Work Text:
August 17, 1967
Doctor Henry McCoy gazed through the roof of the isolation chamber, one palm pressed on it for balance. He was leaning so far over the shallow pyramid of glass he was almost kissing the surface, and he reached up to catch his spectacles as they began to slide down his nose.
“Henry?” Moira asked, standing a few feet back. “What do you think?”
One of the postgrads had asked her to come and look herself, but she’d shaken her head. Her arm was in plaster past the elbow and hung across her chest in a white sling, almost hidden against her lab coat. She was the one who had put the tranquilizer into DEU-K-00009, while he’d been distracted with killing two of her colleagues. He’d wrenched the metal syringe out of her grip with such force that her ulna snapped in two places and the fingers in handles of the syringe were both dislocated. The pentothal put him under before he could finish her, though. Thank God.
“What do I think about what?” Henry asked, without raising his head.
“About the recommendation to put Dew-Kay down,” Moira said sharply. “Henry, listen to me.”
“Look at this,” Henry pointed down into the isolation chamber. “Look at what he’s done to his arms and chest. And there’s blood on his forehead – that wasn’t there yesterday, was it?”
“He’s been grinding his head against the wall,” one of the handlers supplied. His face was drawn and grey around the eyes. None of the technical staff had been sleeping well since the incident on the fifth. Not just because they were pulling double shifts because of the shortage of staff. They’d been the ones to pick up the pieces of the two undergrads, four handlers and a postdoc who had encountered DEU-K-00009 before Moira. Several of the aforementioned pieces still hadn’t been matched to corpses.
“Why?” Henry asked, looking up at last. “You left him alone like I said, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir. All food and water through the window,” the handler said through gritted teeth. If Henry hadn’t given that particular order, it was unlikely DEU-K-00009 would have ever woken up from his anaesthetic.
“But look,” Henry hurried around the roof and grasped Moira’s arm – her good one – pulling her over. “That’s self-mutilating behaviour. Has that been reported in mutants before? Can you think of any clear cases?”
“There’s been claims of suicides,” Moira replied, still not looking down.
“They’ve never been proven. You need an advanced self-awareness to contemplate suicide,” Henry rested his palm on the glass.
“It’s under stress,” the nearest post-grad pointed out, using the genderless pronoun with which the literature traditionally referred to mutants. “It’s hurt itself trying to escape.”
Henry shook his head, adjusting his spectacles again. “Dew-Kay has been in this facility for two years, and in solitary on numerous occasions. I’ve never seen him exhibit this kind of behaviour. And there’re no scratches on the skin around his collar, which would seem like the first point of call for an escape attempt. It’s more like he’s—”
“Don’t say it,” Moira said quietly. “Now is not the time.”
“—Like he’s grief-stricken. Or guilty,” Henry bent over the glass and gazed down at his most dangerous subject. “Like he understands what he’s done.”
There was a low rumble from the handler. Moira turned away, scrubbing her hand over her face. Henry straightened up, fumbling in his pocket for a pen and a scrap of chocolate wrapper, the only paper he had on hand. “You two,” he waved his pen at the two post-grads who had brought his attention to DEU-K-00009’s injuries that morning. “Detailed observations, every aspect you can think of. But for God’s sake, don’t let him out of isolation for anything. Highest security protocols for feeding and hygiene. I will not let this tragedy repeat itself.”
“Yes, sir,” the nearest said in a surly voice, and his companion mumbled the same.
“Until when?” Moira asked, hurrying after Henry as he left the viewing room at a trot, scribbling reminders to himself on the crumpled wrapper. “Henry, what do we do with him?”
“That’s the board’s decision,” Henry said over his shoulder, not meeting her eye. “I’m going to write to them once I’ve had a chance to analyse Dew-Kay’s behaviour.”
“But they're waiting for your advice!” Moira barked.
Henry turned slowly, shoulders hunched. Moira’s eyes pinned him down, her good hand on her hip and her mouth a line so sharp it made him flinch. He relied on her heavily in the human resources aspect of his job. He’d never denied it. He was too young to lead a research team and too smart not to. Moira, despite her qualifications, had always been encumbered within the male-dominated field. The furthest she’d ever get past the glass ceiling was acting as Henry’s backup when the complexities of management overwhelmed him.
His instinct told him to do what she said. And what she said was, “If this were a defense project that blew up on our testing range, we damn well wouldn’t bring it back inside. Not while it’s still armed and loaded.”
Henry muttered. “But he’s irreplaceable.”
He ducked his head and hurried away before she could convince him otherwise.
---
Henry groaned and ripped his latest draft off the pad, scrunching it as small as he could and tossing it into the bin. He dug his fingers into his hair and massaged his scalp, trying to plough out the headache that was worming its way between his eyes. What was he supposed to write? He felt like such a fool – he’d assured the board that the NA-01 tribe were the first truly tame mutants in any laboratory in the world. He’d spoken in conferences and to packed lecture halls of the progress they’d made, of how they’d uncovered an untapped branch of study in mutant social behaviour, of how gentled and cooperative the collared animals were.
In his arrogance, he’d let security standards slip. He’d turned a blind eye to risky tests, he’d practically given free reign to his inexperienced students. And yes, Joel Marshall had been breaking all the rules when he’d let their two alpha males into the main building and then cranked DEU-K-00009’s collar up so high it had short-circuited. But Henry was the one who’d taught him that rules were meant to be broken. That was how progress was made. And now Joel and six others were dead.
He took a long sip of his lukewarm coffee and tried to focus on his letter. What he had witnessed in the isolation chamber was buzzing through his head – was DEU-K-00009 really displaying regret? A sense of moral wrongdoing? Could he convince the board that exploitation of this new behaviour would make the mutant less dangerous? Should he?
He should talk to Bill Francis about it before he wrote the letter. Bill’s thesis had been a comprehensive study of mutants in the field, mostly retroactive interviews with their human families after they were removed to laboratories or euthanized. An excerpt from a Mrs. S went, “My boy [subject A] were [sic] always a bit rough around the edges, but he didn’t fail fifth grade because of no [sic] mutant nonsense, he was just upset about a lot of things”. Bill had (a little too vigorously) defended a hypothesis put forward by Jameson (1959, Journal of Sub-Human Enquiry) that many of the cognitive deficits seen in lab mutants were not present until after they were isolated from social interaction. Bill had gone even further, suggesting that the study of Homo sapiens deterior would benefit from keeping mutants in the care of their original guardians, just as patients with severe mental delays often did better at home than in asylums.
Bill had struggled to secure work after he’d dropped that career bomb, but Henry had loved his lateral thinking. It was exactly what the facility needed, and Henry had personally tracked him down and asked him to join them. Bill had been reluctant until Henry told him he would get the chance to finally meet the mutant son of Mrs. S, on whose testimony he’d based so much of his work – USA-K-00068 was at the time the newest member of the NA-01 tribe. Bill had been disappointed, of course, that like all the mutants, Kay-Six-Eight shied away from him and did not even respond to his mother’s name. But Bill had still worked hard to prove that mutants had more potential to think like humans than most researchers believed.
