J. $eiiri York

Illustrations Si 1VMK Buckingham

MARVEL¹

BP BOOKS, INC. NEW YORK

BERKLEY BOULEVARD BOOKS, NEW YORK

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CHAPTER ONE

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Angelo Espinosa shielded his eyes against the sun with the flat of his rubbery, putty-colored hand, and admired their creation. It had taken him, Ev, and Jono most of a week to hammer together the parts in the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters’ service garage. Then, being careful not to be seen, they’d spent better than half the night dragging the parts out into the giant greenhouse that was the school’s biosphere.

Angelo glanced up at the warm, springtime sun shining through the glass panels of the ceiling. It was nearly noon. They’d spent the entire morning tacking the pieces together with screws, nails, and glue. The last step had been to apply the plywood decking, but that was finally done as well.

Ev popped out from between a pair of wooden supports with a hammer in his hand. He turned and wiped the sweat off his shaved scalp. “Behold,” he said proudly, “the Danger Ramp, an extreme training challenge based on alien Shi’ar technology.” He pursed his lips. “Okay, Shi’ar technology and some two-by-fours and quarter-inch ply we found in the gardener’s shed.”

At that moment, the top of Jono’s head peeked over the far end of the ramp. Angelo glanced at him, imagining for just a second what it w'ould have been like to know Jonothan Starsmore before—From the nose up he looked like what he was, a handsome upper-class English teenager. It wasn’t until he climbed higher up the ramp, exposing the black leather wrap that covered his lower face and chest that there was something obviously different about him.

Before. Before a kid from the Los Angeles barrio had his skin turn into something like a cross between elephant hide and Silly Putty. Before that English kid turned into a living

psionic reactor and accidentally blew a hole in himself. That was a long time ago, he thought, or at least it seemed that way.

Fact was, there was something different about all of the students at Xavier’s. They were mutants, bom with a genetic glitch that gave them incredible extra abilities, and in some cases, incredible extra burdens.

Jono’s wraps covered a gaping hole where his chest and the bottom of his face used to be, a hole filled with crackling psychokinetic energy. The injuries happened when Jono lost control of his newly developed powers. The horror and guilt of that day still haunted Jono, who’d taken the rather disturbing code-name of “Chamber.” Angelo sometimes thought that the damage had been more psychological than physical. He also couldn’t decide if he should feel sorry for a fellow member of the freak-show contingent, or just kick him in the butt and tell him to stop feeling sorry for himself. Most days, Angelo did a little of both.

But Jono wasn’t the only one of the boys whose mutation was both gift and burden. Angelo’s code-name, “Skin,” was an obvious one. His gray, rubbery epidermis hung in loose folds from his face and body. Angelo could stretch and control that extra skin in incredible ways, but it required an act of will to maintain even a parody of normal appearance.

Of the three guys, only Everett Thomas’s power, the ability to “synch,” literally to copy another mutant’s mutations and abilities, had left him unscarred. But Ev had once revealed to Angelo his deepest fear, that one day he would synch with the wrong mutant and impose some terrible change on his body that couldn’t be undone. He’d synched with Jono and Angelo many times without any permanent effects, but the fear persisted.

Angelo scratched the stubble on his chin, and absently pinched a rubbery fold of skin between thumb and forefinger, pulling it out like taffy. Can’t blame him. Who’d want to end up like me? It was just something Ev would have to learn to overcome.

That’s why Ev was here, why all of them were here. This place, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, offered a hope that they, and other young mutants, could learn to control and use their powers, to live normal lives among humans who often hated and feared them.

It was not a great life, Angelo thought, but then neither were the rough streets where he’d grown up. He’d learned to live there, made some friends, had some fun, carved out a little hope among the drugs, the gangs, the guns, the hateful anglos. Now fate had given him a different life, and he’d have to find his place here as well.

Ev clambered up onto the narrow catwalk at the top of the left ramp, a skateboard in his hand. He held the board over his head, the sun catching the glossy black paint and the flaming biker-skull decal. “Anybody want to wrestle me for first run?” Angelo grinned and stepped up to lean against the ramp’s wooden framework. “You want to find all the loose nails for us amigo, be my guest.”

Angelo couldn’t remember whose idea it had been to build the half-pipe skateboard ramp. They’d been talking about some over-blown sports-drink commercial they’d seen on the tube and got to talking about it. Back in L.A., where half the houses, even in the bad neighborhoods, seemed to have pools, some of his friends would watch for the real estate signs to go up, then scout the back yards for empty pools. They’d trespass and turn it into a makeshift skate park until they got busted, then move to another house. Back then, it hadn't much interested him but now, well, there were moments of his old life he’d give anything to bring back. Angelo looked at the board in Ev’s hand skeptically. “You sure you know how to ride that thing?”

Ev chuckled. “Me and the homies used to skate the mall parking lots until the security guards chased us off.” He stood on the catwalk and dropped the board, pinning it under his right foot.

Angelo raised an eyebrow at Ev. “Homies. Right, Midwest boy. Get down with your corn-fed self.”

Ev just stared at him. “You want it or not?”

“I haven’t been on a board since I was twelve and one of my boys got his first chopped Impala. Maybe I should take it slow. How about you, Jono?”

Jono put down a socket wrench and looked at him incredulously. “Ollie, upside, downside, goofy-foot, grind. It isn't even bloody English. I can’t even talk it, much less do it. I’ll watch you Yanks bust your butts for a while first, then maybe I’ll give it a try,” he said in his strange telepathic voice.

Ev brightened. “I’ll teach you, Jono. It’s easy. Watch.” He kicked the board nose-up with his heel, twisted it over the lip of the ramp, and tipped smoothly over the edge. He shot down the half-pipe and up the other side, slowing until he was frozen for a moment standing horizontally on the far wall. Then he reversed his stance, and shot smoothly back the way he’d come, wheels rumbling over the painted plywood decking. He repeated the process, gaining speed until he became airBdrne at each end of the trip.

Ev started doing simple tricks: spinning his body while airborne, flipping the board, finally landing with the board’s metal trucks straddling the lip of the ramp. Ev stood there for a moment, arms outstretched for balance.

“Show-off,” cracked Angelo.

“Always.” Ev grinned down at them. He hopped sideways onto the catwalk, flicking the board up into his waiting hand. He held up the board. “Anybody else want to try?”

“Is this a boys’ club, or can anyone play?” asked a girl’s voice.

Angelo turned to see Paige Guthrie peering around the end of the ramp, and Jubilation “Jubilee” Lee climbing up onto the far catwalk. It’d been Jubilee who had spoken.

Paige stepped out into full view, brushed her blonde hair back behind her right ear, and inspected the ramp skeptically. “This sure looks dangerous.”

Ev chuckled. “They don’t have skateboards in Kentucky,” he said, “the dirt clods keep getting caught in the wheels.” Seeing the hole Ev was about to dig himself into, Angelo

flashed her his best grin. “We are mutants, chica, life is dangerous.”

Just then a girl with flowing, black hair swooped in, flying just below the Biosphere’s glass ceiling like a gorgeous brown bird. Monet “M” St. Croix dropped down and hovered over the center of the ramp. She smirked at him, something she did exceptionally well. “Here lies Angelo Espinosa, a.k.a. ‘Skin,’ mutant, boy, professional annoyance. He survived robotic Sentinels, marrow-sucking vampires, dragons, evil mutants, and alien invaders, only to break his fool neck falling off a skateboard in the back yard. It was natural selection at work. Darwin’s will be done.”

He frowned up at her. How did she make her hair blow like that when there was no wind? “I’d like to see you try it, Little Miss Perfect.”

“I'could, and I’d be better at it than you. But I choose not to waste my time.” He looked to Ev and Jono for some sort of support, but they were just watching him, probably waiting to see what sort of trouble he’d get himself into. “Hey,” complained Angelo, “Ev’s insufferable too, but at least he’s got the goods.”

“Some of us don’t find it necessary to show off our abilities.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

She settled lightly down onto her feet near the center of the ramp. “If you do fall and break your neck, I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

Ev and Jubilee sniggered. Paige had her hand in front of her mouth, trying to disguise her smile.

Angelo scowled. “I haven’t even been on a board yet, and already everyone is giving me grief. Why is that?”

Jubilee was sitting at the top of the ramp, and he noticed for the first time that she was putting on her in-line skates. “Hey, Jubes, this is a skateboard ramp. Don’t you board?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Of course I do, and I’m not bad either, but I’m more of a street rider.” She tapped her left skate. “Besides, these are my wheels of choice.”

Angelo narrowed his eyes, looking at the skates. “Is that legal?”    '    '

Monet had stepped off the ramp and was examining the construction. “The headmasters are going to have a cow when they see this monstrosity. They’ll make you take it down.” Angelo brushed past her and made a show of retightening a bolt. “Have you added clairvoyance to your long list of superpowers, Monet? They don’t even know about it yet, and since they’re leaving today for a two-week trip to Muir Island, it’s probably going to be a while anyway.”

Monet just looked at him like a bug. “They’re going to make you take it down.”

“Ready!” announced Jubilee, brightly. She stood on the end of the catwalk, lowered her red-tinted sunglasses over her eyes',* and without further hesitation launched herself into space, landing half-way down the ramp in a crouch, rising to her full height as she arched across the span of the ramp reaching the top on the far side. She lifted her feet at the top of her travel, snapped her body around in mid-air, then headed back the other way. Faster now, she reached the top of the ramp and went airborne. Instantly, she pulled her body into a tuck and somersaulted, landing smartly and then rolling down the ramp facing backwards. Just as the ramp started to flatten out, she arched her back and transitioned into a double cartwheel that killed most of her speed. She ended up back on her skates and moving forward. She arched half-way up the ramp, turned, and rolled off the low point of the ramp to join Angelo, Monet, and Jono.

Paige and Ev applauded briskly. Jono gave her a thumbs-up. Angelo just shook his head in amazement. “Where did you learn that?”

Jubilee tossed her short, black hair and smiled. “I got moves. People forget that. Why once, when I was—”

“—with the X-Men,” droned Monet, finishing her sentence.

“Actually,” said Jubilee, “I was going to say, once when I was at the mall'' Ev chortled, and Monet flashed him a nasty look. Ev ignored her, and jumped down from the top of the ramp. He tossed his board to Angelo. “Here you go, com-padre, show us what you can do.”

Angelo stared at the board. How long had it been since he'd ridden? This wasn’t going to be pretty.

Monet’s face went blank and she stared off into space for a moment. “We’re wanted back in the school. Emma and Sean are getting ready to leave.”

“Saved by the bell,” said Angelo under his breath.

Ev looked at him. “What did you say?”

Jubilee looked at Monet. “Telepathy, I suppose?”

Monet tossed her hair and sniffed. “I’m not telepathic.” Jubilee just continued to stare her down.

Monet rolled her eyes. “Maybe a little.”

' * “Angelo, what?” Ev repeated.

“Nothing,” Angelo growled. “Let’s get inside. And don’t you dare synch Monet’s telepathy.” He looked at her. “Assuming she has any.”

Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, nestled among the trees of Snow Valley, Massachusetts, had been built for a much larger faculty, staff, and student body than now lived there. With a large main school building, two dorms, a gymnasium, auditorium, the headmaster’s cottages, the biosphere, and many other ancillary and out-buildings, space and clutter were rarely problems they encountered. Thus it was something of a shock for Paige Guthrie to step into the school’s main entry and trip over a row of Italian leather suitcases.

She tried to catch herself, and succeeded only in twisting so that her elbow cracked painfully against the oak table next to the door, before she managed a soft landing in a pile of garment bags.

Paige shook her head, and saw Jubilee looking down at her. “If that had been a super-villain,” she said disapprovingly, “you’d be in big trouble—”

Monet pushed through the door and past her, “Why when I was in the X-Men, and so on and so on.”

Jubilee’s limited attention span diverted, she stomped after Monet. “I was not going to say that!”

Paige heard someone run up the steps, and Jono skidded to a kneeling stop next to her, his strong fingers touching her arm, a look of concern in his eyes. “Are you alright, luv?”

