Shiva: Forced Hand

[x-maverick.livejournal.com]

Taking an active approach to the SHIVA problem, Maverick meets with a group of Snow Valley's finest and begins to concoct a plan.




So this is what Lady Braddock has been doing with her time, David North thought as he perused the conference room and the four individuals in with him. Given the professionalism that Ramsey had shown the day prior, North could only assume the rest of the Snow Valley employees were as well-trained despite their apparent youth.

Or your advancing age, more likely, he reminded himself.

The redhead next to Ramsey couldn't have been much older than the young man, and the blonde girl across the table looked even younger. Even the dark-haired woman with the severe features didn't carry herself like any intelligence operative he'd met before - but these were the people Betsy employed, and she'd saved his life once. That counted for a lot, in his book.

"My name is David North," he began, even though Doug had likely informed them all of that already. "A little less than a week ago, I uncovered information on the Weapon X project, which Mister Ramsey here has been kind enough to interpret and analyze. I have a personal vested interest in this information, as I've already had to kill one of my former teammates to obtain it, and another is currently working to terminate me to keep it secret. I understand you all are in the business of secrets. In exchange for your help in keeping me alive, I'm willing to share what I can about Weapon X and William Stryker's skeletons. Please, will you help me?"

The file that Doug had provided them before the meeting had been read, dissected and read once more before Wanda had even entered the room. He was very, very thorough and so she paid scant attention to the paperwork stacked neatly in front of her. Instead, she was intently studying this David North on more than one level. Hands were tucked neatly under the table even as she shifted slightly in her seat, swiftly scanning the various strings that bristled out from their guest.

He carried himself well but he'd been hurt in that fight he had mentioned - the coloring of the strings grew deeper red as they bunched around his shoulder and ribs and Wanda noted that for any potential future use. "Betsy's word for you has lent you quite a bit of weight, Mr. North," she responded, the red dropping away from her hands before she laid them on top of the table. "It is an added bonus that you have information that we could potentially use. My name is Wanda Maximoff. You've already met Doug; may I introduce Illyana Rasputin and Marie-Ange Colbert, as well. We're currently at your disposal."

Illyana looked up from her notepad, letting her pen fall from the cramped writing to give an awkward little half-wave. "I'm taking notes right now," she clarified unnecessarily, then, with obvious thought, added, as though to be comforting: "Nobody's died yet. Well, not permanently."

Marie-Ange suppressed the urge to cover her face with her hands and sigh. Barely. "I assume you mean more than the adamantium grafted to Logan when you say 'skeletons'?" Oddly, she did not have paperwork, or a notepad, or a laptop - she had a sketchpad, laying open in front of her with a few rough sketches in pencil - one, barely finished and obviously from a distance was of David himself, on a park bench.

Doug shook his head slightly from where he sat, a laptop to one side and a pad of engineering paper in front of him. He had to wonder what North thought of them all and their individual quirks, especially Illyana. He nodded to North, not feeling the need to clutter up the meeting with unnecessary reintroduction.

Clearing his throat, North opened a file folder and slid a photograph across the table. Somewhat blurred and obviously taken from a security camera, the subject was still easily identifiable. "This is John Wraith," he began. "We were field agents for the Weapon X project, working for William Stryker. Almost fifteen years ago, Stryker needed to bury the project and we underwent extensive psychic conditioning -cover identities, falsified pasts, memory implants. Sleepers, if you will, with the intent that we would be reactivated once needed."

With a sigh, North finally pulled out a chair and sat down, his posture one of a man finally succumbing to exhaustion. "Had it not been for a former Soviet agent showing up and breaking my conditioning, I would still be living that cover identity. But once I regained my memories, I began searching for the remnants of the Weapon X program. Last year, I discovered our former executive officer, Daniel Lyman, in a Peruvian prison. I arranged for his release, and he directed me to a cache of further information." He nodded to Doug, indicating the data tape that sat on the table. "It was, of course, a double-cross. Lyman activated the SHIVA protocols, a safeguard set in place should any of us go rogue. From what Mister Ramsey has been able to decode, the program is designed to use the existing sleeper agents to take out one of us that has gone 'off the reservation', so to speak. Last week when I obtained the data tape, one of my former teammates tried to kill me, under the influence of the SHIVA programming. Now that he is dead, Wraith has been activated."

He indicated the photograph again with a gesture. "John is a teleporter, short-range, untraceable. He can mask himself from direct observation, and is one of the most skilled assassins I've ever known. Had it not been for the presence of some of the residents of Xavier's, he'd have killed me two days ago. Now I believe he is simply biding his time, waiting for the right moment."

"Did Wraith refrain because there were innocents around or simply because the quieter the kill, the easier it is to get away?" Wanda asked, leaning forward. The short range teleportion could work for or against them but the untraceable aspect worried her a great deal. She had disrupted teleporters in the past but only when she'd had some kind of forewarning. They needed to know as much about this man as possible.

North shook his head. "Wraith is a professional, not a sociopath. But the SHIVA protocol seems to be something deeply ingrained. When I encountered Mastodon, he couldn't be reasoned with, couldn't be talked down. Whatever they did to our heads, it's deep. Wraith probably withdrew to protect himself, get better recon, and make a more accurate strike."

He sighed again, tapping his fingers on the table. "Ramsey, you mentioned a list in the data tables. When I took out Mastodon, it went to Wraith. But Mastodon wasn't first on the list, was he?"

