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Chapters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
 
 
 

The Game of Empires - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Valerie Jones
Last updated: 02/13/2010 03:54:13 PM

Chapter 11

"Let’s see... Levy. Where is Levy?" Scott muttered to himself as he scanned the building index. They were in the heart of Washington D.C., on the main floor of a nondescript federal building that supposedly held the office they were looking for.

"Aha." He spied the entry for a Dr. M. Levy, who apparently was the director of Project Grayscape. "Fifth floor."

Beside him, Jean nodded. Her gaze was empty though, as she kept up a continuous scan of their immediate surroundings. Scott had no idea if it was necessary, but he believed in prudence.

"Ready?" he asked Jean, and was rewarded with a smile and another nod. He offered her his hand and she took it, and together they started up the wide banister staircase. This was just a scouting mission. He didn’t expect to even go inside Dr. Levy’s office today. They would take a quick look around and then, if things looked good, would probably try to make an appointment for sometime in the near future. Unfortunately, he had no idea what kind of people would want to see Dr. Levy, and that was one of the reasons they’d come today. A surface scan of those inside the office would hopefully give them enough information to create a reasonable cover story. If not, they would be left with no other option but to try breaking in as they had at Whiteman, which was a risk he didn’t want to take.

Scott was breathing heavily by the time they reached the fifth floor, and Jean gave him a concerned glance.

"I’m all right," he reassured her. It had been three months since Dr. Reyes had removed the bomb Bastion planted in his abdomen, but the healing process still wasn’t complete. It was frustrating to have so little stamina. He’d taken the stairs just to push himself a little bit. All of their recent traveling had left him little chance to cultivate a regular exercise schedule.

They found the right hallway after a moment of searching and started down it. The doors were all identical, with beveled glass windows and the title of the office stenciled on them in black. About halfway down the hall, Jean stopped short, then after a moment backed up several steps and paused again. Scott watched her curiously.

Eventually, she blinked and focused on her husband. There’s a psi-damping field. She indicated the hall where Scott was standing. It’s strong. I was blinded the moment I stepped into it.

Hmmm. Scott closed the distance between them. Care to take a guess as to where it’s coming from?

Her eyebrows quirked at his sarcasm. We probably ought to go ahead and walk on by. Once I find the other side of the field, I should be able to tell you for sure.

They continued down the hall and passed by Dr. Levy’s office without pausing. The door was identical to all of the others, the interior of the office blurred beyond recognition by the beveling in the glass. They emerged from the damping field just beyond a bend in the hallway, at a point approximately the same distance from Dr. Levy’s door as where they’d first encountered the field.

That pretty much clinches it, I guess.

Scott nodded. Yep.

The interesting thing is that it’s only a psi-damper. I was still able to use my telekinetic ability.

Scott met her vaguely troubled gaze. That is interesting. They’re afraid of telepaths but not mutants in general?

I don’t know. Jean shrugged uncomfortably. But now I’m doubly curious what this Grayscape is all about.

You and me both, he agreed.

Jean was uncommonly nervous as she manipulated the simple tumblers on the door to the Grayscape office. She was blinded by the psi-damper, and it felt like her head was full of black cotton. For all she knew, there could be a whole squad of soldiers waiting for them inside. Or there could be nothing. The fact that she couldn’t tell the difference left her feeling intensely vulnerable.

The tumblers fell into place and Jean cautiously swung the door open. Federal crime number three, she thought grimly. Breaking and entering had become something of a commonplace event for the two of them recently. But it was either that or telepathically extract the information they needed, and Jean wasn’t willing to use her powers that way.

The office of Project Grayscape was disappointingly normal. They found themselves in a standard waiting room, complete with out-of-date magazines and half-filled water cooler. The receptionist’s desk was crowded into a small anteroom along with a desktop computer, fax machine and copier. A single door led out of the waiting room.

Scott shrugged and tried the door, which opened easily. Jean followed him into a short hall that had one closed door on either side and a third at the end. The first door opened on a tiny bathroom, and the smell of rose-scented air freshener enveloped them.

The second door held an office. The desk was of some dark wood, and the wall behind the desk was lined with medical texts along with a wide array of other subjects. Jean saw books on psychiatry, psychology, mutant physiology, astrology, unexplained phenomena, and home repair. She shook her head as she moved to examine the framed certificates that hung on the near wall. She was somewhat surprised to discover that Dr. Levy, apparently, was a Harvard trained psychologist as well as a medical doctor.

After a little more exploration, they left the office and moved to the third door. The room beyond looked like a cross between an examination room and a laboratory. A plain conference table sat in the middle of the room, one comfortable-looking chair on either side of it. A blank legal pad and two pencils lay in front of one of the chairs, as if they had been placed there in preparation for a meeting the next morning. The far wall of the plain room was filled with banks of electronic equipment. An empty cursor blinked on one of the monitors, the only sign that the equipment was working.

They stepped cautiously into the room. Jean swallowed a surprised exclamation as she moved through the doorway.

The psi-damper’s gone!

They both whirled to look back through the doorway, but didn’t see anything. Jean walked back to the door and the psi damping field struck her as soon as she stepped out into the hall.

It’s a shell, she told Scott as she came back into the room.

He gave her a puzzled look. Any idea what it’s for?

She shook her head. None. Why would they want to suppress telepathic abilities out there, she jerked her head toward the hallway, but not in here?

Scott didn’t answer as he went to investigate the rack of equipment. Jean followed him.

