Chapter Two

Cat wandered through the corridors of the mansion, still not quite able to believe she was going to live there. Earlier the day before she'd met the Professor and he'd seemed nice enough. He'd given her a list of the classes they had and told her to look them over and see him that evening to make her choices.

That morning, Dr. Jean Summers-Grey had clucked over her injuries like the mother Cat never had and made Cat promise to tell her if they were hurting, then Kurt and Kitty had shown her around a little and introduced her to some people. She'd gotten the impression that they wanted to be alone so she'd said she preferred to explore on her own.

So now she was walking through the hallways and trying to remember the names of everyone she'd met. There was the African-American woman with white hair — Ororo Munroe, that was right — and the tall, muscular man with an almost absurd amount of facial hair. She didn't actually remember his name but she remembered that he reminded her of a wolf or something.

She rounded a corner and ran into a man with red-lensed sunglasses on. He looked down at her and she felt a chill run down her spine. There was such emptiness in that gaze. Something felt wrong about him. She'd felt something off ever since she came into the mansion, and it was intensified.

Of course, it could have been her imagination. She had a wild one, and it always raged out of control.

She backed away from the man and left as fast as she could without flat-out running. He made her nervous, and even if it was her imagination she wanted a few days to absorb it properly before making an idiot out of herself.

She turned another corner… how many corners were there in this place… and came to the den, a place with a TV, one of those table hockey games and about twenty armchairs and sofas for the students to study. Cat shrugged, sat down and picked up a magazine.

After about half an hour she felt the hairs on the back of her neck rising. She looked up and saw a good-looking auburn-haired guy with red-on-black eyes and a pretty girl with two white streaks in her hair coming into the room. They were so caught up with each other that they didn't notice her as they sat down in one of the armchairs.

Cat turned back to her magazine article, which she suddenly noticed was titled "Safe Sex — Myth and Fact". She chuckled under her breath and turned to a new article.

Ten minutes later she peeked over the top of her magazine and frowned. The guy was kissing the girl's gloves. Romantic, sure, but why? When she had a perfectly good mouth right there?

She shrugged. Their choice. Sure, she'd prefer the mouth any day but it was none of her business.

Still, she found herself sneaking peeks at them, wondering how they could be so perfectly oblivious to her presence. Finally, amused and a little bored, she coughed.

They jumped apart faster than anything she'd ever seen, deer-in-the-headlights expressions on their faces. She smiled, stuck out her hand and said, "hi. I'm Cat."

@ @ @

Raptor got out of the shower and dressed in a short black skirt and a lilac halter top. She braided her hair into two braids and put on black calf-high boots. When she was dressed she grabbed her backpack and went downstairs to meet with Bobby, Chantelle and Solitaire.

The guys, as usual, had spent about ten seconds deciding what to wear. Chantelle, however, had probably spent ten hours picking out the blue shorts and white shirt tied at her waist. Her hair, which was currently dark purple with the usual pink streaks that were there whenever Solitaire was around, was tied back in a ponytail that bobbed as she moved her head.

"We gonna get going?" she asked. "I'm so bored I could turn invisible and go snooping in the guys showers. Not that I'd ever use my powers for evil. I'd… use them to protect the guys locker room in the gym."

She laughed. "Sorry. Solitaire keeps making dirty jokes about my invisibility. It kinda rubs off on me."

Solitaire grinned, his eyes once again hidden by his Aviator sunglasses. Raptor asked, "Solitaire, what colour are your eyes?"

He looked surprised. "Why?"

"I'm curious. I asked Scott the same thing the first day I met him," Raptor said.

Bobby laughed. "I remember that! We were in mechanics and he was showing us how to change a tyre. Then he asked if anyone had any questions and you put up your hand and asked, 'yeah, what colour are you eyes?'"

Solitaire smiled. "Well, you're not the first person who's asked. Chantelle knows. They're grey."

As they headed to the garage to get a car, Chantelle whispered to Raptor, "ja, a really sexy grey, too. I've seen him without the sunglasses and woah. Of course, he's pretty yummy anyway."

Raptor twirled the keys to one of the Jeeps on her index finger. "I'm driving," she announced, "since I'm the only one with a license. Unless you all want to see what the inside of a jail cell looks like."

She swung into the drivers' seat. Chantelle yelled, "I call shotgun!"

Solitaire and Bobby climbed in the back of the Jeep. Bobby asked, "how exactly did you manage to get a license, Raptor? You're only sixteen, same as us. I thought Dreamer was the only student who could drive."

