taxonomites | In Person [location: Taxon Forest Cliffs]

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In Person [location: Taxon Forest Cliffs]

Scott’s marker comes back onto the map with as much pomp and circumstance as it vanished.

More strangely, his tablet doesn’t join him instantly to broadcast his misfortune. It appears nearby, resting on a tree stump out of the way, but whereas usually it delights in showcasing these moments, it remains quiet now, when perhaps he needs it most.

Five days is a long time where he’s been. He’s pale and drawn, deprived of sunlight and enough food and water. He has dark circles around his eyes, a mixture of exhaustion and bruising.

There’s no awareness of being moved again. He’s simply regaining consciousness and feeling grass and dirt rather than the metal and stone of where he’s been held, a deep ache in his head and uncomfortable pressure in his eyes.

Slowly, he reaches up, feeling over his face and flinching as his fingers poke sore skin and no visor. He has to risk it anyway, bringing his hands to his face, fingers white knuckle laced as he flickers his eyes open.

Nothing.

No light. Not in or out. No warmth over his hands.

He opens them again, fully, but nothing reaches outwards. Nothing explodes, nothing is rent apart.

Everything is dark.

He can’t see.

He snaps his head up, eyes wide and unseeing, a solid, lightless red covering them from side to side.

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"Mr. Summers?"

The video transmission comes promptly, not because Sherlock can sense Scott's presence in any extraordinary way, but because he verified that the map dot option was on while he had hold of Scott's tablet. The fact that it's reappeared in Taxon Forest is news to him. Hopeful news, considering his previous suspicions.

Still, he sounds wary.

Scott's head snaps around to the source of the sound, recognising the voice.

Of course, the video broadcast on Sherlock's end just shows the sky and some leaves, since it's still lying on a tree stump.

"Holmes? Where are you?"

A pause as Sherlock considers the picture and its implications.

"You can't see." It isn't a question.

Another pause, cogs whirring: "I'm transmitting a video broadcast through your tablet, which seems to be facing the sky through some oaks. Your tracker dot is located in Taxon Forest. If you can locate the sound of my voice, you might be able to find it. Are you injured?"

He stands up from his beanbag chair and starts getting dressed in preparation to take the tram to go find Scott, stripping off a T-shirt over his head and pulling on a sweater, but obviously this video broadcast is being viewed by exactly no one at the moment.

Is he injured? He's not sure. He hurts, he aches, but nothing has that sickening, heated stickiness of bleeding and everything moves when he wriggles it.

"I don't think I am." He shifts onto his knees, pointlessly closing his eyes to track the sound. He crawls, feeling his way with his hand to make sure there's nothing dangerous around. Finally, his hands find the stump and then the tablet, pulling it close and feeling the right way up. "Where in the forest? If it's near the cliffs, I can find my way back."

His eyes are still closed. It's habit. No glasses, no open.

"Don't," says Sherlock sharply, fixing the collar of the jumper and then tucking his tablet under his arm as he heads to his building's elevator. When he gets in he studies the picture further. Scott looks like hell, unsurprisingly; five days haven't been kind to him. He doesn't look like he's slept or eaten and his glasses are missing. "That would be irresponsible. I'll be there shortly."

At least he doesn't seem to be seriously injured; he looks tired and a little ill, but not anemic. His movements are clumsy and disoriented, but don't visibly bespeak broken bones.

The elevator goes ding at the ground floor and Sherlock leaves the building with his tablet in his hand, heading for his tram stop. "What happened?"

"Someone experimented on me."

He attaches the tablet to his wrist to free his hands and then pushes himself to his feet. He's been in worse situations and fully intends on helping to make his own way back towards town. Assuming he is where he thinks he is.

"I think they inserted something into the eye socket. There's a pressure, like contacts only much worse."

Sherlock makes an aggravated noise and drops the subject. Masculine pride as framed through the lens of civic responsibility is a truly aggravating thing, he thinks without a grain of irony.

Scott Summers has been experimented upon. That's... a bad thing? He tries to remember to assess things within a framework of sympathetic value judgments, arriving on this being a bad and potentially traumatizing thing and the situation requiring him to say something sensitive. Those are the worst situations. He makes a face and decides to offer sympathy the only way he knows how: by trying to solve the problem. "Is there still visual feedback?" he asks as he stands on the tram platform. "True blindness isn't blackness per se, it's -- blindness -- what I'm asking is, can you still see your eyelids or whatever's blocking them? If your optic nerve is still giving your brain some sort of feedback, you may not be permanently blinded."

