More Than the X Can See

Chapter 30

As the doors closed, Angel sighed heavily and flipped open the folder Fury had given her. She flipped through the contents of the folder. It contained high quality color and a few black and white enlarged passport and driver’s license photo shots with some basic physical characteristics on the top half of the page and the reasons why they were wanted by the authorities on the bottom. Some of the people had multiple photos and extensive histories that encompassed several pages.

John had turned his attention to the false window, watching the landscape as she examined photo after photo of dark haired and dark skinned men and a few women. She was half way through the file and looking at photos of a young dark haired, dark eyed man who would have blended in without notice as a student of any college in America when her eyes blurred the data sheet giving his name and details. Whoever he was, he’d racked up an impressive ‘resume’ in a relatively short time. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose between her forefingers.

“Angel?” John asked, concern tingeing his voice as he touched her shoulder.

Her eyes popped open and she looked at her watch automatically, trying to figure out the time. 2:53 p.m. “Tired,” she said. “Not enough sleep. Not enough caffeine,” she waved her hand dismissively.

“You want me to order some coffee?” he asked.

“No,” she shook her head. “Don’t bother anyone. I’ll get a soda.”

“Until you visit the Lab and get your identity and authorization level logged into the computers, I have to limit your movement. Zero Company is large enough that we can spare someone to get you whatever you need to do your job.”

She smiled at him, “I’m not leaving the office.”

He frowned in confusion as she stood up and walked over to the photo gallery. She quickly keyed the necessary switches and stepped back as the wall slowly swiveled to reveal the wet bar on the other side.

John guffawed as the bottles of liquor swung into view. “That sly old bastard!” he exclaimed in surprise. John walked over to the cherry wood bar and examined it, noting the various high-end bottles of liquor and rack mounted glass stemware reflected in the mirrored backsplash. He ran his hand along the smooth edge of the bar. “I should’ve known he’d have some sort of set up like this.”

“It’s one of the best mini bars I’ve ever seen,” Angel said as she stepped behind the bar and opened a cupboard. “He’s got straight Coke in here. You want one?”

Thinking it best not to help himself to his superior’s private stash he said, “No, thanks, but help yourself.” Why close the corral gate after the cattle’s bolted? He thought in analogy to Angel’s relaxed attitude to raiding the Director’s hidden bar. “It’s more important that you stay awake while you review those dossiers.” There was a hint of chiding in his voice. He’d let her sleep for a short while before waking her up.

“Getting up and walking around helps, too,” she pointed out while loading ice cubes into a tall, thin glass before placing it on top of the bar countertop. She popped open the can of soda and slowly, carefully poured it into the glass that he noticed had a frosted intricate “NF” logo cut along the bottom half. “I needed a break,” she continued. “They all start to look the same after a while.”

She took a drink after the foam settled and then poured more of the can into the glass. “It’s harder to pick people out by photographs than it is in person. In person, you get a three dimensional view of their face. In photographs you don’t really get a sense of distance. You can’t really tell how long their nose is or how much it curves down or up at the tip. And their faces are always so wooden in legal photos. Posed. Not relaxed like they are when they’re unselfconscious.”

“There are surveillance shots,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but they’re mostly distance shots. If I hadn’t already looked at the close-up photo, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell who they were supposed to be. I’m not used to looking at Middle Eastern people all the time. Not used to looking for and identifying the differences in their facial features.”

Taking a different tact and hoping it was something he could better identify with she expounded, “During Vietnam, didn’t the American soldiers have problems telling the difference between one Asian and another?”

“That’s true,” he agreed, “but you still shouldn’t have that much difficulty telling one person from another based on those photographs.”

She was glad Fury had cleared up Zero Company’s status. Now she could talk to John about her mutant abilities without worrying about him turning her over to the government. It was just ironic that he was a military guy in a super high tech military building. She could remember the long hours of drilling and constant surprise questions from her parents about what to do and say if an authority figure accused her of being a mutant. The fear they’d instilled in her as a child that had gradually become less and less of a concern as she’d grown older and dealt with incidents where she’d been able to bluff her way past people’s suspicions. Until the day she was told everyone at Livermore Labs needed to give a DNA sample ‘for security reasons’. She knew she hadn’t been the only one to leave the company at that announcement, but she knew she’d been the only mutant.

“I don’t see the same way everyone else does,” she began. “Don’t get me wrong, I have eyes to see and I see just like everyone else if I’m watching television or reading print, two dimensional images. But in relation to the third dimension, I don’t just go by the surface. I take into account everything physical about them especially if I get close. Facial features are just the beginning. Height, weight, broken bones that’ve been reset, surgeries and whether a woman has had a child or not are some of the other ways I identify people. For example, transsexuals can’t fool me,” she smiled and took another drink. “Even if they’ve undergone the operation to change their sex, I’d still know what sex they were born as.” The smile slowly dissolved as she poured more soda into the glass and continued, “I can even tell if they’re ill. Cancer, diseases, gallstones, heart murmurs and hardening of the arteries. I could probably better tell you how long you’ll live than your family doctor.”

