The X-Project

Marie-Ange stops by the clinic to check on Doug. Their conversation is interrupted by a text from Scott and Doug realizes they've been running with the wrong assumptions.


The frequency and oddness of Doug's text messages had finally waned to "Spelling errors that would be funny under better circumstances" and "Once every ten minutes requesting non-hospital food, his 'good' laptop and socks", and Marie-Ange had brought the laptop, and a package of new socks, extra-thick, with the grippy stuff on the bottom. The food was left out - Doug could get his own girlfriend to do that, or make her a better offer than promises of owed coffees.

She tapped on the door to his room - perk of using the clinic Emma funded, private rooms - and then let herself in, to find that Doug had managed to find a pair of sunglasses and fall asleep while waiting. So Marie-Ange had a moment to set the laptop on the bedside table and plug it in and unpackage the socks before tapping Doug on the (good) arm gently with one balled-up sock.

Doug came awake with a start and a gasp. His sleep was going to be marred by nightmares of passing out after being shot for at least a month. At least he had a therapist who wouldn't blink at that little bit of information. He managed to get his breathing under control and shifted to a bit more of an upright sitting position. "Oh god, you brought the right ones," he said, reaching out for the socks. He took the package, then looked down toward his feet and to the side at his immobilized arm. "Dammit."

"Cold feet are the worst thing." Marie-Ange took the package from Doug and opened it. "Here, you owe me for having to touch your icky boy feet." She nudged the blanket out of the way and rolled the socks over his bare feet. "Do you want the informative but not pleasant update before or after we figure out if anything near here is listed on grubhub?"

"Well, it's going to take a little bit for food to get here, so talk while we're looking up places?" Doug hated to be immobilized and need others to take care of him. Especially Marie-Ange - he remembered all too well the way she had yelled at him the last time he'd gotten shot. Which probably said something about his life that he preferred not to think too hard about.

Marie-Ange took a moment to compose herself. "You and Wade were not an isolated incident. We received word that Kurt and Jubilee were attacked as well." She caught Doug's grave expression and raised a hand to wave off whatever he was about to say. "Kurt teleported them both. They are stable, I am not sure either is awake right now, but neither is at any risk of dying." The specifics would wait - if Doug retreated into panic, she wasn't going to tell him how serious it was.

Doug's hand tightened in the sheet, and he winced as his fingers unconsciously flexed on the injured hand. Remy had warned him this day would come. He'd been so sure that... He visibly shook himself. Chasing himself down well-worn patterns of thought wouldn't solve anything. "Do we have a line on who it is?" he asked in a flat tone of voice that spoke to his attempts to maintain his composure.

"Nothing yet. I was hoping you could analyze the little bit of footage from security cameras. I am not sure I got all of them, your programs on your computer in your office are confusing. Even with the helpful notes you leave." In theory, they'd all had tutorials in Cypher's Magic Camera Hacking Tools, but in practice, there was finesse none of the rest of them could come close to matching just in finding the sources of video feeds around the city.

"You may have to do some of the mouse work," Doug told her. But doing work was good. Work would leave his brain less time to go around and around blaming himself. He managed to lever himself up in the bed, providing a space for the laptop to rest on his legs.

"Mice I can do. I brought the one handed keyboard too." She dug in her shoulder bag and pulled out one of the custom keyboards Doug used for high-intensity work. "You should program a voice operated mouse arrow. It could be very useful." She set that down on the bed, and then paused to swipe across the screen of her buzzing phone.

There was silence, and then the soft pat of a copy of Marie-Ange's phone slipping from her grasp and falling on the floor.

"Oh. Oh, no." she whispered, sitting down quite unsteadily into the chair by Doug's bed. "Molly was shot at. Not Wade. There was a hole in her hat, Scott calculated ricochet angles. Molly was the target... "

Doug blinked. Scott's ability to read angles was unmatched by anyone save perhaps Remy - if he said Molly was the target, then that was... He blinked again. One of these things is not like the others, as the ditty went. Molly didn't fit the pattern - she wasn't connected to Doug at all.

"Wade is the target," he said slowly, setting aside the instinctive conclusion he had first come to in light of the new data.

Marie-Ange was dialing before she had time to finish saying "baise-moi". "He left to get dinner." She crushed a finger against the disconnect button and dialed again. And again. "He is not picking up his phone."

They both had emergency burner phone numbers for Wade, which didn't pick up either. Another pair of quick calls discovered that he wasn't at the mansion or the brownstone. Security cameras were unhelpful - they showed Wade walking out of a takeout restaurant, and then lost him turning around a corner.

"And as usual we are down heavy hitters and the bulletproof." They really needed to recruit the bulletproof. "I am calling the mansion." Marie-Ange said. "Get one of our people to coordinate with whoever I get on the phone. Cammie, if she is available. If this is more of that Weapon Ten nonsense I want someone immune to things that make Wade's skin fall off."

Doug thumbed a speed-dial button and put his phone to his ear. "Cammie. Time to get your punch on," he said as she picked up on the other end. "Wade's gone missing."