1 – Lest He Become
I
Emma DeLauro was dressed in long black slacks and a low cut black shirt that contrasted starkly with her pale white skin and bright red hair. She entered the work are of Sanctuary, the Mutant X headquarters, to find Adam Kane, their leader at the main computer console. He was a handsome older man, in his late middle age, and was also dressed in black.
"Anything?" Emma inquired as she walked to stand beside Adam.
"I've broken into Haines's private computer. Once I've reconstructed the search, I can confirm the names of the people that the killers are looking for."
"Confirm?" Emma asked. "So, you have some idea who they're looking for?"
"No, I didn't mean 'confirm'," Adam said, shaking his head to ward off the question.
Emma tilted her head and examined the man as she stood behind his left shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm okay. I'm just, you know, I want to find the people before the killers do."
Three or four responses came to Emma's tongue, but she was not sure which to utter. "What do you want me to do? Pretend that I believe you?"
Adam turned toward her and spoke with a measured tone. "I want you to stay out of my head. You're not invited." He turned back toward his work and opened a channel to the Double Helix. "Jesse, I want you to patch me in to Shalimar's feed from Naxcon."
Jesse Kilmartin, another member of Mutant X was flying the stealth plane in the area of Naxcon, a chemical facility believed to be connected to the murders they were investigating. "Coming at ya'." Emma heard Jesse say over the radio. She then heard the voices of Shalimar Fox and her father, Nicholas Fox, who owned and operated Naxcon.
"We've developed the broadest range of supplements in the industry," Nicholas Fox said.
"I'm surprised you haven't moved into genetic research," his daughter responded. "You know, modified grains, that sort of thing." Even at this distance, Emma could feel the turmoil in Shalimar's mind. Before departing to be reunited with her father, Shalimar had revealed the source of her feelings toward him and the imprint of her pain still lay heavy on Emma's heart. She felt the woman's hatred for the man she had run from twenty years ago, but mingled with her hatred was a grain of hope that maybe he had changed and they could somehow become a family again.
"That's a science that betrayed me once. I have no interest in giving it another chance." Emma felt Adam's reaction to these words. Nicholas had brought his daughter to Adam for help when she was a young girl, but, though the therapies Adam employed, saved Shalimar's life, there were unexpected side effects. The animal DNA used to repair her defective strands, bound with the human genes and began a process of mutation. She became aggressive and feral, possessing superhuman abilities. Nicholas Fox had wanted his daughter back the way she was before she became what he considered an uncontrollable mutant thing.
"What's in there?" asked Shalimar's voice.
"Oh, that's where we do our most cutting edge R&D. I'd show you around, but they have some sensitive tests set up." Emma watched over Adam's shoulder as the tiny camera Shalimar carried with her fed video of the doorway to the top-secret research area.
"Sounds mysterious," Shalimar said.
A voice cut in garbling what Mr. Fox said next. It was Jesse from the Double Helix. "Shalimar, whatever we're looking for is behind that door. What's in there? They're protected by more security systems than the rest of the place put together."
"Our competitors are always trying to get an early look. Let's go back to my office and uh, we'll talk," Mr. Fox said. Emma knew that they had found what they were looking for as far as their mission was concerned, but her chief concern now was for Shalimar. She sensed a reluctant warming toward her father, which might be dangerous, if he truly had a part to play in the murders. He had already scarred his daughter enough and Emma wished there had been a way to get the information they needed without exposing Shalimar's deepest psychological wounds. "I still want to know more about you."
"I told you."
"Knowing you work in a clothing store doesn't tell me anything. I want to know what you do with your spare time and what you like, what you care about."
"I don't know. I like exercise. I like being outside. I'm not crazy about being cooped up in a place like this." Emma felt the tension mounting. Shalimar's feral side was starting to show.
"And how do you feel?" Everything had been a lead up to this question for Mr. Fox.
"You mean, am I still different?" Shalimar answered her own question. "Yeah."
"But you're okay? I mean after what that bastard did to you?"
"Who?" Shalimar asked.
"The doctor from Genomex. Adam Kane." A wave of guilt emanated from the sitting before Emma. She was sorely tempted to reach into his mind. He had so many secrets, but she was stopped by the sense that no matter what he did, he meant it for good. "You were too young to understand, but I found out a lot of things about him afterwards."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's not important now. He's water under the bridge. What's important is we're together again." Just then Emma caught a sequence of visions from Adam's mind. She hadn't been reading him, but his proximity and the strength of his feelings made it impossible for her to shield herself from his thoughts. The pieces of the puzzle clicked together and she simply turned away from him and walked out of the room. She could feel Adam's eyes on her as she left and heard a few final words from Nicholas Fox. "You and me. I've got so much more to show you."
