xp_logs | Nathan, Alison, Foley... and guess who? Friday evening (Reply)

The Mistra team had enough time to at least partially repair Foley's conditioning, but there are still cracks in the foundation, and Nathan knows precisely how to break it. An hour or so later, company arrives, and neither Alison or Nathan is impressed to see who's leading them.

Nathan watched, outwardly impassive, as Foley sat up with a gasp, looking around wildly. Flinching, as he realized he'd been lying on a morgue slab. "Rise and shine," he said flatly, fully aware of Alison standing over to the side of the room, watching, and Mina and David outside the door, ready to play rearguard if necessary. "If you're wondering," he said, "you're back in the safehouse. We found some of the power-suppressing drug they were using on you and gave you another dose just in case."

Arms crossed, mostly to keep her hands from shaking, Alison stood by, waiting. Her turn would come in this soon despite Nathan's earlier objections and she was finding it frighteningly easy to fall into the right frame of mind for this. The door was closed, there were no windows for anyone to see what she would be doing. Nathan was wearing lenses that would inure him to the light variations, something they'd found in the safehouse, apparently being used to shield the agents from one of the dead children.

Now, only Foley would be affected by what she would do.

"Nathan--what?" Foley looked disoriented, if not nearly as bad as he had back at the safehouse. He looked around again, then spotted Alison and froze, the color draining from his face. "No... I'm not going to... NO!" He lunged suddenly at the door, and Nathan intercepted him, having expected just such a move.

"I should have figured," he gritted, holding onto Foley both physically and telekinetically as the other man struggled. "Gave you the chance, and you've pulled yourself together... guess we're going to have to do this the hard way..." A little telekinesis, diverted to the nearest body bag, and the zipper undid itself, the flap coming back to reveal the face of a young girl, pale and absurdly peaceful.

She did not close her eyes. She knew what was coming, knew what she had to do. And that included keeping her eyes open and facing everything that was to come. Gritting her teeth she bit back a choking sound at the sight of the dead girl, taking a shallow breath and letting go. No meditation, nothing graceful about this as she kept hugging herself and looked and let it bleed through the light slowly taking shape exactly how the sight made her feel.

"Look at her," Nathan snarled, his voice soft but fierce as Foley kept struggling, trying to turn away. "Look at her, Mick - how old do you think she is? Ten? Eleven?"

"Get your fucking hands off me--" Foley was sounding panicked, but still coherent.

Not good enough, Nathan assessed coldly. "You know how it feels," he hissed in Foley's ear. "When the empaths go in, cut you off from everything you feel... you remember, don't you? That black pit, trying to suck you down... you and I didn't fall, but she did. Do you suppose she cried, Mick? Or just closed her eyes and died gratefully?"

Miles was seven. Barely three years younger than the girl on the slab of metal before her and the inescapable thought that it could as easily have been him there broke something inside of her. The patterns of light shifting in the room twisted violently, a jagged lacing of colors and shapes turning in on themselves. Shivering, Alison bit her lip, eyes locked on the dead girl, barely hearing what Nathan was saying.

Foley was shuddering, and Nathan couldn't tell whether his words, or the lights, or the dead girl was what was affecting him. All three, maybe. "Why don't we meet her friends?" he snarled, pulling Foley over to the next slab and opening that body bag telekinetically. A boy, this one. "You know," he said, almost conversationally, "there weren't any names recorded in the safehouse computers? No names. Just numbers. Did you know that? I did. You don't get your name back until you survive the first three months. So we don't know who these children are. They're numbers, MIck... just numbers that the directors were ready to throw out like trash."

She was trembling violently by now - didn't want to see the others, didn't want to see anymore dead children ever again. A muffled sob escaped her and she took a step back, then another until she was leaning on the wall, pushing back against until her knees almost gave way. But she couldn't stop, had to keep looking. The light was pulsating jaggedly around the room, bleeding from one shade of agony to another, colors Alison would have realized she'd never even seen before, had she been able to even look at them.

Instead, she stared at the dead boy and whimpered, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Stop it," Foley was choking out. He was shaking so hard that Nathan wouldn't have been able to hold onto him, if he hadn't been doing so telekinetically, too. "Stop it... for fuck's sake, Nate, what was I supposed to do..."

