"This is our quarry," I said, turning the computer screen to face Lena Blake. She was inexperienced, but at this point I could not afford to be picky.

"Mark Griffin. He has the ability to absorb a person's memory with his powerful gaze," she read from his file.

"Precisely. Four of my best agents have failed to capture him," I said. "By the time they apprehend him, they quite literally forget why they were there in the first place."

"That's about to change," she said.

"Well I'm glad to hear you say that. His power is in his eyes, however, your second eyelid should serve as your protection."

"He won't know which end is up once I'm through with him," she said, covering her eyes with the nictitating membranes that functioned as her second set of eyelids.

I watched intently. "Could you do that again?" I asked.

She indulged me. It was fascinating. I had never seen a living new mutant with such a feature before.

I was interested to hear that Miss Blake's investigation had linked Mr Griffin to a murder, and he was accusing Adam of all people of being the perpetrator of.

"Adam, a fugitive from justice. Of course, that's what I've been calling him all along," I said. "But why would Adam protect the man accusing him of murder?"

"Maybe Adam thinks he's innocent," Miss Blake said.

"Or maybe, Adam doesn't know what to think. What if this Griffin character stole Adam's memories, and has them in his brain just waiting to be discovered," I said. I turned to look at her. "Capture Griffin, and we've got Adam as well."

Unlike so many of my lieutenants, Miss Blake did exactly as I asked, with no delay. Mr Griffin was strapped to a chair with an eye-shield to prevent him from using his powers.

"Congratulations Miss Blake. My confidence in you is not misplaced after all," I said.

"I'd have delivered Adam too sir, but-"

I raised my hand to cut her off. "I have a feeling that with Mr Griffin here, it will be almost like talking to Adam himself," I said. "Isn't that so, Mr Griffin? We both know you pilfered Adam's consciousness. How else could you frame him for murder?"

"I didn't steal anyone's memories, Mason," he said. "And I didn't frame anyone for murder either."

"Then how did you know my first name?"

Miss Blake stepped up behind him and inserted a sub-dermal governor into the back of his neck, and pulled the eye-shield off him.

"Well perhaps we can have an honest conversation, now that we see eye to eye," I said, walking towards him.

Mr Griffin cocked his head to one side and said, "You first." Perhaps it was mere coincidence, but he seemed to be mimicking Adam's personality quite well.

"You killed your girlfriend during a domestic squabble," I said, walking around his chair. "Adam walks in. To eliminate him as a witness, you steal his memories and set him up for the murder."

"Oh isn't that a nice story," he said. "When do you get to the part about me living happily ever after?"

I clenched my jaw. He was so like Adam. So infuriating like Adam.

Miss Blake pressed the button on the sub-dermal governor remote and Mr Griffin was visibly seized by pain.

"I simply don't understand, Mr Griffin, why you were so resistant. There's a bright future ahead of you at Genomex."

"It's worth a lot to you, huh?"

"Money. Position. Power. It's all yours. If you get me the information that leads to the destruction of Mutant X."

He looked at me, considering my offer. Eventually, he agreed to work with me.

Simple questioning seemed to provide surprisingly little information, so I had Mr Griffin transferred to the lab where his memory could be prompted.

Miss Blake and I watched from behind a pane of glass.

"All Mr Griffin has managed to provide us with are a few safe houses and a few Mutant X contacts. What's the problem?" I asked.

"He says it's too much information. Half of what he spews out are disjointed scientific equations," Miss Blake said.

"I see," I said as we walked away from the lab. "Sadly, he has the memories, but lacks Adam's superior intellect to process the data."

"Exactly. Griffin only possesses half the equation. And Adam possesses the other half. Considering Mr Griffin has wiped his slate clean, Adam must have no idea who to trust."

"Not at all. His world has quite literally been turned upside down. Well then, perhaps he'd be receptive to a familiar face from the past," I said, a smile tugging at the corners of my lips.

