Great Attractors: Contact
Jan. 17th, 2016 01:03 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAs Topaz's mind becomes ever-more hostile, the group encounters a surprise visitor.
The rows were endless. While having their lack of progress revealed by the Dewey Decimal System would only have depressed them, it would at least have provided some sort of orientation. Instead the only landmarks were ruined library paraphernalia. Here a stack of books lay in a puddle, pages bloating with water. There a ladder stretching above the dim lights and into the darkness of the stacks above. And all around them the drip, drip, drip of water.
"The damage seems to be getting worse," Haller noted after a time. He gestured to a shelf with the planks split straight through, spilling its contents across the aisle. "Maybe something came this way. Do either of you sense anything?"
"Nope," Rachel popped her 'p' over a shoulder as she lifted them up and over an overturned chair. "Zero signs of any doors or exits either. But you know me and my TP. We're sketchy at best. Dr. Grey? Anything from way back there?"
Jean furrowed her brow thoughtfully. "It's hard to--" she began, taking a step forward, when the rotting boards underneath her feet gave way with a hideous creak, weakened by Rachel and Haller passing over them. Her arms flew up over her head and she let out a startled scream as she plunged below the floor into the depths, water erupting in her wake with a heavy splash.
The water enveloped her from head to toe, the nature of its creation not even allowing her a sensation of hot or cold to focus on. Instead it bombarded her relentlessly with never-ending, overwhelming waves of fear, loneliness, pain, rage, disappointment and frustration.
The memories of every argument she ever had with Warren, her talk with Clarice and Scott, the deaths of patients she tried to save, her attempts to talk sense into Matt, Warren and Miles but with no avail, the feelings of fear when trying to sneak mutants across the border with X-Corps, her break up with her boyfriend in college, witnessing Haller break a man's arm in two, Clarice cutting off a man's finger ripped their way through her mind before settling upon the image of holding Annie in her arms as her life slipped away. The girl was like a broken doll, limp and bleeding while her eyes slowly dimmed.
Jean tried to shriek, but only succeeding in sucking in a mouthful of water as she thrashed about, fighting to find a foothold or something to grab onto but finding none.
It felt like dying, and wanting to die. Over, and over, and over again.
Haller's head snapped around just in time to see Jean's hand disappear through the floorboards. Shit. Rachel's shield had been so effective against the perniciously leaks it hadn't even occurred to him their footing might be at risk.
"Rachel, hold the floor!" Haller called, and dove for Jean. He closed his eyes and plunged his arms into the water up to his shoulders, grappling for her fingers. Something brushed his hand -- he grabbed it, and found a wrist. Jean.
Something cold was rising in his chest, but instinct was already working. Using their physical contact as a bridge Haller forced his stunted telepathy through his fingers and around the doctor, insulating her against the brutal onslaught. He found her other hand and pulled back towards the splintered break in the floor, and now that empty cold was crawling up his throat and into his mouth, the woman in his grasp a thousand miles away, but he kept pulling, pulling until her head broke the surface--
The moment of clarity was something Jean latched onto as her mind, like a wounded animal, instinctively reacted and telekinetically yanked her and Haller from the water with a huge burst of force that was more focused on escape than anything else. There was no trajectory, no plan, just a desire to get away.
They shot up and up before veering sharply to the left and careening uncomfortably close to a splintered shelf, with no signs of stopping.
Rachel's shield had shrunk with a thought, a tick before they collided head-first into the very solid barrier. It very quickly became apparent to her, however, that their flight was not controlled and holding just the damned floor was not going to cut it. Her powers gathered around her before a conscious decision was even made, propelling her upwards and stretching towards them.
A blue globe of energy, looking very much like a cushioned hamster's ball, encapsulated the pair of them less than a foot before they crashed into a book case. Rachel peered into it, worry evident as she slowly lowered them to the relative safety of a ledge.
Haller's hands gripped Jean's wrists like a vise. His body was jerking with short, sharp spasms, and his eyes were clenched shut. The slash-like scars that ran across his face and beneath the collar of his shirt, his astral form's only clearly defined feature, were torn open and streaming blood.
Even though he was grabbing her hard enough to be leaving bruises, Jean still stood there for a couple of moments, a completely distant look in her eyes.
It was the sight of blood that snapped her back to reality more than anything else, followed by the pain (after being swallowed by it, it was hard to really distinguish what was real at the moment). Reflexively, Jean tried to pull herself away with a shudder but found herself held steadfast.
The ledge beneath them gave way with a crack, the break so clean it looked as if it had been partially sawed through. The adjacent shelf gave way with it, vomiting its contents onto the psis – things that appeared to be books but did not open, like dummy copies used for display with the density of bricks.
Jean let out another cry as she found the both of them tumbling yet again, her stomach lurching. She wanted to throw up.
"LET GO!" she screamed in her blinding panic, expecting for them to crash into more water.
Then the world around them flashed blue and came to a sudden, jarring stop as their psionic cage was caught mid-air above the aisle. The books froze as one, and verdant eyes narrowed. With clenched fists, Rachel dropped her personal telekinetic armour and pumped a significant amount of energy into the shield around the other two psions instead, pre-empting the books' collective change in directions to follow their target. They pelted the barrier like kamikaze pilots, and Rachel scowled as a large tome clipped her in the shoulder. It was almost a light show, what with how the barrier pulsed blue with every hit it took.
Above them, a rumble sounded, reverberating down the room and slowly building into a loud roar. Bookcases crumbled onto themselves, collapsing, turning, gathering and falling. Right above them.
"Aw, what the fucking hell. Hang on."
In the next moment, they were flying; Twisting, turning and corkscrewing through falling debris at top speed. But Rachel dared only to dodge and deflect, swinging the globe around like both a shield and hammer. Her armour shimmered into existence again a second before she slammed head first into a falling shelf, the wood splintering with a loud crack.
The attacks, however, were varied, persistent and incessant, and they came nowhere close to a defendable perimeter or exit. The litany of profanities under her breath had been going on for a while, and neither David nor Jean seemed to be snapping out of their respective states any time soon.
Rachel reviewed the situation, weighed her options and stakes, and raised another wall of defenses against darting writing apparatuses. Her expression was a mask of cold fury, a fire blazing in her eyes that none but their sightless attackers to see.
Below her Haller gave out a sharp, sudden gasp and jerked away from Jean, finally releasing her arms. The flash of movement in Rachel's periphery drew her attention for a split-second, and in that second what had appeared to be a section of wall upwards of three stories high peeled away and began to roll towards them with alarming speed, like an enormous poster trying to curl back into shape.
Rachel’s gaze snapped away from the closest thing she had to family and toward what seemed like impending doom. It was hard to be kind when things were out to kill you. She may have been taught compassion as a babe, but blind benevolence had never been on the menu the way protection and survival was a constant theme in her life.
Death on one plane could mean death on another.
With that one thought, all hesitation fell away. Sparking blue energy rolled from her arms, shoulders to fingertips, a wave of relentless power building in rapid seconds until it towered three stories above their heads. She let it go with an echoing war cry and, as if in slow motion, watched as it met the tumbling wall with a resounding explosion that rang in their ears.
Concrete crumbled, wood disintegrated and paper burned up in seconds. The half-spent tsunami of charged telekinetic power shifted, flashed electric blue and morphed into a large claymore, which, shoved forward by two glowing arms, punctured the air with a loud rip.
It took Jean a moment to realize everything had stopped, but Rachel's defenses had continued. It was easy to get caught up in protecting yourself when the world was falling down.
Something stood out among the storm of chaos once brought down both around them and by Rachel herself: a singular figure in the distance, silhouetted against the stacks of books. Topaz. It was the sight of the girl that reminded her of where they were, and the potentially devastating consequences of their actions. Despite the fact that they were merely trying to stop themselves from being harmed.
Jean glanced up to Rachel, then over to Haller and the ball of telekinetic energy around them.
"Rachel, stop! It's over!" she said, but it was unheard over the sound of books and shelves crashing down from the previous assault.
It was time for equivalent of a psychic slap.
Drawing in a breath, Jean released a psi blast that erupted through the ball of energy, causing it to pop and send herself and Haller falling again. She was so tired of falling.
This time, however, she had enough mental acuity to slow them both down to keep them from being less of a pancake and only maybe a couple of extra bumps and bruises.
The landing put them a few feet away from the young woman in front of them, the owner of the mind they curiously resided in.
[_*_]
Other than the steady Drip drip that echoed with her footsteps, the area around Topaz was completely silent. Her foot stepped into a puddle, and a shiver of fear and terror ran up her spine. It faded as quickly as it hit her, but she still gasped and pulled back. Her foot was wet, she noted dimly as she continued on. The next puddle she hit resulted in a similar reaction, although the feelings were muted, like her mind was protected by cotton. After a while she stopped even noticing the puddles.
A sudden bolt of panic and fear hit her, and she whirled around, surprised. That wasn't fabricated emotions - those were real. There were people.
Oh thank god. She turned and sprinted toward the first signs of life she had felt since she'd started walking. It only took a couple turns around bookcases before the beat up and bedraggled psis landed in front of her. For a moment she could only stare.
