— У меня правильнописание хромает. Оно хорошее, но почему-то хромает...(с) Винни-Пух.
читать дальше(A/N: Tweaked from the original prompt, although I hope it fits the bil for someone!)
Alex isn't really surprised when Agent Lehnsherr finds him in the old squat. There's nothing left here, really, just a pin-neat bed with clean, worn linens, a couple of books lined up along the wall, a lamp, a chair and a table — evidence Scott had been here and tried to make a home here before he'd had to take off. Alex doesn't know what he was thinking, busting out of prison four weeks shy of liberty, but he's always known that not going after his little brother was never an option. They're alone, they've got nobody, but they've always been alone together.
He hears Lehnsherr before he actually sees him, just his voice calling out, "You armed?"
Alex snorts. "Have I ever needed to be?" he asks.
Lehnsherr peers out from around a corner, smiling a little. "No," he admits, and adds, "Although it'd be pretty pointless against me, anyway."
Alex glares. "Whatever, just — take me back or whatever," he says, and goes back to staring at his hands, the torn skin of his knuckles, and feels himself shaking. Scott's out there somewhere alone, and Alex might never see him again. He's been such a fucking terrible brother, Alex keeps thinking, something balling up in his throat. He's been such a fucking wreck that the only person he's ever needed to take care of he's let down and now he's who the hell knows where, and Scott is just a kid — just a stupid kid —
"You should have waited a month, Summers," Lehnsherr says from overhead, and his voice sounds almost soft. Alex figures that Lehnsherr probably punches old ladies for breakfast, but there are snatches sometimes, accidental revelations of a person underneath that is actually creepier to know than not; he knows Lehnsherr has come to each of his parol hearings, argued for good behavior. Alex heard Lehnsherr say, "He's a good kid who hasn't made the best of a bad situation," once. "They're going to throw the key away on you for this."
Alex claws at his hair. "It's my brother — you don't just walk away from —" and cuts himself off.
Lehnsherr drops a hand to Alex's shoulder. "I know," he tells him, and clearing his throat, says into his walkie talkie, "Guys, I have him. He's unarmed and cooperating."
***
Hank visits him in jail, dressed up like every bad stereotype of a lawyer out of every bad episode of Night Court.
"Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you doing?" Alex asks, because Hank has that fresh-faced, sweet-mouthed look that would get him eaten alive in here, and he feels antsy just thinking about him walking into this shithole with those eyes and that earnestness and that pleather briefcase.
Frowning, Hank says, "You're an idiot. You should have just called me. I would have gone for him."
Alex glares at the table in the visitors room. "I didn't want to get you involved, you bozo."
"Oh look, this is me, not involved," Hank snaps, because even though he looks like the fold-out of every edition of Emotionally Fragile Twinks R Us bozo lab nerd edition, he's actually the meanest little fuck in the world. "Look, I have a plan to get you out of here."
Swallowing hard, Alex says, "I'm not breaking out of here again."
He'd cashed in all his chips for good behavior on that one. They have him in full ankle and wrist chains now, a reflector suit on so if he tries to sling a laser it'll just blow back at him and slice his spine in half. He's gone back into solitary, but he's glad for it, weirdly, because at least in solitary the inferno of frustration he feels isn't going to hurt anybody when it blows.
"No, but we can cut you a deal," Hank insists.
"I got nothing anybody wants," Alex says flatly.
2.
Fill: Limited Release (2/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 16:29 (UTC)
Ignoring the folder, Alex asks, "So?"
"So, that's an alias," Hank goes on, pulls out another folder, goes through the business of getting another nod.
In another life, if Hank hadn't been kicked out of Harvard when he'd been 16 and Alex hadn't been picking pockets and then fallen victim to crying kids on park benches in fucking Central Park, they wouldn't know each other, and Hank would be a doctor or a scientist and Alex could stop feeling bad about dragging Hank down, too.
"For who?" Alex asks, because he can't think of any reason Lehnsherr would cut him any fucking break for information about fucking Arthur Florick. It doesn't make any sense.
Hank looks grim, and opens the folder, slides it — spread out — across the space between them.
"For Sebastian Shaw," he says, quiet.
***
Columbia Professor in Critical Condition Following Attack at Genetics Conference
BY JEFFERY ELKIN and COLEEN MARLEY, 7:18 P.M.
Columbia University Professor Charles Xavier is in critical condition following gunfire that broke out during his keynote at a genetics conference being held at the school.
The attack, which NYPD has described as "obviously targeted," was carried out during Mr. Xavier's closing presentation at the Kaiser Permanente Pew Foundation Genetics and Mutation Symposium, also led to the deaths of Donald Lufkin and Troy Hernandez of Columbia's campus police and teaching assistant Maria Bellows. Two dozen others reported minor injuries and are being treated at Columbia University Medical Center.
Police have detained two persons of interest related to the team that orchestrated the attack, and they are being held for questioning; no arrests have been made, but the NYPD has asked for anyone who may have information on the attackers to come forward.
"This was not a random act," said Commissioner Gale Renwick earlier this evening. "Opponents of Dr. Xavier and his work generate hundreds of threats each year around this time, and we are taking care to follow every possible lead. We have our best officers on this."
FBI has also been invited to consult on the case, which was called an act of domestic terrorism by Carla Feist, White House press secretary, in the afternoon briefing. The university campus has closed since the shooting and students in residence are being kept in lockdown at their dormitories. School officials have asked that concerned families wanting to take their children home reach out to the school through a hotline.
The Xavier Conference, as it's known throughout the scientific community, has always been a magnet for controversy for its advocacy of mutant rights and its call to arms for equal rights and integration from both mutants and nonmutants alike.
Atomic Ark, a radical mutant separatist group, lists Xavier as No. 1 on a so-called "Hit List" prominently displayed on its website, although police say leaders of the organization have been questioned and there is no evidence of their involvement in the attack. Anti-mutant groups Human Race and Double Helix organize annual protests, some which have grown so intense they've nearly barred entrance for conference participants.
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (3/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 16:30 (UTC)
"We are horrified by the actions of Professor Xavier's attackers and categorically condemn this behavior," Human Race said in a statement shortly after the shooting. "A philosophical disagreement was never solved with something as base as violence."
Mr. Xavier, described as brilliant by colleagues at Oxford University before he moved to New York to begin teaching at Columbia in 1998, has been a touchstone among the mutant community ever since he came out as one himself in the 1990. Submitting himself for testing by a joint U.K.-U.S. intelligence survey, Xavier was discovered to be the most powerful telepath ever recorded, measuring nearly 10 on the Ox-Carlyle Psi scale; average telepaths range anywhere from 2 to 4, with anything 5 or above being considered extraordinary. There are only six known telepaths with scores above 5 on the OCP scale: five measure at 6, and one at 7.
The discovery led to doubt about Xavier's previous scientific work in genetics research, with some arguing the data and conclusions could never be considered valid considering a telepath as powerful as Mr. Xavier could easily sway any ethics panel. Mr. Xavier has publicly spoken out against these claims, calling them "total nonsense" and saying that to use his powers in such a way would be flagrant abuse — something against which he champions.
"The symposium, since it Dr. Xavier first launched it half a decade ago, has always drawn threats and controversy from the public," said University Chancellor Nell Richardson in written comments distributed to the media before a press conference scheduled for this evening. "Dr. Xavier's passion and courage championing mutant human rights, from arguing for affirmative enrollment to speaking before senate and congressional panels for inclusion and openness has won him many admirers and many enemies. We are devastated by this act of ignorant violence, and all of our thoughts and prayers are with Dr. Xavier and his family for his speedy recovery."
***
TBC
Fill: Limited Release (2/?) REPOST FOR MISSING LINE AT TOP
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 16:35 (UTC)
(A/N: ARGH. Sorry.)
"You've got information," Hank returns, and he glances at one trio of guards camped around them at a semi-respectful distance, shows them a folder, before he gets the nod and slides it over to Alex. "Do you — do you remember that crew you used to run with?"
Alex frowns, because it's not exactly like he ever worked with a gang. "Crew," he repeats.
"I mean, you pulled a couple of jobs with them, with this guy — Arthur Florick?" Hank asks.
Florick had been Alex's first venture outside of simple smash and grab, because Florick had insisted it was wasteful for someone of Alex's talents to ignore them and repress them so fiercely. And the money had sounded good, the whole thing had been easy: create a distraction while Florick's team did the intricate work, infiltrated banks and stole who the fuck knows what out of security boxes and office towers and fucking whatever. Set a fire or create a car accident or hell, even a bomb and people are trained for it — you blow through the first floor of the neighboring block and everybody, fucking everybody is going to come running.
Ignoring the folder, Alex asks, "So?"
"So, that's an alias," Hank goes on, pulls out another folder, goes through the business of getting another nod.
In another life, if Hank hadn't been kicked out of Harvard when he'd been 16 and Alex hadn't been picking pockets and then fallen victim to crying kids on park benches in fucking Central Park, they wouldn't know each other, and Hank would be a doctor or a scientist and Alex could stop feeling bad about dragging Hank down, too.
"For who?" Alex asks, because he can't think of any reason Lehnsherr would cut him any fucking break for information about fucking Arthur Florick. It doesn't make any sense.
