Sorry it took a little longer this time, especially after everyone asked me to update quickly. There will be another update sometime tomorrow so hopefully that will make up for it a little bit. Thanks so much for the reviews, I hope you all enjoy this chapter as much as the last ones.

Daveigh moved amongst the Dominion agents, all of them acknowledging her presence, all of them sensing her power. She used to love that feeling, that people were scared of her. It made her feel so much more in control. Given her past, her time at Genomex being experimented on and her time with the CIA control was something she held as extremely dear. She wasn't granted it with the Dominion but unlike with the CIA there was no escape for her. What she had told Taylor was not an effort to gain the girls trust. She was trapped, working against her will. At least Taylor had people who gave enough of a damn about her to try and get her out.

'Ms Ryder,' one of the agents, a tall dark haired man said as he strode towards her. 'Mutant X have arrived in town. They've been spotted a couple of streets away from this building.'

Daveigh looked out of the window next to where she had stopped. She knew the fury of ferals and she was not looking forward to this particular fight. She had a feeling that her gift of fire would do little to Shalimar Fox. The woman was out for blood regardless of what stood in her way.

'Let me know when they get here,' she said as she brushed past him towards the closed door a few feet away.

'You don't want to take some kind of action now?' he asked.

'The action is coming whether or not we make the first move,' she said over her shoulder.

She pushed the door open and walked into the room. It was warm and muggy, due in large part to the blacked out windows and locked door. Taylor was chained to the chair in the middle of the floor. She looked worse off than she had done, her skin pale, her eyes shut, beads of perspiration slowly forming on her forehead and sliding across her face. Her hair was matted against her skull and her whole body seemed limp.

She started as the woman took a few steps into the room. Her eyes tried to focus but it was difficult. All of her senses were muddled and confused. Nothing was as it should be, everything was blurred and distorted.

'Your mums in town,' Daveigh said as she closed the door behind her with a click and walked towards Taylor. She knelt on the floor in front of the figure and looked up at her, concern evident in her eyes.

'She's gonna kick your ass,' Taylor bit out, her breaths short and rasping.

Daveigh smiled to herself, a melancholic look. 'You think she'll kill me?'

'Yes,' Taylor replied, finally raising her eyes to look at the woman in front of her. She had been finding it incredibly difficult to get a read on her. She was the only person in the entire building who had been nice to her. She wasn't like the others who had kidnapped her. She was kind and she seemed to care. But that didn't explain why she was doing the things she was doing. Why help the bad people if she herself wasn't bad?

'I hope so.'

Taylor frowned. 'Why?'

'My life sucks beyond the telling of it. Death would at least be an escape,' Daveigh replied conversationally.

Silence filled the room, consuming them both as they became lost in their own thoughts. Their eyes met and in that moment they understood the world they were in.

And in that moment Daveigh made a decision that would change her life. She stood up, her knees complaining violently and walked around to the back of Taylor's chair. She didn't know why she hadn't done this before. She felt no loyalty towards the Dominion. They had screwed her over on a million and one different occasions and now they were using Taylor to get to Mutant X. There were going to be huge consequences for her actions. The Dominion would find her of course. They would spend a lot of effort on hunting her down and when they located her they would make her pay. But God, it was gonna be worth it.

She ripped the blinds, black and completely opaque from the window. Light flooded the room and she blinked a few times, her eyes gradually getting used to the brightness. She attempted to push the sash window open but it wouldn't budge. There were nails holding it in place but there was nothing in the room with which to remove them. Smashing the window would draw too much attention. They would have to be quick if they were to make it out of there alive.

She looked at Taylor. The girl had been through so much already Daveigh was loathe to make her suffer more.

'How are you with fire?' she asked.

Taylor felt her palms grow cold and clammy at even the mention of it. She knew her fear was genetic, it was nothing to do with being weak but there was no way she could control it. A slight flicker of flame was enough to set her mind spinning. But more than that she was scared of the people who had taken her. The strong, confident woman, seemingly with her entire life ahead of her was terrified of the Dominion. Daveigh wasn't afraid of death but a group of people could make her completely petrified. Taylor definitely wasn't keen to meet them.

