Chapter 6
Jesse Kilmartin sat in a window seat in the rear of the plane, dressed in new clothes, and with a slightly different look. The other three members of Mutant X were in the middle of the plane. Due to the last minute booking, this was the only possible seating arrangement. He had purposely assigned himself in the lone seat in the back of the plane. He needed to think about and sort through all the new information in his head.
He sighed and straightened in his seat, and watched the clouds drift by below the plane. Now that they had a plan, the foremost thing in is mind was Lexa's statement from the night before. Jeez, had it only been last night that they had found out that Adam was a clone? That the Dominion facility had been destroyed? That Sanctuary had been destroyed?
Jesse's body mimicked his thoughts. He sat, fidgeting. He snapped his fingers, cracked his knuckles, then rapped them against the window. He paused a moment. Something was off. He looked closer at his hand. Hmm. The bruising wasn't as bad as he thought it would be. His hand barely hurt.
"Everybody here except Jesse is living under a death sentence." The statement came back to the forefront of his thoughts. Why had he been the only one whose genetic structure was fixed? Why not the others? He might not be a geneticist, but maybe, once the medbay was established in the new Sanctuary, he could ferret out Adam's research. He'd have to. Lexa's expiry date was coming up soon. He didn't even know when Shal and Brennan's were. The change to his structure had obviously happened before Adam had had to go into hiding, so getting a hold on the test results shouldn't be too hard. Those files had been catalogued into Sanctuary's roaming data base ages ago. Maybe with his fresh eyes, he could figure out which test had stabilized his structure.
He groaned, frustrated, earning a look from the middle aged man sitting beside him. To even start that project, he'd first have to get into the new Sanctuary. Access to the location would prove to be a bit of a problem for him. Oh, they could get there with no problem; he knew exactly where it was, even though the building they'd have to enter wasn't on any map. The problem was going to come when they entered the building. He didn't think he could do it.
No. No. He abruptly reigned in his thoughts. He had resolved to remove the phrase "I can't" from his vocabulary after Brennan had saved him when he'd gotten shot. Brennan had taken a huge risk and entered his mind to help him fight the customized bullet that threatened his life. Afterward, Jesse had realized how many times he'd said "I can't" to Brennan, who had shrugged it off and told him that he could. Now, he had decided to replace "I can't" with a mantra Adam had once said to him: "The difficult we can do. The impossible just takes a little longer."
The difficult we can do. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Well, they didn't have that kind of time. He'd just have to find a way to make the impossible happen a little quicker.
Meanwhile, 12 rows up, Lexa, Brennan and Shalimar were discussing the data that Jesse had printed out for them to go over on the plane. Jesse had his own copy, but none doubted that he had already gone over and absorbed the information.
"This isn't going to be as bad as I first thought. Most of the stuff we'll need is pre-fabricated. All we have to do is pick it up and install it." Brennan was going through the list of items the location still needed.
Lexa, sitting on his left, along the aisle, was doing the same. "Jesse was right. There are a few things that we'll need all four of us to move, but it'll be like moving into a new house – just with a lot of stuff. Hey, the electrical system doesn't look too bad. You can get the generator started. I can take care of the welding."
Shalimar nodded, skimming ahead. There were still 2 hours left in the flight. They could outline who does what later. She stopped when she got to the page that provided details about the geographic location of what would be the new sanctuary. The caves were located in a fairly densely populated area. Given that the original sanctuary had been exposed, she had an understandable concern about the security of the perimeter. The place was located under a rare remote location in the area, which was 30 miles outside Philadelphia. There was only once house in the area, providing a clear perimeter for 3 ½ miles – again, unique in a densely populated area. The landowner must be pretty rich, she thought. The house was a 7500 square foot mansion owned by Noah Kilmar –
"Guys, guys…there's a mansion on the land above the caves."
Brennan looked up. "We'll have to be careful then. Keep an eye on them and make sure they don't see us."
"Yeah, we will, but the mansion's owned by Noah Kilmartin." Shalimar's voice was a mix of emotions, surprise, curiosity and hostility, as she pointed to the information on her copy.
Brennan stared. "Jesus…"
Lexa looked up. "Any relation to Jesse?"
Brennan flipped to the page Shalimar had indicated. "Yeah, Jesse's father."
"Jesse's parents are still alive?" Lexa's voice softened. "Jesse's family was never mentioned in his files from the Dominion. I guess I just assumed he was an orphan or abandoned like us."
"I'm not surprised there was nothing in those files. The Kilmartins have enough money to keep that type of information hidden if they want to. Jesse doesn't talk about them very much either, not even to me. All I know about Jesse's family is that they turned him over to Genomex when he was 15. When Adam and I managed to get him out it was more than a year and a half later, and he was half dead. That was almost, oh, 7 years ago. Jesse has his new family, now. He doesn't talk about his old one." Shalimar's voice was laced with her protective instinct for Jesse.
