X-Men: Evolution - Season Five

by Mort de l'Art

X-Men: Evolution the series ended but X-Men: Evolution never will. The members of Xavier's school and the Brotherhood faced the toughest battle of their lives against Apocalypse and emerged victorious but their greatest challenge lies ahead - becoming adults while the world watches. Triumph, loss, heartwarmth and heartbreak await them and one of their own will be changed forever.

3. Episode 2 - Alone in a Crowd

X-Men: Evolution

Season Five

"Alone in a Crowd"

Jamie Madrox was not one for getting up early in the morning. More the opposite with most mornings involving multiple slaps of the snooze button leaving his roommate Bobby to sleepily stumble over one of Jamie's duplicates scattered around the alarm clock, waking them up with judicious stomps on his way to the hallway and the shower. Jamie did not have a roommate anymore and yet on this early September morning Madrox's bed was neatly made, the alarm clock turned off and his room strangely silent.

Its occupant was in the hallway stepping out of the boy's bathroom several doors down, giving his hair one last swipe from a flimsy plastic comb as his older cohorts stumbled out of their own doors and made their way to the bathroom.

"What are you grinning about?" Sam managed as he beat the rest of the pack into the boy's bathroom – more by luck than superior skill or constitution – but didn't hang around to get a better answer. None of the others were even up to that level. Jamie left them to their misery and headed down the stairs, pausing for a small skip at the top and leaving a pair of other Jamie's to do the same before following him.

---

Bobby Drake awoke with a shock, a literal one. He grabbed his hand, a receding red mark on the palm the physical sign of the throb which had woken him. He glanced at the blaring alarm clock on his new night stand; a pair of metal prongs were sticking up next to the snooze button on its top.

He remembered something from the new student orientation about students being forced (it stuck in his mind because of that strange language, forced not required) to wake up at 7:00 on the dot. The enforcement of that rule by electric shock had not been mentioned.

Bobby reached over and turned the clock off, only then realizing the room he shared with three other boys was completely silent because it was completely empty. The other beds were so neatly made he suspected he could bounce a quarter off them the way Logan did his (always a strangely eerie counterpoint to the disarray of the rest of Logan's belonging's). Neat and likewise empty.

Bobby would never be a morning person but he was not generally a late riser, either; typically somewhere in the middle. He glanced at his clock again – 7:05 – and satisfied himself he was only slightly behind the rest of the group.

It took him only a couple of wrong turns, locked doors and linen closets before he found the door for the upstairs boys bathroom (later he would give silent thanks it was not the girls bathroom), arriving just as his three roommates were leaving.

"Morning," he said, receiving only light grunts in return.

The hot water was gone but one benefit of his own particular gift was that he did not mind too much. At the mansion he would occasionally freeze the taps for the next person behind him, less out of petulance and more from the need to keep up the status quo, but he kept himself from falling to the temptation in the here and now and rushed through his morning toilette instead with as much grace as he could muster as he tried to make up time.

As a result it was only twenty minutes after the hour when he found his way to the dining room – a converted ballroom filled with three long tables in order to handle the large student body at the Massachusetts Academy. Bobby hurried over to the serving window on the side, in his haste not noticing how empty most of the tables were, and nearly had his hand caught in the wooden shutter as the white robed cook pulled it down.

"Service ends at ten after," was the only explanation he got before the window was closed for good with no time made for his objections. Before Bobby could decide what to do about that the first bell began ringing. Not wanting to find out what came from ignoring it he headed for class.

---

Jamie was nearly the only one in the Xavier dining room. Mr. Logan was his lone companion, sitting at the far end of the table, but for once Jamie wasn't put off by the stern professor's presence (if the occasional flip of a newspaper page could be called a presence). He tried several times to engage him conversation, to tell him about his excitement for the first day of class but beyond the odd grunt was met with silence.

No wonder no one comes down to eat with him in the morning, he thought, though he doubted anyone else was as willing to get up early enough to do so. It reminded him of a saying Mr. Beast liked to repeat about falling asleep early and getting up early, which sounded like the kind of thing he would do, not Mr. Logan. Actually there were a lot of things Mr. Logan did which didn't sound like things he would do, but he did them none the less. It was as if he were pretending to be someone else all the time but what would make someone like Mr. Logan want to do that…

The arrival of the rest of the student body cut that unsettling train of thought short, thankfully.

Finishing up his last bite of sausage, Jamie was out of the dining room just as the others were finding their places, off in search of his ride to school. He could just hear Ray's lingering comment – "… Jamie down here first…" – when he spied Ms. Ororo in the entry hall.

"I'm ready, Professor," he said, causing her to look up from the paperwork she was rifling through.

"Aren't you the early bird," she said but smiled as she did so, reminding Jamie why she was his favorite of the Misters. "Excited?"

"Kinda," he said, bouncing on the balls of his feet and popping out several more Jamie's. Ms. Ororo frowned at him

"Jamie, we talked about this. You can't be making any duplicates of yourself at school."

"I know," he mourned, banishing the other Jamie's (who waved festively before they went). "But I don't know why. We're not secrets anymore, everyone knows who we are."

"It's one thing to know and it's another thing to have that knowledge shoved in your face. It can make people … react in ways they might not normally."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't use your powers at school and we won't have to find out," she said and gave Jaime the look which said the conversation was over. She picked up the keys she must have set down before Jaime found her and gestured to the front door. "If you're ready we might as well go."

Jamie's excitement dried up as her words sank in. "Don't we need to wait for the others to finish breakfast?"

"They're all going to Bayville High this year; you're the only one left in junior high," Ms. Ororo replied. Seeing his mood change on his face she laid one hand on his arm. "You'll still see everyone at the end of the day."

"Yeah … no … I just forgot," Jamie said before picking himself up again. "It'll be fine. It'll be great!"

"Just so," Ms. Ororo said, following him to the front door. "I'm sure you'll have fantastic stories to share this evening."

The third time Ororo asked Jaime to settle down and be quiet the inside of the school van rumbled with what sounded like thunder and Jamie finally stopped throwing pieces of paper at himself.

"We're almost there, Jamie," Ororo said and Jamie nodded helpfully, focusing on keeping his thoughts positive. "And they're expecting only one of you."

"Yes, ma'am," a single Jamie said from the back. For some reason when he said that it caused an immediate pang of regret in Ororo, she wasn't sure why.

"Now you remember what we talked about?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She knew she should have let it go but the persistent pang forced her hand.

"It's nothing to be worried or ashamed of, it's just still necessary. At least for a little while."

"Yes, ma'am. It's just … I'm not sure who to talk to without them."

"Well who else do you usually talk to?"

"Rhane and Jubilee."

"What about other boys your age?" Ororo got a brief shrug in response.

"My dupes, you know, I know what they're thinking and they know what I'm thinking and they don't try and put me down or make feel bad or think I'm weird. They like the same things I like so it's easy to just, just be."

"Well … well, that's normal," Ororo said, realizing she was having one of the rare moments in her adult life when she was reaching beyond her capabilities. It was not something she particularly liked doing, she suspected most people felt that way, but it was one of those things Charles liked to call "the essence of evolution, which means we must embrace it whatever we may feel about it." Or some sort of empty platitude like that which made Ororo want to summon a rain cloud and have it follow him around all day, even indoors.

"What I mean is, it's nothing to feel bad about," she tried to explain further.

"Oh I don't feel bad about it. I'm not allowed to," Jamie said.

"You're not allowed to?" Ororo was suddenly paying rapt attention.

"No, ma'am. My first day of kindergarten my dad took me aside and told me that he knew how excited I was about going to a new place and meeting new people and that a lot of those new people wouldn't understand that and would do their best to tear me down and make me afraid and never be excited for the new and unknown ever again and that's why I needed to remember how I felt right at that moment and hold on to that feeling so tight no one could ever take it away, that I wasn't allowed to let anyone take it away."

Ororo was still untangling Jamie's one-breath run-on sentence when she realized he was still talking.

"And then powers showed up and dad left and … and still I don't really know what he was talking about but I think about it an awful lot."

Jamie waited what felt like the requisite amount of time for a response and, when none was forthcoming, he jumped out of the van with a wave and a 'Bye!' and scurried up the school steps. A sharp horn blast some moments later forced Ororo out of her thoughts and she pulled the van away from the unloading zone. She did not see the boy with blue, blue eyes standing near the unloading zone watching her drive away and watching Jamie enter the school.

---

First class, as it turned out, was Literature which was not what Bobby had been expecting on many levels. When the other students had talked about attending an all-mutant school he got the sincere impression it would be like training at Xavier's – running obstacle courses, blowing things up, finding new and inventive uses of his powers – without any of the boring school stuff in between.

Instead he had a roster of boring school stuff: Genetics, History, Sociology, Self-Government, Nu Art (whatever that was) and Literature to start the day with nary a trap or explosion in sight.

Literature, however, wasn't Literature. He hadn't looked at his schedule or opened his books until he was sitting in his seat next to a pale, annoyed looking girl with dark eyeliner and black fingernails. He figured he would wing it until they got to the good stuff or he had a chance to get caught up and since he was a transfer student they wouldn't expect him to jump right into…

"Mr. Drake," the bald, mustached, teacher-y looking teacher gestured at him almost as soon as the bell to start class finished ringing. "Since you're new here we're going to throw you into the deep end. Why don't you come up to the front and lead us into today's reading?"

With everything he'd ever known or understood about school upended, and his prayers to wake up from what had to be a particularly nasty nightmare going unanswered, Bobby stood in front of the class staring at his textbook, silently willing it to tell him what 'today's reading' was. It did not.

"Do you know what today's reading is or are you trying to get your latent mutant telepathy to develop?" the teacher-y teacher (in his head Bobby had started calling him Mr. Teacher; even when he later learned his name was Professor Dobson he would continue to refer to him as Mr. Teacher) asked.

A long, drawn out 'neither' drew giggles and titters from the class, and a pair of rolled eyes from Mr. Teacher, and Bobby felt momentarily back in his element.

"Since it is your first day I'll give you a little slack, but only enough to hang yourself," Mr. Teacher said. "Page 105 in the Human Poetry section."

"As opposed to chipmunk poetry?" Bobby said, flipping to the page in question. For once he hadn't actually meant to say it. It was a full five seconds before he realized he had and then he waited for the noose to be pulled tight.

"That's an interesting question," Mr. Teacher said instead and turned to the other students. "Anyone want to explain what exactly is the difference between human poetry and aesthetic expressions by other animals?"

Bobby was starting to think Mr. Teacher was making fun of him but one student gamely raised her hand. "Animal expression, like bird calls and whale song serves a specific evolutionary purpose – initiating mating rituals or marking territory. Human expressions have no practical value."

"That's good thought but a little off the mark. Bobby, why don't you take us through today's reading and let's see if you can all spot where I'm going with this."

By this point thoroughly lost in the conversation Bobby latched onto the one thing he actually understood: he was supposed to read the words in English written in the book.

When children are playing alone on the green/In comes the playmate that never was seen.

Speeding through the rest of the text, Bobby found himself remembering years not too far gone playing with his brother's action figures, zooming around the house pretending they could fly. Before the ice came. He was filled with a vague longing he couldn't quite express for the days of true youth where imaginary friends were part and parcel of life, as intrinsic as blanket-capes and household pets used as horses or other mounts. There was some sort of safety in those memories and part of Bobby reached out to them, wanting to stay there. But he'd reached the end of the poem and was still stuck in class.

"So why don't you tell us, Mr. Drake, what is Stevenson expressing?" Mr. Teacher said.

"I don't know. What's it like to be a kid. What he misses about it and why."

Bobby was self-aware enough to know that was better than almost any answer he had ever given in any class ever, but he was met by what felt like disapproval from Mr. Teacher.

"That's true as far as it goes but it's not really what I'm getting at," he said. "What does this tell us about how human's think of themselves? What they think about?"

After a moment's silence a hand went up and Mr. Teacher quickly pointed at it. "Yes, Amy?"

"It's about fear, fear of the unknown and trying to placate that fear. It's about how humans are naturally afraid of anything they don't understand as part of their evolutionary defense mechanism."

"But it's also about looking to the past, like Bobby was saying," another student offered. "It showcases how focused on the past humans are and their desire to avoid thinking about the realities of the future."

Bobby had no idea how Mr. Teacher was taking any of that; for one of the few times he could remember he was hastily and voluntarily re-reading the poem again either for some clue he had missed or to make certain that he had actually read the same thing everyone else had.

"These are all good ideas but I think you're missing the most obvious answer" Mr. Teacher said. "When they imagine something other than themselves they imagine it as a reflection of themselves. This is an integral part of human psychology, that the human is the apex of creation and everything in nature is aspiring to be them. Why understand what is outside of themselves when they don't have to?"

"But didn't Cannon prove that all human responses ultimately come back to a basic fight or flight choice?"

Bobby wondered if anyone would notice if he slowly inched his way back to his desk and hid.

"To an extent but remember, humans are complex and complicated animals, capable of multiple conflicting thoughts and feelings at any one time. It is imperative not to forget this or you risk not only underestimating but actively misreading their intentions."

"Aren't their intentions the same as all animals? To procreate and protect their descendants?" a voice said.

"But how do they do that? How, how, how. That is what you must be prepared to deal with, thus that is what you must understand. If you take nothing else from your time here, take the need and ability to do that. Man is the most dangerous of animals not just for his ability to reason but for the complexity of his individual motivations and the related difficulty in predicting his actions."

"But what about mutants?" Bobby asked. It was the first time he had voluntarily taken part in a class discussion. He regretted it immediately.

"What about mutants?" Mr. Teacher asked.

"Aren't … aren't mutants animals too?"

"No, we are not," Mr. Teacher said with a look so cold Bobby suddenly understood why grabbing people unawares with his ice hands was 'not cool.' He returned to his desk and sat quietly for the rest of the class.

---

It had been a very long first day. Jamie had, as promised, not created a single dupe all day, even when he went outside for lunch and was sure no one would see. Instead he had sat at a bench imagining cloud animals and superhero battles and the thrill of flying the X-Jet, and occasionally what it would be like to be older and surrounded by his own group of friends like the other kids at the mansion.

Class time had been much the same. He tried to pay attention, at least in the early going, but the constant stream of names and numbers and facts to be memorized and understood and inferences to be made was more than the twelve-year-old mind was meant to handle. By the time chemistry class came around Jamie had migrated from the front row desk he'd intentionally (and against all his instincts) picked out to the back row. It didn't help that no one had sat next to him the entire day, creating an invisible ring around him through which no living thing would pass. He told himself it didn't bother him, it would make it easier for him to focus on the work in front of him but by the time of the last class the boredom and antsy-ness which had been knocking on the door had stopped waiting, let itself in and was setting itself down for dinner.

By the midpoint of the class the teacher was ensconced behind a paper at his desk while the other students huddled over their Bunsen burners, working on that day's lab assignment. Jamie had been idly playing with the level of the flame on his burner, turning it up and down, staring into it. It stirred images in his mind's eye he didn't know the origin of; great fiery hands like wings stretching up and out to the heavens.

He cast his mind adrift to avoid thoughts of loneliness or boredom. He basked briefly in the notion of using his powers freely throughout the day, of always having himself nearby to talk to, of winning unending games of tag and wrestling with friends and family, even his father. Some part of him was aware of a teacher trying to get his attention; he responded and got the distinct impression of laughter nearby but was having much more fun in imagination land than in the real world.

Somewhere along the way those thoughts morphed to an idea of an older Jamie (he wasn't terribly clear on what being older meant beyond being bigger but that seemed enough to start from) going out on missions with the other X-Men and stopping would be world catastrophes. He wasn't gruesome enough to try and put such events into concrete thoughts, rather the villains in his imagination were an amorphous black blob, a shadowy man of some sort sporting a wicked horned crown. Nothing specific just something needing defeating as was obvious by the flames which trailed in his wake, lighting the world on fire, before Jamie and the X-Men put a stop to him.

Jamie was absorbed enough in this that he did not notice the boy sitting next to him until he said "Hi!"

Jamie nearly jumped in his seat but, remembering Ms. Ororo's commandment to not make any dupes, managed to hold himself to just a start. The boy – dark hair, dark skin, blazing blue eyes – was staring at him expectantly. Not knowing what he was expecting, Jamie just stared back.

"Hi," the boy said again. "I'm Farouk. I'm new here."

"Hi, I'm uh, I'm Jamie."

"Mind if I sit here?" As the boy was already quite clearly 'sitting here' it was plainly meant as idle conversation as opposed to an actual question but after a day of no one to talk to Jamie wasn't going to call him on it.

"Sure."

Jamie searched for his next move; as attractive as his imagination was the sudden presence of a real, live person to interact with was not something he wanted to give up. It was too rare, particularly of his own age. He needed a responding gambit which would keep the dialogue going.

"I'm new here, too." Jamie grimaced internally, but pressed ahead. "I mean, I'm not new here I just used to go with – uh – some other friends but they all left and so now I'm new here by myself."

"Okay." There was no indication on Farouk's face that any of that was less than the clearest and most understandable logic.

"Where are you from?" Jamie asked starting to get his books out of his bag, more from reflex than any plan to actually use them.

"Lots of different places; we move around a lot. My dad's a consultant." Farouk spoke the last with such knowing intent that Jamie couldn't bring himself to admit he didn't know what it meant. Instead he just shrugged happily; this was much better than sitting alone by himself in class.

"So what do we do now?" Farouk asked. Jamie wasn't sure what he meant by that and asked him to repeat it. "I mean what do we do now? Do we just sit here all day?"

"No, I mean how did things work at your other schools?"

Farouk just smiled and shrugged. A voice deep in the back of Jamie's mind whispered to him that there was something off about this boy, there was something strange in his questions and reactions to the world around him that wasn't to be trusted. Jamie shooed that voice away and locked the door behind it.

"We'll finish our lesson for today and then we go to our next class and do it again. I have Ms. Flemming for English."

"That sounds boring. Let's do something else."

Jamie's heart swelled, and then immediately deflated. "I can't."

"Why not?"

He told Farouk about his promise to Ms. Ororo to behave and how important it was though he couldn't bring himself to bring up his father's words again, the feelings attached were too strong. If Farouk noted the eliding he made no sign; instead he perked up at the mention of Ororo and started demanding information about her. Who was she, what was she like?

"She's nice, she's one of my teachers …"

"She's here?"

Jamie paused, trying to decide how much to explain about the Institute and what went on there. Neither the Professor nor the other instructors had specifically instructed him to keep its activities secret, but he was perceptive enough to appreciate the difference between the faces they showed the world and the one they showed at home. He wasn't entirely certain why that was but as with his father's words he felt a need to keep some part of it private. That need fought against his desire to open himself up to his new friend and the acceptance which would come with it. That desire lost the initial skirmish but remained burbling under the surface. Instead Jamie talked lightly about the house he lived at, characterizing it more as a 'hotel' than a 'school.' Farouk was not initially persuaded, instead switching his attention to the other children living with Jamie and wanting to know all about them, but was interrupted in his questioning when the fevered whispers caught Mr. Thomerson's attention.

"On second thought, why don't you sit with Mr. Sims," Thomerson said, taking Farouk by the shoulder and maneuvering him to another table. Jamie had bent his head down to examine an acid burn on the desk and hopefully let the wrath of Thomerson slide off him, but from the corner of his eye he imagined Farouk's eyes darkened with anger at the interruption. Jamie was preparing the unthinkable, to interject himself between punisher and punished in order to keep Farouk from doing something ill-advised. But the moment passed and Farouk followed the teacher to a seat on the other side of the room, while a blonde-haired girl with a pony tail took his place next to Jamie. Jamie asked her how far she'd gotten in the lab with her other partner.

"Don't talk to me; I don't want to get into trouble, too."

She kept her head bent down to her work, pen scratching in her notebook, occasionally looking up at their beaker and burner apparatus but never at Jamie. Jamie copied her, carefully measuring out reagents and making weight and catalyst calculations for their experiment. It was the most diligent he had ever been in class. After filling his page with what he thought he was gibberish he asked his new partner if she'd gotten the same answer he had. There was no answer and Jamie looked up to see if she'd heard him but the blonde-haired girl with a pony tail was gone. Farouk was back in his spot.

"What are you –" he gave a furtive glance to the front but Mr. Thomerson was safely buried in a newspaper, "—what are you doing here? Where's Cindy?"

"Oh, she wanted to go sit with that other boy."

"Frankie? But she hates Frankie. He tried to set her on fire once."

Farouk shrugged; it seemed to be his go to response. Jamie scanned the room for his missing lab partner and sure enough she was sitting next to Franklin Ford, III, helping him add elements to their shared beaker and giving no sign that she was sharing a table with her mortal enemy.

A voice in his head told Jamie he should alert someone but he wasn't sure who or about what. That a girl in his class had decided she could get along with the person she said she detested most in the world? Was that something that should be worried about? He didn't have the words or context yet to explain metathesiophobia even to himself but the uneasiness in his stomach was unmistakable, like spending too long on the whirl-a-gig at the county fair.

Or, the voice said, he could be reacting to Farouk himself. It wasn't just the shrugging or lack of answers, Jamie himself had long practiced the art of avoiding answering any direct question asked of him. He believed he was a master at it.

It was more what Farouk did when he wasn't directly talking. He did nothing. Not the standard student form of nothing which tended to include a lot of fidgeting and moving about. There was an innate stillness, a slackness, as if nothing were running through him when he wasn't being looked at. He reminded Jamie of Mr. Beast's lessons about the photon and the way it only reacted when it was being directly observed. When it wasn't there was … nothing there. As if there were some indefinable but unmistakable element of humanity lacking. Jamie remembered Bobby calling it the uncanny valley.

"What are you doing now?"

Farouk's voice brought Jamie back to the table and threw any thoughts of strange behavior out of his head. He turned his attention back to his own experiment.

"We've got to combine these two elements then describe the exact nature of the reaction and what is left afterwards including weights."

"Oh that's easy, the acetic acid and sodium bicarbonate recombine into sodium acetate; the exothermic reaction of the proton loss releases water and carbon dioxide."

"What's exothermic?"

"Here, write this down," Farouk said and dictated a paragraph for Jamie to copy out. Jamie asked him what it all meant.

"That's the answer," Farouk said with a grin. Bobby's phrase appeared in his head again and again he threw it out. Instead he just grinned back, waiting for Farouk to come up with something else.

"Now what?" Farouk asked instead.

"I don't know, I've never finished before class was over before. Actually I've never finished before." Jamie thought the problem over. "I guess we can do what we want as long as we stay at our desk."

Farouk's face fell – being stuck at their desk was clearly not what he thought of as an optimal way to spend the day. Jamie's heart broke at the sad 'oh' Farouk let out and combined with a rising panic that his new friend my search out someone else to hang around with. Someone fun and exciting. Jamie racked his brain for options.

"Iiiii … guessssss … " he drew out each word as he said it, expanding the time he had as he worked through his thoughts, "we could come up with our own experiment? We've still got loads of components."

It seemed to do the trick. "Oh! Let's do that!"

Jamie did a quick inventory of the ingredients they had on hand while looking at Farouk for guidance; a quick headshake told him what he had was boring and to move on to something else. He took out a beaker marked K and sudden memory of caution occurred to him. He set it aside; Farouk asked him what he was doing.

"Oh, we're not supposed to use any of the really reactive chemicals. Besides, we don't want to draw attention, right?" he said the last in a hurry as Farouk's face started to darken.

"Then he definitely doesn't want us mixing the sodium and potassium together," Farouk said and mimed an explosion with his hands, along with a throaty explosion noise for emphasis.

"I think Mr. Thomerson's head might explode."

"Wouldn't that be fantastic?"

What self-control Jamie had been holding onto finally pulled free of his grasp and went on its merry way. The new best friends quickly began making plans for what other theoretical havoc they could wreak.

"Less talking, more experimenting, please. I mean you, Mr. Madrox."

Mr. Thomerson's admonition was met by restrained giggles. He ignored it, and the second wave and the third. That's when he started to smell the smoke.

---

Bobby's roommates were not around when he returned to drop off his books that evening. He was more relieved by that than anything else as all desire to interact with his new schoolmates was more or less gone.

