The Price

by RJ Thompson

Complete Sequel to "Flashfoward" A deadly new enemy is on the rise while old nemesis Gabriel Ashlocke searches for a cure. Can Mutant X beat the odds or will they all pay the price for tampering with fate? R&R please!

8. Decisions

Epilogue Decisions Gabriel slept fitfully.

An hour ago, as the moon rose high and haughty, Dr. Guevara had come to check on him,
moving with her silken, casual grace. He'd felt stronger and, with her help, had managed several deep gulps of icy water. Though she tried to affect a lunar degree of disconnection from her patient, he sensed that beneath the mask lay that singular kindly warmth only mothers and old country doctors possessed.

She'd taken a moment to throw a blanket over Kelly, who'd nodded off in a chair watching over her master. In her sleep, the blonde occasionally muttered meaningless, disconnected words. Gabriel had heard his own name several times and been touched, vaguely, by her continued concern for him.

Guevara had injected him with another dose of a strange medical ooze. It was bluish green,
somewhat like the ocean in an emotionally drawn cartoon.

Whatever it was, it cooled the fires of destruction that had been burning inside of him. Ever since the day that Dr. Kenneth Harrison informed him he was dying, Gabriel had tried, without success, to cool those death flames himself. Now, to have it done so easily by a woman who was, at least by association, his kidnapper, made him wary and more humbled than ever. It wasn't fair that he be taken by surprise, first by Dr. Clark, now by this Society of Supremacy and it's apparent leader James King.

Whatever black dreams were playing inside of Ashlocke's mind, they ended abruptly as he forced himself awake again. The drugs made him sleepy. He knew he healed and felt incredibly rejuvenated afterward, but in dreams he was vulnerable.

"Kelly?" He whispered into the shadow infested room. An effort was made to call upon Feral night vision but there was nothing, not even the expected pain of a subdermal governor acting against his will. At the least, the Society had a gentler hand than the GSA. Gabriel sat up in bed then tried her name again. "Kelly? I need you to wake up baby. We've got to get out of here. We've got to escape and I need my girl for that."

There was a stirring in the ebony chocked depths of the hospital room. Kelly said something in her sleep that wasn't quite "but it's summer time," though the mushy sounds did want to be that sentence.

As he rose from the bed, setting his bare feet down on the chilled metal floor, Gabriel realized that his restraints had been removed sometime while he slept. Stunned, he raised his hands and practically had to bury his face in them to see their tan skinned perfection. For a moment, he was so dazed by the sudden revelation of freedom that he sat back down on the hospital-like bed and just stared into darkness.

This new revelation didn't make any sense.

"Why the hell would they let me go?" He wondered out loud, for once in his life completely and totally bewildered. "Why? They teleport into my sanctum sanctorum, kidnap me, and then all but chain me to this bed only to set me loose while I'm dreaming?" Gabriel shook his head, at a total loss. "Never mind. Just gotta get away."

He stood and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. As a Feral, he could have seen with the clarity of a bright spring day. As a Psionic, he didn't even have to fear stubbing a toe, for he possessed psychic radar. As a Molecular, Gabriel could have conjured a ball of glowing energy to banish the shadows to the furthest corners of the room. As an Elemental, he could have started a fire and light a torch.

As a simple man, Gabriel Ashlocke had to wait for his ridiculously dull human eyes to adjust to the gloom. Not being a man of self-deprecating humor, he could honestly count this moment as his most embarrassing and upsetting.

Even after waiting several minutes, he couldn't see well enough in the darkness to find Kelly,
though he had a fair idea of where to look. Moving quietly at first, then cursing under his breath after banging his knee on something, he made his way awkwardly to Kelly's side. When he found her arm, he shook her lightly. Part of him didn't want to bother her. "Wake up, Kelly.
We've got a chance. They're not watching us."

In her sleep, she mumbled something which sounded like "the shower is burning," but he couldn't he sure he'd heard that right.

Again he shook her, but Kelly remained deeply asleep.

Gabriel didn't hesitate any longer.

He went for the door and yanked it open.

After only a few steps, he stopped dead and merely stared at his surroundings. Gabriel had expected to find himself in the sub-level of a skyscraper or a large basement.

This wasn't a mere basement. This was another world.

The room outside was an enormous, cavernous interior of pure steel with a spider's web of walkways and support columns and vast structures with no apparent purpose spiraling outward from a central mass of computers. Dozens of people, most wearing lab coats, a few in suits,
marched about with clipboard or file folders in hand. Everything seemed to shimmer with a polished metal sheen and the air was filled with a barely audible humming noise, as if vast world engines were at work behind sealed walls. The only reminder normalcy was the gathering of five men around a vending machine, laughing disgustingly at a very dirty joke.

There were at least three stories present, but not a single window, which verified what he'd thought before, that he was underground. The air tasted abnormally clean. He looked back over his shoulder at the door of the room he'd just left, a nervous feeling gnawing his thoughts.
A plate of burnished copper was inscribed with deeply etched letters that read: Iso-Lab Three.
Memory stirred, reminding him that James King had ordered Kelly put in Iso-Lab Four.

"Mr. Ashlocke. Nice to see you awake."

Gabriel spun to his right and found King standing there, his protruding toad eyes watching him calmly, a large caliber handgun clutched in what was probably a very clammy palm. The man gestured back toward the door. "Go back to bed, Mr. Ashlocke."

"I've slept enough." Gabriel said defiantly, sickened by the fear that surged through him.
When he'd been a kid, he'd never buckled to authoritarian figures of any stripe. Now, it seemed that the universe was determined to teach him one hell of a lesson in respect.

King smiled darkly, his eyes glistening in the overhead light, reinforcing the amphibian quality of his face. If not for the otherwise unremarkable nature of the man, such as his slow movements and slightly paunch form, Gabriel might have mistaken him for a new mutant. The gun reinforced the certainty that this was just a man. An ugly toad man, but a man nonetheless.

Again gesturing with the weapon, King said "then go back into your room, wake your girlfriend, and bend her over. I don't care what you do. So long as you do it in there."

"Listen toad boy," Gabriel said, his eyes narrowing to bare slits. "I'm Gabriel Ashlocke,
Patient Zero. I'm a god compared to a waste of skin like you." The bravado was strong and as natural as the contempt that rolled off him in waves. Most men, confronted by such unwavering confidence, might have been tempted to back down.

King did not so much as flinch.

He merely pulled back the hammer of his pistol and kept smiling. "Mr. Ashlocke, my leader will be here soon. Her limousine is almost here. Shortly, you will be meeting her. I can't let you leave until she decides whether or not to keep you." He took aim at Gabriel's knee.
"Although I was asked to make you as comfortable as possible, not to mention ordered to remove your restraints, she also told me to make sure she could meet you. No matter what."

Now Gabriel faced boundless confidence and pure nerve.

Rather than fight, he turned and went back to his room.

Never before, in his entire life, had he felt more angry and humiliated.

"When this woman shows up," he muttered softly to himself, not wanting to disturb Kelly now that there would not be an escape, "I'm gonna tear her apart with my bare hands."
Perched on the edge of her bathroom counter, Eve adjusted her cell phone nervously. The soft chiming jingle purred seven times before one of the new interns picked up. Speaking rapidly,
running words together at times, Eve explained who she was and why she should be allowed to speak to the station head Jonah Tate. When the intern still refused, her voice took on a slightly miffed edge and she had to refrain from hurling insults.

"Just tell him it's me calling, okay? He'll want to talk to me."

There was silence on the line as the intern at last transferred the call.

Again, a faint dinging ring tone filled her ear.

"If they can put a camera in a coffee maker, why in God's name can't they invent a phone that sings instead of ringing. Something, anything, would be better than listening to this stuttering,
chiming, garbage." Eve muttered under her breath as she switched the phone from one ear to the other, while tapping a finger nervously on the faucet.

There was a click on other end of the line. "Tate here." A quiet man's voice answered.

"Hey Jonah, it's Eve. I've got something to run by you."

"Do you own a watch?" The station head asked, sighing in annoyance.

"You know I do. What does—."

He cut her off by clearing his throat loudly and wetly. Eve's nose crinkled in disgust and mild amusement as he spoke. "Look, Ms. Frost, I'll be straight with you." She resisted making a rude and off-color joke, opting instead to just lean back and wait out the coming rant. Tate coughed several times, probably because he was smoking again, then wispily continued.

"We both know you're a valuable asset to the station," he started, "but you're eccentricities are beginning to outweigh the benefit. Do you understand?"

Eve sighed. "If you would just let me—."

Tate talked over her. "Now, in the past few weeks, you've managed to piss off half our camera crews and cost us nearly a thousand for cab fair."

"That's crazy! I haven't—."

