Disclaimer: I don’t own Adam, Jesse, Shalimar, Brennan, Emma, or any others of the Mutant X universe. I’m not using this for money. Yatsa, yatsa, and yatsa.
Claimer: I, however, own Kellei Lyinne (Kelly Lynn), Evyeline Ellyizabyth (Evelyn Elizabeth), Lillie-joi, Corajean, Douglas, and those NOT of the Mutant X universe.
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Resigned to Fate
Chapter One: Darkness
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“What I am about to tell you is basically classified information. Information that goes no further then you and you alone. No one in the underground is to be told nor can either of you tell Emma or Brennan. I will do that when the time comes.” Adam warned his two protégés.
Jesse Kilmartin and Shalimar Fox nodded, and continued to eye the brunet before them.
“I know I’ve told very little of myself to any of you. I still won’t explain why I’ve chosen to do that.” He sighed, “But a piece of my past may be in more trouble than she can handle.” He turned to the desk and motioned for the two to move around to the other side of the orange surface, “Kellei Lyinne.”
The green holographic screen popped up, the image of a young girl around fourteen in the center of it.
“Kellei
Lyinne…” Shalimar’s gazed shifted suddenly to Adam, “No last name?”
He nodded, “Keep reading.”
“Mother’s name is Evyeline Ellyizabyth.” Jesse added, before he looked closer to read who the now sixteen-year old father was. It became his turn to wear the mask of shock, “Her father’s name is Adam.”
“She’s your daughter, isn’t she?” Shalimar asked.
“Her mother and I met at Genomex. She was my assistant, which angered Eckhart to no end considering she was a feral.” He smiled graciously at the blonde, “She was ursine, not feline.
“We were married within a few months, and Kellei was born eight months after that. Her abilities became apparent with days of her birth – bottles moving, things that weren’t really there, talking that we’d only hear in our heads.”
“She’s a psionic.”
Adam nodded, “Her abilities always seemed stronger then others that I’ve met, and now it seems that it’s gotten her noticed by the GSA.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that from the look of our scans, they’re looking for her intensely.”
Shalimar furrowed her eyebrows, “And you want us to get her?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, getting her will require more then talking to her.”
“Why?”
“Because we had a…falling out.” Adam continued his earlier explanation; “Her mother died when Kellei was four, leaving me to raise her. I wasn’t sure I could, but I did it for ten years. Unfortunately, I had to tell her many elaborate lies to keep her from being discovered by Eckhart. Even before the GSA was created, I knew if he got his hands on any of you…”
“We’d be doomed.”
He nodded, “However, Kellei found out about my lies and used them as her basis for leaving home.”
“At fourteen?!”
“She refused to stay in the house with me. She didn’t think she could trust me, and foolishly, I believed that she’d come back within a week after staying with friends. It didn’t go that way.”
A call interrupted the conversation, and Adam automatically called out, “Answer.”
“Hello?” A distinctly teenage male voice asked, shakily.
The computer blinked up a name – Douglas Alleyan.
Adam blinked the surprise from his eyes, “Doug?”
“Adam. Thank god. Look, I need you to meet me at eleventh and main.”
“Doug…”
“Kellei will kill me if I tell you any more…just meet me there.”
“Alright. Off.” The call ended, and before either Jesse or Shalimar could say anything, Adam was running for the door to the Double Helix.
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Kellei
opened her sleep-drugged eyes and surveyed her surroundings. As her eyes focused, she suddenly realized
she wasn’t in the comfortable surroundings of her home, but somewhere
else…somewhere she’d only seen in her dreams.
It was a
field, filled completely with black flowers and healthy golden-brown grass,
which eventually turned into a soft red-sanded beach with crystal clear waters
of black and beige. Three trees grew
behind her at the base of a rolling hill, each a different color – one pink,
one white, and one black.
She
continued to allow her eyes to roam until they gazed upwards. The sky was the colors of a peacock’s tail
with a turquoise sun. A raven flew
overhead, followed by a dove and a cardinal.
As watched them fly off, she caught sight of her clothing – she was
dressed in, well…a dress. It was long
and loose with soft, semi-transparent long sleeves in blue. She wore tights as well, in a light pink
color that reminded her of her mom’s favorite necklace. On her hands were black gloves.
But
something was off; something was different.
This place had always been calming – it suddenly felt…tense. This was more then a dream – this was real. For once she could touch it, hold it. She could hear the ocean, the birds’
ceaseless cawing.
