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xp_logs2005-03-19 01:20 pm
x-cable.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2005-03-19 01:20 pm
Thermopylae - Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight (part 7)
As they rescue Sam, Madelyn and Kurt run into trouble. MacInnis listens helplessly as his rescued operatives fight for their lives, while Morgan and Nathan's teams manage to hook up at the training barracks. But they're badly outnumbered. And the Trojan Horse isn't working.
The triage tent was seeing more business than anyone had expected. Wounded of all varieties - Mistra personnel, some of the government troops, MacInnis' people - were being seen to by harried-looking doctors and medics.
Hank lurched in, Cole still mercifully unconscious, since being carried face down over a shoulder with burns all over your torso would hurt like all hell. He found an empty bed, and put him down in it, wincing. Right. First things first... he needed a proper gauze pad - make that two... and more bandage, for his leg. Then he could get started on the wounded. He saw a table with a nice collection of bandages and headed for it.
"McCoy!" One of the medics, a young woman who'd introduced herself as Fitzpatrick back at the staging area, came rushing over. "Do you need help?" she asked, staring down at his leg before she looked at Cole.
"He has a lot of burns, and is in shock." He waved her towards Cole. "The leg isn't too bad." Nothing too major had been severed, he could tell by the trained observation of a surgeon that told him he could still move his toes and hadn't yet bled to death. So as soon as he rewrapped it, he could try to ignore it for now. Fortunately, the adrenaline still flooding his system was helping him to distance himself from the pain....
"Who is he?" Fitzpatrick asked more professionally, moving to Cole's side. "Not one of ours... Mistra? Do we need to worry about him lashing out with his powers if he comes to?"
"He's an ally." Hank peeled off the old bandage, wincing. Ow. Oozing. Ow. "He and I went in together." He was going to lose big patches of fur again, damn it. Right on his leg, where it showed.
Fitzpatrick started to tend to Cole, her movements hurried but still smooth. Behind her, two of the taskforce soldiers came in, carrying a third, who was dead weight, bleeding from half a dozen obvious wounds. She winced. "Abbott!" she called back over her shoulder, gesturing for one of her colleagues to meet the newcomers.
Hank rewrapped his leg, wincing, careful not to make it too tight this time. There. If he stayed off it, didn't put any further strain on the wound, that should hold it for a while. "Right." He looked around. "Where should I start?"
"If you can move around all right, right to the reds," Fitzpatrick said. "We're short one doctor - Bartlet went out to get an injured X-Man."
Hank... blinked. "She did WHAT?" he asked, worry and exasperation warring for dominance. That... that headstrong, determined, woman! "Is she all right? Where did she go? Has someone gone to retrieve her?"
"Wagner's going to bring them both back," Fitzpatrick said almost absently, checking Cole's vitals.
Oh, great. Hank suspected that he and Kurt were rivals in the matter of the lovely Madelyn.... and if someone had already gone after her, then he, Hank, had no excuse to do so. Especially not with all these wounded. "Right. I'll wash up and get started."
~*~
"There!" Madelyn said, pointing to the fallen figure in black X-Men leathers not far from one of the rough concrete buildings that dotted the island. Hefting her medical bag more securely over her shoulder, ear piece filled with the babble of conflict, she made her way across the rocky ground, glancing around her for hostiles. "He looks bad. Hurry, Kurt."
Kurt winced at the sight of Sam's prone form and, for speed's sake, teleported both himself and Madelyn to his team-mate's side, then stepped back as she began a quick examination.
Sam had hit the ground hard, from a reasonable height. Madelyn checked his pulse and his breathing - both steady, although his breathing was laboured from what was obviously at least one broken rib - and fished out the neck brace from her bag. "Come around here and hold his head steady," she instructed Kurt, glancing up at him. "If he's got a spinal injury I can't move his neck too much putting this on."
Kurt moved quickly to obey, crouching by Sam's head to hold it in place. "How is he?"
"I think 'broken' covers it," Madelyn said a touch grimly as she fitted the neck brace into place and secured it. Concussion was just about guaranteed, but luckily there didn't seem to be any overt head wounds to be felt as she quickly ran her hands over his head. "We need to get him back as quickly as possible - can you 'port him without moving him? He's got at least one broken rib, plus the arm, and jolting him could give him a punctured lung, if we're lucky."
He nodded tensely. "I think I can manage that, yes. I will come back for you as soon as he is in safe hands. Will you be safe here during that time? I could try to take you both at once, but it will be easier and safer for Sam if I can concentrate on not jolting him..."
"I'll take cover in the building there - trust me, I'd rather not attract any attention right now." There wasn't a huge amount she could do for Sam that she hadn't done already. "Yell for Kwan when you get there - he's the best trauma doctor I've seen in a good while."
"Kwan", he repeated with another nod, trying to get a grip on Sam that would allow for as little jolting as possible, without doing any further damage.
"See you in a minute," Madelyn said with a brief grin, collecting her medkit and standing back to give Kurt room. She patted the tranq gun hanging on her belt. "Don't worry about me. Just get Sam back as carefully as you can."
He nodded once more, finally getting Sam securely in his arms, and the next moment they were gone.
~*~
This wasn't happening.
In all the long years of planning for this day, even with all the new random factors that had entered the picture, MacInnis had never foreseen this. Never dreamed of a worst-case scenario quite this bad.
A trigger he'd never known about. Had to be. Ruiz, you bitch, if this is your doing I'll kill you with my bare hands... He barked out another order on the com channel his people were using, demanding a status report. If the second-gens were targetting all Mistra personnel, they'd target his teams, too.
~Bender here, regroup on me!~ he heard Anika snarl.
~...pinned down, can't...~
~REGROUP!~ That was Timothy roaring, sounding enraged.
~...fuck's sake, won't stay down! Conway's dead!~
~Foley here, we're coming!~
It was on the tip of his tongue to pull them out. But even if he had, even if that wouldn't have left the X-Men and Catano's people exposed, he knew better. The order would have been refused.
MacInnis knew his people. Knew there was no backing down, not today.
It took a sheer act of will to keep the despair out of his expression.
~*~
His patient safely deposited with the medics, Kurt returned to fetch Madelyn. The instant after arriving inside the barracks, he realised this would not be as simple as he'd hoped, as he saw Madelyn sail past him into the wall, thrown there by a Mistra operative...
It had happened so fast... One minute she'd been crouched as unobtrusively as possible, the next someone had grabbed her. There was no time to go limp, or to try and twist herself so she landed squarely - Madelyn caught the impact with the wall mostly on her right shoulder. There was a muffled crunch, and the pain was white-hot and enormous, so huge for a moment she thought she was going to black out, hoped she'd black out. Then she slid down the wall to crumple on the floor below. It was all she could do to remember how to breathe.
Kurt glanced at her, assessing her condition as quickly as he could, but there was no time to do more than note that she was still conscious. Not until the operative had been dealt with, at least. He teleported directly between them, poised and ready for a fight.
Radonic snorted as the small - to him, any way - blue man in the black leather armour appeared in front of him, and cracked his knuckles. "Amateurs," was all he said, before swinging a punch smoothly and without warning at Kurt's head. Like most powerhouse types, he was an enormous slab of a man, all of it muscle layered over dense bone, and the fist that swung at Kurt was easily the size of his head.
Big fists were easier to dodge, especially for a teleporter. Kurt was out of the way in an instant, though still not leaving an unobstructed path between Radonic and Madelyn. He had a suspicion that this man depended more on his size than any skill in a fight, which meant Kurt might still have a chance of beating him...
