Having lost or defeated all of the Dominion guards pursuing them, the four remaining members of Mutant X regrouped outside the Dominion installation, catching their breath as they watched the detonation Adam had triggered destroy it.
"Where the hell do we go now?" Brennan asked, still looking shocked at what had happened. At everything that happened over the course of the entire day, really.
"Well, we have to find Adam," Lexa reasoned. "I mean, everyone here except Jesse is living under a death sentence." She didn't bother mentioning that the Dominion had said her own expiry date was "rapidly approaching", in their words. That could mean just a few days or it could mean quite a few months; she'd just have to keep going.
"But Sanctuary is gone, the Helix is gone. The Dominion wo–", Shalimar started to protest, but Brennan cut her off, shaking his head firmly.
"No,
no. They
think they've won," he said. Behind them, a huge explosion tore through the Dominion's building; a fuel or munitions storage area must have been ignited by the Double Helix's explosion or the resulting fire inside. "It's not over yet," Brennan finished determinedly.
"It will be if we don't move," Jesse said as debris from the Dominion's installation began raining down near them. "Come on."
The four New Mutants began trekking south, back towards the city. The Dominion's installation had only been just north of the city, so they hoped to be able to find a vehicle they could use soon.
"But Brennan was right, where do we go?" Lexa asked. "We have to find Adam, but how? What do we do?"
"No Sanctuary..." Shalimar mused as they walked along the edge of the highway, frowning into the middle distance. "I guess we join the Mutant Underground ourselves."
"Hey, yeah!" Jesse responded, enthusiastic once he realized Shalimar's point. "Most of the Mutant Underground would be happy to help Adam, or us. I mean, I don't think we'll get many volunteers to join us on the front lines fighting the Dominion, like any at all, but we ought to be able to get some support, at the least. Supplies, a safehouse to figure out our next move in, maybe even some cash..."
"Okay," Brennan smiled, relieved that they had a plan, and zapped the driver's-side door lock on a newer sedan parked on the side of the highway for heaven knew what reason. It didn't matter why, if it was stolen or not; they'd only be using it to get back into town, anyway. Brennan's electricity tripped the automatic door locks' circuitry, causing all four of the car's doors to unlock. "Next stop, Ruby's bookstore."
Mutant X climbed into the car, Brennan making short work of unlocking the steering and starting the ignition with another small jolt from his fingertips. "Like riding a bike," he murmured with a smirk. They pulled onto the highway and headed into the city, embarking on a new chapter of their lives.
After abandoning the car a number of blocks from Old Maple down Twelfth street, not wanting to leave even the smallest clue to tell the Dominion where they'd gone, Mutant X made their way to Ruby Bishop's bookshop on Thirteenth, "My Friend's Bookstore". It was of course well after closing time, but they weren't too worried about being seen. Shalimar had taken to the rooftops and followed her teammates from above, tracking them with her Feral infravision after Lexa took Jesse and Brennan's hands and rendered all three of them invisible behind her light-cloak. Shalimar waited until she saw the heat-outline of Jesse's form place its hand against the back door of the bookshop, then leaped down from the fire escape and ducked through the immaterial door while Jesse had it phased. Brennan and Lexa followed suit, and Jesse followed them inside, breathing in again and resolidifying the door as Lexa dropped her cloak.
"God, it's been years since I last set foot in here..." Shalimar reflected as she wandered through the stacks toward the back wall of the store. "Which bookcase was it, Jess? I don't even remember," she laughed.
"Ummm..." Jesse walked along the row of bookcases lining the back wall, scanning their overall appearance instead of individual titles, tracking with one index finger as he went along. "This one. I think," he shot Shalimar an apologetic grin. "Been a while for me, too. And I have
no idea which book it was, so..." Jesse exhaled and phased, stepping forward into the bookcase and disappearing through it. Shalimar waited a moment as Lexa and Brennan approached, then blinked in surprise when the bookcase next to her clicked and opened away from her, into the wall.
"Sorry. I was one off," Jesse chuckled as he stepped into the hidden doorway, waving them all through into the safehouse proper.
"Hey, isn't forced entry gonna set off an alarm?" Brennan asked. "Well, not
forced, I guess, but still, unauthorized. We don't wanna panic Ruby or Allison or anybody."
"Right, right," Jesse answered, already typing away at a keyboard. "I'm sending Allison an email, explain things a little. . .she's got a baby now, so heck, she might even be awake at this hour, but
I'm not calling her. Phone's over there, you could call Ruby; the alarm routes to him first, anyway."
The phone rang as Brennan reached for it. Frowning in confusion, he raised an eyebrow to Jesse and Shalimar, who both shrugged back. He glanced at Lexa to see what she thought, but she was still peering around the first Mutant Underground safehouse, fascinated by the side of Adam's benevolent New Mutant efforts that she had never really seen before. Brennan shrugged to himself and picked up the phone halfway through the third ring.
"Hello?" he asked cautiously.
'Brennan!' Ruby's voice came back happily over the line. 'Oh, good, I could tell the four of you were over there, but I couldn't get enough to figure out who was by the phone. You're all thinking about it, but I think Jesse's on the computer, not that that's a surprise, and he's composing a message to Allison. So, what brings Mutant X to my safehouse in the middle of the night? I assume this isn't an impromptu inspection or something, right?'
"No, no it's not, Ruby," Brennan smiled into the phone, always impressed by Ruby's enthusiasm for doing what he could to help, even at ass-o'clock in the morning. "Where
are you, anyway? I didn't think you had that kind of range with your telepathy."
"..range as an Esper!" Shalimar shouted in the phone's direction, grinning at the look of confusion on Brennan's face.
'Thank You, Shalimar, I know you can hear me,' Ruby responded, his grin evident in his voice.
"You're Welcome!" she shouted back, still grinning at Brennan, laughing as Jesse shook his head in amusement and Lexa raised a boggled eyebrow in confusion.
'And what kind of range?' Ruby asked Brennan, a smile still audible in his voice. 'My apartment is across the street. If I ever get an alarm, I can mentally figure out if it's trouble without even accessing the security cameras. No high-tech crooks or tech-controlling GSAgent sellouts are getting past me.
And if I can't scan the intruder's mind, then I
know it's trouble,' Ruby explained. 'But it's you guys, so it's not trouble. Or are
you in trouble, has something happened?'
"Yeah, I'm afraid so, Ruby," Brennan answered regretfully. "Actually, we're in a
lot of trouble, the kind we don't want to give you the details of, because knowing will just put you in more danger." Jesse looked up from the email he was typing when Brennan said that, blinking, then frowned and deleted roughly half of the message he had written, scowling as he began re-typing it to say something else. "Long story short, the people who fund Mutant X decided we're their enemy and destroyed Sanctuary." Brennan paused for Ruby's gasp of alarm, giving the Psionic a moment to compose himself. "They've got Adam, and he had to destroy the Double Helix to give us a chance to escape. We just need to hole up here for a few days, until we can get some supplies together and come up with a game plan. We need to disappear off these people's radar, so we're pretty much joining the Underground ourselves."
'Oh my goodness, of course,' Ruby answered, sounding frazzled and upset but regaining focus even as he considered options and what he could do. 'Well, the Mutant Underground can certainly help you disappear; it's what we do, after all. And with Michelle's telecyber hacking, the IDs we make now are actually better than the ones Jesse used to make at Sanctuary, so that's not a problem. Tell Jesse to tell Alli to have Michelle get on that; it's standard operating procedure for us, so that's no biggie. Alli and I will get together with Vince this afternoon, see what else we can come up with. You guys bed down, I'm sure you need it, and I'll stop in before I open the store in the morning.'
"Thanks, Ruby, seriously," Brennan replied, his gratitude obvious in his voice.
'Not even remotely a problem, Brennan, you know that,' Ruby answered. 'If it weren't for you, the GSA would've had me and all the other New Mutants in my safehouse that day. Not to mention how much you've helped since then. The Mutant Underground supports Mutant X one-hundred percent, you know that. I'll see you in. . .well, just a couple hours, actually. I'll scan the back when I get in; if none of you are awake, I won't interrupt. Just call the store to make sure it's safe to come out before you open the door, okay?'
"Sure, Ruby, no problem," Brennan answered with another smile. "We'll see you then." Brennan hung up, then turned to his teammates.
Lexa raised a hand.
"Okay, when I was in Mutant X 1.0, the Mutant Underground was just an idea Adam had that hadn't been made into reality yet. Somebody want to explain to the new girl what the secret Esper password is?" she finished sarcastically.
"Ruby's a Psionic, a telepath," Jesse piped up from behind the computer screen; Lexa rolled her eyes.
"Thank You, Captain Redundancy," she huffed, glaring in Jesse's direction. "How 'bout you cut to the part where you
explain?" she finished with an exasperated grimace.
"He likes to be called an 'Esper' instead of a 'telepath'," Shalimar explained with a grin. "He thinks it sounds 'sexier'."
Lexa raised a disbelieving eyebrow at Shalimar.
"Ruby's not sexy, is he?" she asked, voice utterly deadpan because she knew she was right.
"See, now you're just gonna be thinking that when you meet him and make a terrible impression!" Shalimar huffed at her, disappointed.
Lexa smirked and shook her head.
"Probably," she admitted, looking down. "I'll see what I can do. But first, I'm going to
sleep."
"Good call," Brennan smiled. "Ruby told us to go ahead and bed down, he'll check in before he opens the store if anyone's awake. Otherwise, call the store to make sure it's okay to open the secret bookcase, number's under the phone," he finished, pointing at the clearly posted number beneath the phone's handset on the wall.
"Got it," Lexa answered, managing a sarcastic thumbs-up even as her voice lost most of its inflection, replacing it with fatigued monotones. "Bed is where?"
"Here," Shalimar answered, jumping up to her feet. "It's just cots, but they're
good cots, at least," she explained, uncovering a stack of cots leaning against the wall and unfolding the legs of the first one, standing it up behind a partition in the corner, out of the light. "Bedding: sheets, blankets, pillows, cases..." she announced, patting a tall metal storage cabinet next to the stack of leaning cots.
"Got it," Lexa answered in the same voice, opening the cabinet and helping herself to one of each of its contents, thankful the pillows on top were already in cases. She was
not up to struggling a pillow into a pillowcase at the moment, was too proud to ask Brennan or Shalimar to do it for her, and she'd feel too guilty to sleep on a naked pillow, making Ruby or someone have to wash or replace it after she left. Thankfully, she didn't have to worry about it.
It occurred to Lexa as she made her bed that she could have simply laid a pillowcase between her head and the pillow, but Yay, she didn't have to worry about it anyway.
Lexa's contented groan as she laid down echoed out from behind the partition as Shalimar finished prepping three more cots for use and Jesse sent his email to Allison after adding Ruby's request to notify Michelle. Brennan looked up from grabbing three more sets of bedding from the cabinet at the sound, then snickered.
"Don't laugh at me, Sparky," Lexa's voice came from behind the partition, apparently somewhat revived by the comfort of lying down. "I'm a military brat; these cots are
very good!"
"The expert has spoken," Jesse smirked as he took a set of bedding from Brennan, nodding his thanks as he followed Shalimar and Brennan into the sleeping area, Shalimar claiming a corner for herself and shoving Brennan and Jesse's cots together in the remaining space. Jesse and Brennan silently made their beds, then made a side trip to the bathroom to clean up a little. Brennan fretted over Jesse's injuries from the Dominion's torture device, and Jesse fretted in turn over the hasty treatment of Brennan's bullet wound, making him take off the bandage and sit still while Jesse took care of it properly.
When they returned to the sleeping area, Shalimar and Lexa were both snoring softly, breathing in sync but one snoring on the inhale and the other on the exhale. Jesse snickered softly and padded back into the safehouse proper, returning after a moment with an iPod and a set of earplugs.
"
Ohmygod, you're a hero!" Brennan insisted as Jesse put the iPod on the floor under the head of their cots, tucking an earbud under each of their pillows and turning up the volume. They both grinned at one another in the dim darkness as they lay down, each working one half of the set of earplugs into the ear that was still exposed to the girls' snoring.
Ruby let himself into the store just before nine thirty am, quickly moving to disarm the security alarm before heading back to the rear wall of the store, cocking his head as he mentally "listened".
Not picking up any conscious thoughts, Ruby smiled to himself and went about his normal duties to prepare for opening the store at ten. He'd call Allison in a little while and have her pick up some breakfast for Mutant X on her way in.
At just after eleven Shalimar was reaching for the phone, about to call My Friend's Bookstore and ask Ruby if it was safe for them to come out and go get some breakfast, when the hidden door opened. Allison Turner let herself into the safehouse, a stuffed duffel bag hanging from one hand, a diaper bag and a large McDonald's bag in her other hand, and a bright-eyed baby looking over Allison's shoulder from where it was strapped to her back. Lexa was just wondering if maybe Ruby had opened the door for her –surely he knew which book opened it, whether any of the rest of them did or not– when Allison turned and concentrated for the tiniest moment on the safehouse's switch for the secret door, causing the button to depress and the door to close itself while Allison crossed the safehouse to the card table in one corner.
"Telekinetic," Lexa commented. "That's probably really handy as a new mother, isn't it?" she asked.
"Girl, you have
no idea. Actually,
I have no idea how any non-telekinetic mother manages it, honestly," Allison replied with a smile as she placed the bigger bags on the table, handing the McDonald's bag off into Brennan's grabby fingers. "You're welcome, Mulwray," she smirked at him, then turned to offer her newly freed hand to Lexa. "Lexa, It's good to see you again. Good to see you back," she finished, dropping the façade of meeting Lexa for the first time and grinning at their private joke.
Allison's grin softened into a smile of warm recognition, and Lexa returned it, embarrassed.
"Allison," Lexa replied, nodding in appreciation of Allison's statement. "Thanks."
"Wait, you two know each other? Since when?" Shalimar asked as she looked back and forth between the two of them, absently taking the paper-wrapped breakfast sandwich Brennan handed her without looking at it.
"Mutant X version 1.0," the two of them chorused together, Allison cracking up as Lexa smiled.
"Adam was
always going on about that, I swear," Lexa muttered, rolling her eyes in fond exasperation.
