Author's note: I hope that this part isn't overdone. And I apologize for any confusion about the last chapter, but, as it was from Brennan's perspective, there was no way to gently interject why she reacted so strongly to the composite. Plus, I enjoyed stringing it along for as long as I could. Let me know if you like it.

Disclaimer: Still not mine, with the exception of Tyler, Seth, and the murdering kids.

********

NATURE OR NURTURE: Walking in Circles

Shalimar shivered in the crisp afternoon air. Her breath came out in little misty trails, white against the stark blue of the sky. Next to her, Jesse shoved his hands further into his pockets. The farm - to which the locals had been more than happy to direct them - was situated a good ten miles from the center of town down an unplowed dirt road.

Perhaps the word "town" was a bit generous for the sleepy hamlet of Randolph. It did have a gas station and a McDonald's, as well as a pitiful excuse for a Technical College, but that was about it. The rest of Randolph was a cluster of twenty houses and a tiny elementary school. Though she never would have admitted it, Shalimar found the place kind of charming.

After looking at the steep, narrow drive leading onto the property, she and Jesse had decided to leave their rental car by the road and make their way on foot to the farm. As Shalimar slogged through snow drifts two feet deep, she wondered if they'd made the right choice. The property itself was mostly wooded, dotted with small fields. It shifted steadily uphill, higher onto the hillside.

"What kind of sick freak puts a dairy farm on a mountain?" mumbled Jesse. Despite his earlier enthusiasm for the trip, he seemed uninspired by their slow progress through the powdery, slippery snow. Doubtless he'd rather be skiing down it than inching up it.

"I don't know, but it is beautiful. He might be an evil government-trained assassin, but Seth has a definite eye for aesthetics."

Jesse muttered something nasty under his breath. Shalimar's sensitive ears picked it up, and she laughed out loud. He really was a sweetheart. He was so gratifyingly straightforward despite all of the strangeness in his life.

Brennan, by comparison, was a seething mass of Machiavellian contradictions. Charming one second, aloof the next, he was always playing some sort of game. Part of Shalimar was intrigued by his deceptive candor. She knew that, given the choice, Brennan kept his secrets to himself. It was enough to catch any woman's attention.

And the package wasn't exactly a turn-off either.

They stepped into a clearing and saw the farmhouse for the first time. It was a large, white structure with a series of attached outbuildings extending to one side. Shalimar could smell the wood smoke trailing from the chimney.

Shalimar caught the soft crunch of feet on snow somewhere to the left. Acting on pure instinct, she dove at Jesse, sending them both tumbling to the ground an instant before a blast of raw heat shot out of the trees at them .

"You okay?" she whispered to Jesse as they crouched behind a snowdrift.

"Yeah. How many are there?"

Shal's eyes went gold as she scanned the horizon. "There are at least three, probably more." Something was odd about the figures hiding among the trees. "Jess, I think they're kids."

"Damn."

She heard more rustling. Childish voices. Then a small, snarling figure pounced on her. A Feral.

Eyes blazing, Shal wrestled the boy to the ground. He couldn't have been a day over thirteen, but he fought like a pro. He twisted around her and lashed out with his leg, catching her in the gut. Loosing all patience, she grabbed his ankle and pulled, up-ending the boy. He jack-knifed up and delivered a wicked blow to her windpipe.

Jesse, meanwhile, was having problems of his own. A cherub-faced little girl in pigtails and a Hello Kitty parka perched on the rim of the drift, her rosy-cheeked face fierce with concentration. She blasted away at Jesse with rays of heat from her bare hands. Jesse phased out, but it was clear that the intense heat was interfering with his powers. Beneath his feet, snow melted into a slick puddle.

With the boy in a headlock, Shalimar kicked the girl's legs out from under her, sending her sprawling. Immediately, Jesse phased back to normal and launched himself at her. Trapped in Shalimar's arms, the boy fought like a wild thing.

"Look kid, I don't -" A small fist caught her jaw. Shal flexed her jaw and tightened her grip. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will," she snarled softly. She could hear Jesse grappling with the girl a few feet away.

"You're gonna pay for this!" hissed the boy. "You'll see; Tyler's gonna make both of you wish you were dead."

Shalimar gave up trying to reason with him. She pressed just hard enough on his windpipe to render him unconscious. Shoving his limp body into the puddle, Shalimar vaulted nimbly over the edge of the drift to help Jesse.

And froze at the sight that greeted her.

Jesse lay curled on his side in the fetal position, clawing at his face, his mouth open wide in a silent scream. Something about the way he lay in the snow vividly echoed the picture of Lily Cross's bloody corpse. Above him stood a tall, wiry man with a shock of platinum blond hair and gray eyes so pale they looked white.

For the briefest of seconds, he turned those hollow eyes on Shalimar, who was still thinking of Lily's body.

The man - Tyler Verlaine, if Shalimar's instincts were right - went pale and began to shake. He stepped over Jesse's writhing form and approached Shal. An oppressive weight settled deeply into Shalimar's mind and began to sift ruthlessly through her thoughts and memories.

Shalimar whimpered in pain and shock. The presence in her mind tightened its hold, carelessly summoning images of Shalimar's dead mother, her first crush, the first man she killed. Gasping at the overwhelming onslaught of thoughts and emotions, Shalimar struggled to breath. She felt so helpless, so invaded ... it was almost as though her mind was being raped.

Again and again, the image of Lily Cross danced through Shal's mind, despite her every effort to take control of her head. Each time it resurfaced, little bolts of pain - not her own - shot through her shaking body.

Desperate to keep her suddenly fragile grip on sanity, Shal wondered if this was comparable to what Emma felt all the time. She had always regarded the other woman's powers with mild disdain, preferring her own physical strength and feline reflexes. But if Emma lived with something like this constant invasion all day, every day ...