"What the hell are you lot doin'?"
After landing on solid ground, Jean stared at Topaz for a moment or two, her eyes noticeably distant.
"We found ourselves here," she said finally. In the sudden rush of deafening silence and stillness and without the push to escape being a singular driving focus, it was easy for the negative emotions imbued by the water clinging to her skin and hair and clothes to cloud her mind and it was becoming a struggle to concentrate. Closing her eyes, Jean rubbed her forehead.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
Topaz's eyes swept over the area, noting the disaster and how tired and wet Haller and Jean looked. Wet?
"I...went to bed. I think. What happened to you all? Why are you wet?" Sure there were puddles but unless they got down on the ground and rolled in them there was no reason for them to look like this.
"Traps, apparently."
This was from Haller, who was now sitting up. Neither his tone nor expression gave any indications of the violent seizure just moments earlier. This was made less reassuring by the blood still smeared across his face and soaking the front of his shirt.
"Or at least in part," the man continued with a glance at Rachel. The weapon had disappeared with the threat, but she was still obviously on her guard. He turned his attention back to Topaz. "If I had to guess, I'd say the mess is because we triggered your psychic defenses. Most people don't like intruders."
It took Topaz a moment to process Haller was even talking when she saw his face. "Okay, so...you're wanderin' around my...head-" And hell if that wasn't still weird, "and somethin' decided you all were a threat and wants to drown you?" Something about that felt a little off to Topaz. Why water? It was a library, after all - the water wasn't exactly natural.
"Your head decided that, yes. Like I said, most people don't like intruders. The fact we hit traps probably means we're close to the center. Jean, are you all right?"
Jean was half turned away from the trio, her arms folded and huddled into herself, as if trying to stay warm. His voice, and the question, crawled its way into her head, pulling out the memory of what he'd done and paraded it in front of her. It was like he was taunting her.
"Oh my GOD. Why do you keep asking me that? You don't even care! Just shut the fuck up about it!" she snapped, turning to glare at him before she noticed everyone staring at her. With a heavy shudder, she immediately jumped, putting a trembling hand back to her forehead.
Rachel blinked at the older woman, the last of her telekinetic shields and armour disappearing with a deliberate ‘click’ of her teeth. Her usually expressive face was now a study on serenity, unnaturally still amidst Jean’s outburst of emotions and resumption of the steady drip, drip, drip. If her head was ringing from the psychic assault she had received from Jean, Rachel made no show of it.
“Dr. Grey—”
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she apologized quickly, taking deep breaths. Regardless of their prior interaction this was not the time and place. And he had saved her. He had pulled her out at risk to his own sanity. That meant there was some care there, some emotion. Otherwise he would've just left her to drown in the deep. Right? Important. Think of that. This is not normal. Something else. Not my emotions.
"It's....it's hard to focus....there's still some residual..." she said, twirling her hand around her head in an aimless attempt to come up with a word.
"I...I think I'll be fine in a little while. It's starting to go away. I just need a little...." Xanax. Whiskey. Sleep. Death. Not normal. Important.
"Time. But I can do whatever you need me to," she swallowed, glancing back up to the group, then finally to Haller.
"Are you going to be okay? Your wounds." She was admittedly curious about the previous scars that had opened up.
Who did he try to kill to get those?
Shut up, fucking creepy shit addled-brain.
Haller blinked, then reached up to touch his face. His fingers came away red. More puzzled than alarmed, the telepath rubbed his sleeve across his face. When he lowered his arm the blood had been wiped away, revealing only old scars once again.
"Just some kind of psychosomatic response," he remarked, quirking an eyebrow at Jean. "I'm fine. And don't apologize. Those pockets seem to be some kind of emotional wells. Contact dredges up . . . something. Obviously I wasn't prepared for it either." There was a tiny crack in his neutral tone, as if he was tripping over some kind of rote diction, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Rachel stepped close enough to place a hand on his back where the others could not see. The discussion and lack of progress had gone on long enough. “Let’s move out of here. It’s not stable,” she said.
Haller, already climbing to his feet, paused. Hanging in the space where Rachel had made her attack was a fissure of light. It spidered across the air like a crack in a pane of glass, nearly oblique from where he stood. Even as he watched it dwindled into nothingness.
"Topaz, we should be near the core of your mind," Haller said, eyes still lingering where the fissure had been. "It'll be safer for us to talk there. Is there a direction that feels 'right'?"
Topaz frowned, turning in a slow circle, eyes slipping from row to row. "This way," she finally said with some amount of confidence. And she started walking.
Jean trailed behind Topaz slightly as she gradually showed signs of 'drying off.' She was careful to avoid the puddles this time, keeping a close, wary eye on her surroundings.
Haller followed a respectable distance away. Even though Topaz's steps were sure and solid he kept his guard up, and that was the only reason why a warning plish didn't end in disaster.
A section of floor Topaz had passed safely over gave way beneath his foot. The edge of a floorboard dipped into the water it was floating on like an overburdened raft. He drew back before he could fall in, forcing a stunted shield around his foot before the emotional contamination could do any damage.
The counselor watched the bobbing floorboard disintegrate like rotted particle board, then raised his eyes to Topaz.
"I assume you're still a little tense," he remarked.
"Well let's see. I went to bed - I went to bloody bed, and ended up trapped in this hell. Yeah, I'm tense." Haller had been Topaz's therapist long enough to know that heavy sarcasm like that was her last refuge when she was scared. She was stressed, she was trapped in her own head, and just to add to the fun she had three other people banging around in her head probably causing a mess.
And she was terrified.
She cast an eye at the rows of books as they walked by them, still barely paying attention to where she was going. When she spoke again her voice was lower and much more insecure. "You didn't open any of the books...did you?"
"Just one," Haller replied without a shred of hesitation, though he carefully refrained from looking at Rachel. "I needed to confirm we were in a mindspace rather than the astral plane. It was mundane, maybe three minutes of your life. We were in the outskirts. The really important things will be hidden much deeper." His carefully exploring foot hit another loose section of floor. He stopped, frowning. "Your defenses aren't going down. This is going to be a problem."
Taking a step forward, Jean glanced over the floor with a look of appraisal, like one of the many games of chess she had played with Charles over the years.
"Wait," she said, carefully studying the floorboards.
"I have an idea," she said.
Jean turned, waiting for the others to move before she turned around back the way they came.
"Please take a step back."
After a few moments of uneventful waiting, a faint rumbling was heard as various bits of debris soon funneled in caused by the earlier battle. The once damaged pieces were soon molded into a makeshift, rudimentary bridge made up of bits of floorboard and shelving
"Topaz doesn't seem to be affected by the water. And if this is her mind, then maybe using stronger parts of it might help us get through."
"Brilliant," Rachel complimented, facial muscles losing some of the tension it had been hoarding since things had gotten messy. She gestured politely for Jean and Topaz to take the lead forward before she dissolved into a ball of energy that wafted over to hang around David's shoulders with a comforting pat to his brain.
The look of irritation on his face was easy to miss, and likely not apparent to Jean or Topaz. Rachel herself could only guess at what had caused that tic of frustration building between his eyes – It was the same one he had displayed those months ago when he couldn’t save her brain from rupturing from holding too many soul fragments inside of it. No, David did not wear helplessness well at all.
"And more efficient than holding a shield," Haller agreed, though inwardly he wasn't as neutral as he sounded. The touch of Rachel's mind only highlighted the extent of his own unease. He returned the touch with reassurance of his own, but even he could feel it rang hollow. It was more than his inability to influence the mindscape. The emotional well he'd fallen into had done . . . something. He didn't understand what, but he had to make sure it didn't happen again.
Pushing the thought away, Haller returned to practical matters. "Topaz, what's your sense of all this?" he asked as he followed Jean across the bridge. "Does this seem normal? –well, never mind, that's obviously a no. What I mean is, does anything in particular feel 'off'?"
Topaz didn't answer for a long moment. She kept her eyes on her feet as she walked along the bridge. She hopped off at the end, barely noticing the puddle her foot hit other than to acknowledge it was cold. "I mean I can't imagine my mind is the most pleasant place to be even on a normal occasion," she dryly. "But this seems a little...extreme. The damage, the water...I don't think it belongs here."
"If I remember right, you've described your empathy as more nebulous," Haller ventured as Rachel's amorphous form orbited him like a lazy moon. "Pervasive, like radio static. The water seems concentrated. Is Jean right? That it doesn't affect you, I mean."
"I mean, my foot is wet." Topaz looked down at the offending foot. "The first time I stepped in a puddle I kind of got a...chill, I guess? Like when you're watching a horror movie and you know somethin's about to happen and you shudder. But after that, nothin'."
"So you felt something unpleasant, but not overwhelming." Haller looked at the redhead leading the way, still carefully assembling a bridge beneath them. "Jean? When you fell in, what did you experience?"
At first she didn't speak. Jean's concentration was on the bridge, boards and metal various debris coming together to make something that seemed almost elegant. She didn't look up, though her work did pause momentarily, her body stiff and rigid.
