Peacekeepers: Denver
Part Two
by Alicia McKenzie
DISCLAIMER: Marvel's characters belong to Marvel, and are used without permission for entertainment purposes only. Everyone else is mine.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I really didn't intend to take this long to get back to this story, but in any case, here we are. Many thanks to Pebbs and Sascha, for constant encouragement. :) More Harry next part, guys, I promise. :)
Security Council Chamber UN Headquarters New York 1:46 PM
"--don't consider it appropriate to be pressuring them so heavily," Timmins, the American ambassador, said repressively. He was a tall, distinguished-looking career diplomat who'd always reminded Nathan of John Wayne with a Bostonian accent. "It's been barely a week since our delegation arrived in Jakarta--far too early to be making any conclusive decisions. We need to let the negotiations take their course. Really, it's--"
"The negotiations are going nowhere," Nathan said harshly, and all eyes in the chamber went to him. "Letting them drag out interminably isn't going to change that. We all heard Fellini's report. If we weren't going to trust his judgement, we shouldn't have sent him."
Timmons arched an eyebrow, giving Nathan a disapproving look from his place on the other side of the great round table. "We're all fully aware of how militant you are on the issue, Summers," he said dryly.
Nathan scowled at the man, and 'heard' Genevieve, sitting right behind him in the rows of seats that circled the center table, willing him to be careful. He tried very hard not to grind his teeth. Timmins was the closest thing he had to a rival - *oath, be honest and call him an enemy!* - on the Security Council, and everyone and their uncle was constantly telling him to be careful around the man. It was tedious. Very tedious.
"It's not a question of militancy," he retorted sharply, keeping his tone as moderate as he could. "The Cairo Accords are explicit on this subject--"
"Ah, yes, and we all know what a vested interest you have in the Cairo Accords," Timmins said with something close to a sneer. Nathan's mood was just poor enough, after nearly six hours of fruitless argument, that he found himself contemplating throttling the man. It wouldn't take much telekinesis, not much at all, and he'd be doing such a favor to the world--
"Excusez-moi, Monsieur Timmins," Sabine Deschamps, the French ambassador, said with a bit of a snap to her usually soft voice. She brushed dark hair out of her eyes, and glared at Timmins with a surprising amount of heat. "There is no place for personal insults in a discussion such as this. The facts are clear, and we must deal with them as they stand, not clutter the discussion with irrelevancies. Do you have a valid reason for encouraging this Council to overlook such a blatant violation of a globally accepted treaty?"
Timmins' expression smoothed instantly. "Of course not. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that, Madame Deschamps," he said reasonably. It seemed to placate her. "But diplomacy is always preferable to conflict. We don't NEED to send in the XSE every time a less-than-prudent national government abrogates treaty obligations."
"Was I advocating sending in the XSE?" Nathan snapped. He could deal with the innuendo and the aspersions being cast on his motivations, but he'd be dead and burned a week before he let anyone get away with putting words in his mouth.
Timmins gave him a thin smile. "Really, Ambassador, we all know where this is going."
"And rightly so!" Valery Bogdanov, the Russian Federation ambassador, suddenly growled, slamming a hand down on the table in front of him. Nathan caught the flash of surprise from Timmins, and very carefully didn't look at Bogdanov. The last thing he needed was Timmins accusing the two of them of collusion. Even if it was--well, technically true. "If we do not act decisively, imagine the precedent we would be setting!" The towering, red-bearded Russian glowered around the table. "The Cairo Accords are the cornerstone of the multinational system, and we MUST defend them by any means necessary. I do not intend to stand by and watch the beginning of another mutant 'arms race'!"
*Valery, my friend, I owe you a beer,* Nathan thought, trying to hide his amusement. "I have to agree," he said in his best reasonable voice. "If we don't--" The astral plane fluttered, and he stopped, frowning.
"Ambassador?" Timmins said, sounding impatient.
Nathan scowled at him, even as he reached onto the astral plane, searching. "If we don't put a stop to this, we do set a precedent," he said curtly, trying to ignore a growing, inexplicable queasiness. "I'm not against the idea of a diplomatic resolution, but we have to be--"
White pain exploded behind his eyes, pain like he hadn't felt in years, as the astral plane ruptured. Tied in countless complex ways to the astral plane since the Merge of the Twelve, he felt it as if it were his own mind being torn asunder. The screams of those caught in the tear were barely a whisper compared to the elemental shriek of the astral plane itself--
He reached out feebly, grasping at the tear.
