Don't Close Your Eyes: Tornado

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Very shortly after helping Amara, Meggan, and Jubilee rescue the Professor, Doug goes with Haller,and Crystal make their way into the mansion via the underground tunnels.

They are ambushed by the teleporter, who regained consciousness a few minutes earlier. With Doug preoccupied by hacking into the mansion's defenses and Haller trying to keep them shielded psionically, Crystal takes on the teleporter alone...and promptly kicks his ass.

The group meets up with Amara, Jubilee, Meggan, and the Professor.



It wasn't that the security lights barely defined the walls. It wasn't even that they had limited room to maneuver. It was that they actually had to go into this dark, enclosed space before Doug could directly access the security system again. Isolating the tunnel's external keypad from the main system was a good preventative against unauthorized access. It also meant that in the event an outsider had already infiltrated the system, the people who should've been inside would now be the ones hunting for an access point.

Crystal seemed to be doing well enough, but Jim couldn't help but wince when he looked at Doug. He could walk, but everything above the waist wasn't moving very well. He wished they'd been able to leave the younger man in the van, but he had no idea if they'd be able to come back for him -- and he hadn't wanted to leave Doug out there alone. It was a risk, and probably a stupid one, but he wasn't doing any more splitting up. If things went to hell, at least Snow Valley and the Annex would know what had happened.

He was trying his best to do his part. Calling up the memory of what he'd felt from Jean's mind, the telepath had carefully patterned a similar, much weaker signal in which to cloak the three of them. Though not likely to pass muster if their opponent were actively searching for them, it would slide into the background static of the psionic activity was flooding the mansion. Or so Jim hoped, anyway. If it didn't work, well . . . this time he knew to be ready to shield. Unfortunately, the degree of concentration required meant he could just about manage walking in a straight line; telekinesis was out of the question. If they ran into physical trouble he was going to be only slightly more functional than Doug.

Just a few weeks earlier, Crystal had had her fill of underground tunnels. And here she was again, on yet another rescue mission that involved travel through dark tunnels. At least in this case, they already knew that people were safe, or as safe as could be for the moment. But the danger wasn't over yet, and people could be injured or worse before all was said and done. The mansion had been fairly empty before the trouble began, so at least many mansion residents were far away from the danger, but that didn't mean those who were 'sleeping' or those who had or were going in to save them were in any less of a threatening situation. On her back, Crystal carried a bag full of medical supplies, precious commodities at the moment.

Crystal floated near Haller and Doug, keeping a small fire burning brightly in the air to provide extra light. It was something that could be noticed if someone else were in the tunnels, but of course three people wandering around down here would also give that away. But at least if someone came their way, this trio would also see them coming.

Thankfully, most of the equipment Doug tended to bring with him for situations like this was on the light side of things, so the slim pack on his back wasn't weighing him down. Getting his one arm through the strap had been a bit on the painful side, but he was managing. Things could get dicey if he had to go hand-to-hand at any point, but with powers like Haller's and Crystal's backing them up, he doubted it would get that far. Of course, Haller was busy masking their psionic signatures...

"Okay, here's the keypad," he told the other two, shaking off his worrying as he pulled out a slim, light netbook and jacked in. "Give me a minute or two."

"Let me know if you need a hand with any equipment," said Jim, situating himself beside Doug as the other man began to tap away so he could watch the tunnel entrance while Crystal kept an eye on the way before them. "I--"

And then the klaxons started blaring.

Under the high-decibel klaxons, if one could manage to block them and the ringing in the ears that followed each hoot out, a faint hissing could be heard. Of course, the visual cue of a gas seeping into the tunnel was much more obvious. Doug cursed, attempting to type faster with his good hand by sheer force of will. "Sedative," he called out, very familiar with most of the security features, as he had helped Forge program them. "Someone's turning mansion security against us."

Jim automatically shielded his nose with his forearm, despite knowing the effort was futile -- even if he'd had access to TK right now a shield would've been too porous to block a gas. Fortunately, there was a better alternative.

"Crystal--?" he called over the blaring alarms, voice muffled by his arm.

Crystal didn't need to hear or see the gas to know that it was filling the air. She had no intention of breathing it in, and she wasn't about to let it affect her two companions as well. Letting her fire die out, she took control of the air around them and pushed the wind down the hallway, away from the mutant trio.

Doug resisted the urge to smack the uplink where he was plugged in. It wasn't the machine's fault he couldn't move fast enough. Though he was starting to get an uncomfortable feeling at the speed with which whoever their enemies had was countering his forays into the system. Nobody could possibly learn all the intricacies of the mansion's security grid that quickly, even if they'd been casing the job for some time. Which logically meant...

In Doug's next digital assault, he embedded a brief command that accessed a subroutine that he had convinced Forge to bury away in the code some time after Day Zero. When the results came back, the bottom dropped out of his already sinking stomach, and he wheezed hard for breath, even though part of his brain knew the reaction was psychosomatic. "Technopath," he grunted. The spike of panic was quickly replaced with rage, and his demeanor shifted to determination.

"You want to dance? Let's dance." This was his home turf, and he would be damned before he let a technopath run wild in it.

Someone would probably be coming for them soon. That someone probably thought they'd be unconcious by now. That someone was going to be in for a big surprise. Crystal stood ready to act in both defensive in offensive manners. Someone had just messed with the wrong mutants.

Teleport here, Markham. Take this person with you, Markham. Go check on the tunnels because someone was in them, Markham. Naggier than his last ex-girlfriend, this bunch. He was close enough that teleporting didn't totally fatigue him, which was good because Aarkus - (and who the hell kept a shit name like that, he wanted to know? His own was bad enough) was right, there were people in the tunnels.

Fuck.

