Age of Apocalypse: Down the Rabbit Hole – Destruction of the Mansion

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Those chosen to follow Rachel back are immediately psionically ripped out to join her in a sudden transition into her world. As they do, a summary of events of Rachel’s world are shoved into Haller's mind.



Jim rubbed his eyes at the monitor as he finally signed off. Much as he'd appreciated Gabrielle arranging participation in the conference call he wished Dr. Allen hadn't been in Perth for the month. He didn't mind comparing notes, but Allen's availability to do so had been uncomfortably late.

Thank god for nicotine, he thought as he closed his laptop, and the fact no one was around to get on him for smoking in his office. With a sigh, Jim collected the mug of now-cold coffee. At least he had the rest of the day to himself.

The telepath had just rolled back in his chair when he felt a strange sense of dislocation. He was light-headed, as if he'd risen too quickly -- but he hadn't left his chair yet, had he? But . . . no, he was standing. He was outside -- still on the school grounds, he knew that instinctively, but he couldn't place where. It was dark. Had he just lost time?

As he tried to piece together what had just happened, Jim realized he smelled smoke. Not cigarette smoke.

Fire.

__________



Flashback: Some of Xavier’s students choose their sides in the war



It was torture waiting until everyone had gotten settled. The club was crowded, but anonymous did not mean secure; it was worth taking the time to ensure no unexpected guests had made an appearance before getting down to business. Their little team had put a lot of effort into cultivating this cover. Now was not the time to get sloppy.

Marius waited until Angel and Sue returned with drinks and had taken their now-usual spots. He took a swig of beer, more for the familiarity of the gesture than in any hopes it would settle his nerves, and leaned forward.

"I've got word," he said. "We move tomorrow night."

Yvette let out a breath, her skin visibly tightening but retaining control over her tendency to spike when stressed. If anything, this time had been been extremely good for her powers training. "At last," she said, her relief a contrast to the tension of the group. "I hate waiting."

Angel swirled her drink in the glass before taking a sip. She was with Yvette on that note - glad this was almost over. Her fingers had been almost burning (literally) with a desire to just do something. "Great. About time. What's the plan?"

"About the same as discussed," replied Marius. He leaned back next to Yvette, fingers working restlessly against his gloved hands. "Sue, you had enough quality time with the security systems?"

Sue nodded, staring over the rim of her glass at the other, "It's every bit as good as they said it would be," the Blonde admitted, "but every system has a flaw, even the best. Took me a while but I've got it, we can take it down whenever you need. Just don't give the command too soon, someone's bound to notice, and I'd rather get out of this one alive."

The Australian nodded. "Angel, think you can get yourself assigned to comms, or should I work the odds a bit?"

"I think I can pull it on my own," Angel replied confidently. "No one wants to do comms, should be easy to convince whoever to switch a night with me."

"True enough." Marius sighed and turned to the final participant. "And you?" he asked Yvette. "I know we discussed your bit, but at this point I'm not one for undue risks. You feel uncomfortable, I can get it done and still make rendezvous." Little expression was showing on her face; her skin hardened under tension, reducing flexibility. It worried him. Besides, he did . . . owe her.

"It will be fine," she replied with a small smile, patting his gloved hand with hers. "I will simply be the tour guide, yes? And once my part is done, I will be making myself scarce."

The smile helped; Marius flashed her a quick grin in answer. "True, true. You are as ninja. Just be sure of it, eh?" he said. With a final bump of his arm against Yvette's, the X-Man raised his bottle and gestured for his teammates to do the same in a toast.

"Right then. No point belaboring the details, that should be that. Here's to luck -- and, one hopes, circumstances favourable enough that we need it not."

****

Sue stared in disgust at the dirt and grime on her hands as she glanced down at her clothes with a sigh. Invisibility was a pretty useful tool to sneak around, but even the blonde's forcefields wouldn't let her get at the wiring that ran through the walls. Or at least not sneakily.

