Mnemovore: Nathan, Jean, Shiro, Monet, Marius, and Jean-Paul

[x-cynosure.livejournal.com]

With the location of the Taygetos safehouse confirmed, the X-Men move in to retrieve their friend.

Warning: Potentially disturbing imagery beneath the cut.



The whole of the forest was shrouded in a thick, clinging fog, reducing the pre-dawn visibility to nearly zero. A thin carpet of dry evergreen needles crunched dully under the feet of the five X-Men like hundreds of tiny bones as they made their cautious way up the mountain slope, scanning the area with senses more versatile than normal sight -- telepathy, infrared vision, and feral senses on loan from an absent teammate. All the information they had indicated that the Taygetos safehouse where Northstar was being held was concealed on this slope and they would find it.

Nathan stopped for a moment, one hand against a rock outcropping beside him. The pause was less to catch his breath than to gather his composure. Tentatively, trying not to wince, he scanned ahead of them - carefully, since he didn't want to test the efficiency of the painkillers he'd taken on the plane just yet. Best to save that for later. Realistically they were walking into a fight. If they could only establish where Jean-Paul was, before they did...

But it was wasted effort; he couldn't sense Jean-Paul. He couldn't sense anyone. Charles had said the place was shielded, that the flash he'd caught of Jean-Paul's mind had been been brief. Maybe he'd been moved closer to the edge of the shielding, something like that. Still, Nathan had been hoping that once they were closer, they could pick up on something more, at least. The lack of any obvious watchers made him edgy. To him that suggested the non-obvious.

Ambush. Trap. That was why they'd taken Jean-Paul, wasn't it? It was the only thing that made sense. Even if he'd been in his right mind when he'd gotten that phone call, he never would have agreed to a trade. But a rescue mission? Taygetos would have known that was inevitable.

Shiro stepped up quietly next to Nathan. He'd shed his right glove as soon as they'd landed; the power indicator was glowing too brightly from anger and worry, and they didn't need that giving them away. He blinked to clear away the red remnants of his infrared scan. "I do not see much. Some animals, no humans."

"Not smellin' much recent, either," Marius agreed from his crouch a few feet away, "but it could be the wind takin' away the scent. Apologies." What he could smell very well was the anxiety from the others, especially the two men. He was proud of himself for restricting his own nerves to a steady flexing of his claws; he didn't have much of a relationship with Jean-Paul, but the same could not be said about the personal associations triggered by Taygetos -- especially with his current power-set. Trying to push it from his mind, Marius instead cocked his head at Jean in silent askance.

Whoever was shielding them was good; knowing they were there Jean could sense the edges where the shielding lay, a sort of fuzz in her mind where the honestly empty forest became empty with a flavor of 'not worth looking, you can go away, no really, nothing to see here' which was subtle enough it was almost invisible to her psychic senses. Almost. "They're definitely..." she started, and then cut off, going pale at a sudden spike of psychic fear which cut off abruptly, along with the shielding. But even with the shields gone, there weren't as many mental signatures as there should be. "Something's wrong. We need to move."

As whatever shielding had protected the Taygetos operation went down, the safehouse's location lit up like a beacon in the night; their target was less than a mile west of them. As the shielding continued to falter and fail, it became clear that the panic which had sparked along Jean's senses had not been a fluke. The sparse signatures continued to flare in pain and panic, then began winking out.

"Shit. Shitshitshit," Monet muttered, catching the edge of Jean's anxiety. She stepped back and shot up into the air, covering the ground-based X-Men as they advanced.

Nathan, sensing the same thing as Jean, abruptly reached the point of no return. He'd had enough. The fear and uncertainty of the days wandering the Ukraine, the raging guilt that had kicked in as soon as his awareness of the here-and-now had returned... it wasn't ending like this. It couldn't. His exoskeleton roared into life around him and he launched himself off the ground, heading directly for the facility.

Shiro was halfway into the air when Monet moved, and rocketed past her and Nathan. He didn't notice the small gun turrets rise from their concealment in the ground until they began shooting, but he barely spared them a fraction of his attention as they exploded below him in spectacular bursts of golden flame.