The big man grunted in annoyance as his target vanished in a cloud of noisome smoke, and whirled, faster than his size would have allowed, arm extending in a backfist strike as he did, aimed at the teleporter who had appeared on his blind side. Trying to lead him away from the woman, who still hadn't gotten up yet. His orders were clear - repel any and all intruders, as quickly as possible - and he didn't have time for messing around. Even if there was something nagging at him, tugging at his mind... what the hell was that, anyway? He resisted it stubbornly, focusing on the teleporter.
The smoke. Kurt almost smiled as it occurred to him that there was another aspect of his mutation he could use to his advantage. Glancing apologetically at Madelyn, he began a rapid series of small jumps, each one taking place before the smoke of the last had begun to dissipate, and each in Radonic's immediate vicinity.
So now he couldn't see... Radonic grinned briefly to himself as he felt a kick glance off his side. On anyone else it might have been winding, but the powerhouse barely felt it. And he didn't need to be able to see to hit his target. Or use his fists, for that matter - driving upwards with both fists, he punched into the concrete of the ceiling, bringing it down in chunks around him. Let's see the teleporter dodge all that.
...but why did he kept wanting to break off, head off for another target? What target? Radonic was getting confused, and the tugging was getting more and more insistent.
Kurt suddenly realized the drawback of that strategy - he couldn't see through the smoke either. Hearing the crunch of Radonic's fists on the concrete, he did the only thing possible: bamfed to the side of the room where, hopefully, the smoke would be less dense, to wait for it to clear.
The shower of concrete drove through Madelyn's pain-haze - instinctively she curled into a ball, cradling her head with her left arm. The right hung uselessly by her side, the shoulder joint alarmingly distorted. Kurt... was in trouble. That fact also made it through as smaller chunks of concrete glanced off her arm, making her glad of the thick leather of the jacket she was wearing. As the torrent of rubble eased, she began awkwardly reaching into her jacket for her gun, the holster on her left side.
She wasn't the only one making a move - Radonic had listened for the tell-tale sound of the teleport, and followed the sound of displaced air. As the smoke began to clear, he spotted the gleam of yellow eyes, and lunged faster than it seemed he could, grabbing at the front of Kurt's uniform.
Kurt dodged back as best he could, eyes darting over to where Madelyn lay to check on her. Seeing her hand moving to her gun, he nodded once, very quickly, and set about distracting Radonic from what she was doing. Which meant leading him on a chase around the room - although not near Madelyn - always keeping one step ahead of him.
"Stay still and fight, you little bastard!" Radonic finally snapped after several passes around the room, frustrated by the time this was taking. He had to get rid of this invader, his imperatives demanded it. Other places to be. Other... targets. His thoughts kept trying to cloud over, and he was finding it increasingly hard to resist. Stooping, he snatched up several chunks of concrete from the smashed roof, hurling them one after another at the fleeing X-man. Maybe if he could wear him down with the teleporting...
Setting her teeth as she inadvertently jostled the injured arm, Madelyn managed to inch the gun out of the holster. She had no idea if it would even work on this bastard - he had seemed pretty invulnerable to the ceiling coming down on him. But maybe if she could distract him enough for Kurt to get an in...
Kurt avoided the concrete, as much with his natural agility as by teleporting, and managed another glance at Madelyn to see how she was doing. Relieved to see that she'd drawn her gun, he 'ported forward again, and again... but was all too aware that he was tiring.
A chunk of concrete only narrowly missed, and Radonic grinned. The blue fucker was finally wearing out. He managed to grab Kurt by the back of his uniform as he tried to dodge past, drawing the Mistra operative away from Madelyn, and tried to smash him bodily against the wall.
She couldn't stop her left hand from shaking, dammit. Madelyn knew it was shock setting in, but she didn't have time for this, and she couldn't risk hitting Kurt. Then she saw him grabbed, and knew he was running out of energy. "Get clear, Kurt!" she yelled, drawing a bead on the back of Radonic's knee, where there was a gap in the body armour and where she hoped the man's defences were weakest.
Kurt yanked himself free with an effort, turning at bay, and without warning, punched Radonic in the stomach with everything he had, putting all his weight - which, admittedly, was not much compared to Radonic - behind it. Shoot now, Madelyn, he tried to communicate to her, silently so as not to alert the man to what was going on.
Okay, so not exactly clear, but shielded by the powerhouse would do. As Radonic stumbled back slightly, taken by surprise by Kurt's sudden reversal, she fired, once, twice, three times... The first shot glanced off the back of his thigh, deflected by the armour and his strength, the second pinged off the wall behind, but the third struck home, shredding the thinner, more flexible leather of the armour there, and the soft flesh beneath.
Radonic cried out, dropping Kurt and stumbling forward as his knee gave way beneath him, the tendons destroyed by Madelyn's bullet. But he wasn't out yet - his hand fell on another chunk of concrete the size of a basketball, and he hefted it easily in one enormous hand, hurling it squarely at Madelyn. She ducked flat to the floor, nearly passing out as she jolted the dislocated shoulder and the concrete shattered against the wall over her head, showering her with smaller pieces.
Kurt took the opening as Radonic fell, following up that first punch with a few more, all of them well-placed with the intention of making Radonic stay down until he and Madelyn could get out. He could do nothing about the concrete until that was achieved, though his instinct was to help Madelyn first.
The punches weren't much, but the pain in his knee was throwing off his thinking, stopping him from focusing - it had been a very long time since he'd felt that degree of pain. This wasn't working the way it was supposed to. Confused, he thumbed his throat mike, tapping the 'back up required" signal just before Kurt kicked him in the face, knocking him backwards.
Kurt watched him carefully for a long moment, ready to kick him again at the first sign that he wasn't going to do the sensible thing and stay down until they'd gone. Not knowing exactly what the man's orders were made it very difficult to predict what he was going to do.
Radonic wanted to stay down, but orders were... He never completed the thought as at last, the 'Masada' trigger took advantage of his daze and finally penetrated his natural defenses, ripping through his mind, shredding rational thought and filling what was left with only one imperative - kill. Silently, he surged upwards, only the fact his destroyed knee wouldn't hold his weight stopping him from regaining his feet.
Kurt couldn't help wincing slightly as he saw the man try to get up and fall back. Just in case, he grabbed the nearest chunk of concrete, waiting to see what Radonic would do now he couldn't walk. If he could still think, that should give him pause...
Unfortunately, there was no thought, only the compulsion to kill, to destroy. The few minutes of unconscious resistance to the trigger were lost, not even a memory. He lunged at Kurt, who teleported to behind him. Unfortunately the change in position exposed Madelyn, slowly gathering her wits and rather muzzily trying to sit up, a shower of cement dust and fragments sliding off her. The dust made her cough, and the sound drew Radonic's attention. There was a length of metal pipe, part of the plumbing that had been ripped from the ceiling earlier. His hand closed over it, his attention purely on Madelyn.
And that left Kurt with no choice. Hefting the concrete in his hand, he teleported to a spot directly behind Radonic and brought it down hard on the bigger man's head before he could throw his pipe. He could only pray he hadn't killed the man if there was any chance his conditioning could be broken.
The pipe fell from Radonic's hand with a clatter, but incredibly he didn't go down, pulling himself back up still with that eerie silence. His face, when he turned on Kurt, hands hooking into claws to tear him apart, was frighteningly blank, eyes completely devoid of any emotion at all.
