xp_logs | Fiddler's Green: In Transit

Nathan wakes up on a cargo plane, to a familiar face. Alpha is not at all in a good mood.

(Warning: includes some potentially disturbing content, due to Seraph having an evil, evil mind.)

The surface he was lying on was hard and cold, vibrating in a very particular (and familiar) sort of way. Nathan managed to force his eyes partly open, breath catching unevenly in his chest as even the low light stabbed into his brain like daggers. Other salient facts registered: his hands were restrained behind his back, tightly enough that the stress on his shoulders was painful, and his powers were most definitely inaccessible.

He'd woken up to worse, but this was definitely not good.

Nathan blinked, then widened his eyes, trying to focus through the dimness. The feel of the vibration was so familiar. Plane, he thought, even as his eyes adjusted enough to let him see that he was indeed in the hold of a cargo plane. There was a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, and he turned his throbbing head to see a tall figure striding purposefully down the hold towards him.

The thin man with the furious, gimlet gaze stopped bare inches from the bound man on the floor. His movements were sharp, stiff, and under utter control. You didn't need to be a telepath to see that every fiber of the man itched to draw his sidearm from his holster and empty it between the eyes of the man who had been a thorn in his side for so many months.

"Dayspring." Alpha turned a chiseled smile with no warmth to it down toward the telepath. "It has been a while. Tell me, is Beaubier sleeping though the night yet? Or did he give up and cut his own throat?"

Nathan swallowed, then tried to use the inside wall of the plane to shift upwards a little, not so successfully. Ribs, shoulders, back, and half a dozen things all protested the movement, and he had to close his eyes for a moment to ride out the pain. At least it was helping to clear his head. "Bouncing right back," he lied, his voice rough. "Don't know why you expected anything less. So... fucking ineffectual, all of you..."

The toe of the man's boot caught Nathan across the jaw.

"The only thing that makes your life worth anything right now is the psionic construct in your mind, Dayspring. As soon as we have that, we are done and you are indisputably dead." Alpha took a step back, glancing over his shoulder as two impassive figures approached. His hand still rested unconsciously on the butt of his pistol. "You will understand what's coming soon enough."

Darkness pushed in at the edges of his vision. Nathan pushed back, and spat blood before he raised his head and glared at Alpha. "I know what you want," he rasped, trying to resettle into a less awkward position. "If you think you can keep me hidden for long enough to get it... well, good luck with that." The Professor would find him. He didn't have a doubt in his mind about that. Some small, perverse part of himself (that didn't have much of a grasp on the concept of self-preservation) drove him to keep pushing. "Down to grasping at straws, huh? It's what happens when you overreach yourself. SHIELD was just thrilled with your servers from Romania."

"As pleased as I'm sure you will be to know that your own short-sightedness will be what makes the conditioning for Taygetos stock one-hundred percent insurmountable." The reminder of that goal seemed to calm Alpha somewhat. "Though I suppose you are the sort that would derive some comfort in knowing that there won't be any cause for further incidents of precautionary culling once you are out of the picture."

"Go fuck yourself," Nathan growled, trying not to shift away at the sight of the two young operatives now standing at Alpha's side. He was starting to think it might have been a better idea to stay unconscious for a while longer. "You think shutting off my powers will make my mind easy to crack? Time's on my side, not yours."

Alpha didn't bother responding directly to the taunt, only snapped his fingers to focus the attention of the muscular blonde and the slender, red-haired girl flanking him. "Soften him up for arrival," he ordered. "No internal bleeding on anything immediately vital, nothing above the neck. His structural integrity is not overly important, but be sure he can walk and respond to questions if we need him to." He took a single step back from the prisoner, giving the pair more room in which to work.

The angry defiance in Nathan's eyes flickered and died as he looked up at the two young women. "The irony kills me," he muttered, a brief flash of something more confused in his eyes.

Despite the new bruises on her cheek from the earlier fight with Nathan, the look on the blonde's face was disturbingly blank as she stepped forward. The blow came without any warning--no narrowing of the eyes, no grunt of exertion, just an elbow cocking back and then a fist slamming into his midsection. Hard. And then another. And a third. And then the girl stepped back as though it were simply the next step in her choreography, face never changing.

Dizzy, trying not to retch and hardly able to breathe, Nathan managed to focus on the girl. Part of him wanted to say something. reassuring, even though he knew she didn't really need it and wouldn't understand it anyway. But she was so young beneath that coldly purposeful expression, and all he could really feel, even as she moved in again, was bleak hatred for the watching Alpha

Nathan managed not to make any noise as the beating continued, but by the time the blonde girl stepped back again he was struggling for air in short, gasping breaths.

The redhead was younger then the girl she'd stood beside, but the gaze she locked on Nathan was no less cold, or calculating then that of her companion. She moved closer, listening to his struggle for air as she leaned over, running a hand just above his body, planning.

She gripped him suddenly, her hand closing on his crotch like a vice as blue-white flashes of electricity sparked over her fingers, lighting her face in the shadowed confines of the plane.

There was no real point in staying silent in situations like this, they'd taught him back at Mistra; it used up energy you couldn't afford. The choked scream that slipped out of him seemed to hang in the air. His vision was blurring too badly to focus, but he thought he saw Alpha smile.

It was no consolation that after the first few shocks, he didn't have the breath left to scream. Those small hands moved steadily over his body, staying scrupulously below his neck but unerringly identifying the most effective areas to target. With each subsequent shock, his awareness of his surroundings splintered further. But it was still far, far too long until he passed out.