Separate the Sorrow

by Dark Mirage1

Woe alas! Danielle's death leads Catherine to Adam, but that arrangement does not work out, and events take Catherine to her father, Mason Eckhart.

2009 Separate the Sorrow92

"Who can take tomorrow,
Dip it in a dream?
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream…"

--Leslie Bricusse & Anthony Newley, "The Candy Man"

2009

"That fickle, fickle, fickle witch!" Rarely did Mason Eckhart raise his voice. Dr Rebecca Steyn could not recall him ever raising his voice within the walls of the quarters they shared. He reserved displays of anger for deserving people and events, so she knew his distress was not trivial.

"Anyone I know?" she asked, managing a mocking smile that served its purpose of visibly calming him.

"I believe you were spared exposure. Showing you this…is so embarrassing. So shameful. But you must see it." Mason removed a half-sized disk from a plastic case and placed it in the DVD player tray.

"No wonder you're upset! You got a disk from Adam!" Communications from Adam almost always precipitated hours or even days of distress for Mason.

"How do you know?" Mason was puzzled. "I haven't told anyone about receiving this."

"Who else uses those chopped-down disks? Do you know anyone else? I don't. I see them in stores, but I never see anyone buying them. Adam must have them by the hundreds. I'm not sure I can recall him using anything else."

"That's true. In this case, the content is more disturbing than the source. And was a great shock to me. Had I known, I would have told you." He came and sat down next to Rebecca, and started the disk by remote.

Adam's smirky face filled the screen.

"He looks terrible, Mason."

"And the message is worse. Listen."

"Hi, Mason. For the last few months, following Danielle Hartman's untimely death choking on a pickled mushroom…"

"Mason, stop that right there."

He did.

"Could anyone choke to death on a pickled mushroom, Mason? Or is Adam on drugs?" Rebecca wasn't playing. Adam's story sounded outrageous and unlikely.

"If anyone could croak that way, Danielle could manage it." He re-started the disk.

"…Danielle's daughter and yours have been living with Brennan and me. Unfortunately, Catherine got herself arrested during a failed mission with Brennan after he had to leave her behind, and now, Mason, she is your problem. I'm attaching all appropriate data to convince you of her pedigree. If you replicate the work, your results will match my own. Initially, I believed Catherine was my daughter, but after Danielle told me she wasn't, I had myself convinced she was Breedlove's progeny. Imagine my surprise at the results!" Adam laughed. The message ended.

"I missed a chapter somewhere, Mason. The name of Danielle Hartman still reverberates through Genomex, even among the new staff. Her reputation was not of the best."

"Uh, no."

"Keep going. You'll feel better once you're through."

"I was in the latter stages of my divorce from Jackie. Breedlove insisted I follow Danielle around when she ventured off site, just to be certain the stealth program was not compromised or ended because of Danielle's excesses. Ethanol and some mutant talents don't mix. I was supposed to keep her from getting into any trouble, mostly in the shape of Adam, who had recently dumped Jackie and taken up with Danielle."

"This is getting incestuous," she said.

"And tasteless. I know."

"Good. Maintaining perspective is good."

"Danielle would drink herself into oblivion and I would all but carry her back to her Genomex quarters. I was drinking too much in those days as well. Much too much. One night I didn't get away from her fast enough."

"That is an interesting way to put things. I don't think I've ever heard quite that explanation. I cannot imagine you drinking to excess. Who seduced whom?"

Mason sighed. "Rebecca, I woke up there hours later and assumed we'd had sex, but I don't recall any of it, which is a mercy. Catherine's existence confirms what I presumed."

Rebecca shook her head. "Such sleaziness, and from you! I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. So out of character." She looked at him carefully for a moment. "I can't read your mind, Mason, but I can tell you're close to panic." Gently, she caressed the side of his face, and stroked the crazy white hair. "Is there more?"

"No, thank God."

"Ah, good. Why the anxiety?"

"I was fearful you might leave me."

"Over something you did before you even knew I existed? No. When I left my Gelding Jeffrey, people thought I was a loon for giving up such a paragon of charm, but they didn't have to live with him. I swore I would never 'settle' again. I have not. I am not 'settling' now. I'm not perfect, but I'm not fickle, either."

"No."

"I'm not sure whether to share the stories I hear with you or not. There are people on site convinced our marriage is a sham, a fraud. I conduct myself in the lab and at meetings as I always have, and the things I overhear…people have the oddest imaginations. I believe only Dr Varady, Emma, and Jesse know the simple truth, which isn't as entertaining as the speculations. Jerry Springer and his imitators have perverted peoples imaginations."

"No one else needs to know."

"Of course they don't. And you've elevated…manipulation by looks and persona to high levels of craft and skill. We have to think about handling Catherine, however." Rebecca shrugged. "We cannot change our past selves to suit our present lives. We were who we were. That's what Adam tries to do, remake his own history to edit out the parts he no longer has a use for, or would prefer to obliterate."

"Very true. I don't think Adam recalls the truth anymore himself after repeating the lies so often."

"What are you going to do now?"

"Call in every favor I'm owed on the west coast to have Catherine released into my custody, and bring her here. I'll have to stretch the GSA's definition as a law enforcement agency to the limits, but I think it can be done."

"Mason, don't worry. I am prepared to accept Catherine and love her, just because she is yours, the same way I love Grey and Deirdre and Michelle. However, a note of caution: your intentions sound noble, fair, and just, but the girl's an unknown. She's old enough to be beyond salvaging. She could show up with twenty earrings in each ear, pierced nipples, tattoos you don't want to think about, her mother's appetite for ethanol, and Brennan Mulwray's twins due in six months."

"O dear God." Mason slumped forward, and removed his glasses. "I'd kill Mulwray."

"I would help you." Rebecca wasn't smiling. "Mulwray and I have a history, recall: he's on my list. He could have killed me flinging me into that wall."

"She could not really be that much of a lost soul, could she?"

"Rebecca shrugged. "All of that can't be true, but be realistic. Be ready for anything. Don't get carried away with pleasant fantasies of who she might be, because no matter how she's been raised, I doubt if she's received the careful attention of the others. You have not had any influence upon her. You don't need to be hurt again. She's probably angry as Hell about being left alone in the world, abandoned by Mulwray during one of Adam's 'missions', then being arrested and implanted with a governor."

"You're probably correct."

"Catherine did not choose the manner in which she was begotten. We can hope Danielle cared enough about her not to tell. She will not hear it from me. You would not tell her, would you?"

"Never. No one deserves sad truth like that. If she ever presses me, I'll lie."

"I could fly out with her GSA escort and try to talk to her on the flight back. She could vent anger on me and dull whatever wrath she feels before meeting you."

"You are wasted in the lab, Rebecca. You have the mind for my business."

"Thank you. I think. Even if Catherine claws my eyes out verbally…it could be better in the long term if she claws out mine initially, and not yours. I can kiss and make up later with her with greater ease than a long-lost father."

"That's an exceedingly kind thing to do for me. For Catherine, too."

Adam insisted there weren't any bones broken in my foot, but I wondered about that. I could walk, but just barely, ever since the last "mission" into the International Scientific warehouse when Brennan and I had to drop twelve feet onto uneven concrete to stay ahead of the private security patrol.

Brennan, ever-lucky, ever smiled upon by chance and fate, landed perfectly, but I did not and it was all I could do to manage to scramble out of there without being caught.

No matter what Adam said, I stayed off the foot as much as I could manage. Slowly, the pain faded unless I tried to do too much.

Adam began dropping hints that the time had come for another visit to the Midnight Market at International Scientific. When I failed to volunteer for the "mission" he just told me that Brennan and I had to go back.

"Catherine, just to be extra safe this time, I'm going to place this device in your head so I can watch the outside and warn you without a sound." He smiled his Fatherly, Reassuring smile, but I wasn't quite buying. Not yet.

Adam held the device in his hand, swimming in a container of antimicrobials which kept it sterile but would not affect the electronics.

"What is that?" I asked.

"A little something I've been working on for over a year. We'll have direct, instant communication. That sounds like a good thing, doesn't it?"

I nodded in agreement. As much as I didn't like the idea of something in my head, the device did sound useful and practical. If I couldn't trust Adam, who could I trust?

Planting the device was painless and quick. I all but forgot I was wearing it until the night Brennan and I slipped back inside International Scientific while Adam watched outside from within the Double Helix. Adam kept reassuring me that he saw nothing outside and that was true, he didn't. What drew private security and the police to the building was one of us tripping an alarm.

I'm still not sure which one of us set off that alarm, but it doesn't matter anymore anyway.

Brennan set off running for the closest way out, half-dragging me though the warehouse. And there we were looking at that same insane twelve-foot drop where I hurt myself before.

Adam had fed me a strong painkiller hours before, but now it was wearing off. My foot hurt again.

"I can't do this, Brennan. Can we go back inside and find another way out?"

"Suit yourself," Brennan said, and off he went, jumping into the darkness. For leaving me behind, he deserved to break both legs, but as always, his luck held. I heard him hit the concrete and take off running. Loyalty among thieves, and all that…Brennan was loyal only to himself. Adam kept him stuffed full of Moon Pies and other junk food delights, so he hung around Adam as long as Adam kept him one step ahead of the cops.

Interior building lights came on behind me, and I knew my retreat was blocked.

I was in too much pain to cast a convincing stealth aura, and the commercial security guys spotted me on top of the single-story roof, and they called the real police. I was too scared of not being able to clamber back over the rooftop to the window Brennan and I had used to escape from the building, so the real police called the real fire department, and they dragged me down from the roof like a stranded cat. Stupidly, I still had stuff from the warehouse in my pockets and my wallet containing lots of identification and my old address with Mom.

I let them pack me up and take me to the district station and waste a couple hours trying to call Mom before admitting she was dead and that I had left that address months before. By this time, my name and hers had been run through several computer databases and they knew I was a Genomex mutant of some kind. They weren't quite sure what a Genomex mutant was, but the information they found scared them. There were all kinds of special instructions and precautions for safely dealing with mutants. I knew this because the cops were reading the 'good parts' out loud to one another.

They locked me in a windowless room and the next time the door opened, it admitted some huge guys who had to be Genetic Security wielding neck restraints which they used to pin me against the far wall until one of them could implant me with a subdermal governor.

The governor hurt like hell, not unlike having a "headache" in your upper spinal chord. As they dragged me from the windowless room, I noticed one of these slugs wore a governor himself, the one who had done the implanting. I spit on him for that. Mutants who turn against their own are among the lowest forms of life, Adam always said.

Ordinary police were in no way prepared to deal with criminal mutants, which, with a shock, I realized I was. I was being transferred to the GSA, the thing most feared by free mutants.

"My left foot is damaged. I might have broken bones."

"That's too bad, kid."

Not that I was looking for sympathy, I just could not walk well.

And for them, that was no problem. They were big, well fed, and well-exercised. Two of them carried me out of the district station and into a black SUV as easily as I might heft a ten pound sack of potatoes. Off we went, and as easily as they chucked me into the SUV, they carried me into the GSA facility and deposited me into a holding place.

I cannot properly call it a cell, since it was more like a stripped down dorm room. I hobbled to the sink and washed my face.

Well, what would Mom think if she could see me now, locked up by the GSA with a governor plugged deep into my neurons, after all those years we had managed to avoid drawing the attention of the GSA and Mason Eckhart?

If Mom were still alive, she'd probably tell me I was a fool. And sloppy. And she would be right.

But she was gone, and it was just me now. The only person in the world I could think to turn to when Mom died was Adam. He did not hesitate to take me in, and I quickly learned why. When he came to collect me in the Double Helix, he didn't fly back to Sanctuary because he had long since abandoned it. Only Brennan was still with him. Adam needed to rebuild Mutant X, and I was part of that plan.

Emma and Jesse had long since sold out to Eckhart. I was shocked and confused by that. Jesse came from money. How could he be bought? Emma never seemed much impressed by material goodies. How had Eckhart gotten to her? Shalimar was gone, too, but Adam was vague about her departure. She had had some physical problems, and maybe couldn't be part of the team any longer. Maybe Shalimar had simply retired and Adam did not want to embarrass her by saying she could no longer keep up with the physical demands of Mutant X.

Adam and Brennan were living out of the Double Helix. It was tight, but they made room for me. They needed me, and my stealth talent.

For a couple of years now, I knew Adam wasn't my father, but I still wished he was, and fantasized that somehow he really was my father after all. Maybe my mother had made a mistake. She was never too good with numbers. All the time I was growing up, Mom told me how great Adam was, how smart, how sophisticated, how he knew everything. She had always told me that she and my father had loved each other very much but hadn't been together long, but ever since meeting Adam, every time I pressed Mom to tell me my father's name she'd tell me I'd be hurt and so would other people if she told. I could not imagine what that meant. Now that Mom was gone, I thought I'd never find out, and that I should 'adopt' Adam as my father of choice.

Adam kept pulling a lot of blood out of me, and testing it in the Double Helix lab. So far I showed no hint of the degeneration that nearly killed Mom. Adam kept checking my blood anyway, looking for any sign of disease.

I started working with Brennan. I had remembered him as very cool, but now he just did not seem very smart. Seeing him with a Little Debbie hanging out of his mouth most of the time was definitely not cool, especially since Brennan was getting chunkier by the month. He had little to say to me except lament the loss of his fleet of vintage Camaros.

Adam sent us on a lot of "missions" which usually puzzled me. Adam had money. Why he sent us to steal plastic transfer pipettes when he could order them by the case was perplexing, but as smart as he was, I figured Adam must have some good reason for what he was doing.

Face clean, I took off my shoes and stretched out on the narrow but spotlessly clean and fresh GSA bed. I closed my eyes, and fantasized about Brennan frying a hole in the wall and breaking me out of here, making a getaway in the Double Helix with frustrated GSA trailing behind, hopelessly outrun.

It was a nice daydream. Reality turned bizarre when the guy I recognized as the head GSA entered my 'pen' –after knocking on the door!—and sat down on the single chair. He began to make nice, which wasn't so bad since he was cute and had a big smile. I was highly suspicious, of course, but at least he did a good job of looking sincere. And he did have great blue eyes.

"I want to apologize for the way my staff treated you. They knew only that you were a potentially dangerous Genomex mutant, so they took no chances of getting hurt—or getting you hurt. Had we known of your connections, we would have been much, much gentler." An even bigger smile followed this speech and lingered too long.

My connections? I didn't have any connections.

"I don't know how your father found out you were here, but he knows and is sending a plane for you."

Adam. It must be Adam, scheming and posing as someone powerful. Adam knows how to get governors off the spinal chords of mutants. It'll be gone in a few hours.

I tried my best to remain cool, and not look too thrilled, to appear as if I had expected this development all along.

"My father?" I asked. I wondered what nom de guerre Adam was using. Probably something displaying his wonderful wit and humor.

"The boss of the entire GSA. Mason Eckhart."

He was not joking. He turned serious and grim just speaking Eckhart's name.

"I see he has the same effect on you that he has on the rest of us. My sympathies, kid. I don't blame you for running away from him."

No wonder Mom took this horrible secret to her grave. How was it even possible? Rape? Drugs? A combination of both? Mason Eckhart was the Great Bogeyman of mutant nightmares. I'd heard horror stories about him all of my life, but during the time with Adam and Brennan, they'd told me even more bizarre tales about "Mr Creepy".

And I'm the Daughter of Mr Creepy? That sounds like the title of a lousy horror movie. This cannot be true. Someone has a cruel sense of what is funny.

Mason Eckhart's reputation for cold, calculating control of himself and other people described a man hardly human. Adam said Eckhart was completely encased in a layer of biopolymer to protect him from microorganisms, and over that, he wore a pair of thin leather gloves, in black, of course, further protection against punctures, paper cuts, or other minor injuries which could easily kill Eckhart with his non-functional immune system.

Adam said that since 1991 Eckhart never wore anything except black pinstripe suits. Adam and Brennan both swore that he wore a long-haired white wig! I could not imagine it. There weren't any photos in existence of him, so I had to believe them, although I was dubious.

Mom, how the Hell did I happen?

"What's Eckhart really like?" he asked.

"You are asking me? I have never met him."

"Well, you'll never forget him. The suits, the wigs, the gloves—I've seen him and it's all true. I'm sorry if I upset you."

"Yeah."

I tried to take a nap and forget the revelation of pedigree, but I was wide awake. Mom, if there is an afterlife, I have a lot of questions for you.

That evening, someone brought me a sandwich. I had to sleep in my clothes, and I wasn't happy about that.

The next morning, yet another GS Agent knocked on my door, then entered to be certain I was awake. I had been awake for some time, drifting forth and back between sleep and wakefulness, not really believing it when I would wake and once more find myself in a locked room, captive of the GSA, possibly cut off from Adam forever.

Adam was the last link I had to my old life with Mom.

My life felt like it was spinning completely out of control. Until Mom died, I had been a good kid—nothing spectacular in the way of grade, but I hadn't given Mom anything extra to worry about. I didn't do drugs and the few friends I had were other good kids. With my mother's health problems and the secretive way we lived so we wouldn't be tracked down as Genomex mutants, she didn't need anything more to worry over.

I wondered how I was going to travel. Would they make me wear an ugly orange jumpsuit and put shackles on my legs?

Then I had a really scary thought. Maybe I wasn't just cut off from my old life. Maybe my life was simply over. All Genomex mutants knew about stasis pods and we all knew about Eckhart's blind hatred of mutants. Not only must he hate me, but I must also be a source of embarrassment to him. Was that why I was being hurried back to Genomex, to be safely stashed in a stasis pod where I wouldn't be a source of ridicule, maybe even a threat to his career?

All of that made sense. I knew he was ruthless. If I was any kind of liability to Eckhart, being his daughter would not stop him from doing whatever he believed was required to protect himself and assure that all balances tipped in his favor. We all knew how Mr Creepy was.

Perhaps Adam could still save me, wrest me away from these grim GSA types, maybe just outside the GSA building or even at the airport with lots of people around and lots of distractions for my keepers.

If Adam didn't rescue me…I didn't want to think about that too hard. The conclusions I had reached were disturbing.

There was another knock at the door, and this time, a different agent entered.

"Good morning, Catherine. My name is Robert Gutierrez, and I'm head of the team taking you to the airport. It's time to go."

I didn't really mind him calling me 'Catherine' instead of 'Ms Hartman'. Gutierrez was young and cute, and unlike the others, must not have completed his official GSA training course in The Smile: The Big Phony Smile and Forgetting How to Smile (these characters seemed to have no middle ground) because he seemed pleasant and genuine.

I stretched and did my best imitation of being cool, casual, and unrattled. I doubt if I fooled Gutierrez, but I refused to be obviously frightened or anxious. I got out of bed and stood up. I felt sticky from sleeping in my clothes.

"Don't I get an orange jumpsuit?"

Gutierrez shook his head. "We don't do that."

"What about shackles?"

He turned suddenly serious and removed a small device from a pocket. "Do you know what this is?"

"No."

"This is the remote control for your subdermal governor. With it, I could induce blinding pain, which as a restraint method is much more effective than shackles."

"Ever activated one?" I asked.

"Yeah, I've had violent or insane mutants in my keeping. Sometimes there just isn't any other way. Catherine, I read your file this morning. I don't know what you were doing robbing that warehouse, but you seem like a decent kid. Please don't do anything that would make me consider using this. Ready to go?"

I nodded. What did I need to do to prepare? I had never even emptied my pockets. I could just walk out the door.

Two more agents waited outside, more of the well-fed, well-exercised guys who must have been selected in case I needed to be carried somewhere. I went along willingly.

Outside, the sky was overcast and dark, much like my mood. One of the generic black SUVs favored by the GSA was parked just outside the front door.

I looked around for any sign of Adam or Brennan, and saw none.

Gutierrez and I got into the back seat of the SUV, with the Big Guys sitting up front.

Then I realized I was hungry. That sandwich had been a long time ago.

Within minutes, I knew we weren't going to the airport, but heading away from it. I became suspicious.

Robert Gutierrez, you of the pleasant smile and supposed desire not to hurt me, are you in the process of making me 'disappear'? Is this how Eckhart deals with his embarrassments?

"Hey, where are we going? I thought we were going to the airport?"

"We are. We're not going to the one the airlines use, but to Montgomery Field. General aviation. The runways are long enough for the GSA Citation, but we won't have to deal with traffic or security. Getting in and out is quicker and much easier on everyone."

Well, that sounded reasonable, but how was Adam ever going to find me now?

The GSA jet was already on the ground by the time we got there. Three people were waiting for us, the two inevitable GSA (like Gutierrez and the two other guys with me, who hadn't bothered to introduce themselves and who had not said a word, they all dressed so much alike I was beginning to think the entire organization shopped out of the same Mr Creepy-mandated catalogue.) and a woman in a tailored but feminine navy blue suit. She did not have the GSA 'look', which in its female incarnation tended towards the severe, mannish, and unflattering. Nevertheless, clearly she was in charge; the two GSA clone-drones deferred to her.

