Peacekeepers: Denver
Part One
by Alicia McKenzie
DISCLAIMER: Marvel's characters belong to Marvel, and are used without permission for entertainment purposes only. The rest are mine, with the exception of Genevieve Bridge, who was created by Falstaff and is used with permission. This story is set six months before 'Remnant Shadows' and a year before the beginning of 'Black Knights'.
August 7th, 2027
Somewhere in the Canadian Rockies
9:32 PM
Once upon a time, it had been a top-secret government research installation, just like countless others hidden all over the world. It had stood empty for years, at the mercy of the elements in this far northern valley. Nothing of the secrets it had once held remained in its empty halls and vacant rooms. It had been forgotten, like so many other facilities of its kind, dismissed from memory and left to rot.
But tonight, for the first time in years, light shone out from its few windows, into the moonless night. Much later, when the time had come to reflect on everything that had happened, there were many who would point out that it had been only chance that no surveillance satellite or idly scanning telepath or wandering hiker had noticed, seen light where there should be only darkness, sensed danger where there should be nothing at all.
Only chance.
Inside, scattered throughout the facility, young men and women, some barely more than children, sat cross-legged on the floor, or reclined on bedrolls, or even - in a few unusual cases - simply stood still. The position one chose for meditation was a highly personal thing; so many differences were hardly surprising, given that the forty-six people in the building were all over the spectrum in terms of appearance and personality and temperament. All they shared was one goal, and one important genetic mutation.
They were all telepaths.
They had been meditating since early that morning, and would continue well into the night, until every mind in the building was clear and calm and prepared for the morning. Anxiety would be minimized. Doubt would be eliminated.
The world would listen to them, at last.
***
August 8th, 2027
New York City
5:07 AM
"Would you slow down a little?" Nathan Summers snapped irritably at his new driver. "We're hardly running late!" He'd woken up feeling decidedly under the weather this morning, and the speed at which the boy was moving through the pre-dawn streets towards UN Headquarters wasn't helping. The motion of the car was making him feel vaguely nauseous, and every time the reject-from-Nascar sitting behind the wheel hit the brakes, Nathan found himself fighting back a flash of dizziness.
"Don't shout at the driver, Ambassador. He needs to keep his attention on the road," the tall, dark woman sitting across from him said mildly, folding her arms across her chest. "Just sit back and relax," Genevieve Bridge advised. "I can hear you grinding your teeth from here. Being this aggravated is not good for your blood pressure."
Nathan glared at his bodyguard. "Your concern for my health is heartwarming," he growled, and levitated one of the files out of his open briefcase to his hand. It took a flicker of telekinesis, no more, but even that tiny effort made the pounding in his head worse. He closed his eyes with a wince. This was ridiculous. You'd think I was hungover or something. He'd teleported the two of them in from Maine to the apartment he and Dom kept in the city, and it had left him feeling drained enough that he'd opted to take a car the rest of the way. Now he was wishing he hadn't. Should've just bitten the bullet--
Even with his eyes closed, he could feel Genevieve Bridge watching him. The realization was annoying enough to make him bristle. "Stop that," he muttered. "I'm fine."
"This is really ridiculous, you know," she said almost conversationally. He opened his eyes and gave her a baleful look. She had that so-very-reasonable expression again--oath, she reminded him so strongly of her father sometimes. "There's no good reason for the Security Council to be meeting at dawn."
"Except when we're receiving the report of how the day's negotiations went in Jakarta," Nathan pointed out dryly. She grimaced, and he shrugged. "It's moderately important," he said, hearing the weary edge to his voice and letting it stay there, for now. Appearances didn't particularly matter at the moment, not when it was just the two of them. "I could hardly have called in sick when I'm the one who was pushing for a resolution of this whole flonqing mess."
The Indonesian government had recently decided that it would be very nice if it had a mutant militia of its very own, which was more or less completely unacceptable under half a dozen different treaties. But it was an outright act of defiance against the Cairo Accords, and that was one line no nation in the world was going to be permitted to cross. Not while he drew breath--
"Hey, don't glare at me, Uncle Nate," Genevieve said suddenly, raising a defensive hand with a grin. "Save it for the naughty rogue state."
