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Resigned to Fate
Chapter Three: Little Time
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Three days had passed, Kellei’s unconsciousness staying in place by way of sedatives, but as each hour passed, all could see the fear evident on the face of their seemingly fearless leader.
And by noon on day three, Adam had reluctantly placed her in isolation and under quarantine, hoping to stave off any further illnesses.
Douglas, Lillie-joi, and Corajean were not content to leave it at the hope that her body would recover with time, and, instead of joining their newest friends for lunch, began thinking of every person they’d known had met with Kellei before she’d gotten sick – a list of both non and new mutants a mile long. All three had crawled up to the dojo and sat down to converse, each writing names down on scrap papers they’d found. After a half hour, they began to debate, knocking some names off and putting others down on a piece of paper simply labeled ‘maybe’.
“I think it’s a safe bet that Jordan’s out.” Lillie shrugged.
“I sure hope that a six year old isn’t bright enough to mastermind this, or else the world is doomed.” Doug grinned momentarily, before glancing toward the lab and sighing.
“April’s been in Europe for a year tomorrow, so I really think she’s out.” Cora crossed the name off her list.
Shalimar had been quiet to approach, and surprised all three when she spoke, “Whatcha doing?” She asked, smiling broadly as they contacted the ground once again.
“You should try to avoid doing that – you could give someone a heart attack.” Doug muttered, standing up and peering over the edge at Emma and the twins.
“They’re fine, Doug.” Cora told him, her eyes never leaving her list, “If they weren’t, one or both of them would be running a test pattern on their lungs.”
Once again, the feral smiled, before sitting down next to the telepath, “They like to yell?”
“All the time. They’ve actually been pretty good while we’ve been here, but usually they’ll cry and whine at everything. Unless Kellei’s involved in some way.” She commented, her eyes stopping on one name, “Jude Eckhart. That has to be who it was. The day she went out and refused to tell us who she was going to meet, it has to be him, because if she’d told us, none of us would have let her go.”
Doug started, “But…”
“No…Cora’s right. It’s him. I can feel it.” Lillie cut him off, and looked up at the other three.
But he still wasn’t convinced, and it was evident in his eyes.
“We’ll have to go back to Lair and get her handheld. That’s the only way to be completely sure, ‘coz it’s definite that she wrote it down. She always does.”
“Who’s Jude Eckhart?” Shal’ finally spoke.
A voice came from behind them to explain, “Mason’s nephew. He, just like his uncle, is not in favor of New Mutants.” Adam sat down beside the blonde.
“He has a nephew?”
Sighing, he continued, “Eckhart is a twin. Way back when, he had a brother named Marcus, but he died when they were still children. By the time I began working at Genomex, Mason’s mother had come in with a lock of Marcus’s hair – she was hoping to clone him. Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible since the DNA was damaged after so many years.
“Instead, the viable DNA was combined with the DNA of one of the twins’ childhood friends named Claire. She willingly carried the child, named him, and I assume she raised him.”
“You guys think that he was the one?” Shal’ questioned, as Jesse and Brennan joined the group.
“Knowing him, and believe me – I do…” Corajean sighed, “Yes. But like Lillie said, we’ll have to go to Lair. Kellei always writes down anything important so she’ll remember. For a genius, her memory is very selective, but then again, she always complains that her brain goes too fast for her to process most of what she’s thinking…”
Lillie jabbed her twin in the arm, “Stop babbling.” She paused, “So it’s settled – we’re going to Lair.”
“What’s Lair?”
Jesse received several secretive smiles.
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The Helix was once again filled with the people – this time, unlike usual, Mutant X were the ones with their vision blanked out.
“Was this really necessary?” The feral was not pleased.
“Depends – you want a very pissed off Psionic who’s beaten up four GS Agents without breaking a sweat coming after you, or would you rather take five minutes out of your day to visit some place interesting?” Doug replied, smiling to himself.
“Here’s a question…why the hell do we have to wear these?” Brennan asked, not as pissed off as Shalimar, but not as calm as Adam.
Doug looked between his sisters, before opening his mouth to speak, “Lair was a facility designed by Evyeline. It was meant to be a backup in case Sanctuary should ever become compromised. At the time of her death, it was only half completed, but the people who were building it for her didn’t want to just leave it the way it was. They began spending their free time working on it, and when Kellei ran away, it was finished.”
“What your daughter never told you, Adam, was that your wife left her a letter. It listed the location of Lair, and that, should she pass on, Kell was supposed to tell you about it…” Lillie trailed off.
“And instead, she moved in with you guys.” The elder finished for her.
“The apartment we were living in is actually one of the safe houses we’d been finishing for friends of ours, but when she got sick, we didn’t want to move her. Even if it was just a few minutes away. We didn’t want to risk her life.” Cora plopped down, and pulled Glory into her lap.