'I'll be alright,' she said, more confidence in her tone than in her body language.

'Stand next to the window,' Daveigh said, taking a step forward so she was between Taylor and the rest of the room.

'How are you going to get down?' Taylor asked, looking through the plate glass.

'Its only two floors,' Daveigh reassured her. She wasn't confident that she could make it but even if she was lying on the ground with two broken legs she could still form a fire wall to keep everyone else back for a good couple of hours. She grabbed the chair and handed it to Taylor.

The smash echoed throughout the street. The noise of glass fragments pounding against the pavement was audible to a group of people standing a few blocks away.

'Go!' Daveigh yelled as she slammed her hands together. She could feel the familiar and comforting energy of the flames as they formed inside of her before she pushed them out with her hands. A huge wall of fire spread itself in front of the door. Over the top of the flickering movement she could see agents coughing, choking on the smoke being sent up from the burning carpet.

She turned and perched herself on the window ledge, trying to psych herself up to jump.

'Come on,' Taylor shouted, her high pitched voice carrying, despite the shouts of agents and the crackling of the fire.

Shalimar sprinted along the street as soon as she heard the glass. Her feet stomped against the pavement as she ran, her heartbeat racing. She knew it was Taylor. Who else could it have been? But she had no idea if glass shattering was a good sign or a bad one. She needed to know that Taylor was okay and if she wasn't Shalimar needed to know whose ass she was to have the pleasure of kicking.

She rounded a corner and saw her. Her wild blonde hair was a complete mess of tangles, her face was pale, her clothes dirty. But she was her daughter and she was standing under 20 feet away.

Shalimar frowned as she followed Taylor's eye line. There was a woman clinging onto the building for dear life, smoke billowing from the open window behind her. Shalimar ran forward, unaware of the circumstances, but she figured that if her daughter deemed this woman good enough then so did she.

She passed in front of Taylor and bent her legs, pushing herself from the ground. Her body became almost weightless thanks to the momentum and she landed next to the anonymous woman on the ledge, finding her balance easily.

'Put your arm around me,' she yelled over the sounds coming from the room.

The woman, without taking her eyes away from the ground below her slung her arm across Shalimar's shoulders, her grip fierce and intense, fingertips digging into Shalimar's skin. As Shalimar stepped away from the ledge and dropped to the ground below she kept her eyes squeezed shut, afraid to watch as the floor came rushing to meet her. She felt her feet hit solid ground and she breathed once more. Air that was untainted by the smoke of the fire was a joy to her lungs and she stood, her hands on her knees breathing it all in. She knew exactly who her saviour was and she had a feeling that it had been some kind of superhero instinct that had just saved her life rather than the kindness of Shalimar's heart.

Shalimar turned to look up at the building. The fire had already consumed the interior of the room and stark amber and gold flames were licking at the red brick walls surrounding the wrecked window. She felt fear growing inside her. She may have been able to deal with small amounts of fire but that building was about to start crumbling and she didn't want to be around to witness it.

She turned, her mind finally catching up with her body and took in the sight of her daughter. She didn't remember a time when she had been so happy to see one person in her entire life. She could feel the tears rise to her eyes and her bottom lip begin to quiver uncontrollably.

'Hey you,' she said before bearing the brunt of Taylor's weight and momentum as the girl sped into her open arms. They embraced for what felt like hours, both the ferals recognising the distinctive scent of the other, breathing it all in.

'Are you okay?' Shalimar asked, more than a touch of concern in her tone.

The little girl nodded, so happy that she didn't have to be the hero anymore. She could quite happily leave that to her mother.

'We need to get out of here,' Shalimar said, her voice louder, stronger, more confident now that she had something tangible to stay alive for.

She turned and for the first time looked at the woman whose life she had just saved. She blinked, once, twice as she took in the face, the hair, the height of the woman. The growl grew deep and low in her throat and instinctively her eyes flashed golden. She didn't know why Daveigh Ryder had been perched on the windowsill, running from a fire that she had supposedly created nor did she care. She had received quite enough crap from the Dominion in her time and she was not going to let this one go.

