The Lost Boys | Search and Rescue
Sep. 2nd, 2025 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_wiccan posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsThe X-Men raid a black site "research" facility experimenting on mutant prisoners.
Cyclops and Echo search for and free the inmates.
There was no telling how many prisoners had been transported to this facility, but it was large enough to hold several dozen. It must have cost a fortune to house and inhibit them, even temporarily. All that money that could have been used for so many other things.
It was like some buildings seemed to absorb an aura from those that lived there, from its use. There was no reason for this industrial building to give him the creeps but there was just something about the building that gave Scott the heebie jeebies, he'd seen too much to discount the fact that locations did in fact absorb emotions and intentions from their inhabitants. Thankfully, unlike some missions that they'd been on, it didn't seem like there were any monsters waiting to jump out at them, well, apart from the human variety of monsters, anyway.
"This place is horrible."
Maya had been mostly quiet on the trip over, which was merely situation nominal for her on the best days. She'd never been particularly chatty, and the atmosphere in this place seemed to suck any degree of happiness down into its overall miasma and kill it dead. She'd have been surprised at the depravity some could treat others with but she had way too many examples of just how shitty human beings could be.
She held her batons at the ready as they reached the nearest corridor to the holding cells, and noted the number of inhabitants to each cell. Crowding people in like sardines always seemed to be the point in these places, just one more indignity amongst a number of them. If she ever got a hold of any of the leaders, she'd definitely have to see how far she could stretch 'non-lethal force' to.
"It's certainly not going on my list of holiday destinations." Scott agreed, eyes dancing over the crowded cells, the forlorn hopeless faces of the cramped prisoners. They may have turned their faces towards the door, but only with the dull look of those who had been beaten so long they could only expect more. Hope was a tenuous thing, and now, with even hope taken from them the prisoners were little more than husks waiting for the next round of experiments.
"The more I see places like this, what they'll do, the more I start to wonder if Magneto wasn't right."
A sigh escaped the man's lips, weary and tired as he gestured at the door, "We can't leave them in here."
“We need to find the guard room.” Maya noted, striding forward as she kept her head on a swivel to make sure they weren’t ambushed. “It’ll have the controls.”
"Let's call that plan A, plan B is I blow off the hinges and the doors come falling down." As he spoke Scott's eyes glanced over the building, of course the bad guys wouldn't just leave wires hanging out like a path but "We haven't crossed a control room yet so I guess we have to head deeper in."
Green eyes watched them from a solitary cell, the collar around their owner’s neck humming lowly. “Guard room is that way,” he muttered, pointing down one of the directions in the upcoming fork in the hallway.
Maya looked at the ‘prisoner,’ cataloguing any evidence of wounds so she’d be able to triage him properly later.
“Thanks,” she said, remembering to vocalize. “We’ll have you all out of here soon.”
“Whatever,” he shrugged, not seeming too confident in their ability to do that
There was something sad, almost heart-breaking about the lack of hope, of anything other than soul crushing despair in the man's face as he sat hunched against the wall. Scott wanted to say something, the magic words that would lift him off of the pit of darkness that he was enmeshed in. The X-Man knew from experience though that sometimes there were no words that could lift your spirits, you had to see tangible proof.
Proof that they would have to provide.
Silently Scott touched Maya's shoulder, nodding down the hallway in the direction the man had indicated. "I'll open the door, you move in using the surprise. We need them down fast, preferably alive but..." his eyes glanced at the cells, "don't put yourself at any risk."
Another step as his eyes started to glow, energy gathering before with a crash, the guardroom door went flying into the room.
It didn’t take Maya long to neutralize the guards after that, they were still dazed by the sudden explosion of force and she’d already knocked them out before they could mount anything resembling opposition.
“Keep an eye out while I take care of the doors.” Maya signed before she turned to an open computer and began to type.
~*~
While Rogue and Dust provide a loud distraction.
The X-Men's initial approach to the remote unlabeled facility was stealthy as always. Their entrance much less so. But the chaos of blasting through concrete like it was tissue was all part of the plan. While the klaxon alarms blared and panicked staff scurried about to safety, the fine-tuned machine of the X-Men split into smaller groups as planned. Rogue and Dust were to take advantage of this disorder and make it worse to the advantage of the rest of the team.
With a grin, Rogue glanced at her teammate and gave a swift nod. They weren't going to hurt any innocents but collateral damage had been approved and encouraged. "Looking worse than sheep on a shearing day," Rogue said to Dust. "Jus' loose and wild ... or maybe they're more like chickens with their heads cut off." There didn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason to the scurrying that was happening. She shrugged, and reached over to pull a garbage can up and threw it in the center of the pandemonium. Although the lights and sirens remained, the staff suddenly froze. "Now they're deer in headlights." This was very amusing to her.
"Listen up," she cried out. "I ain't gonna hurt you if I don't need to, but I can't have you all moving while me and my friend here destroy this place. Stay in the center, and let us do our job, okay?"
"You'd think she's here to give a show or something..." Sooraya commented idly to a nearby staff member, who immediately stared at her with big eyes. Sooraya ignored the look, dissolving into her sandform and quickly dividing herself in several tendrils. They lashed out, pulling plugs from their sockets and cables between sockets. A high beeping sound was added to the ruckus and as she pulled loose one cable, some kind of white steam poured into the room. "Oops," she commented over her comm.
Rogue shook her head. "And you'd think you'd know me well enough to know that go big or go home is my mantra," she muttered, giving a kick to one of the chairs. It spun its way into a group of people, and her eyes widened a bit. It kinda seemed like bowling, and not really what she'd intended but it created another sense of panic. How long could a person panic for...
From behind, she heard a click and felt a bullet bounce off her backside. "Hey!" she cried out, spinning around. Some armed guards had shown up and the fact she hadn't immediately fallen over in pain seemed to have them appropriately stupefied. "Ain't right, shooting a lady in her ass." She reached for one of the broken pieces of wall and threw it at the guards. "Gonna have a bruise now," she grumbled.
