DISCLAIMER: The X-Men and related characters belong to Marvel and are used without permission for entertainment purposes only. No money involved here, believe me. Original characters are mostly mine, but Lily Summers and associated chronographer types are the creation of Domenika Marzione. Oh, and she's got a fairly significant share in Dane Summers, as well. :)
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Once upon a time, Falstaff gave me a very intriguing story idea. I 'recorded' it on the Pantheon series timeline in my head and told myself that at some point, I'd get around to writing it. Years later, in the middle of writing her own Pantheon epic, 'White Rabbit', Domenika, in her own words, "suckered" me into finally writing it so that she could use some of the events involved in her story. I started off thinking I'd just write a smallish companion fic to 'White Rabbit'. Hah. Hahah.
This fic is meant to complement the last several parts of 'White Rabbit', which can be found at the Pantheon archive or Domenika's site for those of you who haven't yet had the privilege of reading it. While the two could technically stand alone, they are meant to be read together--in several spots in 'Pandora's Box', you'll even find scenes from 'White Rabbit' retold from a different perspective.
So please do read both, and if you're inclined to send feedback, either or both of us would appreciate it enormously. :)
Thanks to Staff for the original idea, Domenika for beta-ing (and talking me down off the ledge more times than I can count), Sarah for all her boundless support, sevenall for being a faithful Pantheon reader and generally inspirational, and Heatherly for enthusiasm and encouragement. :)
Pandora's Box: Ripples In The Sand
December 2011
Nathan Summers turned on his side and tugged irritably at the blankets. Dom, as usual, had a death grip on them. Giving up, he stared dully out into the dimness of the bedroom, trying to find something, anything else to focus on besides what he was sensing. He could get up, he supposed, but that would almost certainly wake Dom, and he really didnāt want to deal with any questions just now.
The next time Sulven fed him that garbage about the timestream Īsingingā, he thought crossly, he was going to hit her. Either that or force a psi-link on her so that she could experience what he did when he sensed the timestream shifting. A few hours of listening to the dissonant keen currently reverberating in the depths of his mind would surely be enough to convince her that he wasnāt "whining about some negligible chronopathic manifestation". Maybe heād share the headache, too. That might help to drive the point home.
The timestream shuddered violently enough to make his stomach twist and then went still. Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for that moment of dizziness to pass. Losing that connection was always a jolt, but lately it had been getting worse. He had no control over it; that was the problem.
Domino muttered in her sleep, reaching out for him, but he shifted away uneasily. Physical contact would heighten the psi-link, and he wasnāt shielding well tonight. After a moment, she settled down again, and Nathan spent the next few minutes concentrating on closing off his end of the link. With the way his head was throbbing, it was harder than it should have been, but he managed it. At least Clareās room was psi-shielded, so he didnāt need to worry about waking her.
The timestreamās discordant buzz was dying to a whisper now, lost in the soft rumbling of voices that lapped at his shields, their usual roar gentled to a bearable level by the extra dose of psi-suppressants heād taken before calling it a night. That had been around midnight. It was after three now, and he supposed he should be grateful for having gotten an hour or so of sleep in the interim.
This is getting out of hand. Heād had this heightened awareness of the timestream for the last six years, ever since the battle at Akkaba. Something that had happened in the Merge, most likely. Over time, heād grown accustomed to it, even when heād started to get Īearly-warningā headaches ahead of major shifts in the timeline. As sixth - or should that be seventh? - senses went, it was irritatingly vague, but heād been able to use it as a rough barometer telling him when he needed to be particularly vigilant.
But something had changed these last few months. To say the timestream had been unsettled lately would be an understatement; it had been violently agitated, at times writhing like something in pain. And his awareness of it seemed to be growing more and more intense by the day.
Something was coming; that much he knew. He could sense change on its way, building like a tsunami in the distance. The almost-daily migraines were a good indication that whatever it was, it was serious. But as usual, that was all he had. No details, nothing to work with. Just a flonqing feeling.
No wonder Sulven had laughed at him. Nathan turned on his back, glaring up at the bedroom ceiling. He hated this, hated not having the information he needed to act. To be in the dark like this was intolerable. He was as good as blind, and--
Dom stirred beside him again, grumbling something under her breath. "Go tāsleep," she mumbled warningly, and Nathan flinched as she nestled closer to him, flinging an arm across his chest.
