Chapter 12 - Buckle In
When Alex woke up, he sat up before he was actually ready to move and immediately regretted it when the world started spinning. But he didn't know how long he had been unconscious, and that was enough to send him panicking all over again. "No, no, no," he said, scrambling to his feet - very uncoordinated and slipping a few times while his body caught up to the urgency his mind was feeling. He could see the bars of a cell and knew there wasn't any point to it, but he still rushed to the bars and all but slammed into them. "No!"
"Woah, hey, you okay?" asked a too-familiar voice, and Alex could actually feel his knees almost give out on him.
Because that was Nate's voice. The cells the department had them in were far enough apart that there were only a couple per hallway - probably to cut back on the number of people who could escape at once should one person get out - but the cells were directly facing each other, nestled at the end of those hallways.
They'd put him across from Nate, who didn't know what he knew. Who had been unconscious during the unloading process.
And there was just - there was just no way that Alex was going to tell him the truth. It would destroy Nate, and Alex refused to do the Department's work for them. They'd already killed the people he cared about, but Alex was damned if he was going to deliver that news until they were somewhere safe, somewhere trauma wasn't a blunt instrument in their attempts at control and torment.
So, what Alex actually said was, "No, of course I'm not okay. I have a very broken arm, and I know for a fact they've caught more than just me and you, seeing as you weren't on a beach on Genosha with me before this whole thing started, were you?" And that was all very believable for him to say, but the problem was that the loss was so fresh, and he hadn't actually had any time to process it, that his pitch kept rising, and he was coming across as almost hysterical - which wasn't going to fool a Kindergartener, let alone Nate.
"Uncle Alex-"
"I'm fine," Alex said, trying harder to be convincing.
"Oh, God. How bad is it?"
"Bad." That much, Alex was comfortable telling him, especially because he could feel himself going into a sort of shock as he processed the fact that Scott and Kate both were dead by then. There was no way they had waited long, and he hadn't been able to warn anyone. "Like… really, really bad. Has the potential to turn into X-Men-splitting-and-going-back-into-hiding bad."
"No way," Nate said, though there was no bluster to go with it. "No."
"Who-" Alex stopped himself. He wasn't sure he wanted to know who else had been caught along with Rachel and Nate. "Have you seen…?"
Nate leaned toward Alex and shook his head. "Just you."
"Okay." Alex took a deep breath and covered his eyes. He was sure they'd put him across from Nate on purpose. He had to keep it together, but that could only last so long. "Okay, so - they shot Wanda. Last I saw, they had Billy, too. I don't know what happened to Tommy."
"They're so dead- they shot Wanda? That's just … yeah, no way these guys are surviving that."
"Yeah." Alex didn't pick his hand up off of his eyes.
"So, how long before Lorna comes to the rescue, do you think?"
Despite everything, Alex couldn't help but chuckle. "It depends on if Wanda survived," he said. "If she didn't, I expect Lorna any minute now, fully embracing her father's role."
"She's going to clash so hard."
"That's how you know she's gone evil. Clashing."
"I believe it," Nate agreed, settling in to try and buck Alex up, because it was the one thing she could do. "And she's usually so careful."
"Yeah, totally married up," Alex agreed quietly.
"The real question is: did she learn how to do the magnetic burrito, or will this be a learning experience?"
Alex let out a choked-sounding laugh. "God, that - that was - that's Kate's best contribution to Magneto's legacy, and I love that for her."
"Best contribution you know of. She's got more than that."
"Yeah, just, you know, he's dead, so there's a time limit on her contributions here," Alex said, dragging his hands over his face so he could hide his expression until he had it better under control.
"Oh, she's made all her jokes already. Perfected them and polished them up."
"You married up too," Alex agreed.
"Right. So - lets make sure that these guys don't realize what a mistake it was to put us close to each other, huh?" Nate offered, knowing things were bad because Alex was coming apart visibly and trying to get his mind on escape. "We gotta come up with something good to break out of here and leave like action heroes as the building blows up behind us."
