Pandora's Box: The Sound of Thunder
January 2012
"How have you managed to turn this place into such a disaster already?" Scott asked disapprovingly, lowering himself into one of the chairs opposite the desk. "Itās only been a few months since we all moved in, Wisdom. No one elseās office looks like this."
Pete snorted. "Itās a natural talent, Summers." Once operations had been shifted to the Tower, Intelligence, like the rest of the XSEās divisions, had found itself with more room than its current needs required. Room to grow, or so the reasoning had been. Personally, Pete had been a little put off by the sheer size of his new office, so he hadnāt seen any need to restrain the clutter. Made the place seem more homey, in his opinion. "Want some coffee?"
"Not for me, thank you," Bishop said, lingering by the window. Admiring the view? Pete wondered. It was one of the officeās few redeeming qualities in his opinion. Still, building shields or no building shields, being up here on the eighty-third floor felt awfully exposed.
"Maybe. Is the cup clean?" Scott asked dryly.
"What do you take me for, Summers--a total barbarian? Of course the sodding cupās clean." Pete retrieved a pair of mugs emblazoned with the XSE logo from behind a framed picture of a two year-old Harry covered in paint and grinning ecstatically. "A gift from my new secretary," he said, filling both mugs and handing one to Scott. "For when I have Īcompanyā, she said."
Scott accepted the coffee with a murmured thanks, but grimaced as soon as he took a sip. Pete tried his own, and made a mental note to clean the coffeemaker at some point. Strong was good, but Moira-esque was pushing it.
"Now that the social rituals are out of the way, why are we here?" Bishop asked, coming over and sitting down. "Iām assuming that if it was anything critical youād have called a full meeting of the command staff."
The harshness in his voice was due mostly to fatigue, Pete thought, giving him an assessing look. The press had been having a field day with the attack in Cairo, and the Security Council had gotten into the act as well, demanding answers. For various reasons, Bishop had been the one on the spot for most of it.
"Itās just some preliminary information-sharing, nothing too pressing," Pete said. "But somethingās come up that I think the three of us need to talk about before it goes any further." He leaned back against his desk instead of sitting. He was too restless to sit, and anyway, some part of his brain was telling him that walking around and sitting behind his desk would turn this into a formal thing, which was what heād been trying to avoid. "You know how I have this whole team of analysts that do nothing but play on the net all bloody day? Theyāve turned up something disturbing."
"Details, Wisdom," Bishop rumbled.
"Iām getting there." Pete reminded himself that verbally beating around the bush wasnāt the way to ease conversational tensions when it came to these two. "Believe it or not, it started with a couple of pieces of Nateās hate-mail."
"How many death threats has he gotten this month?" Scott asked. From someone else, the question might have been a joke, but Scottās expression was too bleak and his voice too flat for Pete to think there was any humor intended.
"No more or less than usual." Pete didnāt see the need to point out that the Īusualā for Nate in the course of a month was more than the three of them combined got in six. They all knew that. The negative attention Nate got was an inevitable side-effect of his role in the XSE.
Bishop shook his head, looking somber. "Sooner or later, someone will decide that sending a threatening email isnāt sufficient," he said. "Nathan has never taken that possibility as seriously as he should. I sometimes regret encouraging him to be our public face."
"He was the best choice," Pete said. "Iām sure weād all like him to be a little more careful about his personal safety, but you canāt teach an old dog new tricks." Daring another sip of his coffee, he went on. "Anyhow, as we all know, people say nasty things about him on a regular basis. Even so, they donāt often accuse him of being a latter-day Lucifer who made war on their god."
"Nur-cultists," Bishop growled, breaking the brief silence that had followed Peteās words. "Theyāre rather like cockroaches, arenāt they?"
"Now thereās a good image," Pete said, liking it. It was just too bad that they couldnāt be squashed like bugs. "The emails led us back to some scattered net postings. Mostly Social Darwinist garbage, but with some pretty blatant pseudo-religious overtones. Including some references to the purifying light of the sun and the messiah coming again from the land of the Pharoahs, so I'll be buggered if I know how they slipped through our net filters." The filters were supposed to catch things like that. Heād have to have a talk with Kitty, see if she had any suggestions.
"I was hoping weād seen the last of them by now," Scott said, his voice just a little too level. His expression had gone from bleak to determinedly blank, enough to tell Pete that the news had disturbed him. Once you knew Scott well enough, he was relatively easy to read. "Itās been six years. Youād think theyād have absorbed the fact that Apocalypse is permanently dead this time."
"People have been expecting their favorite dead heroes and rulers to return to life for thousands of years," Bishop pointed out, his mouth twisting. "Why should it be any different with Nur? Especially since his regenerative cycle meant that he did indeed come back to life periodically throughout recorded history."
"Yeah, but this isnāt King Arthur these lunatics are fixated on," Pete pointed out. "What they might do while theyāre waiting for him to resurrect himself is the issue." He paused, remembering that he did have a little analysis to pass along with the raw data. "My chief analyst doesnāt think this groupās actually using the net for publicity. Goes against type, she says, and sheās got some background with cults, so Iād be inclined to believe her. She thinks what weāve got is the work of a few members whoāve broken ranks."
"Still, they might lead us back to the others," Scott said pensively. It hadnāt taken him long to go from reacting to the situation to analyzing it, Pete reflected. "I suppose it depends on how theyāre organized. Pete, any evidence for that one way or the other?"
"Not yet."
"Is there a way to identify the authors of these net postings?" Bishop asked.
Pete shrugged. "Weāve started a trace already, but it might take a while. They may have broken ranks, but they werenāt stupid about it. Anonymous net accounts, lots of fancy footwork to cover their tracks--you know, the usual." As they absorbed that, Pete mustered a thin smile and broached the subject that had been nagging at him since his chief analyst had presented him with her report. "So," he said casually. "Are we telling Nate?"
