Shadow King: Desperate Times

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Monday morning in Madripoor.

Marie-Ange, Doug, Sarah, and Mark infiltrate Farouk's clinic with Jubilee's help. They face heavy resistance.


It was telling about their jobs that a cell phone going off during a mission always meant something went wrong. This was no exception.

Marie-Ange didn't recognize the number, which told her as much as she needed. If it had been a number that was saved in her phone, the caller id would have shown. Since Doug had easily taken care of keeping their phones off any calling lists, an unknown number meant it had to be someone who knew -her- phone number. "There is news?" She said, without much of a greeting at all.

Jubilee stood slightly away from the rest of the group, eyes scanning the surrounding area as she listened in to the conversation between Marie-Ange and whoever was on the other end of the phone. She didn't feel comfortable here, despite the fact they'd already checked out the entrance and taken note of the number of people taking a smoke break outside. She hadn't been able to see any of the inside of the building and she had no idea what they were looking at in the way of resistance and hoped it wouldn't matter.

Mark crossed his fingers. "Big money, big money, big money, no whammies, stop!" he muttered. "Good or bad, Angie? And what degree of bad?" Because he knew it was always the latter, anyway.

Wanda's voice saying "Good luck and be careful." could be faintly heard on the other end of the phone, and then Marie-Ange snapped it shut with a distinct frown. "It would be the whammies." she said. "Dr. Farouk has... I am not sure how to explain it. He is not causing this, but it is centered around him. The centre of the storm, if you will." She looked over to Doug, and then the rest of the group in turn.

Doug whistled almost inaudibly. "That is...not good. I mean, it's better than if he were actively behind things, I suppose, but still." His eyes flicked to meet Marie-Ange's. The information from Wanda put a new twist in the plan they'd settled on.

Marie-Ange's mouth twisted bitterly. "Yes, better. In that now what we thought was someone trying to actively cause destruction is just another victim. I am not sure this changes anything. He is still the cause, and ..." She dug a pair of aspirin out of her pants pocket and took them dry in an effort to stave of the tension portion of the headache that was half tension, half something she couldn't quite put her finger on. "He still has to be stopped."

"Stopped as in stopped, right?" Mark asked. "If he's just as much a victim as Betsy and everyone, then he shouldn't be another Josh." He fought a shudder at the memory of the Kentuckian demon summoning kid.

Sarah didn't look impressed. "Yeah, too bad he's seriously fucking stuff up." She knew all about not blaming the victim and all that, but what exactly were you supposed to do when "helping" the victim meant risking everything else?

"Nice as this is, folks." Jubilee started, noticing from their position that some of the staff were headed back in. "I think if we're going to do whatever it is, we better start doing it now."

Marie-Ange sighed fitfully, making sure not to direct it at Jubilee. Even if she wanted to. Despite her total lack of patience for the petite firecracker, she had a point. "The plan does not change. We go in, do as little damage as possible, and if necessary, kill Dr. Farouk. If the situation changes before then, for better or -worse-, we adapt."

~*~

The information that Jubilee had given them had proven very useful. Knowing which entrances were guarded, by how many people and when those people changed was more than Marie-Ange had counted on having. It was absolutely more then she expected Jubilee to have come up with all on her own. Which didn't mean she liked having her there any more, but she could appreciate the information regardless of the source or the source's lingering presence.

They'd chosen a delivery entrance. While it had more guards, it had fewer random elements. No 'visitors' or new patients coming in - the guards' routine was stable. Easier to plan around.

An 'adult magazine', provided with only scant comment from Mark, formed the basis of a distraction. Marie-Ange formed the image of a nude woman from one of the photographs and sent it sauntering towards the group of guards at the door.

Not entirely unexpectedly, the guards barely reacted to the lack of clothing on the figure - just demanded that the woman stop, and when she did not, drew their guns and pointed them at her. It was the second, third and fourth identical naked women that caused them to react with more then just aimed weapons. The appearance of a fifth, all five women now seeming to so through an identical series of stretching exercises, and one of the guards moved away from the door to confront the women.

Only to swear loudly and fire at their retreating (and naked and quite shapely) backsides as they ran off.

Despite the silencers on their guns, the bullet hit with far too little noise, and the image of the woman disappeared with a plop.

The remaining four images sprinted around the corner, only to be dismissed by Marie-Ange as they came back into her view.

One of the guards came dashing around the corner, only to run into a clothesline from Doug. His feet continued forward while his torso was held back, and he went crashing to the floor with a loud "oof" of his breath getting knocked out of him. "Shit," Doug muttered as he bounced the guard's head off the concrete until his eyes rolled back in his head. The other guards had probably heard that and would now be on their guard. "Someone clean up my mess?" he asked, jerking his head toward where the other guards were coming around the corner.

