Sinister Designs: Chapter 11
When the lights went to "submarine red", Moira and Isidro knew something was up. They prayed it was Xavier's promised rescue. Moira in particular split her prayer between "rescue us" and "please, God, don't let the ventilation cut out in this hermetically sealed cell".
It wasn't until they saw Nightcrawler go literally flying by their cell that they knew for sure.
It would take a second or two for Nightcrawler to figure out what went wrong. He came upon what had to be a row of cells, contacted Logan, and then he was flying face first down that hallway. He managed to get his legs up in time to absorb some of the shock, but he still hit hard enough to leave his ears ringing.
"Hot damn!" someone hooted from down the hallway. "You ain't squashed flat!"
Nightcrawler looked back to where the distinctly male, distinctly American voice came from. A huge man walked into view, slamming his huge fist into his huge hand, and smiling a nearly-as-huge smile.
"You shoulda been a blue spot on the wall! I'm impressed, buddy! I really am!" he laughed.
All right, Kurt, you were warned about this big blob, he thought as he spun to a crouching position, somewhat like an annoyed cat who'd been placed on his back. Just don't let him grab you again, and you'll be fine...
He was about to warn Logan of this new development when he felt and heard pieces of something fall from his left ear. Where he'd hit it against the wall. Where his communicator was. Without taking his eyes off the mobile mountain, he caught a glimpse of plastic and metal bits on the floor. Oops. He was on his own. Time for a little manipulation...
"Don't make me unlimber the full force of my fat jokes on you," he started, backing "nervously" against the wall.
His foe just grinned even wider . "Oh, right, you got any new ones for me? I got me a collection, and they all end with someone getting crushed."
The man's grin turned acidic, the cruelty reaching not just his eyes, but every ominous motion of his body. He slowed down, apparently savoring the panic of his trapped prey. Just as Nightcrawler suspected: this mountain was a bully. Maybe he could turn this to his advantage. He looked around frantically, like a trapped animal, as the man closed in. The man slowed even further.
"Whassamatter, buddy?" His tone was something usually reserved for talking to infants. "Didums get all scardey-waredy?"
Then Nightcrawler suddenly disappeared in a puff of blue smoke, leaving a startled and confused flesh mountain a few feet from the end of the hallway.
"Hey! What the fuck?"
Nightcrawler reappeared several feet behind him and began his fast search of cells, looking for prisoners. Empty, empty, empty, empty...
"Get back here you little shit!"
Oh-ohh. The Blob back there was pissed now. Nightcrawler teleported into one of the unoccupied cells as one very irate man pounded on that cell's bars. He did his best not to wince as the Blob's fist connected with, and cracked, both bars and Plexiglas shielding. If Nightcrawler had remained there, the bars should have strained him like a sieve.
My little Oscar-winning performance isn't going to work twice, it seems. Well, if I can't keep him overconfident, maybe I can get him mad enough to make mistakes...
Nightcrawler smiled sweetly, waggled his fingers, and gave his enemy an "air kiss", all while batting his eyes in an infuriatingly coquettish manner. The Blob's face turned a wonderful shade of red, and he wound up for a haymaker. Nightcrawler teleported into the cell on the other side of the hallway as the man's fist smashed through armored Plexiglas and reinforced bars. He didn't want to think too hard about the shrapnel that he just avoided.
The clear plastic shield did wonders for cutting down sound, but Nightcrawler could easily hear the blue streak that spewed from his tormentor's mouth as he realized he'd been had again. The Blob spun about, ripping his arm out of the hole he created and spraying the hall with more plastic and metal shards. It only took him a half second to find Nightcrawler in the cell across the way. His face was turning purple now, and this time he didn't bother with a fist. He bolted headlong for the cell, which partially crumbled under the assault.
As satisfying as this may be, I can't keep doing this, Nightcrawler thought as he reappeared in the hallway. Sooner or later he could resort to taking hostages...
He had a few precious seconds to search for Moira and the rest of the prisoners before his enemy pulled himself free of the wreckage. He bolted down the hallway as the Blob roared in anger from the cell. There! To the left! By the time the Blob stumbled back into the hallway, Nightcrawler was long gone.
Moira and Isidro had just enough time to register that Nightcrawler had seen them when he appeared in their cell. In less than a second, all three had disappeared, arriving in the Blackbird's interior. From the constant noise, a horrendous windstorm must have been raging outside.
"Hank's there an' so is someone else, cell next to us!" Moira shouted quickly. "An' there's sure to be more somewhere!"
Both she and Isidro looked a bit off balance, and to tell the truth, so was Kurt. Teleporting with two people was a difficult feat at the best of times. He gently pushed them to the wall, to two of the seats.