"Don't be flippant," he snapped, much more harshly than he'd intended, and Genevieve's eyes widened slightly, her smile vanishing. He sighed. "That was uncalled for. I'm--sorry."
She pursed her lips, glancing out the window as the driver made a turn, and then looking back at him, giving a slight nod. "I shouldn't have made light of the situation. I know how you feel about this."
Nathan felt his mouth twist into something approaching a smile. "It's happened before. It'll happen again." But the Cairo Accords were the foundation of everything they'd built in the last twenty years. If they were challenged successfully, everything he and so many others had fought and bled for could start sliding into the abyss.
Genevieve gave a soft laugh. "You really think anyone's going to believe you'll be reasonable about this just because a few idiots have crossed you on it before?"
He really hoped he wasn't that transparent to the rest of the Security Council. "I thought I'd done pretty well, actually," he countered. "After all, I didn't go to Jakarta personally, did I?" So tempting, though. "I refrained. I believe in the value of diplomacy," he said, managing an absolutely straight face. Sure, I believe in the value of diplomacy. Most of the time.
"I almost believe you when you say that," she said, her eyes narrowing lightly. "So what happens if the negotiations don't go well?"
He laid the file back down in his briefcase, meeting her eyes unwaveringly. So much like her father. She still liked testing him, even after all this time. "Whether the negotiations are successful or not, the end result will be the same," he said curtly. "Either the Indonesians will allow their militia to be integrated into the XSE, or they won't. In which case, we do it the hard way." He left it at that, and Genevieve gave him a hard look that dissolved into a rueful grin.
"You scare me sometimes, you know," his god-daughter said wryly. "You're like the proverbial thousand-pound gorilla. Remind me to be on another continent the day someone finally refuses to back down, because I don't want to see what you do to them."
"Don't be ridiculous," he murmured, leaning back into the seat with a heavy sigh. "I believe in the system."
"You just don't worry about it too much when things aren't going your way, right?"
He stared out the window, at New York. "My way or the highway," he murmured ironically. "I wish."
***
Frost Enterprises
New York City
6:30 AM
"So I fired him," Gina said, nibbling on her croissant as she spun idly in her chair. Wearing a blazingly crimson - if conservatively cut - suit, her fire-gold hair piled atop her head with only a few ringlets escaping, she cut a striking figure against the rich woods and dark colors of her office. "Told him to get his things together and be out of the building by five, or I'd have security escort him out."
Standing over by the enormous bay window that gave such an incredible view from up here on the forty-eighth floor, Bishop sipped his coffee and grunted thoughtfully. "Sounds like you should have done that weeks ago," he said to his wife. He'd gotten back to the Tower very late last night after a full two weeks overseas, seeing to various crises, and hadn't been home yet. Meeting for breakfast had seemed like the perfect compromise; they both had a full day today, and weren't willing to wait until late evening to see each other again.
"Oh, but then I wouldn't have had the fun of getting the proof I needed to make his life a living hell for having the gall to embezzle from us," Gina said with a sweet, ruthless smile. Bishop raised an eyebrow. But he shouldn't be surprised. She could be surprisingly vindictive when she'd been wronged; Emma's influence, he supposed.
"You could have simply read his mind," he pointed out, a slight smile playing on his lips as Gina rose gracefully from her chair and joined him at the window.
She reached out and took his hand, her fingers interlacing with his, and Bishop's smile grew despite himself as the link between them opened up and he found out, first-hand, just how glad she was that he was home. "Too easy," she said aloud, a playful gleam in her eyes. "I like playing cat and mouse when the rodent's someone who deserves to get clawed." Bishop chuckled, and she raised an eyebrow, mimicking his earlier gesture perfectly. "Aren't you going to eat something?"
"I"ll take something with me," he temporized, taking a moment to admire the way the sunlight from the window turned her hair almost incandescent. Silver ran through it, here and there, barely noticeable.
"After I went to all this trouble to have breakfast brought up?" she asked archly.
He brought her hand to his lips, kissed it, and then gave her his best straight-faced look. "I thought perhaps we could put the time to better use," he said in a deadpan voice, enjoying the color that rose to her cheeks.