"Plus, there was that whole incident a few years ago," Brennan added. He had been listening solemnly to Shalimar's brief recounting of how Jesse had come to Mutant X.
Lexa raised an eyebrow, silently asking for more information.
"Jesse's dad made contact with him, but it turned out he only wanted to use him to hide information he was using to blackmail other people," Brennan explained. "I don't know about Jesse, but I haven't heard anything about the guy since."
Lexa sat back in her seat, digesting the information she'd just received. "So we'll just have to keep a closer eye out, make sure Jesse's dad doesn't try anything funny."
"I think it's going to be a little more difficult than that."
"Why?"
Shalimar pointed to a place further down on the page. "The only way into the cave right now is through the mansion. We'll either have to sneak in or knock on the front door. Given the amount of security that place is bound to have, and the fact that we don't have any nifty little toys, it'll probably have to be option number two."
Brennan watched Shalimar as she spoke. She was flexing her fingers. He smiled to himself. If she were a cat, she would be baring and retracting her claws. He loved her fierceness and protectiveness. It made him want to hold her close and keep her from all harm, even though he knew she was well able to take care of her self. He would have put his arm around her and pulled her close then, but he could sense the anxious energy radiating from her. She'd be pacing if she could.
Brennan's ruminations were interrupted by Lexa. She was flipping through the information. "I thought the whole cave was more than 100 feet underground. Is there an elevator to the house or something? Even if there was, why would Adam do that? He must have known how Jesse felt about his family. It's too much of a security risk, anyway."
Brennan examined his own copy of the information. "No, look. The main entrance is half a mile from the house, but there's a security grid guarding every single wall, except for one tiny little place under the house."
"You mean like the internal force fields that were inside sanctuary," Lexa mumbled, recalling her own experience with the fields that were immune to mutant and conventional powers alike. Jesse had had to surround her with one when her implant had been reactivated and she was a danger to the team. Her eyes widened slightly with realization. "Jesse's the only one who can get in."
Shalimar thought for a moment. "You're right. He'd have to phase into the cave. But that's through 100 feet of solid rock. That would be pretty damn hard for even Jesse to do. Plus, what if Jesse wasn't around to do it? I hate to say it, but what if Jesse had died? There would be no way to get in."
Lexa leaned over, lowering her voice to a whisper, to unconsciously indicating that Shalimar's voice had steadily risen in volume, was getting a little too loud, even on the noisy plane. "Think about it. It actually makes a lot of sense. If there were ever a big battle, you'd fight to the death for your friends, Shal. Brennan would never back down from a fight, and he'd fight right alongside you. Adam didn't know me, or if he did, he didn't trust me, when he built the place. Jesse's abilities to phase and mass would make him the most likely to survive. If Jesse were dead, that would mean that the rest of the team probably was too. That's probably why Jesse's passwords activated the file. Since we need Jesse in order to get in, Adam had to make sure that Jesse was alive before he gave us the information. My guess is that, if he'd had more time, he would have found ways to let you guys in too."
Running his hand across his face and through his hair, Brennan groaned. "Jeez, this is such a maze."
"I know, and we're only halfway through this stuff Jesse printed. I wonder what's in the other half." Shalimar flipped through the remaining pages, stopping when she found something interesting. She glanced through the next few pages.
"It's Adam's personal file on Jesse."
"But Adam kept his personal files under lock and firewall?"
"He did. How'd you know, Lex?"
Lexa blushed slightly, but recovered quickly. "When I first got to Mutant X, it was my job to find out whatever I could. I could never crack Adam's personal files though. I managed to access some of his private research, though, when I let myself get captured by the Dominion, but I still couldn't even touch his personal files"
Brennan nodded. He knew that Lexa cared about Jesse. He also knew that her suicide mission into the Dominion facility meant that she had some loyalty to Mutant X, but he still wasn't sure what he thought about her. "What else did you do that you didn't tell us about?"
From her seat between them, Shalimar intervened, before the question could escalate into a full-blown argument. "Hey, you know, given how secretive Jesse is about his own past, I wonder why he printed this file."
"Maybe he didn't know he was printing it. This symbol on the first page shows that it's a linked file."
"Jesse's too smart for that. There has to be a reason he let us see this file."
"Maybe this is his way of telling us about his past, why it'll be hard for him to see his father again. Maybe he doesn't trust himself to be able to do it, and he wants us to know why."
Lexa and Brennan were silent. They looked at Shalimar for a moment and saw something in her eyes. They weren't sure what it was, but a tacit agreement was reached, and with a slight nod, the three of them began to read Jesse's file.