Missions and Explanations
The sun was blazing in the early morning and they were all gathered in the kitchen for breakfast. There was no mood for small talk and they mostly ate in silence, Shalimar drinking milk, Cat taking a lifetime to butter some toast, Brennan, Jesse and Revolution picking at their eggs and Emma staring at the bowl of fruit in front of her, apparently undecided on what to pick. The perfume of Adam's favorite green tea and mint blend scented the air.
"I keep seeing it over and over." Emma gave up choosing any fruit. Hunger evaded her thoroughly. "It was horrible."
All heads turned to the young psionic, and Shalimar, always protective, reached out to hold Emma's hands.
"I thought I had stopped you before you could see inside the bedroom." Jesse ran his hands through his thick golden hair and closed his eyes, trying to ward off the haunting image of the day before. "Honestly, Adam," he said, turning to address his friend and mentor, "I've never seen anything so gruesome."
The older man's dark eyes closed up on Jesse's. "Tell me."
"The apartment was like an oven, but the fire was blue and small," interjected Riley, the team's telekinetic. "It was only later that it went up in flames."
"And the body?" Asked Adam.
"There wasn't much left of it," answered Jesse. "Mostly the extremities, like feet and hands. It was lying on the bed and the thighs, torso, up to the neck and lower face..." the young molecular shuddered at the gory memory. "It was torched, burnt to a cinder."
"And you say the rest of the apartment showed signs of burning too?" asked Adam, a puzzled look on his face.
"Yes, every piece of furniture, every appliance, was surrounded by the blue fire," added Emma. "They were all blackening, turning into cinders and coal..."
"...but nothing exploded in normal flames and smoke," completed the young Revolution. "It was only later that the heat got so bad the place blew up like bomb."
"That's very odd! It's different of any case of spontaneous combustion I've ever heard of." Adam was puzzled.
"That's because it wasn't common spontaneous human combustion, if this phenomenon can ever be called common." The voice came from above, from the open skylight overlooking the kitchen. A winged creature was perched on the edge. All eyes turned to the voice and they all stood up to greet their grieving friend.
Cat couldn't believe what she saw. That feral was certainly unique. She looked at Rev and mouthed "What's that?" Revolution gave her a little smile and mouthed back, "Later."
The falcon woman alighted and was immediately enveloped into the arms of the blonde feline feral. Angela buried her head on the cat woman's shoulder and encircled her in a tight embrace. They held to each other, sharing the loss of friend and lover. "How do you feel, Tweety?" asked Shalimar.
Angela breathed deep, gently pushed the cat back and gave her a little smile. "It hurts like hell, Sylvester, but I'll survive."
"Have you eaten?" asked Emma.
"No, I don't think I can hold anything solid inside for the moment," Angela turned to the black clad man leaning against the counter, "but this herb tea of yours smells great, Adam."
"I'll get you some," he said, "and I agree with you. This whole affair doesn't sound like anything I've ever read or heard about SHC."
"What's SHC?" Asked Cat, nibbling at her toast.
"Spontaneous Human Combustion. It is the ability of the human body to blister or smoke or ignite in the absence of any external source of ignition," answered Angela, eyeing the one member of the team she didn't know yet. "The fire is of internal origin."
"Many say it's been recorded as early as in the Bible. In the last three centuries, there have been as much as two hundred documented cases. The first one seems to be from the fifteenth century." Adam handed the bird feral a mug of steaming tea.
"Yes! Jonas Dupont published De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis," added Angela.
Revolution and Cat had question marks drawn all over t heir faces. "The what?" asked the two in one voice.
"A collection of cases and studies," explained Adam, sipping his tea.
The whole team seemed enthralled by the weird tale. It sounded like a horror short story. Brennan's face lit up like a lamp. "Wait a minute! Do you remember Dicken's Bleak House, Adam?" Literature was the young mutant's field of expertise.
"Sure! The death of the heavy drinking Krook!"
"I read it in high school," interjected Emma. "Krook burned to a crisp."
"Over the years, several other cases were documented: Countess Cornelia de Bandi Cesenate, Anna Martin, Dr. J. Irving Bentley, and maybe the most famous of all, Mary Reeser, who torched up while seating in her rocking chair." Adam was in full professor mode.
