Shiva - Everything Ends

[x-maverick.livejournal.com]

While X-Force closes the trap on Wraith, Wanda and North race to try and stop the SHIVA list before the next sleeper agent becomes a living weapon.



North had spent most of the drive out of Manhattan in silence, driving fast enough to cut through traffic expertly but managing to avoid the attention of the ubiquitous speed cameras and radar-bearing state troopers that lurked in wait on the highways.

The only times he took his attention off the road were to reach into his coat and withdraw a foil-cased set of pills, popping four out of their tamper-proof wrapping and swallowing them with a quick drink of water.

Wanda had been impressed - she hadn't even had to use her powers to get them through the mess that was touted as New York traffic. But she eyed him with some concern as he washed the pills down. This could wind up being very difficult and on more levels than emotional; if her 'partner' was unwell, it would only take away from what resources they had.

"Are you feeling all right?" she asked, nodding towards the water bottle as he put it back down between the seats.

"Hmm?" North responded, the first he'd spoken on the drive. After a moment, he shook his head with a small grin. "Oh, these? No, just amphetamines. I'm feeling fine. Why, want some?" he offered.

"... you're very generous, but I'll pass, thanks," Wanda responded dryly. "My powers would probably not handle amphetamines well. Now if you happen to have Jagermeister hidden under your jacket..."

David nodded in response, tucking the packet of pills back into his coat. "When Stryker brought me into the Weapon X project," he explained, "they modified my precognition. Tied it to adrenalin, dopamine, serotonin, all those brain chemicals that go racing when you're in combat. More focus, but no real control. So I've been experimenting a bit with some... pharmaceutical methods and --"

His voice broke off into a series of teeth-clenching grunts, and his knuckles went white on the wheel for a moment. When North's eyes opened, the normally-blue irises had faded to a pale white as he stared back out through the windshield, foot pressing harder on the accelerator.

--white Ford Taurus changing lanes left in two and a half seconds, not checking rearview // speed camera covering lanes three and four blind spot in lane two // pothold in lane one seventy-three miles an hour blown tire--

Guided as much by precognition as reflex, North weaved in and out of the freeway traffic at breakneck speed, coaxing as much power from the rental car's engine.

Thanks to his driving, they zipped merrily around the car that was suddenly spinning out from the combination of speed and a now exploded tire. Wanda frowned into the side-view mirror as the car filled with warm red light; it was behind them now but not far enough away to make much of a difference and it was heading right for another car. The lines showed blood red to her minds eye as she picked and played, setting a gentler tune.

Behind them, the car hit a patch of black ice and it slipped more to the right than the left now, allowing the cars behind it to either hit the brakes in time or zip around with a surge of speed. There was no helping the fact that it ran right into the guard rail but what could have been a several car pileup was now simply one man, shaken, as he stared at the crumpled front of his car.

"I'm sorry, you were saying?" she asked, turning back to David, the light winking out of existence.

Blinking, Maverick's eyes returned to their normal color and the world seemed to speed back up around him as he guided the rental car to the off-ramp. "Well," he said apologetically, "we all have our little tricks now, don't we?"

The remainder of the voyage was spent a good fifteen miles an hour above posted speed limits, the combination of precognition and chaos manipulation managing to keep the vehicle safely away from accidents and overzealous highway patrolmen.

Finally they approached their target - an unassuming single-level home in a subdivision not far from the USAMRIID facility. Light could be seen from the windows, but uneven as if a lamp or television had been knocked onto the floor.

Drawing his pistol as he exited the car, David motioned Wanda forward to the other side of the door. When they were both in position, he cautiously rapped his knuckles against the wood.

Instead of waiting for a response, however, he pivoted and kicked the door, right above the deadbolted lock and sent it swinging inwards. "Carol?" he called as he surveyed the hall. "Carol?"

