The Game of Empires - REVIEW THIS STORY

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

Chapter 25

The woman who lay in the fourth bed was the newest addition to the facility. Like the other three, she too was in a coma she was not expected to ever wake from. When he glanced at the EKG monitor, Donovan noted that it showed a plain flat line.

Vegetable, he thought with a sigh. She was a young woman, pretty in a fresh, vibrant way that reminded him of his daughter Eliza. This wasn’t what I wanted when I agreed to take command of the project. The Psi-Neutralizer, called P-Noot for short, had been intended from its inception as a means of neutralizing the most powerful weapon mutants possessed: their telepaths. And despite the destruction of the Grayscape facility, the project had succeeded wildly, with one unfortunate-- or not so unfortunate, depending on your view-- side effect. The target telepath was very literally brain-killed, and left in a degenerative vegetative state.

This young mutant had registered as a twelve on the newly standardized psionic scale. She was still considered a beta mutant, though just barely. There was significant debate amongst the design engineers as to whether the P-Noot would be as effective on an alpha telepath. Donovan grimaced. Or an omega.

He shook off his doubts with an effort. More than anything, it had been a string of good luck that had brought them this far, and Donovan didn’t believe in luck. The original designs for the P-Noot had been wrong. The device wouldn’t have given a mutant telepath a suntan, let alone fried his brain. But one of the engineers had claimed to have had a vision from God himself, who had manifested as a giant silver face and described to him how to change the design. The engineer had made the changes to the design specs without any supporting calculations, and without informing any of his colleagues until after the prototype trials had proven successful. So now they had a wildly powerful weapon against telepaths, and not the first clue why it worked. Or of what they would do if it didn’t work so well against the high-level psions.

Donovan didn’t believe in God. At least, not in the kind of God that granted visions about minute changes in circuit board designs. But, if it wasn’t God who’d set the project ahead by a year or two, that left the unsettling question of who it was. Whoever it was knew the most intimate details of the project and was able to understand the technology to the point of fixing it. Donovan wavered between believing they had a super-human or even non-human ally out there somewhere, to thinking the mutants had come up with a very subtle means of sabotaging the project. And only time would tell him which it was, if either.

With a growl, Donovan turned on his heel and strode out of the hospital. Harsh sunlight slammed into his eyes as he emerged, making him wince despite the brim of the Army regulation cap that shaded his face. Squinting, he made his way across the compound of tents and metal domes to the HQ building. It was the only structure that rated the name "building", and even it was only a semi-permanent construction.

Donovan was sweating profusely by the time he stepped inside. The switch from the Nevada afternoon to the climate-controlled interior of the building drew a silent sigh of relief. He hated hot weather.

The headquarters building held the engineering labs as well as administrative offices. Donovan had intended to go straight to his office, but found himself instead turning toward the sprawling disaster that somehow claimed to hold the secrets of psionic negation.

The engineering lab looked exactly as it had the last time Donovan had been there, two days earlier. As far as he could tell, none of these young men and women had ever heard of the concept of organization, let alone cleaning up after themselves. The room was a treacherous maze of computing equipment and power couplings. Tables filled with unknown odds and ends of electronic equipment sat at haphazard angles with power cords stretched across the distance like the web of some demented spider. All other horizontal surfaces were taken up by piles of either books or print outs, except the far end of one rectangular table where two coffee makers and a pile of mini-pizza boxes from the cafeteria had taken up residence.

As much as Donovan hated the disorganization, he knew better than to disturb it. The civilian men and women who worked in this lab were some of the best and brightest. Minds of that caliber always came with severe personality quirks. So, holding his distaste at bay as best he could, Donovan made his way through the tangle to the computer where he most commonly found Dan Chang. Chang was the tech who’d come up with the spectral signature for both Onslaught and Erik the Red, and Donovan had had him transferred from the Pentagon to this lab so he could continue his investigation without too many high ranking people looking over his shoulder. If possible, Donovan wanted first crack at Erik.

Chang looked up Donovan approached. "Speak of the devil." He glanced at the engineer who sat beside him, peering with him into the computer’s screen. "I was just telling Matt we should call you, General."

Donovan forgot his mental list of the engineering lab’s faults in an instant. "What have you got?" he asked as he came around the corner of the table to stand behind the two.

