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xp_logsAfter a day of climbing, Nathan and Jean-Paul find someplace to stay for the night, and the truth about what happened during the time Nathan was with SHIELD finally comes out.
It had been a long day of climbing, in the end; after polishing off that first face, they'd done two more in the vicinity. The others had been more straightforward ice climbs, but at that point, Nathan hadn't care. He'd just wanted to climb. And climb, and climb... if he'd been able to hop on a plane and go somewhere with real ice walls, he'd have done it in a heartbeat.
He was paying for it now, of course. His hip was throbbing steadily, even here in the warmth of the cabin, and his right arm, where the second-worst of the gunshot wounds had been, wasn't much better. It probably wasn't helping things that he was sitting on the floor instead of on the couch, but Jean-Paul was puttering around in the kitchen, and after getting the fire going, part of Nathan had apparently decided that sitting here staring into it was how he wanted to spend the next part of the evening.
"Here."
The quiet offer and the plate of sausage-laden pasta that seemed to materialize under his nose jolted Nathan out of his contemplation. Jean-Paul crouched down beside him, watching Nate carefully. "Feeling any better?"
He had kind of... wilted a little, getting back in the car for the trip back into town; fortunately, Jean-Paul had been perfectly willing to drive. Nathan took the plate with a brief smile and a nod, setting it down on the stone of the hearth. "I think I may have overdone it a little," he said, his voice gruff, yet soft. There was a strangely comforting sort of hush in the cabin, and he didn't really want to break it. "This smells good," he said, as Jean-Paul sat down across from him, with his own plate.
"Merci. But at this point, I'll happily eat anything that keeps me from cannibalism. That was a real work-out." He wasn't scolding; he'd enjoyed the climb completely and it had obviously done Nate some good. "More of the same tomorrow?"
"I don't know. You've got classes, I've got work..." Nathan took a bite or two of the pasta, chewed and swallowed before he went on. It was good. "Question of whether we really want to play hooky, I guess," he went on quietly. "Frankly, I could stay up here all week."
"No need to decide just yet." Jean-Paul chuckled softly. "Though I think the longer I am gone, the more my students will dread my return. I did imply that my expectations in terms of quality would ratchet up for every extra day they had to work on their papers."
"You're such a hardcase. I let Callie talk me into doing an independent study with her that involves watching lots of Italian movies. But then, I've always had a heart of pure marshmallow. Kids bat their eyes at me and I knuckle under." There was a tightness in his chest suddenly, and Nathan made himself spear another chunk of sausage and eat it.
"Yes, exactly." Jean-Paul didn't remark on Nate's abrupt interest in his dinner. "Which is why I have to be a hardcase in class. Callie already knows that if she says 'please' and pouts, then I crumble like feta. It's only a matter of time until the others catch on, and I'd like to be able to maintain some semblance of control over the class for as long as I can."
Jean-Paul's grip on his fork had tightened slightly with all this talk of the kids. He was hoping that the suspicions forming in his mind were wrong.
Another piece of sausage. A third. A forkful of pasta. Nathan swallowed, using the fork to push the food around the plate for a moment. "I told someone this week," he said, his voice still low, but very strained-sounding, suddenly, "that I look at the kids, and I see them as they could have been. If they'd been me, or... people like me."
Jean-Paul managed to keep his wince under the skin. That was a bit close to home.
"But that is why we stay on, non? To keep the worst of the predators at bay and give them time to learn their own potential." His gaze hadn't left Nathan since he'd sat down. "There are worse things to be in life than a shield."
"Depends on how good you are at it." Nathan's voice was even softer than it had been. Another piece of sausage. Another bite of pasta. He needed the calories; it was that simple. Eating was one of those small, yet essential things.
"I know that... what happened this week," he said, and it was so obviously not what he'd set out to say. "It bothered you because it was the kids. You could have shrugged it off. Right?"
Jean-Paul frowned a little, more at the redirection than the topic itself, but went along with it for the moment.
"I have been doing this for a while," he remarked wryly. "Another day, another deathtrap. With the kids..." He finally looked away. "No one likes watching repeats of history. I always felt that I had to look out for myself when I was younger. It was obvious no one else would. The students do not need to be in that position and I don't like knowing that I might not be able to keep them from it."
"We do our best, right?" Nathan pushed the pasta around his plate again, the motion oddly jerky. "We try, and if we can't... we're forgiven, right? Maybe not by ourselves. But by each other, at least." The slight rise to his voice on the last word made it more of a question than he'd maybe intended, and he went a shade or two paler, staring at his plate.
"Nathan, you are the best friend I have on this planet right now, so believe me when I say that you're being such an idiot that I could knock you off a cliff for it." Jean-Paul was looking at him again, head lowered slightly so that their eyes met as soon as Nate looked up. "I don't for an instant think that you would do less than your best to protect innocents. Especially children. And so until you can convince me otherwise, there is nothing you have done that needs forgiving."
"But you don't know what happened." He wasn't sure that even Betsy really had, whatever she'd said. Pieces, maybe. Like Jean knew pieces, like Jean-Paul and Angelo and probably at least a few others had figured out pieces, even without the benefit of telepathy. His gaze shifted to the flames, so that he didn't have to meet Jean-Paul's. His voice grew increasingly unsteady as he went on. "It's my fault. It all... it all went to hell."
"It's not fair of you to do this," Jean-Paul said. He'd somehow gotten closer while Nate had been looking away. "You can't sit there and eviscerate yourself over what happened and still keep everyone at arm's length. You're not the first person to make mistakes that got others killed, Nate. How are we supposed to condemn you simply by that?"
Nathan looked back at him, his eyes suspiciously bright in the firelight, full of exhausted despair. "You don't know what happened," he repeated, his voice breaking. "This wasn't a mistake. It wasn't an accident."
"Then tell me what it was." Jean-Paul's chest had tightened when Nathan's voice broke. "You...don't have to talk if you don't want to. Benefits of telepathy." The memory of those three horribly clear images cutting into his mind and the shreds of ragged, desperate emotion attached to them made Jean-Paul want to rescind the offer as soon as he'd made it, but he kept quiet.
I can't, Nathan wanted to say, never more so than when he sensed Jean-Paul instantly regret making that offer. But his friend just sat there, watching him, and even as Nathan looked away, back into the flames, he started to wonder if maybe he needed to do it.
Jean-Paul and Betsy and Jean and Moira were all right. He couldn't go on like this. It was like acid, eating him away from the inside out... and he didn't want to live like this. The thought was crystal-clear, frightening in its implications for a moment. Nathan took a deep, shaky breath.
"I can try," he almost whispered. "It might be... it's bad, Jean-Paul. The fire is the least of it."
The speedster nodded. There was no quip this time, no attempt to make the offer or what Nate had gone through seem less than it was.
"I'll let you know when I need a break," he said softly.
Nathan nodded. Pushing his plate aside, he reached out with a shaking hand and laid it lightly on Jean-Paul's temple. Ordinarily he wouldn't have needed the physical contact. This time, he thought it might be a very good idea to have something grounding him. Grounding them both.
#Like I told you, it was a reconaissance mission. The training facility was off the coast of Puerto Rico...#
---
There were five SHIELD agents on the team, the oldest of them still at least five years younger than he was. Nathan would have felt out of place on the reconaissance mission even under other circumstances. But Fury had made the very good point that he would be able to identify not just how many conditioned children were on site at the training facility, but also what additional security they had, and anything else that SHIELD would need to know when they went in for real.
In that sense it was a perfectly standard job. In every other way... it wasn't.
They went in by boat, or rather, Zodiac, skimming over the waves towards the small, uninhabited island where the training facility was supposed to be. It took them nearly half an hour to stash the boat somewhere safe and make their very careful way upwards and into the rainforest.
The facility was suprisingly substantial, a set of concrete buildings, the largest three stories in height. The complex was obviously built to last. "Expected a prefab," the lead agent, Brandon, murmured to Nathan. They'd found good cover from which to observe the facility, although no one was in evidence right now. "Looks like it's been here for a while."
Nathan didn't answer. He was staring at the building, eyes wide, mind... elsewhere. The staff, the security guards, none of them were of particular interest. He was drawn to the minds of the children like a moth to the flame. Strangely patterned, almost alien. But bright, so bright. Like fireflies.
"Anyone home?" another SHIELD officer murmured on Nathan's other side.
