"Ah... Dr. Essex?"

Sinister paused in the middle of his correspondence to Dr. B. Meyers. It was odd that his assistant ever saw fit to interrupt him in the midst of his work. He turned, an eyebrow raised.

"Yes, Jefferey?" he said, steepling his fingers as he leaned back in his chair. He noticed that the young man looked oddly troubled, even moreso than he had when Sinister had told him what he must do to acquire the Embers girl without difficulty. The geneticist wondered if he hadn't made a mistake. Still...

"I've been monitoring the girl as you said," Jefferey replied, shifting his weight uneasily. "She doesn't eat, she doesn't breathe, she doesn't sleep... sir, what exactly am I supposed to do?"

"You are recording the psionic output?"

"Yes, sir. That seems to be the only thing the sensors can pick up."

"Continue with that. I have some things to attend to before I begin the more arduous testing."

"But sir, surely there's something else I can do." Jefferey sounded lost, almost plaintive. The boy wasn't used to test subjects that didn't require at least a daily watering; the impotency of his position was beginning to wear on him.

"Hmm." Sinister stroked his chin. "Well, if you are up to the challenge, you might ask her how she came to be in her current state. Thus far she has refused to tell me." It had been five days since her acquisition, and since then Sinister had taken her into the lab twice. Aside from the usual infantile quips, Dawn had been utterly uncooperative. He hadn't expected it to be otherwise, but it was becoming tiresome. Fairly early on he'd discovered the damage she'd done to her psionic triggers, and all attempts to determine how and why had been met with baleful silence.

Jefferey, who had seen some of Sinister's attempts, winced. "That would be... interesting."

"Challenging, Jefferey. I believe the word you are looking for is 'challenging'. Do something to gain her trust."

Jefferey inclined his head, half nodding, half bowing. "I'll try," he said, although he still seemed uncertain. He left, and Sinister knew the boy would begin immediately. He had that sort of personality.

The geneticist swivled his chair around to the terminal, his thoughts preoccupied. He was having second thoughts about his acquisition of the girl. It was rare that he went to such extremes for a subject, but the opportunity had been too tempting to pass up. The AWOL precog and the supposedly deceased necropath, together and far away from Xavier's persistent flock? Sinister could afford make a short jaunt to Oklahoma to tie up a few loose ends.

Still, he couldn't help but feel rather the cliched villain as he held her hostage. Smith was one thing--what use was wetware if you didn't keep it where you could use it?--but it had been years since he'd actually held a person with the explicit intention of long-term observation. X- Men excluded, of course, but it was their own fault for pressing the matter.

On the other hand, you didn't run across a new lifeform every day. And Sinister was, first and foremost, a scientist.

There was a problem, however. The girl no longer had a body from which to extract samples, which complicated his original plan. True, he had earlier samples to draw from, but altering them to suit his purpose would take more time than he was prepared to give to such a relatively minor project.

He supposed he could send the Marauders to retrieve her body from Muir Island, but the thought was not particularly appealing. Did he really, when it came right down to it, really want to send the Marauders against Excalibur for the sole purpose of retrieving a disease-ridden corpse? Given the grudges some of the members still nursed it was entirely likely several of his lackeys would lose their lives, and then he would have to go through the trouble of regrowing them. No, it wasn't worth it, and certainly not for DNA that had already been badly corrupted.

Which left him with only half the equation. It was aggravating to realize that a great deal of work had been for naught. He had never been as interested in what the girl was as what she could have been used to create.

Still, Sinister knew how to make the best of things. If there was one thing he was good at, it was adapting.

"Ridiculous," Jefferey muttered, throwing himself onto his bed. "This is gettin' ridiculous."

Interrogate the girl. That was what Sinister wanted. But how? He was a lab assistant. The closest thing he'd had to interacting with humans was cataloguing their remains. Yes, granted, the girl was more likely to talk to him than Sinister, but only slightly. She hated him not for who he was, but who he wasn't.

Jefferey rolled over, half-hanging off the side of the bed. Scattered below him were half-read medical texts, a few unfinished reports, and various sketches of a few of Sinister's projects. His whole room was like that. There was nothing to mark his personality, nothing to distinguish this room from any other workroom. Except...

