Letonia - 5/10

Letonia
5/10

The sound of birds singing woke Scully. Rolling over in bed, she grabbed another pillow and held it over her head.

Wait a second. Birds. Singing. In DC.

A wave of disorientation slammed into her. Sitting up quickly, she opened her eyes. She just as swiftly slammed her eyelids shut. The sunlight streaming in through the window felt as if it had blinded her.

Blinking the after images out of her eyes, she surveyed the room. She remembered where she was now, and what had happened. Strangely enough, she didn’t feel even traces of panic. The sunlight didn’t seem as intense now. A pile of new clothes, a towel, and assorted toiletries sat on a stool by a door that seemed to lead into a bathroom.

Sighing, she settled back under the covers, only to find that she was now wide awake. That first beam of light had been more effective than two cups of Bureau coffee. Considering how tired she’d been the other night, she felt surprisingly refreshed.

Taking the hint that her hosts had provided for her, she headed to the bathroom and turned on the shower. First she’d get clean, then she’d deal with the situation that she found herself in. While the water warmed up, she grabbed the pile of effects.

All right. What do we have here? Soap, razors, shaving cream, shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, hand lotion, facial moisturizer. Towel, wash cloth, toothbrush, toothpaste, and some clothes.

Glancing at the clothes, she could tell that they belonged to someone else. They looked like they’d be a good enough fit though.

Finding what she was looking for, she grabbed the hair brush and dragged it through her now much too long hair. Her hair hadn’t grown out evenly. All of it reached at least her waist, but there were hanks of it which went past her hips.

In other words, she really needed a haircut.

The colour of it still unnerved her. It wasn’t a shade of red naturally found on the outside of humans. It reminded her of nothing so much as fresh blood.

Maybe it was nothing but blood. From the accident. Maybe it’d wash right out.

Testing the water, Dana found it was hot enough now. Turning the cold water on, she adjusted it to where she wanted it, disrobed, and got in.

The water beat down hard on her face. She stopped thinking, and tried to let the water wash away all her problems.

At least this seemed to have gotten rid of the last of her pregnancy weight.

However, thoughts flittered around in her head until she had a fairly comprehensive list of questions that she was going to ask Storm and the others.

It took all of five minutes. That done, she thought that her mind might let her rest in peace, but she kept on going back to her dreams. She’d been with the blue man again. She got the feeling that maybe he’d been with her in that place for the entire time that she’d been unconscious. She just couldn’t remember. It felt like more than a dream, it felt as if it was a part of her life hidden under an amnesic haze, the room a lecture hall, the blue man her professor.

However, she felt that their sessions were drawing to a close. He’d stayed longer that he should have, and it was costing him dearly. He would’ve moved on awhile ago if it wasn’t for her. Now, he was just waiting for someone else to join him. He’d go when they got there.

Now, if she had the slightest idea what she was rambling about, she’d be in a better place.

A sudden though occurred to her, popping out of nowhere.

*I think that if I’d been there all by myself, I would’ve gone insane.*

The idea was disturbing to her to say the least. Despite the heat of the water, she felt goose bumps raise up on her skin. Shaking it off, she reached for the shampoo. She poured some into a pile in her palm, then lathered up her hair. With some trepidation, she help a handful of the lather in front of her face.

There wasn’t even a hint of red in it.

When she finally got out of the shower, the first thing that she looked for was a mirror. She was curious to see what the colour did for her. Peering through the fog that filled the bathroom, she couldn’t see one. There was a double sink on the opposite wall, but no mirror. Taking a closer look, she could see the tell-tale darker square against the wall where a large object had been taken down from.

Shrugging, she grabbed the clothes and the hair brush, and went to go get dressed.

After she’d put on the worn jeans, t-shirt, and bunny hug that had been provided, she looked around again for a mirror, this time to braid her hair in. It was wet, it was long, and she wanted it out of the way. She couldn’t find a mirror in the entire room, though she did find another two darker rectangles, one over a hall table by the door, one by a vanity.

It was starting to annoy me. And even though the clothes looked like they were the right size, they were too big. And now it was overcast outside.