Hank looks grim, and opens the folder, slides it — spread out — across the space between them.
"For Sebastian Shaw," he says, quiet.
***
Columbia Professor in Critical Condition Following Attack at Genetics Conference
BY JEFFERY ELKIN and COLEEN MARLEY, 7:18 P.M.
Columbia University Professor Charles Xavier is in critical condition following gunfire that broke out during his keynote at a genetics conference being held at the school.
The attack, which NYPD has described as "obviously targeted," was carried out during Mr. Xavier's closing presentation at the Kaiser Permanente Pew Foundation Genetics and Mutation Symposium, also led to the deaths of Donald Lufkin and Troy Hernandez of Columbia's campus police and teaching assistant Maria Bellows. Two dozen others reported minor injuries and are being treated at Columbia University Medical Center.
Police have detained two persons of interest related to the team that orchestrated the attack, and they are being held for questioning; no arrests have been made, but the NYPD has asked for anyone who may have information on the attackers to come forward.
"This was not a random act," said Commissioner Gale Renwick earlier this evening. "Opponents of Dr. Xavier and his work generate hundreds of threats each year around this time, and we are taking care to follow every possible lead. We have our best officers on this."
FBI has also been invited to consult on the case, which was called an act of domestic terrorism by Carla Feist, White House press secretary, in the afternoon briefing. The university campus has closed since the shooting and students in residence are being kept in lockdown at their dormitories. School officials have asked that concerned families wanting to take their children home reach out to the school through a hotline.
The Xavier Conference, as it's known throughout the scientific community, has always been a magnet for controversy for its advocacy of mutant rights and its call to arms for equal rights and integration from both mutants and nonmutants alike.
Atomic Ark, a radical mutant separatist group, lists Xavier as No. 1 on a so-called "Hit List" prominently displayed on its website, although police say leaders of the organization have been questioned and there is no evidence of their involvement in the attack. Anti-mutant groups Human Race and Double Helix organize annual protests, some which have grown so intense they've nearly barred entrance for conference participants.
Fill: Limited Release (3/?) REPOST FOR READING CONTINUITY
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 22:33 (UTC)
"We are horrified by the actions of Professor Xavier's attackers and categorically condemn this behavior," Human Race said in a statement shortly after the shooting. "A philosophical disagreement was never solved with something as base as violence."
Mr. Xavier, described as brilliant by colleagues at Oxford University before he moved to New York to begin teaching at Columbia in 1998, has been a touchstone among the mutant community ever since he came out as one himself in the 1990. Submitting himself for testing by a joint U.K.-U.S. intelligence survey, Xavier was discovered to be the most powerful telepath ever recorded, measuring nearly 10 on the Ox-Carlyle Psi scale; average telepaths range anywhere from 2 to 4, with anything 5 or above being considered extraordinary. There are only six known telepaths with scores above 5 on the OCP scale: five measure at 6, and one at 7.
The discovery led to doubt about Xavier's previous scientific work in genetics research, with some arguing the data and conclusions could never be considered valid considering a telepath as powerful as Mr. Xavier could easily sway any ethics panel. Mr. Xavier has publicly spoken out against these claims, calling them "total nonsense" and saying that to use his powers in such a way would be flagrant abuse — something against which he champions.
"The symposium, since Dr. Xavier first launched it half a decade ago, has always drawn threats and controversy from the public," said University Chancellor Nell Richardson in written comments distributed to the media before a press conference scheduled for this evening. "Dr. Xavier's passion and courage championing mutant human rights, from arguing for affirmative enrollment to speaking before senate and congressional panels for inclusion and openness has won him many admirers and many enemies. We are devastated by this act of ignorant violence, and all of our thoughts and prayers are with Dr. Xavier and his family for his speedy recovery."
***
TBC
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (4/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 22:57 (UTC)
***
Alex Summers' known associates list is about five people long, and all of those awful, terrible, incredibly embarrassing aliases dead end in one Hank McCoy, 19, given to twitching, pleading eyes, and sitting in Erik's office looking pathetic and clutching a briefcase he'd clearly purchased at the K-Mart in Astor Place.
"Seriously?" Erik asks, standing in the doorway of his office, and turns over his shoulder. "Who the hell let this kid in here?"
Angel points at Armando who points at Sean who points at Raven, who shrugs, unabashed. Erik scowls.
"You can't fire us," Raven reminds him. "Charles would be so upset."
"Charles thinks I can do no wrong and would tearfully understand if I were forced to throw all of you out," Erik lies, and turns back to Hank, who is looking — if possible — even more scared and waifish, perched on the uncomfortable seats in front of Erik's desk. "All right, out with it, McCoy, what do you want?"
Hank sucks in a steadying breath here, obviously shooting for bravery. "I want to make a deal."
Erik settles into his desk chair and favors Hank with a flat, unimpressed stare.
"Help Alex get out of prison — "
"Not happening," Erik says.
" — And Alex will help you get Shaw," Hank finishes in a rush, hands fumbling with his briefcase, digging out papers he spills all over Erik's meticulously neat desk, jarring his WORLD'S MEANEST BOSS mug (from Raven) and the revoltingly twee silver frame photo of Charles, hair in wild disarray, in three-days-old clothes, balls deep in his dissertation and half-crazy, staring stunned at the camera.
Erik rights the picture reflexively, nudging it back into place, and as an afterthought he reaches out to touch the corner of it in automatic reassurance. In the back of his head he can feel Charles, beavering away at something hideously nerdy across the city, perfectly fine and completely distracted, not paying attention except where Charles is always paying attention — his unconscious telepathy strong enough even unfocused to blanket most of the state.
"Shaw," Erik says, voice very even.
"Sebastian Shaw," Hank clarifies, as if there could be another, and points at this paper and that document all over Erik's desk now. "Alex, when he was just starting out — for a while he worked with Arthur Florick's team."
The paperclips on Erik's desk start fisting into tiny knots. "And Florick is?"
"Is Shaw," Hank babbles, dragging out photographs. "I swear it. I knew about Shaw — I mean obviously everybody knows about Shaw, but I didn't know what he looked like until I got the FBI file on him and made the link."
"Setting aside the fact that you're not supposed to have access to the FBI file on Shaw," Erik starts, and ignores Hank's perfectly adolescent eye-roll at that, "so say I believe you — Alex worked with Shaw. So what?"
"He worked with Shaw years ago," Hank says, overeager, cuffs dragging papers around. "Before he got polished. He said all sorts of stuff — too much stuff — "
"What sorts of stuff?" Erik asks, tense.
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии) (Развернуть)
Fill: Limited Release (5/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 22:58 (UTC)
Hank shrugs. "Names. Personal details. People he runs with," he spouts off.
"How do I know this is legitimate?" Erik asks reasonably, because he can either veer off into one of his fugue states, where he terrifies his agents and makes probes cry and gets reprimanded by his immediate managers for reckless disregard and commended by his manager's manager for bravery and has to go home and sleep in one of the 15 guest rooms because Charles is furious at him and projecting his misery like a fucking foghorn.
There's a telling moment of hesitation here, a beat where Hank's obviously deciding whether not to do whatever he's probably about to do. He's got tells: the way he dips his gaze somewhere away from Erik's face, tugging at the wrist of his left sleeve, the way he rubs his thumb along the sharp edge of a page — skin too thick with callouses to be be worried about a papercut.
"Back then," Hank starts, faltering, "Shaw wasn't so polished. He bragged a lot."
The balls of paperclip liquefy now, pooling with the heat in Erik's stomach in their ceramic dish. "Oh?"
"Alex said — Alex said Florick, I mean, Shaw. That Shaw said he'd made your powers manifest," Hank finishes awkwardly. "That you'd be nobody without him."
Erik thinks that there's more to Hank McCoy than an obvious target for bullying after all.
"Well played," he says mildly, because it's been long enough that his immediate burst of fury at the memory of how Shaw had helped Erik manifest his powers has calcified in its intensity. Erik's unyielding on this point, but he's not reactive anymore, either. "Something not in any records, unknown to most, so verifying — and at once utterly useless in terms of current information on Shaw's whereabouts in order to maximize your leverage."
Hank doesn't look triumphant. He's too baby-faced and blue-eyed for that, but he does tip his glasses further up his nose with shaking fingers and say, "You get Alex out, we'll help you out."
Aside from being the most dangerous man in the world, having tastes that lean toward the unforgivably flamboyant, hideous fucking sideburns, and having arranged for Charles to be assassinated, Erik can now add "spreading lies about me" to the list of reasons that he's going to murder Shaw with extreme prejudice. Erik had needed Shaw to know about his powers like he'd needed another hole in the head, but the difference between being able to win coin tosses every time and coax open every jar and ripping holes into the sides of buildings was apparently Sebastian Shaw threatening to shoot Erik's mother at the mutant integration center, just to see if he couldn't push Erik a little bit harder. Marvelous, Shaw had called Erik's skill back then, and Erik wishes he'd taken Shaw out like all of the light fixtures in the outside hallway — he'd been a minor, a few years in juvie and a purged record at 18 seemed like an easy trade off for preemptively erasing Sebastian Shaw from the face of the earth: started off as a specialist in mutant discovery and integration, turned mutant supremacist and mass murderer. Powers and magnitude of power unknown, highly dangerous, top of every domestic and international terrorist watch list.