"You tell me." Nathan kept his voice hard, implacable. "You tell me what you should have done, you fucking coward... when you and Tim were standing there in Vermont with that conditioning team within arm's reach... you tell me what you should have done!"

Why? She couldn't even begin to shape the word, or any other of the questions she wanted to ask the man. How anyone could do such things, how could such a thing happen in the first place? Grief and horror blended into a whirlwind of emotions as Alison simply let go, closing her eyes and sliding down the floor as her knees gave way. Crying softly, trying to wipe the images of death from her mind as best she could, Alison pushed everything into the light she was generating. Every. Single. Emotion.

Foley was still resisting, Nathan could feel it. "Take a look!" he snarled, opening each of the bodybags and dragging Foley from slab to slab, trying to fight his own reaction to those still, lifeless faces. "Each and every one of them - you remember their faces, because you might as well have killed them yourself! Just like you killed that kid in Columbia!" Nathan's jaw tried to lock, to hold the words back, but he went on savagely. "They're so fragile, children... one accidental sonic blast, one sloppy empathic alteration, and suddenly they're gone. And all you have left are these tiny corpses, that don't even fill up a bodybag..."

And something snapped. He sensed it, an explosion of light in Foley's mind, as the man went rigid in his arms, a choked, cut-off scream erupting from his throat. Then he went limp as a rag doll, and Nathan lowered him to the floor, swearing as he saw the blood trickling from his nose and ears.

"Mick?" he called hoarsely, bending over him. "Mick, can you hear me?" He felt for a pulse and found it, weak and erratic. But he wasn't breathing, and Nathan swore again, bending over him to try and force air back into his lungs.

Over. Oh god, it was over, and even though she was sobbing uncontrollably, light whirling crazily in the room, Alison rose to her feet and staggered towards them, barely breaching the distance before going down to her knees again. Pulse. While Nathan was trying to help him breathe, she could check for a pulse. Trembling fingers settled on the man's throat, finding a thready pulse there, keeping track of it somehow. Eyes closed tightly once more, not looking, just counting out the beats underneath her breath as best as possible.

One minute. Two. Nathan was about to summon Mina with the full medkit telepathically when Mick suddenly gasped, his whole body spasming as he tried to pull air back into his lungs. Nathan grimaced and got an arm under his shoulders, pulling him half-upright as he wheezed, choking. "It's okay," he whispered, his eyes stinging. He could sense the difference in Mick's thoughts, the fracturing running through the patterns. The conditioning wasn't gone, but it was broken badly. Enough that Charles could maybe do the rest of the work, after his experience with Kritzer's trojan horse.

His head lolled back for a moment, but Foley was clearly fighting to focus, to stay conscious, and a heartbreaking noise wrenched itself free from his throat. "K-Kill me... you should kill me..."

Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, struggling with memories of that night in the medlab. "No," he said, softly and unsteadily. "Absolutely not..."

"Please..."

"It's not your fault. You were them." His eyes were stinging worse now, tears escaping. "You just had the bad luck to survive and have to live it, Mick..."

Hand falling to the floor Alison just tried to catch her breath, the light thankfully fading in and out as she ran out of charge, only brief flickers remaining from the sound of the men's voices echoing in the room. Another tremor ran through her body and she looked at Mick, opening her eyes briefly. "Not killing you," she managed, forced herself to speak, somehow. "Not. Told you so..."

It was all she could manage though, shoulders hunched over and starting to curl up on herself. "Close them up, Nathan, please," she begged lowly, wishing she had enough strength left to get up and leave the room. Instead she just remained where she was, trying to stop the shivers racing through her body, to not say anything else until Nathan was done.

The bodybags closed, the zippers pulling upwards. Nathan glanced back down at Foley, seeing the glassy look in the other man's eyes, the steadily increasing shivering. He laid a hand against the side of the younger man's face, and the chill of his skin was almost palpable. "He's going into shock," he muttered, getting up and pulling Mick with him. "We need to get him into a bed out in the lab, stabilize him..." He looked down at Alison almost desperately. "Help me?" he asked, trying to pull her back from the edge.