"Don't tease me."
"Teasing? Me?"
***
Lowry XSE Base,
Denver, Colorado
7:45 AM
"I need a coffee," Clare Summers said mournfully, rubbing her eyes as they stepped off the personnel carrier.
Harry Wisdom grinned up at her, a mischievous glint in his dark eyes. "You always need a coffee," he said to his tall, dark-haired 'cousin' as they walked off the landing pad and farther into the immense hangar. Not a busy place, this early in the morning, he noticed. Save for the odd mechanic, here and there, and the fading echo of their carrier's engines, there were almost no noise at all. "Are you actually that much of a caffeine addict, or do you just do it to uphold the family legend?"
"Fuck off, Harold," she muttered, swatting him lightly across the back of the head. "It's six in the morning, my stomach's still doing acrobatics because that damned pilot thought the personnel carrier was a fighter jet, and I had to listen to you snore for half the flonqing trip. I want my coffee. I DESERVE my coffee." She hesitated for a moment, looking around, and then inclined her head in the direction of a door half-obscured by the light-attack craft lined up in neat rows in front of it. "That way."
"How do you know?" He'd been sort of surprised there was no one there to meet them. Not like he expected the red-carpet treatment - he and Clare were just lowly lieutenants, after all, despite who their parents were - but they HAD been pulled out of their old assignments for a reason. If the commander there had wanted them this badly, surely he would have sent someone to make sure they didn't get lost.
"I memorized the blueprints of the base while we were in flight," Clare said. "Took my mind off the fact that you were drooling on my shoulder." He sniggered, and she arched a eyebrow at him as she slung her duffel bag over her shoulder. "What?"
"You're anal-retentive. You really are." He ignored the forbidding gray glare he got, and headed for the door she'd indicated, trying very hard not to smirk. "I suppose that's not your fault. Probably it's genetic--"
#Attention to detail isn't a bad thing,# her voice said in his mind, her familiar blue-silver presence quivering with amusement. #It tends to save one from certain embarassing situations--#
Harry coughed, flushing. "You promised you wouldn't rub that in," he muttered. It had been two months since that party at the New Lands embassy in Paris, where they'd been stationed up until last night, and he still couldn't help feeling a little embarassed when he thought of it.
"No, I promised I wouldn't tell anyone else. I didn't promise I wouldn't use it to make you squirm," Clare said aloud, her mouth twitching with a smile. "Although I suppose Yevgeny made a pretty convincing girl."
"Bitch," Harry grumbled good-naturedly. "How was I supposed to know that the Russian ambassador's son was a cross-dresser?" All he'd seen was this very attractive blonde who'd felt friendly enough, to his empathy. Sure, she--HE'D been a little tall and muscular, but Harry was used to the Amazon type. "Besides," he said, mock-glowering at Clare, who at nearly six feet tall was more than slightly Amazon-ish herself, "he thought I was cute. And he wasn't really that bad a kisser, all things considered." The grin escaped before he could stop it as Clare laughed delightedly. "Good conversationalist, too," Harry continued blithely. "In hindsight, it's a shame I'm straight."
Clare giggled all the way to the base commander's office. There, they were invited to sit down by a bleary-eyed secretary, but wound up waiting only a few minutes before she ushered them in to see their new CO.
"I see you found your way," the woman standing over by the coffee-maker said with a smile, returning their salutes. She was perhaps in her mid-forties, trim and fit in her uniform, her short red hair liberally streaked with silver. Harry liked her instantly. There was a warmth to her that his empathy picked up on immediately. "At ease, both of you. Coffee?"
Harry sighed and gave Clare a martyred look, and their new commander laughed openly, as she intercepted it. "Foolish question?" Maria Ballantyne asked with a grin. "You must take after your father, then, Clare. I was at the Los Angeles station in the North American network, before the Merge. I can remember Cole, our station chief, going into an absolute panic when your father showed up one day and there was no coffee to be found. No one had gone shopping yet that week, you see." She came over with two cups, handing them to Clare and Harry and gesturing for them to sit down as she went back, retrieved hers, and then took her seat behind the desk.