"Let me make some calls," Erik says finally, thinking about Alex rotting in a cell and Charles gritting his teeth through PT three times a week to keep up the muscles in the legs he can't feel anymore. "I'll see what our options are."
And Hank just stares at him, grateful in a way that's embarrassing, and breathes, "Thank you."
"Christ," Erik says, and shouts out the door of his office, "Hey, Cassidy — get this kid out of the building!"
***
TBC
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии) (Развернуть)
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — electrumqueen — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — srmarybadass — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — salvamisandwich — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — flaxenescapee — Развернуть
Fill: Limited Release (6/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-12 15:50 (UTC)
***
Scott Summers visits like clockwork every week on Thursday for the allotted one hour with Alex in supermax, chattering through the bullet and shatter-proof glass. Prison mail says that Scott also sends a weekly package. Nothing worth currency or effort in prison, just stuff he thinks is funny or that he thinks Alex would like: a couple of comic books, a car mag or two, weirdly, maps, with Post-It notes stuck all over them with defamatory asides about the various locations. All of this, and everything else in Alex's cell — stripped clean now, in punishment — is delivered to Erik that afternoon, and he sifts through all of the soundless footage of Alex and Scott's last visit looking for something that would have triggered this.
"Walk me through it," Erik says.
Angel leans back in her seat, suit jacket bunching up around her shoulders. He wishes she wouldn't wear it around the office — it must be nervewracking to think that if she ever needed to get away, she wouldn't be able to easily unfurl her wings, but she'd said something about wearing backless shirts at the work as unprofessional and then distracted him by asking when Erik was going to man up and make Charles an honest man.
"Alex and Scott Summers, orphaned when Alex was 18 and Scott was 10," Angel says, flipping through Alex's file. "Tried to make ends meet working a couple of different jobs for a while, but they didn't have much of a chance."
The mutant registry had passed in the 1970s, before even Charles was old enough or savvy enough of the world to protest against it, and although subsequent blessings and generations had seen fit to keep it more or less quiet save for medical reason and for law enforcement, people were still suspicious. Nobody paid much attention to laws saying you couldn't discriminate against hiring mutant humans, and Erik had no doubt Alex had lost dozens of jobs before he'd said, "fuck it" and turned to something easier for him, harder to swallow, and far, far more dangerous.
"No, I'm sure they didn't," Erik murmurs.
In the monitor, Alex is laughing, eyes crinkled and young, and Scott is leaning forward, hands pressed against the glass, animated and happy. Nothing bad happened that day. Something bad must have happened after.
"Rap sheet starts when Alex was about 19, mostly petty stuff, theft, car theft," Angel says, distracted. "No drugs, good for him, and nothing violent — sometime after he turn 21 he falls off the police radar for a bit." She holds up another file — Scott's. "This is when Scott starts showing up in school records, but the reasons are redacted."
Probably him manifesting, Erik thinks, because puberty didn't suck hard enough on its own without the advent of your mutation, too, for a lot of kids these days. Erik had figured his out during nursery school, when he'd terrified all the nice German fraus by entertaining himself by deconstructing his crib and playpen for escape, his mother liked to remind him. Charles hadn't even known telepathy wasn't normal until he'd turned four and no other children at some society party his parents were holding were able to hear him when he'd reached out to them in his head.
"When was it for you?" Erik asks, non-sequitur, but Angel just looks thoughtful.
"I was lucky — 20? Something like that? Old enough to know what was happening," she answers, and turns back to the monitors. "Anyway, off the grid for about three years, and then he shows up again: same low-level stuff, etcetera etcetera, and then there comes the accidental car-jacking."
Erik sighs. "Dumbass," he mutters.
Of course Alex Summers would have the luck of trying to steal a car with someone still inside of it, pulled over onto a side street to catch a nap before he drove into oncoming traffic.
"They would have gone a lot easier on him if he hadn't panicked when that guy pulled out his taser," Angel says philosophically. "Although at least he only sliced the car in half, and not the owner."
"Did Scott ever come back?" Erik asks, still watching the monitor, for the way Alex stared after Scott as the guards hustled him away. "After this visit here?"
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (7/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-12 15:53 (UTC)
"Last one," Angel says, checking the record. "The guard on Alex's block said Alex went nuts afterward, spent all his free time trying to call his brother over and over again, and asked if they could send someone to check on the kid, that sort of thing."
Erik twirls the pen hovering over his palm, sending it spinning round and round in thought.
"So he wasn't expecting it, whatever kept Scott away," Erik mumbles. "Whoever is keeping Scott away."
Angel closes her files, stopping the video, now showing some other people now having an argument through the shatterproof glass. "So?" she asks. "He's a nonviolent offender — and he may have some real info on Shaw."
Armando chooses this moment to stick his head into the room. "Plus he only broke out for his little brother," he says, too casually, which means that Sean's perch near the glass doors, texting, was a lookout after all. Sometimes Erik hates his fucking team. "You can't really fault a man for caring about family."
Probably because she can't help himself, Raven yells through the glass of his office walls:
"Come on, do it, Boss — if you don't, Hank's just going to sit in your office and cry some more."
Glaring at Angel, Erik says, "You guys planned this, didn't you?"
"It wasn't a formal tactical discussion or anything," she admits, smiling and gathering up the papers. "But we figured if we couldn't prevail upon your good nature, we could always call Charles."
Erik points at the door. "Go away."
"Yes, Boss," Angel laughs. "Right away, Boss."
***
Ordinarily, the process of certifying a CI is arduous enough, with paperwork thick enough to murder entire Amazonian rainforests and vast troves of undiscovered species. When the CI in question is a mutant, multiply it by five. But Erik likes this done in orderly ways, "Sorted," as Charles likes to say, and so he calls Charles's assistant at the university to say he'll be late home tonight, and powers through all of the forms in one five-hour sitting, swearing at himself for being a pushover every step of the way.
But Alex, for all that he's over 21, is just a dumb kid who ever had a chance, and he's lived his whole life probably scared out of his mind his powers would hurt somebody. If Erik's not going to look out for him, nobody is, and the thought of Alex rotting in supermax, wasting his whole life there because he'd loved his brother too much just to give up on him when he'd gone missing and there'd been no one to help isn't one he can swallow.
By the time he's done, the office is more or less deserted, just Raven still puttering around on a couple of old cold cases that have a Shaw connection and lying about it. Erik's tried to reason with her about it, but she doesn't have an outlet for her obsession the way Erik does, she just goes home and lies in her bed, unpeels herself from her preferred skin of blond hair and round cheeks and stare the ceiling with her cat-yellow eyes. She'd slept at the mansion for a solid two months during Charles's recovery, after he'd come home from the hospital and his seven separate surgeries, and fought with him for hours when all Charles wanted to do was fight with someone.
"Want to come over for late dinner?" Erik asks, because Charles would be glad to see her.
She shakes her head. "No, I just wanted to put together some stuff for Alex to look at, when he gets here."
"That confident the request will go through?" Erik asks, amused. Raven claims that she and Charles are completely different, that she finds his endless optimism annoying, that Charles's relentless determination to see the good in everybody is nauseating, but Erik thinks Raven likes to ignore the ways they've rubbed off one another.
Shrugging, she says, "Don't see why not. Shaw's bigger fish than Alex, and there's no other task force that would be capable of handling his powers."
"Raven, Alex isn't even capable of handling his powers," Erik says, and drops a brief hand to her shoulder good night as he heads for the elevator bank.
It's dark outside, the city throbbing with steamy summer heat, everything gleaming from a brief and violent rainshower they had in the afternoon, and now neon slick like a coat of sweat. He leaves his car in the garage and goes for the subway, taking the 6 up 3rd Avenue.
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (8/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-12 15:54 (UTC)
Erik would have loved the monstrosity of Xavier House as a kid. It's five stories; there's an art deco elevator. Most of the first floor is paved in actual fucking marble. That's aside from the glorious scrolling staircases, the masses of corridors and endless warrens of rooms inside of rooms and hidden passageways that Erik's pretty sure means that the Xavier's made their first fortunes bootlegging during Prohibition. Games of hide and seek at Xavier House would have been epic scale, and Erik sometimes tries to imagine Charles — always alone — trying to keep himself and his wandering and overly powerful mind entertained here with just nannies and maids and the butler to distract him before Raven had appeared in his life. Bored, a grown up Charles is terrifying and restless; bored, a tiny Charles just seems hypothetically sad.
And sadly bored is what Charles is when Erik finds him, languishing in the second floor study.
Erik pauses at the door. "Are you — ?"
"I'm trying to see if I can tell what they're thinking just by having a visual fix," Charles says, unmoving from his slouch in the chair, situated in front of the shitty Best Buy bargain bin TV that's balanced precariously on top of a heap of old term papers in one corner. "I think I might be able to."
Charles is watching re-runs of America's Next Top Model, so Erik thinks it's entirely fair to ask, "Even if you did lock in on their thoughts, how could you tell they were thoughts at all?"
Twisting around to grin at him, Charles says, "Cruel — potentially accurate, but cruel."
