Dr Douglas shook her head mutely - ignoring the girl, the Asian man and the girl that had just appeared, sprawled out on the alley floor - as she backed away as quickly as she could. She fumbled with her phone and in shock at one of the rally goer's cries, she dropped it onto the sidewalk. The cell smashed onto the concrete and the screen promptly shattered. It looked okay but Dr Douglas knew before she even leant down to pick it up, that it was now dead - nothing a quick touch wouldn't solve, but the screen would be like that, till she had it repaired. It wasn't like she was going to call anyone official anyway; it was clear that they were mutants. Even if they didn't recognise her as one of their own kind, she couldn't bring the state down on them. She wasn't that ruthless.
It was probably just some officials trying to cull the rally in a discrete way as possible and the mutants had probably fought back, anyway. Well, that was how she reassured herself - how she justified abandoning the scene, and not calling the authorities.
She staggered into the crowd, a little disorientated before moving a little way away and leaning against a brick wall, making sure she was out of the action. She made sure her dark tinted glasses were firmly in place before going against all her trained habits and mentally reached for the glowing thread in her head, that she visualised on the few occasions she dared to purposefully to tap into her technopathic ability.
First, she fixed her cell phone. It took merely a thought and energy pulse before she felt it hum back to life in her palm. The rush she got from it was incredible, she found herself marvelling but she forced herself to focus. It was purely out of necessity that she was using it.
She could feel the silver cords of electricity laced throughout her mental map of the town square, each one pulsing with delectable energy that called to her. She pushed all of that aside and sought out the alleyway in her mind, where she could sense the pulsing of a phone; it seemed one of the victims had been carrying a cell. She zoomed in on the tiny system and felt herself leak into it, tapping into the calling function. Perfect, she thought, as she clutched at her own cracked cell whilst keeping her eyes locked ahead in her thoughts, her concealed irises glowing behind the lenses. Focusing on the cell - no doubt lying in the dead's man pocket somewhere - she forced it to call her own, which her physical self answered. She wasn't entirely sure what she was doing - largely running on instinct - but she needed to know if the alley mutants knew who she was. She couldn't be linked with the place.
She listened to her cell, hearing the distant drone of the rally both in reality and down the phone. She strained her ears, trying to decipher any conversation.
"Come quietly, and the female won't be killed" the voice was flat and forceful.
Dr Douglas's glowing eyes widened; it didn't sound like the original group she had left behind. It seemed someone else had joined the party. She felt a stab of guilt - did she even see them kill the black-clad men? Even as corpses, the victims had looked pretty threatening - not like victims at all; perhaps, just perhaps, it had been in self defence and they were innocent. And about to run into more trouble, apparently. She found herself edging back towards the alley, her cell still glued to her ear. Keeping a large distance between herself and the scene, she observed, the gathering just visible, listening down the phone and hoping no one would hear her heavy breathing through the deceased man's phone, which she guessed was buried deep beneath clothing.
She felt her glowing eyes dim as she drew back in her electrical sense, powering down her ability and simply listened through the phone, her mutant abilities still dancing at the surface, should she need them for her own self defence.
A last resort, naturally.