MX Sn4: Reassured Desperation

A few days after their little adventure with GSAgent Feldspar, Lexa came to a decision.

She had been debating with herself, unsure if her planned course of action was the right thing to do, but she eventually decided it was. She had seen how Eve had cared for Shalimar and Chris and Kevin, and she knew that the scientist leader of the West Coast branch of Mutant X was devoted to saving New Mutant lives, that had been all too obvious during her discussion with Eloy and Anne the other day at Eloy's Diner.

Lexa wasn't sure if Jesse would thank her for what she was about to do, but Jesse was also a big softie, and Lexa knew he cared about her, so it would work out. She was pretty sure it would, anyway. Nobody liked being a lab rat, but Jesse was noble, felt he had to save lives, even when he didn't like the actual process.

Eve had taken the morning shift on monitor duty, gaining the last vestiges of information she could from the nanite bugs she had planted at the GSA before they burned out. The whole team had been keeping an eye on GSA activity for the past few days, both on the computers and out in the field, to see what the repercussions of Feldspar's removal wound up being. Between the temporarily crippling blow to their systems Eve had delivered and the loss of their key agent regarding the monitoring and capture of New Mutants, GSA activity was at an all-time low. Lexa figured if that were the case Eve would be able to spare some time, so she sought Eve out when Jesse took over the monitors after lunch and Eve returned to her office, instead.

Thankful that Eve had left her office door open, assuming she would have closed it if she were truly busy or did not want to be disturbed, Lexa knocked on the side of the doorframe.

"Eve?" she asked, trying to sound casual but inwardly grimacing because she knew her voice had failed to conceal all of her nerves.

"Yes, Lexa?" Eve asked, looking up from her desk with an openly welcoming expression tinged with just the slightest hint of concern. Lexa mentally frowned in irritated disappointment with herself, knowing from Eve's expression that her voice or body language had given her away.

"You have a few minutes?" Lexa asked, nodding at the work Eve had apparently sat down to after lunch.

"Of course," Eve responded, pushing her chair back from her desk slightly and turning to gesture Lexa into the room. "Please, come in, close the door, sit."

Lexa smiled slightly bitterly as she complied, thankful Eve could read her discomfort and realized she certainly wanted the privacy of the closed door. She was also still irritated with herself, certain that in the past she had been much more capable of hiding her true feelings and maintaining her composure. Jesse would probably say that the fact she was losing that ability was a good thing, a sign of growth or something. Heck, Eve might too. Hell, they probably all would. Stop stalling, Lexa told herself.

"Maybe more than a few?" she asked nervously as she sat down, smiling worriedly at Eve and unsure what to do with her hands.

"Whatever you need, Lexa," Eve said determinedly, closing her eyes and tilting her head the slightest fraction to indicate the amount effort required to give Lexa the help she needed wasn't relevant. "I'll do what I can to help you, I think you know that now and that's why you're coming to me, but I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong." Eve smiled after making her declaration, softening the seriousness of the statement slightly and moreso with her next comment: "Well, I could, but scientific method from square one would involve a lot of testing because guesswork isn't allowed, so it'll be lots faster if you just tell me," she finished with a laughing smile.

"Well, we'd better skip the scientific method, then," Lexa replied, appreciating Eve's directness. She had a feeling Eve used some of her brilliance to be a decent judge of character and knew that the direct approach would work best with her. Lexa had already seen Eve be subtly cagey with Josh and dryly flippant with Chris, so she knew Eve could vary her approach as needed. It reassured Lexa that she was making the right decision and that Eve would understand.

"Since I don't have a lot of time," Lexa continued, glancing down to examine her fingernails in a dismissive gesture because she still didn't know what to do with her hands; then she steeled herself and looked up, meeting Eve's concerned eyes.

Eve blinked in surprise at the fear and worry in Lexa's exposed gaze.

"Because I'm dying," she finished.

Eve blinked in response, not sure where to begin. She frowned for the tiniest moment, deciding that she needed more information.

"Alright, well, for me to help you, I'm going to have to know what you're dying of," she replied, carefully folding her hands on the edge of her desk. Eve met Lexa's eyes steadily, trying to convey calm reassurance that a life-threatening situation did not automatically mean Lexa was going to die, not if there was anything Eve could do about it.

"Well, when the Dominion had me, they tested me to see if Adam had done the same thing to me as whatever he had done to Jesse, but he hadn't. They told me my expiry date was 'rapidly approaching', in their words, but that could have meant hours or it could have meant months, so I haven't said anything to the others. As a patient, I'm asking you not to," Lexa finished, glancing back up to Eve's eyes to make sure she was willing to keep her secret.

"Confidentiality isn't a problem," Eve said with a small frown. "I'm not technically a physician, but I'm qualified and I believe in the Hyppocratic Oath, so I'm perfectly willing to maintain doctor-patient confidentiality," she explained. "But what do you mean by 'expiry date'? The Dominion told you? About something concerning Adam's tests with Jesse?" she asked with a frown.

Lexa's already pallid face paled further.

"You. . .don't know?" she asked weakly, then cleared her throat, blinking at the same time to reset her compsure. "You don't know about the New Mutant expiry dates?"

Eve silently shook her head in response, her eyes narrowed, positive she wasn't going to like Lexa's explanation.

"Well, we just found out ourselves, actually," Lexa said, scrubbing at her jaw nervously with the heel of one fist. "Adam once said New Mutants' genetic codes are 'in a constant state of evolution,'" she quoted, frowning to wrinkle her face and overly squaring her shoulders as she spoke in a stuffy voice to mockingly mimic Adam. "Actually, he said it more than once, and I'm willing to bet he kept saying it; it was one of his favorite phrases."

"Yeah, I'm familiar with that one," Eve replied with a soft smile of memory. "I heard it back in the days after I left Genomex and before Adam did, before you heard it."

"Okay, well, I don't know how much of his original work Adam shared with you back then, and I suppose you wouldn't be able to have copies of it, or even if he shared his later discoveries with you..." Lexa trailed off, watching Eve's face hopefully, sighing in disappointment at her apologetic expression.

"Afraid not, sorry," Eve replied quietly, with a wince. "We couldn't risk Genomex discovering Adam's plans to leave by making illicit copies of any of our work, and Adam insisted I not stay in contact with him after he left, because he knew he'd be classified as a wanted outlaw. That changed a number of years later when our connection was somehow discovered anyway; I defeated a GSA assassin that broke into my home and disappeared, just like Adam had. A bit of work later and Haven was established, and I started preparing the way for the Mutant Underground to have a base of operations in LA and for another Mutant X team when it became needed, but that was really it. Adam would occasionally send me information on how to help certain types of New Mutants if their abilities were out of control, if their genetic sequences were growing unstable, that kind of thing, but that's all; we never had a grand exchange of subsequent research and discoveries. We hadn't actually spoken directly for almost three months when he disappeared," Eve finished.

"But that's what it is!" Lexa protested. "New Mutant genetic instability. It turns out that the same instability that puts our genes in that constant state of evolution doesn't just shorten our otherwise healthy lifespans, it predictably kills us. Predictably as in: can be calculated to the day, or nearly."

"That can't be..." Eve said in a tiny voice, her eyes round and pupils constricted nearly to the point of vanishing, her face pale beneath her California tan. "No," she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. "That can't be it. The Dominion was trying to trick you, coerce you into revealing whatever they were after," she said decisively, giving a firm nod as she met Lexa's gaze once more.

Lexa shook her head, slowly and sadly.

"It is," she said with an apologetic frown, sorry to have to dash Eve's hopes. "The Dominion was after Jesse because he had passed his expiry date. Jesse questioned Adam about it before he got captured, before they came to rescue us. He asked why Adam hadn't told him he knew when he would die, why Adam hadn't told him whatever he tried had worked; Adam asked Jesse if knowing would have made any difference and said that up until that moment he hadn't been sure it had. He didn't even know which treatment had done it, and before he could even think about trying to find out, the Dominion was attacking," Lexa finished.

Eve had closed her eyes as Lexa explained, her face contorted in emotional pain. She tried to restrain her emotions, the fact that everything she worked for, to help New Mutants and save their lives, help them work with their powers to lead fulfilling lives instead of being driven by them to extreme ends. . .all of it, all of it, was for nothing, if the people she helped were just going to expire at some point anyway... She couldn't help herself; Eve's shoulders began to quake as she silently cried, tears sliding out from beneath her closed eyelids and rolling down her face.

"Eve. . .I'm sorry," Lexa said hesitantly. "I just– –I'm sorry, I thought you knew...". Lexa trailed off, unsure what to do or to say.

"No," Eve said softly, shaking her head, her eyes still closed. "No," she repeated, her voice firming. She stopped shaking her head, and her eyes opened, locking into Lexa's with angry determination.

"No," she said again, in a voice that matched her eyes. "No, it's not your fault, Lexa. And I'm sorry; I should have made sure to get the full story from all of you; I let myself get distracted by the GSA's trap for us at Eloy's Diner. Of course you want to rescue Adam, but more than that, you need to," she said as she stood. "But if he cured Jesse, then maybe I can cure you with him as an example. Come on," Eve said in the same determined voice, striding out of her office and obviously expecting Lexa to follow, plucking her cellphone from the pocket of her labcoat as she went.

Eve punched a code into her cellphone as she entered the main area of Haven, Lexa following her in mild apprehension. A tone sounded over the PA system, and Eve spoke into her cellphone, using it as a portable mic connected to Haven's speaker system.

"Jesse, Medical Lab, NOW. Jamie or somebody cover the scanners; I don't care who!" she finished, thumbing her phone off and ignoring the resulting squall of static that surged over the speakers for a moment. There was a scramble of noise from a distance behind Eve and Lexa as they crossed from Eve's office to the medical lab, the squeak of the main workstation's desk chair as Jesse turned it abruptly to stare at Eve's retreating back, wondering what had happened. A half-moment later, as Eve reached the medical lab, she could hear Jamie's voice as he ran up to the main workstation from somewhere closer to Haven's front, probably the lounge area, urging Jesse to "Go, go, go!"

"What's going on?" Jesse asked cautiously as he stepped into the medical lab, wondering if he should be ready to step right back out again, and maybe quickly. He blinked in surprise when he noticed Lexa was there as well, then turned back to Eve, a questioning expression on his face.

"Why are you here?" Eve asked without preamble, folding her arms across her chest in grim determination. "The original team, here in California, I mean."

"What?" Jesse asked, blinking in astonished confusion. "Well, because the Dominion blew up Sanctuary, for crying out loud..." he replied, folding his own arms as he began to grow irritated.

"Right, and they did that why?" Eve prompted, adjusting her tone away from confrontational, but it wasn't getting very close to warm, either. Jesse blinked again as he realized he was looking at Eve's pure determination and nothing else.

"Because. . .they wanted Adam, who Bren and Shal had just brought back to Sanctuary from his hidden lab, because the lab wasn't secure anymore."

"Apparently neither was Sanctuary," Lexa couldn't help murmuring under her breath, despite the fact she wished she could turn invisible. . .without the tell-tale flare of her light-cloak.

"Which Brennan and Shalimar had to do without you and Lexa because the two of you had already been captured," Eve said.

"Right," Jesse confirmed, wondering where in the world the conversation was going.

"And the Dominion captured the two of you why?" Eve asked, raising an eyebrow. There wasn't even a hint of a smile in her face, but something about her expression suggested that answering the question would lead Jesse to the conclusion she wanted him to arrive at. Unfortunately for Jesse, he was entirely confused and misunderstood what Eve was doing completely.

"Eve. . .what's going on? What, do you think the Dominion brainwashed us, or something? We're going to tell them all about the West Coast division of Mutant X, sell you out or something, is that it?" Jesse demanded, stepping forward to put both hands on the medical examination table between him and Eve, leaning towards her aggressively as his temper rose and his face flushed in anger. Jesse was normally a laid back person, but the idea of being suspected of betraying his friends, friends who were closer than any family he'd ever had, that grabbed his last nerve and strained it to the breaking point.

"No, Jesse, I don't think that at all," Eve told him directly, her steady brown eyes never leaving his hardened blue ones, meeting them unflinchingly. "Just answer the question, and think about it, please," she asked of him.

Jesse blinked, still wondering what was going on, then blinked again as he thought about the answer to her question.

"They said..." Jesse turned to glance at Lexa, trying to remember what was said when he had first been dragged into the holding area in the Dominion's compound where she had been imprisoned. He had only been semi-conscious as Lexa spoke with her contact and that weasel-y little Head of the Dominion's Council, and he hadn't been too much better during the conversation after they had tortured him to make Lexa talk.