This time, the silence lasted long enough for Pete to reflect on how well heād arranged this. This way, Bishop and Scott made the decision, and even if they decided to tell Nate, theyād most likely claim that unpleasant duty for themselves. Either way, Pete would be spared having to break the news and deal with the subsequent explosion. Nathan tended to overreact in a spectacular fashion to Nur-cultists, or even rumors of Nur-cultists. It was as if he took their existence as a personal affront.
Bishop raised an eyebrow, giving Pete a look of grim amusement at his unsubtle attempt to pass the buck. "I see no reason for every member of the command staff to be aware of every investigation Intelligence is currently running," he said very precisely, and then glanced over at Scott as if inviting his opinion.
"I have to agree," Scott said after a moment. Pete had to give him credit; there was only the faintest edge of reluctance in his voice, and no uncertainty that Pete could detect. "I donāt like the way he reacted to what we found in Cairo."
Pete nodded. Nathan had stomped around the Tower in a rage for a full week after the attack, pushing his way into the investigation, intimidating lower-ranking officers into letting him appropriate their personnel and resources and roaring at anyone who tried to stand up to him. It had taken some very deft work on Sam and Domās part to convince him to back off and let someone less emotionally involved handle things. At least, they claimed to have convinced him. Nathan had been alarmingly quiet these last couple of weeks, which probably meant that whatever he was doing was flying below the radar.
"--not sure I trust his judgement," Scott was saying, and the hint of reluctance was gone now. "He doesnāt compartmentalize well when it comes to Apocalypse. I donāt think itās unreasonable to keep him out of this, at least until we have more solid information."
"Well," Pete said, relaxing a little, "Iāll get to work on that."
***
Weekends. He hated weekends. If there wasn't an active operation underway, certain people tended to make a scene if they found him at the Tower on a weekend. As if there wasn't plenty to do even when things were relatively quiet, Nathan grumbled to himself. But his family in particular was under the impression that his should be a nine-to-five job. As a result, he'd teleported right into his office where he could do some paperwork in peace, and fully intended to leave the same way. No point in giving anyone the opportunity to fuss at him.
They'd been doing that quite enough lately as it was, Nathan reflected as he gave the latest promotions list a once-over, then signed it and set it aside. No one had actually come out and called him careless for getting caught in that explosion in Cairo. They seemed more concerned with his reaction to the attacking force's use of Apocalypse's technology. Much as he hated to admit it, he'd given them reason to worry with how poorly he'd handled the investigation at its outset.
But theyād overreacted, Nathan told himself fiercely. His judgement wasn't impaired. Heād just been--insufficiently diplomatic. After all, it wasn't every day that he found out that Nur's legacy was suddenly at work in the world again. The fact that this had all happened in Egypt, in the place he still couldn't help thinking of as the source of all evil, had only made things worse.
Nathan swore under his breath and tossed the next folder - the Intelligence budget for the next six months, and who the hell had thought he needed to see that? - at the 'out' pile. He was on the horns of a nasty little dilemma here, he thought disgustedly. There was no way he could sit back and let the situation sort itself out, but he couldn't take decisive action without being fenced in by well-meaning people who would automatically think he was reacting reflexively and not strategically.
They really didn't trust him. That was what it came down to in the end. If he was up-front about how edgy the situation made him, they would tell him his emotions were interfering with his judgement. If he put on a show of being cool-headed and suitably detached, they would think he was plotting something. It was a no-win situation, either way. Nathan supposed it was his own damned fault; he tended to overdo things like the sun tended to come up in the east every morning and after all these years, the reaction from those who knew him well was just as predictable. Didn't make it any less irritating, though.
Leaning back in his chair, Nathan closed his eyes. He had a dull, lingering headache this morning, the remnants of the migraine that had kept him awake for most of last night as the timestream churned in the back of his mind. 'Churning' was the only word he could think of that fit the feeling; it was something new, a change he'd noticed since Cairo. He'd told Lily, who'd nodded, made a note, and managed not to point out just hopelessly vague he was being.
Maybe she'd taken pity on him. He had it on good authority that he "looked like hell" these days. In fact, it was generally the first thing out of anyone's mouth lately when he tried to engage them in conversation. At first it had been annoying, but then he'd made a game of it. He kept count, so that he could smile at whatever interfering mother-hen was getting in his face, say "Eight!" (or however many times heād heard that same annoying comment so far that day), and then enjoy the blank stare he inevitably got in response. No one appreciated the amusement value of a good non sequitur anymore. It was really a shame.
I really need sleep. A cracked laugh slipped out before he could stop it, and he slouched in his all-too-comfortable chair, rubbing at his temples. Sleep-deprivation was a handy excuse, but that wasn't all there was to it, Nathan admitted to himself reluctantly. It was the anger he was struggling with, trying to keep in check: anger at himself for not being able to make sense of what he was sensing, anger at the others for being suspicious and mistrustful and overprotective, anger at whoever was out there playing with Nur's toys. What the fatigue was doing was wreaking havoc with his ability to separate one target from another, and the anger kept breaking the surface at particularly inopportune moments.
And the timestream was humming in the back of his mind again. Nathan groaned and leaned forward, resting his head in his hands for a moment. He was so tired of this, he thought despairingly. To hell with trying to reinforce his shields, or analyze what he was sensing. He'd tried both tactics over and over and over again, and they'd never worked. He was just as lost as he'd ever been, and he was sick of trying, sick of feeling like the whole world was on his shoulders and he didn't know how it had gotten there, let alone what to do with it.
At least it wasn't so bad right now, he thought dully, trying to find some comfort in that. The humming was soft enough that it was actually tolerable. Letting the rest of the air in his lungs out on a sigh, Nathan straightened and eased back into the chair again, starting an Askani breathing exercise.
