Night's Black Heart
Backdated to Sunday Night.
Decades of research into weapons like this, millions of dollars invested, and it's likely some old man who mixed up his medications and had a fit of pique. Makes a man worry about the state of his business.
It makes a man worry about the future of his business, too - backlash is an ugly thing.
Information comes in. The Department of Homeland Security rather suspects that there was some sort of EMP pulse. Down in the deep corners of the Hellfire Club's shielded basement, people pause to reflect on their wisdom.
And then Adel turns (and turns, because his seat is one that spins, such that he has to catch himself on the desk to stop) and glares at the ceiling. "Do you have any idea how many contacts there were in my cellphone that I have now lost?" He asks the room at large, but it his brother who answers:
"Too bad, so sad," Bahir carols crankily, taking another sip from a bottle of water slick with condensation. There are two Bishops, black and white, to the three pawns of which he is one; the other two are white. No Rook, no Knight, and most worrisome, no Monarchs.
Percy is partway through his third sandwich, licking mayonnaise off his fingers because he is eating too fast. The sweat has dried in his hair, leaving it crinkly. He leans with his hip against the desk. "I've got my important numbers in my head," he remarks complacently, after swallowing. "Everything else is work and I'm sure someone has a rolodex someplace."
Most of Adel's numbers were neither important, nor work. His glare says as much. So much ass lost to an EMP. He munches crankily through a sandwich brought to him by Bahir, sullen under his brother's condescending gaze.
The elevator rumbles to life, overly loud in the eerily quiet underground. It winds down slowly and the doors open onto the lower level, spilling out monarchs, White and Black. Emma's dressed for an evening in the Park in a long, flowy, filmy skirt and similar top over a white tank. She's carrying her strappy sandals, a pair of dirty sneaker in their place on her feet. How she got those is a story for another time, we're sure. "At least there's power /here/."
"Of course there's power here," Shaw snaps. "This is the Club, Emma - if it can be had," he says, "we have it." He is, it seems, not in the best of moods - black sportcoat and slacks over a dark blue polo, his fifteen-hundred dollar loafers soiled and dirty. As soon as the doors open he steps out, looking around for the nearest pawn. It's a finger pointed straight at him - black or white - and a, "Talk."
The nearest pawn, as it happens, is white -- and female. She is already paused when the elevator descends, and the look she turns on Emma is almost fawning. It does not take a psionic mutation to notice the relief and adoration that just oozes from puppy-dark eyes. It is a little disgusting, even, but the pawn goes still at the point of Shaw's finger. She bows her head, and talks. What little known is shared, and the fairly obvious confirmed. But who, where, why? The girl can only shrug, and step the side as other pieces poke their heads out of the watchroom to greet their monarchs.
Adel does not poke his head out. He pokes telepathy out: << You're all right, Emma? >>
Percy stuffs the last of his sandwich into his mouth and brushes his hands together to clean them of lingering crumbs. Then he sidles away from the desk and out of the watchroom, hooking thumbs into the belt-loops of old, well-worn jeans. He is a little too relaxed -- mutation extended to its limits, metabolism replenishing through the sandwich fuel; the end result is the torpor of a body preoccupied by digestion. "Oh good, you made it."
"Oh, shut /up/. I didn't notice any of your money or powers of bullying being all that /useful/ on the way back," Emma retorts, taking the girl's arm and soothing her with an absent-minded caress. Report delivered, she sends her upstairs for a change of clothes and footware. << That remains to be seen. In one piece, at least. >> "Your powers of observation are phenomenal, Percy, darling. Anything else you want to report? Perhaps the day of the week, or the fact the sun has set?" Emma slides past him and into the watchroom.
"I did punch the horse," Shaw responds. "And it was my money that put the EMP-shielded generator in. We deal with Lensherr so often..." He steps into the watchroom after Emma, looking around - surveying, really. "Well," he remarks. "On that topic, we assume it this is the old man's doing?"