For reasons Erik prefers not to explore and that Charles knows but pretends not to, he's not given to casual touches, but Charles always says hello not with skin but a sudden sensation of affection, like someone whispering: welcome back, welcome back, I've missed you, welcome back right into the cavities of his heart, bypassing all the unnecessary roadblocks in between.
"How was your day?" Charles asks, wheeling around to face him, and Erik takes the low seat by the window, lets his posture fray completely, melt into the chair. "What happened?" You look tired, gets the direct line.
Erik thinks about Alex's crushed expression, that defeated slump of his shoulders, his own, reflexive ache for the kid. "Alex Summers broke out of prison."
"Alex?" Charles asks, frowning. "He doesn't seem the type."
"He went after his brother," Erik says, because that explains everything, and Charles agrees, from the look on his face.
"Alex didn't find him," Charles says, matter-of-factly.
Erik reaches over and appropriates one of Charles's hands for his own, running his thumb over the lines of Charles's palm and wonders were Scott might be, hopes that he's well and that he's not frightened, but he knows that neither of these are likely. "No, he didn't."
"You think you're about to do something stupid," Charles says suddenly, curious. Erik frowns. "And before you accuse me of reading your mind, your apprehension is so intense it's fairly drowning me through the skin — no additional effort required on my part."
Sighing, Erik folds their palms together. Go on, he thinks. Read me. I'm too tired to talk.
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии) (Развернуть)
Re: Fill: Limited Release (8/?) — nudeonthemoon — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (8/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Fill: Limited Release (9/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-12 15:55 (UTC)
Charles can steal into peoples's heads on cat's feet, silent and undetected, or he can blast in violently, overtaking. With Erik, Charles comes in politely, with the mental equivalent of a knock on the door before he peers inside, easy and familiar in this terrain, sorting fretfully through the ordinary frustrations of Erik's day — paperwork, Cassidy, the forever-long wait for the train in the morning — and rifling through the afternoon and evening, long into night. Erik always visualizes Charles shuffling through the papers on Erik's desk at work whenever Charles does this.
"Oh," Charles says, after a moment, eyes going from sleepy to wide and aware. "A CI? Really?"
Erik shrugs. "He may know something about Shaw," he says.
Charles arches an eyebrow. "Sure," he says, which sounds like, Of course he does, in Erik's head. "And I'm sure your fondness for him plays no part in this."
"You're the one that's spoiling my entire team," Erik accuses, because even if Charles wasn't the world's most powerful telepath, it would be pretty pointless to try lying to him about this.
Grinning, unrepentant, Charles says, "But they're so splendid, all of them."
"If only you'd been properly bullied during your childhood," Erik sighs, and gives Charles's hand a squeeze. "Is there anything to eat?"
"We can order a pizza," Charles decides, and nods toward the television. "They're showing a marathon of this tonight."
Fucked at the office, fucked at home, Erik thinks, resigned, watching Charles reach for his phone.
He ends up asleep on Charles's shoulder after two slices, listening to Tyra ranting about smizing in the background, and Charles has to shake him conscious before he drowsily staggers up one of the many, many steps in the house, hand steady as he floats Charles's chair up alongside him and toward the bedroom.
***
TBC
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии) (Развернуть)
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — swing_set13 — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — gestalt1 — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — pollyrepeat — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — electrumqueen — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — srmarybadass — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — tahariel — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — nudeonthemoon — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — anait — Развернуть
Fill: Limited Release (10/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-13 19:00 (UTC)
***
It's a confusing 72 hours.
Breaking out of prison had sucked out loud, in part because he actually did like the guards — they were nice guys, and hadn't deserved to get knocked out by concrete when Alex had blown up a wall — and in part because he'd known even as he'd been jacking someone's car in the lot, hearing all the alarms go haywire in the background that he was going to get caught and then he'd be really fucked.
But Alex has done a lot dumber stuff for Scott before, and it wasn't like today was going to be any different, so then he'd hit the gas and figured he had like four hours before Agent Lehnsherr tracked him down again like a giant, magnetic bloodhound who kept calling him "kid." That guy was such a dick.
He hadn't really thought he'd find Scott, but he'd hoped, panic-hoped, and it was one thing to know in his head that when he got to the squat that Scott would probably be gone and another entirely to see it empty and stripped of most of Scott's stuff. Alex didn't have a phone number; they didn't have family other than each other, and if Scott had friends to run to, Alex didn't know who they fucking were, and the hole in his chest felt like it was bottomless whenever he thought about his baby brother alone out there.
And then, just a day after he'd been re-arrested, Hank had gotten in pretending to be his lawyer and floating some crazy-ass scheme, there was Agent Lehnsherr again, leaning against a barred window and looking at Alex with narrowed, thoughtful eyes.
Alex puts up with it for maybe two minutes before he bursts out with, "Dude, what?"
"What did Shaw want with you?" Lehnsherr asks, abrupt and to-the-point.
"Oh Jesus Christ," Alex mutters, scrubbing at his face, chains rattling. "Did Hank come at you with that shit?"
"He made an interesting proposition," Lehnsherr allows, and moves to sit opposite Alex at the table. "Well? Shaw — or Florick, when you knew him. What did he want with you?"
Alex has a flash of fury at Hank, for sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, for never getting out whenever Alex has tried to get him out. Hank's smart and clean-looking and he doesn't have that obvious look of criminal desperation on him, and if Hank wanted to, he could get a real job somewhere. Except Hank's pathetically loyal and keeps coming back for Alex, keeps reading every science and law book in the New York Public Library and not walking away.
"What does that guy ever want with anybody?" Alex bites out, because he might as well tell. He's here for the long haul. Maybe Lehnsherr can get him moved out of some of his more restrictive bindings; they're not going to move him into general population, anyway, but maybe he could stop wearing the fucking chains 24-7. "How the fuck would I know? He just had some blonde chick who said she saw something in me and asked if I'd work for him."
Lehnsherr raises an eyebrow. "What did you do for him?"
"Distract you guys," Alex retorts.
"For what? Robberies?" Lehnsherr asks, leaning forward.
Alex shrugs. "I guess. I mean, I thought they were," he says. "I never asked."
Okay, Alex decides his least favorite thing isn't the way Lehnsherr calls him "kid" after all, because the way he laughs, disbelieving, and then says, "Summers, you're a real piece of work, you know that?" is much, much more annoying. "Do you remember anything else? About the blond woman?"
"Hot," Alex says, knee-jerk. "Like, smoking, smoking FHM, Maxim hot."
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (11/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-13 19:03 (UTC)
"Name?" Lehnsherr prompts.
Alex frowns. "Emily? Emma? I think?"
Amused, Lensherr asks, "Bra size?"
"She was a 32D, easy," Alex reports, and it takes him half a beat before he turns completely red at the smirk on Lehnsherr's face. "I have eyes, asshole."
"More importantly," Lehnsherr asks, still smirking, "would you recognize her if you saw her again? I'm assuming you would definitely recognize her breasts."
Alex wishes his ankles weren't shackled together. Probably he'd get some sort of even worse punishment for kicking a federal agent in the shin, but it'd be worth it.
"Sure, yes," he snaps. "I'd recognize most of his crew." They'd thought of Alex as a stupid kid, too.
Lehnserr's amusement fades here, goes serious, and he makes a long, considering noise.
Glowering, Alex says, "Can I go back to my cell now? Isn't this shit considered cruel and unusual torture?"
Lehnsherr grins. "Oh, kid — get used to it."
"What?" Alex says, because that doesn't make sense, and it keeps on not making sense while Lehnsherr's letting himself out, and all through the night as Alex stares at the ceiling and walls in solitary, and for the next 24 hours or so, until there's a knock on the door of his cell and the prison warden's furious bitchface as he says:
"All right, Summers. I don't know how you did it, but your deal came through."
***
The next 72 hours don't look like they're going to be much better, Alex thinks glumly. Hank, in the same crummy suit with the same crummy briefcase, is waiting for him when he gets shuffled through release procedures, and looks like he's repressing all sorts of feelings extra hard. Next to him is Lehnsherr, looking impassive, and Alex would ask one of them, either of them, what the hell is going on, except there's this guy tying something to his ankle.
"The monitor will run 24 hours a day, and will have a geolocation on you to within 5 feet," the man is saying, sounding bored about everything. "It's a combined portable reflector pack and a tracker. You try anything stupid, your handler will flip it back on you. You try to run, it'll ping us when you hit your 2 mile radius."
Alex says, "Uh."
"Unless your handler calls it in," the guy clarifies. "If you guys are out of state or whatever, call it to central switchboard, and we'll just make sure he's tracking within reasonable distance — we clear?"
Alex stares for a while.
"Yes, that's clear," Hank jumps in, practically vibrating out of his skin he's so excited.
"Clear as day," Lehnsherr agrees, and glances at Alex. "Understood, kid?"
"First off, stop fucking calling me that, I'm 24," Alex barks. "And secondly, who is my handler?"
Because having been sent to jail, broken out of jail because his brother's gone missing, gotten re-sent to jail, having Hank McCoy as a best friend, and the fucking FBI all over his dick isn't bad enough, this is when Alex learns that he's now Lehnsherr's pet mutant CI.
"Surprise," Lehnsherr says, dry as tinder. "I can tell you're thrilled."
