I Can't Hide From My Mind

[Andrea Kaine]

Sunlight spilled into ward 32 of the Jozua Clinic as Nurse Angelina Gutierrez drew back the blinds. "Good morning, Andrea! Oh, would you look at that? Beautiful day today."

The stout woman in her fuchsia scrubs turned from the window to see to the room's lone occupant, a thin, waifish teenaged girl with wet-looking dark hair and shadowy circles around her sunken eyes, which were shut like the gates of hades. The girl's exposed right arm was fitted with a catheter fed with fluids from a tree of intravenous bags above her bed, and wires that snaked from under her white medical smock led to a tall bank of monitors whose whirring and beeping maintained that atmosphere of sterile solemnity that was as endemic to hospitals as holiness was to a cathedral.

Gutierrez walked across the brightly lit wardroom and turned on a radio sitting on a desk, only to be startled by a throbbing hip hop beat. "Oh God, don't tell me you like this music, Andrea?" She looked over to the girl, who was still unresponsive on the bed. With a small, wistful sigh, the nurse dialed to an NPR classical station, and the room filled with the strains of a flute concerto.

"Much better," the nurse said. "I'll have to have a word with Cherie about her taste in music. If you want me to change it, you just let me know, okay?" After straightening a few articles on the desk, she bustled over to Andrea's bedside and took down the siderail that fenced her in. Moving the girl was a trivial thing; the nurse's arms were thick and muscular, and Andrea hardly weighed anything at all. With a firm but gentle hand, Gutierrez turned her so she was lying on one side, taking care that her weight didn't pinch any nerves or blood vessels, and she began inspecting the girl with a motherly touch.

"It's going to be a good day. Your brother is coming to visit, and I know how much he cares about you. And he's bringing a friend from school. They're going to be so happy to see you."

She turned to face the bank of monitors and began taking down figures on her hospital-issued smartphone. "And Dr. Heidegger says he has a new combination of meds he wants to try. You never know, it could be the one you need."

"The fox," Andrea mumbled. Gutierrez turned around.

"What was that, dear?"

"The fox feeds on bones in the dragon's den."

"Does he really?" the nurse replied. "Why would he do that?"

Andrea was silent again, and Gutierrez returned to her work with a sigh. Sometimes you could almost hold a conversation with Andrea, but even then nothing she said ever made sense.

"He thinks himself a dragon," Andrea said, "but he only gnaws at the bones. The trap is set for him, too."

"Well, someone had better tell him, then," the nurse said, but Andrea didn't say any more. She finished her work.

"Alex will be here in about half an hour. I'll see you then, dear."

The nurse put up the siderail again and swept back out of the room. Andrea lay listlessly on her side.

"Alex... beware the fox."

[Alex Kaine]

Alex and Lana jostled together on their seat near the rear of the city bus as it made a hard corner a little faster than advisable. Alex grabbed onto the seat in front of him and took Lana's weight in the side so they didn't spill into the aisle.

It wasn't luxury. But then, that was sort of the point. Alex and Lana had made an agreement: if she was taking him somewhere, they'd go in the BMW, eat Natasha's gourmet cooking, and indulge in whatever luxuries Lana thought were apropos, provided she didn't buy Alex any unreasonable gifts. If he was taking her somewhere, they'd take the bus, bring bag lunches, and seek the kinds of thrills that were freely available to a teenager earning minimum wage from a summer job. Neither one was allowed to complain. So far, it had been an interesting exchange program.

And, anyway, Alex had come to find that any time with Lana was time well-spent.

"So I really think you should come," Alex was saying. "Most of the House residents will be there... Tess is chaperoning, if Sergei needs any reassurance. It'll be great, pretty much every mutant in south LA will be there, plus a lot of mundanes who feel the same way about the MRA. It's a chance to make our voices heard. Real democracy in action."

[Svetlana Ustinov]

Lana let out a bit of a squeak as she slid into Alex's side, caught completely off-guard by the bus driver's sudden desire to join the NASCAR circuit. The bus was, by far, her least favorite of conveyances. But it was far better than the buses she was used to in Saint Petersburg, which had seen better days in decades past.