Scully gave herself a mental shake. With everything that was wrong, the things that were really bugging her were the absence of mirrors, ill fitting clothes, and the weather? She brushed her hair again, then braided it without a mirror. She pulled the hair tie off the handle of the brush, and secured it in place. It wouldn’t pass even for on the city streets, but it would do for now.

Ororo had shown her how to use the mansion’s computer system to contact them. Although she hadn’t told Scully to call them before leaving the room, she had implied that it would be best for the agent to have a guide when travelling in the mansion. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was still fairly early. She’d slept barely more than she would in an ordinary night. Seeing the time made her conscious of a hunger gnawing away at her stomach. Considering the time, and the fact that she remembered where the dining room was from her tour the night before, she decided against using it to call for an escort. However, when she walked out of the room, she half expected to see someone outside the door, waiting for her to put in an appearance.

Finding the hallway deserted, she headed in the direction that she remembered leading to the kitchen. As she neared it, she could start to make out voices. The stairs leading down to the dining area were built in such a way that although she wasn’t hidden from view, she wasn’t exactly noticeable. She was about to call out to let them know that she was there, when she heard her name mentioned by a voice which she didn’t recognize.

“. . . up? Really? I was starting to worry. She’d been out for so long, with no change that we could identify. It was down right freaky, her lying there, no vital signs, looking like that.”

The voice was interrupted by another unfamiliar one. “I’m not surprised most of the others stopped going anywhere near the medlab. I could sense that she was alive, but she looked like....”

Scully stopped where she could see the people below her. Remy, Ororo, the Professor, and Logan were involved in conversation with two people who were mostly still hidden from her view.

“Elisabeth. Bobby. Don’t be talkin bout her like dat. She got no control over what happened to her. If you go round thinking bout her like dat, she gonna pick up on it. I don’t think I need ta remind you how much we need her,” Remy broke in.

There was a pregnant pause. Remy must have touched a nerve. Ororo tried to cover it up by welcoming the male back. Scully wasn’t really paying attention to their conversation any more. Everything faded to the peripheral.

Why did they need her?

Lost in reflection, she leaned against the wall.

Had they had something to do with her accident in the first place?

A hand closed on her shoulder, and warm breathe hissed past her ear as a guttural voice whispered “Looky what the cat. . .”

The voice only got that far however. Scully’s body reacted without her willing it to. It remembered some of the patterns that she’d learned in karate as a child. Twisting slightly, she grabbed the arm holding onto her, rolled her hips, and threw the offending person over her shoulder.

They were standing at the top of a landing. Scully’s throw sent the unfortunate entity tumbling down the stairs. The (woman?) landed in a pile at the foot of the stairs. She seemed to have some sort of bone spikes growing out of her dusky pink skin. Drawing herself into a crouch, she looked up at Scully and barred her teeth.

The entire incident had taken only a few seconds.

The group standing in the dining room had stopped talking, and were looking at Scully standing there, and the young woman snarling at the foot of the stairs. The two people whom she hadn’t seen moved into her sight. No one spoke. The silence stretched out. Clearing her throat, she said the only thing she could think of. “She snuck up on me.” Holding her hands behind her back, she waited for someone to call her on being childish. Scully felt like she should apologize to the other woman, but the look on her face forebode any contact. They just looked at each other and shrugged. Scully thought that she saw Storm sigh.

Storm gestured at the woman whom Scully had thrown. “I’d like to introduce you to Sarah.” Sarah glared at Ororo. This time, Scully was sure she saw her sigh. “I think that she’d prefer if you just called her Marrow.”

Storm took a good look at the agent. “You must be starving. We were just about to eat. Would you care to join us?”

Scully nodded her assent and started down the stairs as Ororo introduced the other two as Bobby Drake and Betsy Braddock. Bobby looked completely normal. Betsy, on the other hand, had a red tattoo over her one eye, and her hair, though it seemed to be by product of die, was purple. The Professor excused himself from their group, claiming that he’d already had breakfast. Logan just stalked off. The rest of them headed towards the kitchen.

