xp_logs | Thermopylae - We who are living are now dying (part 6)

Nathan feels the trigger go off, and realizes what it means for the children in the training barracks. As he tries to get there, Kylun persists in his attempts to come in the back way, even as he and Forrester find themselves facing serious opposition. Sam escapes from the bunker and into the open air, only to face a mid-air dogfight. Scott and Konstantakis try to follow, while Alison and Nash run into trouble coming out of the generator room and Wanda finds herself cornered.

~*~

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience
–'The Waste Land', Eliot

~*~

Patterns streamed through his mind. Elegant shapes in psi-energy, flowing down into the psimitar and emerging in the form he wanted. As if the weapon was an extension of his will, perfectly united to it. The sense of total control, of perfect balance as he fought his way through the halls at the head of a mixed team of government troops and MacInnis' people, would have been euphoric if he hadn't been so totally focused on their objective.

He was seeing on several different levels at once, without the slightest trace of discomfort. Bullets flew at him and were caught with ease, the friction of their passage through the air like streaks of red, easy enough to track. He tore guns out of the hands of the people shooting, warping them with a thought and leaving the security troops themselves for the government team to corral and send back to the evac area.

He had somewhere to be.

An operative was there suddenly. Nathan's memory supplied him with the name and mutation from the files. Leger, super-speed. But his path through the air was just as obvious as that of the bullets, and Nathan flung up a TK shield, even as he lashed out very carefully and neatly fractured both of the younger man's knees. A speedster who couldn't run was a speedster who'd be safely sedated and back to the evac area. Leger screamed, falling, and Nathan was past him and continuing down the halls towards the training barracks before the younger operative hit the ground.

~D, status?~ Tim's voice, of course, and Nathan couldn't help a tight smile at the use of the initial. That took him back a number of years.

~Approaching the barracks, M. You?~ He paused as a feral operative rushed him, snarling, from a cross-corridor. A telekinetic blast sent the woman tumbling head over heels back the way she'd come, and Nathan pushed his telepathy through the psimitar, amplifying the 'go-to-sleep' command. She went limp, and he ran onwards.

~Likewise. Running into some heavy resistance here, but we should meet you at the cross-over.~

We? Ani and Mick, too, Nathan suspected. He heard someone call out his name - aloud, not over the coms, and turned to see Bourne running up to him, Darkforce shimmering blackly around him.

"We lost our government friends," the younger man said a bit breathlessly. His arm, broken in Canada, was still in a cast; it had surprised Nathan to know he'd been cleared to come. Two more of MacInnis' people appeared momentarily, and Pulaski followed along behind them, energy crackling around her fingers. "Left them with too many prisoners to take back to the evac area."

"No worries," Nathan said. Better to have ex-operatives, or almost ex-operatives if you counted Pulaski, going up against operatives. The government teams were good, but they'd been taking casualties already. "Let's keep moving," he suggested, his eyes narrowing as he turned and headed down the hall again, sensing with ease the familiar minds ahead of them.

#Ambush around the corner,# he sent back to the others. #Mow through. Bourne, Pulaski and I will try and knock them out on the first pass. Chabot, Higgins, if any of them are still standing when we get past, take them down.# They'd leave them all safely unconscious for the clean-up crew and move on.

They hit the ambush like a runaway freight train. Nathan smashed through the low-level telekinetic's shield with ruthless ease, slamming the young woman into a wall hard enough to render her immediately unconscious. He spun, telekinesis flickering outwards from his psimitar and felling an energy-projector about to blast him. Beside him, Pulaski let her shockwaves flash outwards, jumping from operative to operative, and Bourne was over on the left hammering someone the size of Nash into the ground with tightly focused sledgehammers of Darkforce.

There was no one left standing for Chabot and Higgins. Chabot, a tiny, frail-looking redhead who could pick up and throw a tank with very little effort, gave Nathan a quick flicker of a smile, then fell in behind them, playing rearguard.

