Peacekeepers: Denver - Part Four

by Alicia McKenzie

Denver
2:51 PM

Trevor Corben had always considered himself a strong person. He'd been on the front lines during the Sentinel War, had seen things that had driven some of those who'd seen them with him to the edge and over. After that, he'd had faith in his own ability to maintain his composure in any situation.

He wasn't so sure about that ability now. Flinching as his gaze fell on the nearby schoolyard and all the still, small bodies sprawled there, he forced himself to look away. Nothing on the scanners, nothing at all. Some of the other teams who'd landed elsewhere in the city had reported finding survivors. Only a very few, and all plainly damaged somehow by whatever had happened here - one officer had been seriously injured when she'd been attacked by a man screaming about fire and blackness - but Corben would have welcomed even that, at the moment.

It was the silence. That was what was getting to him. He swallowed. "Jeff?" he asked hoarsely.

"They're in the park here somewhere," his lieutenant said, eyeing their surroundings. "Alive, according to their beacons--there!"

Sandrine, their medic, slung her kit over her shoulder and ran, a step ahead of the rest of them. She was down on her knees beside the two still forms slumped in front of the park bench almost instantly, and Corben and the others stayed well back out of her way.

One of the other team members swore, and Corben's heart did an odd little lurch in his chest as Sandrine gently turned over one of the two fallen officers.

"Shit, do you know who that is?" Jeff murmured disbelievingly from beside him.

Corben stared down at the young woman's face, ashen beneath dried blood, and took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said hoarsely. "Sandrine, is she--"

"Still alive, just like the beacon said," the medic said curtly, and then moved on to her next patient. A moment later, she was looking up, shaking her head at him. "He's alive, but I'll be damned if I know what to do for them," she said helplessly. "I'm not a telepath, Trevor. Their vitals are reasonably stable, at least--"

They'd all come to the conclusion that this had to have been some sort of psionic attack. The reaction of other telepaths around the world - Omaha's resident tepe had gone face-first into his lunch when it had happened - certainly suggested that, and they weren't finding anything to disprove it. The dead seemed to have been the victims of some sort of cerebral hemorrhage, according to Sandrine, and Corben honestly couldn't figure out what else might have caused than on such a wide scale, except for a telepathic attack.

But that was something better left to people with more resources than him. He had a job to do, and at the moment, that job involved getting XSE wounded out of a possible combat zone. They had no proof the threat was gone--

All right, bad thought. Very bad thought. "Jeff, let's get one of the carriers out here and get them evaced," he ordered, his gaze lingering on Clare Summers' face. "Damn," he whispered.

***

Combat Information Center
XSE Headquarters
New York
6:07 PM

"They're being evacuated back to Omaha," Bishop said, laying a hand on Domino's shoulder as he returned to where she, Kitty and Wisdom were keeping vigil beside the holo-tank. "As soon as the medical officer there is sure they're up to a longer teleport, we'll get them back here."

For personal reasons alone, he would have ensured such was the case, but there was more than that at work right now. Clare and Harry had survived, and yet were apparently NOT manifesting the same apparent mental disturbance as the handful of other survivors were. Perhaps because of their mutant abilities? They couldn't be sure, but finding out was vital.

"Anything new from the other teams?" he asked.

"Just more of the same," Wisdom said hoarsely. He looked terrible. By all rights, he should be off-duty at the least, and preferably in the infirmary. A concussion was nothing to toy with.

But he couldn't order him off-duty, just as he couldn't do the same for Domino and Kitty. Wish-fulfillment, he thought painfully. He himself would have given a great deal to be able to leave the CIC right now and go to the hospital where Gina had been taken, according to her secretary at Frost Enterprises. But there was no way he could, not until this situation had been brought under control, and they were a long way from that--

"Other survivors?" he forced himself to ask.

"Some," the lieutenant - Inez, Bishop reminded himself; Inez Castillo - said. "The teams are doing what they can to--contain them."

"Are the further reinforcements I ordered en route?" Even they wouldn't be enough to deal with the situation, he knew; the troops necessary to thoroughly canvass the city, to see to the dead and survivors alike, would have to be mobilized in stages. SHIELD and the American military were doing the same.

There were - had been - four million people living in the Denver area. They had to establish how far this had extended--and whether it was over. Bishop stared at the dreadful images unfolding in the holotank. They needed telepaths in there, to help calm the survivors and assess whatever remained in the local astral atmosphere of whatever had caused this. But they had no telepaths fit for duty as of yet, and he would not risk sending in even those from outside North America until he was certain they'd recovered from the shock.