Literature, it had turned out, was not an outlier so much as an example for what the rest of the day would be like. Each class was a bottomless pool of rhetoric where students and teachers took subjects Bobby thought he recognized and turned them into unidentifiable aliens. Worse they insisted on dragging Bobby into the spotlight, at first out of curiosity but by the end out of a perverse desire to show off how little he understood. He grasped any recognizable concept that came his way like a drowning man but most of the classes were spoken in foreign languages with little understandable to Bobby as English beyond the odd 'mutant' or 'consciousness' or the like. He would inevitably slink back to his desk further and further in the back of the class, usually (not always, but usually) after a sharp grilling by the professor.

Not once did anyone ever get to use their abilities. He had thought perhaps there were at least training facilities he could go to on his own (and had a brief premonition of his year-younger self looking into the future, seeing what had become of him as a uniformed school boy voluntarily looking for more work, and being appalled) but found nothing. Asking his classmates for help, when he finally brought himself to doing so, got him nothing but a grunt and turned back. On the other hand with nothing to distract him (personal materials like video games and comic books were forbidden on campus, it turned out) he had become acutely aware of the time and made it to the cafeteria for dinner while it was still being served. He was sitting very much alone.

Weary of the company of his own thoughts – he'd spent more or less the whole day with them – Bobby took the opportunity to people watch while absently chewing coq au vine. He saw faces of all types and shapes, from triangle heads to writhing snake hair to lizard and fish bodies, a monument to mutant kind normally left underground. With his ordinary features and less visible mutation Bobby looked very much the outsider and felt it. But something in the scene nagged at his consciousness and with no one around for him to act the fool for or otherwise request their attention he took a moment to luxuriate in insight. All the different faces and body types were invariably squeezed into matching red sport coats with school crest on the breast pocket and knotted ties. More than the look was the body language and the faces; they all sat eating their food the same way, tapping their fingers the same way, even having the same rude conversations the same way. They were all different and all the same in a spectacularly planned way. Amongst the sea of monotonous diversity Bobby spotted a face he recognized.

The Vietnamese girl from Boston College and the Danger Room was sitting at one of the tables on other side of the room, silently chewing, the one Ray had said was partially behind his powers going berserk. She stood out to him he realized after a moment because she was not copying the actions of the other students in the mess, either. She was not sitting the same way, not holding her fork the same way, had no small group of people she was talking to. Despite being bounded on all sides by other students she was sitting alone.

Before Bobby knew what he was doing he was up and walking across the room towards her. His brain caught up to his feet a few steps from the table and started desperately trying to formulate a plan but nothing was coming.

"Hi," he said, realizing he was standing in front of her. "I'm Bobby."

That did manage to get stares from the other students sitting around her though to be fair they were staring before he opened his mouth, mesmerized by the unheard of action of walking over to another table and talking. The girl did not look up.

"I met you at my school, at my old school, at Xavier's … didn't I?"

He wasn't sure why he'd phrased it as a question; he knew where he'd met her and was pretty sure she did, too. He even thought he remembered her name. He was expecting an affirmative reply of some sort, it would be the polite thing to do, but got nothing in return.

The unexpectedness of that sent Bobby searching for more options to prod a response from her with. It simultaneously opened the danger zone of Bobby further embarrassing himself, a likelihood which he knew from past experience grew with each syllable uttered. The upturned faces around him were clearly looking for any weak point they could find to start giggling at him. He decided to just continue waiting for the girl to respond. His initial nervousness soon began to transform into a more palpable dread that – like it or not – he would have to say something and would probably have to say it first. A permanent stalemate between two equal super powers was ultimately unsustainable. Bobby remembered Prof. McCoy saying that several times. He still had no idea what it meant but it felt appropriate to the moment.

He was on the verge of launching his first strike when a hand on his shoulder turned Bobby around. He found himself facing the pale girl with dark eyeliner and lipstick from his Literature class.

"I'm Negasonic Teenage Warhead," she said. Bobby was still traversing the mental gear change required to deal with that bit of information when he realized she had fished a deck of index cards from the pocket of her red blazer – the only source of color on her entire being – and was reading from them, rapidly.

"I've been assigned as your student mentor to help ease your transition into life at the Academy. You have been deemed deficient in some areas. You will undergo a round of remedial tutoring to bring you to the level the Academy expects. I will guide you."

Lagging far behind, Bobby had opened his mouth to ask one question, thought better of it, and started to ask a different one when the girl read from a different card.

"Any questions about remedial tutoring, mentors or why you have been assigned should be addressed to Doctor Frost. Not now," – Bobby, having taken one step towards the cafeteria door, took a step back – "Doctor Frost is not to be disturbed after five. Visits to her are first thing in the morning, instead of breakfast."

"Actually, that's the required answer for most of your questions," she added, her first words not read from a card.

"Are you a telepath?" It actually was not something Bobby really wanted to know, it was just the easiest thought for him to put into words at the moment and slipped out before he could stop himself.

"No, I just blow things up with my mind." Another card came out. "Negasonic Teenage Warhead is my name. No really, no fooling, yes I swear. In a hurry I will also answer to Negasonic or Warhead. Yes, my favorite color is black; no, I hate The Cure; I don't have any hobbies. Don't ask more outside of tutoring sessions, I don't respond to questions or socializing. You are free to feel uncomfortable; my personality does that to people."

"No, it's cool; we had a goth at my school, too," Bobby replied.

"What's a goth?" the girl blinked.

"Have you done tutoring before? Why are they making you do it? Why are they making me do it? Wait, why are they making me do it? How am I in remedial already?"

She started to reply from the previous card. Bobby held his hands up in surrender. "Please. I just don't understand."

"That's why," she said. Before he could respond to that or ask another question she pulled another card.

"Transition into the Academy can be a difficult one. We do not look at the world through a human-based lens. All new students are evaluated on their first day for potential remediation, after which they will be re-evaluated. The Academy is committed to helping new students quickly reach the aptitude of their peers in order to keep the quality level of the whole from descending. Tutors are matched and assigned to their transfers based on a variety of criteria including power set, background and personality. See card X." She began sorting through some of the cards at the back of the deck. "Do not be afraid. I am here to help."

She looked at the card with a raised eyebrow. "I forgot that was in there."

"What happens if I'm still, what was it? Deemed deficient?"

The cards, job done, had disappeared back into Warhead's blazer. "Then you're out."

"I'm what?"

"You're owwwww-oooooooooo-ttttttt." She pronounced every syllable as slowly possible, as if were only somewhat familiar with the English language. At the moment he could not disagree. "Doctor Frost doesn't kid around. You have one week to get up to snuff; this is your last chance to prove you belong."

Bobby was still working on a how he felt about that when he realized the girl - job finished and no more need to speak to him - was walking away leaving him to yell at her retreating back.

"It's my first day!"

The Vietnamese girl, Xi'an he remembered her name was, had left at some point as well.

---

Ms. Ororo did not speak to Jamie at all during the long ride back to the mansion. At first Jamie was glad for that but by the time they were pulling into the front roundabout he had decided he liked being yelled at more. Still, he was not going to be the first to break the détente and risk bringing real punishment down so he stayed silent all the way through Danger Room and into evening dinner.

The other students were largely concerned with their own first days back with their peers and spent most of the afternoon exchanging anecdotes, which kept them from noticing Jamie's unnatural quiet. The animated story-swapping was still going on around the dining room table; Jamie caught idle snippets as he stabbed at his potatoes with a spoon.

"…and then the door opened and there they all were," Amara was saying.

"Not naked!" Rhane squeaked.

"No! There were towels."

"Where did you learn about that?" Kitty was unable to contain her amazement.

"Two guesses," Jubilee said, entering through one of the dining room's double doors. She handed several Tylenol's to Kitty. "Here you are."

Before Jubilee had even gotten the words out Kitty had downed the little white pills with a quick swig of water.

"You never would have gotten away with it if Kelly had been there," Sam said, putting up an arm to deflect Rhane's anticipated elbow.

"I wasn't getting away with anything; I was just taking advantage of timely good fortune." Amara halted what looked to be the beginning of a tirade as Beast walked past their section of the table carrying a great plastic tub of … something. "So to speak."

"It's good you're keeping in touch with Tabitha but remember her gifts do have a tendency to explode," Beast said to a muffled hmph from Amara.

"Principal Kelly wasn't there today?" Professor Xavier said, and the sound around him quieted. Everyone always stopped talking and listened when the Professor spoke, no matter what.

"It's hard to be principal and campaign for mayor," Kitty said. After hard thought she had decided to ignore recommended dosages and was polishing off yet more Tylenol. "He was probably at a fundraiser or something."

"He was probably getting fitted for his hood," Ray muttered.

"None of that, from any of you," Xavier said. "I recognize that we have our differences with Principal Kelly but demonizing someone for their opposition only increases antagonism and the likelihood of violence."

"In my experience the opposition tends to take care of that no matter what you do," Logan said.

"Then they don't need any help from us," the Professor responded. A brief silence descended over the table, enabled by the twofold black swan events of Logan actively taking part in dinner conversation and the Professor rebuking him in public. Aside from Logan's non-committal grunt the silence lingered becoming less and less bearable by the moment. Eyes shifted left and right as everyone waited for someone to say something, anything.

"Kelly wasn't the only one playing hooky today," Sam said at last, quickly followed by a muffled thunk.

"Ow!" Roberto, sitting to his left, cried in surprise, "Someone just kicked me!"

Neither Jubilee, Rogue nor Amara lifted their heads from their meals or otherwise indicated they were aware of the violence going on opposite them. There was another thunk.

"Ow!" Sam cried out.

"There somethin' going on I don't care to know about?" Logan asked. The teens wilted and he burrowed in on Sam who leaned so far away Roberto had to move his plate. "Out with it, kid."

Whatever Sam was going to say was interrupted by pointed look from Rogue.

"Omerta," was all he said, turning back to his food.

"He means Rogue wasn't at school today," Scott said suddenly.

Logan quickly turned his attention from Sam to Rogue who seemed not to notice at all. She was all in on the death glare she had pointed across the table at Scott.

"Not that it's any a' yer business. How would yah know where ah was anyway?" She gave an unhappy smile. "Keeping tabs?"

"I had to make sure the Peeping Janes didn't get expelled while everyone else was busy with real stuff."

"We weren't peeping!" Amara yelled, indignant. "We just happened to be walking by!"

"What were you doing?" Logan asked.

Rogue matched glares with Logan, briefly, before turning back to her meal also. "Going ta class – what else am ah going ta do?"

"I've got some good ideas," Scott shot back.

"I bet you do."

"Let's just leave it," Jean, who had been silent the whole meal, suddenly piped up. "There's enough going outside we don't need to be turning on each other."

"An excellent suggestion … for all of us," Xavier added. "Which reminds me, Jean, you had a note from your mother today. The scramble phone is available whenever you'd like it, or even the plane if you prefer that."

It was just the latest wrinkle in the new status quo that the School's phones were certainly monitored. While some calls were allowed to be listened to, Prof. McCoy had rigged a special phone for external calls which created false audio for eavesdroppers, allowing the students some measure of privacy even if it also created such internal fights over who got to use it that the professor was forced to decide on a case by case basis.

"Oh?! Is something wrong?" Jean almost didn't notice how casually Xavier had slipped the mention into their conversation.

"I don't think so but I didn't want to pry."

"Well, I'd better call them anyway, just in case."

Jean hastened away, leaving behind Scott doing a good impression of a knotted hose with the water on full – pressure was mounting and could not be contained. "Looked like you'd been out motorcycle riding," he finally burst out with.

"Prove it," Rogue said.

"I don't think that will be necessary," Xavier said, interrupting whatever reply Scott had been planning to make.

For a moment Scott seemed prepared to ignore the Professor and say something but then he gave in. The silence from the enforced truce drifted over the table as everyone tried to ignore it or find a way to change the subject.

"So, Ororo, Jaime," the professor said jovially, trying again to move on, "we haven't heard anything about your first day back at school."

Their joint I don't want to talk about it left the table stunned yet again. No one tried to revive the mood after that and the subdued silence continued on into the evening.

---

Bobby's intense hunger pangs from skipping breakfast overrode all of his other senses, keeping him from fully appreciating how lushly appointed Emma Frost's office was. None of the hard plastic or peeling paint of Bayville High was visible. It was resplendent in polished oak which filled the room with a deep, rich aroma that an older, more worldly Bobby would say was the smell of money.

The office door opened and Frost swept in carrying a bundle of papers with her. "Mr. Drake, you had an eventful first day I heard."

"Yes, ma'am. I mean no, I didn't think I had, but then that girl …"

"Negasonic, yes; based on our analysis of your joint backgrounds and power sets she is the ideal tutor for you. I think you'll find yourself lucky to have her."

On what planet?would have been Bobby's response back at the Mansion, but if he was too slow to keep up with the give and take in his classes he had still figured out what he could and couldn't say at the Academy. Instead he focused on why he was being given tutoring at all. That got him Frost's full attention.

"Because whether you know it or not you're in over your head, Mr. Drake. That is very much by design. Do you know where you are right now?" Bobby managed a stammering partial answer about being in a place of learning but he was quickly interrupted. "No. You're in Danvers."

While he tried to work out what that meant, Frost pointed idly to one wall with her pen. "But three hundred years ago, this was Old Salem. Not five miles from here is the spot where Sarah Good was hung. Most tend to think of that time as an historical oddity but it's actually just one example among many of humanity's need to purge itself of outliers. Not that I blame them; it's perfectly rational pack behavior, if you think about it."

Frost had stood from her desk and walked to the window overlooking the Academy's vast acreage and the Berkshire's beyond, blocking the grounds from idle visitors. The morning sun touching the top of them turned pink at the contact, coating the view in a beautiful morning light. And yet, listening to Frost at that moment, Bobby thought there was something cold and unearthly to it.

"But rational or not, we can't ignore the fact that we're on the receiving end of it. The march of progress has done nothing but add a veneer of order: congressional hearings and grand juries. I think I prefer the old days when humans were honest about the brutality such actions require. You would at least know what sort of people you were dealing with, none of the mincing and deceit that goes on now. Back then they used to push prostitutes and homeless women into lakes, fill their pockets with rocks and declare that if they survived the experience it was proof they were not witches. It was a practice which gave us the old adage sink or swim."

She turned her back on the view. Thinking on it months later Bobby would realize what a perfectly rehearsed bit of stagecraft it was, but in the moment he was stunned into speechlessness.

"The witch-hunts are coming back; you've already seen that first hand. Those of us who figure out how to swim even holding our own anchors are the ones who will survive them."

She'd made her way back to her desk and had started in on her papers again in exactly the same way Professor Xavier did when it was clear he was done speaking to you.

"What about the ones who drown?" Bobby asked. He knew before he even asked it that it was a mistake, that he should have just left, but he couldn't help himself.

"What about them?"

Of all the answers he had anticipated to his question that had not been one of them.

"I don't know how Xavier ran things, but I'm not here to coddle you. I'm here to make you use a hundred percent of your potential. Make no mistake, there are far fewer of us than of humanity. Operating at the peak of our abilities is the only way we'll survive in their world. I want you to survive, which means I want you to be great. Is that what you want?"

"Yes," Bobby said after several moments thought. "Do you think … Xi'an could tutor me instead?"

Frost's pen stopped and hovered for a moment. "You've spoken to her about it?"

"No, ma'am. I mean we met briefly at the Mansion and I thought I'd like to get to know her and …"

"This is a school, not a dating program. Ms. Manh would not be a good fit for you. On any level."

Her pen took up its work again and, understanding from long experience that he was dismissed, Bobby left to find his unlikely tutor.

---

The study hall was quiet as a grave.

Even as the thought occurred to him Bobby knew that a) it was a cliché and b) having never been buried alive he didn't really know how quiet a grave actually was. But he was pretty sure he could guess and he was pretty sure the study hall would give it a run for its money.

It was partly because the study hall was so cavernous. Study Hall wasn't really a good descriptor for it – it was more like the older brother of the reading room at the New York Metropolitan Library. With just a handful of individuals using it (he assumed also remedial) the funeral feel was enhanced.

At least my tutor fits in, he thought.

The red blazer had come off and was laid across the back of Negasonic's chair turning her into a pillar of black and white like she'd just stepped out of an old movie. An imposing stack of books sat on the table in front of her.

"Staring at me isn't going to make this go any faster," she said without looking at him. He asked her what would, strongly hoping she was hinting at a bribe. "Doing what I tell you."

Bobby swore. He received a cocked eyebrow in response.

"Since I don't know how much you don't know we're going to start with everything. We'll start with a syntopticon combining the major elements of mutant life; if you can handle that then I'll throw more work at you."

Bobby did not think that sounded like a solid inducement to succeed.

"You are either a punishment for failures of my past or a reward for my tutoring skills; either way success is the only choice for either of us."

"Which one is it?"

"I'm assuming you can hold more than one thought at a time."

"That's a bold assumption," Bobby said.

She pointed to various books in the stack: "genetics, mathematics, rhetoric, political science—"

Bobby interrupted the discursion to ask why they needed to get into so many different and advanced subjects and was told (for the 53rd time by his count) because Ms. Frost said so.

"That's the answer to every question, isn't it?"

"Yes," Negasonic said and pushed the stack towards Bobby. "Just get started on these and I'll be back with the rest."

Then she was gone.

He hoped she was joking but from his admittedly brief interaction with her he was pretty sure she wasn't. The thought that this was not all of it was enough to make Bobby consider giving up and returning to Bayville. Instead he grabbed the first book off the top, The Selfish Gene, and started digging into it. He had to read the initial pages several times over before they started to sink in but he did feel like he was making progress.

He was engrossed enough in it that he did not notice Xi'an approaching his desk until she slammed a hand down onto the middle of the book.

"What did you do!?" the enraged Vietnamese girl shouted down at him.

Bobby was starting to investigate new ways of saying 'I don't know.' He'd used the phrase so consistently since arriving at the Massachusetts Academy it was starting to lose all meaning.

"Frost called me into her office today. She said you'd been talking about me. She threatened to 'remove me from the program!'"

Bobby thought he could feel static electricity in the air, like it would ignite any moment. He suddenly remembered the Professor's admonition to try and find out what a known mutant could do before provoking them. He could think of no way to bring the question up in that moment which wouldn't make the situation worse.

"I don't even know you," he finally managed. Even he wasn't impressed with himself.

"That's right, you don't know me." She punctuated each word by poking Bobby in the chest. ""If you cause me any more trouble I'm going to turn you inside out," Xi'an said.

"Can you really do that?' Bobby was less concerned with his safety than acutely interested.

"There a problem here, Manh?" Negasonic had returned from her errand.

"No, no problem." Xi'an didn't even spare the other girl a glance. "Just tell your boy to stay away from me." She leaned in close to make sure Bobby understood her words were for him. "Or I will skin him alive."

"You can't yell at my remedial while I have him," Negasonic said. "If you want to wait until I'm done or find him after class go ahead, but right now he's mine."

"Hey!" Bobby wasn't sure what about that offended him, but something had.

"Just tell him to keep my name out of his mouth."

"There's nothing about you I want to put in my mouth!" Both girls looked at him with arched eyebrows. "Forget I said that, I'm not here, you can go back to yelling at each other."

They did, with gusto. Xi'an continued to berate Bobby as a loser and an anchor who would drag down everyone around him with Negasonic not so much defending him as insisting that she had nothing to do with whatever Bobby had done and it was none of her business. Bobby felt he should defend himself so that at least one person was doing it, but he also suspected it would do more harm than good and decided on standing on the side like the line judge at a tennis match. He began keeping score to himself and was nearly ready to award game, set and match to Xi'an but found as he listened neither her nor Negasonic's words matched their tone or body language. There was an undercurrent of something desperate in their conversation. Bobby knew himself well enough, and was just honest enough, to know he wasn't going to catch all the unspoken nuances between two relatively recent acquaintances, but he couldn't escape the feeling that something deep and dreadful was underlying the two girls' refusal to back down and it was more than just mutual dislike for one another.

"I'm really not that bad once you get to know me," Bobby said.

"You're not going to be here long enough for it to matter," Xi'an replied. Bobby's bruised ego must have registered on his face. "No snappy comeback?"

"Give me a second," Bobby said.

Negasonic took a deep breath and pause before picking back up. "Look. Regardless of what happens to him or not" – she nodded at Bobby but kept talking so that he couldn't interject – "I've got an assignment and you know that I have to do it. This one time only why don't we just forget about who did what to whom?"

"Do I look like someone who does that for people?" Xi'an asked.

Bobby realized with triumph he had the perfect come back for that. And then the front door exploded.

---

Second period had gone well. The entire day had gone well. Farouk was somehow in every one of Jamie's classes, following him down the hall like a lost puppy, asking where they were going next. Jamie had tried to figure out where Farouk was supposed to be but the boy insisted he was supposed to be with Jamie. Certainly none of Jamie's teachers had seemed to mind (or even notice) the extra student in their class and Jamie had decided to go with it. Having someone he knew and could talk to was much better than not. They got through their assignments quickly (wouldn't Ms. Ororo be amazed at that) and plotted larger jokes they could pull off throughout the day. Students were still trying to pick up the quarter they had glued to the floor in front of the vending machines when they went outside for afternoon pick-up.

Standing there Jamie realized he and his new friend were going to have to separate at that point, he was most certainly not going to be inviting anyone over to the Institute on his own. He turned to ask Farouk his phone number and found the boy was simply gone. No word, no warning, no sound.

It was the first time he had been alone all day. He wanted Farouk to hurry up and return, wanted the gnawing feeling of lacking belonging, of lacking a place, a proper definition, to be buried again. But even as he strolled around the blacktop and counted the seconds, other thoughts were busy coming to him. The alien-ness of Farouk's responses to some questions, the lack of any response at all to others, the way he seemed to get anyone to do what he wanted just by asking. Except he didn't ask; even when he phrased a request as a request it came out sounding like a command. Jamie kept telling the part of his mind asking those questions that he didn't care, that it didn't matter, that he had a friend and that was all he cared about, but the questions kept asserting themselves.

He was interrupted by a voice asking "where you going, Madrox?"

From somewhere (a spooky voice in his head intoned 'the bowels of hellllll') Franklin Ford III had materialized in front of him.

"Nowhere" he said and attempted to walk around the other boy but a hand stopped him and forced him to look up and make eye contact, even though he knew he shouldn't.

"Then why are you in such a hurry?" the boy asked.

"Leave me alone, Frankie," Madrox said.

"Leave me alone Frankie," the other replied in what Jamie felt was a poor imitation of his voice.

"I don't sound like that," Jamie said. "I sound like this: leave me alone Frankie. See? It's totally different."

Normally a confrontation with Frankie was something Jamie studiously avoided; if forced he would apply all of his focus to getting away from the boy before anything escalated. This time he barely noticed the other boy was talking to him, still obsessed with the notion of where his friend had disappeared off to.

"What if I said something else? What if I said 'mutie' or 'f-"

"Don't say that?!" The words came out unbidden. Strong feelings were surging through Jamie; he wasn't sure what he was saying and struggled with control.

"Why, are you going to get maaaddd, Madrox?!" Frankie said.

"No."

Frankie pushed Jamie to the ground. It was swift and sudden and Jamie felt a surge deep inside as his dupes tried to appear. He closed his eyes and held it, remembering his promise to Ms. Ororo, keeping the other in. It made his stomach hurt and his head spin; he felt nauseous. Frankie grabbed Jamie's collar and lifted him up with both hands like a cliché of a school bully.

"Get mad," Frankie said again. "Get mad. Come on, get ma-"

"What are you doing?" Farouk was there like he'd materialized from thin air. Like he'd always been there, and no one had noticed until he spoke.

"Who are you?" Frankie asked, but Farouk said nothing. "I'm making Madrox mad. I want to see what it looks like."

"Why don't you find something else to do?" Farouk said.

Frankie looked at Farouk like he was going to disagree; his mouth tightened and twisted, trying to get words out and failing. Farouk did nothing, simply stared.

"Fine," Frankie finally managed to get out, and let go of Jamie who plummeted to the ground. Still sick from his first fall he wasn't ready for another impact. Frankie's attention was firmly on Farouk and he never noticed the identical Jamie suddenly appear on the ground. Farouk's eyes widened but he said nothing; Jamie quickly absorbed the dupe back into himself. He stood up and dusted himself off as Frankie stomped off in a huff, making a supreme example of being completely normal.

"What happened?" Farouk asked.

"Nothing."

He did not like saying that but a voice which sounded exactly like Professor Xavier reminding him not to

"What did you do to him?" Jamie asked. Farouk didn't know what he meant. "He was going to pound me then you told him to leave and he left. What did you do to him?"

