ArchivedLogs:Stages

Stages
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Micah, Hive, Flicker	28 July 2013 Revelations and planning in the aftermath of the Morlock raid.
Location <XS> Medical Lab - B1
Gleaming and sterile, the school's medical facility is all cool science in contrast to the mansion's old-world old-fashion. All stainless steel and antiseptic tinge, the room is filled with the quiet whir-click of the various implements that comprise its medical equipment -- all state-of the art. The hospital beds are curtained off for privacy when they have patients, and in one of the alcoves there is a small operating theatre visible. More heavy-duty equipment is visible in the lab in the back, where the securely locked cabinets keep sensitive equipment out of the reach of teenage fingers. It’s just turned afternoon at Xavier’s, and on a summer Sunday this means the school is a lazy place. Students outside playing, students gaming in the rec room, a few /industrious/ ones actually knuckling down early to make sure their work is finished for Monday though most are putting this off till later tonight. Somewhere upstairs there is lunch being served. Down here there is mostly quiet. Jackson is nestled down in his bed -- he still looks pale, still lacking any of his habitual touches of illusion to cover scars or add bright colour, but he is awake, at least! He currently has a small pair of earbuds plugged in to his phone; he’s listening to it /reading/ him his email rather than reading it himself. Micah is ensconced in his annexed chair-territory again, though looking rather more like himself than he has for the past few days. He is dressed in a pair of patched jeans and a white T-shirt depicting a jubilant T-rex with an adaptive reaching aid in each hand, under the heading 'UNSTOPPABLE!'. His laptop is open on his lap, and he is typing away diligently at ohmygosh such a backlog of e-mails and paperwork from ignoring work for several days. He occasionally reaches over for a mug of heavily-sugared coffee sitting on a nearby table, taking generous swigs from it before returning to his typing. “Hi, guys! Is visiting okay?” Flicker’s tone is warm, as ever, his voice quiet but his smile bright. The teleporter slips in the /normal/ way, through the doors! Dressed pretty summer-light in jean shorts, flip flops, a t-shirt with a little turtle saying ‘Trust me!’ as he upends a vat of green ooze over three other turtles. “I brought strawberries. With chocolate on.” Hive doesn’t ask if visiting is okay. Entering behind Flicker, he has hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, shoulders hunched in his plain black t-shirt. He slouches his way across the room to the bedside, surveying the room more mentally than visually. “You’re awake.” Jackson’s smile is immediate, at the sound of that voice. His attention shifts towards the door. “Flicker! Hey, honey-honey. /’Course/ it’s okay, how’re you doing?” Mentally he is -- tired, mostly, nursing a splitting headache and a lingering /everything/-ache. Wrestling with the extremely jarring feeling of /not/ having control quite back yet, leaving the light around him feeling oddly distant. Still kind of fuzzy-blurry in his vision, hard to focus properly as yet though it’s been steadily improving. “Soooort of awake,” he agrees with a soft laugh, “kinda struggling on that, though. Need more caffeine. -- Oh my /gosh/ you brought chocolate covered strawberries, Flicker I could /kiss/ you.” “Ohgosh, more than okay!” Micah taps a save button before thudding his laptop closed, perhaps a bit harder than would be recommended for such equipment. He sets it aside on the table where his other goods are gathered. Almost immediately, he is on his feet (ignoring twinges of /ouch/ from assorted mild injuries) and bounding over to Flicker for /hugs/. Bouncing on over to Hive in turn afterwards. He is actually /legitimately/ cheerful, if a bit tired under it all. More than superficial inspection would reveal that he is deliberately avoiding thinking about certain topics. “Mmm, fruit an' chocolate. S'a Jax special order. Thanks, Flicker.” Jax is given an amused smirk at his comment. “If you really want to.” Flicker returns Micah’s hug tightly. Afterwards he fishes a box out of his messenger bag, opening it to set it on Jax’s bedstand -- as promised, it is quite full of strawberries dipped in dark chocolate. “Two of you should eat them all, I think we ate about seven hundred this morning.” Hive is more tense, in the hug. He lifts a hand to give Micah a vague back-pat by way of returning it, but then returns his hands to his pockets. “Get some fucking caffeine, then. Got work to do.” Jackson sets his phone down, shutting its screen off and lifting one arm for a hug, himself. “-- uh.” His smile fades at Hive’s words, his nose wrinkling. “Work? What work it’s Sunday. Are /you/ going to get me caffeine?” His hand falls back to the mattress beside him. His head tips to the side, a kind of unfocused glance tossed in Micah’s general direction before, /resigned/, he allows: “-- What’s up?” Micah