AN: I know, I know...sorry for being so late on this chapter too! (dodges thrown objects) I've just been, well,...well, ok, I don't really have a good excuse, so...here's the next chapter!



Chapter 18: Options


"Adam, you're back!"

"Yeah, this little voice kept nagging me, saying that something was off," Adam replied, a sarcastic smile gracing his features. "I was just pulling in when my car's connection to the mainframe shut down. I barely made it into the garage before the external security measures were activated and locked me out. What happened?"

"I'll tell you in a second. Here, give me a hand with him."

Adam assisted Jesse and David, who had taken over for Lexa, and lifted Brennan onto the biobed. "Now, care to tell me what's going on? What happened to Brennan?"

Jesse had been flitting about the monitoring station, but stopped moving about for a moment and dragged a hand through his hair. "Gee, uh…well, what's the last thing we told you?"

"Last I heard, you were sleeping off the effects of healing a psionic mutant named David who was a friend of Katie's. I presume you're David," he said to David, who was standing next to Katie in the corner of the room, both simply trying to stay out of the way.

"You presume correctly, sir. I take it you're Adam. Nice to meet you." He shook hands with the older gentleman. "They've told me all about you."

"Not all of it good, I presume."

David shrugged.

"Welllll," Jesse drawled. He shifted his weight to one foot, then the other. "Long story sort of short, David used to be Peter Holecker, a mutant who was with me at Genomex. He's a touch telepath, and has the power to influence people to commit suicide, but needs some help with his control. For some reason, there's an unbreakable telepathic link between us. He's one of a dozen or so mutants who were experimented on by Dr. Michael Jacobs years ago at Genomex. Jacobs is dead, but someone's been going after all the mutants in the program. A little over an hour ago, we got a call from Monica at the New York safehouse for help with a mutant named Lisa who was being attacked. Just as Bren and Shal get there, someone attacks. Lisa disappeared; Brennan attacked Shalimar, then flew here and fried the entire power grid and attacked us. Lex and I got him down, and we should probably restrain him in case he wakes up still all psycho." He held up a set of soft leather restraints which he had retrieved while he spoke.

"Well." Adam said. "Sounds like you guys have been busy." He folded his arms across his chest. "Any ideas as to why Brennan's acting like this. Could it be a steroid like it was at Hillview? Maybe in an aerosol form."

Lexa frowned in curiosity when Jesse winced. "Hillview?"

"Undercover work. Brennan was given a steroid that enhanced anger and then put in a cage to fight other guys on the same drug," Jesse explained briefly. Turning back to Adam, he said. "I don't think so. At Hillview, he was just a hyped up, angry version of himself. It wasn't like that this time. Besides, something like that would have affected Shalimar too."

"Are you sure? You said he attacked her, just like at Hillview when he attacked y-"

"I'm sure, Adam," Jesse said, cutting him off.

"What about a virus? There was that whole thing with the Army last year. Maybe they didn't destroy it all."

Again, Jesse shook his head tersely. "I don't think so, Lex. His fighting style was way to wild, and it almost seemed like he didn't have full control of his powers, which he would have been if it were that virus. Plus, he was perfectly capable of speaking coherently when he needed to, but he didn't say a word while he was trying to kill me. And he was trying to kill me. Look, before he attacked, I tried to delay him. I asked him if he had been able to fix the micro synch drive at the safehouse. He said it just needed to be restored to the defaults. Now, first of all, there's no such thing as a micro synch drive. Secondly, even if there was, and even though Brennan's pretty smart, he wouldn't know it from a hole in the wall. And he knows that I know that he wouldn't know about things like that. But he tried to fake it." Jesse left his words hanging in the air, feeding the last leather strap through the buckle. While he was talking, Jesse had efficiently tethered each of Brennan's limbs and waist to the bed.

Adam looked at Jesse carefully before saying softly, in realization, "You think someone else is controlling his actions."

"It has to be. Brennan wasn't acting like himself at all, and he seemed lost. Brennan knows how the power grid works. If he wanted to disable it, all he had to do was enter a few codes. And when he tried to leave the hanger, he could figure out how to open the damn door. Sure, he got the Helix here, but if we look at the flight log, I'll bet that it was just on autopilot set to return home. Brennan's like a puppet right now, but whoever's pulling the strings only has control of his body, not his mind."

