Or Is He Both? - Inside (Day 3)
Aug. 28th, 2024 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsTeam One finds Del Frye's body still alive.
It'd been easy enough to follow the trail. Almost suspiciously easy, but maybe whoever owned this lab hadn't thought anyone would break into it. Besides, the kid's body was right in the center of it. Rick's eyes went back from glowing green to his normal brown at the sight of the glowing skeleton, translucent skin glowing in what appeared to be some kind of tube. But his organs were visible too, mostly. And...
"Are his lungs moving?"
"And his heart." Nica's voice was strangled, as if she was holding back throwing up. "Oh my god, that's just so..." She stopped, unable to find the words.
"I read mostly physical augmentations, but some manner of energy absorption as well. Healing factor? Or just . . . dispersing energy enough to sustain his baseline, perhaps." Marius' voice was curiously detached as his amber eyes flicked over their target. Whatever might have been going through his mind was clearling being redirected to a black box somewhere far in the back of it. The Australian turned to Scott. "Apologies, beyond that I can be no more specific. However, if he is emitting any sort of radiation Spectrum and I are capable of absorbing it."
Scott's head shifted into a short nod, his eyes never leaving the kid's body...the way it was left on display like that, There was something deeply unsettling about it, the way that his skeleton and organs were on display for the whole world to see. There was an old saying, you never wanna see how the sausage was made, never wanting to see how the body worked ranked up there, there was a reason Scott hadn't gone into medicine. "Ok...you two handle him then. The rest of us will cover you, just in case."
Jean-Phillipe's fingers flexed in his fingerless gloves, setting the leather to creaking. "Tabernac," he murmured. "That the subject is still alive..." He grimaced. "I cannot imagine what he must have gone through." The person or people who had done this had best not cross his path, because he could not guarantee what he might put them through.
"Okay. Let's get him outta here," Rick said, unwilling to keep the kid trapped in the tube a minute longer.
The kid, Del Frye, didn't seem to be hooked up to anything or even suspended in liquid so it was probably okay to take him out. Rick took a look at the mechanisms of the tube and found the buttons to open it. Del fell out of the tube, still breathing but still mostly passed out into Rick's arms. Rick supported him like he was used to this kind of thing. (You didn't spend your teens with Bruce Banner without coming out of it unable to support the weight of a mostly prone grown man.)
Del started to blink awake, clearly still out of it, mumbling for his father.
"Here, I'll get his other side," offered Marius. Without waiting for a reply the X-Man slid his arm around Del's waist and slung the boy's arm over his own shoulders. His appearance was a bit shocking -- Marius could confess to feeling a moment of mild vertigo at the realisation of just how little came between his hand and a man's intestines -- but worse had occasionally stared back at him from the mirror, so the reaction was quickly stifled. He cocked an eyebrow at Nica.
"Safe to assume we've found the source of the gamma leak?"
Nica's all-over glow had turned a faint green as the tube had been opened and increased as she drew near. "Yep," she replied briefly, reaching out one hand to touch Del's shoulder. The glow deepened to an almost neon green. "It's okay, we're friends, we're here to get you out."
Del looked at Nica with a confused, hazy expression and nodded slowly before looking over to where Scott and Jean-Phillipe stood as if looking for someone else. He groaned a little.
"What is our exit, Cyclops?" Jean-Phillipe asked, his eyes flicking over the room, his body still on high alert. After all, whoever had done this could return at any moment.
The X-man considered for a moment before jerking his head back, "Let's get him back down the hallway, shortest route in, shortest route out and I want to get him to the doctors as soon as possible."
Team Two finds that AIM's research may be connected to a new Weapon X and that Beta Flight's Langkowski may be a mole.
"Fuckin' yay, creepy labs." Kyle had waited until the doors were off the hinges - team-mates with super strength were amazing - and went through fists first, knocking a shouting lab technician to the ground before the man could get more than a single "Hey!" out. He put one big foot on the man's neck, and glanced around a room that looked like every creepy lab he'd ever been in. Tables, equipment he couldn't name much less identify the use of, laptops and tablet computers and bags with the biohazard symbol marked 'specimen' . "At least it's not screaming mushrooms." His eyes kept dropping down to his own hands though, making sure his skin was clear and whole. "Go forth smart people, hack things." Without lifting his foot, he crouched down and made eyecontact with the lab tech. "If you scream, you know what happens." He wiggled clawed toes against the man's throat.
