Lauren's Pov
Mom came into my room about an hour after Andy left saying that he needed to be alone. I was sitting in my bed reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
"Lauren, there is a group of new mutants coming to headquarters soon. Do you want to help get them settled?" Mom said as she came in.
"I don't know. The last time I helped I didn't like 12 people leaving in 2 days" I said, putting down my book.
"That wasn't because of you," she said with her concerned motherly face on.
"We both know that that is a lie. They were scared of Andy and me." I said. I knew that it was true. Andy had overheard one of the mutants who had left's conversations.
Mom sighed and looked at me, "Lauren, you know it's not your fault-"
I cut her off "Don't. We can't change the past so let's just try to move on with our lives. I'll help. Just stop babying me. I know what's happening around here. Don't try to shelter me from it." I was tired of everyone being so delicate with me. Sometimes I would wish that they would just leave me alone.
I put on a pair of sneakers and brushed past Mom who was standing in the doorway and walked up the stairs to the entrance area.
The refugees were standing near the entrance and were being given supplies and clothes. Out of habit, I looked for anyone that I knew not really expecting to see anyone. Instead of not seeing anyone I saw Wes stand in the middle of the group.
"Wes," I said under my breath. My heart fluttered for a second. Why is he here? A million questions flooded through my brain. What if he knew what happened and was scared of me? I needed to find an excuse to get out of here.
I saw Andy come out of a hallway followed by Mia. They were both laughing about something. I was relieved to see Andy and have an excuse not to talk to Wes. Andy smiled at me then saw my expression and looked at Wes then back at me.
"Nope, you're on your own." He said seemingly being able to read my thoughts. He pulled Mia back into the hallway and disappeared. I sighed and shook my head, screw him honestly. I really hate Andy sometimes. I looked back at Wes and he was looking right at me.
I really wanted to run away and hide but I didn't. I pushed my emotions down and put on a smile as he walked over to me.
"Wes, hi," I said, my voice shaking a little even though I was trying to hide it.
"Lauren, how have you been?" Wes said a bit awkwardly.
"I'm ok," I said fidgeting with my hands, "So what are you doing in Philadelphia."
"Well, um, as you probably know Sentinel Services has been freaking out recently so I had to get out of the Atlanta area. They had been hitting everywhere around there really hard so I originally went to Baltimore but after a while, I decided to go a little further north." He said. That made sense.
I nervously pointed to my mom "Um, If you need anything my mom generally knows just about everything that is going on and where everything is." I said. My eyes were darting around the room, people were starting to notice me and whisper to their friends.
"I should probably go," I said biting the inside of my lip, my eyes lingering on a group of teenage girls whispering to each other and pointing at me.
He turned around and saw what I was looking at, "Oh, ok. See you later." he said waving as he walked away.
I took a shaky breath and went to go tell my mom I was bailing, I just couldn't do this. I needed to get out.
Esme's Pov
John called an emergency meeting. Whatever he wanted to talk about was so important that he didn't even bother to get Andy or Lauren, which was honestly kind of rude excluding them like that but I understood.
"What's this about, John?" Lorna asked as she walked in.
"I found someone who has information on the Inner Circle," John said motioning to a female mutant with straight, red, chest-length hair. "Leah worked with them for a time before she realized that what they were doing was wrong. She has information that might help us," he motioned to the girl, her eyes were gray and almost looked like they had blue lightning going through them.
The girl took a deep breath before speaking, "So, my name is Leah and I helped the Inner Circle on a couple of things. I ran after I realized that they weren't helping people, they were hurting people. They attacked a government facility that monitored mutants and tracked them. It worked closely with Sentinel Services. It was hushed up and not that many people know about it." Leah said. She took a deep breath before continuing, "They also sent a spy here. I don't know who it is just that they were sent here specifically with orders to destroy the underground from the inside out."
"A spy?" I said. "Do you know if they are here already or are coming soon? My sisters are smart enough to tell the person to wait so if we heard about it we would be suspicious of the wrong group of people. Then again they also know that I would know that that's how they think."
"I don't know much of anything really but I heard something about the spy having a weapon. There was this mutant who could take your powers and use them herself. I think her name was Anna or Marie I'm not sure but they somehow put her powers into a knife so that other people could use her power themselves to neutralize other mutants temporarily," Leah said. She was nervous but she obviously wasn't the spy. If she was the spy she wouldn't be this obvious with her nervousness. She would be calm on the outside and nervous on the inside.
I thought about what she was saying and it made sense that my sisters would find someone to neutralize powers. They would refuse to use the collars but still want to stop mutants who disagree with them.
"That knife, how does it work?" Marcos asked.
"I think that the person holding the knife has to cut the person to take away their powers but I'm not positive. This is just what I overheard before I left." Leah said. "I really don't know that much,"
"Do you know anything about the person who can resurrect the dead?" Lorna said her arms crossed but her face was curious.
