A Fistful of Nanites - Failure to Initialize Hardware

[xp_cypher]

Doug does not evacuate. Doug heads toward the emergency like the self-sacrificing dumbass he is. But this time, Marie-Ange refuses to let him go off half-cocked.


"Actually," replied Emma. "You can." She ignored Doug's expression, too tired to bother hiding her ruthlessness. "For what we are doing, the fight we are in, your power is almost without limit - except for those limits you choose to impose. If you were as single-minded as Ignatova, you would have a chance of besting her." She closed her eyes for a moment, unutterably weary and heart-sick. "And I am very tired of making people die, Mr Ramsey."

There was a definite sense of deja vu as Doug hustled down the hallway, his breathing already labored as his cane and shoes beat an intricate triple-beat on the floor. He hadn't even had to look at his phone when it shrilled - he was the one who had coded the alerts, after all. But he wasn't evacuating. Just like always, he was rushing headlong toward the epicenter.

One potential catastrophe on it's way out of the mansion, safely in Jubilee's arms, one heading in the entirely wrong direction. Marie-Ange finished yanking the laces to her boots tight, and then rushed to intercept. "No. No, absolutely not." She planted herself in front of Doug, one hand grabbing at his cane. "You are not running off without telling me what your plan is."

"You say that like you think I have an actual plan here," Doug muttered He would have pushed past Marie-Ange, but on the one hand he liked to think he had learned some lessons about using his words a bit more, and on the second, Angie probably could knock him over without even trying these days. "So far I just was operating on I figured out a way to do it once, maybe I can figure out a way to do it again."

"Put yourself in some sort of fugue state and get eaten by another monster? I do not think it... " Marie-Ange swore, and her fingers scrabbled at the top of Doug's cane. "It cannot work that way a second time. This one cannot rebuild flesh. It is just machines in there."

She had a point. She always had a point, and there were probably many to be made about Doug's tendency toward rashness when dealing with technopaths. "But the nanites are trying to build a body," he countered.

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

Doug shook his head and gripped the cane tighter, lacing his fingers in with Marie-Ange's. "I've kicked a technopath out of this mansion before," he said, his voice rough.

"You had help. You had ... you were healthy. You had a plan." Marie-Ange wiggled her fingers away from Doug's hand. "You are operating right now on rashness and self-loathing and panic, and we cannot afford to have you die right now. No more dying. Not today." She reached to grab Doug's arm, and pulled her hand away quickly as if shocked by static. "My idiot cousin is in Scott's plane, Amanda is outside fueling herself on god knows what to protect Avalon and I cannot have any more people I love today be throwing themselves into stupid ideas. You promise me you will make a plan before you take one more step."

There was something in that speech, probably multiple somethings, that would need to be analyzed and addressed later. Decoding the bits of information that came out in conversation with Angie was a full-time job all on its own. "I can't-" Doug began, then forced himself to take a deep breath and attempt to calm his racing thoughts. "I can't make a plan until I know what the situation and the available options are," he said more evenly. "But yes. I promise I will make a plan."

"This is entirely out of my depth." Marie-Ange pointed out. "We know it is making a body, and we have an identity for the technopath, and that is all the information we have, yes?" She was already pulling cards from her pockets. "What capabilities have the nanites shown? What do you need from me to get into the labs?"

Doug tried to trace a chain of logic, looking for the link that would help them fight off this invasion. At least his brain was still working at full capacity. "Medlab," he announced. "That was where the nanites first popped up, right? Maybe there's something there that we can use."

"That is the theory, that they infested Maya first." Marie-Ange confirmed. "And then Garrison. Molly took a sample." She reached for her pocket to grab her phone and then remembered - it was in her suite, where nanites may or may not have already gotten into it. "They could not infect him, but they could Maya, which I am not sure I understand." She was already on the move, a step ahead of Doug, with a card in hand just in case. "I read Molly's update, I just do not know the science behind it."