"Stay clear of the center," he said. "I need to have a clear landing platform here."
"We'll be up in the cockpit," she replied. "That all right for ye?"
Nightcrawler nodded. "Tell them my comlink is gone, won't you?"
Moira nodded, and Nightcrawler disappeared. Moira then moved forward to the cockpit and its sensor array. Rain and gravel-sized hail constantly pounded the windshield, making it difficult to see anything outside. Isidro joined her, looking out the copilot's window while she looked out the pilot's side.
"Moira," he whispered, tapping her on the shoulder.
She couldn't hear his words, but the tapping did the trick. She looked his way, then moved up next to him, sharing the view through the copilot's window. Her jaw dropped in shock. No wonder it was so noisy in the jet. A funnel cloud was roping down right over Nathaniel's lab.
For Storm, calling down the vortex was the easy part. More difficult was magnifying it into something dangerous. In the last few minutes, while Banshee and Colossus kept the amplifier suits busy, she pulled and pulled, creating a whirlwind out of nothing, and then building its speed. With Banshee's sonic screams coming fast and strong, and the hail already buffeting their sensor arrays, the suits never heard the cyclonic action build up behind them.
When the suits first struck at Westchester, Storm's hands were tied. Fearing catching her friends in the middle, she restricted herself to the most basic and selective of attacks. Now, with Colossus, Iceman, and Banshee spread out over several acres, she had free reign, and the tornado just kept building. F1. F2. F3. The tighter she squeezed the vortex, the more speed it picked up, like a skater spinning in a circle.
F4. It was bucking her for control, now. It wanted to be let out to play.
Not yet, my child, she thought. Not yet. Just a little more strength before you touch down. Just a little more...
F5. She could feel it. The winds topped 300 miles an hour. When this touched the lab it was going to explode, reinforced walls or not. She lit the vortex with lightning bolts, and the night sky temporarily turned to day.
The wind made it impossible to talk over the link, but communication had many, many forms. Like the Biblical Pillar of Fire, Storm's sinuous tornado lit up in a twisting column. Colossus, Banshee, and Iceman had been waiting for this for what felt like forever. As one, they fell to the ground and grabbed the earth in their hands. Banshee howled out a perfectly-tuned cord, then modulated up a half-step. With that counter-signal, Storm yanked the deceptively small whirlwind down. It hit the lab like a 1,000 pound bomb. Debris flung out in every direction. Some whizzed over the heads of those in the fields, but most of it was sucked up into the spinning vortex.
Every amplifier suit spun to face what was left of Nathaniel's lab. Their reaction were so fast, so human, that Colossus hated himself for what he was about to do.
"Forgive me," he whispered in Russian.
He ran up behind the suit, picked it over his head, and threw it into the tornado.
Jonathan Portsmith joined the rest of the students inside of the Danger Room, the best armored room in the institute. Half of the students were in there already. Most of them were handling the situation well, but poor Judy was starting to hyperventilate.
"Told you the Professor'd make you come down here," Jaideep said.
"Get bent," John muttered.
"We're gonna die," Judy whimpered. "Rogue was so wrong. We should've run like the last time. We should've run."
Judy's whining was really getting on John's nerves. "Judy, the damn thing has some sort of mutant tracking thing in it. Just how far are we gonna get?"
She stared at him with an open mouth. "How... how do you know that?"
He gave a frustrated growl and rolled his eyes. "I was inside of it, remember? And I saw the specs, okay? Just shut up and let me work from here."
She shook her head frantically. "No! That's not true! It can't find us like that! We have to get out of here!"
She started to bolt. Artie tackled her before she got two steps. The rest of the students grabbed her. She started to scream. Someone slapped her, and she stopped shrieking. They led her to the farthest wall from the door.
"Look, we'll be okay down here," Jaideep told her. "Mr. Summers is up there and so's Kitty. We're just down here so they don't have to worry about us. We'll be okay."
Jaideep's words, repeated over and over, seemed to calm her a little. John and Artie looked at each other.
"You're gonna go into the suit again, right?" Artie asked quietly.
"Yeah," John answered. "Maybe I'll be able to throw its aim off or something. It's not like I can get hurt doing anything from here."
"Anything we can do to help?"
He sneered in Judy's direction. "Keep the princess quiet, okay?"
"You got it."
John moved away from the huddle, sat cross-legged on the floor, and closed his eyes. It took a few seconds for him to "re-acquire" the giant robot's signature through all the electronics in the institute basement. Judy was still whimpering, but she was doing it so quietly that it wasn't a bother anymore.
I'm down in the Danger Room now, just like you asked, he thought.
Good.
