Not all who wander are lost

Posted on Tue Sep 17th, 2024 @ 20:04 by Alistair Quill & Shauna Murphy

Chapter: Besieged
Location: Library
Timeline: Monday, 25th of January, 1993
3416 words - 6.8 OF Standard Post Measure

"Do you know why everyone's suddenly got study hall?"

The thump of text books on the table in front of him became the first indication that Alistair's solitude had run its course. Whilst Shauna could technically take objects with her when evoking her powers, she often tended to lose focus on them first, particularly when thoroughly distracted by situations that agitated her. It constituted her greatest weakness in many regards since it was the biggest threat to her ability to remain in stealth, though the library and surrounding classrooms set aside for study periods were full enough that nobody had really noticed this time. She reappeared a split second afterwards in any case, already sliding into the seat opposite her friend-that-happened-to-be-a-boy without waiting for an invitation. The local gossips had taken too much pleasure in noticing a subtle shift in the pair's behaviour, mostly involving how much time they spent together, but perhaps if they knew what half of the couple's conversations revolved around, they'd have found something a little more contentious to be suspicious about.

In keeping with her current mood, Shauna also didn't wait for an answer.

"A whole heap of the staff are in the gym doing some sort of training."

Alistair looked around a bit to see eyes shifting quickly back into books and murmurs beginning, possibly at their expense. He had given up on normal introductions to conversations. "I wondered why all of them looked so fit. Did you know that some geneticists believe the X-Gene makes you more attractive?" he shrugged a bit, "Some Dawkings guy, I think." He leafed to the next page in his book on music theory. A particularly technical tome that his namesake teacher had advised him to read to expand his understanding.

The deadpan expression that pinned him in place didn't actually evolve into a quip regarding what his excuse was, but there was a flash of difficult-to-define humour in Shauna's eyes that made a hint at it anyway. She was playful, in the 'dangerous if you let on you enjoyed it' kind of way. "Think about it, why would a group of teachers suddenly need to start training? You don't find the timing a little coincidental? I'm telling you, they're up to something. We should have pushed further into those catacombs."

"Well.." Alistair looked around and lowered his voice to the same conspiratorial tone. "If all the teachers are in the gym, who's watching the catacombs?" He quirked an eyebrow. He wasn't usually one to get himself into trouble, but on the other hand he also didn't mind a spell of rebellion. He winked to try and emphasise that it was about time to stretch their legs in the 'staff only' section of the undercroft.

The devious glint of a partial smile lent Shauna a familiar slyness, warmed slightly by a glimmer of approval that celebrated the reason Alistair tended to be her first choice of company these days. Trying to get anything done as a large group had inevitably ended in failure in the past, and though dragging Catriona in was often preferable given the girl's skillset, Shauna actually had no idea where her friend was, or where any of the others were if it came to that. A glance from side to side sought to pinpoint anyone paying them too close attention and, when the coast seemed clear, Shauna reached across to offer a hand. Physical contact, after all, was required if she was going to mask both their exits.

"Cavendish will have to see sense eventually," she lowered her voice. "All we need is a bargaining chip."

Alistair focused a bit on his own body, becoming slightly more lean, allowing for more stealthy skulking. He had figured that if there was less for Shauna to cover up it was going to be easier on her. "Let's find the teller then." He wondered if that particular jest came across as he had intended. "To get our chips." They were leaving the library through the slightly ajar door, "like in a casino."

A pointed side-eye reminded him that, whilst her powers had definitely improved through careful cultivation, Shauna was not guaranteed to mask their voices entirely. With the library so much more crowded than usual, it took a degree of navigation to make it out the door without bumping into anyone, and there was still an element of ducking and weaving out in the corridor before they reached the staircase and started to make their way downstairs. Her hand still clasping his, a familiarity Shauna was now inclined not to flinch at as long as there wasn't too much fuss made about it, she paused at the bottom of the stairs and scoped out the corridor in both directions. From the look of things, every effort had been made to keep the student body on the upper floors, the place was almost eerily quiet given the time of day.