But he couldn’t ask Bill, Henry suddenly remembered. Bill was dead. Bill had been in the office going through the latest Searchlight data when DEU-K-00009’s rampage had started. He probably heard Sally Bolton screaming and rushed to help, and a sheet of Searchlight’s carapace had cut the top of his head clean off. Shinck. Henry could imagine very clearly the noise it had made. He hadn’t seen the body. Moira had told him it would be a closed casket, and that had been enough.
“Sir?”
Henry jumped, and his pencil stabbed a fat line across his paper. It was Terry Morgan, head of the handlers that kept NA-01’s home up to scratch. Gone to seed and a little deaf to authority, Terry nonetheless had an eye for detail that Henry appreciated.
“You alright, sir?” Terry asked, squeezing himself fully into Henry’s tumultuous office.
“Fine, very fine,” Henry tried to smile at him. Terry gave a disbelieving scowl and wended around piles of unsorted journals and a stack of books on a chair that wobbled under the impact of his heavy footsteps. He produced a clean handkerchief from one of his pockets and held it out to Henry, who stared at it.
“You’re crying, sir,” Terry explained brusquely.
Henry snatched the handkerchief, blood rushing to his cheeks, and wiped his eyes. “Gosh,” he kept the smile on his face. “Just a bit—”
“I understand, sir. I’ll be quick. You asked for my assessment of the situation, sir. What I think will happen if Dew-Kay’s disposed of,” he spoke patiently, as if he thought Henry’s emotion might affect his memory.
“Yes, yes I did,” Henry cleared his throat, tightening his hands around the handkerchief and the pencil that was now wrapped in its folds. “You have good instincts, Terry. Tell me what you think.”
Terry paused for a moment, glancing across Henry’s desk to the empty sheet of paper, crumpled drafts that hadn’t quite reached the bin, open notebooks and a cast-aside newspaper article (“PUBLIC CALLS FOR EUTHANASIA OF ALL MUTANTS”, the sub-heading read).
“Frankly, sir,” Terry said with a sigh, “I don’t think they’ll make it.”
Henry shook his head, his smile faltering. “What do you mean?”
“Your favourite, Em-One, he’s healthy enough given his injuries. The others are bringing him food and keeping him warm, moving him about during the day to get the sun…”
“Are they?” Henry croaked. He shouldn’t really be surprised. The mutants had shown clear distress over GBR-M-00001's condition from the moment he’d been reintroduced after the surgery.
“Yes, and he’s doing his best to get up his strength in his arms,” Terry nodded. “They’re helping him with that too, sir. I expect they think it’s a game or something.”
“How curious,” Henry’s mind was whirring again. Most animals would leave a wounded companion to die – but then, the mutants had no place to abandon GBR-M-00001. “Why did you say they won’t make it?”
“He’s morose, sir. He’s not eating much, I’ve seen ‘im give his food to One-Oh-Eight, her being pregnant and such. And he doesn’t – you know –”
“What?” Henry asked impatiently.
“You know. It’s like sometimes Em-One is kind of talking to the others. He’s not doing that. He’s just sitting. I reckon he’ll die, sir, and the rest of them won’t take it well at all. Just my opinion.”
Henry leaned back in his chair, sucking in a long breath through his teeth. “I see.”
Christ. Dammit, fuck, dammit. If GBR-M-00001 died, then even a rebuilt Searchlight would be useless. No Searchlight meant funding would dry up soon enough, and they couldn’t afford to maintain the complex without a hell of a lot of grants from various sources. The surviving members of NA-01 would have to be redistributed to any labs that would take them, or put down if none would, and all Henry’s hopes of a new age in H. s. deterior research would come to a swift, whimpering end. He could not let that happen.
He thanked Terry and watched the man leave. The wormy headache dug deeper towards Henry’s core. He downed the last of the cold coffee, glanced at the clock and then put his pencil to paper.
---
In the isolation chamber under the far wing of the facility, DEU-K-00009 howled and scratched his arms until the handlers hosed him into submission. In the containment building nearby, the makeshift family known as NA-01 slept. Their bodies were curled close around their wounded leader; occasionally they twitched awake at the sounds of his pained gasps. And in his cramped office, Henry McCoy wrote frantically, trying to save three things: their lives, the jobs of his forty-plus employees, and a personal crusade he was barely aware he was waging.
First, he scratched, allow me to open by extending my apologies for the events which occurred within our complex on the 5th of August…
---
The first time that Henry really saw – really understood - that GRB-M-00001 was dangerous, was soon after their fly-winged mutant arrived at the facility. She was a difficult one, skittish and a biter, hard to catch if she got away from the handlers and even harder to restrain because Henry didn’t want her wings damaged. Since the only exit from the enclosure was through one of the wooden-barred doors, however, he figured she could be left to her own devices once she was placed inside.
NA-01’s main quarters, a converted dancing hall with top-notch climate control and large, fibreglass skylights, had half a dozen (exceedingly expensive) close-circuit cameras that watched the play area. Three were positioned above the dens, which were covered with clear Perspex so that the researchers could observe even the most intimate aspects of mutant life. The second day that USA-P-00108 had been in the facility, she flew up and smashed every damn camera. When Henry and several handlers rushed in, they found that one had even fallen down, and GRB-M-00001 and USA-P-00020 were prying it apart with some help from DEU-K-00009’s metal-bending abilities.
They chased the mutants away from the remains of the camera, put all seven in the holding room and took the broken cameras down. Henry decided that USA-P-00108 had merely been frightened by her new surroundings and no one should be punished for the vandalism.
During the three weeks it took to order new cameras, Henry was running routine calibrations on Searchlight when GRB-M-0001 did something uncharacteristic. He had been unusually cooperative that afternoon, and they’d finished the tests with plenty of time to get down to the pub. Everyone was packing up the equipment and GRB-M-00001 looked happy to be escorted back to the enclosure without fuss – except that he tried to take a blanket with him. They didn’t have any such blankets in the enclosure – that was part of the social control policy Henry had designed, and the technicians didn’t want to deal with laundry anyway. But it was chilly inside Searchlight and the mutant was usually covered up during the tests. GRB-M-00001 had never tried to steal anything before, but that day he wouldn’t let go of the blanket until the technician in charge made it clear his fellows would get a shock if he didn’t.
Henry thought it was odd, but he was parched for a beer and didn’t make a note of it. A fortnight later, the new cameras arrived and were quickly installed while the mutants waited in the holding room.
It took less than twenty minutes for USA-P-00108 to break every single one, irreparably, before the handlers even realized what was going on and could get to the switchboard that activated the C6-290 collars.
This time, Henry was mad. He hadn’t wanted any more mouths to feed but had taken in the winged mutant to keep her from being euthanized in a lab closure across the country. He had USA-P-00108 put in solitary for twenty-four hours, and when GRB-M-00001 tried to intervene he had the telepath shocked for good measure. Irrational though it was, he felt incensed by the animals’ lack of gratitude
The next day they were due for more work on Searchlight, and once again the M-type was diligent and well-behaved, until once again they reached the end of the tests and GRB-M-00001 tried to take the blanket. When Henry went up to him and put his face close to the mutant’s, firmly telling him “No,” he was struck by a clear, piercing thought projected from the telepath’s mind. It was an image of the broken video camera.
Henry had stared at GRB-M-00001 for some time. The threat was obvious.
“Let him have the blanket,” Henry said, fascinated by this turn of events. GRB-M-00001 bundled his prize up under his arm and then held out his hand. Henry nodded at the nearest postdoc, “Go get another.”