"Uhh--okay." His voice wavered a bit, but Dom, already drifting off again, didnāt notice.
He ought to at least try and follow her advice, he thought bleakly. The sleep-deprivation was playing havoc with his shields, and people were beginning to notice his little lapses in concentration during the day. If he let that go on much longer, thereād be questions, and that would be bad. The fewer people who knew about this right now, the better. He was not about to play Cassandra, and if he started running around making vague prophecies of doom, that was exactly how heād be regarded. Donāt mind the crazy man muttering to himself in the corner--
Iām getting paranoid. Nathan grimaced and closed his eyes, trying to compose his thoughts. If he had to try all fifty-four variants on Askani meditation, he would. He had to get some sleep.
***
"Clare, what kind of cereal do you want? And donāt tell me Cocoa Puffs," Domino added immediately as she glanced back over her shoulder at the kitchen table and saw her daughterās eyes light up. "Just because your father had a senile moment and bought you a box doesn't mean you actually get to eat it."
Clare looked crestfallen. "I'll brush my teeth after?" she offered hopefully, swinging her feet back and forth under her chair.
"No dice, monkey," Domino said mock-sternly, turning back to the cupboard. Which is rather bare, Mother Hubbard. Time to bite the bullet and go grocery shopping one of these nights, she supposed. "How about some Cheerios?"
"Eww. Cheerios are gross."
"Well, there's instant oatmeal--"
"Yuck!"
"Cheerios it is," Domino proclaimed, pulling the box out of the cupboard and going over to retrieve a clean bowl from the dishwasher. "Don't worry, kiddo, I wouldn't make you eat oatmeal. Not unless you'd been really bad." As Clare giggled and slurped at her orange juice, Domino filled the bowl, adding milk.
She turned towards the table, bowl in hand, in time to catch an interesting little tableau. Clare had pushed her orange juice aside and was staring intently at her father, her chin resting on her crossed arms. Nathan, who'd been singularly uncommunicative and vaguely broody so far this morning - he hadn't even looking up at her little jab about the Cocoa Puffs - peered over the edge of his newspaper and smiled slightly.
"Aloud, Clare," he said, gently but firmly. "Remember your manners."
Clare gave a put-upon sigh. It was a habit sheād picked up from Zara, and Domino didnāt like it at all. "Can we get fish?" she asked aloud, enunciating each word with such exaggerated care that Domino briefly considered calling her on it. Clare had gotten much better over the last year or so about talking, rather than relying on her telepathy, but lately she'd been getting just a little mouthy whenever someone pointed out she was backsliding.
"Fish?" Domino asked, instead of scolding. Nate had already told Clare to mind her manners, after all. They didn't want the kid getting a persecution complex. "For dinner?" She doubted that. They'd been at Scott and Jean's the last time someone had tried to feed Clare fish for dinner, and Clare had slipped most of it to Jean's cat under the table. It had been a shame--Scott had been experimenting that night, and the results hadn't been bad. Of course, the cat had thought so, too.
"Nooo," Clare said, rolling her eyes at her poor headblind mother. "Fish in an aquarium."
"You want an aquarium? What brought this on?" Nathan asked, laying down his paper and picking up his coffee cup. Now that he wasn't hiding behind the international section, Domino couldn't help but notice the circles under his eyes. He looked so worn, she thought, concerned. Looking like that at the end of a long day was one thing, but first thing in the morning--?
"Uncle Charles got fish. They're in his office." Clare giggled suddenly. "They watch you back. It's cool."
Domino thought about asking Clare if the fish talked to her, too, but then decided against it. She wasn't going to worry about the possibility of her daughter exercising cross-species telepathy unless Clare started to talk about how the squirrels were telling her to burn the house down. Until then, it was just 'part of the experience', as Dana liked to put it.
"What kind of fish?" Nathan was asking Clare. The girl hesitated, then shrugged, and Nathan smiled again, less faintly this time. "Show me," he encouraged her. Clare promptly scrambled up onto her knees - to be closer to his eye level, Domino knew - and stared at him unblinkingly, a look of fierce concentration on her little face. After a moment, Nathan chuckled softly and looked at Domino. "Angelfish, I think," he told her.
