The End + Month 1

Proxy Blue still retained her near black colouring and expressionless face, as she had done consistently for the last couple of months. "Everything may have stabilised on the surface, but mutant mania is still alive and well. With the majority of mutants in custody and the remaining gone to ground, jobs that had been created at the beginning of the war are now under threat. If you're not a mutant, then think about whether you could be considered a mutant collaborator, and yes, giving a mutant the time of day once does count. If you're not squeaky clean, be very afraid. Not even the secret services are safe. Two of the FBI's finest have been taken for questioning and four in the CIA. We're verging on something approaching the Salem witch trials or the McCarthy hearings so watch your backs whoever you are. And don't forget, if you have news, people need to know."

*****

"Gossip among the staff has it that you've been working overtime in the library, Adam. Anything interesting?"

"Just research, William," Adam smiled. "Trying to figure out a vaccine to stop any more anomalies being born."

Morrisen raised an eyebrow, and almost dropped his cigar. "Anomalies? I'd rather thought they could be better termed as, ah, exploitative resources. We want them contained, not destroyed."

"Like Victoria has her exploitative resource on a dog leash? Literally? That, William, is where we must differ. Look at the amount of pain and suffering they've caused. It was my mistake that caused it all, and it's my responsibility to eradicate that mistake. The good news for you is that it'll be a very long time before anything effective can be produced. Unless I have access to somewhere like Genomex or LexMor, I'm starting from scratch."

"I wish I could help," Morrisen sighed, "but it would be politically very unwise to be seen having business relations with you outside the Inner Circle. People might get all sorts of wrong impressions. A Senator who has always been anti-mutant, consorting with the creator of said unfortunates? You can see where I'm coming from."

"Yes, William," Adam smiled through gritted teeth. "I can see exactly where you're coming from."

*****

Seven young women sat in a circle with their backs to the central column that connected them all together. The chairs were comfortable and although the probes that surrounded their heads kept them immobile, they were not painful.

They could only ever work in unison but were never permitted contact, each having their own area partitioned off with reflective glass. Opposite the chair, each had a small cubicle that contained a bed and necessary facilities, and there were always fresh meals waiting when the machine released them.

None of the young women knew what the others so much as looked like, but their knowledge of each other was far more intimate than the designers of the machine, Genomex, could ever have imagined.

Very rarely, if one of them became ill or injured, they would be replaced as quickly as possible with another of the same or similar function and the rest of the Circle would compensate for the new one's strengths and weaknesses. It seemed that replacements were hard to find as it usually took days before the new girl was in place, and during these times the six who were waiting would be taken individually to the gym, the pool or the garden. Their owner was most concerned that his Psionic Circle remain as healthy as possible outside the machine, which in turn monitored their vitals at all times that they were connected.

The seven functions covered all the usual psionic bases, projection, precognition, illusion, kinetic, cyber, empath, and telepath and, when combined, they could accomplish so much more than as individuals. Both their shields and their influence had a strength and range that expanded exponentially according to each woman's power, and with psionic beacons at strategic points they could form a psionic web that covered half a continent.

The power, the feelings that came to each woman were addictive. None had wanted to be here, only accepting it to stave off an otherwise inevitable execution, but once they'd had a taste of the machine they never wanted to leave.

And Emma de Lauro was no exception.

*****

Lena McEnery stared hard at her partner's empty chair, willing him to barge in and fill it with his big black lanky frame.

She'd been willing the same thing for the last few weeks to no avail. He'd been taken down for questioning related to an unspecified crime and he was still down there. It was far, far too long.

Just as she was thinking that exact same thought for the thousandth time that day, two of her colleagues came in with empty boxes. Their eyes showed sympathy, but their postures and curt words told her that they were strictly on company business.

"We're here to clear Agent Johnson's desk. Please don't touch anything and please don't interfere."

Darius wasn't coming back then. "Sure, I'll get out of your way, need to grab a sandwich anyway." She slipped her coat on. "Left it a little late if you're looking for evidence. He been sent home?"

"Orders. Agent Johnson has been detained indefinitely," she was told calmly.

"Shit! What the hell is going on around here!" she muttered. "Look, I'll see you later. Second thoughts, I may just hit the bar."

Just slightly harried looking, Lena left the building and headed home. She was well aware that if Darius was in closed custody then, as his partner, she would be being watched. That was standard operating procedure. She'd been living under that assumption since Darius had been escorted from the office, although he obviously hadn't told them a huge amount or they'd have been all over her apartment by now.

She just needed to get out from under the eye of the Bureau, then she could make a run for it. Having spent the last seventeen years as a field agent, and damned good one, she knew how they worked and was able to escape any surveillance coolly and calmly, so that they didn't know she was gone until after the fact.

Fortunately, in order to keep the little secret she and Darius shared, she only needed her Palm Pilot. Her home PC was clean, and she'd already ensured that Darius' Pilot couldn't get access to their hidden server. Having a good idea that they were just waiting for her to lead them to it, she resigned herself to being on the run.

*****

With his rational mind hiding away so that it wouldn't have to acknowledge the dirt and dust and microscopic living things that were crawling all over the vehicle, Eckhart persuaded Wally to lend him his old Roadster, complete with a tank full of gas. It was enough to get him out to Langley's country residence and back, a place he'd been to on one or two occasions when he'd been in favour. He didn't dare visit while she was there, and was reluctantly prepared to camp out in the clapped out old banger for a couple of days at least.