A moment later, the shockwave hit him.
Genevieve Bridge, already beginning to rise from her chair, lunged forward and caught her godfather and charge as he toppled from his chair.
"Ambassador!" she said sharply. He was limp, his dead weight almost too much for her, and she struggled to lower him as gently as she could to the floor, supporting his head. "Ambassador, can you hear me?" she said urgently, checking his pulse and swearing softly as she found it weak and thready.
His eyes were wide open, unseeing, and she swore again at the sight of the blood beginning to trickle from his nose and ears. She'd thought at first this might be something physical, given the stress he'd been under lately and how poorly he'd been feeling this morning, but this was looking suspiciously like a psi-attack, one of the few things she wasn't equipped to defend him against. The realization wasn't much comfort, for all its accuracy.
"What has happened?" Bogdanov demanded from behind her, sounding aghast.
"I'm not sure," Genevieve said tightly. "Could someone please get a doctor and another telepath in here?" People started to crowd around, and she looked up angrily. "Back up!" she snapped. "Give the man some air!" She looked back down at him. "Uncle Nate," she called more softly, laying a hand against his forehead and willing the physical contact to snap him out of--whatever this was. She gritted her teeth, her frustration growing. It was her job to protect him, but she couldn't do a damned thing here--
She looked up again as Sabine Deschamps knelt beside her, wearing a shocked expression, and proceeded to tell her that although the doctor was on his way, the duty telepaths were not.
***
Frost Enterprises New York 1:46 PM
Jubilation Lee stopped in front of the heavy oaken door, reaching out a hand to knock. #Come in, Lee,# Gina's voice said in her mind before she could. Jubilee shook her head as the door swung open of its own accord, revealing her former classmate sitting behind her desk, smiling faintly. "I was expecting you earlier," Gina said quietly.
Jubilee gave her a hard look. "Oh, you were, were you? I thought you might be." She took the seat Gina indicated, and stole a muffin off the platter still sitting on Gina's desk. "The remains of breakfast?" she asked ironically. Gina made a noncomittal noise, so Jubilee went on, peeling the wrapper off the muffin as she shook her head. "I saw Bish when he got to the Tower this morning. You didn't tell him, did you? He wasn't acting like a man who'd gotten that sort of news."
Gina's smile wavered. "I didn't tell him," she murmured distractedly, and reached for her coffee cup. She stopped, mid-motion, and then leaned back in her chair as if she were forcing herself to relax. "I couldn't. I--I was planning to, but--"
Jubilee winced inwardly at the way Gina's hand strayed to her abdomen and rested there lightly for a moment. She'd been afraid of this. "You've really got to tell him, you know," she said as gently as she could. "I know you've been stewing over this for the last week, but he's back, and he's got to be told."
"You know how he's going to react." All the colour in Gina's face seemed to have drained away into her flaming hair, and against the crimson of her suit, she only looked more ghost-like. "I don't--this wasn't supposed to happen again, Lee. Hank and Cecilia warned me. I should have--"
"But it has happened," Jubilee said, her heart aching for her friend. "And you've got to deal with it." Tears sprung to Gina's eyes, but Jubilee continued. "Now, while you're still got--all your options."
"I can feel it already," Gina whispered. "I'm six weeks along. I--should be able to make some sort of connection, but I can't. All I can feel is this void, instead, just like when I was pregnant with Raphaela, and I know what that means."
Jubilee bit back what she'd been about to say, and got up inside, circling around the desk and going over to give Gina a tight hug. Much to everyone's surprise, Gina and Bishop had ended up with one of the more stable marriages in their extended 'family'. *No one would've laid money on that, when they hooked up--*
Their genes, on the other hand, were far less compatible. Raphaela's mutant abilities had been active before birth, and when you had a baby who absorbed psionic energy and a mother who was an alpha-level psi, bad things happened. Gina had nearly died half a dozen times in the course of her first pregnancy, and she'd been told not to risk a second until Hank could come up with a way to solve the problem. Jubilee grimaced. Birth control wasn't supposed to fail in this day and age, damn it.
