Contains spoilers. This is my version of what might happen in the Season Three opener. I'm sure it bears absolutely no resemblance to what will actually happen, but it begged to be written anyway. Mutant X? Don't own 'em, but I like to borrow them every once in a while.
It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum, and here they will break out in their native music and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns and they mope and wallow like dogs.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The loss hit Brennan the hardest.
I don't know if it was because he was the one least allowed to mourn. Certainly he held it together while the both of us went to pieces. Leadership of the team had fallen on his shoulders more and more often, and in retrospect, it almost seems as if Adam knew what was going to happen. But I've yet to see Brennan cry in front of us. I don't know if he's even been able to in private. Mostly he just seems angry all the time, not at us, but at. . . I don't know, life, I guess. Sometimes I wish he would just break down and lose it, and then we could all cry together. Maybe then I wouldn't feel that there's something in him ready to crack.
For a while I worried more about Shalimar than about Brennan. Her family, her pack, was torn asunder, and she raged and wept until I thought she'd go mad. Adam was more a father to her than her own father, and Emma was her friend, confident, sister. To lose them both at the same time. . . well, I don't know how any of us stood it. But Shalimar is probably the strongest one of us, and she managed to pull herself together after a few days. I might have gone mad myself but for the work in Adam's lab, archiving, decrypting, reorganizing everything. He laid it all out there for me, as if he knew that's the work I'd have to do someday. His last act was to put the key in my hand; literally, an electronic key to a holographically hidden wallsafe behind his desk that none of us knew about until that moment. He kept the encryption codes to everything there, his research, his databases, his patents, his secret accounts that funded everything. And his last message was there.
"Jesse, if you're playing this," said the holographic image to me as I sat alone in his office, "then I'm gone, and everything that makes MutantX what it is, is now in your hands. I only hope and pray that you and the other members of the team are safe." I closed my eyes, Emma's face drifting before me. "I've left precise instructions about how to access the money accounts, and my research. There is also a list of people to whom my research can be parceled out. They're people I trust, people who will continue the work in the same spirit in which I began it: to undo the wrong I did in my arrogance and pride, and to enable mutants to find a place to live in this world in peace." He paused, and I almost felt that the real Adam was there, looking through those holographic eyes at me. "I can only say that I'm sorry. I believed I was saving lives with the work I was doing, and I never once stopped to consider the ramifications of what was happening to all of you until it was too late. I hope that someday, somehow, you can all find it in your hearts to forgive me." Oh, Adam. "It all depends on you now, Jess. Brennan will be able to handle the field work, but he's going to need you. The way I need you. Your counsel and guidance, to keep everything together, to keep it all going. Don't let my work die with me, Jess. Don't let MutantX die."
I sat there alone for hours afterwards, reliving that day at NaxCon, trying to figure out what we might have done differently. But all that came to me was the awul memory of destruction of the building, all of us clinging to the rapidly tilting floor for our lives, and then falling… falling into wet blackness, and afterwards, on the shore. . . waking up to the sight and sound of Shalimar running back and forth along the shoreline, screaming frantically for Emma. Her father trailed along after her, trying to calm her, but she swatted his hands away and kept screaming and searching. I was shivering and disoriented, nearly dead with the cold. Shalimar didn't seem to feel it, and I couldn't see Brennan or Adam anywhere. All I knew was that I needed to get help.
I remember stumbling along the shoreline toward lights in the distance, and then nearly falling over Brennan, crouching there among the rocks. He didn't move or speak. I put my hand on his shoulder, thinking he was hurt, and that's when I saw Adam cradled in his arms. I knelt down, the cold forgotten. The wind had died down, and the ruined NaxCon building blazed over the water like a torch, so that I could see Adam's eyes like two gleaming black gems in his bone-white face. His back was broken, so I don't think he really felt anything, but at the time I didn't know that.
He was saying something to Brennan, who sat there holding him like a father cradling a sick child. I bent closer to catch it, and that's when Adam looked straight at me.
"Jess. . . in my coat pocket. . ."
Obediently, I reached into the pocket and drew out the small plastic case. Adam stared at me, and I knew he wanted me to open it. Inside was the flat casing of an electronic key, barely the size of a credit card. I looked at Adam.
