9

It was like stepping back in time.

They were in a long hallway hung with tasteful (and expensive) classical landscapes and sparsely furnished with small side tables and expensive vases, reproductions of Ming and Yuan Dynasty era ones as well as Dutch Delft pieces. It looked exactly like one of the corridors in the London headquarters; even the ecru color of the walls was precisely the same shade. Perhaps it was meant to be comforting, but honestly it was creepy. Had they simply replicated the old building in a new place? Or was this some bit of misplaced nostalgia? A stab at “tradition”? Giles hoped they realized how insane it was, no matter what urged them to do this in the first place.

Large doors opened on just what he expected to find - a library with wall to wall shelves, broken up only by a large window giving a slightly startling view of the Sydney skyline. (He was expecting, out of habit, a view of London.) The shelves were full of books, some so old they shouldn’t have been exposed to air, and plush overstuffed armchairs gave an illusion of warmth, while mahogany wood gave the furniture and shelves a slightly pretentious touch of class. The carpet was a dark red, like old blood, and he knew that wasn’t coincidence. There was a short, wiry man standing behind a rather ostentatious desk, and he stiffened in surprise as Giles came in, followed by Ruby and Mordred. “What the hell are you people doing here?” He snapped, then glared at Mordred. “And who the bloody hell are you?”

“I’m Gandalf,” Mordred replied facetiously, closing the doors behind them.

The wiry man was Gordon Hamilton, the new head of the Watchers Council. He was actually a Scot, with a thick mane of silver hair and eyes as dark as licorice drops, but the most galling thing about him - to Giles, at least - was he was ten years younger than him. He never did like taking orders from people younger than him. Maybe it was an unreasonable prejudice on his part, or maybe it depended on the person. For instance, Ruby was younger than he was, but he had no trouble taking orders from her, but then again, he had little doubt that Ruby could kick his ass, and he knew she had more field experience than most random two Watchers combined.

Gordon reached out to something on the desk - it looked like he was pressing a button, but Mordred shook his head. “I’ve isolated this area of the building in a time bubble. Unless you can cross the dimensional barrier, you’re out of luck.”

Gordon glared at him, his jaw muscles tensing and twitching beneath his skin. “You really expect me to believe you’re that powerful a wizard?”

“Look out the window.”

He did so with great reluctance, constantly looking back at them as if expecting a physical attack the moment his back was turned, but his brief glance became a double take, and he openly stared out the window. The scene was the same, the city of Sydney with a blue slice of water visible at the edge of the horizon, but everything had frozen: there was no movement in the water or the sky, and all the cars on the road looked parked. There was even a sea bird frozen in mid-flight. Time hadn’t actually stopped out there or in here; Mordred had simply erected a dimensional “bubble”, so time passed in different, mutually exclusive ways. It sounded more complicated than it actually was, but required an amount of power and control he would never pretend to have, and he was certain that the Council had no one on site who could handle it.

Gordon cursed softly and rubbed his eyes, which he kept doing as he turned back towards them. “We have all the time in the world,” Mordred pointed out. “So I’d cooperate if I were you.”

He collapsed in his desk chair with a heavy sigh, and asked, “What is it you want? Revenge? Isn’t that a little petty for you, Rupert?”

“What, you’re not crediting me with it?” Ruby asked.

Gordon just shrugged. “I kind of expect it of you, Ruby.”

She glowered at him, rolling up her sleeves. “Right, that’s it - I’m bitin’ you.”

He looked slightly alarmed and rolled his chair back from his desk as Ruby advanced on him, but Giles grabbed her arm and stopped her. “Hamilton, this has gone too far,” he said, trying to get things back on track. “Too many people know about the Ascendant project; I even found someone who could translate the documents. You can’t make this just go away.”

“You found a Russian scholar?”

“Not exactly.” He wasn’t even going to attempt to explain Logan, mainly because he wasn’t sure he could. “But the genie’s out of the bottle and you can’t force it back. We just have to deal with it now in a non-lethal way.”

He found a word he liked in there. “Non-lethal? Does that mean you’re not going to kill me?”

“That depends on you,” Mordred said menacingly.

Giles flashed him a scolding look, and told Gordon, “No, we’re not. But we’re not going to let you kill us either, so I think it’s in all of our best interests to come to an understanding, don’t you?”

He ran a hand through his hair, trying to buy some time to think, and conceded, “I don’t think I have much choice in the matter, do I?”

“Nope,” Mordred agreed.

After a minute or so had passed, Gordon appeared to steel himself, as if to ask something he knew couldn’t be taken well, and finally said, “I need to know how much you know about this.”

“I think you already know.”

He didn’t like that answer. “Do you know where the Ascendant is?”

So that was confirmation they existed, and that the Watchers must have realized that the Brotherhood of Vestus was after them. He had no idea who the Ascendant was, but he suddenly wondered why the Brotherhood had drawn Kier and Logan up to Toronto. If you thought about it - and as Logan himself had brought up, it sounded like the Watchers were experimenting with mutants - Logan would have made an excellent candidate. He shuddered to think what would happen if a vampire inhabited his body. “No. Why? Is it important?”

