Mason, his accomplice who came out with him, and another accomplice driving the van were the only people in the vehicle. Brennan Mulwray was at their hideout. The van pulled into the driveway of a suburban neighborhood. Mason and his colleagues got out of the van, entered the house, and made their way to the basement. On the stairs, Mason heard a splash and a muffled groan.Mason ordered for the camera, television, and transceiver to be turned on to contact Sanctuary. Surely Mutant X will be waiting for him to offer some sort of explanation. All he had to do was tell another lie, and they were all set. Mutant X was much too trusting.
Shalimar stormed into Sanctuary to contact Mason so she could find out what the hell is going on. How dare they do that! she thought. They promised to return Brennan! Lexa and Jesse came out of the Helix and entered Sanctuary as Shalimar turned on the computer. "They better contact us!" she nearly shouted.
The familiar image of the five crimminals and their hostageflickered onto the screen. Jesse and Lexa were prepared to hold Shalimar back to prevent her from attacking the image. They had noticed how protective and territorial the feral had become over Brennan, and this situation was practically killing her.
"Why didn't you give us Brennan like you promised? We kept to our end of the deal." Shalimar demanded.
"We need to make sure this cloning stuff works." Mason replied. "Once we test it on Brennan, we will return him, if he survives that is. We'll be talking to you again when we've finished."
Shalimar seemed slightly flustered. "Wait!" she protested.
Lexa realized that Shalimar was trying to stall for time. She discretely started to trace the signal to see where the transmission was comming from. The process would take a few minutes,so they would have tostall as much as they could.If they are successful at stalling them,they can find out why these people want the cloning research. Kill two birds with one stone.
"Why do you want Adam's cloning research?" Shalimar implored.
Mason smiled. He held out a vial with a few drops of red liquid inside. "Do you know what this is?"
"Is it blood?" Lexa always had a morbid outlook on things, but she was probably right.
"Very good. Do you know whose blood this is? This is from Mason Ekhart. If we have enough DNA to clone with this much blood, we can bring him back."
Brennan's eyes widened, and he let out a surprised grunt. Lexa's jaw dropped. Shalimar couldn't believe her ears. Jesse leaned on the table to stop himself from collapsing. All of them were thinking the same thing. Ekhart!
Mason put the vial safely in his poket. "We'll take some blood from Brennan and try to make a clone. If it works, we will return him and create Ekhart. If it does not work, Brennan dies." The transmission cut out.
Lexa checked her signal trace. "Damn, I couldn't get it. They must be blocking my trace."
Jesse sighed. "We have to get Brennan back this time. We can't wait for them to give him back."
"They said they were going to kill him if the cloning test on him didn't work." said Shalimar.
Lexa, the pecimist, interrupted. "How can we get him back if we have no clue where the hell he is?"
"Well," Jesse said, "After they took him, they were able to contact us within two hours. So it has to be somewhat close. Probably about a hundred mile radius."
"Oh that's helpfull." Lexa said sarcastically.
"Maybe it is." Jesse said. "It's possible that the cloning process creates some energy field that we can detect from the helix."
"It may." Lexa said. Shalimar gave her a quizzical look.
"From what I can remember, Adam used carbon and some other chemicals because I guess humans are made up of carbon or something like that. Then I think he used high electricity voltage, which would be very easy to see. But since Brennan already has massive amounts of electricity in him, either he'll be less unstable, it will overload, or it will create more than one clone."
Once Mason had fixed most of the electrical appliances in the house to electrocute the chemical mixture to be combined with Brennan's blood sample, he picked up a knife and headed towards his hostage.