Racing into the middle of... whatever the hell was going on down there was definitely a natural reaction, Jean figured, seeing as Jean-Paul was in the middle of it, aware of the hyper-blur of his mind even if she couldn't get a fix on it. At the same time, she wasn't quite ready to throw all caution to the wind, a feeling which was reinforced as what looked like automated defenses kicked in, shooting at Shiro. She lifted herself off the ground, wrapping her own shields around her and then cast a glance at her remaining teammate. "Want a ride down there?"

"If you would be so kind," the boy nodded. An instant later Marius felt the full-body grip that indicated telekinesis being applied to his uniform rather than his central mass, which was a small but important distinction when one's powers were characterized by absorption and redirection. Not that he would have minded the additional boost, he considered as Jean took them after the others. Physically, he felt Kyle's powers gave him security enough, but the obvious alarm of his teammates was having the sort of psychological impact the mere threat of bodily harm couldn't even scrape. It was unnerving.

The safehouse's location had been chosen well. The squat, concrete building had the majority of its levels below ground, and what was above was protected on three sides by rocky outcrops. The path leading to the entrance was hidden by the trees as well as defended by the concealed artillery that Shiro had burned down to slag. The crack of igniting ammunition was still echoing off the rocks as the X-Men approached, but despite having clearly announced themselves, no resistance came to meet them through the fog. The only obstacle they found was a closed door with a complicated keypad lock. From within, only the dimmest flickers of pain and shock reached the telepaths and even those were fading.

Monet took one look at the lock and stepped back a few steps. "I'll get the door," she muttered, dropping to a sprinter's crouch. She took a deep breath before moving forward at a dead run. Her shoulder slammed into it and the door gave. Monet stumbled slightly and recovered, moving forward to drop at the nearest corner.

Nathan dropped his exoskeleton and was running in after her in the same moment. Not when they were this close, part of him pleaded silently. If this was some kind of scorched-earth tactic, now that they'd been found, this could be even worse than he'd imagined. And his friend was in the middle of it, because of him. He opened his mouth to call out to Jean-Paul, was already halfway to forming a telepathic call as well, when he saw the first of the bodies.

The corpse had been propped up against the wall beside the entrance way before Monet had taken down the door; it now lay in a twisted heap, one outstretched arm reaching toward the intruders who had arrived just too late. Had the body been on its feet, Nathan noted, the crushed wreck of its chest would have corresponded to the dented wall, the crimson of the impact splatter -- darkening, but still vivid against the stark white of the corridor -- and the fainter streak of thin, oxidizing red running down the wall where the corpse had slumped down after.

The corridor before the rescue team was well lit -- white wall, grey tile, and more bodies. A second corpse lay just beyond the first, nearly torn in two, a discarded firearm and a long skid of blood and organs marking where the man had been originally cut down. Three more doors with keypad locks lined the hallway, all of them open and blocked with the broken bodies of Taygetos personnel.

A mental signature ghosted over the awareness of the telepaths, there and gone.

"They are still warm," Shiro said huskily as he donned his discarded glove. The power indicator lit up like a Christmas tree, but he didn't care enough to rein himself in. He looked up from the bloody masses of pulp to Nathan, and it didn't take a telepath to tell what he was thinking. Any flyer should know what happens when one object with high momentum collides with a stationary, squishy object, like a human body.

Marius was still at the entrance, suddenly light-headed. The smell had hit him almost the instant Monet had taken the door: blood and viscera, released bowels, urine. Telling himself it was no different than working rescue after Manhattan had been attacked, he forced himself inside.

"All human, these." Trying to focus on the task at hand, the boy ventured forward to examine the bloodspatter on the walls. "Except some of this here. Not much, but it's . . . it's Jean Paul's . . ." He faltered as the bloodtrail lead his eyes to a caved-in skull, one eye forced from its socket, and that was too much. Marius spun away and vomited.

After her years working in hospitals and the medlab, the smell was not what got to Jean. Shiro's logic was at the forefront of his mind, and even if she hadn't picked the idea up from him, the facts were inescapable. The second intuitive leap corresponded with yet another brief flicker of what might be thought and Jean sucked in a deep breath. "He's alive. He's here and he's alive." She paused then added, "No one else is."