Raptor snorted. "Well, that's silly. There are what, twenty cars here? Apart from the SUVs, which are just gross, that leaves about ten cars that don't get driven. How many vehicles do the teachers need? There's Scott's motorbike, which none of us are allowed to touch on pain of death, Logan's truck which has the same rule as Scott's bike, and Jean's Cadillac."

The drive to the mall was filled with idle conversation, the four teenagers glad for an excuse to be teenagers and not have to go up against Damien. After a while, they got onto the subject of where they'd like to live after they graduated.

Chantelle leaned back and said, "I want to follow my roots. Go to Spain, France, Italy, places where my ancestors came from. Es macht mir nichts aus. I want to have kids eventually, but not before I have a life. I want to be an actress or a singer, something famous where it won't matter whether my hair is purple or blue or whatever." [It's all the same to me]

Raptor grinned. "I want to go backpacking around Europe," she said. "Kids are okay, but I don't have any great ambition to be a mother. I want to go on adventures first!"

"I want to help people, maybe be a teacher," Solitaire said quietly.

Chantelle looked surprised. "Es verdad? You don't want to be a singer? You've got an amazing voice." [Is that so?]

"Thank you. But no, I don't think I'd handle the fame very well. I like to sing, but I doubt it'd work out. I get too nervous in front of people."

"What about you, Bobby?" Raptor asked, glancing in the rearview mirror. "What do you want to do?"

"I never thought about it much," Bobby replied. "I guess I'm kind of between you and Solitaire. I want to do stuff before I settle down anywhere, but I also want to help people. And I don't really want to leave the mansion. There are too many of my friends there."

@ @ @

'I had the dreams again last night. That sort of thing makes me glad I hardly sleep, but worried about Aura and Remy. If they have nightmares as bad as the ones I had last night, they must be wasted in the mornings.

'I wish I trusted these people enough to really talk to them. I was talking to Rogue today and she said she sees Xavier sometimes, when the voices of Logan, Magneto and her ex get too much for her. I can see her point; I certainly know what it's like to have voices in your head, even though mine were Remy and Aura talking to me. Only thing that kept me from going crazy, locked in that bloody room…

'God, I never knew it had this effect on me. Did I cry this much when I was actually there, or did it all seem like a nightmare? I don't remember that well… actually that's a lie, I remember better than I care to. But whenever he locked me in that room, I sort of shut down. Tried to ignore the blackness, the walls closing in. God, even thinking about it is almost too much.

'Storm told me she was claustrophobic, not long after she found me outside at three in the morning. She understands part of it, but I don't think she's ever had that particular weakness exploited to make her "behave". Like Maya, the girl in my History class. She's freaked of spiders, but I doubt she'd ever been tied to a chair and had them crawl over her body.

'Sometimes I want to kill him. Scratch that — all the time. For what he did to Aura, to Remy, to everyone there. We did our best for him, and he punished us for the smallest bloody mistakes, damn him! Even now, almost six months later, he haunts our dreams.

'Sometimes I wonder if we're ever really free.'

Adam closed the diary, shocked and repulsed by what he'd read. Several of the entries were like that, half-memory. He'd gotten a clearer picture of what his brother's life had been through those memory entries, and it sickened him.

((He wasn't jus' livin' on th' streets… he was workin' f' some guy, some sadistic bastard who by all rahts shoulda been killed long ago,)) Adam thought, his stomach churning as he recalled what he'd read several nights earlier, a graphic description of the tests performed on his brother and the two other mutants he'd escaped with, Remy and Aura. The entry had been written in a purely clinical way, as if his brother had been an impassive viewer, but from the way the pen strokes shook, Adam could tell that remembering, and writing, what had happened had been a struggle.

((Damien told me he has people who c'n help with painful mem'ries,)) Adam thought. ((Maybe they c'n help mah brothah. It's worth a try. An' when Ah recruit him, he'll see that our way is th' only way.))

He placed the diary carefully in his top drawer and stood up. It was about time to visit the prisoner and glean any information about his brother. Damien and Sabrina had approved the visits, and even if they hadn't he'd have found a way to get more information about his brother and how he'd be able to recruit him.

He keyed his access code into the electronic lock and the door slid open. He walked in, charging up his electric-conducting hands and gesturing the prisoner back, sparks flying from his fingers.

Shock registered on the prisoner's face. "Dreamer?"

