True Believers: Part Twenty-Two
"That's charming," Dunworthy said under her breath as they watched the others being led away by Nicholas to stow their gear. Pete, who for obvious reasons hadn't bothered to grab his bag while he was being attacked in the airport, had shown some signs of lingering, but had apparently changed his mind. Cable couldn't blame him.
"What's charming?" he asked dully, sure he didn't want to know.
"Her," Dunworthy said with a low, humorless chuckle. "Your--partner."
Nathan strove not to let any reaction slip out. Domino, as she followed Nicholas out of the command center, kept looking back over her shoulder, as if she was unwilling to leave him alone even for a few minutes.
"She doesn't seem to want to take her eyes off you, Nathan. Has you on a fairly short leash, does she?"
Nathan didn't even bother to look at her. "You sound a little envious, Carmen," he grated, deliberately using her first name. Her insistence on using her married name was a slap in the face, primarily to him, and he always got tired of it fairly quickly. "Having control issues again?"
A little ripple of anger came from her direction, and he smiled coldly. But deeper down, he felt a strange uneasiness, a sort of moment-before-the-car-crash apprehension. Oath--I shouldn't be doing this, he thought almost desperately. There was a time and place for their little power games, and this wasn't it.
But he couldn't just--stop. Not when she'd fallen just as totally into the old patterns as he had. Working with Dunworthy had always been like fighting a duel with a partner whose skills were exactly equal to your own. You couldn't back down for a moment, or she'd have you. And just like him, she always went for the jugular.
It was one of the reasons they didn't work together anymore.
"Why did you bother calling me?" he rasped, sick of the usual dance. His head hurt, he was watching the space-time continuum break down around him, he was having MORE flonqing flashbacks, and the frustration and worry coming from Domino's end of the psi-link was just making everything worse. He couldn't deal with her, couldn't deal with any of this--oh, now THERE'S a productive train of thought!
Dunworthy didn't answer. "What were you thinking, bringing them with you?" she asked, very calmly.
This time, he did give her a sideways look. She was serious. That only made his head hurt worse. "What makes you think this was my idea?" he riposted weakly.
"Breaking security. Letting the X-Men even know about us, after all these years of meticulously keeping out of their way?" Her dark eyes bored into him mercilessly. "You really aren't thinking straight, are you?"
He bit back the impulse to swear at her. "I am getting SO sick of hearing people tell me that--"
"Well, tough," she said harshly, turning to regard the control console again. Since when have I ever cared what you wanted to hear? The bitter thought was inescapable, slashing into his mind like an ice-cold dagger, and he leaned forward, grasping the edge of the console for support again. She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. "Nathan. Sit down or something, before you fall over."
He didn't. It was petty and childish, but he wouldn't give her the satisfaction. "You still didn't answer my question," he said through gritted teeth.
Muscles rippled along her jaw. "Fine. I saw you here. Is that what you wanted to know?"
"You--saw me," Nathan said slowly. Dunworthy's mutant power was a limited sort of prescience; useful, but restricted in its scope to people about whom she--felt strongly, for lack of a better description. And not necessarily people she was fond of, which meant she 'saw' him more often than he liked. "Where?"
She didn't answer. She'd never liked sharing her viewings--she preferred acting on them as she saw fit, not debating interpretations. He sometimes wondered how she managed to function, leading the network. She certainly didn't encourage input from her operatives--
You hypocritical son of a flonq, he told himself disgustedly. As if he was any better.
"Involved," she finally said, tautly. "I saw you involved. And from the looks of you, I think that's an outcome I'd prefer to avoid--"
"Well, you should have THOUGHT of that before you sent Pete to get me," he said, more nastily than he'd intended. She stiffened, and he plunged onwards, aware he was treading on thin ice, here. There was a limit to how far either of them could push things before things got really ugly, and they couldn't afford that right now. "Acting on instinct again, were we? Blaquesmith would be so disappointed."
She looked around at him, the expression on her face so bland that he almost took a step backwards. "So," she said. Mildly. "Did you go out and celebrate when Onslaught blew up Blaquesmith's ship?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Cable snapped, taken aback. She would ask that, he thought grimly. Did she really think THAT little of him? He wasn't a monster, even if his feelings about Blaquesmith were--on the ambivalent side.
