Pandora's Box: Part Three - Windward
March 2012
This was ridiculous, Nathan thought irritably, squinting as he emerged from the command bunker into the harsh sunlight. He had grown up in the desert, so the heat shouldn't be bothering him like this. He'd been here for less than three hours, and already it was making him feel dizzy and slightly sick. The fatigue from teleporting between New York and Egypt probably wasn't helping, but he felt like the heat was slowly sapping what little energy he had left.
At least out here it wasn't as stifling as it had been in the bunker, which hadn't had its environment systems reinstalled yet. Keeping his eyes narrowed against the sun, Nathan paused to study his surroundings for a moment, counting six work crews in the immediate vicinity of the bunker alone. There were nearly a dozen others elsewhere on the base. Work was going on around the clock to get this place up and running again. He approved, but had to pity the poor bastards on the day shift.
They were making excellent progress, he knew; Cairo Base was scheduled to be operational again by the end of the month, and it looked like they'd meet the deadline with no problem. He'd delivered the appropriate words of praise to the people in charge and ought to do the same for the work crews, but he needed some time to himself first. His shields felt paper-thin. Back in the bunker, with so many people packed into a relatively small space, they had actually begun to tear under the strain.
Being here wasn't helping his focus, of course. Intellectually, he knew how much distance separated this place from Akkaba, but it was the same desert and it still made him jumpy. Acknowledging that it was an unreasonable reaction didn't really help to soothe his nerves. A tiny, irrational part of him was listening apprehensively, half-expecting to hear Apocalypse's voice on the wind--
Nathan took a deep breath and told himself to stop being stupid. Maybe the heat really was getting to him. He should have thought to change into a desert-weight uniform before he came, he reflected, stopping to slip off his uniform jacket. It helped, if only a little. Grimacing, he started in the direction of the perimeter, thinking to find an intact guard tower and get a better view of the base as a whole.
The tower that had exploded and killed the forensics team on the night of the attack was on the other side of the base. That was fine with him; it wasn't a spot he particularly wanted to revisit. He opted for one of the newly constructed towers, one that was thankfully empty of people, and climbed with some difficulty up the narrow metal-grate stairs to the top.
The view was precisely what he'd wanted, and though the interior of the tower was still unfinished, the environmental systems, thank the Bright Lady, were working. The air was wonderfully cool. Nathan just wished there was someplace to sit; the stairs had been almost more than he could manage, and his head was spinning.
Hobbling over to the side of the tower that faced the base, Nathan braced himself with a hand against the smoothly curved plasglass of the window and tried to slow his breathing. The view really was perfect. He could see the entire base from here, and the changes were impressive. The first incarnation of the base hadn't been too much different from what one would see at any state-of-the-art military installation in the early twenty-first century, but what he was seeing now was something that bore more resemblance to an installation from his century. Like the Tower, it would be a showpiece for the XSE's capabilities, as well as a functional tactical base. He couldn't help remembering something Charles had said to him upon seeing the plans for the Tower, about architecture as propaganda--
Abruptly, the scene laid out before him shimmered like a mirage and changed, becoming something else entirely, a gleaming white city with soaring towers and anti-grav bridges. Nathan recoiled from the window, but the strange city shimmered and vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The base was there in its place, reassuringly solid, but Nathan winced and squeezed his eyes shut as his head started to pound.
The timestream was growling at the back of his mind, and he bit his lip hard. Not now-- He couldn't afford one of his episodes here. Someone was bound to come looking for him shortly - he'd slipped out of the bunker without telling anyone where he was going - and if he chose right now to fall on his face, he was going to have some explaining to do.
But the timestream, as usual, wasn't responding to reason. He kept his eyes closed and listened, wishing bitterly that he could figure this out. In his rational moments, he knew that he was just sensing change in the timestream, that the visions had to be precognitive snapshots of the new potential futures brought about by those changes. His research had told him that precognition and chronopathy didn't generally go together, but he hadn't found anything to suggest that they couldn't.
Sometimes, though, he honestly couldn't help thinking that the timestream was trying to communicate with him, that the visions happened when it got sufficiently frustrated with his lack of comprehension to deliver a precognitive kick in the head. Are you listening, Dayspring? It was a ridiculous thought - he'd gotten chapter and verse multiple times from both Sulven and Lily about personifying the timestream - but it kept reoccurring.
Growling was a poor description of the noise the timestream was making this time. It sounded like thunder--and wasn't that the most ridiculous flonqing simile he could have come up with? The sound of thunder, a storm on the horizon. Trite didn't do it justice.
The rumbling at the back of his mind grew, becoming a roar, and he sensed the next flash coming before it hit, slashing through his mind like lightning and chasing away the acerbic commentary on his descriptive talents. What he saw was New York, the city unnaturally quiet beneath an iron-gray sky. He seemed to be watching from somewhere in mid-air, high enough to see the Tower soaring over the buildings around it, gleaming silver despite the lack of sunlight. The scene seemed frozen, caught in a moment.