"Please Eve." He said quietly, keeping his words polite. "We've checked the numbers and they are correct. Taxi rides to and from a site, just so you can say a few words before getting back to your anchor's desk, isn't cheap. Our production costs have gone up recently and the reality show we added to the line up last year is tanking faster than my stock portfolio." A pause.
"What are you giggling at Eve?"

"Nothing Johan," she said as she moved from the counter top to the edge of her bathtub.
"It's just that, I don't know if you remember this, but we talked about stock tips late last year.
You mentioned having most of your money tied up in Genomex." She shook her head, an amused grin in place. "Just out of curiosity, what DOA stock did you buy this time?"

There was no answer from Tate.

His silence was anything but comforting.

Eve started speaking quickly, hoping to get her thoughts across before her boss did anything too rash. "Listen Jonah, do you remember about three weeks ago, when I came to you with that story about the missing college girls? I told you there was something major there, that it wasn't just some random snatch and snuff? Remember? I've got that tingly feeling again and don't you dare say that doesn't make you think twice about nagging me about the budget."

A few seconds passed in silence, Eve crossing and uncrossing her legs, just waiting calmly for an answer. She started tapping the bathtub's side. "Come on, Big J." There was a schoolgirl quality to her pleading tone. "We both know I can be a real bitch sometimes, and yes I'm high maintenance, but you can't deny that my hunches are gold mines."

Tate sighed deeply. "I remember those girls. It turned out that nothing bad had happened to them at all. Thanks to your instincts, we were the first news program to break the story that they had, in fact, been picked up by a private detective. It turned out the two were actually fraternal twin sisters, kidnaped nearly twenty years ago, sold to two different families, then just happened to both enroll in the same school and end up best friends. We made a fortune selling our exclusive photographs of them reunited with their real parents." He inhaled, coughed on something that almost had to be cigarette smoke, then said in a miffed voice, "whatever you need,
it will be available for you by morning."

Face lightening up like a Christmas tree, Eve almost forgot to say thank you.

"You won't regret this Jonah." She started to close her cell phone then brought it back to her ear, "wait, Big J, are you still there?"

"Yeah. Still here."

His response was almost exasperated enough to make her hang up on him. "You never could take a joke Jonah." Rolling her eyes, she said "whatever money you've got in your zombie stock portfolio, take it all out. Buy as many shares of Syria Systems Supply as you can. I've heard rumors they're about to go public with something big."

"You've got a tingle there too?"

"I'm taking a bath, I've got a tingle everywhere."

She heard the man chuckle. "Evie, you never fail to surprise me. I'll make a deal with you.
If this hunch of your's pans out, the station will keep picking up your transportation bills. Things go south, the buck passes to you."

"I'll see your threat and raise you." Eve said gently, her thoughts running toward the taxi driver she'd just met. "If I can't bring in the story, I'll resign."

"Whoa, now, Eve." Mr. Tate's voice had just jumped several octaves, giving him an almost falsetto sound. "Let's not be hasty."

"I'm not being hasty. I'm being realistic." She turned slightly and started the hot water running, quickly flicking the bathtub's drain shut before standing. Cell phone squeezed between head and shoulder, she started stripping her undergarments off. "Jonah, I'm aware that the station owners aren't exactly pleased by my. . . quirks. I know you've been dealing with a lot on my behalf." Eve smiled faintly as she slid her panties down her smooth legs. "I know, because you like me too much to give me hell over something as stupid as the budget. To be honest, even though you and I made the worst couple ever, you're still a pretty good guy."

"Thanks." Tate said before coughing again.

Eve stepped into the tub, even though it wasn't yet half full. The steam rising half soaked her before her rump touched bottom. "Jonah, why are you smoking again?"

He didn't answer and, in a funny way, that was all the answer she needed.

"The station owners want me gone, don't they?" Eve asked gently, lying back against the tub's frame, letting water rise above her navel. "You've been fighting the good fight, stressing out over it, and now you're smoking again."

"Eve, please." Tate said in his gentle voice that still managed to bring a tiny smile to her lips. "Things aren't as bad as they seem. I've got the guys in suits calmed down. Hell, I'll pass them the stock tip. That'll get them on your good side again." He thought he was being reassuring, but she could hear the worry in his voice. It wasn't difficult to see through Jonah Tate's thin mask of calm. "I'm sure this will blow over like the last time."

Closing her eyes, she held the phone in hand above rising water. Eve leaned forward to switch off the hot water. "Listen, I appreciate the rose-colored glasses view of the world you're trying to give me, but drop it."

Tate sighed. "Things are bad. They do want you gone. I've promised them you could get the ratings up another few points. This new story of your's will do that, I think. Whatever it is." His voice grew muffled as he spoke to someone in the background. "Listen, Eve, I can't talk much longer. There's a problem down in casting."

On the phone, she heard Tate's lighter click. Before she could chastise him for what was obviously a new cigarette, he apologized. "Sorry, but I'm starting to remember why I used to go through several packs per week."

Sighing, Eve rose a little in the water. "Remember what I said Jonah. If I can't bring in another big story, I'm resigning. I'm not letting those suits kick me to the curb first."

"It won't come to that. You just find me a big stick to back up my soft speaking, okay? I want to show the suits how tough my ex-girlfriend is." Tate said affectionately.

"Jonah, I think I might be about to start seeing someone. I've got a feeling it might be something really good." She lay back in the steaming warmth, her muscles unwinding for the first time in hours. A touch of concern filled her words as she said, "I appreciate what you've been doing for me, Jonah. Believe me, I do. I just don't want you to be doing it out of some sort of misguided notion that we're going to get back together."

"Hey, don't worry Evie. I'm committed to making the breakup work."

She sputtered with surprised laughter. "Thanks Jonah, I needed a giggle just then. I was starting to get serious."

Eve was still chuckling a half hour after saying goodbye. After her bath, she was finally starting to feel as if she'd been awake and working all day. She walked into her bedroom naked and collapsed into bed, letting herself be devoured by the soft stain sheets that felt like they were kissing her silky skin. An almost feline purr escaped her lips as, Eve tugged the covers up to her delicate chin and closed the archaic bed curtains.

In less than a minute, she was sleeping a deep and dreamless sleep despite the fact that she'd left the bedroom lights on. Or, perhaps, it was the gentle glow kept nightmares at bay.

Adam had recently brought to his room a desk, computer terminal, and two file cabinets filled to overflowing. When a night grew long and lonely, he poured over the new mutant database. He would try to predict who Ashlocke would target for membership in his Strand organization, which of the children of Genomex might undergo power growth spurts, or who needed their gifts adjusted for survival reasons. Sometimes he got lucky.

More often, Mutant X arrived late but still managed to wrest victory from the claws of defeat. His team was more than a match for the Strand.

There were a few pieces of art lining the free wall directly across from his door. One was a calming ocean print Emma had given him for a present last Christmas. Even before their relationship began, he'd often found his gaze wandering to that image, his nerves soothed by the serenity of waves and beach.

At the moment, while going over computer files, he felt anything but calm. He tried to affect a demeanor of composure, with his feet propped up on a short file cabinet, elbow firmly on the desktop, but he knew himself too well. Peace of mind would not be his again for some time. His every computer search had come up negative. Though Adam fully believed he could fool his genius brain into believing he wasn't worried if he just kept at it, he was far too much of a realist to believe he'd feel calm anytime soon.

The swift and savage appearance of Aaron Sheckt had thrown him. The man was a complete unknown quantity. He'd never heard the name before, nor could he find mention of him in any of his files. Not one word. Adam might have believed the man a hallucination if not for the incredible damage he'd wrought this day. A number of new mutants and two police officers, plus many of Sheckt's own soldiers, were dead. It seemed the man had destroyed his own army to slay Mutant X in a barbarous act of overkill.

Regardless, Adam knew that new efforts would have to be made to secure Sanctuary.
Though his forces seemed decimated, Sheckt had known the location of Charlotte's safe house,
he could very well know where all Mutant X's facilities were. Adam had spent the last thirty minutes since arriving home working desperately to insure that everyone in the mutant underground was forewarned in case of an attack.

A part of him couldn't stop thinking it was all spiraling out of control.

He'd let their enemies out think him and it had almost killed his team.

"I should have been able to do more." He whispered to himself, shaking his head sadly.
"With everything that's happened, how can I face them. They're never going to forgive me." Adam sighed mournfully and pressed his hands over his face, almost as if he wanting to smother himself. "I've failed them."

From behind him, the sound of a door sweeping open. He turned, returning his feet to the floor with a thump, hands going down to his sides. Standing in the doorway, Emma met his eyes and didn't quite smile. She stood, watching him, waiting for him to say something. For a time, it seemed as if neither would ever move nor speak, as if the fabric of time had been rent asunder and all that was left was a single moment that would last eternity.

