|
|
Post by logan on Sept 22, 2006 15:43:57 GMT -5
Logan ran at full speed, leaping over a random beach ball left in the yard, and bounded up the stairs like a gazelle. In no time he was in the elevator, and heading down to the Med-Lab.
“Rayen! Rayen stay with me!” Logan yelled, barreling out of the elevator and into the Med lab.
Rayen gasped in harshly, as if it were hard for her to breathe, the same electronic hum to the sound of air rushing past her vocal chords.
“Rayen…” she said, sounding confused. Her fingers rubbed against her thumb, fingers working in and out. “You’re Wolverine.”
Logan nodded, unable to stop the smile from spreading across his face, despite the pit of worry in his stomach. She was at least partially aware…
“It’s me, yes, Logan. What happened, Ray?”
Her eyes shifted around erratically, as if trying to see.
“My name is Lorna Dane,” she said, the voice warbling. Then a scream left her, sounding far more like Rayen. Those eyes opened wide.
“It’s okay, it’s okay…” The digitized voice repeated, obviously to herself. Or… to whomever else was in there.
Logan was speechless again. Lorna Dane. It wasn’t a common name, and Logan recognized it as the name of the woman who’d been killed. Forge had identified her somehow. What the hell was going on?
“No… no, you’re Rayen. Your name is Rayen. Lorna’s dead.”
Emotion finally crossed the face, pain and hurt. Her hands tried to grasp at Logan. “I’m not dead, I’m here! Please!”
Rayen’s voice sounded fainter than the first. “Logan! Logan she’s in my mind!”
That gave him pause. In an ordinary, sane world – this statement would be completely insane. It’d be traumatic causes leading to a bout of MPD, or something like that… but Logan had stepped out of the normal world a long time ago. Now he was in a world of animated corpses and mind control.
The electronic sound… was it possible that somehow Lorna’s power – whatever it was – could have led to this? He’d also watched enough Discover TV to see a ghost special, and how they can talk through machines. Was this like that? Conduit a medium for the spirit world?
Plenty of questions. He needed answers.
“Okay… okay, I believe you. Calm down, the both of you. Rayen, hang on, don’t give up – Lorna, you need to calm down.”
|
|
|
|
Post by logan on Sept 24, 2006 12:38:39 GMT -5
Thirty three minutes... and nothing. No change. Rayen seemed to struggle behind her eyes, sweating, moaning. Logan could only figure that she was having a battle of wills with Lorna.
Wait, no, there was change. She was calmer. There were no more yelling matches or jerking motions... but she was still in torment.
He decided he needed to call someone, but no one in the school had an ability that would really help in this particular... scenerio. So he called Forge. Maybe her brother could do something - they seemed to have a strange link between them, particularly in reference to their powers.
Just as Logan were about to call him again, the other came through the door. He was sweaty, and must've pushed that chair as fast as possible.
|
|
|
|
Post by conduit on Sept 24, 2006 14:47:55 GMT -5
Rayen was sitting up on the end of the table, dishevelled and confused looking. She said nothing as Forge entered, but looked her self over, opening her hands, rubbing her own arms.
Rayen's voice left her lips much quieter than it should have. It sounded far away. "I don't seem hurt... nothing hurts. I'm okay right?" She looked at Logan, then at Forge, and seemed to relax a bit just for her brother being here.
|
|
|
|
Post by forge on Sept 24, 2006 15:21:56 GMT -5
Forge looked at his sister, confusion equal to worry on his face. “What the hell?” He managed.
“I found her in the woods, unconscious... there's another... presence. It's in her, talking out – sounds all electronic. She says she's Lorna Dane.” Logan tried to explain.
“... She says she's...” Forge repeated, letting it sink in. “Oh.” He finally added.
