A Wolf In Black Wool

"The North Dakota installation was destroyed, as scheduled."

"Correct."

"That was nearly a week ago, but we have not yet heard from the Creator."

"Also correct. Your point being?"

"My point is, Mutant X was detected leaving the area, just as the installation went up. They could have rescued Kane, even killed the Creator. Pierce attempted to assassinate him while we had her..."

"And she failed. The Creator scheduled the shutdown of the Nevada installation and the destruction of the North Dakota installation, and both went according to plan. If he has not chosen to reveal any further plans to us at this time, that's no concern of ours."

"Of course it's a concern of ours; if he's cut off contact—"

"If the Creator has cut off contact, AND Mutant X was known to have been involved, then we could hardly be blamed for moving ahead with our own initiative, now could we?"

"Ah. Of course."

"Very Good, Doctor; I thought you might see what I mean."

"Certainly, Sir. I'll get started right away."

"You do that. We both know now is the time to act."

Chris was asleep.

..his confusion shifted to outright panic as he realized he was going straight up.

Chris was dreaming.

He was falling upwards, like gravity had been reversed for him somehow.

Chris was having a nightmare.

..panic raving at the edges of Chris' mind as the city of LA below began rapidly growing closer...

Chris was re-living his greatest fear.

Chris' world was friggin' HUGE, and barreling right at him; he could see it rushing closer, hear the sounds of the city as white noise even past his scream, sense all of those sounds with his power, crushing in around him—

–Chris woke with a startled gasp of terror.

He cried out in pain at the sound of his gasp thundering in his ears, louder than anything he had ever heard. . .except his cry was of course a number of times louder, causing Chris to nearly black out from the pain of it. He clamped his hands over his ears, tears of pain leaking from the outer corners of his eyes and running down the sides of his face. Chris started to groan through his clenched teeth at the pain, but even that was far too loud.

Unable to do anything else, Chris tried to call for help.

" Josh! " Chris gasped in a breathless whisper, then had to restrain himself from screaming at the intensity of the pain echoing in his skull. Josh's Feral hearing was incredibly acute; he would respond to the sound of his name, investigate why Chris was gasping it. . .if Chris could gasp it with any volume whatsoever, which he couldn't.

Lying motionless on his bed with the heels of his palms pressed tightly against his ears, Chris began to panic in a whole new way.

In Haven, Eve was continuing to investigate the mysterious electrical short that had destroyed the lounge's mega-screen television and the secondary console in the medical lab. Chris had been relieved to find Eve unharmed when the team had returned to Haven the day before, but he confused Eve when he asked her who had broken in, after she and Kevin had gotten Jamie and Brennan settled and she had treated Shalimar's wrist and Kevin's burns. She had frowned in confusion, explaining that there had been an electrical short that destroyed the computer monitor she had been working at, knocking her out, and somehow destroyed the lounge's TV as well. Chris had frowned in confusion in turn, explaining the double-speak conversation they'd had and how she had cued it. Eve agreed it sounded like something she would do if she were taken hostage, but there wasn't any sign anyone had been in Haven, just the strange electrical malfunction.

"Isn't that just a little too strange?" Chris had asked, suspicious despite how haggard he was from the fight. "The medical lab has its own power connections, redundancies in case of emergency, right? How would a short destroy both one medical computer monitor and the TV? And nothing else? —Did you check the security logs?" he asked with a frown.

"Well, no..." Eve had replied, frowning herself as she considered Chris' points. "But you're right, the systems are separate. I ran a medical scan on myself, just to make sure there wasn't any lasting damage, and the analysis computer is on the same circuit as the secondary monitor. And it is strange, because only the monitor shorted out, not the computer. Given that I was using both when it happened, that's pretty odd."

"It was just the TV that was fried," Lexa had reported as she joined their conversation. "The rest of the entertainment center is fine, which is weird, since the stereo displays the time, the cable box stays connected. . .but the TV gets physically powered off, only the remote sensor still active, waiting for someone to switch it on. I'd say the short came from the main power, but the fact that it surged into just the TV and your monitor makes no sense, especially when there were other things on the same circuit actively using power," she concluded with a frown.

Eve had agreed that the situation didn't make sense and had immediately checked the electronic security of the New Mutant database and her archived records and research. Finding everything undisturbed, she had told the team to get some rest, which they obviously needed after such a large battle. She had taken a nap herself, sweaty and fatigued after her "electrical shock", not realizing it was actually the after effects of her own adrenal rush and battle against Davis, the Link Telecyber. Josh had called in a favor at Benedetti's and gotten a large meal placed in doggie bags to go, bringing it back to Haven for the team to have a late supper. Owen had immediately returned to Jamie's bedside in the medical lab, paranoid Jamie's overexertion from saving Chris would combine with his excessive fatigue from his New Mutant growth spurt in some horrible way. Owen was determined to be there when Jamie woke and make sure he got some food, to give his body the resources it needed to adjust to his evolution. Eve had continued working on the mystery of Jamie's shifting genetics until Chris made her go to bed, the rest of the team having already done so some time before then.

Upon waking the next morning, Eve had returned to Haven to finish getting all of Jamie's medical data ready to analyze. She was pleased to see an empty plate on the tray table beside Jamie's examination bed, glad that he had woken sometime in the night and Owen had indeed fed him. Owen himself was asleep on the second med-bed, one arm curled around a small throw pillow from the lounge, tucked under his head. Eve had sighed and fetched a light blanket from the supply cabinet and covered Owen, then set Jamie's data comparisons running once she had finished prepping them.

Feeling impatient as she waited for the medical computer's results, Eve decided to continue investigating the mysterious power surge. She was thankful it had only been the monitor that had been destroyed, not the computer itself, since much of her current research was on it. Jamie's shifting genetics, Kevin and Owen's recent scans, the Feral Fever Josh had been infected with and how Eve had used it to treat Lexa, her research into Lexa's condition and what Adam had done to stabilize Jesse. . .she had backups, of course, but time would be lost restoring everything if the computer had been destroyed.

Eve had no way of knowing that John Bishop had of course wanted her research into New Mutant expirations to continue unimpeded.

Deciding to analyze the source of the problem to see if that would reveal its cause, Eve went over the power systems with Brennan's help, after making sure his concussion was completely cleared up. They discovered that Lexa had been correct, the main power had somehow sent surges through the secondary medical monitor and the lounge television that shorted them out. . .and that was all. She couldn't find any reason for such a thing to have happened, so the rest of the original team started helping her research other possibilities.

"The security logs were fried, too," Jesse reported with a frown a short while later. He had looked into the security records because Chris had been sure someone had been holding Eve captive and figured they would have to have been tampered with if the intruder or intruders were trying to keep their actions hidden. What he had found had been confusing, however. "There's footage of you taking Chris' call, you stopped working and turned away to answer your phone; when you went back to work, the footage blacks out for about twenty minutes. It comes back online when you were crossing from the secondary monitor to the scanning station." Everything still appeared to be normal, or normal enough after a systems-damaging power short, but the seemingly-coincidental timing of it all made Jesse uneasy.

"That's..." Eve replied with a deepening frown, "..also suspicious..." She and Brennan followed Jesse back to Haven's main workstation, Brennan closing the power room behind them. "Show me the footage of me taking the call. I still don't remember it, and if the power surge happened after, I probably should. Electrical shock can cause short-term amnesia, and I probably did take at least some of it to the brain, since I was sitting right in front of the monitor and it did knock me out, but..." Eve shook her head as she frowned, also not liking the number of coincidences that had to be involved to make the situation as innocent as it seemed to appear.

Jesse re-cued the relevant footage and played it for Eve, who squawked in startled surprise when the image of herself on the screen turned away from the secondary medical computer to answer her phone. . .with her right hand.

"No, that's not even right..." Eve blurted in surprise, staring as her on-screen self spoke for just a moment, then ended the call and put the phone back in her labcoat pocket as she turned back to the computer, just before the screen flickered with static and went black. "That's. . .that's totally wrong, that's fake, it has to be—I keep my phone in my left pocket, always have, I keep my rapier in my right pocket. . .waitasecond, where is my phone, wasn't on my bedside table this morning, I assumed I forgot it down here last night, too distracted, but it's not in the medical lab either..."

Eve's shocked eyes flicked back and forth from Jesse to Brennan, mild panic beginning to grow in them as she wondered what had actually happened and why she couldn't remember it.

"There was definitely someone else in Haven..." Shalimar proclaimed with a displeased snarl as she approached the main workstation from Haven's rear. "They went to a lot of trouble to hide it, fried the TV in the lounge so the scent of fried electronics would cover up their own scent. . .but they made a mistake. They must have been in the rear storeroom for some reason, and splashed some bleach to mask their scent there. That's bad enough, but they left the bleach uncapped. Any Feral would notice that in almost no time; the only reason I didn't last night was because we all went practically straight to bed, then Josh brought Benedetti's wonderfully aromatic Italian into Haven. That bleach had to have been uncapped while we were gone yesterday; if it had been anytime before that, I would have noticed."

"Owen's going all over-protective Feral on Jamie, didn't even find himself a blanket last night, so he didn't notice..." Eve muttered to herself, "..Damn, now we're going to have to go over everything to find out what they did, and Jamie's out of commission for the moment. His photographic memory and greater familiarity with the computers would be ideal," she sighed.

"Do you have any more idea of what Jamie's condition is?" Jesse asked her, shooting a worried glance at the medical lab door. "I'm worried about how far he had to push his new power yesterday. . .and he was injured before that, and he only just got his new ability a week or so ago. He hasn't had time to really get used to it yet–I phased the whole Helix once, but I wasn't recovering from an injury at the time, and I'd had the ability to phase other objects for a few months at that point, not just a week."

"Not yet, sadly," Eve replied with a frustrated sigh. "That's actually what I've got the medical computers running on now, trying to figure out why his genetic code doesn't seem to be stable while he's using the new ability. That. . .concerns me, more than I'd like to admit," she said softly, also glancing at the medical lab and hoping Owen hadn't woken up and shifted into Feral Mode, that he wasn't listening to their conversation. Eve knew how protective Owen was of all his teammates, his Pack, as a Feral, but he was even moreso of Jamie because the two of them had founded the California team under Eve and been its only members for some time before they discovered Chris. She knew how poorly Owen would react if Jamie's health were to be seriously threatened, and she needed him to be able to focus on their investigation at the moment. He was much more familiar with Haven than Shalimar and more likely to be able to detect any traces the intruder or intruders might have left behind.

"Unfortunately, until I have some idea of how his new ability operates and how it affects his system while it's doing so, I won't be able to evaluate how pushing it yesterday may have affected him," Eve explained. "I should know soon; we ran all the tests yesterday before lunch and the fight, so I'll have somewhere to start looking once the comparisons are done, at least. The potential problem is if I can't figure out what effects Jamie's using his new abilities have on his systems are normal, and what's a result of pushing them too far. The tests we ran yesterday are the only baseline for comparison I have, at the moment," she finished.

"Well, here's hoping that doesn't happen," Jesse replied fervently, glancing at the medical lab again before turning back to the main workstation computer. "I'll go over the security footage, see if I can figure out how it was manipulated. Oh! Um, if Chris can spare his phone for a little while, I can sync up the timestamps and verify exactly when the call occurred, that might give me some more points of reference to work with."

"Sure, he'll probably be up soon," Eve answered. "I'm almost surprised he hasn't come down to join us yet; Josh and Kevin aren't morning people, wouldn't be entertaining him even if they're up yet. But the way he had to push himself yesterday, I'm not surprised he's sleeping in for once. He should be down soon, and I'm sure he'll be happy to loan you his phone if it'll help us solve the mystery. Heck, he'll be full of 'I told you so!'s that we had an intruder; he'll definitely want to help," she told Jesse as she turned to head back to the medical lab.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Chris would scream form the pain, but he honestly wasn't sure he would survive the even greater pain that such a loud sound would send spiking through his head. He was desperately trying not to whimper, not to grit his teeth from the ongoing agony of every sound that reached his ears, because those would just be more sounds tormenting him, sounds from inside his own head that would be that much louder. At least all the noise he was currently enduring originated outside of his head and was being somewhat diminished by Chris' hands being pressed over his ears.

Only somewhat diminished, unfortunately.

Chris' face was dripping with the tears of pain that had been steadily leaking from the corners of his eyes and rolling down the sides of his head into his temples, as well as the sweat of ongoing distress that had sprung out on his forehead and cheeks. His body was soaked with it, the tee-shirt and boxers he slept in dripping wet, his bedsheets damp. He would actually start dehydrating soon, if someone didn't hear the S-O-S he was oh so lightly tapping against his bedroom wall with the side of one foot. His bedroom wall was communal with Josh and Kevin's sitting room, surely Josh would hear Chris' tapping as soon as he or even Kevin opened their bedroom door, wouldn't he?

Bracing himself as best he could against even more intense pain, which wasn't much, Chris started tapping his foot against the wall just a little harder.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Josh and Kevin had had a mostly frustrating night the day before.

Eve had treated Kevin's burned back when the team had returned to Haven, after she had seen to the more pressing medical concerns of the others. Kevin had treated his burns appropriately at the site of the battle; Eve had merely examined them to make sure they had all been properly sealed and that none were severe enough to require further treatment. Fortunately for Kevin, Josh had ripped his burning shirt off of him almost immediately; none of the burns were worse than first-degree. They were still quite painful, however, and over enough of his back that Kevin had difficulty getting comfortable. When the team had gone to rest after the battle, Kevin eventually managed to fall asleep on his side, spooning up to Josh's back instead of Josh spooning him. Josh was frustrated with the situation because he wanted to hold and reassure Kevin, but doing so would only aggravate Kevin's wounds and cause him pain, not actually help his situation.

They had slept soundly enough for an hour or so, but then the pain of Kevin's burns woke him again, and his hiss of discomfort seized the attention of Josh's overprotective Feral nature, waking him as well. Josh had reapplied the cooling sealant spray to Kevin's back and given him a painkiller, then checked the time and called Benedetti's to request a take-out meal. Mr. Benedetti had been dismayed to learn there had been a car accident (more or less; Eve's Range Rover had been destroyed, after all) and that some of Josh's friends had been injured; he had immediately declared a meal would be prepared for Josh to pick up and gave him a significant discount.

After dinner, Eve had insisted everyone go to bed, most if not all of the team needing rest to recover from either the battle itself or the stresses they had all been under of late. Josh had obediently taken Kevin back to their room; he was concerned because Kevin had been looking at him just slightly strangely all through dinner, his feet crossed behind one of Josh's ankles beneath the table, both of his calves pressing into the sides of one of Josh's.

"Kevin?" Josh had asked once their sitting room door was closed behind them. "What is it—" Josh's question was cut off by Kevin hurling himself into Josh's arms, grabbing Josh's face with both his hands as Josh's back slammed into their door, kissing him deeply. Josh's hands fluttered unsuredly for a moment even as he closed his eyes and returned the kiss, unsure where he could safely place his hands when he knew much of Kevin's back was slightly burned and highly sensitive. Josh eventually slid his upper left arm under Kevin's right armpit and placed his hand over the side of Kevin's face, holding the back of Kevin's head with his other hand, instead of letting either arm come into contact with Kevin's back.

Gradually, the intensity of their kiss had lessened, Kevin's desperation fading into acceptance of the present, that Josh was there with him, safe and unharmed, unlike the vision Chaplain had made Kevin see during the battle.

"Kevin?" Josh quietly asked again when they finally broke apart for a proper breath, Kevin's eyes still closed as he leaned his head forward to rest his brow against Josh's. "Talk to me, bud, what is it?" he asked, wanting to know what was distressing Kevin so he could do something about it.

"The fight," Kevin whispered back, his face twisting in an expression of distress as he remembered the moments when he thought Josh had burned to death. "The Illusionist Psionic. . .when the Elemental blew up those cars, he made me see you get caught in the blast..." Josh gasped in sympathetic realization, thinking of the hell that would have been to experience as Kevin's watering hazel eyes opened again, staring into Josh's pained grey ones. "You. . .you staggered out of the blaze, hair on fire, clothes burned to your skin, third degree burns all over..." Kevin gasped back a sob as Josh kissed him again, the tears rolling down his face as Josh shifted his hand from Kevin's face to his ass, sliding it into Kevin's rear pocket to pull him closer, into a full embrace, because he couldn't touch Kevin's back.

"..He made me watch you die. You only made it a few steps before you collapsed. The last thing you did was reach towards your car with your withered arm. . .the last place you'd seen me. Your last act was to reach out for me, and there was nothing I could do..."

"Kevin, Kev, shhhh, stop, didn't happen, shhhh, shh shh shhhhh..." Josh shushed him as Kevin cried into the side of Josh's neck and the top of his shoulder, Josh's hands holding Kevin's head and body close without touching his back. "It didn't happen, wasn't real, that GSAsshole got his in the end..." Josh reassured his lover as he rocked them both from side to side as they leaned against the door, the fingers of his right hand carding through the hair on the back of Kevin's head. "I'm here, I'm fine, we're both gonna be just fine, I'm here with you, I've got you, I've got you..." Josh murmured as he straightened up, levering them both away from the door and guiding Kevin to walk backwards into their bedroom.

Constant kisses and contact were maintained as they removed their clothes. No more words were exchanged, but they both ran their hands all over the others body as they undressed and got into bed –except for Josh's hands on Kevin's back– neither wanting to break contact with the other for even a second. Their frustrations grew again as they tried to find a position where Josh could make love to Kevin while holding him close, without Kevin being on his back. They both desperately needed it; luckily, the rest of the penthouse residents were either in the medical lab, or remaining in Haven to make sure Eve eventually left the medical lab, in Chris' case. The lovers finally made do with Josh topping from underneath as they made love much more slowly than normal, Kevin laying atop him and pressing their chests together in an effort to get the closeness they both desired. Josh worried about accidentally clutching at Kevin's back as their hands continued to roam over one another, finally returning them to their previous positions as they neared completion, one over the back of Kevin's head and the other clutching one side of his ass. The care and love Josh expressed without words in his kisses, caresses, and the slow, thorough pace he maintained eventually pushed Kevin over the edge with a long, low moan. The sensations of Kevin's climax around him made Josh follow suit with a lengthy groan; he then turned over beneath Kevin and carefully tipped them over onto their sides to sleep, spooned together once more.

When they woke late the next morning, Kevin made faces that Josh would have found amusing if it weren't for the fact Kevin was making them because he was in pain. Josh sprayed Kevin's back down with the analgesic sealant once more, and Kevin gratefully accepted his help up from the bed, trying to flex his back as little as possible. Josh made an odd face of his own as he both pouted and frowned at Kevin, hoping his lover would recover quickly and be able to put the difficulties of his situation behind him. Also, Josh really wanted to be able to hug Kevin and put his arms across Kevin's back again as soon as possible.

"You're gonna heal up soon though, right?" Josh asked Kevin as they dressed. "I mean, you wore a shirt to dinner last night. . .that was kinda funny, actually, we're all sitting around the table tired and beat to hell from that fight, wearing sleepwear or whatever random crap we pulled on—and you're wearing cargo shorts and a silk shirt, hah."

"Unlike some anarchist-Feral types, I actually have a sense of decorum," Kevin said with a roll of his eyes while he rooted through his side of the closet for a flannel that was broken in and soft enough to wear over his burns.

"Heh, 'decorum'," Josh snickered under his breath. "Didn't know you used big words that weren't medical," he smirked at Kevin, teasing. Both of his parents had been English majors; it wasn't like Josh's vocabulary was small. "' Decorum' or not, you don't have to put a shirt on if it's gonna make you suffer, you know nobody would hold it against you."

"Well, they certainly wouldn't hold it against me if I wasn't wearing it," Kevin snarked back, smirking at Josh. "But hopefully no one holds it against me if I do wear a shirt, either. That'd hurt," he finished, still smirking as he treated Josh's words literally.

"Ho, ho, Funny Man," Josh answered with a roll of his own eyes as he pulled on his shoes. "See, now you're wearing baggy or light shirts to keep from irritating your back, but that's why the shirt you were wearing yesterday caught that stupid thermal blast. You had already ducked under it! If you wore tighter shirts, like me, you wouldn't have that problem."

"Hmmm, I suppose your suggestion for the current problem is that I just go without shirts until my back's healed, right? Or maybe just go shirtless in general, no chance of it getting caught in any way if I'm not wearing one, hmm?" Kevin asked, teasingly. Josh laughed aloud in surprise as he opened their bedroom door.

Josh cut himself off as he thought he heard a sound of pain coming from the other side of their sitting room wall, Chris' bedroom. He held up one finger to cut off Kevin's question as he shifted into Feral Mode, his eyes converting to a bright jade green and their pupils extending to vertical slits. Pausing to listen closely, Josh thought he just might be able to hear the sound of someone trying to hyperventilate quietly, but it was so soft he couldn't be sure. His forefinger remained extended as he continued to listen, but Josh's hand slowly lowered to his side, trying to decide if he had actually heard something strange or not. Suddenly, Josh blinked in surprise, then frowned as heard the faintest tapping coming from the wall in front of them, across the room.

TAP-TAP-TAP. TAP. TAP. TAP. TAP-TAP-TAP.

Thinking quickly and furiously as he considered what he had heard, Josh turned around and put a hand to Kevin's chest, pushing him back into their bedroom and pushing their door up to its frame but not closing it behind them with his other hand. Josh kept going, pushing Kevin along until he sat down on their bed, his eyebrows trying to climb into his hairline as he wondered what in the world Josh was doing.

"Do me a favor," Josh said quietly, his eyes far away as he thought about something with a furious intensity, not even paying direct attention to Kevin, even though he was speaking to Kevin and still touching him. Kevin blinked in surprise as he realized Josh looked exactly like he did when they were on a mission and Eve had just told them their objectives had unexpectedly changed, thinking furiously as he tried to come up with an idea for a plan. "Go check on Chris, astrally. I'll keep your body from slumping onto your burns—I thought I heard a cry of pain when I opened the door, then I heard just the faintest tapping on the wall. . .but the tapping was S-O-S, Morse Code." Josh blinked and his attention returned to his surroundings, his gaze both concerned and guilty as he met Kevin's eyes. "What if he pushed his powers so hard yesterday his sonic sensitivity is out of control, what if everything is too loud for him? I was laughing at your joke, never thought you'd suggest going bare-chested, I laugh so damn loud..."

