Chapter 3

When the police found her, she confessed to everything. She told them about the black fog and the 5 men that had seemingly disappeared. She confessed to hurting Amy, to the pain, to every twisted thing that had happened. They hadn't believed her. For weeks she tried to confess her parents of the same. They pinned her ravings to trauma and hysteria. Finally, when Amy died of her injuries, they signed her up for therapeutic counseling. Her headaches got worse, her whole body would ache, pained by the burden of what it concealed. Small things began disappearing. Bids rabbits and even the family cat eventually went missing. The Frank house became a place of desolation where wildlife dare not go. The entire time, Melanie cried sobbing as though her heart was breaking apart. To her it was. When questioned about the disappearing animals, she again confessed to everything. Assuming that weekly counseling wasn't enough and at their wits end at what to do, her parents enrolled her in a mental ward in Denver.

"I'm sorry!" she had cried as men in white suits carried suitcases of clothing from her house. "Please don't. I need you!"
"What you need is help, sweetie." Her mother had smiled through tears. "And we just don't know how to help you."

She learned that her parents had made her a ward of the state in order to give her to the Psychiatric hospital. She had no parents, no family, and no home. At 14 years old, she was completely alone. The first nights were the worst. Animal noises, laughter, crazed sobbing all became sounds as natural to Melanie Frank as school bells or the sounds of her parents voices had once been. After a few months, the insanity of the other patients stopped bothering her. Instead her mind obsessed itself with the pain. Her heart would clench and her fingers would shake. Every bone in her body would splinter, every nerve would fray. At least, that was how it felt. One day she woke up screaming in agony, and despite the efforts of the doctors, she didn't stop until they sedated her 5 hours later.

No one really knew when the doctors and nurses first started disappearing. The other patients wouldn't go near "the cursed one" but they jabbered endlessly about how this doctor or that nurse had tried to give the cursed one her medicine or how they had gone into her room for something and had never come out. The substance within her had become so hungry that the only way to stop the pain was to release it from her body. She watched it consume four or five people at that hospital, calling it back to her after every time. That had been the only control she had seemed to have over it, the ability to keep it inside her, and the ability to call it back to her. Granted this was not easy. Each day she sat tensely in her room, feeling her muscles bind and ache. More than once, she fainted from the pain.

But worse than keeping the thing inside her body and feeling it tear at her from the inside was calling it back to her once it had escaped. Every living thing it touched it devoured and it didn't want to go back to its host body. To pull it back required more physical and mental force than the girl had and she would collapse after wards, drained of all energy. Eventually, the bouts of unconsciousness stopped.

This place of whitewashed walls and shrieking, laughing inmates was where Charles Xavier and the Telepathic Enhancement Device known as CEREBRO found her. Her door opened and she looked up in terror, afraid of what might happen if the doctor or nurse or whoever this was got too close.

"Melanie," the nurse said sweetly, "you have some visitors."
Visitors? What did she mean? Melanie never had visitors. Not here. But the nurse was right. Behind her were two visitors. The man was bald and lived in, what appeared to be permanently, a comfortable looking wheelchair. The girl that was with him was pale and sour looking. A white streak ran through her cropped maroon colored hair. Melanie shrank back, fearful of her curse. She didn't want this, didn't want to hurt these people. The nurse closed the door behind her.
"Don't be afraid Melanie," The man smiled gently.

"What did they do to her?" A soft twang of Louisiana colored the girl's voice.

"Locked her away Rouge. That was all they needed to do." Melanie hated the pity in his eyes and hated even more to know just how deserving of it she was.
"Please don't come closer." She begged. "I don't want to hurt anyone. "

"You won't hurt us Melanie. We just want to talk."
"Talk?"

"About you. About your gift and what you can do with it."
She sighed." I don't know who you've been talking to Mister, but this isn't a gift."
"Yes it is." His smile returned. "You see Rouge and I-"

-Are like you. She gasped as his voice echoed in her mind. We have talents that at first, didn't appear to be gifts either. But we learned to control them. "Just like you can." He said out loud. "With proper training, you could use your powers for the betterment of Mankind. "

She shook her head and pulled anxiously at her frazzled hair. "No. This ability…it doesn't save people. It destroys them. If you were to touch me right now, it would consume you, kill you even. I'm cursed, not gifted."
The girl, Rouge, knelt before her and raised a hand. "Believe me," She muttered " I know the feeling."

"Rouge drains the energy of every being she touches," Xavier explained." And like you she felt that her gift was a curse, but with proper training and guidance, her gift has saved countless lives."
"Yours could too," said Rouge, "If you gave it half a chance, besides," she murmured, "It would get you outa here." As if on cue, a manic cackle sounded. Melanie shuddered.

"You aren't crazy Melanie." Xavier said kindly, "you just need a little control."
She paused for a moment and stared up at the two strangers. What did they know of her? Why did they care so much? Why did they feel like the safest option?

She lowered her head, and when it was raised, she made up her mind. She would join them and learn more. She would learn about this thing she had to live with and she would not be the cause of any more suffering. Xavier smiled. He didn't need her to repeat herself. The Institute had gained a new pupil.