Of all people, Forge was one of the most open minded types out there. Having seen mutants do any number of strange supernatural feats, this one was something he naturally took too. Not to mention the obviousness of the connection between Lorna and Rayen – from what he'd read, they had a lot of similarities in power. Both dealt with electromagnetic energy, which is what many theorized the soul or mind of a person to be. That this particular combination would occur only seemed natural.
Of course, he was ecstatic that it was possible Lorna still lived on – but the idea that she may forever have damned his sister to a dual existence didn't sit well with him. Already his brain was calculating technology to assist.
He nodded assuringly to Rayen. “Of course you're alright, sis, you're tough as nails. I'm going to run some tests on you, though, just to see what the state of your body is, okay?”
He gestured to the table that slid one into the examination tube. He wasn't a doctor, but he had learned how to use all of the technology here, so he could roughly simulate one.
“How are you feeling... emotionally?”
|
|
|
|
Post by conduit on Sept 24, 2006 15:41:19 GMT -5
Rayen opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to pass out for all of a half second, her body going slack, then catching itself. If either of them had ever seen video footage of someone with multiple personalities lapsing from one to the other, they'd be right at home.
"Don't you care who's done this to me? It was a large blonde man, very hairy. He took me from my car out on Graymalkin!" She grasped Forge's arm, the lights in the room flickering like so much exorcist.
"You have to find him. He may still be OUT there.."
|
|
|
|
Post by logan on Sept 25, 2006 17:37:35 GMT -5
"Don't you care who's done this to me? It was a large blonde man, very hairy. He took me from my car out on Graymalkin! You have to find him. He may still be OUT there.."
Forge and Logan's eyes shot to each other immediately. "Sabertooth." Logan said, a scowl on his face. "I thought I recognized that damn smell… he's supposed to be dead, but apparently he's tougher than we gave him credit for."
Forge frowned. "It gets worse. When I was racing down here, I passed Piotr in the hall – he says Mystique was here earlier. Apparently her and Nightcrawler got into a fight on the lawn, and she'd been wondering around disguised as a student."
Logan's scowl depended, and he looked about two seconds from full thermonuclear meltdown. "Yeah, she's supposed to be cured."
"Right." Forge said, holding Rayen's hand. "So what the hell are the Brotherhood doing here? And why didn't Mystique stay cured?"
"And where's Sabertooth now?" Logan added.
"Yeah, that one's probably more important." Forge said. "Let me think for a minute."
"No. You've been playing leader around here while I've been sitting on my ass, not paying attention. I've been here longer, been in deeper shit. You stay here with your sister, I'll make the plan. Just watch her, alright?"
Forge nodded, completely, amazingly, relieved that someone else was taking charge of the damn situation. He wasn't cut out to be a leader. He never wanted to be a leader. He was made to be support… and here he was. "… Alright. I'll keep an eye on the perimeter; I'm wired into the outside surveillance. If I see anyone come in, I'll let you know. Should I alert the X-Men?"
"Just Storm. Too many people will spook him, I want to hunt him down. Though you should notify all of them to be on alert. I'll be back." Logan said, and bent down, kissing Rayen on the forehead. "Don't worry, Rayen – you're going to be okay… and Lorna. We'll get the sonofabitch."
|
|
|
|
Post by conduit on Sept 26, 2006 17:17:53 GMT -5
(A HALF HOUR LATER)
Can you hear me?
I can hear you.
Did you do this intentionally?
Did it seem intentional to you? I just… felt something.
It must have been right as he attacked… I felt myself sucked into my own field. It separated me from my body.
The electromagnetic field. Yes. That’s what I sensed, it’s why I went back out there.
You’re an electropath, right?
To some extent. I’m a conduit, for the most part.
Of course. That’s how it happened then.
I had drawn the field in towards myself. Generally, it draws a power source towards me. I wanted to see if there was an exposed wire or something causing the signature.
That makes sense. So. My body… it’s dead?
I think so.
My god. Oh my god.