"You won't even see a thing." Sooraya commented as she spiraled to the ceiling, neatly taking out a few of the lights. "But this should help." The room was quickly plunged into shades of murky grey as the lights went out one by one. Spotting another guard pulling a weapon, she lashed out fiercely. Wrapping a tendril around him, she lifted him from the floor and held him in front of Rogue. "You wanna have a chat with him? Downside of this sandform..."
Rogue shrugged. "They don't send me for the intel," she quipped, punching the guard out. "We're just the warm up show and the distraction."
She smiled, a slightly vicious gleam in her eyes. "So let's do that."
"Uhuh." Sooraya carefully lowered the guard to the ground, putting him out of the way of the people still scrambling around. Purely causing mayhem wasn't her strongest suit. Disarming the few guards was not an issue. Dozens of small tendril lashes out, relieving them of their weapons. Though they weren't tucked neatly away... she aimed at the ceiling, discharging several shots of each until they were completely spent. The room filled with the bangs of them and the clatter of them as they dropped to the ground, seemed very quiet afterwards.
Rogue nodded approvingly. If nothing else, the guns were an effective way to shut everyone up. The remaining people were just standing, looking at them in shock rather than engaging anymore. "Well, I guess that's one way to corral the folks," she grumbled. It didn't seem fair to punch people who were behaving nicely. "Y'all best sit down rather than stand. Gonna still be a while, and we ain't letting none of you out anytime soon."
A boy peeked around the door from where he’d taken cover when the guns had gone off. The newcomers weren’t anyone he had seen in the facility before, and he didn’t care to stick around to find out who they were. He had other places to be.
One thick tendril of sand, almost five inches thick, neatly drove the staff in a corner, with another nudge on the shoulder making them sit down neatly. She was only distracted by a small, yet fierce gush of air tearing through one of the trailing tendrils. Sooraya 'glanced' over, but there was nothing to be seen... nothing that could have caused it and she'd have frowned.
Almost immediately her attention was drawn back by one of the staff scrambling away and with a 'sigh' she lashed out with a tendril, dragging him back to the group.
Rogue sighed, tossed another would-be escapee a "look." "Ain't anything safer elsewhere," she intoned, "better y'all stick around before we get any madder."
She punched a wall, making sure it looked effortless as her fist went through it easily. "That'd be your head so just... sit. okay?"
Wouldn't be too much longer, she thought to herself.
~*~
Legion assists Phoenix with medical care for the injured, and the gruesome scenes reawaken something long-hidden in Jean.
The benefit of a medical doctor on team was that, given the proper facilities and materials, casualties in a potentially deadly encounter could be minimized. So while Cyclops and Echo searched for and freed the prisoners, anyone injured from the "research" procedures would find solace in Dr. Jean Grey's capable hands, aided by her trusty assistant.
"Another headed our way, Phoenix. Male, early twenties. Pale, shaky. Seems a little disoriented but no obvious injuries."
Jim listed off the impressions he was receiving from Scott like a man going down a checklist. They had communicators, but now that enough of the facility's power suppressors had been damaged, telepathy was the most efficient way to collect information about incoming patients. They'd only seen a handful so far; the facility had been careful to avoid procedures that would leave obvious marks the prison would be obligated to investigate, and aside from a few evacuation-related injuries most of them presented like the newcomer: stressed, exhausted, and vaguely "off" in ways that could be frustrating to diagnose with limited time and equipment.
"Hmm," Jean said as she put together what she could from one of the facility's infirmaries. They had decent supplies but she since wasn't familiar with the space at all, she was trying to find and grab everything she could anticipate needing and have it in a central location.
"Pale and shaky could be a number of things. You down for playing part-nurse, part-bodyguard?" she said.
This was her first mission without powers. She felt a little useless had it not been for the medical training. Luckily Garrison had taught her some self-defense but it wouldn't mean much against bullets.
"Of course. Just remember this is the first time we've been in the field since I broke my brain, so we may be a little rusty." Now that he was using his telepathy in real-world scenarios again Jim was realizing his rehabilitation on Muir had still left him more sensitive than before. Holding a channel with his teammates also left him open to stray thoughts from the people around them. He could still do his job, but it was definitely something he would need to re-train on.
One such presence prickled the back of his neck. An instant later a young Latino man shuffled into view. He was pale-faced, and moving with much less urgency than would have been expected under the circumstances. He paused to hover in the infirmary door.
"I was sent here," said the man, uncertain.
Jean offered the man a reassuring smile. "You're in the right place," she said. Judging by the symptoms, he definitely looked like he needed some attention.
"Do you need any help with him?" Jim asked as the man trudged into the room. The prisoner had a slightly glassy stare; it was impossible to tell if it was shock or some kind of underlying medical condition.
Doing a quick assessment of the guy, Jean shook her head. "No, I think I'm okay," she said. It almost felt like rotation night in the ER, had it not been for the whole...horrible experiments thing.
"Okay, just let me kn-"
That prickle shot up Jim's spine again -- and neither Echo nor Cyclops had warned him anyone else was on their way. The telepath whipped back to the infirmary door.
It was empty one moment and the next a young man with a shock of white hair was there, looking around wildly. Frustration. Confusion. Determination. He seemed to be vibrating on the spot as he made eye contact with Haller, green eyes widening.
The glassy-eyed man swayed. As he plunged forward, he put his hand on Jean's arm while she herself was trying to catch him.
The world blurred around her at the edges, like it had been dipped in gauze. She wasn't there in the infirmary anymore, she was somewhere else. There was a steady, drip drip dripping sound from somewhere nearby. Her body felt like it was made of stone, every heartbeat heavy and slow. The blinding overhead lights shone down on her like suns. In her arm was an IV, and she caught sight of an IV bag. Her blood, they were taking her blood.
Two technicians stood by the far wall, voices low and clinical. "Levels are low again. Give him the weekend to recover. We’ll need him fresh for the next sweep."
The door hissed open. They pushed another prisoner inside, a wiry, terrified orange-skinned man with frantic eyes. Before either could speak, one of the techs seized Jean's arm and forced it into the other man's hand.
The touch hit like a spike through her skull. Thoughts, emotions, images she didn’t want tore through her...memories of capture, the sting of restraints, the sound of muffled sobbing in a concrete cell. It was too much, too fast. She gasped, trying to pull back, but the grip on her wrist only tightened.
