Thermopylae - The blood-dimmed tide is loosed (part 3)

[x-cable.livejournal.com]

On Youra, battle is joined. Unexpected allies are found, and the scales tip even further in favor of the good guys.

For a little while.


~*~

For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For ill things turn to barrenness.
-'The Two Trees', Yeats

~*~

Nathan closed his eyes, listening to the noise of the Blackbird's engines and wondering where they were along their flight path from Galicia to the Greek islands. He supposed he could have wandered up to the cockpit and taken a look over Sam or Haroun's shoulder to check, but he was, quite honestly, happy where he was. Especially since moving through the plane would mean talking to people, and he was so not up for that just now.

Cain rocked back and forth, arms wrapped around his knees not for any kind of support, but simply because he didn't fit in any of the cargo seats on board the plane. He smirked, looking around at the X-Men in their leathers, then glanced down at his bright purple Minnesota Vikings football jersey and jeans.

"Ain't like black leather's gonna make me any less easy to spot," he'd said in the tactical briefing, "and way I see it, more people see me instead of you, they shoot at me instead of you."

The movement caught Nathan's attention and he opened his eyes, smiling faintly at Cain. 'Are we there yet?' he mouthed.

Cain laughed out loud at that, easing over to squat next to Nathan. "Tell me you ain't airsick," he quipped, bracing himself against the wall of the plane. "Somehow I think barf bags weren't on the pack-out list."

"No, I'm fine," Nathan said, keeping his voice low, so that it was lost in the general buzz of quiet conversation. Talking to Cain was all right. Cain wasn't going to try and give him a pep talk, or look at him sideways. "Little impatient, but hey."

"Understandable," Cain had noticed Nathan acting more on-edge than usual, but just chalked it up to pre-combat jitters. Everyone got them, he reasoned. Nathan was a professional, he had it under control.

"Remind me again," he asked, "why the hell I thought being dropped out of a perfectly good airplane was a sound idea?"

Nathan shrugged a little, the slight smile still playing on his lips. "You want to see what that first step feels like?" His gaze strayed up the cabin, over his teammates. "Did I ever tell you I did a HALO jump without a parachute, once? Brought myself down with the TK..."

"Yeah, but you're crazy," Cain mumbled back, looking over the mission brief. "Still, this works, I got no problem bein' a human cannonball. And once I get in, just start causin' a ruckus until you or Al- Dazzler," he corrected himself, "gets on the horn and directs me somewhere, yeah?"

"Or Cyclops or Storm," Nathan reminded him. "And hell, if Morgan for some reason hollers at you for help, give him a hand? Try not to step on MacInnis by accident if you do, though... that would be tragic." That was far more amusing than it had any right to be.

"You got it," Cain agreed quickly. "This... kinda familiar, you know? Not quite like soldierin' again, but close enough." He checked the stapled pages slowly. "They got some heavy hitters down there, and that's a no-shitter. And like you said, they ain't gonna pull any punches. So they get in front of me..." Cain left the rest of the sentence unsaid, conveying his intent with a simple look.

"That's why retrieving the operatives is third on the list of priorities," Nathan said very quietly. "Rather than first, like the kids, or second, like the directors. We may be there to help them too, but that doesn't mean they're going to recognize that. Or be able to do anything about it if they do."

Cain nodded, consulting the list of priority targets he had taped to his forearm. Communications buildings first, then power facilities, and then wherever the biggest source of chaos was, clearing a path for whoever could follow.

"Something like this," he finally mused, "kinda got a whole 'scorched earth' feel about it. Ain't gonna be pretty or heroic by any means. You sure the rest of them can handle it?"

"They'll handle it," Nathan said, his eyes wandering over the others again. "They know what's at stake." He smiled again at Cain, a bit wryly. "Doesn't mean the first little while after is going to be a whole lot of fun," he said more quietly, "however it goes."

"You thought about that?" Cain asked. "After? I mean - this monkey's been on your back for what, twenty-five years now? Thought much about what freedom's gonna feel like?"

Okay, so maybe Cain wasn't the pep talk type, and wasn't going to nag him about whether or not he was holding up here, but that apparently didn't mean he wasn't going to ask the hard questions. Nathan let his head sag back against the cool metal behind him, his eyes going distant.

"I can't see it," he said, his voice dropping even lower. "After. Oh, I can see going back to Moira and the baby. Continuing on with the X-Men, with teaching... but I try to subtract Mistra from all of it, try to imagine what it's going to be like knowing they're not out there anymore... and I can't see it."

Cain reached out, clapping Nathan on the shoulder with one large hand. "Figure that. Guy who sees the future, and now it's all a surprise for you. Ain't that something?"

He looked to the side to see Haroun pointing at him with both index fingers and then giving the "thumbs-up".

"Shit," Cain grumbled. "Guess it's time for me to go downstairs to the cheap seats, huh?"

Nathan laughed softly. "Guess so." They must be closer than he'd thought. "Enjoy the view on the way down, Cain. I'll see you on the ground."

~*~


It was pretty out here, reflected the officer of the watch as he stared out at the Aegean, ignoring the others here on duty in the makeshift com-tower. Too bad they probably weren't staying. Scuttlebutt said that the new home facility was in some ungodly corner of Siberia. Enough to make one regret one's career path, that...

"Butcher," one of the other officers said suddenly, breaking the quiet. "I think I'm picking up something on radar. Maybe..."

Butcher frowned at him. "What do you mean, maybe?"

"Four, maybe five incoming... wait, one's almost supersonic."

Butcher's eyes widened. "Sound the incoming alarm? That's not the Greek military on maneuvers, that's got to be--"

"Supersonic seems to have... pulled off? Just straight up at about Mach 2?"

"Impossible," Butcher frowned. "Plane would tear itself apart with a maneuver like that. That doesn't make any sense at--"

"INCOMING!" shouted one of the anti-aircraft system operators, staring at his screen. A fast-moving blip was already moving across the radar at a high rate of speed.

