Nurse Margaret Schmidt remembered what had happened to the Church of Humanity council with perfect clarity. So well, in fact, that she couldn't put the gruesome images out of her head even when she slept. Every night after the incident she dreamed the scene over and over again- the dark Darren King grinning with fangs in his mouth, malice in his eyes, and blood dripping down his chin- trying to run- the pain in her legs that didn't go away, even when she woke up again- the legs that were no longer there.

She also remembered the mysterious creature. She had watched him touch the others, uncomprehending in her pain. She hadn't realized that he was healing them. He had “healed” her too. She hated him for it. She would have been better off dead- without the horrifying memories- without the phantom pains from her non-existent extremities- better off without the imperfect body. She would have preferred to be a corpse than to be a cripple.

Not only her body was in ruins, but so was her life. Her husband left, no longer able to stand the sight of her imperfect body, her church was in shambles- torn apart by controversy and fear, even her former career as a nurse was no longer an option. She had even earned an insulting nickname, that she only heard whispered behind her back: Peg-leg Meg. Even her old nickname, Peggy, had a ring of insult to it when she heard other nurses address her. Like everything about this broken life, she hated it.

After the slaughter, she and Rick, the only two who had been conscious throughout the proceedings, had told the others what happened. Rick, the only member of the council who had survived the encounter with nothing but mental scars, had somehow deluded himself into thinking that mutants were not all that bad after all. A mutant had attacked them, a mutant had “saved” half of them. Somehow this added up to mutants being good? It didn't make sense, yet somehow other council members and church members had believed him. Both Gus and Paula were won over by Rick's version of the story. Gus now believed that he owed his life to mutants. Even Paula, who no longer owned a set of vocal chords, was finding ways to sing their praises. They were even comparing the white mutant to the savior: complete bullsh*t.

Gus. Rick. Paula. They were all so stupid. The idiots were tearing the church apart from the inside. Some members were leaving out of fear that they would be attacked next. Worse were the blasphemers who left because they had “seen the light” and now believed that mutants were good, helpful, misunderstood, or “just like humans”. Couldn't they see that God had made humans perfect from the very beginning? Evolution didn't exist. Mutants were not human. They were something else entirely- demons. All of them. And now their evil was spreading through the purest of churches. Was nothing holy anymore?

She hated the white, horned, thing even more than the dark man that had come to slaughter the council. Darren King would have given her death, sweet, simple, and relatively short. If she ever got the chance, she would return the favor. The other, the unnamed monster with the spiral horn on his head had given her a broken life, full of pain, misery, and suffering, and she fully intended to return that favor as well.

He couldn't bring people back from the dead. He couldn't reattach her legs before healing over the stumps and erasing any possibility that she would be whole again. He couldn't even save himself. The mutant “savior” was currently unconscious in the bowels of St. Job's Hospital, at the mercy of Dr. Edward Shaw.

Margaret had first met the doctor her first day of working at St. Job's, the second largest hospital in New York City. He had introduced her to the church of humanity, which had tendrils of control deeply rooted in the hospital. Together they had risen through the ranks of the church and gained influential positions in the hospital. Together they had used the hospital's data banks to help the authorities catch many a mutant that didn't voluntarily register at the introduction of the new law. Together they had survived the mutant attack on the counsel and together they were bringing their own form of justice to the horned mutant in the basement of the hospital spending time each day testing the limits of his healing abilities, pushing, to see how far they could go before he would break.

Supreme Court Justice Johnathan Loxley was waiting until he heard the last people leave the courtroom before he would call to Anders to help him to the car. He hated when others could see how helpless he had become- now that hew couldn't see himself. As he listened to the defendants, the prosecutors, the attorneys, and his fellow supreme court justices file out of the room after another long day debating the rights of mutants with regard to the constitution, he meditated on the day's proceedings.

