Latest installment, sorry for the wait to all my loyal readers. Enjoy!


Pete Wisdom prided himself on being a smart man. He had taken care of the more mundane aspects of his work and cover while thinking about what his boss was, and more importantly was not telling him. Idly he pondered the implications of a need to update a fake Facebook status in order to maintain a cover. The way in which social media now controlled the world was both impressive and flabbergasting. The thought came to him that perhaps this was the new true democracy of developed nations.

Something was not right with that conversation, something he couldn't quite put a finger on. Your average business tycoon with enough liquid assets available to purchase a business and at the same time pass up on purchasing a business did not also have contacts within the Thieves Guild. It was too risky in the business world. People who had that kind of influence were typically frowned upon when they associated with the underbelly of society, not to mention too paranoid to entertain the notion of hiring a trained thief. Somebody who knows all of your secrets is more than likely to exploit them. This meant that the "guy writing the checks" was not just any eccentric rich man. That thought worried him. "What the bloody hell have you gotten yerself into now, Petey boy?"

He felt his thoughts spiraling out of control. That meant one thing. "I need a bloody drink!" Shutting down his laptop, he opened the back of it and carefully removed the portable motherboard. It was, in his opinion, the single most genius invention ever produced, and he hadn't even believed it really existed until his thieves contact had simply handed him one and had him go through the process of uninstalling it about five times. Once removed, the computer would still turn on and function, but only dummy files would still show up, enough to make everything look legit. As a bonus, there was no way of tracing any of the files that you didn't want found because even the temporary file access code lines stored on the removable drive. The precious board, sitting in its rather mundane looking case was then placed carefully in a hidden lead lined pocket in, of all the imaginable places, his mattress, which had also been specially placed in this room for him twelve hours prior to his check-in. It would withstand the strongest electro-magnetic pulse that anybody (even a maniacal geriatric mutant in red and purple spandex) could throw at it.

He had to give the Thieves credit, this whole suite was masterful in that it appeared so normal, but was anything but. Reaching over he activated the bedside lamp, which set it to scan for changes in ambient room temperature and txt him with anything significant. Various other devices were also wirelessly activated once the lamp was turned on: motion sensors on all the entries and exits including duct vents, sensors within said vents, light sensing arrays set to ultraviolet and other spectrums, and seismic sensors ingeniously placed underneath the carpet and in the recessed lighting halos. How those ever got installed without anybody being the wiser he couldn't imagine. He would be alerted if somebody scanned the room for...pretty much anything. The list of amenities went on and on. Benefits of Guild work, all installed specially for him mere hours before his arrival and easily removed in minutes (or so Theoren claimed) leaving no trace that anything had ever been there other than an English businessman with a penchant for alcohol, tobacco, and blondes. It was nearly perfect.

Grabbing his wallet he headed out the door and tried not to strut his way down to the hotel bar. If he had just stepped into the boiling pot that he was pretty sure he had, it was only a matter of time before his phone went haywire, which meant he had best make sure he downed his first drink fast.

The bar, he found, was not too far from his room. It was a mish mash of modernist attempts at metal decor mixed with splashy euro colors that fell just short of coming off as completely offensive. Finding an empty stool at the bar he quickly scanned the top shelf...vodka. The second and third shelves were more of the same thing. Bloody Russians, he thought as he scanned the menu in vain for some whiskey, scotch, pretty much anything but vodka. While he was scanning a bartender stepped up in front of him. She was blonde, busty and cute in a pixie-esque sort of way. A quick vision of his "wife" floated in front of his mind's eye and he shuddered. He eyed her hopefully and mouthed "whiskey". She shook her head, mouthing back "vodka". He tapped two fingers on the bar and she nodded, grabbing a Stoli bottle off the top shelf.

"When in Rome," he muttered. He nodded a thanks and lifted the glass, trying to stifle the urge to pinch his nose. He still choked, which was something he couldn't stifle. It was a fallacy that vodka was flavorless, as any Brit could verify.

"You foreigners," came a deep rumble from next to him. "No appreciation for good Russian vodka."

"I wasn't aware there was such a thing."

"Hah!"