"They need a lot of attention, don't they?" Domino asked warily. Not that she knew much about fish, but she had a vague impression that the fancier tropical types were fussy things. If Clare really was talking to fish, they didn't want to get her any that were likely to die overnight if something went wrong with the water quality. For all she knew, it could be traumatic or something.
"They were pretty," Clare said wistfully, gulping down the rest of her orange juice and casting a sideways look at Domino, who remembered she was still holding the bowl of cereal Clare was supposed to be eating.
"Here," Domino said, striding over to the table and setting the bowl down in front of Clare. "Eat, before they get soggy. And you have to have a banana, too," she insisted, tearing one off the bunch in the fruit bowl at the center of the table and waggling it at her. "Vitamins and all. Can't have your grandmother telling me I don't feed you properly."
"They make my teeth funny," Clare complained, digging into her cereal as Domino set the banana down beside her bowl.
"That's why you brush them after you eat, kiddo," Domino said, and eyed Nathan next. "Nate, what are you having for breakfast?" she asked, deliberately using the mom-voice on him, too.
"Having it," he said, raising the coffee cup and studiously avoiding her eyes.
Domino arched an eyebrow at him. "Youāre being a bad example," she drawled.
#Maybe, but I'm not hungry,# Nathan replied firmly, glancing in the direction of the counter. A pill bottle flew across the room and into his hand, and he opened it, shaking out three of the blue tablets inside.
Three? Domino flattered herself that she kept a pretty close eye on him, and that was definitely more psi-suppressants than he should be taking in the morning. I thought Hank said you shouldn't be taking those on an empty stomach? she thought at him a bit warily as she went over to get herself a bowl of cereal. She had to approach the subject obliquely, given how quickly he regressed to being three years old and sullen whenever anyone tried to talk to him about his problems with his telepathy.
#He may have,# Nate replied, a faint chill edging the words. #But like I told you, I'm not hungry.#
Clare, whoād been ignoring their exchange up until now, finally looked up from her cereal bowl. "Aloud, Dad," she said, her tone far too sarcastic for a six year-old. Nathan glared at her for a moment, but she didnāt so much as blink.
"She's got you there," Domino murmured, and gave Nathan a bland smile as he turned the glare on her. It wasn't much of a glare by his usual standards, actually. He looked more peevish than pissed, and even as she mulled over the distinction, he seemed to give up on being annoyed entirely.
"I suppose I should practice what I preach, shouldn't I?" he said wryly, and then looked back at Clare. "I'm a lousy role model, mi'caehla. Always remember that."
Clare giggled again. She said something back to him in Askani that Domino didn't catch - after eight years, her command of the language had deteriorated to catchphrases and profanities - and went back to eating her cereal, apparently content. Domino brought her breakfast over to the table and sat down, giving Nathan a sidelong look as he went back to his newspaper.
She knew he hadn't slept well last night. Her own sleep had been obscurely disturbed in the way she'd long ago learned meant the problem was coming from the other end of the psi-link. By the time she'd stumbled out to the shower this morning, he'd already been downstairs. For quite a while, too, by the amount that was left in the coffeemaker.
Maybe she shouldn't be fretting. He still had trouble shielding from time to time - it seemed to go in cycles, she'd noticed - and insomnia was usually a symptom. It would explain him trying to overdose on psi-suppressants, at least. But there was less leaking down their psi-link than there should have been if that was the case, and Domino couldn't help but wonder about the inconsistency.
Finishing her cereal, Clare picked up her bowl and slurped down the milk noisily. "Can I take the banana to school with me?" she asked, her big gray eyes guileless as she looked up at Domino, who had to work very hard at not laughing in her daughter's face.
"You're going to throw it in the garbage as soon as we drop you off, aren't you?"
"Nooo."
Nathan snorted. "Clare, don't lie to your mother."
Clare shot him an innocent look. "I'm not lying."
"What, you were going to wait until recess?" Domino teased. Clare scowled at her, but peeled the banana and started to eat it, making such exaggerated faces that no one could mistake the fact that she was doing this under duress. "That's better," Domino said, and reach over to ruffle the child's silky black hair.
"Dom, you're gloating," Nathan said reprovingly. Clare gave him a questioning look, and the corner of his mouth tugged upwards. "That means she's a bad winner," he explained.