A bit of investigative work showed that Adam had turned himself in to the authorities. With my influence, it wasn't difficult to find out where he was being held and arrange a visitation for myself.

I was more than a little amused at the sight of Adam sitting on a bunk in the police cell. Now that is where you belong, Adam, I thought.

The door was opened for me, and I shook my head and walked inside. "Adam! Thank God you're all right," I said, sitting down beside him.

He got up immediately. "Who are you?"

"Well they said you had a memory lapse. I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Adam, it's Mason. Mason Eckhart," I said. When I got up to approach him, he backed away.

"Do you know what happened to me?"

I smiled, and recalled the story I had decided to tell him. Well, it was more like my point of view, rather than his twisted point of view. "A band of outlaws set you up, deviant liars the lot of them. They call themselves Mutant X."

"And Griffin's one of these mutants?"

"Yes I'm afraid so. Now our doctors are working feverishly to assess what he did to you, to reverse the process."

"To restore my memory?"

"God willing. We desperately need you back, Adam, as soon as possible."

"Wait wait you and I work together?" Adam asked skeptically.

I looked away, dreading that he might see through my fabrication. "I keep forgetting you're in the dark here," I said. "Those bastards!" I turned back to him and composed myself. "We work at Genomex, a biotech firm which actually-" I looked over my shoulder to check that the guard was not in earshot "- is a secret branch of US intelligence. You're our chief biogeneticist."

"And this is why they're trying to set me up?"

"And to discredit Genomex, and myself," I said.

"All right, this now makes some sense. But now wait wait, these mutants, are their abilities the result of natural evolution?"

"Sadly no, these anomalies are the tragic results of genetic experimentations gone wrong. Our job is the protect the world from their freakish powers."

"So you and I are trying to cure these anomalies?" he asked.

I looked around and saw that the guard had moved closer. "Adam, this isn't the place for discussing sensitive matters. Trust me, it'll all be clear when we get you home to Genomex," I said, putting a hand on his back.

But he pushed me away. "Wait! How can you prove to the cops what really happened? And what makes you so sure that I'm innocent?"

"Adam, please. We both know you'd never be capable of something so barbarous as murder."

The door of the cell opened again. "Hey, your time's up," the guard said.

I gave the guard a look then turned back to Adam. "Dig down into your core to find the inner strength you need in this time of struggle. I only ask you to remain patient, I'm pulling as many strings as I can to arrange for your release."

Adam nodded. "Mason," he said softly as I turned to leave. "Thank you."

I found myself smiling without having to fake it. I could almost convince myself that someone had stolen the real Adam away from me years ago, and now I had him back. It seemed he had retained his sharpness and intellect. Perhaps now that some of the more extreme beliefs had been cleared from his head, we could be allies again.

I felt the seed of hope begin to grow. I knew that Adam would want his memories back, but I just had to prevent that from ever happening, while giving the appearance of doing all I could to help him.

I returned to Genomex to question Mr Griffin further. On the way back from visiting Adam, an idea had occurred to me. Perhaps we weren't getting the information out of him that we wanted because it was not me who was asking the questions. Adam wouldn't share all of his secrets with just anybody, after all.

"Now I'm going to ask you a question, and I just want you to concentrate on the answer," I said, and gestured to the technician. "The computer will decipher the information by reading the neurotransmitters in your brain."

"I'm ready," he said, and the bench he was lying on moved into the scanner.

"Mutant X's home base, you call it Sanctuary. Where is it located?" I asked.

As the computer was running its calculations, Miss Blake came into the room. "We've received word from the prison, Adam's escaped," she told me.

I sighed in frustration and looked up at the ceiling. "My day just keeps getting better by the minute," I said. The computer had failed to determine an answer from Mr Griffin's brain patterns. I strode over to him and looked down at him. "Now from my perspective, your shelf life is just about up."

"Wait wait wait wait, let's not make any rash decisions here," he said.

"Rash was ever thinking that you could be of value to me."