She looked away. This was the one time she didn’t want him to look at her. If there was one thing Paige hated, it was looking foolish. Without really realizing it, she shrugged off his touch and scrambled to her feet. Mr. Cassidy, Sean, was coming to check on her. The other students were all staring at her. She hated it.

Mr. Cassidy slid in next to her. “Are ye all right, lass?”

She plucked at a loose flap of skin on her elbow. “I just banged my elbow.”

' Sean Cassidy turned to yell over his shoulder into the other room. “Emma, I told you not to leave the luggage here!” He muttered something unintelligible under his breath, followed by, .. woman.”

Emma Frost’s voice came from the other room. “She’s fine, Sean. I checked on her telepathically the instant I realized something was wrong!”

Paige twitched. One more intrusion when she just wanted to turn invisible. “I’ll just make sure that Artie and Leech are ready to go. Be there in a minute.” Emma’s voice faded into the distance.

Jubilee walked by again, going from somewhere to somewhere else, zigzagging through the rest of the luggage that was scattered around the floor of the entry hall. “Look out,” she said as she went past, “Magneto’s got a suitcase!”

Paige picked more urgently at the flap of skin on her elbow. Invisible. On a lark, she dug into her elbow with the fingers of her other hand and pulled. The skin came off her arm with a sound like the tearing of rotten burlap.

Jubilee stopped and screwed up her face. She hated when Paige used her powers, and Paige knew it. She threw the hunk

of discarded skin at Jubilee, who danced and swatted it away like someone escaping a spider.

Paige looked at her hand, transparent as crystal, bending the light like a glass statue. She flexed her fingers, seeing ghostly muscle, barely visible, moving under the skin. That should gross Jubilee out even more. She grabbed the skin above her elbow and ripped again, most of the skin coming off her upper body in one big chunk.

Speaking of chunks, Jubilee was making little gagging sounds. “Oh! Gross me out! What are you doing?”

Paige smiled. “Fixing my elbow. See, just a flesh wound, and once you get rid of the flesh—”

Angelo chuckled. Even Monet cracked a slight smile. Sean just had that long-suffering expression on his face. He had that expression a lot around here.

“Oh, ew! Do me a favor, and just don’t eat anything until you fiusk back.”

“Unfortunately, I have a craving for some Choco-Sugar-Bombs.”

“Ew.”

“Or a cherry fruit pie.”

“Ew!” '

“Or some Spaghetti-Zeros with Meatballs.”

“Ew, ew, ew, you win, I give.”

Angelo scratched his chin thoughtfully. “A fruit pie would go pretty good right now.”

A little green boy wearing a stocking cap and a South Park tee-shirt strolled into the room. “Pie,” he said, wiping the spot on his face where his nose would be, if he had one, which he didn’t, “Hey,” said Angelo, “Leech, my man!” He stooped down so he and the boy could slap palms with one another. “Ready for your big trip to Scotland?”

“Leech ready. Leech packed fifteen pairs of shorts.”

Monet raised an eyebrow. “That’s more information than I needed.”

“Monet,” Sean carefully stepped over a selection of tennis rackets to move closer to her, “is Penny on her way?”

“Gateway left with her an hour ago. They’re already there by now.” Monet frowned a bit. “He was rather annoyed at the intrusion. He has pressing concerns beyond our present understanding.”

“Well,” said Paige, “it’s not like a girl with razor-blade skin can just take the Concorde, even disguised by a holographic image inducer. And this trip is for her own good. Perhaps Dr. MacTaggert will be able to help her learn to talk, or maybe enable her to touch things without slicing them to ribbons.” “It’s too bad she can’t fly with the rest of them,” said Jubilee. “I bet she’d like it, all the people and everything. She’s shy, but I get the feeling she’d love to get out and see the bright lights and crowds.”

Paige sighed. Every time you started feeling sorry for yourself, there was always somebody worse off. Penance— Penny—had to be about the most lonely person in the world. At least every once in a while Paige could “husk” into a diamond hard form and give her a hug. She bit her lip. “When you get there, tell her we miss her, okay?”

Sean nodded thoughtfully, then glanced at his watch. “Blast, it’s getting late. Where are Artie and Emma, Leech?” “They come. Miss Emma make Artie take favorite rock collection out of duffel-bag.”

Mr. Cassidy hefted one of Emma’s bags experimentally. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

Artie and Leech, the school’s youngest students, were mutants too; mutants of the type that even other mutants sometimes shied from. Leech’s mutation had left him so deformed that he seemed more amphibian than human, bald headed, his greenish skin smooth and cool to the touch, his eyes featureless yellow orbs. He possessed the ability to neutralize other mutants’ powers.

Artie, who was just shuffling into the room, looked a little closer to normal from the neck down, except for skin the color of a bad sunburn, but from the neck up he was different, his skull bald and oversized, covered with bumps, his eyes huge and white. Artie could link telepathically with others and project images into their minds. These images were his primary means of communication, since his mutation had also robbed him of the power of speech.

“Hey, Artie,” said Jono, “word up?”

Angelo and Jubilee were definitely a bad influence on Jono’s speech patterns, Paige noted. Then a clear image of a broken heart formed in Paige’s mind.

Angelo took the stocking cap from the boy’s small, pink hand and pulled it down over the top of his head. “Cheer up, spud, your rocks will still be here when you get back. I’ll take care of them personally.”

Artie lifted his eyes and smiled just a little. They were bombarded with a flash of images, candy, video games, Speed Racer cartoons, currently some of Artie’s favorite things. His way of saying “thank-you.”

Emma Frost entered the room carrying a pair of small suit-fcases, and handed them to Sean without comment. She carefully smoothed a stray stand of platinum blonde hair out of her face with a manicured fingertip, rendering herself nearly perfect. Thin, beautiful, rich, cultured, and one of the most powerful mutant telepaths on Earth, Emma literally did have everything. Maybe that explained her luggage.

Emma surveyed the room. “I think that’s all.”

“I bloody hope so,” said Sean. “Ye didn’t pack this much when we drove cross-country with the kids last summer.” “You didn’t see it, Sean. We were in a motor home, I had closets. Besides, that was merely a trip through the boondocks. This time I’m packing for a trip to Europe. It’s an entirely different thing.”

“Scotland,” corrected Sean. “Muir-bloody-Island.”

“But I thought maybe we could make a side trip to the Continent, do some shopping—”

Sean looked around at all the luggage, “Shopping! For what, woman? Sure’n ye have it all already?”

Emma turned away from him sharply, her body language giving a distinct “you’re dismissed” message. People around here had some very interesting ways of communicating. She looked at the assembled students. “I really don’t know about this. Bishop offered to come and keep an eye on the school while we’re gone.”

Jubilee rolled her eyes and sighed. “Oh, that would be fun. Bishop is such a party animal.”

Jono stepped between Jubilee and Emma. “What Jubes means to say is, we aren’t X-Babies here, and it’s spring break. We can take care of our own selves for a couple of weeks, no worries. The pantry is stocked, the satellite dish is warm, and we won’t even have to leave campus.”

Emma nodded. “See that you don’t.” She opened her purse and took out a tiny satellite phone, one of the new Reed Richards designed models that was all the rage. “Keep this with you at all times.” Her eyes scanned the students one-by-one. Finally she handed the phone to Paige. “You take it. You I can trust. Mostly.” She considered. “No radio call-in shows this fime, okay?”

Paige felt herself blush, and hoped that it wasn’t somehow visible on her now transparent skin. She’d gotten them all in a heap of trouble that way last summer in Chicago. “No call-in shows,” she replied.

The front door opened and Emma’s drivers started taking the bags away. The drivers were matched muscle men, identical except that one had skin of pastel pink, the other pale green. Paige had tried to get Emma to tell her if they were mutants, aliens, or had just fallen into vats of industrial-strength Easter-egg color, but she’d never gotten a straight answer. You hang around with this bunch long enough, she thought, some things you learn just to not ask about. Especially when it came to Emma Frost’s past.

The last of the suitcases disappeared into the waiting limousine. “Time to go,” announced Sean. Leech grabbed Artie’s hand and the two of them charged down the step, Leech squealing all the way.

Emma Frost took a last look as she passed through the door and Sean followed, closing the door behind him. “Mind yourself,” he said.

The students all stared at the door silently for a while, listening up as the car drove away. Finally Angelo slumped against the door, his knees sagging slightly.

“Dios, I thought they’d never leave.”

Jubilee did a little dance, multicolored streamers of plasma shooting from her fingers in one of the more restrained applications of her mutant power. “Ding, dong, party-on, ding, dong, the witch is gone!”

Just then, the phone in Paige’s hand rang. Paige leaned over and pulled back the curtain. The limo wasn’t out of the driveway yet. She sighed and held the phone out to Jubilee. “I think she heard you.”

Jubilee answered the phone. She didn’t say much, but she did a lot of listening for several minutes. “Yeah, bye,” she said and slapped the mouthpiece closed. “Like, how does she do that?”

' >Angelo chuckled and slumped the rest of the way to the floor, where he sat, baggy elbows propped on the knees of his dirty, gray sweat-pants. “She says she doesn’t eavesdrop on what we’re thinking.”

“She must not,” said Jono, “or we’d never bloody get away with anything, and,” he waved his hands, “we do.”

Paige nodded. “You get away with plenty, that’s for sure.” “What,” said Jono, “about that night you got yourself drunk and puked your guts out?”

She shot him a nasty look.

His eyes smiled. He delighted in teasing her sometimes, but Paige didn’t like being reminded of one of her more moronic mistakes.

He plunged ahead. “You act like the perfect student, Gel, but I can see right through you.”

“So can I,” quipped Angelo who bent down to peer through her transparent body.

“She just saves it for special occasions,” suggested Ev, who had taken an umbrella from the stand by the door and was fencing with the coat-rack. He jabbed. “Ha! Got you right in your mittens!”

There was a knock. It was the last thing any of them expected. Angelo jumped about three feet away from the door and stared at it. “Did you hear a car, compadresT

They all shook their heads.

Another knock, more insistent.

Ev looked around at the others. “Somebody just ordered the pizza a little early, right? Turned off the security system, too, because they knew pizza was coming. Tell me you ordered pizza.” Nobody responded. “Dang, and it was a good theory.”

Paige opened the hidden panel under the stairs where the security panel was located. ‘The alarms are on, and show nobody outside. Either there’s a ghost at the door, or they’re good.”

“Well,” said Jubilee, “somebody answer it.”

“I’ll answer it,” said Monet in a huff. She stepped toward the door.

Jono pushed in front of her. “I’ll answer it.” He stepped up to the door and opened the peephole. He stared through it for a while without saying anything. “Bloody hell,” he finally said, scrambling to unlock and open the door. The tall, young woman standing there looked as though she’d been dragged through the woods. Her black leather pants and vest were dusty, her tank tee-shirt so dirty it was impossible to figure out which band’s logo was printed on the chest. There were sticks and twigs in the shaggy green Mohawk that ran down the center of her head, and bits of grass and leaves in the close cropped hair on the sides. There were small scratches covering every bit of her exposed skin, highlighted with a few larger ones.

She and Jono stared at each other for a moment.

“Jono,” she said.

“Espeth,” he replied.

She blinked, looked around at the rest of them. “You’ve got to help them, help Chill—the rest.”

Then her eyes rolled back into her head, and she collapsed in Jono’s arms.

When Xavier’s was converted from its former role as a prestigious private boarding school into a distant outpost of the Xavier Institute, one of the first changes was the installation of a small, but incredibly advanced, infirmary. Though each of the students had learned basic first-aid, it was fortunate most of the infirmary’s diagnostic and treatment equipment was automated.

Jono carried Espeth upstairs, and placed her on the examining table, while Ev fired up the machines and let the diagnostic scanners do their stuff. After that, there was nothing to do but wait for a while. Ev tried to shoo everyone out. “It’s getting crowded in here. Give her and the machines some space. I can keep an eye on things.”

“I’ll stay too,” said Jono, “in case she wakes up.”