"Missile?" Butcher asked, foolishly pausing his hand over the alert button. The operator shook his head.

"Negligible heat signature, reads like... no, a flock of birds wouldn't be coming in this fast, or..."

"Oh shit..." Butcher mouthed, glancing out over the ocean. It was no missile. Missiles didn't smile.

"Morning, ladies," Cain Marko said to no one in particular, just before smashing like a wrecking ball through the comm tower.

~*~


Carmella Ruiz had just raised the cup of tea to her lips when the sonic boom hit. The sole woman among the Mistra directors looked up, raising an eyebrow. It didn't surprise her terribly when the door to her rooms opened, perhaps two minutes later, and her aide rushed in, looking agitated.

"What is it, Brent?" she asked calmly. "I'm assuming that wasn't the Greek military buzzing us for kicks."

"No, ma'am." Brent Haydon was generally a steady type, but he looked decidedly white around the lips at the moment. "I think you need to come with me. Something's happened at the communications tower."

"What?"

"It's not there anymore."

"Ah." Ruiz set her tea down with a smooth, unhurried movement, and rose. Her eyes flickered to the open windows as she heard the unmistakable sound of helicopters in the distance. "Sounds as though we have visitors," she said.

"Yes, ma'am. We need to get you to the bunker, as soon as possible."

"Not just yet." She strode over to the emergency phone by the wall, tapping in a number quickly. "Pick up," she murmured, then smiled thinly as she heard the voice on the other end. "Hello, Alexander. Masada."

Without waiting for his reply, she hung up the phone and turned to Brent. "Now," she said serenely, "we can go." Although she had no intention of heading for the bunker. Let the others die like rabbits cowering in their holes.

She had other plans.

~*~


Cain stepped out of the wreckage of the communications tower, brushing concrete dust off his shoulders as he trudged across the tarmac to where the complex's power facility was supposed to be located. He frowned as he noticed a tear in his football jersey. "Dammit," he swore, "ain't like you can find these in the mall in my size, either."

A small itching sensation flared across his back, then the noise of gunfire reached his ears. He turned to see two Mistra operatives with automatic rifles, unloading them in his direction. The bullets struck him and fell to the ground, their energy expended with no apparent effect. Cain grinned widely, brushing a hand over his chest.

"What do you know?" he quipped, "I can actually kind of feel that now. There's a switch." Raising one foot, he stomped on the ground like a sumo wrestler. A look of amusement crossed his face when he watched the two gunmen jump off the ground from the shockwave, tumbling in awkward heaps. Reaching down to pick up their rifles, Cain casually took them in his hands and bent them in a perfect 'C' shape. Tossing the useless weapons to the side, he picked each Mistra operative up by their collars. "You want to live," he growled, "you find the first person in an Army uniform you see and you surrender. Otherwise, I ain't making no promises."

"Aren't making any promises," the hissed correction came, right before Cain felt an impact against the back of his head. A pop and hiss followed, and Cain's fingers came away trailing fire.

"You little prick!" he shouted, brushing his hands over his head quickly. "You fucking thermited me! Asshole!" He glanced around, looking for his assailant. Easy to spot, the man was skinny - gaunt, even - with long, greasy black hair. A wispy goatee bounced as he giggled, waving to Cain.

"Over here, big boy. Let me take a look at you," he taunted, skipping lightly to the side. Cain growled and took a step forward, meeting the man's eyes and--

Drowning Oh god why can't I breathe I can't see CAN'T SEE CAN'T BREATHE my chest oh god I'm breathing water I'm drowning I'm

--looked away with a jerk, dropping to a knee. Heaving violently, Cain vomited up the contents of his stomach onto the tarmac. "What... the fuck?" he breathed, glancing sideways at the thin man, who was holding his sides with uncontrolled laughter. Averting his eyes, Cain keyed his comlink.

"Marko here. Little fucker with long black hair managed to do something to me, think I'll be okay. Ain't got him on the list, what am I up against?"

A brief crackle of static, then Cain heard Morgan's voice over the link. "Jesus Christ, that's Spector. Marko, do not, I repeat do not look into his eyes. He's got a psychic link ability that fucks with your autonomic nervous system. I've seen him kill people in seconds with it."

"Psychic." Cain spat out a mouthful of bile, mulling the word over. Standing up, he rolled his shoulders, hopping briefly up and down to loosen his muscles. "Okay, you anorexic little ratfuck, try that again." He advanced, arms out, trying to focus his eyes on Spector's chest. The smaller man ducked backwards out of Cain's reach, bending at the waist and glancing up at the giant's face.

"Oh, come on," Spector chided in a singsong voice, "haven't you learned that sharing is caring? I just want to share this with you. What it's like to die. I did once, you know." He ducked another wild blow, punctuating each dodge with a childlike giggle. "No one else seems to want to know what it's like. They keep dying on me. You're a big strong one, though. You should be able to... take it!"

With the last phrase, he stepped under Cain's arm, jumping and locking his arms around Cain's neck, holding his face an inch from Cain's.

"Look at me," Spector droned, voice low and hypnotic. "Look at me, look look look..."

Cain felt his eyelids flicker for a moment, and the sensations flooded back, as the water filled his lungs and he began sinking, struggling for the surface.

"That's it, let it fill you up..." Spector breathed, guiding Cain down to the ground. "Can you see it? Can you see?"

Wrenching his eyes closed, Cain coughed and sat up violently, throwing Spector over his head. "Little fucking telepath pissant!" he bellowed, whirling around to face the smaller man. "You died once? Get a little closer and I'll let you feel it again, maybe it'll stick!"

"Ooh, promise?" Spector chirped, avoiding another blow with superhuman agility. "But it won't happen. I never lose this game. It's my favorite." He bobbed and weaved again, ducking under Cain's clumsy punches. "Do you like games, big boy?"

