Flying Off the Handle, Leaping to Conclusions

By OughtaKnowBetter

            "Are you crazy?"

            Lexa  slammed both fists against Jesse's chest, knocking him off of his feet. He skidded several feet across the tiled floor and slid to a halt by knocking up against the wall. The picture frame above his head teetered and threatened to drop.

            "Are you out of your skull?" she yelled again. Tears flew off of her face as she stood over the molecular, and Lexa ignored them. This was Lexa, cold-as-ice Lexa, hard-as-nails Lexa, the woman who didn't care about the people around her. She only cared about getting the job done. Everyone else needed to look out for themselves, because that's what she did. And right now, one of Mutant X had gotten himself into big trouble, and Lexa shouldn't have cared a fig. So why am I going wild like this? "What the hell did you think you were doing?"

            Jesse scrambled to his feet, arms up to defend himself, ready to lash back. The computer on which he'd been working beeped forlornly for attention. "What are you talking about? I haven't done anything."

            "The hell you haven't! They caught you on tape, Jesse! Video tape! They have it all down in living color, with you as the star! What were you doing there?"

            Understanding dawned: cold, stark reality. Jesse paled. "They caught me on tape? She swore the cameras were turned off."

            "I guess she lied to you, didn't she? I guess this means that you can add stupidity and gullibility to your list of shortcomings, too. Nice going, Jesse. I hope she was pretty. It would be a shame to get suckered in by an ugly face."

Jesse ignored Lexa's barbs. "I've got to get to her. Out of my way, Lexa. I don't have time for this."

But Lexa wouldn't let him past. "You really screwed up this time, Jesse. You couldn't even give me a hint of what you were doing? What made you think you could get away with it? All we can hope is that the rest of us aren't going to get killed by your idiocy."

            "Nobody else is involved, and certainly not you, Lexa. This is a private matter. Back off."

            Brennan and Shalimar sauntered in, attracted by the noise.

            "What's going on here?" Brennan inquired, not certain if he was ready to get involved. Didn't seem like a lover's spat, not that either combatant had ever gone that far. Besides, he'd thought that both Jesse and Lexa were keeping any chemistry between them inside the test tube and not out in the open air. Sensible of Jesse, Brennan had thought, considering Lexa's allegiance to the shadowy Dominion. Not an easy lady to get close to.

            "Ask him," Lexa replied bitterly. "Go ahead. Ask him what he was doing last night."

            "Jesse?" Shalimar looked from one to the other.

            "You had no business prying into my personal life, Lexa," Jesse snarled.

            "No? I do if it's Dominion business," she shot back.

            "This is not Dominion business. Never has been, and never will, so get off my case."

            "Jesse, you're jeopardizing the future of all mutants! What ever possessed you to do such a stupid thing?" Volume control rising; Lexa tried to rein herself in. It wasn't easy.

            "Since when is helping a friend a stupid thing? You and your precious Dominion seem to know everything. Why don't you ask them?" Jesse slapped the power button on the computer, turning it off with reckless disregard for shut-down protocols. "I so do not have time for this, Lexa. If I was caught on tape then I need to move now, so stay out of my way." He stormed away down the corridor, angry footsteps echoing in the cavernous hall.

            "Jesse!" Shalimar called after the retreating figure, but Jesse didn't acknowledge her.  She turned back to the light elemental. "Lexa? What's going on?"

            "Jesse's turned rogue, that's what's happened."

            Brennan's jaw nearly hit the floor. "Are we talking about the same Jesse Kilmartin who just exited, stage left? Straight-as-an-arrow Kilmartin, always looking out for the other guy Kilmartin?"

            "Amazing how he fooled you, too," Lexa said sarcastically. "Makes you wonder how long this has been going on."

            Shalimar shook her head in exasperation, blonde curls flying. "How long has what has been going on? Make sense, Lexa. What is it that Jesse has supposed to have done?"

            The smile on Lexa's face had more anger in it than anything else. "See for yourself." She punched several buttons on the computer keyboard, the same unit that Jesse had just shut down. It took too long for the machine to warm up, but none of the three mutants were going anywhere.

