The X-Project

The Blackbird arrives at the safehouse to pick up the four young telepaths, only to find out that something's gone a bit amiss and finding the girls to take them back to the mansion (without going insane in the process) might be a little more challenging than anticipated.


Scott really, really wished that simple pick-ups would stop developing horrendous complications. Was that too much to ask? First the mess in France, and now a government safehouse turned into a telepathic Bermuda Triangle. Lovely.

The first sign of trouble had been the failure of the safehouse to respond on the prearranged frequency, ten minutes out. The next had been five minutes later, when Jean had come running into the cockpit to tell him that the telepathic atmosphere in the immediate vicinity of the safehouse was in chaos, impossible to read.

The lights were on, he'd seen as they landed a safe distance away. Jean had said she could sense a number of people in the house, but not get any response from them. It was the girls, obviously, and Scott had to wonder what was going on. What had set them off. The possibility of being moved again, maybe? If the raid had been hard on them...

"... so I want you to focus on getting those FBI agents and the social workers out of there," he said to Kurt and Piotr. "Jean and I will try and get to the kids and talk them down." Scott smiled thinly. "Just remember the exercises the Professor taught us all and try to remember that most of what you're seeing isn't real." He was relying rather heavily on their ability to resist telepathic manipulation - theirs and his. And while both of them were good at it and he was better, none of them were telepaths. Their resistance was limited.

A lof this was going to depend on Jean. Scott was feeling a little grim about that. Nothing like throwing her right into the deep end...

All the fear in the building was pushing in on Jean, making it hard to sort through it all. It was nearly impossible to pin down where everyone in the building was, simply because most of them no longer knew. And at the center of it all there was her awareness of the girls - confused, scared, and desperate to be left alone. And telepaths who don't want to be found are difficult to pin down.

"Their mind is confusing," she said as Scott finished briefing the others and turned to her. "Even if they weren't trying to keep us out it would be... hard."

"This is new, isn't it?" he said, inclining his head in the direction of the house. If they led the way in, maybe the girls would focus the bulk of their attention on them rather than the other two. It was as good a tactic as any. "A group telepathic mind like this..."

"Yes, but it's not really surprising. Twins, even fraternal twins, have an understanding of each other dating back to their time in the womb that frequently seems to border on the telepathic. Identical twins even moreso, and identical mutant siblings who actually have a psi mutation... Well, it makes sense in a twisted sort of way. The room just inside the door is empty," she added, distractedly. "After you..."

Scott took a deep breath, composing his thoughts. The more he could do for himself, the less energy Jean would have to waste protecting him. They crossed the lawn towards the house, as Kurt and Piotr moved around the house to find another entrance. The door was... unlocked, he found as they reached the front door. In a high-security safehouse, the door was...

Something had happened. There were bullet holes in the walls of the mansion again, like there'd been after Stryker. Bullet holes, and blood splatters, and...

#Jean,# he thought shakily, clinging to the link. Not real. #Jean, what is this... defensive?#

#Yes...# Jean said slowly, coming forward. #They know we're here, but they don't know who we are or why. They don't have a lot of control. This is all... instinct. They're tapping their instincts, and into ours. Instinctive fears, remembered terrors.# They were too strong for her to unravel the whole illusion, but she focused to pierce through as much of it as she could, shielding herself and Scott from the brunt of it and trying not to attract the girls' attention to herself in the process.

The 'mansion' seemed to pale a little, the colors fading. Like an old photograph. More than enough to make it clear enough that it wasn't real. Scott took another deep breath, considerably more unsteady this time, and felt Jean take his hand. #All right. Guess we just have to stay focused, here?#

#Yes.# Jean's mental voice clearly showed the strain of trying to fight through the fear and projections that surrounded them. #They're... up?# She sounded uncertain, but the miasma of emotions seemed to center somewhere above them.

Scott tried not to laugh, knowing that it would probably come out sounding a little hysterical. #Any ideas as to where up is? I'm still seeing the mansion...#

She tightened her grip on his hand, having trouble focusing through the mental plane back onto the purely physical one. As her concentration shifted, the faint outlines of a certain dam-turned-milatary-hideout flickered in her vision, thickening, but they were more an overlay of the more solid-looking walls of the actual building. #This way...# Keeping tight hold of Scott's hand, Jean headed towards a door set incongruously behind the outline of the ruined control panel that Logan had destroyed to close the flood gates.