“I’m not expecting to die in my sleep,” John stated, shocked and yet fascinated by what she was now revealing.

Angel gave him a look over the edge of glass while she took a long drink. “No, I don’t suppose you do,” she replied, returning the glass to the countertop and pouring the rest of the can into it. “How long have you known Fury?”

“Personally? Two years, but I’ve known of him since before I was recruited. He’s been with SHIELD since it’s inception. Before that he worked for the CIA and before that he was in World War II and led the Howling Commandos in Europe.”

“So,” she did a mental tally, “if he led a squad in World War II he must have been at least twenty if not older. Do you know why he’s over eighty years old, but doesn’t look anything over fifty?”

“There’s rumors that go around, but no one’s confirmed anything. The most common of them concern blood transfusions from people like Captain America or Wolverine. ‘Course, if it was something that simple, neither one of them would be running around loose risking their lives on a regular basis. They’d be—”

A long deep tone sounded from the desk and John broke off to check it out. Touching the computer screen, he said, “Chase, here.”

“Is agent Halo still with you, Major?” a masculine voice asked.

“Yes.” His simple answer was a coded response. SHIELD knew the exact movements of each one of their agents and “guests”. He could have responded with one of several different replies, each one described the status of his situation and would put into effect a planned response should he be having any difficulty with his “guest”.

“Agent Beast has arrived and requested that we contact you and have you take her to lab three bravo.”

“Understood. Tell them we’re on our way.”

“Acknowledged.”

John turned to see Angel exiting the bar as it began to slowly rotate back to its original position. “We’ll take the data sheets with us. It’s imperative that you’re familiar with the faces in case you have already or do encounter them later.”

“You want me to memorize them?” she asked.

“If you can.”

“It’s going to take me a while to do that,” she replied before drinking down the last of the Coke. “There’s what? Fifty or more of them?”

“Upwards of. We’ll take them with us. You can look at them if you get any down time and can pass them on to Cable and Wolverine. You’re not the only one who’ll need to memorize them.”

About to place her ice filled glass in the cup holder of Fury’s desk, she noticed slight scorch marks. It wasn’t a cup holder Fury had embedded into his desk it was an ashtray. It explained the humidor in the bottom desk drawer and the small tobacco filled, climate controlled cabinet in the mini bar. He must have just lit up when they arrived because there weren’t any ashes in the tray. She could only catch the faintest whiff of a sweet smell in the air and now understood it hadn’t been an air freshener to cover odors, but high-grade cigar smoke that permeated the room. She dropped the glass into the ashtray with a small clink! And turned to John, “Grab ‘em and let’s go.”

John led her out the doors and into another long hallway. The tiled floor and walls were much more welcoming in rich shades of greens and browns with occasional prints of famous paintings interspersed here and there. It would have been much more calming if Angel didn’t sense the secured caches of weapons, ammunition and medical supplies hidden behind the seemingly innocuous artwork.

Doors to other rooms branched off the hallway. The first were two small meeting rooms that contained electronic tables and computer hardware that resembled the meeting room at the Xavier Institute. Inside one of them Fury, Logan, Nathan and Steve and Luke of Zero Company had been joined by other uniformed SHIELD agents and another mutant.

Angel could tell by body language that her two men were angry. The corner of her mouth quirked upwards slightly as she evaluated her impression of the situation behind the closed door. Her men. Nathan and Logan probably wouldn’t like that type of attitude coming from her. Or would they? Whatever was going on, the situation was tense in that room and her men were upset. Not a good thing considering their personalities. She wondered what could have set them on edge.

Her curiosity got to her and before John could stop her, she knocked on the door that led into the room. After a brief pause one of the unidentified SHIELD agents opened the door a hand span wide. Dark featured, the man could easily have blended in with the men and women in the folder Fury had given her. He wore his SHIELD uniform comfortably with slight wear marks along the leather straps that held his gun and ammo cartridges. His eyes widened slightly upon seeing her face. He recognized her. His eyes flicked to John and at a motion from John, he stepped back and pulled the door open further allowing them to enter.

All the chairs were filled at the table. Facing the door, Fury sat at one end with Nathan and Logan to his left and the other mutant to his right. Uniformed agents filled the rest of the chairs and some stood around the room. A uniformed man and woman stood against the wall behind the mutant who Angel now saw had blue skin and red hair. Above the table, a realistic hologram of downtown San Francisco hovered, the Worthington buildings glowing red.

