"C'mon, Jess, just a little while longer," Brennan said, pulling Jesse's arm more securely over his broad shoulders and keeping him on his unsteady feet. They had already worn a path between the parlor and the kitchen, and Brennan was considering taking the molecular outside for some fresh early morning air. The staircase to the bedrooms was out of the question. "Keep walking. The kids'll be up soon. You can go to sleep as soon as Tess drains Tom."

Jesse's reply was unprintable.

"You gotta stay awake, man. Gotta keep that thing away. Tom'll be waking up before too long."

Shalimar approached, another steaming mug in her hands. "Here, Jesse. More coffee. Black. Just what you need."

Jesse gagged, and tried to pull away, but Brennan wouldn't let him. "Gaah! That's hot!"

"Another sip." Shalimar pushed it at him again. "Keep going. The caffeine will help you stay awake."

"If I take another sip," and Jesse was working very hard to keep his words distinct, "I am going to throw up."

"We'll make Lexa clean up," Shalimar promised. "After all, she slipped you three pills. Brennan and I only gave you two a piece."

"Go ahead, turn on me," Lexa grumbled. "And here I have the answer to our dilemma."

Brennan stopped forcing Jesse to walk. "Which is—?"

"Lady Esther gave me the idea. We find out who put the original inhibitor into Tom, and get him or her to do it again."

Brennan slapped his forehead dramatically with his free hand. "Brilliant! What a clever idea! Why didn't I think of that?" Pause for effect. "Wait. I did. Only there's no way to find out who did it. Tom was a baby when it was done, and the only other person who might know is giggling to himself in the key of H."

"Does the Dominion know?" Shalimar asked.

Lexa shook her head. "Just got the answer back: no. Tom had never even appeared on their radar until Maguire dragged him into the spotlight. There are some rogue efforts out there, and the Dominion is still trying to track them down."

"But you do have a way to find out who developed Tom's inhibitor?" Shalimar pressed. Lexa wouldn't have brought the subject up if she hadn't.

"Yup. How do you find out something from somebody who can't speak coherently?" Lexa moved to answer herself. "You get a telepath. Let's see; do we know any telepaths?" She slapped her forehead, deliberately mimicking Brennan. "Gosh, yes! We know Tom!"

"Are you crazy?" Brennan demanded, appalled. "Maguire almost killed him! He tortured him, Lexa! And you want a fifteen year old kid to face the man who did that to him? You're as crazy as Maguire!"

"Am I?" All attempts at humor had fled. "Let's look at this situation realistically, Brennan, in all its horror. What we have now is a telepath out of control. And it's not just local. Remember what happened at Sanctuary? Your cloud thing, and Shalimar's cobra? Those came from our Jesse here, and long distance. Tom is well aware of Tess's infatuation with Jesse; he can't help but be. So he is going to unconsciously take out his anger on Jesse, which means every time Jesse takes a nap something ugly is going to be produced.

"Lady Esther was right; we need a permanent solution. Getting Tess to drain Tom more thoroughly isn't it. Tess doesn't need any more psychic charge, and we can't overflow her either or we'll end up with two dangerous telepaths. There's only one real answer: we need to shut Tom down. Permanently."

"And how do you propose to do that?" Brennan's voice held a dangerous note. "Kill him?"

"That's an option." Lexa was unfazed.

"No, it's not," Shalimar said. "Find an alternative."

"I did. You just heard it, and Tom will too after he gets home from school and that damn math test. Tom knows what's at stake here: his life. He may not admit it, but he knows, and so does Lady Esther. He either finds a way to control his gift, or it will kill him and several other people with him." Lexa stared each of them down. "We'll do it this afternoon. I'll take Tom and get him in to see Maguire. Tom will probe his mind and find the answer. While we're doing that, the rest of you can track down this fake Maguire and dispose of it." She gestured at Jesse, hiding her concern under a deliberate pose of annoyance. Brennan hurriedly jerked the almost asleep molecular upright again and Jesse grunted disappointedly. "And, for all our sakes, don't let him fall asleep until Tom gets up."