"But Mom's always a bad winner," Clare said with her mouth full.
"You know, I've noticed that."
"You're ganging up on me," Domino sighed, suddenly unable to repress a grin. There were times when she still couldn't believe that this was her life, that she was really sitting in her own kitchen being teased by her family. There'd been a little ripple of joy running through the last six years, and sometimes it burst out into the open, entirely of its own accord. She was definitely going soft. "What's a girl to do?"
"Not make me eat bananas," Clare grumbled, and ate the last bite. "There," she said, glowering.
Domino laughed. "Go pack your backpack, sweetheart," she said, and Clare slid off her chair and vacated the kitchen with noticeable haste. *Probably afraid I'm going to make her eat more fruit.*
"What would mornings be without a battle of wills at the breakfast table?" Nathan asked dryly as he stacked the various pieces of the newspaper neatly.
"Dull?" Domino offered, and gave him a sideways look, noticing that he'd taken the pills at some point while her back had been turned. "So," she said casually. "Why the attempted overdose?"
Nathan gave her a direct, faintly wry look. "North America is noisy today," he quipped. Domino opened her mouth to give that the response it deserved, but he shook his head, the edge of amusement fading from his expression. "Don't, Dom. Please. I don't really have the energy to argue about this."
"Who said anything about arguing?" Domino asked. He grimaced, looking away, and she decided not to exploit the opening he'd given her any further, at least for now. His self-control was always a little iffy when he was having trouble with his telepathy, and the last thing they needed was to start the day shouting at each other. "If you're that drained, you could take the day off, you know."
"Can't," Nathan said a bit remotely. "I'm briefing the Security Council after lunch." He finally met her eyes again, giving her a smile that seemed decidedly forced. "I should be done at a decent hour, though, so I'll pick up Clare."
"Well," she said slowly, wondering if she was doing the right thing, letting this slide, "I'm liable to be late."
"Urban combat training run today, right?"
She rose, stacking her bowl on top of Clare's. She hadn't finished her own Cheerios, but Nate's lack of appetite was contagious. "Your ability to keep everyone's schedules straight never ceases to amaze me," she said sardonically. Giving in to impulse, she reached out and brushed a stray bit of silver hair back from his forehead, frowning at how warm he felt. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'll be fine," he said with a sigh, that same unconvincing smile lingering on his face as he looked up at her. "Don't worry so much."
"I can't help it." She leaned over and kissed him, poking inquisitively at the psi-link as she did.
He parried expertly. #You could just take my word for it,# he sent with a faint mental chuckle that sounded more tired than amused.
Domino drew back with a sigh. There was definitely something she needed to know, but extracting a confession would have to wait until later. "I've known you a little too long for that, old man," she said, straightening. "Now, come on. If we're not out of the house by seven, we're going to be late."
***
You were expected to say you hated paperwork, Nathan knew. The bureaucracy involved in running the XSE was cordially loathed by most members of the command staff. The former X-types weren't accustomed to leaving a paper trail, and the ex-Askani network members chafed at being accountable to the UN. Given all the old tensions and new friction and fundamental philosophical differences, Nathan was sometimes amazed that the XSE functioned as well as it did.
Personally, he'd never really hated the paperwork--well, maybe the funding forms, but on the whole, he didn't really mind it. If nothing else, it was a daily reminder that his life and the world had changed for the better. Sometimes it was almost comforting.
This morning was definitely not one of those times. Precog reports had never been his first choice for pleasant reading material, and this latest batch was particularly disturbing. Which was actually becoming a trend, too, Nathan reflected grimly as he leafed through the transcripts.
Standard operating procedure was to talk the precognitive through a verbal description of their vision - the XSE's precogs were taught to call in immediately, no matter where they were when the vision hit - in order to elicit as many details as possible. But the more intense the vision, the more likely it was to be fragmentary, and the ones he was reading about certainly fit that description.
Battles, exploding buildings, charred forests, burning cities, more battles--oh, and piles of bodies, that's lovely. And here he'd thought they'd gotten Armageddon over with six years ago at Akkaba. Grimacing, Nathan closed the folder and set it aside. He had all precog reports routed to him as a matter of course; he liked to run his own analysis while he was waiting for the official consensus, but he wasn't in the right frame of mind to be looking for patterns in nightmare-images just now. He'd go over it in more detail later, when he wasn't so sleep-deprived.