That wasn't to say he didn't have one team on the way to Denver with the XSE's best psionic scanning equipment. Yes, those were results he would like very much to have as soon as possible--

A flash of light at the edge of his vision drew his attention immediately, and he turned in time to see it coalesce into Sulven, who blinked at the security guards who actually started to rush her in the moment before recognition set in. She ignored them and stalked over to the holotank, as if she saw nothing but it and the small group of people clustered around it.

"Are you all right?" Bishop asked sharply as she stopped beside him. Sulven looked up at him, her dark blue eyes wild in her ashen face, and he immediately wished he hadn't asked such an obvious question.

"Logan will be here once the children rouse," she said, her voice more gravelly than Bishop had ever heard it. "I saw to them before I came."

"The other telepaths here are still all unconscious," Domino said, her eyes sharpening as she focused on Sulven.

"They don't have shields as good as mine," Sulven said flatly. "Or Nathan's."

Inez blinked. "But Ambassador Summers is--"

"Not unconscious for the same reason as the rest of us were," Sulven almost snapped. Her gaze raked over Bishop, Domino, Pete and Kitty in turn. "You have to see," she said, the wildness in her voice now, too. "You have to see for yourselves--"

And Bishop lurched forward, grabbing at the edge of the console to steady himself as the familiar confines of the CIC began to dissolve into wild color. Part of him remained in control, recognizing that what he was seeing was second-hand, filtered through his non-psi perceptions and thus bearing only a passing resemblance to whatever had actually happened.

Even so, it was terrible.

He saw the astral plane torn asunder, saw the rift yawn open and consume everything in its path. Seeing it reflected through Sulven's eyes, he shared her intuitive knowledge of what she had sensed. This had been no natural event; it was an attack, a deliberate, horrific act.

The very idea staggered him. This couldn't be called terrorism. The scale of it was just--impossible--

Sulven thrust them out of the image, but not before Bishop got a single, shockingly vivid flash of a single star, brighter by several orders of magnitude than anything around it, descending rapidly towards the rift, blazing like sunlight as it fell--

"Nathan," Domino said dazedly, rigid in her chair. She looked up at Sulven, her eyes impossibly wide. "That was Nathan--he was going in there deliberately! Why?"

"The rift would have kept growing," Sulven said unsteadily. "They can't have known what they were doing, whoever caused it. If you tear the astral plane, it just keep tearing, until it's repaired. Nathan sealed it." She swallowed visibly. "If he hadn't, it would have--nothing would have stopped it."

"Shit," Domino breathed, folding her arms across her chest, almost hugging herself.

"What are you saying?" Bishop asked as levelly as he could, even though he knew damned well what she was saying, what she was implying. Part of him couldn't process it, though. He needed to hear it aloud. "Sulven--"

"It would have kept growing," Sulven almost whispered, her eyes unfocused as she stared into empty air--or onto the astral plane, for all he knew. "What happened in Denver would have happened everywhere. The rift would have collapsed once it hit interplanetary space and had nothing left to feed on, but everyone on Earth would be dead."

***

Infirmary
XSE Headquarters
7:48 PM

Cecilia Reyes had rarely felt so helpless as she did at this moment. She had known Clare and Harry their whole lives; she'd changed their diapers, bandaged scraped knees, and played doting aunt for the last twenty-odd years. Unhappily, she'd gotten used to seeing people she cared about in here, injured and in need of her skills.

Usually she could at least do something to help them, though. But Clare and Harry's injuries were almost entirely psychic. All she could do was monitor their vitals to catch any physical reaction; beyond that, she'd had to set up psi-shielding around their beds and leave them for the telepaths. Sulven was in there with them now. She hadn't had the heart to bar Domino and Pete and Kitty, although she really should have, at least until Sulven had finished--

Then again, rules and regulations and common sense had gone out the window today, Cecilia thought bleakly. You did what you could, when you could. Sometimes she'd truly regretted taking Bishop up on his offer and signing on as the XSE's chief medical officer. Even with all the other doctors and nurses and medics under her command as a section leader, she could never quite escape the idea that the physical welfare of everyone wearing the black and gold was ultimately her responsibility.

Physical welfare. Cecilia stared blindly at the rows of cots, each occupied by a telepath she hadn't been able to help. They were awake now, at least; that was unquestionably good, of course. Their condition was the only fly in that particular ointment; most were still badly disoriented, suffering from obvious signs of psi-shock and ordinary trauma. Some were more clear-headed, but they were still all restricted to the infirmary level, on Bishop's orders, until Sulven had checked them all over and any lingering effects had faded.