"I wasn't. It was a serious question." Her lip curled. "Do you feel 'free' now, Nathan? You've pretended we didn't exist for the last three years. Now Blaquesmith's gone, too. Must be--liberating."
He glared at her, loathing rising up like a wave of nausea from deep inside him. "It would kill Jeff to see what you've turned into," he said in a low, intense voice. Doing what he'd once sworn to himself that he'd never do, after that day, almost twelve years ago now, when she'd saved his life by shooting a network station chief who'd been captured and implanted with a sleeper personality.
A man who had just happened to be her husband.
Her slap nearly took his head off. The other operatives in the room looked around, and then quickly turned back to their duties. "I should have LET him shoot you," she hissed.
"But that would make this all pointless, wouldn't it?" he said mockingly, rubbing his jaw. Sure, his conscience said sardonically. Alienate everyone around you, why don't you? "As satisfying as it would be to kill me, I'm sure--"
"Don't tempt me!" she spat. "How dare you--"
"Let's not dig up old skeletons," he snarled. "We start rehashing all the reasons we have to hate each other, we'll be here all night. And in case you'd forgotten, we have better things to do." Deliberately, he turned away from her and studied the console for a moment. "The stations are coming back on line," he reported in a more neutral voice. "Slowly."
He could sense her weighing options, trying to think of some way to recover the ground she'd given up with that momentary loss of control. It was amazing how transparent she could be.
Of course, it probably helped that he had virtually no shields left. He wasn't just hearing her, he was hearing EVERYTHING. It was getting to the point where he was having trouble separating his thoughts from the background din.
"It would be to our advantage, to have the tactical net back up," she said, her voice just as expressionless as his. A truce, not a surrender.
Never a surrender.
For a moment, an image of Carmen and Jeff dancing together, laughing, floated through his mind, and Cable closed his eyes against a sudden flood of renewed pain. But it was replaced, almost immediately, by memories of angry words, of a trick--a trap, that forced him into the position of pawn, yet again. She had always sided with Blaquesmith, even before Jeff's death. Out of principle, he'd thought once; a sincere belief in Blaquesmith's methods.
Now, it was habit. Maybe even spite.
And he couldn't blame her. Let he who is without sin--
Oath, he was tired. Too tired to be indignant, righteously or otherwise. Someday he was going to sit down and figure out where this had all gone wrong.
'What is, is', wasn't much consolation, most of the time.
***
Dana prowled the corridors, more frustrated than she'd been in a long time. She'd tried to talk her way into an assignment of some sort, without success. Scott called it 'keeping her in reserve', but Dana knew better. Empathy and the ability to 'flicker' other people's mutant powers were no good in this sort of situation, and even her healing had its limits. Dealing with one serious injury would drain her, and leave her even more of a useless lump than she was now.
Hank had gone to New York, to meet with Reed Richards and a bunch of high IQ types to try and figure out a way to deal with the effects of the temporal wave. They'd heard from the Avengers--Dana had been on monitor duty when the call had come in. Apparently Thor hadn't had any luck trying to control the storms, which cast even more doubt on what exactly was causing them. It wasn't like anything any of the 'super-teams' had experienced before, according to Hank, and he and the rest of his ad hoc 'brainstorming' group were racked those very-accomplished brains for some alternate plan of action.
The mansion was quiet, in sharp contrast to the howling wind and driving rain outside. Half of the X-Men had gone north to help Alpha Flight--apparently the storms were even worse up there--and they weren't the only ones out assisting rescue efforts. X-Force was still out in San Francisco. Excalibur, according to Moira's last call, was responding to flooding along the Scottish coast. X-Factor was somewhere in the snowbound Midwest. Across the world, groups and individuals with whom Dana was totally unfamiliar were helping out where and when their particular abilities became useful.
But what good would it do? she wondered, suddenly despondent. It was just a drop in the bucket. According to Hank, who kept muttering about 'exponential ripple effects', they hadn't seen the full effects of this wave yet--so what if there was another? How much worse could it get?