The sound of a strange voice calling her name snapped Carol back to full consciousness. She became acutely aware that she was in bed, the sheets, sweat-drenched, tangled in near knots around her legs, covers nowhere to be found. Her head ached. It felt like it had been aching forever, like she couldn't remember a time when it hadn't ached, though somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that was just the alcohol, that it had just been aching since Mister North and his companion had come to visit her. Since she'd read the records he'd asked for. Now, images kept accosting her. Sometimes they slipped in like a rising tide, so smoothly she didn't realize she wasn't staring at her office walls anymore, or her bedroom. And sometimes they invaded her mind like explosions, all bright lights and noise. But no matter the method, the results of the assaults were the same- she saw images that seemed to come from dreams, images she knew weren't real. Things she'd never done, people she'd never met. And North.

Was she losing her mind?

That thought had led to the drinking. Carol had always been fond of the bottle, taken comfort in it, especially after she'd been made to fly a desk. Alcohol numbed the pain. She welcomed the dulling of her senses, her thoughts, her memories. And the bedroom floor was littered with the remnants of that cozy relationship with the bottle.

Shaking her head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs from it, Carol sat up. Her lamp had been knocked to the floor, but it still cast a thin light over the laquered hardwood floor of the bedroom. At least it hadn't been carpet, or she might have burned the place down. She held her watch up to her face, read the time and the date. Shit. She'd been home since faxing the records over to North, she remembered that much. She hadn't gone to work, hadn't been feeling well. She'd made some lame excuse, but it wouldn't really have mattered. She wouldn't really be missed.

Unless she had been missed. Someone was in the house. Someone had called out to her.

A bottle crunched underfoot as she swung her legs off the bed, she bit back an expletive and hopped over to pull on a pair of discarded slacks to go with the tank top she was already wearing. Blinking the last of the fuzziness from her brain, Danvers pulled a 9mm from her desk drawer and padded in bare feet out to the hallway. She clicked the safety off as she spotted two figures standing inside her home, the door open beyond them. It was North, and his companion. "Who the hell are you?" she asked in a tone that implied she hadn't forgotten who he'd claimed to be when he'd showed up at her office.

North immediately turned to Wanda, giving a quick look of "follow my lead" as he stepped into the open hall, pistol held low, pointed at the ground. "It's me, Carol. Is everything all right? Do you know where you are?" Do you know WHO you are? was the question he almost asked, but if she was having a break in her conditioning like he had three years prior, or worse - if she'd been partially or fully exposed to the SHIVA activation protocol, there was no telling how she would respond.

Wanda followed North's lead - again, this was his show and she was there in case it turned ugly. She stepped to the side, still slightly behind him, mentally wincing as her boot crushed broken glass under her weight. Danvers flickered a glance in her direction but Wanda kept her hands at about waist level and extended. She was very obviously showing that she was unarmed; Danvers would have no idea that it wasn't necessary in the least for her to have a weapon.

Danvers gave North a wary look, gun still trained on him. "You say 'it's me' like I know who you are," she said evenly, trying to blink away her headache by squeezing her eyes shut and opening them several times. "I know who you say you are, but that's all, and that tells me nothing. Who are you, really?" She blew out a long, tired breath, but her posture didn't relax. She spoke quietly, levelly, though inside she felt as if the damn could burst and set forth hysterics at any moment. "Why am I seeing you in my head, the way I see memories, if you say we've never met? Why am I seeing things that I recognize myself doing, that I almost remember doing, but know, when I'm thinking clearly, that I've never done? What the hell are you doing in my home? What did you do to me?"

"Carol, I need you to put the gun down." As if she needs the gun, God help us if she remembers enough to use her powers, we're all doomed. North held his hands out to his sides, the obvious motion showing that his pistol was pointed away from Danvers, but also masking the fact that he was slowly moving forward. "You're experiencing an incomplete memory reversion. I know because I've been through it. Right now you're remembering things that can't possibly have happened. Your mind's giving you conflicting stories about who you are, what you've done. I can help you, just put down the gun."

