Part 2
"Adam? Adam, can you hear me?" Shalimar's voice permeated the grey fog he'd spent the last eternity swimming in and he smiled; he'd always known she'd be an angel. A butt-kicking angel who'd give the powers that be what for, but an angel none the less. However, as bits of memory filtered back, the smile vanished. He really didn't want to wake up in a world where she was gone. Where they all were gone.
"Adam Kane, if you don't open your eyes and talk to me right now, I swear I will kick your arse all the way to London and back."
Shalimar's clear voice mutated into the nicotine scraped tones of.
"Magda?" Adam cracked an eye open and discovered himself in the ruins of his lab, lying on the only intact piece of equipment still left. The woman, old and wrinkled and dressed in the same plain brown tent she'd worn in life, stood with her arms folded like a fish-wife, her thick grey hair in disarray and a cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth. "What happened?" he asked, trying to push himself up onto his elbows and choosing to ignore the fact that he had seen this woman buried with his own eyes.
"You don't remember?" she said, her East London accent flat and rough.
"Uh." Sitting up slowly, Adam rubbed at his head and at the dull ache in his shoulder. Flashes of memory still tried to break through and, although he knew what they were, he wasn't yet ready to face them.
"In denial as per usual, I see," Magda huffed. "I would kick some sense into you, but the trouble with being dead is, I can't. Bloody damned shame that." She moved over to him, and Adam swore he could smell the combination of cinnamon, mint and tar that had constantly accompanied her. "Listen, Doc, you have got to face what happened. You've been lying here feeling sorry for yourself for the best part of a week. You've lost everything, I understand that, but it's high time you started working on getting it all back."
Unable to stop the flinch, Adam shied away from the memories that still haunted him, but Magda was having none of it.
"You've still got that mountain of money, so that takes care of the hardware, right?"
Adam thought about Sanctuary and how hard he'd worked to build the place.
"And then - "
"No!" Adam looked at Magda, pleadingly. "Please, let me deal with just one thing at a time."
"Hmph." Magda took a deep drag of her cigarette, and looked at it in disgust. "Not even any joy in these," she said. "I tell you, death really ain't all it's cracked up to be."
Ignoring her, he slowly and painfully made his way through Sanctuary trying to objectively catalogue the damage in a broad sense. The caves and tunnels looked to be sound still, although he'd need a survey to be sure, and the basic structure only needed a little reinforcement. The rest just needed money thrown at it, which Adam was certain wouldn't be a problem, and Shalimar and Emma would love outfitting the place.
Would have.
No, not ready to go there yet.
But as he passed the living quarters, Shalimar's and his own almost intact, Emma's and Jesse's half blown away, and a small crater where Brennan's used to be, those memories pushed their way back in.
Damn.
He started to dash away the tears that started to fall but then there were too many of them, so he ignored them, let them run.
The dojo was a mess, the platform torn down, leaving the stairs to lead to nowhere. A pair of legs, stiff with rigor mortis, stuck surreally from the wall where Jesse had fought his corner. Brown trails of old blood led the way along the corridor to what might have been one, or perhaps two corpses that Shalimar had left eviscerated.
In the hanger the Helix lay broken, and the garage held almost unrecognisable shells of the vehicles. Shalimar would have cried if she'd seen the state of her motorcycle. Amidst those ruins lay the evidence of Emma's fight, men lying dead, their faces frozen forever more in absolute, fear-driven insanity.
The meditation room was largely untouched. The water supply was cut off, of course, but the fish and plants were just about surviving, if a little wilted around the edges. His last port of call was the computer room, his own last stand where the machinery was now devastated. Jesse would love helping him redesign this place. Even Brennan would have fun showing off his muscles as he moved the heavy stuff. He could hear them now; Shalimar making a sharp comment, Emma giggling and Jesse joining in, while Brennan pretended to be injured by the words. So vivid was his imagination, Adam thought he really could hear Emma's laughter echoing faintly through the corridors and he called her name, looking.
And only found the ghost that was Magda standing in the corridor.
"Kitchen, dear," she ordered. "Strong hot tea now."
Adam sighed and smiled slightly. She'd always been bossy, but always with his best interests at heart. She'd started off as his secretary at Genomex and followed him to Sanctuary. Never had he been so grateful as when that first group of four children came his way. Shalimar, Natasha, Corey and David; complete monsters all. He would have had no idea what to do with them if it hadn't been for Magda and it had been a sad loss when she'd died.