Kevin frowned at Josh's misplaced guilty conscience, putting the fingertips of one hand to Josh's lips to shut him up before he worked himself up into a state of guilt-ridden agitation.

"I'll go check," Kevin told him, nodding once in reassurance as he took his hand back from Josh's lips, then stood up. "You use your cat-ninja stealth to go grab the dry-erase board from the refrigerator, and a paper towel, take them into Chris' outer room, silently," Kevin instructed as he turned to lay face-down across the foot of their bed, where he could slide off again to his hands and knees and get up without using his back too much. "If I tap you on the shoulder, put them down in front of Chris' door, and I'll TK them in, hopefully without making too much noise. If I push your chest, it's something else and I want you to come back here so I can tell you." Josh nodded and silently slipped out of their rooms, going to follow Kevin's instructions.

Chris gasped when he heard the deafening roar of Josh's laughter and felt like dying from the combination of noises; he wanted to grab two of the tiny little screwdrivers in his electronics repair kit and stab himself in the eardrums with them, to silence the sound. All of the sounds. If the screwdrivers had been at hand, not buried inside a plastic box that would make all kinds of noise if Chris tried to open it, he probably would have. Not that he could even tolerate the sounds simply getting up from his bed would make, much less dig out something to deafen himself with.

Clenching his jaw so tight against the pain Chris couldn't believe his teeth hadn't shattered, he began tapping his S-O-S against the wall again. Josh was in his and Kevin's sitting room, he would hear it, he had to...

BOOM—BOOM—BOOM.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM.

There was a cacophony of noise in the background; Chris could tell it was Josh and Kevin speaking in whispers, but it was so loud he couldn't make out the words past the overwhelming roar.

A moment later, Chris felt a fingertip trace an X over his chest. He gasped in relief, knowing it was Kevin's astral form; Kevin had told Chris how his growth spurt had given him the ability to touch things in astral form like he was there. Chris' face had begun to relax from his grimace of pain, in relief that Kevin had found him, but it scrunched up in agony again at the sound of his exhalation. He pressed his hands to his ears even tighter, arching his back and tossing his head back in renewed torment, only barely holding himself still against the urge to thrash around in pain, and he only managed that because he knew it would be even noisier.

Kevin gasped in dismay at Chris' reaction to his touch, marking an X in signal of "Mutant X", just as he had done with two pens to warn Chris of awaiting guards ahead on the night the original team arrived. Closing his astral form's eyes, Kevin focused on his psychic perceptions, clearly seeing each layer and wrinkle of the bedclothes covering Chris' body. Concentrating, he telekinetically lifted both Chris and his sheets up into the air, then carefully unwrapped the sheets from around Chris by moving them directly away from his body, not allowing them to rub against themselves and telekinetically holding Chris' tee shirt and boxers still, so that no more noise was produced to distress Chris further. Turning towards Chris' sitting room door, Kevin could perceive Josh approaching its other side, holding the message board from the refrigerator and the paper towel Kevin had requested. Kevin wished he could go to Josh and use their pre-arranged signal, but he couldn't keep Chris suspended if he left the room. Thinking quickly, Kevin came up with a new idea.

Josh had just begun to crouch, to place the message board and paper towel Kevin had asked for on the floor in front of Chris' bedroom door, when his lips compressed themselves into a tight line, sealing his mouth shut. He blinked and made a ridiculous face in puzzlement, all the more strange looking because his lips didn't move in the slightest—Kevin was telekinetically manipulating them, not tapping or pushing Josh as he had originally planned. Josh deliberately tilted his head severely to one side in a non-verbal quizzical response, his long hair slipping past one crouching shoulder to dangle over his elbow, paused in mid-reach for the base of Chris' bedroom door as he raised a questioning eyebrow. The message board plucked itself out of his grip and rotated to face the door; Josh silently stood as the attached pen uncapped itself and began writing. A moment later, the board turned around to face Josh, a message on its surface:

CHRIS NEEDS ABSOLUTE SILENCE

GO CALL THE ELEVATOR AND GET MY BODY

AND A PILLOW TO MUFFLE THE ELEVATOR DING

I'LL FLOAT CHRIS TO MEDICAL
Josh nodded his understanding and dashed for the front of the penthouse to press the elevator button in the hallway, still silently, then went back to his and Kevin's bedroom after he had done so. Josh crouched at the foot of their bed and carefully pulled Kevin's right arm across his back and over his left shoulder, shifting to drag Kevin's torso across his shoulders and picking him up in a fireman's carry, sliding his right arm across the backs of Kevin's knees. Josh winced as he dragged Kevin's body off their bed, hoping both that he wasn't putting undue strain on Kevin's burns and that the process wasn't making Chris worse. . .it wasn't even remotely loud, but there was no way to pick someone up without making at least a bit of noise. Josh grabbed one of his pillows, dangling it in front of Kevin's knees as he carefully contorted his way through their bedroom doorway and then through their sitting room doorway into the penthouse's living area. He took care not to knock Kevin's unconscious form against the doorways both because he didn't want to accidentally bruise his lover's body while it was in his care, nor make any sounds when Kevin had said Chris needed absolute silence.

When he entered the living area, Josh nodded with relief to see Chris was floating in the back corner, near Jamie's door and the door to the non-en suite bathroom. Kevin had obviously floated Chris back as far from Josh and Kevin's room at the front of the penthouse as he could, to spare him the sounds of Josh picking up Kevin. Josh turned and carefully opened the penthouse door with his left hand, then turned back and made an urgent face at Chris' floating form, in what he hoped was Kevin's direction, because the elevator would be arriving any moment. Nothing happened for a second, then the pillow yanked itself out from between Josh's right thumb and forefinger, sailing through the open penthouse door and plastering itself over the elevator's speaker a split instant before it chimed and its doors opened.

Josh worked his way through the penthouse door, then turned and used the toe of his shoe to catch the door as its pneumatic arm swung it closed and eased it into position without letting it shut fully, which would make it click. Josh moved to the elevator and stuck one foot just inside so its doors couldn't close, keeping it in position as the pillow floated into the elevator and gently set itself down in the corner without making a sound. Once the pillow was settled, the penthouse door swung open of its own accord and Chris came flying through it, slowing as he reached the elevator and turning to hover in its rear. Josh carefully carried Kevin into the elevator, then turned to face its doors again. He smirked as he felt Kevin's astral hand slide into his pocket, retrieving his keys to access the elevator's override switch and send it down to Haven's access tunnel. The access key slid into the switch, the rest of Josh's keys dangling motionlessly so that they didn't jingle. A second later, the pillow silently launched itself off the floor and plastered itself over the elevator's internal speaker, then the key turned itself, activating the switch.

Chris had dared to open his eyes when he felt himself flying through the air; it was slightly alarming to his acrophobia, but not really, since he knew Kevin had him and he was lying face up—when he could see the ceiling or the roof of the elevator only a few feet above him, he knew the floor wasn't that far below. Josh offered him a weak smile and shrugged as best he could with Kevin's comatose body across his shoulders. Chris smiled back, equally weakly, then clenched his eyes shut in pain at the sound of the elevator doors sliding closed. Josh's eyes widened in alarm, but he didn't move; there wasn't anything he could do, and putting Kevin's body down would make noise. Then the elevator started descending, and Chris began thrashing in mid-air, trying to hyperventilate quietly, sweat springing out anew on his brow and tears flowing down the sides of his face.

Josh began to panic himself, having no idea what he could even do to help, but he was considering hitting the emergency stop on the elevator and hoping Kevin would keep the pillow in place over the speaker. . .that hope was dashed when he pillow fell to floor with a soft thump that made Chris cry out involuntarily, just a sound in the back of his throat that he immediately choked off, the muscles in his bare arms and legs jumping as he clamped his hands even tighter over his ears and his legs and torso tensed in agony.

Kevin's astral form would also have tensed in alarm, if it had a body for him to tense up.

SHIT, I can't do anything about the sound of the elevator running; we have to get Chris to Haven, where Eve can help him... Kevin thought to himself in panic, the pillow falling from where he had pressed it against the elevator's speaker. Chris cried out in reaction to the pillow's landing, then began flailing in reaction to his own vocalization, kicking Kevin's mind into overdrive.

THINK, Tackleman, there has to be something you can do to help him! Kevin berated himself, trying desperately to come up with something. I can't silence the sound of the elevator's movement, but maybe I can keep Chris from hearing it? Kevin thought to himself as Josh mouthed the words: DO SOMETHING! as urgently as he could. Sound is vibrations, transmitted through the air to our ears, or even through objects, like Chris tapping on the wall... Kevin's astral eyes widened as something occurred to him. I can't hold the air still, I can't see it, but I CAN keep the elevator car from vibrating!

Chris' body suddenly went rigid, Kevin holding him still by shifting his astral perceptions to Chris' skeletal muscles and preventing them from moving, keeping him from thrashing around. Chris' body assumed a supine position, then lowered itself to only a few inches above the floor, Josh's pillow sliding into position beneath Chris' head, silently because Kevin telekinetically kept the cloth from vibrating as he moved it.

Having his head so close to the floor of the elevator and the sounds of its descent down its shaft nearly made Chris scream in pain, but he managed to restrain himself. Hovering in the middle of the elevator car, Kevin's astral form closed its eyes and reached out with his astral perceptions, "seeing" the various layers and materials of the elevator car's construction, seeing the patterns their molecular structures were aligned in and telekinetically freezing those patterns in place, not allowing them to vibrate and produce sound, despite the vibrations being transmitted into them from the elevator's cables and mechanisms.

Josh's eyes widened as Chris dropped the last few inches to the floor, crying out at the sound of his body's impact, then louder at the sound of his own cry before choking himself off, panting through his open mouth and trying to do so as quietly as he could. Josh thought about seeing if he could put Kevin's body down and trying to help Chris somehow, but then he looked around in amazement as the entire elevator went utterly silent. His eyes went bright jade green with slitted pupils as he tried to hear anything from the elevator, but the only sounds were Chris' shallow panting and the sounds of his own and Kevin's unconscious body's breathing. It was so quiet in the elevator Josh could even hear Chris' heart trip-hammering away in his chest.

Chris blinked in surprise, opening his eyes and looking around to see what had happened, without moving his head and causing the pillow to rustle. Josh leaned forward carefully, into Chris' line of sight so he could mouth the question Better? at him. Chris lip-synced Yes! back, then closed his eyes and tried to relax in the new-found quiet, only the monotonous thunder of three sets of lungs and three heartbeats disturbing him at the moment.

Haven's entrance opened to admit Josh, who hurried in with Kevin's comatose form across his shoulders, then jerked to a stop when he saw Eve standing right in front of him, along with Brennan, Lexa, and Shalimar.

"Josh, what's wrong with Chris?" Eve asked urgently, stepping forward to put a hand on Josh's forearm as Shalimar and Brennan took Kevin's unconscious body off his shoulders and carried it into the lounge, to put him on the sofa.

"Oh, Jesse saw the elevator switch in use and checked, saw us," Josh muttered as he craned his neck to see Jesse seated at the main workstation, realizing what had happened. He blinked and returned his attention to Eve when her grip tensed on his arm. "Something's wrong with his powers; everything is deafeningly loud to him, like, the sound of a pillow hitting the floor is enough to make him cry out in pain," Josh explained. "He was tapping on our communal wall, S-O-S, so faint I barely heard it. Kevin checked on him astrally, had to levitate him so he could have silence, so he carried Chris into the elevator, and I carried Kev's body."

Eve's face tensed for a moment in concern, proceeding into a frown of concentration as she considered the problem and what she could do to help Chris. Her eyes remained in the middle distance as she contemplated possibilities, but she was all ears for Josh's explanation as she asked another question in order to gather more data.

"How did he handle the sounds of the elevator's operation, if a falling pillow was too much?" she wondered, her frown increasing as she wondered about the seeming inconsistency in Chris' problem.

"Badly," Josh answered with a wince. "Just the sound of the doors closing obviously caused him pain, then he started thrashing around, trying not to cry out, when the elevator started descending. He did cry out when Kevin dropped the pillow he'd been muffling the elevator's speaker with, then choked it off, then. . .actually, I'm not sure what Kevin did, something telekinetic because he set Chris down, but then the whole elevator went silent. I couldn't hear anything but the three of us, even in Feral mode."

"Kevin?" Eve asked after frowning in thought for a moment, then smiled in relief when his astral from tapped her on the shoulder once for 'yes'. "You used your new perceptions to telekinetically manipulate Josh's heart in his chest when it stopped from the Feral Fever virus just over a week ago—you used them now to keep the elevator car from vibrating, right?" Her smile returned, wider than before when Kevin tapped her shoulder 'yes' again.

"Okay, this would only be a temporary fix, but it would let us get Chris into the medical lab where I may be able to help him. . .do you think you could perceive Chris' eardrums and keep them from vibrating?"

There was a brief pause, then Eve's labcoat twitched, one edge looking like it was being pinched between someone's finger and thumb as Kevin lifted it away from her body, then her PDA tablet slid out of its pocket. The stylus detached itself, and a quick message was scribbled on the tablet's screen:

I THINK SO, BUT TO DO SO FOR LONG MAY BE BAD FOR CHRIS
"You don't want to telekinetically paralyze the chemical reactions of living cells, of course," Eve said after reading Kevin's concern, nodding that it made sense to her. "We'll worry about that if I can't come up with something to help him quickly. Just get him into medical, and maintain his deafness; I'll handle the rest," Eve instructed as she plucked her tablet from mid-air and slid it back into her pocket, already turning for the medical lab. "Josh, grab the smaller whiteboard from my office, and a marker." She turned to glance over her shoulder at Brennan, where he and Shalimar were waiting after placing Kevin in the lounge. "Brennan, if you've got any more ideas about handling growth spurts, like you did to get Kevin through his attack when Owen got hurt, I could use the help," she admitted, allowing some of her concern that she didn't know how to help Chris to show on her face.

A short while later, Chris was sitting in the Hot Seat, drinking one of Owen's beloved Gatorades to restore his hydration and electrolyte levels as Eve went over his latest scan. Chris had been amazed when the world went silent, then blinked in surprise as the Door Open button depressed itself on the elevator's control panel. Chris' body rose into the air as the doors slid open, and he frowned as he went floating down Haven's access tunnel.

" You can't keep me deaf if I walked along under my own power, could you? " Chris asked, and a moment later his head shook itself 'no'. " You can't do this all day, either, can you? Probably not good for me, right? " Chris asked with a frown, sighing when his head nodded itself 'yes'. He had kept quiet as he sailed into the medical lab and was deposited in the Hot Seat, giving Brennan, Shalimar, and Owen a sad smile and a shrug as Eve started up the scanner. Owen had woken up when Eve dashed into the medical lab; he was now torn between fretting over Jamie, who was still sleeping soundly, and worrying over Chris because his Feral senses couldn't help but notice the stress Chris' body was under.

"Hey, wait," Owen said after a moment of them all waiting for Eve to discover something in Chris' scan. "What about the sound-absorbing foam you made for our booth in the diner? It absorbs sound well enough to keep any Ferals in the diner from eavesdropping on discussions there, so..."

"Oh! Great idea, Thank You, Owen!" Eve said with surprise. "Even if it's not as good, it ought to help Chris enough Kevin can stop risking doing damage to him!" she declared as she sprinted for her office. Shalimar turned to watch the results of Chris' scan, hoping her years of experience helping Adam in Sanctuary might have given her enough exposure to recognize something familiar. Eve returned a moment later with a sample of the sound-deadening foam, Jesse and Lexa following her into the medical lab. Lexa glanced at Chris in concern, thinking of his out-of-control powers in comparison to her own, while Jesse was frowning in thought.

Naturally, Jamie chose that moment to wake up, and Owen's concern shifted from Chris back to Jamie, who was grumpy and disoriented, complaining his stupid body had shifted from needing more rest to deal with his new genetic sequences to more food, demanding Owen get him a giant breakfast from the Majestic's restaurant. Owen grinned and agreed as Eve hurried to the back of the medical lab with the small block of foam.

Eve grabbed a scalpel from the supply counter and quickly carved two oddly-shaped pieces from the foam as Owen left, then placed them in a compression chamber. "Kevin, will you be able to telekinetically insert these in Chris' ears, while maintaining the paralysis of his eardrums?" she asked as the machine whirred and the foam bits inside it began to shrink, squishing under dozens of PSIs of pressure. There was a pause, Eve beginning to raise one questioning eyebrow as the compression chamber ran, then she felt a very soft, tentative tap of 'yes' against her cheek; she smiled in relief. "You think so, huh? Why don't you float him over here, so you can see both at once?"

Chris' body floated from the Hot Seat over to the compression chamber, Chris' limbs arranging themselves to seat him on the floor. Chris looked like he wanted to comment on the strangeness of his body completing the movements it needed to make without his conscious input, but he knew better than to try to talk while Kevin was telekinetically manipulating the insides of his head and focus on whatever Eve was doing with the compression chamber. He had probably been pushing it by asking questions when Kevin had been floating him into Haven.

Eve waited until Chris was positioned and the two compressed pieces of foam inside the compression chamber had floated up into the air, then she vented the chamber's pressure and opened the door. The two pieces of foam floated through the air and neatly inserted themselves into Chris' ears. Chris made an extremely odd face at the sensation, which shifted from an expression of "This is odd..." all the way to "Holy Crap, this is weird!" as the foam bits expanded inside his ear canals when Kevin released them, still without Chris being able to hear them do so.

Chris winced when Kevin released his telekinetic "grip" on Chris' eardrums and stopped astral projecting; Chris' sense of hearing returning was obviously still painful to him, but it wasn't the agonizing torment it had been previously. Kevin came running into the medical lab as the rest of the team waited for Chris' full reaction, Eve scrambling to direct Chris to the examination table Owen had vacated and started connecting electrodes to his head.

"Chris?" she asked very softly after she had the monitors connected and had moved back into his line of sight. "How are you feeling now; does the foam make it tolerable?"

"Mostly? I guess?" he replied with a frown, shrugging and tipping one hand back and forth in a so-so gesture. "Everything's just really annoying rock concert, thunderstorm-right-outside-your-bedroom-window loud, as opposed to the 'Oh my god, how is my head not exploding and I'm staying conscious through this?' loud that it was before."

"Is it an Elemental thing?" Shalimar asked, hastening to clarify what she meant when everyone looked at her. "Like when Brennan and I were guarding Senator Morrison's daughter, Adam said his abilities were evolving faster than his mind could keep up with them. Could this be something similar?" she asked, looking from Eve to Brennan and Jesse, knowing they must remember what she was talking about. "Could Anne maybe help him adjust to it, the way Emma did for Brennan back then, the way she did for Kevin when his spurt hit?"

"Jess and I were just talking about that the other day," Brennan nodded. "When he was worried about our instability, especially mine because of that incident. I said if that happened, Anne would just have to re-stabilize me, like she did Kevin, like Emma did for me back then."

"You know..." Jesse began, his face twisted in a slightly confused expression as he thought about it, like he couldn't quite remember something he thought he should be able to. "..I think she probably could. She took out that rogue GSA Psionic Illusionist yesterday from across the street, still in her car."

"That's right," Kevin nodded, supporting Jesse's theory. "She yanked him onto the astral plane, where he had me trapped in an illusion. She showed me the real world past it, and told me to go help you guys, that she could handle him. We know she's a powerful Psionic, with similar powers to Emma, according to Jamie and Owen—I bet she could recreate what Emma did, if you can give her some idea of what it was."

"Yeah," Jesse said, his mind unconsciously avoiding the similarities between Emma and Anne without his notice. "I think you're right..." he finished with a tentative nod. His mind was on his and Emma's evasion of the scouting troops in Kovakistan for some reason, but he had no idea why.

Not quite an hour later, preparations had been made, Jamie had been fed, and Emma arrived at Haven, her "Anne Smith" illusionary disguise firmly in place. She stiffened when Jesse opened Haven's secured entry door for her, but she managed to play it off as discomfort over their counseling session the day before.

"Oh! Jesse," she blurted in surprise when she saw him. "I'm sorry, I knew you were here, but I was trying to not read you specifically. . .we connected a bit more than I meant to yesterday." Emma inwardly groaned at herself for her choice of phrasing, even if it was technically actually completely true.

"No, no, I've already apologized for that, probably more often than you really wanted to hear it!" Jesse replied with a smile. "I used to have a Telempath on my team; I ought to have known how telling you all that when it was still fresh trauma to me would affect you! Let me just say 'Thank You' this time, instead. . .getting it all off my chest really did help, a lot. I think I slept better last night than I have for at least a month, if not longer!"

"Well, I—I-I'm glad I could help," Emma replied with a weak smile, groaning at the rookie mistakes she was making in her efforts to maintain her cover. This is why I left New York in the first place, she thought to herself. Nobody will ever get under my skin the way the team does. . .keeping my present separate from my past is a lot harder when my past is standing here talking to me!

"Come on, let's see if you can get Chris patched up, like you did for Kevin," Jesse said, turning to lead "Anne" to the medical lab.

"Okay, so, I just need to connect to Chris, and give him a mental 'boost' to catch his mind up with his powers as he uses them?" the Psionic the team knew as "Anne Smith" asked after the situation had been explained to her. Emma had managed to resist the temptation to keeping looking at Jesse or Brennan as her past actions had been explained to her, but only barely.

"If I'm understanding Adam's theory and what Chris is going through is similar enough to what happened to Brennan, yes," Eve replied with a cautious lilt of hope to her voice. "But even if this isn't right, it won't hurt Chris any, just leave us back at square one again," she explained. Eve adjusted a few more sensor settings and verified her monitor readings, then turned to Chris.

