Revolution 9

by VoxArcana

A murder mystery, a new foe, intelligent crossover and four smart Mary Sues. Read at your peril.

Invisible Death – Complete - Página 217 de 217

IndexTHE VANISHING ACT

Oliver St. Clair III looked out the bay window from his penthouse office on the top floor of the tallest building in the middle of the island.

Memories were a wonderful thing.

The sweetness of his mother's kiss, the proud gleam on his father's eye, the way his grandfather scratched his white beard and straightened his silk tie. Above all, the smile on Leslie's face when she said, "I do" on their wedding ceremony. Their joy at the news of their first child; the kid would one day be either Oliver or Olivia, born to carry on with the St. Clair dynasty name and power.

Memories were a terrible thing.

The death of his parents and the death of his grandfather, who had raised him to be his heir and successor in the pharmaceutical empire the family had built and expanded until it was a force to be reckoned with in the international scene… The diagnostic that his unborn child would not survive to see the light of day… The frantic search for medical solutions that even with the St. Clair unlimited resources would not be forthcoming, not within the confines of mainstream Science… The interview with that condescending bastard, pseudo-scientist, mad doctor, who at their time of need offered a possibility of survival for their child… It was crazy. It was playing with fire... or worse. It was tantamount to playing God. But desperate times demanded desperate measures. It was their only chance, or the child would be stillborn. And nothing could assure them Leslie would be able to conceive again. It wasn't her fault, after all. The problem was his. The malformation was inherited from his mother's side of the family.

Memories were a curse.

The most painful of all and it was vivid behind his eyelids, burning hot every time he closed them, etched in his brain never to be erased. The moment the monstrosity his baby had been turned into by that bunch of men and women, drunk with ungodly knowledge ... the moment that thing clawed its way out of Leslie's womb, tearing her to ribbons as it ripped her belly open to fall on the floor of the operating room. The freak of Nature... no, of Science... had shrieked and crawled on the pool of blood under his wife's body, horrifying all the staff present, including the older, balding man who had created it, until Oliver himself had ended its miserably short life.

Despite all his efforts to stop it, the criminal experiments and research had gone on, even flourished. The government was hell bent on funding and supporting the creation of things that could enhance its military power, not to mention the private funding coming from couples and families in their last hope to make sure either the child they'd given birth to would reach adulthood, or that it would be born at all. God forgive him, Oliver had been one of them, once.

Now, over thirty years later, Oliver St. Clair III, last scion of the clan that gave the world the cure for myriad of diseases, vaccines for many others, and that had grown to the pinnacles of the world's fortunes in the process, looked at the sea beyond the Caribbean island he had made his own, the paradise-like stronghold he had built from the sandy ground up, and once again vowed that the demonic generation Paul Breedlove and his minions had spawned would be wiped out of the face of the earth. Not one anomaly would remain. Humanity would be pure once again... and soon.

The dissertation was a bitch. And that Professor Caldwell was another! On wheels! It would do the world a lot of good if only Charlotte would scrape her fingers on the woman's hand while handing her a test and turn her ugly disposition a hundred and eighty degrees. Professor Caldwell, head of the Anthropology Department, would be friendlier, more open minded, and she would stop calling Charlotte's theories "science fiction". "The Effects of Genetic Manipulation on Future Cultural Patterns" was a worthy subject, but Charlotte Cooke might as well be writing about "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds", for all that bitch cared. The temptation of using her powers to mollify her nemesis, the grouch of the Ph.D.'s judging boards, was almost unbearable, but that had been a head clause on the contract with the Underground scholarship fund. No powers! No use of powers for one's own gain under any circumstances. And the Underground people kept tracks. They were paying for Charlotte's education, room and board, plus pocket money, but they kept tracks, yes, ma'am! And if they so much as suspected she had used her molecular personality-bending powers on anyone at the University, it would be bye-bye scholarship, bye-bye apartment, not to mention bye-bye a position as career counselor at the private school kept by AR&D for genetically enhanced children and teens. And Charlotte was running late for her appointment with Dr. Rodriguez, her therapist and teacher, without whom, she wouldn't be able to graduate. She would have to run. Maybe if she cut through the back of the Bio-Med Sciences buildings and turned to the left on Salk Boulevard, and if her crappy car would cooperate and go a little faster... And if that SUV would just pull a little to the right and let her pass ahead... Oh, bother, why was the thing stopping?

Fear shot through Charlotte Cooke's spine, making her hair stand on end at the nape of her neck, as the black SUV directly in front of her car came to sudden halt. The smaller Corolla bumped lightly against the SUV's rear fender. The young molecular woman tried to back away, but two huge bikes cut her escape short, stopping behind her Corolla. Their four occupants in full black leather jumpsuits, gloves and helmets leaped off the machines and surrounded her car before she could make a run for it. One of the black-clad assailants drove an elbow through the closed window, smashing the glass. In the same motion, he grabbed Charlotte by her hair, crashed her face against the driving wheel, opened the driver's door, pulled her out and touched a stun gun to her chest. He then pulled up her limp body over his shoulder and ran for the SUV's open back door. He shoved Charlotte inside like a sack of potatoes, slammed the double door shut and smacked the car's side, signaling the driver to go. His smaller companion took the driver's seat of Charlotte's car and the vehicles quickly left the scene and the University campus, the SUV and bikes going east, the blue Corolla going west.

The hospital building was still more than four blocks away and Carly Leung was running very late. Dr. Fontenelle would be pissed. Of course, she wouldn't raise her voice, she never did, but she would look at Carly with those unsettling blue eyes of hers. If the doctor were in her private office, she might have her jacket off and her wings would be visible. She would flutter her wings and shake her head. Man, it was worse than a scolding. Against a scolding, an explosion of anger, Carly could steel herself; against disappointment for her constant tardiness... And Carly Leung, mild psionic telempath, could tell exactly which was which. Maybe if she cut through My Friend's Bookstore, she could save herself a whole block walking. Mr. Bishop didn't like people using his store as a shortcut, but, damn, this was an emergency. What time was it, anyway?

Quickly checking her wristwatch, Carly started to walk even faster and that's when the hit came, strong, icy cold sweat running down her spine. The contempt was obvious; the hatred was so gelid even she, weak as she was, could feel its hand clenching her heart. The negative emotions had such an impact on the girl, she had to stop and look around. The blow came from nowhere and caught her on the left cheek. A white star exploded inside her skull and that was the last thing Carly Leung, secretary, mild psionic telempath saw in that bright spring morning.

"Ruby, have you seen Carly?"

"Don't do this to me!" The chubby "esper" jumped at the sound, his hand shooting to his chest. Computers were a pain! Nobody, but nobody could ever sneak up on him! He could feel a person coming a mile away, but computer communications? Those things sprung up to life without any warning! One of these days, they would give him a heart attack! He had been so jumpy after his imprisonment at the GSA. Even after so much time since his release, he was still jumpy as hell. "The girl never went through here! She knows I don't like it, but does she ever listen? No! Why do you ask?"

From the computer screen, the dark skinned woman with unexpected blue eyes looked at the bespectacled man. "It's almost 10:30, she hasn't arrived." The woman bit her upper lip. "I called her mother, she told me she left for work a bit late, as usual, but she should have arrived an hour ago."

"That airhead stopped for something along the way!"

"Come on, Ruby," the Avian shot, "you, of all people, should know she would never do that!"

The bookstore owner frowned. Something didn't smell quite right. The girl Carly's head was populated with movie stars, bad fashion choices, pop music and a huge crush on Brennan Mulwray, but she was otherwise quite responsible. She had been Angela's secretary for almost two years now, since before that awful business with the smuggled babies at the now definitively defunct Breedlove Foundation. And talking about Brennan, what that hunk of a man had said about the other mutant... her name was... Oh, damn... that ugly girl with the power to change moral polarity? Charlotte! Yes, Charlotte Cooke! She had vanished, too. That one, good riddance, but anyway... "You know, Angela... I think we should warn Adam and the kids."

"Why?"

"Not the first case."

"I think, Doctor Kane, you should be tried in the Haia International Court for crimes against humanity!"

The slender man in a cheap gray suit, with gray hair and gray tie, Special ADA Jack McCoy, was nothing gray in demeanor. His eyes shone black and indignant, as if he had an exclusive ownership of truth and right and lawful, the sanctimonious bastard. From the other side of the table, where he was sitting, Mason almost applauded.

"Now, now, Mr. McCoy... We're not here to arrest and prosecute present company." From the door, one hand holding his aluminum cane for the blind, Peter Thorton, head of the Phoenix Foundation, was the image of conciliation. "The object of this meeting is to set up the building of a mutant oriented confinement facility for genetically enhanced criminals." The blind gentleman tapped his way to the head of the table and sat down. "In light of the recent revolt lead by notorious outlaw Nickolas Lareou, it was made clear to the government that there must be a place to keep people whose abilities would make them otherwise impossible to confine and hold them accountable for their crimes. Dr. Kane is here as a designer and architect with plans for this facility."

"Architect all right! Architect of doom!" Jack McCoy, special ADA with jurisdiction over mutant related crimes, the representative of the Judiciary System, was the image of righteous fury. "He made these unfortunate people! He created them! And they might mean the end of Humanity as we know it! Do you realize, sir, your creation was the biggest, most destructive environmental disaster the world has ever seen? There's no Exxon Valdez, no Union Carbide Bhopal catastrophe, no Chernobyl that could compare!"

Adam Kane sat facing Jack McCoy. He grabbed the arms of his chair with such strength his knuckles were white, his eyes narrowed to slits as he heard and absorbed the lawyer's tirade. He was fully aware of the consequences his genetic work could have, what it could mean for the future of Mankind, or lack thereof. But it had never started as a planned disaster! It started, at least on his part, as legitimate scientific research, with a legitimate agenda! For Christ's sake, even Peter Thorton's condition, his blinding glaucoma, could have been reversed with genetic therapy, were it available at the right time. That and a plethora of other diseases! Adam's patience was wearing very thin. That man thought he had the right to judge him! Adam would never quietly accept those accusations. He had to answer and he would... if only he could move, but no matter how he tried, he couldn't stand or move from the present position or even utter a sound. How come...? The only telekinetic in the room was Donna and she... just winked at him. It's inevitable, relax and enjoy it.

"You're very quick to kill the messenger, counselor." The slender woman with long white streaked black hair smiled sweetly at McCoy, but her eyes told an altogether different story. "As you should know, Adam created the technique, which can be used in several different ways to prevent and even cure several maladies. In a similar scenario, would you prosecute Marie and Pierre Curie for the discovery of radio because it was later used to make the atom bomb? Or the Brothers Wright and Alberto Santos-Dumont for the invention of the airplane, because it was later used to drop said atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"

"If not Dr. Kane, here present, at least his mentor, one Kurt von Schuler, aka Paul Breedlove, should really be tried at Haia, since he was too young to be tried in Nuremberg!"

At the mention of Paul Breedlove's name by a representative of the Judiciary System, Mason Eckhart, head of the Genetic Security Agency, visibly stiffened.

Donna Gryphon, detective, now future warden of the Mutant Penn, as it was named for lack of a better designation, and a multi-psionic herself, turned to Eckhart, feeling his discomfiture, then turned back to Adam and, with a discreet gesture, released him from her telekinetic grip. What was that von Schuler story all about?

"I thought this tale of mysterious German scientists that haunted Paul all his life had been put definitely to bed." Adam respected the late Dr. Breedlove as his teacher and mentor.

"Tale, sir? No! Together with the Interpol and the Israeli War Criminals Department, we have uncovered documents from Nazi Germany, East Germany, Argentina and other sources, proving that man's intentions were far from noble!" McCoy pulled his briefcase from its resting place on the floor and opened it with a snap, picking up several files and papers from its bowels, slamming them on the table. "Kurt von Schuler really existed and he worked with Joseph Mengele in Nazi Germany. Like you, Dr. Kane, he was a child prodigy." In McCoy's mouth, Adam's title sounded like a dirty word. "Later, his research on super humans was funded by an organization named ODESSA, hell bent on ensuring the creation of a 4th Reich. Von Schuler, now Paul Breedlove, fled the destroyed Germany to Brazil, then Argentina and, last but not least, here. His goal was, actually, to create a super army for the rise of the new and improved Reichstag."

"I don't believe it!" Adam snatched some papers and, passing a few on to Donna, started reading a tad slower than his particular read-at-a-glance way.

"It's in German," complained Donna. "I can read most romance languages, but no German."

"I can read German all right." Adam picked the papers he had handed Donna back. "This is a Stasis report on the activities of known ODESSA operatives and the cloning operation known as 'Boys from Brazil'. Von Schuler's name is here, only now it is Paulo Alamor and it describes the embryo of Paul's research in great detail." Paper leaves were flying in Adam's hands and it took him less than two minutes to commit the whole stack of documents to memory.

"Try this one now, doctor." McCoy almost spat the title. "It's from the Mossad and was translated from Hebrew to English. It is a little more recent, detailing the early experiences held at the newborn GenomeX. As you see, sir, we know the genesis of this situation, chapter and verse."

Peter Thorton cleared his throat. That was not the time or place to access blame for a fait accomplis. He stood up and tapped his thin aluminum cane on the floor. "Gentlemen, mutants are here to stay. We either deal with them fairly or we will certainly face a war we will never be able to win." He turned slightly to the point where Adam's voice had come. "We will have a brief recess and, then, Dr. Kane, you can start your presentation." And he heard the sound of chairs scrapping the floor.

"Adam, are you there? If you are, get to the computer and talk to me."

From the notebook, on the videoconference screen, Brennan's voice sounded tired, worn and worried. Cat's death had taken its toll. Actually, the whole New Order business had taken its toll on the team. They had all aged. Brennan worse of all. He had used an old trick Adam knew well to dull the pain of loss, burying himself in work, taking over security for the Underground Network, with Harry Bloomenfeld as his second in command. Vince Meisel was Chief Ops and Ruby Bishop was the head administrator.

"You caught me in the shower. What's up?"

"How are the meetings going?" asked the elemental.

"Exhaustive. By the way, you were granted a full pardon, and your rap sheet was cleaned, your record was purged." Adam grinned. "The Special Assistant DA didn't like it one bit, but it is done."

"That's good news, for a change." Brennan Mulwray massaged his temples. "How long are you staying in New York?"

"A while yet. Since we took down the New Order, rogue mutant gangs seem to be popping up all over the world. The plans for Cascade's Mutant Penn were finally approved, but then the Russian Embassy asked for a meeting to discuss another penitentiary in the Urals," answered Adam with a sigh. "Their genetic alteration program went awry after the Communist regime fell and, now, mutants are being drafted by the Russian Mob. Moscow has good reason to be worried."

Brennan leaned closer to the screen. "I wish you'd come back."

"What's up?"

"There have been a few strange disappearances around here."

Adam leaned forward, too. "What do you mean disappearances?"

"You remember Carly Leung, Angela's secretary at the hospital?"

The wheels inside Adam's head could almost be seen moving. "Mild psionic, very young... She has a knack for making people open up and tell her stuff."

"That's her. She hasn't shown up for work for two days and nobody seems to know her whereabouts. We're investigating, but she seems to have vanished into thin air."

"I gather she's not the only one."

"No, Charlotte Cooke has been missing classes for a week now. And she knows she has to do well in college if she wants to keep the scholarship we've granted her."

"What have you done about it?"

"We've gone to her place and nobody answers the door. Her car is parked in front, covered in dust, as if it hasn't moved for a while."

"Have you searched the place?"

"Not yet, but Jesse will be back from California tonight. We're going there first thing tomorrow morning, if she doesn't show up."

"Any other cases?"

"A few, yes. Not so many as to raise any flags and there is no evidence of violent abduction. But one of the missing mutants is that fish girl we placed with the Benedicts."

"Talk to the Benedicts, see what you can find. And get into Charlotte's apartment." Adam bit his upper lip. "About Jesse..."

"I know. He's moving to California permanently. Riley wants to join the Ring and he wants to join Riley," said the elemental, smiling sadly. "I'll miss him."

"So will I, but it will be good for him. I've talked to Pete Thorton and we got Jesse in a graduation program in Stanford. He will study Computer Science and Mathematics in my old alma mater."

Brennan took a deep breath and held it long. "Things are changing."

"For the better, I hope."

The computer chimed another call for videoconference. Adam opened a secondary window to find a strange pair of bleary blue eyes looking back at him. "Good Lord, you look like hell!"

"I feel like hell, thank you very little," answered the bird feral.

"Brennan's on, too. I'll call up a three way conference." Adam's hands flew on the keyboard and the notebook screen broke up in two windows. "What happened to you? Where are you calling from?"

"The hospital. I've been feeling quite under the weather the last couple of days, and Sheridan gave me a thorough physical." Angela blew air and swallowed dry. "There's absolutely nothing wrong with me, but..." She was momentarily at a loss for words.

"But what? Speak up!"

"Adam, when did you talk to Donna last?"

"A couple of days ago. She returned to Cascade with Simon Banks after the first meeting, when she was officially appointed warden of the penitentiary. Simon promised me he would drop her home, and she sent me an email as soon as she got there."

"Was that all?"

"Yes, I was too busy. I was about to call her again."

The Avian rubbed her bionic eyes. "Don't bother, Donna isn't answering. The phone rings till it drops, her cell is in voice mail, and I've sent her a ton of messages. But what really worries me..."

"What?" Adam had a sinking feeling.

"Her commring is inactive."

BLAST FROM THE PAST

The cave was huge, its stone walls pinpointed by openings, crevices and passageways connecting with the exterior, bringing in fresh air, in a maze only the rats knew how to negotiate, rats not allowed into the main canopied room, the size of many football fields, thanks to the thin stainless steel electrified net covering every natural duct. The many equipment consoles, computer screens, control panels scattered all over the place reminded Oliver of an old TV series, The Time Tunnel, only this gear was state-of-the-art, while the show was quaint by comparison. In the middle of the great cave, the gigantic sensory deprivation tank dwarfed everything else. To Oliver's right, the sensory overload cells blinked and glowed; to his right, hidden cameras constantly monitored the padded cells for containment of subjects. To the back, the greenhouses, with their infrared lamps, were lined with hybrid plants, and cared for by native technicians, proficient both in Western Botanical Science and Chemistry, and in the ancient lore of their forefathers. They could create made-to-order genetically altered Datura stramonium specimens to produce any kind of mental effect, to the tiniest specification.

"I was informed the last subject was successfully acquired, Doctor Harrison." Oliver smiled at the lean man in glasses and lab coat.

"The specimen arrived in perfect condition, thank you very much. It will soon be ready for mind manipulation." Ken Harrison rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

"And how do you plan on starting?"

"We will start with sensory deprivation, while the psychosis sets in. Then we will alternate sessions of sensory overload and absolute sensory deprivation until the specimen's mind is blanked out and only raw power remains and can be controlled."

"I understand the other subjects' powers were destroyed together with their minds." Oliver St. Clair smiled sadly. "My son, had he lived, would say their powers went on a fritz."

Harrison cleared his throat, embarrassed at the tycoon's emotional comment. Leslie St. Clair and her mutant son had died in delivery, the child a monster Oliver himself had put to sleep many years ago. "This specimen is unusually strong. That's why I asked for it specifically. It will withstand the cleaning process."

"Or die fighting it."

The loft's door flew open at the first ring and Connor O'Hare, Ursine feral and telempath, saw three men gathered in the spacious living room of the converted warehouse. Jim Ellison was sitting on the couch's arm while Blair Sandburgh looked out a window. Adam Kane was holding the door and welcoming Connor in, but the telempath felt the chill in the air inside Donna's home, where her ex-fiancée and her present lover couldn't very well see eye to eye.

"Thanks for coming on such a short notice." Adam shook Connor's hand, his own disappearing inside the Ursine's huge paw. "And Alina?"

"She's waiting in the car. I'd like to explain something to you before Alina sets foot in here," answered Connor, entering the room and looking at the three men. He pursed his lips and began. "My wife Alina is a psionic with the gift of psychometria. She absorbs the vibrations left in an object or place by any act of violence."

"I have already explained that to Jim and Blair," Adam cut in, anxious to have the psionic up and running.

"But do you realize Alina is not a media player, Adam?"

"What do you mean?" asked Ellison.

"If there was an act of violence performed in this place, Alina will describe it in great detail. There is no pause, stop, fast forward or rewind to her power." Connor turned to Blair, who faced him with his arms crossed over his chest, his brow lined in concentration. "She has worked with FBI's Missing Persons Unit many times. Sometimes, there is no violence and the person disappeared of his or her own volition. Therefore, there is nothing to report." Connor turned to Adam. "On the other hand, if there was violence, Alina will describe the full extent of the event from the moment it was set in motion to the moment it ended, no matter how intimate, private, shocking or embarrassing. There is no stopping her once she engages her powers." The huge man turned from Adam to Blair and back again. "Are you sure you want her to come in?"

Slowly and very deliberately, Adam Kane turned to Blair Sandburgh. The two men faced each other for a long moment, and then both turned to Connor and nodded yes.

Connor O'Hare pulled a cell phone from his back pocket, and dialed a number. "Come up, sweetheart."

Moments later, a light knock on the door announced the arrival of Alina Mathias O'Hare, Connor's wife. The couple was a study in contrast. While Connor had brown eyes, was dark and huge, everything about him was big, Alina was a light redhead, very delicate, finely boned, her skin almost translucent, with liquid blue eyes. She looked much younger than her actual years. Whoever saw them together thought Connor would break Alina to pieces with a single hug. They could never imagine how soft, careful and protective the Ursine could be to the love of his life.

The doll sized psionic stopped at the threshold. She looked around without coming all the way in and drew a deep breath, holding the air inside her lungs, as if trying to absorb all oxygen inside the apartment. She blinked her eyes slowly and let the vibrations penetrate her whole body. When she opened her eyes again, they were shining like lamps. Step by step, she entered, walking to the center of the room, and then ever so slowly, she turned back to the door, her eyes glowing eerily.

"There's nobody home, the door is closed, the house is in darkness," she started. "I hear keys outside, someone is opening the door. It's Donna, she's back. She's wearing black pants, bell-bottoms, with a black leather belt, silver buckle. White silk shirt, black buttons... a black leather jacket. Her hair is in a long, thick braid falling down her back. She has a thin white gold chain around her neck holding a white gold feather pendant. The stem of the feather is studded with diamonds, ending in a larger stone, one carat at least."

"She used to wear many leather threads holding silver and turquoise ethnic pendants," offered Blair.

"And she replaced them all with the white feather I gave her," said Adam, his eyes never leaving the psionic.

"Donna is upset. No! Make that angry. She is throwing her knapsack on the couch." Alina followed every move, echoes from the past only she could hear. "She is furious. Something happened to spoil her evening." The redheaded girl turned to the notebook resting on the desk by the tall windows. "She is going to the computer; she turns it on, logs in and checks her messages. She files some; she'll answer them later. Others, she merely deletes. One of them, she opens. I'm reading over her shoulder. 'Are you home yet? How was your flight? Drop me a word as soon as you can, I want to know you've arrived safely. I have a full day of discussions scheduled with that tiresome DA McCoy. We are trying to clean up Brennan's rap sheet, but that man is stubborn and he pushes my buttons as only Mason ever could. Irritating self-righteous, pompous ass!' She's smiling. Reading you curse has improved her mood some. 'Enough ranting! I miss you already, but I don't know when I'll have time enough to write you properly. I love you, A.' She is hitting the Answer button. 'I made Simon go home directly. He lives on the other side of Cascade. I got a cab and got home safely, but the flight was a doozie. I'm exhausted. I'll hit the shower and the sack, in this order. I wish you were here with me. It's getting increasingly difficult to sleep without you by my side. I love you more than you can ever imagine.' She is signing it... 'GryphonLady'." Alina turned to a highly embarrassed Adam Kane, whom she could not see, as she was lost in the past, and went on with the tale. "Donna is leaving the computer on. She is going to her knapsack and she's picking something up..."

Adam cleared his throat. "Only her knapsack? Where is her duffel bag?"

"No duffel bag, only her knapsack," answered Alina, her eyes shining bright.

"When Donna first arrived in Sanctuary, she had an old nylon duffel bag. Angela gave her a new one, black leather, very elegant. Donna loved it. She checked the bag in before we said goodbye at the airport."

"No duffel bag," repeated the psionic. "She got something from her knapsack, a book. She is heading inside. She threw the book on the bed... The Tao of Physics..."

"I bought her the book in the airport, before she boarded the plane," said Adam.

"She is peeling off her clothes. She is stepping out of her shoes; the leather jacket goes on that peg. She is undressing completely, throwing her pants, shirt and underwear in that basked over there." Alina pointed a round straw basket at a corner and went on. "She is heading for the bathroom. She is opening the water. It is hot, very hot. Donna is unbraiding her hair, combing it with her fingers. Now, she is taking off the gold chain, and leaving it on the counter. She is stepping under the shower, her hair is wet. She is washing her hair and the water is very hot, her skin is turning pink. She is relaxing under the water, washing away whatever made her angry." Alina pointed back to the mirror. "Donna is out of the shower, drying herself. She is running a silver comb through her hair, this one, untangling it." And Alina picked up the comb. "Now, she is putting the chain with the feather back on. She is going to the closet, naked. Her skin is glistening. She is choosing a nightgown... Black, silk, lace nightgown and robe set..." Slowly, Alina turned to Adam. "Donna didn't choose it because she likes it, but because you like it. It makes her feel closer to you." The psionic turned back to the king size four-poster bed. "She is propping up a few pillows, turning the sidelight on and lying down. She is reaching for the book, opening it and starting to read. There's something written in ink on the front page. The handwriting is square, print, block letters, not cursive..."

Adam started speaking as if reading himself. "Science and spirituality are by no means self-exclusive. They rather complement each other. Science with no soul is cold and unyielding. Spirituality without a base in reality tends to turn into fanaticism. One is incomplete without the other, as I am incomplete without you."

Alina nodded and blinked a few times. "The doorbell is ringing. Donna is closing the book and looking at the alarm clock on the bedside table. Almost midnight. Who is ringing this late?" The psionic's breathing was quickening. Violence was coming up fast. She swallowed hard. "Donna is standing up and pulling up the robe. She is going to the security system, there." Alina followed the past movements. "She is turning the entrance camera on. There is a guy there, in an airline uniform... 'We found your bag, ma'am.' He is showing her the missing duffel bag, leather, black... nice. Donna is beside herself. That's what made her angry earlier. The airline had misplaced her bag. 'This is great! Come up, I want to give you a tip.' She is opening the door... I can hear footsteps in the stairwell... Donna turns to her knapsack and picks up her wallet..." Alina stopped, doubled over and groaned, as pain hit her in the belly. "Donna is turning around, she knows something is wrong." Alina reached out her hand in the classic telekinetic gesture. "She throws the airline guy far down the hall; he smashes against the wall, Donna's bag falls from his hand." The psionic turns her head sharply to the side, her eyes ablaze. "There's somebody else out in the hallway! It's a woman! She is pointing a gun at Donna. She pulls the trigger!" Alina touched her chest and seemed to pull something out. "It is a dart, triangular. She yanks it out and throws it back at the woman. The guy comes running. 'You bitch!' He is hitting Donna, backhanding her. She is falling back on the couch. He's aiming to slap her again, but Donna blocks the punch and kicks up. She misses. The drug must be kicking in. Donna is faltering, her head is swimming. The man is pulling her head up, but Donna is still fighting. She is incredibly strong. She pushes him away with her power." Alina turns around. "The woman comes in, she's grabbing Donna by the hair, from behind... She has a subgov gun..." Alina touched the nape of her neck and screams, her knees buckling under her. "Donna's implanted and the drugs have overcome her resistance. She can barely move. She is conscious, but she can barely move. The woman is pulling Donna's commring from her finger. She's going to the bedroom. She will leave the ring on the bedside table, as if Donna had taken it out to sleep."

From her kneeling position, Alina looked up and pointed at the man only she could see with her fiery eyes. "The airline guy is leaning over Donna. He is opening her robe and snapping her nightgown's spaghetti straps. He is uncovering her breasts. She is trying to push him away and cover herself, but the drug is too powerful and her arms are too heavy." Alina shut her eyes and turned her head away. "No... Please..." A dry heave shot up her throat as she felt the man's hands touch her as they'd touched Donna Gryphon. Her voice altered as she spoke for the man. "'Give me five minutes with the bitch and I'll teach her a lesson she'll never forget.' The woman is back." Alina's voice changed again. "'You heard the orders. The anomaly is to be delivered unharmed and untouched.' She is straightening up, covering their tracks. The man is pulling Donna up and throwing her over his shoulder. The woman is looking out, making sure the way is clear. They are leaving..."

Alina's eyes slowly returned to normal, the light fading away. "The very last thing Donna did... My God, how strong she is! She broke it... Donna broke it!" Alina Mathias O'Hare turned around and tried in vain to pull up the couch, but she had very little strength left.

With one hand only, Connor lifted the couch up. Alina dove down and picked up the broken chain with the white gold and diamonds feather.

ART WORK

"One, two, and three... Go!"

The door to the small studio apartment shimmered and blurred, fading away under Jesse Kilmartin's hand. Together, Brennan Mulwray, Shalimar Fox and Jesse himself passed through the phased atoms, feeling the now familiar tingling sensation as their solid matter encountered the modulated structure.

The only light in the main living area that dubbed as sitting and bedroom came from the dirty windowpanes. The sofa bed was open, sheets scattered about, pillows tossed around, some on the floor. Pieces of clothing could be found all around the tiny apartment.

"How messy can this girl be?" Shalimar, wrinkling her nose, picked up a pair of less than fresh panties from the side table with the very tip of her fingers.

"In a scale of one to ten Brennan Mess Capacity points, how would you grade her?" asked Jesse, checking Charlotte Cooke's computer for messages.

"Hey, I'm not messy! You know I hate clutter!" protested the elemental, opening drawers, cupboards and cabinets.

"Yeah, right! I always end up cleaning the dojo after you work out and I know how you leave it." Jesse opened software after software. "As for your room, thank God we have perfectly working doors in Sanctuary." He popped a floppy in the slot and started running a full diagnostic of the system.

"Amen, brother! Thank Heavens for doors." Shalimar had her eyes glowing feral and her nostrils flaring, sweeping the entire place, searching for blood spatters on the walls and furniture. So far, nothing.

"This is interesting!" exclaimed the molecular hacker.

"What did you find?" Brennan was closing the bathroom door, a disgusted look on his face. Cat, as a good feline, had been an absolute neat freak. She would never live like that, not in a million years.

"My Alias anti-spy script found a trapdoor code hiding in the hard disk, in the supposedly empty area. When you delete stuff from your computer, even if you destroy the data, it leaves traces in the unused areas of storage. That's how we usually retrieve data you thought would never be found. You have to know how to properly clean the hard disk. Problem is, only code slingers can do that. Civilians don't even know it is possible. Damn!"

"What happened?" Shalimar came and leaned over Jesse's shoulder, looking at the monitor screen.

"The damn code self-destructed, turned itself into garbage!"

"Can you recover it?" Brennan joined them at the small desk.

"No, the suicide safeguard is built into the script," sighed Jesse. "The moment it knows it was detected, it blows itself up into cyber gibberish."

"What does it do, anyway?"

"It is a kind of Trojan Horse virus, only nastier. It gives the hacker access to everything you have in your computer. He can read your emails, eavesdrop in your Instant Messenger conversations; read anything you've written in any message board you visit. Not to mention passwords, usernames, the works. It can read your shopping list in your word processor. He knew exactly when and where it would be easier to snatch Charlotte up."

"It wasn't here," informed Shalimar. "Let's check the car."

"Yes, that's her all right."

The Cascade PD's sketch artist made the computer image of a chocolate colored, almond eyed woman in her mid-thirties, her dark hair tied up firmly in a bum, rotate on the screen. Then, she hit the "match" key. The screen split in two, with the sketch to the left and, on the right side, the fast changing images of Washington State's known female criminals in the system.

"I'm sorry," said the old lady artist. "No match. I will run it through VICAP and other databases."

"Do that," nodded Capt. Simon Banks, "but I'm not holding my breath on that one. I don't think she is in the system at all. The way she acted, her MO... The way she controlled the thug, the way she cleaned their tracks... She seems to be a highly trained operative."

"The thug, on the other hand..." Blair Sandburgh was perched on the edge of his desk. "Ms. O'Hare..."

"Alina, please," corrected the psychometric psionic.

"Alina, you said the man had deformed ears? Deformed… how?"

"His ears looked like small cauliflowers." Alina Mathias O'Hare's eyes shone as she called up the image of Donna's abductor.

From the sketch artist's station, Adam picked up a drawing pad and two crayons. Ambidextrous, he drew on the paper with both hands while all the others looked on. "Like this?" he asked, turning the pad around. The drawing showed an ear with bumps and scars, barely recognizable as human.

"Exactly!"

Blair took the pad from Adam's hand. "Street fighter," he mused, "and he might even be local. Mrs. Hawthorne, call up mug shots of felons with these features: dark hair, dark eyes, dark Caucasian skin, possibly Latino, over forty years of age, with deformed, street fighter's ears. Let's see what you can find."

The old lady tore her eyes from the sketch, blinked, nodded, punched a few keys, and filled the requirements in the search form. God, that was amazing! The mug shots started to pop up on the screen. Alina's eyes shone as she studied each image.

While Alina looked at mug shots, Jesse's disembodied voice rang inside Adam's inner ear. "We found something interesting at Charlotte's."

"Tell me."

"There was a self-destructing trapdoor virus in her computer. Whoever abducted her also cyber stalked her. We are at the Benedict's right now and I found the same virus in all three computers they have in the house."

"Brennan, do you copy?"

"Loud and clear, Adam. This was a very well planned operation."

"Brennan, order an immediate shut down of all Underground computer system. Jesse, I want a full sweep and diagnostic. Change passwords and check firewalls. I want our systems secured."

"Will do. Brennan out."

"Also, Jesse, run a full sweep and diagnostic of Sanctuary's systems. Better safe than sorry." And, as an afterthought, "Warn Riley at Haven. Have her check all the Ring's systems too. Lux must be informed of the situation."

Jesse's voice sounded again. "Already on it. So far, Revolution says there have been no suspicious mutant disappearances in the West Coast."

"Good, might mean their operation is restricted to the East. I'll run a copy of Alias through Donna's computer. I bet I'll find the bug in her system."

"They cover their tracks pretty good. Charlotte's apartment was clean, if we could say that." Adam heard Jesse cluck his tongue. "Her car was locked, but Brennan opened it with a piece of wire."

"Brennan's talents..."

"Come in handy, sometimes." The molecular chuckled softly. "Anyway, Shalimar smelled blood immediately. It was on the steering wheel and the panel. Shal saw pieces of broken glass under the carpet. They smashed the window, but had it replaced."

"Stop!" Alina was pointing to Major Crime's computer screen. "Go back!" The sketch artist obeyed and made the image return to the previous picture. "That's him!"

All eyes were fixed in the mug shot of a certain Herman Muñiz, aka Hermann Munster. His long rap sheet listed assault, robbery, assault and battery, domestic violence and a bunch of other felonies and misdemeanors. The man was a common thug, working on and off as a bouncer at a local strip club. Blair called Jim Ellison, already in the streets leaning on his snitches and informants, and gave him the heads up. Maybe the kidnappers had made their first mistake by hiring local muscle instead of importing a second operative.

Adam turned the screen around and looked closer at the man who dared attack someone as special to him as Donna Gryphon. With a wolfish grin, he flicked his commring on again. "Jesse, I want Emma on the first flight to Cascade."

THE RAT PIT

Cold. It was cold in there. And white. No color, no machinery, no nothing, only the padded walls and soft floor. Her torn nightgown had been changed for a regular hospital gown, loosely tied in the back and nothing else. Who had changed her, she didn't know. How long had she been lying on the padded floor, she didn't know either. Now that whatever drug they had fed her was wearing off, she realized the place had no external source of light. There was no way to know if it was day or night. Her grasp of time would be warped pretty soon.

Donna licked her parched lips and breathed deep, managing to sit up and leaning against the soft wall. Her head felt very heavy. She touched her forehead and ran her hands through her scalp. Her beautiful thick hair that reached below her waistline was all gone. She had been shaved bald while out cold. Why? Had someone committed her to a mental institution? Donna Gryphon was no coward, but she felt her heart shrink in her chest when her hand went from her bare skull to the nape of her neck and she touched the round cold metal of the compact subdermal-governor sticking out of her skin. No way could she use her considerable powers to try and escape her padded cell, but she could still fight. She was a trained martial arts fighter, only bested by a feral like Shalimar Fox. She could fight if she could stand up at all…

A door cracked open in the far wall, letting two strong men in orderly uniforms enter. They flanked the door as another; leaner, frailer looking man in a lab coat and a young nurse stepped inside the cell. He looked at her and motioned to the orderlies, who went to Donna and pulled her up by the arms. When he spoke, it was to the men, not to Donna. "Hold it firmly. The drug effect is almost at an end." He turned to the nurse. "First report?"

The nurse smacked her lips and locked her hands behind her back, trying to look professional, but managing only to look even younger. She started to speak as they led the captive out. "Subject # 9, civilian name, Donna Sacheen Gryphon, 32 years old, Native American, natural of Kentucky, USA. Graduate psychologist, former officer of Cascade Police Department. Her records show psionic powers on the higher levels of the PB scale in more than one class. She is both a telekinetic and telecyber, with mild precog abilities…"

The doctor lifted his hand, silencing the nurse. "Her? She? You should use proper language when referring to anomalies." He pointed to Donna, led by the orderlies, then turned to the nurse and smiled benignly. "That is not a person. That is a freak of Science, an aberration. It only looks human on the outside."

"I know, Dr. Harrison, but they look so scared when they arrive here." She looked directly into Donna's eyes, huge, black and pleading. "And they talk to us. They sound so fragile, so... human."

Ken Harrison sighed. "You are still very young, and looks can be deceiving, but that was lab engineered, a biological war weapon. Their kind can mean our end as a species." He patted the nurse's hand like a father. "Go with them. I'll be right there. I need measurements before the first session: weight, height, muscle tone, body fat, everything. Plus temperature, heartbeat rate and BP."

The young nurse smiled at the good doctor. He wouldn't report her, not this time, even if she had referred to anomalies as people more than once. As she turned around, she could feel his eyes on her back.

"Nice piece of rump, don't you think, naughty boy?" The whisper was little more than a lip movement, but Thomasina Hobson, Harrison's mistress and administration assistant, knew full well she had been heard loud and clear.

Harrison almost jumped out of his skin. "That's not what I was thinking about." His breath was quick, his heart a marching band inside his chest. "Tomorrow, you transfer that girl to the Medical Center. Give her a promotion, a small raise, anything to make her happy." He turned to Thomasina. "I want her dealing with human patients, not anomalies of any kind. That means, no special infectious diseases ward or..."

The sound of a computer monitor breaking and a man screaming made him stop in mid-sentence. The anomaly had smashed the ball of its foot on the kneecap of an orderly, making him release its arm. At the same time, it used the injured man as a foot hold, leaped over him and backwards, pulling the other orderly's arm over his own shoulder and twisting the elbow until it snapped. The beast then jumped on a table and ran towards Ken, who was desperately trying to extricate a sub-gov remote from his coat pocket, and Thomasina, cowering behind a cabinet. The animal cut its feet on shards of broken glass, but ran so fast no one could catch it until it leaped over a security guard, stepped on the cabinet and landed behind Thomasina, grabbing the terrified woman in a neck-breaking grip.

"I'll kill her!" yelled Donna. "Get out of my way or I'll kill her!"

Ken Harrison had managed to pull the remote from his pocket and pointed it to the anomaly. He saw it tighten the grip on his mistress's neck, straining it to the right.

"I'm out of here now! Out of my way, or I swear I'll kill her!"

Thomasina was shaking in the anomaly's grip, her permanent smile now a rictus, plastered to her face.

Harrison pointed the remote and looked into the anomaly's eyes. Where others could see compassion, he saw weakness; where others could see humanity, he saw feebleness of character. That thing had no strength, no resolve. It was nothing but a bug created in a lab. It would never kill anyone on purpose.

"Out or I'll snap her neck!"

Thomasina's heart was beating furiously. A strangled cry escaped from her lips. Never in her life had she felt so terrified. Not Eckhart, not Gabriel, nobody had ever made her need to scream so bad and not find her own voice.

Little by little, a smile spread across the botanist's mouth. Harrison slowly returned the remote to his pocket. He knew what he was doing. He had the situation well in hand, he was in control.

"I'll kill her!" screamed Donna Gryphon, eyes wild like a trapped animal.

"Then kill her." Harrison's voice was low and measured. "We are not letting you go."

Donna tightened her grip even more. "I WILL KILL HER!"

Thomasina's neck was stretched to its full length. Her fear was so intense; she felt moisture between her legs as she lost control over herself.

Kenneth Harrison, botanist, head of the St. Clair Final Solution Project for Mankind Cleansing, chuckled softly. "Kill her now, if you can."

Desperate, Donna looked around the huge room. Her mouth felt dry like parchment, her breathing rapid, in gasps. There was no way out, no help to be had; no one would stand aside to let her pass. The woman in her hands was so scared she had soiled herself. And that man, the one in charge, had called her bluff. The psionic blinked, her grip on the woman's neck loosened, her arms fell by her side.

Stumbling, Thomasina ran to a corner of the main laboratory as the orderlies grabbed hold of the anomaly. She would never miss it, not even now, when she desperately needed a bath and a strong drink to settle her nerves. She had to witness it, see the anomaly begin its taming.

The orderlies dragged the mutant to a scale, stripped it naked, weighed and measured it, as the young girl nurse took notes, carefully studying the scars on the mutant's lower belly. Then she motioned to the men and they turned the mutant around, so the nurse could study the deeper, ugly scar on the small of her back. She took its blood pressure, temperature and heartbeat readings, shaking her head as she wrote each figure. Thomasina moistened her lips and pressed her thighs together as her heart quickened its pace again, not from fear, but from lust. She felt wet between her legs, not from fear for her life, but from the sight of Ken supervising the drips: saline, nutrients and... Datura! The clear fluid distilled from the native jungle plants, age-old tools used by shamans and medicine men to dive into spiritual quests. Their technicians knew how to crossbreed the delicate foliage to produce hybrid variations so its psychedelic qualities would cause specific alterations of the mind: schizophrenic hallucinations, both auditory and visual, paranoid panic attacks, manic depression or euphoria, the loss of all grasp of reality. What that animal would see! What it would feel! The very idea made Thomasina part her lips and moan.

Ken was ordering the animal into the sensory deprivation tank, that beautiful machine. It was forced into the containment suit, first lying down on her back, squirming, kicking and screaming. No use! There were four male nurses, much stronger than that mutant. Now they knew how dangerous it was and they were ready. They held her secure while Ken glued electrodes to its scalp and chest to monitor her brain activity and vegetative readings. Then, he garroted its arm, tapped the inner elbow and caught a vein, inserting the needle deep and holding the tube to the suit's wall. Thomasina let off a sigh of pure delight as other tubes were inserted in the mutant's anatomy to control the release of body waste. Then, finally, Thomasina heard the mutant scream as the front of the suit was lowered, enclosing it in a modern sarcophagus. The containment suit rolled over on its axis as Ken and the nurses left the tank. The tech at the monitor pulled a lever and lukewarm water filled the tank, allowing the suit to float and cutting all contact the mutant had with the outside world.

Calm down... calm down... calm down... keep your wits about you... stay rational... think coherently. Don't lose it or you might never catch it back. Slow down your breathing. Breathe in... Breathe out... slower... breathe in... Breathe out... sensory deprivation tank... dehumanization process... Brain washing... IV drip... don't know what's in it... who these people... are... Calm down... calm down... keep your wits about you... stay rational... think coherently... control your heartbeat... Whatever it is inside the plastic bags, it can't be good. Adam... don't think about him... no... only hurts more... Calm down... control your breathing... Stay rational... breathe in... breathe out... floating... nothing... don't panic... control your breathing... slow down your breathing... Chances are you're not leaving it here. If you ever leave it here, it will probably be feet first. And it will take a long, long time. Calm down... keep your wits about you... stay rational... think coherently... There's still one thing you can do. There is still one thing you will do, no matter what, and it has nothing to do with your mutation or the use of your powers, so the sub-gov won't kick in. The sensory deprivation tank might actually help with the meditation technique. Empty your mind... slow down your breathing... breathe in... breathe out... empty your mind and let it float... let the trance come to you, don't try to reach it or it will elude you... control your breathing... empty your mind... slow down your heartbeat... lower your blood pressure... breathe in... breathe out... fall down... dive deep... into yourself... into your sense of self... deeper... deeper still... open yourself for the inner light... let it come to you... breathe in... breathe out... find the thread... the thread that links you to your sister in fire... find the silver thread... find Angela... find your soul twin... breathe in... breathe out... touch it... feel it in your hand... caress it... send her your love... make her feel... make her know you love her... make her know she is and always will be part of you... make her see herself in your thoughts... send her a last message... tell Adam I love him, angel girl... breathe in... breathe out... float... touch the thread... caress the life thread linking you to your sister in fire... now... SNAP IT AND SEVER THE BOND!

NOTHING TO HIDE

"Herman, Herman, what have you done this time?"

From the standard metal chair, his wrists firmly cuffed to the metal table in the stark interrogation room at Cascade PD's Major Crime headquarters, Herman Muñiz looked up to the tall blond man in a crew cut. Geez, that detective... What's his name? Ellison! Jim Ellison! He was one big dude! When he had picked Herman up at the strip club he worked for as a bouncer, he seemed to step out of thin air! Herman never saw him coming! If he did, he would have known he was a cop and bolted! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid Herman Munster! He knew he should never have boasted of the good dough he made in one job only! He knew he should never have paid rounds to his buddies... buddies, yeah, those double-crossing bastards... One of them had ratted him out, as surely as death and taxes! But what Herman had never expected was the freaking line-up!

Seven men, all of them looking more or less like Herman, all of them with long hair to cover their ears, all of them carrying numbered cards, stepped inside the line-up room in single file, turned to the left and faced the fake mirror. Behind the mirror, Herman knew someone would point to him, someone who had seen him leave the converted warehouse building with that brunette bitch slumped over his shoulder, trotting behind the other broad, the one with the stiff nose, the broad who paid him for his efforts. Handsomely, he might add. But who could have seen him? The broad had checked the way and it was all clear! Nobody could have seen them! Damn, somebody had.

The deformed voice cracked from the speakers. "Number Four, two steps ahead, please." The "please" was nothing but a formality, of course. Herman approached the mirrored wall. "Turn to the right, please." Herman turned to the right. "Now, turn to the left, please." Herman obeyed. "You can go back to your place."

It felt like a long time, but merely minutes had gone by. The single file started moving, leaving the line-up room. When it came to Herman's turn to step out, a big, black and heavy hand landed on his shoulder, pulling him away from the others. The hand shoved him roughly inside an interrogation room, another place with a fake mirror wall, and the hand's owner made him sit at the chair where Herman waited. And waited. And waited, slowly stewing in his own sweat, before the door opened again to let the tall blond guy in the crew cut, the one detective Ellison, enter.

"I don't know what you're talking about! I was minding my own business when..."

"When you decided to kidnap a former police officer, Herman," cut the tall man. "Bad idea. Very bad idea."

"What do you mean, kidnap? I've never kidnapped anybody! The chicks come to me of their own free will!"

The tall man punched the table, the metal ringing under his fist. "Kidnapping is a federal crime, you moron! We have a witness who puts you right there in the crime scene!"

"You have nothing! I'm innocent!"

"Listen to me, Herman! You will spend your whole natural life in a federal maximum security prison, sharing the shower with the worst human garbage society could spawn." Ellison sat at the edge of the table and leaned closer to the suspect. "Now it is the time to cooperate. Maybe... just maybe we can put in a good word to the DA."

"I don't have to cooperate with you! I told you I'm innocent!"

"Innocent? You were born guilty, you piece of crap!" Ellison jumped off the table. "Where did you take her?" The tall detective towered over the sitting man. "Where did you take Donna Gryphon?"

Herman looked up at Jim Ellison with a challenge in his eyes. Deny, deny, deny everything! Never admit, never confess! "I don't know what the hell you are talking about! And I want a lawyer!"

A light knock on the door was all it took before it opened and a smaller, blue-eyed, long-haired man poked his head inside. Blair Sandburgh looked at his partner and friend. "She's here." And he opened the door all the way to let a slender red-haired woman in a long black pencil skirt with a slash coming up to mid-thighs, boots and jacket in.

What a nice piece of ass, Herman couldn't help himself. Full lips, round face, fine bone structure... And long... long... mile long legs, just the way he liked it. That chick looked as good as the other one... Damn, why did that snot-nosed broad have to stop him from having a bit of fun? At least, he would have something else beside the money, now feeling too little, to show for his troubles. And Herman was in deep, deep trouble! Man, the piece of ass was actually smiling at him! Maybe she was a public defense attorney! Nah... that would be too fast, no way they could call one so soon. What was that chick all about, anyway? And who was the older guy coming into the interrogation room right behind her?

Herman's eyes followed the trio: the young piece of fine ass, the older man all dressed in black, and the younger detective, the Sandburgh guy. The woman came up to the table and sat down facing Herman. She smiled so sweetly! Those delicate hands with long fingers, resting on the table... How good those hands would feel on Herman's skin... He couldn't tear his eyes from the chick, his heart beating faster. His tongue darted between his lips at the thought of that thoroughbred mare in bed with him. He could drown in those eyes... Forget all about the police, the crime he was accused of, the hard time he would certainly serve... Forget all about it. Those eyes were magic... Mesmerizing... Hypnotic... And when the chick spoke... her voice sounded like molasses... Thick... Sweet... Involving... The light on her forehead, like a starburst... It only made her even more beautiful...

"Hello, Herman. It is Herman, isn't it?"

What a voice... "Yes, it is Herman, gorgeous. What can I do for you, other than lick you from head to toe?" He was glued to those eyes.

"That's tempting, Herman. Maybe later." Emma DeLauro smiled ever more sweetly at the broad-chest man in front of her, the rancid smell of his sweat invading her nostrils. She could feel the tension emanating from Ellison to her left, Adam and Blair behind her. It would help if they could relax a bit, but that was too much to ask in the present situation. "Now, I'm very curious about you."

"You are?"

"Oh, yes, very much." The light on Emma's forehead shone brighter and, in a display of enormous control over her power, it traveled slowly till it reached Herman's forehead and touched it, linking the two minds together. "You will tell me all I want to know, won't you, Herman?"

"Oh, yes..." moaned the man. "Everything you want to know."

"Tell me, Herman, how did you come up with so much money all of a sudden?"

"Oh, baby... that was easy money, an easy job."

"Tell me everything, Herman. I want to know everything, from the very beginning."

Herman sighed, wallowing in the girl's swimming pool eyes. He would tell her anything, whatever she asked him, from his birth to this moment, if she wanted. "There is this man, he owns the strip club I work for. I'm a bouncer. He called me to his office and he said he had a job for me. He said the money would be good."

"Go on, Herman."

"I should get my van to the airport and pick up this black chick coming from abroad. I was supposed to pick her up from the small crafts hangar, where she would land on a private Lear jet."

"And do you have the Lear jet's number, Herman?"

Oh, that sweet smile, that husky voice... "Yes, it was NCC-1701."

"Good, Herman. Go on."

"I should do whatever the chick told me. She said I was to snatch the bag of a woman coming up in a flight to Cascade from the East Coast. That broad had everything, the number of the flight, the landing time, even what gate it would arrive and where the luggage was to be delivered."

"Then, what, Herman?"

"Then everything went according to plan. I found the black leather duffel bag with the nametag, Donna Gryphon. The broad had the address. We waited till the woman got home after filling a missing luggage form. We gave her time to get settled and we rang her doorbell."

"It was fairly easy, then."