"Death," she said faintly before she continued on with renewed focus that seemed to become momentarily quick and harsh, almost frantic.
"And pain, and fear, disgust....rage...It was like all of these negative emotions had been...been...pooled together somehow. And I could feel it...all. All at once."
Haller noted the stiffness in Jean's posture; the brisk, business-like stride of someone trying to leave their feelings behind them.
"How has your head been lately?" he asked Topaz. "Have you been near anything or anyone unusual? Felt strange at all?"
The blob of light over his head gave a judgmental pulse at his lack of personal contribution. Haller ignored it.
"Been havin' headaches for a couple weeks now," Topaz admitted with a frown. "They happen sometimes so I didn't think much about it. Haven't really been out or anythin', mostly just hang around the mansion."
They turned a corner, and Topaz saw the caged area she had come out of earlier. "This is where I woke up," she said as she stepped off the path Dr. Grey was making, pushing the cage open with a creak.
Jean seemed startled and almost disoriented at the idea of stopping, and hung back as the others stepped past her. She examined the cage. It was older, well-cared for, and gilded with intricate designs that seemed to invoke comfort and sanctuary instead of confinement.
"Are you trying to keep yourself in or other people out?" she said absently to herself after a few moments, not really thinking about what she was saying or realizing she said it out loud.
She shook her head. "I....think if your mind sensed something wrong, however small, maybe your subconscious sent you to the safest place it knew whenever all hell broke loose."
"I'm not really doin' it on purpose," Topaz mumbled in response to Dr. Grey's question. She hadn't tried to drown any of them, really.
"I know....I didn't mean to imply you were," Jean said with the quiet resonance of someone with similar experience.
Haller touched the wrought iron with the gentleness of a man resting a hand on a skittish horse, eyes scanning what lay beyond. Behind him the light that was Rachel pulsed softly, casting twinning shadows through the bars.
"Headaches," he mused, returning his attention to where Topaz stood by the gate. "Like when you experience overload?" Though they were clearly at the center Haller didn't move. He knew Topaz enough to suspect both of Jean's theories were correct. It wasn't just the situation -- Topaz was private, and she hadn't invited them here. Rather than move for the door he met her eyes, and the look was a question.
Topaz looked back at Haller, frown deepening. "Kind of...but sharper. When I just overload it's like someone hit me with a rock. These headaches have been someone hit me with a rock and then stabbed the back of my head at their worst. I usually just take a couple aspirin and go to sleep."
Jean stared down at a few small droplets of water that had landed on the ground. "You said you have headaches from overload, and these were similar...do you mean overload of emotions? This water is...pretty concentrated, and there's a lot of it, almost like a flood. Perhaps you were reacting to it?"
"But it only seems to be negative emotions," Haller observed. "Is your unconscious absorption usually that selective?"
"No." Topaz started deeper into the caged area, tired of waiting for them. "It's usually everything."
Once Topaz moved Haller finally allowed himself to follow. It was probably unlikely that Topaz gave any thought to the significance of allowing them into the center of her mind, and under the circumstances he probably shouldn't have bothered waiting at all. Still, he didn't like the sense of trespassing. It hit a little too close to home.
"This is a bad time for Charles to be out of town," he remarked absently. His eyes lingered on the books, some of them chained to podiums, some locked safely in display cases. Private memories. He tread carefully, testing the floor before he put his full weight on it, but as he'd expected they seemed to be past the traps.
He sighed. "I'm functionally useless. Jean, the damage seems less in here. Are you having any more luck sending out?"
Jean had just made her way inside the cage, taking the same care Haller had, and paused at Haller's question.
"I tried to wake up when you pulled me out of the water out of....reflex," she admitted.
"But I kept being sucked back in. I couldn't even get close to my body. I can try again."
Jean's eyes fluttered closed. After a few moments her astral form suddenly flickered in and out like a bad connection for only a split second before quickly becoming solid again.
Opening her eyes, Jean put her hand to her temple, then shook her head. She glanced away, rubbing her forehead, trying to stave off a headache.
"It almost feels like something is keeping us here. How, or why...I don't know."
No way out and no obvious reason to be in. Haller pressed a knuckle to his chin, thinking. It might be some form of powers evolution, but that wasn't a reassuring thought: Topaz didn't just absorb emotions, she metabolized them. If she'd trapped their astral forms this was not a good precedent. It also meant they may not be able to escape without help. Charles was out of the mansion, but Emma was almost as experienced. Providing this was a psychic matter, anyway.
"While I still can't believe this is a legitimate concern," Haller said, addressing the only other possibility circumstances and experience presented, "you haven't come into contact with any magical artifacts recently, have you?"
"I barely leave the mansion," Topaz said dryly. "If there was a magical artifact capable of makin' this-" She waved a hand, "happen it'd be in Amanda's hands and far away from me. Aside from the headaches everything's been normal."
The counselor spread his hands. "Considering how often demons seem to feature we have to rule out-"
And suddenly they had company.
Hope's eyes widened and rushed forward as she finally saw the person she had been looking for in the distance. "Topaz, there you are! I finally found you!" Looking around her she also saw several other people she had been wondering about as she let her focus go. "But... where are we???"
Haller blinked, then turned. There, emerging from one of the bookshelves like a ghost, was Hope.
"We're in Topaz's mind," he said automatically, surprised to see her. He'd thought he and the women had been drawn into Topaz's mind because their receptivity made them vulnerable, but Hope wasn't a telepath -- her element was the astral plane, not the mind.
"Hope?" Christ how many people were running around in her head. "What're you doin' here?" Possibly the stupidest question in the world but all she could think to ask in that moment.
"But in whose mind was I then..." She mused softly to herself. Must have been Meggan, if she knew her suite mate. "You are not the only ones trapped... where I just came from... Ms. Frost, Meggan, that pink haired guy and the girl who looks like Ms. Frost are trapped in a very sweet landscape. And I mean that literally as well as figuratively."
"Was there water there?" Jean spoke up. She was still wet but by now it had become mostly damp rather than soaked. Things were becoming clearer now, and she was feeling less like a crazy person.
"And was it emotionally charged? Like with negative emotions?"
The idea of the other person's mind being pleasant was not lost on Jean either. For some reason she was reminded of the second Ghostbusters movie with the slime, and half expected the Statue of Liberty to come stomping down the hallway.
The only ghosts that seemed to be here, however, were old memories.
"That was the strange thing. There was no water in the landscape... The river that I saw from the air... it resembled syrup more than any kind of water that I have seen." Hope replied, a little quizzically. "Do any of you have more idea of what is going here?"
Before the others could reply, the blue orb of light that had been drifting around the cage in lazy circles darted forward, passing through Hope’s shoulder before coming back to pat her on the head.
Between one blink and another, Rachel’s body reassembled itself.
“You were trapped in another mindscape with other psis,” she repeated, one brow arched high. It sounded like almost all the other psis in the mansion, actually. Which was worrying for a multitude of reasons. The redhead cocked her head to the side. “Are they connected?”
"I think I have seen all the other mansion psis by now." Hope confirmed. "I think Mr. Keller is the only one missing. And do you mean if two minds are connected.... I don't know. I was at least able to pass, but my psi-abilities are very different from yours."
Topaz scowled a bit, rubbing her temples. "Okay, so...I didn't do this. Whoever else's mind you were trapped in probably didn't do this because havin' people in your head sucks. So maybe we can work on trying to figure out a way to fix this?"
Haller was thinking. So all the psis were caught except Julian -- and Julian's telekinesis was unique in that it had developed independently of the usual concomitant telepathy. That didn't explain how two empaths had managed to swallow the rest of the mansion's psis, but it was beginning to give him a better idea of the common thread.
The counselor turned to regard the other anomaly. "Hope doesn't travel though the same channels we do," he observed. "If she could move from Meggan's mind to Topaz's, maybe she can get out altogether. With enough of a push."
Jean shook her head, folding her arms. "I don't think that's a good idea. We still don't fully know what we're dealing with yet or why we're here in the first place. She could get hurt, or killed, or even all of us as well due to the connection we all seem to have, if we go charging in blindly without knowing what's going on," she said, absently running her fingers through her hair.
"Are we willing to take that risk, to Hope or to anyone else? I think we should try to meet up with the others first, see if we can....figure something out from here before we try with Hope."
Haller shook his head. "Considering all the time we've spent in here already, I think there's a good chance Hope is the only way to find the others. And she won't be alone. If she's willing to try, I can help her -- I can't do much, but I do still have the ability to augment and shield. Topaz can't exactly leave her own mind, and if something does go wrong we'll need you and Rachel." He turned to Hope. "Still, it's ultimately your decision. Dr. Grey is right, there is a risk. I can't promise this will work, but I'll do everything I can to keep you safe."
"It looks like we might not have much of a choice. Ms. Frost already tried to leave and failed... and doing nothing might present its own risks. So let's do this." Hope immediately replied.
"Anything I can do?" If there was one thing Topaz absolutely hated, it was being helpless. The idea of sitting here waiting for Hope and Haller to do all the work made her skin crawl.
