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Endgame
Notes: After watching the Once A Thief finale, my Jess-muse wanted for the team to do the last scene. Then Adam decided that there was a story attached, and it was his story to tell. Apologies to OaT and a nod to the late, great Douglas Adams.
Bent double over the car, his bleeding shoulder aggravated by one of Absalom’s thugs twisting his arm back, Adam had a clear view through the double doors and straight into the gloom of Absalom’s warehouse. He prayed he would see them coming out before the bomb went off. He prayed he wouldn’t see them at all, that they’d found another, faster way out.
With their powers disrupted, they had no extra advantages, no more than any other group of humans. And no matter what he’d promised himself in the past, he’d grown attached to these four. Cared for them.
But to his horror, as time ran out, he saw them in the shadows, running for the door. Emma and Shalimar supporting the stumbling Brennan, Jesse limping to one side, all trying desperately to reach the exit. He called to them, urged them to run faster, into the daylight, but he knew, just knew that they couldn’t run fast enough.
In slow motion the walls bent outwards, bricks falling and obscuring the four young mutants with geysers of dust, fire erupting through windows, doors, and gaps in the disintegrating rubble. Cold chills clawing down his spine, Adam felt his heart leap into his throat, tears springing to his eyes as he heard the pyrophobic Shalimar screaming, a terrified feral howl that was overtaken by the crashing walls and surging flame. For the longest time he could not stop himself from staring into the inferno, looking for some tiny grain of hope that they might still make it, might just pull off one of their last minute impossible escapes.
The longer time stretched out, however, the harder it became to deny that today a tumultuous, yet much loved era had come to a crashing end.
Deep down he knew that he’d never again feel the wrath of Shalimar’s temper, the heat of her passion, would never again argue algorithms with Jesse or glow with paternal pride at his accomplishments, never again lay awake at nights worrying over Emma’s latest boyfriend, or enjoy the pleasure of a dance with her, never again watch Brennan walk away or talk ice hockey over beers with him. Never again would he watch their fluid teamwork, either on the battlefield or off.
As the fire eventually died down hope died with it, and Adam finally admitted that he’d just lost the only four people he truly loved. That any future he had would be a wasteland of loneliness.
And his heart broke.
*****
“Adam? Adam, can you hear me?” Shalimar’s voice permeated the grey fog he’d spent the last eternity swimming in and he smiled; he’d always known she’d be an angel. A butt-kicking angel who’d give the powers that be what for, but an angel none the less. However, as bits of memory filtered back, the smile vanished. He really didn’t want to wake up in a world where she was gone. Where they all were gone.
“Adam Kane, if you don’t open your eyes and talk to me right now, I swear I will kick your arse all the way to London and back.”
Shalimar’s clear voice mutated into the nicotine scraped tones of…
“Magda?” Adam cracked an eye open and discovered himself in the ruins of his lab, lying on the only intact piece of equipment still left. The woman, old and wrinkled and dressed in the same plain brown tent she’d worn in life, stood with her arms folded like a fish-wife, her thick grey hair in disarray and a cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth. “What happened?” he asked, trying to push himself up onto his elbows and choosing to ignore the fact that he had seen this woman buried with his own eyes.
“You don’t remember?” she said, her East London accent flat and rough.
“Uh.” Sitting up slowly, Adam rubbed at his head and at the dull ache in his shoulder. Flashes of memory still tried to break through and, although he knew what they were, he wasn’t yet ready to face them.
“In denial as per usual, I see,” Magda huffed. “I would kick some sense into you, but the trouble with being dead is, I can’t. Bloody damned shame that.” She moved over to him, and Adam swore he could smell the combination of cinnamon, mint and tar that had constantly accompanied her. “Listen, Doc, you have got to face what happened. You’ve been lying here feeling sorry for yourself for the best part of a week. You’ve lost everything, I understand that, but it’s high time you started working on getting it all back.”
Unable to stop the flinch, Adam shied away from the memories that still haunted him, but Magda was having none of it.
“You’ve still got that mountain of money, so that takes care of the hardware, right?”
Adam thought about Sanctuary and how hard he’d worked to build the place.
“And then – “
“No!” Adam looked at Magda, pleadingly. “Please, let me deal with just one thing at a time.”
“Hmph…” Magda took a deep drag of her cigarette, and looked at it in disgust. “Not even any joy in these,” she said. “I tell you, death really ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Ignoring her, he slowly and painfully made his way through Sanctuary trying to objectively catalogue the damage in a broad sense. The caves and tunnels looked to be sound still, although he’d need a survey to be sure, and the basic structure only needed a little reinforcement. The rest just needed money thrown at it, which Adam was certain wouldn’t be a problem, and Shalimar and Emma would love outfitting the place.
Would have.
No, not ready to go there yet.
But as he passed the living quarters, Shalimar’s and his own almost intact, Emma’s and Jesse’s half blown away, and a small crater where Brennan’s used to be, those memories pushed their way back in.
Damn.
He started to dash away the tears that started to fall but then there were too many of them, so he ignored them, let them run.
The dojo was a mess, the platform torn down, leaving the stairs to lead to nowhere. A pair of legs, stiff with rigor mortis, stuck surreally from the wall where Jesse had fought his corner. Brown trails of old blood led the way along the corridor to what might have been one, or perhaps two corpses that Shalimar had left eviscerated.
In the hanger the Helix lay broken, and the garage held almost unrecognisable shells of the vehicles. Shalimar would have cried if she’d seen the state of her motorcycle. Amidst those ruins lay the evidence of Emma’s fight, men lying dead, their faces frozen forever more in absolute, fear-driven insanity.
The meditation room was largely untouched. The water supply was cut off, of course, but the fish and plants were just about surviving, if a little wilted around the edges. His last port of call was the computer room, his own last stand where the machinery was now devastated. Jesse would love helping him redesign this place. Even Brennan would have fun showing off his muscles as he moved the heavy stuff. He could hear them now; Shalimar making a sharp comment, Emma giggling and Jesse joining in, while Brennan pretended to be injured by the words. So vivid was his imagination, Adam thought he really could hear Emma’s laughter echoing faintly through the corridors and he called her name, looking.
And only found the ghost that was Magda standing in the corridor.
“Kitchen, dear,” she ordered. “Strong hot tea now.”
Adam sighed and smiled slightly. She’d always been bossy, but always with his best interests at heart. She’d started off as his secretary at Genomex and followed him to Sanctuary. Never had he been so grateful as when that first group of four children came his way. Shalimar, Natasha, Corey and David; complete monsters all. He would have had no idea what to do with them if it hadn’t been for Magda and it had been a sad loss when she’d died.
As usual she was right, and the tea helped enormously. Sanctuary was rebuildable and even the data on the computers was salvageable. Jesse had put in a lot of work on backup systems and, as most of those were retrievable, that paid off now . Anything that was missing was probably in Adam’s own head. He wouldn’t rebuild Sanctuary the same, of course, because it wouldn’t be the same. But it would be a new, better Sanctuary.
“For what?” asked Magda, sitting sideways on a chair. Ladylike she was not. “Why rebuild?”
Adam blinked at her. “I thought you wanted me to?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m dead, what do I know? This is your future we’re talking about here, and I want to know what you’re going to do with it and more importantly why.”
“Same as before, to…”
“And your heart’s not in it.”
“Well, you know, I just lost everything. I just lost Sanctuary, - “
“Now, I thought we got that one out of the way. You haven’t lost it, you just need to rebuild it.”
“I lost everything I was working on.”
“It’s all on those computer thingies, you’ve hardly lost anything. Next?”
“I lost my, my –“ Adam tried to say the words, but only adrenaline and a fresh wave of burning tears threatened,
“Your what?” Magda asked.
“My people!” There, he’d said it. And it hadn’t hurt as much as he thought it would.
“Oh, Adam, you’re hopeless sometimes! Your people? So what, you’ve lost your janitor, cook and chauffeur? What?”
Adam flinched a little. “My team, my -. I’ve lost Shalimar, I keep looking at you and expecting you to be her. I’ve lost Jesse, probably the one I most considered a… a -.” He shook his head. “Brennan, he was… noise. Loud. Stopped us from being apathetic. And Emma, I’ve lost her empathy. They’re dead, Magda.” And just saying that hurt like nothing he could ever have imagined. “They’re all dead and I’m lost without them.” Absorbed in his grief, it took a while for Adam to hear what Magda was saying.
“You may have lost them, but Adam, they’re not dead until you’ve seen the bodies.”