She froze at one particular corner, her eyes narrowing. It's stronger here-- Glancing around a bit abashedly to make sure no one was around to see her, she sat down, cross-legged, and ran through one of the relaxation exercises Cable had taught her all those months ago when he'd been trying to help her learn control over her empathy. It didn't help much; the first step was to clear her mind, after all, and she couldn't quite manage that.
Damn it, she had to figure this out! If she was stuck here, she was at least going to determine what the hell had caused everyone's bizarre behavior earlier. Even with half the team gone, the empathic atmosphere hadn't settled entirely. The--residue, for lack of a better word, from the emotionally charged afternoon was simply unbelievable. There were places where it was more noticeable than others. The War Room was the worst of all, the pain in the air almost overwhelming. She was trying to find other 'pockets', hoping they'd give her some further clue.
This was definitely a pocket. This is where he and Pete ran into Nate Grey, she realized. She closed her eyes, extending her empathy outwards. Anger--frustration--desperation--
Nothing to help her put the pieces together. Forensic empathy, Dana thought sourly, shaking her head with frustration as she got up. Who was she kidding? She couldn't make any sense of what she was picking up. What was needed here was the empathic version of a Wolverine--
Now, why had she thought that? On the surface, the 'players' in today's little drama were perfectly clear. Still, ever since Kitty had voiced her suspicions about some sort of manipulation going on, Dana couldn't quite shake the sense that she was right--
It couldn't have been Cable. Besides the fact that he'd been in too much of a mess to pull off something like that, the only person that had 'taken his side', so to speak, was Pete.
Jean? Dana flinched. That was possible. The others had certainly fallen awfully quickly into line with her determination to keep Cable here, no matter what, but Dana just couldn't believe it. Jean wouldn't--would she?
But that left only one option--a third party. And THAT certainly opened up a whole new can of worms. Another telepath--or another empath, maybe?
I really, really don't like that idea.
***
"Jubilee and Gina are WHAT?" Scott sputtered.
The holographic image of Sean Cassidy sighed and cast his eyes skyward. "Gone, lad. I did nae think you were getting hard of hearing--"
"How can you joke at a time like this?" Bishop demanded angrily, his fists clenched at his sides. He'd been standing just beside the door, rather obviously trying to be unobtrusive, but Sean's news had utterly shattered his facade of nonchalance. He was now standing almost nose to nose with Sean's holographic image, glaring as only Bishop could glare. "Do you customarily misplace your students, Cassidy?"
Sean fixed him with a dark look. "I want t'find the lasses as much as ye do, Bishop, but shouting will nae do any good."
"Yes," Psylocke said heavily. "I think we all need to calm down." She folded her arms across her chest and met Sean's eyes. "I don't understand, Sean. There was no trace of an intrusion on the security cameras--?"
"Nay," Sean said, shaking his head. "Not that it means much--all our systems were out for a good five minutes, Elizabeth. Anything could have happened in that length of time, and with all the telepaths unconscious--"
"So long as whoever it was didn't make too much of a fuss about it, no one would have realized," Scott concluded, shaking his head. "But who would have taken them?" Several rather unpleasant alternatives ran through his mind, including a certain mad geneticist of long acquaintance who had a great deal invested in Gina. Scott flinched at the thought. It would be just like Sinister, to take advantage of the chaos to reclaim a 'prized' experiment.
He hadn't had the difficulty adapting to Gina's existence that Jean had--he'd long since abandoned the wistful hope for a normal family tree. And the girl had won his heart a little during her weeks at the mansion--not just mine, either, Scott thought, glancing sideways at Bishop. The thought of her back in Sinister's hands was--painful, to say the least. But why would Sinister have taken Jubilee as well?
"What if they went willingly?" Psylocke said softly. Scott whirled, giving her a peculiar look.
"Willingly?"
Psylocke nodded slowly. "It seems strange to me that whatever happened, happened so--quietly. Jubilee is at least capable of putting up a good fight, and as for Gina--I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of her power if she thought I was threatening her. This is the child who can burn out your mind by accident, remember?" She raised a hand as Bishop seemed about ready to erupt. "Settle down, Bishop. I'm just raising the possibility."
Bishop took a deep breath, and then turned to Scott. "I wish to go to the Academy," he said bluntly.
