Brennan looked around at the tiny cave that they found themselves pushed into. The space was more of a hole in the wall than a cave, but it had its advantages over their previous accommodations. "Okay, we're moving up in the world. Solid floors, walls, and a ceiling. A little drafty at the door, but I can live with that. Wish they'd let us keep the blanket." He sat down next to the wall of the cave, leaning his back against it, cradling his broken arm in its sling. It hurt, but Brennan tried to persuade himself thatthe armwas feeling better. "Adam, you've been quiet. Too quiet. What do you know about these people?"

"I don't know anything—"

"Right. Mutants, everyone of them. And you don't know anything?"

"I've never seen them before in my life," Adam protested.

"But—?" Brennan prompted. Jesse looked on suspiciously from one to the other, wondering what was going on.

Adam colored. "You know I'm not the only genetic researcher in the world," he muttered.

"Know that for a fact. Mason Eckhart, Dr. Harrison, Absalom Maguire, a few others I'd rather not name. Which one did this?"

"I'm not certain—"

"Names, Adam."

"Stop interrogating me, Brennan," Adam snapped.

"Then stop making me question you," Brennan blazed back. "Those people—and I use the term loosely—want to kill us. Let me rephrase that: they want to kill you. You, as in a 'normal' human. Why?"

"If these people are who I think they are," Adam refused to be rattled, "then they are the 'mistakes' of a man by the name of Albert Van Duyn."

"Mistakes," Jesse repeated. "Why mistakes? What did this Van Duyn character do?"

"Look at them, Jesse," Adam said impatiently. "Not one could pass in society, not even with a whole body shave. They're the first generation of feral mutants, the direction that I chose not to go when I was conducting research at Genomex. You've seen Shalimar; that was the route that I took. It wasn't the only route, but it turned out to be a lot more successful that this one." He gestured at the men outside. "It sounds like they've decided to give society as much of a chance as society gave them. They opted out."

"Mountain men," Brennan said. "Maybe even the reason for so many tales of Bigfoot and Sasquatch. One look at grizzly guy over there, and anyone would be hollering for the X Files." He rubbed at his arm, trying to ease the ache. "But what have they got against you?"

"Probably because I look human and they don't." Adam shrugged. "I don't know, Brennan."

"Doesn't work for me," Brennan challenged. "I look human. Jesse looks human, too, although that's up for grabs."

"Hey!"

"So I repeat:" Brennan ignored the molecular. "Why do they want to kill you and not us?"

"Because we know him." A shadow, flickering in the flame, jumped up against the cave wall. Jesse scrambled to his feet. Brennan went to follow, and thought better of it. We are so not up to battling these guys. The owner of the shadow strolled in.

"You know me?" Adam was amazed. "How? When? I've never met you before in my life."

"By reputation, Dr. Kane." Hawk moved into the light of the campfire. The flames glinted on his feathers, turning them almost glittering in the yellow light. "My name is Bartholomew. I used to look like you, more or less. But human."

"Until Van Duyn came along."

"Until Van Duyn came along." Bartholomew nodded his head. He looked at his own hand, the nails long and fierce as talons, more feathers cascading over them. "I had myasthenia gravis," he explained. "I went to Dr. Van Duyn for treatment. For a cure. There was no cure for myasthenia gravis. Oh, there were palliative treatments, drugs that would slow the course of the disease and force it into temporary remissions. But there was no cure. Not until Dr. Van Duyn appeared. He cured me," Bartholomew said with false mildness. "He gave me his potion, and transfused me with the genes of a hawk. He cured me," he repeated. "I no longer suffer from myasthenia gravis."

"Side effects look like a bitch," Brennan offered.

Bartholomew favored him with a glare. "Quite right, sir. What good was it to be cured if we couldn't show our faces in public? Each and every one of us was ruined." He gestured to the people behind him. There were more than a dozen, and all showed evidence of tampering with Mother Nature. "I had quite a promising career on Wall Street until Dr. Van Duyn and his supposed miracle cure. I lost my wife, my children, my home. All because of genetics and its false promises."

"But that doesn't answer the question. Why do you want to kill Adam?" Jesse asked.

"They are all cut from the same cloth," said Bartholomew. "You are a mutant yourself, sir," he said to Brennan. "Can you honestly stand there and tell me that your life is a good one? That you have suffered nothing because of the difference in your genetic make up?"