Kurt shook his head, understanding that this man was beyond reasoning now. "I am sorry," he said simply before teleporting behind Radonic and hitting him with the concrete again, aiming for the same spot. It was the only help he could give.
Radonic fell forward on his hands and one knee, and incredibly tried to rise again.
Madelyn watched horrified as Kurt's opponent continued to try and get up, and then movement caught her eye. Back-up, she realised, as she watched a woman... no, a girl, not much older than Jubilee come forward, with that same blank face, intent only on reaching Kurt. Gun, had to find... Her fingers closed over the grip of the Glock, and laboriously she pulled herself upright.
Kurt hadn't noticed either the second operative behind him or Madelyn's movement, as all his attention was fixed on Radonic. Please, stay down this time, he thought desperately as he brought the lump of concrete down a third time.
There was a sickening crunching sound as the third blow cracked Radonic's skull, and he fell to the ground, unconscious, blood pooling around his head. Kurt dropped his makeshift weapon, looking around to Madelyn, only to find himself looking down the barrel of her handgun. "Move," she rasped, and as he dodged sideways away, too exhausted for another teleport just yet, she fired.
The shot took the girl neatly in the middle of the forehead, dropping her in her tracks, the incandescent flames glowing around her hands winking out harmlessly. Panting harshly, Madelyn let her hand and the gun it held drop into her lap. She wouldn't think about the fact she'd just shot a girl, without warning or giving her the chance to stand down. Not now. "You okay?" she asked before Kurt could say anything.
He nodded reassuringly. "Tired and perhaps a little bruised, but nothing serious. And you, other than your shoulder?"
There was blood on her hand from wiping her face - a cut from the concrete shards, she supposed. "I'm going to be black and blue tomorrow, but it seems to be just the shoulder." She inhaled sharply as he touched it. "We need to get out of here before any one else shows up. Help me up."
He did so, eyeing her shoulder with concern. "I do not think I can teleport again just now - we will have to walk."
"Fuck," Madelyn muttered, realising that she wasn't going to be able to wait for proper medical care to re-set the shoulder - left as it was, it was too much of a liability. "Kurt, I'm going to have to ask you to do something for me, and I don't think you're going to like it. Hell, I'm not going to like it."
He looked at her with dark worried eyes, suspecting he knew what she was going to ask, and nodded. "You wish me to put your shoulder back in place?"
With a pain-filled grin, she nodded. "Got it in one, partner. Help me get this jacket off, you'll need to see what you're doing." Between the pair of them, they got her right arm free of the heavy leather jacket. "Okay," she said, taking a deep breath, sweat already breaking out on her forehead from the effort of moving. "You're going to have to hit the ball, here..." She indicated the bulge of the bone under the sleeve of her t-shirt. "And hold my arm out at this angle while you do, okay?" As he nodded, she took another breath, trying to steady her nerves. "Kurt? You're going to have to hit me as hard as you can to get it in. Otherwise you'll have to try again and I don't think... I won't be able to stay conscious for it."
He flinched, looking from her face to the wrong appearance of her shoulder. "Hit you? Madelyn..." But he quickly got a grip on himself again and nodded, knowing it was entirely necessary. "I will do my best."
"As hard as you can, Kurt," she repeated, flicking the safety on her Glock and tucking it awkwardly into the pocket of her half-off jacket, before bracing the empty hand against the wall. "All right, I'm ready," she told him with a faint smile. "I might holler a bit. I hope you can excuse the swearing."
He managed a wan smile of his own, bracing himself in turn for what he was about to do. "In the circumstances, I think it will be forgivable." he told her, waiting to be sure she was as ready as possible for the "treatment".
They were running out of time. "Okay, do it," she told him. "I'm as ready as I'll ever be."
He nodded again, took a deep steadying breath, and punched her as hard as he could on the point of the injured shoulder. Silent prayers ran through his mind that that had been enough, that he wouldn't have to do it again
White-hot pain flashed through her shoulder, and the muffled click as the joint slipped home was drowned out by an anguished cry that was half scream, half yell. "Son of a BITCH!" Madelyn burst out, sagging heavily against the wall, focussing on just staying upright for the moment, tears squeezing out from under clenched lids. Then the moment passed, and she cautiously moved the arm. There was still pain, from torn ligaments and muscle, but it was manageable.
Kurt had moved to hold her up the moment she cried out, face full of concern. "How does it feel now?" Please let it have worked.
"Congratulations Kurt, you just did your first shoulder relocation," she told him faintly, pulling her jacket around the injury without worrying about putting her arm through the sleeve. "We'd better go. Anyone in the area would have heard that, and I don't think either of us is up for another fight like that." She glanced at Radonic's fallen body, the blood pooling around his head, and then at the crumpled body of the girl, and something hardened in her expression. "We've got to get those bastard directors, Kurt. They're the ones responsible for this."
Kurt nodded quietly, moving to Radonic's side to check for a pulse. He could already see it was too late for the girl. "They will pay for what they have done, in the next life if not in this one. But we can make them pay in this one."
Madelyn didn't have the heart to tell Kurt the large man's head injuries were probably fatal, even with immediate treatment. Treatment she couldn't give, not in these circumstances, with her medkit buried under rubble and her restricted to the contents of Hank's utility belt. "Then let's go and do our parts," she said grimly, pulling her handgun carefully free of her pocket and clicking off the safety.
Radonic was still alive, for now, but there was nothing Kurt could do except remember to send back the evacuation team. With a last look at him, he straightened up and moved back to where Madelyn was waiting. "To the med-evac area, then."
~*~
Nathan and his team weren't at the cross-over. Morgan snarled a furious curse and picked up a feral who seemed bound and determined to claw through his exoskeleton, and slammed the younger operative head-first into the wall. For fuck's sake stay DOWN, kid, he willed silently, desperately, turning for another target.
There were more than enough to go around. He had five team members left; himself, Mick, Ani, and two of MacInnis' ex second-gens. The other three had been dragged down by the triggered second-gens, dragged down and killed, and only an effort of will had stopped him from lashing out at their killers with everything he had. Only the knowledge that they weren't responsible, that one of the fucking directors had triggered some unspeakable surprise.
Scorched earth. He could hear over the coms, reports from the other teams, fading in and out and crackling with interference, but still telling the story all too well. The second-gens were turning on their fellow operatives, on the ex-operatives among the assault teams, on the security personnel and even on some of the directors.
And the kids. He'd caught some kind of garbled message from Nathan a few minutes ago. The only reason he wouldn't have waited here at the cross-over was if there was a more pressing reason to get to the training barracks, immediately.
~Foley!~ Morgan snapped over the coms. Damn it, he was so fucking hampered in these close quarters, he couldn't even turn on his exoskeleton fully. ~Clear us a path, Mick~!
Foley turned from where he was trying his almighty best to persuade another triggered operative to lie down and play dead. It was taking rather more in the way of ultrasonics than he really felt comfortable with these days, but he couldn't just hit the kid with a full-on blast. He cranked up the ultrasonics a little farther, until the younger operative dropped, and then whirled, firing off a high-powered, but mostly unfocused blast straight down the hall. It staggered the operatives in front of them, although only one of them actually went down.
But it was enough to do what Morgan had wanted. Taking advantage of the fact that they were off-balance, he bulked up his exoskeleton as much as he dared and smashed his way through, trusting Mick and Ani and the other two to follow.
