"Pick up, pick up," Pietro snapped into the reciever as it rang again and again and again on the other side. Daddy had a cell phone. Knowing Daddy, though, he probably had it on vibrate. It would surely stink should Daddy be mid-rampage or threatening recruiting and the ding-a-ling of call-waiting go off under his robes.

Pietro was not a patient man, but he could pace his hotel room as rapidly as he needed to -- keep those legs busy and mind wandering -- until Daddy picked up, take five or five hundred rings as it may.

Daddy picked up after ten.

"Lensher," the flat metallic voice muttered with great, dark irritation.

"Hey, Mister Lensher. It's your son, Pietro."

"Oh. Is this a casual call?" The tone implied that it had better not be.

"Not at all, Pops. You know the new kid, Kurt? German, red hair, yellow eyes?"

"I do have files . . . son. I already know he's in the hospital, or rather, is now out of the hospital."

Pietro did a double-take (or, sped up, perhaps a quadruple take). "Waaaaaaahaat? Lemme guess, those idiots flipped out and abducted him, ammI-right?" Pietro spoke a different language entirely when he was over-excited.

"You are correct. I'm surprised you didn't know that. My caller ID program quite accurately shows you are calling from Bayville."

"Yes, yes, but I haven't talked to anyone yet. I was scoutin' round New York City on the lead you sent me. Hasto do with Kurt. 'Parently everything has to do with Kurt."

"Well, what did you find out."

"Well, guess what? Those manufacturers were making something related to mutants. A suppressor of sorts, got that? Crazy, they had these chemicals that'll dampen powers or something, I'm not sure, but something like that. An', from what I hear, they only got one client, or only had one client, and it was Wagner. Funny, huh?"

"Hilarious. But Kurt seems to function as a mutant."

"Oh, yes, yes, now he does. But I was listening in and taking files and stuff and turns out that's just a really really small part of the plant that's expensive to run. So they're shutting it down, 'cause their client disappeared and all that jazz and they were freaked that government would find 'em making the chemical and fine them or worse and stuff like that. I was looking at their old shipping bills and man, were they taking in a lot of dough from one client. Talking ten thousand a bottle of this stuff, and it's in pill form, probably ten pills for bottle. That's, like, a thousand dollars per pill!"

"I can do the math."

"Know you can, Pops. Anyway, Kurt sure wasn't paying for it. Shipping bills show that it was sent to Germany, but it was paid for, whaddyaknow, right around here. But, what I heard was, the patron was still paying for the junk, but for the past two months, the shipments just came right back in the mail and finally, the patron stopped paying. Couldn't figure out who the patron was, though. Don't think they knew either."

"Hmmmm. I may have some idea on 'who.'"

"Xavier? No doubt he's got mega-bucks."

"Perhaps. Thank you for this information, Pietro."

"One more thing, Pops. We got some real gang problems around here. Nearly got jumped by a couple of thugs and I was just walking. Bayville's usually cleaner than Collosus after a wax on that front. Something's up."

"Perhaps. You'll have to excuse me if such an investigation is not terribly high on my priority list at the moment, though."

"Sure thing, Pops."

Click. Pietro slapped the phone shut and scowled at the opposite wall. There was something in the air . . . as if something was smouldering, like Pietro's sneakers after a particularly good run. Burnt rubber is a vaguely encouraging smell in that situation. In any other situation, when there's no logical reason for such a smell, it might just be cause for worry. And Pietro seldom worried.

"Something's up," he muttered again, and sped down the hotel stairs to check out.