"Oh, yes, easy enough. Only that woman was strange. She shoved me to the other side of the hall without ever touching me. I don't know how she could do that, but I ended up splattered against the wall."

"That was nasty, Herman."

"Nasty, yeah. I ripped the woman's nightgown open and I would have taught her a thing or two about treating people, but the black chick stopped me, the bitch."

A gesture from Emma stopped Adam in mid-step. The psionic felt the difficulty her friend and mentor was having keeping his temper under control. Blair was having almost as hard a time keeping his temper in a leash. He still loved Donna, not as deeply as Adam did, but he still loved Donna. And all her other friends in the Cascade PD's Major Crime Unit were suffering with the tale that bastard was telling. To Emma, the emotions running rampant inside the interrogation room as well as in the adjoining observation lounge behind the fake mirror were as clear as daylight. "Don't stop now, Herman. Tell me more." The light linking the two minds intensified its luminosity.

"The broad had hit the woman with a sedative dart and it kicked in. Then she fired a kinda gun to the woman's neck. She passed out, I picked her up and we got the hell out of there."

"And where did you take her?"

"Back to the airport. I drove my van all the way to the hanger. I chucked the woman into the Learjet and strapped her to the seat. The broad and the pilot were discussing the flight back to Coro Town, Venezuela."

"Venezuela, Herman?"

"Yes, that's what I heard. I saw the pilot showing the chick the papers with the flight plan."

"Did you see the paper clearly, Herman?"

"Yeah, it was full of numbers and drawings."

"Can you see the flight plan now, Herman?" The mind link shone even brighter.

"I can. It is right in front of me."

"Read it for me, Herman, please."

Mechanically, Herman Muñiz started reciting a long list of numbers, longitude, latitude, weather forecast, altitude, time of flight...

"Are we taping all this?" Jim Ellison asked softly.

"No need," answered Adam, tapping his own forehead with the tip of his fingers. "Make him go on."

When Herman was finally finished, the light linking his mind to Emma's dimmed down until it disappeared completely. The man blinked a few times, and refocused his eyes, looking at the woman in front of him as if he was seeing her for the first time.

Emma DeLauro stood up. "Thank you, Herman. You've been extremely helpful. Now, I'm going to reward you with the worst migraine headache you've ever had in your worthless life!" And she shot a mind blast that caught the man dead on, making him topple over backwards, knocking the chair back and landing him sprawled and moaning on the floor, holding his head in his hands. "Did you get it all?"

"Everything," answered Adam, opening the door for the young psionic and catching her up as she faltered, as if hit by a horse's back kick. "What happened?"

Emma pushed Adam away, took a couple of steps and leaned against the wall of the observation room. She was clutching her chest with her hand as if to keep her heart in place, stopping it from leaping out of her mouth. "Call Angela. Something has come up."

"Don't bother. Angela is calling you in a video conference. You can pick up the call from my office," said Capt. Simon Banks coming in.

Adam pulled Emma behind him and ran to the captain's office. Angela's face was staring back at him from the computer monitor and she had been crying, her bionic blue eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and she was still sniffling, barely able to hold the tears back. "I am so sorry," she sobbed. "I can't hide anything from you, falconer."

"Then don't," snapped Adam. "Tell me now." He heard Emma's sobbing behind him, and from the corner of his eye, he saw her cover her mouth with her hand.

"The bond is severed."

"No..."

"You know what it means, don't you?" The Avian's eyes filled up with tears as she saw Adam cover his own eyes with the balls of his hands and nod.

"What is it?" whispered Simon Banks.

"Donna is dead," answered Blair. "The bond she shared with Angela and, to a lesser extent, with Emma, could only be severed in death. Excuse me." And he left the office, followed closely by Jim Ellison. The guide now needed his sentinel's support.

It felt as if a long time had passed until Adam was able to take his hands off his eyes and look back at his niece. He looked like a man carved in stone.

"There is something else," started the Avian.

"Yes?" Adam's voice was cold as ice, his self-control was made of flint and steel and diamonds.

"There's someone here who needs to talk to you, bad!"

Angela stood up and offered her place in front of the camera to another, very familiar figure.

Adam couldn't believe what he was seeing. "What could you possibly want from me now, Mason?"

LEI, LADY, LEI (Written together with Dark Mirage)

"Do you expect me to wear... this?"

Mason Eckhart held the shirt at arm's length with the tip of his gloved fingers, and looked as if it was about to bite him.

Studying the contents of Catherine's closet with the same attention she dedicated to a GC/MS spectrum match, Rebecca Steyn-Eckhart was the very picture of innocence. "No, I expect you to wear what you always wear."

"This is vile." Mason looked disgusted at the shirt and all its magenta, turquoise and lime green glory.

Rebecca turned to Catherine, Mason's daughter, now a young woman in her late teens, sitting at the edge of the bed, folding clothes and arranging them in a large suitcase open on the floor. "Do you think it will chill down at night?"

"In the tropics? I think the nights will be balmy and sweet." Catherine pursed her lips. "But you can take a pashmina or two, just in case."

Rebecca smiled, nodded and turned back to the closet. It was good to be girly, discuss what to wear at night as opposed to the day, just for a change. It was good to leave the lab coats and sensible shoes behind, and replace them with short colorful summer dresses and high-heeled sandals. Uh, oh, she needed a new bathing suit. Actually, she just realized she needed a bathing suit. Period. She didn't have any! Maybe she would buy a bikini.

"If memory serves me well," she said without taking her eyes from Catherine's clothes, "the last time you were out in the sun for hours was... uhmm... the Genomex picnic in 2007?" She heard Mason harrumph. "How many pounds did you sweat off? I forget..."

A stifled giggle sounded behind her. Catherine was always amazed by her repartees with Mason. The way Rebecca led him to do exactly what she wanted was masterful. "And what did Dr. Prodana say?"

Leaning against the doorframe, the garish Hawaiian shirt forgotten on a chair, Mason stubbornly crossed his arms on his chest, an annoyed look on his face. "She said I should go without my exoskin, and spend time outdoors. My immune system is holding thanks to the new leukocyte therapy. I should start building up resistance to the outside world." He turned to Catherine. "It is unbelievable I let you talk me into taking a vacation!"

"Now of all times is the right time, Mason." Rebecca was studying the girl's jeans for wear and tear. "Adam is busy with the penitentiary design, there are no crises looming in the horizon..."

"It was quite amusing the way that district attorney, what is his name? McCoy, dealt with Adam." Mason actually laughed out loud. "He kept pushing and Adam was holding the arms of his chair so tight he was about to crunch them!"

Sensing Catherine's discomfort at the direction the conversation was taking, Rebecca decided to change the subject back to the matter at hand. The girl liked Adam, who had really tried to help her fickle witch of a mother when she was in desperate trouble.

"Why don't you try it on?" suggested Rebecca, picking up the toothy shirt from the chair. "You might even like it. It won't stick to you permanently, I promise."

"This is so... undignified!"

"So are these!" Rebecca looked at Catherine. The girl had a few shopping bags in her hands and passed them to Rebecca, who promptly started pulling out several other Hawaiian shirts and printed shorts to go with them. Mason's groan was thunderous. "No one looks dignified at resorts, Mason. They relax! They have fun!"

From yet another bag, Catherine pulled a pair of man's Bierkenstocks. "Don't forget these. And no socks with'em, either. We won't be seen with you if you wear socks."

That was a conspiracy to commit fashion murder! Mason shook his head, mockingly, and faced Catherine. God, he loved that girl! "I expected much better of you, young woman."

"You haven't seen everything yet!" exclaimed Rebecca, dragging other bags from the closet, bending over and pulling yards of colorful fabric out of them. "Catherine and I have muu-muus matching each of the shirts." Her enthusiasm was exasperating.

"We will be a team!" Catherine shot up from the bed and clapped her hands.

"On a circus number!" shot Mason, but he knew resistance was futile.

"None of your GSA tagalongs are wearing their usual boring gear." Rebecca had her hands on her hips and looked very serious. "I've outfitted them, too."

"Did you also get them to sign a pact with their own blood swearing not to describe my attire on pain of horrible death under torture?"

"Something like that."

"Cessna PK7934, you are clear to land."

The coast gleamed in the sun, the sea, shimmering gently under the cloudless sky, was pinpointed with white waves. The St. Mallot Resort, Spa and Casino was stretched in a thin line pressed between the forested mountain and the beach, surrounded by other, not so posh hotels and the St. Mallot town, with its old settlement of adobe, brightly painted houses, and its new township, with ten story buildings and one taller skyscraper, the St. Clair Pharmaceuticals Office Building. A little apart from the complex, the famous St. Mallot Medical Center shone white like a pearl nestled in the thick tropical greenery.

Catherine, her seat belt fastened snuggly around her waist, studied the leaflets the travel agent visiting the college had given her. He had offered her a nifty discount for a 10 day vacation. Timing was perfect and she still couldn't believe they were coming down to the tropics. Surf and sand and sunbathing, here we come! she thought.

The Central-American independent island republic turned tourist attraction was famous for the water sports, grand casino, forest treks and pirate caves. The tiny country's lore stated there were still treasures to be found in the myriad caves that turned the mountains forming a wall behind the beaches into a Swiss cheese. The resort boasted a five-star hotel, gourmet restaurants, several swimming pools, golf, tennis, racquetball, plus the best surfing, windsurfing, snorkel diving... Catherine was looking forward to the snorkel diving on those crystal clear waters. How many different fish could she see? Was there a sunken galleon to be visited? Boy, would they have fun.

Catherine looked up from the folder to her father and stepmother looking through the other window in the close confined Cessna cabin. Mason, for the first time in many years without the exoskin that used to cover his whole body, had relented and was wearing one of the Hawaiian shirts the two women had bought him on their shopping expedition. Bermuda shorts and sandals, well, that would take some more coaxing. But he looked good in white trousers and sneakers. Rebecca, however, looked amazing. Her chestnut brown hair and green eyes shone with excitement at the idea of a whole week of fun on the beach.

Bonnie, the pilot, looked back at the cabin just to be sure everybody was well strapped and secured. She signaled OK and smiled, small wrinkles showing up under her ray-bans. The small aircraft described a graceful curve in the air and approached the runway. Touchdown was smooth. The Cessna approached the small terminal and stopped completely. Bonnie opened the swinging door and the steps lowered automatically. Two GSA bodyguards, as big as wardrobes and actually smiling in their lighter, more casual garb, were the first out, followed by a bouncing Catherine. Hand in hand, Mason and Rebecca stepped out, immediately putting on shades against the strong tropical sun. They were followed by another pair of living, walking wardrobes. Bonnie and her co-pilot officer were the last ones out.

As they neared the terminal, half a dozen young women, scantily dressed in sarongs and with flowers in their hair, surrounded the group, draping layer upon layer of lei on the necks of all, bodyguards included. Mason was the only one who politely declined the offer. Catherine was already drowning in flowers when they boarded the rented limo, after the flower-adorned GSAgents had retrieved their luggage. Customs and immigration were no problem, of course.

The blooms were artificially scented and the perfume was threatening to become overwhelming. After Mason sneezed a couple of times, Catherine took off the prickly flower threads and scratched her neck. Gosh, the place was gorgeous! All the trimmings of a real tropical paradise were there, down to the palm trees and white dunes! Everything surrounded by the luxurious forest. Even he small town outside the resort compound was pretty with its Spanish colonial adobe short buildings, balconies and narrow streets. And the resort was coming up!

The limo drove them directly to the bungalow set a little apart from the more bustling areas of the hotel. It was even more gorgeous, with two bedrooms, one for Mason and Rebecca, the other for Catherine, both converting to a living room and veranda, overlooking a private stretch of beach, two hammocks softly swinging between palm trees. It was perfect, perfect, perfect!

The "wardrobes" delivered their suitcases and retired to their own bungalow, a few yards away. Catherine disappeared immediately in her bedroom, as Rebecca disappeared in hers. Mason was left alone in the middle of the living room, where he started unpacking the briefcase he had brought with him. No regular work to be done in that place, but good books to read and General Grey's biography to at long last start writing. And the hammocks were inviting him for a nice nap in the shade, the Caribbean breeze turning the heat bearable. It had never felt so good to be free from the exoskin. This vacation was really starting to feel like a swell idea.

Mason sat down on the couch and pulled off his sneakers and socks. "Rebecca, where did you put those things Catherine bought me, those sandals?"

"Here."

The woman with a pair of Bierkenstocks dangling from her hand was practically naked! She had on only the tiniest two piece bathing suit Mason had ever seen! It was white with tiny blue flowers, riding high on the hips, and it left preciously little to the imagination. "Where do you think you are going in this state of undress, woman?", he stuttered. His eyes were popping out of their sockets.

"To the beach," was the matter-of-fact answer.

The Bierkenstocks were left on the floor next to Mason's feet. He followed Rebecca's swaying hips as she went to knock on Catherine's door. His daughter left her room in a similar state of undress, only her bikini was powder blue with tiny pink flowers. Catherine handed Rebecca a folded piece of fabric, kept another for herself, and the two women headed for the French doors leading to the veranda and, from there, to the beach. They were passing through the threshold when Mason finally found his voice. "Wait a min..." He never completed the sentence. The two women turned around sharply, unfolded the fabric they had in their hands and wrapped them around their waists in a sarong-like long skirt. They both blew him a kiss, turned around again in an almost ballet motion and sailed towards the easy chairs waiting for them on the sand.

The following days were pretty much the same, filled with sea-food meals, water sports for Catherine and Rebecca, their laughter still echoing in Mason's ears as they frolicked on the water, driving wave runners at neck-breaking speed. For him, peace, quiet, books, the pretension of writing, and the best of all, long walks along the beach at sunset with Rebecca, his arm around her shoulders and the gentle waves licking their feet. Three whole days had passed and he felt like a new man, renovated. He actually felt like he would never again need the plastic encasing that had blocked the outside world from killing him, but also blocked him from reaching out to the rest of Mankind.

The throat clearing brought him out of his dozing on a hammock, a straw hat low on his brow, covering his eyes. Mason opened one eye barely enough to see who was disturbing his rest.

"I'm busy, Mr. Shaheen."

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Eckhart, but Rick Moeller isn't feeling very well. I've sent Mr. Jameson with him to the Med Center's ER."

Mason pushed the hat up on his head and looked at his bodyguard. "What is wrong with him, pray?"

"I would say he ate something that didn't quite agree with him."

"I see. Mr. Moeller is the only Genomex child in this little entourage, is he not?"

"Yes, sir. He is a temperature elemental. He can alter the temperature in a three yard radius around him causing it to warm up or chill down considerably."

"Very well, do whatever is necessary to see that he is cared for."

"Will do, sir."

Mason sighed. He hoped this was only a minor incident, nothing to write home about, a simple food poisoning caused by bad fish. Pulling the hat back over his eyes, he immediately returned to his sleep.

That night, Catherine didn't join them for dinner. She said she would leave them alone to have a romantic candle light dinner and retired early. That was most considerate of hers. Rebecca was stunning in a deep green bare shoulders dress that perfectly matched her emerald wedding ring and her eyes. She seldom used her shoulder length hair loose, but he loved it when she did. It made her look years younger and fresh, so delicate, her skin so white and smooth. She was definitely the best thing that had happened in his life after that wretched incident... no, he wouldn't think about it, not tonight. Not this night of full moon when he could feel the sea salt in the air and on his bare skin, under the white, loose shirt. Tonight, he would think only of the good fortune that brought Rebecca into his life. He would take her by the hand and lead her to the softly lit restaurant with tables under the sky. There, he would order French champagne, the real Veuve Clicquot he knew she appreciated, but never drank in respect to his condition. They would toast and he would even touch the bubbly drink with his lips. They would order a light dinner, a chocolate desert, just what Rebecca liked. Tonight, he would do all he possibly could to please Rebecca, until the moment he would slip the little box with the emerald earrings he bought her on his own shopping expedition, her favorite gemstones, the ones that matched her eyes to perfection. Then, they would return to their bungalow, but before retiring, they would step out of their shoes and take another walk along the beach, this one under the stars. He would point to the Southern Cross and they would kiss like newlyweds on honeymoon. Come to think of it, this was their de facto honeymoon.

Later, much later, Mason and Rebecca were startled out of deep sleep by a bumping noise in the living room. Pulling their robes on their shoulders, they opened the door of their bedroom and turned on the light. Catherine was doubled over, kneeling down next to the couch, her hand over her mouth, retching. Her skin was clammy, her hair moist. She looked like she was running a high fever.

"I don't feel good."

EMMA

It would be three hours before the Helix could pick us up. One hour for Jesse to get the craft ready for flight, two hours full speed to Cascade. After that, another two hours cross country back home where another crises waited for us. A grand total of five hours of emotional hell.

Donna had been dear for few people, but those who had enjoyed her trust and friendship had cared deeply for her. Those I met at Cascade PD's Major Crime Unit spoke highly of her skills as a victim expert. Donna had had the uncanny ability to make victims come to terms with whatever they had gone through and help the police in the solution of crimes committed against them. Donna also had the ability to offer comfort to the bereaved, to cheer up the desperate. That's what made her so special, such a skilled psychologist, who could talk potential suicides out of doing themselves in, make people crazed with grief let go of their emotions and really mourn their losses. That's what made her such a fine hostage negotiator, especially when dealing with situations where the perpetrator, as the police called criminals, had been swept by circumstances more than by his own actions.

Of her old friends and relations from Cascade, Blair was hurting the most. His pain was searing, red and hot. Blair is the kind of person who doesn't bottle things up. A consequence of his upbringing, probably, son that he is, like me, of a flower child, ex-hippie, who believes in being yourself, in being true to your feelings. This is good. It means he will heal in time. And he has Jim's help. There was one not used to display his emotions, Jim, but his simple presence, the solidity he provided, would help Blair overcome his loss and, in time, move on.

Adam, on the other hand, worried me. After a lifetime of work, very little in the way of family or emotional support that I knew of, not to mention two extremely unsuccessful intimate relationships, he had found a spring of clear, cold and soothing water in Donna. Her luminosity, her tranquility had been so new and refreshing to him, he had drowned in her mere existence. She was a lake to his river, a breeze to his hurricane. She had been moonlight to his inner storm. Donna, with her softness, loyalty... with her earth qualities, had provided a safe haven to Adam. She had taken up part of the burden he carried every moment of every hour of every day he lived. With her great sense of ethics, her conscience, she had made him share the guilt that threatened to crush him. She had attached herself to him and helped him shoulder his load. She justified and defended him, not only to others, but to himself, and, for that, he was grateful. Donna had softened Adam. She had loosened his self-control, so he could be more human, more of a man, less of a leader.

Now, he worried me. His grief was white, cold as dry ice and just as burning. I feel him hardening again. I feel him steeling himself in such a way that he will most certainly break down. I feel him locking up his pain and I fear it will eventually burst, explode. I fear the collapse that will certainly come if he doesn't allow himself to grieve and mourn his dead love will irrevocably destroy him.

We arrive at Donna's converted warehouse condo late in the evening to pick up Adam's overnighter, after pulling all the information we could from that walking piece of human crap with mental tweezers. Adam has copies of the keys. The place is dark, but he doesn't turn the overhead lights on. It is an ample living room, but he walks to the side table without hesitation, without bumping into anything and turns the lamp on. We have over two hours to wait till the Helix hovers over the building and we can jump on board.

I see Adam walking around the place like a zombie. He doesn't talk, he hardly ever blinks. He takes off his favorite black leather coat. There's something he and Donna had in common, both of them loved black leather coats. Now, he heads for the kitchen without looking around, his eyes never wander to the portraits and snapshots that grace the desks and tables around the living room. I see all familiar faces: Shal, myself, Bren and Jesse. Cat is there, Rev is there. There is a whole series of pictures Donna took of Angela in flight, while Donna was floating in the air herself. There are pictures of Blair and Jim, and one group shot of the whole Major Crime Unit team where they look like the cast of a TV cop show. Oddly enough, there isn't one single picture of Adam and Donna together. Well, Adam being Adam, he would never step in front of a camera if he could possibly avoid it. I know he, now, regrets it. One particular picture catches my eye: Donna sitting by the tall windows of this very apartment, the light pouring from the outside. She is totally relaxed, in jeans and peasant blouse with flaring sleeves, her mane of black hair loose and cascading like a waterfall over her shoulders. Blair took the picture when they were still together, and it is so absolutely Donna...

The emotional spill hits me like a freight train. I brace myself. The sound of glass breaking will surely come, the bottle of scotch, Adam's poison of choice, as Brennan puts it, will shatter against the wall in a matter of seconds. Am I precog? No. I'm a telempath, the emotions of others live in my heart. It makes us know the people we live with very well. Ah, there it is. Now I can go to the kitchen myself and pull Adam out of there.

He is leaning against the sink, pressing his hands against his temples and breathing hard. Scotch is dripping down the wall, pooling on the floor tiles. When I touch his arm, he takes a deep breathe, let go of his temples, blinks and looks at me. Then, without a word, he leaves the kitchen.

I try to clean up the mess, but Adam's pain is so piercing it hurts me, it shrinks my heart in my chest. It won't do, I can't take that much. I have to do something or I'll be reduced to a nervous wreck.

I leave the kitchen and set out to find him. Of course, he is in Donna's closet, looking around and touching her clothes. He just touches everything with the tip of his fingers, the jeans, the skirts and blouses, the golden hay basket overflowing with Indian beads and baubles. From the door, I see him pull the white gold chain with the diamond-studded feather out of his shirt. It is now hanging from his neck, together with Donna's commring. Absent mindedly, he caresses the pieces of jewelry. Donna's scent is heavy in the closet, pure lavender. Without realizing I'm there, Adam slowly turns around. That's when I hit him with a mind blast. I try to make it as gentle as possible. He glazes over and I lead him by the hand to Donna's bed. I make him sit down. I take off his belt and shoes and make him lay on the pillows. Until the Helix arrives, Adam will sleep. And then, maybe, just maybe I can grieve. Maybe I can reach in and seek my own pain. Maybe I can cry my own tears for my lost friend.

ENGINEERED DOOM (By Dark Mirage)

Rebecca held her hands lightly on Catherine's forehead and flushed cheeks.

"You're running a fever. You're burning up."

Rebecca helped Catherine up to the couch. Catherine was still heaving, but nothing was left in her stomach. She shivered with sudden chills.

"She's really hot, Mason. We've got to bring her temperature down."

"I'll fill up the tub."

Only two of the room's lamps were lit, casting a soft glow, but Catherine shielded her eyes from their light. "My eyes hurt, and my head feels ready to split open. What's wrong with me?"

"I don't know, but the first thing we have to do is lower your temperature." Rebecca sat down beside Catherine on the couch, holding her hand and hoping her stepdaughter could not tell how worried she was.

"When did this start?"

"I woke up this morning with a sore throat. I thought it was sore after hours in a pressurized cabin, but it didn't get any better. In the afternoon, I started getting sore all over."

"Why didn't you say something?"

"I didn't think it would last…and I guess I was selfish. I didn't want to miss any of the fun." She swallowed hard. "Right before dinner, I started feeling really bad. I thought that must be because of lunch. That's why I decided not to have dinner and to go to bed early. I came back here, made some tea, and went to bed."

With alarm, Rebecca noted beads of sweat glistening on Catherine's forehead. The room's air conditioning was in fact set a little too chilly for Rebecca's comfort.

"I woke up in the middle of the night, and started throwing up. I'm not sure how long I was in the bathroom. I got the shivers and wrapped myself in a couple towels."

She coughed, and then continued. "Finally, I got worried and decided to knock on your door. This is as far as I got."

Mason emerged from the bathroom. "The water's ready."

"She's very weak. I'm going to need some help with her."

Rebecca helped Catherine stand, then they both half-carried her to the Jacuzzi, lowering her in, pajamas and all.

"I don't think we should wait until morning to get her to a doctor," Rebecca said.

"I agree. I'll get Moeller in here to watch her while we get dressed."

Mason carried a small transmitter on a chain around his neck, and entered a code that would summon the GS agent posted outside their door. Moments passed and nothing happened.

Mason stalked off to the door, opening it cautiously. Then he threw it wide open. Agent Moeller was sprawled across the entry, hair soaked in sweat. Mason keyed the codes to bring the other three agents running; if they were asleep, the transmitter activated alarms.

Moments later, the other agents emerged from the bungalow across the pool.

Even in their underwear, they all look alike, Mason mused.

"I need you to bring Mr. Moeller inside."

"Sir, what happened to him?"

"He appears to be extremely ill. Once you have him inside, close the door. Mr. Shaheen, come with me and get some wet towels. We have to work on his fever."

Agent Shaheen was startled by the sight of Catherine in the Jacuzzi and Rebecca tending to her.

Mason tossed every towel in the bathroom into the water, then he began handing dripping towels to Shaheen. "Get his shirt off, and start mopping him down with these towels."

Mason waited until the agent left before speaking. "Moeller passed out in front of the door. He looks like Catherine does."

"They didn't eat the same things." Rebecca's fear edged into her voice. "We're dealing with something contagious."

Mason nodded. "One more thing: Moeller's an elemental. They're both Genomex mutants."

"That could be coincidence."

"Could be, might be, but if it's contagious and not food poisoning, I don't want my daughter treated by doctors unfamiliar with the complexities of mutation. I want Catherine treated by my own people at St Katherine's."

"We can't drag two very sick people through the main gate of this place."

"No, we'll take them through the service alley. Various authorities on St Mallot's are going to throw fits about this, and I'll hear about it from an unhappy April Dancer. She'll calm down once I explain."

"We have to assume we've all been exposed. We have to assume any one of us could become as sick as Catherine and Rick Moeller."

"Yes."

"Mason, anything this virulent could be devastating to you."

"I'll accept that risk."

"There is another consideration. We might be importing a dreadful disease. It could spread."

"Once we're in the air, I'll contact St Katherine's and tell them everything, and have them take every precaution. I can't lose Catherine, Rebecca. Not now, after finding her so late and missing so much of her life."

"I'm not going to croak," Catherine said weakly.

"You weren't supposed to hear that."

"I'm glad she did," Rebecca said. "Now, go rouse your flight crew. I'll stay with Catherine while you toss on some clothes. Then I'll get dressed."

"Good plan." Mason closed the bathroom door, and pulled his phone from a bathrobe pocket.

"What are you doing?" Rebecca asked softly.

"Mr. Granberry. Wake up. Listen carefully. I have a medical emergency here. Plans have changed. We need to return home immediately. Every minute lost may be critical. Get dressed, and get to the airport. Now, put your captain on the phone. I know she's there, and we have no time to talk around it."

Rebecca made a face, and mouthed but did not speak 'Bonnie? Granberry?'

Mason nodded.

"Bonnie, please listen carefully. We must return home immediately, with all possible speed. Whatever it costs, whatever it takes. Catherine is extremely ill, and so is Mr. Moeller. We must get them to St Katherine's." He paused. "Thank you, Bonnie." The conversation ended.

"Nicely done. The guys out there didn't need to know that."

"I do take care of my good people. Don't go telling everyone I spared someone's feelings. My reputation would be ruined."

Rebecca did not think she would be able to sleep on the plane, and was surprised when she found herself waking up snugly belted into her seat in the GSA CJ2. Briefly, she was relieved that her nightmare about Catherine being desperately ill was only a confused dream… except it was not. Fully awake, she remembered that the nightmare was real, and while asleep, her preoccupied mind had been sorting and rearranging reality.

She checked her watch, now reset to Genomex local time. 8.30. She'd been asleep several hours. She turned in her seat to see Mason, wiping his daughter's forehead.

"Good morning, Catherine."

"Morning." Catherine sounded weak and far away.

"How much longer, Mason?"

"A little more than ninety minutes, this is good because the ice is nearly gone."

Rebecca fuzzily recalled waiting in a dark rental van with Catherine and Rick Moeller while Mason and his agents raided every ice machine they knew about at the resort, cleaning them out and filling buckets with ice.

"I talked to St Katherine's hours ago," Mason continued. "I should warn you they have an extraordinary reception planned for us. They're taking this seriously."

Rebecca glanced forward. One of the GS agents was snoring, but she couldn't guess who it was.

"Has anyone been watching Moeller?"

Mason nodded towards the front of the cabin. "They took turns until they were all asleep after about two hours."

Rebecca dipped some towels into the bucket of icy water Mason was using. "I'm going to see how he's doing."

The bag of ice left hours ago about Moeller's neck had melted and warmed. As Rebecca removed it, Rick Moeller opened his eyes.

"I'm a little confused. What is going on?"

"You're very sick, and you have a fever. Let me wipe your face."

"Thanks. Where are we?"

"About ninety minutes out."

"I don't remember much, Dr. Steyn."

"We found you passed out and delirious on the bungalow doorstep."

"Am I in trouble?"

"With Mason? No, nothing like that. You're not the only one ill. Catherine is sick, too. Ambulances will be waiting at the airport to take us to St Katherine'."

"Is anybody else sick?"

"No. Everyone else is fine, other than missing some sleep."

"How did I get in here?"

"You were carried."

"I don't remember any of that. I've never been this sick. What's wrong with us?"

Rebecca did her best to answer with as little emotion as possible, not wanting to panic the agent. "We don't know, but the St Kat's is expecting us. They are the best."

Rebecca knew that was true, but she was not sure that was going to be good enough. She wasn't sure Moeller believed it, either. He looked scared. Rebecca stayed with him until the plane landed.

St Katherine's staff was waiting at the GSA hangar. Nobody left the plane or opened the door until the technicians could open the back of a large van, and extend a thick plastic tube tall enough for an adult to walk through to the door of the plane. They cut open the far side, and taped it securely around the door.

Only then was the door opened, and the passengers greeted by a St Kat's technician in a full environmental suit with self-contained breathing air.

Catherine staggered through the plastic tunnel with the help of Mason and Rebecca. Mr. Moeller was carried by his fellow agents.

The tunnel was untapped, and drawn up into the van. A second team of technicians sealed the plane, and washed it down with a sequence of disinfectants. Then, it was pulled into the hangar, covered with a huge tarp, and placed under guard 24 hours a day.

"I had a pretty good idea that we'd be locked into isolation, but I wasn't anticipating… these gowns."

Mason Eckhart was not happy.

"They aren't dignified, are they?"

"No."

"Remember, we're all wearing the same high style."

"Not quite true, Rebecca. Haven't you noticed they keep giving me the ones with the little pink flowers?"

"I hadn't, but they are… very sweet, Mason."

"Mr. Granberry and the GS agents are not issued gowns with 'sweet' little pink flowers."

"Perhaps they are not perceived as having a sensitive side. Someone could be paying you a compliment, discerning the Inner Mason. Okay, this really annoys you. The next time we're issued these lovely paper gowns, we'll trade."

"Deal."

None of the passengers had developed symptoms. None of the tests performed indicated any medical problem or capability for infecting others.

"In another eighteen hours we'll be back in our steel cave, Mason. Who would have imagined so many hours of conversation could swirl around sports?"

"I had no idea my agents were such boring individuals… I had a camera link installed in Catherine's room so we could talk to her, but they keep telling me she's not up to talking. She's not getting better, Rebecca."

"I know. They're actively consulting worldwide. They will find something."

"Catherine may not have the luxury of the time required. I've even considered placing her in stasis until someone comes up with a treatment."

"Stasis? For Catherine?"

"I've been in stasis. I know exactly what I'm suggesting. I don't like the idea, but I can't lose her."

"Thanks for sending someone to retrieve our clothes, Dr. Shah."

"You are welcome."

"Mason feels like himself again, Samihah."

"The small things do make a difference. Well, the others have been pronounced healthy and non-infective. They are being released. We lied to them, just a little. They were told Catherine and Moeller were infected with a bacterium ordinary harmless, but a problem for individuals taking the medication they were both taking. Telling them the truth, that they were exposed to Yersinia pestis, the organism causing Black Death, would have alarmed them and required a great deal of explaining, and we don't have all the answers."

"Plague?" Mason asked.

"The same organism, Mr. Eckhart, at least, superficially the same. This is Y pestis, but it is modified, intentionally engineered to affect Genomex mutants, but not ordinary humans. Bacteria were isolated from Catherine and from Moeller, put through the same tests, and their genetics compared to known profiles of Y pestis."

"But St Mallot's was extremely clean," Rebecca objected. "I saw no sign of conditions favoring a rat population, no garbage strewn about, the locals fastidious... If anything, the level of overall cleanliness and hygiene exceeded that of a typical western city."

"Your impression may be correct, Rebecca, but remember, this is modified Y pestis, not the same organism harbored in the wild animal populations in the American southwest."

"What about Catherine?" Mason asked. "I thought plague was treatable."

"Plague is treatable, but this is not exactly plague we are dealing with. We're trying the most likely antibiotics on Catherine and Moeller now, and testing others in cultures of the organism isolated from them. Nothing we have tried so far has proven effective. I can conclude only that someone has deliberately created a resistant pathogen."

"Biowar?"

"Most likely, Mr. Eckhart."

"But St Mallots is a resort visited by people from all over the world. How would biowar pathogens targeted at everyone make sense?" Rebecca asked.

"I do not have an answer for you. I can only tell you what we have found, and what the findings imply. I recommend you bring in someone with more experience dealing with infectious agents affecting Genomex mutants. I have someone in mind: Dr. Angela Fontenelle."

"Doesn't ring any bells."

"She isn't 30 years old yet, but very well regarded in the medical community. Brazilian doctor, hematologist. She has experience in endemic and epidemic diseases. I saw her about a year ago in the Microbiology Conference in Orlando. We attended the same lectures." Samihah sighed. "Problem is, she heads Axis Research and Development Medcare Unit. Meaning, she works for the competition."

"Can you call her résumé up on the Internet?"

Samihah Shah, microbiologist and Rebecca's friend from the time she had worked for Genomex, logged in the info highway and called up a search engine, typing "Angela Fontenelle MD CV". A few dozen hits afterwards, the search hit pay dirt and a paper on a famed medical journal displayed a picture and career information, showing a woman with skin the color of a light coffee-latte, brown eyes, short curly hair and something on her back that looked like a pronounced hunchback.

"Here she is, Mr. Eckhart. She is impaired herself, has deformed feet and hands." Samihah looked pointedly at Mason. "And she needs a cane to walk."

Pulling the monitor around, Mason and Rebecca bent a little to read the information on the screen. Startled, Mason straightened his back sharply when he saw the picture.

"But this is the bird woman!"

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS (Written together with Dark Mirage)

"All security to stations. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill."

Mutants of all kinds, AR&D security, ran purposefully to their battle stations, following the training drilled into them so many times by Brennan Mulwray and Harry Bloomenfeld. Men and women in the Beast Brigade's black uniform passed through hallways and rooms, placing themselves strategically. A black young woman stood with her back against a wall and disappeared, using her chameleonic powers, another young woman with greenish hair gracefully dove into the water mirror by the main entrance and disappeared, turning her molecular body liquid. A blond man, light refracting elemental bent the light around his body assuming his stealth capabilities and vanished from view.

"What the hell is going on?" Dr. Angela Fontenelle, hospital's director, stepped out of the elevator, her cane tap-tapping on the floor as she made her way through the lobby to the main entrance.

Almost knocking the Avian hybrid off her feet, Shalimar Fox ran past her. "We are under attack!"

"What?"

Shalimar kicked the main door wide open and assumed a battle stance, ready to protect the hospital from the potential invaders. Angela was close behind her.

On the parking lot, a dozen GS agents in their inevitable gray trench coats and shades stood at attention, stun sticks in their hands. Black GSA SUVs were strategically parked, blocking all traffic from either entering or leaving the hospital. A gray sedan was parked in the middle of the parking lot. The two forces eyed each other in a way that reminded Angela of a western style showdown, like two gangs, the Earps and the Clantons at the OK Corral. After a few minutes of the furrowed brows and hard stares, Angela was quite fed up.

"Enough silly melodrama!"

In a perfectly rehearsed movement, three GSAgents opened the passenger doors of the sedan. A lean man in a black pinstripe suit, his white hair gleaming in the sun, emerged from the back seat, followed by a handsome red-haired woman in her early forties and another woman with brown hair, carrying an ordinary-looking picnic cooler with extreme care.

"I couldn't agree more." Mason Eckhart's voice was low and measured. "Dr. Fontenelle?

"Mr. Eckhart..." The bird woman swallowed dry. "To what do I owe the honor of your visit?"

"There is a life and death matter affecting all mutants." He looked around. "Shall we discuss it here in the sun?"

The Avian was quite baffled. She looked at Shalimar, who was flashing feral eyes at the uninvited visitors. "Certainly not. Let's go to my office."

Mason ascended the steps leading to the main entrance and came face to face with Shalimar, who stood her ground, blocking his way.

"Miss Fox, I have been invited inside by Dr. Fontenelle."

"Shalimar, please… step aside. Mr. Eckhart and his party are my guests."

Shalimar stood her ground.

"Well, if we must, we can talk here on the steps if your feline feral won't allow us inside." Eckhart sighed, annoyed with Shalimar.

The brown-haired woman with the picnic cooler sat down on the second step, holding onto the cooler.

The slightly younger woman shrugged. "I warned you, Mason, that anything to do with Adam would be a waste of our time. I'm in no mood for games."

"What would you have us do, Dr. Fontenelle?"

"Shalimar, you mean well, but in this case, let them through."

Shalimar pursed her lips and looked back at Eckhart and the others, flashing feral eyes, lingering upon the red-haired woman. Most humans found her feral eyes disturbing and threatening, but this woman met her eyes without a hint of fear or retreat, and it was Shalimar who looked away, stepping aside with a flourished courtesy, and allowing them all to pass.

"Dr. Fontenelle, I am glad to see you have recovered from your incarceration at the now forever defunct Breedlove Foundation."

Pleasantries time, thought Rebecca Steyn, watching the deformed doctor pour strong-brewed Brazilian coffee for Samihah. Mason could show good manners when he wished. The woman in the picture had brown eyes. This one has blue eyes and they're not contacts. How odd.

"You should know," answered Angela. "When I fled, I hurt you. Ripped your arm open. For that, I am sorry."

"Don't be sorry, that was a time of war. We conduct ourselves… differently."

"But I am sorry. You behaved decently."

From her chair, Rebecca crossed her legs and straightened her back. "Could you explain for the benefit of someone not privy to past details?"

"The defunct Breedlove Foundation was doing research on babies smuggled from Third World countries." Angela handed a steaming mug to the lady with the picnic cooler. "That was pretty gruesome. Mutant X made it their business to stop it. As a doctor and a... well..." She took off her coat, exposing her wings. "I am a flier, I could infiltrate through the air ducts. They were big enough for me, but too small for the Helix."

Mason nodded. "You are the only Aves I've ever seen."

"Avian," corrected the doctor. "Anyway, the Foundation employed a toad mutant. It captured me with its tongue and I was held in a cage. The man that came to check me out had a psionic with him, who said I was concealing information." She turned to Rebecca. "I had been implanted and this man used the remote 'a couple of times' to make me talk."

"Seventeen times," informed Mason.

Rebecca had a look of horror on her face and the picnic cooler lady almost choked on her coffee.

"He only stopped when Emma DeLauro and another psionic managed to send him an image of Mr. Eckhart angry at him for harming such an unique feral as myself."

"But it didn't stop Thorne. He had another clever idea." Mason continued.

"Oh, yes! He gave me as a present to the toad mutant, the one that had captured me in flight." Angela dropped her eyes. "That thing had a lot of fun with me. I remember very little, because I was placed in an induced psionic coma. I was out cold most of the night." She sighed and looked back at Mason. "The next morning Mr. Eckhart verbally thrashed and physically punished Thorne hitting his own sub-gov a few times. I don't think he learned anything."

"Were you?" asked Rebecca.

"What?"

"Concealing information."

Angela chuckled. "I was. Still am." She turned to Mason. "That is, now, how do you say? Water under the bridge. What can I do for you, Mr. Eckhart?"

From his chair, Mason pointed at the good-looking older lady in a scarf and glasses. "This is Dr. Samihah Shah, microbiologist."

Angela looked at the lady in question. "You look familiar. Have we met?"

"We attended a conference in Orlando, a year or so ago."

"You were not one of the speakers."

"No, but we attended the same presentations." Samihah touched the handles of the cooler she had carefully placed by her side. "What I have here..."

"It is something very dangerous."

The picnic cooler was placed in the airlock of a six-person glove bag. Everyone, including Dr. Fontenelle, wore two sets of nitrile gloves, with a thin layer of foil embedded between the layers of nitrile.

"Our facilities don't begin to match those of Ft Dietrick, but we are only going to do a minimal amount of manipulation."

Angela inserted her gnarled hands into a set of gloves and opened the interior of the air lock to retrieve the cooler. Releasing the top of the cooler, carbon dioxide gas wafted out, forming a small area of translucent fog.

"There are three sets of containers. I did not wish to take any chances moving this culture on public roads."

"Very wise and thorough, Dr. Shah."

Dr. Fontenelle unwound the tabbed black tape sealing the two halves of the first bottle, then unscrewed the bottle, revealing an identical but smaller metal bottle inside, nested like Russian dolls. Opening the third and last bottle, she retrieved a plastic screw-top tube containing a culture of the modified Yersinia pestis growing in a nutrient broth.

She set the tube down in a rack, and retrieved an ordinary glass microscope slide and a plastic transfer loop. Tilting the culture tube to minimize casual introduction of contaminants, she quickly introduced the loop, sealed the tube and smeared a droplet of culture thinly over the glass slide.

The Avian held the slide inches from her eyes, with only the heavy, clear plastic separating her from the culture.

"First, I like to take a look on my own before doing anything else. My eyes—my own biological eyes—were destroyed in an accident last year. These eyes are bionic, manufactured. They are wonderful, capable of telescopic and microscopic vision and I am also able to see into the infrared and ultraviolet portion of the spectrum.

"So that is why your online photo shows you with brown eyes instead of blue?" Dr. Steyn asked.

"Yes, that is an old picture. This certainly looks like Y pestis. This is a 48 hour culture, yes?"

"Twelve hour culture," the Iranian-born microbiologist corrected.

"Are you sure? So much growth, so quickly."

"I started that culture myself. As 'bugs' go, this is among the most vigorous I have studied."

"This vigor is not natural."

"I agree. I believe that much about this organism is the result of deliberate manipulation. The genome of Y pestis has been known and studied for some time. This organism is nearly the same, but not quite. I have copies of all data, including the new sequences for your evaluation."

"Very good."

"The additional genetic material is not what one expects in the swapping between bacteria of like or even unlike species. When I realized how unique this sequence was compared to anything naturally found in microorganisms, I cast my nets wider, and tried to find this sequence in any species on earth."

"And…?"

"I could find nothing like it. After that, I began to think that this could have been created — synthesized DNA — by someone determined to kill every Genomex mutant.

"This is no isolated find, no curiosity of science, is it?"

"It's very real," Rebecca Steyn said.

"Do you have a patient?" Dr. Fontenelle asked.

"We have two," Mason replied softly. "They have the best of care, but no treatment has proven effective. They are slowly, inexorably, losing ground."

"Tell me they are in an isolation ward."

"They were brought to St Kats in an isolation van, and have had no contact with patients or staff. We prepared for mutant specific contagions when the present St Kats was refurbished for mutant medicine," said Samihah.

"Dr. Fontenelle, could you please come to St Katherine's and examine the two patients? I will arrange any kind of transportation you prefer at any hour."

Mason Eckhart stopped short of begging, but just short. Other people could think of him as Satan's spawn, but Angela had had a glimpse of a different person.

Dr. Samihah Shah was a legitimate, respected microbiologist. She would not be part of a trap. Then, there was the organism itself, probably engineered. Angela had never heard rumors of such work at Genomex or St Kats.

Eckhart looked tired and strained. He was deeply invested emotionally, and so was Dr. Steyn, however she fit into this group.

"I must see these patients. The implications are terrifying. If you could wait while I get a few things together, I would like to return to St Katherine's with you."

"No way in Hell you're going anywhere with him," Shalimar Fox shouted, pointing at Mason Eckhart and his two companions, standing beside their car in the parking lot. "I'm not going to allow you to follow that sociopath to his horror chamber hospital."

"I will be perfectly safe."

"Why would you go with Eckhart just because he says he needs you? How can you believe a word that comes out of his mouth?" Shalimar turned and flashed her feral eyes at Eckhart.

The Avian stood shorter than Shalimar by a full hand span. Hands planted on her hips, she met Shalimar's eyes. "First, you cannot stop me. Second, my personal knowledge of Eckhart convinces me he is not a sociopath. A sociopath would have discerned nothing wrong with what Thorne did to me. Eckhart removed me from that pit of hell, treating me with decency… and allowing me to regain human dignity. A sociopath would not have the empathy to care about anyone else. A sociopath wouldn't have taken me out of that cage, cleaned me up, seen that my wounds were treated, and found some clothes for me."

"You make him sound kind."

Angela smiled faintly. "What else can it be called? I owe him, Shalimar."

"Well, I don't owe him anything."

"You may owe him your life eventually."

"What do you mean?"

"At St Kats, they have two mutants infected with a bacillus engineered to affect mutants only. They have not found a cure."

Shalimar was taken aback by the revelation. "I'll warn Adam."

"No, not yet. I want to examine the patients first and then be able to tell Adam specifics, not speculation."

"Tweety, be careful."

"I'll be fine, Sylvester."

Angela's hazmat suit was uncomfortable, fitting all too tightly over her wings, but loose and bulky elsewhere.

The young girl on the bed was in bad condition. She was running a high fever, and was delirious and incoherent. In the few moments of coherency, she reported that her joints and abdomen were tender. What worried Angela most were the black, swollen inguinal buboes.

Using the finest gauge needle possible, Angela quickly aspirated a bubo.

"Ok, let's start with the basics: WBC count, gram stain, and new aspirate culture." Angela looked up at Samihah. "Let's make cultures at four, eight and twelve hour intervals. I want to check the development of this bacillus step by step. Let's also do Y pestis fluorescent antibody stain and titer." She picked up the girl's file and turned to Elise Prodana. "You said you tried Streptomycine Sulfate?"

"At the regular 30 mg per kilogram."

Angela nodded. "And how did the patient respond?"

"With the continuous dosage, the temperature dropped from 41 Celsius to 38.5, node and buboes receded and general disposition improved remarkably."

"But...?"

"It didn't last. The picture reversed within 24 hours of treatment."

"The patient relapsed?" asked Angela, flipping the file's pages.

"Severely. Temperature shot up to the 40s, nodes and buboes grew back, joints also swelled up, general state deteriorated into confusion."

"Then, you tried tetracycline. Results?"

"The same."

Angela bit her upper lip. "Very well, let's go to chloranphenicol, it has better CNS penetration. Let's hope it works better. Dr. Prodana, we could start with a 50mg per kilogram intra venous divided six to six. If the patient relapses, we increase the dosage to 100mg per kilogram. Your opinion?"

Elise Prodana nodded. "I agree. Crystalloid to keep vital signs and oxygen through nasal cannula, no mask."

"If that doesn't work, we still have Garamycin, Kanamycin, and Doxycycline we can try. And I can get Ultramiecylin. Adam is still testing it, but the results are extremely promising." Angela turned to Samihah. "Dr. Shah, did you take samples and made cultures between antibiotics?"

"Naturally. The data are in my office and available for review."

Angela pursed her lips in concentration and turned to the bay window, Mason Eckhart was standing with his hands behind his back, looking in. Next to him, Rebecca had her arms crossed on her chest. Both of them looked tired and deeply worried. The Avian directed what she hoped was a reassuring smile at Rebecca, but she was really aiming it at Mason. She turned back to Samihah. "I'm intrigued by the sudden relapse. I want to check all cultures made on both patients." To Dr. Prodana. "Did you find the fleabite?"

"No, we did not."

Angela frowned. That was unusual. "The fleabite should be visible to the naked eye, clearly showing dermatitis."

"Dr. Fontenelle, we found nothing. No evidence of transmission."

"That is very odd." Angela turned back to the sick girl and examined her extremities in search of the necrosis of digits, the black in Black Death, she had found on the male patient. The poor man was rotting away. The girl had been luckier. So far, nothing. Angela touched the nodes behind the girl's ears and moved her neck to check for meningo infection. On the skin of the girl's neck, Angela's bionic eyes detected small points, as if the girl had been prickled by very fine needles, almost the size of a hair. The Avian summoned the other doctors closer and positioned a lighted magnifying glass over the girl's neck. She pointed the purplish punctures to Samihah Shah and Elise Prodana.

"They're not flea bites, but they are odd."

"Let's have a quick look at Mr. Moeller."

"Mr. Eckhart, have patience with me. I must start at the beginning and determine what the two patients have in common. That is the way we will begin to understand this disease."

"They're both Genomex mutants, and both accompanied me on vacation, as did Dr. Steyn."

"Could I please examine your necks? I observed marks on the patients' necks that I could not identify."

Mason Eckhart undid his tie and held his shirt away from his neck. Angela scrutinized his skin carefully.

"Now, you have no marks at all."

Angela then turned to Dr. Steyn, who had unbuttoned the top two buttons of her silk blouse.

"You have the same marks as the girl, but they are simple punctures, not at all inflamed and they are fading. The sick have fine, inflamed punctures… you have punctures but no inflammation," Angela turned to Mason, "and you have no punctures at all. You were all together during this vacation?"

"Most all of the time," Mason replied.

"Mr. Moeller is…?"

"One of my bodyguards."

"And the girl?"

"Catherine is my daughter, Dr. Fontenelle."

Angela had heard hundreds of stories about Mason Eckhart, but none of them suggested a mutant daughter.

"And Dr. Steyn?"

"My wife. The three of us shared one bungalow, and Mr. Moeller and three other GS agents shared another nearby."

Daughter? Wife?

"And you were together throughout?"

"Very nearly all the time."

"Did some of you go hiking, and perhaps acquire those punctures from the brush, while you, Mr. Eckhart, did something else?"

"No."

"Yes!" Rebecca Steyn exclaimed. "When we arrived at St Mallots, everybody had several leis hung around their necks, except you!"

"They weren't dignified."

"You told them you were allergic to the flowers, even though you're not! That's why your neck has no punctures!" Dr. Steyn turned to Angela. "Does that make any sense?"

Angela reflected. "The usual vector is a biting flea, introducing the bacillus into the blood. But this is not your usual Y pestis. Fresh flowers, kept moist, and sprayed with a fine aerosol of bacillus minutes before distribution. It's possible. If the handlers of the leis remained unaffected, no one would ask any questions."

"Dr. Fontenelle, you are implying a deliberate attempt to infect anyone susceptible to this strain of bacteria."

"Yes, Mr. Eckhart, a deliberate, high tech, carefully planned attempt to murder any Genomex mutant who goes to this resort."

Angela halted abruptly, leaning heavily upon her cane. The sudden pain in her head was overwhelming, dampening down all thought. Sweat glistened on her forehead. For a moment, she appeared unsteady.

Rebecca Steyn leapt from her chair, gently but securely holding the bird woman's left arm.

"Thank you… I felt faint for a moment, as if I might pass out. I think I should sit down."

"I'm hanging on to you until you're in a chair."

"Do you think you could have been infected, Doctor? You are a mutant yourself."

"I am a falcon hybrid," Angela panted, tears flowing. "This has nothing to do with plague or infection."

Rebecca reached out her hand. "Is there anything we can do for you?"

"Remember I told you I was put under an induced coma while that toad mutant had his way with me?" She was crying freely. "A psionic named Donna Gryphon did it. She stayed with me, inside my head the whole night... all the time... she never let go of me..." She sobbed. "Thanks to her, I'm not a raving lunatic now." She held Rebecca's hand more firmly and pulled her even closer, as if Rebecca Steyn was a board she was holding on to save her life. "Ever since that night, we shared a bond. A little of her was always with me, and I know a little of me was always with her. I didn't even know her personally then, but that made us more than sisters. We were like Siamese twins, joined at the hip." Angela let go of Rebecca's hand. "Right now... I felt... the bond snap..." She stood up trying to control herself, only to sob even harder. "Oh, my God, Donna is dead..."