Alex isn't really surprised when Agent Lehnsherr finds him in the old squat. There's nothing left here, really, just a pin-neat bed with clean, worn linens, a couple of books lined up along the wall, a lamp, a chair and a table — evidence Scott had been here and tried to make a home here before he'd had to take off. Alex doesn't know what he was thinking, busting out of prison four weeks shy of liberty, but he's always known that not going after his little brother was never an option. They're alone, they've got nobody, but they've always been alone together.
He hears Lehnsherr before he actually sees him, just his voice calling out, "You armed?"
Alex snorts. "Have I ever needed to be?" he asks.
Lehnsherr peers out from around a corner, smiling a little. "No," he admits, and adds, "Although it'd be pretty pointless against me, anyway."
Alex glares. "Whatever, just — take me back or whatever," he says, and goes back to staring at his hands, the torn skin of his knuckles, and feels himself shaking. Scott's out there somewhere alone, and Alex might never see him again. He's been such a fucking terrible brother, Alex keeps thinking, something balling up in his throat. He's been such a fucking wreck that the only person he's ever needed to take care of he's let down and now he's who the hell knows where, and Scott is just a kid — just a stupid kid —
"You should have waited a month, Summers," Lehnsherr says from overhead, and his voice sounds almost soft. Alex figures that Lehnsherr probably punches old ladies for breakfast, but there are snatches sometimes, accidental revelations of a person underneath that is actually creepier to know than not; he knows Lehnsherr has come to each of his parol hearings, argued for good behavior. Alex heard Lehnsherr say, "He's a good kid who hasn't made the best of a bad situation," once. "They're going to throw the key away on you for this."
Alex claws at his hair. "It's my brother — you don't just walk away from —" and cuts himself off.
Lehnsherr drops a hand to Alex's shoulder. "I know," he tells him, and clearing his throat, says into his walkie talkie, "Guys, I have him. He's unarmed and cooperating."
***
Hank visits him in jail, dressed up like every bad stereotype of a lawyer out of every bad episode of Night Court.
"Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you doing?" Alex asks, because Hank has that fresh-faced, sweet-mouthed look that would get him eaten alive in here, and he feels antsy just thinking about him walking into this shithole with those eyes and that earnestness and that pleather briefcase.
Frowning, Hank says, "You're an idiot. You should have just called me. I would have gone for him."
Alex glares at the table in the visitors room. "I didn't want to get you involved, you bozo."
"Oh look, this is me, not involved," Hank snaps, because even though he looks like the fold-out of every edition of Emotionally Fragile Twinks R Us bozo lab nerd edition, he's actually the meanest little fuck in the world. "Look, I have a plan to get you out of here."
Swallowing hard, Alex says, "I'm not breaking out of here again."
He'd cashed in all his chips for good behavior on that one. They have him in full ankle and wrist chains now, a reflector suit on so if he tries to sling a laser it'll just blow back at him and slice his spine in half. He's gone back into solitary, but he's glad for it, weirdly, because at least in solitary the inferno of frustration he feels isn't going to hurt anybody when it blows.
"No, but we can cut you a deal," Hank insists.
"I got nothing anybody wants," Alex says flatly.
2.
Fill: Limited Release (2/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 16:29 (UTC)
Ignoring the folder, Alex asks, "So?"
"So, that's an alias," Hank goes on, pulls out another folder, goes through the business of getting another nod.
In another life, if Hank hadn't been kicked out of Harvard when he'd been 16 and Alex hadn't been picking pockets and then fallen victim to crying kids on park benches in fucking Central Park, they wouldn't know each other, and Hank would be a doctor or a scientist and Alex could stop feeling bad about dragging Hank down, too.
"For who?" Alex asks, because he can't think of any reason Lehnsherr would cut him any fucking break for information about fucking Arthur Florick. It doesn't make any sense.
Hank looks grim, and opens the folder, slides it — spread out — across the space between them.
"For Sebastian Shaw," he says, quiet.
***
Columbia Professor in Critical Condition Following Attack at Genetics Conference
BY JEFFERY ELKIN and COLEEN MARLEY, 7:18 P.M.
Columbia University Professor Charles Xavier is in critical condition following gunfire that broke out during his keynote at a genetics conference being held at the school.
The attack, which NYPD has described as "obviously targeted," was carried out during Mr. Xavier's closing presentation at the Kaiser Permanente Pew Foundation Genetics and Mutation Symposium, also led to the deaths of Donald Lufkin and Troy Hernandez of Columbia's campus police and teaching assistant Maria Bellows. Two dozen others reported minor injuries and are being treated at Columbia University Medical Center.
Police have detained two persons of interest related to the team that orchestrated the attack, and they are being held for questioning; no arrests have been made, but the NYPD has asked for anyone who may have information on the attackers to come forward.
"This was not a random act," said Commissioner Gale Renwick earlier this evening. "Opponents of Dr. Xavier and his work generate hundreds of threats each year around this time, and we are taking care to follow every possible lead. We have our best officers on this."
FBI has also been invited to consult on the case, which was called an act of domestic terrorism by Carla Feist, White House press secretary, in the afternoon briefing. The university campus has closed since the shooting and students in residence are being kept in lockdown at their dormitories. School officials have asked that concerned families wanting to take their children home reach out to the school through a hotline.
The Xavier Conference, as it's known throughout the scientific community, has always been a magnet for controversy for its advocacy of mutant rights and its call to arms for equal rights and integration from both mutants and nonmutants alike.
Atomic Ark, a radical mutant separatist group, lists Xavier as No. 1 on a so-called "Hit List" prominently displayed on its website, although police say leaders of the organization have been questioned and there is no evidence of their involvement in the attack. Anti-mutant groups Human Race and Double Helix organize annual protests, some which have grown so intense they've nearly barred entrance for conference participants.
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (3/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 16:30 (UTC)
"We are horrified by the actions of Professor Xavier's attackers and categorically condemn this behavior," Human Race said in a statement shortly after the shooting. "A philosophical disagreement was never solved with something as base as violence."
Mr. Xavier, described as brilliant by colleagues at Oxford University before he moved to New York to begin teaching at Columbia in 1998, has been a touchstone among the mutant community ever since he came out as one himself in the 1990. Submitting himself for testing by a joint U.K.-U.S. intelligence survey, Xavier was discovered to be the most powerful telepath ever recorded, measuring nearly 10 on the Ox-Carlyle Psi scale; average telepaths range anywhere from 2 to 4, with anything 5 or above being considered extraordinary. There are only six known telepaths with scores above 5 on the OCP scale: five measure at 6, and one at 7.
The discovery led to doubt about Xavier's previous scientific work in genetics research, with some arguing the data and conclusions could never be considered valid considering a telepath as powerful as Mr. Xavier could easily sway any ethics panel. Mr. Xavier has publicly spoken out against these claims, calling them "total nonsense" and saying that to use his powers in such a way would be flagrant abuse — something against which he champions.
"The symposium, since it Dr. Xavier first launched it half a decade ago, has always drawn threats and controversy from the public," said University Chancellor Nell Richardson in written comments distributed to the media before a press conference scheduled for this evening. "Dr. Xavier's passion and courage championing mutant human rights, from arguing for affirmative enrollment to speaking before senate and congressional panels for inclusion and openness has won him many admirers and many enemies. We are devastated by this act of ignorant violence, and all of our thoughts and prayers are with Dr. Xavier and his family for his speedy recovery."
***
TBC
Fill: Limited Release (2/?) REPOST FOR MISSING LINE AT TOP
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 16:35 (UTC)
(A/N: ARGH. Sorry.)
"You've got information," Hank returns, and he glances at one trio of guards camped around them at a semi-respectful distance, shows them a folder, before he gets the nod and slides it over to Alex. "Do you — do you remember that crew you used to run with?"
Alex frowns, because it's not exactly like he ever worked with a gang. "Crew," he repeats.
"I mean, you pulled a couple of jobs with them, with this guy — Arthur Florick?" Hank asks.
Florick had been Alex's first venture outside of simple smash and grab, because Florick had insisted it was wasteful for someone of Alex's talents to ignore them and repress them so fiercely. And the money had sounded good, the whole thing had been easy: create a distraction while Florick's team did the intricate work, infiltrated banks and stole who the fuck knows what out of security boxes and office towers and fucking whatever. Set a fire or create a car accident or hell, even a bomb and people are trained for it — you blow through the first floor of the neighboring block and everybody, fucking everybody is going to come running.
Ignoring the folder, Alex asks, "So?"
"So, that's an alias," Hank goes on, pulls out another folder, goes through the business of getting another nod.
In another life, if Hank hadn't been kicked out of Harvard when he'd been 16 and Alex hadn't been picking pockets and then fallen victim to crying kids on park benches in fucking Central Park, they wouldn't know each other, and Hank would be a doctor or a scientist and Alex could stop feeling bad about dragging Hank down, too.
"For who?" Alex asks, because he can't think of any reason Lehnsherr would cut him any fucking break for information about fucking Arthur Florick. It doesn't make any sense.
Hank looks grim, and opens the folder, slides it — spread out — across the space between them.
"For Sebastian Shaw," he says, quiet.
