THE CASE OF THE GREEN GIANTS

"It's my boss - he's vanished," our new client said tensely. She was obviously worried. And maybe frightened.

Her name was Elizabeth Ross. She was a pretty girl in her late twenties, with a slender figure, long brown hair, and piercing green eyes. She was dressed modestly in a dress that showed only a little bit of calf, and her shoes were very sensible. It was the kind of outfit a girl with a job would wear to the office.

"Who's your boss? And when did he disappear?" I asked.

Marie - my partner - had a legal pad in her hands and was taking notes. Once upon a time, she used to be my secretary. Then she became my lover as well as my secretary. Then one day she told me in no uncertain terms that she was tired of biting her nails as she waited to see if I was going to make it back to the office alive. So now she pounds the pavement with me.

"Dr. Bruce Banner. He's a scientist. I haven't seen him for a week."

The name didn't ring any bells. I glanced at Marie, she gave me a very slight shake of her head.

"When did you see him last?"

There was a momentary pause before Mr. Ross answered my question, "Last Wednesday - at his private laboratory. He has a facility up in the town of Grenwald. I'm his lab assistant and secretary."

Something about that moment of hesitation made me think that our client wasn't telling us everything. Oh, well, it's not a real case if your client isn't lying to you about something.

"Does Dr. Banner have a reason to disappear? Like financial or legal problems?"

"No," Miss Ross said.

"Do you know of anyone who might have a problem with Dr. Banner?" I asked.

Miss Ross nodded immediately, "There's a man named Samuel Sterns. He and Bruce have been exchanging letters and phone calls about Bruce's research for quite a while. A few weeks ago, they had a nasty argument over the phone. Bruce hung up on Mr. Sterns and told me that from then on if he called I was to always tell Mr. Sterns that Bruce wasn't in the office. I was also supposed to throw away any letters Mr. Sterns might send."

"What did they argue about?" I asked.

Miss Ross shook her head in exasperation, "I don't know. Bruce wouldn't tell me."

"Miss Ross, have you tried the police?" Marie asked.

"I did! The day right Bruce vanished! But yesterday I talked to the detective who was supposed to be investigating the case - a man named Cody - and he acted like he'd never heard of it! That's when I decided to come to you."

Miss Ross was gone, her retainer fee was in the office safe, and we were on the case.

I'd made the obvious checks. Banner wasn't at home or his office. There were no John Doe's matching Banner's description in any of the local hospitals or in the morgue.

A photo of Dr. Banner and Miss Ross was sitting on my desk. It looked a bit stilted and posed - according to Miss Ross it had been taken at a formal function at the University - but it did show us what Dr. Banner looked like. He was a scrawny guy, about the same height as Miss Ross, with mildly bland features. However, the obvious glint of intelligence in his eyes and the wry smile on his face did a lot to improve his looks.

"Dr. Bruce David Banner, Ph.D." Marie said as she put down the phone. She had been talking to some of our sources at the local news-rags. "He's a physicist with degrees from Princeton and M.I.T. He teaches at State University, but at the moment he's taking a break from classes so he can work on his research. His recent papers have been about radiation and are considered pretty important. In addition to his office and laboratory at the University, he has a private lab out-of-town. He's been spending a lot of time there."

"That checks with what Miss Ross told us," I grunted.

Sooraya - our secretary - was carrying her baby boy in one arm and a file folder in the other. The boy was getting fussy. Sooraya sat down, unbuttoned her blouse, and began feeding him as she used one hand to awkwardly sort out the file contents on her desk.

"Dr. Banner does have a property up near the town of Grenwald," she began. "According to county records, it has a farmhouse, a barn, and various out-buildings. He also has phone and electrical services - which is expensive that far from the city - and his bills are paid up. He has a post-office box in Grenwald. It's paid a year in advance."

"Does Banner have money of his own? Something besides what the University pays him?" I wondered.

Sooraya pursed her lips thoughtfully, "Perhaps. I stopped at the library and checked the 'Who's Who of Science' and some newspaper files. Dr. Banner's father was a prominent businessman from Philadelphia. His father and mother are both dead and he has no brothers or sisters. So it's possible that he came into a considerable inheritance."

"Does he have any living family?"

"Two aunts, an uncle, and a few cousins. The only relative who lives in town is a cousin named Jennifer Walters. She's a legal secretary and about the same age as Dr. Banner. She said the last time she saw Dr. Banner was two weeks ago when they went out to lunch together. He didn't say anything to her about leaving town or being in any kind of trouble."

I nodded appreciatively, Sooraya was turning into a sharp investigator.

"What about Miss Ross?" I asked.

Marie fielded that one, "She actually comes from a pretty important family. Her father is General Thaddeus Ross..."

That made me raise an eyebrow. "Thunderbolt Ross?"

Marie blinked in surprise, "Yes. You know him?"

"Not personally. He commanded a regiment during the Great War and his name popped up in the newspapers. He had a reputation as a hard-charger."

Marie nodded, "Well, he's currently the commanding officer of the 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley. His wife passed away just after the war. Miss Ross was their only child. She has a degree in nursing from Brown. It's no secret that she and Banner are more than just a boss and his assistant - they've been keeping each other company for six months or so. The story is that they got friendly after there was some sort of accident in Banner's on-campus lab. He apparently pulled her out of the building just in time."

I nodded thoughtfully. It was no particular surprise to me that Banner and Ross were a couple. The thought first crossed my mind when I noticed how Ross kept referring to her boss by his first name. And while most people are willing to call the cops if their boss vanishes, they usually weren't inclined to bring in a private eye who they'd have to pay out of their own pocket.

"What about Sterns?" Marie asked. "Our reporter friends have never heard of the guy."

"There is no Samuel Sterns in the sources I checked at the library," Sooraya said as she burped her baby. "If he is a scientist, he is unknown and unpublished."

"According to the city directory, there are three Samuel Sterns who live in town," I added. "I checked on them. One is an eighty year old retired fisherman, another is an out-of-work janitor, and the third is a transvestite hooker who prefers to be called 'Samantha'. None of them sound like guys who have intelligent conversations about physics with a renowned scientist."

"What's next?" Marie asked me.

I looked down at my notes, "You and I go talk to Detective Cody. Sooraya, start calling Dr. Banner's neighbors and his colleagues at State University and see if you can shake anything else loose."

The County Sheriff's office is actually pretty big. After all, the county it serves includes not just the tiny mountain community of Grenwald, but also the city.

Detective Cody gave Marie and I an unhappy look, "So Ross hired you?"

"Our client is worried about Dr. Banner," I said as neutrally as possible.

Cody leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Weirdest thing. The other day she comes in here and asks me how the Banner investigation is going. Which was kinda surprising since I've never heard of a Banner investigation. I thought for a second someone else must have the case, so I checked with our desk sergeant and the other detectives. It turns out nobody had ever heard of Miss Ross or Dr. Banner. When I told Miss Ross that she had to file a report before we could investigate, she got mad. Swore up and down that she'd already done that."

Then Cody shook his head sadly, "I think that poor girl is a little touched."

"So have you started looking for Dr. Banner?" I asked.

Cody shrugged, "We still don't have a missing person's report on him. Miss Ross stormed out of here without filing one. There's nothing we can do officially until she does that."

"Nothing you can do officially..." Marie repeated, emphasizing the word 'officially'.

Cody looked a little embarrassed. "Yeah, well, Miss Ross was obviously really upset, so I made a few phone calls anyway. The deputy whose patrol area includes Grenwald says he knows of this Banner guy, but hasn't seen him around lately. But he said that doesn't mean anything since Banner keeps to himself. He was going to check around, but I haven't heard back from him yet."

Trying to be as unchallenging as possible I asked, "Look, Cody, just between us, are you positive this isn't some kind of screw-up? You're sure Miss Ross didn't file a Missing Person on Banner and it somehow just got misplaced?"

Cody shook his head, "Miss Ross claimed to have met me previously and we supposedly talked about the case. And that just didn't happen. I don't know what's going through Miss Ross' head, but something's definitely wrong. If you care about your client, you'll advise her to see a doctor."

As we left the building, Marie looked at me and said, "You know, Detective Cody strikes me as a good cop. And I don't think he was lying to us."

"That's my impression, too," I admitted.

"So... is our client nuts?"

I frowned, "Maybe. But before we assume that, maybe we should call in a specialist."

"Who?" Marie asked.

I took a deep breath and said, "You aren't going to like it."

Marie gave me a puzzled look. Then she realized who I was talking about and said, "Oh, hell."

"He's been tampered with," Emma said confidently.

Emma Frost is an honest-to-God piece of work. The Frost family is incredibly rich and powerful and she makes no bones about enjoying all of the advantages that come with that. She's also one of the most powerful psychics I've ever encountered. Oh, and she's ridiculously beautiful, has the morals of an alley cat, and loves to shock people.

We were sitting in my car, watching Detective Cody as he walked out the Sheriff's building and got into his car. It was quitting time.

After talking to Cody, we picked up Emma and returned to the Sheriff's department so she could apply her special skills to figuring out what was going on with the contradictory stories about Banner's Missing Person report. Emma owed me a few favors.

Marie was sitting silently in the back seat. She and Emma weren't exactly enemies, but they definitely weren't friends. Emma finds that amusing, but I hope she never finds out just how dangerous Marie can be. Emma tends towards overconfidence. In my experience, that's a common characteristic of psychics.

"What kind of tampering?" I asked.

"Telepathic memory alteration. Powerful, precise, and very subtle. If you hadn't asked me to check this man, I would have never noticed it. Off hand, I can only think of three people who could do something like this."

"Let me guess," I said. "You, Jean, and Charles Xavier?"

"Good guess," Emma replied with a bright smile. As a reward she put an image into my head that featured the two of us. I wasn't wearing any clothes - unless you count a diamond-studded dog collar, a pair of tiny gold nipple rings, and a light scattering of whip marks - and I was doing something intimate to her with my mouth. Emma likes that sort of thing.

*You like it, too,* she told me telepathically. *I'm just more willing to admit it.*

"What about Betsy Braddock?" I ventured, trying to keep my voice straight and level as I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Braddock was one of Logan's people.

