Marina watched as her friends' unconscious forms were carried out of the office. She wanted to follow and see where they were being taken, but it was too dangerous. She couldn't afford to be caught. She was the only one who knew what had happened here, and thus she was Annie and Gary's only hope of rescue. If she too was captured, there might never be any rescue. She had to wait for her moment to escape from this house, and get back to the school as fast as she could. She couldn't drive the car – she had no idea how to – but if she could get to the coast, she'd swim most of the way.

She crouched in the darkness and watched the three men leaving the office. One was the admiral; his picture had been amongst the stuff on Fliss' computer. The second looked military. She could tell little about the third. He looked old, but at the same time he didn't, almost as if…she couldn't think of any way to describe it in words. He walked with poise and it was obvious the other two deferred to him. This worried Marina. As far as she knew, Admiral McKenzie was the one responsible for her family's death. He was the one to blame. He was the great evil who had taken her life and torn it up and destroyed it and left her an empty shell who would be agonised for ever and ever. What she was seeing here seemed to suggest otherwise. Who was this man, that even McKenzie obeyed him? Marina's curiosity got the better of her, and cautiously she began to follow them.

The three men had stopped up ahead and were discussing something. This was too good an opportunity to miss. Keeping in the shadows, hoping her black uniform would conceal her, Marina pulled out the tiny digital camera which Annie had slipped to her just before being knocked out by – well, Marina had no idea what it was that had affected her friends so badly. Focussing on the three men, she took two photographs. If she took these back to the school, maybe they could identify the third man from the pictures. Maybe the others would know who he was.

There was water flowing in the plumbing pipes all around the house. Marina could feel it just inside the wall she was crouched beside. It would only have taken a flick of her wrist and a surge of her water power to send a flood towards the admiral who had murdered her family. The temptation was overwhelming, but she managed to keep it subdued. Killing the man would solve nothing. It was more important to discover exactly why he'd done it. Maybe after this mystery was solved, she could take him out into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a thousand miles from any land, and leave him to try and stay afloat, eventually use up his strength, sink beneath the surface, and die an agonising death by drowning. Just as her family had. Except the admiral would know what was coming. Her family hadn't. They had had no warning whatsoever, no way to prepare themselves for their imminent death. So would it be with him. Marina made up her mind. She would kill him. She didn't care whether it made her a murderess. All she could think of, all she could see, were the smiling faces of Mom and Dad and Helena and Jason and Uncle Liam and Aunt Iris and – and all of them who had died. They would never smile again.

Neither would McKenzie. Marina stood. Fate obviously agreed with her decision, as the military-looking man and the ageless man who was in charge were moving away from the admiral and heading elsewhere. McKenzie was speaking into some kind of walkie-talkie device. She couldn't make out what he was saying. It didn't really matter. The walls burst open as water pipes exploded on both sides of the corridor, showering him from both sides, knocking him off his feet and on to his back. In shock, he tried to stand, but a jet of water struck him in the face, flinging him into the wall. A tidal wave came sweeping down the corridor, engulfing him, and he fought to keep his head above water. Through the maelstrom of flood and spray strode Marina, with her eyes narrowed, her fists clenched and slaughter on her mind.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

Marina's stammer was suddenly gone as she yelled, "You destroyed my life and everyone I ever loved!"

His eyes widened, "Oh, my – you must be…Forrester…"

"I'm the last one! I'm the only one you couldn't kill!" she shrieked"Have you any idea what it feels like to see your entire family die in front of your eyes! Well? Do you!"

She clenched her hands, ready to burn him alive in a jet of steam. In the corner of her eye Marina saw movement, and she reacted just in time to avoid a thick metal spike as it embedded itself in the wall just where her head had been a second ago. She looked in the direction it had come from. There stood the man who looked old but didn't, the one who was clearly in charge around here. With a flick of his wrist, he sent another metal spike zipping through the air towards Marina's head. Reacting instinctively, she summoned a wall of water in front of her, which turned to ice, the spike impacting into that instead. Admiral McKenzie pulled a gun from inside his pocket and aimed at Aqua's heart, but she kicked it out of his hand and drove her fist into his jaw as Wolverine had taught her.