When the postdoc returned with a folded blanket from the store cupboard, GRB-M-00001 took it and held out his hand again. He continued his demands until he had almost a dozen blankets, the entire stock from the second floor, which he proudly carried back to the enclosure. For a few weeks, the significance of these acquistions wasn’t clear, until the third lot of cameras was installed – protected by electrically charged cages – and the most unexpected part of the whole story revealed itself. That night, a handler saw GRB-M-00001 spreading four of the blankets over the plastic roof of one of the concrete dens. When the handler mentioned this to Henry the next morning, he realized at once that the mutant had completely hidden this den from view. He and a team of technicians and handlers hurried into the enclosure to see what the mutants could possible be up to.
Inside the den, they found three of their subjects – the new USA-P-00108, fiery USA-K-00068 and dark-skinned USA-P-00104 – sleeping peacefully on the mattress inside. They were clearly post-coital and despite their rude awakening, made no aggressive moves toward the team.
From then on, the cameras never observed another sexual encounter within the NA-01 tribe. It was clear that mating was still taking place – especially when, a few months later, USA-P-00108 fell pregnant – but it always happened in the covered den. Henry began to refer to it as the ‘nuptial cottage’ (some of the students designated it the less gracious ‘fuckbooth’).
“It’s incredible,” Moira said over a late-night coffee with Henry. “They’re expressing a sense of privacy. That’s beyond the range of higher primates, Henry. We have to publish this, it’s going to blow half the theories on mutant psychology out of the water.”
“I’ll give it to Bill or one of the postgrads,” Henry scratched the back of his head. “Our main line of research is finding ways to harness mutant powers, not their prudishness.”
“Why aren’t you more excited?” Moira asked, leaning down to catch his eye.
Henry took off his spectacles and cleaned them on his cardigan. “I think Em-One engineered this entire thing.”
Moira frowned, “What do you mean, ‘engineered’?”
“He took one look at that camera and figured out what we had been watching. He made note of how annoyed we were that they were smashed. I think he told One-Oh-Eight to break the second lot of cameras to get what he wanted.”
Henry licked his bottom lip. “It makes me feel like we’re not the only experimenters here.”
---
August 21st, 1967
It was mid-morning, and the handlers were all away on their break when Henry sidled up to the exchange window of the NA-01 enclosure. Empty food boxes lay stacked on his side of the glass, and through the large window in front of him spread the open floor in which the mutants had free rein. Tucked around the corner he could just see the three-walled concrete bunkers in which their subjects slept, and on the edges of the yard were various towers of crates, wooden platforms and ropes - Henry insisted the environment was kept stimulating by changing the play area regularly. The sun filtered weakly through the corrugated plastic skylights. The only mutant in sight was USA-P-00108, who was sitting on a platform high above Henry, her legs swinging over the edge and her gossamer wings flicking to catch the sun.
The circuit board in front of Henry displayed seven columns of buttons with handwritten labels above each one and painted explanations down the side. Each column represented one of the seven mutants in the tribe. The first button lead to a coloured light hanging from the ceiling of the enclosure; a different colour for each mutant, which they had been trained to respond to. The second button sent a signal to the collars of individual mutants, giving a short, mild shock if they were feeling stubborn and refused to come to the window when their light went on. The third button activated the collars of every mutant except the one who'd been summoned. These days they had to use that switch very rarely, and use was always recorded and investigated; sometimes it turned out that a light had blown, or the mutant in question was ill. Henry had no intentions of using it today - he didn't want his visit here recorded.
He pushed down the button for GBR-M-00001 and a blue light winked in the distant ceiling. He waited almost two minutes without any sign of activity from the dens. His finger hovered over the switch for GBR-M-00001's collar, but he hesitated. Leaning close to the glass, he rapped his knuckles on it until USA-P-00108 glanced down at him.
Henry pointed at the blue light in the ceiling. "You know what that means," he called impatiently. The glass was easily thin enough for her to hear him. "Go and fetch him."
For a moment she seemed to be ignoring him, and then she put her hands on the edge of the platform and launched herself off. Henry gulped as she plummeted several metres before her wings caught her and she fluttered to earth. He could tell the extra weight from the pregnancy, though still a barely-visible bump in front of her, was affecting her flying. He hoped she didn't overdo herself. He watched her disappear around the corner to the dens.
Shortly, a laboriously moving figure appeared in the mouth of the nearest den and resolved itself to be GBR-M-00001. He was being carried between his long-time companion, the blue-scaled USA-P-00007, and the facility’s second most dangerous kinetic mutant, the blond, surly USA-K-00068. They brought their leader within a few feet of the window where Henry stood before USA-P-00007 knelt and spread a blanket down. The telepath was lowered onto it. She gently arranged his paralysed legs in front of him and made sure he was able to hold himself upright before she and USA-K-00068 stood up and eyed Henry.
"Go on," Henry grumbled, waving his hand at them. "Shoo."
The two mutants slipped away, glancing back several times. GBR-M-00001 sat perfectly still, braced forward on his hands. He'd lost weight, Henry was sure of it, but the gleam in his eyes was not weary or confused, despite the analgesic pills the handlers were putting in his food. He was very awake.
After a moment, the mutant in front of Henry said, "Am I going to walk again?"
Henry felt a shudder run through his body. He didn't think he would ever get used to seeing this. It wasn't natural, it wasn't right. He jabbed his index finger against the glass. "Keep it down," he hissed. "The handlers are in the tea room next door."
"Am I going to walk again?" the mutant said louder. His voice was husky, almost without any determinable accent, but the hint of his English origins was still there.
"Please, please be quiet," Henry begged.
The mutant raised his voice again, "Am I going to—”
"No!" Henry pressed both hands on the glass. "You're not! We tried to fix the damage, we really did, we brought in a surgeon from the General Hospital and he worked on you for eight hours, but it was too late. You might regain some feeling, but you'll never walk. Do you - do you understand why? Your spine - there's nerves in your back, see, that connect your brain to your legs and when Dew-Kay dragged you out of the wreckage, one of your broken backbones severed those nerves. Like cutting a telephone cord. Do you understand any of this?"
"Enough," the mutant swallowed. His blue eyes hadn't left Henry's face once.
"And you haven't... you aren't talking to the handlers, a-are you?" Henry stammered.
"You told me not to," the mutant said simply. "Why not?"
"Because this isn't normal," Henry said, with the beginnings of a fear-induced anger tearing his words. "Your ability to talk goes against decades of research. I need to understand why you're different before I—”
"I'm not different."
"Yes you are. Mutants don't talk, not the way you do. They parrot words, but they lose the capacity for language once their mutation manifests," Henry echoed the dogma that every paper he'd ever read on the subject had repeated, "They can't use complex syntax or verbalise abstract concepts—”
"Yes they can," GBR-M-00001 said, blinking slowly. "But they're afraid to. It frightens humans when we talk, and what frightens you makes you hurt us. So we learn not to. We forget we were like you once. But I'm teaching them. My sister’s learning fast."
Henry shook his head, half-disbelieving, half trying to dissuade the telepath. "Terry says that you - Terry is the head handler, you know-”
"I know which one Terry is," the mutant said coldly. "He's bad. He has a bad way of looking at the girls."
