Bhagavad Gita: Ground Zero
Jul. 4th, 2008 12:44 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsTommy, Paige, and Adrienne scour the blast site for clues, and find a fragment of the mutant responsible that survived his powers.
It was one thing to watch the aftermath of a city-leveling nuclear explosion on CNN, but it was another thing entirely to actually be there in person. The smells, the sounds. Horrific sights unfolding all around her, with no possibility to switch off what she was seeing and escape it. Adrienne was a self-preservationist, so she had switched off, in a way, but she'd forced herself to switch off somewhere in her own head. Detach from what was going on all around her. Ignore the military and aid personnel, the refugees. Keep her attention focused on her lighter. Compulsively the psychometrist flipped it over her gloved fingers and paced unsteadily in the UN camp as she waited for Paige and Tommy to ready the materials from ground zero for her to read.
Walking through the different chambers, moving from the containment centre to the reading lab, had been loud - the rush of water, the frantic clicks of machines powerfully outnumbered by the sheer volume of the wasteland, the zip of suits and pulling on gloves and masks. It was a strange contrast to the dead silence Paige encountered now. No birds sang, no children laughed, no cars drove past, nothing but the low level static in her ear that kept her connected to both Tommy and Adrienne in the specific quarters. "Alright, I'm coming in on the testing area now," she said, the radioactive husk causing warbling vibrations to her voice that she hadn't heard in a very long time.
"We're ready and waiting." Tommy said in reply as he waited suited up in the lab. He too, had somewhat switched off, at least emotionally. His mind was set to help Paige analyze the pieces from the site and was ready with a safe aluminum compound practiced extensively and stored in the back of his mind so it would take only seconds to transform for Adrienne. It was his emotional reaction that he'd turned off, the fact that the quiet area around them had once been full of life...that was now just gone. He couldn't think about it and still concentrate, so it was gone to think about later. If anything, he was good at brooding after the fact. At the moment, he just busied his hands so everything would be set for Paige.
"Ready, waiting, and trying desperately not to lose our lunch," muttered Adrienne, "or run away screaming. Garrison owes me a hell of a lot of brownies for this. You guys must really like brownies, too," she added, hoping that taking about something inane would keep her mind off of their situation. "Or did he promise you something else, like cheesecake?"
"Alright, I'm nearing the blast centre," Paige informed them, her voice crisp and authoritative before moving to a more playful tone. "I'm here for fun. Someone's going to cellophane my toilet tonight, aren't they?"
"I'm sure that can be arranged." Tommy countered as he idly flexed his hands as he looked around the lab to make sure everything was ready, again. "I"m here because it's the right thing to do." He was deadly serious.
Adrienne continued to play with her lighter in the reading lab. "Too bad the 'right thing to do' doesn't coincide with the 'smart thing to do," she sighed.
***
With slightly bated breath, Tommy came out of the lab. He'd stripped off the helmet and replaced the suit's gloves with his own leather ones once the threat of radiation had been eliminated. He walked over to Adrienne and held out his hand, revealing a small, freshly made into metal object. He and Paige had pulled as much scientific data out of it as they could before he'd changed it and now it was up to Adrienne and her mutation to tell them the rest.
It had been a scrap of clothing. Bits of the mutant's- suspected mutant's, she reminded herself- flesh must have melted into it, because Adrienne had to poke the aluminum piece several times in various places before she fell into the reading, and the only substance she she'd ever encountered that she didn't read immediately was flesh.
With the new circuit-breaker in her mind, the psychometrist was able to zip comfortably past the creation of the turban which had turned into fragment she was now holding, fairly certain Garrison hadn't pulled strings with the NYPD to bring her to India for a report on the production of Middle Eastern clothing. The next image she saw was of a man putting on the turban- shit, he was young. He couldn't have been more than twenty. His skin was a light shade- lighter than the locals she'd been seeing on the news feeds and around the site. He was in a small room that reminded her of a cell (but maybe she was just projecting her own fears) in an indistinguishable industrial or military-use sort of building. Bunker, maybe? She wasn't sure. Gonna have to do better than that for Garrison, she thought to herself ruefully. But the building gave her no more clues as in the next flash of an image the man had finished changing into what looked like festival clothes, leaving blood-stained garments on the dirt floor, and was escorted by two turban-masked men to another room, where they shut the door behind him. Several more men in bulky safety suits stood peering into the room behind glass next door, waiting. The man wearing the turban she was now holding held up his hands and they produced a glow. Something in a heap at the far end of the room, something she couldn't identify- some sort of animal?- seemed to explode or combust or... Adrienne didn't understand what she was seeing exactly, other than knowing that she'd just witnessed a mutant demonstrating his power, and that it turned her stomach, especially when he collapsed with a cry of pain afterwards.