"Alright, Chris, I just want you to concentrate on using your power to reduce all the sound you can, the opposite of the magnification your power is doing without your input," Eve told Chris once she'd double checked everything, meeting his eyes as she put one hand on his knee, trying to reassure him as much as she possibly could. "You just reach for the control you should have, and Anne will give you the boost to get there."

Chris put his own hand over the back of Eve's on his knee as he swallowed nervously, his other hand over the end of the Hot Seat's armrest with a white-knuckled grip. He knew the fear was showing in his eyes as he turned to meet "Anne"'s gaze, but he figured it didn't matter too much; how could bravado matter in front of an empath?

Emma gave Chris a nod, glad that she actually knew exactly what she was doing and confident she could help Chris. Admittedly, she had told Adam "Let's not do that again," after stabilizing Brennan, and she doubted this was going to be fun, but it was saving a fellow New Mutant's life, one she counted as a personal friend. That was exactly what Emma had come to the Californian Mutant Underground to do, to help New Mutants, not to fight power-crazed madmen anymore. She hated to think of what the team might be going through if they actually had to have a less-powerful Psionic try to help Chris with second-hand information from Brennan.

Eve stepped back from the Hot Seat and activated its scanning beam, watching the readouts on her monitor closely while the rest of the team collectively held their breath.

"Okay, Chris, try to reduce all the sound you can," Eve said quietly but clearly, frowning in concentration as she carefully watched the data scrolling across her screen. Chris gave "Anne" another nod, then closed his eyes, concentrating on his power.

Josh, Shalimar, and Owen's ears all pricked up as their eyes shifted to their animalistic Feral modes, Shalimar frowning and Josh tilting his head slightly to one side as all three of them heard the sounds in the medical lab begin to fluctuate. A moment later the rest of the team could hear it as well, the volume of the various electronics and the hum of the Hot Seat's active beam in particular starting to swell louder as Chris' power increased, then fading slightly as he struggled to control the ambient sound the way he meant to.

"Now?" Emma asked a moment later, a sense of déjà vu creeping over her as she realized she had asked for Eve's cue in almost exactly the same way she had asked for Adam's when treating Brennan nearly two years earlier.

"Not yet, Anne," Eve replied, her eyes flicking back and forth between the Hot Seat's datastream and her records of Chris' readings when his powers were operating normally. The various sounds in the medical lab began wavering back and forth as Chris struggled to control his power. "Okay, Anne, now!" Eve declared when Chris' readings matched.

A psi-bolt formed on Emma's forehead, streaking across the medical lab to flash into Chris' brain. Brennan and Shalimar were smirking at the similarities between Chris' stabilization and Brennan's over a year before; Jesse had an uncomfortable frown on his face as the déjà vu struck him so hard he was literally disoriented.

The volume of the sounds in the medical lab increased exponentially as Chris bellowed in pain, everyone wincing and the Ferals clamping their hands over their ears, Josh and Shalimar hissing with pain. Jesse staggered into Brennan, both disoriented and in pain, but the pain was supplanting the disorientation as the volume continued to increase.

"Chris, FOCUS!" Emma said urgently, making sure she didn't yell because that would only make things worse, but she had to get through to him. Emma could feel Jesse's confusion and knew that she was provoking his subconscious with far too many reminders of the things she had covered up in his memory, but she didn't have a choice; Chris needed his thoughts guided into focusing on his abilities just like Brennan had when his powers had done the same thing. Emma didn't want to have to nudge Jesse's mind into accepting the current events as merely similar to the past instead of actually realizing she was the common element, but she would if she had to.

All of the sound in the medical lab fluctuated wildly for a moment as Emma concentrated and Chris cried out, as the hairs on the back of Jesse's neck stood up and Brennan steadied him before he fell, then the entire medical lab went silent as the pulsating psi-bolt lightshow winked out.

Josh's face broke out in a broad grin as he recognized what had happened, Chris regaining control of his power and muting the entire medical lab. The rest of the team's faces made various expressions of shock and surprise, Brennan, Lexa, and Jesse blinking in confusion and Shalimar's eyes widening as she experienced absolute silence for the first time in her entire life. Owen grinned when he saw the looks of delight on Chris and Josh's faces, realizing that Chris had been successful. Kevin and Jamie exchanged a high-five as the members of the original team began smiling; Emma sank into a lotus position on the floor, concentrating on maintaining her "Anne" illusion in the aftermath of straining her powers to stabilize Chris. . .that part certainly hadn't been necessary after helping Brennan. Eve remained fixated on her monitor displays, her eyes still flicking back and forth between them as she compared the Hot Seat's ongoing scan to the previously recorded data.

Eventually, she looked up, realizing everything but the yellow scanning beam had stopped.

" It worked? " she asked silently, then blinked in surprise when she realized she wasn't hearing anything at all, much less her own question. " It worked! " she declared with delight, powering off the Hot Seat and dashing over to pull Chris out of it and into a hug.

Volume returned to the medical lab with the sound of Chris' laughter and the cheers of delight from the rest of the team.

"Okay, I am really, really, REALLY glad that's over with!" Chris declared with a sigh of relief as Eve released him and hurried back to her monitor to compare his new readings. "Anne, thank you, Thank You so much for helping me, here. You ever need anything fixed, at your apartment or your shop, you just let me know!"

"You're welcome, Chris," Emma replied with a soft smile, her eyes still closed. "And I'm glad I could help, it's what I'm here for, but. . .I really think I'd like to go take a boat tour, right now. I need to get away from the city– —there's too many minds; I can't filter properly after boosting Chris..."

"Oh, geeze, of course," Shalimar said, blinking with alarm as she took in "Anne"'s pose and obvious struggle. "Emma said she never wanted to do that again after boosting Brennan, and she was a full telempath, probably stronger than you, Anne," she explained with regret, the way she said 'probably' making it fairly obvious she was merely being polite and thought her supposedly dead friend had been significantly more powerful than her "new" Psionic friend.

"No problem, Shal," Emma replied, making sure she didn't use Shalimar's nickname with the same familiarity she had used back when they had been teammates. "Like I said before, I'd rather be helping run the Underground than be on a team. This is hard enough; I don't need all the other craziness you guys get tied up in. Just dealing with the Mutant Underground craziness is more than enough for me," she finished, thinking of the number of illusions and mental coercions she'd had to perform the day before to get the aftermath of the New Mutant battle in Eloy's parking lot cleaned up.

"Okay, why don't I call you a cab, and you just relax in the lounge while you wait?" Shalimar suggested. "You can just have another cab drop you off at the Majestic and get your car without us bothering you; we've got more craziness to look into at the moment, unfortunately."

"Okay," Emma agreed with a tired smile, glad that someone else had suggested "Anne" avoid Mutant X for the rest of the day. Lexa stepped forward to give "Anne" a hand up to her feet and walked her to the lounge; Emma was sincerely thankful, supposedly because Lexa's emotions were "quietest", but actually because she was the least familiar with both of Emma's identities.

Just as Lexa was walking past the central workstation in Haven's main expanse on her way back to the medical lab, one of the monitors blinked to life of its own accord.

'Lexa,' her Dominion contact said in his monotonous bass voice as she turned to stare at the screen.

"Alright, that has to be the creepiest thing I've ever seen you do," she told him as she crossed her arms and raised one skeptical eyebrow to stare at him. "How in the heck did you know I was just happening to walk past this monitor at this moment?" she demanded.

'Much of the success of a rain dance is a matter of coincidental timing,' he told her, a glint of amusement at her confusion over his seeming non-sequitur hiding in his eyes.

"So. . .no, it's not a coincidence," Lexa decided, shaking her head at the supposed possibility. "You're saying your timing isn't actually that amazing; you've just been rain-dancing since you came up with a message for me, waiting for my rain cloud to walk past a communications center," she declared, smiling with triumph at figuring out what her contact meant when he smiled slightly and gave her a single nod. "So wait, how did you know when that was, are you monitoring my commring? Our communications network?"

'Indeed,' he replied, giving her another single nod of support and agreement. 'You are aware the Creator knows you fled to California and has access to your new teammates' communications?' he asked, raising one bushy eyebrow in a questioning look.

"Yes," Lexa answered with a frown. "He's already given us a few unpleasant surprises, even announcing one to us over our network," she told him. "We've modified it since then, which was supposed to keep him out, but you still overrode our network despite that," she said, frowning with a combination of irritation and disappointment.

'Yes, but I was already aware of Dr. Aybel's technology,' Lexa's contact told her, smirking at her startled reaction. 'Don't forget, Adam worked back channels to get you placed back on the team after he disappeared. Most of those channels consisted of me or my forces,' he explained.

"Alright, so you knew how to wait for me to walk by a comm-station alone," Lexa agreed, conceding the point. "What for? What's the message?" she asked.

'The Creator has disappeared. Without his control, the Council Head is advancing his own plans.' Lexa's contact glanced down as he tapped a command into the communications console he was seated at. 'I'm forwarding coordinates to you,' he said, then looked up again to meet Lexa's eyes through the teleview-screen. 'Meet me there. Bring the rest of your team—Mr. Kilmartin's computer expertise will prove most useful.'

Lexa had just begun to open her mouth to ask "For what?" when the communications link was severed, only the coordinates glowing on the viewscreen instead of her contact's bearded face.

"Dammit, I hate it when he does that," Lexa muttered under her breath as she looked at the coordinates. "And he always does that..." She frowned as she leaned forward, examining the sequence of numbers more closely. "That looks an awful lot like the coordinates to the Dominion's DC base..." she murmured, knowing the numbers were close, even if they weren't identical.

"Hey, GUYS–" she called out as she finished hurrying into the medical lab. "—We've got a problem..."

A short while later, Jamie Gardoit was fuming.

"No," he declared, pouting angrily as he crossed his arms over his chest in defiance. "I'm going. You can't tell me I can't, Lexa's guy said computer skills are gonna be needed, and we don't know what else. We might need Jesse in combat, or to phase somewhere; he's more useful in combat than I am anyway. I can do the hacking, won't even need to use my powers, stupid new ones or self-contained old ones!" he insisted, glaring at Eve.

Josh and Owen exchanged a look at Jamie's statement; a promise not to use his powers "too much" was exactly the kind of thing Kevin used to say before his growth spurt, right before he pushed his telekinesis while astral projecting. He would end up with a migraine that lasted hours or even days, or shakes he couldn't control, even a full whole-body seizure after his growth spurt had started and he taxed his powers against GSAgent Feldspar.

Owen had the odd feeling of suddenly understanding Josh's over-protective streak when it was Jamie who was insisting on risking himself instead of Kevin. Owen couldn't decide if his hypocritical feeling was for condemning Josh for being non-understanding in the past or for condemning Jamie now when he should have been condemning Kevin in the past. Or maybe both the Feral Boys were idiots and shouldn't be condemning either of their teammates at either time, but Owen knew his heart couldn't agree with that statement. He was worried maybe that was the actual hypocrisy.

"Jamie, you can't," Eve sighed, shaking her head sadly but also rolling her eyes in exasperation at the youngest member of the team. "Remember yesterday, when you worried if you should even leave for lunch, because I had no idea what your new genetic sequences were doing? Well, I still don't, and I warned you not to use your powers then. You ended up in an enormous fight, and I'm not blaming you for that, I'm thankful you saved Chris' life of course, but I don't think you realize just how much risk you put your own under in the process. We have no idea what your powers are doing, nor how pushing them yesterday may have changed anything, if it's put you at greater risk, or has added other unanticipated complications we haven't had any indication of yet. . .I'm sorry, Jamie, but you leaving Haven now is just too risky. Way too risky."

Jamie opened his mouth to protest, but Eve held up one palm in a 'stop' gesture, an imperious eyebrow raised and the fierce look of determination on her face to go with it telling Jamie that she wasn't going to tolerate any response that wasn't full agreement.

"I'll let you assist the team using the Helix's Dojo link, because you're right, your skills will probably be needed on this mission," Eve told him, but the whole team could hear the veiled warning in her tone of voice. "But that's the only reason I'm letting you do even that much, Jamie," Eve told him with a sigh. Jamie was blinking back tears of frustration, trying not to feel belittled because he knew he wasn't actually being picked on, that there were legitimate reasons for Eve's concerns and that she would never do that to him, whether his paranoid emotional dependency issues believed it or not.

Eve's warm brown eyes met Jamie's blinking ones sympathetically, knowing how much the situation was hurting him, on several levels, but making sure she didn't make him feel worse about it by pointing it out.

"You should stay in the medical lab, but we've got too many other worries going on at the moment," she told him. "I'll let you help the team from the Dojo, and IF that goes well, I could use your help figuring out what happened here in Haven yesterday, but I'm trusting you to keep me up to speed, first. I need you to be listening to your body, Jamie, to tell me if you're extra tired or hungry again, or anything else weird, if you have any other kinds of symptoms. We have to figure out how your growth spurt is evolving; any other mysteries are secondary to team member health, okay?"

"You're right, Eve," Jamie admitted with downcast eyes and a dejected sigh, then looked up to meet Eve's gaze once more with a hint of a smirk in his own. "As usual," he finished with another sigh, teasingly.

Eve smiled back and left the medical lab, heading for the Dojo to initialize the Double Helix's synchronicity program.

"Hey," Owen said softly from Jamie's other side, catching Jamie's chin in one of his giant hands and turning Jamie's face to meet Owen's eyes, instead of watching the rest of the team leave on a mission without him.

"I'm proud of you, Jamie," Owen told him, his hesitantly warm green gaze staring into Jamie's wide brown eyes. "You stood up for yourself here, insisted you needed to do what you felt was the right thing, because you thought it was the right thing, not because I did, or anybody else said it was. You did. And you accepted it when Eve told you otherwise, not because she wanted you to, but because you knew she was right..."

"..As usual," Jamie said in sync with Owen, both of them grinning.

"..Even though you still didn't want to admit it. I. . .I'm really proud of you, Jamie; I want you to know that. Proud that you're willing to stand on your own two feet, not relying on me or Josh or Anne or anybody to shore you up." Jamie continued to meet Owen's gaze, his own shifting to an expression of slight confusion as he noted the tension growing in the corners of Owen's eyes.

"And I—I don't want to be emotionally manipulating you here, Jamie, I swear I don't..." Owen insisted as his eyes started to get just the tiniest bit wet, which nearly freaked Jamie out entirely, but he restrained himself to wait for Owen's explanation.

"..But I'm scared, man. I. . .I'm really freakin' scared for you, Jamie, 'cause nobody knows what's going on, and we can't find Adam, we can't get a handle on Expiration Dates or half of our growth spurts, or–or half the freakin' crap we run into, and I'm scared for you, man, okay? Scared you're gonna hurt yourself 'cause you don't actually know a damn thing about being hurt, and by the time anybody figures anything out, it's gonna be too late!" Owen finished in a rush, blinking in embarrassment and glad they were now alone in the medical lab, after how loud his voice had gotten. "So, please. . .please just stay here and do it like Eve wants, okay? For me– —as a favor to a friend, who's worried, not just because I asked and you want to make me like you by doing what I want you to, okay?" Owen finished, blushing slightly as he met Jamie's gaze, hopefully.

"Sure, Bear Ears," Jamie said with a grin, stepping forward to embrace Owen and not commenting when Owen squeezed him back almost so hard he had to activate his elastic abilities. "No worries on that score," Jamie finished as he stepped back and smirked at Owen. "I know you're stuck with me now, we founded the Cali team together. . .I know damn well I can be as much of a brat as I want, and you'll still like me!" he declared with a grin.

"Yeah, my taste sucks!" Owen replied with a laugh, the relief clear on his face as they both left the medical lab.

An hour later, the cloaked Double Helix landed on top of an industrial parking garage in Washington, D.C. It was several miles from the Dominion complex where the original team had retrieved the second Double Helix, but it was close enough the GPS coordinates were quite similar.

'I'm reading a lot of electronics in the van parked on the lowest level,' Jamie told the rest of the team, his voice coming from the operations seat behind Jesse's co-pilot chair, where Shalimar was sitting. Jamie was sitting in the same seat in the Dojo's holographic simulation of the Helix back at Haven, secretly enjoying being a covert virtual operative for the team, but he was also hoping he wasn't getting in Shalimar's way, operating the systems she would normally be accessing.

'Alright, by the numbers, people,' Eve cautioned from Haven's main workstation. 'We're not sure what we're walking into, here. Kevin, check that van and come back—if it's Lexa's handler, she can initiate contact; otherwise I want you, Josh, Shal, and Lexa to split up and reconnoiter until we find something, then the team reconvenes at that point. Clear?'

"Got it, Eve," Kevin replied, leaning forward into Josh's chest as his longhaired lover automatically put an arm across his shoulders, being careful of the burns on Kevin's back. They were seated next to one another on the rear bench of the Helix behind Shalimar, Chris and Owen across from them behind Lexa and Brennan; it was quicker for Kevin to lean into Josh and project than for both of them to get down onto the floor, especially when their usual poses for Kevin's scouting required him to be on his back. "Hopefully its him, and we can cut to the chase."

Kevin closed his eyes and projected his astral form free from his body, floating through the wall of the Double Helix to where he could see over the edge of the parking garage. He flashed down to the street at the speed of thought, then turned and peered into the open-air structure, spotting the dark grey van parked in the rear but still adjacent to an exterior wall, its engine running. Kevin flashed over to the van, then floated through its side to see who and what was in its rear compartment.

Lexa's Dominion contact was seated in his electric wheelchair in the middle of the van's rear cargo area, surrounded by monitors and various electronic interfaces. He turned to check a screen that beeped urgently at him when Kevin entered the van, the screen's alert reading: PSIONIC ACTIVITY DETECTED, PERIMETER BREACH. The bearded man reached for an electronic device with a frown of concern; uneasy with what might happen if he activated some sort of Psionic New Mutant counter-technology, Kevin quickly grabbed the man's fingers before he could depress the button he was reaching for. His frown shifted to a look of alarm when he felt a hand he couldn't see grab his own, but his expression cleared when Kevin quickly typed a message on the keyboard in front of him with his other hand:

GREETINGS, SIR. LEXA WILL BE HERE SHORTLY.

"Mr. Tackleman, I presume," the bearded man rumbled in his deep voice. "This location is secure; your team can join her here. I'm afraid we need to move quickly."

Kevin blinked in surprise that the man knew who he was and was able to deduce as much just from his "invisible" actions, but he supposed he was also Mutant X's only Psionic and the man was expecting them, so maybe it wasn't that much of a stretch. It was a little creepy the man knew his name, though.

UNDERSTOOD. WE'LL BE RIGHT DOWN. Kevin typed in reply, then ended his Psionic jaunt and snapped back to his body.

Moments later, the team had gathered around the rear of the van. Lexa's contact had turned his chair and was speaking to them from the opened rear doors while his driver and bodyguard kept watch on the outside of the parking garage.

"You are all aware the Creator was the head of the Dominion," Lexa's contact told them, his eyes glancing from face to face as he spoke, the intensity of his gaze giving his slightly monotonous words more impact. "He was a genius, able to anticipate how technology was going to change the course of the future, nearly two centuries ago. He formed the Dominion to regulate the release of scientific knowledge, to keep technological advances from resulting in chaos, such as the cold fusion technology we suppressed."

"That's what he claimed he formed the Dominion for," Shalimar snarled. "He actually did it to reach his own goals, to control evolution and the entire human race!"

"That's why he cloned himself to create Adam, guided Adam's whole life as a geneticist. . .just to carry on his legacy," Jesse said, frowning uncomfortably as he considered the trials Adam had been submitted to. Owen, Chris, Josh, and Kevin's eyes were ping-ponging back and forth from Lexa's contact and the original team, various looks of shock on their faces as they learned more details of the team's origins.

"That may well be," the bearded man conceded in his gravelly voice, "But that's not important at the moment. Regardless of the Creator's goals, he established the Dominion as a secret worldwide force, exerting influence in every advanced government. The Dominion Council Head intends to use this influence structure to put himself in control, to essentially rule the world through various puppets."

"That's ridiculous.." Brennan said with a frown. "..in America, at least. I mean, sure, there's shadow-factions of the government, we all know how much trouble they can cause, but being shadows ties their hands. It's even worse for the Dominion; they have to control things subtly, eliminate the problems before they go public, like you've had us doing for the past year. You can't control a whole country with an open voting system . .which practically every advanced country in the world has, at this point!"

"Of course you can, Mr. Mulwray..." Lexa's contact told Brennan with a dry voice. "..if you subtly manipulate the voting process. It's an election year, which might explain why I had you meet me in Washington DC."

"That little toad's going to fix the vote before it even happens!" Lexa blurted in surprise, her eyes widening along with the rest of the team's as they realized her contact's point. "It won't matter how people vote if he controls the final results in the Global Election Management System!"

"Indeed," her contact agreed with a nod. "It doesn't matter which party nominee becomes President, if the officials beneath him were actually chosen by the Council Head."

"So. . .we have to keep his flunkies from sabotaging the GEMS computers?" Chris asked with a worried frown. "Isn't the security there, like, higher than Fort Knox? Roughly on par with the CIA, the FBI, and all the other fun government alphabet buildings in this town?"

"Indeed, Mr. Fitzpatrick," the bearded elder agent agreed with a frown of concern, then turned to take a flash drive from one of his computers. "This is the security information concerning the GEMS building. Unfortunately, I have no specifics concerning what forces the Council Head is applying to the operation, though I believe he will be using a standard team comprised of ten agents, six for insertion and perimeter security, three for infiltration, and a technical expert." He handed the drive to Jesse, then glanced at Kevin. "Dr. Aybel, I presume you are monitoring your team, and will continue to do so for this operation. If you network with my communications router here, I can provide back-door access to the GEMS building's electronic security when we arrive."