"He's a competent employee," Henry snapped, and hurried on. "Terry says you're not eating."
"I'm not hungry."
"I can have you force-fed if you continue this."
"And I can talk to the handlers at any time."
Henry whimpered and pressed his forehead against the glass. "You know that won't help you."
The mutant swayed a little, shifting on the support of his hands. "Is he dead?"
"Who?"
"You know who."
Henry straightened his glasses. "No. He's in the isolation chamber."
"Give him back to me," the mutant said, baring his teeth, his shoulders rising behind him. "Give him back to me."
"It’s not my decision. There are protocols. And even if the board lets me release him, I can't let him hurt anyone else!"
"I'll make you regret it. I'll find a way. You take everything else from us. Give him back to me."
Henry stepped back from the glass. He could feel a building pressure between his eyes, like the weight of coming back down after a plane flight, except this grew stronger and stronger. He felt a slick tendril sliding into his thoughts, horribly violating, wrapping around his hesitations about releasing DEU-K-00009 and smothering them slowly. With a willpower he hadn't known he possessed, Henry vaulted his thoughts over the telepath's grip and managed to stab his finger down on the button for GBR-M-00001's collar. With a gasp, the mutant's body tensed and the pressing tendril released Henry's mind. One paralysed leg twitched in a cruel mimicry of conscious movement. Henry released the button and put his finger over the one below it.
"Don't do that again," he said firmly.
The blue eyes flicked up to look at him. "Next time, I'll do worse," he said quietly. "Goodbye, Doctor."
---
In the cold, tiny chamber, he died slowly. It was impossible not to – impossible for anyone to bear this grief – impossible for the White-Coats to let him continue living in this much pain. Despite all their cold dispassion, they must see how much he was suffering, they must see that destroying him was the only kind thing to do now. Perhaps it was another of their games, to see how long before heartbreak killed him. He tried to make himself small, bleed his flesh into the walls, summon the faintest trace of iron and silty copper from the concrete to smother himself. His lips cracked and there was blood and skin under his torn nails. His throat was raw from wailing. Please let them kill him, please let it be soon, he couldn’t go on. He didn’t want to go on, except to hunt them in return, to slaughter them all – and then the rage overtook him and he’d beat the walls and scream at his own reflection in the glass above his head. He knew they were up there. He knew they were watching. The White-Coats. The child-stealers, the game-players, the mate-killers.
His mate was dead. It had to be true. Where the White-Coats were concerned, the worst was always true.
And then, when time had passed and passed like the slow wear of concrete bricks, the door finally opened. He searched for the sweet tang of metal and found nothing on their bodies, and then curled into himself, thinking he was too tired to fight with only his fists. When they clipped the leash onto his collar and tried to bind his hands, he found he was not too tired after all, and fought viciously, ripping at the nearest flanks, sinking his teeth deep into the leather-clad arm of the nearest handler. The Alpha White-Coat was here in person, and trying to shout over his growls.
“Dew-Kay! Look at me! You’re going back to the tribe, Dew Kay, you don’t know how lucky you— oh for God’s sake, you stupid beast—”
He knew most of the words, but didn’t care enough to decode them. He was aware of being dragged through the corridors reinforced against his powers, though he felt a gleam of satisfaction as he burst a water pipe in a bathroom two walls away. There was a minute of sunlight scorching his long-unadjusted eyes as he was hauled between the Large Building and the Small Home Building. He quietened a little out of sheer surprise, having thought he would never see this prison again. And then he was being tossed bodily though a familiar door onto the floor of the Home. He scrambled up and sprinted from the door as fast as he could, looking over his shoulder to make sure none of the White-Coats followed him. But no, they had brought him to Home and left him here, steaming rising from his skin in the humid, brightly-lit cavern.
Angel and Black were sitting by the water, staring at him. A moment later there were cries of unrestrained elation as Blue, Gold and Red sprinted over and leapt onto him, arms around his neck and waist, Blue kissing every inch of his face while Red dragged on his hand, pulling him towards the nearest den.
And there – he choked back a moan – there was his mate, sitting cross-legged in the mouth of the den, holding out arms to him. He fell into the other man’s embrace, clutching him to his chest, burying his mouth into the curve of his neck, breathing in the living scent of him.
“It’s alright,” his mate soothed, running hands through matted hair and hanging from the circle of his arms. “It’s alright. They gave you back.”
Words were cumbersome and tainted, the dominion of the White-Coats. He didn’t want words, he wanted proper language, he wanted thoughts, and he pressed this to the forefront of his mind until his mate responded: Are you injured? Have you eaten? There’s blood on you…
He thought back at his mate, I’m perfectly well. It’s all scratches and grazes, I did it to myself. I thought you were dead. I’m so happy, so incredibly happy.
He tried to pull his mate upright, but found the man a heavy weight in his arms. He knew at once that something was more than wrong and he drew his head back, looking and asking for explanation.
I can’t stand, his mate gazed at him, hands wrapped around either side of his friend’s head. My back was broken. It won’t heal.
He caught the wisp of a hush concealed in his mate’s thoughts, and gave a guttural cry. My fault!
No, no, not you—
He could hear the truth in his mate’s hurried withdrawal from his mind, and see it in his own memories – the terrible, liquid cracking when he’d pulled his mate from the wreckage, the scream of pain, the way his mate’s body had been twisted – but he pushed the memory aside.
“My friend,” his mate was still grasping the other man’s head, keeping him eye-to-eye. “We need to talk.”
He shook his head. “I don’t like talking. Won’t,” he said, though the words sounded embarrassingly juvenile and malformed even in his own ears.
“Yes, you will,” his mate said. “Because you must. I will force you if I have to. We’re not going to stay here any longer. We’re going to leave, all of us. But for that to happen I need you to learn to talk.”
--
"Henry?"
He jerked his head up. Moira was looking at him with both eyebrows raised. Across from her, Professor Shaw coughed and pretended to be busy making notes on his pad.
"Sorry?" Henry straightened bolt upright in his chair. "Sorry Sebastian, what did you...?"
"Quite alright, my boy," Professor Shaw smiled broadly, oozing the charisma that had boosted his popularity in many scientific circles. A German ex-pat who had defected to the States in the early days of WW2, he had joined the defense department and single-handedly reversed the policy of euthanizing all American mutants as soon as they were discovered. After making considerable scientific progress for the allies, Shaw had made a name for himself after the war as a world-renowned expert on mutant study. When the Searchlight program had gotten off the ground he had become very interested in Henry's social control work with the NA-01 tribe and was now a regular visitor to the facility. Henry had been in awe of him since he was an undergrad, and still barely managed to keep from stammering in his presence.
"I was just saying," Shaw leaned forward, "Moira mentioned one of your females is pregnant. You know I'm hoping to establish a New York facility based on your model, but I'm very keen to get mutants as young as possible, while they're still malleable, and I thought once this new infant was weaned--"
How did Henry's tie get so tight? He dragged his fingers under the fold of his collar, feeling sweat breaking out on the skin there. You take everything, GRB-M-00001 had said. He cleared his throat, but his voice still came out a little higher than usual.
"Actually, Sebastian, though I'm flattered you've asked, I— I really don't think it's good for— that is to say, I think NA-01 will benefit from the birth of this new member. The first of a generation raised by mutants. I was hoping to complete a long-term study on the child's development among its own kind."
