More Than the X Can See

Chapter 28

Steve looked at his watch before swallowing his last bite of lentils. Logan noticed his movement and their eyes locked for a half second before Steve laid his fork on his empty plate and pushed it an inch forward on the table.

John had noticed the exchange, but since Wolverine didn’t say anything, he picked up a coffee carafe and refilled his cup. When Cable and Halo left the room, his men had been hesitant to touch their food. Once the waiter had triggered the elevator, Wolverine’s sniff had been audible in the quiet of the room. When he picked up his fork and knife and began cutting into his lamb, they’d taken their cue that he’d decided that the food hadn’t been tampered with and they’d all eaten. Steve had been the last to finish and Cable and Halo still hadn’t returned.

“We need a suite,” Logan said, breaking the silence, “king beds.”

John’s coffee cup paused half way to his mouth. “Two or Three?”

“Two,” Logan said smugly.

“You got it,” he answered letting the cup reach its destination.

“With a separate ventilation system,” Logan added.

“Done,” John replied after a sip of the hot, bitter brew. Wolverine wouldn’t explain their need for a separate ventilation system unless he was told they had clearance. He wished he could explain to the X-men that they’d been assigned to them, but he knew they wouldn’t believe him until they talked to Fury face to face. It was a matter of Security. And trust.

Wolverine and Cable had a history with SHIELD, not all of it favorable. The X-men hadn’t always been considered the positive influence that they embodied now. They had started as vigilantes in a time when all mutants were considered suspect. When mutants of great power began popping up worldwide, governments across the globe began to create laws to restrict these new and unstable creatures, some placing their own citizens in mutant concentration camps to contain the growing and mysterious new threat of mutantcy. Having a mutant gene became another reason for persecution and uncounted innocents had paid for it over the years. Many of the more powerful mutants either joined their governments as watchdogs of their own kind or they became rogues more often turning to villainous groups like the terrorist organization called the Brotherhood of Mutants for safety.

It was Xavier who decided from the first that his X-men would fight for a moral high ground and at the same time try to stay within the confines of the ever growing and constricting web of government laws and regulations. A near impossible task as savvy politicians used the media to feed the flames of mutant-phobia. Their increasingly prejudicial agenda combined with the actions of terrorist mutant groups issued in an age of discrimination unseen since the Third Reich. SHIELD, newly formed to combat the increase in terrorist activity had instantly locked on to the most visible targets, the Brotherhood and the X-men. Justice had been swift and fierce, many of the captured mutants were briefly turned into lab rats by the SHIELD scientists. An intelligence leak broke the story to the New York based Daily Bugle and a firestorm erupted when civil and mutant rights groups petitioned the United Nations to stop the use of mutants as lab animals. A witch-hunt soon followed and many of SHIELD’s top scientists and administration resigned in the face of the media flack.

SHIELD knew a year before it was announced that the worldwide rate of mutant births had been rising for years. They would need a mutant force that could relate to and police the emerging mutants. Among the various mutant groups including the Brotherhood and Xavier’s X-men, it was an obvious decision. The only problem was to convince Xavier that SHIELD wanted to add a mutant force to their arsenal, that is wasn’t a trick to lure the X-men into a trap. Once he had been persuaded, it had been a tougher sell to the United Nations. Instead of creating a mutant force, SHIELD was only allowed to work with approved mutant groups. Fortunately, Xavier’s firm moral restrictions and political machinations had made his X-men one of the approved. Unfortunately, when things went badly, it was the X-men who were blamed and, usually through the media, suffered for it.

Because of this, some of the older and hard-nosed X-men didn’t trust SHIELD. It was an organization whose leadership and policy changed depending upon the political climate at the United Nations. These X-men, Cable and Wolverine among them, would only trust the members of SHIELD with whom they’d formed a lasting relationship. Conveniently, these same trusted members of SHIELD had proven time and again their dedication and loyalty and had ascended to long-standing positions of power.

“That all?” John asked. Fury had ordered him to agree to just about anything—within reason. When he’d notified Fury that Cable and Wolverine had already made their way to San Francisco, he’d seen the gleam in the older man’s eye. Fury and Bridge’s grim moods improved even more after they’d contacted Xavier.

The addition of a large contingent of X-men to SHIELD’s arsenal had upped the odds of stopping the terrorist threat they’d discovered in Southern California. The information about the involvement of Al Qaeda in the threats to the Worthington properties that Xavier had learned from Cable had cemented the fragments of intelligence SHIELD had recently obtained.

“Make sure the rooms are clean. We’ll know if they’re not,” Logan was saying as Angel and Nathan entered the room and immediately went to their seats.

Nathan picked up his fork, but before he took a stab at his food, he looked at John and ordered, “Contact headquarters and have them send a scout to the Muhammad Mosque. You know what the restaurant host looked like, he’s probably the owner. Give them his description with the name Kutty. He should be with another man at the Mosque; sixties, trimmed beard going gray, wearing a navy blue suit with a long jacket. Don’t approach him, he’ll be with a group, but get some pictures of him and his men and cross-reference. I want as much information we can get on him and his people by morning.”

John hesitated, taken aback by the direct order to contact SHIELD in a supposed undercover operation.

Nathan’s fork came up with a dolmas, a rolled meat and rice stuffed grape leaf. “Now,” he growled before stuffing his face.

John glanced at Angel and she nodded her head quickly in the affirmative while she chewed her food. He pulled his cell phone out and dialed.