"Nothing. I just thought … he should leave."

Jamie was certain that was a lie. His stomach plummeted at the idea that his new friend would do that; it cast a shadow on the space between them. It didn't occur to him that they'd only known each other for a few days or to wonder why Farouk would feel the need to lie; only the pain of the moment was real. He wanted to ask 'why' but knew he wouldn't get an answer. Farouk never answered any question and that was also bothering him more and more. He decided to try a different route.

"Did you want him to stay? Did you want to fight him?"

Jamie wasn't sure how to answer that question. He'd been at the Xavier School long enough to have witnessed some real fights first hand and to know that they weren't cool and weren't fun and that he wanted no part of them. He was also pretty sure he could take Frankie, or most of the kids at the school, if push ever came to shove (and especially if push actually did come to shove).

"You didn't have to, I can take care of myself," Jamie said.

"I thought we were friends."

"We are." The import of that sunk in and Jamie reveled in it briefly. "We are friends."

Farouk simply nodded as if this were a law of nature which could not be denied, merely observed. He didn't say anything more and Jamie simply basked in the discovery of something he hadn't realized he'd been going without. After a moment he stumbled on to his original train of thought from before Frankie had accosted him and decided to find out how to stay in touch with Farouk after he left shortly.

"Where do you live?" Jamie asked, or tried to, but Farouk was already talking himself before Jamie had gotten the sentence out.

"It's funny you never talk about yourself," he said, not seeming at all aware of the irony of the statement. Jamie was confused and said so.

"You just never mentioned anything about your family or where you live or anything. It's weird."

Jamie tried to figure out how to explain that, decided being direct was the best option. "I'm not really allowed to."

"Why's that?" Farouk asked.

The Professor Xavier voice returned to admonish Jamie to never show off his powers in front of other people. Somewhere in the process it morphed into his father's voice, or at least what he remembered of it before he'd left. He used to say many of the same things the professor did. But didn't everyone know who they were and what they could do now?

"I'm going to show you something," Jamie said at last," but you've got to promise never to tell anyone."

"Yeah, yeah, of course!"

Jamie led Farouk away from the main entrance of the school to a tree-laden corner where no one was standing or paying attention. Everyone was busy looking for their ride, their ticket to freedom away from the prison of school and out into the world of not-school.

Jamie looked around; no one was paying attention to them. He raised one foot, cautiously, expectantly – Farouk was staring, wide-eyed already – and then brought it crashing to the ground. A dupe immediately sprang up next to him.

Jamie and his dupe looked at Farouk for any hint of reaction. Jamie had done this once before, before being sent to Xavier's, with his friend Dylan from elementary school. Dylan had screamed and screamed and run away and never returned.

Farouk did not scream. He did not run. He did not exclaim or gape or in any way suggest fear. But he didn't smile either, or laugh or in any way suggest happiness. He didn't do anything, just stood and stared at Jamie's dupe. If Jamie didn't know any better he might think Farouk wasn't real, was just a well-designed mannequin who happened to be standing in front of Jamie.

It was not the reaction Jamie had been expecting. He wasn't sure how to respond but was terrified of doing anything to encourage a negative reaction so he said nothing. Just waited. The silence went on and on.

"How did you do that?" Farouk finally said.

Jamie opened his mouth to explain, closed it, tried again, and closed it again.

"I don't know, I just do," Jamie and his dupe said together. That had never happened before, Jamie realized; the dupes did what he told them to do but didn't go off and talk to other people even him. It was strange but the experience of mutant powers was still relatively new enough that he didn't realize how strange and instead was more focused on Farouk's reaction. He asked everyone at the school could do that.

"No, only some of us. And not that, we each do something different …"

Jamie didn't even realize he'd crossed Professor Xavier's warning line, it was just so easy and natural talking to Farouk. He was starting to explain about the mansion and how the X-Men lived and practiced controlling their powers together when he was interrupted by a particularly loud and long car horn. Jamie knew it well.

Jamie and Farouk both looked in the direction of the horn honk. The X-Van was sitting in the roundabout in front of the school. Miss Ororo was just visible through the front window of the van, looking at him pointedly. She raised both hands to the sky in a questioning gesture. Jamie realized she must have been sitting there waiting for him for quite a while. He'd not even thought about school-escape while talking to Farouk.

"What's that?"

"That means it's time to go," Jamie said. A moment later the import of that sunk in. "I have to go!"

Jamie grabbed his dupe and absorbed it, then ran off for the van. "I'll see you tomorrow!"

---

It was a testament to how well the day had gone that Jamie wasn't even worried about keeping Miss Ororo waiting. In fact he wasn't even thinking about her or her reaction as he approached her. Ororo leaned out of the driver's side door as Jamie rushed up to it.

"Didn't you see me here waiting for you?" she asked. "We're going to be late for your Danger Room session."

"Yes, ma'am," Jamie replied absently, tossing his bag on the floor and pulling the van door shut behind him. Ororo was busy placing the bag under chair and wasn't paying attention as Jamie leaned out the window and waved at Farouk. "Bye!"

Farouk waved back, but slowly and without vigor; his face was a mask, the smiles of the afternoon were gone. A wave of students crossed in front of him as more and more cars arrived for pick-up.

Putting the car into gear Ororo looked out the passenger window, trying to get a look at what or who she thought Jamie had been waving at, but there was no one there. Just a wall of children. With a shrug she accelerated, the school shrinking in the rear view mirror.

---

Coming to, the first thing Bobby was aware of was a keen ringing in his ears. As the world came back into focus he saw the heavy study table was resting on top of an unmoving Negasonic. Shaking the cobwebs from his head (which turned out to be a really bad idea as it induced a heavy pounding and a wave of nausea) he looked around the study hall, trying to get some idea what had happened. Furniture was turned over everywhere and papers were fluttering through the air like giant snowflakes. Academy students were scattered about the room, some clutching heads, some holding cuts, some unmoving on the floor.

One girl was not lying on the ground. One girl was standing in the middle of the chaos, not at all afraid. She was awash in purple, from her skin-tight leather to matching hair color and a single purple lightning bolt etched over her left eye. From his current distance Bobby couldn't tell if it was makeup or a tattoo. He was not anxious to get close enough to make sure.

Instead he pulled at the table sitting on top of Negasonic, trying to get her out of the line of fire. When nothing changed he gave up on that and put two fingers to her throat, searching for a pulse. For a heart-stopping moment he couldn't find it. Was she dead? He'd never seen anyone die in front of him before, not even during all the battles with the Brotherhood and Apocalypse. Bobby's stomach swooped and dived and he thought for a moment he'd be sick, but then he felt the steady beat of the girl's heart and she moaned slightly.

Bobby poked his head up to peek over the top of the table to find the purple girl. The elation of discovering Negasonic alive turned to dread when he realized he had no idea where the other girl had disappeared to. Never lose track of an enemy in a fight, make them lose track of you. Bobby realized he was imitating Logan's voice in his head. It wasn't half bad if he said so himself.

Several students dropped down behind the table. All of the surly looks and scowls so many of them seemed to have permanently attached to their faces were gone. They all just looked like scared children, trying to make sense of rules they didn't understand.

"Where are the teachers?" one of them asked. Bobby had no idea what his name was. "Can't they hear this?"

"We need to get out," Bobby replied. "Where's the closest exit?"

The boy pointed at the single double doors at the far end of the hall, on the other side of the purple girl and the shrinking number of older students she was busy beating up. It may as well have been on the other side of the planet.

"Not one at a time, we need to attack as a group!" Bobby yelled.

A sudden cry from somewhere out of sight underscored Bobby's warning. Bobby ducked back down with the other cowering students.

"What should we do?" one of the younger students asked.

"I'm working on it," he hedged.

If he was being honest with himself he had to admit he was slightly distracted by her outfit which was selectively missing large portions along her sides, legs and back. He actually wondered how it was staying up; the handful of straps along the side didn't seem to be up to the task. He suspected glue of some sort. Bobby felt a presence squat down next to him. It was Xi'an.

"We need to get help," he said. "We can't protect the unconscious students and stop the attack."

"Help is coming," Xi'an said.

The doors to the library opened and several students Bobby recognized from the visit to the Xavier Institute poured in, spreading out around the hall. Bobby asked Xi'an if she could see the future.

"No," she said. "That's not my power."

Xi'an strode out from behind the table, aiming for the purple girl like a missile. Bobby reached out for her, trying to grab her and pull her back behind cover but he was too late. He wanted to tell her to get down, to keep from attracting attention but realized yelling that would be extremely counter-productive. Fortunately for Xi'an, the purple girl hadn't noticed her yet as the older students who had arrived were trying to jump her en masse.

The purple-haired Kara (Bobby recognized her from the aborted field trip to Boston College) had planted herself in front of the stranger like a strange reflection of her (Bobby wondered it was about purple before forcing himself to focus on the problem at hand).

"Purple is my color!" Kara yelled, charging the stranger. "You feel very badly about th – ooff!"

Her quip was cut off as the new purple girl spun and kicked her in the stomach faster than Bobby had ever seen anyone but Logan manage. Kara crumpled on the spot, clutching her mid-section, only to be replaced by a black haired youth with rocket engines on his hips. None of the students seemed particularly worried about how quickly their friends were falling. He raced past the stranger followed by two of the girls from Bobby's English class, Jennifer and Marie. They circled the purple girl warily, then pounced working together as a clearly well-trained group.

Marie held up a pair of cards and a pair of figures – a grim reaper complete with giant scythe and a grim woman with a nosed rope – jumped out and charged the girl. At the same time Jennifer grew a pair glowing discs on each hand and advanced on the girl on her own.

The purple didn't even slow down as the reaper swung its scythe. Growing a purple blade from one hand she parried the blade and decapitated the reaper. Marie gasped, her eyes growing large, as the thin man fell and vanished; Jennifer leapt past her, throwing both disks at the girl. She let her forward momentum carry her forward in a jumping spin over the disks which Bobby realized were heading right for him. He didn't know what they did and didn't want to find out. He dropped to the ground, covering his head as the disks flew overhead with scream he could hear in his mind only.

When Bobby looked back up the queen with the rope had vanished and the purple girl was backhanding Marie with a full body spin. The spin thrust the purple girl directly at Jennifer's outstretched hand and the glowing disk she had created.

The purple girl ducked under the swipe and sticking one leg out tripped Jennifer. She stumbled forward and planted both of her glowing discs onto the back of the passing flyboy. His engines suddenly started to cough and he went careening into the wall of the hall with a thump that made Bobby wince.

"Haroum! I'm so sorr—" Jennifer called out before being cut short as the purple girl struck the back of her neck with the flat of her hand.

The purple girl lifted a foot high, prepared to bring it down on Jennifer's skull. Someone cried out No! and Bobby realized it was himself.

Then the purple girl fell to one knee, putting her hands to her temples and crying out in pain.

Xi'an stood in the middle of the room, holding her own hand out towards the purple girl. Bobby wanted to tell her to run and hide but he was too curious about what was going on. The astounding physical display the strange girl had been putting on had been reduced to the world's most intense staring contest. Whatever it was Xi'an was doing, the purple girl had stopped fighting and as far as Bobby could tell was barely staying on her feet. Xi'an glared the purple girl down to her knees and the purple girl glared back.

"I shouldn't have come here," Xi'an said.

Bobby wasn't sure but Xi'an's voice seemed to come from both herself and the purple girl on the floor.

"Why did I come here?" Xi'an asked. "What do I want?"

"I want to be free," the purple girl said, and Xi'an said it also, Bobby was sure of it this time.

"The greatest freedom is in surrender." Xi'an's eyes were closed and so were the purple girl's; she'd fallen to both knees, hands trailing on the ground, like a suppliant. All of the terror had fled the room. Bobby took a step forward, curiosity impelling him despite the voice telling him he was being an idiot. Surrender, Xi'an's voice continued to the girl at her feet, crooning like a lover. Surrender. Bobby wondered if he was falling under spell as well. That awoke a strangled, desperate terror in the pit of his stomach, a memory of being trapped in the cold dark, unable to control his own limbs, screaming to be set free. He'd pushed those feelings aside for weeks after arriving at the Academy; eventually they'd even left his dreams. Now they returned like a wave washing over him, threatening to pull him out to sea forever. He was lost inside himself. He retreated so deep inside that he stopped paying attention to the world in front of him for a moment.

"I surrender," Xi'an said, but the echo from the purple girl was not there. Halfway through the word surrender the last syllable had transformed into a deformed Noooo!

Xi'an's eyes snapped open. So did the purple girl's and they were rimmed by a white glow; her face had taken on a jagged, furious countenance.

"Out! Get out, get out!" the purple girl yelled.

Xi'an collapsed to her knees, hands over her eyes and crying out in pain. The purple girl advanced on her, a long purple blade (what was it with all the purple, anyway? Bobby wondered) emerging from her clenched fist, shimmering in the darkness.

"No more weapons for Frost!" she cried, raising the blade high above her head. It came down on one of Bobby's ice sleds, shattering it. He had already gone, rising towards the high ceiling of the study hall using momentum and the low friction of the ice to carry him and Xi'an to safety.

That had been the plan at any rate.

As he reached the apex of his climb and was preparing to descend his slide suddenly gave way, collapsing beneath him. Bobby and Xi'an went into freefall, the floor rapidly rising towards them. He could see the purple girl rolling between the pillars of his ice slide, slicing through them with single, efficient blows, the ice falling behind her to land among the other students who scrambled out of the way.

Bobby stretched out a hand, conjuring a new slide to catch the falling Xi'an with, depositing her safely on the floor. It left him completely unprotected as he landed on the ground hard enough to drive all the air from his lungs. He was still recovering from that when sharp kick in the ribs informed him where the purple girl was. The kick was strong enough to knock him onto his back. He was still fighting to get his breath back – deep breaths in, one at a time – when her face appeared above him, her hands reaching for his collar. She was amazingly strong; she picked him up by one hand.

Bobby made a capital-T with his hands. "Time … time out …"

The girl pushed him against the wall and tightened her grip on his throat, cutting off his air. Up close she was even prettier than he'd first thought.

"Did you know even your eyes are purple?"

He stopped talking when the purple blade was leveled at his throat. It didn't give off any heat but Bobby pulled back from it as much as he could anyway; he didn't know what it was but he was certain he didn't want to be stabbed by it.

"No more weapons for Frost," the girl said.

Bobby was struggling to simultaneously correct her and ask her what she meant when a nearby chair suddenly exploded. The concussive force knocked the purple girl and Bobby away from each other, which was good for his air supply but bad for his headache. He saw Negasonic, still half prone by the overturned table, her eyes glowing red. The purple girl lifted herself up and ran as another chair exploded and then a lamp and then a table, a trail of destruction following her.

Bobby ran to Negasonic's side.

"Help me get this off her!" he yelled at the students still cowering there.

"Hurry!" Negasonic interrupted with a pointed finger at the attacker. A thin strip of blood was flowing from her nose and the explosions had notably stopped.

With a heave Bobby and the others finally lifted the table and a younger boy and girl Bobby didn't recognize yanked her out from under it. She grit her teeth but it was not enough to keep a loud grunt from coming out as they pulled her. Bobby leaned over her.

"Can you get everyone out while I distract her?" He received a glare and grunt in response and looked at the next oldest student. "Can you get everyone out while I distract her?"

He didn't wait for a response, creating a new slide a taking off for the ceiling before swooping down towards the purple girl. She saw him coming but wasn't quite fast enough to get of the way; his slide glanced into her side but that was enough to knock her off her feet. Bobby tried to freezer her in place but she was already rolling to her feet, leaving his icicles behind her. Bobby climbed again for another dive when he felt the slide to start wobble. Not again!

The purple girl cut was running through the pillars of the slide, cutting through them without any notable effort. Bobby managed to slow his own decent this time, creating another slide which brought safely to the floor and right at the purple girl's feet like he'd been aiming for them. He would later tell people he had been.

"I'd have thought Frost would have scared up some better soldiers by now," she said down to him where he was lying on the floor.

"Yeah, me too," Bobby replied, rolling away.

"I mean the slides are ridiculous—" Bobby started another slide but she chopped that one down as well "—and so fragile."

"Actually the real problem is they get too heavy," Bobby said. He dropped down on one knee and started building an ice sphere around himself as the purple girl became distracted by a cracking echoing above them. The lattice work of ice slides crisscrossing the ceiling broke apart and began to fall. The purple girl saw it coming down but only had enough time to let out one anguished scream.

---

Jamie had hummed happily in the back of the X-Van all the way to the institute. He was the picture of a changed person from just 24 hours earlier. The eagerness for school had not just returned but if anything was greater than it had been on the first day of school. Prof. Xavier was a strong anti-drug proponent for children and had definitively cleared Jamie of any attention deficit or bi-polar disorders, so the bounce back was probably just normal youthfulness. On the other hand he'd also cleared Bobby …

Ororo herself was battling mixed emotions. On the one hand she had not been approached by anyone from school administration to speak about Jamie, which was an unusual feeling. For all the qualities of his heart, and she didn't doubt that organ in the least, his judgment suffered even compared to the other students at the Mansion, to the point that there had been a long and slightly loud conversation with the Logan and Hank as to who would have to deal with Jamie's school on a daily basis. The fact that she wasn't repeating the theater of the first day gave her hope that the growth Prof. Xavier always talked about was not merely wishful thinking.

On the other hand, Jamie was nearly 30 minutes late in coming out for pickup, which was much more typical. She couldn't decide which was more indicative. She had finally decided just to ask him what he had been doing.

"I was talking to Farouk," Jamie replied. "He was the boy I was waiting with when you came and picked me up."

"That's odd, I didn't see anyone."

Jamie had merely shrugged and turned back to humming and talking to himself and once in a while planning out his activities for the next day. Ororo's misgivings festered all the way back to the mansion in large part because she couldn't figure out why she had them. It wasn't unusual for a boy Jamie's age to be volatile in their behavior, changing type from day to day as they searched blindly in the dark for their own natures. She remembered her own pursuits in Africa and wondered how much the girl she was then would recognize in the woman she was now.

And it was unquestionably a good thing that he had found someone to spend time with beyond his normal circle. Widening of his horizons now would make his transition into adulthood easier in the long term, especially as the nature of mutants and mutantkind became more and more part of the public awareness. Ororo realized she talked to herself the same way she lectured her classes and began to understand why the students commented about the stick she carried around everywhere.

She also realized she was avoiding thinking about what was bothering her. Perhaps it was the way Farouk had suddenly appeared in Jamie's life, without warning and just when he was needed? Was she being needlessly paranoid? No such thing, Logan's voice scolded her. It suddenly occurred to her that there may be no Farouk; in his loneliness Jamie may have created what he was lacking, the way he invented stories for himself or talked to himself in the back seat. He wouldn't be the first to do that, either.

She blinked and saw they were already passing through the Institute gates, the drive back gone in a haze of worry and reflex driving and she had not been paying attention most of the way. After the attack on Kitty it was made understood among the teachers that they should be prepared for the same to happen again and to keep their charges in sight at all times. Logan had taken spending an excessive amount of time around the high school during the day and, Ororo suspected, following the some of the older children when they went out at night. He had argued strenuously for a curfew but the Professor would not hear of it.

She parked the X-van in the garage and the automatic door lowered itself, encasing them off from the world again, the chill from the enclosure battling against the warmth of safety from unknown enemies. As she followed Jamie inside, Ororo considered to herself whether it was worth it to bring up his imaginary friend to the Professor. Possible imaginary? Oh, Ororo, what are you doing to yourself?

She was jolted out of her thoughts by a crash of lightning in the front yard. With a shake of her head she shooed the clouds away, vowing to sleep on her worries and perhaps have a better grasp on them in the morning. If nothing else, she had no reason to worry while Jamie was within the protection of the Institute.

---

Frost and several of the teachers had arrived as Bobby was getting himself out of the ice. They snapped a metal collar around the purple girl's neck, put her on a stretcher and wheeled her out.

Where are you taking her? he had tried to ask but Frost stepped neatly in front of him, deflecting him from the stretcher and its occupant.

"I'm told you performed very well today, kept your head and everyone else's," she said.

"Yes, ma'am, thank you ma'am, but why did she attack us?" The words came out in a rush, to keep from being interrupted again. "Who is she?"

"I want you to prepare a training plan for the rest of the students in your class. You'll be responsible for getting them up to your level."

"Really?" On some level Bobby knew he was being misdirected, his questions intentionally unanswered, but his surprise at the sudden change in attention overrode his basic suspicion for the moment.

He was not the only one.

"Are you kidding?" Xi'an exclaimed. She was sitting on one of the intact benches with a saline drip pumping into one arm via IV. She had tried to insist that she didn't anything but rest but had relented on Frost's arrival. She was doing better than most of the other students who had been in the hall; Negasonic was propped up on her stretcher wincing as a golden skinned, golden haired medic prodded her abdomen and assured himself nothing was broken. She had refused to leave until all of the other students had been taken care of; Bobby was starting to reconsider his initial expectations of them and the vibe they gave off.

"Is there anything about this situation you find funny?" Frost asked and Xi'an stopped talking, focusing her remaining attention on a spot on the floor. "Recognizing and taking advantage of accomplishment is a key to our program, you know that. Mr. Drake outperformed you and all of the other Hellions in a real-world action. Making you better was one of the reasons he was recruited."

"It was?" Negasonic said. Bobby echoed her.

"Healthy competition is good for your development which is why I encourage it but never forget who our real adversaries are."

"Humans," Xi'an and Negasonic parroted.

"Or that we are ultimately strongest together. Never be satisfied that you know enough," Frost said, sweeping the group of them with the same stare. "Any of you."

"Does that mean I'm done with remedial?" Bobby asked hopefully.

"No." Frost said, and then gave him several demerits for swearing. "I expect everyone who doesn't need to go to the infirmary to be back in class. Routine is the best antidote for terrorism."

To Bobby's amazement the students who'd only managed a few cuts and bruises started to troop out of the hall, presumably to their rooms or final classes. Bobby didn't know why it surprised him so; after a solid week of the Massachusetts Academy the only thing which would surprise anyone would be the questioning of Emma Frost's authority. Bobby tried to stop himself, but he didn't try very hard.

"Doctor Frost, ma'am, who was she?"

"I said return to class, Mr. Drake."

She did not wait to try again but hurried after the purple girl on her stretcher. Bobby couldn't stop wondering what was going to be done with her – there had been no sign of the police nor any talk of bringing in the authorities – and apart from the image of her stuck in a purple room on a purple bed covered in purple sheets he didn't like any thoughts he was coming up with on the subject. He realized someone was talking to him.

"Aren't you going back to class?" Negasonic asked. It was the first time she hadn't sounded condescending or dismissive to him. If anything she sounded scared, and that scared Bobby, too. Though she was still grimacing with sharp movements the medic had assured her she would be fine and she had stayed in the library with the other older students who didn't have a final class to go to. Bobby was starting to think anything short of amputation was seen as coddling by the Massachusetts Academy.

"Have you noticed how on edge everyone here is?" he asked, trying to head off their joint attack on him. "I don't know about you but that can't be healthy."

They seethed and then they stopped.

"It's always like that," Negasonic said. Xi'an didn't say anything but her silence spoke volumes. Bobby wondered why no one said anything to the Dr. Frost or the other teachers.

"You say something to her, now you're her favorite," Xi'an said.

"No thanks," Bobby said, and was answered by a snort from Xi'an. "Then why are you here?"

"Are you kidding?" Negasonic said, "I blow stuff up where ever I go. Not doing that is worth—"

Negasonic gestured vaguely around the destroyed room. Bobby thought about the world outside of them, the one filled with screaming people and giant robots and the gut wrenching anxiety each trip beyond the Institute's walls brought with it. He'd never had the guts to ask any of the other Xavier students if they felt the same but he thought he knew the answer even without hearing it out loud. It was part of that constant fear, and Doctor Frost's confident answer to it, which had made the Massachusetts Academy so appealing in the first place. That and the sudden malfunction of his powers.

And yet for all his misgivings, and for how behind he felt since arriving, he knew there was something lacking in what the Academy was actually delivering.

"It doesn't bother you that Doctor Frost lied to us?" he asked.

For the first time something very like doubt crossed Negasonic's face.

"You don't know that," Xi'an said.

"Oh yes I do. I'm a great liar and I know what it looks like when someone else does it."

"That's not a ringing endorsement," Negasonic said.