If she wasn't GSA, what the heck was she?

She wasn't young, but she was still attractive, in an understated, classy way not much seen in a society gone relentlessly casual. She had long hair bound up on the back of her head with a pair of black lacquer hairsticks. She wore 2" navy pumps of the simplest design and soft kidskin.

The overall effect approached elegance in its taste and simplicity. I was beginning to feel like a slovenly waif compared to this curious woman when I noticed that her jacket concealed a gun. Curiouser and curiouser. What the heck was she?

Gutierrez stepped forward to greet her. "Robert Gutierrez, GSA."

The woman extended her right hand to Gutierrez in the natural manner of women who have spent their adult lives in the world of business, and who can mimic male rituals without flaw.

"Dr Rebecca Steyn, Genomex. Good morning."

The name meant nothing to me, but the hitherto unspeaking agent now grasping my left arm whispered the Ukrainian phrase for "Mother of God", which I recognized from one of my mother's boyfriends.

She looked away from Gutierrez long enough to quickly evaluate me. That quick inspection made me squirm inside.

"Doesn't she have any luggage?" she asked.

Well, I always pack carefully for these burglaries with Brennan, but this time I don't know what got into me; such a lapse…

"No, ma'am, the police captured her yesterday morning."

"I fully understand those circumstances, but wasn't she issued a toothbrush, toothpaste, changes of underwear, and other personal items? I was standing next to Mason when he authorized spending for these items when he talked to your boss."

'Mason'? The human-looking woman called Mr Creepy 'Mason'? Who the heck is she?

"I'm afraid that directive never reached me." He sounded genuinely sorry.

"She has had breakfast, hasn't she?"

"I honestly don't know." He turned to me. "Catherine, did anyone bring you breakfast?"

I shook my head. These people were inept.

"Between the implant in her neck, her empty stomach, and wearing the same clothes all this time, she must be in a wonderful state of mind."

"She hasn't complained, Dr Steyn."

She made eye contact with me. I glared at her.

Of course I'm livid about being hungry, kept in the same clothes and not being handed a toothbrush. I'll need to take a scraper to my hide before I feel clean again. But I wasn't going to say anything to these GSA clone-guys and let them know I was miserable. And who are you to ask or care about me?

Most people find my Nasty Glare unnerving, but her expression…softened, just short of a smile. Now I knew she was bizarre. Maybe she was the Chief Torturer.

All that exterior polish had to hide something dark, didn't it? The bad guys on the tube always wore nice suits, the good guys were always…a little on the casual irregular side.

"What happened to her left foot? I notice she's not putting much weight on it."

"Old injury, she says."

"Has she seen a doctor?"

"She didn't ask for one."

She rolled her eyes. "Unfortunately, I'm not that kind of doctor, so I can't be of any help to her."

She then turned from Gutierrez and walked right up to me. That's when I got my first good look at her incredible blue eyes. I felt like she was looking right through me. Maybe her job was Chief Interrogator. This was no pampered, hothouse woman, but a fierce, independent soul afraid of very little. She wasn't at all put off by my tough-kid act.

"Catherine Hartman?" The way she said it wasn't a statement, but a question. I could not help but answer.

"Yeah."

Just little old me. Stealth mutant, indifferent student, criminal, and best of all, Daughter of Mr Creepy.

"I am Dr Rebecca Steyn. I will be escorting you back to Genomex, where, I assure you, you will have a toothbrush, even if I have to go and buy one for you."

"What are you, some kind of psychologist?" Psychology would be a good field of expertise for a devilishly clever interrogator or torturer, I thought. That way, she'd know all the things that scare us the most inside. I put all the sarcasm into my voice I could manage. I sounded really whiney. I would be annoyed with me.

"Nothing of the kind. I'm a chemist." She pulled a small leather-bound notebook from inside her jacket. I realized she carried no purse. "If you could tell me your sizes and color preferences, I can make your transition a lot smoother."

She seemed sincere enough. She wasn't trying to "be my friend", as adults will with children or those they think of as children, believing their youth will make them relative pushovers, easily won over by a toothy smile and a too-familiar manner. And if she was asking about clothes, that implied I wasn't going to be killed or podded, not immediately, anyway. That was good.

"I can't pay for anything. I think there's about seventeen dollars in my wallet and pockets, and that's including loose change." I wanted to stir the waters and raise a little hell, but I also was nearly broke. Most of my cash was aboard the Double Helix, at least until Brennan found it. Very inconvenient.

"Mason's paying for everything. I'm terrible at guessing sizes and I don't want to get you a color you cannot stand."

"I don't want anything from him." I glared at her as I said it. My glare had no effect on her! Her voice remained calm and even. She was not tempted by my brat bait.

"He wants to do this for you, Ms Hartman."

"Why now? Where has he been all the rest of the years of my life?"

Where, indeed. I even envied the kids whose parents had split, because they knew who their fathers were and a lot of them saw them on weekends or spent summers with them. For all but the last few hours of my life, I didn't even know my father's name or much of anything about him. I resented all those empty years and now I resented who he actually was. Never finding out might just have been better than learning he was someone I actively hated my whole life.

"That's a perfectly fair question, Catherine. I'm not going to patronize you with a syrupy 'I know how you feel', because I don't; I can't, but I can tell you're deeply hurt. There is an answer to your question, but before I tell you, can you promise to step back emotionally and listen, and not to just strike out blindly because you're in pain?"

"Why should I?"

"One, understanding is in your best interest, and two, I suspect you are intelligent enough not to allow yourself to be ruled by emotions, especially the negative ones."

She was being straight with me. I was sure of it. I had never known anyone like this elegant, tough, feminine woman, who was also packing, and who referred to Mr Creepy as "Mason".

"I will listen."

"Mason Eckhart did not know you existed until about two years ago. At that time, he considered the possibility you were his daughter, but circumstances were such that he could not be certain."

She was being very kind and very gentle with my mother's memory. I knew very well what my mother was like with men. Yeah, a guy would have to wonder.

"He gave your mother two opportunities to tell him if you were his, but she followed up on neither opening. He concluded someone else must have fathered you. What more could he possibly have done?"

"I guess nothing. How did he find out the truth? When the GSA branch office called?"

"No. They had no way of making such a connection. No…he found out by means of Adam sending him a video disk by overnight air telling him the truth. I've viewed the video. Adam's message is brief, blunt, and unambiguous."

"Adam knew?" Adam knew and did not tell me? What was that about? How could he know? When did he know?

"Adam left Genomex with DNA data on everyone who had worked for the company from the beginning until he departed. That was –and is—offered to employees as a benefit which could later be of use in identification. Spouses and children are eligible as well. The database is huge and detailed. Matching you to your mother and Mason would have been straightforward and obvious. This is technology that has existed for some time. Now, as to when Adam knew, I have no way of knowing, and I won't guess."

I was not happy. I had the gut feeling Adam had known for some time. He was aware of my frustration, and to be honest, pain, over not knowing so much as a name. Why had he not told me? And why had he told Eckhart? Something was very wrong.

"Can I see this message?"

"I don't have a copy with me, but I cannot think of any objections Mason would have to your seeing it."

"Why do you think Adam told Eckhart about me?"

"My opinion is that Adam sought to shame Mason. I am well aware of Mason's reputation. What you do not know, but which Adam and I both know well, is that Mason is a formal, old-fashioned man who can still be shamed, unlike the current fashion for amoral shamelessness."

Old-fashioned? Shame?

She glanced at her watch. "Mason has known you are his daughter for less than twenty-six hours. He called in favors to have you released into his keeping. Nothing on earth compelled him to do this except his own conscience."

"I didn't think he had one of those." I tried my best to be unpleasant. I succeeded.

"You have a lot to learn. He is personally paying for the use of the Citation, not creating a fiction about 'company business'. He could have had you shipped across country in one of the scheduled van trips, but he chose to do this."

"I'm confused."

"The situation is difficult. Now, if you could please give me some sizes and color preferences? If you don't, I'll guess, and as I said, I'm not good at that." She tried to smile.

Part of me wanted to continue arguing with this woman, but I realized she was determined and resolute with particular goals and purposes in mind. She wasn't about to be distracted by my emotions or hers.

Her emotions? What part did she have in all of this?

I gave her a list of sizes and color choices. When she thought she had enough information, she extracted a compact cell phone from her jacket (what else did she hide in there?).

"Emma, it's Rebecca. Could you tell Mason we're about to turn around and come back? I have a great favor to ask of you. Catherine doesn't have anything of her own. She needs everything, from a toothbrush to clothes. I have sizes here as well. Mason will reimburse you any way you wish. If you could get this list, and leave the things in my office, she'll have something clean to wear…otherwise, she'll have to sleep in one of my old t-shirts. Oh, thank you, Emma. When in doubt, use your own judgment. I probably won't see you until tomorrow. Bye."

"Were you talking to Emma deLauro?"

"Yes." She looked towards the young, uniformed woman who had just emerged from the plane. Is it time to board, Bonnie?"

"Yes, indeed, Rebecca. We are ready."

Gutierrez handed Dr Steyn the remote control for my governor, then turned to me. "Good luck, Catherine."

"Thanks."

The interior of the cabin was surprisingly comfortable, if cramped. The seats were covered in black leather, and as I discovered as I sank into one of them, very comfortable.

I settled into my seat and buckled in, with this Rebecca person next to me. There wasn't enough room for a real aisle. This close, I caught a whiff of the lavender she was wearing.

"I'm sorry about breakfast, Catherine." She reached down for a bag and handed it to me. "These bagels were fresh this morning. I wish I had something more substantial to offer you, but this is what I have."

"That's okay. I don't want them."

"Take the bag in case you change your mind." She was trying to be nice. Or was she? Perhaps the bagels were laced with some kind of mind-controlling drug.

I took the bag and set it beside me. The aroma of onion reached me and I wished I wasn't quite so proud because I was hungry.

We started moving off immediately.

"Bonnie looks young, but she's been flying since she was fifteen, and she's very good. Her first officer is good, too."

"I've never flown in anything this size."

"It's a different experience than the fifty-first row in a wide-body. Emma spoke well of you, Catherine. She's looking forward to seeing you again."

"Emma sold out." I put plenty of disgust into my comment.

"Hardly. Sometime soon, you should have a heart to heart with Emma, and hear her story. Emma and Jesse have helped thousands of people like you come out of the shadows and live productive, satisfying lives."

"That's not what Adam says."

"What Adam says…" She rolled her eyes at me.

"Are you one of us?"

"No. I'm just an ordinary human."

"If Mason Eckhart cares so much about his long-unsuspected daughter Catherine, why didn't Mr Creepy come here himself?"

"He is afflicted with a number of severe, chronic medical problems, each requiring daily attention by a team of specialists and their instrumentation. He never puts much distance between himself and his doctors. Doing so would simply not be prudent. If he became stranded away from Genomex, he could become very ill with no one who could help him. Why do you call him Mr Creepy?"

"That's what Adam and Brennan call him."

She laughed. "Adam is never going to get around to growing up. When all else fails, he calls people names."

"How did you get drafted for this babysitting job?" I maintained my unpleasantness.

"I wasn't drafted. I volunteered. I'm 'Mrs Creepy'."

Could there be such a woman as a Mrs Creepy? According to Adam, Mr Creepy was completely encased in layered biopolymer, and as far as Adam knew Eckhart didn't have a lot of choice in remaining celibate. I turned and took a careful look at Mrs Rebecca Creepy.

She looked normal, attractive enough to not have to settle for anyone odd or marginal. She seemed pleasant and human. Under other circumstances, I would probably like her.

"If you're not GSA, why are you carrying a gun?"

"Brennan Mulwray once tossed me several yards into a concrete wall. That won't happen again."

No, you won't let anything like that happen again to you. I believe that.

"What had you done to him?"

"Nothing. Adam told him to zorch me, so he did."

"And what had you done to Adam?"

She chuckled. "When I started at Genomex about seventeen years ago, women were tripping over each other trying to draw the attention of the Prince of Genomex. Just not me."

"Why not?"

"I found Adam tiresome, personally pompous, and professionally overrated. No sane woman who believed in herself would want that in her life."

But you did want Mr Creepy, huh? Hmm…

"You could have had Adam?"

"For me, he would have been no prize. Adam doesn't understand "no" very well. He was nearly fired for sending slanderous emails about me all over the company. Dr Breedlove signed the statement everyone received clearing me of all the lies in the email. That's a very juvenile thing to do, completely unworthy of the man Adam pretends to be…but isn't. And never will be."

I had never heard anyone speak negatively of Adam. Everyone I knew thought Adam was wonderful.

"That's hard to believe."

"I have no motivation to lie. If you ever speak to the Prince of Genomex again, ask him about the email and the wicked Dr Rebecca Steyn. His confabulations are amusing."

I had never met anyone who did not hold Adam in high regard. What was wrong with this woman?

"You hate all of us mutants, don't you?"

"Hogwash. There are several mutants among the Genomex staff. I consider Emma and Jesse to be friends. So does Mason."

I didn't have a good answer for that. It didn't make any sense considering what I knew.

"What's Mr Creepy going to do with me? Turn me into an experiment?"

"Well, tonight, he's going to have dinner with you, but as for the rest, you're confusing him with Adam Kane. Adam did perform experiments on you, didn't he? 'Fine-tuning' your DNA or some other legitimate-sounding euphemism?"

"He was trying to help me."

"That's what he tells every Genomex mutant. Unfortunately, it's really about Adam's unlimited ego and sick curiosity."

"Dinner with Mr Creepy sounds delightful." I moved the discussion away from Adam and back towards the easy target of Eckhart.

"Catherine, things are not always as they seem or how we would like them to be. You would be wise to approach Mason with your mind ever so slightly open. You might be surprised. There are a lot of things he could have done with you other than bring you home by private jet. He could have left you to languish in the court system, but he chose not to abandon you."

"I'm not sure which is worse."

"You're about to find out." She was still calm. I was not.

"You're not going to tell me how wonderful Mr Creepy is?"

"You wouldn't believe what I told you. I intend to allow you to sort through impressions and facts yourself. However, there are some things you do need to know." She reached under her seat and pulled out a leather case, removing some framed photographs.

"You have siblings—half-siblings."

She handed me the first photo. "That's Grey Eckhart. He's the oldest." Then she handed me two others. "That is Michelle and that is Deirdre Eckhart."

"They're twins. How can you tell them apart?"

"I can't. They wore different clothes for these portraits."

They all shared the same eyes. They were good-looking, confident kids who knew who they were and what they wanted. Unlike me. I hadn't been too sure of myself even before Mom died.

"How did he come to father these?" My rudeness was intentional.

"From his first marriage, which ended when his wife left him for Adam. Yes, Catherine, another lesser known detail from Adam's past."

Adam? Messing around with somebody else's wife?

"He's never said anything about that. Neither did my Mom."

"Adam flittered right from Jackie to Danielle in a matter of weeks. You wouldn't expect him to talk about that, would you?"

"How do you know?" I made an accusation with the tone of my voice.

"Mason told me."

"And of course, you believed him."

"I have never caught Mason lying to me. We don't tell stories to one another. Adam is less than he seems. Much less."

"What am I supposed to do with them," I asked, pointing to the handsome brood of intelligent-looking progeny.

"Well, you could have a family."

"A big, happy family, huh?" More sarcasm out of me. Sure she would chase after some of this bait.

"I didn't say it would be easy or automatic. They accept me now, but that required conscious effort on my part, honesty, consistency, and an overall light touch."

"Do they know about me?"

"Not yet. Mason has no intention of keeping you a secret, however."

"I don't understand why I'm here." I really didn't. I was very confused about so much.

"You don't have any other family, do you?"

"No."

"Exactly. Mason's trying to give you one. He knows you have no one else."

"What could I possibly have in common with them?" I asked. "Look at them. Look at

me."

"Well, you have Mason in common. And as of this evening, you will have spent time with him. His health problems tie him down, and his children live at some distance. Grey has not seen him since he was a small boy. The girls have no memory of seeing him. They know him through webcams and emails. Sometimes he helps them with homework. Sometimes I do as well."

"I could have used your help in algebra last year." That was true.

"I can still help you. Catherine, I've studied a bit of everything, including folklore. Obviously, I am cast into the role of the Wicked Stepmother, but that is not who I am. I love your father, and that means I care for his children. That could include you as well."

I always thought science people were cold and detached and a bit crazy, like Adam, but Rebecca Steyn was at once organized, logical, and deeply emotional. She had the good sense not to gush all over me, a stranger she just met and make all kinds of promises to me. She just said there were potentials, not certainties. That she cared for my father was obvious. I did not know if that indicated poor judgment on her part. Everything had heard about Eckhart before today described one of the most unlikable men imaginable.

"You need to know that everyone involved—Mason, his kids, me—none of us have had warm, fuzzy families. We have the possibility of hammering out something positive. I prefer doing that to living in the past. You also need to understand that one of Mason's afflictions is a compromised immune system. He typically keeps his distance from people. If you look carefully you will be able to tell he is wearing faux skin. He also almost always wears black leather gloves. None of this is about you. He has lived this way since 1991. I know it looks very odd at first, but try not to be put off by it."

"He was in some kind of accident, wasn't he?"

She shook her head emphatically. "No. There was no accident. Adam tried to kill him. I don't expect you to believe that but once you've seen the security tapes it's hard to believe otherwise."

I went back through the portraits once more. Grey's picture had slipped inside the frame, so I opened up the back to straighten it, and found another, smaller photos tucked in the back. I removed it carefully and compared it to the one of the nearly grown Grey. The smaller photo was of a dark-haired young man holding a blue bundle containing the nearly newly hatched Grey.

Rebecca watched me from close range. The seats were so close together she could easily see the photograph. "Looks like a human being to me. He wasn't always 'Mr Creepy'."

Things were quickly becoming more complicated than I had ever imagined. Eckhart had once been someone else.

I recognized the eyes. He had given them to his other three children, but not to me.

I studied the photos again. Yes. She was right. Very human. He looked proud and happy. There was nothing in that face to suggest what would come, the scheming, the malevolence, the cruelty, all the dreadful acts and crimes I'd heard about all my life.

"So, where did 'Mr Creepy' come from?"

"Just as we indulge in the pleasing fiction that modern medicine can patch us back together exactly as we were prior to a serious injury, we like to believe emotional traumas and abuses will leave us unchanged and unaltered. Neither belief is more than wishful thinking. Each of us is the sum of what has happened to us. Oh, we can decide not to be bitter or crazy, but anyone who flutters through life all light and fluffy after bad things have happened to them is either too stupid to learn anything or a charming fraud.

Terrible things have happened to Mason, emotional and physical disasters. Most of them he's had to cope with by himself. Give him some credit for fortitude, Catherine. He refuses to allow self-pity or despair to be part of his life."

I had to think about that for a long time.

As the inevitable black GSA SUV allowed a view of Genomex, I gathered all the sarcasm I could manage, trying to make Rebecca defensive.

" So, this is the place where all the dirty deeds were done."

"More than you can imagine. If walls could talk, these walls would scream. Genomex-by-the-waters is the center, but not the limit of the biotech empire of Kurt von Schuler."

Who?

"Kurt von Schuler?"

"That's what Breedlove called himself in Germany when he was a Nazi at the beginning of his career in the unholy. His sins began at an even earlier age than Adam's. Even by the end of the war he was so young the Allied tribunals did not prosecute him. He did the same blasphemous work as the other 'medical researchers'. He should have been handled exactly as the rest of them."

Adam worshipped the memory of Paul Breedlove. I didn't know what to make of her comment, but clearly she did not think of him or Genomex as benign, certainly not the Genomex of Breedlove and Adam..

"Adam thought a lot of Breedlove. He talked about him all the time."

"Breedlove duped a number of people, including your father, who is one of the sharpest judges of character I have known. Breedlove was a brilliant man. Unfortunately, he didn't get around to growing a conscience until the last years of his life."

"What goes on here now?" I asked.

"I don't know if you'll believe me or not, but I have access to every office, every desk, every lab, every storeroom, every workshop, every formerly hidden sublevel. As far as I can tell, only legitimate, ethical research goes on here now, involving work on plants of economic or medicinal interest, or domesticated livestock. Human research is strictly forbidden. Now, St Katherines, the hospital Genomex operates for the treatment of mutants does do human research, but none of involves genetics. Instead the work there is directed towards the extension of mutant lifespans and the alleviation of symptoms."

"You're right. I don't believe it."