Scott raised an eyebrow. "Bishop--"
"No!" Bishop said forcefully, but there was a slight, uncharacteristic unsteadiness in his voice that made Scott frown in concern. "There, I can be useful--this is where my experience lies, remember? I can at least make the ATTEMPT to track them using other techniques, since Frost is already searching with the Academy's Cerebro."
#Let him go, Scott,# Betsy's voice whispered in his mind. #He's terrified for Gina, and only slightly less so for Jubilee. Even if you keep him here, he won't have his mind on anything else you give him to do. He has to feel like he's doing SOMETHING.#
Scott sighed, rubbing his temples. It seemed like he'd had a headache for the last forty-eight hours, but it kept getting worse, incredibly enough--"All right," he said crisply, meeting Bishop's eyes. "Do what you can, but you need to figure out how to get yourself there. Personally, I wouldn't want to be flying in this weather--"
"I'd offer to shadow-slip you," Betsy said gravely, "but I don't think it would be safe. The temporal flux and all that--it's why I had Warren fly us down from New York."
"I will manage," Bishop said curtly, turning on his heel and leaving the room. Betsy rolled her eyes.
"He can be positively brusque, can't he?" she said quietly, and then turned back to Sean. "But he's right--he very well may be able to help. Even if he can't pick up any residual energy signatures, he has an abundance of more mundane skills to fall back on."
"I hope so. But I have some of the same 'skills', Elizabeth--if you're referring t'his stint as a 'cop' in the XSE--and they haven't turned up anything yet," Sean said with a sigh, and looked back at Scott. "Lad, I'm not doin' much good here--do you need me anywhere? Em's liable t'turn into a fire-breathing dragon if ye suggest using any of the students, but I might be of some use--"
Scott smiled faintly. Someone else who wants to feel useful, he thought ironically. That particular sort of frustration seemed to be an epidemic today--"Stay put for now, Sean," he finally said. "I don't want anyone roaming around out there by themselves."
"Aye," Sean said, shaking his head. "What a mess this is. Anything from Cable's team, yet?"
"No." Scott bit his lip, trying to shove the desperate worry Sean's question had evoked back into the corner of his mind where it belonged. They should have called to tell us they were safely there, an insistent voice whispered in his mind. What if something happened on the way? But Sean was saying something else, and Scott forced himself to pay attention.
"Pardon me for sayin' so, Scotty, but something tells me that might be a blessing at the moment." Sean's gaze was uncomfortably direct. "Logan was going to try and keep in touch, aye? Ye might want to begin thinking about what t'tell him about the lasses when he does call."
"Good point," Scott said with a wince, wondering if there was anyone to whom he could pass off that particular responsibility. Maybe Betsy--Logan LIKED her.
#Not on your life, Scott.#
Well, it had been worth a shot.
***
"You are going to explain right?" Kitty said under her breath. "Tactical nets and Records and talking holograms that seem to be fond of you--?"
Pete coughed to hide a laugh. "Eventually," he said, grinning at her as they sat down. They'd met back here in the briefing room, with the exception of Gwen, who'd muttered something about being 'just a chauffeur' and gone back to check her plane. "Might take a while, though. Especially about Rebecca--"
"Why am I not surprised?" Kitty muttered. Pete reached out and took her hand under the table, and she snorted. "I swear, you like being mysterious--"
"Guilty as charged. You love it, Pryde, you know you do--" His words provoked a chuckle from Kitty, which was what he'd been aiming for, so he left the subject there, satisfied.
Taking her seat on the other side of the table, Storm gave him a chilly look. Pete smiled at her cheerfully, trying to ignore the little ripple of resentment the whole thing provoked. Bloody hell, she and Dunworthy should get together, have a friggin' contest to see who disapproves of me more--
Someone laid a hand on his shoulder, and he jumped, craning his neck around to look up at a very sober Shavrin. "What?" he asked, a little defensively.
#I should have paid more attention to your memories when I scanned you for this place's location,# her voice said in his mind. #I did not realize things were so bad between Dayspring and these people--#
Pete bit his lip. Don't judge them all by Carmen, he thought back at her. She's sort of a special case--
#Immaterial.# Shavrin's expression had hardened. #My pledge was to him.# She nodded at him, and then went to take a seat.
