Collective Soul: Conclusions
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xp_logsAt an impasse with the investigation into the psychic phenomena, Jean takes the step of scanning mind-by-mind. She begins with Artie.
"Okay, deep breaths," Jean said to Artie as they sat in her office across from each other in two comfortable, well worn chairs.
"I'll be doing a quick mental scan for anything out of the ordinary. If anything feels weird or you want to stop, let me know."
Artie nodded briefly. His general discomfort with telepathy radiated outwards but he kept himself still as Jean began to work. He knew, intellectually, that physical stillness didn't impact telepaths but emotionally, he was 12 at Alkali Lake. No. Not that, not with Jean (another Jean, the third Jean) in the room. The image of the firebird on the water rose in his mind.
It took effort but Artie focused himself, recreating a scene in his mind. Not Alkali Lake. A beachside bar in the Caribbean, X-Force sitting at various tables, all relaxed in a way they seldom ever were, Christmas decorations on the walls and framing the open windows.
Jean lingered in the corner, a wallflower, studying the room for anything out of the ordinary. "When did you first start noticing the weirdness?"
"A few days before Christmas." Artie projected the text, frowning lightly as he did so to stop it breaking apart in the air.
"What happened?" Jean said. "Can you show me in the memory?"
Artie had locked down the basement when the alarms had gone off for Hope's arrival. Movement in the corner of his eye drew his attention to the room that had once housed Cerebro and his first clear look at Hope. She looked, in that moment, absolutely dejected.
She was also outside his taser's reach. Artie began to run. Toward, not away.
There were tears standing in the girl's eyes, her hands opening and then closing like she didn't know what to do with them; but the movement caught her eye, and she raised her hand defensively, a fresh line of blood snaking from her nose to her top lip.
The pattern of damage he'd seen suggested telekinesis not energy or strength. The bad news was, that was a distance power and he really wasn't entirely comfortable shooting a kid. Also, he hadn't brought a gun.
He was limited to pure colour and shape, filling the room and the hallway with jagged pieces of light and dark and a kaleidoscope of different shades of bright colour.
Rogue had arrived alongside him. "Hey there," she said calmly but loud enough to be heard over the alarms. "Don't be scared... I'm Rogue. You look tired, kiddo..... can we get closer, help you find somewhere to sit maybe?"
The girl didn't give an indication that she had heard - much less processed - what Rogue was saying; her head whipped around, flinging a few droplets of blood from where they were hanging on her chin, and the tight whipcord of her body sprang into motion, running for what she thought was an exit.
It was, of course, a wall. One that she hit at speed.
Jean studied the scene carefully as it replayed, keeping her mind out for the strange. And when it happened, the world changed. As Artie made his projections everything around it flickered, turning iridescent before it bled outward, like a drop of ink on a white napkin. The iridescence quickly seemed to harden into an overlay on the memory, soaking into crevices and cracks.
As Hope hit the wall, the scene froze, the girl stopping in midair.
"I see it," Jean said, stepping into the center of the room. "There's something here. It seems to be intertwined with your powers...and your mind. Almost like a...film. A sheen."
He shook his head. "I can believe that. It was before I'd learned to compensate," he replied in ASL, letting the thoughts underpinning the signs seep through to Jean. "I'm still struggling with anything large. What if I do a large projection here?"
Jean nodded. "If you'd like. I don't know if I can really help make it better at the moment but maybe it'll help give us a better idea of what's going on."
Artie closed his eyes and began to build the image in his mind, starting with the table between himself and Jean. It became a restaurant table, half eaten plates in front of them both. The tables spread out around them both, filled with diners and people coming and going from the buffet.
The lighting and walls combined in an oppressive beige. This was the MGM Grand buffet and the diners meant business. Artie opened his eyes and let the illusion go, a skeleton built inside the framework of the room, corners and dimensions hidden.
His head throbbed with the effort as diners around them ate, held silent conversations and came and went.
The movement shattered first, falling into shards of light and colour. The rest of the illusion began to fall apart as he tried to fix it, details blurring and dissolving.
If the iridescence was an ink splatter before, it became a hemorrhage when Artie worked to make the larger illusion, bursting to saturate the scene as it disintegrated around them.