Nathan started down the hall again - and got perhaps ten steps before he reeled against the wall, almost going to his knees at the force of the telepathic shockwave that suddenly exploded on the local astral like a small supernova. It was almost enough to drive him to his knees, and it wasn't even targeting him. Just the brush of it, passing him by - it was immense, ice-cold and overwhelming. And utterly malignant.

Someone was calling his name. Pulaski, he thought, blinking as he focused on Ellen's face. She and Chabot were holding him up, Bourne and Higgins hovering worriedly behind them. "What is it?" she snapped. "Nathan!"

"Trigger," he breathed and straightened. "A trigger, I felt it go off..."

"Who?" Chabot asked, going white. "Directed at who?"

Movement, down the hall. Bourne whirled, throwing up a quick Darkforce shield in time to intercept a blast from the energy-projector Nathan had just knocked out moments ago. They were all shuffling to their feet, all the recently felled operatives. As if they hadn't just been put down for the count.

And there was nothing resembling conscious thought in their minds, nothing at all. Just imperatives, blazing in the dark, and Nathan swore as they started to attack Bourne's shield. He extended the psimitar and threw up a TK shield to reinforce it. But the operatives continued to charge the shields - the energy-projectors blasting, the telekinetic trying to break through it, and the others, the ones with physical mutations, were just trying to force their way through, hammer the shields down with their fists.

~...happened - the second-generation operatives have... berserk... trigger... turning on other Mistra personnel.~ Scott's voice cut in and out on the coms. Nathan swore again and rapidly tied off the shield, knotting the energy in the pattern Askani had shown him months ago.

~Cable to all team leaders,~ he tried desperately, not sure if his call would get through. But he had to try and let the others know what he could see burning in the operatives' empty minds. ~Don't know what that was but we're falling back to the training barracks. The kids are targets, does anyone read me?~ He was about to repeat the call telepathically when one of the energy-projectors at the shields cut loose and the air turned incandescent.

Both shields shattered, TK and Darkforce alike, and Nathan and the other four were flung off their feet by the backlash. Bourne fell on his broken arm and let out a cry, struggling futilely to get up, and Pulaski hauled him back to his feet with one hand, her teeth bared in effort as she reached out with the other and sent a full-power shockwave at the vacant-eyed operatives. It lashed across them, jumping from person to person, and they fell, toppling like dominos.

And got back up, moments later.

"Oh, fuck," Pulaski spat, taking a step back. "Nathan? Ideas?"

Only one. "To the barracks," Nathan grated as the blueprints spun through his mind. If whatever resistance Morgan's team was facing were second-gens, and they'd been triggered as well, they had clear access to the barracks through the cross-over corridor. It would only take a few operatives splitting off from whatever group was fighting Morgan to get back there, to the kids helpless in their cells... "Now!" he yelled, rage and urgency mingling as he extended his psimitar once more, one last blast sending the triggered operatives flying before he turned and followed the others.

~*~

Konstantakis glared at the door as another crash came from outside, as if there was something terribly offensive about it. Her eyes narrowed, and blood started to trickle from her nose. She wiped it away almost absently, and looked back at Scott and Sam. "It's coming down," she said. "Fifteen seconds from now. You," she said to Sam, "need to blast through and out through the hall, back up to the surface. As soon as the door comes down. Don't stop for us."

Sam blinked. Fifteen seconds? But her range was...he shook his head. She was obviously pushing, and that meant she was still seeing badness coming through the door in fifteen seconds. He opened his mouth to start to argue with her, but the look on her face stopped him cold. Instead, he simply turned toward the door, clenching and unclenching his fists as he crouched like a sprinter in the starting blocks, mentally counting off the seconds. Eleven...twelve...thirteen...

The door exploded inwards, bringing a fair amount of water with it. Konstantakis, anticipating it, leapt straight at the one operative she'd seen. "Go!" she shouted at Sam and wrenched the operative's arm downwards, so that his blast hit the water, evaporating it.