Chang shrugged. "A theory. But… we think we’ve come up with an I.D. on Erik the Red."

Only long years of practice kept the expression off Donovan’s face. "Show me."

Chang spun his chair around in a full circle then pointed to the screen. "Take a look."

The screen was divided into four equal panes. The top two held the now-familiar pictures of Onslaught and Erik the Red with their ugly multi-colored auras. The two bottom windows displayed spiky line graphs that reminded Donovan of some kind of audio wave analysis.

"Here we have Erik and Onslaught with the original signatures I showed you back at the Pentagon." Chang pointed to the upper left and upper right images respectively. "These--" he pointed to the lower graphs, "are two dimensional representations of the same information. We’re using a pretty basic power spectral density analysis method to represent the total mutant energy being produced as a function of the quasi-frequencies they operate on."

"Quasi-frequencies?"

Chang continued to watch the screen. "Yes. Real frequency is a measure of events per period of time. Generally, we use Hertz, or cycles per second. In the case of mutant energy, however, we’re not really dealing with something that behaves as a function of time, so we used a mathematical transformation to put us in the time plane. That way, we can represent the data in terms of something we know how to work with, namely frequency. But since it’s not really frequency we’re dealing with, we’ve been calling it the quasi-frequency to help us remember."

Donovan nodded to show he was following the explanation and Chang returned to the main thread of the discussion. He tapped the screen with the tip of his pen. "Now, the big question in both these cases is, who are these people to be throwing off such wild spectrums of energy? We know that most mutants only have one power or use one kind of energy. There are a few exceptions, but that’s the general rule. But these guys--" he waved toward the screen, "are using three separate types of energy: psi, empath, and magnetic."

Donovan was beginning to see where he was headed. "Onslaught was a combination of Charles Xavier and Magneto, which explains the psi and magnetic powers. Xavier admitted that much under questioning." At the Grayscape base, Donovan had never even bothered to use normal interrogation techniques on Xavier. The man had obviously been broken long before he was turned over to them.

Chang held up a cautioning finger. "True, but that’s not all Xavier said. I dug out the transcripts and went through them, trying to figure out where the third element-- the empath-- could have come from."

"And?"

Chang dug through piles of papers until he came out with a thick booklet with "Eyes Only" stamped across it in red. He flipped it open to a page marked with numerous post-it notes around the edges.

"Here." He showed the page to Donovan and pointed to a passage that had been underlined in pencil. "Xavier said there was a dark presence inside him. Something evil, something that wasn’t him."

Donovan frowned as he read the marked portion. Memory filled in Xavier’s listless, rasping voice, his dull, defeated eyes. "He was trying to justify himself," he finally said. "Trying to find some reason why it wasn’t his fault."

Chang gave him a noncommittal shrug. "So the psych people said. But what if it was true? What if there really was a third entity in the mix?"

"An empath?"

Chang nodded. "A telepath-empath, actually."

Donovan stared at the young engineer for several long moments, debating, then decided he really had no choice but to throw away his preconceptions about Xavier and listen to what Chang was trying to tell him. He hooked a nearby chair with one foot and dropped his considerable bulk into its fragile, ergonomically correct cocoon.

"Show me."

Chang and his associate exchanged grins. "All right." Chang spent several minutes at the keyboard, eventually bringing up two more window pairs, upper and lower, like the ones already displayed for Erik the Red and Onslaught. Donovan wasn’t the least surprised to see that the two new ones showed data on Xavier and Magneto.

"We have old data on both Xavier and Magneto here. As you can see, their spectral graphs show far fewer spikes than Onslaught’s."

Donovan nodded. The two mutants’ signatures were distinctly different from each other, and neither one came close to the full-spectrum spiky-ness of Onslaught.

Chang hid the new windows, returning the view to Onslaught and Erik the Red. "I made the assumption that Onslaught’s spectral signature would be the sum of the signatures of his three components." He typed a new command and the graph suddenly became three graphs in different colors, all overlaid on the white line of the original signature. "The red is Magneto, the blue Xavier, and the yellow is our unknown third quantity. As you can see, if you add up the various amplitudes at each quasi-frequency, you get the total of Onslaught’s signature."