Scully felt her eyes being consistently drawn back to Marrow. It wasn’t that she was wary of her. Now that she’d had a short space to think about things, she didn’t believe that Marrow had intended her any harm.

Her reason was much simpler.

The spines. They didn’t disgust her, they intruiged her. She wondered if they hurt. They even looked as if they might be detachable.

This at least answered one of the questions that she had. There were those whos’ mutation caused severe physiological change. Remy’s eyes were red, yes, but eye colour was so changeable.

What must Sarah’s parents have thought when this happened to her?

The thought of parents brought a fresh wave of grief back to her. She missed Evan.

She’d figure something out. She was going to make sure that my little boy is safe, no matter what.

She’d get the answers she needed out of these people. If they wouldn’t help her, then she’d do it without their help. If their mysterious need for her caused them to try to hinder her, they’d find out what had made her last through medical school, what had sustained her throughout her time at the male dominated bureau, what had helped her put up with Mulder for so long.

But first, she was going to eat.

They’d reached the kitchen. The place was huge. A bakery size stainless steel refrigerator sat next to a huge expanse of cupboards. Marrow was already rummaging through the fridge. She pulled a container of yoghourt out, then grabbed a spoon from the drawer. She hopped up on the counter, and dug in. Her expression dared anyone to challenge her claim to it. Looking at her, she reminded Scully of nothing more than a red, grouchy, Chia Pet. Dana stifled the laugh she felt building within her, and went looking for her own breakfast.

Ororo pointed the bread drawer out to her. She grabbed a bag of bagels out of the it, and hunted through the fridge door until she found the cream cheese.

She sat down at the island next to Ororo, who was munching on a green apple. Feeling like a bit of a pig, she consoled herself with the fact that she hadn’t eaten in two weeks. Betsy looked at Bobby with some disgust as he plopped down holding bowl full of dry Captain Crunch. She protectively pulled her toast away from him. “Really, if you’re going to eat that stuff, you could at least put some milk on it.”

Remy simply grabbed a cold piece of pizza out of the fridge and pulled a chair up. He brought a pitcher of grapefruit juice and a stack of glasses with him. They ate in silence under the inset lights.

Scully finished off the last of the bagels, then reached for an orange out of the fruit bowl which sat in the middle of the island. The others had finished their breakfasts long ago. They seemed to be waiting for her. She finished off the orange, then drained the last of her juice.

It was raining hard outside now. She wondered why Ororo hadn’t just stopped the storm. The woman followed her gaze, and said, “Sometimes nature needs a storm. Without the rain, the plants would die.”

They remained quiet for a time more, and Scully was left with the distinct impression that they were waiting on her again. They wanted her to take the first step.

“Ororo. You never did answer me, you know. Last night, when I asked you about my cancer, about how I was rendered infertile. You skipped around it, said something about how mutations show themselves at different times in different people. You were trying to keep me off track.

“You know about my work on the X-Files. You have to know that Mulder is willing to believe pretty well anything, especially when it brings hope that someone he cares about may in fact be alive.

“Why didn’t you tell him that I wasn’t dead? He would’ve looked after me. You didn’t have to bring me here. He would’ve convinced Doggett, and they would’ve found a way to keep me safe until I was better. From what you’ve said, all you’ve done is watch over me while I healed myself. I want to contact my son and my partners, and I want to do it now.”

Scully heard her voice rising. She didn’t care.

“You seem to know a lot about me, but there’s one thing that you missed. You told me that my hair changed colour because of my mutation. If you’d seen any pictures of me when I was really little, you would’ve know that I was born with hair pretty well this colour.”

By the end of this, she felt ready to explode. All the tension that she should’ve been feeling before had added up.

“Now you are going to tell me everything that I want to know, or this is going to go down badly. You could start by telling me exactly who you people are.”

Ororo spoke in a tone that was in harmony with the rain beating against the glass doors. “Calm yourself child. Anger will not profit you now.”

Scully snapped. “Who are you calling a child? What are you, twenty seven? I have more than a few years on you.”

Silence.

“Why don’t you take it easy on Ro, Miss Scully? It’s just easy to forget is all.” Bobby was obviously trying to be helpful, but it didn’t help matters any.