Scott tried to clear Sam a path, hitting two of the other operatives who'd just burst in with carefully measured optic blasts. But he missed a third, who came running at the directors, claws extended. Scott intercepted him, winding up on the floor, tangled up with the feral, who had apparently decided that going for his throat wasn't such a bad substitute.

Sam had a split second to stare helplessly at Konstantakis and Scott, but the barked command from Konstantakis spurred him into action, and his blast field sprang into existence. Two quick steps and he was aloft, roaring down the hallway.

The flight out of the bunker was the longest and most nerve-wracking minute and a half of Sam's life. Several times he came upon groups of berserk operatives turning on everyone within sight. Continuing to blast, he bowled through the groups, scattering them aside like bowling pins. The ninety-degree turns in some of the hallways were solved by starting high and swinging low, just like a NASCAR driver. He thanked the amount of work he'd been doing on his ability to turn in flight. A few times he almost reacted a split second too slowly, his blast field ripping out chunks of the wall.

But finally he burst through the blast door that the team had entered through and into the open air, quickly angling upward to gain altitude. ~Cannonball to Cyclops, Ah'm clear and airborne,~ he subvocalized, knowing that his comm had been designed to filter out the roar of his blast field, and eliminating the need to shout over it.

Scott heard Sam, but couldn't reply. The feral had lost interest in him, and was scrabbling to get away and get at the directors, shrugging off hits that should have put him down. What the hell had been done to them? Scott thought disjointedly, and let go, just for a moment. Enough to let the feral scramble back to his feet and start to lunge at the directors - and give Scott, still on the floor, enough room to blast him.

Konstantakis caught that out of the corner of her eye, and knew she couldn't let her opponent have the same kind of room. Wilson was grappling with her, his empty eyes locked on her face, and she gritted her teeth, trying to keep him from throttling her at the same time that she pushed her powers, trying to see as far ahead as she could. But her focus was going, and there was too much coming, too...

More coming through the door.

"Summers, watch out!" she choked out. "Wyden, don't..."

She didn't get the time to give Wyden and his men a proper warning. Another operative stepped into the room and spotted them, standing between him and the directors. Sebastian, whose powers meant that he could induce instant, fatal hypoxia. The three soldiers never stood a chance; they dropped almost immediately, hitting the ground with limp finality. Wilson's hands firmly wrapped around her throat, Konstantakis saw Summers fire from the floor again before Sebastian could turn his attention to the directors. The operative was thrown into a wall by the X-Man's optic blast, but was stirring feebly, almost immediately.

Scott staggered back to his feet and went for Wilson, feeling oddly like he was trying to beat a rabid dog off Konstantakis. Between the two of them, they finally knocked the man down, and Konstantakis staggered, wheezing. Scott reached out to catch her, then swore as he saw Sebastian trying to get back to his feet.

"We need to get out of here," Konstantakis gasped out, then suddenly shoved Scott aside, drawing her gun with uncanny speed and firing at the door. The bullet took the aquakinetic in the throat and Turnbull went down. Konstantakis swallowed painfully, hating herself. "Get them," she said hoarsely to Summers, jerking her head at the directors. "I'll check Wyden and his men." She made sure to kick Sebastian in the head, hard, as she went past. Wilson was already twitching purposefully.

"On your feet," Scott grated to the directors, his eyes flickering to Konstantakis as she rose from checking on Wyden and the other two, her expression grim. She shook her head at him, and he nodded briefly. "Let's go."

"We won't make it to the stairs," Konstantakis told him bleakly, then smiled very faintly as Scott's jaw clenched. "Just thought I'd let you know that."

~*~

Kylun lunged at Deakins as the operative got to his feet, both swords at full extension. Had they landed, one would have taken Deakins in the throat, the other through the heart.