Then, as he watched, the Tower exploded from within. Floor after floor of windows blew out, belching fire, until the structure of the building itself began to collapse inwards, vanishing inside a black, billowing cloud of smoke and dust--
The vision splintered like broken glass, like the Tower's windows, and Nathan staggered, leaning heavily against the wall beside him for support as he tried to catch his breath. His shields started to buckle and he struggled with them desperately, fighting to focus. But the headache had turned into a knot of red-hot agony burning behind his eyes, and the images from the vision lingered, tormenting him. His concentration was--
Gone. A section of his shields exploded inwards, like a dam bursting under the weight of an impossible amount of water. Nathan collapsed, barely managing to hold back a silent scream that every telepath in the hemisphere would have heard. The noise was overwhelming, millions upon millions of voices suddenly babbling and laughing and crying and screaming in his mind, and he was lost, drowning like he hadn't been since his powers had first returned after Akkaba.
It took everything he had to patch the hole. He couldn't do it all at once, he didn't have the energy, but he'd been taught what to do in situations like this. Laboriously, drawing on the very last of his reserves, he formed a delicate layer of shielding, drawing it across the gap. It was like tissue paper, too thin to hold for more than a moment, but a moment was all he needed to create another layer, which bought him a moment for the next. He concentrated feverishly on adding layer after layer, until the patch became almost as solid as the shielding around it and strong enough to keep the voices at bay.
It wouldn't hold, of course. His defenses were too complicated, too intricate, and this was structural damage, bad enough to bring down the rest of his shields if he left it unrepaired. He thought of all his walls collapsing and shuddered, his eyes flying open. His jacket was on the floor beside him, and he reached out and tugged it closer, fumbling with it for a moment before he managed to pull the small bottle out of the pocket.
He supposed it was a bad sign that he'd taken to carrying extra psi-suppressants around, but right now he didn't have much choice. He would have to keep his telepathy dampened until he could do something more permanent about repairing his shields. Maybe he could get away with a better patch job? Rebuilding them from the ground up would take too long, and he couldn't spare the time or the energy, not when the timestream was screaming at him about the catastrophe waiting around the corner--
He took four of the psi-suppressants and then laid back, focusing on taking slow, deep breaths as he stared up at the ceiling and willed the drugs to kick in. Once they did, he could start to think about getting up. One thing at a time. Hopefully no one would come looking for him before then.
***
April 2012
The XSE's operations had been expanded significantly over the past year. Twelve new tactical bases had been established in the last six months alone, with another ten scheduled to come online by spring. Bishop found such progress immensely satisfying on a personal level, but it had led to increasingly complicated demands on his time. Coordinating his calendar had become something of an art, and he was just fortunate to be able to leave it in the hands of a true artist.
"We'll have to move the intelligence briefing to that morning," he said, resting a hand on the back of his assistant's chair and peering down at her terminal, where his various commitments were being manipulated into something approaching a manageable schedule. "I promised Ambassador Deming some time after the Security Council meeting, so I'll be later coming back from the UN than I planned."
"Easily enough done," Paola Anders said briskly, making the adjustment. She was a rather stern-looking woman of middle age, a veteran of the Askani network and one of the most fearsomely organized people it had ever been Bishop's privilege to meet. He had been very wary at first of the idea of a secretary, but she'd assuaged his fears within the first week. "I'll inform Commander Wisdom. What about your meeting with Dr. Parrish at five?"
Bishop frowned. Surely he wouldn't be that late. But then, he wasn't entirely sure what Deming wanted. Best to plan for the worse, he'd always thought. That way you would never be anything but pleasantly surprised. "Leave it, but let Angharad know I may have to reschedule on short notice," he said, not without some regret. He'd been looking forward to hearing R&D's report on the progress of the new command ship; it was one of his pet projects. "Hopefully it won't come to that."
"All right," Paola said, pursing her lips. "This should work, then. I'll just make the relevant phone calls--" The door slid open with a soft hiss, and she hesitated for a fraction of a second before greeting the new arrival. "Commander Summers," she said without the slightest change in tone. "Good morning."
Bishop looked up and tried not to frown at the sight of Nathan standing in the doorway, giving him a decidedly unfriendly look. "Nathan," he greeted warily, slightly alarmed by the fact that Nathan was making no effort to diguise his anger, despite the fact that they weren't alone. "Social call?"
"No," Nathan said curtly. The glow in his left eye was pulsing in an agitated rhythm that would have been enough to give away his mood, even if his composure had otherwise been perfect. Which it wasn't. "You and I are overdue for a conversation."
Bishop raised an eyebrow at the deliberately confrontational phrasing, but inclined his head in the direction of the inner office. Nathan glared at him for a moment longer, looking almost suspicious of the unspoken request, and then hobbled forward and into the other room without another word.
Paola cleared her throat softly. "I'll just make those phone calls while you're occupied," she said with entirely too straight a face.