II
Emma went to her room to meditate on what she had seen. She thought back on every mission they had been sent on, every unanswered question she had about how Adam came to leave Genomex and found Mutant X as well as what his current agenda might be. Everything supported the intuitive conclusion she had come to while listening the Shalimar and her father talk and seeing the images and emotions that Adam could not hide from her. Though she hoped she was wrong, she knew the Sanctuary computers would confirm everything. She only wished that she knew what to do with the information.
Shalimar's distress hit Emma like a slap. She immediately made her way to the main operations room of Sanctuary where she heard raised voices. "Look, I told you guys before, I don't think my father's involved." Emma turned the corner to see Shalimar, a fit—muscular even—blonde wearing a floral bordered gray tank top and blue jeans.
"Shalimar, it's a hell of a time to develop a set of family values," Jesse said. He was handsome, of medium height, with dirty blonde hair. Jesse was wearing a dark green t-shirt and brown jacket.
"You know what, Jess, why don't you pour yourself a big glass of 'shut-the-hell-up'," Brennan Mulwray was a tall man with dark hair and eyes. Sometimes Emma thought he was too perfect looking, like he would run in a telephone booth and come out in blue and red tights with an 'S' on his chest. Of course, Superman probably wouldn't have so many tattoos. Brennan was almost a stereotypical 'bad boy', but he had a soft spot for Shalimar.
"All right, you two guys relax," Adam said. "Shalimar, all you have to do is guide, Jesse will take it from there."
"Whatever," Shalimar said and walked off. Emma could sense her unhappiness, but it seemed that she would be okay.
"Adam, I got the information back of the names on Haines's database," Emma said.
"And?"
"There were two: Christopher Darnell and a woman named Elizabeth Burton."
"That's it?" Brennan asked.
"I uploaded the information onto the main computer," Emma said.
"All right, you two go find them. It's imperative that we get to them before the other guys do." Adam instructed. "Go," he said. Brennan and Jesse left the room and Emma waited until she was alone with the Mutant X leader.
"You know, there was another name on that list," Emma said, again standing just behind and to the side of Adam, while he avoided her eyes. "Yours." He did not respond and continued working at his computer terminal. "So, what the hell is your name doing on a list of people needed by somebody manufacturing mutants?"
"My name is on a lot of lists," he said.
"That's not the right answer, Adam." Emma waited, glaring at him until he finally turned to face her.
All Adam said was: "That's the only answer available right now." Emma wondered if she would ever be able to provoke him into coming clean. She left him by himself and prepared to go after the other two people on the list.
Emma found Brennan in the hallway, but he was busy in a conversation with Shalimar, so she decided to wait in the Helix until he was ready. Before long, he came aboard and they headed toward the last know location of Christopher Darnell.
They exchanged few words apart from those necessary to navigate and pilot the plane. Emma continued searching for their target as Brennan flew the Helix. Both were consumed by their own thoughts and concern for Shalimar. "Damn it," she said. "We have to change course."
"Why?"
"I tried to contact the first guy on the list, Darnell…."
"Yeah?"
"He disappeared," Emma said.
"I guess our friends got to him first. All right, listen. Feed me the coordinates for the next name on the list. We need to get there before them." Emma transmitted the information to Brennan. "All right, thanks," he said as the overview map came up on his screen. "Listen, Emma, did you get any kind of a strange hit off of Adam back there?"
"Look, if I sense something from someone, it's like a priest hearing a confession. I can't talk about it." Now was neither the time nor place to reveal what she had learned about Adam. When the time came, she would make sure her friends knew what they needed to know, but that time had not yet come.
Brennan let out a brief nasal exhalation that approached a short laugh. "All right, Emma, it's good to have morals, but you need to know when to cut them loose."
"Brennan, I'm really worried about Shalimar." She wasn't ready to talk about Adam yet, but she was also concerned for the feral and she knew that Brennan was too.
"Oh, so her you can talk about."
Emma forged on. "Look she's going through what all of us have gone through. Adam is…is more of a father to me than my own father was." When she said this, she realized that she was experiencing a little bit of the betrayal and disappointment that Shalimar had suffered, but Emma was an adult, while Shalimar had been through unspeakable things at the age of only ten. "All of you guys are my family. But sometimes, I wish that…that my mom had done the right thing. You know? That she had been there to worry about me instead of going off on whatever New Age kick was popular at the time. I mean, sometimes I still think about looking her up."