***
Columbia Professor in Critical Condition Following Attack at Genetics Conference
BY JEFFERY ELKIN and COLEEN MARLEY, 7:18 P.M.
Columbia University Professor Charles Xavier is in critical condition following gunfire that broke out during his keynote at a genetics conference being held at the school.
The attack, which NYPD has described as "obviously targeted," was carried out during Mr. Xavier's closing presentation at the Kaiser Permanente Pew Foundation Genetics and Mutation Symposium, also led to the deaths of Donald Lufkin and Troy Hernandez of Columbia's campus police and teaching assistant Maria Bellows. Two dozen others reported minor injuries and are being treated at Columbia University Medical Center.
Police have detained two persons of interest related to the team that orchestrated the attack, and they are being held for questioning; no arrests have been made, but the NYPD has asked for anyone who may have information on the attackers to come forward.
"This was not a random act," said Commissioner Gale Renwick earlier this evening. "Opponents of Dr. Xavier and his work generate hundreds of threats each year around this time, and we are taking care to follow every possible lead. We have our best officers on this."
FBI has also been invited to consult on the case, which was called an act of domestic terrorism by Carla Feist, White House press secretary, in the afternoon briefing. The university campus has closed since the shooting and students in residence are being kept in lockdown at their dormitories. School officials have asked that concerned families wanting to take their children home reach out to the school through a hotline.
The Xavier Conference, as it's known throughout the scientific community, has always been a magnet for controversy for its advocacy of mutant rights and its call to arms for equal rights and integration from both mutants and nonmutants alike.
Atomic Ark, a radical mutant separatist group, lists Xavier as No. 1 on a so-called "Hit List" prominently displayed on its website, although police say leaders of the organization have been questioned and there is no evidence of their involvement in the attack. Anti-mutant groups Human Race and Double Helix organize annual protests, some which have grown so intense they've nearly barred entrance for conference participants.
Fill: Limited Release (3/?) REPOST FOR READING CONTINUITY
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 22:33 (UTC)
"We are horrified by the actions of Professor Xavier's attackers and categorically condemn this behavior," Human Race said in a statement shortly after the shooting. "A philosophical disagreement was never solved with something as base as violence."
Mr. Xavier, described as brilliant by colleagues at Oxford University before he moved to New York to begin teaching at Columbia in 1998, has been a touchstone among the mutant community ever since he came out as one himself in the 1990. Submitting himself for testing by a joint U.K.-U.S. intelligence survey, Xavier was discovered to be the most powerful telepath ever recorded, measuring nearly 10 on the Ox-Carlyle Psi scale; average telepaths range anywhere from 2 to 4, with anything 5 or above being considered extraordinary. There are only six known telepaths with scores above 5 on the OCP scale: five measure at 6, and one at 7.
The discovery led to doubt about Xavier's previous scientific work in genetics research, with some arguing the data and conclusions could never be considered valid considering a telepath as powerful as Mr. Xavier could easily sway any ethics panel. Mr. Xavier has publicly spoken out against these claims, calling them "total nonsense" and saying that to use his powers in such a way would be flagrant abuse — something against which he champions.
"The symposium, since Dr. Xavier first launched it half a decade ago, has always drawn threats and controversy from the public," said University Chancellor Nell Richardson in written comments distributed to the media before a press conference scheduled for this evening. "Dr. Xavier's passion and courage championing mutant human rights, from arguing for affirmative enrollment to speaking before senate and congressional panels for inclusion and openness has won him many admirers and many enemies. We are devastated by this act of ignorant violence, and all of our thoughts and prayers are with Dr. Xavier and his family for his speedy recovery."
***
TBC
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (4/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 22:57 (UTC)
***
Alex Summers' known associates list is about five people long, and all of those awful, terrible, incredibly embarrassing aliases dead end in one Hank McCoy, 19, given to twitching, pleading eyes, and sitting in Erik's office looking pathetic and clutching a briefcase he'd clearly purchased at the K-Mart in Astor Place.
"Seriously?" Erik asks, standing in the doorway of his office, and turns over his shoulder. "Who the hell let this kid in here?"
Angel points at Armando who points at Sean who points at Raven, who shrugs, unabashed. Erik scowls.
"You can't fire us," Raven reminds him. "Charles would be so upset."
"Charles thinks I can do no wrong and would tearfully understand if I were forced to throw all of you out," Erik lies, and turns back to Hank, who is looking — if possible — even more scared and waifish, perched on the uncomfortable seats in front of Erik's desk. "All right, out with it, McCoy, what do you want?"
Hank sucks in a steadying breath here, obviously shooting for bravery. "I want to make a deal."
Erik settles into his desk chair and favors Hank with a flat, unimpressed stare.
"Help Alex get out of prison — "
"Not happening," Erik says.
" — And Alex will help you get Shaw," Hank finishes in a rush, hands fumbling with his briefcase, digging out papers he spills all over Erik's meticulously neat desk, jarring his WORLD'S MEANEST BOSS mug (from Raven) and the revoltingly twee silver frame photo of Charles, hair in wild disarray, in three-days-old clothes, balls deep in his dissertation and half-crazy, staring stunned at the camera.
Erik rights the picture reflexively, nudging it back into place, and as an afterthought he reaches out to touch the corner of it in automatic reassurance. In the back of his head he can feel Charles, beavering away at something hideously nerdy across the city, perfectly fine and completely distracted, not paying attention except where Charles is always paying attention — his unconscious telepathy strong enough even unfocused to blanket most of the state.
"Shaw," Erik says, voice very even.
"Sebastian Shaw," Hank clarifies, as if there could be another, and points at this paper and that document all over Erik's desk now. "Alex, when he was just starting out — for a while he worked with Arthur Florick's team."
The paperclips on Erik's desk start fisting into tiny knots. "And Florick is?"
"Is Shaw," Hank babbles, dragging out photographs. "I swear it. I knew about Shaw — I mean obviously everybody knows about Shaw, but I didn't know what he looked like until I got the FBI file on him and made the link."
"Setting aside the fact that you're not supposed to have access to the FBI file on Shaw," Erik starts, and ignores Hank's perfectly adolescent eye-roll at that, "so say I believe you — Alex worked with Shaw. So what?"
"He worked with Shaw years ago," Hank says, overeager, cuffs dragging papers around. "Before he got polished. He said all sorts of stuff — too much stuff — "
"What sorts of stuff?" Erik asks, tense.
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии) (Развернуть)
Fill: Limited Release (5/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-11 22:58 (UTC)
Hank shrugs. "Names. Personal details. People he runs with," he spouts off.
"How do I know this is legitimate?" Erik asks reasonably, because he can either veer off into one of his fugue states, where he terrifies his agents and makes probes cry and gets reprimanded by his immediate managers for reckless disregard and commended by his manager's manager for bravery and has to go home and sleep in one of the 15 guest rooms because Charles is furious at him and projecting his misery like a fucking foghorn.
There's a telling moment of hesitation here, a beat where Hank's obviously deciding whether not to do whatever he's probably about to do. He's got tells: the way he dips his gaze somewhere away from Erik's face, tugging at the wrist of his left sleeve, the way he rubs his thumb along the sharp edge of a page — skin too thick with callouses to be be worried about a papercut.
"Back then," Hank starts, faltering, "Shaw wasn't so polished. He bragged a lot."
The balls of paperclip liquefy now, pooling with the heat in Erik's stomach in their ceramic dish. "Oh?"
"Alex said — Alex said Florick, I mean, Shaw. That Shaw said he'd made your powers manifest," Hank finishes awkwardly. "That you'd be nobody without him."
Erik thinks that there's more to Hank McCoy than an obvious target for bullying after all.
"Well played," he says mildly, because it's been long enough that his immediate burst of fury at the memory of how Shaw had helped Erik manifest his powers has calcified in its intensity. Erik's unyielding on this point, but he's not reactive anymore, either. "Something not in any records, unknown to most, so verifying — and at once utterly useless in terms of current information on Shaw's whereabouts in order to maximize your leverage."
Hank doesn't look triumphant. He's too baby-faced and blue-eyed for that, but he does tip his glasses further up his nose with shaking fingers and say, "You get Alex out, we'll help you out."
Aside from being the most dangerous man in the world, having tastes that lean toward the unforgivably flamboyant, hideous fucking sideburns, and having arranged for Charles to be assassinated, Erik can now add "spreading lies about me" to the list of reasons that he's going to murder Shaw with extreme prejudice. Erik had needed Shaw to know about his powers like he'd needed another hole in the head, but the difference between being able to win coin tosses every time and coax open every jar and ripping holes into the sides of buildings was apparently Sebastian Shaw threatening to shoot Erik's mother at the mutant integration center, just to see if he couldn't push Erik a little bit harder. Marvelous, Shaw had called Erik's skill back then, and Erik wishes he'd taken Shaw out like all of the light fixtures in the outside hallway — he'd been a minor, a few years in juvie and a purged record at 18 seemed like an easy trade off for preemptively erasing Sebastian Shaw from the face of the earth: started off as a specialist in mutant discovery and integration, turned mutant supremacist and mass murderer. Powers and magnitude of power unknown, highly dangerous, top of every domestic and international terrorist watch list.