ANGELA

I've never felt so... alone... in my life.

I've always been lonely, that's not new.

When I was born, my mother's womb had to be removed. It had been turned into an egg by Paul Breedlove himself, at my uncle's request. According to what my father told me, and my uncle confirmed many years later, my mother was born to have children. She was the first child. Her brother was born when she was already fifteen years old. She never told me how, but their mother died two years after his birth. Their father died of a coronary only three years after that. My mother was twenty, my uncle was five. And they were on their own. She brought him up. Somehow, she juggled a job and school, and she managed to become a registered nurse. She worked; he studied, until he was emancipated at the age of 15. Only then, when she was already over 30, she allowed herself to date. She met a fine man, a doctor from Brazil, who was specializing in heart surgery. He was of African descent, she was Caucasian.

My mother miscarried three times before me, and she would have miscarried again, had my uncle, already a top researcher at Genomex, not asked, actually begged, Paul Breedlove to save her pregnancy. It was her very last chance to become a mother and she would have died if she could never have had any kids. My uncle knew very well my father was dead set against the kind of genetic manipulation already under development at Genomex, but my father wasn't there at the time. He was away at a conference, a workshop, something. He was away and a decision would have to be made soon: either the womb was converted and the fetus transformed, or the pregnancy would end and the womb would have to be removed due to massive myoma polyp syndrome. Balancing my mother's wishes against my father's, my uncle collected the stem cells needed for the procedure himself.

When my father returned and found out about the changes made, he flipped. The fight landed my uncle on a dentist's chair, repairing the damage an ex-amateur boxer did to his mouth. My uncle has now half a dozen martial arts black belts. Back then, he had as many as... none. My father collected his wife and moved back to Brazil, where his family had wealth and political clout. He started a clinic that, eventually, grew up to be one of the finest hospitals in that portion of the country, with a cardio practice rivaling the best in the world.

When I was born, my father was appalled. He debated the validity of genetic manipulation on many levels, not the least of them the impact mutants with superhuman abilities, or under human conditions, would have upon the rest of Mankind. The creation of patchwork people, who had been mixed up, combined with animals, virtual chimaeras, always struck him as dangerous and heretic. The creation of aberrations who could change their body density, manipulate elements, bend the minds of others, to name but the most common, if common is a word one could use to define the transformed generation spawned by Breedlove and his followers, filled my father with horror.

So, when my mother's belly was cut open in a C-section and I was pulled out, small, with hands and feet resembling a bird's and, worse of all, wings, the feathers wet and covered with bloody amniotic fluid, my father was devastated. The operating room crew: OB-GYN surgeon, pediatrician, anesthesiologist, nurses, all of them were his friends, his colleagues and his employees. They were all sworn to silence. My mutation was kept secret, never made public.

As a child, my father kept me hidden in the family's property at Carneiros Beach, some 100 miles from Recife. I was homeschooled, at first by my aunt Theresa, my father's younger sister, already taking her vows to become a nun. Later, I had many tutors who thought they were teaching a poor crippled girl with a pronounced hunchback, twisted hands and unstable feet. In many ways, I was lucky. I never lacked anything, Carneiros was a dream come true, where I could fly over the sea for as long as I wanted and nobody would see me. But I missed company. I missed the experience of living among other human beings, studying in a regular high school and having classmates. And I had another problem, besides my odd looks and transportation capabilities. I was smart as hell. My mother said I took to her side of the family. Now I know why. I couldn't attend a regular school for two reasons. First, have you ever met a winged girl in high school? Second, I was light years ahead of other kids my age. I was so much ahead, when I turned fifteen, my father used his political connections to have me accepted at Pernambuco State University Med School, after I took SATs equivalence tests and got what is called in Brazil "pontos integrais", the highest possible results. That was no surprise. I didn't have anything else to do besides studying and flying at night to hunt.

A complete medical education, in Brazil, is achieved in roughly 10 to 12 years. I fully graduated in seven. I've never had problems with pharmacology or orthopaedy or anything. Memorizing complex equations was never a problem either. My problem was interacting with patients. My looks hindered my performance; I was shy among strangers who could find out about my... differences. And a few of my fellow students, probably jealous of my intellectual prowess (there were a few, yes) and of my young age, took upon themselves to make my life miserable. First thing they did, and I regarded it as highly immature and juvenile, was slap me with a nickname. They called me Notre Dame.

As a result of taunting, fear of exposure and plain loneliness - there were no other mutants in the whole country - I started to withdraw, to fold into myself. At first, I wanted to do Pediatrics, but children cried when I tried to touch them with my hands. They feared my talons. Other patients felt pretty much the same. So, I chose the laboratory instead. I became a hematologist and virologist. I also studied epidemiology and tropical diseases. Pasteur and Flemming were my heroes: the first discovered microbes; the second, antibiotics.

Soon after I finished Med, my mother found a nodule in her left breast that proved to be malignant. My father, with his position in the Medical community, was able to provide her with the best possible care. She had a mastectomy, did radio and chemo therapies, and we thought we had the cancer licked. She had five years of total remission. When she was about to receive a clean bill of health, the cancer returned, this time with a vengeance. It quickly metastasized. She had preciously little time to live.

Except for my nanny, Babah, my mother had been my only friend. With my mother gone, I would be utterly alone. My mother knew that full well, so she did the unthinkable. She confronted my father and made him contact my uncle, that wizard of an uncle she had told me so many stories about. He came down to Brazil immediately and arrived just in time to witness my mother's passing. She had just time enough to make him promise her he would take me back with him. Without her, I had no reason to stay, so I accepted. At least, I would go to a place where there were others like me, maybe not as conspicuous as I am, but mutants nevertheless.

My uncle and I had no time to talk until the flight back home. I was extremely uncomfortable, cooped up in a pressurized plane cabin. You see, as an Avian feral, my fears are a bit different from the regular felines or ursines or others. They are pyrophobic, afraid of fire. I am claustrophobic. I'm terrified of small, confined spaces. It was very difficult for me to relax. Sleep was out of the question. So, we talked. We talked for 12 straight hours. He told me about the genesis of the experiments that made me what I am, even though I was the only Avian he had ever seen. He told me about the premise of the research, the side effects it caused. And about his departure after finding out that the research company he had worked for so many years was determined to produce not the mainstream process he had developed, but the side effects it had caused. That he would not tolerate. And he told me about the network of clinics, safe houses, and shelters he was carefully putting together to protect those affected by the same side effects. And, last, but not least, about the small group of people he had gathered under his... well... wing - no pun intended -, his core group. All this because some government agency decided it would be a good idea to round up all mutants and store them for further studies. Canned people! I couldn't wrap my mind around it, and neither could he. So, he fought it.

The more I heard what my uncle told me, the more I thought about the European Resistance Movement against the Nazi and their Final Solution for the Jewish "Problem". The Nazi thought they could round up all Jews from Europe and, ultimately, from all over the world, ship them out to concentration camps and eliminate them altogether. A small band of fighters stood their ground against that. Maybe that was what I was getting into, maybe I was about to become a maquis myself. That fact implicated in a series of security measures I wasn't really prepared for. The first one was taken still in Brazil: purge all online records of my family association with my uncle. I dropped my middle name, my mother's origins turned very nebulous all of a sudden. Even the book where my birth certificate was recorded was mysteriously stolen from the notary public's office. I know. I have it with me. From then on, I had no family. The uprooting, the stripping of my history compounded the feeling of loneliness I had carried with me throughout my life.

When we arrived, I was impressed! The place he took me was the biggest cave I'd ever seen, not that I had seen many, but it was huge! And all furbished as both a home and a modern laboratory. It had a Japanese feel to it, with waterfalls, ponds, and many skylights leading directly outside, allowing light and warmth to penetrate the fortress. They were the only relief I had for my claustrophobia. Without those skylights, I couldn't spend a single night in that place. But I wasn't about saying that in so many words. You see, I had promised my uncle one thing: I would be an asset, not a liability. Even if I died trying.

My uncle introduced me to his core group, the four who lived and worked directly with him. He introduced me as a mutant he had fetched from a country where I would have been totally alone. Did he lie? No. He didn't elaborate. And they didn't ask any questions.

God, they were beautiful! My uncle himself was not a bad looking fellow, but he was totally ordinary, medium height, a bit short even, brown hair, and brown eyes... nothing remarkable. But the people he had gathered around him... The elemental guy, Brennan, was tall and dark, strong. The feral, a feline, was blond and had a body to die for. Her smile was very nice, warm. The molecular was very sweet, a shy young man with kind eyes. The psionic was... impressive. She was the younger, but in many ways, the older spirit. She had piercing eyes and some kind of ancient knowledge that stripped your mind naked before her. But she also possessed some ages old tenderness that took off the edge of the mind probing. I remember I thought, "My God, they are so beautiful, and I am so ugly!"

After I arrived, I fell into a routine. They didn't know the meaning of the word, of course, but for me, I stayed home while they went out on mission after mission. My uncle directed and supervised my readings and studies on mutant physiology. I absorbed everything like a sponge. I was finally able to understand myself, what had made me what I was, and the brave new universe genetics had created. On my part, I tried to keep a little house for them, so they would find something hot on the stove, the dishes done and put away, that sort of thing. I'm no great cook, but what the hell; the kitchen is just another laboratory, isn't it?

Talking about food, I seldom ate with them. My eating habits would gross them out big time. I can eat anything, but, you see, as a falcon hybrid, I am a carnivore. And I prefer my beef raw. Actually, I'd rather have it still breathing. So, I never left Sanctuary, but I flew at night around the mountain and hunted. Plenty of small game in the bushes around Stormking. I never starved. And that brought me closer to Shalimar, the feral. One night, the moon was full, and I saw her in the bushes. She hunted, too. Shalimar was a feline, but she was no household pet, no pampered Persian cat. She was a wild cat. Like me, she needed the thrill of the hunt, the pursuit of the prey. I killed a pigeon and brought it to her. I landed in front of her and she made to attack me, but she recoiled. I offered her the bird and she accepted. We shared the meat still warm. We were, then, friends.

With Jesse, the molecular, it was simpler. He cut himself. He is a sweet person, enthusiastic and... bouncy? Is that the word? He has a quick smile and sharp intelligence. He taught me a great deal of computer use. I'm no hacker, but I'm a pretty good user, thanks to him. But he is a bit clumsy with regular objects. He can disassemble a computer and put it back together again with improvements. Give him a kitchen knife and he might be in danger. That's what happened. Someone had bought this Italian sourdough bread, very good, but un-sliced. He tried to cut a slice off it and the knife slipped, cutting his hand, almost chopping his thumb off. He was bleeding a lot and it needed immediate stitches or the movements of his hand could be compromised. My uncle was not home, only Shalimar and Jesse were there, besides me, of course. The two of them wanted to wait for my uncle to come back, but nobody really knew when he would be returning and the cut couldn't wait. That was the first time I put my foot down. They were a little surprised. I had always been self-effacing and discreet. I pulled him after me and went to the Med Lab. Shalimar tried to stop me, but I flashed my feral eyes at her. Then, I could do that. My eyes would glow like an amber ring with a black glinting dot in the middle, much like those of an owl. I am a bird-of-prey, not a canary. Anyway, I sat him on a stool, got the First Aid kit, cleaned the cut, numbed the spot and stitched it good. And I looked at him after the job was done. He was smiling, looking from his hand to me and back again. Then, he bent across the table and kissed my cheek. We were friends.

Emma and I had been exchanging looks and glances for a while then. She gave me a haircut when I needed one, took me to town to buy new clothes when I needed them, even found a shoemaker to make me new orthopedic boots. She was reaching out to me, but I was too shy. Until the day I heard Brennan joke about Emma's lack of skills in the game of chess. It was a very old joke; about Emma playing against herself and having her ass kicked anyway. I pulled her over and suggested a prank to pull Brennan's leg. You see, I'm a very good chess player. Never participated in live contests, but I'm sort of a legend in online chess contests and game sites. I use my old nickname as a handler, "Notre Dame". Well, Emma would challenge Brennan to a game. He would accept, of course, knowing she was no match for him. I would watch the game from afar. With my falcon's eyes, I could see the board from the other side of the room. She would pick up the movements from my mind. The game started and Emma won with little effort. Brennan was more than surprised, he was appalled. He asked for a rematch, Emma accepted, and she won. Again. Brennan couldn't believe it. By then, the game had an audience. Everybody was watching. They surrounded the board and I had to come closer to see it. Three games, three times Emma was a winner. On the fourth match, I decided to go for the throat, and it was mate in three moves. Brennan was flushed. Emma was laughing so hard she almost fell off her chair. I was amused, too, but I turned around and made to go back to my own place, where I was reading, but Emma pulled me back and hugged me. We apologized to Brennan for the prank and he was actually pretty cool about it. He laughed together with us. We were friends.

To tell you the truth, I became more than friends with Emma and that was very fortunate for me. A few days later, after the prank we pulled on Brennan, Emma approached my uncle while we both were in the lab and we were beginning to work on the mutant blood bank I wanted to create. I was getting started on particularities of mutant blood, ferals at that time. Politely, she waited until we were finished, then she pulled my uncle away from the computer.

"You like to be informed of anything different that happens to us," she said. "Well, I've been having these dreams..."

"Nightmares?" he asked.

"No!" she exclaimed. "They are... exhilarating! I dream I'm flying very high. I can see the horizon and the sun coming up from the sea."

I felt my uncle's eyes on my back, burning the feathers on my wings. I had a sinking feeling. Emma was dreaming of the world as seen through my eyes! Inside my head, she had flown with me at daybreak, when I exercised around the mountaintop.

"How many times did you dream it?"

"Four nights in a row already."

"Emma, few things are good and pleasant in the lives we lead," said my uncle. "If the dreams make you feel so good, enjoy them. They won't harm you in any way."

Emma thanked him and left. As soon as she was out...

"Angela!"

I went to his station, trying to apologize! I was so embarrassed! My mind had influenced his psionic's mind. Or was it the other way around? When I was near enough, he got my hand, pulled me down and kissed my cheek. "Thank you," he said. I looked back at him and something broke inside me. I realized then and there I had found something much more precious than a relative, a teacher, a guide. "You are welcome..." and for the first time I called him "...falconer."

A few months later, I met she who would be the love of my life. She was dark like me, but different from me. She was bubbly, enthusiastic, and had clever answers for everything. She was a telekinetic and head of the Underground. Her name was Allison Turner. We hit it off immediately. If you don't believe in love at first sight, well... think again! I've always known I was gay. I always found women more attractive than men, but never did anything about it. I was too self-conscious, too embarrassed of my looks. I thought nobody would ever show any interest for me other than friendship. Feelings directed at me were pity from those who believed me severely impaired, or contempt because I didn't have a bird's brain. Love? No... Lust? Forget it! Desire? Never! You can't imagine how baffled I was the day Allison asked me out on a date. A date? My chin hit the floor.

I was worried about my friends and my uncle. I'd never discussed my private preferences with any of them. It never occurred to them I had any. If my father knew of my... tendencies... he would have boiled me good and turned me into chicken noodle soup. My uncle just said, "The two of you, be careful." My friends were another source of surprise. The girls loved the idea. They set off to make me as good-looking as I possibly could. Unfortunately, not even Shalimar and Emma could do miracles. But they came up with a Greek-style dress (something I usually don't wear) that left my back bare, accommodating my wings. When Allison saw me, she said I looked like an angel. Soon, we were talking about moving in together.

Allison and I had been seeing each other for some time. I was starting to put together what would soon become AR&D Medcare, a health center directed to mutants and their families. We were beginning as a series of clinic analysis labs, actually a façade for ambulatories prepared to address afflictions the Genomex generation would present. I was selecting résumés for employees and doing interviews, when I came across this lab technician. He had recently been fired from the new Breedlove Foundation plant, the one that looked like a war keep, surrounded by a park. I knew the new Foundation did cutting edge research on reproduction and other medical procedures, but what that man, "helped" by my psionic assistant Carly Leung, told me made my skin crawl. He had taken files to a secure ward in the Foundation plant. There, he had seen babies being subjected to the most gruesome experiments. Later, the plant grapevine informed him these were babies smuggled from Third World countries. Hell, I come from a Third World country and I've always heard those stories and dismissed them as mere urban legend. They were legends no more, but the stuff nightmares were made of. I decided to inform my uncle immediately.

My uncle was dead serious about it. He spent the night with Jesse on the computers trying to break the codes and hack into the Foundation system through a trapdoor script. It wasn't easy. Their messages were all encrypted and it was very complicated, something to do with dead languages. Well, I'm a doctor, not a hacker. He also made me set up a second interview with the lab technician. He wanted to talk to the man himself.

The next morning, he sent Shalimar and Brennan to make sure the guy would get to the interview safely. Well, they arrived at the address provided in the résumé and saw the man leave his home with a little girl, maybe seven years old. He didn't make it to the other side of the street. A minivan shot from a parking space and ran them over before Bren and Shal could do anything. Shal tried to get the girl out of the car's way, but there was no time. The car hit father and daughter head on. They were dead before they fell on the pavement. Brennan shot bolts at the car and it toppled over. The driver was dead on impact. Later, when Jesse ran the license plate through the DMV database, he found out it belonged to a Volkswagen bug that had been totaled the past year.

Jesse and my uncle kept on trying to break the codes and, by the end of the day, they managed to decrypt a few communiqués and memos. They found out where the secure ward was. It could be reached by the proverbial air ducts, but only a small flying craft could penetrate them. All the walls were rigged into a sophisticated alarm system that would be triggered at the lightest touch, trepidation or motor heat signature.

My uncle assembled the team and they started discussing strategy. How to infiltrate that fortress? How to reach the ward? How to free the babies, who most likely would be intubated to the gills? They came up with blue prints of the plant, the ducts, everything. I attended the meeting, but they talked as if I wasn't even there. I didn't say a word, I just listened. They agreed my uncle should go because of his medical expertise. And they thought of everything: a small, one-man chopper, an ultra-light craft... Everything was either too big, or too hot or too noisy. When Shalimar stood up from her stool around the table and exclaimed, "How the hell are we supposed to do this? You can't just walk in there and you can't fly yourself!" I felt it was my cue. "I can!" All heads turned to me as if they were seeing me for the first time. I took off my coat and fluttered my wings. "I have the expertise and the means of transportation."

"No way, girl! You are a doctor, not a fighter."

"There you're wrong! I am a doctor and a fighter. I am your private air force."

"This is no game, Angela. This is a dangerous mission and you have no field experience."

I planted my hands on my hips and faced my uncle. If he thought he had brought me all the way from Brazil to put me in another golden cage, he was sorely mistaken. "The day I set foot in here was the day I became a fighter. Besides, what other choice do you have? I am the person for the job and you know it."

"Angela, what am I supposed to do if it goes wrong?"

"The same thing you would do if Shal, Brennan, Emma or Jesse were in my place."

"Angela..."

"Falconer, trust your bird-of-prey."

The night of the mission finally arrived. I was jumpy as hell, I won't deny it. Shortly before the Helix took off, my uncle came to me and gave me a ring. It was keyed to my DNA and I wasn't supposed to take it off. Ever. I had seen similar rings on his finger and all the other guys' fingers. I never thought about it, but now that I had one, I was proud. It was a token of acceptance. I felt that, finally, I belonged.

The plane hovered over the plant in stealth mode. I had the blue prints memorized and I knew exactly how to negotiate my way to the secure nursery ward. I wasn't sure what I would find in there, but one thing was certain: it wouldn't be pretty.

What I found were seven babies, three boys and four girls. There was nobody there at that hour of the night. The crew had been reduced to monitoring and the children were hooked up to machines from every orifice in their tiny bodies, besides several different veins in their arms and necks and heads. I checked the readings and the children quickly. My God, I had to decide which babies I could take away first. You see, I have only two arms to carry them. So, I saw that I could really save three of the seven children. The other four... well... I'd cross that bridge soon enough. I detached the two most likely to survive first, a boy and a girl, leaving the machinery in a way that wouldn't denounce the absence of the patients for a while longer. I flew back out and straight to the Helix. There, Brennan and my uncle were waiting for me at the side hatch with safety belts around their waists, Jesse was pilot and Emma and Shal were supposed to get the kids and care for them. I passed the two children I had with me to the girls and flew back inside.

I was determined to save the last kid, a girl, put the other four out of their misery and set charges to destroy the data they were storing. Everything went fine, if that's the word to use in such a situation. I turned the machines on three children off. They would pass on their own. One boy would have survived with such terrible sequels I decided to do something really questionable. With my heart broken, I decided to do euthanasia. I had a few supplies with me, a few items I could carry in my pockets. Among them, I had a syringe full of morphine. I really don't know why I had it with me, but I did. Probably, I was foreseeing exactly this circumstance. I turned the machinery off on the poor little boy and injected him with a massive dose of morphine. The child went under immediately and his breathing slowed down and down.

As I was unhooking the last child, the girl I was taking away from that place with me, an alarm started blaring and lights began to blink. I picked the girl up and dove into the air duct, flying as fast as I could. When I emerged from the air duct, the sun was rising, the day was breaking and the sky was clearing fast. Following the plan, the Helix was already taking off. The side hatch was fully open and Brennan was nearer to me. I flew directly to the craft. I got near enough to hand him the girl and reach for my uncle's hand, so I could board the plane. The moment I caught his hand, I felt an impact between my wings. Something very sticky had me glued and was pulling me back with enormous strength. I flapped my wings, trying to balance the pull, and my uncle clamped on my hand, trying to pull me up to the craft, but whatever had me was too strong. My hand slipped from his and the ring I had also slipped from my finger, falling on the ground. Suddenly, I was flying backwards, in the direction of the building. And it was fast. No matter how I fought to push ahead, the pull was too powerful and it kept me going back until I hit the sidewall with a thud. The impact knocked all air from my lungs and all semblance of coherent thought from my mind. Everything was blurry, but I think I saw the Helix dive in my direction. I know I heard the click of a gun and I felt someone pull my head up by my hair and touch the muzzle to my temple. After that, nothing.

I woke up in my worst nightmare. I was locked up in a cage. It was small enough to fit inside a room and large enough to accommodate a few people. I don't know how long I waited. The room had no windows, so I didn't know what time it was, if it was still day or night had fallen already. I know I waited a long time, my back hurting from hitting the building's sidewall so hard. After what it felt like hours, the room's door opened and a squat man with thick shoulders and square jaw entered. He was followed by a woman in a gray pantsuit and two classic bodyguards in gray overcoats, both carrying black sticks. He spent a few moments looking at me from behind the bars, a puzzled look on his face. It was obvious he had never seen an Avian before. I was already huddled in the farthest corner of the cage, but I tried to curl up in a feather ball when he opened the door and entered, leaving it opened behind him. Suddenly, I saw an opening and I sprung to the door, trying to escape, but that man was fast. He grabbed me by a wing. His followers also grabbed me and they soon had me immobilized belly down on the floor. The woman with them gave something to the boss, a metal case. I heard the snapping of the lock being released. One of the men grabbed my head and pushed it against the floor holding it firmly so I couldn't move it. Then, something touched the nape of my neck and the world exploded around me and everything imploded inside me. I felt like a cartoon character with a bomb in its belly. The bomb goes off; the character is blown to pieces that fall back together again right away. The men let go of me after that. Tentatively, I touched the nape of my neck. Something round was sticking out of it, tender and throbbing. They turned around, stepped out of the cage and made to leave. They were almost at the door of the room when the woman turned back and looked at me with an unsettling intensity in her eyes. It reminded me of Emma. She retraced her own steps and touched the bars, looking directly at me, as if trying to yank everything I had in my mind with a mental hook. I used a trick Emma had taught me before leaving for the mission.

"If anything goes wrong and you face a psionic, picture a brick wall in your head and concentrate on it, Tweety Bird," she said, calling me by my nickname for the first time. "Count the bricks, apply mortar. The psionic will try to tear it down. Fix it! Put the bricks back up. Depending on the psionic's power and on your own strength of will, it might withstand the attack."

I felt that was exactly the case, so I built the brick wall and focused all my will power on it. I couldn't let that bitch unveil my origins. If they discovered who I was, I would become an even more valuable hostage. I couldn't let that happen.

The woman concentrated harder, but couldn't make the wall collapse. She called the one in charge and whispered something in his ear. He looked at me and picked up something that looked like a small garage door remote control that fit in the palm of his hand from his pocket.

"The lady here says you have information you don't want to share with us," he said. "And you are in pains to keep your secret intact." He looked at the small device in his hand. "In pains..." He looked back at me. I had the feeling something very bad was about to happen. "Let's see how long you can keep up with your little mind game."

The man pointed the black remote at me and pressed a button. I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach, only the fist hit me and penetrated my guts, grabbing whatever I had inside and twisting. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't swallow, everything blew up in a ball of fire in front of my eyes and a sharp pain shot up from my knotted belly directly to my brain, making every vein in it swell up and pound inside my skull. I don't know how long it really lasted. I know it felt like a hundred years.

After he released the remote, the pain subsided. I was panting on the floor, curled up in a fetal position, my knees pressed tightly against my chin, trying to breathe all the air I couldn't catch into my lungs while he was hitting the remote, when I felt the psionic's mind probe poking into my head. I kept the brick wall up.

I saw the woman eye the man and shake her head. He cocked an eyebrow, pointed the remote at me and pressed the button again. Now, I was ready. I knew what was coming my way. What I didn't know was that the pain escalated. Honestly, I don't know how, but I kept the brick wall up. The man hit the button; I knotted myself on the floor, the psionic pounded at the brick wall. One, two, three, four, five times... My head felt ready to explode... On nine, I lost count... I was this close to a stroke. Then, I felt a presence in my mind, behind the brick wall. Two consciousnesses were there, with me. One was Emma, the other I didn't know. I only know they somehow numbed me to the pain of the hits. They didn't eliminate it, but they managed to alleviate it a bit. I could look at the man and the woman. I know Emma and the other entity recognized the man and, through my shaken mind, they started sending him an image, a notion. The hits started to take a little longer to come, as if the man hesitated. He finally stopped and stalked out of the cage room, pushing the woman ahead of him and barking at her for being unable to extract the information he wanted from my head. The presences, Emma and the other one, withdrew from my mind. I let the wall crumble and passed out.

I woke up parched. There was no water in the cage and no one I could ask for some. I was locked in a cage, which was locked in a room. I still felt my head heavy, my guts twisted and tender. I crawled to the farthest corner of the cage and huddled there, closing my wings around myself like a ball of feathers. I tried to forget thirst and hunger, and I tried not to think about rescue or escape. If the chance arose, I'd take it, but I wouldn't kid myself and cling on to false hope. It would only make me desperate and I had to keep my wits about me.

I have no idea how long I waited there, all curled up inside my wings. I know I dozed off a few times, my head on my knees. I only peeked out of the feather ball when I heard the door of the room click open. I hoped they had remembered to feed me and, more important, give me some water, but what came into the room was something hideous. I know I am a conspicuous feral. Different from other mutants I came to know, my mutation is very visible. The half-animal that entered the room was even worse. It was like an upright walking lizard or toad. Its skin was greenish, scaly, its hands had long black nails similar to my talons, and it had a darting yellow tongue with a round point. It looked gooey, slimy. The animal was wearing baggy khakis, a loose white shirt and a lab coat.

The thing shuffled to the bars and looked in. I was peering from inside my wings and I saw it open the cage's padlock and enter. It came closer and I flew up to the top bars of the cage, my hands clenched into claws. Suddenly, the same pain that had almost ripped me apart when Square Jaw pressed the button of the remote hit me again and I fell at the lizard's feet, breathing hard and managing only to stand on all fours. That thing laughed! It laughed loud, a cackling noise that sent shivers up my spine.

"You can't fight back, can you?" that thing said. "All your fighting capacity is directly linked to your mutation." It laughed harder. "You can't even fight back as a human would! The sub-gov kicks in!" It bent down and touched the thing sticking out of my neck. In the same motion, it pulled me up by the scruff of my neck. Its tongue darted out of its mouth, wrapped itself around my throat and slammed me against the back bars. My hands became claws on survival instinct alone, but the punishment was immediate. The pain shot one more time from my gut to my brain and I finally understood there was no fighting back, there was no escape, nowhere to run. With me hanging from its tongue, my back against the bars and my wings spread, the thing pulled up two pairs of handcuffs from the back pocket of its trousers. The tongue tightened around my neck, cutting off my air supply. As I fought for breath, the thing cuffed my wrists to the cage bars. The tongue uncoiled itself from my neck and I fell on my feet, my hands secured to the bars.

That thing took a couple of steps back and looked at me. The lecherous look on its face left little doubt to what was to come. I was terrified. I had never been with a man before. I had had my first sexual experience only a month or so before, with Alli. We were still in the tentative stages of our relationship, still getting comfortable with each other. Now, that lizard's tongue, sticky, gooey and acidic, licked its lips and shot from its mouth, coiling around my bra and yanking it off. The tongue traveled from my chest to my belly, and back again, smearing my breasts with the goo it dripped. Everywhere it touched, a red welt showed on my skin, angry and burning. The thing slurped the tongue back, smacked its lips and came closer, grabbing the bars, sandwiching my body between its own and the back bars. The thing ripped its shirt open so its bare chest rubbed against mine. It was cold and clammy and scaly. Its hands were exploring my body and I turned my head away, trying to evade the stench of its breath. I couldn't. The lizard grabbed my chin, forced my lips open and inserted its tongue into my mouth. It was gagging! I threw up as soon as it took its tongue out of my mouth. It didn't disgust the lizard. On the contrary. That monster ripped my leggings with its talons, leaving me naked against the bars. I've never felt so humiliated, so embarrassed in my life. I wanted to cover myself. I tried clamping my legs shut, but that beast was strong. It held my thighs with its hands and forced them open. I didn't want to feel, I didn't want to see, I didn't want to think...

I wasn't there anymore. I thought I was dissociating, separating my conscious mind from my body, but that wasn't the case. There was someone or something with me and it was GOOD. It was rescue, salvation. I could see myself down below, in that lizard's hands, its body entering mine. Only, I wasn't there at all. There was somebody there, turning me away from my own horror and pulling me up and out of that cage. A hole opened on the room's ceiling, letting light and sky in. The being with me, a mix of eagle and lion, took me inside its beak for I wasn't a flying woman anymore, I was a falcon, a complete bird. It took me away from that place, releasing me when we were airborne. The griffin flew with me, held me, stayed with me all the time, never letting go of me.

After a long while, it gently took me back to my own body. It made me close my eyes, so I wouldn't see myself as I was placed again in my body. Once inside, the griffin turned into the image of a woman with long black hair and Native-American attire. I became my own image, too. The woman hugged me and made me lie on her lap, rocking me gently until I slept. I don't know how long I was out, but I knew she was with me and as long as she was with me, I was safe. I felt her soft hands stroking my wings, smoothing my feathers. She never let go of me, not for a moment.

When she finally released me, I came to my senses to find myself in the arms of a big blond man in a crew cut. I could barely beg for water. I honestly thought I was about to die of thirst. A smaller guy came into the cage. He wrapped me in a blanket and the big man gave me water. I wanted to swallow the whole bottle in a single gulp, but he didn't let me. He forced me to drink slowly, a drop at a time, until I could slow down on my own.

I was filthy, covered in blood and slime, among other disgusting things, but that didn't stop them from holding me tight. They said Donna Gryphon sent me her love. I didn't know a Donna Gryphon, but the name rang a bell. I had met a GryphonLady on the Internet, and I suspected she was a mutant herself, looking for other mutants. She sounded kind and wise, but on the Internet, nobody really knows anybody. They also said they would reunite me with my Mutant X friends. When they were about to pick me up and take me out of the cage, the door opened and a slim man in a black pinstripe suit entered. He had the most unusual white straight hair, quite long. I looked at him and thought immediately of Andy Warhol, the painter. He was followed by Square Jaw, another woman in a gray power suit, and a few obvious bodyguards. The lizard monster that had almost mauled me came running on their tracks, entered the cage, almost knocked White Hair off his feet and tried to pull me away from Jim. I know now it was Jim Ellison who had me. I was terrified. I clung to Jim as my last hope of safety. Blair, I know now who Blair Sandburgh is, was uncharacteristically furious. He punched the lizard in the stomach, slammed it against the bars and cuffed it with the same handcuffs that had held me.

There was not a shadow of a doubt who was in charge there. White Hair was boss and all others cowed before him. He faced Square Jaw and asked, "What have you done to my feral?" Square Jaw stammered, he was clearly afraid of White Hair. The lizard answered. "He gave her to me, she is mine now!" Even though he hardly moved a muscle, it was obvious White Hair wasn't happy with his underling's performance. The explanation Square Jaw gave him for hitting my neck implant wasn't at all satisfactory. First off, he minimized the amount of jolts he gave me, he said "a couple of times". White Hair read the counter on the remote. It said seventeen times. I couldn't believe it! I should have stroked out! Thanks to Emma and the other entity, the same who had taken me off my body while the lizard was raping me, I hadn't! I still could move and think and be rational.

White Hair pulled up another remote from his jacket pocket, pointed it to Square Jaw and pressed the button. I saw Square Jaw keel over, fall on his knees and heave. By the third button pressing, the Jaw was vomiting bile. By the sixth, I thought he was about to lose control of his bladder and bowels.

White Hair stopped hitting Square Jaw's remote, made the man pick me up gently and carry me away from the cage. I was taken to an infirmary with a full bathroom next to it. I was allowed a shower, then the acid burns all over my skin were sprayed with salve and a doctor examined me. From my waist down, that lizard had shredded me to ribbons. I would need corrective plastic surgery to minimize the damage that thing had caused me. I couldn't even walk right. The doctor did what he could to patch me up and stop the bleeding, but I would need extra medical care they couldn't provide. After I was medicated, I was given a change of clothes, pants and a T-shirt I tore in the back to pass my wings through.

When I was wolfing down some food they gave me, there was a commotion around the place. People were running everywhere. Something was going on. Two of White Hair's bodyguards came to the infirmary and picked me up, dragging me down to the building's main entrance, the one leading to a lawn inside the concrete wall surrounding the plant. They stopped up the steps. White Hair was there, as was Square Jaw, another woman at his side. Down on the lawn, I could see my uncle. He was furious, his countenance more somber than the black clothes he was wearing. The whole team was there, just behind him. Standing to his right and his left, were a tall, skinny man looking the same age or slightly older than my uncle, and the same woman! The woman with the long black hair who had held me all through the night! She was there, only she was wearing simple white jeans and a blue peasant top with embroideries. It was the same woman!

The two bands were eyeing each other. Soon, all hell would break loose. I felt a slight pull towards the woman, whose hand was discreetly moving as if she was dragging me to her. The bodyguard to my right released my arm and turned to Square Jaw. The bodyguard to my left still had me, but was paying attention to the showdown. That was my chance. Without really thinking, I ripped his face with my talons. He let go of me and I flapped my wings directly to where my uncle and the woman were standing. I made it halfway through but fell on the ground writhing as the now familiar pain shot up from my belly to my head. This time I was sure I would stroke out. Only I heard my uncle's voice far away shouting, "Now, Mac!" and the pain stopped suddenly. I crawled in the voice's direction and I felt a hand pull me up to my feet. There was no time for thought or words. My uncle was holding me by the shoulders and shouting at me, "Fly away! As high as you can!" I just obeyed and took off, flying up, up, until the whole plant was just a smear on the ground. With my eagle eyes, I could see clearly what was going on down below. I saw Brennan shooting bolts from his hands, Shalimar fighting three goons at the same time, Jesse massing up and protecting Emma, the woman with the long black hair was lifting a goon off the ground and sending him flying to hit the wall full force. The plant's outer perimeter was surrounded by people. The concrete walls were shaking, crumbling, feral mutants were jumping over the debris and attacking the opposing force.

One thing caught my eye. The woman standing next to White Hair shot laser beams from her fingers. She was causing a lot of damage to my friends. From high above, I saw her aim a beam directly at my uncle, who was now fighting one of White Hair's bodyguards. If she aimed true, she would cut him in half. A protective instinct took hold of me. I couldn't allow that to happen. I folded my wings on my back and dove talons first straight to the woman. I ripped her arm from shoulder to wrist and I caught White Hair's arm, too. It felt as if I was tearing at something plastic, but I saw him recoil and scream. Before I shot up again, I had reached his flesh for sure.

After that, the fight subsided. The mutants outside the concrete wall poured in and White Hair's forces were grossly outnumbered. They retreated to the building and closed the door, but my uncle wasn't done yet. He had summoned all mutants the Underground had ever helped achieve some measure of safety to help bring down that horror factory. He called on all telekinetics, terraformers and botanics. Then, he had the sonics announce that the building would be leveled. I saw White Hair and his gang leave from the back entrance. When my uncle was sure the building was empty, he made the telekinetics, the black haired woman among them, blow all windows, skylights and glass doors from the outside in. Then, together with the terraformers, they shook the foundations of the plant until it collapsed in a heap of broken concrete, glass and twisted metal. The terraformers took over and the ground opened in a crater that closed itself over the debris. Only the naked soil remained. The botanics, then, grew a grove where the Foundation had once stood as a solid, stately building. Nothing denounced its existence. The telepaths and telempaths scanned the area, broadcasting a mind-fuzzing wave that dimmed the memories of the people around the city, making the Breedlove Foundation a distant memory to all.

I watched it from high above. I was still flying around the perimeter when I heard a long and piercing whistle. It called me down. I had to respond, even if I wasn't really thinking straight. The whistle was the falconer's call. The falcon had to obey. I folded my wings again and dove directly to the lawn, landing on a tree limb a little apart from the group gathered there. I was scared and hurting, and I wanted back to the nest. My uncle motioned to the black haired woman and she took a few steps towards me. She was part of me; she was my sister, my twin, my equal, my perfect counterpart. There was nothing erotic in the surge of love and gratitude I felt for her. That I felt for Alli, my life partner. That was earthly love and desire, flesh and skin and touch. What I felt for the black haired woman was a thing of the soul, of the spirit, of my heart of hearts. I knew we would be friends for life, no matter what, good or bad, befell us. I had found my other half.

I snatched the woman from the ground and took off with her, my arms wrapped around her.

"Are you scared?"

"No."

"I won't drop you. Ever."

"I know."

We flew directly to Sanctuary, and I dove into the holowall concealing the hangar entrance. The woman never flinched when it looked like we would smash against the mountainside. I landed inside the hangar a few minutes before the Helix, and I let go of her. She came to me and I staggered to her. The battle, the flight and her weight had made me bleed again between my legs. I fell on my knees and she pulled me to a corner, away from the incoming Double Helix. I left a trail of blood on the floor. She held me and called for help. I was shaking and going into shock. My uncle came running and picked me up. It is not hard, since I weight just 70 pounds. I clung to him and could only babble, "I botched it... I botched it..."

"No, you didn't," he said firmly. "Three kids will have a chance at life thanks to you. And we put that monstrosity down to pasture forever and ever, amen."

My head fell on his shoulder and I don't remember anything else, until I came to on the MedLab exam chair, hurting like hell from the waist down, where my uncle had sewn me back together again. The black haired woman was sitting next to me.

"How do you feel?"

"Hurts."

"I know. I can feel some of it."

"I know you can, I'm sorry.

"Don't be. Just get better fast."

"Your name is Donna."

"And yours is Angela."

Something flew from her to me and I fell asleep again. When I woke up, I wasn't hurting so bad, and Donna wasn't there anymore.

We never let go of each other again. Alli was jealous, I know, but she didn't have any reason, really. I didn't love Donna as a lover. I loved her as I loved myself. Because she was me and I was her. We had to communicate every day, either through emails or message boards or phone calls or videoconferences. I felt everything she felt, every joy, every sorrow. And she felt what I felt, too. She howled with me when Alli was killed in a fire. I cried with her when she broke up with Blair. She bled with me when I slashed my wrists. My heart filled with joy together with hers when she found true love in my uncle.

Now, Donna was dead.

I never felt so utterly, completely, irredeemably alone in my life. And I know I'll never feel any different. I had been two, now I was one. That was the real cage, loneliness, abandonment, darkness.

Donna was dead, and a large piece of me died with her.

FIRST, DO NO HARM

"What exactly went wrong?"

From his massive rosewood desk, the blue Caribbean ocean gleaming behind his high-backed chair, Oliver St. Clair was not pleased. He looked at his second-in-command, head of the scientific aspects of his cover operation, Dr. Kenneth Harrison, former director of Genomex itself, and pondered. Harrison had his own agenda, of course, and that agenda included extracting revenge from his ex-employer, Mason Eckhart, who had recently been a guest at the best St. Mallots resort with his wife and daughter. And bodyguards, let's not forget that.

When Eckhart had booked two bungalows in the resort, they had taken pains to hide any evidence of the Final Solution operation. Harrison and Hobson stayed out of sight, security was doubled on the hidden special wards and laboratories, instructions on confidentiality were reinforced. And the Vault inside the mountain had been sealed off, the staff, all volunteers, of course, staying in. Operations would proceed as scheduled, but under maximum security status.

Now, Harrison was sitting across Oliver's desk, looking obviously uncomfortable. Thomasina Hobson, his administration assistant and lover, as the gossip network buzzing around the resort and healthcare operations had it, her permanently plastered smile duly sewn to her mouth, sat next to him and looked at Oliver with cold eyes that belied her lips. Besides working for Harrison, Hobson was in charge of locating known mutants arriving at the resort, and organizing their disposal as guinea pigs on Oliver's Final Solution. They would most likely die in the island's top notch hospital and the death certificate would list food poisoning, anaphylactic shock due to a devastating allergic reaction, some unforeseen tropical disease, anything. In truth, they would perish of plague, specially engineered to affect only genetically altered people. People... ha! Freaks. They would be studied and, then, discarded. The island's independent state legislation allowed that.

"What did you miss?"

Oliver's voice never wavered from its measured baritone, carefully pitched to unsettle or allure his listener. In many ways, Oliver reminded Ken Harrison of Eckhart. The same composure, the same poise... not quite the same way with words, but close enough. Harrison would never be free from those imposing, hieratic figures. He fidgeted on his seat, but wouldn't give Oliver the satisfaction of seeing him run a finger between his collar and neck, as if it were too tight. Maybe he could even salvage the situation. He had a few aces up his sleeve for such difficult occasions. "All security measures were taken to prevent compromising of the operation. The doctored lei would be normally used because we figured the only mutants in Eckhart's party, if any, would be one of his bodyguards, and he goes through several of them at any given time."

"You figured he would have left the bodyguard here?"

"The Eckhart I knew would have done that. The medical facilities here are famous worldwide."

"He didn't leave the bodyguard here. He fled the country risking an international incident." Oliver's voice remained measured, and he looked directly to Harrison with his unsettling fixed stare that had on his interlocutors the same effect a rattlesnake had on a bird. "St. Mallots is an independent republic."

"One you purchased to use as a spring board for your private revenge", thoughtThomasina Hobson. "We did not have all the information," she offered. "You see, we didn't know Catherine Eckhart was, actually, Catherine Hartman Eckhart."

"And that makes a difference because...?"

"Upon further research, we found out Catherine's mother to be one Danielle Hartman," explained Harrison. "She was one of the first Genomex aberrations to be created, preceding my admission to the company by many years. In fact, the creation of Danielle Hartman precedes even the arrival of Adam Kane at Genomex."

"Danielle Hartman had an affair with Adam. She also had an affair with Mason Eckhart before Incident X," Thomasina went on. "It is believed that this fact was a decisive point in Incident X happening at all." That had been hallway radio talk for years at Genomex. "Catherine's mere existence was unknown, until Danielle resurfaced after many years missing. For a while after that, Adam Kane believed Catherine was his own daughter. It is now proved she was a result of Danielle's encounter with Eckhart, not Kane."

"What kind of anomaly was this Danielle? And what kind is this Catherine?"

"They are both molecular stealths, meaning they have the power of invisibility."

Oliver was somber. "As you know yourself, Dr. Harrison, much better than I do, we aren't ready yet to release the bacteria in the wide world. We are still in the final, confined stages of the experiment, testing the spread of the disease in the island's monitored environment." Oliver St. Clair stood up and leaned on his antique rosewood desk. "I don't want to repeat my past mistakes with the premature release of the cladosporium and the rebirth of the Breedlove Foundation. Adam Kane has already thwarted my plans twice now. The fact that these mutants were spirited away from this island and taken to another research facility could spell failure to this whole operation."

"The rebirth of the Breedlove Foundation?" Thomasina was puzzled.

Harrison cleared his throat. "Years after Paul Breedlove's death, his foundation for reproduction research was floundering. Mr. St. Clair funded the renovations and injected cash into new research, dedicated to other microorganisms such as variola virus, causing small pox, mycobacterium leprae, the leprosy bacillus, and our own Y pestis, which proved to be the most promising. The research involved babies acquired by less than licit methods. Kane was informed, and he and his gang destroyed the place. Fortunately, the research could be transferred here and it proceeded, resulting in our own variation of plague."

"Did Eckhart have anything to do with it?"

"Only peripherally. He wasn't informed of the whole nature of the Foundation's lab work. He was involved in the destruction of the plant, however. One of Kane's associates was captured and, let's say, mistreated while in custody, waiting to be delivered to the GSA. Eckhart tried to use the anomaly as bait to lure Kane to a precipitous rescue, but Kane outmaneuvered him."

"As you see, Miss Hobson, I have invested a lot of time, effort and money on this project." Oliver's voice dropped even lower in pitch. "I will not accept a less than thorough investigation on the misstep that now jeopardizes it."

The smile never wavered from Thomasina's face, but beads of sweat glistened on her forehead. Harrison was openly fidgeting in his chair. "I am sure I can compensate you for this setback, Mr. St. Clair. If you could come with us to the Vault, there is something I want to show you."

The Vault was the more informal name of the Psionic Control Project's Laboratory. It could be reached through a series of hallways starting in the basement of St. Mallots's hospital main building and burying deep into the mountain behind it. The original caves, first discovered and used by pirates since the 18th century were now converted into high tech facilities. Harrison, Thomasina and Oliver drove to the hospital and, there, took the elevator to the deepest sublevel. A small electric cart was already waiting for them. They boarded the cart and started down the long underground thoroughfare until it reached the larger inner road crisscrossed by catwalks. More than ever, it reminded Oliver of The Time Tunnel.

Reaching the Vault proper, Harrison turned to Oliver. "I have arranged a demonstration for you."

One of the "storage" cells was opened and a female subject fetched. She was dressed in a white hospital gown only, which only accentuated her squalidness. Her head was shaved bald, a subdermal-governor clearly sticking from her neck. On her skull, seven electrodes had been attached to her skin, the small metal points gleaming in the white light. The woman was clearly not in touch with reality. Her green eyes vacant and unfocused, wandering all around the large cave, her head lolling and apparently incapable of standing upright on her neck, she whispered and babbled, talking to people only she could see, answering voices only she could hear. Her motor capabilities had been obviously compromised, she had to be supported and her hands and arms, thin as if made of matchsticks, trashed, moving absently and without purpose.

The woman was taken to the sensory deprivation tank entrance, the hospital gown removed. The nurses lifted her up by the armpits and legs, lowering her into the containment suit. She didn't resist, lost in a world of her own. Brain scan electrodes were attached to her skull implants. Other electrodes were glued to her chest, monitoring her heartbeat. A BP band was tied around her arm. Tubes were inserted in her inner elbow veins, catheters introduced in her urethra and anus. When she was pronounced ready, the front half of the containment suit was lowered, sealing the woman into the man-shaped box. It turned around on its axis, the tank was filled up with lukewarm water, allowing the suit to float almost free, and the woman was cut off from the rest of the world. She now had only her own ghosts for company.

A young man in jeans and white shirt carefully approached Harrison, Thomasina and Oliver. The good doctor smiled at him. "Julian, this is Oliver St. Clair."

The young man, Julian, accepted the hand Oliver offered him as if accepting the handshake of a saint. "Señor St. Clair, it is a pleasure and an honor to meet you." He was in awe of the man. "My family owes much to you. The whole island population does. What you have done for us in terms of education, housing, and health care can never be repaid." Julian beamed. "If not for you, I myself wouldn't have graduated."

"Julian graduated honra cum laude in computer science." Harrison beamed, too. "And he is completely human. We have engaged his services for this demonstration." The doctor picked up the writing pad the young man offered him. "Subject is recorded as a psionic telecyber of great strength, capable of controlling all cybernetic intelligent machinery with the power of its mind. Are we ready?"

"Absolutely, doctor Harrison."

Julian sat at a stand-alone computer terminal, independent of any connections to intranets or the Internet. He put on a crown-like contraption and made himself comfortable, looking intently at the monitor.

Harrison nodded to the technician operating the tank's controls. She fidgeted with the keyboards and touch screen panels, pushed a few buttons, turned a few switches, adjusted a small satellite dish directed to the antenna protruding from the tank and nodded back.

Harrison pressed a large green button.

Julian's eyes acquired a mechanic glow, the irises turning a metallic shade of silver and lighting up like lamps. The computer terminal lit up like a Christmas tree as software windows popped up on the screen, icons, symbols, and equations exploded like fireworks.

"He can open and control any kind of software," explained Harrison. "Now comes the best part." He motioned to another tech holding a cable-modem connection in his hand. The man quickly linked the computer to the Internet. "Julian can now navigate through the information highway in his cyberbody. A projection of his conscience now can visit all the sites existing in the World Wide Web. And make changes to his liking."

"He is a living computer virus," laughed Thomasina.

"Doctor Harrison, the subject's body temperature is dangerously high," informed the tank technician.

"Let's end the demonstration, then. I don't want to lose this specimen."

"Congratulations, Dr. Harrison." Oliver allowed himself a smile. "Different from the Final Solution, the Psionics Control seems to be making progress."

Harrison rocked on the balls of his feet. "Thank you very much, Oliv... I mean, Mr. St. Clair. We still have a problem, though. One of the side effects of datura is hyperthermia. In laymen's words, the subjects cook up inside." The doctor sighed. "We are working on that."

"Dr. Harrison?" the head nurse called. "The OB-GYN wants to talk to you."

"OB-GYN? Did you call one from the hospital?"

"Yes, Mr. St. Clair. One of the female subjects is in the early stages of pregnancy. We have to terminate it, of course! We will arrange for curettage. Ah, Dr. Salazar!"

The short man in a beard shook hands with Harrison and Oliver. "Gentlemen..." He, then, took Thomasina's hand and kissed it. "Miss Hobson..."

"Your report, doctor." Harrison would have barked if he could.

"The abortion will be performed shortly. The fact that you forbade anesthetics will make my job that much harder, though. We have to restrain the subject firmly. It will fight hard." Salazar pursed his lips. "The subject is still rational; it looks like it is aware of its situation. You must take precautions, for if your records are correct, it will try and protect the offspring."

"Anesthetics could interfere with the psychoactive drugs we are currently studying." Harrison turned to the head nurse. "No painkillers, either, nothing that could alter the levels of serotonin and adrenaline in the subjects system."

"Do you think it is possible, doctor?"

"The subject being aware of its circumstances, Salazar? Its level of consciousness so close to the surface?"

"Yes, I've read its file. The dosage of psycho inducing drugs was quite high and the onset of psychosis should be complete by now."

"It really should, but this subject is proving to be a challenge."

MEMORY LINGERS

Emma's knocking on the door, announcing the Helix's imminent arrival startled Adam. A part of his mind was dedicated to a conversation being replayed over and over in his head, even as he laid on Donna's bed, alert after sleeping much less than Emma would have thought possible after a mind blast and her particular brand of hypnotic suggestion.

Adam could see Mason's face, drawn and gaunt, replacing Angela's on the monitor. It had taken all his considerable self-control not to punch the screen with his fist. Of all people in the billions who inhabited this wretched planet, Eckhart was the last one he wanted to see then and there. Donna's loss was an open wound and Mason's face on the screen poured salt over it. Mason had his Rebecca safely tucked under his protection, nothing could harm her! His Donna, on the other hand, had been vulnerable to God knew who. Adam had clenched his fist to the point where his knuckles were white and almost poking out of his skin. After Mason started speaking, Adam was glad he didn't break the screen before he had even begun.

