Walking Ghosts: Weapon of Choice
Jan. 1st, 2009 12:20 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsOn Muir Island, Nathan receives an unexpected visitor on New Year's Day.
They'd been expecting the boat today; Billie and Anna were coming over for a quieter family dinner, after the usual Hogmanay festivities on the mainland the previous night. But according to security, that wasn't who was on the boat. Nathan's frown lingered as he headed down to the dock, wondering if Moira was about to be asked to consult or something. Various agencies still did that from time to time. Generally, however, they called ahead - and very, very rarely did the people in charge ever show up themselves.
He'd never encountered the director of SHIELD personally, but Nick Fury's face was familiar enough from the X-Men's files, and a quick brush of the other man's thoughts established that they weren't dealing with a shapeshifter or something similar. Unless they're really, really good.
"General Fury," he greeted the other man as he stepped off the boat. "Welcome to Muir Island. If you're looking for Doctor MacTaggart, she's doing rounds right now, but I can take you up to the castle and let her know you're here."
"I ain't sayin' no if she's got coffee up there," Fury responded, hands jammed into the deep pockets of a thick peacoat, "but I ain't here for a social call with the good doctor. SHIELD has a proposition for you, actually."
"...coffee we do have. Although whether you actually want to drink it is a matter of personal taste," Nathan said guardedly, but inclined his head in the direction of the path back up to the castle, letting Fury fall in beside him as they headed upwards. "A proposition for me," he said after a moment or two of walking. "Not for the X-Men?"
"You know any other X-Men got Sharon Kritzer's psionic trojan horse floating around their brain, point them my way," Fury responded bluntly. "One of our psi-specialists that's been working on that kid you brought in, she worked on the MISTRA taskforce. Says there's a lot of the same stuff in her brain. Makes sense, with the whole Taygetos program, don't it?"
Nathan stopped dead, visibly paling. "I never thought," he said after a long moment, realizing that Fury had stopped as well and was looking at him. "I knew they were being conditioned, but I assumed they were working with different methods. With infant minds-" He covered the surge of nausea by looking away. "Poor logic on my part I guess," he said hoarsely. "Infant minds wouldn't have to be broken. It should work even better with them; the mortality rate would probably even be lower." He paused. "Is it first-gen conditioning? If your specialist worked on the taskforce, she should know."
Fury shook his head. "Refined form. Whatever this new version is, they go in and change how these kids think. And here we thought MTV and the internet were going to fuck up the next generation." He chuckled lowly, then removed his black watch cap to rub a hand over his bald head. "I'll be straight with you," he said, "we been interrogating one of the kids you picked up in Wakanda. Found out there's another training facility, down in Puerto Rico. Intel checks it out, and with the Central Park incident on top of the Wakanda bullshit, SHIELD wants this shut down most riki-tick, get me? Now, we can go in guns blazing, but no one wants a repeat of Youra. I think you feel me there, right?"
Nathan wondered uneasily about Fury's use of the word 'interrogating', but put the concern aside for the time being. It was something to ask Charles about; maybe he could find out more. "I know what you told Scott, about the one kid's broken conditioning. About the shape he's in now. You can't want to see that repeated on the grand scale - that is as bad as Youra. I still visit the ones in long-term care. Some of them can even feed and clean themselves these days. Great progress for three years, isn't it?" He couldn't quite keep the rising anger out of his voice.
"Then we're on the same page," Fury said, boots crunching on the frozen tarn. "You got the Trojan Horse in your head, we want to use it to shut these new generation killers down without a fight. Give them a chance to be rehabilitated. It's either that, or they become statistics, because the other option is to have a rogue force of trained mutant killers out there, and you and I both know that ain't acceptable."
"They're child soldiers, Fury," Nathan shot back at him, burying shaking hands in his own pockets. "You can't be serious. The US government's signed-" The rest of the sentence stuck in his throat, because all of a sudden he really didn't want to bring up the fact that the US had signed onto an optional UN protocol on the subject. Too much could be justified in the aftermath of a crisis like the one they'd just had in Manhattan.
