Accel refused to look at Vertigo as they continued to drive away from the safe house. She couldn't understand why he was acting like such a creep. She couldn't believe he had hit her! What had she done? He was the one who had disappeared! Where had he been? Why hadn't he been there when Dervish first arrived? She and the others could have died while he was gone! She didn't really know who the bad guys were, but whatever was going on just now was definitely not her fault, nor her friends. Why then were they the ones getting yelled at and smacked about?
She was still confused and, if she were honest, a little scared about what she had done just then. She had never done anything like that before. Sure, she could hold her own against Chris and Mr Logan at school, but then she knew they weren't really fighting with their full strength or actually trying to hurt her. She had never actually had a proper fight with a full grown adult mutant before, not one who was fighting with no holds barred and was trying to hurt her. Something, she didn't really understand what, had enabled her to rise above her normal level and unleash the kind of power that wasn't really supposed to be possible for ten year olds.
She had just felt so angry. It was three years since she had left the orphanage, but sometimes she still slipped back into her nightmarish memories, and her thoughts and emotions went completely out of control. But she had never known it to 'explode' that way before, and make her more powerful. And she realised that was what it had felt like. She had felt powerful. Powerful enough to win any fight. Powerful enough to do anything. Powerful enough that she was indestructible. It didn't make sense, but that was how it had felt. What did it mean? She didn't know. She wanted to talk to somebody about it, somebody older, but Vertigo had made it clear he didn't want to talk, and besides he was a guy. She wanted to talk to an older girl or a woman about it. They would understand better. Guys wouldn't have a clue.
Accel glanced round behind her at the other four youngsters in the back seat. All of them were sleeping. It was still only the early hours of the morning, and they were just catching up on the sleep that had been disturbed by Dervish's intrusion. Accel couldn't sleep. She didn't want to. She wasn't tired. She was still too angry and feeling as if she was on fire.
She looked out of the front window. Dawn was breaking outside. Where were they going? Vertigo hadn't said a word since they'd left the house, and she wasn't going to break the silence before he did – her face was still sore from Dervish's punch, and she didn't want to get smacked there again. Up until now she had assumed Vertigo knew what he was doing – he was an adult from her school and she had instinctively trusted him – but now...now she was starting to wonder. He hadn't been there when Dervish attacked; he was pushing them around far too roughly; and he'd hit her. He wasn't acting like the teachers at the school. He was acting more like the people who'd been in charge of her at the orphanage.
Ahead of them, a sign at the side of the road read: Thomsonville, 2 miles. Accel sighed. She had no idea where they were or where they were going. She wasn't comfortable with not knowing, because she wasn't sure she could trust Vertigo any more. What if he was taking them somewhere horrible? Well, the worst place on earth, as far as she was concerned, was the Raydale Orphanage where she had grown up. But that was thousands of miles across the ocean in Edinburgh, so he wasn't taking them there.
The silence inside the car was suddenly broken by the last sound on earth she had expected to hear. In astonishment she broke her own personal vow, and looked over at Vertigo. Was he crying? At first she thought she'd imagined it – maybe he'd just done a weird cough or something – but as she looked, she could see that he was definitely crying.
"Are you – " she started to say, when suddenly the car swerved violently off the road and down the exit that was signed for Thomsonville.
"Hey, be careful!" she said. "They haven't got any seatbelts on back there!"
"Shut up!" Vertigo snapped, his voice shaking just a little, wiping a tear away with the back of his hand.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing is wrong with me! For once just keep your stupid little mouth shut!"
For a second his eyes met hers, and she felt her pulse quicken. The look in his eyes was not that of an upset friend or of an adult who was angry with her. It was something altogether different and frightening. It was something very much like the look that the swordsman Dervish had given her when he said he was going to kill her. Or the woman in the cat suit Accel had pushed out of the window at the hotel. Accel didn't know where they were going or what was going on, and she definitely didn't trust Vertigo at all now.
It wasn't long before they arrived at the town of Thomsonville, population 9,300, and Vertigo was getting scarier all the time. His hands were visibly shaking on the wheel. He'd stopped crying, but had started muttering under his breath, which was actually more scary in a way. She couldn't make out what he was saying, but she occasionally caught the odd word, many of which were words she had only ever heard Vertigo say and which would each have earned her a very long detention at school.
As the car left the main street of the town, and headed into a residential district, Accel's feeling of unease and discomfort continued to grow. Where was he taking them? Was there another safe-house here? If there was, she didn't think it would be a very good one – there were far too many people around. Maybe they were stopping for food. She felt a little more positive with that idea. It made sense. She was hungry. But that wouldn't explain why Vertigo was crying.
The car stopped, braking sharply to a halt. Vertigo's hands were still shaking as he continued to grip the wheel. Accel looked out of her window to see where they were. It was just an ordinary residential street, with modest semi-detached houses and small, nicely-kept gardens. Her heart sank. There weren't any restaurants or shops here – they weren't stopping for food. She looked at Vertigo, and again felt frightened at the way he looked back at her. She could tell it was taking him a lot of effort to keep his voice steady as he said, "I'm getting out to talk to someone. You stay in the car. Or don't, I don't care. Do whatever the hell you want. Just don't follow me."
She swallowed nervously, and glanced at her four friends in the back seat. None of them had been woken by the car's sudden stop. She wasn't sure if she should wake them now. She wasn't sure about anything. She didn't know what to do or what to say. In the end she said nothing, and Vertigo opened his door to get out of the car. Accel didn't feel safe at all any more. She wished Cassie was here, or Gemini, or Pyro, somebody she could trust to look after them properly.
Vertigo slammed the car door and strode off without a backward glance. Stupid children. Stupid, annoying little brats. He found himself hoping that when he returned to the car, they wouldn't be there, they would have disappeared. Then they would be somebody else's problem. Stupid, spoiled, useless little wastes of space. He'd never been pampered and cosseted the way these kids were at the X-Men's school. He'd have loved to see how they would survive if suddenly cast adrift in the real world.
Thoughts of his own childhood were whirling around inside his mind now, bombarding him and driving him crazy. His hands were shaking, but he had managed to stop the tears. These were memories he had kept bottled up and shared with nobody over the last nine years. He could ignore them and keep them subdued most of the time. He'd even had an outlet for release of the stress when he was in the Brotherhood, wiping out the worthless human race.
But now those feelings were overwhelming him completely and there was nothing he could do to hold them back. Because Thomsonville was the town where he had grown up, and the house he was standing in front of now was the house he had been born in and lived for the first ten years of his life.