+ Month 12

Proxy Blue regarded her viewers with a positively wolfishly snarky grin, her colours as bright and changeable as they used to be a very long time ago. "You people know how to make a girl proud. With anti-mutant protests and behaviour on the decline, we can lump the whole debacle in with racism, sexism and all the other –isms, the minorities fight every day; no more, and no less. And there's even a support group for misfit mutants and humans who just can't seem to get along with the mutant next door. You can find more information and website URLs at Proxy's usual links page.

"LexMor has been shuffled into what can tentatively be called the Genomex Group, and has secured the government contract for genetic R&D. Like that was a surprise.  Can you spell 'Monopoly'?

"The security agency in charge of the Stacklin Detention Centre has back peddled, accepting full responsibility for the mass breakout in light of the fact that the inmates were political detainees of the infamous Inner Circle, held indefinitely without trial. Apparently they couldn't help themselves.

"One last little mutant related point. All of you nasty little hacks out there that are trying to blame the whole war on the Prozac Syndrome and the so-called Psionic Circle, take a look at the chronology.  It was all down to human nature. And don't you mutants start going all smug, because you have that very same human nature. I dare you to deny it.

"On a more personal note, with the mutants out of the closet and things more or less getting back to normal, this gal is running out of news bigger than 'that mutant ate my sheep'. So, we're expanding our horizons and looking to pastures anew." Here Proxy Blue paused for a very long beat. "You may remember some sixty odd years ago a popular rumour about a little nowhere place by the name of Roswell. You know what I'm talking about, true believers, and I'm not looking for lights in the sky or alien abductions, but if you have gossip on exactly who did what to whom and why in order to cover up the stuff that was never covered up, than drop me a line."

*****

The new Sanctuary had been built on the old. It was only a shell for the moment, some basic accommodation for a dozen people at present, yet held just five.

Paulo had taken his men back home with Charlotte, who had ambitious plans to make him a respectable gentleman of note. Not only had Darius been in Stacklin, but also a blue haired girl named Darlene as well as Julie, much to Jeff's delight, and it was they who volunteered to take Cyber on under her given name, Sarah.

The Kilmartin fortune, integrated into Morrisen Industries, was put back where it belonged with the sole heir, and Cyberteam profits were joined with Morrisen profits and used to maintain Sanctuary.

The five people left in residence had found an uneasy truce. The banter was back, in fits and starts, but it was interspersed with awkward silences that thankfully grew fewer as time went by. They were more a collection of individuals at this point, but anyone who had known them from back in the old days could see that slowly they were drawing together again.

The coms systems were back up and running, and though Adam considered making new devices, he thought he'd offer the rings once more. He could modify them to work with the new systems and they were somehow symbolic. But then again they were the past and he wanted to forget the past, to move on.

In the end, the modifications provided the solution to his dilemma.  He needed to weld a slim copper filament in, and although he could have had it folded inside the metal of the rings, instead he had it inlaid in the surface.

The silver metal bands as they had been and always would be, representative of the family they were, come hell or high water, bisected by the copper line of blood and the hell they'd been through, that had split them apart and brought them back together. The same, yet different. More.

They had a little party with a bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact that they'd all taken their rings back, to celebrate the fact that Mutant X was back. With a different agenda, to be sure, with a different future and different people, but the family remained the same, united despite the differences.

Shalimar couldn't stop hugging everyone, while Brennan boasted his prowess on the basketball court that day, and Adam talked excitedly about plans. Slightly outside the louder, more extrovert three, Emma and Jesse looked at each other across the room, raising their glasses with a smile passing between them. Friendly and gentle to the passing glance, but on closer examination his was perhaps a little colder than the old Jesse might have given, and hers with maybe just a hint of malevolence.

FINIS