Cecilia wondered when Sulven would get to that stage. Clare and Harry had been brought in just under an hour ago, and the Askani telepath had been with them for much of that time.

Hours, minutes, seconds. It shocked her to realize, as she glanced at her watch, how little time had actually passed since the 'incident'. Already, though, there were waves of XSE and SHIELD and American troops moving in stages to Denver. There hadn't been any sign of a--recurrence, yet, and apparently the general consensus was that the risk was necessary.

More kids, going into harm's way.

Cecilia shook her head angrily, and went over to the cubicle where Nathan was still lying, dead to the world. Sulven hadn't seen him yet--apparently he was next on her list, after Clare and Harry. "Why arne't you awake?" she murmured, checking the monitors. "You're beginning to worry me here, Nathan."

His vital signs were not quite as stable as they should be. She didn't know if that was because of what she'd heard, that he'd actually fixed this astral rupture or whatever the hell it had been, or whether she could chalk it up to the fact that he hadn't been in the best overall physical health to begin with. To be honest, he'd been worrying her for a while now. But does he ever listen to my advice? Dios, no, that would be too SENSIBLE, wouldn't it?

Blood was trickling from his nose again. Just a little, but this was the fourth time she'd checked on him personally since he'd been brought in, and the second time this had happened. "I think I'd better get Sulven in here to take a look at you," she said briskly, turning aside to get some gauze. "I don't like--" She trailed off in a gasp as she turned back around and saw Nathan looking at her, his eyes hazy, strangely distant. "Nathan?"

"Cold," he murmured faintly, and closed his eyes again. She went over and touched the side of his face lightly, but he didn't respond. The readings the monitors were giving her hadn't changed, either.

Cecilia pursed her lips, and then started to clean the blood off his face.

***

8:06 PM

Sulven had spent more time on the astral plane than any telepath in this time period. She had held something of a record, even among her fellow Askani, before making the decision to stay here in this era permanently. She knew how to move on this plane, knew its ebb and flow and the vast, magnificent chaos of it.

The rupture had been sealed, sealed so completely and skillfully that her mind reeled at Nathan's success in halting the disaster before it could spread any further. How had he done it? She'd seen the consequences, scanning his mind for damage, but it still seemed impossible, that he could have repaired the rift so completely.

Even so, the astral plane was in turmoil, awash with distortion that she had to assume was the direct consequence of the rift. She was barely managing to keep her shields intact against it, and she knew that was more than most telepaths could have done. The astral plane was liable to be well-nigh impassable until the bulk of this faded--

She tore herself away from thoughts of the future and focused on the here and now. What is, is. This had happened, as unbelievable as it seemed - even Apocalypse's psis would never have considered committing such a self-destructive act! - and now they had to deal with the consequences. Her task was to discover who had done this, and how, and she would do it.

Sulven soared through the distortion waves, analysing the patterns and flow of the energy. This hadn't been a single mind, she thought, concentrating hard. There wasn't a single--signature here, for lack of a better word. Frankly, she found that reassuring. The idea that they were dealing with a single telepath strong enough to create a rupture like that had not been a pleasant one.

So what were the alternatives? A number of telepaths working in concert was certainly a possibility, although the difficulty in synchronizing their efforts, considering that each telepath experienced the astral plane in a slightly different way, on a slightly different 'frequency', made that option a problematic one.

But that left--flonq. Flonqflonqflonq, Sulven thought viciously, reinforcing her shields. A Merge? It was certainly possible - the technique was widely known among XSE telepaths, at least - but it was also the least palatable of all. The Merge of the Twelve hadn't simply destroyed Apocalypse, it had remade the world. The idea that the technique had been perverted into something that could have destroyed it--

Sulven laughed grimly in the silence of her own mind. Wasn't that always the way? Great power was a double-edged sword. My own stupidity, to forget that. She reached out, letting the distorted energy flow through her mental 'fingers', trying to decide if there would be any point in attempting to repair the damage--

Something pealed across the astral plane like a giant bell ringing, deep and resonant. Her concentration broken, Sulven instinctively strengthened her shields even farther, but no attack came. Only words, words spoken in a multi-layered Voice that was unquestionably that of a Merge.

