Xaviers!

Tereza knocks on Ashlie's office door, unfolding the paper in her hand and staring at it.

"Come in." Ashlie's voice comes from inside.

Tereza steps in, closing the door behind her, "Thanks for making time for me. I ran into a potential... complication lately and there's only so much searching I can do on my own." She unfolded the paper again and passed it across to Ashlie. It was an Interpol wanted notice for a Natalya Romanov.

"A wanted criminal, arguably terrorist, depending on your definition." she says as a way to get Tereza to elaborate. She can draw her own conclusions, but this would probably be better if it came from her.

"We crossed paths recently and she claims that she's..." Tereza seems to search for the way to put it, "my biological mother after a fashion."

"And you think she might be right. You're worried this might be a conflict of interest, so to speak?"

"I think, and Sam thinks as well, that the visual similarities are too much to ignore." She gestures at the picture, "She says I'm probably better off never running into her again, but I can't help but wonder, you know? And she also indicated that I'm likely not the last of whoever is trying to duplicate her. So I'm hoping if I can find out more about her..."

"And you're hoping I might be able to help?"

"You have access to avenues I don't. And I think..." She took a deep breath, "I really need your help on this one."

"I do, although it seems you already dug up quite a bit of official information. I can try to look into Russian sources, but they have been shoring up their cyber-security lately. Your conception might not predate the fall of the Iron Curtain but if her involvement with them did then I might be able to find some information in countries that used to be part of the USSR."

"Beyond Interpol, all I have is hearsay from some of the mutant-friendly havens on the internet that say she's been in Madripoor at some point. She did say she used to be in the Russian programs, so whatever they're doing, it's been going on a long time."

"I will look into it. Unfortunately, the further back the harder it is to find digital records. But I will let you know if I find any leads that might warrant investigation." she says, plugging the information Tereza has gathered into her own search algorithms.

"Anything additional will be helpful. I'm hoping I can figure out more and put a stop to whoever is doing this."

"I'll do what I can. We can't tolerate mutants being treated like that."

Natalya turns up quite often in Ashlie's searches, rather like a bad penny. Most of the charges of terrorism are from fairly oppressive countries. She tends to target human trafficking, drug operations, child soldier programs, and the like. She bursts onto the scene some twenty years ago.

Before that there's less to go off of, though Ashlie's facial recognition software does pick up a few hits of a woman strongly resembling Natalya in Russian press events, wearing a military uniform. In nearly all of these events, she appears to be serving as a bodyguard for prominent Russian political and military figures.

"Looks like she had a falling out with Russia's leadership at some point." Ashlie says as she pulls the relevant pictures up for Tereza to see.

"She did say she told the program what would happen if they tried to find her." She studies the pictures, "Looks like she hasn't aged a day."

"Hard to tell for certain, but it's possible. Do you know the extent of her powers?"

"She's definitely a cryokinetic, but I saw her leap to the top of a building, so maybe super strength as well? If that's the case, it might explain my sister's powers, assuming she's a part of the same experiment. It would also explain why they want to replicate her."

"Certainly a powerset a weapon program would be very interested in. More so if she ages slowly."

"They told her that her body was changing and they took 'my sister and me' from her as a precaution as she put it. Don't know if the mother I grew up with was a surrogate or not, but given what I remember, it wouldn't surprise me either way. And Svetlana would have been too young to know if something funky was going on. Natalya said that she hoped they didn't take from me what they took from her."

Ashlie frowns. "How old were you when you escaped the program?"

"I was 15 when the Brotherhood broke me out."

"Then I suppose it's a possibility. Do you know if the facility they held you at still operates?"

"I suppose it's possible, but the Brotherhood made a big splash when they busted the place open. I'm not sure they'd keep it operational if its position was compromised like that. Stranger things have happened though. It was near Zelenogorsk. Very controlled access if memory serves."

"I can try to pull some satellite images, but that'll only tell us so much. Even if it's shut down though it might hold clues as to what happened."

"Well, with enough images, we might be able to get some feeling of activity, but you're right. It still isn't going to be a substitute for people on site." She frowns, thumbing through something on her phone, "Zelenogorsk is still a closed city. We'd need some reason to be there or we'd have to avoid the city entirely. Given that the Russians are probably looking for me, avoiding it might be the way to go."

"The Blackbird is capable of avoiding detection by nearly all means." she says, although her head twitches rapidly as her head turns a little before it snaps back into position and below the Point subroutines strain against each other. Circumstances were forcing her into more and more grey areas or outright illegal activity and her work-arounds are only barely holding. "Not that I am advising you use it to violate Russian a-a-a-airspace."

"Of course not," Tereza says, noting the jitter. "You're just informing me of its capabilities. I am interested in learning to fly it, of course."

"There is a flight training program in the Danger Room. Get Haley to take it with you, I understand she's had some aviation lessons."

"Worth a try," Tereza says, "Oh, one other point of investigation from an informant that might turn up some leads. It looks like there's a major contractor called Islands Industries. They're ostensibly a contractor for the Russian military, but they're getting paid quite a lot for not being in the spotlight. So if they're tied up in this mutant program, it'd probably be good to know what their line is."

"That's easy enough to look up." she says as her programming sends out yet another query.

"They're not publicly traded, no official announcement of contracts. The Russian stock market isn't showing any indications that huge amounts of money are being moved, but that's no definite answer. You would expect other stock to fall if a different company signed a major contract. No job listings, hires or sub-contracting. Could be a subsidiary of another company, buried under paperwork somewhere or a private venture. No suppliers have seen any significant increase in demand. There's... some rumors about prototype tests, things that exceed even Stark level of tech. But we're talking conspiracy forums and similar sources. UFOs, secret flight tests, cloak fields. The same poster claims the Chelyabinsk meteor was a test-missile burning up in the atmosphere and regularly retweets reports about little green men and cryptozoology."

"Nothing wrong with a little cryptozoology now and again," Tereza says, maybe a bit too pointedly. "So they don't do anything official, but sell nebulous stuff to the Russian Navy, at least as far as we know from the documents we managed to acquire. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time corruption ate up the Russian military, but I'd be willing to bet they're the ones who time-stalled that Russian admiral and took his place so they could assassinate the representative from Black Lotus. Do I need to stick some little green men in there to sound just as crazy?"

"Clearly something is going on. But if we believe every lunatic on an internet forum we will get nowhere. It's possible someone is simply producing Hypertech equipment and is leveraging it for all it's worth."

"Yeah, I don't buy it. The Black Lotus is a pricey expenditure if all you're doing is making super-gadgets." She flexes her fingers as she thinks, "Guess I need to do some digging of my own."

"Be my guest."

"I think I'll talk to X-23 first. See if she has some additional light to shed. She's cleared to fly the Blackbird right? Just in case I want to see what I'm getting myself into by learning to fly the thing."

"She is indeed. And I cannot imagine she has much love for mutant breeding programs."

"Sounds like the best place to start then." She turns towards the door, before adding quietly and oddly respectfully, "Let me know if you find anything else out, please?"

"I will. Up to date satellite images depend on orbits of those I have access to, but I will send you anything I can find."