"Thank you," Bishop murmured wryly and followed Nathan into the inner office, stopping to hit the control pad so the door would slide shut behind him. Paola was the soul of discretion, of course, but something told him that this particular conversation really ought to be conducted in private.
Nathan hadn't taken a seat. He was standing by the window, his posture as ramrod-straight as a cadet's at inspection. Bishop studied him for a moment, then shrugged inwardly and went over to sit down behind his desk.
"All right, Nathan," he said, determined to cut right to the chase. Nathan could be very perverse when he was angry, but it was too early in the morning for games. "What's the problem?"
"Security clearances," Nathan said without turning away from the window. His voice was ominously low, almost a growl. "I thought mine was Ultraviolet. Was I wrong?"
Bishop took a deep breath. "You don't need me to tell you what your security clearance is, Nathan," he said evenly. He'd been waiting for this, for some acknowledgment from Nathan that he knew he'd been kept in the dark when it came to this latest group of Nur-cultists. Admittedly, he'd expected it to come weeks ago, when Nathan had first found out.
The road to hell, he thought, and wondered again if they'd made the wrong decision. He'd never seen keeping Nathan out of the loop as a permanent measure--just a temporary one, until they could get a better sense of who these cultists were and what threat they posed. The decision had seemed so logical; Nathan hadn't been able to handle one possible connection to Apocalypse, so common sense suggested keeping him away from another. But then, Nathan hadn't spontaneously combusted over not being told, so Bishop had to wonder if he and Scott and Wisdom had read the situation wrong.
"I hadn't received notification of my clearance being downgraded," Nathan said, sounding as if he was pushing the words out through gritted teeth. "But something happened when I was reviewing the station reports--you know, the ones that get forwarded to me so that I have enough paperwork to keep me chained securely to my desk?"
Nettled, Bishop opened his mouth to say something sharp to him about his implications, but Nathan went on, cutting him off. "There was a reference in the report from London to a set of attached files. As they weren't attached, I had to go looking. I just figured there'd been a mistake, a computer glitch. When I finally found them, they were coded Ultraviolet." Nathan finally turned to face him, and the tightly controlled fury in his voice as he went on made Bishop shift a little in his chair. "So you can imagine my surprise when I found that I couldn't open them."
"I'm--assuming you managed to read them eventually," Bishop said as dryly as he could, realizing he'd been wrong. This wasn't about the Nur-cultists after all. He'd read the same report, and knew that the files in question related to a series of minor perimeter breaches - probably sightseers, it had happened before - at the London legacy site. "I won't ask how."
'Legacy site' was the XSE euphemism for Apocalypse's former installations. Some had been destroyed in the initial clean-up after the Merge, but they'd had to settle for stripping and sealing others that were in close proximity to populated areas. The techno-organic systems most of Nur's sanctuaries possessed had in many places developed intricate relationships with the local ecosystem over the centuries, making their destruction a chancy undertaking. The XSE had learned that the hard way. There had been the explosion in Akkaba that had knocked Alex Summers out of this dimension, and another incident in Borneo only a few months later, where the attempt to collapse an abandoned underground base had caused a chain reaction that had defoliated nearly two hundred square kilometers of forest.
Nathan was giving him an accusing look now, and Bishop sighed. This was an added complication he hadn't foreseen. "There should have been no impediment to you reading those files," he said, trying not to sound too placating. Nathan didn't look to be in the mood to appreciate it. "I'm not certain what happened, but I didn't authorize it."
He could make an educated guess as to who had, however. Only Counterintelligence could downgrade an Ultraviolet clearance without the authorization of the command staff. Wisdom had apparently been creative in applying the precedent set by the decision to exclude Nathan from the investigation of the Nur-cult. I should have made it clear that was a unique situation, Bishop thought grimly.
Nathan didn't seem mollified. "I had to hack the database to find the rest," he said harshly. "I found reports on similar breaches in Rome and Baghdad. Tell me, did I miss any?" He gave a short, harsh bark of laughter completely void of any real amusement. "I wouldn't want to appear more uninformed than I already am."
"No, you haven't missed any. But these breaches are negligible incidents, Nathan," Bishop said calmly, determined to reinforce the facts of the situations. Hopefully that would defuse the tension somewhat. "In each case, the intruders had less than five minutes within the site before the security teams arrived. There was no moveable technology left in any of those three sites, and none of the stationary systems were interfered with. The security teams checked quite thoroughly."
"But they didn't catch them, did they?" Nathan asked caustically, but he was beginning to look more weary than angry, as if it were too much of an effort to hold onto his indignation. "You can't be sure it wasn't some of these cultists," he went on, meeting Bishop's eyes squarely. "Think of the timing."
"I am thinking of the timing," Bishop said, keeping his voice even. He was going to have to speak to Wisdom about this. Perhaps this had been the proverbial straw that had broken the camel's back, but there had been no need for it. Wisdom had been overly presumptuous. "Five minutes, Nathan. Nothing was taken, no damage was done. If it was these cultists, exactly how would it have benefited them?"