<< Cranky, >> leaps between both twins' minds, an observation only lazily shielded from Emma's perceptions. There is a slow smile to Adel's thoughts: not amused, but a smile, even so. As Emma enters, he turns to her. He pushes over transcripts of conversations with various contacts, confirming the short report the pawn offered. "We really don't know much yet," he says aloud. "I've had what pieces reported kept close, except for a pair that were sent to escort you. I suppose that you beat them here. They should be back soon."
"We aren't assuming anything," Bahir says, scooting to sit on the edge of Adel's chair. Adel budges over crankily. "But if it was him, fucker owes me for another laptop. It seems rather larger scale than what I have seen from him, though." He glances over at Emma in pointed fashion, backed by Adel's glance.
"If it's not him, though, we're dealing with an unknown quantity," Percy adds, drifting back in after the Monarchs. He does not even roll his eyes. He is being that good. His arms fold over his chest, brows lowering as he frowns after them. He leans against the doorframe on one shoulder. "So we don't assume that it was him, but I don't think we have another guess."
Emma sweeps up the notes and starts to scan them quickly. "Communications, transportation, security... And from all over the City, Sebastian," Emma murmurs, handing off sheets as soon as she's scanned them. "No impact site detected though. Nothing indicates a bomb. Just on one second, and off the next." She hands the last off and sits down heavily on the edge of the security control-table. "I don't know... I don't know what he's capable of, but this? This is definitely larger than anything /I/ know of."
Shaw stares at the reports for a moment. "We've never been very successful," he remarks, "with large-scale electromagnetic pulses without detonating a nuclear bomb. So if no one is saying we've been nuked, I think that means we have to look to some sort of trans-physical explanation." He glances up at Emma. "It is, however, /very powerful/. I'm a little disturbed by a man with that much power." His mind reflects flat worry and the bald lie of that understatement.
Adel rubs his hands together as if with brisk cheer. "Why? Why do it? Assume it /was/ Magneto. It would probably take a great deal out of him. He had to have a reason to expend so much of his resources."
"Or not," pitches in Bahir, optimist.
"One generally engages in terrorism," Percy points out, leaning back against the desk again with his weight braced on his palms and his ankles crossed, "to beget terror."
Adel slants a look at Percy. "Thank you," he says.
Emma sighs heavily and slants a look at Shaw that reeks of exasperation. "Only a little, darling? You've been playing patty-cake with him for months now, and we've never accused him of bein entirely sane. But honestly, do you really have to wonder? The news about Lowe, Wide Awake, MRA... It's rather more astonishing he's held his peace for as long as he has."
"I expected him to react," Shaw responds with a frown. "I didn't expect that he /could/ react on such a grand scale, dear - and I need to perhaps recalculate if he can stall the largest city in the most powerful nation in the world on a whim."
Adel and Bahir sit side by side and watch Mommy and Daddy -- Emma and Shaw, White and Black -- discuss things. Neither adds a thing, but both smirk slightly.
*IC-News (#511) has just been sent new mail by Storm (#489).
"You thought I feared him for nothing?" Emma purrs, grim satisfaction at this display of Shaw's underestimating hitting bass chimes in her voice, despite the fact she too underestimated him. "What are the estimates for getting the power up? Has anyone heard timetables?"
At this question, Shaw looks around - he has, after all, just walked in with Emma. "Well?" he demands, his voice flecking irritable.
"You've seen what we have," Percy answers, indicating the reports Adel has passed along with a flicker of his fingers. "Nothing from FEMA yet. It's not just power, though. Everything's defunct and will need replacing. We'll be limping for awhile even with functional generators."
The other black pawn rifles through said reports in search of the requested information. "Uh--" He holds up a hand, flipping through just slightly too fast for a baseline human. "It was right here." He moves to the next stack, movements slightly twitchy. "Or maybe here." Or maybe /there/.