"You probably won't believe this, either, but Mason initiated the purchase of St Kat and he also organized the scholarship program that will train a number of mutants as MDs, who will not only be highly motivated and bring special insight to their patients, but will also be watchful for any abuses or perversions of St Kat's purpose. The organizations that funded Breedlove still exist, Catherine. Mason is determined to stop any of them from infiltrating and re-starting anything like Breedlove's work, during the time he is in charge and the times of his successors. He's put a lot of safeguards in place, some of them arcane and wickedly clever."

"The 'wicked' part I believe."

"I thought you might. Mason's seen –and suffered—more of the horrors of Genomex than anyone still alive. Probably no one on earth is more motivated to undo or reverse past unholy science than your father. Of course, that's always been his motivation.

"You make him sound like a hero."

She smiled slightly. "On balance, that's what I believe he is. Mason's flawed, but he's not Satan's best buddy, either."

The GS agents drove us around to the front entrance of the complex and we exited the SUV.

"I'm going to have to sign you into the facility. You will be issued a visitor's badge. Remember to keep it clipped to your clothing at all times. After Mulwray stormed in here and murdered several employees, security has become…tighter. If the motion sensors detect movement and the system cannot match that motion to a transponder in a badge, some really scary looking paramilitary types with serious weapons will turn up almost immediately. Ordinarily, they're unobtrusive, but believe me, they are trained to respond hard and fast. Mason's security people know what they signed on for, but the pointless slaughter of unarmed file clerks and microbiologists who presented no threat to Mulwray's storm troopers was appallingly barbarous…the acts of pathological thugs who have come to enjoy killing and the sight of human blood."

I could have said, 'Yeah, I believe that. Brennan doesn't see other people as anything special. Everything he does is about Brennan. While I was with Adam, I avoided Brennan because he doesn't have a heart.' I could have said that and meant all of it,but I didn't want to agree with anything she said. She really hated Brennan Mulwray.

"Late start to the day, Dr Steyn?" The receptionist was young and polished. She was also behind a thick sheet of bulletproof material.

"Late finish, I'm afraid, Ellen. I've been up in the air most of the day. This young lady requires a visitor's badge valid for at least twenty-four hours. I will bring her back to have another issued tomorrow. Please key her badge so she may accompany Mr Eckhart, Ms deLauro, any of the security force or me anywhere we wish to take her."

Ellen looked up briefly from her task. "Welcome to Genomex. You've got to be a special young lady with that kind of access." She studied me with intelligent eyes. Ellen had to be more than a nice smile to greet visitors.

Rebecca finished signed me in, and pushed the tray holding the visitors book back through to Ellen.

"With all of the high-tech equipment here, you might be surprised to see us using something as primitive as a signature. Most people are reluctant to sign their names to a lie. People who are lying or being coerced won't be quite themselves. My heart rate is being monitored and compared with past typical values and past sign-ins of visitors. So you see, it's not as low-tech as it may appear."

Ellen flashed a smile as she placed the readied badge into the tray and pushed it back towards us. "And if I see anything I don't like, I have long since summoned the cavalry and locked the front doors. Keep that badge on you at all times, Ms Hartman."

"And you have something here, Dr Steyn. Your carnations arrived this morning. When you did not answer your page, I took pity on them and stuck them in water. I hope you don't mind."

"Oh, certainly not, Ellen."

"I'll pass them through to you on the other side."

"Could you call Mr Eckhart and tell him I'm here with Ms Hartman and we will come by his office as soon as she has had an opportunity to shower?"

"Of course."

"Thanks."

Ellen released the steel door from the lobby to the interior of the complex, and met us on the other side, handing Dr Steyn her carnations.

"I wouldn't want them to die of dehydration." She smiled at Ellen.

As soon as Ellen was out of hearing at her desk, I turned to Rebecca and asked, "Mr Creepy send you flowers?"

"Frequently." She smiled.

"I wouldn't have figured him for something like that. It's too sentimental and well, sweet. I figured he would send hell-bouquets of shriveled up dead flowers or dried up thorns and thistles."

Rebecca laughed. "How do you know he doesn't do that to people he doesn't like? Me he likes. He'd better not send me thorns and thistles."

I wasn't sure if she was joking or not.

"Are you serious about me taking a shower?" I was disgusting myself with the grubby feel of my skin, but I wasn't going to admit that, not to her.

"Yes. I'm not going to haul you in all the way from the west coast and have you meet your father with your hide unscrubbed for two days. With any luck, Emma will have found you some decent looking clothes. I don't care if you wear jeans, so long as you're clean and they're clean."

"I don't care if I smell." Not true. I did smell and I did care, because my aroma was disgusting me. However, if my reeking hide and hair offended me, Mr Creepy would be offended as well, and right now, I wanted to offend him.

"I care if Mason can smell you."

I hadn't thought of it that way. She led me through a maze of corridors. People greeted her as we passed. Some were merely deferential but many seemed genuinely glad to see her. She must be human on the job.

Her lab was darkened when we reached it, illuminated only by dozens of tiny lights on instrumentation. She punched in the combination to the door, entered first and turned on the overhead fluorescent lights.

I was impressed. "This place makes science fiction movies look primitive."

"Ah! Emma was here!" She pointed to plastic bags from several stores.

"You operate all this stuff?"

"Sure. That's what I'm paid to do. I'm a geek and proud of it. There are several more laboratories besides. I have people reporting to me, of course, I don't do everything all the time, but I have to understand everything and sometimes perform repairs on some of it."

I had never met a woman who did this kind of thing. My mother was perplexed by screwdrivers. Rebecca was busy placing the carnations in some lab glassware.

"What does it all do?"

"In simplest terms, all of this instrumentation quantifies or identifies or both, but no matter how slick it all looks, a smart human is still required to maintain it, and most important of all, recognize problems. They're not magic. I'll give you a proper tour, probably tomorrow, but now, it's time to hit the showers. Grab some bags and follow me."

The showers were not far. Rebecca sorted out a bathrobe, soap, shampoo, comb, deodorant and towel. I entered the shower, and scrubbed while she went through the clothes.

"Emma did well," she said, after I had turned off the water.

While I towel-dried my hair, she pulled tags from the clothes, and handed them over the door to me, along with underwear and socks.

"I think a basic pair of blue jeans and the long-sleeved periwinkle t-shirt will be fine if they fit. That's something like your 'natural plumage', isn't it?"

"'Natural plumage'?" I giggled at her humor before I could catch myself and maintain unpleasantness.

The thought came unbidden: Even if she is Mrs Creepy, maybe Rebecca's okay. I hated to admit that to myself, but it might be true.

To my relief, everything fit. None of it was exactly my idea of stylish, but it was not dowdy or embarrassing. I emerged from the shower stall. She handed me a comb.

"Almost there…"

To my surprise, I was pleased and relieved to be clean and wearing clean clothes once more. My tough kid look vanished down the drain along with two days worth of sweat. Perhaps some of the tough kid was gone as well.

"You look fine, Catherine."

I wasn't going to tell her I was pleased and relieved, however. And I wasn't going to admit to a moment, a brief, slippery moment of concern about what my father would think of me. I did not care what Mr Creepy thought about anything, did I? Of course not.

"Stand still for a moment. I'm going to do an inspection and be sure I have not missed any tags or stickers."

She walked completely around me, nodding approval. "This works. The rest of it we'll toss into my locker."

We did that. Then, she turned serious on me. "Catherine, I know you're hurt and angry. You have every right to these emotions. Please don't turn your anger on Mason, not without allowing him some opportunity. I swear he means you well. I will warn you, your initial impression is likely to be incorrect. He's a complicated, difficult man, at once the best –and the worst—man I have known. No matter what you've heard about him, he is not a monster."

"And I have heard so much about him." I had my sarcasm potential re-charged.

Rebecca visibly sagged, sighed, and tilted her head to the left, before straightening back up and making eye contact in the mirror while I combed out the last of my tangles. "Please, Catherine. Don't savage him while he's making an easy target of himself."

I shrugged. I had not decided what I would do. With her special pleading, Rebecca had handed me a perfect plan for making this man thoroughly miserable. But I wasn't sure I wanted to do that any longer. Oh, maybe at some other time I would shred him, but just not today. I had never known anyone quite like Rebecca before, but through the few hours we had known one another, I had delivered a lot of snotty comments that she batted back to me mostly fluffy and defused.

She was asking one thing of me: not to attack my father immediately. Maybe he had brainwashed her…but she gave every impression of being a really good person. If my father could inspire Rebecca's respect and loyalty, just possibly he deserved a chance. Probably not. He was probably as dreadful as everyone said, but I would not lose anything by behaving myself initially. I didn't have to be dishonest or phony. I just didn't need to be snotty straight out of the box.

I finished my combing and turned around to face her. With her eyes, she was still begging me to behave. "I'm ready." I lowered my eyes.

Rebecca sighed. "It's not far."

Well, yes, it is. All my life I've wanted to meet this man, and he turns out to be Mason Eckhart.

I didn't know quite what I was thinking or feeling. The final part of the day's crazy journal was just a few hundred yards through the maze of corridors (How did anyone find their way here? GPS units?) and I was in a fuzzy, dreamlike state.

We reached his office door, a wide metal portal worthy of a fictional starship.

"He has two armed guards outside of his office?"

Rebecca nodded. "Yes. All the time. Things have happened here. Sometime, I'll tell you all about them, and what you lost here, which wasn't trivial. Are you ready?"

"Yeah." No. I was terrified. I couldn't recall when I had ever wanted to cast a stealth aura more and run away to a safe hiding place. I even started to will the aura's formation but caught myself before the dire effects of the governor could begin.

The door opened, and in we went.

I don't know what I expected, but that office was the most stunningly unfriendly and sterile space I could remember. And it was cold in there; with my damp hair, it was chilly. I was thankful for the long sleeves.

No contemporary photographs of him were known to exist, but I had heard descriptions of Mason Eckhart all my life. I knew exactly what to expect, but that isn't what I saw. He didn't look up when we entered –his legendary rudeness-- so I took the opportunity to study and observe him. He looked small, dominated by his surroundings instead of dominating them.

"Thank you for the carnations, Mason." I hadn't heard her use that tone of voice all day. What a change.

Then only did he look up. "You're most welcome, Rebecca." He almost purred to her. This was disconcerting. He wasn't supposed to respond to anyone that way, but I'd just heard him. The words were formal, but the emotion in them rang true.

Emotion? From Mr Creepy? Emotion of the boy-girl variety?

Even when he stood up, he was neither tall nor imposing, although he certainly made an unforgettable impression, wearing all black with peculiar white hair. Outside in the wider world he would draw stares.

"Welcome, Catherine." He sounded…genuinely glad to see me. I did not know what to think. I'm not sure how well I was thinking.

"Thank you." I could barely hear my own voice.

"Please, sit down, both of you."

He did something next which I would learn later was without parallel: he rolled his own chair from behind the desk so we could sit together as a compact trio.

"Rebecca, is there anything I need to take care of immediately? Problems? Crises?"

"No. We're all caught up."

"Good." He sat down, fixing his eyes on me. He moved like someone who hurt. He certainly did not look like the happy, proud father holding the newborn Grey. He now hid behind those heavy-framed glasses, but if you looked carefully, the eyes were the same.

"I don't know what to say." I really didn't. I must have spent hundreds of hours daydreaming about this moment, and now that I was living it, I could not think of a thing to say.

"Well, I prefer honesty to glib falsehoods. Charm is overrated." He smiled. He was creepy-looking, but that smile was warm, human, and without doubt, genuine. "You have my mother's hair, eyes, and coloring. I'll show you photos of her. There is so much to tell you."

Up until that moment, I was prepared to hate this man as I had hated never hated anyone. All my life I dreamed of this moment, at long last meeting my father, of having clear and definite connections to other people. Then, when I was told my father's identity, I wanted my one-of-a-kind, singlet, unique status returned. I wanted no part of kinship to a monster. Who would wish that?

"I'd like to see the photos. Dr Steyn showed me portraits of…the others. (What was I supposed to call them?) They look like you."

Most people rush to speak without clearly knowing their thoughts. Mason Eckhart was not like that. Accustomed to people waiting for his words, he formed his replies carefully.

"These circumstances are as awkward and difficult for me as they must be for you, Catherine. I apologize for the application of the neck restraints and the implantation of the governor, but both are standard procedures when ordinary humans are dealing with Genomex mutants involved in crimes."

I lowered my eyes. Adam called them "missions", but what Brennan and I had been doing was stealing.

"Adam called them something else." Even as I said it, I felt foolish because as defenses go, it was lame, even silly. I felt overwhelming shame for being part of those 'missions'.

"Theft is theft," he said softly. Later, when I knew how much he despised Adam, and how disgusted he was with Adam's lies and rationalizations, I would understand how gentle he was being with me. He wasn't going to give me a free pass, but he easily could have launched into commentary about poor judgment (mine) and dubious companions (Adam and Brennan). But he didn't.

I made eye contact once more. "I'm not trying to justify what I was caught doing, or shift the blame. I wanted to believe Adam was telling me the right thing to do. It's still my fault."

"And you will have to live with the consequences. Just what that will ultimately involve I do not know. One condition of your release to me is leaving the governor in place, at least until this matter is settled. I'm sorry."

"I understand." And the funny thing was, I did.

"I want you to know that I argued for the removal of the governor, but the policy of leaving one implanted is not unique to you but is in effect after a number of ordinary humans, police, guards, and others were hurt by Genomex mutants."

In other words, Self, it's not all about you. You're simply colliding head-on with a society trying not to descend into chaos.

"It itches sometimes."

"I know." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small metal tube. "This ointment will desensitize the skin around the governor and I'm told, make it more tolerable. It doesn't smell foully and it won't stain your clothes."

He reached across the space between us to give me the tube. Reflexively, I extended my hand, then for a moment hesitated when I saw the oddly-cut black leather glove. Then I noticed the wrinkled biopolymer faux skin above it. I caught myself staring, I don't know for how long, but long enough to be rude. I took the tube from him.

Very sloppy of you, Self. Whatever else he may be scheming, right now he's only attempting to Make Nice. The bagels turned out to be Only Bagels, and fine bagels, too. This tube is likely Only Ointment.

"Thank you." I hesitated. I had something more to say. "I'm sorry I…gawked at your…skin. That was rude."

"Most people react similarly the first time they get a good, focused look at it. I'm inured to it."

I shook my head. "Doesn't matter. I shouldn't have done it."

O, Self, this is crazy! Five months ago with Mom, whoever would have imagined this conversation in this place, apologizing to Mr Creepy. Have you forgotten who he is?

"I appreciate that, Catherine."

He's not used to people caring if they hurt him. Except Rebecca, who cares very much.

Things were not going as I imagined. Eckhart wasn't supposed to be human. He didn't look human. Nevertheless, that was a human sitting there. Things were becoming complicated, more complicated than I thought things could be.

Am I somehow being craftily manipulated, herded, conned? I didn't know. I couldn't think of what they could get from me. It was confusing and maddening.

"To return to Adam for a moment: Adam can be persuasive. Don't beat yourself up too badly. Learn from your mistake; don't minimize it. Become more selective in choosing friends and those who influence you. Adam deceived me for years while he worked here, even though I had daily contact with him. Catherine, be wary of Charmers."

He was not warning me against himself! His loathing of Adam was not subtle, but this was not about badmouthing Adam. This was about him giving a damn about me, because I was his. He was trying hard to act like a father.

A thought came to me, unbidden, unsought: Well, Self, you're on the edges of having that which you've always wanted and craved. And look where it's coming from. What are you going to do about it? Deny it? Pretend it's something else? Well, Self, there is one other choice available.

"I'm confused. I don't know what to call you."

"Fair enough. Could you be comfortable calling me Mason? I would like that." There was the faintest whiff of pleading in his voice, for acceptance, for familiarity.

"I'll try that."

Rebecca had been quiet, sitting so still I wasn't much aware of her. I glanced her way and met those incredible eyes of hers, wide and brimming with tears. I looked away, fast as I could, too fast; Mason noted what I had done and he turned to Rebecca, who probably just didn't want to be noticed at all.

Mason reached a black-gloved hand to Rebecca and took up her left hand. He could have ignored her, but he didn't. Many people are born into families, clans, tribes, and never lack for a sense of belonging somewhere to someone. They take those connections and concerns for granted. Those of us less blessed with belonging, or worse, cursed with pathological kindred, place high value upon the good people who enter our lives. I was to learn Mason cared for few people; too many times his trust had been betrayed, or he'd been taken for granted or even abandoned. But he still fiercely defended those he cared about.

"You must be hungry, Catherine," he said.

"Yeah."

"The cafeteria staff have prepared what they are grandly calling a buffet, but which I suspect is lunch from the past few days re-heated. I had them start setting things up when Ellen called."

"The food is usually pretty good," Rebecca added.

"Why don't the two of you go ahead, and I will follow shortly. I need to call April and thank her. We've been playing phone tag all day."

"Good idea," Rebecca said. "I'm ravenous."

As soon as the office door closed behind us, I turned to Rebecca. "Aren't you going to ask me what I think?"

"I suspect things went just fine…better than I hoped for."

"Mason is not what I expected."

"Hardly anyone sees any aspect of him other than the forbidding persona. I worked for him fourteen years before seeing more than a few moments of a human every few months, or years. That Mr Creepy persona is his primary means of coping with his afflictions and with people."

"What should I call you?"

"Rebecca. Call me 'Becky' at your peril."

The Genomex cafeteria was set up with long tables. One end of a table was covered with a white tablecloth and settings of silver, which I didn't expect in a corporate cafeteria.

"My great-great-grandmother brought these from Germany a long time ago. I've never had a reason to use these settings before. They've been in storage since I moved here."

"Do you have any family?"

"My brother Steve and his wife, Sherri. They live in Ohio, but they're getting ready to move again, this time to Charlotte. Steve's a corporate nomad. They never stay long in one place. I'm not sure who's puzzled more by Mason, Steve or Sherri."

"When does the bad part begin?"

"What bad part?"

"There has to be a bad part."

"Not from Mason or me. I don't have any understanding of the legal system so I won't even guess what will happen with your arrest. What were you thinking?"

"I never did anything like that before?"

"I know. Mason dug up every scrap of information he could find concerning you, from your school records to your mother's credit report. I read it all on the flight out. You've been a good kid. What happened?"

"Adam made it sound so reasonable. But I should have refused, shouldn't I?"

"Shalimar, to her credit, refused to be part of the raiding party Mulwray brought in here. Blindly following anyone is dangerous."

Mason entered the cafeteria. "I'm sorry. The phone rang."

All my life I had dreamed of a dinner like this one (and not because of the food, which was good but not extraordinary) with my father, but the reality was not as I had dreamed.

Mom wasn't there. While some variations of my dream allowed for a step mother, certainly I never imagined one like Rebecca, a formidable amalgam of intellect, dry humor, and kindness which I imagined must arise out of the pain and difficulties of her own life. I decided Rebecca deserved careful study.

I had never considered that my father might be someone whose name I knew, and I certainly never imagined he would be someone infamous for dark and evil deeds. When I first heard his name, I could think only that he must have raped my mother, but after today, I knew that was not true. Mom must have known the human hidden behind all of those walls. How angry that must have made Adam!

So, there we were, an odd little 'family' of three, a tiny bit of tenuously connected human community in the wider world of human apathy and indifference. I realized I was glad to be here-with these particular people. That surprised me. I wasn't quite where that was coming from, whether I was denying who was sitting across from me, or more surprisingly, changing my mind about him. I just knew I was adapting rapidly to my new circumstances.

"Catherine, I'm a pragmatic man. I'm asking you to give thought to what you want to do with your life during the next few days. We can sit down and discuss details of how to get you there. I've had the same discussion with my other three children."

"What exactly do you mean?"

"The old what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up question, except with the sobering addition of what will be required to get there. I believe it is critical that one have useful, marketable skills, and I'm no snob about it. I do not care if those skills are acquired in a college classroom or in an apprenticeship program. I care only that it be useful and enable you to take care of yourself and your dependents."

Rebecca laughed. "Mason will gladly help you become a plumber or an orthodontist, but whatever you do, don't tell him you want to get a degree in something like 'Literature of the Post-Literate Age' or similar nonsensical hogwash, like the degree my sister-in-law Sherri has."

Mason laughed now. "Or 'Urban Anthropology'. Or 'Womon's Studies'. 'Wimmin's Studies'. 'Womyn's Studies'.

"'Literature of the Post-Literate Age'. I don't even have any idea what that could be," I said.

"I suppose it could be nearly anything," Mason said. "Advertising, for example. But to return to my serious point, Catherine. I want to help you with training or schooling. Make no mistake: I do not believe this compensates for the years lost between us. I want to do this because it is the proper thing to do now. I'm sure you would resent any presumption that throwing money at your needs makes fine and wonderful the fact you're nearly grown and that we only became aware of what we are to one another in the last forty-eight hours. Know that I feel cheated as well."