*          *          *

"You could let me drive," Tom suggested persuasively.

Lexa favored the teen-age psionic with a withering glance before turning her attention back to the road. The spring air was warm and inviting, and she had the top of the convertible down, letting the wind blow through her long hair. Lexa was well aware of the picture she made; several of the men she'd been with over the last couple of years had insisted on discussing it with her. The country road was long and empty, and invited her to speed. "You're fifteen."

"Your point?"

"No driver's license." Lexa wouldn't budge.

That didn't stop Tom. They were in Brennan's red speedster, and the kid's tongue was hanging out of his mouth, drooling. "There's nobody around. Nobody would know."

"I would. And so would Brennan, once you crunched his car."

"I'm a good driver," Tom protested.

"Really? When was the last time you drove?"

That stopped Tom, but only for a few moments. "How about after we see old crazy man Maguire? Like a reward, or something, for good behavior? I mean, I think I aced the math exam today. I deserve something."

More points on the sainthood list for Lady Esther, Lexa thought. How does she put up with this all the time? "Yeah, Tom. I deserve a life on the Riviera, basking in the sun with waiters bringing me daiquiris. You deserve to live a normal life. In fact, you deserve to live, period. Unfortunately, we don't always get what we deserve."

That sobered the kid, and Lexa felt guilty for squashing him like that. He slumped in the passenger's seat, staring out the window.

Lexa bit her lip. I'm gonna regret this. "Listen, you're right. We get out of this okay, I'll take you driving. Somewhere private, where nobody can interfere. I'll see about getting us a car that makes this thing look like a piece of tinfoil." After all, Eduardo owes me a big favor. And he has a garage filled with the fastest things on four wheels.

"Nah. That's okay."

Kids. Can't stand 'em. Good thing I'm never going to have any. Was I ever that bad growing up?

I don't want to know.

The Bush Rehabilitation Center—a euphemism for the Prison for the Seriously Whacked Out Murdering Types—was well-guarded and surrounded by thick and tall stone walls. There were towers at each of the four corners, and a man with a long range rifle stationed in each tower. Bushes softened the walls, but there was no doubt that this facility was designed to be a fortress to keep people in.

Lexa surveyed the terrain, looking for the easiest way to gain access. Tom stayed quietly at her side, trusting that she could do what she said that she could do.

Lexa sighed. Time to move. "Take my hand," she told him.

"Why?"

"You want to be seen?" She grabbed Tom's hand, and they vanished from view.

This was going to be a long session. Lexa slipped them in through the gates unseen, allowing herself a brief respite by turning them visible again but still unnoticed in the bushes. Another few moments of invisibility, and they were past the courtyard into the building itself.

Lexa slipped a lock pick out of her pocket, and had them into a closet in a bare minute. A guard walked by, unseeing.

"Cool," Tom breathed. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

Lexa barely spared him a glance. "Misspent youth."
            "Can you teach me?"

"No." She shoved a uniform at him. "Put that on."

"It doesn't fit."

"Tough. Put it on anyway."
            "Why?"

"How about to avoid getting caught, and spending the rest of our own days in pleasant surroundings like this? Put it on, and hurry up about it." Lexa wound up her long dark hair and pushed it in under the cap that she'd found. Not perfect, but it would do for walking down long corridors.

Only one piece left: an ID card. It was those very cards that let the guards move from one hall to the next through electronically-locked gates. Cautioning Tom to wait in the closet, she went invisible and lifted one from the nearby locker room. Its owner would never miss it unless someone went searching through the computer logs as to why he—one Bartholomew Givens—was visiting the prisoners in Cell Block C on his day off.

It worked. Invisible Lexa had to pull invisible Tom back out of the path of the uniformed guards three times, but they made it to Cell Block C without being detected. The worst part was keeping Tom from making noise. Light Lexa could control, but if the teen-ager laughed out loud, the game would be over. And, despite the gravity of the situation, Tom was finding the whole mission to be incredibly exhilarating. Was I ever that stupid as a teen-ager? Lexa was suddenly afraid that she had been.

