Pandora's Box: Part Five - The Country of the Blind
June 2012
Some part of him was still surprised that the world hadn't come to a screeching halt at the possibility that Nur would be gracing it with his presence once more. But once the initial shock had faded, he'd resolved that he wouldn't let the news paralyze him. Lily was still trying to determine whether the filter implicating Apocalypse in the developing crisis was an anomaly or something more ominous, but that didn't mean he had to sit back and wait to hear from her.
He had rearranged his schedule ruthlessly in order to fit in as much time with Sulven as possible, and they were having meditation sessions at night as well. It was cutting into what little sleep he was managing to get, but he couldn't see any other option. There were after all a finite number of hours in the day. Dom, thankfully, was overseas on another lengthy mission, so there were a minimum of explanations to be made on that score.
Following another of Sulven's suggestions, he had also enlisted the help of the former network member who was now in charge of the XSE unit that processed precog reports. Naomi Jakober had agreed to forward anonymous reports on his visions to her people and to have a full analysis for him as soon as possible. She hadn't asked any awkward questions, but had scolded him for not coming to her sooner.
There were any number of things he should have done sooner, Nathan reflected grimly. He planned to take care of one particular item on that list this afternoon. This was the first time Alex had been at the Tower since that meeting at Lily's lab and Nathan wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to talk to him. It would be as low-key as he could make it, just a casual conversation about Alex's Nexus abilities and what, if anything, he might be able to contribute.
Nur, despite the tell-tale presence in that filter and what had apparently been a starring role in Alex's vision back in January, would not be on the agenda, though. Nathan had no intention of trying to convince anyone that Apocalypse was about to rise from the dead or make a visit from a parallel reality, not until he had something closer to actual evidence. The news of the artifact retrieval had persuaded the others that he wasn't a total paranoid lunatic, and he didn't want to lose what little ground he'd gained.
The training simulation Alex was running was scheduled to end at 1400 hours, so Nathan waited another half-hour before heading down to the Danger Rooms, to allow for the usual post-exercise showers and debriefing. When he got there, however, the debriefing was still going on. Identifying the three cadets Alex was addressing, Nathan rolled his eyes. Morrison and Okashi were both competent, but Robert Vyborny had been pegged as a problem five minutes after he'd walked through the Academy doors.
"--when you're in a real firefight and not a training drill with a couple of your classmates, dirty pool is not only allowed, but it is also encouraged," Alex was saying with commendable patience as Vyborny stared back at him mulishly. "It's a lot harder to force endgame when you're trying to keep casualties to a minimum. You have to take the advantage when it's offered to you and not pass it up in some backwards notion of fair play. Especially if the other side has no compunctions against terminating your ass. There may have been little grace in how I finished them off, but there's a lot less grace in getting killed while looking for a more elegant solution."
"But--"
"But what, Cadet Vyborny?" Nathan asked sharply, stepping out into view. Alex didn't react to his interruption, which Nathan took as permission to continue. A brief scan of the cadets as they jumped to attention told him precisely what the problem was, and he found himself in the grip of a profound sense of irritation. The stupid boy was training as a soldier but wasn't comfortable with the idea of going for the kill in a combat situation? What the hell did Vyborny think he was doing here?
Limping closer, he loomed unabashedly over the three cadets. "Is the only good solution one that is guaranteed to confer a medal of commendation?" he asked, choosing his words carefully. "You will have have an illustrious career with that thinking, Vyborny. One that will have you often polishing your medals for the funerals of the soldiers upon whose corpses you will have built that success."
Watching the boy struggling to cover his reaction, Nathan knew his words had hit home. Still, a little reinforcement couldn't hurt. "Doctor Summers has seen more combat situations than you ever will even if you spend the next thirty years in the simulator," he went on, letting a little contempt creep into his voice. "If you do not have the wisdom to learn from him, then at least try to muster up the respect to keep your fool mouth shut so that your companions might."
Vyborny flushed, but managed a suitably submissive nod. Nathan glanced at Alex for a sign that he had anything to add. None was forthcoming, so he dismissed the three, not surprised by the speed at which Vyborny departed. The boy's pride would likely be stinging for a while yet.
"Vyborny's an ego without an id," he said to Alex once the cadets were safely out of earshot, "but I'm not sure how much of it is him and how much of it is something greater." He gestured tentatively towards the elevator, hoping that Alex would take it as an invitation, and then started limping in that direction, trying not to be too obvious about how heavily he was leaning on his cane. "It's a problem we're having with the psis of that age group."
"Arrogance?" Alex asked, sounding far too amused as he followed, considerably keeping pace with him. It was a courtesy that far too many people forgot. "Hate to tell you this, nephew-o'-mine, but it's not a new phenomenon."
Alex's more-or-less friendly jab almost made Nathan smile, but the urge to frown was stronger. Too many non-psis dismissed the problem like Alex just had, and that sort of cheerful blindness was liable to cause real trouble down the line.
"This is different," Nathan pointed out, more irritably than he'd intended. "These kids manifested post-Merge and were immediately put into training and treatment. They've had none of the traumas most of us associate with emergent telepathy and all of the benefits of their abilities. Power unchecked by fear."
Alex seemed to grasp his meaning. "God Syndrome."
Not a bad term for it, Nathan supposed, although it did rather oversimplify the problem. "More or less," he said, his lips quirking briefly as he reflected on just how offensive some of his fellow telepaths would have found Alex's choice of words. "It's an unexpected side effect of life after the Merge. One that I should have anticipated better." Once they were in the elevator, Nathan pushed the button for the ninety-first floor, giving Alex a sideways look.
Alex only eyed him quizzically as the doors slid shut. "Why?" he asked, and it took Nathan a moment to realize that Alex was questioning what he'd said, not his choice of floors. "Not much of what you experienced in the thirty-eighth century is directly applicable here."
The elevator shot upwards, rapidly enough to make Nathan feel a little dizzy. He ignored the sensation and gave Alex another, more speculative look, wondering just how much the other man thought he actually knew about conditions in the thirty-eighth century. "More and more of it is," he said slowly, deciding that this was a conversational direction better left unexplored. It wasn't pertinent, anyway. "The Askani should have been example enough in this case."
Alex didn't seem to have a ready reply to that, which was a relief. The elevator came to a sudden stop at the ninety-first floor, and Nathan limped forward with some care as the doors opened. His equilibrium really wasn't quite there, today.
His office door was locked when he and Alex got there. He couldn't sense Layla anywhere in the vicinity, which probably meant that she was elsewhere running interference for him with one of the departments he'd been neglecting lately. Since the meeting at Midday Sun, he hadn't been doing a very good job of doing his job. One of these days, someone was going to call him on it. Nathan tapped in the right code on the keypad, and the door slid open.
"Now that we're here, what's up?" Alex asked, following him through the door and into the inner office. Nathan grimaced as his bad knee buckled, making him sit down behind his desk a little more quickly than he'd intended. "Not that I'm not your favorite uncle and all that, but--" Alex trailed off, waving a hand aimlessly as he sat down across from Nathan.
