Chapter 3: CyberTech

The soft chiming of her comm system woke her from a sound sleep filled with happy dreams of her teen years with the X-Men. "Wha—" she said fuzzily, blinking as she sat up and tried to clear the tangled hair from her eyes. "Lights on," she said, and the lights came on. "Computer, who's the caller?"

"Incoming call from Thomas Donaldson, at CyberTech Corporation headquarters," said the computer's androgynous voice calmly. "Accept?"

Jubilee nodded, then remembered that the computer couldn't see her. "Yes, I accept," she said. "Wall screen on."

The wall facing her bed went from blank white to black screen, and moments later the screen went from black to white. Another second, and the face of a short red-haired man came up, wearing ridiculously antiquated glasses and an old-fashioned button-down shirt. "Hey, Jubes," he said cheerfully. "Late night last night?"

Jubilee shook her head irritably. Tom was the only one who called her that anymore; and she hated it. "Tom, I said don't call me that. Why are you calling so early anyway?"

"Whatcha mean, early? It's not early, I've been up for ages. It's almost nine. You were supposed to be here at eight-thirty for a nanite regen session. Wanna get one more charge up for them, just so we can make sure they all got a full battery. And the Boss Man was sayin' something about a new mission, so you really ought to get here before he does or he's gonna go ballistic like he did the last time."

"Let him go ballistic. What's he gonna do, fire me?" Nevertheless, she started to scramble out of bed. Tom watched calmly from the wall screen as she padded over to the wall and opened one of the drawers there.

"Not fire you, but I think last time he said something like making me give the nanites their next upgrade early, just so you'd have to stay here for a week and he could make sure you didn't have late nights and late mornings."

Jubilee groaned aloud, and stared at Tom in disbelief. "He wouldn't!"

"He would!" Tom grinned. "So you'd better get here soon. Tom out." The screen went blank.

Jubilee sighed as she pulled open another drawer and took out what she called her 'work clothes'. It was a jumpsuit that hugged her upper body, had slightly flared legs, and a wide yoke of fabric across the front and draped low down her back to display her tattoo. It was comfortable, allowed her freedom of movement without sacrificing warmth, and would protect her from any surprise attacks because of the adamantium molecules added to the warp of the fabric. The rest of the jumpsuit was made of a super-strong but lightweight polymer that flowed around her body.

Before leaving, she reached into a hidden drawer, taking out the small black device that gave her an impenetrable personal shield. Nothing would be able to touch her. Not that she really needed it, of course; she was only making the short hop eight blocks to CyberTech's building…but it never hurt to be prepared. She'd learned that from running with Logan all those years ago.

Nothing untoward happened, however; she made the trip in ten minutes in her aircar (traffic was heavier than usual, so it took her a few extra minutes as police tried to unravel a tangle of aircars at 14th street and Constitution Ave. She finally pulled into the airpark for the building at 14th and G Street, parked in her special parking space, and walked into the lobby.

And was attacked.

She got no warning; just a moving blur at the very edge of her peripheral vision. She exploded into motion, dropping to one knee, one hand reaching down to her belt and activating her personal shield, the other flying out before her, sending her plasmoids in a wide, tight arc outwards and focusing their blast outwards from her body. And then she saw who her attacker was, and she froze her sparkles in midair before they could touch the man who had sneaked up on her. "Riley, do you want to die?" she asked, half-laughing, half annoyed.

Riley was the security guard that worked the front lobby, directing visitors to the upper floor and keeping the lower levels a secret from all but those who needed to know. "I don't have a death wish, no," he said, his young, boyish face breaking into a grin. "But come on, Nightshade, we do this every morning I'm here. I know you well enough to know you're going to pull your punches until you know if I'm a bad guy, and you've never seriously hurt me."

"Never?" Jubilee grinned lopsidedly. "What about the first time you did this, and I paffed you into the wall there? You took a medical leave after that, if I remember correctly. That was a serious injury."