"They said I was just as good a sample dead as alive; they wanted to know how Adam fixed my genetic instability!" Jesse said in astonishment, blinking with the realization as he remembered and meeting Eve's eyes once more, in shock.

"Exactly," Eve nodded. "That's why you're here; that's the key to all of this. Of course we need to rescue Adam, if we can ever even figure out where to start looking for him, but even more importantly, we need to figure out what he did, how to stabilize New Mutants' genetic structures permanently, before their expiry dates."

Eve blinked, relaxing from her determined stance, and smiled at Jesse, her normal compassionately warm persona emerging again.

"Sorry to have startled you like that, Jesse," Eve apologized. "Lexa caught me by surprise, when she assumed I knew about the expiry dates." She looked up again, meeting Jesse's eyes once more. "I didn't. That was something Adam discovered about New Mutants later. I wasn't back in touch with him after he left Genomex until a few years later, when I had to disappear, too. We shared research then, but I doubt I ever got everything he had discovered, and I certainly never got any specifics on your shortened lifespans being calculable."

Eve shrugged, looking both frustrated and apologetic.

"I didn't mean to vent that shock at you. But it's. . .it's important to me, to help New Mutants. I know I didn't create you, I don't feel the responsibility for your lives that Adam does, that Paul Breedlove should have. . .but I did help make the breakthroughs that created New Mutants happen; I was Adam's assistant. I may not have known what was going on then, but I do now, and I still possess the ability to do something about it, the same ability that Genomex took advantage of, so I want. . .I need to help. I've just been told that all my efforts are only temporary fixes, band-aids on the greater problem. Until we rescue Adam –and we will, I'm not giving up, but we don't know when that will be– I'm the only hope any of you have. Well, any New Mutant besides you, Jesse."

Eve stared at Jesse for a brief moment, her wide eyes mutely begging him for help in her overwhelming task.

"You're the only resource I have, Jesse, the only guide to figuring out whatever Adam did, to be able to help your people. Our people, if you'll have me. Will you help me? Help me help every New Mutant I can, who don't have the same hope you do?"

"I– I..." Jesse blinked, stuttering in his confusion and surprise, then shook his head quickly and refocused. "Of course I will, Eve." He glanced at Lexa, who gave him a tiny smile of encouragement and –unknown to Jesse– thanks, then looked back at Eve, giving her a smile in turn as he nodded. "What do you need me to do?"

"Let me poke and prod you, mostly," Eve answered with an apologetic wince. "Draw some blood, have you pee in some cups, all the usual medical testing things. . .and a sample of the undifferentiated cells of your stomach lining would be really useful."

"Does that mean gastric surgery?" Jesse asked, wincing with dread in anticipation of the answer and obviously hoping Eve meant something else.

"Oh, no! Genetic sample, not a full tissue specimen!" Eve hurried to clarify. "It means a really uncomfortable tube down your throat for a while, but I can put you under anesthetic for it, if you want."

"And me?" Lexa asked, obviously uncomfortable.

"You too, I'm afraid," Eve answered, giving her a sympathetic smile. "Since you've only seen Adam once in recent years, we can assume your genetic code hasn't been stabilized."

"Yeah, we were a little busy removing her GSA neural implant at the time," Jesse said with distaste, folding his arms in unconscious protest at the unpleasant memory.

"Right. So, I can compare your DNA to Lexa's to see if I can figure out how yours has been modified. There's an intangible Molecular who's a regular at Eloy's Diner, Marcia; I'll see if I or maybe Anne can talk her into volunteering for testing. We don't have any combination intangible-impervious Moleculars in the area, but Marcia's genetic sequences ought to be similar enough for me to do at least some baseline comparisons, if not more," Eve finished.

"Well, I guess we should wash our hands," Jesse replied, then glanced at Lexa with a smirk. "..And maybe our inner elbows." Lexa rolled her eyes as she tried not to smirk in response, not bothering to unfold her arms as she followed Jesse and Eve to the washstation sink in the corner of the medical lab.

Hours later, Eve was frowning at her computer screen, her unruly hair drifting in random locks that framed her face and head. As long as they didn't get in her eyes, Eve ignored them, focused solely on the data analyses she was comparing.

She looked up when an oddly familiar voice that she couldn't quite place cleared its throat, startled because she hadn't heard the medical lab doors woosh open on their pneumatic track.

Eve blinked in surprise to see her own self leaning against the corner of her desk, lab-coated arms folded across her chest and one eyebrow raised skeptically.

"Hi, this is your conscience speaking," Eve's other self said, raising one hand from where it was tucked into her inner elbow to twiddle her fingers in a sarcastic wave at Eve. Eve blinked in surprise again, because she recognized the gesture as something she did herself, fairly often. "I'm here on behalf of your teammates to tell you they think you're working too hard. As much as they appreciate your efforts to do everything you can, they would also appreciate it if you accompanied them to dinner tonight, like you said you would."

"Ohmygod, is it Friday already?!" Eve sputtered, fumbling to uncover her watch from beneath the sleeve of her labcoat and check the day/date display on it, all without setting down the papers she was holding. Her desk was covered in various printouts she was comparing in turn to the displays of Jesse and Lexa's DNA tests, trying to sort out what Adam had done. She didn't want to set the papers she was holding down until she was done, because she had developed a methodical system of comparison and didn't want to lose her place.

"Geeze, it is; I didn't forget our dinner plans, I swear, I just..." Eve trailed off, not even paying attention to her doppelganger as she began scanning the surface of her desk, trying to figure out a good way to pause her work.

"..Just forgot what day of the week it was?" the other Eve asked, smirking as she straightened up from the desk's corner and uncrossed her arms, holding her hands out in offer to take Eve's two sheaves of paper and free up her hands to sort out some space. Eve sighed gratefully and passed the papers to her other self's hands, then squawked in protest when she mimed shuffling them together, grinning as she spread her hands apart and revealed the files still just as Eve had handed them to her.

"Don't do that!" Eve protested, glowering as she bent over to open a file cabinet and make space to temporarily store her work-in-progress so that she could return to it without disrupting the pattern she had developed. "And stop wearing my face; you know that's really disturbing."

"Well, Chris dared me to," Jamie smirked as the other Eve's features stretched and shifted into Chris', her medium-brown eyes growing slightly darker as her shoulders widened, and Eve's unruly dark blonde hair shortening into the spiky black tufts of Chris' as his goatee grew from his chin. Eve's hips slendered into Chris', her lithe musculature expanding into his stocky frame as Jamie's transformation completed.

Eve glanced down as Jamie-as-Chris smirked at her, seeing that he was wearing satiny black sweat pants that fairly closely resembled the high-threadcount yoga pants Eve was wearing. Jamie had completed his "Eve" disguise with a powder blue wifebeater, which on Eve's form looked similar to the scoop-neck women's tee shirt she was wearing under her labcoat, but on Chris' frame it just looked silly. Chris' features were too dark and his skin too pale for powder blue, and his frame made the sides of his chest peek out from between the edges of the wifebeater and the lapels of the labcoat. Eve snickered at the look, then took the two sheaves of paper from Jamie's hands.

"Okay, don't do Chris in 'my' clothes, either; that's just wrong," she laughed as she turned to put her temporary files away. "How did you get in here silently, anyway? I didn't hear the doors open."

"Alright, there's a Somebody getting into Somebody's Pants joke in there somewhere," Jamie muttered as she shifted into her normal female form, which could pull off the outfit a bit better. Jamie's eyes were just as brown as Chris' in either his male or female shape, but Jamie's hair was a few shades lighter, a dark brown instead of Chris' jet black. Between that and Jamie's warmer skin coloring, she could make a powder-blue top work, as long as she wasn't trying to do it with a guy's shoulders in a woman's labcoat. "And Jesse phased the wall so you wouldn't hear me coming," she finished with a grin.

Eve gave Jamie a mock glare, betrayed by her smiling eyes.

"You're being a brat. Between you, Chris, and Josh, I'm never going to volunteer to go out with you guys ever again after this."

"Awww," Jamie whined back, smirking in merriment. "But then who would we pick on? Owen gets grouchy, Josh gets grouchy if we pick on Kevin, Jesse and Brennan are too laid back, Shalimar's mean, and Lexa's scary."

"Shalimar is not mean," Eve protested.

"Well, she is if we pick on her," Jamie explained as Eve shut her filing cabinet and saved her work, setting the computer to standby.

"Oh, is that the secret?" Eve asked flipppantly as her computer shut down. "I should just be mean, and you guys'll stop picking on me? Maybe I'll ask Shalimar for lessons." Eve smiled wickedly at Jamie as she crossed the medical lab to the door. "And we both know damn well that Brennan isn't that laid back. You guys just don't want him to turn your escapades into a prank war with him on the opposite side."

"Well, duh," Jamie said sarcastically, eyes rolling as she followed Eve out of the medical lab. "I'm not stupid; Brennan plays dirty."

Somewhere else, Adam Kane was using every iota of his mental capacity to overcome the obstacles of his fate.

Just over a year ago, he had come to suspect that the financial backers of Mutant X were not as benevolent as they had at first appeared to be. He had faked his death to investigate, and some time after that, he had finally uncovered concrete evidence indicating the existence of the Dominion and verifying they were actually said backers. Months ago, he had recovered a copy of the Dominion's genetic research with Brennan and the rest of his team's help, but that had only led him to more questions, not the answers he had been seeking. Shortly after that he had put his life on the line to save Lexa's, knowing the Dominion was aware of his remaining among the living and stimying their efforts. He had since been attempting to discern where the corruption was within the Dominion, while evading their efforts to find and stop him.

And less than a week ago, he had been caught after all, when his whole world changed.
It had been one of the happiest moments of his life when it turned out one of the intruders in his secret lab was Jesse, alive and well two weeks past his expiry date. It was a pity that moment had to be followed by harsh words and suspicions from his former teammates, but he had asked for no less, couldn't blame them for it. What was important was that his work had been successful, not for its sake or the sake of his brilliance and ego, but because it meant New Mutants would no longer have to die before their proper time. He knew Jesse and the others would come to understand that, given time, and Jesse probably would first. But they didn't have that time, not when the Dominion already had Lexa and was after Jesse, not to mention Adam and his work.

When he found out why the Dominion was after his work had been the most surprising moment of Adam's life.
Said reason was currently sitting behind Adam on the far side of the well-appointed lab, watching with trembling anticipation as Adam completed the testing of yet another theory. The Creator still baffled Adam, an old man, ancient man. . .truly, a mad scientist, having been born in the 1800s and done who knew what to extend his life so far. He had known he wouldn't be able to complete his life's work even within his extended lifetime, so he had used his scientific skills to have himself cloned. Using the covert powers of the Dominion he had created and insinuated into the power structures of the government and the world, the Creator had guided every aspect of his clone's life, ensuring the boy grew up to be a genetecist, a pioneer. . .he had created Adam Kane. The Creator had created Adam Kane to follow in his footsteps, to continue his work, even arranging the creation of New Mutants through Genomex and the Breedlove Foundation and funding Mutant X to make Adam experience the things the Creator thought he needed to continue his work.

Adam had no idea how mad the Creator had to be to think that such things had been necessary, but he had to admit –even if only to himself– that the Creator's work was indeed exactly what Adam had been working toward, all his life. But Adam feared for what purposes such a madman would turn the work to, not to mention the potential uses the corruption he knew to exist within the Dominion might make of it. Biological warfare and genetically-engineered master races were only the tip of that potentially disasterous iceberg. Adam wanted to save lives, improve them, put an end to disease and suffering through judicious use of genetic research, but he had no doubt the Dominion would do so much more with it. So much worse.

So, he was carefully curbing his efforts, making sure to make just enough progress to ensure his kidnappers' pleasure but never enough to actually succeed, never enough to complete the project. He found the process intriguing on an intellectual level, since a man who had been doing the same for over a hundred years before Adam was even born was literally watching over his shoulder. (had he been born? there had to have been a surrogate mother to the cloned embryo, certainly? but no, don't dwell on the inconsequential past, don't let it distract or detract from present efforts in the attempt to ensure the future...)

Adam frowned as he placed the last holographic amino acid into the DNA double helix rotating before him, but inwardly he was smiling, knowing its placement was correct and knowing the sequence they were currently trying to complete would succeed. He had actually solved the problem in his head yesterday, but he knew he had to stall for time. Adam had been cleverly pacing his successes since the first time the Dominion had turned him loose in a lab under the Creator's watchful eye, knowing he was in for a challenge unlike any he had ever faced before, trying to fool someone who was potentially more brilliant than he was, someone who was definitely more experienced. Not a situation Adam had any prior experience with, actually. He had known he would have to bide for time, time for one of his handlers to make a mistake, develop a pattern or accidentally drop a clue he could use to facilitate his escape. That time had come just moments ago, and Adam was acting.