It really wasn't her nature to go in and just start punching things (okay yes it was, but she was trying to be better) but everything about this situation pissed her off. Channeling Logan, she let her base anger take over. "Listen to the angry man," Rogue growled, her eyes narrowing as she casually punched a wall, showing how effortlessly she could destroy anything. "We don't wanna hurt you unless we gotta ..... so don't make us."
Sooraya was a little quieter, scanning the lab before immediately heading over towards the table with laptops and tablets. "Don't..." Her voice was low and sharp as her hand lashed out at the tech hiding beneath the table, grabbing her wrist as she tried to snag one of the computers. "... touch those. Behave and you won't be harmed." Tightening her grip, she dragged the woman from below the table, reaching for a zip tie she carried and pulling the woman's wrists together.
"Five tablets, three laptops... MIght be easier just to bring them then to hack and download each piece of data from them." She commented as she shoved the woman against a nearby wall.
"Risky with how easy it is to track and keylog devices these days," April replied, shifting back from her Mayhem form into the unassuming human one. "But Team Tech thought about that." She taps the pouch of the carabiner clipped around her belt, pulling out a handful of USB drives. "Only five, so... laptops, two of the table–ENNT" A clawed, inky-black hand snapped out, web flying directly at the ankles of a third tech. He goes down in an awkward tangle of tripped-up limbs, and April gives him a flat stare before chastising him in the same voice she uses on Boris. "No. Bad scientist, no. Stay."
She turns back to the group, checking the ports before she grabs converters out of the same pouch, slipping a USB-to-C over two of them and then plugging all five into the tablets. "If we smash them after, the data won't be recoverable. Sorry not sorry!" She sing-songed at the techs, grin full of far too many sharp teeth. "Do bad human science, face bad science consequences! We can probably swipe the drives from the laptops, then pack these away, do some smashing. Very, very good smashing. Some might even suggest Hulk smashing, given what these creeps are up to."
"I wanna smash things, why does Hulk always get dibs." Kyle complained, faux-cheerfully. "Hey pal." He looked down at the lab tech still struggling under his foot and picked him up by the front of the scrubs shirt. "So, lets say, you know, as a hypothetical, I wanted to know who was behind this shit, and I'm gonna bet you have no idea, but you know how to get into at least one of these computers." He paused, to set the man down on his feet. "And, I bet you like having fingers and ears." Sharp teeth snapped at the man's face. "I'm good at biting off ears."
He steered the tech towards one of the laptops. "Yo, Mayhem can you toss me a ..." A usb drive on the end of a web dropped neatly into his one free hand and he plugged it into the laptop. "Thank you!" he said, still faux-cheery, and pushed the tech down onto one of the stools. "Here's how this works, if a password prompt comes up, you type it in, or I get bitey."
Rogue tapped a foot, keeping an eye around at the others, trying her best to look angry and intimidating. She glanced back, and did a double take. "Wait ... go back!" The tech looked at her startled. "That page! The one you were on, go back!" A few moments later, she had lost colour to her face. "Ah merde. Weapon X, y'all.... how does those fuckers keep popping up? Someone come look at make sure I'm not just reading into this too much." Langkowski.... that fucker, she thought to herself.
"What, you found something disturbing too?" Sooraya turned back towards Rogue from where she had been examining one of the tablets, her face a little pale. "Hear this... Dr. Frye, Del's father, who is supposedly mourning his son, is a shitty AIM researcher. That explains so much... I wouldn't be surprised if he messed around with his son." She spit out.
"One way or another, someone screwed that poor kid over." Kyle's voice had lost all hint of his previously adopted affability, and now was just an angry growl. "We got Weapon X on one side, AIM on the other... Rogue, Langkowski's, uh, lab guy, turns into bigfoot, right?" He hadn't ever met the man, that he recalled, but he'd read mission reports."
"Yeah. The usual: evil, big, bad, and science for wrong reasons." She paused and sighed. "And Canadian. He's on Alpha Flight which means we got a whole 'nother thing to worry about. How far deep does all this go again?"
"Genetic and power fuckery all the way down. Guess that doesn't change in any universe, does it?" The USB drives are back in her tiny pouch, and one of April's hands shifts into a club with sharp-looking spikes down one side. There was the sound of sharp, heavy thwacks and banging to contend with as she cheerfully demolished the tech they'd just stolen the data from. Once they're smashed to her liking she drops them to the floor and starts jumping, making sure to thoroughly squish and grind the tiny internals that make the things function.