"Doesn't matter!" Bobby was on a roll and feeling much more confident than he deserved. "I've also seen the guys who won't tell you what they're doing or why … and those guys? What they want and what they tell you they want are never the same thing. They just want you to do what they tell you. How is being oppressed by mutants better than being oppressed by humans?"

"Obedience does not require understanding," Negasonic and Xi'an both parroted so completely and so immediately Bobby knew without knowing that they had been required to say it so many times it had become rote. Their ability to question had been taught out of them. Bobby knew they knew it too; brief expressions of shame passed over their faces.

"Tell that to the purple girl," Bobby said. "Oh wait, you can't; she got hauled away by 'ze Germans'. Aren't you curious what they did with her?"

"What's the point?" Xi'an wanted to know, but her skepticism didn't sound believable. Negasonic suggested it was wherever the other girls went. That answer apparently surprised Xi'an as much as it did Bobby.

"There have been others?" Bobby asked.

"One … that I know of. My first year."

Negasonic did not remember her name only that she had green skin and smelled like dandelions and could make plants dance and sing. She had resisted being pushed into the Hellion program and was eventually placed into remedial and then one day she had been taken out of their shared math class by a pair of teachers. Everyone was sure she'd been kicked out of the school, that's what happened when you didn't do well in remedial, but no one could remember seeing her leave the school either.

Negasonic had heard similar stories from other students but no one seemed to know the disappeared personally or had been around when they left. It was more like a scary story everyone knew.

"Like motivation," Xi'an told Bobby. "Do what Frost says, or else. No one knows what 'or else' means and no one wants to."

"Have you ever asked?" Bobby wondered.

"Of course not, because—" Xi'an started.

"Because everyone does what Frost wants," Negasonic replied.

A deep gloom settled over the three of them. After a moment Xi'an asked if Bobby was going to break that tradition. If he'd been paying attention he would have noticed the hopeful tone in her voice, but he was too lost in himself, in the buzz he in the back of his head whenever he looked at her.

"No, I'm going to do exactly what Doctor Frost asked," Bobby replied.

Xi'an rolled her eyes and left. Bobby couldn't blame her, it had sounded like a better reply in his head. He was surprised that Negasonic didn't join her, or that the look she was giving was devoid of contempt.

"What?" he finally had to ask.

"I hope you know what you're doing," was all she said before she too left, leaving Bobby alone in the destroyed hall.

For the first time since arriving at the Massachusetts Academy, Bobby knew exactly where he stood and exactly what he was going to do next. And he wasn't looking forward to it.

---

As excited as he had been for the first day of school, Jamie's reaction to having a friend of his own at said school was another order of magnitude all together. It was even worth the scolding he'd received from Miss Ororo and Professor Xavier; he found himself spending his free time planning what he and Farouk might do the next day. The actual reunion was a little underwhelming.

"Hey," Farouk said, looking up from his backpack for a moment to acknowledge Jamie, before putting his head back into it.

A sudden dread opened in Jamie's stomach, that he had made more out of the previous day's fun than his playmate had, that it was all going to disappear like smoke on a windy day. He searched for the best possible response that would protect his own fragile sense of self. He settled on his own 'hey' and finding his own seat, waiting for Farouk to indicate what they'd do next. He didn't notice at all how quickly he had fallen into following Farouk's lead; it just felt natural.

Farouk did not immediately indicate anything, even as Jamie sat and waited. He'd finished digging around in his backpack and now sat ramrod straight, making no noise except a bright 'Here!' during roll call. He was in every sense the model student. It was tremendously disappointing.

Jamie tried to copy him but his heart wasn't in it. He refused to give in just in case he was being tested and ended up affecting a partial slouch, head turned just enough to keep Farouk in his peripheral vision. He didn't notice immediately when Farouk stopped paying attention, he was so subtle about it. If pressed Jamie wouldn't have been able to say exactly what caught his attention as Farouk moved his hand from the backpack on his desk down to his side, only that he'd spent so long watching people that he sometimes noticed things about them without realizing it. As award winning as Farouk's performance was it was most definitely a performance; his eyes may have been straight ahead but his attention was down beneath his desk.

He tried to peak down between the desks but he couldn't get a good angle without getting up. His first instinct was to send a dupe to go to the other side and look so that he wouldn't get in trouble himself, but he quickly found the flaw that logic. He craned his head more, realized how obvious what he was doing would look and how easily it would alert Mr. Teacher, and pulled back. He wasted another few minutes working out another plan to find out what Farouk was doing without being forced into the potentially terrifying spot of asking him when he remembered one of Professor Xavier's frequent maxims about attacking problems head on. He hated that advice.

"What are you doing?" Jamie asked Farouk.

Farouk gestured down under the desk with his eyes, where his hand disappeared into the front pocket of his jeans. Jamie squinted, trying to figure out what he was supposed to be looking at. He was going to ask when Farouk, like he was guessing what Jamie was thinking, pulled his hand partly out to reveal a gleam of metal secreted in hand. Everyone at the institute knew Mr. Logan had a box full of hunting knives in his room and even though none of them were allowed to mess with them, all of them knew what they looked like.

He wanted to ask where Farouk got it, what he was going to do with it, how he had gotten it past the metal detectors at the front door. Instead he decided to play it cool. This lasted just over 20 seconds.

"Where did you get that?!" he asked. If he was honest it was more like he shouted it.

"Shh!" Farouk said, and the knife disappeared again.

"Where did you get that?" he whispered.

Farouk just raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Jamie caught on and decided not to say anything as well. If he had been able to step outside of himself he might have thought he was acting the way his dupes acted to him, repeating whatever he told them to do without insight or argument.

Farouk opened the blade slowly, to prevent any sound, and once it was engaged began carving a line on the arm of his desk. He quickly had an F branded there, a mark any student after would see and wonder at as Jamie had done to the signs he'd found in classrooms over the years. Who was the boy or girl sitting there striking their existence into the wall or seat? What had they been like? Why had they done it?

"Do you want to see it?" Farouk asked.

It felt like there was a line somewhere in front of him, but he couldn't see it. He wasn't sure what he wanted. Farouk handed the knife over. Jamie's brain was still formulating how he would say 'thank you, but no' when it realized his hands had already taken the blade. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it; it seemed like just putting it in his bag or his pocket would seem unsatisfactory somehow. Farouk was studiously not looking at him but Jamie was certain his eyes were on him nonetheless.

Unsure he turned again to copying Farouk. Opening the blade he started digging a J into the top of his desk. It was a new desk, not even an ink mark on it yet, and the scar from the first cut stood out like a black mark on a field of white.

"Make it smaller, harder for the teacher to see until he's looking," Farouk said. It occurred to Jamie to wonder why they were doing it at all. "I don't know, because we can. You never break anything at home?"

Jamie told him his parents would ground him forever if he had and Farouk clarified that he meant the institute.

"No, the professors would be sooo mad," he said. Farouk asked him what they would do if they caught him; he had to actually stop and think about that. "I guess it would depend on who caught you. They're all really different. Mr. Beast might give you a lecture about the history of vandalism or something. Mr. Logan would just glare at you. That's even worse."

"What do they do?" Farouk asked.

"Hmm?" Jamie was still digging into desk with the knife and wasn't really paying attention. Farouk repeated himself, asking if they all copied themselves like he did. Jamie, wanting to be helpful, tried to focus on what he was asking.

"Oh, all kinds of different things. Some of 'em shoot stuff and some of 'em are really strong …"

"Wooowwww." Farouk stretched out the word so long Jamie knew his awe was real and not feigned. He swelled with satisfaction and started casting about for any other tidbits he could share.

"Yeah, we have this really cool room downstairs where we can practice and get better at controlling our abilities so that we don't, you know, hurt people or break stuff."

The questions poured out of Farouk. Jamie talked mainly about what he knew, the people he spent the most time with and why – how Jubilee made him laugh and Rhane made him run and how annoying Bobby had been (the fact that he wasn't around made Farouk lose interest instantly) and how none of them treated him like the little kid in the group anymore compared with the older kids. The more he asked the more Jamie's desire to be helpful and communicative waned and the shorter and more perfunctory his answers became – what kind of tests did they go through ('a bunch'), how many kids were at the institute ('about 20'), did they ever break the Danger Room ('all the time'). The carving of the J into the desktop stopped being a transgression and became salvation; by focusing on it with painstaking precision he was able to stop answering Farouk without appearing rude. He hoped his new friend would take the hint.

"Do you think I could ever go see it?" Farouk asked.

Jamie had never heard the phrase 'beyond the pale' ever in his life and if he had he would need the etymology explained to him in some detail. But he knew what it meant even so, and knew at some level Farouk was asking something 'beyond the pale.'

The half-carved J on the desk top called out to him. Jamie folded the knife and handed it back to Farouk he quickly put it away. Mr. Teacher had called the class to order and was starting in on covalent bonds. Jamie dutifully took out his book and prepared himself for what he was supposed to be doing. None of the morning so far had gone quite how he had thought it would.

"We've got to focus on the lesson now," he said. He didn't miss the hurt look on Farouk's face and even mildly reveled in it even as he wished he could take it back.

"Sorry, it just sounds so much cooler than anything out here," Farouk said. Now Jamie really did wish he could take it back. "Are you really good at it? I bet you are."

Jamie held his silence as long as he could, realizing he was no longer tiptoeing up to the line he was not supposed to cross but actively jumping over it. The pressure of keeping the conversation going was too great. He was like a diver staying under water too long; he had to surface or pass out.

"Scott's the best, or at least he has the highest score. Well, tied for the highest score with Sam, but everyone's pretty sure that's just an accident. Mister – one of the teachers called it an 'unreproducible phenomenon.' No one ever knows what he's talking about."

"So cool," Farouk said, and Jamie swelled to three times his normal size. "What else do you do?"

It was a lot easier to break through his internal caution signs this time. "No, I mean we have specific tests we do, we use machines to measure our abilities somehow, we—"

He was getting ready to dive into the workings of the X-Jet when Farouk waved him off. Something in the back of Jamie's brain twanged but he ignored it.

"Not that stuff," Farouk said. "I mean when you're not in class. What else do you do?"

Jamie was unsure how to respond to that and said nothing. "We don't have much at home and there aren't any kids my age there so I have to live by osmosis," Farouk added, prodding Jamie out of his silence.

Though he'd definitely heard the word before Jamie still had to ask what osmosis meant. Farouk told him and, after some thought, Jamie told him about his collections, about his letters home, about the occasional replies and all without the least hint of self-consciousness or the normal reserve he had about sharing too much of himself. He didn't realize how much he needed the outlet until it was offered.

"Do the other kids do that, too? At your Institute?" Farouk asked.

It was the third time their conversation had drifted back to the other students at the institute and Jamie was starting to get annoyed.

"I dunno. I guess so." This clearly did not please Farouk and Jamie's annoyance ran headlong into his fear of losing his only friend. "I mean they all have their own things they're into. I don't spend a lot of time with them, except for Rhane – she can turn into a wolf" – this time he knew Farouk's question before his mouth had fully formed the words – "and Jubilee – she blows things up. Actually, most of them blow things up …"

"Is that why you don't hang around them? You don't want to get blown up?"

The idea had never occurred to Jamie but with a sudden burst of insight realized how many other people it must have. He brushed the idea aside, telling Farouk that he simply didn't spend time with the older kids because they had always been in higher grades, first in junior high and now in high school.

"What's that?" Farouk asked.

Jamie wasn't sure he'd heard him right and spent a few moments trying to puzzle out what Farouk was likely to have said. He was getting no help from Farouk himself, who just sat there with an open, questioning look on his face, waiting for an answer. Jamie gave up and decided to just answer what he thought Farouk had asked, deciding it wasn't worth wondering why he didn't know.

"It's, you know, the next grades after junior high that you have to go to."

"Right right right," Farouk said, taking this information in like he'd either never heard it before or had but had totally forgotten it. "And you can't go there until you're older."

"Yeah, I mean usually. I've heard some kids go there when they're really young, the really smart kids. I heard one of the professor's at the Institute finished high school when he was only 11!"

To Jamie it sounded a feat so improbable it was clearly made up, something on par with UFOs or the Loch Ness monster but even less likely. [Although to be fair Rhane's extremely in-depth theories about why the Loch Ness monster was real were extremely convincing]. To Farouk it was an avenue of thought which was not only worth pursuing but apparently so easy it could be taken as given before he'd even attempted it.

"I could advance out of these classes I bet. I mean, it's not like I don't know everything they're teaching us already."

"What about me?" Jamie hadn't meant to sound so plaintive but he needed to know so desperately he couldn't keep it in.

"You'd come with me, wouldn't you? Why would you want to stay here?" Farouk's face brightened as if the most tremendous idea had presented itself to him. "Aaaaannnnddd you'd be back with the other kids from your school, not all alone here. Like that cat girl you were telling me about."

"Rhane. She's a wolf." Jamie hadn't realized he had answered, or even that he had said anything at all. His mind had gone on ahead of him, running around Bayville High like the other kids, seeing the recognizable faces no longer connected to the anxiety of separation he kept pushing down each morning. He drifted further, watching the kids from junior high like Franklin Ford III recede into the background, amazed at how he was leaving them behind. Somewhere in there Farouk appeared, joining the other Xavier students, running with them through the fields of the X-Mansion and through its rooms and its secrets underneath. The anxiety returned at that thought, he wasn't sure why.

"Right, right, a wolf," Farouk was saying. "That's what I'm talking about; if I knew them better I could probably figure out a good way to explain the whole thing to them."

Jamie wondered if he wanted an introduction but Farouk said no, just "you know … information about stuff."

Jamie new he shouldn't ask 'what kind of stuff' but he did anyway. Where they came from, Farouk had said, where they wanted to go, what they liked, what they were afraid of. It seemed like Farouk put the most emphasis on that last one but Jamie brushed that off as just his imagination. It was all academic anyway; the flaw in Farouk's plans was readily apparent.

"I don't know those kinds of things," Jamie said.

Farouk would not be dissuaded. "You can find out. I know you can."

He sounded much more confident than Jamie felt, and Jamie said so.

"I don't know who's been telling you that but you shouldn't listen to them," Farouk said. "I used to listen to that sort of thing, keep myself from getting what I wanted, from even trying. If I could do what you could do … I bet the only thing stopping you is you."

Weighted against that it wasn't really a decision at all.

"Sure, sure, I'll do it," Jamie said.

---

Against his better nature, Bobby arrived more than half an hour early at the gymnasium that had been set aside for his combat class. Always afraid of sitting around and wasting his time he was instead perpetually late for everything.

He had not wasted any time this morning. He'd iced out an obstacle course in the large gymnasium he'd be given, spikes and columns and giant crushing weights which would have done the Danger Room proud if he did say so himself. He'd had a couple of chairs set up and an easel similar to the ones Scott used before introducing a new course for them. Beyond that he was out of options, the idea of running training sessions for other people like he was one of the teachers at the institute was as alien to him as an actual alien would have been, but it didn't matter. Most of it was set dressing for his prospective audience.

Xi'an entered the main door.

Bobby ignored her at first, continuing to ice up practice dummy's and set up charts on his easel (he really liked the easel, it was a great prop, even if everything he'd written on it was gibberish) and letting Xi'an fidget (she did not sit at a desk, which was a little disappointing) while she waited for anyone else to arrive. Eventually she asked why she was the only one there.

"I thought we'd start with one on one's, just so I can see what everyone can do," Bobby said.

He thought she might react to that, her face screwed up like she had the perfect comeback herself, but she didn't say anything; just nodded. Bobby had figured fear of Frost would override anything else but for a moment he wasn't sure.

"What did you have in mind?" was all she ended up asking. "Because if you wanted to try a fight…"

"Have you ever actually been in a fight?" Bobby asked.

"We've been trained for any—"

"That's what I thought," Bobby interrupted. "No, we're going to start with something simple."

He reached his hand out to the empty room and began shaping a collection of obstacles and slides. He'd come early enough of to push the air down and there was plenty of moisture in the air for him to work with but still it was more obstacles than he had ever attempted before and keeping the entire design in his head was complicated. If he lost focus the ice would just begin forming everywhere and stop paying attention to his commands; it was one thing to bring it out and another entirely to make it do what he wanted. As the tracks and designs became ever more complicated he put himself more and more into it, imagining the dips and spires growing out of his own body, moving them about like his own limbs. He could feel their curves, sense their weight, his weight, as they settled deeper into the floor. His sense of self gradually evaporated; there was nothing but the ice.

And then he was done.

"That's what you call simple?" Xi'an asked. She couldn't even mask the edge of awe in her voice. "What am I supposed to do with that?"

Bobby opened his eyes – he hadn't even realized he'd closed them – to check his handiwork. He knew what it would look like, what it should look like but still it came out better than he expected; a short maze gave way to climbing and falling ice slides and shortcuts of stalactites and stalagmites (no matter how many times Beast told him he never remembered which was which) which would come loose as one tried to put weight on them. All of it led to an ice wall which 'could' be gotten over – with difficulty along with quite a few booby traps (or as he always thought of them – Bobby traps).

"You're supposed to get through it – chop chop," Bobby said. Xi'an was not convinced and wondered loudly what it had to do with combat. "Wow, you really haven't been in a fight. The most important thing is the ground you fight on you – you want to pick it if you can but if you can't and win anyway you're in good shape."

Xi'an's eyes narrowed, still suspicious. "So the point is to get a laugh on me."

"Not the point, just a fun side effect. The point is to get to the other side."

He thought Xi'an might say something but instead she dove into the obstacle course.

For all of his concerns about how much of his power he didn't have full control of, and how much Frost's invitation had tempted him for just that reason, the reality was Bobby had spent the better part of his life learning about ice and he could make it do what he wanted it to in most situations. Most people assumed ice was naturally slippery and walking on it was tempting fate to be transformed into a cartoon character bumbling around with arms spinning trying desperately to maintain balance. The reality was he could make it as slick or sticky as he wanted. Case in point, the obstacle course – while the initial steps and turns were more like hard packed snow, capable of holding up an adults weight and providing plenty of grip, the back half became incrementally more slippery until attempting to scale one of his columns would have given a human spider difficulty much less your average high school student.

Xi'an was game, he had to give her that. Even when it became clear that she was not going to be able to get a grip on any part of the course she still struggled onward. Bobby wondered if it was fear of Frost or a desire not to be seen weak in front of himself that was driving her. As he pondered that he sent several giant ice balls after her; she successfully dodged the first batch but not the second. Or the third. There was much swearing. He tried to stop himself from enjoying it too much, he was after bigger fish today than just a good joke, but the impulse was weak. Besides, effort was character building.

Xi'an herself certainly seemed to think so, or else (more likely, Bobby thought) she had been through similar at the Academy and had already steeled herself for the inevitable. Or maybe she trusts you to be doing what you said you'd be doing, he said to himself. He started to worry that he may have gone too far (blasphemy, his brain shrieked) and he would have to intervene before she hurt herself. This is what you wanted, he reminded himself, to break her defenses down so she gives you honest answers. Professor Frost would have been proud. That thought was not pleasing.

Then the wall collapsed sending Xi'an tumbling to the padded floor of the gymnasium.

"This is a waste of time!" she yelled at him, but took his offered hand anyway as he helped her up. He used two, one on her bicep for more leverage. "This isn't what I do. My power set isn't externalized."

She tried to tug her arm away. "Your hands are really cold."

"Everyone says. What exactly is it that you do?" he said, still holding on.

"That's really cold." Xi'an's struggle increased but Bobby held the pressure steady, not letting go. "Bobby, that hurts!"

It was the first time she'd used his actual name but at the moment Bobby wasn't inclined to care.

"Believe me, it can get a lot colder," he said. "Your 'internalized' power set, it lets you take control of people, doesn't it? You're the one who made me … made me …"

Bobby had been mad plenty of times in his life, he did have siblings after all, but he had never been truly angry until that moment.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" Bobby had let go of Xi'an by that point but she made no move to leave.

"Why did you do that? Why would you do that?"

Xi'an's face took on the same aspect as she had the day before in the study hall: fear, compliance, paranoia.

"Because … because Frost told me to." Bobby asked why Frost had done that. "I don't know. I don't! But…"

Xi'an had started to unconsciously hunch and look around despite there quite clearly being no one around. She seemed more the hunted animal than a person; all of Bobby's anger melted away.

"… what Frost tells you to do … you do."

"Or what?"

"Or you end up where the purple girl went, I think," she said. Bobby asked where that was. "I told you in the library I don't know. I don't! It's not like she tells me anything. I'm just a student. We do—"

"What we're told, yeah, I've noticed. And then what?" Xi'an didn't know what he meant and said so. "At Xavier's we're supposed to be learning how to survive out in the world. To get along with other people if we can, to take care of ourselves if we can't. What's Frost teaching us?"

"The same thing," she said. Bobby asked her if she really believed that. "Have you been out in the world? Seen how they treat us? The only way to ensure peaceful co-existence is to force it and there will be resistance to that idea. At first."

"And what comes next?" Bobby asked. The question threw Xi'an for a loop. "If there's resistance at the start, what's on the other side of it? That's what the professor is really teaching us, I think; the unforeseen consequences of our actions before it's too late to do anything about it."

It's like I don't know myself, Bobby thought. He wondered if the professor actually tried to get him to leave the school as a way to break through to him but that didn't seem like his M.O. It was more like something Frost would do, except he suspected she would never be willing to let any of her students out of her sight for so long.

"Then what do you think she's doing?" Xi'an said. Bobby couldn't decide if she sounded like she wanted an answer or not but by now he couldn't stop himself from giving one.

"It seems like she's building an army."

Bobby wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry at the look on her face. He might never be sure.

"I can't be the first person to ever think that." He ticked points off on his fingers. "Enforcing discipline and obedience, breaking down sense of self in favor of the group—"

"You cannot be the same person who bombed out of class a week ago. Where are you getting this stuff?"

"All the books you guys have assigned, I did come here to learn, didn't I?" Xi'an almost laughed; Bobby knew she wouldn't admit to it but also knew it was true. "I'm amazed no one else has noticed before."

"Maybe they have," Xi'an said with a shrug and for the first time looked directly at Bobby. "You've got to understand most of us are coming from … from bad situations. Real bad. Yeah, it's weird here but it's also safe and it's full of people who want to keep you safe and only ask one thing in return. The longer you're here the more they ask but also the worse what you came from seems like and you'd do anything to not go back to it. But most of all, after a while…."

Her eyes became far off and glazed, looking past Bobby to something he couldn't know. Maybe the future, maybe the past. "After a while you just get used to it."

"That's the worst thing I've ever heard," Bobby said. She punched him in the shoulder but without malice. It still hurt. Bobby knew what the next logical question was but he didn't have a good answer for it so he decided to ignore it for the moment, hoping a solution would present itself. Xi'an didn't give him a chance.

"What do you think she wants her … her army for?" she asked.

"I don't know," Bobby admitted, "but I'm thinking we start by throwing some light on what Doctor Frost doesn't want us to see."

---

Jamie was hiding in a closet, peeking out the almost closed door. It had not been his initial plan.

Left to think through Farouk's request all afternoon (including through an entire Danger Room session which caused him to walk directly into a combat sphere) he had decided there couldn't really be anything to it. No friend of his would ask him to do something really bad.

He decided Sam and Roberto were the best potential topics as they couldn't stop talking about themselves to begin with. A couple of the girls fit the same bill but he knew from bitter experience how personal questions to them were usually handled. On top of which, they tended to speak all of their innermost thoughts all the time without buffer, which salved his conscious a bit. It just remained to figure out how to do it inconspicuously.

Jamie had been watching the two of them, all of the other students really, extremely closely over the last several years. Being the youngest he was frequently forced to follow along without necessarily being allowed to participate leaving him very little to do but observe. Jamie had gotten very good at watching people.

He watched them all through supper laughing about some ridiculous answer Sam had given in class that day that he had known was wrong at the time but didn't care. He watched them discuss a race Sam was planning on taking part in at some point in the near future (if he could get his bike fixed) and he watched them talk about all the extra work Roberto was doing in geology and how much his lab partners hated him. Jamie was fairly sure none of this would be particularly helpful for his and Farouk's (well, Farouk's) plan.

Then Ray sat between the two of them and started to quiz them on whether or not they had heard from Bobby, which prompted Sam and Roberto to ask him if it was really Bobby he was looking for. Jamie had no idea why Ray would be interested in anyone else at the Massachusetts Academy (should he mention to Farouk that such a place existed?) but sensed he was closing in on something good so he asked.