"Behind. . . my desk," he said. "It's all there."
"What? What, Adam?"
"You. . . Jesse, you. . ." His eyes gleamed up at me, reflecting firelight, so that it was a while before I realized he was dead. I knelt there on the rocks staring at him while Brennan held him, and the three of us could have been made of stone. There was no sound, no movement. We were frozen in time, because I knew if I took a breath or blinked my eyes, or made any movement at all, it would become real and my heart would be torn from my chest.
"ADAM! ADAM! ADAM!" Shalimar screamed hysterically behind me, and then I was standing, holding her back, how I don't know. I don't remember much more than that. Brennan rose with Adam in his arms, his face like a mask, and we walked toward the lights where police and firemen were forming rescue teams. Behind us, the ruins of NaxCon blazed above the water. I remember thinking no one could possibly be found alive in there, and it turned out that I was right. Eckhardt and his henchmen had fled. Any workers still in the building when it blew up were dead. Emma vanished into the sea. And Adam died.
I don't know what happened to Shalimar's father. He followed us, and then he was gone. I don't know if Shalimar drove him away, but I suspect she did. He hated Adam Kane, he had always hated Shal's mutation, and I don't know if she can ever make her peace with that, even though he seemed repentant at the end.
Later Brennan routed me out of Adam's office, forcing me to rest, and to eat, and doing the same with Shalimar. He sat with us as we wailed and mourned, and made sure we were taken care of, and eventually forced us to come to terms with our loss. What he did for himself, I'll probably never know, but I'm sure it wasn't enough. He's gone silent except when he's laying out plans for a new mission. I miss his joking around, his cheating at basketball, the hungry looks he gave Shalimar when he thought nobody was looking. Something's gone out of him, and if he doesn't get it back, I don't know how long he can go on. He's saved us, but he needs to save himself.
I started making half-hearted, fumbling efforts in the lab, but I'm no genius like Adam. His research has been sent to the people on his list as he asked, so it will go on, and I will coordinate the results. I'm at the heart of a giant web now, extending everywhere, dedicated to continuing the work Adam started. It won't die. It will outlive all of us.
It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum, and here they will break out in their native music and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns and they mope and wallow like dogs.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The loss hit Brennan the hardest.
I don't know if it was because he was the one least allowed to mourn. Certainly he held it together while the both of us went to pieces. Leadership of the team had fallen on his shoulders more and more often, and in retrospect, it almost seems as if Adam knew what was going to happen. But I've yet to see Brennan cry in front of us. I don't know if he's even been able to in private. Mostly he just seems angry all the time, not at us, but at. . . I don't know, life, I guess. Sometimes I wish he would just break down and lose it, and then we could all cry together. Maybe then I wouldn't feel that there's something in him ready to crack.
For a while I worried more about Shalimar than about Brennan. Her family, her pack, was torn asunder, and she raged and wept until I thought she'd go mad. Adam was more a father to her than her own father, and Emma was her friend, confident, sister. To lose them both at the same time. . . well, I don't know how any of us stood it. But Shalimar is probably the strongest one of us, and she managed to pull herself together after a few days. I might have gone mad myself but for the work in Adam's lab, archiving, decrypting, reorganizing everything. He laid it all out there for me, as if he knew that's the work I'd have to do someday. His last act was to put the key in my hand; literally, an electronic key to a holographically hidden wallsafe behind his desk that none of us knew about until that moment. He kept the encryption codes to everything there, his research, his databases, his patents, his secret accounts that funded everything. And his last message was there.
"Jesse, if you're playing this," said the holographic image to me as I sat alone in his office, "then I'm gone, and everything that makes MutantX what it is, is now in your hands. I only hope and pray that you and the other members of the team are safe." I closed my eyes, Emma's face drifting before me. "I've left precise instructions about how to access the money accounts, and my research. There is also a list of people to whom my research can be parceled out. They're people I trust, people who will continue the work in the same spirit in which I began it: to undo the wrong I did in my arrogance and pride, and to enable mutants to find a place to live in this world in peace." He paused, and I almost felt that the real Adam was there, looking through those holographic eyes at me. "I can only say that I'm sorry. I believed I was saving lives with the work I was doing, and I never once stopped to consider the ramifications of what was happening to all of you until it was too late. I hope that someday, somehow, you can all find it in your hearts to forgive me." Oh, Adam. "It all depends on you now, Jess. Brennan will be able to handle the field work, but he's going to need you. The way I need you. Your counsel and guidance, to keep everything together, to keep it all going. Don't let my work die with me, Jess. Don't let MutantX die."
