Not one of my best chapters but it'll have to do. I know nothing about science so any scientific references in this fiction will be extremely made up and glossed over as fast as is humanly possible so I don't come off sounding like a complete fool.

Thank you for all the reviews. Please review after you have read this chapter. And any suggestions as to how to continue with the story will be appreciated. Also I promise to put more Adam, Jesse and Emma in the next couple of chapters.

Have a nice day.

***

The phone rang and Ali's eyes widened. She had completely forgotten what the time was in all the panic of losing Shalimar. She turned and walked back to her desk like she was leading the procession to her own funeral.



She reached out reluctantly to the handset and lifted it off its cradle. She held the phone to her ear dreading the questions she knew would come eventually.

'Hello,' Ali said tentatively into the mouthpiece.

'Ms Kamen, how nice to hear from you.' The voice chilled her blood and sent a shiver up and down her spine.

'Yeah, you too.'

'Whatever. Is everything going as planned?'

Ali wasn't quite sure what to say to the question. The majority of things were going as planned. And she didn't want to raise any concern unduly. Brennan would have Shalimar back in her 'cell' in no time. She wasn't at full strength, there was no way she was getting out of the building.

'Everything is absolutely fine here. And at your end?'

'You think you need to know that?...You're wrong.'

The dial tone came through loud and clear and Ali hung up the phone quietly. She had gotten away with it for now but she knew that lying wouldn't work a second time.

***

Shalimar walked along one of the many corridors. They all looked the same, bare, white, clean walls, ditto for the floors and strip lights in the ceiling.

'I'm lost.'

She breathed in deeply through her nose trying to smell anything that would tell her where she was and where the exit was. A familiar scent wafted past her nostrils. It was a mixture of sweat and Hugo Boss perfume.

'Me. That's what I can smell...me. Guess I've been down this corridor before.'

She carried on walking trying to remember which turning she had taken when she had been there before. She decided to take the left and continued walking until she reached a whole row of doors.

'New stuff,' she said to herself with a hint of pride in her voice.

Small panes of glass were inlaid into each door and as she passed them she looked in. The first few rooms were labs with scientists and microscopes and plenty of colourful test tubes. They were, like the corridors white and clean looking.

The fourth room she came to contained a chair like one that would normally be found in a dentists. Sitting on the chair was a girl. She looked like she was slim but Shalimar couldn't really see due to the hospital gown the girl was wearing. She looked drained and lifeless but the machines attached to her were telling a different story. She was definitely alive, just tired or unconscious.

Shalimar's curiosity was peaked but she had to get moving before someone came along and found her. She turned away from the door and started walking further down the hall. She came to a sudden halt as a shiver inducing scream assaulted her ears. She looked around her, panicked. Her senses started working on overtime and she could smell the scent of fear and blood. She made her way further along the hall to the place the scent seemed to be issuing from. She came to a door and saw a small boy. He was also hooked up to a collection of machines and monitors but scientists seemed to be buzzing around him. He looked drained, like the girl but he would occasionally twitch. She saw a river of blood flow from his arm into a bowl. Looked like whatever the hell was going on was a mass operation.

***

Brennan walked along the hallway trying to work out where Shalimar would go. If only he had her sense of smell he could have found her a lot easier. She would obviously have been trying to get out of the complex but whether she could was debatable. The corridors all ran into each other and he had no idea when he had learnt all about it. It was presumably something that he had picked up from Ali when she worked her mojo on him.

He rounded a corner and saw a group of security guards walking straight towards him. There were five of them, all armed with tasor guns. His initial instinct was to run as fast as he could before he remembered that he was undercover. He walked past them haughtily but they called him back.

Panic swept through him as he realized they must have found out what he was doing and who he really was.

'You looking for the blonde escapee?' the tallest guy asked.

'Yeah. She can't be allowed to get out of here. I was sent by Ms Kamer.' Brennan attempted to put as little expression into his voice, trying to keep up the pretense that he was one of the bad guys.