"Shut up, Jamie," the three said in unison.

Jamie had gotten so used to the reaction that he had stopped taking offense or even notice of it soon after arriving at Xavier's. He'd also gotten used to being ignored as often as he was told to go away and new from long experience that if he just sat still eventually the boys would begin their conversation again. Which they dutifully did.

"If you're so curious why don't you go over there?" Sam wheedled.

"'Cause they'd never let me back in here," Ray said, but that didn't fly. Sam and Roberto both reminded him that they had all done worst stuff in their time at the school.

From there the conversation wound to the time Sam had been tricked into almost destroying the local gas station or Ray's clandestine siphoning from the local transformer after he'd caused a city-wide blackout. The boys laughed as the assessed the different qualities of the smell of burning dog hair for reasons Jamie couldn't entirely understand before launching into a plan to do … something … at the local car wash. Things were getting off course.

By now Jamie was only hazily aware of his initial qualms at Farouk's ask or is hesitancy in going forward. The more obstacles appeared in his way, the more determined he was to pull some sort of secret from his housemates just to show that he could.

Jamie asked why Ray wanted to know about the girl.

"No reason, just 'cause," Ray said. Sam and Roberto nodded along with him. It was enough to discourage the most resolute optimist. Jamie decided if he was going to get anything good it was going to have to be in the wild.

The Professor's office wasn't his first choice for an ambush location (he immediately realized he didn't like that word and pushed it from his mind), he would have preferred the living room or one of the bedrooms but people were already using all those and if he came in they'd want to know why. No one was supposed to be in the Professor's office (except the Professor, of course) which meant real trouble if a teacher came in but also meant any of the other students who entered (and they did, all the time) it would be much easier for him to come up with an excuse. If it was one of the other boys he could tell them he was planning a joke; most likely they'd be too scared of the Professor to want to help. If they weren't he would at least score cool points for his audaciousness. If it was one of the girls he'd tell them he was hiding from the boys, which might get them to open up. He had prepared for every possibility.

Then the door opened and Scott and Jean came in. Plans A through the G were immediately thrown out and he started cycling through the later letters hoping for some sort of inspiration. None was coming.

"What are you doing? We're not supposed to be in here," Scott was saying.

"It's okay, I just needed to go somewhere private for a minute," Jean replied.

The first rule of doing something you're not supposed to do is never admitting to it, even when caught red-handed; if Jamie had learned anything at Xavier's it was that. That and forgiveness really was easier to ask for than permission. In desperation, Jamie had hid in the closet. He knew Jean would realize he was there any moment regardless of what he did. Jamie hunkered down and waited for the inevitable.

But if Jean knew he was there she said nothing. Instead she just stood in the center of the room, arms crossed over her chest, shaking her head to every question Scott asked her. He wanted to know what he could do to help but Jean was already interrupting. "I have to leave for a little bit."

Jamie could have stepped forward, announced himself, but that would mean coming clean about why he was actually in there. He had no illusions about his ability to lie convincingly to Jean. Even when he got away with stuff it felt more like she was letting him which completely leeched all enjoyment from it.

On some level he realized that the real problem was not explaining himself to Scott and Jean, it's what explaining himself meant. He would have to look directly at that roiling feeling in his stomach which burbled to life whenever he thought about the propriety of spying on his friends this way. There was something underhanded and mean to it at a level he couldn't put his finger partly because he didn't have the life experience to and partly because he didn't want to. Staring it in the face would mean admitting how low what he was doing was and the thought of that actually hurt worse than being found out.

"I know," Scott said and for the first time Jean was shaken out of herself by surprise, asking him how he knew. "I've been expecting it for a while now, after some of the talks you and the Professor have been having—"

She shook her head again. "It's nothing like that, it's about my dad."

"Was that the call earlier?" Scott asked.

Jean nodded and, little by little released the contents of the call: her father in the hospital unexpectedly, her mother weeping unprepared ("he's always been so healthy"), the bedrock of her early life cracked in two followed by words Jamie didn't comprehend like cardiac and arrhythmia. Somewhere in the middle one of the words disappeared into a great wracking gasp.

The sudden sob surprised Jamie so much he had to clap his hands over his mouth to keep from making a noise. Scott seemed to have the same reaction and wrapped his arms around Jean while Jamie's stomach descended uncomfortably. He had a fleeting remembrance of his mother crying in their kitchen, his amazement that such a thing was possible and the way it threw his world into chaos worse than even the first time he made a dupe.

"What if he, what if he …" she couldn't get the words out, as if the mere act of saying them would make them come true.

"You can't even think that, not for a minute," Scott said. "Everything will be fine. Everything will be okay."

"He's always been there and to suddenly disappear like that … You can't say that, you don't know what it's like—" Jean said and put a hand to her mouth. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I know you didn't," Scott said, but something had happened to his face. He backed away when Jean reached out to him.

"Why did you ask me that earlier? About the Professor?" she asked, her fear of the moment before gone.

"Nothing, just … I know you've been talking to him about, about the future and what you're going to do and … and you're not going to be able stay here to get what you want."

"Do you really want to have that talk now?" Jean asked. Scott affirmed that he really did not. "What I want is right here."

"And I'll be waiting for you."

Jean paused, taking in all that was unsaid. "It's not just me, you know. You've got everyone else, too. You've got the X-Men."

"That's not … that's something I have to do but …" he paused for a long time. Jamie thought he was having a hard time breathing and didn't know why. "Even with everyone here and everything that needs to be done … without you here I would just be lost in it, alone in the middle of everyone …" he trailed off again.

"I just don't know what to do when you're not around," Scott finally said.

"Do you want me to stay?" the pain in her voice was evident.

"No, of course not. You've got to go. If it was me I wouldn't have waited, just left without saying anything to anyone."

"Yes, but I'm a better person than you."

"Much better," Scott agreed.

Scott leaned forward, touching his forehead to Jean's. He had once told her it symbolized their minds coming closer together. She had once told him he was a dork.

She finally disentangled herself, explaining that "I've got to pack."

Whatever else happened Jamie didn't see, he had his eyes squeezed as tightly shut as possible as if not looking at the Boogeyman would render him powerless and make him vanish. He waited for the sound of the room's opening and closing before he opened them again. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Jamie counted a further thirty seconds and then turned the handle. It wasn't until he had partially opened the closet door that he realized Scott was still in the room. Jamie froze.

Scott's back was to the closet door. Jamie took one backward step towards the closet and then froze again. What if he tripped, what if the floor squeaked, what if, what if, what if? He wished he had a dupe to make a distraction but just creating one would have drawn attention to himself. He looked at the door, judging the distance to escape; it seemed miles away. He risked a look back at Scott, expecting a furious tirade from him but instead there was just the barest intake of breath.

Scott was still facing the Professor's fireplace, his entire weight resting on one hand. His shoulders shook slightly, once and Jamie heard that sound again. Whatever it was, Jamie ignored it, like it wasn't happening. He'd had plenty of experience with that, too.

It was several minutes more before Scott pulled himself together. He stood, back straight, adjusted his shirt and glances like nothing had happened – unbent and unbroken. He straightened some papers on the Professor's desk and then left, closing the office door behind him.

After the footsteps safely receded Jamie cautiously exited the closet. He thought about the rest of his plans, about doing what Farouk had asked, but the excitement had turned to an anxious dread in his stomach and he decided it didn't sound like so much fun after all. Nothing could be worth what he would have to do, he decided, and decided to just go to bed, but tossed and turned, his anxiousness at the intimacy he'd overheard battling with the fear of telling Farouk he hadn't done what was asked of him, wondering what his response would be.

---

"You two are morons," Negasonic had said.

After his dynamic statement to investigate Frost, Bobby and Xi'an and lapsed into a silence so long and uncomfortable they were reduced to literally watching ice melt. (It's not that Bobby didn't want to say something, he just had no idea what that something could be and would have been amazed to discover Xi'an was in the same boat.) His carefully orchestrated obstacle course had become a partial lake by the time Negasonic arrived and stepped into it.

"Is it a swimming test?" she'd asked, toeing the water. Xi'an launched into an explanation about Bobby's questions about the Academy's lower levels and Frost's intentions. Negasonic's smirk slowly fell as she realized they were not joking. At which point she declared—

"You two are morons."

"Be that as it may, I still want some answers, don't you?" Bobby asked. Negasonic wanted to know what he had in mind, first.

"He wants to go into the sub-basement and find out what happened to the purple girl," Xi'an said.

"Hey!" Bobby cried. "That was my big reveal!"

"I saw it coming," Negasonic said.

"Because you've been thinking the same thing," Bobby realized. Negasonic did not agree but did not argue, either.

"And what happens when you're down there?" she asked instead. Bobby and Xi'an looked at one another; they had no good answer. "That's what I thought."

"What would you do?" Xi'an asked.

"Not go down there," Negasonic shot back, but her heart wasn't in it. She surprised Bobby by adding, "But that's not an option, is it?"

"You're really going to do it?" Xi'an didn't even bother to hide her surprise.

"That depends on his plan," Negasonic said, jerking a thumb towards Bobby. The two girls turned to look at him and Bobby's rapture at being believed was quickly replaced by dread at being believed.

"I'm working on it," he allowed. "Meet me during free period after lunch tomorrow."

The idea he did come up with did not go over well.

"I'm not doing that," Xi'an said.

"You said the rear elevators are the only way down to the lower levels," Bobby reminded her for the third time. Xi'an admitted – again – that she had in fact said that.

Bobby's plan had been to break into the security office and turn off monitors and trackers Frost was sure to have in her sanctum sanctorum. Plus draw off the Hellions Frost has guarding the elevators and manning the security room, Negasonic added.

"That's what you call yourselves?" the ridiculousness of the name was so great Bobby completely lost his train of thought.

"It's what Frost calls us," Negasonic replied, before asking how different a name it was from X-Men.

"Okay, okay," Bobby said, trying to get things back on track. "If we get into the security room I can turn off the alarms on the elevator and send the other Hellions on a wild goose chase but first we've got to get into security and we've got to make sure no one knows we're the ones doing it soooo we're going to need some sort of distraction."

"I told you I don't … I don't like doing that," Xi'an said. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for the stuff in Boston and Bayville but I don't want to do it again unless I have to."

"It's either that or Negasonic blows something in here up," Bobby replied. Xi'an was generally fine with that idea but Negasonic gave her a shove.

"Just get to it, the sooner we start the sooner we're in the elevator," she said and turned on Bobby, wanting to know what else he had. He admitted that was as far as he had gotten. "We're breaking into the private rooms of a woman who can read minds and has spent years using it to keep people out of her business and you're plan is to wing it?"

"No," Bobby lied. "I'll … figure the rest out once I can see the security schematics."

"If we're going to do this let's just do it," Xi'an interrupted.

She stalked down the hallway to the door leading to the cafeteria for the school. Lunch was in full swing and the ballroom was filled to bursting, though to Bobby's eyes it was a strange imitation of a school lunch period with the students talking to one another in subdued whispers, heads largely down, rather than the full throated roar he was used to.

"Which one?" Xi'an said. Her voice was flat and emotionless. Bobby realize he didn't have an answer for that – he'd been so focused on winning the argument he hadn't thought forward to what he would do if she said yes. He was still working on it when Negasonic pointed to a girl with long pink hair surrounded by other girls and said her. When Bobby asked why her he was told that everyone really liked her.

"You're really scary," he said and turned to Xi'an but her eyes were already closed and she had two fingers to one temple. For a moment Bobby was strongly reminded of Professor Xavier. Bobby turned back to the lunch room to see the girl's eyes roll up into her head as she collapsed onto the ground in a heap.

The students were so engrossed in not drawing attention to themselves that it took a moment for the action to draw anyone's attention. First one head turned the pink girl's way, then another, then students began to rise and approach her like a wave. Soon student monitors and teachers were approaching the girl. Xi'an's knees sagged and both Bobby and Negasonic reached out to steady her. Just as they did, Xi'an's eyes opened up again.

"Hurry," she breathed. "She'll be up in a second."

With everyone looking the other way Bobby, Negasonic and Xi'an slunk out of the dining hall and into the depths of the Academy.

"Do you know where we're going?" Negasonic asked.

"Follow the conduits," Bobby said, pointing to the bare ceiling. Several pipes snaked across it, heading down the hall with branches occasionally peeling off to enter various rooms. "The thickest one will be power; surveillance wiring is usually bundled with it."

Negasonic and Xi'an were staring at him with shock bordering on catatonia. "I do know some stuff."

Xi'an's diversion had worked even better than Bobby had been expecting; at least twice they had to scramble around corners as groups of Hellions ran past them. It suddenly occurred to Bobby that the school was likely on high alert just a few days after it had been attacked, making it even more susceptible to false alarm. I am a super genius.

The security room door had an electronic lock on it Bobby had never seen before. He was still trying to figure out what his next move was (freeze it maybe, but everyone would know it was him) when Xi'an pushed him out of the way.

"I have something," Xi'an said, reaching for a small canister Bobby noticed for the first time. It was hanging from a strap by her hip.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Odds and ends, in case we get stuck," Xi'an said, holding the canister up. For the first time she noticed Bobby and Negasonic were carrying nothing but just to be sure asked them if they had brought any supplies with them. Bobby held up a USB stick as Negasonic shook her head. "Oh God."

She shook the canister briskly then stuck it onto the lock. It fizzed briefly and the door opened, revealing a cramped room with a number of monitors showing camera angles spread throughout the school. Bobby seated himself at one of them. The terminal was logged out; Bobby took a USB stick from his pocket and plugged it in; it automatically began running a keystroke program and entered the password, opening up the system. Bobby dove into the command structure as Negasonic wondered – appreciatively – that he had such tool.

"Yeah, yeah, you do know some stuff," she interrupted before he could say anything. As he quickly scrolled through the list of commands Negasonic's eyes widened notably. "You're sure you can do this?"

"Sure I'm sure; I helped program the security system for the mansion," he replied. His eyes never left the screen. "How different can it be?"

"Oh, God," Xi'an said again. Negasonic crossed herself like she was entering confessional.

Bobby didn't notice; he'd found the command window and was already searching the directory. The syntax was a little different but the basic architecture and command structure was the same. He grew more and more confident in his ability to do what he said he could do which – though he didn't like to admit it – was not a usual situation for him. Negasonic was busy looking at the clock while Xi'an tapped a finger nervously on the desk.

"How much longer?" Negasonic asked for the tenth time.

"Just a second," Bobby replied for the tenth time.

He started to open the security directory when another folder caught his attention. After several minutes of exploration he chose a file and opened it. A multi-layered layout of the main Academy grounds blossomed in front of them like a flower, filling the screens.

"Look at that," he said pointing at the schematic.

Xi'an leaned in … and then leaned in more, absorbed in it. "It goes down four levels!"

"I knew they had a lot down there but I had no idea it was this much," Negasonic added. "How are we supposed to find anything down there?"

Bobby continued typing. The executable he was building was quick and dirty and though programmed to erase itself upon completion, anyone who was really looking would find it. He didn't mention that to the girls.

"I can do it," Xi'an said. Her voice faltered enough that she herself noticed it; Bobby and Negasonic both looked at her with a silent are you sure? "I can do it."

"Done," Bobby said, closing down the terminal and whatever else Negasonic was going to say. They hadn't even gotten into the elevator yet and already the thread keeping them together and heading in the same direction was fraying; it would take the lightest tug to pull it apart. Bobby started to realize why Scott was also pushing them in the moment, keeping them distracted from their doubts, and appreciated how difficult it was to get even a handful of people to work together. He started to promise himself to do better the next time he saw Scott, then remembered the situation he was in, he'd chosen to be in, and the likelihood he would see the other X-Men again. Was he still one? Did he ever stop? The questions of identity nagged him and he chased them for a moment before he realized the girls were still waiting for him. He stood.

"As soon as I execute, all of the alarms in the west wing will go off at once. We'll have to hurry to get from here to the elevator before someone contacts security."

"Wait," Xi'an said, and pulled some ear plugs from one of her pouches. "It's going to be loud."

The alarm was in fact deafening. Not deafening in an expository or exclamatory sense, but in an absolute one. Even with his hands over his ears Bobby could feel it in his teeth and the back of his skull. Xi'an tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a pair of earplugs from the now open canister.

"Let's go before anyone comes to see what's wrong," Bobby said.

"What?" Xi'an asked. Though the ear plugs were dampening the sound of the alarm they were also keeping them from hearing each other. Bobby was slightly warmed for a moment by the notion that she hadn't thought of everything but he let it pass. Gesturing with his thumb to the door he stuck his head out it, saw no one coming and walked down the hallway for the first corner as fast as he could without looking like he was running, Negasonic and Xi'an close behind him. Their luck held and there were no Hellions heading down from that direction; in less than five minutes they were standing before the elevator door. Bobby pushed the down button before anyone could stop for second thoughts again. The glow of the button glared at them like the eye of some guardian monster standing before them. It seemed to take forever for the elevator to arrive; just as the arrival bell dinged the alarm stopped.

"They're at the security room," Negasonic said, looking around. "They'll check here next."

"I'm more worried about what's downstairs," Bobby said. "Anything waiting for us."

"If we were smart we'd know that before heading down there," Negasonic said.

"If we were smart we wouldn't go at all," Xi'an replied.

The elevator door opened.

"Last chance," Xi'an said.

Bobby resolutely stepped inside. Negasonic and Xi'an followed him.

"So much for being smart," Xi'an said. Negasonic noted that she was right there with them. "Don't I know it."

The elevator door closed.

---

Jamie had barely begun his scan of the school yard, hand over eyes to keep the morning sun out of them, before Farouk's gaping mouth and waving hand leapt out at him.

"Jamie! Over here!" he called, then thought better of waiting for Jamie to approach him and ran over of his own volition.

Jamie hadn't done much planning for how this conversation would go. He hadn't particularly expected to be returning to the school anytime soon (an idea which upset him more than he thought it would) and had been more than surprised when Professor X informed him that the school was indeed expecting him back. He had no idea what happened been promised to manage that, and no one was telling him, and simply gave himself up to the idea piling into the X-Van as usual that morning as if he hadn't attempted to single handedly incite a riot the day before.

Jamie considered returning to the X-Van. On the one hand it would allow him to avoid the stress of announcing failure until hopefully Farouk just forgot what Jamie was supposed to be doing and moved on to something else. On the other hand, that would have meant getting back into the van with Miss Ororo. She hadn't spoken more than a handful of words to him prior to the incident the day before, and had said nothing that morning. The only hint to her mood was a driving rain storm and the odd flash of lightening which had washed the mansion that morning. The rain had followed the van all the way to school, only stopping when it came time to let him out.

A few days earlier the idea of someone running at him and calling his name because they were legitimately happy to see him and not because they were winding up a fireball to throw at him would have been Jamie's idea of heaven. Now it filled him with anxiety and desperate desire to run away and hide.

You're being silly, Jamie told himself.

Still, the thought of returning in failure did not make him happy. While he certainly had his limits Jamie had not yet grown beyond the natural people pleasing of early childhood and positive reinforcement was still a powerful carrot. By the same token the idea of letting someone down created its own particular angst, especially if that someone was a peer rather than a parent or teacher as they only nominally counted as 'people.'

Rather than face that thought head on Jamie focused on the brighter side of life, reminding himself there were all sorts of different things Farouk could be interested in. Perhaps he had another round of pranks he'd thought up. Perhaps he'd brought another weapon to school, or something flammable. Perhaps it just wouldn't come up.

"How did it go?" were the first words out of Farouk's mouth.

As a rule Jamie did not swear, partly because he was still somewhat frightened by the taboo around curse words and partly because he thought it was stupid. Listening to the older kids at Xavier's attempt to do so just made him more certain of that. But at that particular moment he was sorely tempted.

Farouk stood there with an expectant look which made Jamie long to give him good news. He considered that for a moment; he was certainly not averse to telling someone what they wanted to hear whether it was strictly true or not. He believed deeply this was not a sin, it was a favor he was doing for the other person to protect them from the cruel pain of disappointment.

He started to say how did what go?—it was hard to go wrong pleading ignorance—but he stopped himself; it felt like a betrayal though he wasn't sure why. And at best it would just push things off and force Jamie to go back and try again. That was definitely something he was not prepared to do.

He could lie; that was also a valid technique. That thought did not bring pain of transgression so much as certainty that it wouldn't work. He hadn't known Farouk very long but even their brief companionship had given him a fairly clear idea about the others' natural intuition. Looking at Farouk's smiling face – for the second time he was amazed at the sheer number of teeth, more like a strange animal than a person – he had no doubt any lie he came up with would be easily seen through. No, lying was definitely out.

Normally when someone wanted something from him they would wait only so long and then offer their own ideas but Farouk said nothing. He just stood there, waiting, infinitely patient. Desperation welled up in the pit of Jamie's stomach as he considered pretending to be sick or even releasing another set of dupes to cause chaos and close the school.

All he finally came out with 'I didn't get it.'

A shadow passed over Farouk's face, staying long enough for Jamie to notice, before passing away and being replaced by a smile again. Jamie had the distinct impression, for the first time, that Farouk was making himself smile. He wondered if that had happened before and he'd just not noticed.

"That's okay, I've got something to show you!"

He grabbed Jamie's hand and yanked him off towards the backfield and the tree line which surrounded the school.

"We're going to miss first bell!" Jamie pleaded, but weakly. It certainly wasn't the first time for him.

"Who cares?! What I've got is much better!"

They were quickly stomping through the underbrush, well out of sight of any one on the school grounds. To Jamie's surprise Farouk asked for no explanation and seemed to expect none, which was so far outside Jamie's experience he wondered (not for the first time) if Farouk wasn't secretly an alien. If it didn't seem to phase Farouk any it was driving Jamie positively batty. He found himself talking just to fill up the void even as he realized he wasn't entirely sure what he was saying.

"I mean I tried to get it, I wanted to, but everyone likes to keep to themselves you know and whenever I got them talking they would go on and on about 'did you see that girl in class the other day? yeah, I totally saw her, I think she likes you' and none of it seemed like what you … were … looking for …"

As Jamie trailed off he became aware of a strained keening from somewhere nearby.

"What's that?" he asked.

"That's what I wanted to show you?" Farouk said

They'd left the school grounds almost completely behind at this point. If someone noticed and came looking for them he would likely be taken from school and never allowed to return but Jamie was so focused on the moment he didn't care.

They reached a swath of high reeds; with a flourish worthy of circus ringmaster, Farouk reached out and parted them. Beyond was a high oak tree standing alone. Hanging from it was Franklin Ford III.

A nylon rope was tied around one of Frankie's ankles, the opposite end looped higher over one of the trees top branches leaving him dangling in the wind like a living wind chime. Part of Jamie was struck by how brilliantly pink the rope was and he also wondered how Farouk had gotten the rope so high up in the tree.

Frankie's face was streaked with red; he had plainly been crying.

"Isn't it cool?" Farouk asked. He was showing so many teeth it was like his smile had swallowed his face whole. "I trapped a little bird this morning, just like you showed me!"

"I didn't show you this!" Jamie cried. "Get him down!"

"What are you talking about? He deserves this," Farouk said, genuinely puzzled.

Frankie whimpered and seemed to finally notice Jamie was there. "Help me," he cried. Farouk told him to be quiet.

"Get him down," Jamie repeated.

"No," Farouk said. It was a statement without malice and yet was unassailable as a wall.

Jamie wasn't listening anymore, though; his Danger Room lessons had taken over. He slapped the trunk of the tree, then pointed up at the branches to get his new dupes attention.

"Up the tree!" he said. "Save the citizen!"

The dupe saluted and quickly started climbing, his hands seeking out notes and branches for purchase

"Hey!" Farouk yelled, laughter replaced with pique. "That's my bird! Get your own!"

He reached up and grabbed the dupes ankle and shouted Stop it! Jamie expected the dupe to kick free and continue on up the tree. That's what he wanted it to do. Instead it jumped off the tree and stood next to Farouk.

"Hey!" Jamie was so surprised he wasn't even concerned that his own dupe had disobeyed him, though that feeling quickly followed. "I said get up there and get him down."

"And I said no." Farouk glowered at him. The dupe matched the look on his face.

"He said no," the dupe declared.

"You're supposed to do what I say!" Jamie replied, real shock setting in.