More power to you then, love, Pete threw after her fervently. She might be young, but she was still an Askani, and that had to count for something, her being so firmly on Nathan's 'side'.
He just didn't want to see Dunworthy bully Cable into doing this her way. Blaquesmith being gone leveled the playing field a bit, but Nate wasn't exactly at his best right now. It was insane to be looking at this like a game of one-upmanship, but that was what it invariably turned into. There was just too much bad blood here. He only hoped they could both put it aside for long enough to work with each other on this--
"Wisdom!"
Pete nearly jumped out of his chair when Dunworthy snapped his name. "What?" he asked, more plaintively than he'd intended, and then realized he'd taken out a cigarette.
"You light that, I'll shove it down your throat."
"Bloody hell," Pete muttered. He considered the situation, weighing pride against the possibility of adding to the less-than-harmonious atmosphere, and finally stuck the cigarette back in his pocket. There were some battles not worth fighting. A rumbling laugh emanated from Logan's general direction, and Pete gave the older man the nastiest look he dared with Kitty sitting right there beside him. He'd gotten her elbow in his ribs twice already in the last twenty-four hours--or was it more? He was beginning to lose track.
"Why don't we just get on with it?" Cable asked in a neutral voice from where he was sitting beside Domino. He was sitting ramrod-straight in his chair, staring fixedly at the opposite wall of the briefing room, as if there was something absolutely riveting to see there.
Except that it looked more like he was staring THROUGH the wall, rather than at it.
Dunworthy, still standing, looked down at Cable, raising an eyebrow. "Would you prefer to do the briefing yourself?" she inquired mildly, as if he was a cranky old codger who needed to be 'humored'. "You know as much about Apocalypse's base as I do. Unless, of course, you've been--away for so long that you can't remember how to use the briefing room's holographic systems--?"
"You two going to needle each other, or give us some details about what's the hell's going on?" Logan growled.
Pete smiled faintly, wondering if Logan knew what he was getting himself into. Dunworthy had never been the 'simple mercenary' she appeared--she had been Blaquesmith's first recruit, over twenty years ago, when she'd been a teenager struggling with her mutant power. Her years with Simone Vander had been to establish her 'cover', just like Nate's time with SHIELD and the Six-Pack.
Dunworthy gave Logan a bland look, and then continued, as if he hadn't interrupted. "Perhaps I had better do the honors," she said. Cable continued to stare at the wall, not reacting in the slightest. She smiled coldly, and, leaning over, activated the holosystems.
The lights in the room dimmed, and the unit at the center of the table projected a three-dimensional view of Apocalypse's base--or as much of it as they knew, rather. When he'd been here the day before yesterday, some of the techies had still been trying to sneak a surveillance remote into the base to get a more complete picture. Their last drone had been about the size of a cockroach--
The door slid open before Dunworthy could even open her mouth.
"Starting without us, love?" the first new arrival asked cheerfully.
"How rude," the second purred.
Grinning, Pete sat back and watched the show.
"What the hell are you two doing here?" Dunworthy snapped, bringing the lights back up. "Does the word 'lockdown' not mean anything to you?"
"As questions go, that one was remarkably pointless," Jonas Feore said amiably, taking one of the empty chairs. A tall, lanky man with shaggy blond hair and a face like a friendly gargoyle, he was possibly the most mild-tempered operative in the network--until you put a weapon in his hands. Jonas glanced around the room, nodding at Nathan, who had looked away from the wall when the door had opened. Nathan returned the gesture almost curtly.
"You are supposed to be this station's security officer," Dunworthy said icily.
"Which is why I'm here," Jonas said, brightly. "Crisis--security. Nice, obvious connection. Really, Carmen, there's no need to get so huffy about it--" Pete choked back a laugh, and Jonas grinned at him.
"Can we just get on with it?" the young woman who'd accompanied him in asked harshly. "I need to get cracking at cleaning up the mess whatever-it-was made of our systems." Melinda Parrish was as blond as Jonas, but a good deal more attractive--from a strictly aesthetic viewpoint. Pete had never, NEVER even flirted with the idea of approaching her, not in the six years he'd known her. He liked all his parts right where they were--and unsinged. Emotionally unstable alpha-class pyrokinetics were not his cup of tea.