Things were not going well for either Church of Humanity, nor for the Mutant Registration Law. The mutant attack on the council had not only divided the church against itself, but it thrown off the balance of the church's power over the supreme court. Of the nine justices, three had been council members, himself included. Of the other two, Arnold had been killed in the massacre and Gus had unfortunately been “saved”. John wished that it had been Gus who'd had his throat torn out. He'd been so close to dying, but that damned mutant had healed him again. Now the idiot thought he owed his life to mutant kind and helping their cause in order to repay his debt. The combination of a new judge to replace Arnold and Gus' new found “calling” had turned the balance in favor of the mutants and traitors to humanity. It was so disgusting to hear the filth that Gus spewed every day that John felt like spilling his guts- Gus' that was- all over again. The case was going badly, and it seemed that soon it would spell the end of the Mutant Registration Law. So much effort wasted.

Finally the last sounds of life had left the courtroom and John could make his exit privately.

“Anders, I am ready to leave.”

“Yes, sir. Where would you like to go? Home?”

John gramaced. Home. Where his teenage daughter would no doubt hound him about “accepting new realities” and how he should “embrace the new millennium”. Why had he raised her to be an independent thinker? That had been a mistake.

“No,” he finally responded, “To the hospital.” He wanted to check in with Shaw about the specimen. Privately he wished he could still watch the doctor work. Happier times, happier memories.

Dr. Edward Shaw threw his dirtied gloves into the sanitary disposal receptical. One of the assistant surgeons- Jacob, an overzealous young doctor barely out of medical school- clapped Edward on the back enthusiastically. “You've still got it doctor! It's good to have you back in surgery- you know- holding the knife rather than under it!”

Edward just grunted. He couldn't do much else, since his jaw was still wired shut, but he wouldn't have answered much differently even if that had not been the case. He was still healing, but that wouldn't keep him out of commission. He was a man of action, not of words. Even the three weeks he had been forced to rest after the surgery to reattach his jaw had been torture.

Jacob, unsure of how to interpret his reply, was still grinning stupidly, his face mask dangling around his neck. “Anyways, have a great evening at home doc!”

Edward grunted again noncommittally and removed his own face mask revealing the jagged scar that started at each corner of his mouth and traveled to the back f his jaw and curved down to meet under his chin, near his throat. The mask rubbed uncomfortably against the healing skin. He would have a pleasant evening, but it wouldn't be at his home; he was going to spend his free time working on the specimen.

When he could be certain that he would have the elevator to himself, Edward pressed the down button. When the elevator arrived, he inserted his key in the special operations key hole and turned it to the left, ensuring that the elevator would only stop at the floor he specified. Next, Shaw typed in his access code and was on his way down to the lower levels of the basement and the location of his private and discrete laboratory.

*ding*

Peggy and John were waiting for him when the elevator door opened again, chatting about the state of the church. The doctor unlocked the door to the lab, and went straight to check the vital signs of the mutant and record them.

“Normal,” the nurse told the justice. “Fascinating, considering the circumstances. It's healing ability is quite remarkable. No matter what, it heals again. It had a broken neck when we first brought it here; that healed in a bout a week, which was incredible enough, but it's healing has gotten faster since then. It may have used up a great deal of its energy during the attack. The healing speed seems to have leveled out now, at about two hours to heal a broken neck.

It also seems to have a never ending supply of blood. And the blood itself has very interesting properties. The plasma is more of a silver color than the normal amber, which gives the blood an iridescent look. It neutralizes toxins and drugs quickly, and even viruses have had no effect on blood samples.”

Edward nodded and continued his work silently. There were so many experiments he wanted to try on this remarkable specimen. So far he had already measured how fast it could heal from various wounds, and had even discovered that it could regenerate missing body parts, as was evidenced by freakish white lion's tail that had already regained half of its original length.

Shaw had monitored the specimen's brain throughout the experiments and had been delighted to discover that the specimen could still feel pain despite the remarkable healing abilities. He had also discovered a negative correlation between the level consciousness and the amount of healing that was needed. After that discovery it had been easy to make sure the specimen remained unconscious, without using anesthetics.