For what it was - well short of real meditation - it worked surprisingly well. His heart rate started to slow, and the edge of adrenaline that had been fueling his frustration began to fade. He inhaled deeply, feeling a flicker of amusment at the way the smell of his coffee overrode all the other scents in the office. The air felt faintly charged, almost alive; the new Tower shields were being tested this weekend, he remembered. Even the cacophony of thoughts crashing against his shields began to seem more like white noise than an assault once he relaxed a little.
The hum of the timestream was still there, of course. He hadn't really expected it to go away. Still breathing deeply, Nathan closed his eyes and listened, letting his mind drift as he did. The hum was almost melodic, he noticed after a moment. That was unusual. He was more used to the sound of the timestream setting his teeth on edge. As he contemplated the inconsistency, the hum increased slightly in volume, and he'd be damned if it didn't sound almost like singing after all. One voice, singing a single low note--
The timestream gave a convulsive shiver, and suddenly the one voice was many, a shattering chord slicing through him like a bolt of lightning. It went on and on, building in intensity, pushing in on him from all directions as if it wanted to crush him, and Nathan couldn't breathe for the pressure of it. He tried to grab the arms of his chair, to ground himself in his physical surroundings, but he couldn't find them, couldn't even feel the chair beneath him.
But he was seeing something in the sound, even with his eyes closed. Images flickered through his mind like summer lightning, too rapid for him to consciously absorb each. A few lingered a little longer, came across more sharply than the others. His own techno-organic hand braced against a doorframe, covered in blood. A blanket, its edges embroidered with some intricate design - a design he knew, but couldn't place - in metallic thread. A ball of red-gold light, and something was moving inside the light, reaching for him--
Then it was gone, all of it at once. Slumping in his chair, Nathan gasped desperately for air, wishing that he had breath enough to swear. An outburst of profanity would have been truly satisfying at the moment.
What the hell was that? His chest was burning and his head was throbbing, steadily and so fiercely that his eyes were watering as he tried to refocus on the office. He needed to be careful what he wished for, he thought dazedly. He'd wanted something to happen, some new piece of information to come along that would help him decide what to do next. Of course, he'd been hoping for something a little more illuminating.
His link with Dom was quiet, thankfully. She was in Russia this week; apparently that was distant enough that she hadn't caught the backlash from--whatever the hell that had been, or she'd be reacting by now. Thank the Bright Lady for small mercies. As the shock faded and his thoughts returned to something approaching coherence, Nathan pulled his chair closer to the desk and reached out with still-shaking hands to switch on his terminal. This might not have been illuminating, precisely, but it had left him with a new question.
As he'd always understood it, chronopathy was basically an awareness of the timestream, the ability to anticipate change, to identify nexus points. Even in its strongest manifestations, chronopathy functioned on an instinctive level, and it was not a visually-oriented ability. You felt the timestream, you didn't see it. He didn't know what those images had been exactly, but they couldn't be chronopathic in origin.
Maybe he'd been going about this the wrong way. Or just looking in the wrong place. Grimacing in frustration, Nathan rubbed his eyes and then called up the library computer's files on precognition.
***
February 2012
Teleportation had never been her favorite way to travel. You couldn't beat it for convenience, of course, but even after all these years of doing it on a regular basis, it still made her dizzy. Domino kept her eyes closed until the moment of lightheadedness passed, then opened them to see that Lieutenant Holt had managed to deposit her right on the front porch. She'd have to remember to compliment him on his precision.
Digging her keys out of the pocket, she unlocked the door and stepped in. The house was dark, which she'd expected given that it was well past midnight. Clare would certainly be asleep, and Nathan must be, too. Both psi-links were silent, only a few ghostly images whispering down them, too vague to grasp.
That was perfectly all right. She'd be more than happy to join the club and call it a night. Slinging her duffel bag over her should, Domino started up the stairs, yawning as she went. They'd arrived back in New York around dinnertime and she'd been in debriefing ever since. But at least it was done. She'd been tempted to stick around for another couple of hours to get the paperwork done, but she was just too tired. The last month had been exhausting, to say the least. I'm getting too old to be chasing bone-headed mutant anarchists around Siberia in the middle of the winter.
Upstairs, she checked on Clare first. "Hello, Fishface," she murmured to the Black Moor swimming placidly in his tank. The fish blew bubbles at her, and Domino smirked as she moved across the room to the bed and carefully straightened her daughter's tangled covers. Though she was usually a restless sleeper, Clare didn't even stir as Domino leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
Straightening, Domino slipped back out of the room, closing the door behind her and checking the control panel for the psi-shielding. The readings were all normal, so she headed down the hall to the master bedroom, her maternal instincts satisfied. For the moment, at least; generally speaking, her maternal self was a little peevish lately. Separation anxiety, maybe. She had called home every chance she got, but that wasn't the same as being here.
A month in the field had given her too much time to think. As the operation had dragged on, she had begun to contemplate, if reluctantly, making some changes. There were a limited number of years left in which she could be an active field officer, true, but satisfying her inner action junkie couldn't take priority anymore. The idea of a desk job was horrifying, but there had to be some alternative to missing large chunks of her daughter's childhood.
The house wasn't entirely dark after all, Domino realized, seeing the thin line of light beneath the bedroom door. "Nate?" she called softly as she opened the door, but there was no answer. He'd fallen asleep reading, she saw as she came in. In a very awkward sort of position, too, slumped back against a pile of pillows with his head tilted back at an uncomfortable-looking angle.
Domino studied him for a moment, her lips pursed. "Paperwork in bed," she murmured wryly, setting her duffel bag down. "I've been away too long, I see." He was going to wind up with a sore neck if he slept for long like that, but she was loath to wake him up. He hadn't actually admitted it in any of the vidlink conversations they'd had over the last few weeks, but she was fairly sure he was still having problems with insomnia.