"Shit." Emma stands back up and slides past Shaw and Percy to take a stack of clothes from the returning white pawn. "We need to consider how to spin this, if at all possible." She steps out into the hallway and out of sight, though her voice carries back. "You do realize that if it is him, there will be a governmental response."
"I do," Shaw remarks. "I'm not even sure it's a bad thing. The losses are going to be enormous," he says. "We were already in a recession from the terror attacks in the spring... with this, the country is looking at another Great Depression."
Adel's eyes follow Emma nearly as long as the young white pawn's eyes follow her. Nearly. But the young woman beats him out at fawning. "And how do you plan on spinning this? It can't really be that bad, can it?"
"I think you're overestimating, Shaw," Percy says, shaking his head. He glances at his fingernails. "What we're looking at is Hurricane Katrina, not Black Tuesday."
Emma is quiet for a moment, though it's obvious from the sounds carrying through that she's changing. A few minutes later, she's back in fresh jeans, shirt, shoes, and is pulling her hair up into a simple ponytail. "Not a bad thing? When it won't be /just/ Magneto who is targeted? Do you remember our darling president's agenda?"
Of them all, it is Bahir who looks to Shaw and at least grants him the courtesy of assuming he has a point. "So how do we make a profit from it?"
"Hurricane Katrina hit a bunch of poor black folks in Louisiana," Shaw responds. "The nation and the world doesn't care about them - but they care a great deal, however, about rich white people in New York. New Orleans was Africa," he says with a shrug. "This is the center of the world."
Adel studies his nails, and frowns upon discovering the beginning of a hangnail on his right index finger. He smoothes his thumb over the cuticle and checks his (dead) watch.
"The center of the world, and the world's mutant population," Emma points out again to thin air.
"Our computers are fried and our toasters are fucked, but that doesn't mean that Wall Street is about to crash and burn. We've weathered /blackouts/ before." Percy scruffs a hand through his hair, aware of the, well, sidetracking, and sighs. "Have you got a spin in mind?"
"There's going to be a mutant problem," Shaw agrees grimly. "But how many people died when planes fell out of the air? How many car crashes, deaths in lootings?"
"And? What do we do about it? Pin it on dangerous mutants so that you can take control of whatever arm of government reaches out to come down upon the danger?" Bahir asks with thinly veiled irritation. Links show all the more clearly in his mind, transparent to Emma's telepathy: MRA, databases, telepathic /dampening devices/.
"I'm not seeing the spin," Percy says.
"We didn't already have a registry in place for Arabs. We didn't already have a national debate on wether or not they were even /human/," Emma insists, closing in on Shaw and lowering her voice to calm certainty. "If this is Erik's work, then we are looking at yet another war. And this one isn't between politics or religions. It will be against our very DNA."
"Oh, good. I can fulfill my lifelong dream of dying as suicide bomber," Adel says brightly. Speaking of Arabs! He waves the offense with brittle and bitter venom, his thoughts whispering of sand.
"I think," Shaw says, "that it would be unfortunate if you were placed in an internment camp." He smiles almost sweetly at Emma. "Certainly it would be unfortunate for the guards, dear."
"And for those that it is too expensive to contain, there is always mass extermination," Percy says helpfully.
"Optimist," Bahir says accusationally in Percy's direction.
"You make me want to /join/ Erik," Emma mutters, rolling her eyes skyward as if beseeching the heavens for help.
Shaw steps closer to Emma and places a hand on her shoulder. "There, there," he says. "I hear he keeps a harem - you'd fit right in." It's a gleeful grin, and then, "are we sufficiently concerned about fallout to want to cover up Lensherr's involvement?"
Emma looks blankly at him. "Cover /up/ his involvement? This isn't a little fling with a congressional page. The evidence will be fairly conclusive, I suspect, Sebastian."
"We could, uhm, invent an EMP device of suitable magnitude and leave it conveniently positioned at the epicenter," Bahir says very blandly. "We only need the device, and for them to determine the epicenter."