He scoffed. “Of course it’s important, Rupert. We have to kill them before the Brotherhood finds them, or it’ll be a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.”

Oh dear. So much for non-lethal methods.

*****

Logan glared at the Ressik, giving him a look that really should have made the demon turn and run screaming for his life, but Ressiks were just too macho to do that. “You could kill ‘em anyways. I have no reason to trust you.”

The demon shrugged a single shoulder casually. “Except having mass slaughter on your hands. C’mon, fuzzy, at this rate it’s gonna happen when you’re still trying to make up your mind.”

Rags had muttered something under his breath, and Logan heard the “whump” of his sudden teleportation. The Ressik stared over his shoulder, slightly alarmed. “Hey, where the fuck did tattoos go?”

“He’s a Stansin - he probably ran back to our hotel.” It was easier to classify him as a coward than to try and guess what the hell Rags was up to. He was guessing he hadn’t abandoned them, but he had no idea what he was intending to do. Go get reinforcements?

The Ressik seemed willing to believe that, but then Marc audibly dropped something - it made a dull metallic sound as it hit the ground - and the last thing Logan saw was the Ressik’s big mouth opening to say something before Marc suddenly wrapped what he assumed to be his jacket around his head (it smelled like it) as he shouted, “Brace yourself!”

He had barely a millisecond to do that, as there was a loud bang that burst both his eardrums simultaneously, a pain like a donkey had just kicked his head from the inside of his skull, and he was instantly woozy, feeling deeply disoriented and hearing nothing but a white noise hum. He though he’d seen a flash of light beneath the hem of the leather jacket Marc had thrown over his head, and he could feel Marc still had his arms around him. He was holding him up, but he had also buried his head in his back, and was just now loosening his grip and looking up.

Why? Logan had already figured it out, as he knew that particular pain and silence quite well: Marc had just thrown a flash bang grenade. There was no way to keep him from losing his hearing - that must have been the “Brace yourself!” - but by throwing his jacket over his head he’d spared him the temporary blindness. He probably had to hide his head in his back to try and avoid blindness for himself.

Logan pulled the jacket off and looked at the Ressik, who was still reeling, soundlessly screaming and clawing at his oversized eyes. The flash bang was probably even more disorienting to him, considering the size of his eyes, and Revol, Sergey, and Kier looked to be holding their heads in pain, but they were vampires, so they’d be fine. Besides, Kier was the only one to worry about, and hell, he was a “special” vampire, which probably meant he’d recover faster than most.

He felt a bit off balance, as suddenly losing your hearing could do that to you, but he adapted, as he seemed to adapt to many things; the nature of his mutation wasn’t just healing, or at least it seemed that way to him - it was also dealing instantaneously with all the shit life and other people threw at you. He was on the Ressik before he knew anyone else was even there, and a backhand swipe of his claws sent his head flying from his body. It probably was a mercy killing, considering the state he was in.

The flash bang had probably startled everyone, and that’s when Logan got the full genius of Marc’s plan: a flash of light that bright and an explosion that loud would send people fleeing out of the park like a shot. They’d probably think it was terrorists or something, setting off a bomb in downtown Toronto to protest … what? Tim Horton’s coffee shop domination? The Leafs sucking like a Hoover? And any other Ressiks and vampires who were near by would be blind and deaf too, meaning they couldn’t hunt as effectively. The only problem was, how much time did they have before they recovered and came after them?

Oh fuck, it didn’t matter - he’d recover first, and Marc knew that as well.

They probably didn’t have long before the cops showed up, along with whatever potential anti-terrorism units they had out here, “just in case”. Which meant also that there’d be too many armed and jumpy Humans for the demons to deal with, giving them yet another reason to split. Of course this meant they had to hoof it too, but this shouldn’t take him long. Marc had terminally screwed their plan - all Logan had left to do was a little clean up. He felt something trickling down his ears, and wasn’t sure if it was sweat or blood, and figured it didn’t matter either way.

He looked at Marc, and he looked back as he finished shrugging his jacket back on, so he must have saved his own eyesight if not his hearing. He gestured to the vampires, and Marc nodded in understanding, hefting his rifle and briefly the punching the air with it, basically telling him visually that the first vamp to try anything was going to get a slug where it would hurt even them. Logan gestured at the woods behind them, and Marc nodded and gestured for him to go, but then tapped his wrist and held up two fingers: two minutes. Marc probably figured that was all the time they could spare before they had to get out of here ahead of the cops. He nodded, gave him a thumbs up, and tore off towards the woods, letting the thuds of his own footfalls reverberating through his body fill the space left by silence.