Paige’s lips parted, but she said nothing. She stepped out into the hall and, realizing it had been long enough to allow for another “husk,” started ripping at her skin, returning to normal human form. It occurred to her to wonder how she could strip off transparent flesh to find opaque skin underneath. There were things about her powers she still didn’t understand.

She thought about Jonothan and sighed. There were some things maybe she’d never understand. She strolled down the hall and sat heavily on the top stair of the big staircase. She leaned against the banister, the oiled and polished rail cool against her cheek.

Her mind flashed back to the previous summer, when they’d first met Espeth, when he had first met Espeth. It happened at the beginning of their cross-country road trip from Seattle back to the school. They’d stopped at the campus of Pacific University, and the headquarters of a campus mutant

support organization called M.O.N.S.T.E.R.—Mutants Only Need Sympathy, Tolerance, and Equal Rights.

They’d all made new friends there, especially the “Mutant Musketeers,” Chill, Recall, and Pound, who’d paralleled their trip across country, and shared some adventures, and misadventures, with them.

At the M.O.N.S.T.E.R. house there had been a party, and a dance, and there had been a bunch of self-proclaimed mutant groupies called “Genogoths.” That’s where Jono had met Espeth. She was one of them.

The Genogoths had been a little rough, a little scary, but Chill had assured them the Genogoths helped mutants, especially those without the power to help themselves. They provided M.O.N.S.T.E.R. with information about anti-mutant activities, and helped keep them safe.

That’s what Chill had said, but Paige wasn’t so sure. With ’ their black clothes and in-your-face attitude, they seemed to her to be posers, looking for something dangerous to attach themselves to, something that would make them look cool. Or maybe she was just rationalizing her concern. Maybe she was just worried that, by comparison, a certain little mutant girl from Kentucky had to look pretty boring, especially to a worldly older guy from England.

Jubilee appeared from down the hall and sat heavily on the other end of the step, seemingly paying no attention to Paige. She was smacking loudly on some bubble gum, pausing only to blow a large pink bubble, which she popped with a tiny firework from her fingertip. “Pretty interesting, huh?”

“What’s interesting?” Paige didn’t feel like talking, but she’d fallen into another conversational trap.

“Jono wanting to stay in there with her.”

Paige sighed. “He’s just trying to be helpful.”

“Pretty conveniently helpful.”

Paige frowned. Why didn’t people just go away?

“They had a thing in Seattle. Doesn’t that worry you?” “They danced. Once.”

“It was enough of a dance,” said Monet, “to keep you two going in circles all the way from Seattle to Chicago.”

Paige was startled by the voice, which came from immediately to her right. She looked over to see Monet hovering in mid-air, looking at her through the banister.

“Hey,” complained Jubilee, “no flying in the school.” Monet sniffed. “No headmasters, no rules. I thought that was the whole point of the oldsters going away.”

“But,” said Jubilee, “I liked that rule.”

“You can’t fly,” said Monet.

“I just said, I liked that rule.”

Paige growled in frustration. “Will you two just stop it!” Jubilee jerked a thumb at Paige. “She’s jealous,” she explained. “Iam not jealous!”

“Who’s jealous?” said Angelo, who had just strolled out of the hallway.

'“Oh, Lord,” said Paige, letting her head sag between her knees, “it’s a conspiracy.”

Angelo stood at the edge of the landing and leaned his elbows on the railing. “So what do you make of this? I mean, we see this chica like, once, months ago, and thousands of miles away, and she shows up on our doorstep.”

“She must have missed Jono a lot” said Jubilee.

Paige couldn’t help but let the irritation slip into her voice. “She didn’t come because she missed Jono.” Then she thought for a moment. “She mentioned ‘Chill and the others.’ That’s the connection. She knows we’re pals, and that we’d help them if they’re in trouble. That’s the connection.”

“That,” said Monet, “is wishful thinking. Maybe you’re just hoping to see your little boyfriend, Recall.”

“He had a crush on me, Monet, not the other way around. Don’t you have a broom to go ride or something?”

“No,” said Angelo, “she’s right. That’s the connection. It makes sense. So the Musketeers, they probably are in some kind of trouble.”

Jubilee popped another bubble. “I think we’re the ones in trouble, you know?” She pointed at the phone still clutched in Paige’s hand. “You should call the grups. Like, their plane probably hasn’t even left yet.”

Ev popped his head around the corner. “Hey,” he said, “she’s awake. You’d better hear this.”

They all trotted down the hall to the infirmary, with the exception of Monet, who swooped over their heads and beat them all there.

“She’s okay,” explained Ev before they went in. “She’s got scratches, bruises, some exposure, she’s dehydrated and hasn’t been eating well lately, but that’s just the kind of superficial stuff that the gear in here is great at fixing. She shouldn’t even need a doctor.”

“Well,” said Paige, “that’s one less troublesome phone call I’ll have to make. I should still call Ms. Frost and Mr. Cassidy though.” She held up the phone and started to dial.

Jono held up his hand. “Hold off on that till you hear what she has to say.”

As they entered, Espeth was trying to sit up on the bio-bed, but Jono gently put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back down. “I came to tell you about Chill and the guys. They’ve been kidnapped, and they need your help. I risked a lot—I risked everything to come here.”

“If they’re in immediate danger,” Paige asked, “why didn’t you go to the police?”

Espeth shook her head. “It’s not like that. They were kidnapped by the government.”

Paige and Ev looked at each other. Given some of the actions taken by anti-mutant government agencies in the past, it wasn’t unthinkable.

“Taken? Why?” asked Paige. “And where?”

“To a secret government laboratory' in rural South Carolina. They want to experiment on them, something to do with the Hound program. You’ve heard of it?”

Paige nodded. “The government wants mutant trackers and hunters, ostensibly to capture mutant criminals, but more likely to round us all up into prison camps if they think they can get away with it.”

“They’re a lot closer to that than you think, than anyone thinks. But the Genogoths wouldn’t believe me, they wouldn’t help. That’s why I came to you.”

Paige laughed. “The Genogoths? Your bunch of mutant groupie pals? A lot of good they’d do. This sounds like a job for the X-Men, or the Avengers if they’re in the mood, not a bunch of losers in Halloween costumes.”

“Paige! Zip it, Gel!” Jono glared at her.

“No,” interrupted Espeth. She painfully propped herself up on her elbows despite Jono’s protests. “She’s right to be suspicious of what I am, or how I know the things I know.” She looked troubled. “You’re just not going to believe me until I tell you everything, are you?” She sighed. “Okay, but look, I’m violating a sacred oath with what I’m about to tell you. You have to swear that, no matter what you decide to do, you have to swear on—-on Professor Xavier and everything you hold dear, that you’ll never tell another soul. Never.”

The Gen Xers all looked at one another.

“Swear!” Espeth was evidently quite serious.

Paige blinked. She sounded awfully serious for somebody who was supposed to be a poser.

“We swear,” said Jono.

Ev nodded, as did Angelo.

“I’m good at secrets,” said Monet.

Jubilee plucked the chewing gum out of her mouth, looked at it unhappily. “Yeah. Sure.”

They all looked at Paige. “I’m not so sure about this.”

Jono locked eyes with her. “We don’t have to do anything, luv. Just listen. How can it hurt?”

Let me count the ways. She took a deep breath. “ ’Kay.” Espeth’s eyes swept over them all, as though taking their measure. “At the core, the Genogoths aren’t what they seem, what they’re supposed to seem.” Her eyes met Paige’s. “You see groupies, children dressed to scare their parents, masqueraders in black with a mutant fetish. There are some of those, yes, sometimes useful to us, but not much more. They provide our cover, our smokescreen, our camouflage, and the pool from which we recruit those few worthy for our inner-circle.”

Monet grinned just a little. “You should have a talk with Emma Frost some time. The White Queen has this ‘inner circle’ business down—”

Paige swatted at her. “Hush, Monet.”

Espeth smiled slyly. “I know all about Emma Frost’s past association with the inner circle of the notorious Hellfire Club. I know of Professor Charles Xavier and his X-Men as well. Would you like to hear about Sinister? Or the minions of Apocalypse, or the Morlock tunnel that your little friend Leech came from?” She looked at Paige again. “Or your mutant brother Sam, and his association with Xavier’s so-called new mutants, or the latter-day X-Factor?”

“That’s enough,” said Paige. “You’ve convinced us that you and your Genogoths are more than they seem. But you haven’t told us what they are.”

“Since the time of Darwin, we’ve been the sworn protectors of the X-gene.”

“I thought,” said Jubilee, “that was us.” She looked mockingly at Monet. “No, wait, that was when 1 was with the X-Men.”

Espeth sniffed. “That’s what they believe, but Xavier has never cared for the weak mutants, only the powerful ones he could use as soldiers in his cause. The X-gene is humanity’s genetic legacy, the next step in its evolution, and everyone who carries it is precious, not just the powerful ones. But Xavier, Magneto, Apocalypse, all of them are the same. They build their armies, fight their squabbles, all the while drawing attention and hatred to mutants.”

Paige crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot. “Well,” she said, “you’re certainly winning us over to your point of view.”

“I’m giving it to you straight.”

“But,” said Jono, “you said that the Musketeers were in trouble, and that the Genogoths weren’t going to help them.” Espeth licked her lips and looked away as though trying to reconcile the contradiction with herself. “The Genogoths believe that the preservation of the X-gene is more important than any one individual, that sometimes a few must be sacrificed for the greater good.”

“Selfish genes,” said Paige.

Angelo gave her a puzzled look.

“It’s a theory of how evolution works,” explained Monet, “that genes exist only to create other genes. They don’t care about individual organisms at all. They’re just machines for producing other genes. As long as some genes of a line survive, it doesn’t matter how many individuals die.”

“Meaning,” said Ev, “that the guys are too hot for them to rescue.”

' 'Espeth nodded reluctantly. ‘The government is involved, an anti-mutant arm of the government. That plus, as the result of your little excitement last summer, Recall ‘outted’ himself as a mutant on national radio, and has continued to appear on the radio since. That makes him one of the bad-guys as far as the Genogoths are concerned, and puts his friends Chill and Dog Pound on the expendable list by association.”

“Then what,” said Jono, “are you doing here if that’s what you believe? Let them rot.”

She swallowed. “Because—the Genogoths are wrong. This project, it’s vulnerable right now. Yes, it’s government, but it’s a black-project secret, practically outlaw. If something happens to it, the government will just sweep it all under the rug and forget about it, but if it succeeds, then all mutants are in danger. Especially the weak ones.”

Paige stared at her suspiciously. “You don’t sound very committed to the ideals of the Genogoths. How long have you been part of the inner-circle anyway?”

Espeth frowned, but didn’t answer.

Jono bent down to look her in the eyes. “Espeth?”

“Nearly a year.” She squirmed under their collected gaze. “Ten months. Almost ten and a half.”

Alvie Walton had worked at the Snow Valley Roxxon station for a long time now, and he’d seen more than his share of tourists over the years. He thought he’d seen it all, but the guy standing by his black sports car outside gave him the creeps.

As he ran the guy’s credit card through the machine, he tried to figure out exactly what caused the feeling. He peered through the dusty front window of the station. It wasn’t his black wrap-around sunglasses, or his black turtleneck and crisply creased black slacks, or the strange silver pendant he wore around his neck on a chain, a pendant that looked like a stepladder that somebody had put a twist in the middle of. It wasn’t the vintage black Jaguar he drove, or the thin, neatly trimmed goatee on his face. It wasn’t his height, which was average, or his build, which was solid but not overly muscular, or his hair which was short, black, and came to a widow’s peak in the middle of his high forehead.

Add up all the details, and he looked like one of those old jazz-type coffee shop guys. What were they called? Beatniks. The guy was maybe just old enough to be the genuine article too.

But there was something under that, some vibe, a feeling of danger and power. He remembered that movie about Patton and thought this guy had the same aura around him. He somehow, despite appearances, seemed more like a general than a beat poet.

The credit card machine beeped its approval. He glanced at the name on the card. “Black,” he said quietly. No first name, no initial. Just Black. Strange. He pulled the freshly printed receipt off the machine and walked it out to the guy.