Emma shook her head, "Braddock is talented, but she still has a lot of rough edges. I'd be able to read her mental signature instantly if she was the one who had influenced Cody."

Then Emma was quiet for moment before adding, "We seem to have a new player in town in terms of psychic powers. Or perhaps an old player that we haven't known about until now."

I said nothing as I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.

"So why didn't this psychic just fiddle with Miss Ross' mind?" Marie asked from the back seat.

"There wasn't any point," Emma replied immediately. "Your client is Dr. Banner's employee and lover. So she would be constantly reminded that he was missing whenever she went to work, or looked at his picture, or realized that nobody else was in bed with her at night. That would cause any memory alteration to break down very quickly."

"But getting to Cody didn't solve the problem," Marie pointed out. "Eventually, Miss Ross checked to see how the case was going and realized that something was wrong."

"There are practical limits in terms of how many people you can mentally manipulate," Emma replied. "Our rogue psychic was probably just playing for time. And I suspect he didn't get as much time as he hoped."

Emma paused thoughtfully before continuing. "However, there are some interesting implications. The psychic didn't realize how worried Ross would be. That suggests that he isn't very good at reading human emotions. That's an odd weakness for a psychic."

"This is a problem," I said with a worried sigh. Which was a huge understatement. An unknown psychic was involved in our case and had already tried to erase the official investigation into Banner's disappearance. Marie and I simply didn't have what it took to deal with a hostile and powerful psychic.

Emma looked at me. Bless her strangely off-kilter soul, but there was actual human concern in her eyes. "Dom, I suggest you drop this case."

In the back seat, Marie didn't say anything, but I could tell she was also worried.

So was I.

"I've got an idea," Marie said suddenly.

Instead of heading home, we drove to a small, older hotel that wasn't too far from the docks. The hotel wasn't much to look at, but it was one of the most dangerous places in the world. It was the headquarters of the biggest gang in town. A gang that was filled with people who had strange powers of the body and mind.

Two youngsters - a tough Kentucky kid named Sam Guthrie and his Indian girlfriend Danni Moonstar - were watching the lobby. They both stirred when we entered. They got to their feet, ready for anything, when we approached them. I made a point of keeping my hands where they could be seen.

Emma was waiting out in the car, which was just as well. Her dealings with Logan's gang had all been negative - for her. I don't think she's ever completely recovered from that. Emma's used to running the show and being treated like a queen. When Logan had her, Sam and Danni were her guards, but Kitty Pryde had been the person in charge. A day in the clutches of Kitty Pryde had shown Emma a whole new and scary world. Kitty's a psycho.

Marie took over. She has a lot of pull in Logan's gang. She used to be a member, and a fairly important one.

"We need to talk to Hank," she said firmly.

Sam and Danni exchanged looks. Then Sam walked over to the check-in desk and picked up the house phone.

Hank is a huge bear of a man who's Logan's second-in-command. Logan sets policy, but Hank is the guy who carries it out. Hank is also a lot smarter than he looks. In fact, he's one of the smartest guys I've ever met.

Over the years, I've seen a lot of guys make some quite lethal errors in judgement about Logan's gang. Perhaps the worst is to assume that Logan and Hank really aren't that smart - that they just used their powers to muscle their way to the top. You could fill a graveyard with the bodies of people who've made that mistake. Another bad idea was to assume that Hank is the real power behind the throne - and that maybe he could be turned against Logan.

Rule number one of surviving in this town: don't cross Logan. Rule number two: don't cross Hank.

Despite that, I couldn't help but smile when Hank bounded down the main staircase wearing a bathrobe, a pair of over-sized slippers, and pair of rectangular reading glasses. He had a big grin on his face and when he got to where we stood, he planted a big kiss on Marie. She grinned and gave him a careful hug.

"Marie! Dom! It's so good to see you!"

We ended up in the hotel bar. Except for us, it was empty. Nobody really stays in the hotel except for Logan and some of his people. Hank poured us three shots of expensive whiskey as he and Marie chatted about people they both knew and how things were going nowadays. From what Hank told Marie, times were good in Logan's mob. The cops were useless, the mayor and city council were in Logan's pocket, Prohibition had opened up vast vistas of profit, and Logan's only real competitor - Erik Lehnsherr - was currently minding his own business.

Good times, I suppose. I drank Hank's whiskey and kept any contrary opinions I might have to myself. Logan was far from being the worst gang-lord to ever run a town. And it's not like he was holding people at gun-point and forcing them to drink his booze, gamble at his tables, or screw his whores. And he did have his own set of scruples. The booze had to not blind or kill his customers. The gambling tables had to be reasonably honest. The girls had to be clean and well-treated. No drugs. No child prostitution. No murder for hire. If you asked Logan, that was all about good business and good public relations, but I can't help but think that at least some of it was because Logan is actually pretty reasonable about some things.

But...

But this was still Logan's town and it was run Logan's way. So if Logan told somebody what to do, they shut up and did it. Then they thanked Logan for the opportunity to be of service and prayed that he was satisfied. The people who were able to say "No" to Logan were few and far between.

And here's the scary part. With any extraordinarily powerful crime lord - like Capone in Chicago - you could always hope that someday he'll be gone, his empire will collapse, and the city he used to rule could get back to some semblance of normality. After all, eventually the odds should catch up with any gang boss, right? He'd finally get jugged, or killed by a rival or an ambitious underling, or just get old and loose his grip.

But Logan is incredibly hard to kill, doesn't seem to get old, and has never shown any sign of getting soft. So how long would Logan rule this town? What if a twenty years from now - or fifty years, or even a hundred - all of the big players in this town were different except for the most important one?

"I'd like to think you came all this way just to see me," Hank finally said. "But that's hard to believe. What's going on?"

"I was hoping to borrow something from you," Marie said.

Hank shrugged, "What?"

"Whatever it is that makes your people immune to psychics."

Hank frowned at Marie. Then he smiled - the man has huge teeth - and said, "What makes you think we have something like that?"

"I've heard stories," Marie said confidently. "After that mess with the Egyptian, you guys decided that you couldn't always depend on having a psychic available to cover you. So you came up with something that would help."

Hank stared at Marie for a moment - as if he was trying to make up his mind about something. Then he polished off his drink and said, "I really need to tell people to stop blabbing about everything to you. Yeah, we have something, but it's not foolproof. It gives you a defense, but it doesn't make you immune. Given enough time, a powerful psychic can break through."

"But it's better than nothing," I said.

"Far better, actually. You just have to make sure that you fill the psychic with lead before he can get to you."

"We need it, Hank," Marie said calmly.

Hank thought for a second. Then he laughed. "Here's how it will go if I say 'no'. You two will go to Logan, bat your pretty eyes, shake your pretty tailfeathers, maybe whisper a few sweet nothings into his ear, and then he'll tell me to help you. He's like that about old girlfriends. So I might as well save myself some time and aggravation and just give you what you want."

I didn't particularly want to insult Hank by arguing with him - especially since he was probably right. So I kept my mouth shut. So did Marie.

Hank poured us all another round of drinks and yelled, "DANNI!"

Danni appeared in the door.

"Go get a couple of Forge's cuffs," Hank said. Danni nodded and disappeared.

"How's Logan doing?" Marie asked softly.

I tried to ignore how irritated those three words made me. Logan relationship with me and Marie was a tangled mess of love, anger, affection, and hurt. And some really, really intense sex.

"He's fine, Rogue," Hank replied, using the name Marie used back in the day when she was a part of Logan's gang. "You know how he is. He'll outlive us all."

Logan had once told me how he was shot in the chest while helping stop Pickett's Charge, so that seemed at least possible. That conversation happened years ago; we had been in bed together, enjoying a breather and trading stories about tight spots and desperate fights.

Yeah, I was mad at Marie for asking about Logan, but then I went straight to remembering the last time he and I screwed. Which wasn't very fair of me. I swear, that man will drive you crazy.

Danni reappeared with a small wooden case. Hank put it on the table between us and opened it. Two metal circlets, apparently made of stainless steel, rested in the box. They looked like very ordinary and not particularly attractive bracelets.

"Go ahead," Hank said.

Marie and I slipped the bracelets on. They were oddly warm and seemed to tingle a bit, but otherwise nothing much happened.

"Any operating instructions?" I asked.

"Don't wear them for more than a day at a time."

"Why?"

"They eventually stop your brain from working."

Marie and I looked at one another.

"I want them back when you're done," Hank added.

"Interesting," Emma said. We were back out in my car and Emma was holding my arm and hand as she examined the bracelet-thing I was wearing. She seemed a little hesitant about actually touching it.

Then Emma looked into my eyes for a good thirty seconds. Towards the end, I felt a slow pressure building up in my head - like the first sign of nasty headache. After that, Emma frowned and let go.

"This explains a few things," she said thoughtfully.

"Does it work as advertised?" I asked.

Emma nodded her head. "Yes, but don't get too confident. Given enough time, I could get through to you. Did McCoy say where he got these things?"

I shook my head, "Not specifically. But we've known for a while that there's somebody who builds mad scientist gizmos for Logan's gang. He came up with that collar that supressed your psychic powers."

"They call him Forge," Marie added.

Emma sighed. "After my stay with Logan's people, I became curious about the power-supressing collar. I put some effort into trying to discover where they got that sort of equipment. I didn't have much luck."

"It's best to leave Logan's secrets alone," Marie said flatly. I tried to keep a straight face. Marie's advice was good, but she obviously didn't think it applied to her.

Emma didn't say anything.

We dropped Emma off at her high-rise apartment building. Then Marie and I talked over the next step.

"I think it's time to go up to Grenwald," Marie suggested.

That made sense. I used a payphone to see if Sooraya had turned up anything new. Except for some naughty gossip about Dr. Banner and our client, she hadn't. By now it was pretty obvious that Banner and Ross had the kind of relationship that society usually felt should involve a wedding ring. I didn't have either the right or the desire to judge the private lives of others, but I couldn't help but wonder if Miss Ross understood how many people knew about her affair with Dr. Banner.

After gassing up my car, we headed out of town. We didn't bother to stop back at our apartment. Marie and I kept a bag packed with spare clothes and other necessities in the trunk just for situations like that.

