Chapter 7- All hell Breaks Loose
Jackson Nicholls was finishing up a paint job when he noticed a black van pull up to his house. So far, the afternoon had been perfect. He had been painting the house and thinking about the Torah reading he would be required to read on Shabbat in front of the synagogue. Jackson felt his smile drop as a man in a suit got out of his car. Stryker! What in the name of heaven was he doing here?
Stryker turned to face Jackson. "Hello, Doctor Nicholls," the man drawled with fake pleasantness.
"How did you find me, William?" Jackson asked. Jackson was one of the few who knew Stryker's first name as they were first cousins on their mothers side.
"I never lost you, Cousin. After you left when the Xavier girl went missing, I asked Aunt Joanna where you went. She said you came here to New London with Naomi. Speaking of which, how is Naomi?" Stryker asked.
"She's good. She's cooking and cleaning for Shabbat at sundown and our daughter Sarah is on the way home from a project she was doing at the library," Jackson said, hoping Stryker wouldn't ask too many questions about Sarah.
"I thought Naomi was unable to have children," Stryker said, furrowing his eyebrows.
"She was. We adopted Sarah after coming here," Jackson said, hoping his cousin wouldn't look into the "Adoption." But this was William Stryker. He was like a dog that refused to drop a bone once he suspected something. And he would suspect when there would be no record of Jackson and Naomi adopting a little girl.
"I was wondering if you'd like to help me," Stryker asked.
"With what, William?" Jackson asked guardedly.
"I'm looking for mutants and Xavier's brat especially. And I could use your medical expertise," Stryker said.
"No. We've been through this. I won't experiment on children, mutant or otherwise. I don't care if you don't see them as children. I do. The look on Amanda Xavier's face when you forced me to wipe her memory has haunted me. She was a three-year-old, William. Three!" Jackson nearly shouted.
"Nice attitude that you have towards your humanity," Stryker mocked.
"It's because I'm human that I can't. And I don't know how you can either. William, is this because of your son? You wanted Xavier to "Fix" him and when he couldn't you got even by stealing his daughter. All I can say is that the drugs we injected her with should make it nearly impossible for her memories to come back and damped down her x-gene where Xavier can't find her or if he does he won't know it's her," Jackson said as Sarah came pedaling up the road on her bike.
"Shalom, Abba!" Sarah sang out as she went to the shed and put her bike in.
"Shalom, Sarah. Go help your Ima with dinner," Jackson said as Sarah breezed past him and kissed his cheek.
"All right. Are Aunt Shoshanna and Uncle Jonathan coming tonight for Shabbat?" Sarah asked.
"Uh-uh. Tell your mother I should be in to clean up in a minute. And, William, I have chores to do. If you'll excuse me," Jackson said, picking up his paintbrush.
"Sorry I wasted your time, Jack," Stryker said as he went back to his van.
Naomi looked up from the challah bread she had just put in the oven. "What's the matter, Jack?" Naomi asked, a look of concern in her dark brown eyes,
"William. He found us and I don't think it'll take him long to figure out about Sarah," Jackson said.
"Oh, no. Jack, what do we do?" Naomi asked, a fearful look on her face.
"We have two options. We can run and hide like we've been doing. Or we can return Sarah to her father. We can make it where Xavier will have no idea that Sarah is really Amanda. The only way he would know would be through that device Cerebro and a DNA test," Jackson said.
"I just don't know, Jackson. Neither choice sounds like an ideal on, but if we turn her over to William, that wouldn't be good either. You did say he doesn't think of mutant children as just children," Naomi said, her voice shaking.
"No. He's about as bad as Josef Mengele at Auschwitz with twins and he wanted to experiment on them," Jackson said, running his hand through his hair.