After the enemy mutants had left, the X-Teens had been unable to find any sign of the senior X-Men, and had decided to return to the school. There was nothing to be gained by remaining at the conference centre. Helios had landed the jet in the hangar underneath the basketball court, and the five of them had hurried into the school's interior.
"What happened?" Chronos gasped, as they witnessed the extensive damage that had been caused by an explosion at the front entrance.
"The school must have come under attack!" said Helios. "While we were at the conference, the enemy must have struck here too!"
"Where is everybody?" Gemini cried. "Dad! Melody! Where are you?"
She ran towards the stairs, still calling for her foster father and her sister. Atlas watched her as she went, wondering if he should go after her, but then he noticed something else.
"Guys, look!" he yelled.
The three guys and Cassandra hurried to the staircase, where at around head height, an enormous metal spike was sticking out of the wall.
"That guy!" said Atlas. "The tall one with the weapon on his arm! These are the same as the things he fires!"
"He must have been here!" said Helios.
"Look, there's another one!" said Chronos, pointing to the bottom of the stairs.
He hurried down to retrieve the spike that was lying on the floor, and brought it to the others.
"Oh no," said Cassandra in horror.
"What?"
"There's blood on it! Look! Around the tip!"
Atlas was pointing at the wall, "There's blood spatter here too."
"Someone must have got hit! Someone might have been killed!"
"Who? Who was here?"
Helios answered, "Pyro was here, and Melody and her little girl."
"Amnesia was here," Cassandra added.
"And Scott and Storm came here with Logan. We haven't heard a word from them since they arrived – and I think now we know why."
Gemini suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs, "I can't find them! I can't find my dad or my sister anywhere!"
"Look at this," said Helios, holding up the spike. "The school was attacked! The same people who attacked us at the conference! Somebody got hurt by this spike, and there's at least one more been fired!"
"No!" Gemini screamed. "Dad! Melody! Tell me it wasn't them! Please, Helios, tell me they're OK!"
"I don't know! Look, there's blood on this one – I'll take it to the science labs and try to do a DNA comparison."
"I'm coming with you!"
"No, wait – can you search the rest of the school and see if any of our friends are still here? Use your twin and you can search twice as much as any of us can!"
"OK," she said.
"I'll help you," said Atlas.
"What about me?" Chronos asked.
Helios looked at him, "Someone needs to go down to the base and check the security system. See if there are any recordings of what happened."
"I'm on it."
The five of them split up and hurried off in three different ways. Helios and Cassandra ran to the science labs, and quickly inserted a sample of the blood from the spike into the DNA analysis machine.
"If this blood belongs to anyone here at the school, we'll soon know," said Helios.
Cassandra frowned, "What, they have all of our DNA on file?"
"Yup. Partly for identification purposes, but also for our genetic studies classes."
"Oh yeah, of course. How long will the analysis take?"
"It's done. Let's see..."
The DNA from the blood sample analysed, Helios typed a sequence of commands into the computer interface, to initiate a comparison with the school's DNA files. This took only a matter of moments.
"OK," he said, then sighed. "Damn. No matches. But – ah-hah! It's human, not mutant."
"Huh?" said Cassandra in confusion. "There aren't any humans living here! Oh, wait – Melody. Gemini's sister. Hey, run the DNA past Gemini's sample, check for similarities."
"Good idea," he said, typing another sequence of commands.
"I didn't want to say this in front of Gemini," said Cassandra. "But if someone was killed here, where's their body?"
"We didn't see any," Helios replied. "Hopefully that's a good sign. Maybe they got away."
The DNA analysis machine pinged to indicate its latest comparison was complete. Helios clicked a button to bring up the result, and stared at the screen in confusion, "What? This doesn't make sense."
"What doesn't?"
"This comparison report. According to what it says, Gemini's DNA is no match at all to this sample."
"OK, so it's not Melody."
"It has to be – like you said, no other humans have been here. Hang on, let me try something else."
"What?"
"I overheard Melody talking to Scott. Her little girl, Athena I think her name is, is a mutant. Melody wants to bring her to start school here in a few years."
"And?"
"And if he agreed, a sample of Athena's blood might have been taken. Let me check."
Cassandra waited impatiently while he typed into the machine's interface. She resisted the continual urge to look behind her to check there were no enemies approaching. If there were, she'd have a foreflash. There was no reason to look. There was no reason to...
"Bingo!" Helios exclaimed. "Blood sample for Athena Cartëasis, mutant, three years old. I'll run it past the one we found."
Two minutes later, the machine pinged once more, and they both looked at the results.
"OK, we've got similarities," he said. "The sample from the spike has a 98% probability of being a maternal relation to Athena's sample."
"So it is Melody."
"So why isn't it similar to Gemini's?"
"Because she's a mutant and her DNA is totally different?"
"Dunno. Athena's isn't."
"Can you compare Athena with Gemini?"
"Yeah. Hang on."
A few moments later, he said, "No similarities there either. I don't know how much DNA an aunt should typically have in common with a niece, but there isn't anything in common between these two."
Cassandra was bewildered, "So what does this mean?"
"It means it was Melody who was attacked here by the spike guy. But it also means that Gemini isn't Athena's aunt, and she isn't Melody's sister."