#This is the Unity. The death of Denver is our responsibility. We have destroyed a city to show the world the power that can be found in unity of thought.#

The words were not even directed at her, she realized swiftly, but shouted out for any to hear. There was triumph in the Voice, triumph and fanatical determination and no awareness of what It had almost done--

#The group mind must rule. We exist on a level that the headblind cannot reach. We cannot be bound by their rules--they must be bound by ours. Accept this truth, or another example will be made.#

Fury flooded up inside her at the presumption, the sheer unthinking arrogance. #Not while I draw breath!# Sulven spat at it, and lashed out with every bit of her strength, ready to shred this murderous thing and dance on the bloody scraps.

And the Presence couldn't have known she was there, because she felt panic as her attack because visible, burning through the distortion like a ruby comet. The Presence retreated, and she snatched at it, cursing, but whoever composed the merge was more than adept at shielding, and they slipped away into the distortion, leaving her without even a trail to follow.

#OATH!# Sulven threw herself back off the astral plane as she felt her hold on her shields go. It was generally difficult to keep shields at that level and launch an attack that powerful at the same time, and she had no desire at all to wind up mind-fried by the distortion waves--

"'Ven!" Arms caught her before she could hit the ground of the meditation chamber, and Sulven gasped, squirming for a moment before her mind caught up with her and registered that it was Logan.

"I'm--fine," she said slowly, shaking her head to try and clear it. Logan growled, and she managed a faint smile. "Put me down."

"Never seen you fall out of a meditative position before," Logan muttered, setting her carefully on her feet. He kept his arm around her, though. She decided not to mention it; it was somewhat comforting, to be honest. "Usually Nate who's pulling that stupid trick--"

"I was distracted," Sulven muttered, pushing her hair out of her eyes. Oath, her head ached. She hadn't precisely had time to rest and let the last residue of psionic shock fade, and she'd pay for that in the morning. Right now, however, there were things to be done. #The children?# she asked telepathically, reaching out in a brief caress along their psi-link.

Logan merely jerked his chin at the door, and Sulven smiled faintly as she saw the twins lurking in the doorway, watching her anxiously. "Feeling all right?' she asked, more lightly than she felt as she reached out to their minds. She hadn't wanted to leave them, but they'd been in no danger and she'd had to get to the Tower.

"Don't worry about us, Mom," Zara said a little hoarsely, managing a half-hearted smile. "Just a headache."

"How are Clare and Harry?" Nicholas asked immediately, that crease between his brows that meant he was in pain or thinking very deep thoughts reappearing. "Aunt Cecilia wouldn't tell us anything. She actually kicked us out of the infirmary--"

Sulven swallowed, part of her mind entertaining, for one absurd moment, the horrible thought that it could have been Zara and Nick in Denver. Then Askani training took over, and she pushed the thought away. It hadn't been. They were safe--as traumatized as every other telepath on the planet after the violation of the astral plane, but safe.

"They're alive," she said, not having any way to reassure them. She'd never lied to her children, even when they WERE children, and she wasn't about to start now. "Whether or not they'll recover isn't something I can tell you right now."

Nicholas jerked as if she'd hit him, and Zara blinked, then bit her lip. Sulven could feel Logan's anger along the link, a dull heat, and looked up at him with something just short of a glare.

#What would you have me do?#

Maybe be a little less blunt, 'Ven?

#I believe the phrase is 'pot, kettle, black',# she shot back, and pulled away from him, more than irritated by his reaction. Couldn't he SEE? Didn't he understand the situation?

I see a lot more than you think, darlin'. I see that you're upset, and they're in shock, and that this is one of those days where you've decided to be as maternal as a fucking tree stump.

"Stop it!" Nick said suddenly, his blue eyes flashing. "You think we can't hear the two of you arguing? Just--stop it," he muttered, deflating as Logan gave him a hard look. Zara reached out and took his arm, scowling at both of them.

"We don't have time for this," Sulven said, trying not to sound agitated. "I have to speak to Bishop. I know who did this--why, at least," she corrected bleakly, wondering how many other telepaths across the world had heard, how many would know that a merge had done this--

And what the reaction of the rest of the world would be.

***

Bellevue Hospital Center
New York
8:59 PM

Bishop stood in the doorway and watched his wife sleep. She looked so pale, he thought painfully. So fragile--how had he not realized what was going on? They had a psi-link, after all. He should have known she was struggling with something, been able to see it--

Gina's face was nearly the white of the pillowcase. She would recover fully, and relatively quickly, the doctor had assured him. The effects of the psionic shock had simply been too sudden, too severe.