As usual she was right, and the tea helped enormously. Sanctuary was rebuildable and even the data on the computers was salvageable. Jesse had put in a lot of work on backup systems and, as most of those were retrievable, that paid off now . Anything that was missing was probably in Adam's own head. He wouldn't rebuild Sanctuary the same, of course, because it wouldn't be the same. But it would be a new, better Sanctuary.
"For what?" asked Magda, sitting sideways on a chair. Ladylike she was not. "Why rebuild?"
Adam blinked at her. "I thought you wanted me to?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm dead, what do I know? This is your future we're talking about here, and I want to know what you're going to do with it and more importantly why."
"Same as before, to."
"And your heart's not in it."
"Well, you know, I just lost everything. I just lost Sanctuary, - "
"Now, I thought we got that one out of the way. You haven't lost it, you just need to rebuild it."
"I lost everything I was working on."
"It's all on those computer thingies, you've hardly lost anything. Next?"
"I lost my, my -" Adam tried to say the words, but only adrenaline and a fresh wave of burning tears threatened,
"Your what?" Magda asked.
"My people!" There, he'd said it. And it hadn't hurt as much as he thought it would.
"Oh, Adam, you're hopeless sometimes! Your people? So what, you've lost your janitor, cook and chauffeur? What?"
Adam flinched a little. "My team, my -. I've lost Shalimar, I keep looking at you and expecting you to be her. I've lost Jesse, probably the one I most considered a. a -." He shook his head. "Brennan, he was. noise. Loud. Stopped us from being apathetic. And Emma, I've lost her empathy. They're dead, Magda." And just saying that hurt like nothing he could ever have imagined. "They're all dead and I'm lost without them." Absorbed in his grief, it took a while for Adam to hear what Magda was saying.
"You may have lost them, but Adam, they're not dead until you've seen the bodies."
Adam was confused, his mind still half in shock. "What? What are you saying? That they're. " His heart leapt even as his rational mind denied it. "That they're alive?"
"No! No, Adam, that's not what I'm saying at all. You need closure; you need to see their bodies and bury them. You need to go and find them."
"In that building? I suppose there could be traces, but they'd have disintegrated in the explosion."
"Maybe, maybe not." Magda's sudden evasiveness was aggravating. "Genetic material, whether dead or alive, is a valuable commodity. You and Eckhart both said that many a time. Now I'm telling you, whatever's left of those poor children, it's been scattered to the four winds by now. You have to go find whatever there is and bring them home. You'll never be able to rest until you do."
Adam couldn't take much more of this, any more of this, his mind a whirling maelstrom of confusion and grief.
"I told you, sweetheart," Magda continued softly. "I told you I'd look after you always. Now go to sleep and start tomorrow with a new heart." Adam felt his eyes grow heavy and the tabletop looked most inviting. The last thing he heard before passing out was her soft chuckle and one final admonishment. "And if I were you, I'd stop talking to ghosts. People might think you're a fruit-loop."
*****
The following morning, Adam did indeed awake with a new heart full of resolve and determination.
There was no deadline, and mourning each member of his team was something he could afford to reserve until the time arrived. Before that he had a Sanctuary to resurrect and, until he was up and functioning again, there was little he could do as regards this personal goal. He nevertheless made a few phone calls and found that the building where he'd lost his team had been cleaned out and cleared away.
A few more calls had reunited him with the cyber-psionic Natasha, her husband Corey, a terra-forming elemental, and David - also an elemental, but of air. It was with a mixture of sorrow and glee that they took over the restoration of Sanctuary, recruiting from Adam's database those that might help and leaving Adam to redesign, make special purchases and oversee from above.
"You see?" said Magda, one day as he was resting in the meditation room. "They're all good kids, every last one of them. I bet you never thought they'd be so happy to help out. They've all left the lives you gave them, or given what time they could to help you rebuild."
"Yes," Adam agreed with sadness "But they're transient. I helped them in the past and now they're helping me. But they're not. I don't know."
"They're not your children."
Adam snorted. Not this again. "They're not my team! I guess I should find another team."
"Maybe," Magda said. "But not until you've put the old one to rest. Because until you do, no new team will ever be good enough."
Adam looked down into the pond, the fish and the plants no longer wilting now the waterfall was working once again. But like himself, they were listless and not a flower was to be seen.
And then Magda was gone, and Adam wondered if he was going mad.