'Understood,' Eve's voice came from Lexa's commring. 'I'm reading your comm array at 37.75 MHz, with a 1000 cycles per second scrambler—that's impressive, by the way, it's actually taking a bit of my system's processing power to keep up with. I'll ping you with a Prime Number Algorithm security sequence when you arrive at the GEMS building,' she told him; Chris grinned at the man's look of surprise when Eve told him she already had his communications security compromised with only minimal use of her own resources.

"Agreed," was his only reply, giving Mutant X a nod as he turned back to the interior of the van and summoned his personnel. Mutant X hurried back to Double Helix, ready to confront the corrupt forces of the Dominion Council.

Jesse relayed the GEMS security protocols back to Eve and Jamie in Haven, and Eve came up with a plan of attack as Brennan flew the Helix to the GEMS building. She went over their proposed strategy while the team waited for Lexa's contact to arrive and facilitate their entry.

'Alright, we'll be able to bypass security and enter the building undetected once Lexa's contact arrives; my program is ready to launch,' Eve told the team. 'Thanks to his security schematics, we've got a layout to follow,' Eve said as blueprints opened on the Helix's monitors. 'The server station is on the ground floor, southeast corner,' she continued, the room in question highlighting itself on the team's displays. 'Kevin, I want you to do a quick recon, see how the Council Head's forces are deployed, if they're proceeding as he thought, or if we need to adjust.'

"I'm on it," Kevin replied, leaning into Josh again and closing his eyes as he projected his astral form out of his body. Eve continued briefing the team as Kevin's astral form scouted ahead.

Kevin flashed straight up into the air, getting a bird's-eye view of the GEMS building, then oriented himself on the southeast corner. Flashing back down to ground level, Kevin floated through the building's wall, then flashed his way down each corridor to see who was where, growing more disturbed as he went.

"We've got problems!" Kevin declared as he jolted up in his seat, startling Josh. "Whatever they're doing in there, they're using a Psionic to keep it quiet. . .there's black ops suits sneaking around in plain sight, but no one's reacting to them. I could . .feel something inside the building, definitely another Psionic presence."

"Crap, then they probably detected you, too!" Josh muttered unhappily.

"Well, shit, if they hadn't yet, they did now that you said it!" Owen groaned at Josh, already flipping him off when Josh turned to do the same to Owen. Owen grinned.

"That is not how it works, thank you very little!" Josh pouted; Owen and Chris just grinned more as Kevin shook his head.

'Would a little focus be too much to ask?' Eve's voice said with a sigh from the Helix's monitors.

" 'Probably' " Chris, Owen, Josh, Kevin, and Jamie all said in sync, Jamie cracking up over the comm set in the Dojo as Eve groaned. Shalimar and Lexa were both staring at the members of the California MX team as if they were completely insane, Lexa scowling at the total lack of professionalism being displayed. Brennan smirked, and Jesse outright grinned, which only earned him his female teammates' glares as well.

"..And yet, we consistently save the world," Josh laughed as the grey van belonging to Lexa's contact pulled up across the street from the GEMS building.

'The Council Head's forces are already using the backdoor access I would have initially chosen,' Lexa's contact said as the team made their way inside, with a hint of disdain in his rumbling voice. 'I could simply cancel their clearance, raising the alarm, but if they're Psionically cloaked...'

"..It wouldn't help much, and might just get us caught, too," Lexa agreed. "On the other hand..." she said, a wicked smile spreading across her face as she thought about the last time they had interfered in a Dominion plan in DC, "..I might have an idea. –What if we set off the fire alarm, maybe blow something up, cause utter chaos. . .that'd be more than their Psionic could keep the norms from seeing, right?" she asked with a smirk.

"Dude, I love the way you think!" Chris cackled, always eager to unleash Elemental havoc.

'Indeed it would, but you would be getting in your own way,' her contact replied, somehow managing to get his voice to be simultaneously droll and monotonous. 'The Council Head is audacious, making his move by the light of day, expecting his Psionic to cover everything. Proceed with your counterattack; I will provide you with the opportunity to use it.'

"How are you going to do that?" Lexa asked with a frown.

'I have several levels of security clearance of my own,' was his droll reply. 'An impromptu inspection of the facility only six weeks before the election would be in order, of course.'

"Of course!" Lexa laughed, a gleeful smirk on her face.

Naturally, that's when it all went wrong.

Eve wasn't sure exactly what happened, only that somehow the tables had been turned on her team. Mutant X had infiltrated the building thinking they would get the drop on their opponents, that the Dominion Council Head's forces would be caught by surprise when a tech-savvy force showed up to oppose their plan, with enough New Mutant firepower to take down any resistance.

That had not been the case.

Owen had been correct; the Council Head's Psionic had noticed Kevin's astral presence, and the rest of his team had been ready for Mutant X. They had cleverly feigned ignorance of the situation, allowing Mutant X to sneak into the GEMS building and even to enter the server room before they sprang their trap, or so it appeared.

Unfortunately, Mutant X had walked right into it.

Jesse phased into the server room, then phased its wall to let the rest of the team step through.

"Sorry, I'm afraid we can't let you do that," Lexa told the supposedly dumbfounded Dominion tech who had connected a laptop to the server stack.

"Right back atcha, Sweetheart," the Dominion "tech" replied, his eyes lighting up with a Psionic magenta flash as reality melted around the Mutant X team.

In Haven, Eve and Jamie were beginning to panic.

The team had moved to the southeast corner of the building undetected; a camera being telekinetically held in place so it wouldn't spot the team raising no alarm, as opposed to one being short-circuited by a tesla coil. The plan had been for Jesse to phase inside, then phase the wall for the team to enter.

Somehow, they had ended up moving around to the other side of the building, inside the underground parking garage.

Eve and Jamie had both tried to ask various members of the team what they were doing, but no one responded. Jamie started getting upset, shouting at Owen to listen to him, finally stopping when Eve yelled at him that it was clearly doing no good.

"Dammit, Lexa's contact is flashing his credentials at the front desk, I can't get him to answer, either!" Eve snarled as her communications array told her things she didn't want to hear.

Jamie had turned his attention back to the original mission, trying to keep himself busy so he wouldn't panic over his friends being cut off. The Helix was in the proper position, its relays were sufficient for the hacking Eve and Jamie needed to do; they just needed Jesse's pad or Jamie's phone to be close enough to the server room. . .but they were both on the other side of the building, Jesse's pad with him and Jamie's phone in Owen's pocket. Jamie frowned in concentration as he began hacking into the GEMS building's security system, not trying to crack it but merely trying to access the camera feeds.

A fierce grin flashed across Jamie's face when he succeeded, quickly replaced by another frown of concentration as Jamie tried to figure out what he was looking at. His fingers began flying over the keyboard, divvying his screen into four quadrants, one for each camera in the parking garage. Perspiration beaded on Jamie's forehead as he hacked, quickly forming droplets and rolling down his face, but he was too concerned for his friends to pay any attention to the warnings his body was giving him. He was just a little warm, concentrating too hard, but he had to, to accomplish the mission, to save his friends; a little discomfort he could easily ignore was a small price to pay.

Owen and Shalimar were screaming, in pain, in rage, at each other, at the world around them. Chris' scream had crack-hazed the windshields of every car in the parking garage and nearly shattered his teammates' eardrums, sending his Feral teammates into animalistic rage. Or maybe the rabid rage was from the bizarre sensory distortions they were all experiencing, the walls bleeding and the floor moaning when they walked on it, the colors screaming at them and hiding in darkness, screaming more when Lexa or Brennan lit them up again with their powers...

Jesse huddled himself into a corner, packing himself in as tightly as he could before holding his breath and massing. The sounds, the sounds were all painful, pointy growls of Owen's snarls and stabbing pains of Shalimar's piercing shrieks, was this what it was like for Chris, when his powers expanded? Was that really just this morning? Jesse felt like he had been here forever, Brennan's shouts stabbing him in the gut, Lexa's cries trying to tear his skin off, and ohgod,themassingwasn'thelping...

Kevin was beginning to panic, driving himself to astral exhaustion as he struggled to keep his teammates from hurting themselves or each other. He had finally just telekinetically tossed Brennan and Lexa into an unoccupied corner of the parking garage where he could keep an eye on them, keeping their hands pointed at the walls so they didn't blast anyone or blow up any gas tanks. He was trying to restrain Shalimar and Owen, and he had lost track of Jesse, but Shal and Owen kept springing back from wherever he pinned them, impossible to hold a Feral still short of all out telekinetically paralyzing them, and he had too many other things he had to keep concentration on to do that. Josh was huddled up over Kevin's unconscious body protectively, balled up in a corner behind a support pylon, moaning at the things his Feral nose was telling him were present: acid, fire, decomposing bodies, burnt rubber, sewage, lightning. . .and Kevin, Kevin–Kevin–Kevin, Josh had his nose buried in Kevin's collar, against his neck, scent of his lover, his mate, the decomposing body is not Kevin...

Shalimar shouted her rage at the thing that had taken her friend, her Packmate, possessed him, she could see it hiding in his eyes, green-brown and not slitted like a Feral's should be, like her own were, like Josh's were, he was okay, but this thing—

Owen threw a punch at the hissing cat-thing that was threatening him, but it ducked out of the way, spitting fury and making the cool air touching his skin turn slimy. Owen bellowed his rage at the blonde cat-thing making the cool become slimy, blocking its kick with one hand, flinching when the touch to his flesh made all the lights in the room get twice as bright. He blinked when the cat-thing withdrew its leg, the broken contact making the world go dark again. Owen grabbed the blonde cat-thing's ankle –it was still right there, moving so slowly, all the time in the world to grab it– and bellowed in rage when the lights quadrupled in brightness. He jerked the cat-thing off its other leg, swinging it in an arc the length of his arm and its body, smashing it into the crazed windshield of a car, finishing the job of shattering it.

Shalimar blinked, stunned when the back of her skull smashed through the car's windshield. . .thank goodness it had already been spiderwebbed by Chris' shout. She blinked again as Owen leaped up onto the hood of the car, reaching for Shalimar's throat. She frowned, realizing the world made sense again, to her at least, but obviously not to Owen as he reached for her. With only a split-second to act, Shalimar pulled her knee up to her chest, alongside Owen's reaching forearm, and fired the heel of her boot out into Owen's forehead, knocking him clean off the car.

Lexa and Brennan kept shouting and yelling, struggling to blast the phantoms their eyes were seeing and panicking all the more when they found they couldn't move their hands. Lexa snapped her fingers, igniting a small strobe of light that made the walls scream and the floor turn to liquid, both of them staggering and suddenly only keeping their feet because their hands were pinned in mid-air.

Chris, however, was just standing by himself near the wall where they had phased into the parking garage, no longer screaming...

"If you have finished verifying my ID, I would appreciate an escort to the hardware room," Lexa's contact told the receptionist at the front desk, who looked mildly panicked when she verified who he was and what clearance level he had.

"O–Of course, Sir!" she stuttered, pressing the security summons button with one hand and gesturing frantically for them to hurry to her desk with the other. "Right away! Please escort this gentleman to the hardware room," she told the pair of security guards who scurried over, looking spooked by her being rattled. "He has full authorization to inspect whatever he needs to!" she told them, her scared-wide eyes communicating how important their full cooperation was. The guards nodded and turned to Lexa's contact.

"Right this way, Sir," one said, the other hurrying ahead to get the door.

"Pardon me, I need to take this," he replied as he took a silent phone out of his suit pocket. "Yes?" he answered, having surreptitiously relayed Eve's communication link from his electric wheelchair's comm-set to his phone.

'Something's gone wrong,' Eve warned him. 'The team moved from the southeast corner to the other side of the building and entered the parking garage; none of them responded when we tried hailing them. Jamie hacked into the security cameras, says they've all gone crazy, screaming at nothing and fighting each other. I'm guessing the enemy Psionic is in their heads, same as they're cloaking the Dominion Agents from the GEMS building staff. They probably have more than one Psionic, to be doing this much.'

"Agreed," he replied, his monotonous voice giving nothing away to the security guards escorting him. "I will look into the situation, time permitting," he said, double-speak for when I'm able to.

'Understood,' Eve replied. 'If you trust me enough to let my system access the firewall in your chair's comm array, I think we'll be able to use it instead of Jesse or Owen's hardware, if you're heading near the server room?'

"That's my current assignment," he agreed, telling Eve he was already headed that way.

'Alright, I'm signing off, but Haven will remain linked to your comm array. We'll hear everything within range of its mic,' Eve told him. 'If we can re-establish communication with the team, we can connect you to them.'

"Agreed," he replied, and deactivated his phone, putting it back in his pocket before quietly adjusting his chair's systems, granting Eve and Haven access to its hardware.

"Here we are, Sir, the hardware room," the spokesperson of his escort said as the second guard moved to open the door. "The servers are in the room next door, if you need to inspect them as well..." he said, his voice trailing off.

"I don't believe that will be necessary at this time," he replied as he finished adjusting his chair's settings and looked up at the hardware room door; he didn't want the GEMS building security to stumble across either Mutant X or the Council Head's forces at this point, if the team was already compromised, having security alerted would only make things more difficult...

Lexa's contact frowned in surprise as the guard holding the door open for him collapsed, as did the spokesperson guard at his side. He turned in his chair, alarmed, looking for the threat, when the world melted around him...

Many miles away, the Creator was smiling.

It had taken him a bit of time, more time than he had thought it would, actually, to track down the Head of the Dominion's Council, and the geneticist Dominique, who had been his chief aid for several decades. The woman was older than she looked, having used her knowledge of genetics to restore much of her youth. The Creator smiled to himself again at that thought; her methods were deeply flawed in comparison to his own; the nearly flawless cell-duplication would result in horribly malignant cancer the first time she suffered a major wound, if it hadn't already. But it didn't matter.

He no longer had any need of her assistance, and she had betrayed him and his organization. She had sealed her own fate.

The Council Head, however, he was a rascally fellow, now wasn't he? Of course, the Creator had known he was a fairly corrupt individual, with a nigh-insatiable thirst for power. . .those were reasonable qualities in the man who handled much of the administrative work of secretly controlling much of the world. Guiding human evolution required a certain ruthlessness and command of a great deal of power; someone who did not mind that ruthlessness and aspired to that sort of power was ideal.

His greed, however, his ambition for goals above and beyond what the Creator had set forth, had designed the Dominion to achieve...

..That was simply—unacceptable.

The man was paranoid, however. Paranoid, creative, and had paid attention to the ways the Creator himself had avoided discovery and detection. He and Dominique had hidden themselves well, but they had a fatal flaw in their personalities. . .they were creatures of comfort. They desired wealth and power for the privileges such things would gain them, the control over others to ensure they had the best of everything, instead of other people having it. So foolish.

They hadn't been born 200 years ago, in poverty, struggling to survive every day of their life. They had never known such hardships. They hadn't had to work themselves to the bone, just to generate enough food to survive. They'd had modern conveniences to do such work for them, and wailed and gnashed their teeth when expected to do without any little whim that their hearts desired. They wanted power, privilege, riches, and the right to do whatever they pleased. . .and they didn't want to sacrifice an iota of their own time, energy, or beings to gain these things.

That sort of narrow-minded, short-sighted, impractical irresponsibility was exactly the sort of thing the Creator wanted to eliminate from the human species—it could only be an improvement.

The Council Head and Dominique still had those traits, however, and those selfish desires prompted them to make their temporary refuge in a well-appointed penthouse suite. It had taken the Creator a bit of work to track them down, but he had done so. The electronic security on such a building was easily bypassed by someone of his intelligence, and only a tiny bit more effort kept the alarm from being raised and prevented the Council Head or Dominique from noticing as their guards were quietly knocked out.

It had been quite simple, really. He simply filled the penthouse with an odorless neurotoxin that rendered everyone unconscious.

Having taken the counter-agent beforehand, the Creator had all the time he needed to fully incapacitate and secure the guards where they would be out of the way. He also secured the Council Head and Dominique, tying them to chairs he had placed next to each other, one facing forward and the other facing back.

A spritz of the counter-agent to their faces brought both of them around in just moments.

"Hello," the Creator said, with a pleasant smile on Adam's face as his captives awoke.

"Dr. Kane," the Head of the Dominion Council said with thinly veiled contempt. "What is the meaning of this?"

The Council Head blinked in surprise as Adam Kane's body laughed uproariously at his response. Dominique had to crane her head around awkwardly to see him because she was seated with her back to him as he faced the Council Head, but she could see enough of his body language to gasp and go utterly pale.

The Creator grinned, now showing teeth, as he winked at Dominique.

"No, no, no, my 'dear boy'," the Creator told the Council Head, casting his eyes down and shaking his head in disappointment. "I'm afraid you've got it all wrong. I am the one who should be asking you what the meaning of your actions is." He smiled a closed-lipped smile at the man again, but this one could hardly be described as 'pleasant'. "What is the meaning of your going behind the Creator's back? Of expending Dominion resources on your own private affairs?"

He stood and began to pace back and forth in front of the Council Head, too agitated to remain seated. He was venting anger freely for the first time in numerous decades, at a fully deserving target, and it felt far too good to stop. Dominique couldn't keep him in her vision as he passed behind her, but she didn't bother. She merely turned to face the same way as her chair, her skin going pale and her frame beginning to tremble.

"What is the meaning of your bids for power, above and beyond what- -the Creator had already provided you? Of reviving Project Contact, despite the attention it would bring to our work? I ask you, what is the meaning of your betrayal of everything my work, the Dominion, stands for!?" the Creator snarled, his anger getting the better of him and nearly making him openly admit his identity.

"What do you mean, 'your work'?" the Council Head scoffed, trying to hide how disturbed he was by the completeness of his captor's knowledge. "The Dominion isn't 'your work', you coddled academic, it's..." the Council Head's voice trailed off as his captor's eyes glared at him with an intensity that could not be faked. An intensity that he had only ever seen in one man's eyes, eyes that were the same as the ones glaring venomously at him.

"Of course it's his work..." Dominique whispered in a broken voice. She had been the Creator's assistant for most of a lifetime; she knew exactly who her captor was, the smartest man in the world, the man she had betrayed...

"You're the Creator—!" the Council Head gasped in an awed voice, stunned at the implications.

With her eyes closed and her head hanging down in shame and misery, in anticipation of the brilliantly creative punishments she would receive, with her back to the Creator, Dominique couldn't see what he was doing. Seated immediately next to her, she heard the Council Head gasp in surprise, an inarticulate sound of protest...

..Then his head was blown off by the gun the Creator had pulled from Adam's blazer, gore spattering the side of Dominique's face.

She shrieked in panicked surprise, then screamed when the Creator cocked the hammer of the pistol right next to her ear. Dominique's scream of fear escalated into a combination of fear and pain as he pressed the still-hot muzzle of the gun to the side of her neck.

"Now..." the Creator said very quietly as he leaned close to her other ear, whispering into one ear as he held the gun pointed beneath the other. "You were my assistant for many years, my apprentice, and I learned much in the process of teaching you. You have one chance to possibly redeem yourself, if you tell me of your work. All of it, the prion weapon, the customization of the New Mutants, their stabilization, your security protocols. . .ALL of it!"

"Yes, yes," she sobbed, broken. "–I'll tell you everything. . .everything..."

Hours later, Dominique had revealed her every last secret, and the Creator was smiling at her. She had regained her composure and was thoroughly disgusted with herself for falling to pieces so thoroughly.

"There," she scowled, staring down at her knees and refusing to meet the Creator's gaze. "That's everything. ALL my work. My files, my passwords, my research, the protocols. . .EVERYTHING. The Creator is once again back in full control. Are you happy now!?" she demanded sulkily, looking up to glare at her one-time mentor.

"Yes, thank you," the Creator replied, then shot her in the face, blowing her brilliant brains out. "Quite."

"Ooo, we've got it!" Jamie hollered out to Eve from the Dojo. "Damn, his chair is sweet, it's got bells and whistles on it even my phone doesn't, but I suppose it's got more room for hardware than my phone..." Jamie muttered as he began hacking into the GEMS building's servers, using the Helix as a signal booster and the Dominion's souped-up wheelchair as a relay.

"Alright, get to it, Jamie!" Eve called back. "We need two systems to simultaneously access their servers; the Council Head's team won't be able to block us both, unless they also have two systems connected," she went on to explain. Jamie rolled his eyes and nodded even though she couldn't see him, because he knew that already. Owen and Josh called Eve the Shriek Queen because of their Feral hearing, and Chris just did it because it amused him to consider himself the shriek king with his own powers, but in his own head, Jamie called her the Exposition Queen. "One of us has to wipe their trojan out of the GEMS servers while the other simultaneously crashes their system; we won't be sure their influence is eliminated, otherwise."

"I know!" Jamie hollered back at her. "I'll crash them, you wipe their input," he declared. "Plays to our strengths better!"

"Okay!" Eve called back. "Let me know when you're ready; I'm checking something for the team!" she informed him.

"Oh, good," Jamie said under his breath, confident in Eve's abilities. He knew she'd come up with something. He continued to ignore the sweat rolling down his face and neck, but the stresses his body was under reduced slightly as his worry for his friends lessened.

Typing frantically and thoroughly grateful that the Helix's boost meant she could still reach the team's hardware despite their being underground, Eve accessed the nanite dispenser in Owen's pocket, next to Jamie's phone. She had felt vaguely guilty when she had called Owen and Kevin, telling them to release a squad of nanites into the van while Lexa's contact was speaking to the team, but she didn't regret it now.

The nanites had already networked themselves through the hardware of Lexa's contact—including the anti-Psionic hardware he had almost deployed on Kevin.

Working as fast as she could and demanding perfection from herself, leaving no margin for error, Eve reprogrammed the nanites still inside the dispenser to replicate the effects of that hardware, mimicking their circuitry on a molecular scale.

Praying the nanites would be able to find their way through Owen's pocket and access the galvanic impulses of his skin, Eve remotely triggered the nanite dispenser, a puff of air sounding from Owen's pocket on the other side of the country.