"It's going to be all right," Jubilee said finally, drawing back and staring up worriedly into her friend's eyes. "But you have to tell Bishop. You know that, right? You don't have to deal with this alone." Although if she knew Bishop - and she did - he wasn't going to handle this all that well. She could still remember happening upon him in an empty lounge in the hospital after the worse of the crises during Gina's first pregnancy--
"I know," Gina said faintly. "I do. I just--" She hesitated, a strange, distracted expression on her face.
"Gina? What's the matter?" Gina didn't answer, and Jubilee frowned. "Come on, Dreamy, it's not like you to space out in the middle of a sentence." She reached out, truly alarmed now, as Gina swayed on her feet. "Gina! Hey!"
"There's something--" Gina managed, before her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed into Jubilee's arms with a piercing scream.
***
XSE Academy Salem Center 1:46 PM
"Picnic lunches with my husband," Jean Grey-Summers sighed happily, leaning back on her elbows and staring up at the cloudless sky, relishing the cool breeze that blew across the Academy grounds. None of them would be shedding any tears for the heat wave that had finally broken today. Frankly, Jean had been getting rather tired of hiding indoors where it was nice and air-conditioned. "Without having to worry about any interruptions worse than having a soccer ball land in our laps. Have I told you how much I like being semi-retired?"
Scott chuckled. "Not today," he said, and made an appreciative noise as he tasted the potato salad. "That's good."
"Flattery will get you everywhere," Jean said and winked at him. A group of the younger students dashed out from the woods and across the field, clearly in pursuit of one of their number, who was laughing uproariously as she ran. Jean grinned, but touched their minds lightly to make sure they weren't about to get out of hand. Reassured, she looked back at Scott. "I wonder what Melanie's done now?"
Scott gave a heartfelt groan. "I have NO idea, and I don't WANT to know," he grumbled. "Do you know how ridiculous it is that Kevin and Angharad, of all people, should have produced a daughter who turned out to be a worse practical joker than Bobby? They're both so serious--"
"Overcompensation," Jean said helpfully. Like so many of the members of the Askani network, Kevin and Angharad had been founding members of the original officer corps of the XSE, but like many, had found time somewhere along the way to start a family. Jean grinned, reflecting that she and Scott hadn't done too badly on that front, either. "I know she can get herself into the most incredible scrapes, but she's basically a sweet girl."
"Oh, I know," Scott admitted, and examined the sandwiches curiously, peeling back the top layer of bread to reveal the pale green filling. "Jean," he asked hesitantly, "do I want to know what's in these, that they're this colour?"
"Just try them," she said, giving him an appealing look. "New recipe. I know the colour's odd, but you'll like them, I think." She chuckled. "Ray and Colin wouldn't try them," she said, mock-regretfully. "I threatened to withhold their allowances, but they still turned their noses up at my poor sandwiches. We have two very stubborn children, Scott."
"Oh, I know. They get it from your side of the family, without a doubt." Scott cast a dubious look at the sandwiches and then shrugged with an easy grin. "But on the bright side, I do so love being your guinea pig," he said, picking one up and biting into it. "Hmm," he said, chewing, a thoughtful expression on his face.
Jean grinned again. "Well, you're not jumping to reassure me about how good it is, so I suppose it's probably not bad, then."
His mouth quirked. "It is very good. Fish of some sort? I can taste the garlic."
"I was experimenting," she confessed, reaching forward to take one of the sandwiches herself. "It turned out rather well, I think--"
Screaming ripped through her mind, pain shredding her consciousness into fragments, and Jean slumped to the ground with a moan. The last thing she heard was Scott calling her name.
***
Jamestown, New York 1:46 PM
Drifting on the threshold between sleep and waking, Logan dreamed. He dreamed of the very delicate - and very black - operation he'd just spent a month overseeing, of his children as children, playing in the backyard at the mansion, of twenty-odd exciting, terrifying, infuriating years spent loving the magnificent woman curled up in his arms. Between the dreams, he woke up just enough to realize that it was the middle of the afternoon, not precisely an acceptable time to spend lounging in bed, but they'd only gotten home from China a few hours ago. One day to catch up on their sleep was fair, wasn't--
An agonized scream shattered his peaceful contemplations, and Logan sat bolt upright in bed, disoriented enough to wonder whether he'd dreamed it. But he felt the pain and shock rolling up the psi-link, and turned to his wife, cursing as he saw Sulven convulsing beside him, her eyes wide and terrified and her mouth working silently.