*****
It took months before Sanctuary was up and running, but when it was most of the helpers left, leaving Natasha, Corey and David who offered their ongoing help until such time as Adam had a team back in place. Adam could have wept with gratitude, never realising that such a small thing he'd done all those years ago had reaped such great rewards when he needed them most.
Natasha and Corey had three children of their own. The foster-parents who'd taken them in from Sanctuary back then had been more than happy to look after their grandchildren while they helped out. David was footloose and fancy free and, with a stunning career in architecture, he could afford to take an indefinite leave of absence. Adam sat the three down and explained that he needed to close the book on the old team before constructing a new one, and they all understood. Well, except for David's small protest that forward was the way to go, that looking back was a waste of time.
In order to achieve closure, though, he needed to fill in the gaps in his own memory and to find all the pieces he needed to put the entire picture together. First and foremost was Absalom, the entity that had attacked them in their home. Absalom and his flunkies had neutralised them using a form of sub-dermal governor and taken them all to the warehouse. Adam didn't remember that too well, but what he did remember made him sick. Absalom had a niche market in selling new mutants, among other things. But he also liked playing with new toys. Adam remembered Absalom making Emma and Shalimar watch as he made Brennan and Jesse do unspeakable things to themselves, to others and to each other.
But Absalom was dead.
The frightened healer child that constantly made sure no one was left at death's door was the one who'd killed Absalom in the end. When Absalom had wanted Emma taken out of the cage and. Adam didn't want to go there. And then there was Absalom's enigmatic lieutenant, Magarathea, dark haired, ageless, and sharked-eyed in looks, cold, emotionless and ruthless in nature. Of those two, no sign had been found.
However, it was Natasha with her cyber skills who came up with something. Some lost property that was lying unclaimed at the local coroner's office. When Adam got the package home, he sat staring at it for a long time before finding the courage to open it. When he finally did, he tipped onto the table five identical plain silver rings.
He put them carefully back in the package vowing to bury the rings with their owners. Only then would he wear his own again, in remembrance,
*****
Natasha and Adam used the new Sanctuary's technology while David and Corey did the legwork, and it wasn't long before they found that Magarathea, unsurprisingly, had taken over Absalom's business, although still trading in Absalom's name.
Magarathea was pragmatic and saw no problem with doing business with Adam. He paid her, and she gave him what he asked for.
More than he'd ever hoped, less than he needed.
Sale Lot #4835 - 1 x Feral - Anthonius Mosenby, private collector Sale Lot #4836 - 1 x Elemental - Green Acres Molecular Research Institute Sale Lot #4837 - 1 x Molecular - USG Biochemical Research Agency Sale Lot #4838 - 1 x Psionic - Genomex Industries
That was all the information provided, as that was all he'd asked for. 800,000 dollars for that small, but key data. Adam had briefly harboured a thought that there might be some indication of the state of the. their conditions, but Magarathea was clearly not that compassionate.
Or maybe she was.
*****
"I've got one!" Natasha called, her eyes flashing from white to their normal blue.
"What? What is it?" Adam was at her shoulder in a flash.
"USG Bio. Usual government cost cutting with old mainframe, crap firewall and virtually no other data security. Only thing is, I'm not sure Magarathea's molecular is who you're looking for."
"What makes you say that?" Adam tried to sound calm and patient, but his heart was thumping wildly with anticipation.
Natasha seemed hesitant. "Because." She took a deep breath. "Because he was still alive."
Adam's breath caught in his throat. All this time.
But he had to be sure first. "Was? Details. Give me details," he rasped.
"Okay, well, the molecular, sale lot #4837 was purchased nine months ago, which ties in. and was designated patient M987A. Shipment was delivered healthy and neutralised as advertised, 5ft 11inch Caucasian male, dark blond, blue-eyed, molecular, density shifter. Thing is, Adam, M987A was rejected within four weeks."
"What? What does that mean?"
"Hold on, I'm searching... It means that he was unusable. He underwent some experimentation for the first couple of weeks he was there, but then they stopped due to, and I quote, 'a persistent disassociative disorder and an inability to assert molecular stability." I guess the government likes being humane, even if they do 'buy' their guinea pigs. He's been admitted to Rylands as a John Doe. Rylands is a - "
"Yes, it's all right, I'm familiar with Rylands. It's a state run secure psychiatric unit. I can pull strings to get in there."
"I'm sorry, Adam." Natasha looked sympathetic and Adam didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It had to be Jesse, it just had to be. And if he was alive, no matter what state he was in, then he could get him back. And if Jesse was alive, then the others.
*****
To be continued.