"So why haven't you?" Brennan flipped a few switches and checked his displays as they approached the target site.
"Because when you can see into someone's soul, you don't have the same illusions that other people do. You want to believe that people can change, but they don't. Shalimar has to realize that."
"Kind of a dismal outlook, Emma."
"Sometimes the world is a dismal place to live," she said. They flew on in silence.
III
Brennan landed the Double Helix and he and Emma deplaned. Nearby was a flower shop that was owned by Elizabeth Burton, the next to last name on the list. If she was already dead, only Adam would remain.
"This is it," Emma said as they approached the stairs down to the below-street-level shop.
From inside, a woman's voice cried, "Let me go!"
"Let's go," Brennan said and led the way down the steps to the glass door of the store. "Hey!" Brennan stepped toward two men who had Elizabeth Burton pinned down. A third man on crutches was standing off to the side. "Hey! I was hoping I would run into you creeps again." The bigger man, a tattooed behemoth with a blond goatee wearing a black t-shirt over a sleeveless green hooded fleece stood up to faced Brennan, while the smaller man with blond spiky hair dressed in a black trench coat pressed a needle to the woman's throat. "What are you doing? Picking on a girl? Why don't you try someone your own size?"
Though she didn't recognize the man on crutches, Emma knew the large man and the smaller one who were holding down the woman who was the next to last name on their list. She and Shalimar had been backing up Jesse and Brennan on an exchange mission after a man named Richard Haines was asked to sell information relating to the creation of mutant humans. The two men had overpowered all four of them and now Brennan and Emma were outnumbered three to two.
"What, didn't you learn the last time?" the big man responded.
The third person of the group, whose left leg was missing, held out a crutch to hold back his partner. He was wearing a black great coat over a gray hooded sweatshirt with a black knit hat pulled tightly on his head. "You look about my size," he said.
"I don't think you want to do this," Brennan said and then jumped back as the man swung a crutch at his head. He then ducked under a second swing of the crutch, but was caught by a kick to the stomach. Brennan blocked an attack of the man's right crutch with his forearm, but then was clipped in the forehead as the left crutch swung around again. Another jump back and another duck were all Emma saw before she noticed the large goateed man coming toward her.
Emma prepared to fire a psionic starburst at the man, but recognized from their previous encounter that when he pulled his right arm back, he was preparing to launch a telekinetic punch. Quickly, she jumped to the right as the force of the blow struck an ornamental rock and sent if flying into the wall. She dodged another psi-punch by jumping back to where she originally was and the energy struck a glass-topped table, which shattered when it struck concrete ten feet away. From the corner of her eye, Emma saw Brennan had grabbed the one-legged man's crutch and was sending a pulse of electricity through it. She turned away from him and toward her attacker.
"Nowhere to run," he said.
"Guess not," Emma replied as a glowing ball of psionic energy formed from her forehead. The psychic blast sent the big man flying into a stack of flowers, plants and bags of fertilizer.
She now turned back to Brennan and the third attacker. He had wrestled his crutch away and struck Brennan, who went flying back into a table and rolled over it onto the ground with a crash. The smaller man had let go of Elizabeth Burton and fired a stream of intense pain at Brennan as he tried to get up off of the floor. Before she could do anything, the mutant turned and hit Emma with second blast of pain. She fell to her knees and then to the ground, grasping her head and crying out.
"He's dead," the one-legged man said.
"I've got what we need, let's move," said the pain mutant. Emma, just barely able to get to her knees, heard the footsteps of the two living attackers retreat out the front door.
"Emma, did you have to kill him?" Brennan asked, getting to his feet.
"I didn't even hit him that hard," she said with panting breaths. Brennan grabbed her arm and helped her to her feet.
"Is she...?" Brennan asked, looking at the still form of Elizabeth Burton.
Emma could not detect any mental activity from the woman. "Yes, she's dead."
"So much for the list."
"Yeah," Emma said, but she knew there was still one more name.
"We better take that big guy's body with us. Find out why he died and maybe, who made him."
"And Elizabeth?"
"I think it's best to leave her here. Someone will find her." Emma was silent. "C'mon, we can't do anything for her." He heaved to fallen enemy onto his shoulder.
"It just seems so cruel to leave her just lying there," Emma said. "What about her family and friends? What will they think happened?"