Harry absorbed her words, considering them thoughtfully. A lot of the original members of the XSE's officer corps had come from Uncle Nathan's network. Some of them, unsurprisingly, were real hard-asses, but Commander Ballantyne seemed easy-going enough.
Clare murmured a thank-you, and managed a thoroughly blissful look as she took her first sip of the steaming coffee. "My Uncle Hank--Hank McCoy, I mean, suggested to my father a while back that he switch to decaf," she said, grinning at Commander Ballantyne. "I gather it's some kind of ongoing argument that flares up every so often."
Ballantyne chuckled, her blue eyes twinkling. "Dr. McCoy's a brave man," she said, and leaned over her terminal, tapping a few commands into her keypad as she scrutinized the information displayed on the screen. "Well, on to business, I suppose. You've had a long flight, and I don't doubt you'd like to get settled in." She leaned back in her chair, regarding them thoughtfully. "You're probably wondering why I asked the Tower to transfer the two of you here." Harry and Clare nodded, and Ballantyne smiled. "It's really very simple. I want to put you to work," she said with another soft chuckle.
Clare and Harry exchanged a quick look, and he let her be the one to answer. "How so, Commander?" she asked politely.
Ballantyne's expression grew a little more serious. "We've been cooperating with the local authorities on matters of shared interest since Lowry Base was commissioned, but that sort of informal relationship isn't going to cut it anymore, I'm afraid. I don't know if either of you are aware that Denver's population has grown by almost a million in the last two years, thanks to the American government's resettlement policy?"
"Not until now," Harry said. "Quite a jump." Refugees from Dallas were being resettled all over the United States, ever since the American government had signed its treaty with the Prime Sentinel colonies in that city and made a huge chunk of Texas a protected no-fly zone.
Three years ago, now. It hardly seemed possible. Harry had been in training during the last conflict with the Texas hives, and he remembered all too well the casualties the XSE had suffered. But the Sentinels had been changing, even then, moving beyond the limitations of their original programming. No one knew why, or how, but they had developed a racial consciousness of sorts, one that could be reasoned with--by baseline humans, mind you. Their attitudes towards mutants hadn't changed.
But the Sentinels had found their own casualties unacceptable, too, and that consciousness had decided that isolation was the answer. The Sentinels had been the ones to open negotiations, amazingly enough, and they'd obeyed every clause of the treaty scrupulously. Harry knew that a lot of people, especially within the XSE, were horrified at the 'live and let live' policy, but it had been the American government's choice to make. The XSE had to live with it.
Ballantyne nodded. "It's this damned quota system," she said with a sigh. "Obviously, the refugees aren't being properly integrated, not when they're arriving in such numbers. Conditions are bad. There's a lot of resentment on both side. Crime rates are skyrocketing, and the Denver police can't cope." She gave them both an intent look. "You've spent the last year working in Paris with the joint task force we set up with the Paris police. I'm well-aware of your performance records. Clare, I spoke to a very nice police captain in their anti-terrorism section who said he'd rather have you at his back than fifty hand-picked men. And as for you, Harry, Commander Dortmund of the Paris base swears you're the best forensic empath in the XSE." Ballantyne smiled faintly. "All of which is important, but I wasn't just looking for skill. If I'm going to set up a task force of my own, I need with leadership ability and a certain amount of diplomatic talent. There's some dissatisfaction among the local police at the idea that they need our assistance."
"Ah," Clare said delicately. "You need people who won't rub their faces in it."
"Precisely. I was looking for specific elements in the psych assessments of the officers I was considering. You both fit my requirements. So did my choice for your commanding officer. Rick Chaves has been second-in-command of the Bejing task force for the last eighteen months--he'll be arriving tomorrow." Ballantyne smiled. "Essentially, I'm going to throw the three of you together, and let you do all the work. Rick will be in charge, and the two of you will be his eyes, ears and hands out in the field. Sound good?"
Good? She was giving them what was more or less limited field command, and she was asking them if that sounded good? Harry grinned at Clare, who was projecting the empathic equivalent of 'pinch me, it's not right to be this excited' all over the place.
"Sounds like--a real challenge, Commander," she said, her gray eyes almost glowing. "We'll do our best."