"Jesus fuck. Jesus fucking fuck!" Monet muttered. The bodies had been bad enough, so awful she hadn't realized what she was running past until the others had reached her. The idea that it might have been Jean Paul responsible for them was just too much to take in. "I guess we go... find him, right?" she asked, staring down the corridor. There was blood at one end but not the other. Which meant they had to go that way. She signaled left and waited, biting her lip and determined not to start crying yet. She had work to do now.

A blur of motion at the far end of the corridor resolved into a slim human figure before they had taken more than a few steps. The new arrival was in tatters, the remnants of an armored body suit and his victims hanging off of his body in shreds. Sweat and gore shone wetly against his exposed skin as he came to a full stop, regarding the other mutants in the hallway with an utter lack of comprehension. He shifted his weight uncertainly, for an instant seeming as if he would retreat, but then there was a scream of torn air and, an eyeblink later, Monet had been slammed into the far end of the corridor with Jean-Paul atop her.

"No!" Monet could be hurt. It took a hell of a lot, but it could be done - he'd done it. Nathan reached out telekinetically, yanking Jean-Paul back and away from her. But the damage to his mind made him clumsy, slower than he should be, and he lost his grip on the speedster an instant later. "Jean-Paul," he said uncertainly as his friend regained his balance in the air, staring at them. "Jean-Paul, it's us-" He tried to reach out telepathically - and stopped short, swallowing back nausea of his own.

"He doesn't know it's us," he said numbly.

Shiro ignored Nathan and took a step forward. He felt as sick as everyone else but kept his eyes on Jean-Paul and not on the pieces of meat clinging to his skin. "Don't be foolish. Of course he knows who we are." He stepped forward again, kicking up a puddle of blood that stained the hem of his pants red. He paid it no mind. "Come, let us go home."

Jean-Paul continued to hover a few inches off of the floor, breathing hard. His pause brought the previous flicker of mental presence back on-line for the group's telepaths, but there was nothing like thought attached to it. Act. React. Both states spurred by an unrelenting pain that seemed unattached to the shallow gashes along the speedster's body. Bloodshot blue eyes, glassy with stress and exhaustion, slid over Nathan without any sign of recognition before stopping on Shiro. There was another moment of confused hesitation, which evaporated as Monet began struggling to her feet. Caught between two potential targets, Jean-Paul's attention fixed on the one approaching.

That look -- Shiro was wrong, even if somewhere deep down Jean-Paul did know who they were there wasn't anything he could do about it, Marius could see it in his face. Talking wasn't going to fix this. There was nothing there but fight or flight, and there was no chance of flight. From the core of every instinct and memory he had, Marius knew it.

Not thinking of it, knowing he could never do it if he did, Marius moved. Just as Jean-Paul's attention began to move from Nathan to Monet to Shiro, the boy slapped his palm against the blood-smeared wall, brought it to his mouth, and licked it clean.

The attack hit Jean Paul like a freight-train just as his muscles had begun to tense for a lunge, the full-on tackle driving the speedster out of the air and into the opposite wall. The younger man, not anticipating either the force of his own momentum or the lack of resistance from an airborne opponent, tried to twist in midair to avoid a fatal collision. The two men hit the wall at an angle, each one taking the impact hard in the shoulder. Hissing in pain as he tried to get a grip around Jean-Paul's arms, Marius yelled "Get hi--"

Marius' newly-acquired reflexes were all that saved him from a broken neck. He got a block up quickly enough to change the vicious strike that Jean-Paul aimed at his throat from a direct hit to a glancing blow that bruised to the bone and cut off his air. The greater durability that protected Jean-Paul from his own velocity only engaged while he was at speed, the main reason why the speedster's right arm did not seem to be functioning quite right after the impact with the wall...not that it was at all easy for any outside the two currently engaged in hand-to-hand to make out, as the speedster rained down dozens of punishing blows in an instant, compelling Marius to put all his attention to deflecting and dodging and forcing a retreat that moved them both back toward the doorway leading out to the mountainside and open sky.