"'Ven," he said urgently, lifting her into his arms. She shuddered, and then went abruptly limp, and his heart jumped up to somewhere in the vicinity of his throat as he felt frantically for her pulse. Finding it didn't do much to reassure him, but he laid her carefully back against the bed and got out of bed, grabbing the phone and detouring over to the door. "Nicholas! Zara!" he shouted as he dialed.
There was no answer, and Logan hesitated, the phone forgotten in his hand. The twins had said they were staying home today--"Nick!" he shouted again, stepping out into the hall. "Zara--" He stopped, swearing again as he reached the top of the stairs and saw his son sprawled in an awkward heap at the bottom, and his daughter slumped on the couch in the living phone. Something close to panic seized him, and he ran down the stairs to check on them, barely remembering to take the phone with him.
***
Combat Information Center XSE Headquarters New York 1:46 PM
Pete looked around surreptitiously at the others at work in the CIC as he poured himself another cup of coffee. No, no one liable to scold him about his caffeine intake. Very good. That lecture got tedious at times. Besides, it wasn't as if he swilled down coffee like this every day--just when he was on watch, or in another situation where he was bored stiff and needed to keep himself awake.
#I see you, Commander,# an amused voice said in his mind, and Pete jumped, spitting a curse as he nearly spilled the coffee all over himself.
#So do I. I think we should tell his wife on him, don't you?#
Pete straightened, took a defiant sip of his coffee, and directed a mock glare at the two young women grinning at him from where they sat over by the primary Cerebro unit. "Don't the two of you have something better to do than tease a poor aging desk jockey?"
#Not a thing.#
#Me either.#
Pete snorted, shaking his head at the two duty telepaths as he went back to his chair. "Remind me to have you both assigned to Greenland or something," he growled, trying not to smile. Sylvie and Meg were both attractive, generally pleasant young women, but like too many other female telepaths of their age and career path, they'd spent far too much time around Sulven. Askani training tended to leave an indelible stamp--
He went back over and sat down, staring at the Threat Board for a few minutes. Still green. Pete slouched in his chair, pondering how to keep himself occupied, and then leaned forward with a grin, calling up a particular personal file on his terminal. He looked around furtively to make sure that no one was paying any attention to him.
The very last thing he wanted to get out was that he was writing a spy novel. Especially since it really verged on the trashy, to be perfectly honest. Pete grinned a little foolishly down at the half-finished chapter six. He'd started it a couple of years ago, just on a whim, after Harry had given him a boxed set of Ian Fleming books for Christmas. He'd meant it as a parody, initially, but he'd found himself rather reluctantly getting into it. One of these days, he'd show it to Kitty. She'd probably laugh herself into a heart attack, but he was going to have to confess at some point, he figured.
*All right, where was I--* Pete leaned over his console and lost himself in the task of extricating his hero from his Mercedes, currently buried by an avalanche. *How to make this realistic--*
"Commander?" Meg's voice, sounding strangely hesitant, broke his concentration just as he was contemplating what sort of emergency gear a suave secret agent might be packing. He looked up and frowned at the odd expression that was not just on her face but on Sylvie's, too.
"What is it?" he asked, glancing over at the Threat Board reflexively. Nothing. Still green.
"I'm not sure," Meg said with a frown. Sylvie was already lifting the Cerebro helmet onto her head, her posture relaxing as she began to concentrate. "It's an odd feeling--something on the astral plane--"
The words were barely out of her mouth when they turned into a scream. She crumpled, like a puppet whose strings had all just been cut, and as Pete leapt from his chair, the Cerebro unit exploded.
Sylvie never even had the chance to scream. The explosion took out the stations on either side of the Cerebro unit, the secondary commsuite and the control console for CIC's psi-shielding. The whole Tower seemed to shake with the force of the explosion, and the shockwave hurled Pete back against his own console with crushing force.