Feeling slightly guilty, Jefferey reached under the mattress and withdrew a folder. Inside it were a number of sketches. Most were landscapes, but a few were of a house--a stately, two-story brownstone. He wasn't sure where he'd gotten the idea for it, but drawing it was vaguely comforting.

He shuffled deeper. Beyond the landscapes and the structural drawings were more disturbing images--the same house in smoldering ruins, a charred corpse, and a straight-edged, whalebone razor that seemed somehow more sinister than the first two images combined. The last page of scribbling was more abstract, filled with eyes. Eyes and, for some reason, feathers.

Jeffery sighed and turned the paper over. The eyes disturbed him; he'd concentrated too hard on the shading, and as a result they'd ended up looking almost real. Too real. Sometimes he couldn't shake the feeling that they were staring back at him.

Something scrawled on the back of the paper caught his eye. Funny, he didn't remember writing anything...and yet it had to have been him. It was his handwriting. It seemed to be some sort of poem.

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory--
Odors, when sweet violets sicken
Live within the senses they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

The poem certainly wasn't his. At least, it didn't seem like it. He hadn't the right kind of mind for poetry. Still, if it wasn't his, then whose was it? He'd never read any books on the subject--perhaps Sinister's "education program" had included a few, which had wormed themselves into his subconscious. Yes, that must have been it. Where else could he have picked it up?

With a sigh, Jefferey replaced the drawings and slid them back under his mattress. He was certain Sinister didn't snoop around his room--that sort of thing was below him. And yet for some reason Jefferey felt compelled to hide them, as if they were something to be ashamed of.

A bed, a bookshelf, and a folder full of illicit drawings. That was all. It had never bothered him before, but now...

Jefferey shook his head. This kind of self-centered introspection would get him nowhere. It was time he did his job. After all, it was the one thing in the world he could depend on to take his mind off such unfamiliar concerns.

For the time being, anyway.

You know what the worst thing about being held prisoner was? The boredom. There was nothing to do in that except count the tiles, and it wasn't that big a cell. After the first few days I started playing with my hair--braiding, looping, chewing, twisting, anything to keep my hands busy and my mind clear. I felt like crawling out of my own skin. I was beginning to think that Sinister's ultimate weapon was Mind Numbing Boredom.

I tried to stay in contact with Jason for as long as his consciousness would allow. After a while it wasn't even for the conversation, it was for the mere presence of another human being. Jefferey and Sinister didn't count.

But Jason was getting less and less dependable. Already Sinister had tried out the "machine" on him--the one that made him watch the future, then recorded the results. I'd been in contact with him at the time, which had been unfortunate.

So why didn't Jason just cut the connection? Well... he was scared, and I was the only one within range who gave a damn. He'd spent years acting as nothing more than a monitoring device, which hadn't done much for his sanity. So he asked me to stay, and I said yes, because you don't say no to someone who's holding on to your psychic hand so hard you can feel the bones fracturing.

When Sinister started the machine I suddenly knew what Jason had been ranting about when he'd tried to convince me to commit suicide. In those few excruciating minutes all conscious thought was stripped away, all sense of self gone. There was only the rush of images, and the feeling as if someone had opened the top of my head and tried to shove in the universe.

Then, suddenly, the connection snapped. I knew why--how could Jason hang on to it in the middle of all that? I spent I don't know how long with my knees drawn up to my chin, rocking myself back and forth on the creaky cot, trying to forget those eternal moments of complete vulnerability, complete violation. And I prayed.

Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, I felt Jason's feeble scratchings at my mind. I hadn't realized it, but I'd pulled up my psychic shields so far I was amazed he'd found me at all. I dropped them and let him in.

:He said "A few more adjustments, and it will be ready,": was all Jason would tell me, and he spent the rest of the day silent and curled next to my mind like a puppy during a thunderstorm.

Before I'd thought he was a coward for wanting to give up so easily. Now... all right. I have some pride. I consider myself a fairly brave person, what with putting up with death and evil and Armageddon and all that crap. But there's a pretty big difference between actually putting yourself out there and finding yourself forced into that position.

