The first UN Teleporter had shown up to meet Consul, with a Telepath in tow.
It had taken multiple jumps, with a significant amount of difficulty for the Class 4 man. Consul had been mostly stationary, even if he wasn't giving much of his attention to the data slates they'd handed him earlier, after an AI calculated an appropriate trajectory that would make them hit him in a timely manner without enough velocity to disintegrate. Easier said than done, for such a small target on an erratic course, but while the Precogs were struggling, they could assist with that much.
"I'm supposed to be saving people, Lieutenant Trost. Why does it seem that it's the UN shooting at the civilian habs? I stopped at one, you know, and they told me everything." He worked his muscular jaw, checking that the mic taped to the skin was holding.
The Telepath sighed. "It's not as simple as it seems sir, there's been an incident with rogue metahumans, and we believe a hostile AI is loose." She was nervous, but did her best to hold on firm to the Teleporter, he was almost certainly fast enough to get them out of harm's way should they manage to piss off the terrifyingly powerful superhuman.
She was confused as to why it was so difficult to get into his head, he wasn't known to have telepathic powers, simply mild near-field telekinesis augmenting his super strength. Her probes had glanced off a wall of iron, and it was only with immense difficulty that she'd been able to establish a sympathetic link for the purposes of communication, and that too after they'd hailed the man by more conventional means. At least he hadn't seemed to notice, or at least care, about her previous attempts.
"Do you think you can just lie to me? I haven't seen a single sign of the aliens, or any rogue metahumans. That station had video footage, it's clearly the human ships that have killed who knows how many people, and brought down that space elevator. I built the damn thing, do you know how long it took?"
The Telepath swore mentally, careful not to leak her frustration. Perhaps cynically or not, she suspected he was just as pissed about something he'd worked on being destroyed as the unavoidable collateral civilian deaths. Half the reason people hired him was that reputation for pride in his work deterred anyone who wanted to destroy it, that almost invariably lead to a pissed off Consul landing on their doorsteps. As for whether that was followed by bloodshed, it depended on how much ass they were willing to kiss.
Why did they keep him on such a long leash? Sure, he was incredibly strong, but the woman thought with loathing about how she'd been one of the more powerful telepaths on Earth for a good while, and her adherence to the best behavior expected of her hadn't given her nearly as much freedom. Sure, she knew Telepaths had it worse, but if she had her way, maybe they'd have just mind controlled him.
Maybe they had? Such strong resistance, perhaps there were other Telepaths controlling him? Couldn't be that hard right, he was as dense as a brick. Muscles she couldn't help but admire, and those were even denser.
"I'm sorry sir, I don't have all the details, but please, just follow us to the flagship, we've got a beautifully furnished cabin for you, and one of your girlfriends, Anita, aboard. She says she misses you."
The precise opposite of what the woman had told her when they'd grabbed drinks, but her empath powers told her that she was willing to do things she found mildly distasteful for the greater good.
"Really? Well, I'm still going to try and help first, I can clean up the debris, move the stations away-"
The woman was greatly pleased to hear that, sure, not an unqualified success, but having him occupied with busywork was good enough. Yeah, talking down Consul would definitely earn her a promotion. Maybe backline duty, if she could figure out a way to get off the ship..
She didn't notice the divergence between reality and her perception of the conversation that followed, the Teleporter was too busy staring at Consul in abject terror to notice the sudden flare of purple light behind her eyes, and as for the man himself, he'd never met her, and what did he know about how her powers worked? At least initially, introductions were made in quick order.
"What. Who the fuck are you?" He asked, deeply confused. Everything about how the woman had sounded in her mind changed, the voice deeper, more seductive, but more importantly an entirely different accent. Even more concerning was the massive headache building behind his eyes.
"Please Consul. Don't do anything unusual. I'm sorry I had to contact you this way, but we couldn't draw suspicion so early. By the way, I'm your employer, if you want to call me that."
He channeled the pain into a frown. Damn, that did hurt, it was a good thing he had a great deal of patience when it came to other supes. They could just build a new drone, but a supe?
"Now? That was Starcatcher GmbH, that German firm near Europa that's on the news. Prove you're them. They gave me a code."
"Xray Romeo Zulu Lima"
That added up.
"Well? What's this? Why the cloak and dagger? Do you not want me to save the civilians like I was asked to?" He seemed affronted, while the employment contract was flexible, he'd long clamped down on people hiring him for one purpose then coaxing him into something else.
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"It's about [REDACTED] and [REDACTED]. Oh no, what did they do to you?"
The headache exploded, his face turning into a rictus grin, facial muscles that could tug warships with his eyelashes fighting to tear themselves off bone harder than the diamond core of a dying star. He had an uncontrollable urge to fly straight at Mars, bash his skull against the hardest rock till there was nothing but a crater and the bomb in his head.
"Why are you talking funny? Stop this, you're making me feel like shit." Don't let her see that she's getting to you, at least until you find her in person and then smash her skull in. Who the fuck did she think she was, messing with his head like this?
"I'm sorry. The beginning was my fault, I had to channel a lot of power to overcome the Reality Anchor and control this dupe, but this isn't me. Does WHISPERING [REDACTED] mean anything to you?"
"FUCK OFF!" He moved fast, making the Teleporter immediately blink away in panic, even if he hadn't moved in his direction.