"Put the gun down?" Carol spat, the gun never wavering in her grip. "When you're the one who broke into my home? You say want to help me but you won't even answer simple questions, tell me who you are and why you're here?" Incomplete memory reversion? What the hell was that? Memory reversion? Memories, reverting to what? From what? From where? Remembering things that can't possibly have happened. It was what she'd already told him. Your mind's giving you conflicting stories about who you are, what you've done. What she'd done. Her hands shook as she remembered some of the things she'd been seeing since he'd showed up at her office. "What is this?" she asked, voice breaking. "Tell me what's happening to me. Tell me who 'Maverick' is. Why you're here. Who she is." She nodded to Wanda, and lowered the gun from North, though she held it pointing downwards in front of her in case she had to fire it quickly. "She's not in my head. You are, but not her."

“I’m a friend,” Wanda said, refusing to fall back on ‘soothing tones’. Her voice was calm and level because Carol didn’t need to be treated like a child or a wounded animal and she had a feeling that if this woman thought she was being condescended to on top of everything else, something would break even further. “You’re remembering him because of what’s happening to you. He was there, before, and they did the same thing to him. I was not but I understand what you’re going through. Someone’s been inside your head and they’ve taken away things from you. Your memories, your freedom, your sense of self. God only knows that I know how that feels, Carol. Nothing makes sense right now but we can help you and you are not alone.”

She could make the gun misfire or jam at that moment; but while Carol didn’t know she was a mutant, Warbird certainly did and a visible sign from Wanda could prove to be the tipping point.

Staggering back into an armchair, Carol sank bonelessly down, gun held loosely in one hand, safety put back on. She was silent for a time, struggling to understand what the woman was telling her. That someone had been manipulating her brain. It was almost laughable, the fact that the Air Force would have been involved in mind control. It was the sort of thing crazy people shouted from street corners, or wrote online for conspiracy theory websites. It was insanity.

But how else could she explain what was happening?

"Why was someone in my head?" she asked quietly. "Why do this to me- to us?" she turned to North, because both he and the woman said he'd been through the same thing she was experiencing. "What for? Why give me this?" She gestured with her free hand around the room. Like her office, it was filled with memorabilia of her time as a pilot, of the life she'd led before being made to pilot a desk. Memorabilia that her mind was now telling her had been falsely constructed. If she listened to what North and the woman were saying, then she'd never been a pilot. Someone had made her believe it, and set up the room to reflect and reinforce those false memories. "Why put this into my head? Why go to so much detail as this?" She was becoming agitated now, over the fact that the photos and knicknacks she remembered so lovingly setting up around her home were all fake; she probably had never even put them there herself! "To keep me from remembering? Someone was using these things to keep me in the dark?!"

As she gestured at one of the photograph-covered walls with her hand, something happened. One moment the wall looked as it always looked. The next, something... pulsed, almost. And the wall sort of... exploded. Melted? There was heat, something Carol (from her false memories of being a pilot) recognized as intense gravitational force. And the wall wasn't really a wall anymore.

"Oh, God." Face ghostly white, eyes wide, she staggered over to North and the woman, dropping the gun. "Oh my God. What did I do? Are you alright?" It had been the wall across the room from where they'd been standing, but she would never forgive herself if she'd hurt the people who wanted to help her.

North clenched the grip of the pistol tightly when he saw Warbird's power flare, but just as quickly, she was Carol again. Hurt, scared, confused - as he'd been all those years ago. This wasn't an enemy, he reminded himself. This was a woman who'd been a comrade, a teammate, a partner.

In a second, he let his guard down, and let her rest against his shoulder. "It's me, Carol. It's Mav. We're going to get you through this. They aren't going to get you, I promise. We're going to end this here and now."

Before he could explain, however, another sound cut him off in mid-thought.

The ring of a telephone.

Carol wrapped an arm around Mav and held on to him for a moment, believing what he told her about getting through this without 'them' getting her. "I want this to end," she agreed in response to his last comment. The sound of the phone made her jump. "My CO checking in?" she asked with a frown. "I... I think I missed work today?" She stared at it. "Oh, shit, it's probably the neighbours, about the wall. Maybe the police. I shouldn't answer it. Should I?" she asked Maverick. He'd said he was going to help her through this. He would know what to do.

Maverick stepped away from Carol, the irises of his eyes going white again as they had in the car. In a second's time, he saw a multitude of possible outcomes, a precognitive flash of varying futures covering the next sixty seconds.

