xp_logs | Alexander's Wall: We Now Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Humanitarian Trip...

Nathan, Haller, and Gabrielle meet with the heads of the DDR program. All is going very well. Until the city starts blowing up. It's a toss-up as to what's more disturbing: the identity of the person causing the explosions, the fact that backup is twelve hours away, or the other unexpected familiar face who shows up to watch the fireworks.

"Big check," Nathan murmured happily, a look of something close to open contentment in his gray eyes as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot. "They're getting a big check, as soon as I get home and talk to Joel. I am very impressed. He will be, too." They were back at the hotel after getting an up-close look at the project. The very committed group had taken over an old house in the city core, and while quarters had been very close, the programs they were offering were both ambitious and likely to succeed, at least in Nathan's opinion. All they needed now was more space and funding.

"You suppose we could talk them into lunch?" he asked Jim, his eyes flickering to Natalia and Gregoriy, the two who'd accompanied them back to the hotel for further discussions. They were chattering, apparently quite happily, to Gabrielle. "I mean," he went on, waving around at the meeting room the hotel had offered them, "kind of cramped and stuffy in here."

Jim slipped his hands in his pockets and looked around. "I don't think anyone would complain. And I guess it'd give us a chance to sample . . . whatever kind of cuisine Dagestan has." His head still had the small, closed feeling it did in the aftermath of prolonged telepathy use, but it had been easier than a translator. To a point, anyway. Once the talks had turned to practical issues, like financing, he'd left things to Nathan and Gabrielle and moved on to spend some time with the kids. He'd talked for some of it, drawn for the rest. They'd liked his sketches; somehow he'd ended up with a fourteen year old girl's scarf. Knowing nothing about the local culture, he hoped he hadn't inadvertently accepted a marriage proposal.

"Well, I've always liked beshbarmak," Nathan said cheerfully. He was not showing off his local knowledge. Really. "Although given where we are, there should be a good selection of seafood, too..."

"I am personally amenable to bugleme," Gabrielle added pleasantly as she approached the two men, easily slipping from flawless Russian to a lightly British-accented English. "It's a meat stew delicacy perfected by Caucasian Jews. I would like to see if the so-called 'authentic' recipes from an immigrant restaurant in Kiryat Haim are actually authentic."

"Sounds like a plan, then," Nathan said, looking towards the two natives. "I'd think they're probably the best to ask about potential restaurants-" He stopped mid-sentence at the slight tremor in the floor beneath his feet, and frowned a little. Heavy equipment being used somewhere nearby? Before he could get attached to the innocuous explanation, there was another tremor, and another, growing stronger each time.

Shockwaves, he thought.

Jim automatically spread his feet wider for balance. The floor was vibrating, evoking uncomfortable flashbacks of the previous summer in San Diego. As he did so there was a dull, muffled bang, almost more felt than heard, but the tremor sent the windows jumping in their frames. He swung around to see a cloud of something -- smoke or dust or both -- rising from somewhere near the edge of the city.

One hand pressed against the wall to steady himself, Jim squinted at the cloud. "The hell?"

"Oh, that's not good," Nathan said grimly as he headed over to the windows, all-business now. "I wonder where we are in relation to the army base - this is a little far south for terrorism."

Gabrielle had lived in Israel long enough to know a bomb when she heard one, and the shock from that first tremor had her grasping a nearby chair for support. "Can you tell where in the city this is happening?" she asked, praying that it was away from residential and commercial areas.

Jim rested his hands on the windowsill, hurriedly flipping back through memories of the walking tour. "Near the edge -- not the base, I think, but in that direction. I think it's just houses--"

Another impact shivered the room, stronger this time.

Nathan cast his mind outwards, seeking the source of the disturbance. What he hit were panicked thoughts, and enough of them that his expression grew even more bleak. "Whatever it is, it's big..."