And I can still "see" the robot.
Better. Pause. John, can you isolate one process from another?
I should be able to, but it's real hard...
I want to you concentrate on finding the mutant detection equipment. Let me know when you've discovered it, and what you can do with it.
Yes, sir.
It didn't take long for Rosa to swim out of the water and meet up with Siryn. The older girl had managed to scrounge an ill-fitting Xmen uniform jacket, which hung off her like a tent even when it was zipped up. Rosa looked her up and down.
"At least it's armored," Siryn told her.
Cyclops' beams lanced up at the robot, though the man himself was hidden behind a few remaining trees. The robot was an easy target. It was hurting the damn thing that was tough. Concussive blasts that could rip the turrets off tanks seemed to have little effect on the beast. At best they pushed it off-balance. Maybe it was more vulnerable to sound than to sheer pressure.
Siryn glanced Rosa's way. "Plug em', sister."
Rosa didn't currently have "ears" per say, but still she crouched down and put her hands over her tympanic membranes. Siryn took a deep breath.
Focus forward, pure pitch, just like Da' told me.
The sound had a will of its own. Unchecked, it would blow out every window on this side of the mansion. But Siryn's will was stronger. She focused it forward and up, at the robot's head. One of Cyclops' shots hit it again, and the combination of their two blows set the thing reeling. It made a drunken swing with its arm, firing its energy weapon all the way. Siryn realized she was in the line of fire. Her pitch changed, from treble to bass, and the air in front of her shimmered. The energy hit the shield and exploded like a series of grenades. The greenery around her and Rosa blackened, a nearby marble bench cracked with heat, leaving only the two of them, and the tile under their feet, unscathed.
More and more energy came down. Siryn's face turned red as she kept the scream up. Her father could do this for hours! What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she hold a note for twenty damn seconds? In fact, it didn't look like the shield was going to last five seconds.
She felt Rosa grab her jacket. Siryn closed her eyes; if Rosa was doing what she thought she was going to do, this was going to be close. She did not resist as Rosa leapt with her, springing up and over the pool with enviable strength. The stone cracked and melted underneath them, but by then both Siryn and Rosa were ten feet away over the middle of the pool. Steam rose from the chlorinated water as the suit tracked them with its energy weapon, but it didn't get very far. Cyclops' beam came up and knocked its aim off to the right, away from both pool and mansion. Siryn's scream ended in an undignified squawk as she and Rosa hit the water.
"Damn you, Rogue, what the hell were you thinking!" Scott shouted at her. "These kids aren't ready for this! They should have gone out the tunnels!"
Rogue crouched behind a tree and shouted back. "And then where? This thing's got a tracker! Where we gonna go, huh? We're just gonna split up an' make it easier to kill us?"
Scott, I don't like to say this, but Marie is correct, Xavier's voice echoed with regret. This particular unit has some sort of mutant detection system in place. It knows exactly where we are, it will follow, and it moves faster than any of us here. Like it or not, this is where we make our stand.
We make a stand with two and a half adults and a bunch of kids. Great.
There are more differences about this unit, Scott. I can just sense a consciousness within this suit. This time the pilot is not comatose.
The suit suddenly spun around and swept his weapon down as if he was swiping something off his leg. Marie saw the distinctive yellow blur of Regis' teleportation popping around the robot's feet. As the thing tried to grab for Regis, ten Jamies came running out of the brush, each one holding a limpet mine. The suit kicked out, sending half of the Jamies flying. In that second, over a hundred Jamies flew into existence, every one of them doubled over and clutching their chest in pain.
Cyclops felt a similar pain seize his own chest. Jamie Prime had been hit, and hit hard.
Professor, get some of the duplicates to carry each other off! Make sure one of them's Jamie Prime!
It was an absolute horror. Half of the duplicates carried a few of them off, the others, despite the sympathetic pain, tried desperately to grab the limpet mines and affix them to the robot's legs. In return, the massive machine just stomped them into the ground. Several mines went off, tearing one Jamie limb from limb. The robot's armor wasn't even scratched.
They're only duplicates, he told himself. Just duplicates. But Jamie had never had a duplicate seriously injured before, let alone killed. And with Jamie already injured... I can't do this alone. If only there were more of me...
And he looked at the horde of Jamies, and he looked at Rogue, and Rogue looked back. And the two of them didn't need Xavier's influence to think the same thing. Rogue took a deep breath and nodded. She ran for one of the countless Jamies in the area, removing her gloves as she went. Of all the ones on the field, she went for one that was curled up against a tree, hugging his chest. As she got closer, she saw blood streaming from his mouth and nose.
"God it hurts," he sobbed. "Oh God it hurts."