"Are you angry with my Mom for not telling you?"

"Some. But it's done, she's gone, and there is no changing the past, only the present and future."

Rebecca and I had servings from the buffet table, but Mason had been drinking a chalky looking pink slurry poured from a one-liter bottle.

"What is that?" I asked.

"A suspension of nutrients in relatively simple forms, amino acids instead of proteins, simple sugars instead of carbohydrates. I can eat whole food sparingly, but my gut flora copes much better with this formulation."

"How long have you been consuming that?"

"Since 1991, some variation of this. The earliest versions were foul-tasting concoctions. By now, the flavorists have gotten pretty good at masking the flavor of the components."

"I cannot imagine living that way."

"Most people cannot. I've made a host of other accommodations and adjustments as well."

He lifted his left sleeve, show me wear the biopolymer did not fit as well as it did about the face.

"This is not an impermeable barrier, nor was it engineered that way. The design is intended to keep living and near-living organisms out while allowing maximum transpiration of water -sweat-or I'd be at constant risk of heat stroke. I still do not dissipate heat with anywhere near the efficiency of other people. If I spend much time outside in warm weather, I have to wear a suit that circulates water and enhances the efficiency of the biopolymer. That's why my office is kept so cold. I require blood transfusions, though nowhere near as frequently as I did in 1991. Initially, I stopped producing red and white blood cells completely. Every year since 1997 I've shown gradual recovery. I can nearly get by with the blood cells I generate, but not quite. Fortunately, there are people here who donate blood, which is much safer than accepting pooled blood from strangers."

"Who?" I asked before realizing how personal a question that was.

Rebecca answered. "Jesse and me."

"Jesse?" Jesse was giving his blood to Mason Eckhart? Adam would need a bag of antacids when he heard about this. Although it certainly seemed like the kind of thing Jesse would do for someone.

"I count Jesse and Emma among my friends, Catherine. I was not just invited to their wedding; I gave away the bride. They're not just my employees. You look so surprised."

"I am." I was. Perhaps I was wrong to be shocked, perhaps I had been told a lot of lies.

"They want to meet you for breakfast tomorrow. You can talk to them then." I wanted to see them both, but had no idea what to expect. Adam's predictions were not working out very well.

That would be interesting. Adam swore Eckhart had to be exercising some sort of control over them. I was beginning to doubt that, however. Maybe they had both gone crazy.

"What about your wigs?"

Eckhart laughed. "That's one of the oddest things. My own hair was dark like Grey's, but some months ago I began growing hair again, unpigmented. What you see is real. I know how it looks, but it's real."

I thought about it all for a moment, chewing on cheese-saturated broccoli. Adam had laughed about Eckhart's condition and required precautions. Even if Adam was not responsible -and I wondered now about that-his attitude towards Eckhart was needlessly cruel. Seeing him inches away from me now, drinking his pink chalk slurry wearing wrinkly biopolymer covering his arms, I could not think of Mason as a fit subject to laugh at. Laughing at his condition now seemed cruel, and if Adam was responsible, well, then who was the monster?

"Everything sounds very difficult."

"I'm used to it. The alternative is worse."

One thing I did wonder about but wasn't about to ask was about sex. They obviously adored one another, but did they do anything about it? I might never know, and I wasn't ever going to ask.

"I'd like to see the message from Adam." I caught Mason off-balance. Surprise registered in his eyes.

"Very well. The original is in my office, but we can go back there when we're done with dinner. I'll warn you, however, you may not care for the content." He wasn't hiding anything from me. He as trying to protect me from something. Adam?

"That's okay. You've warned me. I want to see it."

Well, that frosted the balance of dinner. Rebecca tried hard to make nice a couple of times, but backed off and retreated.

"Of course, one can always say that the disk is a fraud or tampered with, but that said, I swear that this is the original, unchanged since I received it. I'm sorry, Catherine, but you should know the truth."

Mason inserted the disk, and Adam's image appeared in moments.

I didn't know this Adam. I didn't like the smirk on his face or the sarcasm in his voice. Most of all, where was his care and concern, "I'll take care of it as if you were my daughter" promise? I was thankful for Adam's unusual brevity.

"Do you need to see it again?"

"No."

"Neither do I." Mason retrieved the disk and returned it to safe storage.

"I could learn to hate him." I was very angry with Adam. Of course, the message could be a complete or partial fraud, but I didn't think so. "Did he lie to my mother, too?"

"I don't know. Probably. He manipulates everyone. Don't waste your energies on negative emotions, Catherine. Adam claimed to be my friend, once upon a time, but dwelling upon his sins and crimes committed against me won't help me now. You are outside of his influence. Be glad of that."

"It's been a long day for all of us. I think Mason and I should show you to your room and give you some time to settle in."

"I'm going to live here? I'm not going home with you?"

"I am home, Catherine. I have a small suite of rooms with filtered air and other devices to keep the air very clean, which I share with Rebecca. We're not abandoning you in an empty building."

"You live here?"

"Ever since 'Incident X'. Since that time I have slept elsewhere only one night, the day I was freed from the stasis pod. Some people hid me overnight."

I turned to Rebecca. "Did you release him?"

"I'm afraid not. I was living in Ohio with Steve and Sherri. I had no idea Mason was in stasis. I thought Ashlocke murdered him."

"I'm not going to reveal my liberator's name, Catherine. I owe them that protection."

"Okay."

We recovered 'my' things from the locker room, and went on to the room that would be mine.

"I'm afraid this room has no windows. Rooms like this one were constructed for security purposes." Mason sounded apologetic.

"To keep people like me in?"

"To keep people like Brennan Mulwray out. I have a single window, but it is made of special stuff and would require a missile to breach it."

"What happens tomorrow?"

"Time with Emma and Jesse. Time with Dr Laura Varady. She's a psychologist, but don't panic. She's nice. She's probably more concerned about the effect you will have upon me than about looking for odd things about you. Dr Varady has been looking out for me since 1991. Assuming you stay here, we have to figure out how to complete your high school education. That will be part of Dr Varady's job."

"There will be plenty to do," Rebecca said.

"Sleep well, Catherine. Any onsite location, including my quarters, is listed by your phone."

"Thanks."

The door locked automatically, but had an alarmed panic release. I was contained, but I didn't feel trapped. I busied myself with inspecting and putting away all of my new things. None of the clothes were junk but they seemed more sedate that I would have expected from Emma.

I put on one of the new nightgowns and wondered what to do with myself after I brushed my teeth. I wasn't used to having this much time with nothing much to do, so I began reviewing the day.

Things had not gone the way I had expected. Or the way Adam had planned.

As long as someone else was talking, I had been able to shut out the small voice in my head, but now that I was alone, I could no longer shut out Adam's insistent voice. He sounded far away, at the bottom of a deep pit.

Adam must have watched me being transferred to the GSA, because as soon as I was along in my 'cell' I began to faintly hear his voice in my head. He told me I could be a great help to the cause by infiltrating the GSA.

You lied to me, Adam.

About what?

Nearly everything."

That doesn't matter. I could easily imagine Adam saying that, smug, confident expression on his face, certain everyone around him was either inherently stupid or easily gulled, and so, readily brought around to Adam's position.

Adam just did not understand that his lies did matter. Making things up as he went along always worked in the past when he surrounded himself with people who did not know any better, so he saw no reason to change what he did.

I don't want to be part of this anymore.

You don't really have anything to say about that, kid. I decide what you do, to whom, and when.

"I'm, he's my father. I think I like him.

I could hear Adam's laughter echoing through the ether, rising up out of the dark hole in the distance. That makes you just about unique in the universe. It's been a lot of years since anyone liked Eckhart.

Even that's not true. There are people here who care a great deal about him.

Mr Creepy has friends? Adam sounded more disbelieving than surprised.

He has friends. And he has Rebecca. I think I like her, too.

Rebecca Steyn? She must be getting old and desperate to take up with Mason Eckhart.

She's neither old nor desperate. You're being nasty because she didn't want anything to do with you, and you just aren't used to rejection. She one of the most intelligent women I've ever met, and she's been very kind to me.

Really impressed you, did she? I always thought Mason had a thing for her, but his condition precludes women.

Does it really?

They're married, Adam.

He laughed again. Mason was always conventional, but this sham beats all.

Adam, I think it's real.

Kid, what would you know? Your mother slept with everything with mismatched chromosomes. What could you have learned from Danielle about anything real and apply it to a pair of psychological oddities like Mason and Rebecca?

You're cruel. They're more human than you are.

Psychological oddities. They were both unusual, different people, and from what I could discern, both had endured more than their share of pain and grief. Calling them psychological oddities was extreme, especially from Adam, who had managed no enduring relationship with anyone.

It doesn't matter. You cannot shut me up. You have a mission to perform. I'm reminding you.

I don't want to harm these people. We had dinner tonight, like a family.

How charming. Did you consider what ties the three of you together?

No.

Mason's libido. That's funny, Catherine.

I won't do it, Adam. I won't hurt them.

You don't have much choice.

I'll find a choice.

You haven't got the inherent intelligence or the technical training to stop me.

Even if I can't stop you, someone else will.

Hah, no one else thinks outside of the bounds of morality and technology the way I do. The combination is hard to defeat.

Someone will beat you.

Perhaps. But it won't be you or Mason Eckhart.

I'm getting a terrific headache, Adam. And you know when I have a headache, I cannot function. Can you just leave me alone for a while?

Of course, Catherine. I'll check in tomorrow.

As always, communicating with Adam was extraordinarily exhausting. I tried to watch some television, but could not stay awake.

When the phone woke me in the morning, as soon as I heard Emma's voice the same question which plagued me the night before came to mind: how can I save my father and my friends from me? Adam had programmed me in some fashion that with the proper opportunity and trigger, I would lose my own will and do something horrible.

Emma sounded happy. Confident. The airy-fairy mysticism was gone. She promised to drop by in 30 minutes and we'd meet Jesse for breakfast in the cafeteria. Then I made my bed and lay back down on it and waited for Emma.

I pulled on the jeans I had worn the evening before, and a fresh shirt, taking care to clip the red visitor's badge to it.

My gut instinct had been to refuse an implant in my brain as invasive and repugnant, but Adam had been insistent, and after all, it was Adam, so it must be a good idea and safe.

Except it wasn't. Adam had been planning to use me all along. He probably had not schemed ahead to the grandiose possibility of getting me close to Mason, but he did want my stealth talents under his firm command.

Just because I'd been caught didn't mean he'd lost interest in me, either. In fact, things had probably worked out better than he had imagined possible when he talked me into the implant.

Well, just because Adam is a devious, scheming fraud doesn't make Mason a good guy. But it improves the chances of that possibility. I don't want to hurt Mason. I don't want to hurt Rebecca.

I picked up the phone and punched in 3 of the 4 extension numbers to Mason's quarters. I could not punch in the fourth, not with the intention of telling about Adam's implant in my mind. Adam doesn't even need to be actively monitoring me to stop me. This is like belonging to someone else.

I was stunned when the door opened. Emma had always been exceptionally pretty, but now, with a tailored, adult dress and her hair tamed to flatter her sweet face, the effect was dazzling.

She swept into the room and hugged me. "Catherine, I'm so glad to see you! Jesse and I used to talk and wonder about happened to you, but we never had any way of finding out!"

All of this was genuine, I had no doubt.

"Emma, you look so…grown up."

"I know. It's quite a change from my former look of Excruciatingly Careful and Studied Casualness, isn't it?" But you know, I really like it. Responsibility and respect are positives."

This sounded almost too good. Emma sensed that.

"Oh, Adam probably told you some damn silliness about "selling out". Adam's time has come and passed, and he refuses to accept how much everything has changed. Let's get to breakfast. I'm starved. Wait'll you see Jesse."

Emma's keycard was linked to my own, so I was able to leave my room without security reacting, although they probably knew exactly where I was. Initially I found that overbearing and creepy until I recalled the way Adam and Mutant X invaded this place and wreaked havoc and worse, more than once.

"What exactly do you do here?"

"I do a lot of work with Dr Varady. After the disaster with Ashlocke, new hires are screened with extreme care. Also, Mason does not want the rebuilt Genomex harboring individuals of mixed or divided loyalties. We check out new hires back to high school for any sign of recruitment to a domestic or foreign agency. I can tell when people are doing some serious lying."

"Does that happen often?"

"Yeah, but not for those reasons. The most common lie is about age. I don't even say anything about that lie."

We entered the cafeteria, nearly full during this hour of breakfast service.

"I'm surprised at seeing all these people."

"The well-fed employee who has had breakfast is alert. He won't overeat at lunch and be drowsy half the afternoon. The prices are almost at cost, but Genomex benefits all day."

I hardly recognized Jesse. He stood up to greet us. He was formally dressed in a dark grey suit that fit him very well. I vaguely recalled Brennan laughing one evening, talking about the day he saw Jesse in a suit. I hadn't believed him at the time he told the tale. Brennan said so much that simply wasn't so.

"Doesn't he look respectable?" Emma cooed for Jesse's benefit. "You'd buy a used gene from this guy, wouldn't you?"

"Sure."

"Hi, Catherine. Let's eat."

We went off to the serving line.

"Do you live here, too?" I asked Jesse.

"Oh, no, we bought a house in the neighborhood a few months back. Only Mason and Rebecca actually live here, but Mason doesn't have much choice."

"Jesse has dedicated the entire attic to his computers and techno toys. The rest of the house is nearly normal."

"And the attic looks impressive, too. Geek City, Arizona. Rebecca brought you back?" he asked.

"Yeah. She seems very nice." 'Nice' hardly began to do justice to Rebecca.

"Isn't she a dear? And the two of them are so cute together."

"As much as I like Mason, Emma, I have difficulty applying 'cute' to him."

"Not to Mason by himself. The two of them."

"Okay." Jesse rolled his eyes, unconvinced.

Emma giggled. "A few weeks before Fortier and Harrison betrayed Genomex, Mason and Rebecca started a secret life together and no one but Dr Varady noticed anything. Rebecca sold her condominium and was living here. Right before Ashlocke took over, they went on a long lunch and came back married, and even then not many people knew."

"Mason wears a ring, but you can't see it under those gloves."

"People are full of surprises."

"You both seem so different. You seem happier."

"Well, we've grown up a lot. Adam would have liked us to stay kids forever," Jesse said. "Somewhere in his brain, Adam feels guilt over what he's done. He set up Mutant X so he'd have the undivided attention of four of his creations, people who would not question his motivations or the version he told of the past."

"It was time to live our own lives, not populate Adam's fantasy universe," Emma added.

"Where's Shalimar?"

"She has a martial arts school downtown. She's doing very well," Emma said. "I'm sure Mason will let us take you to see her some evening."

"Everything is different from what Adam told me."

"I know. But it all comes down to Adam's ego and refusal to accept that the work he did was other than benign. Adam becomes wildly emotional if cornered about the twenty years he worked at Genomex, ignorant of the uses to which his research was applied. He'll rant about all the lives he saved, and he did save lives, but he cursed many more. Among those of us who had genetic changes, even in the best cases we've had difficult adjustments and in the worst, we carry traits making a normal life impossible," Jesse said, selecting a pizza bagel.

"Or, as Mason says, 'Adam blights every life he touches'." Emma was not smiling.

"He's right. Has Mason shared his theory about Adam possibly not even being human with you?" Jesse asked.

"Not human? No." That was a shocker.

"Mason thinks he's an android, constructed in part on the basis of Paul Breedlove's DNA. Short of getting additional genetic material from Adam or better yet, a thorough examination of him, we'll probably never be sure. The one sample Mason had examined was inconclusive."

"Being an android would account for some of Adam's thinking," Emma said.

"And his complete lack of a past prior to showing up at Stanford at age twelve, all expenses paid by the Breedlove Foundation."

"He knew Paul Breedlove that far back?" I had no idea.

"We can't be sure but someone at the Breedlove Foundation knew him well enough to provide a complete scholarship. I'd be surprised if Breedlove didn't at least know Adam's name by then."

"And he came here right after he finished at Stanford," Emma said.

"Mason's people did a thorough search of Stanford's records. Care to guess what Adam put down for a home address in those years?" Jesse asked, smiling. "This is really good."

"The front door of this place?"

"Better. Paul Breedlove's home address."

"That means something," Emma said. "We just don't know quite what."

"And we may never know. Breedlove's home address turned up in some handwritten dormitory records. The electronic records were mostly gone, either because of routine purging or by design."

Emma laughed. "Rebecca's convinced. She says she wants to pull out a circuit board or two and stomp on them!"

"Adam and Brennan are living out of the Double Helix now?" Jesse asked.

"Yeah."

"I'll bet Brennan is charming company these days now that he's lost his fleet of junk Camaros."

"How did you know? He talked about each of them like a lost child."

"For him, they were possibly as important as a human. Brennan just isn't conditioned or wired to believe people matter. He never pretended otherwise. Is he still putting away Moon Pies and Little Debbies?" Jesse asked.

"And Twinkies. He leaves the wrappers all over the Double Helix."

Emma laughed. "That must make Adam crazy."

"It does." I smiled at the memory of angry Adam stomping the length of the Double Helix, picking up the wrappers Brennan deposited in his wake. What Adam's swearing lacked in imagination or vulgar shock value he compensated for in volume and repetition.

Brennan did not care what anyone thought or said, and so was unmotivated to change. Adam needed him to steal things and zorch people, and would never turn him out.

Adam could stand inches away from Brennan, and scream at him about the messes he made and Brennan wouldn't even look up from one of his martial arts magazines. One could safely conclude that their friendship had deteriorated.

"Who does the work on the Double Helix?" Jesse asked.

"Adam, mostly. When it flies. Keeping it up in the air is becoming more and more of a challenge. I heard a lot of bad language about the Double Helix when I was with them."

"Keeping the Double Helix airworthy was too much like real work for Brennan. Real men burn their hours tinkering with rusting Camaros." Jesse rolled his eyes.

Emma laughed. "He must have had two dozen of them scattered about the last time we were there. Most of them were probably hot, too."

"Why worry over a technical issue like legal ownership, Emma? Shouldn't the person who really loves those cars be the one to have them? Brennan said that to me once, I swear he did. I could not make that up."

"That argument could be used to justify stealing anything," I said.

"And in Brennan's case, probably has. Good old unreliable Brennan. He'll never be able to figure out how honest people behave well enough to imitate them and stay out of jail. What does Adam do with himself all day now that most of the mutants who aren't crazy or criminal are out living open, relatively normal lives?"

"He tries to convince people everything Mason says is a fraud, and at some point, there will be a mass roundup of mutants. He locates 'mainstreamed' mutants, and tells them they are at great risk."

"Even if that were true, a mass roundup like that would be noticed and create an uproar. The last thing Mason wants is a panic about the existence of mutants. If you grab a few thousand well-behaved, honest citizens from their homes and jobs, questions will be asked. Does anyone listen to Adam anymore?"

"Not really. The crazies, the criminals, the people who are on the edges of society."

"Adam sounds desperate. He wants to keep living in the days of flitting about in the Double Helix and pretending he was important. He wasn't. His efforts set back Genomex mutants, grouping the lunatics and criminals together with people like Jesse, Shalimar, and me. We're as varied as the wider population." Emma looked serious.

"What's going on with Adam is kind of sad." Jesse shook his head. "Adam is rapidly becoming a tragic figure, all of his talents gone to waste and ruin. Pity he does not find some other cause, something worthy of his abilities to challenge him."

Emma shook her head. "That might have worked for him a couple of years ago, but he's been involved in too many crimes. He still has a few powerful friends, people who could have placed him in positive work, but he's little more than a criminal himself. The underground has degenerated into a conduit for drugs and high-value stolen goods. The safehouses don't protect people anymore. They're warehouses and hideouts for thieves."

All of what Emma said was perfectly true. It just wasn't everything. Adam was doing things Emma knew nothing about, and I was too ashamed to tell her.

Adam seemed so different when I stood apart from him in time and distance. I had known most of these things before but the way Adam talked around the obvious had made me ignore the truth that he was no dashing, heroic Scarlet Pimpernel, saving mutants from the doom of the GSA. Adam was instead a thief, a destroyer of lives, and a manipulative liar.

I had planned to confront Emma and Jesse over orange juice and scrambled eggs about Adam's claim they had sold out to Eckhart. After everything I'd heard during the last twenty-four hours, the notion of "selling out" was absurd. Emma and Jesse had outgrown Adam. They were spontaneous and natural, much as I remembered them both, but more mature and confident.

Emma had no business staying a little girl forever anymore than Jesse should have stayed and been the technical wizard while Brennan the street thug was Adam's obvious favorite.

I looked very carefully while we were in the serving line: neither of them wore governors, and neither bore the tell-tale marks of recently removed governors. Adam swore Emma and Jesse could not be serving Mason willingly, but there was no sign of coercion or unwilling conduct.