"You're my only uncle," Nathan said without thinking, and then stopped, sighing inwardly as the joke sank in. Dom was always telling him that he got too literal when he was tired. "I--" He hesitated, took a deep breath to compose himself, and then started over. "I have not kept in touch with you, with your situation."
Alex looked perplexed. "You never did, Nathan," he said without rancor. "We've never been anything approaching close and half the conversations we've had in the past dozen years wouldn't have happened if you didn't have a fascination with my wife's work."
"I don't mean socially." Alex rolled his eyes at him and Nathan grimaced, but told himself to watch his phrasing. The last thing he wanted to do was come across as patronizing.
"I know Scott and Logan have been the ones working with you on your training exercises," he went on, "and it was their idea that you run those tutorials with the upperclassmen from the Academy and the junior officers, but--there are other aspects." There he went with the understatements again. Maybe he should be worrying less about sounding patronizing and more about sounding like an idiot. "I don't know that anyone is working with you on those."
"Other aspects." Alex leaned back in his chair, trying to look relaxed, but Nathan wasn't fooled. "Like the ones my shrink deals with or the ones my wife deals with?"
I knew there was a reason I'd avoided having this conversation for so long. Summers men weren't supposed to have heart-to-hearts; they weren't built for it. "You're the Nexus of All Realities, Alex," Nathan said, and it came out sounding both sharper and more exasperated than he'd intended. "Your shrink can't help you with that."
"And you can?" Alex's eyes darkened, whether with memory or anger or both, Nathan wasn't sure.
"I don't know," Nathan said quietly. He was going to make a mess of this if he wasn't careful. Alex's gaze remained hard, but he gestured at Nathan to continue. "I don't know how much you've explored the different possibilities," Nathan said more tentatively. "The potential for what you could be--"
"I know exactly what my potential is," Alex said, his tone biting as he leaned foward in his chair, the facade of relaxation gone. His mental defensives were impressive, a legacy of the time he'd spent adrift in the multiverse, but his body language was nowhere near as well-guarded as his thoughts. "I can traverse realities without damaging them. I can violate laws of space-time for dimensions we haven't figured out exist yet and I can do it without leaving so much as a scratch. No ripples in the time stream, no loose threads in the fabric of reality, nothing. My potential is that I could be the unchallenged ruler of the multiverse - or I could be the tool of the one who would be. I'm not a baby telepath who doesn't realize what I've got, Nathan. I've had much longer than you've had to think about things."
He definitely should have spent more time planning this conversation, Nathan thought half-humorously, half-despairingly. But the rigid control he was sensing in Alex now was painfully familiar, and he felt a rush of something that wasn't pity and wasn't even quite sympathy. Understanding, maybe. Almost kinship.
He tried to put it into words, staring at the picture of Dom and Clare on his desk instead of at Alex, since he really wasn't sure what sort of a reaction he was going to get. "We're not completely dissimilar," he said slowly. "Different magnitude, different preparation, different reasons? Yes. But not all different. Lost in reality or lost in time, after a while it's just being lost. And whether you're being manipulated by an entity you can see and name or whether it feels like some unseen force of randomness, it's still being out of control and helpless. You find yourself focusing on what you left behind because it was yours and you don't look ahead because you don't want to see that there's nothing there for you."
He had spent so many years clinging to the life he'd lost, holding on so hard that he'd been unforgivably slow to open his eyes and see everything he could have in the here and now. Alex's circumstances were different, of course: he had been torn from his life here, had died and been reborn into countless others, but whether it was by chance or by some greater design, he'd found his way home. To Lily and Dane, to everyone and everything he cared about. His return didn't diminish what he'd lost, or how deeply he'd been changed, but at least he had a chance to take back as much of his life as he could. *A chance I never got--and here I am, trying to draw him into something that could take that chance away from him.* Nathan took a deep breath, acknowledging to himself what he was threatening here.
Not that it was going to stop him, of course. It never did. His only justification was that he didn't ask more of anyone else than he himself was willing to give.
"I don't think I can teach you anything, Alex," Nathan said, looking up at him and trying to convey, if silently, something of what he was feeling. "You don't need any more object lessons on what not to do. And if I can help you at all, it'll be self-serving: I need you to think about what you can do as the Nexus of All Realities instead of just what it takes you away from. Not taking over the multiverse, but--there's more to it than that. I need you to consider all of this."
"You need," Alex said, folding his arms across his chest and giving Nathan an assessing look. "And I'm supposed to just smile, nod, and pretend I'm not noticing the absence of the first person plural, right?" Nathan looked away, unsettled by how quickly Alex had picked up on his implications, and Alex sighed. "I know this isn't you reducing the XSE to the collective 'me', Nathan."
The weariness in his voice was something far more complex than ordinary fatigue. Again, too familiar. Wrestling with his conscience, Nathan forced himself to meet Alex's eyes. "How much control do you have over where you go?" he asked softly.
"None that I can tell," Alex said without a trace of either humor or surprise. He'd been expecting that question, Nathan realized. "What control I have is in sensing paths and patterns and changes, like what Lily does with her chronography graphs except I'm working on a reality scale instead of a timestream one. I can tell when realities merge or split or if something's come over from another reality. And you didn't answer my question."
It sounded almost like a reality-level equivalent to chronopathy--something that could be far too useful, potentially. "Something's coming," Nathan said heavily, opting to tell as much of the truth as he dared. He owed Alex that much at least, after having started this. "I don't know what it is. We don't know what it is. But I know it's a crisis point. A nexus point that has to go our way or else the last seven years have been a waste of time. And while everyone is doing all they can to figure out what the flonq we're running headfirst into--"
"You want to make sure the escape hatches work and the back doors open out instead of in," Alex said with another sigh.
"I suppose you could put it like that," Nathan said quietly, not sure he would have. Then again, one of the few logical explanations for the results of that filter was the arrival of a Nur from a cross-time reality. If that was the case--
Giving a hollow laugh, Alex rose from his chair. "Just think about what you ask of me," he said. His voice was carefully controlled, but Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, flinching inwardly at the plea he could sense all too clearly. "I'm not too eager to be experimenting with anything that could cost me my life in this reality again. Not when I've lost so much already and tried so hard to get some of it back."
Nathan started to say something - what, he wasn't sure - but Alex cut him off with a gesture that betrayed a fair amount of suppressed anger and went on. "Don't tell me that I might not have a choice," he said. "Because there's always a choice, Nathan. There always is. I learned that the long way. Maybe your Askani ideas of 'what is, is' and never questioning why work on the time stream, but they don't work on reality. Creativity is pragmatism where I've been and I've died enough times to be pretty damned sure that resigning yourself to a bitter end doesn't solve anything and it only rarely makes things easier. There are a lot of stupid people in the multiverse, but the only real idiots are the truly fearless."