"Yes. Lots of people home," Nathan finally breathed. His hands were trembling slightly and he tucked them beneath his body, where the others couldn't see. "Maybe... ten, twelve kids."
"Non-operatives?"
"More. Twenty... maybe thirty. At least half of those feel like security."
"Not too bad. Would be better to do what we can to put them off-guard before we call in the troops, though; we don't have the blueprints to that building." Brandon looked sideways at Nathan, assessingly. "I'd say it's time to do your thing, Dayspring."
Nathan twitched, and couldn't hold back the brief, incredulous look. "Like hell," he said, keeping his voice low by force of will. "We're on recon-"
"And if we can call back to base and tell them they're no longer going to get shot down on approach by some teenaged energy projector, we can get on with things right now."
"No." Nathan looked away, ignoring the twisting in his stomach. "Too many variables. We don't know where the kids are inside the compound."
"So find out. You're the telepath." When Nathan didn't answer, the younger man scowled and reached out, a hand clamping down on his arm. "Dayspring, I'm ordering you-"
#I am following orders,# Nathan hissed at him telepathically, too unsettled to feel even an instant's satisfaction at the way the other man jumped. #You are improvising.#
He was right, he tried to convince himself as Brandon attempted sweet reason, his voice low but urgent. This was too tactically risky. He couldn't just light off the Trojan Horse here. It would take forty-five minutes for the rest of the SHIELD troops to get here; they were on standby, not sitting in the helicopters waiting for a call.
All about tactics. Except that it wasn't. He could still feel the children, feel their gem-like, sharp-edged minds. So warped by what had been done to them. So alive, despite it all.
The Trojan Horse would shatter them, put out their light. He knew, because it was exactly what he'd done to the girl back at SHIELD headquarters, and whatever the therapists said, she was a vegetable, an empty shell, and he had done that to her. Just like he'd done it to all the second-gens on Youra years ago...
"Dayspring." He made himself focus; Brandon was staring at him, looking resigned. "I said okay. We'll stick to plan A - but you are going to be able to do this when the times comes, right?"
The look on his face had to be a little alarming. "Yes," Nathan said, forcing the word out past the tightness in his throat. "Yes, I will."
"All right." The other man signaled to his teammates, who gathered their gear in preparation for heading back down to the beach. None of them looked at Nathan as they retreated; he thought perhaps he'd been measured and found wanting. Not part of their team. Arguing with their commander, in the field.
What the hell am I doing? He knew better than this. He should have... no, he shouldn't have. Priorities, he thought, nearly stumbling on an exposed tree root. He had to be clear about this. He wasn't here for SHIELD's sake. He was here for those children.
Afterwards, he would look back and know that he was severely distracted as they got back into the Zodiac and headed back in the direction they'd come. His mind had been anywhere but on masking their presence telepathically.
But no matter how often he tried, he couldn't remember sensing the attack. Just seeing the flash of light, the roar of the explosion and then he was underwater, breathing in water. Again.
And then everything went dark.
---
Your instincts were not wrong. Jean-Paul's mental 'voice' threaded through the black patch in Nathan's memory, buzzing with apprehension. It wasn't a protest, not yet. Only observation.
Nathan opened his eyes, to the cabin and the firelight, and the man sitting across from him. "Weren't they?" He meant it as a flat statement, but his voice gave away too much. The self-loathing was bubbling up from where he'd tried to keep it contained. "I'm not... I should have known better. I should have talked more to him before we left. If I had, instead of being lost in my own little world..." He might have known the shift in plans was coming. Might have been able to argue it with Brandon at the right time.
"Perhaps," the speedster conceded. He was dizzy and trying not to show it. It was one thing to have a mentalist in your head, another to share his memories. "Or you might have been attacked while arguing at the right time. You were sweeping the men, the base...whatever was going on in the boat, if whatever hit you was shielded...I'm not sure you had a chance either way."
"Maybe," Nathan conceded, his voice dull. "Maybe not. All I know is, I didn't have my mind where it should be. And... well." The smile that took shape on his lips was a twisted, humorless thing. "I told you it got worse. There were three survivors of that explosion, besides me. It would have been better for them if they'd died in the blast."
The smile was more of a warning than the words. Turn back now.
"Show me." Jean-Paul had no intention of going anywhere.
Nathan swallowed, then shrugged and reached out again, touching Jean-Paul's temple. #Just tell me if you need to stop,# he said, and steeled himself to return to the point where the memories started again.
---
He'd woken up shackled to a chair before. Those had never been good days, either.
Nathan sucked in a shaky breath, raising his head. Something was running down his face, and for a disjointed moment he wasn't sure whether it was water or blood. Or both. He was soaking wet, he realized in the next instant. What had happened to the boat?
The explosion. I remember. Before he could examine the fragmentary memory, he realized that he wasn't alone in the room. The man standing by the door was in his early twenties, maybe, lanky and underfed-looking, wearing some sort of dark bodysuit - and looking very nervous. Nathan blinked around blearily at his surroundings. Empty, apart from a table and a second chair, and...
Flat. No lines of force anywhere to be felt, and the silence inside his head was deafening. Nathan's head jerked upwards and he stared hard at the other man, who actually took a step backwards. No powers, he thought as his head cleared further - but no collar around his neck, either. Not psi-bafflers, I'd recognize the feel - is it him?
Instinct kicked in. He was already charting out how to get out of the chair and introduce the other man's head to the wall when the door opened.
The newcomer was all neutrals - middle-aged with thinning steel hair, dressed in greys, and devoid of expression. He regarded Nathan with no appearance of emotion at all.
"I am Alpha, and that is all you need to know on that front." The voice was brisk and businesslike, the kind you'd expect from someone about to serve you with papers. "I am, however, quite familiar with you and your...work, Nathan Dayspring. Your recent affiliations. I can not say that I am pleased to see you here." Alpha stalked forward, stopping an exact foot from Nate's chair. "I want to know why you're here, Dayspring, and whose people came with you."
The only immediate response he got was a flat stare, as Nathan pulled experimentally at the restraints, ignoring the pain as they bit into his wrists. Too tight. And not the time to rock the chair to test its weight, not when 'Alpha' was standing so close. And packing a gun, the cold, analytical part of Nathan's mind pointed out. Be careful here.
"Don't expect me to oblige," he finally said, his voice hoarse.
A thin, cold shaving of a smile curled across Alpha's lips. "I did not expect that you would."
"Sir..." The youth at the door shifted uneasily. "Sir, I won't be able to hold him indefinitely. He's too strong. Not like the-"
"Quiet. This won't take long." The door opened again, this time to admit another man, younger than the first and clad in the same dark bodysuit. It flashed across Nathan's mind that there were students at the school older than the boy, but then his attention was drawn to the man he held at gunpoint. The SHIELD agent was bruised and there was a deep gash running across his left cheek down to the hinge of his jaw, but the man entered holding his head up, giving Alpha a steady, contemptuous glare. A precise kick to the back of the man's knees left him kneeling in front of Nathan, his forehead almost touching the mutant's knee. Alpha had his own sidearm pointed at the agent's temple a heartbeat later.
"Who are you working for, Dayspring?"
Nathan met the SHIELD agent's eyes, ignoring the sudden icy feeling that had nothing to do with his drenched clothing. Becker, he told himself. They'd been introduced at the briefing, of course. But he didn't know much of anything else about the other man beyond his name. There hadn't really been time for small talk.
Becker just gazed back at him, his jaw tight and his lips pressed tightly together. Resolute. Nathan swallowed again, but his expression was still flat as he looked up at Alpha. "Treating them-" Please don't let him be the only other survivor. "-as if they're expendable is going to make you an enemy you don't want." Fury wouldn't take this well, and Taygetos was already in hiding. Surely this 'Alpha' wasn't prepared to-
Becker and Nathan both spasmed as the gun went off. Becker spouted a brief, thick geyser of blood from his skull before falling in a shuddering, reeking heap at Nathan's feet.
Alpha gave Nathan an exasperated look and shook his head. "Do not waste my time with vagaries." He turned his head to the second guard. "Boy, bring me another."
Breathe, instructed the voice at the back of his mind with perfect glacial calm, and after a long, suffocating moment, Nathan did. His heart was thundering in his ears, and his eyes flickered down helplessly to where Becker twitched and went still at his feet.