Nathan shook his head, his expression bleak, and there was something close to fear in his eyes for an instant. "We can't afford to rule out the possibility. That's all I'm saying."
Bishop paused, thinking. Nathan was far from objective when it came to anything having to do with Apocalypse, true, but he did have a point. They had a number of variables here--the cult, the successful attack in Cairo, the evidence that someone was using Nur's technology, and now these breaches at the legacy sites. There might be no evidence for the connections Nathan was making, but that didn't mean they shouldn't take it into account as a possible scenario. Maybe they'd overcompensated, trying to keep Nathan out of this. Acknowledging his problems with objectivity didn't mean they had to disregard his experience.
"I've learned not to dismiss your instincts," he said finally, giving Nathan a pensive look. He really didn't look well, Bishop thought. And how often had he made the same observation over the past few months? It was becoming a distressing trend. "I still think you may be jumping to conclusions, but you do have a habit of being right every so often when you're making these intuitive leaps."
"I hear another 'but' coming."
"No more buts," Bishop said, unable to help a faint smile. "A compromise, instead."
Nathan raised an eyebrow. "That word always strikes fear into my heart," he said dryly, but limped over and sat down, a sigh escaping him as he lowered himself into the chair. "Compromises involve too much making nice for my tastes. But go on. I'm listening."
The reappearance of his sense of humor was a good sign, meaning that the danger of an imminent explosion had passed. "Leave the cult to Wisdom," Bishop said, as persuasively as he could. "I'll tell him to brief you in and keep you updated, but you need to let him keep handling the investigation his way."
Nathan frowned, beginning to protest, but Bishop raised a hand. "I'm not finished," he said sternly, and Nathan glowered at him. "I'll find out what happened to your security clearance--"
The glare shifted into a knowing look, accompanied by a smirk that could only be defined as truly evil. "Don't bother. I already know. Pete's next on my list of people to talk to this morning."
"I'll leave it to you, then," Bishop said, and squelched the impulse to offer some sort of apology for how badly this had been handled. He knew precisely what Nathan's response would be, so it was a better idea to focus on offering an olive branch. "I'll make sure your access to the files on these breaches is restored," he said briskly. "Look into them. You can requisition whatever resources you need. If you really think there's a wider pattern here, find us some hard evidence."
"Fair enough," Nathan said. The smirk was gone, but he looked oddly dissatisfied.
Bishop spread his hands wide. "We can't do anything based on conjecture. You know that." Something occurred to him, and he gave Nathan a hard look, his eyes narrowing. "This is conjecture, isn't it?"
Nathan gave a ghost of a smile. "What else would it be?" he asked, an odd, unreadable expression flickering across his features, gone as quickly as it had come. "Thank you, by the way," he went on, a trace of cool amusement entering his voice.
Bishop shrugged, feeling awkward. "For what?" he grumbled. "Suggesting that you further overwork yourself?"
Nathan muttered a curse under his breath and hauled himself up out of the chair. "Where is this impression that I'm ancient, decrepit, and fragile coming from?" he asked irritably. Bishop opened his mouth to answer, but Nathan gave a dismissive wave. "Never mind, I don't want to know. I'm going to go make Pete grovel now."
***
"Ladies and gentlemen, let me be the first to welcome you to Diplomatic Affairs. Contingent on you passing your final exams, of course." A ripple of amusement went through the sixteen soon-to-be Academy graduates seated around the briefing room table, and at the podium, Lieutenant Commander Dorota Rogowska paused to give her newest crop of junior officers an encouraging grin. "Which I fully expect all of you to do."
Sitting beside her, Nathan reflected that Dorota certainly seemed to be enjoying herself. One of us should be, he thought dryly, rubbing his eyes and stifling a sigh. Even if he hadn't been feeling like shit warmed over, he doubted he'd have been able to summon up too much enthusiasm for this ritual, or all the others like it that he'd be attending here at the Tower over the next few weeks.
All these fresh, eager young faces brought back uncomfortable memories from the future of other youngsters, most of whom had gotten themselves messily killed by the Canaanites. Those who'd survived had grown into battle-scarred, dead-eyed veterans. To be honest, he wasn't sure which set of memories hurt more.
"We have a larger than usual group this year, I see," Dorota went on, still smiling. "I'm pleasantly surprised. This isn't the flashiest assignment in the XSE, after all. Our evaluation officers at the Academy feel very left out at times," she quipped. "No one ever tries to bribe them for their recommendation."
More soft laughter, and Nathan sighed inwardly, slouching in his chair. It felt so surreal to be sitting here listening to Dorota charm her new officers. The atmosphere in the room was so relaxed, so normal. He couldn't have felt more out of place.
Going through the motions of everyday life was getting increasingly difficult lately. Probably doesn't help that I can't remember the last time I had a good night's sleep. The timestream seemed to grow more unsettled by the day - it was stirring ominously even as he sat here - and the visions just kept coming. They were getting worse, too. Cities in flames, piles of corpses everywhere--voices he knew screaming at him to help them. Shuddering, Nathan forced himself to focus on Dorota's words.