It took everything Nathan had to not to snap at him for that. This was not the time or the place for an argument on comparative philosophy, and the simple truth was, he'd started this. You didn't back someone into a corner and expect him not to fight back, and that was what he'd done to Alex, wasn't it?
"You are a very different person than you used to be," Nathan said, for lack of any better reply. The absurdity of the statement only hit him after the words were out of his mouth, and he immediately wished he could take them back.
Alex's laugh had slightly more humor in it this time. "No shit, Sherlock," he said, lifting his backpack to his shoulder and starting for the door. "I'll see you around, Nate. And tell whoever it is who's in charge of assignments that Morrison should get some extra small arms training. She's got above-average tactical skills, but can't do much more than fire her sidearm straight."
Nathan assured Alex it would be taken care of and watched him go, waiting until the door slid shut behind him to exhale. Food for thought, he reflected bleakly, slouching in his chair and rubbing at his bad knee. Also one more variable to take into account, not that he really needed any more of those. Hopefully it wouldn't be necessary to involve Alex any further.
You could choose not to, his conscience pointed out somewhat nastily, and Nathan smiled humorlessly. In a way, Alex was right: there was always a choice, but too often there was only one right choice. And it wasn't always the one that you yourself, whether figuratively or literally speaking, could live with.
***
Domino leaned against the side of the personnel carrier and did her very best not to snarl at the medic bandaging her arm. He was only doing his job, but it hurt, damn it, and the fact that she'd gotten wounded at all was embarassing. It had just been a piece of shrapnel, but it still shouldn't have happened. She hadn't been moving fast enough. That was the problem, not her luck.
Trying to distract herself, she scanned her surroundings, reflecting that under better circumstances she would have been enjoying the scenery. She'd always loved the Himalayas. It was a hell of a place to fight a pitched battle, though, and she was only glad that she and her team had been in the area long enough to get at least semi-acclimatized to the altitude before the shit hit the fan. They'd been monitoring the ceasefire between India and Pakistan on the Siachen Glacier when the call from the Tower had come in and they'd had to haul ass out here.
This was one of several legacy sites in the region - Nur had apparently been fond of the mountains, too - but the only one today where a large number of well-armed intruders had blasted their way through the automated perimeter defenses and gotten into the site itself, a series of caves that had been carved out of a rock face some ridiculous number of centuries ago. The intruders had been in the process of pilfering the site when Domino and her team had arrived, but they must have expected an XSE response, because they'd sure as hell been prepared. I think they knew they wouldn't be finished by the time we got here.
It had been a mess, and she was just relieved there had been so few injuries among her people. All of the equipment here was a total loss, unfortunately, which would probably make some number-cruncher back at the Tower very unhappy. Domino wasn't sure how much was actually left in the site to protect, though; she'd sent a small team in to do a survey, but they were still waiting for the specialists from the Tower to arrive.
"Dom?" she heard Sam call. She was about to answer him when he came around the end of the personnel carrier and spotted her, his expression brightening as he hurried to her side. "We caught a few of the bastards," he said breathlessly. "Kohler took their helicopter down with one blast. Gorgeous shot, too."
Domino straightened, ignoring the dirty look she got from the medic. "They in any condition to talk?" she asked eagerly. The intruders had left a number of their dead behind, and she had people checking over the corpses, looking for something useful, but live prisoners were much better. Though if Evi Kohler had knocked their helicopter out of the sky with one of her plasma waves, they might very well need some medical attention before they were ready to spill their guts.
Sam nodded. "A bit banged up, but Cronauer teleported them out of the wreck before it went up. They're just bringing them back now."
"Are you quite done?" Domino asked the medic, who glowered at her, fussed with the bandage for a moment longer, and then gave her a grudging nod. "Lead the way," she said to Sam, pushing away from the side of the carrier with her good arm. "I want to know who these people are. Nate's probably spontaneously combusting somewhere if he's heard about this, and I'd like to be able to bring him back some hard information."
There were four prisoners, it turned out. All were male, the oldest looking to be in his early thirties or thereabouts, and all wore the same sort of nondescript mountain-pattern camouflage and protective gear. They all looked a little worse for wear, too, but nothing that a medic needed to see right away. So much the better, Domino thought, folding her arms across her chest and watching as they were put into restraints and collared, in case any of them happened to be mutants. Not that Domino had seen any evidence of that from any of the intruders during the fighting, but it never hurt to be careful.
"Good work," she said to Tony Cronauer, who nodded, but didn't take his eyes off the prisoners. Keeping a tight telekinetic hold on them until the security team had them properly restrained, she knew. "Where's your partner?"
The corner of Cronauer's mouth quirked upwards. "Still chasing one of the other helicopters, ma'am."
"Ah." Not that she was surprised, but she hoped that Kohler still had the rest of her squad along as back-up. "So," she said, turning her attention to the prisoners and hoping they spoke English. "Which of you would like to talk and save yourself from an interrogation back in New York?" It was generally an effective threat. Word had gotten around by now that the XSE was not gentle with its prisoners, particularly with those caught in the act of violating the Cairo Accords.
The youngest-looking of the four - he couldn't be more than eighteen, she thought - spat at her, but then reeled back against the security officer behind him as if he'd been struck. Domino glanced sideways at Cronauer, who managed to look remarkably innocent. I appreciate the thought, but don't get creative on me, Tony, she thought pointedly at him. He gave her another one of those not-quite smiles and a half-shrug. Just listen to see if they let anything slip.
#Will do, ma'am.#
Technically, these four were unlawful combatants, so she could have had Cronauer sift through their minds to his heart's content, but it was probably better to wait and let the experts at the Tower handle that under more controlled circumstances. That didn't mean she wasn't going to shake these bastards right now and see if anything rattled, though. Like she'd told Sam, she wanted to have something to tell Nathan when she saw him.
"Let's try this again," she said calmly, reminding herself to tell the interrogators that the kid would probably be their easiest mark. The other three were all too stoic, but she didn't need to be a telepath to look at the kid and realize that there were openings there that could be exploited. "Who are you, and what were you doing here? The more you tell me now, the less our telepaths will have to drag out of you at headquarters."
They understood her, she could tell that much. The kid's too-fierce mask cracked for a moment to reveal a glimpse of the real fear beneath. Two of his companions gave her poker faces, while the oldest of the four gazed back at her coolly, a faint smile playing on his lips.
#They're shielding pretty well,# Cronauer sent to her, and Domino wasn't surprised to hear it. If they had expected an XSE response, they would have expected telepaths to be on the response team. Sending anyone who wasn't able to guard their thoughts would have been foolish. #Except the kid, but he's scared, so he's not thinking clearly. It's hard to sort out specifics.#
"Ah'd think carefully about how you want this to go down, if ah were you," Sam said to the four men, stepping smoothly into the opening she'd left him. "It ain't pleasant, having a telepath go through every memory in your mind. People don't tend to handle that real well for some reason. Much easier to tell us what we need to know, don't you think?"