Too bad he couldn't tell his gut reaction to hold off until later. Six precog reports within twelve hours? The same twelve hours in which he'd sensed the timestream rippling so violently? Something had to have happened last night to shift the course of the timeline. Maybe only a little, but enough to set it on a path where the disaster he knew was lurking somewhere down the line had become enough of a possibility to trigger the precognitives.
Nathan leaned back in his chair, sipping at his coffee and trying to ignore the helpless frustration gnawing at him. As much as he approved of this new world he'd helped bring about, the uncertainty that had come along with it was galling. Not that there'd been any way to avoid it. Whatever the thirty-eighth century had become since the timeline had diverged at Akkaba, it was certainly no longer populated by Askani retrocognitives. There was no one at the other end anymore, no hindsight to help refine the foresight of the precognitives. He missed those checks and balances, missed them badly. With the new timeline, they were in uncharted territory, and they couldn't simply afford to sit and hope that the information required to steer it in the right direction would magically be available when they needed it.
Fostering the Chronography group had been the only logical choice. And he was impressed and rather proud of what Lily and her people had managed to do in what little time they'd had. After all, it had taken the Askani decades to set up their system. Lily had shepherded the emergence of a new science in a fraction of that time. As much as some of the temporal specialists from his old network liked to grumble about nepotism, he hadn't picked Lily just because she'd married Alex and suddenly become handy. She was the best person for the job, and she'd more than proved that.
But as far as she and the others had taken chronography, it was still very much a developing science. It couldn't explain the precognitives' visions, or tell him what was going on when the timestream rippled around him. Then again, if he spent less time sitting back and waiting for the chronographers to do all the work and focused on developing his chronopathy or whatever the flonq it was, maybe he'd be able to answer some of those questions himself.
It was just so--nebulous. Chronopathy, precognition--oh, they were fascinating mutations, but they were housed in human brains. Without the sort of checks and balances the Askani system had provided, they were simply too unreliable for his tastes. It had taken an obscene number of lives and a staggering amount of time to produce this new timeline. Was he being that unrealistic to want a dependable, objective method to keep tabs on it? He knew he'd been impatient with Lily lately, that she was doing her best to work the problem from her end, but sometimes when the timestream was particularly unsettled, the sense of urgency got the better of him.
All right. Time to stop stewing. Nathan leaned forward, setting his coffee cup down, and picked up the next folder on the list, the one that held the draft of the final report on the XSE's operation against Fabian Cortez and his so-called Brotherhood. This was what he was briefing the Security Council on this afternoon, and he almost certainly would need to rewrite some of the field reports. He had yet to get it through everyone's heads that their political masters didn't actually want to know the fine details of every operation.
And there were good reasons to be circumspect about what he said concerning this operation in particular. Intelligence failures were inevitable occurrences, but this one had been serious; Wisdom's analysts had prepared an assessment of the Brotherhood's combat capabilities that had significantly underestimated the threat they had posed. Consequently, the field teams had gone in without enough firepower, and there'd been fierce, hand-to-hand combat in the pitch-black corridors of the Brotherhood's underground complex for nearly an hour. Two members of the field teams were dead and the Tower's new infirmary was full of wounded.
The Brotherhood was no longer a threat - their unity of purpose had died with Cortez, and the handful of survivors who'd been elsewhere the day of the operation could be picked off at leisure - but this had not been one of the XSE's shining moments. They'll be dissecting this one in tactics classes at the Academy for the next decade--
#Commander Summers to the CIC! Stormfront! I repeat, Stormfront!# the duty telepath's voice rang out sharply in his mind.
Stormfront was the code for an attack on an XSE installation. The report forgotten, Nathan grabbed at his cane and teleported before he'd finished getting up out of his chair.
***
The CIC was too quiet; it was the first thing Scott noticed as he arrived, and it immediately put him on his guard. A 'Stormfront' code should have had this place abuzz with activity, full of people trying to assess the tactical situation and formulate a response, but instead there was a tense stillness that didn't fit the circumstances at all. Most were intent on their stations, almost fixated, while the only people talking were doing it in nervous whispers. Something was off, here. They were waiting for something--or maybe paralyzed by something, Scott thought, trying to read faces.
