(no subject)
3/23/2007
It is quiet and dark in the bedroom of the White Queen. It's quiet and dark most places at this time of night, and the sound cuts through the sleepy, sated atmosphere to pull Emma from somnolence most ungraciously. She stirs, shifting the arm flung above her head closer to her ear in an unconscious attempt at ignoring the ringing. It doesn't work, and the closer to wakefulness she comes, the more irritated she gets. By the time she rolls out from under Adel's arm and grabs the phone from her nighttable, she is quite aggravated. "/What/?" is snapped into the phone without pausing to id the caller.
"Good morning, darling." The voice on the other side of the line is a mocking snarl. Victor Creed is not, perhaps, the most charming wake up call that one could be given. The towering man paces on the short tether of a pay phone's metal cord, his breathing can be heard through the reciever, accelerated by the adrenaline that refuses to settle thanks to thoughts of what this day will be.
Emma is not yet fully awake, so perhaps she can be forgiven for not recognizing the growl immediately. "Who is this?" she growls, scooting on her stomach closer to the edge of the bed, then crawling out from underneath the sheet to creep across the dark room toward the door of the bathroom.
Laughter through the phone line is a dark, deep sound. "Creed. This is a courtesy call, Frost. One of yer toys needs to be taught some manners and I'm fixin' to do it."
Emma's feet hit cold tile, and she shivers to full awareness. "/Victor/. I'm sorry, has the catnip gone bad?" The sarcastic cooing fades as the lights go up on the ceramic and steel gleam. "What's the matter, kitty? Are you getting bored? Why the hell are you calling /m-- Wait. Toy of mine?"
"Let's see how many fuckin' pussy cat jokes you make while you're cleaning that god-damn faggot Arab's guts up off of a fuckin' ceiling." Clearly, Victor is in no mood for Emma's witty banter. "I'm callin' yer arrogant ass because it's yer fuckin' property I'm about to tear limb from motherfuckin' limb, and I want yer silicone stuffed ass to know it's me doin' it. It ain't no Brotherhood shit. One hundred fucking percent me. You understand, Barbie?"
Emma leans forward and grips the edge of the marbled counter. "Bahir. You are still after Bahir. I don't care if it's you or your little toe, if you go near him again, you will have to answer to /me/," she hisses into the phone. "You stay away from mine, I stay away from yours. You haven't kept to our bargain very well, but there is only so far you can push me, Creed."
"You can punish me when I'm done evening shit up," Creed snarls back into the woman's hiss. "There ain't no way some chickenshit little telepath is going to start shit with me like that and walk away. Buy yerself a new toy, Emma." And with that, the phone is slammed down hard enough to break the earpiece off of the reciever.
Emma stares at the phone now placidly humming the deadline note for a moment, then whirls and throws the phone at the shower stall as she storms out of the bathroom. "Adel!" she yells as she casts her thoughts wide, searching for the scattered pieces of the Inner Circle's net.
Wrapped in Emma's sheets, curled in Emma's bad, Adel lifts a lazy gaze toward the sound of Emma's voice. Unshielded mind unfolding toward hers, he makes contact with a muted, << Emma? >> that wakes into sharper clarity when he takes measure of the feel of her mind. He straightens, sheets falling away.
<< Creed. Bahir. >> Emma snarls into the mental tangles of her connections, speedong the thoughts to both the awakening White Bishop and the sleeping mind of the White King. "He's targeting Bahir, and I think he's doing it soon." White silk flutters around her legs as she stalks to the phone (the non cellular one) on her nightstand.
Adel's mind blanks, the touch to Emma's vanishing as he leaps across the distance to his brother's mind. Wakey, wakey! He moves out of the bed, blind to his surroundings, and snatches up his clothing from the scattered fall on the floor. He kicks past a pair of boots on his way to his jeans.
Magneto is indeed sleeping, if not in his pajamas. Stretched long over the unmade mess of his bed, he pushes up with knit brows and general muddlement, and rolls over onto his back a few seconds later. The silky gray sheen of his vest is unbuttoned, as is his collar. The darker charcoal of his tie is loose around his neck. He sits up. Achilles whuffles.