The miscarriage had been unavoidable.

The blonde woman sitting in the chair beside the bed raised her head, blinking at Bishop as if her eyes wouldn't quite focus. "It took you long enough to get here," Emma Frost said hoarsely, rubbing at her temples and wincing. "Are you really that indispensable at the Tower, Bishop?" The usual edge to her voice was barely there, as if she couldn't quite muster the strength for it.

"We were--are in something of a crisis situation," he corrected himself in mid-sentence. With the Unity's claim of responsibility, they now knew the reasons behind the--incident, but that hardly changed the facts. There were millions of people dead, the astral plane was in chaos, and the only reason they had to believe that the Unity wouldn't try it again - at least not immediately - was Sulven's insistence that they wouldn't. There was still so much to be done - he was supposed to be at the UN at the moment - but he'd needed to see her. Professionalism could only carry you so far.

Emma rose slowly, looking more than a little unsteady on her feet as she moved towards him. "Not a word to her about why she didn't tell you she was pregnant," she murmured, those ice-blue eyes boring into his. "This isn't the time."

"I'll thank you not to tell me how to--" Bishop bit off what he'd been about to say. "How to behave," he muttered almost savagely.

Emma studied him for a moment longer, and then sighed. "I apologize," she said more softly, and offered a thin, strained smile. "I'm not quite at my best today."

Bishop laid a hand on her shoulder, ignoring the way she stiffened. The two of them had never gotten along, to put it mildly, but he couldn't deny how important she was to Gina and Raphaela--and them to her. "Get some rest, Emma," he said as gently as he could.

Emma nodded, and then glanced back at Gina, her eyes suspiciously bright. "I know you probably have other places you have to be, Bishop. But make sure before you leave that she knows you're not angry with her."

He sighed. "I'm not. And she will."

"Good enough," Emma said with a trace of her usual briskness. He moved aside, letting her step past him, and watched her make her unsteady way down the hall for a few moments before he turned and went over to the chair she'd just vacated beside the bed.

He had no intention of even asking Gina why she hadn't told him she was pregnant. Recriminations were of no value at a time like this, and he had faith that she would have told him, once she'd resolved whatever had caused her to keep it from him in the first place.

He should feel more--regretful, Bishop thought bleakly, reaching out and taking her hand. He did, when he thought of the pain this had and would cause her But he remembered, far too clearly, how close he had come to losing her when she had been pregnant with Raphaela. Was it selfish of him? He just couldn't bear the idea of losing her--

Something ghosted along their psi-link, and Gina's eyes fluttered open. "You're here," she murmured after a moment. "Emma said you would be."

Bishop managed a tight smile. "You didn't think I'd come?" he asked. The words came out far too hoarsely.

"I knew how--busy you'd be," Gina said, her eyes going distant for a moment. "Something really bad happened, didn't it?"

"A number of things, yes," he forced out. Gina's eyes filled with tears, and Bishop got up and sat back down on the edge of the bed, supporting her as she sat up.

"I'm so sorry," she murmured against his chest as he put his arms around her.

"You have nothing to be sorry about."

#I should have told you--#

You would have. Please don't--

"Commander?" It was the lieutenant who'd teleported him, standing in the doorway. The young man was standing in the doorway, giving him the most fearfully apologetic look Bishop had ever seen on a human face. "Sir, the Security Council--"

Gina took a deep breath and then managed a weak smile up at him. "I'm fine," she said wearily. "Go on."

I can't leave you alone--

#Raphaela will be here as soon as there's a teleporter free at the Academy.# She squeezed his hand as she laid back against the pillows. "So I'll get a little more sleep, and wait for our darling daughter to show up," she said aloud, managing another half-smile. "I'll be all right. Don't worry."

"I can't help it," Bishop murmured awkwardly, and leaned over to kiss her. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"I know," she whispered, and closed her eyes.

***

Press Room
UN Headquarters
9:48 PM

"How many of them know already, do you think?" Paige Guthrie murmured, peering through the half-open door at the packed Press Room.

"Hard to keep something like this quiet, Lieutenant Commander," her aide said, and handed her the folder with her briefing notes. "Between 'anonymous sources' in the XSE and that talk show, they at least have a good idea, I'd imagine--"

"Yeah," Paige muttered, taking the folder. "The talk show sure didn't help." There had been a talk show taping live in Denver at the time of the incident, and the networks had picked up the feed. She'd seen it herself. The hosts and guest had dropped so silently, so quickly. It had been terrifying, and she didn't like to think about the sort of panic it had to be creating.