The computer automatically ran the testing cycle of its program once the last amino acid had been placed, the whole DNA strand glowing brightly and rotating rapidly as the computer simulated RNA synthesis and transcription. The single-helixed RNA strand spiraled into the projection, wrapping around the DNA and bonding successfully with every acid, the unified whole pulsing a brilliant emerald green as the simulated process completed successfully.

"Yes!" the Creator cried out excitedly in his rasping voice. "Yes! Yes! YES!" he shouted in rapture, his voice quavering horribly as he stood, staring in awe at the fruits of decades of his labors. The Creator's mouth gaped open in a merciless grin as he gazed at the visual representation of another hurdle passed, his body trembling fervently as his talon-like hands clutched at his chair's armrests.

Adam had turned to watch his "mentor", smiling in pleasure, though it was actually pleasure with the success of his subterfuge rather than with the success of the test. His frown of worry over the Creator's health wasn't nearly as falsified as he had been thinking it would need to be; the ancient old man had gone even paler than normal but with spots of bright color suffusing the hollows of his cadaverous cheekbones. And he had looked like a B-movie unconvincingly-dead corpse to begin with.

Moving to the Creator's side, Adam glanced at the security camera up in the corner before turning back to his genetic predecessor.

"Perhaps you should sit," Adam said with concern, hesitantly reaching to cup the ancient scientist's elbow with one palm. His concern was not at all faked, though in fact he did not care in the slightest about the mad scientist's well-being.

He had been a captive of the Creator and the Dominion for less than a week and had been allowed very little time to himself since his capture. Adam was given six hours to sleep each night, but he was worked to the point of exhausion every day, wearying himself further with his efforts to mentally keep ahead of the Creator and simultaneously keep his subterfuge concealed, so he dropped off to sleep practically the moment his head hit the pillow. Adam had not yet had the time to emotionally process his circumstances and the revelations that had preceeded them; he had been forced to immediately step his mind up into high gear to maintain any chance of ever freeing himself. He had not yet decided how he felt about the fact he was a clone, about the fact that the Creator was more responsible for the person he was than his so-called father, Michael Kane.

Adam wasn't sure what to think of himself being no more than an experiment, a madman's attempt to circumvent the inevitability of death, but he knew how he felt about said madman. He wasn't sure what the Creator's plans for the human genome were once he had successfully unlocked and mastered it, but he had heard the claims of "directing human evolution in a controlled, logical manner" more than once. Thanks to the Creator and the Dominion, Adam had already lived through the ruining of human lives through the attempt to play god with genetics; he wasn't interested in doing so again. He was concerned for the Creator's health, true. . .but only because he was certain the corrupt factions of the Dominion would execute him the moment his "patron" was deceased.

"A little help here, Please!?" Adam called out forcefully to the security camera in the corner, waving one desperate arm at it as he lowered the Creator back down into his chair with the other. "You need to relax," Adam cautioned the withered old man. "This is only one step; we still have a long ways to go." Adam frowned down at the ancient mad scientist who was still grinning maniacally even as he wheezed for breath, his body still spasming. "I can't do this without you," he finished, which was true enough. He couldn't do it if the rest of the Dominion assassinated him, after all.

"Please stand aside, Dr. Kane," a medical technician in a black labcoat said as he and two associates entered the lab, the word "please" being no more than a formality. Adam silently moved aside and began collecting his notes, unmindful of the politely phrased order. He had patiently, quietly refused to acknowledge any statement made to him that addressed him as "Adam", "Kane", "You", or even "Mr. Kane", smiling through the split lip a security officer gave him for his "insolence" when the Creator had screamed at the man, railing and practically frothing at the mouth as he ordered the man "punished". Adam wasn't sure what the punishment had consisted of and hoped it hadn't been too severe, but the exchange had given him valuable information. The Creator saw Adam as an extension of himself, saw any disrespect or abuse directed at Adam as being equivalent to doing the same to the Creator, and he had made sure everyone knew it. The staff now called Adam "Dr. Kane", and Adam knew he was safe as long as he stayed in the Creator's good graces. . .and the Creator stayed in command.

Adam moved aside after collecting his notes, standing near the door at one end of a counter running along the lab's wall as the medics fussed over the Creator. Adam watched them working, still disturbed by their black labcoats. Labcoats were meant to be white; it was like as if by wearing the opposite color they were supporting the idea that what they were doing was a travesty, a mockery of life as they helped extend the Creator's existence far, far beyond what it should by rights have been. Never moving his eyes from the medical technicians' work, watching just in case he might learn something useful, never knowing when information or an opportunity might present itself, he took advantage of the one that had presented itself just moments before.

The Creator had sent one of the lab assistants to fetch a device the Creator wanted for his next test, anticipating the latest one Adam was about to complete to fail like all those before it had. The assistant had laid her things down on the counter in a rush and hurried to do her master's bidding; her Treo had spun across the counter almost to its end while her clipboard clattered to the stainless steel countertop.

Adam laid his own clipboard on the end of the counter and began straightening and organizing his notes as he waited for the escort back to his quarters. He deftly palmed the closed Treo as he tapped a sheaf of papers against the countertop to align its edges, concealing the smartphone from the security camera's view. As he rotated the papers ninety degrees to align their long edges against the counter, he deposited his remarkably similar-looking graphing calculator in the Treo's former position, then clipped the papers to his clipboard and backed away from the end of the counter, waiting patiently in front of the door.

The security detail arrived to escort Adam just as the medical technicians were taking the Creator to their facilities for a fresh pseudo-blood transfusion. Adam waited patiently as the guards grudgingly waited for the flustered lab assistant to hastily grab her things and depart after arriving with the no longer needed equipment; she scooped up her files and clipboard and practically ran from the lab, her eyes passing over the calculator at the end of the countertop and dismissing it as not hers. She might wonder where her Treo was later, but the lab was secured until the Creator requested it be opened again; it would be opened for him and no one else, so Adam had no worry of her discovering her smartphone was actually unaccounted for before he could put it back.

Not quite two hours later, the entire Mutant X group was rolling into The Singing Fish, a sushi bar with a live band five nights out of six that was one of the California team's favorite hang-outs. The Singing Fish had an open mic night for both bands and singers on the sixth night (or technically third since that was Thursday nights), and Karaoke With The Band on Fridays. Eve had left instructions with Eloy at the diner to call if there was an emergency, and Anne had all of the Californians' cell numbers as well.

"So. . .it's a karaoke sushi bar..." Shalimar questioned as she hopped out of Owen's raised Jeep, giving The Singing Fish an odd expression as she considered the concept.

"It's Awesome!" Jamie enthused while climbing out of the back of Owen's big black Jeep, literally bouncing after jumping down to the ground. "It's only on Friday nights, but it's not just karaoke; it, like, displays the music for the band to play, so it's a live performance that people sing to! And the band's really good; they can play darn near anything."

"Oh yeah, because that won't intimidate nervous people from trying," Lexa said sarcastically as she chuckled, then smiled at Owen as he gave her a hand down from his lifted vehicle.

"Well, sure, lots of people are nervous about singing karaoke, but those are the ones who usually never end up doing it anyway," Owen said as he shut the door. "The band's really good at welcoming people, making 'em feel comfortable and get into the spirit of things," he finished as Chris parked Eve's cherry-red PT Cruiser nose to nose with Owen's raised Jeep and Josh pulled his midnight-blue Sunfire into the open space two spots over.

"Well, I'll take your word on that, because I'm definitely one of those 'nevers'," Lexa said with a smirk, shaking her head as Brennan and Jesse climbed out of the Cruiser along with Eve and Chris.

"Awwww, you don't sing?" Chris asked with a grin. "Even with the built-in light show?" he laughed, refering to their first conversation, after he had accidentally slammed her into Haven's blast doors when he thought she was an intruder.

"Nope," she answered as Josh and Kevin joined them, the blare of Josh's stereo coming from the Sunfire's open sunroof finally shutting off when he opened his door. "I couldn't carry a tune if it was superglued to my hands, much less in a bucket."

"Me neither," Owen grinned. "I can carry a couple hundred pounds over my head, no problem, but a tune? Not so much, even if the band does make it fun."

"Aww, not even with all the extra workouts lately?" Josh laughed. "Dude, you get any bigger, and we're gonna have to widen the doors in Haven!"

Owen curled his right arm, frowning down at the impressive bulge of his sleeveless biceps, then glanced up at Josh without raising his head, his lower lip extruding in an exaggerated pout as he met Josh's eyes. Josh laughed heartily, tossing his head back, which was exactly what Owen had wanted him to do, uncurling his arm in the blink of an eye to snap out a punch at Josh's head. Either hearing the blow coming or feeling the rush of air displaced by Owen's incoming fist, Josh twitched his head to one side, evading Owen's fist so narrowly it practically vanished in Josh's shoulder blade-length hair as it streamed out behind the motion of his head, even with an elastic band restraining some of it in a bushido half-knot at the back of his head.

Josh slapped Owen's forearm aside as he continued dodging the other direction, propelling Owen's hand free before Owen could open his fist and grab hold of Josh's hair instead. Grinning, Josh snapped a kick at Owen's knee as he turned to face Owen fully; Owen raised his knee and bent his foot back to carry his shin out of the path of Josh's foot. He uncurled his leg into a kick of his own at Josh, and with the greater length of Owen's leg, Josh was forced to jump backward a step to evade it. Just as Josh ducked back in to throw a punch-elbow combination, Eve raised her voice.

"Boys, Boys! Behave; we're here to entertain our new friends tonight, show them the sights. They can see the sight of you two flinging testosterone around anytime," she chastized them with laughter in her voice, smiling as she motioned for everyone to go in.

"Mmm, Flying Testosterone," Josh murmured as he moved back to Kevin's side, sliding an arm across Kevin's lower back and tugging the sides of their hips together as he shook his head to make his hair fall back into place.

"Shouldn't that be flung testosterone?" Kevin asked, putting his arm across Josh's shoulders as they followed Jamie, Owen, and Lexa across the parking lot, the rest of the group following behind them.

"Hung testosterone?" Josh questioned, smirking as he pretended to mis-hear Kevin's question.

"Yes, testosterone is what makes you hung," Kevin answered, rolling his eyes and smirking at the same time.

"Made you hung, anyway..." Josh replied as he nuzzled at the lightly-stubbled corner of Kevin's jaw. He used the motion of leaning in to extend his reach, sliding his hand around Kevin's hip and giving his groin an appreciative squeeze.

Kevin squawked, quietly, grabbing Josh's wrist and moving his hand as he blushed and Josh grinned.

"Did I not JUST say 'behave'?" Eve said from behind them, making not only Chris but Brennan and Jesse snicker as well. Josh smirked; he could hear the wry pursing of Eve's lips in her tone of voice, not even needing to turn around and see it.

"Yes, you did," Josh answered, raising his voice and tilting his head back a bit so the rest of the group behind him could hear his answer as they entered the noisy bar. "But did you really expect me to? I stopped with Owen; you should quit while you're ahead," he finished with a grin, turning to smile at Kevin when he shook his head in fond exasperation.

"Truer words..." Eve muttered as they followed the rest of the group up to the bar, waiting for two tables to be cleared so they could all be seated together. Chris snickered again, shaking his head at Josh's incorrigibility and the fact that Eve always seemed to be caught by surprise by it.

"So, what are you gonna sing tonight, Ms. Eve?" Chris asked with a smirk after the bartender gave Chris his Bloody Mary and Eve the strawberry margarita she had ordered.

Eve nearly inhaled the first sip of her drink.

"Me!?" she protested after sputtering her sip of margarita. "Sing? I don't think so..." she finished, her eyes open a bit too wide in feigned ignorance of what Chris was hinting at.

"Ohhhhh, no, you are singing tonight," Chris proclaimed, grinning widely at the matching smile of glee Jamie was giving him over Eve's shoulder. "You promised, last time."

"I did not!" Eve insisted weakly.

"You did tooooo..!" Jamie sang out behind her, still grinning, and Owen laughed as well.

"I was drunk!" she protested, bowing her head and hiding her face behind her wrist and the wide margarita glass it was holding. "I had worked through lunch and didn't have any of the appetizers; you guys insisted on the nasty calamari and fried cheese sticks!"

"Okay, I don't like fish-flavored-chewing-gum-with-a-fancy-Italian-name-for-squid, either, but how can anybody not appreciate deep-fried mozzerela?" Kevin asked with a skeptical shake of his head.

"Also Italian," Josh said under his breath, his voice bordering on a chuckle.