Adam was confused, his mind still half in shock. “What? What are you saying? That they’re… ” His heart leapt even as his rational mind denied it. “That they’re alive?”
“No! No, Adam, that’s not what I’m saying at all. You need closure; you need to see their bodies and bury them. You need to go and find them.”
“In that building? I suppose there could be traces, but they’d have disintegrated in the explosion.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Magda’s sudden evasiveness was aggravating. “Genetic material, whether dead or alive, is a valuable commodity. You and Eckhart both said that many a time. Now I’m telling you, whatever’s left of those poor children, it’s been scattered to the four winds by now. You have to go find whatever there is and bring them home. You’ll never be able to rest until you do.”
Adam couldn’t take much more of this, any more of this, his mind a whirling maelstrom of confusion and grief.
“I told you, sweetheart,” Magda continued softly. “I told you I’d look after you always. Now go to sleep and start tomorrow with a new heart.” Adam felt his eyes grow heavy and the tabletop looked most inviting. The last thing he heard before passing out was her soft chuckle and one final admonishment. “And if I were you, I’d stop talking to ghosts. People might think you’re a fruit-loop.”
*****
The following morning, Adam did indeed awake with a new heart full of resolve and determination.
There was no deadline, and mourning each member of his team was something he could afford to reserve until the time arrived. Before that he had a Sanctuary to resurrect and, until he was up and functioning again, there was little he could do as regards this personal goal. He nevertheless made a few phone calls and found that the building where he’d lost his team had been cleaned out and cleared away.
A few more calls had reunited him with the cyber-psionic Natasha, her husband Corey, a terra-forming elemental, and David - also an elemental, but of air. It was with a mixture of sorrow and glee that they took over the restoration of Sanctuary, recruiting from Adam’s database those that might help and leaving Adam to redesign, make special purchases and oversee from above.
“You see?” said Magda, one day as he was resting in the meditation room. “They’re all good kids, every last one of them. I bet you never thought they’d be so happy to help out. They’ve all left the lives you gave them, or given what time they could to help you rebuild.”
“Yes,” Adam agreed with sadness “But they’re transient. I helped them in the past and now they’re helping me. But they’re not… I don’t know…”
“They’re not your children.”
Adam snorted. Not this again. “They’re not my team! I guess I should find another team.”
“Maybe,” Magda said. “But not until you’ve put the old one to rest. Because until you do, no new team will ever be good enough.”
Adam looked down into the pond, the fish and the plants no longer wilting now the waterfall was working once again. But like himself, they were listless and not a flower was to be seen.
And then Magda was gone, and Adam wondered if he was going mad.
*****
It took months before Sanctuary was up and running, but when it was most of the helpers left, leaving Natasha, Corey and David who offered their ongoing help until such time as Adam had a team back in place. Adam could have wept with gratitude, never realising that such a small thing he’d done all those years ago had reaped such great rewards when he needed them most.
Natasha and Corey had three children of their own. The foster-parents who’d taken them in from Sanctuary back then had been more than happy to look after their grandchildren while they helped out. David was footloose and fancy free and, with a stunning career in architecture, he could afford to take an indefinite leave of absence. Adam sat the three down and explained that he needed to close the book on the old team before constructing a new one, and they all understood. Well, except for David’s small protest that forward was the way to go, that looking back was a waste of time.
In order to achieve closure, though, he needed to fill in the gaps in his own memory and to find all the pieces he needed to put the entire picture together. First and foremost was Absalom, the entity that had attacked them in their home. Absalom and his flunkies had neutralised them using a form of sub-dermal governor and taken them all to the warehouse. Adam didn’t remember that too well, but what he did remember made him sick. Absalom had a niche market in selling new mutants, among other things. But he also liked playing with new toys. Adam remembered Absalom making Emma and Shalimar watch as he made Brennan and Jesse do unspeakable things to themselves, to others and to each other.
But Absalom was dead.
The frightened healer child that constantly made sure no one was left at death’s door was the one who’d killed Absalom in the end. When Absalom had wanted Emma taken out of the cage and… Adam didn’t want to go there. And then there was Absalom’s enigmatic lieutenant, Magarathea, dark haired, ageless, and sharked-eyed in looks, cold, emotionless and ruthless in nature. Of those two, no sign had been found.
However, it was Natasha with her cyber skills who came up with something. Some lost property that was lying unclaimed at the local coroner’s office. When Adam got the package home, he sat staring at it for a long time before finding the courage to open it. When he finally did, he tipped onto the table five identical plain silver rings.
He put them carefully back in the package vowing to bury the rings with their owners. Only then would he wear his own again, in remembrance,
*****
Natasha and Adam used the new Sanctuary’s technology while David and Corey did the legwork, and it wasn’t long before they found that Magarathea, unsurprisingly, had taken over Absalom’s business, although still trading in Absalom’s name.
Magarathea was pragmatic and saw no problem with doing business with Adam. He paid her, and she gave him what he asked for.
More than he’d ever hoped, less than he needed.
Sale Lot #4835 - 1 x Feral – Anthonius Mosenby, private collector
Sale Lot #4836 - 1 x Elemental – Green Acres Molecular Research Institute
Sale Lot #4837 - 1 x Molecular – USG Biochemical Research Agency
Sale Lot #4838 - 1 x Psionic – Genomex Industries
That was all the information provided, as that was all he’d asked for. 800,000 dollars for that small, but key data. Adam had briefly harboured a thought that there might be some indication of the state of the… their conditions, but Magarathea was clearly not that compassionate.
Or maybe she was.
*****
“I’ve got one!” Natasha called, her eyes flashing from white to their normal blue.
“What? What is it?” Adam was at her shoulder in a flash.
“USG Bio. Usual government cost cutting with old mainframe, crap firewall and virtually no other data security. Only thing is, I’m not sure Magarathea’s molecular is who you’re looking for.”
“What makes you say that?” Adam tried to sound calm and patient, but his heart was thumping wildly with anticipation.
Natasha seemed hesitant. “Because…” She took a deep breath. “Because he was still alive.”
Adam’s breath caught in his throat. All this time…
But he had to be sure first. “Was? Details. Give me details,” he rasped.
“Okay, well, the molecular, sale lot #4837 was purchased nine months ago, which ties in. and was designated patient M987A. Shipment was delivered healthy and neutralised as advertised, 5ft 11inch Caucasian male, dark blond, blue-eyed, molecular, density shifter. Thing is, Adam, M987A was rejected within four weeks.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Hold on, I’m searching... It means that he was unusable. He underwent some experimentation for the first couple of weeks he was there, but then they stopped due to, and I quote, ‘a persistent disassociative disorder and an inability to assert molecular stability.” I guess the government likes being humane, even if they do ‘buy’ their guinea pigs. He’s been admitted to Rylands as a John Doe. Rylands is a – ”
“Yes, it’s all right, I’m familiar with Rylands. It’s a state run secure psychiatric unit. I can pull strings to get in there.”
“I’m sorry, Adam.” Natasha looked sympathetic and Adam didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It had to be Jesse, it just had to be. And if he was alive, no matter what state he was in, then he could get him back. And if Jesse was alive, then the others…
*****
When Adam arrived at the austere building that was Rylands, he was met by a Doctor Paul Austin, a greying, care-worn man he’d had some dealings with when doing his internship. He was surprised that the Doctor remembered him, but pleased as he recalled having a great deal of respect for the older doctor.
As they walked through paint-peeling institutional corridors, Austin rambled at length and seemed genuinely concerned for the welfare of his patients.
“I do hope this John Doe is the young man you’re looking for,” Austin said hurriedly, with that manner of speech where someone obviously wants to give his time, but simply doesn’t have the time to give. “I’ve tried everything I can think of, and I’m at my wits end what to do with him. I mean, the only reason he’s here, really, is because our facilities stand some minute chance of containing him. Well, that and we get a lot of these hush-hush genetic experiment rejects; official secrets acts can’t say a word junket. He could really do with going to a specialised unit, and I trust if he is your John Doe that you’ll take him to such a place. And if he isn’t, might you take him anyway? After all genetics are your field and… ah! Here we are.”
One slightly dented steel door, and producing a bunch of keys Austin opened it.
Adam’s lungs ached, he’d held his breath so long. His eyes teared up and his stomach flipped when he saw Jesse standing by the barred window looking out.
“Jesse?” Adam approached slowly, uncertain of what was happening. He knew that Jesse was disassociated from the world around him, but not by how much. Austin said extreme, but he didn’t have the comatose look of the catatonic. Quite the contrary, Jesse looked healthy and very much alive, if unkempt and melancholy.