Cain smiled, then snapped his arms together, catching Spector in a bear hug. "Sure. Ever watch hockey?" He grabbed the hem of Spector's shirt, hauling it up over the thin man's head, entangling his head and arms. Spinning his prey around, Cain held the shirt closed over the psychic's head, then grabbed the waistband of his pants and lifted him up above his head.

"Can't kill what you can't see," Cain teased, spinning around like a helicopter rotor, then falling backwards, driving Spector head-first into the concrete. The sudden snap-crunch of the impact satisfied Cain, as he rolled Spector's limp body over, watching the crimson slowly start seeping through the man's shirt, now his shroud.

"When you get to hell," Cain told the corpse, "tell 'em Cain Marko sent you."

~*~


"Go! Go, go!"

He should have taken Summers up on his offer and crammed as many of his people as possible aboard the X-Men's jet, Mauricio Catano thought irritably, watching his men deploy. They'd have been on the ground faster, and minutes would make a difference here.

"All right, people, let's start getting set up! Likely to have business arriving here sooner rather than later!" he roared, nodding in satisfaction as he saw the medical teams already scrambling to get the triage tent up and running, and his own communications staff assembling their own equipment at speed.

Reports were already starting to come in over the field coms. The X-Men and MacInnis' people had launched themselves right into the fight. The spearhead, just like the deployment plan had called for them to be.

"I want a perimeter established!" Couldn't have a safe area without it being properly secured, after all.

~*~


Part of the problem was that there were entirely too many targets. The command bunker, the training barracks, the aircraft, the mainframes - half a dozen others, and those were just the geographical targets. They had deployed the X-Men as carefully as they could, trying to support the government troops and MacInnis' people. In most cases, that had involved splitting people up. The group he was with now would split up as well, but he'd needed concentrated punch to get through the main lines of Mistra resistance here at the heart of the complex. Between him, Alison, and Nathan, they were managing quite nicely. Sam and Haroun roared overhead, providing them with eyes in the sky.

Nathan leveled his psimitar at a group of Mistra security personnel taking cover behind a couple of jeeps. The vehicles flew in opposite directions and he lashed out again, sending the men sprawling.

The sonic enhancers were thrumming already, though not all of them were active, and Alison wasted no time in blinding the men that were already down, before directing another blast of pure light towards another group that rounded a corner perhaps a bit too fast for their own good. The backups behind them however didn't so much as poke their noses out, though the various sounds of people scrambling for position weren't hard to decipher.

~Company.~ She aimed for the corner of the building - communications center she noted dimly, from the maps they'd studied previously - and brought it down, keeping them off balance and backing-up further, for now.

Nathan flung up a shield over all three of them as a flyer - not Haroun or Sam - made a flyover, attempting to drench them in plasma fire. It splashed against his shield and he winced, extending his psimitar, intending to take the woman down.

He didn't get the chance. A twenty-foot high, shining golden exoskeleton came leaping down the rock face behind them and extended one claw, catching the flyer and bringing her down, rather more gently than he could have. Tim's tight smile was barely visible behind his exoskeleton's glow, and he thundered towards the damaged communications building, after the group Alison had pinned down.

The chaos around them was oddly muted to Alison's ears, even though she could feel the sound of it, all around. Tim was taking care of any potential trouble on their side and Alison didn't even need to look towards Scott to know what that meant - press forward and secure the advantage they'd gained, and fast. They all had their own part to play and breaking through was part of it. Taking careful aim she switched to lasers - aiming for the communications array in sight, taking them down the ones which had been assigned to her one at a time as they moved forward.

More incoming fire, from their left, and Scott stumbled as Nathan reached out and yanked him backwards, just as what looked like nothing so much as a yellow-green lightning bolt hit a hastily erected psi-shield. "Pulaski," Nathan grated, and Scott spotted the new batch of attackers, half a dozen security personnel and three faces familiar from the Mistra files. Pulaski, Nash, and Konstantakis. The group had emerged from around the back of one of the large tent-type structures, the operatives in the lead and the security types firing steadily.

~Tim,~ Nathan sent sharply, and Tim, busy playing swat-the-bad-guys with great gusto, stopped and turned towards him. Nathan stepped past Scott, leveling his psimitar and keeping the shield up. ~Leave them to us,~ he sent to both Scott and Alison.

Alison raised an eyebrow at that, and did anything but, looking around to make sure there weren't any more operatives showing up. ~Prettying up the scenery is nice and all, but it's not what any of us are here to do.~ The reply was dead calm, followed by a short flare of light as one of the operatives never even had the time to finish what he'd started, hand gestures interrupted by a solid blast of light to the chest which slammed him into a nearby building. She focused on Nash for a moment, even as she aimed at another operative - a second generation, the face one she recognized from the files they'd reviewed - and hoped, briefly, that the Trojan Horse, when unleashed in Canada, had affected him enough to give him more than just leeway, here. ~We hit Nash, Pulaski and Konstantakis last if we can. If we can.~ They still had that leeway, for now. The 'if" was enough room to ignore that should things become too urgent all of a sudden.

~Get back here to cover, Cable,~ Scott added, ducking behind another one of the pre-fab huts and leaning out to fire off a few carefully measured blasts at the security personnel beside the three first-gens. He got a glare, but Nathan rushed back to join him, beating Alison there. Tim, after a long look in the direction of the other three operatives, did the same, shrugging off the gunfire as if the bullets were less than mosquito bites.

Gunfire peppered the side of the hut for a moment before suddenly stilling, which was Not a Good Thing as far as anyone was concerned, Alison knew. No one was coming to surprise them from behind and Tim was certainly able to keep an eye on the new lot of operatives. ~Tim, who are they sending at us?~ That was the usual Mistra tactic - though she wouldn't have been surprised if the gunfire had continued even as they sent someone out, at this point.

