The X-Project

Mark and Sarah prepare to take down the kidnappers, offering Mark a glimpse into the utter weirdness that is the Snow Valley Memorial Center for Mutant Affairs.


Mark dropped his satchel on the bench and pulled up a stool. His omnipresent iPod was hooked up to a dock and softly playing the Mission Impossible theme. Music fiend though he is, he doesn't work well with 1960s television music blasting around him. "This shouldn't take too long, er, Sarah was it?" he said, opening the bag and withdrawing a couple of small cardboard boxes.

"Sarah, yeah." Decked out in her clubbing clothes, Sarah couldn't look any less like somebody going out to help bring down a kidnapping ring. She looked at the boxes curiously. "Wait... what's in those?"

"Parts," Mark told her, showing her various bits of electronics. He plopped down on the stool and pulled the big magnifying lens to his face so he could see the tiny pieces. "I tend to disassemble as many things as I build, so I don't have anything ready made. But sounds devices like these are my specialty. Give me a straw and a wad of chewing gum and I'll go all MacGyver, sans mullet of course. Because seriously? Eww. Who did his hair?"

Sarah gave him a blank look, then blinked and shook her head. "I'm going to pretend that whatever you just said makes sense to people who didn't spend large chunks of their childhood living in the sewers. Because me? Not so much." Did she really want to know who this MacGyver guy was? Finally she decided against it, and added, "So you're going to build whatever it is they're going to use to keep tabs on me, right here?"

"We're going to keep tabs," Mark corrected. He'd made damn sure of the we. "Just a little microphone and speaker and tracking device. Not CIA quality, but, well, the CIA would probably just send you in and leave you."

"That's reassuring," came the dry response, "and are you just a behind the scenes guy, or are you coming out to kick ass when the time comes?" She tucked a strand of hair behind a bone horn on her forehead, and leaned back against the wall to watch him work.

"For what they did to my people? Kick some fucking ass, that's what." From the back lines. After the way Wanda skillfully managed to hand his ass to him two nights ago, he had no illusions that getting too close would be hazardous to his health.

Sarah gave him a once over, considering just how much damage he might be able to do. "Just checking. So how long will this take you?"

Mark licked his lips as he carefully fitted bits of equipment into a small silvery box, no bigger than a penny. "Not too long. It's mostly a jigsaw puzzle here, getting the right pieces to fit in." He glanced at Sarah out the corner of his eye before returning to his project. "So what do you do here at the illustrious Snow Valley Memorial Center for Mutant Affairs?"

"Not much, up until recently." She stretched out, already fidgety from the anticipation of what would hopefully take place tonight. "But they sound pretty interested in having me go back to the degree I was working on before I was so rudely kidnapped and turned into a human organ farm. Seems there's a demand for someone with a communications background in this place."

"Human organ farm?" Mark nearly faltered in his work and swore at himself for his clumsiness. "That's not what they're doing here, is it?" They didn't cover that on Law & Order: SVU.

"With some, maybe." Sarah shrugged, stuffing her hands in her pockets. "If they grab on to somebody who regrows everything like me, I'm sure they have a field day with them."

Mark pulled out what looked like a really old PDA, turned it on, and started fiddling with its settings. "I've heard about bad shit happening to mutants, but this? What the fuck. Who's sick enough to do that?"

"They're out there. Hang around us long enough, and you'll notice we attract them like magnets." She scratched at her collarbone, where a thin patch of bone was starting to form against the skin. "And some of us are more prone to it than others."

With a snort, Mark put the PDA down and reached into his bag for a leather choker, and began fixing the bug to it. "Maybe if Remy didn't wear that trench coat all the time then he'd stop looking so suspicious and people would just leave him and you alone."

Sarah chuckled darkly, and shook her head. "God, I wish I could just go back to blaming him for all my problems. It made life so much simpler. It made me a little more psychotic, but at least I had an answer." She gave him another look, adding, "Truth is, I left all this and they still came after me."

"Left all what?" Mark asked, alternating between checking the choker and fiddling with the PDA. The bug was almost ready. It was just a matter of calibration. His iPod had long since started playing trance. He noticed that some of the pieces near his hands were rattling, and more than a few were stuck together. "Dammit," he swore, shutting his eyes and willing his powers to turn off. Of all the times for it to slip out. Any manipulations in the EM fields would ruin the circuits, and these needed to be perfect.

"Left Xavier's school, and stopped hanging out with the mutants who were trying to change things. I had my own issues to deal with. And when I came back to New York, even though I hadn't contacted anybody from the school, it was like I'd never left. I'm just a magnet." Sarah shrugged again, but a little more brightly. "That makes me perfect for what I'm doing tonight."

"At least there's a silver lining." Mark reached over to shut off the iPod, turning off his own magnetism. "Okay, this oughtta work." He got up from his seat and handed Sarah the choker. "Try it on and say something. I'll be outside with this" - he held up the PDA - "and we'll see if I can here you. The tracking device is working, at least." He left the room and shut the door behind him.

Sarah considered what she should say besides the obvious 'testing' or 'can you hear me?', and finally settled on the first thing that came to mind. "So... is there an off switch on this thing in case I have to pee?"

"There's a little button on the back of the choker," came the reply, staticy and not too loud, but audible. "Press and hold it for a few seconds and it'll turn off. Then press it again to turn it back on." Mark opened the door and came back in, looking just a little bit smug. "Sweet. Now we're ready for business."

"Good. I hate the part where we're sitting around waiting to go in." She stretched a little where she was standing, pulling a bone shard from her shoulder. She studied it for a moment. "Now onto the fun part."