But they did not land; instead, the swords passed through Deakins as though intangible. He hissed in surprise, then bowed his head; the implications were obvious. "Your will, Rinpoche," he murmured, and sheathed the blades; instead, his foot caught Deakins heavily in the chin, spinning the man back to the ground, and caught Duvall in the stomach and the back of his neck on the recoil.

"They are . . . their last vestige of choice has been taken away," he explained to the others. "They are prisoners of their conditioning." His eyes found Forrester. "Victims. Innocent of what their bodies are forced to do. I will not kill them."

"Root programming," Forrester muttered, caught between a certain sense of despair and bitter, bitter hatred for whatever fucking director had done this. He concentrated, pushing his density as far upwards as it could go. Duvall pushed himself back to his feet, blank eyes fixing on Forrester, and the older operative swore and moved to intercept him before he could get off the ground.

"We've got more company!" Breslin called sharply, and both Forrester and Kylun heard her ordering her team to get to cover as two more flyers came in from the west. One dove at Forrester and Duvall, while the other went high - aiming right at the emergency access.

Forrester, grappling with Duvall, swore as he realized something. "Kylun!" he yelled. "The kids - if this is some sort of scorched-earth programming, they'll go for the kids, too!"

Kylun snarled, an animal sound deep in his throat, and leaped for the rock, his first spring finding a handhold nearly ten feet up. "They will not get that far," he tossed over his shoulder even as he climbed, almost flying up the rock. "I swear it."

~*~

The chemokinetic roar of Sam's blast field had been a constant for the past several minutes. Minutes that had seemed like lifetimes circling over the utter chaos in the Mistra compound. He'd been trying to relay information on the ever-changing situation to Cyclops and the other team leaders where he could. A government team pinned down here, a building going up in flames over there...but the situation changed almost as fast as he could talk. The government team managing to pick off one of the second-gens pinning them down. The flames being extinguished by one of the first-gens with the government teams. Still, he continued to rattle off updates as to the tactical situation for anyone who was listening.

Every so often, he'd try to take a low pass over the chaotic battlefield. After the first few passes, he'd realized that it was taking lethal or near-lethal force to take down the second-gens. And that was something he was not prepared to do. So he started concentrating on the Mistra security troops, ignoring the bullets slagging off of his blast field and body-checking the troops into the ground and walls, hard enough to knock them out and keep them from getting back up.

Blue-white fire suddenly washed against his blast field, and a flyer passed him by at impressive speed, lashing out with another blast of plasma. Another dove at Sam, fast enough to create a sonic boom, and instead of hitting him square-on, shifted trajectory slightly, enough to strike his blast field a glancing, if crushing blow and send him spinning off-balance.

Now that was just rude. Grunting heavily, Sam managed to pull himself back on course, sweat rolling off his brow with the effort. A small government team scattered to the ground as Sam whistled by a bare foot off the ground. Pulling skyward again, Sam took a moment to update Cyclops over the comm, then went rocketing towards the flyer that had dove at him. Time to see if this person could take a bit of their own medicine.

The other flyer turned on a dime and came right back at him, full-speed. The other reappeared, as well, coming at him from another trajectory, tossing plasma fireballs as he came.

The plasma fireballs weren't really doing anything but being somewhat annoying, as the flash of their impact on his blast field made it a little difficult for Sam to see. But he allowed for that, as well as the other flyer's maneuverability. Sucking the man in as far as he could, Sam suddenly turned even further skyward, letting the downward thrust of his blasting wash over the man.

The energy-projector hit the ground, hard, and was slow to get back up. The other flyer dodged the backwash easily, though, and chased Sam upwards, gaining ground.

Sam let the other flyer gain ground, keeping an eye on him over his shoulder. Finally, when he judged the distance right, he pulled hard through a vertical Immelmann turn, using the pull of gravity to send him roaring even faster back at his pursuer. Sam's invulnerability was a serious tactical advantage, and he was using it for all that he was worth.