Tim leaned out casually, his eyes widening as he saw who was emerging from the knot of resistance off to the right. Felker was one of the less-stable second-gens, and definitely one of the more powerful. ~Unless we want a fucking earthquake, one of you take him down, now!~ He was instinctively shifting forward, ready to race across the distance and try to grab Felker before he really cut loose if need be, although any of the other three were better-equipped than he was.

Nathan swore, the light link with Tim enough to show him what the other telekinetic was seeing - and hell, he remembered Felker, too. The man needed to go down, right now. He'd done a little reading on the geology of the island, and an earthquake would be a singularly bad idea for everyone. Leveling his psimitar, he stepped out into the open.

Just in time to see Konstantakis raise her gun and shoot Felker from behind.

The younger operative stumbled and fell face-down on the ground, unmoving. The head of the security detail turned on Konstantakis, screaming something at her that Nathan couldn't quite make out.

"Oh, yes," Tim said, in as close to an awed voice as Nathan had heard from him in fifteen years. "Please, yes..."

The security officer was still screaming, and Nathan's eyes narrowed as he saw Konstantakis' cool smile, even as the man raised his gun, clearly about to shoot her out of hand.

Nash reached out and snapped his arm like a dry twig.

"Yes!" Alison, having leaned over to look as well, never realized she'd spoken out loud instead of sub-vocalizing through to her comm. Instead she aimed and fired at a wild haired woman flinging herself at Nash, something unpleasant looking coiling about her hands. The light snapped her away so sharply that the woman went right through the wall, moving weakly for a few more moments in an attempt to get up before slumping back and going still, even as every single other operative turned their entire attention on the two within their midst.

They were right in the middle, she realized. And Pulaski, as far as they knew, was still on the other side. Without a second though, light poured into being around her, solidifying instantly. ~They're right in the middle... Cyclops. Cable. Cover us. Morgan, you're with me.~ Another command went up to her half of the flyers, a query to ensure no one would sneak up on them. Taking only those who could shield individually into the fray was the best move, and someone needed to cover Scott's back - and Nathan could work just as well from a distance as he could in close combat, after all.

Nathan had jerked forward instinctively, but arrested the movement at Alison's order, his jaw clenching as he stopped where he was. Scott, beside him, very coolly started to blast away at the security officers, one by one. "Power conservation," Scott told him calmly as Alison and Tim ran for where Nash and Konstantakis were surrounded. "You can shield and multitask from here without having to power up again."

"Right." It came out as a snarl, and Nathan channeled the anger, leveling his psimitar and taking down the targets Scott hadn't gotten to yet.

Nash smiled tightly as the other second-gens started to react. He lifted Irvine, a feral barely out of training, right off her feet and threw her at Stromboli before the electrokinetic could focus his powers. "Anytime, Pull," he grated over their private com-channel, and smiled again, a little more fiercely, as yellow-green energy crackled around him and Konstantakis, taking down everyone around them and yet leaving them standing.

"Timing is a beautiful, beautiful thing," Pulaski said, energy still dancing around her hands. She looked up, seeing Blaire and - a huge smile blazed across her features as she saw the joy on Tim's face. "Hey, big guy," she said, with a nod to Blaire. "Shall we go?" She wanted, very much all of a sudden, to get over there and see Nathan, too.

"Hell, yes," was the fervent reply - for all that they couldn't see the smile on Alison's face through the light shield, her voice spoke clearly as to her own joy at seeing them in this particular situation. Instructions from Haroun filtered down to her and she pointed in the direction he'd told her too, lasering through two walls before switching to solid light - a cut-off cry followed by a loud thump, along with a cackle of confirmation from above told her she'd aimed true.

"Fall back." It was more for form, really - though everyone headed straight back to where Nathan and Scott were, Alison murmuring into her comm as they moved. ~Scott? We should patch them into our own comm frequency. You have what you need with you to do the job?~

"Simple frequency switch," Scott was saying crisply perhaps thirty seconds later as the three Mistra operatives handed over their coms. If he'd eyed them a bit suspiciously upon arrival, a quick confirmation from Nathan as to the status of their conditioning had reassured him. He worked fast, trying to take advantage of the small lull in the fighting. It wouldn't last, he suspected. Wherever the directors were - in the command bunker, most likely - they'd adapt fast to realizing that some of the first-gens were changing sides.

"Dyson can fix everyone else's if you send him the frequency, Nathan," Nash said, then grinned at the steady look Nathan was giving him. "Ten," he said, answering the unspoken question. "All but Lense. Although they've got Jackie in the medical building - none of us have been able to get in to see her for two weeks."

Tim knelt down beside them, exoskeleton still on. "All but John, huh?" he asked a little raggedly. Pulaski opened her mouth to reply, but then hesitated, her eyes narrowing as she raised a hand and sent a shockwave in the direction of the rock face. Someone screamed and fell.

Scott handed the coms back. "This is the rest of your team from Canada," he said, looking at Tim, who nodded. Inwardly, Scott was reeling a little at the news. They'd hoped, but to have it pan out like this... "Can you have them hook up with some of our people? They know the complex better, and we--"

Nathan threw up a TK shield, seeing the fireball coming at them. "Fuck," he swore, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead as the flames licked at his shield. "Frequency, what's the frequency..." He sensed it at the top of Scott's mind and tuned out the verbal reiteration of it, reaching out telepathically to find Dyson's mind, hoping he could still recognize Ben's thoughts after all these years.

Alison stepped to the edge of the TK field and looked in the direction of the sniper sending fireballs their way. Her eyes narrowed and she pressed one hand lightly on the inside of the TK field surrounding them, the light flaring up around her once more even as the fireballs switched to a sustained blast of flames battering at them. There was a moment longer, fire still beating at the field before it shivered once, Nathan sensing the pressure and recognizing the feel of her power - and he let her walk through it, allowing nothing else within.