Jason wasn't a super hero. He didn't do things because he thought they were right, he did them because either he had to or he was going to get something out of it, like his sister's safety, or the chance of breathing free for another day. And that was all right, because that's what he wanted to do. Heck, that's what most people want to do. But for six years he'd had to be a technical part of Sinister's lab, he'd had to be a silent participant in Sinister's experiments. He wasn't someone like the X-Men who knew the risks and went along with it anyway--he was someone who just wanted to live in peace and had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In some ways this made it even worse, because at least the X-Men have connections and the hope of a rescue. Jason had nothing.

Once I realized that I started to cry a little, but not too much. It wasn't fair, but life wasn't fair, and crying about it was stupid. And anyway, tears weren't going to get us out of this. So I sat back and spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what to do.

And the frustrating thing was, I didn't know what to do. I had no idea. I'm not a good planner, and as far as I could see Sinister had covered all the angles. Which meant that I had nothing to do but sit around and wait to be rescued, or hope that Sinister got distracted and let something slip, or I was saved by an act of deus ex machina. As time dragged on, each seemed less and less likely.

One afternoon, when I'd just finished ripping up the sheet and braiding its respective pieces into elaborate ropes, there was a soft knock at the door. A moment later it opened to reveal Jefferey, dressed as he always was in jeans and a labcoat.

"What?" I asked shortly. The last time I'd seen him he'd been strapping my arms and legs to a table. I had decided to hold a grudge.

"I thought you might like a shower," Jefferey replied, pointedly ignoring my tone. I narrowed my eyes.

"Please tell me that isn't what it sounds like," I said, crossing my arms over my chest. "I'm not doing some kinky shower scene for your viewing pleasure."

He actually turned a little red at that, which struck me as rather amusing. "I meant alone," he snapped, obviously embarrassed. "What do you take me for?"

"Aside from someone who helps their boss cut up fourteen year old girls? Is this a trick question?"

He refused to be baited. "If you don't want to, that's fine with me. I was just tryin' to be considerate."

I hesitated. On the one hand, a shower actually sounded good. Anything to break the monotony of the daily routine of shredding, braiding and counting. On the other hand, Jefferey still creeped me out.

All right, he actually didn't seem to be that bad, but something about him really pushed my buttons. And I don't just mean the fact that he kept helping Sinister poke and prod me. I don't think his appearance helped much, either--every time he came around to pick me up for more testing it felt like Sinister was rubbing my idiocy in my face, which was annoying because I was already doing plenty of that on my own. And, when all was said and done, he did work for Sinister. Can you blame me?

"...Okay," I said at last, but I wasn't too thrilled about it. If the "shower" turned out to be an empty room and a video camera I was out of there.

"Fine," Jefferey said, and stood away from the door to let me out first. I considered rushing past him and locking him in the cell, but the door swung inwards. So much for that idea.

I edged past Jefferey, and noticed that neither of us seemed all that eager to touch the other. In my case it was a natural aversion to brushing against my captors. I'm not sure what Jefferey's excuse was--maybe he just didn't like to be touched. And he always wore surgical gloves when he was around me. I don't know if this was because Sinister told him to or he was just afraid of contaminating (or maybe being contaminated by) me. Or maybe he had a germ phobia. It's hard to tell with some people.

Jefferey led me through the main corridor and off on a side branch. I don't think the complex was as big as I originally suspected--I recognized the door to Sinister's "hands on" laboratory, and then, from Jason's memories, the room they kept the precog in. I made a mental note of it and hoped I would be able to put it to good use at some point.

We made another turn and arrived at a little niche in the hallway. Well, more of a pocket--it was only one door deep, and had one on either side. The door to the right was slightly ajar, and through it I could see a bed and night stand. With a shock I realized that he must have taken me to his own living quarters.

"There should be some fresh clothing in there," Jefferey said, indicating the door on the left side--the bathroom, I supposed. "You probably won't like it, but yours is gettin' a bit the worse for wear."

"Right," I said. This was weird. I was almost positive this wasn't how things were supposed to go. "Um... not that I'm complaining, but don't you have some kind of communal shower room or something? This seems kind of low-tech."

"We do, but I thought you'd like the privacy," he replied with a shrug. "If you're feelin' excluded I can take you there."

"No, I'm fine," I said hastily. If this was a private bathroom maybe he'd have a razor or something. It was too much to hope that he'd have a window, but maybe there'd be something I could use...