walks back to his table, fetching his half-cup of coffee and depositing it on Jax's bedside table. Share? He steals a strawberry to nibble on while he's there, not needing to be told twice. Micah pushes himself up to sit on the edge of Jax's bed, looking to Hive expectantly. “Hive, he’s only barely --” Flicker starts; he stops with a sudden /wince/, a grimace of fleeting pain. “Yeah. Not really /swimming/ in time, though.” With Micah taking a seat on the edge of Jax’s bed, Hive drops down to sit in Micah’s chair. “That shit in the sewers. I know where they took people. We gotta --” He shrugs. “-- Suit up again,” Flicker says with a very small uncertain smile. “Or -- well. You’re the one who --” He frowns down at the bed. “Sorry, Micah, we’re --” “Putting you in the middle of a whole lot of shit again.” Hive doesn’t sound sorry. “You down for being a terrorist again? Seemed to suit you with the cops’ bullshit.” “Oh -- I --” Jackson shifts uncomfortably in his bed, turning a little bit more towards Micah. He reaches past the other man to pluck out a strawberry, too, starting to nibble on it. “You know -- oh, gosh. How many -- /who/ -- who did they take, where.” He frowns. “I thought they just came for Nox, who’s -- are people.” His next bite of strawberry is a little more chompy than necessary. He’s struggling to dredge his mind out of fuzzy-pain-exhaustion and into more helpful alertness. “No. I guess people probably ain’t ok -- Hive, who did. They take. And where.” “Hive, we ain't had a chance... D'you know what happened? An' t’who? Who those guys were working for?” Micah nods, deferring to Jax as he puts forth more questions. He offers a wry half-smile to Hive. “I can do what I /can/ do. I mean. I'm not exactly great at infiltration or anythin' like that. I guess. Kinda support staff?” He fusses at his hair with the back of a hand. “I mean, I just don't know what needs t'be done.” He scoots his hip over to Jax, offering some support in the form of sheer proximity. “Take a minute if you need a minute,” Hive sounds like he is grumbling at this, narrowing eyes at Jackson. Or maybe at Jackson’s /brain/. “But then this is important.” For a moment he doesn’t answer questions. His teeth grind in a slow creaking sound. Flicker moves almost absently to the side of the chair, resting a hand on Hive’s shoulder. “-- Jim,” he answers, quietly. “And that -- one who --” His fingers wave towards his face. “Screws people up.” His lips press together, thin. It takes a /very/ long moment before he adds (more than a little uncomfortably): “And Nox.” There’s a bristling mental /pressure/ that accompanies this last name, pushing at the minds of the others in the room. It withdraws soon enough, even if Hive’s silent mental /listening/ does not. “-- at a military base, right now. Being moved soon enough. Labs.” “-- oh. Right.” For a moment, Jackson’s mind is strangely blank, a quiet detachment as he settles in more closely against Micah’s side. Only a moment; it doesn’t take long before rather /unpleasant/ Promethean memories start filtering back in. But after that, it doesn’t take long before they’re /quashed/ again, determinedly focused instead on the task at hand. “-- Nox.” This is rather /baffled/. “But the news said -- oh.” His jaw tightens. He finishes his first strawberry, setting the leafy top down in the lid of the box and taking another. “Jim -- oh, gosh, Hive, I’m --” He doesn’t say sorry. He just closes his eye, and nods. “Military base where? When’re they getting moved? Hive, I --” This sounds guilty. “I ain’t in /no/ shape to be.” His words falter for a moment; it’s clearly not /easy/ for him to voluntarily sit /out/, but: “-- I can’t even barely get out of bed, I can’t.” This stops, too. He draws in another breath. “-- Always need drivin’,” he tells Micah. “An’ some basics’a first aid an’ -- supply-gathering. S’gonna depend on where an’ when this is going down, though. I -- don’t think we can hit a military base.” Micah rests a comforting hand /lightly/ on Jax's shoulder, the other holding on to a half-consumed strawberry. “Jim, oh, again...” Micah frowns at that announcement, but is confused silent when Nox's name is added to the list. There is a sick twist in his stomach. “What?” He eventually manages to start processing the information being delivered again. “Military? Like...generic military, or actual US government military?” His eyebrows dip severely toward one another. “I can...do those things,” he says of the tasks Jax names. “Do we know when they're movin'? That's what they do when...like in movies. When they need t'get t'someone. The weak point's in the transport.” He frowns again. Movie advice, probably not the strongest. “This week. I can tell you where the base is now. I can’t tell you where they’re going yet, just --” Hive frowns. Deeply. “US government military,” Flicker supplies, softer. “Jax, I don’t think anyone /expects/ you to be up for --” “You need rest,” Hive agrees shortly. “You’re just also the best at this shit. And I need -- fuck.” His words come softly, through his teeth. “We need to