Nathan didn't stir as she approached the bed, not even when she leaned over him to pick up the folders that had apparently slid off his lap when he'd dozed off. She started to pile them together, intending to set them on the nightstand where they'd be out of the way. But the labels on them caught her attention, and she hesitated, taking a closer look.
Precog reports? Not what most people would choose to read to unwind at the end of a day, but then, Nathan wasn't most people. She sorted through them, noticing that they dated back nearly a year. One particularly thick folder was unmarked, and she opened it, only to find what looked like the entire library file on precognition. Leafing through it idly, she wondered what he was researching. Something for the chronographers, maybe?
Nathan came awake with a gasp, abruptly sitting up, and Domino took a prudent step backwards, startled as much by the flare of shock along their link as by his sudden movement. "It's just me, Nate," she said as he looked up at her blearily. "I didn't mean to wake you up."
He made a face, rubbing at his eyes. "You didn't," he said hoarsely. "I just--" He trailed off, mustering a weary smile as he looked up at her. "I mean, 'Hello, light of my life.' When did you get in?"
Setting the folders aside, she leaned over, took his face between her hands, and kissed him soundly. "A few minutes," she said casually as she straightened again. "I've been in New York since seven, but Bishop was being a bastard. Insisted on getting through everything before he let us go."
Nathan snorted, settling back against the pillows in a more comfortable position. "He's been obsessing about this operation," he said, his voice still sounding gravelly. Domino snorted and went over to the dresser to get a pair of pajamas. "You know how he hates it when things get messy," Nathan went on. "He's been fretting about the delay."
"Him and his schedules," Domino said derisively, pulling her shirt over her head. "I can't believe things ever ran that smoothly in his XSE. You have to wonder where these lofty expectations of his come from."
The projected timeframe for this operation had been unrealistic; she'd realized that as soon as she'd taken her teams into the area. They'd had to do much more investigative work than anticipated, and relations with the locals had been rocky. She had opted for subtlety, for deftness rather than speed. Better a scalpel than a hatchet. If nothing else, she had left the XSE's reputation in the area in better shape than she'd found it.
"You know very well where his God complex came from. He's been spending too much time around me," Nathan said with a deadpan look. Domino stuck her tongue out at him as she finished changing. "Never mind him, anyway. I'm just glad you're home," he said as she came back over to the bed. "Our darling daughter's been running me ragged."
"Of course she has. I gave her very specific instructions," Domino said with a wink, turning back the blankets on her side of the bed and getting in. Nathan switched off the lamp on his nightstand, and she settled down beside him, relishing the closeness but a little perplexed by how quiet the link still was. "So," she said lightly. "Since we're on the subject, did the munchkin do anything I need to know about since the last time we talked?"
"Well, I had to separate her and Zara a couple of days ago--" Domino jolted half-upright, but Nathan made an contrite noise, patting her shoulder. "Take it easy, it wasn't anything serious. And Clare started it."
Domino took a deep breath, telling herself to relax. "Don't drop things like that on me," she said warningly as she laid back down. The general consensus among the adult telepaths of the 'family' was that the psionic therapy Sulven had performed on her daughter would prevent Zara from doing things like pushing her playmates down the stairs, but Domino didn't entirely share their confidence. Not when it had been a three year-old Clare who'd taken a header down the stairs that time.
If it had been up to her, Clare and Zara wouldn't be spending much time together, even now. She'd tried to put that into practice after the stairs incident, but keeping Clare away from Zara had meant keeping her away from Nick as well, since the twins were so rarely apart. That hadn't gone over well at all. Having Clare crying for days on end had not been a good experience, so Domino had compromised. The girls could be around each other so long as they were carefully supervised, and she intended to insist on that until Clare was old enough to kick Zara's ass if the need arose.
"She was doing a pretty good job of it on Monday," Nathan said wryly, picking up on the thought. "Too good, actually. Zara was the one who looked a little worse for wear after the dust settled. It's a good thing her healing factor is robust. All the bruises and scratches were gone by the time Logan came to retrieve her and Nick."
Domino sighed fretfully. "I was being facetious, dolt. What happened?" Something flickered along the link in response to her words, and she frowned. That had felt almost like satisfaction, as if he was pleased he'd managed to steer the conversation in this particular direction.
But Nathan's voice was perfectly even as he answered her. "Clare started it, like I said. They were sitting at the kitchen table having lunch, and she threw a glass of chocolate milk at Zara's head."
"She did what?" Domino exclaimed, shifting so that she could look up at him. The moonlight coming in through the window was strong enough that she could see the slight smile on his face. "Why the hell did she do that?"
"Zara said something unpleasant to Nate."
"The poor boy's going to get a complex if our daughter keeps defending his honor," Domino said, shaking her head. "I assume you read her the riot act?" Nathan made an affirmative noise, and Domino sighed. "I think I'll have a little chat with her, too. Her telekinesis is getting too strong for her to be getting in the habit of throwing things at people. Next time it might be the couch." Nathan chuckled softly, and she grimaced, poking him in the arm. "Stop it. This isn't funny. And why the hell does she act like this with Nate and not with Harry?"
"Harry fights back," Nathan said after a moment, as if he'd had to give it some thought. "Nate doesn't."
Domino sighed again. Funny, that the two empaths in the little group should be such different personality types. "Someone needs to have a talk with the boy about standing up for himself," she said, making a mental note to do it herself. Sam and Dana might fuss at her for interference, but what was a godmother for?
She looked up at Nathan again, to see him staring off into the shadows with a suspiciously blank expression. "Next question," she said speculatively. "Did you do anything I should know about since the last time we talked?"
Nathan looked down at her, tilting his head. His smile this time was decidedly sardonic. "Well," he drawled, "I nearly broke a chair over the British ambassador's head when I was briefing the Security Council on Wednesday."