The corners of Edward's mouth twitched painfully as he considered which experiment he would try next. Drowning? Fire? What exactly could this freak live through? The doctor figured that the specimen could probably occupy his attention for years before he finished figuring out exactly what made it tick.

His painful smile reminded him of another oddity about the creature. His own healing had sped up since he started working with the mutant. Whenever he brushed against the specimen's skin or touched it, his own jaw tingled with a icy fire, as if the mutant's cells recognized that it hadn't finished its job. Edward wished he could experiment with letting it heal completely, but it would be too noticeable. He was also curious to see if he could do something about the nurse's legs, but Peggy refused to touch the thing that lay restrained on the cold table.

Perhaps for his next experiment, he would see how well the freak could heal when it was awake. Yes, that thought made him happy, if such a word could be attributed to the gruff doctor. He readied a syringe filled with adrenaline and prepared to inject it into the mutant. Perhaps a little jump start would wake it up.

Sebastian was floating. His conscious and subconscious were merged. He was dimly aware of bright lights shining through his eyelids, and of cold metal against his skin, and a needle in his arm. His thoughts, though, were thousands of miles and thousands of years away.


He had traveled so far in his lifetime. He was searching for a place to call his own, but hadn't found a place to truly call his own since Troy had burned down. After years of wandering, he had come to realize that home was were his heart was- with his love. If only he could find her, she would be so old by now. As old as he was himself, and he was feeling his age in every joint. He saw it in his reflection, in his long white beard and papery, wrinkled skin.

He was stopping for a night at a farmer's house for the hundredth time, when he saw her. He could still remember the feeling of hope and happiness when he saw her face. He felt young again, as if he could stand up and dance. The young girl looked just like Syrinx had as a little girl.

“Girl,” he called her over from her task of minding the hearth, “Do you know a lady named Syrinx?”

The girl nodded shyly, but retreated to stand behind a dark haired woman, and hid most of her face behind the woman's back. One of Syrinx' eyes peeked out at him, sparkling like they always had, so many years ago.

The dark haired woman answered for her daughter, “Syrinx was my grandmother. She died a few years ago.”

Sebastian nodded, “Thank you for telling me.” He had been prepared for her answer, he had almost expected it after all of these years. He no longer needed to continue his search. The light feeling of hope abandoned him, leaving a gaping hole somewhere in his chest.

--

It was here that his love was buried, and here he would wait to be buried beside her. He probably wouldn't need to wait long, he could feel his body failing. He was happy. He would be with her again soon, he only needed to wait. The pain of his body would soon fade away with the pain in his heart. He would be with her again, in death as they couldn't be together in life.

He wondered what it was like to die, and what the after life would be like. The stories of the underworld didn't help him, he knew they were fictional. Hades had died and left behind nothing but myths about his shadowy realms and a trace of the fear of death in the hearts of the Greeks.

The sun shone warm on his head, and the smell of grass was sweet. The swaying of reeds in the wind reminded him of a day long ago, very similar to this one, before he had been separated from his childhood friend, before he had bloodied his hands in battle, before he had grown up and grown old. It was a good day to die.

He was growing tired. He lay down in the grass. The sun shone through his eyelids and warmed his face. He would either sleep for a few minutes or forever. In the end it wouldn't make much of a difference.

He lay with his eyes closed over the grave of his love, waiting to die. He had lived a long life and everyone he had known was gone. He spent so many years wandering, searching, that he hadn't really made any other ties to this life. He was all alone, and ready to end his lonliness.

His body was worn down, frail and weak. His skin felt brittle and his joints ached with every movement. Even his healing ability could not stop the pains of growing old; the pain was a part of his old body and there was no healing it away. Even his tail hurt with every twitch. He was ready to end his pain.