“Forget what?”

Bobby let out a yelp. He hopped out of his chair and rubbed his shin. “What was that for?” The others just glared at him. He looked closely at Scully’s bewildered but still furious face. “Oh. But did you have to kick me so hard? I mean, I haven’t been here, how would I know?”

“Dat your own fault, no?”

“Will one of you please tell me what’s going on?” Scully broke in.

Betsy looked at Ororo. Ororo looked at Remy. Remy tried to kill Bobby with incessant glowering. Bobby rubbed his shin some more. On the counter, Marrow snickered. “Tell the pretty little thing why don’t you?”

When no one volunteered any information, she added, “Or I will.”

Ororo reluctantly shifted forward in her seat as if getting ready to tell a story. “Ms. Scully, you are a very powerful healer. When your body was recovering from the accident, it decided that some things could be improved on. It didn’t just return itself to normal. I guess that you could say that it upgraded.”

“This isn’t making things clearer.”

“Betsy, could you go get a. . .” Betsy had already risen from the island. She was scouring the counters for something. Uttering a small cry of triumph, she grabbed what ever it was that she’d been after. She handed it to Ororo. It looked like an old fashioned mirror, one of the ones with the handle and engraving. Ororo held it face down on her lap. “Ms. Scully, your body put things back to the way that they worked best.”

She reverently handed Scully the mirror. Scully held the mirror mirror side down. A great deal of apprehension filled her. This wasn’t going to be good. It had to be why they’d taken down all the mirrors in the room she was staying in.

Steeling herself for the worst, she flipped it over.

Peering into it, she saw her face as it had been when she was still in university.

She didn’t look more than twenty three or twenty four.

“Oh shit.”

The mirror fell from her senseless fingers and shattered on the floor. Betsy cursed as a piece of the glass bounced up and hit the bottom of her bare foot.

Scully shook her head. That mirror had to have been tricked. Raising a hand to her face, she felt her skin for any sign of the small crows feet which had begun to show around her eyes. Her skin was perfectly smooth. Her face also felt smaller somehow. She looked down at her legs, encased in the jeans that had looked just the right size, but had turned out to be large.

Betsy produced a silver compact from somewhere, and handed it to Scully. “Try not to break this one.”

Trepidation trying to claw it’s way out of her throat, she opened the compact. Her own eyes sparkled bluely back at her from under blood red brows. She made a face into it, trying to see if maybe there was a picture already in it. Her reflection mirrored the movement exactly. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, then looked into the compact once more. Her face remained young. Wordlessly, she flipped the mirror closed, and handed it back to Betsy.

“Youth is something that all covet, is it not? We are stronger, more flexible. The ravages of age have yet to touch us.” A gust of wind danced by as Ororo spoke, picking up the shards of glass and shoving them into to the corner. Scully looked at Ororo, who smiled. She’d been responsible for the display. “I’ll clean it up later, Agent. Right now, we must work on answering your questions.

“We are the X-men.”

“Really? You must have had a good surgeon.”

Bobby started to chuckle. He stopped when everyone in the room shot him a look.

“We are mutants, the students of Charles Xavier. We’re just trying to do more than simply survive, which in and of itself is a feat in this world. As there are those who believe in the superiority of normals, so are there are those who would like to see a world in which our positions were reversed. We’re just trying to keep these forces in check.”

“Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that I believe you. I don’t know if I do yet, but let’s pretend. Explain my cancer to me.”

“To impart that, I’m going to need to go back farther. This is a long story, so I would appreciate it if you’d bear with me.

“In your work on the X-Files, you’ve discovered massive conspiracies. You think that you can see below it, but you’ve only uncovered the top layer. The truth of the matter is much worse.”

“I find it hard to believe that the truth is worse that what I have come to know.”

“Then tell me Scully, what is it that you know?” Betsy’s voice was low and challenging, her tone one that had the beginning of contempt in it. Scully rose to the bait.