Every one ended the same way.

Closing his eyes, he released the safety on his pistol. "Carol. Do not answer that phone."

It was like a mine field, Wanda realized, eyes widening at all the spots that her powers were telling her would cause great trouble. Unlike an actual precog, she couldn't see exactly what trouble was but the fact that the walls and floors were suddenly prickling with molten red rings led her to believe that one wrong move would send the place down around their ears.

But she wasn't reaching to mess with the house, she was seeking to disrupt the phone from ringing. It was a landline in another room and she took a step forward, seeking it out...

When a soft musical tone chimed from Carol's pants pocket and Wanda turned on her heel, cursing, even as more and more rings added to the din. Even the 'you have a call' from the computer started to speak in a monotone voice.

"I can't get them all," Wanda grated as the phone in the next room suddenly, inexplicably, caught fire.

Carol's eyes widened at North taking the safety off his pistol. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and placed it on the coffee table, took a few steps back. "Okay, Mav," she said evenly. "I won't answer it. And now you're going to help me, right?" She took a step forward, towards the phone. "Mav?" her voice wavered. "Why do I really, really want to answer it? Why do I think I have to answer it?" Another step towards the phone, and she squeezed her eyes shut tight, as if very tired, as if being compelled forward against her better judgement and unable to fight against it.

"Carol, don't." Maverick's voice was tight and controlled, the harsh accent coming back. "I can help you, but you have to fight this. You don't have to answer it. Damn it, you can be more than Stryker made you."

His exhortations seemed to fall on deaf ears as Carol's hand closed on the cell phone. In one movement, North raised the pistol, a red dot appearing just above the neckline of the dull grey tank top. "Warbird, I am giving you a direct order, soldier. Do not touch that goddamn phone!"

An infinity of possibilities, and every one with the same conclusion.

Sometimes, David thought, all precognition was good for was letting you know how much it was going to hurt.

Carol's arm moved, just enough to flip the phone open. Mercifully, her eyes were closed.

The two shots from the suppressed pistol may as well have been thunderclaps in the small hallway.

The smell of gunsmoke was acrid in the air as Maverick walked over to the body on the floor and picked up the phone out of her limp hand, holding it to his ear. A short burst of static, and then a pre-recorded voice.

"My mother said, to get things done..."

"...you'd better not mess with Major Tom," David growled back into the phone, dropping it to the floor and firing one more shot, shattering the device into hundreds of pieces.

**

Miles away, inside a bank of computer servers below an unassuming office building, a monochrome monitor blinked.


[CONNECTION LOST. OPERATIVE WARBIRD - INACTIVE. OPERATIVE MAVERICK - ACTIVE.]

[ERROR: OPERATIVE MAVERICK - TARGET.]

[ERROR: MAVERICK - ACTIVE/TARGET/ACTIVE/TARGET/ACTIVE]

[ERROR]

[ERROR]

[ERROR]

[ERROR]



The green screen continued to blink into the dark room, the sound of a neverending dial tone its only companion.

**

After a long second of kneeling by Danvers' body, North stood up and turned to Wanda. "It's done," he said with finality.

"Not quite yet." Purposefully Wanda strode by him, careful not to touch Carol's corpse or the blood pooling from under her. They were standing in a death filled house of cards and all it would take would be for one single card to be moved to bring it crashing down. She paused in front of a section of wall that was still standing from the one blast of power; a hand came up and settled on the rough wallpaper.

This was that one card.

A hex bolt tunneled through the wall and down, turning wood into dust, metal into rust and vaporizing everything else. Somewhere beneath them something rumbled and Wanda turned to see that North was already flying out the front door. 'Wise man,' she thought, keeping everything just balanced as she bolted as well.

They'd just made it to the car before she turned around, hands clenched into fists as she gave one big yank on one small string. The now damaged gas lines under the house exploded and the house of cards trembled before collapsing on itself, throwing everything into relief as flames belched out.

Her vision swam for a moment before she shook it off, a hand on the car door.

"Ashes to ashes," David mumbled to himself as he slid into the car, waiting for Wanda before starting the engine and driving off without a look back.