Moira was frowning, tapping one finger against her chin as she watched Henry blather. Shaw's face condensed, but his smile didn't waver. "Well then, would you mind if I borrow your other female? The shapeshifter. I have another P-type, one who can smash through a ten-inch wall if he builds up the momentum, and I'm very interested in transferring his abilities to some pentagon projects I'm collaborating on. But he's a difficult one to control. If I can breed him—”
"No," Henry said, with a firmness that surprised even him. Shaw looked unfazed, but leaned back in his chair as Henry babbled his explanations. "The tribe's social structure is delicate, Sebastian, and if they realise Yu-Twennie is carrying an unfamiliar male's child, who know how my alphas will react? I appreciate your predicament, of course, but I have to think of my subjects' welfare."
"Of course," Shaw rasped, still smiling, a suture-needle smile that slid between Henry's eyes and made him feel a little dizzy. The conversation turned quickly to more mundane topics and Henry gradually felt his heart rate slow down.
Once they had finished taking Shaw on a tour of the new Searchlight site and the professor had headed back to his car, Moira pulled Henry aside. She made him face her until she could look at his face. "Are you alright?" she whispered. "You looked scared witless in there."
Henry shook his head. "Did I do the right thing?"
"By lying to Sebastian?" Moira's face broke into an impish grin. "Of course you did."
"You noticed I was lying," Henry said dully, feeling his guts contract.
"Only because you've never mentioned any child development study," Moira hastened to assure him. "And we both know Em-One and Deu-Kay looked after Yu-Twennie when she had her last baby. But I'm glad you put him off. I don't care how much the pentagon are falling over themselves to fund him, he's still a sexist, self-serving—”
"Moira!"
"It's true. You built this place from the ground up, Henry, and you don’t owe Professor Shaw anything.”
“We built it,” Henry said, his anxiety beginning to trickle away.
GRB-M-00001 had had no right to guilt him. Henry looked after his mutants, didn’t he? Better than Shaw would have. The memory of how lucid the telepath’s speech was – how impossibly sentient he had seemed – was already fading. So one mutant had learned how to speak; it wasn’t a precedent, it was an exception. And no surprise it was the one who could read minds. GRB-M-00001 wasn’t really aware of what he was saying when he talked, only that he was getting an emotional rise out of Henry. It was a mental trick, like faux-psychics that fed off the audience’s reaction in order to guess details about dead relatives.
That was all it was. A parrot’s trick. Even dogs could be emotionally manipulative. It didn’t make them human. It didn’t make them like him. He, Henry McCoy, was clearly a different order of being. He wasn’t an animal.
He wasn’t.
Not his mind.
Henry was starting to feel a bit stupid that he’d fallen for the trick and released Deu-K-00009 before the board had cleared the decision. Luckily they’d followed his lead, as Moira had predicted they would, and told him that they trusted him not to let another disaster happen. And Henry would do anything to prevent more people being hurt. From now on, every safety protocol would be followed to the letter, every mutant would know their place, and there would be no more secrets or tricks. And if GRB-M-00001 started talking to him again, he’d tell Moira, that’s what he’d do. Moira would figure out what to do.
Feeling better about the whole situation, Henry decided to go back to his office and catch up on his reading.
---
He stayed late that night, giving Moira a grateful smile as she stuck her head in the door and waved goodbye. She waggled her cast at him; it was due to come off in a couple of days, and two of the postgrads had taken to it with coloured markers and turned it into quite the work of art. Henry bade her goodnight and returned to the reviews of his new Searchlight plans.
When he next looked at the clock it was after midnight. He sighed, thinking of the long drive home and the four or five hours sleep he’d get before he had to come back to work. He eyed the couch in the corner, buried under a pile of ring binders and biology textbooks. Crawling under his jacket and sleeping until the cafeteria opened tomorrow sounded like the best plan right now.
Just as he got up to clear the couch, the phone on his desk began to ring. Henry lifted up his paper lunch bag to find it and stared at it for a couple of seconds as if he’d never seen such a device before. Who would be ringing at this time of night? His mother? She only called on Christmas, and only to berate him for working through the holidays instead of coming to visit her.
“Hello?” he said cautiously into the receiver. He was seized by the sudden, bizarre fear that it would be Professor Shaw, deriding him for his lies that afternoon and demanding that he hand USA-P-00020 over for impregnation. But the voice on the other end was Terry’s smoky wheeze. He was the only handler on duty tonight.
“Sorry about the hour, sir. Didn’t know if you’d still be in.”
“Is everything alright? They’re not sick, are they? I’ll call the hospital—”
“No, sir, not sick,” Terry quickly assured him. “But Em-One’s doing something a bit odd. You said to tell you if I noticed anything funny since Deu-Kay got reintroduced, and they’ve been on perfect behaviour for the most part, but now he’s—”
“What?” Henry clutched the phone so hard he could feel his knuckles clicking. “What is he doing?”
“He’s doodling, sir. I think it’s in his own blood. Thought you’d want to know.”
Henry was out the door almost before the receiver of the phone hit the cradle.
He sprinted right across the dusty yard between the main building and the tribe’s home, his lab coat flying behind him, missing the lock several times as he stabbed the key at it with shaking hands. He stumbled down the corridor into the screen room where Terry was watching the television monitors. The handler jumped out of his chair as Henry burst in, quickly trying to hide the hip flask that he'd been sipping from. Henry didn’t care about that, and rushed up to the monitors.
“Show me.”
“It’s just nonsense, sir. He’s probably copying the ingredients off of a food packet or something. He’s cracked,” Terry pointed to the central monitor, which looked directly down at the floor of the play area. The floor was pale marble, left over from when the building had been a dance hall, and a colourless shape that must be GRB-M-00001 was in the bottom corner of the screen.
The rest of the image was filled with huge letters and symbols that were almost a foot tall. They were in black and white on the monitor, but Henry could see that the telepath was holding something like a small bowl in one hand and with the other, using what looked like a piece of torn blanket to paint his huge message. Another cloth was wrapped around the wrist holding the bowl.
Henry tipped his head, pushing his glasses up his nose, and the letters suddenly resolved themselves.
The shock that ran through him was electric and numbing all at once, and he could only gape for several long seconds while Terry shifted uncomfortably behind him. At last, in a voice that drew on a reservoir of acting ability he hadn’t known he possessed, Henry told Terry to take the night off.
“Really, sir?” Terry asked.
Henry turned flinty eyes on him. “I saw that flask, man. This is not a gift to you. If I never have to see it again, I will do the incredibly generous favour of not writing you up.”
“But sir, Em-One might be hurt—”
“I will deal with my subjects, Terry! Since you are clearly not capable!” Henry barked.
Terry gulped and nodded, putting the flask on the table before grabbing his coat and hurrying out. His breath coming quick and shallow, Henry turned back to the screen.
The letters and symbols that GRB-M-00001 had scrawled did look like crude nonsense to an untrained eye, especially daubed in such a messy medium. But Henry recognized them. Capital A’s and B’s here, arrows of various sizes and shapes, a trio of dots, a square-edged hook, an upside-down T, and a multitude of curved slashes for parentheses.
They were mathematical symbols. Several of the most basic rules of logic, written in blood on the enclosure floor, by a creature that Henry had claimed in many a well-cited paper had no capacity for abstract reasoning.