The first number dialed is Percy's. At least, she thinks it is. Her attention is more on relaying the conversation to Adel and Magneto, although it is rather more forcefed to the latter.
Magneto presses the heel of his hand to his brow, clenching the dark flare of his pupils closed hard against an undesired early morning debriefing. One booted foot thunks over to the floor at his bedside. The other...is socked, so that when he pushes to stand, he's decidedly uneven. As if the rumple of his hair and the half-mash of the short bristles against the right side of his jaw weren't enough. Oh well. He stoops stiff after the second boot, and Achilles stretches and yawns before dropping down off of the bed after him.
Midway through Emma's shared conversation, Adel pauses, goes still, and then slides weak-kneed toward the bed. A flutter of panic beats against Emma's thoughts, leashed even as it forms. Given a second to find his breath, he pushes back onto his feet and moves to snatch up his shirt. He tugs it on, leaving it unbuttoned as he strides on quick feet to Emma's side, brisk and purposeful. "He's not there /yet/. I woke Bahir," he says aloud, the touch of telepathy too much to allow.
You have to admit, it is an efficient manner of debriefing. "Then we may still have time... Damn." The phone is switched off and back on and the number redialed. Correctly, this time. "Tell him to call his detail in. How many people are on him?"
"Rrgh," says Erik, unsteady on his feet. He has to push up off the bed again before both boots are firmly tied into place, and then it's out into his office, and the hall beyond that. He fastens the buttons of his vest automatically as he goes, Achilles the great grey mastiff trailing drowsily at his heels. The office to Emma's door sweeps itself open, and they enter one after the other.
"I don't know," Adel says, his tone sharp but the edge modulated away from a snap at Emma. "Percy would know. He'll tell Sauer. She can do it. Percy was talking about increasing his security but I don't know if he has yet, and it was just her at the apartment." He pauses when Erik enters, and then buttons his shirt as he jerks a short nod at the older man.
"Just one? Damn it. Percy?" Her mind thunders even darker at the voicemail that picks up. "What is the point of you /having/ a phone if you don't answer it?" she snarls into the receiver. "Creed's after Bahir. Now." And with that, she flips the phone off and turns on the two men.
Adel's nod is returned over a slow exhalation, and Erik angles his rumpled coutenance slowly back to Emma. Achilles' tail swings in a slow, regular arc behind him, side to side. It is possible that he is drooling a bit on Emma's fluffy white carpet. The dog, that is.
"Morning," he says.
"Good morning," Adel says with strained courtesy. His gaze sweeps between the two monarchs, his hands falling to curl at his sides.
It's well saturated with Didymus drool. Emma lifts her chin and rises, moving to catch her robe from the side of the bed. "We need to alert more security. Also any trackers we have. Just in case."
Achilles droops to sniff at a pat of his own saliva as it soaks into the carpet, and Erik puffs his chest out a bit on the edge of a deep-drawn breath. "This will not end well," he predicts finally, looking wearily from pretty face to pretty face with the sort of resignation generally reserved for the most insolent of Brotherhood recruits. "I will see to the pawns and compose a list of safe havens the Brotherhood has used previously within the city, though it seems unlikely that he would be foolish enough to make use of any of them. Is there anything else?"
Breathless sound not quite a laugh, Adel's voice moves into a quiet groan. He rubs at the arch of his eyebrows, heels pressed against closed eyelids. He swears quietly, and just nods.
Emma nods slowly, pulling her arms through the sleeves of the robe. "That would be beneficial. We should send people to check on them now, so we can have someone in place in case he does. I'll send someone to the residence I provided as well. Stupid, stupid men." She moves back for the phone again.
"Good," the King mutters more to himself than to either piece present, little more than a patient look spared for Emma's damnation of male-kind. "I shall have time for a shower. Notify me if there are any further developments." And with that, he turns to extricate himself in much the groggy manner that he entered. Achilles lingers for a moment before turning to follow.
After Erik leaves, given the span of a breath of silence, Adel glances toward Emma. "I'm not--. I don't know--." He shakes his head, hands spread wide in a shrug. "I think that I'll go take a shower, too."