And it also meant a great deal to Alex that they kept to their agreed-upon program. In reality, it wasn't a hardship...after all, she was snuggled into his side - and bus or not, that was a plus. Overall, their exchange had been working well and there was a whole host of simple things she'd never been introduced to before.

Like peanut butter and jelly. Lana swore she could live on the sandwiches alone, quite happily. It had amused Alex to no end that first afternoon, especially given that the grape jelly had made quite the mess.

"I...I don't know, Alex...a rally? There will be news coverage everywhere...what happens if someone sees..." she began, and then abruptly stopped as he turned to look at her. It meant so much to him that it pained her to think of saying no.

"Alright, I'll come. But...promise me we'll be careful?" Lana finished softly, fingers smoothing out her shorts as she crossed her legs. She fished the small buzzing Blackberry from her wrist-bag, frowning at it before flicking it off and putting it away again.

"Is that the Center up ahead?"

[Alex Kaine]

Alex followed her gaze to the big, beige compound that occupied much of the next block, set back behind an expanse of parking lots and decorative trees. Across one large sandstone wall was the double-helix emblem of the Jericho Foundation and "The Jozua Clinic of Los Angeles" across the bottom.

"That's it," Alex said, stone-faced. He was always ambivalent about the place - on one hand, coming here meant spending time with his sister, which was growing more and more important to him these days. On the other, it was full of the most self-righteous, manipulative, exploitative bastards ever to apply for a government research grant. If they were keeping Andrea for her own good, then he was the President.

Alex and Lana were the only passengers getting off at the stop in front of the clinic. They shuffled down the narrow aisle to the front and disembarked onto the walk leading up to the clinic's main entrance. The building's facade was all glass and concrete and had the look of a hospital trying too hard to appear inviting.

Alex slipped an arm around Lana's waist as they approached the glassed-in front entrance, and he leaned his head down close to hers. "I know you don't advertise it anyway, but it's probably not a good idea to mention you're a mutant in there. They'll probably have their eye on you anyway since you're with me, and, well, they already know about me, but... you know. I just don't trust these guys to respect your privacy."

[Svetlana Ustinov]

His tone and his warning sent a shiver down her spine, in spite of the cloying LA summer heat. Lana was thankful for the arm he had around her waist, taking as much comfort from it as she did distant pleasure. They stopped a few steps before the automatic doors and she gently kissed his cheek.

"Don't worry, Aleksanderrr...I'll be fine. Come...introduce me to your sister. You talk about her so much I feel as if I practically know her already."

Lana smiled brightly as they continued inside and twining their fingers together as he pulled his arm away. The lobby was impressive, surrounded by glass and filled with light. Almost...almost welcoming, until she noticed the glances they were getting. Thinly veiled under what were supposed to be welcoming smiles.

She tightened her fingers around his as he led the way and kept a very tight hold on her energy levels.

[Alex Kaine]

The lobby could have been any well-funded hospital in the state. Just inside the tall picture windows was a waiting area with a lively, colorful pattern on the carpets and comfortable-looking chairs surrounding coffee tables stacked with magazines. There was even a small play area with brightly colored miniature plastic furniture and an assortment of small toys. The Jericho Center wasn't a hospital - not by Alex's estimation - but they played the part well.

With Lana's hand securely tucked in his, Alex struck for the receptionist's desk and, after a brief conversation and a signature, got a pair of visitor's passes and directions to Andrea's ward on the third floor. On either side of the desk were big flyers reminding all mutants that this was a government-authorized registration facility, and that registration was free, easy, and took less than ten minutes. Alex tried to ignore them as they walked past.

They turned down a brightly lit corridor into the bowels of the building, passing doctors and orderlies on their way to various appointments. From one room they could hear a heated argument as a man with a loud voice insisted, very vehemently, that no son of his was going to make household objects float with some creepy voodoo mutant shit, and if you can't keep yourself under control then by God one of these doctors will open up your head and cut out the part of your brain that makes you a freak.

Alex's grip tightened on Lana's, and he quickened his pace. It wasn't until the shouting had faded to a dull murmur behind them that he muttered, "God, I hate this place."

[Svetlana Ustinov]

The further they walked, the further into his side Lana tucked herself, fingers tight around his and her other hand resting on his upper arm. She blinked and bit her lower lip at the sounds of the violent argument, dipping her head to stare at the ground. Suddenly thankful for her own family...even if her father didn't seem very fond of her. At least, she mused, he'd never said anything like that.