"--a number of different purposes," she was saying, her tone growing more brisk as she got to the substance of her 'welcome to the department' speech. "Some of you have qualified as security and protective officers. You'll most likely be assigned to embassy duty at first." She grinned again. "You won't be thrown out on the front lines as diplomatic bodyguards until you've had some experience. We're not in the business of providing cannon fodder."
Nathan supposed he should be feeling impatient, sitting here doing basically nothing. But his only alternatives at the moment were more of the same over in Security, a phone conversation with the Russian ambassador to the UN that he'd been putting off for three weeks now, or the mountain of paperwork sitting on his desk. There was nothing to be done on more important fronts. His investigation into the security breaches at the legacy sites was going nowhere fast, and even Pete's investigation into the cult had stalled. They'd found the rogue members responsible for the message traffic that had tipped them off to the cult's existence in the first place, but the six they had in custody had all been members of a single, relatively new cell, one that had blown its security early and been promptly cut loose. The description they'd given of their contact had been so generic it was useless.
"For those of you who'll be doing diplomatic work, you'll begin at the rank of junior attaches," Dorota said. "You'll probably be moved around a great deal for the first few years to give you a broader range of experience." She shrugged, spreading her hands wide. "Join the XSE, see the world, right?"
She was really laying on the wit today, Nathan thought a bit sourly and stole her glass of water. He let his gaze roam over the assembled cadets, trying to size them up. He'd read their Academy files, of course, but that was no substitute for looking them in the eyes to see what he and Dorota had to work with. As he let his attention rest on one young man, perversely enjoying the way the boy was pretending not to notice, a red-haired woman Nathan recognized as one of Pete's analysts stepped into the room. She spotted him at the front of the room and skirted around the table, making a beeline for him.
"Commander Wisdom said you needed to see this right away," she murmured as she reached him, and handed him a file folder. Dorota, who'd paused briefly at her arrival, went on smoothly with her talk. Trying not to betray his sudden tension, Nathan laid the folder on his lap and opened it, skimming the first page.
It was a copy of a security report from Turkey, timestamped as having been received in the CIC fifteen minutes ago. There'd been another breach, this one at the legacy site in Cappadocia, an extensive underground complex that they'd had to seal because of the unusual geology of the area. Nathan's stomach twisted as he continued to read. Some of the interior T-O systemry had been removed this time--rather neatly excised, too. Following the crossreference, he flipped the page and grimaced at the pictures. That's part of the environmental control core, he thought, trying to make sense of it. What would anyone want with a piece of that?
He turned back to the report itself and kept reading. The intruders had escaped - of course; prisoners who could be interrogated for useful information would be too much to ask - but this time the security team had gotten there in time to get visual confirmation of their presence--
Before they'd teleported away. His heart thudding sickly in his chest, Nathan followed the second crossreference and turned to the last page in the folder, a brief analysis of the energy signature left behind by the teleportation.
It was identical to the one they'd found in Cairo. Of course, Nathan thought, trying to ignore the feeling that the room was spinning slowly around him. Of course it was.
On the bottom of that page was a brief scrawled note in Pete's handwriting. 'Nate - Get your ass down here. PS: Owe you a beer.'
#Dorota,# Nathan thought at her as calmly as he could. #I've got to go.#
Dorota hesitated, looking down at him for a moment, and then nodded and picked up right where she'd left off. Nathan got up, feeling a little shaky as he started to follow Pete's analyst out of the room.
This was what he'd wanted, wasn't it? He should be satisfied, not feeling like he was about to be sick. He'd been so sure the connection was there, sure enough to trust the instinct and go to Bishop, to go out on a limb and risk being dismissed as paranoid--
His bad knee chose that moment to give out on him and he lurched, trying to regain his balance. One of the cadets sprang out of his chair, intending to help him, but a hand on his arm was all it took to make that still-weakened section of his shields start to tear again as the young man's concerned thoughts lashed out at him like a whip. Nathan tried to pull away, but the room seemed to tilt and he wound up on the floor, his coordination deserting him all at once.
"Settle down and back away, all of you! Give him some air!" he heard Dorota snap. Her mind was more disciplined, better-shielded. A calm space amid the uproar, and he clung to it, buying himself a moment of breathing room to wrestle with his shields. "Someone call down to the infirmary, tell them we need a team up here."
He opened his eyes - it took more effort than it should have - and tried to focus on her as she crouched down beside him. "I'm--fine," he forced out, trying not to wheeze. His shields were stabilizing, but so slowly. He hadn't had the meditation time to reconstruct them properly, and now he was paying for it.
"I don't think you are, sir," Dorota said, her voice tight. His vision was blurred enough that her face was a pale, featureless blob, her expression impossible to read.