It wasn't as though the flames could blind her, or affect all that much once she was shielded up, though stepping directly into the heart of the firestorm was eerie, the wild roar of oxygen being consumed at a rapid pace feeding her more than enough to strengthen the light surrounding her even further, even though she had to hold her breath.

Lifting both arms, one hand supporting the other as though aiming a gun, Alison fired straight back upwards into the path of the fire descending upon them.

Nathan found himself doing three things at the same time, even as the source of the fire winked out. He kept the shield up, as the flames themselves hadn't quite died yet, even as he simultaneously reached out to slow the pyrokinetic's fall so he didn't break every bone in his body on impact. At the same time, he found Dyson's mind, and passed along the frequency change. #Small talk later, Ben, I promise... get those coms fixed!#

"All right," Nash said, taking his com back. Alison came back and joined them, and Nathan gave her a quick once-over, satisfied that her shield had held and she wasn't visibly singed around the edges. "How do we want to do this?"

"I have a few ideas," Tim and Scott said in unison, then gave each other identical wary looks.

~*~


Haroun touched down to a neat, if slightly wobbly, landing. In his arms he carried a young man, bleeding heavily from a scalp hit and a nasty burn on one arm. "Second degree burn vic, messy scalp hit." he said tiredly, mopping the blood from his leathers and from his goggles. "Where do you want him?"

"Over here, Haroun," Madelyn called from the surgery tent, beckoning him over. She was wearing a green medical smock over the military-esque t-shirt and black combat pants she'd been issued by the taskforce, it's front splattered with blood. As Haroun approached, the woman she'd been tending was carried over to the recovery area by two young men in fatigues.

Haroun dumped the guy, fairly roughly, onto a medical cot. "Merciful Allah, that crap gets everywhere," he said, removing his goggles and khaffiyeh to look for a place to wash up. "Got a sink?" he asked Madelyn. "I'm coated in blood."

"No sink, but there's medical wipes in the box over there - use those," she said absently, already examining her patient. The scalp wound was messy, as they always were, but not critical. "You're keeping us pretty busy - how's it looking out there?"

"Grim." Haroun said, moving over to the wipes to try to get clean. "It's a madhouse out there. Hard enough just keeping track of where everyone is. At least the skies are ours." he said, looking up at said sky as he cleaned off his hands. "Not seeing too many fatalities, but there's a lot of injured out there. Nightcrawler's popping in and out like a dervish."

"Some of the other medics were joking about air fresheners to deal with his smoke," Madelyn said, looking up from her work with a brief grin. She looked tired, but strangely comfortable, in her element. "Still, we're getting as many prisoners as wounded, so I'll take that as a good sign."

Haroun nodded. "Yeah. Don't envy whoever gets to interrogate those poor bastards." he said, finally getting his hands clean and now working on clearly the blood smears off of his goggles. "Hey, think Medical can spare a little Gatorade for the bus drivers?" he asked with a grin. "I'm running low on fluids."

"Most of them are operatives, so it's less interrogation and more deconditioning, but yeah, it's a hell of a job..." Madelyn finished with the burn and gestured for the orderly helping her to take the pad away from the scalp wound so she could start snipping away hair prior to stitching. "My supply bag's over there," she continued, pointing. "There's about eight bottles of Gatorade in there, just for you. I figured you'd need them."

Haroun grinned as he headed for the aforementioned duffle. "I may marry you yet, woman." he said with real delight as he pulled the first Gatorade bottle from the bag. He then didn't speak for a minute or so, as he was busy draining the entire bottle in a few long pulls.

"Promises, promises," she replied, wiping away excess blood and hair from the wound. "Ouch, nasty. Still, no skull fracture, so we're good." She injected a local into the man's scalp and waited for it to take effect. "Take me out to dinner sometime and we'll call it even."

"Bargained well and done." he said, fishing another bottle of Gatorade from the bag and tossing his empty into the trash. "Any preference as to food?" he asked before he started slamming down the next bottle.

"I keep hearing about this Moroccan place of yours - unless that's a personal thing?" Madelyn asked, looking up from where she was about to set the first stitch. The orderly was looking bemused by the conversation, and she gave him a quick, impish grin. "Just good friends, really," she teased, before turning back to her patient, her fingers quick and nimble with the sutures. "Otherwise I'm fairly easy to please."

"Sorry, the Moroccan place you're thinking of is off-limits." he said with an easy grin. "But I do know another I could take you to - not as good, of course, but a man has to have his standards." he laughed. "It's nothing personal, I assure you."

Madelyn nodded. "I understand," she replied easily, although there was a hint of wistfulness in her expression, quickly gone. "It's a couple thing. Well, then, the other place will do nicely. And I'll hold you to that."

"Hey, now is not the time to get all mopey on me." he said, nudging her with his shoulder. "You're a friend, and a good one. Even if you refuse to wear a veil and are a completely decadent American." he smirked. "Got too much to do."

"Mopey? Bah, who's mopey?" She stuck her tongue out at him. "Go and find me more people to patch up, oh great egotistical man, or I'll have to go out and fetch them myself, and Hank would make that growly protective face at me."

"Yes, I suppose he would." he said thoughtfully. "Anyway, I've recharged, and now I'm off to go rescue more vics." he said with a laugh. "See you soon!" he said as he rocketed into the air to seek out his next evacuee.

~*~


Cole raised a hand, signaling to McCoy and the government team with them to stop. "There," he murmured quietly to the X-Man as McCoy came up beside him carefully. He pointed to the long, gleaming white building nestled into the hillside. There was still a security team on duty out front, despite the fighting breaking out on the other side of the complex. "I was hoping they'd have been called away as reinforcements," he muttered.

"Hope is a fine thing." Hank nodded, eyeing the team thoughtfully. "Should we try to take them, or try to lure them away? They're probably too highly trained for the old 'leave a noisemaker around the corner so they wander around to see what it is' trick..."

