Chapter 4: The Origin of the Shelter

By: Galadeidre

Marron quickly scanned the hallways to make sure no one was there. In a flash, she grabbed Len by her arm and shoved her quickly into the girls' bathroom.

Len stifled a gasp and immediately whirred around to face the telepath. Her face was filled with confusion, slight anger, as well as a hint of fear. "What's this all about, Marron? I haven't done anything wrong have I?"

Marron didn't answer. She walked to the farthest end of the bathroom from the door and pulled out her cell phone. Punching a few buttons, she glanced up at Len and signaled for her to get away from the door. Someone picked up on the other end of the phone and Marron started to speak, rubbing the back of her neck as she paced back and forth restlessly. "Yeah…I'm in the first floor girl's bathroom on the southern end…mm hmm…yeah, I have Len with me…I know, I know…don't question what I'm doing…yes, I do know what I'm doing…just get over here now before class ends." She gave a sigh as she closed the lid on her phone.

Len was growing impatient. "Marron, what's this all about?"

Marron looked up at Len with her dark purple, mutation-trigged eyes, but didn't say a word.

Len was starting to get scared. "Did I do something wrong?"

Marron gave a smirk at this. "Len, hon, if you had done something wrong to tick us mutants off, well, you wouldn't be talking to me."

After she had said this, there was a slight swooshing sound and one of the janitors that worked at the high school was standing in front of Len and Marron.

Len jumped back in surprise at what she saw, but Marron didn't seem to be at all shocked. The janitor was a young man in his early thirties that had been working at the high school for several years. His hair was a white-blond color and his eyes were gray-green. His face was tanned from working in the sun; Len recalled that his name was Jeff.

"Len," Marron started. "You probably know him. His name's Jeff, and I want you to go with him for now."

"What? To where?"

"To where most of us mutants hang out when we have nowhere else to go. Don't worry. Jeff isn't gonna hurt you. In fact, he's part of the mutant group here. He helps me when sudden incidents like this occur."

"What do you mean, 'sudden incidents like this'?" Len narrowed her eyes, suspecting that Marron was hiding something from her.

Marron, though, just shook her head. "Later. Not now. It's not a good time to ask, and we're not in one of the best areas to be talking." She glanced at the door as she said this. Confirming that no one was coming, she turned to Jeff. "Bring her to the Shelter, and make sure no one sees. I'll make sure the attendance and the nurse are informed that she's gone home. I doubt that she'll be coming back to school today."

"What should I tell Z?" Jeff asked.

"Tell her that I've told you to bring her there and that she's been getting headaches and may need to rest. Z will take care of the rest."

Jeff nodded and Marron turned back to Len. She gave the human a reassuring smile and placed her hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry. You're gonna be taken care of." With that said and a nod in Jeff's direction, she turned on her heel and walked out of the bathroom.

Len didn't know what to do, but Jeff gave her a reassuring smile. "Here. Take my hand. We'd better get a move on it before anything goes wrong."

Len hesitated a moment longer before deciding that if Conor could trust Marron, and Marron trusted Jeff, Jeff was reliable enough. She took his hand and Jeff gave a nod.

It felt weird, Jeff's mutant power. She heard a weird swoosh and they were immersed into darkness. It was only for a moment, though. In a blink of an eye, Len was stumbling to regain balance on her feet that had suddenly hit hard ground. Jeff immediately caught her before she fell, letting her go almost immediately after she had regained composure, respecting her distance and wariness of him. "Come on," he said, "it's in the forest."

Len looked at the forest that had grown quite thick and brambly as it was untouched by any human hands. It was the forest that had grown in back of the high school, complete with small ponds here and there.

"Careful now," Jeff said cheerfully. "It might be difficult in some parts, 'cause there's no beaten path. That would've been too easy for the humans to follow. It would've led them straight to the Shelter."

"The Shelter?" Len asked, one eyebrow cocked.

"Yeah, it's not such a bad place. You'll see." He crouched underneath a bundle of tangled branches and lifted them up for her to walk underneath.

They continued to walk through the forest. It must've been a few minutes before they began to speak again to each other, Len starting, for she was curious to know why she was being brought to a hideout of mutants.

"So why am I going to this Shelter and not home?"