"Adam? Adam, can you hear me?" Shalimar's voice permeated the grey fog he'd spent the last eternity swimming in and he smiled; he'd always known she'd be an angel. A butt-kicking angel who'd give the powers that be what for, but an angel none the less. However, as bits of memory filtered back, the smile vanished. He really didn't want to wake up in a world where she was gone. Where they all were gone.
"Adam Kane, if you don't open your eyes and talk to me right now, I swear I will kick your arse all the way to London and back."
Shalimar's clear voice mutated into the nicotine scraped tones of.
"Magda?" Adam cracked an eye open and discovered himself in the ruins of his lab, lying on the only intact piece of equipment still left. The woman, old and wrinkled and dressed in the same plain brown tent she'd worn in life, stood with her arms folded like a fish-wife, her thick grey hair in disarray and a cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth. "What happened?" he asked, trying to push himself up onto his elbows and choosing to ignore the fact that he had seen this woman buried with his own eyes.
"You don't remember?" she said, her East London accent flat and rough.
"Uh." Sitting up slowly, Adam rubbed at his head and at the dull ache in his shoulder. Flashes of memory still tried to break through and, although he knew what they were, he wasn't yet ready to face them.
"In denial as per usual, I see," Magda huffed. "I would kick some sense into you, but the trouble with being dead is, I can't. Bloody damned shame that." She moved over to him, and Adam swore he could smell the combination of cinnamon, mint and tar that had constantly accompanied her. "Listen, Doc, you have got to face what happened. You've been lying here feeling sorry for yourself for the best part of a week. You've lost everything, I understand that, but it's high time you started working on getting it all back."
Unable to stop the flinch, Adam shied away from the memories that still haunted him, but Magda was having none of it.
"You've still got that mountain of money, so that takes care of the hardware, right?"
Adam thought about Sanctuary and how hard he'd worked to build the place.
"And then - "
"No!" Adam looked at Magda, pleadingly. "Please, let me deal with just one thing at a time."
"Hmph." Magda took a deep drag of her cigarette, and looked at it in disgust. "Not even any joy in these," she said. "I tell you, death really ain't all it's cracked up to be."
Ignoring her, he slowly and painfully made his way through Sanctuary trying to objectively catalogue the damage in a broad sense. The caves and tunnels looked to be sound still, although he'd need a survey to be sure, and the basic structure only needed a little reinforcement. The rest just needed money thrown at it, which Adam was certain wouldn't be a problem, and Shalimar and Emma would love outfitting the place.
Would have.
No, not ready to go there yet.
But as he passed the living quarters, Shalimar's and his own almost intact, Emma's and Jesse's half blown away, and a small crater where Brennan's used to be, those memories pushed their way back in.
Damn.
He started to dash away the tears that started to fall but then there were too many of them, so he ignored them, let them run.
The dojo was a mess, the platform torn down, leaving the stairs to lead to nowhere. A pair of legs, stiff with rigor mortis, stuck surreally from the wall where Jesse had fought his corner. Brown trails of old blood led the way along the corridor to what might have been one, or perhaps two corpses that Shalimar had left eviscerated.
In the hanger the Helix lay broken, and the garage held almost unrecognisable shells of the vehicles. Shalimar would have cried if she'd seen the state of her motorcycle. Amidst those ruins lay the evidence of Emma's fight, men lying dead, their faces frozen forever more in absolute, fear-driven insanity.
The meditation room was largely untouched. The water supply was cut off, of course, but the fish and plants were just about surviving, if a little wilted around the edges. His last port of call was the computer room, his own last stand where the machinery was now devastated. Jesse would love helping him redesign this place. Even Brennan would have fun showing off his muscles as he moved the heavy stuff. He could hear them now; Shalimar making a sharp comment, Emma giggling and Jesse joining in, while Brennan pretended to be injured by the words. So vivid was his imagination, Adam thought he really could hear Emma's laughter echoing faintly through the corridors and he called her name, looking.
And only found the ghost that was Magda standing in the corridor.
"Kitchen, dear," she ordered. "Strong hot tea now."
Adam sighed and smiled slightly. She'd always been bossy, but always with his best interests at heart. She'd started off as his secretary at Genomex and followed him to Sanctuary. Never had he been so grateful as when that first group of four children came his way. Shalimar, Natasha, Corey and David; complete monsters all. He would have had no idea what to do with them if it hadn't been for Magda and it had been a sad loss when she'd died.