"Let me make some calls," Erik says finally, thinking about Alex rotting in a cell and Charles gritting his teeth through PT three times a week to keep up the muscles in the legs he can't feel anymore. "I'll see what our options are."
And Hank just stares at him, grateful in a way that's embarrassing, and breathes, "Thank you."
"Christ," Erik says, and shouts out the door of his office, "Hey, Cassidy — get this kid out of the building!"
***
TBC
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии) (Развернуть)
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — electrumqueen — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — srmarybadass — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — salvamisandwich — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (5/?) — flaxenescapee — Развернуть
Fill: Limited Release (6/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-12 15:50 (UTC)
***
Scott Summers visits like clockwork every week on Thursday for the allotted one hour with Alex in supermax, chattering through the bullet and shatter-proof glass. Prison mail says that Scott also sends a weekly package. Nothing worth currency or effort in prison, just stuff he thinks is funny or that he thinks Alex would like: a couple of comic books, a car mag or two, weirdly, maps, with Post-It notes stuck all over them with defamatory asides about the various locations. All of this, and everything else in Alex's cell — stripped clean now, in punishment — is delivered to Erik that afternoon, and he sifts through all of the soundless footage of Alex and Scott's last visit looking for something that would have triggered this.
"Walk me through it," Erik says.
Angel leans back in her seat, suit jacket bunching up around her shoulders. He wishes she wouldn't wear it around the office — it must be nervewracking to think that if she ever needed to get away, she wouldn't be able to easily unfurl her wings, but she'd said something about wearing backless shirts at the work as unprofessional and then distracted him by asking when Erik was going to man up and make Charles an honest man.
"Alex and Scott Summers, orphaned when Alex was 18 and Scott was 10," Angel says, flipping through Alex's file. "Tried to make ends meet working a couple of different jobs for a while, but they didn't have much of a chance."
The mutant registry had passed in the 1970s, before even Charles was old enough or savvy enough of the world to protest against it, and although subsequent blessings and generations had seen fit to keep it more or less quiet save for medical reason and for law enforcement, people were still suspicious. Nobody paid much attention to laws saying you couldn't discriminate against hiring mutant humans, and Erik had no doubt Alex had lost dozens of jobs before he'd said, "fuck it" and turned to something easier for him, harder to swallow, and far, far more dangerous.
"No, I'm sure they didn't," Erik murmurs.
In the monitor, Alex is laughing, eyes crinkled and young, and Scott is leaning forward, hands pressed against the glass, animated and happy. Nothing bad happened that day. Something bad must have happened after.
"Rap sheet starts when Alex was about 19, mostly petty stuff, theft, car theft," Angel says, distracted. "No drugs, good for him, and nothing violent — sometime after he turn 21 he falls off the police radar for a bit." She holds up another file — Scott's. "This is when Scott starts showing up in school records, but the reasons are redacted."
Probably him manifesting, Erik thinks, because puberty didn't suck hard enough on its own without the advent of your mutation, too, for a lot of kids these days. Erik had figured his out during nursery school, when he'd terrified all the nice German fraus by entertaining himself by deconstructing his crib and playpen for escape, his mother liked to remind him. Charles hadn't even known telepathy wasn't normal until he'd turned four and no other children at some society party his parents were holding were able to hear him when he'd reached out to them in his head.
"When was it for you?" Erik asks, non-sequitur, but Angel just looks thoughtful.
"I was lucky — 20? Something like that? Old enough to know what was happening," she answers, and turns back to the monitors. "Anyway, off the grid for about three years, and then he shows up again: same low-level stuff, etcetera etcetera, and then there comes the accidental car-jacking."
Erik sighs. "Dumbass," he mutters.
Of course Alex Summers would have the luck of trying to steal a car with someone still inside of it, pulled over onto a side street to catch a nap before he drove into oncoming traffic.
"They would have gone a lot easier on him if he hadn't panicked when that guy pulled out his taser," Angel says philosophically. "Although at least he only sliced the car in half, and not the owner."
"Did Scott ever come back?" Erik asks, still watching the monitor, for the way Alex stared after Scott as the guards hustled him away. "After this visit here?"
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (7/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-12 15:53 (UTC)
"Last one," Angel says, checking the record. "The guard on Alex's block said Alex went nuts afterward, spent all his free time trying to call his brother over and over again, and asked if they could send someone to check on the kid, that sort of thing."
Erik twirls the pen hovering over his palm, sending it spinning round and round in thought.
"So he wasn't expecting it, whatever kept Scott away," Erik mumbles. "Whoever is keeping Scott away."
Angel closes her files, stopping the video, now showing some other people now having an argument through the shatterproof glass. "So?" she asks. "He's a nonviolent offender — and he may have some real info on Shaw."
Armando chooses this moment to stick his head into the room. "Plus he only broke out for his little brother," he says, too casually, which means that Sean's perch near the glass doors, texting, was a lookout after all. Sometimes Erik hates his fucking team. "You can't really fault a man for caring about family."
Probably because she can't help himself, Raven yells through the glass of his office walls:
"Come on, do it, Boss — if you don't, Hank's just going to sit in your office and cry some more."
Glaring at Angel, Erik says, "You guys planned this, didn't you?"
"It wasn't a formal tactical discussion or anything," she admits, smiling and gathering up the papers. "But we figured if we couldn't prevail upon your good nature, we could always call Charles."
Erik points at the door. "Go away."
"Yes, Boss," Angel laughs. "Right away, Boss."
***
Ordinarily, the process of certifying a CI is arduous enough, with paperwork thick enough to murder entire Amazonian rainforests and vast troves of undiscovered species. When the CI in question is a mutant, multiply it by five. But Erik likes this done in orderly ways, "Sorted," as Charles likes to say, and so he calls Charles's assistant at the university to say he'll be late home tonight, and powers through all of the forms in one five-hour sitting, swearing at himself for being a pushover every step of the way.
But Alex, for all that he's over 21, is just a dumb kid who ever had a chance, and he's lived his whole life probably scared out of his mind his powers would hurt somebody. If Erik's not going to look out for him, nobody is, and the thought of Alex rotting in supermax, wasting his whole life there because he'd loved his brother too much just to give up on him when he'd gone missing and there'd been no one to help isn't one he can swallow.
By the time he's done, the office is more or less deserted, just Raven still puttering around on a couple of old cold cases that have a Shaw connection and lying about it. Erik's tried to reason with her about it, but she doesn't have an outlet for her obsession the way Erik does, she just goes home and lies in her bed, unpeels herself from her preferred skin of blond hair and round cheeks and stare the ceiling with her cat-yellow eyes. She'd slept at the mansion for a solid two months during Charles's recovery, after he'd come home from the hospital and his seven separate surgeries, and fought with him for hours when all Charles wanted to do was fight with someone.
"Want to come over for late dinner?" Erik asks, because Charles would be glad to see her.
She shakes her head. "No, I just wanted to put together some stuff for Alex to look at, when he gets here."
"That confident the request will go through?" Erik asks, amused. Raven claims that she and Charles are completely different, that she finds his endless optimism annoying, that Charles's relentless determination to see the good in everybody is nauseating, but Erik thinks Raven likes to ignore the ways they've rubbed off one another.
Shrugging, she says, "Don't see why not. Shaw's bigger fish than Alex, and there's no other task force that would be capable of handling his powers."
"Raven, Alex isn't even capable of handling his powers," Erik says, and drops a brief hand to her shoulder good night as he heads for the elevator bank.
It's dark outside, the city throbbing with steamy summer heat, everything gleaming from a brief and violent rainshower they had in the afternoon, and now neon slick like a coat of sweat. He leaves his car in the garage and goes for the subway, taking the 6 up 3rd Avenue.
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (8/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-12 15:54 (UTC)
Erik would have loved the monstrosity of Xavier House as a kid. It's five stories; there's an art deco elevator. Most of the first floor is paved in actual fucking marble. That's aside from the glorious scrolling staircases, the masses of corridors and endless warrens of rooms inside of rooms and hidden passageways that Erik's pretty sure means that the Xavier's made their first fortunes bootlegging during Prohibition. Games of hide and seek at Xavier House would have been epic scale, and Erik sometimes tries to imagine Charles — always alone — trying to keep himself and his wandering and overly powerful mind entertained here with just nannies and maids and the butler to distract him before Raven had appeared in his life. Bored, a grown up Charles is terrifying and restless; bored, a tiny Charles just seems hypothetically sad.
And sadly bored is what Charles is when Erik finds him, languishing in the second floor study.
Erik pauses at the door. "Are you — ?"
"I'm trying to see if I can tell what they're thinking just by having a visual fix," Charles says, unmoving from his slouch in the chair, situated in front of the shitty Best Buy bargain bin TV that's balanced precariously on top of a heap of old term papers in one corner. "I think I might be able to."
Charles is watching re-runs of America's Next Top Model, so Erik thinks it's entirely fair to ask, "Even if you did lock in on their thoughts, how could you tell they were thoughts at all?"
Twisting around to grin at him, Charles says, "Cruel — potentially accurate, but cruel."
For reasons Erik prefers not to explore and that Charles knows but pretends not to, he's not given to casual touches, but Charles always says hello not with skin but a sudden sensation of affection, like someone whispering: welcome back, welcome back, I've missed you, welcome back right into the cavities of his heart, bypassing all the unnecessary roadblocks in between.