Well. Not recently in any case.

Parents were supposed to love their children unconditionally, weren't they? No matter how unique they were? No matter what? It made her heart ache to contemplate it.

"I don't like it either...it...I...don't like it at all." she whispered back, her voice trailing off as she murmured in Russian. Around another bend in the hall, they came to a bank of elevators and pressed the little button marked with an upwards arrow. If it were anyone other than Alex's sister they were here to see, she'd have likely run back out the way they had come.

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

Klaus emerged from a patient's room, jotting down a few last notes. The argument down the hall had gone on for some time now. It amused Klaus greatly. There was no part of the brain that gave a person psychic powers. Well, at least there wasn't anything extra parts present in a telepath's brain that was not found in a normal brain. He'd seen so himself.

He looked up, saw Alex and a new visitor and gave one of his practiced smiles.

"I see you are here to see Andrea again. She is no different than most days: as you understand our work his highly experimental, but always to the good of those under our care."

Klaus turned his back to lead them to the room he knew they could find well on their own. He smirked as he thought of the billboards and advertisements all around the city and on the television screens inside homes and apartments across the state. A pretty, innocent blonde girl smiling shyly with various slogans.

The Jericho Center cured my cancer thanks to mutants who agreed to help research the mutant genome. Thank you!

Come to Jericho, and see what you can do to better the world!

I used to hate my powers, now thanks to Jericho, I don't have to be afraid anymore.

What was it about slender, innocent women that made people succumb to whatever you wanted?

"She's of course waiting for you."

Klaus paused at the door and opened it for the couple. As always, he would stand and watch a moment or two to see if Alex showed the mutant power Klaus knew he had. Of course, with the new girl attending him, he had to wonder if she was a mutant too.

[Alex Kaine]

Alex stiffened the moment Dr. Heidegger appeared from one of the exam rooms off the main corridor, and he didn't say a word to the man. Heidegger had been the one who had spoken to his foster parents when Children's Hospital Los Angeles had referred them to Jericho. Heidegger had been the one to recommend that Andrea be kept for long-term observation. It had been his office that had informed them that her condition had worsened, that Andrea was unresponsive, and that she would need to be boarded at the clinic indefinitely. That was when Alex had lost it, and the resulting eruption of his electrical powers had sent him to the juvenile detention system and nearly into the custody of Jericho himself. The next time he'd seen Andrea, she was already in a coma.

For all he knew, Heidegger had put her in that coma himself.

Alex contained his emotions by focusing on guarding Lana. He made sure to put himself between her and that smug bastard all the way up to Andrea's room, where he guided her with a gentle hand on her shoulder into the sterile serenity of the long-term wardroom.

The room wasn't very large, especially with an adjustable bed and a bank of medical monitors taking up most of the available space, but someone had obviously thought to pull back the blinds, and the place was full of sunlight. Alex was glad of that for Lana's sake. On the bed, her upper body elevated, lay Andrea. You couldn't miss the family resemblance between her and Alex, but her skin was noticeably paler from almost two years living in the cloisters of the clinic, and her closed eyes looked puffy and dark.

Alex squeezed Lana's hand and brought her with him to Andrea's bedside. Then he took Andrea's hand and rubbed it. "Hi, Andrea, I'm back. And I brought a very special friend. Andrea, I'd like you to meet Lana."

He lifted Lana's hand pressed it against Andrea's. "Go on, say 'hi.'"

[Svetlana Ustinov]

The Doctor's appearance set the hair on the back of her neck on end, and raised every alarm bell the young woman had. There was something about him that wriggled under her skin and made her completely uncomfortable. But...whether that was because of the man himself or the implication of where they were was unclear.

But it also served to knock Lana back into slightly better head-space. While still fearful and cautious, she was at least able to smile when Alex brought her into Andrea's room.

She was a lovely girl, and reminded her a great deal of Alex, their resemblance as siblings being strong. But the poor thing was pale and her closed eyes shaded dark from being closed up indoors for so long. A bright sunny room wasn't quite the right light to bring color to her cheeks.

Lana didn't have to force the smile to her lips when Alex tugged her close and pressed her hand to Andrea's. Her expression warmed as she spoke. "Hello Andrea...its a pleasure to finally meet you. Alex talks about you non-stop...all good things, of course."