"Anything useful?" one tech asked.
She shook her head. The wrong answer. Another bag clipped in, another slow siphon. The weakness deepened, her vision swimming.
It happened again. And again. Faces changed, but the terror in their minds was always the same. This man was made to rip through them, drag their secrets into the light. He stopped trying to remember names.
On the last run, she caught her reflection in a darkened monitor, but it wasn't her own. It was the young man's gaunt face, pale skin, lips almost gray, the life leeching out one bag at a time.
The guards laughed softly to themselves. "Don’t push him too far, he’s just a donor with a parlor trick."
That was all he was to them: blood and a trick. Nothing else.
The words hit Jean like a punch. She was still in his head when the burn started in her chest, not his body, but hers. Rage swelled so fast it blurred the line between them. The weakness in his limbs, the fog in his vision, the looks of horror and despair from every man and woman and person he ripped the secrets from, the memories of being taken...it all twisted together until something deep inside her broke loose.
Her awareness jerked back into the room, but the fury came with her. Her breath caught, and the air caught with it.
The man was shoved backward into Haller, letting go of her arm as nearby IV stands crumpled inward, their dangling bags bursting midair, spraying red and saline in heavy arcs across the tile. Stainless steel trays warped and folded like they were made of foil, clamps and lengths of discarded tubing snapped from the counters, whipping across the floor like severed vines.
The walls seemed to shudder. Ceiling panels rattled in their frames, a slow rain of dust sifting down like ash. The door’s locking bars snapped with a metallic scream, bolts shearing clean from their housing. A pulse rolled through the floor, shoving every loose object away from the edges of the room as if the space itself was rejecting what had been done there.
Then...silence, save the faint hiss of liquid seeping across the floor and the low groan of warped metal settling. Jean floated in the center, her chest rising hard, power curling around her in a barely visible shimmer.
She drew in another breath, then fell to her knees.
Had he not worked with Jean so long the release of power might have flattened him. Instead Haller sensed it an instant before the prisoner was pushed into his arms, and so when the surge came it was Jack there to meet it, not Jim. The wave of telekinesis that might have swept over their patients instead broke against an opposing telekinetic force wrapped around every warm body in the infirmary, directing the power over and around like the current of a river crashing into stone.
He waited for the surge to subside. The disoriented man still in his arms was an afterthought -- Jack's full attention was on the woman at ground zero. The shields he had erected stayed firmly in place.
"Phoenix," said the alter, his voice calm and low, "you good?"
It was quiet, very quiet. Still quiet. But she felt it, that somewhat familiar feeling. One step closer to herself, but also, back in the middle of a hurricane. She looked up when Jack spoke, and as she did, spotted a guard coming into the doorway. Reaching out her hand, she shoved him into a wall so hard that the wall cracked. She winced.
A pause. She gave him a thumbs up, a tired, mortified look on her face.
Jack watched the guard slide to the floor before turning his attention back to Jean. A faint, slightly malicious smile played across his lips. He wasn't sure what exactly had caused her to have such a reaction, but he could guess. As far as he was concerned, none of the staff deserved a fully intact skeleton.
"Want me to keep handling the defense?" he asked as he began to direct the dazed man still hanging from him towards the nearest bed. Like everything else in the infirmary, it had been shoved against the nearest wall.
Jean nodded sheepishly. "Yeah...probably for the best," she said, letting out a breath before adding with a murmur. "I need to figure out what I didn't destroy."
On the one hand, it appeared her telekinesis was back, but on the other, it wasn't as precise as it had been.
"You need anything straightened, just let me know." With a wave of his hand Jack pulled the beds back into position and offloaded his patient into the nearest one. As he was getting the man situated, however, he paused to look back at the door. The guard was still there, slumped against the wall in a way that meant he would probably remain there until Jean found a cervical collar, but the white-haired boy was nowhere to be found.
~*~
Madin and Dazzler download the research data and evidence of the real crimes.
None of the IT staff was paid enough to put up a fight against a trio of mutant soldiers. It did not take any more than their sudden appearance to get most of them to retreat from their workstations, but a handful continued whatever they were doing. One reached under his desk and spun around in his chair, raising a handgun . . .
BANG
The flashbang, dropped by Alison in the opening moments of their entrance and kicked forward, skittered into the center of the room where it promptly exploded.
"One of these days, that trick isn't going to work," Alison beamed, largely to herself since everyone else was either deaf or covering their ears. She strolled deeper into the room like she owned the place, letting the flashwhitesharp sensation of the bang linger just under the surface just in case. "But today is not that day."
Madin had waited outside while Dazzler did her shit, the better to protect their eyes and ears.
The X-Men didn't kill, so Madin didn't take pot-shots at any of the IT staff. One plasma knife shaped like a glowing purple sword in hand they were all energy and uncontained anger, waving it uncomfortably close to one man's face before slicing a vacant chair in half to make a point, molten plastic and fumes adding to the smoke in the air.
"Up against the fucking wall, arseholes, before I fucking cut you. Hands behind your backs."
The IT staff complied while Madin began pulling restraints from their belt.
Under desk 13, half-blind technician Dennis Sigrid fumbled quietly with his keyboard. A paranoid man by nature (especially now, given his current job), he'd toppled ass-over-teakettle over the back of his chair at the sound of the door being kicked in. He'd managed to reach up and pull his keyboard under his desk with him as the sound of chaos echoed around him. Whoever these thugs were, they were undoubtedly after the work they were doing here. They'd all been drilled with the same information when they started here: In the event of a breach, the first priority was the destruction of all the data in the servers.
He couldn't see his monitor, hidden as he was, but he had the commands for the server memorized. There was a thud, and the desk above him shifted. He only had seconds left, but that was more than enough time.
The soft click of the enter key to run the command was all of their salvations, assuming they survived this. The servers would be in the process of melting down already, and with it went all of the data that could be used to prove their actions. Maybe he'd even receive a commendation from his supervi--
"You spelled 'terminate' wrong."
...what?
A head poked over from the side of the desk, a long rainbow braid tied off with a black scrunchie dangling down to the floor. He stared. She stared back.
"There's an i in 'terminate'," Alison said. "Good try though. Get out from under the desk."
