xp_logs | Krypteia: Alpha and Omega

While Jean is sitting with the dead boy, Nathan appears in the infirmary, drawing the obvious connection, and able to point out a sign that confirms it.

Nathan's appearance in the doorway was so silent that anyone who wasn't a telepath would have been badly startled when they'd turned around and seen him. "I have to admit," he said to Jean, his eyes moving from her to the sheet-covered body on the table in front of her, "this is not the sort of thing I had in mind when I suggested to Angelo he go to this exhibition."

Fury had decided he wanted his people to do the autopsy, something Jean was mostly relieved about, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to leave the body, sitting numbly in the chair next to the table, as though he was just any other patient she were visiting with. Her mind, though, was almost completely devoid of thought - an effort to avoid thinking too hard about what had happened just yet. Instead, she'd opened herself up to the background psychic hum of the mansion, grounding herself in the everyday normality of the students, the non-team staff, even going so far as to reach out towards the town.

She didn't turn to look when Nathan spoke, but did center herself back into her body enough to lift one leg up, hooking her heel on the edge of the chair and wrapping her arm around her knee. "Well, really, who plans for teen-aged assassins?"

"Mm. Charles told me, about the... oddness in their minds. Showed me what he saw. It was different, but... not." Nathan came over to the table, standing at the head of it and gazing down at the shape beneath the sheet. Too small. A very distant and upset part of him wondered whether the SHIELD agents would have a bodybag of the proper size. The rest of his mind skittered away from that image, knowing that was a road he didn't want to go down tonight.

"I know you're probably not up to doing much... thinking right now, but I can't get something out of my head." After a moment, he reached out, turning back just enough of the sheet to expose the boy's face. His expression barely altered as he gazed down at the still features.

"How old would you say he was?" he finally asked, after a long, long moment.

"Fifteen," Jean said after a moment, gaze fixed on the boy's face again. "Sixteen at the outside, but a young sixteen." He'd lacked his adult height, and while his features lacked even an ounce of baby fat, there was an unformedness to them that suggested early puberty to Jean.

"I would have guessed the same." Nathan's voice was very soft, suddenly. "In fact, I would have guessed the same before I ever came down here and saw him. I make certain... associations, maybe a little too quickly for my own good. But I can't help making them." He looked up at Jean, his gray eyes unreadable.

"That complex in Alaska?" Jean asked dully, not looking up. "And Mistra." Fury had had the same thought. Jean might well have herself, if she'd been up to thinking about anything.

"Angelo told me how young they all looked. I talked to Cain, too. It's the right age for a first training mission, and it would explain a few things..." Nathan trailed off. He reached out, fingertips brushing the boy's close-cropped hair. "Before Fury's people get here, we need to check the body for marks. Tattoos."

"First training mission..." Jean mused. "They felt almost too coordinated for that to me." But she stood up, and joined Nathan at the boy's side. "If you're right, where would it be?"

His first mission had been around that age. Although he hadn't handled it well at all. Not such a surprise; he hadn't begun training as early. If we're right. If. How did you even begin training children you controlled from birth? Games? There was a bitter taste in his mouth, and Nathan swallowed. "Upper left arm," he said brusquely. "Look there first."

Jean reached out and pulled the sheet down, settling it around the boy's waist, revealing the vast dark bruise that covered his right shoulder and down the right side of his chest, along with the partially-collapsed curve of his ribs. On the jet they'd only sliced his shirt open, but it was a simple matter to telekinetically lift him so it could be peeled off entirely to reveal the boy's arms.

The mark was small and unobtrusive but unarguably there, a black line drawing of an alpha and omega symbol. Jean sighed. "I hate it when you're right. Even when we were all thinking it."

"I just wanted to be sure, before Fury's people came for him." Nathan's hand went back to the boy's head, resting there for a moment, his own expression still unreadable. He'd had the same tattoo, once upon a time. Until he'd taken it off with a knife, that first year out of Mistra. "I was really hoping Taygetos had been a non-starter."

"You weren't the only one," Jean said, voice low as she turned away from Nathan and the body on the bed.