Rogue's hands shook as she knelt down beside him. "Jamie, I don't know if I can take power from a duplicate, but I gotta try."
"Jamie" looked up at her with tearful eyes. "I'm not Jamie. Jamie's not talking now. He's all quiet and stuff." He took a rattling breath. "But you take what you need. You take everything you need."
Rogue gently held the duplicate against her, touching her hands to the back of his neck. He started to tremble, then violently shake. And suddenly Rogue was just holding thin air. There wasn't even any blood from him on her uniform: it was as if he never existed at all.
As Rogue turned around, once again, Kitty phased out of the ground and reached up to the robot's leg. How it knew she was there Rogue had no idea, but it did, and it reacted instantly, raking the ground with energy fire. The beams went through Kitty, but they blew her back regardless. She fell into the brush, all too solid, steam marking her place in the cold night air.
Rogue looked back to Cyclops, who now did something she'd never seen before: he removed his shades. The full force of his optic beams was focused on the back of the robot's knees. At the same time, he pointed to where Kitty fell. It was time for Rogue to "try out" her new ability, if she'd absorbed it at all. She stamped her foot hard enough to leave her shin stinging. Her consciousness split, and now she was seeing out of three sets of eyes. She and the duplicates looked at each other in shock for a moment, and then both duplicates ran into the battlefield.
Harold Trask fell to his knees. Cyclops' hit felt like a sledgehammer to the back of his legs, but that was the least of his worries. His own mutant detector was going crazy! There were so many of them that he couldn't tell which was which!
"Find the phaser!" he told it. "Find Pryde! Concentrate on her! She's the real danger!"
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"Goddammit, what the hell's wrong with you!" he screamed in his cockpit. "Pryde, Katherine! Phaser! Seek!"
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There were too many mutants around. He'd never run it with thousands of them in range: he'd never come across such a concentration before. Somehow his mutant detector had become "stuck". From now on, he'd have to depend heavily on his internal forcefield to keep Katherine Pryde at bay.
Well, it stopped her at least twice. And I hurt her pretty bad with that last plasma burst. All I have to do is eliminate the rest of these freaks, and I'm back in business.
Back in the Danger Room, John had gone into a low-level trance. He sat there, eyes closed, his breath perfectly even, if a bit labored. He finally had it. He had discovered the detection equipment, and forced it into an infinite loop. But he wasn't sure how long he could keep it up. The backup systems were already eating away at his deception.
You're doing fine, John, Xavier's voice said softly, calmly. Don't worry about anything else. Just keep that loop up. That's all you need to do.
Yes, sir. I'm doing my best.
Xavier's mental voice subtly changed tone. There was a tension to it that hadn't existed before. John, I'm going to do something that may be disconcerting. I'm going to disassociate your other senses, so all you'll be able to see will be the suit's systems. It should help you concentrate completely on your task, and I promise it will be temporary.
Um... Okay, sir.
He barely noticed when he went deaf. He didn't notice when he couldn't feel his own clothing against his skin. Nor did he notice when his sight failed, as his eyes were already closed. It was a remarkably gentle change, and considering how hard he was concentrating, it actually did make things easier. Maybe he could keep the loop going for a few more minutes...
And because of what Professor Xavier did, John didn't even twitch when Jamie's body was hauled into the room, and Judy started hysterically screaming his name.
Six Jamies, wheezing and bloody, carried Jamie Prime between them. As two Jamies fell to the floor and disappeared, the other four laid Jamie Prime down. One duplicate looked up, each breath blowing disturbing bubbles in the blood that ran freely from his nose.
"Don't go out there," he wheezed. "Don't-"
And then all the duplicates were gone, leaving Jamie Prime alone on the floor. As bad as the duplicates looked, Jamie Prime may as well have been hit by a freight train. Most of his face was covered with blood, most of his sweater was stained that same red. That chest was sunken, and it wasn't moving right when he breathed.
Judy wasn't alone, she was just the loudest. She broke free of her restrainers and bolted to Jamie's side, still screaming his name, while the rest of the students looked on with stunned horror. Judy grabbed the neck of Jamie's sweatshirt and ripped it open like it was paper, the tough cotton-poly strands of fabric softened to something fragile and brittle. Jamie's chest was just starting to turn purple, and his sternum was sunk by inches. Something deep inside Judy realized that Jamie's ribcage had been crushed, and without it, his lungs would collapse. No one here knew how to use the medlab equipment for something as severe as this, and none of the adults could come down and help them right now.
Tears flowed down her cheeks. She couldn't hear her own sobs. She just knew had to do something about that chest, because Jamie wasn't going to last long enough for help to arrive.
TBC...