Operation Xorn: Into The Fire
Dec. 4th, 2006 08:05 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsX-Force invade China. With a little bit of help from some unexpected quarters.
They had gotten off of the plane in Kazakhstan, at a brute military airport that wasn't much more than a dozen long asphalt runways and a cluster of hulking hangars arranged in a U shape around the control tower. Most of the planes sitting on the runways looked out of service, some with drifts of snow against their landing struts.
A group of men stood at the bottom of the ramp, dressed in warm Russian military winter gear. In the middle of them was the woman they recognized from their earlier trip to Russia; Natasha Romanova. She was chatting with LeBeau, who had held on to his trenchcoat, but had sensibly added several layers of sweaters underneath. From his expression, he was not enjoying what Romanova had to say.
As they cleared, Remy filled them in on the details. He'd called in a favour from Vazhin, and their way to the compound in China would be via a set of helicopters that had been 'lost' by the Russian airforce. Romanova had travelled down with one of the few small Spetsnaz teams that Vazhin kept active outside of the general chain of command.
There was some shuffling as Remy and Pete discussed the operational plan with Romanova, and finally X-Force was apportioned out between the three helicopters, each set fully briefed on what was expected. The rotors started turning, and in a skirl of snow, the tiny assault team set off east, towards the border.
***
"Two minutes, LeBeau." Romanova said into Remy's ear. Both Pete and Sarah were doing the same thing as him, staring out the side panel windows, anticipating their jumpoff. The other two helicopters were clustered in tight, and the Russians seemed to be enjoying the discomfort caused by their low-attitude treetop flying. Fortunately, Vazhin's men had a modern nightvision suite on board, a stark contrast to the bulk of the Russian services. They were able to dance in beneath the PRC radar towards their objective.
"My men will neutralize the towers on the west and north end, and deploy to hold the landing ground." Natasha said, gesturing to the soldiers in the helicopter. "We've only got an operating window of twenty-five minutes. My troops will not move from the landing point, and we will only engage to protect the vehicles. After twenty-five minutes, we leave whether you are done or not. Any later and we run an unacceptable risk of PRC air response."
"When we succeed, the power will be out for a hundred square miles." Remy pointed out.
"If you succeed. Twenty-five minutes, LeBeau, and that is being generous. Officially these vehicles were stolen and sold on the black market. If one gets caught, the line will lead directly to your group." Natasha grinned suddenly, a perfect line of straight white teeth that held no warmth. "The Chinese are less picky about the death penalty than your country, American. I suggest your team does very well very quickly."
"Remy keep dat advice in mind." He said, turning back to the window. "Bitch." he muttered under his breath as she called thirty seconds. Guns went live on the side of the vehicle, and the panels were pulled back, allowing them to see the full area around them, despite the cold wind that cut through like a knife.
The three helicopters dropped in unison, like bugs lighting towards a pond. The mutants stayed back as the guns on the side of the helicopters were spun up, and green tracers lit up the sky, tracking the two guard towers. The structures exploded where the bullets touched them, disintegrating under the volume of rounds that punched through the flimsy positions. There was a jarring thump as the helicopters set down, and the guns went silent for the Spetsnaz to clear the doors and range out to set up a killzone. After ten seconds, Romanova signaled the all clear, and Wisdom raised his comm to his mouth.
"All teams, move!"
In the barracks, things get bloody as Pete, Remy and Sarah make sure there are no nasty surprises for the rest of the team.
Snow crunched underfoot as they left the helicopters, racing past the control complex and towards the barracks. Remy and Pete had quietly discussed the situation while the helicopters were enroute, and decided that it wasn't time to drop the rest of the team into this yet. Only Sarah had the training and mindset to be able to handle what they needed.
The barracks held at least twenty men, with a fully stocked armoury beside it. These soldiers were not average Chinese levies, but men from their country's version of Special Forces. They'd be well trained, disciplined, and well armed. Neither Wisdom or LeBeau was about to risk them getting to the rest of the team, so the decision had been made to deal with them directly.
"I'll take the armoury." Remy said, angling off. He was still injured from his race against Arcade the weeks before, and it would be stupid for him to try and go for the main target.
"Alright, Sarah, you're with me in the barracks. Fast and hard as you can, and if I tell you to leave, you run, no matter fucking what." He moved off at a jog toward the barracks, moving from cover to cover, stopping in crouch by a side door. "I fucking hate this bit..." he muttered.
Sarah bit back her first instinct to tell him that yes, she could in fact take care of herself. She was learning, slowly. She stayed close behind him. "See anything yet?"
"Yeah, this fucking door." There was an explosion from the armoury. "Right, that's our cue." He took the door off it's hinges with a single blast of energy, and stepped through the hole. A soldier on the other side came at him almost instantly, only to be met with a second swathe of energy himself. The corpse smoked slightly as it fell to the floor in two halves. As soon as Pete had cleared the door, Sarah charged in behind him, a bone knife from her hand firmly lodging itself in the soft spot just below another soldier's throat. It felt good. She'd have to make her confession to the shrinks later. Right now, worrying about it would get her (and probably everyone else) killed.
There were sounds of shouting and chairs falling back ahead, and Pete moved quickly towards them. As he did, a door up the passageway burst open, and a group of four soldiers came charging toward them. Pete caught the first with yet more hotknives, but the second slammed into him, pushing him up against the wall. He rolled with the first blow, ducked the second, then swept the man's legs out from underneath him, and rising to stamp down hard on his opponent's kneecap, which went out with a sickening crunch.
Unfortunately by that point, a third man had come round behind him, lifting him off his feet in a bearhug, while the fourth lined up in front of him, clearly intending to start working Pete over.
There was a flash of light around Pete, just for a second, and the man holding Pete screamed once, then dropped to the floor, his arms and upper body covered in huge burns and the tattered remnants of charred fabric.
It wasn't quite quick enough to keep the fourth man from landing a well placed cross to Pete's jaw, sending him sprawling, cracking his head on a wall as he went down.
Sarah saw Pete go down out of the corner of her eye, but the soldiers she was currently surrounded by weren't interested in allowing Sarah to go help him. In fact, she was pretty sure that was entirely out of the question. Since he hadn't told her to run, she had to assume that everything was still going as well as could be expected.
Pulling a bone club from her shoulder, Sarah brought it down to block one man's punch, shoving the blunt end into his stomach to wind him and push him back away from her. She swung the club hard around her head, nailing another man in the temple and embedding the bone knife in her other hand just under his ribs, angled upwards.
Sarah heard the man shouting from behind her but didn't act quickly enough, turning just in time to take his punch on her jaw. The hit only succeeded in making her angrier, and she kneed him in the groin, followed quickly by her own bone covered fist impacting with the center of his face.
Pete fought to stay conscious as he went down. Head swimming, he registered the soldier landing several solid kicks in his ribs, and it was only with a horrible effort that he got an arm up in time to block a shot to his head that would almost certainly have put him out cold.
Shaking his head, desperately hoping to clear it, he caught the second kick aimed at his temple, and pulled hard on the man's leg, sending him sprawling to the ground. He took the second that bought him to come to his feet, still moving too slowly, blinking repeatedly, trying to focus.
But the time he was upright, his opponent had picked himself up as well. Pete rolled with the first couple of blows, letting him get in close, and brought his head forward, smashing the man's nose, than bringing and elbow down hard on the man's collarbone while he was reeling, driving him to his knees. A quick hotknife ended it, and Pete looked around to see how Sarah was coping.
Sarah always looked bad at first glance. Between the beating she took from her opponents and the beating caused by her own mutation, Sarah looked a little worse for wear in her ripped and bloody clothes. Down to two of her own soldiers, she ducked a punch, shoving her elbow hard into the man's midsection. A bone club to the head sent him to the floor. The other man attacked with a knife, but the impact was buffered by the bone armour that had sprouted up from just above her shoulder blades. He didn't have the same luxury, however, and the sharp-ended bone that she shoved through his midsection went through with very little effort. Sarah looked back at Pete, and then at the room around them.
"Right. What's next?"
Pete felt at his head, wincing as he found a couple of tender lumps.
"Now we wait. If anyone other bastard shows his face, we kick it in, but we've done our part, and kept the guards off everyone else's back. You wait in here, I'll keep an eye outside in case anyone tries to sneak around. I don't really feel the cold. Shout if anyone else tries to kill you." Pete grinned as he stepped back out into the snow.
***
Remy didn't bother with elegance on reaching the armoury. Already the pains in his sides were starting to grow. It was a bad idea to have gone into the field this soon, but there really wasn't much of a choice. The consequences of Xorn's death were too high, and they didn't have enough combat trained people in the group yet. Especially ones with experience against actual soldiers.
The Chinese troops would be better trained than their regular army fellows, although nowhere near the level of Western elite forces. Regardless, they would be experienced men, and not prone to breaking easily. Unlike his team, they also would not hesitate to kill anyone invading the complex, which had in a way doomed them.