Emma looks up from the dialing and meets his gaze evenly, even a little blankly before nodding and looking back down. This time, it is Harper who is called, and orders exchanged to facilitate Magneto's command. And to go wake Percy up.
Adel goes to take a shower. He drags his hands back through his hair, and smushes his face with a, "Mmph."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It is a grim caravan that rolls out of the gated drive of the Hellfire Club in the bleak predawn, dark cars with plush interiors. Despite time pressure and the relative quiet of the early hour, the drivers do not break traffic laws as they proceed steadily towards Morningside Heights.
Subtle chemical influence mutes the sharpest edges of panic in one vehicle. Percy's fingers are curled tight around the door's handle as he stares out the window.
Adel is with Percy, because if Adel isn't with Percy, he's even more useless. As it is, he taxes 'subtle chemical influences' even in still silence. He does not look out the window.
In the front seat, Emma stares out at the city sky that never truly gets dark and gingerly scans the area, zeroing in on this and that person, flitting from mind to mind like a shadow-ghoul. As they close the distance, something niggles at the reaches of her powers. Bloodlust, sadism, cruelty. Emotions out of the norm for most pednatic little people. She stretches out a hand to the driver, who slows the car.
When the car before him slows, Erik slows as well - only just visible through the dark tint of his windows. He knits his brows and squints as if he expects that the pair of them might run across the road, but otherwise contributes very little.
Glancing sharply at Emma from his seat, Percy straightens away from its back, coming all the more alert. "You've found--?"
Adel shivers, but otherwise doesn't react.
Emma holds her out and shifts her head, as if listening for something at a near inaudible pitch. "Not... I... closer, Jerrad." The car rolls close and pasts the Morningside Heights apartments, continuing further down the street. "No, back up. It's growing fa-- Nevermind. Just stop the car. Percy, you stay here for the moment. If you can keep yourself absolutely shielded, Adel, you can come." She climbs out of the car and puts distance between herself and the too close, too familiar minds, straining after that other.
Adel shakes his head with a murmur of sound, the shrug of his shoulders self-deprecating. "Haven't the focus for it," he says, and then laughs.
"Alright," says Erik once Emma has extricated herself. He turns to the primly-dressed man in the passenger's seat and looks him over a litle dubiously before leaning to let himself out. "You may drive, now."
Teeth pressing down on his lower lip, Percy's gaze flicks from Emma to Adel and he swallows. He releases calm in another, stronger volley of soothers, further undercutting agitation (if not misery). He draws a breath and nods once, slowly. He says nothing, but curls his hand into a fist that bites his palm with his nails.
Somewhere in the guts of a building, there is a new surge of sadism. The lust for blood mingles with a nasty sense of enjoyment at what is being done to the already bloodied and crippled victim. Liquid nitrogen is a new toy for Creed.
Emma wanders a few steps, eventually putting her hands over her ears as if that may block the stray thoughts and dreams of those living around them. Into the normal miasma of drudgery and obliviousness that weaves the tapestry of the night for most, a brilliant, cankerous thread of perversion undulates in and around the edges Emma's stretched powers. A minute later, she is back in the car and shivering. "East. Someplace dark, perhaps under construction."
Magneto watches Emma while he circles slowly around the front of his car; curious, if unobtrusive until she re-enters her vehicle, and he slides back into the passenger's side of his.
No rush. Adel watches Emma as she reenters, his gaze sharper.
The car starts up again and glides eastward, though it must first go north to the end of the street. Percy does nothing, beyond continuing the quiet application of his mutation within the confines of this small space.
The car slinks along the streets, sliding past buildings that are vainly searched by senses normal and super-normal until they come to a building surrounded by a temporary chain-link fence. Emma curls forward and digs the palms of her hand into her eyes and mutters, "stop. Somewhere near."
Adel whispers, << Faster, >> on a breath of impatience. He shifts in his seat, pulling against the belt, and unhooks it to spill out as the driver stops. He looks around them, first, and then back at the building with its fence.