Donovan leaned closer to study the new chart. The yellow line contained more spikes than either Xavier or Magneto. Many of them were in an area where neither of the other two showed any activity at all, but several of the yellow spikes overlapped the densest portion of Xavier’s spikes. He pointed to the overlapping blue and yellow points. "Is this why you concluded the third entity must be a telepath-empath?"

Chang nodded. "Yes, and from the amplitudes I’d guess he’s high-alpha or even omega level on both powers."

Donovan pursed his lips, alarmed. "Is he-- or she, I suppose-- less powerful than Xavier since he’s got fewer telepath spikes?"

Chang shook his head and glanced at his partner. "We don’t think so. Amplitude is the measure of raw power, but the number of spikes may have something to do with how well trained or versatile the mutant is with their power."

Donovan shrugged. "Sounds reasonable, anyway."

Chang shot him a vaguely miffed glance. "Now look at Erik the Red."

Donovan obediently shifted his attention as the other man split Erik’s signature into its component pieces. This time, there were only two traces-- yellow and red-- that made up the total signature. Donovan couldn’t help but note that it looked to be an exact match. The yellow traces on each of the two graphs looked to be identical.

He sat back in his chair. "So Erik has the same kinds of power as Onslaught, but he’s only made up of two of Onslaught’s three components." He sank his chin to his chest, thinking. "Is that why he wanted Xavier? To rebuild the original mix? Bring Onslaught back to life?"

Chang only shrugged. "You’ve got me there. But since Xavier’s powers are basically flatlined, I don’t think he’ll have much luck."

Donovan had to agree with that. "Do you have any idea who the third entity is?"

Chang shook his head, and Donovan levered himself to his feet. "All right." He glanced down at the engineer. "This is good work, Mr. Chang. Put it all together in some kind of readable format and have it on my desk by tomorrow morning." He was going to have to pass this information on. Maybe someone higher up at the Pentagon would know who their mystery telepath-empath might be.

"Erik the Red is the Shadow King."

Jean’s eyes widened. "Charles, are you sure?"

"The Shadow King has been dead for years," Scott added.

Hanging inverted over the table, Hank chuckled. "Not that that’s ever stopped anyone."

Jean grinned up at him. "Oh, hush."

The Professor gave them all a stern stare. "This isn’t a laughing matter." His reproving tone effectively capped the banter at the table.

On Jean’s far side, Bobby sighed. "Nothing ever is anymore," he commented in an undertone and Jean’s stomach tightened. It was a painfully true observation and she found herself sighing as well.

"Charles, we know how serious the situation is." Even to her own ears, she sounded as if she were losing her patience. "Living under a cloud of doom isn’t going to make it any better."

Heads nodded around the table as Charles’ expression closed in on itself. All of the X-Men were gathered in the newly refurbished War Room. Jean kept a discreet eye on Remy down near the far end of the table, but he seemed to be holding his own emotionally for the moment. Rogue and Storm sat to either side of him, the latter focused on Marrow, who crouched on a chair about midway up the table. Marrow was ignoring Storm in favor of Gambit, a dangerous smile on her face and her fingers lightly tapping the long bone spurs growing out of her forearm.

Jean bit her lip in consternation. Scott, we’re all strung so taut. The minute something snaps we’re going to be trying to kill each other.

Scott turned his head fractionally to look at her. I know. I just don’t have a clue what to do about it. He gave her the mental equivalent of squeezing her hand as he turned back to Charles.

"What makes you sure it’s the Shadow King?"

Charles’ gaze narrowed. "I recognized him. It took me a long time to figure out what was so familiar about him, but between my own encounters with him in this timeline and… Rem’aillon’s experiences in the alternate timeline, I can draw no other conclusion."

Jean risked a quick look down the table. Remy’s shields were firmly in place, but for once he didn’t seem to have reacted to the mention of his alter identity. She swallowed a heartfelt sigh. If she had to label it, she would say Remy was suffering from a bad case of Second-Son Syndrome. In Charles’ eyes, Rem’aillon was obviously the favored son, the one he ached to have restored to him. It wasn’t surprising Remy was acting the way he was, even if that reaction was sometimes terribly immature.

Turning away from Marrow, Storm spoke up. "That is a very bad thing, then. The Shadow King is an omega telepath." She paused significantly. "The only one on the planet." Her voice remained neutral, giving little insight into her thoughts.