Oh, God.
God, what had they done?
Henry snatched the key to the observation room’s door off the hook on the wall and hurried through into the windowed room. The only light inside the enclosure was the faint glow of patchwork stars through the frosted skylights. He jabbed a button on the circuit board and the blue light to summon GRB-M-00001 shone from the ceiling, casting a sterile tint across at the inert features of the enclosure. Henry could just see the silhouette of GRB-M-00001 still lifting his arm to finish a premise, then dragging his folded legs along the ground to begin the next.
“Stop,” Henry begged, not sure if he was addressing the mutant or himself. He stabbed the button again and again, making the light flash madly. No response. Before he could think twice about it, he hit the button that activated GRB-M-00001’s shock collar.
This time the telepath reacted, his limbs growing rigid and his delicately-balanced body toppling sideways. Henry didn’t hear him make a sound, but USA-P-00020 broke from the shadows of the nearest den and ran over to her foster brother, helping him sit up. Henry could barely see anything, but he thought some exchange might be taking place. Then GRB-M-00001 determinedly pushed the other mutant aside and picked up his cloth brush once more.
Henry scrubbed his hands down his face.
“I need to talk to you,” he whispered. “We need to talk.”
His hand was shaking so much that he dropped the key to the enclosure door. In the shadows of the unlit observation room it took him thirty painful seconds to find it, and then another ten to get it into the lock. He shoved the heavy door open and his feet echoed heavily on the stone floor as he stepped into the enclosure. The spring-loaded door automatically swung shut behind him, and he shoved his keys into the pocket of his trousers as he walked towards the exposed shape of GRB-M-00001. His ears were ringing and a void had opened beneath his diaphragm that made breathing difficult.
In the darkness, the telepath looked up and Henry could tell, even though his face was in shadow, that their gazes were aligned. And Henry, clever, brilliant, genius Henry McCoy with a Harvard PhD in biochemistry and a Masters in structural physics, Henry who could calculate square roots in his head and hit a baseball with a strength that always surprised his colleagues, realized that he had just walked into an ambush.
He spun and glimpsed the white flash of DEU-K-00009’s teeth approaching at a run. The mutant had been hiding below the observation window, crouching against the wall. Henry felt a naked arm grapple his neck and choked back a cry as USA-K-00068’s blond head pressed close against the side of his own and his wrist was twisted agonizingly behind his back. And then he saw the glint of metal in DEU-K-00009’s hand and heard, as if down the wire of a distant telephone, the telepath call wordlessly from across the enclosure. But DEU-K-00009 did not heed him. The makeshift knife went up and under Henry’s ribs in a slice that was so smooth and swift that it was several long seconds before the pain bloomed into him like fire.
---
Henry was moving. His arms hurt. His ribs hurt. He was floating, upside down, watching the carved wooden beams of the dance hall pass above his head.
He realised, after some time (it was probably a few seconds) that the two kinetic mutants were dragging him towards the nearest den. They'd spread the blankets on top, so that the camera above couldn't see inside. The shapeshifter and the red-headed banshee had carried GRB-M-00001 into the mouth of the dwelling, while USA-P-000108 and USA-P-00104 stood on either side like bodyguards. In the dim light, they all looked colourless and statuesque, like dryads in an old Greek story. Through the ragged pain that throbbed with every breath, Henry’s perception was dreamlike. Almost mythological. He remembered that in ancient Greece, hubris was the greatest sin.
The only emotion to be seen was on GRB-M-00001's face, which was twisted in fury. It was not directed at Henry, but at his mate. The mutants dumped Henry just inside the den; he ground his teeth together as a flare of pain erupted in his side, and pressed his hands to the wound. No one was paying attention to him. The telepath had DEU-K-00009 in his sights and had made him crouch down so that they were face-to-face.
"I told you not to hurt him," GRB-M-00001 was hissing. "I told you. You have to do as I say, do you understand?"
There was a drawn-out silence, and then GRB-M-00001 spoke as if he'd heard a response that Henry hadn't. "Don't think at me, speak to me! You're going to be talking a lot in the future, you cannot rely on me to be your mouth any more!"
After a moment, a low, rasping voice emanated from the silhouette of DEU-K-00009 in the doorway. "He earned it."
"You don't get to make that decision. We protect our family. We don't kill except to protect our family. Do not disobey me again," GRB-M-00001 told him. When his mate started to look away, the telepath lunged out and grabbed his face, turning it to meet his gaze. "Give me the knife."
DEU-K-00009 handed it over without hesitation. With his free hand, GRB-M-00001 raised it to his mate's face, and Henry thought he was about to witness some primitive ritual punishment, a scar to remind DEU-K-00009 of his crime. But instead his mate slid the knife in short, careful strokes along the other mutant’s cheek. It took Henry's swimming brain a while to work out what he was doing, and it was only when he saw the short tufts of hair falling against the light that he realised GRB-M-00001 was shaving his mate. All the male mutants – except USA-P-000104, who didn't grow a beard – had their hair trimmed once a week to keep them clean, but Henry had never seen any of them clean-shaven. He felt as if he was hallucinating. As he stared in a kind of blissful curiosity, GRB-M-00001 glanced his way and Henry's heart began racing again.
"I haven't forgotten you, Doctor," he said quietly. "I'm glad you recognised my message."
“Where did you… where did you learn those logical proofs?” Henry gasped.
GRB-M-00001’s native accent slid in and out of focus as he spoke. “One of the only clear memories I have of my father was him teaching me philosophy and logic. I was perhaps nine or ten at the time, but you don’t forget the things that made your father proud. Perhaps it’s best he died the next year, before my abilities were discovered. He never had to learn that his son was a sub-human,” he spat the words, leaning close over Henry.
He glanced sideways at his mate - now completely beardless - and the two older males, and jerked his head. They must have been waiting for this signal, because they moved forward at once. Hands pinched open the buttons of Henry’s shirt, pulling off his lab coat, undoing his belt and trousers. Henry felt such fear wash over him that he was barely aware that they had to hold him down. What were they going to do to him? No, no – he didn’t want to die, but much, much more than that, he did not want to die badly – not like this, not like a captive animal –
But in less than a minute the mutants were stepping back, leaving Henry to wriggle away towards the back of the den in his panic. They’d taken his outer clothes and his shoes, nothing more. He watched GRB-M-00001 inspect the bloodied hole in his shirt, casting an exasperated eye at DEU-K-00009 before the metal-bending mutant took Henry’s pants out of USA-K-00068’s hands and began to get dressed. USA-P-000108 picked up Henry’s keys in her long fingers and offered them to the leader.
Henry’s vision was suddenly blocked out by the shape of USA-P-00020, her teeth bared and her rough-nailed hands grasping the collar of his undershirt and giving him a brutal shake. “Where is he?” she shrieked, yellow eyes flashing a poisonous orange as her shapeshifting blended into her emotions. “Where is he?”
Henry could only gape at her. The sound of her voice was like a slap, the final proof that GRB-M-00001 was not the unique exception to mutant cognition. She shook him again, throwing him down on the den’s mattress.
“Darling,” GRB-M-00001 said sharply, and his foster sister looked up, her brows twisted in fury. The telepath shook her head at her and she stepped back from Henry, flexing her fingers.
“Wh-who is she talking about?” Henry babbled.