The sound of footsteps came from all directions now, men with guns arriving on the scene as if by magic, aiming their guns at Marina. The ageless man with the metal spikes smirked, and Marina knew she could stay here no longer. Flinging a flood of water at the men nearest her, she darted over their sprawling bodies and disappeared into the interior of the house. Bullets smacked into the wall as she hurried around the corner, heading for whatever exit she might find. She heard the sound of more guards approaching, and thought fast: how am I going to get out of here?

There's no way out, except to kill these men.

Wait. The water supply. That's how I was going to get out.

Yes! Of course.

She suddenly remembered one of the other pieces of equipment she was carrying. From her belt, Aqua grabbed a small flash grenade. Pulling the pin, she rolled it down the corridor towards the sound of the rapidly approaching men. Averting her eyes, she heard the men gasp at the intense bright light that dazzled them as the flash went off. Hurrying forward, past the shocked and temporarily blinded guards, she pushed out her senses, trying to track the water flowing in the pipes, trying to determine where its source was. Guided by her aquatic sense and her instincts, she headed deeper into the building. She heard voices and men running, but they were heading in another direction. They must have assumed she would run straight to the front door. She had shaken them off, for a few minutes at least.

Part of her guilt was gone now. There was no way she could have rescued Annie and Gary via the water pipes she was planning to use as an escape route. They would have drowned. Now she didn't feel quite so bad about leaving them behind. There was no other way. But there was no way she was going to leave them to whatever fate these men had planned for them. She would have to come back with the others and attempt a rescue. Marina knew it would be quite easy to rescue them right now simply by flooding the house and using her water powers to take full control of the place. The only problem was that all of the other people here would drown. Should she abandon her dislike of killing, to save her best friend and her lover? Were there times when certain beliefs, however noble, had to be sacrificed for the greater good? Could she make an exception just this once?

No. That was a dangerous path to go down. Doing something like that once would only make it all too easy to do it again, and then again, and again…killing after killing, all in the name of "a greater good". Eventually she would have forgotten that it was wrong to kill, and it would simply have become part of life. If I have a principle, I should stick to it, she told herself, if I abandon it even once, I've abandoned it forever. Some rules could not be broken. If she believed in something as strongly as she believed in the preservation of life, she could never break it. She knew Gary had killed people in the past – in self defence, or so he claimed – but Marina would never allow herself to take anyone's life. She knew all too well what it felt like to lose somebody you loved. She would not inflict that on anybody else. Already she regretted her rash decision earlier to kill Admiral McKenzie. In a way, she was glad the man with the metal spikes had stopped her.

She was getting closer to the main water source now, and she could hear voices. For a moment she panicked, but the voices were not shouting orders or commands to hunt for her; they were calm, level and clearly the sounds of normal conversation. She'd have to find the water supply without these people – whoever they were – discovering she was here. The security guards had all run off towards the front entrance and were hopefully searching for her in the garden outside. Marina moved onwards. She could hear the voices better now; they had to be just around the corner from where she was standing. Staying in the shadows, she risked a glance around the corner.

A group of people – eight or nine – stood together at a doorway, some talking amongst themselves, some glancing at watches, clearly waiting for someone or something. Marina frowned slightly. Her mental problems and troubled mind often made it difficult for her to remember things, but she was sure she recognised one or two of these people. She'd seen them before somewhere – or had she? Was it just a resemblance? Where had she seen them? On the TV, perhaps? She couldn't remember straight away, so she pulled the digital camera from her pocket and took a couple of quick snapshots of the group. Good. None of them had noticed. And she could sense the exact location of the cistern now; it was in the other direction, away from the group. She had found her way out. Now her only hope was to head back to the school, tell the others what had happened, and do whatever she could to help rescue Annie and Gary.

Night was falling over Edinburgh as the two X-Men made their way to the address they'd been given.

"Where are we?" asked Shock, looking around in the growing darkness.

"We're in the dockyards by the river," said Shapeshifter. "We should get there soon. I think this address is one of the warehouses. It must be owned by the man my cousin mentioned."

"Horne," Fliss said, remembering the name. "Who is that? Do you know him?"

"Not personally, no. He's been in the news plenty of times. He's one of the biggest gangsters in Edinburgh. He makes my cousin look like a decent, law-abiding citizen."

"Your cousin doesn't know that you – I mean, about your – "

"About my mutant powers? No, he doesn't. I never told my family. A few of my friends knew, but I lost touch with them when I left here."

"Was it hard growing up in – well, in places like that?" she asked. "I mean, my family were never exactly rich, but on the other hand we never exactly wanted for anything either."