"Funny how he was always so worked up about it, really," Allison replied, smirking as she arranged the baby's carrier on the table, nodding her thanks to Brennan as he passed her a hash brown for the baby to mouth at. "I mean, he
always just
had to add the 'version 1.0' at the end..." Allison waved both palms back and forth as she quoted Adam's past enthusiasm, Lexa copying the motion exactly and mouthing the words in sync with Allison from behind her, smiling as Jesse gave her a sandwich. "It's like he knew we weren't going to work out, he was gonna have to make more versions to get one that worked."
"Like he was trying to get us to figure that out and get out of his hair," Lexa snickered as she unwrapped her sandwich, shaking her head to the memories of years gone by. "But
God, we were just
kids, really. Must be why he was so enthusiastic about it; either he knew it and was trying to convince us otherwise through reverse psychology, or he was just so bad an actor he made it
look that way," she finished, taking a bite of her sandwich and trying not to grin around her food at the looks of shock Jesse and Shalimar were giving her.
"Well, he was right though, wasn't he?" Allison asked as she broke the hash brown up into tiny bites for her daughter. "I quit practically right away. I wanted to help our people, but not by being a superhero. I'm more than happy with regular hero, helping run the Underground. And you didn't stick around, either," she finished, glancing up at Lexa. "And I see you got your neckware removed, finally. Found somebody who could do what Adam couldn't for you, huh?"
Lexa smirked at Allison.
"Actually, that was just removed recently. By Adam, with Jesse's help."
"Oh! Well, good for all of you," Allison smiled, glancing at Jesse, then her expression shifted to concern as she looked into Lexa's eyes. "Did you ever get your brother freed from Genomex?"
Lexa paused in mid-bite, setting her sandwich down and blinking back sudden tears.
"No, he. . .Leo escaped on his own. But what they did to him. . .he was avoiding me, to protect me. We found him at the same time as some organ harvesters who thought his mimicry would make him a perfect donor..."
Lexa looked down, but not quite quickly enough to keep a tear from rolling down her face.
"Leo didn't make it."
Brennan stood, stepping over to put a gentle hand on Lexa's shoulder. She slapped it away, lurching from her seat with a choked-off cry, fleeing behind the sleeping area partition. Brennan sank into her chair, looking pale and a lot like he wanted to cry himself. Allison wisely decided not to question what that had all been about, turning back to feeding her daughter. Jesse brought Brennan's breakfast over to him, setting it down and picking Lexa's sandwich up, rubbing Brennan's shoulder in consolation before quietly walking up to the partition. He laid his free hand against it and phased it as he exhaled, then reached through the immaterial barrier with his other hand to offer Lexa her sandwich. There was a choked sniffle and a weak chuckle of laughter.
"
Thanks, Jess," Lexa said quietly. Jesse smiled softly as he withdrew his hand, releasing his phase of the partition as he turned away and inhaled, nodding to Shalimar as she carried her breakfast and a second coffee for Lexa into the sleeping area. Jesse sat down next to Brennan, contriving to bump his shoulder against Brennan's as he reached for his own abandoned coffee.
"So, the diaper bag is pretty self-explanatory, and how big is your rugrat?" Jesse asked Allison after sipping his coffee. "But what's in the duffel?"
"Cindy is
fourteen months old, aren't you, Sweetie?" Allison cooed at her daughter, smiling as Cindy grinned back in delight. "And the duffel bag is fuuull of clothes, in
everybody's sizes, 'cause you guys have
squat!" Allison finished in the same sing-song voice. Cindy screamed her delight, and Jesse snickered, pulling the duffel over and unzipping it, perusing the contents.
"Okay, should I be worried you know Brennan's and my jean sizes?" Jesse asked nonchalantly as he pawed through the duffel. "Tees, socks, underwear. . .hey, you even got toiletries, toothpaste, girlie stuff I don't even want to know about. . .and an electric razor!? Allison, this is above and beyond, Thank You, so much!" Jesse declared in amazement, looking up to see Allison grinning at him.
"Not even anything even remotely like a problem, Jesse. Consider it the Underground's long-overdue thanks, to all of you. We're working on getting you guys a car, and some funds, too." Allison cut both Brennan and Jesse off with a telekinetically hovering ballpoint pen and the electric razor when they opened their mouths to speak. "Don't even
think about saying you can't accept or that you'll pay us back. We owe you
tons more than this; if you call it even, the Underground is
still coming out
way ahead on the deal. Understood?" she asked, with an imperiously arched eyebrow.
"Understood," the boys chorused. "Your mommy's a
hardcase; you're gonna grow up
very right, aren'tcha?" Brennan asked Cindy in his own overly-sweetened voice.
"You better believe," Allison nodded as she telekinetically retrieved the hash brown bits Cindy had flung away just for fun, frowning as she manually mopped at her daughter's face with a napkin.
"Wow. So is the 'throw everything I can get my hands on so Mommy has to pick it up' game more or less rewarding when Mommy is telekinetic?" Jesse asked.
"Good lord, I hope the answer is 'less', and she decides it's no fun and
stops soon..." Allison lamented as she finished chasing Cindy's face to get the last bit of it clean. "As handy as being a telekinetic mother is, I'm sort of scared of the amount of mess a telekinetic toddler can probably make."
"Well, maybe her abilities won't show until later, adolescence, or maybe she'll have to grow into them, only be able to move a little stuff a little ways until she's older," Brennan offered.
"It only takes a tiny bit to make a
big mess, though. She's already got that much figured out, and she's only been walking a few
weeks, haven't you, Sweetie?" Allison answered, turning from Brennan to smile at her daughter. Cindy screamed laughter in response.
"
God, she's
adorable, Alli," Shalimar commented as she and Lexa approached the table, shaking her head in disbelief. "
Frighteningly adorable. How on Earth did you manage that?"
"Frighteningly," Lexa seconded Shalimar's opinion, smirking at the scowl Allison shot her way before she turned to answer Shalimar. Lexa placed one hand on Brennan's shoulder and squeezed for just an instant before releasing it, reminding him that although it had been her decision to choose Brennan's life over her psychologically damaged brother's, that didn't mean she wanted to talk about it. She had forgiven him –it had been her choice, not his– and she didn't want to think about it otherwise. Brennan knew that and chose to support her silent treatment of the subject by not responding any more than giving Lexa the tiniest of nods, a fact she appreciated, nodding back to him.
"I have no idea how we managed it," Allison responded to Shalimar's question, either unaware of the silent byplay between Brennan and Lexa or choosing to pretend she was because it wasn't any of her business. "Good genes, I guess?" she smirked at Shalimar, her smirk spreading into a grin of amusement as Shalimar and Jesse groaned at her pun.
Allison's grin fell off her face as she cocked her head to one side, eyes staring off into the middle distance as Shalimar whipped her head to face the hidden safehouse door, her eyes flaring as they converted to the golden, feline slits of her Feral mode.
"What is it?" Jesse, Brennan, and Lexa all asked in unison, each of them glancing at one of the other two in what would be amusement if they weren't all on a hair-trigger of tension, wondering what had grabbed Shalimar's and Allison's attention.
"Maybe trouble," Shalimar said, moving to the door and waving Lexa and Jesse over to join her. "Ruby says there's someone suspicious at the counter. Jess, phase us, Lexa, you cloak us, we'll go see."
"Hey, me too!" Brennan protested.
"Sorry, Bren," Shalimar said, looking at him over her shoulder, her eyes still in their golden Feral mode. "Lex can't cloak all of us, and we don't want electricity flung all over a store full of paper. If it's trouble and it finds its way back here, you've gotta be ready to take 'em out," she finished, glancing at Cindy. Allison picked up Cindy's carrier and shushed her, mentioning hide-and-go-seek in a carefully controlled voice with a forced hint of entertainment for her child as they disappeared behind the sleeping partition.
Brennan watched Allison and her baby hide, glancing around the safehouse and realizing there wasn't too much for Allison to wield telekinetically as weapons to defend herself and her child other than pieces of furniture, which would be too heavy for her to keep up for very long, even if they might be more effective. He nodded to Shalimar as Jesse took her wrist, Lexa standing behind them both and putting her hands on their shoulders.
"Our commrings still work, don't need Sanctuary for the satellite link, tell me if you need me or we've got incoming," Brennan told his teammates as Lexa flared with light, her cloaking power radiating from Shalimar and Jesse as well, rendering all three of them invisible.
"You got it," Brennan heard Jesse's voice say, then the sound of him exhaling as he phased the three of them, letting them walk through the hidden door and the bookcase in front of it, into the bookstore proper.
Jesse and the girls emerged into the bookstore to see nothing out of the ordinary, but Ruby's telepathic message had only said there was someone suspicious at the front counter, which they couldn't see from the rear stacks. The three members of Mutant X made their way forward, quietly but as quickly as they could. They had just emerged from the stacks into the main aisle of the store, still not seeing any customers, as a messenger exited, the front door swinging shut behind the bike-helmeted courier as Ruby turned in their direction.
"Shalimar?" he asked, frowning at where he knew them to be but unable to see them. "It's okay, there's nobody here but me."
With a flare of light, Lexa dropped her cloak, Shalimar silently dashing to the very edge of the front window as she reappeared, peering sideways out of it to watch the courier get on his bike and leave. Ruby blinked at the three New Mutants' abrupt appearance, smiling at Lexa as she smirked at him, Jesse raising his commring to his mouth.
"All clear, Brennan. The store's empty; you and Allison can come out." Jesse turned his head toward the back of the store, smirking as he heard Brennan hurriedly open the secret door and rushing forward to join them before he turned back to the head of the Mutant Underground. "What was that about, Ruby? Why'd you say that guy was suspicious?" he asked.
"Because he
was," Ruby nodded back. "He delivered this..." Ruby continued, sliding a flat package across the counter toward them. "It's addressed to 'Your Friends In Back', and the courier was specially hired to hand deliver it. He wasn't thinking about whoever hired him, but he
was thinking about the cool $500 in cash he was handed to do the job, wondering who was in back of what and what made them so special," Ruby finished nervously.
"
Damn," Lexa swore, picking up the courier envelope and scowling at it. "They must have realized where we would go."
"Maybe," Jesse said, hesitantly. "And maybe not. I mean, if the –" he cut himself off before he said "the Dominion", "–if they know about the Underground and the safehouses, guessing we'd come here isn't that much of a stretch. They couldn't have
seen us come here, but they could still assume that we did, or that we will. Mysterious packages for us might have been delivered to the other safehouses, too, to Dr. Marcus. . .we just don't know."
"Well, why don't you go open that up in back, and we'll stay out here," Allison suggested as she settled Cindy back into her carrier and shrugged it back onto her back before the baby could squirm free and run off to see how many books she could pull to the floor. "Maybe mass while you open it, if it blows up, we'll call all the other safehouses and tell them not to open any packages; I'll float 'em out."
"Erm, good plan," Jesse said, glancing worriedly at the package Lexa was still holding. She eagerly –and
gently– handed it off to him, stepping back from it once she let go. "Hopefully it's
not a trap, but. . .better safe than sorry, I guess," Jesse finished, massing both himself and the package and carrying it back into the safehouse.
The others followed Jesse inside, Brennan pressing the button to close the safehouse door behind them.
"Unmass it, Jess," Shalimar said, prowling closer and focusing her Feral gaze on the package as the wavering reddish-orange lines of Jesse's massing ability retreated from the envelope, leaving it for Shalimar's Feral senses to examine. She peered at it for a moment, inhaling tentatively before responding.
"No heat, other than fingerprints on the outside. No scent either; it's probably padded and sealed," she frowned, stepping back as her eyes returned to their normal soft brown. Jesse set the thick envelope down on the table and picked up the duffel bag, stepping away from the table before unmassing.
"It does feel padded," Jesse commented, "But heck, most mailing or courier envelopes are, these days. There's something small in it, maybe just a little heavy for as small as it is," he finished.
"Yeah, that's how it felt to me, too," Lexa added, coming closer to look at the label affixed to the envelope's front. "From a 'Mr. Drow'? That's no name I've ever heard before."
"What, you don't know any Dark Elves?" Brennan chuckled, then blinked at the blank stare not only Lexa but Shalimar and Jesse were also giving him. "What? Drow, Dark Elves? Dungeons & Dragons, R.A. Salvatore's whole damn book series?" Brennan continued, returning the blank stare his teammates were giving him, unable to believe that not one of them had ever heard of those things. Jesse nodded as if it were reasonable to him, turning back to the envelope.
"Okay, it makes sense
you'd know that," he commented mildly, peering at the label as if there were more he could learn from it.
"Well, I don't read
just poetry," Brennan harrumphed, folding his arms. "
I bet Ruby knows what a Drow is."
"Could it be from your Dominion contact?" Jesse asked Lexa without looking up from the envelope at her. "He
did help us escape, after all."
Shalimar snickered.
"He
does look like an evil Santa Claus. An evil Santa would have Dark Elves, right?" she asked with a laugh.
Lexa and Jesse each raised an eyebrow, turning to exchange a glance before both looking back down at the envelope.
"It could be..." Lexa allowed cautiously, nodding slowly. "Fits his M.O." Jesse nodded in response, acknowledging that it seemed in character for what little he knew of the man.
"You're
kidding?" Shalimar frowned. "
That fits his M.O.? Random niche pop culture references based on his looks?" she asked incredulously.
"Well, the fact that no one would
know those references," Lexa admitted, nodding as the strategy began to make more sense to her. "You only got it by accident, cracking a joke."
"No one besides the non-tech geek would know, anyway," Jesse commented, glancing at Brennan as he smirked.
"Hey, I'm not a non-tech geek!" Brennan protested, practically pouting. "
You're all the geek we need."
"Oh, yeah, I got the pop culture in spades, niche fads and all; you're a connoisseur of poetry and fine literature," Jesse drawled, rolling his eyes. "And R.A. Salvatore novels, apparently."
Shalimar giggled; Brennan frowned.
"Okay, it's
probably from him," Lexa allowed, waving a hand at Jesse and the envelope. "Mass and open it, just in case. Maybe that little toad spokesperson wants us to
think it's from my guy, and it really
is a bomb."
"There's a cheery thought," Jesse muttered, stepping forward and gently picking up the envelope. "You know such lovely people, you know that, Lexa?" he said dryly as he stepped into the corner of the room, turning his back to them and massing before ripping open the envelope, hoping his massed form would shield his friends from the explosion if it actually were a trap.