Madin turned and, with all the force they could muster, kicked the prone man in the kidneys as hard as possible with one steel capped boot before stabbing a plasma knife through the keyboard as an object lesson to everyone else with the hand that wasn't currently holding restraints.
Ignoring the groaning behind them - that was a Dazzler problem - they pointed at the man closest to them. "Restrain your mates, hands behind their backs. You fuck up, you do anything, anything at all I don't like and I stab you in the fucking head. Got it?"
The man nodded and took the restraints, setting to work, coughing in the smoke from melted plastic.
It was just like it always was on a mission, as though the last two years hadn't happened, even if certain people were offering quips rather than just getting it done. "Get onto the data, Daz, before we blow the computers."
Alison took a glance over at the computer monitor, where her blue and white thumbdrive happily blinked its little red indicator light at her. On the screen, a popup read "DATA TRANSFERED: 13% Terminal Access Temporarily Suspended."
"...would probably have been easier before you destroyed the keyboard, but yeah, sure. Let me go find a new one, I guess."
Madin didn't say anything. Anything they said would involve breathing more plastic fume filled air and there was nothing as intimidating as a person doubled over coughing, even if Dazzler might have, possibly, had a point. They just waved a plasma blade threateningly at the computer geeks again.
Thankfully, Alison was able to locate a second keyboard somewhere in the room full of computers, and by the time she'd gotten it plugged in, the data transfer had finished and the command line had pulled itself back up and was ready to go. "Tch," she clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Command line." She looked over at Madin, who was intimidating the workers into cowering messes, and extended an open hand, palm up. "Here, tag me. And try not to break this one?"
A swift puff of air moved past the computer terminal, and suddenly there was a white-haired boy in prison orange standing at the back of the room, having just made impact with the wall. “Ugh, how many fucking doors are there in this place!”
"What the fuck?" Madin stopped to stare at the boy. "That way. Exit is that way." They waved a purple knife back over one shoulder. "We can help you if you wait a few. I promise." He was just a kid, for fucks sake. One of the men twitched meaningfully toward a duress alarm. Madin stabbed the wall between his fingers. "I don't really want to have to cut your hands off as a lesson but you fucking lock up kids so I won't exactly feel bad about it."
They finally looked back at Dazzler. "Sorry, what?"
"You'll have to forgive them," Alison said with an easy smile. "They only speak Australian." Christ this kid was young. Okay. This was fine. Just... get him to the rest of the group. She could do that. They'd already swept most of the building, and by this point everyone else should have already cleared their sectors.
"The hall behind us will get you out of here," Alison translated. "It'd be safer if you gave us another few minutes to wrap up this prison break, but if you really can't wait, head down to the end of the hall and turn left. Then take the third right and listen for the screaming." They were the X-Men. Someone would be screaming.
“Um cool. Thanks.” The next moment the kid was gone, but to where was hard to discern.
"Shit. He's gone." And fast, too. Madin shook their head. "I don't know. I don't think he's going to head to our landing point, you know? We don't exactly inspire confidence."
Heaven save Alison from impulsive teens. "Give me a sec and I'll call the others to let them know. First..." and with spectacular timing, the room suddenly got significantly quieter as the AC system above them and the internal fans of the server blades all cut out at once. The temperature instantly began to climb, and within moments the server bank was beginning to let out the magic blue smoke.
"Never mind," she chirped happily and pulled out her com. "Now, you can destroy the keyboards."
~*~
Mission accomplished, the X-Men take their new charges to safety, but realize someone is missing.
The X-Men had hit fast and hard, having caught this so-called research facility unaware and dismantled it with ease and efficiency. Courtesy of Madin and Alison, they had a full roster of every mutant who had been run through this torture chamber, including a list of everyone who was supposed to be on site today. Some of the team helped these rescued inmates board the Blackbird and settle in while the others prepared for departure. In just a couple minutes, this part of their nightmare would be over.
Jim, who had been sitting in his own little pool of meditative isolation for several moments, finally opened his eyes. "Okay, I just did a final sweep. That should be it for the inmates."
"Inmates..." Rogue repeated the word, and sighed. Her arms were crossed in front of her, and she was tapping a toe while she looked at the group. One sorry bunch, she thought to herself, but that was to be expected. "Less people than you'd think for all the damn security here." With a quick glance at the group, she nodded. "Right, well, I'm going to head the ship, unless y'all need something from me here?"
Maya merely nodded at her teammate, still trying to compartmentalize the anger she felt. That this had even been allowed made her want to go back to hitting things.
"Wait," Jean said, checking the notes she had made on the inmates and their medical status against the roster they'd downloaded. The charts were relatively preliminary, but it'd help ease the load later for those who needed medical treatment. There was one person who stuck out from the list due to his age.
"The database said there was someone named Thomas Shepherd? He's a teenager. Sixteen. He wasn't among anyone I treated. Did anyone see him?"
"Kinda scrawny kid? I think maybe," Scott paused, spinning around to look back at the facility, "There was someone like that in with the prisoners but I lost track of him in the evacuation."
"I ‐-- maybe? I dunno. This kid came running through looking for the door? Do you think it's him, Daz?" Madin asked, looking over at Dazzler.
Alison nodded. "If I had to guess, probably. He ran off before we blew the servers, though. Gave him rough directions to get here, though. Did anyone see him after that?"
"Alright... yeah... I'll talk with them and let you know as soon as I have more details." Sooraya quickly wrapped up her phone call. "Sorry, I'm afraid I didn't see anyone. And some resources are being looked into to help these people as soon as we get back." She reported, already dialing a new number.
Madin looked anxious as they asked "You're all certain he's not still here?"
Once again Jim's face assumed the glassy, unfocused look he wore when stretching with his telepathy. Then, after a moment, he shook his head.
"None of the minds I still sense feel like an adolescent's," he replied. "I think I might have seen him for a moment when we were in the infirmary, but something, uh, came up before we could talk to him."
Scott gave the facility one last look before turning his back on it, "Then I guess he isn't here. There's not much we can do now, but once we get home we'll do what we can to find him. We have to."
Cyclops and Echo search for and free the inmates.