Chris shrugged, "When you're a child, you don't really think about things like that. Your world is the only one that exists. You assume that everybody's existence is more or less the same as your own. It isn't until you get older that you realise how different some people's lives can be."

"I've often wondered – why did you never turn into a criminal like your cousin?"

"I dunno. I'm smarter, I suppose. I realise there's more to life than just making money any way you can."

Fliss got her mind back on the task in hand, "What exactly are we looking for in Horne's warehouse?"

"I'm not sure. Any evidence we can find that links him with terrorists. We're assuming that, as before, the terrorist attack, if there is one, will be carried out by an independent militant group, supposedly acting on their own. It seems clear though that somebody is behind the scenes orchestrating these attacks. We have to try and find any evidence that leads to them."

"I don't see what we can hope to find," she said. "Whoever's behind the scenes won't have made any direct contact with Horne. They'll have used the terrorists as middle-men."

"Yeah, I know. I'm hoping we can find something that leads us to the terrorists. If we can get to them before they launch the attack, we can try and find out who's hiring them."

The lightning woman sighed, "I wish we had some idea of what was going on. Who's ordering these attacks? What are they trying to accomplish? Why are they doing the same thing now they did three years ago?"

"Once we find out who they are, the rest should fall into place quickly enough," Chris said. "Hang on, I think this is the place."

They stopped in front a dark shape that loomed up out of the darkness. Mist was rolling in from the ocean and visibility was reduced even further. The two mutants walked along until they found the main entrance to the warehouse. It was a large set of cargo bay doors, high and wide enough for a lorry to drive through. Next to this was a smaller, person-sized door. Fliss tried it, but it was locked. She was rolling up her sleeve and preparing to use a lightning bolt to blast the door open, but Chris restrained her, "I think it would be best if we don't leave any evidence we were here. We don't want these people to know we're on to them. Wait here."

He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and called on his power. Fliss watched, as she had done many times, Shapeshifter's body melting and liquefying into a puddle at her feet. Once Chris was fully in liquid form, the puddle began to drift and gurgle across the ground, slipping silently through the crack at the bottom of the doorframe, between the door and the ground. A couple of minutes later, Felicity heard the sound of bolts being drawn back and locks turned, then the door opened from within. Chris welcomed her into the warehouse with a sarcastic bow and sweep of his hand. She stepped inside, and closed the door behind her.

The interior was pitch dark, but Chris managed to locate a lightswitch, and flicked it on. The warehouse was bathed with light from a series of overhead strips, and they both waited for their eyes to adjust to the brightness before looking around. The main body of the warehouse was filled with crates and boxes of various shapes and sizes: some packed together in bulk and waiting to be transported; some stacked against the wall; some seemingly randomly distributed across the floor-space. An old, rusty-looking forklift truck sat just inside the entrance on their left.

"I always wanted to drive one of those," Chris said.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Actually, what I really wanted to drive was a tank, but I managed that when I was 13. My cousin – my other cousin – and I broke into an army training camp."

"I don't think I want to know," Fliss said, shaking her head. "Anyway, where do we start looking?"

"There'll be an office. Yeah, I think that's it over there. That's where the records and logs will be kept."

"You think he'll have logged the sale of bombs to terrorists?"

"Not on a standard invoice, but encrypted on computer, maybe. Let's take a look."

They crossed the warehouse floor until reaching a small door set in the corner. This one was also locked, but Chris found the key on a ring lying on a table nearby. He unlocked the door and they entered. Chris immediately headed for the computer sitting on the desk inside, while Fliss faced a pair of filing cabinets that seemed to contain paper records.

"I suppose it's probably a waste of time looking in here," she said, pulling the first drawer open.

"Perhaps not. If he has logged the sale of the bombs, he'll have disguised it as something else. Try to find out if he's made any significant income in the last few days."

"Here goes," she announced, as she pulled out the first sheaf of documents.

He booted up the computer and was faced with the login screen. Clearly, he'd have to hack his way inside to find the information they wanted. The two of them worked in silence for a few minutes, until she heard Chris give a short laugh, "Gosh, who installed the security on this computer? A monkey?"