Cole took a deep breath. "Let me try and fake them out," he said. "If I can get close enough for physical contact I can knock them out." He raised a hand, ghostly light flickering around his fingers, and gave McCoy a strained smile. "I do bad things to people's nervous systems."

Hank nodded. "Want me to come with you, or stay back? I have a tranq gun, although I'm not a very good shot. I'm really better at the hand to hand stuff."

"You see me get in trouble, feel free to jump in. Otherwise stay back until I signal you to come ahead." Cole peered back at the government team. "You all, too. Last thing we need is stray bullets going through the walls."

"Point taken," the head of the team, a tall, lean man who'd introduced himself to Hank as Curran said quietly. "Good luck."

"Good luck indeed. I've already used my miracle ration for this month." Hank gave Cole a rueful smile. "We'll be poised to intervene, should things go badly."

Cole nodded, then took a deep breath and ran out into the open, raising his hands immediately as the security team drew on him. "Put your damned guns down!" he snarled at them. They had no reason to believe he'd switched sides, he reminded himself. No reason at all.

"What are you doing over here, Cole?" one of the officers barked. "I thought you were all ordered out to repel the intruders..."

Cole strode right up to him. "Not all of us," he said, and grabbed the man's arm, switching on his powers. The officer screamed and convulsed, falling, and Cole flung him in the direction of two of the others, as a human shield, and launched himself at the three who were still looking utterly shocked to see a first-gen operative suddenly turn on them. You'd think that by now it wouldn't come as that much of a surprise...

Two more down in seconds, barely an instant of physical contact required for each. He took the third down hand-to-hand, grabbed his gun, and was turning and firing even before the other two recovered from having the unconscious body of their colleague thrown at them.

Five seconds and he was the only one left standing at the front of the medical building.

"Efficient," Hank noted dryly as he and the government-team joined Cole. As a doctor, seeing prone bodies set off all sorts of internal alarms and automatic responses. But there were other priorities right now. "What are we likely to be looking at, inside? More security?"

"Conditioning teams, possibly," Cole said, and if his face was more pale and set than it had been before he'd said that aloud, he assumed the X-Man would understand. "If they're in there, they'll know we're coming. How good are your mental defenses?" He directed the question to all of them.

Curran grimaced, glancing at his men. "Not bad, but not great. We've all had basic anti-psi training."

"I've been in training with a variety of psis for... just over fourteen years. Mine are very good," Hank nodded. "I'll go in first, if you prefer." He grinned at Curran. "And, if you run into trouble, a sharp blow to the head will disrupt the attack of even a very powerful psi. If they give you trouble, clobber them." If they could. But they were in a group, which would help... one person could be stopped from lashing out. A group of individual minds was far harder to control.

"Long hallway once we get in," Cole said, stepping aside to let McCoy lead the way. "Conditioning room is the sixth door down. If they've got any of the kids in there we need to move, or they'll have them out the back way before we can get there."

Hank nodded. "I'll head straight for the conditioning room," he said quietly. "My shields are very good, and I don't have any... history, with them. Curran, will you have a couple of your men stay outside, in case some of them get away, or I need backup? The rest of you should probably search the rest of the building, for more security, or victims." He was a doctor, not a tactician, damn it... but that plan should keep the more vulnerable folks away from the conditioning team, at least.

Cole wasn't going to mention that he was here as much to find Jackie as anything else. "Sounds like a plan. After you, McCoy."

~*~


One of the members of the government team dispatched to secure the armory had called for help over the coms, saying something about being 'literally pinned down' in a choked voice that suggested that he wasn't making a joke. They hadn't responded to any attempts to raise them since. Running through the possibilities in his mind, trying to figure out what they might have run into, Mick had come up with a rather unsettling hypothesis.

All but Lense, Tim had said. Which meant that John was still around here somewhere, cracked conditioning or no cracked conditioning, choosing to keep fighting for Mistra rather than switch sides like the others.

Mick liked to think that he didn't get angry very easily. That was one of the things that the instructors had always praised him for, his ability to keep a level head, which they claimed had balanced out Tim's innate irritability very nicely. But the thought of Lense willingly continuing to cooperate with Mistra left him more than a little... irked.

Spotting black-armored figures prone on the ground behind the armory, some of them - not all - still moving feebly, Mick signaled to the other two members of his team to hold back as he moved carefully around the building. Conway and Dobson both had touch-based mutations, and if this was indeed who he thought it was, he wanted to keep them back. They'd be easy prey, as much as the government team had been.

Mick stopped, leaning out just enough to get a quick look around the corner of the armory. Hell. There was Lense, right there, hovering a few feet off the ground, very obviously cranking up the gravity. Grinning down at the soldiers he had at his mercy. Son of a bitch.

~When I distract him,~ he subvocalized over his com to Conway and Dobson, ~get those soldiers out of there.~ With that, he took off at a run, firing up his sonics. Lense had time to look in his direction - just look, nothing more - before the blast hit him full in the chest, sending him spinning backwards and nearly to the ground.

"Foley!" he gasped out as he steadied himself, looking infuriated. His hand came out to gesture in Mick's direction, and Mick hit him again, ruthlessly, adding a healthy lash of ultrasonics to the hit this time. Lense lost his grip on the gravity fields this time and wound up a crumpled heap on the ground.

Mick kept running, knowing he couldn't let up. He was within range as soon as Lense was struggling back up from the ground, and lashed out with his fists this time, hammering the other operative back to the ground. "Son of a bitch," he snarled as Lense tried to crawl away, wheezing. He was peripherally aware of Conway and Dobson moving in to do just what he'd told them. "I ought to liquify your brain for you, John, if you're that determined not to use it..."

He paid for the moment's lapse, of course. Lense kicked out at him, enough to send him staggering backwards, and before he could recover the other man was floating up into the air again, and Mick found himself hitting the ground, several times heavier than he should be all of a sudden.