As Adam stepped into Jesse’s immediate line of sight, the younger man jumped slightly and drew back, phasing out and looking terrified.
“It’s me. Adam,” he said, holding his hand out, but not crowding the young man, knowing he could phase right out and be gone, which was the last thing he wanted. Jesse’s lips moved, but no words came out and Adam shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jesse, I don’t understand.” Jesse came forward a little, the beginnings of a tentative smile touching his lips and a light beginning to spark in his eyes. With some trepidation a hand reached out and Adam went to take it, but his fingers passed right through. And the smile slipped, the light died and Jesse returned to looking out the window.
“It’s like I said, Doctor Kane.” Austin pulled Adam to the side. “He knows we’re here if we get close enough to him and most of the time, as far as we can tell, he’s as solid as you and I. He leaves footprints in the flower beds and rarely disappears through the floor, but he doesn’t seem to be aware of anything beyond a two foot radius. And even then, he can’t seem to interact with us. When he’s lucid I know he tries, as you’ve just seen.”
“Lucid?”
Austin sighed. “John, uh… Mr uh… Jesse has been living in his own world since he got here. He can’t speak, he can’t hear or touch, the control of his abilities is tenuous at best, how he feeds himself I don’t know. It’s a form of sensory deprivation and he’s been suffering from it for a long time. A lot of the time he’s lost in his mind somewhere, and we’re unable to give him either therapy or medication. Thank heaven for small mercies that he hasn’t shown any inclination to leave this place.”
Adam scratched at his chin thoughtfully. “Not even Sanctuary’s safe.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing. I’d like to transport him to my clinic, is that possible?”
“By all means,” the doctor smiled. “But don’t ask me how.”
Someone had left a plate of cookies on the table, and he watched as Jesse tried to take one, dropping it through compulsively phasing fingers and mouthing curses. When he finally had it, he crammed it in his mouth like a child, and still he phased out before he could swallow, half of it falling to the floor.
Angrily, Jesse massed and stamped on the cookie, reducing both it and the floor beneath to powder.
“I’ll have to come back with some equipment,” Adam said thoughtfully. “I’ll see you in a few days. Look after him for me.”
*****
Looking at the dent in the concrete floor, Jesse spun and tried to slam the wall, howling his frustration, but instead fell right through. It was raining out, so he stepped though the wall back into his room.
It was so unfair! The only people he saw were ghost like wraiths who came and sometimes tried to talk to him, but it was like they couldn’t hear him, or didn’t want to hear him. He tried to touch them and they’d just fade away. He thought he’d seen Absalom earlier, but then it was Adam and then he was gone too.
It was like there was a wall between him and the world and he was left all alone. But he had been alone for so long now, and it was so rare that any of the apparitions meant anything at all that he was becoming afraid of what was outside of his world. The longer he stayed in there, the safer he felt and the less inclined he was to find a way out. In the early days, he tried every trick; he’d ranted and raved, kicked and punched, tried every means possible to get out, knowing that to be so alone would drive him insane. But that was all such a long time ago, he wondered if he’d gone insane yet.
His mind was the only thing left to him right now, and he used it to escape into the past, to when he had friends he could talk and play and fight with. Back when he was a real boy.
*****
A fist swinging, and Adam blocked it, threw a flat hand at the thug’s face, breaking the nose and dislocating the offending arm. Another came at him, axe overhead, and Adam threw a kick, sweat pouring into his eyes nearly blinding him. He skidded slightly as a piece of piping swung where his skull had been, sticking his feet out, tripping the wielder, and his muscles ached, his breathing laboured, and the axe-man was back and…
They were all gone, and Adam was left panting on the dojo floor.
“Hey,” David trotted up the stairs. “How’re you doing? Apart from the black eye? And the sore ribs? And the bruised shin? And the skinned knuckles?”
“All right, all right, point taken.” Adam couldn’t help but laugh as David threw his lanky frame down on the ground next to him. He’d come back to Sanctuary with such an overwhelming confusion of emotions that he’d brought himself down here to work it off and think things through. He’d come to the conclusion that Jesse was safe enough where he was, and could stay there until such time as he could devise a way of getting him home. Something he intended to get right onto as soon as he’d showered.
David grinned at him. “Anthonius Mosenby? I have an in.”
“You do? That was quick!”
“No quicker than your own string pulling. He’s a friend of my boss. I met him once.” David grimaced. “But he looked at me like he, like he knew what I was. Creepy. Anyway, I have an invite to a small soiree he’s holding. For me, plus one.”
“When is it,” Adam asked, forcing himself to push Jesse to the back of his mind for the moment. Shalimar had to be the focus of his attention now.
“This very evening.” David grinned, bouncing to his feet. “Better get your skates on, old man!”
“Hey, I’m not that old!” Adam huffed as he pushed himself up. And then a moment later, “Hey, wait up, I’m not as young as I used to be you know!”
*****
The Mosenby mansion was modern and imposing in its many acres of manicured gardens, and the small soiree consisted of around fifty guests from various walks of life, all either famous in their field or one of the Fortune 500.
Mosenby himself was short, rotund and exceedingly pompous, but did the sociable rounds of all his guests as a good host should. He’d joined Adam and David and paused there, fascinated when he discovered who Adam was and pressing him for details and opinions on genetic outcomes.
“So,” continued Mosenby, sipping at his champagne. “Do you not think that any poor creature that has spliced DNA has to be less than human?”
“On the contrary, sir.” Adam pushed his impatience side with an ease born of long practice with necessary, but political social functions. “They have talents and weaknesses just like any human being, and have every right to be allowed to live as such.”
“Even when they are unable to conduct themselves in civilised company?”
“Mr. Mosenby, splicing an animal’s DNA into a human does not turn them into that animal. Some side effects may result in some extended talents, but that is all.”
“Are you really trying to tell me that a man who has been crossed with a mongrel won’t piss on the carpet?”
Adam looked the man directly in the eyes. “No more than the natural born mongrels that walk among us every day. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Adam headed in the direction of the cloakroom, unable to bear the man’s presence a moment longer.
It wasn’t long, but seemed forever, before Mosenby announced a tour of his zoo for those who were interested. About a half were, including Adam and David, and they followed their host out into the garden. It was a short hike across flat lawns, that caused much merriment among those wearing stilettos, to a secret garden hidden by a rose covered wall. When they went through into the enclosed quadrangle, Adam looked about him in stunned horror.
The square included a barn at one end which clearly housed the feed, the veterinary area and suchlike, but the other three sides were made up of small, neat cages, maybe a couple of dozen of them in all.
The cage closest to where Adam stood was home to a cougar that glared at them through the pink eyes of an albino. The cage was certainly clean, but it was barely wide or long enough for the big cat to walk three strides either way. And it was bare, just a small pile of straw in one corner. Nothing to get in the way of the display. The cat looked well fed, but its coat was balding and inner eyelids constantly showing, more likely from stress and distress than from disease.
Adam walked around, sickened by the way Mosenby was showing the creatures off, and more, the way the guests showed no hesitation in taunting them. One woman even asked if the cougar could be sold to her for its fur.
As they reached the far side, passing albinos and deformed examples of many different species, Adam was further shocked to see a man clothed in just a loincloth sitting against the wall of his cage, despair written in every line.
Mosenby told him to move, to go feral but was ignored. A press of a button on the wall next to the cage, a flash of electricity and a vulpine howl filled the air, the man’s eyes glowing gold as he snapped and growled.
There were more very similar cages, and David had to steady Adam when they reached the blonde cat woman. She didn’t need to be shocked into performing, but Mosenby hit the button anyway. She had been curled up in a corner, only an animal print bikini to cover her modesty, but suddenly she sprang at the bars, hissing and spitting and promising death.
As the group moved on Adam tried to reach her, and for an instant she calmed down. “Adam?” she whispered, her brown eyes disbelieving before she screamed in outrage and denial. David had to drag Adam away as her broken-clawed fingers tried desperately to do damage through the bars.
*****
She was so tired of being a showpiece in a zoo, but had long since given up trying to escape. There was only so much pain a girl could take.
They all knew that Mosenby was showing them off again, the same pattern of tranq-ing each occupant, cleaning out the cages, giving vitamin shots and denying them food. All to make them look clean, look good, and look ferocious.
When she first came here, she’d have been up at the bars as soon as she smelled them, demanding to run free. But as her energy deserted her it became too much of an effort. She’d gotten to the point where performing for least punishment was the most viable option for survival. And survival was all she knew these days.