There was no telling how many prisoners had been transported to this facility, but it was large enough to hold several dozen. It must have cost a fortune to house and inhibit them, even temporarily. All that money that could have been used for so many other things.
It was like some buildings seemed to absorb an aura from those that lived there, from its use. There was no reason for this industrial building to give him the creeps but there was just something about the building that gave Scott the heebie jeebies, he'd seen too much to discount the fact that locations did in fact absorb emotions and intentions from their inhabitants. Thankfully, unlike some missions that they'd been on, it didn't seem like there were any monsters waiting to jump out at them, well, apart from the human variety of monsters, anyway.
"This place is horrible."
Maya had been mostly quiet on the trip over, which was merely situation nominal for her on the best days. She'd never been particularly chatty, and the atmosphere in this place seemed to suck any degree of happiness down into its overall miasma and kill it dead. She'd have been surprised at the depravity some could treat others with but she had way too many examples of just how shitty human beings could be.
She held her batons at the ready as they reached the nearest corridor to the holding cells, and noted the number of inhabitants to each cell. Crowding people in like sardines always seemed to be the point in these places, just one more indignity amongst a number of them. If she ever got a hold of any of the leaders, she'd definitely have to see how far she could stretch 'non-lethal force' to.
"It's certainly not going on my list of holiday destinations." Scott agreed, eyes dancing over the crowded cells, the forlorn hopeless faces of the cramped prisoners. They may have turned their faces towards the door, but only with the dull look of those who had been beaten so long they could only expect more. Hope was a tenuous thing, and now, with even hope taken from them the prisoners were little more than husks waiting for the next round of experiments.
"The more I see places like this, what they'll do, the more I start to wonder if Magneto wasn't right."
A sigh escaped the man's lips, weary and tired as he gestured at the door, "We can't leave them in here."
“We need to find the guard room.” Maya noted, striding forward as she kept her head on a swivel to make sure they weren’t ambushed. “It’ll have the controls.”
"Let's call that plan A, plan B is I blow off the hinges and the doors come falling down." As he spoke Scott's eyes glanced over the building, of course the bad guys wouldn't just leave wires hanging out like a path but "We haven't crossed a control room yet so I guess we have to head deeper in."
Green eyes watched them from a solitary cell, the collar around their owner’s neck humming lowly. “Guard room is that way,” he muttered, pointing down one of the directions in the upcoming fork in the hallway.
Maya looked at the ‘prisoner,’ cataloguing any evidence of wounds so she’d be able to triage him properly later.
“Thanks,” she said, remembering to vocalize. “We’ll have you all out of here soon.”
“Whatever,” he shrugged, not seeming too confident in their ability to do that
There was something sad, almost heart-breaking about the lack of hope, of anything other than soul crushing despair in the man's face as he sat hunched against the wall. Scott wanted to say something, the magic words that would lift him off of the pit of darkness that he was enmeshed in. The X-Man knew from experience though that sometimes there were no words that could lift your spirits, you had to see tangible proof.
Proof that they would have to provide.
Silently Scott touched Maya's shoulder, nodding down the hallway in the direction the man had indicated. "I'll open the door, you move in using the surprise. We need them down fast, preferably alive but..." his eyes glanced at the cells, "don't put yourself at any risk."
Another step as his eyes started to glow, energy gathering before with a crash, the guardroom door went flying into the room.
It didn’t take Maya long to neutralize the guards after that, they were still dazed by the sudden explosion of force and she’d already knocked them out before they could mount anything resembling opposition.
“Keep an eye out while I take care of the doors.” Maya signed before she turned to an open computer and began to type.
~*~
While Rogue and Dust provide a loud distraction.
The X-Men's initial approach to the remote unlabeled facility was stealthy as always. Their entrance much less so. But the chaos of blasting through concrete like it was tissue was all part of the plan. While the klaxon alarms blared and panicked staff scurried about to safety, the fine-tuned machine of the X-Men split into smaller groups as planned. Rogue and Dust were to take advantage of this disorder and make it worse to the advantage of the rest of the team.
With a grin, Rogue glanced at her teammate and gave a swift nod. They weren't going to hurt any innocents but collateral damage had been approved and encouraged. "Looking worse than sheep on a shearing day," Rogue said to Dust. "Jus' loose and wild ... or maybe they're more like chickens with their heads cut off." There didn't really seem to be any rhyme or reason to the scurrying that was happening. She shrugged, and reached over to pull a garbage can up and threw it in the center of the pandemonium. Although the lights and sirens remained, the staff suddenly froze. "Now they're deer in headlights." This was very amusing to her.
"Listen up," she cried out. "I ain't gonna hurt you if I don't need to, but I can't have you all moving while me and my friend here destroy this place. Stay in the center, and let us do our job, okay?"
"You'd think she's here to give a show or something..." Sooraya commented idly to a nearby staff member, who immediately stared at her with big eyes. Sooraya ignored the look, dissolving into her sandform and quickly dividing herself in several tendrils. They lashed out, pulling plugs from their sockets and cables between sockets. A high beeping sound was added to the ruckus and as she pulled loose one cable, some kind of white steam poured into the room. "Oops," she commented over her comm.
Rogue shook her head. "And you'd think you'd know me well enough to know that go big or go home is my mantra," she muttered, giving a kick to one of the chairs. It spun its way into a group of people, and her eyes widened a bit. It kinda seemed like bowling, and not really what she'd intended but it created another sense of panic. How long could a person panic for...
From behind, she heard a click and felt a bullet bounce off her backside. "Hey!" she cried out, spinning around. Some armed guards had shown up and the fact she hadn't immediately fallen over in pain seemed to have them appropriately stupefied. "Ain't right, shooting a lady in her ass." She reached for one of the broken pieces of wall and threw it at the guards. "Gonna have a bruise now," she grumbled.
"You won't even see a thing." Sooraya commented as she spiraled to the ceiling, neatly taking out a few of the lights. "But this should help." The room was quickly plunged into shades of murky grey as the lights went out one by one. Spotting another guard pulling a weapon, she lashed out fiercely. Wrapping a tendril around him, she lifted him from the floor and held him in front of Rogue. "You wanna have a chat with him? Downside of this sandform..."
