AN: so sorry about the slow update, terrible writer's black with this story, I think I have it back under control but impending exams are weighing on my time. I'll keep updating when I have time.

Part III

Jesse sighed, shrugging out of his coat and throwing it inaccurately at the back of his chair, watching sullenly as it dropped onto the floor. That just about summed up the week he'd had. He was tired and bothered and he had a killer headache. More than anything he was tired, bone weary. He'd felt the same way ever since Emma and Shalimar's death, like there was less energy in his world. Adam had sent he and Brennan away on a couple of weeks working on individual projects shortly after they had gotten into an argument that ended in blows. The success of the piece of technology he had been working on just hadn't given him the rise he had expected, and his inability to save the two New Mutant kids, the young Asian girl and the bouncy blond, that he had run into in his last couple of days off had haunted him.

He grabbed a clean set of clothes, hoping to change before Adam returned from where ever he was. The note he had left pinned to the door had been brief, not specifying when he had left or when he intended to return. Looking about him Jesse realised that he was incredibly happy to be home. He would never get over the loss of his friends, but maybe he could learn to move past it.

"Jesse." Adam spoke into the comm. system.

"Hey Adam, where are you?" Jesse responded after a moment's pause.

"I'm in the medilab. I hadn't realised you were back."

"I only just got in, there was a note on the door saying you were out."

"Sorry about that, I got distracted and forgot to take it down. We have company, could you join us in the lab when you're ready?"

"Sure Adam, I'm just cleaning up, I'll be right down."

Smiling, and quietly very glad to hear the sound of the molecular's voice after the two weeks he'd been away, Adam turned back to the two visitors.

"Well, while we're waiting for Jesse we might as well get you checked out Eber." He could almost visibly see Eber pale as she glanced back at the table that took up the middle of the room. Gesturing for Sharon to sit in the chair on the edge of the room, Adam led Eber back to the medical chair.

"Bright lights." Eber murmured under her breath as she lay back on the chair, still watching Adam cautiously.

"Yes." He agreed. "Are you Ok?" She nodded briefly, shutting her eyes. The beam scanned over her quickly and the results began scrolling up onto the screen, but Adam's attention was pulled away from the readouts as Jesse walked into the room. He looked tired, but much better than he had when Adam had sent them away for some time alone. He hoped he'd had time to reorganise things. Mutant X needed to get back out there, and soon. Too many people knew about the position they were now in. It had been a risk sending them away in the first place, but a discordant team was worse than no team at all.

Before he could greet Jesse, Eber was up from the chair, balancing on it's end as if ready to dive off it at the room's new occupant. Jesse to a step back, hands outstretched in anticipation of the feral's attack. Sharon too, Adam noticed, looked tense as if expecting an attack from the molecular.

Jesse obviously recognised the two as his defensiveness was replaced by a wry grin of recognition that baffled Adam completely.

"Sharon, Eber, Jesse is a friend, he won't hurt you." Adam reassured. Eber's eyes hadn't left Jesse's face, but he hoped Sharon would be able to pass the message along. She apparently could, as the feral gave her a glance and then sat back into the chair, though her posture lost none of its stiffness. "Jesse?" He questioned.

"I saved these two's lives." He laughed wryly, seeming almost amazed about it himself.

"They don't seem to recognise that." Adam warned.

"Isn't it always the way?" Adam didn't refute the comment. So many of the new mutants they had tried to rescue had turned down their offers of help or accused them of bringing the trouble to them in the first place, but he knew there was something different about this situation.

"Care to explain?"

"I got the machine working, but it was calibrated to detect my bio-signature as mutant, I needed to test it on someone other than me. I wasn't ready to come back here yet, so I took it out into the streets, figuring I'd find someone eventually. I found these two, nice clear marks on the map. What I didn't realise was that they were being followed by the GSA. I caught up with them and helped them fight the goons off, but they disappeared before I could talk to them. I thought that the GSA had taken them."

"That's not how it happened." Sharon retorted. "You arrived with the others, we were barely able to fight you off. The men who attacked us knew you, had memories of you, you were one of them. Eber only just managed to get us both out after one of the men stabbed me." Sharon's hand went to the now-healed wound on her side as she shared an angry glance with Eber who nodded quietly, agreeing with her assessment.

"Of course they knew me, most GSA agents come up against Mutant X as some point in their career. If not, they're still trained to know us on sight. Granted some of them aren't very good at it, but..." Jesse struggled to find some way to prove this to the psionic. "Wait, you're a psionic aren't you? What's your power, can you find out for yourself?" Sharon frowned and looked back at Eber.

"You'll pull me out?" She asked quietly, smiling at Eber's nod. Adam wondered why she had spoken verbally to Eber, but realised she was simply allowing all of them to hear what she was saying, making sure there was no doubt about their communications. Not that he understood what she meant, but he assumed Eber would understand and be able to carry out her request. Reaching out her hand, she offered it to Jesse. He frowned a moment, and then took her hand as if shaking it. Adam watched as a dazed look fell over Jesse's face like a curtain. He seemed to look around him, eyes blank and unseeing, at something moving past him at speed. He remembered his own 'room' and sympathised. Glancing back at Eber he found her watching Sharon steadily, not paying any attention to Jesse's wonder. He wondered what 'pulling' Sharon out might entail.

Jesse watched with curiosity as the crowd around him slowed at Sharon's command. There were millions of squares, like building blocks, and inside each he could see a different memory from his past. Sharon was looking out into the mass and he watched as she called two frames forward, and looked into them curiously. The first, he could see, was him following the GSA into the alleyway where they had cornered the two new mutants, a moving shadow betrayed their presence, the GSA moving in. The second was another of him fighting the GSA, but this one was an old memory, from early in the days of Mutant X. He grinned widely at Sharon as it showed, quite clearly, all four Mutant X team members fighting against the GSA and one of the faces - before it was obscured by a round-house kick from Shalimar - could be seen to be one of those present in the other memory. There had been a reason one of the GSA had recognised him, they'd been defeated by Mutant X before.

Seeing that Sharon was unconvinced, Jesse looked away as she began to sort through other memories; marvelling at the room around him. Seeing a familiar face zooming past he reached out, not hearing Sharon's cry to stop, and was whisked away into an all to familiar setting.