He sounded so pleasant, Domino thought wryly. So reasonable. Too bad none of them looked to be in the mood to respond to sweet reason. "I think we're wasting our time here, Commander Guthrie," she said, putting on a wholly insincere look of regret as she shook her head at Sam. "Best to just load them in one of the personnel carriers and let Commander Logan do her job once we get back to New York."
#Whoa!# Cronauer sent sharply, sounding agitated enough that Domino looked around at him, frowning, peripherally aware of Sam following suit. #Ma'am, sir--the kid knows Sulven! He just thought something about how he'd kill 'that Askani bitch' with his bare hands if she came near him.#
Domino felt her frown deepen to a scowl as she looked back at the prisoners. If whatever group they were part of had good intelligence on the XSE, they might recognize 'Commander Logan', female, as Sulven - Sulven might do a lot of black ops work but she also handled a lot of the training for the XSE's psis, a rather more high-profile job - but knowing her as an Askani was another matter entirely.
The kid was definitely looking agitated, shifting from foot to foot as if he was fighting the urge to try and break away from the officer holding his leash. Domino eyed him measuringly for a moment, and decided to push just a little farther and see what happened.
"So you know our resident Askani, do you?" she asked, giving him a pleasant smile. He glared at her, but his defiance wasn't as convincing as he would probably like it to be. "Then I assume you know she'll strip your mind bare and take a lot of pleasure in doing it." She took a step closer to the kid, noting how he stiffened, his breathing growing more rapid. Domino let her smile grow into something truly unpleasant. "And if you think you'll be able to do anything about it when you're in restraints in an interrogation room, kid, you're living in a dream world."
"My mind is pure--" The kid stopped, flushing dark red. "She won't defile it," he hissed at her, but the tough mask was cracking even more noticeably now.
Beside her, Cronauer made a sudden, almost involuntary movement. "Strip him," he snapped.
Domino looked around at him, blinking. "I beg your pardon?" she asked, wondering where the hell that had come from. But Cronauer was staring at the kid, his expression scarily intent, and didn't answer immediately. "Tony?" she prodded.
"Just his shirt," Cronauer said after a moment, without looking at her. "Take off his shirt."
Since she suspected Tony would do it himself in another moment if they didn't, Domino nodded to the officer holding the kid's restraints. "Do it," she ordered. The kid immediately started to struggle, and Sam stepped in to help get his vest and shirt off.
"Holy shit," the security officer exclaimed as he stared at the kid's bare back. "Are these what I think they are?"
"Sure as heck look like it to me," Sam said grimly, motioning for Domino to come and take a look.
She wasn't sure what she'd expected to see, after all this, but the tattoos still took her by surprise. Not because they were terribly impressive - they were small, actually, and rather crudely done - but because she recognized them. The Dark Riders had worn similar marking on their faces, proudly showing off the fact that they 'belonged' to Apocalypse. The fact that this kid, and possibly the rest of them, wore theirs in a place that could be easily hidden suggested something else entirely.
"Cultists," she said softly, understanding dawning. "I'll be damned."
#I caught a glimpse of it,# Cronauer said, his voice in her mind seething with rage. He was an orphan who'd grown up in the network, so he had certain unyielding attitudes when it came to Apocalypse. Nate had always been rather fond of him. #The sentence he didn't finish. He considers his mind 'pure' because he's devoted it to En Sabah Nur.#
Domino shook her head slowly. "Nate's going to be just insufferable about this," she murmured to Sam, who managed a strained smile.
"He will die soon," the oldest of the four prisoners said suddenly in a thick Eastern European accent. Domino stared at him, her stomach lurching, and he gave her a cold, contemptuous smile, looking completely at ease. "It has been decided. The blood of the Askani'son to mark our new beginning."
His words sent a chill through her, but Domino limited herself to a deadly glare. "The phrase 'easier said than done' comes to mind," she said levelly, stepping firmly on the urge to smash the bastard's face in. The cultist's disdainful expression didn't alter one iota. "We are after all talking about the man who didn't leave enough of your 'god' to fit in a bucket." Still nothing, although one of the two men who'd betrayed nothing up until now actually looked distressed at her reminder of Apocalypse's fate. "Get them in one of the carriers," she said to the security team, knowing that she'd lost her objectivity and thus any business she had carrying out even an informal interrogation. "You don't need to be any too gentle about it, either."
"Hey," Sam said softly as they watched the four being hauled away to be secured for the trip back to New York. "Ease up a bit, Dom," he suggested, laying a hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently. Domino took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax a little. "He was probably just trying to get to you."
"No, actually he was quite serious," Cronauer said unhappily. Sam gave him a disapproving look, and he reddened. "Uh, I'll go watch them. Just in case they let anything else slip."
"You didn't need to glare at Tony," Domino murmured as Cronauer hurried to catch up with the security team. "I don't doubt the bastard was serious. People usually are when they threaten Nate's life. He has such a winning way about him."
"You know, ah've noticed that."
Domino sighed and tried to compose her thoughts. Nathan was probably sitting in the Tower right now, all of his attention on the reports of what was happening here. There weren't many places on the planet safer than the CIC. Given that he would probably be there until she got back to New York with these prisoners, she could put aside any concern for his well-being until then.
There was a flash in the sky above them, and Domino looked up to see another personnel carrier appear. "Our Nur-experts to go over the site, probably," she said, watching it fire its vertical thrusters and circle in for a landing.
"Probably," Sam said, and then made a distressed sound. "Dom, you're bleeding through the bandage."
Domino looked down at her wound and sighed again. "Shit. So I am." There was another, brighter flash, and two more carriers appeared, close enough that they'd obviously been teleported in together. Domino gave Sam a puzzled look. "A little late for reinforcements," she said, bemused.
"Ah guess we'll find out," Sam said, taking her by the uninjured arm and steering her back towards where the medics had set up their equipment. "Right now, though, we need to find you either a medic to stitch that up or a healer."
"Sam--"
"Ah'm quite capable of picking you up and carrying you if you try digging in your heels, ma'am."
***
He had never liked interrogation rooms. Probably because he'd spent too much time in such places over the course of his life, all too often as a subject. But necessity trumped personal considerations, as it usually did, and Nathan was only glad that the Tower's interrogation rooms were equipped with a separate viewing area. He could enjoy at least the illusion of separation from the proceedings.
He watched as Sulven circled the chair where the cultist was restrained. Her slow, deliberate strides seemed almost predatory, and her eyes never left her subject. The two security officers in the room with her were watching her and the prisoner carefully, but standing well back. She could have been in the man's mind instantly if she'd really needed to be, Nathan knew, but he was resisting, and she couldn't risk damaging his mind before she got the information she needed.
He wished he could help, but he didn't have the necessary finesse these days. All of the meditative work he was doing was gradually minimizing the damage the shock of his visions did to his shields, but he was still chronically sleep-deprived and his control reflected that. Oh, he could have wiped the man's mind with no effort at all, but that wasn't exactly what was needed here. The timestream was buzzing at the back of his mind and giving him a killer headache at the moment, too, which wouldn't have helped.