"Will it be any better if she is missing and they never find a body?" Emma concentrated on Elizabeth and was careful not to look at the man she had just killed. She didn't say another word as she led the way back to the Helix.
"Are you all right," Brennan asked, "with what happened back there."
"I'm okay," she said. "It's not the first time." She was thankful Brennan was quiet for the rest of the flight. The emotions of the last dying moments of two more people had been added to her psychic memory.
When the plane landed in the hangar at Sanctuary, Brennan loaded the body of the dead mutant onto the stretcher and brought it to the lab for Jesse to autopsy. Emma made her way back to her room, but she stopped as she passed Shalimar's door. She knocked twice softly and after a few moments, the woman's voice called for her to: "Come in."
Emma opened to door to find the blond feral pacing back and forth. Anger, confusion, frustration, love and hate all flavored her emotional palette. "Shalimar…," Emma said.
"Mason Eckhart. My father is in league with Mason Eckhart." Emma knew that Shalimar and Jesse had infiltrated the secret research laboratory of Naxcon, while she was on the trail of Elizabeth Burton and she knew the name Mason Eckhart well. He was the evil genius behind the rise and fall of Genomex. He had twisted Adam Kane's research to his own ends and for a long time was Mutant X's main enemy. Everyone had thought him dead, or at least imprisoned. "I saw him…in my father's building! Eckhart must be the one who made those freaky mutants we met. How could he do this? I thought my father had changed." Tears were welling up in her eyes and Emma walked to her. She put her arms around the woman and hugged her tight. Shalimar pulled Emma close and cried on her shoulder. Some thought it a sign of weakness when a woman cried, but Emma only saw strength in Shalimar. Emma ran her fingers through the feral's long blond hair, soothing her until the tears stopped. She pulled away and her dark brown eyes looked up into Emma's bright blues. "I'm glad it was you, and not one of the guys who saw that."
Emma laughed slightly. "What if it was Brennan?" She moved strands of hair back from Shalimar's tear-streaked face.
"Please, he already feels like he has to protect me, even though most of the time I end up saving his ass." She had gained control of her emotions, though a stray tear still leaked now and again from the corners of her eyes, which she pushed away with the heels of her hands. They hugged again and Emma kissed the other woman's forehead. Then, without thinking, she leaned down with her head tilted slightly to the left and pressed her lips to Shalimar's. She reciprocated. Her upper lip was between Emma's lips as she embraced Emma's lower one. Emma moved her head to the right and gently kissed Shalimar's lower lip. She could feel the feral's nails lightly scratch down her back as Emma pulled the muscular woman tight against her body. They both found their mouths opening up and they kissed one another passionately for what might have been seconds or minutes.
Suddenly, Shalimar pushed Emma away. Both were panting for breath. "What was that?" She asked, her voice taking on a slightly accusatory tone.
"You were there too," Emma said with a smirk. This was something she never saw—Shalimar flustered.
The other woman smiled. "I bet Brennan and Jesse would have paid a pretty penny to see that. We just have to make sure that it never, ever happens again."
"Why is that?" Emma asked.
"Emma, we've both been through a lot, but one kiss does not mean we have to switch teams."
"I wouldn't be switching," Emma said. Shalimar was shocked. Emma could see it on her face as clearly as she could feel it from her mind. "You didn't know?"
"It's not like you ever said anything."
"Did you really think the reason I couldn't get a guy was because of my fashion sense? I wasn't looking for a guy at all."
"That was just a joke." Shalimar took a few paces away and then turned around again to look at Emma. "So, you're a …."
"The 'L' word?" Emma paused. "Yes. I always have been."
"What about that guy you dated in high school?"
"What guy?" Emma was confused. She usually didn't lie to hide the fact of her sexual preference, preferring to obfuscate or otherwise avoid the truth with double-talk.
"The Finnish one," Shalimar said.
Emma smiled. "I said I dated an exchange student from Helsinki. I never gave a gender. It's a pronoun avoidance game we closeted gals like to play. We were the geekiest couple. She had every episode of Star Trek dubbed into Finnish and we would watch together as well as do other things. I learned the language from James Tiberius Kirk."
"That explains why you knew how to say 'lower the force field' in Finnish." She took a moment to process this new information and could now pick out so many clues in hindsight. "How about Tyler?" Shalimar remembered the deep affection Emma had felt for the erstwhile eco-terrorist who had given his life to save hers.
