Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

*set after the finale of season 2 if blink never came through her portal.*

Lauren's Pov

Mom said that we would make a new mutant underground. I just didn't see how that was possible. But somehow we did. It was an old underground bunker that someone had made during the cold war that we found. It was comfortable but we were stuck here, sometimes it felt like we were trapped. If Sentinel Services ever found us, there was no back way out.

One of our main issues was that we were all wanted fugitives, especially Andy and me. Sentinel Services was really pissed about what happened and hit back hard. Mutants were being captured, killed, and tortured everywhere. There wasn't much we could do to stop it. We were in hiding and Andy and my powers were seriously malfunctioning. We couldn't quite control them sometimes.

Even with all of that, we were dealing with another threat. A much bigger one than Sentinel Services believe it or not. The Inner Circle may have lost their leader but it was still alive and well. Run by Esme's sisters, they wanted revenge on the mutant underground. They were hunting us down in full force. They were coming at us in ways that we didn't expect and had no way to fight against.

The purifiers were still out there and ever since Jace Turner made them into a citizen militia they were coming at us more and more. Mutants were getting attacked by them almost every day. Sentinel Services freaking out wasn't helping. They were trying to find us and we were worried they would. We were one step ahead but it wasn't confirmed that we would stay that way.
Even within the Underground, trust was fragile. We tried our best to keep everybody safe but sometimes we didn't succeed.

Chapter Text

Lauren's POV

We were sitting in the room that we had designated as the meeting room discussing what to do about the new problem we faced. A mutant who could raise the dead. Specifically the people that we had killed. Needless to say we were all concerned about that prospect. We had no idea how this kid's power worked or even who they were or where they were for that matter. We had just heard enough reports to determine that whatever this kid was doing was real and it was dangerous. There had been just too many reports from Sentinel Services or random people talking about how people that they were sure that they killed had come back to life and were working with the group behind the mutant uprising and were now trying to kill them. This was really problematic especially considering the fact that we had all killed people and not many of these people were people that we would want to come back.

I was sitting next to Andy on the couch in the back of the room. Lorna, Marcos, Mom, Esme, and John were all standing around the room discussing the mutant.

"We need to figure out who this kid is and exactly what he can do and exactly why he's working with the Inner Circle," said Lorna.

Marcos nodded, "We've all killed people and if they can bring them back..."

"We're screwed," Lorna finished for him.

"So what do we do?" Esme said looking between Lorna and Marcos.

"We figure out where they are going to attack next then we stop them." John said looking up with a determined expression on his face. He's been like that for a while now. Determined. Ever since Clarice died he's been trying to fix it somehow. Maybe just to at least make her death worth it.

Mom looked at John "But how do we do that?"

"There's actually been a pretty clear pattern of where they attack '' said Esme, getting everyone's attention, "They have attacked places within a 50 mile radius around Philadelphia where there were old underground stations. There are only about 3 left that they haven't attacked." She said, pulling out a map and showing us the locations.

"Which one do you think they will attack next?" I said looking at the map then at Esme. She was a little surprised I was talking to her. Andy and I had been avoiding her for a while now. After what happened we just couldn't bring ourselves to talk to her and luckily, she respected that.

She pulled out a marker and explained to us that it was most likely that they would attack an abandoned warehouse just outside of the city that had been a waysation before the underground collapsed.

"They have been attacking places like it, abandoned for much longer, and the other two that they haven't attacked have been active until about two weeks before the underground collapsed. This one is more similar to the ones that they have been attacking because the underground left it around two years before the collapse.

"We can send a team out to watch it." John suggested.

"Lauren and I could go." said Andy, speaking for the first time. I looked at him and nodded in agreement. No one had been letting us do much for fear of Sentinel Services figuring out where we were.

Lorna looked at us and nodded saying, "I'll go too."

"Same" said Marocs.

Mom looked like she wanted to protest "but.."

"They will be fine Caitlin," John said.

"But someone could see them and report them and then Sentinel Services would know that we're in the area and search everywhere and close the roads. We would be trapped. Don't even get me started about the other mutants in the area." Mom said looking between us with a worried expression.

"We'll be careful. We promise" Andy said. He's been dying to get out of here for weeks. It was honestly kind of bugging me.

"I still don't like it." Mom said.

"We'll make sure nothing happens Caitlin. Okay. They'll be fine." Lorna said.

It took two more minutes of arguing for her to finally relent and let us go.

Lorna, Marcos, Andy and I headed out after 30 minutes of getting ready, not really expecting to be confronted but prepared to be.

Mia's Pov

It was a normal day. Until it wasn't. I was walking through the art and music hallway at my school heading to my piano class, when all of a sudden an announcement came over the speaker saying "Everyone listed please report to the main office immediately." They rattled off a couple of names before I noticed a pattern, most of them were people that I knew were mutants.

There were a couple of names I didn't recognise but I heard enough to be able to guess that was happening. I heard one of my friends' name, Kaylee, but I knew that I couldn't intercept her. She has classes on the other side of the Main office and wouldn't go through any hallways I would.

There were two names I didn't recognise in a row before I heard the name of one of my friends and his little sister, Camreon and Lizzie Stone. I knew what Cameron's powers were. He had increased strength and fast reflexes and Lizzie hadn't triggered her powers yet but we figured out that she's a mutant because her eyes are naturally purple. She had to wear contacts to make them seem brown. I became increasingly worried when I heard my best friend's name go over the speaker, Josh Black. He can heal people's injuries both physically and mental. He got his powers a couple months ago and I've been helping him with them ever since. Then I heard my name and My heart stopped. Everyone in the hallway turned to look at me as I froze, my face paling. I looked around quickly as I hurried to find my friends before they got to the main office. Knowing them one, at most, would figure it out and they probably wouldn't think to run if they did. They had no means of escaping. I did.

I hurried quickly to try to intercept them. I saw Lizzie as I walked into the main hallway, "Lizzie! Wait!" I said as I ran to get to her.

"What?" She said turning around to face me. "I want to get this over with, I have my favorite class next."

"Well if you keep going, my guess is the next class you will be in is prision." I said seriously.

"What!" she said looking very startled.

I started to explain but I saw Josh turn the corner of the hallway next to us, talking to Cameron with a serious expression on his face, seemingly trying to convince him of something. Josh saw us and pulled Cameron towards us. "Please tell this idiot that this is not random. They called us down because they figured us out." Josh said slightly exasperated with a desperate look on his face.

I nodded, "They did. We have to go. Now."

"Mia, are you sure I mean this could be totally random and a coincidence." Cameron said looking between me and Josh.

"Look outside." Josh said, his eyes glued to the window a terrified expression on his face. I turned to look and I saw Sentinel Services pulling up outside.

"Oh crap" said Lizzie. I have to say I agreed with her. Sentinel Services have been freaking out ever since that terrorist attack on their headquarters in DC. It was the biggest mutant terrorist attack ever. They say a team of two siblings took it down. I had heard the news call them Fenris.

Sentinel Services agents started to surround the school most likely were covering every exit. "They're starting to surround the school. They probably will have exits covered soon. We need to go." Josh said, his voice shaking slightly.

We turned to go but the exit that would lead us out was already covered. I pulled them out of the line of sight of the windows and started trying to think of a way out.

"Mia, you have to get us out of here," Lizzie said, grabbing my arms and shaking me.

I looked at her doubt flooding my mind. "I don't know I've never jumped with more than one other person before." I said, panic fully taking over my brain.

"You have to," Josh said.

"Ok, Um, grab on to me" I said, grabbing Lizzie's shoulder. I focused on my power. I could manipulate, create, and travel through shadows. I had also been training to fight but that's not what I needed to do now. Right now we needed to run

"Mia, hurry! They're coming" Cameron said, gripping my arm tighter.

I felt my nose start bleeding. I focused on where I wanted to land. I made the shadows surround us and I pulled us through and we landed next to Cameron's car. He was the only one of us who had gotten a car for his 16th birthday.

"Get in. I said, before they find us." I said.

"Mia," Josh warned. I looked at him, his brown hair falling in his eyes as the world went dark and I felt myself fall against him.

Josh's Pov

Mia fell into my arms as the nosebleed I had noticed before we jumped got worse. I dragged her into the backseat of the car as Lizzie and Cameron climbed into the front. I looked behind us as Cameron started the car and pulled out.

"Drive," I said.

"I know. I know" Cameron said. He sped up as he pulled onto the main road.

I turned to Mia. She was still unconscious. She had exhausted her powers. I can't heal her all the way when she does this but I can help with the symptoms. I stopped her nose bleed. She'd be unconscious for a while yet. I tried to clean up the blood on her face a little. It was black because of her powers and blood is a lot more noticeable when it's black.

"There is an old abandoned warehouse just outside of Philly. The mutant underground used to use it before the network collapsed." I said. Mia had started researching places to go if we ever got caught when Sentinel Services busted her neighbor a few weeks ago. We had started planning on running for a while now.

We drove in terrified silence for a while. Cameron was focused on where he was going and Lizzie was looking out the window. I was just making sure Mia was okay. After about 30 minutes she woke up.

"What happened?" She said sitting up really fast. She was unsteady even just sitting down. I gently moved her so she was leaning back in the seat.

"We made it out. We're heading to a warehouse outside of Philadelphia to hide for a bit." I said trying to calm her down.

She nodded. "Good plan. We need to get off the road. They will know the plates once they realize that we weren't there and look it up."

"We're almost there. Don't worry" said Cameron.

"One more thing." Said Mia. She pulled out her phone. "Phones. They can track us if we have our phones on us. Give me your phones."

We all had her our phone and she threw them out the window of the car.

"Well that was violent" Lizzie said, looking out the window regretfully.

We pulled up to the wear house but we parked a bit away from it.

"Grab the license plate. They'll probably send out drones to look for us. They'll find where we are hiding if we leave it on." Lizzie told her brother before helping Mia get out of the car.

Cameron pulled the license plate off the car before starting to walk towards the warehouse.

We got there and had Mia sit down behind a stack of boxes so if someone walked it we wouldn't be seen immediately. Which turned out to be helpful because after a couple of minutes I heard the door open and pushed Lizzie to the ground, hiding her behind me.

A group of four people came in and looked around. One of them said "are you two sure about this. You can still go back."

A different voice said "We're fine Lorna."

I felt something press into my hand. I looked down and it was a small dagger. I turned back and looked at Mia. She had the twin dagger in her left hand and was handing it to Lizzie. She knew she couldn't fight and she knew that she was the only one out of us to carry a concealed weapon. She hid them in her boots. God she's awesome.

We heard them moving closer. The footsteps echoing off of the walls. Yet another voice said "do you think the Inner Circle will actually attack here. I mean it seems pretty empty"

What now, I exchanged a look with Cameron. Who were these people? They didn't seem like Sentinel Services but you never know.

We heard them start to get closer. I griped Mia's dagger tighter as Mia shifted to get her feet under her.

One of them, a woman with green hair, rounded the corner. She raised her hands and a green light surrounded it. I felt the dagger get ripped out of my hand and fly into the mutant's hand. I saw the dagger in Lizzie's hand do the same. The other three people ran over and saw us hiding behind the boxes.

"Who are you?" said the green haired mutant, holding Mia's dagger.

"Whoa, Whoa." I said, holding my hands up defensively. "We are just kids hiding from the cops."

"Lorna, they're just scared kids." A blond haired girl said.

"So. Scared kids do dumb stuff." The one I assumed was named Lorna said.

"Ok um, I'm Josh, don't know what you think that we're gonna do but um, this is Cameron, Lizzie, and Mia." I pointed to each of them in turn. Lizzie waved awkwardly and Mia shifted a little pulling shadows closer to her ready to run if the need came.

Lorna lowered her hands. "You guys are mutants."

"Um yeah"

"And you are running from the cops."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because someone told the cops that we are mutants and they came to our school to arrest us and we ran. Okay." Mia said.

"Lorna stop interrogating them. They are obviously scared and in danger." Said the guy with black hair. "I'm Marcos." he pointed to the other boy and girl that they were with "that's Lauren and Andy" then he motioned to the green haired mutant. "And this is Lorna, although I'm sure you figured that out already. Do you need help getting away from the cops."

"Yes." Mia answered. "But, uh, can I have my daggers back?" she asked a little nervously.

Lorna apologized and gave them back to her. I noticed what seemed like a person moving through the corner of my eye in a space between two of the boxes.

Before I could say anything the person went up to Andy and put a hand on his arm and said "Have fun," before running away.

Chapter Text

Andy's Pov

I felt someone touch my arm and say "have fun" before I could even process what happened. The first thought that went through my head was "what?" but then I realized. The mutant who could resurrect the dead. "Well this is going to end badly," I thought.

"Dammit," Lauren said, "Do you think..."

"Yes," I responded before she could finish her question. I knew what she was going to ask me. she was going to ask if 1. That was the person who could resurrect people we've killed and 2. If I think that they will resurrect Rebecca. The second one was almost a guarantee if the first one is true.

I watched as the person ran away and Heather took their place. "well, well, well, what do we have here?" she said. She had a gun in her left hand. I instinctively moved slightly towards Lauren.

"What do you want Heather?" Lorna yelled to her.

Heather rolled her eyes before responding, "What do you think I want, you killed Max, I want revenge. And here I thought you were smart."

She fired her gun at the same time that something was exploding behind us. I turned and saw Tico and Bulk next to a pile of bombs.

"Wonderful," I thought as I regained my balance after the explosion.

Chaos followed. The Inner Circle was trying to kill us desperately. They had obviously hired people to try to kill us too because there were a bunch of people that I had never seen before with guns shooting at us.

Lorna was stopping as many of the bullets as she could while avoiding Heather shooting at her and teleporting bombs near her and Tico exploding them. I focused on my powers and I felt Lauren do the same. We were better fighters when we let the darkness inside us take over for a bit. It probably wasn't the best idea but this was not a great time for impulse decision making.

The fight continued like that for I don't know how long before I felt Lauren pull herself out of the darkness really suddenly causing me to do the same. I stumbled a little with the sudden change and I heard Lauren say my name. I turned around and saw Rebecca leaning against a wall.

I froze. My brain stopped working. Lauren grabbed my arm and squeezed it a little, trying to comfort me a little like we did when we were kids.

"Hey Andy, funny seeing you again seeing how you killed me," Rebecca said.

"That was an accident," I said, my voice shaking. I balled my hands up into fists.

"Like I'd believe that. You're his sister I presume," She said turning towards Lauren, "Nice to meet you. Not."

She started to use her powers. She twisted something inside out and threw it at us. Lauren put up a shield to deflect whatever she threw at us. Good thing too. It exploded as it hit the shield. Lauren let her shield fall and used one of her flying disks. It hit about half of Rebecca's neck. I obviously expected her to die, but she didn't. She just laughed.

The wound started healing as she smiled, "You can't kill me, idiot. I can't die until the person who brought me back is already dead." She lifted her hands again as Lauren stepped closer to me.

Her powers started to surround Lauren and I. Lauren grabbed my hand. I felt Fenris start to activate. I knew that we shouldn't, we couldn't use Fenris. We needed protection to find a way to stop Rebecca's powers. Almost as soon as I'd had had the thought, a golden light surrounded Lauren and I, seemingly stopping Rebecca's powers in their place. It was a different feeling to how Fenris normally felt, but still strangely familiar. I looked at Lauren, she had a surprised expression on her face. I squeezed her hand, hoping that whatever we were doing, would last long enough to protect us.

"What are you doing? Stop it!" Said Rebecca. Fenris was stopping her powers from getting to us. "I'm trying to kill you over here," She was pretty pissed that she couldn't kill us apparently but I wasn't really in the mood to die so I wasn't going to let go of Lauren's hand.

"Seems that that's not gonna happen," Lauren said, stepping forward slightly.

"This isn't supposed to be possible!" Rebecca said, still trying to use her powers.

"Well, it looks like it is," Lauren said, taunting her.

Rebecca stopped trying to use her powers and stomped away angrily while saying "This isn't over! I find you when you least expect it." Her threat burned into my mind.

I pulled my hand away from Lauren's and breathed a sigh of relief but worry about Rebecca's parting words filled my mind. I looked at Lauren and asked, "What was that?"

She glanced around at the battle still raging around us, "I don't know but we'll figure it out later, right now we have to help Lorna and Marcos."

We turned back to the main fight and kept Heather distracted.

Lorna's Pov.

Heather fired her gun at me and I stopped the bullet but got distracted by something exploding over my head. I turned my head briefly and saw Tico and Bulk standing next to a pile of explosives.

Marcos was next to me and said, "You want to help me blow them up instead of this ending up the other way around."

I smiled and lifted one of the explosives up for Marcos to hit. He hit the explosive expertly. The fire went in between Marcos and me and the Inner Circle. God, I loved him.

I smiled as I turned towards Marcos and saw the kid who touched Andy grab Marcos's back briefly and run away. My smile faded as Marcos turned around and looked at me worriedly.

"That's probably not good," He said.

"No, probably not," I said. If my suspicions were right then that kid was the kid that we had been told about. The one who could resurrect the dead.

I turned to see Heather appear and shoot at me. I saw other people with guns appear and start to shoot at us as well. I managed to stop the bullets. I glanced at where I had last seen Lauren and Andy and I saw Rebecca taunting them. That kid who had touched him was the kid who could resurrect the dead then. I could barely think "poor Andy" before something exploded behind me. I felt myself get thrown to the ground. I fell flat on my face. I looked up and saw Marcos get thrown into a wall. I crawled over to him, he was unconscious.

"Marcos. Wake up. Come on" I whispered, shaking him slightly. He was bleeding a little bit from the back of his head where he must have hit it. He needed to wake up. We didn't have time for this.

"Aww. Boyfriend won't wake up. How sad." A voice I recognized but never expected to hear again. I stood up in front of Marcos and turned around with my fists clenched. I faced Max, one of the few people I was kinda glad was dead.

"Max, how absolutely lovely to see you," I said sarcastically.

"I knew you were a spy," he said before throwing a tennis ball at me that he had charged with his powers.

I saw a black shadow in front of me and then I was about 20 feet away from the explosion that I would have been caught in with one of the kids that we had found kneeling next to me with black blood streaming from her nose.

"Thanks, Mia, right?" I said to her.

She nodded. "Your friend is he unconscious," she said with concern in her voice.

"Yeah," I said. Her honey brown hair fell into her face as she looked back to where Max was furiously looking around. His eyes skipped right over where we were like he couldn't even see us.

"He can't see us, can he?" I asked her. Max started yelling at Heather to try to find where I went.

She wiped the blood off her face onto the back of her hand before responding, "I manipulate shadows. I pulled them around us making it too dark for anyone to see."

I nodded. Powers are weird. I don't like to question them too much.

I looked back to where Andy and Lauren were. They were fighting Heather and almost all of the people with guns back to back. Normally this wouldn't be a problem for them but Andy was obviously distracted by whatever had happened with Rebecca and Lauren was way too overwhelmed trying to put up shields everywhere at once. I was worried that one of them would get shot but before that could happen Heather seemed to get a message on her watch. She teleported out of Andy and Lauren's sight and looked at it and yelled out, "Let's go!"

The Inner Circle all stopped fighting and left. The people with guns backed out while still shooting at Lauren and Andy. I thought that this was weird because if they had kept going they would have eventually worn us down and ended up winning. We were severely outnumbered. I pushed this worrying revelation out of my mind as I looked back to where Marcos was, still unconscious. I went to move towards him but before I could get very far Mia grabbed my arm and her eyes were alert.

"Not yet," she said, shaking her head. "They're not totally gone yet."

I heard multiple cars start after about 30 seconds and then the sound of them driving away. Mia let go of my arm. I rushed over to Where Marcos was.

Mia's Pov

I watched as Lorna ran back to the other mutant's side as soon as I let go of her arm. I got up unsteadily and walked over to see if I could help. I was shaking slightly from all of the adrenaline pumping through my body. Josh ran over to me.

"Mia, you shouldn't have done that." He said as he stopped my nosebleed that had started again when I jumped to help Lorna. He hugged me tightly after, checking to make sure I wasn't hurt.

"Yeah well if I didn't one more person would be a lot deader," I said pulling away.

I walked over to where Lorna was kneeling next to her friend, "Is he okay?" I asked looking over him. Josh had followed me and kneeled down next to Lorna.

"I don't know. I mean he's unconscious and that's generally not a good sign." She said, her eyes looking for more injuries.

Josh looked over the mutant, "His name is Marcos right?" Lorna nodded as Josh kept talking, "I have healing abilities. I can heal him if you want."

Lorna looked at Josh, "Please," She said, her worried tone clear.

I watched as Josh put his hands on Marcos's head and closed his eyes. I watched as a green light came from his hands and the bleeding stopped and the wound closed. Marcos's eyes fluttered open as Josh pulled his hands away.

"What happened," Marcos asked as Lorna helped him into a sitting position.

"There was an explosion and you got knocked out. Max is back. That person that touched you was the one that could raise the dead. One of the kids that we found, Josh, has healing abilities so he healed you." Lorna explained gently. The more I watched them the more I started to think that they were dating. The two other people, Lauren and Andy came over to where we were.

"They left. All of them. For no reason. We were losing and they left. It just doesn't make any sense." Andy said. He looked extremely worried.

"It's like they came here for a reason to use us to bring back people that had died that would help them," Lauren added.

"I'm sorry to bring people back? Like from the dead? And who are they?" Lizzie said walking over. Cameron was behind her.

"'They' is the Inner Circle. They are the group behind the hashtag #mutantuprising and organized the attack on sentinel services. And yes like back from the dead. One of the mutants that work with them can bring back people that you have killed." Marcos explained rubbing the back of his head.

"Well that's fun," said Josh. He had an expression on his face that I have always liked to call his 'let's get out of here' face. I see where he's coming from. With how Marcos explained the resurrection dude it sounded like they had all killed people that this person could bring back. It was slightly concerning but I pushed the thought away for now.

"We should get out of here. The police are probably on their way because of the explosions and gunshots." Lauren said looking around uneasily.

"Lauren's right, let's go," Lorna said, helping Marcos to his feet.

Chapter Text

Mia's Pov

The four Mutants led us to their car which was a van with the back seats taken out. Lorna and Marcos got in the front leaving the rest of us to sit in the back. This seemed slightly unsafe but then again I did just jump in front of an explosion then immediately get out of the way again after I had already exhausted myself using my powers, so who was I to judge? I ended up sitting in the middle of the van with my back up against the driver's sidewall. Josh was next to me and still berating me about how I shouldn't have used my powers so much.

"Josh you realize that if I haven't used my powers as much as I did today we would be in prison and/or the nice lady who's helping us would be a lot more dead so please shut up," I said to him in a totally nice tone.

"Mia..." Josh got cut off by Cameron, "Josh just quit it. You know she's not going to listen to you," he then turned to Lauren and Andy who were sitting against the back of the van, "So, what are your powers?"

"I can push things apart, basically like exploding stuff but different," Andy said.

"I can pull things together. I mostly do that to make shields out of the air and stuff," Lauren said.

"That's really cool, you have like opposite powers," Lizzie said.

"Yeah, you'd think so," Lauren said I heard the tone of her voice change slightly.

"So you are a part of the mutant underground. I thought I collapsed a while ago," Cameron said.

"It did. We rebuilt it after it collapsed. It was kind of my fault anyway," Andy said.

"No it wasn't Andy," Lauren said.

"Yes, it is Lauren. Without me, they would have been able to break Rebecca out. Then they wouldn't have been able to go to the bank. Hey maybe they wouldn't even know about us and They wouldn't have been able to use us to destroy Sentinel Services." He stopped talking all of a sudden.