"Well that's because you're going about this all wrong. Just because I can't process all the information I have doesn't mean I can't access it through other means," he said. "You want to go to Sanctuary, I can take you there. Take you right to his nest."

I expected that Mr Griffin was making empty promises in an attempt at self-preservation. At first it seemed he was leading us in circles, but eventually he took us to a mountain by the coast. The perfect place for a secret lair.

With Mr Griffin's assistance, the team of experts accompanying us located an entrance and disabled the security systems, and at last we were inside.

"You've made me a very happy man, Mr Griffin," I said, looking around. The interior design was unmistakably Adam's style, and the temperature was very warm. The thermostat would need to be turned down immediately.

"I've always dreamt that this day would come," I said as we went to the upper level.

"That's the dojo," Mr Griffin said as my agents carried an unconscious Mr Mulwray and Mr Kilmartin into the area. "It was created for a variety of reasons, one of which is a virtual prison." He pressed a button on a computer terminal and a shimmering force field appeared over the open ends of the dojo. "They're not going anywhere, unless you want them to."

"What are you planning on doing with this place?" Miss Blake asked.

"It'll be converted into a hidden division of Genomex. My pied à terre. Collect the others while I explore the rest of my new home."

All in all, it was an interesting place. I took note of its features, and began to consider the changes I would make.

I went around a corner and came face to face with Adam. "What, you just having a little look around?" he asked. I was startled by his aggressive manner and instinctively shrank back a little.

"Adam, thank God you're all right," I said, rallying. "We've come to rescue you from these monsters and come to take you back to Genomex."

"No. I like it here," he said, confirming what I had instantly feared.

"You're-"

"Back to my old self."

"Ah."

Behind him, his team were approaching.

"Now why don't you do yourself a little favour, and get your ass out of my Sanctuary," he said.

"I don't think so. Since I've discovered your little hideout, your cloak of secrecy is all but vanished. Let's face it Adam, it's over."

Adam looked over his shoulder at his team, and that is last thing I remember seeing before he knocked me out with a single punch.

Some time later, I found myself in a place that looked like some sort of laboratory. It was very cold, and filled with people who looked like medical technicians and scientists.

"Excuse me, excuse me," I said, as they scrambled to get out of my way. It was odd, almost as if they were afraid of me. They seemed doubly freaked out when I spoke to them.

The events of the recent past were hazy and difficult to recall, as if I had just stepped out of a dream. I was becoming increasingly aware of a number of aches and pains. In fact, everything seemed to feel uncomfortable.

"What did you say your name was?" I said to the woman who was following me, whom I was sure I should have recognised. "Never mind, it's not important." I stopped and turned to her. "Tell me, what are all these people doing here?"

"I'm not exactly sure, sir," she said.

I was gathering the impression that I must be someone quite important here. Well. That was a positive. I hoped the unbearable pain and discomfort of simply standing and walking around was a fleeting thing.

"Well then, back to-" I said, looking around for inspiration "-wherever you were."

I closed my eyes and sighed. Another one of those medical scientists or whatever they were was walking by. "I would appreciate if you would tell me where my office is," I said.

The man looked worried, and pointed vaguely. I looked around, not entirely sure where he was pointing to.

I walked around for a while longer, until the discomfort of it really started to wear me down. My head hurt, as if I had been recently assaulted. I tried to grasp for the memories, but to no avail.

A rather odd British man approached me, and started asking me about something I had no recollection of. He called me Mason, so I presumed that must be my name. When I made it evident that I had no idea what was going on, he laughed and said he thought I had been pretending to have lost my memory, testing him perhaps.

He made me a cup of sickeningly sweet tea with milk, which I took a polite sip from while he told me that his name was Dr Harrison, and that he had made many achievements while working here. I put the cup down, and started to ask him more direct questions. Slowly, I pieced together enough to figure out what must have happened. And the discomfort I felt, yes, that was constant.

I felt like I should be angry about the situation. But there was just an emptiness. It had been confusing, almost frightening to not remember who I was. But the recollection brought with it little sense of ease.