Another strike glanced off of Marius' battered forearms, grazing his cheek, and the entire corridor lit up in a painfully bright supernova of white light.

Hand-to-hand was not going to work, Nathan knew, even as he reeled back against the wall, shielding his eyes from the explosion. Not with Jean-Paul in the state that he was in, fighting to kill. "Shiro, Monet - help Marius keep him busy," he shouted hoarsely, knowing that he didn't have the ability to multitask with his telepathy right now. Him half-conscious with a migraine wasn't going to help the situation. "Jean..."

"Got it!" Monet called, turning toward Marius and Jean-Paul. Flying at them, she slapped Jean-Paul lightly on the back of his head. "Come on, bitchface. Come and fucking get me!" She slapped him again and flew as fast as she could down the hall, turning and coming back at him. It seemed like he might go for a moving target...

Jean herself was still reeling slightly from the near blankness that could be seen in Jean-Paul's mind when he paused. She knew what Nathan meant, but it still took her a moment to process as Monet rocketed down the hall. "It'd... there's been too much done to him to fix this quickly. We need to just shut him down and get him back to Charles," she said, turning to Nathan. "It's going to take both of us to get through his natural defenses at speed..."

"Then we will slow him down." The blood beneath Shiro's feet vaporized as he took off and followed Monet and Jean-Paul down the corridor. "Oi, aho! Pay attention to me!" he shouted over the thunderous clap of a plasma blast.

A "light slap" from Monet was enough to leave almost anyone seeing stars and Jean-Paul staggered. Marius and the path outside were both forgotten; Monet had his full attention. He screamed past the telepaths and Shiro as if they were standing still, tackling Monet though the air and against the wall at the end of the corridor, his arm pressing down on her neck. Dust and shards of drywall rained down on them, but she wasn't breaking. She was stronger and tougher, but he was far, far faster to react and they were still in the air. The two disappeared around the corner of the hallway, crashing into the floor, the end of the hall, and down a set of concrete stairs in as many seconds as the speedster attempted to batter the life from the woman in his grip.

With a final look at the two psis, Marius took one last deep breath and sped to the stairwell after the others. Like this, the world seemed to crawl: bodies moving in slow motion, the strangely gentle sleet of Shiro's plasma as he passed the man. Unfortunately, this enhanced perception gave him no advantage over his target, and just as Marius launched himself at the speedster he abruptly found not Jean-Paul in his path, but Monet.

The impact sent the two Australians through the door and spilling into the level beyond. Stunned, Marius at first couldn't understand the stickiness beneath his cheek. Then he opened his eyes.

They'd landed facing the threshold of a makeshift barracks. He could make out five distinct genetic signatures, and that awareness was the only thing that could have told him the number of corpses at a glance. As his vision resolved, he could make them out clearly: three girls, one metallic-skinned, and two boys, one with green skin and quills and the other clawed. His power fed him the specifics: two ferals, a power-dampener, a teleporter, and an energy projector. Taygetos' ambush-team, the ones they'd been prepared for. None of them were over eighteen.

It had taken Monet a moment or two to wriggle her head out from under Marius' legs and look around the room. She screamed and closed her eyes. "Ohfuckfuckfuckfuck," she muttered before opening them again to look for Jean-Paul. There was ...blood on the ground under her hands. And on her uniform. She took one whimpering breath and then another, trying not to breathe too deeply.

The room lit up seconds later when Shiro arrived, his fire form casting ghastly shadows on the slaughtered children. Jean-Paul was nowhere in sight, but before Shiro could open his mouth to ask about the fallen Australians, he caught a familiar and near-blinding red light out the corner of his eye and just barely managed to avoid being eviscerated on the spot. He retaliated instinctively with a wave of plasma that went out in all directions before he could focus and direct it at Jean-Paul. "Yamete! Open your eyes, Jean-Paul! We are your friends and we are going to help you! Stop fighting."

The link with Jean was more awkward than it should have been, at least on his part - it was like reaching out to her with a burned hand and trying to ignore the pain even the gentle pressure provoked. It wasn't that which made Nathan stumble mentally and nearly lose the link, however - it was absorbing Monet and Marius's impressions of what they'd just found. Force of will and long habit kept him on his feet and focused.