'Wait. What the what?' I thought as the realization of what he had just said dawned on me.

"Wait, hold up. Do you mean to tell me that you two are responsible for Sentinel Services?" Josh said in an accusatory tone.

"Kind of," said Lauren shrinking away from the question. "We were forced to by these telepaths who can control your mind. It's complicated."

"Wait how did you destroy the building. You already told us what your powers are and that's not what happened to Sentinel Services. That building was literally disintegrated." Lizzie said.

"We can combine our powers and when we do that we become really destructive and well, that's the result," Andy said.

"So you are mass murderers?" Cameron said moving away slightly.

"Technically yes. But according to our mom, it's not our fault, it's Reeva Page and The Frost's faults, but of course, no one knows who they are so." Andy said. He was clearly affected by whatever had happened that day.

"We don't really believe her but the rest of the underground seems to, or at least that's what they tell us," Lauren added just as dejected as her brother.

Josh looked at me with one of the most concerned looks on his face that I think that I have ever seen him make. I turned back to the two siblings, they were both clearly uncomfortable talking about what had happened that day. I felt bad for them. I couldn't imagine being forced to do something that horrible. I leaned back against the wall of the van and closed my eyes. I didn't want to have to think about stuff, it had been a really long day. I put my head on Josh's shoulder and closed my eyes.

Lauren's Pov

*flashback*

We had just found the new headquarters that we were going to use for the underground. It was an old abandoned underground bunker that some survivalist had built but died before it was of any use and since this guy was so paranoid no one knew it existed. It was on land owned by that man's family but luckily his granddaughter is a mutant named Anna and we had helped her a couple of weeks prior to finding it so they let us stay here and kept quiet about it.

Andy and I had to share a room here, Mom's room was just down the hall. Mom, Andy, and I decided that it would be best if Andy and I were away from everyone else. After what happened our powers had been getting more and more unstable and harder to control so we thought that this was the best solution. We were the farthest room away from the main area at the end of all long hallway made up of mostly just storage rooms.

I walked down the hallway to my room. I opened the door and saw the set up that we had made. My stuff was on the far side and Andy's was closer to the door. We only had one desk so it ended up on the opposite side of the room of our beds. Andy was sitting at the desk drawing with some old colored pencils that we had found when exploring one of the storage rooms. I walked over to him.

"Hey," I said. I walked over to the desk and I glanced at the drawing. I saw two people holding hands in front of a building.

"Andy" I started. He cut me off before I could say anymore.

"I know. I know. I shouldn't be thinking about it." The pain in his eyes mirrored my own. "I just can't get it out of my head."

"I know. I can't either." I said as I sat down dejectedly on the floor against the end of his bed. I felt his emotions get stronger. Stuff like that had been happening for a while now, feeling each other's emotions, pain. Stuff like that, it was kind of annoying yet strangle comforting knowing that you're not alone; but mostly just strange feeling emotions that weren't your own.

"I just keep wishing I could go back and change what happened." He said walking over and sitting next to me.

"I do too," I said quietly.

"Do you think it's our fault?" He asked, staring at the wall.

"I don't know. Maybe? I blame myself but everyone else seems to think it's not our fault. Then again they don't even think Esme is to blame and she definitely is." I said dejectedly.

"I don't get it how did they just forgive her like that. After what she did to us." Andy said.

I took a deep breath and said something that had been bothering me. " I heard Esme and Lorna talking a while back, while we were still running from place to place, and Esme said that she and her sister shouldn't have been able to force us as easily as they did,"

"That was easy?" Andy interrupted.

"Apparently, according to her some part of us wanted to do that otherwise what they did, would have killed us, Andy," I said a tear rolling down my cheek.

"What is wrong with us?" he whispered, starting to cry too.

I looked up at the dresser next to me and saw the music box that had belonged to Andrea Von Strucker. After dad's funeral, I just couldn't get myself to leave it, no matter how much I tried it, I just couldn't do it.

I got up and walked over to the music box. I opened the lid and turned it on. It was just so comforting.

"It's not fair, that Dad had to die," I said. I felt a tear roll down my cheek.

"Why did he have to die. Why couldn't The Frosts die or Jace Turner for god's sake? Why did it have to be Dad." I said, my voice getting increasingly louder. I grabbed my head trying to control my powers that I felt stirring inside me.

"Lauren," Andy said warningly feeling it too.

"It's just not fair!" I said throwing my hands down. The lamp behind me imploded. I turned around to look at it. My powers had been doing that recently, pulling on solid objects instead of just the air. This new form my powers had been taking were a lot more destructive than my powers had been before anything.

I started sobbing as Andy pulled me into a hug.

"Shhh. It's ok." He said in a soothing voice. "We'll be fine. We'll figure it out."

I felt myself fall to the floor bringing andy down with me.

"How?" I asked through tears.

"I don't know." He said hugging me tighter.

*end flashback*

I snapped back to the present a little startled. I wiped away a tear that had fallen on my cheek. I had no idea how long I had been stuck like that. I glanced at Andy, he was staring blankly towards the front of the van. He was probably thinking about something in the past too.

These flashbacks have been happening a lot lately too. Mom thinks that we probably have some sort of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I have to say I think I agree with her. We have all of the symptoms but getting diagnosed with a serious mental illness when you're a fugitive running from the cops because of a massive terrorist attack is kind of hard.

Lorna turned around from her seat, not noticing anything wrong, and said smiling, "We're here!"

Esme's Pov

I was with Caitlin in the medical area on the first floor when Lorna walked in a little beat up.

"Hey, so the mission went a little strangely..."

"Where are my kids?" Caitlin asked concerned.

Lorna held up her hands in a soothing gesture, "They're fine. They are still outside with Marcos."

"What happened. Was the Inner Circle there?" I asked Lorna.

"Yes they were, but we also found four mutant kids running from the cops while we were there." She said pausing slightly.

Caitlin interrupted Lorna before she could tell us more, "Let's get everyone together to discuss this." She said, worried. "Meet in the meeting room in 5 minutes and bring the kids that you found." Caitlin walked out presumably to find the others. I turned to Lorna.

"What happened?" I asked her concern leaking through my voice.

"The Inner Circle was there. The rumors about a mutant who could resurrect the dead. Not a rumor, that kid's real. They couldn't have been more than 17 but they resurrected Rebecca and then Max. The Inner Circle attacked us and they were winning but they just randomly stopped. It's been bothering me that they just left. Marco's was hurt, I was too, Andy and Lauren were overwhelmed. I just don't get it, five more minutes and they would have won." She said very quickly, obviously distressed. She was obviously worried, that emotion was just pouring off her. I tried not to use my powers on my friends but sometimes I just can't help it, especially when their emotions are strong.

"One more thing before we go to meet the others. One of the kids, Mia. She's really powerful. I think more than she knows. With some training, she could be an excellent fighter. Her friend, Josh, can heal and it doesn't seem to have any negative effects on him like with most mutants. They could both be really useful if they chose to stay." She said.

I nodded, "Let's go. We'll talk about it with the others."

Chapter Text

Esme's Pov

I went to the meeting room and Lorna went to get the mutant kids that they had found. John and Caitlin were already there, John was on the couch and Caitlin was leaning against the table in the center of the room.

John was clearly frustrated about something, he seemed to always be these days, "Why would they bring new people here? There is an outpost where we bring people first. Then we decide, as a group, who to bring to headquarters." He was saying to Caitlin, his voice tense. He clearly wasn't happy that Lorna and Marcos decided to bring them here.

"John it doesn't sound like they had much of a choice. What these kids saw, they were going to have questions." Caitlin rebutted.

I walked over to the table and pulled a chair against the wall and sat down.

Andy and Lauren walked in, they both seemed a little put out. I wanted to ask them if they were okay but I knew that they didn't want me to talk to them. I wish I could apologize for what happened but I don't think that they wouldn't care. They've made it very clear that they don't want me to talk to them and I've tried to respect that.

Lorna and Marcos walked in followed by four kids, two boys, and two girls.

Lorna told them to introduce themselves.

One of the girls who had black hair with pink tips spoke up, "I'm Lizzie," she was a little nervous, but I would be too in that situation so I couldn't blame her.

"I'm Cameron, Lizzie's older brother." Said the tallest boy.

"Mia." The shorter girl said.

"I'm Josh." Said the last kid.

"So, Lorna, what exactly happened. How did you meet these kids?" John said, not even bothering to hide his annoyed tone.

"We found them when we went to go stake out of that warehouse. We got attacked right after we found them. Mia saved my life." Lorna said a little defensively. She had obviously taken a liking to them.

Caitlin spoke up, "Why don't I take the kids outside into the hallway and we can talk about what happened. Ok?"

John nodded. Caitlin took the kids outside and told them to wait by the door, that someone would come out to talk to them soon. She came back into the room with a serious expression on her face.

"So what exactly happened when you went to the warehouse?" She asked, her arms crossed.

Lorna, Marcos, Andy, and Lauren all took turns explaining what happened. When Andy got to the part about Rebecca my heart broke for him a little. I remember how upset he was after her death. I could tell that he and Lauren were leaving something out. They were being very suspicious about how they got her to stop trying to kill them. They weren't telling us exactly what happened, just something about their powers being able to stop hers. Lorna explained how Marcos got knocked out and Max came back to life and tried to kill her and how Mia saved her life by teleporting her out of the way rather than hiding her with her powers. She then explained how Josh had healing abilities and healed Marcos. Caitlin seemed pleased that hopefully if he chose to stay, this kid could help her when injured mutants come in.

"That sounds exciting..." I said when they finished explaining what happened. "My sisters weren't there at all? They normally would love to do stuff like that." Normally they wouldn't miss an opportunity to kill people. It was their favorite thing.

John interrupted me before I could say anything else "The Inner Circle just left? For no reason?" he said.

"No, your sisters weren't there, Esme, I think that that fight would have ended a lot differently if they had been," Andy spit out at me. "And, John, that's what I was saying. It just doesn't feel right."

"I know. They must've wanted to resurrect Max and Rebecca then get out. They easily could have killed us all but they didn't," Marcos said sitting down. Lorna put her hand on his shoulder.

"It doesn't sit right with me either but we should discuss what to do with those kids," Caitlin said.

"We should interview them like we normally would then ask them if they want to stay or leave. Like we normally would except they are already here instead of at an outpost." I said. "I can do it."

"Ok, then that's what we'll do. We'll figure out what to do about the Inner Circle later. Marcos, I want to make sure your head is ok." Caitlin said.

I went outside to go get the kids to interview them as Caitlin and Marcos headed to the medical area. Lizzie scrambled back from the door like she had been listening. Mia and Josh were leaning against the wall arguing with each other and Cameron was clearly put in the middle of two best friends arguing and really didn't want to be.

"So, I'm gonna interview guys to get to know you all and ask you some questions so we could help you better. So if you would follow me," I said awkwardly, sensing the tension between Mia and Josh.

I decided to talk to the two siblings first, hopefully giving the other two kids time to cool off from whatever they were arguing about.

I walked them over to a sitting area with two couches facing each other.

"So, what is your last name?" I asked.

"Stone," Cameron said.

"How old are you?"

"I'm 14 and Cameron's 16," Lizzie said.

"Do you plan on staying here or getting out of the country or maybe going to a different station?" A lot of people want to help with the fight but most of them figure out who Andy and Lauren are and want to get out of here pretty quickly.

"Probably just go to a different station for right now. Maybe get out of the country if things get bad enough." Cameron said.

"Cameron, I kind of want to stay here and help them," Lizzie said.

"No Lizzie," he said.

"But..."

"No," He said sternly. Lizzie rolled her eyes.

"You can decide what you want to do later. What are your powers?" I asked them, curious because no one told me what they could do.

"I have increased strength and fast reflexes, almost like I can see something coming before it does." Cameron said, "We don't know what Lizzie's powers are yet, but her eyes are naturally purple so we know that she's a mutant."

I nodded. Visible mutants sometimes have their visible mutations from birth but not their powers.

"Any criminal record for either of you," I asked, this is the part where I was supposed to use my powers to see if they would lie or leave anything else. This place was built on trust.

"No," Lizzie said. I checked to make sure that she wasn't lying, I didn't think she was so I laid down the basis for what would happen.

"You'll stay here for a day or two then we'll send you to a different station where you can decide what you want to do from there," I said. "That's all the questions I have for you. If you could send your friends over that'd be great"

They left and went over to where their friends were. Mia and Josh seemed to still be arguing about something seemed my hopes of letting them cool off hadn't been fulfilled. They got up and came over seemingly putting their argument on hold. They sat on the couch in the spots where their friends had just vacated.

"Ok, so Mia, what's your last name?" I asked. I was going to ask these two a few more questions than the others. I had questions about their powers and how powerful they were. Lorna thought that if I could convince them to stay they could really help the underground but I figured that I should start with the basics.

"Lynn." She said.

"And Josh, what's your last name?" I asked him.

"Black," He said.

"How old are you?"

"I'm 15 and am turning 16 soon and Josh just turned 17 last week," Mia said.

"What are your powers, just for clarification. Lorna told me a bit about what you can do." I said.

"I can heal people, like most injuries and some sicknesses. I can't heal someone if they exhaust themselves or their powers though." Josh said, fidgeting a little.

"I can manipulate, create, and travel through shadows. Basically, I can hide really well, make it impossible for people to see unless they can see in the dark, and teleport although teleporting tends to wear me out pretty quickly." Mia said as she made her hand seem to be covered by a shadow. I definitely agreed with Lorna that both of these kids would be really helpful to have around. Caitlin would love someone to help her in the medical area and Mia just seemed like she would fit right in with everybody here. With a little training, I thought that she could be a really great fighter too.

"Ok, so two more questions. Do you have a criminal record?" I asked.

"No," they said in sync with each other.

"So last question, Do you plan on staying here or leaving?" I asked, I really hoped that they would stay.

"Well I want to stay and help but Josh, on the other hand, wants to leave and says that I'm not allowed to stay if he doesn't, and right now he is not convinced that it is safe," Mia said rolling her eyes with her arms crossed.

I turned to Josh, "Why don't you think that it's safe here?" I asked. We were in one of the safest places in the area for mutants right now.

He looked very sheepish. "Well, those two other kids that we met seem kind of dangerous." My heart sank. When people figured out that Sentinel Services was destroyed by Andy and Lauren's powers they always got nervous.

Mia rolled her eyes "You can't judge a book by its cover Josh,"

"Lauren and Andy have been through a lot. And Sentinel Services wasn't their fault. The Inner Circle forced them to. You can't blame them. They're just kids." I said. I had been trying to protect Andy and Lauren as much as I could because of what I did to them.

"We'll talk about it and decide later if we want to stay or not," Josh said with a pointed look to Mia.

I nodded, "Ok just let us know. You can leave at any time to go either to a different station or to get out of the country."

I watched as they got up and walked back to their friends.

Mia's Pov

Josh can be so annoying sometimes. He insisted that we couldn't stay here because Andy and Lauren are dangerous blah, blah, blah. Even after hearing what Esme said he still doesn't want to stay. I was sitting on a couch in one of the rooms after getting a tour from another mutant named Anna. Josh was talking to Cameron about the best places to go to get away from here. Lizzie seemed sad, I think that everything that had happened in the past 12 hours was finally catching up to her.

I was trying to figure out how to convince Josh to let me stay here, with or without him. I kept running over scenarios in my head but I couldn't come up with anything that would convince him.

"Josh, why can't I just stay here by myself and you all can go wherever you want to?" I asked, still trying to convince him to let me stay.

"Because Mia, you are impulsive and irresponsible and someone has to make sure you don't get yourself killed. Since I can heal and I'm your best friend I figured that out of everyone I'm the best one for the job." He said.

"Josh, how about I convince you to stay here," I said, having come up with an idea.

"And how would you do that?" he said skeptically, he was stubborn and not easy to convince of things but I had come up with something that just might work.

"What if you give me 48 hours to convince you that Andy and Lauren, your main reason that you don't want to stay, aren't dangerous," I said.

He looked at me seemingly amused with the idea, "24 hours" he said

"Fine, I have 24 hours to convince you to stay," I said, sticking out my hand to confirm the deal.

"Josh are you sure, she'll probably come up with a way to convince you and you know it," Cameron said.

"I'm stubborn," He said smiling. He doubted my ability to prove him wrong but I would, tomorrow. It was almost midnight and It'd been a long day. I walked over to the couch that Lizzie was sitting on and curled up on one half, leaving her room to curl up on the other end, and fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Unknown POV

I was watching a security camera recording of what my superiors think is mutants fighting mutants. I had to say I agreed with them, the mutants seemed to be attacking each other. There were people with guns shooting at one group of mutants as well. I was able to deduce that the mutant underground was the group that was also getting shot at. I couldn't find much on who the other group could be. Although I had a theory that I didn't want to write down because there was no actual proof that this group exists.

I was told by John Proudstar that the group there was a group called the Inner Circle and they were causing the attacks under the hashtag #mutantuprising. I'm pretty sure that they had been causing the attacks on the government that had been hushed up too. I'm not completely positive that he's telling the truth because some of the attacks also used members of the mutant underground. Although no attacks have since the attack on Sentinel Services. Right before the attack, I was put into a two-month coma by the same person who gave me this information but I just couldn't shake the feeling that it was true.

I turned my attention back to the recording and wrote down some notes on the video. I got up and looked into the mirror. I ran my hand over the cybernetic implants I was given to help keep me alive. They now protect me and let me get information on the field because of the scene in front of my eyes. That's why I do this job. I do this to pay back the people who saved my life and gave me this technology, by catching the mutant underground. Most importantly Andrew and Lauren Strucker, the ones who did the attack on Sentinel Services. After three months of searching and planning I had finally come up with a plan to catch them and whoever else was out there helping them. It was time to put it into action.

Chapter Text

Mia's Pov

I stood in front of the door to Andy and Lauren's room trying to make myself knock. Lorna had told me where the room was after I explained my plan to convince Josh to stay here to her. After a while, I gathered my courage and knocked. Lauren opened the door.

"Hi?" she said, clearly questioning why I was there.

"So, this is a bit weird but my friends are annoying right, and um, well, I'm trying to convince them to stay here but they won't. So we made a deal that if I can prove to them that everyone here is a normal person they will stay. Sort of weird but you know." I said really awkwardly. Leaving out the part that my friends specifically didn't like her or her brother.

"So you are trying to convince your friends that everyone here is 'normal'" Lauren said.

"Kind of," I said.

"Hate to break it to you but no one here is 'normal.' So, how are you going to convince them that we are all at least semi-normal." She asked.

"Well, I was thinking that I could get to know each other like I could ask you questions and you could ask me questions," I said nervously.

"Ok, sounds interesting. Nothing much has happened here in a while and this seems like a much-needed distraction," Lauren said.

We ended up sitting on the floor to get to know each other. It was definitely a little awkward at first but it got better.

"So how old are you?" I asked them.

"I just turned 18 and Andy's 16," Lauren said before turning the question back on me. "How old are you?"

"15. Although I turn 16 in two weeks." I said. "have you lived anywhere else. I mean like besides Philly."

"Yeah, we used to live in Atlanta before I got my powers," Andy said.

"That's really cool. What was it like?" I asked genuinely curious.

"Hot. That's definitely something that I've noticed as we've moved north. It's gotten steadily colder." Lauren said laughing a little.

"Do you like video games?" I said.

Andy got really excited "Yes. I haven't gotten to play them recently though which sucks," he said smiling.

"Do-Did you live around here?" Lauren asked, correcting herself.

"I lived up in Easton. It's a town about an hour outside the city." I said, noticing her self correction. "What's your favorite color?" I redirected.

"Purple," Lauren said.

"Blue," Andy said. "Do you have any siblings?"

"Nope. I'm an only child. I've always wanted siblings though," I said.

Andy and Lauren looked at each other. "No, you don't." They said at the same time.

I laughed a little bit before I kept quizzing them. We kept talking like that for a while. It was fun getting to know them, they were just so normal. I get how people would assume that they would be scary or something but talking to them I had to laugh at the thought.

"Do you like cats or dogs?" I asked

"Dogs," Andy said definitively.

"Cats are better," Lauren said.

"No, Dogs are so much better, can you play with a cat? No! The cat would scratch your eyes out. They are rude creatures" Andy said, clearly offended.

"But cats are so cute and cuddly though," Lauren said. I laughed as they argued. They kept arguing about it until all of a sudden a glass of water that had been sitting on the dresser near the door, shattered. The smiles on their faces disappeared and were replaced by scared looks. They glanced at each other

"What was that?" I was confused.

"You should go," Lauren said.

I nodded "ok" I left and the two siblings retreated back into their room and closed the door as soon as I left.

I was a little confused about what had just happened but I brushed it off. I went to go find Josh. I think that I have enough to convince him that they are just normal kids.

Lorna's Pov

I was in Marcos's and my bedroom looking at a picture of Dawn. We left her with my aunt for now. It was still just too dangerous for her here. As much as I want to be with my daughter I just couldn't bring myself to raise her here. She deserves a normal life for as long as possible.

I used to hate my Father for giving me up, sending me away to be raised without him. Looking at my situation now, I understand why he did it. He just wanted me to have a normal life, something that he just couldn't provide. I want the same for Dawn and if she lived here, her life just wouldn't be the best that it could be so I left her with my aunt until I could give her the life I wanted her to have.

Marcos walked in and saw me looking at Dawn's picture. He smiled and walked over.

"Is that a picture of Dawn?" He asked.

"Yeah, my Aunt just sent a new one," I said wiping away a tear that I had forgotten had fallen. He took the picture and sat down next to me.

"She looks so big," he said, his face lighting up as he looked at the picture.

"I know. I just wish I could be there with her." I said a little sadly.

"I know. I do too."

I kissed his cheek. "So what do you think of the kids that we found?" I asked, changing the subject.

"I don't know. From what I heard from Esme only one really wants to stay here." Marcos said, shaking his head.

"Yeah, Mia was talking to me about that. I think that her friends are nervous because of Andy and Lauren." I said.

"Probably, the reason most people don't stay is either that they want to get out of the country right away or they freak out because of Andy and Lauren," said Marcos.

"Do you think that if she can convince her friends to let her stay I could train her? With her powers and her friend's powers, they aren't necessarily fighting powers but can be made into them if they learned how to use them right." I said, thinking further into what I had said. "Like with Mia, from what I understand her powers are mostly defensive but if we gave her a weapon she could be a great offensive fighter. During the fight earlier the way that she was analyzing what was happening even though she didn't know what was going on, which was really impressive."

Marcos gave me a curious expression, "I don't know Lorna. If you wanted you could go find her and ask her." He said.

I smiled excited about this new possibility and put Dawn's photo back on the nightstand and went to go find Mia.

I was walking down the hallway to the area I knew that she and her friends were staying in but I heard arguing even before I got close to the door.

"Ok, so we can stay right."

"No"

"Why? You agreed that if I could convince you that they are normal kids and I did so we're staying."

"Yes but I still think that they are dangerous."

"That wasn't the deal. It convinced you they were normal." Mia said to Josh who was on the other side of the conversation.

I leaned against the door frame very amused at the argument taking place. It took them a more few minutes of arguing to notice me standing there.

"Oh hey, Lorna!" Mia said when she noticed me.

"So have you figured out if you're staying or not yet?" I asked.

"I don't know. Have we Josh?" Mia said, turning towards her friend.

He sighed and relented very reluctantly, "fine we can stay."

Mia got up and did a little happy dance that made me smile. I turned to her other friends and asked, "Do you plan on staying?" I asked them.