I’m sorry Lorna… Lorna. It’s alright. We’re going to get this fixed, somehow. Okay? My brother and I… we know this stuff backwards and forwards. I’m pretty sure with a little experimentation, we’re going to be able to find a way for you to live a relatively normal life.
Just not in my own body.
Yeah. That’s… likely not an option.
Jesus in heaven. Rayen… what am I going to do?
Rayen’s face twisted with sadness, and she had to wipe her eyes. She had quieted them both and spoken only inside herself for the last half hour or so, while her brother hooked her up to every techno-contraption he could think up and others he invented on the fly.
She looked at Forge, so glad he was here. It had occurred to her that there was a distinct advantage to have two mutants so similarly talented in the same space- not only was their double the technical knowledge, but they shared an intimacy with each other’s idiosyncratic natures that no other mutant could.
“We’re just… figuring out a way to communicate.” She nodded a little, looking mournful. “It’s so hard Bandero.” Rayen sighed.
“Do we know of any mutants who have been separated from their bodies before?” It was Lorna’s voice, distorted and electronic. By this point Rayen had suggested that Lorna’s control over electromagnetic fields had been retained when she was severed from her physical form- and they way she spoke was by running that magnetic force over Rayen’s vocal chords. A normal human would have experienced extreme pain by having electricity run through their insides, but Rayen was unharmed by even large voltages. Somehow, fate had smiled on them both today.
|
|
|
|
Post by forge on Sept 26, 2006 21:24:05 GMT -5
“None that I know of, sis.” Forge said, stepping back from the Dynamic EM Pathway Reader. “We know there are mutants who can separate their wills from their body, using telepathy. Phase can do that.”
He adjusted a few circuits, and studied the screen.
There was no measure to the relief he experienced when Rayen had finally been cleared of any real damage. Of course, there was still the problem of the other consciousness floating around in her body... but at least it wasn't a mortal problem. It was fixable. The figuring out how was simply in the detail.
“It's amazing... I can literally see her separate energy in you. It has a completely different pattern.”
Looking at the sad look on her face, he immediately tensed up. “Ohh... oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”
Perhaps it was time to change the subject.
“So, Lorna... how do you feel about a robot body? You could be the first android in creation?”
Only Forge would consider this a good thing.
|
|
|
|
Post by conduit on Sept 27, 2006 19:44:09 GMT -5
"A robot body?" Lorna asked. She sounded vaguely horrified.
"I don't know, Forge... part of me feels like we need to solve my murder first, you know? Then we can think about that sort of thing."
Rayen spoke up. It was an eerie thing, two voices coming from the same mouth. "It is something you should consider Lorna... as much as I'm happy to help you out..."
"Of course." Lorna's voice again. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay Lorna."
Rayen looked at her brother and sighed. "The problem will come with knowing if its safe to try and transfer her signature out of my body. To be honest I'm not even sure that can be done. What if I pass current through my body and she's sucked out again? What risk do we take?"
|
|
|
|
Post by forge on Sept 27, 2006 20:18:40 GMT -5
Forge thought about it a moment, leaning back in his wheelchair. The problem wasn't an easy one to solve, and it was hard to really concentrate on with his sister speaking in two different voices.
"Well... we'd have to try to re-create her electronic signature for a test. Naturally, we can't exactly re-create the electromagnetic sig of a... well, soul. But - we can come close. Find a wavelength that's similar." He said, now stroking his chin like a charecature of a scientist in thought.
"If that's the case, I figure we can build a device or even a whole room that's designed to contain that kind of signature. Like a battery. That way, if the transfer fails to stick, you could just... you know, suck her back in."
Forge rolled back to the Analyzer, studying the signature of her spirit. It was a measure of how much he'd spread his resources on monitoring the grounds, the interior, and countless other functions he was plugged into, that he'd even have to physically look at the screen.
"Lorna, as for your murderer - don't worry. I can't imagine anyone who could escape Logan and the Sarge."
|
|