“Have you identified anyone?” Fury asked, his question more directed at John than at Angel.

John shook his head, “McCoy’s arrived and we’re going down to the Lab.” Fury nodded in acceptance, he’d been expecting it.

While John and Fury talked, Angel strategically walked over to the table near the mutant woman and stared at the hologram. Looking closely, she was surprised she was able to see miniscule people, cars and trucks moving up and down the street. “Cool,” she said, taking the extra time to focus on the mutant beside her while her eyes remained on the hologram. “Is this real time?”

“Yes,” Fury replied, his eyes moving from one woman to the other. He noticed the way the woman in the chair was eyeing Angel with interest. This could be good or this could be bad, he thought. “Halo, I’d like to introduce you to Mystique. She’ll be working with you on this mission.”

Angel turned and got a good view of Mystique. She had deep sky blue skin and dark, nearly true red hair and eyes that were completely yellow including the iris. The woman’s eyes had an ethereal quality as if had the room’s lighting been dim, they would glow. The only thing Angel could compare them to were the eyes of Kurt Wagner, but there was still something strangely indefinable about them that made them even more inhuman than his. In fact, there seemed to be something strangely indefinable about the whole woman. It piqued her interest. The woman, who was using those eyes to look Angel up and down appreciatively, extended a hand in greeting, “I’m sure we’ll work well together.”

“I’m sure we will,” Angel replied taking her hand and noticing the firm, almost masculine grip.

“Mystique will not be working with us on this mission,” Logan bristled, mocking Fury’s words. “I don’t care what type o’ leash you’ve got on her. I don’t trust her.”

Fury looked to Nathan who had a thoughtful look on his face. It was obvious that he was weighing the pros and cons of the situation. “Cable?” he asked.

Mystique appeared to be wearing silver skull jewelry, a tight black leather belly baring top and matching low-rise pants. Angel knew the clothing and jewelry was a sham. The entire ensemble was the woman’s epidermis, her skin. The woman could control how her skin appeared and how it would feel to the touch. Angel wondered what it would be like to run her hands down the woman’s body. To feel the skin change from soft breast tissue along her chest to tough hide where the leather top formed and then back to the oh so soft skin on her belly. To flick her fingernail along the front of the leather top knowing that the nerve endings along the nipple and areola were there and that it was only the woman’s will that stopped them from puckering into a tight bud.

“I don’t trust her either,” Cable began, but Logan’s confident smirk slipped with his next words. “But our cover’s blown and her metamorphic ability and experience as a terrorist will give us an edge.”

“A terrorist?” Angel exclaimed in alarm and pulled her hand from Mystique’s grasp.

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” Mystique smiled ruefully at the cliché and shrugged. “Isn’t that right, Cable?”

Nathan gave her a quelling glance, but he did note Angel’s startled reaction as Mystique threw the truth in his face. Even before he traveled back through time to the present he’d been fighting to free the masses from tyranny and oppression. It was a job he did well. It was a job he would do until his dying breath. With the knowledge that he had been used and deceived by the very men he had trusted with his life less than five days ago uppermost in his mind, Nathan replied, “Only as long as you have all your facts straight.”

“And do you?” Mystique asked. “The Worthington building is clean. You went to check out a terrorist cell and found a bunch of immigrants renovating a hotel. Hardly signs of acts of terrorism unless you think the immigrants are planning on turning the Worthington building into a Mosque.”

“Only one building has been checked, there are four others. I know those immigrants have been trained by Al Qaeda and they’re just waiting for their marching orders.”

“So you say,” Mystique said, disbelief oozing from her words.

“So I say,” Nathan answered stonily.

“What can you do, but humor him?” Mystique said turning to Angel. “There’s no talking to a fanatic.”

“You don’t think there’s going to be a terrorist attack?” Angel asked confused, swayed by Mystique’s argument.

A slow smile spread across Mystique’s face before she asked Nathan, “She precious! Where’d you get her?” She turned back to Angel, “Of course there’s going to be a terrorist attack, Honey. Fury wouldn’t be threatening me with dire consequences if I don’t persuade these Cro-Magnons to allow me to join your Ménage a trois.”

Nathan, ignoring her barbs and Logan’s growing antagonism, focused his attention on Fury, “Why?”

“Misdirection, infiltration and experience.”

“What’s ta keep her from turnin’ on us?” Logan asked.

“She’s in the top five of almost every most wanted list and a prime target for bounty hunters. As long as she doesn’t step out of line, she’s provided with technology to avoid detection in the less civilized countries and she’s gets downgraded to ‘watched’ and not ‘wanted dead or alive’ in the those more cultured.”

“That never stopped her before,” Logan argued.