Magneto flicks idly through the manual he has retrieved from the glove box, looking up again only once he realizes that they've come to a halt that has not been prompted by some sort of light or sign. The pads of his fingers pushed up rough over his face, he sighs when Adel makes an appearance and tosses the manual aside with muttered instruction for the driver to keep up with the car before them before he leans out into the cold once more.
Percy slips out of the car quietly after a sparse few words shared with the driver. He closes the door behind him and then circles around behind the car to hover just behind the others with a faint shiver for the cool spring air that seeps through the fabric of his dress shirt, which is purple for no particular reason.
Emma climbs out of the car last of all, and turns to look at Erik, then nods in the direction of the building. "Well, dears. Someone want to distract him a bit?"
Adel does not volunteer.
Magnetism ripples through the ring of chain link around the building, testing flimsy metal and more resilient razor wire with fair delicacy while he pulls in a trio of slow, even breaths and squints at the building proper. "Where is he?"
Emma looks aside at him. "Inside, I presume."
Percy rocks forward onto his toes, rubbing his hands over his forearms. His chemical influence is muted considerably out here in the free air, as opposed to within the confinement of the car; to maintain a similar effect, he must work harder.
Already wind-ruffled and now openly lacking in patience, Erik looks sidelong at Emma as he smooths a hand down the coarse canvas of his overcoat. In the air around him, razor wire is unwinding from its bindings only to coil again. The wires are still compacting into rough spheres when he pushes out one last gruff exhalation and starts for the door. "Wonderful."
Emma hangs back as well, reaching a hesitant hand for Adel's arm.
Adel takes Emma's hand without comment. Imperfect shields shadow the shape of his thoughts, but it hardly takes telepathy to guess them: worry, anxiety, fear, and anger. Quite a lot of the last. << My brother? >>
Where magnetism's touch was delicate before, when Erik paces in through the door, it tremors hard and tangible through the floors; the walls; the ceilings. Its resonant hum is familiar beneath the rattle of loose tools and debris. Hello.
It only takes a few moments for the monster to be summoned up from his cave. The resonance is unforgettable. The roar of Sabretooth's fury at being interrupted is every bit as easily recognizeable as he comes tearing up from the basement, ripping sheets of plastic hung to cover doorways out of his path. Hi!
Emma shakes her head. << I can't sense him. That may only mean he is drugged, or shielded somehow, >> she is quick to reassure. She edges around the car and tugs Adel after.
Adel presses Emma's hands between his own in a quick squeeze, a wordless thanks shared. He releases her hand and meanders after Magneto.
If Erik shivers at all, it's only because his bones are inclined to rattle. He takes a half-step back and plants himself - heavy, open overcoat flaring wide as unearthly magnetic force rocks through the air around it. Clumps of razor wire blossom into makeshift nets, shredding some plastic of their own in their haste to meet Victor halfway. How's life?
Creed is absolutely consumed by his rage at this point. There is no recognition or hesitation at seeing his former leader. He rushes ahead. The blossom of razor wire does nothing to slow his rage, but his body is another matter. He is skidded backwards on his heels as the sharp wire bites into him. With another savage roar, he claws wildly at the wire, trying to free himself from it. Doin' good, yourself?
Standing in the middle of the street, Emma hangs quietly and unobtrusively behind the scenes, so to speak. She watches from behind Erik's eyes, spinning off the images for Adel and Percy.
Razor wire is so named for a reason. Knife-like barbs burrow and bite into Victor's hide with vicious intent, clenching taut before the full force of Erik's power builds to hurl the big mutant back down the stairs into the basement from whence he came. Teeth grit and eyes alight, the old man's nostrils flare against the scent of fresh blood on the air. Same old, same old.
So enraged, Creed keeps fighting. For every slice into his flesh from the wire's sharp bits, he heals two of the old ones. This is only a distraction and a means of sending him deeper into this murderous frenzy. At least, it is only so until Erik uses the wire as a means to launch Sabretooth back down the stairs leading to the basement. He lands at the bottom with a meaty thud, but the snarling and struggling still does not cease. Nice seein' ya!
Adel traces the footsteps set before him, nearing the sounds of general violence. He lags, hanging back out of sight, and reaches not for Erik's mind, but Creed's: empathy unfolds merely to learn, to watch and observe.
