The cheap motel room was sparsely furnished, but the front desk had taken cash and stayed disinterested. The rooms arranged on three sides around a parking lot facing the road could have been located anywhere in North America. It was clean but tired. The drapes drawn against the sun had been washed thin enough to rate as translucent in the daylight working in from outside. The manmade carpet shone as worn nylon can, the fake woods didn't, and the wipe clean furniture bore scars of past scuffles with previous occupants. Richard Parker wasn't sure who'd won. He bet on the metal and plastic, people usually had more give in them.

His charge however had little give in her. She was metal-tough through and through, and threw a mean punch too. Again she wasn't strictly people though, she was the other kind, the Mutant kind. Word was Meta-human was the Politically Correct term according to the current administration. Richard Parker paid his taxes, saluted and did his duty. Silver Fox was Native American; Red-Indian in the less correct old western parlance. He wondered what advice her ancestors would give if they could. Salem's Witch Trials, Cowboys and Indians, McCarthy's and Red's under the bed Witch-Hunt, and now the Mutant problem. Richard was a student of history and human nature, he recognised the signs and didn't much like them. They'd been on the move ever since the incident at the previous SHIELD safe house.

Richard had been called in to deal with Silver Fox. Their short but successful partnership had been enough to propel him to the top of Director Fury's list it seemed.

The mission debriefing had brought the former CIA operative, now full time with SHIELD to speed on the events following the attack on the Kent Farm in British Columbia. May Kent having been spirited back to the United States, She'd been found a place in Washington, and been given help to put her Law degree to use. Parker on one level was uncomfortable that no attempt to hide this relocation had been made, May reminded him of his older brother Ben's wife Martha. Jonathan Kent's death only made him more reflective. Ben was almost old enough to be Richard's dad, and had served with Kent in the army. SHIELD hadn't allocated May Kent a new identity. However May had history with Lionel Luthor according to her file, enough history for Fury to bet Luthor wouldn't move against her in the open, if only because such an overt move might lead back to him. Failing that Richard understood that May Kent was in effect a baited trap should Lionel throw caution to the wind.

Parker rationalised she was safe.

Silver Fox was another proposition, she was an operative who didn't really exist save for a dozen false aliases, and she was a Mutant. Making her disappear would be a lot easier for Luthor to arrange and authorise; and she had after all double crossed him. That never ended well. May Kent had just been caught in the cross fire. Silver Fox had been pointing the gun, the gun being another Mutant hiding in plain sight. His file was so heavily redacted that it made little sense at all.

"Are you okay?" He asked her. Silver Fox's signature silver hair was now coloured jet black, undercover operations demanded sacrifices. He went with a pair of round Lennon glasses. Eye glasses and mussed hair worked every time, people always underestimated the power of a pair of spectacles.

"Yes." She said, her eyes remained closed, her posture was that of meditation, crossed legged and straight backed, seated on the floor.

Truth was Silver Fox mostly didn't move. In that sense watching her was a lot simpler than he had expected. Usually baby-sitting jobs involved persuading a protected person they needed to stay in put and stay out of sight. Silver Fox had required no persuasion.

"And what about the boy?" He asked. "Have you sensed him yet?"

"No he's lost." She replied.

Richard folded his arms. Fury wasn't happy. "Your file said you were good at this."

"I am very good at this, but the child is not of this world, however human he appears, getting a read on him is difficult even when he is close by, at a distance impossible."

"But you're still trying?"

"Yes I am. Please convey this to Director Fury."

"Sure. I'll call him while I grab a Coffee." He replied sarcastically. Mission parameters involved the usual radio silence protocols. "Want one."

She shook her head.

Later he let himself back in, freshly caffeinated from the Diner down the street. He'd let nearly an hour amble by, walking slowly, drinking coffee slowly, reading the paper an earlier patron had left behind.