"Okay...you can stop," Jean said, shaking her head. "It's the same thing, only much worse."
She met his eyes. "Are you okay?"
Artie nodded. "I'll live."
Letting out a breath, Jean nodded. It wasn't great news, but at least it was another piece of the puzzle. Now she had something to look for.
The next volunteer was waiting.
After preliminary assessments are complete, Jean enlists Hope Abbott for her unique perspective.
The roof fell away below her as Hope continued to rise until she was at least hovering at least 50 feet above the mansion. High enough to get a clear overview of the house and the grounds surrounding it, but so far she couldn't see anything... if she could even figure out what she was looking for. A psionic film clung to her and some of the other psis, but she had not been able to detect anything from the ground level... maybe an overview from higher up would reveal something.
She 'closed' her eyes for a moment to focus, opened them and simply looked down. This... this was something she had not expected. Multicolored 'stuff' hung over the mansion like a cloud, little streams of what seemed to be a kind of energy in many different colors chasing each other around and around. Little threads shimmered in the mass, linking several individual points to one 'thing' in the middle...?
Taking a sip from her tea, Jean felt a mental flicker of recognition and curiosity coming from Hope.
~How's it going?~ Jean asked telepathically.
"Well, there is definitely something strange going on, but nothing I recognize. Some form of energy resembles a cloud, but there are also threads connecting to a center point. I cannot identify the center point though..."
'Narrowing her eyes' Hope focused, sending a picture of what she was seeing at that moment. "Let me see if I can get just a little closer without losing sight of the cloud."
~Be careful~ Jean said. If the cloud was the source of the problems, she was loath to think what might happen to be caught in the middle psionically.
"Of course." Hope sent as she descended a little closer to the energy 'thing'. From closer up the little energy streams seemed brighter as the colors tumbled around almost playfully, but the shimmering little threads seemed to jump out even from above that. The point they originated from remained stubbornly vague, even if the various points at the end took on vague silhouettes. "Dr. Grey, there is definitely something going on with the psis being connected to a focal point... I can almost recognize the people in the end."
This piqued Jean's curiosity. ~Who are they?~
"Most, if not all psi's in the mansion. I recognize Marie-Ange for one... Do you have Arthur's overview at hand by any chance? I will call out whom I can place."
~I can get it, yes. Give me a moment.~ Jean said. After grabbing the overview from her desk, Jean settled back down. ~Okay, I got it. Go.~
"Alright. Marie-Ange..." Hope focused on the second presence that was so much less familiar to her. "I believe that must be Beatrice.. and the third one are Sophie and her sisters..."
Assessment complete, it falls to Jean to deliver her conclusion.
There was sometimes a fine line between shock and actual dissociation. At this moment Jim was walking it like a tight-rope, still in his body but numb to the words he'd just heard. He heard himself ask:
"What do you mean it's me?"
Jean met Jim's eyes. Her expression never wavered, but held a sense of sympathy amidst certainty.
"The psionic 'weirdness' that's been happening over the last few months...it's the result of a leak of psionic energy. Sort of like...an ocean oil tanker being damaged by rocks. The oil leaks out. I've done multiple scans in different ways. And the oil...in this case...all leads back to you."
"But I . . ." The sentence didn't get any farther; thoughts were colliding in his skull like a fifteen car pileup.
"How?" said Jim's mouth. "Even if my shields are shredded, how can that be affecting other people's powers?"
"Wish I knew," Jean admitted.
"Hope saw it...the connection to you, on the Astral Plane. And when I ran some psionic scans on some of the others who were impacted...well..." She tapped her temple.
"I can show you, if you'd like."
Sometimes it was easier to see something than just hear about it.
Jim hesitated. "Share the memory, or . . ?"
"I was thinking a scan," Jean said. "You should be able to tell right away."
Since the reconstruction he had limited telepathic contact as much as possible, but Jean was experienced enough to handle whatever bleed his damaged shields might allow through. She knew what she was offering. Tentatively, Jim closed his eyes and reached out.
Jean's own conceptualization shaped his perceptions, and what he saw was -- paint. Wild swirls of color overlaid her thoughts like a translucent wash. Stunned, Jim pressed against the distortion and felt his mind pass through. It was like an oil slick, floating on the surface without penetrating deeper, but enough to cover the outermost layer like a film.