"Do you know what you're going to be doing?" Emma asked.

"Not really. I was arrested. Brennan got away, but I was stuck."

"Mason told us. I hope you don't mind our knowing," Emma said. "He asked us to help you settle in here, since you knew us in the past."

"No, I don't mind your knowing. It would come out sometime. I had never stolen anything in my life, but Adam convinced me that stealing stuff from International Scientific was part of a "mission". I should have seen right through him."

I was becoming more and more angry with myself for ever being part of Adam's science supply warehouse crime wave. I was beginning to hate Adam.

"I don't know anything much about the legal system," Jesse said.

"Brennan knows it well," Emma said. "One of these days he's going to know it even better."

"Just be glad you're not around Adam and Brennan any longer. Is Mason trying to get legal custody of you?"

"I don't know."

"It's late, but it couldn't hurt. I'll say something to him, make sure the possibility isn't overlooked."

We were done with breakfast. Emma glanced at her watch. "Dr Varady's probably waiting for us by now. Shall we go and meet her?"

"Emma, I'll talk to you later. It's good you're here, Catherine. Laura Varady is no one to worry about. Bye." Jesse got up from the table.

"She really is no one to worry about. Around here, she's everybody's mother or grandmother, even to Mason. Especially to Mason. You'll see."

"Adam said Mason drove his own mother to suicide." I said that softly, not as an accusation but as a possible dark truth that I might not want widely shared.

Emma shook her head. "One of these days, Adam's lies will catch up with him. Mason's father was a nutcase, despite being a psychiatrist, and probably drove his wife over the edge. He did all kinds of things to Mason and his twin."

"Mason has a twin?"

"Had. They were eight when Marc drowned. There are a lot of stories you're going to have to know."

"Why would Adam say what he did?"

"To be cruel."

Emma was probably correct.

"First, I want to put your mind at east, Ms Hartman. I'm not here to hang some kind of label on you to define you as a crazy person. Mostly I'm here to direct employees with specific problems to therapists with special expertise beyond my own. In your case, we're not talking therapy. Mason wants an evaluation of your past education, to get an idea where to go next."

"He's already talking to me about college or some other kind of training."

"Your father is one of the most detail-driven individuals I've known. I'm not surprised."

"My grades aren't very good." That was the sad truth.

"I saw your transcripts. You're right, your grades are not good. But you are, aren't you?" She smiled. She meant it.

"I've always been told I could do a lot better." All my life I'd heard that. I wasn't sure I believed it any longer.

"That's part of what I'm supposed to assess. Mason isn't like some parents who will be heartbroken if a child does not go to college. He's a realist and knows that isn't for everyone. But if you have talents and potentials, it's best to find out now, and understand why your grades don't reflect your abilities."

"Did you know my Mom?"

"Why, yes. I've been here a long time."

"She didn't think school was very important. I always liked reading, but she never encouraged me much."

"Now you know where that inclination comes from. Mason actually still reads books, a habit not much found among adults. Fortunately, he now has Rebecca, who reads the same sort of books. They actually talk about books they've both read."

"Rebecca's tried hard to be good to me."

"I hope you've been nice back to her."

"Not always. I didn't know what to think at first." I wasn't sure what to think now. After all, I'd been at this place among these people less than day.

"Well, try to be nice to her. Rebecca's been through her own personal hells. She's understanding and patient with people in pain."

"I noticed."

"Good. For the first fourteen or so years she was here, she did little else except work hard. She opened up a little to a foreign-born PhD who was widowed with four small boys, but except for that, you could see she had decided people were not worth the risks. Watching her, it was obvious she had checked out of the human race. Several PhDs who worked here in the past were interested in her, but nothing came of that because she preferred her own company. She may not even have been aware of them. I had to explain Adam to him. Adam made an absolute fool of himself over Rebecca, but all she did was become irritated with his interruptions. Mind you, this was with three-quarters of the unattached women on site drooling over Adam."

"She seems so fearless. I cannot imagine anything making her retreat."

"Hiding and building walls are perfectly human responses to pain. The positive part is that she never became nasty. Even when Adam's conduct sank to that of a rejected eleven-year-old, she just wanted things to stop. She could have gone to an attorney, and sued the company, but all she asked was that the silliness cease. I think that signifies high intelligence and a high order of logical thinking."

"And you are telling me all of this because?"

"Ah, very good. Rebecca is key to recent changes in Mason. Three years ago, I think he would have gotten you away from the west coast, and probably deposited you in something like a convent school. Your bills would have been paid faithfully, but I don't think he would have troubled to meet you. He would have kept his distance. I knew your father before Incident X, before his divorce, and he was a good, decent man. All these years he's been protecting himself with this grim persona. I'm hoping his former self will still emerge more openly."

"I never imagined that a technical center could have so much intrigue."

"Most corporations have a surprising amount of intrigue. Political scheming inside of companies can be intense, even in businesses you might believe would be utterly boring. Any time you get a group of people together, there are allies, enemies, speculations, cultures, subcultures. It's just our nature as human beings."

"Amazing."

"Yes. And endlessly fascinating, at least to me. Did you sleep well?"

"Surprisingly, I did."

"Good. I'm going to get you started on those assessments."

I spent the whole morning going through that tedious paperwork. I suppose it had to be done, but my head ached by the time I completed the last of it.

Rebecca claimed me for lunch. Afterwards, we took a walk around the perimeter of the property.

"Dr Breedlove had this walking trail built. It's been here a long time."

"What was Breedlove like? I cannot imagine being arrogant enough to tamper with human embryos and not be sure of the result."

Something dark flitted through her eyes, something about Breedlove that she wasn't about to share. A long time would come to pass before I would know the whole of it.

"Breedlove told everyone he was seeking cures for genetic diseases in children. To be completely fair, he did come up with a number of techniques still used today in pediatric medicine. But to be completely honest, much of his work was chamber of horrors material. I don't know how he was able to get people to work for him. Long before my time, even before Adam's time, he did his creepiest work."

"Like what?"

"Human/insect intermediates. Mason used to prowl this entire complex in the middle of the night. He knows more of its secrets than anyone else, except maybe Adam. He found the preserved remains of the human/insect intermediates one night. Breedlove tried to hide the most unholy of his researches. Whole sublevels were sealed off, camouflaged as something else, with phony walls. Mason has spent years of sleepless nights discovering these things."

"He used to walk around here all by himself in the middle of the night?" I couldn't imagine wandering around the current labs late at night. The thought of prowling around and unearthing sealed levels was spooky.

"Yes. I had a night shift job once. After a while, the dark just isn't scary anymore. I realized I could hide in the dark as well as anyone or anything else. The night becomes like day for you. One night, I was outside some distance from the main production building and one of the fun-loving production guys crept up on me from behind, thinking he'd scare me. I was the only woman on the shift. He tapped me on the shoulder –mind you, it was very dark, and I was crouched down to read the lot number on a solvent drum—and I didn't even flinch. I just turned around to see who it was. He was very disappointed. That's when I realized I was not afraid of the dark anymore."

I hadn't expected anything like that out of Rebecca, but perhaps it made sense after all. Rebecca had looked deeply into darker recesses of the heart. The more I knew of her, the more unique I realized she was. She had seen something human in my father when everyone else (except Dr Varady) assumed his humanity was gone.

"What happened to the human/insect hybrids?"

"Mercifully, they were put out of their misery. Mason has films and photographs in safe storage. He said the work was obscene, and worse, that some of the individuals have had some long-term viability. They could have become adults and might be still walking among us."

"Since they were part-human, putting them down could be considered murder, couldn't it?"

"Strictly speaking. As I said, a chamber of horrors."

"I don't understand why none of this was ever exposed publicly. A lot of people had to know about what went on here."

"A lot of people did know. To be fair to Adam, dozens of people worked with Breedlove before Adam came, and not one of them came forward. Mason's tracked them down to be sure they aren't creating their own chambers of horrors. The ones who haven't retired are still working in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals."

"Why wasn't Breedlove ever prosecuted?"

"Because he was never charged."

"Why didn't Mason do anything about him?" Even as I asked the question, I surprised myself, sine I did not ask the question as an accusation. I asked out of puzzlement, out of the belief that seeing charges brought against Breedlove would have been the right thing to do, and what I would have expected from Mason."

"By the time Mason knew the secrets of this place, he owed Breedlove his life several times over for devising ways to keep him alive dozens of times over. Mason should have died so many times. Only Dr Varady believed he was going to live. Dr Breedlove kept coming up with workable solutions to problems as they cropped up."

"Was I conceived before or after Incident X?"

"Almost certainly before. Among other effects, Incident X left Mason sterile."

"How many people like my mother did Breedlove and Adam make?"

"Adam might know, but I don't know anyone who can answer that question confidently. Mason keeps finding more of them that do not appear in the Genomex lists, but obviously were created with Genomex technology."

"And what do you think that means?"

"Technology developed here was applied elsewhere, with comparable results."

"I suggested to Mason once the unpleasant possibility that Adam may not be unique, and that other "Adams" could be out there in the world, hatching Genomex-type mutants to this day. Nearly all of the original Nazis are dead now, but there are still enclaves in this world where they and their children are welcome, and where you'd never guess that the Third Reich was more than 60 years destroyed. Enclaves of a sick Germany. With their absurd racial theories, someone like Adam might have been welcomed."

"Other Adams creating their own uber-mutants. What a thought."

"Mason dreads finding out that this is the case. If true, then the problem is much larger than he feared, and probably unstoppable. If he found proof of other programs, he might even retire."

"Is that what you want him to do?"

"I want him to be able to enjoy his grandchildren the way he could not enjoy his children. This task he has taken on is thankless and will not end in our lifetimes, or yours. And there are books he wants to write. He can't do anything like that now."

"What about you?"

"I haven't really thought about me. I'm adaptable. There are books I want to write, too."

"I don't know quite what to make of all this. I've heard so much that's opposite of what I've been told my whole life."

"Change is the only certainty life promises, Catherine. While you're weighing everything, look for consistency. Pay attention to what people do as opposed to what they say."

"Do you go along with everything Mason does? Or did?"

"Not blindly. Don't think there aren't 'lively' discussions of practices and policies. I won't argue with him in front of other people, but before he does something I consider unwise, I tell him what I think and why, especially if I think of a better way. Mason's smart enough to listen."

I hadn't considered that Rebecca might have influenced the way Mason ran Genomex and the GSA, though the possibility was obvious.

"I feel kind of overwhelmed."

"You have a lot to think about."

"Yeah."

"Fortunately, no one's going to pressure you for a quick decision. Just take in the data, and keep evaluating where they lead you."

I spent the balance of the afternoon with Emma. We went through 'my' new things, and evaluated what else I needed, and then we went off-site with a shopping list.

"I'm stunned that I'm allowed to leave."

"Why?" Emma asked.

"Well, I might escape."

"You aren't planning that, are you?"

"No."

"I could have stopped you. It wouldn't have been fun for either of us, but I would have done that. I wouldn't have taken on the responsibility if I thought you would run off, however."

"All of your powers are intact?"

"Complete and undiminished." Emma smiled. "If anything, they're stronger. If you're asking me indirectly if Mason's had me tampered with, the answer is no. An unqualified no."

"You're certain? You don't remember anything being implanted in your head?"

"I'd remember something like that. What an odd question. Where did that come from?"

"Adam was working on something like that. I thought these people might have something like that, too."

"How creepy. But that sounds like Adam. He devised the governors and pods. Did he bother telling you about that?"

Adam designed the subdermal governors and stasis pods? I shook my head.

It's not something he tells mutants very often. For someone who claims to champion our cause, he spent a lot of time constructing devices to control us. Fortunately, many people are seeing through him."

"What's this St Katherine's like?"

"State of the art."

"Could they have helped my mother?"

"Very likely. Mutant afflictions are dealt with daily there."

"What does Mason do with…the really dangerous ones?"

"If they're out of control or insane, first they try governors and medication. If the medication works, they can go back into the world, but only if they live in one of the residences where their medication can be monitored and given consistently. That way, they can have nearly normal lives. Podding is the last resort, Catherine, but if they're insane and capable of destroying half a city, it's the only humane alternative. Mason spent months in a pod. Podding isn't something he signs off on lightly."

"I guess not. I don't know what else could be done with someone like that."

"We only admit this among ourselves, but it's true: a percentage of us think we're better than ordinary humans and don't believe we're bound by their laws. Such mutants think they're above general population, the next step in human evolution. This dangerous attitude makes monsters of its believers, when taken to extremes. One of the lessons the very young ones are taught is that they are modified humans, not superior, not inferior, but modified.

"I think it's sad we're expected not to have children."

"It is. But making another generation, possibly with mixed talents and unpredictable outcomes, well, that's hardly fair or kind, is it?"

"I see the sense of it, but it's still sad."

"There are already a lot of orphaned mutant children whose parents have died young. That's sad, too. Mason's program is tough, logical, and probably the most human approach to dealing with the existence of Genomex mutants. The program includes placement of those mutant orphans with responsible mutants who will understand their abilities. Jesse and I have registered in the program."

"Adam thinks Mason is controlling you and Jesse."

"What do you think?"

"I think Mason has so much to worry over he doesn't have time to watch what you and Jesse are doing. He simply trusts you."

"Exactly."

"Don't let Adam get near you."

"Don't worry. Adam should be careful not to come anywhere near me. Neither Adam nor Mason have any idea just what I could do to them. Mason doesn't want to know and doesn't have anything to worry about since he's always straight with me. Adam's another story."

"Adam's always that way, isn't he"

"Unfortunately, yes."

That evening, I had dinner with Mason and Rebecca, but this time, things were quite different. We had a picnic out of sight of the complex with a view of the lake. Rebecca had changed into jeans, but Mason was formal as ever.

"Catherine, before even asking him if he has any other clothes, the answer is yes, somewhere at the bottom of his closet." She was laughing.

"My approach does allow for simplicity and ease in planning one's dress. Unlike some people." He was playing.

We just talked that evening, beginning an almost unchanging pattern early every evening. Like a family.

Sitting outside in the fresh air made me sleepy. After dinner I took a long, soaking bath in some nice-smelling stuff I'd bought with Emma. I turned in early, falling asleep reading a book Rebecca had loaned me.

I was very annoyed when Adam's voice woke me a few hours after I dozed off.

Adam, I'm exhausted. I just want to sleep.

But we need to talk. You have to tell me what you've learned.

To begin with, the only one wearing a governor in this place is me. That includes Emma and Jesse.

You saw Emma and Jesse?

I had breakfast with them. They're independent people. They're not wearing governors now, and their necks don't show any marks of their being recently removed.

How is Eckhart controlling them? Could he have implanted the next generation of control devices, like the one you're wearing?

You said the technology was unique.

I believed it was.

Adam, Emma and Jesse seem spontaneous, genuine, and themselves. They don't seem reluctant to talk about anything and they aren't careful about what they say, either. Most of all, they appear to be happy.

I enjoyed telling Adam that. I could almost feel his anger and aggravation, and that felt surprisingly good. He did not want to believe his "children" could be happy or succeed without his special guidance. The truth was that Emma and Jesse had been suffocating under Adam's control, and they blossomed once free of Adam.

What about that other sell-out, Shalimar?

Shalimar doesn't work here. She never did. She has some kind of martial arts business. It's doing very well.

Adam didn't want to hear that, either. He treated Shalimar more like a child than any of the others, since he met her when she was only fifteen.

This is all so fantastic, Catherine.

But true, Adam. Either these people all had drastic personality changes as soon as you stopped seeing them daily, or your recollections are faulty.

Of course, what I meant was 'or most everything you've told me about them was a lie', but I wasn't prepared to argue with him, just let him know how much I questioned what he told me. From a distance, powerless to flash his I-Know-More-Than-You-Do Adam smile, he would be greatly annoyed. I could almost see him excavating his pockets for a roll of antacids. Admitting he was wrong was almost impossible for Adam.

Oh, come on, Catherine, when did you ever hear anything good about Eckhart?

He's treated me well. And if he was so rotten, what was my mother doing with him?

I don't have an answer for that. Maybe he assaulted her in a drunken stupor.

Adam! He's treating me with respect. I'm going to meet his other children.

The Progeny of the Beautiful Jacqueline. I wonder if they have Jackie's sense and Eckhart's looks? Hah. Danielle never told me anything that made me think Eckhart might be your father. This is very odd. I have to admit to continuing puzzlement over your pedigree.

But you would not have wanted to consider that possibility, would you? No, not proud Adam.

Adam, I don't think I want to help you any longer. I know I don't.

I could hear his laughter in my head, not as if he was speaking to me in the same room, but thin and tinny, echoing from a distant place.

Catherine, you don't have any choice. I tell you what to do. I haven't forced you to do anything yet because it hasn't been necessary—yet. In my way of thinking, you have gained access to my enemy's inner places and that is an advantage I intend to exploit.

You can't make me hurt these people.

Who?

Mason. Rebecca. Emma. Jesse.

Care about them already, Catherine? He mocked me.

Yes.

Silly girl. That's a human frailty. You're a mutant. Be better than a human.

I am a human, and I won't hurt them.

I can make you do anything I want you to do. You'll see. Don't question me.

He shut down his half of the dialogue before I could respond. Hours went by before I could sleep again.

After a while, I became accustomed to Mason's 'Mr Creepy' took. Since my relationship with him was positive, the look ceased to be frightening. After a little longer, I stopped 'seeing' it at all.

One evening after the Genomex employees had gone home, Mason and I went for a walk by the lake. I suppose he did not want his people seeing him do anything so human. I know it wasn't about being ashamed of me because he made no secret of being my father.

"Dr Varady and I discussed your educational assessments today. You're very bright, Catherine, but I doubt you'll be shocked to learn your education to date has been hit and miss."

"I'm not shocked. Mom and I moved a lot. Some of the schools weren't very good."

"Have you given any more thought to what you want to do?"

"I don't have any clear idea. From what Dr Varady says, I have more possibilities than I thought."

"I've always made my way with my mind. I'm not a snob about this, but it is what I know, and it is the direction I've encouraged my other children to take. I've also tried my best to make sure that whatever they did to make a living, they would be more than knowledgeable in their field. Having a rich interior life to draw upon made all the difference seeing me through the last eighteen years."

"What do you mean?" He was telling me something important and I did not want to miss his meaning.

"During the darker moments of my life, such as Marc's drowning, instead of losing myself in pop culture, I lost myself in learning. The more you know, the more varied and subtle connections you are able to make in your mind, not just about what you do for a living, but about everything. I've hired a lot of brilliant individuals with remarkable formal educations. Within the bounds of their expertise, some had no match in the world. Outside of those fields, many of them knew not much of anything, and could be readily gulled by propaganda and emotional appeals. I'm not saying I know everything, but I know a little about a lot of things, most of that not acquired in formal classroom settings. Is this making sense to you?"

"Some. I've never heard anyone say anything like this." I don't think anyone –not even my mother—had ever spoken so seriously to me before. I decided I liked the way he was speaking, realizing he respected my intelligence and was concerned about the kind of person I was and would become.

"That's because it's an old-fashioned attitude fallen out of fashion." Mason smiled at me. He genuinely liked me.

This discussion wasn't about his progeny having more degrees or credits than the cultural norm. No, this was about adaptability and survival in a difficult world.

"And you want me to always land on my feet, like a cat."

"Yes. Surprise your friends. Awe your enemies. As I do. Everytime." Smiling, he invested that reply with great emotion.

"I've seen people attempt to force a child to be someone they're not. That's why I am explaining things to you this way. I am prepared to put together whatever combination of classroom instruction, one-on-one tutoring, or organized reading program to develop your mind, but only if you want that. I won't force you. It has to come from you. You would have to work very hard and develop a level of discipline I honestly do not perceive in your character at present. Talk to Rebecca as well. She doesn't wear her scars as obviously as I display mine, but she has been through a lot. Life can be very hard, even if we strive to do everything right. She'll tell you how she came through the worst of it without bitterness or even madness."

"And if I say thanks, but no thanks to catching up on my education?" I didn't really mean it. I wanted to hear what he would say.

"Your life is your own. The choice is your own, not mine." He sounded disappointed.

I wanted to scream at him, 'Adam has put this thing into my head, and is going to force me to bring harm to you, just as I'm beginning to surprise myself and care about you. Get this thing out of my head! Find someone capable of removing it or neutralizing it!'…but every time I started to say something, nothing would come out. I was making odd, involuntary choking noises.

"Catherine?"

"I'm okay." Well, I wasn't. Now I knew just how much of me Adam possessed.

How am I going to save you from me?

"I want to try, Mason. I just wondered what you would say if I refused."

"It's going to be a lot of work. Hours of serious study daily. I suspect you'll have to learn how to study to begin with."