This is a frequency analyzer, he said after a moment, tapping the front panel of one of the pieces of equipment. And that, he motioned to a confusing jumble of wires and plugs, looks an awful lot like some kind of hardware/software interface chassis. We use a similar setup for system testing on the Blackbirds.

This is some kind of electronics lab? Jean didn’t have any responsibility for maintaining the Blackbirds, so she didn’t know much about the system he was talking about. But she was willing to take his word for it.

Curious, she picked up a lightweight headset that was plugged into the chassis while Scott continued to examine the tangle of multicolored wires.

Do I dare turn it on? He rested one gloved finger beneath a switch.

Jean shot him an alarmed look. Just because we haven’t seen any surveillance doesn’t mean this system isn’t monitored. And I can’t see past that damping field to know if anyone is about to walk in on us. It was like being inside a bubble, really. Her telepathic powers worked, but were essentially useless because of the surrounding damper.

Scott considered for a moment, then flipped the switch upward with a mechanical click. This office is a front for something -- that much is obvious. But I don’t think anyone’s watching. This set up feels too... authentic for that.

Two rows of red lights came on when Scott flipped the switch and a host of commands began to scroll down the monitor screen. Jean didn’t get a chance to read everything that went by, and probably wouldn’t have understood the cryptic statements even if she could, but she got the distinct impression that it was running some kind of initialization routine. Eventually, the red lights began to wink out, to be replaced by green lights coming alive on the other side of the chassis. When everything had gone green, Scott turned to her.

Looks like it’s up and running. I’m going to poke around a bit.

Jean suppressed her protest. The psi damping made her very nervous, but Scott was confident, and she trusted his danger sense almost as much as her own. She went back to examining the headset in her hands while he turned on the frequency analyzer and began fiddling with the knobs.

What she’d originally taken for tiny earphones were actually electrodes of some kind, she realized as she peered more closely at the headset. They were emitting an annoying buzz that suddenly turned into a shriek that stabbed directly into her brain. She dropped the headset with a cry and put her hands to her head. The pain disappeared almost instantly.

Jean! What is it?

Jean blinked the stars away. I’m all right.

She squeezed his arm in reassurance before crouching down to retrieve the headset. She held it gingerly, then after a moment, brought it slowly closer to her face. The buzz became perceptible as she brought the headset near, but she didn’t experience the excruciating pain again.

A number of things began to click into place in her mind. She glanced at the frequency analyzer, which was currently displaying a scrolling sine wave.

Can you make the amplitude higher on that? She nodded toward the signal.

Sure. He turned one of the large dials and Jean watched the wave re-scale itself. How’s that?

Cautiously, Jean brought the headset toward her head. The buzz was much worse, grating across her senses painfully. Ouch. She let the headset fall to dangle in her hands. O.k. You can turn it off now.

Scott did so, then turned back to her with the question obvious on his face.

It’s generating telepathic... noise, for lack of a better term, she answered. I think this is some kind of testing facility for telepaths. That psi damper suppresses any interference from the outside world, which make it incredibly quiet in here. Even a minimal talent should be able to pick up on this. She waved the headset.

Scott frowned thoughtfully. So who’s looking for telepaths? Their gazes met. And why?

"Rogue, ya’d better come see this." Logan caught a glimpse of the woman passing by the doorway to the rec room. She walked with shuffling steps, her head down, as if there was an invisible weight on her shoulders that she could barely support. Unfortunately, Logan thought, this new development was only going to make her day worse than it already seemed, but business was business.

She stopped, glanced up at him with red-rimmed eyes. "What is it?"

"Come look." He turned his attention back to the television, granting her a modicum of privacy.

Mercifully, the other X-Men pretended not to notice the evidence of her tears as she joined them. Joseph opened his mouth to say something to her, but then stopped as her expression darkened with outrage.

"Figured he’d have ta show up again sometime." Logan kept his attention focused on the television, where a frantic reporter was trying to face the camera while still keeping an eye on the destruction going on just across the street. The cameraman had given up on the reporter, and was instead centered on the mutant who stood in the center of the street, arms upraised. A mutant the X-Men knew only as Erik the Red.

"Where is this?" Rogue’s voice was harsh.

Ororo stepped up beside the distraught woman, arms crossed. "It is the Federal building in Philadelphia."

"Our mysterious nemesis is apparently curious about certain government records." Hank squatted on the arm of the couch, his quaint spectacles perched precariously on his nose. "He has already absconded with a sizable number of filing cabinets and now seems intent on leveling the building."

"So what are y’all waitin’ for?"

"Psylocke," Logan told her.

"Where is she?"

"Right behind you."

Several of the X-Men started at the sudden voice, but Logan just snorted. That girl was downright eerie these days. She spent more time on the astral plane searching for Warren than she did in the real world, and it was beginning to show.

Marrow appeared on Betsy’s heels, ghosting into the den and approaching the television with obvious interest. Logan had smelled her out in the hall a while ago, but hadn’t seen any reason to encourage her to join them. Now, she leaned around Sam to watch the newscast.

"So that’s him." She glanced at Rogue. "The one who revealed the genetraitor." Rogue turned to glare at her, but Marrow only smiled merrily. "I’d like to meet him."

"Marrow." Logan stared at her until the other’s smile disappeared. Then he looked the assembled X-Men over. "Everybody ready?" Nods answered him, and Logan turned to Betsy.

"Up ta you, darlin’."

She turned without answering and walked toward the far corner of the room, where the light from the window didn’t quite reach. "The shadows are over here."

 

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