"No, Lizzie and I are going to leave tomorrow morning," he said. He turned to his friends, "We need to go look in one of the storage rooms for clothes and stuff for the trip to Baltimore." They left heading towards one of the storage rooms.

I turned back to Mia "Mia since you're staying I was wondering if you would like to train your powers." I said.

"Sure, why not," She said shrugging.

"I was thinking that you could also do weapon training. We keep some weapons in a locked storage room." I said my mind began to think about ways to train her powers.

"Sure sounds fun. When are we starting?" She said excitedly.

"We could start now. We could get you weapons and make sure you know how to use them," I said.

"Ok," she said jumping up. I lead her down a hallway to where the weapon storage room is.

"So why don't you tell me more about your powers. How do they work," I said wanting to know a bit more about her powers and how they work.

"It's complicated. I can create shadows and can manipulate and control them. Like I can move them and hide things in shadows but if shadows are already in an area I can't take them away. I can also travel through them, which is basically teleporting. I can make other things travel through shadows too." She said motioning with her hands showing how she could hide her hands behind shadows so you can't quite make it out.

"That's really cool. I've never really heard of another mutant with that ability before" I said as we rounded the corner to the weapons room. I unlocked the door and turned on the lights.

"Woah," Mia said softly, taking in the walls of weapons. She walked over to a sword on the wall and gently ran her fingers on the blade.

"It's cool right," I said smiling, knowing that she was in awe.

"I've never seen so many different types of weapons before," she said as she walked over to a recurve bow and took it off the wall. "Can I pick a few out to keep?"

"Sure, you'll probably need them soon enough. Better to start practicing now rather than later."

She grabbed a bag from a pile in a corner and put a few throwing knives in as well as the bow that she had picked up earlier. She grabbed an over-the-shoulder quiver for arrows as well as an extra quiver of arrows.

"Why a bow and not a gun," I asked, curious, I would have chosen the gun

"Guns are loud. Bows are silent," she said with a mischievous smile on her face. She picked up her new bag of weapons and smiled. "I've always wanted to learn how to do archery. Now's my chance," she told me with her eyes bright.

"Let's go, I'll show you space where you can practice," I said laughing a little, I led her out of the room and locked the door behind me.

Chapter Text

Andy's Pov

*Flashback*

I was looking out the window to where the purifiers were. Lauren and I were arguing, she still thinks that I like hurting people, which I don't. She turned around all of a sudden.

"What?" I asked.

"The door, Mom closed it." She said.

"Yeah, what the hell," I said walking over to stand next to her facing the door.

We looked out into the empty hall. I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and saw the Frost sisters and Fade. My heart skipped a beat. I took a step back then went to use my powers. Lauren did the same thing but nothing happened. I heard a voice say "On your knees don't fight."

I felt myself fall to the floor. I didn't want to but I did. My head started to hurt like crazy, almost like a burning sensation. Lauren hit the floor next to me, she was still trying to use her powers. The pain dulled as The frost sisters said, "Andrew, Lauren, is that any way to treat guests?"

Their eyes were glowing blue, and I realized they were using their powers on us. This wasn't good. They could make us do anything they wanted and we couldn't do anything about it. I looked at Lauren. She was terrified, she had reached the same conclusion that I had. That there wasn't anything that we could do and was terrifying to us.

The Frosts forced us to stand and walk into the hallway. It almost felt like I was watching a movie. I was only half-aware of what was happening around me even as I tried to stop myself from doing what they wanted. Trying to fight only made the already agonizing pain worse but I knew if I stopped fighting then they would win and I just couldn't let that happen.

Fade made us invisible to get past the purifiers. They forced us to sit in a car for I couldn't tell how long. After a while, we got to the tunnel system that Reeva had shown us the day before. Fade stayed in the car and the frosts led Lauren and me to the entrance. The frosts climbed down first then they forced Lauren to climb down than me.

We just stood there and I couldn't figure out why, it was like my brain was in a fog. I became more aware of what was happening when they made us start to walk again.

"We're almost there. It's just around the corner." The three sisters said.

I started struggling more against their control. Lauren was too. We were desperately trying to fight them.

"No, No" I heard Lauren say.

"Please," I said, begging the Frosts to not make us do whatever they wanted us to do.

They made us stop walking suddenly. I felt everything start to hurt again.

"Still resisting? I suggest you behave," One of the frosts said.

"Or we'll make you behave," the one behind Lauren said.

The phrase 'stop resisting' started playing over and over again in my head as I fell to the ground in pain. It felt like they were constantly stabbing my brain with needles.

The pain stopped being as bad as Lauren asked, "What do you want from us?"

Esme responded, "We just need some help destroying a building. Please, don't make us force you, this will all go easier if you cooperate."

"But if you'd rather do it the hard way that'll work too." her sisters added.

"We left our parents to be killed by purifiers," I said, realizing that we left them.

"The Purifiers will get what's coming to them," one of the sisters behind me said.

"I thought the whole point of doing this was to help mutants. This is mutant freedom? forcing us..." Lauren said, trying to convince Esme that this was wrong, to let us go.

She was cut off by one of Esme's sisters "We don't see it as forcing some people just need a little help seeing the light.

"So we show it to them," the other one said. The searing pain came back in full force. Everything hurt. It felt like my mind was being torn in half.

"Wait" the pain subsided "you know what happens if we keep pushing them like this. we'll break them they might never recover." I couldn't even tell who was talking at this point.

"We let you try to reason with them"

"They made their choice."

"We'll break them they might never recover."

"It's not like Reeva's gonna let them live after what they did."

I looked at Lauren, my heartbeat speeding up. She looked as terrified as I felt.

"They might as well be useful"

"Now let's get this over with. Get up."

I felt myself standing against us. I tried to fight but I couldn't. I wasn't strong enough. They made us walk for just a little bit more before coming out of the tunnels. We walked down the stairs and stood in front of the building. I looked up at the building and I realized it was Sentinel Services.

"it's time you know what you're here for." The frost sisters said in Lauren and my mind.

Lauren turned around to beg them not to make us do this. "Please, Please don't make us do this." Her voice mirrored the desperation that I was feeling. I looked back up at the building for a second before I heard Lauren cry out in pain. I looked back at her and saw that they were doing something to her with their powers.

"Why are you hurting her?" I said to the frosts. They needed to stop hurting her but I couldn't do anything. I was useless against them.

"She should stop resisting." The two frost sisters hurting her said. They stopped causing her as much pain as they turned to Esme.

"Esme, Waiting for something," they said. She walked down and joined her sisters.

I looked at Lauren silently trying to tell her I was sorry, for everything. I just wanted this to stop.

"Time to hold hands," they said.

I felt my hand move towards Lauren's. I tried to fight but I couldn't stop it. It hurt so badly. Our hands joined and Fenris activated. It felt wrong, every second of it. Not the good feeling Fenris causes where we are in control, no. This was like it was happening to us not us causing it. I watched as our powers destroyed the building, killing the thousands that were inside. Once it stopped I just stood there for a second in shock. It couldn't quite process what we had just done. I was almost numb to it.

They forced us to go back towards the entrance to the tunnel in the parking garage under us. As we were going down the stairs I heard Esme say "Come any closer and they die. You shouldn't have come" I saw Mom, Dad, Lorna, and Marcos

"You don't have to do this. Just give them to us and we'll go" dad said. I wished that the Frosts would but I knew they wouldn't.

"Too late they're ours now," one of the frosts said. I could barely stand. The only reason that I was still upright was that the frosts were forcing me to be.

"Kill them. Kill them all," Esme said

We begged them to not make us even though it wouldn't make a difference. We fought ten times harder than we had fought before. A ringing in my ears started as I desperately tried to keep my hand away from Lauren's. Everything hurt. I was barely aware of anything except for that pain. I felt like my brain was melting and my body was on fire. People were talking but I couldn't figure out who or what they were saying. My senses were too overwhelmed to process anything.

All of a sudden it just stopped. I could pull my hand back to my side. I heard Lorna's voice but I couldn't process what she was saying. My vision was blurry and I couldn't make out anything. All I could feel was the leftover pain, everything still hurt. All of a sudden I felt that force holding me up disappear. I fell to the ground barely conscious.

*end flashback*

I blinked a few times, reminding myself that it's been over five months since that day. That I was safe. That they couldn't hurt me anymore. I pulled my knees up to my chest and tried to just remember to breathe. My vision blurred as tears formed in my eyes.

I heard footsteps coming and tried to hide the fact that I was crying. I saw Mia in the doorway. She stopped when she saw me.

"Are you ok?" she asked, her concern obvious in her voice.

"I'm fine" My voice cracked.

She looked at me as I felt a tear that I was trying to hold back fall on my cheek, "No you're not. You're crying" She came over and sat next to me her back against the wall.

I pressed my knees against my eyes and hugged my legs close to my chest. We just sat there for a while. Me crying and Mia sitting in silence. Just her being there made me feel less alone.

Eventually, she turned to me and said, "If you don't mind me asking, why are you crying?"

I turned my head to look at her. Her green eyes were filled with concern as she watched me. "I get these, like flashbacks to this day that really sucked, like a lot, and sometimes it just gets to me. Ya know." I said.

She nodded. "Was it the day that you and your sister were forced to destroy Sentinel Services headquarters?" she asked

"How did you-" I started.

"Esme told me when she was interviewing me and Josh. Josh was saying something and she just blurted it out." She said.

"Of course it was Esme," I said rolling my eyes. She had no business telling anyone that, "Did she leave out the part that it was her and her sisters who forced us?"

"Yes actually she did leave that part out," she said, she suddenly looked very concerned. I guess she was processing the fact that Esme's a little bitch.

"Yeah, well she does tend to do that. She likes to pretend it's her sister's fault only, not hers but she still did it. Even though she objected to it she did it, giving Lauren and me a whole bucket of trauma in the process." I said angrily.

"You know you should probably see a therapist," Mia said.

"Yeah, I probably should. But unfortunately when you are on the run from the government for killing a bunch of people therapists are kind of hard to come by." I said laughing.

"True, true" Mia said smiling. "You know I think I cheered you up."

"You know I think you did," I said smiling at her.

She got up and offered her hand to me. "You want to go find Lauren"

"Why not," I said, grabbing her hand.

Chapter Text

Lauren's Pov

Mom came into my room about an hour after Andy left saying that he needed to be alone. I was sitting in my bed reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

"Lauren, there is a group of new mutants coming to headquarters soon. Do you want to help get them settled?" Mom said as she came in.

"I don't know. The last time I helped I didn't like 12 people leaving in 2 days" I said, putting down my book.

"That wasn't because of you," she said with her concerned motherly face on.

"We both know that that is a lie. They were scared of Andy and me." I said. I knew that it was true. Andy had overheard one of the mutants who had left's conversations.

Mom sighed and looked at me, "Lauren, you know it's not your fault-"

I cut her off "Don't. We can't change the past so let's just try to move on with our lives. I'll help. Just stop babying me. I know what's happening around here. Don't try to shelter me from it." I was tired of everyone being so delicate with me. Sometimes I would wish that they would just leave me alone.

I put on a pair of sneakers and brushed past Mom who was standing in the doorway and walked up the stairs to the entrance area.

The refugees were standing near the entrance and were being given supplies and clothes. Out of habit, I looked for anyone that I knew not really expecting to see anyone. Instead of not seeing anyone I saw Wes stand in the middle of the group.

"Wes," I said under my breath. My heart fluttered for a second. Why is he here? A million questions flooded through my brain. What if he knew what happened and was scared of me? I needed to find an excuse to get out of here.

I saw Andy come out of a hallway followed by Mia. They were both laughing about something. I was relieved to see Andy and have an excuse not to talk to Wes. Andy smiled at me then saw my expression and looked at Wes then back at me.

"Nope, you're on your own." He said seemingly being able to read my thoughts. He pulled Mia back into the hallway and disappeared. I sighed and shook my head, screw him honestly. I really hate Andy sometimes. I looked back at Wes and he was looking right at me.

I really wanted to run away and hide but I didn't. I pushed my emotions down and put on a smile as he walked over to me.

"Wes, hi," I said, my voice shaking a little even though I was trying to hide it.

"Lauren, how have you been?" Wes said a bit awkwardly.

"I'm ok," I said fidgeting with my hands, "So what are you doing in Philadelphia."

"Well, um, as you probably know Sentinel Services has been freaking out recently so I had to get out of the Atlanta area. They had been hitting everywhere around there really hard so I originally went to Baltimore but after a while, I decided to go a little further north." He said. That made sense.

I nervously pointed to my mom "Um, If you need anything my mom generally knows just about everything that is going on and where everything is." I said. My eyes were darting around the room, people were starting to notice me and whisper to their friends.

"I should probably go," I said biting the inside of my lip, my eyes lingering on a group of teenage girls whispering to each other and pointing at me.

He turned around and saw what I was looking at, "Oh, ok. See you later." he said waving as he walked away.

I took a shaky breath and went to go tell my mom I was bailing, I just couldn't do this. I needed to get out.

Esme's Pov

John called an emergency meeting. Whatever he wanted to talk about was so important that he didn't even bother to get Andy or Lauren, which was honestly kind of rude excluding them like that but I understood.

"What's this about, John?" Lorna asked as she walked in.

"I found someone who has information on the Inner Circle," John said motioning to a female mutant with straight, red, chest-length hair. "Leah worked with them for a time before she realized that what they were doing was wrong. She has information that might help us," he motioned to the girl, her eyes were gray and almost looked like they had blue lightning going through them.

The girl took a deep breath before speaking, "So, my name is Leah and I helped the Inner Circle on a couple of things. I ran after I realized that they weren't helping people, they were hurting people. They attacked a government facility that monitored mutants and tracked them. It worked closely with Sentinel Services. It was hushed up and not that many people know about it." Leah said. She took a deep breath before continuing, "They also sent a spy here. I don't know who it is just that they were sent here specifically with orders to destroy the underground from the inside out."

"A spy?" I said. "Do you know if they are here already or are coming soon? My sisters are smart enough to tell the person to wait so if we heard about it we would be suspicious of the wrong group of people. Then again they also know that I would know that that's how they think."

"I don't know much of anything really but I heard something about the spy having a weapon. There was this mutant who could take your powers and use them herself. I think her name was Anna or Marie I'm not sure but they somehow put her powers into a knife so that other people could use her power themselves to neutralize other mutants temporarily," Leah said. She was nervous but she obviously wasn't the spy. If she was the spy she wouldn't be this obvious with her nervousness. She would be calm on the outside and nervous on the inside.

I thought about what she was saying and it made sense that my sisters would find someone to neutralize powers. They would refuse to use the collars but still want to stop mutants who disagree with them.

"That knife, how does it work?" Marcos asked.

"I think that the person holding the knife has to cut the person to take away their powers but I'm not positive. This is just what I overheard before I left." Leah said. "I really don't know that much,"

"Do you know anything about the person who can resurrect the dead?" Lorna said her arms crossed but her face was curious.

"Um yes, their name is Alex. They will go out and look around for the Inner Circle's enemies then resurrect whoever they killed. If he knows that they killed an ally of the Inner Circle they'll resurrect that person. The whole enemy of my enemies is my friend thing. They do this with their girlfriend. I don't know too much about the girlfriend but she's powerful and people are scared of her. Everybody says to stay away from her, I do know that." Leah said this was the most steady she had been. This girlfriend person was not to be messed with apparently.

"Like what they did with Max and Rebecca," Lorna said, making the connection.

"Thank you, now we know more than we did before. We need a plan," Caitlin said.

Leah left still nervous. Her hair bounced a little as she left.

"So that was a lot of information," Lorna said. "John, how did you even find her?"

"She came to me when I was picking up the first half of the group of refugees. She had gone to the Morlocks first and Erg told her to stay with them until he sent a group of refugees to the underground and we would help her more than they could." John said.

A lot of our refugees come through the Morlocks. Most people still think the Underground collapsed five months ago but know the Morlocks are still there, you just have to find them. Erg will ask people if they want to stay within the community of the Morlocks and if they don't he will send them to us. This makes it easier on both groups so Erg doesn't have to deal with the people who need help but don't want to stay with the Morlocks and when we get these refugees we don't have to interview or find them cause he already did.

"What are we going to do with this new information?" I said.

"We should probably increase security. We only have cameras on the entrance inside and outside. We should definitely add more cameras and some guards outside like we did back in Atlanta." Marcos said.

"Good idea. We should have cameras in all of the communal spaces, where people spend time together." Lorna said.

John nodded. "We'll call a meeting where we tell everybody that we decided to increase security." He said.

"Are we going to tell them that there could be a spy or about the knife?" I asked.

"No. If the spy is already here we don't want them to be aware that we know. We should keep that knife to ourselves. It seems dangerous and could cause people to panic" John said, opening the door to start to gather people for a meeting.

"I'm going to go help the second batch of refugees coming in. I'll tell them that there is going to be a meeting tomorrow to discuss the increased security," Caitlin said walking out.

I walked over to Lorna "Do you think that those kids that you found one of them could be the spy?" I asked her.

"No, their stories line up with the news perfectly. It doesn't make sense for one of them to be a spy. Besides most of them wanted to leave and Josh only stayed because Mia wanted to." Lorna said.

I nodded. "Makes sense. This spy is going to bother me now until we have found out who they are." I said.

"You could use your powers to do some snooping to try and figure it out," Marcos said.

"Good Idea," I said, smiling. Maybe I could talk to Leah more later, see if she knows anything else that she forgot to mention.

Andy's Pov

I was talking with Mia in my room. We had come back here after I had seen Lauren freaking over the fact the West was here. There was no way I was participating in that conversation.

"But why are the lightsaber fights in the original trilogy so slow when in the prequels all of the fights are like bam, bam, bam, whack," Mia said. We have been discussing Star Wars and our opinions on the different trilogies.

"Well the first ones were made like 40 years ago so obviously the CGI would be bad and they couldn't do all of the fancy stuff...," I trailed off as Lauren came in. I made eye contact with her and I saw her facial expression change. She closed the door and leaned against it and was desperately trying not to cry.

"Should I go?" Mia asked, a worried expression on her face.

I nodded. She used her powers to teleport away so Lauren didn't have to move.

Lauren sank to the ground, tears pouring out of her eyes. I quickly moved over to her and sat next to her. She leaned against me and just cried. I didn't even ask what was wrong, I knew. I just sat there letting her against me as she cried.

"Are you ok?" I asked her when she stopped crying.

"Yes? No? I don't know. I think everything that I've been feeling the last couple of days just caught up with me all at once." She said. She got up and went over to her bed and flopped in it face first. I followed and sat on the floor leaning against the side of her bed.

"I hate this. So much. I went out there to help mom and all I got was people staring and whispering about me. Oh and don't forget the panic attack." Lauren said banging her head against her pillow.

"Why don't we go see if there is ice cream or something in the food storage room?" I said trying to distract her.

"Why not." She said relenting.

We got up and went to go to the storage room. I realized that we would have to pass the main entrance to get there, where all of the refugees were.

Lauren must have realized it too "It's fine. We'll only pass it for like two seconds in each direction," she said.

She walked over to the break in the hallway where you have to cross the main entrance. She peeked around the corner and made a muffled gasping noise. She quickly re-hid herself from the entrance area pushing her back against the wall hiding from the line of sight of anyone in the main entrance.

"What?" I asked

"Just look." She said, her voice shaking a little.

I looked and saw someone who I never expected to see again, her ex-boyfriend Jack. Well, that's not good.

Chapter Text

Lauren's Pov

Jack, my ex-boyfriend who I haven't seen since the day Andy got his powers is here, in the underground. How is this even possible, he's not a mutant right? My brain was going a million miles per second trying to figure out how this was possible. Is Jack a mutant?

"Lauren, are you ok?" Andy asked me. I shook my head no, no I was not. I was freaking out.

Mom walked in front of the hallway we were standing in, "Andy, Lauren, there you are, I've been looking everywhere for you. We got some new information about the Inner Circle. We are going to tell everyone about some of it tomorrow but I thought that you should know a little bit more than others. There is a spy working for the Inner Circle here. We don't know who it is or when they came or if they are even here yet but we do know that they are getting information on how to take the underground down from the inside. We are going to increase security to try to figure out if they are here or stop them from getting in." She said. I looked at Andy and my panic rose.

"A spy? Like for real?" Andy said I could feel him getting nervous which only made me more nervous than I already was.

"Yes, a spy. I want you both to be at the meeting so you know what's going on." Mom said.

"Why weren't we told about this when you were?" I asked.

"We just didn't have time. John was rushing us, he wanted to tell us about everything right away and no one knew where either of you was." Mom said. "I'm going to tell more people to meet in the living area for the meeting tomorrow. I expect to see you both there."

She walked away and I looked at Andy. "A freaking spy. Great, just great." I said, my voice shaking.

Mia's Pov

Caitlin had come to where Josh and I were staying. We were in one of the rooms with two beds pushed into the corner of the room with a curtain that could be pulled around the beds for privacy. We had crashed here last night after helping Lizzie and Cameron finish getting stuff together. They had just headed out on the bus that was going to take them to Baltimore, where they would be staying for now. Hopefully, they would come back at some point but Cameron's stubborn so probably not, at least not for a while.

"Hey, there is going to be a group meeting that everybody has to come to in about 15 minutes in the living area," Caitlin said.

"Ok, we'll be there," I said smiling as I put an extra blanket over my bed that honestly was more of a cot.

Caitlin left. I turned to Josh, "You ok?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, why?" He said sitting on his bed.

"It's just with everything that's happened these past few days I wanted to make sure. I mean we literally are now on the run from the cops." I said.

"Yeah, it feels like we're in a bad TV show or something." He said laughing.

"Let's head down to the meeting now so we won't be late," I said smiling. He nodded.

We were standing in the living area where Esme had interviewed us when we had first gotten here. I saw Lauren and Andy slip in right before John started talking. Lauren's eyes were darting around like she was either scared or looking for someone.

"So, you are probably all wondering why we called this meeting. We recently got information that made us believe that we should increase security. We will be installing cameras around the bunker, not just in the main hallway, to make sure that everybody in here is supposed to be here. We will also be installing more security cameras outside. If anyone would like to volunteer we were thinking of having guards. We had them at the Atlanta station and thought it would be a good idea to have some here too." John said loudly addressing the group.

Some dude in the back volunteered along with an older girl. I turned to Josh "Do you think that I could do the guard thing?" I whispered.

He shrugged and whispered back, "Sure why not."

"I can do the guard thing," I said. Lorna smiled at me. I glanced around, a few people looked skeptical that a tiny blond little girl would be able to do much in a fight. Oh well, guess I would just have to prove them wrong.

A few more people volunteered, but not many. The meeting ended and Lorna came over to where Josh and I were standing.

"Hey, Lorna. What's up?" I asked.

"I was just thinking that we could do a training session later. I want to get a better feel for your powers," Lorna said.

"Sure why not," I said smiling.

Josh turned to me, "Mia I'm going to talk to Caitlin. I think I could help her with some medical things," he said.

"Ok, see you later," I said as he walked towards the hallway she disappeared down. I turned back to Lorna, "Well I guess I don't have any plans, do you want to do the training session now?" I asked.

"Yeah, let's go to the training room," She said.

I walked into the training room. It was a huge room with pillars holding up the ceiling. There were a couple of pillows laid out on the ground so if people were practicing fighting each other they wouldn't get too banged up hitting the floor. On one side there were a few targets set up to practice shooting at. I had come in here earlier after Cameron and Lizzie left to shoot my new bow a few times. I only hit the center of the target once in the thirty minutes I had been down here.