Wisdom and Remy had exchanged a quiet conversation in the helicopter, and come to the decision that it would be better to send the other half of the strike force at the command and communications centre. It would be lightly guarded, and their powers fit the challenge well. The other aspect was that neither men wanted them to be faced with the grim necessities of dealing with the rest of the guard. They had pushed the training hard, but what was needed here was lethal action, which they should still be spared for now.
The door to the small armoury complex was heavy steel, but the concrete the hinges were inset into was pitted and cracked; the victim of the punishing climate. Remy pulled out a full deck of cards and started charging it carefully. He didn't have the reserves for a sustained fight, so he needed to be fast and accurate. When the deck was glowing entirely purple, LeBeau aimed it at the door and let go, snapping out the cards like a Las Vegas croupier. The shock and impact dented the door, and drove it inward, pulling the hinges right out of the concrete.
There was a brief scream, cut off as the door smashed into the far wall like an oncoming truck. Remy was already following it in, fishing into the pockets of his jacket for more cards.
Behind a wire mesh barrier stood the second soldier in the armoury. He'd just sprung from his chair, and was reaching for his pistol as Remy cleared the doorway. The mesh was too small to throw a card through, but there was a long low slot at the bottom of it, obviously to hand through weapons and ammunition for the men. Remy's first card came through that space, striking the man in the abdomen. As he doubled over in pain, a second card struck him in the forehead. Remy used cards because it was the easiest way to control the level of his power charge. The waxed paper simply could only hold so much energy. But the force and placement of the strike was fatal to the unfortunate soldier, who jackknifed back against the racks of supplies and slithered to the ground.
Remy clutched at his side as he approached the doors. His rush had opened up the stitching of the knife wound, and already blood was suffusing his shirt. The security was a contact button release, and a heavy lock. Lacking the access to either, Remy focused on the barrier, using charged coins to weaken a section large enough for him to bend out of the way, and slip into the kiosk like area to retrieve the keys from the corpse.
For a remote complex, the PLA was kept well stocked, and Remy moved quickly between the racks, setting the charges that he'd liberated from their own supplies. The combined blasts would flatten the building, helping to cover his tracks and making sure that any missed soldiers would have nothing larger than small arms to threaten their escape vehicles.
Whilst mayhem is being wrecked elsewhere, Mark, Marie-Ange and Wanda are on security detail.
"The beauty of electronic locks," Mark began, blue sparks of electricity dancing along his fingertips, "Is that they're so easily subverted." He placed his right hand on the keypad by the door they were trying to unlock, and smirked as it short-circuited, permitting him to open the doors by hand. He stood aside and bowed to Marie-Ange and Wanda. "Ladies first."
"Someday you are going to have a lock short circuit and seal the door shut instead of unlocking it..." Marie-Ange said. "And then what will you do?" But, nonetheless, she pulled a card out of her pocket and conjured one of the familiar imps, sending it strutting through the door. "I am feeling paranoid. You will have to forgive me. If there is a movement detector, I would prefer not to be lasered into tiny cubes."
Wanda smirked from her position. "Yes, that would be a horrible tragedy," she agreed. "I doubt we will run into any human guards right on the other side of the door—-the strings are all fairly stable--but the electronic ones could be trickier. But keep an eye out, just because there are no guards yet does not mean that will be the case for long." She glanced around, keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings as Marie-Ange concentrated.
"At least cameras aren't an issue," Mark commented, glancing up at one that hadn't been transmitting anything but static since Mark was within its visual range. "No giant ground beef monsters here to fight, I hope."
"And I had just started to be able to eat red meat..." Marie-Ange muttered grimly. "The imp is in one piece. I think we are... as safe as we can be." She did not dismiss the image though, and kept the card in hand, in case she needed more.
Despite Mark's words, Wanda followed in last, not really liking the quiet all that much. The thing with quiet on missions like this is that it normally ended in loud explosions. There was something just not quite right.
"This isn't really how I expected to spend my first trip to Asia." Another zap, and another camera died. Mark smirked. "Essex says the comms room is just down the next corridor. Just gotta get rid of those chumps so Doug and Sofia and that Haller dude" - Mark's face darkened briefly at the mention of his name, that teasing bastard - "can find God. I mean Xorn."
"We can stop and get you your authentic Hong Kong experience after we finish." Marie-Ange said. Something about this whole mission felt wrong, and while she was nearly certain it was Essex's presence, it still bothered her enough to dim her customary habit of banter.
"Join us, see the world after wacky, disjointed adventures," came the muttered reply. The hairs on the back of Wanda's neck had been standing up the moment they had arrived and weren't looking to be lowering any time soon. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can leave and the happier I think we all will be."
"Yvan eht nioj," Mark sang softly. "So, Boss Lady, what do we do? There's bound to be baddies in the room. What's the plan? And if it's just to charge, then I'm standing behind you."
Wanda snorted but looked amused at the same time. At this rate, she was getting that engraved on her business cards. "I was thinking perhaps up and over," she said quietly, pointing to the ceiling. "Drop a few distractions via Marie-Ange and follow them in. I, for one, am certainly not keen on opening a door with a potential gun on the other side of it."
"I could pull up a force field so that in theory" - Mark emphasized those words, as he wasn't sure how much gunfire he could take - "That wouldn't be a problem. And then you two do your X-Ninja thing." He glanced up at the ceiling. "I'm way too short to climb into a vent. And I really don't fancy you throwing me near any metal containers, please."
"Remy is the ninja. I just look very good in black." Marie-Ange said. "Climbing up to the vent is not a problem. I can make a stepstool." She eyed the ceiling, and mentally sent the imp climbing up the wall towards the grate covering the ducts. "Could you loosen that, and I can have the imp remove it quietly? We should move quickly before we have to deal with some passing guard." As she said that, a twinge ran down her back, and she winced.
Stopping in mid-step, Wanda glanced sharply over at the younger woman. "Tarot? What is it?" she murmured, body relaxing as she took a good stock of the surrounding area. The vent could wait until she was reassured everything was just fine.
Mark reached into his pocket to turn down the volume on his iPod so he could hear his surroundings better. "Is this the part where you say 'I have a bad feeling about this' and then we die? Because I don't like that part. I'd rather skip it."
"This is the part where I have a bad feeling and then we do -not- die." Marie-Ange said. She had a -date- next week. She was not going to expire messily in some horrible facility in China. "I think we are about to have company..."
Forewarned was forearmed, even if it was only by a few seconds. Through a door, not the one they had come through, four guards came out, talking quietly amongst themselves. All conversation stopped as soon as they caught sight of the trespassers.
The only thing that was clear in their rapid fire conversation was "Americans?!" as they reached for their weapons.
"I resent that implication," Wanda muttered, throwing herself at the nearest guard. At close range, guns would be harder to use and they had to do this as quietly as possible. And shorter range meant head butts that proved very affective.
Mark's left hand found its way back to his pocket, turning up the volume loud enough that Primus would have deafened him had he actually been wearing the headphones. He wrinkled his nose at the burning odor of ozone as a bolt of lightning raced from his hand to one of the guards, sending him to the ground twitching, his uniform smoldering.
Marie-Ange waited, until the two remaining guards turned to look at the one who had fallen, and then pulled another of her cards from her sleeve. She would have laughed, had it not been so urgent to get the guards immobilized. She must had grabbed, at some time when packing, the Monster of Hollywood themed deck. It was goofy, it had been a joke gift, and she had a card with a pair of Egyptian mummies in her hand.
Mummies that appeared in front of her, not shambling and shuffling like in the movies, but striding forward to lunge at one of the two guards, enveloping him in a mass of writhing bandages. "Ew.." She muttered, shaking her head, and turning to stand in front of Mark. He was safer if she kept something between him and the guards. "DJ. Radios." She said.
Dropping the now unconscious guard, Wanda couldn't help a smile at the sight of the mummies. But first, there was one still standing, scrambling for the very radio that Marie-Ange had warned about.
Mark could deal with the electronics in a second, she thought, snapping her leg up and out. The force her heel to the guards jaw sent him crumpling to the ground, radio spinning across the floor. "All yours, DJ," she said, crouching to pat the man down.
"Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is." A well-aimed zap to the fallen comm device short-circuited it, and Mark blew on his forefinger as if it were a gun. "Oh, they are not going to be happy when they try to repair that," he declared proudly.
"You are enjoying yourself far too much." Marie-Ange said. Handcuffing the mummified guard was as simple as letting the image start to dissolve, and then driving her knee into his back before he could get back up. Once he was pinned, struggling under her knees, she copied Wanda, stealing his handcuffs and securing his arms behind his back.
Once the guards were all secured, and put off to the side to make it harder to find them, Wanda crept back to the door they had been trying to enter. Holding up a hand to let them know to be still for a second, she listened at the door. After a few seconds it became aware that they hadn't heard anything going on in the hallway.
Or they were preparing an ambush but since the plan had been to go up and over, it was workable. "Alright," she said once she gotten back to the other two. "Up and over is still our best way in right now."