No no no no
The following conversation came in staccato bursts, the confused Teleporter kept on appearing close enough to continue the conversation, unsure what the fucking odds were that his panicked random jumps kept bringing him close to where the erratic supe was flying.
"GET OUT OF MY HEAD"
"They're using your [REDACTED], wait, no, mater[REDACTED]"
"FUCK OFF!" The Teleporter screamed helplessly, barely getting out of the way, before finding himself mere kilometers distant.
"Woman of child bearing age who produced [REDACTED]"
"QUE PORRA É ESSA?!" Consul desperately changed course, missing the man by inches.
"Person who gave b̶i̷r̸t̵h̵ to someone who might be-"
He didn't think the pain could get worse, yet it did, his vision going red, pulsating vessels in his retina coiling like worms and smudging the stars.
He remembered agony almost as bad, when he'd been hit in the head with a baseball bat by a bully, after he'd had the temerity to kiss his younger sister while only handsome instead of rich. It had been her idea, he'd only helped her solve those integrals, and she could have just used ChatGPT if she hadn't wanted an excuse to-
His mother's face, older and uglier, yet far more comforting, swimming in and out of vision as the bored doctors read the scans. Yeah, nasty contusion, a little concerning about the blood in the brain, but he'll heal. He's just a kid, they're tough.
"Please, I can pay!" She let slip the mask, showing naked desperation as she begged the bald man to do more.
"Just wait a few hours, it'll be free if-"
The first shifty man had fled from their apartment that weekend. He'd had to resist the urge to reach for the baseball bat he held on to. No, it wasn't just for himself, there was someone he'd played with, before. Someone who had come back with bruises on his face, after doing what Consul didn't, someone so familiar he felt like he was staring at a mirror. He'd bruised himself too just a few hours back, was his memory failing him? It must have, after that blow, he'd become slower, unable to do the maths he'd solved in his head. His grades fell, and normally slacking off like that that would earn a stern word and pointed comparison to his just as gifted-
He found himself staring at a the piece of spacesuit he held in his fist, almost red hot from how hard he'd crushed it.
His mother had never scolded him again for his plumetting grades.
"Do you remember a ş̸̡͍͖̼̞̮̺̫̯͈̞̥̜̓̎͊̆͊̐o̴̼̰̜̪̲͓̤͓̓̄̈̌̄̀̐͠͠n̶̨̖͉͖̟̮̩̩̣̱̻̙̪̍̎̑̿͑͗̾̓̚?"
A what? Why did his breaking mind leap to a memory of a panicked kid who had run faster than sound into one of his penthouses? He'd broken all the windows, even the hardened ones. Too fast to catch, even as Consul had chased him around. Then he'd seen the VTOLs approaching, heedless of speed limits themselves, and the boy had vanished over the horizon. He vaguely remembered him being explained away as a delusional fanboy with powers. Didn't pay him any heed. He'd looked like him, he'd almost believed the kid when he said he was his dad. Laughable, wasn't he sterile? Besides, anyone could get surgery done, barring himself, his mother was hardly recognizable from the old photos he'd kept. Back before she'd married his father, when she had-
"Laid an egg. Binary fission. Had two daughters when all embryos are morphologically female in the womb. Ancient history, child entering the Senate, rising to highest rank."
This time he'd torn off a limb, blood sparkling in the dimmer sunlight as it froze and tinkled off his burning face.
"I am not causing the pain. Overloading is the fastest way to cause your systems to adapt-"
"I AM GOING TO KILL YOU. EVERYONE. PLEASE, MÃE, WHERE ARE YOU?"
"Stay still. Shit, it's too soon, you're not ready, I can't start the Apo-"
He went so fast that the Teleporter couldn't keep up, individual syllables smashing into his brain and doing damage that would make RKVs jealous.
The UN Telepath had realized something was very, very wrong, assuming that her partner missing a limb hadn't clued her in. What had she said? He'd been fine, they'd even agreed to having the USSF pay him-
"B̴͍͇͐̈́͗R̸̲͓̳̰̋͋̓̇͒Ö̶͎̖͇̲́̽̿Ṫ̷̤͇͔̭̔̂́̇H̷̡̬̺̰̝̿̔̄̌͋Ẽ̸̥̥͔̿͆̃̎R̸̡̪̞̽͝"
He stopped. So hard that his brain rattled against his skull, his suit almost tearing itself off him. A cloud of makeup turned micrometeors peppered the howling Teleporter just a few feet in front of him.
The man had a moment to calm down, divert his attention to using the power that had almost failed entirely when they'd gotten this close to Mars.
Consul had gone dead still, showing no signs of his previous madness, even if his eyes were bloodshot, a trail of snot that reached about the boundary of his telekinesis before itself freezing over.
"Sir? It's okay, we're going to get you a Healer-"
His fast reflexes meant he teleported one last time, screaming again when he saw he'd barely moved. The Telepath was missing her arm, why had she tried to reach out and touch him on the forehead?
Come on. Come on. One more-
He succeeded, in that a disembodied head found itself hurtling into the void, joining many other corpses and soon to be corpses hiking out to the stars.
He spun too fast around his protruding spine, far too quick to really observe Consul methodically tearing the rest of his body and a glowing Telepath limb from limb.
It wasn't so bad, being bodiless, he told himself, using the last of the blood still moving with simple rotational inertia in his veins. Hey, I think I've lost enough mass to make it to a Healer in the-
He'd have been dead in a few seconds, but the teleported fusion bomb was a swifter form of cremation.