Brennan cocked his head. "I was well on my way to dying on the streets before Adam Kane got hold of me."

"Was that before or after you discovered your mutant powers?" Bartholomew shot back. "After? I thought so. Don't sit there and tell me that your life wouldn't have been better without them. As a normal, able to do normal things. Never afraid that this will be the one time that your mutantcy gets the better of you, and you kill someone. Or that someone kills you out of fear."

"Or perhaps you would wish for death," Wolf added, "because of it. Some of us have chosen that route."

"Look, not all of us are like Van Duyn," Adam argued. "I went into this research so that I could help people, people who were dying right then and there. I saved lives."

"I can show you records of people who are alive today because of Adam," Jesse added. "I can introduce you to them: people who would have died years ago, walking around on the streets today leading normal lives."

"Ah, that's the rub." Bartholomew jumped on the word. "Normal."

"I didn't know you existed. Let me see if I can help you," Adam said. "Help us get out of here, out of the woods, and give me samples of your DNA. I won't make you any promises—I'm sure that Albert Van Duyn did enough of that—but I will promise to try my best to give you another option beyond living by yourselves in the woods."

"Oh, but we have another option." It sounded odd to hear the words all but cooed from the hawk beak on Bartholomew's face. "You see, we're not all dumb animals, Dr. Kane."

"I never said—"

"Some of us have made quite a study of the native flora in this region of the country," Bartholomew continued, as if Adam hadn't tried to speak. "In fact, we've been rather motivated. And we've been successful. We've discovered a cure."

"A cure?" Adam was genuinely interested. "How? What?"

"Why haven't you used it?" Brennan broke in.

"We have," Bartholomew said.

"Only the ingredients get used up pretty quick," Wolf appended, sticking out his tongue and lolling it over his face, canine-fashion. "Two of us escaped this life. They're now living it up in the real world. Something like you," he added, a hungry look on his snout. "Taking advantage of the normals with their mutant powers." Jesse stifled a shudder.

"So you need more raw material." Adam was trying to be cooperative. "What raw materials? How can we help you get it?"

"Oh, we've got some right now, doc." Was that slaver drooling off of Wolf's canines? Those teeth were certain to reappear in someone's dreams tonight, Jesse thought. Probably mine. "We're drawing lots to see who gets to go first. Me, I think I ought to go before Wilbur here," and Wolf indicated the man who looked like a grizzly bear. "It'll take a lot to cure him. Not as much for me."

"Based on that concept, I ought to precede both of you," Bartholomew the hawk pointed out. "No, Clarence, we'll stick to the original plan. We'll draw lots while Wilbur is making up the potion."

"What potion?" Adam pressed. "Maybe we can make it synthetically, make up enough for all of you all at once. You don't have to suffer like this. I can help you."

"No, Dr. Kane." Bartholomew was quite certain. "You've helped quite enough, you and all the researchers like you. No, now it's time for someone else to help." He indicated Brennan Mulwray, sitting on the cold cave floor. "Your companion."

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Shalimar trotted back into their makeshift camp, automatically giving the cookfire a wide berth. Emma was stirring some berries into a vegetarian stew that, surprisingly, smelled rather good to the feral. The tent was already down and rolled up into the pack, ready to go. The other pack likewise was already put together and available for transport to whichever site the pair determined was next likely to be where the menfolk of Mutant X had been marooned. Emma handed over some of her cooking. "Any luck?" Already knowing the answer.

Shalimar made a face. "Nothing yet. The guys haven't been through this neck of the woods, and there's no trace that the Helix was anywhere near here. You?" she asked, having gone out searching well before Emma had awoken to report on her own activities.

Emma sighed. "Nothing more than what I already have. They're still alive, but I think Brennan was hurt. His thoughts felt drugged, as though Adam had given him some pain-killer. And I know they're somewhere in the mountains, but that's all I could get."

"No location, no hints as to where in the mountains," Shalimar moped. "These are big mountains. And a lot of them." She glanced up at the sky. "I wish we could do a fly over. That would eliminate a lot of territory. We'd be able to spot the Helix, I know it." She glared up at the sky, noting the hawk tracing lazy circles among the clouds, looking for breakfast. "Why did I have to be a feline feral? Why couldn't I have acquired some hawk characteristics, like an ultra-light body with some wings?"