“What’s goin’ on?” Logan asked, even he was surprised by Nathan’s order.

Angel swallowed and said, “They stopped to talk in the parking lot across the street and I took Nathan over to the other side of the building so he could get a look at them.”

“Communications?” Logan asked with a glance at John as he rattled off code into his phone.

“I don’t know what you guys were expecting, but this place is just a hotel with a restaurant and gift shop. I was expecting some computer command center or hidden base, but,” she waved her fork in the air, “there’s nothin’ here.”

Logan glanced at Nathan before returning his gaze to Angel, brows furrowed, “Nothin’?”

“Not that I can tell,” she said before spearing a cherry tomato and placing it in her mouth.

Logan sat back, crossed his arms and stared at Nathan. He wouldn’t say what he wanted to say out loud in front of the agents.

Nathan continued to shovel the food into his mouth, but he opened mental contact to Logan. *The place is a cover,* Nathan told him once Logan let him into his mind.

*You sure?* Logan asked.

*No, but I know Al Qaeda sent a squad of men here—to this hotel. They must have been the men Kutty got rid of. If this Kutty character’s in charge then he’s connected to Al Qaeda, too.*

*I don’t understand why he sent them away. There was no reason for it. Angel says there’s nothin’ here.*

*Nothing she can detect,* Nathan emphasized. *That doesn’t mean there’s nothing here. I’ll let SHIELD look into Kutty’s background and paper trail although I question why he dismissed his men.*

*One of our tails?* Logan raised an eyebrow.

Nathan chewed thoughtfully before answering, *I doubt it, but it is a possibility. If he was told who we are, we’re going to have problems.*

*If he knows who we are we’re going to have more than just problems, we’re going to get killed.* He glanced at Angel, *I don’t want to drag her into this if—*

*She’s our Ace in the Hole, no one knows her abilities, and no one has her abilities. She cuts our work in half maybe more, there’s not as much need for covert action and less combat to get our answers.

She identified our tails, all four of them, before you did. She can give me a detailed layout of the building and match it to any floor plans SHIELD digs up. If needed, she can give us a positive ID on Kutty. She identified the presence of security measures or rather, the lack of, better and quicker than any of us could have. She knew where the enemy was located and notified us of their change in movement.*

*So she’s good in non-combat situations,* Logan agreed, *but if she’s taken out, where does that leave us? You got backup plans?*

*If she does her job, she won’t get taken out. She’s got a good range, we just need to keep her on her toes. And I’ve always got a backup plan.*

*She’s tired and in Heat. She’s going to make mistakes.*

*After we move our equipment to SHIELD headquarters, she can sleep. I’ll tell McCoy he can examine her after the meeting tonight. That should give her some decent shuteye and when he’s finished we can get her back downtown to get more buildings scanned before tomorrow morning.*

*McCoy and the others might be in California by the time we get to SHIELD HQ. We need to know what’s going on with her and the sooner he gets his paws on her, the sooner we get answers.*

Nathan raised an eyebrow at Logan’s choice of words, surprised at his derogatory remark. To his knowledge, Logan and Henry McCoy got along fairly well and although Henry had become more bestial recently, his morph into a more feline appearance had not greatly transformed the Doctor’s hands or interfered with his dexterity. He let the comment slide and shrugged, *You’re the expert, if you think she can wait—*

*She’s gonna have to,* Logan replied petulantly. Her smell was driving him crazy, but it was more important for their resident chemist and to examine her and start his tests to determine what could be done to alleviate if not eliminate her symptoms. Although he enjoyed the benefits, part of him wasn’t very comfortable taking advantage of her need to procreate for his own recreation.

Every woman he’d gotten close to had died tragically so children were something he thought he’d never have, not in his line of work. Most of the X-men didn’t have kids and what few there were had actually been special circumstances like Nathan or Rachel Summers both of whom had arrived fully grown from future alternate realities. Despite being surrounded by children at the Institute, most of the X-men weren’t married, nor did they have any offspring. And according to what Nathan and Rachel could remember of their future/pasts, none of the X-men ever would. It didn’t bode well for Halo.

*Do you remember her? In your past?* he asked.

*Angel?* Nathan frowned and took a moment to examine her face and tried to remember. He shook his head, *No, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there.*

“You know it’s rude to talk about people in front of them without letting them know what you’re saying,” Angel commented snidely after she noticed Nathan’s scrutiny. She had also been able to tell from the small telltale signs that Logan had been having some sort of conversation with Nathan, but when they had started looking at her, she knew she was the topic and didn’t like it one bit. “Just because you’re using telepathy and not a foreign language doesn’t make it any different.”

“If you need to know it, I’ll tell you,” Nathan replied and turned to John. “Have your men taken care of our tails?”

“The Paparazzo’s not going anywhere,” John replied, “and we’ve got men in place to apprehend the other. We should know who he’s working for by the time we reach headquarters.”

“Good,” he said and stood up. “Let’s go.”

“Hey!” Angel exclaimed motioning at her still half full plate.

“You can eat later,” he said and continued out the door, the SHIELD agents right behind him.

“But this is good,” Angel whined to Logan as he waited for her in the doorway.

“I’ve eaten better,” Logan replied. “Hurry up.”

Angel stuffed one last bite into her mouth before she grabbed her purse and the bag under her chair and headed towards the door. They caught up with Nathan as he paid their bill. John and his men were nowhere in sight, but she could sense that they’d continued down the last set of stairs and were almost out of the building.