"Did you memorize all these names?" Revolution was amazed.
"I read about SHC once, long ago."
"And you kept it all in your head?" the girl insisted.
"Pretty much."
"Big head..." she muttered just loud enough to get chuckles all around.
"All of these cases," Angela took over the makeshift classroom, "have one very strange thing in common, though. The fire never spread away from the body. Only the victim's immediate vicinity was scorched."
Nodding his head, Adam picked up the tale as if it were a tennis ball. "Yes, victims have burnt up in bed without the sheets catching fire, clothing worn is often barely singed, and flammable materials only inches away remain untouched."
By then, the rest of the team was watching as the two doctors in the house tossed the narrative like a volleyball from one to the other. 'This is ridiculous. I'll end up with a stiff neck!' thought Riley Jackson.
"Have you ever seen the aftermath of one of these cases, Adam?"
"No, they're extremely rare, surrounded in mystery," the older man answered. "They're a favorite of ocultists and alternative sciences adepts."
"Well, for your information, I have," affirmed the bird feral, then turned to the other mutants. "In my country, Brazil, medical students are required to spend time as interns in public hospital ERs. In big metropolitan areas like Rio or São Paulo, it's almost like combat training, due to shootouts, violent muggings, gang wars, and so on. Brazilian doctors have even gone to Israel to learn combat trauma techniques. I've met one who went as an invited professor."
Angela paused, collected her thoughts and proceeded with the tale. Now, even Adam was enthralled. "Up North, where I was born and raised, the main problems are malnutrition, parasitic infections, death in childbirth and in early childhood. Well, every misfortune squalor and filth can bring."
"You were born in Brazil? Neat." Cat interrupted. "And where did you see this combustion thing happen?"
"In a shack over the marshes, near Recife, my home town," answered the bird woman. "I was an intern in the public hospital ER there and we were called on site by a frantic policeman. Guys, policemen in my country have seen it all and then some. This one was out of his mind with fear. He was babbling something about demons, evil spirits, fire from hell, this kind of thing."
Cat's eyes were like saucers. "Demons, really? Wow!"
"The African legacy is strong in Brazil, Cat." Adam, in full professor mode, was hard to stop. "The slaves brought their beliefs with them, but the Portuguese regarded their Nature-based gods as demons and imposed Roman Catholicism on them. They mixed the two theologies and created a third, composed religion. Fascinating, really."
Angela picked up the narrative again. "The on site team, myself included, hopped on the ambulance and sped up there." The bird feral closed her eyes, remembering a very shocking scene. "We were expecting a full blaze, firemen, the works, but there was nothing, just the one police car that attended the neighbor's call. We entered the shack and, on a cot, the remains of a man were melted to the mattress. I could see it had been a man by the size and shape of the feet and hands. That was it, there was nothing left but the hands and feet. Everything else was torched." She looked around, as if she was building up the suspense like a good storyteller. "Even stranger was the fact that only the spot where the body had been lying was scorched. The sheets around it hadn't been even singed! It was unbelievable! Pathology determined that the fire had to be at least at 3,000 F to achieve that level of obliteration. Folks, a crematorium heat is 2,000 F tops!"
Shalimar and Cat shuddered, their pyrophobia shooting up several degrees, together with the description of the combustion heat. "And you say nothing around the body had been burned?" asked Shalimar.
"That's impossible! This kind of heat is beyond the point of explosion, when everything simply burst into flames!" Jesse's eyes were as wide open as everybody else's.
"That's not impossible, that's typical!" counteracted Adam. "It is something all SHC records have in common: nothing else is burned, sometimes, not even the victim's clothes."
Angela cut in, "That's why I say..."
"...this was not a case of Spontaneous Human Combustion..." Adam interrupted.
"...not as they've been recorded time and again!" Angela shot back.
'Oh, they're at it again!' thought Revolution, running her hands through her hair.
