Chapter 1
Voices, so many voices, but not just sounds, feelings, pounding away, as if all wanting to be heard at once. Whispering, screaming, but not at the listener, they were just there, unaware of someone listening to every word.
"Taya, Taya, are we listening? The performance will be in two weeks and if you would rather be away with fairies than learn your lines, then you will not be playing Titania and be sent back to the gutter from whence you came! Am I clear?"
"Yes sir, sorry sir, it shall not happen again."
"I would like to think not Miss Harker, but to believe that you will concentrate would be as ridiculous as believing in fairies themselves!"
"Yes sir," she replied, picking herself up and continued to recite the scene.
It was a pleasant afternoon in 1674, the sun was shining, but there was a fresh chill to the air, a fine day for taking the long route home according to Taya. This way she could clear her head from the stresses of rehearsals for the upcoming performance of a Midsummer Night's Dream.
Jean was sitting on her, bed, laptop open, briskly browsing through her spam mail when she felt a familiar psychic link establish between her and her professor.
"Jean, could you come along to cerebro please, there's something I need to show you."
Jean replied, "Sure, I'll be right there," and as she closed her laptop the telepathic bond between them gently fizzled out and she went to aid Charles.
She arrived to find her senior's brow furrowed in concern and possibly confusion, a rare sight from an esteemed telepath.
"What seems to be the problem?" Jean asked,
"I'm not entirely sure, for the last few days, cerebro has been picking up a disfigured shadow on my readings amongst the normal images. It's quite bizarre."
"What does it look like?"
"I'm not sure as it completely undistinguishable, but I can only assume that it would be of a mutant as I can't recall cerebro tracing anything otherwise unless I programme it to. I'll trace it again and show you the image."
A few minutes later, on the horizon of cerebro, the small scratchy shadowed image appeared again, Charles then handed over the headset to Jean, who herself was unconvinced of being able to use it and focused her mind. There in front of her was the same shadow her professor had seen.
"It isn't just you, weird, all of the other pictures of the mutants are as clear as mud apart from this one. How very odd." She removed the headset and gently placed it on the side of the computer, "I can go through he motherboard if you want just to check if you want, I'll send the results in later." With that, Jean started to check the computer system for any faults.