Sue sighed as the thought of the nice peaceful and most importantly clean central office. Sue knew she could have snuck in there when the office was empty and just have altered the programming. The problem was the office was almost never empty, and if someone decided to run an upgrade on the system then it would be pretty obvious that the system had been tampered with. But if she was to break the system at its source, no-one would ever be any the wiser.

With a grin Sue slipped the last wire into the little black box she'd constructed just for this purpose. At Marius's command she could press a button and bring down the entire security system without anyone ever realizing. By the time anyone caught onto the fact that the system wasn't working the cavalry would be here and they could all get out of here.

Sue started as she heard a movement echo down from further along the duct, instinctively pressing herself against the wall and throwing up a forcefield around herself. She couldn't help but chuckle ruefully when she saw one of the cats regally proceeding down the corridor, no doubt on the way to the kitchen to see what food it could liberate from the hands of the evil humans. Grinning to herself Sue reached down to grab her wrench and the cover to the conduit. She still had 2 more boxes to install before she was done so she really had to pick up the pace and get moving.

****

Comm duty really was boring.

Angel sighed as her eyes flitted about the screens, waiting for some sign of life to appear on them. She'd gotten on about eight o'clock, relieving the previous person with a smile and a pleasant, "Have a good night," like everything was entirely normal. Of course, to just about everyone else it was. She'd settled in and slipped a book out of her bag to read, every now and again looking up to make sure everything was in order.

Over the last thirty minutes or so, she'd put the book away and begun paying a little more attention than she had the last few hours. It was almost time. If everything was on schedule, Sue should have been disabling the alarms right about now. Any minute...

A movement on the far left screen caught her attention, and the redhead snapped right around to it, watching as, little by little, the shadows of the invading forces made their way inside. She held her breath as her gaze slid from screen to screen, watching their progress and waiting for something to go "Wee-ooooo we-ooooo" or "brah brah brah" to alert everyone to the fact that there were intruders. It was nerve-wracking, and as she watched her mind went over all the things that could possibly go wrong, what would happen if the alarms went off now.

But Sue, it seemed, had done her job quite well. As the last of the shadows made it through the perimeter, she breathed easier, standing up and stretching her arms over her head. Her job was done. She hummed a funny little tune as she made her way out of the comm room, locking the door and melting the key in her palm before heading up to the roof to wait for Marius' signal.

****

Waiting was the worst.

Yvette sat in the fork of a tree, motionless and almost invisible in the darkness. Even her eyes, which normally glowed neon blue, had dimmed to mere will-of-the-wisps. Then, at the sound of barely-audible footsteps below, they brightened and she leapt from the tree, landing in a crouch at the feet of the visitors.

"I will be your guide," she said, straightening. "The tunnels are not far, but we must be absolutely quiet."

She didn't wait for a reply, instead turning and heading noiselessly into the brush. The less time she had to think about this, the better it would be.

****

The night was dark and their meeting place isolated, but Marius nonetheless maintained his borrowed invisibility until his contact was almost on top of him. She was dark-haired and attractive, if artificially so, at least until one became acquainted with her personality. For all of that, though, his sudden appearance elicited no shock -- only a snort of annoyance.

"Paranoid much?" the woman asked, raking the hair from her neck as she eyed him. "How many powers are you stacking?"

"Enough." The woman never noticed the Australian's fingers – only inches from her gut -- softening from a razor-sharp state. "Didn't want any interruptions while I dismantled potential escape vehicles."

Dark eyes rolled. "Or you could have just killed the witnesses."

"Not our job."

In the distance something that sounded like a bomb went off. Somewhere beyond the trees the sky turned orange.

Someone else did have that job.

Barely looking, Marius raised a hand and fired three short, evenly spaced bursts of blue energy into the night sky.

"Wow," drawled his contact, "it's like a ghetto Bat-Signal."