It wasn't until he saw the location of the red light blinking on the Threat Board that he started to understand. Oh, damn, Scott thought, his stomach twisting at the sight of Egypt awash in a crimson glow. It's Cairo Base. Not good at all; this could only complicate things. Egypt evoked too many bad memories, too many unpleasant associations. Scott couldn't even exclude himself from that.
Spotting Nathan sitting at the command console, Scott hurried over to join him. "What's the situation?" he asked swiftly, part of him craving details. Details would put it in context, make it something they could deal with instead of a mass of frightening possibilities. Nathan glanced up at him, his eyes burning with barely veiled fury, but went back to glaring at his screens without answering. Fighting back a transitory urge to smack his son across the back of the head, Scott turned to the blond man standing behind Nathan's chair. "Jonas, fill me in," he said, and it wasn't a question this time.
"We don't know the details yet," Jonas Feore said calmly, and Scott spared a moment to be glad that Jonas had the watch this shift. Unlike most of the former network members, Jonas was unlikely to overreact to a situation just because it happened to be developing in Apocalypse's former backyard. He was a moderating influence, and judging by Nathan's deadly silence, that might be handy.
"The comlink went down right after they reported the attack," Jonas went on, and glanced over at the young woman sitting at the primary communications station. Her hands were blurring as they flew over her console at an unnatural speed. "Friesner's still trying to reestablish contact, but she's not even getting a carrier wave."
"But they're still on the tactical net," Scott said, looking back up at the Threat Board. If that connection had been broken, Cairo's marker would be dark. "Surely it can tell us something." They might not be able to communicate with the base's personnel, but its computer should be able to talk to the Tower's. Any information was preferable to none.
"There's been massive damage to the base, that's what it's telling us. Apparently their security systems are completely off-line." Jonas shook his head, looking grave. "Whatever breached their perimeter, it did it fast."
Just what he'd wanted to hear. "In other words, they're in real trouble," Scott observed grimly and looked down at his son, who could have been a million miles away for all the interest he'd been showing in the conversation. "Nathan, what are we doing here?" he asked, with an unsubtle poke at the thread-thin link they shared. Instead of a response, he got an impression of intense concentration, and realized abruptly what Nathan was trying to do. Nathan! he thought at him as forcefully as he could. You shouldn't be trying to reach that far without a Cerebro. The CIC was equipped with the latest model, so there was no excuse.
Nathan's head jerked upwards, and he gave Scott an nettled look. "I fried the last Cerebro I used, remember?" he snapped, blinking as if he were having trouble focusing. "And I did make contact, so don't carp at my methods."
Scott scowled at him, making a mental note to pursue this later. Not that he made a habit of nagging Nathan about his powers, but Nate Grey's not-so-sterling example was still too fresh in his mind. Scott wasn't about to refrain from pointing out to Nathan that he was overexerting himself. He wanted his son around for years to come, thank you very much.
"And?" Jonas prompted delicately. "What's the situation?"
"Not good. They're fighting, defending the base." Nathan shook his head, grimacing. "This isn't some pissant terrorist group getting overambitious. From what I saw, they're facing a full-scale assault." He closed his eyes for a moment, as if reviewing whatever images he'd gathered from the telepathic contact, and then looked back up at Scott and Jonas, his gaze penetrating instead of unfocused. "We need to get them some help before they're overrun. Where's the nearest tactical team?"
Jonas leaned over the console, calling something up on one of the screens. "Istanbul," he said after a moment. "Still debriefing after that counterterrorism operation in Ankara." He gave Nathan a questioning look. "Should I call the Turkish ambassador and tell her to tell her government that we need our people back?"
"Right after you inform that team that I want them ready for transport in thirty minutes," Nathan said, pushing himself up out of the chair. It took an obvious effort, and Scott couldn't help but notice the way Nathan was leaning on the edge of the console and not even attempting to make it look nonchalant. "Scott," Nathan said, turning to him, "go grab your gear. I'm teleporting us both over there." A thin, oddly defiant smile flickered across his lips as Scott gave him a level look. "A little direct supervision never hurts in situations like this."
Their link, faint as it was, was leaking pained weariness from Nathan's end, and Scott's concern only deepened. It would have been an enormous strain for Nathan to narrow his focus and make contact with a single mind at that range. Teleporting himself plus an extra passenger halfway across the world was only going to make things worse.