The sound of his voice. No longer hard and cold, and so very harsh but needing help, asking her for help. She could focus on that. With a small nod she took a breath and then slowly rose to her feet, using a nearby table to steady herself before moving to help Nathan. "Let's go." The thin veneer of control was all she could manage but she clung to it with a will, hands still shaking despite her best efforts. And once the door opened there were others who would be able to help.

---

Foley's vitals were stable. That was the most important thing, Nathan tried to tell himself, standing beside the bed. He reached out and adjusted the blanket covering the other man, then looked up at Alison, who was slumped in a chair on the other side of the bed, her very slightly glassy eyes locked on Mick's face.

"I think--I think he'll be okay," he said, his voice low and rough with emotion. "Physically, I mean. If he was going to stop breathing again, he'd have done it by now..."

"Okay." It was the only word she'd said since they'd brought him out of the morgue, and even that took her a while to formulate properly. She took a shallow breath and tried to drag herself into something resembling someone who was in control, somehow. Someone (Mina?) had brought her bag into the room a while ago. Her data pad would be there - calling for the Blackbird was the thing to do now.

Slowly she pushed herself up, barely noticing the tenderness in her side where Mick had landed the strongest hit, and slowly walked over to the bag to retrieve what she needed before heading back to the chair again. She even looked steady while doing so, not that she felt it in the least. "Calling our transport."

"Okay," Nathan echoed a bit emptily. Already thinking about loading the kids' bodies onto the Blackbird. They couldn't leave them here, for Mistra to come back after they left and stuff them into an incinerator or something. Dead was one thing. Erased from existence was another.

"Nathan," Mina's voice crackled over his headset, sounding agitated. "Nathan, get out here, we've got company--"

Nathan turned and bolted from the room without waiting to hear the rest of it.

Alison remained exactly where she was, her only action after sending the call off that of edging the chair to the side slightly, giving her a perfect line on the only entrance to the room and a clear shot at anyone who entered who, well, should not. Someone was staying with Foley at all times, and that was that - there was hardly a need to confer about it. And if Nathan needed anything, he could easily let her know, whatever was happening out there.

"Talk to me," Nathan snapped as he ran through the hall to the front entrance. "Mina!" He cast his mind out in front of him, and reeled as he sensed David's thoughts go strange and chaotic suddenly, and a flash of panicked images from Mina. There were other minds, he could sense them, but they were clouded somehow - shielded?

He threw up a TK shield and ran through the open front door of the safehouse, coming to a stop and taking in the scene in one glance. There were half a dozen men and women in body armor, with guns. David was lying on the ground, twitching, one of them standing over them. Another had Mina in a very awkward-looking hold, as if he was trying to get as much of his body in contact with hers as possible. The fact that electricity was arcing around her but seemed to be having absolutely no effect on her captor explained why.

Standing there in the midst of all of this, staring directly at him, was MacInnis. Nathan opened his mouth, but the old rat bastard beat him to it.

"Stand down," MacInnis said steadily. "I don't want to hurt you or your people, but I'm not having this turn into a fight."

Nathan glared at him, telekinetic energy seething in the air around him, rolling off him in waves. The ground beneath his feet started to shiver slightly. "Then back away from my people," he said through gritted teeth. Mina made a noise of frustration, and his eyes flickered to David. "What did you do to him?"

"Temporary neurotoxin. Couldn't have him beating the crap out of us in ten seconds flat, as entertaining as it might have been to watch. And my big friend over there absorbs electrical energy, so Ms. Rabin's at a disadvantage." MacInnis gazed at Nathan for a moment, almost measuringly, and then nodded to the man holding Mina. He let her go, and she immediately drove her elbow into his stomach, then ran for David. "He'll be fine," MacInnis said, sparing a glance for her, and then looked at Nathan. "Shall we go in and see Mick now?"