Domino blinked. Despite the smile, he seemed perfectly serious. "Are you really getting that irascible in your old age," she asked, "or are you just cultivating the appearance of being a cantankerous old goat?"
"A little of both, actually."
The link was more muffled than quiet, Domino decided. As if he were deliberately shielding--but why? She poked at the link inquisitively, but the only thing coming through clearly was his fatigue.
Whatever it was, she told herself, it could wait until morning. There was no point in trying to drag it out of him at this hour. "Go to sleep, Nate," she said, laying her head on his shoulder. "You seem tired." And she sure as hell was.
He gave a soft laugh. "I never sleep well when you're not here."
"Flatterer."
***
The elevator was far too crowded. Nathan closed his eyes, trying to stay focused and outwardly calm, so the people packed in here with him like sardines wouldn't notice how much it was bothering him. Every thought in the minds of the people around him was like a tiny knife digging into his shields. He'd taken another dose of psi-suppressants in his office, but they hadn't kicked in yet. Maybe he should have waited?
Just as he asked himself the question, the elevator stopped, and he looked up to see they were at the eighty-third floor already. He'd zoned out again, he realized, irritated. "Excuse me," he muttered, and his fellow sardines parted to let him out, shifting in unison as if the cramped conditions had created some sort of collective mind.
And his mind was definitely wandering. Of course, his focus was absolutely shot these days; that was part of the problem. Nathan nodded to the security officer sitting at the desk in front of Intelligence Division's glass doors and them hobbled through them as they opened, trying not to wince at the high pitch of the psychic noise on this particular floor. Intelligence was apparently a busy place today. He really should have called Pete up to his office instead of coming down here, but you didn't do that when you were the one asking for a favor.
He skirted around the edge of what he'd once heard Pete call 'my very own cubicle farm', whatever that meant. A piece of slang he'd never picked up, apparently. The architect who'd designed the Tower had preferred these large, semi-open working spaces; synergy, that had been his reasoning. There was definitely something to that, Nathan thought dimly. It was hard to sense discrete psi-signatures here. They were all flowing together, into something that was more than the sum of its parts. And it was tugging at him, too, the momentum of it almost like an undertow--
Focus, he told himself fiercely, stopping and bracing himself with a hand against the wall beside him. He was here to talk to Pete about getting more intelligence assets in South Africa to keep an eye on some of the expatriate Genoshan Magistrates who hadn't gone quietly into retirement. Nathan squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, doggedly reinforcing his shields, and then resumed limping towards Pete's office, last in a row of individual offices on the other side of the central room.
"Commander Summers," Pete's secretary greeted him as he stepped through another, smaller set of glass doors. "Commander Wisdom's just run downstairs for a few minutes--he should be right back."
"Mind if I go in and wait?" Nathan said, gesturing in the direction of the inner office. He wasn't up to making small talk, and he could really use a few minutes of semi-privacy to wrestle with his shields some more.
"Of course, sir. Would you like some coffee?"
"I'll be fine," Nathan said absently, moving past her and into Pete's office before she could make any comments about him refusing caffeine. His own secretary, Layla, was already convinced he was either gravely ill or a clone. To be perfectly honest, he would have loved some coffee, but too much caffeine on top of the amount of psi-suppressants he'd been taking lately upset his stomach.
He lowered himself into one of the chairs opposite Pete's desk, a sigh escaping him. There were tiny cracks appearing in his shields again already, noise from outside seeping through. Closing his eyes again, he set about reinforcing them once more, just like he had out in the main office, just like he had twenty times a day for the last month. Nothing seemed to work for long: not the advanced shielding techniques Sulven had taught him, not even extra psi-suppressants. His shields kept fracturing, no matter what he did.
It didn't make any sense. The visions and the chronopathy shouldn't be messing with his shields. They were something else entirely, completely unrelated--weren't they? Nathan grimaced, rubbing at the back of his neck. He supposed it could be fatigue. Ever since Akkaba, his shields had needed constant attention, and it would be an understatement to say that his concentration had been lacking lately.
It was a manageable problem right now, but if it got much worse, it wouldn't be. If his shields actually collapsed, the question of what the hell the timestream was trying to tell him would be moot, because he'd be curled up in a fetal ball in some psi-shielded room somewhere, wishing he was catatonic.
Slouching in the chair, he tried to imagine the noise pushing at his shields as waves crashing against a breakwater. If he could build the breakwater up, stone by stone, his shields might follow. Visualization exercises like this were the last resort of the desperate as far as he was concerned, but he might as well try.
But water didn't talk, and he could still hear voices. Almost involuntarily, he tried to pick up individual thoughts, single threads - individual trees in the forest instead of waves at a breakwater - but the psi-suppressants were working well enough to hamper his fine control and make his grasp clumsy. He wound up brushing against several minds in quick succession, not getting more than a snapshot impression of each.
--fucking starving, why did I skip lunch?
--wish I could pile up all this paperwork and torch it--
--keeps looking at me. I wonder if he's--
--have to get in touch with--
--morons, worshipping Apocalypse--
Nathan jerked upright in his chair, grabbing desperately at that last mind. Whether it was adrenalin or his concentration returning when he needed it, he made contact again. Too close a contact--he was linked before he could help it, seeing through the eyes of one of Pete's junior analysts as the young woman studied the information on her computer screen.
It was an eyes-only file, according to the header, and the title at the top of the screen read 'Possible cult activity relating to En Sabah Nur'. Stunned, Nathan simply stared through the analyst's eyes for a moment, his own mind racing in futile circles as he tried to absorb what he was seeing.
Nur-cultists. And he hadn't been told--why the hell hadn't he been told? The shock started to fade, replaced by a cold, building rage that somehow helped him focus like nothing else he'd tried today had. Now wasn't the time to contemplate the motivations of whatever misguided idiot had been keeping this from him, he told himself harshly. This was his opportunity to correct their sin of omission.