I stepped into the bathroom. It was almost clinically clean, which didn't surprise me much. This was a medical facility, after all. The door didn't have a lock, which meant Jefferey could barge in whenever he felt like it, but I didn't really think he would. If he got embarrassed at the mention of watching me shower it seemed unlikely he'd actually go in and do it.

I sighed and leaned against the sink. There was a toothbrush and toothpaste balanced on the counter, and upon closer inspection I saw that some persistent dried toothpaste had fused itself to the basin. There was also a comb there, but it was one of the cheap flexible kinds that tend to snap whenever you bend it at a 20 degree angle. No help there. I opened the medicine cabinet--it was empty. No razors, or scissors, or even tweezers. Heck, there wasn't even aspirin. Geez, who was this guy? Either he'd cleaned it out before I'd gotten there or he was the world's lowest-maintenance human being.

There was a large, rather rough towel sitting on the toilet, and beneath that a long grey... something. Frankly, it reminded me of the black thing Moira'd had me wear when I first showed up at Muir. Of course, whereas Moira had actually taken a little care to hide the wires with her suit, Sinister obviously hadn't bothered. It felt like steel wool, or at least, what I could feel of it did. The texture was about the same, anyway.

Great. I was actually supposed to wear this? I didn't think so. I'd keep my shredded shirt, thanks.

Wish a sigh I stripped and turned on the water. It wasn't a proper bath, but one of those showers with the bubbled-glass door. It seemed a little more lived-in than the rest of the bathroom, but not by much. There was some shampoo and Dial soap on the stand, but that was it. I found myself wondering where exactly the toiletries had come from. The thought of Sinister standing in line at Walmart was just too bizarre for words.

The shower was sort of useless, because I couldn't really feel the heat, but the sensation of the water pounding against my skin was soothing and the change of scenery made me feel a little more human. This experience was definitely one for the archives. Nowhere in the files about Sinister (and I'd read a lot after my parents died) had it said his lackeys were so agreeable about creature comforts.

Actually, nowhere had it said that he had any lackeys aside from the Marauders. I suppose it was possible that the X-Men simply hadn't met them before--I mean, it's not exactly as if Sinister would drag them into battle or mention them in casual conversation. I was almost tempted to believe that Sinister had made Jefferey for my benefit, except he'd thought I was dead until just recently and Jefferey had obviously been around for a few months. So why had he done it? For company? Somehow I doubted that. Maybe he just wanted someone to do the menial work, like sorting the bodyparts.

I stepped out of the shower, toweled myself off, and slipped back into my much-abused clothing. I felt much better, I had to admit, but outside that door was still a man waiting to take me back to my cell...

I looked around the bathroom one last time and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked tired. Well, that wasn't so unusual. I'd been having nightmares all week. But...

The mirror. Hmm.

I flicked an eye towards the door, but it didn't seem inclined to open. I knelt down and peered under the crack beneath--no feet. I guessed he'd gone into his room. So...

I grabbed the wad of cloth and circuitry Jefferey had lost and wound it around one hand. Then I hauled back and punched the mirror. I'm not that strong, so one punch didn't do it--the glass just splintered a little. The second punch, on the other hand--that did it. I picked up one of the larger pieces with my cloth-wrapped hand, and just in time--the door was flung open and suddenly Jefferey was there, looking torn between concern and anger. I didn't give him a chance to react to the sight of me standing in the middle of his broken mirror, I shoved the shard into his abdomen and ran for it.

Well, I tried, anyway. I got maybe six feet before he grabbed my arm and spun me around, one hand cradling his lacerated abdomen. He looked ticked. I pressed the advantage and tried to punch him with my free hand, but he caught it in mid-swing. He was fast. Now he had both my arms, and I was getting desperate. I lashed out with my leg, trying to get him in the knee, but somehow he looped one of his arms beneath my knee without even letting go of my hand. Now he had both arms and my right leg. I decided to go for broke and kicked out with my left leg, too, which made him let go out of sheer shock but also sent me sprawling on my rear.

After a confused moment of grappling Jefferey managed to grab both my arms and twist them behind my back. One of his knees was lodged in the small of my back, and my cheek was pressed against the tile. I wasn't exactly sure what had happened.