Jean could feel the sudden waves of regret and loss that emanated from Charles, but he simply nodded. "Given what I have seen of how the telepaths in the alternate timeline networked themselves to boost their power, I think we may be able to combat him with the various alpha telepaths on the current X-rosters."

Jean raised an eyebrow but didn’t immediately comment. Instead, she turned to the only other telepath in the room.

"Betsy?"

"I think he’s out of his mind." Elisabeth’s answer was as sharp as the blade of the katana she wore strapped to her back. "The networking idea is a good one, but he’s grasping at straws if he thinks a handful of us can take on the Shadow King and win. Look where that got us at Muir."

Jean nodded in agreement. Unfortunately, I was thinking something similar myself, she added privately.

And? Betsy could obviously feel the decision that weighed so heavily on Jean’s mind.

Jean sighed. Just be ready. This could get ugly. Turning, she looked first at Charles, then to Remy.

"There is one omega who might be able to help us."

For a moment, every person in the room focused on her, their attention both curious and wary.

"Who?" Scott finally asked.

Jean’s hands curled into fists in her lap. "Rem’aillon."

Remy’s gaze snapped to hers, hostile and frightened. "No way."

"That’s impossible, Jean." Charles’s voice interrupted before she could respond to Remy and she turned to look at him.

"Why?"

The look Charles gave her was full of reproach. "We’ve been through this before." One hand fluttered in a gesture of helpless frustration. "I made a mistake when I set up Gambit’s psychic defenses. If you tried to break the blocks on his powers you’d get hit with a psi bolt fueled by the full power of an omega telepath. It would kill you." For a moment his gaze flickered guiltily toward Remy before returning to Jean.

She returned Charles’s stare with as much fortitude as she could muster. "If it was just me." She glanced down the table at Psylocke. "But we were just talking about networking telepaths. What if I had Betsy and Cable and Emma Frost and however many others I thought I needed to back me up? We’re talking about one psi bolt here, not an ongoing battle."

She saw Charles open his mouth for a retort, but he shut it again before any sound could emerge. He steepled his hands in front of his mouth and stared at her thoughtfully. "I… don’t know, Jean," he finally said. A tiny spark seemed to kindle in his eyes. "It might work."

"And if it didn’t?" Scott’s voice was full of alarm.

Jean shrugged, uncomfortable. "One or more of us would probably end up dead."

Scott’s jaw clenched, the muscle standing out in sharp relief. "Then it’s out of the question."

Jean tried to hold onto her temper. "I wouldn’t be willing to try it if I really thought that would happen," she answered tightly. "I’m not stupid."

Scott glared at her in a mixture of anger and fear as silence engulfed the table. Jean returned his gaze defiantly.

"So, ain’ anybody gon’ ask me what I t’ink o’ dis niftly lil’ plan?" Gambit’s voice held a venomous, bitter edge.

Jean turned with a guilty start. She’d been so engrossed in debating the technicalities with Charles that she’d completely forgotten about the man himself. Moistening her lips, she quickly tried to make amends.

"I’m sorry, Remy. It wasn’t my intention to shut you out. I was just trying to point out the possibilities. In the end, the decision is yours. It has to be."

The blood red stare faltered, and Jean could feel the hard edges of his anger crumble. She breathed a sigh of relief as he nodded in tacit acceptance of her apology. The last thing she wanted was to alienate him any further.

Charles slowly leaned back in his hoverchair. His gaze was distant as he stared down the length of the table. "I, too, owe you an apology, Remy." His soft voice seemed like a shout in the stillness. At Gambit’s startled look, he continued, "I have grown too used to controlling people and events as I see fit, and despite the pain I have caused, it is a difficult thing to let go of that power." He paused and shook his head sadly. "Jean is right. It is possible, though terribly risky. The choice is entirely yours. I--" He faltered for a moment and swallowed convulsively to regain his voice. Jean could feel the hot shards of disappointment and loss as he forced out his next words. "I will support whatever decision you make."

Wary gratification filled Remy’s expression. He nodded slowly. "Merci."

Surprisingly, Jean’s mood lifted a little at the exchange. It was the first time father and son had spoken directly to each other since Remy had learned the truth and she smiled as she realized what had happened. It’s a beginning.