For a brief instant, she thought she saw someone from her past, someone who reminded her that she’d been human once, but that was only fleeting before the evilness reasserted itself, more virulently than ever.
*****
Mosenby was too arrogant, and Adam too determined to get Shalimar out of her prison for anything to prevent that from happening. The conditions that the blonde feral was being kept in were abhorrent to Adam in just about every way, which only served to motivate him into making plans to free her the following evening.
With Natasha taking care of the security systems and David taking care of any guards and dogs, Adam and Corey broke into the secret garden.
For whatever reason, the animals and ferals enclosed growled softly, but did not fuss at their presence. However, as they approached Shalimar’s cage, she struck out at them, at Adam, screaming unintelligible words and launching herself at him even though the bars were in her way. Adam tried to talk her calm, tried to soothe her before she inadvertently raised the alarm or set the other captives to fussing and drawing attention to the area.
As Adam failed in his attempts, the realisation that she wouldn’t or couldn’t listen prompting a surge of disappointment, Corey too tried to talk her down. But in the end there was only one option. Corey raised his gun and shot her.
With a long protesting moan, Shalimar gave in to the tranquilliser and slid to the floor as Corey shifted the stone and iron to make a hole. “I wish we could take all of these people, and the animals too, away from here,” he said.
“I know,” Adam whispered back as he lifted Shalimar up, noting how much lighter she was than he remembered. “And we will close this guy down. Animal rights will be up in arms, and I can see at least half a dozen counts of abduction or kidnapping.”
Corey nodded as he put the cage back how they’d found it. “We better make it quick.”
Adam smiled wolfishly. “I think your wife is making sure they get an early wake up call in the morning.”
*****
Adam stood in the hangar in thoughtful silence as he contemplated the large reinforced Perspex cube that contained a confused, frightened and far from human Shalimar. The cube contained a cot and private facilities, some of Shalimar’s own sweatpants and tops, as well as some of her favourite magazines, anything that he could salvage from her room that wouldn’t be dangerous. But she eschewed it all in favour of sitting curled in a blanket in a corner, constantly wary and watching, like a cat taken from its home, not knowing if this new place is safe.
He jumped, startled as Corey materialised beside him, a knack the quiet young man had. “Hey, we found something on your elemental, Brennan? It’s not good.”
“What’s up?” They were two for two batting Not Good so far. But, at least Not Good was whole lot better than Terminally Dead, which was where they’d started off.
“Seems that Mr Mulwray didn’t like Green Acres very much. Shorted out the entire centre, putting some of the research back by years, and took off. Hasn’t been heard of since.”
“Damn. Okay, well, why don’t you and David work on trying to track him down. You know how to use the scanners, Proxy Blue might have something, and just get out there and look. I’m going to keep working on Shalimar and Jesse until Eckhart responds to –“
“You don’t have to wait, Adam,” Natasha’s voice came over the internal comms. “Mr Eckhart found our little hack and is on the vid demanding your presence immediately.”
Adam swung out a portion of the maintenance desk. “Patch him through here, would you?”
“Adam,” greeted Eckhart pleasantly. “Why on earth all this subterfuge if you only wanted to talk. You could have just picked up the phone and called, you know.”
“Mason.” Talking to his oldest friend, enemy and sparring partner for the first time since the invasion of Sanctuary, Adam felt a sense of welcome normality. “If I’d called or knocked on your door, you’d be looking under every rock trying to find my ulterior motive.”
“What makes you think I’m not doing that already?”
“I’m sure you already are. But I also think you know exactly what I’m after. You have a friend of mine with you, I believe.”
“I have a lot of your friends here, Adam. Now which one in particular would you be referring to?”
Adam shook his head and forced a smile. “Emma de Lauro? I’m sure you remember her.”
“Yes.” Eckhart pursed his lips in an expression of distaste. “Rather emotional creature, prone to making people’s heads explode. It’s so hard to explain accidents like that to the cleaners. I believe she may be in a pod somewhere. Why, did you want her back?”
“Perhaps I could come and discuss the matter?”
“I shall be expecting you.”
The transmission ended and Adam prepared to enter the lion’s den that was Genomex.
*****
“So, how much is Ms De Lauro worth to you, Adam? How much coin do you put on the worth of a life.” Eckhart’s tone was soft and seductive, but still managed to cut effortlessly to the core with clinical precision.
“*I* don’t, as you well know. Unlike yourself.”
“Yes, but what you fail to see here is that I have never pretended to value a life the way you purport to.” Eckhart paused for a beat. “So, how much, Adam?”
“You know I can’t put a price on a life.”
“Oh, well. Does that make Ms De Lauro priceless or valueless? Because to me, she has become valueless. It’s up to you to change that.”
Adam sighed and tried to find a middle ground that would get him what he wanted without compromising his beliefs. But in the end, he knew he would do, and say, anything Mason wanted him to if it would get Emma back safe. And he knew that Mason knew that too. “I would gladly reimburse you any and all expense incurred by you in your care of her.”
“Oh, now that’s an interesting way to put it. Almost like one would reimburse a kennel keeper, hmmm?”
Adam bit back a retort. Eckhart held all the advantages and could choose not to co-operate at any time. So he held his silence.
“Very well,” Eckhart said suddenly, spinning his flat screen so that Adam could see it. “These are the costs I’ve incurred, plus a modest little kennel fee at the bottom.”
“That’s your idea of little?” Adam remarked.
“Are you bartering for Ms De Lauro’s life?” Eckhart asked in mock astonishment.
Adam forced a smile. “No, of course not. That’s fine.”
“Good. We accept all major credit cards.”
Adam knew that he would never be able to reconcile with himself the fact that he’d just paid cash for a human being, and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to tell Emma that he’d bought her.
*****
Emma walked in her accustomed place, just a step behind Mason Eckhart, in her tailored brown uniform. She liked it here; she got to play with her powers in a challenging assortment of ways. Mr Eckhart liked to have her check the veracity of his employees reports, liked to have her explore prisoners’ minds, make them do and say things they would normally never dare.
She liked the power she had. But she was careful not to enjoy it too much. She was very well aware that she could control even Mr Eckhart if she so chose, and he knew it too. But they had a symbiotic relationship. There was only one person she was afraid of. And Eckhart promised to protect her from him, had even proven to her his ability to do so.
It worked for her and she enjoyed her job.
She didn’t sense any difference today, so it took her by surprise when Mr Eckhart stopped. And there he was in front of her. The very person she was terrified of. She could feel the whole world trying to climb into her head, could feel her sanity slipping.
“You were supposed to protect me from him!” she cried.
Eckhart turned and shrugged slightly. “I lied,” he said. Then vanished into thin air and she was left alone with Adam.
“No!” she screamed, and lashed out with a blast meant to draw out her enemy’s worst fears. Only it backfired and drew from Adam the dark entity that was Absalom.
She screamed more as her mind fractured, unable to contain the thoughts and emotions of six billion people, splintering shards spinning out into darkness.
Until she woke up.
She got dressed and went to join Mr Eckhart for his usual daily tour.
Emma walked in her accustomed place, just a step behind Mason Eckhart, in her tailored brown uniform.
She liked it here.
*****
The pod lay in the lab, the one time he’d tried opening it resulting in Emma screaming in excruciating agony and clawing at her own eyes. Nothing Adam could do could stop her and even sedatives, while calming her thrashing limbs, had no effect on her tortured mind.
So now she lay like Sleeping Beauty in her glass coffin, just waiting for her Prince Charming to come and wake her up.
“You’re mixing up your fairy tales,” Magda told him, puffing away on her cigarette. “Snow White with the coffin and Cinderella with Prince Charming. Honestly, how a man who can recite the periodic table backwards in four dead languages, yet not know such simple little details any five year old could tell you, is quite beyond me.”
Adam chuckled although the humour never reached his eyes. “I don’t know how I’ve ever managed without you, Maggie,” Adam said quietly as he studied Emma’s youthful face and wondered if she would end up wasting twenty five years in there. “And I don’t know what to do now. The kids are working almost twenty four seven to find Brennan. I have no idea how to get Jesse back to Sanctuary and even if I could what would I do with him? What am I going to do with any of them?
“You’re looking at mountains again, Adam,” Magda told him whilst craning her head to look at Emma properly. “Pretty little thing, isn’t she? Be breaking hearts in a couple years.”
“Already has,” Adam smiled.
“They start so young these days, don’t they?” Magda sighed and took another drag. “Now, start from the top and stop trying to be so damned clever. You’ve got the pod person here?”