She flinched as she felt a hand on her arm. She looked down at Taylor. She frowned, her shoulders dropping slightly, her stance becoming less aggressive.

Shalimar raised her eyes to look at the woman in front of her. She understood her daughters need to protect Daveigh, even if she didn't agree with it.

'We have to leave, now,' she said, her tone calm with the merest hint of danger underlying it. She was going to find out the full story later and she would decide then whether or not to drop her suspicions. She raised her eyebrows, a warning gesture making Daveigh aware of the fact that she wasn't to get too comfortable with her new status.

Shalimar took Taylor's hand and strode past Daveigh but she halted in her tracks. There was movement just around the corner from them all, many footsteps sounded out on the paving stones. She looked along the road behind them. She closed her eyes, a wry smile replacing open mouthed thoughtfulness as she took in the fence which officially made the road a dead end.

'Can you fight?' she asked, looking into Daveigh's eyes.

'I'm currently burning down their building,' she replied nervously.

'Me and my daughter, as I'm sure you're aware are not too good around fire so I need to know if you can fight without it.'

'Yes.'

Shalimar turned away from the woman and crouched down next to Taylor. 'I need you to hide somewhere,' she said.

'I can fight with you,' Taylor replied, her voice indignant.

'No.'

'I can kick ass-'

'No!' Shalimar's voice brooked no opposition and Taylor turned and ran behind the nearest trash can. 'And don't say ass,' Shalimar called after her.

Taylor was out of sight as the first Dominion agent rounded the corner. He stood at least ten feet away from the two new mutants who instantly took on fighting stances. He was joined within seconds by four more agents, all of them with some kind of dark smear across their faces, their suits looking as if they hadn't seen an iron in a good few months. Shalimar watched them. They were clearly afraid, scared of the potential of the two women in front of them. She smirked but it quickly disappeared from her face. Something was wrong. She blinked as she realised that wasn't it. It wasn't that something was wrong; something had just become incredibly right but she had no idea what it was. It was like she had found the last piece of an intensely complicated jigsaw puzzle and she had fitted it in and now everything made sense. But what was the piece?

She blinked again, shaking the thoughts from her mind as she concentrated on the fight that was imminent. She didn't know quite who was going to make the first move but she could play the waiting game as well as anyone.

She watched as one of the men took it upon himself to move forward, away from the safety of the group. He reached behind him, to the back of his trousers and Shalimar saw the flash of sunlight reflecting from a gun. She instantly stepped forward and kicked him straight in the gut. It was the sign they had all required as the men all moved in on the pair. Shalimar dropped to the floor as a punch was thrown over her head. She kicked out with her leg, taking the first agent down with ease. He fell to the floor and she stood up, blocking a few kicks from the second agent who had clearly spent his childhood watching far too many kung fu movies. She quickly knocked him to the floor where he remained, out cold. She spared a glance for Daveigh who seemed to be holding her own. Shalimar turned her attention back to the third agent but was immediately knocked to the floor with a hefty punch hitting her left cheekbone. She lay, dazed on the ground knowing that she was wasting time, but the hit had been hard and pain was slamming into her face in huge waves making it difficult to think.

She rolled over onto her back so she could keep an eye on the guy but as she looked up she stared straight into the barrel of a gun. There was no way, even with her increased reflexes and speed that she could grab the weapon before he pulled the trigger and she really didn't want to end up as splatter marks on the street.

She closed her eyes, savouring the darkness. She frowned as she felt a rush of something pass over her face, the wind brushing against her skin. She opened her eyes and saw that there was no one there, the guy with the gun was gone. All she could see was the sky, brighter than previously, the sun higher already, the day moving on with predictable steadiness. She watched, frowning as static bursts of blue electricity swirled above her head, the noise causing blood to rush through her veins that bit faster, static crackling in the atmosphere. She rolled over on the ground and pushed herself up from the floor her eyes staring straight ahead.

Lexa had been right.