            Lexa accessed the video camera security files from a bank. The files had clearly been sent to her only recently. "Community Finance Bank," she tossed in, "from last night. Watch." As if the other two expected to do anything else.

            The cameras were trained on the entrance hallway to the safety deposit vault of the bank. The hallway looked common and straightforward: thick steel doors that would take more than a small amount of explosive to do more than polish the chrome finish. The doors were closed; Lexa fast forwarded past the three couples and then two singletons who disappeared in and out earlier in the day doing their business with the safety boxes. The light in the corridor took on a subtly darker shade as the afternoon edged toward night. There was a long period of nothing—one security guard made his ambling and bored after hours rounds—and then three people entered.

            Two were unrecognizable and the stockings that they wore over their heads made them more so. The third, however, looked familiar despite his attempt at masking his features. The shoulders were broad, the waist narrow; even the shirt worn loosely and untucked looked disturbingly identifiable. The stocking tried to hide the even features, but couldn't do much to disguise the sandy colored hair. Brennan and Shalimar exchanged unhappy glances. What could Jesse have been doing in the bank vault after hours?

            Lexa didn't let them wonder for long. The tape moved on. Jesse stepped forward and placed both hands against the thick steel vault door. He paused to collect himself, exhaled, and phased.

            The vault door crumbled into its constituent molecules, ending up as a pile of iron dust on the floor at his feet.

            Jesse stepped over the mess, followed by the other pair. They entered, and clearly knew which safety deposit box they were after. Jesse phased open the selected box and pulled it out of its slot, and the watching trio could almost hear the tinkle of the iron shards as the remnants of the deposit box cover bounced onto the floor. One of the others opened the inner canister and withdrew what looked to be some sort of small blue plastic computer disk. Jesse held it up to the light, and his victorious smile could be seen even through the stocking mask. He pocketed the disk, and the trio beat an unhurried retreat.

            Lexa stopped the recording, leaving it on freeze frame. Jesse's masked features leered out at them from the computer screen. The identification wouldn't stand up in a court of law, but the hair color, the tilt to the head, the general dimensions—all Jesse Kilmartin. "Comments, anyone?"

            "I don't believe it," Shalimar said. "There has to be some mistake. That can't have been Jesse."

            "Yeah," Brennan put in. "I mean, look at the guy. He's wearing the stocking mask, you can't really see his features—"

            "Wake up, Brennan. How many bank robbers can phase through solid steel? So where was Jesse last night when this was going down?" Lexa broke in. "More to the point, why won't he tell us where he was? If he wasn't there," and she pointed to the frozen picture on the computer screen, "then why won't he tell us where he was?"

            "He must have a good reason," Shalimar insisted. "This is not Jesse Kilmartin that we're looking at. I don't care what you think, Lexa. That's not Jesse!"

            "It doesn't matter what I think," Lexa said darkly. "Not any more. It's what the Dominion thinks."

            "I don't care—"

            "You'd better care," Lexa cut her off brusquely. "The Dominion told me to kill him. Just now. Terminate him, they said. He's a liability. Get the computer disk that he took from that safety deposit box, and remove him from the equation. Permanently."

            "Going to do it?" Brennan's voice held a world of warning.

            Lexa wasn't cowed. "I haven't decided. I need to recover the computer disk first."

            "We need to talk to Jesse first," Shalimar said.

            "Go ahead. Get him to tell you why he did what he did. And where the computer disk is. If we give the Dominion the computer disk right now, maybe I can persuade them not to have him executed."

*          *            *

            Brennan rapped on the door. "Jess? Jess, come out, man. This is serious, Jesse."

            No answer. The door to Jesse's room stayed shut. Lexa cocked an I-told-you-so look at Brennan and Shalimar.

            Shalimar rapped harder. "Jesse, it's Shal. We need to talk to you. Tell us what's going on."

            Still no answer. Shalimar tried the door. Locked. Lexa folded her arms. With an uncomfortable look at Shalimar, Brennan zapped the lock with a small burst of electricity. The lock sprang open, and Brennan pushed the door ajar.