"
Yeah, well, Adam and MX 1.0, then you guys after the Dominion; at least I go back and forth," Lexa murmured to herself. She didn't notice when Shalimar grinned at her words, standing behind her as Lexa raised her voice to Jesse. "Well? You didn't explode, what's in it?"
"Just a phone," Jesse answered, unmassing and turning around to show them the small flip phone that had been in the envelope, tossing the empty package aside as he re-approached his friends. Lexa plucked the phone from his hand, looking it over before opening it, then wincing in anticipatory dread as she pressed the power button.
Jesse gasped and grabbed Lexa's wrist, massing both of them but not the phone as Brennan scrambled back away from the table and Shalimar hit the floor, laying herself flat.
The phone vibrated as it switched itself on.
"
God, don't
DO that!" Jesse sighed explosively as he released his power and Lexa's wrist. "What if it
had blown up when it turned on!?"
"The stump of my wrist would be bleeding?" Lexa winced apologetically. "Sorry." She ignored Jesse's frustrated eyeroll and the dark looks Brennan and Shalimar gave her as they approached once more, pressing buttons to cycle through the phone's information, instead. "It's some kind of government Black Ops phone," she told them, glancing up to make sure she had everyone's attention before returning her eyes to the phone's screen. "No manufacturer logo or log-on, no service provider listed, just one number in the Contacts."
"You think maybe it's a trap? Using the GPS to find us?" Shalimar asked with a frown of worry.
"Nah," Jesse said as he peered over Lexa's shoulder, Brennan shaking his head at the same time. "They delivered it here, so what's the GPS going to tell them? Unless they sent a homing-beacon phone to everywhere they could think of that we might go, just waiting to see which one turns on first. Not like we're planning on taking it with us."
"Call the number, Lex," Brennan said, jerking his chin at the phone she held. "If it's from your guy, he's got a message for you; if it's not, we need to know that and make tracks. Or rather, split and
not leave any tracks," he finished as Lexa nodded her agreement and pressed the "Send" button.
'Lexa,' her Dominion contact's deep, distinct voice said over the line; there hadn't been a ring or even a connecting beep, just his voice once she'd pressed "Send". Lexa wondered if he were sitting at some sort of computerized communications center, or if maybe he knew when the phone had been delivered and had just been waiting for contact to be made.
"Your name is Mr. Drow?" she asked, thinking of the last words they'd exchanged after he'd freed her and Jesse from the Dominion's brig. Or more accurately, saved them from being executed after they'd freed themselves. She'd told him she didn't even know his name, and he'd replied that they shouldn't ruin a good thing, that they would meet again. She wondered if this phone call counted as a "meeting".
'Of course not,' he answered, managing to sound both amused and annoyed even as his nearly monotone bass voice proceeded with almost no inflection. 'And it never will be again.'
"Okay, well, I'll presume any further messages from the North Pole or gaming contacts are from you," Lexa quipped, then frowned as she considered her statement. "Or maybe I shouldn't. They'd be from someone else
impersonating you, wouldn't they?"
'Indeed,' he responded, his continual lack of inflection still managing to sound droll.
"Okay, so, you found us. Does that mean the rest of the Dominion Council knows where we are? Are we putting people in danger simply by being here?" she asked.
'I am the member of the Council in charge of dealing with Mutant X and the organized factions of the New Mutant community such as the Underground, fortunately for you,' he answered. 'But the rest of the Council has access to most of my records. I recommend you move within the next few hours. Sanctuary has been destroyed.'
"I know," Lexa replied, frowning at how he could discuss their fugitive status and continue to the destruction of their home as if he were merely commenting on the weather.
'It was constructed with the aid of New Mutants who are no longer available. Sanctuary cannot be replaced.'
"Its construction was also funded by the Dominion. We're not exactly interested in recreating that relationship, and I don't think they are, either," she said dryly.
'Certainly,' he responded, using the exact same lack-of-tone with which he had said "Indeed". 'But the Double Helix was produced through ordinary means, with the Dominion's funds. Once Adam Kane had developed the technology, the cost in materials and production was not so extraordinary in comparison.'
"You mean..." Lexa gasped as the implications of what her contact was telling her became clear. "..the Dominion's payment to Adam for developing the Helix's technology was funding its creation? And Sanctuary's?"
'Correct.'
"Which means the Dominion has access to the Helix's design, its technology..." she went on, horrified by the idea that the Dominion would have been ready for them the entire time.
'Also correct,' he answered, then continued his point. 'But more importantly, to you, the material cost of the Double Helix was easily afforded by the Dominion; they could have readily covered it twice over. They approved of the craft being named the
Double Helix.'
"Ohmygod..." Lexa gasped again, her eyes widening as she grasped his implication. "Are you saying there's another one, somewhere?" If they could get their hands on it, destroy the records of its creation, its schematics...
'The Dominion is aware that you are without resources. They
expect you to hide,' her contact's deep voice told her. 'The Underground is a logical first place to look. They will
not expect you to make an offensive move, certainly not on another of their installations,' he finished. 'That phone is useless now, Lexa, as is its number. Open it, and destroy it. Goodbye.'
"Wait—!" Lexa protested, but the line had already gone dead, silent, without even a click of disconnection. "
Dammit," she snarled.
Shalimar had her eyes narrowed at Lexa as she angrily tossed the phone on the table.
"Did I hear that right? Did he tell you there's a second Double Helix?" she asked, still scowling. Shalimar hated doublespeak and intrigue.
"He did," Lexa nodded. "But he didn't say where. He also said the rest of the Dominion will find us soon and that we should leave ASAP, that the Dominion will expect us to hide in the Underground, not to attack. Other than that, he just said the phone was no good now, to destroy it." Lexa frowned at the phone where it lay on the table. "Actually, he said to open it,
then said destroy it."
"But it was open while you were talking to him on it, when he said that," Jesse said, scrunching his face slightly in a half-frown of suspicious confusion.
"He did," Lexa nodded, still looking at the phone. She picked it up and started examining the seams of its casing. "Maybe he meant open it
to destroy it?" she theorized, glancing up at her teammates.
"Gimme," Shalimar said, holding out her hand. She was irritated and would feel much appeased if she got to break something that had originally come from their enemy. Lexa put the phone into Shalimar's hand, and the Feral flipped it open with her thumb, grasping the phone's top half with her other hand and twisting. With a sharp crack of splintering plastic, the flip phone came apart in Shalimar's hands. She spread her hands apart, working her thumbs and fingertips into the shattered plastic and prying each half of the phone apart, splitting it along the seams that had originally held the plastic casing together.
As Shalimar pried the screen away from the cover of the broken flip phone, a small piece of paper fluttered toward the floor. Brennan ducked down, snatching the tiny square of folded paper out of mid-air as it flitted through its descent, unfolding it as he straightened up again.
"What is it?" Lexa asked as Shalimar crushed the rest of the phone's remains into bits, dropping them into the empty McDonald's bag to be thrown out later.
"Numbers," Brennan said with a frown of confusion, handing the paper to Jesse as he came up behind Brennan, trying to see over his shoulder. Jesse grinned.
"
Fourteen numbers," Jesse said, grinning happily at Brennan, then at Shalimar and Lexa as they also gave him confused looks. "They're map coordinates. That has to be where the second Helix is; the Dominion will never expect us to even know where to look, much less to break in and steal it from them. That's what your contact was telling us."
"Sounds like a plan," Lexa answered with a vicious smirk. "Hit that computer, Nerd-Wonder; let's find out where we're going."
"Wait," Shalimar said, holding up a cautionary hand. "Jess, find out where we're going. . .but don't tell the rest of us until after we leave. We'll all be thinking about it; we don't want Ruby to know –what he doesn't know can't hurt him." She frowned, scowling as another thought occurred to her. "But dammit, we're all gonna be thinking about the fact we're on our way to get the other Helix; if they make Ruby talk..."
"Earworm," Brennan said calmly. Shalimar cut her worried tirade off to blink at him.
"Huh?"
"An earworm," Brennan repeated, smirking. "You know, when you get a stupid song stuck in your head on endless repeat? We'll call Ruby," Brennan explained, heading for the phone and picking it up as he continued, "And tell him we're leaving, to stay out of our heads so he doesn't know where we're going, so the Dominion can't make him talk. Then we all get a stupid song in our heads to make sure, and leave."
Shalimar considered Brennan's proposed plan as he dialed My Friend's Bookstore, blinking as she contemplated its ridiculousness.
"Hell, that's not even the craziest thing I've ever heard you say, but it's up there enough it might work," Shalimar said with a smirk of her own, causing Lexa to chuckle and Jesse to laugh.
"Ruby, it's Brennan. Obviously, we didn't blow up," Brennan said into the phone after it had been answered. "We've got a plan, but like I said, the people after us are dangerous. We need you to stay
out of our heads; if you don't know, they can't make you tell them. We're not sure if they're on their way here or not, but that package wasn't a good sign. If anybody shows up, just cooperate with them. Show them the safehouse, they already know about it and the Underground, show them we're gone and tell them you don't know where. Right. Okay, we'll be leaving soon, actually. Uh-huh. Gotcha, okay. Bye."
Brennan hung up the phone and turned to his expectant teammates.
"Okay, Ruby's clear on staying out of our heads and cooperating with the Dominion if they show up. He's a little nervous about our thinking 'too loud' about our plans, but the earworm will take care of that. He said Allison called Vince; he's on his way here with some cash, so we'll be good to go for a while."
"What about the car Allison mentioned?" Jesse asked as he typed away at the computer. He had already gotten the location of the coordinates and written it down; he was taking the time to clear the computer's memory, to make sure there was no trace of the information he had looked up for the Dominion to discover. At the same time Jesse asked his question, Lexa said:
"We're leaving momentarily, aren't we? How can Vince get the money here that fast?"
"Vince does
everything fast," Shalimar explained to Lexa. "He's a Propulsive Molecular."
"We're downtown now, no shortage of cars to lift," Brennan answered Jesse. "If we take one of the Underground's cars, the Dominion could force details about it from Ruby or Allison. Taking one off the street randomly works better. And I know a few good places to pick up a car that won't exactly get reported to the authorities as missing, either," he finished.
"Okaaay, we won't ask about that," Jesse said with a laugh as he glanced at Brennan, then grinned as he finished resetting the computer. "Okay, boys and girls, Instant Earworm, which will also be gleefully waiting for any Dominion spooks who try to hack this actually empty computer. Nobody kill me; it was all Brennan's idea," Jesse declared with a smirk as he clicked on a
bookmark he had installed on the computer.
Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" began playing over the computer's speakers, with the volume turned up to a ridiculous level.
Lexa groaned and Shalimar chuckled, her mirth spiraling up into a gale of laughter as Brennan grinned and began wiggling to the beat of the song, stripping his shirt up over his head like he was taking it off as he swayed to the beat. Jesse whistled but had to cut himself short when he couldn't help laughing, singing along with Brennan as he put his shirt back to rights and Lexa clamped her hands over her ears, scowling.
"I hate you, you know," Lexa told Jesse as the four of them quickly cleaned up the safehouse, tossing their bedding into a laundry hamper and folding the cots back up before leaning them against the wall and covering them once more. "Isn't Ruby gonna be mad that you've got that damn song not only stuck in all four of our heads, but wired his safehouse computer to play it, too?"
"Naaah," Jesse grinned back as they all headed for the door, Jesse and Lexa first to phase out under her cloak to make sure the coast was still clear. "Ruby likes that song," he smirked as took Lexa's hand and exhaled, phasing them as Lexa rolled her eyes and activated her light-cloak.
Jesse was dying laughing as Mutant X descended the front stairs of My Friend's Bookstore, Lexa belting him furiously on the shoulder, repeatedly.
"I cannot
believe you did that!" she snarled at him, all the more enraged by how funny Jesse apparently found the situation. " 'Naah, Ruby likes that song!' " Lexa quoted Jesse's previous statement, glaring daggers and continuing to swat at him as he finally raised an arm in protest. His shoulder was getting sore. "
I was even thinking he was 'sexy for an Esper' earlier, thanks to Shalimar..." she muttered angrily as they filed outside, causing Shalimar to burst out laughing.
"That
was pretty mean, Jess," Brennan said as he closed the door behind them. "Ruby
hates that song," he finished with a smirk, shaking his head slightly at Jesse's warped sense of humor.
"But I knew it'd keep him out of our heads, especially mine, since I looked up the coordinates," Jesse countered, holding up a declaratory index finger to make his point. "And a little outrage will keep him from folding to any goons who show up. We want him to cooperate for his own safety, not make himself look like a welcome mat for them walk all over. Hey, Vince," Jesse finished, addressing the other Molecular as he approached. Vince had been waiting on a park bench across the street, had glanced to make sure there was no traffic and no one watching, then zipped across the street at an impressive rate of speed to reach Mutant X.
"Jesse. Shalimar. Brennan," Vince said by way of greeting, nodding to each of them as Jesse took the small bag he had been carrying. "..Sorry, I don't know you," he said to Lexa, raising an eyebrow.
"Lexa," she answered. "I predate Shalimar and Jesse, actually."
"Lexa," Vince answered, nodding. "Sure, Allison's mentioned you, talking about 'back in the day'."
"Vince!" Shalimar said urgently, looking up at him from the bag Jesse had opened, her eyes wide with astonishment. Brennan peered over Shalimar's shoulder into the bag, then raised an eyebrow and whistled at its contents as Shalimar continued to protest. "Vince, that's
way too much, we..."
Shalimar was cut off by Vince's taking the two steps closer it took to reach her and the palm he held up in front of her face in an undisputable "Stop" motion, all in the blink of an eye.
"If you're going to finish that sentence with 'We can't take this', or 'accept this', or anything like that, I want you to picture Allison," Vince said as he lowered his hand.
"Picture Allison?" Shalimar asked, confused.
"Yeah," Vince answered, folding his arms confidently. "Picture Allison, in her workshop, with
all those tools lying around, and then picture the look on her face when you tell her you can't take that cash, and picture the number of heavy, pointy things that would be aiming themselves at you."
Brennan and Jesse laughed.