The contamination was his. He recognized the feel of it as surely as the lingering scent of smoke on his clothes.
Jim wrenched his mind away.
"This isn't right," he began. "I would've noticed before-"
He stopped. The only person whose mind he'd entered since regaining consciousness in December had been Arthur's. Arthur, and his mind already held the unique fingerprints of Jim's psionic signature as a consequence of the repairs the telepath had made years ago.
"You weren't looking. And neither was I. Not until I had something out of place to look for," Jean said gently.
"You didn't know. None of us did. This is kind of...unique territory."
Jim sat, frozen. All of it. Weeks, months of disruption for a dozen psis. His telepathy had been the only aspect of his power he had ever felt was safe. Coming to David's system only after Jemail had mastered it, it didn't flare like telekinesis. It didn't break bones or burn flesh when David was in crisis. He'd never felt in danger of losing control of it. Never.
His most reliable tool had been poisoning everyone around him.
Every time I told Arthur I would help him, he thought, mind spinning as his muscles began to shake, Every time we tried to figure out what was happening to his powers. The whole time, it was . . . I was . . .
Jim brought his hands to his face, fingers convulsing into claws as his breathing began to quicken -- and then slow. The thin man was silent for a few moments, as if collecting himself, and let them drop.
Grey eyes rose to meet Jean's, and then Jack stood.
"This is a problem for Xavier."
The shift felt like a wall of steel, and Jean recognized the person in his place.
"It is what it is," Jean said, glancing Jack over. "It was an unintended side effect of someone ripped apart and nearly dying. Which...has happened more often than not to more than a few people, in different ways. Was it a problem? Yes. But we'll get through it, together."
"Good luck with that argument," said the alter, but it was a comment without hostility, only matter-of-fact observation. The telekinetic retrieved his cell and thumbed to the Contacts list. Technical understanding wasn't necessary to make an executive decision. Jim certainly wasn't in a position to do it right now.
"Psionic background radiation seems to like a bad idea for an international flight. I'll see if I can beg emergency transport out of Blink." Jack glanced up at the redhead. As always, his very presence set Haller's face into a hard expression, but there was respect there. He gave her a nod.
"Thanks. We'll take it from here."
"Okay, deep breaths," Jean said to Artie as they sat in her office across from each other in two comfortable, well worn chairs.
"I'll be doing a quick mental scan for anything out of the ordinary. If anything feels weird or you want to stop, let me know."
Artie nodded briefly. His general discomfort with telepathy radiated outwards but he kept himself still as Jean began to work. He knew, intellectually, that physical stillness didn't impact telepaths but emotionally, he was 12 at Alkali Lake. No. Not that, not with Jean (another Jean, the third Jean) in the room. The image of the firebird on the water rose in his mind.
It took effort but Artie focused himself, recreating a scene in his mind. Not Alkali Lake. A beachside bar in the Caribbean, X-Force sitting at various tables, all relaxed in a way they seldom ever were, Christmas decorations on the walls and framing the open windows.
Jean lingered in the corner, a wallflower, studying the room for anything out of the ordinary. "When did you first start noticing the weirdness?"
"A few days before Christmas." Artie projected the text, frowning lightly as he did so to stop it breaking apart in the air.
"What happened?" Jean said. "Can you show me in the memory?"
Artie had locked down the basement when the alarms had gone off for Hope's arrival. Movement in the corner of his eye drew his attention to the room that had once housed Cerebro and his first clear look at Hope. She looked, in that moment, absolutely dejected.
She was also outside his taser's reach. Artie began to run. Toward, not away.
There were tears standing in the girl's eyes, her hands opening and then closing like she didn't know what to do with them; but the movement caught her eye, and she raised her hand defensively, a fresh line of blood snaking from her nose to her top lip.
The pattern of damage he'd seen suggested telekinesis not energy or strength. The bad news was, that was a distance power and he really wasn't entirely comfortable shooting a kid. Also, he hadn't brought a gun.
He was limited to pure colour and shape, filling the room and the hallway with jagged pieces of light and dark and a kaleidoscope of different shades of bright colour.
Rogue had arrived alongside him. "Hey there," she said calmly but loud enough to be heard over the alarms. "Don't be scared... I'm Rogue. You look tired, kiddo..... can we get closer, help you find somewhere to sit maybe?"