Chris had freaked out when the world went insane on them, now colors were causing unbearable noise in his head, instead of his powers. He had screamed in panic and surprise, blowing out the windshields of the cars nearest him and crazing the windshields of the rest. He had squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over them instead of his ears, the volume in his head reducing along with the level of light reaching his retinas. He also noticed that his scream had been a blinding flash, sound affecting his retinas and light affecting his eardrums... That's synesthesia, Chris thought to himself. Confusing the senses, mixing their inputs. . .but I don't just hear sound—I can feel it!

Standing motionless, Chris reached out with his power, as opposed to just increasing the volume of sounds reaching his ears and hearing them normally from there. It was similar to how he had realized something was wrong when the rogue GSAgents and the Links got the drop on the team outside of Eloy's; Chris felt the sounds around him and realized something. . .it was like sonar. Every object reflected at least a little bit of the sounds that hit it; ambient noise gave Chris a three-dimensional, 360° feel for his environment. It bypassed the synesthesia he was otherwise experiencing because it was a combination of two senses, both his hearing and his touch, thanks to his New Mutant ability.

Leaving his eyes closed, Chris found he could still move normally, almost as if he could see, like he was wearing night vision goggles.

"Whoa," Owen groaned as he sat up. "What happened?" he asked, rubbing his forehead as Shalimar picked herself out of the car's destroyed windshield and hopped down to the ground.

"Oh!" she gasped, one hand flying up to cover her mouth, but Owen could still see the smile laughing in her eyes and wondered what was so funny. "Omigod, Owen, I'm so sorry!" Shalimar blurted as she lowered her hand, then raised it again when she couldn't prevent her smile from coming back. "You've got my heelprint right in the middle of your forehead!" she gasped, trying not to laugh.

"Yeah, okay, but what happened?" he repeated. "What the hell was that, why did the world go nuts, why did we go nuts, trying to kill each other?"

"Has to be the enemy Psionic, you jinxed us," Shalimar frowned looking around at the team still going bananas, except for Chris, who was walking towards them with his eyes closed.

"You guys okay?" Chris asked as he reached them. "Somebody should probably let Eve and Jamie know what's going on, they must be losing their shit by now."

"Oh, Christ, of course he is!" Owen said, scrambling for his phone before he remembered that Jamie's phone was also in his pocket. "Oh, damn, we shoulda just switched phones..." he muttered.

"System: dial Haven," Shalimar told her commring, even as Owen's phone began to vibrate.

'Shal!' Eve responded instantly, sounding both relieved and thrilled. 'It worked?' she asked.

"What worked?" Shalimar asked with a frown as Owen answered his phone.

"Jamie?" he asked, since the screen said it was Haven calling and Shal was already speaking to Eve.

'Geeze, O, you okay?' Jamie asked, and Owen could hear the worried frown in his voice. 'Turn to your left, face the camera, I want to see," Jamie ordered, his voice audibly scowling. Owen turned obediently to face the security camera in the corner of the garage, tipping his head back just the slightest bit so that his forehead faced the lens directly.

A moment later, Jamie cracked up over the phone.

"Duuude, she clocked you, Bear Ears!" Jamie laughed. "Oh man, I hope your hibernation thing fixes that the next time you sleep; you've got a two-inches square black and blue mark right in the middle of your forehead!'

"Hmmm, maybe no headbutting any badguys, this fight," Owen muttered, realizing his head was still sore.

'Umm, the anti-Psionic nanites I released?' Eve asked Shalimar. 'Isn't that what fixed Owen?'

"Uh, no, sudden cranial trauma seemed to do the trick for me, so I returned the favor..." Shalimar admitted.

'Oh, no!' Eve laughed. 'Okay, well Owen has the nanite dispenser; try it on someone else.'

"Volunteering!" Chris said, holding up one hand and still keeping his eyes closed. Owen shrugged and sprayed Chris' forehead with the nanite dispenser. "How long should this take?" he asked Shalimar's raised right hand.

'Just a second, they're coming online, these readings are really interesting...' Eve said, her voice growing distracted as she became fascinated by the data scrolling across the main screen at Haven's primary workstation. 'Oh, okay, they're linked and mimicking the Dominion's circuitry; how do you feel, Chris?'

Chris hesitantly opened his eyes and glanced around, then turned to see where Lexa and Brennan were still shooting their powers more-or-less harmlessly into the wall.

"It's working, no more synesthesia," Chris told Eve.

"Huh. It was weirder than that for us," Owen said glancing at Shalimar to see her nod in agreement. "Maybe 'cause Feral senses are sharper?" he wondered. "Oh, shit, Josh!" he cried out, realizing his fellow Feral Boy was still suffering from the Psionic's influence. He turned to dash over to the corner he could detect Josh and Kevin's scents coming from.

'Owen, WAIT!' Eve called out urgently, the note of alarm in her voice bringing Owen to an abrupt halt. 'Don't spray Josh if he's in physical contact with Kevin; these nanites are replicating anti-Psionic circuitry; I'm not sure what they'll do to Kevin!'

"Crap!" Owen muttered, now aware of Josh's quiet moans of misery at the situation his brain told him he was in, even if it was a lie.

"I think Kev must be keeping Bren and Lex from blowing anything up," Chris cut in quickly, pointing them out to Owen, in the opposite corner of the garage. "Spray them, and then he's free to separate Josh from his body," Chris explained, Owen nodding and moving to "inoculate" the other Elementals. They knew Kevin was astral projecting, so there was no chance he wasn't in contact with Josh, and if Josh was as disoriented as Shalimar and Owen had been, approaching him would probably be a bad idea.

"Lexa, stop!" Owen called out to her as he approached. "You're just wearing yourself out!" Lexa screamed at the torments the sound of Owen's voice produced in her brain, freaking out all the more when her own voice hurt her. Brennan grunted in further distress and blasted the wall with both hands, his left hand strafing something only he could see before Kevin immobilized it, as well.

Lexa began snapping the fingers of both her hands, sending small flares strobing out in every direction. Owen winced as he got closer, finally closing his eyes and using his Feral hearing and sense of smell to determine when he made it to her. Reaching out with both hands, Owen flinched when Lexa startled violently and screamed even louder when his left hand brushed her shoulder. Grabbing her shoulder to hold Lexa still, Owen reached up with his other hand and sprayed a dose of Eve's nanites under the corner of Lexa's jaw.

A moment later, she stopped yelling and setting off strobes, blinking as reality restored itself to normal around her.

"What the Hell was that?" she asked, reaching up to take Owen's wrist, pulling his hand off her shoulder but holding onto it in thanks as she turned to face him, with a questioning look on her face.

"The enemy Psionic," Owen answered as he gave her a nod in acknowledgement of her thanks, then pulled his wrist free of her grasp as he turned to Brennan. He stepped forward and sprayed the back of Brennan's neck as Lexa rolled her eyes.

"No kidding, it was the enemy Psionic," Lexa said with a huff. "I meant, what the heck is in that gadget? Last time, it was Eve's nanites, copying the Dominion's storage servers..."

"Still nanites," Owen answered with a frown, his eyes remaining on Brennan as he waited for the Electrical Elemental to return to his senses and stop blasting the wall. So far, he was continuing unabated. "Eve copied your guy's anti-Psionic circuitry, figured it might do the trick. We're lucky it did, but it doesn't seem to be working on Brennan," Owen explained, still frowning, but blinking in surprise when his phone rang, answering it quickly. "Eve?"

'It's not working on Brennan,' she said, sadly. 'I can see it on Jamie's feed from the Dojo, his body is crackling with electricity; it's more than enough to short out my poor nanites as soon as they come in contact with him. You may have to knock him out.'

"That. . .could be tricky," Owen answered, frowning again. "Like you said, he's crackling with electricity, and he's not in his right mind, thinks he's fighting for his life. His charge would fry me just like your nanites, if I hit him or put him in a sleeper hold or something."

"Crap, but we need to free Kevin up to treat Josh, and he's the only one who can handle Brennan!" Chris sighed in frustration.

"I could. . .punch Josh in the head?" Owen asked, doubtfully. He blinked in surprise when his head suddenly shook itself, then he felt invisible hands manipulating his free hand into a thumbs-up. "Oh..." he said, grinning when he realized what had happened. "..I think Kevin's got it, or an idea, anyway." Owen blinked again when his head was telekinetically nodded, that was still really weird, but he took the nanite device back out of his pocket and relaxed his grip on it, ready for Kevin to telekinetically pluck it from his hand.

Owen stood with his arm extended for a moment, waiting for Kevin to do something so that Brennan could be sprayed with the nanites. After just a second, Brennan cried out, making odd motions with his head and looking like his hands were trying to reach up for his own head or neck, but they were still telekinetically pinned by Kevin's concentration.

Kevin had used his new ability to touch things with his astral form to put Brennan in a sleeper hold, as Owen had suggested. Standing behind Brennan and wrapping his left arm around Brennan's neck, Kevin folded the fingers of his left hand inside his right inner elbow as he bent his right forearm back and splayed his fingers over the back of Brennan's skull. Brennan struggled, trying to free himself, but he wouldn't have been able to break Kevin's grip even if he could move, and he couldn't really move when his hands were frozen in position, pointing at the wall.

After a few moments, Brennan's eyelids sank shut over his eyes, and the electricity coursing over and around his body fizzled out. Owen hurried forward and sprayed Brennan's head with the nanite dispenser, then turned to hurry back across the parking garage to the other corner, where Josh and Kevin's body were.

Lexa's contact blinked in surprise as the world melted around him, then re-formed into a horribly familiar sight...

..the securities warehouse where he had been crippled.

It was just as he remembered it: dimly lit, dank, and smelling of the waterfront outside. In fact, it was exactly as he remembered it; he was re-living the experience, watching with horrified eyes as his younger self repeated the actions he had previously taken, the actions that had resulted in his lower spine being severed.

He watched through his younger self's eyes as he broke into the warehouse, his Dominion security clearance easily bypassing the computerized security. He knew Genomex's covert black ops team had agents on site, some of them likely to be New Mutants. He was the Dominion's expert on New Mutants, however, and he had naively believed himself prepared for any confrontation. His older self could only watch the previous events of his life unfold with dread knowledge of what was to come.

Skulking silently through the warehouse, particularly impressive for a man of his size, he trusted his crepe-soled shoes and the watery smells of the docks to keep him from Feral detection. He continually recited his name, rank, and serial number in the forefront of his mind; he couldn't keep a Psionic from detecting him or accessing his mind, but he could give them a minimal amount of information to work with. If they confronted him with mental abilities, he would have to up the ante.

Wearing armor designed by the Creator himself to withstand Elemental blasts as well as bullets and flame, he had snuck farther into the warehouse, looking for the records room the Genomex agent would have to access. The warehouse was part of Adam Kane's Mutant Underground, using its covert access to the waterfront to smuggle New Mutants out of the city. If Genomex accessed its files, they would be able to track down the New Mutants who had already been freed to start new lives outside of Genomex's control. Dr. Kane was still setting up his Sanctuary, had yet to assemble a team of New Mutants to help him reach his goals. The Creator wanted Dr. Kane to succeed, and so his efforts to free the Children of Genomex from their creators needed to be preserved.

Lexa's contact had been prepared to do just that, but he had failed to anticipate how dire the situation would become.

"Okay, Jamie, the team's back online, let's get the GEMS servers taken care of while they handle the enemy team!" Eve called back to the Dojo as she switched Haven's main workstation over to her electronic security protocols, ready to eliminate the hidden programs that had been introduced to the government's servers.

"Right!" Jamie yelled back in answer, calling up the access he had already initiated into the GEMS building's network and switching over to an analysis routine, running it to find the foreign computer connected to it aside from Haven, whatever the Dominion Council Head's forces were using.

Jamie sat hunched over the holographic Double Helix monitor in the Dojo, waiting for the program to complete. His shoulders were tensed with anticipation, and he shifted his feet restlessly, impatient. His elasticizing power couldn't affect the hologram of the Double Helix, because it was pure energy, so its keyboard remained normal, unlike Haven's main keyboard when his new ability had first manifested, when he was decrypting the Dominion's logs.

The shoelace of Jamie's right shoe snagged on the end of the bolt that attached the chair to the Helix's floor as he shifted; the shoelace stretched just like a rubber band as Jamie repositioned his foot, his power flowing into the clothes he was wearing and his genetic code shifting with its use...

Jesse blinked back to proper conscious awareness of his surroundings to see Kevin leaning over him with a smile and Eve's nanite dispenser in his hand.

"Euugh, what was that!?" Jesse muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. "You're my kind of Psionic, buddy, no messing with people's heads, yowtch..." Jesse blinked in surprised confusion as part of his mind considered that statement a dishonor to Emma's memory, and another part, an emotional unthinking part, spoke up to say it was only proper. Kevin didn't notice, thinking Jesse was still adjusting to proper sensory input again.

"It's okay, you're temporarily immune to Psionic manipulation, thanks to your Dominion contact's tech and Eve's nanites," Kevin grinned, waggling the dispenser. "Lucky for me that my powers seem to make me immune to theirs; I don't think we want to try exposing me to the Dominion's anti-Psionic technology."

"Oh," Jesse replied, blinking in surprise again and remembering Kevin and Owen answering their phones while Lexa's contact had been speaking to them. Then Owen had given Kevin something; Jesse had wondered about that. "Yeah, probably not a good idea," he agreed, taking Kevin's hand and accepting his help in rising to his feet.

"Guys, Jamie says something's weird with the Dominion team's computer access," Owen called out to the team in general. "I think we need to go take them out, either pull the plug manually or at least figure out where and what it is so Eve and Jamie know where to start," he explained, nodding as he listened to Jamie on his phone, knowing Jamie would still be watching them on his screens.

"Oh, I'm afraid we can't let you do that," a new voice said as four people exited the parking garage's elevator, the spokesperson's eyes glowing Psionic magenta. Lexa gasped as she realized he was the "tech" who had fried their minds, parroting her own words back at her. The tall man behind him raised his hands, wavering bands of energy radiating from them as he gestured. Four cars on the other side of the parking garage, parked on either side of the exit ramp, went flying sideways and smashed into each other, the cars on the outer sides flipping over on top of the first two, blocking the ramp with a literal four-car pile-up.

"Um, he just magnetically threw a couple tons of cars around, simultaneously, and made it look easy!" Brennan pointed out, looking distinctly worried. The tall enemy Elemental grinned in response.

The stocky woman to the Psionic's left stepped forward, her body shimmering from flesh to crystal in the space of half a step. Jesse gasped quietly in surprise; he had never seen any Molecular accomplish a full-body transformation so quickly, even his own phasing or massing took longer, and he could do those in the blink of an eye, if his lungs were fresh. The woman dropped to one knee and slapped one quartz hand into the concrete surface of the parking garage, a wall of quartz crystals eight feet wide springing up in front of her, giving her team nigh-indestructible cover to duck behind as needed.

"Oh, crap," Jesse whispered, grabbing Kevin's hand again and pulling him back into the corner Jesse had been curled up in, out of the ememies' line of sight behind a support pylon. "Kevin, you have to get out of here. They have to be using a Telecyber, if Jamie can't detect a foreign computer. You're our only Psionic, and you've got Eve's nanites. If you can short-circuit the Telecyber, Eve and Jamie will be able to do the rest, but we need to get your body somewhere safe, first," Jesse explained as he pulled Kevin back into the corner. "I'll phase the whole wall; you should be able to get through one side or the other," Jesse said, hoping he was right. Kevin nodded as Jesse put his hands against both walls of the corner, exhaling to phase them. Kevin quickly stepped forward and put his arm through the first one, frowning when his hand encountered dirt. Ducking around Jesse and reaching through the second wall, Kevin flashed a thumbs-up to Jesse with his other hand and dashed through the wall, just as a voice called out:

"Hey! I hear you using your power back there; what are you doing!?" the burly man standing to the Psionic's right called out, his eyes a deep brown from lid to lid with a pinprick pupil, the eyes of some sort of non-felid predator. His wiry black hair stood out from his skull in spiked tufts; the Mutant X team reacted in shock when his sideburns spread from just in front of the tops of his ears across his face and under his cheekbones, a goatee sprouting on his chin as he sniffed at the air. "I smell you; you're a Molecular! Get out here where we can see you, or I start tearing your friends apart!" he snarled, his fingernails lengthening and thickening into taloned claws.

"He's like the Tiger, one of Dominique's customized mutants!" Shalimar whispered in shock.

"You bet we are, Sweetie!" the wolverine pseudo-Feral said with a gleeful snarl, turning his broad, now flat-topped skull to face Shalimar, grinning at her with his suddenly pointed teeth.

With a snarl, he threw himself forward, leaping over the crystalline pseudo-Molecular's wall of quartz.

Inside his memory flashback, Lexa's contact watched through his younger self's eyes as he paid the price of success...

He had reached the records room undetected, but he hadn't detected anyone else, either. Not anyone else conscious, anyway; the guards at the entrance and touring the interior had both been knocked out. Could the Genomex agent have been a New Mutant with some ability that enabled them to complete the job far faster than anticipated? It wasn't likely, but he would have to verify...

Sudden motion at the records room door froze him in his tracks. With a faint shimmer of light, a young woman became visible. . .very young, still a teenager! Why would Genomex be sending someone so young on such a sensitive mission? He frowned as he saw her burn through the records room's lock with a laser fired from the first two fingers of her right hand.

A Light Elemental, he thought to himself, surprised. I thought surely she must be a Psionic, a Telecyber to force her way into the secured database, with a mental cloak. . .why would they send someone so young, surely they have elder agents with comparable firepower?

Lexa's contact had dropped his jaw open in surprise when the young Lexa had finished burning through the lock and straightened up to take a cautionary look around—not only were her eyes solid white, which he knew was not a normal side effect of an Elemental mutation, there were also two metal studs in the side of her neck, above the Gemini necklace dangling between her collarbones. He recognized those studs; they were the exterior hardware of Genomex's Project Nine, a project designed to give them full control of a subject by putting them in an REM trance. It was a disgusting application of science, all the worst forms of control wrapped up in one. This poor girl was a New Mutant being abused by Genomex, probably believing she had no choice. . .now they were using her as they saw fit.

He wouldn't stand for that.

Hurrying forward but remaining silent, he approached the records room as the young woman slipped inside. Cautiously peering around the edge of the door, he considered his options. He wanted to startle her, the more violently the better, to wake her from her REM trance, but he couldn't let her succeed at copying Adam Kane's database, either. Frowning, he watched as she went to work, quickly bypassing the internal security on the computer and powering it up, managing to log on despite her lack of a password in mere moments. The Project Nine control wasn't remote operation by a third party; it was more akin to a hypnotic suggestion, a command given to the subject in their trance state that they then carried out to the best of their ability. The fact that she had managed to sneak inside, take out two guards, enter a secured room and bypassed the internal security of the computer proved she was an agent with a great deal of skill.

He would need to make sure those skills were put to better use; Dr. Kane was working to rescue New Mutants from tormentors like Genomex; he could probably use someone with such remarkable skills on the taskforce he was assembling. It would be an ideal resolution to the situation; he just needed to make it happen.

Sneaking into the room and up behind her, Lexa's future contact fired his gun immediately behind her head, pointed harmlessly up into the ceiling. He expected the report of the shot to be loud enough to "wake" her, snapping her out of the REM trance...

..Sadly for him, that wasn't how Project Nine worked; normal methods of waking the subject were ineffective.

Lexa spun around and dropped into a crouch even as she turned, clapping her hands together and igniting a strobe between them that was more than enough to blind his night vision-adjusted eyes. Crying out in pain and surprise, he stumbled backward, brandishing his gun threateningly. He had absolutely no intention of harming her, wanted to rescue her, but he needed her to remain cautious and at a distance until he recovered his sight.

Under orders to eliminate all interference, Lexa in Project Nine mode didn't give him that chance.

She backed away, skilled at moving silently thanks to her cloaking power requiring it. Circling around behind him, Lexa considered his options. He was pivoting back and forth, aiming his gun with one hand and holding the other up in a martial arts defense posture, keeping silent and listening for her because his eyes were blinded. He was backing up in a straight line, heading for the door. As he pivoted back and forth, not realizing he was actually heading right for her, in reverse, his lower back continued to point at her, only his shoulders and upper torso rotating to cover his flanks. She supposed it made sense; if he pivoted his hips, he would lose his line to the door. By keeping his lower body pointed at the door, he could back his way out. . .as long as she didn't stop him.

Programmed to follow her Project Nine orders, Lexa grinned, being the "virtuoso of violence" that Dr. John Gonsalves wanted.

Jamie was scowling in frustration, trying every trick he could think of to track down the enemy agent's computer connection.

He had scanned the GEMS building's network, he had profiled and catalogued every server, serial port, and slave unit in the building. He had scanned every access point on the wireless network, which were all just ordinary laptops or smartphones in the building, all with proper IDs and recorded properly on the activity logs. He had accessed those logs and cross-verified everything, making sure the enemy agents weren't somehow hiding their presence behind an actual registered user. Nothing was working, the enemy system was completely hidden from him, and it was driving Jamie crazy.

His fluctuating genetic sequences weren't helping his state of mind, either.

"Dammit, what the HELL?" he snarled, shifting into a mini-Owen as he ranted, Owen having the most impressive rage Jamie had ever seen. His elasticized tee shirt stretched to fit his still-much-wider-than-his-own shoulders without Jamie noticing. "It's not like they can just be dumping new programs into the servers out of thin air!" he snarled.

Actually, yelling wasn't doing any good, of course, and really, it only very rarely did Owen much good, either. Forcing himself to calm down, Jamie reverted to his own shape and decided to try something else.

"Eve, they're doing something tricky, hiding their access point!" Jamie called out to Haven's main expanse. "Go ahead and wipe their programs; I'm going to try to increase the GEMS security and attack all foreign points of access besides us. If this doesn't work, you may have to keep wiping them! And I'll pitch a freakin' fit," he muttered to himself.

"I'm on it!" Eve called back. "I'll let you know what their response is; you know we need a simultaneous transit action to completely eliminate their influence," she went on, Jamie rolling his eyes as she slipped into Exposition Queen mode again.