The man took the receipt and was reaching for the credit card when Alvie pulled it away. “Black,” he said. “I’ve never seen a card with just one name before.”

“That’s my name.” He looked slightly annoyed as he plucked the card from Alvie’s fingers and tucked it into an Italian leather wallet. He seemed to be staring at Alvie, though he couldn’t tell for sure because of the glasses. It gave Alvie the willies.

“You seem to be a man,” said Black, “who notices things, things that are not his business.”

Alvie was caught by surprise. “No, not really—hey, just making conversation. Didn’t mean to—”

Black waved for silence. “That wasn’t a criticism. I’m looking for someone. A young lady not from around here. He produced a picture from somewhere, almost like magic, and handed it to Alvie.

The small snapshot showed a punk-looking girl with green hair. She was standing next to a tall boy of maybe nineteen or twenty, a boy with white hair. But, unlike hers, his didn’t seem to be dyed. They were smiling, and she was holding onto his arm as they posed.

Then it hit him. Green hair. How do you forget a thing like that? He’d seen her at the station a couple of days earlier, buying a bag of salted peanuts with what seemed like her last dollar. He eyed Black suspiciously. He wondered if she was young enough to be a runaway. Could this creep be what she was running from?

Black seemed impatient. “Have you seen her?”

“Why are you looking for her?”

“We’re—associates. We were supposed to meet at the Vermont ski areas to do some business, but she seems to have had car trouble. I found her car abandoned up the highway twenty miles or so. I thought perhaps she’d hitch-hiked into town.” Alvie considered. Parts of the story fit, but he wondered what kind of business they could be doing, and decided it wasn’t good. He tried to remember the details of the encounter. She’d asked questions too, something about that weird boarding school outside town. If that was the place she was looking for, she’d be there already. If she’d wanted to talk to him, she could have phoned. Alvie had spotted a cellular phone sitting on the front passenger seat. “Haven’t seen her. Sorry.”

Black handed the picture back. “Take another look.”

There was something folded under the picture. Alvie fanned it out to see the edge of a crisp one-hundred dollar bill. That was a lot of money for a guy who worked as a service station attendant. He looked at it for a moment, then pushed it back at Black. In a week the money would be spent, but a guilty conscience could last a long time. “Nope, haven’t seen her.”

Black tightened his lips and nodded. “Of course, thank you for your time.”

Alvie watched as Black climbed back into his car and drove away. Alvie wiped his hands on a rag from his back pocket and strolled back into the office. On a whim, he pulled out the doodle-covered phone book from under the counter and opened it up. What was that school called? X something. Xavier’s That was it. But Snow Valley was a small town. There were no X’s listed, not one. “Must be unlisted,” he said to nobody in particular. It was a shame. He had the feeling that somebody would like to know this dude was coming.

Paige made herself a peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwich and sat down at the little table in the nook off the kitchen. The jam was in an unlabeled Mason jar, part of a care-package from her mamma in Kentucky. Like Mama didn’t have enough to do raising a house-full of kids by herself.

Still, Paige smacked her lips. The jam was sweet and tart, its flavor blended with the salty peanut butter. It tasted like home, and for just a moment she had the terrible urge to cry'. The she reached into her pocket and pulled out the letter she’d fetched from a shoebox under her bed. It was the last letter she’d gotten from Recall, dated two weeks prior. If what Espeth said was true, it must have been sent only days before his kidnapping.

She spread the computer printed sheet on the table and flattened it with the palm of her hand. She read.

Dear Paige and Guys,

I wish I could have come with Chill and the Pounder when they visited you guys at the school last month, but between night classes and a national radio talk-show, it’s a lot for a sixteen-year-old to handle, you know? Plus, Chill was here during his spring break, and he’s like the worst housekeeper in the world. Took me most of the week he was gone just to catch up the dishes. It’s probably a good thing he’s not here when school is in session, and I expect he’ll be moving out completely after graduation.

Until then, I guess I could afford to hire a housekeeper or something, but I’m socking the radio money ' away in a CD to pay for grad school. This radio business is too crazy. Literally overnight I went from student nobody with a lame mutant power, to national talk show cohost, and I could be a student nobody again just as fast if the ratings take a slip or some anti-mutant sponsor gets a bee in their bonnet. It’s been quite a ride though, and I owe it all to you and your Generation-X crew.

In a reckless moment that summer, Paige had gotten them all involved with an anti-mutant radio-talk-show host named Walt Norman. Through a series of misadventures, they’d all had a hand in saving Norman’s life from an on-air terrorist attack. In the aftermath, Recall had been given the chance to make an impassioned plea to a national audience for tolerance toward mutants. The network had liked the volatile chemistry of pairing the mutant Recall and the anti-mutant Norman, and had offered to let him share the mike on an ongoing basis.

Since then, Recall had been in regular touch. Though he’d apparently gotten over his crush on her, his friendship with her and the group had lingered on. Unfortunately, Paige had been a less than faithful correspondent, a fact that she now regretted.

She read on.

Hey, you know, I think I’m starting to put a dent in my bone-head cohost Walt. I used to say that he sure wasn’t a mutant, but he wasn’t a human either, but lately our on-air debates have changed lone, more fact and less rhetoric. We still don’t agree on anything, mind you, but hey, progress is progress.

Got to go. Air time in thirty minutes. See you on the radio.

Your Pal, Recall

She folded the letter and tucked it back in her pocket. She wondered if that ingrate Norman had even noticed that Recall was missing. Maybe he was relieved to have him gbne.

If she’d been listening to the show, she’d know, might even have realized weeks ago that something was wrong with Recall. After the trip, she’d listened to the “Walt and Recall” show every week, but after a while she’d slipped out of the habit. Life kept getting in the way, and Norman just infuriated her. Maybe Recall thought he was making some progress with the big parasite, but Paige just couldn’t listen to him. The urge to call in and tell him what a horse’s backside he was, was too strong, and it was exactly that urge that had gotten them in trouble last time.

If she'd had better control of her emotions, Recall wouldn’t have gotten on the radio and become a target. Basically, this was all her fault. She looked at the half-eaten sandwich and tossed it on the table.

The kitchen door opened and Angelo walked in, followed by the rest of Gen-X. Angelo headed immediately for the peanut butter and bread, with Jubilee right behind him. “Jubilee,” said Paige sternly, “stay out of Mamma’s jam.” Jubilee muttered under her breath as she and Angelo both

tried to shove butter knives into the peanut butter jar at the same time.

Jono was the last one through the door. He pulled the kitchen step-stool over and perched on the top step. “Okay, time for a war council. We’ve got to figure out what to do about this blinking mess.”

Jubilee and Angelo finished making their sandwiches and joined the rest of them around the table.

They all stared at each other.

Finally, Paige spoke. “I think it’s obvious. We call the X-Men. This is definitely a big-league problem.”

Jono shook his head. “We swore we wouldn’t tell anyone. That includes the X-Men, Emma, Sean, anybody. My take is we just go and do what needs to be done. We can bloody do it.”

Jubilee shook her head. “No way. This is an X-Men-class problem. I say we call them. Maybe they’ll let us tag along.” Monet looked at Jubilee and sniffed. “I vote against side-kick-girl.”

“Monet,” said Paige, “why?”

“Because I’m voting against sidekick-girl.”

Paige scowled at her. “That’s not much of a reason.”

“It’s my vote.”

Paige looked at Angelo. He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Look, I never signed on to be a super hero, and I’m not in favor of getting us grounded till the end of time either. Call in the bad mamma-jammas.”

Jono looked at Ev, seeking some sympathy in his eyes.

Ev squirmed in his seat and chewed at his bottom lip. “Our friends are in trouble, and I’m ready for action. We go.” “Bloody great,” said Jono, “it’s a hung jury. Looks like we fight it out or draw straws or something.”

“It’s a tie,” complained Paige, “because Monet is voting against Jubilee, no matter what. This is too important a decision for that kind of thinking.”

Jono’s eyes flashed anger. “Who are you to criticize somebody’s reasoning. Don’t you care about your mate Recall?” “Of course I care,” she snapped. “About all of them. That’s why I want to call in the X-Men. It’s the best thing we can do for them. Besides, how would we get to this secret lab? The X-Men can just fire-up a Blackbird and be there in half an hour. Are we all just going to pile into Sean’s Jeep?”

“The Xabago,” answered Jono without hesitation.

Paige blinked. The Xabago was one of the two motor homes they’d purchased for the summer’s trip. Emma and the female members of the team had traveled in a luxury motor coach, which had since been sold, but the guys had been allowed to pick their own vehicle. The Xabago was a hideous, tricked out camper with steer horns over the radiator, orange shag carpeting covering the interior, and a fighter plane’s bubble cockpit on the roof.

“Jono, the Xabago blew a head gasket eighty miles from home, and had to be towed here. It’s such a hunk of junk that Sean and Emma couldn’t even find anybody to buy it. It’s been rusting out behind the biosphere like a little slice of home.”

“We fixed it,” said Jono.

Paige frowned. “Who fixed it?”

“Ev, Angelo, and me,” explained Jono. “We’ve been tinkering with it for months.”

“I helped too,” injected Jubilee. “None of these guys even knew how to use a torque wrench.”

“She lies,” said Angelo.

“About helping,” asked Monet, “or the torque wrench?” Paige threw her hands up in frustration. “Everybody just shut up! This is important!” She waited for things to quiet down. “So, we have transportation, but that still doesn’t change the basic issues. We’re deadlocked, I say we call in the X-Men.”

Jono looked at her, his eyes intense. “You keep talking like that’s an alternative. We swore to keep the Genogoths’ secrets, and if we tell somebody about the Musketeers, they’re going to want to know where we got the information.” He tapped the side of his fist nervously against his knee. “Calling the X-Men isn’t an option. Either we do the job ourselves, or we let them rot.”

Black pulled into a park and found a shaded spot near a Civil War memorial. Through the trees, he could see a man in a heavy wool sweater throwing a flying disk for a dog, but otherwise, the area was deserted. He flipped open the scramble phone and dialed from memory. He never used the speed dial for security reasons.

The phone was answered on the second ring. “Night comes early,” he said, giving the current code phrase. Even a scrambled phone could fall into the wrong hands.

“No moon tonight,” said the voice on the other end, providing the countersign. “This is Leather.”

' “Black. I’m in Snow Valley, Massachusetts. She’s been here, I’m certain of it. If so, she’s undoubtedly at Xavier’s School.”

There was a pause from the other end, then, “She could compromise everything. Maybe she already has. Twenty years of staying off Xavier’s radar shot in a night. I told you she wasn’t ready for the Inner Circle.”

Black clenched his jaw slightly, for him, an extreme display of emotion. “Remember your place, Leather. You’re a field commander, but I’m the Vertex of the Circle, and I brought Espeth into the Circle myself. She’s worthy, but inadequately indoctrinated, and no one could have anticipated that she would be so severely tested so soon. But I still have faith in my choice. I don’t think she would casually compromise us to Xavier, not even for the lives of her friends.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that we may still have time to cauterize this wound. Though I am loath to take direct action, we must have options available. Assemble the troops.”

“How many?”

“Everyone available in the region. If we must strike, we must be prepared to strike hard and do what is necessary.” He watched the man playing with the dog. “Sometimes, mine is not an enviable job.”

CHAPTER THREE

“Did you hear the one about the mutant that you could depend on? No? Well neither did I. [Canned laughter] As you may have guessed, my cohost, Recall, is missing in action again today. He hasn ’t called in or anything, so we don’t know what’s up. Me, I just figure he’s discovered girls.” [Canned laughter]

—Walt Norman Walt and Recall radio program

Jono followed her as she speed walked toward the girls* bathroom, “Give me the phone, Luv.”

“Don’t call me iuv,’ Jono, and no, I won’t give you the phone. I’m locking myself in the bathroom, turning the sink on full-blast to drown out your noise, and I’m calling the X-Mansion. I’m going to send the X-Men to rescue the guys, and that’s final. Yes, we swore we wouldn’t tell, and we won’t any more than is necessary, but I’m not going to just sit here on my hands while our friends are in trouble.”