When another member of the SHIELD team was marched into the room -Lafferty, the radio operator - Nathan snapped out of that moment of shock. Give him a little. Buy time. "We were doing reconaissance," he said rapidly as Becker's corpse was dragged to the side and Lafferty was forced down in the exact same position in which his teammate had died. "That's all."
The deafening retort of the firearm crashed through the room again, and Lafferty's blood mingled with the spreading pool on the floor. A fine spray of red cooled on Nathan's arm, matting hair against his skin.
"Two simple questions. You could answer them both satisfactorily in fewer than ten words, I am sure." Alpha tapped his foot with less than perfect patience as he waited for his soldier to return with another agent. "My men were very precise with their attack, Dayspring. Trust me when I say that we can simply keep at this until you get it right."
Nathan choked back a sound of protest. Lafferty's eyes were wide open, staring. I can't. Depending on how long it had been since the boat had been hit, there could be another SHIELD team coming, to see what had happened to the first. Even reinforcements, depending on how Fury decided to react to losing contact with Nathan's team. And if he gave up the information, if there were field-ready operatives here and they were prepared for incoming...
He shifted tactics desperately, and went on the attack. "You think you've got it all figured out, don't you?" he said harshly, lips drawing back from his teeth in a snarl. "So did Carmella Ruiz. I wasn't there to see them stick the needle in her vein, but for you?" It was bluster. Pure bluster, meant to evoke some sort of reaction, and he waited. Watched for that moment when the man would be distracted as he formulated a response.
There. With a heave, he tipped over his chair, slamming into his interrogator before Alpha could take a step back. They both went down, but the chair didn't break. Shit! It had been a shot in the dark, and a bitter, breathless curse escaped Nathan as hands yanked the chair back upright, pulling him with it.
A fist slammed into his face once, then again, and Nathan reeled back in the chair, spitting blood.
By the time Nathan's vision had stopped swimming, Alpha had erected his unflappable demeanor once more, but the blood smeared across the back of his hands and soaking into the cuffs of his suit belied his composure.
"Such...small, small thoughts." He might have said more, but his people had returned, half-dragging Kurtz, the team's medical officer with them. The young man was bloodied and his right leg trailed uselessly behind him. Alpha stepped away from Nathan, his steps accompanied by quiet ripping noises as he walked across smears of gore going tacky on the cold, concrete floor. "An ex-Mistra field leader wouldn't bother going along on a simple reconaissance mission, Nathan. So do not try that weak fiction again." Alpha kicked idly at the agent's shattered limb, nodding as his prisoner choked back a scream. "Two down, Nathan."
Kurtz did scream as he was manhandled into position at Nathan's knee, but found his voice as Alpha drew his gun again.
"Wait..." The agent swallowed, breathing hard, his eyes flickering to the bodies of his comrades. "Wait, don't...you don't have to do this..."
"Stop it." The snarl was pure Cable, no Nathan in it at all - and was directed at Kurtz, not at Alpha. He drew in a ragged breath and concentrated hard, pushed with his mind just as he would have if he'd had access to his TK and was prepared to slam every hostile in the room against the walls.
Two things happened. The air felt heavy in a very familiar way for a promising, taunting moment, and the young man who'd been there when he'd come to stumbled back against the wall with a cry, one hand raised defensively. Yes, it is you, isn't it? Nathan thought in fury and pushed again, harder this time. All he needed was to break through for a moment.
There was a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye, then something cracked against his skull with enough force to grey out the room. Through the ringing in his ears, he could hear Kurtz laying the entire mission out before Alpha -- the Trojan Horse, the successful attempts to use it in breaking conditioning, everything. Then, clear, sharp and awful, another gunshot, another mess on the floor.
Alpha spoke as he left the room. "Get him ready to move."
"Sir."
---
Jean-Paul's speed managed to get him to the cabin's bathroom before he brought up dinner, but it was still a close thing. He'd seen people die and not all of them had died well, but he had never been so intimate with cold butchery. The scents of blood and emptied bowels, the churning rage and helplessness in Nate's memories overlain with his friend's very real misery and self-loathing had all been too much to take at once and his body had reacted violently to the barrage of information.
When he came back, Nathan was still sitting right where he'd been, although his posture had changed. He'd drawn in on himself, not quite huddled against the stone hearth (but close). His eyes were open, but empty, reflecting only the flames.
"I told you," he said in a detached-sounding voice. "Starting to get it now?"
Jean-Paul sat beside him again.
"It's easier to blame yourself." Simple statement. "When there isn't anything but helplessness, taking the blame is something that you can do. Even if it kills you, it's better than nothing."
"Platitudes." Almost impossibly distant-sounding now, as if he was retreating further and further away from this conversation by the moment. "He didn't stop with them."
"Experience. Nathan..." Jean-Paul cut off whatever else he had been going to say and gripped Nathan's wrist, trying to draw him out again as the telepath retreated.
His heart was pounding, his head still in a reeling horror that he was trying not to absorb, at least not until this was done with.
A memory of Nate's flickered in Jean-Paul's head again. Bright like fireflies.
Jean-Paul swallowed hard. "I said you didn't have to do this alone. Don't make me chase after you again."
Gray eyes shifted back to him, struggled for a moment to focus. Then, without a word of warning from Nathan - as if he was all out of delaying tactics - the memory reached up and swallowed both of them again.
---
He was dragged out of the room by two new faces - older men, wearing more standard body armor instead of the bodysuits. Not operatives, Nathan thought, trying to focus, to stay on his feet as they hauled him down a set of stairs. It was nearly impossible. His head was swimming, and it was only sheer force of will that kept him from throwing up as nausea swept over him. The blow to the head, he told himself. That was all.
The young man blocking his powers was a few steps ahead of them, looking back nervously at Nathan every few moments. Nathan almost told him not to worry. He couldn't concentrate enough to break through the block - not right this second, at least. Once we stop, the voice at the back of his mind said. The Cable-voice, clearer than he'd heard it in years. Then you try. Break through and take them all down before Fury sends anyone else in-
The voice fell silent abruptly at the sight of what was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. A large, open basement, fitted out with fitness equipment. Mats for sparring. The children standing on the mats in four neat lines of three apiece were preteens with shaven heads, wearing gray versions of the bodysuits. They were staring straight ahead, their empty eyes intersecting the space where Alpha and a handful of other adults, all of them armed, stood. But they might as well have been staring at the wall, for all the reaction they betrayed.
Alpha turned his head toward Nathan for the briefest of glances. The marginally brighter light of the training area made the red stains on his hands and sleeves stand out sharply.
"Sadly, we are all out of SHIELD agents." That cold, grey gaze swept over the assembled children. "How many of Fury's people can use the Trojan Horse? I want solid information, Dayspring. Names." Again, that cold smile. "No vagaries."
Nathan wanted to tell him to go to hell. But the gun was still in his hand - not to mention the MP5s in the hands of what had to be part of the facility's security detail - and his intention was clear. "None of them." The voice was hardly recognizable as his own. There should have been a tactical personality shouting profanities at him for the admission, but there was nothing but silence in the back of his mind. "I'm the only one who can."
Alpha considered the rows before him again again. Four lines of targets, three deep. He inclined his head slightly and the child nearest Nathan, a vaguely reptilian girl with large, golden eyes and a bright mosaic of sharp osteoderms across her brow and cheekbones, all but dissolved in a hail of gunfire. A bullet nicked the boy to her left. He didn't flinch or even turn to look at the pile of remains that had stippled his right side in red.
"The Trojan Horse is a threat to my entire operation, Dayspring. The sacrifice of a few incomplete projects is will worth the benefit. Again. How many SHIELD agents are capable of using the Trojan Horse?" Guns were trained on the next child in line, the boy still dripping with the blood of the dead girl.
Nathan swayed in the grip of the two guards for a moment, bile rising at the back of his throat and still, nothing but silence in his mind. He couldn't bring himself to look away from the small, pitifully crumpled corpse.
"None... of them." He forced the words out, and yet, they still sounded oddly detached. Because he knew what was he doing, and he couldn't not. They were dead if he didn't. You're dead if you do. But he had to try and save them. Had to. "It took... a telempath a decade to create it. There's only one. It's just me."
A full minute passed, during which there seemed to be no sound other than Nathan's labored breathing. Finally, Alpha spoke.