"That's exactly what she did to us when we tried to say the funds were too much when Jesse thanked her for the clothes and stuff," Brennan explained, curling his right biceps to indicate the duffel hanging from his fist.
"Well, that's just the emergency cash," Vince explained. "The funds we were setting up would've been more, but you guys have to go, so I just ran over to the Turner's and grabbed it. We'll replace it with the funds we
were setting up for this afternoon."
"Well, Thanks Again," Brennan said, switching the duffel to his left hand so he could shake Vince's.
"Not even a problem, as I'm sure both Ruby and Allison said," Vince answered with a rare smile, hugging Shalimar and Jesse in turn and taking Lexa's hand to shake when she offered it. "I'd say this qualifies as a New Mutant emergency; you guys might need to make motel stays, don't want to pay with any plastic that could be traced..."
"Vince, you ran from your place to Allison's to here after Allison called you? All of what, ten minutes ago at the most?" Shalimar asked with a frown of concern, realizing after hugging him that Vince was indeed a bit sweaty.
"It's okay," Vince answered with a slight smirk, saluting Shalimar jauntily. "I've got glucose, had a Gatorade waiting for you across the street, and Allison's driving me out to a horse-sized lunch," he finished, turning to flourish his salute to the other three members of Mutant X before entering the bookstore.
Mutant X left the area, headed for one of Brennan's old haunts and another stolen car.
An hour later, they were on their way down the coast, headed for Washington DC.
"Okay, so Jesse's coordinates say the second Helix is hidden somewhere in Washington. Is anyone else worried about trying to break into the Pentagon?" Lexa asked. "What's the plan?"
"Well, your contact didn't
say 'Pentagon', right?" Jesse asked.
"Well, no, of course not," Lexa answered, frowning. "If he had, we wouldn't've needed to figure out those coordinates, would we?"
"'We' she says," Jesse mocked with a smirk, knowing
he had been the one to figure them out, and he knew Lexa knew it, too. Nerd-Wonder indeed. "So what
did he say?"
"That the Dominion knows we don't have any resources, so they'll expect us to hide, not to 'make an offensive move, certainly...'" Lexa's voice trailed off as she remembered her contact's finishing words. "..Certainly not on another Dominion installation is how he put it," she grinned. "So that means it's another secret base, like the one we just escaped."
"That's what I thought," Jesse nodded. "Those coordinates are in the DC area, but they're not too near the National Mall or the Pentagon. I figure it's probably some sort of research and development plant, or more likely a warehouse associated with that sort of plant. Either that, or it
is another totally secret base, with a hangar big enough for the Helix, and they flew it in under cloak."
"I still hate the idea that somebody else knows all about how the Helix works; the idea that somebody besides us has
flown her..." Shalimar scowled.
"Not a lot we can do about that," Jesse nodded in commiseration. "But if it is the plant where it was built, odds are the records are on site, too. We can wipe those out, no problem. The Dominion's probably paranoid enough to have copies elsewhere, but it's a start."
"Jesse, can you set a virus so that it won't destroy the files until they're accessed? Copied?" Lexa asked. "If we set the virus that way and don't just destroy the files outright, the Dominion is likely to transmit them to wherever else they've got the files saved; we can get those places, too."
"Like, only destroy
some of the files, just enough to make the rest of them worthless, then they'll put the contaminated files together with the intact files elsewhere to compare. Good plan," Brennan said, nodding at Lexa's deviousness.
"Okay, so, we steal the second Helix and do what we can to counter the Dominion's ability to defeat it," Lexa stated. "Where do we fly it away
to?"
Shalimar laughed, causing Brennan to flick his eyes to the rearview mirror and Jesse to turn in his seat, both glancing back at their Feral teammate.
"Cal-i-for-nia, Here We Come..." she sang slowly, drawing it out and raising her eyebrows to Jesse and Brennan, inviting them to participate in her joke. Jesse laughed, and joined her singing "..Washing-ton-Dee-See's Where We're Comin' From...", causing Brennan to break out in laughter and Lexa to scowl, crossing her arms.
"Would you
stop that?" she pouted. "No fair that I don't know all the in-jokes! What the hell is this one about; why are we going to California?"
"'Cause that's where our backup is," Shalimar smirked, relaxing back into her seat.
"Backup?" Lexa asked in confusion, looking to Jesse as he turned in his seat once more to smile back at her, also smirking. "Since when do we have backup? Who's our backup?"
"The Californian division of Mutant X," Jesse told her, grinning at the look of shock on Lexa's face. Shalimar laughed, and Brennan chuckled. He couldn't see Lexa's face in the rearview mirror, but he could imagine Jesse's statement had come as quite the surprise.
"Californian division," Lexa said calmly, one eyebrow arched nearly to her hairline. Jesse and Shalimar nodded at her in sync. "
Stop that; you're creepy," she muttered, shooting Shalimar a look, which just made her grin again. "There's a Californian division of Mutant X," Lexa stated clearly, just to verify she had heard correctly and was grasping the situation accurately.
"Yep," Brennan answered without turning, while Shalimar and Jesse nodded in perfect tandem again, both grinning at Lexa and flicking their eyes to one another to exchange an amused glance.
"
SINCE WHEN?!?" Lexa bellowed, throwing her hands up in exasperation and causing all three of her teammates to laugh out loud in amusement.
"Since about a year and a half ago," Shalimar finally answered, still chuckling. "The Mutant Underground had been spreading all across the country, but a lot of the New Mutants we rescued wanted to relocate to the west coast. Whether it was just to pursue the American Dream or not, the population density is high enough in Southern California that New Mutants would have a better chance to blend in, so efforts began focusing there. But the GSA is a government program, so we had to assume that it would have multiple branches, too. Eckhart may have been the head of the GSA, but that doesn't mean he didn't have subordinates outside of Genomex. And if the GSA ever found out how many New Mutants there were in California, they'd definitely pursue them, so Adam decided they needed the protection of a Mutant X team, too. Sure, we could fly around the country as needed in the Helix, but there was only the four of us. Once there was over a hundred New Mutants in the LA area alone, Adam decided they needed their own protectors. He had an old friend ready and waiting to help, so once we'd found some volunteers who wanted to fight back against the GSA, use their powers to do some active good, the Californian division was a go."
"Huh," Lexa blinked, considering the ramifications. "So my contact said the Dominion knows we don't have any resources. They blew up Sanctuary, after all. But I don't think they knew there was a second Mutant X team. The Dominion didn't fund them, obviously."
"Nope. Adam's silent partner comes from money, and she's almost as smart as he is; Eve's got a few handsome patents of her own," Jesse replied.
"Adam and his silent partner Eve?" Lexa asked with another disbelieving raise of an eyebrow.
"Hey, not like they picked their names," Jesse smirked. "Okay, they deliberately called the new MX headquarters in LA 'Haven', but it's a haven for their team just like Sanctuary was a sanctuary for us, so it works."
"So, we don't have any resources other than what the Underground gave us, but we're going to steal ourselves a replacement Double Helix, and Eve and the Californian division of Mutant X will have the resources we're used to that we can use to find Adam," Lexa postulated.
"Something like that," Jesse nodded. "And Eve was Adam's assistant for a number of years at Genomex; she's a geneticist, too. She may be able to figure out how Adam treated me and be able to do the same for you guys and her people."
"Hey yeah," Brennan interrupted. "They finally got an Elemental of their own a while back, right? Not just Jamie and Owen anymore?"
"Yeah," Shalimar answered. "I think Jamie said his name's Chris. I know they were still looking for a Psionic, too, but that was a while ago, so who knows who they've got by now. Both teams got busy for a while there, and then, after. . .after my dad, and Naxcon, Emma..." Shalimar trailed off, her face twisting slightly in distress at unwanted memories, then she shook it off. "Well, we haven't heard from them in a while, other than the automated stuff Eve sends, database updates when their branch of the Underground places somebody, that kind of thing. Jamie kinda fell off the regular email report thing. . .poor kid probably took the news of Emma's death pretty hard," Shalimar finished, trailing off with a frown as she realized she hadn't considered the fact they knew someone else who had been fond of Emma, grateful to her specifically.
"Yeah, I'd imagine so..." Jesse said quietly, thinking of his fellow Molecular. Jamie was a shapeshifter, capable of both mimicking other people's features or transforming into a generic man or woman of roughly the same mass and also of stretching both body and limbs a significant distance. Jamie had taken to assuming multiple identities to get away with petty crimes, get out of trouble, and anything else a perfect disguise could get away with. Jamie wasn't the most stable of people because of those multiple identities, eventually growing paranoid some of the more criminal identities were being pursued. Jesse wasn't sure if Jamie's condition actually qualified as paranoid schizophrenia, especially since it was probably true to a degree, but eventually Jamie had suffered a literal meltdown, collapsing into a rubbery pile of formless flesh. Jamie's mother had desperately contacted Adam, who had brought Emma with him to telempathically reach the terrified young New Mutant and restore a desperately needed core sense of self to Jamie. Adam had spent a great deal of time explaining the realities of New Mutants to Jamie and how their New Mutant abilities could be used for both harm –as Jamie had been doing– and for good, the way Mutant X did. Jamie had agreed to help eventually form a second Mutant X team, so Adam and Emma had brought Jamie back to Sanctuary. Jesse had taken his fellow Molecular on as a protégé, since Jamie's shapeshifting could be used in ways similar to Jesse's phasing. Jesse had also taught Jamie everything he could about computers, which Jamie had proven capable of picking up very quickly, having been blessed with a photographic memory. It had been a great start to the plans for a second Mutant X team.
If it hadn't been for Emma, Jamie could easily have died, much less ever have regained any sort of normal life or accomplished anything with it. Given Jamie's emotional dependency on friends to maintain a steady sense of self, Emma's death had to have come as a blow, possibly a serious one.
Jesse decided seeing Jamie and Owen and Eve again would be great, as would meeting Chris and any other new member or members their Californian sister team had managed to gain. He was looking forward to it; they just needed to steal a zillion-dollar piece of technology from the most politically-secured city in the world, first.
Late that night, the four members of Mutant X were sitting in their stolen car a hundred yards or so from the fence surrounding a nondescript industrial building. The building itself wasn't out of place, sitting in an industrial park on the edge of Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington DC, but interestingly enough, the building didn't have a single sign identifying itself or what its purpose was.
Brennan smirked as they left the car; he'd had the foresight to steal a black Ford Taurus that was only a few years old; there had been no less than three other black Tauruses in the parking lots of the motel they had gotten rooms at and the two others on either side of it. Two minutes with an electric screwdriver and Lexa's invisible form had swapped their car's plates with the plates from the Taurus at the far end of the neighboring motel's lot. They had very little worry of their car being thought of as out of place unless it needed a permit sticker to park in the unsecured employee lot they had chosen, but since they wouldn't be using it anymore, they didn't care.
Shalimar had spent the late afternoon circling the building from a distance, armed with a notebook and a camera and the excuse that she was a reporter for an independent DC magazine doing an article on the non-government and non-tourism side of Washington DC, which would let her wander through the industrial park with abandon as long as she didn't trespass on any of the properties. Since her Feral vision allowed her to take a close look at the unlabeled Dominion building without actually pointing her camera at it, and the camera didn't have a zoom lens besides, she had been fairly certain no one would particularly notice her. She had taken care to circle other buildings in the park as well, pointing her camera at a number of signs announcing who the buildings belonged to and what they did, and paying very little overt attention to the Dominion building since it didn't have a sign at all. Her passing looks could have been excused as wondering
why the building had no signs, which was a perfectly plausible question for any reporter to have.
She'd managed to circle the entire building and draw a relatively accurately scaled map in her notebook, complete with indications of all the cameras she had spotted, including several fairly hidden ones. Shalimar had spent an hour more taking random pictures of other buildings in the industrial park, leading herself away from the Dominion's building. She found it interesting that all the other buildings in the area had quite a number of people leaving them and a few coming in at around five o'clock, but she never once saw anyone go in or out of the unlabelled building that matched their coordinates.
Are they trying to stand out? Geeze. Shalimar had thought to herself as she left, heading back to the motel to report her findings and help form their plan.
With the aid of Shalimar's recon info, Mutant X was able to approach the loading dock at the rear of the building, a long arm of the structure that jutted out from the rear south wall of the building but was not flush with the west wall. The small portion of the south wall between the building's west side and the west wall of the loading dock was only five feet wide; there had not been a door nor windows installed in it, and there were no security cameras monitoring it directly. Lexa took Jesse and Brennan's wrists, cloaking the three of them under the cover of motel blankets to keep the flare of light from her power's manifestation from being seen. Shalimar quickly and silently stuffed the blankets back into the car as Jesse phased her teammates through the building's fence and they hurried across the lot to the hidden corner.
Moments later, Shalimar's Feral vision could just see Jesse's hand phase back through the wall, gesturing for her to approach. Shalimar leaped the ten foot fence topped with spirals of razor wire, landing silently on her feet and hurrying across the lot, taking care to swing wide past the cameras, timing her passage to sprint past an oscillating camera while it was pointed the other way. When she reached the short wall, Shalimar saw it was blurred from Jesse's phasing effect and stepped through it, into a darkened room with her teammates.
"We are in
so much luck!" Jesse whispered excitedly as he released his phase of the wall and turned to Shalimar with delight. "Look around, this whole place has been converted from whatever it originally was; it's totally a Dominion installation, now!" Shalimar glanced around the darkened room, her eyes still in their Feral mode and easily noting the reinforced walls and high-tech equipment present even in a tiny corner storage room, the fiber-optic communications cables running from that equipment to the corner and up into the ceiling, and the security card-reader next to the room's only door. She hadn't been able to see in through any of the building's windows during her reconnoiter that afternoon; Shalimar figured they were all fakes and the building didn't really
have any windows.
"Why is that a good thing?" she asked back equally quietly, wondering about the paranoia of a place that required its employees to swipe a card (so that their movements could be tracked) from
inside a storage room, not just to
get inside it.
"Because that means this place
will have all the info on the Helix," Jesse answered. "Sure, they've probably got copies elsewhere, but the main ones will be here, and we can set the virus to wipe any other installations that contact this one's records. Heck, this is the one that actually
has the Helix, so there's a good chance it may have a list of the other places that have copies of its info. Or at least links to their computers, so we can take care of that much. If we get
really lucky, we might even find out where to start looking for Adam."