Now, while the conversation unfolded in his head yet again, Adam had a world map spread open in his mind. From Greenwich and the Equator, he traced the coordinates spilled by that felon, Muñiz, directly to a small island Northeast of Aruba...

"What can you possibly want from me now, Mason?"

"Your help."

"That's new."

"Adam, this is not the time for verbal fencing."

"Agreed. I can't help anybody right now, Mason. Why don't you call April Dancer?" Adam's hand reached for the power button.

"No, wait!" Mason's vehemence gave Adam pause, made him pull away his hand.

"April is not a scientist with your specialties. I need your specialties. Someone important to both of us has need of your abilities."

"What is going on?"

"Black Death. Catherine is fighting for her life against Black Death, and losing." Mason pursed his lips. "Adam, Catherine thought -thinks- highly of you. You are possibly her last hope."

Plague? How could Catherine catch plague? "Mason, calm down. Plague is treatable!" No wonder Eckhart looked ready to break down. "How could she catch it?"

"No one is really sure, but she may have been intentionally infected." With a hand movement, Mason Eckhart called Angela to share the conference and opened the camera angle to include her. "This strain of plague is not responding to treatment."

"Mr. Eckhart came to AR&D and asked for my help. His physician, Dr. Prodana, and I have been trying all known antibiotics, one by one. We've already tried streptomycin sulfate, tetracyclin and cloranphenicol. We are now trying Garamycin."

Mason... invited Angela? If he had threatened, harmed her in any way, Adam would have his liver. But no... If he knew his niece, she would come willingly and help in any way she could. "Was there no response at all?"

"The antibiotics buy the patients some time. There is a remission, but within 24 to 36 hours of treatment, the patients relapse."

Adam's brain wheels started rolling faster. "If there is a possibility of intentional infection, there is also the possibility that this strain was engineered, so it might be resistant to most known antibiotics." He leaned closer to the screen. "You say 'patients'? Isn't it just Catherine?"

"One of my bodyguards, another Genomex child, was also infected," Mason interfered. "He seems to be faring even worse than Catherine."

"It appears to have been designed to affect Genomex mutants only," added Angela.

Adam looked puzzled. "When did it start?"

"About a week ago."

"Any ideas on the transmission agent?"

"Yes, Dr. Fontenelle was able to see puncture marks on Catherine's and the agent's necks."

"Fleabites?"

Angela shook her head. "Doctored lei."

"Lei?"

"We were on vacation," informed Mason. "Catherine fell sick two days after we arrived in Venezuela."

Adam did a double take at the mention of the South-American nation. A coincidence? Adam Kane had never believed in coincidences. "Where exactly, Mason?"

"St. Mallots Island."

St. Mallots Island was located at the exact coordinates in the flight manifest of the plane that took Donna away forever.

The Helix was on autopilot, hovering some four feet above Donna Gryphon's converted warehouse building's roof, its back hatch open. Jesse Kilmartin helped Emma DeLauro board the plane and offered his hand to help Adam up, something he usually wouldn't do. The older man was fit enough to climb up swiftly without any help, but Jesse's offered hand was a token of friendship and support in an hour of grief, and Adam read the sign perfectly. He accepted the offer and took a second to look into Jesse's eyes before hopping up the plane.

"Course laid in for Sanctuary," informed Jesse, back on the pilot's seat.

"We're not going to Sanctuary. We will go directly to St. Kats." Adam sat on the computer terminal to the right of the craft. "Did you gather the information I asked on St. Mallots island?"

"It's all there, on a shared file. You can retrieve it from my station." Jesse fidgeted with the commands and looked back to make sure Emma had her seatbelt snuggly buckled. "I can give you the highlights."

"Go ahead."

"St. Mallots was a den of pirates in the eighteenth century. The island's relative position, the mountains and natural caves, the bay with deep and calm waters made it ideal to defend against the attacks of the Spaniard armada. It is said there are still treasures to be found deep in the caves." Jesse fidgeted with the controls and the craft took off. "In the early twentieth century, the island was granted independency, but became a Venezuelan protectorate."

"I've always enjoyed my History classes, Jess," said Emma. "Go on."

"It is now a tax haven and tourist tropical paradise. In the early 1980s, a big American conglomerate, with several branches around the world, transferred its headquarters there, officially for tax reasons."

Adam lifted his eyes from the computer screen. "I'm interested in the unofficial reason."

"It is said the company's tycoon simply bought the island for himself, turning it into his own private republic. There is a puppet government, but he is the boss and no mistake. He built the resort and casino, and made the island famous in the tourism business, with boat races, golf tournaments, great shows, the works. But the island isn't famous just for entertainment and fun. He also built a top notch Medical Research and Care Center, renowned worldwide for its cutting edge work on epidemic and tropical diseases. It has the patent for a bunch of vaccines and drugs."

"St. Clair Pharmaceuticals." Adam bit his upper lip.

"You know it?"

"I know of it. When I was still in Stanford, many headhunters scourged the place for promising students. They offered positions in big companies. I was approached by several of them and, ultimately, it got down to two companies. One was Genomex, which I chose. The other was St. Clair Pharm. I opted for Genomex because of the genetics research it was doing and because of Paul Breedlove. I wanted to work with him."

Jesse nodded from the control seat. "Six degrees of separation, Adam."

"What do you mean?"

"You were approached by St. Clair Pharm scouts, but chose Genomex instead. The wife of Oliver St. Clair, head of the company, Leslie, was Breedlove's patient. They wanted a child, Breedlove promised them one, but couldn't deliver. Open the file, it is pretty gruesome."

"Six degrees of separation... and a grudge."

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN

"Is it really you? Did you come to save me from the aliens?"

The girl was running a high fever, her eyes sunken on her face, her lips cracked and swollen. Her physical condition was deteriorating fast and black spots were showing on her fingers and toes. Her crotch and armpits were covered in nasty, obviously painful buboes.

Angela Fontenelle approached the bed with an instrument tray, laid it on a side table and pulled a fine-needled syringe from the kidney bowl. While Adam held the kid's shoulders, the Avian doctor and Elise Prodana spread her legs and proceeded to aspirate a bubo for yet another culture. Samihah Shah would have her hands full, but as for Angela and Elise, there was little more they could do. All the antibiotics were proving useless; the effect of garamicyn was already waning.

"Please, Adam, don't let them do that to me! It hurts! They're aliens!" The girl fought to free herself from Adam's grasp and tried to kick the doctors away. "They're here to drain my spinal fluid! Remember? I know about the spinal fluid-drinking aliens! They're back!"

"Calm down, Catherine. They are not aliens."

"They are, too! They are, too! Look at her!" And she pointed to Angela, misshapen and bent, clad in an ill-fitting hazmat suit. The look on the doctor's face was drawn and somber. She was loath to inflict any more pain to the girl, but the cultures were absolutely necessary to determine the progression of the bacteria and its relation to the antibiotics in use. The Avian called a nurse to help hold the girl. Catherine was so frightened, so full of adrenaline, anesthetics wouldn't work, unless given in massive dosage.

The girl screamed as the needle pierced the bubo and the milky content was drawn into the syringe. It was placed in a secure container. "I'm taking it to Samihah, Adam. The cultures are ready for you."

"I don't want to croak... Am I gonna croak?" Catherine was half sitting up on the bed.

"Not if I can help it."

Samihah Shah's small and improvised office next to St. Kats lab was packed full, with the Iranian microbiologist sitting behind the desk, Angela and Adam on chairs in front and Mason and Rebecca on the two seat couch to the right. The perfume of coffee, brewed Turk-style was heavy in the air.

Blowing into her mug, Angela looked at Adam. Somber, tired and worn, he had not looked directly at anybody since his arrival, just at her and just once, for a long moment. Then they both had averted their eyes, knowing that if they didn't break eye contact, they would both break down and be left incapable of functioning. And, what else was new? They were needed. Another crisis was exploding on their faces. They had work to do.

"I've examined every culture. The bacillus was genetically modified, creating a highly adaptable, highly selective, almost 'intelligent' variation." Adam opened charts on Samihah's desk. "Every time you attack it with a new antibiotic, it changes its genetic structure to elude and escape the medication."

"The dead Breedlove Foundation's research!" exclaimed Mason.

"Exactly."

"That was the experiments the babies were being submitted there, when I rescued them." Angela's eyes were big as saucers.

"First, let me make myself very clear: I've never approved, condoned or was even informed of that line of work. The new Breedlove Foundation was privately owned and conducted its research apart from Genomex." Mason stood up and walked to the desk to look at the charts. "We had nothing to do with it. When you were captured, Dr. Fontenelle, I was called because you were such a unique feral and because Mutant X was clearly involved in the breaking and entering. The Foundation owner wanted to be on my good side, so he called me and offered to place you under GSA's custody."

"And when we were searching for Angela," Adam cut in, "we decrypted most of the Breedlove Foundation's documents and communications. They were studying a bacterium, mycobacterium leprae," he turned to look at Rebecca. "Leprosy, you know." Adam turned back to Samihah. "A virus, variola, smallpox; and a bacillum, Yersinia." He bit his upper lip. "It seems they managed to transfer their data elsewhere before I had the building leveled."

"Mr. Eckhart," Angela turned around, "do you know who owned the Breedlove Foundation?"

"It was part of a conglomerate, but the mother company was..." Mason didn't finish.

"St. Clair Pharmaceuticals."

Rebecca Steyn crossed her legs on the couch. "Then, they have headquarters in St. Mallots Island. I've done some research myself and their facilities are state-of-the-art. There could be more than met the eye there."

"Catherine and, worse, the other patient, Moeller, can't wait for us finding a cure. It is possible St. Clair Pharm either has it already or is well on its way with one. They wouldn't dare test the infection on strange subjects, such as visitors, without an ace up their sleeves."

"I'll try a contact with Oliver St. Clair."

"And accuse him of infecting mutants on purpose?" Adam shook his head. "There's nothing you could do to make him admit it."

"What do you propose, then? I can't let my daughter die." Mason Eckhart, who never gave in to emotion, was almost choking.

"A more subtle approach is necessary and you know it. That's why you called me, Mason." Adam stood up and faced his old enemy in the eyes. "You needed someone who could double as a scientist and field agent. You want me to go there and find out anything that could help Catherine."

"You can't begin to imagine how important she is to me."

"Oh, I can. And I do. I've lost someone very dear to me."

"Is the testosterone competition taking much longer?" asked Rebecca, standing up and taking a few steps, until she stopped behind Angela, next to the desk. "Catherine doesn't have time to spare. What are you doing, besides being obnoxious?"

"I'm going to St. Mallots, Rebecca, of course. I have a few questions of my own."

"You can't simply land on St. Mallots and start asking them, Adam." Angela had a little smile on her lips. That Rebecca Steyn was a piece of work. "It might get suspicious."

"Besides, you are a doctor, a geneticist, not a microbiologist," shot Samihah. "You will need help, technical and as a disguise."

"Dr. Shah," started Mason, "I can't ask you to..."

"I can!" interrupted Rebecca. "We've been friends for a long time, Samihah. You helped me when I needed. Would you help us now?" She reached her hands across the desk and held Samihah's.

"Do you have to ask? I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Then it is settled," said Adam. "And I have a plan." All eyes turned to the Man in Black. "How long have you been widowed, Samihah?"

"Hettar died six years ago. Why?"

Adam's eyes narrowed, he smiled through tight lips, and took the microbiologist's hand from Rebecca. "Samihah Shah, would you give me the honor of being my wife?"

"What?"

"Dr. Fontenelle, to the isolation ward! Dr. Fontenelle, to the isolation ward!"

The intercom blared and the phone rang at the same time. Samihah picked it up with a brisk "Hello" and listened intently, then put the phone back on its cradle and looked up. "Catherine has gone missing."

"I found the nurse on the floor when I was doing my rounds." Elise Prodana looked worried and upset. St. Kats Hospital was her responsibility and she felt she had failed it and let Mason Eckhart down.

The room was in disarray, tables and a chair scattered about, legs up in the air. Security guards, some of them in hazmat suits, denouncing them as mutants, were roaming the place. An orderly helped the nurse sit on the bed, a nasty gash over her right eye. Catherine was nowhere to be seen.

"What happened?" asked Mason.

"I turned around for a second and, when I turned back, the water jar was floating in the air." The nurse was bleeding from the gash. "It hit me hard and I fell. The girl wasn't here anymore."

"Call the ferals! They can find Catherine even if she is in stealth."

"Shalimar is outside, with Brennan, I'll warn her!" Adam made to speak on his commring.

"No!" Samihah's yell made them all stop. "Catherine can infect any mutant who gets too close to her. Right now, this hospital will have to be fully isolated. We don't know who came in contact with her."

Angela was looking at the floor intently. "She was barefoot and her body temperature was quite elevated. I've switched my eyes to infrared, so I can see the prints. Come!"

Her cane tapping, the Avian lead the way, following the prints left by Catherine Eckhart through the hallways and down the stairs. To her bionic eyes searching the floor and the walls where the feverish girl had leaned as she fled monsters and aliens who existed only in her mind, each touch was a pulsing, bright red and yellow stain.

The trail led the group directly to the main entrance, opening to a large lawn and garden surrounding the hospital building. Groups of people, doctors, ambulatory patients and their families, visitors and hospital employees walked down the aisles, enjoying the sunny afternoon. Shalimar and Brennan saw Adam leave the building with the others and perked up. Something was definitely wrong. With nostrils flaring, Shalimar smelled extreme fear emanating from a point in the lawn where there was nothing to be seen. She nudged Brennan and pointed, starting to run in that direction.

Angela scanned the area. "There!" She pointed far ahead, down the grassy path leading to the main gate.

"I can see nothing, just Shal and Brennan!"

"I can see more!" The small woman switched off the field around her head and pulled down the zipper closing her hazmat suit. Stepping out of the silvery fabric, her eyes intently focused on the far end of the garden, the bird woman bent her knees and took off with a leap, flying to the place where a red ghost marked the spot where Catherine was staggering to escape the hospital. The girl, invisible to normal eyes, was approaching a group of people, while Shalimar and Brennan ran in her direction. "Back away!" the Avian shouted.

Leaving Mason, Rebecca and Samihah watching an Avian in flight for the first time, Adam ran after Angela. "Back away!"

"From what?" shouted Brennan, tesla coils flickering from his fingertips. "There's nothing here!"

Shalimar, her own eyes ablaze, pointed somewhere ahead. "Yes, there is! The fear smell is coming from there! Zap it!"

"I can't zap what I can't see!"

"Catherine is in stealth! Make these people back away!" Adam was running as fast as he could, with two women behind him and Mason Eckhart further back.

The Avian was hovering over the spot, flapping her wings and flashing her eyes. Suddenly, she plunged from the sky, aiming at nothing, as if her intention was to splatter herself on the ground. A split second before the crash, she grabbed... air... and struggled with it, shooting back up. A form started to flicker in her arms, the image of a young woman, her hair flaying as she shook her head and fought to escape the falcon woman's firm grip.

The girl appeared and vanished in Angela's arms, as the effort robbed her of control over her powers. The bird woman was having a hard time keeping her prey up in the air. She was also losing control of the flight and, tangled together, they fell on the ground rolling as Adam and the women reached them. The older man pulled a pistol from his back and pointed, but the girl was flickering too much, making it impossible to aim. Angela's hand shot out and he gave her the gun. With a knee pinning the girl's blinking body to the ground, the falcon touched the muzzle to the nape of her neck and fired. With a scream, the girl turned completely visible and went limp.

"You killed her!"

"No, it is a compact sub-gov gun," answered Angela, breathing hard from her struggle with Catherine.

Adam's hand stopped Mason. "Don't worry, this sub-gov is a power inhibitor which causes no pain. No pain, Mason!" He knelt by the girl, lying unconscious in Angela's lap, with Rebecca kneeling next to him and Samihah calling for help. Mason was giving instructions. Only humans could get anywhere near Catherine. With a start, Adam looked at Angela. Reaching with his fingers, he pulled the Avian's chin up and made her look at him. "You've been infected."

"Maybe, maybe not. I'm a hybrid, not a mutant. My genes are stable."

"All I know is the stakes are now even higher."

EL SID

According to the notes on Thomasina Hobson's clipboard, the super VIP guest was one Datuk Alif Sharfan bin Muhammad, a tycoon from Malaysia, owner of several freight ships, currently mixing up business with pleasure. While on honeymoon with his second wife, Sid Alif, as he should be addressed, had come to the island resort to sign a transport contract with Mr. St. Clair, a very big contract.

Oliver had laid down his honored guest's demands, from the simplest to the most complex: his bungalow suite should be the most secluded and discreet one, as a practicing Muslim, the gentleman did not approve of alcoholic beverages, no smoking in his presence. A selection of fruits and teas should be always available, a special brand of coffee for Turkish brewing, and most of all, total privacy. No one should intrude on the couple without express invitation. All in all, very simple requests, nothing fancy. In Thomasina's mind, simplicity was the marking of class. The more complicated the demands, the newer the money was. That guest was classy all right!

Thomasina plastered a smile on her face, her best welcoming grin, smoothed her strawberry blond hair one more time, pushing a hairpin tighter on her bun, and entered the airport's VIP lounge. Any business partner of Oliver's would be welcomed like a king on the island. This one, with his multimillion dollars contract to move enormous amounts of medical supplies and medicine around the world, even more so.

The only person in sight was an elderly gentleman, his back turned to her, pouring mint tea in a crystal cup, Arabian style. He turned around and pierced Thomasina with his gray-green eyes. Not tall, slightly built, he had gray hair and beard and was dressed as a Westerner, in a perfectly tailored three pieces dark blue suit, ivory linen shirt and silk tie. A thick gold wedding band adorned his left hand, and a silver metal ring shone on his right, where a Muslim beaded rosary danced between his fingers. All in that gentleman screamed of dignity, elegance and poise. With a curt bow of his head, he acknowledged Thomasina's presence.

"Sid Alif, the island of St. Mallots is honored to welcome you."

The faintest of all smiles lit up his face as he bowed his head ever so delicately one more time. "Thank you," he said in heavily accented English. "May I introduce you to my wife?"

A slim lady in traditional Muslim garb, a flowing robe and sheer shawls, gold and gem jewels gracing the tip of her lobes and covering her neck, hands and wrists, her hair hidden under the modest veil of her faith was coming from the ladies restroom, closing the door behind her. As she turned around to look at her husband, the surprise of recognition hit Thomasina full force. "Samihah! I can't believe it! Is that really you?"

Samihah Shah took off her glasses and stared at the blond woman in a charcoal gray pantsuit. "Thomasina Hobson? What a small world!" She turned to her husband. "Thomasina and I worked for Genomex once. She was head of public relations."

"Ah! I'm glad to meet you, Miss Hobson."

"Mr. Saint Clair would like to invite you for tea in his private office, Sid Alif, if you're not too tired, of course."

"It will be a pleasure. I'm looking forward to finally make Mr. St. Clair's acquaintance." He turned to Samihah. "Would you like to go directly to our rooms?"

"Not at all. I'd like to meet Mr. St. Clair myself." She smiled at the PR woman. "And I'd like to catch up with you, Thomasina. It's been a long time."

"You left Genomex after the power shift there, when Gabriel Ashlocke took over." Thomasina licked her lips. "Did you return there with Eckhart? I remember you were a friend of Rebecca Steyn's, and you know how the gossip went about them."

"No, I don't know how the gossip went about them."

Thomasina assumed a conspiratorial tone, her eyes glinting at the possibility of a good girl talk and rumormongering. "Everybody said they were lovers, Eckhart and Rebecca."

"No, they were not lovers. They were married."

The PR woman's mouth opened in amazement at this piece of juicy news. "You don't say!"

"I'd say, yes." Samihah sighed. "And I was already working for another research company." Samihah looked down, making a show of being embarrassed. "And I didn't want to work with those... creatures... anymore."

"Oh, I understand completely!" chimed Thomasina, as the trio observed the many pieces of luggage being stored in the trunk of the waiting limo. "They freaked me out, too." Her hand shot up to her breast, as if to still her beating heart. "A threat! A menace to Mankind! Thank God there are people taking steps to put a stop to the mutant epidemic."

"Really?" Samihah was the picture of innocence.

"I'll tell you all about it later. Now, if you care to embark, Mr. St. Clair is waiting."

"Is that the island? Gorgeous!"

The lean feline woman was looking over the rail on the upper deck of the Vindicator, the yacht they'd found moored in a secret dry dock at Sanctuary days before. As it approached the marina, Shalimar's golden hair gleamed in the tropical sun. Wearing only the scantest of all bikini suits, a colorful fabric wrapped around her hips, she pulled up her shades to better see the place where her fellow new mutants were being targeted for mass destruction.

The island looked harmless enough, a typical paradise with rolling forest-covered hills, white sand beaches glistening against the bluest of seas. Next to the township, with its short, brightly painted houses, the beach resort, sprawled on the small plain squeezed between beach and hills boasted water sports, spa comforts, top notch restaurants and fun galore, but what caught Shalimar's eyes was not the wood and glass houses of the hotel and resort. It was the contrast the white buildings that constituted the research and laboratory facilities, the internationally famous hospital and office headquarters of St. Clair Pharmaceuticals taking up part of the side of a hill, overlooking the port where deep sea cruisers poured mobs of tourists and visitors seeking rest and relaxation in the tourist Caribbean point. How could such a beautiful place hide such a horrifying secret?

"Do you like what you see?" asked Brennan Mulwray from the pilot seat, as he expertly drove the small ship to its assigned docking space. He was wearing only swimming trunks and his skin was tanned from the trip South.

Shalimar looked at her friend and teammate. The trip had done him good, he looked less worn out, less troubled than he had looked in the months after Cat's death. "Oh, yes," she answered. "Great place to visit, if we were not on a mission. Is everything in place?"

"Yes, Vince did a great job concealing the lab equipment. Everything our two scientists might need is neatly stored here, even an... what is it called? Autoclave! Gee, this place is nice!"

"It is, isn't it? Here, have a few lei," said Shalimar, draping half a dozen flower strings around Brennan's neck. "And, remember, don't accept any more lei from the people on land. They're deadly."

Almost as an afterthought, Shalimar touched Brennan's cheek, looked into his eyes, stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly.

"Where did that come from?" asked the elemental.

"My heart, big guy."

"Sid Alif, it is a great pleasure to finally meet you in person."

Oliver St. Clair, every strand of his silver white hair in place, stood up from behind his huge rosewood desk and buttoned up his jacket as the door to his private suite of offices opened to admit the man who would ensure his products would reach their destination in time and safely, and his second wife. He stepped around the desk and offered his hand in greeting, directing the couple to the oversized sofa and chairs surrounding a coffee table ready with a silver high tea service, bone china cups and plates of small sandwiches and cookies.

Datuk Alif Sharfan bin Muhammad took the offered hand and shook it firmly, looking the pharmaceutics industrialist directly in the eyes. "The pleasure is all mine, Mr. St. Clair."

"Oliver, please."

Sid Alif smiled faintly and nodded, affable. "May I introduce you to my wife, Dr. Samihah Sharfan binti Shah?"

"An honor, doctor." Oliver St. Clair took Samihah's hand and respectfully bowed. After they took their places and teacups were passed all around, he turned to Sid Alif. "Everything has been made ready according to your specifications. I hope you will have a pleasant time here."

"I'm certain of that, Oliver. And I look forward to study the transport contracts with you," Alif turned to his new wife and smiled fondly, "after I've seen to my gazelle's comforts and well-being." At that, the lady blushed furiously.

"Sid Alif, I fear you might have embarrassed your lovely wife. You are a doctor, madam. May I enquire what kind of doctor?"

"Samihah Shah is one of the best microbiologists I've ever met!"

The voice came from the open door, where a wiry man in a lab coat was standing, hands in his pockets, with Thomasina Hobson a step behind.

The group stood up and Oliver St. Clair motioned for the new arrivals to join them for tea. "It was my intention to introduce you to my head researcher, Dr. Kenneth Harrison, botanist and biogeneticist, but I believe it won't be necessary."

"Dr. Harrison and I were colleagues at Genomex a few years ago," informed Samihah. "So, you came here after Mason Eckhart's return. I might say it is a very nice place to work, Ken, and a very good position."

"Not to mention the fascinating line of work I'm doing here." The botanist shook hands with the two men and took Samihah's hand in his. "It's been much too long a time."

Oliver cleared his throat. "Dr. Shah has worked with Genomex's special genetic research, then?"

"Actually, it is Dr. Sharfan now, but Samihah will do nicely." She blushed again as befitted a shy Muslim married lady. "Yes, I have worked extensively with the so-called Genomex children."

"Then I would like to show you St. Clair Pharm's state-of-the-art laboratories and research facilities, Dr. Sharfan... I mean, Samihah... if you're up to it."

"There's nothing I'd like better."

"If we can entice Dr. Sharfan to join us for some lab work, she will be most helpful with our pet project, Mr. St. Clair."

"Mind your manners, Dr. Harrison. Samihah is on her honeymoon." Oliver was shaking his head.

"But I'd love to, if my husband doesn't object," piped in the microbiologist.

"Anything to please my gazelle," the elderly gentleman lifted Samihah's hand to his lips and kissed it. "But before that, please, there is a delicate business I'd like to talk about with you, Oliver. In private."

"By all means. Let's go to my meeting room. We can leave the ex-colleagues to catch up."

They passed to a large room next door, with a mahogany table and leather upholstered chairs, very elegant, it's floor to ceiling windows displaying the seascape below, with luxury cruise liners gracing the docks, the contrast of sand and sea making for the most beautiful artwork and dispensing with paintings.

The two men sat by the head of the table, facing each other. "I've investigated you, Mr. St. Clair, and I expect you have done the same with me," started the Muslim.

"I have."

"Then, it seems to me we might have a few interests in common, besides the transportation of your pharmaceuticals and chemicals in my ships."

"Indeed, we might have, Sid Alif. Allow me to offer you my condolences on the passing of your grandson."

The elderly gentleman nodded. "Thank you. Allow me to offer you my condolences on the passing of your child."

Oliver St. Clair also nodded. "Both deaths were due to the same..." he cleared his throat, "health problems."

"You are correct. Although decades apart, your son and my grandson were both..." Alif Sharfan also cleared his throat as if the word he was about to say was painful to utter, "...mutants." He lifted his eyes to the man in front of him. "Your son was genetically altered in womb. My grandson was the product of his freak of a mother, a mutant herself, as we came to know later."

"I'm very sorry to hear that, Sid Alif." Oliver St. Clair stood and offered his hand again. "I believe you will find my pet project even more fascinating now, in light of your misfortune."

"I believe I will."

"I will give you and your lady wife the grand tour of St. Clair Pharmaceuticals. It will be most enlightening."

Greeting his wife in the main office, Sid Alif held her hand in his and followed Oliver St. Clair, Ken Harrison and Thomasina Hobson on their way to the waiting cars that would take them to the hospital, where they would begin the promised "grand tour".

"The day that sadistic plant pimp becomes a biogeneticist, it's the day pigs will fly, if you pardon my language, dear 'husband'," said the veiled lady in Farsi, the language she used to communicate with her husband. "And if you call me 'my gazelle' one more time, Adam, I'll strangle you with my bare hands."

The Muslim gentleman held Samihah's hand tighter and repressed a smile. "Yes, I believe you will," he answered.

"Oh, Allah have mercy, your pronunciation is atrocious."

"I know," he sighed. "I can learn the grammar of any given language and acquire vocabulary in record time, but I do have a problem when it comes to actually speaking it. I don't have the musical ear that ensures good pronunciation. Every time I speak Portuguese with Angela, that girl has a fit of the giggles."

INTENSIVE CARE

The overhead and side lights in the decontamination booth bathed Rebecca Steyn's body from every angle, making the dark pink scrubs she was wearing glow in many shades as the different beams destroyed microbes and bacteria she could be carrying from the outside to the isolation ward. White, purple, yellow... each color marking a light specially designed for a specific microorganism, each one coloring with a different glow the image Rebecca saw through the transparent glass doors leading to the high-tech ICU-like room with half a dozen beds, only two of them occupied.

Inside, staffers worked checking machinery; some of them in simple scrubs much like what Rebecca was wearing herself. That marked these staff members as humans, immune to the disease confined in the ward. Other staff members sported the complex hazmat suits that covered their entire bodies, complete with helmets, gloves and breathing apparatus. That marked them as mutants, therefore vulnerable to the virus.

The only exception was the strange creature in unprotected scrubs, a mix of woman and bird, who directed the work within the confines of the ward, ordering nurses and technicians around. That one was obviously a mutant - or a hybrid, as she had explained – her appearance making her conspicuous and very visible, indeed extremely odd. From the semi-protection of the decontamination booth, Rebecca looked closer. How deformed were the hybrid doctor's feet, with their Avian appearance, their three toes pointing forward and a kind of thumb-toe pointing backwards. Perfect for perching and grabbing they were, but awkward on the ground, most unfit for walking. No wonder the hybrid had to use a cane to move around. How ugly were her hands, combining the darkness of her Afro-Brazilian heritage with wrinkled thick skin, long fingers adorned by large knuckles ending in black pointy talons.

By far, her most striking feature, her stranger, but at the same time, most enchanting characteristic, was her wings, their feathers gold and maroon. She kept her wings neatly folded on her back when on land, but she had unfurled them completely when she took off to pick the escaping Catherine off St. Kat's front lawn. Flight! The dream of human flight personified by the myth of Icarus. Rebecca had seen it come true from the hospital's main entrance when the bird woman shed the hazmat suit she was wearing and, oblivious to the danger she was putting herself in, flew high up in the sky and held the thrashing, very sick Catherine in her arms, fighting to keep her still and implant her with a sub-gov, a necessary precaution to prevent the girl from using her stealth powers to escape again.

Yes, how enormously humane, how apt the bird doctor's name was. Angela... it means "messenger" and, by extension, "angel" as God's errand creatures. She never thought of the possibility of contamination for a moment. She simply flew up and brought Catherine back safely. Yet, contamination was a concern. Even though the doctor stated her genes were stable, therefore she was not technically a new mutant, so possibly immune to the Y pestis virus killing both Catherine and Richard Moeller, Rebecca had her doubts. The chemist had been discreetly observing the doctor and she had seen her cough, at first just a little, now more frequently, the bird woman's breathing more labored, a faint bubbling sound rumbling from her chest. Rebecca Steyn knew very well Y pestis didn't manifest only as Black Death, with buboes and darkening of digits. Y pestis had another face, just as cruel: pneumonic plague, attacking the lungs and making its victim drown in dry land.

From the decontamination booth, as the light beams finished up their microbe killing business, Rebecca watched the bird doctor. Her back was turned to the door, as she hunched over a computer station, in conference with another woman who looked intently back from the monitor, her big earrings dangling as she shook her head at Angela. The bird woman fluttered her wings and turned a little to the right, covering her mouth with her hand and coughed a few times, dabbed a tissue over her watering, tired eyes and mouth, then threw the tissue away in a hazmat waste basket, later to be incinerated, turning all the way around from the computer as the glass door slid open to admit Rebecca in the isolation ward. With a smile that lit her blood-shot blue eyes, the doctor motioned for Rebecca to come closer to the computer unit, offering her a stool next to hers, so the small video camera could admit the chemist in its frame, making her visible to the person in the monitor.

Angela made introductions. "Rebecca, this is Makenna Coniglario. She is also a doctor of great experience working with mutants in California."

"It's a pleasure, doctor."

"Makenna, this is Dr. Rebecca Steyn, Catherine's stepmother." Angela tried to cover up a cough without much success. "Did you review the data I sent you?"

The woman in the monitor, her huge earrings swinging from her lobes, nodded. "Yes, I did."

"What did you find?"

"The same as you, Angela. I don't think Lux will be able to help at all."

Rebecca frowned. "Lux Windsor?"

"How do you know?" Angela repressed another fit of coughing.

"The GSA knows a lot of things, Dr. Fontenelle." Rebecca turned to the monitor. "It is our duty to keep tabs on all mutants, especially those as powerful as Lux Windsor. Plus, we followed the Nikolas Lareou crisis very closely."

Angela nodded gravely. "Then you know Lux has the molecular power of healing, on top of her psionic abilities. I was hoping she might be able to help us now."

"Afraid not." Makenna Coniglario shook her head vehemently. "Yah see, I've made a special culture mixing together some of that sample you've sent me and Lux's blood, recreating a natural environment so the bacteria would act as it would in a living organism."

Angela sighed. "I've tried that myself with blood samples from various mutants."

"Then you know the results with the general mutant population." Makenna pursed her lips. "With Lux's blood sample, it was an onslaught. The virus is too fast, it changes too rapidly. Problem is, Lux's defenses reacted accordingly. Her immune system, boosted by her powers, turned entirely to combat the virus. If she tries to heal your patients, the virus will attack her in force and her instinct of self-preservation will shut her down, in order to make her heal herself. She won't be able to help your patients and will be out of commission for a while, fighting the virus."

The bird doctor sighed again, more deeply this time and turned to look at the girl sleeping fitfully on the nearest bed. "Thank you, Makenna. I appreciate your help, anyway."

"Is there anything else I could do, Angela? This bubonic plague virus can be a threat to the West Coast mutants as well."

"Just keep your West Coasters as far away from here as you possibly can."

The doctor from California nodded. "Good luck, Angela. We're here for you, if you need us."

"I know, Makenna. Send Lux and Riley my love. And everybody else, too." And she turned the videoconference off.

Planting her elbows on the console, Angela rubbed her face and neck, as if trying to wash off layers of exhaustion, when a red light started to blink in tandem with a peeping sound, much like a siren. The bird doctor was on her feet and, running to the side of Richard Moeller's bed, she quickly checked the readings on the many pieces of equipment linked to the man's body. All lines were jumping up and plummeting, drawing crazy patterns on the monitors and screens, as his organs failed him, his immune system exhausted of fighting the Yersinia pestis virus.

Rebecca watched attentively as Angela ordered doses of epinephrine and coordinated the nurses giving Moeller CPR, trying desperately to save his life. Finally, after what felt to Rebecca like a long time, the doctor ordered a stop and called TOD, while a male nurse took notes. The bird woman gave instructions to close the body in a special bag for the post-mortem, which would be done in an isolated lab within the morgue, in order to avoid contagion. She pulled the sheet over Moeller's head and dragged herself to Catherine's bed, where she carefully checked the girl's readings, which didn't look much better than Moeller's.

The chemist stood and joined Angela by Catherine's bed. The doctor leaned on the mattress as a new coughing fit raked her chest, making her wings flutter and shake. "Please, tell Mr. Eckhart to have a stasis pod ready."

Clamping her mouth shut, Rebecca held the doctor's shoulder and squeezed. Deep freeze for Catherine. That was the only alternative, the only hope to keep her alive while Adam and Samihah searched for a cure in that hellhole disguised as a tropical paradise that was St. Mallots Island. A curse on the day Catherine came home with the notion of taking a holiday there, and a curse on herself for helping the girl convince Mason that it was a good idea.

She turned around and called her husband's office. His face showed on the screen immediately, and Rebecca told him about Moeller's death of plague, how Angela had done everything in her power to save him, but to no avail. And, steeling herself against emotions that threatened to overwhelm her self-control, Rebecca Steyn asked for a stasis pod to be made ready to receive Catherine's body in suspended animation.

The sound of a loud, gurgling coughing made Mason Eckhart's wife turn back from the computer just in time to see the doctor fall on her knees, coughing so hard she seemed about to spit her lungs out, blood staining the front of her scrubs.

Rebecca adjusted the tiny camera's angle so Mason could see past her. Two nurses were helping the bird woman back to her feet, but Angela couldn't stop coughing. The two women looked at each other and the chemist turned back to the man on the screen, who pulled his tinted glasses off, closed his eyes and nodded slowly. No words were necessary. Rebecca Steyn knew Mason would have not one, but two stasis pods ready within the hour.

GUIDED TOUR - The Outer Limits

"Turn around, Samihah. Look at the view down the hill. Isn't it breathtaking?"

Thomasina Hobson's smile never wavered, never flickered. And it never reached her eyes, either. Those were ice blue and burning. Her perfectly coifed blond hair didn't allow for a single strand out of place, and even after spending half the morning with the visitors, her pantsuit showed no wrinkles.

Obediently, Samihah Shah turned around on her seat in the limo bringing the VIP guests, namely herself and her "husband", and their hosts to the white building perching on the hillside behind the hospital proper. While the hospital was open to the public and famous worldwide, the Research Center was closed and security was tight.

The view was enchanting. The resort and village sneaking on the narrow strip of land between the hills and sea gleamed in the sun. The marina could be seen to the left, resting next to the resort's water sports facility, where small crafts like wave runners and wind gliders in bright colors pinpointed the deep blue water. The over-solicitous Thomasina opened a compartment on the limousine back seat console and fished a pair of binoculars, handing them to Samihah, who handed them immediately to her "husband". The gentleman pulled the visual aid to his eyes and aimed them at the marina, where he quickly located the boat he was seeking. With a smile, he returned the binoculars to Samihah and pointed, telling her what to look for in Farsi.

"Oh, here we are, Sid Alif," said Oliver with a sigh.

The car had come to a stop at the Center's front entrance and the back doors were opened from the outside, allowing the riders to disembark. Stepping out of the car, Samihah's breath caught in her throat. The building was almost a stone by stone copy of Genomex. The only differences were the position, the Center being attached to the side of a hill, whereas Genomex was by the sea, and the color. Where Genomex was painted a yellowish cream, this building was pristine white, the painting unblemished. The same two story grand entrance with its glass double doors, giving way to a marble lobby and staircase leading to the upper floors, the right and left wings with marble floored corridors and hallways, the art-deco feel belying the high tech interiors that would certainly replace it once the visitor penetrated deeper in the facility's belly. Samihah stole a glance at her "husband", but his face registered nothing, not surprise, not awe, not amazement, just mild curiosity.

Oliver and Harrison handed the visitors their passes. "Welcome to St. Clair Pharmaceuticals Research Center, Sid Alif and Samihah. This way, please."

With obvious delight, Ken Harrison took over the role of tour guide and opened every door leading to every laboratory on the first floor. "These are the 'almost' public labs, where we conduct the front aspects of our work. Here, we develop vaccines for a plethora of diseases. We have actually a very promising agent to combat both Hanta and Ebola. And it will come cheap, too. Well, once it's established and defined. Dose number two will cost just a few cents to countries buying in bulk to inoculate entire populations. Dose number one, on the other hand, will cost a couple of dozen million."

"This is true of every new medicine, Dr. Harrison," interrupted Oliver. "The first pill costs a fortune; the second, a pittance."

"Very true, Mr. St. Clair," Samihah agreed. "And you have fantastic equipment and installations here. I'm impressed."

"Not as much as you will be, my dear lady," smiled Oliver. "Follow me, please."

At a signal of the silver haired man, the wall behind the reception desk and under the marble and wrought iron staircase slid to the left, opening the way to the inner belly of the building. The party passed under the arch and there it was, before Samihah's eyes, in all its glory, making use of one among the many caves that hollowed St. Mallots Island hills, the circular hallway of Genomex, all steel and glass, silver being the primary color. The lighted dome gave the immense room a majestic, almost cathedral-like quality, a temple to invasive science and technology.

A few yards away, a very familiar sliding door blocked the access to a well-known office. A proud Ken Harrison stepped to the door, which opened automatically. "Come in, please."

The desk was the same, the high back red chair was the same, the glass panels behind it were the same. Instead of overlooking Pod-Ops, the windows showed the most expensive, expansive, massive state-of-the-art laboratory Samihah had ever seen. Down below, technicians in environmental suits, looking like astronauts, manipulated the instruments. The microbiologist felt a presence behind her, looking over her shoulder. She looked up and her eyes crossed paths with her husband's. His face was relaxed, betraying nothing, but to Samihah, the narrowing of his eyes denounced his concentration. They both looked back down again. What they needed was there, in the NASA-like laboratory, hidden in the computers that controlled the whole operation. And they would get it.

Alif Sharfan turned around and faced the industrialist. "This is really most impressive, Mr. St. Clair." He pointed to the lab below. "The security employed on the front laboratories was… how do you say it?" and he said a few words in Farsi.

"Top notch," informed Samihah.

"Yes, my dear, top notch. This, however, has a level of secrecy I've rarely seen."

"And for good reason, Sid Alif." Oliver approached the glass panels and clasped his hands behind his back. "For all I know about you, sir, I can be candid as seldom I could. Openly, we conduct research on healing methods such as vaccinations and antibiotics. Covertly, however, we have been developing a biological agent that can solve the problem Humanity is facing right now."

"As you know, genetically engineered anomalies known as new mutants are a threat to Mankind. They breed, they multiply and they can ultimately mean the end of Homo Sapiens." Oliver stopped his tale and turned around, facing Alif Sharfan, who nodded gravely. A small smile crept up to Oliver's mouth. "That has to be stopped. And soon. Dr. Harrison, would you proceed, please?"

"Gladly! For years now, St Clair Pharm has funded and encouraged research on several microorganisms, studying their mutating capabilities. We were looking for a highly adaptable agent, some virus, bacteria or bacillus we could make especially selective, extremely aggressive and totally versatile. In short, we aim to create a smart bio-agent."

"Many microbes had potential." Harrison was warming up to his narrative, proud of his accomplishments in the field of bio warfare. "Over the course of the study, three promised better results," he counted on his fingers, "variola, leprae and Yersinia."

Harrison took a few steps and stopped next to Samihah. Grabbing her elbow, he led her to the high-backed red chair and made her sit down, turning the chair around so she could see the laboratory taking up all the space below them. He leaned against the glass pane. "Of the three microorganisms, Yersinia was the most pliable. We applied the same genetic principle that created new mutants themselves, the splicing and recombination technique, the same process Adam Kane created to eliminate or recombine genetic structures that would lead to future or hereditary diseases, and that ultimately created never before seen genetic combinations which resulted in superhuman powers of the four kinds!"

While listening to Harrison's yarn, Samihah tore her eyes away from the movement below and slowly stood up. She felt somehow drawn to the side of her "husband", who had his arms crossed on his chest and a hard look on his face. At the sound of Adam's name, she turned to the botanist doubling as a biogeneticist.

Now, a mesmerized Samihah was looking directly into Harrison's eyes. And she saw obsession there, she saw the zeal of a fundamentalist there. Samihah Shah saw madness in Kenneth Harrison's eyes.

The noise of a loud throat-clearing broke the silence spell that had fallen over the office. Samihah seemed to wake up from a cobra-induced trance. "You seem quite enthralled, Dr. Sharfan," said Oliver with a proud smile illuminating his whole countenance.

"I am," gasped Samihah. "This is utterly..." she seemed at a loss for words and looked up, pleading, at her "husband".

"Fascinating!" Alif Sharfan's face showed only a serene acceptance of the scientific breakthrough that pleased his host so completely.

"I knew you would like it. And understand it, too, Sid Alif. But now, our Miss Hobson has a vegetarian lunch prepared for us here, in the executive lounge. All in accordance to your specifications, my friend. I believe I can call you friend."

Sid Alif bowed his head slightly, acknowledging and accepting Oliver's pledge of friendship.

"After lunch," the pharmaceutical industry mogul went on, "I have something very special to show you and your lovely wife."

"It is the apple of Mr. St. Clair's eyes," chimed Thomasina.

"Indeed it is," completed Harrison. "I can assure you, Samihah, my dear, you have seen nothing yet."

GUIDED TOUR – The Inner Sanctum

The headache began discreetly, in the back of his skull, just an annoying presence. It started the moment he stepped out of the small electric car that took them from the Research Center to what their hosts called The Vault through corridors cut inside the mountain, linking caves and openings used for their natural size and protection. In many ways, that place, the facilities reminded him of his own Sanctuary. The principle was the same: make use of what was already there and adapt the huge spaces to fulfill their needs of security and secrecy. Just like Sanctuary, only a natural disaster of catastrophic proportions could threaten the integrity of the caves dug deep into the rock, which was in itself, the top of a gigantic underwater mountain range.

The place also reminded him of a very old movie he had seen as a child, a picture he had never forgotten. Not that he forgot anything, but this one was always fresh in his memory: Fantastic Voyage. An enormous scientific facility dedicated to a miniaturization process that enabled a small u-boat craft and its crew to penetrate a man's blood system, science-fiction at its best. Now, he felt as if he was living it first hand: the security guards, the hallways, the many check-points. And the coffer-like core of the project, the Vault itself, with its humongous, two meter thick stainless steel double doors, computer controlled and needing tracks to slide open.

Oliver St. Clair, obviously beaming with pride, had pointed out that, if necessary, the Vault could be sealed from the inside, protecting the project from intruders for days. According to the silver-haired man, the Vault could not be breached from the outside. "Come in, Sid Alif and Dr. Sharfan. This is my pride and joy."

The party entered a cave easily the size of many football fields. Two silver metal and glass tanks in the middle of the huge room drew their eyes immediately. The one to the left was obviously a sensory deprivation tank, something "Sid Alif" had seen many times before in Stanford, a device used to study the works of the human mind and where volunteers were cut off from all contact with the exterior world for specific periods of time. Those volunteers, many of them psychology students, were placed in a human-like box that floated on lukewarm water and they had CAT scans, magnetic resonance scans and many other readings studied while they laid immersed into themselves, without a single stimulus from the outside world disturbing their concentration. He had once volunteered himself to the experiment, just out of sheer curiosity. He had been placed inside the tank for one hour and, when released, he had vowed never to try anything even remotely similar again for as long as he lived. The imposed inactivity and claustrophobic environment had nearly driven him crazy.

The tank to the right was something else! Its outside appearance was not that dissimilar from the sensory deprivation one, but inside, no water would be allowed and the human-shaped container was quite different from the metal sarcophagus hanging from silver tubes inside the left tank. This one was also in the shape of a sprawled eagled human body, but with an inner lining resembling a fakir's bed of nails, with millions of prickly points. The head apparatus showed phones that would cover the subject's ears, goggles that looked like small television screens and a mouthpiece. At the figure's groin, where the legs intersected, a device that looked like a chastity belt was open and waiting for its next victim.

The visiting couple approached the tanks. With each step, Alif Sharfan's headache climbed up a notch.

"I've seen a sensory deprivation tank before," stated Samihah Shah. "But what is the other tank for?"

"It is a thing of beauty, isn't it?" beamed Ken Harrison. "It is the exact opposite of the SDT. It is a sensory overload chamber. I have a demonstration in the works for you. It will begin in a few minutes. Meanwhile, I'd like to show you my little babies."

Kenneth Harrison, primarily a botanist by trade, closely followed by the ever-smiling Thomasina Hobson, led the couple past rows and rows of computer workstations, control panels, equipment console mechanisms. He carefully explained what they did, what purpose they served. Samihah made comments and wooed over the high-tech gear. Her husband followed closely, not saying a word, but looking closely and paying attention to everything Harrison said. When he passed in front of the subject confinement cells, the gentleman approached one of the frosted glass doors.

"This is not simple frosted glass, Sid Alif," Harrison hurried to explain, reveling in the show-and-tell. "This is actually 'intelligent glass'. It can become frosted or transparent according to our needs." He opened the door to a padded cell, the likes of which could be found in any insane asylum in the world. A tiny woman was lying in the middle of the cell, her back to them, curled in a fetal position. Her bare cranium showed six implanted electrodes and a compact subdermal-governor was sticking out of her thin neck. Her hospital gown was open in the back, exposing her spine, buttocks and thighs. The woman was the size of a child, thin beyond squalidness, her elbows sticking out, almost piercing the skin of her twig-like arms. With the sounds of the opening door, she turned around and looked at the group with sunken Oriental eyes that shone like diamonds with the light of insanity. With a high-pitched scream, the girl crawled backwards and huddled in the farthest corner of the padded cell. A stream of words with no punctuation, no breath, no meaning, poured out of her mouth, directed either at the group or at ghosts only she could see.

The visiting gentleman took two steps inside the padded cell, only to be stopped by his wife's hand on his arm. At the girl's scream, he lifted his hands to his temples, touching his forehead with the tips of his fingers and slightly wavered on his feet.

"What's wrong?" asked Samihah in Farsi.

"Nothing, just a headache," her "husband" answered in English.

"Sid Alif, step outside." Oliver St. Clair delicately pulled the gentleman out of the cell. "Do you feel unwell? Would you like to cut this visit short and go to the hotel?"

"Absolutely not, Mr. St. Clair. This is just a mild headache, nothing more. I wouldn't miss this for anything. Please, do go on."

Leaving the cells area, the group finally arrived at the back of the canopied room, where glass and iron greenhouses were lighted from the inside with infrared lamps to guarantee photosynthesis for the plants inside. As the group approached the entrance, two technicians in all-white clothes, their heads covered with plastic caps, opened the doors and let them in. Long wooden tables supported innumerous rows of potted plants, their deep green leaves immobile in the hot, humid and windless glass room.

Other men and women, all dressed in the same white uniform, their features obviously Native, with darker skin, straight black hair, large bones, thick lips and slanted eyes, fussed over the plants, carefully cutting off small and tender limbs from one bush, then from another and planting them together to make yet another, hybrid form of the same plant.

"Jimsonweed!" exclaimed Samihah. "Datura stramonium! And, here, you have atropa belladonna."

"You know your plants, Samihah! What a surprise!"

"Ah... I know a little," stammered the Iranian microbiologist. "Nothing compared to you, though."

"You're very kind, but I've got to admit, I know a thing or two about our leafed friends here. You've seen one of our experiment's subjects, the specimen in the padded cell."

"Yes, we saw that."

"Different from other genetic anomalies that have to be eliminated, of course, we have found out that the so-called psionics can be actually useful. Such powers as telecyber, telekinesis, telempathy and others, if properly harnessed and yielded by trustworthy humans, can be exploited in the international market to great profit. The anomalies themselves cannot be trusted, that's obvious, but imagine the power one can have with an army of humans controlling such immense mental energy!"

"Dr. Harrison, what do you mean, humans controlling psionic power?" Sid Alif looked pale and pained, but his curiosity seemed to get the better of him.

"With the help of these hallucinogenic plants, sir, we can deprive the subjects of all conscious control over themselves. Once they... ahem... lose their minds, we get access to their powers. A combination of datura and belladonna induces psychosis, plus a regimen of total deprivation of sensory stimuli against the overload of the same stimuli liberates humongous amounts of mental energy. This energy is absorbed and transmitted by the electrodes implanted in the subject's skulls and linked to the central computer through digital cables. On the other end, one of our human scientists dons the head gear and is able to control and use the subject's power."

"I believe our demonstration is ready to begin," interrupted Oliver St. Clair. "This way, please."

The group was led to the bay window outside the sensory overload chamber. The glass wall allowed them to see everything that took place inside. Two strong orderlies opened one of the cells and entered. A few seconds later, they emerged, half-dragging a man between them. The subject was black, bald and skeleton thin, he was covered with a hospital open back gown identical to the one covering the Oriental girl in the padded cell. His eyes wandered around the room, never fixing on anything or anyone. His head lolled on his neck and his mouth hung open, babbling something no one could hear or understand. As the trio approached the chamber, the black man's eyes seemed to focus a little as he tentatively touched reality, realizing he was being taken to another torture session. He tried to escape his captors, but was clearly no match to the orderlies, who simply lifted him off his feet by his armpits and pulled him into the chamber.

Once inside, the door was closed, the lights turned on. The orderlies took off the man's gown, leaving him naked. One orderly pulled his legs up, the other supported his meager weight and they placed the thrashing man in the contraption, spreading his arms and legs to fit the human-shaped box. They strapped the man's arms and legs to the lower half of the box, inserting two IV lines in his inner elbow veins. Then, they closed the man's head in the lower headpiece, adapting the phones to his ears. Before the upper half was lowered over his face, the orderly forcibly opened the man's eyes and clamped them firmly. He wouldn't be able to close his eyes during the whole demonstration. The goggles where placed over his eyes. The orderly opened the man's mouth and inserted the pacifier-like piece between his teeth.