Anika dropped her opponent - at least temporarily, she reflected grimly - and stuck as close to Mick as she could. He was doing fine, better than fine, but she still worried. Especially when the pressure had just gotten cranked up past 'tense, but manageable' to 'all hell has just broken loose.'
There was a cut-off scream from behind her and she whirled just in time to see Fellows, one of their remaining teammates, fall, a smoking hole burned through her chest by one of the energy-projectors who'd just hauled himself back to his feet, apparently heedless of the shattered jaw she'd left him with.
Anika hissed and launched herself at the younger man before he could blast her. "Stay... down... damn it!" she snarled at him, punctuating her words with well-placed blows. He stumbled, but reached out inexorably and grabbed her leg as he went down. It yanked her off-balance, but worse than that, his hand started to glow, and Anika shrieked in pain as the light and heat seared through her body armor in an instant.
Rahall, the other member of their team, was there in an instant to help her, trying to detach the operative with an energy blast of his own. His blasts were concussive, and managed to stun the other energy-projector for long enough for Anika to wrench herself free. "Come on," Rahall snapped, dragging her along with him down the hall.
Mick hadn't gone very far, of course. "Damn it," he grated, taking her weight from Rahall. "Ani, what were you doing?"
"I'm fine," she insisted stubbornly, a sheen of sweat standing out on her face as she tried to ignore the pain of forcing the leg to work at least semi-properly. Heal, damn it... She couldn't stop. There was no question of leaving anyone behind, not in a situation like this.
"I am so going to kick your ass when we get out of here," Mick murmured, his arm tightening around her as they made their way down the hall as fast as their mutual fatigue and her injuries allowed.
"Promise?"
"Uh-huh."
~*~
If only they'd been two minutes faster getting here. Nathan whirled and brought his psimitar down, sheathing it in telekinetic force so that it shattered the bones in the arm of the pyrokinetic reaching out for him. The operative stumbled, and he landed a solid kick to knock her back a few steps, buy himself some breathing room.
Two minutes would have given them enough time to circumvent the security systems on the door, get into the barracks. They could have had more flexibility inside, cover to work with, something. But several triggered operatives had been here already when they'd gotten here, trying to blast and hammer and claw their way through the reinforced door.
It had been all that his team could do to drive them back, away from the door. Drive them back and hope that Kylun's team was getting the kids out through the emergency access. There was too much interference on the coms, still, and his calls to Kylun had gone unanswered.
For about the fifth time, he tried the Trojan Horse. The key phrases ran through his mind and he pushed it outwards at the nearest operative, willing her to fall. But it wasn't working. Everything he'd gone through with it, and the fucking secret weapon didn't work. There was resistance, almost like a counterforce, and as hard as he tried to force the psi-pattern of the Trojan Horse into any of the minds around them, it faded away before it could take root, as if it had been smothered.
"I can't get the door open!" Higgins snarled desperately from where he was still trying to do just that, in between fending off attacks from a very determined feral who, like the others, would just not stay down. "One of the blasts must have scrambled the locks!"
"Leave it!" Nathan yelled back at him, shielding against some sort of greenish energy blast from a second-gen he didn't recognize, even from the files. He could have yanked the door right off its hinges, but there was no way they could risk leaving the barracks open, not with this happening right on the doorstep. They could defend a door. They couldn't defend a hole.
And there were more of the triggered operatives. Nathan spotted four more running down the hall, another couple coming behind them. That made fifteen. Three to one. Too much of a pull, he thought desperately, spinning and sending the energy-projector tumbling back down the hall before he could fire off another blast. All these priority targets, all in one place. He could see it what was left of their minds, the driving imperative to kill anyone who had or who'd had conditioning. And not just currently-serving Mistra operatives; they were focusing as intently on him and Bourne and the other two as they were on Pulaski.
Pulaski leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. "I'm running down," she called back hoarsely, and kicked the next operative who came at her in the face. "No charge left..."
There was a scream from Chabot's direction suddenly, and Nathan looked over in time to see her fall, another operative on top of her. He lunged in that direction and swatted her attacker away.
Too late. He felt Chabot's thoughts flicker and fade, like her mind was shorting out. She twitched for a moment and then went limp, her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. Nathan choked back another curse and whirled, knocking the operative who'd killed her back down, again, as he tried to get up.
Bourne was blasting away grimly, but his Darkforce projections were getting less and less coherent, and Nathan knew he'd wear himself out shortly as well. "Higgins," he started to say, but then Higgins went down as well, caught by a stray blast, and Nathan was shielding desperately from more that were coming at him, three or four different types of energy, and the patterns were throwing him, he couldn't focus enough to sort them out...
~DOWN!~ came Morgan's voice shouting over the coms, and Nathan flung himself to the ground, barely registering Bourne and Pulaski doing the same. The roar that followed, the air above them shuddering with the force of its passage, was unmistakably sonic energy.
But even as he struggled back to his feet, the operatives that Mick's blast had knocked down were doing the same. Fuck, this is futile... He lashed out with his telekinesis, fracturing the leg of the nearest, an energy-projector. But the young woman just started blasting from the floor, and Nathan cursed again, more weakly this time, aiming for her head this time. Just knocking them out wasn't going to work, he thought desperately; their systems were running on overdrive, flooded with adrenalin. Whatever programming this was, it was working on the subconscious level, and they weren't going to stop. They couldn't.
Tim barreled down the hallway, knocking operatives flying left and right as he tried to clear a path for himself and Mick and Ani through to where Nathan and the other two were trying to defend the door. "More coming behind us," he grated. "At least ten."
"Fuck," Pulaski spat exhaustedly, summoning up a faint shockwave and tossing it at the nearest target. "This isn't working. We have to..."
She didn't get a chance to finish the sentence. Someone phased out of the wall behind her, passing through her in an intangible form, and Pulaski screamed and fell, her own shockwaves suddenly crackling around her. Two more operatives were on her in an instant, and Bourne cried out her name and flung himself into the fray, broken arm and all.
Nathan felt them both die, their minds winking out like streetlights at dawn. He staggered, and Tim caught him, holding him up with one hand as he projected the claw of his exoskeleton outwards and slammed another operative into the wall before he could attack Mick from behind.
Four, Ani thought, seeing Bourne and Pulaski go down. Just the four of them, and close to twenty-five second-gens who might as well be automatons at this point. Her leg was a solid mass of pain, but she used it, deliberately letting herself slide partway into the red haze, where the only thing to do was to fight and nothing else mattered.
Mick saw her snarl and launch herself at one of the other feral operatives, and knew what she was doing. Even if he'd wanted to call her back from it, he couldn't have, not when pure bloody-minded refusal to go down was liable to be the only thing that saved them here. Ignoring the ache in his bones, he ramped up the sonics farther. Close quarters, too close for ultrasonics. He blasted two of the operatives into the wall, saw it spiderweb with cracks behind them - and yet they got up, back on their feet almost immediately.
Nathan pulled away from Morgan and focused. Power poured through his psimitar and came out glowing, streams of golden energy with a distinct reddish tinge to it, lashing like whips down the hall. Even as he did that, he raised a shield over the door, making it as sturdy as he could, knowing that he didn't dare try and tie it off, couldn't risk sacrificing strength for flexibility. ~I need help at the training barracks!~ he called out over the coms, gasping with the effort of splitting that much power that many ways. ~We can't hold them off, they're swarming the fucking door!~
And he heard replies. At least two, maybe more - it was hard to tell, with the static. Too many damned energy-projectors firing in here... He poured more power through the psimitar. Down they went, and up they got, and damn it all to hell, he was not going to start fighting to kill, he was not...
