Don't Close Your Eyes: Contact

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

While trying to regroup from their previous attempt at a rescue, Doug, Haller, and Crystal receive a break when they are contacted by Jubilee, who's inside the mansion.



Jubilee paced as she held the phone to her ear, listening to the dial tone as it rang, "Come on, Doug, pick up."

Doug's eyes narrowed. The number that showed up was from a batch of 'burner' phones that X-Force kept - temporary disposable phones that were designed to help evade tracing of their communication and location. It was impossible to guess just from the number who had the phone and why they were using it, but since Jubilee was still inside the mansion... He thumbed the 'talk' button on his phone and brought it up to his ear. "Operator," he said curtly, on the chance that someone else had come into possession of the phone. If it was one of his teammates, they would recognize his voice. If it was an enemy, he would give away as little information as possible.

"Doug! You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice," Jubilee replied, the relief evident in her tone "Tell me you're outside, cause seriously, this whole situation is nuts, we've got a dead cuckoo and there was some weird ass dream with Selene and I am totally over this shit."

"Jubes." The simple act of saying her name uncoiled the knot that had been making its way up his spine since he'd been called and found out that she was trapped inside...whatever this situation is. Then her rapid-fire status report caught up to his thinking process, and he winced. "Dead?" The Cuckoos were strange, to be sure, and not always easy to interact with, but still... He swallowed heavily, enforcing control on himself. Now was the time for action, there would be time to mourn later.

"Where are you?" he asked, trying to fashion something, anything like a plan.

Amara had about as much clue as Jubilee as to what was going on, and she wasn't particularly enjoying that feeling. Waking up in the Danger Room like this, with everyone else asleep, after such a disturbing dream? She was struggling to hold onto her usual calm, her fists clenching and unclenching as Jubilee spoke to Doug. They needed to get out of there, to find out what was going on. And to help everyone else.

Meggan was just as in the dark as everyone else, but was primarily hoping that nobody else died because of whatever was going on here. She wanted everyone else to wake up before anything else went wrong, she just wanted to help them, and was horrified that the poor Cuckoo had died. The stillness of the room was almost unnatural. She was just waiting for a plan to get cooking, once they learned the true extent of things, and what they could do from here. No matter how bad things looked right now. Even if it wasn’t real, and she hadn’t actually been used like that, she was still disgusted by the nature of that dream.

"Danger room at the mansion, looks like," Jubilee responded, watching Amara and Meggan to make sure they were okay. Living in the mansion gave you a certain resiliency on the 'weird shit o' meter' for the most part but you could never tell. "I'm figuring it's where we really are, since nothin's changed place or tried to eat us yet."

"Now there's a cheerful thought," Doug murmured sarcastically. "Okay, who's with you, and what kind of shape are you in?" He needed more details. Of course, communication and planning required time, and who knew how much time the mansion intruders might give them.

"That's me, full of the cheer," Jubilee replied, glancing over at Meggan and Amara to assess their mental/physical state. "I've got Meggan and Amara here, everyone else is still asleep. We're doing okay though, no visible physical injuries and mental state, good as can be expected."

Meggan caught the look, but didn’t want to interrupt the conversation. Instead, she just gave Jubilee a quick thumbs up and small nod, to confirm she was mostly okay, given the strangeness of their circumstances. She hadn’t been ripped up, she wasn’t bleeding.

Amara nodded as well, a tight smile on her face. The dream world had been disturbing, but she'd woken up unhurt, with only the lingering memories of the dream to haunt her.

"Okay, so let's see here..." Just as Doug was about to work his way toward coming up with some kind of plan, one of the camera feeds he'd been able to hack his way into showed movement. "Shitshitshit," he cursed in a monotone under his breath. "Jubes, you've got incoming," he snapped out. "Move your ass."

"Crap, alright, you got any plan here or do we just run like hell out of this place?" Jubilee asked, gesturing for Meggan and Amara to leave pronto.

Unfortunately for all of them, the Danger room door was locked tight and if Doug's tone had been any indication, they didn't have time for her or Doug to hack the lock.

"Okay...," Jubilee started, more a thinking noise then anything else as she gazed at the two girls and worked through ideas at lightning speed in her head. "Doug, I figure we play dead, or like, you know, sleeping in here and ambush whoever comes through the door. Can you work on some sort of plan for after that?"

Doug shook his head, knowing that Jubilee couldn't see the grim look on his face. Which was good, because he didn't want her to. It was a slim bit of strategy to pin anything on, but... "It's better than nothing," he admitted. "Leave the phone on." At least then he'd know what happened.

Amara took Jubilee's hint to play dead, sinking to the ground and stretching out. Closing her eyes was one of the hardest things she'd done in awhile - what if the nightmare came back? She could hear the others moving as well, and she prayed that them closing their eyes wouldn't bring the nightmare back.

Playing fetch and carry, not exactly his favorite thing to do here. But he didn't have much choice now, did he? So Markham did his best to keep the grumbling to a minimum. Even if teleporting a -dead body- was not really his idea of what he'd been paid to do here. No one had said anything about touching dead bodies.

He popped in just outside the doors to that big hologram fighting room, and waited a beat until the doors slid open.

Jubilee was lying propped up against a wall just beside the door, her eyes closed but all senses on alert as she felt their opponent walk into the room past her. It took her seconds to 'wake-up' and launch herself at the man. It was a good thing she was light but strong because climbing someone's back like a monkey and then putting a choke hold on them was not as easy as it looked in the movies. It was only the surprise involved that stopped the man in question from doing anything nasty in the ten seconds it took for unconsciousness to happen and she held the choke hold for at least another three seconds before releasing her hold.

She'd have held on longer to make sure the guy didn't come back as anything but a walking vegetable but considering the audience she had, she didn't want to ruin their images of the world any more then what normally happened on a day to day basis at Xavier's.

***

Doug had winced with every sound on the end of the line, worrying at one of his nails with his teeth, an unusual physical reaction from him. When Jubilee came back on the line, he blew out an explosive breath he hadn't entirely been conscious of holding. "Good," he murmured in response to her, clinging desperately to professionalism. "You should probably try and find the Professor," he suggested. "My guess says they put him in the Box." It was one of the only ways to neutralize a telepath of Xavier's caliber. He bit back a sour taste in his mouth, remembering the adrenaline of facing off against Skippy, and the memory of the insane man wearing his friend's face dying at his hands. "Get moving, stay in contact," he managed huskily.

"Aye, Aye, Captain tightpants," Jubilee replied with a grin, gesturing for Meggan and Amelia to go ahead of her as she brought up the rear. "After this is all over, we're totally getting Emma to give us a corporate jet to one of those resort places for a week."