As usual she was right, and the tea helped enormously. Sanctuary was rebuildable and even the data on the computers was salvageable. Jesse had put in a lot of work on backup systems and, as most of those were retrievable, that paid off now . Anything that was missing was probably in Adam's own head. He wouldn't rebuild Sanctuary the same, of course, because it wouldn't be the same. But it would be a new, better Sanctuary.
"For what?" asked Magda, sitting sideways on a chair. Ladylike she was not. "Why rebuild?"
Adam blinked at her. "I thought you wanted me to?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm dead, what do I know? This is your future we're talking about here, and I want to know what you're going to do with it and more importantly why."
"Same as before, to."
"And your heart's not in it."
"Well, you know, I just lost everything. I just lost Sanctuary, - "
"Now, I thought we got that one out of the way. You haven't lost it, you just need to rebuild it."
"I lost everything I was working on."
"It's all on those computer thingies, you've hardly lost anything. Next?"
"I lost my, my -" Adam tried to say the words, but only adrenaline and a fresh wave of burning tears threatened,
"Your what?" Magda asked.
"My people!" There, he'd said it. And it hadn't hurt as much as he thought it would.
"Oh, Adam, you're hopeless sometimes! Your people? So what, you've lost your janitor, cook and chauffeur? What?"
Adam flinched a little. "My team, my -. I've lost Shalimar, I keep looking at you and expecting you to be her. I've lost Jesse, probably the one I most considered a. a -." He shook his head. "Brennan, he was. noise. Loud. Stopped us from being apathetic. And Emma, I've lost her empathy. They're dead, Magda." And just saying that hurt like nothing he could ever have imagined. "They're all dead and I'm lost without them." Absorbed in his grief, it took a while for Adam to hear what Magda was saying.
"You may have lost them, but Adam, they're not dead until you've seen the bodies."
Adam was confused, his mind still half in shock. "What? What are you saying? That they're. " His heart leapt even as his rational mind denied it. "That they're alive?"
"No! No, Adam, that's not what I'm saying at all. You need closure; you need to see their bodies and bury them. You need to go and find them."
"In that building? I suppose there could be traces, but they'd have disintegrated in the explosion."
"Maybe, maybe not." Magda's sudden evasiveness was aggravating. "Genetic material, whether dead or alive, is a valuable commodity. You and Eckhart both said that many a time. Now I'm telling you, whatever's left of those poor children, it's been scattered to the four winds by now. You have to go find whatever there is and bring them home. You'll never be able to rest until you do."
Adam couldn't take much more of this, any more of this, his mind a whirling maelstrom of confusion and grief.
"I told you, sweetheart," Magda continued softly. "I told you I'd look after you always. Now go to sleep and start tomorrow with a new heart." Adam felt his eyes grow heavy and the tabletop looked most inviting. The last thing he heard before passing out was her soft chuckle and one final admonishment. "And if I were you, I'd stop talking to ghosts. People might think you're a fruit-loop."
*****
The following morning, Adam did indeed awake with a new heart full of resolve and determination.
There was no deadline, and mourning each member of his team was something he could afford to reserve until the time arrived. Before that he had a Sanctuary to resurrect and, until he was up and functioning again, there was little he could do as regards this personal goal. He nevertheless made a few phone calls and found that the building where he'd lost his team had been cleaned out and cleared away.
A few more calls had reunited him with the cyber-psionic Natasha, her husband Corey, a terra-forming elemental, and David - also an elemental, but of air. It was with a mixture of sorrow and glee that they took over the restoration of Sanctuary, recruiting from Adam's database those that might help and leaving Adam to redesign, make special purchases and oversee from above.
"You see?" said Magda, one day as he was resting in the meditation room. "They're all good kids, every last one of them. I bet you never thought they'd be so happy to help out. They've all left the lives you gave them, or given what time they could to help you rebuild."
"Yes," Adam agreed with sadness "But they're transient. I helped them in the past and now they're helping me. But they're not. I don't know."
"They're not your children."
Adam snorted. Not this again. "They're not my team! I guess I should find another team."
"Maybe," Magda said. "But not until you've put the old one to rest. Because until you do, no new team will ever be good enough."
Adam looked down into the pond, the fish and the plants no longer wilting now the waterfall was working once again. But like himself, they were listless and not a flower was to be seen.
And then Magda was gone, and Adam wondered if he was going mad.