As luck would have it, however, he passed her car on its way from the estate and since he only saw the chauffeur and Langley herself, he was reasonably certain that the Kilmartin boy would be inside the house still.

He'd scoured the news as carefully as possible given his lack of computer access, and Kilmartin had appeared here and there accompanying Langley to one function or another, a showpiece that she trotted out on every public occasion. Of the other three members of the defunct Mutant X there was no sign, and he was not yet prepared to deal with Adam.

Straightening himself up as much as possible, he prepared to bully his way into the small mansion.

Jesse was working out when the bemused butler came to tell him he had a visitor. Raymond, who'd followed the butler up, suggested that Jesse showered, changed and met his guest in the living room, and Jesse nodded and smiled, grateful that someone had control of the situation.

Without Victoria he was lost, and wasn't used to having to make decisions for himself. Wasn't normally permitted to. With Raymond apparently in control, he decided that this was one of the handler's refresher tests. The quiet man did that occasionally to make sure Jesse didn't need any further training, something he abhorred intensely.

Half an hour later he entered the living room to find his guest using the computer in the corner. He wasn't sure he liked this visitor using it because it was his. Victoria had given it to him as a present. But since he wasn't allowed to make a fuss, he waited patiently for his guest to notice him.

Maybe fifteen minutes passed before the stranger turned slightly and jumped violently as he spotted Jesse. "Er, Mr Kilmartin, there you are."

Jesse just stared at him. The man was scruffy and dirty, the thick scarf covering his face falling down to reveal a tired, haggard face with broken glasses. And his skin - it wasn't just peeling, but blistering and broken out in sores. It looked painful, and made him feel sick.

"Mr Kilmartin, I er, I know we've not exactly been on the, er, same side of the fence, as it, er, were…" The man kept touching his temple, and squinting as if battling some internal force. "But I, ah, came to persuade you to take up, er, to take back control of, uh, well, you know, your, ah, electronic highway robbery mantle, er, am I making any sense?"

Jesse blinked and decided that the man was clearly insane. "Not really," he said carefully, wondering what repercussion might eventuate for his lack of understanding.  Victoria could be vicious, but her anger rarely lasted more than a few moments and her contrition made it all better. Raymond's anger was far more enduring and hurt less, but for a lot longer.

"Do, er, do you know who I am?" the strange man asked, coming closer. Jesse flinched from him, but stood his ground. "Mason Eckhart? Genomex?" A long pause, then. "Adam Kane?"

"No." Jesse really didn't like this man, and didn't like this test because he didn't understand it. Didn't know what was expected of him, and he'd learned that not knowing was never a good thing.

Eckhart looked closely at him for a long time, making Jesse very uncomfortable. "You need to come, er, to come with me…" he started, but trailed off uncertainly, rubbing at his head with gloved fingers.

"I can only go with Victoria," Jesse told him matter-of-factly. That should explain everything, but he felt the urge to clarify. "I don't want to go anywhere unless it's with Victoria." Because in a world where his wants and needs were dictated by someone else, that was the only thing he was sure of.

There was a long awkward silence, before the strange man turned on his heel and headed for the door.

Then a hand on Jesse's shoulder made him stiffen in apprehension.

"Good boy," Raymond said softly, and Jesse smiled in deep relief.

*****

Shalimar woke to the smell of frying food, and for the first time in a long time, her stomach grumbled. Paulo laughed at the clear sound and took a plate from the cook, offering it to her. Fever and deprivation had taken their toll on her formerly fit body, although she was working hard to rectify that, and she took the plate with a grateful smile, pulling herself upright against the tent wall to eat it.

The men who had pulled her out of the bloody cesspit had taken care of her pretty well. They were nomadic, and well practised in some of the medical arts alongside some excellent ranger skills.  Fortunately, the two bullets that hit her arm and thigh barely scraped muscle, but it was the infections that had caused the fever, though chances were she'd already been sick from the conditions of the place before the massacre.

They'd looked after her as one of their own and she hadn't yet figured out why, didn't know why they hadn't dumped her body, or left her at one of the aid-stations. They'd taken and burned all the bodies at the prison in one long funeral pyre, but any compassion she might have thought her rescuers had died when they told her brutally frankly that to leave that many corpses rotting in one place was to invite disease and pestilence to the area. Better the place be cleansed and used by others another day.

One of the most peculiar things about the men, other than that there were no women with them, was that they had never knowingly met a mutant. There simply weren't any in this part of South America or, if there were, they were few and far between. They'd assumed that the bodies they'd burned, because they all looked human, having been neutralised, were human.

They'd had to ask what the thing was in the back of her neck and, slightly out of it at the time, she'd told them honestly. They'd laughed at her, told her that she was too pretty to be a monster.

Paulo came and sat at the far side of the tent to eat his meal. No one came close to her unless she knew they were coming since she'd damned near ripped the well-meaning cook's arm out. She'd clearly marked out her territory, and disliked anyone crossing into it, insecure in both body and mind. The only person she tolerated anywhere near was Paulo; he'd been with her when she was delirious and shown her nothing but respect.  He was nearly as tall as Brennan and as fit, but darker, smoother, like he should be in silk Armani hosting a dinner party on some rich hacienda, and he led this group of nomads.

And with the way he smiled at her, maybe she did have an inkling why they'd looked after her, after all.

*****