Logan was immediately all business, "How can I help?"
"Could you set up a secure telephone line for me please?" Kitty asked standing up, "I need to contact Raven as soon as possible, find out where he is, what's wrong…?" her voice trailed off eliminating the need for the etc.
"No problem," Logan rolled across the room towards his computer.
"Let me guess, Kitty-Cat," the other man sighed, remaining seated, "Nick's being told to go find transport."
"You can use my car," Logan called from across the room.
"Go pick up the rest of the equipment then," Nick sighed, eventually rising to his feet.
"Uh-huh - Now," his sister snapped, turning to join Logan at his computer.
"Naturally," Nick turned away, sighing again. When would his sister get the point? The X5s weren't babies anymore; they could take care of themselves.
Just before he reached the door, he heard Kitty's voice on the phone, "Raven? That you, honey? Thank God! What's up with…? She's been caught by the cops? Questions about her barcode? Where? We're on our way!"
Involuntarily Nick broke into a run.
*******
After a surprisingly short amount of time, the three of them climbed out of Logan's car into a dirty dumping ground that had once been to allowed call itself a car park. They were here, because this miserable, stinking pit happened to belong the grubby-looking, run-down hotel where they were supposed to meet Raven, whom, Kitty had briefed Logan, was a fellow X3 from their unit, also with an X5 interest. Whatever that meant.
"I thought you couldn't walk," Nick muttered as Logan strode up towards the main doors.
"It's an exoskeleton, Nick," Kitty interrupted, "I thought you read the report,"
Logan turned around aghast, "Report?"
Kitty grinned at the look on his face, "We watch X5s. You spend way too much time with Max for us not to have a file on you,"
"Kinda risky keeping files, don't you think?" Logan asked still frowning.
"Oh!" Kitty giggled, "We've got pretty good at hiding things from Manticore. And White's not that much harder really." Logan didn't get the joke, but it was weird watching the female X3 laugh. She kept such a straight face most of the time that somehow anything more than the wisp of a sarcastic smile looked strangely out of place.
It suited her though, Logan had to admit that. The normally plain woman looked almost beautiful. He watched fascinated for the three seconds it took for her laughter to die down to a mere cheeky grin. She reminded him of someone, he suddenly realised, but he couldn't place who it was.
"What else do you know about me?" he asked slowly.
Kitty shrugged, "Huh, just the usual blurb. Address, date of birth, blah blah blah, obviously; that you come from a rich family and that you blew away most of your fortune; oh and that your Eyes Only, of course."
"How do you …"
"Know that?" Nick finished, "I IDed you." He said that as if it was supposed to mean something.
"You didn't cover up your iris and retina well enough, surprisingly," Kitty explained, but she couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice, "Eyes Only indeed. Very safe that one! May as well have called yourself Fingerprints Only, or DNA Only, or 'Hi my name is Logan Cale' Only for all the good that is at keeping you anonymous. Nick took one look at your baby-blue eyes and matched you up with a transmission from that same day. It was that easy."
Logan shook his head in amazement. He had long since given up holding grudges against the transgenic ability to take one look at him and see Eyes Only. Nick was not the first to do so and probably wouldn't be the last either. Kitty was right, he probably shouldn't have chosen to expose a body part that made him so easy to identify.
"So how about we go inside and met this 'brother' of yours?" he said in an effort to change the subject.
Kitty smiled again, in a strangely pleasant way this time, "We were supposed to meet him in front of the hotel, not inside it. Besides we don't have to go anywhere. He's already here."
She cocked her head slightly and Logan followed her gaze to a man in his mid-thirties, who was perched several meters away on a heavily vandalised car that looked like it had been left there before the pulse.
The stranger didn't have Nick's muscle-packed body nor was he as skinny as Kitty, owning instead a figure that was to be placed somewhere in the middle of their two extremes; lean, but none the less still fairly muscular. His skin was a dark tan in colour and his sleek coal-black hair shone in the sunlight.
He jumped from the car and, as he strolled towards them, Logan was surprised to find that Raven didn't have his siblings' height. He couldn't have been much over a mere five feet.
Raven made up for his lack of height with his style, however. He moved with the graceful prowl of a hunting cat, with the attitude of a movie star. He was dressed like one too. The man looked like something out of that pre-pulse classic, the Matrix. Black leather for the most part, with dark glasses hiding his face from view. He made his two old tracksuit clad siblings look decidedly boring.
The figure stopped by the crumbled remains of a wall, that had once divided the car park from a flowerbed that now held nothing more than weeds, and bent down to shake something hidden behind it – someone hidden behind it, rather.
Logan heard Kitty's sharp intake of breath, "Tobias? Didn't know he was coming." Sure enough another man rose up from behind the wall.
If Raven looked like something out of the Matrix, then Tobias featured Lord of the Rings. He looked every bit the elf, save for the pointy ears and the fact that his hair was more like the written version of Harry Potter's, jet-black and untameable. He was incredibly pale. Pale skin, pale blue eyes, and even pale clothes - a scruffy high-necked white jumper with heavily faded jeans – but he had such an air of grace and accuracy about him that it wouldn't surprise Logan to see him pick up a bow and slide down a flight of stairs on an upturned shield.
The two men stood still by the wall, watching their two siblings. They got the message at once and speed off towards them, leaving Logan to follow in his own time.
"Hey," Kitty kissed her brothers' cheeks awkwardly; as Nick high-fived first Raven's leather-gloved hand and then Tobias' slender white one. "Great to see you guys!" he cried.
"So what's up with Syl?" Kitty asked, pulling away, as her face reset itself back to business mode.
Tobias frowned. "Not good," he replied, "She's being detained in a facility not two klicks from here. I don't think they've caught on to the fact that she's genetically enhanced solider yet, but her barcode's on file."
"So it shouldn't be too long before White swoops in on the building then," Kitty rounded off.
Raven nodded, "Exactly!"
"So what do we do?" Nick put in.
Tobias scratched his head, "Without letting her know we're here? Not much we can do."
"Speaking of people not knowing we're here, who's the guy you've got with you?" Raven asked as Logan caught up with them.
Kitty glanced to her side, "Oh hi. Boys, this is Logan. Logan, these my brothers, also X3s. Geoffrey Alistair and Tobias Eugene."
Raven sighed exasperatedly, "Otherwise known as Raven and Tobias. Honestly Kitty! You must be the last person who even remembers what our full names were, let alone uses them!"
Tobias however had noticed something else, "Logan as in Eyes Only?"
Logan nodded warily. Not another one.
"Eyes Only?" Reaven asked.
"Don't any of you read the reports?" Kitty muttered exasperatedly.
'Or it could just be that they keep each other well informed,' Logan thought miserably.
"So what's he doing here?" Raven shot back at her.
"Objecting to your rudeness possibly," Kitty snapped, "Don't talk over people as if they weren't even here,"
"Yes mother," Raven replied. Kitty raised her eyebrows.
"We were talking to Logan about Zack when Kitty's pager rang," Nick said quickly, "So Logan kindly agreed to lend us a hand saving Syl."
"Yeah," the unfortunate ordinary man agreed, purely to make his presence felt amongst the seething transgenics, "So – um – what are we going to do then?"
"I thought something like the stunt we pulled of in 2014," Kitty smiled again suddenly,
"You spent eight months in psy-ops for that, Kitty, and that's not counting what else that bitch did to you for that little trick! I'd hardly call it a successful manoeuvre!" Tobias exclaimed.
She shrugged. "So we modify it slightly," she explained, "That's all."