*****
It took months before Sanctuary was up and running, but when it was most of the helpers left, leaving Natasha, Corey and David who offered their ongoing help until such time as Adam had a team back in place. Adam could have wept with gratitude, never realising that such a small thing he'd done all those years ago had reaped such great rewards when he needed them most.
Natasha and Corey had three children of their own. The foster-parents who'd taken them in from Sanctuary back then had been more than happy to look after their grandchildren while they helped out. David was footloose and fancy free and, with a stunning career in architecture, he could afford to take an indefinite leave of absence. Adam sat the three down and explained that he needed to close the book on the old team before constructing a new one, and they all understood. Well, except for David's small protest that forward was the way to go, that looking back was a waste of time.
In order to achieve closure, though, he needed to fill in the gaps in his own memory and to find all the pieces he needed to put the entire picture together. First and foremost was Absalom, the entity that had attacked them in their home. Absalom and his flunkies had neutralised them using a form of sub-dermal governor and taken them all to the warehouse. Adam didn't remember that too well, but what he did remember made him sick. Absalom had a niche market in selling new mutants, among other things. But he also liked playing with new toys. Adam remembered Absalom making Emma and Shalimar watch as he made Brennan and Jesse do unspeakable things to themselves, to others and to each other.
But Absalom was dead.
The frightened healer child that constantly made sure no one was left at death's door was the one who'd killed Absalom in the end. When Absalom had wanted Emma taken out of the cage and. Adam didn't want to go there. And then there was Absalom's enigmatic lieutenant, Magarathea, dark haired, ageless, and sharked-eyed in looks, cold, emotionless and ruthless in nature. Of those two, no sign had been found.
However, it was Natasha with her cyber skills who came up with something. Some lost property that was lying unclaimed at the local coroner's office. When Adam got the package home, he sat staring at it for a long time before finding the courage to open it. When he finally did, he tipped onto the table five identical plain silver rings.
He put them carefully back in the package vowing to bury the rings with their owners. Only then would he wear his own again, in remembrance,
*****
Natasha and Adam used the new Sanctuary's technology while David and Corey did the legwork, and it wasn't long before they found that Magarathea, unsurprisingly, had taken over Absalom's business, although still trading in Absalom's name.
Magarathea was pragmatic and saw no problem with doing business with Adam. He paid her, and she gave him what he asked for.
More than he'd ever hoped, less than he needed.
Sale Lot #4835 - 1 x Feral - Anthonius Mosenby, private collector Sale Lot #4836 - 1 x Elemental - Green Acres Molecular Research Institute Sale Lot #4837 - 1 x Molecular - USG Biochemical Research Agency Sale Lot #4838 - 1 x Psionic - Genomex Industries
That was all the information provided, as that was all he'd asked for. 800,000 dollars for that small, but key data. Adam had briefly harboured a thought that there might be some indication of the state of the. their conditions, but Magarathea was clearly not that compassionate.
Or maybe she was.
*****
"I've got one!" Natasha called, her eyes flashing from white to their normal blue.
"What? What is it?" Adam was at her shoulder in a flash.
"USG Bio. Usual government cost cutting with old mainframe, crap firewall and virtually no other data security. Only thing is, I'm not sure Magarathea's molecular is who you're looking for."
"What makes you say that?" Adam tried to sound calm and patient, but his heart was thumping wildly with anticipation.
Natasha seemed hesitant. "Because." She took a deep breath. "Because he was still alive."
Adam's breath caught in his throat. All this time.
But he had to be sure first. "Was? Details. Give me details," he rasped.
"Okay, well, the molecular, sale lot #4837 was purchased nine months ago, which ties in. and was designated patient M987A. Shipment was delivered healthy and neutralised as advertised, 5ft 11inch Caucasian male, dark blond, blue-eyed, molecular, density shifter. Thing is, Adam, M987A was rejected within four weeks."
"What? What does that mean?"
"Hold on, I'm searching... It means that he was unusable. He underwent some experimentation for the first couple of weeks he was there, but then they stopped due to, and I quote, 'a persistent disassociative disorder and an inability to assert molecular stability." I guess the government likes being humane, even if they do 'buy' their guinea pigs. He's been admitted to Rylands as a John Doe. Rylands is a - "
"Yes, it's all right, I'm familiar with Rylands. It's a state run secure psychiatric unit. I can pull strings to get in there."
"I'm sorry, Adam." Natasha looked sympathetic and Adam didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It had to be Jesse, it just had to be. And if he was alive, no matter what state he was in, then he could get him back. And if Jesse was alive, then the others.
*****
To be continued.