xp_logs | Alcatraz: "... a golden handcuff with the key thrown away." (3/5)

Some quick sleight of hand and good timing (not to mention Kurt's efficient use of his mutant ability) gets Remy onto the island to do his thing. Which he does.

Nathan was pulling on his gloves where there was a *bamf* and the distinct smell of brimstone behind him. "Nightcrawler," he said quietly as the other man came up beside him. "All ready to go?" Kurt didn't look too worn out by teleporting Remy almost to the shores of Alcatraz. That was good. Nathan would have hated to have left him here on the mainland, and not just because it would have taken some explaining to Duncan and Langstrom.

"As I will ever be," came the determined answer. "When do we go in?"

"Momentarily. We're going to shut off the engine on the zodiac while we're still well off the island, and Lorna and I will bring it in silently." He gave Kurt a faintly amused look. "I explained to Duncan and Langstrom that you couldn't really teleport us in one-by-one. This will work just as well. It's very dark out there, and, well, we all dress in black."

Kurt nodded. "I doubt I could have taken even one more of you and been good for anything more on this mission."

Nathan smiled, clapping Kurt on the shoulder. #Smile,# he sent, a bit wryly. #If we look like we're confident, maybe Langstrom will stop giving us the evil eye.# Then again, if they looked confident, he might only glower harder.

---

It was almost oppressively dark down here. Dark and damp, and more than a little cramped at various spots in these tunnels. They'd followed the SEAL team's route, right up to the detour, but had stopped well short of the point where things had started going wrong to regroup. Just outside of the perimeter - they hoped.

Nathan looked up the ladder at the vent, frowning, then glanced back at Remy. "I can feel him all over the place," he muttered, stepping aside to give the other man room at the ladder. "Little ripple under the surface of the astral..." He gave Remy a long, grim look. "In case this blows up in our faces... I'm sorry I got you into this."

"Non, you're not." Both men had their mikes off, and Remy had made Nathan stop his telepathic link. Even tiny psionic usage could bleed out and alert the psi on the other end of the Esper system. "You did what you had to do. Wit'out even dis shot, all dose people up dere are going to be dead. Dat's what we signed up for."

"Mmm." Nathan glanced up at the vent again, then shook his head. "I'll feel the passive scanning contract," he said just as quietly. "When I do, I'll bring the others up." When, not if. There was no real need to talk about what passed for the back-up plan, because it wasn't much of a plan and if it came to that, Remy probably wouldn't be here to care one way or the other.

"Once I disable the main switch, de Esper won't be amplifying his powers to jump zones. Dat still means he'll be scanning in a normal fashion, and dey will still have normal systems in place, so be careful." Remy retracted his staff and passed it over to Nathan. "If dey ping on me, you'll likely hear de alarm from de Esper. Get to de people or de bomb. Don't even think of coming after me. I can maybe buy you enough time to get a shot at de bomb and de hostages."

"Right. Well, there's an easy answer to that," Nathan said, taking the staff in his free hand. "Don't get pinged." He smiled faintly, then went on. "When you disable the switch, wait for us. You'll be more helpful topside than running around in these tunnels."

"Give me about five minutes. Dat should be enough time to kill de switch, or to screw up and get caught. If dat happens, Remy head for de docks. Might convince dem dat dey've just got a hostage on de loose." Remy checked his pockets for the tools he needed, and hung his trenchcoat on a broken rung. "Besides, no one likely to confuse me wit' a Navy SEAL, neh?"

Nathan smiled again, a little more wryly this time. "Not likely. Five minutes, then. Good luck," he said, stepping back to let Remy at the ladder.

Remy pulled himself up the ladder, and stopped in a tight crouch at the top. He took a few seconds to slow his breathing, as he let his spatial awareness take over, building a full picture of the room in his mind. He was at the edge of the field, bare inches away from discovery.

An Esper, like a regular telepath, used psionic transmissions in the same way a radar used radio waves to detect foriegn objects. The wave of telepathic energy would bounce off each distinct psychic pattern that it hit, sending back a clear signal of another mind in the vicinity. The breakthrough with the Esper was that the Japanese development team had found a way to artificially replicate the psionic emissions of a single psychic, so one telepath could actually cover a much wider radius than their normal strength would allow.