"Well, before you get all happy being a computer geek, let's go check the other side of that door," Lexa interrupted, jerking her head towards the room's only exit. "I'll cloak us with Shal, then you phase us out into the hall. If there's no one there to see, you can phase right back in here. She and I can scout around a little, figure out the best ways to get around whoever's here while you set the virus and
find the Helix. This is a big building; I don't think we can just knock everybody out and take our time."
"You're right," Jesse nodded. "Brennan can stay here with me, take care of anybody that happens to stop by. If you two get in trouble, give us a yell over the commrings and I can phase us right into the receiving area. There's probably a fuel store there Brennan can blow up to cause a nice distraction."
"Hey, that's a good idea..." Brennan said with a nod. "If the Helix doesn't leave through Receiving, we can blow it up to provide cover while we make our getaway. And if it is in the receiving area, maybe the girls can find something else to blow up, or the main computer for me to short out."
"Distractions and collateral damage," Lexa smirked as Shalimar took hold of a corner of her coat and Jesse put his hands on the girls' shoulders. "I love being an Elemental," she declared as she flared with light, reactivating her cloak. Brennan waited for a moment after he heard Jesse exhale to phase them through the door, growing more tense by the second until Jesse abruptly reappeared in front of the door, with his back to Brennan.
"Jess. . .what–?" Brennan asked quietly as he came closer, watching Jesse pull his phased hand back through the door before inhaling and resolidifying himself.
"Guards in the hallway outside," Jesse said cautiously. "Lexa couldn't let go of me to let me phase back in here; we had to maintain contact so she could keep me cloaked until I was back inside," he explained. "It's tricky, phasing while you're invisible. I couldn't see where our hands were, to be sure I wasn't leaving hers stuck inside the door when she let go of me. I just hope there weren't any guards looking right at the door to see my blurry hand suddenly appear and go through it."
"Well, the girls would've told us to run if the guards saw anything and got suspicious. It may be tricky for them to let us know they're back, though, or for you to phase the door so they can get back in," Brennan reasoned.
"Hmm, good point," Jesse said, frowning worriedly as he switched on the computer connected to the communications cables in the corner. He was concerned that the computer in a storeroom might not have access to the information they needed, but the only way to find out was to check. Jesse wished he had his mini-laptop/palm to hack into the Dominion's systems with, but if he was wishing for that, he might as well wish that Sanctuary and the Double Helix hadn't been destroyed in the first place. It would do as much good.
"
God, this is annoying," Lexa muttered under her breath, hardly making a sound. She knew Shalimar would still be able to hear her; she was less than two feet away, after all. "
Is there noplace in this joint that isn't crawling with cameras or guards?"
"
Well, it's Washington," Shalimar's barest whisper came from just below Lexa's ear. "
Gotta figure they have to be on pretty high alert practically all the time. Though I dunno what they think they could do if the FBI broke down the front door, y'know?"
"
Well, I can't keep this cloak up forever, or even that much longer, actually," Lexa murmured back, watching as another guard walked down the corridor away from them. "
We need to find a bathroom or something, somewhere we can slip out of sight. Soon."
"
Okay," Shalimar answered, then paused for a moment. Lexa kept silent, figuring Shalimar was using her Feral senses to listen for a direction they could go that didn't have a guard in it. "
This way," Shalimar whispered a moment later, tugging on Lexa's coat toward the hallway on their left.
"
It's quiet..." Shalimar whispered as they rounded a corner, finally entering an empty corridor. "
There. . .bathroom."
"
I see it," Lexa answered, following Shalimar's lead to enter the ladies' room where she could drop her cloak without fear of its flash of light attracting attention. She'd be relieved to stop having to coordinate her movements with a partner she couldn't see, as well. It wasn't quite as bad as an invisible three-legged race, but it was close. If they broke contact, Shalimar would appear in a flash of light that would almost certainly register on either a camera somewhere or attract at least one of the numerous guards' attentions.
They paused as Shalimar listened to make sure no one was about to turn the corner and see the bathroom door opening all by itself and to make sure it wasn't occupied. They slipped inside the darkened bathroom, and Lexa dropped her cloaking power with a sigh of relief, rolling her neck and shaking the tension out of her arms.
"We're kind of screwed," she said softly. "This place is crawling with
way too many employees; we'll never be able to get all four of us to wherever they're hiding the Helix. And why the hell are the lights off in the bathroom?" she muttered in annoyance, reaching for the light switch.
"Leave it," Shalimar said, holding up a warning hand to keep Lexa from flicking the switch. "If they're supposed to be off, a guard might notice the light under the door. And sure we can," she answered equally softly, her eyes still in Feral mode as she kept an ear out for trouble. "You and I will just have to get to the Helix once Jesse finds it, then you can go back and get him and Brennan. With his phasing and your cloak, you guys could practically go in a straight line, lots faster," she reasoned, her eyes flicking up to the ceiling vent in annoyance as a noisy, rattling circulation fan turned itself on.
"That might work, if Jess gets enough of a layout for us to figure out the direct route..." Lexa nodded, frowning in concentration as she considered the logistics involved. She raised the back of her right hand to her mouth, speaking softly into her commring. "Hey, Jesse, any ideas on where the Helix is stashed yet?"
'Not yet,' Jesse's voice came back over her commring, equally softly. 'The security here's kind of ridiculous, as if the card-reader
inside a storeroom wasn't enough of a clue there. I'm having to circumvent a
lot of systems to get into the mainframe; it's gonna take some time. I'm pretty sure the Helix is
not in the receiving area, but that's only because it was a legitimate trucking bay whenever this place was built, so it's not designed to fit an aircraft. I'll get back to you.'
"Okay," Lexa answered, trying to hide her disappointment with irritation, which resulted in sounding pretty much the same. "You're right about the security; there's personnel, guards, and cameras
everywhere. Shal and I were hoping you could direct us to the Helix, so I can drop her off and come back for you guys. I don't think there's any way for us to get around in here without my cloak, and your phasing would help."
'Right, just sit tight, I'll find it as soon as I can,' Jesse answered. 'I figure it must be on the top floor somewhere; the Helix is VTOL, so it only needs roof access. You two could start working your way up, but I figure if you do that, then I'll find out there's a subterranean hangar somewhere. Once I know where to send you, I'll start working on the virus. I should be able to get that done and see if I can't learn anything else by the time you drop Shalimar off and come back for Brennan and me.'
"Got it," Lexa answered. "The sooner the better, Jesse. I've had enough of Dominion installations for a while; a sunny Californian vacation sounds good, you know?"
'I hear you,' Jesse replied, a smile in his voice. 'I'm going as fast as I safely can. We won't get a second shot at this.'
"Understood," Lexa responded, then dropped her hand loosely to her side, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes in mild frustration.
"You don't do patient well, do you?" Shalimar asked, her single sardonically raised eyebrow all the more dramatic in its statement since it was arched over a golden cat's-eye.
"We're not all half-feline," Lexa answered with a smirk, not even bothering to open her eyes. "Also, I'm resting. I think we're going to need my cloak a
lot more before this is done."
"Probably tr..." Shalimar cut herself off as the door to the bathroom opened; she hadn't heard anyone approach because of the noisy ventilation fan. With lightning speed, she put a hand over Lexa's mouth as she grabbed the taller woman around the waist with her other arm, using her Feral strength to pick Lexa up and silently back them both into the corner behind the bathroom door as it opened. Lexa's eyes snapped open in surprised alarm, but she was professional enough to avoid making a sound, trusting her teammate's instincts and letting Shalimar do as she would until Lexa could get a grasp on the situation for herself.
Seeing a lone woman in black fatigues entering the bathroom, Lexa silently watched, waiting for the woman to turn the lights on. When she did, Lexa activated her cloak, hiding Shalimar and herself and hoping to conceal the flare of her power's activation under the cover provided while the woman's eyes adjusted to the new light level.
The athletically built woman went utterly still, her hand pausing halfway between the light switch and returning to her side. Her eyes flared the bright golden yellow of a timber wolf's as she carefully watched the room, her nostrils twitching as the New Mutant shifted into her Lupine Feral mode.
"I see you..." the muscular woman growled, squinting into the corner where Shalimar and Lexa stood. "
Smell you..." she snarled, turning to face them and beginning to step forward, advancing on her prey.
"See
this!" Lexa sneered back, dropping her cloak and brushing her fingers at the Feral's face, flinging a bright strobe of light into the woman's timber wolf eyes. The woman snarled again, wincing, unable to see and caught completely off-guard as Shalimar stepped forward and drove a fist into the woman's stomach, knocking the wind out of her. Shalimar stepped around the woman as she doubled over, raising both fists overhead and bringing them down in a hammerblow to the base of the woman's skull. The wolf Feral dropped to the floor, unconscious.
"Since when does the Dominion hire New Mutants?" Shalimar asked in exasperation, frowning down at the woman's unconscious form.
"I don't know, since me?" Lexa said sarcastically, rolling her eyes for good measure. "How long do you think she'll be out?"
"Dunno, but probably not very," Shalimar answered, still frowning as she tried to figure out what to do with their prisoner.
"Well, we should probably tie her up and gag her, then," Lexa replied, looking around to see what was at hand.
"With
what?" Shalimar asked, annoyed. "You got anything on you that will hold a Feral? That a wolf can't chew through?"
"It doesn't take too much..." Lexa replied in a superior tone of voice, crouching down next to the woman's feet and untying one of her combat boots. "..If you know what you're doing," she finished, cutting eighteen inches or so of shoelace off of the woman's boot with a brief burst of laser light from the first two fingers of her right hand.
"You can't tie her up with shoestring!" Shalimar protested. "She'll snap that like it's nothing!"
"Doesn't matter how strong she is; she can't snap it if she can't get any leverage," Lexa answered as she removed the second length of shoestring from the other side of the woman's boot. "Help me get her back against the end stall there."
Lexa and Shalimar sat the woman up, dragging her across the floor to sit in front of the first stall's partition. Lexa took the lengths of shoestring and tied them around the woman's wrists, then folded her arms behind her back, slipping her fingers over her forearms and under her biceps, pressed up against her back. Lexa took the rest of the shoestrings' lengths and lashed them to the opposite forearms; the Feral's own fingers would prevent her from being able to move her arms enough to put sufficient tension on the strings to snap them, if she could even move her arms that much in such an awkward position.
With a smirk, Lexa removed the woman's belt and threaded its ends under the Feral's armpits. She entered the stall and crouched in its corner, reaching under the partition to grasp the belt's ends and pull them into the stall, buckling it behind the narrow support that held up the stall's corner. Returning to the woman's feet, Lexa untied her other boot, then crossed her ankles and used one length of the shoestring to tie them together. With Shalimar's grinning help, they folded the woman's feet under her; with her chest level with the base of the stall's partition, the woman was practically lying on the floor, her lower legs bent back double beneath her. Lexa took the other end of the second shoestring and tied it to one of the first strings around the woman's forearms, so that she couldn't get her legs out from under herself.
"No way to get any leverage. I stand corrected," Shalimar admitted, nodding at Lexa's work and smiling with pride in her teammate's accomplishment as Lexa searched the woman's pockets and found a handkerchief as well as her security access card, but nothing else of use as a gag. She frowned for a moment, considering, then glanced up at the wall and grinned. Lexa crossed the bathroom to the sanitary napkin dispenser, melting its lock with a laser and taking two of the small packages out. She ripped them open, wrapping one pad inside the other and pushing them into the unconscious Feral's mouth before tying the handkerchief around her head so she couldn't spit the gag out.
"Oh my god, you're
evil," Shalimar said with a wicked grin. "I
love it!"
"What was I supposed to do, use toilet paper?" Lexa asked. "She'd chew it up and swallow it, then start screaming her damn fool head off." She contemplated the unconscious Feral for a moment, then frowned. "Hell, she might chew those up and swallow them. But it'll take longer, at least. Unfortunately, tying her up probably used all the time she was allotted for her potty break. We'd better get out of here. . .I hope Jesse finds out where we're headed soon."
Shalimar nodded, taking hold of the corner of Lexa's coat again and waiting for her to activate her cloaking power before turning the lights back off. Shalimar cracked the door open the tiniest bit, just enough she could hear the hallway outside despite the noisy fan, then pulled the door open and followed the tug of Lexa's coat through it once she was sure the coast was clear.
"
Hey, perfect," Lexa's voice whispered a moment later as they proceeded down the hallway. "
Hang on; we're going back," she warned Shalimar, going slowly to make sure her teammate could follow her movements as she detoured to the door of the men's room. Shalimar snickered when she saw the "Out Of Order" sign on it, which Lexa picked up and hastily moved back down the hall to hang from the women's room door. "
It won't take them long to decide to check the out of order bathroom when they can't find her, but we'll take whatever we can get."
"
Definitely," Shalimar answered, then raised her commring to her lips. "
Jesse, Brennan, we're going to have a problem, probably sooner rather than later," Shalimar said softly.
'
What's wrong, Shal?' Brennan answered, equally quietly.
"
For starters, the Dominion has New Mutants on the premises," Shalimar warned him. "
We had to knock one out, so this place might go to red alert when they figure out she's missing, definitely when they find her tied up in the bathroom."
'
Bathroom? Nevermind, I don't wanna know,' Brennan replied. '
Jesse's found a layout of the place; there's giant extra-secured areas in the basement, but no plane-sized access to them, and one largish secured area on the top floor, northeast corner. You guys head that way, see what you can do about getting the Helix ready. If Jesse can find the main power, I'll take that out, otherwise I'll blow the receiving area, like we said before. That should give us enough distraction in the opposite corner of the building to get away with this.'
"
Go for the receiving dock," Shalimar answered, feeling Lexa's shoulder move as the other woman nodded. "
Good chance we'll need the power on to get the Helix running, open the roof hatch, etcetera. Jesse can phase you right into Receiving; there's too much security for you to sneak anywhere else in this place."
'
Right, good call,' Brennan said. '
The alarm is definitely gonna go off when I blow Receiving, but hopefully it leads trouble away from you guys. We'll meet you there.'
"
Gotcha," Shalimar acknowledged. "
We'll comm you if anything changes; you do the same."
'
Definitely. See you soon.'