"Put him with the rest and terminate the product. There's too much potential for contamination to continue on with this batch." Alpha stepped back as his security lead Nathan forward, slamming him against the wall behind the children, who still stood at attention, unwavering, unblinking. The remaining gunmen stepped forward and took aim. Alpha held Nathan's gaze. "Pity. There was some potential in you, Dayspring. Perhaps, if we're fortunate, heredity will continue on that same promising path. Fire."
The muzzle flashes lit the vast dim basement. Four lines of targets, three deep, Nathan behind them. Able to see, in that instant when everything slowed, the way the gunfire tore through the children he'd come to save. Broken toy soldiers, flung this way and that by the impact of the bullets. Falling without a sound.
They'd left his vest on. It was still like being kicked in the chest, and there were other, sharper impacts where it didn't protect him -shoulder and arm, leg and hip. He didn't have time to feel the pain start before something smashed into the side of his head and he went down.
Blackness.
---
Nathan tore his wrist out of Jean-Paul's grip and reeled to his feet, staggering nearly halfway across the cabin before his knees buckled and he was back on the floor. His breath was coming in gasping near-sobs as the images swept through him over and over, like they were on an infinite loop.
"I was behind them," he choked out. "That's the only reason... they took the brunt of it." He raised a shaking hand to his temple. "The head wound. I would have looked... if they hadn't stopped to check..." And they hadn't had any reason to, had they? Not when they'd...
Jean-Paul hadn't moved. His eyes were squeezed shut, though it did nothing to stop the tears creeping out from beneath them. He didn't know if the screaming in his mind was his own or Nathan's and he supposed it didn't matter so much. His own words rose up in his mind, sharp and mocking as he stumbled to his feet and sank down beside Nate again.
'There are worse things to be in life than a shield.'
"I...Nate, I..."
Nathan shook his head violently. The words spilled out in an anguished flood. "They killed them because of me. Because of what I might have done to their conditioning, before they caught me... they didn't even check. They mattered that little. Product. That's all they were."
There were tears blurring his vision, and Nathan sank his head into his hand, trying futilely to draw in a deep breath. He was not hyperventilating. He wasn't.
"And then they left us there. They left us there, and tried to clean up their mess." He didn't consciously try and trigger the memory. It was the one that had haunted him the most, after all. So close to the surface, even when he was awake.
---
Not dead. Why the hell wasn't he dead? There was blood running into his eyes, and Nathan tried to draw a breath that turned into a coughing wheeze. There was cold concrete beneath the side of his face. Get up. Get up now. He wasn't alone, there were children dying on the floor, he could feel it. He tried to roll onto his side, grayed out as a wave of fiery pain tore through his shoulder.
Silence. Silence in his ears, but he could feel them. He wasn't being blocked anymore. Get out of the cuffs, the voice at the back of his mind whispered desperately. Nathan bit back a cry, tried to focus.
There was a noise like a crack of thunder, as if lightning had struck somewhere directly in the building above. It was deafening, and he felt the shock of it vibrating through the floor and the whole structure around him. Nathan managed to lift his head, and made a noise that might have been protest, or despair. Because he could see the lines of force blaze into incandescence, and then begin to tear.
The building was coming down. The telekinetic bubble sprang into existence in the last possible instant, solidifying at the same moment that the first pieces of debris hit it, and then the whole floor above was crumbling inwards with another deafening roar. There was fire behind it, billowing outwards like a star going nova, and Nathan couldn't breathe. No air. Just heat, and the only thing louder than the roar of the flames was the scream of metal tearing...
The bubble, compressed by the weight of God only knew how many tons of debris, collapsed inwards, and Nathan pushed back feebly. Somehow, it was enough. He was buried, but not crushed, although the weight of a huge crossbeam was hanging there, an inch or two above him, somehow braced at an impossible angle.
Silence, or nearly. He could hear the debris shifting, hear the crackling of flames. His own breathing, harsh and labored, catching in his chest with each breath.
And in his mind, there were flickering lights. Like streetlights at dawn, going out. Hold on, he thought half-deliriously. Hold on, I'll get us out. I'll get us out. But there was nothing coherent in the minds there with him, buried beneath the rubble, and it wasn't just because they were disintegrating, unraveling as their bodies shut down. There was pain, but no fear. No desire to hold on, to be saved. Choking, burning, bleeding, but no crying out. Not a sound as they died.
They slipped away, like fireflies into the dark, even as he reached out desperately to try and hold them here, to pull their minds back together. Stay. Stay with me. Don't go...
Too late.
He couldn't breathe. Blackness, again, and he didn't know how long it lasted before he was drifting back to fuzzy awareness. The smell of smoke was sharper, more acrid than it had been before, and he started to cough, sending waves of sick pain through his chest. The debris creaked and groaned above him, shifting alarmingly.
Cold words echoed in his mind, Alpha's parting shot about Rachel, and a strangled noise that was half-sob, half-snarl escaped Nathan. He closed his eyes, and the pressure on his shoulders eased abruptly as the cuffs snapped. One arm was still trapped beneath him, but he had one hand free, and the feeling was rushing back as circulation returned. He pushed against the underside of the beam feebly. Nothing.
You have to live. The voice at the back of his mind sounded numb, like he'd never heard it before. They're gone. You have to stay.
I know. Nathan sagged, coughing again. The smoke was getting heavier.
Start moving.
So many ways to die, trapped down here. Only one direction out. Weak telekinetic pushes shifting the debris above him, Nathan dragged himself upwards, inch by painful inch.
---
"Four hours." The voice didn't sound anything like his own. And it was so curiously calm, as if it was reciting events that had happened to someone else. "It took me four hours to get out. I couldn't... I should have been able to blast my way free, but I kept fading in and out. The smoke, maybe, or the head injury..."
"You might have just caved more of the building in on yourself." Jean-Paul's voice was rough, as if the shared memory of the smoke and choking dust was enough to coat his throat. It was the other memories, though, of the children that had been doomed before Fury ever came to Muir. Death of body, death or mind, or a lifetime of killing. No future. Those were what tightened his throat and made him feel that he would break into shards if he breathed too deeply. He took refuge in mundane analysis because every bit of him capable of feeling had been worn raw.
"They didn't know. They didn't know what was happening to them. What was done to these kids..." The calm was finally fracturing. For the last time, Nathan suspected. There was no more safe distance here. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, but the tears still came. "I couldn't help them. I couldn't do anything." He would have put Alpha's gun to his own head to save them - he had.
But it hadn't mattered. More casualties without names. More small bodies in bodybags too big for them.
#I should have been able to save them!#
No one could have. The thought made Jean-Paul want to be sick again, but that didn't lessen the truth behind it. You could only have switched them off. No one could have saved them.
His leg bumped Nate's as he shifted position and he startled slightly, confused to find a barrier of flesh and blood between them and too worn to try and withdraw into his own thoughts again.
In his heart, Nathan wanted to rebel against the idea. It should have been possible to save them. He'd wanted to, so badly. Had been prepared to trade his own life for theirs (and that brought with it the same rush of guilt it had all these weeks, whenever he thought about Rachel and Moira).
But everything had gone so wrong, and now, none of those children would get the chance to recover, to live real lives. Maybe none of them would have, even if they'd lived. The pain at that thought was like a tidal wave. Was there no chance for the others in the Taygetos program? Can't I even hope for them?
And something inside him, something that had been worn away with every Mistra facility he'd helped take down, every DDR centre Elpis had opened, every moment since they'd found out what Taygetos was, finally gave way under the weight.
"I can't do this anymore."
Jean-Paul blinked back into the present, trying to suppress his first interpretation of the words. If Nathan had come out here to kill himself, Jean-Paul had little doubt that he would be unconscious and tucked out of the way back at that gas station. It still took him a moment to come up with another explanation.
"You're going to leave the X-Men?"
A broken-sounding laugh escaped Nathan. "I think I need to ask myself that question some point down the line when the team would actually want me again." The 'do not put this man on active duty' note on his file was going to stay there for the foreseeable future, he suspected. "This. The kids. All these dead children on my conscience."
"I hope you don't expect me to argue against three fewer lives being destroyed." Jean-Paul dragged the back of his wrist across his eyes, but composure was a hopeless quest by now.
"I always thought I owed it to them. Because I'd gotten out." Because he'd run, and left so many behind. "I thought I would spend the rest of my life, trying to help. I don't know if I can live with not doing that, Jean-Paul. I just know I can't do it anymore right now." Nathan wiped at his eyes with a shaking hand. "Not when all I see are the dead."