Years of the Helix entering the hanger had left Adam, Jesse, and Shalimar with a keen sense of when they were entering through a disguised opening. Where they were, they didn’t know, but they knew that this place was hidden from view.
Jesse, who’d so far been silent, spoke up, “Are we in another mountain?”
The teen-mother looked up, “No.” She smiled, “We’re underground.” She reached forward and pulled the disc off his temple, her sister and brother doing the same for the others, before they guided the five off the Helix and into a hanger-slash-garage.
To one side, an aircraft much like the Double Helix was settled with two men standing under it with tools and piping. On the other side, several different cars – a few looking eerily like the GSA’s SUVs – were parked, while bathed in the soft glow of the lighting.
None of the siblings commented on any of what was going on, they simply started walking toward a door directly in front of them, while trying to keep Americus and Glory from running off. Wordlessly, Doug pulled a keycard from his pocket, passing it through the electronic reader, set midway up the doorframe. The door itself began to change as it identified the owner of the card – from what had appeared to be metal, to pale-green tinted glass. It slid open with a dull hiss, revealing before Adam and the team, an amazing blend of Zen and command center – a place so different, yet so much like their Sanctuary.
Adam stepped forward first, noticing immediately that they were in fact on an upper level. A plank walkway, with rope for handrails and covering the conduit that the wood sat on, linked up the four sides of the square level. Small corner walls were placed in the middle, like vertical beams, which joined the four walkways.
“Those…” Doug pointed to doors to Adam’s left, “…are our bedrooms.” He then pointed to Adam’s right, “Through that door is the Lab.” He pointed straight a head, where there was no door, but instead a spiral staircase, “That is how we get downstairs.” He patted the brunet on the shoulder and walked forward, being to point out more of Lair’s nuances. He pointed up at the ceiling, “It’s a mirror. Kell was trying to explain how it applied to the laws of Zen, but I just never figured it out.”
Shal’ smiled as she watched her mentors amazement – and then everyone else’s when they noticed the huge garden before them.
The whole thing was formed on top a wood platform, which, again, was like the one at Sanctuary by the pond, but a hell of a lot bigger. The sides formed the waterfalls, the water dripping and trickling into a pond the followed the edges of the platform.
“Wow.”
Suddenly a new voice entered the already-confusing mix, “She was right.”
The attention of all but the Alleyan’s shifted to an auburn-haired, green-eyed woman standing in the doorway to the kitchen, “Kellei…I didn’t believe her when she said that everyone’s reaction is the same to the garden.” She looked to Lillie, “Is she…?”
“No, and we
think we know who hurt her.” Lil nodded, “Heather Chalet, Mutant X. Mutant X, Heather Chalet.”
She stretched her hand forward
and shook each one politely, “My guess is that you think its Jude?”
“Yep.”
“Well, if you’re looking for her handheld – we already looked. The files have been deleted. She definitely didn’t want us to find out what she was doing with him.” Her eyes began to twinkle devilishly, “But I know that someone here is very good at retrieving files from the database logs if they haven’t been purged. And since she only does that once a year…”
Cora shook her head, “Not happening. The last time I did that, Kell spent two days trying to fix the stuff that crashed. I am not messing with Lair’s computer system – no way.”
-*-*-
Grumbling as her fingers flew across the keys, Corajean began thinking of all the colorful things she was going to say to Heather when this was over. She was mid-keystroke when her eyes turned a silvery-blue and her body froze in place.
“What…”
“Welcome to the world of Precog.” Doug murmured, shrugging and allowing himself to fall into the nearest computer chair, “Her eyes always change when her abilities decide to show her something.”
“She was
so smart…like she couldn’t figure out that I’d set her up. Come on, Douglas.” Jude’s voice rang out
clear from his end of the table.
“What
did you give her?”
…
“So
little time…” Kellei’s voice – one so helpless in nature, Corajean’s heart
broke in two at the sound.
…
Corajean
looked around at the people in Sanctuary’s Lab. Adam’s tears, Lillie’s numbed look, even Emma’s eyes were sad.
And in
the middle, the source of it all – Kellei’s limb and cooling form. A body with a soul no longer.
The
monitor and its horizontal image taunting her, teasing her – and there was
nothing that she could do against it.
Her friend wasn’t breathing, her heart wasn’t beating. There was nothing she could do about it.
She began to blink furiously, her vision slowly coming back into focus, “Just go…now.” She turned to her brother, her gaze boring into his eyes, “She doesn’t have time for me to go through all this.”
Douglas wheeled, heading out of the room, followed by Brennan and Shalimar.
Cora turned back to the screens before her, drawing up the last known location of Jude Eckhart, “I hope this is right…please, if there’s a god up there, let this be right…” She prayed, sending the information to the Helix.
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