Grenwald was about an hour's drive west of town. It was a few miles off the highway and the part that wasn't highway was still unpaved roads. A lot of city-slickers don't realize how much of the country is still connected by dirt and gravel.

It was after sundown when we got to Grenwald, but it was obvious that there wasn't a lot to the town. It had maybe fifty houses, a general store that doubled as the post-office, a garage, and a church. Most of the houses were already dark. There wasn't a lot to do in a town like that when the sun went down. Almost all of the houses that were still showing a light were depending on oil lamps. Electric lights seemed to be far and few between.

"The local hotels all seem to be full," Marie said dryly. "Where do you want to camp out?"

Marie had a look on her face that suggested she had designs on my virtue once we settled down together in the backseat of my car. Camping makes her randy.

"Not in town," I said. "I don't want to attract too much attention. We may as well go to Banner's property. Miss Ross gave me the key. We can spend the night under a roof."

Marie nodded and reached for the map.

The turnoff to Banner's laboratory was in a thick belt of trees. It was only after we turned into it and drove about a hundred yards that I realized that the lights were on at the Banner place.

I turned off my headlights and we ground to a stop in the middle of the track that lead up to the farmhouse. For a long moment, neither Marie or I said anything as we carefully examined our surroundings. The farmhouse was a two-story wooden-frame building that needed some fresh paint. Behind it, the indistinct bulk of a barn loomed. Tall trees flanked the buildings. I assumed the farm fields were behind the barn. A distant part of me wondered what you grew this high up in the mountains. Potatoes?

"Miss Ross could be here," Marie finally suggested.

"Could be, but she said she rents a room in Grenwald. And I don't see a car anywhere," I replied.

We fell silent and watched the house for a solid minute, waiting for some sign of activity.

Nothing happened.

I took my .45 automatic from my shoulder holster and chambered a round. Marie pulled her .44 Smith and Wesson out of her purse and checked the cylinder. A while back, she decided to swap out her .38 Police Special for something with a little more stopping power. I heartily approved.

"Let's go," I said.

We ghosted our way out of the car and towards the house, keeping to the shadows and avoiding the light streaming from the windows. The porch was surprisingly dark - the house didn't have exterior lights. I crept onto it while Marie lagged behind and watched my back. Then I peeked through a window.

It looked like most of the first floor had been gutted and converted into a lab. It was filled with all sorts of exotic equipment that I didn't recognize, as well as the usual stuff like lab tables, blackboards, bookshelves, filing cabinets, and desks. A bare set of stairs led up to the second floor.

Miss Ross was naked and strapped to a some sort of medical examination table. Her eyes were closed and she wasn't moving, but she didn't look dead. Meanwhile, a nondescript-looking guy dressed in coveralls was shoving a complex-looking wheel-mounted device towards the table she was laying on.

I moved to the door as Marie replaced me at the window. She blinked in surprise at what she saw inside and then gave me an urgent look. I nodded in response.

I tested the door knob. It wasn't locked.

With a decisive click, Marie pulled back the hammer on her six-gun.

I opened the door and stepped inside.

"Hands up," I said. I was in a two-handed stance with my automatic leveled at the guy who was standing next to our client.

He was medium-tall and stocky; maybe 30 years old with brown hair and rather plain features. He was dressed in a set of coveralls, work boots, and a blue work shirt. Nothing about his appearance stood out - except for a pair of bright emerald eyes. They seemed startlingly out of place in his face.

He had a pair of thick cables in his hands. They ended with clips while the other ends were connected to the gizmo he'd just pushed next to the examination table. They looked something like jumper cables.

Miss Ross didn't react to my entrance, and that worried me. Marie moved into the room behind me, closed the front door, and then shifted well off to the side so the guy in the coveralls would have to split his attention between us. She was also aiming her gun at the guy.

The guy didn't react the way you'd expect when a pair of rather big handguns are pointed at you. Instead of looking scared, he just frowned in what looked like puzzled surprise.

"Where did you two come from?" he asked.

I made a slight gesture with my gun. "Mr. Colt here seems to think that I should be the one asking the questions. He also thinks you should drop those cables, put your hands up, and step away from the young lady."

Looking even more puzzled, he put down the cables. However, he stayed where he was and didn't put up his hands. Every now and then you run into a guy who won't play ball. At that point, you have some life-and-death decisions to make. But the bottom line was that this guy hadn't done anything - yet - that warranted shooting him. And besides, I wanted him in one piece so he could answer questions.

I flicked my eyes towards Marie. She nodded very slightly. I would keep the guy occupied while she went in close and used her power to take him out.

It was then that I realized that the stainless steel bracelet that Hank had given me was getting warmer and warmer. And the tingling sensation was more intense. I could feel a growing pressure in my head, like the first sign of a nasty headache.

"Psychic!" I yelled. Marie paused in her approach and aimed her gun again. Getting close to a psychic was dangerous. They're more dangerous if they can touch you.

"Cut it out!" I warned the psychic. The bracelet was now just plain hot and the pressure in my head kept intensifying. The expression on the psychic's face was determined, yet puzzled. He wasn't sure why his attack wasn't working, but he seemed determined to continue.

I was out of options.

I opened fire.

My bullets got within a yard of the guy and then froze in midair. I've heard that some of the more powerful mind-movers can do something like that. For that matter, so can Lehnsherr. In fact, I've seen him do it. But nobody had ever done that to me before. I found myself thinking that I didn't like the idea that I couldn't deal with a problem by shooting it.

Fortunately, you apparently have to concentrate pretty hard to pull off that particular trick. And our psychic was concentrating more on me than on Marie. She snapped off a few shots and the guy tried to do the same trick with her bullets that he'd done with mine, but his control was sloppy. Some of her shots froze in midair, others deflected away, and one went into his arm.

The bullets that had been suspended in mid-air clattered to the floor. Grimacing in pain, and holding on to his wounded arm, our target ran for the backdoor, leaving behind a trail of blood. A strange, rippling haze seemed to surround him. I snapped a pair of shots after him, but despite the fact it should have been an easy shot, I missed. Apparently he was still somehow jinxing our gunfire.

Marie and I advanced to the examination table. Ross was stirring now, roused by the gunfire. Marie quickly reloaded and then covered the doors as I freed Ross from the straps that were holding her to the table. At that point, my only plan was to get our client and ourselves the hell out of there. The guy we'd wounded had more power than I was comfortable facing alone. His trick with the bullets had scared me - being able to do both matter and mind manipulation is a sign of a really powerful psychic. I was already mentally flipping through the list of heavy-hitters that I might call in for reinforcements. Emma was on the top of the list.

"Hu'wha?" Ross said groggily as I helped her off the table and onto her feet. She'd obviously been doped. Under other circumstances, I suppose an armful of a naked Elizabeth Ross would have been fun, but at the moment I was too busy trying to think three steps ahead to enjoy the experience.

We fell back to the front door. Marie kicked it open and checked the porch.

Our client made some more indistinct noises that were probably supposed to be questions. And I was having trouble hanging on to her. For a brief moment we looked each other directly in the face and I was surprised at how unnaturally, eerily, green Ross' eyes were. And since when was she taller than me?

"Dom!" Marie gasped as she stared at me and Ross. But I already knew that something was wrong.

Ross was growing. And she was turning green.

Ross was screaming as I let go of her and staggered away, trying to put myself between Marie and whatever the hell Ross was becoming.

Ross was putting on something like two feet of height and three hundred pounds of muscular weight. With a horrible tearing noise, a pair of giant wings burst out of her back. Meanwhile, her legs twisted and stretched into something you might expect to see on a seven-foot tall owl, as feathers sprouted from her lower body, her fingernails expanded into long daggers, and her skin darkened into a shade of emerald green.

I was mesmerized by the transformation. Ross was becoming something terrible, frightening, and strangely beautiful. Marie grabbed me and dragged me out onto the porch as Ross snarled at us in rage.

Her mouth was huge. And her teeth were like knives.

I instinctively raised my gun. So did Marie. But the fact we couldn't bring ourselves to open fire probably saved our lives.

"Where's Bruce?" she growled at us. Her voice was incredibly deep and edged with boundless fury.

"I don't know!" I answered quickly. "Ask the guy we shot. He went out the back door."

The creature that had been Elizabeth Ross suddenly turned away from us, her wildly swinging wings toppling a bookshelf and smashing a lab table to pieces in the process. Then she bounded to the center of the room, sending yet more equipment and furniture flying. She was simply too big for the scale of the room.

Ross bent over and closely examined the blood trail from the guy we'd shot. Then she touched her long dark tongue to a splatter of blood. Her face twisted into an expression that was almost orgasmic with joy.

With another howl, Ross took off and flew into the back wall. The wall exploded outwards as Ross made a yards-wide opening for herself. Through the hole that used be most of the back wall, I caught of glimpse of her wings flapping powerfully as Ross vaulted into the sky,

Then, from high above in the night sky, we heard Ross howl again.

She was on the hunt.

"What the hell?" Marie asked me. Her eyes were wide and the gun in her hand was trembling. We were still standing on the front porch, but we had both edged against the house wall. That way, the porch roof gave us cover from anything flying overhead.

I shrugged helplessly. If you hang around with the powered set, you sometimes see people who can transform into something else, but a change this massive was new to me.

Marie glanced at our car and said urgently, "Dom, we've got to get out of here!"

Actually, I agreed with her, but a thought had occurred to me.

"We need to check the rest of the house," I said.

Marie hesitated for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and nodded in agreement.

We cautiously reentered the now-wrecked laboratory. We could obviously see all there was to see of the first floor, so we advanced up the stairs. The second floor hadn't been modified. It had three bedrooms and a bathroom.

We found Dr. Banner in one of the bedrooms. He was out like a light and handcuffed to a bed. A syringe and a small vial of morphine were on table near the door. I counted the needle tracks on Banner's arm and winced.

Banner heard us. His eyes blearily cracked open and he tried to focus on us.

His eyes were the same shade of bright green as Ross and the guy who'd been holding he and Ross prisoner.

"Help me. Please help me," he croaked through cracked lips.