It had been a long day of climbing, in the end; after polishing off that first face, they'd done two more in the vicinity. The others had been more straightforward ice climbs, but at that point, Nathan hadn't care. He'd just wanted to climb. And climb, and climb... if he'd been able to hop on a plane and go somewhere with real ice walls, he'd have done it in a heartbeat.
He was paying for it now, of course. His hip was throbbing steadily, even here in the warmth of the cabin, and his right arm, where the second-worst of the gunshot wounds had been, wasn't much better. It probably wasn't helping things that he was sitting on the floor instead of on the couch, but Jean-Paul was puttering around in the kitchen, and after getting the fire going, part of Nathan had apparently decided that sitting here staring into it was how he wanted to spend the next part of the evening.
"Here."
The quiet offer and the plate of sausage-laden pasta that seemed to materialize under his nose jolted Nathan out of his contemplation. Jean-Paul crouched down beside him, watching Nate carefully. "Feeling any better?"
He had kind of... wilted a little, getting back in the car for the trip back into town; fortunately, Jean-Paul had been perfectly willing to drive. Nathan took the plate with a brief smile and a nod, setting it down on the stone of the hearth. "I think I may have overdone it a little," he said, his voice gruff, yet soft. There was a strangely comforting sort of hush in the cabin, and he didn't really want to break it. "This smells good," he said, as Jean-Paul sat down across from him, with his own plate.
"Merci. But at this point, I'll happily eat anything that keeps me from cannibalism. That was a real work-out." He wasn't scolding; he'd enjoyed the climb completely and it had obviously done Nate some good. "More of the same tomorrow?"
"I don't know. You've got classes, I've got work..." Nathan took a bite or two of the pasta, chewed and swallowed before he went on. It was good. "Question of whether we really want to play hooky, I guess," he went on quietly. "Frankly, I could stay up here all week."
"No need to decide just yet." Jean-Paul chuckled softly. "Though I think the longer I am gone, the more my students will dread my return. I did imply that my expectations in terms of quality would ratchet up for every extra day they had to work on their papers."
"You're such a hardcase. I let Callie talk me into doing an independent study with her that involves watching lots of Italian movies. But then, I've always had a heart of pure marshmallow. Kids bat their eyes at me and I knuckle under." There was a tightness in his chest suddenly, and Nathan made himself spear another chunk of sausage and eat it.
"Yes, exactly." Jean-Paul didn't remark on Nate's abrupt interest in his dinner. "Which is why I have to be a hardcase in class. Callie already knows that if she says 'please' and pouts, then I crumble like feta. It's only a matter of time until the others catch on, and I'd like to be able to maintain some semblance of control over the class for as long as I can."
Jean-Paul's grip on his fork had tightened slightly with all this talk of the kids. He was hoping that the suspicions forming in his mind were wrong.
Another piece of sausage. A third. A forkful of pasta. Nathan swallowed, using the fork to push the food around the plate for a moment. "I told someone this week," he said, his voice still low, but very strained-sounding, suddenly, "that I look at the kids, and I see them as they could have been. If they'd been me, or... people like me."
Jean-Paul managed to keep his wince under the skin. That was a bit close to home.
"But that is why we stay on, non? To keep the worst of the predators at bay and give them time to learn their own potential." His gaze hadn't left Nathan since he'd sat down. "There are worse things to be in life than a shield."
"Depends on how good you are at it." Nathan's voice was even softer than it had been. Another piece of sausage. Another bite of pasta. He needed the calories; it was that simple. Eating was one of those small, yet essential things.
"I know that... what happened this week," he said, and it was so obviously not what he'd set out to say. "It bothered you because it was the kids. You could have shrugged it off. Right?"
Jean-Paul frowned a little, more at the redirection than the topic itself, but went along with it for the moment.
"I have been doing this for a while," he remarked wryly. "Another day, another deathtrap. With the kids..." He finally looked away. "No one likes watching repeats of history. I always felt that I had to look out for myself when I was younger. It was obvious no one else would. The students do not need to be in that position and I don't like knowing that I might not be able to keep them from it."
"We do our best, right?" Nathan pushed the pasta around his plate again, the motion oddly jerky. "We try, and if we can't... we're forgiven, right? Maybe not by ourselves. But by each other, at least." The slight rise to his voice on the last word made it more of a question than he'd maybe intended, and he went a shade or two paler, staring at his plate.
"Nathan, you are the best friend I have on this planet right now, so believe me when I say that you're being such an idiot that I could knock you off a cliff for it." Jean-Paul was looking at him again, head lowered slightly so that their eyes met as soon as Nate looked up. "I don't for an instant think that you would do less than your best to protect innocents. Especially children. And so until you can convince me otherwise, there is nothing you have done that needs forgiving."
"But you don't know what happened." He wasn't sure that even Betsy really had, whatever she'd said. Pieces, maybe. Like Jean knew pieces, like Jean-Paul and Angelo and probably at least a few others had figured out pieces, even without the benefit of telepathy. His gaze shifted to the flames, so that he didn't have to meet Jean-Paul's. His voice grew increasingly unsteady as he went on. "It's my fault. It all... it all went to hell."
"It's not fair of you to do this," Jean-Paul said. He'd somehow gotten closer while Nate had been looking away. "You can't sit there and eviscerate yourself over what happened and still keep everyone at arm's length. You're not the first person to make mistakes that got others killed, Nate. How are we supposed to condemn you simply by that?"
Nathan looked back at him, his eyes suspiciously bright in the firelight, full of exhausted despair. "You don't know what happened," he repeated, his voice breaking. "This wasn't a mistake. It wasn't an accident."
"Then tell me what it was." Jean-Paul's chest had tightened when Nathan's voice broke. "You...don't have to talk if you don't want to. Benefits of telepathy." The memory of those three horribly clear images cutting into his mind and the shreds of ragged, desperate emotion attached to them made Jean-Paul want to rescind the offer as soon as he'd made it, but he kept quiet.
I can't, Nathan wanted to say, never more so than when he sensed Jean-Paul instantly regret making that offer. But his friend just sat there, watching him, and even as Nathan looked away, back into the flames, he started to wonder if maybe he needed to do it.
Jean-Paul and Betsy and Jean and Moira were all right. He couldn't go on like this. It was like acid, eating him away from the inside out... and he didn't want to live like this. The thought was crystal-clear, frightening in its implications for a moment. Nathan took a deep, shaky breath.
"I can try," he almost whispered. "It might be... it's bad, Jean-Paul. The fire is the least of it."
The speedster nodded. There was no quip this time, no attempt to make the offer or what Nate had gone through seem less than it was.
"I'll let you know when I need a break," he said softly.
Nathan nodded. Pushing his plate aside, he reached out with a shaking hand and laid it lightly on Jean-Paul's temple. Ordinarily he wouldn't have needed the physical contact. This time, he thought it might be a very good idea to have something grounding him. Grounding them both.
#Like I told you, it was a reconaissance mission. The training facility was off the coast of Puerto Rico...#
---
There were five SHIELD agents on the team, the oldest of them still at least five years younger than he was. Nathan would have felt out of place on the reconaissance mission even under other circumstances. But Fury had made the very good point that he would be able to identify not just how many conditioned children were on site at the training facility, but also what additional security they had, and anything else that SHIELD would need to know when they went in for real.
In that sense it was a perfectly standard job. In every other way... it wasn't.
They went in by boat, or rather, Zodiac, skimming over the waves towards the small, uninhabited island where the training facility was supposed to be. It took them nearly half an hour to stash the boat somewhere safe and make their very careful way upwards and into the rainforest.
The facility was suprisingly substantial, a set of concrete buildings, the largest three stories in height. The complex was obviously built to last. "Expected a prefab," the lead agent, Brandon, murmured to Nathan. They'd found good cover from which to observe the facility, although no one was in evidence right now. "Looks like it's been here for a while."
Nathan didn't answer. He was staring at the building, eyes wide, mind... elsewhere. The staff, the security guards, none of them were of particular interest. He was drawn to the minds of the children like a moth to the flame. Strangely patterned, almost alien. But bright, so bright. Like fireflies.
"Anyone home?" another SHIELD officer murmured on Nathan's other side.
"Yes. Lots of people home," Nathan finally breathed. His hands were trembling slightly and he tucked them beneath his body, where the others couldn't see. "Maybe... ten, twelve kids."