"Nah, I went to Atlantic City to gamble," Riley joked. "But no, that first time was a fluke. Now that you know it's me, we haven't had that problem again." He sat down again behind his desk and picked up his newspaper. "Go on down. Your friends have been calling up here every half minute to see if you've gotten here yet."

As if on cue, the vidscreen beeped. "Riley? Has Nightshade gotten there yet?"

Jubilee grinned, pressed a finger to her lips, and headed for the lift. Riley turned to the vidphone. "No, she hasn't. But I heard there was an accident down at 14th and Constitution that snarled up traffic some; she's probably caught in that."

"Oh," said Tom's image. "Well, if that lasts too much longer she'll paff the aircars in the pileup in a fit of pique and blow them to kingdom come. And the boss'll have another fit. Thanks, Riley." The image clicked off.

Riley settled back in his chair and opened his newspaper. Some things never changed…

Jubilee got off the lift when it stopped at Sublevel C and strolled off down the hall. Despite the climate controls in place down here, she could still feel the chill in the air from being underground. Suppressing a shudder, she turned down a small dead-end corridor and stopped in front of a dull gray door labeled, 'Medical Labs'. Slipping her ID card into the slot, she opened her eye very wide and allowed the retinal scanner to scan her eye. Then the door opened with a hiss of hydraulics.

"Morning Carl. Morning, Tom," she said breezily as she strolled in. "Miss me?"

Tom's jaw dropped. "I just got off with Riley…he said he hadn't seen you yet—"

From the other side of the lab, Carl grinned. He was a tall, huskily-built man with green eyes and hair dyed a bright straw yellow. "Don't let that fool you, Tom," he said. "Riley's up there today. He and Jubes are tight. They do stuff like this all the time. Just…Riley's been off while his wife was having her baby, and that dried up old stick who replaced him hasn't got the humor God gave a cabbage." He looked at Jubilee, and smiled at her. "Come on up. Looks like you had a night. Anything I have to help the nanites fix?"

Jubilee grinned as she started unzipping her jumpsuit. Carl and Tom were her 'handlers'. Tom was the techie; he took care of the nanites and the cybernetic organs she carried around in her body, and Carl was the doctor who took care of her biological parts. "Nope. Actually, I did go to bed early; but I woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare, and it took a while to get back to sleep." Nude now, she lay down on Carl's exam bed.

Nudity, after over a century of living, wasn't a big thing with her anymore. Especially around these two. Both Tom and Carl had seen everything under her clothes, and even under her skin, multiple numbers of times. They were the third set of handlers she'd had since she signed up for Project Nightshade; and so far the only ones who had not had an issue with her body. She did have a nice body; teenage puppy fat had given way to lean, toned limbs and muscles and a woman's curves, the nanites had preserved it, and her past doctors had been almost embarrassed to look at her because they couldn't without drooling. Carl and Tom were under no such restrictions; they accepted what she looked like under her clothes. Probably because they were more 'interested' in each other than in her. Which was fine. It was kind of fun watching the two interact both at home and at work. They were more interesting than some of the other people working here at Cybertech; and much nicer.

Carl probed the skin at the top of her shoulder. "Still looks pink there. Does it hurt at all?"

Jubilee thought for a moment, concentrating on the signals her nanites were sending her, and shook her head. "Nope. Not at all."

Carl made a satisfied sound. "All right. Go on and sit up. Tom wants to charge the nanites, so…" he picked up a tube of conducting gel and waited for her to hold out her hands.

Jubilee smiled as she felt the warm, gooey stuff hit her palm. "I like that. Did you know none of the other doctors ever warmed the conducting gel before they applied it? As if I didn't already have enough to deal with." She rubbed the gel over her hands as he reached over behind her and plugged the thin charging cord into the small metal port at the base of her spine. "Set it a little higher this time. Maybe about forty percent. I have some things I need to get done today."

Carl tilted the top of the bed up as she reached out and firmly gripped the metal handles attached to the side, then braced her feet, but Tom hesitated. "Jubes, are you sure?"

Jubilee rolled her eyes. "Tom, I told you, it doesn't really hurt. Well, maybe in the beginning, but I'm used to it by now. Forty."