[Alex Kaine]

"I've told Andrea a bit about you, too, actually," Alex said with a sheepish smile. "She always did say I needed to get better at making friends."

He reached down to clear a loose strand of hair out of his sister's face. "You two would get along really well. Andrea's much more outgoing than I am. She always has friends at school, even after they all found out she's a mutant. Maybe it's because of her gift, but... it seems like she knows how to empathize with anyone."

He was careful to talk in the present tense as much as possible, just to let Andrea know - as far as she could know anything at this point - that she was still included. And even though she was pallid and thin, she looked so peaceful that she might have been sleeping, just waiting for the right word or thought or action to wake her up, and then she'd look at him and recognize him and smile, and he'd feel that familiar sensation of her feather-soft thoughts pressing themselves onto his consciousness, that unique bond of contact that had been silent for so long.

He'd already released Lana's hand, leaving it in Andrea's, and now he wrapped his arm around Lana and rubbed up and down her shoulder.

[Svetlana Ustinov]

Her cheeks flushed a pale golden-green, and she found herself thankful that their backs were to the door. Lana wasn't about to check over her shoulder to see if the Doctor was still there, especially not now.

It wasn't worth ruining the moment with her fear.

She did glance up at Alex and cast him a softly adoring look before tilting her head back towards Andrea. Her other hand moved to clasp Andrea's hand between her own, gently stroking it and wishing she dared to reach out with her gift. If only to warm her for a moment or two.

"Sometimes, Aleksanderr...I think you talk too much." Lana replied brightly. "Andrea reminds me very much of my best friend back in Saint Petersburg. Katia has the same sweet face and dark hair...I was thinking of calling and inviting her to visit this summer. I think she'd be delighted to meet you, Andrea. You would like her very much...but she does talk a great deal, and rather quickly at that."

[Doktor Klaus Heidegger]

Klaus listened idly as the mutant couple talked to Andrea and to each other. The doctor kept his eyes locked on Lana, hoping she would betray some sort of sign that she was a mutant. It seemed the pair was intent on keeping their backs to him.

It didn't matter. He had cameras hidden to cover every angle of every room in every wing of his facility. Nothing would stay hidden.

"I will leave you to your visit. Alex, I trust your friend knows the rules for visitations at the Jozua Clinic. Enjoy your time with your sister."

[Alex Kaine]

Alex threw an icy look back over his shoulder. Realizing Heidegger probably wasn't going to leave without some sort of acknowledgment, he settled on a very curt, "Thanks."

He waited until the door clicked shut. Then he opened his senses to the electrical currents running through the room. There was a lot of complex activity right in front of him, of course - the medical instruments that were monitoring every aspect of Andrea's biology. There were also the lights, the air conditioning, the radio, simple and steady rhythms of alternating current racing back and forth through the wall wiring like millions of tiny heartbeats. But there were other lines of electricity with more gravity, more nuance - data streams flooding through isolated circuits from a dozen points around the room. Some of them connected the medical instruments to remote monitors so the staff could respond to any sudden changes in her condition. Others... couldn't be so easily explained.

Alex dropped his arm from around Lana's shoulder. "Can you give me a second, Lana?"

He stepped away from Andrea's bedside and closed his eyes, rubbing at the bridge of his nose as if fighting off a headache. But he was searching out those data streams, isolating them from the rest of the circuits in the room. The connections were delicate, not designed for high voltages, so theoretically it shouldn't be too difficult to--

The lights overhead flickered, though with the sunlight beating in through the window, it hardly mattered. More importantly, Alex's localized power surge had just burned out all the covert cameras and sensors in the room - at least, all the ones he'd been able to find.

He rubbed at his temples, eyes still closed. Now he really did have a headache. "Okay," he said, "we should be able to talk a little more freely now."

[Andrea Kaine]

While Alex's back was still turned, Andrea took in a long, slow breath and opened her eyes. They were large and dark, just like Alex's. Her head lolled to one side, but her eyes unerringly found Lana's and held them with a vice grip.

[Svetlana Ustinov]

Her hands still on Andrea's as the girl opened her eyes, her head tilted oddly off to one side. Her gaze was focused and gripping, dark eyes holding her chestnut gaze captive.