We got Banner out of his handcuffs, found him some clothes, and bundled him into our car. After some hesitation, I took the morphine, the syringe, and some clean needles as well. We needed Banner functional and communicative. And besides, I had an ugly suspicion what might happen if he started going through withdrawal.

We checked the rest of the property before leaving. We found a Sheriff Department patrol car parked behind the barn. The windshield was smashed in and the driver's seat was soaked with blood. It looked like the local deputy wasn't going to be getting back to Detective Cody anytime soon.

There was an all-night diner on the highway just outside of the city. It mostly served truckers. We stopped there. Banner obviously needed something to eat.

"Who are you?" Banner asked haggardly as he slurped down a bowl of soup.

"I'm called Domino. This is my partner, Marie. We're private eyes. Your... assistant... Miss Ross hired us to find you."

He looked at us, obviously worried. "Betty? Is she all right?"

I wasn't really sure how to answer that. "Like I said, she hired us to find you. Now, do you want to tell us what's going on?"

Banner paused in his attack on his food to rub his eyes. "Sterns is a madman. He wants to steal my research."

So the guy in the lab had been Sterns. But otherwise I figured Banner wasn't tell me all of the truth.

"C'mon, Banner. Sterns wants something more than your file cabinet. He was experimenting on you."

Banner didn't come across as a tough guy. In fact, some might be inclined to say that he wasn't much of a man at all. But for a moment, a look entered his strange eyes. A look that suggested that ultimately he wasn't somebody you wanted to cross.

"As I said - Sterns is a madman. There's no accounting for what he does."

"Look, Banner, when we got to your laboratory, Betty was tied buck-naked to a table and Sterns was doing God knows what to her. When we busted down the door to rescue her, she turned into something big and green that had wings. She followed Sterns. If I had to make a guess, she plans on hunting him down. And I don't think she plans on having a pleasant conversation when she finds him."

Banner dropped his spoon. It bounced off the table and clattered to the floor. His eyes were wide and his face was pale.

"No," he whispered.

"One more time, Doc. What the hell is going on?"

Banner buried his face in his hands.

I let him think it over for a few seconds. Then Marie said softly, "Listen, Doc, do you want us to help Betty? Then you better talk."

The waitress delivered the rest of our food. Banner waited until she was gone until he started talking.

"It was six months ago," Banner said as he poked listlessly at some mashed potatoes. Apparently his appetite was gone.

"I was doing research into the properties of certain exotic forms of radiation. I was using my University lab and Betty had just signed on as my assistant. I had discovered that under certain circumstances some forms of radiation had an effect on test animals. It physically transformed them, but the changes were unpredictable and could be quite grotesque or even dangerous. And there was an odd green coloration associated with the irradiated animals."

"But then something happened in my laboratory. A massive amount of radiation was released and Betty and I were both exposed. I managed to get us out of the laboratory, but at the time I was sure we would both soon be dead from radiation exposure. However, that didn't happen."

Banner paused and then rubbed his eyes. "Maybe it would have been better if we had died then and there."

"Get on with it, Doc," I said quietly.

"Betty and I had both been... changed. But we weren't the only ones."

"Let me guess," I said. "There was a janitor in the building when the accident happened. Right?"

Marie gave me a sharp look.

Banner just nodded, "Samuel Sterns. A lazy no-account who wasn't even a very good janitor. I complained to the administration about him several times, but they did nothing. I'm convinced that the radiation release was his fault. He'd heard that I wanted him fired and did something to my equipment."

I looked at Marie, "Remember what I said about the various Samuel Sterns who were living in town? One of them was a janitor. But when I checked on him, he was out of work. I didn't know about his connection to the University."

Banner nodded again, "After the incident, I put my foot down and finally got Sterns fired. About two months later, he contacted me. He wanted to exchange information about the so-called "accident". At first, I was incredulous. The man didn't even have a high-school education! But it quickly became obvious that he had also been changed by the radiation exposure. He's now much more intelligent. And he's somehow managed to train himself in physics, higher mathematics, biology, and a variety of other disciplines - all in just a few months!"

"Seeing as how you think he tried to kill you, it strikes me as an odd decision to talk to the man," Marie observed.

Banner made a disgusted face, "He had useful information. And we both desperately needed to cooperate."

"Why?" I asked.

Banner sighed and put down his fork. "Because all of us - Betty, Sterns, and I - are dying. It's a slow process, but it's just a matter of time. Betty and I have been working on a cure ever since we were exposed. So was Sterns, but he was behind us. It took him a while to train himself in what he needed to know."

"So Betty didn't know about Sterns?" I asked.

Banner shook his head, "Not everything. She had just started working in my lab when the incident happened. She'd never met Sterns and didn't know his name. When I started sharing information with him, she assumed he was a colleague from another university."

"But you had an argument with Sterns. You eventually stopped talking to him," I said.

Banner's eyes met mine, "Our research was stalemated and we were getting nowhere. He told me the only way to proceed was to work with a live specimen. We need to experiment on a human subject who had been exposed to the radiation."

Marie took a sharp breath.

"He wanted to experiment on Betty?" I asked slowly.

"Yes. He said it was logical since she was contributing the least to our research."

"What do we do now?" Marie asked.

Banner was sitting in the car, looking lost and forlorn as a gas-monkey filled our tank. Marie and I were in the gas station, pretending to buy some cigarettes.

"Now we put Banner on ice and try to find our client," I answered.

"Our client can fly," Marie observed.

"That's a problem," I conceded.

"And if she's found Sterns, she might also be a murderer," Marie added.

"That's another problem."

"Unless, of course, Sterns has mind-controlled Betty and she's now working for him."

"Third problem."

"And where do we put Banner? He's a hot potato. We need to bury him deep if a psychic is after him."

"Logan might help with that."

Marie blinked, "You're going to talk to Logan?"

Normally I try to keep my distance from Logan. Marie's the one who's usually more willing to have something to do with him.

"I'll make a deal," I said.

Marie winced. There was a lot of history between Logan, Marie, and I. He wasn't going to be easy on me.

"Are you sure, Dom?"

"We need the kind of muscle that only Logan can provide."

"Do you want me to ask him?"

I bristled, "You aren't getting on your knees for Logan!"

Marie smiled and ruffled my hair, "Hey, sweetie, don't get mad. We've both been on our knees for Logan. And at the time, we enjoyed it."

"Cut it out, Marie," I said through gritted teeth.

"Sorry."

By then we had walked back to the car. The guy pumping our gas screwed the gas tank cap back on, gave us a look of utter contempt, and stalked back inside.

In the car, Dr. Banner was shooting up with morphine.

"Oh, dear Lord," Marie said as she looked away in disgust.

"No choice," I said.

"I know!"

We were back at Logan's hotel. Marie and Dr. Banner were having a drink in the bar. And I was in Logan's office.

The office really wasn't that fancy. Logan isn't big on appearances. When I sat down in the chair that faced his desk, my back was to the door. Standing on either side of the door were two of Logan's more lethal chippies: Raven and Yuriko. Of the three other people in the room, I could maybe take two of them in a one-on-one fight. I wouldn't have a prayer if all of them - or even just two of them - ganged up on me.

"Yeah, this is a hotel," Logan growled. "But we really don't get a lot of guests."

"Just for a couple of days, Logan."

Logan stubbed out a cigar with more force than was required. "Who's after him?"

"A psychic. Powerful one, I think. It's a new guy named Sam Sterns."

I could see the gears turning in Logan's head. Psychics were a problem. They could mess with your mind and if they were good enough you wouldn't even know that something had been done to you. And they could get a lot of mileage out of manipulating people with power. Logan knew that better than most since his pet psychic, an English girl named Braddock, had been a key element of his take-over of the town from the Santini family. Logan might not have wanted to admit it, but a previously unknown psychic - and a powerful one - was a problem that he had to worry about.

Then I took a deep breath and continued. "I also need to borrow some of your people."

Logan's mouth described a flat and narrow line.

"Who?" he asked suspiciously.

"Ororo and Warren."

"Why?"

"I need people who can fly."

Logan examined me suspiciously. Ororo owed me a huge favor - and by association, so did Warren. Logan knew that if I ignored him and went straight to Ororo and Warren, they would probably help me. I was being courteous by asking him for their help.

"Okay," Logan said. "I'll watch your chump for a couple of days. Betsy and a few others will stay here and babysit him. And if Ororo and Warren want to help you, that's fine."

Then, after a suitably ominous pause, he added, "But you owe me for this."

"What do you want?" I asked warily.

He laughed. "Dom, what I want is a harem consisting of you, Marie, Ororo, and that cute redhead Emma Frost is banging. But I'll settle for a little less. First, when this is over, you tell me everything you know about this Sterns guy. Second, you owe me a future job - no questions asked."

I winced. "What kind of job?"

"That's a question, Dom. Didn't you hear the part about 'no questions asked'? Do we have a deal or not?"

I took a deep breath. "One job only, Logan. But you don't own me and I don't work for you. Understand?"

Logan smiled and poured me a drink.

As I left, Raven - dressed from head to toe in her trademark blue - gave me a feral smile. Yuriko was outfitted as a traditional geisha. She didn't smile, but her eyes seemed to look deep into me as she held the door open.

"Welcome home, sister," Yuriko said to me in Japanese.

Raven walked me back to the bar. That smile was still on her face.

"You got something to say?" I said tensely. I really don't like Raven.

"Yuriko and I usually take turns sucking Logan's cock. Where do you want to fit in the rotation?"

"Go to hell!" I snarled at her. Raven just laughed at me.

"I blew Logan," I told Marie as we left the hotel.

She blinked in surprise, "Really?"

"Only metaphorically. I owe him a job sometime in the future."

"You mean we owe him a job," she pointed out quietly.

"Nope. Just me."

"Just we," Marie said firmly. That's Marie. Loyal right to the end.

Then she kissed me. It didn't really solve anything, but I still felt better.

We were dead tired and I decided we better get some sleep or we'd be pretty ragged tomorrow. However, back at our apartment I took the time to warm-up the radio and spend a few minutes flicking from station to station.

"Anything?" Marie asked.