This briefing should have taken place hours ago, but Bishop had insisted they wait until they could give a complete briefing, rather than bits and pieces of information that might just worsen the situation. She supposed he probably had a point, and she certainly wasn't going to argue with him. Especially not today.

"All right," she said to her aide, with more confidence than she felt. "Ah'll be right back."

The noise as she strode out into the Press Room was explosive. Reporters started babbling questions before she could even step up onto the podium, and she started to realize just how important a job Bishop had assigned her. When even REPORTERS looked like they were on the edge of panic--

This was the XSE's chance to give the impression that they were handling this to the best of their abilities, and to make that impression stick. She had to knock this one out of the ballpark.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, as firmly as she could. The noise didn't abate, not even for a moment, and Paige tried not to let her aggravation show. At the back of the room, the doors were wide open, and the hallway itself was packed, as well. There were a few uniformed officers back there trying to keep order, but they were all but lost in the sea of people. "Folks!" Paige snapped in the voice she'd used to bark orders across the battlefield when she'd been a field commander during the Sentinel War. "If y'all would settle down, we could get on with business, here!"

Astonishingly enough, it seemed to have the desired effect. Most, if not all of the noise died down, and Paige waited until she was sure they were paying attention to her before she continued. She sure as hell wasn't going to go through this more than once.

"Thank you," she said, keeping her voice as crisp as she could. "Ah'll make this short and sweet. Ah've been asked by XSE Commander Bishop and the UN Security Council to brief you on what's been going on today." The rest of the noise faded, and she nodded half to herself in satisfaction. "At approximately 10:50 Pacific Standard Time this morning, the city of Denver was the site of a terrorist attack. The astral plane in Denver's immediate vicinity suffered a major rupture--" A shocked ripple of whispers broke out, but Paige continued steadily. "It's what specialists in the psionic arts call a 'catastrophic astral event'. The details are in your briefing packages. Ah'm afraid to say that the effects of this event were--severe."

Dead silence, now, and Paige took a sip from her water glass before she continued. "Could ah have the map now, please?" Her aide brought up the holographic projection, and Paige tried not to grit her teeth too obviously as she looked at the illustration some public-information genius had come up with. It looked like a huge blot of blood, surimposed on the map of Colorado. Really subtle, yeah. "This is the geographical extent of the event as we've established it so far," Paige said as coolly as she could. "XSE and SHIELD troops are cooperating with the American military to get a better picture as we speak, but within a radius of twenty miles emanating from the Denver city center, the casualty rate seems to be--nearly total."

The silence wasn't quite dead, anymore. Paige could almost see the questions seething in the eyes focused on her, the desperate need for answers--for reassurance? She went on, fighting for composure. "Our teams have found virtually no survivors. The victims suffered a form of psychically-induced cerebral hemmorhage, brought on by being caught in the astral rift. Our best guess is that they died instantly." She changed the subject as gracefully as she could. "The event also disabled pretty much every telepath on the planet for a number of hours, and some of the XSE telepaths here in North America are still in psionic shock. Our ability to assess the situation on the astral plane's been compromised, but we're shipping in telepaths from elsewhere, psis who weren't as badly affected, and we should have more information soon."

She took a deep breath, willing the words to come out steady. Hard to do, when she still couldn't quite believe that it was true. "This can't have been a natural event," she said, knowing it sounded blunt. "A XSE telepath monitoring the astral plane picked up a message claiming responsibility from a group calling themselves a Unity. According to what they said, they're a psi-supremacy group, for lack of a better term. Ah can tell you we have no previous information about this group. We know nothing besides their name, their stated goals, and the fact that they're clearly willing to commit major acts of terrorism to carry out their agenda."

They were beginning to look a little glassy-eyed, as if it wasn't sinking in for them, either. Paige seized the opportunity and kept going, knowing they wouldn't be able to hold the questions back much longer. "We're putting together a worldwide watch on the astral plane," she said firmly. "We don't believe there'll be a repeat of this event, but we're not taking any chances." She folded her trembling hands together on the podium where her audience couldn't see them, and took a deep breath. "Ah'll take questions now, folks."

It had been too much to hope that they'd ask them one at a time, she thought a moment later as she was assailed by questions from all sides, half of them sounding more hysterical than curious.

"How precisely was this rupture created?"

"Where's the death toll currently, Commander Guthrie?"