Harry nodded eagerly."You can count on us, ma'am," he said. You couldn't advance very far in the XSE until you'd held a field command. This was going to look REAL damned good on their records.
#If we do a good job,# Clare reminded him firmly.
Yeah, yeah. Harry shot back exuberantly.
***
Combat Information Center
XSE Headquarters
New York City
11:05 AM
Yawning widely, Pete Wisdom shook his head at the large holographic display affectionately termed the Threat Board. It was the most dominant feature in the massive Combat Information Center, taking up one entire wall. It was more or less clear this morning. Which was a good thing, he reminded himself; slow days meant no casualties.
Still, it left him with very little to do. Bloody hell, I hate pulling the watch. But there had to be one executive-level officer on duty in the CIC at all times, in case something came up that required immediate action, so he wound up sitting shifts two or three times a week whenever he was in New York. More often than not, it wound up being a stupendously boring way to spend twelve hours, and the whole bloody Tower was a non-smoking zone, which really pissed him off.
"Commander Wisdom?" One of the duty officers handed him the data crystal with the day's dispatches.
"Thanks, Inez," he said, plugging it into his terminal and bringing up the information on his screen. "Any coffee made?"
"I'll check, sir."
He murmured another thank-you, already browsing through the dispatches. Nothing much of note, he realized pretty quickly. Another sign that it was turning into a routine sort of day. Coming across the entry in the transport logs recording personnel carrier's 4724's safe arrival in Denver, Pete grinned. Need to give Harry a call later, see how he likes his new assignment. Field command - or the next best thing - at twenty. Pete knew he'd been swaggering a little, since he'd found out, but he figured he was entitled.
Honestly, he was almost as relieved as he was proud. Seeing his son heading up the investigative end of a task force was a lot preferable, in Pete's eyes, to having him out on front-line police actions. Not that he wasn't capable of the latter - he and Clare had both covered themselves in metaphorical glory doing that very thing in Russia, their first year out of the Academy - but Pete was selfishly glad that Harry's particular talents had made him suitable for a less-dangerous line of work.
It was a good partnership between Harry and Clare, he thought, not for the first time. According to Dortmund, Clare had a positive genius for the anti-terrorism end of things; her talents complemented Harry's nicely. And they got along like only two people who'd been in near-constant psychic contact from childhood could. No, I don't think that's a pair we want to split up anytime soon. You didn't mess with what worked. One of the reasons he'd been willing to sign on with Bishop and Cable back at the beginning had been the fact that they recognized that--and that they hadn't been willing to put up with any of the sodding political nonsense, but that went without saying, didn't it?
"Here, sir," Inez said, handing him a cup of coffee. He gave her a brief smile, and went back to reading the dispatches.
***
XSE Academy
Salem Center
11:35 AM
"And that," Scott Summers concluded with a faint smile, "is, more or less, the truth behind the incident more commonly referred to as Second Akkaba. Any questions?" The twelve youngsters in his Elementary Tactics And Strategy class - seven boys, five girls, none over the age of fifteen - had been listening raptly for the last hour, and Scott's smile grew as no questions were immediately forthcoming. "All right, I have a few for you, then. First of all, what mistakes were made?" One of the boys sitting near the rear of the classroom raised his hand, and Scott nodded at him. "Andrew?"
"Well," the tow-headed boy said, a little hesitantly. "I suppose the Scions of the Morning Fire were relying too heavily on secrecy, weren't they? I mean, you said they hadn't mounted any sentries or anything--"
"Right," Scott said with another nod. "They were completely focused on their goal - digging up the technology they were after - and didn't think anyone would be close enough to notice what they were doing--"
"Because the Cairo Accords made Akkaba a forbidden zone," one of the girls said brightly. "Oh, I get it! Once they were in, they thought they were home free, right?"
"Overconfidence," Scott said with a wry grin. "Often a fatal mistake in a combat situation." His eyes drifted over to the windows as a fair amount of muffled shouting suddenly broken the near-silence. His students looked equally curious, and he shrugged, turning back to them. "Commander Guthrie stopped by to teach his aerial combat class again. I'm sure I don't need to explain further." A wave of snickering swept through the room and was gone again almost as quickly as he stepped away from the lecturn and moved forward to the front row of desks. "So, where was I?"