"You're not the boss of me," the dupe replied. Jamie stamped his foot again and sent another dupe after Brian but Traitor Dupe No. 1 grabbed that one by the arm just as Farouk had done.

"You don't need to listen to him," Farouk said.

"You don't need to listen to him," Traitor Dupe No. 1 added in.

"I don't need to listen to him," the new dupe said, a tone of revelation in his voice.

More than anything that had happened so far that statement terrified Jamie. The fact that his dupes could disobey him was scary enough; the idea that they might want to, might have always wanted to … it was a thought he had never even considered before. He didn't entirely know what ramifications meant but he could feel them settling on him none the less, like a mine caving in and sealing off the last of the sunlight above.

He shook his head to clear it. Save the citizen first – it was the main lesson of more than half of their regular Danger Room lessons. The confusion gave Jamie enough time create another group of dupes around him but he kept them from the fray.

"Up!" Jamie said as a collection of hands gather under his legs and butt and begin to propel up the side of the tree. Dupe stood upon dupe like a living pyramid, lifting Jamie upwards.

"Cheater!" A group of traitor dupes tackled Jamie's pyramid. Jamie had just enough time to reach out and grab the branch Frankie was tied to before his support gave way with a crash, dragged down into the mire where the other dupes were wrestling. Then slowly the wrestling stopped, all conflict going out of the participants. They stood up, helping each other out of the muck, and turned to Jamie as a group, all with the same dark gleam in their eyes. They were all covered in mud in indistinguishable from one another both by eye and temperament. It was like some sort of horrible disease, passable just by the act of touching.

"Help me up here!" Jamie yelled.

"Help yourself," one of the dupes said back.

"Get him down here," Farouk said. The dupes looked at each other and then began climbing one atop the other, reforming the same period Jamie had so recently used, reaching up at Jamie where he hung from the branch. It was like a nightmare he'd once had.

Jamie pulled his feet up and with an effort and wrapped them around the branch, then hauled himself up to the top of the branch. He looked down at the sea of angry eyes beneath him, centered around Farouk. He looked like the embodiment of betrayal.

"This is all your fault," Farouk said.

Jamie tore his eyes away and looked up at the branch where Frankie was hanging. He climbed up the trunk to Frankie's branch and crawled over to him. The nylon cord was tied tight. Perhaps with a knife Jamie could have cut through it but trying to pull it up with weight on it was not going to work.

"Please!" Frankie cried, watching him. "I'm sorry!"

"I'm working on it!" Jamie responded.

The ground was muddy and sticky from the recent rain, but it would also be small enough to break Frankie's fall. Jamie stood up, grabbing a branch from overhead to hold his weight and began stomping on the branch at its weakest point. With each crash he felt the urge the release a dupe; it took everything he had to contain them, to keep Farouk's new army from growing. His head swam and he felt nauseas.

"I thought you were my friend," Farouk called up. "I thought you'd do what I wanted!"

"That's not what a friend is!" Jamie yelled back. With one last kick the branch broke and gravity took over. Franklin plummeted, landing on the collection of dupes and driving the wind out of several of them.

"Run, Franklin!" Jamie said, but he needn't have bothered. Franklin was already long gone. Jamie turned from him back to Farouk … and found a small army of dupes staring up at him. None were fighting anymore.

"Looks like we've caught a different bird," Farouk said and all of the dupes spoke with him.

"Why are you doing this?" Jamie called down.

"Because you ruined my fun!" Farouk yelled. "Come down here!"

The dupes all echoed Farouk's yell. The horror of staring down into a sea of his own face, staring up at him with hate and gnashing teeth, was overwhelming. Jamie froze on the branch.

"You can't stay up there forever," Farouk said.

"Bet I can."

Farouk's face darkened, as dark as eyes, as if there were a void there where a person should be, a dark abyss Jamie could fall into and never touch bottom if he kept looking.

"Go get him!" Farouk said.

The other Jamie's started climbing; first jumping up and trying to reach the lowest hanging branches and — when it became clear that wasn't going to work — forming their own pyramid and climbing one over the other to reach the first branches. Real Jamie remembered a phrase Professor Beast always used about 'low hanging fruit' and suddenly it made sense to him. His first instinct was to climb higher, out of the reach of the approaching dupes. He looked up at the top of the tree and realized how quickly he'd run out of room. He wasn't the only one.

"That's not going to work," Farouk sneered.

Jamie agreed and looked down at the tower of dupes coming closer.

"You should stop before you hurt yourself," Farouk said. "What's it going to be?"

Jamie jumped into the pile of dupes beneath him and this time didn't bother to stifle the impulse to keep from spawning more. The small mound of Jamie's erupted into a veritable mountain of him, all kicking and biting and fighting with one another. Reaching critical mass it collapsed in on itself, devolving into chaos.

Farouk reached down and grabbed one of the Jamie's at random.

"All right, all right, you got me," the Jamie said.

Farouk put both hands on either side of the boy's head, then snarled and pushed him to the ground. "That's not him!" he yelled.

The pile of dupes slowly stood up, all the fight leaving them as they stared at one another warily.

"None of you are him," Farouk said. "He got away while you were wasting time. Spread out, look around, he can't have gotten far.

"What do we do when we find him?" a dupe asked.

"Whatever you feel like doing," Farouk replied.

The dupes stared at one another, unused to such freedom. After a moment one picked up a rock, followed by another, while another grabbed a large branch and tested its weight in his hand.

"Now go get him!" Farouk said, and pointed down into the gulley. The dupes ran past him, screaming primal screams.

Jamie couldn't have managed such a scream even if he'd wanted to. He hadn't stopped running since crawling out from under the stack of dupes; his chest was heaving and his lungs burned with the effort. The sound of his dupes crashing through the under growth after him spurred him faster but he didn't have much more to give. They weren't near him yet but Jamie could feel the dupes getting closer. He turned away from the school and moved deeper into the woods between the school grounds and I-684.

Looking for cover he came down a small head and found himself standing over a gulley holding the outspill of a large cement pipe carrying runoff from the nearby interstate. The gulley stretched out beneath him, dark and musty. It smelled terrible. Mr. Logan always repeated the need to cover up sight and odor traces when avoiding pursuit. The gulley would do it. Jamie really didn't want to get down in it.

He was still trying to decide when something solid hit him in the back and he fell to the ground. He looked up at his own face, twisted into a mask of anger and confusion. The dupe was holding a large branch, which he had clearly used to hit Jamie in the back.

"Why did you do that?" Jamie asked. "Why did you hit me?"

"I don't know," the dupe said and his face scrunched up in confusion. Jamie was so familiar with the look it was as if he were feeling it himself, and yet he had never spent a lot of time examining what his dupes looked like. The sensation of watching himself face emotions he himself wasn't feeling was too bizarre to put into words and was profoundly unsettling.

"Because I can," the dupe said. "Because you can't tell me what to do anymore."

"Someone is," Jamie replied.

Jamie snaked his feet through the dupes ankles and tripped him, sending him crashing to the ground. The dupe looked up in time to see its own branch smashing down towards its face.

His first instinct was to absorb the dupe, but what then? Would it vanish like they always did or would it absorb him? Would he still be himself or would he turn into one of Farouk's puppets? He didn't know the answer and he was terrified to find out. More terrified than he had ever been of anything he could remember.

He could feel another dupe approaching and pushed the one at his feet down the hill and into the gulley.

"He went that way," Jamie said, pointing away from Franklin, but the dupe just looked him skeptically.

"Don't kid me. We always know who the prime is," the dupe said.

"Good to know," Jamie replied and hit the dupe in the head as hard as he could with the branch, then jumped over him and disappeared into the gulley.

The other Jamie's arrived shortly afterwards, stopping at the sight of the dupe lying on the ground. Several of them reached down to pull the dazed one from the ground. He shook himself free from the others arms. "He went that way!" the dupe yelled, pointing down into the gulley. They stomped back and forth from one end to the other, yelling and screaming. Jamie was not at the opposite end and there were no tracks leading away.

"Now what?" one dupe asked.

The other shrugged. "Do I look like the guy who makes plans?" Yes, the first dupe said. Another dupe came up behind and slapped them both in the head, telling them to keep looking. The dupes searched for the better part of an hour but eventually Farouk got bored and they wandered off to look for something else to do.

A pile of debris in the overflow tunnel began to move and eventually gave way to reveal Jamie as he stood up from the tunnel floor. He could still feel his dupes stomping away; he could probably catch up with them, but then what? He needed advice, he knew that much, but he wasn't looking forward to asking for it at least in part because he was afraid to find out the change was permanent. As often as he had thought about life where his powers had never appeared, suddenly not having them was almost as bad.

Jamie sighed and turned away from the sound of the dupes. He was certain he could lay low until Miss Ororo arrived to get him – he'd already learned all the best hiding places in the school. It just meant a day alone, he could handle that. He didn't want to but it didn't matter; nothing that happened had been what he had wanted.

---

The ride down was short.

Bobby, Negasonic and Xi'an had kept their eyes glued on the elevator numbers as it proceeded downwards. They couldn't have looked away if they'd wanted to. The elevator doors opened silently. Part of Bobby was glad for that – he did not want to be catching anyone's attention – but part of him was generally unnerved by it. The entire sublevel was eerily silent.

"Now what?" Negasonic asked.

Bobby leapt what he thought must have been a foot in the air. He couldn't seem to stop himself, instead bending all his willpower to keeping the high-pitched scream he felt burbling up from inside from escaping. Xi'an's hand wrapped around his mouth as if she knew it was coming.

"Cool it!" she hissed. "You're going to get us caught."

Bobby pushed her hand away. "I've got it under control." He closed his eyes, pulling up his memory of the schematic.

"There's a large room of some sort down—" he pointed to his left "—that way. Let's start there."

The hallways reminded Bobby of the lower levels of Xavier's; in fact so much of the Academy reminded him of Xavier's it could be like stepping through a mirror from one to the other. It was a thought he didn't want to dwell on.

A door appeared in the wall, a door with no handle and single glass slit of a window high up near the top. It made Bobby think of a prison. He looked around the door jam and found the glass plate which plainly allowed entry. He started feeling around the edge of it with his fingers, looking for some point of entry to the electronics behind, while Negasonic suggested she could blow it open. Xi'an stopped them both, reaching for their arms with a soft wait.

"What is it?" Bobby asked while Negasonic simultaneously said: "It's Frost, isn't it?"

"No," Xi'an said. "There's usually a … a buzz … whenever she's around, like an electrical hum in my head. I don't feel that right now. It's … something else."

"Is it coming from in there?" Bobby said, pushing Xi'an towards the window. "Take a look."

"No, you look," Xi'an said, shoving back.

Negasonic huffed and pushed them out of the way, standing up on her tip toes to peer through the small window. She huffed again.

"Don't tell me we did all of this for nothing," Xi'an whined.

"Nope, she's in there," Negasonic said, peeking through the window.

It was an examination room of some sort, cold and sterile with gleaming walls as white as it's owners name bathed in sickly green neon light. No detritus, no dirt, no papers or trash which would signify a human being had ever entered the room was visible. It would be easy to suppose it had never been in habited except for the outlier at its center. An examination chair bolted to the floor there; the purple girl was strapped to it.

The only window on the only door in the room began to frost over like watching a winter day on time lapse, and ice emerged around the door frame. It finally slid open revealing Bobby, Negasonic and Xi'an standing there. They continued to stand there for a long minute, as if none of them could believe they had found their target so easily.

"So are we going in or what?" Xi'an asked.

Bobby dived out of the doorway and rolled behind a nearby bank of machinery. He popped his head up and scanned the room for surveillance. The space between himself and the table in the center of the room did not offer a lot of cover. In the real world he would normally just ice everything and leave it to the authorities to wonder how that could have happened but here that would be easily traceable back to him; he needed something more old fashioned. For a moment he luxuriated in the irony of Frost teaching him to think more like a human than a mutant, then shook his head and forced himself to focus on the problem at hand.

As Bobby pondered his next move Negasonic strolled past him and into the room.

"You look ridiculous down there," she said.

Bobby protested that they didn't know what sort of security equipment was down there but Negasonic stopped him with the knowing comment that "people don't put cameras up around stuff they don't want anyone to know about it."

"They also don't let people who see that kind of stuff walk around alive," Xi'an said, walking around the room and taking it all in. She pointedly did not approach the girl on the table.

"Always so negative," Negasonic said. Xi'an reminded her that she wore all black and called herself Negasonic Teenage Warhead. "That doesn't make me a pessimist."

Seeing that neither Negasonic nor Xi'an had been zapped by any hidden lasers, and neither Doctor Frost nor any guards had arrived, Bobby had gotten up off the ground and walked directly to the examination table.

Though he had gotten the definite impression that the purple haired girl was extremely attractive during their brief interaction, looking down at her still form he realized just how beautiful she was. Part of it, he had to admit, was the purple leather outfit she wore with discreetly missing panels along her sides which managed to reveal as much as it covered up. But that wasn't really it, there was something about the otherness of her he couldn't look away from. Somehow the paleness of her skin made the purple of her hair pop out all the more, but it wasn't fake purple like the girls in wigs at the mall. It's what someone born with actual purple hair would actually like if such a person existed. Lying on the table she seemed at peace for the first time and it made her natural beauty more obvious. Like Cinderella Bobby said to himself; No, not Cinderella, the other one, what was her name—

"You just going to stare at her, weirdo?" Negasonic asked.

"No," Bobby said, more defensively than he had intended. "I'm just wondering what happened to make her come back here. It seemed like she knew this—" he gestured around the room "—was going on."

"Maybe they did something to her?" Xi'an said.

"The question is 'why is she still alive'?" Negasonic said.

"No, the question is why is she down here," Bobby replied. He looked down at the girl. "Why are you down here?"

"Are you expecting her to tell you?" Xi'an asked.

"Because she disagreed with Frost," Negasonic said. The other two looked at her. "You know how paranoid she is. Even our families don't know exactly where the school is or how to get here. If someone knows a lot about the program, how it works, do you think she's just going to send them back home if they decide they don't want to be here anymore?"

"So now what?" Xi'an asked. Bobby and Negasonic both stopped arguing and stared at her. "So now we know she's down here and Frost put her down here. Okay, that's what we came down to find out and we did. Now what?"

"We need to wake her up and talk to her," Negasonic realized.

"We need to get her out of here," Bobby said.

"Are you out of your mind?" Xi'an asked, clearly horrified. "Why not just etch a sign on the door saying 'someone was poking around down here'?"

Bobby pointed out that wouldn't mean anyone would know it was them.

"She reads minds," Xi'an spat out. "Do you think anyone just takes things from her and gets away with it?"

"Then why'd you come down here?" Bobby asked.

"I don't know," Xi'an said. "No, that's not true. I knew they were doing … something down here and … the way Frost has started asking us to do what she shouldn't be asking us to do … I had to know."

"Knowing isn't going to do much for us if we're dead," Negasonic reminded her.

Bobby wondered if that were true why no one had been able to stop them from coming down and poking around. Negasonic did not think Bobby had a good idea how lucky they'd been.

"Doesn't matter how we did it, just that we did. Mister Logan always says that. Professor Xavier always hates it when he does," Bobby said. Negasonic wondered who Professor Xavier was. Bobby started to explain but Xi'an interrupted.

"Even if we could wake her up we don't have time to talk to her down here, but if we take her we have to keep Frost from knowing she's gone or she'll never stop looking for us. You know she won't."

"Doesn't matter," Bobby replied, trying an experimental tug one of the restraints. "We can't leave her down here. Everything else comes second."

Negasonic gasped and Bobby quickly scanned the room, expecting Frost or some guard but there was nothing. He turned back to Negasonic to ask what was wrong and saw her looking down. Xi'an was doing the same. The purple girl's eyes were open and staring at them.

"I think she's awake," Bobby said. "Are you awake?"

"What is wrong with you?" Negasonic said, and nodded at Xi'an. "Put her back to sleep."

"It doesn't work like that; I'm not a telepath, I just control people," Xi'an said.

Bobby remained focused on the purple girl. "Can you hear us?"

"No more weapons for Frost," she answered. It seemed to take all the strength she had.

"You said," Bobby replied. "We're here to help you. Do you understand?"

"Hide," the purple girl said.

"From what—" Xi'an started, looking around, but she never got a chance to finish. Bobby had grabbed both her and Negasonic and yanked them down to the ground.

A moment later the door opened and Frost entered.

---

The Institute's front door creaked open, just enough to allow Jamie to squeeze his body through it without opening it all the way. The sun had long since set and the moon had risen.

After a day lurking in the grounds near Bayville Junior High (which was more calm than he had expected after the morning's events, he actually found himself understanding Mister Logan's attraction to it) he had slunk back to the school parking lot to see if he could find the X-Van. It was heading into the lot as he arrived and he started making his way to it, keeping an eye out for Farouk, when he saw the passenger door open and one his dupes climb inside. Hiding behind a bright yellow sedan in the teacher's lot, he watched the X-Van leave, his dupe proudly sitting inside. He thought he imagined the dupe spying him through the window, and smirking as the van reached the road and disappeared.

The junior high was just under 15 miles from the Mansion which Jamie had never thought of as far (it was barely a 30 minute drive in the morning) but with few immediate options after the dupe had left he quickly began walking down the highway, all thoughts of the quiet forest surroundings of the day gone. By the time he reached the school grounds most of his fears of the morning had been replaced by the pain in his feet and legs. Or it would if the image of his dupes snarling up at him hadn't continued to haunt him.

Reaching the Mansion grounds was only part of his problem; he still had to figure out how to get inside and find his wayward dupe without alerting anyone else. Going in through the kitchen or the garage was more likely to attract attention than the front door; that's where most of the students and teachers who weren't in the living room tended to congregate. For a moment he considered rappelling down the side of the cliff on the back of the grounds to the hidden hanger entrance for the X-Jet, but he finally pushed the idea aside as impractical. The elevators up from the lower levels were usually monitored.

No, best way to avoid notice was to go in direct through the front door.

As it happened he was alone. From somewhere deep inside he could hear the yells and screams of his classmates engaged doing something they shouldn't be. Any moment and the roar of a professor catching them at it would follow as surely as night follows day. None of that mattered to him immediately. His dupe was waiting for him, sitting at the bottom of the main staircase.

"Took you long enough," the dupe said. Jamie asked if anyone knew he was there. "No, and they don't have to if you come with me."

Jamie refused to do it, and then took a second look around. "Where's Miss Ororo?"

"When I asked her for help she said yes," the dupe smiled. He looked more confident than Jamie had ever felt in his life. Jamie wondered if it was a side effect of being able to act on his own for the first time and had to remind himself that the dupe wasn't. "She went right outside where the rest of us were waiting."

"You're lying," Jamie said.

"One way to find out," the dupe said, holding its hand out. Jamie recoiled like it was a hissing snake. "Not scared are you?"

The dupe advanced a step forward; Jamie retreated instinctively. "No," he lied. "You're just a dupe."

"Maybe," the dupe said. "Or maybe we'll find out I'm the real Jamie after all."

For a moment his Father's face flashed in Jamie's mind though he couldn't for the life of him explain why he was thinking of the man just then, why he was conflated with worry for Miss Ororo. It was just one of many confusing things about the situation.

"I am the real Jamie," he asserted. "And you're going to tell me what you did to Miss Ororo."

"If you want to find out you'll help me bring the rest of your friends to Farouk. He wants to meet all of them."

Why was Jamie's instinctual question but he knew the answer already. So he's not alone anymore.

"But if you don't," the dupe continued, "Farouk will come for them. You definitely don't want that."

Jamie stopped, decided, advanced: "No, he won't."

"You wouldn't da—" Jamie grabbed the dupe by the arm and re-absorbed him.

His chest heaved and burned and he felt nauseous. He could tell the dupe was fighting him, trying to keep itself together. Part of him sympathized; the greater part was focused on forcing the dupe down, absorbing everything it was – its pain, its joy, its fear, its memories …

Farouk was still at the school (did he go anywhere else?), waiting in front of it. Miss Ororo was getting out of the X-Van following Jamie towards Farouk, at first confused and then suspicious as more and more Jamie's appeared. He saw Miss Ororo backing up as the hands reached for her, saw her attempt to fly off only to be grabbed and pulled back down to Earth, saw Farouk advancing on her with outstretched hands …

He wrenched himself back to reality and found himself sprawled at the foot of the grand staircase. He looked around to see if he had been noticed, still more terrified by that than anything else – even Miss Ororo's abduction – but there was no one around.

How does so much happen here without anyone noticing?

No bones seemed broken; he could stand without pain and he did so. He felt himself over from head to toe, unsure what he was looking for. He was certain he felt the same before he'd absorbed the dupe but he wondered how he would know if he had changed.

But hadn't everything?

Farouk wasn't around, he could make more dupes … but what would happen if he did? Jamie considered running off to find one of the professors; go get an adult had been the de facto answer for any serious trouble he'd ever run into he wasn't really sure what else he wanted to do. At the same time the thought of actually explaining what had been going on was even more terrifying – what would they say if they knew that he'd explained who they were and what they did to a stranger, that he'd met a stranger with powers he hadn't told them about … that he'd lost control of his dupes and may not even have powers any more …

Torn between coming clean and the long, lonely trek back to the school and whatever might be waiting there … he went to the kitchen, and froze. Mr. Logan was there, washing a single dish in the sink. He didn't stop or put his head up or in any form acknowledge Jamie's presence but Jamie was certain he knew Jamie was there. Standing in the doorway. Not moving.

The kitchen door he'd pushed open swung back and hit Jamie, prompting him to head for the refrigerator, trying to determine if this were a sign of some sort. He opened the refrigerator and pondered the secrets of the universe.

"You gonna keep standin' there like that we're gonna make you pay the electricity bill this month." Mr. Logan had finished whatever he had been doing and was standing next to Jamie at the refrigerator door. He'd been so quick and silent that Jamie had become marginally more aware why the other kids were so scared of him.

"Sorry," Jamie said, "I was just thinking."

"Well get out of the way while you do it, you're standing in front of the beer."

Jamie moved aside to allow Mr. Logan free access to the refrigerator. He recognized this as a prime opportunity to tell him about Ms. Ororo and get the rest of the X-Men to go rescue her.

"Mr. Logan?" there was no response. After a moment he tried again.

"I heard ya, kid," was the response. Logan removed a beer from the refrigerator and started closing it. "Ya decide what ya wanted?"

"No," Jamie said. "I just … what do you do when you know there's something you've got to do but you're afraid to do it? And you could ignore it and probably no one would know and it would be fine but you would know and it wouldn't. Be fine that is."

Jamie said all of that to kitchen floor, unwilling to look Mr. Logan in the face or see the contempt he expected there. He kept looking at the floor for long moments after he was done, but when no answer was coming he finally risked a peek upwards.

Mr. Logan was standing just as Jamie had found him but his face had changed. Jamie wasn't exactly sure how but it seemed old and sad in a way he'd never associated with Mr. Logan before.

"Mi ni tanoshimi o takamazu," he said at last. Jamie asked him what that meant. "It means … it means if there's something you've got to do, then you've got to do it. Even if you don't want to. Especially if you don't want to."

Jamie nodded though he wasn't sure what he was nodding at. But the leaden feeling he'd been holding onto lifted; all the fear had been about having to make a decision but once made all fear was gone. The long road back was calling out to him and he'd already decided to walk it even if he didn't know why. He turned back to the kitchen door. Jamie had almost made it when he was stopped by a "kid?" from behind.

"What do you got to do?" Logan asked.

"Nothing," Jamie said. "There's just a bully at school."

"And what are you going to do about it?" If Jamie had been thinking about it he would have realized this was the longest and most in-depth conversation he'd ever had with the gruff old man. But he wasn't thinking about it.

"I'm going to find him?" Jamie asked, more to himself than anyone else. "I'm going to go find him."

Mind made up, Jamie disappeared through the kitchen door. It swung shut behind him, and continued swinging for several moments afterwards. Logan stood unmoving, watching it.

"God, I'm getting old," he said.

---

Frost did not go to the girl on the examination table right away, even though she could be the only reason anyone would enter the room. Instead she wandered around the room, checking equipment, taking her coat and gloves off, reading data from a screen, clearly taking her time.

Bobby was sweating bullets, recognizing the feeling of being the mouse. She knows we're here. She has to know we're here. He keenly wished he had not brushed off Xi'an's warnings. He looked at her; she just shook her head. Frost suddenly stopped what she was doing, her head shooting up like a predator catching the scent of its prey. Bobby felt his heart stop.