"Wait a minute. That's it!" Emma almost shouted it. "Wings! We need wings!"

Shalimar simply looked at her. "Are you crazy? We can't just go hijacking a plane. In the first place, it's illegal. And in the second, with these wind currents, we'd go down faster than you could say—"

"Hang glider," Emma interrupted.

"Hang glider?"

"Hang glider," Emma confirmed. "Low flying, short hops above the trees, looking for signs of the Helix. How much more territory could we cover that way?"

Shalimar began to see. "Miles. Miles and miles."

"And we wouldn't have to look for just the guys. If Brennan is injured, they won't be able to travel very quickly."

Shalimar nodded. "All we have to do is to find a large crashed silver jet." She looked at Emma. "Come on, girl. We've got a plane to catch."

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Adam had already gotten nervous. "Look, it's a really bad idea to experiment under these conditions. There are no controls, nothing in case something goes wrong—"

"Something already has gone wrong, or haven't you taken a good look at us?" Bartholomew waved bitterly at his feathers, and the pelts of his companions. "And, contrary to what you're thinking, this is not an experiment. An experiment is where you don't know what will happen. We already do. We've tried this before, tried it successfully."

"At least tell me the herbs you're using," Adam argued.

"Can't. Don't know 'em by name," Wilbur the grizzly compound said mildly. "Figured 'em out by trial and error. See?" He mashed another several green leaves into the wooden bowl he was working with, holding one up for Adam to take a gander at. "I suppose if you have a picture book we could look 'em up. The plants are pretty common around here." He tossed the leaf into the bowl and stirred.

The contrast between methods couldn't have more dramatic. Adam's lab contained clean dishes, high tech equipment, computers to run simulations prior to any testing on live bodies. There were files containing evidence on both hard copy and on disks, microscopes and Petri dishes, even sinks with running water.

Here there was running water, but it was running half a mile away. Clarence had toted a bucket of water over, and Wilbur was using it in the herbal mash he was creating, using a long claw to stir the leaves into a sticky, gooey mess. There was no Bunsen burner here. The only source of heat was an open fire surrounded by rocks to keep it from scooting off into the brush.

Adam pulled the other two back further into the cave that was doing double duty as their jail cell. "I don't like this. There's something that they're not telling us."

Jesse glanced outside. It looked as though Wilbur was almost finished with his cookery. "I think we're about to find out what. Shall we make a run for it?"

Adam shook his head. "We wouldn't get ten feet from camp. These men are all ferals. They may not look like Shalimar, but believe me, they have all her powers. If by some miracle one of us did manage to escape, they'd track us down as quickly as she could."

"Then what do we do?" Brennan wanted to know, easing his arm back into its sling with a grimace.

"I'm open to suggestions." Adam too looked out at their captors. "Here they come."

The entire crowd of badly mutated bodies crowded around the entrance to the cave, blocking any hope of escape along with blocking the light. Only a few stray photons ambled in over their heads. But the animal musk was pronounced. Brennan coughed at the odor.

"It's time," Bartholomew announced. "Come out of there. You can all watch."

"What are we going to watch?" Adam allowed himself to be hustled out of the cave along with the other two.

"Our transformation," Wilbur rumbled. He looked even more like a grizzly when talking, the sound eerily reminiscent of the bear. He pointed at Brennan. "You. Come here."

"Hey!" Brennan objected as Bartholomew and Clarence grabbed him by the arms. "Ow! Watch the claws! Some of us have plain skin over here."

"Let him go!" Jesse yelled. "Can't you see he's hurt?" He went to go to Brennan's aid, pulling Bartholomew off of the elemental.

Bartholomew was expecting something of the sort. With a speed worthy of Shalimar at her best, he knocked Jesse back.

But Jesse hadn't trained against the feral for years for nothing. He too had been expecting the beast in front of him to respond as a feral, and he instantly phased solid. Bartholomew's fist knocked against a rock hard surface and crunched.

Bartholomew howled.

It turned into a free for all.

Had it been a fair fight, Mutant X would have won. Had it been one on one, Mutant X would have prevailed. Even Adam, with no mutant abilities but with a multitude of practice matches against his own home-grown feral, would have subdued any reasonable opponent.

