Man of Stone: Doug and Marie-Ange
Sep. 16th, 2009 07:32 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsThe other half of Marie-Ange's and Doug's day. After dealing with her vision of Shiro, they continue tracking their leads from earlier.
"Remind me never to allow the rest of the office to suspect that I am ordering lunch," Doug muttered as he wiped the remains of a gyro from the corner of his mouth. Of course, it was difficult to keep that sort of thing from an office of intelligence professionals, but that was beside the point. Ordering lunch had become a forty-five minute affair complete with negotiations about where they would be ordering from.
"This is the downside to you knowing all of the good places to eat and being on a first-name basis with half the owners." Marie-Ange said, nodding sagely. "Between you and Mark, I think you know every restaurateur in the city." Which was simply ridiculous and a total exaggeration but sometimes it felt that way. "But it is okay, I had time to make another phone call and Jubilee brought me a few faxes in as well."
"Oh?" Doug asked, reaching for the faxes and attempting to steal a stuffed grape leaf from the container that Marie-Ange was jealously hoarding. "What's in the faxes?" he asked her as he started flipping through them.
"Autopsy reports. You will like this." And by like, she meant not like at all. "One of our missing mutants from this morning? His body was found. Well, parts of his body were found." Marie-Ange nudged the fax towards Doug with one hand while defending her grape leaves with the fork in her other hand. "Also those are mine so please to stop with the grabby hands."
The photographs were typically clinical, but no less gruesome for that. Doug felt his stomach rebelling briefly, but marshalled it back under control before he had to run off to vomit. It wasn't the first nasty thing he'd seen since coming to work at Snow Valley, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
"Parts were found? Where's the rest of him?" Doug mused somewhat rhetorically. "Organ farming and they disposed of the 'spares'?" That didn't seem quite right. Something about the precision of the separation of the body parts nagged at his brain. "...wait a minute," he said, setting the pictures aside and stepping to a small monitor on a side table that connected into the bank of servers in his office. He brought up a file of stock photographs of Xavier's students and faculty, and queued up several shots. He walked back over to grab the autopsy photos, and compared them to the ones on his screen. "I hate it when I guess right," he muttered, swiveling the monitor so that Marie-Ange could see it.
A series of pictures of John Henry Forge and Haroun al-Rashid were on the desktop. "I think someone's mucking about with cybernetics," he said.
"He could've been an amputee." Marie-Ange suggested. The connection felt tenuous, more so than some of Doug's 'normal' leaps of logic. At least, that's what Marie-Ange was telling herself. "I think you are going to have to have more than a hunch about this..."
"Amputees don't have entire sections of ribs removed," Doug said matter-of-factly. "Also, the connection scars are a little too precise even for amputation. It doesn't fit," he insisted.
The stuffed grape leaves were suddenly not at all appetizing, and Marie-Ange shoved the little container away. "I still think we need more information." Which meant back to the files, back to the phone calls and back to paperwork and archive searching and back to trying to squeeze any little bit of information out of people who were not inclined to want to be cooperative without some kind of favor or payment in return.
---
"I hate Russia. I hate cybernetics. But mostly, I hate Russian cybernetics." Doug groused and gestured emphatically as he entered Marie-Ange's cubicle several hours later. "So, I got a little tidbit. The whole cybernetics theory? Got me to thinking about those SIROCCO people we dealt with a while back. Cybernetically enhanced mutants and all that. Well, I did some digging, and guess where SIROCCO got their tech from?"
Marie-Ange feigned a look of total cluelessness. "Oh, let me guess. Iowa? No, I know. New Zealand. They were experimenting on sheep, yes?" She tabbed away from the document she was working on, and spun her chair to face Doug. "Really, I am getting very tired of governments selling off their old programs just to have those programs come back to haunt people decades later."
Doug set a folder he'd been carrying down in front of Marie-Ange. "The 'Krasnoe Dinamo' project. Part of the Soviet attempts at creating a super soldier. I went crawling through some old archives. Which, of course, raises a nasty question. Did I 'guess' the password, or did I get it from one of the other Soviet weaponization projects?" He tapped his skull along with the oblique reference to Mastermold.
"You guessed the password." Marie-Ange wasn't' even going to consider the other option. She already had nightmares about that sort of thing and she knew Doug did as well, and making them worse was not acceptable. "I think that I shall join you in hating Russia. Also I think I need a coffee drink, and that you should join me."
"You get to order. The baristas like you more than me," Doug said with a pout.
---
"Krasnoe Dinamo. The Crimson Dynamo." Doug and Marie-Ange's voices were kept in that careful register that they couldn't be heard more than a foot or two away, but not so quiet that they looked obvious whispering to each other. Plus they were in a far corner of the coffee shop, so they would easily see anyone getting in hearing range long before it became an issue. "Headed by one Piotr Phobos. Eventually shut down due to lack of success, though judging by SIROCCO, that was probably due to a lack of the right kinds of subjects, and the crudeness of Soviet tech at the time." Doug's brain all too easily supplied the sort of operative that could have been created from Piotr Rasputin with a higher technology level.
"A name is better than nothing." Marie-Ange was building a careful tower of sugar packets on the table between them, already a few stories high. "So where is Comrade Phobos now? Dead? Hiding in some country that does not care that he was carving people up like a Christmas goose?"
"Not sure. Haven't gotten that far yet. But considering he's our likeliest person to hit...I mean hit -up-...for more information, I'm thinking this might be time to bring to the rest of the team. What do you think?" Doug asked, sipping at his coffee.
"I think that I have already reached the limit of contacts in Russia that I can count on to not lie to me and then try to get money out of me." Marie-Ange said. "Or try to get me naked. I do not want to be naked in Russia again. I got sick the last time." Hot spring or not, it had been very cold. "I think yes, more resources would be good. Also I think more coffee would be good."