Suddenly, Emma felt her amusement at revealing herself to Shalimar replaced by the sorrow of that wound. "What Tyler and I had was a connection between two psionics. I loved his mind and I loved him as a human being, not as a man. There were some physical moments, kissing," she said, "but we were never biblical. Tyler knew and accepted me in a way no other man or woman ever could. He loved me even knowing everything that I was and I loved him just the same." Emma's own eyes began to tear up.
"Biblical?" Shalimar asked.
"As in there was no chance of any begetting, though if I ever could have lived happily with a man, it would have been with him."
"Emma, I love you," Shalimar said, "but I don't feel for you that way and I never will. You are like my sister. That moment between us was an aberration. It won't happen again." Emma knew that her facial expression changed. She was hurt, even though she knew that wasn't the intention. Shalimar picked up on the change. "I don't blame you. It's not like I tried to fight you off." She tried to laugh it off. "But that is it. Do you understand?"
Emma saw guilt, embarrassment and anger in Shalimar's aura. She also saw doubt. "I understand." Emma turned and left the feral's room. Now was not the time to pursue things any further. Maybe once everything was settled with her father and Mason Eckhart.
IV
Emma heard Shalimar's voice just as she was about to enter the main tactical room of Sanctuary and waited to hear what was going on. "Okay, Adam, we've been patient. I want to know what the hell Eckhart's been doing at my father's company," Shalimar demanded.
"He's tricked your father…into providing him with the resources that he needs to support his new project," Adam responded.
"Which is?" It was Brennan's voice.
"Well, according to the material on these hard drives, Eckhart is on the verge of controlling the keys to life. For what he plans to do with it, of course, we'll have to ask him in person," Adam answered.
Shalimar spoke again. "Okay, if he's so close to having his hands on such big secrets, why are his mutant's so messed up?"
"The guy who died in the flower shop had the metabolism of an eighty year old, Adam," Jesse's voice said. After her 'talk' with Shalimar, Emma had briefly looked at the results of the autopsy Jesse had performed on the dead mutant. She was reassured that her psionic blast would not have killed him had he been healthy, though any killing left its residual guilt.
"Eckhart is attempting to do selective mutation from a specific blueprint, but he doesn't have the required DNA to perfect the process. The samples that he's collecting will allow him to do that."
Emma had heard enough. She entered the room just as Brennan asked, "How do you know all this?"
"It's not important how I know it. What's important is that we get in there, we get him, we shut his operation down as quickly as possible, so I'm going to ready the Helix for immediate take-off and then you four are going in." Adam turned away from the others and back toward his computer console.
Emma stood across the workstation from Adam and shook her head. "No," she said. Everyone looked at her as she formed a starburst of psionic energy, which illuminated her face.
"Whoa, wait, Emma, what are you doing?" Brennan said.
"You were right, Brennan. There's a point where you have to go past your usual moral code. Now, I've understood what's been going on for a long time and I think the rest of you deserve to know too." Emma held the threat of the psionic blast for all to see, but did not fire it at Adam yet.
"Emma, stop it," Adam demanded.
"I could make you talk, Adam, but you're going to do it yourself," Emma said and let the ball of psychic force dissipate to nothing. "So tell them about the third name on the list. Tell them what it all means."
Adam turned back to face his team. "All right, so you want to know how Eckhart got the blueprint for making mutants? He got it from me."
Only Jesse responded audibly. "What?"
"After I realized the genetic mutations that my therapies were causing I stopped using them to treat people, but I couldn't just throw that information away, so I gathered specific genetic samples, including my own DNA, and I experimented on selected mutations in secret."
"Yours was the third name on the list," Shalimar asked.
Adam half smiled and exhaled his breath before he said, "He needs our DNA to complete my work. He wants to recreate it."
"That's what my dad was trying to tell me," Shalimar said as she walk across the floor, looking left and sizing up anew the man she thought she knew so well. "You're no better than Eckhart."
"I was on the verger of cracking the genetic code," Adam said, his voice clinical. Shalimar simply shook her head in disbelief. "The possibilities for humanity…they were limitless."
"So, you were just in it for the knowledge?" Brennan asked, disappointment flavoring each word. "Wow, it must be hard going back to being plain old Adam Kane after playing god for so long."
"All right, I knew nobody should have this information. It was too dangerous for anyone to have. So what did I do?" Emma listened to Adams words and monitored the emotions in the room. She didn't know how this would play out, but she had been unable to let her friends face any more danger without knowing the whole story. Adam was angry and defensive as he raised his voice and said, "I stopped my experiments. I encrypted my information. I took it out of Genomex as quickly as I could."
