Sombra Recon Pt. 1

[Aurora]

Taking their rented car to the industrial rental warehouse, Mystique had Aurora dress down and Mystique stepped out of the car a tall, burly older man, replete with the smell of tobacco chew and engine grease. ‘Jack Crawford’ signed a release for the rental of a small delivery truck, and they were on their way.

Driving out of Philadelphia proper, they followed the freeway into a nearly deserted industrial area. “It’s out here somewhere. I think another few miles up. But we’re going to check out this other lot, I think they do seasonal shipments or storage or something because it’s mostly deserted, at least from the satellite scans I was able to get my hands on. If we’re lucky that’s still the case, and we can park the truck there and get some preliminary shots from a distance. Then I’ll likely have you stay in the truck and be my lookout while I get closer.”

Looking at Aurora, she didn’t smile, the business side of the blue spy’s personality having taken over several hours ago. “What we’re doing today is getting an idea of basic movement. I have the blueprints of the layout but I need to know who leaves when. We’ll stay until the last person has left the building, then go back to the hotel and sleep, but only for a few hours. We’ll need to be back a few hours before sunrise to see who arrives first. Security is likely twenty-four hours, but they won’t notice us from our location.”

Aurora nodded, looking forward through the dusty windshield at the desolate landscape. She was still excited to be doing what they were doing in the long run, but couldn’t help but want to sigh at the thought of sitting in that delivery truck for the entire rest of the workday.

“So they run tests on kids and do shipments or storage?” Aurora said aloud, wondering what kind of place this was. “What’s their front again? What do they tell the world they do?”

“Sombra fronts as a test division of his pharmaceutical company. It’s not really well known, being just a division, which is why he’s been able to keep it pretty quiet.”

Parking the truck, she pulled out her case and opened it up. Getting out, she set a tiny cone shaped apparatus on the hood in the place a hood ornament might have been. Getting back in, she handed them both wireless earpieces, putting hers on and taking out a small remote device.

Pushing a few buttons and toggling a joystick-style switch under her thumb, Aurora heard static, and then slowly, voices. Mystique stopped and listened as two men seemed to have a generic conversation about some recent news report about a stadium being built in a suburb of Philadelphia. Mystique was quiet for a few minutes as that conversation faded, they heard footsteps, some greetings, and the sound of water.

“I think that’s a lunch room. Can you hear the silverware?” She looked at Aurora.

Aurora’s sensitive, pointed ears picked up much of the background noise. She nodded as she stared at the dash and listened. If she could listen in, the day wouldn’t be very boring after all. Not that much would probably happen in the lunch room. Through the sound of the water running, she picked up the noises that would have been covered to normal ears. “Scraping a plate…A spoon hitting a bowl…Definently lunchtime.”

“Does everyone there know the truth about Sombra’s purposes?” Aurora asked, her eyes flitting to Mystique with a slight turn of her head. She wanted to know if she should hold all of the employees as enemies, or as misled people who were, while naïve, innocent in the dirty deeds of Sombra Corp.

Mystique didn’t look at her, shifting the toggle to try and find another room. “Yes…” she said distractedly. “I haven’t been able to find out how many employees the division has, the only records that are kept are under the umbrella corporation.”

There. Children’s voices. Mystique’s heart jerked, and she swallowed, listening. A teacher led them in a song about counting. It sounded just like any other classroom.

Mystique’s face as impassive, purposefully so. She felt anger rolling through her, but was far too professional for that. She couldn’t help but remember Erik’s young face and the faces of the other children in Auschwitz, the ones being kept in separate pens awaiting experimentation for ‘special’ prisoners.

“What we’re looking for,” she said, pausing as the teacher spoke again, “Is an administrative office. Someone speaking about the project itself. Teachers or instructors talking about individual students. Then we’ll look for the security office. It took take quite a while. I need names, need to become familiar with the way their office works. Then I’ll be able to go in and speak their language, us their lingo, and reference people no one outside the company would know about.” Her eyes flickered to Aurora. “Make sense?”