He stared at the SHIELD director, and realized that he had to go along with this at least for the time being. To find out how far they were willing to go, if nothing else.
"You want me to test it on the girl first," he said brusquely. It wasn't a question, and he didn't care about the breach of telepathic manners. "Because her conditioning's still intact."
"To make sure, yeah," Fury confirmed. If the director of SHIELD felt any sort of ill ease or remorse about what he was asking Nathan to do, it didn't show in his expression or thoughts. "And before you even start about moralizing it, let me give you two words, Dayspring -'acceptable casualties'. You know what our mandate for this is when it comes to acceptable casualties? One hundred motherfuckin' percent. With or without you, we're going in and if we don't bring a one of those child soldiers you're all into shedding tears about out of there? Then the world never hears about it and everyone sleeps safer in their beds. Now, I came all the way out to this godforsaken frozen rock to ask you to use what they did to your weird-ass mutant brain to try and cut that casualty ratio down to something a bit more manageable. So does that work for you, or do I tell my people it's lock and load time?"
Nathan stared at him flatly. He knew when he was being manipulated. "You're right," he said, folding his arms across his chest. "I'm making this personal. But you're oversimplifying option B, and I think you know that, too. Chances are, they didn't put all their eggs in one basket. You can take down one training facility, but where are the others? Not all on American soil, I bet. Some of the potential complications if you go for the military option could make the violation of international law look like a total non-issue."
He went on before Fury could respond. "I'll do you the courtesy of assuming that you meant it when you said you wanted to give them a chance. But I want to talk to your specialist," he said, "and to whatever psychiatrist you've got on the case. To see what rehabilitation options they've established. So long as it checks out that they're at least working on it... I'll try it with the girl." He managed to keep his voice steady on the last words. He was a little proud of that. "And we'll see."
"I brought along the dossier," Fury responded with a smile, tapping his coat. "Now, let's see that doctor wife of yours about some coffee. How in the hell do you people live out here? I swear, ain't the first bit natural and I was stationed in Thule."
They'd been expecting the boat today; Billie and Anna were coming over for a quieter family dinner, after the usual Hogmanay festivities on the mainland the previous night. But according to security, that wasn't who was on the boat. Nathan's frown lingered as he headed down to the dock, wondering if Moira was about to be asked to consult or something. Various agencies still did that from time to time. Generally, however, they called ahead - and very, very rarely did the people in charge ever show up themselves.
He'd never encountered the director of SHIELD personally, but Nick Fury's face was familiar enough from the X-Men's files, and a quick brush of the other man's thoughts established that they weren't dealing with a shapeshifter or something similar. Unless they're really, really good.
"General Fury," he greeted the other man as he stepped off the boat. "Welcome to Muir Island. If you're looking for Doctor MacTaggart, she's doing rounds right now, but I can take you up to the castle and let her know you're here."
"I ain't sayin' no if she's got coffee up there," Fury responded, hands jammed into the deep pockets of a thick peacoat, "but I ain't here for a social call with the good doctor. SHIELD has a proposition for you, actually."
"...coffee we do have. Although whether you actually want to drink it is a matter of personal taste," Nathan said guardedly, but inclined his head in the direction of the path back up to the castle, letting Fury fall in beside him as they headed upwards. "A proposition for me," he said after a moment or two of walking. "Not for the X-Men?"
"You know any other X-Men got Sharon Kritzer's psionic trojan horse floating around their brain, point them my way," Fury responded bluntly. "One of our psi-specialists that's been working on that kid you brought in, she worked on the MISTRA taskforce. Says there's a lot of the same stuff in her brain. Makes sense, with the whole Taygetos program, don't it?"
Nathan stopped dead, visibly paling. "I never thought," he said after a long moment, realizing that Fury had stopped as well and was looking at him. "I knew they were being conditioned, but I assumed they were working with different methods. With infant minds-" He covered the surge of nausea by looking away. "Poor logic on my part I guess," he said hoarsely. "Infant minds wouldn't have to be broken. It should work even better with them; the mortality rate would probably even be lower." He paused. "Is it first-gen conditioning? If your specialist worked on the taskforce, she should know."