“That there was a group of men who were willing to sell out the rest of the human race to save their own skins. They struck a bargain with an alien race. In return for their survival, they conducted experiments on men, women, and children, trying to create an alien-human hybrid which would be immune to the effects of a biological organism. They obtained these people by abducting them. Some, like me, were returned with a chip in their neck and rendered infertile. Others never came back, and still more were destroyed by the Faceless Rebels, a different group of extraterrestrials, and the Bounty Hunters. These people, the Syndicate, were very deep in the government for a time. They sold out the human race so that they could live another day, experimented on innocents. I don’t see what could be worse than that.”

The mutants looked at her keenly, evaluating her. They seemed slightly surprised. Ororo continued. “I won’t dispute the existence of the Syndicate. They are a faction we are all too well aware of. Survival is a fairly understandable motive when you think about it. Self preservation is something that we can all identify with, even if we disagree strongly with the length that they would go to.

“What if I were to tell you that these people weren’t working for the aliens? I’m not saying that there aren’t aliens, just that they are not what you think they are.

“All these genetic experiments, not for the aliens sake. They’re trying to find a way to wipe out the part of the genome that creates mutants. The people who they take are, for the most part, ones who were marked with the small pox vaccine. I believe you discovered that the immunization was used to mark those who were inoculated. They continued to vaccinate people with it long after the threat of the disease had passed.

“The small pox vaccine was merely a carrier agent. Piggy backed onto it was the earliest attempts at a reverse genome agent. They were attempting to wipe out mutations before they took hold.”

Scully pursed her lips. This was quite the tale. “You do know that there wasn’t the technology back then to delve into the human genome?”

“The technology was there, it was just limited to select government agencies. They took it from a Shi’ar ship which crashed in New Mexico back in the forties.”

“You’re telling that the Roswell crash was real?”

“So much has arisen from rumours surrounding that crash. They aren’t little grey men Ms. Scully. Most of them look just like you or me. If you ignore the hair that is. You must have noticed that the technology in our medlab is much beyond what society today has.

“We are in contact with the Shi’ar. They share some of their technology with us. You really must see the danger room sometime.”

Mulder would have loved this. Scully wasn’t having such a great time.

Something told her that this was going to be one long day.

“Look, Ms. Munroe, this is all very fascinating. I’d love to hear about it some other time. Now I just want you to explain to me what the Syndicate has to do with my current situation.”

Ororo started slightly. It was easy to forget that this woman, as much as she had learned, was missing so many key facts. “Forgive me. I do digress at times. As you can tell by looking at Marrow, sometimes mutations can be very obvious. They tracked down all the mutants that they could find. Once they had them, they ran them through tests until they were certain that they’d located the genes responsible for their mutation. They did this again and again, for they discovered that the genes were different for each person. Then they put all of this together, creating the anti-genome agent which was piggy backed on the small pox vaccine. You said that you were born with hair the colour that you currently have.

“Your mutation manifested itself at birth, which is very rare. Usually only the most powerful and the weakest mutations do so. This is going to seem like it comes out of nowhere, but a healing factor is often part of a physical mutation, especially those which mimic animal attributes. If you just take a look at the urban myths surrounding animal people, then you can tell that there have been no shortage of those.

“The vaccination suppressed your healing abilities before they could truly begin to manifest themselves, and marked you as a latent mutant. That’s when your hair faded. The vaccine couldn’t fully repress your powers, for the basic reason that you were a different sort of healer than those that the tests had been run on.

“What is it that drew you to medicine Ms. Scully? Did part of you long to heal? Could you tell when those around you were suffering? When medical school didn’t lead where you sought, you jumped at the opportunity offered to you by the FBI recruiter.

“You didn’t know this, but even your entering medical school set off alarms for the MR. The MR is simply the Mutant Registry. This is a department responsible for keeping track of all known mutants, including those who were marked by the vaccine. There’s a huge archive somewhere in Washington, listing the name of the citizen, their status, location, and powers. You were showing tendencies related to your mutation. They let it go, even let it slip when you entered the bureau, but when you began work on the X-Files, they became concerned.

“They eventually decided that they needed to make sure that you were completely under control. That’s why you were abducted. The abductions are their way of bringing in mutants and suspected mutants to test them. They went over you, and though they found that the reverse genome therapy was still working for the most part, they came to the conclusion that they should go through the procedure just to make sure. They rendered you infertile to prevent the the possibility of your having children who would likewise be mutants. Part of what they did also included that chip in your neck, which we have removed.