I shook my head. I was hoping that Miss Ross had been spotted. A huge green lady with wings should make the news. That would give us an idea where she was.

"We can check again after dawn," Marie said.

That made sense. We stripped down to our underwear, curled up on the couch under a comfy blanket, and fell asleep in each other's arms.

The next morning, we checked the radio again. Europe was a mess, the Depression was still with us, Hollywood was full of glamorous idiots, and nobody had anything to say about a flying green amazon.

Ororo wasn't wearing much when she answered my knock on her door. Just a short robe that was backlit enough by the morning sun to show that there was nothing underneath. Ororo isn't really a clothes person. She tends to wear nothing at home, but in a nod to convention, she keeps something that she can throw on quickly hanging on a hook next to her door. I assume she's really popular with the local delivery boys.

"Domino! Marie!" she said with a smile that would have knocked anyone interested in women back on their heels.

Then she saw the expressions on our faces and her smile vanished.

"Come in," she said, holding the door open.

Ororo had been with Logan for a long time. A lot of people figured that she ranked just after Hank in the gang hierarchy. Like Logan, Ororo wasn't into the obvious signs of luxury. Her apartment was large and had a gorgeous skylight, but it was filled with flowers instead of expensive furniture or fine art. The only hints of extravagance were almost certainly gifts from her boyfriend.

And speaking of Ororo's boyfriend, Warren Worthington the Third - the richest and most unlikely gangster in the world - was slouched in the center of Ororo's couch, reading a newspaper. All he had on was a pair of boxer shorts, and his wings were spread lazily across the top of the couch. Warren is a blonde god who's a match in contrasts to Ororo's darker beauty. When you're around Ororo and Warren, you tend to feel really uncertain about your looks.

Warren put down his newspaper and stood up, but he didn't bother to go get dressed. Warren knows the effect he has on women and he enjoys it.

Then the arrogant jackass nodded to me politely... and walked over to Marie and planted a kiss right on her mug. I resisted the temptation to shoot him on the spot. You have to make some allowances when Marie runs into the people from Logan's gang. She goes way back with most of them and they seem to like her.

Marie smiled and said, "Stop that you big galoot." But she really didn't seem to be too put out. Dear God, she was actually blushing.

"Good to see you, too, Rogue," Warren chuckled.

"What is wrong, Domino?" Ororo asked me.

"Well, for one thing, your boy-toy is pawing my girl," I said. Warren gave me an amused look. Marie had the decency to look embarrassed.

"Warren is very demonstrative," Ororo said. Warren proved her point by walking over to Ororo, lazily slipping the shoulder of her robe down, and planting a kiss on some delicious-looking light-brown skin.

"So I see. I was hoping you and Warren could help us track down a missing client."

Ororo frowned, "I certainly owe you a favor, Domino. But you are very good P.I. Why do you need our help?"

"Our client turned green, grew seven foot tall, and now has a pair of wings."

I'll treasure the look that appeared on their faces until the day I die.

We were back up at Grenwald. And his time we were loaded for bear. I was carrying a Thompson submachinegun. Emma was with us. And our air cover was about to take off.

Without any hesitation, Marie stripped to the waist. Then she kissed Warren while Ororo and I tried not to stare daggers at the procedure. Emma was obviously amused at our irritation, but she seemed to enjoy the show.

The kiss went on and on. Warren had his hands on Marie's waist. She had his head in both of her hands. Neither of them bothered to disguise the fact that they were enjoying what they were doing.

A pair of beautiful white wings slowly unfurled from Marie's shoulders. Her eyes were bright and eager as she broke the kiss with Warren. Stepping back, she flapped her wings experimentally. Then, with a yell of sheer joy, she leapt into the sky. The powerful sweep of her wings blew the hat from my head, and I caught a glimpse of her waving at me as she spiraled upwards. It occurred to me that this wasn't the first time she'd made use of Warren's wings.

Warren followed Marie into the sky. A flight of mountain birds twittered in indignation at the alien intruders, and scattered in all directions to avoid them.

Ororo walked to the other side of the road and summoned her winds. She tumbled into the sky in a manner very different than Warren and Marie, but no less graceful or amazing. Marie and Warren swept down and then came up on either side of Ororo. The three of them held hands - with Ororo between Marie and Warren - as the sky echoed with their laughter and they swept higher and higher.

Emma got out of the car and met my eye. "I'm not used to feeling so... unremarkable," she said wryly.

I smiled grimly as I chambered a round into my Tommy gun, "Now you know how I felt on the drive up here. You four are hard on a girl's self-image."

Emma pulled a handgun out of her purse. Then she negligently discarded the purse - which had freaking diamonds inlaid in the leather - into my car. The firearm she was sporting surprised me. I would have expected something tiny, elegant, and pricey. Instead she was carrying something big, nasty, and pricey: a Stark conversion of a broomhandle Mauser. That was actually a very serious weapon.

I was still wearing my anti-psychic bracelet. So was Marie. But this time, our primary defense on the psychic front was Emma. I was actually sort of hoping Sterns would try something.

As we started trudging up the gravel track to the Banner place, Emma asked, "What did it cost to get all of this help from Logan?"

I grimaced, "I owe him an investigation. No questions asked."

"Was that wise?"

"No. But my client is in trouble, Emma. And she needs more help than Marie and I can give her on our own."

"Dom, that honorable streak will be the death of you eventually."

"Maybe."

"By the way, what will be my reward be for helping you?"

"How about a handshake, a slap on the back, and a hearty word of thanks?"

"I had something more personal in mind."

"Hmm. You know, this is usually the part where you put a dirty picture in my mind. In this case it would probably be the one where I'm wearing nothing but a frilly white apron as I pour you a glass of champagne. Sure is a shame that I'm wearing this piece of anti-psychic hardware, isn't it?"

"Actually, you rather like that image. So stop complaining."

Then we broke into the clearing where the Banner house was located.

Nobody was home. Emma and I did a quick check of the house, the barn, and the outbuildings. The patrol car was still hidden out back and we found a soft spot in the ground behind the barn where I suspected the deputy was buried. Aside from that, there was nothing to see.

Overhead, Warren, Ororo, and Marie kept watch. Every now and then, we communicated by hand signals. They hadn't spotted anything either.

"Now what?" Emma asked. We were in the laboratory.

"Can you get a psychic feel for Sterns or Betty?" I replied.

Emma wandered around the place, frowning thoughtfully as she touched or picked up various items. She spent a lot of time with her eyes closed and both hands on the examination table where Betty had been strapped down.

"I'm not getting anything at all for Sterns - he's dangerously powerful. But Miss Ross has a very strong aura. She's somewhere east of us, but I can't get much more than that."

I nodded, "Good."

Emma opened her eyes. "Dom, 'east of us' is a big place."

"Then it's a good thing we have our own Air Corps to do reconnaissance for us."

We found Betty Ross in the hills just inland from the city.

Warren and Ororo circled overhead as Emma and I drove up. Betty was sitting on a shelf of rock by the side of the road. She was naked, badly bruised, and obviously out of sorts. Marie, still topless and with wings, was sitting next to her. She was quietly talking to Betty as they held hands. One of her wings was tucked around Betty to keep her warm.

As I set my car's hand-brake, I glanced at Emma.

Emma was staring narrowly at Betty, "She's deep in shock. And her memory is a mess. I'm only getting bits and pieces from after she transformed. She caught up to Sterns and there was a fight. But Sterns had help of some kind and he escaped."

I grunted as I opened the car door. Sterns wasn't alone. Great.

Emma silently fell in behind me as I walked over to Betty.

"Betty?" I said as I squatted next to her.

"Hello, Domino," she said as she gave me a distant glance. Her eyes weren't green any longer. They were a deep shade of brown.

Emma - cruel and haughty Emma - gently wrapped her ridiculously expensive coat around Betty. Then she smoothed back Betty's wild tangle of hair. Some of the tension in Betty seemed to slip away.

"Betty, I've got some good news," I said quietly. "We've found Bruce."

A spark seemed to light in Betty's eyes. And they slipped from brown to a light shade of green. I tried not to react.

"Bruce?" Betty said as a tiny smile appeared on her face. I hoped to hell that Banner was worth what Betty felt for him, but frankly I wasn't too sure about that.

"He's in town and we can take you to him, but we've got a problem."

"Problem?" Betty said. He brow furrowed and her eyes began turning a deeper shade of green.

Emma touched Betty on the shoulder. Betty seemed to relax. Her eye color was stable, but it wasn't sliding back to her normal brown.

"Sterns is after you and Bruce," I said. "You won't be safe until we find him and deal with him. Do you know anything, Betty? Anything at all that can help us find him?"

Betty shuddered and shook her head. "Sterns got away from me. I tried to kill him, but he got away."

"That's okay, Betty. You don't have to fight him, but we do need your help. Do you know where Sterns is holed up?"

Betty frowned, "There was something he said when I was his prisoner - he said Bruce's lab was better than his. I didn't know he had a lab."

I mentally kicked myself. It made sense that Sterns had a lab of his own. That should have been obvious from what Banner had said. And that was something we could work with.

"Betty, we're going to take you back to town. And you can see Bruce. Is that okay?"

She nodded eagerly and stumbled to her feet.

Marie helped Betty to the car as I gave Emma a worried look.

"She needs some rest. And seeing that man of hers will help, but..."

Emma hesitated.

"What?"

"She's frightened and upset, Dom. Whatever happened six months ago in Banner's lab is slowly killing her and she knows it. And then there's Sterns, of course. But there's more. Your client is pregnant."

We drove back to town with Betty curled up in my back seat. She slept, with Emma's coat as a blanket and her head in Marie's lap. Emma made sure her sleep was deep and peaceful.

"How sure are you about her being pregnant?" I asked.

"I can sense the child. It's about two months along."

I didn't have any response.

"You better get used to the idea that you won't be able to save her," Emma said quietly.

I looked at Emma, but I didn't say anything.

"You've found Betty's boyfriend. You can do whatever it takes to get Sterns out of their lives. But Betty's dying. And then there's that thing she changes into... Those aren't the sort of things we can do anything about. Perhaps nobody can."

I turned my eyes back to the road.

"Maybe," I answered.