"I'm going to throw stuff at you and I want you to not get hurt. Okay?" Lorna said, bringing my attention back to her.

I nodded and pulled shadows in front of me, ready to teleport them somewhere else. I heard something coming at me from the side and quickly moved the shadows pulling an object into them. I teleported it into my hand and looked at it. It was a small chunk of metal. I smiled.

"Good," Lorna said nodding. "I didn't really expect you to be able to react that fast."

"I used to train myself. I would have Josh throw something at me and I would teleport it somewhere else," I said shrugging.

"Interesting. Have you started practicing your new weapons yet?" She asked

"Yeah, a little," I said. I walked over to where I had put my bow after I had practiced earlier, "I didn't hit the center that much but I got close a lot."

Lorna nodded, "Just keep working at it. You'll get there. You can't be perfect at everything right away."

I knew she was right. "Yeah, I know, just gotta keep practicing, right?" I said. I switched topics to something I had been thinking about. "About that security plan that John was talking about, how are you going to get more security cameras? From what I understand security cameras are expensive."

Lorna sighed, "We don't know. There are a few humans around here that help us out sometimes but they've been dwindling. Most have stopped because of the new mutant laws and the ones that do still help, I don't think that we can ask them to get us security cameras. There would be too many questions about why they would need so many. I mean we would need one in every room."

"Two in every room. You would need at least two," I said, "There needs to be a camera facing the first camera's blind spot. If you don't do that people can still hide what they are doing there."

Lorna looked at me curiously, "Right, we definitely thought of that."

I smiled, "Let's get back to training."

Josh's Pov

I left Mia to go to find Caitlin. I searched for a few minutes and found her in the medical area. She was hovering over a little girl with blue hair and a cut on her arm. It looked pretty deep.

"Hey, I can help with that," I said. Caitlin looked up noticing me standing just inside the room. "I have healing abilities."

"Ok, it's a pretty deep cut almost to the bone," she said.

I walked over and kneeled down to look at the cut. It was pretty deep, it looked pretty jagged too.

"How did this happen?" I asked the small girl.

"I fell and accidentally cut it on broken glass," she said, blushing slightly.

I nodded. Mia had done this at least 12 times when we were exploring abandoned buildings. She was clumsy and really liked exploring abandoned buildings which is not really a great combination.

I put my hand over the wound and pushed my powers through to her cut. I watched as my green powers glowed around the wound stopping the bleeding, and slowly stitching the skin back together.

The blue-haired girl watched in amazement as I pulled my hand away from her freshly healed wound.

"Wow, there isn't even a scar left. That's so cool!" The girl said, examining her arm. She looked up with a huge smile on her face. "Thank you!"

I smiled as she jumped up and ran off. I looked up at Caitlin, she was looking at the door that the girl just ran through.

"Impressive," Caitlin said as she turned back to me. "How much do you know about medicine?"

"Not much, just some stuff I've picked up over the years," I said.

"How about I teach you some stuff. Healing is great and all but you should learn the medical stuff behind it too," she said.

I stood up, "Sure. It makes sense to know what I'm doing when I'm healing," I said.

She walked over to a shelf with some vials of medicine on it. "What exactly are the limitations of your powers? I've been around mutants long enough to know you all have limits," she said, turning around with a bottle of red liquid in one hand and a vial of clear liquid in the other.

"I can heal just about any wound but if it's bad enough I can't heal it all the way, just mostly. Some wounds can't be healed but those don't happen often. And if someone gets hurt from overusing their powers I can't heal that, but if you have a nosebleed because of overuse of your powers I can fix that cause it's just a burst blood vessel," I said.

"Interesting" Caitlin said. She held up the red vial, "This is Hypercortisone-D, it can help when people overuse their powers. It's the pharmaceutical version of kick, so only use it in emergencies."

I looked at the vial in her hand, "Doesn't kick boost your powers?" I asked.

"Yes, but it can also stabilize them too," she said. That made sense.

Caitlin put the red vial back on the shelf. She twitched the clear vial in her other hand. "This is a sedative. If someone is freaking out it would be hard to heal them so give them some of this and they will calm down," she said. "I'll come and get you next time someone gets hurt. Okay?"

"Yup. No problem. See you then," I said walking out the door. I glanced at the shelf of medicine one more time before I left.

Lorna's Pov

Mia and I had finished training for the day about an hour ago. We decided to do some more tomorrow morning, to help her keep getting stronger with her powers. I was heading to the meeting room because Marcos said that John and Caitlin wanted to talk to us about something.

I heard some guitar music coming from one of the bedrooms. I noticed the door was open. I peeked in and saw Mia holding a guitar surrounded by some of the younger kids. She was turning one of the nobs at the top and strumming one string. The pitch changed slightly each time she did.

"Ok, I think I got it!" Mia said. She started strumming the guitar, she was pretty good. She was smiling and started singing a little as some of the kids started clapping along with the beat.

She was clearly having a lot of fun with these kids. It made me miss Dawn a bit. I smiled sadly and kept walking through the hallway.

Chapter Text

Andy's Pov

"So your kinda ex-boyfriend, you were never officially dating, showed up unexpectedly on the same day your other ex-boyfriend showed up right after you almost finished having a panic attack about the first guy. Also, you never knew that this ex-boyfriend is a mutant and you still haven't talked to him or even attempted to figure out what he can do." Mia said. Lauren and I were sitting against a wall talking to Mia who was practicing shooting the bow that Lorna gave her. She shot an arrow, hitting the ring around the center circle. She frowned before turning back to us. "Did I get it all?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Lauren said. She was in a mood ever since both of her ex-boyfriends showed up on the same day, causing her to have multiple panic attacks. Mia looked kind of amused about the situation.

"So your love life sucks," Mia said, shooting another arrow. This one hit the ring around the one that she had hit before. "Damnit, I keep missing." she pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes at the target.

"You'll get better, it's only been a few days," Lauren said.

"I know, but I've been practicing for hours and I feel like I'm getting worse," Mia said.

"Come take a break," I said, motioning for her to come to sit down against the wall. Mia sighed and came over and sat in between Lauren and me.

Lauren sighed, "I hate people"

"True that," Mia said.

"Have you ever had a boyfriend," Lauren asked Mia.

"No, but I had a girlfriend," Mia said.

"Had... What happened?" I asked.

"Her name's Oliva, I used to call her Liv. I was the only one who got to call her Liv, she would punch you if you did. One day I was kissing her and I guess I just got excited and I accidentally used my powers, just a little. The shadows around me swirled around us. It freaked Liv out, and she figured out I was a Mutant and she broke up with me. She never told anyone, at least that I know of. I'm probably never going to see her again so it doesn't matter." Mia said smiling sadly, she wiped away a tear before it fell.

"That's terrible. I guess all of our love lives just suck then." Lauren said.

Mia turned to me, "What happened in your love life?"

"Well, I killed my girlfriend then she was resurrected and is now trying to kill me," I said.

"You know what I think you win," Mia said, laughing.

"Yeah, I know. The one girlfriend that I've ever had died, then resurrected and is now trying to kill me and Lauren so yeah. I don't think much can top that." I said glaring at the floor.

Mia looked at her watch and sighed, "You know you two should probably go, Lorna's going to be here soon and I want to practice shooting more before she gets here."

Lauren nodded and stood up smiling, "Ok, and next time try hitting the center"

"Haha," Mia said, rolling her eyes.

I got up and followed Lauren out the door, "See you later." I said. Mia waved before knocking an arrow on the bow.

Lauren was a little up the hallway talking to mom.

"What were you doing in there?" mom asked Lauren.

"Talking to Mia," Lauren said, shrugging. I walked over and stood next to Lauren.

"Good you two are making friends. You need them." Mom said with that 'I'm worried about you' tone of voice.

"We're fine Mom," I said. "I promise"

"As much as I don't believe you, I'm going to let it go for right now. I was actually looking for you. John and I are going to go to Baltimore for a couple of weeks." Mom said.

"What? No, we need you here." Lauren said.

"The leadership down there is struggling. There have been a couple of issues recently so John and I are going down for a couple of weeks to help them sort everything out." Mom said putting her hand on Lauren's arm.

"But who's going to do the medical stuff here? No one else is trained in medicine and people have been getting hurt a lot." I said, protesting her leaving. We needed her here. My breathing started to speed up.

"One of the mutants that you and Lorna found, Josh, has healing abilities. Yesterday and today I showed him what to do if he can't use his powers to help someone. His powers only can't help in a few situations so I'm sure everything will be fine." Mom said trying to calm Lauren and me down. "It will only be for a few weeks. I'm not leaving until next week."

Mom pulled us into a hug before heading back down the hallway. Lauren looked at me, "We'll be fine Andy"

I pressed my lips together. "I just have a bad feeling you know."

Lauren nodded and looked back down the hallway mom disappeared down. "I know."

Esme's Pov

I wanted to talk to Leah a bit more about what the Inner Circle has been doing. Maybe knowing more about what they have been doing will give me a better idea about what they will do.

"Hey, Leah," I said jogging over to where she was sitting. "I wanted to talk to you a little more about what the Inner Circle is doing, or what they have done."

"Esme, I don't really know that much. I was only there for three jobs and they only told me what they had to for me to do my job," Leah said.

"Then tell me what your job was," I said sitting next to her.

"I would stop communications and see what was going on on the cameras and make sure that the sentinel robots wouldn't work. One time they also asked me to disrupt the electronics in the cars, so they couldn't escape or get back up." She said. Her red hair fell into her face, and she tucked it back behind her ear. My eyes lingered on hers for a couple of seconds. She was really pretty.

"Um, I uh, What are my sisters doing," I said, breaking eye contact.

"I don't really know. This may be wrong but I think that they're planning something, something big. If I'm right then the spy isn't just supposed to gather information about how to take down the Mutant Underground for the inside, I think that they are supposed to kill someone or multiple people." Leah said nervously.

I took a breath, trying to process what Leah said. "Who," I asked her.

"I don't know, I don't even know if I'm right but whoever they are planning to kill, they're dangerous to the Inner Circle's plans," Leah said, her voice shaking slightly.

"It does seem like something that my sister would do," I admitted. "Thanks for telling me."

I glanced back at Leah and she was looking at me. I looked away. "I should go tell the others about your theory," I said awkwardly. I tried to walk away but I tripped over a chair and fell onto another couch.

"Are you ok?" Leah asked me, coming over and helping me up.

"Yeah, just a little clumsy," I said embarrassed, "Wow your hands are really soft."

Leah blushed, "It's all in the moisturizer." Leah laughed, her laugh sounded like tinkling bells.

"Don't trip again," Leah said smiling.

"I won't see you later," I said, still really embarrassed. I walked away mentally hitting myself in the head with a flowerpot.

Chapter Text

Lauren's Pov

I had been avoiding both Wes and Jack all week. I'm not very good at it apparently. I had bumped into Jack twice and Wes three times. I had managed to get away before I had to actually talk to either of them though.

Mom and John were heading down to Baltimore today.

"I love you," Mom said, hugging me. Andy was standing just behind me. "I'll only be gone for a few weeks."

I nodded. "Yeah," I said. Mom hugged Andy after she let me go.

"Hey Caitlin, you ready to go?" John asked as he walked in. Mom nodded.

"I'll call to let you know we got there safe." Mom said as She grabbed her bags and headed out. It will be fine. I looked at Andy, his lips were pressed together.

"We'll be fine," I said trying to reassure him. I was also just trying to convince myself of that. Mom hadn't left us alone since we got here.

"Yeah," he said I could tell he didn't believe me. I didn't believe me either so I couldn't really blame him.

"Hey Lauren and Andy, can I ask you a favor?" Lorna said running up to us.

"Yeah sure, what's up?" Andy said.

"With Caitlin and John leaving, Marcos and I are really busy but we do a supply run and right now we don't trust a lot of people because of the spy thing. Can you two do it?" Lorna asked.

"But we're not supposed to go anywhere by ourselves, what if someone sees us," I said concerned. Mom had drilled this into our brains, don't leave. And if you have to don't go alone.

"Then take someone with you," Lorna said. "Please, I really don't have anyone else to ask. Just take two or three people to help you and you'll be fine. Okay?"

"Fine, we could ask Mia or something," Andy said.

"Yes, ask Mia. She's pretty good at using her powers, and she's getting better with her bow too. I got to go through, Marcos needs my help." Lorna said walking away towards the meeting room.

I turned to Andy, "Now, we need to even see if Mia will agree to go. Who else would we even ask"

"You could ask Wes," Andy said, poking me in the ribs.

"No," I said glaring at him.

"But we don't talk to anyone else," he said.

"Oh well," I said slightly annoyed.

"Lorna said to bring two to three people with us so we don't ask Wes then we would have to ask Esme which is not happening," Andy said raising an eyebrow at me.

I sighed "Fine," I said reluctantly. "You have to ask him though."

"What no! I barely even know him. I've talked to him like three times," he said.

"It was your idea, you have to ask him," I said starting to walk away to go find Mia to ask her. "I'm going to go ask Mia, so have fun"

"I hate you," Andy said groaning.

"Yup," I said smiling mischievously. I went to go find Mia. She wasn't in the area that she ended up sleeping in. I checked just about everywhere before I decided to check the training room. Of course, the last place I checked in was where she was. She was shooting her bow at the target.

"Hey," I said walking in. Mia acknowledged me and shot another arrow. It hit the circle next to the center.

She sighed before addressing me "Hey Lauren, what's up."

"Do you want to come with me and Andy on a supply run?" I asked her.

"Sure why not. Sounds fun" She said, shrugging.

"Bring your weapons just in case," I said.

"Just don't expect me to actually hit anything with an arrow," Mia said motioning with her bow at the target full of arrows that didn't hit the center.

"I'll be fine, nothing ever happens on supply runs, weapons are just a precaution," I said, "I have to go get some stuff together for the mission. One more person is coming too."

"Who?" she asked.

"Wes," I said, sighing.

"The kind of ex-boyfriend Wes?" Mia said, raising her eyebrow.

"Yeah, Lorna said we should bring two or three other people with us and we don't talk to or really know anybody else," I said. "I need to grab a couple of bags to load the supplies into once we get to the warehouse"

Mia nodded, "How long till we're leaving?"

"Two hours," I said walking out the door.

I was heading towards the storage room where we put the bags when I bumped into someone. I looked up and saw Jack and his perfect hair. Like seriously, he was a refugee and his hair was all perfect and bouncy... back to the point, he was standing in front of me.

"Lauren. Hey," he said. I just stared at him for a second.

I swallowed my feelings and refrained from freaking out too much about the fact that I was talking to my ex-boyfriend who I haven't talked to since the day Andy got his powers, "Hey Jack. W-What are you doing here?"

"Uh, hiding from the government." He said like it was obvious, probably because it was.

"So, you're a mutant?" I said, nervously.

"Yeah, I can manipulate people's emotions." He said.

My eyes widened slightly, "Oh, uh, like a telepath. That's interesting," I said hesitating slightly. I wasn't a big fan of telepaths for obvious reasons. I noticed my powers start to activate. I tried to focus on stopping them but never worked very well before so I don't know why I expected it to work now.

Jack looked at his hands before asking me a question that I had been waiting for, "What are your powers? I saw some stuff on the news but.." he trailed off.

"Well, the news isn't wrong. I can do that when I combine my powers with Andy's. By myself, though I push things together, it's a form of molecular manipulation and more recently telekinesis." I said.

Jack looked at me with concerned eyes, "Did you actually do that?"

"Yes, I did," I told him what happened. I trusted him still somehow, even after everything I went through and the fact that it's been over a year since I've ever seen him.

"That's terrible," he said.

I looked at my hands and nodded. I felt my powers flare more and a chair a couple of feet down the hallway tipped over towards me. I took a sharp breath.

"Is this place haunted?" Jack said, turning around to look at the chair.

I walked over to pick up the chair, "No my powers just like to do stuff when I don't want them too."

Jack nodded, "Where are you going that you are in such a big rush," he said, changing the subject. I was grateful to him for that.

"Uh, a supply run. Normally Andy and I don't really do this kind of stuff but everyone's kind of busy right now." I said, wishing my heart would stop beating so fast.

"I could help if you want," Jack said.

"Uh, I, uh, I don't know," I said. I felt my powers calm down a bit.

"Come on it will be fun. We could hang out, it will be like before," Jack said smiling gently at me. I forgot how handsome he was.

"Ok, fine. Meet me at the main entrance at six." I said, feeling my heartbeat calm down slightly.

I walked away shaking my head, berating myself for saying he could come.

Andy's Pov

I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car and Lauren was driving. She has been supper tense ever since she let Jack come on the supply run, which was stupid considering her other ex-boyfriend was also coming. Mia was unfortunately stuck between Jack and Wes, but she threatened them to behave with one of her daggers before she got into the car.

I glanced at Lauren, her eyes were glued to the road and her fingers were white from gripping the steering wheel so hard.

"You good?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said, her voice tense. She wasn't. I could feel how tense she was. It was making me anxious.

I watched as we pulled into the warehouse's back driveway. I looked around to make sure no one was around. I didn't see anyone so I turned around to talk to the others, "Ok, we have to do this quickly. Get in, get out. Got it?"

Mia nodded and poked Wes to make him move, "Yup, let's go."

Lauren pulled the car up against the wall of the warehouse. We all walked inside and Lauren and I directed the others where to go and what to grab.

Lauren and I had to get some more blankets. More refugees were steadily pouring into all of the stations. We were going to send these to some of the other stations that needed them as well as the Morlocks.

"Are you ok?" I asked Lauren.

"Yeah, why," she said, clearly lying.

"Lauren, you know we are psychically linked to each other right. I can tell you're lying," I said, raising my eyebrow.

"I'm fine Andy," she said trying to walk away.

"No, you're not. You're stressed," I said following her.

"Of course I'm stressed Andy. My two ex-boyfriends showed up on the same day and for some reason I let them come with us on the supply run." Lauren said as I tensed hearing something out the window that sounded like a car door slamming. She looked at me concerned. "What?"

"Hold that thought," I said walking over to the window and looked out. I looked out and saw a few cars pull up and people get out. They were wearing hoodies with a white cross. My heart dropped to the ground as my eyes widened

"Lauren," I said, warning her that something was wrong with my tone.

Lauren walked over. She looked out the window and gasped "Purifiers" She looked at me terrified.

Mia ran over from wherever she was, "Purifiers outside" she said, panting.

"We know," Lauren and I said in sync.

"What do we do?" I said.

"I don't know. Mia check in the back, see if they found the car, and have the exits covered. Find Wes and Jack and tell them what's happening," Lauren said. Mia nodded, pulled her bow off her back, and ran off.

"We'll have to fight if she doesn't find a way out," I said looking back at the purifiers. They were moving into offensive positions.

"There has to be another way," Lauren said, shaking her head.

"There might not be," I said. I was looking at how the purifiers were lining up, some were in defensive positions and others were in offensive positions. "They are really prepared."

"Yeah, it's like they knew we would be here..." Lauren said. Her eyes widened, "Oh my god, they knew we would be here. Someone tipped them off."

"Oh my god," I said. "How?...right, there's a spy. Why would they tell purifiers and not the inner circle?"

I heard Mia say "Who are you?"

"Because they told both," Lauren said.

I looked at Lauren and ran over into the main room of the warehouse. Mia had her bow drawn and pointed at Rebecca.

Rebecca smiled at her "None of your concern." Rebecca raised her hands to use her powers.

Mia looked around Rebecca's powers "Nope not today." Mia said as she shot the arrow.

Lauren and I ran over to her. Mia's arrow had hit Rebecca's chest.

"Not where I was aiming but that works too," Mia said, pulling another arrow out.

"You can't kill her," Lauren said to Mia. "But that doesn't mean she won't try to kill you."

"Wonderful," Mia said, looking at Lauren out of the corner of her eye, very concerned.

"What do you want Rebecca?" I said as Rebecca pulled out the arrow that Mia shot.

Rebecca threw the arrow aside, "Well I think it's pretty obvious that I want you dead."

"How did you know we were here?" I said even though I already knew that answer.

Rebecca rolled her eyes, "The spy obviously. Didn't Leah tell you about them, the traitor?"

I glanced at Lauren. She was glaring at Rebecca in between looking for a way out of here. Wes ran out from a hallway and stopped, his eyes wide.

"Oh another new friend, fun" Rebecca said, smirking. I watched as Rebecca's powers surrounded Wes's chest. I was frozen in place like I forgot to move. Her powers stopped and I watched him fall to the floor dead. His heart no longer in his body. I grabbed Lauren as she tried to run to him, stopping her.

"No," Lauren screamed.

Chapter Text

Lauren's Pov

"No," I screamed. Andy grabbed me as I tried to get to Wes. I could see his heart laying on the ground next to his body. I couldn't process that he could be dead even though all of my senses pointed to it.

"No, Andy, Let me go!" I said as I struggled to get out of Andy's grip.

"Lauren stop. You can't help him." Andy said tightening his grip around my waist.

I looked at Rebecca who was smiling, "Aw, are you sad? Did I kill someone you care about?" She said in a mocking tone.

"I will end you" I growled at her. All of the windows in the warehouse shattered, the glass falling inward. Andy let go of me. I threw one of my disks at her but missed her as she leaned out of the way. I tried again and hit her leg but only cut half of it. I realized I was too angry to actually hit anything I was aiming at.

"Missed me," Rebecca said smiling at me with her insane smile. I glared at her as my vision became blurry and hot tears spilled down my cheeks. I stumbled backward against Andy as a sob wrenched itself from my chest.

He hugged me tightly, "Go, you're not ok, you can't fight right now." he whispered in my ear. He pushed me behind him.

He turned around and yelled, "Mia, Get her and Jack out of here."

Mia nodded and grabbed me, I watched as darkness swirled around me. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again I was on the ground in a different spot. Mia was kneeling next to me looking over boxes, presumably to see what was happening. All of a sudden I got really dizzy from whatever Mia did.

"Mia, take me back. I want to help Andy. I want to kill her," I said trying to get up but falling against the boxes behind me. I was shaking, I wanted Rebecca dead. I wanted her to die slowly and painfully. I was shaking with anger.

"No," Mia said, getting up. She pulled out an arrow and looked out the broken window. "If you want to fight someone you can help me find us a way out of here. There are still purifiers surrounding us, remember."

I turned around to watch Andy as Jack ran over. "I couldn't find any exits that aren't covered." He said to Mia.

"Then we'll just have to make one," Mia said. "Jack go check around the car, see how many purifiers are there, see if we can get out through there"

I watched Andy fight Rebecca. I wanted to go help him desperately. I wanted to kill her, but we couldn't kill her. For some reason, she just wouldn't die.

Mia's Pov

I turned around and saw Lauren still on the ground watching Andy and Rebecca's fight. Andy had basically been just trying to keep her down so he could get out of there but Rebecca was too fast for him.

Rebecca was taunting him the entire time, "Did you get less powerful since you killed me?"

"Leave Rebecca, stop hurting other people just to get to me," Andy said backing up a couple of feet.

"I would but hurting other people is a lot more fun," Rebecca said trying to use her powers on Andy. He used his powers to push her backward stopping her from focusing to use her powers.

I glanced at Lauren, she was watching the fight. A few tears were still falling from her eyes. Her eyes seemed to have a slight golden tint to them. It was probably just the light or something. The glass on the ground around us started to move towards her slightly.

"Lauren," I said, nudging her. She didn't even notice me. "Lauren," I said slightly louder and nudged her harder.

She shook her head a little and looked at me, "What?" The glass stopped moving.

"Are you ok?" I said, I mean her ex-boyfriend was just killed in front of her.