"Remind me never to allow the rest of the office to suspect that I am ordering lunch," Doug muttered as he wiped the remains of a gyro from the corner of his mouth. Of course, it was difficult to keep that sort of thing from an office of intelligence professionals, but that was beside the point. Ordering lunch had become a forty-five minute affair complete with negotiations about where they would be ordering from.
"This is the downside to you knowing all of the good places to eat and being on a first-name basis with half the owners." Marie-Ange said, nodding sagely. "Between you and Mark, I think you know every restaurateur in the city." Which was simply ridiculous and a total exaggeration but sometimes it felt that way. "But it is okay, I had time to make another phone call and Jubilee brought me a few faxes in as well."
"Oh?" Doug asked, reaching for the faxes and attempting to steal a stuffed grape leaf from the container that Marie-Ange was jealously hoarding. "What's in the faxes?" he asked her as he started flipping through them.
"Autopsy reports. You will like this." And by like, she meant not like at all. "One of our missing mutants from this morning? His body was found. Well, parts of his body were found." Marie-Ange nudged the fax towards Doug with one hand while defending her grape leaves with the fork in her other hand. "Also those are mine so please to stop with the grabby hands."
The photographs were typically clinical, but no less gruesome for that. Doug felt his stomach rebelling briefly, but marshalled it back under control before he had to run off to vomit. It wasn't the first nasty thing he'd seen since coming to work at Snow Valley, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
"Parts were found? Where's the rest of him?" Doug mused somewhat rhetorically. "Organ farming and they disposed of the 'spares'?" That didn't seem quite right. Something about the precision of the separation of the body parts nagged at his brain. "...wait a minute," he said, setting the pictures aside and stepping to a small monitor on a side table that connected into the bank of servers in his office. He brought up a file of stock photographs of Xavier's students and faculty, and queued up several shots. He walked back over to grab the autopsy photos, and compared them to the ones on his screen. "I hate it when I guess right," he muttered, swiveling the monitor so that Marie-Ange could see it.
A series of pictures of John Henry Forge and Haroun al-Rashid were on the desktop. "I think someone's mucking about with cybernetics," he said.
"He could've been an amputee." Marie-Ange suggested. The connection felt tenuous, more so than some of Doug's 'normal' leaps of logic. At least, that's what Marie-Ange was telling herself. "I think you are going to have to have more than a hunch about this..."
"Amputees don't have entire sections of ribs removed," Doug said matter-of-factly. "Also, the connection scars are a little too precise even for amputation. It doesn't fit," he insisted.
The stuffed grape leaves were suddenly not at all appetizing, and Marie-Ange shoved the little container away. "I still think we need more information." Which meant back to the files, back to the phone calls and back to paperwork and archive searching and back to trying to squeeze any little bit of information out of people who were not inclined to want to be cooperative without some kind of favor or payment in return.
---
"I hate Russia. I hate cybernetics. But mostly, I hate Russian cybernetics." Doug groused and gestured emphatically as he entered Marie-Ange's cubicle several hours later. "So, I got a little tidbit. The whole cybernetics theory? Got me to thinking about those SIROCCO people we dealt with a while back. Cybernetically enhanced mutants and all that. Well, I did some digging, and guess where SIROCCO got their tech from?"
Marie-Ange feigned a look of total cluelessness. "Oh, let me guess. Iowa? No, I know. New Zealand. They were experimenting on sheep, yes?" She tabbed away from the document she was working on, and spun her chair to face Doug. "Really, I am getting very tired of governments selling off their old programs just to have those programs come back to haunt people decades later."
Doug set a folder he'd been carrying down in front of Marie-Ange. "The 'Krasnoe Dinamo' project. Part of the Soviet attempts at creating a super soldier. I went crawling through some old archives. Which, of course, raises a nasty question. Did I 'guess' the password, or did I get it from one of the other Soviet weaponization projects?" He tapped his skull along with the oblique reference to Mastermold.
"You guessed the password." Marie-Ange wasn't' even going to consider the other option. She already had nightmares about that sort of thing and she knew Doug did as well, and making them worse was not acceptable. "I think that I shall join you in hating Russia. Also I think I need a coffee drink, and that you should join me."
"You get to order. The baristas like you more than me," Doug said with a pout.
---
"Krasnoe Dinamo. The Crimson Dynamo." Doug and Marie-Ange's voices were kept in that careful register that they couldn't be heard more than a foot or two away, but not so quiet that they looked obvious whispering to each other. Plus they were in a far corner of the coffee shop, so they would easily see anyone getting in hearing range long before it became an issue. "Headed by one Piotr Phobos. Eventually shut down due to lack of success, though judging by SIROCCO, that was probably due to a lack of the right kinds of subjects, and the crudeness of Soviet tech at the time." Doug's brain all too easily supplied the sort of operative that could have been created from Piotr Rasputin with a higher technology level.
"A name is better than nothing." Marie-Ange was building a careful tower of sugar packets on the table between them, already a few stories high. "So where is Comrade Phobos now? Dead? Hiding in some country that does not care that he was carving people up like a Christmas goose?"
"Not sure. Haven't gotten that far yet. But considering he's our likeliest person to hit...I mean hit -up-...for more information, I'm thinking this might be time to bring to the rest of the team. What do you think?" Doug asked, sipping at his coffee.
"I think that I have already reached the limit of contacts in Russia that I can count on to not lie to me and then try to get money out of me." Marie-Ange said. "Or try to get me naked. I do not want to be naked in Russia again. I got sick the last time." Hot spring or not, it had been very cold. "I think yes, more resources would be good. Also I think more coffee would be good."
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