He barely even registered blonde hair and a cold expression before he popped out, landing behind the blonde woman and driving his elbow into her gut. Or at least trying to. He'd barely made contact before a gust of wind, something like standing under a plane pushed him back, and he popped back out again, reappearing next to the woman, and going for her knees.

Only to be met with another gust of wind straight in his face. It whipped up dust and grit straight into his eyes, blinding him. He'd had just enough time to reorient himself, and he teleported out blind, and appeared behind her again, one arm around her neck. "Try that wind shit again, bitch and I'll knock you out."

She said nothing - but naturally she couldn't, not with an arm pressing against her windpipe, and Markham heard a rushing noise, and his ears popped several times, and everything spun, he felt his lungs give out and then he fell in a heap to the ground.

Jim stared as the man hit the floor. Crystal had taken the man out almost before he'd even realized they were under attack; the entire fight had taken less than a minute.

"Um," the telepath croaked, still staring at the teleporter's crumpled form, "thanks, Crystal." He cleared his throat and added, "Doug . . ?"

"You have the right to remain passed out, you have the right to lose all your oxygen...do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?" Doug asked rhetorically to the body on the ground. "Yeah, didn't think so." He was about as unnerved as Haller at Crystal's reactions, but he covered it with humor.

"Okay, here we go," he murmured, rapping at his netbook and sending out a batch file of commands to all take place at once. He bit his lip while he waited to see if they took effect, then barked out a short laugh. "Gotcha!" he crowed. Essentially, he'd managed to cut their tunnel's defense grid from the rest of the systems, making it temporarily a standalone. The technopath could in theory bypass his work, but it would require physically coming down to the tunnel itself, and with their teleporter out of commission... He jerked his patch cable out, leaving only his computer connected to anything deeper in the mansion.

-COME GET SOME-, he typed in a text box that would show up wherever the technopath had squirreled himself away.

-BUG IN A JAR, JUST WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED. HANG ON WHILE I GET MY MAGNIFYING GLASS,- came the typed response. The hacker on the other end had sealed a tunnel off from Vince but that didn't mean Vince couldn't work on the adjoining corridors and through them his mutation could potentially get through to the tunnel he'd been cut off from. -COME INTO MY PARLOR, SAID THE SPIDER TO THE FLY,- Doug shot back. -THIS BUG HAS HOMEFIELD ADVANTAGE.- He smacked another key, and a giant ASCII middle finger took up Vince's screen, and the harsh squeal of feedback came out of every speaker near him. Wincing, Vince worked quickly to kill the speaker interference. -DON'T YOU KNOW WE'RE ALREADY ALL IN THE WEB? THERE'S NO MORE HOME FIELD.- Doug's screen went black suddenly. At first it looked like a screen saver had come on, thin silver lines crisscrossing the screen. As more lines drew across the screen they formed a spiderweb. While the man on the other end of the connection drew the web Vince's mutation let him access the terminal in the tunnel. He didn't just take back control, he locked them in and killed the lights. -HOPE YOU'RE NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK,- the web started to spell.

-MY FEARS ARE A LITTLE MORE...EXOTIC.- Doug shook his head. -AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE WEBS ARE GOOD FOR?- He bared his teeth at his screen. -BACKTRACING.- Any technopath in the mansion, especially if they were attempting to work with any of the systems in the basement and tunnels, would have to be in one of a finite number of places. And Doug and Forge had both had reason to plan for hostile technopathy. A small needle punctured a vial inside the console Vince was using, and acid dripped directly onto the motherboard - though in a non-essential location. First step was to gauge the other person's reaction, and leave room to ratchet things upward from there - all through the use of simple mechanical things that a technopath would have much more difficulty exerting any control over.

Vince yelped in startled pain. What the hell had that been, he wondered. It had felt like someone had briefly dipped his brain in battery acid or something. -IT'S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG, BITCH,- he sent to the attacker, the webs on the screen becoming a series of girders reminiscent of the old video game. Whoever it was, he'd shielded his computer well. He could distract them with imagery on the screen while he reestablished connections to the security systems in the tunnel, but he couldn't actually get into the machine itself and shut it off.

Doug's eyes narrowed. -I'M SORRY, MARIO, BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE.- With the technopath concentrating on reestablishing full control of the tunnel they were in, that let him work on other things. Like a small security camera over the terminal he'd tracked his opponent to. It was clearly a man, hunched over the interface. "Come on, look up for a second," Doug murmured, then chuckled darkly when the man on the screen did so. A quick facial recognition search gave him what he wanted. -WHAT'S THE MATTER, VINCE. NOT HAVING ANY FUN?- he asked, able to see sweat beading on the man's temples.

Vince tried to turn his head everywhere at once, clearly rattled. -HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?-

-I TOLD YOU THIS WAS MY HOUSE. AND YOU DON'T BELONG IN MY HOUSE, VINCE. WHY ARE YOU IN MY HOUSE?-

-THAT'S NOT ANY OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS.- Vince finally spotted the camera and swore. Several seconds later, the feed on Doug's laptop blanked out, and the technopath redoubled his efforts to control the security systems in the tunnel.

Doug cocked his head. Vince's response didn't entirely make sense. If he was a true believer, like the one that had called Haller, he should have spouted some Brotherhood propaganda or something. He'd looked...frantic. Nervous. Not sadistically gleeful like the man who had killed Amelia Voght. He'd looked...afraid. Maybe afraid of the people he was working with? Doug went with that instinct. -VINCE, IF YOU NEED HELP, WE CAN HELP YOU.-

His only response was digital silence, and the cessation of the assault on the tunnel's systems. Clearly he'd struck a nerve.

"We're in. Let's move," Doug said to Haller and Crystal as the lights flickered back on.