"Commander, can you tell us more about this Unity?"

"How many survivors is 'virtually none'?"

"We have no more details about the Unity at this time," Paige said, interrupting the babble of questions before it could get any further. "The number of casualties--we don't have any firm numbers on that, but we're estimating somewhere close to four million people in the greater Denver area."

It seemed impossible. It had all happened so quickly, and yet there were millions of people dead on the other side of the country. Snuffed out like candles--

"How exactly was this rupture created?" the lead CNN reporter pressed, in the shocked silence that followed her comment about casualties.

Paige hesitated. "By telepaths working in concert," she said briefly. Far too cautiously, she realized as she saw eyes widen all over the room. Several months in this job, and she still hadn't adapted to how fast these people smelled it when you were trying to put something past them.

"In concert?" the CNN reporter said sharply. "You mean a merge?"

#No comment,# Sulven's voice said harshly in her mind, nearly startling her out of her skin. Paige managed to cover her reaction, but directed a few nasty thoughts in Sulven's direction. A little warning would have been nice--

#No time. No comment, Paige. That comes straight from Bishop.#

She couldn't say that! Paige opened her mouth, thinking rapidly. "Ah can't give out any conclusive details about that right now, Peter," she said as smoothly as she could, and knew, as soon as she said it, that they hadn't bought it. That's just 'no comment' with different wording, moron--

"I see, Commander Guthrie," the CNN reporter said very quietly, and sat back down, even his professional mask not enough to cover the speculative - and slightly sick - look in his eyes.

***

Infirmary
XSE Headquarters
10:38 PM

"Nathan? Can you hear me?"

Noise. So much noise. Shivering weakly - why was it so cold? - he struggled to open his eyes and focus on the pale face hovering above him. He could hear her, but he couldn't--feel her. The link was still there, he knew, but there was so much else, so many other minds all pressing at him, and the astral plane was screaming, he could feel it--

"Nathan. Try and focus." Something squeezed his hand, and the link flared brightly. So much there, even. Anger and fear and tension--he couldn't separate one from the other, and it all just flowed into the rest of the noise, indistinguishable after that first moment--

Memories surfaced sluggishly from the cacophony, almost unbearably vivid, and he tried to focus on them. The rift on the astral plane--that was why he felt so weak, he'd let it feed off him to close it, but had he? He couldn't remember. He started to reach out to the astral plane to find out, but couldn't find the strength. Probably not a good idea, anyway - he'd been in psionic shock often enough to know what the burned, frayed feeling he was experiencing was - but he'd never felt this--drained before. He couldn't even raise his shields.

"Nate," Domino said, more gently, leaning closer to him. His vision still wasn't clear; it was dancing and swimming and just generally making it very hard to focus on her face. Nathan swallowed, trying to summon the strength to do something, even just squeeze back, but he was so tired. So cold. Domino reached out and stroked the side of his face gently. Her eyes were--tears? Why was she crying?

He clung to the link as tightly as he could, trying to focus on it and shut out the rest of the noise. It didn't really help, and he fumbled half-automatically for the other link, the one with Clare. Center himself--he had to center himself, reorient himself inside his own mind--

He touched the link with his daughter and a choked, hoarse cry ripped itself free from his throat, his whole body convulsing at the fiery pain that rolled up the link as soon as he made contact. A curse came from Domino's direction, and there were another set of hands holding him down suddenly, and a familiar cool ruby presence in his mind.

#Nathan, don't reach for Clare,# Sulven's voice said urgently, and pushed him away gently when he didn't withdraw. #No, Nathan!#

He tried to slip past her, but she caught him, and he was too slow, too weak to fight. All he could do was struggle futilely as she disentangled him from the link and shielded it, firmly.

He was too tired to muster rage. It was just--confusing, and he couldn't understand why Sulven wasn't letting him help, why she would stop him. Clare-- She was in so much pain, he hadn't felt anything that even resembled conscious thought. What had happened, how had--

"--giving him another dose," a different voice said, one that he heard with his ears. Cecilia? "If the shields aren't working--"

"--going to fight it, you know that. You know how much he hates those damned suppressants," Domino said, her voice sounding horribly bitter.

"--not much choice, Domino--"

Something pressed against his arm with a hissing noise, and Nathan moaned, fighting the sudden, rapid dulling of his telepathic senses. "N-No," he croaked, fighting to open his eyes more widely and focus on Domino's face. "Need to--"

"You need to rest," Cecilia's voice came from somewhere to his right. The words were hard and uncompromising, and he didn't have the breath to mount any kind of a real argument. "Sulven's seeing to Clare, Nathan. You can't help her when you're in this condition."