"Well giving the circumstances I don't think any of us are fine," Lauren said. "We need to help Andy, he can't stop her without killing her but she can't be killed. I've tried, it doesn't work, she just heals."

"So, we have to stop the healing process," I said.

"Yeah, if we hurt her bad enough she should take a bit to heal, giving us time to get away from here. No guarantee though," she said turning back towards the fight.

"You and Andy can like to combine your powers, right? What if you just do that?" I said motioning with my hands something blowing up.

"No, too destructive, we don't want the cops to know we're here. They still think we're in D.C. although some do think we are in Atlanta. A few even think we might be in New York. Not many have guessed Philadelphia and we want to keep it that way. Besides it would kill everyone here," Lauren was watching her brother while talking. He wasn't making any progress at stopping Rebecca. If anything he was losing, he kept backing up trying to find an opportunity to get away from her.

"Understandable, there is also the whole purifier problem outside," I said nodding. I glanced outside. They had set up a perimeter. This was getting worse the longer we stayed. We were just giving them more time to prepare.

"We'll deal with that when we get there. Andy and I are pretty good fighters as long as the person we're fighting doesn't just get back up again every time we knock them down." Lauren said motioning at Rebecca. Suddenly she looked up at me, "Mia do you think you could shoot Rebecca in the head? Brain injuries take a while to heal even with a healing factor. It won't kill her but it might give us enough time to escape."

"I don't know. I haven't been very good with accuracy and I'd have to get behind her so she wouldn't see me," I said shaking my head. I gripped the arrow in my hand tighter.

Lauren got up and grabbed my arm, "You have to try, Mia," she turned around and pointed to a small balcony in the back of the warehouse. "What about up there. You would be behind her."

I pressed my lips together in a frown and looked at the ledge with worried eyes, "I'll try. No promises though."

Lauren squeezed my arm and smiled at me before crouching down and resuming watching the fight.

I teleported onto the balcony and hid in shadows so no one would see me there. I notched my arrow onto the string of my bow. I looked at the fight below me, I could see Andy struggling to keep Rebecca from using her powers. From what I could tell if she could keep her focus for long enough we would all be dead in a matter of seconds.

I took a deep breath and held it as I pulled my bow back. I aimed directly at the back of Rebecca's head and prayed that she wouldn't move. I breathed out and let the arrow fly. It hit her directly in the back of her head.

"Yes," I said smiling. I teleported back down to the ground and stumbled a bit as I landed. I felt a drop of blood drip down my nose. I wiped the blood on the back of my hand.

I walked over to Andy, "You ok?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little tired," he said. Lauren walked over to where Wes's body was. Andy noticed and went over to her.

Jack came over from wherever he was hiding. "Well that was crazy," he said. His tone was weird, I couldn't put my finger on it. Almost concerned but angry, it was just weird.

"Yeah no duh. Wes died." I said. I looked at Jack and something about him just threw me off for a second. "Or did you forget already?"

I walked away shaking my head. I didn't like him, he just dismissed Wes's death like it was nothing. Something was off about him.

Lauren was kneeling next to Wes's body crying. Andy was next to her trying to calm her down enough to leave. I looked down at Wes's body and I could barely process it not having even known the guy. I couldn't imagine what it would feel like for someone who had known him.

"I'm sorry but, we have to find a way out of here. Purifiers are everywhere and they are just getting more prepared by the second," I said walking over.

Andy nodded, "We have to try to get the supplies back to headquarters so people don't have to go out again."

"Ok, but we still need a way back to the car," I said.

Jack walked over, "What if someone distracts the purifiers while the others go to the car?"

"That sounds like a good way to get the person distracting someone killed," I said.

"That's actually not a bad idea," Andy said as he stood up. "If Lauren and I can distract them, you two could take the stuff to the car. Then we'll meet you there once we can stop the purifiers. We're good fighters just not against someone who can't be killed."

"Really all you have to do is take away their guns and then they get scared and run away," Lauren said standing up and wiping her tears away. Her face was blank. She must have been just pushing everything down inside her.

"Ok," I said as I grabbed one of the bags I had discarded earlier. "Let's do this."

Andy and Lauren headed to a different side of the warehouse to distract the purifiers. Hopefully, this would work.

I stood hidden by shadows just outside the door. Jack was standing behind me.

"Your powers, they're cool," he said, glancing at the shadows around us.

"Shut up. We don't want them to hear us," I said. I was holding my bow with an arrow at the ready. It was likely that most of the guards would leave to help their friends but one or two would stay. I could shoot them in their arm stopping them from being able to fire their gun then problem solved no more purifiers guarding the car.

Jack sighed. I heard some loud noises coming from the side of the warehouse that sounded like a mixture of gunfire and explosions. The purifiers watching the car looked up. They talked for a minute then most left leaving two guys to keep guarding the car. I waited until they rounded the corner before aiming at the guy guarding the front of the car's shoulder. I was shaking a little as I let my arrow go and hit his thigh. Close enough.

I walked over to him and hit him over the head with my bow knocking him out. His friends tried to shoot at me but held out my hand and teleported his bullets behind me. I hit his arms with my bow disarming him then I pulled out an arrow and this time actually shot him in the shoulder like I planned to do with the first guy. I was still shaking a little from all of the adrenaline running through my body.

I took one of the guns and handed it to Jack when he walked over. He took the gun from me warily, "That was badass. Remind me not to mess with you."

"Thanks, trust me I won't let you forget it," I said, grabbing two bags to throw them in the trunk of the car.

Jack and I got all of the bags into the car in about five minutes. As I put the last one in I heard the crackling of a walkie-talkie. I heard one of the guys say into his walkie, "Muties, the car. Help"

I walked over. It was the guy I had shot in the shoulder. "Dude not cool," I said as I hit him in the head with my bow knocking him out. I turned to Jack, my adrenaline kicking back in.

"Hide," I said pushing Jack into the back seat of the car. "I'm going to distract them. When they are distracted I want you to drive away. Hide the car close to the entrance, so we can get out easier. I'm going to get Andy and Lauren then come find you."

"What, no. We're supposed to stick together, splitting up is how people die in basically every single movie." Jack said.

"Well if we don't split up there will be a much bigger chance of both of us dying and that only happens in horror movies," I said as I desperately tried to figure out a plan.

Jack rolled his eyes and glared at me, "Fine."

I closed the car door and hid behind the car. I watched as about six purifiers rounded the corner. I looked for a place for me to teleport to so I could start to distract them so Jack could get away. I had to stop them before they got to the car.

I looked up and saw a broken window with a pretty big ledge on the second floor. I teleported into a crouching position on the ledge. I waited for a second before shooting an arrow at one of the purifiers. It hit the back of his shoulder and he fell to the ground. I quickly hid in the shadows as the rest of the purifiers started frantically looking for me. I quickly shot another arrow at the guy closest to the car. One of them must have seen where the arrow had come from because they started shooting at the window I was kneeling on.

I teleported directly in the middle of the circle that they had made. I hit one guy in the head with my bow knocking him out. When I hit another in the arms, disarming him he grabbed my bow stopping me from hitting him, the other two started shooting at me. I teleported the bullets away from me. I heard the car engine start. I had to keep the purifiers distracted. I kneed the guy holding my bow in the balls and once he let go I shot him in the shoulder. I turned around breathing heavily to face the last two purifiers, my nose starting to bleed again. I shot one in the arm and hit him in the head and the last one started to run back to where he came from after I had disarmed him, terrified. I shot him in the thigh to stop him from getting more of his friends.

I turned around to make sure Jack got away. The car was almost to the entrance. I turned around, I still had the element of surprise for the rest of the purifiers. I had to help Andy and Lauren. I started to run towards the corner of the building not wanting to use my powers. I needed to save my strength just in case.

Lauren's Pov

Andy and I were on the opposite side of a doorway getting ready to do our part of the plan. I nodded at him and we attacked at the same time. It felt good to finally be able to just fight and not have the person just get back up again. It was a good release for my anger.

We fought for a couple of minutes before someone threw a grenade at us. We both ran in opposite directions. Well if they planned to split us up they weren't doing a bad job and that wasn't a bad plan. We were better when we were fighting together, I couldn't explain it we just were.

I ducked behind a column that was very helpfully placed. The column was weird; it was two walls coming together to form a corner. I leaned around one of the walls to see what was going on. I heard a gun go off and I felt a white-hot pain go through the top of my right arm.

"Damnit," I said. I looked to see where the bullet hit me and how bad. it had hit about three inches below my shoulder. The bullet skidded along my skin but was still in my arm. I put my arm over the wound to try to stop the bleeding.

I could feel the pain slowly increasing. Andy ran over to me, "Are you ok?"

"No Andy, I got shot," I said, my voice shaking slightly from the pain. "How did you even know to come to find me?"

"I don't know. I had a gut feeling I guess," he said he pulled my hand away from my arm gently. "Well, that's not good."

"Yeah no duh. Ow!" I said as the pain suddenly got a lot worse. My powers started to activate. I could feel them on top of the pain.

A purifier rounded the corner. He took one look at us and shot his gun. Andy tried to push the bullets away but instead of going back towards the guy who shot at us they just kind of stopped in mid-air and started shaking. I realized it was because my powers were affecting the bullets too. I watched as the bullets disintegrated.

The purifier who shot at us said, "What the hell" he tried to shoot at us again but before he could the gun in his hand started to disintegrate. I exchanged a scared look with Andy. We were somehow doing this and had no idea how to stop it.

The guy started to back up as his hands disintegrated. He screamed and yelled for the other purifiers to run as the rest of his body disintegrated. He turned into a pile of dust in seconds.

"Oh my god," I said looking in the space where the man just was. "Did we just..."

"Yeah. We did" Andy said. I took a sharp intake of breath then tried to just focus on my breathing as the pain that had dulled came back in full force.

Mia came around the corner, her jacket had splatters of blood on it. "Are you guys ok? There were a bunch of purifiers but they just scattered," she said her eyes found the blood from my wound that was trailing down my arm "Oh my god. What happened?"

"She got shot," Andy said. Mia didn't seem to have seen the guy disintegrate. "Where's Jack and why are you covered in blood?"

"My part of the plan went a little sideways. Jack is waiting with the car for us," she said. "Let's go. You need help."

Mia took us back to where the car is and we got in and started to head back to the Underground. My arm hurt really bad, it was all I could do to keep breathing and stay conscious.

Chapter Text

Andy's Pov

I was sitting in the medical area with Lauren. Josh was trying to get the bullet out of her arm.

"It hurts," Lauren said, wincing as Josh tried to get the bullet out of her arm.

"Just hold still. I've never done this before." Josh said holding a pair of tweezers awkwardly.

"Can't you just heal it?" I said nervously. Lauren's powers were still active. I was afraid to try to stop the stuff around us from shaking because of what happened to that purifier guy.

"No, I can't just heal it. I have to get the bullet out first. Do you want a bullet stuck in her arm causing her pain for the rest of her life?" Josh said, slightly annoyed. "Now both of you shut up so I can get the bullet out and heal Lauren."

Lauren and I shut up. Josh finally got the bullet out and as he was pulling it out Lauren winced and a ceiling light behind us imploded.

"Sorry," she said grimacing.

Josh sighed and looked at the glass on the floor. "It's fine." he put his hand over the wound and green light emitted from his hand. After a couple of seconds, he took his hand away and the wound was mostly gone. All that remained was a small scratch that looked like it was done by a cat. That was going to be really helpful.

"Wow that's cool," Lauren said looking at where the bullet wound was. Josh nodded smiling slightly.

"Yeah, How did you even get shot? I thought that you could make these like shield things that can stop bullets," Josh said.

"I can. I was looking around a corner not expecting someone to be there ready to shoot at me as soon as I looked around the corner," Lauren said as she inspected her arm.

"Ah, makes sense," Josh said as he went to go clean up the glass.

Lorna, Marcos, and Esme walked in followed by Mia and Jack, "So are either of you going to give a better explanation of what happened than what you gave when you walked in the door?" Lorna asked, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrow at us.

I sighed. All we said when we walked in the door was 'Wes died. Rebecca killed him. Purifiers attacked and Lauren got shot.' So good summary, but worry inducing. We explained what happened. When Mia explained how she stopped the purifiers attacking her I was impressed. She said she was running off of pure gut instinct and adrenaline.

"Wow," Lorna said when we finished explaining. "I'm sorry I asked you to go. We haven't had any problems with supply runs before. I guess we have to be more careful now that we know there's a spy."

"It's fine Lorna. It wasn't your fault." Lauren said. Sometimes it feels like all we do is tell each other stuff isn't each other's fault.

"Maybe if Esme worked a little harder at finding out who the spy was this wouldn't have happened," Marcos said really passive-aggressively.

"Sorry, but I can't read everyone's minds at one Marcos. It is impossible, we've only known about the spy for a little over a week. It's gonna take time for me to figure it out." Esme said.

"Well try harder," Marcos said, crossing his arms.

"Let's not argue amongst ourselves. That's what the spy wants and we're not giving the spy what they want. Got it?" Lorna said. She turned to me and Lauren and handed me a phone. "Call your Mom and tell her what happened. She'll want to know."

"Do we have to tell her?" I said taking the phone reluctantly.

"I feel like that's a bunch of added stress and worry that she doesn't need," Lauren said, summing up the rest of my thoughts perfectly.

"Yes, you do. Now go do it." Lorna said, pushing us out of the room. I sighed and dialed the number as we walked back to our room.

Lauren's Pov

I had just hung up talking to Mom. Andy had given me the phone once he dialed it. Apparently, I was better at explaining stuff. She freaked when I told her what happened, obviously. She wanted to come back but Andy and I told her that she had to stay in Baltimore, they needed her. I really didn't want her to come home and smother me. I love my mom but sometimes she can be really overbearing. She tries so hard to understand but she just doesn't get it.

"You good?" Andy asked. He was sitting on his bed drawing something.

"Yeah, it's just, how can our lives possibly suck this much?" I said, flopping at the end of his bed.

Andy sighed and put down his notepad, "You know, I've been asking myself the same question for months."

I stared at the ceiling thinking about what happened. I just couldn't stop thinking about Wes dying. I could barely believe that it actually happened. I wasn't sad anymore per se, I don't know, I couldn't describe the feeling. It was like a mixture of anger, sadness, and some weird emotion I couldn't pinpoint. I just felt weird. I was really sad at first but during the car ride back I guess I just pressed all of my emotions down and now I feel somewhat numb to it. I don't know.

"How's your arm?" Andy asked, pulling me away from my thoughts.

"It's fine. You know for how much it hurt I can barely feel it at all now. It's just like an oddly placed paper cut." I said running my hand over the area. "Are you okay?"I asked him.

"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?" He said with a blank expression on his face.

"Well, you just had to fight your ex-girlfriend who died and came back, and now really wants to kill you and apparently just random people too," I said, turning to lay on my side to face him.

Andy looked down, "I just keep trying to convince myself that this isn't happening. I still feel bad for her, she was tortured in that mental hospital for over a year. It made her go crazy. I guess I don't want to admit to myself that this is happening."

I nodded, "Yeah, it's hard not to feel bad for her. What those humans did to her, was awful, but there were definitely better ways she could have handled that trauma." I laughed, "I mean look at us, hiding underground ignoring trauma. It's been working great for us, hasn't it," I said sarcastically.

"Yeah, we handle trauma perfectly compared to her," Andy said smiling. I watched as his smile faded as he thought of something else. "Lauren, what happened earlier with that purifier, that wasn't normal or good."

I sat up, "No it wasn't. He just disintegrated. I could feel it happen." I said, my chest heavy.

"I could too. I think both of our powers were affecting the same thing and because we do opposite things the molecules just sort of freaked," he said motioning with his hands.

"This isn't good. We can barely control our powers as it is and adding this... this new thing. As much as I hate to agree with Sentinel Services, I'm going to have to agree with them on this one and say we're dangerous." I looked down at my hands as a tear fell onto my fingers.

"That's one thing they weren't wrong about," he said. "Maybe it would be best for everyone if we just left and went where we couldn't hurt anyone by accident."

"Don't think like that." I said, "We can't think like that. We'll just fall back into that depression pit that we were in two months ago. I don't want to end up back in there." I could feel his emotions, he was mad at himself yet sad at the same time. Feeling his emotions was affecting how I was feeling.

Andy nodded, "Sorry, it- it was just something that crossed my mind."

I pulled him in into a hug, "We'll figure this out. Let's not tell anyone though, there is still a spy here somewhere, and if they know our powers are freaking out more than normal. That won't be good."

"Yeah. There is still that problem to deal with," Andy said, pulling away from me. He stood up, "You want to go find ice cream, we never actually got it last time."

"Sure why not," I said smiling, happy for the distraction.

Lorna's Pov

Marcos and I were sitting in our bedroom talking about what happened to Lauren and Andy during the supply run. I blamed myself for what happened, I'm the one that asked them to go even though I knew there was a spy and I knew that the Inner Circle was working with the purifiers.

"It's my fault," I said.

"Lorna..." Marcos started.

"It is. I asked them to go. They both didn't want to but I told them it would be fine. Then they said okay that they would do it, as a favor to me." I said.

"Lorna you couldn't have known that this would happen. We could never have predicted it," he said tucking my hair behind my ear.

"But it did happen, Marcos," I said standing up frustrated.

He grabbed my hand "And it wasn't your fault."

"Then why do I feel like it is," I said a tear falling down my cheek.

"It's the Inner Circle's and you know it. They are behind this," he said as I sunk back down onto the bed.

"I know but I just feel like asking Andy and Lauren to do this somehow enables them to attack," I said.

Marcos kissed my head gently "They would have attacked whether or not Andy and Lauren were there." he said, "Maybe if Esme worked a little harder at finding the spy..."

I cut him off, "She's trying her best. Don't be too hard on her, she's going against her sisters. That can't be easy."

"I know I'm just mad at her. She could try a little harder," he said. He has that face when he's annoyed at someone but doesn't fully blame them.

"She's trying as best she can Marcos. She's been talking to Leah trying to figure out everything she knows. Whether it's relevant or not." I said, putting my hand on his arm.

"I know she's trying. I just feel like she could be doing more," he said, sighing.

"I know, just cut her some slack," I said gently

"I'll try," Marcos said smiling gently.

I sighed, "I love you, you know that."

"Yeah, I do," Marcos said, kissing me on my cheek. I giggled

"Let's go to sleep. It's been a long day, correction, a long couple of weeks." I said laying down on the bed smiling.

Esme's Pov

Marcos had been very passive-aggressively hinting at me for the past week that I could be doing more to find the spy. I've been trying to find the spy but so far to no avail. I just can't figure it out. I feel like the answer is right in front of me and I just can't see it.

I went to go talk to Leah, we had been talking quite a bit the past week and a half that she'd been here.

"Hey Leah," I said as I sat down on the couch next to her we were the only ones in the room.

"Hey, what's up?" Leah said.

"Oh, nothing. It's just Marcos has been being a little passive-aggressive lately and I wanted someone to talk to who doesn't know him. Someone that won't just say 'cut him some slack he's really stressed right now, we all are' I know everybody's stressed. I'm a telepath for crying out loud." I said.

Leah laughed and said smiling, "Yeah, I get it."

Her laugh was so beautiful. I glanced at her gray eyes with electric blue lighting going through them.

Leah tucked her hair behind her ear. She shifted in her seat a little bit. She looked up at me. Wow, she was so pretty. She looked at me smiling.

I looked away and I felt her lips on mine. I was surprised and my eyes widened for a second before I closed them and leaned into the kiss. It was a blissful couple of seconds before she pulled away. I was in a state of shock as I just stared at her still being able to feel the ghost of her kiss on my lips.

Leah looked at me for a second, like she was surprised with herself before saying, "I'm sorry, I just-" I cut her off by kissing her again.

She pushed me back against the couch and kissed me harder. I could feel her hands gently pressing at my waist as she kissed my neck, butterflies fluttering in my stomach.

I heard the door open and Leah quickly got up. I sat up very alert and looked at the door.

Lorna looked at me with her eyebrows raised as she stood with her hand still on the doorknob, "I was going to ask if you wanted to do something but I think you're a little preoccupied. A little word of advice, lock the door." She closed the door again as she left. I was blushing profusely, I could feel the embarrassment pouring off Leah.

I turned to look at her, she was biting her lip, her beautiful grey eyes wide.

"Whoops, guess we should have thought of that," Leah said, laughing awkwardly.

I laughed, "Yeah." I said, getting an idea of something I could do, "You stay here, I'll be right back."

"Okay," Leah said leaning back against the couch, her smile mischievous. I smiled and got up. I had the best idea.

3rd Person Pov

Leah was sitting on the couch waiting for Esme to come back. She was leaned up against the couch with a magazine in her hand. She kept shifting nervously.

The door opened. Leah sat up smiling, her smile disappeared as an unfamiliar silhouette appeared in the doorway.

"Can I help you?" She asked.

"No," A male voice responded. He twirled a gold knife in his hand as he walked towards her.

Leah took a sharp breath when she saw the knife "Oh my god, you're the spy," she said, her heartbeat speeding up.

"Perceptive," the spy said. She began to try to find another way out of the room. She quickly realized there weren't any.

Leah started backing up slowly, "What do you want with me?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"Nothing, you are inconsequential to my plan. You're just in my way," he said. He was completely calm and had an air of confidence about him.

"Then what do you want with me? I won't help you." Leah said as she backed into the wall.

The spy was in front of her, stopping her from going anywhere, "I don't need your help. I'm here to kill you. You betrayed the Inner Circle. I would have killed Lorna first but you were much more convenient. I will, of course, kill Esme, but I have to get creative with her because she's a telepath. As for Andy, well I have a very special plan for him and his sister, just to tie up some loose ends."

He plunged the knife into her gut. Leah gasped as the knife went in. A cold feeling spread across her body. She fell to the ground as the spy took the knife out of her, blue lines now running across the blade.

"I have things I need to do. Have a nice rest of your life, or should say a few minutes." The spy said as he walked out the door closing it behind him.

Leah was laying on the floor, her hand clutching her stomach desperately trying to stop the bleeding.

Esme walked in, holding a bottle of wine and two wine glasses. "So I found some wine a while back..." She trailed off as she saw Leah on the ground. "Leah." she ran over to her discarding what she was holding on the couch.

Leah tried to talk, "The spy... he..." she gasped.

"Shh, just try to hold on alright. I'm going to go get help." Esme said, her heart going a million miles per second. She ran out of the room, looking for Josh. His healing powers could save Leah she assured herself as she rushed towards the medical area.

Chapter Text

Jace Turner's Pov

Agent Carter walked into my office. "Agent Turner."

I looked up from the paperwork I was doing, "Yes. Do you need anything?"

"Sir I think we might have found something related to The Mutant Underground," he said.

"What it is," I said. I tried not to get my hopes up. Nothing has amounted to much lately. I had a team that was heavily monitoring all suspected or confirmed mutant activity.

"A recent attack on a warehouse in Philadelphia has some signs that some of The Mutant Underground participated, specifically Lauren and Andrew Strucker. If you look at the photos the destruction matches their abilities. Witness accounts say that one of the purifiers attempting to stop the attack was disintegrated after injuring one of their attackers." Agent Carter said.

I sat back taking the new information in. "That does sound like it was caused by our friends in The Mutant Underground. Any other information from the attack?" I said.

"Yes, most of the Purifiers there were seriously injured. Most have concussions, some have arrow wounds, some have broken bones, and some have deep cuts. There were a few that died from their injuries. One deceased person's arm was cut clean off." he said

I nodded, "The Struckers were definitely there, the arrow wounds are interesting though. Doesn't seem like any Mutants we know of, seems they made new friends," I clapped my hands together and said, "I guess we're moving to Philadelphia." I smiled. "I want to talk to a prosecutor named Carla Jackson. She's been working with us on the Mutant Underground case. I want her to come with us."