It was not a fair fight. Mutant X was out-numberedfour to one with a broken wing to add into the unfairness of it all. The mutant beasts jumped onto all three, beating them to the ground and pinning them.

"Jesse!" Adam yelled. "Get away! Bring back help!"

Jesse ground his teeth. It was the right thing to do, but it felt wrong. It felt wrong to turn tail and run, leaving the other two behind.

"Go!" Adam insisted.

Jesse phased, passing through his captors. They lashed out at him but it was like slashing at air.

"Hold," Wilbur rumbled.

Jesse halted. Wilbur held his claw-fisted hand over Adam's throat. Another inch, and the jugular would be severed. Death would occur within seconds.

"Go!" Adam yelled once again from his position on the rocky ground.

"He's a normal," Bartholomew hissed. "He's worth nothing to us. Go. We have the other one."

But Jesse was beaten. It was one thing to go for help. It was another to watch as his mentor spilled his blood into the cold and unforgiving soil, never to rise again. He returned his density to normal, allowing the beast mutants to manhandle him back to the group.

"You should have gone," Adam said bitterly as Jesse was forced to sit on the ground beside him. Jesse didn't say a word, simply watched as the beast mutants shoved Brennan to the center of the circle. What were they going to do to him?

It was as if the beast mutants had read his mind, and Bartholomew the hawk man was in a talkative mood. "Clarence won the pool; he will go first."

"What are you going to do?" Jesse couldn't help but ask. "How are you going to restore your appearance? What is that concoction that you made? Surely you don't believe that it will work?"

"Yes, I do," Bartholomew replied, "because I've seen it work before. It is a very powerful potion."

"All right, fine. I believe you. It works. You don't need us here." Jesse kept himself very still, his arms at his side. Wilbur, on his part, kept his claws at Adam's throat. Adam, ever the scientist however, was fascinated by the scene being played out in front of him.

"Ah, but we do." Bartholomew indicated the scene in front of them. "It's not just the potion. We need a mutant."

"You've got plenty around here."

"Yes, but not perfect ones. That potion that Clarence is holding will allow him to take a better gene sequence from your friend and transfer it to himself."

"You can't know that." Adam finally couldn't keep quiet, despite the danger he was in. "You can't tell how it works. Not in a place like this. Simply 'taking a better gene sequence from someone else' flies in the face of accepted genetic theory. It can't work like that." He swallowed hard against the claws at his throat.

"True. But that doesn't really matter, does it, Dr. Kane?" Bartholomew wasn't smiling. "All that matters is that it works." He gestured to the others. "Go ahead."

Clarence walked up to Brennan, holding the cup with the noxious green liquid. Brennan didn't dare turn around, couldn't stand to look at Adam and Jesse watching him at this moment. Really good time for Shalimar and Emma to come riding over the hill. Then, ferals or not, Mutant X would show these beasts what it really meant to be a mutant. Hear that, Shal and Emma? Any time now.

"Drink this." There was excitement in Clarence's voice, sounding strange coming from the visage of a wolf. "Drink it all."

Brennan could throw the potion to the ground, see it vanish into green colored mud. He could also watch Wilbur slit Adam's throat, and then have another batch of the stuff forced down his throat once Wilbur had a chance to whip up a second cup. Either way, it looked like Mrs. Mulwray's little boy was going to have to drink the nasty medicine. Might as well make the best of it. Taking a deep breath, he tossed the potion to the back of his throat and swallowed.

He gagged; the stuff was awful! He forced his stomach to keep it down, staggered as the full noxiousness of the potion made itself felt. Clarence clutched at him, dragged him into a close embrace, waited for the potion to take effect.

Nothing happened.

Brennan went limp in the wolf mutant's grasp, gasping for breath, eyes watering, wishing he could just throw up and get it over with. His legs begged to simply dump him to the ground. Clarence hugged him closely, tighter and tighter as he waited for something, anything, to happen, refusing to let go.

Still nothing.

Clarence released the elemental, puzzled. Brennan groaned; his arm was throbbing in time with his stomach and he was in serious danger of heaving in front of every single beast mutant. Not the best way to make a good impression. Brennan flopped gracelessly to the ground, barely conscious of what was going on around him.

"What happened?" Clarence demanded. "Wilbur, you made the potion wrong!"

"Did not." Wilbur moved away from Adam, the man's throat no longer exposed to danger. But Adam shook his head at Jesse. It wouldn't take much to bring Wilbur back, and now Brennan looked to be incapable of going anywhere. Not a good time to make a move.