"Keep your eyes open. You know your own mind best. If something seems to be changing or you start feeling any pain, let Rachel and Dr. Grey know immediately. It may be a sign they need to pull us back. Or, if there's an opportunity, push the rest of you out." He knew it wasn't what the she wanted to hear, but Haller had nothing more for her. This was her mind -- how frustrating must it be to have no control?
That was a sentiment he could empathize with.
With an inward sigh Haller turned to Rachel. "Watch for potential adverse reactions on this end," he said.
His adopted sister nodded her acknowledgement, poking at an empty table by Topaz’s side before deeming it safe enough to perch her butt on top of it. Her expression and posture exuded calm and ease, but her eyes were bright and alert as she wagged a warning finger at them. “Don’t go taking your time now,”
Jean glanced down, still looking decidedly unhappy with this plan.
"Be careful," she said faintly.
“As best as they know how to,” Rachel assured her, and Topaz by extension. “We’ll get through this. We always do.”
Hope and Haller fail to escape, but make a different sort of headway.
Once they'd moved a safe distance from the other three, the telepath held out his hand.
"Just concentrate on getting to the astral plane," Haller instructed. "As long as we're in direct contact I should be able to give you a boost."
"I hope it works." Hope mentioned as she accepted his hand. "I tried from Meggan's mind, but I was not able to. I think I was lucky I was able to follow my own bond to Topaz." With those words she closed her eyes, letting the waves grow in her mental eyes until they would carry her away to the astral plane.
Through her mind he could see it. Haller added his own power to the effort the visualization represented, subtly increasing the size of the waves -- a tide that was still gentle but inexorable, carrying them upwards. As Hope began to ascend, spirit-like, all sense of weight vanished; around and below them the library began to fade as if swallowed by encroaching mist.
So far it seemed to be working... Hope opened one eye to see the landscape beneath them fading and the darkness that was always her first impression of the astral plane was so near she could almost touch it.
Suddenly a sharp lance of pain shot through her head, from the back where the tether usually connected her with her body. It was sharper than the discomfort she sometimes felt when she shifted between the planes. Still, she took 'measured' breaths, trying to let pass through her and fade away into nothing.
He felt the pain shudder through her. Haller automatically reached out to dampen it, but he could feel the strain. They needed to be careful. Astral bodies were fragile, and Hope had never taken passengers before; too much stress could literally tear her apart.
"How are you doing?" Haller asked.
A wince stole over her face as another stab of pain lanced through her. "Not feeling great." She ground out as she fought to keep the image of the waves carrying her up in her mind. "Not sure if we are going to make it..." Suddenly the weight she was carrying seemed to triple as another wave of pain rose.
"Stop. Don't hurt yourself." Pain existed for a reason, and the portion he was dampening from Hope was substantial. Straits were nowhere near dire enough yet to risk permanent damage. He studied the girl's pained expression carefully.
"What if you try bringing us down to a level you can tolerate?" Haller asked. "Maybe we can get a better idea of what we're dealing with."
Her face still grim, Hope closed her eyes again, focusing on the picture in her mind. The waves subsided somewhat, manifesting in the outside world as being lowered closer to the mindscape again. Slowly the strain lessened and the lines around her eyes smoothed out. Finally she opened her eyes. "This I can handle." There was still a sense of discomfort, but nothing overly painful.
Haller nodded. "Thank you. Keep me updated on how you're doing, okay?" With a final readjustment of his senses to monitor Hope's strain, he turned to regard what lay below.
The two psis hung over the astral body like satellites in local orbit. Topaz's mind stretched beneath them like a dark planet covered in labyrinthine terrain -- the stacks they'd seen in her mindscape, dimly lit and complex.
And then, like the image of a young woman from one angle and a crone from another, his perspective switched. Wreathed shadows became verdant forests, long hallways winding paths and rivers. It was no longer Topaz's mind, but one he'd touched before: Meggan's.
"This isn't right," Haller said aloud. "It's like two minds are existing in the same space." It hurt the eyes to study too long. He glanced back up to Hope. "How does this compare to what you see on the astral plane? Have you ever seen anything like this?"
"Nothing like this." Hope shook her head slowly. "On the astral plane I either see some kind of nothingness... or an impression from a place in the real world... if there are people... I will see their auras with emotions and connections between them... but nothing has ever come close to this..."
Haller was silent for a moment, considering. "It's similar for me," he said eventually. "The astral plane is basically ambient psionic energy. Individual consciousnesses are just pinpoints in it, like fish in the ocean. This is -- unusual. It's like looking into someone's head from the outside."
He turned his attention back to the ever-shifting mindscapes below them, forcing himself to look closer. There was something around the edges of the planets, something he hadn't noticed at first because of the wavering perspective. It wasn't apparent straight-on, but the planets were haloed by some kind of debris field. It had the organic quality algae drifts gathering near a lakeshore.
"There's something around the edges," he said.
Hope's eyes narrowed. "I cannot quite see it. Wait..." With the headache only a distant feeling, she was able to let herself sink in her perception that allowed her to see auras. "Whoa!?!?! This is weird."
Both mindscapes pulsed beneath her, two masses of color that seemed distinct, yet flowing in each other at the same time. She could easily distinguish the two... the darker shades churning together were clearly Topaz, while the flickering impossible bright mass must have been Meggan's. Finally she focused on the edges, where Haller had seen something...
There was something there as well... black... with other dark shades shimmering beneath it. "I can see it... this is so strange. Look through my eyes, see what I see..." She urged him.
Haller arched an eyebrow at her, puzzled, but didn't argue. Carefully he eased his way into her mind, closed his eyes, and looked through hers.
"It's . . . emotion," he realized, surprised. What had looked like a film of scummy debris from his own mind's eye looked like a satellite view of a tropical storm to Hope's.
"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" he asked, tearing his eyes away to look back at Hope.
"Hmm... not on the astral plane, but..." Hope tilted her head, searching for what she had seen. "Those dark spots... I have seen them in auras of people with severe emotional trauma. Not always... but sometimes it almost looks like their aura has some kind of mold on it... or like it's rotting... Does that make any sense to you?"
"Emotional damage. I only see it in terms of its psionic equivalent in someone's mind . . . deterioration, flooding, rubble. Nothing like this." Which was fascinating. If Hope could perceive trauma at a glance . . . but no, now wasn't the time. Haller turned back to the planets, dipping in and out of Hope's perceptions in an attempt to process what he was seeing.
"I don't think it's part of the girls," he said. "If it was, it would be fully integrated into their mindscapes. They're both empaths, but that's not how it works. They metabolize the emotions, pass them through. Emotional trauma is specific to the individual. Even if they can absorb the pain there's no way they should be able to take the damage itself."
Hope observed the dark spots a bit more. "It's not... Not a part of their mindscape of any of them. It's like..." She narrowed her eyes. "It's almost like it's clinging to them... even better... sticking to them. You know... when you peel a sticker of the window... there almost always is some kind of glue residue. It reminds me of that."
Something that didn't belong. While he appreciated the outside confirmation, the implications weren't good.
"I still don't understand how their mindscapes can overlap," Haller said. "Can you take us closer? Maybe we can get a better look at it."
"That I can do." Hope focused on subsiding the waves in her mind even further and she felt the strain in the back of her mind grow even less strong as they descended. "This looks so odd..." She commented softly as she looked back and forth between Haller and the mindscapes.
"Agreed." Now that they were closer Haller could tell the metaphorical planets weren't perfectly aligned. It was close, but the overlap wasn't exact: Meggan's mind inhabited areas Topaz's did not, and vice versa. It made him think of a nearly-complete solar eclipse.
"The debris field is constant," he observed. "In terms of the space it occupies, I mean. It doesn't seem to align precisely with one psyche or another. If it were simply some kind of empathy glitch I'd think the girls would each have their own individual atmosphere. This surrounds both of them."
"So something from the outside is attacking them?" Hope asked. She had far too little experience with this. "I can see the others..." She suddenly realized. "I mean... not them, but their auras and the connections between them."
Haller slipped behind her eyes again. Suddenly the mindscapes were a satellite-image of urban areas at night, spots of light and color grouped together and connected by tendrils. Five minds, spread across two different consciousnesses. The signals pulsed with the minds that hosted them. They never faded completely, but clearly occupied different planes.
Haller withdrew from Hope's mind and rubbed his temple. "So locating us isn't the problem, which is good," he said, "but we're still out of sync."
"Out of sync?" Hope regarded him quizzically. "How do you mean that?"
"Imagine the minds as two pages in a book, and everyone in them as words printed on one page or the other. When you close the book the sentences occupy almost the same space, but they're still on different pieces of paper." He paused, thoughtful. "Though . . . when you found us you just passed from one mindscape to another, right?"
"I manage to follow the bond between Topaz and me somehow." Hope nodded. "Though I am not quite sure how I managed to do that. I do not think I have done that before."
"Which means wherever we've ended up, your tracking still works . . . at least to an extent. Which means whatever barrier is separating the mindscapes isn't absolute." Haller thought for a long moment.