Despite the migraine, despite everything, he couldn't help feeling almost exultant. He'd talked to both Dom and Sam, seen the fighting in Tibet through their eyes and reviewed the video records from the personnel carriers, and it all matched. This wasn't another Jordan. One of his visions had actually come to pass. It had been a quick flash several days ago, too fragmentary to give him the information he would have needed to take preemptive action to stop the raid, but this was still progress. At this point, he'd take what he could get.
"Nathan?" He turned to see Scott standing in the doorway, regarding him steadily. "I guess I expected to find you watching one of these," his father said, coming in to join him at the glass.
"Wouldn't miss it," Nathan said a bit uneasily. "Have they started with the others?" Something about Scott's demeanor was setting off little warning bells for him. There were only a few things in this world that made him truly wary, and his father approaching him like a tactical problem that needed solving was right up there on the list.
"Just now," Scott said, frowning at Sulven. He had never been comfortable with telepathic interrogation, Nathan knew, although he generally kept his opinions to himself. "Sam told me what this one said."
Nathan couldn't help an edgy laugh. "Yeah, well, Nur-worshippers do tend to fantasize about killing me. It seems to go with the territory." He wasn't going to worry overmuch; he was used to death threats, and presumably Sulven and the other interrogators would find out if there were any concrete plans out there to bring his life to an untimely end. At the moment, he was more concerned with the raid's reasons and objectives.
"Nate, I'm curious about something," Scott said after another moment of silence. Nathan made a noncommittal noise, which Scott seemed to take as encouragement. "You were sure there was a connection between Nur-cultists and these legacy site raids before this happened."
It wasn't a question, and Nathan glanced down at his father, raising an eyebrow and wondering where this was going. "More or less," he said, just to be perverse.
Exasperation flickered briefly across Scott's features. "My point is, these particular cultists came to the site in vehicles," he said. "They didn't teleport in."
"I know that," Nathan said, wrestling with a swelling sense of irritation. He'd been expecting the 'You were right, but...' from someone, so he'd been somewhat prepared, but he didn't know what Scott wanted, which made him nervous. This didn't sound like the prelude to a lecture about not getting carried away just because he had hard evidence for a single connection--
"I'm--" Scott paused, clearing his throat, and gave Nathan an unreadable look. "I'm just wondering what you think of that."
The last of his patience abruptly vanished. He was too tired and too tense for verbal sparring. "What I think," Nathan said tightly, biting off the end of each word, "is that this cult is very disciplined. Some cells have Nur's teleportational technology, others don't, or aren't using it. Some are attacking the XSE, others are raiding legacy sites. Maybe some are even planning to do both." His anger flared as Scott just stood there, watching him calmly. "Is that what you wanted to hear me say, Scott? That I'm still holding to my paranoid belief that there's a grand design behind this all?"
Infuriatingly, the corner of Scott's mouth quirked upwards. "You keep using that word," he said, almost wryly.
"What word?" Nathan snapped.
"Paranoid." Scott shook his head slowly, never breaking eye contact. "I don't think you're paranoid, Nathan."
"The hell you don't," Nathan said darkly, turning back to the glass. Inside the interrogation room, Sulven had stopped behind the prisoner, her eyes narrowing and a rather alarming look forming on her face. Nathan frowned, and started to reach out to her telepathically, just to see what she was doing--
"I don't," Scott insisted, laying a hand on his arm. Nathan jumped, his concentration broken. "I told you in Jordan that I want to understand what's going on, Nate. I still do. You were right about this, and I don't think any of us can afford to brush that off as a coincidence."
Nathan swallowed, feeling oddly stricken. He hadn't expected this, either the attempt to reach out or the implicit apology. For a moment, he was tempted, especially since Scott obviously suspected already--but there were things he really couldn't tell him. Not just about the visions, either. He could only imagine what Scott's reaction would be to the news that he'd dragged Alex into this. Maybe it was best not to say anything at all--
Inside the interrogation room, Sulven smiled brightly, and then lept at the prisoner and started punching him in the face. For an instant, Nathan gaped at her, but then regained his composure and smashed a fist against the glass, drawing the attention of the shocked-looking security officers. #Get her out of there!# he shouted at them, and they immediately hauled Sulven off the prisoner and dragged her out of the room.
Nathan turned towards the door, but Scott, cursing, beat him there. By the time he limped out into the hallway, the inevitable confrontation was already under way.
"What the hell was that?" Scott was snapping at Sulven, who stood there calmly, looking deceptively serene.
"You can let me go now, boys," she said, smiling at the security officers who were still holding onto her. They flushed and backed off, looking perplexed, and she turned to Scott, still smiling. "I needed an opening, so I created one," she said cheerfully. "It's difficult for a non-psi to concentrate if you're busy breaking his nose."
Nathan looked away, struggling with helpless amusement as Scott, in an acid tone, reminded Sulven of the regulations concerning the treatment of prisoners. He shouldn't be finding this funny, but it was--
The timestream's buzz rose to a howl, and Nathan shuddered, the laughter he was barely repressing threatening to turn into a moan. He'd finally gotten to the point where he could feel a vision coming, and this one was coming at him like a runaway train. Struggling to keep his breathing steady, he stopped resisting and let it take him.
And was somewhere else, in the blink of an eye. He was standing in the shadows of some dimly lit, enormous room. A short distance away, he saw a group of twelve figures, robed and hooded in crimson. They knelt as he watched, raising some sort of inscribed metal panel above their heads and presenting it to someone standing on a set of steps in front of them. Nathan started to look up, wanting to see the recipient's face, but red-gold light blazed out of nowhere, annihilating the image, and he was back in the hallway with Scott and Sulven.
He staggered back a few steps, leaning gratefully against the wall. Scott stopped glaring at Sulven and gave him a questioning look that swiftly transformed into one of real worry. "Nathan? What's wrong?" he asked sharply.
"Just my shields," Nathan said faintly. His head was spinning and he felt more than slightly nauseous, but he forced himself to look at Sulven, who was standing just behind Scott, frowning at him. "They were after artifacts, weren't they?" he asked, focusing on Sulven.
A startled look flitted across her features, but she folded her arms across her chest, her expression hardening. "A couple of specific pieces," she said, her voice deceptively light. "Techno-organic systemry, as well. But yes, they were indeed after artifacts."
Scott looked back and forth between them for a moment, clearly still concerned, but then shook his head, as if reminding himself to get back to business. "Nathan, you look like you should sit down. I'll go check on the prisoner," he said, shooting Sulven another disapproving look that she ignored completely. "Sulven, you should go get the details recorded while they're still fresh. And don't think I'm not going to report you for this. We have rules about prisoner treatment for a reason."
"To add unnecessary complications to life. Yes, I know," Sulven said, smiling blandly at him. "Come along, Nathan," she said, heading down the hall in the direction of the room where a computer with a neural link had been set up to let the interrogators record whatever they got from their subjects. "Let's find you a place to sit down."