"It serves two purposes, Samihah," explained Harrison. "It stimulates the subject's taste buds and prevents it from swallowing its tongue, or biting it off completely."

The headache was now pounding on "Sid Alif's" temples, threatening to knock down the sides of his skull. It had escalated from a mild cephalalgia to a mid-sized migraine and climbing. Soon, he would be seeing colorful lightning bolts shooting from his peripheral vision to the center of his eyes and a bitter taste would fill his mouth as nausea cramped his stomach and made what was left of his head swim in an ocean of pain. Usually, he could push the pain to the back of his head and go on functioning as long as necessary on will power alone, but today, try as he must, the pain was winning the war.

Inside the chamber, the orderlies were now fitting the chastity belt contraption to the subject's groin area. The man's genitals were inserted in a tube lined with the same prickly material and the belt was secured in place. The man could only twitch as the upper half of the human-shaped box was lowered, encasing him completely. "See how all five senses are addressed?" Harrison was relentless in his enthusiasm for the experiment. "Were the subject a female, the same tube, which is also lined in the outside, would be fitted into the female genitals, resulting in the same sexual stimulation." With an enraptured look on his face, he gave the order. "Engage."

The contraption inside the sensory overload chamber lit up. On the control panels, screens displayed readings, monitors showed the colors and images fed into the goggles covering the man's clamped eyes. Sound scanners revealed the level of noise imposed on the man's ears and led lights over a human form on a screen demonstrated the areas of his skin being subjected to cold or hot or irritating sensations. The lights in the area between the man's legs changed colors constantly.

"You look green."

At the sound of Samihah's voice and her words in Farsi, Adam tore his eyes from the glass wall and looked down at her. Images and sounds were increasingly difficult to register and decode, the pain shutting down one part of his brain after the other. "Can you hear it?" he whispered in Farsi. "The rumble… A growl deep in the throat, only lower." He leaned on the railing marking the observation area. "And this is vibrating."

"Over there, please." Harrison pointed to another room sporting glass wall, where a woman had a crown-like device on her head. Led lights were shining like jewels through her hair. The botanist pressed a button and spoke in a microphone. "First target, fire."

The woman frowned in concentration and motioned her hands in the direction of the first of three dummies at the back of the room. The manikin flared up, it simply exploded in flames.

"That's an elemental power!" exclaimed Samihah.

"No!" shouted Harrison, a manic glint in his eyes. "That subject is a psionic pyrokinetic, not an elemental fire starter! We've broadcasted its power to a human!" He pressed the button and spoke on the microphone again. "Second targ…"

Before Harrison could finish, a tremor shook the whole Vault, coming from the base of the mountain, deep down the ocean cliff. It started small, making coffee cups tremble and paper leafs fall on the floor. A nurse came running from the confinement cells, stopping at the railing and grabbing it. "Dr. Harrison! Mr. St. Clair! A subject is manifesting its powers!"

"Impossible! All subjects have been implanted!"

"The sub-gov is half way out of its neck! It is tearing out whole plates from the cell walls!"

The tremor was escalating to a full earthquake. Oliver St. Clair saw his guest of honor hold his temples with the heels of his hands and sink to a knee, his eyes rolling up on his head. Samihah Sharfan and Thomasina Hobson were holding the railing with one hand and trying to help the older man back to his feet. Oliver called for help and two strong security guards came to the rescue, helping the industrialist and his guests out of the shaking Vault as light bulbs blew up. The island itself was shaking, rattling and rolling.

"Dart gun! Fast!" Harrison shouted to the guards, his voice sounding above all the bedlam that was his laboratory.

They ran to the cells as best they could on the rolling pavement, with tiles coming loose and cracking under their feet. A fallen nurse pointed to a smart-glass door that immediately blew up to smithereens, sharp shards of glass showering over the guards, impaling one, stabbing another. In the ruined padded cell, with plates coming off the walls, the anomaly was floating five feet above the gynecological chair, a demented look on its face, its hands twisted like claws. It was screaming like a banshee and had an aura of radiating raw power. There was blood spattered on the walls, on the ceiling, rags of torn flesh ripped off bones, dismembered bodies. The anomaly had blown up at least two people.

The guards aimed and fired, but the triangular darts flew around the creature in a complete circle and shot back at the guards, hitting one of them in the neck. The only dart reaching its target and imbedding itself in the freak's chest was fired by Harrison himself. The creature tore its eyes from the guards and looked at the shooter. One of the guards seized the chance and fired a second round. This time, the dart hit true, sticking out of the creature's thigh. The drug started to kick in and the freak wavered in midair. A third dark hit it in the shoulder and the anomaly slowly descended, its legs crumbling under it as it lost consciousness.

Together with the drugged anomaly, the island of St. Mallots stopped its tremors and quieted down in an eerie silence.

OF MICE AND MAN

"Bismillah! In the name of Allah, what was that!?"

Before Samihah Shah could say another word, either in Farsi or English, Adam, pain pouring down his eyes, touched her lips with his fingers, silencing her. "Bugs," he whispered in Farsi. "Surveillance." He paused, closed his eyes and breathed deep, fighting the nausea that was threatening to overcome him.

"They're coming," he said, releasing Samihah's lips and rubbing the silver ring on his right hand with his thumb. With his left hand, Adam leaned heavily on Samihah's shoulder. He was panting; speech was difficult, coming in gasps. "Don't let them set one foot in here without a full sweep of this place." He stopped again and caught his breath. "Stop them at the door, and do this." He made a circular motion with his hand that seemed to encompass the whole bungalow. "They will know what to do." Another pause. "Samihah, please, get me some ice."

Adam let go of Samihah's shoulder, turned around, staggered to one of the two bedrooms and entered the private bathroom, slamming the door behind him. From the sitting room, all the way out of the bedroom, the Iranian woman heard him retch and lose all the food he had forced himself to eat and compliment. She had tried her best to do the same, but the company she was keeping, the first visit to that sickening, beyond Freudian Genomex clone… And the look of complete manic madness in Kenneth Harrison's eyes… All that had tied up Samihah's stomach in knots. She could barely look at her plate, let alone eat from it.

"Ken Harrison is completely insane," she thought while she emptied ice cube trays on a towel. "He has to be stopped! Allahu Akbar! Those poor people!"

The sound of hurried steps in the porch snapped her out of her reverie. She left the ice soaking the towel and ran to the French doors, blocking Shalimar's path just before she entered. With her left hand palm out in the classic "Stop!" gesture, Samihah made a circular motion with her right hand and her eyes, encompassing the whole bungalow. Without a word, Shalimar nodded. The feline looked at the elemental coming up the steps, pulled two silver cell phone-like boxes from her purse, handing Brennan one of them. They snapped open the boxes and split, dividing the bungalow between themselves and checking the readings and beeps the box gave out. Every time the beeping accelerated, they attached a small metallic chip to the place, either a wall or lampshade, anything, and the beeps calmed down.

Grabbing the ice-filled towel, Samihah ran to the bathroom door and knocked. "Are you all right? I have the ice."

Adam opened the door and leaned against the frame. Taking the makeshift ice bag from Samihah with two hands, he placed it against his forehead and breathed hard for a few minutes, hoping the cold fabric would give him a modicum of relief. He couldn't open his eyes, the dimmed light in the room felt like a searchlight to his pounding head, the smallest noise was a needle in his brain. He took a few tentative steps and felt a hand on his elbow, guiding him to the bed. The same hand helped him sit down, then lay against propped up pillows. The headache he had brought back from that Byzantine torture chamber was so overpowering that even Shalimar's whisper of "All clear" made him cringe. He tapped his hand against the bedside table, trying to turn the lampshade off. The same hand, Samihah's, stopped him and he felt the bungalow slowly plunge into darkness. Adam could only open his eyes when nothing but the moonlight bathed the room.

"Good Lord, this is the worse migraine headache I've had in my life."

A large, heavy hand, Brennan's, landed on his shoulder, making him wince. "Sorry, man," apologized the elemental, "but what happened to leave you in this sorry state?"

Adam took his time to answer, relishing in the perception that the pain was starting to subside. "The most… horrifying demonstration of sadistic pleasure and lust for power a person could witness can have that effect."

"What do you mean?"

"He means, Mr. Mulwray," answered Samihah, "that that man is completely out of touch with reality."

"Wait a minute," interrupted the feline. "What man?"

"Ken Harrison. To call him insane would be an understatement."

"That botanist… geneticist…" Shalimar choked on the words.

Adam pulled the ice-filled towel from his forehead. "Geneticist my foot! Ouch!"

"Eckhart's yapping dog!" snapped Brennan.

"It has grown to Rotweiller proportions, sir. He is running the show." Samihah took the towel from Adam's forehead and headed to the kitchen area for more ice. "His golden dream came true! He has Mason's office, complete in every detail."

"That's creepy." Shalimar followed the Iranian microbiologist with her eyes.

"Creepy are the experiments he is conducting there." Samihah returned the replenished ice bag to Adam's forehead. "Creepy is the fact that he has limitless resources to pursue his immoral research, granted by a financier who sounds just as crazy, just as obsessed."

"St. Clair is the real threat," pondered Adam. "Harrison can be taken down, neutralized, and I will see to it. St. Clair is another matter. He is enormously wealthy, immensely powerful on an international level, the real ruler, in fact the owner of this gilded banana republic. And he has friends in high places. The way he took Donna out of the country…"

"He was responsible for Donna's abduction?" asked Brennan.

"And all the other mutants who've been disappearing." Adam sat up, handed the wet towel to Shalimar and combed his damp hair with his fingers. "He needed guinea pigs. And since the bastards don't regard mutants as people, they simply set out to collect them." He rolled his shoulders to alleviate the tension. "And he needed specimens for experiments other than the one dealing with the biological annihilation of all mutants."

"What are you talking about? Does this other experiment have anything to do with this freakish earthquake the island experienced today?"

"I don't know. It is possible."

"Adam, Jesse contacted us half an hour ago," informed Brennan. "Seismologists around the globe are baffled by the phenomenon."

"Why?"

"It didn't spread!" exclaimed Shalimar. "It registered 6.7 in the Richter Magnitude Scale, yet it was concentrated in the epicenter, here. The ripples didn't reach Aruba."

"They're calling it an anomalous phenomenon, a physical impossibility."

"It was not natural." Adam looked up at the feline. "I think this monster headache I had and the earthquake were somehow linked together."

"How so?"

"The other experiment I told you about has to do with psionics, harnessing and controlling their powers. They have a secret laboratory built deep into the mountain, a fortress that can be sealed shut from the inside. The headache started the moment I entered that place, and I could hear a low rumble coming from the earth itself."

Shalimar turned to the Iranian woman. "Did you feel anything?"

"No."

"Maybe I'm more sensitive, more sympathetic to the plight of those poor people." Adam stood up and flexed his cramped muscles. "All I know is the earth tremor and my headache escalated together until a breaking point."

Brennan was pensive. "It would take a telekinetic of cataclysmic power to create such an earthquake. Not even Riley could do that."

"Donna could."

The moment the words left Shalimar's mouth, she wished she could bite them back. She saw Adam turn around and look directly at her, eye to eye. That was not one of his usual "I hate myself" faces. All the grief he felt for the loss of the woman he loved was written there, even though he hardly moved a muscle. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, as if sorting out his feelings. Shalimar's heart shrunk in her chest.

"Donna could… you're right…" He sniffled. "But Donna is dead, Shal. The bond was broken. And thank God she is dead."

"What?"

"Miss Fox, if your friend was taken to that horrible place - and everything points out to that – then Adam is right. And I can only pray that her death was swift, because it was not painless."

Adam clenched his hands in a fist so tight his knuckles turned white. "Enough! There's work to be done," he snapped.

"I'm glad you're feeling better."

"Much better, Samihah, thank you." Adam turned to Brennan Mulwray. "Is the Vindicator ready?"

"The equipment has to be set up."

"Samihah, the Vindicator is a fully functioning laboratory, but the gear must be correctly calibrated, the machinery set up right. Can you do that with Brennan's help?"

"Certainly."

"Very well. Shalimar, it's 7:15 now. Meet me here in one hour." He started rummaging through his luggage. "With the earthquake, this island must be in an uproar. We will take advantage of that."

"Where are we going?"

"I'll go out and hunt for Sanctuary all over again." He looked up at her and gave her a small, but reassuring smile. "Only this time, you're with me."

"Hey, this is so quaint! It looks like a tricorder!"

The device in Shalimar's hands looked like an old fashioned tape recorder, with a detachable microphone, nothing like the cutting edge technology she was used to. Even the small TV-like screen was monochromatic, with white lines against a green background. It shone dimly in the darkness of the bushes up the St. Mallots hills, on the opposite side of the Research Center.

"Careful with that, Shalimar. It is twenty years old." Adam was pulling himself up a rock ledge, using a tree limb to steady himself. The device's twin brother hung from a strap on his shoulder. "And I never figured you out for a trekker."

"Look who's talking! You built the damn thing!" With one single jump, she was perched above him, on a higher ledge.

"Guilty as charged." Adam turned his device on and pulled the sensor off its socket. "This is a mobile sonar device, Shalimar. It works like regular underwater sonar, but it is calibrated to find underground hollow spaces. The rod emits an audio signal that bounces off the ground. The returning sound wave differs according to the thickness of the wall it hits. The higher the peak, the larger the cave."

"Understood. I'll go…" she pointed to a distant, rocky point further up the mountainside, where trees were thinner, "that way."

"Fine," he answered. "I'll climb up the forest side, where the leaves cover the soil."

For hours, they canvassed the mountain, taking readings every few yards. Many caves pinpointed the interior of the mountain, but none as large as the Vault. That was one huge mother of a cave.

The balmy tropical night sang to the feline Shalimar Fox, made it easier to concentrate on her task. The many natural smells enticed her, the soft rustle of leaves, the noise of small animals and night crawlers sounded like music. The island was full of life, casting a spell on her wild side. Too bad she couldn't hunt, stalk a prey in that paradisiacal wilderness, smell its fear, hear the blood pounding in its veins. Then, the kill, the warm, sweet flesh. It was the nature of the beast.

A strangled scream in her inner ear, where her comring's audio chip was located broke her concentration, making her prick her ears. A thousand small furry animals, with their distracting prey smell, scattered all around her, disappearing in the darkness of the wild. "Adam!"

The mind switch was immediate, from huntress to protector. A member of the pack was in danger, the help plea sounded urgent. He might have taken a fall, suffered an injury. He wasn't yet fully recovered from the nasty migraine he had had merely hours ago. And, yet… the plea had a strange ring to it. It sounded… panicked? That quality made her inner claxon alarm scream, all her animal instincts go on red alert. What could possibly make that particular pack member who was a control freak lose it?

Speed was of the essence! Leaping from tree to tree, from rock boulder to rock boulder, Shalimar Fox ran to the area Adam was supposed to be scanning, negotiating her way through the thick bushes, her feral eyes flashing, taking advantage of the meager light of the half-moon that trickled down through the foliage, her sense of smell turned to the max to locate the pack member at risk faster.

Coming around a corner to the exact point where she had last seen Adam, Shalimar thought perhaps the world had turned upside down and the starry tropical night was now below her, not above. Only, the stars shone red and blinking, divided in pairs on the ground, up the trees, on the rocks, pinpointing every available space, carpeting the whole clearing, up and down and sideways. And the whole place smelled of rodents… and fear.

Shalimar eyes flashed feral. The scene before her took shape, one of the most terrifying sights of her life, and Shalimar was no stranger to scary situations. Adam was pinned against the back of the clearing, totally surrounded by the red blinking stars, his eyes semi-closed, his arms spread, hands clutching the grass covering the mountain wall. The mind-numbing fear was coming from him. Shalimar could hear Adam's heart beating so loud it seemed ready to jump out of his chest.

Little by little, the red stars faded, revealing their owners: rats. The clearing was covered in rats of all sizes, some as large as small dogs. Rats were perching on the rocks, clinging to the grass on the clearing wall, hanging from the trees. There were rats absolutely everywhere and they were standing there, immobile, their noses twitching in the night air.

No wonder Adam was scared out of his wits. He had rats climbing up his legs, sitting on his shoulders, touching their little muzzles to his cheeks and ears; their front paws scratching his hands and neck.

"No te llegues más, gata! Don't come any closer, cat!" The voice came from the largest pair of red stars and they seemed to be suspended in mid-air. "E tu, señor, no te muevas. No matter what happens, don't... you... move."

To make the point even clearer, the big, heavy rat sitting on Adam's left shoulder looked directly at Shalimar and bared its pointy, sharp teeth. It stood on its hind legs and, fast as lightning, bit Adam's ear, making him shut his eyes and gasp. The smell of blood running from the wound and trickling down the side of his face agitated the animals, making them squeak and wave like an ocean of fur.

The larger pair of red eyes moved to the side, coming closer to the man glued to the mountain wall. "I was watching you, gata. And you, too, señor."

The pale moonlight revealed the voice's owner. A thin, small creature, obviously female, she didn't show much humanity at all. The rags covering her revealed legs curved like a rabbit's, making it easy for her to sit on her haunches. Her arms ended in hands with long fingers and needle-thin nails. Her bare feet were bony and long, also graced with the same nails. A thin layer of gray fur covered her entire body. The creature had more of a muzzle than a face, with a pronounced overbite and whiskers.

A rat half-breed, she was now hanging from the grass right over Adam's left shoulder. Delicately, she dislodged the rat sitting there and approached her muzzle to his face, licking the blood welling from his ear. "¿Di-me tú, gata, que quieren vosotros acá? What do you want here? How dare you come to my woods? You, a cat!"

Shalimar swallowed hard. The rats were way too many for her to handle and Adam wouldn't be of any help. All she could do was try and talk their way out of there, but that was not really her cup of tea. Speaking was Adam's bailiwick; hers was fighting. "My name is Shalimar Fox," she began, "and I am a feral just like you."

"¿Qué? ¿Que és feral? What is a feral? I'm not a feral, I'm an anomaly like the town people say! And you are, too."

"Feral… is a mutant classification… one of four… different kinds." Adam spoke very slowly, his voice choking with fear.

"¿Mutantes? ¿Los que son diferentes?"

"Sí."

"And you? Are you a mutant, señor?"

"No, but I… work with mutants… helping others like them."

"Mutants are being killed and tortured in this island." Shalimar's heart was also beating loud, pounding in her ears. "We came here to stop it."

The creature turned her head sharply from Adam to look at the feline. "You mean the people brought here in secret. I know all about them." She climbed above and around Adam's head, clinging to the grass over his right shoulder. The big rat immediately claimed its first perch back, sniffing at the wound on Adam's ear.

"A powerful man here wants to wipe all mutants out of the face of the earth. That includes you, rat. And me."

"And what were you doing here, in my woods?" hissed the beast. "If you want to stop the big shot from the hospital – yes, I know it is him - you don't need to come all the way here."

"The big cave with all the machines," Adam swallowed dry, his mouth felt like parchment. "It is a torture chamber where they're tormenting people. We need a way in."

The rat squeaked a laugh. "And you were expecting to find it with this?" The portable sonar was dangling from her hand. "Fat chance, señor. But I can get you there without anyone the wiser."

Blood wasn't the only thing pouring down Adam's face. Cold sweat was drenching his black T-shirt. "Would you help me gain access to that cave?"

"For a price, señor.

"Name it."

"My pack is always hungry. I want the cat."

"No!" Adam shouted, turning his head sharply to the rat hybrid.

The creature's eyes flashed feral, red and glinting. Adam felt a sharp pain in his hand as a rat bit him. "I told you not to move, señor. That was a warning, not an order."

Gasping at the burning sensation on his hand, Adam forced himself to look in the creature's eyes. "You can't have the cat."

The rat shrugged.

"But you can have me, after we put a stop to the depravity happening in this island." He had his fear under control now. "After we free the people kept in the cave and we end this obscene operation, you can have me."

The rat was looking straight in the man's eyes, her muzzle inches from his face. "One question and, if I like the answer, we will have a deal. You say you're normal, so you have nothing to do with me and the cat. Why are you so hell bent into helping freaks like us?"

"I have everything to do with you. I am a scientist. I helped to create you."

The rat nodded slowly, a wicked smile creeping up her face. "I believe you, señor. If you were lying, I would know." She chuckled. "We have a deal. After you shut down whatever is going on in the big cave with the machines, you are mine." Her eyes flashed red again and all the rats disappeared in a matter of seconds. "You can go now. Send the cat here to tell me when you're ready to enter the cave. She will be safe."

With overwhelming agility, the rat climbed up the clearing wall and vanished into the night.

Adam felt himself go numb; his legs couldn't hold his weight any longer. He fell on his hands and knees, pulling his injured hand up immediately off the ground. The punctures were deep and throbbing. Shalimar was kneeling next to him in a flash.

"It happened to Mason once… the rats…" he gasped after a long pause he used to reign his thumping heart in. "I didn't give a damn." He was trying hard to breath normally again, so far without great success. "Now, I almost… I was this close to… Oh, God…"

"What have you done?" Shalimar pulled Adam to his feet and made him face her. "That thing will turn you into dinner for her pack!"

"I couldn't let her have you." His breath was ragged, difficult. He shrugged himself loose of her grasp and took a few tentative steps to leave the clearing. Suddenly, he stooped, looked at his bitten hand already swelling up, turned back at Shalimar. "Some antigen… my throat is starting to close…" He took another couple of unsteady steps. "The rat bite… I'm allergic…"

Shalimar barely had time to break his fall.

THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Tumbling, falling, frantic with fear, Shalimar ran as fast as she could. With each step, Adam faltered, with each yard covered, he was more of a dead weight she had to carry. Shalimar could hear his breath thinning as his throat constricted, swelling inside with the increasing allergic reaction to the rat bites. After it stopped completely, Adam would have four minutes to start breathing again. After that deadline, oxygen deprivation would permanently damage his brain, turning him into a living corpse.

Down the hill, reaching the outskirts of the town, Shalimar tried to find her bearings. Where was the hospital located? Damn their cover, damn their assignment, damn everything but save Adam's life! She had to get him to the ER and fast, not a moment too late. How could she, for heaven's sake? They were on the other side of the hill, looking for an alternative way to get to a cave that was probably located in the very center of the mountain. That was the poorer part of the town, almost a settlement, far from the hospital and hotel. There, the earthquake had taken a heavier toll; the frailer dwellings had suffered more than the bigger beach houses and buildings near the sea.

As they got closer to the crumbling houses, Shalimar could see people running around, trying to salvage possessions from the wreckage. With all that damage, there would be people hurt. Rescue teams should be available, paramedics and ambulances should be rushing to help the wounded. If only Shalimar could find one…

The squeal of brakes being violently applied, tires sliding on the dirt road, made the feline and her burden turn, the lights hitting her eyes, dazzling her for a moment. A small car, a Beetle with a few years to its name came to a stop merely inches from her legs. The door opened all the way and a shadow jumped out of the vehicle.

"¿Qué pasa con él?¿Se ha lastimado en el temblor?"

The voice sounded young, female and honestly concerned. "No Spanish. Help us, please!"

"Lay him down on the ground! I'm a nurse, I can help!" The shadow dove into the car and jumped out a second later with a medium-sized duffel bag in her hand. The woman knelt next to Adam, touched two fingers to his neck, searching for a heartbeat. Found it! She turned his head to the car light. "His lips are bluish, he's not breathing. How long?"

"A couple of minutes tops!"

The woman looked at the wound on Adam's temple. "Did he hit his head?"

"No, he was bitten by a rat! He's a doctor. Before he passed out he said something about being allergic."

"Anaphylactic shock!" The woman searched her bag quickly, pulled out a phial and a disposable hypodermic needle. She filled the syringe with the transparent liquid, pumped the air out. She expertly found a vein in Adam's inner elbow and injected the medicine. "This is epinephrine. It is a strong antihistaminic. I hope it works, and fast, or I'll have to give him a tracheotomy."

"A what?"

"I'll have to open an air duct in his trachea so he could breath." She fished an instrument that looked like a curved metal tube from her bag. "Pull his head back as far as you can." Her left hand searched for the small, soft spot in Adam's throat and she positioned the tube over it.

A moment before she pushed it in, Shalimar held her wrist. "Wait!" The whizzing breath coming from the man lying on the ground was almost inaudible at first, but Shalimar's feral ears could pick it up clearly. It became stronger and louder as Adam fought for breath. A second later, he jerked back and pulled a lungful of air in with a gurgling sound. His breath, noisy at first, became increasingly steadier, his lips were returning to their normal color.

"Help me get him in the car," commanded the woman.

They sat a still unconscious Adam on the passenger seat, Shalimar hopped up in the back and the woman took the wheel. She put the Beetle in gear and drove ahead. "I was on my way to the hospital. We have to get him there fast."

Shalimar's hand shot up as lightning, grabbing the woman's windpipe between iron hard fingers. "No, you're taking us where I tell you."

On the mirror, the woman saw a pair of eyes light up like yellow lamps. "¡Ai, Dios mío!" gasped the woman. "You're one of them!"

"You bet."

The call sounded in Brennan Mulwray's inner ear, low and urgent, the speaker's breathing labored and tired. "I'm on the beach, east of the bungalow. Come help me, quickly. Adam's down."

The elemental didn't waste any time, running out of the Vindicator and telling Samihah to head directly to the bungalow. He jogged down the deserted beach, searching for Shal and Adam, probably out cold, relying entirely on the feline's strength and stamina. Gosh, that wasn't Adam's lucky day, with that nasty headache and now… Now… what? What could have gone wrong on their hunt for the cave? Were they made? Attacked?

Thank God for the earthquake! The town was in turmoil, the population busy with salvaging their belongings, helping the wounded, repairing the worst of the damage, and the tourists were frightened, huddling in their hotel rooms or trying to escape the island by air or sea. There was nobody on the beach and "Sid Alif's" bungalow was the most secluded of all, standing far from the resort's entertainment complex.

There she was, coming from the shadows, supporting Adam's weight with one arm and dragging a very reluctant woman with the other. What the hell was going on?

No time to think. Brennan ran to Shalimar, picked up Adam, pulling him over a shoulder, and headed straight to the bungalow. "What happened to him?"

"Rats."

"Let me go! Please!" The stranger was trying the impossible: to free herself from Shalimar's grasp. "I helped you! I saved that man's life!"

The feline's eyes flashed with a bright yellow glow. "And you will help us a while longer."

They mounted the steps two at a time as Samihah opened the double doors. Brennan lowered Adam on the bed and Shalimar pushed the woman to the bedside, making her kneel next to him. Samihah was there in a flash. "What happened?"

The woman turned Adam's head, exposing the wound on his ear. His arm was hanging out of the bed. She pulled it up and rested his bitten hand on his chest. Opening her bag, she pulled a first-aid kit. Her face was pale as a ghost, her hands were shaking and she stole glances at Shalimar.

"We were in the woods and we had a close encounter of the biting kind with a pack of rats and its leader."

Samihah looked closer at Adam's injured hand and ear. "The wounds are too small to knock him out."

"He is allergic," answered the woman between shattering teeth. "He was going into anaphylactic shock, but I pulled him out. He still needs care, though."

"And who are you, dear?'

The woman looked at the kind, motherly Samihah Shah. She seemed young and naïve, but her actions, the way she tended to Adam's wounds belied her apparent inexperience. The girl knew what she was doing. "My name is Emilia Ramos. I'm a senior nurse at the hospital here." She turned her eyes to Shalimar, then back at Samihah. "You're not one of..." She pointed to Shalimar with a trembling finger.

"No, I'm not."

"Is he?" She pointed to Brennan?

"Yes, he is."

"And this gentleman here?" She pointed to Adam.

"No, this one is not."

"Ah, I see." Emilia looked a little relieved. "The anomalies are your property, your servants. They seem housebroken. How did you manage? Freaks are untamable."

"What do you mean?"

"The anomalies, she... he... they belong to you..." Emilia covered her mouth with her hand, scared. "Oh, I'm sorry, please! I meant no offense. I'm always referring to anomalies as he or she." She grabbed Samihah's hand. "I know it is wrong, but I can't help myself. I've been reprimanded many times, but..."

"It's all right, dear." Samihah looked at Shalimar and Brennan, their mouths were hanging open. "Why is it wrong to call mutants he or she? And why do you call them anomalies?"

"Because that's what they are. We are taught anomalies are not people; they're genetically engineered weapons, lab-created monsters. Most of them must be eliminated, since they can't be tamed and put to good use. Some, the mind freaks, must be studied and controlled."

"Who taught you that?"

"It's all on Mr. St. Clair's book. It is mandatory reading at St. Mallots Pre-Med and Tech. It is a special course on Anomalous Physiology, confidential. Students attending foreign schools sign a confidentiality agreement and cannot talk about it with strangers."

"You talked to us." Samihah caressed Emilia's hair and pulled her chin up.

"You have anomalies in your employment. Secrecy seemed... moot."

"Mutants are people like you and me, Miss Ramos, only... with a twist." The voice came from the bed, but it sounded tired and distant.

"You're awake!" Shalimar sat at the edge of the bed.

"For a couple of minutes already." Opening his eyes, Adam rolled on his side and looked at the young woman. He looked at his bandaged hand and pulled it up to his ear, where a bio band was covering the bite, blending with his skin.

"If nobody told me, I wouldn't even know you're hurt," said Shalimar smiling.

Adam chuckled and accepted Brennan's outstretched hand to pull himself up and sit. "Miss Ramos, you said you've been reprimanded many times for referring to mutants as people. Could you tell me where and when?"

Emilia Ramos looked around her. Four people were in the room beside her. Two had openly declared themselves to be anomalies. The other two said they were humans. Yet, they seemed to be working together, collaborating. When she ran into the feral freak and the slumped man she was carrying, the anomaly looked scared stiff at the man's fate, at the possibility of his death. That was not the kind of behavior Emilia was taught to expect from aberrations. Who were they? What were they doing here?

The older woman, the one with the veil covering her hair seemed to feel her discomfort. "I think introductions are in order. The blond lady over there is Shalimar Fox. She is a feral mutant."

"I know," said Emilia. "I saw her eyes flash."

"The tall, good looking guy over there is Brennan Mulwray. He is an elemental. It means he controls forces usually found in nature."

Emilia saw the man, Brennan, form a lightning in his hand, the white light dancing between his fingers. He kept the bolts confined, never releasing them. The air in the room acquired a strong smell of ozone. With a smile, the man closed his hand in a fist and the bolts vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared.

"My name is Samihah Shah. I'm a microbiologist and I used to work for Genomex..."

Hearing the name, Emilia gave a double take, looking all around her.

"Do you know Genomex?"

"I know of it! Every student who took Anomalous in college here knows of that criminal corporation and how the mad scientist Adam Kane created the living weapons in his attempt to form an army of super powered creatures!"

All eyes turned to the man sitting on the bed who was actually blushing. Suddenly, everyone in the room but Emilia burst out laughing. "What? What did I say?"

"Meet the mad scientist himself, Emilia," said the man, offering the girl his uninjured hand. "Thank you for saving my life."

That man? That was the crazed, power mad demon that built the chimaeras they were taught to despise and fear? And the other two were monsters? Nah…

"Emilia, you said you've been reprimanded for referring to mutants as people, not objects," the man continued. "Could you tell us when and where?"

"I know it is not polite to answer a question with another, but what were you doing on the other side of the island? What did you want there?"

Samihah answered. "Yesterday, we were taken on a visit to a secret facility, a mind altering laboratory set up in a huge cave. What's going on there is horrifying."

"You've been to the Vault?" The girl looked alarmed.

"You know it?"

"I used to work there. I kept calling the subjects he or she and Dr. Harrison was always chiding me." Emilia looked embarrassed. "But I think the straw that broke the camel's back and got me transferred was this one subject." Her eyes filled with tears. "That female specimen was not a monster; she couldn't be a monster, for crying out loud!"

Samihah's motherly demeanor seemed to have a better rapport with Emilia. "What about this particular specimen, dear?"

"All subjects had that little device implanted…" The girl touched the nape of her neck.

"The subdermal-governor," stated Brennan, touching his own neck where a small scar marked the spot where he had been implanted.

"Exactly. That prevented the subjects from using their powers. And they get scared." The girl looked around at the ones she knew were mutants themselves. "The standard procedure is designed to break their spirits. Male or female, they are shaved bald, have electrodes attached to their skulls, and are given only an open-back hospital gown to wear." Emilia saw the blond feral, Shalimar, part her lips in amazement at her tale. "They are assigned numbers and they are handled like beasts, they are allowed no modesty, no dignity whatsoever. So, they are cowed, they do not react." She pulled her legs up and hugged them, resting her chin on her knees. "This one subject, her number was 9... Here I go again, calling it 'she'..."

"That's perfectly fine, dear, that's the right way to call her. Go on."

"She... she reacted." Emilia swallowed dry. "She managed to escape the guards when she was taken to measurements for the first time, before her first mind-altering session. She seemed good in kung fu or something, because she fought hard and grabbed Miss Hobson in a tight grip. She threatened to break her neck, but Dr. Harrison dared her." The girl was agitated, that was a painful memory. "When she realized there was nowhere to run, they would not submit to her threat, Subject # 9 released Miss Hobson and stopped fighting. She could have ripped that fake smile off Miss Hobson's face easily, she could have broken her neck like a twig, but she didn't. If that's not compassion, respect for life, I don't know what is! I don't care what Dr. Harrison says, that woman was not a monster! She was not a Frankenstein! She was a human being!" Emilia was sobbing and choking, she couldn't go on.

Adam stood up and gently pulled the girl up. He cupped her face with his hand. "Do you know anything else about this woman, Emilia?"

"I'll never forget her eyes, sir. She had big black eyes... wise eyes. She knew what was going to happen to her, yet she didn't do Miss Hobson any harm." The girl was crying softly now. "I will never forget that woman for as long as I live. She was not a thing, she was a person."

Adam's hands released Emilia's face and grabbed her shoulders. His eyes welled up. "Did that woman have any distinctive marks?"

"She had a deep diamond-shaped scar on her lower back."

Adam shut his eyes and a tear ran down his cheek.

MUTANT HORROR PICTURE SHOW

Adam let go of Emilia and his hands shot up to his temples as if he were trying to stop his head from splitting open.

"Is Donna alive?" Shalimar jumped from her seat. "Adam, there is hope Donna is still alive!"

"I can't say." Emilia shook her head. "I was transferred that very afternoon, I never returned to the Vault."

Slowly, Adam sat back on the bed, planted his elbows on his knees and pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes had sunk into dark, plum-colored circles and there were new lines on his forehead and around his mouth. His face was so pained; his hurt was so obvious; he seemed to have aged ten years in five minutes. "Donna is dead, Shalimar. Her bond with Angela was severed." He sniffled.

"You heard Emilia, she could be alive!"

"She is not. Please..."

Brennan pulled Shalimar to his chest and held her, his fingers brushing his mouth in the classic "Silence" gesture, but the feline couldn't stop. "Brennan, she could be alive! Why is he so adamant?"

Adam shot up to his feet clenching his hands into fists. "Because I can't bear the thought that she might still be locked up in that hellhole, being systematically raped in body and mind!" He suddenly stopped, his mouth working, but no other words coming out. He blinked several times and sat again, his hands holding his head one more time.

"Is the headache back?" Samihah tried to talk to him.

"With a vengeance," was all Adam could say and he could barely be heard.

Emilia didn't waste any time. She pulled an old fashioned BP unit from her bag, and made Adam lay down. She cuffed his arm and pumped air, a stethoscope already hanging from her ears.

"This is ancient!" exclaimed Brennan. "I can get something modern in a flash."

"No time for that," snapped the nurse. "Besides, I trust my ears, not some electronic gadget." Little by little, she deflated the cuff and listened intently. "He is spiking! His BP is skyrocketing, already over 200."

She rummaged through her bag and found another small bottle full of a transparent liquid. Pulling another hypo, Emilia made to fill up the syringe, but Shalimar was faster. The feline grabbed the nurse's wrist and pulled her up. "What the hell is it?" she asked, her eyes flashing feral.

"A beta-blocker, it is..."

Shalimar dragged the young woman away from Adam, slammed her against the wall, pinning her by the throat. "I don't know you, and I don't trust you. He dies, I kill you!"

"Leave her alone, Shalimar!" exclaimed Samihah. "She's right! He needs it fast or he might stroke out! This is an emergency hypertension medication!"

Still holding the nurse by the neck, Shalimar turned her head and looked at Adam, who had slipped from the bed and was kneeling on the floor, the balls of his hands pressing his temples. The feline remembered seeing her friend and mentor like that once before when he had been robbed of all his memories and his brain was short-circuiting.

Brennan held Shalimar's shoulder and gently pulled her away from Emilia. "Let her help, Shal."

After another moment of hesitation, the feline released the nurse and let her do her job, watching closely as the young woman injected the medication and helped the fallen man lay down to rest.

"He can't go on like this." The young woman was readying her instruments to careful monitor her patient's BP readings. "How old is he, anyway?"

"Late forties, early fifties... Nobody knows for sure," answered the elemental.

"Who are you, people? Why do you push yourselves so hard?"

The answer came from Samihah Shah, sitting on the floor, her legs crossed in a lotus position. "You know what you were told, dear, but the truth is different. This man has a responsibility to the enhanced generation he helped create."

"We cannot sit on our hands while people like us are abducted and brought to this place to serve as guinea pigs or as power sources," explained Brennan, holding Shalimar closely to his chest.

"They are our kind, even if we don't know them," said the feline, blinking back tears. "Some are our friends. One is much more than that."

The nurse measured Adam's BP one more time. "It has dropped down a little. He is responding to the medication." She pulled the stethoscope from her ears. "Is the woman with the scar the special one?"

"She is the woman Adam loves," answered Brennan. "They'd been together for a little over six months when she was snatched out of her house and disappeared."

Emilia felt a hand delicately hold hers as her patient stirred and painfully rolled on his side. "Feeling better? Has the headache abated?"

"A little." Adam slowly opened his eyes and looked at the young nurse. "Propanolol?"

"Yes."

"Right choice. Thank you again, Emilia." he gave her a fleeting smile and looked at Shalimar. "I think we have made a friend tonight. And an ally."

"I'm sorry for scaring you. I wouldn't really hurt you, you know." The feline looked sheepish.

"Like hell you would not, gata, but she was never in any danger." The high-pitched, heavily accented voice coming from the darkened veranda made everybody in the room turn around. "If anything, my pack would have had an early dinner."

Emilia jumped up from the bed and ran to the veranda, holding a small, dirty, tattered creature in a tight hug. "What are you doing here, Terra? You know how dangerous it is! If they see you around, they'll hunt you again."

"Nah! They would never find me. They never have, and never will."

"Could she come in, please?" asked Emilia. "It is too dangerous for her to stay outside."

"Get her in," answered Adam, pulling himself up to a more erect position. "Brennan, close the doors. We're already too exposed as it is."

As the elemental hurried to obey, the nurse, a protective arm around the small creature's shoulders, returned to the room. What Emilia Ramos was bringing into the room could only be described as a cross between a human being and a rodent, muzzle, whiskers, gray fur and all. The creature walked almost on all fours, her legs curved and ending in long, bony feet with needle-sharp nails. Under the artificial light of the room, her eyes were small red beads, shooting from one side to the other, taking everything in, completely alert. Her nose twitched at the smell of humans.

Emilia and the creature stood in the middle of the room. The nurse seemed contrite; the creature, defiant, sitting on her haunches, arms crossed on her furry chest, her chin jutting out in a challenge. "This is Teresa Rafaela de Monegal, my stepsister. She is the main reason I cannot think of anomalies as objects. We grew up together in her father's estate, on the other side of the island."

"Now that you know my name, may I know yours?" asked the rat.

"Terra, this is Samihah," pointed Emilia. "She is normal."

"As if I were not... Ola, señora."

"That is Brennan," Emilia proceeded with the introductions.

The elemental formed a small tesla coil between two fingers and waved, a lopsided grin on his face, a warning in his eyes.

"I'm sure you've met Shalimar..."

"Pero si, como non, la gata."

Shalimar hissed and flashed her eyes.

"...and Dr. Adam Kane."

Terra looked at the older man, grinned, and licked her lips almost in slow motion, smacking her lips.

Adam just closed his eyes and lightly shook his head.

Motioning for Terra to stay put, her stethoscope again dangling from her ears, Emilia sat down to measure Adam's BP one more time, just to be sure. "Terra's father knew Oliver St. Clair way back, when St. Clair Pharm was starting here. He was the architect who designed the hospital and the resort. His wife was facing similar conception problems as Leslie St. Clair and both went abroad in search of a solution." Emilia stopped long enough to read the instrument. "140 by 90, it's dropping nicely."

The rat hybrid took up the storytelling. "My mother and the other one ended up consulting with the same doctor, that one Breedlove. He treated them both and could guarantee a complete pregnancy." Her eyes searched the room, pausing at the sight of the kitchen entrance. "Is there anything to eat around here?"

"We can't order room service at this hour and for so many people," answered Brennan, "but I'm starving myself."

Samihah stood up from her place on the floor. She had only had lunch in very bad company and had barely eaten anything. Suddenly, she realized she was hungry, too, really famished. "Usually, these first class suite rooms come with a fully stored kitchen and servants. We refused the permanent butler and maid service for privacy reasons." She went to the kitchen and started opening cabinets and the fridge. "It doesn't mean there's nothing here..." Samihah had brought up four kids almost single handedly. Cooking for six people would not be a problem. "I can whip up some spaghetti."

"Nothing meatier?" asked the rat.

"Sorry, I'm a vegetarian," answered the motherly Iranian microbiologist.

The rat harrumphed. "Will have to do. Meanwhile..." She grabbed the fruit basket on the coffee table, squatted down on her haunches and, with an apple in one hand and a pear in the other, started munching.

Emilia shrugged apologetically. Terra's manners left a lot to be desired.

"Anyway," said the rat feral between bites, "I was the result of that man's treatment. And the other baby was just like me."

"I know the fate of Oliver St. Clair's wife and son," said Adam. "His wife died at childbirth and the son was officially stillborn." The older man looked at the rat feral now peeling a mango with her teeth. "Did your mother die, too, Terra?"

"Si, but the difference, señor, is the big shot killed his own offspring. My father brought me up as best he could." Terra bit a mango's soft flesh; juice dripped down her chin and stained her fur yellow. "As you can see, he did a poor job."

"Terra was smuggled back into the island and raised in secrecy," completed Emilia. "I inherited the manor house and I live there. Terra lives in the mountain with her pack, but she drops by once in a while."

Shalimar was picking up plates and silverware while Samihah boiled water for the pasta and diced vegetables for the sauce. The older woman stopped the knife she had been cutting up onions with in mid-air. "Emilia, you worked at the Vault, but you know it isn't the only depraved operation taking place in this island, don't you?"

The young nurse dropped her eyes and nodded, looking ashamed at her inside knowledge of the island's illicit activities. "There is a secure isolation ward in the hospital. My boyfriend works there." She blushed. "He is a resident. We met in Med School and we always joked because we both worked for the top-secret departments."

"Could you help us enter there?" Brennan asked.

"Not us." Samihah put the sauce to simmer and rinsed her hands. "Adam would be too conspicuous. You or Shalimar could be either detected as mutants or accidentally infected. I, on the other hand..."

She dried her hands, left the kitchen and opened the door to her own room, then the door to her private bathroom, leaving both open so everybody could see what she was doing. She pulled off her glasses, opened a small two-sided plastic box and inserted contacts in her eyes. Then, she washed her face of the heavy make-up she was wearing, and smeared a little transparent gloss on her lips. Unwrapping the veil that covered her hair and shoulders, she faced the mirror in a simple sleeveless blouse and flowing pants. She brushed her thick and wavy black hair, gathering it in a ponytail. Stripping herself of all gold and gemstone jewelry she was wearing, she replaced all items with plain small loop earrings.

When she turned around, hands nonchalantly shoved into her pant pockets, she didn't look much older than Shalimar. "I, on the other hand," she repeated, "I bet I can go unnoticed."

Three hours later, the sun was starting to rise over the sea, and a burning red path of light divided the ocean in half.

Emilia's Beetle sped back to the resort from the hospital where her boyfriend had facilitated her entrance in the secure isolation ward. Samihah Shah was slumped in the passenger seat, clutching a handkerchief to her mouth. Not even the open window and the cool early morning air could appease her churning stomach. Every time she closed her eyes, the image of the isolation ward exploded against her tightly shut lids. She thought it couldn't get any worse than the Vault and its sensory overload chamber. Bismillah, was Samihah Shah, Iranian microbiologist working for Genomex, wrong! Was she ever!

On the back seat, a locked picnic cooler brought back samples collected from the unfortunate souls serving as lab mice in captivity. In the back pocket of Samihah's jeans, an oddly shaped minidisk with data stolen from the hospital's computer secret files and with the trapdoor spy script written by Adam himself and by Jesse Kilmartin it had installed in the hospital's intranet's system. Hopefully, it would give them access to the bulk of St. Clair Pharm Yersinia pestis research.

Following the plan laid down before they had set off on their mission, Emilia parked far from the bungalow. The two women left the car, rolled up their pants, and went barefoot on the sand, walking near the water like a couple of friends returning from a night out or just up, enjoying a stroll under the sun. The nurse carried the cooler and had her arm around Samihah's waist, discreetly helping her go forward.

Near the bungalow, a couple stood from the easy chairs they were occupying. A blond woman in a scanty bikini and a tall, dark man in swimming trunks crossed the women's path heading for the water. Inconspicuously, the man rubbed the large silver band he wore on his right hand. The eagle had landed safely.

For Samihah, each yard covered was an extraordinary effort. Only the sight of the approaching building and the idea of some rest and a long hot bath forced her to put one foot in front of the other. She mounted the steps leading to the veranda, opened the French doors and staggered to her bedroom, pulling a pacing and worried Adam behind her as she headed straight to the bathroom. She opened the cold tap water to the max, pushed her head under the gush and let it drench her hair, her face, and her neck for a long time, pouring down her shirt and cooling off the heat on her forehead and cheeks.

Silently, Adam handed her a towel.

After Samihah was done toweling off her hair and face, she looked at herself in the mirror. She could see Adam standing next to her, a concerned look on his face. Farther behind, she could see Emilia standing under the doorframe. "I am a good Muslim," she said, not taking her eyes off the mirror, "but I need a drink right now."

Without a word, Adam went to his room, and found a bottle of scotch hidden in his luggage. He picked up the glass Emilia offered and poured Samihah an inch of the golden liquid.

The Muslim woman took the glass and downed the scotch in a single gulp, drying her mouth with the back of her hand. She stuck the glass out and Adam poured her another shot. This time, she didn't drink it, but took it with her, sitting on the bed.

The older man took another glass, poured himself a stiff one and motioned to Emilia, silently asking her if she wanted some. The young woman shook her head no and sat down on a large chair in a corner, carefully placing the cooler on the floor.

After a beat, when they sipped their drinks, Adam pulled Samihah's chin up and made her face him. "What happened?"

Samihah bit her upper lip and breathed deep. "What happened is I will kill Kenneth Harrison with my bare hands."

"Take a number," said Adam, downing a third of his scotch.

"I thought nothing could be worse than the Vault." She tore her eyes away from Adam's and looked into her glass as if she could find strength in the light reflecting in the liquor. "That secret isolation ward is a chamber of horrors fit for the grossest slasher picture ever made. The patients are kept naked on plastic mattresses, tubes inserted in every orifice of their bodies, every vein they could find. If one vein starts phlebitis, they simply snatch the catheter out and shove it up on another. They're covered in buboes, some of them with digit necrosis on both extremities. Others cough all the time, almost drowning in their own spit and blood. But that's the pretty part." She downed what was left of her drink.

"There was one... specimen... a young woman... She was barely conscious, delirious. She repeated her name over and over again. And when she saw me, she lifted her arms to me. She didn't have necrosis of the digits... because she had no digits..." The microbiologist looked up directly into Adam's eyes. "She had no fingers... she had no hands... they had been extirpated..." Samihah Shah took the man's glass and drank what was left there. "She had only bandaged stumps." She averted her eyes again and they assumed a distant look. "They cut her hands off. And she kept repeating... 'My name is Charlotte Cooke. Please, help me.'"

WE, ROBOT

Handshakes, heads slightly bowed, sage smiles gracing both older men faces, enquiries on welfare and health concerns. Samihah Shah had one of the smiles attached to her face, little wrinkles in the corner of her eyes, under her glasses, attested to the sincerity of her pleasure in the company she was keeping.

Oliver St. Clair and Datuk Alif Sharfan bin Muhammad, Samihah's new "husband", were meeting for an afternoon of serious business negotiations, dealing with the transport of St. Clair Pharm's chemicals and meds on the Malaysian tycoon's freight ships.

"I hope you're feeling better today, Sid Alif." Oliver St. Clair was genuinely worried about his guest.

"Much improved, thank you, effendi."

"The earthquake was a complete surprise, a freakish natural phenomenon. This part of the world is prone to occasional winds, but never before an earth tremor."

"Allah's ways are unfathomable, Mr. St. Clair," said the bespectacled gentleman, playing with his Muslim beaded rosary. "Shall we reconvene to your private office and leave the younger generation to their scientific amusements?"

"See, Dr. Harrison? I believe you are still included in the 'younger generation'," chuckled the pharmaceutics industrialist.

Ken Harrison also had a little smug smile on his thin lips. His beautiful secret main laboratory was ready to welcome a top VIP guest. He would take Samihah down to the lab proper, to inspect his great achievement in the field of bio warfare. Finally, he would prove to the world his worth as a scientist and researcher, Adam Kane's true nemesis. Whatever Adam had created, he, Kenneth Harrison, botanist cum geneticist, would undo, destroy, and write his name on the pages of History as Mankind savior, together with Jonas Salk, Alexander Flemming, Louis Pasteur and so many other beacons of light shining in the black darkness that was ignorance. One name shone brighter than any other in Kenneth Harrison's mind, in golden, glowing, glistening letters, five of them... pure gold... N... O... B... E... L...

Of course, other five letters crept insidiously from the blackest corners of Kenneth's mind, casting their shadow over his dream. Actually, the five letters of lead cast their shadow over his entire life. He thought of them every second, every waking moment. They were like a ghost, haunting his every thought, always lurking behind his eyelids, spoiling every idea, every notion, every thought they touched. Everything and anything Kenneth Harrison did in his life had a single aim: to defeat the five letters of lead, to chase them away from his brain, from his heart, from every fiber of his being. This time, he would do it. It was so close! So near! Within his reach: victory! The complete annihilation of the Mutant threat. The five letters of crap would never again turn his golden dreams into rotting garbage! They would never again make him wake up drenched in cold, stinking sweat. They would never again make him look over his shoulder, even when he knew there was no possibility the letter owner could be in the same room, the same city, the same country, even the same continent! The five letters of crap would never again make Kenneth Harrison's heart thump like crazy in his chest for no reason! He would have proven himself the better man! The abler man! The real ace and alpha male! He, Kenneth Harrison! Never again... M... A... S... O... N...

"Let's go visit the lab, Samihah? Ken? Ken, are you all right?"

Thomasina's voice woke Kenneth Harrison up, making him snap out of his stupor. He looked around and all eyes were turned in his direction. He shook his head lightly to make all letters disappear and smiled more broadly. If he could, Ken Harrison would blush. Bowing his head slightly like he had seen the other men do, he directed Samihah to the exit. Outside, under the clear blue tropical sky, the stretch limo with St. Clair Pharm's logo painted on the sides waited for them.

"Is everything ready?" Adam ignored Brennan's outstretched hand and jumped to the Vindicator's deck, already peeling off his jacket and loosening "Sid Alif's" tie.

With a headshake, Brennan Mulwray transferred his hand to the approaching Samihah Shah and helped her board the vessel. "We have the secure satellite feed to Sanctuary," he answered. "The holo-lab is ready for manipulation. We have a secondary link to St. Kat's. Everything is more scrambled than eggs, no-one will be able to eavesdrop on your conversation."