If this were the rest eternity, this one instant, Adam wouldn't complain.

The very sight of her left him breathless, though she had done nothing more than change into a clean T-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans.

Emma ended the quiet by clearing her throat. "This is the part where I'm supposed to comfort you and say that it wasn't your fault."

Adam didn't speak. Whatever he'd expected her to say, this wasn't it.

"Of course, then you'd just say that it was and that you had to take all the responsibility for it because you're our leader and you should have been paying more attention." Emma casually stated as she stood there, shaking her head in a funny way, her eyes never leaving his face. "We weren't paying enough attention either but you'd ignore that fact and focus the blame solely on yourself. That's who you are. . . the man in charge. So, in your mind, this is the part where you shoulder the burden and feel all the remorse."

No reply. Emma shook her head and a small smile formed on her lips. She watched him with a mix of love and irritation.

"Now, after a long talk about how you've done the best you could, I'd have to slap you because you'd still be moping, acting like everything that's gone wrong in all our lives is your fault." She walked over and sat down on the edge of his desk, crossing her ankles and turning her head to watch him, sexy without knowing. "For once, Adam, let's not play that script. Let's pretend you've already finished hating yourself for not predicting the unpredictable. You're an amazing man, a terrific leader, and one of the most brilliant minds in this world."

She grinned. "The world's not on your shoulders. You're not Mutant X's Atlas."

Reaching out, she gently touched the side of his face, running the tips of her fingers through the short strands of curled hair behind one ear. "You're not God, you know. We don't expect you to see everything our enemies might do. You do the best you can, and that's all we need.
Sheckt doesn't know where we are. We're alive and we're safe. Focus on the positives for once. We survived."

"You're right but—." Before Adam could finish, Emma pressed a finger to his lips.

"Hush." Her eyes were bright with affection, jewels more precious than the sapphires they mimicked. "Listen, we took a hit today. A big one. But everything worked out and you have to get that through that brilliant but hard head of your's. We're all okay."

He reached up and took her hand, pulling it gently away from his mouth. "Have I told you lately how much I love you?"

"Yeah, but I never tire of hearing it." Emma grinned and leaned in, brushing her lips against his. "Ready to stop sitting here in the dark, feeling sorry for yourself? Jesse went out for pizza and brought back enough to feed an army. After the day we've had, we deserve it."

"I'll be there in just a minute. I need to make a call."

"Sure you're not going to revert back to the incredible sulk?"

Adam laughed, his first genuine laugh in some time. "Positive." He hesitated, then quietly said, "you always did make me feel better. Ever since the first time we met."

"That's what I love. Making you feel better." Emma smiled and stood up. As she walked out the door, she glanced back over her shoulder. "Adam?"

"Yes?"

"We really are okay." With those simple words, she walked away.

An odd, sad sort of smile formed on his face. He'd been alone for a long time and now that he wasn't, he was having trouble making himself believe that it was all real. How could a woman like Emma love him? That question haunted him the nights he couldn't sleep. He wanted to go after her right now, but he did have to make a call.

Reluctantly, Adam turned to his computer and brought up a secure communications line. He double checked one of the half dozen messages that had been left on his system by a women named Irene Saunders, a CPT agent, then dialed the agency's number.

Adam waited for some time before it was picked up.

"Counter-Para-Terrorism division, Agent Walter Haladki speaking." The man said as the video link was established. A thin smile crossed his face when he saw Adam's image on his own computer screen. "Dr. Kane, isn't it? It's good to hear back from you. A tad late, but better that than never." He spoke with just the faintest trace of an accent, possibly Bostonian.

Though he didn't know why, Adam immediately liked this man. "I'm just glad to be alive to call back. I'm trying to reach Christina Bergl, your division director."

"I'm sorry, you've just missed her. She left the building a few minutes ago for. . . well, I suppose I can say where since you have been granted security clearance. Director Bergl's on site at Frost Lake, working with our interrogators." Haladki's voice held a barely perceptible harshness, as if he felt personally affronted for being stuck in an office fielding calls rather than being out in the field. It was gone a second later, leaving Adam wondering about his initial liking for this man. "A few of Sheckt's terrorists were found alive and in good enough condition to be immediately questioned. She plans to relay any information to Washington directly."

There was a short pause in the conversation. Haladki sighed. "Sorry if I sound a bit on edge. One of Sheckt's people tried to escape, injured a friend of mine. We usually work together and I keep thinking I should have been there. Maybe if I'd been there, it wouldn't have happened." The man ran a hand through his thinning black hair. "Do you ever get that feeling?
That, I should have done more feeling?"

"Yes." Adam sighed quietly, "yes, I do." He realized, with some annoyance, that he wasn't going to get all the answers he needed yet. "When should I be able to reach her?"

Agent Haladki shook his head. "I doubt she'll be available for some time. Director Bergl is bound for Washington D.C. tomorrow to discuss the issue of new mutant terrorism. In light of what's happened today, I think there's a chance she can persuade a few senators to come around." The man paused to shift through some papers. "Ah, here it is. She left a disc for you.
It's all the CIA has on Aaron Sheckt. I'll send the files over our secure server. I'll have to remote verify that your system is safe before final transmission. That's our S.O.P. around here."

Haladki smiled and the change it wrought in his face was amazing. He looked ten years younger at least. "Listen Dr. Kane, just leave your system running. Go enjoy a moment with family or friends. This is going to take an hour or more."

"Alright. Thank you for your help."

"That's what we're here for." Agent Haladki said as he waved him away. "Now go and do whatever it is you Mutant X people do for fun, eh."

Adam stood up and turned off the computer's video and audio links to the CPT, leaving only the silent streaming of pure data. He rose from the desk, left his room, and trusted in his old friend's allies to teach him the secrets of Aaron Sheckt and give him the edge needed to stop the bastard dead.

He walked out of his room and was startled to find Emma waiting for him. "Walk me to dinner handsome?" She asked, grinning and blushing.

"It would be my honor." Adam replied, taking her arm in his.

As they walked away, an unseen machine watched. Tiny camera eye following their steps,
the insect shaped artifact seemed to debate pursuing them before settling on entering Adam's room. Silent and undetectable, it took a position and waited.

They'd be back soon enough.

"Hey Saunders? Mind if I ask you a question?"

CPT Agent Smythe was hunched over the diagnostic panel of an antiquated GSA stasis pod as he asked, his attentions only half on her reply. Irene glanced up from her own work comparing the genetics of current pod occupants to past records. Over the last twenty minutes since her arrival by ultrasonic transport, Irene hadn't heard him speak more than a half dozen words, so she took his request very seriously.

"What's on your mind?" She asked quietly, her eyes glued to the DNA analyzer in her hand. "I'm kind of busy."

Smythe glanced back over his shoulder. "Yeah, I know." He said dryly, the overhead lights glinting in the darkened pools of burned amber that were his piercing eyes. "That's my question. Why you? I thought the brass had taken you off active duty."

For a moment, anger flared in Irene's heart. Then she realized that only his choice of words sounded like an accusation. His tone was conversational, curious, and calm. She ran her fingers through her hair and drew a slow breath. "I guess I've served my time."

"You make it sound like a prison sentence."

Mildly concerned, still curious, and very calm was the tone of his deep voice.

"It felt like prison." Irene muttered savagely as her scanner winked at her in a deep and frightening crimson. "Damn it. Another one."

Smythe rose from where he was working. "I knew it." He said sternly, his face a mask of frown lines and scars. Deep creases marred what might otherwise have been a handsome visage.
His skin had the look of rough leather. Irene had always wondered what had happened to this man before his transfer to the CPT, why he looked like this, but she'd never asked. It didn't seem appropriate, especially now as he glared down into a stasis pod.

He turned toward her. "I warned Christina. We needed to watch this place at all times." Unless Irene was mistaken, he was grinding his teeth. "Damn Congress and it's shortsightedness.
Without funding, how can possibly protect our country?"

Irene didn't feel like debating politics but she felt duty bound to answer his question. "We do what we can and we do the best we can. That's our job. We fight, we die, and we do it because no one else is willing. As agents of the CPT, we took an oath of service to our nation.
No matter what, he serve."

"Nice speech." Smythe grunted. Striding toward the last stasis pod to be checked, he wore an expression best described as furiously queasy. "Regardless, you and I are in it up to our chins.
We've got at least seven new mutant criminals missing, including Barry Stirling, Anderson Luster,
Markus Grant, and Leslie Sherman. And, as an added bonus, at least two incarcerated GSA troops with mutant abilities are MIA too." He glanced down at a clipboard he'd produced,
seemingly from nowhere. The man had the grace of a shadow and the speed of a drunken sunbeam. "The agents are Skeet Vossberg, recruited middle of last year, and female Molecular named Wendy Stone."