Marius said nothing.

Angel was the first to arrive. She flew low, outlined against the darkness by her distinctive blue field. She must already have been close to feel safe enough to risk giving away her position. Sue arrived by foot shortly afterwards, fading into view only once the group was firmly in her sights. If one hadn't known of her powers her movements could have been mistaken for the normal rustle of leaves and crack of twigs.

Both girls were quiet.

It hadn't been difficult. The redhead had never quite recovered from the implications of an entire country declaring war upon them. Sue was more committed to reclaiming her father's company than fighting for ideology. All they'd needed was a push.

"What is this?"

"What, you thought we'd give you a mutant to smuggle around under your coat for months? It's bone marrow. Don't worry, we did some tinkering. It's strong enough for what you need. Just make sure you get us some good ones."

"I'll get who I get. Too many psis about. Empathy's harder to catch but I change too much, someone'll notice."

There was the distant, unmistakable retort of gunfire, then another explosion. A short distance away two pinpoints of blue briefly luminesced from the bushes. Yvette emerged an instant later, nothing more than a shadow in the darkness. She hesitated long enough to give their contact a cautious look, then moved to join the group.

"But your little red mealticket will be one of them, right? I've seen the pictures. You're ugly without her. I heard your lungs are melting or something too."

"Yes, for which I owe her a debt. So no, I will not be leaving her on the losing side."

"Hun, whose marrow do you think you're holding? 'Responsibility' isn't the feeling that comes from the area in question."

"Please do not force me to weigh the benefits of this deal against the promise of continued interaction with yourself."

"Don't even try threats. The boss'll hold up his end of the deal but he doesn't care who it's with, and I care even less. It's either you now, or someone else later. Your call, Emplate: you gonna play it smart, or do I need to find a guy who will?"

Marius' fingers curled against his ungloved palms, and the razor-edged teeth that edged them.

Their contact seemed oblivious to the distant sounds of violence. Instead she gave the little group an unimpressed look, then shrugged. "If that's everyone I guess we can go," she said, before gesturing vaguely towards the orange glow. "Unless anyone wants to watch the Infinites' barbecue."

"No," Marius replied, fighting not to look back at the others or the fire on the horizon behind them. "We've done our bit. Now kindly do yours."

"Suit yourselves." The Prelate's teeth showed in a smile.

"Welcome to Apocalypse's army."

__________



Flashback: During the fall of the Mansion, lives are lost but others escape



"The mansion is lost get out!" Lorna sending a magnetic pulse down a hallway towards the enemy.

The commotion was all around, destruction everywhere. Voices cried out in surprise and pain and anger. Thick black smoke filled the air. Jean stayed low as she telekinetically ripped the metal head off a robot that come up from behind her. She wouldn't have noticed had it been for the footsteps.

"This way," she said. The more they could get out, the better. It was hard to tell what the numbers were on both sides but it didn't look good.

As far as Matt was concerned it was every man for himself. He wasn't a team player unless it involved family and these people were not family. He didn't think of the several bolt-holes he knew of though, not in the midst of this chaos and mind-reading. Instead, he focused his powers so that he could make heads and tails of what was going on around him, moving and dodging so that he could survive. That was key. Live. Fight another day. Or better yet, live and live another day.

Another magnetic pulse made it's way down the hallway and the lights started to flicker throughout the mansion. The enemy was replaced with new ones with a special kind of weapon. Lorna didn't pick up any metal signatures on the new hardware. "Shit."

Meggan was endeavoring to do her best to follow quickly. There was really nowhere left for hiding, just ducking. She was instinctively encouraging any and all electricity from hanging wires to leave people alone if they were near to a person, whenever she caught sight of a live one dangling…even while she knew there was only so much that that could really accomplish, at a time like this, she wanted to try to help. Once she could see through the smoke to the fire beyond, she would be dividing her attention between that, and the wires.