"Non-operatives?"
"More. Twenty... maybe thirty. At least half of those feel like security."
"Not too bad. Would be better to do what we can to put them off-guard before we call in the troops, though; we don't have the blueprints to that building." Brandon looked sideways at Nathan, assessingly. "I'd say it's time to do your thing, Dayspring."
Nathan twitched, and couldn't hold back the brief, incredulous look. "Like hell," he said, keeping his voice low by force of will. "We're on recon-"
"And if we can call back to base and tell them they're no longer going to get shot down on approach by some teenaged energy projector, we can get on with things right now."
"No." Nathan looked away, ignoring the twisting in his stomach. "Too many variables. We don't know where the kids are inside the compound."
"So find out. You're the telepath." When Nathan didn't answer, the younger man scowled and reached out, a hand clamping down on his arm. "Dayspring, I'm ordering you-"
#I am following orders,# Nathan hissed at him telepathically, too unsettled to feel even an instant's satisfaction at the way the other man jumped. #You are improvising.#
He was right, he tried to convince himself as Brandon attempted sweet reason, his voice low but urgent. This was too tactically risky. He couldn't just light off the Trojan Horse here. It would take forty-five minutes for the rest of the SHIELD troops to get here; they were on standby, not sitting in the helicopters waiting for a call.
All about tactics. Except that it wasn't. He could still feel the children, feel their gem-like, sharp-edged minds. So warped by what had been done to them. So alive, despite it all.
The Trojan Horse would shatter them, put out their light. He knew, because it was exactly what he'd done to the girl back at SHIELD headquarters, and whatever the therapists said, she was a vegetable, an empty shell, and he had done that to her. Just like he'd done it to all the second-gens on Youra years ago...
"Dayspring." He made himself focus; Brandon was staring at him, looking resigned. "I said okay. We'll stick to plan A - but you are going to be able to do this when the times comes, right?"
The look on his face had to be a little alarming. "Yes," Nathan said, forcing the word out past the tightness in his throat. "Yes, I will."
"All right." The other man signaled to his teammates, who gathered their gear in preparation for heading back down to the beach. None of them looked at Nathan as they retreated; he thought perhaps he'd been measured and found wanting. Not part of their team. Arguing with their commander, in the field.
What the hell am I doing? He knew better than this. He should have... no, he shouldn't have. Priorities, he thought, nearly stumbling on an exposed tree root. He had to be clear about this. He wasn't here for SHIELD's sake. He was here for those children.
Afterwards, he would look back and know that he was severely distracted as they got back into the Zodiac and headed back in the direction they'd come. His mind had been anywhere but on masking their presence telepathically.
But no matter how often he tried, he couldn't remember sensing the attack. Just seeing the flash of light, the roar of the explosion and then he was underwater, breathing in water. Again.
And then everything went dark.
---
Your instincts were not wrong. Jean-Paul's mental 'voice' threaded through the black patch in Nathan's memory, buzzing with apprehension. It wasn't a protest, not yet. Only observation.
Nathan opened his eyes, to the cabin and the firelight, and the man sitting across from him. "Weren't they?" He meant it as a flat statement, but his voice gave away too much. The self-loathing was bubbling up from where he'd tried to keep it contained. "I'm not... I should have known better. I should have talked more to him before we left. If I had, instead of being lost in my own little world..." He might have known the shift in plans was coming. Might have been able to argue it with Brandon at the right time.
"Perhaps," the speedster conceded. He was dizzy and trying not to show it. It was one thing to have a mentalist in your head, another to share his memories. "Or you might have been attacked while arguing at the right time. You were sweeping the men, the base...whatever was going on in the boat, if whatever hit you was shielded...I'm not sure you had a chance either way."
"Maybe," Nathan conceded, his voice dull. "Maybe not. All I know is, I didn't have my mind where it should be. And... well." The smile that took shape on his lips was a twisted, humorless thing. "I told you it got worse. There were three survivors of that explosion, besides me. It would have been better for them if they'd died in the blast."
The smile was more of a warning than the words. Turn back now.
"Show me." Jean-Paul had no intention of going anywhere.
Nathan swallowed, then shrugged and reached out again, touching Jean-Paul's temple. #Just tell me if you need to stop,# he said, and steeled himself to return to the point where the memories started again.
---
He'd woken up shackled to a chair before. Those had never been good days, either.
Nathan sucked in a shaky breath, raising his head. Something was running down his face, and for a disjointed moment he wasn't sure whether it was water or blood. Or both. He was soaking wet, he realized in the next instant. What had happened to the boat?
The explosion. I remember. Before he could examine the fragmentary memory, he realized that he wasn't alone in the room. The man standing by the door was in his early twenties, maybe, lanky and underfed-looking, wearing some sort of dark bodysuit - and looking very nervous. Nathan blinked around blearily at his surroundings. Empty, apart from a table and a second chair, and...
Flat. No lines of force anywhere to be felt, and the silence inside his head was deafening. Nathan's head jerked upwards and he stared hard at the other man, who actually took a step backwards. No powers, he thought as his head cleared further - but no collar around his neck, either. Not psi-bafflers, I'd recognize the feel - is it him?
Instinct kicked in. He was already charting out how to get out of the chair and introduce the other man's head to the wall when the door opened.
The newcomer was all neutrals - middle-aged with thinning steel hair, dressed in greys, and devoid of expression. He regarded Nathan with no appearance of emotion at all.
"I am Alpha, and that is all you need to know on that front." The voice was brisk and businesslike, the kind you'd expect from someone about to serve you with papers. "I am, however, quite familiar with you and your...work, Nathan Dayspring. Your recent affiliations. I can not say that I am pleased to see you here." Alpha stalked forward, stopping an exact foot from Nate's chair. "I want to know why you're here, Dayspring, and whose people came with you."
The only immediate response he got was a flat stare, as Nathan pulled experimentally at the restraints, ignoring the pain as they bit into his wrists. Too tight. And not the time to rock the chair to test its weight, not when 'Alpha' was standing so close. And packing a gun, the cold, analytical part of Nathan's mind pointed out. Be careful here.
"Don't expect me to oblige," he finally said, his voice hoarse.
A thin, cold shaving of a smile curled across Alpha's lips. "I did not expect that you would."
"Sir..." The youth at the door shifted uneasily. "Sir, I won't be able to hold him indefinitely. He's too strong. Not like the-"
"Quiet. This won't take long." The door opened again, this time to admit another man, younger than the first and clad in the same dark bodysuit. It flashed across Nathan's mind that there were students at the school older than the boy, but then his attention was drawn to the man he held at gunpoint. The SHIELD agent was bruised and there was a deep gash running across his left cheek down to the hinge of his jaw, but the man entered holding his head up, giving Alpha a steady, contemptuous glare. A precise kick to the back of the man's knees left him kneeling in front of Nathan, his forehead almost touching the mutant's knee. Alpha had his own sidearm pointed at the agent's temple a heartbeat later.
"Who are you working for, Dayspring?"
Nathan met the SHIELD agent's eyes, ignoring the sudden icy feeling that had nothing to do with his drenched clothing. Becker, he told himself. They'd been introduced at the briefing, of course. But he didn't know much of anything else about the other man beyond his name. There hadn't really been time for small talk.
Becker just gazed back at him, his jaw tight and his lips pressed tightly together. Resolute. Nathan swallowed again, but his expression was still flat as he looked up at Alpha. "Treating them-" Please don't let him be the only other survivor. "-as if they're expendable is going to make you an enemy you don't want." Fury wouldn't take this well, and Taygetos was already in hiding. Surely this 'Alpha' wasn't prepared to-
Becker and Nathan both spasmed as the gun went off. Becker spouted a brief, thick geyser of blood from his skull before falling in a shuddering, reeking heap at Nathan's feet.
Alpha gave Nathan an exasperated look and shook his head. "Do not waste my time with vagaries." He turned his head to the second guard. "Boy, bring me another."
Breathe, instructed the voice at the back of his mind with perfect glacial calm, and after a long, suffocating moment, Nathan did. His heart was thundering in his ears, and his eyes flickered down helplessly to where Becker twitched and went still at his feet.