Mark had shut his music down to manageable ear-bustingness again, and nodded at Wanda. "You know, putting the vent there is really just an invitation to sneak in."
Marie-Ange had already conjured back up the little dreadlocked blue-painted imp, and it was climbing up the wall. "Which is why we are sending a scout first. If I get a migraine, we know they have security measure in the ducts. Scarlet Witch? Could you kill the duct cover for me?" Another imp went scrabbling up the wall to meet the second, this one with hands the size of dinner plates.
Craning her neck, she eyed the covering, her minds eye picking and choosing the strings. "It is such a shame that they never clean these things," she breathed, as the screws holding the cover suddenly fell out, the rust having eaten the holdings. The imp below caught it before it could hit the ground and give them away.
With the imp setting the cover down and then dissolving away, Marie-Ange was free to send the first, original imp through the vent, and spend a few seconds to create a sturdy wooden-looking ladder from a small laminated sketch. "Always useful, no?" She said, with a grin.. "And so far, the imp has not gotten lasered, cut to bits, burnt or squashed, so I believe we are safe."
"So far," Mark murmured as he shut off his iPod and climbed up the ladder. He crawled through it as quietly as he could, silently commiserating how he was never going to get his clothes clean again.
The imp led him to the vent that would let him enter the main comm room, silently rocking back and forth on its heels in anticipation. Mark took a deep breath to steel himself and flipped to the right track on his playlist. This particular maneuver worked in practice, so no reason it wouldn't work now.
Mark idly wondered what Tchaikovsky would think if he knew that The Overture of 1812 was being used to fuel a forcefield that not only busted open the door to the vent and protected Mark as he fell, but also expanded rapidly in a burst of brilliant blue light to fling away the half-dozen soldiers who'd been caught by surprise.
There were a few muffled thumps that Wanda hoped was not the sound of Mark falling over or being thrown through a wall. She took a few steps back, muscles clenching as she started for the door, two hex bolts slamming into her target. Ducking her head, she used her shoulder to slam against the buckling door as the entropic energy ate away at the material.
She hit the floor amid shrapnel from the mess she’d made and rolled, shoulder protesting, on her feet again as fast as she could be. Her sudden entrance meant that some of the men in the room weren’t paying attention to Mark anymore and she grinned. “Hello, boys.”
"You are -both- enjoying this too much." Marie-Ange was already elbowing one of the technicians in the throat almost as fast as Wanda was going in with fists and booted feet. Soldier or not, he didn't necessarily deserve to die, and he was just manning communication. She could knock him out and leave him that way. "Stop BITING!" She yelped, and kicked the man's feet out from under him. "Bad." She scolded, using the technician as a shield to keep the others from shooting at her.
Mark kept his shield up, wincing as one of the soldiers tried to hit him with the back end of his rifle. The shield brightened at the spot of impact, but held, and Mark forced it to expand again. It hit the soldier like a sack full of bricks, and Mark grinned. "Cool. I guess expecting a base full of Jackie Chans was a bit much. I always thought there wasn't any gravity in China," he mused, smacking the soldier with the force field again. "Like in Crouching Tiger"
"It is a very good thing I like you," Wanda sighed, sounding very put upon. Holding one hand in a headlock, she grunted at nearly being forced off her feet. Slapping one hand over his eyes, she concentrated, pushing her powers to the full. He screamed, loudly, and jerked back, wrenching himself out of her grasp. He tottered backwards, clawing at his eyes and tripped, suddenly, knocking himself clean out on the side of a desk.
She shrugged at the stares of her teammates. "I blinded him with the glow of the rings, nothing more," she said mildly, going for one of the guards that was left standing.
Marie-Ange was busing herself with tying the remaining technician's hands behind his back with his own belt, keeping another busy with a swarm of the dreadlocked imps she had kept making. The man swatting at the imps and flailing wildly was giving her a headache, as every destroyed imp was like being poked with a sharp stick, but they kept the man from calling for help.
With all six soldiers down for the count, Mark plopped himself in the center seat and pulled on his headset. "All right, gang, time to party," he announced. "Comms are secured. Y'all're free to save the world. Again."
Down in Xorn's containment area, things get seriously trippy. And Betsy gets to stab people in the brain.
The route to Xorn’s containment area was blocked by huge secured doors, but it was only a few moments work from Mark in the control room to bypass the controls and force them open. The technology was from the mid-eighties, once top of the line and now sadly obsolete. Radiation warnings in Chinese were plastered everywhere, and the area held a sense of quiet menace about it.
As they passed the final door, they found themselves in a large circular room, not unlike a crude version of the Cerebro. Massive cables ran down the sides of the bowl like bottom half, coming to a juncture at the bottom of a large dais. Sitting on a large chair, festooned with electronics and wires like a technological throne and surrounded by a nimbus of energy, sat Xorn.
"Amanda," Betsy said warningly, and the witch came forward, wiping her sweaty palms on the legs of her pants.
"Got it," she replied shortly, hoping she had enough power for this. Otherwise it was going to be a very short rescue mission. "Get in close, I don't want to leave any bits hanging out."
"There's going to be more closeness for some of us in a minute. I'm sorry in advance, but we'll keep to the front." Jim turned his gaze away from the figure on the dais and reached out to Betsy, threading their minds in preparation as they had so many times before, the twine of white into amethyst like a slow lacing of fingers.
Okay, babe. Let's go.
Mismatched eyes shifted away from purple to look at the others in the room. "Ready when you are," Jim said.
And here I am, hiding behind everyone again... The thought came out edged with humour bordering on hysteria and Amanda clamped down on her nerves whilst the rest of the group arranged themselves in front of her. Raising her hands, she brought them together in a single short handclap, the sound echoing off the curved walls of the containment unit like a gunshot. Her shielding spell appeared, this time the dull grey of weathered stone, encompassing her and Doug and Sofia, who were directly in front. Huh. Not-So-Great Wall of China. With a pushing gesture, she expanded it, gritting her teeth against the strain, until it encircled everyone. Albeit with little room to move, just enough to shuffle forward towards the figure on the dais.
Doug stared across the room at the man sitting on the chair. The radiation warnings in Chinese hadn't exactly done anything for his comfort levels, but he was trying his best to focus on the mission at hand. He was a little bit in awe, trying to comprehend the psionic singularity that was the source of Xorn's powers. "They tried to weaponize him..." he murmured to himself. "Doesn't say much for human nature, does it?"
“Or everything,” Sofia replied firmly, her words with the same inflection as the way she reminded herself that she’d been in vehicles tighter packed than this, even if she’d known the people better at the time. Her nostrils flared, just slightly, and her mouth drew in, but she managed somehow not to jab an elbow at someone’s nose. “Nice work, Amanda. If not a little showy.”
"I don't pick the colours, that's China's doing," Amanda said, voice a little tight with effort. Sweat was beading on her forehead despite the chill in the air of Xorn's containment area. "How about you big brains do your thing, yeah? 'M not sure how long I can hold this without a direct power source and I don't fancy being deep fried crispy witch."
Her mind needed to be grounded throughout the link and with the amount of force Xorn exuded, there would need to be something more physical. "Let's get on with it then," Betsy replied tersely. She turned to the man next to her. "Doug, you ready for this?" She felt more than saw his tight nod and so she moved behind the him, giving a gentle squeeze of his shoulder for reassurance.
A flash sizzle and a trail of fire traveled down her spine as she activated the psi-blade. Her right hand glowed eerily in the bright shield Amanda created, the amethyst light from the blade, joining in the colorful foray and reflecting in her eyes. And then she made contact by bringing the blade to the back of Doug's head, only her fist visible and covered in the light that emanated from all her psychic energy coming into focus. When it was secure with Ramsey, Betsy opened her mind fully to Haller and slowly the rest of the links were created, connecting with the others, and like dominos, they all fell into place one after the other. It only took a matter of moments really for the fully developed link to establish and with it strengthening, Betsy closed her eyes and called out to the rest of her team. #Ready.#
The link they'd already formed surged at the power-jump. Jim sent a last tendril of acknowledgement to the other psi, brief and private, and nodded.
"Let's make this fast," Jim said, and opened his mind to the silent figure on the dais.
And saw.
Mutation was a fluke of genetics and chance that, upon manifestation, could gift the carrier with wings, or extreme strength, or the intrusion of things unspoken that could not be unheard.
For Xorn, it had brought transcendence.
In the physical world the body of Xorn himself was now obscured by the shimmering grey haze that was Amanda's protection, but that was no longer what Jim saw. In the mind's eye of the telepath the filthy, withered figure in its nest of tubes and wires was no more than a speck of dirt floating in the current of an endless sea teeming with light and life, and in that sea all things moved.
Teilhard's Omega Point. A state of aggregate awareness so absolute Teilhard had likened it to that of God. To the frail shell in the chair, the presence of the people in this room was real and immediate -- as were the soldiers who sweat and fought and swore in the complex beyond. As were the flock of birds swarming over a field miles away. As were the silent voices of the tiny organisms dwelling in the soil of the distant river. Everything was real to Xorn. Everything -- simultaneously.