The other flyer didn't so much as hesitate. He flew right at Sam, his expression utterly blank, as if he was completely unaware of the fact that he was flying straight for a nasty collision.

The blank stare on the Mistra operative's face was uncanny. But Sam couldn't let that throw him. He knew from the way he'd knocked the aquakinetic down in the bunker that it would take a lot to keep the second-gen operatives down. "Come and get me," he murmured, flexing his hands in his leather gloves as he rocketed closer.

Impact. The operative spun away, clearly staggered by the sudden stop, but leveled out in the air and came back at Sam doggedly, fist pulling back to land a solid blow on the blast field.

The jarring impact staggered Sam as well for a moment, though he was expecting the strike and so was able to roll with it slightly. But the strain on his blast field was palpable, and sweat was oozing down his forehead and inside his uniform. He shook his head at the operative, wondering when the poor idiot was going to figure out about the invulnerability. Better not to let him have the time to realize and plan around it, though, and so Sam landed a heavy punch of his own to send the operative spinning away again.

The plasma-thrower slammed into him from the other side, like a bug trying to splat itself against a windshield. He fell again, but the other flyer was recovering already, coming back at Sam once more. His fists blurred as he slammed them into the blast field, as if he could pound his way through by sheer force alone.

It was pretty much a midair Mexican standoff. Sam couldn't seem to keep either flyer out of the dogfight for very long, and neither one of the operatives could do much of anything to Sam while his blast field was up. Making a corkscrewing dive towards the ground, Sam scanned the compound, looking for some way to break the stalemate. Weaving around blasts from the energy projector, Sam headed towards where two government teams were holing up, hoping to draw one or both of the Mistra operatives into a crossfire.

The plasma-thrower went high, while the other one followed Sam, shrugging off the bullets as if they were insect bites as the government team opened fire on him. He seemed utterly focused on Sam - until he spotted a group of fleeing Mistra support personnel, wearing simple fatigues instead of the body armor of the operatives or the security troops. Turning, he dove towards them instead, focusing on the priority targets.

Sam breathed a momentary sigh of relief when the operative peeled off, which turned into an uncharacteristic curse when he realized what had caught the other man's attention. Pushing even harder, Sam poured on the speed to move above the operative, slamming down abruptly to knock the man towards the ground and away from the support personnel. See how you like it, Sam thought to himself, trying to ignore the way his undershirt was drenched with sweat and how his breath was coming in short gasps from the effort.

The operative caught himself before he hit the ground and came right back at Sam with everything he had, as if Sam had gotten his attention back. He headed straight for Sam's blast field with all the unnatural persistence of a bird flying straight at a window and not understanding that it wasn't open air. Above, the shadow of the plasma-thrower passed over them both, but the other operative didn't dive for Sam, instead turning his attention to the fleeing group of Mistra personnel. They vanished in an inferno of plasma fire, not even given a moment to scream.

Tears burned in Sam's eyes at the senseless loss of life. It was hard to understand how such horrible things could happen. Not that any Mistra personnel was probably innocent, but it just didn't make any sense. Pulling hard away from the operative slamming into his blast field again, Sam panted, his vision graying at the edges. Gritting his teeth, he pulled harder into the turn.

Suddenly, without any warning, Sam's blast field sputtered out as the grey at the edges of his vision became a bottomless black pit that he fell into. He had just barely enough time to whimsically remember a line from the movie Top Gun: "The Defense Department regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid." His last thought before blacking out was of his family: how this might affect his mother and siblings, and whether he'd finally see his father again.

He was already unconscious when he hit the ground, his body tumbling bonelessly several times before coming to a halt, his arm twisted unnaturally beneath him.

~*~

~Team leaders, we've got an X-Man down over on the west side of the complex.~ It was Elliot breaking into the frantic chatter on the communications net, sounding neither as nervous nor as young as he usually did.