When another member of the SHIELD team was marched into the room -Lafferty, the radio operator - Nathan snapped out of that moment of shock. Give him a little. Buy time. "We were doing reconaissance," he said rapidly as Becker's corpse was dragged to the side and Lafferty was forced down in the exact same position in which his teammate had died. "That's all."
The deafening retort of the firearm crashed through the room again, and Lafferty's blood mingled with the spreading pool on the floor. A fine spray of red cooled on Nathan's arm, matting hair against his skin.
"Two simple questions. You could answer them both satisfactorily in fewer than ten words, I am sure." Alpha tapped his foot with less than perfect patience as he waited for his soldier to return with another agent. "My men were very precise with their attack, Dayspring. Trust me when I say that we can simply keep at this until you get it right."
Nathan choked back a sound of protest. Lafferty's eyes were wide open, staring. I can't. Depending on how long it had been since the boat had been hit, there could be another SHIELD team coming, to see what had happened to the first. Even reinforcements, depending on how Fury decided to react to losing contact with Nathan's team. And if he gave up the information, if there were field-ready operatives here and they were prepared for incoming...
He shifted tactics desperately, and went on the attack. "You think you've got it all figured out, don't you?" he said harshly, lips drawing back from his teeth in a snarl. "So did Carmella Ruiz. I wasn't there to see them stick the needle in her vein, but for you?" It was bluster. Pure bluster, meant to evoke some sort of reaction, and he waited. Watched for that moment when the man would be distracted as he formulated a response.
There. With a heave, he tipped over his chair, slamming into his interrogator before Alpha could take a step back. They both went down, but the chair didn't break. Shit! It had been a shot in the dark, and a bitter, breathless curse escaped Nathan as hands yanked the chair back upright, pulling him with it.
A fist slammed into his face once, then again, and Nathan reeled back in the chair, spitting blood.
By the time Nathan's vision had stopped swimming, Alpha had erected his unflappable demeanor once more, but the blood smeared across the back of his hands and soaking into the cuffs of his suit belied his composure.
"Such...small, small thoughts." He might have said more, but his people had returned, half-dragging Kurtz, the team's medical officer with them. The young man was bloodied and his right leg trailed uselessly behind him. Alpha stepped away from Nathan, his steps accompanied by quiet ripping noises as he walked across smears of gore going tacky on the cold, concrete floor. "An ex-Mistra field leader wouldn't bother going along on a simple reconaissance mission, Nathan. So do not try that weak fiction again." Alpha kicked idly at the agent's shattered limb, nodding as his prisoner choked back a scream. "Two down, Nathan."
Kurtz did scream as he was manhandled into position at Nathan's knee, but found his voice as Alpha drew his gun again.
"Wait..." The agent swallowed, breathing hard, his eyes flickering to the bodies of his comrades. "Wait, don't...you don't have to do this..."
"Stop it." The snarl was pure Cable, no Nathan in it at all - and was directed at Kurtz, not at Alpha. He drew in a ragged breath and concentrated hard, pushed with his mind just as he would have if he'd had access to his TK and was prepared to slam every hostile in the room against the walls.
Two things happened. The air felt heavy in a very familiar way for a promising, taunting moment, and the young man who'd been there when he'd come to stumbled back against the wall with a cry, one hand raised defensively. Yes, it is you, isn't it? Nathan thought in fury and pushed again, harder this time. All he needed was to break through for a moment.
There was a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye, then something cracked against his skull with enough force to grey out the room. Through the ringing in his ears, he could hear Kurtz laying the entire mission out before Alpha -- the Trojan Horse, the successful attempts to use it in breaking conditioning, everything. Then, clear, sharp and awful, another gunshot, another mess on the floor.
Alpha spoke as he left the room. "Get him ready to move."
"Sir."
---
Jean-Paul's speed managed to get him to the cabin's bathroom before he brought up dinner, but it was still a close thing. He'd seen people die and not all of them had died well, but he had never been so intimate with cold butchery. The scents of blood and emptied bowels, the churning rage and helplessness in Nate's memories overlain with his friend's very real misery and self-loathing had all been too much to take at once and his body had reacted violently to the barrage of information.
When he came back, Nathan was still sitting right where he'd been, although his posture had changed. He'd drawn in on himself, not quite huddled against the stone hearth (but close). His eyes were open, but empty, reflecting only the flames.
"I told you," he said in a detached-sounding voice. "Starting to get it now?"
Jean-Paul sat beside him again.
"It's easier to blame yourself." Simple statement. "When there isn't anything but helplessness, taking the blame is something that you can do. Even if it kills you, it's better than nothing."
"Platitudes." Almost impossibly distant-sounding now, as if he was retreating further and further away from this conversation by the moment. "He didn't stop with them."
"Experience. Nathan..." Jean-Paul cut off whatever else he had been going to say and gripped Nathan's wrist, trying to draw him out again as the telepath retreated.
His heart was pounding, his head still in a reeling horror that he was trying not to absorb, at least not until this was done with.
A memory of Nate's flickered in Jean-Paul's head again. Bright like fireflies.
Jean-Paul swallowed hard. "I said you didn't have to do this alone. Don't make me chase after you again."
Gray eyes shifted back to him, struggled for a moment to focus. Then, without a word of warning from Nathan - as if he was all out of delaying tactics - the memory reached up and swallowed both of them again.
---
He was dragged out of the room by two new faces - older men, wearing more standard body armor instead of the bodysuits. Not operatives, Nathan thought, trying to focus, to stay on his feet as they hauled him down a set of stairs. It was nearly impossible. His head was swimming, and it was only sheer force of will that kept him from throwing up as nausea swept over him. The blow to the head, he told himself. That was all.
The young man blocking his powers was a few steps ahead of them, looking back nervously at Nathan every few moments. Nathan almost told him not to worry. He couldn't concentrate enough to break through the block - not right this second, at least. Once we stop, the voice at the back of his mind said. The Cable-voice, clearer than he'd heard it in years. Then you try. Break through and take them all down before Fury sends anyone else in-
The voice fell silent abruptly at the sight of what was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. A large, open basement, fitted out with fitness equipment. Mats for sparring. The children standing on the mats in four neat lines of three apiece were preteens with shaven heads, wearing gray versions of the bodysuits. They were staring straight ahead, their empty eyes intersecting the space where Alpha and a handful of other adults, all of them armed, stood. But they might as well have been staring at the wall, for all the reaction they betrayed.
Alpha turned his head toward Nathan for the briefest of glances. The marginally brighter light of the training area made the red stains on his hands and sleeves stand out sharply.
"Sadly, we are all out of SHIELD agents." That cold, grey gaze swept over the assembled children. "How many of Fury's people can use the Trojan Horse? I want solid information, Dayspring. Names." Again, that cold smile. "No vagaries."
Nathan wanted to tell him to go to hell. But the gun was still in his hand - not to mention the MP5s in the hands of what had to be part of the facility's security detail - and his intention was clear. "None of them." The voice was hardly recognizable as his own. There should have been a tactical personality shouting profanities at him for the admission, but there was nothing but silence in the back of his mind. "I'm the only one who can."
Alpha considered the rows before him again again. Four lines of targets, three deep. He inclined his head slightly and the child nearest Nathan, a vaguely reptilian girl with large, golden eyes and a bright mosaic of sharp osteoderms across her brow and cheekbones, all but dissolved in a hail of gunfire. A bullet nicked the boy to her left. He didn't flinch or even turn to look at the pile of remains that had stippled his right side in red.
"The Trojan Horse is a threat to my entire operation, Dayspring. The sacrifice of a few incomplete projects is will worth the benefit. Again. How many SHIELD agents are capable of using the Trojan Horse?" Guns were trained on the next child in line, the boy still dripping with the blood of the dead girl.
Nathan swayed in the grip of the two guards for a moment, bile rising at the back of his throat and still, nothing but silence in his mind. He couldn't bring himself to look away from the small, pitifully crumpled corpse.
"None... of them." He forced the words out, and yet, they still sounded oddly detached. Because he knew what was he doing, and he couldn't not. They were dead if he didn't. You're dead if you do. But he had to try and save them. Had to. "It took... a telempath a decade to create it. There's only one. It's just me."
A full minute passed, during which there seemed to be no sound other than Nathan's labored breathing. Finally, Alpha spoke.