During the whole conversation, Adam had been calculating and forming a plan of action, his mind working in many levels at once. "Very well, here's what I want you to do. Brennan, you, Angela and Shalimar will go to the loft and look for anything off kilter. Mainly, the presence of accelerants. It they've been used, and I very much doubt it, Shalimar will be able to smell them." He turned to Jesse and Cat. "We are paying a visit to the morgue. I want samples from the body. I want to be sure it is really Allison and maybe I can identify any unnatural causes for the combustion, if there was any."
"Adam, I'm sorry, I don't mean to question you..." Angela stood up slowly and looked directly into her friend and teacher's eyes, "but you know I should be going to the morgue. You'd be in a better position to see clues I wouldn't notice, and I can collect samples as well as you."
"I know, but not in this case."
"I've passed Pathology with flying colors, Adam. And I had a nickname for each corpse I dissected with my right hand while eating a hamburger with my left!" Angela was intense.
"This is no Jack, Jill or Joe whose body has ended up in a Med. School lab, Angela." Adam could be equally intense, if not more. "This is Allison we're talking about."
"All the more reason to do it right. Falconer, trust your bird-of-prey."
Adam took a deep breath. He knew all along she was right, he just wished he could spare her this fresh amount of suffering. Biting his upper lip in a very Adamesque gesture . "You know I trust you, Angela," he relented. "So be it. You go to the morgue, but take Brennan along. And Jesse. Today is Sunday, there must be just a skeleton crew there. Take the samples and come back fast." He looked around. "Cat, you're with me and Shalimar. We will search the loft and see what we can come up with." Adam, then, turned his eyes to Emma and Revolution. "Riley, I need your hacking skills. Break into the police, DA's office and Medical Examiner's communications. And their databanks. I want to know everything there is about this case first hand. And I want a research on all SHC cases and odd fire cases ever reported. The latest cases, especially involving VIPs are priority. There was one case in Monaco last year involving an extremely wealthy banker named Safra. I want all files. You and Emma are on it. I want to know if important people have been bursting into flames lately."
The members of Mutant X were leaving the kitchen to prepare for their different missions. "Tweety?" Adam called.
Angela stopped by the door but didn't turn to her mentor. "Yes, falconer?"
"Fly high," he said.
"Seek peace," she answered.
The sun was blazing in the early morning and they were all gathered in the kitchen for breakfast. There was no mood for small talk and they mostly ate in silence, Shalimar drinking milk, Cat taking a lifetime to butter some toast, Brennan, Jesse and Revolution picking at their eggs and Emma staring at the bowl of fruit in front of her, apparently undecided on what to pick. The perfume of Adam's favorite green tea and mint blend scented the air.
"I keep seeing it over and over." Emma gave up choosing any fruit. Hunger evaded her thoroughly. "It was horrible."
All heads turned to the young psionic, and Shalimar, always protective, reached out to hold Emma's hands.
"I thought I had stopped you before you could see inside the bedroom." Jesse ran his hands through his thick golden hair and closed his eyes, trying to ward off the haunting image of the day before. "Honestly, Adam," he said, turning to address his friend and mentor, "I've never seen anything so gruesome."
The older man's dark eyes closed up on Jesse's. "Tell me."
"The apartment was like an oven, but the fire was blue and small," interjected Riley, the team's telekinetic. "It was only later that it went up in flames."
"And the body?" Asked Adam.
"There wasn't much left of it," answered Jesse. "Mostly the extremities, like feet and hands. It was lying on the bed and the thighs, torso, up to the neck and lower face..." the young molecular shuddered at the gory memory. "It was torched, burnt to a cinder."
"And you say the rest of the apartment showed signs of burning too?" asked Adam, a puzzled look on his face.
"Yes, every piece of furniture, every appliance, was surrounded by the blue fire," added Emma. "They were all blackening, turning into cinders and coal..."
"...but nothing exploded in normal flames and smoke," completed the young Revolution. "It was only later that the heat got so bad the place blew up like bomb."
"That's very odd! It's different of any case of spontaneous combustion I've ever heard of." Adam was puzzled.
"That's because it wasn't common spontaneous human combustion, if this phenomenon can ever be called common." The voice came from above, from the open skylight overlooking the kitchen. A winged creature was perched on the edge. All eyes turned to the voice and they all stood up to greet their grieving friend.