"Defoliation and mass manipulation. I fear for my life." Irene said with a smirk.

"Those two may or may not be dangerous. Stirling is though, and so are Luster, Grant, and Sherman. Anderson Luster murdered his entire family. Markus Grant is a cannibal and our lovely Leslie thinks it's funny to skin children. Compared to them, Kilohertz might qualify for new mutant of the year." At the sight of her shudder, Smythe seemed to soften. "Sorry Ms. Saunders. I thought you'd been briefed."

Irene shook her head, a sick feeling in her stomach. "Those nightmares were being held here but no one thought they needed to be monitored?"

"The President and Christina fought for the money to have this place manned all the time but they lost out. If not for the twice monthly checks, we wouldn't even know anything was wrong." The scarred man was grinding his teeth again. "Like you said before, we have a job to do because no one else is willing."

She was standing over the last stasis pod, her hands on its glass surface. A thick film of dust had gathered on this tube, yet something about it seemed staged for her benefit. Agent Smythe took up his place beside her and started tapping commands into the pod's onboard computer.
Slowly, a green screen appeared listing vital statistics.

A series of straight, flat lines formed.

"Whose pod is this?" Irene asked, her eyes slipping to Smythe's shadowy profile.

His frown deepened, making his scars even more pronounced.

"It's Eckhart's prison."

She felt her heart skip a beat. The former head of the GSA was dead.

Then Smythe reached out and brushed away dust and grime so that they could see within the glass chamber, into the unholy coffin of metal and mechanism. Here had lain the monstrous progenitor of a people's suffering. Neither CPT agent's expression shifted in the slightest at the sight before them.

After a moment, Irene drew her cell phone and plucked at the numbers. As it started ringing, she saw Agent Smythe's head fall to his chest. He seemed to deflate.

"It's starting again." He whispered.

Irene heard someone pick up her call. "Director Bergl? Agent Saunders reporting." She glanced at Smythe again before turning away from him and away from the empty stasis pod.
When she spoke, there was an unearthly calm to her voice.

"Mason Eckhart is free."
The door to Aaron Sheckt's office was open. Lena paused in her walk down the long corridor, her gaze shifting. It stood partially ajar, as if gusted open by an errant breeze. Here in the bowels of Haven, however, there were no breezes and as much to satisfy curiosity as to ensure her leader and partner's safety, she entered.

Though she'd been inside this room before, it's sheer lack of personal touches always shocked her.

There was a desk, an antique affair, which dominated the room. Several file cabinets were nestled into recessed hollows. The walls were beige. A file folder with a bird insignia rested on the desk along with several other papers.

That was the extent of the decor, aside from a few nondescript chairs.

Lena knew there were various items hidden behind wall panels, such as an access terminal for the central Haven computer and a collection of small arms, but she couldn't remember exactly where those things were. As she stepped inside the office, her attention fell upon the folder with the Falcon crest. A cold shiver ran through her as Dr. Falcon's face and history crept swiftly to mind, bringing dread.

Without quite intending to, she sat down on the edge of Sheckt's desk and reached out,
taking the file into her hands. Part of her felt a desire to rend the folder along with its contents.
Unlike most agents for the GSA, Lena had known Dr. Stephen Falcon.

The man had frightened her more than she cared to admit. Even now, eyes fixed to his avian crest, she felt a slithering unease constricting her heart.

She opened the folder in spite of fear.

Lena Isley-Blake, formerly a GS agent, currently a terrorist using her mother's half of her surname rather than her FBI G-man father's contribution, was not the kind of woman to hide from anything. She especially wasn't going to hide from a man who was dead. Except, a nagging part of her subconscious kept reminding her that Falcon had been considered even more brilliant than Adam Kane.

Inside the dossier were a number of sheets of a printed computer paper with the corporate logo of Genomex stamped in glossy black ink at the top. Line after line of clinical data trailed down each page, leaving Lena with a headache.

Next came a series of charts and graphs, each representing a different estimate regarding her leader's various biological systems. A frown crossed her face, her brow wrinkled, as she read some of the numbers. While far from being wise in the world of medical knowledge, even a complete novice could recognize that the rapidly diminishing lines, pie charts, and bar graphs all lent to a dismal picture. She had thought Sheckt's health improving, but unless she was misinterpreting the information in front of her, the opposite was true.

Aaron Sheckt was dying and doing it fast.

And Guevara still didn't know how to stop it.

"My God." Lena uttered as she turned to another set of estimates. "If Guevara's right, he only has a few more months. Not even half a year." She seemed to go slightly numb as she thumbed through the rest of the document, fast approaching the last page. Before this moment,
Lena had never actually believed that he could die. Though she'd only known Aaron Sheckt for two months, the time passed since Gabriel's assault on the GSA, he had become so important to her every waking moment that the idea of his death boggled her mind. It had been his guidance that had helped her to heal after losing so many friends.

More important still, it was his strategy and flawless tactics that brought her revenge on Kenneth Harrison and Morgan Fortier. Only he had understood her desperate need for their brutally painful deaths.

"This can't be happening." Her voice seemed shaky and Lena was surprised to find that her hands were quivering. With but the flick of a wrist, she would be reading the final summary of Guevara's research, a fact which should have filled her heart with joy but instead brought only a darkness. The brilliant doctor's analysis was desperately bleak. "I won't let him die. No matter what it says, I won't let him die."

She turned the page. A single paragraph had been neatly typed and centered.

The words loomed like bombing planes overhead.

Lena closed the folder and replaced it on Aaron's desk.

"It doesn't matter." She said confidently to herself before suddenly breaking into an uncontrolled yet strangely emotionless session of sobbing. Her reptilian Feral nature refused her the right to properly feel passion, to lose herself in the sensations of being alive. Fear was blunted by steely logic, love dimmed by temperate blood, grief diminished along with joy and wonder.
Only rage remained potent in one such as herself.

Sitting there on her leader's desk, her chest heaving slightly with the force of her tears, Lena did not truly feel the pain she knew she should. Her body instinctively reacted as it should, but her heart and soul were barely cognizant of the sensation of sorrow.

The cold-blooded reptile mind whispered a siren's song filled with revenge.

"Adam Kane did this." Lena's eyes fixed on the file folder, the Falcon crest, and she bowed her head. Speaking as if in prayer, she whispered "even if it costs my own life, I will avenge you Aaron Sheckt. I will."

She rose from the desk and turned to leave.

Sheckt was standing there in the open doorway, rage and hate burning in his gaze like a Gorgon's stare. Lena froze in place. His mouth twisted into a lunatic's grimace. "It would seem that the good doctor's report isn't the only bad news."
Charlotte delivered her punch line, "I said to the guy, if that's the best you've got, don't quit your lousy day job," and everyone laughed, even Shalimar. The joke was one drawn from a personal experience, which was part of the fun, and she had such a deadpan delivery that it cracked Mutant X up easily.

Snickering around a mouthful of pizza, Brennan nudged Jesse. "I don't care if you did see her first, the new girl is mine."

Jesse sipped at a can of soda. "No way static cling."

"Boys, boys, please." Charlotte said in the voice of a queen, catching their attention. A smile was on her face. "Continue fighting over me."

That response brought a fresh round of laughter. After the long, dark day, Mutant X needed to laugh and smile and push the pain back into a deep corner of their minds until they could deal with it. Dinner had begun with Jesse cracking several lame jokes that broke the pall of worry and unease they'd felt since first encountering Sheckt's killers. Slowly, everyone had found something to say or do that brought a smile.

It felt like the beginning, when the team was first made whole by Brennan and Emma's arrival. Having Charlotte sitting at their table, grinning and giggling, helped to reinforce that feeling of deja vu.

'Or perhaps,' Adam thought as he ate the unhealthy cheesy Italian derived food, 'it's a case of presque vu.' Though a far less common sensation, that feeling of knowing that something would soon come to pass, of almost seeing it, felt more accurate here.

Hadn't Charlotte Cooke been part of Mutant X thirty years forward? Hadn't she been one of the team in that hell of Eckhart's making? Adam watched her, thinking about the anger that had all but consumed her just a year ago and contrasting that woman with the one sitting at his table now. Aside from the seemingly trademarked razor tongued wit, she seemed to have let go of the thirst for revenge.

Watching her gave him hope for another new mutant who had once been a part of his plans for good. As the meal came to a close, Adam felt a weight falling on his shoulders. The time had come to discuss what they all knew had to be discussed. It was time to face their fears and formulate a plan.

"I'm getting to old for this." He grumbled coldly.