"Overconfidence, sir."
"Right. The Scions of the Morning Fire weren't the only ones who were overconfident in this situation, were they?" He got twelve identical blank looks in response, and folded his arms across his chest, terribly amused by the whole thing. "Oh, come on, people. It's not a hard question."
"Umm--Ambassador Summers was overconfident, too, I guess--" one of the other girls said hesitantly, and cringed as the others looked at her, as if she was expecting to get glared at.
"Exactly," Scott said crisply, ignoring the surprised looks he got. "It's the perfect example of how dangerous it is to become emotionally involved in situations like this. It may have been a courageous thing to do, but the fact is that Ambassador Summers - Commander Summers at the time, remember - went in on his own, without back-up." Scott didn't have any trouble wearing a disapproving expression as he spoke. The 'incident' was years in the past, but he had no trouble remembering just how badly he'd wanted to throttle his son for it. Nathan had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility when it came to Apocalypse's various legacies, but that didn't make his behaviour that day any less asinine.
"Not--real smart, I guess," one of the other boys admitted, sounding almost reluctant.
"Not smart at all," Scott said firmly. "There are always going to be times when you're in over your head. But when you have time to plan, the choice to bring along adequate support, and you still go in half-cocked, that's just asking for trouble. Yes, Elizabeth?" he asked as the girl who'd pointed out Nathan's overconfidence raised her hand.
"What do you do, the times you get in over your head?" she asked tentatively.
Scott smiled a little wistfully. "Your best," he said simply.
***
Somewhere in the Canadian Rockies
10:32 AM
A force was beginning to coalesce on the astral plane, a force of a sort that hadn't been seen for over twenty years. The last time, it had encompassed every man, woman and child on the planet.
Today, there were only forty-siz. Forty-six minds, weaving themselves into a tapestry of thought and desire. A pillar of fire took shape on the astral plane, a construct of pure psionic power, unhindered by the laws and restrictions of the physical world.
Only forty-six minds, but it would be enough.
The last such merge had broken the old order, to make room for the new. This one would do the same. It didn't matter that the 'old order' in this case had survived for a mere two decades, as opposed to five millenia.
It was wrong, and the merge glowed with the force of its conviction on that score. It was wrong, and would be changed. This was merely the beginning, one carefully measured act to show the world the true meaning of power, and what would be done if any resisted the change that was coming.
A warning. A shot heard 'round the world.
The merge laughed silently, and submerged itself in the astral plane, heading for its target like a shark towards its prey.
***
Denver
10:46 AM
"That's your fourth cup of coffee."
"No, Harry, this is espresso," Clare said extravagantly, leaning back against the park bench and grinning at him. "This is better than normal coffee." He shook his head ruefully at her, and she laughed. "Come on, lighten up. Ballantyne gave us the day off to get settled in and see some of the city. So enjoy yourself, and forget about my caffeine addiction."
"Bad habit," he grumbled.
"Me and my coffee, or you and your nagging?" She laughed again at the dirty look he gave her. "Just kidding."
"Sure you are." He leaned back against the bench, studying their surroundings thoughtfully. "Pretty area, this."
"Sure is." She wouldn't mind living here, not at all. Paris had been a lot of fun, but there was something about Denver she just liked, instinctively. "The housing wasn't bad, either," she said idly, staring across the park to a fenced-in school playground where a large number of kids had just appeared. Morning recess, probably.
"Hell, anything that I don't have to share with two other guys is fine with me," Harry said vehemently. "I'm not a fanatic about privacy--it was the mess they made that bugged the shit out of me."
Clare mock-sniffed. "Men are slobs," she pronounced airily. "Tana and Evi and I got along just fine." She would miss her roommates, she thought suddenly. They'd had a lot of good times together in Paris--but neither of them would want her to look back, she knew. They wouldn't, if they'd had an opportunity like this dropped in their laps.
"Well, I was about to the point where I was going to start setting fire to Mike and Enrique's dirty laundry," Harry said darkly. His eyes flashed red for a moment, and a tiny ball of flame took shape in his hand. "Poof," he said with a crazed grin, letting it dance from fingertip to fingertip. "Goodbye, dirty laundry--hello, arson record."