The girl didn't give an indication that she had heard - much less processed - what Rogue was saying; her head whipped around, flinging a few droplets of blood from where they were hanging on her chin, and the tight whipcord of her body sprang into motion, running for what she thought was an exit.
It was, of course, a wall. One that she hit at speed.
Jean studied the scene carefully as it replayed, keeping her mind out for the strange. And when it happened, the world changed. As Artie made his projections everything around it flickered, turning iridescent before it bled outward, like a drop of ink on a white napkin. The iridescence quickly seemed to harden into an overlay on the memory, soaking into crevices and cracks.
As Hope hit the wall, the scene froze, the girl stopping in midair.
"I see it," Jean said, stepping into the center of the room. "There's something here. It seems to be intertwined with your powers...and your mind. Almost like a...film. A sheen."
He shook his head. "I can believe that. It was before I'd learned to compensate," he replied in ASL, letting the thoughts underpinning the signs seep through to Jean. "I'm still struggling with anything large. What if I do a large projection here?"
Jean nodded. "If you'd like. I don't know if I can really help make it better at the moment but maybe it'll help give us a better idea of what's going on."
Artie closed his eyes and began to build the image in his mind, starting with the table between himself and Jean. It became a restaurant table, half eaten plates in front of them both. The tables spread out around them both, filled with diners and people coming and going from the buffet.
The lighting and walls combined in an oppressive beige. This was the MGM Grand buffet and the diners meant business. Artie opened his eyes and let the illusion go, a skeleton built inside the framework of the room, corners and dimensions hidden.
His head throbbed with the effort as diners around them ate, held silent conversations and came and went.
The movement shattered first, falling into shards of light and colour. The rest of the illusion began to fall apart as he tried to fix it, details blurring and dissolving.
If the iridescence was an ink splatter before, it became a hemorrhage when Artie worked to make the larger illusion, bursting to saturate the scene as it disintegrated around them.
"Okay...you can stop," Jean said, shaking her head. "It's the same thing, only much worse."
She met his eyes. "Are you okay?"
Artie nodded. "I'll live."
Letting out a breath, Jean nodded. It wasn't great news, but at least it was another piece of the puzzle. Now she had something to look for.
The next volunteer was waiting.
After preliminary assessments are complete, Jean enlists Hope Abbott for her unique perspective.
The roof fell away below her as Hope continued to rise until she was at least hovering at least 50 feet above the mansion. High enough to get a clear overview of the house and the grounds surrounding it, but so far she couldn't see anything... if she could even figure out what she was looking for. A psionic film clung to her and some of the other psis, but she had not been able to detect anything from the ground level... maybe an overview from higher up would reveal something.
She 'closed' her eyes for a moment to focus, opened them and simply looked down. This... this was something she had not expected. Multicolored 'stuff' hung over the mansion like a cloud, little streams of what seemed to be a kind of energy in many different colors chasing each other around and around. Little threads shimmered in the mass, linking several individual points to one 'thing' in the middle...?
Taking a sip from her tea, Jean felt a mental flicker of recognition and curiosity coming from Hope.
~How's it going?~ Jean asked telepathically.
"Well, there is definitely something strange going on, but nothing I recognize. Some form of energy resembles a cloud, but there are also threads connecting to a center point. I cannot identify the center point though..."
'Narrowing her eyes' Hope focused, sending a picture of what she was seeing at that moment. "Let me see if I can get just a little closer without losing sight of the cloud."
~Be careful~ Jean said. If the cloud was the source of the problems, she was loath to think what might happen to be caught in the middle psionically.
"Of course." Hope sent as she descended a little closer to the energy 'thing'. From closer up the little energy streams seemed brighter as the colors tumbled around almost playfully, but the shimmering little threads seemed to jump out even from above that. The point they originated from remained stubbornly vague, even if the various points at the end took on vague silhouettes. "Dr. Grey, there is definitely something going on with the psis being connected to a focal point... I can almost recognize the people in the end."
This piqued Jean's curiosity. ~Who are they?~
"Most, if not all psi's in the mansion. I recognize Marie-Ange for one... Do you have Arthur's overview at hand by any chance? I will call out whom I can place."