Using a switch to break the area into zones, the psionic on the other end of the Esper would conduct regular sweeps over the outlying areas, in a random fashion to adequately maintain a wide perimeter. Conventional counter-intrusion technology would help fill the gaps. Considering that there was no current way to counter it, the system was extremely effective, limited only by the fact that a psionic needed to transmit mentally in a very limited frequency. That meant finding one that could use an Esper system was extremely rare.

However, the Esper system did have the same limitations as a normal telepath. While it actively searched, it still needed a psychic signature to react to, which was how Remy had beaten the one before. His spatial sense confused casual scanning because his mind was constantly updating data at a speed normal humans couldn't. It created a difficult signature to passively track, since it was like trying to follow a single insect in a swarm. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box, about the size of a cigarette package. Remy touched the top button, and once the green liight blinked on it, he attached it to his belt.

The Agency had developed a psionic countermeasure several years ago called the Psychic Signature Disruption Device (PSDD), or in the short form of the Agency, the 'pissed' box. It pumped out the equivalent of psionic chaff; useless against a directed psychic probe, but useful for helping obscure a mental signature from passive detection. Remy had used one to get close to the Professor a couple of years ago without his knowledge. The PSDD wouldn't mask him from the Espers' active detection, but it would help further suppress his psychic signature. All stealth technology, be it for sonar or radar, was about reducing the factor which the system could generate a return on, and beating the Esper was no different. Minimize his mental noise and slip past the survaillance zone.

Remy let out a deep breath and closed his eyes. His powers had probed the edges of the room and secured it in his mind. Now, he needed to run almost entirely on instinct. Any cognitive pulse would trip the system and alert the terrorists to their presence. He tensed, like a runner on the starting blocks, and moved.

His enhanced agility complemented his other powers, allowing him to go over objects without thought. His eyes flickered open and closed, enough to only allow his power a split second of orientation as he keep himself in a zen-like mental emptiness, trusting his abilities to get him through. He arced up and over a table, rolling as he landed and continued running. At the final stage, he lept and pivoted in the air, coming to land on his hands directly on the brace bar over the Esper switch setup.

Directly above the unit was a dead space, a column of uncovered area going up to the ceiling. He gritted his teeth as he shifted slightly for balance, mentally dissecting the last few seconds to see if he'd possibly been tagged. There had been no prickle of recognition on the back of his neck, or pulse of detection in his thoughts. He'd made it through clean.

Straining, Remy lowered him and twisted, so he could rest one shoulder on the brace bar and free that arm. Even with his powers, it was extremely taxing to maintain his position and the balance, so he'd need to work quickly, and unfortunately, one handed. LeBeau pulled a small velcro wallet from his pocket, and opened it to reveal a small tool kit, much like a jewelers set. He carefully unscrewed the upper access panel, above the touchscreen and set it aside. The computer system of the Esper was surprisingly simple, compared to the complicated construction of the rest of the system. It was little more than a basic switching system, designed to randomly assign zones and regulate both timing and transition. Remy carefully clipped a pair of wires to the thick buses running between the switch and the motherboard, waiting for the small chip attached to them to turn from red to green.

There was a long moment before the colour changed, and Remy sighed. He leaned lower and tapped the access keypad of the system, bringing up the command screen he'd deftly isolated from the main Esper control system elsewhere in the prison. Despite having to read it upsidedown, he swiftly removed a series of zones from the Esper's switch, leaving it to only transfer the psychic to the remaining ones. The screen confirmed his selections, and he all but fell to the side of the switch, breathing heavily and trying to stop the fire in his arms.

LeBeau had effectively cut off the command query response from updating, so any polling of the unit would respond with the last reading before he reach it, which listed full coverage in all zones. Unless the psychic had a reason to check, they would assume they were still getting full coverage, bouncing between all zones, instead of never being switched to the specific zones Remy had removed from the list. That gave both teams a clear way to the hostages and the nuke without fear of detection by the Esper. He had just repocketed his tools when the five minutes ended, and Nathan's head slowly appeared in the distance, just over the lip of the accessway he'd entered the room in. Remy gave him an 'all clear' signal, hoping Nate could see him.

Nathan emerged from the vent, the others following him. "All right," he said in a low voice as they regrouped. "Good start." There was no need to go over the plan; everyone but Remy had reviewed it carefully before leaving the command center back on the mainland, and he'd updated Remy as they'd regrouped in the tunnels. He checked his watch. "Watch your timing," he told the second team, "and wait for my signal."

Timing, even at this point, was going to be everything.