[Aurora]

As she listened to the children sing, knowing that the teacher was a part of the whole scheme keeping them captive there, Aurora was revolted. Hers she allowed to show on her face somewhat, not having any particular reason to hide it. She didn’t have any connection to Sombra or to any of the children who had come from it; but she would have at that moment liked to have connected her foot with the ass of every last Sombra employee there. Via their mouths.

She’d found the catholic academy to be terrible, and at least there they didn’t force you to stay (though having known nothing else her entire life, Jeanne-Marie had felt like out in the real world she’d have failed utterly at succeeding on her own). But this place was brainwashing these children, taking them from—they must have had families, unless they bred them there.

“Perfect sense,” she replied briskly as she listened carefully for any telling sounds as they moved through the rooms inside the building. She didn’t make another sound except for when they paused on a room where conversation sounded like it might be remotely important, only to hear a deep-voiced man’s reply to the statement ‘It looked promising on paper’ be ‘Yeah, but everyone knows they airbrush that shit. You think Bea Arthur’s really still that smooth?’ The statement was punctuated by the flushing of a urinal, and the women in the car quickly shifted the toggle, Aurora unable to conceal her laughter as she shook her head.

Mystique smirked, shaking her head.

It took them quite a while to hear anything of worth. They had fixated on a room for a while where some children were being taught martial arts. It began with general kata, the sort of repetitive motions spoken by a deep voiced male over and over again. Occasionally there was encouragement, but it was clipped and severe. Military training. They were definitely teaching these children to respond to commands without question.

“Dear god.” Mystique whispered at one point. They moved on to competitive fighting, where the instructor openly spoke about one child’s ability to stretch his arms and legs in a given direction, and another child’s talent with quick motion. They tested their technique against one another, one of them becoming frustrated and angry. He was chastised calmly, told to focus. It would have been the same if Mystique had been training them. Only she doubted these children were being trained to fight for the right side.

Every mutant child deserved a normal life. This was exactly why Mystique had never suggested to Pyro that they have anything to do with the children after they were freed. They would have been no better than Graydon by that point. Besides. After these kids learned what had happened to them and perhaps, to their parents, it would only be a matter of time before they had a host of recruits. Given five to ten years, their numbers would likely swell considerably. Particularly if Mystique could get her hands on a list of names and profiles.

“I wonder if we’ll have to contend with fighting children if things go wrong.” She frowned a bit. “I’ll have to be very careful. I intend to have the children taken away from Sombra by the police before we move in to destroy the building. But if I’m caught when I go in tomorrow, things could get ugly.”

She hoped she wouldn’t have to face killing children. Mystique knew herself; if it was a matter of one child’s life or the future of a hundred or more, she’d do what she had to do.

“Who exactly are they training this youth army to fight?” Aurora asked, her eyes on the face of the man Mystique was disguised as. She wasn’t very worried about Mystique being caught; who would ever know it was her? As far as Aurora was concerned, there was no reason why Mystique’s investigation wouldn’t go according to plan.

And she was going to so enjoy blowing the place to pieces.

They changed to a different room, and cut in on the middle of a man’s harsh tone.

“—they trace that back to us? She was the responsibility of Weapon X, whether he chose to set her loose on New York City or she escaped somehow, it is no longer our issue.”

[Aurora]

Mystique’s eyes- at least the ones inside the man’s head- sharpened considerable at the sound of the voices, and then the conversation. She sat up in the driver’s seat, pressing her fingers to her earpiece.

“That’s Graydon,” she said urgently, with an odd tone in her voice.

Staying very quiet through the rest of the conversation, she pulled her palm pilot out of the case and began furiously putting down notes.

“Something to look for later,” she half said to Aurora.

Aurora’s eyes narrowed slightly as she listened to every last word, committing it to memory as best she could and listening for background noise. There was none of any importance, that she could tell. “Weapon X?” she asked once the only noise was of footsteps in the distance. She was bewildered.