“Her baby,” GRB-M-00001 answered. “They took her baby.”
Henry looked up at the mutant in front of him, naked but for her alien scales. “But she… we didn’t even detect any increase in anxiety when we… we thought she didn’t…”
“Thief!” she snarled, moving as if to assault Henry again, but with a quick intake of breath GRB-M-00001 put two fingers to his temple and pinned her with an intense stare. She looked between her brother and Henry, some silent conversation passing between them, and finally slunk away to crouch on her haunches, sneering at him.
“Do you know what they said to her?” GRB-M-00001 asked Henry. He shook his head, feeling tears prick at his eyes. The telepath’s lips drew back in disdain, “They said they wanted to do a medical check on the baby. They said they would bring him back in an hour. They didn’t think she understood, but she did. She didn’t protest because she wanted the best for his health. But an hour passed, and then a day, and they never brought him back. You never brought him back.”
Henry broke eye contact, turning his stare towards the concrete brick wall. He rubbed his hand across his eyes and felt them come away wet.
When he looked up again, DEU-K-00009 was fully dressed, the bloody part of Henry’s shirt tucked into the side of his trousers. The broad, animal grin had returned to his face. He held out his arms and did a quick twirl – Henry wondered where he had learned to do that, or if it was some innate instinct people had for new clothes – and his mate clapped, while the redhead and USA-P-00108 laughed.
Henry raised his hand, “You can’t go out like that,” he croaked. “They’ll recognise you. They’ll catch you.”
GRB-M-00001 shot him a lazy glance. “You think?”
Henry looked at DEU-K-00009, clean-shaven and straight-backed in the stolen clothes, his thumbs tucked into the belt loops with the labcoat thrown rakishly open. Henry’s breath caught in his throat. Years of his life withered in his memories, turned into lies and evasions of this single truth: he looked human. None of the handlers who worked with DEU-K-00009 every day, who fed him and leashed him and sedated him, would have recognized him even if they were staring right in his face.
He looked human.
Henry tipped his head back. His vision was bleeding into the shadows and despite his grasping strength, he couldn’t keep all the blood inside the wound. He heard some half-spoken, half-thought conversation going on above his head, and a moment later USA-P-00020 was looming over him again, tearing something with her teeth, and Henry felt strong fingers balling a cloth against his oozing ribcage. She grabbed his hand and made him hold the torn blanket in place while she wrapped strips around him, helping by USA-K-00068 and USA-K-00094. She tied the bandage with a vicious jerk, but as she got up to leave him, Henry grabbed her wrist.
She twisted out of his weak fingers easily, but he said, “Wait. Your son.”
The shapeshifter froze, staring down at him. “He’s in Hamburg. We have a sister facility. He has three foster mothers who adore him, my colleague writes. They don’t use C6-290 collars.”
USA-P-00020 looked at her brother. “Ham-burg?”
GRB-M-00001 looked between her and Henry, his eyes hooded. He answered quietly. “Very, very far away. Too far.”
She shot Henry a disdainful snarl and stepped over him to crouch beside the two alpha males. GRB-M-00001 was testing his mate’s speech, making him repeat certain phrases – “I’m taking the cages for cleaning” and “Don’t open them, they smell like shit” in particular. At last he nodded at his sister, who stood up and in a blink turned into a perfect replica of Henry, completely with a different shirt colour to distinguish her from DEU-K-00009’s clothes. The C6-290 collar was still around her neck, and USA-K-00098 beckoned her and folded up the collar of her fake lab coat to hide it.
“Your wrist,” Henry croaked at GRB-M-00001. “It could get infected. You need to get it cleaned.”
“No hospitals,” the telepath growled, his hand going to the cut wrist with which he’d written his bloody summoning.
“No, I understand—” Henry took a long breath, which was getting harder and harder to do. He put all his strength into raising his head. “There’s a first aid kit in the tearoom. You know where it is? There’s disinfectant in there – take it all with you, clean the wound and use the adhesive stitches – you can read my mind, can’t you? You see what they look like? When you get out of the complex, go down the biggest street until you see a school. There’s a mission bin behind the boiler room, Dew-Kay can get into it with his abilities. There will be clothes in there, and warm blankets to take with you.”
The mutants glanced between each other. Henry’s confidence surged a little. “Why? Why write all that? There had to be other ways to get my attention.”
“People will see it,” GRB-M-00001 explained, jerking his chin to indicate the message on the floor outside. “It’ll show them what we are.”
Henry couldn’t hold up his head any longer and let it dropped back against the mattress. He chuckled, despite the renewed pain it caused. “No it won’t,” he said.
“Yes it will!” GRB-M-00001 said angrily, showing a hint of the child he’d been when his humanity was erased. “It’s proof!”
Henry couldn’t focus his thoughts enough to answer. He turned his head until the cluster of mutants was brought into view. DEU-K-00009 was holding Henry’s shoes, waving them in front of his made. Henry could distantly hear some quiet disagreement, and the alpha saying, “Too big.”
GRB-M-00001 pointed at Henry. “Get his socks.”
Henry closed his eyes. This was it. “No,” he mumbled, pulling his legs towards his body. “No, no—”
By the air currents against his skin he felt that he was surrounded, and he tried to jerk his feet away from their hands, but he was cornered and tired and a few moments later he heard several sharp gasps and someone stepping back in a hurry. He blinked up at them, flexing his feet. Even in the worst situation, it felt good to have them free for once.
“I’m not,” he was breathless after two words, sucked in all the air he could manage and finished, “one of you.”
“Oh, Henry,” GRB-M-00001 said quietly. He clicked his fingers and pointed out into the enclosure, rattling the keys in his fist. NA-01 tore their gazes away from Henry’s feet and got up. USA-K-00098 brushed his palm down the concrete wall as if in farewell. USA-P-00104 wrapped one arm around USA-P-00108’s shoulders and with the other, grabbed USA-K-00068’s hand.
DEU-K-00009 was lifting his mate off the cold ground, piggy-back style. GRB-M-00001 kissed the hinge of the other man's jaw as he stood up, a strangely unselfconscious gesture, perhaps an apology for scolding him earlier. As the group began to head out of the den, Henry found enough breath to say, “Thank you for not killing me.”
The telepath didn’t answer aloud, but a cautious voice in his head replied, Goodbye, Doctor.
---
Moira took a sip of the water glass on the podium in front of her. It had started off as iced, but under the heat of the stage's spotlights it had long since melted. Her raw throat drained the moisture away and began to tighten once more.
"These are the facts," Moira concluded, relieved to hear that a croak hadn't yet crept into her voice. "At least one member of the NA-01 tribe has proven himself capable of complex language, premeditated planning, advanced theory of mind and even rudimentary mathematical reasoning. That he led all six of his fellows without being discovered suggests at least some of them are equally capable. Subsequently, we need to—” oh, there was the croak. She cleared her throat, glancing down at the scribbled notes in her own hand, "we must cease all euthanasia programs immediately, and all research that involves non-consensual experiments on mutants. We need to test their intelligence and emotional reasoning. If necessary, those that prove themselves as rational as Em-One—” she corrected herself quickly, "As GRB-M-00001... must be offered rehabilitation and compensation as soon as possible."
