They continued to stare wordlessly at each other, the old man and the young girl. She was caged in a thick bulletproof glass enclosure, looking at him with uncomprehending eyes, unable to understand the message behind his steady, emotionless gaze. Behind him, the doctors in their lab coats

The old man spoke, but Trianna could not hear him behind the glass.

"None whatsoever, am I correct?" he asked, his eyes never leaving her own. He usually wore a visor that enhanced his eyesight, but he had wanted to see her with his own eyes. He had hoped for it so badly, and now the girl was just another disappointment.

"Yes, sir. No ova whatsoever, even after we induced her menarche. She's sterile," someone replied behind him, carefully masking any trace of fear.

"Then I have no use for her." He said. The decision had been made, and it was final.

"Chairman Lorenz, I beg you to reconsider," a female scientist spoke, as her colleagues began to eye her nervously. Lorenz turned his head, ever so slightly, giving her the courage to continue.

"Trianna is the only successful fusion of alien DNA in the whole world! There has to be another way, sir."

"Yes, there is another way," Lorenz said coldly. "It does not involve her. Begin the cleanup after I leave this complex."

"Xark!" barked Lorenz, as a middle-aged man stood at attention, his hands immediately leaving his greying mustache and landing on his hips in the classic ready position. "I am done here. We leave for Berlin immediately"

Xark took a final, forlorn look at the girl in the glass cage and followed his master out.

The assembled scientists looked at Trianna, then at each other, then again at her, uncertain as to what to do, or more precisely, how to do it. With a shrug, someone pulled out a gun from a drawer somewhere. The door to the glass cage swung open, and a reluctant man gingerly made his way in. Trianna smiled at him, unaware of the danger. She was just glad that everyone stopped looking so afraid when the creepy man came.

Three bullets to the chest dropped her to the ground, the smile rapidly fading as death came for her. Her eyes saw the bright florescent lights overhead before her world turned white.

"I guess that's it" said someone.

"Pulse, respiration, zero. Some residual brain activity," someone said.

"A pity, she was such a sweet young thing"

"For someone carrying the death of us all inside her, you mean."

"Hey, wait a minute! Brain activity just spiked! Her heart's just restarted!"

"What?!"

From Trianna's inert body, a sense of warmth flowed outward. The whole area seemed much brighter, and her body seemed the brightest object in the room.

"Blue pattern energy signal manifesting!" shouted someone, utter terror evident in her voice.

Trianna's body now positively glowed. A few seconds ago it would have been dismissed as a mass hallucination or a trick of the light, but now there was no trick, there was no rational explanation as the dead girl's body radiated a blinding white light.

"Run! Now! The alien aspects are manifesting!"

But there was nothing that could outrun light, and when the workers came to pick up the pieces, they found rubble, destroyed equipment and strange puddles of yellow-orange liquid lying around in puddles around the scorched lab complex, but there were no bodies of any kind whatsoever.

Logan's light blue truck rattled its way through the back roads of upstate New York. He was in another foul mood tonight. He had spent three days, driving from one town to another trying to find it, without any success. He angrily accepted the inevitable conclusion that the only place to get any Madripoor beer was Madripoor, and was on his way back to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester. Maybe he'd hop on the next flight to Madripoor tomorrow just for the heck of it – and Summers be damned if he even squeaks disapproval, but right about now, he was tired, he was cranky, and he'd like to go home.