"Pyromaniac," Clare scoffed.
"Pyrokinetic," he corrected, almost primly.
"There's a difference?" she countered.
He hesitated, and grinned. "You've got me there."
Laughing, she set her cup down carefully on the arm of the bench and flicked her fingers at the ball of fire, giving it a little telekinetic push. It drifted for maybe two feet before Harry let it dissipate. "Enough about the dirty laundry," she said imperiously, and gestured around at the park, taking a deep, appreciative breath. "Smell the flowers, instead."
Harry's gaze wandered over to the carefully tended flowerbeds, and then back to Clare. "Very nice. I'm just waiting for my allergies to flare up," he said with a smirk.
"Oh, drop the pessimistic act," Clare snorted, and reached out for her cup again. "I've been inside your head on and off for most of our lives, remember? I don't--" She hesitated, mid-motion, at the odd--flutter she suddenly sensed from the astral plane. Ripples, she thought with a frown. Motion where there shouldn't be motion--not motion like that, anyway. It felt--wrong.
"Clare?" Harry said suddenly, sharply. "I just felt something--"
Straightening, she cast her mind out onto the astral plane, searching for whatever had just tugged at her perceptions. #Harry, what exactly did you sense?# she asked him as her astral self surfaced and she started to scan as widely as she could.
Purpose-- His answer was faint, but audible. Danger--I don't know, Clare, it just hit me--
Everything looked fine. The astral plane was the same churning sea of color and power as it had always been; its patterns wild, but ordered, just as they should be. There was no trace of that strange disturbance she'd felt, or of a malevolent presence.
But that didn't make sense. She might have dismissed what she'd felt as some sort of anomaly, but she couldn't brush off what Harry was telling her. His empathy was far too strong, far too acute. He was perfectly capable of picking up things telepaths would miss entirely.
#Link with me?#
Yeah--go ahead. It's gone quiet now, though--
Quiet. Alarm surged up inside her as she suddenly felt the silence, the stillness all around her, and knew it instinctively for what it was, the calm before the storm--
Something broke the surface of the astral sea, something massive. The shockwave sent Clare reeling. Distantly, she was aware that she had toppled forward from the park bench to the ground, and that Harry was calling her name, shaking her. But as she tried desperately to stabilize her astral form, all she could sense, all she could see, was It--
An It that was Them--a Many that were One--
It loomed over her like a great dark tower. She was nothing to it, too small to notice, too insignificant. Its blackness against the fierce colors of the astral plane was what warned Clare first, even before she reached out and felt the--wrongness, sensed It exulting in Its power and purpose--
Gathering Its strength.
A crack appeared in the darkness, and molten power poured out like magma.
Clare Summers screamed in agony as it blinded her instantly, burning into her mind and turning part of her into ashes, forever. Even as she felt her very self fraying under the assault, she could still sense beyond her own pain. The crack was spreading, more of that terrible, killing power flooding onto the astral plane--
#HARRY!# She snatched at the link desperately and clung to him, steadying herself, pushing the pain away as much as she could.
Clare!
She wrapped her shields around them both with a strength born of panic. It wasn't enough. It COULDN'T be enough--
The darkness split open all the way, and the explosion smashed into the fabric of the astral plane, tearing it apart.
Thousands died instantly. The astral plane shrieked, like a living thing, as the rupture widened, growing into a vast, howling rift. Everything was warped, pulled out of place. Threads had been snapped, and now the tapestry was coming apart. Unraveling. The rift yawned wider, like a great black hole, and began to pull everything around it into its fathomless depths.
Stars. Countless stars, a river of stars, being sucked down into the rift. Each star, each mind, imploded as it crossed the event horizon, and the screaming grew louder, a chorus of dying screams, a great symphony of death--
Everything she was, was seared away in the backlash, and Clare felt herself reduced to light, to a star like any other.
#HARRY!# she shrieked in the moment before her voice was burned away, too. But she held on, even when all thought was gone.
Two stars, locked in an embrace, toppled together towards the abyss.
to be continued...