But the basic plan was reasonable, and Scott knew better than to try and argue Nathan into staying behind. It would be wasted time in a situation where there wasn't the time to waste, and besides, there were other ways to handle this. "All right," Scott said evenly. One thing he was definitely going to try and do was find another long-range teleporter between here and the locker room. Too bad Sulven was in Bolivia.
***
The smoke was blotting out the stars. Nathan started to cough as the wind shifted, blowing both the smoke and a fine haze of sand right into his face. He threw up a partial TK shield, ignoring the wave of dizziness even that slight effort provoked, and hobbled doggedly onwards, determined to do a complete survey of the damage to the base. It was just as bad as it had looked from the air, maybe even worse.
"Coming through!" Nathan heard someone shout, and stepped out of the way as two medics rushed past him, guiding an anti-grav stretcher towards the triage area. The badly burned young woman on the stretcher was whimpering softly, and Nathan struggled to reinforce his shields against the sickening waves of pain and fear her semi-conscious mind was emanating.
It didn't work, which didn't surprise him. He'd passed the point of simple exhaustion several hours ago, and pride was about the only thing keeping him on his feet. Scott had threatened to leave him behind in Istanbul - so he'd nearly fallen on his face after teleporting them there, so what? - which had been completely unacceptable. In the end, Nathan had simply told himself, firmly and repeatedly, that he wasn't allowed to collapse. Thus far, it had worked.
Though the devastation around him was almost enough to make him wish he had let Scott bully him in staying behind. There were fires raging everywhere he looked, and the efforts of the hastily thrown-together firefighting teams appeared increasingly futile. There just wasn't enough water - all but one of the base cisterns had been destroyed - and the one fire-controlling pyrokinetic they'd brought with them had been taken out in the fighting. As Nathan watched, the roof of the hangar collapsed inwards, more smoke billowing upwards furiously. This was swiftly turning into a race to keep the flames away from the few undamaged buildings, and even that was a losing battle.
Back in 2009, it had taken nearly three months, even with thirty-eighth century technology to help things along, to turn the old Cairo West airbase into an installation fit for the XSE's needs here in Egypt. This had been one of the first permanent XSE bases - this desert, even after Apocalypse's death, had secrets that needed to be kept - and had always been one of the best-defended, given the persistent unrest in the Middle East.
Three months to build, less than a night to destroy. By the time they'd gotten here from Istanbul, what remained of the base's complement had been pinned down in the command bunker, taking heavy fire. The attacking force had stuck around for a token skirmish and then scattered. Although Nathan had sent teams after them he wasn't optimistic. Whoever these people were, they'd eluded the sensor net and breached the perimeter before the base's personnel had been able to react. They were quick, efficient, and brutal, and wouldn't be easy prey, even out in the desert.
One of the forensics teams that had been teleported in from Berlin once the fighting was over was busy examining the outside of a guard tower that appeared only slightly damaged, and Nathan headed over to see what they'd found. Getting a clear picture of what exactly had gone wrong here was essential, and every bit of information helped. As he approached, the lieutenant in charge of the team spotted him and jogged over to meet him halfway.
"Sir, you shouldn't be here." The boy had his helmet off - not smart in conditions like these, Nathan reflected - and looked utterly horrified to see him. Under other circumstances his expression would have been entertaining. "It's not secure."
There was a very short list of people from whom he would tolerate this sort of fussing. It was a list that did not include anonymous junior officers. "Are you implying I can't take care of myself?" Nathan growled. The lieutenant blinked and started to respond, but Nathan went on brusquely, not caring to hear him either protest or persist. He was too flonqing tired to pretend he had anything more than a stray scrap or two of patience left. "Never mind. Report."
"Uh--we're still working, sir. But we've picked up traces of an energy signature around some of the buildings." The lieutenant had a notebook computer cradled in the crook of his arm, and he shifted it, tilting it so that Nathan could see the screen. "We're running it through the databases looking for a match. It should--"
KAA-BOOOMMM!!!
Sand, Nathan thought disjointedly, struggling up out of the blackness that had so suddenly claimed him. He was face-down on the sand. Just like before. Disoriented, trying to separate memory from reality, he was sure for a moment that he heard enormous footsteps thundering towards him. He panicked, pushing himself upwards, and almost made it to his hands and knees before the rush of adrenalin failed him and he realized that it was the sound of his own heart pounding in his ears, not Apocalypse coming for him.