"Then let's figure out what to do with the lab staff and then let's get out of here!"
It'd been easy enough to follow the trail. Almost suspiciously easy, but maybe whoever owned this lab hadn't thought anyone would break into it. Besides, the kid's body was right in the center of it. Rick's eyes went back from glowing green to his normal brown at the sight of the glowing skeleton, translucent skin glowing in what appeared to be some kind of tube. But his organs were visible too, mostly. And...
"Are his lungs moving?"
"And his heart." Nica's voice was strangled, as if she was holding back throwing up. "Oh my god, that's just so..." She stopped, unable to find the words.
"I read mostly physical augmentations, but some manner of energy absorption as well. Healing factor? Or just . . . dispersing energy enough to sustain his baseline, perhaps." Marius' voice was curiously detached as his amber eyes flicked over their target. Whatever might have been going through his mind was clearling being redirected to a black box somewhere far in the back of it. The Australian turned to Scott. "Apologies, beyond that I can be no more specific. However, if he is emitting any sort of radiation Spectrum and I are capable of absorbing it."
Scott's head shifted into a short nod, his eyes never leaving the kid's body...the way it was left on display like that, There was something deeply unsettling about it, the way that his skeleton and organs were on display for the whole world to see. There was an old saying, you never wanna see how the sausage was made, never wanting to see how the body worked ranked up there, there was a reason Scott hadn't gone into medicine. "Ok...you two handle him then. The rest of us will cover you, just in case."
Jean-Phillipe's fingers flexed in his fingerless gloves, setting the leather to creaking. "Tabernac," he murmured. "That the subject is still alive..." He grimaced. "I cannot imagine what he must have gone through." The person or people who had done this had best not cross his path, because he could not guarantee what he might put them through.
"Okay. Let's get him outta here," Rick said, unwilling to keep the kid trapped in the tube a minute longer.
The kid, Del Frye, didn't seem to be hooked up to anything or even suspended in liquid so it was probably okay to take him out. Rick took a look at the mechanisms of the tube and found the buttons to open it. Del fell out of the tube, still breathing but still mostly passed out into Rick's arms. Rick supported him like he was used to this kind of thing. (You didn't spend your teens with Bruce Banner without coming out of it unable to support the weight of a mostly prone grown man.)
Del started to blink awake, clearly still out of it, mumbling for his father.
"Here, I'll get his other side," offered Marius. Without waiting for a reply the X-Man slid his arm around Del's waist and slung the boy's arm over his own shoulders. His appearance was a bit shocking -- Marius could confess to feeling a moment of mild vertigo at the realisation of just how little came between his hand and a man's intestines -- but worse had occasionally stared back at him from the mirror, so the reaction was quickly stifled. He cocked an eyebrow at Nica.
"Safe to assume we've found the source of the gamma leak?"
Nica's all-over glow had turned a faint green as the tube had been opened and increased as she drew near. "Yep," she replied briefly, reaching out one hand to touch Del's shoulder. The glow deepened to an almost neon green. "It's okay, we're friends, we're here to get you out."
Del looked at Nica with a confused, hazy expression and nodded slowly before looking over to where Scott and Jean-Phillipe stood as if looking for someone else. He groaned a little.
"What is our exit, Cyclops?" Jean-Phillipe asked, his eyes flicking over the room, his body still on high alert. After all, whoever had done this could return at any moment.
The X-man considered for a moment before jerking his head back, "Let's get him back down the hallway, shortest route in, shortest route out and I want to get him to the doctors as soon as possible."
Team Two finds that AIM's research may be connected to a new Weapon X and that Beta Flight's Langkowski may be a mole.
"Fuckin' yay, creepy labs." Kyle had waited until the doors were off the hinges - team-mates with super strength were amazing - and went through fists first, knocking a shouting lab technician to the ground before the man could get more than a single "Hey!" out. He put one big foot on the man's neck, and glanced around a room that looked like every creepy lab he'd ever been in. Tables, equipment he couldn't name much less identify the use of, laptops and tablet computers and bags with the biohazard symbol marked 'specimen' . "At least it's not screaming mushrooms." His eyes kept dropping down to his own hands though, making sure his skin was clear and whole. "Go forth smart people, hack things." Without lifting his foot, he crouched down and made eyecontact with the lab tech. "If you scream, you know what happens." He wiggled clawed toes against the man's throat.