A door opened to the side walkway and Shalimar joined the group. "Welcome back to the Vindicator, Dr. Shah. And how did the business meeting go, Adam?"

"Excellent! The real Sid Alif would be proud of me, and very pleased," the older man shook his head. He stopped for a moment and leaned on the railing, gazing at the city beyond the docks, the massive hospital brightly lit, and its brother, the St. Clair Pharm admin headquarters shooting up above all other buildings. "It's really a shame," he said.

"Yes, it really is," agreed the Iranian microbiologist, taking a moment herself to look at the resort. "Apart from their problem with mutants, St. Clair Pharm does a world of good."

"I don't care about all the good it does, Dr. Shah," said the feral. "They're ready to wipe my kind off the face of the earth. Let's say I begrudge them for that."

"Their legitimate research is top notch, Shalimar," offered Adam. "They have developed a number of drugs that are used worldwide to battle many new resistant viruses and bacteria. Their new antibiotic families are very powerful."

"I wouldn't be surprised if they had come up with the viruses themselves in the first place," interjected the elemental.

Adam's head came up with a snap and he turned to Brennan, a new light in his eyes. "Now there's a thought worth looking into, but right now, we have more pressing matters to attend to. Is everybody online?"

"Everything's set, but... ah... we have a problem." Brennan led the way to the main cabin.

In a normal yacht, used for the pleasure and enjoyment of its owner, the main cabin would be used as a living and dining room, possibly sporting a home theater and library. On the Vindicator, all amusement and comforts were forfeited in favor of lab equipment and state-of-the-art scientific gear. Machines and computers of all sizes and shapes blinked and whirled in the room. A large workstation was set next to a compact centrifuge. In the middle of the room, a young man, his blonde hair gleaming in the artificial light turned to the door and greeted the group with a smile.

"I don't think you've met my associate, Jesse Kilmartin, Samihah," said Adam, pulling his tie out and handing it together with his jacket to Shalimar. "Jesse, this is Dr. Samihah Shah."

"A pleasure, Jesse," said the microbiologist, offering her hand. "But I wasn't aware you were part of this expedition. When did you arrive?"

The young man laughed and made to shake Samihah's hand, only his hand passed through the older woman's hand, and it was not a molecular phasing exhibition. "I didn't. This is a holographic projection."

Samihah was open-mouthed. She had helped get the machinery properly tuned, but nothing had prepared her for the hologram ride. Up to that very moment, that was an extremely modern, but ordinary laboratory set in the boat, something unusual in itself. There was nothing like that projection thing neither at St. Kats nor at Genomex. Granted, the laboratories there were considered state-of-the-art, but this was something directly out of Star Trek.

"You said we have a problem, Brennan? What is it?" asked Adam. "If we can see Jesse and he can see us, the hologrid is working properly."

"The problem is not here," answered the elemental. "Let me get you online with St. Kats."

A voice cracked from the main workstation speakers. "We are ready here and things are not improving with time. Can we get this road on the show, please?"

"Always acerbic Rebecca," thought the microbiologist with a smile. Add to that her extremely low level of patience to deal with Adam Kane, and you'd have a potentially explosive situation. To be honest, Samihah had found a new respect for the man while they were working together in her first ever field mission. His capacity for, what was it called? Social engineering! Humph... a new name for deception, that was it, in a nutshell, but done with absolute flair. The attention to detail, the shaping of a brand new life to show their target, St. Clair, who was an intelligent man, not easily duped. No matter the amount of research and investigation Oliver did, he would never crack the web of lies weaved to convince him Adam was not Adam, but a billionaire tycoon, the owner of freight ships that crisscrossed the seas from Malaysia. No matter how deep Oliver dug to uncover a glitch on their story, he would never find it. And something else touched Samihah's heart and brought a sense of camaraderie towards the man she once regarded as a fiend, a criminal: his innate notion of loyalty to his friends and associates, like Shalimar and Brennan, who were devoted to him. A maniac wouldn't command such obedience, and Samihah wouldn't call it "blind" obedience. She sensed they kept their eyes wide open and very focused. The way they worked together, sometimes understanding each other without any words reminded her of a fine tuned music ensemble.

Adam took a deep breath and counted to ten. Rebecca was not the only one with a limited amount of patience. "It's always a pleasure to see you, too. Now, please, put Angela on so we can get started."

Hearing Angela's name, Brennan's eyes crossed with Shal's and the elemental cleared his throat. Even Rebecca on the other side of the monitor looked embarrassed and averted her eyes. "This is the problem I was talking about. Dr. Steyn and Mason Eckhart informed us yesterday and it was my call not to tell you."

"Not to tell me what, Brennan?"

"Mr. Mulwray, may I?" Mason's familiar countenance occupied the screen where Rebecca had been a moment ago. "It was per my suggestion that we have kept you in the dark. Mr. Mulwray and Miss Fox have agreed. We knew you would have to be informed sooner rather than later, and now it is time. If you care to follow me..."

Samihah relinquished her place at the work station to Adam. The older man sat down and stared at the monitor as Mason got up and, leaning on his cane, obviously exhausted, led the way to a stroll around St. Katherine's Hospital. The place was different from the time he had visited Catherine Eckhart on the isolation ward. The staff was running from one place to the other, the camera captured the image of Dr. Elise Prodana directing her people in various tasks. Opening a door to an infirmary, the camera showed rows of beds and gurneys, all of them occupied. Sick people abounded in every corner of the building, on hallways and waiting rooms, on the floor, everywhere.

"As you can see, St. Kat's has been isolated, quarantined." The camera focused on Mason, who looked like an on-site TV reporter. "When my daughter fled her sickbed in stealth mode, she ran around the hospital unnoticed and she crossed paths with many mutants who work here or were visiting relatives or who came here for treatment. As a result, the virus spread from the isolation ward to the general public." Mason pointed to a window and the camera showed outside. The hospital's lawn and main gate looked like a prison camp, the fence had been covered in barbed wire. No unauthorized person could get in or out of the premises. "Luckily, Mr. Mulwray and Miss Foxy were outside when Catherine fled. Otherwise, they would be here, either bedridden or..."

"Oh, my God...", Adam cut in. "Angela..."

The camera returned to Mason. "Yes, Dr. Fontenelle was the first to fall. Perhaps because she was in closer, physical contact with Catherine when she stopped her escape and brought her back. Dr. Fontenelle... your Angela was infected with the pneumonic aspect of the plague and it developed in record time. I am very sorry."

"Mason, is she dead?"

"No, we have had no fatal casualties yet, other than unfortunate Mr. Moeller." Mason Eckhart pulled a radio transmitter hanging from his belt, adjusted an earpiece he had on, and spoke into the microphone. "We're ready to transfer video feed on five... four... three... two... Now."

The image changed to a familiar environment, GenomeX podding operations hall. Several pods were in various stages of preparation, some empty, some receiving occupants. Mason's voice sounded on the speakers. "As you know, after the Ashlock debacle, GenomeX and the GSA changed policy, from storage to mainstreaming of new mutants. Apart from a few who were considered dangerous to the public and to themselves, the pods were emptied. That was really most fortunate because now, in this time of need, we have room to spare. The patients whose condition is regarded as potentially fatal are brought here and podded for their own safety, to wait until you find a cure. Please, GenomeX podding staff and camera crew, show the two pods I had separated."

The camera approached the podding area, getting closer and closer. A young lab technician, wearing the traditional GenomeX silver scrubs showed the way. Two pods were set a little apart from the others. In one of them, a young woman, very pale, very thin, her hand showing the first signs of digit necrosis, rested as a modern day Snow White in her crystal coffin. In the other, a dark skinned woman, her wings slightly spread, just enough to let her lie flat on her back, slept a death-like slumber. Only the blinking lights on the lid and around the pods walls assured the onlookers they were not dead, but in suspended animation.

"St. Kats' is now sealed," Mason went on. "We are referring all other business to your AR&D Medcare. Mr. Kilmartin and Miss DeLauro are coordinating the joint effort against this plague." He stepped in front of the camera. "Even though we have taken all precautions to stop the spread of the disease, cases have started to trickle down from the city. I don't have to tell you time is now more of the essence than ever."

"I understand perfectly, Mason." Adam turned to Brennan and Shalimar. "And you chose not to inform me of the situation at St. Kats?"

"Yes," answered the elemental firmly. "We all agreed it would be better if you were kept unaware things were so bad back home."

"This whole mission has weighted very heavily on you," interjected the feral. "You almost died yourself!"

Adam tore his eyes from his associates and friends, landing them on the Iranian microbiologist. "Samihah?"

The older woman took off her glasses and returned Adam's gaze without blinking. "I agreed with the decision a hundred percent! Absolutely! It would be nothing but an extra burden on you, especially when news of Dr. Fontenelle's health reached us. It's quite obvious the good doctor is unique in more than one way."

Adam nodded slowly. "I can see the logic of your reasoning, but I don't have to like it." And back at Mason. "Much thanks to your Dr. Shah, who has proved herself as able a field agent as I could possibly hope, we're now approaching the final steps on this operation. We have all the information we need. I will transfer the feedback to Rebecca so we can get started."

Adam typed a few commands on the keyboard and the image returned to the microbiology laboratory. The camera showed a panoramic view of the room where Rebecca, now standing and moving about, was giving instructions to half a dozen technicians who'd be assisting her in the work.

The redheaded chemist turned around to face the camera. On her own monitor, there was a view of the Vindicator's "hololab". "Oh, you're back. Before we start, I have a question, if I may."

"Go ahead."

"If I have understood correctly, Samihah and I are supposed to come up with a new strain of your ultramiecilin antibiotic. We have to equalize its molecular structure to the virus, therefore, creating a new and specific drug that will fight this one mutant Y-pestis virus."

"That's correct, yes."

"What will you do exactly?" asked the chemist.

Adam sighed and engaged his "professor" mode. "Dr. Shah, here, gathered confidential studies from St. Clair Pharm's secret laboratory while on a special visit guided by our nefarious Ken Harrison. Those studies indicate the Y-pestis virus capacity to evade any medication thrown its way by altering its genetic structure, thus mutating itself into another Y-pestis strain. All strains, however, have a few things in common: selectivity, aggressiveness, vigor."

"Thank you for the recapitulation, Adam. What happens in this episode?"

"In this episode, I'll be building a few nano-airplanes to bomb the Y-pestis virus with antibiotics wherever they hide," answered Adam between gritted teeth.

"Did you say 'nano'?"

"Yes! Are you familiar with Dr. David Bruce Banner's breakthrough studies on nanorobotics for medical use?"

"Somewhat," answered the chemist. "I've read a couple of papers, nothing conclusive. I was led to believe they were highly unstable."

"When they are used to repair damaged tissue, such as in a wound, they tend to lose control and start repairing what's not really damaged at all. To prevent them from going, I'd say 'mad', you have to encase the nanobots and restrain their mobility to the specific area of the wound." Adam scratched his temple in a very characteristic gesture. "It is quite difficult to keep these molecular-sized beasts from going wherever they please, believe me. You have to recalibrate the casing for each layer of tissue they repair. I know. I've used them before with excellent results."

"Why, of course!" Rebecca's voice dripped with sarcasm.

"I've been studying nanorobotics and applications since 1995, when I've attended the Nano4 conference in Palo Alto. I'm also working with Dr. Adriano Cavalcanti, from S. Paulo's UNICAMP university, and Dr. Robert A. Freitas Jr. I am one of the leading names in the field."

"What's your plan for building useful nano devices? Self-assembly or Nanomanipulation?" Asked Rebecca, her interest now picked.

"Self-assembly has severe limitations because the structures produced tend to be highly symmetric, and the most versatile self-assembled systems are organic and therefore generally lack robustness," answered Adam, in full professor mode. "I'll focus on techniques based on Scanning Probe Microscopy, or SPM."

A victorious smile spread on Rebecca's lips. She'd got the arrogant bastard on his own field. "And you're doing it in a boat?" she exclaimed. "A swaying boat? Not even an aircraft carrier has enough stabilizers to keep itself steady so the whole experience won't be failure!"

"Rebecca, you really think I'm an idiot, don't you?" Adam's patience was at an end. "A moron, a complete imbecile." He pinched the bridge of his nose, summoning the last rags of endurance and stamina to deal with the skeptical Dr. Steyn. Maybe he should be grateful to Brennan, Shal and Samihah for keeping him in the dark to the fact that he wouldn't be working with Angela, but would have to shoulder the extra burden of dealing with... ahem... Becky! "The objects to be manipulated are biological, so to further complicate matters, the SPM must operate in a liquid environment. Therefore, the design will be done here, but the actual building process will be done on terra firma, where not even a tectonic plaque movement will affect it." He looked around, his eyes stopping on each one of his associates. Finally, his gaze returned to Rebecca. "You were right about one thing, though. The situation is not improving with time, so let's put this road on the show, shall we?"

Adam stood up from the workstation and motioned to Samihah, and the Iranian microbiologist took up his place with a smile and a shrug to her friend Rebecca. From the center of the room, next to the holographic image of Jesse Kilmartin, Adam spoke as if to a ghost. "Initiate link to Sanctuary main server, auto-file sharing."

"Initiated," answered Brennan.

"Initiated," echoed Jesse.

"Voice command interface, engage."

"Engaged," answered Brennan from his station.

"Computer, activate nanomechatronics grid."

From her seat in a corner of the room, Shalimar, who had nothing much to do, save for the inglorious task of refreshing the mugs, filling them up with strong brewed Brazilian coffee, so the team who would have to work for hours and hours building complex structures one atom (or even one nanoparticle) at a time, wouldn't fall on their faces from sleep deprivation, saw a structure made of light shape itself around Adam and Jesse. Other shapes sprung from the first, bigger structure. The feral focused her eyes tighter and confirmed her first, strange impression. That whole thing reminded her of the building blocks she had as a small child, the ones she'd much rather throw like missiles than put together to form other objects. Then, from smooth phantasm-like walls and surfaces, cylinders like hills seemed to grow and the chamber stopped reminding her of building blocks and took the shape of another childhood toy: LEGO. Only, these LEGO blocks were on a billionth scale, measured in Microns and Ängstroms, units Shalimar had barely heard of before. She heard Jesse's slightly metallic voice.

"Ok, man, it's all set."

It was so odd, absolutely amazing, to think that Jesse was actually standing in the middle of Sanctuary's nanomanipulation laboratory, looking straight at their images, all of them displayed life-size and moving about as if they were all together in the same place, and maybe they were, all gathered together in a "blue wonder world", not existent in concrete reality, but oh so real in virtual fantasy.

Jesse went on. "What kind of nanobots are we building?"

"When I first started to plan the use of nanos for this procedure, I thought of biomaterials such as DNA and proteins, but I thought maybe they were too flimsy, whereas diamondoid structures are expected to be very strong," explained Adam. "The Y-pestis virus is extremely vigorous and resistant, so I'm taking no risks. I'm going in with the heavy artillery."

"Diamondoids, then," agreed Jesse. "In a sterile liquid environment for easier introduction in the blood stream?"

Adam nodded. "Let's start programming the recognition and location of virus cells," he instructed. "First, we input the genetic code of the original virus. Now, we allow for mutation."

"How can you foresee what kind of change the virus will do in its own genetic make-up?" asked Samihah from her workstation.

"By uploading all the possibilities," answered the older scientist. "Why does this virus mutate, Samihah?"

"To escape the onslaught of any given antibiotic... Ah! That's clever!" Samihah Shah had a smile on her face. Finally, something effective was done, and not a moment too soon.

"You have the genetic structure of every known antibiotic, and a few still unknown and in the works on your station. Access them and send them to me," ordered Adam. "Now, Jesse, let's program the chip so it will match the virus mutation to the specific antibiotic and detect the virus form, going after it no matter what form it takes."

From the monitor, came Rebecca's voice. "The virus mutates to match the antibiotic thrown its way. However, in order to retain its infecting and aggressive nature, it must keep its original genetic structure, and only 'disguise' itself to throw the antibiotic off-base."

"That's correct," shot Adam, juggling with the LEGO-like holographic building blocks.

"Thank you very much! Hallelujah, there is intelligent life in the world, beyond the genius of Adam Kane." Rebecca rolled her eyes. Hashem be praised, that man was insufferable. He was patronizing, condescending. He looked down on everybody else! She gritted her teeth and breathed deep. He was a pain in the ass, yes, but the damn man was good. The work he was doing with the nanobeasts must be first class, if he got Samihah's attention and admiration. She went on. "We are working your ultramiecilin in a way that it will attack whatever remains of the virus original features, ignoring whatever change it might have made to its own genetics. Your ultramiecilin will go to the core and kill the prey, but it has to find the target."

"We have, then, the prey and the weapon to kill it. And we are, now, building the hunter."

From his own workstation, Brennan interrupted the conversation. "We have had several attempts to breach our firewall and scrambling array. So far, it is holding up, but St. Clair has smart people working for him. And it's possible there is a psionic telecyber trying to crack our protection."

"It wouldn't surprise me if there was a telecyber captive in that Vault."

"They have picked up our broadcast," shouted Brennan.

"From the boat to the satellite?" asked Jesse.

"From the satellite to..." Brennan's hands pressed commands on the keyboard. "The signal bounced off Sanctuary's firewall and spread. What they have picked up was the feed from the satellite to GenomeX.

"Shal, quickly, open another channel to GenomeX." Adam's mind was already forming an alternate plan, since GenomeX firewalls and securities weren't as sophisticated as Sanctuary's. If St. Clair's people traced the signal back to the Vindicator, the whole mission would be in jeopardy. "Put Mason on."

Happy to have some useful job to do, Shalimar sat down at the fourth workstation and did as she was told. Mason Eckhart answered immediately.

"Mason, do you copy?"

"Loud and clear."

"It is possible there is a psionic telecyber or a human controlling telecyber powers trying to trace the satellite feed back from Rebecca's laboratory all the way here." Adam's hands never stopped building up the nano blocks, they didn't even slow down.

"I'm happy to give them the runaround. They'll be picking their way in a virtual maze till the next millennium," said Mason with a thin smile. "But a human controlling telecyber powers? How's that possible?"

"Allow me, Adam, please," Samihah spoke from her station and, in the same fashion, she never lifted her eyes from her work. "Mr. Eckhart, do you know what a fatwa is?"

From the other side of the monitor, Rebecca's head snapped up and she faced the camera square on. "It is a death sentence issued by the leaders of the Muslim. It can and should be carried out by any follower of the faith anywhere in the world, anytime." Rebecca paused and looked at her friend's face, showing on her side of the monitor. "I've never thought I'd one day hear you talk about a fatwa."

Samihah's eyes locked with Rebecca's. "I'm calling one on our distinguished colleague, Dr. Kenneth Harrison."

From inside the light cocoon that was a nano robot blown up to the billionth degree, Adam chuckled, and the sound of it sent a chill up the spine of everyone within earshot. "I told you to get a number, Samihah."

"I thought I had rid the world of that worm when I recovered control of GenomeX post-Ashlock. What has the most competent of all botanists been up to this time?" Mason's voice sounded tired.

"You mean, besides heading the whole research project for mutant extermination using the Yersinia pestis virus?" asked Adam, and his face was the picture of innocence.

"Is there more?"

"Hell, yes! Much, much more! How about a parallel project to short circuit the minds of psionics and broadcast their raw power to trusted human 'receivers' who would, then, wield them?"

Mason sighed and shook his head. "My esteemed Dr. Shah, kindly get yourself a number. Methinks Dr. Harrison's days are quite numbered. And the figure is very low." He stopped for a moment to think. "Adam, I must inform April Dancer of this new development."

"Where is she, anyway?"

"Already off the shore of St. Mallots Island, waiting for the green light on 'Operation Sickbay'," answered Mason.

"That's a nice name." Adam shook his head. What with the mission christening mania and the covert forces? "I need time to put these nano devices together properly. I'll tell her when we're ready. Meanwhile, Brennan will send you schematics of the secret Psionic Project location. It can't be stormed from the outside, but it can be opened up from the inside and that's what I'm planning to do."

"Very well, Adam. Eckhart out."

"We might have another problem," shot Samihah from her workstation. "I trust the nanobots won't be detected by antibodies in the early stages of their assignment, but as the virus is eliminated and the patient's natural resistance improves, the nanobots themselves will be targeted by the phagocytes."

"I was thinking about that and I have an idea," answered Adam. "The nanobots will be long-circulating phagocytosis-resistant particles, actually stealth drug carriers."

"How?" asked Samihah, turning from her station to look back at the light cocoon where Adam was working with the projected image of Jesse Kilmartin. The breath caught in her throat. The inside of the object being built as full of cylinders, boxes and other shapes, all lit up in various colors. "Bismillah! This is amazing!"

"It is amazing, isn't it?" Adam smiled at the Iranian microbiologist. "The nanoparticle absorption and internalization by phagocytes will be inhibited by the presence of a coating of polysaccharide chains, heparin or dextran, in a brush-like configuration. The nanobots' hull will be covered with polysaccharide filaments, Samihah. And after they've done their job and there isn't a single Y-pestis virus left in the patient's system, the nanobots will be naturally eliminated through the tear ducts."

The scientists and their assistants returned to work. Brennan was busy taking care of security. To Shalimar, there was nothing left to do but fill up the empty mugs and wait. She sat at her station, now silent, and looked on as Adam and Jesse carefully put together their three dimensional puzzle. It was hard work and, to her eyes, tedious work. Soon, Shalimar was dozing, her head falling on her chest.

Hours later, the feral heard a different noise coming from the people in the boat. Chairs were scrapping the floor and a gentle hand was shaking her shoulder. Shalimar wasn't startled because the scent was unmistakable and the voice was very well-known to her. Adam had a tired look on his face, but it was obvious he was pleased. He brushed her cheek with his fingers and pointed to the center of the room. The diamond-shaped structure was complete, it's greenish hull covered with a white baby-thin hair coating. One point was graced with a double tail that looked suspiciously like a horizontal double helix that would work as the nanobot propeller. All participants were looking closely as the big medicine-carrying vessel started to shrink until it disappeared and only Jesse's image, smiling broadly, was left in the middle of the room, showing them a glass tube with a silvery liquid inside that could pass as mercury.

"Is that it?" asked Shalimar.

"That's it, Shal, and it is all there, back in Sanctuary, ready to be inoculated in our patients," answered Adam, stretching to relieve the tension of the all-nighter.

"But that is not enough!" exclaimed the feral.

Adam had an arm around Shalimar's shoulders. "Right now, they're self-replicating. We have programmed the nanobots with a self-replicating capability, which will increase their numbers exponentially. Once they've fully replicated, the ultramiecilin will be introduced to the nanobots liquid environment and they'll incorporate it. Then, it will just be a matter of inoculating the patients. I have faith they'll quickly recover." He pulled Shalimar around to face him. "It's time, Shal. Tonight, Brennan and I are entering the Vault through the back door. You and Samihah will lead April Dancer's Black Ops troops to the secret ward and, then to meet with us. Go to the rat queen, Shal. Tell her we're coming."

(A note from the author: All terms and procedures on nanorobotics were thoroughly researched. I recommend the following works to anyone interested: Nanorobotics, Aristides A. G. Requicha, Laboratory for Molecular Robotics and Computer Science Department University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0781

requicha , .edu/~lmr; plus any work by Dr. Adriano Cavalcanti and Dr. Robert A. Freitas Jr., leading scientists on the field. Besides that, you can also find useful information and images on these sites: . ; . ; . /links/en/werkstoffe_ ; . . Falconia.)

STORM TROOPERS

The VW bug stopped at the foot of the hill. It could go no further. From that point on, the occupants would have to proceed up on foot. The first one out was the tallest man, dressed in black from head to toe, in sturdy jeans, a black turtleneck shirt, hiking boots and a cap on his head. He extricated his long legs from the driver's seat.

Next, the shorter, older man, similarly dressed in black, climbed out of the small car's passenger's seat and pulled the back of the seat to the front, so the rider in the back could climb out. He offered a hand to help the young woman step out of the vehicle. After the girl was out, the older man carefully closed the bug's door and lightly brushed his hand over the top of the small car, a longing smile dancing on his lips. Of all cars he had purchased throughout his life, the Mustangs, the BMWs, one car held a special place in his heart, the first one he'd bought with his own money, and it had been a VW beetle, a convertible one! That wasn't a car; it was a friend, a most trustworthy friend.

The man looked up at the sky. It was a clear, starry night, but there was no moon. So much the better, it would be harder to spot them finding their way in the bushes, looking for a cave that would take them deep into the mountain itself. The man turned to the young woman standing next to him, took her hand in his and kissed the palm, looking into her eyes that shone in the dark. "Thank you, Emilia, for everything. I don't think we could have fulfilled this assignment without your help. You were a Godsend."

The young woman thanked her lucky star, now certainly shining up above her, together with her sisters of the Southern Cross, for this night was a moonless one, lest she would be seen blushing furiously. "Perhaps I should thank you, Dr. Kane, for showing me another reality, for confirming a few things I already suspected about new mutants."

"You knew them to be true in your heart, Emilia." Adam pointed the mountain to Brennan, signaling he should go on to the place where they would meet with Terra, the rat feral. "If I can impose on you a little longer, please, wait for Shalimar. She'll be down shortly. Take her back to the Vindicator."

"It's no imposition, Dr. Kane." Emilia Ramos, registered nurse who'd been taught from infancy that mutants were not human beings, but genetically engineered weapons created to dominate Humanity, held on to Adam's hand and gave the older man a peck on the cheek. "By the way," she joked, "I like you better this way."

"This way... how?"

"Clean shaven," she laughed softly and let go of his hand. "Good luck, and may you find the lady with the big, black eyes and the scar on her back alive and unharmed."

Adam nodded in the dark and left the woman to wait for Shalimar. He quickly found the trail leading up the hill. The light was very dim and he could barely see his way through the bush. He negotiated his way up more through touch than sight; whatever luminosity trickled down through the thick foliage was rapidly lost in the darkness under the trees.

Using branches and rocks to pull himself up, Adam found his way to the clearing where a very small campfire burned, now almost totally reduced to embers. Next to the fire, he could see the familiar silhouette of the slender and lithe Shalimar sketched against mountain wall. A few feet away, sitting on her haunches, Terra, the rat feral, chewed on something whitish and tossed remains over her shoulder. Brennan was standing behind Shalimar, his hands on his hips, as he looked around, amazed at the "sky on the ground", the myriad of blinking little red stars denouncing the presence of Terra's pack of rodents.

"Bienvenido, señor," greeted Terra, speaking with her mouth full. "Are you hungry? Do you want to share my meal?" The rat woman showed the gutted carcass of a small animal, possibly a goat. "Your cat has declined."

"I used to hunt myself." Shalimar looked disgusted. "But I think I'll go vegetarian."

"Thank you, Terra," answered Adam. "But I believe I'll pass, too."

"No problem. You'll be joining my pack for dinner very shortly." The feral squeaked a laugh and hurled the carcass to a cluster of small and shining red dots a few yards away. There was some commotion for a few seconds. When things calmed down, nothing but white bones shone under the dim light of the stars. "Vamonos, todavia. The night won't last forever."

While the rat feral stood up and cleaned her greasy hands on her fur, Adam pulled Shalimar to the trail. "Did you study the files on April Dancer?" he asked.

"Yes. Ex-field agent for the United Network Command for Law Enforcement, she rose in the Network's ranks, following the footsteps of her mentor, Alexander Waverly. After the agency was absorbed into other organs, April Dancer went into the intelligence and information community, where she quickly rose to a very powerful, extremely dangerous and even more secret position. She's as gray as they come, Adam. She has her manicured fingernails firmly stuck into any number of covert ops, confidential assignments, pretty much any action the government doesn't want to be associated with. She's so high up in the food chain, no pun intended..." Shalimar looked at the rat feral now picking her teeth with a twig and shuddered, "...Mason Eckhart himself answers directly to her."

"This is the person you'll be meeting tonight. In the flesh. No pun intended either." He looked over his shoulder to the rat and saw it grin back at him, her pointy, sharp teeth gleaming in the night. "This operation was considered so important she is commanding it herself. You, Shal, and Samihah, will meet April and her troops on the beach and break into the Medical Center's secret plague ward. Then, after you've seen to it that the surviving patients there are secure and on their way home for treatment, you'll lead April to the Vault's main entrance. I hope to have it open when you get there."

"I understand."

"Shalimar, I want you to take special care of one particular patient in the ward."

"Who?"

Adam swallowed dry and bit his upper lip. "You remember Charlotte Cooke?"

Shalimar looked at her friend pointedly. "That girl who turned your moral polarity upside down? How could I forget her? She was one of the disappearances we investigated."

"Yes, St. Clair had her abducted to serve as a guinea pig on his plague research." Adam touched his temple with the tip on his fingers, trying to muster some courage to spell out Charlotte's fate. "They did something terrible to her, Shal, probably fearing her moral polarity power. If she's alive and conscious, tell her Angela will know what to do to fix what has been done to her. And tell Angela, as soon as she's herself recovered from her bout with the plague, to contact Steve Austin. I'll need a pair of female bionic hands."

"You'll take care of that yourself, Adam." Shalimar couldn't take her eyes off her friend's face.

"I hope so, but I have an appointment for dinner," Adam answered, pointing to Terra, who just grinned more broadly.

"That's one date you're not planning on keeping, are you?"

"I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Now, go. Emilia is waiting for you." He pulled her chin up and lightly kissed her cheek.

Shalimar returned the kiss and held Adam's hand for a moment longer. "You're getting to that bridge very fast." She let go of his hand and started down the trail, then turned around for a split second, in time to see him heading to Terra. She would see him later inside the Vault.

"¿Entonces, señor? Can we go?" The rat's eyes flashed feral, two ruby red dots in the night, brighter than all others surrounding them. She turned her flashing eyes to Brennan and all the other red dots turned in tandem, landing squarely on the tall man. "Come after me, hombre," the feral addressed the elemental. "The way won't be easy."

The rodent half-breed climbed the rocky patch on the mountain side. With his eyes now adjusted to the dark, Brennan saw the shadow disappear up ahead among the trees. He grabbed a tree limb and climbed after her, confident Adam would be right behind him.

There was no trail anymore. Now, it was packed forest, the tropical kind, with dense foliage and slender trunks, best known as Atlantic bushes, not as thick as the rainforest of the Amazon River basin, but more than enough to conceal the entrances of the many caves that made the happiness of the pirates four hundred years in the past. No wonder the old sea wolves loved this island with the mountain. From their vantage points, they could see the sea for miles, but could never be seen. Even their ships could be hidden in a few larger caverns the water penetrated, their mouths large enough to accommodate a frigate.

Brennan climbed easily, following the shadow. From time to time, he could see the larger red dots a few yards up ahead as that animal mix turned around to check on their progress and show them the way. They weren't going so much as straight up, but more like sideways. And Brennan could hear Adam behind him, breathing hard. He had lost his footing a couple of times already, making Brennan turn and catch him by the arm. Adam wasn't as fit as he used to be. He tried to hide it, but Brennan noticed he had trouble reading the holographic lettering the computer sent while they build the nanorobots, he had new wrinkles around his eyes and a few suspicious white hairs were peeking from his temples. The fearless leader was getting old; his years were catching up on him. And the fact that Donna was lost had taken a heavier toll than Adam was willing to acknowledge. But she could be alive in that hellhole. The girl Emilia had seen her soon after she had been abducted. Adam, however, insisted Donna was dead. The man was in denial, but that was understandable. Whatever he and Dr. Shah had seen inside the Vault, whatever methods Harrison was using to squeeze the juice out of the captive psionics' minds, must have horrified them both to the point Adam wished the woman he loved a quick and, if possible, a painless death; it would be better than to be buried alive in that place.

A thin hand with long fingers and even longer fingernails grabbed the tall elemental's wrist and pulled him up as if he, a full grown man of good height and normal weight, was made of feathers. For a moment, he lost all contact with the soil, his feet dangled in the air. He was hanging high above a black nothingness. Cold sweat coated his skin in a split second. If he fell down the shaft, he would never be found. And he didn't dare form a coil, for the electric discharge could shock the owner of the hand that held him aloof. He hang on thin air for a few seconds, but he felt as if a whole year had gone by, until he was hauled up unceremoniously and left on a rock slab like a sack of potatoes. A muzzle sucked air next to him and a laugh that sounded more like a squeal rang in his ears.

Brennan was still trying hard to swallow his heart back and force it to its proper place when he felt Adam land next to him and crouch. He was sure he could hear his friend's heart beating like a drum. "Is that what Angela feels when she's flying?" he asked.

"Do you really want to know," Adam gasped, "or was it a rhetoric question?"

"Never mind."

The crevice they were occupying was narrow, but followed the side of the mountain for a few yards, ending in a bend which hid a crack in the wall. It looked like a small wedge had been hammered into the mountain, then yanked out. In the dark, little red dots blinked and a shadow crept up among them. The shadow let itself swing from a vine and jumped in front of the two men. A pair of larger red dots flashed and pointy white teeth gleamed in the night. The shadow turned around and headed to the crack in the mountain side. It was barely wide enough to let it pass and when the rat feral crossed the cave's threshold, she pulled Adam behind her. Brennan followed immediately.

Outside the cave, there was some light to see by. Inside, it was pitch black. Only animal eyes could see, and Brennan's instinct was to form a tesla coil between his fingers to help them see better. The coils danced in his hand and the white light revealed a narrow passage where they didn't fit upright, but had almost to crawl in order to move. The cave walls and ceiling were covered with rats of all sizes. With the sudden light shining in their eyes, the rats squealed and hissed, showing their tiny razor sharp teeth and claws. Terra, the pack leader, squeaked louder, flashing her eyes like rubies. She looked around, lips drawn, nostrils flaring. In a moment, the rats moved to attack and only Adam's voice shouting, "NO!" made the feral move to stop her army.

They were at a standstill. Brennan had rats climbing up his legs, his back, his arms, up to the shoulders. Even though he was a master in martial arts, there was no room to maneuver in the cave, it was impossible to fight. And what enemy was he supposed to fight? Hundreds, maybe thousands of the small beasts? He might catch a few with his bolts of lightning; he might toss a few off him with his hands, but in the end, the rats would have him. He was grossly outnumbered. The moment he heard Adam pitching his voice as low as he could and telling him, "Don't move, Brennan. Whatever happens, don't you move." He could feel that was the best piece of advice he had been given in years. He stood frozen in his place, his eyes adjusting further to the blackness. He didn't move a muscle, he didn't even blink. He doubted he was breathing. Only his eyeballs moved and very little, as he watched the darker shadow that was Adam slowly clasp Terra's hands in his and, pitching his voice even lower, try to sooth the feral into releasing him, explaining in as few words as possible the intricacies of mutant types and powers.

As Adam talked to the feral, the rats that had Brennan in his tiny clutches started to relax their grip and climb down from his body one by one. "Your feral eyes make you see clearly in this blackness, Terra. We can't see an inch ahead of us," the older man patiently explained, holding the mutant rat's hands in his. "Brennan has the power to generate electric energy and light. It will help us see a little, and we'll move along faster. Warn your pack and he will show you."

The rat woman had relaxed a little. Adam discreetly felt her pulse and it had slowed down somewhat. He saw her eyes shine scarlet and what looked like to be a million other tiny eyes shone a fraction of a second later. He turned to his companion, who was squatting a few feet away and slightly shaking. "Form a small tesla coil. The sudden bright light might dazzled them all. They have very sensitive eyes, actually. And remember, as ferals, they're pyrophobic," he instructed.

Brennan obeyed, conjuring up tendrils of light between three fingers. And he was extremely careful to keep them confined and under control. Electricity was too close to fire for comfort. With the delicate filaments of light shining from the very tip of his fingers, Brennan slowly lifted his hand closer to Terra. The feral had a fascinated look on her face. The dancing white light seemed to mesmerize her and she lifted her own fingers to touch the tendrils. Brennan turned the coils off before she could touch them, plunging the cave back into complete darkness. "No, no touching," he said. "You touch it, it will hurt you."

"Repítelo!" Exclaimed the feral with childlike delight. "Do it again!"

The light filaments returned, casting light to their surroundings. The elemental could see the feral smile and her eyes were almost falling out of their sockets. This time, he added a fourth and a fifth fingers to the sparkling dance. And he made the tesla coils leap from one hand to the other like a juggler. The feral released a high pitched laugh and clapped her hands in admiration.

"Are you, gentleman and lady, done?" Adam cleared his throat pointedly.

The dancing lights stopped on Brennan's right hand. "Keep it, hombre," chuckled the feral. "We will see better, but there are certain tunnels with barely enough room to crawl." She looked at Adam, then gazed at Brennan and smiled. "No tengan miedo, you won't get lost," she said in her odd combination of Spanish and heavy accented English. "You have the best guides in the world."

The small car sped down the hill towards the marina. At the wheel, a blond woman, her long hair flowing in the wind. After shoving the young nurse, Emilia, to the passenger seat, Shalimar drove with a decided look on her face. For the first time in her life, she would be a participant in the invasion of a sovereign republic. From guerilla fighter to investigator to field agent, to spy, now covert ops soldier. The feline feral shook her head and smiled reassuringly to the girl seating to her right and clutching the handler in the car panel so tightly her knuckles were white.

That time of the evening, the streets were deserted, and few cars rode in the island anyway. People preferred mountain bikes, quaint horse drawn coaches or going around on foot. The docks of the lavish marina opened before the VW bug and Shalimar parked the little vehicle at the main gate. The two women hurried to the yacht where Samihah Shah, microbiologist, waited for them and where they would contact the submarine where government agent April Dancer, head of the black operation that would secure the demise of an extremely dangerous project carried on in the island and intending to wipe out all mutant kind off the face of the earth, had her troops deployed and ready to go.

The Vindicator gently swayed against its docking place, the lights softly glowing inside. The gangplank that linked the vessel to the dry land was in place and the women boarded the yacht fast, rushing to the main room where they'd worked the night before. Calling out for the microbiologist, Shalimar opened the door and entered the room with the young nurse. There, in the middle of the room, Samihah Shah, bound and gagged, had a weapon pointed to her temple. Two other guards in the island police uniforms flanked the door. Shalimar and Emilia heard the distinctive noise of guns being cocked and they felt the muzzles touch their heads.

The tunnels had started off fairly wide, allowing Brennan and Adam to half stand, half crouch as they hurried deeper and deeper into the mountain. Little by little, however the passageways got narrower, until there was barely room enough to crawl and the darkness was complete. They pulled their bodies forward by the sheer strength of their arms. Suddenly, as the tunnel widened just enough for them to proceed on all fours, the rat feral Terra made them stop. Her eyes flashed red and held. This time, only one other pair of red dots responded to the animal communication. After a long moment, the two pairs of red dots dimmed down. "Hombre, dame luz," she demanded.

"What?"

"Terra is asking for some light, Brennan," Adam translated.

"Si, si, luz. Dame luz."

The elemental formed a small bunch of tesla coils and the narrow passage was bathed in white light, just enough so they could see each other. They were filthy, covered in sweat and dirt. The feral, her thin fur matted with mud, launched a thick barrage of words in Spanish, speaking very fast, so fast Adam made her stop and speak slower or he wouldn't be able to understand.

"What did she say? What's wrong?" asked Brennan, keeping the light shining in his hand.

"She said there was a small cave-in up ahead and the passage is too narrow."

"What now?" asked Brennan. "Do we go back and try another tunnel?"

Before Adam could translate the question to Spanish, the feral shook her head. "No! No go back," she reverted to English. "We make the passage big." Then she started in Spanish again and, now, Adam's eyes were wide open and he had an incredulous look in his face.

Turning to Brennan, Adam said, "Listen to me, something is going to happen. Turn off the light, lie down on your belly and cover your head with your arms." His hand touched Brennan's shoulder. "Remember back at the entrance, when the rats climbed on you?"

The elemental nodded and swallowed hard.

"You get the idea."

"Oh, man..."

Adam swallowed hard himself. "It's The Tempest, Brennan."

"What?"

"Strange bedfellows," said Adam, dropping down on his stomach and covering his head with his arms.

Brennan quickly assumed the position, crossing his arms over his head. "They couldn't come any stranger."

"¿Listos?"

"Are you ready, Brennan?" Adam's voice was trembling.

"Yes," the elemental answered, his teeth shattering.

Squeaks and hisses filled the tunnel, coming from the deeper passages. A sea-like rumble grew louder as it got closer and closer. In a matter of seconds, thousands of rats covered the two men as they ran down the tunnel, heading for the exit. The rat wave washing their bodies was never ending, as tiny little feet scurried over them. Even though it lasted just for a couple of minutes, it felt like an eternity had passed, until the last few animals rushed to the back of the tunnel.

A yearlong moment passed before the men could pick themselves up and sit with their backs to the tunnel walls. It took them even longer to slow down their beating hearts. Both Adam and Brennan blew out the air they were holding in their lungs and gasped. They had enough trouble breathing correctly again, speech was impossible. The light shone one more time on Brennan's hand and he saw that the older man had drawn his legs up to his chest and was holding his knees, shaking badly. He looked at his own other hand and saw that it wasn't steady either.

With a triumphant grin on her muzzle, Terra beckoned them to follow her. The tunnel was now large enough, thanks to her pack.

Hands bound behind their backs, tightly held together with plastic restraints, three women were pushed roughly out of the yacht's main room to the gangway that surrounded the vessel's main deck and led to the gangplank. Each one of them had an armed policeman walking next to her. The instructions had been clear: they were to be taken to the boss, the jeep was already waiting on the dock, with other guards keeping watch.

Policemen and captives went down the gangplank. As they stepped on land, shadows climbed the dock, emerging from the sea. The surprised guards never had a chance, as the agents, all Navy SEAL trained, rose behind them. The women heard the sickening snap of a neck breaking, the hushed sound of a throat being slit and the thud of something hard connecting to a skull. One diver quickly cut their bounds as another hopped on the jeep's back and signaled that the women should get in the vehicle. Inside, an elegant woman already past her prime, but still handsome greeted them with a smile.

"Acá estamos, señor."

The last few yards of their way had been conspicuously easier. Adam looked around. The light coming in from a hole in the wall allowed him to see his surroundings without the aid of Brennan's electric coils. The walls of the passageway felt different to the touch of his hand, not the packed solid dirt they'd been crawling on for so long, but crumbling and loose. Also, the hole on the far end was way smaller than the inside width of the tunnel.

"This is not natural," he said.

"No, señor. You have been busy working in the boat." The rat woman grinned and her muzzle twitched. "Well, so have we. This was the best hidden entrance, but the tunnel leading here was way too narrow." With a proud look on her face, she placed her hands on her hips and grinned. "We make it big."

The older man came closer to the opening and studied the metallic mesh that covered its mouth. Without touching it, he called for Brennan. The tall electricity mutant concentrated and passed his hand, palm out, about an inch of the mesh. "It is hot, electrified, but the current isn't too strong."

"It isn't there to keep people away, but to keep our small furry friends under control." explained Adam, looking at Terra, a few feet behind, curiously watching what the humans were doing.

"It covers all the interior walls in the big cave, señor, all the openings," said the feral. "It killed many hermanitos, many brothers. I touched it once, but I didn't die. It just hurt me bad."

"There's something more," Brennan offered, passing his palm over the mesh one more time. "A magnetic pulse of some sort... I'm not sure."

"I bet it is an alarm system. Anything or anyone trying to cut the mesh will trip it."

From the pockets of his cargo pants, Adam produced a bunch of clamps, each one wired to a small black box big enough to hold a battery. He attached the clamps to the mesh around the edge of the hole. "Each box has a chip and a battery, Brennan. They'll divert the electric and magnetic flows away from their perimeter, creating an isolated field. They're off now, and have to be turned on at the same time, or the alarm will be triggered."

"Not a problem." Brennan pulled his hands together and gathered power between them, forming a small ball of light filaments. When he was satisfied the energy was enough to turn the little devices on, but not so high as to burn them out, he released the bolt and hit all the black boxes with a burst of electric power at the same time, turning them on, as the little green lights they sprouted proved.

From another pocket, Adam pulled a set of clips and quickly cut the mesh, liberating the mouth of the tunnel. Now he could see where it lead and he understood why nobody saw the mesh cut. They were immediately behind the greenhouse where Harrison cultivated his pet psychedelic plants. Between the glass and rocky walls, there was a space roughly four feet wide, just enough for them to enter the Vault unnoticed.

Adam was the first out, hanging from Brennan's hand and landing with his back to the glass of the greenhouse wall. Brennan came second and Terra was third. After them, rats started to pour into the Vault and run around the rocky wall. In a matter of seconds, the small furry beasts were deployed all around the Vault, hiding under tables, file cabinets, delicate electronic machinery and consoles.

When the rats were in position, Adam took another peek at the Vault and noticed the staff seemed to have been reduced, as he had expected, to a small monitoring crew taking the graveyard shift. He gestured to Terra, telling her "One... very small..." without any sound. The feral nodded and grinned, her muzzle twitching in anticipation. Adam, then, pointed to a female technician sitting in front of a computer station, totally focused on her work and oblivious to the rest of the world. The feral grinned more broadly and nodded. A dreamy look clouded her face and her eyes glittered like rubies in the familiar feral way.

Adam counted fifteen seconds in his head. The scream was piercing and terrified, as the computer tech climbed up her chair, then up the desk, gathering her skirt and long lab coat around her thighs and yelling in absolute terror. "A rat! A rat! There are rats in here!"

In the commotion that followed, as techs, doctors and security guards overturned chairs and crashed lab appliances while hunting the tiny mouse that ran around the equipment, eluding all humans in its pursuit; Adam and Brennan turned the corners of the greenhouse and entered, closing the door behind them. A few punches, kicks and electric discharges later, the plant caretakers were all down on the floor, knocked out.

Brennan opened the greenhouse door a crack and looked out. Many staffers in the Vault were still hunting the rat and caring for the terrified woman. Other security guards and techs looked on, talking among themselves, taking a break from their routine. He gestured "clear" and Adam, half crouching, ran to the nearest cell, quickly entering through the smart-glass door. With any luck, they would overlook the unauthorized opening and closing of the cell.

In a far corner of the padded cell, a frail oriental girl was curled up in a fetal position, her thighs almost glued to her chest. Adam looked at her quickly, she seemed to be out like a light, rocking fitfully and muttering in her sleep. He squatted next to the door, applied his ear to the glass and heard intently. Things were slowly calming down in the Vault, as the techs and guards returned to their stations. He didn't dare crack the door open; the smart glass would become transparent again. He was counting the seconds in his head. Brennan must be in the other cell by now and... the hand on his arm made him almost jump out of his skin.

Adam leaped and grabbed the girl, clamping his hand over her mouth to prevent her from calling the guards attention, but the girl didn't make a sound. She relaxed in his grip and turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were enormous, big beyond measure in the pinched, way too thin and gaunt face. He rocked her gently and made a shushing sound in her ear, calling her name softly. "Carly... shh... shh..." Under his hand, a small, almost absent smile spread on the girl's face as her eyes rolled a complete circle in her head and returned to their proper position. Adam wasn't certain if she was nodding or if her head was lolling like her neck couldn't hold its weight. Slowly, he removed his hand from the girl's mouth. She giggled a little and looked at him. Her eyes seemed to focus for the first time and she half giggled, half cried, nestling more snuggly against Adam's chest. "Dr. Kane... is that really you?" she whispered. "Are you really here or just in my mind?"

"I am really here, Carly, you're not hallucinating."

"They forgot all about me," she whispered, as if telling him a secret. "I am too weak, I have no powers to speak of..." She looked around and she cowed, grabbing Adam's shirt like it was her last hope of salvation. "No... no... let go of me. Let go of me! You're not gonna take me... no..." she spat at nothing, now talking to ghosts, yet her voice never rose higher than a whisper. "I was a disappointment, a mistake... I shouldn't be here at all... When they took me to the prickly place and stuck needles in me, nothing worked... only scared... only fear..." She started to hyperventilate. "They said I was no good. I could only..." She squirmed in his lap, snapped her head to the side and addressed the ghosts only she could see. "No! Don't come any closer. Keep your tentacles to yourself! Don't touch me! I'm safe now! Safe!" She seemed to come back to the one thing she knew was real, Adam. "They forgot all about me... They took me to the nothing box and the ghosts, the monsters got worse... but they were not happy with me. I heard them talking... talking... they said there were only emotions... only the fear and the hurt... the other one just screamed and screamed... I could do nothing, I couldn't move things or control computers or read minds, I could only cast emotions , so they just left me here... with the ghosts... with the monsters... but they didn't stick nothing in me anymore... any... more..."

Adam had a pained look in his face, and he was gritting his teeth to keep his temper under control. He was trembling himself of rage, of outrage, really, at the total absence of compassion, of mercy, of simple humanity to the captives. They were regarded as animals and treated as such. Pulling the girl's face up so he could look into her eyes, he tried to make her focus just a little more, grateful that she had been forgotten and the amount of drugs in her system was small enough to allow her to be at least a little coherent. "There's more people here, more captives. Do you know how many? Do you know any of them?"

"There's more people here, yes! There's the nurses!" She shuddered. "They're all white and evil... They're monsters, you know?" She was shaking. "The doctors... the guards... they hurt... they stick thinks inside me... they put me in the prickly box with the thing in my mouth and on my eyes... I can't shut my eyes..." She was whimpering. "And in the nothing box... The ghosts get worse!" She was getting too agitated, too loud. Suddenly, her voice dropped again to a whisper, as she told Adam another secret. "And there's the others... I see them... the skeletons... they go naked... The monsters pull them, haul them to the prickly box... and to the nothing box... There are men skeletons and women skeletons... And they do those things... those experiments..." She giggled once, twice, three times spasmodically. "Do you know they glue things to these here?" She poked at the electrodes sticking out of her shaved skull harder and harder until the poking became hitting, as she tried to stop voices inside her head, shake ghosts out of her mind with her fists.

That was getting out of hand. The noise level was rising fast, she would soon raise hell and the guards would certainly come see what the racket was all about. Adam bit his upper lip so hard it left a faint taste of blood in his mouth. He soothed her, stroking her arms, holding her like a baby and rocking softly. As delicately as he could, he placed his fingers on the girl's thin neck, finding the right spots. "Forgive me, Carly." He applied pressure and held, cutting the blood flow to the girl's brain. The look of incomprehension on her face was pitiful. In seconds, her mouth gaped, her eyes rolled inside her head and she went limp in his arms.

Adam gently laid the girl's body on the padded floor and tried to preserve her modesty as best he could, arranging the only garment she had on, an open back hospital gown, in a way she wouldn't be too exposed. He risked detection when he opened the door and the smart glass went transparent, but luck was finally on his side and the immediate vicinity was deserted.

Crouching, almost crawling, Adam rushed to the back of the big sensory deprivation tank that dominated the Vault. It was illuminated; he could see the light pouring out through the bay window on the other side. The sensory overload chamber, however, was dark and empty, the workstations there unattended. The nearest desktop computer stood just a few feet away, but it couldn't be reached. He would certainly be seen if he tried. Yet, he had to hook up the last of the small black boxes he had with him to a slot in the back of a CPU to connect the intranet to his palm pilot and download the trapdoor script Jesse had written into the Vault's system. He looked around, searching for a solution and he saw Terra's muzzle peek from behind the empty sensory overload chamber. Their eyes met and she bared her teeth in her insolent grin. Adam showed her the black box and the connector, then he pointed to the workstation and the computer there, making her understand one had to be fitted to the other. He saw her gesture back, palm out in the classic move meaning "wait". She was looking directly at him and her eyes glinted feral, two cherries glowing like lamps.

Adam felt a slight tug on the leg of his pants. The larger rat he had met up close and personal in the clearing a few days earlier was pulling at him, calling. That big sucker of a rat seemed to be Terra's second in command, her most trusted hermano. The scientist looked at the feral and she touched her mouth with the tip of her fingers, meaning he should place the box between the rat's teeth. Adam looked at her quizzically and she nodded firmly, pointing to the animal. After a moment's hesitation, the older man did as he was told.