“Hello,
Kellei.”
The
voice had come from nowhere, and Kellei wasn’t sure she’d even heard it until
she looked to the tree and saw a small polar bear cub.
“I am in
big trouble.” She murmured.
“No, not
in trouble. Just a little lost.” The
cub smiled, and climbed down.
“Please
say I’m dreaming.”
She
shook her head, “Sorry. You’re sorta in
a coma.”
“A
COMA?!” She yelped, then calmed, “No problem…I’ll just wake up.”
“Not
possible.”
“Why the
hell not?”
“Because
you’re the one keeping yourself here.”
Kellei
laughed, “Right…I’m keeping myself here for the simple joy of toying with my
friends and letting the GSA get closer to me…Look, I’m asleep, you’re a
delusion of mine. I’ll wake up and this
will all be over.”
“Alright,
but it’s gonna be a couple of very insane days if you continue to believe
that.”
Flustered,
Kellei fell back to the grass, her head in her hands.
-*-*-
“We don’t get it. She came home around six,” Doug explained, never seeing Adam’s forlorn look when he said home, “and collapsed about an hour later. We have no clue what’s wrong with her. All we know is that Lillie-joi can’t read her and Corajean says her precog is showing her nonsense.” He finished, opening the door and walking into the apartment.
“Nonsense?”
A teenage girl, obviously of a Mediterranean descent, appeared in front of them with a basin filled with water balanced precariously under her left arm and washcloths clutched in her right hand, “Doug, could ya’ help me here?” She asked, the stress evident in her voice.
He walked forward the few steps and took the items from her before turning back to Adam, Jesse, and Shalimar, “This is Corajean. She’ll talk to you for a few minutes.” He told them and disappeared around a corner and into a room.
“Nonsense?” Jesse repeated for Adam.
“That’s Doug’s word for it, but that’s essentially what it is.” She replied, waving them in to the living room, “All I see are flashes usually, since my precog is still developing, but lately…mostly I see people crying, but I never see anyone die. I never have anything in direct relation to Kellei, but I have that feeling that they’re crying over her.”
Adam nodded, “But it doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s going to die. Precog is like fate – it changes with every choice we make.”
Corajean nodded, “True, but it’s probable that what I see is what’s going to happen. Which is why I let Douglas call you.” She looked at her socks, “We were forbidden from ever calling you. She needed her time to figure everything out, and she’s done it, but she’s been waiting for a time when she won’t attract the GSA to Sanctuary.”
“She told you about Sanctuary?”
“Not where it is, but what it’s like. She refused to put Mutant X in that kind of danger.”
“But by telling you…”
The seventeen-year old cut Shalimar off, “I would never tell anyone about Sanctuary. The only reason she told me was because when she did go back she wanted to take me, Douglas, my sister, and my daughters with her. She wants us to see it someday.”
Adam was growing more antsy, but kept his outward expression normal, “It looks like you may get to see Sanctuary now.”
Corajean smiled, “I knew you’d say that. The lab, right?”
“Right.” He smiled.
The door suddenly slammed and Corajean’s twin sister, Lillie-joi stormed in, “We have to go NOW!”
“What? Why?”
“Just get Glory and Americus!” She looked at the other three, “You must be Adam. Hi.” She looked around quickly, “DOUGLAS!”
He appeared in the doorway reluctantly, expecting her to be angry that he’d eaten her last poptart again, “What, Lil?” He asked, tiredly.
“GSA incoming! Get Kell!”
“Jesse, go get the Helix!” Adam instructed, sending the Molecular running.
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“This is
not fair, you know.” Kellei whined, looking at the bear, “I should be home with
my friends. The GSA can’t be far from
them. And I know for a fact that
they’ve been looking for me too.”
“Like I
said before – you’re the one keeping yourself here. This is your place. This
is the place that you use to think and sort things out. Which used to be your dreamland, but now
you’re in limbo.”
“Limbo?”
“Stuck
between a rock and a hard place, undecided.
Pick an expression. What it
comes down to is that you are in this place, because you have unfinished business,
but at the same time, your body is dying.”
“Uh
huh. Has anyone ever told you that
you’re friggin’ insane?” She asked, only slightly amused by the cub’s answers.
“No. I didn’t actually exist until you thought me
up.”
