It wasn't the first time he had left Sanctuary in a huff but, Jesse thought bitterly, it might be the last. All that crap that Adam was handing him about needing him for computer work; a trained monkey could do ninety percent of it. Come to think of it, Jesse had trained Brennan to do the same thing. Point for Jesse's side of the argument.
So Adam thought that Jesse was a liability, not to be trusted in the field. The older man had made that abundantly clear. All the times that Jesse had come through, all the work that he'd done didn't count for much. It was the others that Adam wanted on his team: Shalimar, able to take down any three men without mussing her hair. Brennan, ole Sparky himself, for the electronics. And Emma with more power in her pinky than any of them. All Jesse had the ability to float through walls. Hah. Pretty lame, when you thought about it. No wonder Adam didn't want him where he could fall down and go boom.
He looked at the ring on his finger, that multi-tasking marvel of engineering that served as both a comm. link and a locator beacon whenever Adam felt the need. Right now the comm. link portion wasn't needed, and as for the locator? That, as far as Jesse was concerned, was a liability.
He pulled it off of his finger, tugging slightly when it resisted going over the joint. Once off, his finger looked bare and almost forlorn. The skin beneath was whiter than the surrounding flesh, evidence that he hadn't removed the band in a very long time. A little breeze meandering by tickled his finger—amazing how the moving molecules of air knew just where to go to tease at his heartstrings. The breeze hadn't touched any other part of him.
Jesse couldn't keep it with him, not if he expected to leave Mutant X behind. He stopped, jolted at his own thoughts. Did he really want to do that? It was the only family he'd known for years. Shalimar was literally the big sister he'd never had, looking out for him, helping him through the worst of teen-age angst when it seemed that he could never fit in. And Adam? Teacher, mentor, coach, and, yes, even father-figure.
The same man who didn't trust Jesse to blow his nose without supervision. That decided him. Jesse was out of here. He surveyed the ring ruefully, finally dropping it into a stamped envelope so that it wouldn't get lost. Maybe Adam could tune it to the next member of Mutant X that he'd recruit, someone that the scientist could trust a little more to look out for himself. He dropped it into the postal box on the corner, hearing it bang on the empty bottom of the container with a quiet ring of finality. Mutant X was gone from his life.
But that left Jesse at loose ends. What to do now? Seeing the world didn't excite him: been there, done that while he was growing up. Maybe he'd just drift around the countryside for a while, deciding what he ought to do with himself. Maybe he'd look up Mutant X again after a couple of years, maybe a few months. Heck, maybe he only needed just a week of two of vacation.
Heck, maybe he didn't need to leave after all. Two drinks at the local bar, maybe a third at another, and he could saunter back to Sanctuary as if nothing happened. After all, it wasn't the first time one of them had gone off in a snit. Usually it was Brennan, or Shalimar, occasionally even Emma. But that didn't mean that Jesse Kilmartin wasn't entitled to do the same thing.
He couldn't go back without his ring, though. That would be embarrassing. Not a problem; all Jesse had to do was reach an insubstantial hand into the postal box and pull out the envelope with a lumpy circular area in it. He phased.
Something clamped around Jesse's head. A shooting pain arced from ear to ear, and his unphased arm snapped back to reality. His vision went dim, but he retained just enough sense to register four men suddenly surrounding him. They grabbed his arms just in time to keep him from collapsing to the ground, and remembered no more.