Agent Carter nodded, "I'll make sure to let her know you would like to speak with her." he left leaving the files on my desk.

I sat back and smiled. Finally a lead on The Mutant Underground. I wasn't going to let them get away. I was going to do this and I was going to do it with as few humans dying as possible. They were getting away as smooth as they thought they would. I was going to be ready for them.

Chapter Text

Josh's Pov

I was sitting in the medical area talking to Mia when Esme came running in. She was panicked and out of breath.

She was trying to catch her breath as she said, "Leah...spy...she got stabbed...I need help,"

I jumped up, "Where?" I said adrenaline starting to course through my veins.

Esme motioned for me to follow her and started back down the hallway she came from. I looked at Mia who was now on her feet and pointed at her, "Stay here," I said then I ran after Esme.

I followed Esme into one of the common rooms where people hang out. Esme instantly went to where Leah was. She was on the floor next to the far wall. I ran over to her and quickly assessed her wounds. She had a deep wound that wasn't that long. Whatever she got stabbed with hit a major artery based on how much blood was coming out of the wound. I took a deep breath, my hands shaking from the adrenaline. I put hand hands over the wound and focused on closing the main artery. I could feel her body draining of blood, her pulse becoming weak.

The bleeding slowed a little bit but too much blood was still coming from the wound. Leah was starting to lose conciseness.

"Hey Leah, I need you to try to stay awake," I said, pushing more power into her wound.

Leah just nodded slightly, barely moving her head. Her face was screwed up in pain. I looked back to the wound as I heard Esme gently talking to her.

"Hey, it's going to be ok Leah. It's going to be ok." Esme said, quietly.

The wound just wouldn't close, no matter how hard I tried. It was like something was stopping my powers from healing her wound. I managed to close the main artery so she wasn't losing too much blood, and wouldn't bleed out right away but other veins had been punctured too. I hadn't even started checking her organs to see if they had been hit and judging from the position of the wound at least one most likely was.

I shook my head, there was no way that I could heal her by myself here. I needed to get her to the medical room.

I turned to Esme, "I need to get her to the infirmary, something is stopping my powers from working right. If I get her there I might be able to do more."

Esme nodded and looked back at Leah who's eyes were closed. She was still conscious but barely.

Esme helped me move her to the medical area. It wasn't easy to move her but we did it.

When we got there Mia ran over "Oh my god what happened?" she asked. Esme and I gently put Leah on the bed, she was still just barely concise.

Esme responded to Mia before I could, "I don't know we were talking and I left to go get some wine that I found a couple of weeks back. When I came back in..." Esme motioned helplessly at Leah.

Mia nodded, "Can I do anything to help?"

"Uh, get Lorna, she uh... she should know about this," Esme said, her hands shaking. Mia nodded and left.

I put some gauze onto Leah's wound while they were talking and tried to stop the rest of the bleeding in the more conventional way, but it wasn't working.

I pressed my lips together. I glanced up at Leah to make sure she was still awake. She wasn't. "Leah, wake up," I said, shaking her a little. "Damnit"

Esme looked at me, "What? What happened?"

"She lost consciousness. We're running out of time." I started frantically searching for my phone.

Esme looked at me like I was crazy, "Then why aren't you helping her?"

Caitlin had given me her number before she left and said to call her if my powers wouldn't work on a wound. I found the phone and started going to Caitlin's contact, "Caitlin gave me her phone number and said to call her if I need help and I need help."

Esme sighed as I pressed the call and held the phone up to my ear with one hand and put pressure on the wound with the other.

The phone rang a couple of times then went to voicemail. "Damnit!" I said throwing the phone onto the chair behind me.

Esme was pacing, "Can you do anything else. I don't want the one person that I actually find attractive to die."

"You think she's attractive?" I said looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

Esme glared at me, "It's not important, just help her!"

Leah's pulse was getting too weak. I glanced behind me at the shelves with all of the bottles of medicine. I pressed my lips together, "There is one more thing I can try"

I told Esme to keep the pressure on the wound. I walked over and grabbed a bottle of Hypercortisone-D then grabbed a syringe to start to get the liquid out.

"What are you doing?" Esme said looking at me like I was a crazy person.

"Trying something crazy," I said holding the syringe full of liquid. "This is my last resort option here so if this doesn't work, I don't have any other ideas so we're screwed."

I put the needle into my arm and injected myself with the drug. I instantly felt a rush of power flood my body. It was dizzying.

"Woah," I said grabbing the side of the table as I stumbled. Esme was still looking at me like I was insane. Which to be fair, this was an insane idea. An insane idea that just might work though.

I walked over to Leah and pushed Esme's hand away. I lifted the gauze and put my hand on the wound, power coursing through my veins like fire. The wound instantly started to heal. Whatever had been stopping me from healing her before wasn't working against my boosted powers. The skin knit itself back together leaving only a small scar where the knife penetrated her skin.

I pulled my hands away breathing a sigh of relief. I did it, I actually did it.

Esme looked at me, "Josh, what did you do to save her?"

"I used the medical version of Kick to boost my powers to save her life. Her pulse was fading. If I hadn't done that she would have died." I said.

Esme looked at me concerned, "But that drug is dangerous. It's addictive."

"I know I'll be careful," I said. "Just do me a favor and don't tell anyone. Mia would freak on me."

Esme sighed, "Fine" she looked back down at Leah, "When is she going to wake up?"

"I don't know. Her body just went through massive trauma and she lost a lot of blood, I can't fix blood loss." I said. I took a deep breath calming myself of the panic I had been feeling for the past however many minutes. "I'm going to hook her up with an IV."

By the time I was done hooking her up to the IV, Mia had come back with Lorna in tow.

"What happened?" Lorna said, her eyebrows creased and her lips pursed.

I took a deep breath and told them what happened or at least most of what happened.

"Your powers just started working and healed her. Why? Did you do something different or was it just random?" Mia asked, looking worried.

I hesitated, "I, uh, I think It was just random." I said. If she found out what I did she would scream at me for hours. My mom had a problem with drugs before I was born and sometimes addictive personalities can be passed on to the next generation. I knew Mia was just trying to look out for me but this wouldn't become an issue.

Mia squinted at me but nodded.

Lorna had walked over to Leah, "Is she going to be ok?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said walking over to the other side of the bed. "She lost a lot of blood. Two more minutes and she probably would have died."

Esme, who had been sitting in the corner of the room while I explained what happened, spoke up, "Do you know when she'll wake up?"

"No. It's impossible for me to tell. I'm not a doctor. Just a kid with healing abilities who happens to know a little bit about the human body." I said.

Lorna sighed, "I'm going to call John and Caitlin, they should probably know what's going on. Caitlin will probably want to come back soon." She said heading towards the door. "Come get me if anything changes."

Mia nodded then turned to me, "Are you ok?" she asked.

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" I said.

"Well, this is a lot to process," She said motioning towards Leah.

"I guess it is," I said laughing. "You are good with everything that's been happening? You did see someone die not too long ago."

"Yeah, it never really hit me that he died. I never knew him so guess it didn't really affect me that much." She said fidgeting with her sleeves. "Hey, I'm going to go, if that's ok."

"Yeah, it's fine. Go do something fun for me. I have a feeling I won't be leaving this room for a while." I said. Mia laughed and left.

Lauren's Pov

I was standing in my room at the dresser with the music box on it. I shivered all of a sudden. Like a chill of cold needles went down my spine.

Andy looked at me, "what?"

I shook my head, "Nothing just a weird feeling, like the danger feeling." I said. Sometimes we would get this feeling that the other one was in danger. Andy felt it when I got shot and now I just felt it.

"It's probably nothing," I said trying to reassure myself.

Andy nodded, "Let's hope so. We have enough craziness in our lives."

Someone knocked on the door. "I'll get it," I said.

I opened the door and saw Jack standing there.

"Jack, hey. Uh, what's up?" I said surprised. I hadn't really expected to see him today. I've been not really talking to many people since Wes died.

"I was wondering if you wanted to hang out?" He said awkwardly.

I looked back at Andy and he shrugged and motioned for me to go. I turned back to Jack and smiled, "Sure why not," I said.

Chapter Text

Mia's Pov

I was in the training room with Lauren practicing shooting my bow. We have been hanging out here a lot since I got here almost four weeks ago. I knocked an arrow and shot it, hitting the center of the target.

"Nice shot," Lauren said looking up from the book she was reading.

"Thanks," I said smiling. I put my bow down. "Have you noticed anything up with Josh? He's been acting weird ever since he healed Leah."

"I don't know him that well so can't really say but he seems fine to me," Lauren said.

I paused for a second, thinking of how I wanted to phrase my thoughts, "It's just that he seems... I don't know, like off somehow."

"He's probably just tired. Healing a wound that bad must take a lot of energy." Lauren said, shrugging.

"Yeah, normally he just heals wounds mostly. He could have healed her enough so that she would be ok and left it there but he didn't heal it all the way. Which is weird." I said. That had been bugging me the past four days since Leah got attacked.

"Maybe he's just getting stronger. I mean he's been using his powers a lot and the more you practice with your powers the stronger they get. They can change and get stronger. At least that's what happened with Andy and me." she said marking her page and putting her book down.

"Yeah, maybe. Hey, where is Andy? I thought he was supposed to meet us here." I said.

Lauren frowned, "He was." Lauren sighed glancing at the door, "He probably just forgot or something."

"Yeah," I said. I picked up my bow and shot another arrow at the target. I hit right next to the first arrow I shot. I smiled.

"Boo"

I jumped and turned around to face Andy. Lauren burst out laughing. I sighed and glared at Andy before turning on Lauren.

"You saw him didn't you," I said accusingly, pointing my finger at her.

"Yeah I did," Lauren said smiling mischievously.

"You both suck," I said rolling my eyes.

Andy laughed at me. "You know, you are surprisingly easy to sneak up on," he said smiling. He was holding a box.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, what's that?" I said, pointing at the box.

"Something I found that I thought was cool," he said smiling.

Lauren came over "What?"

Andy smiled and opened the box and took out a gold knife with an ornamental handle. It was honestly really pretty.

"A knife," Lauren said, raising her eyebrow. "Where did you even get this?"

"I found it in a storage room behind a bunch of stuff in a cabinet. It was like somebody didn't want it to be found." Andy said as Lauren took the knife out of the box. Andy put the box on the table.

"Maybe because they didn't want it to be found," Lauren said examining the knife.

She put her finger on the tip of the knife, testing if it was sharp, "Ow" she said as she pulled her finger away quickly, dropping the knife. She blinked and stumbled backward and fell to her knees.

"Lauren, are you ok?" Andy said quickly, catching her just before she hit the ground.

"I don't know, I just got really dizzy and cold all of a sudden. Right as my finger hit that knife." She said blinking, clearly disoriented.

I knelt next to her. Andy was on her other side, half supporting her, "What happened?" I said putting my hand on her arm, she was burning up.

"Oh my god," I said, "You're burning up," I told her.

Lauren looked confused, "I am? I-I'm freezing," she said.

Andy looked at the knife, "What the hell is that and what did it do?"

"A knife that apparently is really creepy and I have no idea," I said eyeing the knife warily. I turned back to Lauren, "What happened?"

"I don't know, I touched the tip not expecting it to be that sharp, I barely touched it." she said, shivering a bit, "When I touched it was like all of the warmth and strength left my body through where I poked myself. Like it was being drained out of me," she said.

I picked up the knife to examine it. I looked at it closely, being careful not to touch the blade. It was gold and had faint golden lines running across the blade that stood out from the rest of the knife. It almost felt hot to the touch. I put it back down. It was kind of freaking me out.

"What do we do with it? I mean, it is a weapon to begin with, and those are supposed to be in a locked room that only Lorna has the key to. If this was in a storage room that means someone brought this in from the outside and if it can do this," I said motioning at Lauren,

"Then we should make sure whoever brought this knife here, can't find it," Andy said.

"But where would we hide it? It's not like there are many places to hide stuff in here." Lauren said, her eyebrows creased as she looked at the knife.

"I don't know," I said.

"What if we put it in the weapons room," Andy said.

"It's locked, Andy. No one can get in" Lauren said.

"Not necessarily," I said, an idea dawning on me, "I can teleport, it's like traveling through shadows. I've been in the weapons room, I know the layout. I could teleport into the weapons room, hide it, then teleport out and no one would be any the wiser."

Andy nodded, "That's not a bad plan."

"It could work, as long as no one sees you put the knife there," Lauren said.

"Lauren, half of my power is just hiding. I'm pretty sure I'm not dumb enough to get caught." I said.

Josh's Pov

I felt great like nothing could stop me. I decided that because Kick is an addictive drug it would make a lot more sense for me to slowly wean myself off of the drugs than just take it once and never take it again. I feel like that would cause side effects if I did that. Taking the drug I felt invincible. I could heal all of the wounds that people came in with, even the really bad ones.

It made me feel so happy to help these people, so what if I was hurting myself. I didn't want to stop. Mia would freak if she knew so I couldn't let her find out. I was doing this to help people. I kept telling myself that over and over again. I knew that I shouldn't be doing this, taking this drug but it was for the best. I was helping people, I was healing them so that they wouldn't be in pain.

I focused back on what I was doing. I was monitoring Leah. She still hadn't woken up. I didn't know why, she should have woken up by now. There was nothing wrong with her anymore, besides some bruising, but bruising is one thing that, even with taking Kick I couldn't fix. It was just blood trapped inside the skin. I could stop bruises before they formed but after they were already there... there just wasn't anything to fix.

I pressed my lips together as I went over my notes on everything I've done to help Leah, omitting the drugs obviously. She should be fine, there was nothing medically wrong with her.

Esme came in, "Any changes?" she asked quietly as she walked over to the bed.

"No," I said, shaking my head. I was frustrated, why couldn't she just wake up?

"I don't know. She just won't wake up. There isn't anything wrong with her. She should have woken up by now," I said.

Esme sighed. "Hey, how are you doing?" She said gently, putting her hand on my arm.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?" I said.

"You took a really addictive drug to heal her. I just wanted to make sure that there weren't any side effects." She said gently.

I hadn't told her that I was still taking Kick. She would tell someone if I told her. "I'm fine Esme. Nothing happened." I said moving to the other side of Leah's bed. I was pissed that she wouldn't just leave me alone. I was fine.

Esme looked at me, almost as if she was studying me.

"You don't need to use your powers on me. There is nothing wrong." I said suspiciously. I didn't want her to find out about me still using Kick.

Esme sighed. "I wasn't Josh. I believe you," she said. She looked at Leah her eyes softening as she looked at her, "Just come get me if anything changes. Ok?"

I nodded. Esme gently squeezed Leah's hand before she left.

She was suspicious of me I could tell. She was lying that she wasn't, I could see it in her eyes. No one could find out I was still taking Kick. I was just going to try to avoid everyone so no one else would be suspicious.

Lauren's Pov

I was standing outside the door of the weapons room with Andy while Mia went in to hide the knife. Mia would be the only one who knew the exact location of the knife.

I was still a little woozy from whatever that knife did to me. It had been almost 4 hours and I didn't quite feel totally okay yet but I was standing without my knees buckling, which was an improvement.

"How long do you think this is going to take?" Andy said. It had already been over ten minutes.

"Don't know. She has to find a place where no one is going to look like ever, so it could be a little," I said.

Andy sighed and leaned against the doorframe. He was tapping his fingers nervously on his arm. "I just feel like the longer we stand here the more suspicious we look."

"Probably," I said. I got really dizzy all of a sudden and leaned heavily on the door frame and just tried to stay standing.

"Lauren, are you ok," Andy said.

I tried to say, "Yeah I'm fine," but my knees buckled before I could say anything.

Andy quickly came over. My head was spinning. "I'm fine, I think I'm just still feeling whatever that knife didn't to me is just still affecting me," I said.

Andy sighed. "That knife is just weird. I hope wherever Mia hides it where one will find it."

"Yeah," I said.

"There was something else too, when you touched that knife all of the normal feedback that I get from you like the emotions and stuff it just went away. Like the flip of a switch, it was just gone." Andy said helping me up.

"That's weird. I wasn't paying attention to our connection when it happened but if you stopped getting feedback from me then I probably stopped getting feedback from you but I just didn't notice." I said.

"Can you feel any feedback for me now?" Andy asked.

I closed my eyes and focused on where I could normally feel our connection to each other. I could feel it faintly but not even close to the level that I could normally.

I shook my head, "I'm only getting a little. Not even close to the normal level" I said as I opened my eyes.

"This is weird. I don't like it," Andy said.

"Yeah," I said. I glanced down the hallway and saw Jack walking towards us. I nudged Andy and motioned for him to look.

He glanced behind him, "nope you're dealing with it. Not me. Your ex-boyfriend, your problem." He said. I took a deep breath as Jack noticed us.

"Lauren, Andy, what are you doing here?" Jack said as he walked up.

"Just chilling in a hallway," I said, motioning around us.

"Why though." He said looking at the hallway.

"Uhhh, because..." I looked at Andy for help.

"Because there is shattered glass in our room," Andy said.

Really? That's what you come up with. I sighed.

"Okay, you guys are weird," Jack said. He looked at his feet, "Lauren do you want to do something maybe, that's not standing in a hallway?"

"Uh... No...We have to do something soon." I said awkwardly.

"Oh, Okay. I guess I'll see you later then." Jack said. He left looking over his shoulder at us as he left.

I breathed a sigh of relief and looked at Andy, "Shattered glass?" I said, raising my eyebrow at him.

"What I panicked," He said, raising his hands in surrender. I rolled my eyes.

Mia appeared in front of us suddenly. "That was stressful," she said as she got her bearings.

"Tell me about it," I said.

Chapter Text

Mia's Pov

Josh has been acting weird ever since he healed Leah. It's been a month since she got stabbed and the entire time, every time I talk to Josh he is either being super weird and trying to get out of the conversation or he just straight up avoids me. It's making me suspicious of him. I think he might be trying to hide something from me.

I had been asking people if Josh seemed weird to them and everybody said that they didn't know him well enough, he just seemed different than when they met him. So I guess that them saying he does seem weird but only a little. It was frustrating.

I was walking down the hallway trying to think of ways to talk to Josh when I quite literally walked into a wall.

"Damnit. Stupid wall," I said. I heard laughter coming from my right.

I turned and saw Jack, one of my least favorite people. He was annoying and always sticking his nose in other people's business and constantly asking questions about stupid things.

"What do you want," I said, glaring at him.

"Nothing," Jack said, raising his hands in surrender. "Just was here, when you walked into a wall."

"Go away," I said, glaring with increasing hostility.

"Why? Got to do something right here, in this specific spot. Otherwise, you could just keep walking." He said snarkily.

"You know, you are such an ass. I don't know what Lauren ever saw in you" I said starting to walk away.

I seemed to have hit a nerve. He glared at me.

"I have stuff to do," I said smiling slightly as I brushed past him.

"Make sure you don't walk into any more walls" He called after me. I flipped him off as I continued walking down the hallway to the medical area.

I walked into the medical room. Esme was sitting in a chair in the corner watching Leah. She still hadn't woken up.

"Hey, have you seen Josh? I wanted to talk to him." I said.

Esme looked up, "Um he left a couple of minutes after I walked in. About 15 minutes ago."

I nodded and went to leave then stopped, "Has Josh seemed off to you? You've been spending a lot of time here with him and I'm just worried about him."

"Uh no. Why?" she said looking away from me. She seemed nervous.

"Esme... is there something you aren't telling me?" I said stepping towards her.

Esme seemed to internally debate with herself before responding, "Fine. Josh didn't want me to tell you, or anyone for that matter," she took a deep breath before continuing, "When Josh was healing Leah, his powers wouldn't work. Something was stopping them from working. He injected himself with a drug to boost his powers, Kick, to heal her."

"What!" I said. "Why would he do that? I got it to save Leah but there had to be another way."

"I know, but there wasn't another way that we could see at that moment. He did it to help Leah," she said.

"That explains why he was acting weird a month ago. Not why he's still acting weird now." I said crossing my arms. Something still wasn't right.

Esme sighed, "I don't know Mia. He could just be being weird because he's keeping a secret."

"No, I've known him almost my whole life and this is not how he keeps secrets. Something else is going on." I said trying to think. Then it dawned on me, he never stopped taking the drug. After that first dose, he never stopped.

"Did he ever mention that that was the only time he took the drug?" I asked.

Esme seemed to consider what I said, "He said he stopped but he was being weird and aggressive when he did."

"He never stopped," I said, my heart sinking. I glared at the floor. "He's not dumb enough to say he took Kick more than once."

Esme looked at me with sad eyes, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. He asked me-"

I cut her off, "I know, I get it. It's not your fault." I sighed. "I have to talk to him. I think it would be best if I just waited here for him to come back and confront him here where we would be alone."

Esme nodded and got up to leave. "I really am sorry."

I nodded, "I know. It wasn't your fault. I'll fix it. Everything will be fine. Hopefully" I said. Hopefully, if I could just talk to him about it he would stop.

Josh's Pov

I had left the medical room after Esme went in there. I was still distancing myself from everyone. Especially her because I think she's suspicious that I'm still taking Kick. I mean, I am but that doesn't mean I want people to know.

I needed to go back and get another dose of Kick. I was starting to get shaky, it wouldn't be long before I would get nauseous. I hated the side effects of going too long without taking the drug. It made me feel awful.

I walked into the room and stopped. Mia was sitting in the chair in the corner of the room, holding the bottle of Kick I had been using.

"Mia..." I started.

"So, is there anything you want to tell me, Josh?" she said crossing her arms.

"I know what you're thinking and..." I said.

"What? It's not true. You're not taking Kick? Because I think we both know that's not true," she said her voice shaking slightly, if I didn't know her I probably wouldn't have even noticed. She looked disappointed in me like I let her down, which I guess I did.

I looked at my feet, "I'm sorry, but I'm doing this to help people."

"By hurting yourself? That's not a good trade-off Josh," she said standing up. She was basically yelling at this point.

"Yes, it is. I'm helping people Mia," I said matching her volume.

"No. You don't get it. You're not helping anyone. You can heal people without drugs. You don't need them," she said.

I shook my head, she just didn't get it. "Yes, I do. There was no way I would have been able to heal Leah without Kick. I have helped so many people in the past month. Do you know how many of them would have had lasting injuries? Way too many."

Mia shook her head and walked over to Leah's bedside, "It's normal for people to get hurt. I get that you want to help people, I really do, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to let you hurt yourself." she said.

I watched almost in slow motion as she threw the bottle of Kick on the floor.

"No" I yelled as the bottle hit the floor shattering. "What did you do?" I said my knees hitting the floor as I tried to grab the bottle before it hit the floor even though it lay shattered at my feet. My voice was shaking more than my hands were at that point.

"I took away the source of the problem. Getting drug addicts off drugs 101," she said.

"No, no, you don't understand. I need that drug." I said.

She knelt next to me and gently put her hands on my shoulder, "No, you don't. It's alright, I'm going to help you get through this," she said gently. She was trying to help me but I didn't need help. I just wanted her to leave me alone.

"No you're not," I said quietly. I stood up grabbing her arm to push her away from me. I felt my powers start to run through my hand into her arm. I didn't know why they were but I didn't stop them. The green light of my powers glowed where my hand gripped her arm.

Mia winced and looked like she was going to pass out. She looked at me horrified, "Josh, stop it. You're hurting me."