Espeth appeared in the infirmary doorway, leaning heavily oil 'the door frame, but looking much stronger than the last time Paige had seen her. “I wouldn’t do that,” said Espeth. “You can call them, but where will you send them? South Carolina is a big state, and the lab where they’re being held is well hidden.”

Paige stopped a few feet in front of her and stared. She hadn’t considered that. Espeth had been so forthcoming, it hadn’t occurred to anyone that she’d left key pieces of information out. “The X-Men have resources. Wolverine can call some of his old intelligence buddies. Cerebro can search for mutant biosignatures if they have to.”

“This is the Hound program, remember? Mutant tracking is their business, and if you don’t think they have a way to shield their captures from Xavier’s scanning devices, you’re wrong. It can be done. The Genogoths do it all the time. And yes, your friend Wolverine or one of the others would eventually find where they’re being held. But how long will it take? Weeks? Months? How many times have the X-Men ‘lost’ someone and been unable to find them? Even Xavier himself has disappeared on a number of occasions. Meanwhile, you can’t even imagine what sort of things they have in mind for our friends.”

Paige stood her ground. “But even so, you’d deny us the information we need to save them?”

“FU take it to my grave.” Something in Espeth’s facade seemed to slip for a moment, a sliver of vulnerability showing. “You don’t understand the position I’m in, Guthrie, not just between the rock and the hard place, but between the unstoppable force and the immovable object. I’m trying to reach the impossible compromise here, and it can only happen on my terms.”

The phone in Paige’s pocket rang, and the sound made both of them jump. Paige looked at Espeth. Espeth looked back.

Paige took out the phone and opened it. “Hello.” She listened for a moment. “Nothing much. We’re just hanging out and watching TV.” She tried to put on a brave face. “Nothing happening here at all.”

Recall opened his eyes, then closed them again. It wasn’t right. He opened them again. No, it didn’t seem like a dream at all.

The cell walls seemed to be made out of some sort of plastic, or maybe fiberglass. Every surface of the little room— walls, floor, ceiling, the sparse furnishings that flowed into the floor and walls as though the entire thing had been molded in one piece—all were a uniform, glossy white. Two benches along the walls, one of which he was lying on, a small table, a sink, a lavatory, all melded seamlessly into the rest of the room. In fact there were no corners at all, as floor swept smoothly into wall and wall smoothly into ceiling. These were the first details that Scooter McCloud, better known by his nickname “Recall,” took in as he awoke.

It also hadn’t escaped him that he wasn’t alone in the cell, that his two college friends and fellow mutants, Peter B. DeMulder, a.k.a. Chill, and Willy Gillis, a.k.a. Dog Pound, sat on an identical bench across the room. They were dressed in utilitarian green jumpsuits. He glanced down, and saw that he was dressed in one as well.

“We were wondering,” said Chill, a look of controlled anger on his face, “if you’d ever wake up.”

It took Recall a moment to realize that Chill wasn’t mad at him, something totally out of character for his cool-headed friend and sometime roommate, but rather angry at their unseen captors.

“Of course,” continued Chill, “you’re the smallest of the three of us. It’s possible whatever they doped us with hit you harder.”

Recall grimaced. He didn’t like being reminded of his small stature under the best of circumstances, even if it was true. Chill’s beanpole frame was at least a foot taller than he, and the Pounder was not only a bit taller, he was built like a human-Rottweiler, thick and muscular. Feeling generally self-conscious, Recall tried to sit up and discovered that not only was it a difficult proposition, but it caused his head to spin.

“Hey,” Pounder leaned close and put a hand on his shoulder, a frown of concern on his wide face, “take it easy, spud. That’s some rough stuff they used on us. We both took it pretty hard too.” He glanced over at Chill, who seemed distracted, then snapped his attention back to his cellmates.

Chill smiled nervously and ran his fingers through his close-cropped, white hair. “Sorry, short stuff. Don’t mean to be cruel. This is a shock to all of us.”

Recall managed to push himself into a sitting position. He slumped with his back against the wall. He turned his head, and the cool smoothness felt good against his cheek and forehead. He still felt doped up, disoriented. “Last thing I remember,” he said, “I was—”

“In Chicago, taping your show,” said Chill, “last we heard anyhow. And Pound and I were in Seattle, getting ready for graduation and turning over the M.O.N.S.T.E.R. chapter there to the new president. Last we remember, Pound is helping me pack up my office. We were hauling some boxes out to the car, and then it gets fuzzy.”

Pound shook his head. “I don’t even remember that much. I can’t even remember leaving the chapter house.” He put his hands on his bald scalp and let out a deep, slow breath. “Like I said, bad stuff.”

Recall tried to remember. At first, even the last week in Chicago seemed a jumble. Then he focused, tapped into his mutant ability to find lost things. He’d learned early on that this ability extended to his own memories, at least when he consciously applied it. Images and memories snapped into neat piles, like the cards in a game of computer solitaire.

He remembered a marathon taping session of the Walt and Recall radio show, then the daily live broadcast, plus two taped episodes to be inventoried as fill-in while he was back at school. By the end, Walt Norman had been irritable and difficult to work with, hardly unusual.

Then Recall had gone down the elevator in the downtown building where the studio was located. His contract called for a car to take him to and from his parents’ home in the suburbs, allowing him extra time for studying. The car had been there as expected. No, a car.

“I remember,” he said. “I was going home, and I saw what I thought was my car. Then this woman gets out of the front, not one of the usual drivers. A guy gets out of the back, a big man, and holds up what looks like some kind of pistol. I’m thinking, they must be car-jackers or something, when he pulls the trigger. I don’t even have time to react, but there’s no bang, just a hiss and a smell kind of like honey and paint-thinner mixed. I realize that he’s sprayed me with something. Then it’s real hard to think, or stand, or anything. I fall over and he’s pulling me into the car.”

“I told you,” said Chill to Pound, “that he’d remember more than we did. They probably nabbed us the same way and were waiting at my car.” He looked back at Recall. “That all?” Recall pondered for a moment. “No. One more thing. I woke up a little, not all the way. I felt shaking, heard voices, sounds, then that smell again.” The voices had been unfamiliar, so he focused on remembering the sounds. “Jet engines.

thunder, the creaking sounds a plane makes when it hits turbulence. Maybe they flew me to Seattle?”

Chill pursed his lips. “Not unless we’ve been out longer than we think. Meteorology is my major, you know. Jet stream was hauling all the Pacific moisture south, and a big high-pressure system was controlling the Midwest. Clear sailing all the way. Could be south though, or east.” He shrugged. “What am I talking about? I just know we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto. We could be in Genosha for all we know.” Pound’s eyes went wide. “You don’t really think—?”

“Just a joke, really. We don’t know where we are really, or why.” He grinned. “We should be honored. I figure, normally this kind of mystery treatment is reserved for the X-Men or the Fantastic Four.” He glanced to his right, and pointed in that direction. “By the way, say hello to our viewing audience.”

- .Recall saw that he was pointing at a small black circle high in the far wall. It was smooth and flush with the otherwise unmarked white surface.

“We think there’s a camera back there,” Chill explained. “Probably a microphone here somewhere too.” He dropped to a stage whisper. “Don’t talk in front of the toilet.”

Despite himself. Recall chuckled. Cheer up the troops. It was in Chill’s nature, part of why he’d made such a great chapter president these last three years.

Recall looked again at the hidden camera. Maybe there was something he could do. He stood up, reeled slightly as the blood seemed to rush from his head, then walked closer to the far wall.

“Look,” he said, “whoever you are, maybe you don’t know who you’ve got here. My name is Scooter McCloud, but my air name is Recall, of ‘The Norman and Recall’ radio show. We’re carried on seventy stations across the country.”

The black circle on the wall just stared at him. “I’m famous. People will be looking for me, not just the authorities, but the show has lots of fans.”

Nothing. “The staff sends out a hundred autographed pictures of me a week. Our web page takes over a thousand hits a day."

The circle just looked at him. Suddenly something inside him seemed to shatter. He slammed his fist against the wall. “Let us out of here! I’m famous. Let us out!”

Chill was suddenly behind him, trying to calm him down.

He pounded the wall again. “Let us out! I’m famous!” His head was spinning. Suddenly it was hard to stand. He slumped against the comforting support of the wall and slid slowly down it. “I’m only sixteen years old-—”

As Black drove into the parking lot of the Snow Bird Motor Court he saw that it was almost entirely full of black vehicles. They were drawing attention to themselves. Genogoths were supposed to travel alone, or in small groups. Twenty-five was considered a major gathering. Attention was inevitable in bringing such a large force to such a small town.

He found an open space and edged the Jag carefully into it. As he climbed from the car he saw an employee watching him from the door of the motel’s office, a woman of fifty or so, dressed in a baggy, loud, fioral-print muumuu. Rather than ignoring her, he stopped and made a point of staring back. The woman froze, like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck. Then finally she dashed back inside the office. As he turned away, he caught a glimpse of her peering at him through a set of blinds.

It was part of the Genogoth philosophy, to hide in plain sight. Someone attempting to conceal themselves will always be found out eventually. By not concealing themselves, by dressing strangely and acting intrusively, they became, in a strange way, invisible. The trick was not to avoid being seen. It was to be seen, and then make the watcher turn away.

Doubtless the locals would talk, rumors would circulate, of cultists, Hollywood people scouting for a movie location, traveling rock bands, and a thousand other things, none of which would remotely resemble the truth. The Genogoths, each and every one of them, were soldiers; trained, determined, dedicated, and ruthless. He had assembled a small army under the townspeople’s very noses, and they would never know it.

He stepped up to the door of room sixty-six and tapped on the door, two soft, two hard, one soft, two hard. The door opened and Black stepped inside without a word.

The room was like a thousand others of similar vintage that Black had seen. There were two beds, a small table with two chairs, a combination dresser and writing desk, an end table between the beds, a cracked mirror on the wall over the desk, and a few ugly lamps. An ancient window air conditioner was mounted in a box near the door at the front of the room. The wallpaper peeled in the comers, and in some places had been stuck down with cellophane tape. The carpet was avocado green where the original color showed through the stains.

', There were two men in the room, sitting in the chairs by the table. One was in his late twenties, tall, slender, muscular. He wore no shirt under his black leather vest, and displayed an impressive assortment of tattoos and body piercings. His blonde hair was shaved on the sides exposing more tattoos. The hair in the center of his head was long, pulled back in a ponytail. He also had a single tattoo on his right cheek, a tiny, stylized section of a DNA molecule. It exactly matched the silhouette of the silver pendant that Black wore around his neck. The man paused just a second too long, then stood and offered Black his chair.

Black took the chair. “Thank you, Leather."

The man who sat across the table from him was older, and much more massively built. He was muscled, the build of someone who did heavy work on a regular basis, not someone who honed themselves in a gym. His hands were rough and callused, the fingers thick and strong. His hair was red, streaked with gray, and hung half-way down the back of his black Van Halen tour shirt. His jeans were tom in places, and his sandals were heavily worn. On his right wrist, he wore a hand-made pewter bracelet. Woven into the design of the bracelet was the same double-helix design that Leather and Black wore. He would have looked at home as the head roadie on any concert tour in the country.

“You,” said Black, “I don’t know.”

“Name’s Styx. East coast head of Covert Information and Surveillance.”

“What happened to Pit?”

“Took a bullet from a rogue Genosian Magistrate, protecting a mutant in Florida.” He shrugged. “Not his job, ya know, but he was in the right place at the right time.”

Black nodded. “He was a good man, Pit. We all do what we must.” He looked up at Leather, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “Status?”

“We’ll have patrols along all the roads and in the woods around the school by nightfall. If they attempt to leave by air, we'have modified Gulfstream interceptors stationed strategically at three nearby airports.”

Styx continued the report. “We’ve got an RF monitoring and jamming van in place, and my roadies are working to tap the incoming phone and data lines. We’ll shortly be able to monitor communications in or out, and to cut the lines at a moment’s notice.”