Cat couldn't believe what she saw. That feral was certainly unique. She looked at Rev and mouthed "What's that?" Revolution gave her a little smile and mouthed back, "Later."
The falcon woman alighted and was immediately enveloped into the arms of the blonde feline feral. Angela buried her head on the cat woman's shoulder and encircled her in a tight embrace. They held to each other, sharing the loss of friend and lover. "How do you feel, Tweety?" asked Shalimar.
Angela breathed deep, gently pushed the cat back and gave her a little smile. "It hurts like hell, Sylvester, but I'll survive."
"Have you eaten?" asked Emma.
"No, I don't think I can hold anything solid inside for the moment," Angela turned to the black clad man leaning against the counter, "but this herb tea of yours smells great, Adam."
"I'll get you some," he said, "and I agree with you. This whole affair doesn't sound like anything I've ever read or heard about SHC."
"What's SHC?" Asked Cat, nibbling at her toast.
"Spontaneous Human Combustion. It is the ability of the human body to blister or smoke or ignite in the absence of any external source of ignition," answered Angela, eyeing the one member of the team she didn't know yet. "The fire is of internal origin."
"Many say it's been recorded as early as in the Bible. In the last three centuries, there have been as much as two hundred documented cases. The first one seems to be from the fifteenth century." Adam handed the bird feral a mug of steaming tea.
"Yes! Jonas Dupont published De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis," added Angela.
Revolution and Cat had question marks drawn all over t heir faces. "The what?" asked the two in one voice.
"A collection of cases and studies," explained Adam, sipping his tea.
The whole team seemed enthralled by the weird tale. It sounded like a horror short story. Brennan's face lit up like a lamp. "Wait a minute! Do you remember Dicken's Bleak House, Adam?" Literature was the young mutant's field of expertise.
"Sure! The death of the heavy drinking Krook!"
"I read it in high school," interjected Emma. "Krook burned to a crisp."
"Over the years, several other cases were documented: Countess Cornelia de Bandi Cesenate, Anna Martin, Dr. J. Irving Bentley, and maybe the most famous of all, Mary Reeser, who torched up while seating in her rocking chair." Adam was in full professor mode.
"Did you memorize all these names?" Revolution was amazed.
"I read about SHC once, long ago."
"And you kept it all in your head?" the girl insisted.
"Pretty much."
"Big head..." she muttered just loud enough to get chuckles all around.
"All of these cases," Angela took over the makeshift classroom, "have one very strange thing in common, though. The fire never spread away from the body. Only the victim's immediate vicinity was scorched."
Nodding his head, Adam picked up the tale as if it were a tennis ball. "Yes, victims have burnt up in bed without the sheets catching fire, clothing worn is often barely singed, and flammable materials only inches away remain untouched."
By then, the rest of the team was watching as the two doctors in the house tossed the narrative like a volleyball from one to the other. 'This is ridiculous. I'll end up with a stiff neck!' thought Riley Jackson.
"Have you ever seen the aftermath of one of these cases, Adam?"
"No, they're extremely rare, surrounded in mystery," the older man answered. "They're a favorite of ocultists and alternative sciences adepts."
"Well, for your information, I have," affirmed the bird feral, then turned to the other mutants. "In my country, Brazil, medical students are required to spend time as interns in public hospital ERs. In big metropolitan areas like Rio or São Paulo, it's almost like combat training, due to shootouts, violent muggings, gang wars, and so on. Brazilian doctors have even gone to Israel to learn combat trauma techniques. I've met one who went as an invited professor."
Angela paused, collected her thoughts and proceeded with the tale. Now, even Adam was enthralled. "Up North, where I was born and raised, the main problems are malnutrition, parasitic infections, death in childbirth and in early childhood. Well, every misfortune squalor and filth can bring."
"You were born in Brazil? Neat." Cat interrupted. "And where did you see this combustion thing happen?"
"In a shack over the marshes, near Recife, my home town," answered the bird woman. "I was an intern in the public hospital ER there and we were called on site by a frantic policeman. Guys, policemen in my country have seen it all and then some. This one was out of his mind with fear. He was babbling something about demons, evil spirits, fire from hell, this kind of thing."