"Dude, you say, 'Mmm, Italian,' and I swear I'll smack you," Kevin muttered back at him.

"Mmmmmmm, English," Josh growled appreciatively as he leaned in toward Kevin's ear, practically mouthing at his neck.

"English?" Kevin asked in confusion, turning to frown at his boyfriend and almost bumping their noses together as he did.

"Dude, your last name's Tackleman, you're totally English!" Josh laughed as he sat back slightly. "Hell, 'tackle' first meant, like, fishing tackle, right? Maybe you should like calamari," he finished with a teasing grin.

"It could be from block-and-tackle," Kevin returned without missing a beat. "My uncle's an architect. Or maybe I come from a long line of rugby players."

Josh blinked, surprised Kevin had made what was effectively a football joke. He knew Kevin had been outed in high school by a cheerleader "friend" he had confided his attraction to the quarterback in. The football team had cornered Kevin in the pool after gym one day, beating him up before the quarterback had propelled Kevin into the pool with a punch to the stomach that had knocked the wind out of him. Kevin would have drowned if one of the slightly less hot-headed football players hadn't realized they were all about to be accessories to manslaughter and rescued him; the experience had given Kevin a paralyzing phobia of open bodies of water and drowning.

Kevin smirked back at Josh, having known exactly how his comment would catch his lover by surprise. Josh had walked right into it, frowning in confusion for a moment before blinking in surprise again as he realized Kevin had said it on purpose.

"Ass," Josh commented fondly, lightly backhanding Kevin's shoulder, both of them smiling at each other.

"So really, what are you singing?" Chris asked Eve again as Josh distracted Kevin into their own conversation. "You know the line's a mile long every Friday; we have to put our requests in now if we wanna sing, and you promised," he finished with a grin.

"You are just lucky I keep my promises to my friends," Eve told Chris with an only partially-amused glare. "Okay, fine, gimme the book," she demanded, waggling her fingers at Owen to pass one of the binders listing the available songs over. He did so with a grin, using the length of his enormous arms to reach past Jamie and pass the binder in front of Chris, who leaned back so Eve could reach it. She stuck her tongue out at him for his lack of chivalry in passing the book to her; Chris beamed innocently at the ceiling, then leaned in to read over Eve's shoulder and teasingly critique her potential selections or just suggest the hardest songs on the page, regardless of which song Eve was actually considering.

Over half an hour later, the group was greatly enjoying their evening. Drinks were had, karaoke requsts had been submitted, and the original Mutant X team was introduced to the pleasures of fresh-daily Californian sushi, except for Shalimar. She had protested the menu, flipping through it and despairing that all the meat served was not only fish but raw unless it was shellfish, until Jamie pointed out the rumaki on the appetizers page. Shalimar wrinkled her nose at the fact it was liver, but at least it was cooked liver, as well as bacon and a water chestnut. She had raised her eyebrows in surprise at the appetizing aroma of the platter the waiter had set down before her, nodding when Jamie grinned at her as she tasted the soy sauce and Pacific Rim seasonings.

Chris was entertaining Brennan and Jesse as well as Eve and Jamie by being obnoxious, making ribald comments with plausible deniability of their double entendres and beaming with complete innocence as his audience laughed. He was also carefully timing the delivery of his comments to get Eve to almost choke laughing on her food, making her slap a hand over her mouth as crumbs of onion blossom or stuffed potato skins went flying while Jesse and Brennan cracked up. Brennan laughed all the harder when Eve started smacking Chris' shoulder after the third time he made her spray food or drink laughing.

Owen was regaling Lexa with ever more-outlandish stories of drunken idiocy and other stupid things he had seen people do, including some of the much-less-than-legal hijinks the street gang he had been part of in his later teens got up to. Josh was making idly disparaging remarks about drunks and idiots in counterpoint to Owen's stories, both of them cracking up whenever Kevin would drop in a quiet yet devestating comment in response to either.

Lexa was enjoying her second vodka martini as Owen prattled on in a verbal one-upmanship with Josh, quietly listening to the rather good singing and very talented band, watching Kevin watch Josh debate and oratorically spar with Owen. She had seen Josh's concern and love for Kevin the night they had taken down Feldspar and in the day or two afterward while Kevin had recovered, but she hadn't seen the love so mutually returned other than in their mutual flirtatious banter and picking on one another. She smiled to see it now, in the gentle expression Kevin watched his boyfriend with; it was hiding behind his eyes but obvious if the observer knew what they were looking at. Kevin was a quietly determined person, his emotions no less intense just because he didn't wear them on his sleeve like a Feral. Lexa could appreciate that, nodding to herself as she moved her casual observation over one seat, listening to the band and Kevin singing along to the songs he knew under his breath as she watched Josh.

She frowned after watching Josh for a few moments, knowing that something had caught her attention but unable to put her finger on what. She glanced back at Kevin, who was still watching Josh and Owen try to upstage one another, a smirk lurking at the corners of his generous mouth. She turned back to Josh, wondering, then stilled as her eye was caught by the flexing of the tendons in Josh's wrist. He had his elbow on the table, turned to face Owen over the corner of the table as they debated, his hand raised slightly and holding his glass as he gesticulated hugely with his free hand while protesting something Owen said.

Lexa turned her attention back to the Ferals' brandishing of their machismo as she continued to watch Josh's wrist. After another few moments of listening, she realized Josh was tightening his grip on his glass, flexing his hand without moving it, every time Owen mentioned stupid consequences of drinking. She watched both Josh and Owen for another moment, making sure they were both focused on each other and wouldn't overhear her when she turned to quietly ask Kevin a question about Josh across the table.

Kevin's smirk had bloomed slightly; he was looking directly into Lexa's eyes when she turned to him.

Lexa blinked in surprise to find Kevin already looking at her and anticipating her question. She opened her mouth to ask Kevin how he did that, shut it as she contemplated whether it was because he was psychic or just observant and watching her because she was watching his boyfriend, then closed her eyes and shook her head, deciding it was irrelevant and asking her original question instead.

"What's Josh got against drinking?" she asked quietly, knowing from the look on Kevin's face that he knew she had noticed.

"Bad memories," Kevin murmured back, then his eyes left Lexa's and flicked to his side, his smirk returning in an apologetic expression as he looked at his lover.

Lexa looked to Kevin's right again, this time finding Josh looking directly at her, also smirking because he had still overheard her, while Owen went on in the background to Lexa's left.

"My dad was an alcoholic," Josh told her with a dismissive shrug. "He crashed the family car when I was ten and a half. I was the only survivor, only because I was Feral, raised from then 'til I was sixteen by my aunt and uncle," he explained. "So, yeah, bad memories. But just 'cause it makes me uncomfortable doesn't mean other people shouldn't enjoy it. As long as they stay responsible about it, don't get behind the wheel or anything, y'know?"

"So that's why you're drinking Diet Coke?" she asked with a frown.

Josh laughed.

"Well, I'm drinking soda because of that," he answered.

"He's drinking Diet Coke because of the Diet Coke Break commercial in the late 80s," Kevin laughed.

"Oh, with the shirtless construction worker? Yeah, he was hot," Lexa nodded. Josh laughed as Owen's ramble sputtered to a stop.

"Hey, it also tastes good! 'Just For The Taste Of It', that was the tag-line at one point!" Josh protested with a grin. "My aunt was pretty heavy, and my uncle was in the army, career officer, real military outlook, so he just decreed one day that there would be no regular soda in the house anymore. My wild-ass Feral self didn't need the sugar, anyway. Hyper enough as it was; I just got hooked on Diet," he explained.

"Your aunt was?" Lexa asked, questioning the past tense with a frown. "What, did the Diet Coke work that well for her? –God, don't tell me she died too..." Lexa trailed off, looking stricken and hoping she hadn't just put her foot in her mouth.

"No, at least, not that I know of," Josh said, smirking again, but there wasn't any humor in his eyes accompanying it. "Like I said, I lived with my aunt and uncle until I was sixteen. Then my uncle caught me kissing another guy and threw me out. I haven't seen any of my family since," he finished with a shrug, obviously pretending not to care, but the haunted look of his eyes suggested otherwise.

"Jesus..." Lexa whispered, then cleared her throat. "What. . .what did you do?"

"Got unofficially adopted by my best friend's radically cool parents until I finished high school, turned eighteen the following summer," Josh answered with a fond smile of reminiscence. "They're who first got me really into martial arts, actually. I decided that since I couldn't afford college I'd transplant myself to LA and be an actor, instead. I ended up waiting tables eighty hours a week and living in a shoebox roaches wouldn't deign to stay in for a few years, eventually got a job in stuntwork for a crap studio when I managed to prove I was idiotically fearless and damn near impossible to hurt." Josh glanced from Lexa to Kevin, smiling softly before turning back to her.

"Did that for a few more years, started to work my way up to something, then I met a certain telekinetic pre-med student." Josh grinned broadly at the memory, shrugging and gesturing to the rest of their group. "Not long after that, he calls me in the middle of the night, saying there were people on campus kidnapping students, special ones like us. Kev knew I could fight, asked me to help, and the next night he jerks out of his astral coma with a yell, freaking out that a group of mixed-nuts superfreaks like us were trying to rescue the missing students but got caught themselves. We managed to sneak in and free Jamie, Owen and Chris, almost getting ourselves killed in the process, and they got our newbie asses out of there in one piece, along with the other students. They took us to meet Eve, and she decided we were crazy enough to fit right in."

"Obviously, she was right," Kevin said, making Owen laugh and Josh grin even more broadly.

Jesse and Brennan were seated on either side of Shalimar and picking on her, taking turns stealing rumaki off her plate while the other one talked to her, leaving a cut of sushi or a seaweed roll behind instead, both of them laughing when she would turn back to her plate and protest. Catching on after the third time one of her rumaki disappeared when she turned her face away from her plate, Shalimar spun back and caught Brennan red handed the next time Jesse "innocently" asked her a question.

"Mulwray, you drop that piece of fish on my plate, your sparky butt better fry it first!" she snapped, jabbing an imperious finger under his nose. "And quit taking my bacon things! —JESSE!" she yelled as she turned back and saw Jesse pop the rumaki he had snitched while she was yelling at Brennan into his mouth, drawing out the toothpick that held the bacon wrapped around the water chestnut and liver from between his teeth. Jesse smiled at her as he dropped the toothpick back on her plate, not even feigning innocence.

"Omigod, fine!" she snarled bitterly, reaching over her plate to grab Brennan's with her left hand, picking it up as she grabbed her own plate with her right and slamming it down in front of Brennan with a huff.

"You're. . .trading plates with me because Jess didn't even leave you a rice-roll in return for the rumaki?" Brennan asked in confusion as Shalimar set his plate down where hers had been.

"No, I'm trading seats with you; move it," Shalimar growled as she stood, grabbing Brennan by the earlobe and tugging him out of his chair.

"Ow! Ow, okay, okay!" Brennan yelped as he leaped out of his seat to stumble into Shalimar's vacated one. She didn't let go of Brennan's ear until he sat down again, nor did she bother raising her hand high enough for him to straighten up as he moved over a seat. Shalimar glared down at her plate as she sat back down again; the boys had enough temerity to have put the toothpicks from their stolen rumaki back on her plate. Shalimar carefully moved her few remaining rumaki to the side of her plate farther away from Brennan, scowling at the lumps of raw fish and empty toothpicks scattered over the rest of it.

"Eve, may I have another order of roo-whatevers?" Shalimar asked with a put-upon sigh as she began stabbing barren toothpicks into the sushi on her plate, giving Jesse and Brennan looks that suggested she was envisioning various portions of their anatomy as she did so. "Jesse and Brennan would be happy to pay you back, since they ate half of this one," she finished, stabbing the last three toothpicks home and grinning malevolently at the boys as she did so.

"Sure," Eve answered with a smiling laugh, glancing at Chris and thinking about the way he kept making her spray and waste her own food. "We'll have a girl-talk session sometime soon, figure out where we can drag the boys to next time that we'll enjoy and they won't," she declared, smiling overly-sweetly at Chris as she did so.

"Hey, I didn't steal any rumaki!" Chris stopped singing along to the karaoke to hastily protest. He then dodged, grinning, when Eve threw an ice cube from her water glass at him. She smiled as she did so, then returned his grin when Chris straightened up again, flicking her fingers in his face to spray him with the water from her fingertips.

"Hey, Josh, you're up next," Jamie called from Kevin's other side, pointing at the Karaoke: Now Serving screen. It was displaying the current selection as "Stairway to Heaven, as made popular by Led Zepplin". Underneath that, in smaller print, the screen read: "Next Up: Josh, #DW01-BLY".