Essex had been right: this consciousness was beyond the scope of a single tawdry little mind. Fortunately, David Haller had not been of a single mind in a long, long time. Broken facets turned to receive the vast input, processing and channeling, breaking it down to manageable levels . . . just. Only just. The jaw of Jim's physical body tightened, the only visible indication of the psychic pressure. His mind was a spillway under the weight of a flash-flood; even his mode of specially adaptive functioning wasn't made for this. But he was the filter standing between Xorn and Betsy, and through her the others, and theirs were even less.
Jim put thoughts of the strain aside. From the standpoint of certain theorists, Xorn had hit the evolutionary jackpot with his mutation -- but in doing so the young Oxford student who had once attended Sex Pistols concerts had been lost.
Time to find him.
Betsy's mind glowing behind him, Jim's astral body raised its arms, the blue nimbus of that perfect awareness eddying around him like troubled water, and four voices spoke as one against the cacophonous roar of life that had been the other man's only existence for thirty years.
Kim Ye-Xorn, can you hear us?
can you hear
hear us
us
There was a long pause, the thunderous channel of thought around them seeping through the boundaries Haller struggled to remain open against, and the sheer scale of the minds sleeting through Betsy's connection into Doug. His power worked automatically, running a thousand times faster than it had ever done so to keep up with the level of input. Sofia held her fists tightly, mimicking her mind's hold to Doug's, as she struggled to make sense of the filtered information his power was trying to bring order to. Finally, from all around them, the connection caught and Xorn surfaced in the noosphere like a rising leviathan.
[[ butformaloWHYftabellHAVEselfhisYOUsomesurelyCALLEDfriendsONtestthatUSmakebodyINforeseenofulSINGLEtimateFORMoneprepareALLomnibusANSWERpentevenALLcommittingaddedCREATEfirstmoveXORNtentcontest]]
”It’d take too long to list the entire world’s names.” Sofia wasn’t entirely certain that should be translated back to him, but who could tell whether he’d lost his sense of humour or not, when he’d lost his singular self; art did depict Buddha laughing. “We’ve come to warn you.”
For Doug, touching Xorn's consciousness, even indirectly through the link with Haller and Betsy, was like trying to dip one toe precisely in a raging river and not get torn away by the current. The communication from his mind almost transcended language, as if, by the nature of his power, Xorn was communicating in some sort of proto-language, each word conveying a vast depth of nuance and meaning. It was overwhelming for Doug, coming up against a language that he had to struggle, for the first time since the certain knowledge of his mutancy, to translate.
[[intolerableWARNINGSthegalleryARElandNOToutlineNEEDEDhorizontalWEreadyAREwhichslowlyOFunraveledTHEluremoreWHOLEotherOFeruptionTHEnatureWORLDwords]]
“Precisely. You, and therefore the whole world, are in danger.” Somewhere, Sofia had a dim feeling of warmth, a prickling sensation, traveling over her collar. It was drowned out by the thunder in her ears and the small, bloodied crescents in her palms. “Xorn is the meeting of all minds, and the physical representation of that meeting, is threatened. Without it, you, everything, ceases to exist.”
[[appearsYOURcomesPOINTwhenthatISeclipsesNOTEDbreadthTHEandvisibleWORLDquicklyCANNOTcanwithBEcalculatorTHREATENEDasinCASUALLYprovided]]
Sofia smiled. “You know that the only way to deal with such danger is to put all of yourselves into Xorn,” she said, a small droplet of blood running down the side of her hand to drop off her smallest finger and splash on the cement bellow. “It will be difficult, but we have heard that you are great.”
[[sadlyAnaturePOINTpassageOFatSINGLEoceanFOCUScontinentYOUussomeEXPRESScapriseISseasNOTfootCAPABLEatthreeTHEandWORLDhundredINcutTHEmeridianFOREVERevidenceMIND]]
“We’ve taken care of that.”
An eternal moment passed as the being seemed to consider. The steady amethyst glow of Betsy's presence was beginning to flicker. The sustained expression of power, used in a way she'd never tried before -- Jim knew she wasn't going to last much longer. He could feel her settled there in the back of his mind like a wilting butterfly. Over the link Doug's mind was moving so fast, patterns and processes dipping in and out of Jim's ability to comprehend them as the younger man's mind turned, and turned, and turned again in the hand-off between Sofia's words and Xorn's replies. At the outer edge of the link was Sofia's mind, so light it could only be felt as if through a haze; neat, and ordered, and organized. Boxes, all safe and separate. Three minds worked, and Jim stood there, safe behind the eerie glow of Amanda's shield, between Xorn and them all.
The telepath's hands raised to his skull and pushed, as if physical pressure alone could contain the psychic onslaught. Tearing . . . understand please understand because we are we are we . . .
Amanda's raised arms were shaking, her hands growing hot as the energy from Xorn swirled around the frail bubble of her spell. But the blood on the faces of all four of her charges, discoloured in the greyish light, reminded her there was far more going on than just holding Xorn's radiant power at bay, and she gritted her teeth, adding her own energy to the spell. Any time with the helmet now, people...
The helmet had been brought along in a foam-lined case, to protect it against damage during the flight and the assault on the complex. Realizing the fact that none of them were going to last much longer, Sofia put one foot on the edge of the box and shoved it hard. The case slid easily along the metal floor, passing through Amanda's barrier like fog and rotating slightly as it slid down the sloped floor and came to a stop at the bottom of the dais.
For a long second, it seemed like the gesture was wasted. Energy pounded at the barrier and the telepathic presence pounded at their minds. Both Haller and Betsy were losing cohesion, the vast gulf of Xorn threatening to pull them in, tearing their minds completely away into the swirling ocean of the noosphere. Doug and Sofia weren't as lucky, non-telepaths trapped in the feedback, their own minds starting to crack under the relentless barrage of information. It wouldn't matter if it was Amanda's shield or Betsy's link that broke first. Which ever did would finish them all.
But suddenly, the figure in the nightmarish throne moved. The emaciated form stood and stepped down, trailing a massive apparatus that siphoned his energy away into crude electrical power. It was like a stop motion film, the movements jerking and unfamiliar. The psionic waves got stronger, screaming at the link like banshees as the entity fought for cohesion. It was their minds he held on to, the transmissions amplifying it just enough for the force to mimic it.
Hands reached down to the box, movements they all visualized desperately to try and convey what he needed to do. Clumsy movements, agonizingly slow, freed the helmet and held it up. But there was no more left, no more to hold out with. Haller's filter finally broke and the world flooded into their minds; final sentient thoughts seeing only the blue nimbus of a tiny star radiating at them as their minds were wiped away.
An ending. A pilgrimage is begun, and it's suggested Essex might have been a little over-dramatic in his assessment.
Where the ocean had been, now only a cooling trickle remained, like icy water running down their heads, refreshing and chilling them awake. The room was dark, lit only by an eerie blue glow. What had been a crucible of energy now sat dead and inert. They scrambled to their feet, holding their heads and trying to remember before the sickening sensation of having all self completely blasted away.
Standing in the middle of them was Xorn. The apparatus lay disconnected at the base of the dais, and his emaciated frame was gone, now a robust figure in a complex looking leather and pvc outfit. His head was hidden by Forge's strange mask, only the eyes glowing in a deep, rich blue that swept over them.
{{It is curious/strange/unfamiliar to be of one/singular/solitary mind.}} The 'voice' was in their minds; a strange echoing cadence that carried several levels of meaning for each word. {{The others/friends/team wish to leave/escape/ambulate from this place, as do we/us/Xorn.}}
They nodded dumbly. There were no words, not this close. The freezing air was unfamiliar and shocking after the warmth of the underground. Xorn walked in the midst of them, inscrutable and alien. When they reached the helicopters, the soldiers backed away nervously, and even the rest of the team looked askance at the figure. Even without speaking, those around him felt the hum of the minds he connected to, as if his power was bleeding into their minds.
The helicopters took off, and separated quickly. They had a better chance of escaping undetected alone, and even with a wide range now powerless thanks to Xorn's absence, they were not about to take any chances with their guest. Instead of the planned flight plan, the pilot found himself veering further west, unquestioned since it was Xorn willing them in the direction he wished. They tried to talk, but went unanswered, the silent figure content to look out the window. Finally, the helicopter began to drop and finally land, and Xorn stood.
{{We/us/Xorn will take another/seperate/distinct path from here, person/rescuer/PeteWisdom. Tell the other/nothere/doctor that the noosphere/existence/mindworld is stronger/resilient/bigger than for even we/us/Xorn to threaten/destroy/break.}} He said, stepping out of the vehicle. He took no notice of the wind or the cold, stepping out on to the frozen ground and walking away. They had no time to watch, compelled to get the helicopter back into the air and on their flight path. Back finding their way home.