It really wasn't her nature to go in and just start punching things (okay yes it was, but she was trying to be better) but everything about this situation pissed her off. Channeling Logan, she let her base anger take over. "Listen to the angry man," Rogue growled, her eyes narrowing as she casually punched a wall, showing how effortlessly she could destroy anything. "We don't wanna hurt you unless we gotta ..... so don't make us."
Sooraya was a little quieter, scanning the lab before immediately heading over towards the table with laptops and tablets. "Don't..." Her voice was low and sharp as her hand lashed out at the tech hiding beneath the table, grabbing her wrist as she tried to snag one of the computers. "... touch those. Behave and you won't be harmed." Tightening her grip, she dragged the woman from below the table, reaching for a zip tie she carried and pulling the woman's wrists together.
"Five tablets, three laptops... MIght be easier just to bring them then to hack and download each piece of data from them." She commented as she shoved the woman against a nearby wall.
"Risky with how easy it is to track and keylog devices these days," April replied, shifting back from her Mayhem form into the unassuming human one. "But Team Tech thought about that." She taps the pouch of the carabiner clipped around her belt, pulling out a handful of USB drives. "Only five, so... laptops, two of the table–ENNT" A clawed, inky-black hand snapped out, web flying directly at the ankles of a third tech. He goes down in an awkward tangle of tripped-up limbs, and April gives him a flat stare before chastising him in the same voice she uses on Boris. "No. Bad scientist, no. Stay."
She turns back to the group, checking the ports before she grabs converters out of the same pouch, slipping a USB-to-C over two of them and then plugging all five into the tablets. "If we smash them after, the data won't be recoverable. Sorry not sorry!" She sing-songed at the techs, grin full of far too many sharp teeth. "Do bad human science, face bad science consequences! We can probably swipe the drives from the laptops, then pack these away, do some smashing. Very, very good smashing. Some might even suggest Hulk smashing, given what these creeps are up to."
"I wanna smash things, why does Hulk always get dibs." Kyle complained, faux-cheerfully. "Hey pal." He looked down at the lab tech still struggling under his foot and picked him up by the front of the scrubs shirt. "So, lets say, you know, as a hypothetical, I wanted to know who was behind this shit, and I'm gonna bet you have no idea, but you know how to get into at least one of these computers." He paused, to set the man down on his feet. "And, I bet you like having fingers and ears." Sharp teeth snapped at the man's face. "I'm good at biting off ears."
He steered the tech towards one of the laptops. "Yo, Mayhem can you toss me a ..." A usb drive on the end of a web dropped neatly into his one free hand and he plugged it into the laptop. "Thank you!" he said, still faux-cheery, and pushed the tech down onto one of the stools. "Here's how this works, if a password prompt comes up, you type it in, or I get bitey."
Rogue tapped a foot, keeping an eye around at the others, trying her best to look angry and intimidating. She glanced back, and did a double take. "Wait ... go back!" The tech looked at her startled. "That page! The one you were on, go back!" A few moments later, she had lost colour to her face. "Ah merde. Weapon X, y'all.... how does those fuckers keep popping up? Someone come look at make sure I'm not just reading into this too much." Langkowski.... that fucker, she thought to herself.
"What, you found something disturbing too?" Sooraya turned back towards Rogue from where she had been examining one of the tablets, her face a little pale. "Hear this... Dr. Frye, Del's father, who is supposedly mourning his son, is a shitty AIM researcher. That explains so much... I wouldn't be surprised if he messed around with his son." She spit out.
"One way or another, someone screwed that poor kid over." Kyle's voice had lost all hint of his previously adopted affability, and now was just an angry growl. "We got Weapon X on one side, AIM on the other... Rogue, Langkowski's, uh, lab guy, turns into bigfoot, right?" He hadn't ever met the man, that he recalled, but he'd read mission reports."
"Yeah. The usual: evil, big, bad, and science for wrong reasons." She paused and sighed. "And Canadian. He's on Alpha Flight which means we got a whole 'nother thing to worry about. How far deep does all this go again?"
"Genetic and power fuckery all the way down. Guess that doesn't change in any universe, does it?" The USB drives are back in her tiny pouch, and one of April's hands shifts into a club with sharp-looking spikes down one side. There was the sound of sharp, heavy thwacks and banging to contend with as she cheerfully demolished the tech they'd just stolen the data from. Once they're smashed to her liking she drops them to the floor and starts jumping, making sure to thoroughly squish and grind the tiny internals that make the things function.
"Then let's figure out what to do with the lab staff and then let's get out of here!"