"Elizabeth," she said without turning, "you're awake."

"I'm awake," the purple haired girl – Elizabeth, Bobby guessed – said.

She had tilted her head to one side as much she could, so that she could keep Frost in her line of sight. In the process she had turned enough that she was looking directly at Bobby and the girls. It had the side effect of forcing Frost to stand with her back to them in order to look her prisoner in the eyes. Bobby had no idea if Elizabeth was doing that on purpose or not, but he hoped she was. He could feel Negasonic's breathe stop and catch in her throat, somewhere behind him.

"I should have expected the depressor wouldn't be quite enough for you," Frost said.

"You should have expected I'd be back," Elizabeth replied. "I told you. I told you, I told you, I told you what I'd do if you and the rest didn't stop."

Frost bent and ran her hand affectionately through the girl's purple hair, the way an owner might pet its dog.

"But dear Elizabeth, what makes you think I didn't?" she said, her voice as sweet and nauseating as honey. "Why do you think you're lying here like this?"

"What do you want?" Elizabeth asked.

"An apology wouldn't be a bad start," Frost replied. Elizabeth spit at her but Frost had already easily moved out of the way.

"Never quite got control of that temper, did we?" she said.

"After what you did!" Elizabeth attempted to pull herself from the chair only to be yanked back down.

"I made you what you are," Frost countered.

"Yes, you did. You did, you did, you did. And you're going to pay for it."

"No doubt. The one lesson you never wanted to learn is that there is no price too high for the salvation of our people."

"What. Do. You. Want?" Elizabeth asked again.

"All I've ever wanted. To make you capable of replacing me."

Elizabeth told her she would die first. "I will be very disappointed if it comes to that," Frost responded. Bobby wasn't sure but it sounded like she meant it.

A light on one of the consoles began to blink. Frost scowled and turned it off but not before Elizabeth noticed.

"Lord and Master is calling," she said.

Frost frowned but refused to rise to the bait. "You were my greatest disappointment, Elizabeth."

"So were you, Emma," the girl said.

Frost stepped away and began tapping keys into a terminal. She was so close to Bobby and the girls that she was almost standing on top of them. Xi'an was beginning to shake. Bobby shared a look with Negasonic; she seemed as terrified as he was. The tenseness of the situation for a moment left Bobby's mind as he realized for the first time he knew exactly what the two girls were feeling and why. It was a feeling he'd been searching for so long since arriving at the Academy that its arrival almost made him stop caring how he'd gotten to it. Almost.

Bobby had been in this sort of situation before and had no illusions about it. Any moment her hand was going to reach over the edge of the console and grab one of them. Bobby's neck was involuntarily tensed awaiting the moment; he realized this about the time he realized they hadn't been found. He edged his around the top of the console and scanned the laboratory.

Frost was gone.

Bobby waited a count of ten and then left cover. Xi'an reached out to stop him but was too slow, grasping only air. Walking in a crouch, Bobby sneaked over to the table, waited and … nothing happen. He began pulling at the restraint on Elizabeth's wrist. She did not turn her head, made no notice at all that anything was happening, except for her eyes drifting over to observe him at their far corners. They moved again, looking at something else; Xi'an and Negasonic and crouch walked over to the table as well.

"You look ridiculous," Bobby smirked. Negasonic just scowled. Bobby was starting to appreciate the look as her natural state.

"What are you doing?" Elizabeth asked. Bobby congratulated himself for not starting this time.

"What are you doing?" Xi'an asked as well.

"Not leaving anyone behind," Bobby said. The first restraint came free and Bobby went to work on the one at her ankle. Whatever qualms she had about his course of action, Elizabeth did not hesitate before reaching over to unstrap her other wrist.

"I can't believe Frost doesn't know we're here," Negasonic said, speaking what they were all wondering.

"I've been blocking her," Elizabeth replied. "I can't do it much longer."

"You're a telepath!" Bobby said, and earned himself a glare from the three girls. "I mean it was obvious from the nature of your attack this morning."

"You don't look like one of them but you sure sound like one," Elizabeth said, eliciting a wounded hey! from Bobby.

"Where'd she go?" he asked, trying to get the ankle buckle undone. It was much thicker and he was having a hard time with it.

Elizabeth quickly dispatched the one around her wrist and sat up, pushing Bobby out of the way. "Talking to the people who run this place, probably finding out what to do about me."

"Frost has a boss?" Negasonic said in disbelief. It was the most human she had ever sounded.

"Everyone has a boss," Elizabeth said and, finished with the last strap, slid off the examination table. Her legs collapsed under her almost immediately. Bobby and Xi'an grabbed her under the arms out of reflex. Elizabeth tried to push them off but her limbs wouldn't cooperate fully.

"You're not getting out of here on your own," Bobby said, and she relented and allowed herself to be supported. She asked Bobby how he was going to get her out. "In fact I was kind of hoping you'd have an idea about that."

"Oh, God," Negasonic said.

"There's a drainage system below this level. It feeds into Danvers River."

Bobby had a sudden intimation of terrified farmers crowded around a river, even more terrified women between them, perched on an ad hoc scaffold with ropes around their necks.

"Is there another option?" he asked. The Guards, Elizabeth responded and Bobby pushed the old witch hunts out of his mind and squared his shoulders to the idea of the river. Let's go is what Bobby wanted to say, his mouth even formed the shapes necessary to do so. Bobby could not tear himself away from the door Frost had gone through.

"Do you know who it is?" Bobby asked, tilting his head towards the interior door. Elizabeth just shook her head, they never came to the school and Elizabeth had never had the guts to try and poke around in Frost's head.

Bobby knew what he was going to do even though he couldn't, maybe even wouldn't put it to words. If he'd said it out loud he'd have had to admit how bad an idea it was. As if he were outside his own body looking down on it he saw himself start to move towards the door.

Negasonic grabbed Bobby's arm to stop him. "What are you doing?"

"Frost said to never be satisfied that we know enough. I'm just doing what Frost said to do. Isn't that the rule here?"

"Now you start to follow the rules?" her words were snarky but for the first time Negasonic's tone seemed genuinely worried. Worried for him, Bobby realized, and his chest involuntarily warmed at the thought.

"I'll be right back," he said.

The lab's inner door rested exactly opposite the exit to the exterior walkway. Bobby wondered how many interior doors the sublevels had; the image of a series of Russian nesting dolls occurred to him, on and on to eternity. Standing on his tiptoes he could just make out the back of Frost's head, seated in front of a bank of monitors but she was blocking the image of whomever she was speaking to.

"What's he doing?" Xi'an asked, watching Bobby squat the door. He was going to eavesdrop on Frost, Negasonic said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Xi'an reacted equally naturally. "He's going to get us caught!"

"No, he's not," Elizabeth said. She closed her eyes and stood motionless but for the veins clearly showing at her temples.

The lock was a standard biometric keypad to Bobby's eye, not too different than what Xavier's used on its lower levels. Simple, but difficult to beat … unless you could control the local temperature. It was easy for Bobby to reduce the temperature around him if he didn't care about leaving a lot of ice lying around everywhere, it was a good bit more difficult if he didn't. Covering the keypad with his hand he concentrated in leaching all the warmth out of the area the size of his palm, picturing the individual molecules in his mind's eye vibrating slower and slower and slower until they came to a near stop – just the way Professor Xavier had taught him.

With a small thunk the door lock released and the door silently slid open. And that's why Star Trek doors are a bad idea in real life.

Frost was still sitting unmoving at the terminal, and Bobby wasn't prepared to do more than stick his head in. From the doorway he still couldn't make out who she was talking to. As much as he wanted to turn back, he wanted to know what they were talking about more. Probably a bad trait in people, he thought.

"… we're still on schedule for the winter solstice when we attempt the—"

"I didn't call for a progress report," the voice on the screen interrupted. A man, Bobby realized, and did his best to try and memorize the voice.

"I'm not giving you one," Frost replied, "I'm keeping us focused on the endgame and not distracted by trivia."

"You have a strange idea of trivia," another voice – a woman's – said. Frost answered to several people? Who were they? Government, like Trask? Something else? "A former student nearly killed you."

Frost turned her head slightly, giving Bobby his first unobstructed look at the monitor. He knew he was close to being seen but couldn't bring himself to move from the door way. It was an older man with a long black ponytail and a permanent smirk on his face.

"That is an exaggeration," Frost said. There was no adjective for it but icy, no matter how lame that sounded in Bobby's head.

"She shouldn't have surprised you like that. These are not results worthy of a Hellfire Club inner member."

"I am aware and –" Frost's voice had picked up the faintest edge and it sounded to Bobby like she'd reached her breaking point when she stopped. Froze, really. She stood and walked slowly back to the doorway, looking around as if searching for something she'd lost.

"Wait," she said.

"Frost," the smirking man said, only he wasn't smirking anymore, "Frost, I'm not done talking to you."

But she was done with him and his words were left to echo off her back. Something was sticking in her mind … something, something, something …

She poked her head around the various pieces of equipment the small room was filled with, but there was nothing there. And yet … Filled with dread by sudden intuition, Frost rushed to the door and keyed in her security code.

Nothing happened. She keyed the code in again, again the door didn't open. The nagging intuition had ceased nagging and was outright screaming at her. Frost opened a panel next to the door and pulled an emergency release handle, forcing the door open. She didn't even try to open it all the way, just enough that she could squeeze out.

The lab was empty.

---

Farouk was waiting for Jamie in front of the school, like it was just a normal day of class. Except that instead of all the other kids he was surrounded by Jamie's dupes, looking down on him with a hungry gaze like a kettle of vultures. Jamie felt put on the spot and, realizing it was on purpose, attempted to set his shoulders and steel himself to his task. It was his first arch-nemesis. He didn't know what to say; he didn't know what Farouk would say.

"Hi Jamie," Farouk said, and waved.

"Hi Farouk," Jamie replied, and waved back. For a moment he contemplated the likelihood of everything going back to the way it had been, going off and having fun and writing the past 24 hours off as a bad dream.

"Did you get what I asked for?" Farouk asked. No, Jamie said. Farouk seemed less angry and more saddened by the reply. "Why? Why?"

Jamie wanted to tell him how it made him feel, listening in on the other kids at the school, the leaden weight in the pit of his stomach which seemed to grow and grow and grow, but he didn't know how to put it into words so he said nothing.

"I've been alone for so long, you don't know," Farouk said and choked a bit on the words, like he was trying to keep tears back. "Everywhere I go it's just me and no one else. I thought maybe you would understand, maybe you'd be the first person who could."

"I do," Jamie said.

"No you don't! No you don't!" Farouk said, advancing and pointing. "You know what being alone is? It's being nothing! If no one sees you then you don't exist. If you understood that you would have done what I asked!"

Farouk smacked himself in the head rapidly several times, like the unpleasant thought was a buzzing insect he could shoo away. Jamie asked where Miss Ororo was.

"She's here," Farouk said and gestured towards the grandstands.

The Jamie's came down from the seats and onto the field. From a distance it looked like a gelatin melting and pooling onto the field before reforming. As they parted they revealed Miss Ororo sitting in the stands in the same posture as the dupes. She also came down, following the dupes as they lined up behind Farouk in a semi-circle.

"Stop what you are doing, right now," Miss Ororo said but Farouk told her to stop talking and she did.

"Don't do that," Jamie said.

"You don't tell me what to do," Farouk said. "I'm the one who tells. I'm the one."

"That's not what being a friend is."

"How do you know? How do you know? Have you ever had anyone?" Farouk asked.

Yes, Jamie replied and Farouk saw him looking at Ororo.

"You know what," Farouk said, and his face lit up, "I've got an idea."

Ororo felt her hands rising. The wind rose with her and single drops of rain fell to the ground at first in scattered droplets and then faster and faster like an army advancing from a walk to run and charging at the enemy.

"Stop this," she said, but no one was listening to her; her voice was lost in the wind. The wind pushed Jamie back a step; he had to put a hand up to keep the water out of his face.

"I thought you were my friend!" he yelled. Even amid the rain he was clearly in tears.

"I thought you were my friend!" Farouk yelled back. All of the other Jamie's yelled with him. It sounded to Ororo like the boys' choir from her youth, but with an unmistakable undercurrent of rage tainting the effect.

"But I don't need a friend like you," Farouk said and pointed at Ororo, "when I've got a friend like her."

Ororo felt the sensation in her stomach when she called the lightening, growing and growing, as the clouds above began to rumble. She rose into the air and looked down at Jamie, growing smaller and smaller beneath her.

"Run, Jamie!" she yelled.

Jamie didn't listen; instead he slapped his right hand to the ground, springing a fresh dupe forward. Ororo's heart swelled with pride, but it didn't last long. Jamie and his dupe charged at Farouk, who put a hand out and grinned smugly as the dupe stopped in its tracks.

"Why do you keep doing that?" Farouk asked. "You know it won't—"

He didn't get a chance to answer. Jamie had not stopped moving, putting all of his inertia behind one strong punch just like Mister Logan had shown them. Blood spurted from Farouk's nose as he collapsed to the rapidly muddying field.

Farouk looked up at Jamie in surprise, like he could not believe he had been hit or perhaps that it had been Jamie who had done it. Jamie was just as surprised; he hadn't fully known what he was going to do until he'd done it. Mister Logan's training had just kicked in. So that's why we do that boring stuff over and over and over again.

Jamie left Farouk behind, running over to where Miss Ororo hovered off the ground. The angry clouds flashing above her looked like a halo as Jamie looked up at her. She started to move higher up. Jamie stamped downwards creating another dupe beneath him. The new dupe stood up and pushed with his arms, launching Jamie upwards where he clung to Miss Ororo's foot.

"Miss Ororo, please come down," Jamie said.

She looked down at him in sadness and then her eyes went white and the clouds clashed again. She lifted her foot and kicked downwards.

"Please!" Jamie called. Miss Ororo kicked again and Jamie lost his grip on the slippery leather of her boot. He fell to the ground below, knocking the wind from his lungs. Her hands raised above her head, hair blowing wild in the wind and lightening sparking in the clouds she no longer looked someone wearing a halo; she looked like the other thing. Jamie said please again.

"Please," Farouk's voice mocked him from behind.

Jamie looked back at Farouk. He was standing in exactly the same posture as Miss Ororo, moving her like a puppet. The rain came down harder and harder; the muddy field was looking less like a muddy field and more like a lake.

"Jamie," Ororo said. He didn't notice immediately, so fixated on the other boy, and she had to repeat it. "Jamie! Run!"

She didn't have to repeat it a second time; Jamie broke for the school. He could feel the thunder before he heard it. He could hear the feet of his other dupes chasing after him. The wind was whipping the rain into his face like little stinging pebbles; he put an arm up to shield himself and could no longer see where he was going. Sprinting towards the school he went for the first window he could find and pulled on it but it was locked fast. He slapped one hand against the pane, popping another Jamie onto the other side. The sheer number of dupes now was making him dizzy; he'd always wondered how many he could create but had never really tested his limits. The new Jamie opened the school window.

"Head down the east hallway, try to draw their attention," Jamie said, closing the window and relocking it just as one of his dupes reached it. A group of angry Jamie's stared at him before racing for the front of the building.

"I won't let you down," the new new dupe said and disappeared.

Jamie ran from the dupes with only the vaguest idea about losing them in the bowels so that he could face Farouk one on one. He turned down one hallway and then another and entered a classroom at random only to find a group of dupes waiting for him.

"We always know," one of them said.

They jumped at him and dove to the ground under one of the desks. Standing up quickly he created several more dupes which created enough pressure to lift the desk and the Jamie's atop it into the air and send them flying. The two oceans of Jamie's collided together like angry waves, turning the room into a dervish of fists and feet. Jamie pushed and bit his way to the door and out, leaving the fighting dupes behind. Realizing he was closer to the back of the building than the front he changed his plan and turned left, heading down the hallway towards the gym. His maneuver in the classroom had not created enough of a distraction, already more footsteps were chasing after him. In the dark, being followed close behind and the wind howling without the school had become truly sinister in a way it had never seemed to Jamie before. He wondered if he would ever be able to return to it.

He could feel the dupes closing in but his lead was too great, the gym door was right ahead of him. He burst through it and almost stopped – Miss Ororo was waiting for him. She'd gathered her rain clouds in the high ceiling of the gym and it was pouring rain onto the epoxy floor. Miss Ororo gestured at him and Jamie recognized the movement from Danger Room sessions, it was the way she would call her mini-tornados to push an opponent away.

Dropping to his knees, Jamie let the water and his momentum slide him between her legs. He popped up the other side; the other Jamie's were less fortunate. Miss Ororo's miniature wind storm had lifted several of them from their feet, flinging them into the others and driving the group en masse against the gym's far wall.

Turning with a snarl she flung an arm towards Jamie and the wind responded, picking up one of the dupes and hurling him across the gym with a hey! Jamie felt him coming and broke to the right, letting the dupe sail past and through the double doors leading to the hallway beyond. Jamie burst out the open doors, over the dupe still gathering his wits on the floor and across the hallway into the cafeteria. He knew Ororo was close behind even before the lunch tables were wrenched from the floor with a howl (and were certainly headed towards him).

Using one of the tables still planted at the back of the room, Jamie leapt for the metal opening to the kitchen area, sliding across the stainless steel top and pulling the metal shutters down behind him, closing the kitchen off. The flying lunch tables thunked one after another into it and the wall around.

Jamie didn't wait to see what would come next. He charged across the kitchen, sliding over one counter top, rolling under another, until he got to the door on the other side leading to the practice fields at the rear of the school used by Bayville High's JV team. The junior high was no longer allowed to have a football team after the great bus roll of '01. Jamie wasn't sure what he would do out there but he was certain distance was his friend.

Coming out the door, he was completely dry – whatever Miss Ororo was doing to the weather she had limited it to just the area of the school. The control required must have been incredible. The practice football field with its chain link fence was the closest barrier so he headed for it. With no time to worry about consequences he hit the fence at full tilt, creating another dupe. "Give me a leg up," he said.

The dupe nodded and he interlocked his fingers into a stirrup for Jamie's left foot and propelling him up to the top of the fence. Jamie levered himself over the top but the drop down was higher than he had thought.

"Don't worry, I've got you," the new dupe said. He'd climbed up to the top as well. Jamie took the dupe's outstretched hand and let himself be lowered down to the ground. Jamie was about to drop down over the other side of the fence when the hand holding him turned and his gripped his wrist. Jamie looked up at the now familiar view of his own face twisted and darkened.

"No you don't," the new dupe said. Jamie twisted his shoulders enough to straighten his arm and slip out of his jacket, leaving the dupe holding the empty coat. Landing he had a full view of the side parking lot and the car tumbling towards him, the creak of metal scraping against metal, scraping against turf.

Jamie ran and dived, covering himself with mud as the car crashed through the fence, leaving a gaping hole in the chain link and sending the dupe sitting atop it flying. Miss Ororo, who had been pushing it with a focused gust of wind, walked through hole, followed by the reduced army of dupes, though Farouk was still nowhere in sight.

So much for breathing room, Jamie thought.

He took off immediately for the grandstands. Clouds gathered overhead and began to intertwine, light dancing inside, pulsing like a heart coming to life. Lightning darted down from the sky, scorching the football field and throwing up clumps of sod. Jamie ran a zig zag pattern at random, as he'd been taught, to make himself a more difficult target. Reaching the grand stands he jumped for the first row of seats, leaping from seat to seat like it was a set up steps for a giant. His chest was heaving, he thought his heart would leap out of it.

The lightning bolts followed Jamie up the grandstand; they were so close he could feel the hair on the back of his neck sizzling. He dropped down under one row of seats and down into the underbelly of the stands, dropping to the muddy ground beneath. The lightning continued to search for him through the obstruction of the seats; Jamie could smell acrid smoke as the stands caught fire. He raced away from the flames and the lancing fingers of electricity. Miss Ororo was waiting at the far end, eyes white, silver hair flowing and lifted by the wind she created. She looked terrifying.

"I told you to run!" she said.

Jamie could hear the wood above snapping and crackling as the flames spread; he didn't need to look up at them to see them bending and dipping and know what trouble they were in. He took a deliberate step backwards. Ororo advanced.

"I wanted to but I can't," he said.

"You never do what I tell you," she scolded and advanced.

"Mi ni tanoshimi o takamazu," Jamie said.

Miss Ororo stopped and blinked at him and for a moment seemed her old self as if that had sparked something deep within. "What did you say?"

Jamie took another step backwards; Ororo took one forwards.

"What was that? What does that mean?" she asked, more questioning than threatening.

"It means I have to do this," Jamie said. A section of seats above buckled and collapsed, landing on Miss Ororo and driving her to the ground with an oof!

Jamie raced to her, taking a limp arm and trying to pull her out but the weight of the splintered wood and aluminum was too great. He stamped his foot on the ground once, twice, ten times and the army Jamie's he created was enough to lift the destroyed seats off her. They had jointly pulled her out when the inevitable happened. A dozen hands reached down and grabbed him.

Jamie struggled, trying to keep the hands off of him and simultaneously forcing a new set of dupes from emerging as he was bashed about from post to post. With each impact it became more and more difficult: Jamie faces and arms and legs began to sprout from him before he pulled them back in. With each reabsorption his head pounded worse and worse and he began to fill sick to his stomach. His legs buckled and he fell to a knee.

He felt all the small hands lift him up and carry him out of the burning stands and smoke onto the practice field itself, before setting him on the ground in front of Farouk.

"You are so much trouble," Farouk said.

"I get that a lot," Jamie said.

Another group of dupe dropped Miss Ororo on the ground nearby. Farouk pointed at her.

"I mean look what you did to your teacher." Ororo groaned and lifted her head slightly; Farouk grinned, "What do you have to say to him?"

"Jamie, run," Miss Ororo said but this time her eyes remained her own and Jamie was not afraid. A small arc of lightning came down again but this time aimed at Farouk who jumped away and muddied himself. Instead it struck the base of the goal post, knocking it over and into the muddy water filling the field.

"That was not friendly!" Farouk yelled jumping up. "You are not a friendly person!"

"You're slipping," Jamie said.

Miss Ororo gestured again but the last bolt seemed to have taken all that remained of her strength. The clouds stayed silent and after a moment her arm dropped. The Jamie dupes, cowering during the show of force, converged on her, holding her arms and legs so that she couldn't try again.

"This is all your fault, you know," Farouk said. "If you'd just done as I asked none of this would have happened."

Jamie looked at the goal post near him, saw it resting in the water and tried desperately to remember Professor Beast's lessons about conductivity.

"That's not my problem," Jamie said.

"I'll make it your problem," Farouk snarled and pointed at Ororo. As he did, Jamie took a step towards the puddle. Small hands grasped at Ororo, grabbing at her hair, arms, legs, pulling her apart. Ororo screamed.

"Okay!" Jamie screamed. "Okay, okay, okay!"

Farouk gestured at the dupes again and Jamie took another step. The dupes let Miss Ororo go.

"I still want us to be friends again," Farouk said. "You can start by bringing the rest of your school to me."

"Sure, whatever you say," Jamie answered, and inched towards the puddle another step.

"I don't think you mean it," Farouk said.

"Because I don't," Jamie replied, and put his hand into the puddle. His teeth clenched involuntarily which was the only thing that kept him from screaming out in pain. He couldn't guess what the electrical current surging through his body was doing but he figured it must have been pretty bad by the way the his other dupes all grabbed their heads and collapsed to the ground. They only did that when he was in real pain.

"Stop!" Farouk yelled, and pushed Jamie out of the puddle. The two of them shot apart as if opposing magnetic poles.

Jamie's muscle's screamed at him as he lay on the ground. He was able to lift his head just enough to see Farouk and his dupes laying on the ground as well. Jamie smiled in victory, and then blacked out.

---

The tunnels were pitch black and despite the depth of her bag of tricks, Xi'an had not thought to bring a flashlight.

"Are we lost?" she asked.

Besides the darkness, the tunnels were a maze all on their own.

"I'm not going to sugar coat it," Bobby said. "There's only a 70% chance I can get us out."

"We're lost," Negasonic said.

"They'll never find us down here," Xi'an said, more to herself than anyone else. "They won't find us and we'll gradually starve to death … or be reduced to cannibalism and THEN starve to death …"

Bobby decided it was best not to dig too deep into that minefield, instead focusing on getting out of the current predicament.

"Or worse," Elizabeth said. "Frost is here."

