Age of Apocalypse: Viruses and Antidotes

[x-eidolon.livejournal.com]

Rachel and Essex break through to the lab, but the virus is not as the professor had described.



There was no time even for apologies or swift prayers to unknown deities to protect the people on the battlefield right then. With what was possibly the full weight of a full assault by the horsemen on them, the only way they would make it out alive was to find and use Essex’s promised solution.

With a hand wrapped around his arm and a psionic shield keeping them in a bubble, Rachel tugged Essex alongside her, having discarded all notions of stealth. She threw a psionic explosion at the outer wall of the building and flew them both through the resulting hole in the wall. No time for lock-picking and clever schemes.

“Which way, Prof?”

"In the basement. We'll need to pass through the old security. If it's active, it means that they haven't found this place yet."

“Sure.” She steered them in the right direction, not dropping speed in the least. “Just tell me what to do.”

"There's a false wall that leads into the lower levels. If the building power is off, you'll need to pull it up telekinetically." He hurried down the building's central plant stairs, heading deeper and deeper into the building.

When the stairs came to an end, Rachel did not bother checking for power – slight as the chance may be that it was on – and threw the weight of her powers into throwing the wall up. It gave with a loud screech that seemed to echo through the deserted building.

She swallowed heavily at the sight that lay behind it.

“This is it then?”

"It would appear that the upper labs saw some use." He said softly at the carnage. When Apocalypse took Manhattan for the second time, his forces made sure that their control was absolute through a campaign of terror that dwarfed anything ever perpetuated by the French Revolution or the conquest of Nanking. Mutants ran wild, killing, torturing, raping, wallowing in an orgy of death and pain. A favoured location were hospital ERs, where humans still instinctively fled towards the red cross like an icon. Instead, Apocalypse's men liked to get... creative. Essex' lab bore similar signs, although the bodies were now dissecated and fallen, their torment perserved only by position.

Essex walked past it without a second glance. He opened a panel in the back and pressed his palm to it. There was a low hum as two dim sensors opened above him and then blinked over to green. Beside the panel, a section of the wall slide back and opened into a narrow staircase.

"Undisturbed." He sagged for a moment. "Come, child. It's time we ended this."

She squeezed his shoulder firmly in support, determined not to take too close a look at the stale death scene before them. Without a word, Rachel led him down the stairs, wary of any nasty surprises that might await them – just in case.

Lights flickered on, triggered by their motion, and the teenager blinked as they descended into what must have been Essex’s old playground.

The lab was surprisingly spare; several of what had been high tech laboratory work spaces, a robust computer terminal, a wall full of equipment she'd never seen but wouldn't have looked out of place in the old Muir Island labs, and three pods that looked like cockpits from a plane. Essex moved through the lab like a wraith, lights blossoming under his fingers where ever he touched on the complex equipment. Long dormant screens blinked to life and the hum of power filled the room.

"Better than I'd hoped. Rachel, come here." He waved her over to a terminal with a headset resting on it, similar to Forge's portable Cerebra units.

The girl obeyed without question and picked up the headset, eyeing it for a moment before glancing at her teacher, silently expressing a question with a tilt of her head. When she received the affirmative, the psion maneuvered her way into the terminal and slipped the headset over her head, completely obscuring messy strands of red.

For a brief moment, she met Essex’s gaze with a wan smile and the understatement of her life. “Hope it works.”

"Child, you were born for this." He said kindly, and pressed a button. The machine powered up slowly, tugging at the edges of her shattered telepathy like a darting butterfly in the corner of her vision. "There should be a sense of something there; a presence more like an echo than another mind. A name spoken on the wind. Search for it, Rachel. You've heard it all your life. The process needs a telepathic wakeup as gentle as a feather's touch. That was my failsafe against it getting out of control."

“I don’t know… if I can,” she frowned. But her eyes slipped close as she focused on the frayed patches of her powers – the deep holes where her telepathy had once been, strong and ready to heed her calls and directions.

Something, however, something foreign and distinctly technological nudged at it, and from the recesses of those dark gouges came an answering tug. With a triumphant smile, Rachel grasped it – what little of it was left – and sent it out again like a sonar call.

And just as Essex had said there would be, a strangely familiar echo responded. Faint, but there nevertheless. She reached for it, stretching the mental call as far as she dared. As much as she could.

#Wake… up?#

"You have it, Rachel. Hold on for just a moment longer." Essex worked frantically at his terminal, fingers darting through the interface. One of the strange coffin shaped pods lit up, displays cycling to match the same tattoo of those on her console. "Just a bit longer. Hold tight!"

Faint tendrils of her remaining powers grasped at the faint presence almost reflexively, digging into the presence with as much strength as she could muster. Outside, in the real world, Rachel gasped from the mental exertion, willing Essex to hurry the hell up.

The buzzing in her head grew to a roar, and she nearly broke the connection as the intensity grew. Then, like the popping of a bubble, the pressure was gone. Essex was knelt over the pod, keying in commands. The seals around it break, hissing as if under high pressure, as Essex pulled up the canopy. His back was to her, but he bent over, lifting something gasping from the bath like interior. Tiny gasps punctuated the silence, as Essex turned with the dripping children held protectively in his arms.

"Adam."