xp_logs | Day Zero - Pestilence

Sunday morning, Doug and Jubilee wake up in the Snow Valley offices to discover Remy has returned, and the three head out to gather information. On the way, Emma makes contact, and tells them that one of the Horsemen has set up shop in the New York Stock Exchange. And it seems that the Horseman of Pestilence is a familiar face who isn't quite as dead as was previously thought...

Jubilee had worked late at the Snow Valley offices before, but had somehow managed to avoid sleeping there so far. She'd woken up this morning, looked about from her position curled under her desk and wondered three things. One, why she'd not thought to bring any smokes with her? Two, where the hell the caffeine fairy was, and how the hell was she meant to go through a day without at least one swig of Coke? And three, why the recent occurrence had been on none of their Bingo cards.

They were musings doomed to go unanswered, as she had much more important things to be doing. Like mapping out the parts of the city she'd managed to investigate during the previous day while Doug continued to try and break through the communications embargo.

"A dozen escape plans run through, and you all stay at de damn office. Remy swears, we get out of dis alive, it's going to be six months in de Balkians wit' armed criminal after you as advanced training." The Cajun had walked in from his office, the only one with a balcony which he often used to enter and leave. The streets were chaos, crawling with Apocalypse's forces or mobs of New Yorkers who could get out. He'd managed to locate Sofia, and pass along the note from Kane, and he'd found Mark was somewhat safe at Silver.

"Pack up what you need and get ready to move. Tenth floor isn't going to be safe for long. Dey bound to start rerouting power, and we near enough to dat damn Citadel dat accidental discovery means you all got no where to go if dey notice you."

"Hi, Remy. Good to see you too. Yes, Jubilee and I are fine, thanks for asking," Doug retorted somewhat sarcastically in an instinctive response to LeBeau's crankiness. He quickly folded up his laptop and put it into a waiting backpack. "I don't know what they've been doing to keep communications out, but I've tried everything I know and still no luck," he updated the Cajun. "Could be tech, could be a really weird mutant power, I just don't know." He slung the backpack over his shoulder and picked up the staff he'd kept at hand since the landing of the Citadel. "Ready to go."

"My votes on 'weird mutant power'." Jubilee said, packing up the map she'd been working on and stuffing it into her backpack. "You seen any of the others, Remy? I know Mark's at Silver but I haven't heard from any of the rest."

"Dat's because you should have been servicing drop points looking for imformation from de others rather den playing wit' you cell phone." Remy shook his head. Emergency response was going to have to be a priority in the future. They hadn't done anything reckless, but they hadn't used their heads either. "Sofia's on her way to de FBI field office. One of de X-Men works dere, thinks dat dey wouldn't have evacuated. Wanda, 'manda, Sarah and Bishop are at de mansion, working on a plan. Mark's at Silver with 'yana, and seems dat Wisdom had been in de area, maybe wit' Marie-Ange. Betts and Frost are still out of touch, which is why we packing up here and going for her place. If she hasn't contacted anyone, she'll stay close to home so we can find her."

The Cajun looked at his watch. "Time not something we got much of. Remy need to get back to de mansion for a meeting, and we need to set up information moving back and forth from de city as our first priority. Once we locate Frost, Jubilee, you going to start working de patterns dat I taught you around lower Manhattan. No contact. Look, watch, get as much intel as you can, and den meet wit' 'yana to port it back to de mansion. Once Remy back, we take a more systematic approach."

"Then let's go already." Jubilee said, thrusting her arms into the straps of her backpack and headed for the exit.

"I've been waiting on you," Doug told her, pointing at the backpack he'd already packed. "Did you miss the part where I said 'ready to go'?" he asked amusedly.

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From her safe perch, tucked away in the cornices of Federal Hall, Emma viewed the scene around the New York Stock Exchange with a certain dismay. She had an amused affection for the NYSE and its bright-eyed, ambitious and pleasingly avaricious inhabitants. To see what they had become, terrified herds in the hands of strange new masters, pained her somewhat.

It also had a certain familiarity. Some memory of something she'd read in the files tickled at the back of her mind. Also tickling was the faint sense of something intersecting with her psionic power at - right angles? It tasted inhuman against her psi-senses, like licking copper. It wasn't looking for her, she could feel that. It was busy - gloating? Anticipating? Despite her comparative safety, she curled her psi-senses down in on themselves, made herself as close to invisible as she could on the Astral Plane, except for one laser-like tendril she sent outwards.

#Douglas,# she whispered into the mind she found, not too far away. Her psi-sense touched who he was with and she expanded her communication net a little wider to acknowledge their presence. #Remy. Jubilee.# She didn't wait for a reply. #Douglas, do you think you would have any access to the Stock Exchange. CCTV? Internet? Anything?#

The first touch of psionic communication, no matter how familiar the 'speaker', was always just the slightest bit startling to Doug. He wasn't sure he'd ever lose the instinct to look over his shoulder to see who was talking to him. #I'm...not sure. I'd imagine there's a closed-circuit system of some sort, given how often you see shots of the trade floor during economic reports,# he reported somewhat hesitantly.