Gritting his teeth, he 'encouraged' the analyst - who was not a telepath, and seemed unaware of his presence - to scroll down the page. She did so obediently, and he skimmed through the brief analysis section and the attached net postings that constituted the evidence for the cult's existence. The rhetoric sounded about right, Nathan thought, seething. When he found whoever had cut him out of the loop on this, he was going to--
"Hey, Nate."
He felt a jolt as his consciousness landed back in his own body with what felt like an audible snap, adrenaline from the shock - when was the last time he'd been surprised like that? - making his heart pound loudly in his ears. "Wisdom," he responded, wanting it to come out like a half-threat and knowing it came out as a gasp.
"You okay?" Pete said with a frown, peering at him as he went over and sat down behind his desk, setting his notebook computer onto its docking station. "You look a little tired, if you don't mind me saying it. Aren't you getting any bloody sleep at all these days?"
His hands weren't quite steady, so Nathan gripped the arms of his chair tightly and glared bitterly at Pete. Who had to be involved, he thought grimly, if one of his junior analysts had access to the information. He was tempted to have it out with him right here and now, but somehow he doubted that Pete was the only one behind this. The last thing he needed to do was to provoke them into closing ranks--or to prove them right. The motives behind this were obvious; someone had thought he wouldn't be able to handle this in a professional fashion.
He'd never liked to be predictable. "I wanted to talk to you about shifting some assets into South Africa," he said as coolly as he could. He would get to the bottom of this, but he would do it quietly. If they had decided not to trust him, he'd just have to work around them.
***
Grading papers was not her favorite part of life as an Academy instructor, Jean reflected as she scrawled a pointed suggestion about proofreading on one paper that was talking very enthusiastically about mutants and baseline humans having 'intimated relations'. I'm not even sure what to think he meant by that. Admittedly, this batch of papers wasn't all that bad, the occasional case of borderline illiteracy aside. Too bad that didn't make the process of marking them any more enjoyable.
The astral plane rippled in a very particular way, and Jean looked up expectantly. The person who materialized in the center of the kitchen floor was exactly who she'd expected to see at this time of the evening, and Jean smiled. "Hello, dear," she said to Nathan, noticing that he was still in his dress uniform. He must have come right from the UN. "We saw you on TV this afternoon. How's the new ambassador?"
"Interim ambassador, as she keeps reminding everyone," Nathan said with a faint smile, hobbling over to join her at the kitchen table. Jean couldn't help a frown as she got a closer look at him. He still looked haggard, worse than when she'd seen him a few days ago, and he'd looked moderately awful then. It hadn't been noticeable at all on the news coverage, so she'd actually dared to hope he'd gotten some rest. Apparently that had been wishful thinking on her part. "And Frost is actually very cranky. At the reception she kept wondering aloud how she let Magnus talk her into this."
Jean couldn't help a smile. Emma agreeing to serve as the New Lands ambassador to the UN until Magnus could find someone to take the job on a permanent basis had been a surprise, to say the least. "She'll probably wind up liking it and tell him she wants to keep the job," she said, noticing the shadows beneath Nathan's eyes fretfully. "Although I'm sure I don't want to know what favor she extracted from Magnus in return."
"Trust your instincts on that. You really don't." Nathan gave a heavy sigh and slouched in his chair, his gaze straying in the direction of the den. "What are the rugrats doing? It's too quiet."
"They're watching a Disney movie. Don't be so suspicious," Jean chided. "Let's let them finish--it's only got ten minutes or so to go. Unless you and Clare have somewhere to be?" Nathan shook his head, and then looked longingly in the direction of the coffeemaker. Jean snorted. "You don't look like you need any caffeine at the moment, Nate."
"I always need caffeine," he said, giving her that wide-eyed, appealing look that really should not be that devastating coming from a man of his age. "All they had at the reception was decaf. I told Emma they were trying to poison me but she just laughed."
Setting the paper aside, Jean gave him a speculative look, reasoning that coffee might soften him up a little. He tended to talk more when he was well-caffeinated. "All right," she said reluctantly, unable to help an inward chuckle at his suddenly suspicious expression. "I suppose it's not going to kill you, and maybe you do need the caffeine," she said, getting up. "After all," she went on sweetly, "you do look awfully tired."
His mouth quirked upwards briefly. "Jean, you have the twins to mother now, remember? And they're young enough to lap it up. Why not go for the path of least resistance?"
"Old habits die hard," she pointed out, pouring two cups. If she was going to get through any more of those papers before turning her attention to making dinner, she really needed a pick-me-up.
"Well, don't worry about me," Nathan said, shifting in his chair. She turned, a mug in either hand, in time to catch a rather spectacular yawn on his part. "Just--too much to do and not enough hours in the day," he said, rubbing at watering eyes. There was an edge to his voice, though, enough to tell Jean that she was probably right to worry. When Nate couldn't lie well, you knew he wasn't at his best.
"I see," she said, arching an eyebrow as she handed one of the mugs to him. He took it, eyeing her warily, and she decided to shift tactics for now. The pile of papers was reminding her of something, and she gave him a stern look as she sat back down. "So, since I'm thinking of it--when are you going to uphold that promise you made me last year and teach a course or two?" She'd been nagging him about it for a couple of years now. Really, he had so much to teach. For him not to put in a little Academy time would be criminal. Besides, teaching was relatively low-stress and she suspected he might even grow to like it, given time.
Nathan didn't seem particularly grateful for the subject chance. "I didn't promise," he groused, sipping at his coffee. "I told you I'd think about it."
"Come on, Nate. It's not like you'd have to draw up course outlines and lesson plans, not unless you had an idea for something new." Jean smiled encouragingly at him. "You could take a section or two of Advanced Tactics," she suggested. "That would be right up your alley."