"How was your day?" Charles asks, wheeling around to face him, and Erik takes the low seat by the window, lets his posture fray completely, melt into the chair. "What happened?" You look tired, gets the direct line.
Erik thinks about Alex's crushed expression, that defeated slump of his shoulders, his own, reflexive ache for the kid. "Alex Summers broke out of prison."
"Alex?" Charles asks, frowning. "He doesn't seem the type."
"He went after his brother," Erik says, because that explains everything, and Charles agrees, from the look on his face.
"Alex didn't find him," Charles says, matter-of-factly.
Erik reaches over and appropriates one of Charles's hands for his own, running his thumb over the lines of Charles's palm and wonders were Scott might be, hopes that he's well and that he's not frightened, but he knows that neither of these are likely. "No, he didn't."
"You think you're about to do something stupid," Charles says suddenly, curious. Erik frowns. "And before you accuse me of reading your mind, your apprehension is so intense it's fairly drowning me through the skin — no additional effort required on my part."
Sighing, Erik folds their palms together. Go on, he thinks. Read me. I'm too tired to talk.
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии) (Развернуть)
Re: Fill: Limited Release (8/?) — nudeonthemoon — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (8/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Fill: Limited Release (9/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-12 15:55 (UTC)
Charles can steal into peoples's heads on cat's feet, silent and undetected, or he can blast in violently, overtaking. With Erik, Charles comes in politely, with the mental equivalent of a knock on the door before he peers inside, easy and familiar in this terrain, sorting fretfully through the ordinary frustrations of Erik's day — paperwork, Cassidy, the forever-long wait for the train in the morning — and rifling through the afternoon and evening, long into night. Erik always visualizes Charles shuffling through the papers on Erik's desk at work whenever Charles does this.
"Oh," Charles says, after a moment, eyes going from sleepy to wide and aware. "A CI? Really?"
Erik shrugs. "He may know something about Shaw," he says.
Charles arches an eyebrow. "Sure," he says, which sounds like, Of course he does, in Erik's head. "And I'm sure your fondness for him plays no part in this."
"You're the one that's spoiling my entire team," Erik accuses, because even if Charles wasn't the world's most powerful telepath, it would be pretty pointless to try lying to him about this.
Grinning, unrepentant, Charles says, "But they're so splendid, all of them."
"If only you'd been properly bullied during your childhood," Erik sighs, and gives Charles's hand a squeeze. "Is there anything to eat?"
"We can order a pizza," Charles decides, and nods toward the television. "They're showing a marathon of this tonight."
Fucked at the office, fucked at home, Erik thinks, resigned, watching Charles reach for his phone.
He ends up asleep on Charles's shoulder after two slices, listening to Tyra ranting about smizing in the background, and Charles has to shake him conscious before he drowsily staggers up one of the many, many steps in the house, hand steady as he floats Charles's chair up alongside him and toward the bedroom.
***
TBC
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии) (Развернуть)
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — swing_set13 — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — gestalt1 — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — pollyrepeat — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — electrumqueen — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — srmarybadass — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — (Анонимно) — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — tahariel — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — nudeonthemoon — Развернуть
Re: Fill: Limited Release (9/?) — anait — Развернуть
Fill: Limited Release (10/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-13 19:00 (UTC)
***
It's a confusing 72 hours.
Breaking out of prison had sucked out loud, in part because he actually did like the guards — they were nice guys, and hadn't deserved to get knocked out by concrete when Alex had blown up a wall — and in part because he'd known even as he'd been jacking someone's car in the lot, hearing all the alarms go haywire in the background that he was going to get caught and then he'd be really fucked.
But Alex has done a lot dumber stuff for Scott before, and it wasn't like today was going to be any different, so then he'd hit the gas and figured he had like four hours before Agent Lehnsherr tracked him down again like a giant, magnetic bloodhound who kept calling him "kid." That guy was such a dick.
He hadn't really thought he'd find Scott, but he'd hoped, panic-hoped, and it was one thing to know in his head that when he got to the squat that Scott would probably be gone and another entirely to see it empty and stripped of most of Scott's stuff. Alex didn't have a phone number; they didn't have family other than each other, and if Scott had friends to run to, Alex didn't know who they fucking were, and the hole in his chest felt like it was bottomless whenever he thought about his baby brother alone out there.
And then, just a day after he'd been re-arrested, Hank had gotten in pretending to be his lawyer and floating some crazy-ass scheme, there was Agent Lehnsherr again, leaning against a barred window and looking at Alex with narrowed, thoughtful eyes.
Alex puts up with it for maybe two minutes before he bursts out with, "Dude, what?"
"What did Shaw want with you?" Lehnsherr asks, abrupt and to-the-point.
"Oh Jesus Christ," Alex mutters, scrubbing at his face, chains rattling. "Did Hank come at you with that shit?"
"He made an interesting proposition," Lehnsherr allows, and moves to sit opposite Alex at the table. "Well? Shaw — or Florick, when you knew him. What did he want with you?"
Alex has a flash of fury at Hank, for sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, for never getting out whenever Alex has tried to get him out. Hank's smart and clean-looking and he doesn't have that obvious look of criminal desperation on him, and if Hank wanted to, he could get a real job somewhere. Except Hank's pathetically loyal and keeps coming back for Alex, keeps reading every science and law book in the New York Public Library and not walking away.
"What does that guy ever want with anybody?" Alex bites out, because he might as well tell. He's here for the long haul. Maybe Lehnsherr can get him moved out of some of his more restrictive bindings; they're not going to move him into general population, anyway, but maybe he could stop wearing the fucking chains 24-7. "How the fuck would I know? He just had some blonde chick who said she saw something in me and asked if I'd work for him."
Lehnsherr raises an eyebrow. "What did you do for him?"
"Distract you guys," Alex retorts.
"For what? Robberies?" Lehnsherr asks, leaning forward.
Alex shrugs. "I guess. I mean, I thought they were," he says. "I never asked."
Okay, Alex decides his least favorite thing isn't the way Lehnsherr calls him "kid" after all, because the way he laughs, disbelieving, and then says, "Summers, you're a real piece of work, you know that?" is much, much more annoying. "Do you remember anything else? About the blond woman?"
"Hot," Alex says, knee-jerk. "Like, smoking, smoking FHM, Maxim hot."
(Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)
Fill: Limited Release (11/?)
(Анонимно)
2011-06-13 19:03 (UTC)
"Name?" Lehnsherr prompts.
Alex frowns. "Emily? Emma? I think?"
Amused, Lensherr asks, "Bra size?"
"She was a 32D, easy," Alex reports, and it takes him half a beat before he turns completely red at the smirk on Lehnsherr's face. "I have eyes, asshole."
"More importantly," Lehnsherr asks, still smirking, "would you recognize her if you saw her again? I'm assuming you would definitely recognize her breasts."
Alex wishes his ankles weren't shackled together. Probably he'd get some sort of even worse punishment for kicking a federal agent in the shin, but it'd be worth it.
"Sure, yes," he snaps. "I'd recognize most of his crew." They'd thought of Alex as a stupid kid, too.
Lehnserr's amusement fades here, goes serious, and he makes a long, considering noise.
Glowering, Alex says, "Can I go back to my cell now? Isn't this shit considered cruel and unusual torture?"
Lehnsherr grins. "Oh, kid — get used to it."
"What?" Alex says, because that doesn't make sense, and it keeps on not making sense while Lehnsherr's letting himself out, and all through the night as Alex stares at the ceiling and walls in solitary, and for the next 24 hours or so, until there's a knock on the door of his cell and the prison warden's furious bitchface as he says:
"All right, Summers. I don't know how you did it, but your deal came through."
***
The next 72 hours don't look like they're going to be much better, Alex thinks glumly. Hank, in the same crummy suit with the same crummy briefcase, is waiting for him when he gets shuffled through release procedures, and looks like he's repressing all sorts of feelings extra hard. Next to him is Lehnsherr, looking impassive, and Alex would ask one of them, either of them, what the hell is going on, except there's this guy tying something to his ankle.
"The monitor will run 24 hours a day, and will have a geolocation on you to within 5 feet," the man is saying, sounding bored about everything. "It's a combined portable reflector pack and a tracker. You try anything stupid, your handler will flip it back on you. You try to run, it'll ping us when you hit your 2 mile radius."
Alex says, "Uh."
"Unless your handler calls it in," the guy clarifies. "If you guys are out of state or whatever, call it to central switchboard, and we'll just make sure he's tracking within reasonable distance — we clear?"
Alex stares for a while.
"Yes, that's clear," Hank jumps in, practically vibrating out of his skin he's so excited.
"Clear as day," Lehnsherr agrees, and glances at Alex. "Understood, kid?"
"First off, stop fucking calling me that, I'm 24," Alex barks. "And secondly, who is my handler?"
Because having been sent to jail, broken out of jail because his brother's gone missing, gotten re-sent to jail, having Hank McCoy as a best friend, and the fucking FBI all over his dick isn't bad enough, this is when Alex learns that he's now Lehnsherr's pet mutant CI.
"Surprise," Lehnsherr says, dry as tinder. "I can tell you're thrilled."
@темы: fanfiction