"Bren, this is slow going," Jesse said worriedly as Brennan finished speaking with Shalimar. "We've got a rough layout of the place, but it's not like it's labeled. We can assume the top floor northeast corner is the Helix, but I'm not any closer to figuring out even
where the electronic records are than when I started here, much less setting up a virus or searching them to find out where any other records are or where Adam might be," he explained with a frustrated sigh. "I need more time, and I'm not
even sure that I can get what we need from this terminal. I might need to find the mainframe itself, or at least an office or something with the proper access."
"Well, this one has access to the mainframe; it had the layout," Brennan replied with a frown. "Can't you just hack past its security limitations and get into the parts of the mainframe you want? Why do you need an office?"
"Sure I can," Jesse replied with a disgusted smirk. "With another hour or so's work. We're talking about the Dominion here, Brennan, shadow government ops. The security on this system is a lot more advanced than the firewalls around the files for the giant electric fence the army was using to wall in the Breed at Fort Perry, you know?"
"Hmm, good point," Brennan answered, realizing the difficulties Jesse was up against. "Well, take a quick break and phase us into Receiving. You relax for a sec while I blow something up, then we'll run right back through the wall. With everybody freaking out, we might even be able to get over to an office."
Jesse smiled at Brennan's enthusiasm for the plan.
"Good plan," Jesse nodded, taking Brennan's offered hand and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. They walked over to the corner across from where they had entered the storeroom, where the wall was communal with the receiving area. Jesse exhaled and phased, leaning forward to phase through the common wall and peek into the receiving area. Brennan watched curiously as Jesse bent over almost double, most of his upper body disappearing into the wall. . .apparently the wall was pretty thick. After a brief moment Jesse straightened up back into the room, inhaling and releasing his phase.
"It's quiet, empty, but I saw motion detectors in the corners and at least one camera; you'll have to be quick to take them out before we're spotted," Jesse reported. "That'll probably get Security's attention in and of itself, but if you blow something up, I doubt that'll be an issue. Problem is, I didn't see any obvious fuel stores. On the other hand, I couldn't really look around without tripping the security anyway."
"Can you make sure of the camera?" Brennan asked, frowning as he considered possibilities. "Maybe check on the computer? If I can take out the cameras, it won't matter if the motion sensors register me if I blow something up."
"Right," Jesse nodded, hurrying back to the computer. "Those are fiber optic video cables, security just about
has to be going through them, so accessing that shouldn't be too difficult," he went on, opening a new window on the computer and typing away at a furious pace. "Here we go..." Jesse said a moment later, leaning in as he cycled through the security camera displays. "Okay, this is the panning camera in the middle that I saw," Jesse clicked past the receiving dock display to the next camera, "And this one is in the corner above our heads, monitoring the loading bays and fire exit, awesome." Jesse stood up and looked at Brennan, grinning. "The second camera won't be able to see us at all; you can take them both out, no problem. Only trick is going to be finding something to blow up."
"Oh, I'm sure I can come up with something," Brennan grinned back. "Fuel stores would be nice and easy, but I'll find something to make do. You come with me; you can mass us both if I have to set off something really explosive like fuel and can't do it from this wall while it's phased, and if we have to go looking, the motion detectors will only register one presence if we stick together."
"Right, if I have to come join you, they'd read me, too, and two signals couldn't be blamed on the fire or explosion," Jesse nodded. "Let's do it."
Jesse led the way back to where the receiving dock's corner was on the other side of the wall, laying his hand on Brennan's arm and phasing them both, allowing them to step through the wall. He pulled away from Brennan the moment they were through the wall, reverting Brennan to normal. Brennan rolled his hands over one another to generate a Tesla coil and quickly zapped the camera hanging from the middle of the ceiling, short-circuiting it despite the fact it was hidden behind a dark plastic dome. Electricity was still crackling over the fingers of Brennan's other hand; he looked up and found the stationary security camera in the corner over their heads, zapping it out of commission as well.
"C'mon, who knows how fast security will react..." Brennan said, grabbing Jesse's wrist and pulling his younger teammate after him as Brennan strode out onto the receiving dock, looking for a good distractionary device.
"I don't like this..." Jesse said quietly a moment later. "Shal said she never saw any activity here, never saw anybody go in or come out while she was watching this afternoon. This dock is too closed off, like it's shut down. They might not even be using it."
"No, then why two cameras?" Brennan countered. "Just Dominion paranoia? Heck, there were trucks outside, worst case you can phase us back outside and I'll blow one of
those up."
"Hey, that's a thought, if we can't find anything here. . .those look like hard copy files, paper, it'd burn, but I think we want to do better than that..." Jesse said, pointing at some pallets of cardboard storage boxes sitting up above on some racking, shrink-wrapped for long-term storage.
"They're dusty," Brennan said, squinting at the nearest pallet. "Those aren't being shipped somewhere; they're stored here. That means you were right, this receiving dock isn't actually in use."
"Well, the trucks should still have fuel," Jesse replied, considering the details. "The city would notice if the same trucks just sat outside all the time, so they must rotate them to keep up appearances; maybe they do ship
some stuff from base to base, just not enough to need an operating dock. You can blow the diesel tanks on one or two of the trucks, and–"
"FREEZE!" a voice shouted, cutting Jesse off.
Jesse and Brennan spun to face the door to the receiving area. The door was still shut, but there was a stocky man in a black guard's uniform standing in front of it, pointing a handgun at the two of them. "On your knees, hands in the air, Now!" the man yelled across the large room at them, stepping away from the door and coming closer.
Jesse stepped in front of Brennan protectively, hands spread in an anticipatory stance at his sides, ready to mass in an instant if needed. Brennan shifted behind Jesse, turning his profile to the guard to present a smaller target area of what little of himself that was visible past Jesse. He brought his hands up slowly, looking as if he were thinking about surrendering and throwing himself on the mercy of the authorities (the very idea of which made him want to smirk wryly), but in actuality he was preparing to thrust an arm over Jesse's shoulder, to shock the guard into unconsciousness.
"Hands
Up, on your knees,
Now, or I'll shoot!" the burly guard yelled, continuing to step closer and aiming his gun directly at Jesse's chest.
Jesse balled his fists, glaring at the man aggressively and silently daring him to shoot. The man ceased advancing, sliding one foot to the side to assume a shooter's stance, and Jesse massed as the guard pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into Jesse's orange-lined form, smashing itself flat and dropping to the floor as Brennan flung his arm over Jesse's shoulder and threw a bolt of electricity at the guard.
Brennan and Jesse both blinked in surprise when the guard exhaled as Brennan moved, his stocky form growing blurry as the man phased and Brennan's electrical bolt passed harmlessly through him.
"He can only hold that phase for thirty seconds or so, right?" Brennan asked Jesse quietly, neither of their eyes ever leaving the immaterial Molecular's form. "You can hold your breath longer than that; I've got him," Brennan finished, still speaking under his breath and barely moving his lips. He was watching the Molecular guard directly over Jesse's head from immediately behind him; Brennan didn't need to shift his gaze to see Jesse's miniscule nod.
All three New Mutants stood there waiting to see what would happen next. Jesse wasn't sure if the guard's gun would fire while it was immaterial; he didn't think it would, too many interlocking parts that wouldn't interact properly in a phased state, but he wasn't sure. He'd never tried shooting a gun while he was phased, had never shot a gun, actually, so he wasn't positive what would happen. The guy hadn't shot again yet though, so Jesse hoped his theory was sound. Brennan was more worried about backup for the guard showing up any second or further alarms going up when the guy failed to report back immediately.
Twenty-some seconds later, the stocky guard inhaled and released his phase, leaping to one side and firing again at Jesse and Brennan. The man was a decent shot, but he wasn't an expert marksman to make the awkward shot to hit Brennan behind Jesse's massed form as the man dove to the floor. The bullet hit Jesse's collarbone and flattened itself as Brennan thrust his other hand forward past Jesse with a snarl, grabbing onto Jesse's other shoulder with his first hand to lean past him and hit the other Molecular with an electrical blast before he could phase again.
The stocky guard collapsed bodily to the floor, unconscious before he struck it.
Brennan clapped Jesse on the shoulder as he released his mass and forcefully exhaled, breathing deeply to replenish his oxygen-hungry lungs. Jesse turned to exchange a grin with Brennan as the taller man moved past him, heading for the downed guard. Jesse frowned as he considered the fact that the guy was an Intangible Molecular.
"What do we do with him?" Jesse asked as Brennan crouched over the man, checking his pulse. "It's not like tying up an Intangible does any good, and I'm fresh out of subdermal governors." Brennan smirked at him with an expression that said he didn't find the joke all that funny.
"We can take him with us and I can keep zapping him until we're ready to move, but I think we're better off just leaving him here," Brennan answered. "We've gotta move; they obviously sent security to check out the cameras going down in here, and they'll send more when this guy doesn't check back in, might be more on the way now," he finished as he rose and moved over to the roll-up receiving doors, peering through their tiny windows to see which bay was empty but had a truck in the neighboring bay. Luckily, the first bay he checked had a truck in it, but the second not only did not, but the one on its other side had another trailer. Not only that, but Brennan could see that both the occupied bays had full trucks in them, complete with cabs that would have diesel fuel tanks, not just trailers waiting for cabs to come pick them up.
"Phase this door, Jess," Brennan said, pointing at it. "I'll lean through and blow both trucks' gas tanks for our distraction. The second I dive back through the door, stop touching it, or the blast will catch us, too."
"Got it," Jesse nodded, stepping up to the roll-up door and laying his left hand against it. "Diesel is used in homemade high explosives; you'd better jump into me, I'll mass us," Jesse said, finishing with an exhalation and rendering the door intangible. Brennan rolled his hands over one another, building up a good charge. He leaned through the blurred door, thrusting both arms out and spearing the cylindrical fuel tank under the side of one truck, electrifying the other's cab with as much energy as he could, hoping to ignite the fuel tank on its other side that he couldn't see.
Brennan threw himself backwards through the immaterial door, the explosion already rushing toward him. It seemed like the world was in slow motion; Brennan knew that an explosion was just something burning so fast that the heat of its expansion propelled the air ahead of it at ridiculous velocities; that's where the shockwave of an explosion came from. Even so, Brennan was sure he could actually see the fireball expanding toward him, maybe it was a really slow explosion, just burning diesel fuel, without whatever other stuff was added to it to make it high explosives. Organic fertilizer or something, right?
Regardless, Brennan had thrown himself back through the door even as he had shot his Tesla coils, but he had seen the orange of the flames even as he was heaving backward with his legs. That explosion was rushing for him, a slow one or not, probably going to blast right through the flimsy metal slats of a roll up receiving door. . .the Dominion had reinforced the walls of the storeroom, why not the doors of the receiving area? Brennan was so screwed; it hadn't even been a tenth of a second, and that fireball was going to blast through the door into Brennan's face in just the next
instant...
Jesse let go of the door the instant Brennan's elbows were through it, the ripple of his phase effect ending crossing the door's surface away from Jesse with perfect timing to avoid catching Brennan's fingertips as the door resolidified. Jesse inhaled quickly as he caught Brennan's backpedaling form, grabbing him tight and holding his breath, massing them both as the bay door smashed into them, propelled into the receiving dock by a large orange fireball. Jesse dragged Brennan's stumbling form through the flames and wreckage, trying to get them clear before he exhausted his quick breath and had to unmass.
Brennan's stumbling only grew worse as they staggered away from the destroyed door and raging inferno that had blown into the receiving area. Brennan lost his footing, grabbing at Jesse's shoulder with one arm to keep from falling into the flames billowing about their knees, clawing at Jesse's arm where it was holding Brennan's ribs with his other hand. He was clawing desperately; he had gasped in reaction to the incoming explosion, had stupidly expelled his air in a gasp of fright as he fell back into the dock, knowing Jesse was going to mass him, but it had been an instinctive reaction, now he didn't have any air, couldn't breathe with his lungs massed...
Jesse frowned down at Brennan's face as the older man struggled, then his eyes widened in alarm as he realized what had happened. Jesse shifted to sling Brennan's arm over his shoulders, trying to haul him out of the flames as fast as he could, but it was tough going. Jesse's strength didn't increase when he was massed, or if it did, it was only enough to move his massed form, it all still felt normal to him. He hit lots harder, but that was do to the sheer amount of mass making the impact, not that he was any stronger. Brennan was 6'3" and weighed around 175 pounds, so he was big and heavy even
before he was massed.
They managed a few more shambling steps, getting out of the worst of the fire but still definitely within it when Brennan collapsed entirely, hanging limply from Jesse's side. Jesse panicked for a split second, terrified Brennan would suffer brain damage if his blood and lungs weren't returned to normal almost immediately, his fear intensifying when he realized that the receiving area was now full of smoke, as well. Deciding he didn't have a choice, Jesse struggled to get Brennan into a proper fireman's carry, distributing his massed weight over Jesse's shoulders. Jesse's knees nearly buckled as he struggled to straighten up under the load of Brennan's weight, but once he had Brennan off the floor, out of the flames, he released his massing of Brennan's form, reducing his weight to less than 200 pounds. Jesse's massed form could handle that amount of weight
much better since it was already across his shoulders, hurrying the rest of the way out of the flames and gasping for breath in the smoky air as he unmassed himself. He staggered under Brennan's weight to the corner under the deactivated security camera, thankful for the sound of Brennan gasping for breath. Exhaling one last time, Jesse phased them both and staggered through the wall into the storeroom, collapsing painfully to his knees and delivering Brennan to the floor as gently as he could, both of them gasping desperately for breath, thankful for the cool, clean air of the small storeroom.
"Well," Brennan panted, "I've had
worse plans..."
Jesse gasped laughter.
"You
have!" he panted back, euphoric with their marginal escape. "Okay, you catch your breath," Jesse said breathlessly, clapping Brennan on the calf, the nearest portion of him Jesse could reach, then he struggled painfully to his feet. "I gotta find those files. I'm gonna check that layout diagram, see if there's a lab nearby we can go through the walls to get to. I've got a feeling the hallway outside Receiving may get pretty busy in just a second."
"Ya think?" Brennan laughed from the floor, slowly levering himself up into a seated position.
'
Jesse, what'd you do?' Lexa's voice said quietly over his commring.