Scott pushed one of his two surviving prisoners down flat, ignoring the yelp from the Mistra director as plasma fire blazed through the spot where they'd been a moment before. He raised his head, blasting at the operative chasing them, who went flying backwards, hitting the floor hard. From what he'd seen so far, Scott fully expected him to get back up again momentarily.

~Who?~ he snapped out over the coms, his voice shaking. He'd left two of the directors and Konstantakis at the bottom of the stairs, dead. The only reason he'd made it out with the other two was that she'd deliberately put herself in the line of fire, shielding him for long enough to get up the stairs. His leathers were covered in her blood, and the memory of that last calm, knowing look she'd given him before she'd turned back to face the operatives rushing them from behind was going to haunt him forever. ~Who's down?~

~One of the flyers... Cannonball. Fell right out of the sky.~ Scott's heart sank.

~We're tied up here,~ came the taskforce's agent in charge of medevac, a military doctor called Marshall. ~Can your man get him, Cyclops?~ There was no answer from Hank. The coms were definitely having trouble coping with all the energy being tossed around.

More plasma fire came at them, and Scott cursed, shielding the man with his own body - and not quite sure why the hell he was doing this, for someone who probably shared responsibility for what was happening. Sam, damn it... ~Elliot, can you get to him?~

~Negative. Too far away.~

~I'm on it,~ came an unexpected voice, one belonging to a certain redheaded doctor who was supposed to be safe and sound in the evacuation area. ~I can see him now. ETA in about thirty seconds.~

Scott opened his mouth to say something to Madelyn - possibly 'What the hell do you think you're doing?', or something along those lines - but yet another wave of plasma fire came at him. He ducked, then popped back up again, blasting at the energy-projector.

No optimum, in a situation like this. They all did what they had to do, when they had to do it, and hoped for the best.

~*~

The pace of the fighting outside was picking up, audible even through the walls - more gunfire, explosions, muffled screaming. Nash swallowed, his throat feeling as dry as sandpaper as Alison blew up the last of the generators. "I don't know what's going on," he said tightly. "There shouldn't be anything in the conditioning to make them do that..." Second-gens, Summers had said. "I don't feel anything different..."

"First gen conditioning isn't the same as second gen," Alison said shortly. There was still power going, which meant one of the generators she'd hit hadn't gone out completely. "Fail safe." She hated how the thought made sense. "Someone put in a fail safe in them, so they couldn't break through the conditioning like you and the others did." Rage glimmered, emotion powering her as well as sound and with a sudden shriek of dying metal, the generator that had been sneakily thrumming along was put out. Hard.

"We need to get moving. Switch to comms." Out. It was, suddenly, so very imperative that they get out now that their work was done. ~Move. Move!~

~Turning on other personnel doesn't sound like a fail-safe,~ Nash replied bleakly, leading the way out. It struck him, all of a sudden, and he gasped aloud, picking up the pace. ~The kids, fucking hell...~

There were screams, suddenly, from down the hall and around the corner. Nash thundered towards the sounds, horrified to see Morris blasting away at one of the government soldiers, two more lying horribly burned and still at her feet. "Morris!" he shouted, lunging at her. As the third soldier fell, she turned towards him, her eyes utterly, utterly vacant, and let off a full-power blast right at him.

It staggered him, briefly, but he recovered and crossed the rest of the distance between them, dropping her with one punch that sent her flying backwards and shattered her jaw. She hit the floor several feet away, and Nash lowered his fist, breathing hard and trying to ignore the smell of his burned body armor. That had stung.

And even as he thought that, Morris sat back up and fired again.

Alison, who had been following him, saw the motion and flung herself to the side, firing off a blast in a desperate attempt to divert Morris' own somehow. Light and energy swirled and Alison, unaffected by the resulting brilliant flare, stared right into the heart of it - just in time to see Nash take the impact of a blast beyond anything she'd thought Morris capable of generating compared to what the woman had done before.