While a new god walked his first steps on the world.
They had gotten off of the plane in Kazakhstan, at a brute military airport that wasn't much more than a dozen long asphalt runways and a cluster of hulking hangars arranged in a U shape around the control tower. Most of the planes sitting on the runways looked out of service, some with drifts of snow against their landing struts.
A group of men stood at the bottom of the ramp, dressed in warm Russian military winter gear. In the middle of them was the woman they recognized from their earlier trip to Russia; Natasha Romanova. She was chatting with LeBeau, who had held on to his trenchcoat, but had sensibly added several layers of sweaters underneath. From his expression, he was not enjoying what Romanova had to say.
As they cleared, Remy filled them in on the details. He'd called in a favour from Vazhin, and their way to the compound in China would be via a set of helicopters that had been 'lost' by the Russian airforce. Romanova had travelled down with one of the few small Spetsnaz teams that Vazhin kept active outside of the general chain of command.
There was some shuffling as Remy and Pete discussed the operational plan with Romanova, and finally X-Force was apportioned out between the three helicopters, each set fully briefed on what was expected. The rotors started turning, and in a skirl of snow, the tiny assault team set off east, towards the border.
***
"Two minutes, LeBeau." Romanova said into Remy's ear. Both Pete and Sarah were doing the same thing as him, staring out the side panel windows, anticipating their jumpoff. The other two helicopters were clustered in tight, and the Russians seemed to be enjoying the discomfort caused by their low-attitude treetop flying. Fortunately, Vazhin's men had a modern nightvision suite on board, a stark contrast to the bulk of the Russian services. They were able to dance in beneath the PRC radar towards their objective.
"My men will neutralize the towers on the west and north end, and deploy to hold the landing ground." Natasha said, gesturing to the soldiers in the helicopter. "We've only got an operating window of twenty-five minutes. My troops will not move from the landing point, and we will only engage to protect the vehicles. After twenty-five minutes, we leave whether you are done or not. Any later and we run an unacceptable risk of PRC air response."
"When we succeed, the power will be out for a hundred square miles." Remy pointed out.
"If you succeed. Twenty-five minutes, LeBeau, and that is being generous. Officially these vehicles were stolen and sold on the black market. If one gets caught, the line will lead directly to your group." Natasha grinned suddenly, a perfect line of straight white teeth that held no warmth. "The Chinese are less picky about the death penalty than your country, American. I suggest your team does very well very quickly."
"Remy keep dat advice in mind." He said, turning back to the window. "Bitch." he muttered under his breath as she called thirty seconds. Guns went live on the side of the vehicle, and the panels were pulled back, allowing them to see the full area around them, despite the cold wind that cut through like a knife.
The three helicopters dropped in unison, like bugs lighting towards a pond. The mutants stayed back as the guns on the side of the helicopters were spun up, and green tracers lit up the sky, tracking the two guard towers. The structures exploded where the bullets touched them, disintegrating under the volume of rounds that punched through the flimsy positions. There was a jarring thump as the helicopters set down, and the guns went silent for the Spetsnaz to clear the doors and range out to set up a killzone. After ten seconds, Romanova signaled the all clear, and Wisdom raised his comm to his mouth.
"All teams, move!"
In the barracks, things get bloody as Pete, Remy and Sarah make sure there are no nasty surprises for the rest of the team.
Snow crunched underfoot as they left the helicopters, racing past the control complex and towards the barracks. Remy and Pete had quietly discussed the situation while the helicopters were enroute, and decided that it wasn't time to drop the rest of the team into this yet. Only Sarah had the training and mindset to be able to handle what they needed.
The barracks held at least twenty men, with a fully stocked armoury beside it. These soldiers were not average Chinese levies, but men from their country's version of Special Forces. They'd be well trained, disciplined, and well armed. Neither Wisdom or LeBeau was about to risk them getting to the rest of the team, so the decision had been made to deal with them directly.
"I'll take the armoury." Remy said, angling off. He was still injured from his race against Arcade the weeks before, and it would be stupid for him to try and go for the main target.
"Alright, Sarah, you're with me in the barracks. Fast and hard as you can, and if I tell you to leave, you run, no matter fucking what." He moved off at a jog toward the barracks, moving from cover to cover, stopping in crouch by a side door. "I fucking hate this bit..." he muttered.
Sarah bit back her first instinct to tell him that yes, she could in fact take care of herself. She was learning, slowly. She stayed close behind him. "See anything yet?"
"Yeah, this fucking door." There was an explosion from the armoury. "Right, that's our cue." He took the door off it's hinges with a single blast of energy, and stepped through the hole. A soldier on the other side came at him almost instantly, only to be met with a second swathe of energy himself. The corpse smoked slightly as it fell to the floor in two halves. As soon as Pete had cleared the door, Sarah charged in behind him, a bone knife from her hand firmly lodging itself in the soft spot just below another soldier's throat. It felt good. She'd have to make her confession to the shrinks later. Right now, worrying about it would get her (and probably everyone else) killed.
There were sounds of shouting and chairs falling back ahead, and Pete moved quickly towards them. As he did, a door up the passageway burst open, and a group of four soldiers came charging toward them. Pete caught the first with yet more hotknives, but the second slammed into him, pushing him up against the wall. He rolled with the first blow, ducked the second, then swept the man's legs out from underneath him, and rising to stamp down hard on his opponent's kneecap, which went out with a sickening crunch.
Unfortunately by that point, a third man had come round behind him, lifting him off his feet in a bearhug, while the fourth lined up in front of him, clearly intending to start working Pete over.
There was a flash of light around Pete, just for a second, and the man holding Pete screamed once, then dropped to the floor, his arms and upper body covered in huge burns and the tattered remnants of charred fabric.
It wasn't quite quick enough to keep the fourth man from landing a well placed cross to Pete's jaw, sending him sprawling, cracking his head on a wall as he went down.
Sarah saw Pete go down out of the corner of her eye, but the soldiers she was currently surrounded by weren't interested in allowing Sarah to go help him. In fact, she was pretty sure that was entirely out of the question. Since he hadn't told her to run, she had to assume that everything was still going as well as could be expected.
Pulling a bone club from her shoulder, Sarah brought it down to block one man's punch, shoving the blunt end into his stomach to wind him and push him back away from her. She swung the club hard around her head, nailing another man in the temple and embedding the bone knife in her other hand just under his ribs, angled upwards.
Sarah heard the man shouting from behind her but didn't act quickly enough, turning just in time to take his punch on her jaw. The hit only succeeded in making her angrier, and she kneed him in the groin, followed quickly by her own bone covered fist impacting with the center of his face.
Pete fought to stay conscious as he went down. Head swimming, he registered the soldier landing several solid kicks in his ribs, and it was only with a horrible effort that he got an arm up in time to block a shot to his head that would almost certainly have put him out cold.
Shaking his head, desperately hoping to clear it, he caught the second kick aimed at his temple, and pulled hard on the man's leg, sending him sprawling to the ground. He took the second that bought him to come to his feet, still moving too slowly, blinking repeatedly, trying to focus.
But the time he was upright, his opponent had picked himself up as well. Pete rolled with the first couple of blows, letting him get in close, and brought his head forward, smashing the man's nose, than bringing and elbow down hard on the man's collarbone while he was reeling, driving him to his knees. A quick hotknife ended it, and Pete looked around to see how Sarah was coping.
Sarah always looked bad at first glance. Between the beating she took from her opponents and the beating caused by her own mutation, Sarah looked a little worse for wear in her ripped and bloody clothes. Down to two of her own soldiers, she ducked a punch, shoving her elbow hard into the man's midsection. A bone club to the head sent him to the floor. The other man attacked with a knife, but the impact was buffered by the bone armour that had sprouted up from just above her shoulder blades. He didn't have the same luxury, however, and the sharp-ended bone that she shoved through his midsection went through with very little effort. Sarah looked back at Pete, and then at the room around them.
"Right. What's next?"
Pete felt at his head, wincing as he found a couple of tender lumps.
"Now we wait. If anyone other bastard shows his face, we kick it in, but we've done our part, and kept the guards off everyone else's back. You wait in here, I'll keep an eye outside in case anyone tries to sneak around. I don't really feel the cold. Shout if anyone else tries to kill you." Pete grinned as he stepped back out into the snow.
***
Remy didn't bother with elegance on reaching the armoury. Already the pains in his sides were starting to grow. It was a bad idea to have gone into the field this soon, but there really wasn't much of a choice. The consequences of Xorn's death were too high, and they didn't have enough combat trained people in the group yet. Especially ones with experience against actual soldiers.
The Chinese troops would be better trained than their regular army fellows, although nowhere near the level of Western elite forces. Regardless, they would be experienced men, and not prone to breaking easily. Unlike his team, they also would not hesitate to kill anyone invading the complex, which had in a way doomed them.