He sobered once they found Absalom Maguire. The teen-age high of putting one over on the authorities vanished into a terrified kid, facing the perpetrator of the worst episode of his life, with the knowledge that if Tom couldn't discover who and how the neural inhibitor had been implanted in his brain, death was the only likely possibility for him. You made that real clear to him, Lexa. You're such a sweetheart. No wonder no one dares get too close to you.

Maguire was a wreck. The last time Lexa had faced the man, he had been small but strong in his own sense of self. The white hair was still there, flowing backwards in a bad imitation of Einstein, but the prison kept it clipped short. Likewise, the facial burns, a leftover from Mutant X's first encounter with him, stood out like a sore thumb against the white-haired backdrop.

But where Maguire had stood straight and proud, there now was a stooped over old man, doddering on his feet, mumbling incoherently to himself in words that only he could understand. Or maybe Adam could, Lexa thought, if he were still alive. Some of the phrases had a suspiciously scientific flavor to them. She wondered if they even made sense.

Lexa ran the ID card through the electronic lock and swung open the door, still keeping the pair invisible. Maguire took no notice of the door apparently opening by itself.

Tom hung back, suddenly afraid.

"C'mon," Lexa hissed. "He can't hurt you."

Still Tom hesitated. Lexa grabbed his arm, pulling him in.

Tom began to shake, turning white. Fear was naked on his face, features that only Lexa could see in this invisible state. "I can't do this."

"Yes, you can," Lexa insisted. What a time for this to happen! "Hurry up! We don't have much time." She tossed a cloth over the security camera high over the door, making it look as though Maguire himself had done it, hoping that it was a fairly common occurrence, and that the guards would take their time in investigating. Inspiration hit: she turned them visible again, then grabbed Tom to turn him to face her. "This is the bastard that started this whole mess," she snarled. "This is the piece of crap that hurt you. And this is the man who hurt Tess. Are you going to let him get away with that?"

"But…"

"Get angry, Tom," she advised him harshly. "Get mad. He hurt you; he hurt Tess. He's hurting you right now, by making you have those nightmares that turn real! And you have the power to stop him from ever doing that again. Dig in his mind, Tom. What the hell did he do?"

A fire lit in Tom's brown eyes. Setting his jaw he took Maguire by the shoulders, forcing the head up to look deep into the old man's rheumy and unseeing eyes.

Lexa could almost see the psychic link snap into place; she had no doubt that Lady Esther would have. Maguire began to whimper, tears leaking down his wrinkled visage, shaking in terror as Tom revisited the horror that Maguire had done.

It took a full five minutes. Lexa was getting nervous; surely the guards would come to investigate any moment. But Tom straightened finally; Maguire slid to the floor.

Tom surveyed the wreck of the man with contempt. Lexa was amazed; in just those few moments Tom had gone from being a teen-aged brat to a man. She could see it in the way he stood, in the determined set of his shoulders. It was as if he'd taken a lesson in what not to do in life from the pile of steaming flesh in front of them.

"The knowledge that this man possessed," Tom said deliberately, "must never be allowed to fall into any one else's hands." He glanced over at Lexa, looking down at her from his near six foot height. "Let's go. I need a shower."

*          *          *

Brennan pulled into the driveway with Tess and Ernest, hoisting their book bags with one hand. "Now, remember what I said, guys: no pestering Jesse. He had a rough night. And you stay with Shalimar or me at all times, right?"

"Right," Ernest said. "Can I go on my computer? It's upstairs in my room."

"Don't see why not," Brennan allowed. After all, it was only when Jesse and Ernest were asleep that the trouble started. Although Brennan would have given a pretty penny to know what had happened to the spectral figure that had escaped last night. He was pretty sure that he and Lexa hadn't destroyed it. And that whole thought made him nervous.