Alex nodded with a tired smirk, knowing what Nate was doing but playing along anyway. "Think they'll fix up my arm? I can't even bump it without seeing white, so that puts a damper on our planning."
"If they don't, Tyler can," Nate said. "But if they were going to weaponize you, seems like you'd need the arm in decent enough shape that you don't turn into a three-year-old with a scraped knee when you breathe on it."
"I need a Band-aid," Alex said straight-faced.
"Somehow I doubt they give out Twinkies here."
"Damn." Alex smirked and then slid to the ground, sitting against the bars so he could easily talk to Nate. "Okay, boss. Let's plot and plan."
The second Bobby had been thrown into a room with heat lamps in it, he'd known what was in store - but that didn't make it any easier when the lamps came on. He couldn't go anywhere when his knee was so badly hurt, but he did try to fight back, nearly hyperventilating, before the door was closed.
He could hear the guards outside chuckling and congratulating themselves on their plans when they saw how badly Bobby was reacting to his quarters. He shot a solid glare their way, but all he could think about was the last time he'd been in a situation like that, so the glare didn't have the bite he wanted it to have.
He managed to maneuver himself so that he wasn't just sprawled out on the floor, but even then, he cried out a few times when he accidentally jostled his knee. He sucked in a breath and managed to sit up, but he couldn't lean against the walls when they were the source of the heat.
He took a deep breath, trying to calm down, but he couldn't. He just couldn't. The second he closed his eyes, he could see Logan. He could see Graydon Creed. And he could hear Logan's whispered apology before Logan started making it look bad.
He took in a breath that hitched, and then, he simply started to cry.
Tommy was putting to use every trick his dad had ever taught him for what to do when he needed to stay put. For how to keep his mind occupied. And he still felt like he was falling apart.
Maybe it would have been easier if he could close his eyes and center himself. He did know how to do that, even if he didn't like doing it. But when he closed his eyes…
He tried to block it out. He really did. He tried not to think about how much everything had hurt, how sick he had felt in his body and soul. He tried not to think about the look on Billy's face when Apocalypse had him in his grasp.
He tried not to think about Mia. About Noh. About funerals. About comparisons. About nightmares. About how damn hard it had been to live through it all and try to pick up the pieces.
So, of course, that was all he could think about.
He tried to put on a brave face, because Steve was close by, and it was embarrassing to fall apart in front of Captain America. But it was also embarrassing how relieved he was when guards showed up to take him out of his cell. Even if whatever was in store was bad, at least it wasn't leaving him alone with his thoughts and memories.
The guards dragged him along and didn't engage him in any conversation, but that, for once, worked for Tommy; it gave him time to get his breathing under control so he could sass whoever was over the guards' heads.
But Tommy didn't get to see anyone in charge. Instead, he was shoved into a room and was surprised to find that it… just… looked like a big, four-walled, metal-lined room with an observation deck with reinforced glass at the very top of it. "Huh," he said, turning a small circle. "Okay, this is a new one."
No one said anything to him, though, so he didn't have any context for what was happening when his collar beeped and the light went out. But even if that made it obvious these guys wanted to see him do something, he wasn't going to stick around and see what hoops they had for him to jump.
"Thanks! See ya!" he called out, giving the observation deck a two-fingered salute before he zipped off - and hit the wall harder than he'd meant to.
"Ow." He shook his head and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, realizing that the sound in the room wasn't his ears ringing but the walls.
Vibranium.
"Well that's just great," he muttered, dusting himself off. He'd really planned to go through the walls and leave, even though that was one of the hardest things to do with his powers. But vibranium was particularly difficult to get through.
He tried a couple more times but could only get a hand or one time an arm through before the reverb was too much for him and he had to pull back. The last time, he ended up stumbling back a step and landing on his butt, and he glared up at the glass booth - which was still silent. "Okay. Fine. Can't go through; I'll just bring the exit to me," he said and put both hands on the floor, closed his eyes, and concentrated on getting just the right vibration to sync up with the natural rhythm of the vibranium.
This was what he'd been working on in Westchester. Anyone could run fast. Figuring out how to control his concussive and vibration powers was a science.
