by Drucilla
Disclaimer: I own nothing, except Angelique and her horses. Please don't sue me, I don't have any money. Thanks to all who reviewed, I'm glad you guys liked it! I'll try and write more.
"All right. Who was she?" Shalimar asked Adam, staring intently at him. "I saw how you all reacted to each other. Who is she?"
Adam was staring at a picture of a young woman, taken twenty, thirty years ago, seemingly ignoring his ward. Finally he spoke. "Delacroix was a biologist, fresh out of grad school, working with Genomex about twenty years ago. She was a genius – college at 15, graduated at 17 – obsessed, almost, with animal biology and her horses…" He scrolled through her file, assembled both from what they had discovered at Mutant X and what GenomeX had on her. It was surprisingly scant. "She came to work at GenomeX through an internship program. She wanted to improve domestic animals and plants, make them better and more useful without turning them into something they weren't supposed to be."
"Like what scientists are doing now."
"Sort of. She did it… more subtly, though. Not with cloning, or only selective breeding. She … had a special gift for adapting the strands of DNA so that things would turn out, if not actually good, at least not horribly mutated." Adam scrolled down. It looked as though she was doing well for herself. Shalimar looked over his shoulder.
"Getting back on the horse?"
Adam glanced at her with wry irritation. "Looks like it's a proposal she wrote up for a second chance program based at her stables. She wrote it six years ago, looks like the program's doing pretty well now."
Shalimar snorted. "She can't be as good as she seems."
Adam glanced at her again, this time with more amusement. "You're a little young to be so cynical, aren't you?" She gave him a very direct Yeah-And? look. "She had her faults. Don't get me wrong. She had a way of surprising everyone with brutal pragmatism when we least expected it. I bet she could give even Eckhart a run for his money on that, sometimes. But most of the time she didn't think it would be a good practical solution. I think most of her really horrifying suggestions were theories, not fact."
"Like?" Shalimar folded her arms. Clearly, she'd put Angelique in the 'don't trust her' category, lumped in with Eckhart it seemed like. Despite what her mentor was saying, she clearly thought he was seeing the woman through two-inch thick rose-colored glasses.
"Well…" he hesitated. "She had this theory about breeding programs for humans. Something about how not all humans were good parents, and we were breeding ourselves into over population and extinction. She talked about licensed childbirth, when the subject came up."
Shalimar gave her mentor a look as if to say, I told you so.
"She never thought badly of the children because of parental stupidity, though," Adam pointed out, tapping the computer screen with a finger. "This whole second chance program is fairly typical. She always used to say, it was the responsibility of those of us cleverer than the average to save humanity from it's own stupidity."
The cat woman shook her head. "Second chance program, my..."
"What program?" Brennan wanted to know as he walked up, toweling the sweat from the back of his neck. Adam sighed and put the file on the projector. "Oh…her. I heard about her. Mackie used to talk about her all the time. She made him horse-crazy… he used to hang around the stables. I guess his Mom thought it was better than hanging around the rest of us." He quirked a wry grin. "Looking back on it I can see why."
"She used to work for GenomeX," Shalimar said without any preamble. Brennan did a slight double-take.
"Oh. So are we going after her, now?"
"Used to work for GenomeX," Adam corrected with a pointed stare at Shalimar. "She left the labs fourteen years ago."
"From the conversation you had with her, she left under less than pleasant circumstances," Brennan cocked an eyebrow at the older man. "I could hear the tension all the way up in the Double Helix. She really doesn't like you two, does she?"
"Two?" Shalimar wanted to know. "She gets along fine with Eckhart."
"She told him to stuff off," Brennan pointed out. "That's not exactly getting along fine."
"What's her connection to Eckhart?" Emma asked. Shalimar, Brennan, and Adam glanced around at her. The young empath was leaning against the wall and watching them. It was even odds how much of the conversation she'd heard.
"Well, we all worked together. What Eckhart and I lacked in elegance we made up for in innovation." He smiled wryly, but it disappeared quickly as the humor left his face. "She always said our penchant for wild experiments would get us into trouble some day."
Emma shook her head. "Not like that. I mean, what's her specific connection to Eckhart?"
The other three stared at her. "What do you mean?" Adam asked.
"I don't know… she was pleased to see him again, but really careful. Like she knew what he was, or as though he'd done something really bad in the past. And…" Emma hesitated, searching for words. "He feels really strongly about her. Not love, not exactly. Something… A lot of things. All confused."
"So he used to be in love with her and then he went all psycho. And since she didn't, he can't relate to her." Brennan theorized.
"Maybe."
Adam stared at Emma and Brennan incredulously. He hadn't even thought about her in years, not until the intercepted e-mail that had made him think… but… "There were rumors about them, a long time ago. I didn't think about it at the time, but I suppose they could have been. Then again, there were rumors about her and everyone at the time. She was a beautiful woman. I guess we all wanted some part of her."
"Maybe he still wants her," Brennan postulated. "It's not like he's not already obsessive. What's one more target?"
Adam shook his head slowly. "I don't think that's it. They never acted… close. And I know you can't always tell, but ten years… I don't think that's it. I think it's something else. Maybe you're right," he looked at Brennan, "Maybe it is just obsession. But why now, after all those years?"
"That's what he asked her," Emma commented. She had wrapped her arms around herself and was staring at the floor, shivering. "I don't know. But when you three all got together… It gave me the creeping jeebies." She looked up at Adam with a gaze intense enough to make even him step back. Shalimar and Brennan stared at the empathic woman, startled. "There's history between the three of you, even if you don't know it."
Adam sighed. "And even if there is, she's not going to tell me. Not right now, anyway. I shouldn't have been so adamant about talking to her, but I thought it was urgent, I thought she was in immediate danger. I guess…"
Emma shook her head slowly. "I don't know what the e-mail was all about, but I don't think she's in danger from Eckhart. Not in the way you mean. Besides, she's not a mutant. She's a scientist, but he's got tons of scientists working for him already. I don't think he's interested in her that way."
"So what is he interested in her for?" Brennan wanted to know.
Adam stared at the picture on the screen. Fourteen years, and it felt like they'd never passed. She looked like they hadn't passed, from what he remembered of their brief meeting at the show. She looked very much the same as she had when the picture was taken. "I don't know."
"When we know, we'll know how to stop him," Shalimar said firmly. Brennan winced, and Adam and Emma exchanged uneasy glances.
"Maybe we will," Adam said slowly. "Maybe we won't. Finding out what he wants is going to be harder than ever, this time. This time, it's not about Mutant X or GenomeX or anything like that. I think this time…" he trailed off.
Emma finished his thought with uncanny accuracy. "This time, it's personal."