            The room looked like Jesse himself, tasteful and well-appointed but slightly disheveled in an artful style. There was a painting on the wall that, to Brennan's untutored eye, looked quite a bit more expensive than the dime-store poster variety. A formless sculpture that nevertheless made him think of a bird taking flight sat on a table just off center, perfectly placed for maximum impact. The bed linens were still rumpled; Jesse hadn't bothered to straighten them.

            Of Jesse himself there was no sign. And on the table, next to the sculpture, was his comm. ring. The message was clear: leave me alone.

            "Bolted?" Lexa said, carefully avoiding the I-told-you-so tone.

            "His clothes are still here." Shalimar pulled open the closet. "Where ever he's gone, he's planning on coming back."

            Unless he didn't think he had time to pack, was the unvoiced rejoinder.

            "Look for the computer disk," Lexa ordered, suiting actions to words.

            But both Brennan and Shalimar held back. "This doesn't feel right," Shalimar said. "I mean, this is Jesse's room. We're invading his privacy."

            Lexa kept on going. "The Dominion will be invading a lot more than his privacy if we don't find out what going on." She straightened up. "Does this sound like the actions of an innocent man? Jesse won't say where he was last night. There's a man caught robbing a bank who looks an awful lot like him. And—dear God," she broke off, staring at the contents of the dresser drawer.

            "Lexa?"

            The others came up behind her to stare in horror at the contents. It was filled with stacks of bills: twenties, fifties, and hundreds, all neatly wrapped with paper bands across the middle.

            Lexa was the first to find her voice. "I think we'd better search this place very carefully for the computer disk."

*          *            *

            It was frustrating, but Jesse parked the car almost a mile away from the estate. He couldn't risk it being spotted. Not now, when Lexa had told him that he'd been caught on video tape. Jesse cursed under his breath—she'd promised that she'd turned the cameras off. Elena was desperate, desperate to escape, and compromising her ticket out wasn't what Jesse would have expected.

            He left the car under some long hanging branches to let the vehicle hide in plain sight. The estate was surrounded by a thick brick wall, but that was no barrier to Jesse Kilmartin. Placing a hand against the wall he centered himself, exhaled, and phased. The wall went insubstantial, and he slipped through the very molecules themselves to arrive inside the estate.

            Still had to be careful. There were guards with guns patrolling. Setting off an alarm now would ruin everything. And since Elena didn't know that he was coming, she wouldn't know to turn off the security cameras on the estate. He wondered what had happened the last time. Perhaps she didn't know how to turn them off? Or one of the guards had noticed, and turned them back on? He scuttled from bush to tree, sometimes crawling along the ground and once lying absolutely silent beneath a rhododendron while a pair of guards strolled past, oblivious to his presence.

            Again he phased through a wall, this one into the house itself. He had already determined the spot closest to where Elena spent most of her hours, and that forethought served him well again. He ended up in a coat closet near the stairs, listening for several more long minutes to be certain that he hadn't been detected.

            Jesse let himself into Elena's suite, closing the door silently behind him. He could hear Elena breathing behind him but hers was the only one. They were alone.

            "Jesse?" she whispered, voice trembling. "What's wrong? Why are you here?"

            "We have to go now," Jesse said harshly, keeping his own voice down. "They caught me on the security cameras patrolling the estate. A friend back home told me. We have to—what did he do to you?" Jesse caught her hand, turning Elena to him.

            Elena tried to turn away, to hide.

            "He hit you." Jesse felt his blood boil. The black bruise across her cheek was the unmistakable evidence of what he had known was going on but had no proof. "I'll kill him."

            "Jesse, don't. Just leave it. Please, Jesse. Just get us out of here, please?" Elena pulled away. "I don't want you to be hurt."

            Jesse took hold of himself. Now was not the time to go off half-cocked. He needed to get them all out safely. "You're right. But, Elena, why didn't you turn off the cameras like you said?"

            Elena looked puzzled. "Jesse, I did. I swear it."

            "You couldn't have. My friend had the video tape."