Now that his eyes had stopped watering, Pete was able to turn and address his bar neighbor. It was as if he was facing every Russian cliche ever created, all that was needed was a bearskin hat with ear flaps to make the picture complete. A big bushy black beard covered most of a face underneath two small wide set beady black eyes. He was a large stocky man who looked almost out of place in the well fitting business suit he sported. The burlish man extended a hand the size of a frying pan and flashed a wide white grin. "Dmitry Vankov."

"Paul Whitmore" Wisdom replied, burying his hand within the Russians. "Now tell me about this 'good' vodka."

"Ach. Englishman, if I have not completely misplaced your accent." Dmitry waved his hand at the liquor shelf absently. "You vill not appreciate any of it. I suggest you stick to your beer, comrade. You may find that ve do not butcher beer so badly." The bartender was again floating back toward them and the large man waved his hand, grabbing her attention. "A Baltika for my friend here." The girl smirked at Wisdom and reached blindly behind her, producing a blue labeled bottle and popping the top in a single fluid motion.

Wisdom picked up the bottle and tilted the neck in her direction briefly before nodding at his new drinking buddy. "Cheers." The first swig went down fairly smooth, although it was certainly lighter and thinner than he preferred.

"So, vat brings an Englishman to ze frozen tundra?" His smirk half buried in that beard took some of the sting out of the jibe.

"Business, of course. Is there anything else?"

Dmitry quirked an eyebrow at him. "Business? You are aware, comrade, that our beloved Russia is going through some...how you say, money draught?"

Wisdom took another swig and nodded. "Oh I'm aware. See, me Da, he's got some bloody idea in his head that there's money to be made here. He's the brain, and I'm the..."

"Braun?" Dmitry cut in, running a skeptical eye over the skinny Wisdom.

"More like the hunting dog." He began tapping his fingers on the top of the bar, staring into the blue glass of the bottle for effect. His mother had always said he should perform Shakespeare. "He gets some scheme and I go off to see what I can find."

"So you are here on a hunt? Have you found any prey?"

Something suddenly struck Wisdom as off. This conversation should not be happening. He had been a marked man since the moment he stepped into the hotel, perhaps even through customs. Anybody else would have simply laughed, wished him luck and moved on. This man wanted information. This could be bad, or it could be very very good...for his bank account. It was always said that the truth would set you free. Pete hoped that would serve him well for the next few minutes. "Prey? Me Da may not be Mr. bloody Rogers, but we're not lookin' for companies to bleed." He turned an eye toward Mr. Vankov, letting a fringe of hair hang down. "Truth, we're lookin' for a partner, someone to share the success, ya ken?"

The man turned away briefly, and if he hadn't been looking so closely Pete would've missed the quick glimmer in his eyes. "So you are here to share ze vealth vith some poor floundering company here in Moscow?"

Pete took another swig and shook his head. "Nah, I'm lookin for a company with more ideas than it's got resources. Me Da figures we got the resources, maybe we can use them to get in on the next big thing. Russian company hits the global market lookin rosy, other investors start takin' interest in Russian companies and technology, we line our pockets. Somethin' like a win, win, win."

"You are a very honest businessman, Mr. Paul Whitmore."

Wisdom nodded. "Me mum always said 'the truth will set you free'."

His new companion laughed. "And you listened?"

"To that one I did." Wisdom pushed his now empty bottle and still full tumbler back onto the edge of the bar. Just as he did so he felt his phone vibrate. Bingo. "Wonderful to meet you Mr. Vankov, but I am starting to really feel the jet lag..."

"Vait, my friend." That same huge hand grabbed his arm in a grip that, while not tight, would be nearly impossible to shake. "I believe, if your intentions are as you say, zat I may be able to be of some help."

His phone went off again. "Is that so?" He glanced briefly at the exit, then sat himself back down on his barstool. The daddy's boy suitclad twirp he was supposed to be portraying would not walk away from an open invitation like that, no matter what his phone was doing. "Never was one to eye a gift horse. What type of 'help' is it you want ta offer me?"

Vankov smiled slightly wider, looking even more like a bear, one that had just awoken from hibernation. "Have you ever heard of Mutragenics?" And the bear was hungry.