He dozed on and off. The sun felt good on his ancient skin. He always seemed to be cold, even in the summer, but now, for once, he felt warm. If he lay perfectly still, he couldn't even feel the pain in his joints. The warmth of the sunlight had spread through his body. He felt better than he had in years, just lying there on the grass in the sunlight. He didn't want to move, lest he invite the pain back. If only he could make this feeling last a little longer.

He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the grass. He could even smell the blossoms on the olive tree nearby. They smelled delicious. The whole world seemed so fresh.

He opened his eyes. It was like opening his eyes for the first time. The sunlight was strong, but after a few moments of blinking, his eyes adjusted. Had the grass been that vivid green color before he fell asleep? Had the sky been that blue ever before in his lifetime? And red! Those flowers at the base of the tree were so very red. They were very small flowers, but their bright hue more than made up for their diminutive size. He felt the urge to see them up close; they looked scrumptious.

He rolled to his side and pushed against the ground to gain the leverage he needed to stand. For some reason his hands didn't want to obey him, and he ended up sprawling on the ground face first. It didn't hurt as much as he had expected. In fact, even after moving, his joints felt pain free. He stared down at his front hooves, not recognizing them and not understanding why he didn't recognize them.

In a moment he was ready to try again. This time he had more success pushing off the ground with his unsteady legs and he was able to wobble over to the flowers. They looked good enough to eat, but he sensed that he wouldn't be able to digest them. What he really was craving was milk, something he hadn't had since he had been a goatherd so many years before. He heard the sound of a whinny from off to his left. It was an interesting sound, and he adjusted his ear accordingly to be better able to hear it. Wobbling on his unsteady legs, he made his way closer to the sound.

Sebastian opened his eyes and blinked in the harsh fluorescent lights.

“Oh look, it's awake,” sneered a woman's voice. He tried to turn to look at the speaker, but he was restrained somehow and couldn't turn far enough to see her. “Remember me?” questioned the woman without legs as she maneuvered her wheel chair into Sebastian's range of view.

Sebastian's brain struggled to recall the correct memories. He'd spent a long time living in memories of the past before suddenly being jerked back to the present again, “Vous etes...” His voice cracked at first, unused to speaking after a long period of disuse. He cleared his throat. English, she was speaking English. “You are from the Church. I'm glad to see you are alright.”

The woman laughed, a barking sound lacking in mirth, “Glad? I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you. You should have just let him kill me! Soon you'll wish you...”

“Peggy,” the blind justice placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and stood behind her, “conversing with him is unnecessary. He's just a freak.”

The woman, Peggy, “hmph”ed in response and repositioned her chair, as if Sebastian were some sort of show she was going to watch and the blind man had changed the channel to some other station. “Oh, just get on with it Ed,” she snapped. “We don't have all night. At least, you and John have to get some sleep before work tomorrow or you'll both be vicious crabs tomorrow.”

Sebastian's mind was still adjusting to thinking in English again. Was she talking about shape shifters?

Then, the person named Ed, whom Sebastian could not see from his vantage point, threw a switch that released 40,000 volts of electricity through Sebastian's body.

Lightning bolts twined themselves around the boy's arms and legs and coursed through his bones. Every part of him felt like it was on fire. Heat coursed through his veins in random patterns. Heat and cold struggled in a sizzling battle as his body fought to heal electrical burns as they occurred. He wasn't sure if he was screaming or not. He wasn't even sure if he could breathe.

“Stop it, brother. He's just a boy.”

“Stop being such a worrier, Earthshaker. He's a healer, and he's got to learn his lesson,” the lightning wielder flicked his wrist and the bolts jumped back into his finger tips.

The boy collapsed to the ground gasping for breath. His body continued to spasm. Burning cold energy seared him from within, his body's natural defenses struggling to repair the damage done to cells and neural pathways.