"Don't you preach at me, you fucking traitor," he heard Lense snarl at him shakily.

Traitor? Of all the fucking gall... Unlike John, he didn't need to be in line of sight, or make dramatic little hand gestures to use his power. Not really. Mick squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the crushing force pinning him to the ground, and cut loose with his sonics, letting them roll off him in waves. He felt, rather than heard the wall of the armory behind crumble inwards. Not important. What was important was that it reached Lense, and it did. The strangled cry, followed by a thud, was very satisfying.

Pushing himself back upright, gritting as his body loudly protested the sudden release of pressure, Mick staggered a little as he headed over to Lense, who was sprawled on the ground, bleeding from the ears. The stubborn bastard tried to get up as Mick approached, though, and Mick seriously considered just kicking him in the head. Lense waved a hand feebly at him, and Mick suddenly found himself - floating? Zero-gravity? He's trying to stop me with zero-gravity?

"Oh, give me a fucking break!" he snarled, losing patience, and blasted Lense again, the air rippling under the sonic assault and the ground beneath the other man spiderwebbing with cracks. It was enough force to slam Lense back into the ground like a rag doll, his head bouncing. The gravity abruptly cut back in, and Mick managed to land more or less on his feet. He'd only been a couple of feet up.

People behind him. The sound registered first, and he turned in time to see a pair of the government soldiers coming running around the corner of the building, stopping as they saw him standing there and Lense on the ground. Mick smiled faintly.

"Someone to evac," he said, glancing back down at Lense, who seemed quite satisfactorily unconscious at last. "Might want to sedate him, just in case. He'd be a handful if he woke up."

You get another chance, John, he thought, watching the two soldiers put him in restraints and administer the sedative. Try not to fuck it up this time. Satisfied that they had things under control, he turned away. ~Conway, Dobson, I'm going to hook up with Morgan. Catch up with us at the first cross-over if you can.~

~*~


The command bunker was heavily defended - though mostly by Mistra's security troops, rather than operatives, Scott realized as he, Sam, Konstantakis and one of the government teams fought their way through the hallways, heading down. "Taking too long," he muttered, firing off an optic blast at an impromptu 'roadblock' in the middle of the hallway - they were trying to hold them off with office furniture? Cute. It shattered under the impact of his blast and those taking cover behind it immediately made tracks to a spot just around the junction of two hallways and kept firing from there.

All of Sam's training with using his blast field while standing still was paying off, as the cramped corridors and myriad twists and turns would never let him get up to full flight speed without crashing through walls. It was a serious effort to maintain the blast field like that, though, and Sam slumped against a wall around a corner from the heaviest firing, breathing a bit heavily. "Ah agree, but Ah'm darned if Ah can think of another way to do this, Cyclops," he managed to get out.

Scott glanced back at Konstantakis. "Any ideas?" he asked the precog. Her expression went distant for a moment, but she shook her head almost immediately.

"I only see ten seconds ahead, remember," she said. "And all I see is us keeping going." She leaned out from cover, firing down the hall. "Don't let junior there get too far ahead of us, though," she suggested. "We don't know if they might have some operatives down here after all."

"Junior?" Sam bristled. "Ah'm not _that_ much younger than you or Cyclops, ma'am," he said, the 'ma'am' almost an afterthought. He understood that everyone was tense, but really, there was no call for rudeness or being insulting. Grimacing, he levered himself away from the wall and rolled his shoulders.

Konstantakis rolled her eyes. Ah, young male pride. "Come on," she said aloud instead, looking ahead ten seconds. "They're going to be reloading," she said sharply and darted down the hall, seeing the pause in fire coming and taking advantage of it.

Sam gave a very brief thought to seeing if Konstantakis' precognition extended to things other than tactical matters, but then decided he was safer just blowing a mental raspberry at her. Following her lead, he let his blast field flow around him (it was just a little bit easier when he was moving in some fashion), and darting ahead of the others, he made like his codename and balled up, crashing through the makeshift barrier the security troops had erected to impede the invaders' progress.

The Mistra troops scattered, trying to withdraw, but by then Scott, Konstantakis and the government team had reached them, and after a few more shots were traded, all of the hostiles were taken into custody. One of the government team was down, though, bleeding heavily from a bullet wound in the thigh, and Scott's jaw tightened as he calculated the loss in manpower. Two team members to take the prisoners back, another to stay with the injured man while they waited for a medevac...

The numbers weren't in their favor, in any of this. They had relied so heavily on the advantage of surprise, and it had paid off, but teams were beginning to get bogged down all over the complex. He only hoped it was a temporary state of affairs. Scott nodded at Wyden, the head of the government team. "Let's keep going," he suggested.

Konstantakis fell oddly quiet as they progressed more slowly down the hall, finding no more immediate resistance. Scott looked sideways at her, wondering at the tension in her expression. "What are you seeing?" he asked under his voice.

"I'm not... sure," she said, definite uncertainty in her reply as she tried to analyse what she'd picked up at the far limit of her ten-second limit. But even as she answered, the seconds ticked onwards, and it became a whole lot clearer. "BACK!" she screamed suddenly, turning so rapidly that she ran into Wyden. "Back to cover, NOW!"

And the hallway filled with water. It swept down towards them like a tidal wave in the close confines, knocking them all off their feet and rising to the ceiling with frightening speed.

Acting quickly, Sam reached out to grab a hold of Konstantakis and Scott. He could generally carry one person relatively easy while he was blasting, but he'd never tried two. Still, now wasn't the time to be timid or uncertain about trying new things. The flames of his blast field flashboiling the water around him, Sam struggled to keep the blast field active as he rose above the rising water. Squeezing along the ceiling, he made a beeline for a stairwell they had just come down. Luckily, it was all in a straight line, so there wasn't as much danger of crashing through walls.