Jeff shrugged. "I'm never told why, I just do what I'm told."

"Well, then, how do you know that what you're doing is right?"

Jeff gave a small smile. "These mutants…well, you do know that this secret mutant club hasn't been around for that long of a time yet. I'd say about five-six years, tops. I've been working here for about a good ten years or so, and I was real lonely. Nobody that I knew here was doin' anythin' about us mutants. I only knew of a few kids that were mutants. Well, five-six years ago, a strong mutant transferred to this school, named Von."

"Von?" Len turned to look at him. "Von Debler? Isn't he Marron's man?"

Jeff nodded. "They make a handsome couple, don't you think?"

"I didn't know he was a mutie."

"At the time, neither did I. He was a tough one, though. Always competing. Every time he got hurt while playing sports, he'd just shrug it off and say, 'It'll heal'. I thought then that he was just being tough and all. He was real good at hiding his powers."

"You mean, he's got healing powers?"

Jeff gave another nod. "He was smart, too. Real smart. He could even tell if you were a mutie or not, for the most part. He must've noticed a lot of mutants, 'cause he rounded up some of his friends that he knew were pro-mutant or mutants themselves and started building the Shelter in the forest. Nobody knew about it, and it only took them about two months to get the whole thing built. Then again, they had a lot of help from humans and mutants that were trustworthy.

"Then he contacted a close mutant friend of his, nicknamed Chameleon, and rightly so. He made a huge stack of fliers that proposed a meeting with all mutants at the high school, young and old, at the edge of the forest on a certain night. Then he had his friend, Chameleon, rigged the fliers so that they were invisible to the human eye. Only mutants could see the fliers, and he and some of his friends, all mutants of course, secretly posted the fliers everywhere. There wasn't a wall that wasn't plastered with at least two."

"And I'm guessing that the fliers worked? The meeting was successful?"

"Was it ever," Jeff remarked. "Even some of the teachers that were mutants came to the meeting, just to see how it was going to be run. I went, and that's when I found out that Von was a mutant. A lot of the mutant kids were shocked to find out that Von was like them, but they were relieved. They got a lot done that night. Von had it all planned out, right to the end. They elected Von as leader, obviously, four more co-leaders under him, two secretaries, a few medics and storage personnel, and a delivery boy, which was me."

"How'd they decide?"

"By looking at the person's mutant powers. I was chosen as delivery boy because of my easy access to anywhere in the building because of my job and also because of my teleporting abilities. There's another delivery boy if ever something happens to me. Von didn't need to be determined as leader by way of his powers. It was unanimous." He gave a smile at this.

"So it's been running well ever since?"

Jeff nodded. "Nothing's gone wrong. Then again, we've got excellent leaders. Every fall, after the first week of school, we hold a mandatory meeting to welcome the new incoming freshmen muties. We always have a stack of fliers ready to post onto the walls for the whole year so that no mutant will be left out of the club. And at the end of each school year, we have another mandatory meeting to say farewell to the seniors and have a reelection if that senior had held a position during their high school years."

"Who's the leader now, then? Von, I know for a fact, is out of high school."

"He's still the leader. He decided that he'd just attend college here, so he could stay close to the group that he founded. Besides, I believe he's running his own advertising company here."

Len nodded.

"Ah, here we are." Jeff stopped in front of an old tree and gazed at it from top to bottom. "Welcome to the Shelter, Len."

Len almost choked. "This is the Shelter? Some place this is. It's an old, rotting tree."

Jeff smiled and shook his head. "Don't judge a book by its cover." He walked over in between two of the tree's large roots and started feeling the ground.

"Yeah, I've definitely heard that saying before…" but she was now staring at what she saw in front of her.

Jeff had found a hole in the ground and had pulled on it, revealing a hidden trapdoor. Below the trapdoor was a flight of stone steps that led down deeper into the ground. The walls were concrete and a small keypad could be seen near the top of the stairs. Jeff pushed a few of the buttons on the keypad and immediately, the stairs and walls were lit by fluorescent lights. Jeff nodded for Len to go in and he followed her. After he had made sure that the trapdoor was shut securely above him, he started walking down the steps, Len following close behind, their footsteps echoing eerily off the walls.