~*~
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
–'Do Not Go Gentle Into The Good Night', Thomas
The triage tent was seeing more business than anyone had expected. Wounded of all varieties - Mistra personnel, some of the government troops, MacInnis' people - were being seen to by harried-looking doctors and medics.
Hank lurched in, Cole still mercifully unconscious, since being carried face down over a shoulder with burns all over your torso would hurt like all hell. He found an empty bed, and put him down in it, wincing. Right. First things first... he needed a proper gauze pad - make that two... and more bandage, for his leg. Then he could get started on the wounded. He saw a table with a nice collection of bandages and headed for it.
"McCoy!" One of the medics, a young woman who'd introduced herself as Fitzpatrick back at the staging area, came rushing over. "Do you need help?" she asked, staring down at his leg before she looked at Cole.
"He has a lot of burns, and is in shock." He waved her towards Cole. "The leg isn't too bad." Nothing too major had been severed, he could tell by the trained observation of a surgeon that told him he could still move his toes and hadn't yet bled to death. So as soon as he rewrapped it, he could try to ignore it for now. Fortunately, the adrenaline still flooding his system was helping him to distance himself from the pain....
"Who is he?" Fitzpatrick asked more professionally, moving to Cole's side. "Not one of ours... Mistra? Do we need to worry about him lashing out with his powers if he comes to?"
"He's an ally." Hank peeled off the old bandage, wincing. Ow. Oozing. Ow. "He and I went in together." He was going to lose big patches of fur again, damn it. Right on his leg, where it showed.
Fitzpatrick started to tend to Cole, her movements hurried but still smooth. Behind her, two of the taskforce soldiers came in, carrying a third, who was dead weight, bleeding from half a dozen obvious wounds. She winced. "Abbott!" she called back over her shoulder, gesturing for one of her colleagues to meet the newcomers.
Hank rewrapped his leg, wincing, careful not to make it too tight this time. There. If he stayed off it, didn't put any further strain on the wound, that should hold it for a while. "Right." He looked around. "Where should I start?"
"If you can move around all right, right to the reds," Fitzpatrick said. "We're short one doctor - Bartlet went out to get an injured X-Man."
Hank... blinked. "She did WHAT?" he asked, worry and exasperation warring for dominance. That... that headstrong, determined, woman! "Is she all right? Where did she go? Has someone gone to retrieve her?"
"Wagner's going to bring them both back," Fitzpatrick said almost absently, checking Cole's vitals.
Oh, great. Hank suspected that he and Kurt were rivals in the matter of the lovely Madelyn.... and if someone had already gone after her, then he, Hank, had no excuse to do so. Especially not with all these wounded. "Right. I'll wash up and get started."
~*~
"There!" Madelyn said, pointing to the fallen figure in black X-Men leathers not far from one of the rough concrete buildings that dotted the island. Hefting her medical bag more securely over her shoulder, ear piece filled with the babble of conflict, she made her way across the rocky ground, glancing around her for hostiles. "He looks bad. Hurry, Kurt."
Kurt winced at the sight of Sam's prone form and, for speed's sake, teleported both himself and Madelyn to his team-mate's side, then stepped back as she began a quick examination.
Sam had hit the ground hard, from a reasonable height. Madelyn checked his pulse and his breathing - both steady, although his breathing was laboured from what was obviously at least one broken rib - and fished out the neck brace from her bag. "Come around here and hold his head steady," she instructed Kurt, glancing up at him. "If he's got a spinal injury I can't move his neck too much putting this on."
Kurt moved quickly to obey, crouching by Sam's head to hold it in place. "How is he?"
"I think 'broken' covers it," Madelyn said a touch grimly as she fitted the neck brace into place and secured it. Concussion was just about guaranteed, but luckily there didn't seem to be any overt head wounds to be felt as she quickly ran her hands over his head. "We need to get him back as quickly as possible - can you 'port him without moving him? He's got at least one broken rib, plus the arm, and jolting him could give him a punctured lung, if we're lucky."
He nodded tensely. "I think I can manage that, yes. I will come back for you as soon as he is in safe hands. Will you be safe here during that time? I could try to take you both at once, but it will be easier and safer for Sam if I can concentrate on not jolting him..."
"I'll take cover in the building there - trust me, I'd rather not attract any attention right now." There wasn't a huge amount she could do for Sam that she hadn't done already. "Yell for Kwan when you get there - he's the best trauma doctor I've seen in a good while."
"Kwan", he repeated with another nod, trying to get a grip on Sam that would allow for as little jolting as possible, without doing any further damage.
"See you in a minute," Madelyn said with a brief grin, collecting her medkit and standing back to give Kurt room. She patted the tranq gun hanging on her belt. "Don't worry about me. Just get Sam back as carefully as you can."
He nodded once more, finally getting Sam securely in his arms, and the next moment they were gone.
~*~
This wasn't happening.
In all the long years of planning for this day, even with all the new random factors that had entered the picture, MacInnis had never foreseen this. Never dreamed of a worst-case scenario quite this bad.
A trigger he'd never known about. Had to be. Ruiz, you bitch, if this is your doing I'll kill you with my bare hands... He barked out another order on the com channel his people were using, demanding a status report. If the second-gens were targetting all Mistra personnel, they'd target his teams, too.
~Bender here, regroup on me!~ he heard Anika snarl.
~...pinned down, can't...~
~REGROUP!~ That was Timothy roaring, sounding enraged.
~...fuck's sake, won't stay down! Conway's dead!~
~Foley here, we're coming!~
It was on the tip of his tongue to pull them out. But even if he had, even if that wouldn't have left the X-Men and Catano's people exposed, he knew better. The order would have been refused.
MacInnis knew his people. Knew there was no backing down, not today.
It took a sheer act of will to keep the despair out of his expression.
~*~
His patient safely deposited with the medics, Kurt returned to fetch Madelyn. The instant after arriving inside the barracks, he realised this would not be as simple as he'd hoped, as he saw Madelyn sail past him into the wall, thrown there by a Mistra operative...
It had happened so fast... One minute she'd been crouched as unobtrusively as possible, the next someone had grabbed her. There was no time to go limp, or to try and twist herself so she landed squarely - Madelyn caught the impact with the wall mostly on her right shoulder. There was a muffled crunch, and the pain was white-hot and enormous, so huge for a moment she thought she was going to black out, hoped she'd black out. Then she slid down the wall to crumple on the floor below. It was all she could do to remember how to breathe.
Kurt glanced at her, assessing her condition as quickly as he could, but there was no time to do more than note that she was still conscious. Not until the operative had been dealt with, at least. He teleported directly between them, poised and ready for a fight.
Radonic snorted as the small - to him, any way - blue man in the black leather armour appeared in front of him, and cracked his knuckles. "Amateurs," was all he said, before swinging a punch smoothly and without warning at Kurt's head. Like most powerhouse types, he was an enormous slab of a man, all of it muscle layered over dense bone, and the fist that swung at Kurt was easily the size of his head.
Big fists were easier to dodge, especially for a teleporter. Kurt was out of the way in an instant, though still not leaving an unobstructed path between Radonic and Madelyn. He had a suspicion that this man depended more on his size than any skill in a fight, which meant Kurt might still have a chance of beating him...