“Emma. Who’s apparently been subjected to some kind of intense - ”
“You’re not listening, Doc. Simplify!”
Adam blinked. “She’s insane?”
“Better. And?”
“She’s safe here.”
“Right. And Shalimar?”
“Insane. And safe here.”
“See? You can be intelligent when you try.”
“Jesse, also insane. Safe. But not here.”
“You sure about safe part?”
Adam thought about Rylands and the overworked doctor there, and was suddenly not convinced that Jesse would stay put. “No, but we need to communicate with him to get him to come home. He doesn’t know that we’ve rebuilt.”
“Jesse and Shalimar were inseparable, you know.”
“How could I forget,” Adam laughed. “Wherever one was, the other was never far behind.”
“Mmmm… and Jesse still knows how to read?”
“Sure, but he can’t pick up a – oh. Now that was kinda obvious.”
“Exactly. There is such a thing as being too smart for your own good. Now go bring that boy home. He and Shalimar need each other. Then you can concentrate on Sparky.”
“Maggie, there are times when I truly love you,” Adam said, before running for the door.
*****
Adam’s brief burst of optimism dissipated far too quickly. It was one thing to leave a message somewhere very obvious that Jesse stood a chance of seeing, but it was quite another waiting for that chance to occur.
And further, once that chance had occurred, there was no way to try and hurry up someone who didn’t seem able to interact with the physical, tangible world. It seemed to take hours before Jesse made up his mind and made a positive move out of the building. And then it seemed to take him another age to find the car. Almost like a blind man feeling his way about.
The drive back to Sanctuary was an experience of life with the Invisible Man. Adam found it hard to believe that anyone was sitting in the passenger seat, even when Jesse was visible, and the BMW, no matter how robust its suspension, was not used to the abrupt shifts in weight between his phased and massed forms.
When they arrived at the base of the beach side mountain, Adam drove through the garage and into the hanger in the hope that parking close to Shalimar might just anchor Jesse here.
Shalimar’s reaction was immediate, but one of confusion. She was pressed against the wall facing the car, shying away from Adam but clearly trying to reach Jesse. When he was invisible she could still sense him, and that confused her.
She prowled around her cage, always by the wall closest to Jesse, unintelligible sounds coming from her throat, yet, to Adam, a far more encouraging sight than the tightly curled figure in the corner had been.
Jesse, for his part, sensed Shalimar almost immediately, but it was the same thing that had happened at Rylands. Adam saw him, phasing almost from solidity to invisible intangibility and back as he ran to the cage, put his hand up to meet Shalimar’s and pass right through both Perspex and flesh.
Then, suddenly all massed anger, he pounded on the Perspex, which started to give, and without thought Adam pounced to try and pull Jesse away before he broke Shalimar’s cage. And slid straight through the molecular who didn’t seem to notice, just stood leaning his head against the wall with closed eyes.
Later on, Adam would find them both curled up asleep on either side of the wall, just the Perspex between them. Crouching in front of Jesse, Adam’s automatic reflex was to push the too long hair back from his eyes but he caught himself. Then wondered if this was all in his mind? He leaned in with the lightest touch, breath held as nothing happened until he reached the point where he thought skin should be. But there was nothing. His fingers slipped straight through as if Jesse were just a projection in a movie.
Food for thought and Adam left the pair of them there, a bond between them so strong that nothing on this earth could break it.
*****
“Adam, we have a problem!” Natasha’s worried voice woke Adam from one of his few fitful sleeps and he hurried to the lab. “Corey and David are in trouble.” She was trying to be calm, but Adam could hear the trembling undertone of her worry for her husband. “Uh, we, um… Monitoring the power companies, we picked up a pattern of failing substations. They don’t fail for long, just a few minutes. By the time the remote engineers get there, it’s functioning fine. We put them together with police reports, and they tie in with robberies that occur at one or two select homes and businesses.
“It was kind of tentative, because it’s been happening in several counties and is pretty low key, so it’s not been picked up by either the power companies or the police. Anyway, there’s a pattern, and the guys took off for where we thought the next place might be, here, Bennington. Small place with a small diamond merchant. It might not even be Brennan Mulwray responsible, it was just a hypothesis.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Adam asked tightly. He hadn’t intended for these three to be put in danger, and didn’t think he could cope with losing them too.
Natasha took a deep breath. “Because when I checked you were sleeping soundly, and you don’t get enough sleep as it is. I thought it was worth checking out before disturbing you. My bad call.”
Adam closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. They were only trying to help. And they’d done a damned fine job so far. “Okay, what happened?”
Natasha played back the recording of Corey and David’s last communication. There was a lot of shouting, a lot of flesh striking flesh. And in the end, an unfamiliar voice demanding, “Tell Adam Kane to get his ass out here now. The boss wants to see him or the wannabe’s get it.”
*****
Adam had no idea what he was walking into and just hoped that he could deal with whatever was thrown at him.
Humming lines surrounded the sub-station, and only a small brick building in the centre indicated any life. A man in denim with long matted hair, toting a machine gun, guarded the single door.
There had been a large pick-up parked on the roadside a little distance away next to his own Audi, the car the boys had borrowed, and Adam guessed that it probably belonged to the men here.
Approaching cautiously, Adam announced his presence and, with a snarling glare, the guard let him in.
Inside, David and Corey, looking dishevelled and bruised, sat on the floor tied back to back, blindfolded and gagged. Adam felt like cheering when he saw a figure sprawled on the floor next to the wall, shaking a little and moaning slightly in his sleep. Brennan. Two more guards sat at a small table playing cards and smoking cigars, and neither seemed to be taking any notice of him.
“I believe your boss wanted to see me?” Adam said, trying to prompt some reaction.
“Yeah, yeah,” growled one, waving vaguely at centre of the room. “In a minute.”
“Now. I’m kinda busy and I’d like to get this little tête-à-tête over with.”
“Do what?” said the first. “A little tit on tit?”
“No fucking idea,” spat the other. “Sounds kinda perverted to me.”
The first man got up from the table and walked over to Brennan. He bent slightly and took the cigar from his mouth. “Hey, boss! Your buddy’s here!” He shrugged and went back to continue the card game.
“Okay, okay I’m coming,” Brennan grumbled, rubbing his hands over his face and clambering to his feet. He looked haggard and drawn, dark rings below his eyes as he looked Adam up and down.”
“Brennan, are you okay, where are – “
“What do you care? Adam.” Brennan interrupted. “Play your little mind games with us, sell us off to the highest bidder, and next minute you have a whole new team. What is with you?”
“Brennan, what are you talking about? You’re making no sense!” Adam tried to understand what the angry elemental was saying.
“Oh, always protecting us, always making sure our powers won’t hurt us or anyone else. You know what? It was Magarathea who had all the answers in the end. At least she was honest enough to tell us she was selling us out. It was her powers that unlocked our powers. That’s what she said, that she’d unleashed our full potential, so that we might know what it was to be imprisoned by them.” Brennan looked confused for a moment. “Of course,” he continued, “I don’t get that last bit.”
“Magarathea?” Adam asked, his mind whirling at the thought that all their problems could be of genetic origin rather than mental. “What exactly did she do?”
Brennan sneered. ”Oh, don’t tell me, the all seeing, all knowing doesn’t know everything. After you bailed on us in the explosion, Magarathea’s power went out of control and nuked us all.” He blinked. “But that’s all past history. Right now, I have power, I have more power than you, or any money grabbing fat cat or politician could ever dream of. And I’m using it, slowly, to build me an empire that’ll show each and every one of you exactly who is in charge.”
Adam could swear the elemental’s eyes were sparking as he pushed past outside. Standing feet apart and raising his hands, Brennan arced bolts of lightning at the pylons and they came back to him tenfold. With a long cry of ecstasy, he absorbed, something he’d never been able to do before. One hand moved over to the surrounding chain linked fence and set it dancing blue lightning, and Adam realised that Brennan wasn’t actually absorbing. He was channelling and re-routing the electricity.
And getting drunk on the power, but the power was the only thing he knew. His own power was all he knew. Just like Jesse. And Emma. And Shalimar. But reminiscent of Ashley before him, a new mutant whose power it was to absorb electricity, that the team had met shortly after Emma and Brennan had joined, Brennan needed the power to survive. A power junkie for want of a better description.