All hell broke loose just as I made the turn onto the street where Logan's hotel was located.

There was rumbling roar and part of the front wall of the hotel exploded out into the street. I saw the distinct streak of Sam Guthrie's rocket-like trail as he blasted his way out of the hotel. Sam was wrapped in the grip of something huge, green, and crudely man-like. The two of them piled into a building on the opposite side of the street from the hotel. It promptly collapsed on them.

There was a moment of stunned silence broken only by the crash of collapsing brick and masonry. Then a vast green form stood up in the wrecked building. He snarled as debris cascaded away from his gigantic body. I didn't see any sign of Sam.

Emma's eyes were wide as I parked the car some distance down the street.

"Emma, allow me to introduce you to Dr. Bruce Banner," I said as calmly as possible.

The big, hulking, green guy threw his head back and roared up at the sky. Lead by Logan, a half-dozen mutant gangsters spilled out of the hotel. Logan's had his claws were out and he looked really, really pissed.

"Wait in the car!" Emma and I yelled simultaneously. As we stared at each other in surprise, Marie disentangled herself from Betty, got out, and began sprinting towards the fight.

"Oh, damn it!" Emma said.

Using language quite a bit stronger than that, I unholstered my piece and followed Marie.

By then, there was a whirlwind of a fight going on in the middle of the street. A lightning bolt slammed down from the sky - Ororo was still overhead - and hit Banner dead center. That staggered him enough that Logan was able to leap claws-first into Banner's face. Bobby Drake got too damn close and a flailing green arm the size of a telephone pole smashed him across the street and through a plate glass window. Scott Summers fired a burst of three optic blasts that just seemed to skitter off of Banner. Yuriko ducked low and tried to hamstring Banner with her freakishly long finger-claws. Her claws just slid off with no discernable effect.

Marie reached into the window Bobby had been smashed through and grabbed his arm. Then she fired a blast of cold ice at Banner's feet. Banner had a lot of problems at the moment, not the least being a face-full of Logan's claws, and that was enough to cause him to loose his balance and slam to the ground. With a roar, Banner kicked out and clipped Yuriko in the side, which knocked her for a loop. As Banner climbed to his feet, Warren swept in low and fast and smashed shoulder first into Banner's massive back. Warren bounced away and crashed to the pavement. His arm was hanging at a weird angle, but Banner didn't even look like he'd noticed. I lined up a shot on the bridge of Banner's nose. I wasn't sure if that would hurt him, but I was willing to bet that it would definitely distract him.

*STOP!* Emma shouted in our minds. Her psychic shout was pretty loud. My bracelet instantly became uncomfortably hot.

Thanks to the bracelets, Marie and I were okay, but everyone else stopped fighting and began looking around blankly - as if unsure where they were. Ororo fell out of the sky and went to check on Warren. Emma collapsed to her knees, her head in her hands. That stunt had obviously taken a lot out of her.

Like everyone else, Banner seemed puzzled. It occurred to me that you could still see his normal features dimly represented in his big, green, face. Then whatever control Emma had over him vanished. He shook his head, crouched, and leaped into the sky. It was an incredible jump.

By then, Betty was out of the car. Wearing nothing but Emma's coat, she ran after Banner - screaming his name at a rapidly dwindling green speck in sky.

"What happened?" I asked.

We were in what was left of the hotel's bar. A jagged ten-foot wide hole in the wall gave it a new view of the street.

Logan used his teeth to pull the cork from a bottle and took a long slug. Then he handed the bottle to me. I took a drink and transferred the bottle to Hank. I noticed that both Logan and Hank now had on the same bracelets that Marie and I were wearing. Emma was still in the area and they apparently didn't trust her. As I keep saying, Logan and Hank are a lot smarter than they look.

"Banner ran out of morphine," Hank said with a shrug. "Before we could get him some more, he got big, mean, and green. He knocked out Danni and Betsy with one punch. That left Sam to fight Banner on his own until the cavalry showed up."

"The kid has heart," I said with an impressed shake of my head.

"He's also got a lot of broken bones," Logan grated. Say what you will about Logan, but he tries to take care of his people.

"Anyone else hurt?"

Hank finished the report. "Yuriko has some busted ribs. Bobby has a lot of cuts - some pretty bad. Warren's got a dislocated shoulder. Raven's still knocked out. Everyone else has the usual set of bruises and bumps."

Betsy Braddock took that moment to storm into the bar. She's yet another cutie - a British girl who had to flee home when her powers began to show. She's also Logan's best psychic. At the moment, she was sporting an impressive black-eye and was holding an ice-pack against the side of her head.

"You bitch!" she hissed at me. My bracelet began heating up again. I was beginning to wonder what I would have to do for Hank in order to keep it.

Hank stood up, grabbed Braddock by the shoulders, and then forcibly turned her around until she was facing the door. A firm slap on the posterior sent Braddock back out of the room.

"You aren't real popular right now," Logan said dryly as Hank sat back down on his barstool.

"What was she trying to do to me?"

Hank took another drink. "She said something right after the fight about putting you to work in the worst whorehouse in town until you paid us back for damages and hospital bills."

Yikes.

"It's an idea," Logan added thoughtfully.

Double yikes.

"But that's a problem for later," Logan continued. "Right now, I want you to tell me what's going on."

I spilled what I knew. Before you start wondering if I was betraying the confidentiality of my client, you should know that Logan had the resources to figure out everything I knew. And some of his methods were less than gentle. And this way I got to make sure he heard the story in a way that put Betty in the best possible light.

"These people - Banner, Ross, and Sterns - they aren't like us," Hank said thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"That Xavier guy called us mutants. He said we were born different from other people, but our actual powers don't start showing up until we start to mature. But these guys turned into what they are in a lab accident."

"And it's killing them," I pointed out.

Logan gave me a lop-sided smile, "You don't think our powers are killing us, Dom? How many of us have normal lives? Or families? How many of us do you suppose are going to die peacefully in bed?"

That was surprisingly philosophical for a gang boss. He also had a point.

Over the radio, we heard excited reports of a green giant roaming around the downtown, causing random damage. We made an effort to track Banner down, but he was always just ahead of us. After a few hours, things went quiet. However, the cops were on alert and foot patrols armed with shotguns and rifles were wandering the streets.

"This case is a mess!" Marie fumed. "First we have Betty, but Banner is missing. Then we lose Betty, but find Banner. Then we find Betty, but Banner gets away again."

I shrugged helplessly.

"We have a problem," Emma told me.

"Tell me about it," I said with a distracted shake of my head.

"Domino, you have to understand this: Banner is very hard to psychically control when he's transformed into his giant form. Perhaps I can deal with Ross, but Banner is a different story."

I looked at Emma thoughtfully, "What if we bring in Jean to back you up?"

Emma shook her head and said very flatly, "That's not going to happen. This is too dangerous."

"Then we better not run into Banner when he's all green," Marie interjected.

Emma nodded. "I have to agree. Our best bet is to avoid Banner until he changes back to normal. Depending on psychic powers to control him is a bad bet."

I nodded my head in reluctant agreement. I was just hoping that fate would be kind enough to cooperate with what we wanted.

Thanks to the run-in with Banner, Warren was out of action for a couple of days. Our team was down to Marie, Emma, Ororo, and me.

We regrouped in a diner that's not too far from Logan's hotel. Betty had been moved to another location, but Logan's people were keeping an eye on her. I guess Logan figured we still had a deal.

Emma opened her eyes and looked at the rest of us. She looked pretty wore out. "I still can't get a read on Banner," she said. "But that isn't too surprising. The city provides a lot of background interference."

I made a face. Naturally this wasn't going to be easy.

"What now?" Marie asked me.

"We find Sterns," I replied. "If we can take him out of the picture, a lot of our problems will go away. And it will help if we can look for Banner without constantly looking over our shoulders."

Marie nodded in agreement. "And our best bet is to track down Sterns' laboratory?"

I put a list in the middle of the table, "I got this from Betty. It's a summary of specialized equipment that would be useful for the kind of research Sterns is doing. The items circled in red are particularly unusual and expensive."

"As you asked, I checked with my office," Emma began as she opened a notebook of her own. "There are five scientific and medical supply businesses in town."

Frowning thoughtfully, I looked at Emma, "How long would it take you to visit their offices and psychic their salesmen?"

Emma shook her head as she picked up Betty's list. "No need for that," she said. "I'll just phone them and ask for the information. Those companies need to keep Frost Enterprises happy."

Marie and Ororo gave each other an amused look. I hid a smile.

When you get down to it, money is the best super-power of all.

It took the rest of the day to get the information we needed. After that, it was just a matter of checking mailing addresses.

"Green Future Laboratories?" I said disgustedly. "You've got to be kidding."

"We probably could have figured that out just by looking in the phone book," Marie chuckled.

"How do you want to handle this?" Ororo asked me.

"Reconnaissance followed by lots of violence."

'Green Future Laboratories' was located in a converted warehouse in the Piedmont district. During the middle of the last century, Piedmont was a bustling manufacturing center. But eventually the factories got old and started closing down. The Depression finished off the last of them. Now Piedmont was an all-but-abandoned wasteland in the middle of the city, filled with empty buildings.

We were parked on a low hill that gave us a view of the district. It was night and we could see small heating and cooking fires scattered here and there among the abandoned structures. The train yards for the city were located nearby and the hobos had found that Piedmont an attractive place to squat. I wondered how long it would be until a fire got out of control and Piedmont burned to the ground.

Emma opened her eyes and shrugged irritably, "I can't get anything. Something is shielding the building from me."

"At least we know we've got the right place," observed Marie.

"Before sunset, I saw some people around the building," Ororo said. "There was perhaps a dozen of them. They were wearing work uniforms and making an effort to look busy. But if you watched long enough, you could tell that they were merely moving crates from one end of the facility to the other. They are actually guards."

"Weapons?" I asked.

"Nothing obvious, but I was keeping my distance and they might have handguns. Also, they could have any number of weapons hidden in the area."

"The moon's up," Marie observed as she nodded towards the horizon. It was a three-quarter moon. It was going to be a fairly bright night.

I glanced at Ororo.

"Anything specific?" she asked.