"Omni-skin," Doug muttered. "If that isn't one of the more seriously pretentious names for a thing." The enhancements that the mutant Blaquesmith had grafted onto various mansion residents were...to call them technology was stretching the meaning of the word. He refrained from quoting the old saw about sufficiently advanced technology, though. "But it means there is something this Fixer person and his nanites can't handle. So let's start there." He trailed behind Marie-Ange, a reversal of their usual stance - normally he was the one protecting her.

"So we are going to the infirmary? Or to Molly's laboratory space?" Marie-Ange paused use a hastily imaged spear to shove a roomba back into a room and pulled its door shut. "That is your starting space, yes? Garrison's skin adapts to attacks, but the nanites were going after Garrison's fight chip, so it.. " She dropped the imaged spear, and it puffed away into mist. "They evolve, but not fast, yes?"

Doug nodded. "Wherever Molly is keeping the sample off of Garrison." It was Molly, she loved keeping samples of everything interesting she came across. "She's out there trying to find..." He snorted. "I believe I heard some very creative variations on names for him from Topaz and Kyle on their way out."

Of course Doug would have his own phone linked to the team comms, and shielded from attacks. In hindsight, Marie-Ange's own phone was probably also shielded, but she'd been overly cautious. "Medical then. Almost certainly, if they suspected that was the cause of Maya's collapse."

At least the emergency stairs down to the infirmary and laboratories were well light, Marie-Ange thought, as she stopped again to open an emergency lockdown door with a palmprint scan, and then shut it again just as tightly once Doug had followed her through. And that the nanites had not managed to scramble the security enough to lock down biometrics. "Medical is evacuated. Clarice did an EMP on Maya on Molly advice." She'd taken Doug's phone in hand, leaving him with the earbud to monitor comms while she monitored text alerts. "Can we just EMP the entire mansion?"

Doug leaned against one of the benches as they entered the medbay proper, trying to recover his strength without obviously flagging. "Wouldn't work." He waved a hand at the walls. "This whole basement complex is hardened against a potential attack by Magneto, and I don't think anyone's got him stashed in their back pocket, so..." He straightened up. "Okay, where's our merry little band of robotic Osmosis Joneses?" he asked, looking around for wherever Molly had stored the nanites. After a quick scan of the room, he pointed to where a container sat, about as far away from any of the electronics as possible. "That looks promising."

Marie-Ange pulled a card from one pocket, and a moment later her hand was covered in a gauntlet, green and mossy at the fingers and growing more wooden and bark like as it climbed up past her wrist. She picked up the container. "They are... dead?" The layer of grey coating the jar was ashy and not reacting at all "So we are at a dead end again? What does one do with dead nanites?" She raised an eyebrow at Doug, whose face was twisted up in a frustrated grimace. "I know, you want to pull out a laptop and look at what makes them run. Little machines full of code no one understands but you." Her hand clutched, and she almost dropped the jar. "No one at all except you would understand it, yes? It has to be you."

Doug continued to grimace, adding a frustrated grunt. She was right. Sometimes you didn't even need precognition to know someone as well as Marie-Ange knew Doug. Of course his first instinct was to use technology to understand what he was looking at. Of course, putting a bunch of inert nanites into a laptop was basically just giving a big thumbs up to whatever havoc they would then wreak. He frowned and drummed his fingers against the handle of his cane. That last bit Marie-Ange had said...'it has to be you'. He'd grown very used to the subtle inflections that shaded her voice when she was being cryptic and letting her power direct her words.

It had to be him. Well, when was the last time it had to be him? Technopaths.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I have an absolutely horrific idea. I need a syringe."

"You need a what?" Marie-Ange couldn't have even said what language she replied in as she set the jar down on the lab bench. "Explain."