Lexa, Katie and David had been silent during the presentation of Jesse's theory. Lexa stepped away from Brennan's bedside. "And how exactly are we supposed to find out who's pulling these strings?" she asked, watching Adam move over to the control console and activate the golden beams that scanned Brennan's body.

"That's where David comes in." Jesse said, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder. "If you're willing, I'd like you to try to make contact with Brennan. But only if you want to. I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do," he said firmly across their mental link, looking directly at David.

David met Jesse's eyes and both young men simply stood there. For a moment, Lexa thought that time had frozen around her, but then she noticed that Jesse's eyes were lighter than normal. She had spent a lot of time these last few months either looking at or into Jesse's eyes and knew them intimately. And they had definitely changed from their normal cornflower blue to a steely gray blue. Having seen the color change before, she finally made the connection and realized what it signified; she wondered what Jesse and David were silently talking about.

Finally, David nodded. Aloud, he said, "I'll do it. You'll be there?"

Lexa was about to ask what they had talked about when the beep of the console interrupted her. Adam turned his attention to it from where he, too, had been watching David and Jesse. "There are definitely indications of psionic interference. His T waves are compacted but delta and alpha waves look fine."

"What does that mean? Can we get an English translation?" Katie asked.

Adam gave a short sigh and looked around at all of them, then to the unconscious Brennan. "His body and his brain function are fine, and all else being equal, he'll be fine. The compacted T waves are one indicator of psionic interference. As long as there's not prolonged exposure, T waves should return to normal on their own within an hour or two of psionic contact."

"What happens if they don't?"

Adam grimaced. "I'd rather not consider that possibility, but in the even that a person's T waves remain compacted for a significant amount of time, meaning about 3 hours or more, permanent brain damage is highly probable. But, based on what you've told me, it's been less than an hour since his exposure; that's not enough time to cause permanent damage, so, in that respect, he's fine. What worries me is that Brennan's are still compacted even after being knocked unconscious. So either the psionic either ended contact recently or…"

"Or what?" Jesse asked sharply.

"Or the psionic is still there," Adam said with a simple shrug.

Silence. Finally, Lexa said, "Well. You certainly have a flair for the dramatic, Adam."

The older man's response was another shrug.

Katie took a step forward and reached out to take David's hand. "Is there any way for us to figure out if the psionic is still connected to Brennan?"

Adam frowned. "Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything. As usual, the best thing is for Brennan to fight it from the inside, but we have no way of knowing what kind of condition his mind is in or what kind of damage has already been done, if any. In the past, the only way we've been able to monitor things like this is from the, uh…from the inside," he concluded hesitantly.

Lexa recognized the subtle reference to reference to Emma and, more recently, the Dominion's Dr. Robinson. It had been more than a year since Emma's death, but there were times when she was reminded how much the other members of the team missed their friend. "Well, what are our other options? I mean,…wait. David, do you think you're ready to do something like this?"

Beside her, she heard Adam's sharp intake of breath. Glancing over to his stunned, yet intrigued, features she could tell that he had put two and two together, as she just had a moment ago, and figured out what David and Jesse had been talking about. Turning her gaze back to David, she waited for an answer.

David met Lexa's inquiring eyes and nodded. "We're one step ahead of you." Letting go of Katie's hand, he turned to Jesse, who reached a hand out and grasped his shoulder. David did the same, and with his other hand, he reached out to touch Brennan, ignoring Lexa's surprised protest.

Jesse felt his body jerk as David made contact with Brennan. The world seemed to spin on its axis and he felt as if his body was passing through a sheet of liquid air. Then, as quickly as hit came, the feeling passed.

"Jesse? Are you okay?" he heard David ask.

"Fine. I didn't know it felt like that when you make first contact." He looked around at their surroundings, rubbing the back of his head with one hand... "What's going on?"

"I'm not sure. Normally if someone's unconscious, there's either a dreamscape or absolutely nothing." He gestured at the trees, bushes and ponds, all hanging in space at odd angles, yet not feeling out of place. "I feel like we're standing in the middle of…"

"David, look out!"

David looked up, just in time to see a blue energy ball hurtling toward him.