When she awoke, she was no longer lying on the road, but on a soft bed. For a few moments her brain wasn't working and she had absolutely no memory of what had happened. Her leg muscles ached, but she wasn't sure why.
"Hey, honey," came a voice from beside her. "Welcome back to the waking world. Here, sit up a little and drink this."
Accel looked over. It was Cassie, handing the little girl a cup.
"Careful, it's hot."
She sipped at the cup. It was warm milk. Her mind was beginning to wake up a bit. She started to remember what had happened. Then it came back to her in full. Man. No wonder her legs were aching. Her hand shook a little and she nearly spilled her milk, as she remembered the terror of almost being shot.
"She's awake!" Cassie called to somebody else.
That somebody else turned out to be Mr Summers, striding angrily across the room.
"Acceleratus!" he yelled.
The girl braced herself. She knew she was in trouble when the teachers used the closest thing she had to a full name. Mr Summers stopped at the side of the bed and demanded furiously, "What the he – what on earth do you think you're playing at?"
"What?" she said defensively, holding her cup tightly with both hands.
"Do you have some sort of death wish? First you go diving out of a window who knows how many floors off the ground, then you start running about on an open road! What kind of crazy behaviour do you call that?"
Accel wasn't afraid of talking back to adults, but not usually when they were angry, and definitely not when it was Mr Summers. But this time it was different. She'd almost died! She'd almost died and he didn't even care!
"I almost died!" she exploded. "I was doing my job! I was fighting the bad guys! Where were you? Huh? Where were you? Up here sitting on your – "
"That is it!" he roared. "I am not taking that kind of insolence from you, young lady! Consider yourself lucky to be alive and even luckier if you escape without serious punishment!"
"Hey, give her a break," Cassandra snapped at him. "She's been through a lot today, you know!"
Mr Summers looked at the older girl sharply for a second, then stormed off. A moment later Chris appeared where he had been standing. He leaned over and tapped his knuckles gently against the top of Accel's head.
"What are you doing?" the child demanded, still angry.
"Oh, just checking to see if it's hollow, or if there really is a brain in there."
"Chris!"
"Oh, come on, Accel – you're not allowed to go running off without backup! None of us is allowed to do that!"
"But she would have got away!"
"Who?"
"Who do you think? The bad guy – the woman in black, the one we were fighting!"
He looked at her strangely, "Accel, she died. She fell out of the window with you, remember?"
"No! She got up again and I went after her!"
"She what?"
"Didn't Icarus tell you? He saw it too!"
"He was babbling about something, but we thought he was just over-excited! Are you saying this woman fell all that distance on to the ground, and then got up again?"
"Yes!" Accel said impatiently. "Then a van picked her up! I tried to chase it, but it got away. That's why I was stuck in the middle of the road! I wasn't just fooling around!"
"I'll be right back," he said, and hurried to the door.
He was true to his word, returning within seconds, this time with Mr Summers and Miss Munroe. Accel hid her face in anticipation of another yelling.
"I think Accel should rest just now," Cassie said to them.
"This'll only take a minute," Miss Munroe said softly. "Honey, tell us what happened, after you fell out of the window."
So Accel told them how Icarus had grabbed hold of her to save her from falling, and how they'd touched down safely on the ground. Then she told them how she'd seen the woman lying on the floor, then getting up, killing some men, and running off. And how Accel had gone after her, but had run out of energy before she could catch up with the van.
"Are you serious?" Mr Summers demanded. "After falling that distance, she just got up?"
She was still resentful about the way he'd spoken to her, and still naturally frightened of getting yelled at. But now there was something else as well. She could sense it in his voice somehow. Was Mr Summers frightened too? Starting to feel even more uneasy, the little girl just nodded, "Uh huh."
- - -
Melody suddenly jolted awake. Her briefcase full of notes had slid off her knee and hit the floor with a crash, waking her. She shook her head, and tried to keep her concentration on what she was doing. She had in front of her the transcripts of the presentations and debates from the conference so far. It was a lot of material, and she was only half way through. She was supposed to have finished it half an hour ago. In the absence of their missing speaker, she and her colleagues had had to do the best they could to present the late woman's case between them. Melody's job was to go through everything that had been said so far and make sure they had covered all the angles.
However, it wasn't going well, for a number of reasons. They were all still in shock at the news of their colleague's murder, and the murder of one of the speakers on the opposing side. It couldn't be coincidence – could it? Two deaths so close together, so closely linked to the conference. But it made no sense. A lot of people felt very strongly about this conference, and she could understand why somebody might try to silence an important voice on one side of the debate. But why would anyone try to silence both sides? There really wasn't any middle ground between the two positions – at least, not that she could see.
Being a young widowed mother didn't make things easy either. Little Athena was always unsettled at first when she came to a new place, and getting her to sleep was proving very difficult at the moment. Melody had spent much of the previous night awake, trying to lull her small daughter to sleep. Though stressed out and exhausted to the point of desperation, she had comforted herself with the thought that things couldn't possibly get any worse. That was before she had heard the news of the two murders. Now it felt like she was struggling to keep herself from losing it.