"Have you made any decisions about registration yet?" Since the coast seemed very clear, maintaining low volume seemed safe enough. It was a conversation that would help them cover the distance in any case.

There was a long drawn-out breath from Alistair. "My parents actually insist I register." That was the downside of parents that still inserted themselves in one's life. He wouldn't say so in front of Shauna, but it was clearly annoying to have a mother so persistent. "Something about making it safer for me and them." He shook his head, "Do you know what the teachers are planning to do about it?" He leaned in a bit closer, and whispered even though they were alone and invisible, "I heard some of them were staging a coup against Ms. Cavendish to stop her from turning us all over to the registration people."

"If you believe half of what goes around, there'd be a coup every second day." As much as Shauna could be outspoken in her disagreement regarding some of the choices the adults around them made, she wasn't one to be so clouded by her own assumptions that she refused to seek clarification. Knowing had always been more important to her than guessing, a natural tendency for a mutant whose entire skillset afforded her the capacity to chase down the truth even when it didn't want to be known. "I don't actually think Cavendish will cooperate."

It was, given the history between the pair, an unlikely vote of confidence from an unexpected advocate.

"Even if she wanted to, which I doubt, there's only a handful of kids here she has legal guardianship over. If idiots like your parents want to believe going along with this will make life easier, then there's nothing she can do to stop them registering their kids. And if parents don't want to, it'd take a subpoena to force Cavendish's hand and we know how much she likes being told what to do." Shauna spoke with more authority than she really had and yet with a tad more than most her age might even get close to knowing. Politics and the legalities of mutant rights had been topics in her household since before she could remember.

"Alright, Inspector Murphy." Alistair smirked a bit. "So, what's the alternative then? Refusing registration? I'm not sure that'll go down well either." It was of course a different group with which that particular course of action wouldn't go down well, and the question was whether it made any difference to them if it did.

As they talked they came to a door. It was rather non-descript, except that it seemed as though the wood had some sort of sheen to it. The two exchanged a glance, they had been here before. Somehow Shauna knew the code to get inside and they had gotten to a small, musty, room with some sort of helmet. But there were more doors down the corridor they hadn't been able to get to because somehow Head Mistress Cavendish had found out they had come in there.

"What even is this place?," Shauna mused, more a rhetorical question to herself than something she expected a response to. It was clear the infrastructure was old, and given the castle's history, that probably made sense. The layers of security, however, did not appear to be of-the-time and had only increased since they'd last managed to bust their way in. "They can't be going to all this trouble just to block off a possible security breach. There were enough eye witnesses accounts of a jet involvement in the sentinel attack that there's got to be some grain of truth to it all. Hiding a whole aircraft underground is a bit insane though."

"You think that's what they're hiding here?" Alistair looked around a bit as they pushed aside the door. Even though it appeared to be wooden, the touch and feel was that of a heavy metal door. The corridor was short and the rooms now had small signs posted indicating what they housed. One of which was clearly labelled hangar. "I'm guessing that's where one would keep a jet."

"I don't think it counts as hiding if you fly it several miles into town. Storing it quietly in the hope that people forget about it, maybe." Shauna's eyes drifted between the options, her teeth worrying her bottom lip as the grip on Alistair's hand tightened just enough to be noticeable. "It's not the main thing they're storing down here though, not in a million years. Something is off though." It shouldn't have been this easy. After being caught the last time, Cavendish was clever enough and had the means to improve security and there were options that still made it difficult for the invisible to move around undetected. Shauna knew this because her parents had been making use of heat detection since she was a kid.

They made their way through the corridors before taking a turn and another one. It wasn't quite the layout he remembered, but Alistair was growing less and less certain of his own memories. It wasn't like there were crossroads or decisions they needed to make. It was just following the undercroft's narrow halls, that was until they got to a new door. This was definitely one they hadn't seen yet. It was robust, metallic, and it stood at the top of a five step staircase. "I don't remember this."