Adam laughed. He'd known this would happen the second he revealed himself, but it was still funny that he'd been mistaken for his younger brother. He shook his head. "No, mah friend, Ah'm not Daniel. Though mah power's a lot lahke his. Y'all know he's a dreamseekah, Ah presume? Well, so'm Ah, but Ah c'n also channel electricity through mah hands. So don' try anythin' or Ah'll have ta give y'all a nasty shock."

"What do you want?"

More of a habitual question than one asked by someone who really cared. Even after only a few days, the prisoner had learnt that they weren't going to tell him anything about what purpose he was going to serve.

Adam smiled. "Ah'd tell ya, friend, but then Ah'd have ta kill ya, an' Ah don' think Damien'd be too happy with me if Ah did that."

He hooked one of the chairs with his foot and sat down. "Now, y'all gonna tell me whatevah Ah want ta know 'bout mah brothah, got it?"

"What makes you think I'll tell you anything?"

"Cause if ya don', we'll all have ta get a l'il bit nasty a bit closah ta home, ya get mah meanin'? Why d'ya think we got ya, pal? Ta get info from, sure, but we're not complete idiots. We know y'aint likely ta tell us much. An' why d'ya think th'others haven't come bustin' in here ta get ya out?"

"Why don't you enlighten me?" the prisoner asked sarcastically, "since I'm sure you're dying to gloat. It's not like I can stop you."

"Ya think Ah'm gonna tell ya everythin' so ya c'n report back ta ya friends with all our plans if ya get outta here? What kinda fool d'ya think Ah am? Ah'll tell ya what Damien authorised, no more. See, th' reason nobody's come lookin' f'ya is that they think y' still at th' mansion."

"Why would they think that? Even if you somehow convinced Mystique to morph me, Logan can smell the difference."

"With Mystique, yah, but not with Discordia. When she morphs, she takes on everythin'. Ya friends won' be able ta tell ya n' her apart."

"Is that so? You underestimate us."

"Ah doubt that very much, friend. Damien, Sabrina an' th' rest of us, we believe in what we're doin' here, and we're not gonna let it be destroyed by people lahke y'all," Adam said. "Ah know y'all been taught by Xavier what's "raht an' wrong", but he don' know shit 'bout th' world. All he c'n see is what he wants. Well, guess what? Things don' always work out th' way we'd lahke'm ta."

"A stirring introduction, Adam," Damien said, walking into the room. The door swished closed behind him as he came to stand beside Adam and look down at the prisoner, a slightly condescending expression on his face.

"You think I'm evil, and I can understand that. After all, I keep you prisoner, I kidnapped ten of the students from the mansion and I would have harmed them greatly to harness their powers to my Augmentator. Fortunately for them, I no longer feel that is necessary. The Augmentator has its uses, but there are greater things to aim for.

"Tell me, are we so different? At your school, children are taught to control their powers so they may be integrated back into society, a society where mutants and humans can peacefully coexist. There's nothing I would like more than that, my friend, but we must be realistic. It isn't going to happen.

"Here, I do much the same thing as Xavier and the others at your school. I train my young proteges to use their powers to their full extent, so that one day, when all this escalates into something we will have no control over, they will be able to defend themselves against the humans and those mutants who simply kill for the sake of killing."

"You're just like Magneto. You want mutants to rule."

"Rule? No, my friend, I don't think that would be wise. Mutants are merely genetically superior, that doesn't mean we're perfect. After all, look at Dusk. He's certainly not the image of superior. Besides, one race ruling over another, eliminating all who speak against that? It would be the Holocaust all over again, and that's something nobody wants to go back to.

"No, I'm merely preparing my young ones for a world that isn't ready to accept us. If I have to be ruthless to do that, so be it. But if they're to survive, I can't have people like you interfering. And I need the support my associates give me, otherwise things would be more difficult to work. Which is why you're here."

"If you think I'm going to tell you anything you're sadly mistaken," the prisoner hissed.

Damien shook his head. "Not at all. I don't want you to tell me anything. You see, with Discordia acting as my spy, I'll have all the information I need. This time I'm deadly serious, friend. Kidnapping those four children last time, that was a ruse to lure you here. But my next actions are the first steps in the major plan."

He and Adam turned to leave. As they were at the door, Damien turned again, as if he'd just remembered something.

"Oh, and don't try to attack any of the orderlies again. We'll be watching you."

TBC. In Chapter 3, Dreamer, Aura and Remy reveal some of their past. Nasty mutants attack the mansion. Aura has a new boyfriend (see if you guess who?)