"I really wish you hadn't done that," Jefferey said in a voice that was more tired than angry. His gut-wound was dripping on the back of my shirt. "Are you always this nice to people who try to do you a favor?"

"Only when they're holding me captive," I retorted. "Can you let me up?"

"That depends. Are you going to try that again?"

"I think we've both determined that would be fairly useless."

"That wasn't the question."

"Okay, okay, I won't. It was worth a shot, though."

He let me up, wincing a little, and I felt a pang of guilt. All things considered, he'd been decent to me--and I had just shoved six inches of glass into his stomach. How grateful is that?

"Um... here," I said awkwardly, handing him the roll of cloth. "Try using this to stop the bleeding."

"Thanks," he said with heavy irony, but he took it anyway. He was looking a little pale. "Damn, this bloody hurts!"

"Uh... I'm sorry." All right, it was a stupid thing to say, but it came out automatically. Jefferey snorted.

"Just don't do that again." He shook his head. "An' now I've got no mirror."

I started to make some remark about being able to look himself in the face after all he'd done, but stopped. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because I didn't feel like hurting him again, or maybe I just didn't want to see that very Glenn-like hurt puppy-dog expression he got every time I insulted him like that. Either way, I kept my mouth shut.

I noticed he was looking at me oddly. "I think it's time you go back to your cell," he said. I shuffled my feet involuntarily.

"I guess it's too late to ask to go for a walk?"

"Much. Come on."

I followed him back to my room in silence. I was confused. For one, I was having a hard time believing I'd actually just assaulted someone with a piece of glass. The only excuse I could think of was that it had seemed like a good idea at the time, and that was pretty stupid. What ever happened to trying to talk your way out of things?

And then I realized part of what was going on. Jason's impotent rage towards his captors had found an outlet: me. Spending that long in his head was starting to rub off on me, and I was fighting back in the way he dearly wished he could. That was half of it.

The other half was desperation, plain and simple. They were stronger than me, they were bigger than me, and I was scared. That made them fair game.

I winced. I was getting more violent than I'd thought. My only consolation was that I'd aimed to injure, not to kill. That meant human life wasn't that devalued for me. Yet.

As we continued our journey I noticed Jefferey seeming less and less well. I wondered if maybe I couldn't try running from him again, but scratched that thought. He was a lot faster than I was, and he would only tear himself up more by trying it. And for some reason I didn't want that to happen anymore.

"Um, do you want to sit down?" I asked. The cloth was soaked with blood--maybe I'd hit an artery. Jefferey just shook his head.

"I'll be fine," he insisted, and I had an irrepressible surge of deja vu. How often had Glenn told me that after hurting himself? The resemblance between the two was starting to get to me.

Finally we arrived at my cell. I entered without a word, feeling drained. Now that the rush of adrenaline was over I was shaking a little, and I hoped that Jefferey wouldn't notice. Luckily, he was a little distracted with his own problems to pay much attention to me. All he was concerned about was whether or not I was in the cell, which was fine by me.

He shut the door without a word, leaving me in the flourescent hell of my room. After a while I got up and washed the blood off my hands, watching the stuff swirl down the drain and into wherever the water here went. Now I was worried not only about my physical health, but my mental health as well. It was downright amazing Jason had made it through as well as he had given how fast I was going downhill. I just hoped that things would turn out all right before I was a complete sociopath.

She stabbed me! I can't believe she actually stabbed me!

Jefferey winced as he applied the disinfectant. The wound was already healing, but he wasn't one to take chances. He hadn't eaten for some time, so his body's reserves were already stretched. He was going to need raw material for the repair, and quickly.

As he taped down a pad of gauze Jefferey tried to forget the cool, calculating look in the girl's eyes as she'd stabbed him. What had he done to earn that look? He'd thought she would appreciate being taken out of her cell, and what had she done? Lacerated a kidney. That was the last time he tried to do a good deed.

But somehow, even through his anger, Jefferey couldn't bring himself to blame her completely. She was frustrated, anyone could see that, and she had apologized... sort of.