And as Brennan’s capacity for channelling the power dwindled with satiation, rock pillars pushed through the earth to expand and surround him. Too late Brennan realised and started flinging bolts, primarily at Adam, then at the stumbling Corey. He didn’t see David reach out and make the motion of grabbing air and pulling it to him, creating a vacuum around Brennan that had him clawing at his throat, gasping and suffocating until, finally, he passed out.
Strangely enough, the three gun-toting guards were nowhere to be seen.
*****
Having been abandoned by the one person he was beginning to trust above all others, the need to show Adam how powerful he’d become was overwhelming. He’d only meant to show him what he could do, but the electricity flowing through Brennan was so enervating, so strong. And it made him stronger, and he was lost in the power of it.
He was going to be weak as a kitten once he’d expended the excess, but for the moment he was absolutely certain that he was the most powerful being on the planet.
He came down slowly, unwilling to let the last vestiges of power leave him too quickly, only to be assaulted by earth and wind. He’d taken them by surprise before, but now they’d somehow freed themselves and surprised him. Right at his weakest moment.
Now he knew how Jesse used to feel when he had to go vulnerable to take breath. And as his air left him, amidst the black spots dancing before his eyes, Brennan saw a vision, perhaps a memory, of Absalom laughing at him.
*****
“Don’t you think we’re turning into a mutant collection agency?” David remarked as they ate. “I mean, we have your four guys back and now we’re after Magarathea? And her little healer kid?”
“I know,” said Adam, not really tasting the food. “But Magarathea did something their powers and, on top of that, I’m sure if we get as many of the pieces here as possible we can solve this.” He sighed, unsure how to explain his methodology. “It’s just putting together what we know with a good dose of gut feeling. The only missing piece then is Absalom.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” Corey asked, playing with his noodles.
“I – “ Adam paused, frowning. “As I can be. I don’t remember a whole lot about it to be honest. The healer child exorcised him from his host. See, Absalom was a pure psionic, very diverse in his powers but he had no corporeal body and used others like a parasite, but he couldn’t survive long without a body. Of course it drove him mad, made him unpredictable. But I think Magarathea is the key here. We just have to persuade her that she wants to come and help us out.”
“How do you plan on doing that?” Natasha asked, and Adam looked at her brightly.
“I’m not,” he said. “You are. The same way you enticed Eckhart.”
*****
There was no point in pretending that Magarathea didn’t know where Sanctuary was, information that she would sell, should the price be high enough. Adam was confident of the new security systems, though, so he invited her to come at her own convenience. She had stared silently at him over the vid unit for some time before accepting with suspiciously little argument, even so far as agreeing to bring the little healer child with her.
She arrived with little fanfare, waiting at the foot of the mountain for an invitation in a plain black Trans Am. Just her and the child.
Lowering the camouflage shield and raising the garage door was invitation enough and Adam met them inside the garage. He was suspicious of the fact that Magarathea, a known mercenary, had not asked for so much as a sou to come out here and help his team. He had to deal with that first before letting the child that clung to her trousers anywhere near his team, for while he would sell his soul to the devil himself to save any one of them, it was in all their best interests to at least try and negotiate a deal. But he was all too aware that he held all the low cards at this table.
And Magarathea was not going to play. She refused to negotiate, saying only that Adam would owe her a favour that she would collect in the not too distant future. She was emotionless and intractable and he soon had to give in.
*****
Adam didn’t like being kept out of anything, much less by a pair of dubious mercenaries with unknown motives claiming to be able to heal one of his team members. However, Magarathea’s explanation was that while she could push Emma’s defensive shields up for them to heal her, it was imperative that there be as few people as possible close enough to distract them.
And heal her the child would have to do, for while Magarathea could regress each of the four mutant’s abilities back to their original state even from a distance under normal circumstances, damage had been done by the continued stress on their bodies and minds which meant that the regression and healing had to be performed in a delicate conjunction with each other.
So Adam asked Natasha to keep an eye on them as best she could through the computers even though he was certain that whatever was going on in there would be beyond the cyber-psionic’s scope.
Magarathea seemed to be under some considerable strain, but Emma remained calm as the pod was opened this time. The child laid hands glowing a soft blue at Emma’s temples and, although the process was slow, Magarathea’s efforts became increasingly unnecessary until at last, Emma opened her eyes. A few words passed between Emma and Magarathea, and then Adam was in the room while Magarathea took the child away to the living area to eat and rest.
Naturally, Adam put an exhausted Emma through a gamut of tests, doing his utmost to make sure she was safe. He badly wanted to reassure her, reassure himself with some tactile gesture, a hug, or at least a supporting squeeze of her arm but, as she seemed understandably reticent and oversensitive, he refrained, feeling somewhat surreally out of touch.
*****
It wasn’t too much later that Magarathea deemed the child rested enough to work on Brennan, although there was no mention of her own exhaustion. The austere woman had decided that Shalimar and Jesse needed to be worked upon together, and the child would therefore need a good deal more rest before attempting to help them.
For someone who seemed so cold and emotionless, Magarathea showed a lot of care and concern for the youngster, whose name had not been given. The child itself was frail and androgynous, although Adam had the impression that it was a little boy who looked to be about seven or eight, although could well be older.
Brennan was slumped on the cot that had been moved into the dojo for him. The force field prevented his escape, so he spent the time taking pot shots at imaginary cockroaches. With Emma back on her feet, if uncharacteristically quiet, Adam acceded to her request to be allowed to join them.
As they entered the training area Brennan surged to his feet, the arrogant expression making his dark features almost cruel, and it occurred to Adam then that the elemental was not one he would like to meet as a true enemy.
With Emma in the middle, Adam and Magarathea watched the child approach the dojo, Magarathea having assured Adam that the force field was no obstacle. Indeed, the child walked straight through, and Brennan didn’t seem to know how to deal with this unthreatening being.
While Magarathea’s eyes closed and her head bowed in concentration, working from where she stood, the child held its hand out and, hesitantly, warily, Brennan took it. The glow began and instantly Brennan yelped, pulling roughly away. But the child held on, physically unmoved, rooted as surely as the mountain.
Lightening crackled in the air around them, and while the child’s face remained placid, Brennan’s contorted in agony as he fell to his knees. The energy built up around them to such a phenomenal extent that Adam hastily checked the monitors for weaknesses in the powerful force field. The sound and light show built to crescendo, reverberating through the very bedrock until with a sharp, bright crack, it stopped, leaving everyone momentarily blind and deafened by the silence.
As soon as the black spots started to dissipate, Adam saw Brennan slumped on the floor and the child already back with Magarathea. He switched off the force field and Emma ran to the elemental, kneeling on the floor and cradling his head in her lap.
Adam checked him over and, from a casual inspection, he seemed only stunned. He would give the elemental the full barrage of tests as he had with Emma of course, but for the moment it only remained to make sure that he recovered from the mental and physical healing assault he’d just been through. Hearing a moan and a curse from the semi-conscious Brennan, Adam breathed in relief.
The tall mutant’s eyelids fluttered open and he smiled up at Emma. When his eyes fell upon Adam, however, he flinched away slightly, and the older man could hardly blame him. If the young man had any recollection of past events, he must be feeling both angry and guilty at the very least.
So Adam just smiled understandingly and persuaded Brennan that he needed to be checked over properly.
*****
Jealousy overwhelmed Adam as he watched Emma and Brennan huddled in a corner, talking in low tones. The one time he'd approached them they'd looked at him with almost identically haunted eyes, and Adam had been forced into the realization that although he'd been the one to instigate the search and rescue for them all, the young mutants were bound together in a way he could never understand, sharing the same feelings of what, relief, joy, and violation? Anger and hatred? He didn't know, and never truly would.
So instead of spending the time while the child rested reuniting with his two walking wounded team members, he retreated to the kitchen and there found Magarathea huddled over a mug of hot chocolate. She looked tired and drawn, suddenly years older than her usual cold and hard façade indicated.
Quietly, Adam got himself a coffee and sat down opposite her. She stared intently at him for a moment, the shield rearing back up before she seemed to come to a decision that there was nothing to hide from here and now.
"So," Adam began, "I can take it that the child, the boy, was responsible for the fact that my people escaped the explosion unscathed."
"Not unscathed." Magarathea's voice was harsh, but with what, Adam couldn't tell. "I was caught in it as well, and he healed me. "
"But?" Adam prompted.
Magarathea sighed heavily. "But my own psionic defences were shattered and they were… they were all screaming. The feral was screaming so much, I - Daryl had no choice but to kill or cure them, and he could never kill."
"Daryl? The boy?"