It hadn't been that long, but it was still awfully silent out there. Frowning a bit, Alison slipped off her headset, eyeing it distantly. Nothing. No contact since the first call. Not normal. She slid it under the bed sheet, hiding it from sight of anyone walking through the door and walked over towards the entrance, peering up thoughtfully at the thick concrete wall. Yes, she decided. Better to be over cautious - after everything that had happened, she wasn't even sure it was that anyway. She pointed upwards, quickly setting things up to her taste.

"Son of a bitch," Nathan grated as he was marched back into the safehouse. The guns weren't much of a deterrent to him, but MacInnis had left a few of his people out there watching David and Mina - hostages to his good behavior, he knew - and what was worse, he recognized the snub-nosed weapon the red-haired woman beside MacInnis was carrying. One blast from that and he'd lose his grip on his TK completely. Damn his vulnerability to EM discharge... and damn MacInnis for knowing about it.

#Alison,# he sent, flashing her the image of where he was and what the situation was.

The frame of mind he encountered was less blank than a few moments ago, more alert - and was radiating a sense of upside down, for some reason. #Thought so. No big boom. Make sure he walks right after you.#

#He is. The bitch with the portable EMP is right beside him.# Nathan gritted his teeth and kept walking. "You think you've got all the angles covered, is that it?" he asked harshly. "That I won't do anything just in case she hits me with a blast from that little toy and I wind up blowing up the house?"

"With Blaire and Foley in it? I know damned well you won't risk that. I'm just hoping Blaire won't, either. Where is she, back with Michael?"

"Fuck you," Nathan growled.

#Language.# The thought automatic, tinged with a dull matter of factness. #So that's MacInnis? He had to know we're talking. Show me the specs on that EMP before you all tromp in here.# What she intended to do was simple really. Hit the EMP rifle, get MacInnis at the same time. Quite literally. That was all she needed to do - MacInnis's people were sadly outnumbered as of that moment, in her opinion.

Nathan concentrated, pulling them back into mind and then projecting them to Alison as clearly as he could. #She hits me with that, and there won't be much of this place still standing,# he sent bleakly. #Be careful.#

A pause and then a clear mental image radiated from her mind, with a faint sense of questioning, showing the weapon neatly sliced into three pieces. #That part separated from that part. No boom. No EMP either. Heat will burn her hands.# It did not sound as if Alison cared all that much. #You're down the hallway, I can hear all the tromping. Loud and overconfident.# That she might just be a touch oversensitive to sound after the past day didn't occur to her.

#We're almost there.# Despite the fact that she clearly had a plan, he tensed up as they approached the door.

Walking inside the room revealed only Foley, still lying on the bed. The apparent quiet lasted for all of two seconds though, light stabbing towards the EMP from above, searing through the gun just as Alison had planned to. It was the next bit that Nathan could sense amused her. Sheated in light she'd unfolded from the wall above the doorway while shooting at the woman's gun, to wrap one arm tightly around MacInnis' neck, one fingertip pressing at his temple. She didn't really need to say anything at that point, really.

#Got maybe twenty seconds left on the shield unless someone starts feeding me sound.#

Nathan tilted his head, then reached out with his TK to the other side of the lab, where the worktables were, and shattered every piece of glassware there, careful to shield it so that none of the shards reached as far as where they were standing, or Mick's bed. "Drop it," he said to the red-haired woman, who'd gone for her sidearm. "Or I feed it to you."

MacInnis somehow managed a rueful sigh, even with Alison's chokehold. "Stand down, Cindy."

The sound of breaking glass was very nice, really. Jangled, high pitched notes, all of them adding that much more time to her shield. "That's good," Alison commented, very politely. "Please put that gun down." Still very polite. "Mina and David?" The question was directed more towards Nathan, but if the man she was holding decided to offer a comment, she didn't mind.

"If you'll let me get to my com," MacInnis said, still very much in a conversational tone, if one that was a little strangled-sounding, "I'll give the order to my men outside to back off, too."

"I'm sorry," she replied urbanely, voice still flat and even. "Am I holding on too tightly?" She didn't relax her hold in the least however. #Nathan? I don't want to let go. Mind just holding his comm. up for him?#

Nathan reached out with his mind and tugged at the com, holding it up so that MacInnis could speak into it. The old man smiled faintly. "Stand down, people," he said. "We're all okay in here. Give the Rabins whatever medical attention they need."