“That’s because the technology to detect her energy signature by satellite wasn’t readily available.” Mystique’s grin turned sour at Fury’s words.

“I didn’t know satellites could do that,” Angel said worriedly.

“There are only a few, but Mystique’s reputation is such that many countries and organizations are willing to forego past differences in order to dispose of the threat that she poses.”

Angel stepped back from Mystique, “She’s that dangerous?”

“No,” Mystique replied.

“Yes,” Fury, Nathan, Logan and John answered, almost in unison.

“I’m far less dangerous than a man who can kill anyone on the planet with a thought. Xavier may be a prophet of peace, but I’ve had enough experience to know that people can change given the right conditions and circumstances.” Mystique crossed her arms, spreading her venomous glance between the men. “None of you seem to question his relationship with Magneto.”

“Don’t try to divert attention away from yourself, Mystique,” Nathan cautioned. “It just makes you more suspect.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to make a point. You make me out to be more than I am. Despite appearances, I’m not the goddess of chaos. I don’t sow dissent and destruction on a whim. I’m paid to do it. I’m an agent. A mercenary. Only in my case, I usually get to choose who I follow or if I follow anyone at all, but my own conscience.

“Most of those countries want me dead because of what I’ve done for them. They’re afraid I’ll make all of their nasty secrets public. I’m the living proof that they’re all lying bastards who cover themselves with the respectability of politics. I’ve seen the heinous underbelly of humanity and I’m not impressed.

“I admit to being a mutant terrorist. But that’s only a matter of perspective. I’m a mutant in a world where mutants are persecuted for being different. A hundred years ago, a mutant was someone with a skin discoloration or one finger to many. An oddity. Common enough that it was remarked upon, but in general not something of concern. Now, there are mutants who mimic angels and demons, mutants who have the abilities of gods. In third world countries, whole families are executed because a child is born with a mutation. I watched a mob lynch every single member of a family including their livestock because a baby was born with a second head and third arm growing out of it’s body!” Mystique’s voice cracked at the memory and she took a deep breath to calm herself. “The baby wasn’t a mutant. It was a birth defect. It should’ve been twins.”

Angel gasped, caught up in Mystique’s emotion, “You couldn’t stop them?”

“No,” she shook her head, bitterly. “I had to maintain my cover.”

“I read about that,” Nathan stated. “The Iranian ambassador toured the site and gave a party afterwards to reward the village.”

“He was a very religious man. He hated mutants with a passion and fervor that I’ve only seen in those who hold political or religious power. He was both, a Muslim cleric and an Ambassador to Germany.”

“He died in a fire a week later,” Nathan added.

“I was done with my mission.”

“You killed him because he hated mutants?” Angel asked, horrified.

“No. He’d died a month earlier from drug and alcohol poisoning in the arms of a she-male in a brothel in Amsterdam. His family paid me to impersonate him to avoid scandal.”

Angel’s mouth dropped open in shock and the room grew quiet as people absorbed the facts.

“So,” Mystique broke the silence. “Do I get to join your Ménage a trois, or what?”

“You can impersonate people that well?” Angel asked, still hung up on Mystique’s story.

Mystique threw a questioning glance at Fury. At his nod, she swung her chair towards Angel and stood up. All the SHIELD agents straightened to attention, going on the alert. Her hair darkened and flowed upwards into a military style cut. Skin tone lightened to a weathered tan. Her shoulders widened and her hips narrowed while her black leather outfit stretched into a dark SHIELD uniform. An eye patch appeared over one eye.

Angel’s eyes widened and then narrowed. Once Mystique was finished transforming into Nick Fury, Angel cocked her head to the side. Her lips raised in a secret smile as she took in Mystique’s new appearance. Her eyes lowered to Mystique’s slightly bulging crotch. “It works, doesn’t it? You’re fully functional.”

“Would you like a demonstration?” Mystique replied in an exact match of Fury’s voice.

Angel’s eyes shot up to meet hers and then she shrugged nonchalantly, “Maybe later.”

“Angel,” Logan growled. When he had her attention, he shook his head slowly, “No.”

“What?” she asked with feigned innocence.

“Can you tell the difference?” Nathan asked. It was an important question and vital to his decision.

Angel’s eyes flicked from the real Fury to Mystique before she said apologetically, “Sorry, but you’re not perfect.” She turned to Nathan, “I’d be able to tell it was her no matter who she tried to be.”

“In a crowd? At a distance?”

She nodded, “Yes.”

“How far?”

She considered for a moment, “Fifty to seventy feet, maybe a hundred.” At his frown, she added, “I could increase my distance if I spent more time with her. Get a better grasp of her anatomy and how her shape changing ability works.”

Logan sighed resignedly. He knew it was the answer Nathan had needed to make his decision.