The outside of the Motel was no more descript than the inside, and just as worn and tired. The register housed in the office across the parking lot read Mr and Mrs Smith. It was a natural cover for a man and woman to assume. As he opened the room, Richard found he looked past Silver Fox to the Life Decoy Model SHIELD had provided. Currently it was on charge. The cable ran from the baby carry case to a wall outlet. The charge passed through the membrane on the case and through the life like faux skin into the small robot. It was a simple mechanism of its type, all the faux-child had to do was mimic the limited range of sounds and movements a baby needs to make to appear real. A whole lot simpler than the walking talking models that could fool the uninitiated. Still the robot made Richard think of his real baby boy, Peter. Then of his wife Mary. The child sold his cover story well, fugitive secret agents with a baby on board sounded ridiculous.

"Are you Okay?" he asked Silver Fox as he closed their door.

"I'm fine Richard. There's no need to ask every five minutes. I'm not a bomb waiting to go off." She replied eyes still closed, apparently unaware exactly how much time had passed.

"Tell that to your last handler." Parker replied, he was thinking how much he missed his family, and then how unprofessional that feeling was, which made him angry on two levels, at his job, and at himself for not being good at his job.

Silver Fox turned and looked at him, her eyes opening to register her displeasure at his last remark, her face was easy to read.

"Sorry." He added rubbing his hair. "Guess I'm tired, that and I just want to stay out of the hospital.

"That incident was a one off. A response to what I saw, to what they were doing to Logan." She replied. "I was unprepared for the psychic backlash." Then as an afterthought. "Agent Lewis is fine, he was only stunned, and I assure you Richard Parker he suffers no ill effects."

Richard nodded, giving her that much, before he asked. "But you're not trying to reach Logan now – or are you?"

Silver Fox let her head droop. She looked defeated. "I won't pretend." She said. "I have being doing exactly that."

"Every time you… meditate?"

"Yes."

Richard took a deep breath, and folded his arms. It was reasonable to assume the boy was still with Logan. "Okay. Any luck?"

"No."

"That's not good is it?"

"No, but not in the way you are thinking Richard Parker. If Logan were dead I would sense his passing, his soul would leave an echo of himself, and his Spirit would rise to the light. There is nothing."

"I don't follow."

"Logan is neither alive nor dead – he is something else. Something worse."

-(*)-

The Brass Plate read the Charles Xavier School for the Gifted. Today it caught the sun, but Kent Logan had first seen it in the dark. The building lit from the inside, looking dark and menacing as the gothic architecture of the grand country house that its builders had employed was want to do at night. In the day light it looked less menacing, but no less grand. An old house built by old money.

He had come to it as thief in the night, seeking sanctuary, and to his surprise it had been offered without question. The bald man who had eventually welcomed him had at first stared at the half naked child wearing what amounted to burned rags with incredulity. His guards had been more direct pointing assault rifles at him.

Xavier had looked into Kent's eyes with great intensity and greater surprise, then after a long moment of uncomfortable silence, Kent became aware of a presence in his mind. Odd but not threatening. Then in the next moment Charles Xavier's well equipped security personal, reacted, they stood down. Their weapons no longer levelled at the dishevelled child who had punched, literally through the facilities outer wall.

Kent learned quickly that night that Professor Charles Xavier was special too, he was a telepath, and he had created this school in his own home as a sanctuary for special children. What was more this Professor had been expecting Logan.

Unfortunately Kent couldn't relay any good news, James 'Uncle Jimmy Olsen' Logan had vanished from the site of the explosion that had destroyed their hire car. Kent had done the only thing left to him, he'd snuck cross country to their destination, an expansive country estate in Westchester; the Xavier Mansion.

As far as a school went it the grand country house was well appointed. There was every amenity Kent could imagine, everything was in place from gym equipment to science and language laboratories, in every way it was fully equipped but one, there was scarcity of students. The house had sufficient rooms to accommodate few hundred persons, yet the school was occupied by only a handful of students.

Xavier explained. "This is just the beginning."