The big man grunted in annoyance as his target vanished in a cloud of noisome smoke, and whirled, faster than his size would have allowed, arm extending in a backfist strike as he did, aimed at the teleporter who had appeared on his blind side. Trying to lead him away from the woman, who still hadn't gotten up yet. His orders were clear - repel any and all intruders, as quickly as possible - and he didn't have time for messing around. Even if there was something nagging at him, tugging at his mind... what the hell was that, anyway? He resisted it stubbornly, focusing on the teleporter.
The smoke. Kurt almost smiled as it occurred to him that there was another aspect of his mutation he could use to his advantage. Glancing apologetically at Madelyn, he began a rapid series of small jumps, each one taking place before the smoke of the last had begun to dissipate, and each in Radonic's immediate vicinity.
So now he couldn't see... Radonic grinned briefly to himself as he felt a kick glance off his side. On anyone else it might have been winding, but the powerhouse barely felt it. And he didn't need to be able to see to hit his target. Or use his fists, for that matter - driving upwards with both fists, he punched into the concrete of the ceiling, bringing it down in chunks around him. Let's see the teleporter dodge all that.
...but why did he kept wanting to break off, head off for another target? What target? Radonic was getting confused, and the tugging was getting more and more insistent.
Kurt suddenly realized the drawback of that strategy - he couldn't see through the smoke either. Hearing the crunch of Radonic's fists on the concrete, he did the only thing possible: bamfed to the side of the room where, hopefully, the smoke would be less dense, to wait for it to clear.
The shower of concrete drove through Madelyn's pain-haze - instinctively she curled into a ball, cradling her head with her left arm. The right hung uselessly by her side, the shoulder joint alarmingly distorted. Kurt... was in trouble. That fact also made it through as smaller chunks of concrete glanced off her arm, making her glad of the thick leather of the jacket she was wearing. As the torrent of rubble eased, she began awkwardly reaching into her jacket for her gun, the holster on her left side.
She wasn't the only one making a move - Radonic had listened for the tell-tale sound of the teleport, and followed the sound of displaced air. As the smoke began to clear, he spotted the gleam of yellow eyes, and lunged faster than it seemed he could, grabbing at the front of Kurt's uniform.
Kurt dodged back as best he could, eyes darting over to where Madelyn lay to check on her. Seeing her hand moving to her gun, he nodded once, very quickly, and set about distracting Radonic from what she was doing. Which meant leading him on a chase around the room - although not near Madelyn - always keeping one step ahead of him.
"Stay still and fight, you little bastard!" Radonic finally snapped after several passes around the room, frustrated by the time this was taking. He had to get rid of this invader, his imperatives demanded it. Other places to be. Other... targets. His thoughts kept trying to cloud over, and he was finding it increasingly hard to resist. Stooping, he snatched up several chunks of concrete from the smashed roof, hurling them one after another at the fleeing X-man. Maybe if he could wear him down with the teleporting...
Setting her teeth as she inadvertently jostled the injured arm, Madelyn managed to inch the gun out of the holster. She had no idea if it would even work on this bastard - he had seemed pretty invulnerable to the ceiling coming down on him. But maybe if she could distract him enough for Kurt to get an in...
Kurt avoided the concrete, as much with his natural agility as by teleporting, and managed another glance at Madelyn to see how she was doing. Relieved to see that she'd drawn her gun, he 'ported forward again, and again... but was all too aware that he was tiring.
A chunk of concrete only narrowly missed, and Radonic grinned. The blue fucker was finally wearing out. He managed to grab Kurt by the back of his uniform as he tried to dodge past, drawing the Mistra operative away from Madelyn, and tried to smash him bodily against the wall.
She couldn't stop her left hand from shaking, dammit. Madelyn knew it was shock setting in, but she didn't have time for this, and she couldn't risk hitting Kurt. Then she saw him grabbed, and knew he was running out of energy. "Get clear, Kurt!" she yelled, drawing a bead on the back of Radonic's knee, where there was a gap in the body armour and where she hoped the man's defences were weakest.
Kurt yanked himself free with an effort, turning at bay, and without warning, punched Radonic in the stomach with everything he had, putting all his weight - which, admittedly, was not much compared to Radonic - behind it. Shoot now, Madelyn, he tried to communicate to her, silently so as not to alert the man to what was going on.
Okay, so not exactly clear, but shielded by the powerhouse would do. As Radonic stumbled back slightly, taken by surprise by Kurt's sudden reversal, she fired, once, twice, three times... The first shot glanced off the back of his thigh, deflected by the armour and his strength, the second pinged off the wall behind, but the third struck home, shredding the thinner, more flexible leather of the armour there, and the soft flesh beneath.
Radonic cried out, dropping Kurt and stumbling forward as his knee gave way beneath him, the tendons destroyed by Madelyn's bullet. But he wasn't out yet - his hand fell on another chunk of concrete the size of a basketball, and he hefted it easily in one enormous hand, hurling it squarely at Madelyn. She ducked flat to the floor, nearly passing out as she jolted the dislocated shoulder and the concrete shattered against the wall over her head, showering her with smaller pieces.
Kurt took the opening as Radonic fell, following up that first punch with a few more, all of them well-placed with the intention of making Radonic stay down until he and Madelyn could get out. He could do nothing about the concrete until that was achieved, though his instinct was to help Madelyn first.
The punches weren't much, but the pain in his knee was throwing off his thinking, stopping him from focusing - it had been a very long time since he'd felt that degree of pain. This wasn't working the way it was supposed to. Confused, he thumbed his throat mike, tapping the 'back up required" signal just before Kurt kicked him in the face, knocking him backwards.
Kurt watched him carefully for a long moment, ready to kick him again at the first sign that he wasn't going to do the sensible thing and stay down until they'd gone. Not knowing exactly what the man's orders were made it very difficult to predict what he was going to do.
Radonic wanted to stay down, but orders were... He never completed the thought as at last, the 'Masada' trigger took advantage of his daze and finally penetrated his natural defenses, ripping through his mind, shredding rational thought and filling what was left with only one imperative - kill. Silently, he surged upwards, only the fact his destroyed knee wouldn't hold his weight stopping him from regaining his feet.
Kurt couldn't help wincing slightly as he saw the man try to get up and fall back. Just in case, he grabbed the nearest chunk of concrete, waiting to see what Radonic would do now he couldn't walk. If he could still think, that should give him pause...
Unfortunately, there was no thought, only the compulsion to kill, to destroy. The few minutes of unconscious resistance to the trigger were lost, not even a memory. He lunged at Kurt, who teleported to behind him. Unfortunately the change in position exposed Madelyn, slowly gathering her wits and rather muzzily trying to sit up, a shower of cement dust and fragments sliding off her. The dust made her cough, and the sound drew Radonic's attention. There was a length of metal pipe, part of the plumbing that had been ripped from the ceiling earlier. His hand closed over it, his attention purely on Madelyn.
And that left Kurt with no choice. Hefting the concrete in his hand, he teleported to a spot directly behind Radonic and brought it down hard on the bigger man's head before he could throw his pipe. He could only pray he hadn't killed the man if there was any chance his conditioning could be broken.
The pipe fell from Radonic's hand with a clatter, but incredibly he didn't go down, pulling himself back up still with that eerie silence. His face, when he turned on Kurt, hands hooking into claws to tear him apart, was frighteningly blank, eyes completely devoid of any emotion at all.
Kurt shook his head, understanding that this man was beyond reasoning now. "I am sorry," he said simply before teleporting behind Radonic and hitting him with the concrete again, aiming for the same spot. It was the only help he could give.