Sarah watched as another set of guards branched off towards herself, both armed. As they yelled harshly at each other, Sarah flicked a bone from her arm at the one man's hand, causing the gun to drop to the floor with a clatter. Sarah dropped to the ground as well, the other man firing at her with his own weapon. She pulled another bone from her back, throwing it hard in the direction of their ankles, jumping up to grab the unarmed man before he regained his gun. "Not so fast," she growled, forcing her shoulder up into his soft middle. He collapsed on top of her,the wind knocked out of him, and the other guard hesitated shooting just momentarily. Grabbing the squirming man on her shoulder, she pushed him as hard as she could towards the other man, pinning the still armed by not nearly as agile man below. Pulling a bone from her shoulder, she swung it at his temple, where it struck with a sickening thud. The first guard experienced a similar blow to the back of the head, and finally stopped squirming.

"Doors!" Marie-Ange called out, rounding the corner - the delivery entrance had a pair of steel safety doors that were closing, seemingly automatically. "The next time we assault a heavily guarded medical clinic, I want a tank!" she grumbled, loudly, as they ran for the closing doors.

"Well, we -do- have a guy with an exoskeleton..." Doug said as Mark broke ahead of them. The doors stopped up against the coruscating energy of Mark's form, then slammed shut as he squeezed through, leaving the group separated by several inches of metal. Doug's phone almost immediately rang. "Keep going," he said curtly. "We'll be in as soon as we can."

Jubilee stared at the door in disbelief. She'd been aware that the clinic was more then what it seemed from the get go, the trail of highly armed and trained 'orderlies' they'd recently left in their wake was evidence enough of it. Despite all that, she'd not really expected blast doors of solid steel, with what appeared to be an extremely complicated electronics panel on the wall beside it.

"Fuck me." she breathed, wondering just how the hell they were going to get through this.

"More guards. Probably the ones from the side entrance." Marie-Ange said, expression growing briefly distant. "The fake tourists I made that were gawking at them were just destroyed." She had just enough time to pull a pair of cards from her pocket before the guards appeared, shouting and already firing at the group. Ahead of her, a wall of stone, and then another wall of interlocking metal disks appeared. "Melt the doors if you have to. Or the panel. Or whatever connects them. It has to have a way to open it in an emergency."

Ignoring the sounds behind her, Jubilee moved closer to the door. She was just glad she'd actually managed to eat breakfast this morning, this little pain in the ass was going to take concentration, rather then brute strength. With careful movements, she brushed her fingers in a wide oval, the size of two people standing abreast, laying down glowing lines of multi-coloured plasma that quickly burnt into the metal, making a slight spitting sound as it did. She watched the glow for a second before going back over the lines she'd made with more plasma, cutting her way through the door.

As Jubilee cut her way into the doors, the sounds of gunfire on stone changed to gunfire on metal, as Marie-Ange kept replacing the disappearing discs as quickly as she could. It was apparent that the gunfire was taking its toll on her ability to keep the images stable, as the replacements came slower and slower, and the expression on her face grew more and more taut. "Guns need to -go-." She said through gritted teeth. "Or the door."

Just as Doug was about to move to a growing hole in Marie-Ange's walls, Jubilee broke through the door with a triumphant cry. Not wasting any time on words, Doug grabbed Marie-Ange by the shoulders and yanked her through the smoldering gap in the doors.

~*~

Jubilee has a Brilliant Idea.


"Okay," Doug said. "I need to get to the phone closet." He glanced around the hallway to get his bearings. "Which is...that way," he said, pointing to his left. "Jubilee, Marrow, you go that way," he pointed in the opposite direction. "We need a distraction. You know, mayhem, havoc, property destruction." His teeth bared in a grin. "Have fun." He grabbed Marie-Ange by the hand and dashed off.

In the opposite direction from where Doug and Marie-Ange had gone, the hallway ended in a T. At one end, a set of double-doors marked "Radiology". At the other, a pair of guards, with menacing expressions and already raised guns.

Jubilee burnt the guns the two guards were holding, taking out the most obvious threat vector first. At one time, maybe not so long ago, she'd have hesitated. The thought of accidentally burning off a man's hands due to a slip on her part would have been repulsive. Those thoughts were another country now, and rather then contemplating the two guards dropping their now useless weapons any further, she simply raised her hands again and blinded them with a flash-bang before slipping past and moving on.

Disarmed, one of the guards came charging at Sarah, only to have his fist impact hard with her bone-covered stomach. His eyes widened as he drew back, but not far enough to keep Sarah from driving the bone in her hand deep into his own stomach. She kicked him backwards, letting go of the embedded bone as he fell to the ground.