            Elena started to shake. "Raymond must have a second set, or separate controls. I turned them off, Jesse!"

            "Shh, shh, I believe you," Jesse soothed. "Get little Nicky. Let's go."

            She bit her lip, and nodded.

            It didn't take much. The only thing she was taking with her was a small diaper bag, and the four month old baby who went with it. Nicky stared at Jesse with the solemnity of his youth, dark eyes dancing over the man's face, searching for familiar features. Jesse felt a pang of regret, then steeled himself. If they left Nicky behind, he'd grow up to be like his father. Or be battered like his mother, or both. Jesse refused to allow that to happen.

            "You still have the money I gave you?" Elena's voice was getting more nervous, if that was possible, now that flight was actually happening.

            Jesse nodded. "Back home. Let's concentrate on getting out of here." He led her downstairs, darting back to avoid the guards patrolling even inside the house, and phasing them out through solid wall. Elena swallowed hard at this evidence of her escort's uniqueness, but gamely plodded on. Anything, even this scary escape, was better than remaining where she was.

            At the car, Elena hesitated. "There's no car seat," she said.

            Jesse had to suppress an angry retort. It was an automatic reflex on Elena's part; she hadn't been out of the house, she'd said, since Nicky was born. Her husband had kept her locked up and isolated.

            "We don't have one," Jesse said gently. "You'll have to hold him. Look, he's already fallen asleep."

            "Kids do that," she responded. Jesse recognized the signs of being overwhelmed; there was too much going on for her to comprehend more than the simplest and most straightforward of tasks. He ground his teeth: Raymond Kruger had much to answer for. Elena had never been like this, not when they were growing up as kids. The bright young girl that had been a childhood sweetheart during his tenth summer had disappeared into this frightened young woman desperate to save herself, and her child. He put her into the car, tucking both her and her son in securely before getting into the driver's seat.

            He couldn't take her back to Sanctuary, as he'd first intended when Elena's best friend had contacted him. That was out; Lexa and the Dominion had seen to that. He wondered what the connection was between the Dominion and Raymond Kruger, then put that thought aside. It could wait for a better time, when Elena and Nicky were safe.

            Jesse himself would have to return to Sanctuary at some point, some point soon, to collect the money that Elena had squirreled away for herself and Nicky for this exact moment. It looked substantial: Raymond's activities garnered him a lot of wealth as well as a hefty amount of attention from the local police force. But Jesse knew how quickly a young mother and child could go through even that quantity. He would have to help her set up in some place where she could make it last as long as possible. Jesse had tried to persuade Elena to go to the authorities, to get into the Witness Protection Program, but she would have none of it. They'd track me down, Jesse, she'd said. They'd kill me, and take Nicky back to Raymond. That would be the worst, knowing that my son would grow up doing what Raymond does.

            He pulled in beside an abandoned warehouse. At least, it appeared abandoned. Elena looked at him, raising her eyebrows.

            "It's all right," he reassured her. "It looks better on the inside." I hope, he added to himself. It had been a long time since he'd been here himself. It was one of Mutant X's old safe houses, a place where they could stash frightened mutants en route to a safer place. Jesse himself had lost count of the people he'd brought to this very building back in happier times, when Adam Kane was running the underground. If Jesse was right, this place would be a little dusty but warm and dry and still ready for temporary occupancy. Just the place for Elena and Nicky to stay while he returned to Sanctuary to get her money.

            "All right," she said doubtfully, clutching the infant to her.

*          *            *

            "The Dominion is sending you back up," the bearded man told her. The computer screen crackled; the connection had been re-routed through several different points. It didn't make any difference. The meaning got through.

            "I don't need back up," Lexa replied irritably. "I can handle this."

            "Have you re-acquired the disk?"

            "You know I haven't."

            "Has Kilmartin been terminated?"

            "I'm working on it." Guilty pang.

            "The decision has been made. Back up will be arriving shortly."

            "Fine," Lexa snapped. "Tell 'em to stay out of my way."