"I was thinking we could use a chronography course," he said suddenly, taking her by surprise. Jean tilted her head at him, the question already forming on her lips, but he went on hurriedly, a little color coming back to his face. "I meant in general, Jean. That wasn't me offering to teach it."
"Did you have anyone in mind?" Jean asked, genuinely curious. There'd been a great deal of talk about creating a chronography group within the XSE, but none at all, as far as she'd heard, about training up their own chronographers within the Academy structure.
"Not Lily, obviously. She's far too busy." Nathan hesitated, looking vaguely embarassed. "I keep meaning to ask her for suggestions. There's just--I've had so much else on my mind."
"Not enough hours in the day?" Jean asked, not above needling him with his own words. "Or are you just afraid to ask her? I mean, Lily with her allergy to the XSE--I can't see her jumping to help."
She got a half-hearted glare in response. "Yeah," Nathan grumbled, gulping at his coffee. Then he set the mug down on the table, meeting her eyes almost resolutely. "So," he said, with the air of someone about to broach a disagreeable subject--or pick a fight, she wasn't sure which. "Where's Scott?"
"Doing some placement interviews up at the mansion," Jean answered, her eyes narrowing. The mansion was where most of the Academy offices still were, even with the number of new buildings going up on what was slowly turning into a respectable, if somewhat specialized university campus. "Why?"
"He's been avoiding me." Nathan looked more tense suddenly, almost grim, and Jean tilted her head, waiting for him to continue. "He knows I found out they didn't tell me about this latest batch of Nur-cultists."
So that was it. "Ah," Jean said, a little helplessly, and then could have bitten her tongue. It was as good as an admission, and Nathan pounced on it.
"You knew?" he demanded, giving her an accusing look.
"Well, psi-link, remember?" It occurred to her to shield them from the den, so the kids didn't pick up on the increasing tension in the conversation. She felt Nathan add a second layer of shielding to hers, and smiled faintly at him, glad to see he wasn't completely caught up in his hurt feelings. "And when he's stewing about something, your father isn't particularly good at keeping his thoughts to himself."
"You didn't think to tell me when you found out?"
"Honestly, no," Jean said a bit defensively. "They made a decision, and it wasn't my place to second-guess them." Thought that was something of a lie, she reflected grimly. She had second-guessed the decision to keep Nathan in the dark about the Nur-cultists; she just hadn't expressed her doubts to Scott, or done anything about them. From the way Nathan was looking at her, respect for the chain of command wasn't going to be much of an excuse. It was sometimes so awkward to be serving in a military organization with your immediate family.
Nathan made an exasperated noise, and Jean gave him a sharp, worried look as she sensed his shields shudder. "I'm fine," he said tightly before she could ask. There was too much tension around his eyes, though, and 'I'm fine' had never held much weight with her, not coming from him. "Not very happy, but fine."
Jean managed not to sigh. "You said Scott knows you know," she said, wondering if it would do any good to tell Nathan just how much Scott had obsessed over the matter. Though he'd stuck to his decision, he'd still been torn, thinking that he was displaying a lack of trust in his son. "Did the two of you argue about it?"
"No," Nathan said immediately. "What would be the point of confronting him about it? Of confronting any of them?" He shook his head, flushing again. "It was quite the little conspiracy, you know."
Jean winced. "They were just concerned, Nate," she protested mildly.
"Like hell. I'm going to be very honest here, Jean," Nathan said, his voice a low growl. "I was getting out of line with the Cairo investigation, I'll admit that. I'll even admit that I understand people feeling like they might need to work around me a little, because of how I reacted." He hadn't raised his voice, but his eyes were flashing and Jean got the impression that he would have liked very much to shout, and probably would have if there hadn't been three telepathic children in the next room. "But no one even gave me a chance with this. They kept it from me deliberately, and I have a hard time with that."
"It makes you feel like we don't trust you," Jean said, deliberately including herself. If Nathan thought she was taking responsibility for what he clearly saw as a sin of omission on her part, he might ease up a little.
"No," Nathan said, more quietly but no less forcefully. "It makes it very clear that you don't trust me."
"That's not fair." Jean intended to go on, but a questioning, wordless thought poked tentatively at her shields, and she looked towards the doorway to see Nate Guthrie appear there, his pale blue eyes wide and troubled as he studied the scene in the kitchen. Instantly, she projected a wave of reassurance, smiling brightly at the little boy. "Hey there," she said cheerfully. "Did you want a drink or something, kiddo?"
Nate shook his head and made his careful way across the kitchen, climbing up on the empty chair on the side between Nathan and Jean. He folded his arms on the table, resting his chin on them, and peered at them both almost mournfully.
Nathan's expression softened a little. #Developing a peacemaker complex, is he?# he sent to Jean as he smiled down at the boy.
#Yes,# Jean said with a sigh. #If he catches you arguing, he wanders up and gazes soulfully at you until you stop.# It was really quite effective, even if it made you feel vaguely guilty for arguing in the first place. Nate was spending so much time here, with Dana away so much training healers and Sam getting called out into the field so often, that Jean wondered if Colin and Ray would pick up his habits. She almost hoped so, if it got them to interact with other people a little more.
#Were we arguing?# Nathan shot back wryly, reaching into his pocket for something.
#I don't know,# Jean sent back, trying to match his sardonic tone. #At the very least, you were venting.#
With one of those smiles that meant he was about to do something he thought was particularly clever, Nathan produced a quarter, showing it to Nate. He let go of it at about his eye level, but it remained floating in the air, and Jean sensed him exerting a tiny amount of telekinesis to keep it there. After a moment, it started to move slowly, tracing a series of circles in the air before it moved into a figure-eight pattern. Three figure-eights, and then it came to a gentle stop, floating down to land on the table just in front of Nate, who picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully, as if waiting for the coin to explain how it had done that.