I sat there alone for hours afterwards, reliving that day at NaxCon, trying to figure out what we might have done differently. But all that came to me was the awul memory of destruction of the building, all of us clinging to the rapidly tilting floor for our lives, and then falling… falling into wet blackness, and afterwards, on the shore. . . waking up to the sight and sound of Shalimar running back and forth along the shoreline, screaming frantically for Emma. Her father trailed along after her, trying to calm her, but she swatted his hands away and kept screaming and searching. I was shivering and disoriented, nearly dead with the cold. Shalimar didn't seem to feel it, and I couldn't see Brennan or Adam anywhere. All I knew was that I needed to get help.
I remember stumbling along the shoreline toward lights in the distance, and then nearly falling over Brennan, crouching there among the rocks. He didn't move or speak. I put my hand on his shoulder, thinking he was hurt, and that's when I saw Adam cradled in his arms. I knelt down, the cold forgotten. The wind had died down, and the ruined NaxCon building blazed over the water like a torch, so that I could see Adam's eyes like two gleaming black gems in his bone-white face. His back was broken, so I don't think he really felt anything, but at the time I didn't know that.
He was saying something to Brennan, who sat there holding him like a father cradling a sick child. I bent closer to catch it, and that's when Adam looked straight at me.
"Jess. . . in my coat pocket. . ."
Obediently, I reached into the pocket and drew out the small plastic case. Adam stared at me, and I knew he wanted me to open it. Inside was the flat casing of an electronic key, barely the size of a credit card. I looked at Adam.
"Behind. . . my desk," he said. "It's all there."
"What? What, Adam?"
"You. . . Jesse, you. . ." His eyes gleamed up at me, reflecting firelight, so that it was a while before I realized he was dead. I knelt there on the rocks staring at him while Brennan held him, and the three of us could have been made of stone. There was no sound, no movement. We were frozen in time, because I knew if I took a breath or blinked my eyes, or made any movement at all, it would become real and my heart would be torn from my chest.
"ADAM! ADAM! ADAM!" Shalimar screamed hysterically behind me, and then I was standing, holding her back, how I don't know. I don't remember much more than that. Brennan rose with Adam in his arms, his face like a mask, and we walked toward the lights where police and firemen were forming rescue teams. Behind us, the ruins of NaxCon blazed above the water. I remember thinking no one could possibly be found alive in there, and it turned out that I was right. Eckhardt and his henchmen had fled. Any workers still in the building when it blew up were dead. Emma vanished into the sea. And Adam died.
I don't know what happened to Shalimar's father. He followed us, and then he was gone. I don't know if Shalimar drove him away, but I suspect she did. He hated Adam Kane, he had always hated Shal's mutation, and I don't know if she can ever make her peace with that, even though he seemed repentant at the end.
Later Brennan routed me out of Adam's office, forcing me to rest, and to eat, and doing the same with Shalimar. He sat with us as we wailed and mourned, and made sure we were taken care of, and eventually forced us to come to terms with our loss. What he did for himself, I'll probably never know, but I'm sure it wasn't enough. He's gone silent except when he's laying out plans for a new mission. I miss his joking around, his cheating at basketball, the hungry looks he gave Shalimar when he thought nobody was looking. Something's gone out of him, and if he doesn't get it back, I don't know how long he can go on. He's saved us, but he needs to save himself.
I started making half-hearted, fumbling efforts in the lab, but I'm no genius like Adam. His research has been sent to the people on his list as he asked, so it will go on, and I will coordinate the results. I'm at the heart of a giant web now, extending everywhere, dedicated to continuing the work Adam started. It won't die. It will outlive all of us.