Feb. 23 - Civil Unrest

[Rachel O'Brien]

"We're trying to keep things from exploding." Rachel replied "Stop being cute, and tell me what you're looking for. Are you one of Cassiel's boys?"

[Narrator]

"You could look at it that way," he said, shrugging. "We all get our marching orders from somewhere on high, and Lord Cassiel's been as busy as Lord Exodus has. No one really gets face-to-face time with either of them lately, the orders are just left for morning briefing."

"And if you want to keep things from exploding, you're definitely not looking in the right place," the man said, all joking finally gone.

[Rachel O'Brien]

"Where should we be looking?"

[Narrator]

He considered the three X-Men for a moment, then shrugged. "What the hell. I haven't been able to make any headway into the recon, maybe you can. We're all on the same side, after all. I was supposed to rendezvous with a deep-cover agent in London, but something happened to him, so I'm missing a lot of pieces of the puzzle. All I have is that the project's named Blitzkrieg. I had a few more leads I thought, but they turned out to be dead ends."

[Rachel O'Brien]

"How were you supposed to get in touch with the agent?" Rachel asked.

[Narrator]

"I was the silent backup for his mission. Y'know... send someone in, someone else shadows him and makes sure the mission goes down without them knowing it? Something nailed me at the start of the mission, though. Woke up the next day in an alley, no idea what happened, and I haven't been able to find him ever since."

[Rachel O'Brien]

Rachel was surprised by how much the apparent Acolyte was telling them, but decided to keep him talking "His name?"

[Narrator]

"Don't know. I can remember the mission. I can remember going. But for the life of me, I can't remember who my contact was. Like I said... I got slammed before I even got in a building. If you're going to sneak up on a psychic, you're either a robot, really fast, or, say it with me..."

[Tommy More]

"Not as good as you thought?" Tommy said, innocently.

[Rachel O'Brien]

"A telepath?"

[Narrator]

"Yeah, or stupid," he agreed with Tommy, before nodding to Rachel. "Yeah. Another psychic, which explains memories getting erased. At first I thought it was an X-Man or something... leftover animosity, y'know? But that didn't check out, especially with all the alliance talk. So I've got no idea what it was. Maybe someone with one of those telepathy implants that SHIELD uses."

[Tommy More]

"And why on earth are you telling us all this?"

[Narrator]

Santiago shrugged. "We're all mutants, right? Policy from On High is that we're looking out for all mutants, and that the X-Men get brothers-in-arms status. Like I said, the alliance they're working on. The reason that Jubilee came over to work on Genosha with the Accolytes."

[Rachel O'Brien]

"Jubilee did what?!?" Rachel asked, unable to contain her surprise.

[John Hino]

"You'll have to forgive us for being skeptical, but that seems... unusual at best," John said diplomatically.

[Narrator]

Santiago shrugged. "Oh come on. You're a psychic. You tell me if I'm lying."

[Rachel O'Brien]

"Oh, I know you're telling the truth." Rachel replied "I'm just....surprised. Anyway, what are you looking for?"

[Narrator]

"Any clue what else is in the works. Barring that... I'm just gauging how things are going to go down when everything comes to a head."

[Rachel O'Brien]

"Unfortunately 'anything' is kind of broad." Rachel said "Where were you supposed to be looking?"

[Narrator]

"That's nothing that's going to help you... something fouled up our information. I've got zero leads left. You guys were the ones who took out that lab, you probably got to do better investigation than I did."

[Rachel O'Brien]

"I'd like to help you." Rachel said, not entirely truthfully "But if I don't know what you're looking for..."

[Narrator]

"Hey, if I knew what I was looking for, I'd tell you. Besides, do you think I expect you to throw in and help me? I'm not an idiot, I'm just out of information. See what you can turn up, we can race for the credit for the find."

[Rachel O'Brien]

"Sounds good." Rachel said, telepathically sending him her cell number "Give me a call if you find anything, ok?"