"They'd probably find some way to blame mutant terrorists even if we did," Percy says with a snort. "After those riots?"
"If we can't deflect the blame," Shaw reasons, "then we should be the ones pointing fingers. To do nothing makes us look weak."
"We. The mutant community?" Bahir hazards. "Distance ourselves from the extremists?"
"'Not me'," Adel sing-songs unhelpfully, a vision of potential distancing.
"We as in the Hellfire Club," Shaw responds. "The mutant community is..." He waggles his fingers. "Out there. I don't profess any fellow-feeling towards them because of some quirk of genetics; no, the Club is my fellows because we share ambition and the means to achieve it."
"And then who and where will we be pointing fingers?" Adel asks, saccharine sweet. "The Hellfire Club? What would a group of do-nothing rich boys have to say about mutant terrorism?"
"That quirk of genetics can betray you, Sebastian. It can betray us all. We might be able to hide our genes from databases, but if they go after us with any vengance, then we are going to have to be /extremely/ light on our feet to stay ahead of them." Emma stops and sweeps him in a disdainful glance before moving across to Adel's chair. "And some of us aren't quite as nimble as we once were."
"Are you accusing me of being old, Emma dear?" Shaw's hand squeezes her shoulder a little more than firmly. "You are not so young as you once were, either." He looks around. "Well," he says briskly. "No decisions can be made tonight - not until we see what the morning brings. Tomorrow, let's put pawns in the city to get a sense of what is up and have someone go bring newspapers from Jersey. We'll decide then what to do."
An icy wind blows across the scape of Adel's mind, pride pricked by the glint of light off the silver handled cane on the wall. Still, he turns his attention up to Emma, sharpening a smile at her. It is very nearly a leer. As pawns peel off to assignments made by the Black Bishop per Shaw's directions (even Bahir, pawn that he is) and the room quiets, the White Bishop has eyes only for his Queen. "So, want to show me the guest bedroom?"
Decades of research into weapons like this, millions of dollars invested, and it's likely some old man who mixed up his medications and had a fit of pique. Makes a man worry about the state of his business.
It makes a man worry about the future of his business, too - backlash is an ugly thing.
Information comes in. The Department of Homeland Security rather suspects that there was some sort of EMP pulse. Down in the deep corners of the Hellfire Club's shielded basement, people pause to reflect on their wisdom.
And then Adel turns (and turns, because his seat is one that spins, such that he has to catch himself on the desk to stop) and glares at the ceiling. "Do you have any idea how many contacts there were in my cellphone that I have now lost?" He asks the room at large, but it his brother who answers:
"Too bad, so sad," Bahir carols crankily, taking another sip from a bottle of water slick with condensation. There are two Bishops, black and white, to the three pawns of which he is one; the other two are white. No Rook, no Knight, and most worrisome, no Monarchs.
Percy is partway through his third sandwich, licking mayonnaise off his fingers because he is eating too fast. The sweat has dried in his hair, leaving it crinkly. He leans with his hip against the desk. "I've got my important numbers in my head," he remarks complacently, after swallowing. "Everything else is work and I'm sure someone has a rolodex someplace."
Most of Adel's numbers were neither important, nor work. His glare says as much. So much ass lost to an EMP. He munches crankily through a sandwich brought to him by Bahir, sullen under his brother's condescending gaze.
The elevator rumbles to life, overly loud in the eerily quiet underground. It winds down slowly and the doors open onto the lower level, spilling out monarchs, White and Black. Emma's dressed for an evening in the Park in a long, flowy, filmy skirt and similar top over a white tank. She's carrying her strappy sandals, a pair of dirty sneaker in their place on her feet. How she got those is a story for another time, we're sure. "At least there's power /here/."