"I wouldn't say no to that," Nathan muttered, giving Scott what was probably a feeble attempt at a reassuring smile before he limped along after Sulven.
She waited until they were around the corner and out of earshot before turning to him. "Another vision?" she asked seriously, in the battle language instead of English.
Nathan nodded jerkily. "Was one of the artifacts a metal panel with writing on it?" he asked. The panel was part of the Pandora's Box list. According to thirty-eighth century records, the inscription was Celestial script and had never been deciphered. The panel's location in this era had never been known, and it sure as hell hadn't been in the inventory for that particular legacy site. That didn't mean that it hadn't been there, of course. Just that it hadn't been visible.
Sulven stopped short, her eyes widening. "This is definitely progress, little brother," she breathed.
He laughed unsteadily. "I"ll take that as a yes."
"What else?" she asked eagerly, her gaze locked on his face, almost hopeful.
He took a deep, shaky breath, fighting back frustration. "Nothing," he said, and it came out sounding almost despondent. "I didn't finish the vision, Sulven. It was that damned light again--"
She pursed her lips, muttering something softly enough that he couldn't make out the words. "Bright Lady preserve me, but I've had enough of this," she said more forcefully. Nathan flinched before he could stop himself, but her expression softened and she shook her head, reaching out to pat his arm. "I'm not angry at you, little brother. I know you're doing your best, but there's clearly a deeper problem here. I think it's time we tried something new."
"What?" he asked, almost certain that he didn't want to know.
"You won't like it."
He gave a brief, ragged laugh. "Do I ever?"
***
July 2012
"Nathan, you're wearing a path in a very expensive rug," Emma Frost said, eyeing her guest with a mixture of amusement and wariness. Nathan stopped trying to pace - he couldn't quite manage it, with the cane - and gave her an uneasy look. Emma smiled slightly and patted the empty spot beside her on the couch. "Come over here and sit down," she said, firmly enough that it wasn't a suggestion.
Nathan stiffened for a moment, but then obeyed. "That's better," Emma said, satisfied. She knew he didn't really want to be here - this had been Sulven's idea, not his - but as long as he was willing to do as he was told, she was willing to overlook that.
They were in her penthouse - she hadn't been about to do this on anything but familiar ground - and she suspected that their location wasn't doing anything to help Nathan's comfort level. She had redecorated recently, given that she was expected to do so much entertaining in her new diplomatic position - the New Lands embassy was a pleasant enough place, but a personal touch was always best - and so the penthouse was looking slightly more opulent than usual. It had been a conscious choice on her part, a way of subliminally reinforcing the strength and wealth of the nation she was representing. Putting on a bit of a show never hurt, despite Magnus's rather tiresome concern with appearing 'non-threatening'.
Well, Nathan would just have to deal with doing this in her 'territory'. She was after all putting herself out for this, although if it hadn't taken her more than a moment to agree when Sulven had asked her to help Nathan explore the possibility that his problems with his chronal abilities were psychological in origin. This disturbance in the timeline sounded ominous, and she was too fond of her currently rather pleasant existence to want to see it come to an untimely end. If Nathan was attuned to this crisis point, as the evidence seemed to suggest, it made sense to exploit that. It certainly hadn't hurt that Sulven had made it clear that Emma could call upon her for "services", as the Askani had put it, in return for this consultation.
Though if she were to be scrupulously honest with herself, Emma reflected as she watched Nathan, she'd have to admit that part of it was curiosity. Sulven was convinced that Nathan's precognition was a secondary mutation caused by the Merge, and Emma found the idea intriguing. She had always been fascinated by the Merge and its consequences, but even though she had been one of the Twelve, there were things she still didn't understand, aspects she didn't fully comprehend. Since Nathan was here, she wasn't about to pass up the chance to do a little digging. As the Merge's central figure, he had been most directly affected, after all.
Nathan took a deep breath and then another, as if trying to compose himself. "So where do we start?" he asked, looking a little calmer.
Emma smiled again, wondering if he actually thought the facade was convincing. "Well," she said dryly, "first I thought I'd slip into something more comfortable--" The look Nathan gave her was almost disgusted, and she laughed, waving a hand dismissively. "Oh, don't glare at me. You're too bleary-eyed for it to be at all effective. Have you been sleeping?"
Nathan shifted, looking away. "Little enough that Dom's been on my case again," he said under his breath, and looking at him, Emma could believe it. Domino had never struck her as the type to henpeck, but Nathan did look moderately dreadful.
Something else struck her, and she gave him a thoughtful look. "You haven't told her about any of this, have you?" Nathan gave what could only be described as a guilty twitch, and Emma rolled her eyes. "Color me completely unsurprised. You always did like your secrets, didn't you?"
He looked back up at her, his eye flashing gold. "Is this relevant?" he asked tightly.
"The fact that you haven't told her? Not really," Emma admitted easily. This was certainly a sore spot, which made her loath to drop the subject. It might offer some useful insight into how his precognition was affecting his emotional state, which was certainly pertinent. "The reason you haven't told her, on the other hand--" She raised an eyebrow at him, silently inviting him to explain.
"Call it protecting her, if you want," Nathan said, reddening just enough to tell Emma that he didn't quite buy his own reasoning. "She didn't handle it well when I had problems with my shields back in the spring. I didn't think she needed to deal with this."
Emma shook her head at his 'logic'. The answer was about what she'd expected, but perversely, she was almost offended on Domino's behalf. "It amazes me," she drawled, "how you could have grown up in a supposedly advanced society and yet be so quintessentially male." The look she got in response was decidedly hostile, but she ignored it, moving smoothly back to the subject at hand. "Some ground rules," she suggested.
"I'm listening," he growled.
*A little more life there--that's good.* Emma tucked her hair behind one ear, regarding him steadily. "First, you answer any question I ask you to the best of your abilities. We won't get anywhere if you're not open with me." She doubted he would be able to answer some of the questions she planned to ask, but she wanted to make it clear that she expected him to try. Nathan nodded curtly, and she went on. "I also expect you to keep yourself under control. Any sort of aggressive response from you, even if it's reflexive, and I call an end to this immediately."
Doing this was a calculated risk in the first place - if he was inhibiting himself, there was no telling what sort of defenses she might trigger if she probed deeply enough - but she didn't intend to be foolish. He was a great deal stronger than she was, psionically speaking, and she didn't particularly trust his control.
"Sounds fair," Nathan said more quietly, his expression somber. #I appreciate you doing this, Emma,# he added telepathically. #I know I don't seem very enthusiastic about it, but--#
#No need to explain,# she sent back briskly as she set her own defenses in order. Reaching out, she brushed against his shields. #Let me in,# she murmured, closing her eyes.
What she saw when she did was a door opening for her. She slipped through, into his mind and down, down until she found herself in the form of her usual avatar, standing on a mindscape. He had instinctively created them a fixed point to work from, and Emma couldn't help but be amused by his choice of location.