The three of them had searched the house, then the neighborhood for the eerie figure, without a trace. Even Shalimar with her feral senses couldn't locate him, or it, or any sign of its passage through the walls of the guest room in Lady Esther's home. And the rainbow lizards too had vanished from sight, although Shalimar did see one scamper off under a rock in the next door neighbor's garden. It was Lexa's opinion that such creatures would probably be good for it, keeping the insect life under control. Or perhaps the things would vanish in the daylight, like the nightmares themselves. We can only hope.

Once Tom was safely off to school, Jesse had been allowed to sleep off his inadvertent sedation, and had woken up mid-afternoon with a hangover and a temper to match. After poking their noses in every fifteen minutes to check on his slumber earlier in the day—fearing that Tom might fall asleep in class out of boredom—the others quickly learned to leave Jesse alone to suffer in silence.

All except for Lexa. She plopped two white pills on the table in front of him, with a glass of water.

"What's this? Going to drug me again?"

"Aspirin," Lexa informed him. "Take it, or leave it. It's your choice."

Jesse surveyed the white tablets morosely. "Aspirin?"

"Guaranteed. This time."

"There's gonna be a next time?" But he tossed them back, chasing the pills with the contents of the glass before meandering to the living room to drop onto the sofa.

Shalimar stood up as Brennan herded the two Maguire children into the house and dumped the book bags onto the floor beside the umbrella stand. "Lexa and Tom get off okay?"

"Right on schedule," Brennan assured her. "They should get there in about half an hour."

"Good. Keys."

"Keys."

"Give. Tess and I are going shopping."

Brennan lifted his eyebrows. "At a time like this?"

"Especially at a time like this," Shalimar informed him. "I'm thinking that keeping a psionic vampire out of the mixture in this house is a great idea. Lady Esther agrees. Besides, Tess and I need to do some bonding."

Tess fixed the elemental with a gleam in her eye, seizing on the idea with glee. "Yeah. Bonding. Woman stuff."

"Lets me out." Brennan gave in immediately, tossing the keys through the air to Shalimar. She caught them without a blink. "I'll protect the home front."

*          *          *

Shalimar wondered how long it would take Tess to screw up her courage. It actually took quite a while; somewhere after purchasing the shoes and before the cropped halter top that Shalimar doubted that Lady Esther would let her wear but Shalimar got for her anyway. Girl has to have some dreams.

"Jesse's got a girl friend, doesn't he?"

Shalimar had been expecting something along those lines. "No. Not that I know of."

"Then it's me. He doesn't like me. I'm too geeky."

"He likes you fine, honey." Shalimar looked around for a spot that would be relatively private, and settled on the Starbucks. Busy, but few people who would listen to another conversation. Besides, it was inherently adult, something that would appeal to Tess's growing maturity. She sat them down and ordered two lattes. How to bring Tess to reality, but not crush a young girl's dreams? "But you've got to understand, this isn't the life for deep romances. Besides, you already have a guy who's crazy about you."

"Who, Tom? He doesn't care. He just needs me to keep him sane."

Truer words were never spoken, but only the last half of them. "Tess, take another gander," Shalimar said with a smile. "That's not just an 'I need you' look Tom's giving you. That's an 'I need you' look. That's the kind of look that guys get when they can't stand to be without you. The kind of sappy expression that comes when they think they might be losing you to somebody else who makes them look like a total waste of space."

Tess took a deep swig of her latte. "You ever have anybody like that?"

"Uh, yeah."

"What happened?"

Shalimar wished Tess hadn't asked. "He died."

Unfortunately, Tess missed the entire point. "Cool! How romantic! Are you pining away for him? Never gonna look at another man for as long as you live?"

Shalimar wished she'd never brought up the subject. "Life goes on, Tess. You learn to live with it."

Tess sighed. "I can't live without Tom. Literally. Who else is so strong that they can stand me taking a vampire hit off of them every single day?"

"True." Shalimar sat back in her chair, and took a sip of her latte. "Of course, he gets the same from you. If you ask me, it's a pretty good thing that he likes you so much."

"Yeah, but Jesse's cool! I mean, he's been to Italy! And he saves lives every day!"