Black leaned his elbows in the table and pressed his fingertips together. The gesture was at once thoughtful, and an opportunity to engage in isometric exercise. Black liked everything to do double-duty whenever possible. “So, we have them contained, and when we’re ready, isolated. Young Espeth has been quite resourceful in evading us so far, but in coming here for help, she’s created her own trap. All we need do is slam it shut on her.”

Scattered around the western part of South Carolina are the various patches of woodlands, hills, and low mountains that collectively make up Sumter National Forest. Within the boundaries of one of these patches, at the edge of the Blue

Ridge Mountains, was a separate plot of government land not listed on any map.

Originally, it was the home of a secret radar site guarding against missile attack by Soviet submarines in the Atlantic. A huge tunnel had been drilled into side of the mountain, visible from the outside only as a huge concrete portal sealed with steel doors. Passages were drilled out into the mountain and expanded into chambers, where a dozen men could live and work, and where tons of bulky radar and communications could be stored and operated against the threat of nuclear attack. But the technology on which the station was based had become obsolete long before the Cold War ended, and it had been gutted and sealed.

The locals took little notice when the site was years later leased to a “mining operation” which began to haul in unmarked trucks full of heavy equipment, and haul out truckloads of rock. Nor did the fences and signs, warning hikers and hunters who might consider trespassing against the possible danger of lost explosives and blasting caps, cause much disturbance. When, in time, the flow of trucks turned into a trickle, most assumed that the mining venture had been unsuccessful, or that whatever vein of whatever ore it had been mining had merely played out.

None of them could have suspected that the “mining company” was actually the cover for a secret government operation, or that the trucks had been hauling away not ore, but the tailings resulting from a massive expansion of the underground tunnels and galleries of the original installation. Nor did the trucks coming in carry mining equipment, but rather advanced equipment once associated with a now-defunct black operation known only as “Project Homegrown.”

Project Homegrown had been under the direction of General Macauley Sharpe, an effort to study, and replicate in humans, the powers of non-mutant super-humans. Mistakes had been made. The super-human vigilante “Spider-Man” and the government-sanctioned mutant group X-Factor had become involved. The project’s primary laboratory, known as “Shad-owbase” had been destroyed.

Sharpe had been made the scapegoat, court-martialed, and stripped of his rank and honor. Then, quietly, the very people who had taken everything from him offered him a new position, one with even less sanction, one for which he was ideally suited.

And so it was that, Mister, not general, Macauley Sharpe sat in a control room nearly a hundred feet under the South Carolina countryside. Rather than a general’s stars, he wore another kind of uniform, the suit of a corporate warrior. In front of him, a bank of monitors allowed him to observe every corner of the hidden installation called “the Foxhole.” His attention was focused on one screen in particular, showing the interior of a holding cell and the three young males housed within. Though it wasn’t much evident from the picture on the 'screen, each of these young men was a mutant, hand-picked as an experimental subject by Sharpe himself.

In front of him, two men worked at a sweeping horseshoeshaped console, overseeing the operation of the Foxhole. One of these men, Happersen, had served under him at Shadow-base. “Are the test results in, Happersen?”

Happersen spun around in his chair. Light reflected off the lenses of the horn-rimmed glasses hiding his eyes. Though he wore coveralls bearing the logo of the fictional “Canus Mining Company,” his erect posture and short haircut clearly marked him as a former military man. “All but the final genetic profiling, Mr. Sharpe. Everything looks positive. They seem to be ideal subjects for the program.”

“Begin the prep work then. Have the bionetics lab begin tuning the power amplifiers to their mutant auras. Have the armorers adapt the field gear to complement their individual mutant abilities. And of course, tel) the behavior modification lab that we’re ready to begin conditioning our subjects immediately.”

Happersen nodded and smiled slightly. “Eager to begin trials, sir?”

Sharpe nodded. “You know me, Happersen. I believe that a new weapon can only be truly proven in the field. It won’t be long before our guests are changed into obedient hounds, eager to help us hunt down their fellow mutants in the service of humanity.”

CHAPTER FOUR

'Wmi

Jono had escorted Espeth back to the bio-bed to complete her treatment while the students made preparations for the journey. Fortunately, the school had its own gas pumps, so they were able to top up the Xabago’s tanks before leaving. A raid on the school’s pantry⁷ stocked the vehicle’s kitchen.

The biggest problem was cash. They’d been caught off guard by Espeth’s announcement that they’d be unable to use plastic of any kind, credit cards, debit cards, ATM cards. The Genogoths would be looking for such transactions and would use them to track their travels.

'“You mean,” said Paige, after she’d made this proclamation from her infirmary bed, “that the Genogoths aren’t just unwilling to help, they’re actively trying to stop you?”

Espeth nodded. “I thought that was obvious. It’s what made my journey here so arduous. I had to hitch, jump freight-trains, and walk more miles than I can count, often cross country. I did my best to throw them off the trail, but they can’t be far behind. We have to get out of here just as soon as we can.” She turned her attention back to Jono. “So, this Xabago of yours, it’s some kind of aircraft?”

Paige and Jono stared at each other in surprise.

Finally, Jono said, “No, luv, it’s not exactly a bloody aircraft, but it’s transportation.”

Espeth looked concerned. She pushed back the monitoring console that hovered over her midsection and sat up. “What kind of vehicle is it?”

“You’ll see,” said Jono.

Espeth looked at Paige, demanding an answer.

“It’s a motor home.”

“What?”

“The Xabago,” repeated Paige, “is a motor home. A caravan. A camper van. Not a very pretty one, either.”

Espeth’s eyes were wide. “You’re Xavier’s pups! You’re supposed to have resources!”

Paige turned to leave. “We do have resources, but we’re at Xavier’s school. Consider yourself lucky we don’t have a big, yellow bus.”

Jono got Espeth settled back in the bio-bed, then followed Paige down to the service garage where the Xabago was parked. They arrived there at the same time as Ev, and followed him inside. There, Monet and Jubilee were loading the last of the food and supplies that they’d scrounged from around the school. Ev and Angelo had been given their own assignments.

“I’ve finished rerouting the phones,” Ev announced. “If I did things right, any call to any of the incoming phone lines at the* school should be routed out through another of the lines and into your satellite phone. If Emma, or anyone else calls, they shouldn’t be the wiser.”

The Xabago, Paige observed, wasn’t getting any better looking after several months of sitting out in the harsh, winter weather. The paint was even more streaked. The spray-painted red X’s that Angelo had “tagged” the sides and front of the vehicle with were now dull and faded, chipping in a few places where the paint hadn’t properly adhered. The bubble cockpit grafted onto the roof looked slightly milky and crazed from exposure. Even the chrome women reclined on the custom mud-flaps looked tarnished. “You sure this thing runs?” Jubilee emerged from the Xabago’s door and sat on its step. “Like a champ. Runs as good as it ever did.”

Paige was skeptical. “That isn’t saying much.”

“It’ll get us there,” said Jono.

The door in the side of the garage opened and Angelo strolled in, a big grin on his face. “Mission accomplished.” He held out a stack of bills and fanned them for show. It wasn’t a huge stack, and the bills were only twenties, but it was far greater than the sum total of money they’d been able to pool between them.

Paige looked at him. “Where did you get it?”

“The headmaster’s offices. All it took was a bent paper clip and certain unwholesome skills I learned from my gang days to get into the strongbox where they keep the petty cash.” Angelo saw the look on Paige’s face and responded. “We’ll pay it back when we return, chica. This is just a cash flow problem. I didn’t even scratch the lock.”

Jono examined the haul. “Bloody good thing too. The Xabago doesn’t exactly sip the petrol. We’ll need every bit of it.” '

Monet emerged to stand behind Jubilee in the doorway. “It’s going to be very crowded in here. You only had the three guys and Sean in here last trip. This time there will be seven of us.”

’ “We’ll sleep in shifts,” said Jono, “take turns keeping watch. This is a combat mission, not a pleasure cruise.”

Preparations complete, the group returned to the infirmary to fetch Espeth. But when they entered the room, the bed was empty. Paige called her name, but there was no answer. They all stared at one another.

Paige saved an especially angry stare for Jono. “You and Angelo search the room, the rest of us will fan out and see if she’s still in the building’’

Angelo picked up the pillow off the bed and threw it angrily at the door. “Madre de dios, she’s run out on us!” He shook his finger at Jono. “You see, I knew this would happen. I know something about loyalties, and that chica is conflicted.”    '    '

Jono checked in the bathroom, but emerged, obviously having found nothing. “If that’s the way you felt, Angelo, why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“I voted my way, I kept my suspicions to myself. I figured I could trust the rest of my compudres to be smart enough to figure it out for themselves. But some people weren’t thinking with their brains.”

Jono glared at him. “What’s that bloody supposed to mean?”

Just then they heard Paige call from down the hall. They both ran out to join the others standing outside a janitor’s closet.

“The door,” explained Paige, “was ajar.”

Angelo smirked grimly. “I wish 1 was in a punning mood.” He saw Jono glaring at him. “I know, ‘shut-up, Angelo.' Shutting up now.”

Paige looked from Jono to Angelo, trying to figure out what was going on between them, then turned her attention back to the interior of the closet. Among the mops, buckets, brooms and bottles of cleaning supplies, a ladder was bolted to one wall of the small room. “Roof access,” she explained.

“So,” said Jubilee, sarcastically, “she’s using her mutant powers to fly away.” She looked mockingly surprised. “Wait! Not a mutant. Well, duh.” Her mask dropped, and she frowned at them all. “Cut her some slack. Maybe she just needed some air, you know?”

The phone rang. Paige muttered under her breath. She tossed the phone to Angelo. “It’s the old people. Take this out of earshot and handle them.”

Angelo looked perplexed.

“Do it,” she hissed.

He flipped a sloppy salute and trotted back to the infirmary'.

“I could fly up,” suggested Monet, “and look for her.”

The hatch above them flopped open. “Not necessary,” said Espeth. She stepped onto an upper rung of the ladder, then slid down the outside of the side rails gripping them with her hands and the sides of her feet, in the manner of a sailor from some old submarine movie.

“Where have you been?” Paige demanded angrily.

“Well, duh, again,” said Jubilee.

Espeth didn’t seem to hear either one of them. Her expression was grave. “Are you ready to travel?”

“Yes,” said Paige, “we’re ready. We were coining to get you. What did you think you were doing?”

“You don’t understand,” she said, “I was on the roof scouting. There are people in the woods all around the school. The Genogoths have us surrounded. We’ve got to leave, now,” She started walking toward the garage, and the rest just naturally started following her.

Paige looked puzzled. “What? The security system hasn’t picked up any—”

“It didn’t pick me up either, did it? And these people have better equipment and vastly more experience than I do. These aren’t amateurs you’re dealing with here, they’re Genogoths.” As they passed the door to the infirmary, Angelo emerged from the door and fell in step with the rest of them. His eyes widened slightly as he spotted Espeth.

“She was watching our backs for us,” said Jono.

' Angelo smirked. “Watching her back, at least.” He handed the phone to Paige. “Sean says ‘hi,’ and to be sure to put away the croquet set when we’re through. The wire hoops are hell if they get caught in the lawn mower.”

He followed them all silently for a few yards as Espeth broke into a trot, and the rest kept in step. “Somebody want to tell me what’s happening?”

Jubilee’s eyes remained fixed straight ahead. “Genogoths. Surrounded. Imminent danger. Gotta split.”

“Oh,” he said, “sorry I asked.”

The conference room was in one of the chambers that had been used for the radar base that preceded the Foxhole. Though the conference table, chairs, podium, lighting fixtures, and flat screen computer monitors on the rock walls were all relatively new, someone, either out of whimsy or frugality, had left a pair of early 60s vintage ceiling fans hanging over the table. They whirred quietly over the assembled staff meeting, adding a faint whiff of ozone to the air.

Sharpe stood at the head of the table, and all eyes were on him. He let the moment linger. He liked attention, liked to wield authority. He missed his uniform, the stars, the brass buttons, the medals and ribbons representing his service in covert actions in South America and the Mid East, and his two years on the staff of General Thunderbolt Ross at Hulkbuster Base. Despite his continued service to the government, his continued authority at this project, he missed the power, authority, and respect that only a military officer could truly command.