Now Shalimar raised her voice. "You can't hide anything from Eckhart. You should know that."
"For all we know you wanted them to have it," Brennan accused.
"What does that mean," Adam asked, sensing the challenge.
"I don't know. Hey, all I know is we're having a hard time believing anything that's coming out of your mouth right now." Brennan walked away, followed closely by Shalimar.
"Wait, wait. Where're you going?" Adam asked. Brennan and Jesse stopped and turned back to him.
"To Naxcon," Shalimar said. "I'm going to get my father away from Eckhart before he gets in too deep."
"Shalimar, it's too late for that," Adam said.
"I spent all these years hating him, thinking you were my family." Shalimar pointed a finger directly at Adam as she said this. "And now it turns out he may be the only one telling me the truth." She continued out of the room with Brennan.
Adam turned to Jesse and Emma. "I want you two to monitor Brennan and Shalimar's progress and provide them with any assistance they need to get Nicholas Fox out of there." They looked at one another, but didn't make any movement to comply. "Listen, I know you don't want to take orders from me right now, but whatever I have done in the past, believe me that right now the only thing I want to do is help my team." He met Emma's eyes and Jesse's in turn.
"We'll help Brennan and Shalimar," Emma said, "but not because you order it. Jesse and I will hold our own counsel on following any suggestions," she emphasized the word, "you might have to offer."
Emma and Jesse followed their friends as they traveled to Naxcon, but shortly after entering the facility they lost track of the two. If the problem was atmospheric interference or electronic jamming, Brennan and Shalimar's comlink rings would alert them to the fact and they would call in to Sanctuary by another method if they couldn't get clear and use their rings. It was standard procedure and the rest of Mutant X hoped against hope that the call would come.
"Damn it!" Adam exclaimed. "Why the hell haven't they called in?"
"Because their comlinks have gone dead, Adam," Jesse responded, though he knew Adam was already aware of this. Jesse shook his head.
"'Cause Eckhart knew that they'd be coming." Adam leaned heavily on a laboratory table.
"Adam, there's a call coming in from Naxcon," Emma informed him.
"Patch it through," Adam said and began typing on a keyboard.
Mason Eckhart's face appeared on the screen. He was different than when Emma last saw him. Now, his hair was black and slicked back. He was wearing glasses with rectangular black frames and a pinstripe suit. "Hello, Adam. Have you missed me?" he said.
Jesse and Emma stepped back from the main monitor. Adam approached the screen, which was equipped with a camera for two-way video conferencing. "You're looking more like your old self, Mason."
"Feeling like a million bucks," Eckhart said. "It's amazing what a new hairstyle can do for one."
"What have you done with Brennan and Shalimar?" Adam asked.
"I'm afraid you'll have to come and see for yourself." He paused. "And Adam, time is of the essence." The screen went dark. Adam went to his workbench and picked up an electronic device.
"Where do you think you're going?" Emma asked as he began to leave the room.
"Well, you ought to know. You seem to know everything else," he said.
"Look, Adam, I didn't want it to have to happen this way," Emma said.
"None of us did," Adam replied and turned again to leave.
"Wait, what are you doing?" Jesse asked. "Your DNA is the last piece that Eckhart needs to control mutation. Are you just going to deliver that up to him?"
"I'm not going to let Brennan and Shalimar suffer for my mistakes," Adam said.
"After he gets what he wants, he will kill you," Emma warned.
"I didn't say I was going in there unprepared." He held up the device he was holding. "I have a plan."
"Good. So, you want to fill us in?" Jesse asked.
"What do you mean, 'us'?"
"Yeah, us. It took me twenty-eight years to find someone to believe in, Adam. I'm not just going to throw that away," Jesse said.
Emma had wondered if any of the team would support Adam again. Jesse had just given her the answer. Maybe Brennan and Shalimar would come around. She couldn't imagine what it was like to judge a man's character simply by his words and actions. She knew Adam meant well, but his ends did not always seem to justify his means. Still, he was learning and changing. She decided to let herself be swayed, at least for now. "Let's do this," Emma said. She and Jesse joined Adam.
V
Adam, Emma and Jesse made their way through the Naxcon complex. The first person they encountered was the pained inducing mutant. Emma remembered she still had a score to settle with him from the flower shop.
"I'm Adam Kane."
"I know who you are," the man said. Emma was surprised to see that he was much taller than Adam, even though he had seemed small next to the mutant she had killed. The man turned away from them and pressed his eye close to a retinal scanner. The door unlocked and he stepped into an elevator.
