Xaviers!

"No time," Will grunted, his arm lighting up and sparking. "What do you need cut up?"

"Open up the casing on this thing."

"Everyone look away, unless you've got regenerating eyes," Will said, before beginning to cut along the seam of the arm.

The bright flame touches the smooth surface of the arm and for a moment the flame doesn't seem to do anything. It takes a couple moments before a hole begin to form. There's a sudden hiss of a slight pressure equalization and it becomes easier to extent the breach. At first there's a couple sparks when Will cuts through a tightly packed assembly of electronics and miniaturized machinery, then suddenly a clear liquid wells up from the cut and sizzles when it comes into contact with the flame. It takes a couple of minutes to cut a 10 square-inch segment free and pulling it away reveals the burned out segment of what once was filters, oxygen reclamation and a whole array of things that make no sense to Will. Nestled next to it inside another casing of clear plastic and leaking fluid where the flame has punctured it is a human brain along with a literal handful of partial organs, pulsing rapidly as if in sudden distress.

"That explains why the spell wasn't working," Sean said staring at the organs pulsing in distress.

"....Uhhhh, now. I know my knowledge of biology is limited, but this is not....in any way shape or form normal. Should we rush this to the medbay?"

"Yes! I don't know what they could even do, but go!"

Before Ashlie is even done talking there's a faint whirring sound of a miniature pump and the organs in the shell suddenly turn grey as some kind of injection spreads through them, killing the tissue and making it shrivel up.

"Ah ah ah." Reach's voice suddenly seems to echo through the room. "Manikin informs me you managed to crack open his arm. Bit unfortunate, that, but maybe it can serve as a... preview. Bit of a motivation, perhaps. Because if the ones we chose survive our tests they are going to join us, one way or the other. Char chose correctly. Her clairvoyant friend... well, he still helped out in the end."

Natalie immediately begins searching for clairvoyant associates of Char, the image on her monitor freezing as she devotes her mental power to the search.

She doesn't find any arrest records or rap sheet, but Char's known associates mentions a suspected mutant tracker or clairvoyant selling their services to criminals, operating out of Mutant Town.

Her monitor is overlayed with the information she's finding, immediately sharing it with Ashlie as well. Then she starts hitting up some of the Mutant Town community "forums" for lack of a better term looking for mentions of someone going missing: Twitter lists, small hosted forums, their NextDoor site, etc.

Mutant Town is a big community, predominantly low-income with high crime-rates and a large homeless population. Needless to say that Natalie finds a treasure trove of missing people that would take a while to sort through.

She communicates it to Ashlie all the same.

Code: Select all

List is too big.

"So, is this the clairvoyant," Natalie ponders out loud, "Or is this a piece of Manikin?"

"Perhaps the doctors could figure that out by examining the brain, but I wonder how...relevant that point is right now. This is a time for action."

Natalie frowns, "Every piece of this puzzle could be important. Just because you don't know where this piece goes at the moment doesn't mean it's a good idea to ignore it."

"Fortunately we do have the number advantage and can split our attention. Natalie, take this to the medical lab. We'll see if we can figure anything out that could be helpful. Sean, wherever you think you might be the most useful. Will, continue working on a plan of attack to lure them out of hiding while I definitely avoid gaining access to Maldon's closed circuit camera network."

"I don't need to plan. I'll go lure them out," Will said, standing up.

Ashlie, partially distracted and assuming Will is planning on bringing back-up to spring as a trap, nods.

"You're resilient enough to be okay, but do be careful."

"Don't waste the processing power to worry about lil' ol me," Will said, exiting stage right.