That had been taken from him forever. It was something he could never truly forgive, never forget. His time with General Ross had given him little sympathy for super-humans, and now, after his encounter with X-Factor, he had even less for mutants. They were vermin, suitable only for use as experimental animals. Nothing more, nothing less.

He scanned the faces in front of him, men and women, mostly former military or intelligence personnel. Most were wash-outs from their former organizations, expelled for the very ruthlessness that Sharpe coveted for his organization. Fortunately, his shadowy employers had made a list of such people available to him. There were a few new faces, needed technical specialists that had only recently made it through their convoluted recruitment and relocation.

“Before we begin, I want to review our project’s methods and goals for our newest staff-members. Most of you are familiar with ‘Project Homegrown.’ The objective of Homegrown was to analyze so-called superhumans in order to duplicate their powers in normal humans. For our purposes, we were allowed the use of convicts as experimental subjects on which to test our methods. We were successful, not only in temporarily inducing powers in these subjects, but in developing the rudiments of mind-control technology that allowed us to use our subjects in field trials.”

He touched a control on the podium, and an image of the Shadow Force, the test subjects from Homegrown, flashed on the big screen behind him. He turned to look at the six men and women dressed in similar green uniforms, topped with power inducing yokes and their prototype mind-controi headpieces.

“Unfortunately, our project ran afoul super-human intervention. Several of our subjects were terminated, our project exposed, and our installation, Shadowbase, was destroyed. I willingly sacrificed my military career, as did some of the others in this room, to provide plausible deniability for my superiors, persons at the highest level of government.”

He scanned the room, paying particular attention to the new troops, without making it obvious that he was doing so. They were lapping it up. The “noble sacrifice” thing always got them, even if it wasn’t exactly true. It didn’t matter. Truth was what your superior said-it was. He’d learned that a long time ago.

“It is publicly believed that all the equipment and data from Project Homegrown was destroyed with Shadowbase. Given the ongoing threat of super-human involvement, we’ve worked hard to maintain that impression and to remove ourselves from those areas frequented by super-humans.

“In fact, much of the equipment and data from Homegrown survived in off-site storage facilities and our superhuman data acquisition stations in Manhattan. These formed the basis of our current program. In recent months, we’ve made great progress in improving our mind-control technology, and adapting our shadow-agent technology for use on mutants.”

He pushed another button on the podium, cutting live to the camera in the holding cell. Though the sound was off, one of the subjects, the most recent capture, seemed quite agitated, not an unusual after-effect of the sleep-gas used. He smiled. He wanted them disoriented. That was part of the plan.

“In the last day we’ve obtained our first three mutant subjects. Obviously, they are not volunteers. They have been designated code-names for the purposes of our project. The stocky one is an animal telepath with minor physical mutations. His designation is ‘Top Dog.’ The small one is a telepathic locator, designation ‘Bloodhound.’ The tall one is a negative-thermomorph, code-name ‘Three Dog Night.’ ”

One of the new people, a rather striking woman with long, blonde hair raised her hand. “Fortuna Bouille, Mr. Sharp. My understanding of Homegrown was that the technology was used to give powers to subjects without any special abilities. These are mutants, they should already have powers, shouldn’t they?”

“A reasonable question, but not all mutants are in the power class of Magneto or X-Factor’s Havok, Bouille. Some have minor mutations of limited power, sometimes effectively useless. But all mutants carry the X-gene, and our research has shown that this gene gives them an enhanced bio-signature, an ‘aura’ for lack of a better word, one that allows them the potential to tap vast energies in a way we don’t understand. The Homegrown technology also worked by enhancing an(i altering the normal human bio-signature, but there were drawbacks that came out in field-testing.”

He pushed another control, and a picture of a large and advanced power reactor appeared on the screen. “The biggest was a dependence on a centralized broadcast power, much of which was wasted simply maintaining the altered bio-signature. It’s ironic that accidental readings taken of the mutant Havok during the destruction of Shadowbase were ultimately responsible for our breakthrough.

“As you said, mutants already have special abilities, no matter how weak, and we have also discovered that they all have the potential, even if they can’t directly access it, to tap into vast energies.”

He turned and smiled at Bouille. “Therefore we don’t need to impose an altered bio-signature, nor do we need to supply power. All we need do is enhance what is already latent in any subject carrying the X-gene, then control that subject for our purposes. Our job is actually simpler by an order of magnitude.”

“So,” said Bouille, “we’re here to perform dangerous biogenic experiments on unwilling, mind-controlled, human-mutant subjects?”

Sharpe raised an eyebrow. “You have a problem with that?”    ‘

She grinned and shifted in her chair. “No, it’s pretty much my dream job.”

Black sat in his car, parked beside the road near Xavier’s school. About a mile ahead, there was a cutoff to a private road leading to the school itself. He held an unfolded road map in front of his face for show, but in fact, all his attention was focused on the nearly invisible radio receiver in his left ear.

A voice said, “I’m picking up motor noise on my shotgun mike. Heavy diesel, coming from the service garage. No sign of movement.”

' 'Another voice, “Do you have visual on any activity there?” The first voice again. “Negative, the doors are closed, and the rear access to that building is not visible from beyond the compound.’*

Black felt himself tense. This was a critical moment, and there were decisions to be made, not only when to move, but how to move. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and turned his wrist so that he could talk into the disguised microphone in the clasp of the watchband. “Leather, this is Black.” “Go ahead,” said Leather, “we’re ready to move in on your authorization.”

“Your orders are that the mutants are not be harmed. That is the priority. They are to be captured unharmed if possible. Only Espeth is expendable. And no firearms.” The latter instruction should have been unnecessary, the philosophy of the Genogoths called for use of minimal force where possible. In theory, if the operatives were good enough, guns should be necessary in only the most dire circumstances, and the Genogoths were good.

But he had noticed in Leather a tendency to overkill that he found disturbing. A certain ruthlessness was necessary to the job, but it was important not to lose sight of the greater goals.

There was a moment of silence on the radio. “That limits our options, Black.”

“Options are always limited. It’s only a matter of degree. We need to interrogate the mutants to learn what they know and who they may have told. We hope to contain the situation, but first we have to learn if it can be contained. In any case, I’m hopeful that they can be salvaged somehow. There are methods of inducing amnesia, or they might be relocated to a containment camp so that we can maintain their genetic stock.” “It places my people at risk, Black.”

“That risk is the duty of any Genogoth, Leather. You have your orders. Now, move in when ready.”

Jono sat in the driver’s seat of the Xabago, listening to the motor rumble. The air smelled strongly of soot and diesel exhaust, but powerful fans in the roof of the garage kept them from becoming a real danger. “I wish,” he said idly, “that we had some kind of diversion.”

The door opened, and Espeth climbed into the motor-home. “They’re out there. As I expected, the motor noise has caused them to become careless.”

Angelo raised an eyebrow. “So, what’s the word?”

Espeth looked grim. “Not good. They’ll charge the vehicle before we get off the grounds, and they’ve undoubtedly got a roadblock planned.”

Paige and Monet looked at each other, and for once, seemed to be on the same wavelength.

“Earlier,” said Paige, “you said something about the Xabago being an aircraft.”

“How much,” said Monet, “do you think the Xabago weighs?”

Ev nodded. “Maybe too much for one, but maybe not too much for two.”

“Never mind that,” said Jubilee, “has anybody seen my skates?”

Leather lay on his belly in a ditch at the bottom of the driveway. It had taken him more than an hour to creep this close to the school without being seen. If he twisted and looked back over his left shoulder, he could just make out one of their people sitting on a platform attached to the trunk of a tree, thirty feet in the air, and pointing a sensitive microphone at the garage.

“Activity,” said the voice in his ear, a voice he knew was being transmitted from the watcher in the tree.

Leather watched the garage intently as one of the big doors rolled up with a motorized whir. The motor noise was louder now, but he could see only darkness inside the door. Then something small and yellow, rolling out of the darkness and down the driveway. A girl in a yellow raincoat, A girl on skates. A girl on skates.

'‘‘Something’s wrong,” he said into his radio. “We may have misjudged the situation.”

“The girl is identified as Jubilation Lee,” said the voice from the tree, “mutant plasma/energy caster of great reported potential, but limited ability. Threat factor is minimal.”

The girl rolled slowly down the gentle slope of the driveway, seemingly unaware of any danger. Then she bent sharply forward, placed her palms on the ground, and went into a graceful handstand. The bottom of her coat fell down around her shoulders. Leather noticed that her hands were placed over a large crack in the sidewalk, as though it had somehow been her target. None of it made any sense.

The girl continued her handstand for several more seconds, then tucked and rolled, ending in a sitting position with her knees raised. She wore red tinted glasses, but he could swear she was looking right at him. He pushed himself farther down into the ditch.

Then the ground began to rumble, and the soil around him seemed to boil with glowing streamers of plasma, coming out of the ground like earthworms after a heavy rain. The girl. She had done this somehow, sending the plasma into the ground during her handstand, then guiding it underground. There was a bang, like a gunshot next to his ear, and the streamers began to explode all around them.

Despite himself, Leather jumped to a crouch as one of the streamers exploded inches from his face. It took him a moment to regain his composure, at which point he realized two things. First, he had exposed himself to anyone watching from the school compound. Second, the other door of the garage was open, and a bizarre looking camper van of some kind was advancing down the driveway.

Furious at himself for become distracted, he held his microphone up and shouted, “They’re on the move by vehicle! All units inside the perimeter attack! I want a roadblock by the inner gate! Go! Go!”

Jono sat in the driver’s seat of the Xabago, Paige in the passenger seat to his right. Espeth stood behind them, looking anxiously out the windshield. One moment, the grounds and driveway in front of them were empty, then a virtual carnival of Genogoths boiled from every possible hiding place converging on their position. Farther down the driveway, Jono saw a large, black pickup and an equally black SUV appear from either side of the decorative gate, sliding to a stop nose to nose, blocking the drive.

He felt strangely calm.

He turned to Paige. “Tell me, luv, ever see the film Flub-berT

“No,” she said, “but I saw The Absent-Minded Professor

“Never heard of it,” he said.

As the Xabago rolled past, Jubilee jumped up onto her skates and skated furiously after it. She had almost caught it, her hand reaching for the roof-access ladder above the back bumper, when a bearded young Genogoth, head down, charged out of the shrubbery next to the drive headed directly for her.

She swerved, jumped, hit him on the head with her skate and rolled right down his spine. She used the increased height to spring herself into a flip that took her clear over a woman in biking leathers. Jubilee hit the ground rolling, but she was headed away from the Xabago. She jumped, changing direction in the process, pumping all-out to catch up with it.

Then a man in a sniper’s camouflage suit popped out of the landscaping and grabbed her around the ankles. She went down hard on the concrete, thanking whoever had put the dorky-looking knee and elbow pads onto their training uniforms.

Then there were more, and more, grabbing her arms and legs, holding her up like a puppet, unable to get leverage. She watched as the Xabago rolled away.

Leather watched the camper roll past. It wouldn’t get far with the road-block just ahead of it, and he could see a group of about a dozen people who seemed to have the skating girl well in hand. She struggled, showing no evidence of her mutant powers. Perhaps she had exhausted herself creating the impressive diversionary display.

He stepped up to look at the girl who had humiliated him. She was beaten now, fear marking her Asian features. “Put her down,” he ordered.

His people holding her lowered her feet to the ground, but continued to grip her arms. Despite appearances, she had exhibited the strength, grace, and speed of a professional athlete. But now she was humbled, like a cheetah in a cage, struggling only weakly.

Suddenly, one of the people in the group pointed behind him and shouted. He turned and realized something was wrong, though he couldn’t immediately tell what. Then he saw the front of the camper lift off the ground as though by an invisible jack. Then the rear. To his horror, it passed just beyond the reach of the group assembled on the driveway to intercept it. Underneath the frame he could see two of the mutant teens, flying, carrying the motor-home, literally on their backs.

It was thirty feet off the ground as it passed over the roadblock. Below, he saw Black’s small sports car slipping between the bumpers of the stopped vehicles. Black was here to witness his humiliation, and they were getting away!