"No--"

"Nathan, listen to me," Domino said almost harshly, taking his hand again and squeezing it tightly, so tightly it almost hurt. "Close your eyes and rest, damn it. Sulven says you don't have the strength to shield yourself--you need to rest until you get that back before you can do anything to help Clare."

Strength--it had all gone to the rift, to lure it to him. He'd spent it all on the rift, and didn't have any left to help Clare. Stab his eyes, he should have--

Domino stroked the side of his face again. "Just rest," she murmured, much more softly. "You've done all you can for the day, Nate."

Clinging to the link, he saw what Domino was thinking, and knew, understood it all in one horrified instant. Clare had been there. She had BEEN there, caught in the rift, and he hadn't known, hadn't--

Another moan escaped him. That--tug, he'd felt, while he'd been falling towards the rift. That flash of urgency, of need--it had been Clare, reaching out to him, and he hadn't understood, hadn't realized--

"Denver," he murmured weakly, his voice breaking. Domino's expression went blank for a moment. "I didn't--know, I didn't k-know it was Denver--"

"Nate, just--take it easy," Domino said shakily. "Don't--"

"I didn't know--" He was losing his grip on everything as the drug kicked in. "Didn't--know--Clare--"

Domino was still holding his hand, still murmuring something soothing, but he could still feel her fear as he tumbled back into the darkness. Not just hers. So much fear, fear from all around. He could still hear it, even as the drug shut his telepathy down--

The astral plane was crying.

***

Combat Information Center
XSE Headquarters
New York
11:57 PM

"You should be with Kitty and Harry, kid," the gravelly voice said from over his shoulder. "Or in a bed yourself, from the look of you."

"Didn't know you were here, Logan," Pete muttered, not looking up from his screen. "Just--finishing my report."

Logan's hand came down on his shoulder, squeezing gently. "You know, I suspect Bish'll let you off the hook."

Pete looked up at him, grimacing and rubbing the back of his neck. The headache was coming back. "I have to finish my report," he grated, willing Logan to go away and leave him alone. "Have to get--all the bloody i's dotted and the t's crossed--"

Logan arched an eyebrow, but didn't make the sarcastic comment that Pete had expected. Didn't scold him for avoiding the infirmary, either. And he wasn't, anyway. He was going to go straight back down there, once he was finished this. But he needed to finish his report--

"What're you putting in it?" Logan finally asked, leaning back against the console and studying him speculatively.

Pete gave a hoarse laugh. "The basics," he muttered, rubbing his eyes. "You know. Just the facts--"

How could it be anything else? There was no way to put into words how it felt to see the whole world spin out of control in an instant, to know that four million people had died in agony and terror at the hands of something no one, not even the most powerful telepath in the world, had seen coming.

No way to explain how it felt to see your son lying in a bed, hooked up to life support because his mind was so badly damaged that his body was shutting down. To see that, and know that there was nothing you could do, no way you could help him--

"This changes everything, you know," he rasped, speaking before the blurriness to his vision could get any worse. "Whole new world, old man."

"I know." Logan said softly. "Come on, kid. File the report."

Pete nodded jerkily. "Changes everything," he muttered, his voice cracking. There'd been plenty of war and death and darkness in the last twenty-two years, but this was different. This was the pendulum swinging as far it could go in the other direction.

What had saved them at Akkaba, the force that had saved the world and rewritten the future--had just killed four million people, and the world was never going to be the same.

He added his authorization code and sent the report to the main databank. "Done," he muttered, drawing the back of his hand across his eyes and rising from his chair, leaning against the console to steady himself.

Done. And almost midnight. "You remember that doomsday clock back during the Cold War?" he asked Logan hoarsely, watching the clock above the Thread Board count down to the turn of day. "The one that told you how close we were to nuclear war by how close they set it to midnight?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"I think we need a new one of those. Set it to about two seconds to midnight," Pete whispered. "Would be about right, don't you think?"

War on the astral plane. Just the thought--

"I think I want the Cold War back," Logan said.

Pete gave a cracked laugh, hearing the edge of hysteria there and helpless to do anything about it. "I think I could drink to that."

The clock turned over to midnight, and Pete imagined the new day moving over New York, on its way across the continent to devastated Denver and beyond.

A new day. And it would be a long, dark time before the sun rose.

fin

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