The lightning wielder strode over to the boy and crouched down, lifting his head up by the hair and forcing him to meet his gaze. The boy was breathing rapidly and his left eye twitched.

“Let's try this again,” the lightning user smiled, his brilliant white teeth flashing. “What are you,” he demanded.

“A child of the Blood, s-sir.”

“And what do you do when I order you to do something?”

“I obey, sir.”

His hand still clutched in the boy's hair, the lightning user jerked the boy's head toward a man who was cowering on the ground not far away. “That pathetic man broke his oaths. He will now pay for his actions.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the boy, still shaking, as the Thunderer handed him a sharpened knife.

The Earthshaker snorted in disgust at his brother's behavior and strode off.

Edward switched of the electricity and administered a second dose of adrenaline to the specimen.

“Well, that was kind of disappointing. He hardly screamed at all before he fainted,” sneered Margaret.

Edward just grunted and wrote the appropriate numbers down on his clipboard.

Sebastian's eyes remained closed. His fingers were still twitching. His entire body tingled with cold. His breath was shaky, but he was still breathing and his heart was beating still, or again.

“Well, as much fun as this has been, I should be heading out. As much as I don't want to, I must return to work tomorrow. The Erickson case is becoming quite troublesome.”

Margaret nodded sympathetically, “I believe I should call it a night as well. See you tomorrow, Ed.” The doctor just nodded and continued to check various monitors and record his findings. He was pleased with the evening's work.

All was quiet in the secret laboratory of Dr. Edward Shaw in the bowels of St. Job’s Hospital. The doctor himself was softly snoring hunched over his desk, all tuckered out after poking, prodding, and electrocuting his latest science experiment and spending several hours happily analyzing the results.

Sebastian was quite awake, having had plenty of sleep recently as well as several types of physical and chemical energy coursing through his body earlier that evening. His body had fairly efficiently repaired the damage from the electricity, but the adrenaline, being a substance natural to his body, was taking its sweet time wearing off.

Sebastian’s muscles were sore from the long period of time he had spent in the same position. Metal restraints held each of his limbs in place and bit into his skin. For some reason, his tail was still stinging with icy healing energy that seemed out of place. Sebastian shook the thought out of his head and focused on listening to the doctor’s snores.

The man called Ed had been snoring for at least 20 minutes now. Sebastian figured it was time to leave. He wasn’t going to take the abuse lying down, at least not now that he was awake. In his gradual way, Sebastian began to shift to a younger – and smaller – version of himself. The years melted off of him, and within a few minutes his hands and feet were small enough to slip out of the metal restraints that had held him to the cold metal table. With his newly liberated hands, Sebastian pulled off the sticky pads that were monitoring his various bodily functions. The heart monitor flat lined and emitted a quiet, but steady beeeeeep. Luckily the doctor did not wake up.

Sebastian peered over the edge of the table, which now seemed much taller than it had been before. Slowly, he put his feet over the edge and slid as far down as he could, letting himself drop the last 30 cm to the floor. He landed softly on bare feet and glanced around the darkened lab with wide eyes. It seemed darker and creepier now. The only light came from the computer monitor and the small lights on strange machines whose purpose Sebastian could only guess.

Finally, after nervously taking the keys from the snoring doctor’s belt, Sebastian had managed to make it out the locked laboratory and to the elevator. No special code was required to ascend from the basement, and Sebastian soon found himself headed toward the ground floor.

As he waited for the elevator to reach its destination, Sebastian examined himself in the full-length mirror that made up the back wall of the elevator. Peering back at him from the mirror with wide, innocent, blue eyes was the face of a pale eight-year-old boy. His white hair was unkempt, and his bangs kept falling in front of his eyes. For once, Sebastian’s chin lacked any sort of facial hair. In the center of his forehead was the barest beginning of a white spiral horn, barely 2 cm long. His body was, as usual, without scars. Sebastian spun around. He’d need to pick up some clothes somewhere. It wouldn’t do to run around as a naked child, not in this day and age. Then he noticed something amiss.