"Not every single day," Shalimar smiled. "The rest of us do our share."

"Yeah, but I mean, he's even saved my life! And he's got the dreamiest eyes."

Okay, reality check time. "Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be with him twenty-four seven?"

"That would be the greatest—"

"Worrying about whether he was alive or dead?" Shalimar broke in. "Worrying about all the psionic women out there who would be trying to brainwash him, just to get whatever they wanted? Knowing that he'd be away from you most of the time, on some secret project for the Dominion that he couldn't tell you about even if he wanted to?" That last was an exaggeration, but it would get the point across, and Tess wouldn't know the difference.

"I'd go with him," Tess said stoutly. "I could help."

"No, you couldn't," Shalimar told her gently. "You'd be in the way. Any time you were around, Jesse would worry about you and try to protect you. He'd get himself killed saving you." She paused to let that message sink in. "Look at when your father was trying to get at you and Ernest. Think of the last time; Jesse turned himself in to your father to save you from the collar. He sacrificed himself to save you. He's lucky to be alive. One of these times he's not going to be so lucky. Not everybody is."

Tess froze. "What do you mean?" She looked around, as if she could see everyone in the world. "Where's Adam? And Emma? Why hasn't she come?"

Shalimar didn't need to say anything. Tears welled up in Tess's eyes, echoing the ache in Shalimar's heart.

"Now do you see why Jesse doesn't want to get too close to anyone?" Shalimar asked gently. "He's afraid of losing them. We all are."

Not the whole truth, but it would do for now, until Tess was older.

*          *          *

The two heads were pouring over the computer, killing off ogres and gnomes, looking so much like each other: both with sandy hair, both frantically tapping at the controls and shouting to each other. Brennan shook his head in mock dismay. An unknown evil menacing the household, and all Jesse and Ernest could do was to play computer games.

Brennan himself couldn't sit still. He worked off his worry by doing endless rounds of the house, searching for the black specter version of Absalom Maguire, waiting for Lexa and Tom to get back with an answer to this problem. Waiting wasn't something that he did well, and in this case practice wasn't making perfect. Even Lady Esther as an example wasn't working. She had long since finished making minor repairs to Tom's jeans and letting out the hem to Tess's one and only skirt that still fit and had moved on to the ever popular practice of baking cookies. Brennan had snatched a couple as he passed through the kitchen.

Don't need a Stair-Master, he grumbled silently to himself. I'm getting plenty of exercise climbing the stairs to the third floor to check on Jesse and Ernest. He wouldn't admit it to himself, but he was just as worried about Jesse as he was about Ernest. For the Maguire specter had shown plenty of interest in both moleculars. Changing the state of matter was something that Maguire had specialized in, and the pair possessed gifts that was right up Maguire's alley. Sure, Jesse seemed all right now, no worse the wear for the inadvertent over-dosing of last night, but Mutant X didn't have a particularly good track record when it came to these molecular creations.

He was grateful to Shalimar for taking Tess off their hands for a bit. The girl had virtually nothing to do with the mess that was taking place, and her infatuation with Jesse had become more than a bit awkward. It was a phase, but a difficult one since no one wanted to hurt her more than she'd already been hurt. The kid and her brother had been to hell and back. But Shalimar would know the right thing to do, the right thing to say. Cripes, couldn't Tess see that Tom was wild about her? What was with teen-age girls?

Although in a way, Brennan could blame the whole mess on Tess. If Tess hadn't been so infatuated with Jesse, then Tom wouldn't have become wildly jealous. His psychic control wouldn't have eroded, and the link to both moleculars—first Ernest, then Jesse—wouldn't have occurred. And Brennan wouldn't be here, searching for a nightmare made solid.

But if Tess hadn't cared so much about Jesse in the first place, then Jesse and the rest of Mutant X might not be alive.

Too many 'if's'. Time to check on Lexa and Tom driving home from the Bush Rehabilitation Center. He thumbed his comm. ring. "Lexa?"

"Here. Has the specter re-appeared?"