Rogue shrugged. "They don't send me for the intel," she quipped, punching the guard out. "We're just the warm up show and the distraction."
She smiled, a slightly vicious gleam in her eyes. "So let's do that."
"Uhuh." Sooraya carefully lowered the guard to the ground, putting him out of the way of the people still scrambling around. Purely causing mayhem wasn't her strongest suit. Disarming the few guards was not an issue. Dozens of small tendril lashes out, relieving them of their weapons. Though they weren't tucked neatly away... she aimed at the ceiling, discharging several shots of each until they were completely spent. The room filled with the bangs of them and the clatter of them as they dropped to the ground, seemed very quiet afterwards.
Rogue nodded approvingly. If nothing else, the guns were an effective way to shut everyone up. The remaining people were just standing, looking at them in shock rather than engaging anymore. "Well, I guess that's one way to corral the folks," she grumbled. It didn't seem fair to punch people who were behaving nicely. "Y'all best sit down rather than stand. Gonna still be a while, and we ain't letting none of you out anytime soon."
A boy peeked around the door from where he’d taken cover when the guns had gone off. The newcomers weren’t anyone he had seen in the facility before, and he didn’t care to stick around to find out who they were. He had other places to be.
One thick tendril of sand, almost five inches thick, neatly drove the staff in a corner, with another nudge on the shoulder making them sit down neatly. She was only distracted by a small, yet fierce gush of air tearing through one of the trailing tendrils. Sooraya 'glanced' over, but there was nothing to be seen... nothing that could have caused it and she'd have frowned.
Almost immediately her attention was drawn back by one of the staff scrambling away and with a 'sigh' she lashed out with a tendril, dragging him back to the group.
Rogue sighed, tossed another would-be escapee a "look." "Ain't anything safer elsewhere," she intoned, "better y'all stick around before we get any madder."
She punched a wall, making sure it looked effortless as her fist went through it easily. "That'd be your head so just... sit. okay?"
Wouldn't be too much longer, she thought to herself.
~*~
Legion assists Phoenix with medical care for the injured, and the gruesome scenes reawaken something long-hidden in Jean.
The benefit of a medical doctor on team was that, given the proper facilities and materials, casualties in a potentially deadly encounter could be minimized. So while Cyclops and Echo searched for and freed the prisoners, anyone injured from the "research" procedures would find solace in Dr. Jean Grey's capable hands, aided by her trusty assistant.
"Another headed our way, Phoenix. Male, early twenties. Pale, shaky. Seems a little disoriented but no obvious injuries."
Jim listed off the impressions he was receiving from Scott like a man going down a checklist. They had communicators, but now that enough of the facility's power suppressors had been damaged, telepathy was the most efficient way to collect information about incoming patients. They'd only seen a handful so far; the facility had been careful to avoid procedures that would leave obvious marks the prison would be obligated to investigate, and aside from a few evacuation-related injuries most of them presented like the newcomer: stressed, exhausted, and vaguely "off" in ways that could be frustrating to diagnose with limited time and equipment.
"Hmm," Jean said as she put together what she could from one of the facility's infirmaries. They had decent supplies but she since wasn't familiar with the space at all, she was trying to find and grab everything she could anticipate needing and have it in a central location.
"Pale and shaky could be a number of things. You down for playing part-nurse, part-bodyguard?" she said.
This was her first mission without powers. She felt a little useless had it not been for the medical training. Luckily Garrison had taught her some self-defense but it wouldn't mean much against bullets.
"Of course. Just remember this is the first time we've been in the field since I broke my brain, so we may be a little rusty." Now that he was using his telepathy in real-world scenarios again Jim was realizing his rehabilitation on Muir had still left him more sensitive than before. Holding a channel with his teammates also left him open to stray thoughts from the people around them. He could still do his job, but it was definitely something he would need to re-train on.
One such presence prickled the back of his neck. An instant later a young Latino man shuffled into view. He was pale-faced, and moving with much less urgency than would have been expected under the circumstances. He paused to hover in the infirmary door.
"I was sent here," said the man, uncertain.
Jean offered the man a reassuring smile. "You're in the right place," she said. Judging by the symptoms, he definitely looked like he needed some attention.
"Do you need any help with him?" Jim asked as the man trudged into the room. The prisoner had a slightly glassy stare; it was impossible to tell if it was shock or some kind of underlying medical condition.
Doing a quick assessment of the guy, Jean shook her head. "No, I think I'm okay," she said. It almost felt like rotation night in the ER, had it not been for the whole...horrible experiments thing.
"Okay, just let me kn-"
That prickle shot up Jim's spine again -- and neither Echo nor Cyclops had warned him anyone else was on their way. The telepath whipped back to the infirmary door.
It was empty one moment and the next a young man with a shock of white hair was there, looking around wildly. Frustration. Confusion. Determination. He seemed to be vibrating on the spot as he made eye contact with Haller, green eyes widening.
The glassy-eyed man swayed. As he plunged forward, he put his hand on Jean's arm while she herself was trying to catch him.
The world blurred around her at the edges, like it had been dipped in gauze. She wasn't there in the infirmary anymore, she was somewhere else. There was a steady, drip drip dripping sound from somewhere nearby. Her body felt like it was made of stone, every heartbeat heavy and slow. The blinding overhead lights shone down on her like suns. In her arm was an IV, and she caught sight of an IV bag. Her blood, they were taking her blood.
Two technicians stood by the far wall, voices low and clinical. "Levels are low again. Give him the weekend to recover. We’ll need him fresh for the next sweep."
The door hissed open. They pushed another prisoner inside, a wiry, terrified orange-skinned man with frantic eyes. Before either could speak, one of the techs seized Jean's arm and forced it into the other man's hand.
The touch hit like a spike through her skull. Thoughts, emotions, images she didn’t want tore through her...memories of capture, the sting of restraints, the sound of muffled sobbing in a concrete cell. It was too much, too fast. She gasped, trying to pull back, but the grip on her wrist only tightened.
"Anything useful?" one tech asked.
She shook her head. The wrong answer. Another bag clipped in, another slow siphon. The weakness deepened, her vision swimming.
