Chapter Ten

Long ago…almost two centuries back…a man sat in a smoky London tavern, his pie and pint forgotten as he flipped through the notes for his upcoming speech before the Royal Society.

"Dr. Essex, I presume?"

A tall, lanky man moved to stand between Essex and the nearest gas lamp, casting the scientist's table – and his notes – into shadow. Bushy mutton chops and round, pince-nez glasses obscured his features, but his voice betrayed his youth and eagerness.

"Might I have a word with you, sir?" the man said. "It's about your research… You see, I too have read the work of Gregor Mendel, of his Law of Segregation and Law of Independent Assortment. And, like you, sir, I believe that, taken in combination, Darwin's theory of natural selection and Mendel's insights into the random transmission of dominant and recessive traits from parents to offspring have the potential to lead us to the secrets of humanity's deepest hereditary; to allow us to trace our origins back to our purest beginnings. To a time before Babel, perhaps to Eden itself—!"

Essex clenched his pipe's stem tighter between his teeth. Not another Bible-blinded radical! And a university student, from the looks of him…

"You have approached the wrong man, sir," Essex growled over the younger man's enthusiastic prattle. "I did not come here to socialize or debate. The aims of my research lie, not in tracing humanity's past, but in guiding its future. Now, leave; you are blocking my light, and I do need to review this…"

"My apologies," the young man said, staying right where he was. "Perhaps, another time…? I am free all this week."

Essex turned his shoulder to the man, but he didn't budge, waiting patiently for the scientist's reply. Essex snarled and gathered his papers, taking no notice of his untouched meal as he climbed to his feet. He waited, pointedly, in the narrow aisle but, when the tall man still didn't move, he prompted: "Sir, you are standing in my path."

"Then, allow me to open the way for you," the student said, his hair and gleaming glasses unable to fully mask his odd little smile as he stepped aside.

Essex brushed past him and out the door, his busy mind fixed on matters far more important than sparing common courtesy for some upstart student with pretentious side burns…

Cold, hazy drizzle hung in the air outside Braddock Manor. It soaked through Kurt's velvet fur as he crouched at the outskirts of the cordoned grid overlaying the ruins of what had once been the Training Room's equipment locker. The salty, marshy scent of low tide tickled his nostrils, and he wrinkled his nose to prevent a sneeze, his long tail swaying irritably behind him.

"Soft weather, they call this," he grumbled. "Bloody miserable, is more like it."

"Like walking through a cloud," Samuel said, standing beside him as they watched the forensics teams work. "All this mist and fog can get pretty frustrating, though. It's not actually 'raining,' yet we still manage to get thoroughly soaked."

"I almost wish it would rain…" Kurt muttered. "At least, then, there'd be some sense of release. I feel as though the sky itself has been holding its breath since this hellish nightmare began…"

Samuel regarded the older man, his blue eyes dark with empathy. Nightcrawler looked like a shadow in the misty haze, a gaunt wraith, his chin dark with stubble and his golden eyes shot through with red. Samuel set his jaw.

"We will find them, Uncle Kurt," the teen asserted. "Marti's smart, and my Aunt Betsy's a lot tougher than she acts in front of those cameras. They've all gotten in and out of tough spots before. We just have to trust that, wherever they are, whoever's behind all this, they'll be able to handle it. They'll be OK."

Kurt placed a hand on Samuel's shoulder, but couldn't bring himself to reply. The boy was still too young to fully understand the terrors that froze a father's heart. Betsy was skilled, but long out of practice and, though Marti, Suzie and their friends were indeed smart, resourceful, talented kids, for all their training they were still only children. His children...flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood: his and his wife's. When they hurt, he hurt, and if they had been injured...or worse...as a result of this attack—

"Colonel Wagner!" one of the forensic team leaders called out, her gloves and wellies thickly coated in mud and soot. "Sir, we've found something you should see!"

A BAMF of smoke, and Kurt and Samuel were at her side. The woman jumped slightly, then smiled.

"Incredible," she said, and gestured to her find, all business. "This is the epicenter of the explosion, right here. The blast was extremely forceful, but it was more percussive than hot. We believe damaged wiring caused the fires, not the explosive itself. The blast pattern indicates the bomb device was housed in this locker, under extreme pressure. Scattered cardboard and blue, black and red polyester fragments suggest it had been concealed in a box - possibly inside a plush toy. We've scanned the fragments and we'll try to digitally reconstruct the original shape, in case it has some significance. But this..." she held up a damp, singed piece of what appeared to be an international shipping label, sealed in a plastic evidence bag, "...is why I called you over."

Kurt took the bag and read the shipping label's blurred, ink lettering, his already chilled skin growing cold.

"...Karl and Marta Wagner..." he whispered. "But, this is a return address! My parents' address. They said they were sending a parcel... But, if the bomb had been placed in this box—"

He pressed his thick fingers to his mouth, his long tail clamping around his leg like a snake.

"Samuel, you stay here," he croaked. "I must make a call...!"

"But, Uncle Kurt—"

Samuel started to reach out to him, but had to pull back when Nightcrawler vanished in a BAMF of smoke.

I know this is a short update, but there's more to come! So much has been going on, but I wanted to get something posted before the end of the month!

NOTE: I'm messing around a little with the established Marvel timeline for Essex and his 'would-be' pupil, but Earth 723 is an AU, and their motives in this story, though inspired by the comics, are tied in with the World War III and IX-MO backstory I made up for the Earth 723 universe. I'll be going deeper into that backstory here, but the basic details are also in my previous stories "The Day the Earth Stood Back," and "True Love Ways."

Thanks so much for reading my story! Your reviews are always welcome! :)