Bloody hell, this shouldn't be this easy. Every alarm bell in his body was going off simultaneously. Absentmindedly, Wisdom put his hand in his pocket and fiddled briefly with his lighter. That damned Cajun snake over in New York had once commented that this habit was his only tell, after losing near a week's pay to him in a single night of poker. But Pete passed it off as a moment of racking his brain, something that a dimwit like his character would do. "Can't say as I have, mate. Some invention of yours? Lookin' for a venture capitalist ta make it all a reality?"

It struck Wisdom, as his phone continued going haywire, that he really did not like this man's laugh. "Not an invention, comrade, a company. One zat is poised to change ze world, and ve are looking for people exactly like you to make it all a reality. Meet me here tomorrow, 2pm, ve can discuss more then. It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Vitmore. I look forward to doing business." And with that Vankov left. Wisdom's phone gave off one final desperate buzz before going silent. All Peter Wisdom could think was that neither drink had done a thing to calm his thoughts or his body.

"Out of the frying pan, Petey boy, out of the frying pan."


Growing up in North Carolina, Charlotte had led a somewhat privileged life. Daddy was a tenured professor of American Literature at Chapel Hill. Momma maintained a proper southern house, and sold Mary Kay on the side to keep herself occupied. Charlotte spent her time alternately playing and arguing with her four siblings, with no concept of what it meant to not be perfect. Life really was good. Then her hair turned lavender, and her fingernails.

It started with just a single streak near her temple. She was convinced it was a trick, a prank that her sisters Savannah and Brooklyn had played on her. She tried nail polish remover, no luck. Her mother had not approved of the hair, and no amount of explaining, begging or pleading her case had convinced Amelia Manning that her daughter hadn't colored her hair simply to spite to her. Slowly the color spread. They had tried bleach, dye, hats. Eventually it was wigs. At the time she had thought that it was humiliating, something that she wasn't sure she could ever live through. Then she went to prom.

Not that anybody had wanted to go to prom with her, despite her best efforts everybody was referring to her as the purple haired freak by the end of senior year. The only people still willing to speak with her were her siblings and the modern version of the black trenchcoat mafia. Her siblings only in private at home, and the goths and freaks only when they were able to corner her in the hallway. She had managed, after agreeing to handling all of his chores until she left for college, to convince her younger brother Dallas to take her to the dance. Dancing had been nice. For an hour she had actually managed to forget that the perfectly coiffed updo was just another expensive hairpiece, with her own locks butchered painfully short underneath. That was until one of the "mean girls" decided to grab for her wig on the dance floor.

They thought they were funny. The harder she cried the harder they laughed. To his credit, Dallas had tried to stop them, tried to grab her wig back. He was only a Freshman, no match for Corey, Anthony and Nathan Simkins, the triplet threat on the defensive line. They kept Dallas pinned to a wall while the girls tossed her wig around, taking turns wearing it and twirling around. It was a twisted game of monkey in the middle that seemed like it would never end. Then it all just stopped.

Stop! It was the only coherent word that was floating through her mind. She wanted everything to stop: the taunts, the sneers, the names, the laughs and mostly the god damned wig. She watched Lilah Neilson grab a steak knife off a nearby table, one that the wait staff had yet to clear. She watched Allison Donahue pull the wig off her head and gently toss it in Lilah's direction. She watched as, midair, the wig simply stopped.

It's been said that silence is golden, but the reality is that most times silence is terrifying. In that moment the entire prom went silent as everybody turned to stare at the hair piece frozen perfectly in place, 8 feet above the dance floor. Before anybody else could react, Charlotte grabbed it and ran. Ran from the mean girls, from the football players, from the teachers and all her former friends. Desperately, Charlotte ran home.

But she didn't run fast enough. The news of the magical frozen wig had beaten her home, and standing in the doorway was William Manning, the person she hoped would be her savior. She remembered shouting "Daddy", she could still feel the tears, and she could hear the words that he thundered from that backlit entryway: "There are no mutant abominations welcome in this house."

When she replayed the movie in her mind, as she frequently did, Charlotte could see her mother, her sisters and her one other brother cowering behind him. She could see their eyes. Her sisters were afraid of her, her mother was angry, but her brother...dear sweet Denver looked sad, bewildered and utterly heartbroken. Denver Manning, the youngest of the clan at only 11 years old, was the only one to look her in the eyes. As the heavy solid wood door slammed shut in front of her Denver had mouthed the words "I'm sorry Char".