"Not yet. Quiet as a tomb around here."

"Can't say that I care for your choice of descriptive phrases, Brennan."

Brennan ignored her complaint. "Your end?"

"Looking good. Got in and out without a problem."
            "Tom?"

"He thinks he has what we need." Lexa stole a look at her passenger. Tom had been extraordinarily quiet since making their exit from the Bush Rehabilitation Center. His newfound maturity was still with him, and Lexa found it disconcerting to see within the fifteen year old. The bleak expression, too, scared her. And that from a woman who had seen too much to be easily scared. "We'll be home soon."

*          *          *

Tess trudged into the house, carrying her share of the purchases, and disappeared into her room, a grim and thoughtful expression on her own face. Brennan met Shalimar a the door after the girl moved past him almost unseeing. "Shal?"

"The heartbreak of young love," Shalimar said wistfully. "Tough at first. She'll get over it pretty fast. We talked for a long time." She sighed. "She's a smart kid. Smarter than I was at that age."

"She gonna get over Jesse?"

"Oh, yes. Like I said, she's smarter than I was."

There was an odd note to Shalimar's voice, and Brennan caught it. "You reminiscing?"

"Yeah."

"Anybody I know?"

"You might say that." Shalimar smiled wistfully. "There were a few. Adam among them."

"Adam? Shal, he was older than you. Did he know?"

She grinned, a quick change of pace. "Probably. And was too smart to say anything about it to me at fourteen. I was a mess." She grinned again, a quick and mercurial flash. "Tell Jesse to be as smart as Adam."

"And Lady Esther," Brennan added, nodding toward the kitchen. "You think she knows?"

Shalimar furrowed her brows. "I'm beginning to think that that lady knows everything about her kids. She was the one who suggested that I take Tess shopping."

*          *          *

Everyone in the house was on edge as night approached. The nightmares would start again as soon as Tom and the moleculars fell asleep. Having the two sides on different sleep schedules was an unacceptable option—it was only a band-aid solution, and not a permanent fix. All knew that destroying the specter and then finding how to put another neural inhibitor into Tom's head was the only way that the patchwork family would survive. And Lady Esther would accept nothing less.

Tom remained reticent throughout the evening, refusing to talk about what he had learned from Tess and Ernest's father's insane thoughts. Lady Esther held them back from pushing; "That was a difficult thing for Tom to do. That was the man who tortured him, and who tortured you, Tess, as well as the rest of you. I suspect that he's found out things about his childhood, things that he'd forgotten but that Dr. Maguire kept records of. And I believe that a number of the horrible things that reside in Tom's brain came directly from Dr. Maguire." She clucked in commiseration. "Tom needs space. You need to give it to him."

"We need answers," Lexa disagreed. "That thing is coming back. We need to be prepared."

"And we will be." Lady Esther allowed her gaze to swing across the group. She lit upon Jesse. "You speak to him, Mr. Kilmartin."

"Me?" Jesse was barely able to keep from yelping. Me, the guy that Tom thinks is stealing his girl? Me, the guy his subconscious hates so much that he sends these realistic nightmares to remove me permanently from the playing field? Jesse carefully avoided looking at Tess. Lady Esther would know best. Adam had trusted her; Jesse and the rest of Mutant X needed to do the same. He swallowed hard. "Yes, ma'am."

*          *          *

There was no answer to Jesse's knock at the door. He tried again, then pushed his way in. "Tom?"

Tom wasn't lying on the bed, playing video games. Nor was he listening to CD's, or anything else that Jesse would have expected. Instead he was sitting on the edge of his bed, covers still rumpled from this morning, staring out through the window at the stars that had started to appear when the sun made it clear that the day was over. Tom hadn't turned the lights on. There was just enough moonlight to make out his tall and gangly shape.

"Tom?"

At first Jesse thought that Tom hadn't heard him, but no. "I should have known it would be you."

"What did you expect? You wouldn't talk to Lexa on the trip back. You want somebody else to talk to, besides me?" Please, please let him want somebody else.