"Are you sure this is the right thing to do," Emma asked.
"It's our only chance," Adam said. The looked at one another and then all three stepped into the elevator with Eckhart's mutant.
When the doors opened, Mason Eckhart was waiting for them. "Adam, it's been a long time." Nicholas Fox, the one-legged mutant and another person Emma didn't recognize, were also in the secret laboratory, the main part of which was six feet lower than the landing onto which the elevator let out. "Of course, being in the pod made it seem even longer." Mason Eckhart had been locked in a stasis chamber when a super powerful Genomex mutant had staged a coup and taken over the facility.
"How'd you get out?" Adam asked. They walked to their left, where steps led down to the main part of the room. At the bottom of the stairs, Brennan and Shalimar were held in the green light of a force field. The lab was actually under the bay with a Plexiglas ceiling and above, they could see water, through which sunlight still shone, casting eerie shadows that never stayed still.
"You don't think I'd devise a trap without a backdoor for me to wriggle out? Six months in, any pod that I hadn't coded the locks on was automatically reopened," Eckhart explained.
"I was hoping you'd have used some of that time to think about all of the damage that you've done."
"Beautiful," Mason said. "As sanctimonious as ever." He had been leaning on a desk with his arms crossed, but now straightened up and took a step toward Adam. "Actually, I did use my time for thinking. I thought a lot about you and what I planned to do when I got out."
"How long have you had my files?" Adam asked.
"I had the files as soon as you saved them, but it took my people until just a few months ago to break the encryption. You always were the best and now your brilliance and your DNA will change the world in a way you never had the courage to." Eckhart turned away from Adam.
"This isn't about courage, it's about the fact that there are some things that people shouldn't try to control." As Adam said this, Emma was proud of him. She felt a little more certain of her decision to trust him again.
"Adam, I thought you'd understood. Destroying disease. Creating a race of perfect humans. Turning on genes to make people live forever. These are dreams that people like you live for." Mason Eckhart walked over to a video monitor that displayed the Naxcon logo. He turned again to face Adam. "Thanks to your research and your DNA, I'll be the father to a whole new race." Eckhart flipped a switch and the video screen showed a room full of embryonic chambers.
Nicholas Fox approached Mason Eckhart. "What's going on? That's not the agreement. You can't do it. I won't let you."
"I'll keep my end of the bargain. Your daughter will be returned to you cured," Eckhart said and then almost hissed the words, "as soon as I get what I want."
"What about your friends here. What have you given them besides a lot of pain?" Adam asked. "All he's given you is a life that's going to end very soon."
"What is he talking about?" the pain mutant asked. Emma sensed his concern. It was something he had suspected.
Adam turned to look over his shoulder at the man with blond spiky hair. "Why do you think he needs my DNA?" He turned back to the others. "He needs it to perfect the process of mutation, because you're just rough drafts. That's why your friend died. That's why you're going to die." Adam pointed a finger at Mason. "What? You forgot to tell them this, Eckhart?"
"That's enough," Eckhart commanded, "I need the samples. Take him."
"I don't think so," Adam said, reaching his right hand into his black leather coat and pulled out a silver metal device consisting of a handle attached to a hoop with highly potent battery running along the diameter from the handle to the opposite end of the hoop. "This is an electromagnetic pulse generator. It's strong enough to fry every piece of electronic equipment in this building."
"Really Adam," Eckhart responded, seemingly unconcerned. "It showed up on the sensors the moment you walked through the front door and that's when it was rendered unworkable. When are you going to learn that I really am a step ahead?" Emma looked from Mason to Adam and saw that he had no answer. "Take him," Eckhart ordered again. One of his mutants did an acrobatic flip and swung at Adam, but the Mutant X leader ducked and threw a forearm in the man's face, sending him falling back into a metal tank.
Adam was struck by the bright purple flair put off by the pain-inducing mutant and he fell to the ground. The first attacker recovered and with the one-legged mutant, joined the fray.
After taking out Adam, the pain mutant turned on Emma. "Lady, you're about to have the worst day of your life."
"I don't think so," Emma said and formed a starburst. As the blond man formed a purple arc of pain to cast at her, Emma hit him with a numbing psionic blast. She used her telempathic powers to completely alleviate his suffering. "It's hard to share pain you don't feel, isn't it?" she asked him as he collapsed on the stairs. She had successfully neutralized his attack ability without killing him. Emma turned to see that Jesse had freed Brennan and Shalimar from the force field. Brennan was in a rematch against the one-legged mutant, while Shalimar was engaging the acrobat who had first attacked Adam. One after another, Emma saw them both take out their foes with kicks to the head. Only Mason Eckhart was left.