Still, he wasn't sure how long he could keep this up. The girl seemed to be terminally annoyed with him, and the boy alternately cursed and pleaded whenever he was in earshot. It was all very well for Sinister--he simply didn't care. But somehow Jefferey was beginning to have more and more trouble shaking off their reactions. That wasn't right, was it? Things should be getting easier, not harder. So why did he find his resolve wavering?

Worse yet, he didn't seem to be doing anything for Sinister, either. He'd completely failed to win the girl's trust, and he was at a loss for what to do with the precog. He might have been able to bear their hatred if he'd thought he was accomplishing something, but as it was...

Jefferey sighed and leaned back. Things would get better, he told himself. They had to.

"Awake, huh?" Vance said as Verney shambled into the living room. "We were getting a little worried there for a while, but Grace has been watching you. How do you feel?"

"How I feel is best left undescribed," Verney replied. He was drained, bruised, battered, and in otherwise bad shape. He really didn't want to deal with questions at the moment.

"Hook the wire there."

"No, here. You don't want it to double back on the power source, do you?"

"Hey, do you want to do this on your own? I'd be more than happy to let you."

"All right, all right, I just hope you know what you're doing..."

Verney blinked blearily. The two voices coming from the kitchen were vaguely familiar. He wandered past the shade into the ruined niche by the likewise ruined bay window to discover Karen and Derrick squabbling good naturedly over what looked to be the lovechild of a toaster and an octopus.

"What is this?" he inquired, his curiosity getting the better of him. Karen glanced back at him.

"Oh, you're up," she said dismissivly. "This is a locator. We're trying to find my brother."

"Your brother..?" Verney's mind felt sluggish. "Where has he gone?"

"Dunno. That's what we're trying to figure out. Dawn's probably with him, though."

"She's gone?" His mind crawled into a slightly higher gear. "She's left again?"

"Left, been kidnapped, disappeared, we don't know," Karen said irritably. "That's what we're trying to find out. Now leave us alone, we're trying to work."

Rebuffed, Verney left the kitchen, his mind still spinning. The girl was gone? She'd left him? But where..?

He collapsed on a nearby armchair, shredding it and not caring. He was far too tired. With slightly shaking hands he reached into his robe and withdrew a vial of supplement, uncorked it, and fed from it. The sustenance made him feel a little better, but not by much.

"No mind them," came a voice from somewhere in the vicinity of his right elbow. He turned to discover the pretty red-headed girl crouched there, her arms wrapped around her knees.

"They work for days," she explained, blinking wide blue eyes at him. "Little food, less sleep. For girl, anyway. She worried."

"Ah," Verney said weakly. He was trying very hard to ignore her aura, which looked incredibly appetizing. He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. The last thing he needed right now was a lapse. For starters, Monet would disembowel him.

"Your friend and Karen's brother disappeared a few days ago," Vance explained. He'd settled down on the couch, dipping slightly below the cushions. "They're just trying to locate them. They've been having a few problems."

"I had supposed so," Verney replied, finishing the vial and replacing it. The supplement was filling, but as palatable as dried bread. Just one little touch...

No. One touch would be too much.

"I don't suppose you have any way of keeping in touch with Dawn?" Vance asked, although without much in the way of enthusiasm. Verney shook his head.

"There is a... connection, as there is with all my former thralls, but nothing easily traceable," Verney confessed. "If I may be of service in some way I shall, but I'm afraid I have nothing productive to offer."

"Us too," Grace replied. She looked disgruntled. "No can help, so they yell. Annoying."

"Then stop spraying them with the hose when they're not looking," Vance said. "Anyway... it's progressing. I guess that's a good sign. Dawn's teacher was... not happy."

Verney raised an eyebrow. "You have spoken to Monsieur Cassidy?" he inquired. Vance gave a short, sharp laugh.

"Much to my regret, yes," he replied. "After Dawn disappeared I had to call him. He was less than pleased."

Verney formed a mental image of Sean Cassidy. "Somehow this does not surprise me."

"So now we wait," Grace concluded. "Wait until Derrick and Karen finish."

"Wonderful." He was going to be staying in a house full of mutants while his genetic supplement began to run in shorter and shorter supply. This was just perfect.

Still, what could he do? He owed the girl. If he could just see this one last thing through he could rest.

He only hoped he lived that long.