Hearing his fingers tapping away rapidly on the keyboard, Fliss hoped he was having more success than she was. If there was some logical order to the way her pile of documents was arranged, it was beyond her understanding. Horne's filing system seemed to be along the lines of "let's stuff this file in here and hope I never need it". This was going to take her a while. She began sorting out the documents between those that were definitely no use, and those that might yield something on further scrutiny.

"Ah, I think I'm in," Chris said suddenly. "I think I've found what we're looking for."

"Good."

Then his voice sounded in surprise, "What the – "

"What?"

"This can't be happening. Half the files I just looked at are gone."

"What are you talking about?"

"What – another bunch just disappeared as well! Someone's deleting files from this computer!"

"Huh? You're the only one using it!"

"Someone's obviously connected to it over the Web, and they're destroying the files!"

"Well, stop them!"

"I can't! Wait, the phone line! We have to pull the phone line!"

"Where is it?"

"It'll be – oh well, it doesn't matter now. The entire hard disk has been erased. Whoever did this wasn't messing about."

"But who – ?"

"Whoever's behind this whole mess, of course. They must have realised there was evidence against them on Horne's computer. My accessing the file must have triggered some kind of alarm. They realised somebody was on to them, and they erased the files before I could find out anything."

"Great. So what do we do now?"

Chris had finally located the phone line, and he pulled it out of the socket by the wall. Then he looked at her and said, "Well, we can take the computer back with us. It might be possible to extract some data from the hard disk even after it's been deleted."

"How is that possible?"

"Because most systems won't actually destroy data when you delete it. They simply take the disk space occupied by the data and mark it as 'free space', so it can be written over. The actual data will remain until it's written over by something else. I can try to extract it."

"We can take these files back too," she said, indicating the pile of documents she was working on. "It doesn't matter if we leave a mess here now. They already know we were here."

"Yeah. Gather them up and let's go."

"Give me a few minutes; I haven't even started on the second filing cabinet yet."

The second filing cabinet was different from the first. The first had three separate drawers that opened individually. The second appeared to have one single hinged door, presumably with shelving inside. Fliss pulled it open to begin looking through the contents. Chris had taken the computer on its side and was unscrewing one of the cover panels to get at the hard disk inside.

And then she screamed. Stepping backwards in horror, her hand over her mouth, Felicity stumbled over the computer chair and Chris caught her in his arms. She steadied herself, and got herself under control. He looked to see what had surprised her so much.

Within the second filing cabinet was the body of a man, his arms and legs bent at abnormal angles so he would fit inside. His eyes were open and staring sightlessly down at the floor. Overcoming her initial nerves, Fliss stepped forward to touch the man's skin, "Cold. But I don't think he's been dead very long. Couple of days at the most. Is it Horne?"

Chris nodded, "Yep. I guess this proves beyond any doubt that he's involved. They must have killed him to keep his mouth shut. Maybe he found out more than they wanted him to."

"I guess they'll go to any lengths to keep their secrets – whatever those might be. But I don't get it. Who are these people? Why'd they hide him here, in his office? Why not dump him a hundred miles out into the ocean? Why not bury him under a thousand tons of rock where nobody would ever find him?"

"Because – " Chris said slowly. " – oh shit. I think we're in trouble."

"Why?"

"The only reason to leave him here is because they don't care if anybody finds him. Because they've got a plan in mind to deal with anybody who does."

"You mean this is a trap?"

"Yeah. My accessing the file wasn't what triggered an alarm. It was probably our entering this office that tripped a motion switch or something. They've probably got people on the way here right now!"

Fliss stiffened slightly, "Hadn't we better go?"

"I'd say so. Grab as many files as you can. I've almost got the disk out."

Working quickly, he prised the panel away from the computer, and reached inside to unscrew and pull out the hard disk. Fliss seized the small pile of potentially useful documents she'd collected, and stuffed them under her jacket. They shut the filing cabinet door, concealing the corpse, feeling that in some way it was more respectful to cover him up. Then both of them hurried out of the office and back into the main body of the warehouse.

"Is there another way out?" Fliss asked. "The main entrance takes us right back out into the dockyards. If people are coming here…they'd spot us right away."

"The fog will hide us. Come on."

They ran across the floor to the small door that they had used to enter the building. Cautiously Chris pulled it open, flicking off the lightswitch to remain hidden in the doorway. He glanced outside, looked both ways. There didn't appear to be any welcoming parties. Perhaps nobody had got here yet. Perhaps there was no trap. Perhaps there was some other explanation for Horne's murder. A gang dispute maybe. But what about the deleted files on the computer? Random virus? No. There had to be more going on here than met the eye.