"
Nothing," Jesse replied with a smirk, not bothering to stop typing. They needed to get this done; Lexa could live with the click of keys over the comm. "
Brennan caused a very nice explosion outside, but I didn't do anything other than save his silly ass."
'
Good for you,' Lexa replied patronizingly. '
Lucky for us, my cloak got us past the security cameras in the stairwell, so we made it to the top floor pretty easily. We've got an access card, but who knows if it has clearance for the Helix. Then alarms went off while we were making our way to the northeast corner, and now there's people running around all the hell over. You any closer to ready yet?'
"
Not really," Jesse answered with a sigh. "
That's why Brennan set off the distraction explosion; I need more time. Maybe you guys should head for the southwest corner of the top floor, start a fire there, too. If we can get them to evacuate the building, or mostly evacuate it, our jobs'll be a lot easier."
'
Great idea, Nerd-Wonder,' Lexa sighed back. '
It would've been swell if you could've thought of it before we got all the way to the opposite corner of the complex!'
"
Hey, not my fault you only called now," Jesse chuckled back. "
The Dominion's security is pretty intense; I've still got a lot of work to do just to find the Helix's files, besides contaminating them and seeing if I can find any leads on Adam. You got any pointers on Dominion computers for me, make this go any faster?" he asked.
'
Hmmm, no,' Lexa replied with disappointment. '
But remember the virus I used to wipe their computers and free us the other day? I've got a copy on my own site, triple W dot LexaLight –both L's capitalized– dot envy dot nu, that's N-U, slash computerstuff, all one word, slash KaneMutiny, one word, capital K and M, dot e-x-e. If you can add that executable to the Helix's files or any other fun place you can find for it, we already know it works. They might have applied the resources to fix it in a day, but since Adam blew that installation up, I doubt it.'
"
You keep your malicious viruses in an Envy folder called 'computerstuff'?" Jesse asked in amused amazement.
'
Hey, not like anybody's ever going to look there,' Lexa replied. '
And if anything happens to my Envy account, I'll know it was you, so you better behave yourself, buster.'
"
Lex, if you keep chaotic core computer viruses in the interesting folder, I'd be terrified of what else I might find anywhere else on your site. I'll leave it alone," Jesse reassured her, his grin evident in his voice. "
Find someplace to sit tight and set off the sprinkler system up there; Brennan and I will join you as soon as we can. If you can get into the Helix's hangar, that might save some time."
'
Sprinklers, good idea,' Lexa answered. '
That much I can do without having to cross the whole damn complex again. We'll be waiting.'
"
Roger that; be there as soon as we can," Jesse answered, nodding as he continued to type away at the computer, searching for a nearby office. There was nothing useful on the ground floor, but he was hoping he could find something on the second floor, using the southwest corner of the main complex as a reference point. A moment later he grinned in satisfaction.
"Got it, Bren," Jesse said, still smiling as he turned to make sure he had Brennan's attention, then pointed at the screen. "There's some kind of research lab-area directly above us, but there's an office off of it. We can stack some of the junk in here up, go right through the ceiling. If they've got research going on at midnight we might have to knock somebody out, but there's a fire not too far away, hopefully they're clearing the area."
"Yeah, it'd be great if we die of smoke inhalation from our own distractionary tactic," Brennan laughed sarcastically, rolling his eyes as he got to his feet and helped Jesse start stacking items to use as their makeshift ladder.
"
Okay, we need to find somewhere out of sight again," Lexa whispered to Shalimar. "
I can't keep this cloak up forever while we wait for the boys, and it won't do us any good once we set the sprinklers off, anyway."
"
Right. Let's find another bathroom or an empty office near the hangar," Shalimar answered.
The two female members of Mutant X made their stealthy way around the corner of the corridor accessing the secured area that must contain the Double Helix, thankful that the two guards standing there did not appear to be Ferals or Psionics who could detect their invisible presence. They didn't find another bathroom, but there was a small office for one Dr. Bleisdel, Operations, with a fogged glass window that was dark inside. Lexa glanced around, spotting the security camera at the end of the hallway that could see the office's door. She towed Shalimar down to the camera, positioning them beneath it so it couldn't see them when she dropped her cloak. She did, then fired a laser into the camera's lens, not to destroy it but blinding it with direct radiance.
"
Go open the door, quick and quiet!" she hissed at Shalimar, who nodded and silently sprinted back the way they had come. Shalimar grasped the office door's handle with one hand, bracing her feet and pressing her stomach up against the handle to muffle the sound of her forcing the door open. Lexa had carefully followed Shalimar back down the hallway, keeping her laser trained on the camera's lens.
Once Shalimar had the door open, Lexa fired a more intense laser with her other hand, directly into the heat sensor of the sprinkler head immediately in front of the door. The sprinkler turned on and a fire alarm began blaring; Lexa dropped her lasers and stepped back through the office's door and closed it behind her. She was hoping that whoever was monitoring the security cameras wouldn't have returned their attention to the proper screen from being distracted by the fire alarm before she got the door closed.
Shalimar had her head cocked to one side when Lexa turned away from the door, her eyes in Feral mode as she listened.
"I don't think those guards are going anywhere," she said. "It's hard to hear over the alarm, but I can hear one bitching to the other about the sprinklers."
Lexa glanced around the office, looking for inspiration. It was a small office, obviously Dr. Bleisdel's personal office, stuffed with books and papers that were slowly being ruined by the spray of water from the sprinklers. She crossed the room to a small armoir in the corner, opening it to discover a spare labcoat.
"I've got an idea..." she grinned at Shalimar.
The poor guards were still standing there on either side of the secured doors to the hangar, soaked and beginning to shiver as a short, distraught blonde clattered around the corner. She had books and papers clutched haphazardly in her arms, and her labcoat with its security access card flapping was trying to billow behind her as she hurried, but it was already too heavy from the weight of the water beginning to saturate it.
"Ohgod, ohgod, all my notes, I'm not done, do we really have to leave?" Shalimar gasped in desperation as she rushed past the guards, lurching to a halt and turning to look hopefully at them. "Maybe it's a false alarm, somebody smoking in a bathroom or something?"
She wasn't really faking the lurching; Shalimar was wearing Lexa's stylish black shoes, which were not only a bit more appropriate footwear for a scientific office assistant than Shalimar's cowboy boots but also a size too big. She gave a gasp of dismay, "Oh, my
papers!" as half the sheaf of documents she was carrying spilled to the floor from the momentum of her abrupt stop.
"Oh, nonono, the water, everything's
ruined, Dr. Bleisdel needs these
tomorrow, that's why I was staying so late..." Shalimar wailed as she dropped to her knees, trying manically to scoop all the papers up at once without releasing everything else she was carrying, which ended up only making a bigger mess. Shalimar let the sound of sobs fill her voice; she wasn't looking either guard in the eyes, so they couldn't see hers actually weren't red, and they were all already wet from head to toe thanks to the sprinklers, so no lack of tears was evident, either.
"Here, Miss," the guard on the left said, stepping forward and gently grasping her elbow, pulling Shalimar back up to her feet. He took the books and remaining papers from her arms, shoving them into the arms of his scowling partner and telling him to cover them. The guard turned back to Shalimar, smiling gently into her wet, blinking eyes. "I'll get your papers, Miss. Use your labcoat like an umbrella; maybe we can keep them from getting any wetter."
"Oh!" Shalimar gasped, beaming at him. "Good idea, oh Thank You!" she exclaimed, turning modestly aside as she shrugged the labcoat off, which did indeed thrust her chest forward in its thin, wet shirt. The helpful guard wouldn't have noticed, since he had already dropped into a crouch to begin collecting the fallen documents, but Shalimar's turn aside had left her facing the surlier guard, who was enjoying the show as Shalimar fiddled with both hands behind her back to remove the labcoat from her arms.
The first guard was crouched over the floor, looking at the papers he was collecting; the second was looking at Shalimar's chest, so neither of them saw the clear silhouette of Lexa's invisible form stealthily approaching, outlined by the falling water of the sprinklers' spray.
Shalimar finished shrugging off the lab coat and draped it over her bent elbow, leaning to one side so that her elbow and the rest of the lab coat hanging from it shielded the crouched guard from the spray, or at least his arms and the papers he was grabbing. She continued to face the other guard, propping the knuckles of her free hand on her hip and smirking at him as he continued to watch her chest. Shalimar's eyes flicked to the side to check on Lexa's progress, seeing that she had snuck up directly behind the crouched guard.
The guard with his arms full finally looked up at Shalimar's face when he realized his show was continuing and she wasn't turning to help his partner or worry over her precious papers. His frown of confusion flickered through guilt at being caught staring before deepening into suspicion when he saw the smirk on Shalimar's face.
Then she knocked him out with a single Feral strength punch to the jaw as Lexa smashed the crouching guard to the floor with vicious chop to the side of his neck.
"Damn, and he was kinda nice," Shalimar snickered as they rolled the unconscious men onto their fronts, untying their boots to tie their ankles together with the laces from one boot and tie their wrists together to their ankles with the other.
"Open sesame," Lexa smirked as she ran the nice guard's security card through the reader, her smirk spreading into a grin as the indicator light lit up green. Then she turned to Shalimar and frowned. "And gimme my shoes, yours don't fit."
Brennan and Jesse had managed to stack enough stuff to almost reach the ceiling of the storeroom, clambering up their pile to crouch with their heads between the support struts of the industrial room's ceiling.
"Ready?" Jesse asked. "It's gonna be kind of weird; going up or down any kind of step while phased, and we won't be able to see our feet with our heads through the ceiling. You have to be careful not to step
through whatever you're climbing."
"Got it," Brennan nodded. "And I thought my powers took concentration to work with."
Jesse smirked at Brennan and raised a disbelieving eyebrow. True, Brennan had to concentrate on the voltage he wanted to apply and had to be careful about water and being grounded, but that didn't really compare to constantly worrying about how every part of you was interacting with the environment every time you used your powers, not to mention coordinating it all with your breathing.
Brennan smirked back; he hadn't forgotten how Jesse had saved all their lives when he phased the entire Double Helix with five people inside it, flying at hundreds of miles per hour.
"Okay, we stand up to see where we're going, step up onto the top of the pile, then jump through the upper level's floor. I drop the phase and we land on our feet; you zap anybody who's still there," Jesse said, and Brennan nodded in confirmation. "On three, One, Two,
Three!"
Jesse exhaled forcefully on three, phasing them both so that they could stand up through the floor of the research area above. The room was empty and dark; they carefully high-stepped their way on top of the solid boxes they had placed on top of the pile, then half-crouched. Jesse nodded, and they both jumped up into the room, Brennan flailing slightly as one of his feet went down instead of up, phasing through the box he had been standing on. Jesse pulled on Brennan's arm, helping him make it through the floor, then let go so that Brennan solidified and landed on the floor as Jesse inhaled and resolidified, also landing on the floor in a crouch.
Brennan glanced around as Jesse rose, making sure the room was empty. They'd been caught by surprise once tonight; Brennan didn't want to take the gamble of trying to get away with it twice. Jesse went over to the adjacent office door, phasing himself and leaning through to one side of it to check the room beyond. The office door had a small smoked-glass window in it, but neither Jesse nor Brennan intended to take any chances, checking before relying on the darkness of the office to indicate its empty status. Jesse stepped through the door, and a second later Brennan heard its lock disengage from inside; he let himself in to see Jesse typing on a computer's keyboard even as he sat down in front of it.
"And starting from scratch on this one is going to be faster than going the long way through the one downstairs?" Brennan asked, hoping things wouldn't take
too long and they would all be getting out of there soon.
"Definitely," Jesse replied, not bothering to look away from his screen. "Especially since it's not from scratch; I figured out this one's address on the one downstairs before we came up here. This is a communal office, used by various people doing work in the research lab, so it's not even password protected. I just have to hack into the mainframe from here. . .Bingo," he finished after another few moments of typing.
"Excellent," Jesse breathed out in relief after another minute's work. "We're in luck, the system isn't really
that secured, once you're into the mainframe. I don't think they expected anyone to get this far," Jesse reported without an ounce of pride, just stating things as he saw them. "If I can just get into the settings of an administrator or somebody high enough to have access to the Helix, to the addresses of the other sites where they keep copies..."
Brennan watched Jesse work for a moment, keeping silent and letting Jesse concentrate, his stream-of-consciousness exposition as he worked a familiar and reassuring cadence to Brennan. When Jesse went quiet, Brennan silently moved away to keep an eye on the door, knowing that Jesse's silence meant he was deep in concentration and hard at work.
"
Jess!" Brennan hissed urgently an instant later. "
Keep quiet, company outside!" Brennan finished, grabbing a folder from a drop-bin mounted on the wall next to the door and holding it close to the window to block the light flickering from Jesse's monitor.
"
Aw, dammit, Bren, I've only just found the files. . .still need to download and customize Lexa's virus, and I haven't even started looking for any leads on Adam yet..." Jesse complained, dropping his voice so that it was barely audible.
"
Forget it, Jess, there's no time!" Brennan whispered back, taking an experienced thief's vocal cadence to avoid hissing his sibilants and softening his plosives to keep from giving their presence away. "
They've had Adam for less than twenty-four hours; it's not like there's gonna be an update about him waiting on the news board!" he continued urgently, keeping one eye up close to the window in the door, peering sideways past the folder he was holding in front of it to make sure they weren't about to be discovered.
"Shit, they're coming this way," Brennan muttered in frustration; Jesse typed faster, wishing that just a few more seconds would be enough. "Get over here, phase me through this wall," Brennan said, grabbing a thumbtack from a bulletin board on the other side of the door and pinning the folder in place over the window, then dashing to a nearby desk to grab an empty CD jewel case.
"What!?" Jesse whispered in shock, looking up at Brennan in surprise.
"No time; I'm buying you some!" Brennan hissed as he grabbed Jesse's wrist, yanking him out of the chair and running straight for the wall to one side of the door. "We've only got this one shot,
phase me!"
Jesse opened his mouth to protest but cut himself off before he'd said a word when he heard the voices just outside the door. Jesse pursed his lips in an exhalation instead, giving Brennan a pleading look to be careful as both of their forms became intangible and blurry. Brennan dashed through the wall; the second he was through it, he let go of Jesse's wrist, letting him retreat back into the office to continue his work while the guards were distracted by Brennan's sudden appearance.