It hurt. Hurt, like nothing had hurt since his mutation had developed, since he'd become dense enough to repel nearly anything. Nash found himself lying flat on the floor, struggling to draw breath into lungs that didn't seem to want to work. He couldn't see. Why couldn't he see? He twitched feebly, remembering what was happening. Had to get up. Something was...

Light flared again, a muffled thump resounding in the distance, and then suddenly there was more heat at his chest, thin lines searing up and down quickly - and release of pressure.

"Nash? Talk to me! Come one!" Peeling off the body armor he was wearing, her gloves protecting her from the heat, Alison looked at his face intently - shouts resonated down the hallway and she looked up, eyes narrowing. Three government agents spilled into the room, nearly earning themselves a light blast to the head. And one of them, Alison noted, had a medic's arm band.

"It's insane out there!" Wild-eyed, one of them leaned on the wall, glancing out into the hallway and keeping watch, while the other two moved in.

"Nash, it's okay. Help is here. Don't. Move. Stay down." Alison heard a sound behind her, and lashed back with more light, a body again hitting the wall. The same hand then reached out towards the medic "The tranquilizers. You take care of him, he's on our side. I'll put her under."

The medic bent over him, swearing, as Alison went over to sedate Morris. "This is bad," the medic called out, her hands moving swiftly over Nash's prone body, pulling supplies from her kit. "We need to evac him, now. He's going into shock."

~*~

~Cyclops to Scarlet Witch.~ Scott sounded strained, rushed, and there was so much background noise across the coms, explosions and screaming and gunfire and so many other voices yelling orders, echoing the noise around Wanda right now, that she could hardly pick out his voice. ~You've got help coming... Dyson, one of the first-gens. He's trying to reroute the security systems to help you get them out of the building.~

Beside her, Land opened fire at one of the second-gens. The woman, an energy-projector of some kind, went down - and then got right back up, silently, stepping back into the cover of a doorway and letting go with another blast of greenish-blue energy, right at them.

~Copy that, Cyclops,~ Wanda sent back as she barely managed to duck the bolt. Land, also, was rolling to his feet. ~God knows we need it. Scarlet Witch out.~ In response to the attack, she flicked a few strings, sweat pouring down her face. The light fixtures suddenly crashed down next to the woman, just inside the door, forcing her to rejoin the other four as they headed left.

Tired, aching, and with her head pounding, all she wanted to do was get this over with. They were in charge of herding these second gens out of the building and it was proving harder than it should have been. Whatever had hit them to make them go nuts was proving to be a rather hard adversary.

Land leaned heavily against the wall for a moment, breathing hard. He'd accompanied her when the order had come to send the rest of his team to secure one of the captured Mistra directors. "Jesus Christ, this is insane," he muttered feebly, then pushed himself back upright again. The second-gens were trying to get at the mainframe in this wing, apparently, but one of the taskforce's tech teams was still trying to strip the databases. So they had to be given more time. Land reloaded, then swore as all five of the operatives emerged from cover and rushed them again, the energy-projector firing steadily.

This was not working, Wanda thought desperately. They would just not _stay_ down. How many of them had been shot or were bleeding from wounds caused by flying debris? How many of them kept getting back up? Pressing herself against the wall, she held out a hand, frantically trying to stop the oncoming rush. One tripped over the energy-projector, sending them both tumbling to the ground in a heap--only to get run over the those in the back.

The energy-projector fired from the floor, and Land went down, the front of his armor smoking. She and the other second-gens were already getting back up, their eyes absolutely vacant. One, with claws and pointed teeth, an obvious feral mutation, charged ahead of the others - and hit a forcefield that hadn't been there a moment ago. It hissed and flashed, throwing him back to the floor.

Land groaned, pushing himself up to a sitting position. "What the hell... where'd that come from?"