"Don't patronise me, Holmes, I know a lot about blindness. I've been blind at various points of my life, I know the particulars. I can't see anything. No light, no shadow, nothing." His voice is snappish, the stress showing in his speech. "No optic blasts on the other hand."

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Logan happens to be glancing at his tablet for the first time in a while, having gone on one of his wilderness jaunts for some time and ignored everything. Thus, Scott's signal coming back on is the first time he notices it wasn't there in the first place.

Time to check in and see what level of broken Summers is now. If he comes traipsing in here with the Phoenix Force...

No. Looks like he's had his ass kicked.

Looks like he's blinded.

Huh.

First instinct is there's an enemy here.

So he initiates an audio connection.

"Who did this to you, Summers?"

All business.

He's walking with Sherlock at the time.

And as soon as he hears that voices, his instincts kick in. He pulls away from Sherlock, moving some distance before answering. "Logan?" He has that hidden, fragile edge of his voice, like when he was hauled out of a government facility with a bomb in his gut. "I don't know. I presume the overlords, I didn't see anyone clearly. I'm with Holmes, he's being a pain in the ass but he's taking me to Mick St John, he's a medic."

For Sherlock, it's clear in Scott's body language. For all the very obvious fighting and threats of violence, Scott implicitly trusts Logan.

"Good," comes the instinctive response. That particular tone of Scott's reminds him of a time when he returned that trust.

"Let me know what he finds out. What do you remember?"

"Pain."

Not a helpful answer, but he's not entirely well and it takes a bit for him to put together something more cognizant than that. "Polished metal. Something like concrete. Very... stereotypical, sci-fi holding cell. I don't remember food, but whatever they gave me to drink must've been a substitution.

"Being strapped to something. Shadows and bright lights and chalk white masks leaning over me. Then I woke up here and I couldn't see." He curls his fingers into the bark of the tree he's holding onto.

"Masks," he repeats, making it known that he's looking for details on just who - or what - was wearing them.

"Humans? Hamsters? Somethin' else?"

He's absolutely itching for some kinda progress on figuring out just who's behind all this... everything.

"They were like masks. They weren't biological faces. They..." His voice drops softer, fragile. "They were like my childhood nightmares of Sinister. I didn't see anything else of them. or if I did, I can't remember it."

A low growl as Logan considers the possibilities. What kinda nightmare might this place turn into if Sinister showed up?

"You ever been through a glitch before? You think it's one of those, or is there some new bastard in town?"

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The mind that reaches out to contact Scott's is certainly Madelyne's though it is different. Where as before, there were emotions and stray thoughts open to him, what greets him is pleasant and neutral. It is warm and welcoming but in a way which does not attach any of the weight that it previously had.

Scott. What do you need?

The relief she feels that he's not dead is kept to herself. He doesn't need the weight of her emotions right now in addition to his own.

I'm okay. Sherlock's with me. We're going to Mick's to get me checked and then I'll contact you. He's not okay. There's confusion and pain leaking through his words.

You are not okay. It is acceptable to admit that you're hurt, Scott Summers. There is a feeling of comfort from her, she'd take the pain from him if he let her but she's not going to force help on him.

I will be here.

The frustration of not being allowed to be strong for him is kept out of her mental voice and kept away from him entirely.

Tony had seen it all. He'd let it stay as it was, not rushing in though the instinct was there. He'd thought to do just that, to rush in and see what he might find. Instead he waited.

Later he sent the voice mail message.

"Talk to me, Summers."

Scott made a call back once he was done with medical nonsense.

"And say what, Stark?"

He answered with a chuckle.

"I think you should say either if I can come over there, or you here. You and I need to talk about things. Like you abandoning me to my project alone."

"Next time I'll ask them to abduct you for scientific experiments as well," Scott retorted. "I can't come over. I can't navigate my way at the moment, and I suspect I'm to stay resting until Mick says I'm better."

"Mick? Mick? Isn't he one of the... Is there a politically correct term for it? Because I'm all for not being correct because, really? Wait, is it a mutation what they are?"

Yeah, Tony wasn't letting him wallow in this, wasn't suckering him with sympathy.

"Vampire. He's a vampire. And where I come from, we call them vampires. We've had run ins. I'm not going into it. It was very silly."

"Where I come from, we don't have either. That I know of," he added. "I feel cheated in all of this."

He went quiet for a minute. "What can I do? How bad are things?"