"Okay, take us back. I may have an idea."
The rows were endless. While having their lack of progress revealed by the Dewey Decimal System would only have depressed them, it would at least have provided some sort of orientation. Instead the only landmarks were ruined library paraphernalia. Here a stack of books lay in a puddle, pages bloating with water. There a ladder stretching above the dim lights and into the darkness of the stacks above. And all around them the drip, drip, drip of water.
"The damage seems to be getting worse," Haller noted after a time. He gestured to a shelf with the planks split straight through, spilling its contents across the aisle. "Maybe something came this way. Do either of you sense anything?"
"Nope," Rachel popped her 'p' over a shoulder as she lifted them up and over an overturned chair. "Zero signs of any doors or exits either. But you know me and my TP. We're sketchy at best. Dr. Grey? Anything from way back there?"
Jean furrowed her brow thoughtfully. "It's hard to--" she began, taking a step forward, when the rotting boards underneath her feet gave way with a hideous creak, weakened by Rachel and Haller passing over them. Her arms flew up over her head and she let out a startled scream as she plunged below the floor into the depths, water erupting in her wake with a heavy splash.
The water enveloped her from head to toe, the nature of its creation not even allowing her a sensation of hot or cold to focus on. Instead it bombarded her relentlessly with never-ending, overwhelming waves of fear, loneliness, pain, rage, disappointment and frustration.
The memories of every argument she ever had with Warren, her talk with Clarice and Scott, the deaths of patients she tried to save, her attempts to talk sense into Matt, Warren and Miles but with no avail, the feelings of fear when trying to sneak mutants across the border with X-Corps, her break up with her boyfriend in college, witnessing Haller break a man's arm in two, Clarice cutting off a man's finger ripped their way through her mind before settling upon the image of holding Annie in her arms as her life slipped away. The girl was like a broken doll, limp and bleeding while her eyes slowly dimmed.
Jean tried to shriek, but only succeeding in sucking in a mouthful of water as she thrashed about, fighting to find a foothold or something to grab onto but finding none.
It felt like dying, and wanting to die. Over, and over, and over again.
Haller's head snapped around just in time to see Jean's hand disappear through the floorboards. Shit. Rachel's shield had been so effective against the perniciously leaks it hadn't even occurred to him their footing might be at risk.
"Rachel, hold the floor!" Haller called, and dove for Jean. He closed his eyes and plunged his arms into the water up to his shoulders, grappling for her fingers. Something brushed his hand -- he grabbed it, and found a wrist. Jean.
Something cold was rising in his chest, but instinct was already working. Using their physical contact as a bridge Haller forced his stunted telepathy through his fingers and around the doctor, insulating her against the brutal onslaught. He found her other hand and pulled back towards the splintered break in the floor, and now that empty cold was crawling up his throat and into his mouth, the woman in his grasp a thousand miles away, but he kept pulling, pulling until her head broke the surface--
The moment of clarity was something Jean latched onto as her mind, like a wounded animal, instinctively reacted and telekinetically yanked her and Haller from the water with a huge burst of force that was more focused on escape than anything else. There was no trajectory, no plan, just a desire to get away.
They shot up and up before veering sharply to the left and careening uncomfortably close to a splintered shelf, with no signs of stopping.
Rachel's shield had shrunk with a thought, a tick before they collided head-first into the very solid barrier. It very quickly became apparent to her, however, that their flight was not controlled and holding just the damned floor was not going to cut it. Her powers gathered around her before a conscious decision was even made, propelling her upwards and stretching towards them.
A blue globe of energy, looking very much like a cushioned hamster's ball, encapsulated the pair of them less than a foot before they crashed into a book case. Rachel peered into it, worry evident as she slowly lowered them to the relative safety of a ledge.
Haller's hands gripped Jean's wrists like a vise. His body was jerking with short, sharp spasms, and his eyes were clenched shut. The slash-like scars that ran across his face and beneath the collar of his shirt, his astral form's only clearly defined feature, were torn open and streaming blood.
Even though he was grabbing her hard enough to be leaving bruises, Jean still stood there for a couple of moments, a completely distant look in her eyes.
It was the sight of blood that snapped her back to reality more than anything else, followed by the pain (after being swallowed by it, it was hard to really distinguish what was real at the moment). Reflexively, Jean tried to pull herself away with a shudder but found herself held steadfast.
The ledge beneath them gave way with a crack, the break so clean it looked as if it had been partially sawed through. The adjacent shelf gave way with it, vomiting its contents onto the psis – things that appeared to be books but did not open, like dummy copies used for display with the density of bricks.
Jean let out another cry as she found the both of them tumbling yet again, her stomach lurching. She wanted to throw up.
"LET GO!" she screamed in her blinding panic, expecting for them to crash into more water.
Then the world around them flashed blue and came to a sudden, jarring stop as their psionic cage was caught mid-air above the aisle. The books froze as one, and verdant eyes narrowed. With clenched fists, Rachel dropped her personal telekinetic armour and pumped a significant amount of energy into the shield around the other two psions instead, pre-empting the books' collective change in directions to follow their target. They pelted the barrier like kamikaze pilots, and Rachel scowled as a large tome clipped her in the shoulder. It was almost a light show, what with how the barrier pulsed blue with every hit it took.
Above them, a rumble sounded, reverberating down the room and slowly building into a loud roar. Bookcases crumbled onto themselves, collapsing, turning, gathering and falling. Right above them.
"Aw, what the fucking hell. Hang on."
In the next moment, they were flying; Twisting, turning and corkscrewing through falling debris at top speed. But Rachel dared only to dodge and deflect, swinging the globe around like both a shield and hammer. Her armour shimmered into existence again a second before she slammed head first into a falling shelf, the wood splintering with a loud crack.
The attacks, however, were varied, persistent and incessant, and they came nowhere close to a defendable perimeter or exit. The litany of profanities under her breath had been going on for a while, and neither David nor Jean seemed to be snapping out of their respective states any time soon.
Rachel reviewed the situation, weighed her options and stakes, and raised another wall of defenses against darting writing apparatuses. Her expression was a mask of cold fury, a fire blazing in her eyes that none but their sightless attackers to see.
Below her Haller gave out a sharp, sudden gasp and jerked away from Jean, finally releasing her arms. The flash of movement in Rachel's periphery drew her attention for a split-second, and in that second what had appeared to be a section of wall upwards of three stories high peeled away and began to roll towards them with alarming speed, like an enormous poster trying to curl back into shape.
Rachel’s gaze snapped away from the closest thing she had to family and toward what seemed like impending doom. It was hard to be kind when things were out to kill you. She may have been taught compassion as a babe, but blind benevolence had never been on the menu the way protection and survival was a constant theme in her life.
Death on one plane could mean death on another.
With that one thought, all hesitation fell away. Sparking blue energy rolled from her arms, shoulders to fingertips, a wave of relentless power building in rapid seconds until it towered three stories above their heads. She let it go with an echoing war cry and, as if in slow motion, watched as it met the tumbling wall with a resounding explosion that rang in their ears.
Concrete crumbled, wood disintegrated and paper burned up in seconds. The half-spent tsunami of charged telekinetic power shifted, flashed electric blue and morphed into a large claymore, which, shoved forward by two glowing arms, punctured the air with a loud rip.
It took Jean a moment to realize everything had stopped, but Rachel's defenses had continued. It was easy to get caught up in protecting yourself when the world was falling down.
Something stood out among the storm of chaos once brought down both around them and by Rachel herself: a singular figure in the distance, silhouetted against the stacks of books. Topaz. It was the sight of the girl that reminded her of where they were, and the potentially devastating consequences of their actions. Despite the fact that they were merely trying to stop themselves from being harmed.
Jean glanced up to Rachel, then over to Haller and the ball of telekinetic energy around them.
"Rachel, stop! It's over!" she said, but it was unheard over the sound of books and shelves crashing down from the previous assault.
It was time for equivalent of a psychic slap.
Drawing in a breath, Jean released a psi blast that erupted through the ball of energy, causing it to pop and send herself and Haller falling again. She was so tired of falling.
This time, however, she had enough mental acuity to slow them both down to keep them from being less of a pancake and only maybe a couple of extra bumps and bruises.
The landing put them a few feet away from the young woman in front of them, the owner of the mind they curiously resided in.
[_*_]
Other than the steady Drip drip that echoed with her footsteps, the area around Topaz was completely silent. Her foot stepped into a puddle, and a shiver of fear and terror ran up her spine. It faded as quickly as it hit her, but she still gasped and pulled back. Her foot was wet, she noted dimly as she continued on. The next puddle she hit resulted in a similar reaction, although the feelings were muted, like her mind was protected by cotton. After a while she stopped even noticing the puddles.
A sudden bolt of panic and fear hit her, and she whirled around, surprised. That wasn't fabricated emotions - those were real. There were people.
Oh thank god. She turned and sprinted toward the first signs of life she had felt since she'd started walking. It only took a couple turns around bookcases before the beat up and bedraggled psis landed in front of her. For a moment she could only stare.