The next image did nothing to settle her stomach. A fragment flashed in her mind of men- the men in the safety suits?- gathered around maps she recognized as being layouts of the city. The mutant sat in a corner, silently watching, arms hugging knees in a posture that made him look so young, so... human, it made a lump come to her throat. The men appeared to be fighting over locations on the map, their angry tones and wild gestures advertising the general mood of the room well enough that Adrienne didn't have to understand the actual words. One pointed to the site where the explosion had originated. There was a brief debate, then sounds of approval. The man who'd chosen the spot shouted something, and Adrienne made out the word 'bakr', part of a phrase which was echoed throughout the room.
Adrienne tried to release the bit of metal she was touching, anticipating that what was coming soon was something she'd already seen repeatedly on the television, but another picture exploded into her head before she could end the reading. It deteriorated immediately into bright, fragmented images. The mutant, walking through the streets. People praying. Some eating. Circulating the way you did at a party. Laughing. Children dancing a little ways away. Shit, shit, shit! The psychometrist tried frantically to order her hand to draw back from the scrap of aluminum before she saw any more, but in another fragment the mutant was on his knees praying, and before she could take in the words of the prayer the vision changed again and the vivid colours and noise of the explosion arrowed into her head with more beauty and horror than could ever be captured on the television.
The circuit-breaker kicked in mercifully and Adrienne pulled her hand away from the former piece of turban, rushing out of the reading lab on shaking legs to empty the contents of her stomach onto the hard ground outside.
A cool, slender hand brushed Adrienne's cheek, pulling a dark curl of hair behind her ear before reappearing with a small t-shirt. "Here, you can wipe your mouth," Paige said, standing behind Adrienne in the long sleeved shirt that had gone under it and her jeans.
The brunette's face twisted in a scowl and she was about to bat Paige's hand away and snap that she didn't need any goddamned help, but instead she found tears in her eyes at the simple touch and offer of the other woman's shirt. Choking back a sob, she pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her mouth with it instead, throwing it on the ground in the mess afterwards. "Don't wanna ruin your shirt," she told Paige with a weak smile, "but thanks." The gesture meant more after what she'd seen than a quiet thanks was worth, but Adrienne couldn't manage any more right then.
Tommy stood a metre away, look decidedly at a spot on the wall, as the two women straightened, but followed them both as they went to find both a phone and a soda machine.
It was one thing to watch the aftermath of a city-leveling nuclear explosion on CNN, but it was another thing entirely to actually be there in person. The smells, the sounds. Horrific sights unfolding all around her, with no possibility to switch off what she was seeing and escape it. Adrienne was a self-preservationist, so she had switched off, in a way, but she'd forced herself to switch off somewhere in her own head. Detach from what was going on all around her. Ignore the military and aid personnel, the refugees. Keep her attention focused on her lighter. Compulsively the psychometrist flipped it over her gloved fingers and paced unsteadily in the UN camp as she waited for Paige and Tommy to ready the materials from ground zero for her to read.
Walking through the different chambers, moving from the containment centre to the reading lab, had been loud - the rush of water, the frantic clicks of machines powerfully outnumbered by the sheer volume of the wasteland, the zip of suits and pulling on gloves and masks. It was a strange contrast to the dead silence Paige encountered now. No birds sang, no children laughed, no cars drove past, nothing but the low level static in her ear that kept her connected to both Tommy and Adrienne in the specific quarters. "Alright, I'm coming in on the testing area now," she said, the radioactive husk causing warbling vibrations to her voice that she hadn't heard in a very long time.
"We're ready and waiting." Tommy said in reply as he waited suited up in the lab. He too, had somewhat switched off, at least emotionally. His mind was set to help Paige analyze the pieces from the site and was ready with a safe aluminum compound practiced extensively and stored in the back of his mind so it would take only seconds to transform for Adrienne. It was his emotional reaction that he'd turned off, the fact that the quiet area around them had once been full of life...that was now just gone. He couldn't think about it and still concentrate, so it was gone to think about later. If anything, he was good at brooding after the fact. At the moment, he just busied his hands so everything would be set for Paige.
"Ready, waiting, and trying desperately not to lose our lunch," muttered Adrienne, "or run away screaming. Garrison owes me a hell of a lot of brownies for this. You guys must really like brownies, too," she added, hoping that taking about something inane would keep her mind off of their situation. "Or did he promise you something else, like cheesecake?"
"Alright, I'm nearing the blast centre," Paige informed them, her voice crisp and authoritative before moving to a more playful tone. "I'm here for fun. Someone's going to cellophane my toilet tonight, aren't they?"