Tom sighed. "No. I guess you're the right one."

Shit. All right, get it over with. "What did you learn from Maguire?"

"That basically I'm screwed."

Jesse tried to digest this. "Tom, it's not hopeless. Even if Maguire didn't have the answer we need, that doesn't mean that we quit. We have other ways to find out who developed the neural inhibitor, how they did it. Maguire wasn't the only one—"

"I found out how it can be done."

Jesse quietly pulled the desk chair around and sat on it backwards, more to give himself time to think of what to say than anything else. "And I take it that it's not going to be easy."

"Damn near impossible."

"Care to elaborate?"

Tom finally turned to stare at Jesse, and the molecular didn't like the bleak look in the psionic's eyes. "It's you or me, man."

There were times when silence was the best policy, and this was one of them. Jesse let his head rest on his arms on top of the back of the chair, waiting for Tom to continue.

It took a while, but Tom broke the silence. "It takes a molecular to build another neural inhibitor and put it inside my head."

"Keep going. We've got the molecular. What's the problem?"

"You know how to build a neural inhibitor?"

"I can learn. You get that info from Maguire's mind?"

"Yeah."

"Then what's the problem?"

"Takes a Maguire Collar, man."

Jesse felt his blood run cold, and he now understood why Tom was sitting here, alone, in the darkness of his room. The only place that he truly felt comfortable, safe, secure.

Tom didn't remember his childhood. The earliest memories he had were of hospital rooms, and syringes, and adults in white coats forcing him to do things he didn't want to do. They were the ones who had given him the original neural inhibitor, a device that made all the horrible nightmares go away. At twelve he understood that they were trying to keep him alive, keep him sane, but then the people in white coats went away. They were replaced by Absalom Maguire.

Maguire only saw Tom as a tool to be used in his quest for the proof of the ultimate genetic theory. And he didn't much care whether Tom remained sane or not. Not, for Maguire, would probably have been preferable. Then Maguire wouldn't have had to put up the pretense of talking Tom into doing whatever it was that Maguire thought needed doing. And life pretty much went downhill from there. So much so that when Jesse first met Tom, both prisoners of Maguire, Tom had asked Jesse to end his misery on a permanent basis.

Fortunately for both of them, Jesse hadn't been in any position to comply. Jesse was forced to make things worse, to remove the neural inhibitor with his own molecular gift and nearly causing everyone around them to go insane along with Tom. It was only through the intervention of the rest of Mutant X that the catastrophe had been averted.

And then Tess came along with her psionic vampire powers, needing Tom as much as he needed her. Each teen-ager acted as a check on each other, a balance, Jesse feared, that no longer applied.

Jesse tried to stay casual. "I seem to recall that the first time I met you, you were asking me to kill you. You've got to get over this death wish, Tom. It's getting boring."

Tom sighed. "How's this for not so boring? In order to save my life, we get to kill you with old CrazyHead Maguire's collar instead. And then Tess hates me because I killed the man she loves, assuming that I live through what you're going to do to me. And that's what Tess and I get to live with for the rest of our lives, tied to each other. Lose-lose situation, Jesse. Might as well cut our losses. Kill me, and make it quick and painless. I'd appreciate it."

Jesse remembered that collar. He remembered that collar very well, the black leather with the silver wires shot through it. He remembered doing things with his powers enhanced beyond all reason by that collar. And most of all, he remembered the sheer agony that the collar produced in Maguire's victims.

Tom remembered it, too. Tom had felt the vicious caress of the black leather, had felt his brains leaking out through his ears as Maguire dialed up the juice in an effort to obtain results. Time had dimmed the memory, but the specter had revived it with a vengeance.

But—"Need to find another way," Jesse said. "Aside from the obvious, we don't have a collar. Not necessarily a bad thing." A thought struck him. "I don't suppose you know how to build a collar?"

Tom laughed bitterly. "Yeah, I do. Pretty good for a kid's who's flunking math." He finally looked squarely at Jesse Kilmartin, the man his girl was in love with. "Now you want to kill me?"