The water, however, beat his attempt, and his blast field sputtered out in a hiss of steam, leaving the group several yards away from the stairwell, and now completely underwater.

Scott had managed to take a deep breath before they wound up under water completely, and so was at least semi-prepared when Sam's blast field sputtered out. The current slammed him hard against the wall and he grabbed at - something, an exposed pipe from the feel of it, managing to catch himself.

He saw Wyden and his remaining two men go past, carried on the current. Sam and Konstantakis were already behind him. Now or never, Scott thought and looked down, getting his free hand up to his visor and cutting loose with a focused, if full-power optic blast.

Instant drainpipe.

The water started to drain away, and Konstantakis took a gasping breath as she reached open air again. "Off-balance," she gasped at Sam, seeing ten seconds again. "Change in the water pressure, he's off-balance... go!"

When this was all over, Sam promised himself he was going to sleep for about a month. Already, the amount of work he had done with his blast field, and how hard he had pushed it, was exhausting. Still, if everyone was counting on him... Taking just enough time to gasp in a ragged breath, Sam took two quick steps and launched himself back down the hall with a subsonic rumble, easily picking the stumbling aquakinetic out of the group of security troops starting back up the hallway.

Sam's blast field-aided tackle took the mutant right in the midsection, and the man folded up with an explosive "oof" before falling backwards and slamming his head against the ground, knocking him out cold.

Scott was running as soon as his feet touched solid ground again. The water was evaporating. Odd. He let off another couple of blasts at the fleeing security troops, and four of them hit the ground unconscious. ~Konstantakis!~ he said sharply over the coms. Two left. Just two.

~Behind you, keep going - don't let them get that door shut!~

The door she was referring to was just ahead at the end of the hall, looking very much like the heavily armored door that sealed Cerebro off from the rest of the mansion. Scott fired again and both of the two remaining security officers went down. He didn't stop; he ran right for the door as it started to slide shut, still firing as he went in an effort to discourage any return fire that might come from inside the bunker.

There were four men inside. All well into middle age, at the very least. Directors, Scott thought, and blasted a gun out of the hand of one as he raised it, ignoring his yelp of pain. "Away from that console," he warned another, who was obviously the one trying to close the door.

After ensuring that the aquakinetic was out cold, and would remain so for a significant amount of time, Sam was only a matter of steps behind Scott, just in time to cut off one of the directors who was attempting to sidle around behind another console. "I wouldn't if I were you," he said in a hard voice.

Konstantakis brought up the rear, Wyden and his remaining two men straggling along behind her. Her eyes lit with unholy glee as she saw the four men in the room. "Surprise," she said cheerfully.

One of them gaped at her for a moment before his expression hardened. "The mission in Canada," he snapped, comprehension in his eyes. "You and the others... you've been compromised."

"You bet your ass, sir." Her gun was abruptly leveled at him. "Your ass which really ought to be sitting right down and behaving itself while we decide how to get you out of here." Konstantakis glanced at Scott. "You have a teleporter, don't you? We can't afford to lose these four."

Scott nodded. He started to subvocalize Kurt's code name, to tell him to make his way here to evac the prisoners, when Konstantakis, who'd looked back over her shoulder towards the door, suddenly went white and leapt at the console where the director had been trying to close it just moments ago.

"What?" Scott asked sharply. "What do you--"

There was a sudden roar from down the hall, and another wall of water came sweeping towards the door, which closed just in time to keep most of it out of the bunker. Konstantakis looked at Scott and Sam, her eyes wide. "He sat up!" she said in agitation. "Turnbull, the aquakinetic... I saw him get up."

"That's impossible!" Sam exclaimed. "Ah knocked him out, Ah made sure of it. He should have been out for at least a while." He looked at Scott and Konstantakis confusedly. "Ah don't understand..." he trailed off, shaking his head.

Scott looked around sharply, spotting a bank of screens on one side of the bunker. "Security cameras," he muttered, heading over there and turning them on, leaving it to Wyden and his men to restrain the directors.

What he saw was the beginnings of chaos. Black-armored Mistra operatives charging government teams, MacInnis' people, X-Men. A counterattack? But as he saw some of them go down under return fire and get right back up, from hits that should have been incapacitating, he started to realize that something else was going on here.

~All team leaders, we've got second-gens who're acting like they've been booted back to root programming here - where are the damned telepaths?~ One of Morgan's people, Scott thought, and sounding highly agitated.

"Root programming?" Konstantakis said, her composure cracked entirely now. She stared at the screens, ashen, and then whirled as something started to crash at the door.

"That's--that's impossible," one of the directors stammered out, able to see the screens from where one of Wyden's men was putting restraints on him. "We didn't order any trigger!"

"Well, someone had to," Sam responded, not entirely inclined to believe the director's stammering. "Ah mean, this isn't the sort of thing that would just happen. It had to have been triggered." He looked at Scott, Konstantakis, and the monitors. "Ah mean, there's safety protocols and such, right? So the question is, who did it?"

"One of the other directors, obviously," Konstantakis said, sounding angry now. "They're not all here." She stared hard at the door, then shuddered, looking around and then finally up at the ceiling. "How good is that blast field of yours?" she asked Sam. "Can it get you through fifty feet of earth and stone? Because I don't think we're going out the way we came in."

"Fifty feet?" Sam asked in a strangled tone. "No. Ah don't even think Ah could make it _ten_ feet. Ah'm a flyer, not a burrower." He could tell that Konstantakis was grasping at straws. And that meant that whatever she saw ten seconds out wasn't pretty. He swallowed somewhat heavily, trying to think outside the box and come up with a solution to the situation they were in.

~Cyclops to all X-Men,~ Scott said over the coms. ~Something's happened - the second-generation operatives have gone berserk. Some sort of trigger - they're turning on other Mistra personnel.~ He suspected grimly that almost everyone would know that already, but those who didn't needed a heads-up.

~*~

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned...
-'The Second Coming', Yeats