"Up here." Above them was a skylight neither had noticed, and up there was a tall, dark-haired man in black body armor, currently fiddling with some sort of projector that was clearly the source of the forcefield. He locked it onto the edge of the skylight and then dropped down to the floor. "Dyson," he said, his eyes widening as he saw the five second-gens get back to their feet, staring straight at him with their empty eyes. "And... I probably should have stayed on the roof." His hands were already busy, though, pulling various bits and pieces of metal and circuitry off his belt, assembling something rapidly.

One of the second-gens, physically enhanced by the size of him, started to pound on the forcefield with his fists, ignoring the burns it produced.

"Probably," Wanda agreed, grateful for the breather, however slight it might be. She winced as another bolt of energy slammed against the forcefield and wondered how much abuse could it stand to take. "Land! How much further do we have to go?"

"With us getting mixed around, I'm not certain of the distance. Time wise, at this rate, it'll take us another half an hour."

"Then lets see if we can even the odds."

The sight Wanda was seeing was different than what anyone else saw. Lines criss-crossed in front of her in varying shades of red. Most of them were the darker shades, the ones that didn't bode well for the person they were attached to. And unfortunately, those were the ones she needed.

The energy-projecter fired again but though she was still getting up, she _had_ been hit numerous times. And she didn't concentrate well enough this time and hadn't paid attention to the fact that one of her 'teammates' suddenly stepped in front of her, the blast hitting him fully in his back.

Dyson nodded to himself, his hands still moving, assembling the next device, even as his eyes flickered up to check the projector. It was so very jury-rigged. Wasn't going to hold for very long, especially if Samuelson kept hitting the forcefield with her blasts. "I'm a primary target," he said, attaching the new device to his arm. "Moreso than the databases. I can draw at least a couple of them off." He glanced at Wanda. "Maximoff, right? This- " He tapped the device. " - will let me walk through the forcefield. I'll make a break for the exit." He drew his guns as Land dragged himself back to his feet, swaying.
"Hopefully they'll all follow me. Two should, at least."

Wanda really did not like this plan, no matter how well trained Dyson happened to be. But at this particular junction there really was no alternative. Nodding once, the hex rings around her hands grew brighter as she focused harder. "Ready when you are."

Dyson took a deep breath, gave her a quick flash of a smile - and then ran. He was through the forcefield in a flash, firing as he went. Samuelson took a plasma charge to the chest and went down again, and Dyson feinted, to throw Vargas off - if the big guy got his hands on him, he was in trouble. Becker gestured at him, and Dyson gasped as a telekinetic sledgehammer hit him, sending him reeling into the wall. He managed to get his guns up and fire again, and Becker was no Tim, or Nathan, not nearly enough of a telekinetic to be able to deflect energy blasts. Becker went down, but Vargas was charging again, alarmingly fast, and Dyson, before he could do a damned thing, was picked up by the front of his body armor and flung down the hall like a rag doll.

Cursing in other languages, Wanda lashed out with a hex bolt, hitting the ceiling right above the one that was still going after Dyson. Yes, the plan had been to get them on him but not like this. Metal rusted and suddenly part of the roof caved in, covering a few of them.

"We've got to figure out how to get them out of here or we're dead!" she yelled over the noise, reaching over to make sure Land didn't fall from that blast he had taken. "Any ide--oh shit."

The rubble suddenly moved and Wanda realized that that big guy had to have a healing factor, right as he started coming for them.

Land opened fire at him, but Vargas shrugged off the bullets and lashed out with a casual-seeming backhand. It slammed Land into the wall, and when he went down this time, he didn't get back up.

Down the hall, Dyson staggered to his feet, but they were on him again almost immediately. Abbas charged him, claws slashing right through Dyson's body armor, and Chang just tackled him, apparently too far gone in the trigger to focus his powers.

Wanda had actually been knocked aside and landed in a sprawl amongst the rubble. Tucking, she rolled back up into a crouch and bit her lip at the scene in front of her. The chaos energy tickled the back of her mind, and she wanted so badly to just let go but there was a job to do.

And it seemed she was the only person left standing.And it seemed she was the only person left standing.