“Which explains why you sound
exactly like my mother.” She murmured, standing up and looking around
again. She had been in this place for
hours, but she wasn’t tired, which was a good thing considering she didn’t have
anything that could remotely pass for a bed beside the cub.
“So are
you going to start thinking of your unfinished business or am I gonna just
gonna sit here and watch you slow destroy yourself?”
“You
have such a way with words.”
“Thank
you.”
“That
wasn’t a compliment.”
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In the amount of time it had taken the Helix to return to Sanctuary with its passengers, Adam had re-learned everything about his daughter. Doug and his younger sisters had immediately started explaining her life in the last two years, and they told him everything – from her boyfriend to her ever-growing abilities to her love for Corajean’s daughters.
“She named them Glory and Americus?” Jesse asked. He was sitting beside Adam, with Shalimar on his other side. His feet were resting against another chair, which Shal’ kept scolding him about, but he just laughed and continued sitting there.
“Yep. Americus is from some book…Where The Heart Is, I think. And Glory…I think Lillie-joi was involved in her naming.” Corajean turned to her twin.
Lillie-joi, however, was plastered to the door to the Helix’s lab. Kellei Lyinne was laying in the chair, her round, pixie-like face contorted with unbidden agony with strands of her golden-brown hair stuck to her forehead with sweat.
“Lil? Yo’, Lillie-joi! Snap to!” Douglas sighed, and when he got no response, he gazed back at the three Mutant X members, “Lillie and Kellei are best friends. They’re always doing everything together, and most often, if you’re looking for one of them, that’s were the other is. It’s probably because they’re both telepaths, but what ever the reason, they’re as close as twins.”
Corajean smirked at the last part of her brother’s sentence, and then sighed, “Lil isn’t going to leave Kell’s side. Not until she’s up and laughing about her ‘stupidity’.”
Adam simply nodded, his heart twisting – he wished that he had been the one to be close to Kellei and he knew that in time, he could be, but it still hurt that her family didn’t include him.
Catching the look in his eyes, Cora spoke, “She doesn’t hate you, you know. And several times, she has mentioned that she wanted to go home to you more than anything, but it’s always been dangerous. Especially for her.” She paused, “When you said that you knew the GSA was looking for her from the scans, I know you were thinking that it was just within the last few weeks, but they’ve been looking for her for longer then that. Eckhart maybe a pretentious, delusional, egotistical, asshole, but Kellei’s pretty sure that he knows that you scan the organization’s computers for data, which is why for the last year and a half, anything that had to do with Kell within the GSA was done by memos and written documents. They didn’t want you knowing that they were looking for your daughter.”
“But how do you know all of this?” Shalimar asked. It seemed odd to her that they knew more than Adam did.
Cora and Doug passed a look between each other, “Well…” She started, “Kell’s sort of been running her own Mutant X. Some of the new mutants that you’ve put into the underground in March and April were people that Kell directed to contact you. And she has people inside of Genomex and the GSA who feed her information. She’s not exactly the girl you remember, Adam. The whole innocent schoolgirl thing was blown out of the water the day she figured out what you’d been keeping from her.”
“How did
she do all that?”
“Easily – she took your
example of mystery, and taught people not to fear those who are different. Kell is just like you. She tries to deny it, but she really is just
like you. Everything she does, patterns
something you did.”
“That and the fact that she’s got four out of the five types of psonic abilities probably has something to do with it.” Doug added, “I’m pretty sure that it always helps to be a telekinetic, a telepath, a telempath, and an illusionist.”
Jesse looked at Adam, “How is that possible?”
“With psonics, it’s rare to have more than one of the traits, but it is possible. Kellei’s genetics mutated while Evy was carrying her, making her have the four abilities, but as for how she got the codes for them, I’m unsure. Evyeline was feral, like I told you before, so I’m not really knowledgeable on how our daughter ended up a psonic, but since she’s a new mutant, it’s possible that this was just a random mutation where Kellei’s feral DNA was turned off and other DNA turned on.”
“But she has the ursine genetics.”
Adam nodded, “When she was a year old, Evy and I tested her genetics ourselves. She has the DNA to be ursine, but it was inactive, and she has the active DNA for her current abilities.”
Lillie suddenly entered the conversation, “Could one of you come here for a second?” She questioned, looking directly at the eldest in the group, “It’s like she’s fighting someone who isn’t…”
Adam didn’t even wait for her to finish. He was out of his chair and beside the sixteen-year old within seconds, trying desperately to calm her, unaware of what she was trying to fight.
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