Lana's fingers moved gently across the back of Andrea's hand once more as she spoke without moving her eyes.

"Aleksander, smotret...look."

[Alex Kaine]

Alex turned quickly, and his breath caught. No, it wasn't the first time it had happened, but each and every time he couldn't help but wonder, hope, pray that this one might be the time she really woke up.

He crossed to Lana's side and passed a hand over Andrea's eyes. They didn't react - didn't even blink. Alex let the hope float away like a half-imagined image in the clouds.

"She does that sometimes," he said quietly. "I don't know if she sees us, or if maybe she's sensing us on some other level. It usually means she's about to go into a trance."

Mutation was a gift - Alex believed that with every cell in his body - but he knew it could also be a burden. Andrea was a telepath. Not an altogether strong one - she could sense emotions and intentions well enough, but to read the finer nuances of another person's thoughts, anything beyond the noisy impulses at the surface, took a great deal of familiarity. Alex had been an open book to her. They'd even learned they could communicate - Alex could put his thoughts at the surface where she could read them easily, and she could press her own mind onto his with such delicate grace that sometimes it was difficult to tell where he ended and she began. It wasn't until she was taken away from him that he realized how much she'd been tempering him, soothing his anger, pulling him out of his brooding spells.

But then there had been the trances. They came on her without warning, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. Her eyes would lose focus - or, rather, they'd focus on things no one else could see. Her movements would become slow, deliberate, disjointed, as if she were hearing commands and obeying them. And her speech... strings of words that made grammatical sense but no other kind, as if she were trying to describe what she saw in the only way she knew how. And as it went on, she would approach a point of clarity, and she would say things that made sense but were things she couldn't possibly know, things about the past, the present, or future, cryptic but unswervingly accurate, and her excitement would build as she approached some point of epiphany -

And then she would collapse into violent seizures. Seconds, sometimes minutes. Once she was unconscious for four hours. That was when their foster parents had finally called Jericho.

Alex had told Lana as much of this as he could bear to tell. Now he held Lana close, leaning on her for support as much as he was supporting her.

"It's okay, Andrea," he said. "Do you have something to tell us?"

[Andrea Kaine]

Andrea stared at Lana in silence. Her breath was still slow and steady, like a sleeping person. After three breaths, she spoke.

"Moonlight. The golden light of the harvest moon. The earth is your mother. Your father..."

Her eyebrows knit together as if in concentration, and she squinted as if she were looking into a great light.

"You reflect your father."

[Svetlana Ustinov]

Lana lightly leaned against the bed, freeing one hand from Andrea's to wind around Alex's waist. The air felt suddenly thick even as the sun slipped behind a whisp of a cloud, dimming the light in the room for several moments. It was...portentous, to put it mildly. Perhaps forbidding?

The blonde blinked, growing perfectly still and forgetting to breathe as Andrea spoke. First, truth, regarding her mother, and the golden light of the harvest moon she was born under. But then Andrea paused, gazing at her as if she were glowing to brightly to see properly, stopped in midsentence about her father.

Someone she tried very hard not to think about as fear slid down her spine and made her shiver.

"You reflect your father."

Fingers tightened their hold on Alex's t-shirt at his waist, as tension rose to engulf her slender frame. "But that...that's not possible. I'm nothing like my father...not even my gifts are similar. At all. I...I'm not...like him. I cannot reflect him..." she whispered, chestnut eyes wide as the golden fleck of her irises began to shimmer.

The sun returned from its sojourn behind the cloud, filling the room with its brilliance and warmth, but unable to allay the fear that tightened Lana's throat.

[Alex Kaine]

When Andrea entered one of her trances, you never knew what she was going to say. It just happened. And then you had to figure out what to do with it.

Alex rubbed his hand up and down Lana's arm. "Lana, Lana, it's okay," he said. "A lot of the things Andrea says don't make sense to me, either. Don't worry about it."

But it bothered him more than it should have that Andrea had chosen that subject - no, whatever was driving her mutation right now chose it. She was only trying to put words to what she was seeing.

"Andrea, I... look, you know I don't like to ask you things when you're in a trance. Lana hasn't been able to get in touch with her little brother in St. Petersburg. Do you know anything about him?"