"Put him with the rest and terminate the product. There's too much potential for contamination to continue on with this batch." Alpha stepped back as his security lead Nathan forward, slamming him against the wall behind the children, who still stood at attention, unwavering, unblinking. The remaining gunmen stepped forward and took aim. Alpha held Nathan's gaze. "Pity. There was some potential in you, Dayspring. Perhaps, if we're fortunate, heredity will continue on that same promising path. Fire."
The muzzle flashes lit the vast dim basement. Four lines of targets, three deep, Nathan behind them. Able to see, in that instant when everything slowed, the way the gunfire tore through the children he'd come to save. Broken toy soldiers, flung this way and that by the impact of the bullets. Falling without a sound.
They'd left his vest on. It was still like being kicked in the chest, and there were other, sharper impacts where it didn't protect him -shoulder and arm, leg and hip. He didn't have time to feel the pain start before something smashed into the side of his head and he went down.
Blackness.
---
Nathan tore his wrist out of Jean-Paul's grip and reeled to his feet, staggering nearly halfway across the cabin before his knees buckled and he was back on the floor. His breath was coming in gasping near-sobs as the images swept through him over and over, like they were on an infinite loop.
"I was behind them," he choked out. "That's the only reason... they took the brunt of it." He raised a shaking hand to his temple. "The head wound. I would have looked... if they hadn't stopped to check..." And they hadn't had any reason to, had they? Not when they'd...
Jean-Paul hadn't moved. His eyes were squeezed shut, though it did nothing to stop the tears creeping out from beneath them. He didn't know if the screaming in his mind was his own or Nathan's and he supposed it didn't matter so much. His own words rose up in his mind, sharp and mocking as he stumbled to his feet and sank down beside Nate again.
'There are worse things to be in life than a shield.'
"I...Nate, I..."
Nathan shook his head violently. The words spilled out in an anguished flood. "They killed them because of me. Because of what I might have done to their conditioning, before they caught me... they didn't even check. They mattered that little. Product. That's all they were."
There were tears blurring his vision, and Nathan sank his head into his hand, trying futilely to draw in a deep breath. He was not hyperventilating. He wasn't.
"And then they left us there. They left us there, and tried to clean up their mess." He didn't consciously try and trigger the memory. It was the one that had haunted him the most, after all. So close to the surface, even when he was awake.
---
Not dead. Why the hell wasn't he dead? There was blood running into his eyes, and Nathan tried to draw a breath that turned into a coughing wheeze. There was cold concrete beneath the side of his face. Get up. Get up now. He wasn't alone, there were children dying on the floor, he could feel it. He tried to roll onto his side, grayed out as a wave of fiery pain tore through his shoulder.
Silence. Silence in his ears, but he could feel them. He wasn't being blocked anymore. Get out of the cuffs, the voice at the back of his mind whispered desperately. Nathan bit back a cry, tried to focus.
There was a noise like a crack of thunder, as if lightning had struck somewhere directly in the building above. It was deafening, and he felt the shock of it vibrating through the floor and the whole structure around him. Nathan managed to lift his head, and made a noise that might have been protest, or despair. Because he could see the lines of force blaze into incandescence, and then begin to tear.
The building was coming down. The telekinetic bubble sprang into existence in the last possible instant, solidifying at the same moment that the first pieces of debris hit it, and then the whole floor above was crumbling inwards with another deafening roar. There was fire behind it, billowing outwards like a star going nova, and Nathan couldn't breathe. No air. Just heat, and the only thing louder than the roar of the flames was the scream of metal tearing...
The bubble, compressed by the weight of God only knew how many tons of debris, collapsed inwards, and Nathan pushed back feebly. Somehow, it was enough. He was buried, but not crushed, although the weight of a huge crossbeam was hanging there, an inch or two above him, somehow braced at an impossible angle.
Silence, or nearly. He could hear the debris shifting, hear the crackling of flames. His own breathing, harsh and labored, catching in his chest with each breath.
And in his mind, there were flickering lights. Like streetlights at dawn, going out. Hold on, he thought half-deliriously. Hold on, I'll get us out. I'll get us out. But there was nothing coherent in the minds there with him, buried beneath the rubble, and it wasn't just because they were disintegrating, unraveling as their bodies shut down. There was pain, but no fear. No desire to hold on, to be saved. Choking, burning, bleeding, but no crying out. Not a sound as they died.
They slipped away, like fireflies into the dark, even as he reached out desperately to try and hold them here, to pull their minds back together. Stay. Stay with me. Don't go...
Too late.
He couldn't breathe. Blackness, again, and he didn't know how long it lasted before he was drifting back to fuzzy awareness. The smell of smoke was sharper, more acrid than it had been before, and he started to cough, sending waves of sick pain through his chest. The debris creaked and groaned above him, shifting alarmingly.
Cold words echoed in his mind, Alpha's parting shot about Rachel, and a strangled noise that was half-sob, half-snarl escaped Nathan. He closed his eyes, and the pressure on his shoulders eased abruptly as the cuffs snapped. One arm was still trapped beneath him, but he had one hand free, and the feeling was rushing back as circulation returned. He pushed against the underside of the beam feebly. Nothing.
You have to live. The voice at the back of his mind sounded numb, like he'd never heard it before. They're gone. You have to stay.
I know. Nathan sagged, coughing again. The smoke was getting heavier.
Start moving.
So many ways to die, trapped down here. Only one direction out. Weak telekinetic pushes shifting the debris above him, Nathan dragged himself upwards, inch by painful inch.
---
"Four hours." The voice didn't sound anything like his own. And it was so curiously calm, as if it was reciting events that had happened to someone else. "It took me four hours to get out. I couldn't... I should have been able to blast my way free, but I kept fading in and out. The smoke, maybe, or the head injury..."
"You might have just caved more of the building in on yourself." Jean-Paul's voice was rough, as if the shared memory of the smoke and choking dust was enough to coat his throat. It was the other memories, though, of the children that had been doomed before Fury ever came to Muir. Death of body, death or mind, or a lifetime of killing. No future. Those were what tightened his throat and made him feel that he would break into shards if he breathed too deeply. He took refuge in mundane analysis because every bit of him capable of feeling had been worn raw.
"They didn't know. They didn't know what was happening to them. What was done to these kids..." The calm was finally fracturing. For the last time, Nathan suspected. There was no more safe distance here. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, but the tears still came. "I couldn't help them. I couldn't do anything." He would have put Alpha's gun to his own head to save them - he had.
But it hadn't mattered. More casualties without names. More small bodies in bodybags too big for them.
#I should have been able to save them!#
No one could have. The thought made Jean-Paul want to be sick again, but that didn't lessen the truth behind it. You could only have switched them off. No one could have saved them.
His leg bumped Nate's as he shifted position and he startled slightly, confused to find a barrier of flesh and blood between them and too worn to try and withdraw into his own thoughts again.
In his heart, Nathan wanted to rebel against the idea. It should have been possible to save them. He'd wanted to, so badly. Had been prepared to trade his own life for theirs (and that brought with it the same rush of guilt it had all these weeks, whenever he thought about Rachel and Moira).
But everything had gone so wrong, and now, none of those children would get the chance to recover, to live real lives. Maybe none of them would have, even if they'd lived. The pain at that thought was like a tidal wave. Was there no chance for the others in the Taygetos program? Can't I even hope for them?
And something inside him, something that had been worn away with every Mistra facility he'd helped take down, every DDR centre Elpis had opened, every moment since they'd found out what Taygetos was, finally gave way under the weight.
"I can't do this anymore."
Jean-Paul blinked back into the present, trying to suppress his first interpretation of the words. If Nathan had come out here to kill himself, Jean-Paul had little doubt that he would be unconscious and tucked out of the way back at that gas station. It still took him a moment to come up with another explanation.
"You're going to leave the X-Men?"
A broken-sounding laugh escaped Nathan. "I think I need to ask myself that question some point down the line when the team would actually want me again." The 'do not put this man on active duty' note on his file was going to stay there for the foreseeable future, he suspected. "This. The kids. All these dead children on my conscience."
"I hope you don't expect me to argue against three fewer lives being destroyed." Jean-Paul dragged the back of his wrist across his eyes, but composure was a hopeless quest by now.
"I always thought I owed it to them. Because I'd gotten out." Because he'd run, and left so many behind. "I thought I would spend the rest of my life, trying to help. I don't know if I can live with not doing that, Jean-Paul. I just know I can't do it anymore right now." Nathan wiped at his eyes with a shaking hand. "Not when all I see are the dead."
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