It happened again. And again. Faces changed, but the terror in their minds was always the same. This man was made to rip through them, drag their secrets into the light. He stopped trying to remember names.
On the last run, she caught her reflection in a darkened monitor, but it wasn't her own. It was the young man's gaunt face, pale skin, lips almost gray, the life leeching out one bag at a time.
The guards laughed softly to themselves. "Don’t push him too far, he’s just a donor with a parlor trick."
That was all he was to them: blood and a trick. Nothing else.
The words hit Jean like a punch. She was still in his head when the burn started in her chest, not his body, but hers. Rage swelled so fast it blurred the line between them. The weakness in his limbs, the fog in his vision, the looks of horror and despair from every man and woman and person he ripped the secrets from, the memories of being taken...it all twisted together until something deep inside her broke loose.
Her awareness jerked back into the room, but the fury came with her. Her breath caught, and the air caught with it.
The man was shoved backward into Haller, letting go of her arm as nearby IV stands crumpled inward, their dangling bags bursting midair, spraying red and saline in heavy arcs across the tile. Stainless steel trays warped and folded like they were made of foil, clamps and lengths of discarded tubing snapped from the counters, whipping across the floor like severed vines.
The walls seemed to shudder. Ceiling panels rattled in their frames, a slow rain of dust sifting down like ash. The door’s locking bars snapped with a metallic scream, bolts shearing clean from their housing. A pulse rolled through the floor, shoving every loose object away from the edges of the room as if the space itself was rejecting what had been done there.
Then...silence, save the faint hiss of liquid seeping across the floor and the low groan of warped metal settling. Jean floated in the center, her chest rising hard, power curling around her in a barely visible shimmer.
She drew in another breath, then fell to her knees.
Had he not worked with Jean so long the release of power might have flattened him. Instead Haller sensed it an instant before the prisoner was pushed into his arms, and so when the surge came it was Jack there to meet it, not Jim. The wave of telekinesis that might have swept over their patients instead broke against an opposing telekinetic force wrapped around every warm body in the infirmary, directing the power over and around like the current of a river crashing into stone.
He waited for the surge to subside. The disoriented man still in his arms was an afterthought -- Jack's full attention was on the woman at ground zero. The shields he had erected stayed firmly in place.
"Phoenix," said the alter, his voice calm and low, "you good?"
It was quiet, very quiet. Still quiet. But she felt it, that somewhat familiar feeling. One step closer to herself, but also, back in the middle of a hurricane. She looked up when Jack spoke, and as she did, spotted a guard coming into the doorway. Reaching out her hand, she shoved him into a wall so hard that the wall cracked. She winced.
A pause. She gave him a thumbs up, a tired, mortified look on her face.
Jack watched the guard slide to the floor before turning his attention back to Jean. A faint, slightly malicious smile played across his lips. He wasn't sure what exactly had caused her to have such a reaction, but he could guess. As far as he was concerned, none of the staff deserved a fully intact skeleton.
"Want me to keep handling the defense?" he asked as he began to direct the dazed man still hanging from him towards the nearest bed. Like everything else in the infirmary, it had been shoved against the nearest wall.
Jean nodded sheepishly. "Yeah...probably for the best," she said, letting out a breath before adding with a murmur. "I need to figure out what I didn't destroy."
On the one hand, it appeared her telekinesis was back, but on the other, it wasn't as precise as it had been.
"You need anything straightened, just let me know." With a wave of his hand Jack pulled the beds back into position and offloaded his patient into the nearest one. As he was getting the man situated, however, he paused to look back at the door. The guard was still there, slumped against the wall in a way that meant he would probably remain there until Jean found a cervical collar, but the white-haired boy was nowhere to be found.
~*~
Madin and Dazzler download the research data and evidence of the real crimes.
None of the IT staff was paid enough to put up a fight against a trio of mutant soldiers. It did not take any more than their sudden appearance to get most of them to retreat from their workstations, but a handful continued whatever they were doing. One reached under his desk and spun around in his chair, raising a handgun . . .
BANG
The flashbang, dropped by Alison in the opening moments of their entrance and kicked forward, skittered into the center of the room where it promptly exploded.
"One of these days, that trick isn't going to work," Alison beamed, largely to herself since everyone else was either deaf or covering their ears. She strolled deeper into the room like she owned the place, letting the flashwhitesharp sensation of the bang linger just under the surface just in case. "But today is not that day."
Madin had waited outside while Dazzler did her shit, the better to protect their eyes and ears.
The X-Men didn't kill, so Madin didn't take pot-shots at any of the IT staff. One plasma knife shaped like a glowing purple sword in hand they were all energy and uncontained anger, waving it uncomfortably close to one man's face before slicing a vacant chair in half to make a point, molten plastic and fumes adding to the smoke in the air.
"Up against the fucking wall, arseholes, before I fucking cut you. Hands behind your backs."
The IT staff complied while Madin began pulling restraints from their belt.
Under desk 13, half-blind technician Dennis Sigrid fumbled quietly with his keyboard. A paranoid man by nature (especially now, given his current job), he'd toppled ass-over-teakettle over the back of his chair at the sound of the door being kicked in. He'd managed to reach up and pull his keyboard under his desk with him as the sound of chaos echoed around him. Whoever these thugs were, they were undoubtedly after the work they were doing here. They'd all been drilled with the same information when they started here: In the event of a breach, the first priority was the destruction of all the data in the servers.
He couldn't see his monitor, hidden as he was, but he had the commands for the server memorized. There was a thud, and the desk above him shifted. He only had seconds left, but that was more than enough time.
The soft click of the enter key to run the command was all of their salvations, assuming they survived this. The servers would be in the process of melting down already, and with it went all of the data that could be used to prove their actions. Maybe he'd even receive a commendation from his supervi--
"You spelled 'terminate' wrong."
...what?
A head poked over from the side of the desk, a long rainbow braid tied off with a black scrunchie dangling down to the floor. He stared. She stared back.
"There's an i in 'terminate'," Alison said. "Good try though. Get out from under the desk."
Madin turned and, with all the force they could muster, kicked the prone man in the kidneys as hard as possible with one steel capped boot before stabbing a plasma knife through the keyboard as an object lesson to everyone else with the hand that wasn't currently holding restraints.