"I know, I know," he scowled at the screen as he uploaded some of Eve's more clever and covert security programs into the GEMS building's servers, then began setting up a system-wide attack, excluding all the access points he had already mapped, the Helix, Haven, the California team's phones, and the Dominion's spiffy wheelchair.

If there was anything else accessing the GEMS building's network, which there obviously was, somewhere, Jamie was determined to give it a corrupting virus its user would never forget.

Shalimar and Owen lunged forward to engage the enemy pseudo-Feral as Jesse ran up to join his team.

"Your primary concern is taken care of; we need your focus here," Jesse said to Josh quietly as he joined them, knowing Josh would understand and not wanting to clue the enemy in that they had another team member, not when the pseudo-Feral had senses keen enough to hear Jesse using his phasing and could tell he was a Molecular from his scent alone.

Josh gave Jesse a frowning look, but then nodded in realization. "Thanks, Jesse," he said, turning to join the Feral fight.

Shalimar ducked the wolverine pseudo-Feral's first claw swipe, and Owen grabbed the man's other wrist when he slashed at him with his other hand, Owen's huge hand encircling the pseudo-Feral's wrist entirely. Owen cried out in pain and surprise when the pseudo-Feral backfisted him in the solar plexus with the hand that had missed Shalimar, sending Owen's 269-pound frame flying fifteen feet to smash into a van that rocked on its springs from the impact.

"Holy Shit, how strong is this guy?!" Josh asked in shock as he and Shalimar began tag-teaming the enemy pseudo-Feral, springing at him from opposite directions and using their superior agility to evade his attacks while the other tried to score a hit while his back was to them. The enemy pseudo-Feral was as freakishly fast as he was strong, however, and neither Feline Feral could manage to land a truly damaging blow, only narrowly avoiding the wolverine-thing's counterattacks.

Brennan was flinging lightning bolts at the enemy pseudo-Elemental, who was absorbing them harmlessly with his electromagnetic powers. Brennan was irritatingly reminded of the Electromagnetic Link Shauna, but this guy was obviously far more powerful. Brennan hoped he didn't try Shauna's trick of flinging people around by the metal on their persons, given that he had flung cars a dozen yards with a flick of his wrists.

Lexa activated her light cloak, fading from sight and figuring the enemy pseudo-Feral was busy and she was currently immune to their pseudo-Psionic leader, so she could avoid detection. She began circling around the edge of the parking garage, intending to sneak up on the pseudo-Psionic and knock him out.

Jesse massed himself and strode up to the enemy pseudo-Molecular's quartz barrier, smashing a good portion of it with one ultra-dense kick. She sneered in rage and rushed him, grabbing the arm Jesse held up to fend her off with and coating it in quartz. The crystals grew lightning-fast, spreading from his arm down his side and up over his head, encasing Jesse in quartz in mere seconds. He exhaled and phased free of the crystalline matrix, moving aside and massing again, then dropping down on one hand. He swept one super-heavy leg out to kick the enemy pseudo-Molecular's feet out from under her, sending her crashing to the ground with a squawk.

Chris had noticed the wink Brennan had given him, tipping his head slightly toward the enemy pseudo-Feral before he turned to throw a tesla coil at the enemy pseudo-Elemental. Chris smirked, seeing the sense of Brennan's plan and loving the fact that he would get to introduce it with the element of surprise. He stepped back to where he could see both the enemy pseudo-Feral and the enemy pseudo-Molecular, raising his fists and biding his time.

Elsewhere in the GEMS building, Kevin had secured his comatose body in an unoccupied office, laid out comfortably on a couch with the door locked and large file cabinet telekinetically placed in front of it. His astral form flashed straight up into the sky to reorient himself on the southeast corner once more, flashing back down to it to investigate the server room and look for the enemy Telecyber.

Kevin found him inside the server room as expected, sitting next to a server with one hand on it and his eyes alight with a magenta glow similar to the blue one in Eloy's eyes when he used his Telecyber abilities. The enemy Telecyber seemed to have more powers, however; he had a psi-bolt starburst twirling in front of his forehead, and his head was turned to point at the corner of the room, by the door.

Having only just stuck his head into the server room, Kevin didn't think he wanted to go any farther. He could feel that Psionic interference again, coming from the Psionic before him. Kevin wasn't sure if his initial astral jaunt had been noticed or if the enemy had gotten the drop on Mutant X in some other fashion, but he didn't want to risk it. Withdrawing back outside, Kevin floated a few yards over, then floated back through the wall into the building's hardware room, crossing it to stick his head out into the hall.

Kevin's astral form gasped immaterially when he saw Lexa's Dominion contact sitting motionless in his powered wheelchair, two guards unconscious on the floor, one next to him and the other by the hardware room door.

Figuring he had already proved immune to the worst of the enemy Psionic's powers, whom he recognized as the supposed tech who had sprung the Council Head's trap on them, Kevin decided to try sneaking up on him physically instead of Psionically, ending his astral jaunt and snapping back to his body.

Jamie grinned with satisfaction, absently wiping the sweat pouring from his forehead with the back of one arm as he transmitted his virus. It would dump a huge cache of MP3 files, lolcats, and explicit internet fiction into every access point connected to the GEMS building's network that Jamie hadn't explicitly excluded.

He was unknowingly potentially saving the day for Mutant X, or at least for Lexa's contact, dumping disturbing imagery into Domnique's uniquely modified Telecyber, filling Dominic Pendergrast's mind with emotionally-laden context. Although he was superior to ordinary Telecybers, Dominic still had the emotional issues of Psionically connecting to unemotional computers, a problem that was only partially corrected by his psychic rapport with his identical twin brother, Jeremy. Jeremy's powers were currently doing him no good whatsoever, since Mutant X had been inoculated against Psionic influence for the time being. Connected to the server Jamie had just transmitted half a gigabyte of pop culture references through, Dominic began to snicker.

Kevin snuck through the GEMS building, thoroughly creeped out by the way none of the employees noticed him, even when he walked right in front of them. He had telekinetically slammed the first Dominion agent he encountered into the floor, smashing the back of the guard's helmet into the linoleum-covered concrete hard enough to crack it and knock him out. Kevin had then telekinetically swiped a namebadge from an employee that was engrossed in their paperwork and a clipboard from the first desk he passed. By walking as if he wasn't noticing any of the Dominion agents, they ignored him just like they did all the GEMS employees. He would have smirked about it, except it was decidedly weird.

Approaching the server and hardware rooms, Kevin kept an eye out, but none of the Dominion agents seemed to be concerned with that wing of the building. It made Kevin wonder what else they were doing there, or were all the agents just security for the Telecyber? Maybe minds too close to his own would disrupt his ability, so he knocked out the escort guards and put Lexa's contact in a fugue state? Kevin wasn't sure, but he supposed he was about to find out. Coming around the corner to the hardware and server room doors, Kevin calmly sprayed a puff of nanites into the contact's face as he walked by, figuring the man was a master spy and would figure things out on his own easily enough once he woke up.

Kevin continued on into the server room, telekinetically pinning the guard to the wall as he stepped inside. Floating the nanite dispenser over to the Telecyber, who was just sitting there giggling at something, Kevin depressed the dispenser's button twice, dosing the enemy pseudo-Psionic with several thousand nanites.

Nothing happened for a moment or two, the guard pinned to the wall making sputtering noises and struggling to reach his gun, but his hands and arms were just as pinned as the rest of him. Then the Telecyber cried out in pain, clutching the sides of his head and moaning the name: "Jeremy! Jeremy!" over and over again. Kevin frowned and moved to where he could see the enemy pseudo-Psionic's face, trying to see if his eyes were still glowing magenta or not. Moving put his own face where the guard pinned to the wall could see it, and the man gasped in surprise.

"Tackleman?" the guard said in disbelief, his helmet cocked slightly as he stared at Kevin. "Holy crap, Kevin Tackleman!" he exclaimed, then laughed derisively. "You're a faggot and a mutie freak!"

Staring in shock, Kevin managed to focus on the man's helmet enough to whisk it free of his head, letting it clatter to the floor as he stared at a face he hadn't seen in eight years, hadn't seen up close in nine. . .Jason Johnson, the quarterback of his varsity football team, the boy sixteen-year-old Kevin had had an intense crush on—until he was outed by his own innate honesty, confessing his attraction to one of the cheerleaders, whom he had thought was his friend. She had spread his secret far and wide across Peoria Central High, and Jason and the rest of the football team had confronted Kevin after gym class the next day, harassing him through the boys' locker room showers and into the pool room. They had proceeded to rough him up, the treatment proceeding to an actual beating that Jason finished with a sucker punch to Kevin's stomach. The punch not only knocked the wind out of Kevin, it propelled him into the pool, where he nearly drowned, and would have if one of the other football team members hadn't realized they were all about to be accessories to manslaughter and rescued him.

Kevin had found Jason significantly less attractive after that.

"You. . .really haven't changed a bit, have you?" Kevin scowled up at Jason, his face scrunched up in disbelief. "Well, except for your hairline starting to recede, I guess," Kevin told him with a snort. "You're still a self-justifying asshole with no compassion whatsoever, aren't you? I shouldn't even be surprised you ended up working for a class act like the Dominion Council Head, should I?" Kevin scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief.

"My uncle works for the CIA!" Jason snarled back, flecks of enraged spittle flying from his mouth. "My profile caught attention, and I got contacted to work for the Dominion, the real power in this world!" he shouted.

"Oh, please!" Kevin laughed back, his thorough amusement being far more insulting than anything he could have said. "Your profile attracted attention because you're a thug. You were hired to work for a thug with delusions of grandeur, riding on the coattails of the smartest man on the planet, who is certifiably insane, but at least his delusions of grandeur are justified.

"You?" Kevin said, looking up at Jason's angry face before dropping his gaze and snorting in dismissive disgust. "You're just pathetic. My god, how the hell did I ever find you attractive? Talk about being a stupid teenager." Kevin would feel slightly bad about it later, but only slightly, and he had almost a decade of paralyzing aquaphobia to pay Jason back for. With a glance and a smirk, Jason's flak pants were opened and pulled down to his knees, putting his thigh holster lower than his reach even if Kevin released his arms. Jason yelled in protest, his bellow shifting to a nervous screech of outrage as his boxers followed suit.

"Gee, whaddya know," Kevin said with a smirk that was both leering and disgusted, making sure to look up to meet Jason's eyes and show him what he really thought before dropping his gaze back to the man's privates again. "You're hung like a mouse. No, wait, what's smaller than a mouse? You're hung like a shrew. And to think, I spent months fantasizing about what was in your underwear. The reality is always sadder than the fantasy, isn't it?" he asked with another scoffing huff of breath. "Ah, well. It turns out you're actually a total asshole, and now I've got a boyfriend who's an absolute animal in bed, and he loves the way I'm hung so much he talks about it and gropes me in public!" Kevin said, blushing slightly because it was true and humiliating Jason all the more. He didn't bother explaining how much Josh loved him and how much he loved Josh in return; it would be meaningless to the Dominion thug who simply wouldn't care, and Kevin did, so he would rather keep it to himself.

"I'd say 'See Ya,' but I sincerely hope I don't," Kevin told Jason as he turned to leave, glancing over at the tools lying on a shelf to one side of the room. Two screwdrivers levitated themselves, then plunged forward at Jason Johnson. The Dominion thug screamed in panic, not noticing the fact that his armored vest had lifted itself slightly. The screwdrivers stabbed right through the reinforced Kevlar just above Jason's shoulders, plunging the lengths of their shafts into the cement wall to pin Jason in place with his pants around his knees and his pathetic shriek echoing in his ears.

Still trapped within his flashback, Lexa's contact was no longer watching through his younger self's eyes because he had been blinded, but he continued to relive the experience of meeting Lexa Pierce...

The pain that suddenly stabbed into his back could have been described as "blinding", except he had already been blinded. It might further have been described as "paralyzing" as he cried out and fell to the floor, grunting in pain and trying to determine what had happened.

Her lasers... he thought to himself with a gasp as he realized he could feel the burning pain in his lower back. . .but nowhere beneath it. She shot below the posterior armor, damaged my spinal cord... he thought with shock, his mind flashing back to what he knew of the Project Nine protocols. It's an REM trance, but she's not asleep. . .she'll remember what happened as if she dreamed it...

The most accurate description of his pain was "crippling", because he had indeed been rendered paraplegic, but that wasn't his primary concern at the moment. He had accepted the risks of his position along with the position itself, and he would deal with the ramifications as needed, probably better than most in his situation would, with the Dominion's resources behind him. His main worry was to secure Dr. Kane's database, and for the poor young woman who had clearly been abused and tormented in many ways, to free her from the prison her life had become.

Blinking the spots from his eyes and seeing that the computer she had started to access was still unattended, and remembering her Gemini necklace, he made a gamble.

"Young Lady!" he barked out in his best Military Command voice. She was far too trained and disciplined for her age; he was willing to bet she had come from a military background. "You are not dreaming! Think of your twin; what would they think to see you like this!?"

Young Lexa frowned in surprise, thoughts of Leo catching her off-guard. He was why she had done all this in the first place, but they weren't helping him, just torturing him...

"He knows..." she said in a breathless, pain-filled whisper, but she had hesitated, not delivered the killing stroke, and was now listening to him. The pain in her voice had been regret, not betrayal, and he knew he was on the right track, had gambled his life successfully. Now he just had to preserve it, so he could help her, her brother, and Dr. Kane.

"Think of your twin brother," he ordered her, but it wasn't a barked order of command, it was a caring instruction, the kind she had probably never even received in her life. "Think of how much you want to help him, and how much he would want to help you. This isn't a dream, Young Lady, and you can remember it, and you can act. The database you're here to retrieve? It belongs to Dr. Adam Kane. Dr. Adam Kane's work was used, without his permission, to create New Mutants, like you and your brother. He understands how you work, and he wants to help you. Find Dr. Adam Kane, Young Lady, and he will help you!" Lexa's future contact insisted, then took action.

His sight had returned while he spoke to her, and she was behind him, in the doorway. He had fallen forward, farther into the room, closer to the computer she had been accessing. Spotting its tower and knowing where the hard drive would be on that model, he fired his gun, putting a bullet through its memory and destroying that copy of the New Mutant database.

"Your mission cannot be completed," he told her, using tones of military command once more, his gravelly voice firm and brooking no deviation from its expectations. "Abort, and return to base." He relaxed fractionally when she simply stood there for a moment, not finishing him off, then she turned to leave. "And remember!" he called after her sternly, "Find Dr. Adam Kane!"

Rolling onto his front once more, Lexa's future handler began dragging himself across the floor with his arms, to reach the phone on the desk and call for back-up. His forces could keep watch for anyone investigating Dr. Kane's whereabouts, and the Creator would be most pleased to have such a skilled asset assisting Dr. Kane in reaching his goals. It would work out for the best, in the end.

He focused on those thoughts as he dragged himself forward, the pain in his lower back growing but not reaching any lower.

He dragged himself forward, the memory fading to magenta as he went.

Brennan cried out in surprise when the enemy pseudo-Elemental turned Brennan's own powers against him. . .the tall man made another gesture with his energized hands, and Brennan's tesla coils went around the man instead of striking him or being absorbed by his electromagnetic aura. The electrical bolts zapped into Brennan, not harming him, but lifting him up into the air where he struggled to move. Brennan stopped firing his electricity, but remained suspended in mid-air, the bolts energized by the enemy pseudo-Elemental's abilities instead of his own.

"Jess, I think we need to switch up our Elemental and Molecular pairings, here!" Brennan called out. "And Lex, our keen-sensed friends could probably make good use of your input!" he yelled. Shalimar grinned as she ducked under another of the wolverine-thing's swipes, throwing herself backward to avoid his second hand as Josh kicked him in the back of the knee, buckling it and keeping him from being able to catch Shalimar. She recognized what Brennan was suggesting and changed tactics, just working to stall the enemy pseudo-Feral instead of trying to land an attack on him. Being both a fellow Feline Feral and a well-trained martial artist, Josh recognized what Shalimar was doing and followed her lead, even if he didn't know why she was doing it.

Chris had moved to check on Owen, since Brennan's plan required him to keep his powers unrevealed for the moment. Owen hadn't stirred from the heap he hand landed in after bouncing off the van, and Chris was a little worried. . .the enemy pseudo-Feral had hit him hard.

Owen had landed on his side, half-curled into a ball, half sprawling across the parking garage's floor. His jacket was tangled under his back, and one side of Owen's tee shirt had been rucked up to his ribcage by the way he had fallen, pulled further askew by Owen's slithering down into a heap as he collapsed.

Chris hissed in dismay when he saw the lurid purple edge of a severe bruise peeking out from under the edge of Owen's tee shirt. "Dude, that looks. . .awful?" Chris told Owen as he pulled the shirt free and lifted its edge away to see the wound, frowning at its variations of color. He had intended to see if it looked like Owen might have had his spine injured, meaning it would be unsafe to move him. There was more bruising on the middle of his back, where he'd impacted the van, but it wasn't as severe. The odd part was where the edges of Owen's bruises met his uninjured skin. On his abs, they were a hideous purple, like the bruises were hours old, instead of having just happened. On his back, the edge of the bruise that Chris could see was a greenish color. . .almost like it had been healing for days, not just moments.

"Duuude..." Chris muttered in shock, watching as the middle of the bruise on Owen's front faded to the color of the edges and the edges faded to the same days-old green of his back. Chris cautiously placed a hand on Owen's side, his eyes widening when he felt how cool to the touch Owen's flesh was. "Holy crap," Chris blurted. "Dude, Big Guy, I'm glad I figured out this was your new healing coma before I touched you—I woulda thought you were a corpse!" Chris said with a shudder. "Man, you're gonna be starving when you wake up, aren'tcha?" Chris chuckled as he moved away, hoping it was time to reveal Brennan's plan.

Jesse and the enemy pseudo-Molecular had continued to struggle, neither one able to actually hurt the other, merely inconveniencing one another with their powers. Brennan continued to struggle in the grasp of the pseudo-Elemental's powers; he had tried firing his electropropulsive blast against the wall to see if he could push himself free of the tesla coils suspending him in mid-air, but all it did was push the electrical "cage" around with him. The leader of their enemies, the pseudo-Psionic Jeremy, had closed his eyes in distress and was concentrating urgently, mouthing the name "Dom!?" silently and repeatedly.

Taking advantage of his distraction, Lexa had snuck up behind him and dropped her light cloak as she hit him in the back of the neck with a double-fisted hammerblow. Jeremy Pendergrast went down like a lead balloon.

"Now, team, L–C INCOMING!" Brennan yelled, the same phrase Chis and Lexa had bandied back and forth to announce their incoming Elemental salvos to their teammates when the original Mutant X team accidentally invaded the California team's headquarters the night they arrived.

Josh and Shalimar both leaped backwards, away from the wolverine pseudo-Feral as they clamped their hands over their ears. Josh squeezed his eyes tightly shut; Shalimar had worked with Lexa for a year and knew she could keep her eyes open the barest slit to keep the enemy in view; the angle put their enemy between Lexa and Shalimar, and she was crouched low enough to use his form as cover from Lexa's light.

Lexa clapped her hands together, pointed at the wolverine-thing, detonating an enormous strobe in his face even as Chris screamed. His piercing cry rang out a dozen times more shrill and loud than anything Eve the Shriek Queen could produce, stunning the pseudo-Feral with the surprise even as he was blinded. Chris turned to face the pseudo-Molecular and her crystalline barriers; his sonic sensitivity let Chris quickly match the quartz's harmonic, and after only a second or so all of her constructs shattered. Chris poured on the noise as Jesse turned and sprinted for the pseudo-Elemental who still held Brennan captive.

Shalimar and Josh both sprang back into action when Chris turned his shout on their female opponent, tackling the wolverine pseudo-Feral while he was blinded and deafened, and thoroughly distracted and disoriented. Being behind him, Shalimar sprang on his back, locking her ankles in front of his solar plexus and wrapping her arms around his neck, putting him in a sleeper hold. With his phenomenal strength, it would take some time for him to succumb, so Josh flung himself at the big man's chest, twisting horizontal in mid-leap. Grabbing the wolverine-thing's right wrist with both hands, Josh threw his right thigh over the man's left arm, bending his knee to clamp the man's elbow and hooking his ankle in front of the man's wrist. The pseudo-Feral was insanely strong, even his left arm was probably stronger than Josh's whole leg, his right might even be stronger than both of Josh's arms together, but Josh had his arms restrained so he couldn't do anything about Shalimar knocking him unconscious.

Or so Josh thought.

Josh's bizarre luck seemed to be frowning at him again, as the enemy pseudo-Feral began bearing down, quite easily forcing Josh's elbows and right knee to bend, despite his efforts to restrain the man.

Jesse turned his back on the pseudo-Molecular and dashed away from her towards Brennan's opponent, grinning when he heard her gasp in shock when Chris shattered all of the quartz crystals she had grown. The pseudo-Elemental frowned at Jesse and swept one hand at him, leaving the other still pointing at where Brennan hovered, trapped in mid-air. A car was dragged from its parking spot and flew sideways across the aisle between itself and the next car, smashing into it with Jesse between them.

Jesse's phased form ran out the other side of the car's wreckage as it crashed to a halt.

The Electromagnetic pseudo-Elemental frowned in frustration as Jesse continued to approach, turning his free palm to face Jesse's oncoming form. His face tensing up in concentration, the tall man unleashed his biggest blast on Jesse—a maser, like a laser but with the focused, coherent electromagnetic energy being microwaves instead of visible light. The beam ionized the air in its path into plasma, resulting in a half-laser, half-lightning beam that was hotter than both combined striking Jesse as he ran forward.

Having massed himself when the pseudo-Elemental pointed his hand at him, Jesse simply ran into the blast, undamaged by it.

Chris continued to shout at the pseudo-Molecular, matching the harmonic of his voice to the harmonic of the crystalline structure of her body, causing her entire form to vibrate.