“This is. Screwed. Up--” Aurora declared, trying to wrap her mind around the whole thing.

Mystique shushed her sharply, closing her eyes to try to follow the footsteps. She had to follow Graydon, find out where he was, where his office was. It made all the difference in the world where he was going to be when all this went down.

The footsteps came and faded, paused, came and faded again. Then finally, Graydon spoke again after a faint voice spoke to him from across a room.

“Yes, I’ll take the call in my office,” he said. Mystique managed to follow him after the sound of the door shut called her attention to where he’d gone.

“Shit. I haven’t had time to tap the line yet….” She frowned.

Aurora fell silent the millisecond the shushing sound started from Mystique’s throat, her superspeed kicking in like second nature and stopping her voice. She listened to what went on, frowning at herself for making that mistake. But the time for apologies was later.

There was a shifting of papers and the squeaking of springs in a chair before Graydon picked up the phone and they heard his voice again. When he spoke his voice was entirely different, sounded worried, even shaky.

“Officer Dreyer? Yes Sir. Have you heard –anything- about my daughter? … I just don’t understand. You’ve sent out a search, haven’t you? … I told you, she was with Jennifer Pearson. Has anyone found HER?”

Mystique stopped breathing. He was talking about Hannah.

“Let me remind you officer, I am a very important man. I’ve done my daughter favors by keeping this out of the media for the time being, but how would it look if I took this to the public and let them know how I was asked to suppress the news by the Philadelphia state police? I expect there to be –some- new information on Hannah within the week. A man like me does not just –lose- his daughter.”

Mystique huffed. “No, you rotten bastard, you turn her into an experiment.” It was her turn to have an outburst apparently.

As she spoke, Graydon hung up the phone. “CLARA!” He barked. “Have the car brought.”

Perking. Mystique scrambled for the next tool. “See the parking lot?” she said hurriedly, handing Aurora a long thin telescope with an electronic sight. “Watch for the next car to pull around, and get the license plate.”

Aurora sat forward in her seat as she took the telescope and held it to her eye. She got her bearings and watched the point where she would first see the car. It was a few minutes later that the car pulled into view, and she moved the telescope with it.

She said the license plate number aloud, as well as the model of car and it’s year, just in case Mystique would need that as well. She kept her eye trained on the car as she asked, “Anything else you need on it?”

[Aurora]

Mystique put the information into the palm pilot, ready to send the info to Gill and get a lock on who owned the vehicle, maybe even a home address.

“Graydon is very tall, very broad. His hair is blonde, almost a reddish blonde. Make sure he’s the one that gets into the car.”

Sure enough, a minute later there he came, a briefcase in hand he shoved at the driver while unbuttoning his coat. He looked angry as hell, but from the tone of voice he’d used in the conversation about the mutant, and then on the phone, and then to ‘Clara’, it might have been his normal state of being.

“It’s him,” Aurora said confidently, thinking more than a few insulting comments about Graydon Creed as she watched him get into the car. “What a waste of a man.” Had she known that Graydon was Mystique’s son, she might have kept her comments to herself.

Probably not. Since it was true and all.
Mystique called Gill and gave him the information. Then they listened to a few more rooms, Mystique showing Aurora the blueprints and having her mark down what they thought the rooms might contain. Later she would memorize the floor plan, and have Aurora do so too, if only for practice.

Every name was put into the palm pilot, every tiny bit of information they could gather. Mystique showed Aurora her laptop, catching the wireless signal from the building to search for the names on databases both public and private. A few of them seemed to have security clearance up to government level, and she saved those for printing later.

“See how this all begins to come together? It’s not so boring as you might think.” She smiled a bit.

“It’s pretty damn cool,” Aurora said with a wide smile and a nod, shifting to face Mystique more and crossing her legs. She looked as the laptop began to list names on databases. “Wish I could go in there,” she said regretfully. But hey; she hadn’t drawn shape-shifting out of the cosmic bucket when it came to mutation. She loved her own abilities, they just didn’t help much in that kind of situation.