There had been a few more guards between Doug and Marie-Ange and the phone closet, but the pair had made short work of them. Entering the cramped space, Doug snatched his laptop out of his bag and propped it open. Jacking it into the electronics, he hit a key to start a preprogrammed virus which would temporarily halt all calls coming in or going out of the clinic. It wouldn't do to have someone call the police, after all. "It's time to spread the word," he quoted in his best impression of Liam Neeson's clipped tones. "Well, actually we don't want anyone spreading the word," he corrected himself with a grin and began tearing network cables out of their ports by the handful.

They'd been moving through the facility, creating a wave of destruction as they went, subduing some guards with blinding displays, burning the weapons out of the hands of those that seemed already on alert. There'd been some close calls, the guards were highly trained and as brutally efficient as Sarah could be, Jubilee had been out of practice now for months. Still, she'd managed well enough, but now she needed something bigger, something to bring them all running. It was at that point that the radiators she'd seen in the corridors clicked to the forefront of her mind, and she realized she had the makings of an absolutely brilliant plan. All she needed to do now was find the main gas line and everything else would fall into place.

She quickly pulled out the cellphone Marie-Ange had given her earlier and clicked on Doug's name, listening to the phone ring.

"Operator," Doug quipped as he picked up the phone.

"Doug, I need you to tell me where the main gas line is." she said as soon as the phone picked up.

"It would help to know where you are, Jubilee" Doug replied in an exasperated tone as he pulled the clinic's schematics up on his screen. He nodded after a moment and zoomed in on a particular group of images. "Down the stairwell in front of you, hang a sharp U and then the third hall on your left should take you to the utilities area."

~*~

Mark, separated from the rest of the group, fights through to Farouk. A nasty, unexpected surprise meets him.


It was becoming clear the he was simply in the way here.

The Aegis people were functioning with smooth calm efficiency, even under the completely unexpected assault.

The taut machine of their unit had little place for an outsider and the ugly and unpredictable nature of close-quarters urban combat, playing out with such viciousness in the maze of the clinic's corridor, made would make Esteban's attempts to fit into their practiced formations and maneuvers on the fly - more hindrance than help.

And so he stepped back, withdrawing smoothly from the dance of death and slipping into side door.

Mark had learned a lot since New Orleans, the last time he'd had to use his exoskeleton in combat. Clunky though it was especially in cramped quarters, it was near-automatic now to keep it reinforced even as a spray of bullets threatened to chip it apart. He swiped a long arm down the corridor, swatting a couple of gunmen hard against the wall like flies. One rolled under the shining white arm, and Mark turned to punch him, when he noticed a familiar form retreat confidently down another hall. He swore to himself and hastily dispatched the gunman. Even as the exoskeleton shimmered out of existence, the air rippled around Mark to form a translucent bubble, and he dashed down the hall in pursuit.

"What the fuck, Esteban?" he demanded, dropping the bubble as he burst through the door and slammed it behind him. In retrospect, he shouldn't have been surprised that he was there. Granted they hadn't talked much the few times they'd slept together, but it seemed that "manservant" had something to do with following Farouk to death's door. But why had he been out in the melee at all and not just hiding in here the whole time?

Esteban was already moving, even as door opened. The slight sound of the lock beginning to be turned, the creak of the hinges pulling him into an easy, flowing turn as his body instinctually interposed itself between the exit and the bed where Farouk was laying.

The Glock appeared in his hand as if by magic, a movement so practiced that it looked effortless in its simplicity, the barrel whipping upward even as Trotsky sunk in a half-crouch of shooting position.

And then he blinked as the voice and the face registered and his eyebrow climbing in what was, for him an equivalent of a hysterical surprise.

An eternity passed, and then his thumb moved a fraction, clicking off the safety.

One didn't remain with Dr. Amahl Farouk for long, without getting used to the fact that anything could happen and the only surety in life was that, eventually, everyone tried to kill you.

After a while, nothing really bothered you that much, any more.

Sometimes, though, he missed his old, simple and rewarding life as a Mexican child-guerrilla.

Mark hands immediately went up. "Oh, you have got to be shitting me. You're going to shoot me? That's really fucked up." His headphones hung around his neck and he could still hear Holst's joyous trumpets praising Jupiter, and it was enough to let him pull up the bubble again. He readied it but didn't actually release it yet. It was too obvious, and the way that Esteban held the gun told Mark that he'd be ready to shoot as soon as he noticed anything odd. There was no way Mark would be able to get it up in time.

But they'd shared a bed together. Many times. That had to count for something. "Esteban, put the gun down. You know what we're doing is right. Whatever it is that's put Professor Farouk here has nearly killed half a dozen people, and that's hardly the beginning. We have no other choice." He even almost believed that now.

Esteban's eyes widened a fraction as he stared at Mark silently for a second. And then the gun wavered minutely as Trotsky shook his head in an amazed, mocking disbelief.

"Faggot."

The sound of the gunshot blended seamlessly with the sudden, thunderous explosion that seemed to shake the foundations of the building.