"If that neurotoxin doesn't wear off fast," Nathan said very quietly, "with no lingering effects..."

"It will," MacInnis said, his eyes flickering towards Foley.

There was a faint sizzling sound and Alison leaned on MacInnis shoulder without warning, flipping from upside down and attached to the ceiling to standing up on the floor in a smooth motion. The choke hold was neatly reversed, her finger still pointed at his head the entire time. #Ow. Side hurts.# It was, she realized, a very belated discovery.

"What do you want, exactly?" He was not getting Foley. That much was dead certain.

"To help," MacInnis said, still looking in Foley's direction.

"Bullshit," Nathan snapped. "If you wanted to help and you were this close, you would have done it already. What the fuck are you up to?" he demanded, wrestling with his agitation.

"I wanted to see how you'd handle it," MacInnis said simply.

It took a while for Alison to realize she was tightening her grip on the man. Perhaps a bit more than she should. She glanced at the woman idly, not really caring much about her other than if she tried to do anything and released her hold. To something like what it was before. "Now you know. Why are you here?"

"To check on how things went," MacInnis said, sounding more than a little choked now. "To clean out the computers--"

"We'll be taking those," Nathan growled.

"We already have them safely packed away and everything," Alison added calmly. The woman wasn't budging an inch, though there was a lot of scowling going on. Shifting slightly to keep MacInnis between them, Alison allowed the light shield to fade partially, just enough to be able to keep it going longer around her still exposed arm. "Keep talking. Anything else?"

MacInnis looked right at Nathan. "Wanted to... talk to you, son."

"Stop CALLING me that!" Nathan snarled at him, taking a step closer. "Damn it, you've been playing me like a chess piece all week, and I'm NOT PUTTING UP WITH IT!"

#Nathan!# She really did hope he heard her. #You yell, you lose control, he wins that much more control over you. Each time.# Numb, she was still far too numb, she realized. Only Nathan's distress had changed that, for a moment. "Our ride will be here soon enough. Neither of us is really in the mood to talk just now, I'm afraid." She wondered if he had any idea how abnormal it was for her to be this calm in a situation like this - surely they had files on her. A profile of some sort.

MacInnis was silent for a moment. "You intend to stand here with your arm around my neck until your jet arrives, Ms. Blaire?"

"It's a fast jet. I won't have to put up with doing that for too long. Until then, this suits me just fine." Alison's voice was very, very patient. "Unless there's anything else you wanted besides talking to Nathan?" That, she decided, wasn't an option just yet. Not until Nathan was steadier -mentally and emotionally.

"We were listening in on your coms," MacInnis said. "I was going to offer to take the bodies. Doubt these kids were American. Might have more luck identifying them over here, as opposed to taking them back to the States."

"That's very considerate of you." Alison didn't believe that for a moment, but keeping dead children away from Nathan - and herself - she could deal with. The thought of staring at the body bags the entire way back to the mansion made her feel far too ill. #Nathan?# He was being awfully quiet all of a sudden. #I would like to accept this offer.#

Nathan was quiet mostly because he was struggling for control. "Going to identify them, are you?" he asked hoarsely. "Give them all names, proper burial, tell their parents... how really considerate of you. Really. Very decent..."

"Nathan," MacInnis said, giving him a steady, unblinking look.

Nathan turned away, his jaw clenching. "You'd better fucking do it," he whispered raggedly.

"Will that be all?" She cut across the discussion without any remorse, still unmoving even though her side was giving her a lot of grief for it at this point. She probably should have used the other arm for the choke hold, she decided. Oh well.

"For now," MacInnis said. "We'll take the bodies and go." He was still looking at Nathan. "I'll be in touch."

"Go to hell," Nathan snapped, then met Alison's eyes. "Let him go," he said, a little more levelly. Falling back on what needed to be done, at least for now. "I'll see the two of them out and help Mina with David. You stay with Mick."

Alison stepped back without a word, arm loosening as she released MacInnis and walked towards the bed. #Keep contact with me as you go out.# It wasn't even to be sure something wouldn't happen really - she just wanted to keep tabs on Nathan himself.