Xaviers!

"We should stay together, just in case. This doesn't quite smell right," he said, pun unrealized.

"Okay then," Tereza says, starting to prowl up the stairs hunting for Sam's mystery contact.

It's easy enough to narrow it down and pretty soon they find themselves standing in front of what appears to be a broom closet of some sort. Judging by the rooms to the left and right of it there can't be much room in there, but it's definitely where the presence is coming from.

"A closet? What could they have possibly put in here?" Tereza looks at the door, reaching to open it without thinking.

Tereza swings the door open and comes face to face with Admiral Rothrakov!

Whose face seems to be frozen in a startled surprised that looks almost comedic once the initial shock has worn off. He's wearing slacks and a polo-shirt and his hands are halfway raised in a defensive gesture, a look of utter confusion on his face. He doesn't move at all, or at least until the initial surprise of finding him standing in a closet wears off. At a closer look his eyelids are moving ever so slightly in an incredibly slow-motion blink. On a shelf next to him, standing out from the regular clutter you'd expect to find in a broom closet, is a small metal disc, maybe 3 inches wide and half an inch thick, giving of a hum so feint even Tereza's ears can barely hear it.

The hum is briefly interrupted by a drawn-out toooooock, that breaks the stunned silence as the watch on the Admiral's wrist finishes ticking out a second. The rest of the watch-face, along with it's date indicator, is frozen at several weeks ago.

After a moment of not understanding what he was seeing, he said, "I knew that guy wasn't Russian."

"I'm guessing that whatsit is doing this to him somehow."

"So how confident are we that he'll be grateful to be let loose?"

"He's Russian and we're mutants... so... probably not much?" Tereza says, reaching for the device anyway to look for a way to shut it off.

"He'll probably just assume we're with the people who did this to him."

The device is labelled with symbols in some kind of foreign language. There are no obvious buttons but it seems to be designed to respond to touch-input and the dial in the middle looks like it turns, presumably to determine some kind of settings. It definitely seems to be keeping up the pocket of slow-time the Admiral is trapped in. It doesn't seem like picking it up would immediately disperse the effect, but it probably has some kind of range restriction for sustaining the effect.

Tereza glares at the dial as if she can intimidate it into submission, holding her arm out away from the closet with the device in it. She begins moving away, trying to break the device's effect on the closet.

She makes it a couple steps and the Admiral suddenly starts to move again, raising his arms all the way and shouting in Russian.

"<...are you doing!? Who are yo...>" He trails off when he realizes the situation he's in has suddenly changed. "<What is going on here!?>" he demands, though he doesn't quite manage to keep the sound of fear out of his voice.

"...we're rescuing you," she says, her Russian too rudimentary to say it in anything but English. She tries to radiate reassurance.

"<What happened to the... the impostor? He was just here!>"

"<He is likely long gone, along with a number of other things. Your watch is several weeks out of date,>" she says, gesturing at his wrist watch.

"<What are you talking about?>" he asks, glancing at his watch. "<Who are you people?>"

"<The people who rescued you,>" Tereza says, trying to keep up a running translation in her head for Sam to feed off of. "<What do you know about Islands Industries?>"

"<They're a contractor for the military. I was supposed to meet with them. Now how is that any of your business?>"

"<So you were supposed to meet with your contractor and you ended up a prisoner of some high tech device? Use your brain, what does that tell you about your contractor?>" The aforementioned device has mysteriously vanished into one of Tereza's pockets.

"<I'm perfectly capable of drawing conclusions, young lady. But this could just as well be an attempt to interfere with Russian affairs and sabotage our military. By say a group of rogue Mutants?>" he says, clearly having pegged them as such. However he does not seem too eager to call for security as one might expect if he really suspected them of anything.

"<There are many reasons I could give to dislike your precious military, but there are quite a few better ways to sabotage it than screwing with a single admiral. Aside from which, I don't have the patience to play the kind of convoluted game you are suggesting.>"

"<Then you should leave before someone with less inclination to be thankful to you draws that conclusion. And like it or not, a single Admiral has much more influence than some small-time terrorist raging against society.>" he adds, patronizingly.

"<Just remember who screwed you over and who saved you, because I will be watching.>" Time to go.

Without another word, Tereza turns and heads for the back door.

The Admiral glares at them, but doesn't keep them from leaving.

Chase followed Tereza out. He wondered if the fire engine guy's powers were simply technology, or if this Islands Industries had somehow duplicated the effects of a mutant ability. The latter felt unlikely. But, then again, he was as knowledgeable about science as a lemur is about chess.

"Now we get to our pickup and get the hell out of here," Tereza says as soon as they are outside, "Get the science types to look over the device and dig some more into this Island Industries."

"I can already picture Tosh doing his happy dance."

"I'll pass on witnessing that," Tereza says, leading them away from the house to head back towards their boat out.