Author's note: I could regale you all with excuses for why this chapter took so long, but that would entail a long diatribe about the current state of politics and the economy (in a nutshell, George W. Bush). I live in D.C., so reality's been a little, shall we say, REAL lately. Instead, I apologize to my readers and swear that it won't happen again.

Disclaimer: Still not mine. Although, after this long, I'm starting to feel like I've at least got partial custody. Every other weekend and Christmas.

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NATURE OR NURTURE: Rolling with the Punches

Emma burrowed under her blanket, utterly miserable. She'd spent the two days since the team returned from Vermont holed up in her room, alone.

The minutes after Tyler had ripped away every trace of psionic ability from her mind had passed in a haze. Emma vaguely remembered the rest of the team rounding up the children - five in all. Matthew and Katie, of course, as well as a sullen shape-shifter named Pauline, a chunky kid with an uncanny knack for computers, and a seven-year-old who insisted on being called "Lord of the Deep."

Emma barely recalled Brennan scooping her up and carrying her to the Double Helix. At Sanctuary, he, Jesse and Shalimar had kept concerned vigil over her the first night, until she forcibly ejected them all from her room.

She had refused to see anyone since.

Emma rolled over on her stomach, burying her face in her feather pillow. The loss of her powers had left her completely bereft. Unlike the times the GSA agents had used a neural inhibitor to block her powers, Emma could actually feel the empty place in her mind where her psionic abilities had been. It was as though Tyler had sliced away one of her senses.

Useless. The word echoed through her mind, over and over. What good was she to anyone like this? Brennan's face rose in her mind, his eyes full of pity. Even without her powers, she had recognized the look. That was what Tyler had reduced her to - an object of pity.

Something hardened in Emma's mind. She was more than her powers, more than a mutant. And she'd be damned if she let someone like Tyler dictate the terms of her life. Tyler hadn't taken away her brain, just her empathy. She could still help the team with the investigation into Lily Cross's murder. After all, with the exception of Adam, who used the lab more than Emma?

Her renewed resolve banished her lethargy. Suddenly, she realized that she was famished. Emma looked up at Felix. The battered clock suspended in his belly read 2:57am. The perfect time for a snack and a little visit to the lab. Emma sat up and pulled on a pair of butterfly-print yoga pants. Without even glancing at her mirror, she slipped out of her room and walked toward the kitchen.

The fridge was full of all of the food that Adam deemed healthy - fruit, vegetables, soymilk, and garden burgers. Nose crinkling in disgust, Emma slammed the door and went for Shalimar's stockpile of junk food. Usually, Emma cursed Shal's super-fast metabolism, which allowed her to eat anything she wanted and never gain an ounce. Tonight, the Twinkies and Doritos looked like manna from heaven.

With a glass of milk and an entire bag of Oreos under her arm, Emma headed for the lab. There were so many questions left unanswered.

Possibilities buzzing in her brain, Emma swept into the lab without bothering to switch on the lights. Stuffing an entire cookie into her mouth, she curled up catlike in one of the swivel chairs in front of the computers. She brushed the chocolate crumbs from her lips absently, intent on the work at hand.

Three hours later, Emma fished blindly for an Oreo and found nothing but an empty plastic bag. Scowling she crinkled it into a ball and hurled it toward the corner of the room. After endless tests and scans, Emma was left feeling more confused than ever.

One thing, however, was crystal clear. Aside from running operations that rivaled the CIA for nastiness, Project Icarus had found a way to accelerate mutation. And, if the tests Emma had run on the DNA sample from Lily's child were any indication, they had taken their experiments to an extreme that put Genomex to shame. A mere two and half months after conception, the baby tested as a fully developed mutant.

A Feral.

Unfortunately, that was about the only certainty that Emma had in the whole ugly mess. Thanks to Jesse's meticulous attention to detail, each of the children had a comprehensive file, complete with blood test updated every twelve hours. By cross-referencing each of the samples, Emma found that their mutations had been fluctuating ever since leaving the farm. Some samples showed readings so low that no evidence of mutation was visible at all. Twelve hours later, the same child showed levels of power comparable to that of Ashlocke.