Emma leaned down and kissed his cheek, her hand squeezing his shoulder comfortingly.
"You're doing that brooding scientist thing again." She said quietly so that the others, who were clearing plates, wouldn't hear. "This isn't the time for blame Adam. We've got a new enemy and we need you ready to lead. We need you." She lightly caressed his face, tracing the worry lines of his forehead before kissing him again, this time on the lips. "And I need you too."

Without another word, she turned and took a stack of plates from Charlotte who was limping a little on her injured leg.

"Thanks." Charlotte said with haggard grin before sitting back down. Although the piece of shrapnel that had stabbed her didn't do any major damage, it did make walking painful.

Half-smiling back, because she still wasn't quite sure how she felt about having Charlotte in Sanctuary again, Emma waved away her gratitude. "Just rest okay? This will only take a minute to get everything cleared off. Then we've got a bad guy's defeat to plan." She observed Adam for a moment before nodding, apparently satisfied that he wasn't relapsing into depression. Of all the men she'd ever dated, he was the most sensitive and caring, but also the most self-deprecating and introspective.

After the remains of dinner were banished, Mutant X and Charlotte returned to their chairs and waited for Adam to return from his room. When he came, he held many sheets of computer printout. Carefully, almost hesitantly, he spread out the intelligence file Christina had given them on Aaron M. Sheckt along with a detailed report on what Gabriel Ashlocke did while they were fighting for their lives. Graphic images of fire, death and destruction glared up at them like nightmares made manifest. They each read through a handful of documents before meeting one another's faces. The information before them wasn't good.

It might have ruined their appetites had they not so recently finished dinner.

Shalimar picked up a sheet and read over it again before speaking, her stare locked on Adam. "The CIA doesn't know anything about Sheckt. That's what your friend's file basically amounts to, right?" She asked calmly, though there was a hint of exasperation in her voice.

"That's not exactly true, Shal." Jesse said with a smirk as he pointed down at a page in front of him. "According to this, he didn't exist until two years ago. No social security number,
birth certificate, tax records. . . the man was either born on the street and never entered into the system or the name he's going by is a very clean alias. Or he really doesn't exist and we were all nearly killed by a figment of our collective imaginations."

Holding his head in his hands, Brennan snorted. "Great. Next time we go out on a mission,
the Easter Bunny and Santa can kick our ass."

Siting across from him, Emma chuckled dryly. In the time it had taken her to read over just a few pages of the CPT file, her positive attitude had faded dramatically. "As disturbingly funny as that image is Brennan, we have to consider every possible angle with this guy. I never sensed him when I was with Devon in the Frost Lake base. Not once. I felt general impressions,
something dark and malevolent, but I never touched Sheckt's mind. Psionically speaking, there's a slim chance he really is someone's bad dream."

Charlotte Cooke, who had been quiet until this moment, pointed toward a picture taken at the safe house where she'd lived. Two of her friend's bodies were visible in it, though someone had covered them in simple white shrouds. "My vote's on real guy with a fake name. No way is he's just a living delusion. The way his people acted, I think he used to be government."

Everyone turned their faces to Adam.

Even Emma.

"She's got a point." Jesse said, picking up another sheet of paper. "What little Christina did have on Sheckt indicates a background in intelligence. The first time anyone got wind of him was shortly after one our early missions, back before Brennan and Emma joined up. Look at this date. It's less than two days after we raided that Genomex lab Eckhart was working out of.
Remember the Cascade Mountain base?"

He passed the sheet of paper to Adam, who read it quickly and nodded. "You might be on to something Jesse. Sheckt's first known terrorist act was an attempted bombing of an FBI office not far from that lab. No one's certain why he did it, but several men being held for questioning at the time were never accounted for. Sheckt claimed responsibility in an e-mail." He frowned and laid the document back down on the table. "It was untraceable and the CIA's best computer experts still don't know how he did it."

"According to this," Shalimar added as she thumbed through a particularly thick stack of information the CPT had compiled, "the only way American intelligence has been able to even belatedly track his movements is by keeping tabs on his known associates." She held up a picture of Duncan Ladd, the new mutant torturer who'd saved their lives by arranging for nearly half the bombs set under Frost Lake to be defused. "He's a recent addition to Sheckt's private army." She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "The psycho used to be on our side."

Still holding his head, alternately rubbing at his temples and grimacing from the pain, Brennan tried not to let the migraine he was feeling interfere with his speech. He tapped a finger against the paper in front of him. "According to this, the FBI managed to uncover one of Sheckt's bases just after it had been abandoned. They found some very weird stuff. There was a notebook with his name written over and over. Based on where it was found, they think Sheckt was the guy doing the writing."

"Why would anyone write their own name like a mantra?" Charlotte asked, one eyebrow arched high, as if to say that she'd never heard of anything more bizarre.

Adam stood up. Though he seemed tired, there was a warmth and confidence in his voice when he spoke. "Right now, we haven't got enough information to figure Sheckt out. Here's what we do know: First, he wants us dead. Second, he's extremely well informed about us. He knows our weaknesses and can predict our actions. Third, Sheckt seems very unwilling to engage us directly." He glanced at Emma, just to admire her angel's face. She smiled and he couldn't help grinning back.

"Based on what Katherine told us," Adam continued before he lost his train of thought completely, "Aaron M. Sheckt is private to the point of total excess. Maybe he is the psionically projected persona of some new mutant enemy, maybe he's just extremely paranoid. Either way,
he's a threat."

He paused again. This time, he looked to Charlotte, concern coloring his tone. "The last thing we know about Sheckt is that he's after you."

Everyone stared at her as she nervously shifted in her seat.

Adam's expression softened. A thin smile warmed his face. "That's why I want you to stay here for now. I've got people working on securing the safe houses but, for the time being, we can't trust them. Until we can be certain that there hasn't been any further compromise of the mutant underground, you have a place with us Charlotte."

Charlotte stared at him, her mouth slightly agape. "You mean, you actually want me to stay here? With you?"

"I think 'want' might be a strong word." Shalimar said, but she was grinning as she spoke and quickly added. "Yeah, Charlotte, we want you to stick around a while. You're not safe alone. Besides," she said, her eyes slipping for just a moment to Emma before going back to Charlotte's pleasantly surprised face. "It'll be nice having another woman in the house. The men won't be able to outvote us on movie night anymore."

Everyone watched Charlotte for her reaction. Even though it was in her best interest, she did have the right to refuse their help. Sheckt's attack on her safe house proved that they couldn't guarantee her safety and, although they were all certain that Sanctuary was safe, there was a chance they couldn't protect her even in their own home.

After a moment of thought, she stood up and shook Adam's hand over the table.

"One condition: I want to be a full fledged part of the team."

Adam nodded. "We can live with that."
James King stood in the garage. He'd been standing for quite some time and had developed a terrible ache behind his right knee. Sore muscles and cramps abounded. Still, he remained,
faithful as the dog that dies on a master's grave. He was waiting for the arriving limousine from Jacob's Memorial Hospital.

"More like Jacob's Memorial Fire now." The man joked to himself.

The vehicle pulled in moments later. A man in a black suit, the driver, stepped out and quickly proceeded to the back of the vehicle to open the car door.

From darkness she stepped, wearing clothes that Dr. Guevara had found for her and sent along with the car. King was struck almost senseless by her beauty, just as he had been the day they'd met, when he found her dying in an alleyway.

"Welcome to your new home," he said as she adjusted her dress. "My dear Jane Doe Number Five."

"Spare me the sniveling King." The woman rasped as she stood in the cavernous garage,
her dull brown hair hanging about her head in uneven, sweeping locks that brushed her bare shoulders. She wore a tube top of black leather that wrapped around her chest snugly, a pair of matching hip-hugging jeans, and heavy snake-skin boots. "And call me by my proper name or refer to me as mistress."

"As you wish, my dear mistress."

The woman was shorter than him, slight in build and seemed smaller still due to the paleness of her skin and the cadaverous quality of her appearance. She'd been fed by IV for two weeks while lying near death in a coma. Only now was she strong enough to stand on her own again, to speak with her true voice rather than her Psionic tongue.

Her eyes bore holes into King's soul. He could not bear her gaze for long and twitched under it like a bug stabbed through by a pin and about to be mounted in a trophy case. Head bowed, he lead her into the underground facilities. "We're still having to operate here in secrecy," the words felt torn from him by her vicious silence. "Our CEO is not aware of the true function of these sub levels."

"But he is beginning to suspect, isn't he?" The woman asked darkly, throwing a glare at him which sent shivers down his spine.

Though she had been inside King's mind for some time, he feared her. She knew secrets.
Some of them, she'd given to him as payment to buy his loyalty. Those technological and medical miracles would make the company billions. Yet, when he heard her true voice, slightly rough with disuse, he could not help but wonder if he'd made the right choice when he saved her life.