Percy comes to Emma's side and halts for a moment, watching Adel approach the building. The flavor of the images spun into his mind leaves fear a cold certainty in the depths of his stomach, his mutation taxed already in the manufacture of false calm. The expulsion of his next breath is shaky.
"If you would like to beg for mercy, now is the ideal time," Erik raises his voice to convey, measured footfalls already carrying him with reasonable swiftness down the same stairs he just cast Creed down. One boot planted before the other, he attempts to listen past the snarling only briefly before zeroing back in on it, and the wire, which seems to bury itself even deeper into muscle for Victor's struggling. You too.
Victor Creed's mind is not a pleasant place to visit this particular morning. It is a dizzying chaotic mess of animalistic urges, instincts that contradict human thinking and clash against it. Everything though, at this moment, is buried beneath a desperate psychotic need for violence and murder, something that has been left unfulfilled for far too long. The wire digging into Sabretooth's body only draws out a new round of snarling and slavering, his claws trying in spite of damaging himself further on the wire binding him, to find purchase upon it to cut it away.
Now Emma closes the distance, coming up alongside Adel and peering into the gloom inside. She creeps further still with her thoughts, expanding from her seat behind Erik's eyes to reach intangible fingers to brush against the black, churning mess of Victor's mind.
The White Rook is the last of this creeping procession. With no telepathy to scout ahead for him, the reason for the physical advance is less clear.
From the floor at the base of the stairs to the flat of the far wall, Victor is flung with a gesture and force harsh enough to crack cinderblock and concrete. "Apparently not."
Adel turns to nicer thoughts than Creed's, slipping into Emma's mind. He offers her the lesson that Bahir learned from Jean: the precise needling of telepathy. << --but then, Dr. Lensherr seems to be handling it. >>
Sailing through the air, Creed passes by the chair upon which Bahir al-Razi is still bound. One of his hands has been cut free of the zip-tie that had held it. A thermos sits just below where that arm hangs, Bahir's own property. Beside that is an odd little shape a few inches long. A finger that was frozen and snapped off. Both of the man's knees are bloody, maimed messes and the culprit, a blood-soaked drill rests on the floor between his feet. Smartly perched behind one ear is a telepathic inhibitor, Creed's gift. The back wall of the basement cracks loudly with the force of Sabretooth's body slamming into it. Dust falls from the ceiling after the impact, and the wire-wrapped monster slumps to the floor.
The metal of the inhibitor gleams dully as Bahir shifts. His expression dazed and his eyes glazed with pain, he lifts his head to watch as Creed -- big, furry muppet bound to Magneto's razor-wire strings -- goes skipping past to slam into the wall. He blinks.
<< Indeed, >> Emma replies with prim-voiced distaste for the method, however effective. She pushes past Adel and steps fully inside, picking her way slowly across the room, digging her fingers deeper, looking for handholds in the creature's mind. "Are you enjoying yourself, Erik?" she asks, offering her services wordlessly.
The chemical cocktail that creeps to assault a pheromonist's senses as he drifts further into the building slows Percy's step to a drag, despite his intention to follow in Emma's footsteps. He goes slowly, acclimatizing himself to the air with the careful concentration of a rather small rabbit raiding a den of rabid wolverines.
Frigid triumph slicks over and around ice and metal and blood all in uncomfortable and violent proximity to the surface of Erik's thoughts while he grinds Creed deeper into the wall, disturbing what loose concrete and dust hadn't yet managed to tumble to the ground. Mercifully, the action is short-lived. At Emma's question and the look Erik turns back on her, the movement ceases abruptly. Creed is held where he is.
There are no wolverines here, only bigger predators. One that is currently trapped and being rewarded with new spikes of pain every time it tries to lash out at those invading it's den. Creed's roaring and snarling continues, inarticulate noises of animalistic rage. His mind is a similar thing. The churning keeps washing away the easiest handholds for the explorer to find. He is deep enough into this frenzy of his that it's hard to find the man beneath it. Work though, and skill, will find it. A nest of pride affronted by Bahir's insults, frustration over untold numbers of things. He is anything but shielded, though.