"Oh God," Jean breathed, staggering slightly herself. She managed not to say out the first thought out loud, but Nathan had no trouble picking it up: Will he even want to wake to this? But she pressed on before he could react, reaching out, using their teammates as a stepping stone to find Jean-Paul's mind. The plasma had stilled him for the moment, it might be enough. #Sleep, Jean-Paul,# she sent, trying to be as gentle as possible as she fought through the wreck of his mind but given how little time they had, there was only so much she could do.

The heat of Shiro's blockade drove Jean-Paul back, away from his downed teammates, away from the stairwell. Some part of him was aware that he was being herded, being trapped again. An animal desperation flashed in his eyes for a moment, but Jean's command reached him before he could attempt to escape. The speedster clutched at his head, uttering his first sound since he'd attacked them, a low, hoarse cry of pain as the mental intrusion disrupted the shards of his mind. Trying to push the command through was like yelling through dark water, but for all that Jean-Paul's mind was little more than wreckage on first contact, now that she was in, he had no shields left to bypass. Jean-Paul went down to one knee.

He was down on one knee but not down. Monet could only guess at how quickly his speed would allow him to shake off Jean's command. She lurched to her feet and ran the three steps to him. Wrapping one arm around his neck, she forced him into a sleeper hold. She'd never done it on anything other than a drone before. "Jean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry but I don't want to hurt him. Can you make sure?" she babbled, knowing Jean would be able to pick it up.

Now that he was still, the blur of his mind slowed to near normal speeds, Jean and Nathan had a chance to work. Finesse would have to wait, though. It was Nathan's familiarity with Jean-Paul's mind that directed her, but Jean was in control as they reached for the sleep centers of his brain, no mere suggestion this as she triggered a mental switch from conscious to unconscious and the speedster slumped back in Monet's grasp.

As soon as he sensed Jean-Paul's mind go dark, Nathan pushed himself away from the wall, half-stumbling as he headed for the stairs. The bodies registered, would always register when he remembered this place, but he didn't hesitate. Just headed for his unconscious friend as quickly as he could.

Even down and unconscious, Jean-Paul's respiration and heartrate were elevated. A quick look over showed that he was battered and gashed, but firmer touches to his mind revealed a more intense pain, unconnected to his injuries, emanating directly from his mind.

Jean was only a few steps behind Nathan as he started down the stairs, which became a few more at the entrance to the room and the remains of the children. Her eyes flickered closed almost of their own accord before she managed to steel herself and get to Jean-Paul's side. His vitals were alarming, the state of his mind more so, but there was nothing she could do for him here. "Monet, come on, help me get him up to the medical bay in the Blackbird."

"Okay." Monet shifted her hold on him, placing her arms under his shoulders and knees. She stood carefully and headed toward the stairs, visibly shaking.

Shiro stared at the retreating forms until they left the room, fighting the urge to follow them and stay with Jean-Paul until he recovered, however long that may be. The reek of partial corpses littered on the ground reminded him of the task at hand, though, and he turned to Nathan and Marius. "We ought to ensure that he left no one and nothing untouched," he suggested, his voice tight. And then he'd burn the place to the ground.

Marius stared at him, not quite comprehending how that could even be in question, but nodded. He cleared his throat and gestured to the barracks. "All the operatives are accounted for. The strike-force." He scanned the hallway, eyes settling on each body, or what remained of it. "Not seein' the telepath . . . wait."

There was something on the floor in front of one of the doors -- just a suggestion, but enough to attract his attention. Marius approached cautiously, then risked a look around the frame. The color drained from his face.

"There he is." The Australian took a step back, yellow eyes wide on the contents of the room. "An' there, an' there, an' there . . ."

Nathan had approached soundlessly behind him. He said nothing - had said nothing, since Monet and Jean had carried Jean-Paul away. He stepped past Marius and into the room, empty gray eyes scanning its gory contents until they landed on the table in the center of the room, with its broken restraints. The muscles along his jaw twitched, and the table and everything else in the room started to tear itself apart, as if being pulled apart from the inside out. The ground beneath their feet rumbled and the building shook, enormous cracks appearing along the walls.