The rat held the small device in its mouth and clamped its little teeth tightly around it. Then, it scampered fast under the desk, disappearing behind it. Seconds passed and the palm pilot in Adam's hand came to life, meaning it was now linked to the Vault's computer main server. He punched a few commands and the download began as predicted and took ten seconds to complete. A few commands punched in the palm pilot later, and the huge coffer door's locks started to open themselves, wheels turning, the steel latch the size of a tree trunk being pulled inexorably back.

The security guards, the medic and scientific personnel working in the Vault, all looked at the door without comprehension. Why the hell was the door opening at this hour? It would be at least another three hours to the end of the shift and another crew take over their places. On whose authority? The door was time rigged in the computer system. It wouldn't open before it was supposed to, unless someone very high up overrode the commands.

One female nurse, looking intently at the door, felt an itch on her ankle and bent over to scratch it. Her fingers touched something soft and furry and she looked down only to meet with a pair of small red irises and a twitching muzzle that seemed to be grinning at her. For a moment, she couldn't believe her own eyes. It was not a tiny mouse like before, but a huge rat, its gray fur almost black. The nurse gasped once, she gasped twice, desperately seeking her voice in the depths of her throat. She found it, loud, clear and high pitched when the animal sunk its teeth on her foot right above her white sneakers, piercing her socks and her skin with a vicious bite.

Another woman screamed and jumped off her workstation, then a man, and another, as rats emerged from under every desk, from around every console, from behind every cabinet, from the shadows of every secluded corner of the super secure Vault. The mice scurried everywhere, climbing up chairs, jumping up monitors, straddling keyboards. The invasion of the rodent army turned the facility into a pandemonium. The security detail was dumbfounded. No-one knew how to react to the breaking and entering.

Two men dressed entirely in black, a deep contrast to the white clad staff working in the Vault, both grimy with dusty sweat and mud, came running from the back of the cave. This kind of invader the security guards knew how to fight and they responded according to their training, aiming their guns at the intruders.

The tallest man shot a bolt of lightning with his hand hitting a guard square on the chest and making him crumble. He was a weapon! He was one of Them! One of the things they were taught to hate and fight! As the aberration shot his bolts, the other, shorter man jumped over a workstation now abandoned and started to punch keys on the keyboard without looking at it, but with his eyes latched to the monitor. The Vault's door were now moving on its hinges and slowly sliding through its tracks. One of the techs tried to pull him out of the computer, but the man was fast. An elbow to the tech's face broke his nose, a backhand to the side of his head sent him spiraling back. The man in black did a back flip over the computer and landed with his feet on a guard's chest, screwing his aim. The shot meant for Brennan went astray and the bullet was lost in the depths of the cave.

The Vault's door was open wide enough to admit people from the outside in. Men and women in camouflage attire started pouring in the great cave, their faces smeared with black paint. Their weapons were light, but deadly. The Vault's security guards were quickly outnumbered. Behind the soldiers, four women in civilian clothes entered the facility, one of them, the older one, had a pistol in her hand. Once inside, the armed woman called out and more soldiers entered, bringing with them a silver haired gentleman, a thin man in a lab coat and a terrified blond woman, her once perfectly coifed hair disheveled, her clothes in disarray.

But resistance inside wasn't over. From the opposite side of the huge laboratory came a woman. Well over forty, she radiated command and resolve. A crown-like contraption shone among the strands of her hair, the glass ornaments shining as energy ran in its wiring. The woman took stock of the situation and started moving her hands in the fashion of telekinetics. She was pushing rats out and using them as projectiles, hitting the invading soldiers.

Seeing the new enemy, Brennan gathered energy between his hands, forming a ball of power to shoot at the woman, but she saw it too and, with a wave of her hand, she sent the elemental flying fast, slamming him against the door to the sensory deprivation chamber with such strength he had all air knocked out of his lungs and collapsed to the floor like a rag doll.

With an ear piercing squeak, a creature out of nightmare came running over the desks and cabinets, leaping from one counter top to the other, almost flying. Half woman, half animal, it had bloodshot eyes, white pointy teeth. A muzzle and bedraggled gray fur covered its body, but its most frightening feature were the black, thin, razor sharp nails adorning her front paws. Together with it, a wave of rats shot from the center of the cave to the crowned woman. No matter how many she tossed aside, more came to her, until she could no longer resist. The big monster sped relentlessly and, in a final leap, it flew, landing on top of the woman, its nails tearing at her flesh, ripping the crown off her head and holding it high as it squealed in frenzied fury.

Shalimar Fox jumped over the railing separating the entrance mezzanine from the lower portion of the laboratory. She fell on a fighting guard, kicked him viciously and did a somersault, landing next to Brennan's sprawled form. She quickly checked him for broken bones and found none. He was only stunned by the crash against the tank's door.

From the mezzanine, Samihah Shah, standing a couple of feet behind the invaders' commander April Dancer, couldn't take her eyes off the sensory deprivation tank. Light shone inside it, the sarcophagus was lowered, floating in the middle of the water filled chamber. She found an unused computer station, keyed a few commands and starred in horror at the monitor. Running to the railing and leaning forward, she screamed at the top of her lungs, trying to sound louder than the fray below her, "Adam! ADAM!" When he finally looked up, she pointed to the tank and yelled, "There's somebody there! That woman was commanding telekinetic powers! To do that..."

"She needed a source!"

Adam didn't waste a second. He commandeered a computer and started keying in codes with lightning speed. He found the software controlling the tank and the experiment being held before all Hell broke loose. There was indeed a specimen inside the sensory deprivation chamber, locked into the human shaped box. He found the commands to empty the tank of its water and turn the box on its axis face up. The command to open the door was clear on the monitor and Adam punched the keys fast. The computer complied, but a warning sign shone on the screen. Some mechanical malfunction, something had broken when Brennan slammed against the door. Adam tried again. And again. Another warning sign shone on the monitor, and this time, Adam got frantic. "The door is jammed," he shouted. "It won't open and the air supply to the patient inside was cut! We have to free him or he will suffocate in a matter of seconds!"

Shalimar left Brennan's side and tried to push the tank door open, but it wouldn't budge. Time was pressing, the poor soul inside it wouldn't resist much longer.

"GATA! Conmigo!"

That was one of the few words in Spanish the feline feral recognized. It was Terra's way of calling her. She turned and saw the rat feral grabbing a heavy chair from one of the workstations. Shalimar ran to the rodent, grabbed the chair and with their eyes ablaze, the two ferals threw the piece of furniture with all their strength against the tank's bay window, shattering it in thousands of shards.

Adam punched a quick code in the computer keyboard, leaped over the workstation, then over the shattered window as the human shaped box cracked open, its top hoisted, revealing its occupant. It wasn't a man, but a naked woman, skeleton thin and with her eyes closed, the electrodes implanted on her bald shaved head were attached to the box's wall, the veins of her outstretched arms pierced by IV needles leading to tubes feeding drugs and fluids to her bloodstream, and there were catheters inserted in her body.

Without a look to the woman's face, Adam went to work in a flash, freeing her from the perverted medical paraphernalia that linked her to the tank. He lifted her torso from the box and slipped his arm under her legs. Scooping her up and out of the box, Adam knelt down, cradling the woman in his arms and shouting for April to send the paramedics that came with the invading forces to him. The woman's skin was burning up to his touch and her body started to shudder in an epileptic-like fit, her arms and legs thrashing weakly. Her head jerked back and forth, crashing against Adam's shoulder. He held her tighter and cupped the side of her face with this hand to stop its motion. The woman's eyes fluttered open as the thrashing subsided and she looked at him without a trace of recognition in her huge black and catatonic eyes.

This time, it was Adam who started trembling as realization hit and he saw exactly the person he held in his arms. His hand slid down from her face and over her ravaged body until it came to a stop on her sunken lower belly, where it traced the scars marring the skin. He pulled her closer to his chest, slightly turning her hips so he could see the small of her back. There should be another scar at the base of her spine, this one deeper and uglier. Instead, there was an open sore, and his hand came up smeared with blood and fluid.

Adam was shaking as he held the woman's body tighter and tighter against his chest. Burying his face on the crook of her neck, he lost control over his emotions and he cried her name again and again.

"Donna! Donna! Donna!"

All eyes in the Vault, human and animal, were glued in the scene playing in the sensory deprivation tank. Like an inverted Pieta, a man sat on the floor and held the unconscious body of a woman on his lap clasped tightly to his chest. The pallor of her skin made a striking contrast against his black clothes. For all accounts she looked like a corpse, a broken puppet, yet he kissed her cracked lips, her hollow cheeks, his hand touching her forehead, running down her neck, her shoulder, her arm, till it grabbed her limp hand and brought her fingers to his lips, her palm to his face. He mourned her like a father would mourn a lost child; he cried over her body like a husband would cry over his dead wife.

Of the many eyes enthralled by the scene, those who didn't know the couple showed pity; those who knew the woman to be a genetically altered freak showed disgust. The few others, those who knew the man and called him either leader or friend, those who had met the woman before and cared deeply for her, they showed genuine grief. Samihah was biting her knuckles, trying not to break down herself; Shalimar had fallen on her knees next to Brennan and she was grateful when he held her in a tender embrace. Even the hardboiled April Dancer was moved.

Terra, the feral rat, squatted by Shalimar's side, a puzzled look on her face. "¿Quién es ella?" she asked, lightly nudging the feline.

Shalimar lifted her head from Brennan's shoulder. "What?"

"Who is she?" the rat woman repeated the question in a respectful whisper.

Sobbing, the feline looked at the rodent, tears streaming down her face. "She is his mate, Teresa. She is his mate."

A combination of horror and sorrow spread over the rodent's face. She shook her head slowly. "Ay, caramba..."

In the tank, Donna's skin was almost searing Adam's hands. He looked up, but his tear-filled eyes could barely see. No matter, they had won the battle. He knew they had won the battle. And he knew Donna's release from her high tech coffin had plunged everybody into a stupor. Action! Get a grip! Do something! "Samihah!" he shouted as loud as his hoarse voice allowed. "Get... some... water in here!" he choked. "She's boiling hot! It's hyperthermia! Datura poisoning..." he gasped. "It causes hyperthermia! April!" he howled. "Where the hell are those paramedics!"

The invaded laboratory burst into sudden activity. Samihah Shah ran back to the computer and entered the command to fill up the chamber with water. April summoned the medical unit working at the hospital's secret plague ward to the Vault on the double. Brennan and Shalimar ran to Adam's side, helping him stand and hold on to Donna's body. Water was pouring into the tank and the chamber was filling up fast. When it got to waist level, the pouring stopped. Slowly, gently, and keeping her head above the surface, they lowered the comatose woman to the water to cool her off. Touching the liquid, half submerging in it, the woman's eyelids fluttered open again, but the orbs never focused on anything or anybody. Her lips moved in a soundless speech and her neck, a subdermal governor firmly inserted on its base, couldn't possibly hold her head as it rolled in circles. Her arms shook chaotically and her atrophied legs quivered, her whole body shook and her head jerked back, gurgling sounds coming from her throat as the spasms grew more severe.

"She's seizing! Shalimar, hold her above the water!" Adam forced Donna's mouth open, pulling her tongue out and keeping her air passages unencumbered. They held her like that while the paramedic unit came down to the tank. Finally, Brennan had to pry his friend's hands away from Donna and force him to surrender her to the medics care.

Adam's knees buckled under him and he plunged into the water half filling the tank. Pushing Brennan away, he knelt, bending his head till he was totally submerged. He had to cool down himself or he would lose the tenuous grip he had over his emotions and it was clear to him control was of the utmost necessity right now. His work in the underground palace of horrors was far from finished.

When he finally stood up, water dripping off his hair and clothes, he was his old self again, not only in command of his own heart, but of his team, too. "Shalimar!" his voice was a bark. "There are other victims here who need help bad. Carly Leung, Angela's secretary, is in that holding cell there. You and Samihah, take care of that for me, please." He looked around. "Brennan! You... Terra! You're both with me."

With a last look to his Donna, now in the hands of April's medic unit, he leaped over the broken bay window. The elemental and the rat feral flanked him and the strange trio climbed the stairs to the entrance mezzanine. The deadly look on Adam's face made everyone they met on their way up step aside and let them pass, even April's agents. No one dared confront them on pain of instant electrocution. Or worse.

At the top of the stairs, Adam's eyes fell upon Kenneth Harrison, the mind behind the mutant extermination plan. The man was trembling like a leaf, but he still tried to keep his composure, something his lover Thomasina Hobson had already lost.

"Hello, Ken, you pathetic little worm." hissed Adam. "You ridiculous excuse for a man of Science. Do you know who that woman down there is?"

Harrison's heart was the size of a shriveled prune. "Just one of the specimens he provided," he answered, pointing to St. Clair.

"You pusillanimous bastard! You are already pointing fingers and trying to save your scrawny ass." Adam's tone was icy cold. "You requested a multipsionic to satisfy your perverted curiosity, you overgrown sadistic little brat!" He grabbed Harrison by the collar of his shirt and pulled his face closer. "She is not a number, you son of a bitch! Her name is Donna Gryphon and she was to be my wife."

Ken Harrison was horrified, but not at the idea of having caused perhaps irreversible harm to another human being, because, in his mind, that freak was not human at all. The very idea was... His fear left him, only disgust remained, and he managed to free himself from Adam's grasp. "You mean... you and that... you have sexual intercourse with... That's nauseating! That's worse than zoophilia!"

Blood and teeth spilled from the botanist as Adam's fist smashed through his mouth. He couldn't even fall down right, as Adam kicked him in the back, sending him face-first to the floor. His hand gripped Harrison by the scruff of the neck and pulled him up unceremoniously. The botanist struggled and whined, "You cannot do this to me! I am a citizen of this island! I was granted citizenship! And here, I am not a criminal! I am a respected scientist! A benefactor of Humanity!"

The paramedics were climbing up the stairs with Donna's body on a stretcher. Her condition was extremely severe. In an effort to boost up the power broadcast to the human receiver, the technicians in charge of controlling the flow of drugs to her system had increased the dosage exponentially. While in the care of the paramedics, Donna had shown signs of drug overdose, resulting in seizures. She had to be intubated and placed on life support.

Adam hauled Harrison by the neck and forced him to look at Donna. "Benefactor of Humanity? You're not even a human being, you slug! That is a human being, you little prick! She is more human than you are, more human than I am by far!" He spun Harrison around and faced him. "Mason thought he had rid the world of your slime when he handed you to Miss Dancer here, but she did a very poor job when she let you live. I won't make the same mistake, Kenneth!"

"You can't do that!" Harrison desperately looked around. "Help me, Oliver, please! April! I beg you!"

Nobody moved a muscle to interfere in Harrison's favor.

With Harrison still in his clutches, Adam's voice was low and menacing. "Terra!" He called and his voice climbed up a notch with every word. "You have performed beyond my wildest expectations. For that, Terra, your... pack... deserves... A snack!"

Grabbing Harrison by the collar and the belt, Adam sent the screaming man flying over the railing to land in the middle of the laboratory, where rats covered him completely in a matter of seconds. They piled up on top of the screeching botanist, as he tried to kick and yank the assaulting rats, only to have more rodents attack him from all sides. When the animals scattered again, not even bones remained; only a bloodstain marked the spot where Ken Harrison disappeared forever off the face of the Earth.

From the holding cells where they'd found Harrison's other victims, Shalimar and Samihah covered their eyes to avoid the feeding frenzy taking place in the center of the lab. After it was over, they quickly climbed the stairs to join the group up on the mezzanine and waited till Adam turned away from the railing where he was watching the carnage below.

Speaking very low, afraid of that evil side she knew laid dormant inside Adam's soul, Shalimar informed that they'd found a few other victims and they were being well taken care of. Among them, they had found the young Carly and Michelle Bigelow, the telecyber.

Adam nodded, gasping and fighting to regain some self-control again. He felt old, disillusioned, his spirit hurt beyond any chance of healing. His darker side had taken over once again, this time without any aid, without any need for his moral polarity to be turned around and twisted. It had sprung up like a geyser from the depths of his heart, as Adam had consciously unleashed it to take revenge over the man who had robbed him blind, taking away the purest, cleanest feeling he had cultivated in decades, his one chance at happiness, at contentment for his vintage years.

Shalimar took two steps towards her surrogate father and lightly touched his arm, only to be pulled into a tight, desperate hug she gladly returned. Reaching out with her hand, she pulled Brennan in closer to help comfort a man they both admired, they both respected, even loved.

"I trust you with Donna's life." With his voice coarse with emotion, Adam spoke without letting go of them. "Take care of her as best as you can. Take her home. Tell Jesse and Emma I love them as I love you both. I couldn't love you more if you were my true children. Tell Angela she's the only blood family I have left, but that doesn't matter. Together with you, she is a child of my heart. Tell her to open the top drawer of my desk in Sanctuary. There, she will find a jewel, the exact replica of one her mother had. It is a gold ball studded with gems. It belonged to my mother and it can be opened in the middle. Inside it, you will find my passwords and codes. With them, you'll be able to access all my databases, all my bank accounts, all my funds. My wealth is counted into the billions, Shalimar, and I have six heirs, you, Brennan, Jesse, Emma, Angela and Donna. Use it wisely." He reached inside his shirt and fingered the diamond studded feather pendant he had one day given to the woman he loved, now hanging from his neck in a chain, together with her commring. He lifted his head painfully and looked at Shalimar Fox, his friend of more than ten years, and let go of her.

Adam turned to the Iranian microbiologist. "Thank you for everything, Samihah." He reached for her hand, brought it up and kissed it. "You've been the perfect field agent... my gazelle. Send Mason and Rebecca my regards, but now you'd better go." He turned to face the troop commander. "And you, too, April. Take St. Clair with you and do with him whatever you please, I don't care. I very much doubt you'll do anything. After all, it would cause a diplomatic incident and you're up to your neck in them, aren't you? But his cover is blown, everybody knows what he is up to and you have two choices. Either you fight him tooth and nail or you join him and fight the future. It's up to you." He sighed. "Go now, for I'll seal this place shut forever."

April Dancer jumped at his words. "No, this technology..."

Adam barked a laugh. "Greedy April, already calculating what this technology would mean to you and your bosses, aren't you? Do you really think I would leave it to you?" He laughed again. "Not a chance. Go before you join me for dinner. I have a date and I mean to keep it."

"I think you'd better go, too, señor." The rat feral was perching on the mezzanine rail, picking her teeth with something whitish that looked conspicuously like a human finger bone. "My pack might always be hungry, but today, their bellies are full, thank you very much." She jumped down and came to face Adam, two hand spans shorter than the man, yet managing to look him squarely in the eye. "You go. Your debt is paid."

"I have to seal this place, Terra. Besides, I'm so tired..." Adam touched the side of the rat's muzzle. "Enough is really enough."

"Your mate needs you, señor. Your place is with her now." She reached out her hand and held his. "Show me what to do and this place will be closed forever."

With a sigh, Adam fished his palm pilot from his back pocket and handed it to the rat woman. Pulling out the stylus, he touched a few commands as Terra watched. He ostensibly spoke to Terra, but he wanted April and Oliver to know what was about to happen. "After we're out, touch this symbol here. You'll see the computers that are still working flash then go dark. It will happen to all of them here and then reach the primary one all the way to the main server at St. Clair Pharmaceuticals headquarters..." Adam heard Oliver groan and chuckled. "All the data concerning this operation and the plague research will be garbled, every single file will turn itself to cyber garbage. And it will also lock the door. My friend Jesse wrote a brilliant piece of script." He looked intently at the rat feral, who was frowning, really crinkling her head as she tried her best to concentrate on his words. Adam pulled her muzzle closer and, smiling inward as, for a fraction of a second, he wished Harrison back to see what zoophilia was all about, he gave her a peck on her twitching snout. "Thank you, Terra. I'll never forget you."

"I'll never forget you either, señor." Teresa Rafaela de Monegal, hybrid rat feral, grinned her impudent grin and licked her lips. "Gata!" she called. "Take good care of your pack leader."

Outside the Vault, as she watched the humongous door slide on its tracks and close itself with a final, definitive, resounding clank, Samihah Shah, Iranian-born microbiologist, widow and mother of four, felt her heart shrink in her chest, like the door was closing on the most amazing, most exhilarating, most thrilling adventure of her life. Yet, she could only think of one sentence and she said it out loud, so all others in the group would hear it.

"Shut, Sesame, never to be opened again."

ON HOLY GROUND

The graveyard extended till the eyes could see, the odd mix of small headstones, elaborate statues and even mausoleums disappearing in the horizon. It was a city of stone, of marble, white over the greenish brown of the dry grass under the young woman's feet. She walked down aisle after aisle, occasionally looking more closely as a name plucked a string in her brain, as a hieratic figure depicted someone she thought she had met in a previous life. The woman lifted her eyes from the plaque she was studying. The sky was overcast, but not with clouds of rain. They were clouds of smoke. Gone were the days when pollution was a ribbon in the sky far away, over the sea she could see from her bedroom window. Now, after the great crumble, everything was dirty, soot covered every surface. Gone were the days when the sun shone bright in a blue canopy. Now, it fought an inglorious battle to pierce the leaded clouds of smoke and vapor. The filth covered the earth, covered the marble statues, the concrete headstones, her dress, her arms, her heart, her very soul.

Lux Windsor had flowers in her hands. She looked down at the tomb by her side and read the name on the slab one more time. Connor... He was there and he deserved flowers. The small bunch of color made a garish contrast against the white tombstone. And on she went. Another tomb waited.

They were all there, not one was missing: Rahyll, Riley, Jax... Her people. And every other new mutant in the world, all were gathered there, all buried there. Lux sighed as she walked, approaching the main alley, final home of Shal, Brennan, Jesse and Emma, plus Angela, whose grave was graced by the figure of a soaring angel. On every tomb, she laid at least a blossom.

Down the main avenue, to the right of the cross that marked the center of the graveyard, the massive block of white Carrara marble marked Donna's burial site. Simple, unadorned, pure and unblemished, as if even the filth that covered the earth had somehow avoided it, respected it. It was, nevertheless, the centerpiece of the whole graveyard, as if the person there lying had been the first to fall and be taken to that site.

Standing next to the grave, an old man had his back to Lux. No matter, she knew who he was, even though he didn't look like the man she had met so many years before, not in the least. This version had long gray hair that reached his bent shoulders, the wrinkled skin of his hands was spotted almost totally brown, his fingernails so long and black they reminded Lux of Angela's talons. His usual clothes were dusty and unkempt, looking more charcoal gray than the usual black. Lux cleared her throat to announce her arrival and the man nodded, acknowledging her presence. Slowly, he turned to the woman and blinked a few times, as if his eyes were not as keen anymore. He nodded again, a small, sad smile in his thin lips. "Thank you for coming, Lux. You can't imagine what it means to me." He used Donna's grave to steady himself as he took a few steps in Lux's direction. Instinctively, she reached for his arm and held it, lending her support to a man in his nineties. "You haven't changed," he remarked, then lightly shook his head. "You can't say the same about me."

"Adam, I..." At a loss for words, Lux offered the flowers she had to the man. With a gesture, he indicated the grave and the woman knew what she was supposed to do. She scattered the flowers over the slab stone. All the flowers she had. All the great bouquet of lavender. The blue and fragrant flowers covered the tomb.

Together, the old man and the young woman turned from the graveside and, arm in arm, they started through the main avenue, stopping to visit the home of their long gone friends. When they finally reached the iron gates, they turned and the whole graveyard was spread before them.

"Don't let them come here. Don't let them build it. Don't let the world turn upside down, Lux."

The woman woke up with a start, a hand on her shoulder, shaking her less than gently. Her eyes took a few moments to refocus and she stretched to loosen the cramps on her back. So much for dozing off sitting at her desk with her head cradled in her arms. She brushed off the hand on her shoulder, grabbing it at the same time and using it to balance herself as she stood up from her chair. She stretched some more. Suddenly, a bout of nausea shot up from her stomach, flooding her mouth with a bitter taste.

"Are you poorly, lass?" Jax McManus brogue always thickened when she was angry or worried.

"Yes and no," answered Lux, heading for the bathroom to wash her mouth. "I've never been ill a single day of my life, my powers won't permit it."

"Then how come you look like a corpse fresh from the grave?"

Lux looked at herself in the mirror. She looked pale, gaunt; her eyes had lost their glitter. "It's nothing physical, Jax. It's more like sadness, a melancholy." Lux turned from the sink and leaned against it, facing her friend. "I feel as if everything was coming apart, unraveling... I feel it in my soul..." She buried her face in her hands and sighed.

Jax pulled Lux to her chest and held her for a long moment. "Tell me, lass. What is it?"

"You know how elementals can shoot fire or electric bolts from their hands, Jax? Where the energy comes from?"

"Their mutation?"

"Their mutation enables them to tap into the universe's life force, Jax. The same with moleculars and psionics. Even ferals do it when they flash their eyes." Lux allowed her friend to guide her back to her office and they sat down on the couch. "What elementals gather to form lightning between their hands, or command the weather, or alter temperature, bend light... What moleculars manipulate to change the atoms that form their bodies or objects...? Do you know what it is, Jax?"

The lioness had a puzzled look on her face. "No, lass, you tell me."

"It is chi, Jax, or life force. Chi is the thread that binds the world together; it is the planet's spirit and your own spirit. It is that ineffable power that permeates everyone and everything. Our mutation attunes us to this bottomless well of energy and each mutant can tap into it and use it according to his or her own ability. That is, we are all bound together to each other and to the planet and the universe themselves." Lux pulls her feet up and hugged her legs, resting her chin on her knees. "I feel it coming apart at the seams, I feel it collapsing, dismantling... I don't know why, but everything is coming undone. As if a key-element in a house of cards had been pulled away and the whole building is falling down, inexorably crumbling in a heap, only it's going down in slow motion."

"Did you have a vision, Lux? Is the world coming to an end?"

"I had a dream, Jax. I dreamt of..."

As if on cue, the PC on the desk whistled and a soft mechanic voice announced, "Incoming transmission. Video conference requested."

Lux stood from the couch and came to sit at her desk. Her fingers danced on the keyboard as she opened the video window, turning on the webcam. She wasn't surprised at the face that greeted her from the monitor, but the way the man looked at her, with tired eyes, his hair going gray at the temples and reading glasses, that did surprise her. Adam looked at least ten years older than the last time they'd spoken, probably more. He had aged a lot, and in record time.

"I've been dreaming of you," she said, before Adam could open his mouth. "Not of you as you are now, but of you as you'll be twenty, thirty years from now."

"If I live that long. And hello to you, too, Lux." Adam's voice was croaked and he cleared his throat more than once.

"Things are bad?" Lux was confused. "I know you've beaten the plague."

"On a general level, we've won the day." Adam looked away from the camera. "On a personal level, on the other hand..."

"Tell me."

"You know I went to St. Mallotts Island, don't you?"

Lux nodded.

"And you know we stopped the research on the plague done there, don't you?"

Lux nodded again.

"What you don't know is we found a second research being done under secrecy there." Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. "Have you noticed the disappearance of psionics on the West Coast, Lux?"

"No, not here." The young Ring leader shook her head. "I would have known. Why?"

"St. Clair had a secret facility built inside St. Mallotts Peak. He called it The Vault and, there, they developed a process to broadcast the power of psionics to regular human receivers."

Lux Windsor's mouth opened of its own accord. She felt her chin hit the floor.

"For that, the late Ken Harrison had psionics kidnapped and inoculated with a combination of psychedelic drugs, Datura stramonium, or jimsonweed, an Atroppa Belladona." Adam sighed at the painful memory. "The drug treatment, plus sessions in sensory deprivation and overload chambers turned the victims into power sources to St. Clair's mental soldiers." Adam stopped and waited for Lux to say something, but she couldn't utter a word. "Many subjects died, we rescued a few, very weak, very maddened. And there was one in particular, Lux..." His eyes filled with tears and he couldn't look at the young woman anymore. It took a few moments before Adam could turn back to the webcam and speak again. "Donna had been missing for a couple of weeks. We believed she was dead, because the bond she shared with Angela had been broken." He stopped again and swallowed dry. "I found her there, Lux... And we brought her home... We brought her shell back home, Lux... She was regarded as their most promising subject, so she received the full treatment... continuous sessions of sensory deprivation and overload... massive doses of psychedelic drugs..." He couldn't go on.

"Go ahead, tell me more."

"Datura poisoning causes hyperthermia. She literally cooked up inside. Her lungs, kidneys, liver and heart have been compromised. Her brain synapses are erratic. She has epileptic-like seizures and she is totally out of reality, catatonic." Adam rested his head on his hand, covering his eyes. His shoulders shook, as he could no longer control his grief. "She is dying of multiple organ failure, Lux. You are our last hope."

"How could it be? Donna can't heal others, but she has the power to regenerate herself!"

"We don't know, but she has lost all touch with reality. Maybe that's why she's unable to regenerate." He wiped his eyes. "Can you help us, Lux? Can you help me?"

"I'm on my way."

Emilia Ramos waited at the Intensive Care stall at AR&D Medcare. The nurse had been brought to the country as a refugee, since her permanence in St. Mallotts Island, her homeland, was now impossible. She had committed the ultimate crime against the law of the land. She had helped put down the top research lead by the island real owner, the one who was hell bent on either destroying all new mutants in the world or using their mental powers to feed special forces soldiers. Now, Emilia Ramos was a fugitive, and she had a price on her head.

Standing next to the supply cart, waiting for Dr. Fontenelle and the head nurse... she had to remember to call Melissa Bloomenfeld "head nurse", instead of "matron"... Emilia remembered the look of hatred St. Clair had in his eyes when he looked at her. But Dr. Kane had seen it, too, and he invited her to join the departing team back home, promising her a new life, a new name, a new identity... and a new job, where her talents would be appreciated, and her natural sympathy for new mutants wouldn't be a liability, but an asset. And Emilia had accepted the invitation, grateful for not being left behind in St. Clair's hands. The difficult part was saying goodbye to her half-sister, Terra, who had been adamant in her refusal to leave her pack.

"Let them maricóns come," the rat feral had said in her heavily accented Spanglés. "Anyone coming near my pack will be invited for dinner... as a main course."

The island was behind Emilia now; a new life opened itself for her, with new possibilities, new knowledge. And the nurse felt she belonged there, as she had never felt she belonged in her native land before. New mutants, whom she had been taught were monsters were actually people like everybody else, just with a twist they seldom, if ever, used. They went about their business, trying to cope with life as everybody did, studying, working, loving and living. And they had health problems like everybody else had, problems attended to by St. Kat's Hospital, and by AR&D Medcare, where she, Emilia, worked under Head Nurse Bloomenfeld and the doctors. Strange, most doctors were mutants, but not all of them. Many nurses and staff were mutants, but not all of them. Head Nurse Bloomenfeld herself was plain vanilla human.

Of the mutants working at AR&D Medcare, Emilia had noticed they used their powers to enhance their performance as caregivers. The nurses and assistants, for instance, if they were telekinetics, they manipulated the sick with their powers, giving them more comfort than if they were touched by hands. They lifted them clear off the beds, when the linens had to be changed; they turned them gently in midair to bathe them... It was amazing! And what about the doctors? They had the most amazing powers! The anesthesiologist, Dr. Sheridan, he could control involuntary, vegetative brain activity. He could put a person under without any drugs if necessary. And he was so good-looking! There were other doctors, like the woman with X-ray eyes, who worked, of course, in Radiology. And the guy who worked in Pediatrics, the telepath nurse who could make sick children laugh with his antics, while reading their minds to know exactly what they were feeling. Amazing!

But the most amazing of all was the deformed Dr. Fontenelle, with her ugly, but gentle hands, her pronounced hunchback and unstable feet, and her unsettling blue eyes, contrasting with her dark mulatto skin. The way she, as Chief of Staff, dealt fairly with the small squabbles that emerged once in a while between employees, and the way she oriented the doctors when facing many new medical mysteries new mutation entailed.

Now, the hospital seemed to be of a single mind, all their resources directed at the care of one patient, the woman Emilia had seen weeks ago in the Vault, jumping from table to cabinet in a vain attempt to escape her captors. The woman had been rescued, but she wasn't the one Emilia remembered. What had been brought home was broken beyond repair, and Emilia was waiting for the doctor and head nurse to care, one more time, for the woman.

The tap-tap of Dr. Fontenelle's cane hitting the linoleum floor brought Emilia back from her thoughts. The doctor and the head nurse approached the curtain closing the stall and smiled. Emilia opened the curtain and they entered, the nurse pushing the cart in. Inside, the many monitors blinked and beeped, controlling the patient's readings. On the semi-elevated bed, the woman rested comfortably and oblivious to her environment, her torso under a plastic oxygen hood after she had been released from the respiratory tube. Her eyes, when open, never blinked, never focused, never saw anything; they were lost in a nothingness that suggested the carcass on the bed had been robbed of a soul. Her mouth hung open and slack. Her arms rested on her sides, her legs and feet were twisted and atrophied, like those of a long-paralyzed cripple. On her back, the open sore never stopped purging, even with the carefully inserted drain, which had to be cleaned every few hours.

Dr. Fontenelle cared for this special patient herself. Nothing was done, nothing happened without her personal approval. She was the main caregiver for the ICU patient, giving her even the most basic help, cleaning her, changing the bed, unclogging the drain and changing the dressings on the horrible sore. Dr. Fontenelle watched every physiotherapy session, when the woman had her limbs massaged to prevent further atrophy. She carefully watched the tests to determine when the woman would be needing dialysis, and she would need it soon enough, the way her kidneys were deteriorating. And all the time she cared for the woman, Dr. Fontenelle talked to her as if she was talking to a dear friend, although an unresponsive one. She told her about everything, how everyone was doing, their friends both near and far, everybody who wanted to know about her and who were worried about her recovery. Oddly enough, the patient never showed any kind of reaction. But every time Dr. Fontenelle talked about Dr. Kane, the patient's eyes filled with tears and they ran down her hollow cheeks to drip on her chest.

And Dr. Kane came at night, every night, never failing. He sat next to the bed and held the woman's hand in his, hoping for a movement, for a signal, anything. And he waited. Every night, he waited. When the woman finally closed her eyes and her breathing slowed down in sleep, the seizure would come and make her trash and shake and try to tear at the IV lines and electrodes linking her to the monitoring devices. And Dr. Kane would free her from every needle, every electrode, and hold her in his arms until the seizure abated and the woman's muscles relaxed and she drifted off in an exhausted sleep. He would hold her for a few minutes longer, than, with infinite care, he would reattach every vein, every electrode. And he would, then, care for her in the night as Dr. Fontenelle had cared for her during the day. And every morning, Dr. Fontenelle and the rest of the staff would find him dozing off, his head resting on his arm, and the woman's hand firmly clasped between his hands. The dark-skinned doctor would delicately touch his shoulder, waking him up. They would hug tightly; he would give her a peck on the cheek and leave, knowing the patient would be in the best of care.

Today, like every day for the past ten days or so, they were caring for the lady patient. They had pulled the covering sheet down, changed her gown, and bathed her. Dr. Fontenelle changed the dressing on the smaller wounds on the woman's head, where the six implants had been removed, as Head Nurse Bloomenfeld and Emilia cared for the IV lines feeding nutrients and saline serum to keep the woman nourished and hydrated, as well as the other catheters dealing with body waste. They proceeded to carefully turn the woman to her right side and hold her, so Dr. Fontenelle could withdraw the drain on the small of her back and replace it with a new one, and then, to change the gauze and tape covering the sore. It was a deep and nasty thing, diamond-shaped, as if something pointy had been rammed into the woman's back. Emilia looked closer as the doctor revealed the wound.

"We're not lucky people, Emilia," said the doctor, noticing the nurse's interest. "Luck is never on our side, and we are sort of magnets for trouble."

"What do you mean, doctor?" asked the nurse.

"Some of us, mutants, seem prone to suffering, Emilia," answered the doctor, without taking her eyes off the sore, her hands working on the tape and gauze, to pull the old dressing out without causing further damage. "When Donna was about fifteen, she was seized on her way to school by a gang of teenage rapists, who thought they were above the law because they were white, wealthy and they hunted native women living in reservations in Kentucky. Her mother was the Cherokee reservation administrator." The doctor's ugly hands picked up pincers and a cotton ball, dipped it on the dark cleaning liquid and tapped the sore with the soaking cotton ball, cleaning the crusts. "They took her to an out of the way country house and they had a lot of fun with her, as they had had before with half a dozen other poor girls. You see, they liked them young, inexperienced, and very frightened. They called themselves the Clockwork Orange Gang, in a tribute to Stanley Kubrik's movie. Inspirational, don't you think?"

"I saw the movie, yes."

"Well, after they gang raped their prey, they used to beat them to death and burn the bodies in a garbage furnace nearby. Their leader had the nasty habit of kicking the girls in the stomach and back, look." Angela Fontenelle pointed to the scars on Donna Gryphon's lower belly, all slightly diamond-shaped. "Now, look here." She traced the edges of the open sore. "The gang leader was very fond of this metal-toed boots, and he hit Donna here when she was lying on her side, trying to breathe after the others had kicked her in the stomach. The metal point penetrated all the way to her spine, severing the cord. Technically, she should have lost the use of her legs forever."

"But she didn't! I saw her run and use martial arts myself!" exclaimed the nurse. "And how did she escape the gang?"

"First things first, that's when her powers flared," explained the doctor. "When she was kicked in the back, her telekinetic powers reacted to survival instinct and pushed all the assailants off her. Only, it happened with such violence one of the rapists was thrown against a tree, banging his head so hard it burst open like an egg. He was killed instantly. The others had broken bones and cracked skulls." Angela closed the dressing and they made Donna lay down on her back again, pulling the covers and closing the oxygen hood that helped her breath. "She never knew how, but she crawled to a phone in the house, and dialed her mother, who managed to have the call traced. They found the place. The gang was scattered on the patio, moaning and groaning. Donna was in the house, clutching the phone and unconscious. She spent a year in a hospital. The doctors thought she would never recover movement on her lower limbs, but... ahem... miraculously, her spinal cord regenerated and she could learn to walk again."

"But now, it doesn't look like..." said the nurse.

"We think Donna has reverted to the stage she would be had her powers never surfaced." The voice came from the corridor, outside the ICU stall, making the three women caring for the patient turn.

Emma DeLauro, Dr. Adam Kane and a long haired girl in her late teens looked like they'd been there for a while, listening to Angela's tale. The teenager had a pained look on her face.

"Lux, thank God!" whispered the dark-skinned doctor, as she went over to the girl and opened her arms. They hugged as old, dear friends and Emilia saw the doctor's hunchback heave. She was holding the girl and crying. When the doctor released the teenager, she made introductions. "This is Lux Windsor, Emilia. Don't be deceived by her looks. She seems very young, she's nothing but. If anyone can help Donna, she can."

As Dr. Fontenelle went to greet Dr. Kane, the teenager approached the bed and looked intently at the patient lying there. She looked up at Emma DeLauro, standing across the bed, then at the foot of the bed, at Adam and Angela. "What the hell did they do to her?"

"Everything I told you, Lux, and more." answered Adam. "For them, she was no better than a guinea pig, a lab rat. And she was treated as such."

"I don't know what happened there, but if I know you at all, they felt the power of your wrath," said Lux.

"The man behind the research, the Chief Scientist, did. He didn't scream... much."

"Good," said the healer. "Emma, shall we?"

The two psionics looked at each other and concentrated. With a swift motion of their heads, they focused on Donna, two mind beams hitting her forehead at the same time. Emma's stayed there and Lux's traveled down from the patient's head to her body, covering the woman in white light for a few moments. Then, the bright psionic luminescence died down.

Emma took two steps back from the bed as she retrieved her blast. Lux placed her hands on the bed and steadied herself. Adam brought her a chair immediately. He knew the use of her powers drained the young psionic bad, even if she had only examined the object of her future care. "Emilia, get Miss Windsor here some water, please."

After a few minutes recovering their breath, Lux and Emma nodded in agreement. "Look, here's what we've felt," Emma said. "Donna's mind is a blank, there is a black fog, a haze there that's so thick we can't see a thing. I can't penetrate it alone."

"I can help her, while I try and heal Donna's physical internal injuries, the damage done to her organs by the Datura hyperthermia." The healer drank eagerly from the cup the nurse offered her. "The molecular healing process will weaken her barriers and allow Emma to enter her mind and try to pull it back from the depths it has plunged into."

"But there are no guarantees," interjected Emma.

"I ask for no guarantees, Emma." Adam looked very tired. "We, doctors... scientists... there's nothing else we can do. We can only give her comfort and watch her slowly fade away." He offered his hands to help the psionics stand, and he pulled both women in a tight embrace. "I'll be grateful for anything you can do."

The two multipsionics came closer to the bed, one at each side. They breathed deep a few times, concentrating and cleansing their minds from their own thoughts and feelings. Slowly, they lifted their eyes and locked them together. In a single motion, the mind blasts hit their target making the patient's eyes open wide and her back arch. Donna's body responded to Lux's mix of telekinetic and molecular power, floating up, clearing the bed entirely and levitating above it, held in a cocoon of white light, while Emma's mind blast held fast to her forehead. The white light shone so bright, everybody else in the stall had to cover their eyes and the whole Intensive Care unit was illuminated. The working staff stopped cold what they were doing to watch in silence as the light shone from the stall and raw power emanated from the special patient's bed.

The white light shone brighter and brighter until it exploded in a silent supernova. When Adam, Angela and Emilia felt the stall had dropped back to the regular artificial light that bathed the whole IC unit, they saw Lux and Emma fall next to Donna's bed, passed out from the extreme power release. Donna's body, hovering above the bed, fell back on the mattress. Calling for help, the two doctors and the nurse ran to the fainted psionics as other nurses and hospital staff entered the stall to help.

Back! Up! Flight! The silver cord attached to her waist, the life thread that linked her to the Universe, was pulled fast and strongly, making her spirit self shoot back from the black pit where it had been trapped for so long and into the light of reality, the reality from where she had fled and hid away, the reality of unreality, of extraordinary panic, uncontrollable fear and anguish. Black was better! Dark was safe! At least, she wouldn't witness the horrible, painful slaying of her friends, one by one, again and again, so many times, seeing them die in agony, only to be resurrected to die another time. Black was better! Dark was safe! At least she wouldn't have to roll like mad in a color roller coaster where blood and guts were the only destination, in the tunnel of horrors where the wax figures being tortured had the faces of her most cherished ones... and they moved... they were not wax, but they were living, breathing creatures under terrifying pain, a pain she shared with them... Each agonizing poke, each searing burn, each cut and bruise and tear... Every time they were killed, she died with them. Every time they were maimed, she was maimed with them, until she had plummeted to nothing, to black, to dark. And now, she was pulled back to the light, to the colors, to the visions. No! Black was better! Dark was safe! No white! No White! NO WHITE! NOOOOO WHIIIIIIIIITTTEEEE!

The scream curdled the blood of every person within earshot. On the Intensive Care Unit's bed, Donna Gryphon had her eyes open, her hands clutched the sheets covering her body and she screamed and screamed and screamed, her twisted, atrophied legs banged against the mattress, her head shook from one side to the other and her eyes rolled up inside her head as a new, fresh seizure took her over completely.

Adam left Emma to the nurse's care, jumped up to Donna's side and forced her mouth open, pulling her tongue out and holding it firmly, so she wouldn't choke on it, as he had done so many times before. Only now, it was different, the seizure felt different. Donna was fighting him, thrashing to free herself from his grip. Her whole body shook and trembled in frenzy and she was wailing, while the previous seizures were silent. Her eyes rolled around in their sockets, but they seemed more focused, more alert. "Donna, it's me! It's Adam! You're home! You're safe!" But she wasn't listening, she was lost in a world of fear and pain and hurt.

"Sheridan!" Angela shouted at the tall man in a goatee that had entered the stall. "Quickly, depress her! Her readings are skyrocketing! Her BP is going through the roof, her heart beat is erratic! She is going into cardiac arrest!"

The man concentrated and Donna's body was covered in a soft blue light as he poured his power into her, depressing her blood pressure, making her heart beat in an ordained fashion and calming down her brain waves and synapses. Little by little, the thrashing subsided, the wailing turned into anguished sobs, and the labored breathing was regularized as she gulped air, and the thumping of her heart diminished. The seizure abated as Sheridan forced Donna's readings to a more normal level, functioning as a psionic sedative.

The woman's body, still covered in soft blue light, was slowly relaxing in Adam's arms. The older man cupped her face in his hand and the woman responded. Her eyes fluttered and opened, looking directly into his. Weakly, her hand came up and touched his face. He could smell her feverish breath as her lips moved, trying to speak. Adam had to touch his ear to her mouth to listen, so weak was the whisper. "Are you real... where..."

He pulled her hand do his face and held it there so she could feel the warmth of his skin and the tears that ran from his eyes. "I'm real, Donna, my love. I'm solid. You are safe. You are home."

Donna's eyes also filled with tears and they ran down her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered and closed again as the blue light made her relax into her first peaceful sleep in many weeks. When her head came to rest on Adam's shoulder, she had a faint smile on her lips.

Four people were enough to fill the penthouse apartment on AR&D Medcare roof where Angela lived, almost a nest to a bird. The doctor Head of Staff had made the kitchen provide a meal to her guests, nothing fancy, but filling and hot, as all of them needed to recover their strength. Donna, now sleeping calmly, was left under Emilia's personal care, and Melissa Bloomenfeld was keeping an eye on the special patient, too. The young nurse had been ordered not to leave Donna alone for a moment and to report if she but stirred in her slumber.

Between spoons of thick vegetable soup, they talked. Emma and Lux had woken up from their fainting spell, and they needed to refuel. Angela noticed, happily, that Adam was eating for the first time in days without having to be threatened with forced feeding by his own niece. Physician, heal thyself indeed.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more, Adam." Lux pushed her bowl away.

"You did a lot, Lux, and I can't thank you enough," answered Adam.

"You know I've only bought her time." Lux looked away, at the city below. The overcast sky reminded her of her dream, and Lux's dreams were as good as her visions. Something was making the very fabric of the Universe come loose at the seams, and somehow, Lux knew Donna's fate was tied to the greater scheme of things. She might be the "one card", thought the Californian multipsionic, the one card that, when pulled away, made the whole house of cards crumble and fall. "Donna's organs are as compromised as before. If she is lucky, she will die in three months; if she isn't, maybe in six."

"In that time, we will find a way to heal her." Angela was filled with hope.

"No, you won't, Tweety Bird," shot Emma.

"What do you mean?"

"The power blast blowing up wasn't our doing, Angela," explained Lux. "It exploded when Donna pushed us out of her mind and body."

"Donna? Why would she do that?" The bird doctor couldn't understand.

"Because she doesn't want to heal." Emma was studying Psychology in college, and her psionic powers enabled her to jump much ahead of her class, landing her at a Ph.D. level of knowledge in record time. "I've studied Donna's medical records and psychological evaluation. And I read the confidential files the Phoenix Foundation had on their experiment, the one Donna was a volunteer." Emma pushed her own plate away. "They aimed at a psionic equivalent to Gabriel Ashlocke, that is, an artificial multipsionic, covering the whole spectrum of mental powers. But they knew about Ashlocke's lack of conscience. Adam," she said, "I'm firmly convinced Ashlocke was a sociopath from birth. Before you put him in stasis, he had already shown the three evidences of a psychopathic personality: bed wetting, fire play and cruelty to small animals. I believe powers or no powers, he would have grown into a serial killer, a criminal, a monster as so many others who are human, and I use the term loosely."

"That's possible," Adam agreed. "That would explain a lot, Emma. I tried to boost up his conscience medically, but I couldn't grow something out of nothing."

"Exactly!" exclaimed Emma. "Donna, on the other hand, was a moral person to begin with. She had a conscience, she had feelings, she empathized. She was a complete human being, and now I use the term properly. Therefore, already aware of the Ashlocke failure, the Phoenix Foundation didn't want to risk another problem. So, they added your 'conscience in a bottle' component, Adam, to their own mixture. Everybody knows the experiment was a failure, and Donna is the only surviving specimen. She survived because she had already the makings of a multipsionic and all the Phoenix did was boost up her innate powers. And they boosted up her conscience in the process. They gave her a capacity for guilt that can give you, Adam, a run for your money."

"Donna is deep into victim's syndrome, only hers is lethal," completed Lux.

"You know how things are allegorical inside the mind, don't you, Adam?" Emma closed her eyes, remembering the experience she had inside Donna's mind. "When I entered her mind, I saw Donna trapped in a quagmire, a quicksand bough. She was totally under the sand, only her arms showed and they were disappearing fast. I could only grab her hand and pull her up, but I couldn't take her completely out of the mire. I was thrown away by a kind of overseer or guardian in the form of a dragon. And I saw a mythical animal, a griffin, obviously, chained to the cavern's side wall." She bit at a fingernail. "In very generic terms, the woman in the quicksand, Donna, is her ego, which is trapped and drowning. The overseer that threw me out is her superego, which is destroying her as punishment for allowing herself to be victimized. The cavern is Donna's id, her unconscious mind, the home of her powers, symbolized by the chained griffin. To release her powers, you have to release the griffin, but you can't do it. The superego won't permit it." Emma sighed. "I know if we try now, we won't be able to tear down Donna's barriers. What we did was buy her time and bring her conscious mind a little to the surface, so she can interact with her surroundings. This way, at least, she will know she is with her loved ones, she will know she is comfortable, protected and well cared for."

"Then, there is no hope?" Angela's eyes were filled with tears.

"Not from us, Tweety," answered Lux. "And not from you, either."

Angela's intercom beeped. A metallic voice sounded. "Dr. Fontenelle, to the ICU, please. Your patient is coming around. Dr. Fontenelle, to the ICU, please. Your patient is coming around."

White, again, but not quite... Not so relentless, spotless white as in her padded cell... Blue curtains... Beeping... Soft lights... Indirect... Not the bright light that was never turned off and that hurt her eyes... Warmth... Cozy pillows, sheets covering her... Not cold... Not freezing... Comfort... Calm... The sensorial memory of delicate hands touching her, turning her over and caring for her... Voices... low... gentle... Her name... not a number, but her name... they were calling her name. She opened her eyes a little, focusing on the faces above her... No... she must be dreaming again... they were an illusion... another delirium, but she didn't want to come out of this one... it wasn't a nightmare, this time... she must have died and gone to heaven, if heaven existed... she closed her eyes again, a faint feeling of dread, that if she opened them again, the faces would be gone, replaced by the rotting corpses she came to identify as her only companions... But the voices still called her name, not a number... gently coaxing her from sleep... She dared to open her eyes one more time, and the faces were still there, the same loved faces she had dreamed of, longed for, missed so much. She lifted a bony, trembling hand to touch the man, but his hand met hers midway, holding it, pulling it up to his face, keeping it there as he kissed her palm. The dark woman picked up her other hand and pulled it to her chest, holding it fast. They were... what was the word... the word in her dream? Solid... they were solid... they were there, in the flesh, in reality... not a hallucination... not a ghost, a wraith, but solid people... Donna couldn't believe it... She tried to lift her torso up, to reach for them, but she had no strength, the smallest movement was a superhuman effort. Without letting go of her hands, they helped her sit straighter, and the man pulled her to his chest, holding her tight in his arms. Donna abandoned herself to the loving warmth of Adam's embrace, to the strength of his arms around her and she wept as a wave of relief washed over her. She was safe in the arms of the man she loved, and who loved her. Home. She was finally back home.