At least they had the girl. “Your friends,” he said, “are leaving without you. Or was that the plan all along? Self sacrifice is a noble impulse when not wasted.’’ He reached his fingers under her chin and gently raised her eyes to meet his. “Perhaps we can use you as bait.”

The girl looked shocked. “You can’t do that!”

He chuckled. “What’s to stop us, little mutant?”

Suddenly her expression changed, from supposed terror to a broad smile, and the knot in Leather’s stomach told him that somehow he’d just been had.

“Because,” she said, “to do that, you’d have to keep me.” She gestured upwards with her eyes and whispered, “Incoming”, ,

He turned. The sun was suddenly blotted out by the Xabago, angling down out of the sky exactly like a hunting hawk, if hawks weighed six thousand pounds and were made of corrugated metal. As he dived for the ground, he heard more of the mutant girl’s fireworks, saw her break free and start running. He hit, rolled, saw the vehicle swoop by just above him, saw the side door open and a young man with putty-gray skin lean out.

Angelo gripped a towel bar under the Xabago’s sink with the extended skin of his right toes, then leaned out the door. The Xabago was tilted nose-down at about a forty-five degree angle. Things were shifting noisily inside all the cabinets and closets. Somewhere he heard glass breaking, and the frame of the vehicle itself groaned ominously. Things rolled down the center aisle of the vehicle from front to rear. He oofed as a rolling duffel bag hit him in the belly.

“Thank the Blessed Mother,” he whispered, “that we didn’t have time to fill the water bed.”

Below him, he saw the Genogoths ducking for cover, saw

Jubilee using her fireworks to blast herself free of her captors. He stretched out the skin of his left arm forming a huge caricature of his normal hand. Jubilee flashed by below, and he caught her like a baseball in a catcher’s mitt.

Leather watched as the flying motor-home lifted away, the girl dangling underneath. Enraged, he reached into the hidden pocket under his vest and drew the automatic pistol hidden there. A press of a stud, and the extended barrel and pop-up site of the S.H.I.E.L.D. covert-ops model snapped into position. He squinted, drew a bead on the rear of the flying vehicle. He held his breath, felt his own pulse. For a moment, nothing existed but him and the target. He squeezed off a round, heard the slug hit metal.

A powerful hand grabbed his wrist, pushed the gun up, away from the target, then expertly twisted it from his hand. Hg shook his injured fingers and turned to face his attacker. Black.

He grunted and wedged the skin of his other foot between the stove and the kitchen cabinets. “Have you gained weight, chicaT'

Jubilee looked up from where she dangled. “Just watch where you put your fingers, smart-guy!”

“Did someone,” yelled Ev from under the vehicle, “hear a shot?”

Angelo ducked his head down, looked under the Xabago. “You’re imagining things,” he called, then turned to wink at Monet. “Word up, pretty lady?”

She scowled at him. “This thing is getting heavy. I hope somebody has a plan.”

Jubilee was climbing up his extended arm, hand over hand. He pulled his head back and yelled toward the cab, “Does anyone know where we’re going?”

Espeth ran back to give him and Jubilee a hand. “Head for the river,” she yelled. “If we cross it before we land, it’s twenty miles by road for them to catch up.”

“She said—” started Angelo.

“I heard,” said Monet. The Xabago turned slowly toward the river.

“Does anyone,” yelled Ev, “smell gas?”

“It wasn’t me,” replied Angelo.

“Not that kind,” he said.

Jubilee was crawling up over Angelo’s shoulder, and Espeth was pulling her inside. “You’re just being paranoid,” he called.

Then the propane tank on the back of the Xabago burst into flame.

Black flicked the clip from Leather’s pistol with his thumb. He put it in one pocket of his black sports-coat, clicked the barrel and sight to their closed positions, then put the gun in another. “You could have hit one of the mutants,” he said. “If you'd hit one of the flying ones, you might have killed them all.”    '

Leather watched the motor-home, girl still dangling beneath, as it vanished beyond the tree-line. The truck and van that had formed the roadblock were already rolling out in pursuit. “I was aiming for their fuel tank. They can’t get far that way. I thought if I could disable their vehicle—”

Black got directly in his face. “That was a stupid move, Leather. I don’t want any more mistakes like that.”

Leather growled. “If you hadn’t tied our hands, they might never have gotten away!”

“Our duty,” said Black, coldly, “is to protect the X-gene whenever possible. Remember that.” He turned and trotted back to his car, to join the pursuit.

Leather glared after him. “Don’t worry,” he said under his breath, “I have a long memory.”

Angelo gave Paige a questioning look as she pushed past him into the open doorway. “Hold your breath,” she said, “and give me a boost up.” She ripped a hunk of skin away from her shoulder, revealing a gray, shiny, fibrous material underneath. “Asbestos,” she said.

Angelo’s eyes went wide. He held his breath, cupped his hands for her to step into, and hoisted her up over the top of the door.

Black tried to drive the Jag on the twisting forest roads and read the map at the same time. As the tires squealed around a curve and the map tried to refold itself, it was one of those rare times that he wished he’d availed himself of the full-time aide that his position in the Genogoths afforded him.

The feeling would pass. Getting close to people was only trouble. People were only trouble, as Leather had proved today. Black preferred to travel alone. He would have done the whole job alone if he could, but it was far too much for one man, or even one generation.

The map flopped open again, and the road straightened again. Espeth and the escaped mutant children were headed for the river. He needed to know where the closest crossing was. His finger traced a blue line on the map, glancing up to steer the car back into the middle of the road.

He groaned. The closest bridge was almost back to Snow Valley, miles in the wrong direction. A horn sounded, and he looked up and swerved just in time to avoid running head-on into a red pick-up truck.

“Leather,” he said into his radio mike, “how long till we get a ’copter on-scene?”

Silence. Then, “We don’t have any in the area. Xavier’s people are known for their fast jets. Nobody expected them to attempt escape in—Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

Black bristled. “We’re going to lose them,” he growled into the radio. The trees parted. He leaned over the wheel and looked up. His eyes went wide. “Then, perhaps not,” he said. He kept the flying vehicle in sight for only a moment, but long enough to see the flames.

He turned off the transmitter, cursed under his breath, and pressed the accelerator.

Paige Guthrie climbed across the roof hand-over hand, ripping off chunks of skin as she moved. She wasn’t sure if the synthetic asbestos she’d turned her body into was as toxic as the real thing, but she hadn’t wanted to take chances inside. She only hoped it was as flame resistant.

The wind whipped past as she swung herself over the back of the Xabago and climbed down the ladder. Asbestos was a rock, basically, and she was strong in this form. That helped. She was also heavy. That didn’t. Treetops flew by under her feet.

To her relief, the flame was still limited to the tank, and hadn't spread to the rear of the vehicle. She could see where a bullet had nicked the tank, causing a tiny fracture which jetted gas and flame. The bad news was, there was plenty of gas in the tank, enough to turn it into a bomb at any moment.

She climbed down onto the rear bumper. Blue flames jetted over her belly as she slid past the tank. It tickled. Once she was on the other side of the tank, she could see that it was held into its bracket by a metal strap, and there was a buckle holding it closed.

She reached in, flame playing through her fingers and making it hard to see. She shifted her grip on the frame of the back window, and gasped as she almost lost it. Her asbestos fingers were slippery.

She pulled at the buckle which was rusted and layered with paint. At first it wouldn’t budge, then it came open with a snap.

The strap sprang open. The tank fell out of the bracket. It hung from the copper tubing that connected the tank to the Xabago, spinning. The jet of flame played over the thin, corrugated metal of the vehicle, blistering paint like a blowtorch. In moments it might cut through.

She kicked at the tank. It turned, more flames against the vehicle. Again. Something on top of the tank snapped. There was a loud hiss, and flame enveloped her.

She kicked blindly. Another snap, and the tank fell free.

Then her fingers slipped completely from their handhold.

Black rounded another curve and the road paralleled the river. He tried to catch some glimpse of their escaped quarry, looking up just in time to see something like a flaming comet coming straight at him.

Instinctively he reached for the door handle, and rolled from the car.

Impact. Pain. Spinning. Noise. A terrible heat.

Then he stopped, lying in wet grass along a ditch. He heard the roar of flames, and, after stopping just long enough to make sure that nothing major seemed to be broken, sat up. He watched as his car coasted off the road and rolled down the embankment into the river, already a burned-out hulk before it hit the water.

Sharpe studied the young man slumped in the examination chair, the harsh overhead spotlight casting dark shadows on his unconscious face. As Sharpe watched, a technician stepped between them, adjusted an arm-mounted remote scanner, nodded at Sharpe, and then slipped back into the shadows at the edge of the room. Sharpe leaned closer. The boy didn’t look dangerous. He was the youngest of the three, with what seemed, on the surface, to be the least useful mutant ability.

Sharpe stood and removed a small headset which he clipped over his right ear. He smiled. Appearances could be deceiving. “Status,” he said almost inaudibly. Sensors in the headset picked up the minute sounds conducted through the bones in his head and transmitted them to the next room, where half-a-dozen technicians invisibly monitored the session.

“Subject is approaching awareness,” said a woman’s voice in his ear. Bouille. “Shall we hit him with more sonics?”

Here in the controlled environment of the Foxhole they could use beamed sonic stunners to subdue the subjects rather than the cruder sleep-gas used on them in the field. “No,” he replied, “not if you’re ready. We can begin.”

“Shall we wake him then?”

“Good to go,” he said.

The boy—the subject—twitched as a mild electric tingle was directed through the wrist shackles that bound him to the chair. His head rolled groggily, then he snapped upright as someone zapped him with a second charge.

The subject looked around, confused, tugged ineffectively at his bonds, and finally slumped back in the chair. “Not again,” he said.

Sharpe stepped into the pool of light, so that the subject could get a good look at him. “Again,” he said. “And again, and again, as necessary.”

* The subject’s eyes narrowed. Sharpe knew his face would be the first stranger that the subject had seen since his capture. “Let me go,” said the subject. “Let us all go.”

He smiled grimly. “So predictable. I’d have expected something more original from a radio professional.”

The subject looked surprised. “You know who I am, then?” “Oh, yes, even if I hadn’t watched your rather pathetic display for our cameras on taped replay.” He stepped closer, the smile melting like ice in a fire. “That’s why I picked you— mutant.”

Again surprise. Good. Keep him off balance. “Oh, yes, I’ve listened to your program. I listened to Walt Norman before you came along, with your pro-mutant propaganda. It was the ruin of a perfectly good program. But then, without it, I never would have found you''

The subject said nothing. He just stared at Sharpe,

Sharpe clasped his hands behind his back and walked slowly around the chair. In the other room, complex devices were recording not only every word said, every movement made, but every aspect of the subject’s physiology as he responded to Sharpe’s prodding. Sensors mapped the electrical and chemical pathways of his brain, how consciously and unconsciously he accessed the power inherent in his X-gene. With every breath, every thought, the subject betrayed himself further. Sharpe had only to provoke a reaction from him.

“A few years ago I cared nothing for mutants, one way or the other. Then a group of mutants called X-Factor—you’ve heard of them? Yes, I see you have. X-Factor took everything from me, my r<jnk, my career, my public honor. Only then did I fully understand the threat that mutants posed to the world, to Homo sapiens. Only then did it became personal. Fortunately, circumstances have offered me an opportunity to contribute to the ultimate downfall of mutant-kind.”

“Good data,” said the voice in his ear, “see if you can get his heart rate up.”

“You are not,” continued Sharpe, “a celebrity here. You are not a man. You are nothing. You are an experimental subject, code-name Bloodhound, nothing more. Some of my superiors said it was a mistake to take such a public figure for our project, but I simply wanted to silence you. End your prattling. And—,” he smiled, the irony was so sweet, “your program has made you many enemies in Washington, powerful enemies. Some people work their whole lives to earn such notoriety. You achieved it well before reaching drinking age. Congratulations.”

• “What, about my friends? They didn’t do anything t
• “You might be surprised,” she said. “Let them resc
• Pound turned and left as well, leaving his robots