Everyone froze, like guilty children who'd heard the front door open and realized there was no way to hide the evidence of their activities before they were discovered; only luck could deliver them.

They waited … and waited … and waited …

"Elizabeth?" Frost's voice echoed down the tunnels. None of them could tell where it was coming from.

"She's going to find us," Negasonic said.

"She doesn't know where we are yet," Bobby countered. "That's why she's calling out."

That did not appease Negasonic who began to pace back and forth in the tunnel, alternately talking to herself and the others but not really talking to others. One part of Bobby wondered what it was about Frost that could reduce such seemingly strong individuals to these responses. A different part remembered the white room with its lonely chair and decided it was best not to think about it anymore. As before with Xi'an, Bobby decided to wait for Negasonic to stop, only she wasn't stopping.

"She's going to find us, she's going to find us and she's going to put us in the chair and then she's going to do that—" she pointed forcefully at Elizabeth "—to us and then we'll never have a future and we'll just be here forever!"

There was no doubt about it; Negasonic was freaking out. Bobby grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to get her attention on anything other than her thoughts. It was strange enough that she did in fact look at him though her eyes remained wide and dilated.

"Look, Negasonic." He had to stop at that. "Sorry, I can't get that out. What is your name?"

"That is my name!"

"It's Effie," Xi'an offered.

Negasonic crossed her arms and sulked. "I hate that name."

Bobby asked why, thinking it was actually kind of pretty. Negasonic stabbed him in the chest with one long index finger. "I will blow us all up," she said.

"At least that's progress from a minute ago," he said. How? Xi'an asked but Bobby shushed her. "I know you're scared."

"I am not – !"

"We all are," Bobby said. "I know I am. And the only way we're getting out of this is if we work together and keep our heads."

"Is that what you learned at the Xavier school," she asked.

"Yeah it is." No one said anything else for several moments. Bobby knew (he wasn't sure how he knew, but he knew) if he tried to push too much they'd all run off and they'd lose whatever chance they had. He quietly held his breath.

"I am not scared," Negasonic said at last.

"Quiet, I've got to concentrate," Bobby said, trying to hold the image of the underground labyrinth in his head. The sewer system hadn't been on them, but they conformed closely enough to the sublevels that Bobby could make some guess as to where they were relative to the outside.

Which doesn't tell me where an exit will be, but we'll deal with that when we have to.

"We're about … 100 meters from the eastern edge of the sublevel structure, and a bit further from any of the other edges. If we continue to the closest wall we can reduce our search to that area, we'll either find an outflow or mark that section off."

"Assuming there is an outflow," Negasonic said. Bobby reminded her that the water in the tunnels had to be draining somewhere even if echoes made it hard to determine where.

"And it's going that way," he said pointing down one of the side tunnels. He took off before any of the others could say anything, trusting they would follow him from instinct as much as anything else. Their best bet was to keep moving, to try and outrun second thoughts.

The flowing water twisted and turned through the tunnels and a part of Bobby's mind tried to warn him that he'd gone off his internal map and was going to have real trouble finding his way back to it again. A larger part of his mind told the smaller part to shut up, that he knew what he was doing and it was all going to be fine.

The tunnel ended in a wall. The water disappeared through a grate on the floor.

"Who builds an underground exit tunnel with no exit?" Bobby wondered out loud.

"Who builds an underground tunnel?" Negasonic answered.

"People with something to hide," Bobby said, thinking of the underground tunnels under the Xavier Institute and for a moment wondering how similar Professor Xavier really was to Doctor Frost. He pushed that away and realized Xi'an was saying something. He asked her to repeat it."

"I said, 'this was your genius plan'," Xi'an said again.

"I'm working on it," Bobby said. "This isn't enough for everything the school is using. There must be a larger outflow somewhere else."

None of which would matter of Frost really was down in the tunnels, and the longer they were down there the more likely it became that she would hone in on them. She did not strike Bobby as someone who gave up easily. Inspiration to burst on him like a rain cloud.

The purple girl had been so quiet since they'd left the lab he kept forgetting she was there, especially when he was busy sparring with Negasonic. He walked past Negasonic and planted himself in front of the girl to make sure he had her attention. "Elizabeth … it is Elizabeth, right?"

"Betsy," Elizabeth said at last. "Everybody calls me Betsy."

"Cool. I'm Bobby, this is Xi'an," he said pointing to his left, and then to his right. "And this is Effie."

"Don't – never mind."

"We're in a bad spot here," Bobby said. "We're, and I can't emphasize this enough, not lost but it's going to take some doing to get out and if Frost finds us before we do we're all toast."

"I can't beat her," Betsy replied, defeated. "I've tried but … I can't."

"Not fight her," Bobby said, "confuse her."

"How's that?" Betsy asked.

"How's that?" Negasonic echoed.

"We don't need to fight Frost, we just need to stop her from finding us long enough to find a way out. Stop her from seeing us."

There was an intake of breath from somewhere but Bobby ignored it, putting all of his focus on the lost girl in purple standing in front of him. He put all of his willpower into not saying anything no matter how much he wanted to (and he really, really wanted to) as she

"I can help," Xi'an said, breaking Bobby and Betsy out of their respective reveries.

"I thought you couldn't do that?" Bobby said. "Read minds."

"I can't, not by myself, but I can help."

"I've seen Professor Xavier at my old school do this a bunch of times," Bobby said. Copying a move he'd seen Scott pull many times, Bobby placed one hand on Betsy's shoulder. She looked at him in surprise. "I know you can do it, too."

"I hear something," Negasonic interrupted, now her eyes wide and white in the darkness. Bobby wondered what he looked like.

"Don't move," Bobby whispered. "Don't even breath." Negasonic did not reply, merely nodded. The group backed themselves together and froze. Bobby wondered idly at the irony of the word and then forced himself to focus on the moment, to calm even his breathing, reducing the in-out of lungs so barely any noise came from him, the way Logan had showed him. It was the first time he'd thought of the teacher since coming the school; how quickly he'd adapted to his new surroundings, become acclimated to him. It made his old life at the Institute seem almost a dream, one he was awake from now. He wondered what the girls were thinking and if it was along similar lines.

Bobby was so focused on remaining still that it took him a moment to realize Frost was standing just a few feet from them. He was so shocked he didn't even consider moving.

"There's no reason for you to run from me," Frost said. "There's nothing outside these walls that won't try to kill you, and nothing inside them that won't try and save you."

She had turned around as she spoke, casting her words at all of the walls and clearly not sure where her quarry was. She was also alone, Bobby noted, she hadn't brought any of her Hellions with her. Because she doesn't want anyone to know what she's doing, Bobby realized. Frost took a step forward, towards Bobby and the others. On reflex he took a slow step back, trying to keep the distance between them unchanged. He thought he could sense the girls doing the same but didn't want to look away from Frost to check just in case that somehow tipped her off.

Frost took another step forward (and Bobby another back) and a small shaft of light from somewhere above struck her, just enough for Bobby to get a good view of her. She had transformed but in such a manner Bobby was hard pressed to describe it to himself. On the surface she looked the same, but the cold serenity he always connected to her was clearly gone. The corner of her lips curled slightly, giving Bobby the unerring impression of a snarling animal. It was a Frost who was clearly not happy.

"I'll never stop looking for you. Never," she said. "The fact that I'm down here … in the sewers … should be proof of that."

Bobby spared a glance at Betsy, saw her standing with her eyes closed, a hand to her temple the way Jean often stood. Xi'an was behind her, eyes also closed, her hand on Betsy's shoulder now, just where Bobby's had been. Frost took another step forward; Bobby and Negasonic took another back. The dance continued several more times until Frost stopped and grimaced, as if a terrible thought had just occurred to her.

"I'm wasting my time," she said, and stomped off down the tunnel. In a burst of inspiration Bobby followed her, dragging the others along with hm.

"What are you doing?!" Negasonic whispered. "We need to get away from her!"

"I think she thinks we left already," Bobby said. "If I were her I'd be checking on the exit, seeing if it were true."

Negasonic wanted to say what a stupid idea that was but Bobby's stride was longer than hers and she would have had to raise her voice more than she wanted. Instead she followed along after him and cursed herself for it.

It was difficult to keep up with Frost and Bobby had to keep increasing his speed, trying not to make too much noise but gradually becoming more afraid of losing sight of his tall, white stalking deer. He had a vague image of a ghost flittering through the sewer tunnels, and himself vainly chasing after it forever and ever but never catching it. Maybe we will have to resort to cannibalism, he thought idly. In that moment Frost rounded a corner and out of sight. He increased his pace, trying to catch up before she got permanently out of sight. He rounded the corner and there was the exit, a large circle cut into sheer rock face where the tunnel ended. A large grate filled the opening, bars wide enough to allow the water to flow out and into the Danvers River below, but far too narrow for a human or mutant to pass through. Beyond the bars the moon loomed clear over the landscape. Clear enough to light the end of the tunnel brighter than any other part of the labyrinth. Bright enough to make it undeniable that Frost was not anywhere in sight.

The three girls rounded the corner with him. Bobby saw them to start to exclaim at the sight of the exit and quickly brought a finger to his lips, urging silence. It worked and, after he was sure they wouldn't give themselves away, pointed to fingers at his eyes and then around the tunnel. After a moment of swinging their heads back and forth he was certain they'd figured out the Frost problem also.

Bobby was plotting how to post sentries at the corners and keep an eye out for Frost while he jimmied the grate open when she spoke to them. It wasn't the reverberating echo of before but low and quiet and right next to his ear.

"I know you're here," she said. It took everything Bobby had not gasp in surprise. Betsy slapped a hand over his mouth and drew him to one of the walls of the tunnel. Xi'an and Negasonic followed them.

Frost stepped forward into the light of the moon. It was only when she turned her head away from the four them and stepped tentatively towards the opposite wall of the tunnel that Bobby realized Betsy was still blocking her, at least a little.

"There's no reason to hide, I'm not angry at you," she said. Bobby did not believe her. "Remember what I told you when you came to me."

Bobby wondered if she was talking to Elizabeth or himself. He wondered if she could tell he was there. I hope not.

"This is the only place you will ever belong. This is the only place where people will understand you. Whatever it is you think you're looking for, you're not going to find it out there."

She turned back towards them and strode forward, her steps more confident now. She knows, she knows, she knows, Betsy's voice said in Bobby's head. He wasn't sure if he was imagining it or if she was actually projecting. Frost was so close to them Bobby could see the intricate snowflake designs woven into her coat. His instinct to run or fight was overpowering. Instead he stood unmoving, practically looking Frost in the eye. Suck it, Cannon, he thought.

"Believe it or not, even I have my limits," Frost said. "The only way I can protect you … the only way I can protect any of us … is if you stay here."

Bobby looked at the girls out of the corner of his eyes, hoping they didn't bolt as well. Betsy was trembling slightly, her fingers practically digging into her head as she concentrated. A thin stream of blood was emanating from her nose. Xi'an was in a similar position only the blood was coming from her tear ducts. It reminded Bobby of the reliefs at church when he was little.

Frost had closed her ideas, her delicate brows knitting together ever so slightly; it was the only external sign of any effort on her part. On a whim Bobby reached out and grabbed Betsy's hand. After a moment Negasonic did the same for Xi'an, and Bobby took Negasonic's. Pin pricks began to tickle the back of his head, gradually increasing to a full blown migraine. He wondered what Xi'an and Betsy were feeling and thought if it was even a tenth of what he was getting he didn't know how they could stand it.

"This is your last chance," Frost said. "After this it's out of my hands. The powers that be will not let you wander out in the wilderness alone. They do not believe in risk of any sort, as foolish as that sounds. But there's nothing more dangerous than a fool."

Bobby wasn't sure if the concern he thought he heard in her voice was real or if he was just imagining it. A lot of that was because the pounding of the migraine was getting worse and worse.

"I'll promise you this, my door will always be open to you. If you come back, we'll never speak of this again," Frost said, and now Bobby was sure the sadness was real. "And if you don't … if you don't, then I'll know the hounds got you."

Frost was inches from them now as the four young mutants pressed themselves up against the wall of the tunnel, trying to will themselves flat. If Frost had leaned even slightly forward she would have run right into them. The pressure in Bobby's head was so intense he could feel tears starting to run down his face. Betsy's fingers had turned to claws in his hand, digging into the meat of his palm. At some point it would be too much, one of them would break, and Bobby was sure it would be him.

Then the pressure lifted, and was gone. Frost's face could have been carved from marble. At least until she scowled and stamped her foot in the water with loud "Damn!"

They waited as Frost stomped off into the darkness and then they waited and waited and waited some more. Eventually it was clear that she really wasn't coming back this time. They collapsed into the murky water and cold iron of the tunnel, too drained to do more than lie there for long minutes.

"Now let's get you out of here," Bobby said at last, breaking the tension.

"You should come with me," Betsy said. To Bobby's surprise Xi'an agreed.

"Where are you going?" Negasonic asked. Betsy admitted she didn't know. "That's not a great answer."

"We can't go," Bobby said. "We've still go things to do here."

"You don't really want to go back up there?" Xi'an said. "After what we saw her do?"

"We have to go back there because of what we saw her do," Bobby said.

"He's right," Negasonic said. Bobby asked if he'd heard correctly. "I'm not repeating it."

"You, too?" Betsy asked. After a noticeable pause Xi'an nodded. She did not look happy about it.

"We still have to get through that," Negasonic interrupted, waving at the gate. "Or you're going nowhere."

"Leave that to me," Bobby grinned, rubbing his hands. All three girls chimed in with a simultaneous Oh, God. He was getting used to it.

Focusing on the point where the metal met the rock face Bobby began lowering the temperature and, once ice crystals began to form on their own, adding to it with his own ice, pushing at the slim gap between the grate and cliff and causing rock chips to fall from it. He added to the pressure but creating a pair of ice pillars which reached the grate just under its mid-point, placing extra pressure on the upper region.

Though the girls were shivering by this point with their breath plainly visible in the night air, beads of sweat had coalesced on Bobby's forehead from the concentration involved. Pushing upwards with the ice pillars, the grate shook until finally the rock cracked and the gate came down onto the pillars which held the metalwork in place.

"That was actually impressive," Xi'an allowed.

"Milady," Bobby said, gesturing and bowing like a maitre'd as Betsy walked past and out into the night air. Negasonic hit him on the back of the head.

"Don't ruin it," she said.

Betsy stood out in the night air, the full moon casting everything in a tranquil light. It did not seem to fit what she had just been through. Behind here the three students stood the same as before, as if waiting for something to happen and unaware that it already had. Betsy looked at the grate, still ajar.

"You're not going to just leave it like that, are you?" Betsy asked.

Bobby's smile dropped slightly as he was, in fact, going to leave it like that. But once he'd heard the tone of Betsy's voice he realized what a bad idea that would likely be. His smile quickly reappeared, hopefully too quickly for any of the others to have noticed.

"Of course not," Bobby said.

Re-freezing the pillars (and causing Xi'an and Negasonic to finally leap out of the remaining waste water and hold onto the side of the tunnel for dear life), Bobby lifted the grate back into place. With care and deliberation he filled the crevices in with packed earth and ice muddied enough that short of close examination it wouldn't be readily apparent they'd been replaced. It was a tricked he'd tried twice at the mansion and though Wolverine had seen through it immediately both times Bobby was still certain the theory was sound.

"They'll never even know we were here," Bobby said, rubbing his hands with satisfaction.

The grate trembled and fell out of place, landing at Betsy's feet.

"For a while," Bobby added. "They won't know for a while."

"It's okay," Betsy's replied.

She turned to go but Bobby stopped her on a sudden institution. "If you need any help go the Xavier School in Bayville. They can protect you."

"No one can protect us from what's coming," Betsy said. "Be careful, all of you. You don't know how much danger you're in, staying here."

Then she ran off into the night and was gone.

"That was ominous," Bobby said. "I mean that was textbook ominous."

"C'mon," Negasonic said, pulling on his elbow. The three students splashed off down the sewer tunnels, disappearing into their own darkness.

---

The pool of water Jamie's face was partially dipped into woke him up, giving him an unobstructed view of Farouk's shoes. He looked up; Farouk had clearly awoken and gotten to his feet first.

"Why did you do that?" he asked. He sounded genuinely concerned, even fearful. "You could have hurt yourself."

"I think I did," Jamie said. He was trying to push himself up to at least sitting but his arms weren't listening to his brain very well. Before he could collapse again, several hands grasped his arms and lifted him up. He was surprised to see his dupes still walking around on their own; he thought his own bout of unconscious ness would cause them to automatically re-absorb; it usually did. Farouk's control was getting stronger and stronger the longer he held onto them.

"This is getting out of hand," Farouk said, and Jamie couldn't help but agree. "If you keep fighting me you're going to get killed."

"You started it."

Farouk's face hardened. "Don't you have something to say to me?"

"Let Miss Ororo go," Jamie replied. He saw her, slumped on the ground some distance away; he couldn't tell if she was breathing. He hoped she was.

That was apparently the wrong thing to say as Farouk's face clouded again and he began stomping in a strange circle around the field.

"No, no, no!" Farouk raged. "You're supposed to listen to me! You're all supposed to listen to me!"

"I'm listening," Jamie said.

"Then why don't you do what I want?" Farouk asked and Jamie noticed he was more whiney than menacing.

"Why don't you make me," Jamie said.

Farouk thought about it. "Alright, I will."

He put both hands on Jamie's head and every muscle in Jamie's body seized again; it was like the puddle, but worse. Jamie found himself looking into Farouk's great, dark pools of eyes, unable to turn away. He was falling in, falling, falling, falling …

Hate. Hate, hate, and all he could think of was the door closing behind his father that last time. Ever since the quiet thunk of a door closing tightened his stomach and brought bile to the back of his throat before Jamie could tamp it down. Once Rhane had been the closer and when she'd asked him a question he'd yelled at her so badly she'd actually run off. And Rhane didn't run from anyone.

But that wasn't what he felt at the time, Jamie remembered. He'd been confused, not sure what his father was saying, remembering the last time his dad had talked to him like that, on the first day of school. He couldn't remember the words anymore, they'd already blurred into something deeper, a feeling of warmth, an enveloping love for life and everything in it, the excitement at how new and wonderful everything was.

His father had asked … what was it … had asked if he'd been excited and he'd said yes, that he was going to meet so many new people and they would all be his friends and his father had said, had said …

Remember this, hold it tight, and never let anyone take it away.

Farouk let go of Jamie, pulling his hands back like they'd been scalded.

"What is that?" he asked, his face screwed up in something like a mix between nausea and fear.

"That's … what … you … wanted …" Jamie got out. Farouk accused Jamie of trying to trick him.

"I'm not the one who does that," Jamie responded. "You wanted to know everything about me; now you do."

"No one think's like that, believes in that," Farouk sneered. "I've known people all over the world since before there were people and no one is that naïve."

"I don't know what that means," Jamie said. "But if that's what you think then maybe that's why you're so alone."

Farouk clapped his hand harder on Jamie's forehead.

"I'll show you you're just like me," Farouk said but for the first time the command in his voice faltered. "Let go of it!"

"You can't make me," Jamie replied and deeper realization set in. "You can't make me."

That seemed to incense Farouk even more and he increased the pressure. Jamie thought his head was going to explode.

"I can," he said. "I'm everywhere. I'm everyone. Where ever hate is, I am. Now let go!"

Jamie closed his eyes to the pain, tried to recall his father's face one more time, but the feeling had flitted away. He chased after, back in his back yard, hand outstretched trying to catch a leaf blowing on the wind. It drifted further and further away … and then he had it.

No matter what happen, never let go of that.

"I'll never let go of that," Jamie said.

"You do what I tell you!" Farouk's face twisted up into its cartoony rigor mask, the one that had startled and scared Jamie so when he'd been trapped in the tree. His chest didn't tighten this time but instead relaxed, fear letting go of him. Something of what he was feeling must have been evident on Jamie's own face. Farouk pushed the dupe holding Jamie aside and pulled his own fist back to hit Jamie.

"Don't do that," Jamie said.

Farouk's fist never landed. One of the nearby dupes caught it with both of his hands and held it tight.

"Don't do that," the dupe said with Jamie's voice.

Farouk shook his arm, trying to get the dupe off. When it became clear that wasn't going to work he tried to push the dupe away with his free arm only to find yet another dupe had grabbed that arm and was holding it back. Jamie had a powerful recollection of a story his parents used to read to him about a rabbit trying to punch his doppelganger and getting more and more stuck to it.

"He said don't do that," the second dupe scolded.

Jamie stood and advanced. The dupes had the good grace to look ashamed and parted like the sea before Moses as Jamie.

"Go check on Miss Ororo," Jamie said and the dupes scattered, leaving he and Farouk alone. "And you need to get out of her, and anyone else you've messed with."

"You don't know what it's like," Farouk said. Jamie spun when his own voice said behind him, "You don't know how lonely it is."

A handful of dupes were returning to the field, crawling out of the burning wreckage of the bandstand or out from under debris, the remaining detritus of the fight still speaking Farouk's words. Jamie wasn't afraid of any of them.

"That doesn't matter," Jamie said as the dupes lined up behind Farouk. "It's time for you to go."

"Please," Farouk said and now only a handful of voices spoke with him. The rage had turned plaintive, afraid. "I don't have anywhere to go."

"I said get out."

Jamie advanced on Farouk, repeating the phrase over and over again. Farouk's face had dropped its snarl, replacing it with wide eyes and gibbering. He backed up into the dupes that had been supporting him and was pushed away like a pinball hitting a wall of bumpers. He bounced into another Jamie who shoved him into another who swatted him away, all telling him to go away. With a last shove he fell to the ground, crashing into a muddy puddle. The circle of Jamie's parted, letting the real McCoy in to stand above his fallen rival.

"You think you're so big," Farouk complained from the ground, but made no more move to get up. All of his menace was gone.

"No, I think you're so small," Jamie responded. "You didn't have to be, but you are."

A group of dupes returned carried Ororo to Jamie and layed her gingerly down onto the ground. Jamie called all of the dupes to himself and reabsorbed them.

"What else was I going to do?" Farouk asked and reached a hand up. "Please help me up."

Jamie looked at the hand and thought about swatting it away. One more time the thought of his father's words came to him and his heart softened and he started to reach out to Farouk, but the moment had passed. Farouk's hand was gone. He vanished, his last wail merging with the wind still whipping about the school.

Jamie stood triumphant and then, for the second time that night, he passed out.

---

Despite what he had said earlier, Bobby thought seriously about leaving the Massachusetts Academy, or at least about being 'sick' for a day or two to avoid the other students. Walking into the lunch room he paused for a second at the door as his stomach swooped and dove, but no one noticed him. He was once again safely anonymous.

Xi'an and Negasonic were sitting on different sides of the room, each with their normal groups of friends (in Xi'an's case) and comrades (in Negasonic's) appearing no different than any other day. But it was a new day and there could be no avoiding it, Bobby realized.

This greater awareness caught Bobby by surprise, along with a sense of loss as if he were leaving something precious behind. Even under the stress of facing the Sentinels and Apocalypse he'd never really given up his outlook that all things would turn out as they should and everyone should just enjoy it. He wished more than anything he could get that feeling back, but knew it was futile.

He caught Xi'An and Negasonic's eyes for the briefest of moments but made no comments to them or even acknowledgement of their presence. Nor did he receive any. But that was fine; he didn't need to.

Bobby found an empty seat by himself on the opposite side of the cafeteria and sat down.

---

Jamie opened his eyes, looked around cautiously, felt his chest and arms. He refused to jump to conclusions but he was fairly sure he was still alive.

The Jamie's helped Ororo to her feet. Even if she hadn't stretched her powers to point of exhaustion she might not have been able to stand on her own. Her mind was too busy trying to process what had happened.

"Are you all right, Ms. Ororo?" Jamie said, vanishing his dupes.

"I'm … no, but I will recover." She put her hands on either side of Jamie's face. "I want you to do something for me, Jamie. Those words your father said to you? Never forget them."

"I won't, I promise. Can you do something for me?" She nodded. "Can you not tell anyone about any of this?"

At that moment the burning bandstand collapsed in on itself.

"Yes," Ororo said. "I think I can manage that."

She called the rains one last time to douse the remaining embers before she and Jamie left. The sparks from the dying flames drifted up into night sky and faded like falling stars.

---

[text of "The Unseen Playmate" by Robert Louis Stevenson]

Next: "Sins of the Father"