Tom winced. "I'm not thinking about how much it hurts you, I'm thinking about how it hurts me," he grumped as he turned to the machine beside the bed. "Masochist."

Jubilee chuckled at his grousing. The chuckle turned into a gasp as the electric started flowing into her body via the plug at the base of her spine and through the contact electrodes embedded in her hands. It had been painful at first; the tiniest shock had hurt, but this was the only way they had found so far to 'charge' the nanites. They did run off Jubilee's own energy reserves, but in case of severe injury, they needed to be 'charged up'. Jubilee knew when she was getting ready for another mission when she was scheduled for more frequent chargeups.

She didn't like them, but she put up with them because she still vividly remembered the last time she had gone out with the other subject volunteers of Project Nightshade and the mission had gone wrong. They had been captured by a gang of Centro-American guerillas and interrogated for information; Jubilee had been the only one still alive when the SEALS came to extract them. Barely. She had sustained massive damage to her cybernetic organs, to the point they were barely functional; since she hadn't been allowed to eat, there were no energy reserves for her nanites to draw on while they repaired the damage, and most of the nanites had 'run down' and stopped completely. The few still remaining had been working as fast as they could just to keep her heart beating and her lungs and brain going. And when Jubilee had been brought back here to CyberTech, she had been hooked up to the charging machine and had punishing amounts of electricity pumped through her body to charge the nanites up so they could heal her body. It had taken a long time for her to recover from that much pain, but the shocks had been necessary to save her life…and the government's investment. Now she never went on a mission without a full charge on the nanites. It also made her post-mission recovery time quicker.

The higher the voltage of the electricity going in meant the faster the nanites would charge. The handles she was now gripping with white-knuckled intensity were feeding information back to Tom's machine, telling him when the nanites had reached maximum charge.

She was concentrating on keeping herself from making any sound that would distress her friends when the door opened. She turned her head just the barest bit, saw that it was the Boss Man, as everyone called the project head Sam Rennick, and turned her attention back to what she was undergoing. Carl quickly whisked out a paper drape and covered her nude body with it. She might not mind Tom and Carl…but Carl knew she didn't like Rennick looking at her. He didn't either; Rennick always looked at Jubilee as though he were undressing her with his eyes.

Tom watched the monitor until the readout showed that the nanites had a full charge, then shut the machine off as fast as possible. Jubilee sank back onto the regen bed with an audible sigh of relief, and panted for breath as she carefully unclenched her gritted teeth. God, she hated these charge-up sessions. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her moth, and she wondered how she was going to say hello to the boss, as he was so obviously expecting. Her fluid levels were low; she knew Carl was looking at that on his computer screen, and cursed herself for not taking the time to drink a glass of water when she got up, to replace what she'd lost during the night crying.

Carl touched her elbow, and she looked down, to see him holding a cup of water with a straw in it. Thanking him with her eyes, she took the straw in her lips and sipped deeply. Rennick looked exasperated. "Aren't you going to say hello?" he demanded sharply.

She was about to say something cutting when Carl broke in. "Give Nightshade a minute, boss," he said in a cordial tone that belied just how angry Rennick had made him. "The charging process takes a lot out of her." He sounded pleasant…but Jubilee could see the stiffness in his shoulders, and Tom's, and she knew they were both upset with Rennick. Anxious to avoid a confrontation, if only for her friends' sake, she responded as soon as she was able, though not without her own measure of sarcasm, "Good morning, boss." Rennick hated the word 'boss'; it was one of the reasons why Jubilee and Tom and Carl used it.

Rennick gave a curt nod. "Got another mission for you," he said.

Jubilee sat up, still holding the thin paper drape to her chest. As soon as Rennick went to the large blank wall at one side of the lab, Carl helped her to stand, held the drape up like a changing curtain, and she yanked on her clothes over shaking limbs. Then she sat back down on the bed as Carl brought over a container of fruit juice and one of his favorite chocolate cupcakes. She accepted it gratefully and started to eat while Rennick went over the mission plan.