My tail!

Sebastian was still staring with shock at the remains of his once magnificent unicorn tail (which is like a lion’s tail, only better, because it is pure white), when the elevator doors opened on the main lobby of what appeared to be a hospital. The eight-year-old blinked away the moisture that had built up in his eyes due to the discovery of his now diminutive tail and glanced around. There was a front desk, chairs set up in rows, and a directory pointing out the way to the emergency room, the intensive care unit, and other hospital wards. The front lobby was quite dark at this time of night; all the action would be down in the emergency room so late in the evening.

Now out of immediate danger, Sebastian was suddenly curious to explore. He’d never been in a modern hospital before, not usually having a need for doctors. He had only ever seen the inside of hospitals on the doctor shows with which Americans seemed to be so obsessed. Sebastian was tempted to go visit the maternity ward and see the brand new babies. He loved babies. Or maybe there would be clothes that would fit him in the children’s ward. He turned in the direction indicated by the map on the wall, but then heard voices coming down the hall. Quickly, Sebastian ducked behind the lobby’s impressive fish tank just before two men in pale green scrubs walked by. One held a clipboard and freshly sharpened wooden pencil. The other was using a wooden walking cane.

“I don’t know how Antonescue expects us to find him in this huge place. He could be anywhere,” complained the tall, broad shouldered, brown haired doctor with a hawk like nose, whose name tag read Dr. Percy Ferramouth. He tapped the eraser of his pencil impatiently on his clipboard.

“He could not be anywhere,” reasoned his companion, a thin man with a pony tail and glasses, whose nametag read Dr. Edward Sivuteeth IV, “for example, we are highly unlikely to find him in either the maternity or the children’s wards. More likely, we will find him in some secret wing or basement laboratory. This isn’t exactly a mutant friendly hospital.”

“Can’t we just ask where he is at the front desk, like normal people?”

Dr. Edward Sivuteeth tapped his wooden walking cane thoughtfully on the floor, “Do you really think that would work?”

The voices faded away as the footsteps carried the two men past Sebastian’s hiding place and down the hallway. The young unicorn boy shakily emerged from behind the fish tank and hurried toward the front door. Scary men were looking for him. Sightseeing probably wasn’t the best idea in the world. Though, neither was wandering around in the middle of the night as a child with no clothes, identification, or money and with half a tail in the biggest city in the first country ever to have made it illegal to be a mutant.

Nigel Banks was sitting in a black jeep across from the front doors of the hospital, headset resting on his ears, a cream soda bottle in his hand, eyes darting back and forth between the front door and various screens that let him see what the security guards inside the hospital were seeing.

Percy had insisted that it was Nigel’s turn to do surveillance because Nigel “always got to have all the fun” on these missions. Nigel didn’t mind doing surveillance in the least. All he had to do was sit in the jeep, sip his cream soda, and watch the monitors to see if anything interesting was happening. It was a relaxing day on the job, which almost never happened in Nigel’s line of work. A normal night had Nigel chasing down shadow jumping intruders or getting chased down by suckling vampires. Surveillance was nice for a change.

It was while he was feeding a loop to the main lobby security cameras to keep the unknown surgeons from being noticed that Nigel himself noticed something peculiar: a small white boy darting out from behind the fish tank toward the front door.

Nigel chuckled.

--

Dr. Percy Ferramouth was about to walk through the door into the urgent care unit when his progress forward was abruptly halted by a hand grabbing the collar of his shirt from behind.

“What gives?” he hissed at his partner.

“He’s got him,” Dr. Edward Sivuteeth IV informed him, tapping the tiny microphone in his right ear knowingly.

Percy’s eyebrows furrowed as he followed Edward back to the lobby again, “How does he do that? He was on surveillance.”

The doctor with the cane shrugged, “He’s Nigel Banks.”

--
(Continued in Immortal Vendetta.)