Adel drifts after Emma, his slow steps taking on speed and purpose once he sees Bahir. He crosses the room in a quick stride that is just short of a run, trusting to King and Queen to keep Creed entertained. The first thing that he does is remove the inhibitor, tossing it away.
Emma aches a brow and glances to where Creed is embedded in the wall, wrapping her thoughts around the lesson Adel offered. << I warned you, Victor, didn't I? >> she purrs, the mental communication tickling his thoughts.
Percy picks his way warily down the steps, flinching a little at this roar or that. When he sees Bahir, he neither quickens his step nor halts, though his pulse races even faster and he swallows, hard. The sharp intake of breath proving something of a mistake, he closes his eyes, counts to three, and then looks around the floor for something sharp.
The temptation to approach is powerful. To taunt; to dominate. A slow pair of steps are even taken in the behemoth's direction now that the initial violence between them has steeped to an abrupt halt, though his better judgment suggests that he should hang back and see to Bahir.
(OOC) Magneto says, "Mein."
It takes a long moment before Emma's voice in his head is reacted to with anything but incoherant rage. << Fucking fuck went too far. Needed brought down a peg. Let me down. >> The late statement is a command, in spite of the fact that it makes no sense to be demanding that of Emma. Creed hangs where he is, effectively locked in place and unable to do any more damage.
Adel watches Percy as he looks for his something sharp. He does not move from Bahir's side. Although he can't do anything about the zip-ties, he can at least get rid of the cord.
Emma doesn't look away from Creed, but neither does she answer him. "Percy. Do you have people standing by? He needs tending to," she asks quietly.
"I had the driver call in a team when we got out of the car," Percy answers, rummaging through a red toolbox until he finds the hard grey handle of an old, but sharp -- he cuts his finger testing it -- utility blade. Sucking his fingertip and then shaking his hand out as he starts towards Bahir and Adel, he says, "They'll be here in a few minutes, if they're not outside already."
Unaware of any inner dialogue as it occurs, Erik narrows his eyes at the restrained bulk of Creed, but says nothing, perhaps thinking his point sufficiently made. Whatever the case, he expells a slow, carefully measured breath before turning to move back for Percy and the al-Razi's.
Black eyes still wild with frenzy stare at Emma. He doesn't say anything further and nor does he move. There is some mental ripple of contentment at perhaps having made his point. There is a sudden and nasty wash of ego, his superiority over Bahir al-Razi has been proven.
(OOC) Creed says, "Yeah. Creed. Name."
"What are you going to do with him?" Adel asks, lifting his head to level a look at Creed. He tries for cool contempt, but ends up with hot hate. He curls the cords in his hands, unwinds them, and wraps them around his fist again. Anger spikes at the read from Creed's mind, and he tenses on the edge of a lunge. He holds so very still that he quivers.
Bahir is quiet, thoughts soft and muddled. He tips his head back, pressing it to Adel's hip, and closes his eyes as he swallows. He too quivers, but for a simpler reason: pain.
"i can put him to sleep, for now. Any more permanent measures will have to be considered carefully," Emma says with a half shrug. "He's your creature, Erik," she offers, turning to look at him.
Percy drops to a knee at Bahir's other side, heedless of the spatter of blood that has made the floor around him a questionable proposition. He cuts through the cord that binds Bahir at first one ankle and then the other, his throat working convulsively as he holds tight to the handle of the utility knife. He is heartsick over darker, protective anger, lower key than Adel's hot fury on account of the restraint his mutation has forced over his mood to avoid responding to the sadistic murk in here.
"Once upon a time. I have left the Brotherhood, as you may recall." His back kept turned stiffly squarely to Creed, Erik looks at Adel instead, and then Bahir. "If you are going to sedate someone, it should be him."
"Yes." Agreement to Erik's words quiet, Adel feathers a light touch over Bahir's features. Lightly cupping the side of his brother's face from behind, he reaches into his mind: sedation, quiet and complete, comes with the loss of consciousness. With Bahir out, Adel says simply, "I want Creed."