~I can get it, yes. Give me a moment.~ Jean said. After grabbing the overview from her desk, Jean settled back down. ~Okay, I got it. Go.~
"Alright. Marie-Ange..." Hope focused on the second presence that was so much less familiar to her. "I believe that must be Beatrice.. and the third one are Sophie and her sisters..."
Assessment complete, it falls to Jean to deliver her conclusion.
There was sometimes a fine line between shock and actual dissociation. At this moment Jim was walking it like a tight-rope, still in his body but numb to the words he'd just heard. He heard himself ask:
"What do you mean it's me?"
Jean met Jim's eyes. Her expression never wavered, but held a sense of sympathy amidst certainty.
"The psionic 'weirdness' that's been happening over the last few months...it's the result of a leak of psionic energy. Sort of like...an ocean oil tanker being damaged by rocks. The oil leaks out. I've done multiple scans in different ways. And the oil...in this case...all leads back to you."
"But I . . ." The sentence didn't get any farther; thoughts were colliding in his skull like a fifteen car pileup.
"How?" said Jim's mouth. "Even if my shields are shredded, how can that be affecting other people's powers?"
"Wish I knew," Jean admitted.
"Hope saw it...the connection to you, on the Astral Plane. And when I ran some psionic scans on some of the others who were impacted...well..." She tapped her temple.
"I can show you, if you'd like."
Sometimes it was easier to see something than just hear about it.
Jim hesitated. "Share the memory, or . . ?"
"I was thinking a scan," Jean said. "You should be able to tell right away."
Since the reconstruction he had limited telepathic contact as much as possible, but Jean was experienced enough to handle whatever bleed his damaged shields might allow through. She knew what she was offering. Tentatively, Jim closed his eyes and reached out.
Jean's own conceptualization shaped his perceptions, and what he saw was -- paint. Wild swirls of color overlaid her thoughts like a translucent wash. Stunned, Jim pressed against the distortion and felt his mind pass through. It was like an oil slick, floating on the surface without penetrating deeper, but enough to cover the outermost layer like a film.
The contamination was his. He recognized the feel of it as surely as the lingering scent of smoke on his clothes.
Jim wrenched his mind away.
"This isn't right," he began. "I would've noticed before-"
He stopped. The only person whose mind he'd entered since regaining consciousness in December had been Arthur's. Arthur, and his mind already held the unique fingerprints of Jim's psionic signature as a consequence of the repairs the telepath had made years ago.
"You weren't looking. And neither was I. Not until I had something out of place to look for," Jean said gently.
"You didn't know. None of us did. This is kind of...unique territory."
Jim sat, frozen. All of it. Weeks, months of disruption for a dozen psis. His telepathy had been the only aspect of his power he had ever felt was safe. Coming to David's system only after Jemail had mastered it, it didn't flare like telekinesis. It didn't break bones or burn flesh when David was in crisis. He'd never felt in danger of losing control of it. Never.
His most reliable tool had been poisoning everyone around him.
Every time I told Arthur I would help him, he thought, mind spinning as his muscles began to shake, Every time we tried to figure out what was happening to his powers. The whole time, it was . . . I was . . .
Jim brought his hands to his face, fingers convulsing into claws as his breathing began to quicken -- and then slow. The thin man was silent for a few moments, as if collecting himself, and let them drop.
Grey eyes rose to meet Jean's, and then Jack stood.
"This is a problem for Xavier."
The shift felt like a wall of steel, and Jean recognized the person in his place.
"It is what it is," Jean said, glancing Jack over. "It was an unintended side effect of someone ripped apart and nearly dying. Which...has happened more often than not to more than a few people, in different ways. Was it a problem? Yes. But we'll get through it, together."
"Good luck with that argument," said the alter, but it was a comment without hostility, only matter-of-fact observation. The telekinetic retrieved his cell and thumbed to the Contacts list. Technical understanding wasn't necessary to make an executive decision. Jim certainly wasn't in a position to do it right now.
"Psionic background radiation seems to like a bad idea for an international flight. I'll see if I can beg emergency transport out of Blink." Jack glanced up at the redhead. As always, his very presence set Haller's face into a hard expression, but there was respect there. He gave her a nod.
"Thanks. We'll take it from here."