Doug's words became rapid and choppy, as if he almost couldn't keep up with the connections his brain was making. He knew how frustrating it could be when Marie-Ange presented a conclusion without the intervening steps, but she had her powers to thank for that at times. "They're refusing to let anyone or anything through into the secure space, correct?" He waved a hand at the jar. "Well, there's one thing they have to be letting in - themselves." His gestures became more animated as he laid out the logic. "They are building a body, but they also have to be monitoring the door if they're keeping things out. And we know that he has used the nanites to control people."

The expression that met Doug's explanation screamed confusion. "That explains almost nothing. Why do you need a syringe? You cannot think to..." Marie-Ange's hands went flat on the lab bench. "Oh, oh, I see. You are going to... this is that. We are here, now, and it does have to be you." She busied herself with peripherals - alcohol wipes and the sharps container. "Where? How. I have no details, I just have.. everything but details."

And in the space of several seconds, Marie-Ange had somehow gone from behind Doug's semi-manic logic chain to way out in front of it. Doug was pretty used to that, though. It was part of why they just...fit together, as teammates and lovers. Between his power calling out patterns, and her precognition, they could make incredible leaps of intuition in tandem, one kickstarting the other. "I mean, I'm just making this up as I go along, but it would seem we're on the right track." He examined the syringe and the jar. "I'm thinking it should be as close to the actual nervous system as possible, maybe even the brain stem." He hissed out a long breath. "This is going to hurt like hell."

"Shirt off. I do not know how to use a fluoroscopy machine, so it has to be lumbar." Marie-Ange did not wait for Doug to start undressing, she moved to the sinks to scrub her hands. "This is a skill I never thought I would need outside of murder..." She said absently, as she dried her arms.

"If you were anyone else, the fact that I've heard you say that exact sentence multiple times would be disturbing." Thankfully, with the nanites being inert, it was a simple task to load the syringe with approximately a thimbleful of them and then set it aside.

Doug's shirt came up and over his head, and he clambered up onto the table, laying down on his side and staring at the wall.

"No lidocaine that I can find." Marie-Ange confirmed, glancing at Doug quickly as she uncapped the syringe. "You are right, this is going to hurt like hell."

She had found the epidural kits, and had spent most of the time prepping recounting exactly when and why she'd learned this particular skill, adding in a side tale about her medical examiner friend and his collection of anatomical drawings from the eighteen hundreds. "Everything like a spinal tap, but in, not out. Please breathe on a slow four count, and I will inject on the exhale."

Doug chuckled. "Spinal tap...does this one go to..." He trailed off as he thought better of it. Sure, making a dry quip in the face of pain and danger might blunt the edge of it, but in this situation it was far more important for him to remain still and do everything he could to help Marie-Ange with this.

He inhaled slowly, and as he began to exhale, the hiss of breath became a 'hnnnnnnnnghhffffffffff' grunted out through his gritted teeth. Doug was no stranger to pain after years of throwing himself into dangerous situations, but this was on a whole other level entirely. He did his best to maintain control of his breath, panting slightly when what he really wanted to do was arch away and curse in at least a dozen languages.

"And now you sit for five minutes or until the mass of horrible nanites attacks this room." Marie-Ange busied herself with the sharps container and pressing a bandage to Doug's back.

The five minutes was spent with Doug concentrating very hard on continuing to keep his breath steady in the face of an enormous panic attack. Around three minutes in, his eyebrows furrowed. "I definitely feel...something," he declared.

To Marie-Ange's wordless questioning hum, Doug winced. "Oh. Oh shit. Is this what one of your migraines feels like?" he asked through gritted teeth.

"Do you feel like one of your eyes is on fire, and you are not sure if you want to vomit, because what you really want to do is squeeze your brain out of your skull rather like a toothpaste tube?" Marie-Ange had pulled a quick acting heating pack from a cabinet, and handed it over. "Back of the neck, to keep muscles from seizing up. Breathe through your mouth and if you have to vomit, vomit. Surpressing it will just make it worse."

Doug groaned, but did as he was told. "Fuck my life," he murmured.