At first, the walls and floor didn't respond to what he was doing, but after a few minutes, the entire room started to shake. First a little, then like there was an earthquake, then a bigger earthquake, to the point that the ceiling started to crack and the reinforced glass was making criss-cross patterns, and the soundproof seal broke, finally breaking the silence, too.
"That's more creative than we thought," one of the scientists said from the other side of the glass as another two were scrambling at the control panel. "We have a fair idea on how to apply pressure, though. Take him down."
Tommy paused what he was doing when he heard the order. "Yeah, not happening," he muttered and went ahead and shattered the collar he was wearing. He hadn't been able to pick it anyway, and his powers were still on. He wasn't going to lose that advantage. Of course, he had to go back to the floor and try to find the right sweet spot again, but it didn't take as long to get the place shaking again, and this time, one of the cracks was at his level. He grinned as it widened, and then pressed himself through it as soon as it looked like he could fit.
There were soldiers on the other side, though, and as soon as Tommy came through, they raised their guns at him.
"Oh, hi," Tommy said - and took off running immediately.
The soldiers opened fire, and Tommy could hear people shouting, but he didn't stay in one place long enough to hear the actual words. His goal was to find his brother or his mom. Once he found someone else in his family, that would be it.
He rushed through the halls, and he did see people he knew that he could double back and get if he needed to, but Billy would be faster, and Wanda would be devastating to the bad guys.
One of the doors looked reinforced, so Tommy figured that was probably important, and he ran into it when it didn't immediately open. It was hard to get through; it was either reinforced with vibranium or adamantium. But the wall beside it…
He stumbled through the wall a second after he'd hit the door, but that hit had alerted the guards beyond that someone was there, and an alarm had just sounded. Tommy was fast enough that the guards didn't know the whole reason for the alert.
Once again, the guards opened fire on Tommy, and this time, he felt his arm explode in hot pain, just below his elbow. But he kept running, past the guards, yanking their guns out of their hands rapidly and knocking them out before he rushed to a set of three green tubes.
"Oh, there are some things I don't want to see," Tommy said, rolling his eyes when he realized that Billy, Rachel, and James were all butt-naked.
He set to work trying to figure out the controls, because he wasn't sure breaking the tubes was smart. The three people inside them were hooked up to stuff, and Tommy didn't know enough about non-physics science stuff to know what the different notations meant. And he'd seen Billy shaking from withdrawal after Viper and knew drugs could be funny things.
His arm was killing him, and he bounced in place a few times, gritting his teeth as he waited for his body to fix it.
He was focused enough on the controls that he didn't see a room beyond the tubes where people with lab coats on were reading over notes - but those people saw Tommy through the one-way glass and sent another several soldiers his way.
"Gah- hey!" Tommy spun and punched the soldier who snuck up on him, and while he knocked the guy out, the soldier had managed to get a collar around his neck in the process.
Two other soldiers rushed at him to grab him - and Tommy honestly could have taken them if he hadn't been shot. His arm was nowhere close to being okay yet, and the second the soldier on his left purposefully grabbed his open bullet wound, Tommy couldn't fight back when his vision was swimming.
The soldiers manhandled him forward until he was in the other room, where half a dozen white-coated scientists were talking all at once. Half of it sounded like it was in code to Tommy since he didn't get all the medical mumbo jumbo, but whatever was going on was sucking the power, making it flicker. As Tommy watched, some techs hooked up massive equipment to James's tube, which had way more stuff around it than Billy's or Rachel's.
There was clearly one woman running the show, coolly directing them all at once while she watched the monitors and James - which was when Tommy could see that James wasn't exactly out. His eyes weren't closed anywhere near as tightly as the other two, and Tommy could swear that he was trying to look at something. One second, the white-coated woman was telling her team to keep steady; the next, she was directing them to start the video feed. And a moment after that, she was troubleshooting the kinds of medical issues that sounded really bad.
The techs were all … so calm, even if their focus was tight. They all had their jobs, and they knew how to do it.