**********

Nathan's jaw clenched as he shoved the communicator into the pocket of his jacket. His eyes shifted towards the windows at the sound of another explosion out in the city. They were getting closer, and he could feel the panic spreading, even from here. Whoever was managing the evacuation, they weren't keeping up. Couldn't keep up, maybe. The door to his room opened, and Nathan didn't need to look over his shoulder to know that it was Jim.

"Even if it wasn't going to take them twelve hours to get here under the best of circumstances, getting through the airspace they'll have to cross is going to complicate matters," he said to the younger man. The Blackbird's top speed was not entirely compatible with its stealth systems. "I think we're on our own. That's psionic energy being thrown around out there - can you feel it?"

Not his end of the spectrum, but Jim hesitated nonetheless. As the windows rattled in another distant explosion he felt a faint, hot prickle on his scalp. Like electricity in a burgeoning storm. Drawn towards the window as if seeing outside could help him quantify the sensation, he moved across their hotel room. His shoe kicked the leg of a table in his trance. In the streets below someone was screaming in a language he didn't understand.

"Almost," Jim said, staring across the city without seeing it. His eyes tightened. The blue of his right iris was patchy with green and grey. "Telekinetic, I think. And . . . bleeding."

Nathan walked towards the window, not flinching at the way the windows rattled. He stared out at the city, and saw the patterns of telekinetic energy, lashing out wildly, fracturing even as they moved. So bright. Almost brighter than anything he'd seen.

"You're possibly not going to believe this," he said, very quietly, "but I'm fairly sure that's Ilyas Saidullayev out there."

Jim frowned, sorting through the long list of unfamiliar and many-syllabled names compiled during the course of reading mission reports. "The guy from Alcatraz? Didn't he get arrested after Moscow?"

"I watched him being taken into custody myself." It raised a number of questions. Why the Russians hadn't quietly executed him, what was he doing in Derbent... Nathan only wished that his mind didn't immediately supply him with several answers for the first of those questions. He didn't need to ask himself how the Russians had contained the man, if they'd kept him in custody. He knew there were ways.

"Groundburst," he said, watching half a city block just... disintegrate under a wave of telekinesis. It would have been more shocking if he hadn't been so intimately familiar with the technique. This really couldn't be worse. "Jim, if he gets locked into that, the range of the explosion will increase each time he does it. The shockwaves build on each other. He could destroy this whole city."

Jim pulled his eyes away from the window to look at Nathan. It was interesting. Before he'd joined the X-Men he hadn't even imagined someone could communicate a sentiment like 'we're about to do something stupidly heroic' with just a set of the jaw.

"Well," Jim said quietly, his posture subtly shifting from tension to readiness, "backup was a nice thought, at least."

"Remind me to start bringing my psimitar along on Elpis trips." If we live. "I mean, would it be that hard to get Forge to make the case mimick a golf bag?" Nathan turned away from the windows, a spark of bleak amusement in his eyes. But his tone, when he went on, was all business. "Let's go. We can talk strategy in the car."

"Right. Just . . . let me tell my mother."

**********

Jim snapped his cell closed and shoved it into his pocket. "They're getting the kids out of the city," he called from the doorway he'd pressed himself into. It was the only sure way to avoid being trampled by the city's mass-exodus; there were screams as rock exploded somewhere in the distance. He caught an older woman by the elbow as she stumbled in front of him, helping her up before a younger man managed to push through the crowd to reclaim her. Jim didn't understand what the woman said to him as the man hurried them off, but it sounded like thanks. He nodded at her.

"Good." Nathan was outwardly calm, his almost tranquil expression a sharp contrast to the panic and fear on the faces around them. The look in his eyes was sharp and focused, and he didn't seem to be sparing much attention for the crowd, or for anything except what was in front of them. #I'm picking up more than just the 'getting the hell out of here' thoughts. There's local police up ahead, and they know how this started. The first explosion was at a government building on the outskirts of the city... no, a military building.#

Jim frowned as he started shoving his way towards Nathan. #An accident?# There was another shudder of impact. The air up ahead was getting clogged with dust. That's still in progress?