"Come on, let's go," he whispered.

Fliss followed him out of the doorway, keeping low in case anybody was searching for them, hurrying as fast as they could along the route that would take them to the city centre. From there they could make their way to the outskirts of the city where the jet was hidden.

"FREEZE!"

The shouted command split through the silence of the night like a bolt of lightning, and in an instant powerful searchlights were shining blinding light from all directions. Armed men, mere silhouettes against the lights, appeared from nowhere to surround the two mutants. Before Chris or Fliss had a chance to react, both felt a prickling sensation at the back of the neck, and both reached back to feel a tranquilliser dart protruding from their skin. It took Chris slightly longer to lose consciousness, but in less than a minute, both Shapeshifter and Shock lay unconscious on the ground.

The van at the side of the road was white, unmarked, and looked relatively innocuous. Scores of people had already passed it that morning without giving it a second glance. Perhaps it was the van of a tradesman who was doing work somewhere nearby. Or it could be a delivery van, or a van hired by somebody moving house. It wasn't an uncommon sight in a busy Edinburgh street just after mid-day. True, it was parked in an area where parking was forbidden, but nobody paid any attention to that. Parking spaces were murderously difficult to come by in the city centre, and nobody minded if the van driver had broken the rules.

At approximately half past twelve, the van exploded, vaporising twenty-five innocent passers-by and demolishing the foundations of two tenement blocks. Eleven more people were killed in the collapsing building. Although police and ambulance crews rushed to the scene, it was too late to save anybody from the latest terrorist strike to hit a major world city. And as the police interviewed witness, it became even clearer that this was a terrorist attack. The van must have been loaded with explosives, and then abandoned while the perpetrators made good their escape.

Mutants were instantly blamed in the press, and the normally quiet and liberal capital city turned almost instantly into a fuming, spitting cauldron of anti-mutant hatred. Attacks on known mutants began to increase tenfold, and vigilante groups prowled the streets, looking for anybody whose DNA was just that little bit different from the ordinary human genome.

Two hours later, the police announced they had captured the mutants responsible. Christopher Garcia, himself once a resident of Edinburgh, and the woman presumed to be his wife, as yet unidentified, were being held in top security custody. It was rumoured that special investigators would be coming over from America to help deal with the situation. As the newspapers pointed out, if these really were the mutants masterminding the terrorist operations, then the free world could sleep a little easier tonight.

Soon after that, reports began to come in from Toronto, where it seemed there had been a related incident. Two men, believed to be mutants, had been involved in a brief yet frantic battle with police forces near a major railway station. One of the mutants was armed with some kind of laser weapon, and the other with knives that sliced clean through every obstacle thrown in his path. Amazingly, no bystanders had been injured, though this was credited to the superb organisation and quick thinking of the Canadian police. The mutants had been neutralised and were being held in an undisclosed location. Clearly, the newspapers concluded, these creatures were far too dangerous and bloodthirsty to be allowed to roam free among innocent civilians.

In Sydney, Australian officials were being congratulated on the capture of Bobby and Marie Drake, described as two of the most dangerous mutant terrorists in the world. The Australian Prime Minister praised the dedication and bravery of the police forces involved, stating that they had saved untold numbers of lives from a potential terrorist attack. The newspapers heralded the couple's arrest as a major blow struck by the forces of freedom and justice, against the forces of violence and terrorism.

And in South Africa, two mutants – one described as "having the appearance of the devil himself" – had been arrested on suspicion of planning to attack a government institution. An unrelated report described the incredible weather phenomena that had been witnessed at the time of the incident. Perhaps the mutants had hoped the severe hurricanes and lightning storms would distract attention from their attack. The newspapers stated that the mutants had only one goal in mind: the slaughter of as many innocent South Africans as possible, with the added bonus of destroying an important government building to disrupt the peaceful running of the country.

All across the world, the public were assured that they were safer and more secure with the capture of these mutants. Hopefully now the terrorist attacks would stop, and the mutants would realise that their mindless hatred and desire to kill would not gain them any support or benefit in this world. They would be tracked down to the ends of the Earth if necessary and brought to justice. Those countries where mutant registration was not in effect, were urged to bring it into operation immediately, to protect their homes and their children from mutants who killed indiscriminately to further their own ends.