It was a pity he didn't have the breath to laugh, Nathan thought despairingly, closing his eyes again. It was the law of averages, he supposed; the shape he was in, something like this would have happened in public sooner or later.
That wasn't much consolation, though.
***
The door slid open, and Cecilia looked up, not surprised when she saw that the new arrival was a flustered, armor-clad Domino. "Where did they pull you away form?" she asked, keeping her tone casual so Domino would realize the situation wasn't dire and stop to catch her breath.
"Training exercise," Domino said distractedly, coming over to the other side of the biobed, her searching, almost frantic gaze locked on Nathan's sleeping face. He didn't even twitch at her proximity, and Cecilia nodded, satisfied that she'd sedated him enough. "What happened? All they told me was that he collapsed."
"He did. As far as I can tell," Cecilia said, glancing back at the diagnostic unit's screen to confirm what she'd been reading when Domino had come in, "we seem to be dealing with a combination of impaired judgement and plain, old-fashioned stupidity. How long has been taking too many of his psi-suppressants?"
Domino tore her gaze away from Nathan and gave Cecilia a sharp, questioning look. "I'd caught him doing it once or twice lately. Once a few months ago, too. Are you telling me he's been making a habit of it?"
"Looks like," Cecilia said bluntly, programming the diagnostic unit to do another set of tests. "Judging by the residue I'm detecting in his system, he's been taking too much on a regular basis for at least several weeks."
Nathan's psi-suppressants were an ongoing project; Hank and some of the specialists were constantly trying to improve them, to come up with something that would target only Nathan's telepathy and dampen it just enough, with as few side effects as possible. The practical effect of all this tinkering was that Nathan's medication changed a couple of times a year.
She'd told him he had to be careful with this latest concoction. She was used to her lectures falling on deaf ears - Nathan was, hands down, the single worst patient she'd ever had - but he didn't generally run out and do the exact opposite of doctor's orders. What could he have been thinking? It wasn't as if she'd never caught him doubling up on doses before, but never over such a long period of time. I guess I know why he was avoiding his physical.
Two spots of angry color had appeared high on Domino's cheekbones, and Cecilia repressed a thin smile at the grim look she shot at the oblivious Nathan. "That's the problem, then?" she asked, her voice almost a growl. "The suppressants?"
"It's the most important problem right now," Cecilia answered promptly. Domino looked quizzical, and Cecilia shrugged. "Cause and effect, right? Something made him start abusing the psi-suppressants. I'm guessing he's having problems with his shields, but I'm certainly not qualified to help him with that."
Domino muttered a curse under her breath. "I should have guessed," she said darkly, her hands clenching on the edge of the biobed. "He's not been himself lately. He's been distracted, distant, not sleeping well--" Something close to guilt shadowed her eyes as she looked up at Cecilia. "I've been too damned busy to stop and figure it out. I kept telling myself that if it was anything serious, he would tell me. You'd never know I'd been with the man for all these years, would you?"
"Don't beat yourself up," Cecilia said firmly, although she was a little irked at herself for letting Nathan get away with delaying his physical for three weeks. Her reasoning had been similar to Domino's, too. She just hadn't felt like nagging him, especially since doing so was generally futile. The man could be insanely stubborn at times. Most of the time, actually. "What I'm going to do now is take him off the suppressants completely for a few days, let his metabolism take care of what's in his system. It won't be comfortable for him, but it's the easiest way."
The infirmary had several private rooms with heavy-duty psi-shielding. They'd have to get one ready for Nathan, maybe reinforce the shielding a little. It wouldn't be enough, Cecilia knew. The Z'Nox chamber back at the mansion wouldn't have been enough. Nathan's telepathy had been amped up to unprecedented levels by the Merge, and artificial shielding was even less effective than his own shields were without the psi-suppressants. He was a tricky case, always had been. She'd have to get Jean or Charles or Sulven in here, all three maybe, to find out what had set this off and help Nathan fix it. Only there was a good chance she'd have to sedate him once the psi-suppressants were out of his system entirely, and if she did, he wouldn't be in any shape to work on his shields--
"Cecilia?" Cecilia blinked and looked at Domino, who was frowning at her, beginning to look more than slightly exasperated. "Are there or aren't there any lasting effects I should know about?"
"I don't think so," Cecilia said after a brief, considering pause, and Domino visibly relaxed, her shoulders sagging. "There's no sign of liver damage or any of the more serious effects we might have seen." His hyperactive metabolism had probably helped on that score. "So long as we figured out what happened and keep him from trying a repeat performance, we can probably record this in the Big Book of Stupid Cable Tricks and leave it at that."
"I'm going to kill him," Domino muttered after a moment, but it seemed like a token threat as she reached out and stroked the side of Nathan's face gently.
Cecilia mustered a wry smile. "If you're going to do it, do it now and spare me the work." Domino gave an edgy little laugh, running a hand through her disheveled hair. "Hey," Cecilia said reassuringly. "Don't worry. I haven't put this much time and effort into him to watch him do himself in by accident. If I have to dole the damned pills out to him every morning so that he only takes what he's supposed to be taking, I will."