It was the desert, of course. Rather astonishingly realistic, as well. She hadn't expected him to demonstrate this much subtlety, given his exhausted state. Emma looked down at herself and was considerably less amused to find herself wearing one of her more skimpy White Queen outfits.
"Is that how you think of me, Nathan?" she asked 'aloud', and concentrated for a moment on changing her attire. Whimsy made her opt for a Bedouin woman's dress, all in white.
"Old habits die hard." His voice came from behind her, and as she turned, she was startled to see him in the distinctive, Askani-influenced uniform he'd worn at Akkaba. The cane was gone, and he looked younger, less worn. "What?" Nathan asked defensively as she continued to stare at him.
"Stuck in a moment, are we?"
He looked down at himself, a flash of what might have been embarrassment crossing his face. "I didn't consciously--" He stopped, shaking his head. "Probably just random."
"More like telling, I'd say," Emma murmured as she carefully restructured her own shields, arranging them in a configuration that would allow her to receive his thoughts at multiple levels, yet could be quickly and easily rearranged into a more defensive pattern if necessary. "You Askani aren't much for the 'why', are you? The 'how', the means to an end, that's all that's important."
"The why of any situation is secondary to the situation itself," Nathan said automatically, but then blinked, giving her a sharp look. "Yet Sulven thought of coming to you."
"Necessity is the mother of invention, they say," Emma quipped, wondering just how much of a departure it had been for the Askani. "But let's focus, shall we? I want you to show me how you perceive the timestream at this moment." He hesitated, looking uncertain, and she sighed, reminding herself to be patient. "You can keep the mindscape if you'd like," she told him. They would have to take this one step at a time.
Nathan knelt down, laying a hand against the sand. He closed his eyes, going briefly transparent as he directed his concentration to something other than holding his avatar together. The mindscape flickered, then solidified, and Emma tilted her head, listening to the soft rumbling that was as much a vibration in the ground as noise.
"Almost like an underground river," she said, kneeling beside him. "An interesting choice of metaphor."
"Lily's always telling me that I'm hung up on the image of the timestream as a river, but it's how I was first taught." He edged away from her as he spoke, and Emma let herself absorb the ebb and flow of stray thoughts that manifested here on the mindscape as the wind. Lily--Lily Summers, Alex's wife, she realized. The chronographer. And chronography had something to do what she was sensing now, but only peripherally.
"You're anxious," she said, studying him intently. "Why?" He opened his mouth as if to answer, but hesitated, grimacing almost helplessly. The wind picked up, colder and somehow harsher, and Emma concentrated, listening carefully to the agitated whispering. His problem with that question was an inability to express the answer, not an unwillingness, she decided.
"It's--strange, to be trying to bring it closer like this," he finally said, almost in a whisper. His eyes were wide and somehow distant, staring off into the desert he'd created as if the truth was out there somewhere, beyond the dunes. "And I'm not actually sure I like thinking of it as a river after all. I feel like I could--"
"Drown?" Emma finished shrewdly. He jerked backwards, away from her, and she ignored the way the sky dimmed. "Nathan, what are you afraid of?" she asked, leaning forward and touching his hand.
The mindscape flickered out of existence as she made contact, as if someone had turned out the lights. There still seemed to be something beneath her, some sort of 'ground', but she couldn't see it. Her avatar was the only thing remaining that was visible, and although she could sense Nathan, his presence was all around her, not localized. His awareness wasn't directed at her, either. It was as if he'd forgotten she was here, an idea which she found vaguely offensive.
Emma rose to her feet, pondering her options. If he'd released the mindscape entirely, she would have assumed that he had simply rejected her assertion that he was afraid more violently than she had expected. But there were still elements of a mindscape present, which made her think that whatever was happening, it was more complicated than that.
As she was mulling it over, something flickered in the distance. Emma held her ground, but the flickering grew brighter, closer, until she could see its source, ghostly shimmers of formless light that floated towards her, seemingly of their own accord. She regarded them curiously. Telepathically speaking, they felt--mirror-like, almost, reflecting her attempt to probe them back at her. Not merely stray thoughts, then. At least there was no hostility here. That much she could sense, she reflected, reaching out and brushing a hand against one of the lights--
--"Nathan! Nathan, get up!" Dizzied, Emma looked around at Scott's voice, and blinked as she realized that she was back in the desert. Not the mindscape, though. This was Akkaba, the edge of Apocalypse's fortress complex, on the day of the battle. There was gunfire and the sound of energy discharging all around her, but at a distance, as if the battle was a storm and she stood at its eye. This was a memory, she realized, watching a battered-looking Scott frantically tearing at the shattered rock half-covering Nathan, who was barely moving. A wall had collapsed, she remembered. She'd been watching with the rest of the Twelve from the command deck of the Helicarrier, and they'd seen it happen. A roar shattered the air, and she watched Apocalypse charge out of the haze of smoke and dust, screaming something Emma couldn't understand. Scott whirled, firing an optic blast at Nur, but the External shrugged it off and sent him flying with one blow. Scott crashed to the ground fifteen feet away and didn't move. Before Apocalypse could take another step, the debris exploded away from Nathan's body, propelled through the air by fiery light that unfolded from a nimbus into a great winged form--
--and the whole scene stopped, frozen in that instant. Emma frowned, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her lips. This was mere minutes before the Merge, but it certainly seemed to be the end of the memory. But why did it end here?
Fragments, she thought suddenly. That was what the colored lights were: fragments of memory, bits and pieces of the battle. She'd triggered them, or her question had, because they were all bound up in the fear she'd sensed. That was why they were hidden in the darkness, why he'd seemed unaware of her when she got close to them. He was walling them away, keeping himself from accessing them.
But why was he afraid of remembering Akkaba? It didn't make sense; it was human nature to savor your triumphs, and even if the trauma he had suffered that day had left him partially amnesiac, it didn't make sense that he would reject what memory he had left of the most important day of his life.
He was afraid of the timestream and afraid of something that had happened at Akkaba, and because she'd left herself open, she'd been carried along by the connection between the two. The answer hit her all at once, and Emma made an exasperated noise, disgusted with herself for not seeing it earlier.
Nathan had redirected the timeline at Akkaba, using his chronal abilities on an unimaginable level. However the Merge had changed them, it still would have been an enormous strain--
She sensed something tug at her, and surrendered to it readily. It pulled her out of the frozen memory, back to the desert mindscape where Nathan was waiting for her, white-faced and clearly agitated.
"Where did you go?" he demanded instantly.
Emma folded her arms across her chest. "Where did you send me?" she countered, not willing to show her hand just yet.
"I didn't send you anywhere! You vanished!"
"I saw a memory," she said, watching him carefully for his reaction. He blanched even further, but she went on calmly. "You and Scott, in those last few moments before the Merge--"
The panic on his face was unlike anything she'd ever seen from this man before. "No," he said, almost desperately. His shoulders were hunched, his posture tense, as if he were bracing for a blow. "I can't."