I thought for a second before responding. "Give us a storm. It should have a slow buildup so it doesn't look too unnatural. Then make it rain buckets when we get close. Shut it down once we get inside the fence and up to the building. Be ready to drop lightning on anything that looks like trouble. After we get inside, follow us in."

Ororo just nodded as if I'd asked for nothing more complex than going down to the corner store and picking up a newspaper. It's a joy to have Ororo on your side.

Then I looked at Emma and Marie. "You two are with me. We'll use the storm for cover as we approach the building. If we can, we'll sneak in. Otherwise, we fight."

Marie nodded instantly. Emma made a face, but didn't say anything.

Now came the tricky part. "Emma, I want you to let Marie duplicate your powers."

That went over like a lead balloon. First they both gave me a disbelieving look. Then they glared at one another. However, what I'd said made too much sense. If we ran into Sterns, we'd need all of the psychic firepower we could manage.

Marie sighed, took off her anti-psychic bracelet and tossed to Ororo. "Here," she said to Ororo, "the last damn thing we want is for Sterns to take you over."

Emma resignedly extended her hand. Marie grinned - anything that made Emma uncomfortable was fine by her - and then ignored the offered hand and stepped right up and kissed Emma. Emma stiffened in shocked surprise. Then she relaxed as her body sensously molded into Marie's.

I rolled my eyes. Ororo gave me an amused glance as she slipped on the bracelet that Marie had given her.

The kiss went on. And on. Emma had grabbed Marie's ass and pulled her even closer. Marie had one hand on the small of Emma's back and the other on the back of her neck. For the first time, I noticed that Marie was taller than Emma.

I coughed loudly.

The kiss ended, but Emma and Marie were still in each other's arms, staring into each other's eyes.

"Bitch," Marie purred.

"Slut," Emma replied with a smile.

"Whore."

"Slag."

"Cow."

"Trollop."

Ororo was trying not to laugh.

"We've got a job to do," I said stiffly.

Never tell Ororo that you want a lot of rain.

It was a damned deluge. We were soaked to the bone and the water splashing over the asphalt and concrete was at ankle level - and rising. Dear God, I half expected to see somebody building an Ark.

On the other hand, we didn't have to be particularly stealthy. Nobody was going to see us unless we bumped into them. I found the fence to the warehouse by literally walking right into it. Slipping a pair of wire-cutters out of my jacket pocket, I cut us a hole through the chain-link. Then we crawled inside.

I was squinting through the rain - trying to make out the details of the main building - when I felt a sudden surge of psychic energy and then heard something splash. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Emma crouching over a still figure who was laid out on the asphalt. Marie was standing nearby, obviously watching for more trouble.

*Dom, take a look at this,* Emma spoke into my mind. I'd ditched my bracelet on the theory that it would be useful to telepathically communicate with Emma and Marie. Between them, they should be powerful enough to keep Sterns off our backs.

I crouched down next to Emma. The guy she'd knocked out wasn't quite human. He had oddly bluish-purple skin and his facial features were strangely indistinct and malformed - as if they were made of wax and then partly melted. At a distance, you might mistake him for a normal human, but once you got close the difference was obvious. He was wearing a typical work uniform, but there was a non-typical heavy revolver in a holster on his belt.

*What the hell is that?* Marie asked telepathically.

*Good question,* I replied.

Emma did the psychic equivalent of a shrug. *His mental patterns are strangely simple. He seems very focused on obeying immediate orders. And he has little in the way of memories.*

Despite the cold rain, I felt my skin crawl, *Do you mean his mind has been altered?*

*No. I don't think he has any memories that are more than a few weeks old. And all of them are about doing simple jobs for Sterns. He's not a human being, Dom. He's something that Sterns created in his laboratory.*

*A Frankenstein's monster?* Marie asked.

Emma shook her head. *I don't know if the analogy is completely accurate, but it's close enough.*

I glanced at Emma, *How many more are there?*

She frowned, *Sterns is still mucking up my psychic read of the area, but I'd guess that Ororo's count of a dozen is more-or-less accurate.*

I didn't like that sound of that. *How hard are they to take down psychically?* I asked.

*It was actually rather easy to knock this one out. I think they're vulnerable to psychic powers. It makes sense that Sterns would build them that way.*

*That's a break,* Marie added.

"About time we got one," I said out loud.

By the time we got to the entrance, Emma and Marie had taken out two more guards. Pressing my ear to the door, I could hear the repetitive rattle of a generator. Good. Between that and the drumbeat of the rain, we might still be able to sneak inside.

Emma and Marie were off to the sides of the door. I took a deep breath, hefted my Thompson gun, and eased open the door. Light spilled out.

Inside was a vast single room. In the far corner, a lab had been set up. Crudely strung electrical lights illuminated a scene straight out of "Frankenstein". Strange machines were spread around the area. Beakers bubbled on lab tables. Blackboards were covered with strange equations. And the banging sound of the generator filled the air.

Some kind of large animal cage was set off to one side. Banner was in it. He seemed to be unconscious. There was another cage - unoccupied - next to the one Banner was occupying. I guess Sterns was planning on having a pair of lovebirds.

Sterns was wearing a labcoat over his coveralls and standing next to one of the tables. I noted with interest that there was no sign of the bullet wound that Marie had inflicted on him up in Grenwald. In one hand, Sterns had a clipboard. In the other, he had a sandwich. He was examining the clipboard intently. Some guy I'd never seen before - a harried-looking little man who was wearing another labcoat - was rearranging equipment on another one of the lab tables. He paused in what he was doing just long enough to pour some coffee into a mug that was sitting on the table next to Sterns.

It was a startlingly domestic scene from the life of a mad scientist.

I eased into the room and dodged off to the side and into a convenient shadow. Emma and Marie silently followed me. Marie carefully and soundlessly closed the door behind us.

The rain decreased slightly in intensity. I took that as a sign that Ororo was on the way.

Emma glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. I made a 'wait' gesture with my hand. I wanted Ororo nearby before we confronted Sterns.

But then Sterns glanced up in surprise. And his eyes met mine.

I had my Thompson pointed right at Sterns.

"Don't try anything," I said bleakly. I didn't bother to yell. Sterns wasn't the kind to be impressed by shouting.

Sterns was smart enough not to be cocky. His eyes flicked to either side of me as he noted the presence of Emma and Marie.

The lab assistant was frozen in place, his eyes wide as he stared at me.

"Hands up - slowly," I ordered.

Sterns smiled thinly, put down his clipboard and sandwich, and did as I'd said. The lab assistant also raised his hands.

"Really, Domino. 'Hands up?'" he chuckled.

"Don't tempt me to end this right here and now," I said coldly. And I meant what I'd said. Sterns was dangerous and I couldn't afford to take chances with him. I hoped he understood just how serious I was.

Once again, Sterns checked out Emma and Marie. He apparently knew they were psychics. I figured he was trying to gauge his chances against the two of them. He didn't seem to like the odds. Emma and Marie would be able to parry any psychic attacks he tried - and they should also be able to frustrate his mind-mover trick where he stopped bullets in mid-air. If necessary, I was going to empty the Thompson's drum right into Sterns and he couldn't do much about that.

"It's like this, Sterns," I continued. "You play ball and we'll hand you over to the Feds. If you don't, I'll kill you where you stand."

Say what you will about J. Edgar's boys, but Congress had given them complete authority over psychic crime and all the resources that could be scrounged up to fight it. Call me cynical, but I think politicians are scared silly of people who can see what they're really thinking.

"You don't strike me as a cold-blooded killer, Domino. And what will the police say if they find you with my bullet-riddled corpse?"

"You a psychic who murdered a Sheriff's Deputy, Sterns. The cops won't blink twice when I tell them I didn't have any choice but to gun you down. Hell, I'll have handsome young cops offering to buy me drinks and the Sheriff and the Chief of Police will give me a free pass on parking and speeding tickets for the rest of my life."

Sterns nodded slowly. "Very well. Your logic is unassailable. You had best take me in."

A flicker of a smile appeared on his face... and quickly vanished. You didn't have to be able to read minds to tell what he was thinking. How the hell could we hold a major-league psychic? As soon as he was out of Emma and Marie's clutches, he'd simply mind-control the cops who were holding him and slip away.

Then Sterns' eyes went wide when Marie pulled out a syringe and a bottle of morphine. It wasn't very sophisticated, and the cops really don't like to talk about it, but drugs were the best means law enforcement had come up with to control psychics. I guess Sterns didn't know that I'd heard of that little trick.

Sterns' eyes flickered to Banner and back. He had made Banner into an addict. He didn't like the idea of going the same route.

"Don't do this," Sterns said. And for the first time, I heard fear in his voice. I hate to admit it, but an ugly part of me enjoyed that. Sterns was the kind of guy whose every word was weighted with the contempt he felt for lesser beings. And as far as he was concerned, everyone on Earth was a lesser being. But now the long, slow, train called 'payback' was pulling into the station.

Marie filled the syringe. Then she began to carefully approach Sterns. Emma slipped to the side, concentrating fiercely. This was the tricky part. Sterns was scared and we didn't know the full range of his abilities. And even if the odds were stacked against him, his balls were in a vice and he just might do something desperate.

Then the lab assistant suddenly stepped in front of Sterns.

My finger tightened on the trigger, but I hesitated. One long burst from the Thompson and both Sterns and his Igor would be cut to pieces, but for all I knew, the lab assistant was being mind-controlled. Marie stopped her approach, obviously not sure what to do next.

Emma didn't hesitate at all. She emptied the clip of her Mauser.

Emma's a surprisingly good shot. Most of her shots slammed into the lab assistant. He went down. That shimmering effect I'd seen before popped up around Sterns and he desperately dove underneath one of the lab tables. Marie had flinched away from the shots, but now she broke into a run towards Sterns.

Banner suddenly screamed. I flicked a quick glance towards his cage. He was awake. And he was changing. Whatever controls Sterns had over him was gone.

Behind us, the door opened. Marie saw that and her eyes went wide. I pivoted to cover whatever was coming inside.

Two of the purple guys were at the door. Both had their handguns out. They had the drop on me and I knew in my gut that there was no way I'd be able to fire before they plugged me.