Hallways went by as Donna's bed was rolled to the regular room wing of the hospital. The best corner suite had been readied for her in the few days after she had recovered conscience and Angela had declared her strong enough to leave the Intensive Care Unit. She still needed oxygen, but a nasal cannula was enough to keep her levels at 90 percent. She was free of the IVs, as she was able to drink from a cup and straw. Angela had talked to the hospital nutritionist and Donna had been started on a liquid diet, soon to be upgraded to broths and pastes, as she managed to keep more solid food in her stomach. Only Donna had to be mouth fed, since her hands shook too badly to hold a spoon without spilling the contents. Angela had called it Parkinsonian Motor Imbalance, a sequel of her jimsonweed overdose. And Donna would need basic care forever. She would not recover movement on her lower limbs, her legs and feet were twisted, the muscles so atrophied as to be nonexistent. The sore on her back had stopped purging, but it wouldn't close either. And the nights were still very bad. Every time she drifted off and reached the REM stage of sleep, she would seize and need special medication to settle down and rest.

The bed reached its destination, and the doors to the suite opened to admit it. Inside, the room was covered in flowers, her favorite, simple blue lavender. The color complimented the sweet light peach of the walls.

Adam was waiting for her, and he instructed the orderlies on the correct place to park the bed. When the help was gone, he sat on the bed, held Donna's hand, and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Look," he whispered in her ear, as he picked up a remote control on the nightstand and pointed to the curtains covering the entire front wall. The cream colored curtains parted and revealed the windows overlooking the whole cityscape below. The autumn sun was shining softly, casting a golden hue on the buildings, painting the city gold against the blue sky.

It was so lovely, and it had been so long since Donna had seen the world outside! Locked in a cave, then transferred to the windowless Intensive Care, she longed for a view of the sky, of the open. She had an enraptured look on her face as she reached out with her hand, trying to touch the landscape, only to fall back on the mattress as the little strength she had was depleted in the feeble attempt to rise.

"Wait, love, I'll help you." Adam wrapped an afghan around Donna's shoulders, tucked a blanket around her legs and scooped her up in his arms. She was so thin, she weighed almost nothing. He carried her to the window and held her so she could better see the world outside. After a few minutes, he sat on the couch, holding her on his lap like a child, and arranging the afghan and blanket to keep her warm. His hand caressed her cheek, running down the side of her face, her chin, her neck now free of the governor. He caressed her head, where her once raven black hair, now completely snow white, was starting to grow back. "I've missed you so. I thought you were dead and the idea of losing you forever was a knife in my heart."

When his mouth sought hers, she pulled away and buried her head on his shoulder. "No, please..." her voice was a faint whisper. "I'm too ugly, too broken up. I'm damaged goods."

"Don't say that!" Adam looked in her eyes. "Donna, please, don't say that, not now. Not now that I have you back. You can regenerate... you can be yourself again, you have the power."

"No, I don't, not anymore." She sounded so tired, so worn out. "I know I'm dying, my love. I know I don't have much time left." Donna touched Adam's face. "And you still have so much to do... so much good... Why don't you leave me in a home and go on with your work? The Adam Kane I first met would do it."

"I'm not the Adam Kane you first met, Donna. I'm not the same man I was two years ago, before I met you. This Adam Kane would never leave you, would never give up on you. This Adam Kane believed you dead, believed he had lost you forever, but he was given a second chance. He found you and brought you back, so don't talk about moving on and leaving you behind, that's not going to happen."

"But you should, you must. I'm not getting any better."

"Donna, you're the only one who can make yourself get better. Do it for me, please!" he begged. "Access your powers and heal yourself for me. I want to make you happy, I want to be happy with you. It's high time I retired, anyway. We can do all the silly things all other couples do!" He smiled warmly. "I want to take you out for dinner, just the two of us."

"And where would you take me? To a Japanese restaurant and order everything raw on the menu?" Donna chuckled. "It would gross me out big time."

"No, I would let you drag me kicking and screaming to a Mexican joint where you would eat something dreadfully spicy." It was Adam's time to chuckle. "It would give me heartburn for a week."

"I wouldn't do that," Donna protested.

"Oh, yes, you would. And I would love it." Adam pulled Donna's mouth to his, and this time she didn't resist him. "Do something, my love, anything, just don't die on me, Donna. Don't leave me again."

"I can't... There's nothing inside me, no power, no strength, no spark..." She was so frail; she was shivering in his arms despite the woolen coverings. "Forgive me, please, but I can't."

"No, no, there's nothing to forgive." He held her closer. "I love you and I'll be with you always, I'll stay with you, anywhere. Tell me, Donna, where to you want me to take you? You're strong enough to go home with me, but you have to tell me where home is. Is it Cascade? I'll take you there, your condo is untouched."

Donna shuddered. "No, please, I was captured there."

"I don't think Sanctuary would be an option, would it?" asked Adam.

"No, dear, it would just be another cave." Donna was looking out. The sun was setting fast, night was falling on the city and the lights had begun to shine on the windows.

"Then tell me, my love, where is home?" asked Adam.

Donna seemed hypnotized by the outside view. "Home is where I've been happy, happier than I've ever been." Her eyes were lost in the horizon. "Home is where I want to spend the rest of my life, and I feel it won't be long." She somehow managed to hold on to the back of the couch and sit up, looking out. "Can I really hope that you'll take me there and stay there with me? Can I ask that of you?"

Adam reached inside his shirt and pulled out the white gold chain that hung from his neck. He opened the clasp, released the commring and left only the white diamond-studded feather. He wrapped the chain around Donna's neck and closed the clasp. Holding the woman he loved from behind, he showed her the commring he had kept all that time.

Donna smiled and offered her right hand. Adam pulled her left hand up and slipped the ring on her finger. "I take thee, Donna Gryphon, as my wife," he whispered in her ear. He, then, pulled his commring off his right hand and gave it to Donna, offering her his left hand.

Donna took the ring and slipped it on his finger. "I take thee, Adam Kane, as my husband," she whispered in his ear.

"Now, tell me, Donna, where is home?"

"Home is the wood and glass house overlooking the sea. That's where I want to die."

"No, that's where I want us to live for as long as we have."

ADAM

Day 3 of the trip to Carneiros.

This place never ceases to amaze me. Early this evening, as the sun was setting, the bay shone like a billion red diamonds. I watched the sun go down from the wide West veranda, overlooking the winding path leading to the beach. All that beauty was spread out just under my feet, but it didn't cheer me up. It actually made me sadder and morose.

Standing at the porch's edge, I felt tears come to my eyes. I've been feeling them flooding my eyes a lot lately. Since the day I lead the storming of St. Clair's Vault, my emotions have been winning over my self-control. I've always kept my emotions under a tight leash, and usually, I was good at it. But when I found Donna inside that sensory deprivation chamber and I didn't recognize her, I lost it. It was like finding a Nazi camp victim. Her head was shaved bald, her gorgeous raven hair all gone. She was emaciated, all skin and bones. I've always tried to stay fit, but I'm not a physically strong man by any means. However, when I scooped her out of the sarcophagus, she weight almost nothing. I could lift her out of that horrible box like a rag doll.

After that, the emotional roller-coaster ride only got faster and more furious. Among other things, I killed a man. Not in cold blood, no. When I threw Ken Harrison over the railing to be devoured by Terra's rat pack, my blood boiled; my head was ready to blow. And I realize now, for the first time in my life, I feel no remorse whatsoever over my actions. I killed Kenneth and I'd kill him again… and again… and again.

Donna's stay at the hospital was almost a blur to me. I could barely think. Night after night I kept vigil sitting next to her bed. Night after night, she seized when she reached REM state. Lux and Emma managed to draw her consciousness up to the surface a bit, but Donna's powers are gone, her regenerative capacity is nil. She has degenerated to the state she would be had her powers never flared, meaning her legs are atrophied, the wound on her lower back never closes. To be honest, she is worse. Her organs are slowly shutting down. Little by little, heart, liver will cease to work. First to go, her kidneys; she needed dialysis two times a week. Now, it's three times. Soon, it won't do her any good anymore. Second to go, her lungs; she already needs oxygen fairly often. Soon, she'll need it permanently.

To watch the woman I love slowly fade away like a flickering candle is almost more than I can bear, but bear it I must. And I must be thankful for the fact that she is coherent, alert enough to really be with me in her final moments. I'm being selfish, I know. For her, being conscious and alert means the knowledge that she is dying. It means to be in constant pain and suffering. I have to steel myself to witness her ordeal, and I cannot let my guard down around her, for I know I am her only solace. I must be strong for both of us, but it is so very hard…

As the last rays of sun touch the sea, the tears start to run down my cheek. I feel a light touch on my shoulder and I'm startled out of my thoughts. Quickly, I blink away the tears before I turn around. I'm greeted by a wizened black face with the sweetest grandmotherly smile I've ever see. The old lady, barely five feet tall, is dressed in starched white robes and a turban. Dangling from her neck, a bunch of multicolored necklaces reveal her rank in the Afro-Brazilian religion, "candomble", as she has explained to me. Babah, my niece's nanny and my sister's best friend, from the moment she landed in her husband's native land, she is a high priestess.

I got to know Babah better this time around. On my first visit to the glass house over Carneiros Beach, Pernambuco, Brazil, I was in a kind of honeymoon with Donna, after we defeated Nicholas Lareou and his gang of rogue mutants. We needed rest badly and Angela offered us the Brazilian retreat where she was raised. After my sister's passing, Angela inherited the property, and she entrusted Babah and her family with its care and maintenance. Suffice to say I had other things in my mind at that time, but the old servant always intrigued me. For one thing, she was fluent in English. She told me she learned the language from Evangeline.

Now, caring for Donna as we would care for a fragile baby, we talked. Donna needs rest and, as we watch the hours go by, Babah and I talk. She told me of her friendship with my sister Evangeline, how they met. Babah was already in her forties, a servant in my brother-in-law's household for all her life. An African princess in her own right, Babah descends from a long lineage of warriors turned into slaves. Her own grandmother was born in slavery, but Abolition freed her shortly after birth. The family never parted from their owners; they turned into free servants and cared for generations of Marco's family.

When my sister met Babah, she was illiterate. She had the knowledge of experience. A wise woman and midwife, she cared for the poor folk of the area with herbs and common sense. Evangeline soon realized Babah was extremely intelligent and quick. And kind. They took to each other immediately. They learned from one another. Eva taught Babah to read and write, her callused hands used to kitchen utensils, not pencils. Babah opened Eva's eyes to the great wealth of herbal medicines this land boasts. Eva taught Babah English. Babah taught Eva Portuguese. Eva saw to it that Babah's grandchildren went to school. Some of them went to college. Babah initiated my sister in the mysteries of Brazilian Earth religion, the mix of Roman Catholicism and African mythology. Together, they raised Angela, my unique niece, and they did a fine job of it. Babah and her family know Angela's secret and it has never been breached.

Since our arrival, Babah has helped me care for Donna. Her older grandson is a registered nurse thanks to Eva, and he has been pulled out of his assignment at Marco's general hospital to be Donna's full time caregiver. I must say Marco has gone above and beyond my wildest expectations. We were friends once, but we had a fall out after I meddled with my sister's pregnancy to ensure she'd carry the baby full term. However, when Angela called him and explained the situation, Marco took the matter to heart. He spared no expenses and equipped a room in this house with everything needed to the care of a bedridden patient. Donna will be comfortable until the end.

Night has fallen. Babah beckons me inside. She's worried about me. She says I don't eat enough, I don't sleep enough, and I drink way too much coffee. Babah leads me to the dinner table where I bet she has laid out her latest attempt at feeding me. She faced the problem of making me pack on the pounds as a war campaign, and has pulled no punches. Every meal is an elaborate event, from breakfast with cheeses and corn concoctions, like popcorn cooked in coconut milk they call "canjica", to lunch presenting poultry and pork done in many different ways, to dinner with an unbelievable array of seafood dishes, not to mention the little snacks she brings me throughout the day together with fresh coffee or tea. It's amazing the variety of cakes and cookies, as well as breads, Babah's kitchen can turn out. Only problem is, I can't find anything tasty or interesting. All dishes, all confections, all treats, no matter how fragrant or colorful, taste to sawdust in my mouth. I try to eat just to please Babah, but I can hardly keep anything in my stomach.

Tonight, Babah surprises me. Instead of a lavish spread, there's a single bowl on the table. She pulls up the lid and a delicious aroma fills my nose. For the first time since I've arrived, my mouth waters. It's soup, simple "canja", or chicken and rice soup with carrots, spinach and potatoes. I sit and Babah ladles the thick broth, filling my plate. I taste it and it is so comforting, so heartwarming… I can only look at that plate full of soup on the table... I try to hold back, but it's impossible, everything swells up, every sorrow, every regret, every pain… I can't stop myself… Slowly, but surely, I start sobbing like a child. I haven't wept so hard in decades, but I really couldn't help it. My emotions bubbled up like a geyser. All I could do was drop the spoon and cover my face with my hands.

Babah was standing right next to me. She stepped closer and held me against her chest. She held me like she would hold a wounded kid; and she kept saying over and over, "Hope dies last… hope dies last…"

THE PLESURE OF YOUR COMPANY

Babah's head snapped up. She put down the empty juice glass and straw she'd been offering the sick young woman and lifted her hand to her chest. She couldn't hear any noise other than the birds and the wind and the sea. She couldn't see anything other than the sun, the sand, the palm trees… It wasn't anything she saw or heard, tasted or smelled. It was something she felt in her heart of hearts, a ripple in the very fabric of the Universe, in the soul of every living thing, in the glue that kept the atoms together joining the smallest grain of sand she crushed under the soles of her sandals to the largest planet in the depths of outer space.

For a while now, Babah had felt the soul of the Universe unraveling, ripping at the seams. Something very wrong had happened. Her plants were different, her "orixas", the gods of her ancestors who ruled Nature, were angry. Since time immemorial, the holy gifts of the earth were used in ritual, in sacrifice and to open the minds of the initiated to the world beyond. Special herbs, mushrooms, roots and fruits were used to crack open the doors between realities, not only in her own "candomble" religion, but in other ancient faiths. Mescal, ayahuasca, marijuana, dung mushrooms… all of them tools in the hands of priests and priestesses. One of the most powerful of these tools was jimsonweed. Handled by well-trained initiates, it was capable of putting a "yao", a novice, in direct contact with his or her ruling "orixa". Just like all the other revelation tools, it should only be used as an instrument in the hands of priests and wise men, of medicine men. But someone had used the "erva-do-diabo", or "devil's trumpet", as an instrument of unspeakable evil, as a tool not for the opening of the doors of perception, but for mind domination. That could destroy all communication of this solid world with the other world, the world beyond.

The realm of the Spirit was pulling away thanks to the misuse of the sacred herbs. Something had to be done to right that wrong, and Babah knew the woman she cared for, the poor tormented girl, now all twisted and frail, the same she had met a year before as a vigorous, beautiful and loving young woman, was the key to mending the spiritual hailing frequencies, so to speak.

Whatever had to be done, it had to be done soon, but Babah couldn't do it alone. It was an extreme situation that called for extreme measures. A single "yalorixa", or high "candomble" priestess and wise woman as herself, was not enough. She needed help. And help was coming. Babah felt the other world stir.

She turned to the older man reading in the easy chair by her side. "Mr. Adam," she said, using the Brazilian form of address joining the formal "mister" to the first name. "Mr. Adam, we have company."

The older man looked puzzled, but followed Babah's gaze down the winding path that led from the glass house to the beach. Sure enough, a few people walked up towards them.

Despite her advanced years, Babah's eyes worked perfectly and she could count five people. As they got closer, she saw a tall, dark haired man holding hands with a statuesque blond woman. Babah could clearly see Ogum, the Warrior, shining in the face of the man. And Oxossi, the Hunter, covered the woman from head to toe. Behind them, Babah saw a fair-haired young man helping a red-head up the path. Xango, the Rock, was with him. The second woman walked with Yemanja, the Lady of the Sea, the indomitable force of Nature that ruled the oceans, at the same time soft and gentle as the waves licking the sand, but capable of unbridled fury.

Closing the line, walked a long-haired man, dark and brooding. With him, came Olodum himself, the greatest, the God of gods, the One Above All.

The whole Pantheon was there, the representatives of all her gods, the gods of Nature, who changed names from one faith to the other, but who always remained the same, no matter what they were called. They were gathered together to fight back.

Babah saw the older man smile sadly. "He thinks they came to pay their respects, to say goodbye to their dying friend," she thought.

"Those are my closest friends, Babah," Mr. Adam said. "I believe they'll stay for a while. Can you have everything ready?"

"Everything has been ready since the day you and your lady arrived, 'sinhô'." She called Adam by the old word the slaves used, meaning "boss".

OLYMPUS

The parlor was dimly lit, no direct light. The elegant lamps shone on the group gathered for coffee after dinner.

"I haven't eaten so much in a long time." Brennan suppressed a belch as best as he could, as he accepted the demitasse offered by the old black lady in white robes.

Sitting on the couch by his side, Shalimar drove an elbow to his ribs. Bren could gross her out, sometimes, but she was learning to love him. He had a thing for feline ferals, she thought.

Truth be told, Shalimar was also pleasantly full. Dinner had been unbelievable: fish steaks cooked in palm oil and coconut milk, served in a black clay pot, chicken stew with okra, and the most delicious roast beef, roasted to absolute perfection. Side dishes included vegetables and greens she barely knew, all exquisitely made. Shalimar would never forget dessert. She had tasted half a dozen different compotes, served with the fresh cheese made in the property. It was heaven on the dinner table.

She looked around. Emma and Jesse occupied winged chairs to her right. Donna was resting on the chaise in front, with Adam sitting at her feet. Blair Sandburgh had the swinging chair to her left. The old black lady, Babah, after serving coffee, sat on the floor at Blair's feet. By the look on Adam's face, Shalimar realized that was unusual. Babah was, after all, a servant. She shouldn't join the guests in conversation. But Shalimar also realized Babah was special. There was something almost… regal about her. She was, most definitely, not a common servant. The way she had greeted Blair when they were introduced at the veranda that morning… The old black lady had curtsied to each one of them as Adam said their names, but at Blair's turn, Babah had dropped to her knees and touched his feet with the tip of her fingers, saying something that sounded like "atoto". Blair, looking unfazed, had reached out with his hands and helped the old lady up. Next, as everybody else watched, he dropped to his knees and touched her feet, saying something that sounded like "saravah". Their greeting was strange, but oddly compelling. They looked like the pope and the head of the Greek Orthodox Church meeting. Now, this gathering felt like a summit.

Blair leaned forward, tilting the swinging chair. "Adam, I'd like to tell you why we are here."

From the chaise, Donna pulled out the oxygen mask. "I know why you're here. You came to say goodbye." Her voice could barely be heard.

"Actually, no, we're here to right a wrong."

At that, Babah tapped the floor next to Blair's feet three times, and said, "Atoto, medicine man," and nodded.

Blair turned his head to the old black lady sitting at his feet and respectfully tipped his head. "The high priestess knows what I'm talking about. Hallucinogen plants of all kinds have been used since the dawn of time to open the gates that lead from this palpable Universe we all know to the shadow spirit realm that exists parallel to our world. Their use is restricted to the highly initiated, the shamans, the druids, the medicine men and wise women, in short, to those who know what they're doing."

"When we breached the Vault in St. Mallot's Island, we entered it behind the state-of-the-art greenhouse," Adam interrupted. "I'm no botanist, but I've been to college in the late 1960s and I know a marijuana plant when I see it. And I remember mushrooms."

Blair set his cup of coffee on the side table, and took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts. "Did you notice any vines?"

Adam closed his eyes, remembering. "As a matter of fact, yes, I did."

Babah and Blair looked at each other and nodded one more time. "Ayahuasca. It's a hallucinogen vine employed by the Santo Daime followers to provoke 'mirações', or visions."

"People have been using those plants as recreational drugs since forever. Why is it different now?" asked Emma from her winged chair.

"The voluntary, recreational use of those sacred plants doesn't disturb the fabric of the Spirit World," answered Blair. "The difference is now they've been used as weapons, they were imposed on captive subjects to turn them into power sources. That disturbs the fabric of the Spirit World profoundly. All earth-bound religions around the globe have been feeling this ripple, this disturbance. I received reports from Native American medicine men, Wicca high priestesses, Inuit wise men, druids, voodoo priests, African witch doctors, everybody! I've even received word from the Three Witches, Carlos Castañeda's three female followers and close acolytes, who've been missing since his death in 1998." Blair sighed. "Make no mistake; the unraveling of the Spirit World will affect the world as we know it. It already has. Evil is mounting everywhere. Terrorism, war, crime, they've all increased exponentially."

Deferentially, Babah lifted her hand, as if asking permission to speak. "It can still be mended," she said. "I've been feeling this… trembling… in my soul, for a while now. It got stronger when you, Mr. Adam, and Mrs. Donna arrived. And there was nothing I could do on my own. I needed a… group… a… what's the word?"

"A coalition, a joint effort," offered Blair. "This disturbance affects all earth-bound religions and beliefs. So, in order to address it, those beliefs must unite. And that's why we're here."

"Mrs. Donna, you are a very strong spirit. Are you an initiate?" asked Babah.

Still holding the oxygen mask against her face, Donna weakly shook her head. "No," she said, pulling the mask away. "But as a Cherokee and a reservation child, I came in contact with the religious practices of my people. My grandfather was a medicine man."

"You see, Donna," said Blair, "You are the key to the mending ritual. In captivity, the procedures you've endured have changed you, transformed you. You have regressed to the state you'd be had your powers never surfaced."

"Mending ritual?" asked Adam. "What do you mean?"

"The sacred plants have been used to harm. Now, they must be used to heal, Mr. Adam," answered Babah. "That's the only way we can fix the Spirit World. That's the only way the balance between Good and Evil can be restored."

Adam's eyebrows came closer together. Doubt and disbelief were written all over his face. "I repeat the question…" And he pronounced every word separately. "What… do… you… mean?"

Blair sighed deeply. "I mean similia similibus curantur."

"Likes are cured by likes?" Adam was shocked.

"Yes!" exclaimed Blair. "Only this time, it will be done correctly. The sacred herbs will be handled by two experts, namely me and Kabinda de Nanã, the one you know as Babah. The ritual will be supported by spiritual representatives of the appropriate forces of Nature already present here. That's why I brought your core group along. Each one of them…" and he pointed in turn to each Mutant X fighter, "…really represents one of the 'orixas'."

Babah took up the explanation. "The tall man with dark hair is a son of Ogum, the Warrior." She turned to Brennan. "During the ritual, you must position yourself in the sugarcane field north of this house."

Brennan just nodded.

"The yellow-haired lady sitting next to you…" Babah turned to Shalimar, "…is a daughter of Oxossi, the Hunter. He is the orixa ruling the forest." She addressed Shalimar directly. "You are part animal, so you belong to him. During the ritual, you must be in the woods east of this house."

Shalimar just nodded.

Now, Babah turned to Jesse. "You are a son of Xango, the Rock. He rules the boulders, the big quarries. During the ritual, you must stand next to the hill south of this house."

Jesse just nodded.

Now, it was Emma's turn. Babah bowed to her. "Hail, daughter of Yemanja. You are the ocean, calm and quiet one moment, unconquerable the next. You must be at the beach west of this house, with the waves of your mother licking your feet."

Emma just nodded.

"Every corner of this house will be, thus, manned," Babah went on. "Every element will be present: earth…" She pointed to Jesse. "Fire…" She pointed to Brennan. "Air…" She pointed to Shalimar. "And water…" She pointed at Emma.

"Besides that, this ritual will be supported by every Animistic religion in the globe. Rituals will be held all over the world: North and South America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, Asia… everywhere. It concerns everybody and everybody will pitch in." Blair caught the explanation ball. "Babah and I will conduct the ritual itself. We will get the beverage ready and we will be with you both every step of the way."

Adam looked down at Donna. "You both, who?"

"You and Donna. You are together. She needs a guide, and you're him, Adam. You both must partake of the infusion." Blair saw Adam swallow dry. "Even though her powers are dormant, Donna is a multipsionic. We are confident she will instinctively join both your visions." He stood up and went to Adam and Donna. He crouched, facing them. "You must make this journey together."

Babah came closer and crouched next to Blair. "You are a son of Oxala." She lightly touched Adam's forehead with the tip of her fingers. "Oxala is the Son, as Olodum is the Father," she pointed at Blair. "You are a daughter of Oxum." She lightly touched Donna's forehead. "Oxum is the Female Principle, as Nanã, my Spirit mother, is Female Wisdom." Babah stood up and addressed the whole company. "You see, we are all here. We've been gathered here by forces beyond your understanding. Together, we will repair the channels to the Spirit world."

"Whatever you do, do it quickly," said Donna, pulling the oxygen mask off her face. "I don't think I have any time to spare."

DRUMS IN THE NIGHT

Friday early evening, close to 6 P.M. As ordered, Adam was in the glass house's master bedroom suite he was occupying. He was in the bathroom, under the shower, rinsing his hair, when he heard someone knocking on the door.

"Blair?"

"Yes," answered a voice from outside. "I'm coming in."

Blair Sandburgh, in full shaman regalia, constituted of white pants and loose shirt, a multicolored sash around his waist, beaded strings around his neck, entered carrying a pitcher, a change of clothes and a wide cloth. "Are you ready?" he asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be."

Stepping into the shower, the shaman ordered Adam to turn around, and began pouring the leaf concoction from the pitcher down his back, from his shoulders down, all the time mumbling ancient chants and prayers. After all the infusion was poured, he stepped out, handed Adam the pristine white cloth made of pure cotton, never before used, and told him to step out, too. "Dry up, and then give me the cloth," he said. "Put on the clothes I brought you. They're made of white cotton, no buttons, nothing metal, and never used before. I'll gather the fallen leaves in the drying cloth after you're done."

In the walk-in closet, Adam looked at himself. He couldn't repress a chuckle. After so many years known as the "Man in Black", he was now dressed all in white: loose pants gathered at the waist with a hemp cord, loose shirt with short sleeves he'd pulled over his head. No buttons allowed; no metal clasps of any kind. His hair was damp and he was barefoot.

Back in the bedroom, Babah and one of her novices were getting Donna ready for the ritual they'd perform later. She had been bathed, her short hair, now snow white, thoroughly washed. And she had also been bathed in the same cleansing herbal infusion. She had been dressed in a loose white robe made of the same pure cotton as his clothes. A white cloth like the one he had used to dry himself was spread at the foot of the bed, the infusion leaves gathered at the center.

Blair came out of the bathroom carrying the cloth with the leaves from Adam's bath. Babah folded the sides of Donna's white cloth over the leaves of her bath and handed both parcels to her novice.

"You know what to do," she said. The girl bowed ceremoniously to both high priests and left.

Babah turned to Adam. "She will dispose of the leaves in the stream running from a waterfall nearby. Then, the cloths will be brought back here," she explained. "As soon as the sky fills up with stars, we shall begin."

It was time. Brennan, Shalimar, Jesse and Emma, the four friends and fellow fighters, gathered at the glass house's main entrance. They were similarly dressed in white, no buttons, no metal; the men in loose shirts and pants; the women in loose full-sleeved robes. They joined hands, and hugged each other. And each one headed to his or hers appointed location.

The ritual was about to begin.

The master bedroom was now bare, all furniture had been removed. The white cloths were spread side by side on the floor. Babah was instructing her acolytes, two female "yaos", two older men, their skins dark as night. Each one would stand in a corner of the room, ready to aid the high priests during ritual.

Donna was already lying flat on her back on one of the cloths. Adam looked at her, so thin, so frail; her twisted legs were tucked under the white robe. Instinctively, Adam sat cross-legged on the other cloth and pulled her to his lap. He was holding her when Blair entered the room from the veranda overlooking the bay.

"The time is right, the stars are right," he said. "We can hear the drums pounding. The candomble house is already going full tilt. We must begin now."

Babah picked up a white kettle that had never been used before. She poured a strong, very dark red, almost black brew on two small crystal glasses. She handed Adam one of them and, holding Donna's head up, touched the other glass to her lips. "You must drink at the same time," she said.

Adam looked down at Donna, lying across his lap and resting against his left shoulder. Crouching next to them, Babah supported Donna's head with one hand and touched the glass with the brew to her lips with the other. Adam smiled and nodded. He saw Donna smile at him and lightly nod, too. They both downed the reddish infusion at the same moment.

The hallucinogenic concoction's taste was vile. It was so bitter; they started coughing immediately after the first gulp. Cradled in his arms, Donna's body shook in spasms, but Babah encouraged her and, finally, she managed to swallow every drop.

Adam forced himself to gulp the whole content of his glass, but to keep it down took almost all his will power. All the while, he held fast to Donna, as she drank the foul-tasting brew.

After the glasses were drained, Babah took them away. Together with Blair, they started lighting votive candles and placing seashells and flowers around the white cloths where Adam and Donna held each other. All the light in the glass house came from candles, and the building shone like a jewel in the dark.

Brennan kissed Shalimar lightly on the lips, squeezed her hand for a moment, then turned west and walked up the path leading from the house to the main road, and, from there, he headed to the sugarcane field. He lifted his eyes to the sky. The Milky Way looked brighter than ever. Right above his head, a cluster of five stars glittered in the characteristic Southern Cross pattern. Far away, drums filled the dark, strangely starry night with a power that penetrated him through his feet. With his eyes glued to the sky, Brennan drank his share of the herb tea.

Shalimar smiled at her friends, and headed to the woods near the glass house. That would be her station throughout the night. Her heart was pounding. Shalimar had no idea what was about to happen, but her heart pounded both in fear and in anticipation. The drums rolled the call of the jungle. The woods beckoned her. There, she knew it, she would feel at home. It was the call of the wild. She gulped her share of the herb tea.

Jesse turned around and headed straight to the enormous black boulder sticking out of the earth, the tip of the cliff where the glass house was perched. The rock pulled him up like a magnet. His head was filled with the sound of drums pounding in the night. He leaned against the rock, looked up at the sky and drank his share of the herb tea.

Emma headed down the winding path to the beach. Her bare feet touched the sand and it looked like powdered jewels. The ocean sang to her. With light steps, she approached the crispy waves. As instructed, Emma counted seven waves. In her mind and heart, she begged permission and walked into the water just enough so the waves would lick at her ankles. Emma turned around, her back to the sea, her eyes on the dimly lit house up the path, now the center of the diamond. With her ears, she heard the drums. With her mind, she heard the music thousands of minds focusing on the same prayer, the same hymn, and the same healing idea. And it was beautiful. She drank her share of the herb tea.

The black tea felt like molted lava down Adam's throat. Cough shot up from his lungs and the tea threatened to hit the pit of his stomach and geyser right up. Adam's whole respiratory tract was on fire. He felt as if he had swallowed pure sulfuric acid.

Donna's body shook in his arms as she coughed and choked on the brew. Adam tried to hold on to her, but through his own spasms, he could see she was having trouble breathing. She gasped, choked, coughed; no air was entering her lungs. He tried to call for help, but his voice caught in his throat. He was having trouble breathing himself. Little bright dots started blinking around his field of vision and, when Adam moved to lay Donna on the floor, the whole room did a somersault and started spinning. He shook his head trying to clear it, but he could feel the world physically turning. No matter how dizzy he felt, he had to help Donna.

Adam bent over Donna's body. He held her face between his hands. He searched for her nose with his fingers, but before he could find it, his mouth found hers and he tried to give her mouth to mouth. Only, when their mouths locked, Donna gasped and sucked all the air from his lungs. Instead of breathing, she kissed him. And he couldn't help it but kiss her back. Their mouths melded together, their bodies melded together, becoming one single mass, as the room around them, and the whole world as a whole started spinning faster and faster and…

WORLD WIDE WEB OF LIGHT

One, two, three shining drops fell from the sky. It was raining, but there wasn't a single cloud up. The droplets gleamed like diamonds, because it was raining stars.

Jamaica. The moment the sun disappears in the sea and the sky becomes a black ocean of stars.

The Rastafarian elder lights up his marijuana pipe, his chalice. His tribe of believers, sitting in a wide circle, bows their heads. The pipe is ritualistically passed around and refilled with ganja, the holy herb. The bluish, sweet smoke coils up to the sky. The drums roll, the nyabinghi, the sacred dance is about to begin. One by one, the men and women in dreadlocks stand up and sway to the rhythm. Any moment now…

Emma lifted her hand, and touched the sky. There was no distance, no height, no difference. She knew everything was linked together, one mind, one soul, one spirit. She looked at her own hand and her skin was also gleaming. She looked at the house up the path and it shone like a beacon of light. The waves licked the hem of her pristine white robe, the tips of her flaring, elongated sleeves touched the salt water. The sea was her strength and power. Any moment now…

Haiti.

The gathering was massive. Houngans and mambos from all houses were present in whole regalia, all their followers in attendance. Many altars had been erected, many goats and roosters where ready for the sacrifices. All lwa, the entities representing love, agriculture, rain, magicians, and the first among them, Legba, the king of the crossroads, they would all be called upon.

When the sun disappeared over the edge of the world, the oldest houngan held the ritual knife in his right hand and the first lamb, white as a cloud, would have his throat cut. Hounto, the spirit of drums took possession of his army of players, and the songs filled the air. The lwa were coming down and penetrating the bodies of men and women alike. Any moment now…

Jesse felt his body phase and harden at the same time, becoming one with the rock. The stone was his strength and power, backing him up. The little shining raindrops, falling from a cloudless sky, covered his body and the whole quarry. Turning his head, he could see the house. It was just light, a brilliant gem glistening in the distance. He felt himself meld with the boulder. Any moment now…

Stonehenge, England.

The circles of druids and Wicca priestesses surrounded the gigantic boulders many times over, forming a lake of souls a quarter of a mile wide. The singers, spread all over the circles, raised their voices in a New Age melody, followed by the lute, flute and percussion players, an anthem sung in tongues long forgotten. The Mother would soar among the constellations. The circles within circles rippled. When the sun touched the center stone… Any moment now…

Shalimar reached the small clearing in the center of the woods running on all fours, or so she thought. Somehow, the place felt right and she sniffed the air. It smelled of plants, trees, grass and millions of animals, both big and small… Wildcats, armadillos, anteaters, rodents of all kinds, snakes and insects, all of them inhabited these woods and all of them were her pack. She arched her back and roared, leaping up as high as the stars she could touch with her paws. She was one with all wildlife on Earth. They were her strength and power. Any moment now…

Delphos, Greece

In the secret cave, the fumes coiled up from the bowels of the planet. The covenant bent over the smoke pit, inhaling deep. The women, ancient priestesses of Apollo, swayed under the thick cloud, their minds melding together in a prayer to their fiery god. When his flaming car reached the right spot in the sky, it would happen… Any moment now…

Brennan was surrounded by sugarcane stalks. The field stretched as far as the eyes could see, and the house in the distance shone like a jewel. The sky above was falling one star at a time in a brilliant rain, but there were no clouds above and the droplets were not made of water, they were made of pure light. All around him, lightning bolts exploded in mute thunderclaps. Brennan was a being made of electricity. He was one with the energy that moved everything in the universe, from the smallest grain of sand to the largest celestial body. The primal force was his strength and power. Any moment now…

India, somewhere in the thick jungle…

The Dalai Lama himself was first among the equals, as monks and yogis, gurus and anchorites sat down and relaxed their breathing, willing themselves into deep trance, achieving communion with the universe and the myriad minds gathering in the reality beyond by meditation alone. The holy men sunk deeper and deeper as the hour approached fast. Any moment now…

Deep in the Amazon rainforest…

The Santo Daime community gathered in the depths of the rainforest around the altar, a huge table made of old fallen mahogany trees, the legs, their roots themselves. Each member took a little cup full of ayahuasca, the sacred concoction. The "uniformed ones", the novices, hundreds of them coming from all over the country, all of them in solid blue or white, sung hymn after hymn, guiding the mind-travellers to their places. The congregation would partake of the holy drink together. The "godfather" would know the exact moment, when the stars would be just right and the endless jungle pulsated with a single heartbeat. Any moment now…

Somewhere in the USA, possibly the Mojave Desert…

Three women, old as time itself, ageless crones of boundless wisdom, the Witches, direct disciples of Carlos Catañeda, held hands around the gurgling cauldron. Holy herbal gifts from the gods and goddesses had been used to cause unspeakable harm. Now, they would be used again, this time to mend.

The Three Witches formed the sacred triangle, the holy triad. Their spirits soared above their bodies, pure energy and light. Each Witch shot in one direction: West, to hover above Europe and Africa; East, to float above Asia, Australia and Russia; South, over the Equator, exactly above a tiny dot of power shining in the depths of the Amazon Basin.

Together, they were ready to channel all force, all power, all might being generated by millions of souls in one single prayer. Together, they held the planet in their arms.

Any moment… NOW!

From the sea, a beacon of light shot up sky high and met…

…a lightning bolt zapping the air straight at the firmament and they met…

…a ripple cracking the million-years-old rock dead center, and the silent sound wave flying to the sky and they met...

…two yellow beams of light converging to one and climbing rocket-like to the stars, there to meet…

…the four elements manifest.

When the four powers met above, exploding in an energy canopy, the barriers between solid and imaginary, between object and allegory came down with a bang.

MY WINGS ARE LIKE A HURRICANE!

Adam and Donna stood face to face in the whiteness of nothing. They looked at each other and they knew who they were, only they were… different. Even though they thought they saw their faces, at the same time they were pure energy beings, two… principles… male and female.

Hand in hand, they turned and a square opened on the whiteness surrounding them. The nothing receded, revealing a cave where a mythical creature, a griffin, was chained to a thick black iron ring welded to a rock. Flames came from the depths of the cave, almost licking the half eagle, half lion chimera.

Footsteps boomed on the ground, as a gigantic lizard head poked out of a tunnel. The taloned front paws appeared from behind the rocky entrance.

"I was waiting for you," purred the beast. "My name is Knowledge and I know what you did."

The dragon roared and sucked all air in a vortex, swallowing both Adam and Donna whole. They were diving head first to the core, the nucleus, to the belly of the beast.

The whirlpool landed them back in the Vault, in one of the cells. The anomaly was squatting by the padded wall, its back turned. The electrodes shone on its skull, the black sub-gov disc stuck out of its neck, and the open hospital gown left visible its spine down to the diamond-shaped deep scar.

"It's you."

"Yes. I'm terrified. I had a few sessions already. The first was in the sensory deprivation tank; the second was sensory overload. I remember it much better now. I know I was still functioning."

The cell's door clicked open and the anomaly turned its head at the sound. Its huge black eyes registered fear, loathing, distrust, but not madness. The thing was still rational. That meant there would be a fight.

"I can feel my heart pounding, my mouth dry. I know what's coming. I am still coherent, so I know they're bringing in the big guns… I heard them speak of jimsonweed… It is devil's trumpet… everybody in the tribe knows it's dangerous… better leave it alone just for the medicine men. They used to mix it with Atroppa Belladonna… it's poisonous… Now, they talked about LSD… they'll combine two natural psychedelic drugs and one artificial, created in a lab… They think that will do the trick."

The anomaly stood up, leaning against the padded wall. Shaking, it assumed a fight stance to resist the male nurses coming to get it. But instead, a strange contraption was wheeled into the cell. The stirrups gave it away, it was a gynecological chair. Plastered against the wall, the puzzled anomaly looked on. Why did they need that?

"Oh, my God…"

"When did you have your last…?"

"I was late!" And both Donna and the anomaly screamed in tandem.

"Infanticide! Liar!" hissed the dragon.

As Donna's shape crumbled at his feet, Adam pushed her behind his own shape and faced the dragon. "She was a captive! There was nothing she could do!"

"Tell the truth! Face the truth!" The dragon roared.

"My child was murdered! And not by her!" Adam turned around and pulled Donna up until she faced him. "Is that why you're killing yourself? Donna, what could you possibly have done?"

"Everything! Anything! I could have fought harder…" Her tears were rivers of silver light running down her cheeks.

"You did! You fought so hard you came out of that chamber of horrors alive!" Adam pulled Donna into his arms. "You must, Donna! For me, for us! You have to forgive yourself!"

"Murderess!" roared the dragon.

"I tried to stop them! I did! I tapped into my telekinetic power as deep as I could! I tried and pushed the sub-gov out, but it only came half way!" Donna's luminous shape started to waver, decompose.

"Stay with me!" Adam held her shoulders and pulled her away, looking into her eyes. "The very core of the island started to shake! I know! I was there! You caused an earthquake!"

"I wanted to kill them all!" Donna howled. Her energy self regained its human outline, her body untwisted and straightened. "I wanted to tear that island off the face of the Earth!" Her limbs unbent and grew stronger as she stood up to her full height, heat and light shooting out of every pore. "I ripped them apart! They tried to grab me, I blew them up! And I would do it again!"

The griffin screeched and pulled at its chain.

"Child killer!" growled the dragon.

Adam saw Donna turn and face the dragon square on, her feet planted firmly on the cave's floor. "I wanted them dead and I killed them! And I knew the effort would make me miscarry, but I DIDN'T CARE! I didn't care for anything! All I wanted was that place destroyed! I wanted those people torn limb by limb! No matter what!" Gritting her teeth, Donna was a being made of pure power. "Now you know, Adam! I wanted them dead no matter the price! And the price was the life of our child! I killed our child as surely as I killed two men! In that cell! Before they could do it! Before they could perform the abortion! I tapped into my powers so hard I miscarried! Tell me now, how can I forgive myself? How can you forgive me?"

Without a word, without even a thought, Adam pulled Donna back around to face him again and kissed her. With his mouth covering hers, himself a being made of energy and light, he ran his hands through her short, silver hair and pulled. And as he pulled, the strands grew longer and longer, darker, shinier, changing from silver to obsidian black. The silky filaments thickened into locks, the tresses reaching her waistline.

Screeching, the griffin pulled at its chain. The black iron ring cracked open with a snap.

GOOD MORNING, STARSHINE

The sun peaked out of the horizon and climbed up over the woods. On a pile of fallen leaves, a feline woman stirred and stretched. Flexible and lithe, Shalimar elongated her spine first, then her arms and legs. Sleep had been deep, the forest a cocoon, a true womb where she rested in absolute peace for the first time in years. She opened her eyes to a new day and a new reality. She actually felt renovated and fresh. And hungry! The idea of breakfast was enticing indeed. Better to go back to the house.

The boulder shone under the rising sun and gave both shadow and warmth to the young man asleep at its foot. Slowly, softly, he turned and sighed, but didn't open his eyes. As he sat up, he rubbed his back against the rock, caressing it with the back of his head. His blond hair gleamed to the light, so light to be almost silvery. To his touch, the rock was very smooth, almost glassy. He felt like one with the stone. Finally opening his eyes to the morning, Jesse smiled and took a deep breath. He was rested and relaxed, at peace with himself and the world for the first time since he found out what he was and life had taken a whole new meaning. Something had happened to lift his spirits and make him feel younger than his years. And hungry… Famished, really. Time to go back to the house and meet the others.

In the middle of a sugarcane field, a sleeping man rolled on his back and exposeed his face to the light. The sky above him was a clear blue tinted with the yellows and pinks of the rising sun. Not a cloud in sight. Around him, mature sugarcane stalks ready to be cut down formed a wall filling the air with a sweet, earthy smell.

Brennan stood up to his full height and stretched, lifting his arms as if trying to touch the blue infinity above. He felt an odd sense of peace invade his heart. Since Cat's death and even before, tension had been a constant companion. He used to feel he had electricity running in his veins instead of blood, his muscles were permanently taut, and he was always, always ready. Not today. Today, he felt renewed with a calmness relaxing his whole body.

Brennan Mulwray smiled and took a lungful of the crisp morning air. His stomach growled. It felt like he hadn't eaten in days. He should be heading back to the house.

The tide had receded, making the white sand streak larger. The sun rising from the mainland hit the palm trees and cast a shadow over the beach. The early morning light was soft and the air smelled of salt.

Lying on her side, her head resting on a small mound of sand, Emma blinked and opened her eyes to a vision of paradise. The beach at dawn was exploding in color. She sat up and patted the sand off her shoulders. Her white cotton gown as damp at the hem and it clung to her legs when she stood up and stretched. The red-headed psionic's senses were quietly alert, but all they could pick up was peace, tranquility, ease. There was a soothing quietude in her surroundings, only broken by a flight of squawking parakeets and the palm trees swaying to the breeze.

Soon, the sun would hit the beach in full force and her fair complexion would suffer. Better to go back up and join the others in the house. She felt… no… she knew something had happened, something wonderful had happened.

Standing in the west veranda, Blair waited for the quartet of mutants to return. He had kept vigil throughout the night. To keep the level of concentration, the dance, the drums rolling all night long, it could be exhausting. The power he and high priestess Kabinda de Nanã had wielded could be draining, but the sacred infusion had given them the strength and the ability to manipulate and maintain the gates open, the ley lines flowing free. Beacons of light emanating from all corners of the globe helped direct the four columns of energy linked together for as long as needed. Brennan's lightning bolt, Jesse's magnetic meridian, Emma's mind blast and Shalimar's feral eye beam had met up the sky zenith and stayed there, forming a canopy over the house.

Oddly enough, Blair Sandburgh didn't feel tired, and he was pleased. He was very pleased. He felt in his heart, in his mind and in his soul, he felt music like the tingling of tiny crystalline bells remembered rather than heard.

There, climbing up the path coming from the beach, there was Emma. Jesse showed up, coming from the quarry, and they walked together to the house. They were smiling and there was a bounce to their steps.

Rounding the corner, coming from the sugarcane field, Brennan stepped up on the porch, leaned against a wood pillar and smiled at Blair.

Shalimar jumped off a tree and crouched a few feet off the veranda. She lifted her head, making her golden blond hair fly off her face and smiled broadly. With a leap, she held Blair in a tight hug, kissed his cheek and ran to Brennan.

They were all back, and Blair smiled, instinctively opening his arms and welcoming the four powers in a relieved group hug. Then Blair gave them a playful push, breaking the embrace. He looked at their faces and broke up laughing.

"Man, I'm so hungry!" exclaimed Shalimar.

"I'm starving! I feel like I haven't eaten in months!" complained Brennan.

Blair laughed harder. "You all must be famished. The amount of energy you commanded last night was staggering!"

They all turned around when the double doors that lead to the ample living room clicked open to let Babah, looking fresh and rested in her dazzling white starched robes and turban, step outside. "I know holy work is hungry work," she said. "Come in, all of you. Breakfast is ready."

"This is delicious. What is it?" Brennan had something that looked like a cross between a small biscuit and a cupcake in his hand.

"That is cheese bread," answered Babah, commanding a small army of "yaos", novices from her "candomble" house, now helping set up a true feast on the breakfast table. Kabinda de Nanã, her high priestess's name stood proud on the afro-Brazilian religion hierarchy. "You should try the yucca cake. It was one of Mrs. Evangeline's favorites."

From her place at the table, digging into a bowl of popcorn cooked in coconut milk, the Brazilian version of morning cereal, Shalimar blinked and turned her head to Blair at the head of the table. "It worked, didn't it?"

"It did. We can all feel it in our souls, can't we?" Blair leaned against the high-backed chair and relaxed, a smile spread on his face. "That's why we haven't checked in on them yet."

"Let them sleep a while longer, medicine man," said Babah. "They've travelled deep into the spirit's world."

Emma lifted her head and looked at the old lady. That was a wise woman to the utmost sense of the words. "I see! There are two ways to describe it. You, ma'am, call it the spirit's world. I call it the mind realm."

"Is this wonderful peace I'm feeling a sign that the ritual worked?" asked Jesse.

"I think so, yes," answered Blair. "But there's only one way to be sure. High priestess, I think it is time."

"If you say so, medicine man."

Blair stood up and held his hand out to Babah. The shaman and the "yalorixa" headed to the hallway leading to the bedrooms, followed by the four mutants. They stood at the master suite door. When Blair reached out with his hand to knock, the doorknob turned and clicked, and the door cracked open by itself. He heard the guys behind him chuckle.

Blair pushed the door and they saw, in the middle of the room, a couple asleep in each other's arms. The man's face was tucked in the woman's neck and hidden under her long, black hair. The woman's head was resting on her arm and her hand covered her face. They stirred and slowly broke their embrace. The man propped himself on his elbow, and then sat up, his back turned to the door. He lifted his hands to his face and stretched his back, rolling his shoulders.

"Good morning, Adam," greeted Blair from the door.

Slowly, the man turned around. "Top of the morning, Blair."

"Oh, my God!" exclaimed Shalimar.

"Oh, my God doesn't come close…" gasped Emma. "Oh, my goodness gracious, Adam…"

Puzzled and slightly alarmed, Adam looked at them. He felt great! He felt better than he had felt in a long… in a really long time… "What?!"

"Adam, pull off your shirt and look at yourself," said Blair.

Babah sunk to her knees and pounded the floor three times, reverently. "The wrong is right, the rip is mended," she intoned with tears in her eyes. "Do as the medicine man says, sir."

Adam obeyed without hesitation. He pulled the now wrinkled white cotton shirt over his head.

"Look at his arms!" marveled Jesse.

"Man, you've got some biceps!" Brennan's eyes were almost popping out of their sockets.

On the floor, the woman stirred and pulled her hair off her face, lying now flat on her back. "Geez, we can't even sleep around here," Donna said with a grin. She spread her arms and joined her hands above her head as she pointed her toes, stretching herself like a cat. Her legs were no longer atrophied, the muscles clearly defined, her body as supple as it was before. Actually, she felt better than ever. Before her abduction, her hair had two streaks of white at the temples. She could see no white, her hair was raven black, silky and long, reaching below her waist. Donna sat up facing Adam. "Hello, love," she said.

Adam and Donna looked in each other's eyes. In a single, swift motion, as if one instinctively knew what the other would do, they stood and fell into each other's arms, kissing as if it were the first time. They finally parted and as they checked one another, they laughed. They laughed as if the weight of the world had been lifted from their shoulders.

Still laughing her low, throaty laughter, Donna looked at Adam. "Come," she said. "You have to look at yourself." She pushed him to the walk-in closet and made him stand in front of the full length mirror.

"That's not me!" Adam couldn't believe his eyes. "I mean… that's me… that's me over twenty years ago!"

"I'd say twenty five, Adam," shot Blair, reflected in the mirror, together with the group. He stepped up and held Adam's shoulders, turning him slightly this way and that. "Tell me truly, how old are you?"

"I'm almost fifty."

"Not anymore!" Blair was amazed. "You are younger… you have de-aged! And I'd bet it was at a cellular level."

"You have a six-pack?" exclaimed Brennan. "You look like you'd been working out hard."

"When I was twenty-five, I was working on my martial arts." Adam checked himself in the mirror again. He looked exactly as he did at twenty-five. "When I was thirty, I already had a couple of black belts and I was starting to build Sanctuary."

"That was your physical peak, wasn't it?" asked Blair.

"I would say so, yes," answered Adam. "I could keep it for over fifteen years, but lately… I was feeling my years and more. Back on the island, I had a taste of my true age."

"What do you mean?" asked Donna.

"He means he almost had a heart attack…" answered Shalimar. "Or a stroke, whatever sky high blood pressure brings. We'll fill you in later."

"The healing ritual and the "miração", the vision… or the trip you had… whatever you want to call it," explained Blair, "it worked so spectacularly it didn't just make Donna heal herself. It allowed her to restore… you!"

Adam looked at Blair, then at Babah, and then at his four closest friends. It was over, truly, completely over. That one nightmare had ended. He turned back to Donna, smiled and pulled her into his arms. "I can't thank you," he said without looking at the group, his eyes glued to Donna's. "So, I won't even try." He turned his head. "Blair, I owe you. I owe you, and there's no paying my debt. I can only try and reciprocate in friendship and alliance." His eyes were glinting.

"Blair, I…" Donna started, but couldn't go on. She stepped away from Adam and fell in her ex-fiancée's arms. They held each other for a long time. That day, all wrongs were righted, all wounds were healed, and all hurt was soothed.

Finally, Blair pushed her back and gave her a peck on the cheek. "You owe me nothing… You owe us nothing." He sniffled. "Remember Alexandre Dumas?"

"Oh, yes," said Adam, reaching out with his hand.

Blair Sandburgh took Adam Kane's hand. "All for one," he quoted.

And they all completed in total agreement. "And one for all."

THE END

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