Cat's eyes were like saucers. "Demons, really? Wow!"
"The African legacy is strong in Brazil, Cat." Adam, in full professor mode, was hard to stop. "The slaves brought their beliefs with them, but the Portuguese regarded their Nature-based gods as demons and imposed Roman Catholicism on them. They mixed the two theologies and created a third, composed religion. Fascinating, really."
Angela picked up the narrative again. "The on site team, myself included, hopped on the ambulance and sped up there." The bird feral closed her eyes, remembering a very shocking scene. "We were expecting a full blaze, firemen, the works, but there was nothing, just the one police car that attended the neighbor's call. We entered the shack and, on a cot, the remains of a man were melted to the mattress. I could see it had been a man by the size and shape of the feet and hands. That was it, there was nothing left but the hands and feet. Everything else was torched." She looked around, as if she was building up the suspense like a good storyteller. "Even stranger was the fact that only the spot where the body had been lying was scorched. The sheets around it hadn't been even singed! It was unbelievable! Pathology determined that the fire had to be at least at 3,000 F to achieve that level of obliteration. Folks, a crematorium heat is 2,000 F tops!"
Shalimar and Cat shuddered, their pyrophobia shooting up several degrees, together with the description of the combustion heat. "And you say nothing around the body had been burned?" asked Shalimar.
"That's impossible! This kind of heat is beyond the point of explosion, when everything simply burst into flames!" Jesse's eyes were as wide open as everybody else's.
"That's not impossible, that's typical!" counteracted Adam. "It is something all SHC records have in common: nothing else is burned, sometimes, not even the victim's clothes."
Angela cut in, "That's why I say..."
"...this was not a case of Spontaneous Human Combustion..." Adam interrupted.
"...not as they've been recorded time and again!" Angela shot back.
'Oh, they're at it again!' thought Revolution, running her hands through her hair.
During the whole conversation, Adam had been calculating and forming a plan of action, his mind working in many levels at once. "Very well, here's what I want you to do. Brennan, you, Angela and Shalimar will go to the loft and look for anything off kilter. Mainly, the presence of accelerants. It they've been used, and I very much doubt it, Shalimar will be able to smell them." He turned to Jesse and Cat. "We are paying a visit to the morgue. I want samples from the body. I want to be sure it is really Allison and maybe I can identify any unnatural causes for the combustion, if there was any."
"Adam, I'm sorry, I don't mean to question you..." Angela stood up slowly and looked directly into her friend and teacher's eyes, "but you know I should be going to the morgue. You'd be in a better position to see clues I wouldn't notice, and I can collect samples as well as you."
"I know, but not in this case."
"I've passed Pathology with flying colors, Adam. And I had a nickname for each corpse I dissected with my right hand while eating a hamburger with my left!" Angela was intense.
"This is no Jack, Jill or Joe whose body has ended up in a Med. School lab, Angela." Adam could be equally intense, if not more. "This is Allison we're talking about."
"All the more reason to do it right. Falconer, trust your bird-of-prey."
Adam took a deep breath. He knew all along she was right, he just wished he could spare her this fresh amount of suffering. Biting his upper lip in a very Adamesque gesture . "You know I trust you, Angela," he relented. "So be it. You go to the morgue, but take Brennan along. And Jesse. Today is Sunday, there must be just a skeleton crew there. Take the samples and come back fast." He looked around. "Cat, you're with me and Shalimar. We will search the loft and see what we can come up with." Adam, then, turned his eyes to Emma and Revolution. "Riley, I need your hacking skills. Break into the police, DA's office and Medical Examiner's communications. And their databanks. I want to know everything there is about this case first hand. And I want a research on all SHC cases and odd fire cases ever reported. The latest cases, especially involving VIPs are priority. There was one case in Monaco last year involving an extremely wealthy banker named Safra. I want all files. You and Emma are on it. I want to know if important people have been bursting into flames lately."
The members of Mutant X were leaving the kitchen to prepare for their different missions. "Tweety?" Adam called.
Angela stopped by the door but didn't turn to her mentor. "Yes, falconer?"
"Fly high," he said.
"Seek peace," she answered.