It was at times like this she really missed her husband. He had always been there, through everything, whenever she needed a comforting presence or when things were getting too much for her. He would do whatever he could to take his share of her burden, or help her find a way to lessen it. But now that he was gone…
She still didn't really know who had been responsible for his death. He'd been one of the millions of victims of the deadly Plague virus that had spread across the Americas three years ago. Nobody knew for sure who had started the Plague. Rumours were that it had been mutants trying to wipe out the human population, but as the virus had quickly begun to attack the mutants as well, Melody considered that unlikely. Just as it had seemed that the Plague would spread unstoppably into Europe, Africa and Asia, a cure had been discovered and mass-distributed in time to eradicate the virus. At least she knew who to thank for the cure. The X-Men, her younger sister's mentors, determined as they were to live in peace with humankind, had put all of their efforts into finding a way to cure the Plague. Melody and baby Athena had both been saved from certain death. Her husband had not been so lucky.
She jolted upright once more. She'd been drifting off to sleep again. It was no good. She just couldn't concentrate. Sighing and putting her notes on the table in front of her, Melody stood and went to check on Athena. Before she reached the stairs however, she decided to go and find something to eat first. She didn't care what, just something to keep her awake. Back in her student days, before getting married, she'd been used to eating pretty much whatever was at hand. But when she had married and quickly become pregnant, she'd had no choice but to start eating more sensibly.
It was the abrupt change of mind that saved her life. Had she continued on into the hallway and towards the stairs, she would have been directly in the path of the explosion that suddenly ripped through the front entrance of the school, throwing brickwork and shards of glass in all directions. The shockwave rocked the building, throwing Melody to the ground. It took a second or two for the shock to wear off and her mind to work out what had happened. Then she was on her feet and desperately looking around for some explanation of what was going on. Only one thing was in her mind: find Athena. She ran for the stairs.
Out of the smoke and chaos of the entrance hall she suddenly found herself face to face with four unfamiliar figures. In an instant she took in what few details she could: the first was short; the second hunchbacked; the third wore dark glasses; and the fourth was definitely not human. Their demeanour was not friendly. Terrified, Melody ran for the stairs as fast as she could. She had to find her daughter.
"Get her!" one of them yelled.
The fourth figure raised both arms, there was a phut, and suddenly Melody found herself pinned to the wall. She screamed in agony and tried desperately to pull free, but a spike over a foot long had impaled her right hand, and she was stuck fast. Blood was pouring from her palm and tears from her eyes.
One of the figures laughed, "You missed."
"No, I didn't, I was aiming for the hand. It's more fun when they know what's coming."
"HELP!!" Melody screamed.
"Get the other hand!"
"Wait a minute, I'm not ready."
With a superhuman effort, Melody pulled with her left hand at the spike that had pierced her right. Ignoring the pain, blinking away the streaming tears, driven on by her overpowering maternal instinct to go to her daughter, she felt it come loose, and then with another tug it was out.
Phut.
In desperation she threw herself headlong to the ground, and heard the sound of another spike hitting the wall where she had just been standing.
"You missed that time!"
"You kill it, then!"
"Fine!"
The small figure was coming towards her now, blinking spasmodically, both fists clenched. Although she was on the point of passing out through pain and loss of blood, Melody somehow managed to drag herself to her feet, and ran up the stairs with every last measure of strength in her body. She had to get to Athena.
"Mommy?" she heard a voice cry.
Melody reached the top of the stairs to find little Athena running towards her, still clutching her favourite teddy-bear. The child had obviously been woken by the explosion. Frightened, Athena stretched both arms out towards her mother, seeking a reassuring cuddle. Still running, Melody scooped up her daughter with her good hand, and cast a terrified glance behind her.
The small man had just reached the top of the stairs. He cracked his knuckles with a horrible metallic krak, and drew back his fist.
"Please leave us alone!" the young mother begged, backing away as fast as she could.
The other three figures appeared behind him.
"Did you hear something?" one of them said.
"Nope."
"Funny. Could have sworn I heard the human say something. But of course humans can't talk. They're just animals."
"Please, don't hurt us!" Melody cried. "We haven't done anything!"
"There it is again. I must get my ears checked."
The man with dark glasses snapped impatiently, "Quit fooling round and kill it."
Melody gave up any hope of pleading for mercy, and turned to flee. Footsteps told her the attackers were right on her heels. With her mangled right hand and being weighed down by carrying her child, she wouldn't be able to out-run them for more than a few seconds.
Suddenly a figure appeared at the other end of the corridor.
"Pyro!!" she gasped in relief. "Please! Please help us!"
In a flash his cigarette lighter appeared in his hand. Melody cast a frantic glance over her shoulder. The four pursuing figures had stopped. She did not, continuing to run towards Gemini's foster father. But the momentary glance came at a price, as she lost her footing and fell to the ground. Athena shrieked in terror as she was spilled on to the floor. Melody tried to break her fall with her damaged hand, but this only delivered a jolt of excruciating pain that pushed her to the brink of blacking out.
"Pyro…long time no see," she heard the small man with the metallic knuckles saying.
Pyro made no response. Melody grabbed Athena and held her close.
"How've you been, Boss?" asked the hunchback.
Boss? Melody turned to look at Pyro in confusion. She was just in time to see the burst of flame shoot out from the cigarette lighter, before Pyro hurled it down the corridor towards her. The young mother screamed as she and her daughter were engulfed in flames.