He killed a couple of vampires and Ressiks and barely even stopped running, just slashed out, and they were so disoriented by the flash bang that they never even knew he was there. The farther he went in the woods, the more together and unaffected the demons were, but most turned and ran as soon as they spotted him, figuring keeping their heads was the better part of valor. There really were fewer people in the park than there had been only minutes earlier; that grenade had been better than an air raid siren. He’d been looking for Dru, assuming she’d been the one who’d come back with reinforcements, but he hadn’t seen her, and doubted he was going to. She’d probably already run off, for good this time. Yeah, she was nuttier than alligator in a goldfish bowl, but you didn’t need to set a grenade off in her face for her to get the hint that her side was losing.

He’d come out in one of the park’s open spaces, both Human and demon free, and he realized the sharp, high pitched noise he’d started hearing had become a deeper hum, accompanied by an odd fluttering sound, like he’d gotten a month trapped in his head. But he knew by now that was just his eardrums repairing themselves, and he was literally hearing the progress as it went along. He’d probably have all his hearing back in under two minutes.

He sensed the disturbance of air beside him, and whirled in time to see Rags had materialized there. He was talking to him, looking sweaty and nervous, but he couldn’t hear him yet. He was able to read his lips, though … well, partially. He saw “What the hell was that?” in between words he just missed.

Logan hoped he was speaking in a normal voice, and replied that Marc had set off a flash bang to derail the Ressick, then asked him where the hell he went. He didn’t know if he was speaking in the correct tone or not, he still couldn’t hear himself, but he could feel the vibrations in his throat as he made the words, and it didn’t feel like shouting.

Rags didn’t look at him funny either, so he figured he’d done okay. Rags spoke really fast, or his Cockney accent impacted how he formed vowels and syllables - which made sense, since he had a tendency to pronounce “th” sounds as “f”, and elided like mad. But among the confusing mishmash and vague hand gestures, he saw the word “evacuate”, and he guessed that Rags had decided to try and get some of the Humans out of the park like he’d gotten people out of the library. It was a good plan, humane, but Marc’s had been a bit better.

See, that’s exactly why he loved the guy. He could even have a perfectly wordless conversation with him that was completely understandable - thanks to his military background? Who knew really. It was just he really needed to try and shove him into the X-Men. No matter Captain Buzzkill’s objections to his casual violence or Xavier’s objections to weapons, Marc could think on his feet, and the guy could fight, damn it - you never had enough quick thinking fighters on a tactical team. Even Scott couldn’t argue with that.

He told him they had to get back and get going before the cops got there, and Rags didn’t even ask; he just grabbed his arm and teleported them back to the group. By this time Kier had straightened up, but he had tears running from violently red rimmed eyes, and it wasn’t clear if he could see yet, or hear, or anything. Still, he looked better than Revol and Sergey, which Logan felt proved his point. Rags said something, but turned away from him so he had no hope of seeing it, but now he could hear muffled words; it was like his ears were crammed full of cotton wool, but rudimentary sounds were starting to get through. He couldn’t hear enough to make any sense of the sounds, but at least he had solid proof of his recovery.

Marc stared at Rags intently, clearly reading Rags’s lips with the same amount of difficulty he was having earlier, but he got the gist of what he was saying, tapped Kier’s shoulder, and then put his hand on Revol’s shoulder. Kier got it, and moved behind Revol and Sergey to grab them both by the shoulder. Marc grabbed Kier’s arm, Logan grabbed his, and then Rags grabbed his arm. A little humanoid daisy chain that made teleporting them all en masse a simple thing, but as soon as they were ripped out of here and shoved out into an alley a couple blocks south of their hotel, Kier staggered a bit, still having trouble adjusting to Rags’ rather abrupt and comfortless teleports. But that was okay, as it hit Revol and Sergey even harder; they fell against the nearest wall, sagging like alcoholics who had just surpassed their own tolerance levels, and it looked like they wanted to barf but couldn’t, probably because vampires didn’t barf. (He had no idea; he’d just never seen one! do it.)

Street noises were coming back to him, and he could hear the muffled, distant wails of a chorus of sirens heading towards High Park, as well as a few car alarms, which were either being set off by the sirens now or had been set off by the violence of the flash bang. “Okay,” Logan said, just to see if he could hear himself now - yes, he could. He grabbed Revol and shoved him hard enough against the wall to make him look at him with his red rimmed, angry eyes. “Can you hear me? Fuck it, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter.” He held his claws up right to his face, and that message didn’t need words behind it. “We’re going to Kayla, and no more bullshit, no more double crossing crap, or I’ll leave you a limbless torso that’ll fry when the sun comes up.” He then asked, “You get me?” but it took him a moment to realize he’d said it in Russian.

But that may have been for the best. He got him loud and clear, whether he could genuinely hear or not, and he got the sense, reflected in the sullen dullness in his eyes, that all the fight had finally been kicked out of Revol. He could almost feel bad for him - what must it have been like to lead a cult that bled members every year, that struggled to rebuild itself after decimation, and never quite became anything but a shred of a shadow of its former self?

Yeah, that was really sad. He’d have to pencil in a cry about that later.