#We need to find out what's going on.# Emma broadcast the pictures she was seeing into the three minds: the terrified inhabitants of New York being herded into the NYSE, the guards who seemed not quite the right shape, the arc and flicker of the lights as if power was surging and falling back, slowly growing brighter in the Stock Exchange, dimming around it; it was a subtle gradation but it was there. #They appear to be building something in there. I can only pick out a few words, not enough to work out what it is. There's something on the psychic plane that's all wrong and I don't want to attract its attention. But it keeps thinking about meat.# Her psychic voice was droll but humourless. #I can't imagine that that's a good thing.#

"Meat spores. Saw dose in Russia." LeBeau scowled. Obviously Ignatova hadn't been killed in her battle with X-Force. He thought back to the briefing with the doctor in the natural hot tub. "She can alter flesh somehow, make it so dat she can control people like puppet, remake dem. When we fought her, she actually took control of a flesh-wrapped metal frame and nearly killed us wit' it. What she'd want wit' de stock exchange... better computers or something, maybe?"

"That'd be my guess. Upgrade the hardware. It was hard enough to beat her when she was running off obsolescent Russian stuff from the 1950s or so. Can you imagine what would happen if she gained access to modern-day technology?" Doug shivered at the idea. "On top of the fact that the entirety of the US financial system would be at her mercy..."

"Not just the U.S, you know." Jubilee noted quietly, continuing to walk beside the other two as they talked with Emma. "The rest of the world's so keyed into the U.S markets that a crash, or even a freeze would mean some really sucky times for everyone."

#You may not have noticed, Jubilee, but Wall Street has already crashed. This will just make it somewhat more literal.# She paused for a moment, reviewing what she remembered of Ignatova on the files. The woman, if that was what she still was, was a technopath, which meant that Emma would have relative immunity on the Astral Plane, if she needed it. Her next actions were immediately clear to her, but Emma was not particularly enamoured of their probable result. She turned her thoughts back to the small group. #Douglas# she said. #There's a Frost Enterprises shop-front in the Woolworths Building, not too far from NYSE. It's secure and has comms and electronics that can't be traced. Go there. I need you to test Ignatova, tell me if you can take her down.# She slipped the route to her office into Doug's head, along with the accesses he needed to get into the building, and then cut off the link. Emma turned her attention back to the people below her and let her mind drift outwards, a slow and careful search through the psionic plane. Doug would contact her when he was ready and then she could determine what the next step would be.

Doug split off silently, heading for the building Emma had directed him to. It took him a handful of minutes at a jog to reach the building, and a handful more to gain access to the offices. He whistled at the electronic setup. Emma hadn't been kidding. ~I feel like Oracle. Only minus the paraplegic part,~ he mused as he began booting things up. An array of uninterruptible power supplies and a small standalone generator meant that the intermittent power in parts of the city wouldn't be a problem. He was sure that Ignatova would have access to power in the NYSE, so if he could just access the closed-circuit system, get visual on whatever she was trying to do... ~Let's try sneaky first,~ he decided, tapping rapidly at a keyboard.

The CC system was hardwired into the building, requiring jumping from dedicated financial systems to interior maintenance subsections, avoiding the areas that had been shut down once the attack had happened in the first place. Only the good fortune that the building's security and environmental systems were thinly connected with some subroutines in the main network even offered a hope of getting through. As for the NYSE systems themselves, there was no hope even trying to get in. It was too big, too complex, and too fast for even a team of top hackers to be able to get a handle on as a single entity.

That was a slight intermittent gap in the system, as something was accessing environmental controls. Piggybacking the open connection, an access port opened up with options on the security. But as fast as the access was granted, the opening slammed shut again.

:.:unauthorized access attempted:.:slavsya otechestvo nashe svobodnoye:.:capitalism subjegates the people through lies:.:druzhby narodov nadyozhny oplot:.:misuse of trust:.:znamya sovetskoye, znamya narodnoye:.:it will not be trusted soon:.:greed and lies undermined by lines:.:pust' ot pobedy k pobede vedyot:.:long live the revolution:.:

His screen went dead as the connection was cut with a swift finality.

"Tvoyu mat!" Doug yelled in Russian, smacking his palm on the desk. #Emma, it's Doug. She's even faster than before. Tried a bit of an end-around to get access to the closed circuit cameras, and she locked me out cold.#

#Keep trying# sent Emma. #Don't leave the building. You're safe there and I know where you are if I need you. Try and keep her distracted.# Emma cut the link again and sighed. It didn't surprise her that Doug couldn't make any immediate inroads but he had to be given more opportunities to try. In the meantime she had other plans.

Emma reviewed her map of the minds available to her. Scattered throughout the terrified denizens in the near-vicinity of the NYSE, the markers she had placed in the minds of the Hellfire Club members shone brightly. There were more than a few of them; all Outer Circle members who thought of it as no more than a somewhat hedonistic and naughty social club to fill in the hours before they could start making money again, most too lowly to have even been chosen by a Court.

The White Queen sighed and enforced the price for membership, chose the first member of her new, if short-lived, Court. He was young and terrified, hiding but, based on the movements of Mastermold's collection squad, not for long. With something close to regret, Emma activated her marker in his mind, took it over with ease. Down, she directed him, and he followed her commands, using a discreet utility manhole to make his way into the tunnels that gave access to Manhattan's power grid. For a moment, Emma considered whether she could help him escape, but a quick inspection showed that Ignatova's squads also prowled beneath the streets and he had a few minutes at best. It was the work of less than that to equip him with a metal pole and drive him to a junction where power cables hummed within their plastic casing. With a gentle touch, Emma switched pain centres for pleasure, then helped him lift and swing the metal pole, again, again, until plastic cracked and metal touched metal. His death was a burst of ecstasy across her senses. The lights in the Stock Exchange dimmed fractionally, flickered and then Ignatova redirected power and the lights resumed their fierce burning.

Emma sighed and sought out another new member for her court.