Emma was stronger than she looked.

It was Shalimar's last coherent thought before she collapsed in the snow.

Vaguely, she registered Tyler's footsteps on the snow, his hands withdrawing something from her jacket. The printout from the police station. As darkness rushed in on her, she heard him whisper, "Seth."

********

With an evil grin, Emma dropped the Double Helix several hundred feet, then pulled up sharply. Next to her, Brennan's head gave a satisfying thunk as it slammed into the side of the jet. Along with mild cranial pain, Emma sensed that Brennan was regretting his decision to let her fly them to the Icarus headquarters.

Of course, she had been sending a little bit of guilt his way - how was she ever going to improve her piloting if the others never let her practice?

"Em, please, I'd like to live to see thirty." He sounded just like a grouchy little boy.

Emma pretended to ignore him and banked a hard right, throwing his whole body toward her. Silently, she cursed the seat belt that kept him from tumbling into her lap. Brennan fumed, radiating irritation.

As humor did not appear to be working to lighten Brennan's dark mood, Emma decided to give polite curiosity a try. "Want to talk about it?"

"About what?"

Okay, so small talk was a failure. Emma narrowed her eyes. Time to whip out the big guns. Brutal honesty. "Brennan, you can't obsess about this. We'll figure it out sooner or later."

Nothing.

Emma sighed. She knew what he was feeling - and she genuinely wished she didn't at this moment. When he first saw the printout, she'd felt his momentary panic. He had instantly recognized the brooding, handsome face. He stared at it every day in the mirror.

Someone, somewhere had put Brennan at Lily's murder site. Emma wanted to believe that he was just being framed by one of the leftover lackeys from Genomex, but that would mean that the whole case was a set-up. But it was an awful lot of trouble to go to in order to draw Mutant X out into the open. Anyone familiar with the team would know that even a simple missing mutant would have caught their attention.

And the Genomex Emma knew and loathed would never get rid of an asset as valuable as Lily Cross. The woman was not just a talented mutant; she had also been one of the foremost weapons specialists in the world. They would have just stuck her in a pod and reprogrammed her.

Besides, the police had been in possession of the composite long before Mutant X became involved.

It all boiled down to the same conclusion: there was no simple explanation.

"We're almost to the compound. Can you land this thing or do you need me to do it?" Brennan looked eager to take over.

Emma shot him a withering glance. In a series of graceful sweeps, she landed the Double Helix on a dime. She set the Double Helix into its invisible mode. "Bren, any answers we're going to find will be in that building. Hopefully."

"Fine," was his terse reply.

They moved cautiously from the Double Helix toward the compound. The guards patrolling the perimeter were the only outward sign that they were in the right spot. "I'll use Old Faithful to get us inside," she whispered.

"The one where you project us in uniform? When did you start calling that 'Old Faithful'?"

Emma gave unladylike snort. "Around the fiftieth time Shal and I used it to get into Genomex. You'd have thought they'd catch on, but it always worked."

They approached the checkpoint. As predicted, Emma's trick worked like a charm. The smile she flashed at the guard didn't hurt, either. The interior of the compound was a mass of labyrinthine corridors and stairs. Every time they rounded a corner, Brennan made sure to zap the cameras.

The place was almost empty. Emma easily distracted the few people who crossed their path. All of them emanated a sense of incredible stress. Something was amiss at Project Icarus. Brennan pulled her into the nearest office and, after putting the security camera out of commission, he used his powers to patch them into the Icarus mainframe. "Their system is triple encrypted. I've never seen anything quite like this. Jesse would have a field day in this place."

"He'll get a chance to hack it." Emma slipped a tiny bug from her jacket pocket and slipped it onto the smooth black surface of the computer. It immediately mimicked the same color. "We don't have time to fool around with this right now. I want to find McKay's office."

"Bad idea."

Brennan and Emma whipped around at the unfamiliar voice. A large shape unfolded itself from the shadows. Emma felt Brennan's shock echo her own. The two men stared at each other, each momentarily lost in the experience of seeing his exact double for the first time. From their unfathomable black eyes to their well-muscled bodies, Brennan and the stranger could have been the same person.

A nasty little smile crossed the intruder's face. "You have no clue what you're messing with."

Blood pounded through Emma's head. From Brennan, she felt an overwhelming mix horror, shock, and aggression. But from the stranger, she could barely read anything. It was as though he had an impenetrable wall in his mind. All she could pick up were traces of rage ... and pain.

Without warning, he jumped Brennan, moving almost faster than Emma could see. As the two big men fought, Emma caught a flash of yellow from the stranger's eyes. A Feral.

Bren threw the man off and sent a bolt of electricity at him. With a growl, the man dodged, as elegant as a dancer. He flipped backward and then wheeled at Brennan with a powerful kick, sending Bren sprawling. The stranger was on him in an instant, his hands raised to deliver a killing blow.

Adrenaline pumping, Emma launched herself onto the man's back and bombarded him with panic and fear. He gasped and his grip loosened enough for Brennan to scramble free. With both small hands pressed to his temples, Emma continued her mental attack.

Then the wall guarding the man's mind dropped and Emma went rigid as an all- consuming tidal wave of emotion ripped through her. Wrath. Guilt. Pain.

The pain was ... familiar. Before she could identify where she'd felt that deep, gut-wrenching pain, Brennan yanked the stunned man from her grasp and delivered a series of ferocious blows to the man's head, interspersed with severe shocks to his body.

The pieces clicked in Emma's mind. "Bren," she said hoarsely, "hold on. I think ... Bren, he's Seth."