Wisdom and Remy had exchanged a quiet conversation in the helicopter, and come to the decision that it would be better to send the other half of the strike force at the command and communications centre. It would be lightly guarded, and their powers fit the challenge well. The other aspect was that neither men wanted them to be faced with the grim necessities of dealing with the rest of the guard. They had pushed the training hard, but what was needed here was lethal action, which they should still be spared for now.
The door to the small armoury complex was heavy steel, but the concrete the hinges were inset into was pitted and cracked; the victim of the punishing climate. Remy pulled out a full deck of cards and started charging it carefully. He didn't have the reserves for a sustained fight, so he needed to be fast and accurate. When the deck was glowing entirely purple, LeBeau aimed it at the door and let go, snapping out the cards like a Las Vegas croupier. The shock and impact dented the door, and drove it inward, pulling the hinges right out of the concrete.
There was a brief scream, cut off as the door smashed into the far wall like an oncoming truck. Remy was already following it in, fishing into the pockets of his jacket for more cards.
Behind a wire mesh barrier stood the second soldier in the armoury. He'd just sprung from his chair, and was reaching for his pistol as Remy cleared the doorway. The mesh was too small to throw a card through, but there was a long low slot at the bottom of it, obviously to hand through weapons and ammunition for the men. Remy's first card came through that space, striking the man in the abdomen. As he doubled over in pain, a second card struck him in the forehead. Remy used cards because it was the easiest way to control the level of his power charge. The waxed paper simply could only hold so much energy. But the force and placement of the strike was fatal to the unfortunate soldier, who jackknifed back against the racks of supplies and slithered to the ground.
Remy clutched at his side as he approached the doors. His rush had opened up the stitching of the knife wound, and already blood was suffusing his shirt. The security was a contact button release, and a heavy lock. Lacking the access to either, Remy focused on the barrier, using charged coins to weaken a section large enough for him to bend out of the way, and slip into the kiosk like area to retrieve the keys from the corpse.
For a remote complex, the PLA was kept well stocked, and Remy moved quickly between the racks, setting the charges that he'd liberated from their own supplies. The combined blasts would flatten the building, helping to cover his tracks and making sure that any missed soldiers would have nothing larger than small arms to threaten their escape vehicles.
Whilst mayhem is being wrecked elsewhere, Mark, Marie-Ange and Wanda are on security detail.
"The beauty of electronic locks," Mark began, blue sparks of electricity dancing along his fingertips, "Is that they're so easily subverted." He placed his right hand on the keypad by the door they were trying to unlock, and smirked as it short-circuited, permitting him to open the doors by hand. He stood aside and bowed to Marie-Ange and Wanda. "Ladies first."
"Someday you are going to have a lock short circuit and seal the door shut instead of unlocking it..." Marie-Ange said. "And then what will you do?" But, nonetheless, she pulled a card out of her pocket and conjured one of the familiar imps, sending it strutting through the door. "I am feeling paranoid. You will have to forgive me. If there is a movement detector, I would prefer not to be lasered into tiny cubes."
Wanda smirked from her position. "Yes, that would be a horrible tragedy," she agreed. "I doubt we will run into any human guards right on the other side of the door—-the strings are all fairly stable--but the electronic ones could be trickier. But keep an eye out, just because there are no guards yet does not mean that will be the case for long." She glanced around, keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings as Marie-Ange concentrated.
"At least cameras aren't an issue," Mark commented, glancing up at one that hadn't been transmitting anything but static since Mark was within its visual range. "No giant ground beef monsters here to fight, I hope."
"And I had just started to be able to eat red meat..." Marie-Ange muttered grimly. "The imp is in one piece. I think we are... as safe as we can be." She did not dismiss the image though, and kept the card in hand, in case she needed more.
Despite Mark's words, Wanda followed in last, not really liking the quiet all that much. The thing with quiet on missions like this is that it normally ended in loud explosions. There was something just not quite right.
"This isn't really how I expected to spend my first trip to Asia." Another zap, and another camera died. Mark smirked. "Essex says the comms room is just down the next corridor. Just gotta get rid of those chumps so Doug and Sofia and that Haller dude" - Mark's face darkened briefly at the mention of his name, that teasing bastard - "can find God. I mean Xorn."
"We can stop and get you your authentic Hong Kong experience after we finish." Marie-Ange said. Something about this whole mission felt wrong, and while she was nearly certain it was Essex's presence, it still bothered her enough to dim her customary habit of banter.
"Join us, see the world after wacky, disjointed adventures," came the muttered reply. The hairs on the back of Wanda's neck had been standing up the moment they had arrived and weren't looking to be lowering any time soon. "The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can leave and the happier I think we all will be."
"Yvan eht nioj," Mark sang softly. "So, Boss Lady, what do we do? There's bound to be baddies in the room. What's the plan? And if it's just to charge, then I'm standing behind you."
Wanda snorted but looked amused at the same time. At this rate, she was getting that engraved on her business cards. "I was thinking perhaps up and over," she said quietly, pointing to the ceiling. "Drop a few distractions via Marie-Ange and follow them in. I, for one, am certainly not keen on opening a door with a potential gun on the other side of it."
"I could pull up a force field so that in theory" - Mark emphasized those words, as he wasn't sure how much gunfire he could take - "That wouldn't be a problem. And then you two do your X-Ninja thing." He glanced up at the ceiling. "I'm way too short to climb into a vent. And I really don't fancy you throwing me near any metal containers, please."
"Remy is the ninja. I just look very good in black." Marie-Ange said. "Climbing up to the vent is not a problem. I can make a stepstool." She eyed the ceiling, and mentally sent the imp climbing up the wall towards the grate covering the ducts. "Could you loosen that, and I can have the imp remove it quietly? We should move quickly before we have to deal with some passing guard." As she said that, a twinge ran down her back, and she winced.
Stopping in mid-step, Wanda glanced sharply over at the younger woman. "Tarot? What is it?" she murmured, body relaxing as she took a good stock of the surrounding area. The vent could wait until she was reassured everything was just fine.
Mark reached into his pocket to turn down the volume on his iPod so he could hear his surroundings better. "Is this the part where you say 'I have a bad feeling about this' and then we die? Because I don't like that part. I'd rather skip it."
"This is the part where I have a bad feeling and then we do -not- die." Marie-Ange said. She had a -date- next week. She was not going to expire messily in some horrible facility in China. "I think we are about to have company..."
Forewarned was forearmed, even if it was only by a few seconds. Through a door, not the one they had come through, four guards came out, talking quietly amongst themselves. All conversation stopped as soon as they caught sight of the trespassers.
The only thing that was clear in their rapid fire conversation was "Americans?!" as they reached for their weapons.
"I resent that implication," Wanda muttered, throwing herself at the nearest guard. At close range, guns would be harder to use and they had to do this as quietly as possible. And shorter range meant head butts that proved very affective.
Mark's left hand found its way back to his pocket, turning up the volume loud enough that Primus would have deafened him had he actually been wearing the headphones. He wrinkled his nose at the burning odor of ozone as a bolt of lightning raced from his hand to one of the guards, sending him to the ground twitching, his uniform smoldering.
Marie-Ange waited, until the two remaining guards turned to look at the one who had fallen, and then pulled another of her cards from her sleeve. She would have laughed, had it not been so urgent to get the guards immobilized. She must had grabbed, at some time when packing, the Monster of Hollywood themed deck. It was goofy, it had been a joke gift, and she had a card with a pair of Egyptian mummies in her hand.
Mummies that appeared in front of her, not shambling and shuffling like in the movies, but striding forward to lunge at one of the two guards, enveloping him in a mass of writhing bandages. "Ew.." She muttered, shaking her head, and turning to stand in front of Mark. He was safer if she kept something between him and the guards. "DJ. Radios." She said.
Dropping the now unconscious guard, Wanda couldn't help a smile at the sight of the mummies. But first, there was one still standing, scrambling for the very radio that Marie-Ange had warned about.
Mark could deal with the electronics in a second, she thought, snapping her leg up and out. The force her heel to the guards jaw sent him crumpling to the ground, radio spinning across the floor. "All yours, DJ," she said, crouching to pat the man down.
"Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is." A well-aimed zap to the fallen comm device short-circuited it, and Mark blew on his forefinger as if it were a gun. "Oh, they are not going to be happy when they try to repair that," he declared proudly.
"You are enjoying yourself far too much." Marie-Ange said. Handcuffing the mummified guard was as simple as letting the image start to dissolve, and then driving her knee into his back before he could get back up. Once he was pinned, struggling under her knees, she copied Wanda, stealing his handcuffs and securing his arms behind his back.
Once the guards were all secured, and put off to the side to make it harder to find them, Wanda crept back to the door they had been trying to enter. Holding up a hand to let them know to be still for a second, she listened at the door. After a few seconds it became aware that they hadn't heard anything going on in the hallway.
Or they were preparing an ambush but since the plan had been to go up and over, it was workable. "Alright," she said once she gotten back to the other two. "Up and over is still our best way in right now."
Mark had shut his music down to manageable ear-bustingness again, and nodded at Wanda. "You know, putting the vent there is really just an invitation to sneak in."