He'd found her in an alleyway, dying, her DNA shredded by some unknown illness or phenomena with which doctors knew no cure. The coma had healed her.

"Is Ashlocke here?" She asked.

"Yes, mistress. We have him in Iso-Lab Three."

Her hand shot out and gripped his shoulder with the power of a hydraulic vice.

"Take me to him." Kelly had left the room earlier so Gabriel was not surprised by the sound of the door swishing open. When he turned to ask the lovely blonde if she were feeling better, he found himself rendered speechless.

The mystery woman had arrived.

The first thing that struck Gabriel was her height, or lack thereof. She was petite, seemingly frail. Long strands of black hair hung down to just graze her shoulders, her skin seemed sickly ashen. He tried to focus on her mind but could not, of course, because he still bore the indignity of a subdermal governor. The man gave her a look, dismissing her much like he would an insect.

"You're not much to look at, are you?" Gabriel said coldly.

She smiled. "This from the petty tin god?"

The question sent a surge of adrenaline flowing through Gabriel's body and, had his powers been active, he would have killed her where she stood with a thought. If he believed he could have crossed the space between them without being stopped, he would have done so.
Unfortunately, he could do nothing but glare, because she had the toad man James King at her right side, his pistol pointed at Gabriel's heart.

"Go to hell." He snarled, forcing himself to remain almost perfectly still as he spoke.
Without his powers, a bullet would kill him easily.

Perhaps sensing what he wanted to do to her, the woman broke into dark laughter and threw her head back. Of all the things she could have done, this hurt Gabriel most. It was a blow to his pride.

It got worse.

Her laughter turned to cruel words. "This the great and mighty Ashlocke? Laid low by a subdermal governor and reduced by a single woman to petty human insults?" She came closer,
until her face was mere inches from his own. Utterly fearless, she breathed out one word.

"Pitiful."

Gabriel lunged forward but was almost instantly shoved back by a crushing telekinetic fist that seized his body and held him against the wall. Struggling, he only then began to understand the danger he was in.

Regarding him with detached coolness, the woman continued. "I'm not that unlike you,
Mr. Ashlocke. I want things, crave things, and to hell with anyone who dares get in my way.
Ruthlessness and a methodical nature just make my work easier. My genetics further ease the taking of what is desired. You, for instance."

She sauntered to Gabriel's cot and lay back on it, staring at the ceiling, seemingly ignoring the self-proclaimed god's struggle against her powers. Yet, her focus was always on him. He could feel her mind reaching out and burrowing into his own. Without his powers, there was nothing he could do to repel her invasion and, for the first time, he began to understand why his victims screamed sometimes at a telepathic invasion. She learned everything about him in mere seconds, every fear and every memory.

In the process of raping his brain for the information, she made him endure some of the worst parts over and over again. Gabriel tried and failed to make the images go away.

"What's wrong? Bad memories?"

The woman grinned frostily. Slowly, she ended the assault. Gabriel's eyes, which had blurred with tears, began to clear and he focused them on her. She was watching him. "We can be allies, you and I. We both want the same things. Power, pleasure, and plenty of servants to provide us with both." Her face smiled but her eyes failed to learn of the display. They remained obdurate, unsympathetic, utterly stony.

"You should think about it. I propose you join me, merge your Strand forces with my Society of Supremacy. Our ostensible goals are the same so the rabble won't question the union.
At least, not much." She rose from the cot. "If you say no, I won't cure your fatal flaw. I won't make you invincible. I will allow you to diminish and die."

He did not dare respond to her threat.

Though desperation beseeched him, Gabriel refused to beg her for the cure.

Moving to his beside, the woman stood and watched him with a Gorgon's glare. "Once so haughty, so certain of your own power; now reduced to pitiable silence. How the mighty Ashlocke has fallen." Her cold laugh made Gabriel's stomach turn. "I'll give you some time to think about my proposal. Once you've come to your senses, I'm sure you'll gladly get down on your knees and thank me."

As she walked away from him, the telekinetic force holding Gabriel against the wall evaporated. Sprawled on the floor, his chest bruised and aching, he hated this woman. He hated her more than he had ever hated anyone else.

She was mere millimeters from the door when he spoke. "Wait."

"Yes?"

Silence.

A glance over her shoulder. "You can have life or you can have self-respect. Which do you value more highly?"

Not waiting for an answer, she walked out of the room, never having given him so much as a name. Body hurting, he returned to his cot and lay there, alone again with fear. His heart beat steadily in his chest. He'd been saved by the doctors but they had condemned him to fatal weakness. Human weakness. The subdermal governor bound to his spine brought unwelcome memories of his insignificant childhood.

Those recollections soon gave way to the memory of the first sign of power, the first moment of manifestation. He'd jumped off a roof and landed without injury.

He remembered his parents. Strange to think of them, but he did. They had been arrogant and hadn't treated him with the proper respect. He recalled their faces when he killed them.
How long after that before Genomex scientists came to collect him? He wasn't sure.

A few more memories fluttered through his mind. First kiss, first sex when he got free of Adam's stasis pod. The kills that followed mother and father. Eckhart's face at the end, as he was shoved inside a pod of his own. He remembered being inside Shalimar's mind and how much he'd wanted her, mind and body and especially soul.

Unfinished business. That was what made him call out to bring the woman and her promises of a cure back. He did not scream for her, did not let himself sound as desperate as he was, but he did call out for her return.

"I want it all!" He roared sitting up in the bed. "I want what I'm owed!"

He did not go to the door; that would have seemed too needy.

Gabriel had unfinished business. World domination. Revenge. Kelly. Yes, he just had unfinished business. He wasn't afraid. He wasn't.

No. He wasn't afraid of death.

A god had no reason to fear death and he was a god.

Yes. He was a god. He wasn't afraid.

The woman entered the room with a hypodermic in hand. She coldly grinned, her eyes narrowing to slits. "I thought you'd make the right decision. You're arrogant to call yourself divine, but just smart enough not to believe it."

Gabriel did not contradict her.

As she injected him with the medicine that would cure him, the woman said "you've made the right decision. Welcome to the Society of Supremacy, Mr. Ashlocke. My name is Valerie Curio, but you can call me mistress."

Her cackle made him shiver.

Almost an hour after the conference on Sheckt, Adam had spent some time explaining Sanctuary's various security grids to Charlotte. Now that she would be staying with them, it seemed appropriate. He'd helped her settle into a spare room that had, until recently been used for storing the Dojo's components. Jesse would soon be reassembling the holographic system in a newly built room; Charlotte needed training.

With the young woman fast asleep, Adam himself walked into his bedroom with every intention of falling onto his bed. Just inside the doorway, however, he stopped.

Someone had done a little redecorating.

A set of shelves had been installed on the wall directly across from the door. Before, it had been bare but now there were several rows of aromatic bath oils and lotions, as well as several varieties of calming incense. Emma's things.

A vase of flowers had been placed on his desk and a number of new books, mostly on meditation, were now conspicuously sharing space with science volumes. Adam looked around the room and saw other additions. There was a pseudo-shrine in one corner, more potted plants,
several pieces of glass art. He spotted two framed pictures hanging on the wall: a group shot of the team and one that Jesse had taken of Adam and Emma.

He remembered the day it was taken. The team was celebrating a victory against the legions of the GSA. Brennan had convinced them to do their happy dances at a new amusement park that had just opened on the outskirts of the city. It was Shalimar who brought the camera, though Jesse ended up taking more pictures.

Adam had beaten a rigged game and won an enormous stuffed teddy bear. As much to rid himself of the embarrassingly cute creature as to make her smile, he'd given it to Emma. Jesse had caught her reaction on film. Standing in the doorway, looking at that picture of her smiling at him with shining bright blue eyes, Adam wondered how they could ever have ignored their feelings for each other.

He stepped into the room , feeling at peace for the first time since hearing the name Aaron Sheckt, and sighed blissfully. "You did all of this while I was talking to Charlotte?" As he spoke,
he turned toward his bed.

Emma was sitting on the edge; she'd been waiting for him.

Her hair stuck wetly to her neck and glistened in the light. She'd taken a shower earlier,
changed into a wispy nightgown. A glow seemed to emanate from her perfect pink skin. As Emma stood up and crossed to him, she moved with such elegance and beauty that for an instant,
Adam could not breath. Her gentle yet bold gaze made his heart pound.

"You're not angry, are you?" She asked quietly.

"No. Not at all."

He caressed the underside of her chin, something that made her practically purr with contentment. It was a trivial thing. Most people wouldn't have thought of it. Adam alone knew how much the simple gesture affect her.