"W-w-h-a-t a-a-r-e y-y-o-u d-d-o-i-n-g t-t-o m-m-e!?" she yelled, beginning to panic as she felt the strain growing in her crystalline body. "S-s-t-o-p I-i-t!!"

Chris was about to run out of breath, but he didn't want to keep going, regardless. He could have shouted louder at her, but that would have made the reverberatory stresses in her body escalate even faster. . .Chris didn't want to shatter her. He had to fight to keep from smiling as he saw Lexa come up behind the woman; it was hard to smile and shout at the same time.

Lexa simply held both her hands forward at the woman, shining intensely bright light into her clear body. The light refracted through the crystalline facets of the pseudo-Molecular's form, adding a different form of stress to her body.

With a cry of pain and fright, the woman reverted back to flesh and collapsed, unconscious.

"I can't hold him, and he doesn't seem to be fading!" Josh cried out to Shalimar, worried he was about to receive even worse treatment than Owen had.

"You've still got a foot free!" Shalimar yelled back, trying to squeeze the man's ribs with her legs as much as she could, hoping to impair his breathing and make her sleeper hold take effect that much faster. His neck muscles were so thick and strong, she wasn't sure if she was impeding the flow of blood to his brain at all, much less enough to render him unconscious.

Josh was standing on the toes of his left foot, and they were only reaching the ground because his weight on the man's arms and Shalimar's impact with his back had bent him over slightly. Josh's torso and head were awkwardly stretched across the man's arm-span, his face in front of the right side of the man's chest. Josh and Shalimar were both in Feral mode as they struggled with their opponent, and Josh's jade green eyes narrowed as his Feral sense of smell detected something. . .pheromones. The pseudo-Feral was finding their fight stimulating, probably because he was a sadist, if he was anything like the Tiger that Shalimar had described. He obviously enjoyed being massively physically superior to whomever he was engaged with, be it in combat or in more carnal pursuits.

Jesse plowed through the pseudo-Elemental's maser-plasma blast, grinning at the astounded look of panic that he couldn't stop Jesse on the man's face when his lightshow ended. The man flicked a glance up at Brennan, who was shouting encouragements, then frowned as he tried to think of another option before Jesse reached him.

"Yeah, Jess, get 'im!" Brennan called out, then yelled in surprise when the tesla cage holding him yanked him back down to the ground, to hover in front of the Electromagnetism pseudo-Elemental.

"You can't hit me if he's in the way!" the man sneered. "And if you phase through him, I'll just keep him wherever you are, and you'll solidify inside him! Now, why don't you just surrender, before I crash some cars into your buddy's sides, here?"

"Brennan," Jesse said as he raised his hands and released his mass, looking right into Brennan's eyes, whose own widened in protest at Jesse giving in.

"Gotta gi' up," Jesse told him, flicking his gaze up at the ceiling and clipping his words so he could have been saying "give". . .or "go".

Brennan grinned, firing his electropropulsive blast into the ground beneath his dangling feet, sending himself blasting upward and no longer between Jesse and their tall enemy. Jesse massed his arm as he stepped forward, punching out the pseudo-Elemental as he released Brennan's tesla cage, before he could bring any of his powers to bear against Jesse. Jesse's massed fist crashed into the man's cheekbone, cracking it and sending the man's head snapping sideways, knocking him out.

The wolverine pseudo-Feral was only wearing a tank top with his jeans and boots, despite it being late September in New England. Considering the state of the man's hormones –and the fact he was slowly folding Josh's spine in half– Josh made his decision. Grinning, he leaned in to lick his tongue in a broad stripe up the man's armpit, then bit his peaking nipple through the man's thin cotton shirt as he twitched in surprise. Josh growled slightly and tugged on the nub of flesh with his teeth, inhaling as if he were sampling the scent of a lover. Caught completely off guard, the wolverine pseudo-Feral's body interpreted the increased stimulation as a prompt for full arousal. . .then Josh struck.

He hopped up off the toes he was standing on, ramming his knee into the man's testicles at full force.

The pseudo-Feral cried out in surprise, shock, and pain, the directed concentration he was applying to his neck and arm muscles shattered as his knees buckled. Josh straightened his arms and legs, forcing the man's arms wide once more and tipping him backward as his lower body sank to the ground, Josh pushing off his left leg. Shalimar clenched her arms all the tighter when she felt his neck muscles relax, getting her feet under herself as his upper body leaned back towards the ground and dragging him to be stretched out on his back before her, Josh lying on his abdomen to impair his breathing all the more. After just a moment, the man's struggles ceased, and he lapsed into unconsciousness.

"Bleah!" Josh moaned in disgust as he rolled off the man. "Gah, licking deodorant is disgusting! My tongue's drying out from antiperspirant!" Laughing at him, Lexa offered Josh a piece of gum. "Oh, god, Thank You!" Josh declared, swiftly chewing the piece of gum flexible and trying to stretch it over the surface of his tongue. Chris and Shalimar laughed at the faces he made, while Owen blinked awake and wondered what was going on.

Suddenly, alarms started blaring.

"Whoops," Jesse commented, hurrying over to the cars blocking the garage's exit ramp. "We knocked out the Psionic. . .the GEMS Building Security must have just noticed all the intruders—think that includes us?" he asked as he phased the cars, gesturing for everyone to hurry through with his free hand.

'Not yet, it doesn't,' Jamie's voice came over Jesse's commring. 'I was already connected to the parking garage's cameras; I'm looping their feeds to before you got there. Just zap the exterior cameras, so your faces don't get caught on film, and get out of there before security can come investigate,' he instructed the team with panting breaths. 'They'll be busy trying to figure out what's going on for at least a few minutes!' he declared with a breathless laugh. 'We can bet the election will be secure, though. . .they'll have to go over everything after this!'

"Jamie?" Owen asked with a frown, leaning in to address Jesse's commring. "You okay, Bud?" he questioned, his expression suggesting he didn't think he would believe an answer of "Fine."

'Yeah, 'm fine, O,' Jamie replied, still speaking and breathing too rapidly. 'Just busy trying to wipe all the footage of Kev running around the place, gotta do it quick b'fore they notice him sneaking out with Lexa's guy...' he explained. ' 'S'okay, I haven't been stretching anything, even me,' he insisted, unaware of the truth of the matter.

"Okay..." Owen said doubtfully, sharing a frown with Josh, who could also hear how Jamie's breathing was affecting his speech. "We'll be home in about half an hour."

'See y'then...' Jamie said in answer, and had his voice slurred the slightest bit? Owen blinked, telling himself he was imagining things, that of course Jamie sounded rough; Eve had said he should really be in medical, hadn't she? '..Josh, tell your boyfriend he's lucky the chinos-an'-polo-shirt wardrobe makes 'm look like an intern,'

"Yeah, too bad we didn't have you along to do your airheaded secretary impression!' Josh called over at Jesse's upraised hand.

" 'Impression'?" Chris added, exchanging a laughing grin with Josh. Jamie didn't answer; Owen figured he would claim it was because he was busy covering Kevin's tracks, but they all knew it was because he wasn't dignifying their sarcastic teammates' comments.

They met up with Lexa's contact and Kevin a number of blocks away, landing the cloaked Helix in the back of a less-than-busy strip mall parking lot. The dark grey Dominion van drove up and parked next to the Helix, the driver pulling over when Lexa warned her contact they were getting close to the Helix's invisible position.

Josh bounded out the rear ramp of the Double Helix as Kevin climbed out of the van, the rest of the team following more slowly as Josh scooped Kevin up in his arms, then just as hastily put him back down again when Kevin gasped in pain at the contact with his burned back.

"I'm fine!" Kevin laughingly protested. "It was just creepy, walking around and nobody seeing me, even though I wasn't projecting."

Josh considered his lover's answer, frowning slightly in disbelief.

"Then why do you smell stressed?" Josh asked, raising one skeptical eyebrow. Something had rattled Kevin, and Josh was a bit upset that he hadn't been there, even if Kevin seemed fine at the moment.

"Eh, not really a biggie; I'll tell you later," Kevin answered, sliding his hands down Josh's back to slip them into the rear pockets of Josh's bluejeans, the slight squeeze of his fingers saying later, when we're alone. "Why are you chewing gum? I thought it threw off your sense of smell?" Kevin asked with a frown.

"Bleh, it does, but I know your scents," Josh explained with a wry grimace. "I needed my palate cleansed. Kiss me, you're way better than gum," he declared, lifting one hand to the back of Kevin's neck, to run his fingers through the collar-length hair there.

"Spit the gum out, and I will..." Kevin promised lasciviously, grinning in anticipation as Josh hurriedly turned his head to spit the gum out. Kevin took one hand out of Josh's rear pocket to thread Josh's long hair through his fingers, drawing their lips together. Josh made a happy hum deep in his throat as they kissed, their tongues entwining. . .then Kevin's head jerked back with a confused frown.

"Dude, why the hell is the top of your tongue dry?" Kevin asked; Josh just grinned, shaking his head to say 'This is my ridiculous life.'

"Lexa," her contact said as the team assembled before his van once more, giving her a nod. "My apologies. I had not anticipated Dominique's experimental mutants being part of the Council Head's taskforce. This concerns me; if he has access to her work or her cooperation, this may have been only the tip of the iceberg. I will attempt to discover their whereabouts, and if they have any other operations in progress. I will contact you if I discover anything."

"Gervais, The Fixers, Dominique. . .and 'Mr. Toad' the Council Head himself. . .Burstyn's gone, Gervais killed at least two other Council members—how much of the Council is left who aren't corrupt?" Lexa asked with a sigh.

"Unknown," her handler replied with a slight smirk. "If we knew who the corrupt members were, they would have been eliminated."

Lexa barked out a laugh in surprise. "Yeah, I suppose that's true. The Dominion is basically in shambles. . .what are you going to do?" she asked.

"I am fortunate that my position was relatively autonomous," he answered in his gravelly voice. "I still have access to most of my resources, and will continue to use them to ensure the Children of Genomex are not turned to purposes that would be detrimental to the world order. Given that this has always been Mutant X's primary purpose as well, I will continue to liaise with Dr. Aybel, the Mutant Underground, and you as necessary."

"Well..." Lexa said, blinking in surprise. "..good. See you soon, then, I guess."

"Hopefully not," he replied with another smirk. "Or at least under better circumstances if we do," he went on, giving Kevin, Jesse, and the rest of the team a nod. "I told you we'd meet again, Lexa," he said as he turned his chair back into its traveling position within the van's rear compartment. "I will contact you with my findings," he finished as the door slid shut.

"Okay, I successfully removed all of the extra lines of code that had been added to the GEMS building's software," Eve said with relief as she entered the Dojo. "Good job disrupting their input, Jamie," she went on as she entered the holographic Double Helix facsimile and moved up toward its front. "I'm not even sure what they were using—JAMIE!" Eve shouted when she saw the starboard ops chair. . .and Jamie collapsed in it.

He wasn't just collapsed, not simply slouched over bonelessly or unconscious. . .he had literally collapsed, slumped down in the seat of the chair in a nearly liquid state, a formless lump of rubberized flesh.

"System: initiate new locale generation routine beta!" Eve snapped, her brow frowned in concern behind the wisps of her hair that were floating around her head. The Dojo shimmered, the Double Helix simulation vanishing and a blank white floor appearing in its place beneath her feet and Jamie's almost liquid body where it fell to the floor.

"Manifest: a five-foot square wall, eighteen inches tall, centered six feet from my position at my 12 o'clock, attaching floorspace within," Eve dictated, the resulting wall appearing around Jamie's collapsed form. Sweat beaded on Eve's brow as she worried for Jamie's condition, and she desperately wished she had someone else in Haven to help her handle the situation, but she didn't and didn't have time to summon anyone, so she would just have to make do.

"Manifest, adjacent: a– —coffin, open," Eve instructed, her voice hitching for a moment when she realized the shape she wanted was what Jamie would end up in if she couldn't save him. "Raise initial construct five feet, coffin construct three point five feet," she went on as the coffin appeared, both holograms rising to the heights she had indicated. "Raise initial construct's left edge fifteen degrees and lower right edge fifteen degrees, delete right side." Eve hurried forward as the hard-light images followed her instructions, Jamie's body sliding out of the initial construct as it tilted and pouring into the coffin. Eve sighed in relief to see that he had landed in the coffin on his back, leaving him rightside-up as his semi-liquid form settled, except for his right arm being folded beneath his back. Eve grabbed Jamie's shoulder and lifted the upper-right portion of Jamie's body, dragging his right arm out from beneath himself. It merely stretched as Eve pulled on it, forcing her to dig farther beneath him to free his hand before she could get the rest of his arm to follow. . .it was a lot like fighting a water bed mattress. A tiny portion of Eve's stress was relieved when she noticed his flesh was still warm, meaning his collapse into a near-liquid state hadn't killed him, at least.

"Manifest: surgical shears," Eve instructed as she held her right hand out, palm up. The high grade scissors appeared atop her hand in a shimmer of light, and Eve used them to quickly slice Jamie's clothes off, dragging them out from beneath his rubberized body. She was relieved that he wasn't elasticizing his clothing, hopefully meaning his genetic code wasn't fluctuating from the use of his new ability, but she didn't have any way to be sure of that. . .until it occurred to her that she actually did.

"System! Substituting the coffin construct for Examination Table One, recreate the medical lab, using synchronization subroutine Epsilon Five from the Double Helix synchronicity suite!" Eve ordered, the back of her mind sprinting and leaping hurdles to figure out how she would need to modify the Dojo's interactions with the medical lab to get the results she wanted. Frowning in concentration as she considered the problems trying to run the medical lab by remote would generate, Eve stood motionless for a moment beside Jamie as the medical lab appeared. Piece by piece, the medical lab manifested in the Dojo in shimmers of light, ending with the first examination table's pedestal beneath the coffin Jamie's semi-liquid form was lying in.

A few more commands had the medical lab's computers and instruments ready to function using the data inputs from their recreations in the Dojo, and Eve smiled as one last set of commands put the Hot Seat's scanner above Examination Table One instead of the EDD's chair. Initiating the yellow scanning beam, Eve brushed her unruly bangs out of her eyes and concentrated on figuring out how to help Jamie.

Half an hour later, the rest of the team returned to Haven, on high alert because they hadn't been able to contact Eve or Jamie.

"Eve!" Chris practically shouted as he ran into the medical lab, relieved to have found her at last and that Haven wasn't under some sort of attack, like it had been the day before. "There you are; you weren't answering your phone, I thought..." Chris trailed off in surprise when Eve's eyes snapped up from her monitor to meet his, then immediately returned to her screen and dismissed Chris entirely, because he wasn't relevant to the crisis she was currently facing.

"Eve?" Kevin asked as he entered the medical lab behind Chris, having heard him exclaim her name. "What's wro—"

"Kevin!" Eve snapped at the sound of his deep voice, the member of the team she had been waiting for, her eyes not leaving her screen as her fingers continued to race over the keyboard. "Get out of the way and project; I need your astral perceptions and for you to telekinetically manipulate Jamie's body. He's lost control, his entire body's gone viscous; I haven't been able to draw any blood or introduce any medication, only manipulate him on the genetic level with the EDD and try to shore him up with my nanites, but it's not enough. He's in the Dojo; I need you to TK him in here, and hold his form 'solid' on the examination table—I haven't been able to fake everything I need with the system sync."

Kevin paused, taking a split second to decide if he was up to that task. He knew he needed to be, that Jamie needed him, but telling himself he could do it and trying if he actually couldn't would only result in two emergencies and Eve without her second set of medical hands, not to mention driving Josh insane. Taking stock of how he felt after their strike on the Dominion Council Head's forces at the GEMS building and confronting some of his past there, Kevin decided he was rested enough after having relaxed in his boyfriend's arms during the flight back.

"I'm on it, Eve!" Kevin declared as he sprinted for the lounge, to stretch out face-down on the sofa and avoid aggravating his burned back, just as he had done that morning when treating Chris.

The team had hurried home to Haven, their stress growing when neither Jamie nor Eve answered any attempts to reach them.

Chris led the sprint into Haven from the parking garage's elevator, still paranoid from Eve's being held captive by the unknown intruder the day before. Owen was right behind Chris, equally worried about Jamie, but Owen froze upon entering Haven, his entire frame twitching as he shifted into Feral mode.

"What is it?" Josh asked sotto voce as he followed Owen into Haven, his eyes shifting to bright jade with vertical pupils, matching Owen's green-brown from lid to lid eyes as Josh also went into Feral mode. Owen's nostrils flared as he scented the air while Kevin followed Chris towards the medical lab; Shalimar, Brennan, Jesse, and Lexa also entered Haven, pausing when they saw the Feral Boys alert to something, Shalimar going into Feral mode as well.

"Jamie!" Owen's voice croaked out, his broad frame trembling with worry and deeper emotions he wasn't allowing himself to name. "Something's wrong!" he gasped turning to Josh with panic in his Ursine eyes. "His scent; sweat, stress, something. . .something's wrong, been wrong, for a while..." Owen choked out, his voice breaking in mid-sentence and his hands reaching aimlessly, his Ursine eyes unseeing as Owen was caught up in the distress he could smell in Jamie's scent.

Shalimar closed her golden cat eyes and inhaled deeply, taking a long sample of Jamie's faint scent on the air and considering it. Josh would have done the same, but he was distracted by Kevin's dashing out of the medical lab and sprinting to the lounge. Kevin met his lover's eyes as he ran, giving Josh a single nod of acknowledgement as he ran past but no more than that, making no efforts at explanation. Josh frowned in worry and took Owen's semi-flailing hand, wrapping his own hand around Owen's lower forearm and giving him a grounding point. Owen's hand returned Josh's grip, nearly grinding the bones of Josh's wrist together in Owen's stress.

"..Jamie's scent was a lot like this when Adam and Emma first brought him back to Sanctuary," Shalimar said, opening her golden Feral eyes and frowning at the rear of Haven in confusion. Brennan looked concerned, remembering how worn Jamie had been when he first arrived, before Adam had taken Jamie into his office to have a long discussion about abuses of New Mutant abilities. Jesse gasped in dismay; Jamie had confided most of his past to his Molecular mentor, and Jesse knew the condition Jamie had been in when his mother had called Adam.

As his best friend, Jamie had told Owen how Adam and Emma had found him, shortly before the team rescued Owen from the GSA.

"But. . .that was when he had his meltdown..." Owen whispered in a broken voice, his eyes widening in panicked realization even as his hand tightened around Josh's wrist. Josh winced and was just about to say something when Owen let go, his head whipping around to face the rear of Haven once more.

"JAMIE!!!" Owen screamed, racing for the gym and Dojo with all the strength and speed his 6'5" Ursine frame could bring to bear. Josh was on his heels, worried both for Jamie and Owen's state of mind, and the original team followed, unsure exactly where their worry needed to be directed.

Owen lurched to a stop as Jamie's naked body came sailing out of the Dojo, headed for the medical lab. Owen's shoulders were heaving up and down with the force of his hyperventilation, his breath whistling between his teeth as he caught his lower lip between them. Tears were streaming from his Ursine eyes as he turned to watch Jamie fly into the medical lab, Shalimar dashing ahead to get the door.

"He's okay..." Owen whispered as he watched Jamie go through the door, still Jamie-shaped and not a collapsed mass of rubbery flesh. He and Jamie had taken turns confiding the horrors they had experienced to one another when they had first started bonding back at Sanctuary. Jamie hadn't even been able to conceive of the tortures Owen had endured at the hands of the GSA, outright injury being something he rarely experienced, but the circumstances that had put Owen there had been disturbing enough. Owen, on the other hand, had always relied on his physical gifts to get him through life's hardships, and he couldn't imagine the horror of having his own body betray him, as Jamie's had done with its collapse.

"He's not," Josh said worriedly, stepping behind Owen to put his left wrist in Owen's left hand and putting his right hand against the small of Owen's back, urging him to head for the medical lab. "Eve wouldn't have left him in the Dojo unless she had to; Kevin was TK-ing him," Josh explained, Kevin's prior urgency as he ran by now making sense.

Owen whimpered, an entirely unconscious sound he wasn't even aware of, and slowly responded to Josh's guidance, reluctantly heading for the medical lab. Jesse lowered his head, shaking it sadly and knowing how badly Owen was going to react to Jamie in a medical emergency. Brennan put a hand on Jesse's shoulder in a show of support, exchanging a glance with Shalimar, who gave him an aggrieved look in return—as Owen's mentor, she knew how deeply his protective instincts ran, towards Jamie in particular. She turned to trade a look with Lexa, shaking her head to silently tell Owen's newest friend that things were epically Not Good.

An hour later, Jamie's eyes blearily blinked open.

The collective sigh of Mutant X echoed through the medical lab as the team relaxed a slight amount; Eve's stimulant had done the trick and restored Jamie to consciousness. His skin was pale and sallow, and a nasal cannula was strapped to his head to facilitate proper breathing even while his lungs were semi-liquid elastic. There were bags beneath Jamie's bloodshot eyes, which were listless as he slowly glanced around the medical lab, but at least they were open.

They hadn't been since before Eve had discovered Jamie unconscious in the Dojo; she had been working frantically since then to try to stabilize Jamie's systems. Her holographic recreation of the medical lab had given her only limited success in assessing Jamie's condition, and the recreated Electronic DNA Diagnostic Scanner couldn't manipulate Jamie's unstable genetic sequences with anywhere near enough precision to be useful. Eve had made do with her nanites, setting up a network of them in the Hot Seat's scanner to relay the data the first network was gathering from Jamie's cells. She then had to direct a third network to perform the genetic adjustments the EDD indicated were needed, all of which took far longer than the Hot Seat itself would have.

Eve had been typing frantically, trying to coordinate the multiple nanite networks, without their getting in each others way, when Kevin and the rest of the team had arrived. Kevin's astral perceptions and telekinesis enabled Jamie to be transported to the medical lab and held still for the Hot Seat to do its work. Once the conflicting portions of his genetic sequences had been stabilized, Eve had been able to introduce drugs and treatment to Jamie's systems, slowly getting his body back under a slight modicum of control and restoring semi-normal solidity.