Josh leaned back to see past Jamie, Chris, and Eve's end of the two tables that had been pushed together for their group. He looked up at the screen and grinned when he saw what it said.

"That's our song; yay me next!" he said, turning back to share his grin with the table, then frowning and doing a double take at the screen. "Stairway to Heaven?" he asked with a scowl, pausing to actually listen to the band and current karaoke singer, who were just getting past the accoustic intro. "God, this song is how long? Geeze..." he muttered as he sat back in his seat, folding his arms across his chest and frowning. Owen laughed.

"Impatient much?" he snickered, smirking at Josh.

"Oh my God, listen to this guy..." Josh muttered, rolling his eyes at yet another mediocre singer mutilating a song that was a classic because it was difficult. Kevin smiled as he watched the band, who were grinning and enjoying playing a famous piece of music, putting their best into it and subtly downplaying the less talented singer.

"You know, you do our song half the time we come in here; the band's going to be bored, following up Stairway with your usual Bohemian," Kevin told Josh.

"At least I can sing..." Josh muttered, still wincing at the current singer who didn't have the voice control to hold the extended notes of Led Zepplin's most famous hit. Josh was trying to keep his head and feet from bobbing and tapping to the beat of the song, without much success; the band was simply too good.

"You said 'our', what song, why is it you guys'?" Jesse asked, looking across the table at Josh and Kevin with interest.

"You'll find out in a minute. . .or five," Josh answered with a grin, then shrugged and rolled his eyes at the current singer. "It's just a goofy, fun song that was playing when Kevin and I met. . .and it's kinda freakishly accurate –we really were both working as waiters at the time; I was in a lousy band with some of my stuntcrew co-workers– –it's just funny, really, good way to remember."

"Well, neither of us're so much into the vegan food," Kevin said with a laugh, his smile shining in his eyes. "And you just like singing it, you big softie," he said as he raised his glass, smirking as he sipped his drink.

"Ssshhh!" Josh hissed melodramatically, widening his eyes as he looked around and tried not to grin. "I'm a gay longhair already; the only street cred I've got is being a badass, don't go telling everybody I'm a softie!" Kevin rolled his eyes as he pulled his glass away from his mouth for just a second to comment.

"Yeah, 'cause nobody'd ever notice," he said before taking another sip of his drink, grinning around the glass when Josh harumphed and pouted at him.

Josh then cleared his expression and turned back to Owen, affecting disinterest in Kevin's opinion.

"Only obvious to you," he said dismissively, winking where Owen and Lexa could see but Kevin couldn't. "Soft, hard, you bring it all outta me," he finished, grinning when Owen sputtered on his own drink and Lexa and Kevin laughed.

"Yeah, but were you two complimenting each other's hair the day you met?" Jamie asked from Kevin's left, grinning.

"We did, actually," Kevin laughed. "That's why the song's so funny."

"Our song," Josh nodded. "Well, neither of us had a great car, actually; I've got Eve to thank for that, but..."

"You're doing that on purpose!" Shalimar called from the other end of their two tables that had been pushed together. "You're teasing my feline curiosity! What song?!" she demanded, glaring at Jamie as well as Josh and Kevin.

"And Eve's got this weird thing where she expects us cat-types to be patient..." Josh snickered. "You'll find out in a minute, geeze!" he called back to the opposite corner of their tables, laughing. He paused to listen to the cover of Stairway, making sure it was almost done before getting up to join the band. "Man, this guy's gonna murder the finish, make me look good as the follow-up," Josh said with a wince, doubting the singer's ability to hold the notes of the finale.

Josh was pleasantly surprised to discover he had been wrong as he got up and approached the band's corner of the bar; the singer covering Stairway to Heaven had apparently been saving himself for the finish. The band petered out their various instruments, the guy's voice carrying through the extended "..And She's Buyyyyy-ying the Stair-Way. . .to Hea-vennn..." much more adroitly than Josh had been prepared to give him credit for. Being a generally easy-going and good-natured crowd, the patrons of the Singing Fish applauded with some degree of enthusiasm, impressed with the finish regardless of what they may or may not have thought of the rest of the song.

"Hey, Guys, ready for me?" Josh asked the band as he stepped up onto their dais, grinning as he took the mic from its stand. The band's lead guitarist merely smiled back and shrugged; the band was professional, meaning they didn't comment on the various karaoke patrons who joined them, good, bad, regular, repetitive, or otherwise.

"Well, finally –wait, I don't know that song..." Shalimar muttered when the Now Serving screen flashed and changed to display "Now Playing: Bohemian Like You as made popular by the Dandy Warhols"; followed by "Next Up: Chris, #DF04-IW".

The band jumped into the song, starting off with the eight bar drum intro and providing the synchronous backup vocals effortlessly, making it obvious they had performed the song with Josh before. Now that she was paying direct attention, Shalimar was all the more impressed with the band; besides playing skillfully, they were very clearly quite good at working with the karaoke singers, as well. They had made the enthusiastic but less talented singer who had covered Stairway to Heaven sound decent while playing a great rendition of the song, and they were accomplishing the same for Josh through the opposite technique, playing the song and downplaying their own voices and contribution, letting Josh take the spotlight as a confident singer who knew his material.

Shalimar blinked and glanced down from the band at Chris where he sat across the table from her, singing along. Josh was a good enough singer to cover the lead line of the song with his low-baritone voice, still managing to pull off the wailing notes of the chorus' "Woo-hoo-hoo"s, but Chris' light tenor wasn't even straining as he sang along under his breath. He was actually perfectly in tune, apparently without effort.

"You're not using falsetto, like he is, are you?" Shalimar frowned at Chris. He grinned back and shook his head, his smiling eyes meeting hers as he continued to sing along. "That's your natural singing voice," Shalimar frowned with jealous disgust. "I'm not sure my voice even goes that high!" Chris laughed in response.

"Eve thinks I'm special," he said, batting his eyelashes at her and snickering when she frowned, her expression suggesting she was about to go for her water glass again. Chris reached across the corner of the table to cover her glass with his hand, just in case. "I grew up in poverty, pretty much starving half the time, probably part of why I'm short, but my parents aren't tall, either," he explained to Shalimar with a shrug. "Being a New Mutant means my internal organs are stronger and stuff, but I almost never ate or slept properly, making sure my younger sisters had enough food, stuff like that. So Eve's theory is I may not have grown up properly even though I'm a New Mutant, due to improper nutrition."

"Does that theory explain your maturity level, or lack thereof, too?" Jamie asked with a smirk. Chris replied by crossing his eyes and sticking his tongue out at Jamie, puffing up his cheeks at the same time. Jamie laughed, turning one hand palm up at Chris in a demonstrative gesture. "I rest my case."

"Really, though," Chris continued, "I'm a medical anomaly. My claim to fame is I'm the only New Mutant who wears contacts," he finished with a grin.

Shalimar blinked in shocked surprise, leaning in and peering at Chris' eyes across the table, her own shifting into their golden Feral mode as she looked for the edges of the contact lenses around his irises in the dim lighting of the bar.

"Wow," Shalimar said as she sat back again, blinking her eyes back to normal. "I'm sorry, that's just. . .sort of weird."

"Wait, Ruby wears glasses," Brennan interjected with a frown.

"Yeah, but the lenses are flat," Jesse said with a grin. "Ruby wears glasses because he runs a bookstore. He thinks it fits the image."

"Is that like being an 'Esper' sounding sexier than being a telepath?" Lexa asked with a frown. Jesse laughed.

"Probably. And now I've got that damn earworm in my head again. That's your fault," he told Brennan, backhanding Brennan's shoulder. "You should go sing it."

"Oh, Hell no; I am not going up there and singing 'I'm Too Sexy'," Brennan laughed.

"I wouldn't touch that one even if Josh were still here egging me on," Kevin said with a smirk, shaking his head as Chris got up to take Josh's place at the microphone.

"Pffft. Egg you on?" Owen asked sarcastically "He'd totally do it himself."

"I'd do what?" Josh asked as he took his seat again, looking from Owen to Kevin. "Geeze, you all don't even listen to me finish, just sit here and talk about me..."

"I was watching," Kevin said. "You shook your head during the 'casual, casual easy thing, is it is for me,' line, because you were singing it at me, and that's not how you feel," he finished with a smirk that spread into a grin.

Josh pursed his lips to one side in a half-assed smirk at his boyfriend.

"You were not," he accused, his smirk sliding into a smile as well. "I know because I was watching; you were watching everybody else, the conversation moved down the table."

"Yeah, well, that's still what you did," Kevin replied with another smirk. "It's what you always do; that's the other thing about always doing the same song."

"I don't always do that one," Josh frowned back. "There's a fair number of songs I'll karaoke to; I just do our song. . .frequently."

"Yeah, well, it's not a perfect match, anyway," Kevin smiled. "We're not a casual-easy thing for me, either."

"Shush, you two, I want to hear," Lexa demanded from the other side of the table as Josh returned Kevin's smile. Chris was singing David Foster's I Will, a much slower song than was generally selected for karaoke. Lexa was impressed that the song was even available in a karaoke version, much less one the band could play to. On further consideration she decided the band was just that good; they were probably only displaying the video feed from regular karaoke discs and playing the music themselves. The song was also light in the use of instruments, meaning it absolutely had to be carried by the skill of the singer.

Chris was pulling it off, flawlessly. He obviously sang from the heart, with a true love of what he was doing. His high tenor voice was a pure sound, capable of holding an extended note apparently without effort. He casually met the eyes of his companions at their table as well as randomly meeting the enraptured gazes of various patrons throughout the bar; Chris made his listeners feel as if he were singing to them alone, as if not even the band were there playing, nothing present but Chris and his song.

"When No One Else Will Be By Your Side . .Iiiii Will..."

Eve was smiling in appreciation of Chris' skill, then gasped when she happened to look up at the screen, which said she was next.

"He did that on purpose," she scowled. "Making me come up after him. I can't sing, and he's practically a professional."

"It's okay; nobody could follow that up," Kevin said as he passed by Eve's end of the table on the way to the bar with Josh. "On the other hand, if you can't sing, I'll look better up there after you, so thanks," he finished with a teasing smile and a sincere nod.

"Wait, you signed up? What song?" Josh asked as they moved away.

"You want to get some small bills in change at the bar," was Kevin's only answer, grinning as Josh frowned in confusion at him.

Chris finished his song as Josh and Kevin were returning to the table, the entire bar breaking into appreciative applause as he bowed, even a few whistles and enthusiastic shouts of approval coming from the more inebriated tables.

"Thanks, Everybody, you're too kind," Chris said into the microphone, smiling broadly in the high of a performance rush. "But that's a good thing, I hope you'll continue to be too kind to our next singer; she's a karaoke virgin, popping her cherry with you folks tonight," Chris finished with a wink, laughing maniacally as he stepped away from the mic and the cheers and laughter rang out across the bar. Eve had frozen in mid-stride up to the stage, her mouth dropping open in shock at Chris' statement.

"I. Am. Not!" she hissed at Chris as he sidled past her back toward their table, still grinning. "I've karaoke'd before!" she insisted, quietly. "Twice, even!"

"Oh, you remember those?" Chris asked with a wink. "I thought you were too drunk, or Jamie and I'd never have talked you into this again." Eve scowled back at him, her expression suggesting that they had only talked her into it because she had been drinking on an empty stomach last time. " 'Sides, the crowd'll love you as a newbie, roll with it!" Chris urged Eve, shooing her in the direction of the stage. "You'll sound great, I promise."

Eve moved up to the microphone stand, blushing and hoping the funky lighting concealed it, smiling gratefully in response to the welcoming nod the lead guitarist gave her. She closed her eyes as the band started playing the electronica intro to Nikka Costa's Everybody Got Their Something, swaying to the beat and snapping her eyes back open just in time to verify she was starting in sync as the first words lit up on the teleprompter.

Jesse and Brennan exchanged a glance, impressed by the song's mix of funk, soul, and R&B. Eve's vocal style wasn't even remotely similar to the slightly eubonic flavor Nikka Costa used for the song originally, but Eve put her own white-girl spin on it and used the vocal force and breath control she had developed otherwise where she could. The band proceeded to get more and more into the stylistically mixed song, providing Eve stronger and stronger backing to sing more forcefully to as the song built in intensity.

Josh, Kevin, and Jamie were all singing along quietly, but Chris merely watched Eve perform, smiling with pride but concentrating nonetheless. Owen looked up as he realized the song's bassline was reverberating at an impressively high level. Maybe ridiculously high; he could actually see the liquid of their drinks quite obviously rippling to the thud of the beat. He blinked in surprise and then frowned in consideration, wondering how on earth the speakers could be producing such astounding bass without reverb. . .then he blinked again in surprised realization as he noticed Shalimar staring at Chris.