Scully raised a hand to her neck in panic. “You don’t understand. Last time that the chip was taken out....”

Ororo smiled reassuringly. “You developed cancer, yes, we know. You do not need to worry over that anymore. Your healing factor will take care of it. You see, that chip served a dual purpose. It kept your healing ability firmly under control, and it released and anticarcigen. The people responsible for your abduction jammed one of your genes responsible for producing natural anticarcigens into the “off” position. The chip and the “off” gene cancelled each other out. Without the chip, your mutation had a better chance of developing, but due to the original therapy, your cancer appeared. When you put the chip back in, it resumed producing anticarcigens, but that wouldn’t have been enough to return you to health. The people behind the chip, though, believed that it had cured you.

“In most cases, once the genome therapy has taken hold, it’s there to stay, unless you receive intense rehabilitation. Due to the nature of your gifts however, this was not true for you. All this time, you hadn’t been seriously enough injured for your body to try to beat the reverse genome therapy. Now, however, your body saw the vaccine as a threat to itself, which it had to get out of the way so that it could get on with the process of destroying your tumour.

“It was a long, hard battle. I don’t think that Logan’s immune system could have done the same thing given the circumstances. We don’t know if replacing the chip helped your remission along, or if the timing was merely a coincidence. We just know that the chip itself could not have healed you.

“After your tumour was not a problem any more, your healing factor was repressed by the chip once again.”

“When you were stung by the bee that infected you with that virus, your healing factor tried to reassert itself. You would’ve survived even without the vaccine. When Fellig shot you, the chip failed almost entirely. The doctors told you that you were making one of the fastest recoveries that they’d ever seen. If you were fully human, you would’ve died right then. However, after that, your healing factor entered into a battle against the chip. To your body, that thing was now as dangerous as your cancer had been. The chip, however, was designed to fight your specific mutation.

“From then on, while you were going about your normal life, a battle was going on inside of you. As long as you were not badly injured, your healing factor was entirely focused on beating that chip. We don’t know exactly when, but your body obviously triumphed. It then reversed the process which made you infertile.”

Scully spoke then. “That still doesn’t explain Evan. There are certain factors involved in becoming pregnant that I haven’t fulfilled in quite awhile, and certainly not in the time frame that I would need to become pregnant.”

“What is the most basic biological drive?” Bobby asked.

That one threw Scully for a moment. “To procreate, I guess.”

“If your body could do all that, what makes you think that it wouldn’t look after the passing down your genes thing?”

“Because it’s insane, perhaps?”

“More insane then the idea that you were hit by a car, died, and woke up two weeks later more than ten years younger?”

That threw her for even longer. Finally, she said “Are you telling me that I somehow managed immaculate conception?”

“You mean does Evan have a father? I guess, if you want to get technical, your son’s gene’s are drawn only from your own. It’s not to say that he’s a clone of you. I guess the best way to explain it.....” Bobby fell silent, thinking. “Hank explained this to me so well.....” At the mention of Hank, the room seemed to freeze. The others were just looking at Bobby, watching him carefully. To Scully, it looked like they expected him to explode. Bobby didn’t even notice. “It’s as if, in a normal birth, the DNA in the sperm happened to be the same as that of the ova. I don’t remember what he said the statistical chance of that happening were, but there were a whole bunch of zeros.”

Scully just sat there. Now everyone was watching her like they thought she might explode. Evan, just hers. No one else’s. It felt right.

She could accept that.

“If the small pox vaccine worked so well, why are you standing here now?”

Storm chuckled. Of all the things that she’d expected from the agent, insightful questions weren’t exactly at the top of her list. “Aside from the fact that almost all of here are either from another country or a situation where our shots weren’t exactly looked after, there are a lot of mutations which are undetectable, such as telepathy, telekinesis, and many others. The Syndicate didn’t luck onto many mutants possing powers such as those. So they continued to pop up, unchecked. Your, Mulder, and Doggett’s work on the X-Files was allowed to continue despite the fact that you were starting to come close to the truth.