Mark crashed to the floor and cried out in pain. He tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in his hip kept him down, and his hand automatically went to it and came up bloody. He looked up at Esteban, who'd quickly regained his balance after the tremors, and nearly wet himself. That could have been it, if not for that serendipitous explosion. The bubble couldn't have saved him even if he had kept it on. He tried to bring it up again, a last ditch effort to save himself before Esteban could get in another shot.

Of course, his iPod had fallen out of his pocket and Bringer of Jollity had ended. Saturn should have been next, but Saturn didn't have guitars. Mark desperately reached into the music to pull out something, anything, but nothing. When Simon Le Bon joined the guitars, Mark realized his mistake. It was funny, in a way, that in the middle of Gustav Holst's The Planets, Mark had added "Astronaut" by Duran Duran. Maybe it was the threat of imminent death or the blood loss or just an entirely inappropriate sense of humor, but Mark had to laugh at that.

Laughter which quickly grew hysterical. Of all the ways to fuck up. He put his hands on his side to keep pressure on the wound, but couldn't stop laughing. The movement hurt, and his vision clouded over with tears, but still the only sound in the room was Mark losing his mind. Had he been coherent, he would have noticed the gun shaking violently in Esteban's hand, or the doorknob rattling, or the lights flickering. But he just laughed and cried as Le Bon went on, unaware that an invisible hand had freed the gun and turned the butt on Esteban's face.

Farouk came away slowly, sluggishly scrabbling toward awareness, the baleful screaming presence now locked in the deepest well of his back-brain howling at him, screaming in frustrated rage.

The Astral Plane loomed close to the edges of his mind. Its presence strange and yet familiar. Familiar and yet achingly new as if washed clean, washed clean of everything, of recent scars and ancient edifices built painstakingly by the minds that had dwelt there, stripped to the bone and grown anew.

A terra incognita once again.

Here be Dragons.

He let go, unable to deal with it now, and swam toward wakefulness.

His head was ringing with the pain, with the echoes of... explosion?

His vision focused suddenly and he gaped at the macabre tableau of Esteban being pulped by his own gun, the wounded kid he vaguely remembered meeting an eternity ago laughing and weeping and screaming in the corner while humming some sort of pop tune.

"What in the fucking HELL is going on?!"

Mark wiped his eyes with the back of a bloody hand as his laughter subsided. His head pounded, angrily demanding an explanation for this bullshit, which Mark couldn't provide. The gun fell to the floor along with Esteban, and Mark let out a weary giggle. "Who's the faggot now?"

~*~

Marie-Ange and Doug find Farouk and end things.


The pain began to recede, but whether that was natural or just the beginning of passing out, Mark couldn't tell. Hands still pressed firmly against his side, he could at least feel the warm flow of blood slow. "Hi, Prof," he said, his voice the soft, flighty tone of a drunk, "Couldja just lie back down for a sec? I'm supposeda kill you."

Farouk stared at the young mutant incredulously for a long moment, waiting for the punchline. "I beg your pardon? Listen whatever the problem is between you and Mr. Trotsky..."

It was only appropriate that the door was -again- shoved open, and Marie-Ange and Doug stormed into the room, both stopping in their tracks as they saw Dr. Farouk sitting up, and Mark lying on the ground bleeding. Marie-Ange swore - somewhat uncharacteristically in English, and knelt to look at Mark, ignoring the blood already seeping into her slacks. And ignoring utterly the other prone figure on the floor - she knew of Esteban, but Mark was her teammate, and therefore a priority.

Doug took in the tableau at a glance. Marie-Ange was fashioning a tourniquet to stop Mark's bleeding, Trotsky was not a visible threat, and Professor Farouk was awake. A knife appeared in Doug's outstretched hand and he used it to point menacingly at Farouk. "Sit down and shut the goddamn hell up," he instructed the older man. Something was off here. Their information had indicated that Farouk was unconscious, under attack by the same entity that had incapacitated the rest of the psis at Xavier's. But he was obviously awake, and not acting like a threat.

As he advanced, preparing to enforce his instructions physically, his phone chirped in his pocket. Continuing to watch Farouk intently and holding his knife at the ready, he pulled the phone out and pressed it to his ear. "Go," he said curtly. A few terse seconds later, he relaxed. His knife returned to its sheath and he thumbed the 'end' button. "Well, whatever Team Magic did, it worked." He nodded brusquely at Farouk. "Looks like you're off the hook." He turned back to Marie-Ange and Mark. "He going to be okay?"

"Dude, you were totally almost badass," Mark slurred. "So, y'all wanna take me to the hospital? Oh, shit, we're in one, aren't we? Lawl." With Marie-Ange's help, he got to his feet, only wincing once at the sharp pain in his side. "Tell Esteban we're breaking up. I don't think this relationship is going anywhere."