Recognizing that it would be impossible to unravel that particular knot without more information - or Adam, wherever he was - Emma had attacked the mystery of Lily's baby. She fully expected the child to be Seth's. She was wrong. Nor did it belong to Tyler; in fact, the baby's DNA didn't match anyone in Sanctuary's database.

As if that weren't enough of a dead-end, all of the tests Emma had run on Seth and Brennan had yielded one, thoroughly maddening result: inconclusive.

Emma unwound her body, wincing as her stiff muscles protested the sudden movement. She needed to think about what she'd found -and what she hadn't. Maybe a little meditation would help unclutter her mind.

********

Brennan savagely attacked the punching bag, oblivious to the sweat streaming down his torso. By all rights, he shouldn't be this tense after a three-hour marathon workout. If he were a sane man, he would be in bed recuperating from playing nanny to the pack of rabid kids that seemed hell- bent on turning Sanctuary into their own private playground.

Instead, he was pounding his frustration into a poor, defenseless punching bag.

With a sigh, he abandoned the bag and grabbed a towel from the stack Adam kept hidden behind a sliding panel. The stack was almost gone, yet another sign of Adam's absence. As he buried his face in the clean terrycloth, the image of Emma's pale, ravaged face flashed through his mind. Nothing would ever erase that moment from his memory.

Except maybe beating Tyler to a bloody pulp. And there was no chance of that. After seeing the ferocity with which Bren and Shal shoved Tyler into his cell, Jess had taken the precaution of wiring the room so that he would be alerted any time anyone entered. Not for the first time, Brennan cursed Jesse's sense of honor.

The soft hiss of the door sliding open cut into his thoughts. A familiar silhouette stood in the doorway. Brennan scrambled to his feet. Emma stepped into the room, almost hesitant. "Hey Bren," she said quietly. Her face still bore an unnatural pallor, the circles under her eyes so dark they appeared bruised. Always slender, she now seemed emaciated, and the arms wrapped protectively around her waist were painfully thin.

Bren was torn between wanting to offer comfort and a sick, selfish urge to pretend that nothing at all had happened. He decided to go with bald honesty. Emma, even a wounded Emma, had a very low bullshit tolerance. "Feeling better?"

He was rewarded with the ghost of a smile.

"I'll live."

Those two words spoke volumes. Emma was a survivor - hell, they all were. She would be okay. Something inside Brennan relaxed at the thought. "So, what brings you to the gym at this ungodly hour?"

Her eyes flicked over his sweat-soaked torso and the discarded towel. "Probably the same thing you're doing - clearing my head." She sat on of the weight benches and pulled her legs to her chest like a little kid. "Actually, my first stop was the lab."

"To try and fix your.?" Bren touched a hand to his forehead.

Emma's browed furrowed. "No. I somehow doubt anything Adam's invented could undo what Tyler did. He didn't block my powers or switch them off. I know what that feels like. It's like he cut away the part of my brain that made me an empathy." Her shoulders slumped. "Anyway, I've been wallowing in depression for two days now. I wanted to do something to take my mind off of it. I was trying to see if I could uncover anything about Lily and Project Icarus."

"And?"

"The baby - which by the way, did not belong to Tyler or Seth - was already a full-fledged mutant. Every other lead I tried to investigate turned into a dead end. Even you and Seth." She gazed at him questioningly. "Have you three managed to uncover anything new in the past 48 hours?"

He sank onto the bench next to her, suddenly feeling very weary. "Other than the fact that Katie likes to 'style' Shal's hair and the fact that the Lord of the Deep has a disturbing tendency to disassemble anything unlucky enough to cross his path, no."

This time, Emma's smile was real. "Hey, if this gig ever falls through, you could find work as an au pair."

Bren found himself returning her smile. "Laugh all you want, sweetheart. Don't think you're going to escape babysitting duty."

She groaned good-naturedly, and for an instant, Tyler, her lost powers, and his confusion over Seth were all forgotten. All that was left was an unfamiliar feeling of well-being.

The moment was shattered by a bitter voice. "Why, if it isn't Red and my favorite long-lost brother. Fancy meeting you here at 4 a.m."