"You're doing that, aren't you?" she asked in surprise, marveling at the balance of bass, treble, voice, and instruments, all with no distortion from reverb or even the slightest hint of feedback squeal. Chris didn't answer, didn't even turn his gaze away from Eve and the band to acknowledge Shalimar, but the quirk of his lips as he smirked deepened in her direction. Shalimar grinned, impressed with both Chris' skill with his abilities above and beyond his raw power as well as the lengths he was going to in the effort to give Eve a great karaoke experience.

Chris grinned as the song drew to a close, relaxing his abilities as he sang along with the last repetition of the finishing line: "There's a Time for Every Star." The Singing Fish erupted in applause, almost every patron rising to give Eve and the band a standing ovation as they applauded, cheers and whistles filling the air.

"Wow, uhm, Thank You!" Eve said into the mic, blushing as she panted and smiled. "Thank you so much, but really, it wasn't me," she said bashfully. "Let's hear it for the band; these guys are amazing!" she finished, putting the microphone back in its stand and stepping aside, holding one hand up to indicate the band with an approving gesture.

The crowd cheered all the more as Eve returned to her seat at the end of their tables, stepping past it to bend over and give Chris a hug before sitting down again.

"Thank You, you big ham," she told him with a smile, her face still flushed with the excitement of a well received performance.

"Yeah, thanks," Kevin said with a wry smile as he waited for the applause to peter out before heading up to the mic. "So much for an easy act to follow," he went on, giving Eve a wink as he frowned at Chris. "It's okay, though. The other guys can all back me up," he finished, nodding across the table at Brennan, Jesse, and Owen at the other end before turning to flash a grin at Josh.

"We can?" Brennan asked in confusion. "You don't mean singing, right?" he asked as Kevin turned to step away. "I mean, the band does that..."

"No..." Kevin called back over his shoulder. "..But You Can Dance..."

"..For Inspiration?" Josh said with a frown, automatically finishing the line and then wondering about the reference. "Wait, what're you..." he sputtered, twisting in his chair to look the other direction and read the display screen. "I thought you said I needed. . .oh, MG, gotcha. You're a brat!" he called out after Kevin, once he had figured out what Kevin was doing and that the dancing inspiration line was from a different song entirely. Kevin merely tossed another grin at Josh over his shoulder.

"Wait, we can dance backup? What the hell?" Owen asked, turning to Josh in confusion. Josh was grinning, carefully arranging a fan of bills in his left hand.

"Read the screen, Big Guy," Josh told him with a laugh. "If you remember this one from the mid-80s, you'll know you can start with a hug and a kiss, or join him for the second line to beg and plead," he finished with a gleeful smirk.

"Dude, I was born in 1980; I was five when this was on the charts!" Owen protested as the band started playing, a fairly obviously 80s synthesizer intro with a preppy-pop guitar riff.

"So was Kevin, and yet, he knows this song and you knew when it was released," Josh smirked as he stood. Jesse had laughed when he saw the screen and figured out what Kevin was doing; he and Brennan were already bobbing in place next to the band's dais as Kevin took the microphone and Josh approached, Jesse still giggling.

The band finally moved on from their extended intro once the bar patrons began laughing when they recognized the electronic-music-box jingle of the synthesizer, people who hadn't bothered to read the screen or couldn't see it eventually realizing it was the opening riff of Madonna's Material Girl. Kevin grinned out at his audience, strutting across the so-called "stage" in front of the band and hamming it up to the laughter and cat-calls of the bar's patrons.

"Some Boys Hug Me, Some Boys Kiss Me; I Think They're O-Ka-ay..."

Kevin sang as the song began, leaning over to sling his free arm across Jesse's shoulders in a one-armed hug as Brennan cracked up; he then leaned towards Brennan as the taller man stretched up to kiss the air near Kevin's jaw as Kevin turned away to sing the next line, sauntering back in front of the band.

"..But If They Don't Give Me Proper Credit, I Just Walk A-way-ay..."

Kevin sang as he turned his back on Brennan and Jesse, strutting to the other side of the dais. Josh had stepped up to that side with Owen and was grinning like a mad thing, wishing he could clap but carefully keeping the display he had arranged in his left hand out of sight instead.

"They Can Beg and They Can Plead but They Can't See the Li-ight..."

Kevin continued, waving a dismissive hand at Owen as he sank to one knee and sauntering right past Brennan and Jesse as they clasped their fists to their chests or raised their empty hands in imploring gestures, circling back toward Owen and Josh's side of the band once more.

"..'Cause the Boy With the Cold Hard Cash Is Al-ways Mister Ri-ight."

Kevin sang as Josh stepped up onto the band's dais, displaying his fan of dollar bills and stepping up close to Kevin's side, slinging his free arm across Kevin's shoulders as Kevin slipped his arm behind Josh's lower back and led him across the dais in front of the band, both of them grinning like lunatics. Back at their table, the rest of the team was howling laughter, Chris sticking both his index fingers in his mouth to loose a trilling whistle of approval as Josh separated from Kevin at the other end of the dais, pocketing his cash but remaining above Jesse, Brennan, and Owen as Kevin sang the chorus.

" 'Cause We Are Li-ving In a Material World, And I Am a Material Guy,"

he sang, winking out to the crowd and smiling as he changed the gender of the last word.

"You Kno-ow That We Are Li-ving In a Material World, And I Am a Material Guy."

The bar continued to crack up as Kevin and the boys hammed up the rest of the song, whistles and cat-calls coming from every table. Chris had managed to spark the entire building into enjoying the live performance of karaoke, even when he wasn't using his sonic abilities to enhance it.

Kevin copped a feel of Josh's ass as he sang the last verse, plucking the small wad of cash from Josh's rear pocket. Kevin held it up in display as he sang the last line before the final chorus:

"Experience Has Made Me Rich and Now They're After Me-ee."

As Kevin sang the closing chorus of the song the boys lined up in front of the band's dais, Owen on one end and Josh on the other. Realizing they were re-enacting Madonna's video, Kevin grinned between repetitions of the word "Material" and stepped up to Owen. Owen pivoted neatly in place at the end of the line, scooping Kevin off his feet and into Owen's arms, raising him up overhead as he turned to face the front again and Kevin kept singing, including Madonna's falsetto squeaks and gasps. The boys passed Kevin down their line as he sang the last of the song, the band continuing the monotonous repetition of "Liv-ving In a Material World" until the end.

"Thank You, and Goodnight!" Kevin laughed into the microphone as the cheers broke out anew, handing the microphone off to Brennan to replace in its stand on the stage as Josh lowered him from overhead. Kevin merely turned in Josh's arms, wrapping his legs around his lover's waist and his arms over the tops of Josh's shoulders as they both leaned in to kiss. They maintained that position all the way back to their seats, Josh following the looming presence of Owen's broad back with his peripheral vision.

"See, you guys were all worried about who follows who, looking bad after the previous act..." Chris said.

"I wasn't," Josh said with a smirk, ignoring the look Chris gave him for interrupting.

"..But really, it's whoever comes up after us who should be worried," Chris finished with a grin, tipping his head slightly to indicate the poor girl at the mic who was about to try to sing a five-part harmony Backstreet Boys song all by herself. Luckily for her, the band could really sing.

Not quite an hour later, Mutant X was leaving the Singing Fish, laughing their way out into the parking lot.

Eve smirked as Chris tried to help Jesse pour Brennan into the back seat of her PT Cruiser. Chris had ended up matching Brennan shot for shot after the karaoke sessions, and even though Chris had a ridiculously high alcohol tolerance level, Brennan was more than half a foot taller and had at least forty pounds on Chris. Shalimar had followed her boys over to Eve's car as they left, still poking fun at Brennan for being drunkashell and therefore less drunk than Chris, who was only reallydrunk. Shalimar continued snickering as she watched Chris and Jesse try to fit Brennan into the back seat, because Chris insisted that Brennan could obviously not out-drink him, since he couldn't take any more and Chris himself was not nearly as drunk. Consequently, Chris refused to relinquish his claim on the front seat, even if he would fit in the back a lot better than Brennan would, so he was trying to make Brennan fit before Eve lost her patience and made him take the back. Shalimar just thought the whole thing was hilarious; she was only a little shorter and lighter than Chris and had drunk nearly as much, but her Feral metabolism gave her an even higher tolerance.

Eve finally took pity on Jesse's suffering through Chris' attempts at assistance while Brennan protested he didn't need help from either of them, ordering Chris to get in and buckle up and giving Jesse a grin and a wink as he smiled gratefully in return. Shalimar rolled her eyes as Chris cheered and jumped in the front passenger seat, then chuckled more as she got under Brennan's other arm and helped Jesse manhandle Brennan into the backseat. Brennan protested being made to sit in the middle, since he was bigger than Shalimar and Jesse, even if you put them together! Shalimar laughed more as she closed the door; Jesse merely groaned and asked Eve to please leave, already.

Jamie clambered up into Owen's lifted Jeep, then turned back and offered Lexa a hand up. Lexa stood staring up at the absurdly high seats of Owen's Jeep, deciding she'd had at least one martini too many and that she didn't want to attempt climbing the Jeep's frame in her fashionable but less than rugged footwear.

"You," she said, pointing at Owen, "Are far too enormous, and so's your Jeep. Are you too drunk to drive?" she interrupted herself as something else occurred to her.

"What?" Owen asked with a blink of surprise. "Geeze, no. I'm Feral, huge, only drank a little and stopped half an hour ago."

"Okay, good," Lexa replied. "Then I can trust you to not only drive, but to pick me up. Put me in your Giant Monster Jeep, you enormous. . .giant."

Lexa frowned as Owen and Jamie laughed, but she put an arm over Owen's shoulders when he ducked, readily enough. Owen scooped a forearm under Lexa's knees, lifting her effortlessly as he straightened and holding her steady as she climbed from his arms into the Jeep. He carefully closed the passenger door behind her with a grin, then turned to walk around the front of his car and climb into it himself.

Owen halted before he'd gotten all the way around the grill of his Jeep, frowning at the three large men who approached Josh and Kevin as Eve's PT Cruiser backed out and pulled away. They were all over six feet tall as well as over 200 pounds, though the two on the ends looked like they had more beer-belly than brawn. The one in the middle was the tallest, aggressively muscled with his head shaved so the stubble on his scalp matched the stubble on his jaw. All three were swaggering aggressively, their body language screaming "trouble" loud and clear.

Josh had been leaning against the passenger door of his Sunfire, his arms folded across his chest and teasing Kevin as he forbade access to the car. Josh had turned away from Kevin, smirking as he continued to deny entry without the promise of bedroom favors they both knew were going to happen anyway, both of them just enjoying the game for its own sake. He had spotted the approaching men when he looked away from Kevin and recognized their intentions were nothing good from their body language. Josh straightened abruptly, his attention suddenly shifting off of Kevin even though Josh had already been looking away from him. Josh's arms remained folded across his chest, but Kevin saw them suddenly flex in tension, rather than simply resting against Josh's chest in the relaxed posture they had been in.

Kevin cut off his pseudo-protests that had been about to shift into carnal negotiations as Josh moved, following his lover's gaze. The three men finished their approach as Kevin turned, lining up shoulder to shoulder less than ten feet away.

"Problem, Boys?" Josh said aggressively, his tone making it clear that he thought there was one.

"Sure is," the stubbled man in the middle answered, equally assured there was trouble present and not at all bothered that he was the one bringing it. "Trouble's freaks like you two."

Josh barked out a surprised laugh.

"Freaks like us, huh?" he smirked, shifting his fingers to curl them into fists in his inner elbows, instead of just having his hands tucked into his folded arms. "You know, 'freak' is a pretty offensive term, but we actually qualify a few different ways, depending on your definition. Think you could clear that up?"

The guy frowned, angrily.

"I mean that you're a pair of queer fags, smartass," the muscular man growled.

"Queer fags, huh?" Josh repeated with a snort of amusement.

"Redundant," Kevin nodded.

"I dunno," Josh replied. "I'd hate to think we're queer; I always wanted to be a normal fag, didn't you?"

Kevin laughed; two of the three men frowned, the last one on the end didn't appear to get the joke.

"I don't think you two pretty boys get the part where we're gonna mess you up for being unnatural perverts!" the first man in the line declared, jabbing a declaratory finger at Kevin and Josh that made the flab under his triceps wiggle. Josh glared back, beginning to let his irritation show, then shifted his stance to ask a question, trying to make a point for reasonability's sake instead of just jumping into a fight. He knew Kevin would appreciate the effort at least, even if Josh would personally prefer to have simply handed the assholes their asses and been done with it.