He'd called up a map of the southern Atlantic Ocean and indicated a small island nation off the southeastern US seacoast. It used to be Cuba; Jubilee couldn't remember what it was currently being called, though she knew there had been some unrest in the Intelligence community about recent activity there. "We've been hearing a little too much about this island country," Rennick was saying. "And with the recent foiled attack on the United European States, they've become rather more than a nuisance and are starting to become dangerous. The Europeans have asked us for help. They sent in one of their assassination teams to neutralize the threat this nation poses by assassinating the dictator…and the team never made it. They were killed.

"The Europeans asked the President and the President agreed to send a team of our best in. Unfortunately, since you're no longer part of a team, it will have to be you." He pointed at Jubilee. "By yourself. And I don't think I need to tell you that plausible deniability applies here. If you're captured this time, like your team was three years ago, there will be no SEALS this time to haul you out. You're on your own. Got it?"

Jubilee resisted the impulse to curl her lip and snarl at the man. "Got it," she said shortly. "When's the briefing, and when will I leave? What will my armament look like?"

Rennick dug around in his expensive Italian leather briefcase and handed her a little silver datacard. "Everything you need to know is on here. Look it over carefully, as soon as possible. You leave the day after tomorrow." He snapped the briefcase shut, turned on his heel, and walked out.

The sound of the door slamming was loud in the suddenly quiet lab. For a long moment no one looked at each other, each worrying about what the upcoming mission might bring.

"Hardass," Tom finally said into the silence. "Damn hardass. He went to all that trouble to get you to say 'hi', and he never said 'hi' back. I'm going to put laxatives in his coffee."

That broke the tension. Jubilee laughed a little, pushing her worry back to the back of her mind for the moment. "Put one in there for me too, will you?"

"And me," Carl said, going to the small lab fridge and getting out a brown paper bag. Coming back, he shoved it at Jubilee. "Here. Chicken salad, apple, another of those cupcakes, and some more juice. You need it."

Jubilee tried to give it back. "Carl, I can't. It's your lunch. I'm going to go grab a bite after we're done here."

"Eat it," Carl said firmly, his tone not allowing for any further discussion. "Your fluid and energy levels are low. Didn't you eat any of the roast chicken I gave you?" Carl's hobby was cooking, and he was good at it too. Jubilee was often favored with the results of his experiments, since he complained she never ate enough and didn't have a husband or 'significant other' to care for her.

Jubilee flushed. She was too embarrassed to tell him she'd been unable to eat because the chicken smelled and tasted like something that Scott used to cook for dinner back when she lived with the X-Men. The very thought brought tears to her eyes. "I—"

Carl held up a hand. "Don't. I don't need an explanation." He looked up as Tom brought over his own datapad and handed it to Jubilee. She slipped her datacard into it, and started reading the screen as she ate. Both Tom and Carl hovered over her shoulder, reading the mission information with her.

"I don't like it," Carl said flatly when they were done.

Jubilee smiled. "Carl, you never like any of the missions," she said gently.

"It's too dangerous. You're going alone. Too many things could go wrong."

"Yeah. Like when you led the Nightshade team three years ago." Tom was serious. "Look, Jubilation. We know you're in a dangerous business. We knew that when we took over as your 'handlers'—God, I hate that term, makes you sound like a damn zoo animal, for Christ's sake—but knowing you accepted the risks when you accepted the nanotech enhancement doesn't make it any easier to bear when you go off on a mission you could potentially never come back from. And even worse when all we can do is twiddle our thumbs and wait for you to come back. Since that disaster three years ago, we've had to struggle with our memories of what you looked like when you got back here…and we know you could come back looking like that again. And it scares the hell out of both of us. You're not just a job, Jubilee. You're our friend. And we don't like seeing our friends get hurt."

A lump rose in Jubilee's throat. "I'll be careful, Tom, Carl," she whispered, leaning forward and giving them both a hug. "I promise I'll come back. I can't disappoint the only two friends I have left in the world, can I, now?"

Carl hugged her back, tears in his eyes as he looked over her shoulder at Tom. "No you can't," he sighed unhappily. "No, you can't."