"My son. He nearly died trying to save your… people in order to save me. Your molecular was so badly burned, healing him was almost more than Daryl could take."
"But you sold them. How could you do something like that?"
Magarathea shrugged and looked Adam straight in the eye. "It's what I do, and I'll keep on doing it. Supplying whatever is demanded. Whether it's slaves, guns, information or holy water." She stiffened slightly, eyes unfocussed for a second. "He's ready."
And that was, apparently, the end of discussion.
Daryl's entry into Shalimar's cell was cautious, and it seemed that his caution was not unfounded when the feral yowled, eyes blazing as her territory was invaded. Adam was interested to see Jesse placing himself between Daryl and Shalimar, his arms up towards Shalimar as if to defend himself.
The feral prowled back and forth as Jesse kept himself between her and the boy, and Adam wondered how much of the world Jesse was actually aware of, or whether it was strictly Shalimar he was reacting to.
In the end, it was Daryl who took matters into his own hands, stepping right through Jesse to lay hands on Shalimar who hissed and writhed in anger and terror as the glow surrounded her, her protestations rising to a howl that ended abruptly as she fell to the floor.
Adam, with Emma materializing hard on his heels, opened the cell up to see to Shalimar, but the feral was already stirring, panic on her face.
"Where is he?" she cried, looking straight at Adam. "Where's Jesse, what have you done with him?"
Adam glanced at the spot where he'd last seen the molecular, but there was no sign. Brennan followed Emma in, and Shalimar threw herself at him. "I thought you were dead!" She hugged him tightly, and Brennan returned the hug with as much force while Emma held on to them both.
And Adam was standing on the sidelines once more.
A flutter at the edge of his vision, and Adam saw Jesse very briefly standing by the group hug, his face screwed up in anguish as his hand went straight through Shalimar's hair. Jesse too was apart, unable to join in, and Adam tried to touch him with as little success, his effort going ignored before Jesse flickered and phased and vanished.
Adam was fairly certain that Jesse hadn't dissipated, was just invisible as he'd been on and off since Adam had first rediscovered him. The only worrying thing was that Shalimar could no longer sense him, although it seemed that Emma could feel traces.
"We need to understand what happened," Adam said, "to understand what's happening here." He looked at Magarathea, silently inviting her to fill in the gaps since she seemed to be the only one who retained any memory of the explosion.
Scowling, she complied, explaining that she had sent a psionic burst out reflexively, her power being the ability to augment or suppress a mutant's power within the scope of their current abilities. The burst she had projected had apparently pushed each of their abilities to the maximum possible level within their current mutations, without consideration for sanity, morality or physical capability.
"I guess we should be grateful that Jesse didn't just mass into a solid lump," remarked Brennan.
"So how do we get him back," hissed Shalimar, her expression making it clear that she blamed Adam for everything.
"Well," began Adam slowly, trying to think of anything that might help that didn't involve Magarathea’s powers as, without knowing where Jesse was, she would only be able to send out a broadband blast which would disable them all. And with the boy to lay hands as well, any damage would only be exacerbated. There were just too many unknown quantities.
Emma broke in. "Shal, why don't you concentrate on Jesse and I'll try and reinforce your senses?" she suggested.
"You're sure he's here somewhere, right?" Brennan asked. "So we just need for him to appear long enough for the kid and the, uh, her to their stuff."
"Appear solid for long enough," Magarathea interjected. "We can't heal what he can't touch."
"But Jesse phases before human contact," Adam pointed out.
"Before you can make contact," snapped Shalimar so sharply, Adam couldn't help but flinch. "I won't have that problem."
It really didn't take long for Jesse to materialize in front of Shalimar, although when she tried to touch him her hands passed straight through. But she talked to him, and Emma and Brennan were both there supporting, gently encouraging as Shalimar and Jesse sat, palm to palm, until she whispered with a hesitant joy. "I can feel you!"
At her words Daryl was there, wrapping his small hands around theirs, using Shalimar as an anchor, while Magarathea’s face was rigid with effort and the glow enveloped Jesse, sending him into a wild frenzy of phasing and massing.
At first it was a silent scream, but as the magic worked they could hear him, fuzzy at first but growing clearer, like tuning a radio. Finally, yelling loud and clear, he fell into Shalimar's lap. She stroked his hair back as he gasped for breath. "You ? I'm here?" he asked.
"Yes, sweetheart, you're here." Shalimar looked at Emma and Brennan and amended, "We're all here."
*****
Watching his team huddled together in the meditation room, Adam once again felt pangs of jealousy at not being a part of them. They were talking in low voices, touching each other constantly as if to reassure themselves that they were still there. Occasionally one or another's voice would rise in anger or anguish, which would result in a spontaneous group hug.
In some ways Adam was grateful. As well as going through the whole reuniting and rediscovery of each other, they were clearly counselling each other too which had to be a big help for each of them in the healing process. Brennan possibly had the easiest transition back to reality, but he'd apparently done some appalling things that could make it hardest to forgive himself. Whereas Emma and Jesse both had the most difficult road back to reality having been cut off from it for so long, and Shalimar surely had to deal with deep issues of violation and degradation.
Adam wanted to help them and he knew he could, if they'd just let him. Why had he never realized before now that he cared so deeply, that it could hurt this much?
"You always have, dear," Magda was leaning against the opposite wall, cigarette in mouth, arms folded. "You've always been a soft touch for those kids of yours. And I don't just mean those four, the rest of them too. Feeling guilty?"
"Wouldn't you?"
Magda shrugged. "It's you we're talking about." She peered past Adam through the doorway into the meditation room. "Doesn't seem fair, does it?" she said, taking a drag before pulling the cigarette from her mouth and glaring at it.
"What doesn't?" Adam frowned.
"That I can't seem to find a nicotine rush in the eternal fag, and you don't seem to be deserving of their gratitude."
"I don't deserve their gratitude," Adam protested. "That's not what this is about!"
Magda cocked her head at him. "Sure? Because it seems to me that you've done a hell of a lot for them kids recently for no personal gain. Or am I wrong?"
"No, you're right," Adam admitted, "but I've never expected anything from them."
"Now I know that's a lie," Magda snorted.
Adam chuckled slightly. "You mean the expectation that they'll help me make the world a better place, etcetera, etcetera?"
"Yadda yadda. That's the one."
"Maybe. But on a personal level I've never expected anything from them."
"And that would be another lie."
Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Adam retorted, "No, it's not!"
"All together, boys and girls, oh yes it is." Magda waved her cigarette in the air. "You've virtually dragged Shalimar and Jesse up by yourself and the other two might as well have been overgrown little orphan Annies when they arrived here."
"You're reaching," Adam told her, not feeling quite as confident as he sounded. "Jesse and Shalimar both had their own families around to do the parenting thing so don't lay that at my doorstep. And Emma and Brennan are both very mature young adults."
"Pah!" Magda choked on her phantom smoke. "Shalimar's father had no business raising gerbils, much less kids, the way he treated that girl. And as for Jesse, his family may well have more money than God, but the mental abuse of a child is still a crime. The psionic bint was a scared child when she got here and Sparky was trouble trying very hard to happen. It's you that's turned them all around, Doc, and don't you dare give yourself any less credit than you deserve." Magda sniffed, seeming as surprised as Adam at her outburst. "So there," she finished, as if that were that.
Adam couldn't find anything in what she'd said that he could disagree with and, as Magda vanished, he was stuck with the thought that no matter what the kids had been through, he really didn’t deserve to be excluded like this.
*****
Thinking how stupid he was to be feeling so nervous, Adam resolved to talk to his team. He tracked them down in the dojo, using the training platform as a lounge area. But he was stopped in his tracks when they abruptly ceased talking and turned to him as one, with sad and haunted eyes.
"What's going on?" he asked a little nervously as they moved into the positions he recognized their classic defensive battle stances - Jesse at the front, ready to mass and defend, Shalimar and Brennan slightly behind and to either side ready to both defend and attack, while Emma stood at the back, protected by the others but ready to attack.
Shalimar's eyes glowed as she broke the silence. "You're not welcome here."
"You hurt us," Brennan spat.
"Made us hurt each other," Jesse added.
"Get out," said Emma, a bubble forming ready to blast. "Get out of him and get out of here."
"Excuse me?" But no one was talking anymore as Emma's blast came straight at him. Throwing himself to the side, Adam called for backup, relieved to hear Natasha's declaration that she'd taken over the internal systems and the boys' announcement that they were on their way.