The four years since had been an awkward marriage between trauma and adventure until Logan, the Wolverine, had almost literally snatched her up out of an alley and bodily dragged her to Westchester. Once settled, Charlotte had somehow managed to locate and initiate contact with Denver. They talked at least twice a week, more if time and her parents schedules permitted. Her parents were unaware that a cleverly created eBay auction for some X-Box 360 games had merely been a simple way for her to smuggle him a burner phone. She always waited for him to txt her, that way there would never have to be any awkward explanations at the dinner table. And when a txt came, if she wasn't in the middle of saving the world, she would venture out into the woods surrounding the estate and they would talk. Denver always picked up on the second ring.

"Char Char! What's up?"

"Hey Den. Not much, just kinda hanging out at the house today. Got your txt."

"I still can't believe yah get to live in a mansion now." Denver laughed. "Like a real mansion." Now 14, Denver still insisted on romanticizing the whole experience. Some days it worried Charlotte, but it wasn't her job to force him to grow up by exposing him to the reality of what her life had been like up until the X-Men.

"It's not like I live here by myself you know. I have to share it with like twenty other people. Sometimes it feels smaller than a hotel room." She absently ran her hands through the pine tree boughs as she passed them, taking in the remaining fall foliage. Most of the trees were now completely bare, but a few oaks and maples were holding desperately to their red and yellow leaves. Growing up, her parents had always taken them to Vermont in the fall so they could witness the beauty of the changing leaves. Then it had seemed amazing, now it seemed rather odd that people traveled from all over the country simply to look at dying leaves. "Where are you guys right now?" There had been talk of her father taking a traveling sabbatical, though Denver hadn't mentioned anything about it since he had first said something over a month ago.

"Funny you should ask, we're in Moscow."

It took her a second to say anything back. "Moscow?" She parroted back.

"Yup. Dad got offered a short term teaching position over here with some big company. Short term thing, so we're just freezin' our keesters off until February. Then we get ta go home."

"Huh, That's kinda sweet, I guess. What're you and Brook doin fer school while y'all're in Russia? I'm guessin' Momma and Daddy didn't transfer you into the public schools there."

It was a running joke. No Manning child had ever set foot inside a public school. They had always figured it was either similar to a prison, or was really some magical place where kids ate candy all day and never had homework. "Yah crazy? Nah! He's havin' us telecommute to school. It sucks, cuz we gotta get up at eleven at night so we can face time for our classes, then when school gets out its like five thirty in the mornin' here. Brook and I have been tired as all get out."

"That just sounds awful!" As she continued walking, a sound caught Charlotte's attention. It wasn't the sound of an animal walking through the woods, it was heavier than that. And it wasn't the sound of the Wolverine, he made no sound at all. She continued to make small talk as she slowly made her way closer to the sound source. Finally she located movement through the trees. "Hey Den, I gotta let you go. I got somethin' goin' on here."

"What kinda somethin'?"

"Don't know yet, nosy. Txt me tomorrow if y'get time and I'll tell ya all about it."

"K, Char. Latah."

"Latah bro." She quickly locked the screen and shoved her iPhone in her back pocket, automatically crouching into a stance that would allow her to fight or flee equally well. In her time here at Xavier's she had yet to witness an invasion, but as the saying around this place went: the mansion was overdue for a rebuild.

Whatever it was that she heard, it was on the other side of these particular trees and was moving slowly. She knew what it couldn't be, since most of the team was still in the house this early in the day. If it was somebody trying to be stealthy, they were doing a poor job of it. Teenagers? That was how the boathouse had been burned down a few weeks before she had come to live here. The sound of another snapping twig was followed by a muffled groan.

Charlotte decided that enough was enough. Using her curse (it was hard to think of it as anything else), Charlotte created a solid walkway about an inch over the forest litter with her mind. Tree branches and bushes slid aside without a sound as she made her way closer to the source of the noise. She came upon the culprit much sooner than she had expected, face to face with her teammate, and sometimes field partner, Ricochet. "Nick!" He looked like he'd just had a run in with the Juggernaut, and lost, hardcore. "What the hell happened?!" He focused the one eye that wasn't swollen shut on her face momentarily. Something about that eye didn't seem right, didn't seem sane. She would've sworn he mouthed the words "Sorry Char", then everything went black.