            "No, Ms. Pierce. Let me make myself perfectly clear. A Back-Up Squad has been sent. You stay out of their way. You are a valuable employee of the Dominion, but not so valuable that you are irreplaceable." He ended the connection abruptly.

            Lexa stared at the blank screen, her face paling. A bad situation had suddenly gotten a whole lot worse.

*          *            *

            Shalimar stared at the twentieth replaying of the bank video tape. "That's not him," she muttered under her breath. "That's not him."

            Brennan spared her a quick look. "Then help me prove it, Shal." He fiddled with the computer keyboard, striving for the same level of competency that he'd seen Jesse display over and over. It was slow going. Frame by frame, he enlarged and enhanced the pictures of Jesse, pouring over each one, looking for something that would prove that the figure on the screen was not Jesse Kilmartin. Arms were the best bet; perhaps this mystery man would have a tattoo that Jesse didn't, or a scar. Brennan refused to believe that he had been so wrong about the man he called his best friend.

            "I am." Shalimar sat back and studied the moving images from a different angle. The three masked figures paced up and down the hallway, forward and back as the feral reversed and played the tape over and over again. "He doesn't phase right. He didn't put the molecules back the way he found them. Jesse always does that."

"Maybe he had a reason to leave dust on the floor." Brennan concentrated on scanning the blown up image.

Shalimar continued her perusal, musing over tantalizing tidbits. "He doesn't move like Jesse does."

            "How does that help us?"

            "I don't know." She changed her position once again, still studying the action. "He doesn't move the same way."

            "All right, I'll bite. How is this guy different?"

            It took several long moments for Shalimar to answer. "He's not as home in his skin as Jesse."

            "Not admissible in a court of law, Shal."

            "Give me a minute. I'm still watch—it's his gait! It's the way he walks! He takes smaller steps." Shalimar sat bolt up straight. "It's really not Jesse! It's not him!"

            "You've already convinced me. Now convince a jury."

            "If he takes smaller steps, he has shorter legs."

            Brennan caught on at once. "Shorter legs means shorter height." He fiddled with the screen, persuading the computer to apply some measurements, judging the masked man's height against the standardized concrete cinder blocks that made up the wall. "That's it, Shal! You've got it. This guy is only five foot six. He's inches shorter than Jesse!"

            "C'mon." Shalimar stopped the tape. "Let's go tell Lexa so that she can clear up this mess with the Dominion."

            "No need." Lexa lounged in the doorway, deceptively at ease. "I heard."

            "Good," Shalimar said eagerly. "You can tell the Dominion to go take a hike."

            Lexa didn't move. "What about the computer disk?"

            "Jesse doesn't have it. He didn't rob the bank."

            "What about the money? Going to tell me that he's been saving his pennies all of his life?"

            Brennan started to get exasperated. "Cut him some slack, Lexa. There's a perfectly above board explanation for that money. Shal and I just proved that it's not Jesse on that tape; he's innocent. Call off the Dominion."

            Lexa looked unhappy. "Wish I could. Matters have gotten out of my hands."

            "Which means—?"

            "Which means that the Dominion was not best pleased that Jesse ran off. In fact, it solidified their suspicions that it was our favorite molecular who pinched the computer disk. They've called in the big guns to resolve the matter."

            "Tell them they're wrong, Lexa. That Jesse is innocent. Have 'em call their people back."

            Lexa looked even more unhappy. "I can't."

            "And why not?" Brennan suddenly got a lot more threatening.

            "Because I've been cut off." Lexa seemed smaller. At the pair's disbelieving stare, she added, "I was supposed to terminate Jesse last night. I didn't. Now the Dominion doesn't trust me. Not that they ever trust anyone, but I'm less an asset now and more of a liability." She sighed, and Brennan and Shalimar could see the decision to come clean taking place inside. "They've sent out a Back-up Squad."

            Brennan looked at Shalimar with concern. "Why do I hear capital letters when she says that? What am I missing?"

            "The Back-up Squad's job," said Lexa, "is to remove the problem by force, and to eliminate anyone or anything that stands in their way. Scorched earth policy. And, Brennan," she added, "they know everything about Sanctuary's defenses."