Sanctuary's internal defence systems came online and Jesse was kept busy deflecting the lasers as best he could. Adam was trapped by Shalimar and Brennan, with Emma bearing down on him, when a blast of air knocked them all off their feet and a shield of rock appeared between Adam and his attackers.
Emma was the fastest to recover, a psionic blast aimed straight at David who had no time to duck. But it seemed to have no effect. Emma seemed shocked, and aimed another at Corey who, although he spun away, caught a glancing blow that also seemed ineffective.
To Adam's practiced eye, his first team were unsure, unbalanced and uncoordinated, which was only to be expected given their experiences, but it was painful to see them all so clearly off kilter and hurting. And what had possessed them to attack him? He didn't want to see them hurt anymore, and with every whirlwind David produced, every missile Corey threw, every laser Natasha fired, he held his breath expecting the worst.
And behind his first team, Magarathea and her boy stood unmoving and silent, looking on with detached interest.
Jesse cried out as a stray laser slashed his arm when he took a breath, while Brennan was horribly silent while he suffocated and Shalimar howled at her own ineffectiveness, pinned to the wall by rock.
Adam looked on, full of panic and confusion, and completely out of control of a situation where he needed to be in charge.
*****
Then Magarathea stretched out an arm towards him and he felt an internal tug before the world stopped. Completely. Rock and paper and Jesse, mid-kick, froze in mid-air, while Magarathea walked among his first team, touching and whispering to each one of them. They all seemed unaware except for him and he couldn't fathom why.
"That's because it's your power she's used," Magda leaned against Adam's rock shield, and he found that although he couldn’t move, he could talk. "No you can't," Magda disagreed. "You just think you can. Thought’s a powerful thing, you know."
"What do you mean, my power?"
"Well, okay, not yours then. Mine."
"But you're a ghost."
"Well," Magda looked up speculatively. "That depends on how you define ghost. I mean, I am real. But then again, only you can see me."
"I don't understand!" Adam groaned. "What. Is. Happening!"
"Well, let’s start with Magda here, shall we? If I'd picked anyone else to use, and you have a lot of ghosts in that noggin of yours, you'd have tied yourself in knots trying to find any anomalies in your own make up. As it is, you just accepted me."
"You mean, you're not Magda?"
"Congratulations, mastermind. I mean, I took her almost wholly from your memories, and she was a smart cookie, so it's been fun playing games with you. But no. You do know me, though. We had fun with your team. Don't you remember?"
Something, an echo of a memory suppressed, a curtain drawing back and oh God! Memories of Jesse screaming, and Brennan crying. Of Brennan writhing in agony and Jesse lying shattered. Shalimar throwing herself at the bars of her cell until she bled in her efforts to get to the boys, of Emma's constant weeping. And Magarathea's boy-child healing them so they could start all over again.
Now he knew why they hated him so much. He couldn't have done all that, could he? The mere idea sickened him, the memories would have made him nauseous if time weren't stopped.
"Absalom," he muttered, knowing now who had been responsible right from the beginning. All the time he'd thought he'd been the good guy. And he'd just been a marionette for the bad guy.
"Well done again," Magda… no, Absalom using Magda's form, sneered. "Took you long enough."
"How long have you been in my head?" Adam asked, trying to think when the parasite might have taken him over, knowing the answer but needing it ratified.
"Why, since I invaded Sanctuary when that brat of yours phased my previous host into the wall. I didn't exactly have a lot of choice, what with you being the only non-mutant around at the time. Apart from that ever so brief interlude when the ice-queen over there lost control of her kid."
Adam was at the complete and utter mercy of Absalom, and could see no way of turning this into happy ending. "So what happens now?"
Absalom looked through the rock shield. "Well, I'd say the hard bitch has just about finished giving your boys and girls a pep talk. So either you kill them, or they kill you, and I know which option I'm not letting you choose. Don't worry about the psionic chick, she can't hurt any of us while I'm about. So I say let the rest of them nuke each other, while we take care of ‘Thea and her brat."
"Do I have any choice?" Adam desperately tried to think of something, anything to get them out of this. Even if it meant he had to die. It would be the least he owed them.
"Not while I'm in here," Absalom chuckled and vanished as time resumed.
Adam spotted his solution at a nearby console; a loose wire, several thousand volts of electricity and the mutants could carry on without either himself or Absalom.
But thought is faster than physical action ever could be, and Adam was stopped in his tracks before he even started, Absalom chuckling in his mind as they watched the battle taking place. Which left Adam feeling helpless as a newborn.
Emma sent blast after blast of ever increasing psionic energy at David and Corey as well as Adam, with no effect. Brennan, his lips turning blue, found the deep well of his power and sent a rocket blast of electricity at Shalimar, shattering her prison so that she in turn, with superhuman speed and agility, could take out both David and Corey in one long, graceful sequence. Jesse in the meantime massed to deflect the lasers from the combatants and as the last one fell, phased into the wall to disable the wiring, leaving Natasha blind and helpless in the control room.
With what sounded suspiciously like a squeak, Absalom released Adam from his temporary freeze and bade him run. Away from those who would kill him, away from Sanctuary, and Adam had no choice but to obey.
But what about Magarathea? Adam thought as he ran. You wanted her dead.
I still do, Absalom replied, but her power makes her as powerful as her enemy plus one degree. That makes her more powerful than I, and your second team was not as powerful as I'd hoped. She can wait.
Adam skidded to a stop, his way barred by Daryl who simply stood and stared at him with his customary silent intensity, and to Adam's bewilderment, he realised that Absalom was scared. Scared of a mute little boy with the power to heal. Absalom urged him to run, but Adam stood his ground. It was much harder for Absalom to force him to physically do something than to stop him. Calling upon his not inconsiderable willpower, Adam concentrated on making his knees buckle, falling slowly to the floor, making Absalom's will that much harder to bring to bear. But Absalom was not yet out of options, reinforcing his will with iron sharp spikes of pain that brought tears to Adam eyes.
Absalom couldn't make him run, but Adam's will was weakening against the powerful onslaught, his body crawling away from the unmoving statue that was the boy.
Feet and shoes entered his wavering vision and he squinted up to see four pairs of eyes staring back down and he was winning the battle, losing the war, and everything was such a mess and it all hurt like he'd never believed possible.
A small hand touched his cheek and Adam screamed as Absalom screamed, the ripping apart of two minds more than he could bear. For a moment he felt light as air as Absalom left him, quickly followed by an oppressive pressure that had him pressed to the floor. The only thing he could see was his own hand, the skin bearing the red and black markings that were Jesse's massed trademark, blue lightning skipping over the top, while unsolicited thoughts of bank vaults and brick walls battered at his mind. And in the distance he could hear Absalom screaming, but it wasn't him anymore.
Eventually the pressure lifted leaving him weak and exhausted, and Adam felt as if he'd burst into tears at any second when Shalimar lifted his head onto her lap, her eyes still haunted, yet mixed with worry for him. He looked about and the others were there, guarded and wary, yet concerned. For him.
*****
In the meditation room, Adam allowed the soft trickling water to soothe his soul and help his mind calm its chaotic tumbling. Satisfied that they could look after themselves, Natasha, Corey and David had said their goodbyes and taken their leave.
The battle for his mind had not been an easy one and a dead-eyed Magarathea had taken her son away. The child had burnt himself out and his mother had held little hope of recovery. But perhaps that would be for the best, for the reason that Magarathea needed the money she made was that Daryl could heal everyone of anything, but could not heal his own wasting body.
Absalom, though, was well and truly dead and Emma had come close to burning herself out too with her psionic shield, only the added support from Brennan and Jesse helping her keep her defences and mind intact. After three days, she still mostly slept.
They were all walking around like open sores, each largely eschewing the others’ company in favour of solitude. Except Jesse, who seemed to need to be with someone or something that could reassure him he was still a part of the world at all times.
Somewhere, probably the dojo, Adam could hear Shalimar and Brennan arguing over something, their voices quieting quickly, meaning it was no doubt something trivial. They were all healing slowly but surely, and at the end, Adam had a certain parental pride in the way they'd handled themselves.
Absalom had recreated Magda from his memories, so Adam felt no guilt or worry that some of what she'd said made sense. In one way or another, each one of those four young people were his children, and there was nothing wrong in taking a paternal pride in anything they did and no shame in caring about each of them as if they were his own.
He looked at the ring glinting silver on his finger, then took a good look at his surroundings. Today they’d each taken their rings back, and for the first time he noticed that the plants around the pond were blooming, their vibrancy echoed in the colours of the fish.
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The Sun Never Sets on PureMX.net
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