"Of course there's power here," Shaw snaps. "This is the Club, Emma - if it can be had," he says, "we have it." He is, it seems, not in the best of moods - black sportcoat and slacks over a dark blue polo, his fifteen-hundred dollar loafers soiled and dirty. As soon as the doors open he steps out, looking around for the nearest pawn. It's a finger pointed straight at him - black or white - and a, "Talk."
The nearest pawn, as it happens, is white -- and female. She is already paused when the elevator descends, and the look she turns on Emma is almost fawning. It does not take a psionic mutation to notice the relief and adoration that just oozes from puppy-dark eyes. It is a little disgusting, even, but the pawn goes still at the point of Shaw's finger. She bows her head, and talks. What little known is shared, and the fairly obvious confirmed. But who, where, why? The girl can only shrug, and step the side as other pieces poke their heads out of the watchroom to greet their monarchs.
Adel does not poke his head out. He pokes telepathy out: << You're all right, Emma? >>
Percy stuffs the last of his sandwich into his mouth and brushes his hands together to clean them of lingering crumbs. Then he sidles away from the desk and out of the watchroom, hooking thumbs into the belt-loops of old, well-worn jeans. He is a little too relaxed -- mutation extended to its limits, metabolism replenishing through the sandwich fuel; the end result is the torpor of a body preoccupied by digestion. "Oh good, you made it."
"Oh, shut /up/. I didn't notice any of your money or powers of bullying being all that /useful/ on the way back," Emma retorts, taking the girl's arm and soothing her with an absent-minded caress. Report delivered, she sends her upstairs for a change of clothes and footware. << That remains to be seen. In one piece, at least. >> "Your powers of observation are phenomenal, Percy, darling. Anything else you want to report? Perhaps the day of the week, or the fact the sun has set?" Emma slides past him and into the watchroom.
"I did punch the horse," Shaw responds. "And it was my money that put the EMP-shielded generator in. We deal with Lensherr so often..." He steps into the watchroom after Emma, looking around - surveying, really. "Well," he remarks. "On that topic, we assume it this is the old man's doing?"
<< Cranky, >> leaps between both twins' minds, an observation only lazily shielded from Emma's perceptions. There is a slow smile to Adel's thoughts: not amused, but a smile, even so. As Emma enters, he turns to her. He pushes over transcripts of conversations with various contacts, confirming the short report the pawn offered. "We really don't know much yet," he says aloud. "I've had what pieces reported kept close, except for a pair that were sent to escort you. I suppose that you beat them here. They should be back soon."
"We aren't assuming anything," Bahir says, scooting to sit on the edge of Adel's chair. Adel budges over crankily. "But if it was him, fucker owes me for another laptop. It seems rather larger scale than what I have seen from him, though." He glances over at Emma in pointed fashion, backed by Adel's glance.
"If it's not him, though, we're dealing with an unknown quantity," Percy adds, drifting back in after the Monarchs. He does not even roll his eyes. He is being that good. His arms fold over his chest, brows lowering as he frowns after them. He leans against the doorframe on one shoulder. "So we don't assume that it was him, but I don't think we have another guess."
Emma sweeps up the notes and starts to scan them quickly. "Communications, transportation, security... And from all over the City, Sebastian," Emma murmurs, handing off sheets as soon as she's scanned them. "No impact site detected though. Nothing indicates a bomb. Just on one second, and off the next." She hands the last off and sits down heavily on the edge of the security control-table. "I don't know... I don't know what he's capable of, but this? This is definitely larger than anything /I/ know of."
Shaw stares at the reports for a moment. "We've never been very successful," he remarks, "with large-scale electromagnetic pulses without detonating a nuclear bomb. So if no one is saying we've been nuked, I think that means we have to look to some sort of trans-physical explanation." He glances up at Emma. "It is, however, /very powerful/. I'm a little disturbed by a man with that much power." His mind reflects flat worry and the bald lie of that understatement.
Adel rubs his hands together as if with brisk cheer. "Why? Why do it? Assume it /was/ Magneto. It would probably take a great deal out of him. He had to have a reason to expend so much of his resources."