Fury shook his head. "Refined form. Whatever this new version is, they go in and change how these kids think. And here we thought MTV and the internet were going to fuck up the next generation." He chuckled lowly, then removed his black watch cap to rub a hand over his bald head. "I'll be straight with you," he said, "we been interrogating one of the kids you picked up in Wakanda. Found out there's another training facility, down in Puerto Rico. Intel checks it out, and with the Central Park incident on top of the Wakanda bullshit, SHIELD wants this shut down most riki-tick, get me? Now, we can go in guns blazing, but no one wants a repeat of Youra. I think you feel me there, right?"
Nathan wondered uneasily about Fury's use of the word 'interrogating', but put the concern aside for the time being. It was something to ask Charles about; maybe he could find out more. "I know what you told Scott, about the one kid's broken conditioning. About the shape he's in now. You can't want to see that repeated on the grand scale - that is as bad as Youra. I still visit the ones in long-term care. Some of them can even feed and clean themselves these days. Great progress for three years, isn't it?" He couldn't quite keep the rising anger out of his voice.
"Then we're on the same page," Fury said, boots crunching on the frozen tarn. "You got the Trojan Horse in your head, we want to use it to shut these new generation killers down without a fight. Give them a chance to be rehabilitated. It's either that, or they become statistics, because the other option is to have a rogue force of trained mutant killers out there, and you and I both know that ain't acceptable."
"They're child soldiers, Fury," Nathan shot back at him, burying shaking hands in his own pockets. "You can't be serious. The US government's signed-" The rest of the sentence stuck in his throat, because all of a sudden he really didn't want to bring up the fact that the US had signed onto an optional UN protocol on the subject. Too much could be justified in the aftermath of a crisis like the one they'd just had in Manhattan.
He stared at the SHIELD director, and realized that he had to go along with this at least for the time being. To find out how far they were willing to go, if nothing else.
"You want me to test it on the girl first," he said brusquely. It wasn't a question, and he didn't care about the breach of telepathic manners. "Because her conditioning's still intact."
"To make sure, yeah," Fury confirmed. If the director of SHIELD felt any sort of ill ease or remorse about what he was asking Nathan to do, it didn't show in his expression or thoughts. "And before you even start about moralizing it, let me give you two words, Dayspring -'acceptable casualties'. You know what our mandate for this is when it comes to acceptable casualties? One hundred motherfuckin' percent. With or without you, we're going in and if we don't bring a one of those child soldiers you're all into shedding tears about out of there? Then the world never hears about it and everyone sleeps safer in their beds. Now, I came all the way out to this godforsaken frozen rock to ask you to use what they did to your weird-ass mutant brain to try and cut that casualty ratio down to something a bit more manageable. So does that work for you, or do I tell my people it's lock and load time?"
Nathan stared at him flatly. He knew when he was being manipulated. "You're right," he said, folding his arms across his chest. "I'm making this personal. But you're oversimplifying option B, and I think you know that, too. Chances are, they didn't put all their eggs in one basket. You can take down one training facility, but where are the others? Not all on American soil, I bet. Some of the potential complications if you go for the military option could make the violation of international law look like a total non-issue."
He went on before Fury could respond. "I'll do you the courtesy of assuming that you meant it when you said you wanted to give them a chance. But I want to talk to your specialist," he said, "and to whatever psychiatrist you've got on the case. To see what rehabilitation options they've established. So long as it checks out that they're at least working on it... I'll try it with the girl." He managed to keep his voice steady on the last words. He was a little proud of that. "And we'll see."
"I brought along the dossier," Fury responded with a smile, tapping his coat. "Now, let's see that doctor wife of yours about some coffee. How in the hell do you people live out here? I swear, ain't the first bit natural and I was stationed in Thule."
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