Adam punched the data up onto the screen in his private lab at Sanctuary. Forty six pairs of chromosomes looked ready to wriggle away, despite being only photons representing reality. Beatrice Sutter peered at them, perched on her stool beside her fellow scientist. In the background a set of test tubes bubbled merrily away and another set of computers chuckled fussily to themselves, trying to solve yet one more genetic mystery. She smoothed back a lock of mousy brown hair. "That's the one. Look at fifteen. It's classic. That's the primary cause of the deficit."
"Sure, but look at twelve," Adam countered.
"Twelve! I never touched twelve. Twelve is completely normal, Adam."
"But do we want it to be? You've tried correcting things, Bea, but how about an end run by enhancing a normal chromosome? If it works, you can accomplish the same thing." He turned to Jesse who was seated in front of the computer banks, pretending that he understood more than one word in ten that the pair had uttered. "Jesse, pull up file EDel793 and put them side by side." A second set of chromosomes slithered up for a side by side comparison. "Bea, this is one of my team's genome. You can see that her fifteen looks a lot like Benji's, twisted and deformed. But you've met Emma; that girl is highly intelligent as well as gifted. Now look at twelve. Jess, pull out both twelves for me."
The two sets of chromosomes obediently took over the screen and enlarged. Beatrice Sutter leaned in to examine the display. "I see what you mean, Adam. The twelve in this chart is clearly deformed. But are you saying that this—"
"—is a compensatory mechanism. Yes, I am, Bea," Adam finished.
"But we can't just pick and chose which elements we're going to use, Adam." Hope flared in her eyes, even though her words tried to remain realistic. "There are some things we can't accomplish yet. Even if we were to use this sample, we wouldn't be able to eliminate the double X. We'd be giving Benji a whole new set of ailments to cope with."
One corner of Adam's mouth quirked upward. "We don't have to use Emma's DNA, Bea. We've got a few more to choose from. I asked Jesse to put up Emma's because I knew that she had some similar chromosomal abnormalities as Benji."
"We could choose from your entire data base?" Bea's eyes opened wide.
"Well, no, not the entire d-base. I don't see any reason to include those with a double X. As you correctly pointed out, that would give Benji more problems instead of less. In addition, I'll recommend that we eliminate those with average or less intelligence, to avoid muddying the data and the results."
"That rules out Brennan," Jesse quipped from his perch in front of the computer.
Adam ignored him. "That should still give us a number to work with. Most of the mutants I've known tend to be of higher intelligence—present company excepted," he added, grinning at the ceiling and watching out of the corner of his eye how Jesse would take the remark. The molecular stared at the computer screen, ignoring Adam, ears flaring red. Adam went on. "We'll narrow it down, you and I, and then see who we can approach. Not everyone will be open to participating in more research. Especially not when we approach with long needles for samples."
"Better not be me," was the murmured reply from the direction of the computer console. "I hate needles."