"Check his profile and medical files again, please," the woman in charge said, prompting another to get to work at her station. "I've gone over it for months, but we need to be sure…"
Two of the techs shared a look, then turned their focus to the woman running the show. Neither of them wanted to speak up, but it was clear they'd reached a point that they needed her call.
Finally, after reading through some notes one more time, she turned their way, looking irritated. "Start the feed, boys. We've used enough thorazine to drop an elephant. He won't move."
"Yes, ma'am," one of them said before he hit a button, and the temperature in the room jumped up an easy twenty degrees; the smells in the air shifted from hot metal to ozone as whatever else was in that water heated up and dispersed.
A few moments later, it looked as if the water in the tank James was floating in was boiling … or near enough to it.
"Woah, hey, roast Wolverine is not on the menu!" Tommy blurted out, trying to pull free, though that was hard when one arm wasn't responding right. The guy on that side seemed to realize that was the case and shifted so that he was still holding Tommy by the shoulder with one hand but with the other jammed his fingers under Tommy's chin so he couldn't talk. He didn't need to hold Tommy's wrist if he couldn't move it anyway.
"Where did he come from? If you can't get rid of him, at least keep him quiet," the woman called out, sounding more serious as one of the doctors started to call out vitals.
"We have to slow his heart down," one of them told the woman running the show. "The feed might be going wrong…"
"It's not wrong," the woman in charge said, cutting across the doctor. "That's what the reserves are for. Our source didn't bother telling us how tall he was."
But that seemed to be the last word for a long while as the doctors and lab personnel quieted down when the feed stopped … along with James's heart. They all seemed to be holding their breath until, several moments later, James' heart started beating again and stayed in a range they could actually read … and nothing further seemed to happen. It was like someone had slammed on the gas pedal and then the brakes before he suddenly continued on without more prompting.
And, once the feeds were done, the light available in the room brightened, signaling that the hardest part was over with.
"Start running diagnostics," the woman said. "Make sure when you get him out of there that you have every monitor available functioning and reporting. As soon as he moves a muscle on his own, I want to know."
After a long moment, the woman in charge turned toward Tommy and the guards holding him as if she just now was bothered to notice he was there. "Who is this? How did he get in here?" she asked as she checked a clipboard in front of her. "I don't have anyone else on my roster right now."
"One of the Genoshan princes," the soldier to Tommy's right said, since Tommy couldn't answer. "Apparently, he overloaded the observation room when they turned off the collar."
Tommy did his best to grin under the circumstances, but he was too surrounded to try to escape. Yet.
"What do you want us to do with the subject?" one of the scientists at a control panel asked.
"Keep him in stasis for now," the woman replied. "Easier to keep tabs on him this way. As soon as he's more stable, start removing the extra ledes."
"And the prince?"
"Hmm." She checked the clipboard again, frowning, then turned to look at the other genesis tubes. "They're not on my roster either." She held the board close to her chest as she looked at Tommy more closely over the top of her glasses. "Bring him back to me if he needs a surgical modification; otherwise, he shouldn't be in my wing."
The soldiers needed both arms to manhandle Tommy out of there, so Tommy was able to talk again. He coughed several times and then started swearing. "You can't even keep me contained for more than five minute spurts - you really think digging your graves any deeper is a good idea?" he shouted even as he was dragged out.
But no one paid him any attention, and the two guards just kept dragging him. Which honestly pissed Tommy off. So, he waited until they were farther away from the crowd so it was just him and the two guards, and then, he full-body dropped, throwing their balance off when they suddenly had his whole body weight to deal with.
And while they were scrambling, he got his feet underneath him enough to push off the ground and slam one of the guards into the wall. The guy let go, and his partner was easy to throw off after that. And then, Tommy took off running, annoyed that he was once more in a collar and couldn't speed away like he wanted.
He knew he needed to get his breath and his bearings, so after he took several turns and was sure he heard the two guards run past him, calling into their comms, Tommy decided to pull a stunt Kate had told him about. He yanked on several vent covers until he found one that was loose, then focused on that until he could climb in, his chest heaving as he heard, not two minutes later, people running past.