Dunworthy gave them both one last, baleful look, and then activated the hologram once more. "Remind me to assign you both to Pitcairn Island--" she grumbled.
"We don't have a station on Pitcairn Island," Jonas pointed out helpfully. "I've always had a fancy for Fiji, myself--"
Pete could almost hear Dunworthy grinding her teeth--she'd never had much of a sense of humor. But she let it drop, like he'd known she would. Rules or no rules, Jonas and Melinda were a lot more useful inside than running around out there in the storm, and she knew it. Dunworthy wasn't one to throw away her tools just because they made a habit of annoying her--will you listen to me? Pete thought, oddly disturbed by the direction his train of thought had taken, and forced himself to turn his attention to the hologram.
"As you can see, we don't have a complete schematic of the base," Dunworthy said, presumably for the edification of the non-networkers in the group. "That complicates things slightly--"
"Slightly?" Storm asked quietly.
"Not as much as you think," Dunworthy said promptly--surprisingly, not looking even the slightest bit annoyed at the interruption. "We have several different possible points of access to choose from, and we know where we're going, at least." She adjusted the display to highlight one particular level of the basis. "Here. Passive scanning is picking up a very--specialized sort of energy signature from this level."
"Teleportation systems," Cable said. It wasn't a question.
"Like yours?" Logan asked, and Pete remembered that Wolverine and Bishop had both been exposed to Cable's bodysliding technology during that mess with Stryfe.
"Based on the same technology," Cable said quietly, studying the hologram. "Only these energy readings look like these systems are adapted to shift large masses, not just a few people at a time."
"It's obvious when you think of it," Jonas said, his gaze focused on the hologram as well. "I mean, so they're disassembling the base--bully for them. They have to be sending it SOMEWHERE."
"But that's not the whole issue," Cable said, his expression sharpening as he straightened in his chair. For just a moment, watching the wheels turn behind Nathan's eyes as that devious brain of his started to attack the problem, Pete could almost fool himself into thinking the events of the last twenty-four hours hadn't happened. It was a comforting illusion; too bad he'd never been good at deluding himself. "Where they're sending it is important. But we need to know exactly what they're sending, too."
"What they're building, wherever they're building it," Jonas summed up, and then blinked as Cable's head snapped around towards him. "What?"
"Building--" he muttered, and then swore in Askani.
"Well, that was terribly illuminating, Nathan, thank you," Dunworthy said ironically. But as Cable got up from his chair and started to pace, she studied him, her eyes narrowing. "What are you thinking?"
He ignored her, continuing to swear as he paced.
Domino's expression tightened with resolve. As he came past her chair, she reached out and grabbed his arm. He stopped short, glaring down at her hand as if it were some disembodied impediment that had suddenly appeared in his way.
"Nate," she said softly. "What?"
He blinked, and his thunderous expression faded. "I always knew the waves felt artificial," he said. For all the confidence of his words, he nevertheless sounded curiously unsure of himself. "The early ones, I mean. The--degree of intensity, the amount each was out of phase--the phrase 'test sequence' even occurred to me. I don't know about this last wave and all the damage it's doing--maybe they lost control of it--"
"A test sequence," Kitty said thoughtfully. "So you think this equipment's going to a machine that's generating these waves? What sort of machine could do that?"
Melinda suddenly went ashen. "Oh, shit," she breathed. "Tell me he's not building a Tinex--"
Pete could almost feel a certain part of his anatomy shriveling up in response to that idea. Jonas paled, Nicholas started chewing his lower lip in a familiar nervous mannerism, and Dunworthy folded her arms across her chest, her eyes widening imperceptibly.
"A Tinex?" Storm asked. "Some sort of--time-travel device?"
Pete was tempted to say No, a wristwatch, but he kept his mouth shut.
"The Rolls-Royce of time-travel devices, Ms. Munroe," Nicholas said grimly. "And not something that should be appearing in this timeline for another thousand years or so, even in its most primitive form."