"I'll take care of it," Domino said firmly, and then took a deep breath. "So," she said in more of a bantering tone, "is he actually asleep, or did you have to sedate him?"
"The latter, of course. He wouldn't stay on the examining table." He'd been very agitated, Cecilia reflected. Almost panicked. She checked his vital signs, frowning at the elevated EEG activity. That was unusual; with the effects of the suppressants, she'd have thought the opposite would be the case. Very odd, Cecilia told herself, and made a few additions to the list of tests she needed to run.
***
"What were you thinking?"
She'd really wanted to shout the question at him, Nathan knew. He could sense that much at least, but anything more was hit and miss, even with the link. He just couldn't narrow his focus that far. Most of the western hemisphere was babbling merrily away in his head and it was only going to get worse. He knew that, too.
"I wasn't. I wasn't thinking," he muttered, wishing he could teleport himself out of here. Anywhere else would do. But that wouldn't have been an option, even if the room hadn't been shielded. In the state he was in, he'd have smeared himself across the astral plane, and if by chance he hadn't, Dom would have tracked him down and made him wish he had.
"Clearly not. Although I'm surprised to hear you admit it," she was saying to him now, her voice still low but her tone cutting. She was making a real effort to keep her anger under control, he could tell just by the look on her face. Maybe he should tell her that it wasn't necessary, that her thoughts were beginning to melt into the noise, psi-link or no psi-link.
Or maybe not. She didn't seem to be in the mood to listen. He'd awakened to find her sitting beside his bed, looking like she'd much rather be pacing the narrow confines of the shielded infirmary room. When she'd seen he was awake, she'd told him where he was, what had happened, and gone to some lengths describing just how pissed she was. Then she'd really pounced--figuratively speaking, of course. He was moderately impressed by her restraint. By all rights she should have been throttling him by now.
Dom gave a sudden, harsh sigh and leaned forward, taking his hand. With the physical contact, the link abruptly grew sharper, almost searing in its clarity, and Nathan struggled not to react. If he did she'd let go, and he didn't want to lose track of the link again. It might hurt, but at least it was something to hold on to.
"Just tell me why," she said, and the anger had an edge of hurt in it now. Stubborn bastard. Why didn't he tell me--fuck that, why didn't I figure it out? came whispering down from her end of the link, and Nathan closed his eyes, guilt gnawing at him. She shouldn't be angry at herself over this. It was him who'd kept the problem to himself, him who'd let it get out of control.
He concentrated on answering her. She deserved that much, at least. "I'm having trouble with my shields," he said, opening his eyes again and trying to focus on her. His vision was still hazy, something it had in common with the rest of him. Cecilia must have been overenthusiastic with the sedative. Either that or his metabolism was asleep on the job.
But he could see Dom clearly enough to catch the strained little smile that tugged at her lips as she spoke. "When in doubt, state the obvious?" she asked, her grip on his hand tightening slightly. "Come on, Nate. I didn't think you'd been overdosing on your psi-suppressants because you thought they were breathmints."
"It's the not sleeping, I think," he said, and the part of his mind that was thinking clearly was appalled by the sound of his own voice. He sounded--old. Querulous and old. But Dom was watching him, clearly expecting more, so he forced himself to go on. "I don't sleep well, and my shields get worse. Then the insomnia gets worse."
All true, as far as it went. Just not the whole truth. Part of him knew he should tell her about the timestream, about the flashes, but he didn't dare. Not now, when he was having so much trouble thinking straight. If he tried to tell her and made a mess of it, she'd think he was babbling and it would take forever to convince her otherwise.
But she might think that anyway, it occurred to him suddenly. Even if he managed to explain it clearly, she might think it was the suppressants in his system or the strain on his shields making him see things. Hell, the whole thing wouldn't have made sense coming from someone in perfect health and an unimpeachable mental state, and he didn't fall into that category, did he? Nathan shifted on the biobed, his heart racing and a knot of sick horror forming in the pit of his stomach. He'd been so damnably stupid! He'd thought he was buying himself time to figure it all out, but all he'd done was provide them with a whole host of reasons to think he was delusional, or at least confusing telepathic input with something else--
"Nate," Dom said, sounding mildly exasperated, as if she'd been trying to get his attention and he'd been ignoring her. Shivering, he looked up at her, trying to compose his features, but she frowned at him and he knew he'd failed. "I said, why aren't you sleeping well?"
"Too noisy," he said weakly, at a loss for anything else to say.
She raised an eyebrow at him. "I'll buy the whole 'vicious circle' argument," she said, a bare touch of dry amusement in her voice even as her gaze lingered on his face, unsettlingly intent, "but it had to have started somewhere."
"I just can't concentrate, all right?" he said, much more vehemently than he'd intended. He had to stick to that, he thought wildly, at least until he figured out whether to tell her. No, how to tell her. He was going to tell her, he just had to figure out how. And when.