"We didn't get very far last time." As much as this was true, the statement was made more as if Shauna was trying to convince herself it explained why things felt oddly...unfamiliar, even though they had no right to feel anything else. A glance back behind them confirmed that there had been no missing branch to the corridor, at least not one that stood out, and Shauna found herself torn between following the very obvious path forward and back-tracking to look for clues to masked entrances. Unable to shake the feeling that she was somehow falling for expectations that left her less in control of her choices than she liked, Shauna heaved a sigh and tugged Alistair up the stairs. "Let's at least look."

As they took the steps upward Alistair noticed a small sign that he had mistaken for a window from a distance. "Look." He pointed it out.

'To those of you that traversed the undercroft in search of riches and forbidden knowledge, know these things; Not everything unseen goes unnoticed. Keep spreading your wings for one day you may need to fly. When the walls fall, this is path one should follow, but it comes with a responsibility to be the last one to leave.'

"Could we be more inside of a fantasy novel?" Alistair looked over at Shauna to see what she'd make of this message.

"Once a performer..."

Shauna allowed the observation to trail off, being somewhat more distracted by the balancing act of her emotions. On the one hand, being constantly a step or two behind Cavendish was getting old, as much as the challenge was motivating, and though she didn't suppose it was much of a prediction to expect the group to try once again to access the teacher's secrets, it still irritated her that the headmistress had an uncanny habit of planting herself, or her decoys, right where Shauna intended to be. Their powers weren't identical but the younger mutant had long suspected she wasn't quite as removed from Cavendish's radar as she was other people's. As far as Shauna was aware, the woman hadn't gone to her parents' lengths and deployed heat detection as a means of deterring outright mischief around areas of the estate she was not permitted to explore but she also suspected the older mutant didn't need to.

Aside from the annoyance, however, was a sense of curiosity and thoughtfulness that at least prompted a quiet introspection. Rather than block them out entirely, Cavendish had permitted access, albeit highly restricted, and something about the cryptic message sounded almost like a compromise. More than that, the last sentence contained an instruction and a request, one that was already starting to make sense. Lifting her eyes to the solitary door, Shauna furrowed her brow and gnawed on her bottom lip.

"We should see where it goes."

"Well, obviously." Alistair could be accused of a great many things, but a lack of curiosity wasn't one of them. Perhaps that's also what made their excursions and adventures so appealing to him. Aside from the fact that they meant they'd be spending time together. Out of sight. He pushed his abilities to slightly puff up his muscles and with it seemed to grow a couple of centimeters. Hand in hand they took the last few steps of the stairs and he pushed the door aside with quite a bit of ease. Beyond it was a dark tunnel, no end in sight. No light to brighten the darkness. "That's not ominous at all." He looked to the side and saw the familiar look of determination and knew that once they had been in for a penny, they'd be in for a couple of hundred quid.

They took a step forward inside. Something must've triggered, since as soon as they stepped inside lights on the wall flickered on. One by one the illumination went deeper into the tunnel, still no end in sight.

"What is she playing at?"

It was a rhetorical question, one spoken mostly to herself, but Shauna's steps faltered as she took the time to properly survey the scene. Something niggled and it occurred to her that, at least for the time being, being invisible wasn't really affording them any kind of protection and it seemed wise to at least test the limits of Cavendish's sudden bout of exposition. Gradually, the sensation of dulled perception that usually plagued those enveloped by her stealth lifted and the pair were left, still holding hands, in the middle of a corridor that only had one direction.

"A slightly winding tunnel with a gradual elevation, with motion-activated lighting and only just wide enough for many four people to stand side-by-side. I guess we've figured out what McAvoy does when he's not pulling up weeds."