#It is Saidullayev,# Nathan said, sounding utterly sure of himself. #But there's something wrong. All the patterns of his thoughts are...# Fractured. His mind supplied the right word just as something went up in a towering fireball, a dozen blocks or so ahead of them. Nathan winced, taking a step back instinctively as debris started to rain down on them. He threw up a shield, stretched it as far as he could to protect the crowd.

#I think that was part of the pipeline going up,# he sent grimly to Jim.

#Shit -- hang on, let me . . .# Rocks pocked off the shield. The fact Jim knew the other man was protecting them hadn't stopped him from jumping at the explosion; after what had happened at FoH headquarters the previous year this wouldn't have been Jim's first choice of action, but Nathan was occupied.

In the middle of crowds of fleeing people and flying chunks of cement was not the best place to exercise the shakiest area of his telepathy, but Jim quested out with it anyway. Slogging through the panic around him and towards the mind burning like a bonfire, breaking everything in sight . . .

And then he found it.

Nathan watched Jim gasp and stagger as he made contact with Saidullayev's mind. #I don't think trying to reach him from a distance like this is going to work,# he said, making his way against the tide of the crowd to Jim's side, relieved when the other man caught himself, straightening. #He needs something to focus on,# he went on grimly. #If we can get him to start lashing out at a single opponent, the worst he'll do to the city is collateral damage.# Which would be bad enough, but at least he wouldn't be walking down the street leveling everything and everyone around him.

"Was just trying for a scan," Jim managed aloud. He coiled his mind, winding it back in tight and secure even as he flicked through the evidence he'd gleaned. "You're right. He's not focused. He can barely tell what's going on. Everything skewed, distorted . . ." have to kill them all before they come, and they are coming ". . . he's had a schizophrenic break."

"Wonderful." Nathan's reply was barely audible. The debris was no longer flying, so he dropped the shield. "Jim..." His eyes met the other man's. "I'm going to have to go right for him. Can you do what you can to help the civilians evacuate?" Jim had no experience in this kind of telekinetic combat, and someone had to try and help get these people out. Who knew how many were trapped in the collapsed buildings up ahead alone.

There was a moment of hesitation, then the younger man nodded. "It shouldn't be hard," Jim said, looking back towards the scene of chaos in the distance. "He's attacking on his delusions -- engage, and he'll project them onto you. That you're with the people who had him. He'll focus on that."

"Thank goodness for small mercies that aren't anything of the sort," Nathan said, his attention going back to the pillar of fire once more before he refocused, for just a moment, on Jim. There was a strange, oddly distant glitter in his gray eyes. "Do what you can," he said. Both of them knew perfectly well that they were almost certainly here too late for far too many people. This was as close to a worst-case scenario as you could get. "If I can get an opening, I might be able to take him down. Either way, I should be able to hold him off for a while."

He took a step away from Jim, levitating just enough to be able to form his exoskeleton without knocking anyone over. A few fleeing civilians screamed louder as the giant firebird flashed into existence above their heads, just one more shock to their already shattered nerves. The firebird shot towards the center of the disturbance like it was diving on prey.

The tall figure remaining behind stood motionless, the only still body in the thinning flood. Jim closed his eyes and breathed again, in and out, a few brief moments in an eternity. Ready, he told himself, breathing in the dust that clotted the air. Ready.

Long fingers laced together, the pop of knuckles lost in the howl of the crowd and some official's distant orders shouted through a loudspeaker. Neck cracked as his head swung from side to side. He straightened, the last of the tension had drained from his body, and when he opened his odd-colored eyes again all the remained was grey.

"I'm always ready," said Jack.

**********

The addition of two telekinetics to the madness in the city hadn't appreciably improved matters, if one was observing from a distance -such as, for example, the balcony of a hotel. Nathan's firebird had been briefly visible, flying into the center of the disturbance, but the explosions hadn't stopped. They had merely become more concentrated, waves of blinding light obscuring whatever was going on at its heart.