"What the hell are you lot doin'?"
After landing on solid ground, Jean stared at Topaz for a moment or two, her eyes noticeably distant.
"We found ourselves here," she said finally. In the sudden rush of deafening silence and stillness and without the push to escape being a singular driving focus, it was easy for the negative emotions imbued by the water clinging to her skin and hair and clothes to cloud her mind and it was becoming a struggle to concentrate. Closing her eyes, Jean rubbed her forehead.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
Topaz's eyes swept over the area, noting the disaster and how tired and wet Haller and Jean looked. Wet?
"I...went to bed. I think. What happened to you all? Why are you wet?" Sure there were puddles but unless they got down on the ground and rolled in them there was no reason for them to look like this.
"Traps, apparently."
This was from Haller, who was now sitting up. Neither his tone nor expression gave any indications of the violent seizure just moments earlier. This was made less reassuring by the blood still smeared across his face and soaking the front of his shirt.
"Or at least in part," the man continued with a glance at Rachel. The weapon had disappeared with the threat, but she was still obviously on her guard. He turned his attention back to Topaz. "If I had to guess, I'd say the mess is because we triggered your psychic defenses. Most people don't like intruders."
It took Topaz a moment to process Haller was even talking when she saw his face. "Okay, so...you're wanderin' around my...head-" And hell if that wasn't still weird, "and somethin' decided you all were a threat and wants to drown you?" Something about that felt a little off to Topaz. Why water? It was a library, after all - the water wasn't exactly natural.
"Your head decided that, yes. Like I said, most people don't like intruders. The fact we hit traps probably means we're close to the center. Jean, are you all right?"
Jean was half turned away from the trio, her arms folded and huddled into herself, as if trying to stay warm. His voice, and the question, crawled its way into her head, pulling out the memory of what he'd done and paraded it in front of her. It was like he was taunting her.
"Oh my GOD. Why do you keep asking me that? You don't even care! Just shut the fuck up about it!" she snapped, turning to glare at him before she noticed everyone staring at her. With a heavy shudder, she immediately jumped, putting a trembling hand back to her forehead.
Rachel blinked at the older woman, the last of her telekinetic shields and armour disappearing with a deliberate ‘click’ of her teeth. Her usually expressive face was now a study on serenity, unnaturally still amidst Jean’s outburst of emotions and resumption of the steady drip, drip, drip. If her head was ringing from the psychic assault she had received from Jean, Rachel made no show of it.
“Dr. Grey—”
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she apologized quickly, taking deep breaths. Regardless of their prior interaction this was not the time and place. And he had saved her. He had pulled her out at risk to his own sanity. That meant there was some care there, some emotion. Otherwise he would've just left her to drown in the deep. Right? Important. Think of that. This is not normal. Something else. Not my emotions.
"It's....it's hard to focus....there's still some residual..." she said, twirling her hand around her head in an aimless attempt to come up with a word.
"I...I think I'll be fine in a little while. It's starting to go away. I just need a little...." Xanax. Whiskey. Sleep. Death. Not normal. Important.
"Time. But I can do whatever you need me to," she swallowed, glancing back up to the group, then finally to Haller.
"Are you going to be okay? Your wounds." She was admittedly curious about the previous scars that had opened up.
Who did he try to kill to get those?
Shut up, fucking creepy shit addled-brain.
Haller blinked, then reached up to touch his face. His fingers came away red. More puzzled than alarmed, the telepath rubbed his sleeve across his face. When he lowered his arm the blood had been wiped away, revealing only old scars once again.
"Just some kind of psychosomatic response," he remarked, quirking an eyebrow at Jean. "I'm fine. And don't apologize. Those pockets seem to be some kind of emotional wells. Contact dredges up . . . something. Obviously I wasn't prepared for it either." There was a tiny crack in his neutral tone, as if he was tripping over some kind of rote diction, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Rachel stepped close enough to place a hand on his back where the others could not see. The discussion and lack of progress had gone on long enough. “Let’s move out of here. It’s not stable,” she said.
Haller, already climbing to his feet, paused. Hanging in the space where Rachel had made her attack was a fissure of light. It spidered across the air like a crack in a pane of glass, nearly oblique from where he stood. Even as he watched it dwindled into nothingness.
"Topaz, we should be near the core of your mind," Haller said, eyes still lingering where the fissure had been. "It'll be safer for us to talk there. Is there a direction that feels 'right'?"
Topaz frowned, turning in a slow circle, eyes slipping from row to row. "This way," she finally said with some amount of confidence. And she started walking.
Jean trailed behind Topaz slightly as she gradually showed signs of 'drying off.' She was careful to avoid the puddles this time, keeping a close, wary eye on her surroundings.
Haller followed a respectable distance away. Even though Topaz's steps were sure and solid he kept his guard up, and that was the only reason why a warning plish didn't end in disaster.
A section of floor Topaz had passed safely over gave way beneath his foot. The edge of a floorboard dipped into the water it was floating on like an overburdened raft. He drew back before he could fall in, forcing a stunted shield around his foot before the emotional contamination could do any damage.
The counselor watched the bobbing floorboard disintegrate like rotted particle board, then raised his eyes to Topaz.
"I assume you're still a little tense," he remarked.
"Well let's see. I went to bed - I went to bloody bed, and ended up trapped in this hell. Yeah, I'm tense." Haller had been Topaz's therapist long enough to know that heavy sarcasm like that was her last refuge when she was scared. She was stressed, she was trapped in her own head, and just to add to the fun she had three other people banging around in her head probably causing a mess.
And she was terrified.
She cast an eye at the rows of books as they walked by them, still barely paying attention to where she was going. When she spoke again her voice was lower and much more insecure. "You didn't open any of the books...did you?"
"Just one," Haller replied without a shred of hesitation, though he carefully refrained from looking at Rachel. "I needed to confirm we were in a mindspace rather than the astral plane. It was mundane, maybe three minutes of your life. We were in the outskirts. The really important things will be hidden much deeper." His carefully exploring foot hit another loose section of floor. He stopped, frowning. "Your defenses aren't going down. This is going to be a problem."
Taking a step forward, Jean glanced over the floor with a look of appraisal, like one of the many games of chess she had played with Charles over the years.
"Wait," she said, carefully studying the floorboards.
"I have an idea," she said.
Jean turned, waiting for the others to move before she turned around back the way they came.
"Please take a step back."
After a few moments of uneventful waiting, a faint rumbling was heard as various bits of debris soon funneled in caused by the earlier battle. The once damaged pieces were soon molded into a makeshift, rudimentary bridge made up of bits of floorboard and shelving
"Topaz doesn't seem to be affected by the water. And if this is her mind, then maybe using stronger parts of it might help us get through."
"Brilliant," Rachel complimented, facial muscles losing some of the tension it had been hoarding since things had gotten messy. She gestured politely for Jean and Topaz to take the lead forward before she dissolved into a ball of energy that wafted over to hang around David's shoulders with a comforting pat to his brain.
The look of irritation on his face was easy to miss, and likely not apparent to Jean or Topaz. Rachel herself could only guess at what had caused that tic of frustration building between his eyes – It was the same one he had displayed those months ago when he couldn’t save her brain from rupturing from holding too many soul fragments inside of it. No, David did not wear helplessness well at all.
"And more efficient than holding a shield," Haller agreed, though inwardly he wasn't as neutral as he sounded. The touch of Rachel's mind only highlighted the extent of his own unease. He returned the touch with reassurance of his own, but even he could feel it rang hollow. It was more than his inability to influence the mindscape. The emotional well he'd fallen into had done . . . something. He didn't understand what, but he had to make sure it didn't happen again.
Pushing the thought away, Haller returned to practical matters. "Topaz, what's your sense of all this?" he asked as he followed Jean across the bridge. "Does this seem normal? –well, never mind, that's obviously a no. What I mean is, does anything in particular feel 'off'?"
Topaz didn't answer for a long moment. She kept her eyes on her feet as she walked along the bridge. She hopped off at the end, barely noticing the puddle her foot hit other than to acknowledge it was cold. "I mean I can't imagine my mind is the most pleasant place to be even on a normal occasion," she dryly. "But this seems a little...extreme. The damage, the water...I don't think it belongs here."
"If I remember right, you've described your empathy as more nebulous," Haller ventured as Rachel's amorphous form orbited him like a lazy moon. "Pervasive, like radio static. The water seems concentrated. Is Jean right? That it doesn't affect you, I mean."
"I mean, my foot is wet." Topaz looked down at the offending foot. "The first time I stepped in a puddle I kind of got a...chill, I guess? Like when you're watching a horror movie and you know somethin's about to happen and you shudder. But after that, nothin'."
"So you felt something unpleasant, but not overwhelming." Haller looked at the redhead leading the way, still carefully assembling a bridge beneath them. "Jean? When you fell in, what did you experience?"
At first she didn't speak. Jean's concentration was on the bridge, boards and metal various debris coming together to make something that seemed almost elegant. She didn't look up, though her work did pause momentarily, her body stiff and rigid.