Standing here, in a moment of perfect happiness, he had an epiphany. Suddenly his life came into focus. Everything changed in that instant, because Adam knew that he would never stop loving this woman. Emma had awakened something in him that he'd long believed dead.
She'd brought back his love of life itself. When he spoke, the words were as much a surprise from him as they were for her.

"When Sheckt is in custody, I'm leaving Mutant X." Adam said, the truth in his words too plain to ignore. "There have been too many close calls lately. Too many near misses. Emma, I want you to come away with me. I've been preparing a place, no one knows about it but me. It's perfect for an escape."

Emma stared at him in stunned surprise. For a moment, she uttered not a sound. Then, as if waking from a dream, she said "that's a big step. A really big step. Almost like marriage."

Adam touched her face and leaned close. He whispered into her ear.

"I'm an old man, Emma. You're moving too fast for me."

She giggled and shook her head. "You're talking about us running away together and you say I'm moving too fast?" Gently, she pulled him toward her, toward the bed. They fell back on to it a moment later and held each other. Emma snuggled against him as he slipped an arm around her. "You're half right, I guess. But I don't care how fast or slow things go, as long as I have you. For the first time in my entire life Adam, I feel truly loved."

They kissed softly at first.

Only at first.

Aware of nothing, save each other, Adam and Emma did not notice the electronic surveillance device that had hidden behind the computer monitor earlier. It crawled out of the shadows on six wire legs and climbed a wall. Moving with the sickening depravity common in cockroaches, the piece of artifice was soon on the ceiling. Guided from afar by the hands of an enemy, it moved forward until it rested directly over their bed.

Tiny cameras watched as a kiss turned to something deeper and more passionate.

As they made love. . .

. . .another made hate.
Buried beneath many tons of sand and rock, the Haven base was the perfect facility to operate from. It had been constructed by a wealthy man with paranoid beliefs. He'd feared a third world war was imminent and, at considerable cost, he'd brought this place into being for his own safety.

Standing before the video monitor, watching as the man he hated rumpled sheets with the lovely Emma DeLauro, he frowned deeply. At his sides, his hands were clenched into fists and his nails were biting into the flesh of his palms, drawing blood.

He turned away and met Lena's gaze.

"Mutant X lives. My informants have confirmed the destruction of the Frost Lake base but,
it would appear that someone disarmed nearly half our explosives." His face was masked in shadows, hiding his expression. "Katherine Bowden betrayed us."

Lena was stunned, but not by what he'd said.

As he stepped out of darkness, she saw his face.

He was smiling.

"As I expected."

"You. . . you knew?" She asked in an awed voice.

A twisted chuckle was her initial answer. "No. But I expected something to go wrong. I always hope for the best while planning for the worst. Much like your previous employer, Mason Eckhart. Though I do hope I've made a better leader than he." Moving gracefully, he reached up to trace the curves of Lena's face. "I can scarcely believe I have such a prize as you in my life."

She didn't smile, but her face seemed to grow more inviting. "You flatter me."

"Not at all. I merely state the truth. You, Lena Isley-Blake, the famed reptilian GS agent.
Eckhart could not have appreciated you as I do. He saw only your abilities and your last name,
your father's name, and no more." His eyes watched her face for a reaction to his words and was rewarded with a small, but genuine, smile.

"He always called me Agent Blake. That was how my name was on the Genomex payroll.
I gave them my father's name alone rather than include mother's. They were still together then." Her expression grew cold. "It's no longer fitting. That woman, Agent Blake, isn't really who I am anymore. The mission has changed. My mother's name is better for the woman I've become."

He nodded. "It's softer, more feminine, than Blake. Yet, it does lack a certain tonal quality.
Lena Blake sounds a tad ferocious while Lena Isley sounds more seductive."

She leaned in and kissed him. "That's how it should sound to you. Especially now."

Instantly, Lena knew she'd said the wrong thing. Without warning, his hand struck out but stopped less than a millimeter from her face. He saw the shock in her eyes and spun away from her, disgusted with himself, barely managing to say "I shall not be pitied," before slamming a fist into the monitor, shattering an image of his most hated enemy and Emma DeLauro.

"I am dying." He said in a faint whisper, trembling with humiliation. "That is suffering enough, I cannot bear your pity in addition. Leave me."

Lena Isley left her leader's office close to tears.

Alone, the man she called Sheckt took a seat at his desk. For a time, he regarded his hand,
which had shards of broken glass imbedded between the knuckles. The astringent reek of ozone and smoke filled the room as something melted inside what was left of his enormous video screen.
He sighed and drew out each dagger with bare fingers, cutting himself again and again.

When his hand was glass free again, he bandaged it. Then he pressed a button mounted under the desk's edge. A secure communication line opened to section of Haven no one knew about but him.

"Send the first two." He uttered emotionlessly into the air.

Several minutes passed, during which time he opened a drawer and took out a pad of paper. Methodically, he began writing a name over and over again in thick, block capitals,
printing in much the way a small child might.

AARON M SHECKT.

He drew this many times in the few minutes before his office door opened and two men walked in, dragging another, frailer man between them. One had to clear his throat to gain Sheckt's attention, for this bizarre task claimed all his focus and concentration. Had anyone asked, he would have had no clear answer as to why he wrote his own name repeatedly. Nor could the man have explained it's deep importance to him or why it's creation ruled his mind.

"Sir?" The man who'd cleared his throat asked in a deferent tone, barely above an angel's whisper. He gave his second a nod and the other man joined him in heaving forward the third who had been suspended between them.

He hit the floor hard, collapsing to his knees, and did not try to rise or even to look up into the face of his captor. This man stayed down, though he visibly shook. Either with fear or rage remained to be seen, but of certainty was the fact that this person had never bowed to anyone before. His straight back and just slightly down turned face, the way his breathing stayed even,
almost stiffly so, proved him a man of stern personality.

Without fully intending to, Sheckt started laughing. "Oh please, don't pretend to be cowed old man. We both know you too well to be fooled."

From the floor, the man's head shot up at the sound of his captor's voice. Their eyes met and icy serpents of dread ran through him. Kneeling there, gazing up into orbs of a murky sadistic sapphire, the exact same color as his own, Mason Eckhart felt his chest seize tight and his heart simply stop. For a time, he drew no breath, and only as darkness began to creep into the edges of his sight did his pulse finally return while a soothing gasp filled him near bursting.

He tried to say something, moving his lips to form random words, but nothing came save the toneless squeak of pure stunned shock. Eckhart suddenly spun around and tried to escape but did not get more than five steps from Sheckt's desk. The two men who'd brought him took hold his arms again and forced him down into the carpet.

"I'm hurt." Sheckt muttered quietly, rising from behind his desk. "You seem afraid, old man, and that truly hurts me. Truly." He tapped the pad he'd been feverishly writing in earlier.
"Have you ever played a game called 'anagrams,' old man?"

Picking up the pad in one hand and a pen in the other, Sheckt started to jot down something new. "You take a word, a sentence, even a name, and you rearrange the letters until they spell something new. It's not the easiest game in the world, because it's so hard to make anything that makes sense."

He finished writing and tore the top sheet of paper off the pad. "But sometimes you get lucky." Sheckt handed it to Eckhart.

Mason looked down and read his captor's name, with difficulty for every letter had been crossed out.

AARON M. SHECKT

On the line below, using each letter from the name before, was written his own name.

MASON ECKHART

Eckhart stared up at the man named Aaron Sheckt. "You can't be alive. Falcon said you couldn't have survived alone. Not with the amnesia."

Sheckt shrugged. "I went through a lot of suffering to get to where I am now. Of course,
it wasn't until two weeks ago that my purpose in life started becoming clear. Echoes from the future led me to my past, to Genomex." He smiled the strangest smile, gentle and caring but harshly angry. "On that road of discovery, I chanced upon a former follower of yours, Agent Lena Isley-Blake of the GSA."

"Agent Blake is alive?" Eckhart asked.

"Of course. Did you expect such an extraordinary woman to perish at the hands of a false god like Ashlocke?" He shook his head and chuckled. "Old man, do you have so little faith in your followers?"

Eckhart tried not to stare at the man but he couldn't help it. Their faces were so similar, so almost perfectly mirrored. Age had barely touched this man, marking him as a young thirty, with hair dark and wavy. When he moved, there was something unsettling in the familiarity of it, as if he stared into a mirror but one from a fun house, the reflection made different yet the same. Still disbelieving, Eckhart muttered "this is some sort of dream."

Sheckt laughed deeply, his eyes watering with mirth.

"You're not real." Eckhart said calmly, rising from the floor at last, certainty stilling his face and bringing a defiant timbre into his voice. "You are nothing more than an illusion. A fabrication." He stared into the man's face, met his eyes completely. "Aaron M. Sheckt does not exist. He never did. You're a fiction."