Radonic fell forward on his hands and one knee, and incredibly tried to rise again.
Madelyn watched horrified as Kurt's opponent continued to try and get up, and then movement caught her eye. Back-up, she realised, as she watched a woman... no, a girl, not much older than Jubilee come forward, with that same blank face, intent only on reaching Kurt. Gun, had to find... Her fingers closed over the grip of the Glock, and laboriously she pulled herself upright.
Kurt hadn't noticed either the second operative behind him or Madelyn's movement, as all his attention was fixed on Radonic. Please, stay down this time, he thought desperately as he brought the lump of concrete down a third time.
There was a sickening crunching sound as the third blow cracked Radonic's skull, and he fell to the ground, unconscious, blood pooling around his head. Kurt dropped his makeshift weapon, looking around to Madelyn, only to find himself looking down the barrel of her handgun. "Move," she rasped, and as he dodged sideways away, too exhausted for another teleport just yet, she fired.
The shot took the girl neatly in the middle of the forehead, dropping her in her tracks, the incandescent flames glowing around her hands winking out harmlessly. Panting harshly, Madelyn let her hand and the gun it held drop into her lap. She wouldn't think about the fact she'd just shot a girl, without warning or giving her the chance to stand down. Not now. "You okay?" she asked before Kurt could say anything.
He nodded reassuringly. "Tired and perhaps a little bruised, but nothing serious. And you, other than your shoulder?"
There was blood on her hand from wiping her face - a cut from the concrete shards, she supposed. "I'm going to be black and blue tomorrow, but it seems to be just the shoulder." She inhaled sharply as he touched it. "We need to get out of here before any one else shows up. Help me up."
He did so, eyeing her shoulder with concern. "I do not think I can teleport again just now - we will have to walk."
"Fuck," Madelyn muttered, realising that she wasn't going to be able to wait for proper medical care to re-set the shoulder - left as it was, it was too much of a liability. "Kurt, I'm going to have to ask you to do something for me, and I don't think you're going to like it. Hell, I'm not going to like it."
He looked at her with dark worried eyes, suspecting he knew what she was going to ask, and nodded. "You wish me to put your shoulder back in place?"
With a pain-filled grin, she nodded. "Got it in one, partner. Help me get this jacket off, you'll need to see what you're doing." Between the pair of them, they got her right arm free of the heavy leather jacket. "Okay," she said, taking a deep breath, sweat already breaking out on her forehead from the effort of moving. "You're going to have to hit the ball, here..." She indicated the bulge of the bone under the sleeve of her t-shirt. "And hold my arm out at this angle while you do, okay?" As he nodded, she took another breath, trying to steady her nerves. "Kurt? You're going to have to hit me as hard as you can to get it in. Otherwise you'll have to try again and I don't think... I won't be able to stay conscious for it."
He flinched, looking from her face to the wrong appearance of her shoulder. "Hit you? Madelyn..." But he quickly got a grip on himself again and nodded, knowing it was entirely necessary. "I will do my best."
"As hard as you can, Kurt," she repeated, flicking the safety on her Glock and tucking it awkwardly into the pocket of her half-off jacket, before bracing the empty hand against the wall. "All right, I'm ready," she told him with a faint smile. "I might holler a bit. I hope you can excuse the swearing."
He managed a wan smile of his own, bracing himself in turn for what he was about to do. "In the circumstances, I think it will be forgivable." he told her, waiting to be sure she was as ready as possible for the "treatment".
They were running out of time. "Okay, do it," she told him. "I'm as ready as I'll ever be."
He nodded again, took a deep steadying breath, and punched her as hard as he could on the point of the injured shoulder. Silent prayers ran through his mind that that had been enough, that he wouldn't have to do it again
White-hot pain flashed through her shoulder, and the muffled click as the joint slipped home was drowned out by an anguished cry that was half scream, half yell. "Son of a BITCH!" Madelyn burst out, sagging heavily against the wall, focussing on just staying upright for the moment, tears squeezing out from under clenched lids. Then the moment passed, and she cautiously moved the arm. There was still pain, from torn ligaments and muscle, but it was manageable.
Kurt had moved to hold her up the moment she cried out, face full of concern. "How does it feel now?" Please let it have worked.
"Congratulations Kurt, you just did your first shoulder relocation," she told him faintly, pulling her jacket around the injury without worrying about putting her arm through the sleeve. "We'd better go. Anyone in the area would have heard that, and I don't think either of us is up for another fight like that." She glanced at Radonic's fallen body, the blood pooling around his head, and then at the crumpled body of the girl, and something hardened in her expression. "We've got to get those bastard directors, Kurt. They're the ones responsible for this."
Kurt nodded quietly, moving to Radonic's side to check for a pulse. He could already see it was too late for the girl. "They will pay for what they have done, in the next life if not in this one. But we can make them pay in this one."
Madelyn didn't have the heart to tell Kurt the large man's head injuries were probably fatal, even with immediate treatment. Treatment she couldn't give, not in these circumstances, with her medkit buried under rubble and her restricted to the contents of Hank's utility belt. "Then let's go and do our parts," she said grimly, pulling her handgun carefully free of her pocket and clicking off the safety.
Radonic was still alive, for now, but there was nothing Kurt could do except remember to send back the evacuation team. With a last look at him, he straightened up and moved back to where Madelyn was waiting. "To the med-evac area, then."
~*~
Nathan and his team weren't at the cross-over. Morgan snarled a furious curse and picked up a feral who seemed bound and determined to claw through his exoskeleton, and slammed the younger operative head-first into the wall. For fuck's sake stay DOWN, kid, he willed silently, desperately, turning for another target.
There were more than enough to go around. He had five team members left; himself, Mick, Ani, and two of MacInnis' ex second-gens. The other three had been dragged down by the triggered second-gens, dragged down and killed, and only an effort of will had stopped him from lashing out at their killers with everything he had. Only the knowledge that they weren't responsible, that one of the fucking directors had triggered some unspeakable surprise.
Scorched earth. He could hear over the coms, reports from the other teams, fading in and out and crackling with interference, but still telling the story all too well. The second-gens were turning on their fellow operatives, on the ex-operatives among the assault teams, on the security personnel and even on some of the directors.
And the kids. He'd caught some kind of garbled message from Nathan a few minutes ago. The only reason he wouldn't have waited here at the cross-over was if there was a more pressing reason to get to the training barracks, immediately.
~Foley!~ Morgan snapped over the coms. Damn it, he was so fucking hampered in these close quarters, he couldn't even turn on his exoskeleton fully. ~Clear us a path, Mick~!
Foley turned from where he was trying his almighty best to persuade another triggered operative to lie down and play dead. It was taking rather more in the way of ultrasonics than he really felt comfortable with these days, but he couldn't just hit the kid with a full-on blast. He cranked up the ultrasonics a little farther, until the younger operative dropped, and then whirled, firing off a high-powered, but mostly unfocused blast straight down the hall. It staggered the operatives in front of them, although only one of them actually went down.
But it was enough to do what Morgan had wanted. Taking advantage of the fact that they were off-balance, he bulked up his exoskeleton as much as he dared and smashed his way through, trusting Mick and Ani and the other two to follow.
Anika dropped her opponent - at least temporarily, she reflected grimly - and stuck as close to Mick as she could. He was doing fine, better than fine, but she still worried. Especially when the pressure had just gotten cranked up past 'tense, but manageable' to 'all hell has just broken loose.'