"O-oi!" Alarmed, Marius made a grab for the other man's elbow. "We're still in here!"

"After we find what we need, Cable." The almost fully-illuminated power indicator belied Shiro's disturbingly calm tone, although he was right there along with Nathan in terms of desire to annihilate. "We are here for Northstar."

Nathan shook his head slightly, as if Shiro's voice was a fly buzzing around his head. But the building did stop shaking, the pieces of the table and the other equipment in the room clattering back to the floor. Frowning, he moved towards one of the walls, reaching out and dragging a hand across it, through the blood. The look in his eyes had sharpened, grown less vacant.

"There's something on the other side of this wall," he said, his voice low and rusty. "I felt it when I-" Leaving the sentence unfinished, he laid his hand flat against the wall, eyes narrowing. More cracks spiderwebbed across the concrete, dirt trickling through the gaps. He continued to work, his eyes going glassy with pain, and the wall slowly disintegrated under the push of his telekinesis.

And there was something beyond - another room, one with no immediately obvious entrance or exit, and full of computer equipment. Nathan stepped through the 'door' he'd created and into the hidden room, noting the coolness of the air. "Server room," he said hoarsely, and spotted something on the floor. It looked like nothing so much as a well-secured manhole. A flicker of telekinesis tore over the cover, and he sent another wave of telekinetic force down through the hole, mapping it. "Tunnel... leading out to the other side of the slope." Something close to a laugh escaped him, but it was a broken, jagged sound. "Any bets that none of our corpses knew this was here?"

"Even if they had, there'd've been no time," Marius said distantly. The Australian couldn't stop looking at the walls. At the glistening chunks that clung to the paint and concrete. At the little red drops that fell from the ceiling and into pools on the floor. The press of mutant bone and flesh everywhere, so palpable his muscles were almost in spasm. Still frozen on the doorway, he found his gaze drawn to a misshapen lump of flesh he realized was a skull, almost split in two. "Just not quick enough," he murmured.

"Karma sucks." Shiro roughly pushed past Marius into the room. "What do we need?"

Marius looked at Nathan uncertainly, almost grateful the only thing he could see of the man was his back. "Suppose whatever we can get from the computers."

Nathan ignored both of them and walked down the length of the server room, just to assess the equipment. As he turned around and walked back, the power flickered off on each machine, and the server towers rose into the air, floating in neat lines behind him. "Upstairs," he said, not looking at either of them. "Look for any paperwork. Any other computers - yank the hard drives if you find them. Anything else that looks informative, take it. We can't count on SHIELD being able to get into the country before Taygetos gets back to clean out the place." So they needed to bring back as much as they could.

And he couldn't go back to the plane just yet. He just needed... a few minutes.

Shiro nodded and turned to leave the room. "We should not leave anything for Taygetos to find, period. No records, much less this building." The itch to blow up was growing more incessant by the minute, no doubt assisted by Nathan's impatience.

"Right," Marius said. He finally extricated his gaze from the carnage and took a deep breath. "Right."

There wasn't much to be found in the lower-level, and they took what they could from the upper one. Unsure of what was important, they settled for removing the locked filing cabinet and computers from the security/communications room, just in case. The Australian tried hard not to look at anything but the equipment; he didn't need to think about which of the corpses had been reading a split-spined Michael Crichton novel, or drinking coffee from a chipped Red Cross mug.

"Think that's it," Marius reported as he set down his end of the filing cabinet, praying that it was. Right now he wanted only two things: to burn his gore-smeared leathers, and to never see that abattoir again.

After helping the others load the Blackbird with whatever he could, Shiro stepped out and returned to the safehouse. He took deep, steady breaths with each step, the same technique he'd taught Angel to control the fire burning inside her. This wasn't to suppress himself, though, but to stoke the flames and initiate the countdown. He returned to the room in which they'd subdued Jean-Paul, still reeking of eviscerated young bodies, and held out his hands palms up, as if in supplication.

Shiro caught up with the retreating Blackbird minutes later, the safehouse now nothing more than rubble and smoke.