The X-Project

Jean and Kyle go to investigate the name on the letter that Kane texted them.



The house was on the border between Oakland and San Francisco; a formerly middle class development of small plots which had slid into a slightly shabby atmosphere of retirees who'd been there forever. This one was recently painted, and the lawn was neatly trimmed and squared away. The dented mailbox said 'Bradley' on the side, and was barely hanging on the post by a nail.

"You know, I dig it here. If I wasn't like, living in New York, I could totally live in San Fran." Kyle said, easing out of the rental car. "I mean, the hills bite, but the weather's awesome and the food's awesome and I'm pretty sure there's enough weird people that like, nobody'd care if some dude teaching kids in the bad part of town had funky ears." He grinned across the top of the car at Jean. "So, what you say, we convince the Prof to just pack up the whole mansion and move it out here."

"I secretly suspect he has a fondness for the soul-chilling New York winters," Jean said, closing the door behind her. She shielded her eyes from the sun as she studied the house.

"Might be difficult."

"It gets cold here." Kyle protested. "Uh, telepath cop, dumb as rocks cop? I can play big dumb jock and I dunno, hope the guy doesn't decide to go off all shotgun in the face at us?" He did have a lot of practice playing dumber than he really was.

"I mean, I'm just not sure I could hold up my end of some kind of elaborate like, ruse or something."

"If he goes all shotgun I'll take care of it," Jean said. Or try to anyway. She was pretty good at stopping bullets thus far (that she was aware of) but didn't particularly like putting that talent to practice.

"We'll do fine. Perhaps you should try being the rookie cop? Makes it easier to feign ignorance at police procedure."

Not that Jean was particularly an expert. She hoped he didn't happen to be the C-SPAN sort of guy and saw her on TV during a political debate.

"Hey, wait, we actually get to pretend to be cops? Man, Gar's gonna kick my entire ass into the Bay..." Kyle said, shrugging, although he was also making sure his shirt was tucked in and he actually kind of looked like an adult. At least he was actually wearing shoes this time. He cracked his knuckles, and pulled his claws back into the nailbeds so that his hands looked almost sort of normalish, and followed Jean up to the door.

Straightening her blouse, Jean grinned. "I was kidding," she said, then nodded toward the door.
"We'll do what we always do." Wing it, with some liberal dashes of experience to at least make things go in the right direction some of the time,

"Aw, man. I was gonna hum the Law and Order theme and everything." Kyle knocked on the door once they arrived, and took a half-step back so as not to totally tower over Jean. Even if he wasn't going to get to play Dumb Cop, he was going to defer to her, at least to start. After a moment, the door opened, and a tall, black man in a pair of work pants and a khaki shirt stood in the entrance way.

"Can I help you?" His bass voice rumbled. He was broad shouldered, and his arms were thickly muscled and powerful. Against the dark skin of his hands and forearms, a number of pink scars were visible, climbing his arms and disappearing under his rolled up shirt cuffs. He was shaved bald, and his short, heavy beard was liberally speckled with white.

"I hope so," Jean said. From the looks of him he seemed to be the guy they were looking for. But she wanted to be sure.

"Are you Isaiah Bradley?"

"Yes, I am." He said, slightly puzzled. "I'm sorry, Miss, but I don't think I know you or your friend."

Kyle stuck out a hand. "Kyle Gibney, this is Ms. Grey-Summers. We're, well, we're looking into the death of a guy, name of Nasland, or Nashlund, something like that. Couple of names came up, we're just seeing who knew the guy." Right, that was more or less what people on cop shows said, right, only without the claiming to be a cop part.

Isaiah shook Kyle's hand, but his expression fell almost immediately. "Will Naslund is dead? When?"

Glancing around a moment, Jean finally looked back to the man. "May we come inside? It may be better to continue this in private."

He waved them inside, into a small, neat kitchen with a circular table in the middle. Over to one side, a tool box and a work jacket sat on the counter, as if he'd been on his way out before they called. Without saying anything, he poured three cups of coffee into plain white mugs and set them down with a small coffee service of sugar and cream before taking a seat himself. "Tell me what happened to Will. Please."

Kyle looked distinctly uncomfortable, between not knowing if it'd be rude as hell to just ignore the coffee, and having to tell this guy that not only was his friend dead, Gar was convinced it wasn't natural. "I, um, I'm no doctor." He glanced at Jean. "The medical examiner said it was natural, but, well... " He shrugged a bit. "I dunno."

"Damn." Isaiah looked into his cup of coffee, trying to adjust to the news. It was obvious that he had been close to Naslund, and it was all he could do to try and hide it. "He was over eighty. And the last year or so hasn't been the best for him healthwise. But still-"

He shook his head. "I appreciate you telling me. I should call his daughter in Charlotte. Let her know what's happened. Uh-" There was a pause. "Did you just come to let me know about Will? Are you with the hospital?"