"Death," she said faintly before she continued on with renewed focus that seemed to become momentarily quick and harsh, almost frantic.
"And pain, and fear, disgust....rage...It was like all of these negative emotions had been...been...pooled together somehow. And I could feel it...all. All at once."
Haller noted the stiffness in Jean's posture; the brisk, business-like stride of someone trying to leave their feelings behind them.
"How has your head been lately?" he asked Topaz. "Have you been near anything or anyone unusual? Felt strange at all?"
The blob of light over his head gave a judgmental pulse at his lack of personal contribution. Haller ignored it.
"Been havin' headaches for a couple weeks now," Topaz admitted with a frown. "They happen sometimes so I didn't think much about it. Haven't really been out or anythin', mostly just hang around the mansion."
They turned a corner, and Topaz saw the caged area she had come out of earlier. "This is where I woke up," she said as she stepped off the path Dr. Grey was making, pushing the cage open with a creak.
Jean seemed startled and almost disoriented at the idea of stopping, and hung back as the others stepped past her. She examined the cage. It was older, well-cared for, and gilded with intricate designs that seemed to invoke comfort and sanctuary instead of confinement.
"Are you trying to keep yourself in or other people out?" she said absently to herself after a few moments, not really thinking about what she was saying or realizing she said it out loud.
She shook her head. "I....think if your mind sensed something wrong, however small, maybe your subconscious sent you to the safest place it knew whenever all hell broke loose."
"I'm not really doin' it on purpose," Topaz mumbled in response to Dr. Grey's question. She hadn't tried to drown any of them, really.
"I know....I didn't mean to imply you were," Jean said with the quiet resonance of someone with similar experience.
Haller touched the wrought iron with the gentleness of a man resting a hand on a skittish horse, eyes scanning what lay beyond. Behind him the light that was Rachel pulsed softly, casting twinning shadows through the bars.
"Headaches," he mused, returning his attention to where Topaz stood by the gate. "Like when you experience overload?" Though they were clearly at the center Haller didn't move. He knew Topaz enough to suspect both of Jean's theories were correct. It wasn't just the situation -- Topaz was private, and she hadn't invited them here. Rather than move for the door he met her eyes, and the look was a question.
Topaz looked back at Haller, frown deepening. "Kind of...but sharper. When I just overload it's like someone hit me with a rock. These headaches have been someone hit me with a rock and then stabbed the back of my head at their worst. I usually just take a couple aspirin and go to sleep."
Jean stared down at a few small droplets of water that had landed on the ground. "You said you have headaches from overload, and these were similar...do you mean overload of emotions? This water is...pretty concentrated, and there's a lot of it, almost like a flood. Perhaps you were reacting to it?"
"But it only seems to be negative emotions," Haller observed. "Is your unconscious absorption usually that selective?"
"No." Topaz started deeper into the caged area, tired of waiting for them. "It's usually everything."
Once Topaz moved Haller finally allowed himself to follow. It was probably unlikely that Topaz gave any thought to the significance of allowing them into the center of her mind, and under the circumstances he probably shouldn't have bothered waiting at all. Still, he didn't like the sense of trespassing. It hit a little too close to home.
"This is a bad time for Charles to be out of town," he remarked absently. His eyes lingered on the books, some of them chained to podiums, some locked safely in display cases. Private memories. He tread carefully, testing the floor before he put his full weight on it, but as he'd expected they seemed to be past the traps.
He sighed. "I'm functionally useless. Jean, the damage seems less in here. Are you having any more luck sending out?"
Jean had just made her way inside the cage, taking the same care Haller had, and paused at Haller's question.
"I tried to wake up when you pulled me out of the water out of....reflex," she admitted.
"But I kept being sucked back in. I couldn't even get close to my body. I can try again."
Jean's eyes fluttered closed. After a few moments her astral form suddenly flickered in and out like a bad connection for only a split second before quickly becoming solid again.
Opening her eyes, Jean put her hand to her temple, then shook her head. She glanced away, rubbing her forehead, trying to stave off a headache.
"It almost feels like something is keeping us here. How, or why...I don't know."
No way out and no obvious reason to be in. Haller pressed a knuckle to his chin, thinking. It might be some form of powers evolution, but that wasn't a reassuring thought: Topaz didn't just absorb emotions, she metabolized them. If she'd trapped their astral forms this was not a good precedent. It also meant they may not be able to escape without help. Charles was out of the mansion, but Emma was almost as experienced. Providing this was a psychic matter, anyway.
"While I still can't believe this is a legitimate concern," Haller said, addressing the only other possibility circumstances and experience presented, "you haven't come into contact with any magical artifacts recently, have you?"
"I barely leave the mansion," Topaz said dryly. "If there was a magical artifact capable of makin' this-" She waved a hand, "happen it'd be in Amanda's hands and far away from me. Aside from the headaches everything's been normal."
The counselor spread his hands. "Considering how often demons seem to feature we have to rule out-"
And suddenly they had company.
Hope's eyes widened and rushed forward as she finally saw the person she had been looking for in the distance. "Topaz, there you are! I finally found you!" Looking around her she also saw several other people she had been wondering about as she let her focus go. "But... where are we???"
Haller blinked, then turned. There, emerging from one of the bookshelves like a ghost, was Hope.
"We're in Topaz's mind," he said automatically, surprised to see her. He'd thought he and the women had been drawn into Topaz's mind because their receptivity made them vulnerable, but Hope wasn't a telepath -- her element was the astral plane, not the mind.
"Hope?" Christ how many people were running around in her head. "What're you doin' here?" Possibly the stupidest question in the world but all she could think to ask in that moment.
"But in whose mind was I then..." She mused softly to herself. Must have been Meggan, if she knew her suite mate. "You are not the only ones trapped... where I just came from... Ms. Frost, Meggan, that pink haired guy and the girl who looks like Ms. Frost are trapped in a very sweet landscape. And I mean that literally as well as figuratively."
"Was there water there?" Jean spoke up. She was still wet but by now it had become mostly damp rather than soaked. Things were becoming clearer now, and she was feeling less like a crazy person.
"And was it emotionally charged? Like with negative emotions?"
The idea of the other person's mind being pleasant was not lost on Jean either. For some reason she was reminded of the second Ghostbusters movie with the slime, and half expected the Statue of Liberty to come stomping down the hallway.
The only ghosts that seemed to be here, however, were old memories.
"That was the strange thing. There was no water in the landscape... The river that I saw from the air... it resembled syrup more than any kind of water that I have seen." Hope replied, a little quizzically. "Do any of you have more idea of what is going here?"
Before the others could reply, the blue orb of light that had been drifting around the cage in lazy circles darted forward, passing through Hope’s shoulder before coming back to pat her on the head.
Between one blink and another, Rachel’s body reassembled itself.
“You were trapped in another mindscape with other psis,” she repeated, one brow arched high. It sounded like almost all the other psis in the mansion, actually. Which was worrying for a multitude of reasons. The redhead cocked her head to the side. “Are they connected?”
"I think I have seen all the other mansion psis by now." Hope confirmed. "I think Mr. Keller is the only one missing. And do you mean if two minds are connected.... I don't know. I was at least able to pass, but my psi-abilities are very different from yours."
Topaz scowled a bit, rubbing her temples. "Okay, so...I didn't do this. Whoever else's mind you were trapped in probably didn't do this because havin' people in your head sucks. So maybe we can work on trying to figure out a way to fix this?"
Haller was thinking. So all the psis were caught except Julian -- and Julian's telekinesis was unique in that it had developed independently of the usual concomitant telepathy. That didn't explain how two empaths had managed to swallow the rest of the mansion's psis, but it was beginning to give him a better idea of the common thread.
The counselor turned to regard the other anomaly. "Hope doesn't travel though the same channels we do," he observed. "If she could move from Meggan's mind to Topaz's, maybe she can get out altogether. With enough of a push."
Jean shook her head, folding her arms. "I don't think that's a good idea. We still don't fully know what we're dealing with yet or why we're here in the first place. She could get hurt, or killed, or even all of us as well due to the connection we all seem to have, if we go charging in blindly without knowing what's going on," she said, absently running her fingers through her hair.
"Are we willing to take that risk, to Hope or to anyone else? I think we should try to meet up with the others first, see if we can....figure something out from here before we try with Hope."
Haller shook his head. "Considering all the time we've spent in here already, I think there's a good chance Hope is the only way to find the others. And she won't be alone. If she's willing to try, I can help her -- I can't do much, but I do still have the ability to augment and shield. Topaz can't exactly leave her own mind, and if something does go wrong we'll need you and Rachel." He turned to Hope. "Still, it's ultimately your decision. Dr. Grey is right, there is a risk. I can't promise this will work, but I'll do everything I can to keep you safe."
"It looks like we might not have much of a choice. Ms. Frost already tried to leave and failed... and doing nothing might present its own risks. So let's do this." Hope immediately replied.
"Anything I can do?" If there was one thing Topaz absolutely hated, it was being helpless. The idea of sitting here waiting for Hope and Haller to do all the work made her skin crawl.