Jean lead them down to the hallway where one of the escape passages was hidden. There was no other way out that they could see. Every exit was blocked. They kept coming. The enemy was prepared. They knew their target well. Very well.

"Get to the secret passage it--AARGH!" Jean said, but was cut off by a scream as an image of Charles flashed across her vision just before her mind was filled with a high pitched static, cutting off her telepathy. She clutched her head.

Oh hell no. Nope. This was not what he had signed up for showing up here. Separating from the group, Matt twisted and dodged, hearing the gun mechanisms shifting before they were even fired. He wasn't interested in getting shot, but it took all his energy and focus to keep moving without getting shot. All he wanted was out.

Lorna ducked into another room as they threw a plastic grenade her way, they knew her weakness. The explosion was loud and painful as several of the pieces were lodged into Lorna's side, as well as one of her legs. Leaning against the wall, Lorna could hear the enemy moving up to her position.

At the most recent of the explosions, and the gnawing sense of more pain from several directions, Meggan ducked down and hurried her efforts to find the passage hidden away. She was reasonably certain of where it might be, and scrambled for a way to find it, heart thudding as she hurried. After moving a few flames from the most likely location, and over to where nobody could be burned, she thought there might be something. A quiet click as her hand felt around, tapping what must be the right spot almost went unnoticed beneath the noise of gunfire. “It’s this way, over here,” Meggan cried out frantically.

The passageway opened with a familiar whir but as the panel slid open an unfamiliar noise followed. The faint beep was almost unassuming given the explosion that accompanied it, sending shrapnel and a plume of flames everywhere with furious force.

There wasn't even enough time to register her mistake in opening the door before the detonation struck. The explosion was too swift and too close for Meggan to have a hope of ducking away in time, much less control a portion of the flames in the aftermath. The combination of the shockwave slamming her into the nearest wall with neck snapping force, with the shrapnel which pierced deeply into her chest left little doubt as to the outcome. She was dead before her body finished sliding onto the ground.

Holding onto her side, Lorna created a makeshift metal bandaged. It would stop the bleeding but wouldn't stop the damage that it had already created. She slowly stood up as she used the rest of her metal on her as she created a metal glove just as the first man entered the room. Grabbing his gun before hitting the man hard in the face with her metal glove.

Somewhere in the building another explosion went off. It was the second that the enemy to take her out as she looked down to see another one of those grenades being thrown into the room with her - followed by three more just be sure. Lorna lowered her head and closed her eyes as they went off sending the shrapnel everywhere. Another X-Man had fallen.

Jean stirred on the ground. She had been close by when the explosion hit Meggan and the result had also knocked her backwards. She opened her eyes to see what was left of Meggan's dead eyes staring back from a few feet away, most of her face blackened and marred and wet with red mush. Blood spilled out from underneath her, further staining the carpet.

Three loud bangs nearby suddenly shook the hallways, and the static that filled Jean's head that was now ebbing and flowing like a wave was cruel enough to signal death had come twice in only a few short moments by sensing Lorna's passing. Coughing from the heavy smoke, Jean covered her face with her hands, hearing nothing else but a ringing in one of her ears as she let out a cry of anguish.

As she moved she felt a sharp pain and looked down, finding a piece of wood embedded in her calf and another in her side. Careful not to pull the pieces out, Jean wiped away her tears. Three soldiers entering the hallway also ensured that she would not be able to do much else. She had to run. She was in no condition to fight. There were too many.

Pulling herself up, Jean stepped over Meggan's body, allowing herself only one more glimpse at the girl as she disappeared into the secret passage, her exit shrouded by the smoke.

Sticking to the peripheral and twisting and turning to dodge what he could, though he was hit in the shoulder and side, Matt was gone without a second thought, down the passage. Moving was better than standing, life to fight another day. Live to live another day. Stillness was death. He didn't care for these people, but he didn't want anyone dead. Not like this. Nothing he could do either, so move on.