"Or not," pitches in Bahir, optimist.
"One generally engages in terrorism," Percy points out, leaning back against the desk again with his weight braced on his palms and his ankles crossed, "to beget terror."
Adel slants a look at Percy. "Thank you," he says.
Emma sighs heavily and slants a look at Shaw that reeks of exasperation. "Only a little, darling? You've been playing patty-cake with him for months now, and we've never accused him of bein entirely sane. But honestly, do you really have to wonder? The news about Lowe, Wide Awake, MRA... It's rather more astonishing he's held his peace for as long as he has."
"I expected him to react," Shaw responds with a frown. "I didn't expect that he /could/ react on such a grand scale, dear - and I need to perhaps recalculate if he can stall the largest city in the most powerful nation in the world on a whim."
Adel and Bahir sit side by side and watch Mommy and Daddy -- Emma and Shaw, White and Black -- discuss things. Neither adds a thing, but both smirk slightly.
*IC-News (#511) has just been sent new mail by Storm (#489).
"You thought I feared him for nothing?" Emma purrs, grim satisfaction at this display of Shaw's underestimating hitting bass chimes in her voice, despite the fact she too underestimated him. "What are the estimates for getting the power up? Has anyone heard timetables?"
At this question, Shaw looks around - he has, after all, just walked in with Emma. "Well?" he demands, his voice flecking irritable.
"You've seen what we have," Percy answers, indicating the reports Adel has passed along with a flicker of his fingers. "Nothing from FEMA yet. It's not just power, though. Everything's defunct and will need replacing. We'll be limping for awhile even with functional generators."
The other black pawn rifles through said reports in search of the requested information. "Uh--" He holds up a hand, flipping through just slightly too fast for a baseline human. "It was right here." He moves to the next stack, movements slightly twitchy. "Or maybe here." Or maybe /there/.
"Shit." Emma stands back up and slides past Shaw and Percy to take a stack of clothes from the returning white pawn. "We need to consider how to spin this, if at all possible." She steps out into the hallway and out of sight, though her voice carries back. "You do realize that if it is him, there will be a governmental response."
"I do," Shaw remarks. "I'm not even sure it's a bad thing. The losses are going to be enormous," he says. "We were already in a recession from the terror attacks in the spring... with this, the country is looking at another Great Depression."
Adel's eyes follow Emma nearly as long as the young white pawn's eyes follow her. Nearly. But the young woman beats him out at fawning. "And how do you plan on spinning this? It can't really be that bad, can it?"
"I think you're overestimating, Shaw," Percy says, shaking his head. He glances at his fingernails. "What we're looking at is Hurricane Katrina, not Black Tuesday."
Emma is quiet for a moment, though it's obvious from the sounds carrying through that she's changing. A few minutes later, she's back in fresh jeans, shirt, shoes, and is pulling her hair up into a simple ponytail. "Not a bad thing? When it won't be /just/ Magneto who is targeted? Do you remember our darling president's agenda?"
Of them all, it is Bahir who looks to Shaw and at least grants him the courtesy of assuming he has a point. "So how do we make a profit from it?"
"Hurricane Katrina hit a bunch of poor black folks in Louisiana," Shaw responds. "The nation and the world doesn't care about them - but they care a great deal, however, about rich white people in New York. New Orleans was Africa," he says with a shrug. "This is the center of the world."
Adel studies his nails, and frowns upon discovering the beginning of a hangnail on his right index finger. He smoothes his thumb over the cuticle and checks his (dead) watch.
"The center of the world, and the world's mutant population," Emma points out again to thin air.
"Our computers are fried and our toasters are fucked, but that doesn't mean that Wall Street is about to crash and burn. We've weathered /blackouts/ before." Percy scruffs a hand through his hair, aware of the, well, sidetracking, and sighs. "Have you got a spin in mind?"