"Correct." Doug turned his laptop around, and on the display was a short list of names with grainy pictures similar to the one North had shown of Wraith. He indicated each operative in turn as he listed them off. "Code name Vole, deceased." He pointed at North with a wry smile. "Code name Maverick, rogue." Returning to the computer screen, he continued. "Code name Marten, deceased. Code name Mastodon, deceased. Code name Kestrel," the image matching the larger photograph North had laid on the table, "currently active." He cleared his throat. "After that, the data on the tape is corrupted. There is certainly at least one more operative after Kestrel, but it's impossible to tell if there are more after that."

"There were others," North confirmed with a nod. "And we need to find them quickly, find a way to break the SHIVA chain, hopefully without killing everyone I meet. It gets old, you see. One thing I did learn from Lyman was that after the destruction of the Alkali Lake facility, and President McKenna's executive order to fully investigate the existence of various covert operations utilizing mutants like myself - the original files, hopefully uncorrupted, have to be stored somewhere. This is where I need your help."

He leaned forward on the table, voice suddenly more even, without a trace of exhaustion, the slight echoes of a German accent tinting his words. "One, I need to find those original files. Two, Wraith has to be stopped and the SHIVA chain needs to be broken, otherwise the entire cycle will repeat itself. Do you understand what I am asking?"

"More than information, then. When you killed Mastodon, these... SHIVA protocols moved to Wraith, and if you kill him, they will move to someone else, whoever is next on the list." Marie-Ange tapped the blunt end of her pencil against her sketchpad, where she had been drawing, rough undetailed sketches of the photographs that were on Doug's laptop screen. "What happened to Vole and Marten? Did someone else go rogue and kill them?"

"Vole and Marten?" North looked legitimately confused, then winced as if a sudden headache had set in. "Vole, Vole... infiltration specialist, yes. Small man, Quebecois, I think. If he and Marten were eliminated by the SHIVA program, there would be records. If we can find where they are kept... Mister Ramsey, I will need that location, and an acceptable cover to access the documents. Vole and Marten..."

North grimaced again, looking at the list, which almost seemed to waver before his eyes. Vole - Maverick - Marten - Mastodon - Kestrel...

"My God," he breathed, resting his full weight back in the chair. "I may have killed them, I believe."

Illyana put her pen down firmly on the table; the noise clattered through the quiet room like thunder. "Are you kidding? You think you might have killed them? I don't know about anyone else, but I'd really like to know whether you go around killing people and forgetting about it all the time. And I'm not being unhelpful," she added petulantly, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "This is the kind of thing that really screws us over sometimes."

North stood up quickly, his face angry - but just as quickly calmed himself, holding up his hands. "That's a fair evaluation, Miss Rasputin. As a former sleeper agent, I likely had the SHIVA programming in my mind as well before Lady Braddock drove that psychic knife of hers through my brain three and a half years ago. If Vole and Marten went rogue, then according to this list, I would have been the agent activated to deal with them. Believe me, I'd like to know that myself."

"Let's add that to the list of things to get done then, shall we?" Wanda said smoothly, more used to Illyana's ... interesting observational tactics. Lack of tact was another term that was bandied about but she'd made a good point. Fingers were steepled thoughtfully in front her face and she gave David an interested look. "We're going to need a concentrated effort on this. If we take out Wraith but leave the unknown operative - and the potential rest of the missing list - as unknowns, the cycle will still continue. We'll need to either find this operative before or during any potential take down, preferably before."

She hesitated, mouth thinning into a straight line as a worrying thought came to her. "...David. You and Logan were teammates much like with the rest of these people. Is there any chance that Logan could be one of these SHIVA operatives? Any chance at all?"

This time the look on North's face was one of shock and horror. "If he is, then we need to move with all due haste, because I don't think anything short of the nuclear option is going to work."

Doug's brain hadn't even gone in that direction until Wanda had said something, and he blanched at the thought that the code name after Kestrel could be Wolverine. He supposed he'd gotten too used to thinking of Logan as one of the good guys. Not one of his favorite people by far, and occasionally a little crazy, but one of the good guys nonetheless. He pulled the laptop back around to face him and began rapping at the keys. "Sounds like I've got a lot of work in front of me, then."

"Perhaps we should warn whoever is keeping tabs on Logan as well? I would not want to be the one to have to tell Marie that someone had to put Logan down." It was obvious by Marie-Ange's tone that Logan was not her favorite person in the world. "I think I know someone who can... well, perhaps not be discreet about it, but could get in touch with James Hudson of Alpha Flight without asking me too many questions." At least, she was fairly sure she could talk Forge into it, or Doug could.

Illyana had assumed her standard put-out expression. "First one guy's an amnesiac accidental serial killer, and now we have to worry about the old art teacher too?" She cast a plaintive look at Wanda. "I don't want to use a nuclear weapon. They gave all those Japanese people cancer in the olden days."

"Trust me, the last thing I want to do is try to figure out where we can steal a nuclear football or whatever it is these Americans call it these days." Pushing against the table top, Wanda slowly stood up. "With these odds, David, I think you're going to need all the help we can give you. I think we'll leave Doug where he is but the rest of us need to go inform everyone else as to what's going on. In the meantime, we'll get you settled while the pieces fall into place. Hell, we'll probably need to warn the X-Men..."

She rubbed at her forehead while she scooped up the papers in front of her. "If the potential danger doesn't get me in this job, the stress certainly will."