Not for the first time, Gabrielle wished that she had Charles' gifts. Her concern for the people caught in the crossfire was only surpassed by her near-obsessive worry for her son, and she would do anything to know that he was unharmed. There wasn't much that she could see from the balcony, and she'd long since started to ignore the tremors that accompanied each explosion. But as she looked over the city of Derbent, a familiar chill ran down her spine, one that she had not felt in almost twenty years.

"What are you doing here?" she asked huskily without even turning around.

"At this precise moment? Watching, just as you are," was the response from the man who had stepped out onto the balcony with her. They were alone, watching the chaos in the city below. The majority of guests and staff had done the sensible thing and cleared out.

"You shouldn't try to surprise me like that. I am not as young as I used to be." It would have been a joke if her guest did not terrify her so. "~What is your true purpose here?~" she asked again in Yiddish. She had not spoken this language in years, but found it easy to slip back into her mother tongue. Years ago, they used to speak like this when they desired privacy. It was one of the many things they shared that made them understand each other so well. Back when they used to be friends.

"~I came to investigate a rumor,~" was the calm, almost droll reply. "~I hardly expected to see the truth reveal itself before my eyes, Gabrielle, but I certainly won't complain.~ It's a pleasing sort of irony," he went on, switching back to English, a subtle cue to her that they were approaching a topic that went beyond whatever bond they had once shared. "To see exploitation backfire in such a fashion."

"You sadden me," she said, still looking off into the distance, as if casting her mind to locate her child. "You were once a great man. A mentor, a confidante, a friend. You understood me - and I you - in ways no one else could. Now I cannot bring myself to look at you." Her voice hardened as she spoke, as if his mere presence had awoken a beast within her.

"Then watch, Gabrielle," he said, sounding utterly unbothered by her words or the anger in them. "Observe. It's little enough, but by the time the dust settles there will be excuses, and cover stories... I always believed you to be a woman interested in the truth. Will you be able to stay silent when the Russian government calls this an earthquake, or a pipeline explosion?"

"When exposing what actually occurred is exactly what you want?" she retorted. "I will not play your games, old friend, not when innocent lives are at risk." Her eyes narrowed, and she finally turned to look up at the old man who stood beside her. The warm, pleasant face she had once known had grown old and angry, and she might have almost felt pity for him had she not been so appalled by what she saw. "And if you harm my son . . ."

There wasn't even a flicker of surprise on Erik Lehnsherr's face. He smiled, very slightly, a spark of real amusement in his eyes, all the more chilling for coming under these circumstances. "Harm David? I have left him very scrupulously alone, Gabrielle, out of respect for you... and his father."

"How noble. If you do have any respect for either of us, then you will leave here and not return." She turned away from him and gazed over the continued fighting. There was no way that she could warn Nathan and David of the oncoming danger in time.

"Really, Gabrielle. I'm not here for you, or David, or even Dayspring." The firebird was visible for an instant, but then vanished once more into the center of the disturbance. "What I came here to do is already done, with no help from me. Coincidence is such a remarkable thing, isn't it? That there should be a secret Russian prison for mutants, in the very same city you chose to visit this week..."

There was no trace of surprise on the woman's face. "And you are here to liberate the unjustly imprisoned, I suppose. A knight in shining armor, you are."

"I'd hardly be so trite, Gabrielle. But redeeming captives has been the responsibility of those who would call themselves leaders since time immemorial." A sharp edge of amusement in his words, as if Erik was tickled by his own historical reference. "Can I do any less for my people? Still, I wonder if the captive doing this-" He waved a hand at the city below. "-might not still need my help, free or not. Perhaps it's time to find out."

She had to call Charles. Dayspring had already alerted the X-Men, but this changed the situation entirely. "Do what you will," she said softly, her voice almost inaudible over an explosion. "If Charles cannot appeal to your humanity, then I would have no chance."