Marie-Ange had already conjured back up the little dreadlocked blue-painted imp, and it was climbing up the wall. "Which is why we are sending a scout first. If I get a migraine, we know they have security measure in the ducts. Scarlet Witch? Could you kill the duct cover for me?" Another imp went scrabbling up the wall to meet the second, this one with hands the size of dinner plates.
Craning her neck, she eyed the covering, her minds eye picking and choosing the strings. "It is such a shame that they never clean these things," she breathed, as the screws holding the cover suddenly fell out, the rust having eaten the holdings. The imp below caught it before it could hit the ground and give them away.
With the imp setting the cover down and then dissolving away, Marie-Ange was free to send the first, original imp through the vent, and spend a few seconds to create a sturdy wooden-looking ladder from a small laminated sketch. "Always useful, no?" She said, with a grin.. "And so far, the imp has not gotten lasered, cut to bits, burnt or squashed, so I believe we are safe."
"So far," Mark murmured as he shut off his iPod and climbed up the ladder. He crawled through it as quietly as he could, silently commiserating how he was never going to get his clothes clean again.
The imp led him to the vent that would let him enter the main comm room, silently rocking back and forth on its heels in anticipation. Mark took a deep breath to steel himself and flipped to the right track on his playlist. This particular maneuver worked in practice, so no reason it wouldn't work now.
Mark idly wondered what Tchaikovsky would think if he knew that The Overture of 1812 was being used to fuel a forcefield that not only busted open the door to the vent and protected Mark as he fell, but also expanded rapidly in a burst of brilliant blue light to fling away the half-dozen soldiers who'd been caught by surprise.
There were a few muffled thumps that Wanda hoped was not the sound of Mark falling over or being thrown through a wall. She took a few steps back, muscles clenching as she started for the door, two hex bolts slamming into her target. Ducking her head, she used her shoulder to slam against the buckling door as the entropic energy ate away at the material.
She hit the floor amid shrapnel from the mess she’d made and rolled, shoulder protesting, on her feet again as fast as she could be. Her sudden entrance meant that some of the men in the room weren’t paying attention to Mark anymore and she grinned. “Hello, boys.”
"You are -both- enjoying this too much." Marie-Ange was already elbowing one of the technicians in the throat almost as fast as Wanda was going in with fists and booted feet. Soldier or not, he didn't necessarily deserve to die, and he was just manning communication. She could knock him out and leave him that way. "Stop BITING!" She yelped, and kicked the man's feet out from under him. "Bad." She scolded, using the technician as a shield to keep the others from shooting at her.
Mark kept his shield up, wincing as one of the soldiers tried to hit him with the back end of his rifle. The shield brightened at the spot of impact, but held, and Mark forced it to expand again. It hit the soldier like a sack full of bricks, and Mark grinned. "Cool. I guess expecting a base full of Jackie Chans was a bit much. I always thought there wasn't any gravity in China," he mused, smacking the soldier with the force field again. "Like in Crouching Tiger"
"It is a very good thing I like you," Wanda sighed, sounding very put upon. Holding one hand in a headlock, she grunted at nearly being forced off her feet. Slapping one hand over his eyes, she concentrated, pushing her powers to the full. He screamed, loudly, and jerked back, wrenching himself out of her grasp. He tottered backwards, clawing at his eyes and tripped, suddenly, knocking himself clean out on the side of a desk.
She shrugged at the stares of her teammates. "I blinded him with the glow of the rings, nothing more," she said mildly, going for one of the guards that was left standing.
Marie-Ange was busing herself with tying the remaining technician's hands behind his back with his own belt, keeping another busy with a swarm of the dreadlocked imps she had kept making. The man swatting at the imps and flailing wildly was giving her a headache, as every destroyed imp was like being poked with a sharp stick, but they kept the man from calling for help.
With all six soldiers down for the count, Mark plopped himself in the center seat and pulled on his headset. "All right, gang, time to party," he announced. "Comms are secured. Y'all're free to save the world. Again."
Down in Xorn's containment area, things get seriously trippy. And Betsy gets to stab people in the brain.
The route to Xorn’s containment area was blocked by huge secured doors, but it was only a few moments work from Mark in the control room to bypass the controls and force them open. The technology was from the mid-eighties, once top of the line and now sadly obsolete. Radiation warnings in Chinese were plastered everywhere, and the area held a sense of quiet menace about it.
As they passed the final door, they found themselves in a large circular room, not unlike a crude version of the Cerebro. Massive cables ran down the sides of the bowl like bottom half, coming to a juncture at the bottom of a large dais. Sitting on a large chair, festooned with electronics and wires like a technological throne and surrounded by a nimbus of energy, sat Xorn.
"Amanda," Betsy said warningly, and the witch came forward, wiping her sweaty palms on the legs of her pants.
"Got it," she replied shortly, hoping she had enough power for this. Otherwise it was going to be a very short rescue mission. "Get in close, I don't want to leave any bits hanging out."
"There's going to be more closeness for some of us in a minute. I'm sorry in advance, but we'll keep to the front." Jim turned his gaze away from the figure on the dais and reached out to Betsy, threading their minds in preparation as they had so many times before, the twine of white into amethyst like a slow lacing of fingers.
Okay, babe. Let's go.
Mismatched eyes shifted away from purple to look at the others in the room. "Ready when you are," Jim said.
And here I am, hiding behind everyone again... The thought came out edged with humour bordering on hysteria and Amanda clamped down on her nerves whilst the rest of the group arranged themselves in front of her. Raising her hands, she brought them together in a single short handclap, the sound echoing off the curved walls of the containment unit like a gunshot. Her shielding spell appeared, this time the dull grey of weathered stone, encompassing her and Doug and Sofia, who were directly in front. Huh. Not-So-Great Wall of China. With a pushing gesture, she expanded it, gritting her teeth against the strain, until it encircled everyone. Albeit with little room to move, just enough to shuffle forward towards the figure on the dais.
Doug stared across the room at the man sitting on the chair. The radiation warnings in Chinese hadn't exactly done anything for his comfort levels, but he was trying his best to focus on the mission at hand. He was a little bit in awe, trying to comprehend the psionic singularity that was the source of Xorn's powers. "They tried to weaponize him..." he murmured to himself. "Doesn't say much for human nature, does it?"
“Or everything,” Sofia replied firmly, her words with the same inflection as the way she reminded herself that she’d been in vehicles tighter packed than this, even if she’d known the people better at the time. Her nostrils flared, just slightly, and her mouth drew in, but she managed somehow not to jab an elbow at someone’s nose. “Nice work, Amanda. If not a little showy.”
"I don't pick the colours, that's China's doing," Amanda said, voice a little tight with effort. Sweat was beading on her forehead despite the chill in the air of Xorn's containment area. "How about you big brains do your thing, yeah? 'M not sure how long I can hold this without a direct power source and I don't fancy being deep fried crispy witch."
Her mind needed to be grounded throughout the link and with the amount of force Xorn exuded, there would need to be something more physical. "Let's get on with it then," Betsy replied tersely. She turned to the man next to her. "Doug, you ready for this?" She felt more than saw his tight nod and so she moved behind the him, giving a gentle squeeze of his shoulder for reassurance.
A flash sizzle and a trail of fire traveled down her spine as she activated the psi-blade. Her right hand glowed eerily in the bright shield Amanda created, the amethyst light from the blade, joining in the colorful foray and reflecting in her eyes. And then she made contact by bringing the blade to the back of Doug's head, only her fist visible and covered in the light that emanated from all her psychic energy coming into focus. When it was secure with Ramsey, Betsy opened her mind fully to Haller and slowly the rest of the links were created, connecting with the others, and like dominos, they all fell into place one after the other. It only took a matter of moments really for the fully developed link to establish and with it strengthening, Betsy closed her eyes and called out to the rest of her team. #Ready.#
The link they'd already formed surged at the power-jump. Jim sent a last tendril of acknowledgement to the other psi, brief and private, and nodded.
"Let's make this fast," Jim said, and opened his mind to the silent figure on the dais.
And saw.
Mutation was a fluke of genetics and chance that, upon manifestation, could gift the carrier with wings, or extreme strength, or the intrusion of things unspoken that could not be unheard.
For Xorn, it had brought transcendence.
In the physical world the body of Xorn himself was now obscured by the shimmering grey haze that was Amanda's protection, but that was no longer what Jim saw. In the mind's eye of the telepath the filthy, withered figure in its nest of tubes and wires was no more than a speck of dirt floating in the current of an endless sea teeming with light and life, and in that sea all things moved.
Teilhard's Omega Point. A state of aggregate awareness so absolute Teilhard had likened it to that of God. To the frail shell in the chair, the presence of the people in this room was real and immediate -- as were the soldiers who sweat and fought and swore in the complex beyond. As were the flock of birds swarming over a field miles away. As were the silent voices of the tiny organisms dwelling in the soil of the distant river. Everything was real to Xorn. Everything -- simultaneously.