"This shouldn't be possible," Shavrin said, sounding troubled. "It IS too early--" She started to toy with her medallion. "Any change in that would have been a major nexus point--the retrocognitives would have seen it!"
"But they didn't see any of this, you said," Dunworthy muttered. "And the wave could have caused a major shift in this timeline--"
"I don't think it's a Tinex." Everyone's attention went back to Cable. He was staring straight ahead once more, his eyes unfocused. "It is a displacement wave--or would be, if it was properly phased. But it's being directed outwards, not inwards for a time-rip--and that doesn't take into account the astral disruption it's causing."
Kitty frowned. "So--it's the process in reverse?" Her expression turned thoughtful as she considered the problem. Pete decided, then and there, to steer her in Melinda's direction when the briefing was over. God only knew what the two of them could come up with, working together--
Cable didn't seem to hear Kitty's question. "The astral wave happened first," he muttered. "Then the temporal wave. Displacement on two separate levels--what would be the point of causing that?" He looked suddenly frustrated. "Stab his eyes, this doesn't make any sense!"
"There would be a way to find out, maybe," Melinda said crisply. "I would need to get into their system anyway, to find out where the stuff's being routed. I could poke around for information on what they're doing with it, too--"
"And get your brain fried by the automatic defenses," Dunworthy said irritably. "Don't be so eager to die, Parrish."
Melinda's smile was positively savage. "Did I say I'd be doing it alone?" She turned back to Cable. "I've been experimenting--"
"Again?" he asked, almost dryly, and she scowled at him. "Go on."
"Stefan and I worked out a way to make Rebecca--um, portable, for lack of a better word. Between the two of us, we should be able to handle it." Melinda's smile returned as Cable blinked at her, clearly stunned. "What? Surprised I could improve on the technology?"
"No, I think Nathan knows not to put anything past you, Mel," Jonas said pleasantly. Melinda bared her teeth at him.
"Taking Rebecca out of her matrix?" Pete asked, troubled by the thought. "Is that safe?" Dunworthy gave him a mildly contemptuous look, and Pete braced himself for the inevitable 'protective feelings towards a hologram are foolish' lecture.
But he couldn't be so dismissive. Not when he'd been sitting beside Rebecca--the real Rebecca--when she'd died, holding her hand as the equipment raced to record her memories and psi-pattern before the bloody virus killed her.
She had been his friend. Nothing more than that, but that had been more than enough. One of the sweetest, kindest souls it had ever been his privilege to know. He sometimes thought she'd been too good for this world--too good for this life, definitely. It had killed her in the end, after all.
Melinda actually gave him an understanding look. She and Rebecca had been very close, too. Now, THAT had been an odd friendship, Rebecca being so serene and Melinda so wild. "Do you think I'd have suggested it if it weren't?" she asked, her voice uncharacteristically mild. Pete nodded in acknowledgment, and she turned back to Cable. Focusing on him, rather than Dunworthy; Pete found that rather interesting. "It's workable," she said bluntly. "I'd be totally incapable of protecting myself while I was working, though."
Pete could see she didn't like that idea. Melinda, for all her technical expertise, was just as valuable in combat. She certainly preferred fighting to tinkering, no matter how good she was at the latter--
"Information," Cable said, almost distantly. "That's what we need, more than anything else."
"And then we finally blow the place up, right?" Melinda asked with relish. "Cut off the flow of supplies to wherever it is they're going?"
"No," Cable corrected. "Then we make sure the 'labor force' is evacuated." His head turned towards Dunworthy, who smiled slightly. Pete could almost hear the clash of steel as their eyes met. "Then we finally blow the place up."
"Really, Nathan," Dunworthy murmured, that same faint smile still playing on her lips. "Do we have to have that little talk about priorities again?"
She was goading him, damn it. Pete could see it in her eyes. He had his problems with Carmen, but he didn't want to see her get blown through a wall if Nate lost his less-than-secure hold on his even-more-dangerous-than-usual temper.
"No," Cable said, his voice wintry. "I have my priorities--perfectly in order, thank you."
She arched an eyebrow. His left eye started blazing.
The stand-off was broken by a disapproving noise from Nicholas's direction. "Do I have to take you two over my knee?" he asked acidly.
to be continued...
[FOOTER]