Sheckt wasn't smiling now. "Watch your tongue old man."

"You're a lie, a nightmare. Nothing but smoke and mirrors. A—."

The blow took Eckhart by surprise because he'd managed to half convince himself that he was hallucinating or dreaming in his stasis pod. Collapsed on the floor, he stared up at this man who should not exist. "What are you?"

Face gone cold as stone, Sheckt knelt close to him. "You tried to play god, old man. You opened Pandora's Box and let out all the anomalies. Then along came me." He began to smile again. "There's always a price to pay. And I'm it." He smiled. "Father."
An hour after the conference ended, Jesse was standing outside Charlotte's door, listening to her muffled breathing. He'd hoped to catch her alone. He wanted to talk. Weeks ago, when he'd found the letter from her trapped between the pages of the book from the dark future, there had been only confusion. Just thinking about time travel made his head hurt. He'd dwelled on the subject for some time, even allowed it to interfere with work.

Jesse knew what the letter said was true. Instinct made him believe it. Yet, even though he could not deny an attraction to Charlotte, he felt uncertain. What had happened before occurred as a direct result of Adam and Emma's subtraction from the Mutant X team. The feisty brunette joined after, aiding the team for a time before Eckhart's forces overran Sanctuary.

"Now she's here anyway." He said to himself, standing sentinel, wondering about how things were progressing. It seemed as if, on some level, fate was trying to reassert itself. Jesse shook his head, brushing aside his concerns. The idea of the nightmare future resurrecting unsettled him. "Adam and Emma are here and in love. Sanctuary's safe. The book, the letter,
that's all real. But things aren't going to turn out the same way."

A faint moan from Charlotte's room caught his ear. Jesse started to open her door, then stopped. He could hear her tossing and turning in bed. She was having a nightmare. Again, he started to think about the feelings building inside him for this woman. "But is what I'm feeling for her real? Or is it just an echo of what happened in our future? God, this whole situation makes my head hurt."

"You're not the only one brother."

Whirling in alarm, Jesse saw Brennan walking in with Shalimar right behind him, the former fending her off as she tried to check his head for the tenth time. He breathed a sigh of relief, his heart steadily easing back. "I'm going to tie a bell around both your necks."

"Didn't mean to spook you." Brennan said, trademark smirk in place as he twisted away from Shalimar's probing fingers. "I know you feel compelled to touch me, most women do, but please relax. Me and my skull are just fine."

"Funny Brennan." The blonde said though she didn't laugh nor smile much. "Will you just hold still and let me look? I know Adam scanned you and everything seemed fine but I want to make sure for myself." Grabbing his arm to stop him from walking away from her, concern clear in her eyes, Shalimar touched the side of Brennan's head worriedly. "You said the headaches hadn't gone away. I'm worried about you. When I'm worried about someone, I need to be doing something."

"Okay, I surrender. Don't know why I'm fighting you anyway." He smiled at her, a multi megawatt grin that would have lit a room even if he weren't an electrical Elemental new mutant.
"Your hands on me, that's my idea of fun."

Rolling her eyes, smiling in a vaguely embarrassed way, Shalimar started going over his bruised head. "So how's Charlotte?" She asked conversationally, glancing over at Jesse. "Did Adam give her the particulars?"

She didn't ask why he was standing outside her bedroom door.

For that, Jesse was deeply thankful.

He cleared his throat, switching his thoughts from the future's past to the present. "Yeah,
Adam explained our computer net and the passwords in brief. If she wants to walk around by herself or get on the Internet, Sanctuary won't sound any alarms. After everything she's been through today, I don't think Charlotte will want to wander." He nodded towards the guest room.
"Right now she's dead asleep."

"Whoa! What happened to her?" Brennan gasped, hearing only the "dead" part of what Jesse had said.

The day had been so filled with surprises, so glutted with grave turns, that the idea of an assassin entering their home and silently murdering Charlotte wasn't beyond thought. Half distracted by Shalimar's probing of his badly bruised skull, he focused on the worst possibility instantly. Nerves still tightly wound, body still not certain the danger was past, electric currant began to seethe between his finger tips.

"Easy Brennan, chill. She's just sleeping." Jesse smiled weakly. "Bad choice of words,
sorry." Seeing that Shalimar had also grown tense and, surprisingly, feeling his own hands clutched into fists at his sides, he felt a deep unease that left only grudgingly. When he brought one hand up to his eyes, it was shaking slightly. Quietly, he said "I guess we're all still on edge.
With everything that's happened, I guess I really shouldn't be surprised."

"It's okay." Brennan glanced beside him at Shalimar. "We're all okay, even me with my banged up head. No injuries we can't handle."

"Just revelations." She muttered darkly before turning away from him.

Surprised, Brennan reached out and grasped her shoulder. "Hey, what did I say? You sound angry." She glanced back at him, then there was the faintest twitch of her eyes toward Adam's room. His puzzlement disintegrated. "Oh. You're mad because I didn't tell you about them, right? You think I should have told you about Adam and Emma."

Shalimar looked away from him.

"Are you okay with them? With what's going on between them?" Brennan asked as Jesse came closer, worry in his eyes.

Her face was lowered.

She whispered. "No."
"Adam?"

"Hmm?"

Shifting position under downy, warm sheets, Emma propped herself up on one side. Her elbow pressed into the pillow, she studied Adam's profile for a moment. In the bedroom twilight,
she could just barely make out the strength of his handsome face.

Outside muted, distant thunder pulsed.

Emma shivered.

"What's wrong?" Adam asked, sensing a change in her.

"Something's been bothering me. Ever since the meeting after dinner." She whispered,
perhaps worried that someone else might hear her. Perhaps afraid she might hear herself. "This man, Aaron Sheckt, he's not like the others we've fought against. He knew exactly how to come after us; he knew how we would react."

Adam turned his head toward her. "You're afraid of him?"

"Yes. No. I don't know yet." For a moment, she did not go on. She rested there, meeting his gaze, wanting nothing more than to let silence carry her to sleep. Something had been gnawing at her for some time, something that, until this very moment, she'd never fully understood. Now,
Emma could put it into words, but she didn't want to. More than anything else, she just wanted the stillness unbroken.

Those concerned eyes were what made her go on. She couldn't refuse him the answers he deserved. "When we came back form the future, I thought at first that it was all over. We'd changed everything. Then, I started to wonder." Emma reached over to him and he took her hand, squeezing comfortingly. "I'm afraid Adam. I'm afraid that there's going to be repercussions because we're together."

"I don't understand."

"Balance, Adam. The cosmic scales. Balance. When we came back from that nightmare,
we brought with us love and hope and for one instant millions of other people felt destiny touch them. They saw their fates. I know that they tried to make things better." Her eyes shimmered with the threat of tears. "We've brought a lot of good into the world Adam. You can't have that kind of imbalance. We paid a price today, but nowhere near what's owed."

He leaned over and held her close, letting her snuggle close. Holding her, feeling her body against his, it was easy to believe that she was wrong.

"I wish I thought you wrong Emma." Adam said quietly, thinking about his own fears.
Aaron Sheckt had killed so many people today, just for a chance to destroy Mutant X. He was a wildcard, unpredictable. "Whatever price fate demands from us, we'll fight against it together.
I'm not losing you or anyone else."

"What if we haven't really changed anything Adam?" She asked, her cheek pressed against his throat. "Charlotte's here, just like she was in the future. Thirty years if a long time. What if we just delayed what's coming?"

Gently kissing the top of her head, hugging her tight with arms around, Adam reassured her.
"We've changed everything Emma. All that pain and suffering that was going to be, it's been prevented. Eckhart can't become Emperor as long as we're here." Without knowing that he was about to lie to her, he took her slender chin in hand.

"I swear Emma, no part of that future exists. Not now."

Long before they fell asleep, in the city where Mutant X had fought the GSA and Gabriel Ashlocke's Strand, a woman with dark hair and a petite body made plans. Her name, cast from deep within the future storm, was Valerie Curio. Under the desert sands of the Midwest, Aaron Sheckt prepared a new offensive against Adam Kane and Mutant X, hating them for reasons that were only then beginning to become brutally clear.

Emma would have called them the price.
END OF EPILOGUE

Author's Note: I will soon be posting a sequel entitled "Paradigm" which will focus on the sudden turns from cannon Mutant X I'm about to take. (Yes, even more severe than those I've already taken with this new Season 2 MX verse of mine!)

For all of those who read "The Price," I didn't feel that this quite came out as good as I had intended. I hope, however, to return to the power you felt with "Flashforward." This next story will be excellent. I've been working on it for a long time.

As usual, I appologize for the long wait between parts and promise this time that, once started, I will finish "Paradigm" quickly and powerfully. Hope you'll join me.