"Um yes, their name is Alex. They will go out and look around for the Inner Circle's enemies then resurrect whoever they killed. If he knows that they killed an ally of the Inner Circle they'll resurrect that person. The whole enemy of my enemies is my friend thing. They do this with their girlfriend. I don't know too much about the girlfriend but she's powerful and people are scared of her. Everybody says to stay away from her, I do know that." Leah said this was the most steady she had been. This girlfriend person was not to be messed with apparently.
"Like what they did with Max and Rebecca," Lorna said, making the connection.
"Thank you, now we know more than we did before. We need a plan," Caitlin said.
Leah left still nervous. Her hair bounced a little as she left.
"So that was a lot of information," Lorna said. "John, how did you even find her?"
"She came to me when I was picking up the first half of the group of refugees. She had gone to the Morlocks first and Erg told her to stay with them until he sent a group of refugees to the underground and we would help her more than they could." John said.
A lot of our refugees come through the Morlocks. Most people still think the Underground collapsed five months ago but know the Morlocks are still there, you just have to find them. Erg will ask people if they want to stay within the community of the Morlocks and if they don't he will send them to us. This makes it easier on both groups so Erg doesn't have to deal with the people who need help but don't want to stay with the Morlocks and when we get these refugees we don't have to interview or find them cause he already did.
"What are we going to do with this new information?" I said.
"We should probably increase security. We only have cameras on the entrance inside and outside. We should definitely add more cameras and some guards outside like we did back in Atlanta." Marcos said.
"Good idea. We should have cameras in all of the communal spaces, where people spend time together." Lorna said.
John nodded. "We'll call a meeting where we tell everybody that we decided to increase security." He said.
"Are we going to tell them that there could be a spy or about the knife?" I asked.
"No. If the spy is already here we don't want them to be aware that we know. We should keep that knife to ourselves. It seems dangerous and could cause people to panic" John said, opening the door to start to gather people for a meeting.
"I'm going to go help the second batch of refugees coming in. I'll tell them that there is going to be a meeting tomorrow to discuss the increased security," Caitlin said walking out.
I walked over to Lorna "Do you think that those kids that you found one of them could be the spy?" I asked her.
"No, their stories line up with the news perfectly. It doesn't make sense for one of them to be a spy. Besides most of them wanted to leave and Josh only stayed because Mia wanted to." Lorna said.
I nodded. "Makes sense. This spy is going to bother me now until we have found out who they are." I said.
"You could use your powers to do some snooping to try and figure it out," Marcos said.
"Good Idea," I said, smiling. Maybe I could talk to Leah more later, see if she knows anything else that she forgot to mention.
Andy's Pov
I was talking with Mia in my room. We had come back here after I had seen Lauren freaking over the fact the West was here. There was no way I was participating in that conversation.
"But why are the lightsaber fights in the original trilogy so slow when in the prequels all of the fights are like bam, bam, bam, whack," Mia said. We have been discussing Star Wars and our opinions on the different trilogies.
"Well the first ones were made like 40 years ago so obviously the CGI would be bad and they couldn't do all of the fancy stuff...," I trailed off as Lauren came in. I made eye contact with her and I saw her facial expression change. She closed the door and leaned against it and was desperately trying not to cry.
"Should I go?" Mia asked, a worried expression on her face.
I nodded. She used her powers to teleport away so Lauren didn't have to move.
Lauren sank to the ground, tears pouring out of her eyes. I quickly moved over to her and sat next to her. She leaned against me and just cried. I didn't even ask what was wrong, I knew. I just sat there letting her against me as she cried.
"Are you ok?" I asked her when she stopped crying.
"Yes? No? I don't know. I think everything that I've been feeling the last couple of days just caught up with me all at once." She said. She got up and went over to her bed and flopped in it face first. I followed and sat on the floor leaning against the side of her bed.
"I hate this. So much. I went out there to help mom and all I got was people staring and whispering about me. Oh and don't forget the panic attack." Lauren said banging her head against her pillow.
"Why don't we go see if there is ice cream or something in the food storage room?" I said trying to distract her.
"Why not." She said relenting.
We got up and went to go to the storage room. I realized that we would have to pass the main entrance to get there, where all of the refugees were.
Lauren must have realized it too "It's fine. We'll only pass it for like two seconds in each direction," she said.
She walked over to the break in the hallway where you have to cross the main entrance. She peeked around the corner and made a muffled gasping noise. She quickly re-hid herself from the entrance area pushing her back against the wall hiding from the line of sight of anyone in the main entrance.
"What?" I asked
"Just look." She said, her voice shaking a little.
I looked and saw someone who I never expected to see again, her ex-boyfriend Jack. Well, that's not good.
*Yes there is a reference to Rouge in here so that's fun. Enjoy this chapter part :)*