Alistair looked around the tunnel, and while the addition of the lights was definitely modern, it seemed that the tunnel itself had been in use for quite some time. "The stonework seems similar to the oldest parts of the castle." He ran a hand down the side. There was a certain cold dampness to it. "I think we might be under the Loch." He looked down the path, "I'm guessing we'll come out somewhere in the forest." He turned a bit and tried to figure out exactly which way they were oriented, though that was made pretty much impossible with exactly zero points of reference.

They continued down the tunnel for quite some time, all the while keeping hold of each other's hands, before there was another set of stairs. Much longer this time, almost certainly leading back to the surface. At the top of the stairs there was a trap door in what for them was the ceiling. "Well then. Let's find out where this leads."

"It's got to be inside the castle."

One thing that seemed a natural off-shoot of her powers, or perhaps just an entirely separate ability that had nothing to do with mutation, was Shauna's usually-accurate sense of direction. Orienting herself to the rest of the world and being able to keep track of the spaces she travelled through certainly became an important part of not being disoriented whilst cloaked, especially as the ongoing maturation of her ability to manipulate her own sound field brought with it an element of distortion of the outside input from time to time. If her ability to hear long distance was compromised then being able to account for everything as a visual memory became all the more important. There seemed little chance that the pathway hadn't deviated back under the castle itself, or at least one of the associated buildings. The facility seemed to exist subterranean to a lot of the grounds as it was, Shauna wouldn't have been surprised if there weren't several access points. Cavendish probably had a trapdoor under her desk.

Finally letting go of Alistair's hand, the lithe mutant stretched her arm over her head and strained. The drop wasn't particularly long, certainly coming from the other direction wouldn't break any ankles if forced to enter without any assistance from a ladder. The lack of one still irked Shauna, since it seemed childish to make this last part awkward when this was clearly what they were supposed to do. "Give me a lift up."

Alistair made his way to stand against the wall and clasped his hands together. "How are they going to expect us to evacuate people through here?" He started to look around for an indication of some sort of ladder. But there didn't seem to be one. Clearly this part hadn't been really thought through.

"Hauling people up is probably faster," Shauna mused, not really paying attention to the conundrum because she was dealing with one of her own. It took a moment of feeling around the edges of the trapdoor for her to find the unlocking mechanism and, after that, several pounds of her fist finally dislodged it so that she could give it a hard enough push to flip open. Instantly met with a blast of frigid air, she wobbled a moment, frowning. "This isn't the castle."

Being wrong wasn't her favourite thing but finding out why was more important. Tentatively, Shauna struggled to heave herself up far enough to hook her elbows over the edge of the opening, at which point she stopped for breath to get her bearings. A flurry of wind kicked up enough debris to force her eyes closed and then, squinting, Shauna gave a wary glance around before starting the scramble upwards.

"How the hell did we get this far out....?"

Alistair pulled himself up after Shauna and looked around. "Looks like we're across the Loch." He turned a bit to try and triangulate their exact position. It was just trees around them though, nothing to give them a proper landmark and the hole in the ground they had come from had been covered, camouflaged from any onlooker or passer by. "We didn't walk that far, did we?"

"I don't think so." There was hesitation in Shauna's tone, however, an unusual indecision that kept its caution because she didn't want to be proven incorrect. Cavendish, like so many of them, was capable of very clever things but Shauna couldn't think of a known skillset that would allow the distortion of space itself. "It's not an illusion though," she added, immediately wrapping her arms around herself. "Unless it's detailed enough to include the weather." Staring for a long while at the twinkling lights of the castle through the trees, Shauna then lowered her gaze to the rippled reflections on the water's surface, just visible through the scrub, and frowned. "This is an escape route." She lifted her furrowed brow towards her partner in crime. "What was it Hunter said in History last term? The myth of escape tunnels and how popular fiction has grossly over-estimated how many medieval structures actually had them?" Shauna scoffed and looked back across at the castle. "She always did like irony too much."