Percy lifts his knife to cut the tie that holds Bahir's other wrist to the chair. That's the last of them. He gets stumblingly to his feet, sliding the blade back within its holder. He doesn't say anything. He skits a glance toward the stairs, but there is no sign of whatever back-up. He looks back down at Bahir again and shivers.
Bahir looks so /peaceful/ all passed out! Really!
Which is a nice counter to Creed hanging where he is, snarling and growling ocassionally, blood trickling from the wounds he keeps opening in himself.
"No. Your brother's inability to restrain himself is what caused this, and I will not condone torture. We are the Inner Circle." Gruff once more, Erik works his jaw, cold eyes still focused dimly upon the unconscious, bloody slump of Bahir. "It will only make matters worse."
Adel exhales in a slow hiss of breath. He glances toward Erik and nods once, short acceptance.
Emma presses her lips into a thin, white line and folds her amrs in front of her before looking back at Creed. Her eyes narrow as she dives bloodily into his mind, scouring painfully past thought and conscious motor functions to strike with the ungraceful power of a pickaxe at Creed's sleep centers, stirring them into a tsunami wave to overtake everything else.
A deep dive into Creed's mind is never a pleasant experience. Darkness and instinctual violence try to grab at the edges of Emma's presence, the specters of the monster's mind desperate to lash out. Emma's expertise though, sees to Creed falling limp against the wires restraining him.
Two pawns arrive, peering down the stairs after the directions of the driver of the car.
Adel studies Creed with an air of vague dissatisfaction, but not makes no move to act on his impulses. It's all about impulse control, today. "What guarantee do we have that he won't try again? Are we going to leave him here to get loose?"
"We have none. But as of this moment, he owes his life to our good grace. He may well keep that in mind the next time he is tempted to look for trouble within our ranks." Oh not. Erik allows Creed's body to fall either way - magnetism relaxed enough for razor wire to peel away from the wall and onto the floor, though it remains bound thick around him. "Bahir is priority. He's lost a great deal of blood."
It's no the going in so much as the coming back out. The return trip is slower and messier, with torn fragments of memories and thoughts and desires swirling free without even minimal control. She stumbles back a step, sickened by the accumulated grime that is Creed's mind, and trips on physical debris, landing hard on her backside.
"Shock?" Adel glances toward Bahir again, concern renewing as he steps delicately around and over to Emma to offer her a hand up without comment. Looking toward the pawns, he adds, "Make sure they get the finger. Just -- just in case."
The expression the Rook turns upon the fallen Queen is blankly baffled, as though he has taken in too much stimulus and can't quite process this new information. "Liquid nitrogen," he mutters. He beckons to the pawns irritably for their hesitance in coming down the stairs. "Come on," he snaps, patience run short with the overextended tether of his control. His senses continue to advise him that this is a /bad room/. Bad room! "Which hospital is closest? Columbia Presbytarian?"
His overcoat dusted with a substance that looks (and smells) suspiciously like blood, Erik continues to keep a careful grip upon his breathing, and his pulse. Control. It is important. He turns his head just in time to see Emma fall, and he too responds with a large question mark. It lingers over his head for several seconds.
Emma accepts the hand up, and clings to it a moment longer than necessary, as if siphoning off some measure of comparative cleanness of mind. "The drivers will know. Have the pawns get there ahead and arrange things." She brushes her backside off and turns for the stairs. "And get another crew in here to clean up this mess. We don't want questions with answers that can trace back to us."
After Creed, Adel's mind is a soft and comforting thing, warm and dry and much less crazy-animal-time. He is practically a saint. He squeezes Emma's hand. "One or both of us should go to the hospital, then, and make certain that the doctors and surgeons are amenable to whatever version of events we decide on."
The pawns troop down the stairs in tandem, crossing over to the bloodied figure in the chair. One of them, looking a little green, wraps the finger in his handkerchief and puts it in the pocket of his hoodie before he joins his companion in carefully lifting the unconscious telepath.
Percy nods, without turning his intent gaze away from this process. "I'll get a crew in, right away," he says.
Events are carrying on in motion on their own now, and Erik does not see fit to interrupt. He folds his arms across his chest and studies the remains of the scene as it occurred, and says nothing.