fucking get him.” “The news lied,” Flicker clarifies simply. “About Nox. They’re taking her to a lab instead of jail.” Hive’s teeth grind again. “This week.” Jackson slowly continues to nibble at his strawberry. “We /could/ hit ‘em up in transit, yeah,” he agrees. “Though Hive, if you -- if they have /drivers/, if you could -- figure out where they’d be going /anyway/ --” Then they can hit that facility, /too/, is the unfinished thought. “I don’t think Ryan’s around this week,” he adds, exceedingly /glumly/, “and Josh’s schedule --” His teeth dig in against his lip. “Well. Can check. But I think we’re gonna need some extra -- do we know any way to reach out to Nox’s folk? Can any of them help?” “Actual government military,” Micah echoes, a little too stunned to reach the appropriate level of being intimidated. “So...she's alive? They just...kidnapped her. /Again/.” He looks at the half a strawberry in his hand like he isn't quite sure what it is or why he's holding it. “That's not a lot of people on our end,” he comments, a little sigh of frustration interrupted by Jax's question. “Anole. He's here. He'll know how t'get into contact with his folks if anyone would. Oh/gosh/, he should really know that Nox isn't dead.” “No,” Flicker sounds a little sad about this, “he shouldn’t, yet.” “-- Cuz if we fuck this up,” Hive points out bluntly, “she might still be.” “He could get you in touch with his people, though, probably.” Flicker is still standing by Hive’s side, leaning his weight just slightly into the hand that rests on Hive’s shoulder. “I hope someone in those fucking sewers packs a good goddamn punch,” Hive grumbles with a grind of his knuckles in against his eye. “Because if they /do/ get them all the way to the lab --” He tenses, head bowing. One of his hands lifts to the one Flicker rests on his shoulder; his fingers trace against the scars pitted into Flicker’s skin, acid-remnants similar to but far deeper than the ones Jackson bears. There’s a long stretch of silence before he looks at Jax. “-- If they do get them all the way to the lab,” comes lower, “and we have to go in there after them --” His teeth grind. “I’ve followed your lead to hell and goddamn back but if it comes down to /our/ people or leaving her behind she can fucking --” Flicker’s fingers curl in tighter against his shoulder. “We’ll just have to get them sooner, then, won’t we,” he interrupts with a good deal of level calm in contrast to Hive’s teeth-grinding. Jackson exhales, slowly. There is somewhere in his mind a twisted-knotted storm of emotion. Memories. Ian sucking all the light out of the facility Nox was liberated from. “If it comes down to that --” His voice is leaden-heavy; his eye closes. He draws in a slow breath. “Whatever it comes down to, I still gotta know that m’team’s gonna /listen/ to me when everything’s exploding.” It’s calmer, in his mind, now; perhaps not at any deep level but a steady surface veneer of focus. “Get me an address. And a date. I’ll ask Anole to reach out to his people an’ hope to God there’s enough of ‘em to pull this off. Find --” His lips compress for a moment. “-- Murphy, maybe. For help with looking into the base.” His head falls slightly to one side, resting up against Micah’s side with a sudden wilt of exhaustion. “It's...I don't...seems like her folks should have the right t'know what's goin' on,” Micah protests, albeit rather weakly. He's not looking to fight the issue. “Some of the folks I've met from there are pretty impressive,” he assures instead, a memory of Tatters's impressive strength (ironically, against Masque) flashing through his mind. Flicker's sentiment of freeing the people before they go to a lab earns a nod, a better thing to focus on than deciding who is worth rescuing and at what cost. He listens quietly to Jax's planning until he starts to fade. “You need a break, hon,” Micah's voice comes just above a whisper to Jax as he reaches for a cup of water, holding it out near the other man's hand. He looks back at Hive and Flicker, knowing Jax is unlikely to request the needed rest himself. “This is a lot right now, could we...maybe try t'do this in stages?” “Yeah. They should. And they will --” Hive flicks his fingers towards Jax, “if we’re going to, uh, need them to do this -- entire thing. Fuck. Ngh -- I just don’t know if -- it’d be worse for Anole. To know. If she ends up dying anyway.” Flicker just shrugs. His eyes focus on Jax for a moment, and then shift away. “Stages. Yeah. OK. You just --” Hive’s posture doesn’t really wilt so much as vaguely shift to lean into Flicker’s hand, but there’s a definite abrupt /heaviness/ to his expression. “-- just let us know. What you guys need.” This finishes softer than the rest. “Thank you,” Jackson murmurs softly, taking the water from Micah and sipping it slowly. “Some’a their folks are pretty much badass. They’ll -- they should be able to.” This drifts off into a long pensive silence. “Right now I need more of these strawberries. After that -- after that I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. One stage at a time.”