Dazed, he looked around, seeing the guard tower in flames and the still forms of the forensics team. Then he remembered. Cairo, this was Cairo, not Akkaba, and--
Someone was shouting his name. Nathan managed to finish sitting up, gritting his teeth at the way his body protested. Bruised ribs at the least, even with the body armor, and there was something, probably blood, trickling down the side of his face. He looked around for the lieutenant, and found the breath for a curse as he saw the young man a few feet away, his head lolling at an unnatural angle and his eyes wide and unseeing. I should have told him to put his helmet back on--
There were screams echoing in his mind, death-screams to go with the bodies scattered like broken toys around the ruins of the tower. For a moment, Nathan couldn't figure out why he wasn't one of them, why--the TK shield, he realized suddenly, stricken. The rest of the team had been too far away, but he should have been able to extend it to protect the lieutenant. He was supposed to be able to do things like that without having to think about it, it was supposed to be instinctive--
"Nathan!" Scott's voice, and Nathan flinched as his father fell to his knees beside him, breathing heavily. "Nate, look at me," Scott said urgently, reaching out and gripping his shoulder tightly. "Are you all right?"
The standard answer was the only thing that came to mind. "Fine," Nathan muttered weakly.
"Don't tell me 'fine'!" Scott almost snarled, and Nathan rocked backwards at the blast of frustration that lashed outwards from his mind. "Are you hurt?"
"Nothing serious, all right?" Nathan said hoarsely, with a little more conviction than he actually felt. He'd been wearing his helmet, but his head was beginning to spin in that 'say hello to your nice new concussion' sort of way he hadn't felt in a while. It hurt to breathe, too. "Had a TK shield up," he went on, his voice breaking despite his best efforts to keep it steady as he looked back at the lieutenant's body. 'What is, is' wasn't much comfort--or much of an excuse. "I'm okay."
"All right," Scott said, and at another time Nathan would have snapped at him for the suspicion in his voice, "but you're still seeing a medic as soon as one's free."
"No argument here," Nathan said under his breath, feeling gingerly at the side of his face. Some sort of gash--didn't feel too big, though.
There were other figures in battle armor checking on the rest of the fallen. Nathan thought of telling Scott there was no point, but as his head cleared a little more he remembered there was something else he should be telling Scott. Something the lieutenant had been saying, just before the tower had blown up--
"Tell the forensics teams to stay away from the intact buildings," Scott was saying loudly, talking into his headset. Nathan let him see to giving the necessary orders, and focused instead on piecing together those last couple of minutes before the explosion. "There are live explosives... No, I don't know if it's just the intact buildings, so warn the firefighting teams, too... I know, but tell them to keep their distance as much as possible."
Computer, Nathan thought suddenly. The lieutenant had been carrying a notebook--where was it? Squinting at the area around the lieutenant's body, Nathan saw it, half-buried in the sand. He pulled at it with his mind and the computer flew across the intervening space, right into his waiting hands.
"--need an explosives specialist... We didn't bring anyone with us." Scott was still talking into his headset. "What? ...No, I don't want to take any chances. Get London and Berlin on the com, see if there's anyone they can teleport out to us."
The notebook had taken a beating. Nathan gritted his teeth and smacked it lightly. The screen flickered, then lit up, displaying the last open file. Energy readings--that was it, Nathan thought, seeing the graphs and strings of numbers. The forensics team had picked up an energy signature around the buildings, and--
His blood froze in his veins. "Oh, no," he said. "No, no, no--"
"Nathan?" Scott asked, laying a hand on his shoulder again, more gently this time. "What is it?"
He knew this energy pattern.
"This can't be--" His voice broke, and Nathan forced himself to ease his grip on the notebook before he broke the poor battered thing. "The explosives--they were teleported in," he said faintly, starting to understand. Wishing he wasn't.
Scott frowned. "That would explain how they breached the perimeter so quickly."
"No. You don't--" Nathan swallowed, and for a minute he didn't want to say it. As if saying it would make it real "The power signature, Scott," he went on, forcing the words out. "I know it. It's from Nur's teleportational technology."
to be continued...
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