"Then why didn't the potion work?"

"I don't know." Wilbur sniffed at the cup. "Smells right." He sniffed at Brennan. "Smells right. But I don't know what a mutant always smells like. Maybe he isn't a mutant?"

"Course he's a mutant!"

"Yeah? How do you know?"

"I saw him throw electricity, that's how!"

"I didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"I didn't see him throw electricity."

"You calling me a liar?"

"Nope. I'm just saying that I didn't see him."

Bartholomew got into the act. "You know, Clarence, I didn't see him throw electricity, either."

"I did!"

Bartholomew glanced up at the sky. The sun was shining brightly. "Could've been a reflection off of something. That would explain it."

"I'm telling you, this guy's a mutant!"

"No, he's not." Adam hurriedly put in his own two cents. "Believe me. I know. Been working with the guy for years. He's one of my lab techs, and not one of the brighter ones. You may as well let him go."

"Thanks, Adam," Brennan muttered under his breath, praying not to throw up. He rocked back and forth on his hands and knees, cradling his throbbing broken arm to his chest. "I really needed to hear that." Which would come first? The heaving or the passing out? Brennan decided that he didn't care, as long as it happened soon.

"Gotta be a reason that the potion didn't work," Wilbur rumbled. "Made it the same way."

Bartholomew came to a decision. "Whatever the reason, we need to start over. It doesn't matter if it's because the potion was incorrect, or this man is not a mutant. We cannot continue. Put these three back in the cave and guard them well. Especially that one." He pointed at Jesse. "We may not all have seen the tall one throw electricity but I myself saw this one go from gaseous to solid just now. He is a mutant. We will use him for our next trial."

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Okay, there were times when being a feral was a very good thing to be. With the grace of a natural athlete multiplied by ten, Shalimar soared through the skies with the ease of a eagle, scanning the ground below for signs of a recently downed jet. Emma trailed off to the distance, fighting her own craft, wondering if there was any way she could lock into Shal's mind and 'borrow' the skills needed to manage steering this overgrown kite, watch the ground below, and keep from crashing into the mountainside. Was that a skid mark left by the Helix? Oops, they'd never know because Emma's hang glider decided of its own accord to dip to the west. Couldn't have been; anything that large passing through a field that broad would leave a scratch mark for miles. Emma was relieved to realize that she wouldn't be required to try and fight her way back to check out a sign that she'd missed.

Shalimar dismissed her teammate with hand signals: head down to the ground and set up a campsite. Emma gratefully put the craft on the rocky soil, wondering if she dared 'forget' to tie it up and let it get blown away overnight. Then she felt ashamed of herself; the guys were counting on her. It wasn't their fault that she didn't have Shalimar's skill at just about everything that could be done outside.

Shalimar came in half an hour after the sun settled itself behind the mountains, taking advantage of her feral eyesight to search through the darkness itself. "Nothing," she reported, undecided whether to be thrilled at the chance to fly or disappointed at not yet finding their missing teammates. "Three hundred miles down, only seven hundred to go."

"Shalimar," Emma started to say, when the feral cut her off.

"Emma, I've been thinking," she said firmly. "We aren't covering nearly enough ground like this. The guys could be anywhere in these mountains and we won't find them for a week. And that's assuming they're still at the Helix. We need to maximize our efforts."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, we've been using my powers and wasting yours. Look, you've been tagging after me, trying to do what I do, when we both know that you can't. You're not a feral. You're a psionic."

"Okay." Emma was puzzled. "But, Shalimar, I have been using my powers. Every night I check for the guys, see if they're still alive."

"Right. And every night you're exhausted from trying to keep up with me. Don't think I haven't noticed, girl. You wouldn't be able to 'read' your twin sister sitting next to you, you're so worn out."

"I haven't got a twin."

"You know what I mean."

Emma began to see what Shalimar was getting at. "You think that if I'm well rested, I'll be able to get more into the guys' minds, see where they are."

Shalimar shrugged, a little smile on her face. "It's worth a shot." One side of the smile quirked up. "You know how Adam is always yelling at you not to go so deep? Afraid that you won't be able to get out of someone's mind? That you'll be caught there forever?"

"Yeah."

"You won't get that from me."