Remy’s spatial sense warned him of Lilandra’s approach long before her boot heels began to echo on the weathered wood of the boat dock. In the time it took for her to cross the distance to where he stood at the dock’s end, he had thought of no less than fifteen different excuses to leave before she could strike up a conversation. But when her footsteps ceased directly behind him he still hadn’t moved.

After a moment, he forced himself to turn. "Hello, Lilandra."

The Shi’ar Majestrix nodded in greeting as the evening breeze ruffled her feathered crest. "Gambit." She seemed horribly uncomfortable, but her jaw was set in a stubborn line Remy recognized from years of staring in the bathroom mirror, and in that instant all his thoughts of making things difficult for her evaporated.

"De name’s Remy."

She nodded again. "I know." Her lips curved in an oddly shy smile. "But we haven’t been properly introduced and I… didn’t want to presume."

Touched, Remy gallantly held out his hand. "Well, I guess we can fix dat. I’m Remy LeBeau."

"Lilandra Neramani." She shook his hand. The contact was brief, and they quickly separated. Remy found himself chuckling in acute embarrassment, and as he looked away his gaze swept across the wine bottle and flutes Lilandra held in her other hand.

He looked up at her in surprise. "You brought wine?"

She shrugged. "I can’t stomach the beer on this planet, and it is always easier to talk when the hands have something to do."

"Guess I can’ argue wit’ dat." Remy was amazed by how easily they had fallen into something approximating a normal conversation. He had to admit it felt a lot more like meeting a regular woman than trying to get acquainted with the mother he couldn’t remember, but for now that seemed good enough. He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he wanted contact-- any kind of contact-- with her. "What did y’ bring?"

Lilandra raised the bottle and offered it to him. "A random selection from the cellar, I’m afraid. I don’t read… whatever language the labels are written in. I hope I haven’t committed a terrible breach of wine etiquette."

Remy grinned as he studied the label. "Actually, y’ done pretty good." He made short work of the cork with his pocketknife and poured wine into the glasses Lilandra held out. Then, setting the bottle aside, he sat down on the edge of the dock and dangled one leg over the edge. Lilandra copied him and they ended up facing each other across a short gap.

Remy sipped his wine and tried to figure out what to say.

Lilandra cupped her glass in both hands and stared upward. "The stars are so bright here." Remy followed her gaze. "On Chandilar, the skies are always alight. You can barely see the stars at all. Here, they’re so bright they seem almost unreal."

Remy shrugged. "I’ve always been more o’ de city boy, m’self. Never spent much time lookin’ at stars."

Lilandra continued to study the sky. "There," she said after a minute, pointing. "Do you see that little bluish one, near the horizon?"

Remy followed the direction of her pointing hand and nodded. "I t’ink so."

"That’s the star Chandilar orbits." She turned to look at him, her gaze thoughtful. "It’s where you were hatched. Or will be, I suppose."

Remy simply stared at her as his stomach tried to crawl up his throat. "Hatched?" he finally managed to ask.

Lilandra regarded him quizzically for a moment before her expression cleared. "Oh, I suppose that would sound strange. Humans do have live births, don’t they? I had forgotten. Any child of mine would spend the last phase of gestation in an egg in the Aviary." She made a dismissive gesture, as if it weren’t terribly important. Remy, on the other hand, felt like his head was spinning and not just from the concept of being hatched. Lilandra had, however obliquely, laid claim to the fact that he was her child, her son, and a tight knot in his heart suddenly loosened in response.

"I wish I could remember y’," he said without realizing he was speaking the thought aloud.

Lilandra’s dark gaze met his, her expression vaguely troubled. "I hope they would be pleasant memories," she said softly.

Flushing, Remy looked away. "I… t’ink so." He pressed one hand to his heart, struggling to explain. "I c’n feel you. Here."

A short moment later, Lilandra reached over to touch his knee and he looked up into her face. Without his consciously willing it to, his hand sought out hers, curling around her slender fingers in a tight grip that echoed the nameless feelings in his heart.

"What’s de Shi’ar word f’ mother?" Remy finally asked.

"Aman."

"Aman." Remy tested the sound of the word, finding it far more comfortable than he could possibly have imagined. He nodded to himself. "Dat sounds right… feels right." He gave her a lopsided smile. "Do y’ mind if…?"

Lilandra’s smile glowed. "No, not at all."

"Aman it is, den."