The vents were dusty and gross, and they smelled like mold. And he could only see boots. But no one saw him, so… that was good.
Tommy scooted back away from the vent cover, took a deep breath, and finally allowed himself a very quiet, whimpering cry over his arm - and over everything he'd seen. He'd gotten so close to Billy, but… Billy was alive, and he wasn't in line for experimentation. All Tommy had to do was figure out how to get back to the lab and how to get Billy out without being caught.
He could do that, right?
Nate was pacing in his cell when the telepathic attack hit him out of the blue, and he ended up sitting down, if only because his powers weren't on, so he couldn't float in the lotus position like he normally would.
But even if he didn't have his powers, his mind was his domain, and he had the home field advantage when five blonde girls came traipsing in, trying to unlock doors in the orderly hallway.
Nate didn't bother trying to ask what they were after; he could figure that out on his own. These guys were in the business of making mutants do what they wanted, and from what Nate could see of these girls' telepathic weapons, they weren't half bad.
He just wasn't in the mood to play around.
A second after he saw the girls, he had a psychic gun in hand - a big one - and blasted them away from the doors they'd been trying to open. When they turned toward him, almost in unison, he frowned and had to pause. Quintuplets? Clones? They definitely all looked like the same person - enough so that it was off-putting.
In the split second he'd taken to get a good look at his attackers, they struck back with blue-ish beams that left ice in their paths. And suddenly, Nate wrinkled his nose, realizing that these had to be Emma Frost's Cuckoos.
After everything his dad had been through with Emma, not to mention the crap that had gone down with his brother and the Hales, Nate wasn't in the mood to add his name to the growing list of people screwed over by a Frost. He fought back with a psychic flamethrower, scattering the girls in the process and (mostly) melting the frost where they'd left paths. He'd have to go back and fix that when he wasn't in the middle of a battle, but a good meditation would work just fine, and he wasn't worried about the bare traces in the short-term, anyway.
For a long time after that, they traded barbs, frost and flamethrower, daggers and bullets, you name it. And he had to admit: as a united front, the Cuckoos were good. They really were. But he was pissed, and he'd worked so hard to keep his telepathy honed so he could be normal that really, they were kind of asking for him to let loose.
One of the girls did get a door open while Nate was fighting, but that actually just expedited their exit, because she'd happened to pick one of the few, vague memories Nate had of his mom. It wasn't much, just a song she'd used to sing, and her voice was faded and garbled because he couldn't remember it anymore - but it was personal and particularly sacred to him.
The next thing the Cuckoos knew, they were forcibly expelled back into their own minds - and left with serious headaches.
"Touchy about history repeating itself?" one of the blondes said as she got her bearings.
Nate glared as he got to his feet in his cell, his arms crossed now that he could see his attackers in person. "I'm a private person, and I don't like Frost knockoffs trying to get in where they aren't wanted."
"Yes, I'm sure that's what it is," another blonde chimed in.
"And not at all a little boy just hiding from the truth." a third added.
"Especially since it seems like your family simply couldn't-"
"Learn from your mistakes," the five chimed out in unison.
Nate frowned between the five of them. "Yeah, whatever," he said and sat back down. "We done now?"
"Who's the little boy?" the first asked, then smiled tightly. "He was cute."
For just a second, Nate's eyes narrowed. And then, he said the first thing that came to mind. "Cousin. Alex is a sucker for babies."
"We don't believe that," the second said.
"Okay. Can't control what you believe," Nate said. "And you can't paw around in there, so, again, we're done here. Go bother someone else."
"We can," the fourth argued.
"We'll just need preparation," they all echoed.
"Okay, come back with an army," Nate said easily, leaning back. "Bye."
"We'll drug you," the last one said. "Works like a charm."
"Good luck with that," Nate said.
The girls shared a look, and all of them were smiling. "Your sister said the same thing," the leader of the group told him.
Nate narrowed his eyes again. "My sister would have burned you from the inside out if you'd tried."