Emma noticed that Nicholas Fox stood at a computer terminal as the battle raged behind him. Suddenly, an orange screen appeared on the large flat panel monitor he was standing at. It read: CRITICAL PRESSURE LOSS DETECTED and CORE MELTDOWN IMMINENT. A clarion alarm began sounding through the building.
"You idiot, what did you do?" Mason Eckhart demanded of him.
Shalimar's father backed away from Eckhart, his arms spread. "I opened up the steam valves. I released the pressure," he said. Then raising his voice, he called out: "It's all about to go up!" Just then the cap on a steam pipe that ran through the secret Naxcon laboratory popped off, letting a jet of hot steam into the room. Brennan, Emma, Shalimar and Adam ducked, fortunate not to be burnt.
"You always have to screw things up, don't you, Adam?" Mason Eckhart accused. He fled the scene, followed by his three mutants, who had recovered enough to guard Eckhart's escape in the only elevator connected to the underwater lab.
"Get down!" Adam warned Nicholas Fox as a pipe detached from the ceiling, falling just to the left of the man. "How much time do we have?" Adam yelled the question, grabbing handfuls of Mr. Fox's jacket arms.
"About a minute, maybe less." Sounds of venting steam and alarms made it near impossible to hear. Emma could sense the panic filling the air.
"Is there another way out of here?" Adam waved his right arm at the pending devastation. Emma and Brennan approached them from the right side.
"That way!" Shalimar's father answered. He pointed to a metal hatch with a raised cross reinforcing its center.
Adam grabbed Brennan and pulled him in the direction of their escape route. "Brennan, hit that!" he ordered the tall elemental as Shalimar came up behind.
With a grunt, Mulwray let out twin blasts of electricity that knocked the hatch from its mounting, opening up their way out.
"All right. Great. Let's go, go, go!" Adam called out. Emma was the first one out, followed by Shalimar and Nicholas Fox. Jesse preceded Adam and Brennan brought up the rear. "Now, go, go!" he continued to yell. Once through the hatch, they all had to climb a narrow metal ladder up a concrete shaft.
As the six men and women came to the top of the service shaft, they heard two large explosions, accompanied by the sounds of breaking glass. They ran across a series of glass-walled bridges that connected the Naxcon Corporation buildings, which were all built up on individual pylons. Adam led the group and when Emma heard four more explosions, she knew that they might not make it. The lights were beginning to flicker and in some buildings, they were already out. Adam encouraged them to run. "Let's go!"
Two more huge explosions came from the direction they had been running. There was nowhere to go. Adam had been leading, but he had no more idea of what to do than anyone else. "Which way?" he asked
"Go right," Shalimar called out.
Nicholas agreed, "Right!"
"Go right," Adam echoed them.
As they entered a lobby area, a huge explosion knocked everyone from their feet. Several of them cried out in fear and surprise. The lateral support beams had given way and the building they were in was now only supported by its weakened main pylon. The weight and movement was too much and the entire structure began to be impaled, pierced through the center by the pylon it rested on. Everything began to tilt as metal twisted and gave way. A giant cube emblazoned with the Naxcon logo swung precariously above them as the building shifted. Ornamental columns fell and began sliding across the floor, which began to crack. All six found themselves on the ground and falling towards the outer window. They managed to catch hold of a long crack in the marble floor where what was now the lower half was beginning to split from the upper half, creating a ledge just large enough to grab a finger hold.
"All right, up! Hang on!" Adam encouraged them. Emma had almost lost her grip and he used his right arm to help her regain the ledge as he held on desperately with his left hand. Jesse helped Nicholas in a similar way as he began to fall. Fish tanks, chairs, vases, all began tumbling toward Mutant X and Nicholas Fox. Shalimar began to slide, but Brennan was able to catch her. The angle became steeper, approaching the vertical.
"Emma!" Adam shouted.
"Hang on," Shalimar cried.
"All right?" Adam looked to the young redhead.
"Brennan?" Shalimar looked to her left and found him still there.
Emma lost her grip with one hand. "Emma, hang on!" Adam called again just as another enormous explosion rocked the structure. All of the windows broke. Above, they heard the sounds of antennae and exhaust stacks collapsing and sliding down the roof. It was all about to go.