I didn't stop. I kept letting my powers run through my hand until Mia collapsed on the ground. I let go of her arm in shock.

I knelt next to her quickly, my heart pounding, "Oh my god. What did I do?" I whispered.

I needed to get out of there. I quickly got up and walked over to the medicine cabinet. We kept one bottle of every kind of medicine in a glass box, only to use in emergencies. I hit the glass surrounding the extra bottles of medicine, shattering it. I grabbed the bottle of Kick and a syringe and left my best friend lying on the ground behind me. I didn't even know if she was okay.

I took a deep breath and went to my room to grab my stuff to leave.

Andy's Pov

"Where's Mia, I thought she wanted to talk to us about something?" I said. I was sitting on my bed talking to Lauren who was laying on the floor.

"Don't know. Last I talked to her she was going to check on Josh but that was a while ago," Lauren said sitting up.

"We should probably see if we could find her," I said.

Lauren sighed, "Probably." She got up from the floor, "Let's go check the medical room. That's where Josh generally hands out so if she was looking for him she probably would be there."

We got to the medical room and the only person that I saw was Leah still unconscious on the bed.

"Mia?" I said. "I don't think she's here."

"Wait," Lauren said, grabbing my wrist as I tried to walk away. She took a couple of steps inside the room before running to the corner of the room, "Oh my god," she said.

"What," I said then I saw Mia lying in the corner. I ran over.

"Mia, what happened?" Lauren asked, helping her into a sitting position. Her nose was bleeding black blood.

"Josh, he-" Mia started before she started coughing. She put her hand over her mouth and when she pulled it away more blood was on her hand.

"Oh my god, Mia..." I said.

Mia took a deep breath, "Josh, he's taking Kick. I don't know for how long but I think it affected his powers somehow, making him able to take away health instead of just giving it," she said.

"Okay, what do you need?" Lauren said gently holding Mia's arm to keep her steady.

"I'm fine. I'll be fine," Mia said, pausing to cough up more blood, "You can't let him leave. If he gets out he'll be able to get more drugs and we might never find him."

I nodded, "Ok, we won't let him get out. I promise," I said.

"We'll tell someone to come and find you," Lauren said as I pulled her up.

Mia called after us as we left, "Don't let him touch you. He needs physical contact to use his powers."

Chapter Text

Lauren's Pov

Mia needed us to stop Josh from getting out of the building. He was taking Kick. It was like everything lined up, Mia had been saying that he seemed off for weeks. I guess she was right.

"What are we going to do? How do we stop Josh without hurting him?" Andy said pacing in front of the front door. We were standing there to make sure Josh couldn't get out while we came up with a plan.

"I don't know, we can't let him get close to us so using a sedative isn't an option," I said leaning against the door frame. "We have to knock him out without touching or hurting him."

An idea popped into my head that I knew Andy wouldn't like. I wasn't a big fan of it either but it was our only option.

Andy stopped pacing and turned around to face me, "I know what you're thinking, and no. We are not asking Esme for help."

Right as he said that Esme just so happened to walk out of one of the hallways.

I sighed, "It's not my favorite idea ever either but we are both going to have to deal with it." I said walking over to Esme.

"Esme!" I said. Esme turned around obviously surprised that I was talking to her. "We need your help."

"Uh, why?" Esme said.

"Because Josh is on Kick. He hurt Mia. We need to knock him out without touching him or hurting him. And, um, our powers aren't very good at knocking people out without hurting them." I said.

"Ok. What do you need me to do?" she said nodding.

"I need you to use your powers to make him fall asleep, so he can't hurt anyone else," I said. I hated this but, it was the only option.

Esme nodded slowly. "I'd have to hide so he wouldn't see me coming."

"Ok, we'll distract him and then you'll knock him out," Andy said walking over.

Esme nodded, "Yeah, um, before we do this. I just wanted to say I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, for what happened, what I did to you." she said. I took a deep breath. I never really expected to hear those words come out of her mouth.

Andy and I looked at each other as Esme continued, "What I did to you was horrible and something no one should ever have to experience. I am so, so sorry. I hadn't been able to say this before because I had to admit that it was my fault to myself before I could apologize to you. I'm so sorry it took this long."

I smiled as I bit the inside of my lip, "Thank you, I never really expected you to say that," I said.

Andy nodded, "Yeah, what Lauren said."

"It's okay Esme. Let's all just try to move on from the past and make sure Josh doesn't leave," I said.

Andy and I stood in opposite corners where it was hard to see us while Esme hid where she could see what was going on but if you were trying to get out of here you couldn't. Now we just had to wait.

It wasn't long before Josh walked out of one of the hallways with a backpack. He looked so nervous. He walked to the door and right before he reached out to grab the door handle I put a shield up to block him. He tried to push through the shield but that obviously didn't work.

Andy used his powers to push him away from the door gently, enough to make him stumble back so we could stand in front of the door.

"Hi Josh, fancy seeing you here," I said stepping in front of the door.

Josh's eyes widened, "Lauren.. what are you doing?" he said trying to play dumb.

"Don't we know what happened? We know what you did to Mia." Andy said as he stood next to me, ready to push Josh back if he tried to get close to us.

"I didn't mean to. I don't even know what I did" Josh said quietly, looking at his feet.

"Yeah, we didn't mean to do a lot of things that we did. That doesn't excuse us from blame." I said.

Josh looked up and tried to take a step forward but Andy pushed him back. Esme stepped out from her hiding place her eyes glowing blue. Josh fell to his knees holding his head.

Esme said a single word, "Sleep" And he collapsed.

I breathed a sigh of relief, "Now what do we do with him?"

Chapter Text

Andy's Pov

Lauren and I were sitting against a wall in a hallway on the lowest floor of the base. Mia was sitting against the opposite wall with Esme helping her with all the problems Josh had caused.

Lorna and Marcos were standing near a door to a prison cell that they had made when we first found the base. It was made out of adamantium. Very convenient of them to have made a prison cell that had a divider to make two separate cells out of adamantium. The one thing that can stop Lauren and my powers.

"How did you even get a room made out of adamantium in the first place?" I asked.

"The guy who built this place built it as a last resort place to go if the world was ending or something. We had another use for it, so we converted it into a prison cell," Lorna said.

"And why exactly did you need a prison cell?" Lauren said, narrowing her eyes at Lorna.

Lorna exchanged a look with Marcos, "Because..." Lorna said, clearly not wanting to state their reasoning.

"Because," Lauren said motioning for her to continue.

"Because when we first got here your powers weren't exactly stable," Lorna said awkwardly.

"And why didn't you just leave the room the way it was and just not turn it into a prison cell?" I said.

"Was it because you were worried that we would go crazy and needed a way to contain our powers?" Lauren said.

Lorna and Marcos's guilty faces gave it away. "Glad to see you trust us so much," Andy said sarcastically.

"Hold up did our mom know about this?" I asked.

"Yes, she was the one who suggested we put the cells in not just leave it how it was," Marcos said.

I sat there stunned. How could our mom suggest putting in a prison cell for us? Her kids. I looked at Andy. He was staring at the floor clenching his jaw.

Esme stood up and changed the subject, "What are we going to do with Josh? We can't just keep him in there forever."

"I don't know, he seriously hurt Mia and we can't let him out until the drugs get out of his system. I don't know if he should stay in there longer than that though," Marcos said.

"He should probably be in there until Mia gets better," Esme said. "He wasn't okay the last time I talked to him."

"Yeah. So a couple of weeks," Marcos said.

Mia spoke up, "Don't be too harsh on him."

"Mia he could have killed you, and he did seriously hurt you," Lorna said.

"Yeah, so could everybody else in this room," Mia said, standing up slowly. "It's not exactly a special feat."

"Mia..." Lorna started.

Mia cut her off, "He wasn't in control of his powers. He didn't even know that he could do this. We can't blame him for something he didn't even know he could do. I could see the horror in his eyes, he had no idea he could do that. None of us did." she took a deep breath. "Just keep him in there until the drugs leave his system and he's stable. Just until he promises he won't take anymore."

Lorna nodded. "Okay."

Marcos looked at his watch, "I have to go." He kissed Lorna's cheek as he left.

Mia looked at the door leading to the cells. "Can I talk to Josh?"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Esme said.

"No, but he is still my best friend, I want to make sure he is okay," Mia said.

Lorna nodded, "Okay." She unlocked the door and Mia slipped inside. Lorna closed the door behind her but didn't lock it.

"I should probably go to check on Leah," Esme said.

Lorna nodded as Esme walked away. I looked at Andy, I could tell that the fact that they had an adamantium prison cell built just in case we went crazy was still bothering him.

I nudged his side, "Are you okay?"

"No," Andy said, still glaring at the floor. "I still can't really process the fact that they built a prison cell for us. Specifically."

Lorna sighed, "Andy..."

"Lorna, you seriously don't trust us that much," Andy said. I could feel how pissed he was. I took a deep breath.

"Andy chill," I said.

"No, I'm not going to chill Lauren. They built a prison cell for us and Mom suggested it." He said. I understood I was mad too but we just couldn't right now. There was too much going on.

"Andy, I'm sorry. When we found this place and put the cells in, you weren't exactly stable. We just built it as a last resort, a fail-safe." Lorna said sitting down in front of us.

"You thought we would snap? Mom thought we would snap." I said. I almost felt disappointed that they would think that. Even though I knew that when we first got here it was probably a real concern. We weren't exactly okay seven months ago.

"Don't blame your mom too much. We all decided to do this. It wasn't just her idea, It was all of our ideas." Lorna said.

Andy and I nodded. "You still did it though. You don't trust us." Andy said having deflated a bit.

"We do trust you. You just weren't okay yet when we built this." She said.

"Yeah," I said quietly. I turned to Andy, "Let's go. I'm kinda done with people for the day."

Andy nodded, "See you later." He said to Lorna as we left. A lot happened today, we were pretty done.

Lorna's Pov

Andy and Lauren left and Mia had just finished talking with Josh. She went somewhere to rest hopefully. I needed to call Caitlin, she needed to know what happened today.

I dialed her number on my flip phone and hit call. It only rang twice before she picked up.

"Lorna, what happened?" She said as she answered the phone. I sighed and started to explain what happened since I had last called her.

"You told them about the prison cells?" she said.

"We didn't have a choice, Caitlin. We needed a place to keep Josh while the drugs work their way out of his system where he can't hurt anyone. It was our only option." I said moving away from the door to the cells.

"You couldn't have kept him somewhere else?" she said her voice was staticky because of a poor connection.

"Where, we are already low on space here. We were going to have to tell them eventually. They would have found out." I said pacing as I talked.

"I know, I just wanted to explain to them why when I told them," Caitlin said.

"I did tell them why. Andy was a little mad and Lauren seemed disappointed. She thought we didn't trust them." I said.

"That's because we don't Lorna. Do you know how much destruction they caused in the first couple of months after everything that happened with the Frosts and their dad?" she said.

"Yes, I do, I was there," I said. Caitlin was worried about her kids but ended up just pushing them away. They stopped telling her what they were going through because she kept reacting weirdly to it. Like suggesting to build the prison cells. After they stopped talking about what was happening, we had no idea what their mental states were so we made failed safes. Plans, to make sure that if something happened, other people wouldn't be at risk.

"I need to come back, I need to see my kids," Caitlin said.

"No, they still need you in Baltimore. We're fine here" I said.

"No, you're not. You didn't notice that Josh was on drugs," she said.

I interrupted her before she could go on to her next point, "To be fair, his best friend didn't figure that out for a month."

"Still, a bunch of other stuff has happened while I've been gone. Wes died for goodness sake. The only reason that I didn't come back then is because Sentinel Services had found one of the outpost stations down here. I'm coming back, my kids need me." she said.

"They're fine Caitlin. They are the best they've been in months. The Baltimore station needs you" I said. That was a lie, Andy and Lauren weren't fine but Baltimore had been struggling for months before we sent them down. No one there had any idea how to lead the station.

"I don't care. John can handle it. I'm coming back as soon as I can. Probably next week sometime. Now I have to go. I'll call you later." She said before hanging up.

I sighed. I needed a drink. I had hidden some liquor in the back of one of the storage rooms. I feel like today has been stressful enough to call for some good old fashioned bourbon.

I walked into the storage room where I had stored the bourbon. I was not expecting to see anyone but of course, I did. Mia was sitting on the floor in the back of the storage room, her head in her hands. The bottle of bourbon was sitting next to her, with less alcohol in it than when I had last hidden it.

"Aren't you a little young to be drinking?" I said.

Mia looked up and laughed sadly, "I guess, but after the day I had I feel like I deserve to have some alcohol."

I rolled my eyes and walked over and took the bottle away from her, "Yeah well, I'm not going to let a 15-year-old drink on my watch, especially after what happened today."

"16-year-old. It's my birthday today." She said a tear falling down her cheek.

I sat down next to her, "Pretty terrible birthday."

"Yeah, not how I expected my day to go," she said leaning her head against the wall.

"What were you planning on doing?" I asked.

Mia shook her head, "I don't know. I'm a refugee, there's not much I could've done. I guess I was just going to hang out with my friends, maybe steal your bourbon and celebrate with Josh." She said, laughing a little. She got quiet, "But that's not going to happen now."

"Hey, it's alright. There is always next year right." I said trying to comfort her.

"Yeah, hopefully. As long as the world hasn't descended into complete chaos by then," she said taking a sip of the bourbon.

I laughed, "We'll try not to let it. "

Mia smiled. "You know you're awesome Lorna, or should I say Polaris."

I smiled, "No one's called me Polaris in a while. It feels good, getting called a name you gave yourself." I said. "You know if you're going to keep hanging out here and helping us you should get a street name, so not many people know who you are."

Mia looked at me, "Really? What would I even call myself? You all have cool nicknames. What would I get Shadow? That's so overused."

"How about Nyx?" I said.

"Nyx?" she said raising an eyebrow at me

"Yeah, Nyx. Nyx is the Greek goddess of night. She was the only goddess that Zeus ever feared." I said.

"I like that. Nyx, it's a cool name," she said.

"Yeah, it is. Now you need to rest and heal and no more alcohol." I said taking the bottle back. I got up and offered Mia my hand to help her get up.

Mia sighed and took my hand, "I guess you're right. I probably should go chill in bed for a while."

I smiled as she left the storage room. I liked her, she was fun to talk to.

Chapter Text

Lauren's Pov

Mia had been recovering from what happened with Josh for a little over a week before anything happened. We were having a meeting about the Inner Circle and what they've been up to. Mia and Jack had been included in these meetings ever since Wes died because once you were aware of the Inner Circle you wanted to know what they were doing.

"So we have literally no idea what the Inner Circle is doing. Like at all," Andy said.

"No, but John should be calling me any minute to give me an update on what he's found," Lorna said.

"But what if he hasn't found anything? We've gotten nothing for over a month. We have no idea what they are doing or what they are planning, let alone how to stop them." I said.

"Look, I hate it as much as you do but you know as well as I do that they are the most secretive organization in the country, if not the world. There is nothing we can do until we get information," Marcos said.

I sighed as Lorna's phone rang. She picked it up and we all watched her reactions as John told her whatever he knew. Near the end of the conversation, Lorna's eyes widened. Andy and I exchanged a glance. That had to mean that John found something right?

Lorna hung up and looked at Marcos, "He found something."

I smiled. Finally, we could actually do something.

"What did he find?" Mia said sitting up from where she was laying down on the couch.

Lorna took a deep breath and explained to us what John told her, "Apparently the Inner Circle was looking into a munitions factory in West Philadelphia. We don't know what they want with it or why they were even looking into it."

"Ok, now what?" Esme asked.

"I don't know," Lorna said.

"Are we going to fight?" Andy asked.

Lorna sighed, "What can we fight. We don't even know why they are attacking, or when they are attacking for that matter. How could we fight them."

"So we're just going to do nothing then," I said. How could we just do nothing and let more people get hurt?

"For now." Lorna said, "Until we come up with a plan."

"Screw a plan. Every time we make one it just goes wrong." Andy said. I could feel his anger mingling with my own.

"We want to fight Lorna. We can't just sit here and do nothing while the Inner Circle hurts more people." I said.

"Lauren last time you went up against the Inner Circle you got shot," Marcos said.

"Technically that was a purifier, not the Inner Circle," I said.

Lorna sighed, "Who was there because a spy who works for the Inner Circle told them where you were going. We have to wait until we know more."

"I'm done waiting. I want to do something." I said.

"And we will, just not yet," Lorna said. I sighed and leaned back in my chair.

"We should probably come up with a plan to watch the factory," Jack said.

Lorna nodded, "John is sending someone with Caitlin when she comes back who can hack the security cameras."

"Okay. The plan is to wait for Caitlin to get back then make a plan then." Marcos said.

"Right," Lorna said.

I sighed. I just wanted to do something. I was tired of waiting. The meeting ended after that. Mia got up to go do some training with Lorna. Marcos and Esme went to go do whatever they do all day, so it was just Andy, me, and Jack left in the room.

"Why won't they let us just do something. We've been stuck inside for months." Andy said. He got up and started pacing.

"Yeah well, them not letting us do anything isn't anything new," I said.

Jack got up and walked over to us, "You know you could just go and not tell them." Jack said.

"They have security cameras everywhere. They would know the second we walked out the door. Not to mention the actual guards outside. I think it's Lorna's turn too. It'd be pointless to try." I said, raising my eyebrow. I sighed and leaned against the back of my chair. As much as I wanted to go and break the rules, we would get caught if we did.

"You could go when they change shifts," Jack suggested. I looked at Andy, he had stopped pacing.

"That could work. But we would need someone to distract the others. Mia wouldn't agree," Andy said.

I nodded, "Could you distract them for us?" I said.

Jack shrugged, "Sure why not."

I smiled and hugged Jack "Thank you, you're the best!" I turned to Andy, "If we're going to do this we should figure out a plan." Andy nodded.

Esme's Pov

I was in the medical room watching Leah after I helped some kids who hurt themselves playing in one of the storage rooms. I had ended up being the one put in charge of the medical stuff after we locked Josh up. I basically never left this room.

I was sitting on the chair in the corner of the room, a space where I normally occupied. I was listening to Leah's breathing while reading an old magazine I found. I heard her breathing pattern change suddenly. I looked up and walked over to check on her. Her breathing had gotten a lot quicker.

I gently put my hand on her arm. I gasped as her eyes flew open and she sat up gasping.

"Oh my god, Leah, you're awake," I said.

Leah leaned back slowly, "How long was I out?" She asked.

"A month and a half," I said pulling a chair over to her bed.

Her eyes widened, "That long. What happened?"

"Not much really." I took a deep breath, "Do you remember who attacked you?"

"I didn't know who they were but they had a knife, it was gold, and after he stabbed me these blue lines were running across the blade. That must be the knife that can take away mutants' powers. He... Oh my god." She stopped.

"What?" I said concerned.

Leah took a deep breath, "He said that he wanted to kill you too. As well as Lorna, Andy, and Lauren. He said that he had a special way to kill Andy and Lauren too. And I think he planned to use that knife. Has anything happened while I was asleep?"

"No, but, it might happen soon. I need to tell the others. I'll be right back" I said. I squeezed her hand before I ran out of the room to the meeting room where I knew that Lorna and Marcos were.

I walked into the room and saw Mia and Lorna looking at something on the table.

"Guys, we have a problem," I said.

"Multiple problems apparently," Lorna said, her voice tense.

"What's your problem first," I said.

"Andy and Lauren are missing. They left, and before they did they left this note." Mia said, holding up a piece of paper. "They said that they didn't want to wait for more information, they wanted to try to figure out more themselves."

"That's not good," I said as I looked around the room. "Where's Marcos and Jack."

"Marcos is on watch and Jack, I don't know, I talked to him when I was going on watch but I haven't seen him. I'm guessing when he was talking to me that's when Andy and Lauren slipped out." Lorna said.

Mia looked up, "I can look at the security cameras"

I nodded. Mia walked to the computers in the corner of the room. She sat down and started typing. She pulled up the front camera and started rewound it.

"I got off watch at around seven so we can start there," she said.

We watched the camera feed for a couple of minutes before Mia paused it, "There," she said. It showed Andy and Lauren looking around before going out of the door.

"This isn't good," I said.

"No, if they-" Lorna started.

"It's more than that," I said, cutting her off, "Leah woke up, and before you say how great that is, we have a problem. Leah said that before the spy stabbed her he mentioned that she wasn't the only one that he wanted to kill. He wanted to kill me, Lorna, Andy, and Lauren."

"That's not good," Mia said.

"To say the least. If the spy knows Andy and Lauren left..." I said trailing off.

"Then they're perfect targets." Lorna finished for me.

"We need to find them before the Inner Circle does," Mia said.

"Find who?" Caitlin said walking in and dropping her bags on the floor near the door.

Chapter Text

Esme's Pov

"Yeah I'm not explaining this," Mia said sitting back in her chair. Caitlin had just walked in. Right as we mentioned that Andy and Lauren were probably in a lot of danger because the Inner Circle was trying to kill them and they left to go try to find the Inner Circle like idiots. They left the very safe underground base that we stay in because it is safe. Idiots.

"Andy and Lauren may have left to go look for the Inner Circle based on the information John gave us," I said nervously.

"What!" Caitlin exclaimed.

"And the Inner Circle may be trying to kill them along with me and Lorna," I said.

"And why did no one call me?" Caitlin said.

"Because we only just figured it out. Leah only just woke up and told us who the spy was trying to kill." Lorna said.

"We need to find them," Caitlin said sitting down on the couch.

"We know where they are. They went to figure out what the Inner Circle is going in that munitions factory." Mia said.

"We have to go after them," Caitlin said, her tone the most worried I have ever heard.

"We are working on that. We just need to get Marcos and then we can go find them." Lorna said.

"One more thing. Leah mentioned that the spy had a knife that could take away people's powers." I said.

"But if Andy and Lauren don't have their powers..." Mia started her eyebrows creased.

"They are kind of defenseless," I said pressing my lips together.

"They left 3 hours ago, so they have a huge head start on us and if the spy knows they left the Inner Circle will go after them," Lorna said. She was pacing back and forth. I could tell she blamed herself for not noticing that they left, she was the one on watch after all.

'We have to find them before the Inner Circle does." Caitlin said standing up.

"What if we don't they've been gone for three hours, what if the Inner Circle already found them?" Mia said.

"Well if my sisters found them, we're screwed and if literally, anyone else found them they are either dead or injured surrounded by either dead bodies or a disintegrating building. It depends on what kind of mood they were in." I said. I looked at Caitlin who looked like she was ready to shoot someone if they hurt her kids, "Sorry Caitlin. We just have to hope that the Inner Circle didn't find them."

Andy's Pov

"We've been here for an hour and a half, maybe nothing's going to happen. John did say that he didn't know when they were going to attack this place." Lauren said. We were sitting behind boxes on one of the observation balconies hiding watching the floor of the factory.

"Let's just wait for a couple more minutes," I said. I didn't want to have to leave not knowing anything else than what we came here knowing. She sighed and leaned against the wall behind us.

"Fine, 15 minutes then we're leaving. Mom is supposed to get back tonight," she said.

I heard a door open so I shifted my position so I could see better. I saw a person in a hood walk onto the floor of the factory.

"Hello" They called out. Lauren quickly moved beside me to see what was going on, "Sophie, Phoebe, I have information for you, or do you not want it, cause I can leave."

"No, we want it." one of the Frost sisters said stepping out of the shadows.

I looked at Lauren with my eyes wide. Lauren grabbed my wrist and hissed in my ear, "We have to go, they'll figure out we're here and if that happens we're screwed."