"Can't?" She took a step closer to him and he backed away. "You're not just afraid, are you? You're terrified." He started to turn away, and she bit back an exasperated hiss, grabbing his wrist. "Don't you turn your back on me," she snapped warningly.
Something broke through the fear, something close to outright rage, and Emma didn't try to stop him as he wrenched away. "It hurts," he snarled at her almost feverishly. "I don't want to remember!"
The air was growing luminous, white light like she remembered from the Merge. Forcing herself to focus, Emma stepped forward and slapped him, hard. "I don't care what you want," she said coolly as he reeled backwards. "I like this brave new world of ours, Nathan. I risked a great deal to help you bring it about."
He straightened slowly, and the air was growing brighter and brighter. "I know," he said, his voice rough with some emotion she couldn't decipher. Emma could barely make out his face now. "I know what I have to do."
"Then why don't you do it?" she asked shortly. The change in the mindscape didn't feel like the prelude to an attack, but she couldn't be sure. His mind was in turmoil, and she closed the openings in her shields, just in case. "I never took you for a coward, Nathan--"
The white light flashed into brilliance, and when it faded, she was standing in a library, cool and dim and utterly unlike the desert where they'd just been. Nathan was sitting at a desk in front of her, poring over a book. The shelves behind him drew her attention. The shelves to the left were empty, all the books in boxes on the floor, while the ones just behind him were full. Those to the right were as well, but they were flickering in and out of existence, as if that part of the mindscape hadn't been properly envisioned.
"Where are we?" she asked Nathan, and realized that this wasn't his avatar she was addressing. It was a reflection of him from somewhere deeper in his mind, an image that had only a whisper of self-awareness about it.
"What does it look like?" he asked, not looking at her.
"A library," she said dryly, and paused for a moment, organizing her thoughts. If she'd wound up in his subconscious, which is what it felt like, all of this was undoubtedly metaphorical. Each detail could have meaning. "Why are all those books in boxes, instead of on the shelves?" she asked thoughtfully.
"They're outdated," the Nathan-image said. "If you want them for research purposes, you have to fill out a request form."
The image of Nathan as a librarian was truly, truly bizarre, she decided. Coming around to stand behind him at the desk, she noticed that the books on the shelves had Askani script on their spines, not English. A sign of what language he truly thought in, deep down?
"What are you reading?" she asked, peering over his shoulder.
"New acquisition. Very interesting."
The book seemed to be written in English - or maybe that was just how she perceived it - and Emma skimmed through the page he was reading, startled by its content. "But this is what's happening now," she said, and her eyes narrowed as she hit the last sentence.
'Nathan decided he had to let Emma try,' she read, 'and opened his shields to let her into his mind...' It ended there, leaving half the page blank, and Emma gave Nathan a quizzical look.
"It hasn't finished happening yet," he said, answering her question before she could ask it. "It could go a number of ways."
Emma pursed her lips. "And what about those books?" she asked, pointing at the shelves that were still vanishing and reappearing, here one moment and then gone the next.
"Same thing. Stories that haven't been told yet."
"Then they're blank?"
"I didn't say that." He looked up at her, and suddenly it was Nathan looking at her, aware of where they were and what was happening. "It was easier before," he said almost wearily. "These weren't my decisions to make."
"But they are now," she said immediately. "You can choose. Act on what you know."
A tremor crossed his features, and he closed the book, pushing it away almost violently. "I can't. I'm afraid."
Emma gave a scornful laugh. "Of course you are," she agreed derisively. "You have to choose, and you're not used to that, are you?" As she spoke, he seemed more solid, more there, as if the challenge she was in the midst of delivering was drawing all his attention. "Before, you just had to do as you were told. Walk the path the Askani laid out for you."
The glare she got this time was undeniably Cable-like. "Don't you think I know that?" he demanded.
"Newsflash, dear," she said dryly, leaning back against the edge of the desk. "Apocalypse is dead. You changed the course of history. Do you know what that means?"
"There's no path," he murmured, looking stricken at the thought.
"No!" she said, more sharply than she'd intended. But this--desperation was pointless, utterly unproductive on his part. "It means you get to make your own. Do you want these things you've been trying so hard not to see to come about?" He shook his head, and she gave him a fierce smile. "Then get up there and choose yourself some reading material," she said, gesturing at the shelves holding the books that she somehow knew represented the future. The whole scene was somewhat Dickensian, actually.
He got up slowly, reluctantly, and Emma was vaguely surprised to see that he had his cane here, as he hadn't in the desert. "What if I make the wrong choice?" he asked dully as he hobbled over.
"It happens, Nathan."
"But there's so much more to lose now."
"I know," she said, far more gently than she should have.
He hesitated, looking back at her for a moment, then reached out for one of the flickering books. As soon as his fingers closed on it, red-gold flames burst out from the shelf, racing up his arm. Nathan screamed, and the library shattered around them. Emma felt the backlash coming and avoided it the simplest way, by pulling out of his mind as quickly as she could.
She opened her eyes to see that he'd fallen back against the couch, shaking and almost hyperventilating. Sliding closer to him, Emma took him by the shoulders, projecting calming thoughts as forcefully as she could. His shields, thankfully, seemed intact.
"Nathan, look at me," she commanded crisply. "Nathan!"
He jerked almost convulsively, but then focused on her. "It burned," he breathed, but then frowned and looked down at his hands. "All in my head, I see," he went on, his voice still shaky. "What the flonq was that?"
"A bad sign," Emma replied drolly. She saw the problem now, she thought, and the bad news was that it was every bit as complicated as she'd suspected. He looked up at her expectantly, and she shrugged slightly. "You came so close to burning yourself out at Akkaba," she began. "We always assumed it was just your telepathy and telekinesis that you'd blocked while your mind healed."
"But I altered the timeline, too," he said uncertainly. Catching on with respectable speed, Emma reflected, given the shock he'd just had.
"Yes. But because your chronal abilities were always latent, you were used to not using them." She paused, trying to think of the right words. "You didn't push yourself like you did with your psionics, so the block stayed. It's probably become more deeply rooted over time."
He gave her an uncomprehending look. "But I'm pushing myself now," he said. "I want to know--"
"You do and you don't," she said, wondering if he'd ever heard of the Cassandra complex. It was a common dysfunction for precognitives, this sort of crippling fear of making a decision, of taking steps that could lead to a less than palatable future coming about. It was the precognitive's trap, a very subtle form of 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'. "That's the root of your problem. The conflict. Until you resolve it, you won't get anywhere with that block."
He paled, swearing viciously under his breath in Askani. "You're right," he growled. "I am a coward."
Emma smiled slightly, not displeased by the reaction. "So what are you going to do about it?" she murmured.
He looked down at her, his eyes blazing not with fear, now, but with determination. "Make a choice," he grated.
"Now, there's the Cable I know."
to be continued...
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