"Keep your eyes open. You know your own mind best. If something seems to be changing or you start feeling any pain, let Rachel and Dr. Grey know immediately. It may be a sign they need to pull us back. Or, if there's an opportunity, push the rest of you out." He knew it wasn't what the she wanted to hear, but Haller had nothing more for her. This was her mind -- how frustrating must it be to have no control?
That was a sentiment he could empathize with.
With an inward sigh Haller turned to Rachel. "Watch for potential adverse reactions on this end," he said.
His adopted sister nodded her acknowledgement, poking at an empty table by Topaz’s side before deeming it safe enough to perch her butt on top of it. Her expression and posture exuded calm and ease, but her eyes were bright and alert as she wagged a warning finger at them. “Don’t go taking your time now,”
Jean glanced down, still looking decidedly unhappy with this plan.
"Be careful," she said faintly.
“As best as they know how to,” Rachel assured her, and Topaz by extension. “We’ll get through this. We always do.”
Hope and Haller fail to escape, but make a different sort of headway.
Once they'd moved a safe distance from the other three, the telepath held out his hand.
"Just concentrate on getting to the astral plane," Haller instructed. "As long as we're in direct contact I should be able to give you a boost."
"I hope it works." Hope mentioned as she accepted his hand. "I tried from Meggan's mind, but I was not able to. I think I was lucky I was able to follow my own bond to Topaz." With those words she closed her eyes, letting the waves grow in her mental eyes until they would carry her away to the astral plane.
Through her mind he could see it. Haller added his own power to the effort the visualization represented, subtly increasing the size of the waves -- a tide that was still gentle but inexorable, carrying them upwards. As Hope began to ascend, spirit-like, all sense of weight vanished; around and below them the library began to fade as if swallowed by encroaching mist.
So far it seemed to be working... Hope opened one eye to see the landscape beneath them fading and the darkness that was always her first impression of the astral plane was so near she could almost touch it.
Suddenly a sharp lance of pain shot through her head, from the back where the tether usually connected her with her body. It was sharper than the discomfort she sometimes felt when she shifted between the planes. Still, she took 'measured' breaths, trying to let pass through her and fade away into nothing.
He felt the pain shudder through her. Haller automatically reached out to dampen it, but he could feel the strain. They needed to be careful. Astral bodies were fragile, and Hope had never taken passengers before; too much stress could literally tear her apart.
"How are you doing?" Haller asked.
A wince stole over her face as another stab of pain lanced through her. "Not feeling great." She ground out as she fought to keep the image of the waves carrying her up in her mind. "Not sure if we are going to make it..." Suddenly the weight she was carrying seemed to triple as another wave of pain rose.
"Stop. Don't hurt yourself." Pain existed for a reason, and the portion he was dampening from Hope was substantial. Straits were nowhere near dire enough yet to risk permanent damage. He studied the girl's pained expression carefully.
"What if you try bringing us down to a level you can tolerate?" Haller asked. "Maybe we can get a better idea of what we're dealing with."
Her face still grim, Hope closed her eyes again, focusing on the picture in her mind. The waves subsided somewhat, manifesting in the outside world as being lowered closer to the mindscape again. Slowly the strain lessened and the lines around her eyes smoothed out. Finally she opened her eyes. "This I can handle." There was still a sense of discomfort, but nothing overly painful.
Haller nodded. "Thank you. Keep me updated on how you're doing, okay?" With a final readjustment of his senses to monitor Hope's strain, he turned to regard what lay below.
The two psis hung over the astral body like satellites in local orbit. Topaz's mind stretched beneath them like a dark planet covered in labyrinthine terrain -- the stacks they'd seen in her mindscape, dimly lit and complex.
And then, like the image of a young woman from one angle and a crone from another, his perspective switched. Wreathed shadows became verdant forests, long hallways winding paths and rivers. It was no longer Topaz's mind, but one he'd touched before: Meggan's.
"This isn't right," Haller said aloud. "It's like two minds are existing in the same space." It hurt the eyes to study too long. He glanced back up to Hope. "How does this compare to what you see on the astral plane? Have you ever seen anything like this?"
"Nothing like this." Hope shook her head slowly. "On the astral plane I either see some kind of nothingness... or an impression from a place in the real world... if there are people... I will see their auras with emotions and connections between them... but nothing has ever come close to this..."
Haller was silent for a moment, considering. "It's similar for me," he said eventually. "The astral plane is basically ambient psionic energy. Individual consciousnesses are just pinpoints in it, like fish in the ocean. This is -- unusual. It's like looking into someone's head from the outside."
He turned his attention back to the ever-shifting mindscapes below them, forcing himself to look closer. There was something around the edges of the planets, something he hadn't noticed at first because of the wavering perspective. It wasn't apparent straight-on, but the planets were haloed by some kind of debris field. It had the organic quality algae drifts gathering near a lakeshore.
"There's something around the edges," he said.
Hope's eyes narrowed. "I cannot quite see it. Wait..." With the headache only a distant feeling, she was able to let herself sink in her perception that allowed her to see auras. "Whoa!?!?! This is weird."
Both mindscapes pulsed beneath her, two masses of color that seemed distinct, yet flowing in each other at the same time. She could easily distinguish the two... the darker shades churning together were clearly Topaz, while the flickering impossible bright mass must have been Meggan's. Finally she focused on the edges, where Haller had seen something...
There was something there as well... black... with other dark shades shimmering beneath it. "I can see it... this is so strange. Look through my eyes, see what I see..." She urged him.
Haller arched an eyebrow at her, puzzled, but didn't argue. Carefully he eased his way into her mind, closed his eyes, and looked through hers.
"It's . . . emotion," he realized, surprised. What had looked like a film of scummy debris from his own mind's eye looked like a satellite view of a tropical storm to Hope's.
"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" he asked, tearing his eyes away to look back at Hope.
"Hmm... not on the astral plane, but..." Hope tilted her head, searching for what she had seen. "Those dark spots... I have seen them in auras of people with severe emotional trauma. Not always... but sometimes it almost looks like their aura has some kind of mold on it... or like it's rotting... Does that make any sense to you?"
"Emotional damage. I only see it in terms of its psionic equivalent in someone's mind . . . deterioration, flooding, rubble. Nothing like this." Which was fascinating. If Hope could perceive trauma at a glance . . . but no, now wasn't the time. Haller turned back to the planets, dipping in and out of Hope's perceptions in an attempt to process what he was seeing.
"I don't think it's part of the girls," he said. "If it was, it would be fully integrated into their mindscapes. They're both empaths, but that's not how it works. They metabolize the emotions, pass them through. Emotional trauma is specific to the individual. Even if they can absorb the pain there's no way they should be able to take the damage itself."
Hope observed the dark spots a bit more. "It's not... Not a part of their mindscape of any of them. It's like..." She narrowed her eyes. "It's almost like it's clinging to them... even better... sticking to them. You know... when you peel a sticker of the window... there almost always is some kind of glue residue. It reminds me of that."
Something that didn't belong. While he appreciated the outside confirmation, the implications weren't good.
"I still don't understand how their mindscapes can overlap," Haller said. "Can you take us closer? Maybe we can get a better look at it."
"That I can do." Hope focused on subsiding the waves in her mind even further and she felt the strain in the back of her mind grow even less strong as they descended. "This looks so odd..." She commented softly as she looked back and forth between Haller and the mindscapes.
"Agreed." Now that they were closer Haller could tell the metaphorical planets weren't perfectly aligned. It was close, but the overlap wasn't exact: Meggan's mind inhabited areas Topaz's did not, and vice versa. It made him think of a nearly-complete solar eclipse.
"The debris field is constant," he observed. "In terms of the space it occupies, I mean. It doesn't seem to align precisely with one psyche or another. If it were simply some kind of empathy glitch I'd think the girls would each have their own individual atmosphere. This surrounds both of them."
"So something from the outside is attacking them?" Hope asked. She had far too little experience with this. "I can see the others..." She suddenly realized. "I mean... not them, but their auras and the connections between them."
Haller slipped behind her eyes again. Suddenly the mindscapes were a satellite-image of urban areas at night, spots of light and color grouped together and connected by tendrils. Five minds, spread across two different consciousnesses. The signals pulsed with the minds that hosted them. They never faded completely, but clearly occupied different planes.
Haller withdrew from Hope's mind and rubbed his temple. "So locating us isn't the problem, which is good," he said, "but we're still out of sync."
"Out of sync?" Hope regarded him quizzically. "How do you mean that?"
"Imagine the minds as two pages in a book, and everyone in them as words printed on one page or the other. When you close the book the sentences occupy almost the same space, but they're still on different pieces of paper." He paused, thoughtful. "Though . . . when you found us you just passed from one mindscape to another, right?"
"I manage to follow the bond between Topaz and me somehow." Hope nodded. "Though I am not quite sure how I managed to do that. I do not think I have done that before."
"Which means wherever we've ended up, your tracking still works . . . at least to an extent. Which means whatever barrier is separating the mindscapes isn't absolute." Haller thought for a long moment.
"Okay, take us back. I may have an idea."
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