Your time has come Pt1
Posted on Mon Feb 3rd, 2025 @ 8:17 by Effigy & Cameron Johnston & Phoebe Hunter & Ji-an Yun
Edited on on Mon Feb 3rd, 2025 @ 20:26
Chapter:
Besieged
Location: Undercroft, Avalon Institute
Timeline: Late evening, Sunday, February 7th, 1993
1866 words - 3.7 OF Standard Post Measure
The chemicals pumping through Effigy dulled everything but the instructions imprinted in her brain. There was a secret facility underneath the school, there was a way inside through the maintenance area, or rumour had it there was a way straight from the Head Teacher's office. Ironically the third floor office was much easier to reach than the maintenance area, which lay beyond some fairly high traffic areas of the facility. She cracked her knuckles and rolled her head, a laboured breath through the mask hiding most of her face. Her eyes flared up with intensity right before she took a short run up to the outside wall and scaled the castle up the three floor before getting to the windowsill. The old stone wasn't really handling the assault gracefully. Hanging on to the ledge of the window the G.O.U. operative tried to shimmy it open, but it wouldn't budge. Breaking the window would surely cause some sort of alarm. Then her enhanced vision spotted a spot on the ceiling. Damp. A hole. A way in perhaps, it had only been stoppered rather than outright mended.
Another show of strength as Effigy jumped up to the roof. Making her way across the slightly domed rooftop to get to the centre. Just slightly off to the side was a crack. Which is where she started to take it apart. Almost like a dog digging a hole to hide a bone in. She got to the insulation and wood underneath. It took some time to get a hole wide enough for her to force herself through. She cut herself on a bit of roofing sticking out, a bleed that quickly knitted itself back together. Landing on the rug, quiet as a mouse, she looked around, trying to find signs of a secret route down.
"So, you don't forget him at all?"
Typically speaking, it wasn't really Cameron's preference to be cooped up inside the castle after curfew. Though plenty willing to do his due diligence with settling the hoards and supervising evening activities, once it was lights-off in the student dorms, the speedster usually excused himself to either work on personal projects out in the workshops, or tinker around with Nessie, which had become a more pressing need over the past few weeks. Occasionally, he'd use the time to focus on his personal training and, more than a few times a week, those late-night jogs would take him via a certain garage in the town's centre, where he'd perfected the art of scaling a century's-old oak tree to squeeze in through a second-storey window. Sitting still wasn't Cameron's strong point and, since he invariably required only a handful of hours of sleep in order to function, he'd grown used to viewing the nights as an opportunity to develop an identity outside the goofball teacher who was typically a crowd favourite, particularly with the younger students.
Vigilance had taken on new significance, however, and though he could have undoubtedly slipped past the barricade with little fear of them being able to keep up, there was no good reason to pursue personal matters when tensions were so high and the responsibility for the safety of so many young mutants rested with the adults who'd opted to stay. As the situation continued to escalate, there simply wasn't time between trying to maintain some semblance of daily routine and managing the security of the castle to worry about allure of wide open spaces. He'd got better at taking phone calls, at least, and since there were only a handful of Claire's most trusted able to properly understand why guarding the underground facility was now so utterly imperative, Cameron had found ways to make the indoors endurable. If he was on shift with Liana, it was mastering meditation techniques or picking up guitar tips or learning a smattering of Korean so he could better communicate with their small charge. If it was Phoebe, and it rarely was because she had a habit of making sure it wasn't, it was trying to beat a precog at chess whilst teasing her to the point where at least one pawn was eventually thrown at his head.
As he waited for her to make her move, a deliberation that usually took twice as long as his own impatience, Cameron considered the topic of Phoebe's current guest and continued the speculation of the last ten minutes in trying to get his head around what Matt's reality must actually be like.
"So how does that work then? Is it because he doesn't want you to or because your mind tentacles have latched on and refuse to let go." To emphasise the rather crude description of her powers, Cameron fanned both hands out from his head like a pair of flashing reindeer horns.
"I do not know," Phoebe said moving her piece eventually as she glanced up at him doing the best reindeer impression she had seen in a long time. She offered a ghost of a smile as she glanced at the door that currently allowed the young mutant to sleep without hearing the pairs back and forth. "Bit of both I suppose. Hard to forget to a precog when you have seen things many ways and maybe he likes me enough to not want me to forget." Phoebe shrugged again feeling self conscious about it all suddenly but she had to give Cameron some credit he was trying to keep her mind in the here and now instead of else where.