Kent Logan had stumbled into an institution in its infancy. The Professor whose name was on the plaque, was a young man with aquiline features, made all the more striking by his hairlessness. He was confined to a wheel chair. Kent could see scar tissue and damage to his spine. With him was a youth teetering on the edge of adolescence, although his breadth, his barrel like chest, his height would suggest he was in fact much older. Hank McCoy, Kent learned was an example of one of two kinds of mutant. The former had the misfortune to be identified at birth, and shunned because of it. For them there was some obvious difference in their physiological make up which singled them out as different. For Hank it was prehensile toes, feet that were almost hands. It had been enough. Charles Xavier had plucked him from an uncaring foster care system. There were others, but their ages made the school more akin to a day care centre. One child who had been born with an extra set of digit less limbs from the shoulder, had been delivered to Xavier by his wealthy parents, who moved in the same circles as the Professor once had, before his accident, which was as much as Xavier would say about his handicap.

The fluffy down that had covered the young boys extra limbs had developed into feathers. Now Kent's age or thereabouts, the boy had wings, still developing, but undeniably Carter Warren Worthington-Hall had Cherub-like wings. Kent determined that his "almost eight years," his answer to the obvious question from the Professor, placed him in the middle of the age rage among the few who inhabited the rambling mansion, and visited the attendant stone built buildings. Kent as a farmer's son recognised them as originally been agricultural in purpose, although much grander than the utilitarian sheds he was used to, and then further on there were grander still stables and coach houses. These various buildings had been converted and extensively modernised beneath their old world stone architecture to serve as classroom facilities. The main house was living accommodation.

Along with the Professor the other adult who wasn't identifiable as hired in security or support staff, was a young woman called Raven Darkholme, whose striking appearance was deceptive as it was outwardly beautiful. Kent could see this by virtue of his enhanced senses, but having made similar mistakes in the past, he had the good sense not to mention this to her or anyone else.

Today he stood in the Professors office, Raven sat in a chair beside Xavier's leather topped desk. It was a room of considerable size and height, characterised by wall to wall library shelving, and oak panelling where there were not books, interrupted by large bay windows, and a big feature fire place, which blazed behind his back. Kent stared at his feet, or more accurately under them. There was an extensive basement and sub-basement levels beneath the whole complex. Lead shielding was employed, and his young eyes struggled to see any detail beyond grey shadowy shapes. He concluded this school was like an iceberg, with a great deal hidden beneath the surface. He told the Professor as much. "And I mean that both ways." Kent said.

Professor X raised an eyebrow and smiled. The other students called him that, it wasn't an imaginative nick name, but neither was it an unpleasant one, which said a lot about how his students felt about their mentor.

Recognising unspoken question as an invitation to explain himself Kent added. "I mean both physically and…" he waved his hand "well mentally I guess."

Xavier was unsurprised by the existence or reach of his x-ray like vision. To Kent he seemed unflappable. He lived in and for the strange.

"I received a letter from Doctor Wayne, of Gotham, Chicago." The Professor told him. "He asked me help you with your dreams."

"I don't dream." Kent replied.

"You mean you don't sleep." Raven stated. She was baby blonde today, yesterday her hair had been so dark that it had shone blue in the sun.

Kent shrugged and nodded.

"And when you do sleep, you dream." Xavier stated.

"I don't need to sleep." Kent said aware that he was being sullen. He could almost hear his Pa chiding him to pull in his bottom lip. Thoughts of this loss threatened to overwhelm him. Steam rose from his eyes, a combination of welling tears meeting heat vision.

The Professor's fountain pen scratched across the pages of his note book. He said. "I doubt that is true. I think you can go a very long time, by human standards without sleep. But I don't believe you can live happily without dreaming. Dreams are important to our mental wellbeing."

"I don't know…"

"Hank has built a dream laboratory." Raven told him.

Kent smiled. He liked Hank, he liked the idea of having a friend who could challenge him intellectually. Hank was a genius, and the fact that a child barely in his teens could build a laboratory didn't' surprise Kent, it excited him, and he found himself wanting to validate Hank's efforts on his behalf. To reciprocate the gangly youth's kindness. "Hank has?" he asked. Xavier nodded.

"I guess I should try." Kent agreed. Stop running he thought to himself, he imagined May Kent coming to the Mansion, there was no shortage of rooms, and it felt safe here.

"Good." The Professor said with a smile. "That's settled then. Tonight we'll see if we can explain your dreams."