'Take this,' the guy said, handing Brennan a walky talkie. 'If you find the feral call us for backup.' The group turned on their heel and walked away from Brennan.

He breathed out as he watched them go and then turned and went off in his own direction at a jog, determined to find Shalimar before they did.

***

She didn't know how long she had been staring for. It was like time had stopped and all that mattered was the boy. She was mesmerized by the morbidity of what she was seeing. She knew he was a new mutant. It was like she could sense something about him, something that stood out from all the rest of the people in the room.

She grabbed her head as pain went coursing through it, bouncing off one side of her skull, rebounding off another milliseconds later. Images flashed in front of her. They were blurred and even if they had been clear they were all moving so fast she couldn't separate them. She fell to her knees as the pain increased. The images were so confused. One second there would be a child playing with a ball in a garden, then blood pouring from unseen orifices would flash across. Just as suddenly as they had all come, the pain disappeared, the pleasant home movie stopped. But the damage had been done. She stood up as the alarms started blaring. She ran, not knowing where to, not really caring as long as she got out of there.

She heard the shouts of security guards behind her and felt the vibrations of their feet through the floor beneath her. But her senses were slightly dulled from the mind wackiness that had just taken place. She turned around, still running to make sure that no one was following her.

Shalimar ran straight into Brennan as he walked around the corner. She looked like she had gone completely out of her mind with worry and anxiety. She backed away a couple of feet, wanting to put as much distance between her and the enemy as was possible. And she had accepted the fact that Brennan was, for now, possibly forever the enemy. She looked up at his face and into his deep brown eyes. She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the eyes of the old Brennan, her Brennan.

'You okay?' he asked breathlessly. He had been running for some time trying to find Shalimar in the vast network of tunnels.

'No time.' Her point was emphasized as five security guards ran round the corner. They raised their tasers and dashed down the hallway, throwing caution to the wind in their desperation to catch the feral. Brennan prepared to run. He could see that Shalimar was too weary and hurt to fight. But Shalimar took up a defensive position.

'Shal, what are you doing?'

'There are people, new mutants in those rooms. I don't know what these people want with them but I'm getting them out of here.'

He sighed, knowing that once Shalimar's mind was made up there was no changing it. He walked just in front of her, wanting to make sure that if anyone had to bear the brunt of the fight it was gonna be him. He charged up a ball of electricity and sent it flying towards the group. Two of them were propelled through the air as the remaining three looked on in horror and disbelief.

By the time they had gotten over what had happened to their colleagues Shalimar had knocked them all out with swift kicks and punches to their heads and chests.

She walked along the corridor quickly, knowing that backup would be there in a matter of minutes. She had ran past a few doors when she had seen the security guards and made her way back past them to see what was going on, though she had a feeling they would all be exactly the same. The second one she looked into was dark.

She creased her brow as she pushed open the door cautiously. Here eyes glowed as she looked around.

Brennan walked down the hallway, opening the doors into the labs and scaring the scientists with a couple of sparks. He looked at the child attached to the chair. Finding the keys in the pocket of one of the scientists he inserted one of them into the lock and undid the restraints. The child was too scared to move and Brennan held out his hand. But he didn't have time to wait for the kid to get his second wind so he slid his arms under his neck and knees and lifted the boy out of the chair. He walked out of the room as quickly as he could and went to free all the other new mutants. It appeared like the operation was in its earliest stages and they hadn't managed to capture many. Two boys, three girls. They all needed a certain amount of encouragement that he was actually helping them but they were nowhere near as far gone as the boy.

Shalimar walked towards a bed that was placed in the middle of the room. She could make out a shape in the dark and walked towards it till she was standing over whoever it was. She looked down into the eyes that looked right back up at her. Shock overwhelmed Shalimar and she stepped back unable to process what she was seeing.

Brennan walked into the room and balancing the boy in his arms he flicked the lightswitch. Bright white filled the room and Brennan was forced to blink a few times until his eyes became accustomed to it. He looked across at Shalimar. She was standing a foot away from a table staring down at...Shalimar.