"She didn't, though," the same girl told him. "Hard to concentrate when we work with the right balance."
"Now I don't believe you. It's harder for her not to let the Phoenix play when she's in danger. Break her concentration? You're dead. So don't try to lie to me. I know her."
"Break her concentration while she's so drugged up on things to keep her calm, she simply didn't care about what was going on around her."
Nate's eyes flashed as he got to his feet and stalked as close to the girls as he could with the lasers stopping him. "If you get my sister killed by the Phoenix, I will turn every thought in your head to soup."
"Going to be hard to do when you don't have access to anything," she countered.
"You can't even get more than a surface glimpse of my memories," Nate shot back.
"Just a matter of time," the second girl said. "It just takes finding the right approach. You'll see."
"Like hell," Nate said through his teeth.
The girls all shared a look and an obvious telepathic conversation between them before they all turned in unison and started to walk off - in step with each other with every footfall. Riling Nate like this wasn't going to get them anywhere, and they knew it.
Since Nate had been a harder target than the Cuckoos wanted to deal with at the moment, they turned their sights somewhere they were sure would be easier. For the past several days, the only reports out of Bobby's cell were that he was clearly having some kind of breakdown. So, they reasoned, he would be the perfect target.
They turned down the heat enough that it would be slightly more tolerable for them while still being warm enough to bother Bobby when he was already that dried out before they let themselves in to where Bobby was curled in on himself. And then, they invited themselves into his mind.
They weren't at all surprised that he was all but broadcasting the time he had spent in Graydon Creed's captivity - as well as the intense survivor's guilt he had walked away from that fiasco carrying. And they weren't surprised to see that, after a few days, his memories of that captivity were blending into others, so that his time on Genosha was at the forefront of his mind as well.
The girls were sure this would be easy as they walked into Bobby's mind, ready to pick it over for information on the rest of the X-Men as well as on Genosha, but they had no sooner gone deeper into Bobby's mind than they heard the screeching sound of metal on a cold tile floor and looked back to see that Bobby was standing there in his mindscape with his hand on the door to the cell he had just closed them into.
His smile was a little too manic to be menacing, but it was still unsettling as he gestured around them. The scene had shifted so that they looked to all be locked into Magneto's prisons, with power radiating from the bars that Bobby had just closed.
"You want to know what's on my mind?" Bobby asked, still with his slightly too-wide grin. "This. This is what's on my mind. And now you're stuck in here with me, so I hope it's worth it to you."
All five of the Cuckoos let out identical cries of indignation and sent Bobby flying backward and crashing into the wall, but he just let out a tired chuckle and picked himself up again.
"Yeah, I know. It's not fun," he agreed. "But the thing is, you guys aren't the first to think about using telepaths. You seriously think Magneto didn't know a single telepath he could send my way?" He wiped his mouth and stood up straighter, then gestured around himself at the walls. "I know my defenses suck when something like this happens, so you know what I did? I repurposed them. I don't have defenses anymore; I have one big, giant trap, and you waltzed right into it. So you can scream and throw me around all you want, but you're stuck here just as much as I am."
One of the Cuckoos narrowed her eyes and pointed at Bobby. "Do you really think you can keep us here?"
Bobby shrugged easily. "I mean, there's only one exit, and it's out. You'll get exactly no information out of me, and you'll have to tell your bosses you got outsmarted by a half-melted snowman, but you can leave in about…" He paused to think about it. "Ten minutes." As he said that, the scene shifted, and the Cuckoos found themselves in the last moment Bobby had seen Logan alive, as Graydon Creed demanded that Logan hurt Bobby for him.
Bobby took a deep breath and let it out. "Once this is over, there will be a door. You can take it if you want. Or you can relive the next memory. And then, there will be another door. I'm already reliving it, so it doesn't matter to me how long it takes you to leave."
"You can't-" One of the Cuckoos tried to argue, but in the memory, Graydon had just kicked Bobby, and all of them, Bobby and the Cuckoos combined, felt it.
Bobby sounded tired as he met the Cuckoos' gaze. "Well, girls, buckle in."