Ignoring the groaning behind them - that was a Dazzler problem - they pointed at the man closest to them. "Restrain your mates, hands behind their backs. You fuck up, you do anything, anything at all I don't like and I stab you in the fucking head. Got it?"
The man nodded and took the restraints, setting to work, coughing in the smoke from melted plastic.
It was just like it always was on a mission, as though the last two years hadn't happened, even if certain people were offering quips rather than just getting it done. "Get onto the data, Daz, before we blow the computers."
Alison took a glance over at the computer monitor, where her blue and white thumbdrive happily blinked its little red indicator light at her. On the screen, a popup read "DATA TRANSFERED: 13% Terminal Access Temporarily Suspended."
"...would probably have been easier before you destroyed the keyboard, but yeah, sure. Let me go find a new one, I guess."
Madin didn't say anything. Anything they said would involve breathing more plastic fume filled air and there was nothing as intimidating as a person doubled over coughing, even if Dazzler might have, possibly, had a point. They just waved a plasma blade threateningly at the computer geeks again.
Thankfully, Alison was able to locate a second keyboard somewhere in the room full of computers, and by the time she'd gotten it plugged in, the data transfer had finished and the command line had pulled itself back up and was ready to go. "Tch," she clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Command line." She looked over at Madin, who was intimidating the workers into cowering messes, and extended an open hand, palm up. "Here, tag me. And try not to break this one?"
A swift puff of air moved past the computer terminal, and suddenly there was a white-haired boy in prison orange standing at the back of the room, having just made impact with the wall. “Ugh, how many fucking doors are there in this place!”
"What the fuck?" Madin stopped to stare at the boy. "That way. Exit is that way." They waved a purple knife back over one shoulder. "We can help you if you wait a few. I promise." He was just a kid, for fucks sake. One of the men twitched meaningfully toward a duress alarm. Madin stabbed the wall between his fingers. "I don't really want to have to cut your hands off as a lesson but you fucking lock up kids so I won't exactly feel bad about it."
They finally looked back at Dazzler. "Sorry, what?"
"You'll have to forgive them," Alison said with an easy smile. "They only speak Australian." Christ this kid was young. Okay. This was fine. Just... get him to the rest of the group. She could do that. They'd already swept most of the building, and by this point everyone else should have already cleared their sectors.
"The hall behind us will get you out of here," Alison translated. "It'd be safer if you gave us another few minutes to wrap up this prison break, but if you really can't wait, head down to the end of the hall and turn left. Then take the third right and listen for the screaming." They were the X-Men. Someone would be screaming.
“Um cool. Thanks.” The next moment the kid was gone, but to where was hard to discern.
"Shit. He's gone." And fast, too. Madin shook their head. "I don't know. I don't think he's going to head to our landing point, you know? We don't exactly inspire confidence."
Heaven save Alison from impulsive teens. "Give me a sec and I'll call the others to let them know. First..." and with spectacular timing, the room suddenly got significantly quieter as the AC system above them and the internal fans of the server blades all cut out at once. The temperature instantly began to climb, and within moments the server bank was beginning to let out the magic blue smoke.
"Never mind," she chirped happily and pulled out her com. "Now, you can destroy the keyboards."
~*~
Mission accomplished, the X-Men take their new charges to safety, but realize someone is missing.
The X-Men had hit fast and hard, having caught this so-called research facility unaware and dismantled it with ease and efficiency. Courtesy of Madin and Alison, they had a full roster of every mutant who had been run through this torture chamber, including a list of everyone who was supposed to be on site today. Some of the team helped these rescued inmates board the Blackbird and settle in while the others prepared for departure. In just a couple minutes, this part of their nightmare would be over.
Jim, who had been sitting in his own little pool of meditative isolation for several moments, finally opened his eyes. "Okay, I just did a final sweep. That should be it for the inmates."
"Inmates..." Rogue repeated the word, and sighed. Her arms were crossed in front of her, and she was tapping a toe while she looked at the group. One sorry bunch, she thought to herself, but that was to be expected. "Less people than you'd think for all the damn security here." With a quick glance at the group, she nodded. "Right, well, I'm going to head the ship, unless y'all need something from me here?"
Maya merely nodded at her teammate, still trying to compartmentalize the anger she felt. That this had even been allowed made her want to go back to hitting things.
"Wait," Jean said, checking the notes she had made on the inmates and their medical status against the roster they'd downloaded. The charts were relatively preliminary, but it'd help ease the load later for those who needed medical treatment. There was one person who stuck out from the list due to his age.
"The database said there was someone named Thomas Shepherd? He's a teenager. Sixteen. He wasn't among anyone I treated. Did anyone see him?"
"Kinda scrawny kid? I think maybe," Scott paused, spinning around to look back at the facility, "There was someone like that in with the prisoners but I lost track of him in the evacuation."
"I ‐-- maybe? I dunno. This kid came running through looking for the door? Do you think it's him, Daz?" Madin asked, looking over at Dazzler.
Alison nodded. "If I had to guess, probably. He ran off before we blew the servers, though. Gave him rough directions to get here, though. Did anyone see him after that?"
"Alright... yeah... I'll talk with them and let you know as soon as I have more details." Sooraya quickly wrapped up her phone call. "Sorry, I'm afraid I didn't see anyone. And some resources are being looked into to help these people as soon as we get back." She reported, already dialing a new number.
Madin looked anxious as they asked "You're all certain he's not still here?"
Once again Jim's face assumed the glassy, unfocused look he wore when stretching with his telepathy. Then, after a moment, he shook his head.
"None of the minds I still sense feel like an adolescent's," he replied. "I think I might have seen him for a moment when we were in the infirmary, but something, uh, came up before we could talk to him."
Scott gave the facility one last look before turning his back on it, "Then I guess he isn't here. There's not much we can do now, but once we get home we'll do what we can to find him. We have to."
no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 12:53 am (UTC)...what?
A head poked over from the side of the desk, a long rainbow braid tied off with a black scrunchie dangling down to the floor. He stared. She stared back.
"There's an i in 'terminate'," Alison said. "Good try though. Get out from under the desk." "
This is delightfully funny. I love it.