Scott caught the flash of Alkali Lake and swallowed. #Maybe not a lot of control,# he said, following her closely, #but a lot of insight, for kids...# Her grip on his hand was like a lifeline. It occurred to him that he should be trying to get through to the others on the coms, or get Jean to find them... but the important thing was to get to these girls and get them to settle down.

#Yes, but luckily, not a lot of finesse.# As they moved into the next room, Jean could feel the illusions shifting around them, trying to find a way to keep them back. But seeing how they built the illusion, it was easier to find the holes in it, find the path through. #And not enough presence of mind to do anything more devious than put the heaviest illusion over the path...# she added, heading down the hallway towards a staircase she could only just make out at the other end.

#Charles is going to have his hands full,# Scott sent a bit wildly, and then froze. That was not water rushing at them. Definitely not. And this was not the bunker on Youra, and damn it, Jean. Jean and water. His hand tightened on hers almost crushingly. #Not real,# he sent to her, wondering who he was trying to convince, him or herself.

Not real. Not real not real not real... Every muscle in Jean's body had tensed as the water rushed towards them, echoing in both their minds and making it just that much harder to remember that it was an illusion. Fighting her own instincts, Jean desperately tried to keep her telekinesis from switching on, reaching out telepathically towards the illusion. NotrealnotrealnotrealNotRealNotRealNOTREALNOTREAL!!! The illusion shattered around them, leaving the hallway entirely clear for a few seconds, and there was no way the girls wouldn't have noticed that, but just now Jean didn't care.

Scott took a step back, sliding an arm around Jean. "Look at me," he murmured. #Look at me, Jean,# he repeated on the link, more forcefully, and she did. #I wasn't there when the water hit,# he said with a vehemence that surprised him a little. #But I'm here now, so we're not there.# Logic.

Jean took a careful breath, and then another, and there wasn't any water in her lungs. Scott was here. Scott was here. Slowly the shaking stopped, and she nodded. She would not collapse. Not now, anyways. After... They would deal with that later. "Let's go... Let's go find them before they recover enough to hit back."

Keeping his arm around her, Scott led her towards the stairs. #Maybe if we thought of the school?# he sent, pulling images up out of his memory. #Showed them that it's nothing to be afraid of...#

#You mean I'm not allowed to stick them in retroactive detention for the next year?# But she latched onto the idea, projecting his images and her own memories of the school as a safe haven, a home, a place to be accepted and to learn. It seemed to work, to an extent. The illusions net throughout the building which had begun to reform right away shivered in her awareness as the girls attention was diverted slightly.

Scott concentrated on the memories, and on welcoming thoughts, avoiding anything else but the positive images. If he didn't give them anything to snatch at to use in their projections... There were stairs beneath their feet, and Scott smiled.

In with the fear and anger Jean could now taste a sort of confusion, almost as though the mind were disagreeing with itself. Which, given there were four different girls making up the one 'mind', probably wasn't that unlikely. #Would you at least talk to us?# she sent out towards that confusion, and a shocked silence met her projection. "Scott, has anyone ever even told them there are other telepaths in the world?" she wondered aloud.

"Possibly not. Given the conditions they were raised in..." What he'd read of the files that had been forwarded to Charles weren't quite as horrific as some of the other mutant research programs they'd run into had been, but it was bad enough. "Near-total isolation..."

With the illusions still clear, at least around them, she and Scott were able to make much greater progress through the building. And the girls weren't trying to hide from her, although it was possible they simply didn't know how. "Their telepathic defense training seems to have left much to be desired. Which is good for us, and makes sense if they've never had to deal with another telepath. Next floor," Jean said. "The middle room."

They headed up the next flight of stairs, and Scott froze as he saw not the hall, but the library in that school in Rio, and there were children's bodies everywhere.... He faltered, his grip on the link with Jean slipping even if his physical hold didn't.

"Oh, that's a low blow..." Jean breathed as what Scott was seeing echoed down the link. The hallway in front of her remained as it should be, but the girls were learning and it was harder to shield his mind this time. Instead she went for the direct route. #Stop it,# she sent, her mental voice taking on just a hint of her 'you will listen to me or else, young ladies' teacher tone. #Do you want detention for a month?# And with the question came the thought of just how normal a life they could lead, where worrying about detention and doing homework would be a good forty percent of their total worries, and what the boys thought would make up another forty.

The illusion faded suddenly, and Scott shivered, shaking it off. The hall was there in front of them, where it should be. "Gah," he muttered. "Let's get in there, shall we?"

Jean's arm tightened around him and she nodded. "Yes, let's. We've got some students to collect."