-4 Months

Proxy Blue regarded her audience with what seemed to be an air of contempt. "Word has it that someone has been cherry picking psionics on their way to the freak farms, building a little mental task force. Who could that be? Someone with official connections, obviously. But someone trying to climb the ladder? Or someone trying to consolidate what they already have? Scuttlebutt says that someone in Genomex got paid off. Watch this space.

"Talking of money, yet another rich kid bites the dust as the last of the Kilmartins was arrested last month for being a mutant and a dissident. Apparently they kept this one quiet because he was a key member of Cyberteam too. Well, I can personally vouch for the fact that Cyberteam is very much still alive and kicking, albeit going through structural changes - but aren't we all these days? Hands up those who think that kid's arrest has more to do with all that money and real estate now lining someone else's pockets?

"And how many of you out there are making any protest at these convenient little laws that keep cropping up? These little laws that could just violate the Constitution a tiny bit? Read it recently? Shame on you! Keep the scoops coming, ladies and gents, this girl is hungry."

*****

The person, thing that Eckhart had come to see was living in conditions that almost had him turning on his heel. He had thought that Wally's accommodation would be slightly more up market, given the modest but ongoing compensation he received from Genomex. But perhaps here in a shantytown Wally found it easier to fit in, and right now, Eckhart was far too aware that a beggar couldn't be a chooser.

Wally was feral. The very first feral. A guinea pig who'd allowed his body to be experimented upon in exchange for money. They hadn't meant to change anything about Wally, only see if they could splice some dormant rat DNA into an adult human.

They could, and Wally's results had been instrumental in creating the ferals as they were today. Unfortunately for Wally, he got to spend the rest of his life looking like exactly what he was - a human and rat hybrid.

But at that point he'd been more naïve even than Adam, and the thought of putting a living person into cold storage had nauseated him just too much. So he'd made sure Wally got looked after. Wally had a kind of love and hate for him, his mind too simple for absolute hate when the object of that feeling also gave him kindness.

So, crossing his fingers that Wally might be able to give him some temporary shelter, Eckhart took a deep breath and knocked at the metal wall of the shanty where Wally lived, hoping that his… investment… was in a receptive mood.

*****

Jesse had no energy left at all, hanging between the two soldiers and letting them carry his weight. Consciousness was at best intermittent, zooming in and out every second or three. He was bruised and bloody and doped up to the gills from their attempts to get information on the rest of Cyberteam and any other mutants, and he was quietly proud of himself that everything he gave them, all of it involuntarily, was about as useful as snow in Alaska. His recent lifestyle, and the electronic plan he'd put in place, meant that he literally knew nothing that was of any use to anyone, and the little he did know about Brennan, Emma and Adam, they never asked.

He grinned to himself, even giggled, though he suspected that was just in his head. Speaking of which, someone raised his head by his hair which probably should've hurt if it wasn't for the fact that everything else hurt more. Through his swollen eyes it kind of looked like Adam.

"I'll have him fitted with an SGFlex, and put him to work in one of the mines," said someone else. "A molecular of his caliber should replace at least one of automatons that worked down there before the AV's destroyed them."

"Good idea," the Adam person said. "He's not been working out recently and the exercise will do him good."

"Huh?" But his brain couldn't keep up anymore and chose that instant to switch to standby.

"Why did you have the AV's destroy so much?" Adam asked Morrisen once they were alone again.

"Excuse me?" The other man only hesitated an instant as he poured drinks for them both.

"Come on, William, I'm not stupid. I know that you're behind the AV's. Even Proxy Blue's been telling the world for the last few months if you know how to read between the lines. Frankly I'm surprised no one else has figured it out by now."

"Well." Morrisen handed Adam a drink and took a sip of his own. "It's that obvious, is it?"

Adam shrugged. "I think so. Not that I'm about to tell anyone; it's not in my interests to. But I would like to know why."

Morrisen shrugged. "Control of the AV's is not absolute. They do a lot of things without my specific say so. I consider myself more of a guiding force than any kind of leader. And as long as they run around frothing at the mouth, humans will be terrified of all mutants. It's their nature to tar everyone with the same brush. Cyberteam won't last long and, once the Freedom Fighters and the Underground Railway are beheaded, I can get rid of the AV's and we'll be left with a slave race. And as history from around the world shows, from Egyptian and Roman, through Chinese and Indian and even American, there is nothing so profitable - socially, politically and most importantly, economically - as slavery. The economy is in tatters due to the war and Cyberteam, and it's only right that they pay their dues."

Adam smiled wolfishly as he took mouthful of a warm liqueur. "Then I look forward to the day that they're all off the streets."

*****