So, naturally, I got crazy lucky.

A sudden blaze of hot white light flared through the open door and high-set windows of the warehouse. Then there was an ear-shattering roar that made all of us flinch. Ororo had seen something outside that she didn't like - and she had delivered her judgement on it.

The lightning strike didn't hit the two guys at the door, but it did stun then. One fumbled with his gun, but the other raised his at me. I responded with a burst from my Thompson that stitched across their chests and knocked them flat. There was no blood, but both of them went still.

Another lightning strike hammered our ears as I turned my attention away from the door. Something was going on outside, but I had to assume that Ororo was handling it.

"STERNS!" Banner roared. His scream was almost as loud as Ororo's lightning strike. He was roughly half-way transformed into his giant green form. He gave the bars of his cage a yank and they bent.

Emma had reloaded and was covering Sterns as Marie dragged him out from underneath the table. Sterns was also turning green and his head was transforming into a grotesquely long shape. His face was contorted in terror as he ignored us and stared at Banner. It suddenly occurred to me that he was trying to control Banner, but it wasn't working.

And just to top it all off, the lab assistant guy that Emma had thouroughly plugged was staggering to his feet. He was the third guy in the room who was going green. He seemed to be changing into something that looked like a cross between a lizard and a gorilla. As I watched, one of the holes in his chest puckered out a bullet that dropped to the floor. Then the wound closed.

Banner exploded out of his cage. Shrapnel from the cage's metal bars whizzed through the air. Banner had murder in his eyes as he began stomping his way towards Sterns. Emma and Marie - their eyes wide in horror - began backing away. I could tell that they were trying to psychically control Banner as well, but nothing seemed to be working.

By then, Sterns had fully transformed. His body was spindly and sickly-looking, but his head was bizarrely tall - the part above his eyes was at least twice normal height. He gave out a high-pitched scream and tried to run. But Banner was too fast for him.

With Sterns helplessly grabbed in his huge hands, Banner went to work. Sterns' screams turned into something that was only vaguely human.

I've seen a lot of bad things in my life, but sometimes I still have nightmares about what Banner did to Sterns.

Emma and Marie seemed frozen as they tried to do something - anything - to Banner with their psychic powers. I began shoving them to the door.

Covered with Sterns' pinkish-green blood, Banner howled in rage and turned to look at us.

We all opened fire. Yeah, our job was to save Banner, not kill him, but if you'd seen the way Sterns had come apart in Banner's hands you would have shot him too.

The bullets slowed Banner down, but otherwise didn't do a damn thing.

I stepped forward. "Keep running!" I yelled at Emma and Marie just before I slammed another short burst into Banner. I still had half-drum of ammo in my Thompson. Maybe I could keep Banner occupied long enough for them to get away.

Banner just leaned into my fire and advanced towards us. Bullets were bouncing off of him and his eyes were promising that he'd do to me what he'd done to Sterns. Emma and Marie were reloading frantically as they kept falling back towards the door, but the damn fools refused to run.

"Go! Go! GODDAMMIT, GO!" I screamed at them. I knew my lifespan was measured in terms of the ammo load in my Thompson, but if I could just save Emma and Marie...

Then the lizard-gorilla guy tackled Banner. Punching and clawing wildly at each other, they slammed into the wall of the warehouse and smashed right through it. Chunks of broken brick and mortar flew everywhere.

Emma and Marie and I turned and ran like hell.

Ororo was standing in the middle of the warehouse loading dock, staring in awe at the two green giants who were trying to tear each other to pieces. The storm Ororo had summoned was still swirling through the sky, occasionally rumbling and flickering with angry thunder and lightning, but the rain had decreased to a soft drizzle. Scattered about the nearby grounds were well over a dozen of the purple guys. Ororo had taken them all out.

Ororo had her hands raised uncertainly - trying to decide if she should drop her lightning on the two monsters.

"Don't!" I said as I grabbed Ororo by the shoulder. There was no guarantee that her lightning would effect them. And I didn't want to attract their attention.

Without a word, Emma and Marie joined hands. Both of them were trembling in obvious fear, but so was I. We were tiny people in the presence of giants.

Banner broke loose from the grip of the lizard-gorilla guy and landed a pile-driver of a blow that staggered his opponent. Then Banner picked up the lizard-gorilla guy and slammed him to the ground. A crater erupted in the now-broken concrete. The shockwave made us all stumble. But through it all, Marie and Emma kept their eyes locked on the two combatants.

The lizard-gorilla guy was trying to crawl to his feet when Banner slammed a massive fist into his face. Bones loudly broke as the lizard-gorilla guy's head visibly deformed. Blood and what I suspected was brain matter flew away from Banner's fist.

The lizard-gorilla guy bonelessly collapsed to the ground. Banner growled at his defeated foe - and then kicked him so hard that downed monster pin-wheeled a good thirty yards away before slamming into the chain-link fence.

Banner grinned, lifted his arms, and howled with triumphant laughter as the rain washed blood from his face and body. With Sterns and the lizard-gorilla guy dead, he seemed to be coming down from his titanic rage.

Then he spotted us and a flicker of irritated recognition passed over his face.

Banner took a step towards us. Then he suddenly frowned - as if he suddenly didn't quite understand where he was and why he was about to kill someone.

"No..." Banner grunted. For a second, I didn't realize that he'd said an actual word. I was used to hearing angry howls from him.

Emma and Marie were still staring at Banner. Their hands were still locked together.

Suddenly, Banner sat down on the wet concrete. Then he began to shrink. In less than a minute, he was a man again, sitting in the rain in tattered clothes and sobbing like a little boy.

Ororo's eyes met mine as thunder rolled overhead. My Thompson was empty, but I had pulled out my automatic. We were both considering murder. Or maybe what we had in mind was more like a mercy killing.

Then Banner looked up at us, his face a portrait of misery. "Betty... is she all right?" he asked brokenly.

The dangerous electric aura surrounding Ororo dwindled away. I took my finger off the trigger of my handgun.

So in the end, it was Betty who save Banner's life.

"Can you control him?" I asked Emma and Marie.

Emma gave me a skeptical look. Marie shook her head.

"Yes and no," Marie said worriedly. "Right now - yes. But for a while, he was completely berserk and we couldn't do a damn thing to stop him. After he killed Sterns and the other green guy, we managed to get to him."

Emma took a deep breath and began walking over to Banner. A sudden, wild surge of panic went through me and I raised my gun. Marie grabbed my arm and Emma, sensing what I was about to do, held up a hand to stop me.

Crouching next to Banner, Emma put her other hand on his shoulder.

"Dr. Banner?" she asked softly.

Banner looked at her blearily.

"Go to sleep," Emma finished.

Banner collapsed into her arms.

It was a couple of weeks since the raid on Sterns' laboratory. Betty was out of the hospital and in our office, settling her account with us.

"Thank you," Betty said as she finished counting our fee onto my desk. She had tossed in a hundred dollar bonus. I hadn't turned it down.

Betty looked less healthy than when we first met her. And her belly was beginning to show.

"How's Dr. Banner?" Marie asked quietly.

Betty just smiled. "He's back in his lab."

I wasn't completely sure if that was good news. On the other hand, I certainly hoped Banner would be able to save Betty and himself. And their baby.

There wasn't a lot to say. We shook hands and Betty thanked us again. Then she left.

I flipped through a newspaper while Sooraya silently did some filing. Marie was on the couch, staring out the window. All in all, the office of Domino Investigations was a pretty quiet place.

"Sooraya, take the rest of the day off," I said suddenly. "And put the 'closed' sign up on the door when you leave."

For a second, it looked like Sooraya was going to object - the girl's a hard worker - but then she sensed that we needed some time alone. After bundling up her baby boy, she went home.

With a sigh, I opened my bottom desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a pair of shot glasses.

"What are you thinking?" I asked Marie as I handed her a drink.

"I'm not sure we accomplished much," Marie said. She was holding the glass in both hands, gazing down into it as if it held some important secret.

"We did what our client hired us to do," I pointed out.

"You saw how Betty looked. It's a race to see if she'll die before she has her baby."

"There's nothing we can do about that. And any chance Betty and her baby now have is because Banner is back to work."

"Yeah, they have a chance... assuming one of them doesn't turn into a monster and kill the other - and anyone else who's around."

I made a helpless gesture with the hand holding my shot glass. "As near as I can tell, they were handling their other sides pretty well until Sterns showed up. He kicked over the table, Marie. It was only then that Banner and Betty got dangerous. Hell, if Banner is right about Sterns sabotaging his lab, then Sterns is the guy who started everything. And the violence ended when he did."

Still looking down into her drink, Marie nodded slowly. "Yeah, Sterns was a bad guy. Maybe he even deserved to die the way he did."

I tried not to shudder. "Nobody deserves to die that way."

That sort of killed the conversation. Marie downed her whiskey. I sat down next to her on the couch and poured her another one.

"One other thing," Marie said. Then she paused.

I cocked my head and waited for her to finish.

"When I absorbed her powers, I got a pretty good look inside Emma's head," Marie continued slowly.

Uh-oh.

"She's an arrogant slut who likes to play at being just plain evil," Marie said. Some exasperation was creeping into her voice. "But she also has a lot of guts, and she sticks by her friends, and she can be kind to people who are in trouble. I have to admit that there's more to her than a crazy, stuck-up, skank who likes to spank people."

I couldn't help but smile at Marie's analysis of Emma's character. Actually, it was pretty close to mine.

"And she really does love you, Dom. It's a strange kind of love, but it's there."

I wiped the smile from my face. "Are you mad?" I asked.

Marie shook her head. "No. We've already had our argument about Emma. I don't see any reason to go over it again, and I know you've been a good girl where she's involved. I just want you to know that now I understand what you see in her. I didn't before."

I tried not to let Marie see my sigh of relief.

Then Marie gave me a mischievous look. "And just to clear the air, I don't think there's anything wrong with a recreational spanking every now and then."

I laughed and kissed her. The kiss lasted for some time.

"Uh... wait a minute," I asked after we separated. "If we ever have a 'recreational spanking', who gets spanked?"

Marie just smiled mysteriously.