She swept her gaze across the audience, recognising many faces but not the multitude of emotions that shaped them. Others were strangers to her; international scientists, representatives from the government and the defense department, and more journalists than she had ever seen, their hands clutching their notepads and their eyes gleaming. "Are there any questions?" she asked.
A forest of hands filled the audience. Moira pointed at a professor in the front row that she knew from university, who stood up and rumbled, "Doctor McTaggart, these 'facts' you have proposed are in fact inferences, are they not? One interpretation of the evidence?"
Moira's hands clenched around the edges of the podium. "To some extent, every fact is an inference. I've shown you the photographs. What other inference would you make?"
Voices of protests rippled across the theatre, and Moira raised her hand. "Please. Professor, how would you interpret the evidence?"
One of the journalists leapt up before he could answer. "Is it not true that your colleague, Doctor McCoy, was found bleeding inside the empty enclosure? Couldn't he have released the mutants and written the mathematical proofs in his own blood?"
Moira shook her head, "Tests from multiple parts of the writing showed the blood was A positive. Henry's bloodtype is O, while the only member of NA-01 who is A positive is GRB-M-00001."
One of the defense spokesmen bellowed for attention next. "But it is true, is it not, that your colleague suffered a severe mental breakdown following the discovery of these supposed 'facts'?"
"His word is reliable, I assure you," Moira said sharply. "He was perfectly lucid once he regained consciousness in hospital. He wrote down everything he witnessed, and his report matches perfectly the statements of the head handler who was on duty that night—"
"A man who was later fired for drinking on the job," another journalist called.
"Doctor McTaggart," the professor who had spoken first called. "Henry, God spare him, has now been institutionalised in a very expensive, very discrete mental hospital, hasn't he?"
"He's not insane," Moira's voice rose. "Several doctors have testified that he is not suffering from any delusion or mental deficit. He may be the sanest of all of us."
"But you did have him locked up," the defense spokesman called.
"For his own safety," Moira countered. She didn't say, Because he thinks he's a mutant. That was another Fact that she couldn't begin to reconcile, the idea that her clever young colleague had repressed his own nature and denied the truth for most of his life. But then, when she was a child she’d wanted to be a vet, and now she was declaring herself a career torturer. It'd be funny, except it wasn't.
"Doctor McTaggart, the mutant trait has been linked to severe retardation and social stunting since the 19th century, how could examples never have arisen before now—”
"Is this a publicity stunt, Doctor McTaggart? Are you trying to reclaim funding for the defunct Searchlight project?"
"Do you really have any idea what you're talking about, Doctor? You were just Henry's assistant, weren't you?"
Moira searched desperately for a friendly face among the horde, someone with a genuine question, someone who wanted to consider the possibility of what she was saying before they cut her down.
One of the government bureaucrats cleared his throat and raised his hand as he stood up. "But let's get this straight," he said. "If you're advocating that the NA-01 tribe, at least, be treated as... human," he drew the word out with a smirk as if it was a terribly witty joke, "then we are dealing with dangerous fugitives, are we not? Who stabbed and nearly killed Henry McCoy, and who assaulted at least one security guard during their escape. Why, the German one," he checked his notes, "DEU-K-00009 alone is responsible for more than thirty deaths in the last two decades. Seven of them at your own facility. He broke your arm and nearly killed you too, didn't he? And he is armed with powerful weapons - why, if he were human, the normal course of action for the police would be to shoot him on sight!"
A murmur ran through the audience, and Moira struggled to bring her voice up from the depths of her chest. Because he was right, wasn't he? If DEU-K-00009 wasn't an animal, then he was a mass-murderer. Finally, holding onto the podium so hard she could see her knuckles pressing white against her skin, she said, "He was defending himself! From us!"
The murmurs grew into roars, and someone at the back snatched up their bag and walked out. But now Moira could see others who were holding their hands to their mouths in horror, or bent forward with rapt expressions on their faces. The chairman of the conference stood up at the edge of the stage, waving his hands. "Please, can we settle, please. Are there any more questions? I said questions, not accusations."
"Where are they now?" someone yelled, someone Moira couldn't identify. "Where did NA-01 go?"
Moira shook her head, leaning close to the microphone. “It's my belief that they've successfully integrated themselves into human society."
---
When the ordeal was over and she left the stage, she passed Sebastian Shaw by the stairs. He tried to catch her attention as she passed, but she turned her head away and kept walking. Before she'd got more than a few metres, the journalists closed in, stretching onto their toes to shove the mics of their dictaphones into her face and trying to pull her one way and then the other. She raised her voice, "Please, I can discuss this outside, can we please—"
She felt a new tide shift through the crowd and the journalists were shunted aside by several of the bulkier scientists who had been at the talk. They grabbed Moira's arms and pulled her out of the reach of the government suits, while a group of younger researchers defended the rear. Outside in the broad hallway beyond the lecture theatre, they kept her moving until they'd gone around a corner and the journalists were out of sight. Suddenly there were hands extending to Moira and a flurry of introductions, but the aggression and anger had faded away.
"John Verturi, MD, Boston General Hospital - we refused to perform experimental surgery on mutants last year, Ms. McTaggart, and two lobby groups are suing us—”
"Professor Celia Taylor, Doctor McTaggart, I was a great admirer of the late Bill Marshell's work on mutant-human interactions—”
"Doctor Berkolitz, I run the New York institute for mutant study, we've been protesting the conditions in most mutant labs for years—”
"Sam Sjoquist, I've written several papers showing that mutant retardation is comparable to POWs and abused children exposed to similar circumstances over long periods of time—”
"Liam Castle, United Kingdom Agency for the protection of mutants—”
One of the tall men who had pushed aside the journalists stepped up and shook her hand vigorously, "Johan Gottshalk, my dear, we've never met but I always considered Henry a close colleague."
Moira looked him up and down, "You run our sister institute in Hamburg."
"Yes I do, Doctor. I was very saddened about everything that's happened this past year, but you were terrific today. Very brave. We've only got four adults in our tribe, you know, EU-01. They were all in captivity from a young age and our tests have always shown they're cognitively well below average - but it's our little one that's of interest, you know? The infant Henry gave us from your facility, USA-P-00214, the troublesome little teleporter. He manifested prenatally, so all the case studies on early manifestation say he should show the worst delay in development. Yet despite being raised solely by the mutants – and they do adore him – we've kept his environment stimulating and he's developing well within the normal range of a human child."
Moira stared at him. "I had no idea."
"We've been afraid to publish so early. What journal would believe it? But this announcement of yours - it's going to change everything, Doctor McTaggart."
A young woman in a suit nodded eagerly. "I've tried to publish on mutants who traversed puberty without showing signs of developmental delay, and had the work rejected. I knew what I'd seen was true."
"We've been working with a pair of young twins, two of DEU-K-00009's by artificial insemination, and they've been talking normally for years - but the reviewers insisted they'd been wrongly diagnosed, that they were just ordinary humans with some odd characteristics."
"We're going to change things."
"We'll figure it out."
"We'll make people listen."
Moira turned as the voices swelled over her, trying to hear every story and memorise every face. She thought, this has been coming for a long time, hasn't it? and then, Why didn't we see? All of us were responsible.
She smiled at the babbling men and women around her, and wished Henry was beside her. No matter what had happened, and what he blamed himself for, he felt like the only family she had and she knew she’d defend him to the last.
Human or not.