"Wait, I think this guy is the spy, maybe we could figure out who they are," I whispered, stopping her from pulling me away.

Lauren glared at me, "Fine but if they kill us it's your fault.

Why were the Frosts even here? Couldn't they have sent one of their lackeys to get whatever information this person had?

The hooded guy handed them a piece of paper, "Here, this is a list of everyone who has come in and out of the station.

"Good job. Now, what about your other projects. Not including the one you failed to kill, are any of the targets actually dead?" one of the sisters asked.

"No, not yet but they are about to be. I have a very special plan that is in motion right now," the guy said, "As long as Rebecca does her job."

Lauren grabbed my arm and started to pull me away again and this time I let her. We needed to warn the Underground. If they were planning something that involves Rebecca... Well, let's just say it wouldn't end well for us.

We moved quickly towards the door, trying to stay out of sight. There was just one more corner to turn before we got to the door. I looked back to make sure no one had seen us when Lauren stopped right as she turned the corner.

"Shit," Lauren said. I turned the corner and Rebecca was leaning against the doors which now had a metal chain around the handles.

"That's a reasonable reaction," Rebecca said smiling.

Lauren turned to me and said, "Your fault."

I sighed as Rebbeca yelled, "You were right, they're here," she then turned to us, "If you don't want to die I recommend walking back to the floor. Of course, you will die later anyway so it's just a choice of if I get to do it now or later," she said.

Lauren and I stood frozen in place. I had no idea what to do.

"Are you just going to stand there because if I can kill you I would love the opportunity, but if you want to live another couple minutes..." Rebecca said.

"Fine," Lauren said, turning around. She whispered to me, "We're screwed."

"Yup," I whispered back.

Rebecca trotted behind us happily as we walked to where the Frosts were. Lauren's hands were shaking, I just felt numb. This was my fault, Lauren wanted to leave but I made her stay. Maybe those extra five minutes would have let us get out without them catching us. That stupid spy, why did there have to be a spy. Whoever it was I wanted to kill them.

We got to the floor of the factory. The Frosts looked at us with their evil smiles. They were identical to Esme but still looked so different from her just from the way they looked at us. It was terrifying. I had no idea what they were planning. My breathing sped up as I looked at them, I was barely even paying attention to the spy.

One of the Frosts, Sophie I think, started talking, "Andrew and Lauren, our wonderful spy here told us you would be joining us today. How lovely to see you both,"

"Go to hell," Lauren said.

"We are good here thank you very much." The other Frost said. She then turned to the spy who still had his hood up so I couldn't see his face, "You two can handle this, correct."

"Of course. We won't let you down." The spy said. His voice sounded familiar. I just couldn't place it.

The Frost sisters left. I just now realized how tense I was. Lauren looked at me, she was clearly sighing in relief. If they had used their powers on us... well, it wouldn't end well.

"Oh, I have been so looking forward to this." The spy said.

"Who are you?" Lauren said.

"I'm surprised you haven't figured it out. I thought you were smart." Rebecca said walking in front of us.

The spy laughed, "They are. I'm just that good." The spy took down his hood.

Lauren made a strangled gasp, "Jack?"

Chapter Text

Lauren's Pov

"Jack?" I said making a strangled gasp. "How could you."

How could Jack be the spy? I trusted him, he was my ex-boyfriend. I could never have even guessed. I- I didn't know what to think or how to feel.

"How could you work for them?" Andy said. I could feel his anger start rising. I could feel how betrayed he felt.

"How could you betray us like that?" I said, my emotions leaking through my voice.

"Betray you? How could you even-" Rebecca started angrily before Jack cut him off.

"Rebecca, I got this," Jack said, putting an arm on her shoulder. Rebecca deflated.

"Andy, you betrayed the Inner Circle. They helped me, saved my life actually. It seems only fitting that I get to betray you for the Inner Circle.

"That's not the same thing," Andy said quietly.

"You still betrayed the Inner Circle, ever think about that? You did that before they even did anything to you so that just makes it worse." Jack said.

"You little-" Andy said.

He put his hand up to use his powers, but Jack took out a knife and held it in front of him. A golden knife, the one that Mia hid in the weapons storage room, "You might want to not do that"

Andy slowly put his hands down while staring at the knife in shock. I took a step back. "How did you find that?" I said.

"It wasn't too hard. Your friend Mia isn't that great at hiding stuff. It was in a duffel bag at the bottom of a barrel. Creative but terrible hiding place." Jack said, twirling the knife.

"How did you even get in there? It's locked and Lorna has the key." Andy said stepping in front of me ever so slightly.

"I may be bad at killing people but I'm not totally useless. I know how to pick locks." Jack said as if it was obvious.

"What do you want?" I said.

"You ask that question a lot. You know that." Rebecca said, rolling her eyes. "Like every time I've seen you since I resurrected."

I looked at the ground. My powers were active, I was too nervous. I needed to calm down. I needed control of my powers if we were going to make it out of here alive.

"So do I get to kill them with my powers or are you going to use your stupid fancy knife," Rebecca said.

"I'm using my knife that is not stupid. It's cool Rebecca." Jack said. They kept bickering with each other.

I looked at a pen that must have rolled off of one of the tables. It was rolling towards me slowly. I watched as it stopped rolling and started shaking in place. It slowly disintegrated. Shit. Not good. Andy's powers were active too. If we both weren't totally in control of our powers I didn't see a way to get out of this. If our powers were acting on their own, they were harder to make do what we wanted. Andy and I exchanged a look he noticed too. This was not good.

"Ok, so you're using your..." Rebecca said before she started coughing. Jack looked at her in shock.

I looked at Andy, he was staring at Rebecca. I looked back to Rebecca, she was on her knees couching with Jack next to her. Then I noticed it, her hands were disintegrating.

She turned to Andy and me, "What are you doing? Stop it," she said in between coughing. She was looking at us terrified. Jack was gripping her arms as her entire body turned to dust. I looked at Andy shocked. Did we kill her? I mean cool, I hated that bitch, but still, she was supposed to be immortal.

I didn't get much time to think about it before an ice-cold pain spread through my arm. I cried out in pain. I turned around and saw Jack standing there, having cut my arm. My knees gave out and Andy caught me as I fell. An awful icy feeling spread across my body as I felt my powers stop.

"Oh my god," Andy said. Jack moved and cut Andy's arm before either of us could do anything to stop him. Andy cried out in pain, "What the hell dude."

"What did you do?" I asked quietly. I couldn't feel my powers anymore. It was like they just disappeared.

Jack knelt beside us, "I took away your powers. This knife has that ability. It was designed specifically to kill you because without your powers you're useless. It's a cool knife though even without that ability."

I looked at the knife horrified. It had golden veins running along the blade that I don't remember being there before. This wasn't good. This was worse than anything I could have ever imagined.

"You know you two are surprisingly easy to distract. Aren't you supposed to be the new Fenris or something, unbeatable? Cause I beat you pretty easily." Jack said. I tensed up at the mention. Andy's grip on my arm tightened. I looked at the ground. "Oh and thank you for killing Rebecca, she was getting kind of annoying. I had a whole plan for how to kill you and she kept wanting to do stuff differently and got in the way a lot." Jack said.

"Jack please. We've never done anything to do you," Andy said, trying to pull me away from him. We were both too weak, we would be able to get far.

"You sure about that? You remember how my dad worked for Sentinel Services right. Well, he was in DC for a meeting the day that you disintegrated Sentinel Services headquarters. You killed him. So, yeah you did do something to me." Jack said looking at us like we were monsters. Which I guess we were, to him at least. "And thanks for asking Andy, you helped me decide who to kill first."

I couldn't even process what Jack said before he grabbed Andy's arm and pulled him to his feet. Andy tried to pull away but the aftereffects of the knife made him unsteady. He couldn't.

"Jack, please, don't hurt him!" I begged. I couldn't do anything. I was trapped because of what the knife did. I couldn't stop him.

Jack ignored me and dragged Andy to the wall next to us. Jack shoved Andy against it. "You know, I was going to give Rebecca this privilege but since she's dead I guess I get to do it," Jack said.

"Jack, don't," Andy pleaded with him.

Jack looked at him with a terrifying gleam in his eyes, "Oh, I've been waiting for this moment for a long time." I watched terrified as Jack pushed the knife into Andy's shoulder. Andy cried out in pain.

"I did figure it would hurt a lot more to watch each other slowly bleed out knowing no one is coming to save you though," Jack said laughing.

I felt like I couldn't breathe. Andy fell to the floor holding his shoulder where Jack stabbed him. I used what little strength I had left to push myself behind a box. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, I couldn't do anything except desperately trying to get away. He stabbed Andy, a person he had known for years, my little brother. And I couldn't do anything to stop him. I was useless. I knew it was pointless to try to hide, I couldn't get away and there was no way I was leaving Andy behind.

"Lauren, where did you go? You know you can't get away. Why bother hiding?" Jack said, walking closer to me. I put my hand over my mouth to try to cover the sound of me crying. I could hear his footsteps getting closer. He rounded the corner of the box I was hiding behind.

"Ah, there you are beautiful. You know it is a shame all this beauty wasted on such a terrible monster," Jack said. I was shaking.

"Please," I said a sob coming out of my mouth. I didn't want to die. I couldn't get out of this.

Jack looked at me almost like he was sad that he was going to kill me, then he smiled, "You know, I'm going to enjoy this."

Jack pulled me up off the floor. He was holding his knife covered in blood, Andy's blood. It was pulsing with golden veins. I couldn't look at it. I wrenched my eyes away from it. He dragged me back in front of the box.

I looked up at him shaking, "Please don't do this Jack. You're better than this. Please." I said. My voice was shaking, I could barely breathe.

"No, I'm not." He said. He plunged the knife into my gut. The little air left in my lungs vanished. I looked down as he pulled the knife out. My knees gave out. I hit the ground too hard. I watched as dark blood spread over my grey shirt and black jacket. I couldn't process it. This couldn't be happening. I leaned back against the box behind me, starting to hyperventilate.

He walked over to Andy. He put the knife on a table as he walked over. He knelt in front of him. I closed my eyes. I couldn't watch.

"Enjoying this?" Jack said.

I heard Andy's voice, "Go to hell."

"If you insist, I guess see you there then," Jack responded laughing slightly.

I opened my eyes and looked around the room desperately. They caught on the knife, Jack had left it on the table as he passed. He was standing in front of Andy again.

I slowly crawled over to the table where Jack left the knife. I silently begged that Andy could keep him distracted long enough.

"I'm going to enjoy watching you and your sister bleed out," Jack said. Andy glared at him.

I pulled myself up to the table and grabbed the knife. I gripped it hard as I used the table to pull myself to my feet. I had one hand on my stab wound and one hand gripping the knife. I pushed off from the table and plunged the knife through Jack's back. If I was going to die then I was taking him down with me.

Andy's Pov

Jack suddenly looked down. Red bloomed on his shirt right where his heart was. He dropped to the floor. Lauren was standing behind him gripping his knife in one hand and holding where he stabbed her with the other. She dropped the knife and stumbled over to me. She collapsed against the wall, leaning on my uninjured shoulder.

"Did you..." I started.

"Kill him? I hope. If we're going to die, I want to bring him down with us," she said quietly.

"No one knows we're here. No one's coming," I whispered a tear falling down my cheek. I could barely even feel the stab wound. I read something once about sometimes when people go through extreme physical trauma sometimes the nerves get too damaged so they can't feel the wound. Maybe that was what was happening.

"At least we're together, maybe someone found our note," Lauren said, grabbing my hand. Nothing happened because that stupid knife took away our powers.

"Yeah," I said. I didn't want to die but I didn't think we had a choice.

We kept talking to each other. trying to keep each other awake for as long as possible. Maybe someone would find us.

After I didn't know how long, Lauren stopped responding to me. I could still feel her pulse, but barely. I pulled her close to me. We were dying and I knew that. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

I was about to close my eyes when I heard the door open. I looked up and saw our mom running over to us. Maybe we would survive this. Maybe. I closed my eyes and let myself drift into darkness. I lost too much blood. I couldn't fight it anymore. Maybe they could save us. Maybe there was still hope in this endless darkness.

Chapter Text

Mia's Pov

Andy and Lauren almost died. Lauren was barely breathing when we found them. It's a miracle that they survived. They only just woke up about an hour ago.

"You could have died. How could you do that to me? After everything we've lost," Caitlin said. She had been constantly worrying and pacing around the room for the past two days.

"Yeah well, we didn't know that this would happen to go in. We just thought that we were going to sit there and not find out anything. This was not the plan." Andy said motioning at his shoulder where he got stabbed.

Caitlin sighed and sat down in her chair, "As much as I want to be mad at you both I can't because you're my kids and you almost died."

"We're just glad you're okay," Lorna said. She and Marcos were standing near the door. I nodded.

Lauren looked up, she had been quiet ever since she woke up. I guess she was still in shock from what happened. "How did you save us? When I passed out, I-I didn't think it was possible to save me anymore," she said.

"Luck, pure luck. When Jack stabbed you both, he didn't hit anything that was too deadly. Your mom was able to stop most of the bleeding before we got you back here and when you got here we asked Josh to help. He wasn't able to do much but he was able to heal it a little. Something about that knife stopped his powers from healing it as much as he could normally." I explained.

Lauren nodded. "Okay."

Caitlin studied both her kids, "you two should rest more." She motioned for the rest of us to go. "You guys go. I want to talk to them a bit before I go try to get some sleep."

I nodded and walked out. I went to go talk to Josh. He was still recovering from the whole Kick ordeal.

"Hey," I said walking over to him. He was reading a magazine on a couch in one of the common areas.

"Did Andy and Lauren wake up yet?" He asked sitting up.

I shushed him, "Yes but keep quiet about it. Caitlin doesn't want people to know about what happened. She thinks it will cause people to panic."

Josh nodded and went back to his magazine.

I thought about walking into that factory not knowing what we were going to find. Half of me was expecting to find them dead. We were very lucky that they weren't. I walked onto the floor following Caitlin and saw Jack's body. I figured out he must have been the traitor. My eyes shifted to seeing Andy and Lauren curled up against each other, both of them covered in blood. They were unconscious. I was terrified that we were too late. Every thought running through my head was some variation of what if I did this differently. Would we have gotten here sooner? Could I have prevented this?

For 48 hours I barely slept. I was so worried that they would die. They were the first people I made friends with here. For 48 hours I kept preparing myself for the worst. The chaos that would happen if they died, the grief. Everything was just so worrying, terrifying.

I sighed and grabbed a magazine from the table, figuring I should just distract myself from everything. I fell asleep after a couple of minutes trying to read.

Andy's Pov

"Are you sure you're okay?" Mom said. She was worried. I mean who could blame her, her kids did only just wake up from being stabbed.

"We're fine mom," Lauren said, "Just tired."

"What happened to the knife? What did you do with it?" I asked. I wanted to make sure no one could ever use it against us again.

"Lorna and Marcos are working on it. They are going to melt it and then bury it somewhere no one will find it." Mom said.

"Good," Lauren said, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Now get some rest." Mom said as she got up and left.

I sighed and turned to Lauren, "She's going to smother us, isn't she?"

"We almost died Andy," Lauren said. "We haven't even told them what happened yet. They haven't even asked. They're that worried us."

"What are we going to tell them when they do?" I asked thinking about everything that happened. "Rebecca disintegrated. How do we explain that?"

Lauren tried to lay on her side and winced, "Ow, stupid stab wound. I don't know. Do we even know what happened? Just that we caused it somehow."

"I know but it's hard to even try to figure out what happened. It was like we somehow stopped her from regenerating with the way our powers affected her." I said.

"What if that happens again?" Lauren asked. She was a little scared of her powers and I couldn't blame her. What was happening was crazy. "We don't know how our powers do that. We don't know how to stop it. What if we hurt someone we care about?"

If this, whatever it was, happened here... I didn't know what would happen. Both times it happened it only stopped after someone died. What if that was just how it stopped? With people dying.

"What if we left, just for a while? Until we figure everything out." I suggested.

Lauren pressed her lips together, "We both have open stab wounds."

"Fair, but we could wait until they healed more or ask Josh if there is anything he could do," I said.

"Andy it's just... Mom. What would happen to her? She'd freak. I saw what happened when you left, she fixated on finding you. It was all she thought about," she said. Mom right, she's been overly worried since everything that happened and us getting stabbed has only made her worry more.

I sighed, "I know and I don't want to leave but I think it's best. Just to keep everyone safe."

"Maybe. Ask me again tomorrow. I'm tired." she said. She closed her eyes. I sighed, it was best for everyone and we both knew it. I think Lauren just didn't want to admit it to herself right away.

Lorna's Pov

I wanted to talk to Andy and Lauren. Caitlin had just let them go back to their room to finish recovering instead of making them stay in the medical room. She was so worried about them.

I walked into their room, "Hey Andy, Lauren..." I trailed off as I realized I was talking to myself. They weren't there. I walked farther into the room.

Some of their stuff was gone too. The music box was missing with a piece of paper in its place. I walked over and picked up the paper.

It was a letter. It said, "Dear whoever is reading this, we're sorry but we couldn't stay. We had to leave. Some stuff happened at that factory that freaked us out. We need to figure it out by ourselves. We'll be fine, don't worry about us. Don't come looking for us. Andy & Lauren"

That was it, that was the letter. They left, those idiots. Whatever happened, we would have helped them figure it out.

Mia walked in, "Hey, where's Andy and Lauren?"

"They left," I said, holding up the note.

Mia walked over and took the note from me. "You're kidding, right? They still have open stab wounds," she said when she finished reading the note.

"I know. They're idiots," I said shaking my head.

"How do we tell Caitlin? They're her kids," Mia asked, giving me back the letter.

"I don't know. All I know is that, based on this letter, they don't want to be found and if they don't want to be found, we won't find them," I said.

Lauren's Pov

I was sitting in the passenger seat of the car. Andy wasn't letting me drive.

"Why can't I drive," I said.

"Because you got stabbed in the stomach and can barely walk much less drive," Andy said rolling his eyes. He was driving with one arm, the other one was in a sling.

"Yeah, and you can only use one arm because you got stabbed in the shoulder," I said.

"Whatever, we'll be there soon anyway so it doesn't matter," he said focusing back on the road. I sighed and looked out the window. We were running away. I tried not to think about it too much, we were trying to just laugh and pretend that this wasn't happening. That we weren't running away because we were scared of hurting someone.

"We're here," Andy said as we pulled into an alley. We got out of the car and leaned against it waiting.

"So we're just supposed to stand here out in the open?" I said looking around the alley. It was dark so people hopefully couldn't see us but we were still just standing in the middle of an alley.

"All he said was to meet him here," he said. I sighed.

"So, I hear you are running away," I looked up and saw erg walking out of the shadows.

"Yeah, we are," I said.

"May I ask why," Erg asked

"Um, we just have some stuff to figure out by ourselves," Andy said.

Erg nodded, "Here are the supplies you asked for," Erg said, handing me a duffle bag and a backpack full of stuff.

"Thanks. Do you know any roads that we should avoid?" I asked, handing Andy the backpack. I knew of some but I wanted to make sure we stayed away from places people got caught and Erg would know that kind of stuff.

"Stay off the highways and toll roads. Stay away from interstate 80, there are a lot of cops on that road," he said.

"Got it," I said.

"Where do you plan to go?" Erg asked.

"Don't know, LA, Chicago, maybe even Miami. I've always wanted to go to Miami," Andy said jokingly.

"We're going to stick to small towns. The midwest somewhere. And, don't tell anyone we came to you for help. We don't want them to find us or look for us even," I said.

"I won't. Good luck and don't get caught," Erg said, walking back to wherever he came from.

"We won't," Andy said, going to put the backpack in the car.

I looked around the alley making sure no one was watching us. I didn't see anyone. I sighed, we were really doing this. I walked back to the car.

"You ready," I asked as I got in the car after putting the duffle in the back.

"Yeah. Let's go" Andy said, turning the car on.

Chapter Text

Jace Turner's Pov

There seems to have been a mutant incident at a munitions factory. I was at the site with a team to try to figure out what happened.

"Agent Turner, we found a body with one stab wound. It seems as if he was stabbed through the back with a knife. We haven't found the weapon yet." Agent Carter said.

"Any sign of the Mutant Underground's involvement?" I asked.

"We are unsure but we found multiple pools of blood. They are testing it now to see if there is a match on record." He said handing me the file he was putting together.

I looked over the file as Agent Carter talked to one of the forensic teams. The file had all kinds of notes on everything that they had been looking at.

Agent Carter walked back over, "The blood matched with both of the Strucker kids."

I looked up, "We found them?"

"It seems that they were both seriously injured based on the amount of blood, possibly even dead but yes, we did," Agent Carter said.

"There mutants, Sentinel Services thought they were dead after Atlanta and they weren't. They are dead when I see bodies. We need to keep tracking them." I said handing him the file back.

He nodded, "Of course sir. Any specific direction you want to head in?"

"I have a couple of leads to look into," I said smiling wider than I had in months. Finally, we were getting somewhere.

Agent Carter nodded and headed back to the site to finish his assessment of the site. I was getting close. I could feel it. Another couple of weeks or months and I would find them. I was so close. I smiled and headed back to the car, I had some reports to write.

Thank you so much for reading this wacky fanfiction for a dead fandom that I decided to write. I'm currently editing it to make it better and more coherent. I am also currently working on Part 2 to this so in a couple of weeks I'll start posting that! I love the world of The Gifted and halfway through writing this I realized that I had more stories to tell so I started planing Part 2. Part Two is posted!/p>

Here is the summary of Part 2 as of right now. It is called The Darkness Overwhelms

Andy and Lauren left The Mutant Underground to look for answers three months ago. They went to New Orleans to find answers about their family and their powers. Mia has been looking for them, following leads for months. John's been helping her to keep distracting himself from his grief. He was still mourning Clarise but he was getting through it, slowly. Esme found happiness with Leah, she was still trying to find her place in the Underground but she was getting through it. Lorna and Marcos missed their daughter, they wanted to be with her but they couldn't, not yet.

Jace Turner was still looking for The Mutant Underground. He was so close to finding them. He was on Andy and Lauren's trail. It was only a matter of time before he found them. The Inner Circle was quiet, too quiet. They were up to something, The Underground just couldn't figure out what.

Here is a short outtake from the first chapter.

Lauren's Pov

I was sitting in the car waiting for Andy to get the rest of our stuff. I was still not totally healed from getting stabbed so Andy didn't let me do much.

We needed to move on. The cops were slowly figuring out where we were but we were here for a reason. We were trying to find answers about our family, our powers, everything. We were so close, but the cops were too close to figuring out where we were. So we were getting our stuff in the car and checking out one more lead then getting out of here.

Andy threw the few bags of stuff we had in the back then climbed into the driver's seat. He still wasn't letting me drive.

"You know you could just let me drive, right," I said.

"No, you're still recovering from getting stabbed. You're not driving until you can walk longer than thirty minutes at a time." Andy said.

I rolled my eyes, "You got stabbed too."

"And my injuries weren't nearly as bad and they are mostly healed," he said.

"You can still only drive with one hand. It's not safe." I said.

Andy laughed, "Oh, and driving when you can't use your core muscles is safe?"

"I hate you," I said crossing my arms.

"Yup, I'm your little brother, you're supposed to," he said poking me in the arm. "Besides we're almost there so it doesn't matter."

I rolled my eyes and looked out the window. We were in New Orleans. As we drove past one of the aboveground cemeteries that were scattered throughout the city I thought about how beautiful they were in a strange, creepy way.