Operation: Mutant of the Seas 21

[xp-changeling.livejournal.com]

Emma finally discovers the source of the call for help they've been seeking, and makes some hard decisions in regards to it.



The ship was a cacophony of sirens, alarms and claxons; most of it intentionally set off from the bridge to maximize the panic and tie up the remaining security forces from regrouping. The calls had come over the comms of the former magistrate targets being down. Their shocked mutates were almost catatonic, forced to be dragged around with them. The entrance to the power room was securely locked via thumbprint, retinal and bio-metric scanners.

"Now, what could be so important that you need all this security?" Amanda asked Mudd, shooting him a glare as he dangled from North's grip on his collar. His face was mottled with bruises from Amanda's hitting him with the drinks tray and he looked less than happy about this whole situation. "Just as well we have you here, yeah? I'm sure a muckity-muck like you has access to the whole bloody ship."

"No, no. It's all very technical you know. Brian runs most of it." Mudd blustered, rubbing his head. "I'm here for my people skills. Long term planning and strategy and the like."

"Last time I checked ass grabbing and people skills were not the same thing." The hand at Felicia's side where she still held her stolen steak knife twitched slightly. "I'm so glad you two found us and took him off my literal hands," she said to North, just behind him.

“Of course. We are here for our people skills,” North replied dryly, giving the man another hard shake for good measure. He hooked his ankle around a roller chair and dragged it over for Mudd’s sitting pleasure, but the man ended up missing the cushioned seat by a couple of inches to tumble to the floor.

Ever helpful, North helped him back up, a shoulder clasped in a tight grip as the German towered above Mudd. “I believe the lady asked you a question.”

"Well, you can't be too careful. Never know when a group of mutant terrorists are going to suddenly and violently attack your ship." He blustered. "The power room is essential. Without it, we'd be adrift, without power for any of our systems!"

Emma raised an eyebrow at the man. "Well, they certainly didn't hire you for your calm response to a crisis," she observed dryly. "And let's just take your words apart for a minute here. Not the engine room. The power room. An interesting distinction that. What exactly do you have on board this ship, Captain Mudd, that provides the power?" She leaned forward, one diamond-tipped fingernail tracing the shape of the Mudd's eye socket, almost a caress. If a caress finished with the welling of a thin line of blood at the top of Mudd's cheek.

"It's a power plant, you know. Engineering and such. Very technical, you see. Brian manages all of that." He said, clearly losing his composure at the threat.

Amanda snorted in disgust. "We're getting nowhere playing nice," she growled. "Why don't we just cut the bits off we need and get in there?"

Jubilee let multi-coloured spirals of plasma start sliding between the fingers of one hand as she grinned at Mudd with what could only be called a cold look in her eyes.

"Maybe not even cut," she murmured softly, stepping closer to him to allow him to feel the heat coming off her hand. "Maybe I just melt off the fingers we need and we go open the doors all by ourselves. What do you think, dude? Won't even bleed, it'll just hurt like a son of a bitch. Oooor, you could open the doors for us, like a nice little dirt bag and we all go home with our bits intact."

"There's no need for that!" He said quickly. He moved to the panel and pressed his thumb against it. Next, he peered into the reticule of the retina scanner, and a red laser briefly crossed his eye. The door opened and a guard with a gun pointed it at them. "Now, none of that! None of that! We're going to cooperate with our guests."

"This was such a nice work trip until all the threats and maiming and shooting," Felicia complained, giving the guard a little wave and pausing beside him as the group walked past, and into the room. "Speaking of. Gun now," she said, pleased when he waited only a beat before handing his weapon over. She held out her other hand to his partner, who followed suit. "Thank you. Sorry for my violence manic co-workers, it pays the bills, you know how it is."

"As I explained, it is just the power plant. Drives the... boat. Ship. Liner. You know what I mean!" Mudd blustered.

"These aren't normal power regulators." North said, pointing a gun at one of the techs. "Why?"

"It's the plant. It's a mutate." The man stuttered, hands over his head. "He generates the power on the ship. The monitors are for his vitals as well as the power output. He can't leave the chamber any more. Parts of him are pure energy now."

Emma looked around as North continued to talk, reaching out with her mind. It didn't take her long to distinguish the right hatch from the various ones in the room. Moving quickly, she turned the large wheel on the front of it, then threw back the lever, allowing the hatch to fall open.

Within a heavy glass cylinder, he (reaching out with her mind, reaching into its mind, down past mutate programming, down past agony, to identity, a remembering of essential things) hung in a mass of wiring, mutate suit containing a body that seemed little more than a sack of flesh and energy now. Pure energy, drawn from the furnace they had made of him. Energy made of agony, agony so strong that sometimes it had allowed him to pierce his mutate conditioning and send his helpless, hopeless cry of pain out into the world, waiting for someone to hear him.

~I heard you,~ she said to him, ~I came.~

There wasn't enough of him left to make words, but he heard her and a small wave of gratitude came out through the pain. And something that Emma could only translate as no longer alone.

~Not alone,~ she confirmed. ~I'm here with you. I'll stay with you.~

With a quick reach outwards, Emma created her telepathic switchboard, drew in the minds of everyone around her. She had listened to the conversation going on behind her. Confirmation from North that simply to shut the power plant down would likely lead to a nuclear explosion. That they could overload the plant, feed energy into it until it shut down, but this was likely to lead to the destruction of the bulkhead and the sinking of the Emperor within hours. Jubilee's report that a heavy storm was forecast - possibly enough to swamp the lifeboats if they chose to abandon ship. Amanda's concerns about the safety of the innocent crew and passengers (while interspersed with acerbic comments on the not-at-all-innocent crew and passengers and what they deserved), followed by Mudd's protests. Felicia's suggestion that perhaps they could simply sail the ship to a new harbour and then make a decision.

~We are sending them into the lifeboats.~ Emma's telepathy rode over all of her colleague's thoughts and, before they could begin to protest, she opened a small conduit between their minds and his, allowing them to touch the agony that was all of his life, had been his life for what, years now? ~I won't let him live for this for any longer than I have to.~ She closed the conduit, separated them from his mind, though not herself. ~I need to help him die. It's why he called me.~

Gratitude, so strong it nearly made Emma stagger, a wash of hope beneath the pain came from the mutate.

Behind her, Emma heard everyone begin to take command, North starting to program the plant, the others beginning to divide up the work that would be needed to evacuate the ship. Bowing her head, Emma trusted them and set herself to the task of reaching into the pain and trying to take it away.