"Well, I'd hope so, or he'd better work hard to make me forget to kick his ass." The attempt at protective older brother was idle playfulness, the kind of treatment Cameron usually reserved for Claire but seemed recently inclined to hurl at Phoebe too, when he could pin her down for any length of time. As much as she'd made it clear she didn't want to talk about it, there was clearly a thing that bothered her, that had to do with him, and there was something a little unsettling about that coming from someone who could see future possibilities. With any luck, she was just pre-emptively annoyed with him for stealing her Easter chocolate. Even Cameron wasn't optimistic enough to believe for a second it was that insignificant. Reaching across, he made his next move with the same lack of hesitation that he always employed and offered his opponent a wink. "He seems like a good guy though, I might need to ask him some tips on how to deal with women who never forget."
Phoebe offered a small smile as she stood up again for the fifth time in an hour and stretched her legs. She was unsettled and for the life of her, she did not know why. "He is a good guy. Has put up with me for six months nearly and I have only ever had one relationship longer than that." She said and people knew how that ended thanks to Halloween.
Not for the first time, the game stalled in favour of Phoebe's need to move. Having clocked her restlessness earlier, Cameron watched her pace without drawing direct attention to it, the sprawl of his limbs as he sat back into the sofa to wait meant as an intentional relaxed contrast. "They're a sturdy bunch, these locals." For a moment, the irony of his own situation creased the speedster's brow just a little but there was nothing much to be gained by bringing up his concerns regarding Mhairi when the air was already thick enough with unspoken tension. Placing both hands on his knees, Cam gave an elongated groan as he pushed himself to his feet and stretched upwards in exaggerated protest before shuffling out from behind the coffee table. "Pop the kettle on, you look like you need a drink. I'll go check on our little Gallifreyan."
When she wanted Effigy could move through a place, properly scouted, fast and relatively unseen. It had been what she was trained to do. It had taken her no time at all to follow the instruction of their extracted asset to find herself near the entrance to the secret undercroft facilities. The old stonework had been refurbished with clean silvery corridors and fluorescent lights. Each of the doors were labled, not necessarily for her convenience but it was massively convenient. Still in a stealthy gait she made her way through the corridor in the direction of the strategic operations room. That would surely be where they kept their most prized information and data on mutants across the UK and perhaps even the world. Information that her bosses could use. Information that would earn her some peace and quiet.
Suddenly a door opened, and in the smooth, brightly lit corridor there was no place to run or hide.
It had been at least a few weeks since anyone had asked Cameron to describe what it felt like when his powers activated. Usually, it was the curiosity of the younger students who had yet to see the man's full potential but had witnessed enough of his classroom antics to speculate. Though each were in possession of their own talents, apparently being able to move fast was "cool", and Cameron was happy enough to stick with that definition if it never meant having to put into words how much it messed with his mind. The truth was, the older he got, the more it seemed as if the real test was keeping himself regulated enough to stay in step with the world around him, the downside being not only the physical repercussions of trying to suppress normal reflexes but also the strain of handling any sort of cognitive load at a relative snail's pace. A lifetime of 'learning difficulties' and mediocre academic performance might make more sense when categorised as a sacrifice for slowing himself down but being able to explain it didn't change the lived experience. The world was a sluggish place, sometimes the temptation to just let it roll into the background was stronger than he would have liked.
But there were advantages. Being able to analyse a situation in a split second, not just as an observation but as a fully-realised thought process, produced a very different Cameron Johnston to the man who had never really learned to spell very well and hadn't read a novel since leaving high school. It was impossible to register just how quickly he became aware of the trouble laying in wait on the other side of the door, nor would it have been easy to calculate just how quickly he was able to judge the distance between himself, the intruder, and the room where Ji-an was sleeping. It was only obvious that the pause of several seconds the pair took to size each other up was far more than necessary, as somewhere amidst his instinctual reaction, Cameron had the presence of mind to yell, "Phoebe, we've got company!" before the jam of a taser buried in a back pocket provoked an instantaneous acceleration that turned him into a full-sized projectile hurtled as a direct interception.
To be continued...