"I'm tired of being told I'm an 'underachiever'. I want to find out what I can do." And I wanted to prove I was as good as his other children. A secret part of me wanted to prove I was better.

"Very well." He was pleased, more than his face showed.

I realized something at that moment: how important it was to me to please Mason, win his approval, and be a source of pride for him. I had not expected this.

"You must be curious about your half-sibs, yes?"

"I'm dying of curiosity. Especially about Grey. I've always wanted a brother, an older one, to stick up for me."

"I have not said anything about this to Rebecca, but what you think of the idea of bringing them here for Thanksgiving, and Emma, Jesse, and Shalimar, maybe even Rebecca's brother Steve and wife Sherri? A family kind of feast, with all the traditional trimmings, and all the traditional anxieties?"

"Wow." Wow, indeed, considering Laura Varady's description of his retreat from people. And what would Rebecca think? She did fine in business settings, but I was beginning to think that was merely camouflage.

"Last Thanksgiving with Rebecca was the first one I did not spend alone since 1990, when I was still with Jackie, and Grey was very small."

All of the time I've been alive, and more.

"I've never done anything like that. A few times, Mom and I did Thanksgiving with one of her boyfriends and their children from assorted marriages and relationships, but never with the same guy twice, so it never 'felt' the way it's supposed to."

No, it hadn't. Some of Mom's boyfriends, were, well, no one I wanted ever to see again. Their offspring were frequently stupid (like their mothers; why are men surprised when the children they sire with witless women turn out much like their dams?) or top-heavy with emotional problems.

"I'm not intending to go anywhere or abandon you, Catherine." Mason read people very well. No wonder he could instill such fear.

"I can tell. I just cannot believe my luck. My good luck. I'm glad I'm here." I meant every word.

"I cannot believe mine. The evening before she flew out of here, Rebecca warned me not to raise my hopes too high, that you could be wearing nipple rings, obscene tattoos, and be carrying Mulwray's twins."

"Mulwray's twins!"

"Yes. The thought of Brennan Mulwray as a de facto son-in-law inspired murderous fantasies. Not that I require much motivation to think unpleasant thoughts about Mulwray."

I laughed. "When I first met Brennan, I thought he was pretty darn cool, but about a week after Adam took me in, I couldn't stand him, and then things got worse."

"What made you re-think Brennan?"

"He swiped my change. I don't think he can walk past a vending machine without feeding. I could not leave change in my pockets overnight. I had to hide my wallet and change under my pillow overnight."

"Mulwray's a thief."

"Full time! And he never forgets that. Then, there are his clothes. When I was younger, I thought it was cool, but there is something sad about a guy Brennan's age wearing stuff you'd expect to see on a marketing-entranced fourteen year old. Seeing Jesse the way he dresses now convinced me."

"Mulwray was never in the running as a potential son-in-law?"

"No. His name never passed the entry box."

Mason laughed. "Can you tell me you don't have any embarrassing tattoos?"

"Not a one. No tattoos of any kind."

"That's a relief. And your mother never said anything which made you think I was your father?"

"Nothing. Most of the time growing up I thought Adam must be my father, just from the way she talked about him. Well, she thought a lot of him."

"I'm not going to presume to speak for Adam or know his mind, but he may well have used her as he did most other Genomex mutants, as research subjects. Adam always did his best to charm the ones whose traits intrigued him the most."

Mason was trying to be gentle. But I already knew the truth of Adam. Everything he did was about Adam, not about anyone else.

"What was your father like?"

"My father –your grandfather—still is. He's an MD, a psychiatrist. I have not seen him in 20 years. I have no wish to see him. He's either insane or incredibly cruel. Dr Eckhart might even manage to be both. I blame him for Marc's drowning and my mother's suicide. He had a stroke years ago. I resolved a long time ago not to be like him, at least, not with my children. You are not missing much by not knowing him."

Mason sounded bitter, and miserably unhappy. Rebecca had told me the story of Marc's drowning and how Mason found his mother's body. He had the intelligence to do his best not to be the kind of parent my grandfather had been, and that was a good thing.

"What happened to your father to make him that way?"

Mason shook his head. "I have no idea. Anyone who might have known is gone. Growing up, I never even heard any stories. Explaining him would not have excused his actions, although there is a story buried somewhere in his past."

"That's all so sad."

"Yes. But all is not lost: I found you. You found me. If Adam had not sent me his nasty video message I would not have known you."

Mason spent time with me without Rebecca. She was smart enough to understand and not be jealous, as some 'evil stepmothers' might become. I learned a lot of family material this way, and he learned my much shorter history.

For some time, I had wanted to ask Mason a particular question.

Every Genomex mutant knew his name, and each had a collection of stories about Mason Eckhart as well. I had grown up hearing these stories. Some tales were utterly fantastic, obviously exaggerated to the point of crediting him with supernatural abilities.

"I don't want to sound ungrateful or rude, but…I need to know. All the stories about you…they're not all lies, are they?"

With most everyone else, Mason hid behind his thick-framed glasses and beneath his hair, but unlike his employees, I knew he was human, and he could not hide from me. I did not think he would try, and he did not fail me.

"I would have to know the specific story to answer with certainly, but I've done enough that some of the stories are undoubtedly true. Catherine, I have done terrible things."

He looked very sad. I felt badly for bringing this up, but I had to know the truth.

"I have to know." I could be very blunt with him, I learned. He preferred that to wasting time with hints dropped here and there.

"You deserve to know. I've run a secret law enforcement agency with domestic intelligence responsibilities. I've dealt with dangerous mutants and circumstances. Extreme, extraordinary measures were often my only option. I am afraid you will hate me if you discover too many of the stories are true, and I do not want that. "

"I don't think that will happen." I had fewer illusions about Mason than he probably realized.

"I've never pretended to be a nice man, Catherine. Much of what I've taken on could not be done by a nice man. I have done some horrible things. But, to this day, I cannot think of any other ways to accomplish the same ends."

Mason mixed regret and pride oddly when he said this.

"A cold man, a man with no heart, would have left me to find my own way through the legal system. Had I made my way back to Adam and he had told me you were my father, I would never have come looking for you. Everything that has happened is because of your choosing. Your decency and kindness."

"I've done for you what my sense of responsibility and honor demand."

"Exactly."

"You may abandon me when I tell you specific things I've done."

"No. I won't do that."

By now, I was in awe of Mason, though I had not told him. Rebecca was good at thinking about things, but Mason was incredible in the way he thought about people.

"Tell me what you've done."

"Murder." He spoke without hesitation.

Well, why start with the small items?

"Related to the job?"

"Absolutely."

"Rebecca knows?"

"She does. And has from the beginning. Being other than honest with her would have been unfair. She would have heard the stories eventually, and I decided better to tell her myself than hear them from someone else. She has no illusions about what I have done or who I am."

Rebecca was made of sterner stuff than I had realized. They both were.

"I've ordered men killed. I've had things done to individuals to enhance whatever abilities they had—processes which could be painful or traumatic or both."

"Did you offer these people a choice?"

"Typically, they were people all out of choices…criminals. They had a choice…of sorts. I was manipulating them. Using them. But not for me."

"And you did these things…why?"

"To stop the spreading of Genomex DNA through the entire human population. I don't know what Breedlove was thinking. If the genes spread through the entire species, health problems similar to your mother's and my own will become commonplace, and they will tend to die young. The transgenics will splinter off into dozens of sub-species, probably producing sterile offspring, the way most mules are sterile. All of this leads to one end: extinction."

What Mason outlined made simple, straightforward sense. I wondered why I had never heard it discussed among mutants in underground circles.

"Adam knows this?"

"Adam and Breedlove explained it to me. They understood perfectly well. They had faith a future cure would be found. I have seen a lot of misery for lack of that projected cure."

"They knew, and they went on and created mutants by the hundreds?"

He shook his head. "Possibly by the thousands. I keep turning up more and more of them. Breedlove's biotech empire extended well beyond Genomex, with satellite clinics all over the US and Canada."

"I can't imagine anyone knowingly creating such pain."

"Yet they did. And it appears they never had difficulty hiring highly skilled people to assist them. I should have left when it was clear what was going on here. My life would have been different if I'd left Adam and Breedlove and this unholy mess behind, before the twins were born. It's strange the way things we believe are important in the past turn out to be illusory. I thought it was critical to provide well for my family, but by staying here I lost them."

"To hear Adam talk, you were one of the prime forces behind the creation of mutants, as much if not more than he was."

"Do the math," Mason said softly.

"I know. I don't know if people wanted to believe ill of you, but I've never heard anyone comment upon how the numbers just don't work."

"Adam appeals to their emotions. He blends in a pinch of the truth into his impassioned displays, and people assume anyone who is that much of a true believer cannot be lying. They don't think to check plausibility."

"If you hadn't been here, who would have done...what you've been doing?"

"I don't know. You haven't noticed a collection of trusted lieutenants around me, have you?"

"Only Jesse."

"Well, Jesse came along much later."

"Except for you, is it possible Adam might still be working here, still creating mutants?"

He smiled and I didn't know why.

"Yes, I suppose it is possible, but Rebecca had something to do with the departure of the Prince of Genomex. It's her story, not mine. She'll tell you if you ask."

"Adam doesn't like Rebecca."

"He did then. Rebecca's tolerance for fools is similar to my own—or perhaps even less. That includes Adam."

I was given access to much of the Genomex complex. As soon as Adam forced that info bit out of me, I was soon prowling about, gathering information for him.

I did my best to resist Adam. I discovered he had scary ways of making me do as he wished, but not by inflicting pain. He would wake me from a sound sleep, demanding I do something, and stopping my breathing or my heart until I rose from bed to do his will and bidding.

Arguing with Adam when he had such persuasive capabilities was out of the question. Adam knew nothing about the newer security measures in place, but little by little he used me to probe the system to find weaknesses.

I wanted no part of this. The guilt I felt knowing I was doing things that eventually would harm people who obviously cared about me was overwhelming.

I was puzzled why Emma could not detect my emotional uproar, and decided Adam's implant must also mask emotions it generated.

One day, I heard Adam's voice with unusual clarity.

You sound…close.

I am. I've come back home. I've returned to Sanctuary.

Was Brennan's fleet of junk Camaros still outside rusting in the weeds?

Most of them. What he's really excited about is the selection of snack treats distributed in this part of the country. He came back to the Double Helix with all the goodies he couldn't find out west.

I'll bet. Bags and bags of sugar and far. Perfect Brennan fodder.

I tried my best to be careless and sloppy, hoping I'd be caught. I wanted so badly to be found out. To my great relief, eventually I was.

Rebecca looked downcast and drained. Mason just looked cold and indifferent, which from him was scarier than any other impression he could have given. Emma looked grim.

'I'm confused, Catherine. You were found in possession of three blank badge templates and I cannot imagine what legitimate purpose you would have for them." He tossed the templates onto the glass surface of his desk, and glared at me.

Adam was right there in my head. I didn't care anymore what he did to me. I was relieved to have been found out, because now the people I cared about were safe, from me.

"Ad--," but I could say no more, breath drawn out of me. I pointed to my head, and pleaded with my eyes until I passed out.

Rebecca and Emma were hovering when I opened my eyes and recognized where I was. Contact with Adam was gone.

"Adam … implant—" but that was all I could say when he crawled back inside my head.

Catherine, I thought I lost you for a moment.

You did. I blacked out.

"She's terrified of something," I heard Emma say, sounding faint and distant.

"She may be scared, but of what? 'Implant' sounds like something out of bad science fiction." Mason sounded so cold. He believed I had lied to him all along.

Tell them anything, and I'll stop your heart. Forever.

Adam had no idea I'd told them anything.

Mason came and stood over me, very close, glaring at me the way he must…at traitors and liars. "Catherine, is this a story?"

That look must freeze over the hearts of your enemies. But I'm not one of them. I'm trying to save you.

I shook my head emphatically, NO, and then I did something else.

What are you doing, Catherine? I could tell Adam was confused.

Go ahead, stop my heart. I won't hurt these people.

By now, I was crying and I did not care who saw my tears.

You can't save them.

I will try. You're not going to use me to hurt my father or my friends.

Fool.

I passed out again. Mason and Emma both caught me so I wouldn't hit the floor.

"This is not an act, Mason. She's scared. She also cares very much about you, about both of you. She's trying to protect you from Adam, who is directing her actions. I don't know how."

"Did Adam ever say anything about refining the governors?" Mason asked.

"Adam always had plenty to say. He was always tinkering with something. Jesse would know more."

"I've got her, Emma. Concentrate on learning whatever you can."

"Rebecca, please page Jesse. I want to believe her, Emma."

"It's hard to focus on her. But you can believe what she is saying. Adam is making her breathing stop long enough to make her pass out. She's shielded somehow; I can tell you what I have only because we're touching. She's lost now…confused images, almost a dream state." Emma kept both hands resting on my forehead.

"By going after Catherine, Adam's gone farther than he knows."

"This is a new low, even for him." Rebecca was a reflective, patient woman, typically slow to anger. She was angry now. "Something has to be done with him. Someone has to do something to him. Maybe me."

Lost you again, Catherine. Where did you go?

As if he did not know. I recognized that Mason was keeping me from falling, and realizing that, held onto him. Please, believe me. I don't want to hurt you or Rebecca. This time, as I rose up out of the fuzzy gloom, things were different. Emma lurked just out of Adam's 'seeing', and ambushed him as he intruded.

I didn't expect to meet you here, Adam. Emma wasn't afraid of him.

Lovely traitorous Emma.

Whatever you want to call me, Adam. I don't care. Your name-calling is not going to bother me. But I do care about whatever you've done to Catherine.

Just a little something I whipped together in my spare time.

Tell me how to free Catherine of it. Now.

It's permanent. Remove it, and she'll be brain-damaged permanently.

Oh, but Adam, you're so clever. There must be some way to 'pull the plug'.

Stop him, Emma. I was pleading.

I'm out of patience, Adam. Destroy the linkage to Catherine, or I'll reach across the miles and homogenize your brain, and you'll never again know the thrill of telling everyone about your intellectual superiority.

Emma, starting to come into your own?

Something like that. You don't want to find out what I can do.

I sensed confusion and rage from Adam. He knew Emma wasn't bluffing and he knew she was angry enough with him for what he had done to me to unleash whatever potentials she had onto his brain.

Do it, Adam. Right now.

I felt a brief moment of pain—the brain wasn't supposed to feel pain—and the sensation of 'connection' vanished.

Suddenly, Adam was gone. I was still only partly aware, and confused. I knew Mason was there, and I knew he trusted me again. I came back up to awareness, as if rising through murky water.

"Adam's in retreat," Emma said. "I hope I put enough of a scare into him to keep him out of our lives."

"I couldn't not do what he told me to do. Please, believe me."

"I do believe you." He hugged me. "How long has he been in your head?"

"Since they day I got here. Nearly every day he'd 'drop-by' and ask me things. You'll have to change some of the security procedures, because he made me tell him. Every time I tried to refuse, or tell you, he'd race my heart or make my breathing stop. I'm so sorry."

"I'm sorry I failed to protect you. I didn't think I was underestimating Adam, but obviously, I was."

"And he's back in the area."

Mason went ahead with his plans of gathering a large group at Genomex for Thanksgiving. At first, I looked forward to it, and then as the weather turned cooler and reality began to seep through, I became terrified at the prospect of meeting my half-siblings, even though I "knew" them from electronic images for some months now.

"I'm scared, Rebecca."

"What part worries you?"

"The half-sibs. I'm afraid they're better than I am."

"Hogwash. What if you dressed for the day, something feminine and soft, something not jeans?"

"That would help."

Rebecca hated shopping, but she had a formidable collection of catalogues, which we studied together one evening.

"I don't remember the last time I wore a skirt or a dress."

"Old memories are about to return."

So it was my 'wicked stepmother' Rebecca got me dressed and shod for the big day, well in advance.

"I'm still scared."

"That's normal. Try not to worry about it too much. They don't seem like horrible people. You will have to cut the twins considerable slack, however."

"Why the twins?"

"They have no memory of their father other than the webcam images. They're going to want his time and attention, and he owes it to them. Don't be silly and decide because he pays more attention to them while they're here that he thinks more of his 'real' daughters than you—understand the crazy circumstances. You see him every day. He thinks the world of you. Grey will want time with him, too, but Grey won't be as obvious as the girls. If you're smart, you'll do everything possible to steer them towards each other."

That made sense. I hadn't considered any of it.

"What about what I am?"

"A Genomex mutant?" Rebecca asked.

"Yeah."

"I know Mason hasn't explained that part to them yet. Your governor should be gone by then. Just don't go stealth over dinner, and talk to everyone, not just Emma and Jesse. Samihah will have her hands full with her four boys, but she's an interesting woman and worth making an effort to get to know. Try not to worry so much."

I tried not to worry, but I worried anyway. When I was alone in the evenings and finally done studying, some nights I would take out my dress and just look at it, hoping it would be protection enough.

It never occurred to me that they were even more worried about meeting their father than I was about meeting them, not until I got email from Grey admitting as much.

"We're afraid of not living up to his expectations, the twins more than me since they don't remember him as a human being."

"But you're all intelligent, high-achievers," I wrote back. "He's proud of each of you. I can tell by the way he talks."

"We know this," Grey wrote back. "Some of the guys in the dorm never had a kind or supportive word from their fathers. Dad's always praised us and made time to talk us through trouble, even though he could only do that electronically. We understand his health problems kept him away from us."

"When you see the faux skin and gloves you'll realize how unusual his life is. Most days he doesn't eat real food, but drinks a sterile pink slurry. He doesn't complain, but he's lived this way for almost twenty years. It must be very strange. I don't know if I could do it."

"Mom saw him once in the plastic skin. She said it was horrible. At the time, she thought it would only be temporary, but nothing has changed since 1991."

"Don't worry about being good enough, Grey, and tell Deirdre and Michelle not to worry, either. He accepted me under awkward circumstances, which he was not compelled to do. Only a good man would have done that."

Yes, difficult and awkward circumstances. The time had come to ask Mason for something. I rarely showed up in his office, wanting to keep his work and private life as separate and distinct as possible. When I did go to his office, he knew it was important and made time for me.

"I want to ask you for something."

Probably he thought I wanted a car or some other adolescent delight.

"Ask."

"I want to have your name."

"It's always been yours for the asking, Catherine. I wasn't going to press the issue. I'll have to ask the lawyers what's involved, but I'll change what I call you now."

"Thank you."

Free of Adam and his intrusions, I was able to throw myself wholeheartedly into my studies, an eclectic amalgam of disciplines. The intention was for me to spend a year doing this, and then enroll in a formal high school. I minded neither the work nor the hours. Among my tutors were specialists Mason hired, and Jesse, Rebecca and himself.

One Saturday afternoon, Rebecca and Mason demonstrated the conduct of the Battle of Hastings on the sloping shores of the lake, making the fate of the unlucky Harold indelible in my mind.

Once I had struggled to get through 8th grade algebra, but through Rebecca's patience, I not only got through algebra, but pressed on into the calculus.

All of this was a lot of work. I put more time into studying in a single day than I formerly had into an entire week. Somehow, this was different.

Mason had a peculiar kind of 'family room' carved out of an unused suite of offices. I say peculiar not because of the furnishings, but because a pair of armed GSA stood watch outside the door. Rebecca was thrilled. She dragged all of her electronic toys out of storage and assembled them.

Any studying requiring concentration I did in my room, but fiction reading I did in the family room, with Rebecca and Mason reading or watching a movie. Neither of them had much interest in series television, and were mostly unfamiliar with programs I thought everyone knew. Rebecca hadn't watched a series faithfully since the X-Files, and was annoyed by the way Dana had gone off into the sunset with porn-watching Mulder, whom she thought Dana would have found stupefying boring. Mason would admit only to watching Babylon 5.

At first I thought this room was a silly idea, but the sense of it became apparent quickly. It was not work space or personal space belonging to an individual, so we could all feel comfortable there. Mason allowed no employees inside, at least on work matters. Emma and Jesse were regular visitors.

It wasn't important that we talked all the time to one another, although we did talk. The important part was that we were present in the same space and could talk. We took our evening meal here, the meal we always ate together. In this room, the meal had a very different, private feeling compared to the cafeteria.

For the sake of security, this room was windowless like my own, which also made it safer.

The two armed guards who stood outside in the evening weren't the first line of defense, but nearly the last. Mason expected Adam to return.

One evening, while paying no attention to Kurosawa's Ran which they were watching (again), I became deeply absorbed sailing the wine-dark sea with Homer, something which had hopelessly bored me when I first had to read it years before. I completely ignored the movie since I could not see the subtitles where I was sitting. I noticed that the movie had ended and that there was no reaction from Rebecca and Mason, who had been watching side by side in the floor.