Dom frowned again, letting go of his hand and leaning back in her chair. "Why didn't you talk to Sulven or Jean, then?" When he didn't respond, she sighed, looking like she couldn't decide whether to be frustrated or disgusted. "Nate, there had to have been a better way to deal with the problem. Why mess around like this instead of asking for help?"
"I'm stubborn?" he offered feebly, realizing she'd chosen not to push him any further on the previous subject. She was probably just putting it off until later, but he'd take what he could get right now.
"This isn't funny," she said, glowering at him.
"I know, Dom," he said, swallowing. "Trust me, I know. There's not a thing funny about any of this, unless you count me thinking I could handle it."
Dom shook her head. "I could have killed you, you know," she said, and looked like she was still considering it for a moment, despite the lightness of her tone. "There I was, running my training exercise, minding my own business, when I get a call from the Tower telling me that my ass of a partner's in the infirmary. Incidentally, Dorota told me to tell you that you traumatized her cadets."
Before he could say anything to that, she had leaned closer to the bed, reaching out and laying her hands on his shoulders. The link flared into life again, and her expression was fierce as she glared down at him. "You are not allowed to scare me like that," she said, her voice very low and very implacable. "I thought we'd established this years ago."
"I'm always backsliding," he whispered past a lump in his throat. How could he have been so stupid--so careless? He hadn't thought about any of it--he'd just reacted, done what he thought he needed to do to keep functioning, but that wasn't an excuse. Not when he had her and Clare to think about, their feelings to consider. He tried to pull himself together, to tell Dom that and ask her to forgive him, but the link was so sharp that it hurt, and what was left of his concentration was fraying.
He could hear through the room's shields already. That didn't surprise him; when Dom had told him where he was and what was going on, he'd known they wouldn't be effective for long. Shielding technology hadn't progressed significantly in the last seven years, and the last time he'd been in this position, only running to the ends of the earth had given him the breathing room he needed to reconstruct his own shields. And while he was quite fond of the New Lands, spending another few months in Antarctica wasn't an option. Not with everything that was happening here.
Dom backed off a little, and the last thought that came across the link before it was swallowed up again was full of despondent anger. I can't even touch him without hurting him--damn him for getting himself into this mess, and damn me for not seeing it sooner--
But her voice, when she spoke, was still soft and almost soothing. "How do you feel?"
"My head hurts," he said uncertainly. There was so much he should say--so much he needed to say. He just had no idea where to start.
"I'm not surprised," she said, more briskly, and then paused for a moment before she went on, a little hesitantly. "You know, Cecilia was muttering something to Hank about your EEG being erratic. I'm not sure what that means."
Nathan opened his eyes and stared up at the pale blue ceiling. "I suppose stuff like that happens when you overdose on a psychoactive drug," he said slowly, but couldn't help wondering. The suppressants were supposed to--well, suppress psi-related neural activity. If Cecilia was picking up something unusual, it might be related to the chronopathy, to the visions. Medical proof, maybe? Exploring that option had never even occurred to him.
He heard, rather than saw Dom shift in her chair. "Cecilia did say she was surprised you haven't been hallucinating," she said lightly.
It was meant to be a joke, he knew, but the implications made his heart speed up again. Could he have--no, he told himself harshly, concentrating on regulating his breathing. There was no way the flashes could be hallucinations. Not when they were so closely related to the timestream's movements. Besides, he hadn't been doubling up on his suppressants more than occasionally when they'd started--had he? Nathan stiffened, a frustrated noise slipping out as he tried to remember and couldn't. There was no point in trying to figure this out when he couldn't think, he told himself fitfully. No point at all, and he wasn't going to let it torment him--
"Hey," Dom said worriedly, leaning over him again but not making a move to touch him. "What is it?"
"Wallowing in my own stupidity," he said after a moment, trying to put some bite in his tone but failing. What he really wanted to do was smother himself with his own pillow, but he didn't think he had the strength. "The next few days aren't going to be a whole lot of fun."
Dom smiled rather weakly at him. "Probably not. You should try and sleep."
"I don't know if I can," he said after a moment.
"I could always have Cecilia knock you out again--"
"No," he said sharply. Dom's eyes widened slightly, and he swallowed, then explained more calmly. "The sedative just made my shields worse. I don't want--I know she'll have to, eventually, but I don't--" He trailed off, confused by the sad little smile she was giving him now.
"Always have to do things the hard way," she murmured, her fingers gliding across his jaw for a moment, the touch so fleeting that the flare of the link was just a twinge.
Nathan gave her the closest facsimile of a sardonic smile that he could manage. "I thought this was about me trying to take the easy way out?" he asked tiredly.
She snorted softly. "Heard me thinking that, did you?"
"Didn't need to." He closed his eyes, sighing again. "You're right, you know," he murmured, taking a deep breath and starting to compose himself as much as he could. The more of his shields he could reinforce now, while he could, the better off he'd be in the end. "You're so right."
to be continued...
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