"You're left handed, aren't you?" Josh asked the first man, raising an expectant eyebrow as he suppressed the urge to snarl.

"What?" the man blinked in surprise. "How the hell'd you know that?"

"Because you pointed with that hand, and your right's empty," Josh said, rolling his eyes. "Not to mention your keys are clipped to your left hip's belt-loop, instead of the right. So tell me, did you choose to be left handed?"

"What the fuck?" the guy snarled. "Of course not; what the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

"Well, we didn't choose to be gay, anymore than you chose to be left handed. Sure, it's not as common as being straight is, but that doesn't make it unnatural, or a perversion, for that matter. No more than being left handed is, even if it's not as common as being right handed," Josh explained.

"Oh, bullshit," the man growled. "You say shit like that about me again and I'm gonna put you in the hospital, you fucking faggot!" the heavy-jowled man spat, furiously.

Josh's jaw dropped.

"I didn't say anything about you, you moron!" Josh snarled, glaring at the man for sheer idiocy.

"Hey!" Kevin interjected before Josh could go any farther. "Take it easy, man. You let them make you angry, you're giving them what they want. Letting them ruin your day."

"I could smash all three of their faces in without even trying, that'd make my day..." Josh growled, glaring at the three men even as they returned his angry gaze.

"That's still letting them win, even if they regret it," Kevin countered quietly, also keeping his eyes on the three men.

Josh paused for a moment to consider that reasoning, then snarled in frustration. Josh hated letting anyone win, a fact that Kevin knew all too well. It was just as well that Josh didn't like sports much; he'd never be able to restrain himself from using his Feral abilities to defeat the other players.

"So don't let 'em," Kevin continued, smirking slightly as Josh turned to look at him. "Keep enjoying your night, on your terms," Kevin finished, allowing his smirk to spread into a smile as he moved closer to Josh. Josh smirked back, his own mouth spreading into a grin because his pleasure with Kevin's repsonse was too much for a mere smirk to express.

Kevin leaned into Josh as he stepped up to him, sliding his arms under Josh's, fitting his biceps into the hollows between Josh's chest and underarms as he slid his forearms up Josh's back and wove his fingers into Josh's hair. Josh wrapped his own arms across Kevin's broad shoulders and narrow waist, pulling him in close as Kevin steered Josh's head into their kiss. Their lips met, pressing together as Josh tipped his head to slide his nose past Kevin's, keeping the corner of a slitted eye on the three men even as Kevin closed his own.

Kevin mouthed his way up Josh's jaw, before the use of tongue in their kiss got too obscene. Once he got near Josh's ear, at the corner of his jaw, Kevin whispered: "Lift me."

Josh made a quiet, inquisitive noise deep in his throat.

"Pick me up, maybe one-armed, overhead," Kevin murmured softly. "Convince these assholes they don't want to get in a fight with us, without making it an insult their pride won't let them ignore," he finished.

Josh flexed his abdomen and shoulders, surging away from his car as he straightened and took a step forward, sliding his hands down to Kevin's ass even as Kevin hopped into the air and wrapped his legs around Josh's waist, just as they had done after Kevin's karaoke performance. Their lips parted with a wet smack as Josh shifted his hands under Kevin's rear to lift him higher, shifting his hands to put one directly under Kevin's rear and taking his hand with the other, holding Kevin steady as he raised him up to the full extent of Josh's reach.

Josh raised one expectant eyebrow at the glaring men, then casually and slowly raised his knee to his chest. He equally slowly unbent his knee, straightening his leg vertically in an impressive display of flexibility that resulted in his toes just touching Kevin's ass. Kevin gave a small start of surprise, reaching behind himself with his free hand to grab Josh's toes, then released Josh's other hand and held himself steady that way instead.

Using his newly freed hand, Josh flipped off the three staring men, leaning his head to one side to maintain eye contact with the muscular bruiser in the middle past his raised leg.

"He weighs 160 pounds. I can lift him with one arm. That means I can bench a good chunk over 300 pounds, so I can probably throw any one of you sacks of crap, even if not very far. And he may not be as strong as I am, but my guy here can actually hit harder, so I really don't think you wanna piss us off."

The look in Josh's eye suggested that he perhaps actually would like the men to piss him off, but he was faking it. He had meant he would like them to pick a fight, but then it occurred to Josh that he had suggested Kevin use his telekinetic punch, which he had not used since his collapse the other night. Josh certainly didn't want him to start now, in uncontrolled conditions with opponents present.

"And, they've got friends who are even bigger and stronger than they are," Owen said from where he had silently snuck up directly behind the three men. All three gasped in surprise and spun around, the stubble-headed spokesman in the middle stepping back when he discovered Owen was immediately in front of him as he turned around. Owen glared at the man as his arms shot out to the sides, fisting his enormous hands in the collars of the two men on either side of their spokesman, still within reach of Owen's giant armspan.

Owen curled his fists back over his biceps, planting the points of his elbows in the middle of the two men's chests. He raised his elbows up as he curled his fists back farther, raising his upper arms to be parallel to the ground and lifting the two ungainly men up off of it as he continued to glare at their buzz-headed friend.

"I can lift each of your fat-ass friends with one arm," Owen snarled into the gaping man's face as he shoved his arms wide, flinging the other two aside. They both hit the ground stumbling, tripping over their own feet and going down, only to scramble back up and run away. "You don't want to fight us, period."

The muscular man glanced to his sides as Owen snarled into his face, hoping his friends would get back to their feet and catch Owen off-guard so they would have a chance at all three of them taking him down before the two fags behind them could come help their friend, then all three of them could teach the two perverts a lesson. He frowned in frustrated anger as his companions ran away, glancing back at Owen's angry face before turning away to follow his partners back inside.

"Asshole," Owen snarled under his breath after him.

"Complete and utter," Josh commented as he approached, still holding Kevin overhead.

"Put Me Down!" Kevin demanded, but Josh just ignored him for the moment, other than flexing his hand slightly to paw at Kevin's ass just the tiniest bit without moving his fingers. His arm was getting bloodthirsty, but he certainly wasn't going to let Kevin know that.

"See, I got a boyfriend to go and try to be a better person for, and you got to do the fun part," Josh pouted.

"Yeah, well, I don't want a boyfriend, so I guess I get the fun part, hah-ha," Owen grinned back at Josh. Josh merely frowned back at him, unimpressed by Owen flaunting his ability to have his violent Feral fun without repercussion.

"Hey, I can see the top of your Jeep from up here," Kevin commented idly to Owen, his arms folded across his chest to demonstrate his boredom once he secured his position by hooking his ankles around Josh's biceps. He was also demonstrating his ability to ignore Josh back, since Josh wasn't putting him down. He figured Josh's arm would get tired soon enough, so he could wait. It was either that, or fart on Josh's hand, which would be sort of hilarious, but Jamie was in the Jeep and Chris wasn't there to appreciate it, so Kevin decided not to. That, and the fact that Josh would probably drop him if he did, which might not be fun.

Josh smirked as the perfect counter to Owen's claim of not wanting a boyfriend and monopolizing the fun part occurred to him.

" 'Sokay," Josh said as he reached up with his free hand and unhooked Kevin's ankles, then reached up farther to quickly take Kevin's hand before he lost his balance. "I do want the boyfriend, so I can be the better person," Josh smirked, his eyes smiling as he lowered Kevin back down to the ground, Kevin turning to face Josh as he went and sliding down against him into an embrace.

Kevin wrapped his arms around Josh as he landed, sliding his hands down Josh's back to slip them into the rear pockets of Josh's jeans and pull him into a kiss. Josh wrapped his own arms around Kevin, one forearm over his back and reaching up to slide his fingers into the longish hair at Kevin's nape, the other going across the small of his back to cup one side of Kevin's ass as they kissed.

They kissed for a long moment, small wet sounds coming from between their mouths as lips and tongues met and explored one another. Eventually Kevin slid his hands back up out of Josh's pockets, bringing his forearms up to wrap around Josh's shoulders and lower back, holding him close even as Josh moved his own hand up to do the same. Kevin then mirrored the placement of Josh's hands, sliding his higher hand up to the back of Josh's neck, cradling his head as Kevin turned to slide the side of his face past Josh's as he ended their kiss, their stubble rasping together as Kevin moved. He bowed his head the slightest bit forward as he pressed their cheeks together, turning his head for the briefest moment to press a tender kiss beneath the corner of Josh's jaw before turning back again, basking in the moment and proud that Josh strove against his baser instincts just because Kevin wanted him to, just to please Kevin because he loved him. Kevin loved Josh so much in return for that, he thought he could burst, he could feel it...

Josh leaned back to meet Kevin's eyes, knowing the joy he would see in them, because he could feel it shining in his own. Kevin brought out the best in him, always had, and Josh knew he could never be grateful enough for that. He had been on the fast track to self-ruin the day they had met, the day Kevin had turned his life around. He had greeted Kevin like any other patron of the restaurant, maybe a touch more warmly because Kevin was certainly attractive, but inside Josh had just been full of bile. Jealous of a pretty boy who probably never had a problem getting a date, clearly gay but probably never be interested in Josh, just his luck, probably never had to worry about scaring people off because he was a freak of nature, probably...

Kevin had complimented Josh's hair, then asked for his honest opinion on what would be good for lunch. Josh had sputtered wordlessly –which was a rare condition for him– for a moment, then grinned back when Kevin had laughed, then said no, really, he really liked Josh's kung-fu hair, and what was good for lunch?

Josh had smiled back, the first honest smile he'd had in he couldn't remember how long, and complimented Kevin's hair in return. He had admitted he liked being a longhair but didn't really like long hair on other guys, but Kevin's floppy bangs and just-long-enough-to-reach-his-collar hair looked really good on him, without being too long. And the bruschetta and sausage paella were really good that day and ready to serve, he was just in time. Josh had immediately served Kevin and let the pissy Italian Business Man at Table 3 wait for the next batch, almost ten minutes later.

Meeting Kevin's eyes as he leaned back, Josh mentally let go of the past and focused on the present, on the amazing man in his arms that he loved so much, that amazingly enough loved him back. He saw that same love and joy in Kevin's eyes, and Josh couldn't help the broad smile that spread across his face in response, nor did he want to.

Kevin smiled back, trying to remember if there had ever been a time he had been so happy, silly to be so happy when they had just almost had an ugly situation, but he was, so happy, a great night, riding high on emotions, so high on freaking joy endorphins those asshats hadn't even brought him down for a moment. He felt like . .like the freakin' Grinch at the end of the story, his heart swelling three sizes, swear to God...

Josh's beaming eyes flared in alarm as Kevin slumped in his arms, Kevin's arms sliding slackly off Josh's back and his knees buckling, Josh's suddenly clenching arms already being around Kevin the only reason he hadn't collapsed to the pavement.

"Kevin? Kevin!" Josh cried in alarm, jiggling his semi-conscious lover in his arms and unsure what else to do, how to help when he was already there, already had Kevin in his arms. He dropped halfway into a crouch as he leaned Kevin back to support the weight of Kevin's upper body with his left arm, swooping his right hand from the back of Kevin's neck to under his knees from his right side, straightening up to carry Kevin's sagging form in his arms.

"Kev? Josh, what happened?" Owen asked in alarm, hurrying back over to them after having turned back to his Jeep to give them their privacy once their groping hug had turned into something obviously more meaningful. Jamie opened the driver's door of Owen's Jeep, having elastically squeezed between the seat and the wall after seeing Kevin collapse.

"Should I call Eve? She can't be far, could come right back..." Jamie called over to them doubtfully, worried.

"No," Owen called back over his shoulder, having placed one broad hand on Kevin's chest and feeling his heart thundering away at far too rapid a pace, even if he had just been getting a rush, sexual or otherwise. "She doesn't have anything on her to help. Just tell her to get back to Haven as fast as she can, prep the med lab; we'll be there as soon as possible."

"Gnuhr..." Kevin mumbled in Josh's arms. "Wha' h'pn a me?"

"Kevin?" Josh asked, still bordering on panic. "Ogod, Kev, talk to me, what's wrong?"

"Buh," Kevin said clearly, squeezing his eyes shut tight for a moment, his face scrunching up with the effort before they snapped open again, immediately homing in on Josh's. "Was weird. . .world went all 3-D movie on me, double images in rainbow colors, vertigo like whoa..." Kevin squeezed his eyes shut again, but not in a focusing effort. "..I think I'm gonna be sick..."

Josh dropped Kevin's feet to the ground, bending over double and sliding his left hand around to Kevin's chest as he moved, neatly rolling Kevin over to face the ground as he finished crouching, Kevin's flailing arms bracing against the blacktop once they could reach it. Josh rubbed Kevin's back with his free hand as Kevin retched, his beers and his dinner splashing to the pavement.