They were both sound asleep. Mason was curled about Rebecca, face buried in her hair, arm holding her. There were people who believed their marriage was a fiction, but when I saw things like this I knew better.

I did not have the heart to wake them, so I turned off the tv and the DVD player and had one of the guards escort me to my room, and reflected upon the odd life I was living, and how much I liked it.

As warm and sweet as my description of this scene sounds, the details add additional flavors. They were both armed. They never went anywhere unarmed as far as I could tell. They might be wearing jeans and t-shirts, but that meant only they wouldn't be covering their automatics with jackets.

Mason always expected Adam to return. He said Adam could not adjust to changed circumstances and that he would not abandon his confused campaign of 'saving' Genomex mutants.

The days were long past when Mason was all alone in the complex at night. Rather than set up routine patrols, the patterns of what was watched and when was changed daily. Shift changes were staggered. Badge colors were changed frequently, at irregular intervals. If Rebecca woke up Tuesday and told Mason that visitor's badges should be triangular and mauve, by 10 AM that is exactly what was in place. This may sound capricious or silly, but patterns and routines invite intrusion. Having Rebecca make whimsical decisions kept the changes random and unpredictable.

Still, what little we heard of Adam described a marginalized man (or android or whatever he was). Mason's contacts among formerly underground mutants were surprised to learn Adam was still out there, still trying to convince mutants to go into hiding. Very rarely, someone would relate to Mason the tale of trying to convince Adam of coming out of hiding. They described Adam's grasp of reality as tenuous.

Rather than rejoice over the reduction of an old enemy to a purposeless anachronism, Mason more wisely became wary, deciding the shattering of Adam's reality made him far more dangerous than before. The course and flow of Adam's life was forcing him into a corner.

I spent time reflecting upon Adam and realized that no matter how he interpreted his descent into obscurity, he had to feel betrayed by life and all the promise he displayed early on.

What did he now have to show for his talents and intelligence? He was mostly living out of the Double Helix, sharing cramped quarters never intended to be living space, with an unimaginative, unintellectual, unreliable felon. Surely this life could bear little resemblance to Mason's, which had become astonishingly…human.

Adam loathed Mason, though he often spoke of Mason's hatred of him as it were unique, pathological, and unjustified. I was beginning to unravel Adam's hatred for Mason and see it for what it was: jealousy.

Adam knew more about genetics than Mason ever would, but Adam had created a human tragedy and technical disaster applying his knowledge of genetics. Even though Adam would never admit it, Mason was making good progress towards lessening the impact upon society of Adam's unholy human failures , while Adam did nothing but deny there was a problem and insist that Mason was setting a vile trap cloaked by an offer of normal life and medical help.

While Adam knew genetics, Mason was in truth more broadly educated. That must have annoyed Adam no end. Outside the bounds of Adam's specialty, Mason could outmaneuver and outdistance Adam.

They had competed for the same women.

I had had no contact with Jacqueline Eckhart, or Jacqueline Winsor, her current name, so about her I could only guess, but how she could ever have chosen to leave Mason for Adam was a mystery, now that I was well acquainted with Adam's dubious character.

For most of my life I assumed that the lofty and wonderful Adam was my father, but now I was proud of Mason, and glad that for once my mother had displayed good taste in men. Adam must have been furious when analysis of my genetics revealed my proper pedigree.

Of course, there was Rebecca, who saw through Adam immediately, and could not stand him. Naturally, the only woman Adam really wanted was the one who thought he was a pompous ass. The stories about Adam's vain pursuit were amusing. Adam must be buying antacids by the bagful, knowing that the woman who rejected him so publicly was sleeping with Mason Eckhart.

All this while Adam lived out his days in the scintillating company of Brennan Mulwray.

As hateful as Adam was about Mason, privately Mason wasted little thought upon Adam. His thoughts had always dwelt upon the three children from his marriage, but now he had Rebecca and me as well. For anyone paying careful attention, such as Laura Varady, Mason's transition was remarkable.

How I wished I could have told Adam of the evenings and weekends my increasingly not so odd little family spent together. How I wished I could have driven the smirk from Adam's face, describing to him how Mason and I managed to craft a belated but loving father/daughter relationship. Mason was not demonstrative in front of his employees, but we were comfortable now with one another. I found myself wishing I could tell Adam.

I had believed Mason was reserved in the company of strangers, but I was astonished when Rebecca told me Mason generally—or formerly—had been horrified by the touch of another person.

Piecing information together, I was able to deduce Mason had spent nearly two decades in something of an emotional wilderness. Sometime later, I realized Rebecca had been lost in a similar wilderness of her own.

We did more than sit in that windowless room together. We ventured out into the wider world together. Sometimes Emma and Jesse joined us, especially for hikes through woodlands or walks through gardens. Before Incident X, Mason had been a serious gardener, growing all sorts of flowers and edibles. Now, that was all gone. He did not dare touch soil or handle plants.

He knew an amazing amount about plants, and obviously enjoyed talking to Emma about growing things. Most of his old, pre-Incident X library was too laden with mold or dust to be allowed into his quarters. The books that could not be cleaned were microfilmed, and the originals put into storage. Mason gave Emma the gardening titles from the stored books.

The better I grew to know Mason, the more I understood just how much of himself had been lost after Incident X. the more I knew, the more striking I found his survival.

The most amusing aspect of these outings was the way Mason changed his singular appearance, wearing wire-rim glasses and a dark brown wig. Emma especially found this amusing, but she understood why he would not want to be noticed.

Neither Emma nor Jesse had any interest in classical music or art, and I'll admit I had not been exposed to these universes. Rebecca and Mason had very different tastes in both spheres, so I was introduced to a broad range of artists and composers.

We'd drive as far away as three hours from Genomex to see special exhibits in other cities. Mason had never driven this far himself, being cautious of his physical fragility.

We looked like a family. We acted like one. Strangers assumed we were a family; perhaps we were.

Rebecca and I even took an eight-week course in watercolors together.

If all of this sounds warm and fuzzy and exciting and fun, well, it was. But it would be misleading to state that this was the whole of our lives together. Not everything was positive or pleasant.

Mason's father died unexpectedly in early fall, and the three of us flew on the GSA Citation to the funeral. Mason never considered flying commercial. The recycled virus and bacteria-laden air probably would have killed him.

So it was that I met my half-siblings weeks earlier than anticipated.

Mason had planned and paid for the funeral years ago, in case something happened to him, since there was no one else to take care of matters. That made me wonder what else he had planned for, just in case.

Mason came as his Genomex self to the funeral. His appearance was striking and singular, but his children were used to it and he did not care what his father's former colleagues thought (my grandfather had no friends) and he wanted to intimidate his ex-wife Jackie and her new husband—her fourth (Rebecca's comment: "That's more men than I've slept with."), described by Grey and the girls as loud and overbearing. They were glad to be going to college away from home. Peter Winsor had his own brood of children from previous marriages, and did not even feign interest in Jackie's progeny.

"So, why did your mother marry this character?"

And Grey had told him –there was something about being an Eckhart that made us all blunt-- "Dad, as near as I can figure, and I hate to say this, because she is my mother, but it has everything to do with the size of his checkbook. You should see the house they're building. It's vulgarly ostentatious. Deirdre gets the giggles just describing the gold-plated seahorse bathroom fixtures, the Secret Room of Last Resort that everyone knows about, and the wine cellar, and Michelle swears everyone will be handed a map and compass as they come through the front door so they won't be lost for too long."

"And a packet of bread crumbs, too? Sounds like Jackie has found someone able to maintain her lifestyle at the level she believed she always deserved. But why is this place so huge?"

"Oh, two of Peter's kids display the Failure to Launch Syndrome."

"The what?"

"They don't-wanna-grow-up, and neither Peter nor their mothers have had much success in convincing them of the Joys of Maturity, so they tend to live at home."

We made quite an entrance, with Mason's inevitable GSA bodyguards, armed with heavy heat leading the way. Mason didn't anticipate an invasion, but he was in the habit of taking the bodyguards everywhere and he knew how much Jackie loathed firearms.

The GSA firepower and the way Mason and Rebecca made no attempt to disguise their arms would have intimidated anyone.

Rebecca wore one of her Sincere Blue suits, one I knew by now was customized to carry everything. Months before she had decided I needed something for Credibility Dressing as well, so she took me to her tailor and had me measured for credibility. Then she got a bolt of the stuff my dad's suits were made from and had that made up into a short-skirted suit for me, playfully worn with some black lace. I wore this.

Jackie had never seen Mason's post Incident X dress-for-intimidation and calculate-to-cow wear. Grey and the girls knew what was coming, and showed no reaction at all when we entered but Jackie stared as if an alien had entered the chapel. I had no way of knowing what Peter Winsor expected, but he looked pleasingly startled. I was deeply amused. So was Grey, who like his father could be difficult to read until you knew him. The girls looked ready to explode.

Mason went directly to his three oldest children, and greeted and hugged them each in turn. We were all glad to finally meet one another, and everyone was smiling, except for Jackie and Peter, and the small group of one-time colleagues of Dr Conner Eckhart.

Mason hated his father with no shortage of justifications, and saw no reason to pretend he was saddened by his death. He had told his children the horror stories and we also saw no reason to affect sad faces. Without Dr Eckhart, none of us would exist, but he had made our grandmother Marilyn and father Mason miserable.

I had a chance to look Jackie's way, and noted her studying Rebecca intently, deeply curious about this brilliant woman who had helped Deirdre save her math grade, gotten Michelle reading history and biography, carried a firearm, but most intriguingly, slept with the now alien-looking Mason and startlingly, had married him.

No one had told Jackie about me, however, so she had no idea who I was until Mason marched us both up to her. Mason began with a lie, and he could be an incredibly good liar.

"You're looking well, Jackie."

Except she wasn't. Naturally a very pretty woman, he hair was short and frosted and upon her the effect was unflattering.

"This is my youngest, Catherine Eckhart," he began.

I took in the look of surprise on Jackie's face, as she tried to figure out where the heck I had come from. She had missed something somewhere and did not understand how that had happened.

"and my wife, Dr Rebecca Steyn."

Rebecca was wearing what she called her best "technical meeting smile", being politely pleasant to people she would probably never set eyes upon again, and in whom she had little personal investment.

"This is Peter Winsor, Mason. Peter, this is Mason Eckhart, father of my children."

Mason didn't give him any chance to escape, but thrust a black-gloved hand Peter's way in manly greeting. Peter stared briefly at the glove, oddly fitted. It was a warm day.

Now, I knew Mason was inherently frail and serious exercise was impossible because he had no way of cooling himself because of the biopolymer. However, he did trouble to keep his hands very strong, and his handshake generally surprised. This was of course, planned and intentional.

Mason taught me to aggressively press any advantage I had, advice he faithfully followed himself, giving Peter one of the more memorable handshakes of his life, smiling warmly all the while. As I said, he was a good liar.

Rebecca offered her hand as well, being a long-time denizen of the world of business. Peter refused to take her hand. She looked briefly surprised, then turned back towards me. That's when Peter spotted her automatic. His eyes went wide, and if he hadn't had any regrets about his lapse in manners, he did now. Mason witnessed none of this; if he had, he would have tossed Peter a shark-eye glare and make him wonder just what kind of tribe these Eckharts were.

Mason looked about the room. "Well, I cannot imagine anyone else showing up for this, so I'll get started."

Afterwards, Mason admitted to me that he had his father's 'eulogy' written years ago, and that it had just been fine-tuned over the years. He took his place at the lectern.

"My name is Mason Eckhart. I am Dr Conner Eckhart's only surviving offspring.

Culturally, we are discouraged from speaking ill of the dead, but in the case of my father there is little else to speak of.

I'm not Dr Eckhart's only child. I had a twin named Marcus Aaron. When I was eight years old, I watched my father stand by and do nothing while Marc drowned. My father had a fast boat and he was a good, strong swimmer. Marc did not need to die. To this day I have no idea why he was allowed to die. If you're going to pray for the dead, pray for my brother Marc who never had a chance to grow up and become a good man.

While remembering the dead, spare a moment for my mother Marilyn Eckhart. I wish she had had the personal courage to pack up Marc and me when we were small boys and run away as fast and as far away from my father as we could, because it was obvious Dr Eckhart wasn't good for any of us. Unfortunately, my mother was weak and she stayed.

One day when I was 12, I came home from school and found her body. She died from what was ruled a self-induced overdose, but there is no question in my mind who prompted that overdose.

There are likely people present shocked and outraged that a son would speak so of a father. Pretending that my father was other than cruel and crazy will not undo the harm he caused while he lived.

However, I do wish to thank my father for one great gift, making me think carefully about what a father should be. I want my four children to learn the correct lesson from this day, without requiring the pain I endured, and that they teach their children the same lesson.

If Dr Eckhart had been a more ordinary father, surely I would have been a more ordinary parent myself.

Extreme, debilitating health problems kept me separated from my children. The conviction they needed me was the only motivation that kept me alive during the first terrible years after the unethical application of advanced biotechnology that destroyed my immune system. Nevertheless, I maintained close and active involvement in their lives by way of computers, email and webcams.

This may sound cold or strange to some, but I managed daily, lengthy contact with my far-away children. Unlike the children of many men who have worked for me, Grey, Deirdre, Michelle, and Catherine unshakeably know they mean more to me than my golf game, my cars, my toys, or my job. They know my mind and my heart, and I know theirs. We are not strangers to one another.

So, some good came of Dr Eckhart's life, but in a convoluted fashion, and at too high a cost."

"Did you know he was going to do this?" I whispered to Rebecca.

She nodded. "I helped him write it. These things desperately needed saying out loud."

By the time Mason returned to us, I was in tears. Before he could sit down, I rose from my chair and hugged him.

When he sat down, Rebecca took up his gloved hand and squeezed it.

I looked toward Grey. He had known what was coming, but he had not read the text. He saw me, and smiled. Grey was quietly, fiercely proud of his father.

Jackie was horrified. I'm not sure if she had ever actually met Dr Eckhart, who had next to nothing to do with Mason from the time of his mother's suicide, but appearances were important to her. Perhaps even now she was agonizing over what Peter Winsor would think of her once-upon-a-time marrying and having children with a physical oddity (Peter had no way of knowing the 'timing' of Mason's 'look'. For all he was informed, Mason might have been born with white hair.) and blasphemous hellspawn.

Afterwards, on the flight home, Mason told us about the private, separate conversations he'd had with Jackie and Peter.

"Mason, I hope you haven't ruined what time I have left of my life."

Jackie was in fact, a few years younger than Rebecca.

"What do you mean by 'time left'? Do you have some sort of terminal illness?" Of course, she did not, and Mason knew it, but this was her way of heightening the drama of the moment.

"I'm perfectly fine, but I'm getting old."

"It happens, Jackie. Is this your way of saying that if Peter slips your leash, you believe you won't be able to bag another with pockets so deep?"

I could almost see the way Mason must have smirked at her as he related this conversation.

"You've always thought you were so clever with words!"

"Well, I am. And your point?"

"Try to understand what I'm up against."

"Improving your standard of living by way of the men you sleep with? I am familiar with that practice of yours."

"You really said that to her, Mason?" Rebecca asked.

"Yes."

"She deserved it, but hmm, that's rough." Rebecca rolled her eyes at him.

"Well, she went from me to Adam to Frank. Frank was a decent enough fellow who was good to my kids, but he liked to drive fast, and that killed him. He was a smart guy, but he thought the laws of physics didn't apply to him. He thought it was funny that he was once given a speeding ticket in the boondocks of Indiana by a state cop who dropped out of the sky in a helicopter."

"He was given a speeding ticket by Airwolf?" Rebecca asked.

"Something like that. Poor Frank hadn't been planted long in the ground when Jackie began setting snares for Bob, who had a good income but turned out to be a genuine pervert. Jackie turned even that to her advantage, getting a plump settlement from Bob in return for her silence."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Grey told me. During one of their moves he had access to files marked 'Bob', so he skimmed through them until he found the interesting material."

"God's teeth," Rebecca said. "That sounds so hauntingly familiar. Did you encourage Grey to go on this treasure hunt?"

"I did not! I did not suggest or hint. He thought of it by himself, and took the initiative." Mason smiled, proud of Grey.

"Blood will tell." Rebecca rolled her eyes. I giggled.

"And then after Bob the Profoundly Peculiar, Jackie dropped a net over Peter, who may not be so bad after all, even if he did want gold-plated seahorse bathroom fixtures in seven bathrooms."

"Only seven?" Rebecca asked.

"Well, there will be eight bathrooms, but no seahorses for the live-in maid."

"Alas," Rebecca sighed.

"Yes. But to return to Peter, he came up to me and said he admired my honesty in speaking of a destructive parent. He didn't offer much and I did not pry, but he said his father was a very successful builder who privately beat his mother and left his kids confused and abused emotionally. They still get together and pretend to be a big happy clan every Christmas for the sake of the grandchildren. Peter's been wanting to tell his father off for decades."

"Wow," I said.

"I'm going to have to tell Grey that Peter deserves more respect than we've been giving him, despite the absurd seahorses."

Rebecca pointed to the Wal-Mart bag containing bottles of water, and a steel can holding Dr Eckhart's ashes. "What are you going to do with your father's ashes?"

"Someday, when I build a house without gold-plated seahorse fixtures…"

"But what if I want gold-plated seahorse fixtures in every bathroom?" Rebecca interrupted.

"You would just have to go. But to return to the fate of my father's ashes…when the concrete is mixed for the foundation, I'll insist upon tossing in the ashes. That way, he'll finally be involved in something constructive."

As I said, not all was sweetness, joy, and light.

While dealing with some particularly troublesome homework, I went looking for Rebecca. She wasn't in her labs. One of her technicians said she was outside, walking by the lake to sort out a problem.

"You're lucky to find her onsite at all. She's been gone most of the afternoon at the dentist."

Taking a walk by the water was not unusual. Rebecca insisted she got her best ideas while walking through the building or around the property.

She wasn't walking when I found her. She was nearly hidden from view, sitting beside the stream that flowed through the property, seated on a clump of weeds in a skirt.

"Rebecca?"

"Yes, Catherine." She did not turn to face me, which was odd, and she sounded upset.

I walked around to face her. She had her head lowered, but I could see she was crying. Rebecca was so strong. I could not imagine what could make this tough woman go off and cry by herself.

"One of your technicians told me you just got back from the dentist."

"I lied. I was seeing a doctor. A specialist. I did not want to crank up the company rumor mill. For a little while, Catherine, for a very little while, I was carrying a pair of your siblings."

"But Mason's sterile."

"No. That hasn't been true for a while. Just as he hasn't required blood transfusions with the same frequency as he did initially or just a few years ago, he isn't sterile anymore, either. As late as five or six years ago, my presence in his quarters would have killed him, but no more. He'll never be 'normal', he'll always be physically frail and immunologically vulnerable, but he is considerably more whole than anyone could have imagined in 1991."

"What happened?" Even as I said it, I realized how graceless and cold it might have sounded.

"My doctor doesn't know. I didn't even find out what they were, which somehow makes it worse."

"Does Mason know?"

She shook her head. "I was going to tell him when I knew what they were. Now, I don't think I should tell him anything. He's lost enough. But, that's wishful thinking, isn't it? He'll know something isn't right."

"Yeah."

"The trouble is, this is not the first time. When Ashlocke and Harrison took over this place and put Mason into stasis, I was pregnant and didn't have any idea. I had not considered the possibility because I did not think it was possible. Ashlocke crawled into my head, and he knew. He was a cruel, insane creature. He mocked me, and then did something to make me lose my son, my Greylet. Then he told Mason what he was doing."

Greylet?

Creature? Had she forgotten what I was? Did she think I was a creature?

"Why did you call him creature?"

"Because he was crazy and cruel and didn't think of himself as human. Breedlove should have put him down the way he did his insect/human chimaeras. Ashlocke was nothing like you or Emma or Jesse, Catherine. You must not believe you share any kinship with him."

She had answered all of my questions.

"I'm so sorry, Rebecca. If I could make it even a little better, I would."

"I know. Sometimes, I curse myself for not having the strength to keep my distance from people. I used to go for years without ever crying, without ever hurting like this."

"Would you ever want to live that way again?"

"Sometimes. Now. I never agreed to save everyone but myself, and that's exactly what's been going on."

"But we love you, Rebecca. You've been so kind to me and taught me so much."

"I have no desire to hurt you or anyone, Catherine, but when you've been damaged as much as I have, you will never be quite right again. I want my own pain to stop. That might mean going to work someplace where nobody knows me, and limiting my universe to my job and my toys."

"That sounds crazy."

"Yes. But only a woman who was at least a little crazy would have discerned the human being your father kept so well hidden for so long."

"Aren't you afraid of being alone? Most people seem that way."

"No. I've been alone nearly all of my life. That is my normal state."

"But you were married before."