"I'm sorry for your loss. Were you and Mr. Naslund good friends?" Jean asked. He looked affected by the man's death but how deep did the connection go?

Jean paused. "How long ago had it been since you'd seen him?" The tone was not insinuating, merely curious.

"Little over a month ago. Since I retired, I do a lot of little renovations in the area. It's mostly older people in this neighbourhood, who've been here for decades. A lot of them have trouble winterizing their houses for the rainy weather. Normally, Will and I would get together every few weeks to talk. I'd run any errands that he wasn't up to." Bradley said, shaking his hand. "I've know that man for twenty years, and now he's gone..."

"Aw, geez. I'm sorry, man." Kyle's face fell, and he rubbed the back of his neck. "You, uh, said he wasn't in the best of health, I mean, if it's not too nosy, was it just age, or uh, well, like I said, there's some concern about how he died, and anything you can tell us that'd help clear that up, it'd help."

Jean stared at Kyle a moment before glancing back to Isaiah. She had hoped to get some more information out of him before they started delving into the more sensitive portions of why they were there.

"I'm sorry, I know this must be hard for you. But we're just trying to get to the bottom of things."

"The bottom of what? His death? You said it was natural."

There was really no other way around it. "The medical examiner said it was natural. We have reason to believe there's a possibility that it may not have been," Jean said, setting down her coffee mug.

"It's clear you care a great deal for Mr. Naslund. Is there any reason you can think of why someone might want to harm him?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Any enemies Will may have had have been dead for a long time. Other than his daughter, the other guys and a few neighbours, Will didn't have anyone else. He used to say that was his punishment for surviving the Second World War. He got to watch everyone take the bullet first."

"That's kinda a few more people than 'didn't have anyone.' though." Kyle suggested. "I mean, I hate to like suggest it but he didn't have like a son in law who got mad at him, or like, a neighbor feud, or something going down with one of those other guys you mentioned?" He'd heard something, he thought, a slight increase in the man's heart rate, like he'd maybe said something he shouldn't have.

Jean leaned forward in her chair. "What may be ridiculous to you might be incendiary to someone else," she said. Kyle was onto something. Even if the man didn't say it aloud perhaps the right questions might provoke a cerebral response.

"Will spent most of his life in the military. He used to be involved with special projects over the years. Special forces types, medical testing, that sort of thing. When I was drafted in '74, I volunteered for a similar program. Will liked to keep track of guys like us, because some times, if the program was top secret, after it was closed, we didn't always get the proper support afterwards. Special provisions for health care, stuff like that." Isaiah shook his head. "Those of us in California would keep in touch through him, occasionally meet up for coffee every six months, make sure everyone was getting what they need. He was, well, like an ombudsman for us. His daughter and her husband come out maybe once a year. So, what, maybe ten people that he saw a couple of times a year at most? To me, that's not having anyone."

Jean sat up straighter. "Medical testing?" she repeated. Coupled with 'special forces' it set off all sorts of red flags, especially given how well she'd seen that go for people like Nathan. Throwing 'top secret' in there also drew her attention.

"What type of medical testing?"

"Just normal tests. USAMRIID always has tests going on for different things; vaccines, gases, new drugs for infection and disease. Sometimes those projects had side effects that don't show up for years, and the DoD wouldn't provide the right medical information to the doctor because it was still classified. Will had worked for them long enough that he could help in those cases. I guess he felt, well, still responsible because he'd once been one of the people overseeing the tests." Bradley shook his head. "He took it very seriously."

Kyle shrugged. "Okay, so, I'm still in college and my 20th century history class went on and on about all the stuff the government does to people, and I mean like the military and civilians too, and even like CIA guys and doesn't tell anyone. I mean, there was that whole CIA thing with LSD and hookers." He scratched his head a little, thinking. "Midnight something or other? Anyway, maybe he like, advocated too hard or something? I mean, you guys weren't mixed up in any weird CIA LSD crazy stuff, right?"

Jean was somewhat skeptical as to words like "just normal," but she remained silent for now. Until they had something more concrete she didn't want to jump the gun and spook one of the few leads they had.

"We're just trying to narrow things down a little," Jean clarified. "To make sure nothing gets left out."

"Hey, if you want to talk to the other guys, be my guest." He went to an old desk, and rooted around awhile before coming up with a printed sheet of names and numbers. "I'm going to half to let them know about Will's death now anyway." He handed the information over.

"Thank you Mr. Bradley," Jean said. rising as she reached out to shake his hand. "We appreciate your time."

It was best to take things slowly until they had a more concrete idea of what was going on. It was a good start, but there was definitely more there than what it appeared.