He slid to the floor, limp and stunned, as he heard the emergency sirens begin to shrill. *What the bloody hell--?* he thought dazedly, lifting his head and trying to blink away the haze. No, not haze, not all of it. Smoke. The realization jolted through him, doing remarkable things in terms of clarity.
"Commander! Commander, are you hurt?"
Pete batted away the helping hands and hauled himself to his feet, using the console as support. "I'm bloody well fine," he rasped, straightening. "Someone get that sodding fire out, and give me a report!" He saw four--no, five people down. *Damn it--*
Sabotage? he thought wildly. Not bloody likely, considering the security around here, but a possibility, he supposed. But why only the Cerebro unit, in that case--?
Turning away as others rushed to give what assistance they could to the wounded, he leaned over his console, willing the back-ups to kick in. A moment later, they did, not just at his station but all over CIC, and he cursed at the sudden babble over the internal communications systems. "Bloody fucking hell, will everyone except security and medical get off the sodding channel?" he snarled. "I need med support and a security team in CIC right the hell now, and I want the Tower sealed off, people! Total lockdown!"
"Wisdom," Bishop's voice thundered, cutting through the continuing babble. "Report."
"We've had an explosion down here. The Cerebro unit went--I've got people down--" Pete coughed on the thick, acrid smoke, and continued as soon as he got his breath back. "I don't know what the hell caused it, so I think we'd better keeping our fucking heads down until we know there's nothing else incoming." He was working as he spoke, sending out the coded signal that meant trouble at the Tower to every X.S.E. base in the world.
"Agreed. I'll be down there in five minutes."
Pete knew he didn't have to tell Bishop to take an escort with him. If someone had done this, they might still be here, looking for an opportunity to exploit in the mess they'd created. *Bloody fucking hell--* They'd had terrorist attacks before, a number of them, but nothing like this, right in the heart of the damned Tower in the heaviest circle of security.
"People, if you're not busy wanking, could you please find me some fucking answers?"
***
Security Council Chamber UN Headquarters New York 1:55 PM
He was being torn apart. Wave after wave of distortion buffeted him, nowhere near the strength of that first horrific shockwave but still doing damage, hitting him with enough force to make his attempts to rebuild his shields futile, like trying to build a sandcastle below the water line, where it kept getting washed away by the waves--
*So get out of the water.* The thought penetrated the haze of pain, and Nathan fought past the disorientation. Out of the water. He pulled farther and farther away from his body until all that was left between him and it was a tenuous link, a thread that could be snapped if another shockwave on the order of the first hit. But he had to take the chance. What had happened--what was still happening--
As he acted, much of himself was left behind, until the part of him that soared above it all, into the thin borderlands of the astral plane, was an elemental sort of awareness at best, capable of analysis and action, but very little emotion. It was the only thing that let him confront what he saw without losing control.
The rift yawned open beneath him, blacker than midnight could ever be, its depths far beyond even his perceptions. His bearings were gone utterly, so he didn't know where the rift was in relation to the physical world, but it was clearly not natural. Not natural at all, and if someone had created it--
Then he could repair it. And there was only one way, and one place, to do it. Taking the astral equivalent of a deep breath, he dove, hurtling down through the astral plane, past minds screaming in terror as they were caught in the undertow. For a moment, he thought he felt something tug at him, a sense of urgency wholly unrelated to the fact that he was throwing himself into the heart of an astral rupture, but he ignored it, pushed it completely from his mind and continued to freefall into the abyss.
He broke the event horizon of the rift, and it was like falling into deep water, through a plate-glass window and onto a hard surface, all at once. The shock was as lingering as it had been sudden, and he was helpless for precious moments, at the mercy of the vast forces within the rift. For a heartbeat, he was crushed, pressure beyond measuring bearing down on him, trying to do exactly what it had done to who knew how many minds already.
But there was no intelligence behind the assault, nothing but a vast, empty need, and that was how he tricked it. He let his own power flow through him, lighting him up until he was a blazing sun in comparison to the stars of the minds around him. The rift did exactly what he'd expected it to, and reached for him hungrily.
It wanted to close, needed to fill up that emptiness. So he let it pull the power from him, as if it was drinking the blood from his veins, and ignored the growing weakness and pain as it continued to drain him. The edges of the rift were shimmering, drawing closer.