"There's going to be a mutant problem," Shaw agrees grimly. "But how many people died when planes fell out of the air? How many car crashes, deaths in lootings?"
"And? What do we do about it? Pin it on dangerous mutants so that you can take control of whatever arm of government reaches out to come down upon the danger?" Bahir asks with thinly veiled irritation. Links show all the more clearly in his mind, transparent to Emma's telepathy: MRA, databases, telepathic /dampening devices/.
"I'm not seeing the spin," Percy says.
"We didn't already have a registry in place for Arabs. We didn't already have a national debate on wether or not they were even /human/," Emma insists, closing in on Shaw and lowering her voice to calm certainty. "If this is Erik's work, then we are looking at yet another war. And this one isn't between politics or religions. It will be against our very DNA."
"Oh, good. I can fulfill my lifelong dream of dying as suicide bomber," Adel says brightly. Speaking of Arabs! He waves the offense with brittle and bitter venom, his thoughts whispering of sand.
"I think," Shaw says, "that it would be unfortunate if you were placed in an internment camp." He smiles almost sweetly at Emma. "Certainly it would be unfortunate for the guards, dear."
"And for those that it is too expensive to contain, there is always mass extermination," Percy says helpfully.
"Optimist," Bahir says accusationally in Percy's direction.
"You make me want to /join/ Erik," Emma mutters, rolling her eyes skyward as if beseeching the heavens for help.
Shaw steps closer to Emma and places a hand on her shoulder. "There, there," he says. "I hear he keeps a harem - you'd fit right in." It's a gleeful grin, and then, "are we sufficiently concerned about fallout to want to cover up Lensherr's involvement?"
Emma looks blankly at him. "Cover /up/ his involvement? This isn't a little fling with a congressional page. The evidence will be fairly conclusive, I suspect, Sebastian."
"We could, uhm, invent an EMP device of suitable magnitude and leave it conveniently positioned at the epicenter," Bahir says very blandly. "We only need the device, and for them to determine the epicenter."
"They'd probably find some way to blame mutant terrorists even if we did," Percy says with a snort. "After those riots?"
"If we can't deflect the blame," Shaw reasons, "then we should be the ones pointing fingers. To do nothing makes us look weak."
"We. The mutant community?" Bahir hazards. "Distance ourselves from the extremists?"
"'Not me'," Adel sing-songs unhelpfully, a vision of potential distancing.
"We as in the Hellfire Club," Shaw responds. "The mutant community is..." He waggles his fingers. "Out there. I don't profess any fellow-feeling towards them because of some quirk of genetics; no, the Club is my fellows because we share ambition and the means to achieve it."
"And then who and where will we be pointing fingers?" Adel asks, saccharine sweet. "The Hellfire Club? What would a group of do-nothing rich boys have to say about mutant terrorism?"
"That quirk of genetics can betray you, Sebastian. It can betray us all. We might be able to hide our genes from databases, but if they go after us with any vengance, then we are going to have to be /extremely/ light on our feet to stay ahead of them." Emma stops and sweeps him in a disdainful glance before moving across to Adel's chair. "And some of us aren't quite as nimble as we once were."
"Are you accusing me of being old, Emma dear?" Shaw's hand squeezes her shoulder a little more than firmly. "You are not so young as you once were, either." He looks around. "Well," he says briskly. "No decisions can be made tonight - not until we see what the morning brings. Tomorrow, let's put pawns in the city to get a sense of what is up and have someone go bring newspapers from Jersey. We'll decide then what to do."
An icy wind blows across the scape of Adel's mind, pride pricked by the glint of light off the silver handled cane on the wall. Still, he turns his attention up to Emma, sharpening a smile at her. It is very nearly a leer. As pawns peel off to assignments made by the Black Bishop per Shaw's directions (even Bahir, pawn that he is) and the room quiets, the White Bishop has eyes only for his Queen. "So, want to show me the guest bedroom?"