There was a cut-off scream from behind her and she whirled just in time to see Fellows, one of their remaining teammates, fall, a smoking hole burned through her chest by one of the energy-projectors who'd just hauled himself back to his feet, apparently heedless of the shattered jaw she'd left him with.
Anika hissed and launched herself at the younger man before he could blast her. "Stay... down... damn it!" she snarled at him, punctuating her words with well-placed blows. He stumbled, but reached out inexorably and grabbed her leg as he went down. It yanked her off-balance, but worse than that, his hand started to glow, and Anika shrieked in pain as the light and heat seared through her body armor in an instant.
Rahall, the other member of their team, was there in an instant to help her, trying to detach the operative with an energy blast of his own. His blasts were concussive, and managed to stun the other energy-projector for long enough for Anika to wrench herself free. "Come on," Rahall snapped, dragging her along with him down the hall.
Mick hadn't gone very far, of course. "Damn it," he grated, taking her weight from Rahall. "Ani, what were you doing?"
"I'm fine," she insisted stubbornly, a sheen of sweat standing out on her face as she tried to ignore the pain of forcing the leg to work at least semi-properly. Heal, damn it... She couldn't stop. There was no question of leaving anyone behind, not in a situation like this.
"I am so going to kick your ass when we get out of here," Mick murmured, his arm tightening around her as they made their way down the hall as fast as their mutual fatigue and her injuries allowed.
"Promise?"
"Uh-huh."
~*~
If only they'd been two minutes faster getting here. Nathan whirled and brought his psimitar down, sheathing it in telekinetic force so that it shattered the bones in the arm of the pyrokinetic reaching out for him. The operative stumbled, and he landed a solid kick to knock her back a few steps, buy himself some breathing room.
Two minutes would have given them enough time to circumvent the security systems on the door, get into the barracks. They could have had more flexibility inside, cover to work with, something. But several triggered operatives had been here already when they'd gotten here, trying to blast and hammer and claw their way through the reinforced door.
It had been all that his team could do to drive them back, away from the door. Drive them back and hope that Kylun's team was getting the kids out through the emergency access. There was too much interference on the coms, still, and his calls to Kylun had gone unanswered.
For about the fifth time, he tried the Trojan Horse. The key phrases ran through his mind and he pushed it outwards at the nearest operative, willing her to fall. But it wasn't working. Everything he'd gone through with it, and the fucking secret weapon didn't work. There was resistance, almost like a counterforce, and as hard as he tried to force the psi-pattern of the Trojan Horse into any of the minds around them, it faded away before it could take root, as if it had been smothered.
"I can't get the door open!" Higgins snarled desperately from where he was still trying to do just that, in between fending off attacks from a very determined feral who, like the others, would just not stay down. "One of the blasts must have scrambled the locks!"
"Leave it!" Nathan yelled back at him, shielding against some sort of greenish energy blast from a second-gen he didn't recognize, even from the files. He could have yanked the door right off its hinges, but there was no way they could risk leaving the barracks open, not with this happening right on the doorstep. They could defend a door. They couldn't defend a hole.
And there were more of the triggered operatives. Nathan spotted four more running down the hall, another couple coming behind them. That made fifteen. Three to one. Too much of a pull, he thought desperately, spinning and sending the energy-projector tumbling back down the hall before he could fire off another blast. All these priority targets, all in one place. He could see it what was left of their minds, the driving imperative to kill anyone who had or who'd had conditioning. And not just currently-serving Mistra operatives; they were focusing as intently on him and Bourne and the other two as they were on Pulaski.
Pulaski leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. "I'm running down," she called back hoarsely, and kicked the next operative who came at her in the face. "No charge left..."
There was a scream from Chabot's direction suddenly, and Nathan looked over in time to see her fall, another operative on top of her. He lunged in that direction and swatted her attacker away.
Too late. He felt Chabot's thoughts flicker and fade, like her mind was shorting out. She twitched for a moment and then went limp, her dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. Nathan choked back another curse and whirled, knocking the operative who'd killed her back down, again, as he tried to get up.
Bourne was blasting away grimly, but his Darkforce projections were getting less and less coherent, and Nathan knew he'd wear himself out shortly as well. "Higgins," he started to say, but then Higgins went down as well, caught by a stray blast, and Nathan was shielding desperately from more that were coming at him, three or four different types of energy, and the patterns were throwing him, he couldn't focus enough to sort them out...
~DOWN!~ came Morgan's voice shouting over the coms, and Nathan flung himself to the ground, barely registering Bourne and Pulaski doing the same. The roar that followed, the air above them shuddering with the force of its passage, was unmistakably sonic energy.
But even as he struggled back to his feet, the operatives that Mick's blast had knocked down were doing the same. Fuck, this is futile... He lashed out with his telekinesis, fracturing the leg of the nearest, an energy-projector. But the young woman just started blasting from the floor, and Nathan cursed again, more weakly this time, aiming for her head this time. Just knocking them out wasn't going to work, he thought desperately; their systems were running on overdrive, flooded with adrenalin. Whatever programming this was, it was working on the subconscious level, and they weren't going to stop. They couldn't.
Tim barreled down the hallway, knocking operatives flying left and right as he tried to clear a path for himself and Mick and Ani through to where Nathan and the other two were trying to defend the door. "More coming behind us," he grated. "At least ten."
"Fuck," Pulaski spat exhaustedly, summoning up a faint shockwave and tossing it at the nearest target. "This isn't working. We have to..."
She didn't get a chance to finish the sentence. Someone phased out of the wall behind her, passing through her in an intangible form, and Pulaski screamed and fell, her own shockwaves suddenly crackling around her. Two more operatives were on her in an instant, and Bourne cried out her name and flung himself into the fray, broken arm and all.
Nathan felt them both die, their minds winking out like streetlights at dawn. He staggered, and Tim caught him, holding him up with one hand as he projected the claw of his exoskeleton outwards and slammed another operative into the wall before he could attack Mick from behind.
Four, Ani thought, seeing Bourne and Pulaski go down. Just the four of them, and close to twenty-five second-gens who might as well be automatons at this point. Her leg was a solid mass of pain, but she used it, deliberately letting herself slide partway into the red haze, where the only thing to do was to fight and nothing else mattered.
Mick saw her snarl and launch herself at one of the other feral operatives, and knew what she was doing. Even if he'd wanted to call her back from it, he couldn't have, not when pure bloody-minded refusal to go down was liable to be the only thing that saved them here. Ignoring the ache in his bones, he ramped up the sonics farther. Close quarters, too close for ultrasonics. He blasted two of the operatives into the wall, saw it spiderweb with cracks behind them - and yet they got up, back on their feet almost immediately.
Nathan pulled away from Morgan and focused. Power poured through his psimitar and came out glowing, streams of golden energy with a distinct reddish tinge to it, lashing like whips down the hall. Even as he did that, he raised a shield over the door, making it as sturdy as he could, knowing that he didn't dare try and tie it off, couldn't risk sacrificing strength for flexibility. ~I need help at the training barracks!~ he called out over the coms, gasping with the effort of splitting that much power that many ways. ~We can't hold them off, they're swarming the fucking door!~
And he heard replies. At least two, maybe more - it was hard to tell, with the static. Too many damned energy-projectors firing in here... He poured more power through the psimitar. Down they went, and up they got, and damn it all to hell, he was not going to start fighting to kill, he was not...
~*~
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
–'Do Not Go Gentle Into The Good Night', Thomas