Not close enough yet, Nathan thought weakly. Had to wait--just a little longer--
The rift was shrinking, compressing itself around him, and as the edges grew closer, Nathan reached out and seized them, tearing himself free of the rift and weaving the tear back together all in the same moment, fighting to keep his own astral form intact as it wavered like a ghost amid the distortion, like a candle flame in a sudden breeze--
So tired--all his strength was gone, but he was almost there--almost--
Genevieve Bridge swore desperately. "Do something!" she nearly shouted at the doctor as Nathan's body convulsed violently. Blood was streaming from his nose and ears, and he was coughing it with every labored breath.
"I don't know what's causing it!" he snapped at her, readying some sort of injection. "The duty telepaths weren't reacting this violently--try and hold him still, would you?"
Bogdanov knelt down opposite her to help, worry written all over his face. Genevieve spared the Russian ambassador a single look and then turned her attention back to Nathan as the doctor jabbed the needle into his arm. The convulsions slowly eased, and Genevieve reminded herself to breathe as her godfather went limp, those terrifyingly blank eyes going hazy and fluttering closed.
The doctor was still shaking his head. "His vitals are erratic. We need to have him and the others transported to X.S.E. headquarters--we're not set up here to deal with anything like this."
"Like 'this'?" Timmins asked sharply, and the doctor shot him a disgusted look.
"Pardon my brusqueness, Ambassador, but you don't honestly believe that it's a coincidence that every telepath in the building dropped simultaneously, do you?" He gestured in frustration. "Treating the symptoms won't do any good. We need the XSE's diagnostic facilities, to know what's causing this."
Genevieve rose, but Bogdanov put a hand on her shoulder. "I will arrange for transportation," the Russian said. "You stay here with him."
She nodded, and took up her vigil again. The doctor, apparently for lack of anything better to do, tried to clean some of the blood away, and Genevieve flinched at the deathly pallor of Nathan's face beneath.
"The medical personnel at the Tower will have a much better idea of what we're dealing with," the doctor said, maybe trying to be reassuring. "With the way the others collapsed, there's got to be something behind all of this."
Genevieve nodded, saying nothing, and wondered if she was violating the spirit of her duty to her charge somehow. The doctor was right - something had to have happened - but part of her was very much reluctant to know what.
***
Denver 10:55 AM
The morning was still, still as a city of Denver's size should never be, not even in the dead of night. In office buildings and shopping malls, homes and schools, factories and shops, people lay where they had fallen, spreading pools of blood beneath their heads. On the streets, countless vehicles had crashed when their drivers had died, but there were no sirens, no emergency personnel to respond--and no need for any response.
At Lowry Base, Maria Ballantyne laid slumped forward over her desk, her officers scattered through the base like broken dolls; victims, as helpless in the face of this disaster as the people they had sworn to protect. The Cerebro unit had not been in use, so the base itself was intact, its systems undamaged. Lowry had received the emergency code from the Tower, but no one was alive to answer.
Scattered throughout Denver were a few thousand survivors, beginning to awaken to madness that would last for the rest of their short lives. No one would ever be able to figure out how these people, all utterly without psionic gifts of any sort, could have survived. Attempts to repair the damage done to their minds would be even more futile.
And in a small park beside a schoolyard full of dead children, there were two survivors of a very different sort. Clare Summers opened her eyes, wondering why she couldn't see, why she was choking on blood as she tried to breathe. Burning--she was burning--
She heard a whimper from somewhere very close by. Harry. Coughing, a broken moan escaping her as she tried to crawl towards the sound, she reached out and tried to pull him towards her, with no success. Crawling a few inches had exhausted her, and she had no strength left. She opened her mouth to call his name, but all that came out was a croaking noise that didn't sound like her voice at all.
He was shaking; she could feel him shaking, hear his breathing, ragged and shallow. Blind, she traced a hand along his shoulder, up to his face--
As soon as her skin came into contact with his, she felt it, the screaming inside his mind that wasn't just his, but the scream of the whole city. Agony and fear, looping over and over again, crushing what was left of his mind, of Harry himself, beneath its weight.
And now she'd opened herself to it. It sliced into her already wounded mind, and she slumped back against the ground, her tenuous hold on consciousness slipping away. Flowers, she thought feverishly in the moment before everything went black. She could still smell the flowers.
to be continued...