Kevin had floated Jamie over to the first examination table, then stopped projecting and hurried to the medical lab, ready to assist Eve however was needed, desperate to keep Jamie's systems stable and prevent further collapse. Eve had sighed in relief and told Kevin to prep Jamie for surgery, just in case. She was worried they might have to intubate respiration and cardiac support before Jamie destabilized further; normal methods wouldn't work while his flesh was elasticized. Kevin had nodded morosely and fetched a hand towel, alcohol, and a sterilization unit while Eve quickly wrote new software for a specialized network of nanites and the Hot Seat's scanner, using Jesse as a second set of eyes to catch any coding mistakes. Kevin knew Eve was preparing for the worst while hoping for the best and expecting something in between, but he couldn't help being worried when they had to contemplate invasive surgery just to keep Jamie alive.

"I'll—I'll. . .let me do it. I'll do it," Owen said as Kevin approached the examination table. Owen's eyes never left Jamie's face as he reached one hand towards Kevin for the towel, Owen's own face frowning as he tried not to think about what Eve had said.

"It's. . .a sponge bath, basically," Kevin said cautiously, wondering exactly what was going through Owen's head. "..You know how?" he asked, raising an eyebrow when Owen didn't even turn to look for the towel.

"Yeah," Owen said, his mouth smirking without humor, his gaze still riveted to Jamie's unconscious face. "I. . .used to have to clean my mom up. After Dad—got done with her." Owen winced, either in memory or at his words coming out not quite how he had intended them to sound. He glanced at Kevin and smirked more, but it still didn't touch his eyes. "Even cleaned you up a little, when you had your last growth spurt attack, before Anne fixed you."

Kevin shrugged and gave Owen the towel and the alcohol, stepping back to watch and make sure Owen knew what he was doing. He exchanged a look with Josh, who had raised an eyebrow at Owen's claim to have given Kevin a sponge bath; Kevin shrugged in response. Owen did indeed know what he was doing, efficiently wiping Jamie's body down even if there was nothing brisk about it. The tension in Owen's shoulders only drew tighter and tighter as he proceeded, his lips pressed so tightly together they went white, an effort to keep himself from catching his lower lip between his teeth once more.

"Dammit, this isn't working," Eve had muttered a short while later, sighing when the new scan failed to give her the answers she was looking for, even with the new programs she had added to her nanites and the Hot Seat. "Kevin, put Jamie back on the bed; Shal, bring up all of Jesse's recent scans on the analysis computer. Jesse, change quick, I need a full scan with the new nanites; I'm hoping I can find something in your Molecular sequences that will help me understand what's happening with Jamie's. His spurt shifted him to applying his abilities to the world around him, just like yours did, so I'm hoping there's a clue in your genetic codes," she explained as she began prepping the Hot Seat for a different scan.

"Even though Adam stabilized my genes?" Jesse asked as Josh opened a drawer under the storage counter and retrieved a pair of the specialized spandex shorts that didn't interfere with the Hot Seat's full-body scan for him. "Will my sequences still help?" he worried, knowing they hadn't helped Eve figure out what Adam had done so far. He gave Josh a nod of thanks, then exhaled and phased his body but not his clothes, allowing them to fall through his immaterial form and collapse to the floor. Jesse stepped clear of his fallen clothes and solidified, taking the shorts from Josh and pulling them on, then hurried over to the Hot Seat. He appeared to be ignoring the fact that Josh, Lexa, and Brennan had watched him do so, but his cheeks were tinged faintly pink.

"I certainly hope so," Eve said quietly as she sprayed a few puffs of the new nanites over Jesse's body. "Because otherwise, I'm running out of ideas. I need a better understanding of what's happening to Jamie; if I can't wake him up and get him to describe what he's experiencing, get him to consciously respond to certain tests, then I have to hope I can get the answers I need from you," she explained as she initiated the scan.

Jesse's scan hadn't provided Eve with all the answers she needed, but it had given her enough of a reference point to figure out how to stabilize Jamie slightly more. His stabilized condition meant he could take the risk of a stimulant being applied to his strained system, and Eve had done so, managing to wake him up.

"Hey," Jamie croaked to the team at large through his parched mouth, his eyes remaining fixed on Owen's. Owen quickly turned to the tray table beside Jamie's examination bed, retrieving a few ice chips from the cup there and slipping them into Jamie's mouth.

"Th'ks," Jamie murmured after sucking them into liquid and swallowing, soothing his throat. Kevin had managed to successfully insert a saline IV in Jamie's arm once he had stabilized enough, but he was still recovering from the dehydration of sweating so profusely before his collapse.

"How y' feelin', Bud?" Owen asked Jamie, his eyes bright with worry even as he tried to plaster confidence and reassurance on his face. The brief upward twitch of the corners of Jamie's lips suggested Owen wasn't doing a very good job of portraying the expression he wanted, but Jamie was appreciating the effort anyway.

"Shitty," Jamie told him with another almost-smile, then turned his head slightly, feebly, when Eve asked him a question. Owen's eyes never left Jamie's face; he never let go of Jamie's hand, even as Jamie answered Eve's questions as best he could. Owen couldn't do anything but hold onto his best friend, his closest Packmate, trying not to fall apart on the inside.

Owen didn't hear Eve's questions, didn't even really hear the sound of her voice; he actually didn't even hear the words of Jamie's answers, just the weak tone of his voice as he replied. The tension in Owen's frame only grew tighter as stress crept into Jamie's face, worry over Eve's growing concerns when Jamie's answers to her questions only led her to believe things were worse than she thought. Owen made an involuntary noise of distress when Jamie's eyes shifted to meet his again, fear at what Eve wasn't saying bright in Jamie's otherwise listless gaze. Owen's other hand shot forward to cup the side of Jamie's neck, cradling his head, and Jamie's other hand weakly came up to clasp around Owen's wrist.

Both their hands were shaking, how much of each was caused by physical stress and how much by emotional was anyone's guess.

Owen continued to cling to Jamie, trying to support him with nothing more than his presence and his conviction that Jamie had to be alright, because that was all Owen could offer. He remained motionless as a flurry of activity erupted around Jamie, Eve trying everything she could think of to keep Jamie's systems from breaking down, trying to stabilize him once more, now that she had some idea of how he was reacting to his condition.

Kevin and the rest of the team did whatever they could to help, but eventually, those efforts required Owen to move.

"Owen. Owen. Hey, O. . .Big Guy, we need you to let go of Jamie, so Eve can help him," Josh told Owen, placing one hand on Owen's shoulder and gently pulling in an effort to get Owen to move away from Jamie's examination table.

Owen's tensed shoulder was as hard as a rock beneath Josh's hand, and he didn't even lean slightly as Josh pulled.

Josh frowned, uncomfortably.

"Owen. . .O, you gotta move, so Eve can work," Josh tried coaxing, moving almost up against Owen's back and reaching with his other hand to try to disengage Owen's fingers from Jamie's.

Josh blinked in startled surprise when Owen snarled, spinning in place faster than Josh had ever seen him move, letting go of Jamie to seize Josh by his shirtfront, instead. Josh was still only just beginning to flinch in surprise as Owen stood and hauled Josh up so Owen could snarl in his shocked face, not a bellow of fury but a relatively quiet growl of rage. Even as Josh's instincts were processing that he was being threatened because of the glare in Owen's Ursine eyes, Owen roared a grunt of rage and hurled Josh away, sending his back flying towards the medical lab wall at something like fifty miles an hour with one heave of Owen's arms.

"Owen, STOP!" Kevin yelled, thrusting one hand at each of the Feral Boys. Josh lurched to a stop, frozen in mid-air with the curve of his spine less than a foot from the storage racking against the rear wall of the medical lab. Owen was also pinned by Kevin's will, frozen in place before he could pursue what he was perceiving as a threat to his injured Packmate. Owen bellowed in fury, every tendon and sinew in his neck, shoulders, chest, and arms standing out in rigid relief against the rest of his flesh as he struggled.

The combined stresses of the situation had pushed Owen too far, driving the normally placid grizzly bear side of his nature over the line into animalistic rage. Like the bears he shared genetic material with, Owen was normally laid back, even responding to crises with stoic resolve and patient determination, as opposed to Josh or Shalimar's fluid Feline emotions. The capture and torture of New Mutants, particularly by the GSA, could push Owen to fury, but that was a conditioned reaction built on Owen's standing hatred of what had been done to him, his torture at the GSA's hands. Being pushed to all-out rage, by threatening Owen's loved ones, his Pack, without the element of fear or panic generated by his past experiences, was something that had never happened before. It was akin to Josh losing himself to his Feral nature when confronted by uncontrolled flame, but much deeper. Snuffing the flame and reassuring Josh he was safe was all it took to bring the Feline Feral back to his senses; Owen's loss of control was much more dire—his inner beast had been enraged, and it wouldn't quieten until it decided Owen's Packmate was safe and sound.

Given that Jamie was anything but sound at that moment, the odds of Owen regaining control were slim to none.

With a bellow so loud Chris instinctively reduced its volume to a tolerable level, Owen used his massive Ursine strength to exert more force than Kevin could telekinetically restrain. Owen had set the superweight machine in Haven's gym to 1900 pounds almost two weeks before; when he had dropped the weight bar and Kevin had tried to move it, it had been close to the limit of Kevin's telekinetic strength. Owen's upper limit was actually a fair bit more than that; he was now operating on rage and not almost a week's worth of sleep deprivation. Kevin gasped in pain as his limits were surpassed, and the roar of rage Owen unleashed at him as the threat keeping Owen from his injured Packmate startled Kevin enough to shatter his concentration.

Owen lurched a step forward as Kevin doubled over in pain and clapped one hand to his forehead; Owen turned and roared at the other occupants of the medical lab, warning them to stay back, to keep away from the examination table behind Owen and his injured Packmate, his best friend, his Jamie. The rest of the team shifted uneasily, Josh dropping to land on the balls of his feet on the edge of the supply counter, then leaping to Kevin's side, making sure he was alright. Brennan had his hands raised and a tesla coil crackling between his fingers, but he didn't want to zap Owen if he could help it; zapping Owen hard enough to stun or knock him out in his current state would be far too much like the tortures he had endured as the GSA's prisoner. Lexa's hands were raised, but she was visibly stricken, obviously comparing Owen's unstoppable protective rage to that of her late twin brother Leo, who had manifested an Ursine-Feral-like alter named Troy to escape his GSA tormentors.

Chris frowned, wondering if he could confuse Owen by rendering him deaf, muting all sound reaching his ears. . .would the lack of hearing confuse him enough to get him to stop and consider the situation? A sonic blast would only enrage him more, and Chris couldn't risk damaging the medical lab, not when it was urgently and immediately needed. Shalimar's eyes were golden slits; she was prepared to tackle her former protégé and pit her greater years of experience against his strength if she had to, but she didn't like the odds of the medical lab coming through such an encounter intact. Jesse stood ready to grab Owen and phase him so he couldn't hurt anyone, but he wasn't sure what would happen if Owen attempted to move with all his Feral strength and speed while phased. . .or if he tried to strike Jesse while they both were.

A piercing scream pealed out through the medical lab, continuing on and on and making the screens of the monitors and the steel shelving of the various storage racks ring in resonance. Every head in Haven's medical lab turned to stare at Eve as she shrieked, even Owen in his rage and Jamie in his weakened condition. Although it lacked Chris' raw power, Eve's scream bore significantly more emotional power, conveying her anger, her protest, her distress, and her urgency in her bid for Owen's attention. Shalimar hissed and clamped her hands to her ears; Josh winced and covered Kevin's ears, who was still off-balance from his sudden headache.

Owen turned and blinked his green-brown Ursine eyes at Eve, visibly confused but still not consciously aware of the situation.

" Owen, are you TRYING to hurt Jamie? " Eve asked in a very quiet –yet distinctly carrying– voice.

"What!?" Owen blinked in surprise, startled out of his aggressive headspace by the inconceivable question and quiet confrontation.

" Do you want him to suffer? " Eve asked, still in the same quiet voice but adding an element of contempt to her tone, implying disgust with Owen if such were his actual intentions.

"No!" Owen yelled, his face pursed in horrified confusion at even the suggestion. "Of course not!" he snarled, beginning to get angry once more, this time at Eve's implication.

"Then stop acting like it!" Eve snapped at him, her sudden volume and anger startling Owen off-balance once more. "He needs his genes modified right now, before his collapse proceeds any farther, and if you don't let go of him and get out of the way so I can do that, WE COULD LOSE HIM," she hissed, anger at the time they had already wasted clear in her voice.

Owen gasped, horrified, practically tripping over his own feet as he backpedaled away from Jamie's examination table. He blinked in confusion, his eyes returning to normal as he glanced around the medical lab at his on-edge teammates, the reality of the situation finally dawning on him. Shalimar took his hand and drew him away, her other hand rubbing up and down his back soothingly, in support. Josh was still holding Kevin's shoulders, supporting him as Kevin grimaced in pain and focused his telekinesis on moving Jamie from the table to the Hot Seat for another round of adjustments. Josh gave Owen a silent nod of support, telling him there were no hard feelings and that Josh's Feral nature could certainly understand Owen's reaction.

"Geeze, Big Guy, you do overprotective even better than Josh," Chris commented uncomfortably as Eve initiated the EDD's beam. Lexa had moved to Owen's other side and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but she turned her head to shoot Chris a look. Chris completely missed her silent hint that he should stop talking, because he was looking down with one hand rubbing the back of his own neck. Having the tendency to babble when nervous, he kept speaking, without thinking about what he was saying. "You and Jamie founded the Cali team, I get that that makes you guys close, but man, you'd think you guys were married," Chris went on, dropping his hand to pick at a hole in his jeans instead. "Josh over Kevin, you'd expect this kinda behavior, but you—you're worrying more like a lover than a best bud, aren't. . .you–?" Chris asked as he looked up, his voice trailing off as he saw the looks everyone except Owen and Jamie were giving him. He blushed as he realized how far down his own throat he had swallowed his foot.

The uncomfortable silence was broken by the Hot Seat's scan beam snapping off and the medical computer sounding an alarm.

"NO!" Eve cried out, her head whipping back around to face her monitor once more, her fingers racing over the keyboard and her brow furrowing ever more intensely as error after error popped up on her screen. "No no no nonono, it can't do this, not now...!" she blurted out, her words going just as fast as her fingers. "His genetics are shifting, and he's not even using his new ability..."

Eve clamped both her hands to her temples, freezing up with her hair clenched between her fingers as her eyes widened in panic.

"O–Owen..." Jamie gasped weakly, turning his head to try and meet his best friend's eyes as Jamie shifted to his female shape. Owen dashed up to the Hot Seat, taking Jamie's feebly outstretched hand as Eve bowed her head and shut the medical computer down. The rest of the team was frozen in shock, not sure what to think when both Eve and Jamie seemed to be giving up hope at the same time.

" Jamie... " Owen whispered, tears filling his eyes even as he began hyperventilating in panic.

"You're gonna have to do this one without me, O," Jamie told him. Owen soundlessly gasped the word 'no', shaking his head violently in denial without ever letting his gaze leave Jamie's.

Eve pushed her chair back away from the medical computer, getting up and crossing to the rear corner of the medical lab.

"You're gonna have to help the rest of the team find Adam, and save him, so he can save all of us," Jamie whispered to Owen, her eyes feverish but blazing with intense urgency as she implored Owen to listen to her. "Hopefully me, too," she went on, Owen continuing to shake his head, protesting the truth of Jamie's words.

"Kevin, clear this, please," Eve said in a cold and broken voice, resigned to the course of action she was taking. She had gestured at the storage racking above the counter as she spoke, facing the wall that was communal with her office.

"But just in case," Jamie continued, tugging weakly with the hand Owen was holding in an effort to get him to draw closer. "I want you to know I Love You, man," she said as Owen leaned in, the tears finally spilling over his lower lids.

Kevin glanced worriedly from Jamie and Owen to Eve standing alone in the corner, then decided they had nothing to lose when the situation was this dire; he had to trust Eve knew what she was doing. He knew she would never give up, not until her body forced her to and she collapsed.

With a sweep of Kevin's hand, the items on the racking Eve was facing were telekinetically whipped aside, piling themselves up on the next counter as Eve reached forward with both hands. Her left hand lifted the lowest shelf of the racking, all three shelves folding up flat against the wall. Her other hand pressed a button concealed at the back of the countertop, behind one of the racking's struts.

" I—I L-Love You, too, Jamie, " Owen whispered back, his voice hoarse with emotion.

Eve stepped back as the counter slid up the struts of the racking above it, the folded shelves sliding up ahead of it. A Genomex stasis pod slid out of the revealed opening from where it had been concealed in Eve's office, inside a false storage cabinet.

With a grunt of effort, Jamie managed to throw her free hand up to cup the back of Owen's neck, pulling him down into a desperate kiss. Jamie poured everything she had into the kiss, telling Owen how much he meant to her without words. Owen keened miserably into the kiss even as he returned it fervently, terrified he was about to lose Jamie just as they wordlessly confessed the depths of their feelings for one another.

Jamie shifted back into his normal male shape in the middle of the kiss, unable to consciously direct his power any longer. Owen continued to kiss him, bringing his free hand up to cup the side of Jamie's neck, tilting his head just a touch to improve the angle of their kiss. Jamie moaned slightly, a pained sound of protest at the situation, expressing his fear and frustration. Owen kissed him harder, a desperate whimper of his own sounding through his nose as he tentatively added tongue, kissing back passionately when Jamie responded in kind.

Owen tipped his head forward when Jamie ended the kiss, desperate for air, their foreheads touching as they opened their eyes.

" Let's Do This, " Jamie whispered breathlessly, growing visibly weaker in Owen's arms but smiling as he quoted Owen's usual line at him. " I hang on. . .you get Adam. . .we get me better... " he panted, weakly shifting his hand up from the back of Owen's neck in an effort to wipe away the tears on his face.

" Jamie... " Owen whispered brokenly, choking back a sob so he could hear Jamie's words.

" Carry On, Bear Ears, " Jamie told Owen as the last of his strength gave out, his hand falling slackly from Owen's face as Jamie's eyes sank shut. " there' be peace. . .when y'done... " he slurred, trying to finish the quote of Owen's favorite song, his empowerment mantra, as Jamie lost consciousness. Owen's head whipped back and forth in denial, his mouth working soundlessly as his tears began flowing down his face once more, pressure building in his lungs and throat...

"Kevin, put Jamie in the pod please," Eve said in the same broken voice as she finished activating it and its canopy opened, unaware of the drama unfolding behind her. "It's his only chance. . .I can't help him, yet, but I can put him in stasis until I figure out how. It's his only chance. " she repeated to herself, then whirled in startled surprise at Owen's anguished wail.

Kevin and Josh ran to Owen, Kevin reaching out with one hand to lift Jamie's body from the Hot Seat and telekinetically whisk him over to Eve's pod, settling him inside it as he and Josh each took one of Owen's arms, Josh's free hand going to Owen's back.

Owen screamed protest as Josh and Kevin urged him from the medical lab, practically dragging him as Owen bellowed "NO!" over and over again. Eve activated the stasis pod, then covered her face with both hands, errant wisps of hair framing her fingers as the pod hummed, Jamie's body going still as cold fog filled the pod. Eve stood motionless, the quivers of her silently sobbing frame only slowly becoming visible as her misery increased. She began to slump forward, her knees about to buckle beneath her when Chris rushed forward and took her by the arms, turning her to face him and wrapping his arms over her back, holding her as she cried.

"God. . .what. . .what do we do now?" Lexa asked a short while later, her expression bleak and her frosty blue eyes thawed into tears that were on the brink of running down her face. She, Brennan, Jesse, and Shalimar were in Haven's lounge, all seated together on the sectional sofa. None of them had wanted to be alone after the emotional trauma in the medical lab, and the lounge was out of the way, leaving Chris free to escort Eve out of Haven without witnesses, once she managed to calm down. Shalimar had noticed their shadows passing by the lounge's entrance a few moments before Lexa spoke, but Chris had used his powers to silence their footsteps and the sounds of Haven's door cycling. No one had bothered to turn the stereo on, and the mega-screen TV had yet to be replaced, so there were no other sounds in the lounge aside from the original team's breathing and Brennan nervously tapping the back of one thumbnail against his father's dog tags through his shirt. Lexa's words were the first anyone had said since they entered the lounge.

"We do exactly what Jamie said," Jesse said fiercely, causing Brennan to look up as he stopped his nervous tapping, Shalimar turning her head to stare at her 'little brother' as Lexa blinked in surprise. "We Carry On, as the wayward Children of Genomex we are. We find Adam –he probably knows how screwed the Dominion is just as well as we do; I bet he's taking decisive action that can't wait and that's why he hasn't contacted us– and we help him however we can to figure out what he did to fix me. We save Jamie, and Lexa," he went on, giving her a nod as he said her name, "..And Josh whenever his growth spurt kicks in, and all the rest of you. Every New Mutant everywhere," Jesse said firmly. "We save them from people who want to use their abilities for profit, from people who want to control them, to use them, to kill them, and from themselves when they go too far," Jesse declared, getting up and pacing in the open area between the lounge's seats.

"We're Mutant X, dammit, and we're not giving up. I'm not giving up, on Jamie or on any of you," Jesse finished as he turned to face his friends, planting his fists on his hips. Brennan was nodding firmly in agreement, and Lexa was blinking away her tears as she nodded too. Shalimar straightened up from her slouch on the sofa, sitting on the edge of her seat and squaring her shoulders as she took a deep breath.

"Jess is right," she declared, giving him a nod of acknowledgment. "To quote Owen: 'Let's Do This.' "

After a night of mostly restless sleep, Mutant X awoke to find a discovery had been made on the other side of the country...

TO BE CONTINUED...