Brennan didn't waste a single second on witty banter or trying to draw the guards' attention to him; his sudden appearance through the wall was more than enough to accomplish that. He simply thrust his free hand forward, zapping both the guards in front of the office door and conveniently between him and the exit. Brennan sprang over their collapsing forms and sprinted for the door to the hallway on the far side of the lab as the other guards in the research area called out in alarm; Brennan did his best to mimic a Feral's agility as he used his long legs and years of martial arts experience to leap clear over a lab table, electrifying just the irises of his eyes as he glanced at the guards on the other side of the room. He charged out the door and down the hallway, sprinting for all he was worth to get out of sight before the guards could scramble through the door after him.
"Shit, Intangible
and Electrical?" Brennan heard a worried voice behind him call out as he rounded the corner. "
No, he was a Feral; I saw his eyes when he leaped!" Brennan grinned as he charged down the hall, knowing the more corners he put between himself and the guards, the more likely they were to think he had gotten away.
He hoped it would be enough to enable him to actually do so.
Lexa and Shalimar entered the Hangar Control Room, noting a number of alerts flashing on various display boards. The sprinklers were still going off in the control room, but the room had been designed so that the hoods over the monitors shielded the consoles from the spray. Glancing through the overlook window into the hangar proper, Shalimar could see that there weren't any sprinklers being deployed over the Helix itself. She smiled softly to see Mutant X's faithful steed waiting for them to rescue her, or their steed's littermate, at the least.
"We've got a fire warning up here, a Code Red External Fire Alert down in Receiving, whatever that is, and Intruder Alerts both in Receiving and on the second floor. . .with New Mutant warnings, Code Ultraviolet?. . .That sounds bad," Lexa commented, reading off the Security monitor.
"Sounds like the boys have been busy," Shalimar commented, looking over the control panels. "Man, this is laid out almost identically to Sanctuary's systems. That means I can run this, but still, creepy," she frowned, poking at a number of controls.
"Well, it's the same aircraft, and the Dominion funded both the Helix and Sanctuary's creation, so I guess we shouldn't be too surprised if things match," Lexa replied. "What are you doing?"
"Diagnostic update, first," Shalimar answered, tapping controls with confidence now that she was on familiar territory, or at least a clone thereof. "Make sure she's ready to fly, see what needs to be done if she's not. If it needs refueling, we could be screwed. That's a time-consuming process, time we probably don't have."
"Hell, as long as it has enough to get us up, up, and Away," Lexa frowned. "We can land anywhere and cloak it, come back with jet fuel later, if we have to."
"True," Shalimar nodded, eyes never leaving the readouts as she assessed their getaway situation. "Fortunately, not an issue. Looks like they keep our bird ready to fly, but according to the maintenance records, that's all they've done." Shalimar glanced at Lexa and smirked. "This Helix is a virgin, and you know how Brennan likes to be behind the wheel. He'll love that."
The girls' chuckles were interrupted by the door being thrown open violently.
"Nice of you bitches to leave my card out there on the labcoat," the Lupine Feral they had subdued earlier snarled at them, a shorter blonde woman with a Psionic starburst pulsing on her forehead standing behind her.
Lexa slapped her fingers together to fling a blinding flare at both of the women, but it was diffused by the spray of water from the sprinklers into nothing more than a bright cloud of glitter that swiftly faded. The laser beam she fired from the first two fingers of her other hand flared into a prismatic fan of rainbow colors as it was reduced to complete inefficiency by the water droplets between Lexa's fingers and her target.
"Shit," Lexa snarled in frustration as Shalimar and the wolf Feral leaped into one another, colliding in mid-air as Lexa turned to face the smirking blonde Psionic.
Brennan ducked into a bathroom, pulling the door as close to shut as he could without crushing his fingers, close enough that the pneumatic arm finished closing it before his pursuers rounded the hallway's corner. He stashed his swiped CD case in the garbage can, then pulled a paper towel out of the dispenser and set it on the counter the sinks were built into. Brennan jumped up onto the counter, leaving his footprint on the towel, which fell to the floor when he climbed onto the partition of the first stall. A single paper towel with a footprint on it didn't look particularly out of place in the men's room; Brennan lifted one panel of the drop ceiling next to the wall and crawled up into the space beneath the roof, lowering the panel back into place behind him.
A moment later the door opened, and Brennan heard a burst of static as a guard activated his radio. "Men's room's clear; the guy was an Intangible, like Bryce, came right through the wall. He could've dove through the floor; God knows where he is now," the man finished in frustration. 'Copy that,' another voice responded. 'We'll have to get somebody savvy enough to go through the office, find out what he took.' Brennan waited for the sound of the pneumatic door slowly swinging itself shut behind the man as he left before speaking.
"Jesse, they think I swiped something from the lab. They're going to go back and secure it; you've gotta finish up and get outta there," Brennan said quietly into his commring. "I went out the lab doors to the left, to your left the way you're facing," he went on, knowing Jesse had been seated facing the wall with the door he had burst through. "I took the first right, second left, first right; I'm hiding in the ceiling of the men's room just down that hall. They think I phased and got away, so be careful, they might be keeping an eye on the walls."
'Gotcha, Bren,' Jesse answered. 'I've installed Lexa's virus and emailed it to all Helix recipients with an "Urgent, Regarding Kane Aircraft!" subject line. I doubt anybody'll notice the email actually went out shortly
before we stole the Helix. I copied the network addresses to a jump drive; that
might be enough to give us a jump-start on finding Adam. I'm leaving now; I'll be with you in a minute, depending on how many guards I have to sneak past.'
"I'll be waiting, cramped and alone in the ceiling," Brennan muttered back, knowing it was an excellent hiding place, but that didn't make it a comfortable one.
'
What's with us and bathrooms tonight, anyway?' Jesse asked softly a moment later, with a smirk audible in his voice. '
And what'd you do to these guys, Brennan? I just heard one informing another that you must be Gabriel Ashlocke; he thought you were dead.'
Jesse phased through a wall into another room that was closed for the night as he heard more guards storming down the hallway, about to round the corner and see him.
'
I made like a Feral and jumped over the lab table between me and the door on my way out,' Brennan answered. '
Guess those guys were a little nervous, watching me phase through a wall, zap their friends unconscious, then leap over a table. It wasn't that much of a leap, but it helps that I can light my eyes up. They don't turn into slits, but hey, not like I was having a staring contest.'
Jesse snickered.
"
Nice one, Brennan." Jesse answered. "
I took the direct route, phasing right to you in a straight line. Actually, I think I passed you; I'm in the right hallway, but I'm past the bathrooms. I'm headed your way, be there in. . .
Shit!"
Brennan frowned with intense worry, Jesse was right outside; he'd heard Jess' shout through the ventilation louvers in the bottom panel of the door. He had just lifted the ceiling tile up a crack and peeked through, thinking about going to his partner's aid, when Jesse crashed through the door, spinning to slam it shut as he massed for an instant, bending the door in its frame to seal it shut for a moment.
"Bren, they're right behind me, get ready to blast the floor!" Jesse hissed in a stage whisper, then massed again and kicked out all the water supply pipes beneath the sinks' counter. The floor was flooded with water in seconds as Jesse unmassed and scrambled up onto the counter. He turned to face the door just as a Feral the size of an ox shouldered it open, stomping into the room and grinning up at Jesse with cold brown eyes. Jesse stood his ground on his perch and massed as a number of other guards piled into the room on the Feral's heels, all of them with guns pointed at him.
Jesse roared with mock rage as the Feral took a step forward, smashing his fists backwards into the mirror behind him, a sheet of glass twelve feet wide and five feet tall. Jesse's massed fists shattered the silvered glass into shards and splinters, the reverberation of the structurally solid wall under Jesse's massed fists propelling the razor-edged shrapnel forward at the men who were only just beginning to raise their arms defensively or ducking for cover.
All of the men were still standing on the soaked floor as Brennan blasted the flowing puddle with everything he could. The guards cried out and twitched spasmodically, sparks snapping from their fingers and hair and jumping between their saliva-wet teeth and tongues as they cried out. The Ursine Feral shuddered and snarled, jaws snapping as he tried to move his feet, tried to lift one foot so he wouldn't be grounded to the wet floor, but it was too late. The Feral and the other guards all twitched their way to the water-covered tile of the bathroom floor, unconscious.
"Well, that was nice and close," Brennan commented as Jesse unmassed and climbed up on top of the stall partition, accepting Brennan's hand and help to climb up into the ceiling with him.
"You know, the girls get to invisibly take the stairs, and we're stuck climbing through ceilings," Jesse mock-complained, his actual amusement shining in his eyes. "Somehow that strikes me as less than fair," he finished before exhaling and standing up on top of the bathroom's wall to see what was on the floor above.
Shalimar and the Lupine Feral bounced off one another in mid-air, both landing on their feet and swinging at each other, their superhuman reflexes evident as they dodged and weaved, swinging fists and kicking feet at one another. They seemed to be relatively evenly matched; Shalimar was faster, but the other woman was taller and had greater reach. They managed to both feint and attack at the same time, each catching the other with a grazing blow to the head. They both backed off a single pace, shaking their heads in nearly identical fashion to clear the ringing from their skulls, neither woman taking her eyes from the other for even an instant.
Lexa frowned, knowing her powers were almost useless in the artificial rainfall of the sprinkler system, but her powers weren't her only option. The only problem was that she was facing a Psionic; if the other woman was a telepath, it wouldn't matter what sort of plan she came up with, because her opponent would already know it. Hoping for the best, Lexa activated her cloak, knowing she wouldn't really be invisible under the falling water and that it might not matter to a Psionic anyway, but she was hoping for the best.
"Oh, Honey, I'm a telepath; I don't care whether I can see you or not," the blonde claimed, sending her soft orange starburst streaking Lexa's direction. Lexa spun out of the way; she didn't normally move quickly when cloaked because the shimmer of her outline would become much more visible, but it hardly mattered when her form was visible from the water hitting it anyway. More importantly, she had confirmed the woman was a telepath; she just needed to turn that into an advantage for herself instead of the Psionic.
"Cal-i-for-nia–" Lexa began singing, several times faster than Shalimar had been singing it early that afternoon, hoping Shal got the point.
"–Here We Come–" Shalimar responded at the same speed, singing loudly as she circled opposite the timber wolf Feral, grinning as the other woman frowned in confusion.
"–Washing-ton-Dee-See's Where We're Comin' From..." both women sang together, committing their thoughts and voices to their words. The blonde telepath hesitated, the orange starburst on her forehead fluttering as she tried to track the thoughts she wanted to fire on, but they were in perfect sync with the other stranger's thoughts, and she couldn't see the one she was fighting...
Lexa ripped a fire extinguisher off the wall, pulling its pin and squeezing the handle to spray the telepath in the face with choking non-flammable white gas and dust. The woman coughed and sputtered, trying to scream if she had the breath, the starburst on her forehead vanishing as her concentration was shattered. Lexa uncloaked and stepped forward, kicking the woman in the gut with the toe of one of her finely-pointed black shoes, then clocked her across the back of the head with the fire extinguisher. Lexa then calmly turned and sprayed the back of the Lupine Feral's head with the extinguisher, easily distracting her enough for Shalimar to duck in and slam both fists into the woman's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her and leaving her defenseless to Shalimar's follow up. Lexa tossed Shalimar the extinguisher, and Shalimar followed up her attack by cracking the other Feral across the back of the skull with the steel cylinder, hitting her much harder than she had back in the bathroom.
Moments later, Jesse and Brennan ran literally through the door into the control room, both of them panting for breath when Jesse released their phase. Brennan immediately turned and put his hand on the security doors' access panel. A flare of electricity shorted out the security doors, Brennan's physical contact with the panel grounding him against the sprinklers' water that was soaking him, then he flopped back against the doors, eyes closed as he gasped for air.
"There's about. . .a zillion and five. . .guards right behind us," Jesse gasped as Shalimar frowned and started hitting controls faster, trying to figure out how to get the hangar open, since it was not a perfect match for Sanctuary. "We took out. . .an Intangible and a. . .
really big Feral. . .but they might still have. . .a Telekinetic or somebody. . .who can get this door open," he gasped. "We gotta. . .get outta here,
now."
"Did you destroy their Helix files?" Lexa asked. "Figure out how to hit any others?"
Jesse answered her with a thumbs-up, still whooping for breath as his face began to return from fire-engine red to a more normal color.
Shalimar gave a cheer of "Yes!" as she got an indicator she wanted to light up, the roof hatch over the Double Helix cracking open and beginning to withdraw into the sides of the ceiling over the hangar.
A second later they stopped, as all the lights in the control room and the hangar went out.
"No!" Shalimar protested desperately. "NononononoNo! They cut the power!"
"Screw
that," Brennan sighed. "Jess, get us in there."
Jesse stepped over to the blast doors leading into the hangar, laying one hand against them and waving his teammates through with the other as he exhaled and phased the doors. He relaxed his phase of the doors and phased himself to follow his friends into the hangar, gasping for air once more as he released his phase on the other side.
Brennan headed over to the machinery in the corner that had been drawing the roof hatch open.
"Shal, fire it up. Lex, Jess, where's the plug on this thing?" Brennan asked, looking at the hydraulic machinery and not seeing a power supply.
"Here," Lexa said, pointing at a heavily shielded set of cables. She shook the water off her fingers, glad the hangar had its own fire suppression systems that hadn't activated alongside the sprinkler system, then used her lasers to slice away the shielding from both sides of the power cables, revealing the copper wire beneath.
Brennan nodded to Lexa and Jesse, who turned to follow Shalimar into the Double Helix, then he grabbed the bare wiring in both hands, sending current into it and restoring the hydraulic systems back to operation, the roof hatch continuing to trundle open.
A minute later the roof was open, and Brennan was climbing aboard the Double Helix. A moment after that, guards were storming into the control room, but without power they couldn't even get the doors to the hangar open, much less do anything to stop the Double Helix from lifting off.
The guards tried to shoot out the overlook window and then open fire on the Helix, but they were too late.
The Double Helix lifted into the sky majestically, vanishing from sight before turning and streaking off to the west, headed for California.