Essex had been right: this consciousness was beyond the scope of a single tawdry little mind. Fortunately, David Haller had not been of a single mind in a long, long time. Broken facets turned to receive the vast input, processing and channeling, breaking it down to manageable levels . . . just. Only just. The jaw of Jim's physical body tightened, the only visible indication of the psychic pressure. His mind was a spillway under the weight of a flash-flood; even his mode of specially adaptive functioning wasn't made for this. But he was the filter standing between Xorn and Betsy, and through her the others, and theirs were even less.
Jim put thoughts of the strain aside. From the standpoint of certain theorists, Xorn had hit the evolutionary jackpot with his mutation -- but in doing so the young Oxford student who had once attended Sex Pistols concerts had been lost.
Time to find him.
Betsy's mind glowing behind him, Jim's astral body raised its arms, the blue nimbus of that perfect awareness eddying around him like troubled water, and four voices spoke as one against the cacophonous roar of life that had been the other man's only existence for thirty years.
Kim Ye-Xorn, can you hear us?
can you hear
hear us
us
There was a long pause, the thunderous channel of thought around them seeping through the boundaries Haller struggled to remain open against, and the sheer scale of the minds sleeting through Betsy's connection into Doug. His power worked automatically, running a thousand times faster than it had ever done so to keep up with the level of input. Sofia held her fists tightly, mimicking her mind's hold to Doug's, as she struggled to make sense of the filtered information his power was trying to bring order to. Finally, from all around them, the connection caught and Xorn surfaced in the noosphere like a rising leviathan.
[[ butformaloWHYftabellHAVEselfhisYOUsomesurelyCALLEDfriendsONtestthatUSmakebodyINforeseenofulSINGLEtimateFORMoneprepareALLomnibusANSWERpentevenALLcommittingaddedCREATEfirstmoveXORNtentcontest]]
”It’d take too long to list the entire world’s names.” Sofia wasn’t entirely certain that should be translated back to him, but who could tell whether he’d lost his sense of humour or not, when he’d lost his singular self; art did depict Buddha laughing. “We’ve come to warn you.”
For Doug, touching Xorn's consciousness, even indirectly through the link with Haller and Betsy, was like trying to dip one toe precisely in a raging river and not get torn away by the current. The communication from his mind almost transcended language, as if, by the nature of his power, Xorn was communicating in some sort of proto-language, each word conveying a vast depth of nuance and meaning. It was overwhelming for Doug, coming up against a language that he had to struggle, for the first time since the certain knowledge of his mutancy, to translate.
[[intolerableWARNINGSthegalleryARElandNOToutlineNEEDEDhorizontalWEreadyAREwhichslowlyOFunraveledTHEluremoreWHOLEotherOFeruptionTHEnatureWORLDwords]]
“Precisely. You, and therefore the whole world, are in danger.” Somewhere, Sofia had a dim feeling of warmth, a prickling sensation, traveling over her collar. It was drowned out by the thunder in her ears and the small, bloodied crescents in her palms. “Xorn is the meeting of all minds, and the physical representation of that meeting, is threatened. Without it, you, everything, ceases to exist.”
[[appearsYOURcomesPOINTwhenthatISeclipsesNOTEDbreadthTHEandvisibleWORLDquicklyCANNOTcanwithBEcalculatorTHREATENEDasinCASUALLYprovided]]
Sofia smiled. “You know that the only way to deal with such danger is to put all of yourselves into Xorn,” she said, a small droplet of blood running down the side of her hand to drop off her smallest finger and splash on the cement bellow. “It will be difficult, but we have heard that you are great.”
[[sadlyAnaturePOINTpassageOFatSINGLEoceanFOCUScontinentYOUussomeEXPRESScapriseISseasNOTfootCAPABLEatthreeTHEandWORLDhundredINcutTHEmeridianFOREVERevidenceMIND]]
“We’ve taken care of that.”
An eternal moment passed as the being seemed to consider. The steady amethyst glow of Betsy's presence was beginning to flicker. The sustained expression of power, used in a way she'd never tried before -- Jim knew she wasn't going to last much longer. He could feel her settled there in the back of his mind like a wilting butterfly. Over the link Doug's mind was moving so fast, patterns and processes dipping in and out of Jim's ability to comprehend them as the younger man's mind turned, and turned, and turned again in the hand-off between Sofia's words and Xorn's replies. At the outer edge of the link was Sofia's mind, so light it could only be felt as if through a haze; neat, and ordered, and organized. Boxes, all safe and separate. Three minds worked, and Jim stood there, safe behind the eerie glow of Amanda's shield, between Xorn and them all.
The telepath's hands raised to his skull and pushed, as if physical pressure alone could contain the psychic onslaught. Tearing . . . understand please understand because we are we are we . . .
Amanda's raised arms were shaking, her hands growing hot as the energy from Xorn swirled around the frail bubble of her spell. But the blood on the faces of all four of her charges, discoloured in the greyish light, reminded her there was far more going on than just holding Xorn's radiant power at bay, and she gritted her teeth, adding her own energy to the spell. Any time with the helmet now, people...
The helmet had been brought along in a foam-lined case, to protect it against damage during the flight and the assault on the complex. Realizing the fact that none of them were going to last much longer, Sofia put one foot on the edge of the box and shoved it hard. The case slid easily along the metal floor, passing through Amanda's barrier like fog and rotating slightly as it slid down the sloped floor and came to a stop at the bottom of the dais.
For a long second, it seemed like the gesture was wasted. Energy pounded at the barrier and the telepathic presence pounded at their minds. Both Haller and Betsy were losing cohesion, the vast gulf of Xorn threatening to pull them in, tearing their minds completely away into the swirling ocean of the noosphere. Doug and Sofia weren't as lucky, non-telepaths trapped in the feedback, their own minds starting to crack under the relentless barrage of information. It wouldn't matter if it was Amanda's shield or Betsy's link that broke first. Which ever did would finish them all.
But suddenly, the figure in the nightmarish throne moved. The emaciated form stood and stepped down, trailing a massive apparatus that siphoned his energy away into crude electrical power. It was like a stop motion film, the movements jerking and unfamiliar. The psionic waves got stronger, screaming at the link like banshees as the entity fought for cohesion. It was their minds he held on to, the transmissions amplifying it just enough for the force to mimic it.
Hands reached down to the box, movements they all visualized desperately to try and convey what he needed to do. Clumsy movements, agonizingly slow, freed the helmet and held it up. But there was no more left, no more to hold out with. Haller's filter finally broke and the world flooded into their minds; final sentient thoughts seeing only the blue nimbus of a tiny star radiating at them as their minds were wiped away.
And in of the the fullness world and eight billion minds for just one tiny fraction second they of a saw it all
An ending. A pilgrimage is begun, and it's suggested Essex might have been a little over-dramatic in his assessment.
Where the ocean had been, now only a cooling trickle remained, like icy water running down their heads, refreshing and chilling them awake. The room was dark, lit only by an eerie blue glow. What had been a crucible of energy now sat dead and inert. They scrambled to their feet, holding their heads and trying to remember before the sickening sensation of having all self completely blasted away.
Standing in the middle of them was Xorn. The apparatus lay disconnected at the base of the dais, and his emaciated frame was gone, now a robust figure in a complex looking leather and pvc outfit. His head was hidden by Forge's strange mask, only the eyes glowing in a deep, rich blue that swept over them.
{{It is curious/strange/unfamiliar to be of one/singular/solitary mind.}} The 'voice' was in their minds; a strange echoing cadence that carried several levels of meaning for each word. {{The others/friends/team wish to leave/escape/ambulate from this place, as do we/us/Xorn.}}
They nodded dumbly. There were no words, not this close. The freezing air was unfamiliar and shocking after the warmth of the underground. Xorn walked in the midst of them, inscrutable and alien. When they reached the helicopters, the soldiers backed away nervously, and even the rest of the team looked askance at the figure. Even without speaking, those around him felt the hum of the minds he connected to, as if his power was bleeding into their minds.
The helicopters took off, and separated quickly. They had a better chance of escaping undetected alone, and even with a wide range now powerless thanks to Xorn's absence, they were not about to take any chances with their guest. Instead of the planned flight plan, the pilot found himself veering further west, unquestioned since it was Xorn willing them in the direction he wished. They tried to talk, but went unanswered, the silent figure content to look out the window. Finally, the helicopter began to drop and finally land, and Xorn stood.
{{We/us/Xorn will take another/seperate/distinct path from here, person/rescuer/PeteWisdom. Tell the other/nothere/doctor that the noosphere/existence/mindworld is stronger/resilient/bigger than for even we/us/Xorn to threaten/destroy/break.}} He said, stepping out of the vehicle. He took no notice of the wind or the cold, stepping out on to the frozen ground and walking away. They had no time to watch, compelled to get the helicopter back into the air and on their flight path. Back finding their way home.
While a new god walked his first steps on the world.
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