Owen sprinted to his Jeep and took the water bottle Lexa was already holding out the door for him with a nod of thanks as Jamie continued to inform Eve of the situation. He twisted the cap off as he dashed back, getting the passenger door to the Sunfire after Josh unlocked it with his keyfob easily enough but was reluctant to put Kevin even halfway down and discomfort him to free a hand to open the door with. Josh murmured his thanks to Owen as he opened the door, leaning in to gently place Kevin in the passenger seat and quickly reclining it back as far as it would go before giving him the water Owen passed over.

Kevin swished his mouth out and sat back up, pushing Josh out of the way to spit his mouthful out onto the blacktop. He laid back in the seat again and drank a few swallows from the water bottle, then held its lower half up to his forehead. Josh's hand immediately shot out, pressing its back to Kevin's temple and the side of his forehead as Josh frowned in concern.

"That's not cold; it was in the car. . .are you feverish?" he asked urgently, frowning more when Kevin's forehead felt warm but not particularly so, no more than might be expected after vomiting in a warm California evening.

" 'Scold enough," Kevin muttered at the same time Owen said: "I've got an icepack in the cooler in my car."

" 'Mokay, or mostly," Kevin sighed as Josh continued to fret over him. "I mean, I feel like crap, and I have no idea what happened, so that's a little scary, but it's nothing like the other night, okay? –I'm not dying, Josh."

Josh took a deep breath and bowed his head where he was crouched in the passenger door of his car, releasing the breath slowly as held Kevin's left hand in both of his own, his thumb stroking back and forth over Kevin's knuckles.

"How's his pulse?" Owen interrupted, wanting to cut Josh off before he got on an overprotective streak. Josh blinked and craned his neck to peer back over his shoulder and up at Owen where he stood on the outside of the car's open door. Owen shrugged at the confused look Josh was giving him. "It was pretty damn high a minute ago when I felt his chest."

Josh turned back to Kevin and slid one hand up to touch Kevin's wrist, his eyes going distant as he focused on Kevin's pulse.

"Rapid, but not awful," Josh said back to Owen, looking up into Kevin's eyes. "How are you feeling now? Is it passing?"

Kevin shrugged in response.

"Like I said, I feel like crap, but it's not like a minute ago when I puked. And it's not like a migraine from overusing my TK or going astral too long, either. I've got a headache, but it's different. . .and that might just be from puking. The swirly vision and vertigo only lasted a second; I just feel like I was hit by a truck, now."

"Okay, Mr. Med Student, you can do better than that," Jamie said from Josh's other side, reaching into the car to offer Kevin the phone. "Eve wants details."

"Hi, Eve," Kevin said into Jamie's phone after taking it. "I'm mostly okay, but I have no idea what happened. Yeah, I collapsed, didn't lose consciousness, but damn close, vomited in reaction a minute later. No, reaction to whatever knocked me off my feet. I dunno what it was; it was like. . .my perceptions went skewed. It honestly looked like suddenly the world was a 3-D movie and I wasn't wearing the glasses; everything was double-imaged, and one set of images was all weird colors, rainbow pastels, way brighter than nighttime outdoors, you know? And intense vertigo, that's what actually made me fall; the altered consciousness was trying to deal with my vision going so strange. Yeah, it was the combination that made me sick, an after-effect, after the wonky-vision had stopped. It only lasted a second, the vertigo hit at the same time; I started to fall because the vertigo was strong and I couldn't make sense of any visual cues to orient myself because of the rainbow vision."

Kevin's eyes cut to the side to meet Josh's; Josh was both looking on in concern and trying to suppress the inappropriate smirk that wanted to form on his face because his gay boyfriend had just confessed to suffering from rainbow-vision. If the whole situation turned out to be some bad sushi or something, Josh was going to sue the Singing Fish and tease Kevin endlessly afterward.

Josh returned his direct attention back to Kevin as Kevin continued to meet his eyes, a soft blush forming on Kevin's cheeks.

"Uhmm, actually, I didn't fall because I was already in Josh's arms when it hit me," he explained into the phone, shifting uncomfortably in the seat just slightly. He took the phone away from his ear and scowled a frown at it before bringing it back. "What do you think we were doing in each other's arms, Eve?" Kevin asked exasperatedly. Kevin met Josh's eyes again as his blush grew more intense; Josh smiled sympathetically and pet Kevin's hand. He wasn't nearly as embarrassed about public displays of affection as Kevin was.

"Oh, fine," Kevin muttered as Eve finished her technical explanation of needing details for her medical analysis. "We had actually just been accosted by three homophobic assholes in the parking lot... No, no there was no fight or anything, tensions didn't even get that high." Kevin barked out a small, surprised laugh at Eve's response. "Okay, maybe Josh's tensions got that high, but I talked him out of violence. I did too, do you want this explanation or not? Okay, so then I suggested we show them they didn't want to get in a fight with us but without making it a testosterone contest their pride would make them fight us over anyway. We were kissing, just to prove we had the right, then Josh picked me up, held me up overhead."

Kevin paused and listened to Eve momentarily, then grinned at Josh, who was squirming uncomfortably because he had heard Eve's question with his Feral hearing.

"Uhm, yeah, actually he did do it with one arm," Kevin answered, mouthing the word 'Sorry!' at Josh as they all heard Eve's squawk of protest coming from Jamie's cellphone.

"Heh, busted," Jamie snickered, then grinned at Owen, knowing what Kevin was going to say next.

"Well, then Owen surprised all three of them, had snuck up behind them, he picked up the two on the ends and threw them aside– —no, Eve, just, like, shoved them as he dropped them back to the ground; they just fell over. Owen didn't throw them across the parking lot or anything; we're not that stupid." Kevin gave his friends a wry frown as Eve informed him at length of how stupid it was to go displaying their abilities in public. He was just raising his hand to make Chatty Cathy motions when she got back to her point of asking him for details that had led to his collapse.

"Anyway, they ran off, we laughed about it, and. . .I was hugging Josh as he set me down bodily, then I kissed him, because I was glad he listened to me and didn't let it turn into a fight, even if we weren't in any danger." Kevin paused in his embarrassed fidgeting, listening as Eve said something at length to him. "Well, I– –I was just. . .happy. No, I was already happy, like, high-on-life just from tonight. Those three asshats didn't even put a dent in my mood, so I was all the more 'up' from Josh's response..." Kevin's face scrunched into a confused frown at Eve's next interruption. "You seriously think that matters?" he asked, glancing at Josh and seeing that Josh was just as confused by Eve's question and certainly more offended. His face settled into a disapproving frown as Eve explained herself.

"Well, I'd hold you to that promise of explanation, Eve, except that Josh looks like he's going to use you as a scratching post if you don't, so I'm not going to worry about it," he told Jamie's phone curtly. "Okay, fine, yes, I was really flying high as a kite when it happened. We had just been casually hugging after the scene with those guys, just, y'know, thankful it hadn't gotten ugly, and then it got. . .more intense. No, I mean emotionally. Just, what it meant to me that Josh held himself back just because I asked him to, and Josh felt the same, and we seriously kissed over it, and I'm just as seriously going to kick some ass if you ever bring this up, okay?" Kevin finished, scowling at Jamie and Owen and wishing Owen had decided to walk away when Kevin was talking about it, like he had when it had actually happened.

Kevin turned back to the phone and blinked.

"No, not you, Eve. I know you won't talk about it outside of a medical context; I was yelling at Owen and Jamie." He listened for just a second, then continued his explanation. "So yeah, we were, uhm, kissing heavily, but it was- -was emotional, not sexual. I can honestly say my physiological responses were only at the opening levels of arousal; we weren't up to thundering heartbeats or dilated pupils yet, other than because we're out here in a dark parking lot."

Kevin paused to listen, then glanced from Josh to Owen and frowned as he answered Eve's next question.

"Well, we kissed for a bit, like I said, it was just... It was just a good moment. I, um, pulled Josh into a closer embrace after, just thankful for that moment, you know?" Kevin rolled his eyes gratefully when the clue-bus hit Owen that time and he dragged Jamie away, finally returning to reassure Lexa, who had been abandoned up in his Jeep and was probably too inebriated to get down from it by herself. "We held that for just a second, I know Josh was feeling the same. No, I could see it in his eyes when we drew back; we were both just smiling like crazy, I was thinking how silly it was to be so happy when we'd just almost had an ugly situation, but I was, and then the world went wonky-vision."

Kevin paused to listen for a moment; Josh patted his knee twice and stood, closing Kevin's door before circling the car to get in.

"Yeah, I slumped, it lasted. . .I dunno, less than a minute, though, I'm sure of that. Josh was carrying me, I squeezed my eyes shut, concentrated on which way was up, where Josh was as he held me, to get through the vertigo; it passed after a second of that, and when I opened my eyes, things were normal again. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck, also sick and dizzy from the vertigo; that's when I puked."

"Just before that was when Owen said your heart was racing," Josh said quietly as he started the car. "Right before you closed your eyes, while your senses were still screwy, Owen had his hand on your chest."

"Okay, Josh and Owen said my heart rate was elevated while my senses were distorted. Josh said it was rapid a minute later, when he put me down in the car, but Owen said it was 'pretty damn high' before I closed my eyes and got over whatever it was."

Kevin glanced at Josh as he pulled out of the Singing Fish's lot and headed for Haven, wondering if he had heard Eve's last comment. Since he wasn't scowling, Kevin was guessing he hadn't, paying attention to the road, instead.

"You really think so?" he asked with a wince, mentally berating himself when Josh heard it in his voice and snapped his eyes away from the road to look at Kevin in worry. He'd be listening for sure, now. Kevin didn't dare turn and meet Josh's eyes; he knew they'd be in his Feral mode, anyway. He breathed a sigh of relief when Eve's next question was Was it like astral projection? Have you projected since the other night in they alley?

"No, at least, it didn't feel like astral projection, but that's sort of this weird absence of feeling because I'm not in my physical body; I don't think I can explain what it's like. But whatever it was was more like. . .I don't know, a sensory disorder, not psychic. And I haven't tried astral projecting since the other night; I was waiting to do it in the lab, under your supervision."

Kevin turned to Josh and returned his smile, knowing Josh was glad that Kevin hadn't pushed his abilities since the other night when he had been forced to push them well past "excessively".

"Okay, we'll be home soon, set up whatever you think's best," Kevin told Eve, then frowned at Josh. "No, Josh is driving like a crazy person, of course he is, but he's not going to get pulled over, are you?" Kevin asked, raising an eyebrow at his lover pointedly.

" 'Course not," Josh muttered, slowing down considerably.

"Alright. Yes, straight to the med lab. Okay, see you soon," Kevin finished, then closed Jamie's phone.

It was going to be a long night.

Eve shook her head as she ended the call and put her phone away, hoping her theory was correct. Kevin didn't sound like he wanted her to be right, but honestly, if she wasn't? Then she had no idea what was going on, other than possibly that it was brain damage from the other night, which wasn't something they could do anything about. Pretty much anything else would be better than that.

"Kevin okay?" Chris asked from the seat next to her, frowning worriedly.

"I think so," Eve answered cautiously. "I'll have to run some tests, obviously, but I think he's okay. As long as I can rule out this being a result of brain damage from taking care of the GSA and Feldspar the other night, then things should work out," she finished, hoping her voice was projecting more confidence than it sounded like to her own ears. She was pretty sure she was right. She hoped.

"What the Hell?" Shalimar muttered from the backseat.

"What?" Jesse asked, trying to look past Brennan to see what Shalimar was frowning at. Brennan had passed out and was leaning heavily on Jesse's shoulder, drooling slightly on it. Jesse couldn't lean forward to see what Shalimar was doing, but he thought she was frowning at her phone.

"I got a text message while we were at the bar, didn't hear it 'cause it was loud in there and my phone was in my purse," she explained, holding her phone across Brennan where Jesse could see it. "But it doesn't make any sense. I don't know anyone named 'Asi'." Her phone's screen read:

Be in touch ASAIK –ASI

" 'As Soon As I Kan'?" Shalimar questioned skeptically. "With a K? Some idiot AOL teenie texted my number by mistake."

"Looks like algebra, or code," Jesse said with a snort of wry amusement, frowning at the message. "ASAIK minus ASI. Equals AK," he muttered, then blinked in shock, lurching forward out from under Brennan's slumbering form to meet Shalimar's also-startled eyes.

"Be in touch As Soon As I Can..." Jesse said, knowing Shalimar was thinking the same thing.

"..Adam Kane?" she finished, her eyes equally wide with shock.