-(*)-

David Cain checked his rifle. This was a too-fer. Target could be described as a man and his wife. The man was Richard Parker, who would be travelling under an alias, with a woman – his wife for appearances sake, who had more aliases than Cain had seen in a long time, so many he'd mentally filed her as name-undetermined. He'd memorised the mission data, rechecking it was like walking through his childhood home, exactly like that, as that was his chosen memory landscape. Cain had trained himself to remember, mind and body. He'd learned how to move through the world unnoticed, the way of the ninja, both physical and meta-physical. He had learned to conceal himself in broad daylight, he had learned how to hide from those who possessed second sight.

He used his weapons telescopic sight, and zeroed in the room's door. The curtains were closed. Had been since the couple checked in. The sniper's gun was large, clumsy on the move, but here in a predetermined location, it was a tool of great precision. The silencer on the barrel would radically reduce the rifles range, but his hiding place was close enough for that not to matter.

He'd seen Parker leave and return, but his contract stipulated both of them, so he'd settled down to wait for the right opportunity.

The small town was hardly worth a mention on the map, it had benefited from being on the interstate to New York, and had traded up on the back of motorists stopping for fuel and a bite to eat, from a few houses into a community with all the necessary trappings, a firehouse, police station and a school, but it was still a one horse town, if you extended the old phrase to include the automobile in general. His vantage point was a general store that sold everything a passing motorist might think they should want, including a lot of gadgets that plugged into a car's cigarette lighter socket. It gave Cain an uninterrupted high ground view of the cheap motel across the street whose rooms were arranged with doors facing into the central parking lot. His exit plan was a motorbike hidden behind the store's dumpster. Fast and anonymous.

As day gave way to night, he saw the couple exit the room. Twilight wasn't optimal for target recognition, the harsh lights in full darkness were better than this grey light, but the coming darkness was better for his exit strategy.

David Cain checked the contacts in his scope against the kill-contract's descriptions using his mental record. There were differences. The woman's hair was dark and cut short, but that kind of change was to be expected under the circumstances. Make up could alter skin tone, and the half-light made her complexion harder to judge, she wore gloves covering her hands, but her height and weight fit the described parameters. Untidy hair and glasses did a reasonable job of changing Parker's look, but Cain looked past these. The SHIELD agent held a carrycot, arm extended in the awkward fashion required to negotiate the door. This didn't surprise Cain, his mission brief had included that detail, to expect a baby-LDM. Information that could only come from inside SHIELD itself. Given the origin of this kill-contract it didn't surprise Cain that his employer had a mole inside Fury's operation, he probably had more than one.

This wasn't the first time Cain had done this man's wet work.

Cain breathed in, and then as he relaxed and exhaled; his finger pressed the trigger, and a heartbeat later he pressed a second time. The gun sounded two loud pops. Cain didn't miss, not at this range, and not in these relatively benign conditions. It was almost too easy. Both targets fell, the carrycot jerked from Parker's hand, tumbling to the ground, spilling the contents onto the tarmac. The baby began to wail. It was a piercing sound, unmistakable. Cain breathed in again, checked the targets through his sight. Both had been dead before they hit the ground, the heavy calibre bullet had torn into the centre mass of the torso, with massive life ending trauma to the heart and lungs. He breathed out, a heartbeat later his scope zeroed in on the baby. In the failing light the blood that welled from the child's head looked black, but the baby had suffered an injury in the fall onto the pavement. Cain bit down a curse that hissed between his clenched teeth. He didn't like surprises. SHIELD's standard issue baby LDM wasn't a sophisticated robot, certainly light years ahead of the child dolls pressed into service by less well equipped operations, but Cain had seen this LDM's specs, as included in his mission pack. The baby-LDM did a lot things real babies didn't, if needed, including an impressive self-destruct option, but this robot didn't bleed.

Cain wasted no time on this discrepancy, rather he let the anger pass. His paid for targets were down, and he returned his mind to the moment, to his escape, to leaving not evidence, physical or meta-physical of his presence. Cain cleared his brass, and collapsed the snipers rifle with practised efficiency. Moments later as the first screams from across the street rang out he was already on his motorcycle. David Cain massaged the throttle and gently pulled away from the scene, riding unnoticed into the falling darkness.