"Can you do that?" Nathan asked softly, with just the right mix of challenge and encouragment in his voice.
Nate raised the coin up to his eye level, and mimicked what Nathan had just done perfectly. More slowly, of course, and the coin's landing was a little short of the target and a little harder than the last had been, but Jean was still tremendously impressed.
"That's excellent, Nate," she said, grinning at the little boy and putting every bit of approval she could muster into her voice. "You've been practicing, haven't you?" The little boy's eyes lit up and he beamed at her. Jean couldn't help it--she leaned forward and ruffled his hair, chuckling as he squirmed. "Just you wait. A couple more years, and you'll be putting the rest of us to shame."
Nathan picked up the quarter and handed it to Nate. "You keep it," he said firmly. "Use it to keep practicing with."
Looking delighted, Nate took the quarter from him and started to shift over to the edge of the chair. He stopped suddenly, as if remembering something, and looked up at Nathan with a grave expression. "Thank you," he said, very precisely, and then slid off the chair and wandered back out of the kitchen.
"You're welcome," Nathan murmured to his retreating back, and then turned back to Jean, his eyes gleaming. "Quite the little tension-breaker, that one. I suspect he's just as manipulative as Zara, even if it's in a more positive way."
"He's still so quiet," Jean said with a sigh, and decided to change the subject before she made herself depressed worrying about all the baby telepaths in the family and their varying problems with verbal communication. Colin was still having the worst problems, after all, and Ray, for all that he was headblind, wasn't much better. "I hear Dana and Sam asked you to take over his training in a couple of years."
"You know Dana and Sulven," Nathan said wryly, and Jean had to chuckle. "There are still issues there."
"That's putting it mildly."
"Sulven will have to teach them all certain things, of course," Nathan said, looking thoughtful. "She still knows more than all of us."
"I know." Jean herself had learned a great deal from Sulven over the years. There was more to Askani discipline than she'd ever dreamed, and some of it, like the astral-plane teleportation, she still hadn't mastered. "I wasn't crazy at first about the idea of her teaching Colin anything until he was a lot older, but it would be stupid not to give him every advantage."
Nathan frowned, an odd sort of unease in his voice as he spoke. "I'm worried in general about her teaching the boys," he said. It had the sound of a confession to it, and Jean leaned back in her chair, pursing her lips. "Askani discipline is still the best thing we have for birth-emergent psis, but Sulven doesn't really interact well with males of any age."
"I've noticed that," Jean said, trying not to sound sarcastic, or to point out that it wasn't limited to males. Nathan did have a point, though. Sulven was the child of a stringently matriarchal society, and she still tended to be as condescending with men as she was competitive with women. "Though she seems to be doing all right with Nicholas."
"I'm not so sure of that," Nathan muttered. Jean frowned, but before could quiz him on that, the kitchen was suddenly invaded by a small stampede of children, Clare in the lead.
"I'm ready to go home now!" she announced cheerfully, bounding over to her father and clambering up onto his lap. Nathan winced, and Jean opened her mouth to tell Clare she was getting a little big for that, but hesitated at the brief, puzzled look the girl gave her father.
"So I see," Nathan said, and then glanced over at the twins. "Hey, guys," he said to his brothers. Colin and Ray eyed him for a moment, identical expressions of indifference on their faces, and then wandered over to the counter where the cookie jar was sitting.
"Hey!" Jean said, unable to help an incredulous laugh as the cookie jar started to slide across the counter towards the edge, seemingly of its own accord. #You little monkey!# she projected merrily, jumping out of her chair and swooping down on Colin, who giggled as she swept him up off his feet and dangled him upside down. Ray started to giggle as well, and Jean shot him a mock-reproving look. "I was sitting right here, you know."
"Bad," Nate said softly from where he was lingering in the doorway.
"Yes, very bad," Jean said, righting Colin and kissing him soundly. "No cookies until after dinner."
"Can Nate come home with us?" Clare was asking Nathan.
"Why?" Nathan asked.
"So he can meet Fishface."
Jean snorted involuntarily. #Only Domino would name a Black Moor 'Fishface',# she sent to Nathan, who grinned over Clare's head at her.
#And only our daughter would actually keep the name,# he replied, and then turned his attention to answering Clare. "He can meet Fishface the next time everyone's over at our house. Sound fair?"
"Nooo. I want him to meet Fishface now. Please, Dad?" Clare said, employing the infamous puppy-dog eyes.
Nathan sighed. "Who's coming to pick him up when?" he asked Jean, who laughed at the silent 'bail me out, here?' plea she saw in his eyes.
"He was supposed to be staying overnight, actually," she confessed. Dana was out of town and had taken Alison with her, and Sam was out on a mission.
"Well, he can stay overnight in Maine as easily as he can here, I suppose," Nathan said grudgingly, and Jean nodded. Nathan peered down at his godson. "Nate, do you actually want to come meet Fishface? I don't know what Clare's told you, but he's not the world's best conversationalist." Nate nodded eagerly, and Nathan bowed to the inevitable. "Then go grab your stuff."
"I'll help!" Clare said eagerly, sliding off Nathan's lap and going with Nate.
Jean sat down, still holding Colin. Ray wandered over to Nathan, giving him an expectant look, and Nathan picked him up absently. Ray immediately started playing with the insignia on Nathan's uniform.
"You're turning into quite the pushover," Jean told her eldest child gravely.
"Only when the people doing the pushing are small and cute." There was a trace of warning in the words, despite his amused tone, and Jean told herself that she'd maybe better have a little conversation with Scott, whether or not it broke security protocols. Little Nate Guthrie wasn't the only one with a peacemaker complex.
to be continued...
alicia's stories | [ARCHIVE] | comicfic.net