"I was never more alone than when I was with Jeffrey. Recent years have been the aberration. There are worse things than being alone, Catherine."

"I think you're just really depressed because of some really bad news. I don't think you believe half of what you're saying."

"Certainly, I don't want to believe."

Mason's telescope on the rooftop was one of the better-kept secrets of Genomex. He had few expenses, so when he bought this system, he acquired a very good one. The Genomex location was blessed with relatively clean air and frequent nights of "good seeing". I hated to admit it to him, but previously I paid little attention to the sky beyond noting that things rose in the east and set in the west.

Mason taught me the names of all the first-magnitude stars and the readily identifiable northern hemisphere constellations. He showed me the phases of Venus, the major moons of Jupiter, and Mars, which intrigued him –and Rebecca-- most of all.

Sometimes Rebecca was with us, sometimes not. One night the three of us were on the roof watching a meteor shower during a fortuitously moonless night. I was astonished to learn she knew everything Mason had been teaching me.

"Where did you learn all of this?"

"I taught myself when I was a kid. I've always been interested in this kind of thing."

"It's pretty to look at, but what use is it?"

"Uses? Plenty. You can find your way by the stars. They give you perspective on our place in the universe, which is small."

"She's right," Mason said, and laughed.

"And where did you learn this stuff?"

"I'm a self-taught kid, too."

"I'll have to show you some papers on terraforming Mars. There are people giving serious thought to the subject."

I couldn't see her face in the dark, but I could tell from her voice she was serious about terraforming Mars. She was a member of something called The Mars Society.

I had never known adults who delighted in this kind of thing.

I had taken a nap earlier, anticipating the late hours, but I was still exhausted, and ready to sleep for what remained of the night.

Mason heard it first.

"Gas turbine engines. Not moving. Hovering."

"Adam?" Rebecca asked.

"I don't have any friends with Harriers," he replied.

Even in stealth mode, the heat of the engine exhaust caused visual changes. "There," Rebecca said, pointing out distorted starlight.

"Yes. I hope he has enough sense to put that thing down on a section of roof capable of bearing the weight."

"Details, details, details. When has the Prince of Genomex ever sweated details? If the exhaust melts the asphalt on the roof, he might just find his Flying Sow glued to the surface when he tries to leave."

"Flying Sow?" I asked.

"It does look like one—when you can see it," Mason answered. "I wonder what Adam thinks he's doing?"

"He's re-stocking," I said. "Anything he'd need is already here."

"That sounds Adamesque. I wonder if he's been brazen enough to return to Sanctuary?"

The Flying Sow touched down 75 meters away.

"Well, enough of this," Mason said. As always, he was armed, and as I knew now, anytime he or Rebecca removed their automatics from their holsters anywhere other than the GSA range, an alarm was triggered, summoning GSA to their location.

We were standing in deep shadow, but Mason directed us to stand behind one of the air intakes. We could defend ourselves, but we did not know how large of a group Adam had brought. The GSA was heavily armed, ready for anything.

I could hear Adam. In my head. Reflexively, I put my hands over my ears, as if that would help.

"Adam. He's in my head. Again." I was whispering.

"Devil."

You're awake awfully late, Catherine. Just what kind of parent is Mason, anyway?

What do you want, Adam?

I just thought I'd say hello since I'm back in town. I thought I'd ask how you're doing with your new 'family'.

We're fine.

The night was quiet. I could hear Adam and Brennan walking on the gravel-covered rooftop, making no attempt to move quietly, searching for the stairwell that would bring them closest to the labs, which of course brought them towards us.

Fine, huh? Is Mason attempting to civilize you?

Well, he's not using me to steal supplies for him.

Adam laughed. I could hear his sarcastic laughter floating through the ether, in my head, and echoing over the rooftop.

"What's so funny, Adam?" I heard Brennan ask.

"The next time we do this, we're going to park closer."

Next time?

Funny you should mention supplies, Catherine.

And why is that, Adam?

Brennan doesn't know it, but he's showing signs of degeneration. I need some specialized materials to help him.

Too bad Brennan was never mainstreamed. The mutants who have come out of hiding can get treatment at the hospital Genomex operates. I'll bet they've developed treatments you've never thought of, Adam. One man cannot think of everything.

Mainstream. Yeah.

It's genuine. I've talked to a lot of these people.

It has to be a trick.

Just because you say so? I haven't seen any proof of your claims. In science, you are supposed to offer solid proofs, aren't you?

You've been talking to that damn Rebecca.

She's been tutoring me in math and chemistry.

Math and chemistry? What would Danielle think of her lovely daughter studying such subjects and straining her brain?

Adam, why does it take people so long to realize what a miserable man you are? I know my mother wasn't perfect. It may surprise you to learn that Rebecca thinks I'm good at math; I just haven't been taught well in the past.

Rebecca is such a loser. Can't you see that?

Why? Because she rejected you? Because she's helping me develop abilities I didn't think I had? Because she sleeps with Mason?

Mostly the latter.

Well, she has taste and standards.

All of this exchanged occurred faster than speech, as fast as thought. Armed GSA paramilitary guards emerged from two stairwells simultaneously. Adam and Brennan ran back through the darkness.

Gotta go, kid

What's happening?

I had dropped by your home for a personal visit, but Mason has become even more wary. I can't believe he anticipated me, but he has. We'll just have to talk later.

Let him believe Mason anticipated a rooftop invasion.

I had developed a headache from the exchange with Adam. Mason's men couldn't bring down The Flying Sow with bullets, but they could cause damage Adam would have difficulty repairing properly. I held my arms about my head in the darkness. Only Rebecca was with me; Mason was with his guards. I heard her secure her automatic.

"Catherine?" Rebecca asked.

"Adam…was back in my head, which now hurts."

I couldn't see her face so I knew she couldn't see mine.

"Can it wait until Emma gets here in a few hours, or shall I call her?"

"Let me try aspirin first. I'm scared, Rebecca."

"So am I. I don't care for the way Adam just drops in when he feels like it."

"He came to pilfer lab supplies. He told me."

"The roof will need to be watched."

"He was very insulting. I don't understand how anyone likes him."

"Adam is a charmer. People tend to cut charmers an outrageous amount of slack."

I hugged Rebecca. "He said nasty things about you, too."

"It's been a long time since I gave much thought to what Adam thought of me."

"I know, but his sarcasm still surprises me."

Mason returned to us. "We might have put some holes in the Sow."

"Preferably through the control cables and fuel tanks. He's back in Catherine's head. He told her he was here to steal supplies."

"He's desperate."

"Or foolish."

"Most likely both. It's one thing to come after me, but another to tamper with my kindred."

"If he's gotten back inside Sanctuary, there isn't much to be done about it."

"No, but if that's true, he'll soon discover Sanctuary isn't the same place he abandoned."

Emma and Jesse lived in the neighborhood, so it was an easy matter for me to walk to their house and be inculcated into the deeper mysteries of geekiness.

I was comfortable using computers, but they were mostly mysterious black boxes to me. Jesse patiently changed all of that. In short order, Jesse had me assembling computers from individual components to get past the magic black box mentality. I never looked back from there.

I spent a lot of time with Emma as well. The airy-fairy aspects of her personality were much muted, but she grew all kinds of plants in their sunny yard, especially herbs.

She was becoming an accomplished cook, a vanishing art, which she shared and taught me, along with how to grow things.

I walked home to Genomex without any fear, so I was stunned when someone called out my name from behind. By the time I had turned about completely, I had recognized the voice as Brennan's.

I was annoyed. By running me down in such fashion, it was certain Adam or Brennan or both of them had been watching me with some care and I did not like that.

"What do you want, Brennan? The loose change in my pockets?"

He smiled a foolish grin which I suppose was intended to be so charming and disarming that I would 1) hand over my change and 2) do or tell Brennan whatever he had come for.

"Adam wants to talk to you."

"I don't want to talk to him. I'm done with Adam. If you had any sense, you would be, too."

"That's cold."

He caught up with me. I activated a pager-like device, summoning GSA from Genomex and Jesse and Emma from their house. I wasn't taking any chances with Adam or Brennan, not after their attempt to invade Genomex a few days before.

"What could Adam possibly want from me?"

"He wants you to come back and live with us."

"Adam wants my pocket change, too? Lean times on board the Flying Sow?"

"Flying Sow? That's cruel."

"Nowhere near as cruel as Adam's little video message to my father announcing my paternity, or any number of things Adam has done. I don't like Adam, Brennan. I don't care for the way he lies to people and manipulates them. And I really don't like what he did to my father in 1991."

"Eckhart's gotten to you." Brennan looked very grave, as if he had made a comment of rare and striking insight. I knew he was merely parroting Adam.

"Go finish the comment. Say something about how Eckhart's suborned me, just the way Adam would say."

"Well, isn't that exactly what's been done to you? You hated Eckhart just like we did, and now, you don't"

"Grow up, Brennan. Mason's been good to me, and a lot of other people. He treats me as his daughter. If Adam's intention was to embarrass Mason by dumping wrong-side-of-the-blanket Catherine into his life, it has not worked. Open your eyes. Living here has been a positive thing for me. I'm not going to throw that away because Adam's running out of mutants upon which to build his silly empire."

I stopped, turned, and looked Brennan in the eye. "Tell your keeper I want to be left alone. I'm done playing with you losers."

"Not good enough." Brennan lunged for me. They were probably planning to grab me to coerce Mason into doing something dreadful.

Unfortunately, my governor would not be removed until 1 November.

I tossed the contents of my bottled water onto Brennan, which would affect his ability to throw lightning for a little while. I turned and ran back towards Emma and Jesse's house. By running back the way I had come, I was hoping I would avoid Adam, whom I was hoping was closer to Genomex, waiting to seize me if Brennan failed.

The water would distract Brennan for only a few moments, and then he'd be after me taking one stride to two of mine. I could not outrun him for long. So, I started screaming at all the people outside in their yards, busy raking leaves, telling them to call the police.

I could hear Brennan closing in, and when I knew I couldn't outrun him any farther, I ran into the front yard with a couple collecting leaves from a huge sugar maple. I dropped down to the grass, and clasped my arms around a sapling. If Brennan was going to carry me off, he was going to have to work hard, and I knew Brennan was lazier than ever.

"Call the police! This creep is trying to grab me!"

Brennan hesitate for a moment before setting foot on their property, then he smiled his Winning Smile at the woman. "My sister hasn't been taking her meds."

"Adam must have made that up for you. You're nowhere near clever enough to think of something like that."

"I think we'll let the police sort this out," the woman said dryly. Brennan's winning smile did not work miracles when he looked as scruffy and disreputable as he did at present. He looked like what he was, a street thug. She pulled a cordless phone out of a basket of gardening tools and began punching numbers.

"Thank you."

"There's no need for police, Catherine. I really need to get you home. Shouldn't make such a fool of yourself."

Jesse came driving down one end of the street, and every black SUV leased by the GSA came flying down the other. But Brennan was facing away from the street, and saw neither approach. He was focused only upon me.

Jesse stepped out of his car, and was recognized by the GSA in the first car. Jesse pointed to Brennan. Two of the biggest GSA I'd ever seen ran out of the third car, and grabbed each of Brennan's arms.

"Anybody have an implanter with them?" Jesse asked.

"Traitor," Brennan sneered.

Jesse ignored him.

By now I was sitting up in the grass. "Brennan, you are such a creep. And you are so stupid to do as Adam says. He's been using you all along."

The agents dragged him back to the first SUV, mostly so the civilians would not get a good look at the implanting. My father drove up just as the deed was done, and moments before the first of a fleet of patrol cars screamed up the street.

"Catherine, did he harm you?"

"He tried. I think Adam's around here somewhere, too."

Mason reached down with his right hand to help me stand.

"Thanks. These good people called the police."

Mason turned to them. "Thank you very much."

The woman smiled. "I've seen the girl walking in the neighborhood several times. That guy who went after her doesn't belong around here and he certainly isn't her brother."

"No, indeed. He has an extensive criminal record." Mason turned to one of the Gs agents. "Start looking for Adam. Quickly. Search for the heat signature of the Flying Sow. If he isn't on board, he has to return to it in order to escape."

Mason and his lieutenants showed the police their identification, and presented them with Brennan. "This is Brennan Mulwray, street thug and out of control criminal mutant. He tried to kidnap my daughter. Dozens of citizens on this street saw her trying to get away from him. I've dealt with Mulwray in the past. I think you'll find a close look at Mr Mulwray's record rewarding."

One of the officers took a good look at Brennan. "You look an awful lot like the Nutty Bar Bandit who's been hitting Ed's Buy and Fly convenience store near Genomex."

"Mr Mulwray is infamous for his fondness for Nutty Bars," Mason said, making eye contact with Brennan's dark, angry, stupid eyes.

A quick search of Brennan's pockets revealed a quantity of Little Debbie Nutty Bars.

"Well, Nutty Bars are just the latest of his thefts. Brennan Mulwray has been a one-man crime wave most of his life. You may also want to check out his collection of antique Camaros. I suspect most of them are hot. Jesse, could you give the officer general directions to where we think those Camaros now are?"

'Yes. Gladly."

Brennan shot Jesse a nasty look in response to what he must have considered the ultimate betrayal. The aging Camaro fleet would be dispersed and returned to their legal owners, or in many cases, sold for scrap.

Did Brennan expect Jesse to do otherwise? I had heard the stories from Emma and Jesse how Brennan's joining Mutant X had reduced Jesse to taken-for-granted technogeek, with Adam favoring Brennan as a leader despite his tendency to ignore instructions and the overall goal.

Jesse was good enough to keep the Flying Sow safely airborne, but not good enough for Adam to take seriously. Brennan should not have been shocked by Jesse's willingness to direct police to the Camaro herd. Besides, by the time Brennan was done with trials in various jurisdictions and serving time for robbery and theft, those Camaros would have been largely reduced to rust dust and trees would be growing up through the rotten floors.

I liked that last mental image a lot. I turned back to Brennan, whose face revealed deepening rage. I was thankful for Adam's inventions of subdermal governors.

Mason and I went to the district station to formally press charges.

I was uncomfortable at first, remembering my last contact with police, but the experience soon became enjoyable as Brennan's past life was revealed.

Two days before Thanksgiving, I was intently reading Mordecai Roshwald's Level Seven, a classic of the Cold War, when I was distracted by a buzzing in my head.

Oh, no.

Unfortunately, the buzzing quickly ceased and Adam opened a clear channel into my mind.

Catherine.

Lonely now without even Brennan to talk to?

That's cold, Catherine. Is this how you treat all of your old friends?

Adam, you don't have any idea what friendship means. What would my mother think of your sending a thug to grab me off a residential street?

I was just trying to bring you home, Catherine. Your mother would approve, I'm certain.

Nonsence. You abandoned me to the GSA and made sure Mason knew about me. What you did not anticipate was the way he accepted me and made me part of his family.

That did surprise me.

Adam, just leave me alone. I'm getting ready for Thanksgiving.

How homey.

Yes. We're celebrating as a family.

Adam laughed.

What's so funny?

Mason putting a family together at this late hour in his life.

Emotionally, it's a lot healthier than going about trying to scare people into leaving their homes, jobs, pets, and everything else, because of a threat you imagine and cannot begin to prove.

It'll happen.

Oh, yeah. Mason hates all mutants, even the one with his name. Yes, Adam, I'm legally Catherine Eckhart now. And he's going to round us all up and do unspeakable things to us, including me. I believe that.

It's all going to happen. Believe me. Come with me and help me rebuild Mutant X before the catastrophe begins.

NO, Adam.

Each time Adam invaded me, Emma closed down the open links, leaving only the weakest paths open to him. He had successively less control over me heart and breathing, and hence, less coercive power. I don't think he knew this.

After Adam left me this time, I was able to write down what he said, freely and completely. Adam's control was nearly gone.

I took the written account to Mason. "I cannot say this out loud, but I could write it down for you."

"How did he sound, Catherine?"

"Desperate. I'm not sure he's thinking clearly."

"I'd like you to stay within these walls for a few days, Catherine."

"I was looking forward to greeting Grey and the girls at the airport."

"I understand. But Adam is behaving badly, he has no allies left to him, and I want to make the most of that inclination. It's just for a few days."

"Makes sense. Could you ask Emma to please come and snip these fresh connections?"

When Thanksgiving came, it was more of a reunion that anything else. Meeting my brother and sisters dispelled the tension of the day, and I was able to enjoy it rather than worry over it.

Nearly everyone I wanted to see was able to come, even Shalimar. Samihah Shah brought her four boys.

How Rebecca persuaded Mason to wear something other than black I do not know, but she got him to wear a dark blue turtleneck sweater for the day. She was quite proud of this, pointing it out to everyone.

"Mason, is that really yours, or did you borrow that sweater from your son?" Jesse was being playful.

"It's really mine."

"I think this is a first," Emma said.

"Just hope it's not the last. Next year, he'll have to be even more daring." Rebecca smiled.

We had all seated ourselves around the three of the long tables arranged in a horseshoe when the main door opened, and in walked Adam. Almost everyone present knew who he was, except Samihah's boys, Deirdre, and Michelle. Grey recognized him; I could see that in his face.

Adam looked surprised, and then I realized why. He had expected to find the three of us, not this gathering, and certainly not Emma, Jesse, and Shalimar.

Mason sat very still, eyes not leaving Adam as he approached.

Shalimar set a drumstick back onto her plate. One should never disturb kitty while she is eating, and so it was with Shalimar. She flashed her feral eyes at Adam. Shalimar remained angry over the accumulated lies Adam told her over a period of more than ten years. She was ready to launch herself at him over the tabletop.

Emma and Jesse looked none too pleased, either. Emma placed her right hand atop Shalimar's left, indicating restraint.

"Adam, to what do we owe this honor? Come to cause trouble, or just offer holiday well-wishes?"

Adam snickered. "This looks so Norman Rockwell, Mason. I never would have imagined you part of something like this."

"Really? My memories of the more distant past include you seated at my holiday table several times, since you had nowhere else to go. You still don't, do you?"

Adam didn't know quite what to say to that, since it was wholly true. Adam generally could be stopped cold by the truth, if only for a short while.

"I remember you at Christmas dinner a long time ago, Adam, when we still lived on Hollyhock Drive."

Adam did not recognize Grey immediately, but he figured things out quickly enough.

"Grey Eckhart."

"I told you he wasn't a little boy anymore. It's later than you believe."

"Quite an odd little family you've cobbled together, Mason."

"Are you jealous, Adam? Your cult family is gone. Even your former follower Brennan Mulwray is enjoying a jailhouse version of the traditional feast. Behave yourself, pull up a chair and we'll set another place. Or leave my kith and kin in peace. Now."

"You're inviting me to dinner?"

"I'm very civilized."

"I think I'll decline."

"Well, then, it's one thing to invade Genomex and aggravate me, but another to show up here and annoy my friends and family. Time for you to exit, Adam."

Adam turned to me. "Time to go, Catherine." He smiled. He was convinced he was in control and was going to get his way.

I could hear him audibly, and inside of my head, persuasion I was finding impossible to ignore. I had to summon all the will in me to stay in my chair. I turned to Emma.

"I know what you're doing, Adam, and I won't allow it." Emma sounded resolute.

"As much as anyone, you should know Emma is not bluffing," Mason said calmly.

"Not only can I stop you, Adam, but at this close range, I now know how to permanently disable the links you've affixed to Catherine. You won't be bothering her again."

"Miserable traitor."

Mason answered. "No, Adam. You're the traitor. You've betrayed your friends, your talents, and humanity. But now, that's all over. I think you are going to regret not partaking a final civilized meal in pleasant company."

Adam knew then he'd made a serious mistake. He turned and walked briskly for the door, but he must have known he's never leave the building.

Mason watched him leave until he passed back through the doors.

"How did you convince so many GSA to work Thanksgiving?" Rebecca asked.

"Well, I only asked the single ones."

"Some of those guys are married?" I asked.

"To women?" Rebecca asked.

"Of course. Simply because a fellow has a grim, humorless work persona does not mean he lacks the potential of being someone else in his personal life. You two should know all about that."

"I always imagined you maintained dormitories or boarding houses for those guys."

"Well, I may, but all of the guys who worked today are getting the same feast I had catered here, as soon as they complete locking up Adam three levels down. Doesn't that have a comforting sound to it? Locking up Adam. And tomorrow, I have the pleasure of having him charged.

"For creating mutants unethically?"

"Embezzlement. Adam made a fortune in the stock market in the 1990s, but he started with money stolen from Genomex. Jesse's spent months unraveling the old encrypted Genomex records." Mason raised his wine glass to Jesse. "Now the legal staff can put them to good use. I'm going to have a good dinner."

"Would you really have allowed Adam to sit down at table with us?" Rebecca asked.

Mason smirked. "Androids don't eat."