“Why do you think that was, Ms. Scully?”

Scully didn’t even need time to think about that one. “The Syndicate doesn’t even see us as a threat most of the time. We’re just little guys, who though they may cause large amounts of trouble at times, have proved too hard to get rid of to waste resources on. Plus, there are forces in the government which want the truth to come out, which protect us.”

Remy looked at her kindly. Marrow chortled again, a nasty, harsh sound. She spoke for the first time since the stairs. “ Scully, you are being used. They want you to keep working on the X-Files, because you are uncovering mutants for them, confirming if they are worth their trouble to track down and capture. What you thought was the truth is only a facade, though one believed by many members of the Syndicate. These forces which you think want the truth to come out, they’re only interested in the number of mutants that you identify for them. The alien abductions, yes, they are attacks by the government on their own people, but they’re motivated by their fear of the those of us who are better then them. These are people who took you because you had been marked, and they wanted to make sure that they still had you muzzled. They made you infertile because they didn’t want to take the chance that you’d have a kid who was better than them too. They took your ovaries because nothing finds cures for diseases as fast as human trials. A mutant child they felt that they could experiment on, because although they don’t see them as human, they’re close enough to work for most medical trials.”

“Sarah! That will be quite enough.” Ororo’s voice was fully of controlled rage. Outside, a huge thunder clap rent the air.

“What, Wind Rider? She deserves to know.”

Scully, Bobby, Betsy, and Remy sat uncomfortably, watching the two woman face off. Marrow was the first to drop her eyes. Ororo turned from her.

“That’s why you can’t go back. The government will know that your mutation has fully surfaced. When your death was reported, a special team was sent to verify it. Even if they didn’t already have a file on you, if they hadn’t checked you out, your appearance would be a dead give away. You work in an area that is under heavy surveillance by very dangerous men. We could not, in good conscious, leave you in the care of men who knew nothing of what was really going on. If you go back, then they will find a way to dispose of you. You know too much, you’re a threat to them. They know what your weakness is too.”

“Evan,” Scully whispered under her breath.

“They tested him while he was in the hospital, you know. They wanted to see if this child born of a barren mother could grow up to be a danger to them. They have a thing with paranoia. Luckily for him, he’s completely human. They checked on you too. They looked far enough to see that your chip was still intact. Their doctors figured that your ability to have children must have been some weird side effect the combination of your natural talents and the gene therapy. You must remember that they are working with a technology that they do not fully understand.

“They think that you are dead. They believe that you died with your healing factor still repressed, and yet they watch your son, just in case you did survive. They know that you would go back for him.” Ororo let her words fade into the pattering of rain. Scully just stared out the doors at the brick patio, digesting what she’d been told.

Betsy stood, wincing slightly as she put pressure on the cut on her foot. “Well Miss Scully, I think we’ve given you enough to mull over for now.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Scully finally spoke. “You know, I think that maybe I’d like to be by myself for a bit.”

“Of course. I’ll show you back to your room.”

Bobby and Gambit headed out, Bobby muttering something about having to talk to the Professor. Betsy moved to accompany Scully back to her room. They headed up the stairs, leaving Ororo to have words with a still sullen Marrow. When they reached the room, Betsy stopped outside. Scully smiled her thanks, then opened the door. Betsy started to walk away, but stopped at the sound of Scully’s voice.

“What Marrow said, about the Syndicate using our work to do to others what had been done to me. . . Was it true?”

Betsy didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. The silence and the sadness in her eyes said everything.

“All right. Thank you.”

Dana walked into the room, and locked the door.

She leaned back against the cool wood. She hadn’t asked all of the right questions yet, she could tell. She could feel it in the sensation of relief that had flowed into the room when she had declared that morning’s Q&A session over. These people wouldn’t lie to her, but they weren’t going to volunteer any information.

She felt something warm sliding down her now oh so perfect face. She raised her hand to her cheek. It came away wet.

Feeling the strength go out of her legs, she slid down the door.

Crouched against the wood, she let herself cry.

For everything.

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