"I'm sure that can be arranged." Tommy countered as he idly flexed his hands as he looked around the lab to make sure everything was ready, again. "I"m here because it's the right thing to do." He was deadly serious.
Adrienne continued to play with her lighter in the reading lab. "Too bad the 'right thing to do' doesn't coincide with the 'smart thing to do," she sighed.
***
With slightly bated breath, Tommy came out of the lab. He'd stripped off the helmet and replaced the suit's gloves with his own leather ones once the threat of radiation had been eliminated. He walked over to Adrienne and held out his hand, revealing a small, freshly made into metal object. He and Paige had pulled as much scientific data out of it as they could before he'd changed it and now it was up to Adrienne and her mutation to tell them the rest.
It had been a scrap of clothing. Bits of the mutant's- suspected mutant's, she reminded herself- flesh must have melted into it, because Adrienne had to poke the aluminum piece several times in various places before she fell into the reading, and the only substance she she'd ever encountered that she didn't read immediately was flesh.
With the new circuit-breaker in her mind, the psychometrist was able to zip comfortably past the creation of the turban which had turned into fragment she was now holding, fairly certain Garrison hadn't pulled strings with the NYPD to bring her to India for a report on the production of Middle Eastern clothing. The next image she saw was of a man putting on the turban- shit, he was young. He couldn't have been more than twenty. His skin was a light shade- lighter than the locals she'd been seeing on the news feeds and around the site. He was in a small room that reminded her of a cell (but maybe she was just projecting her own fears) in an indistinguishable industrial or military-use sort of building. Bunker, maybe? She wasn't sure. Gonna have to do better than that for Garrison, she thought to herself ruefully. But the building gave her no more clues as in the next flash of an image the man had finished changing into what looked like festival clothes, leaving blood-stained garments on the dirt floor, and was escorted by two turban-masked men to another room, where they shut the door behind him. Several more men in bulky safety suits stood peering into the room behind glass next door, waiting. The man wearing the turban she was now holding held up his hands and they produced a glow. Something in a heap at the far end of the room, something she couldn't identify- some sort of animal?- seemed to explode or combust or... Adrienne didn't understand what she was seeing exactly, other than knowing that she'd just witnessed a mutant demonstrating his power, and that it turned her stomach, especially when he collapsed with a cry of pain afterwards.
The next image did nothing to settle her stomach. A fragment flashed in her mind of men- the men in the safety suits?- gathered around maps she recognized as being layouts of the city. The mutant sat in a corner, silently watching, arms hugging knees in a posture that made him look so young, so... human, it made a lump come to her throat. The men appeared to be fighting over locations on the map, their angry tones and wild gestures advertising the general mood of the room well enough that Adrienne didn't have to understand the actual words. One pointed to the site where the explosion had originated. There was a brief debate, then sounds of approval. The man who'd chosen the spot shouted something, and Adrienne made out the word 'bakr', part of a phrase which was echoed throughout the room.
Adrienne tried to release the bit of metal she was touching, anticipating that what was coming soon was something she'd already seen repeatedly on the television, but another picture exploded into her head before she could end the reading. It deteriorated immediately into bright, fragmented images. The mutant, walking through the streets. People praying. Some eating. Circulating the way you did at a party. Laughing. Children dancing a little ways away. Shit, shit, shit! The psychometrist tried frantically to order her hand to draw back from the scrap of aluminum before she saw any more, but in another fragment the mutant was on his knees praying, and before she could take in the words of the prayer the vision changed again and the vivid colours and noise of the explosion arrowed into her head with more beauty and horror than could ever be captured on the television.
The circuit-breaker kicked in mercifully and Adrienne pulled her hand away from the former piece of turban, rushing out of the reading lab on shaking legs to empty the contents of her stomach onto the hard ground outside.
A cool, slender hand brushed Adrienne's cheek, pulling a dark curl of hair behind her ear before reappearing with a small t-shirt. "Here, you can wipe your mouth," Paige said, standing behind Adrienne in the long sleeved shirt that had gone under it and her jeans.
The brunette's face twisted in a scowl and she was about to bat Paige's hand away and snap that she didn't need any goddamned help, but instead she found tears in her eyes at the simple touch and offer of the other woman's shirt. Choking back a sob, she pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her mouth with it instead, throwing it on the ground in the mess afterwards. "Don't wanna ruin your shirt," she told Paige with a weak smile, "but thanks." The gesture meant more after what she'd seen than a quiet thanks was worth, but Adrienne couldn't manage any more right then.
Tommy stood a metre away, look decidedly at a spot on the wall, as the two women straightened, but followed them both as they went to find both a phone and a soda machine.
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