Gifted Read Free Page B

study.”
    “Perhaps. However, I don’t believe Doctor McCoy would be objective about
my
…objective. Given his condition. He seems mostly preoccupied with fully understanding the mechanics of the mutant gene. Laudable, certainly, but that’s a far cry from wanting to
do
something about it.”
    “And it’s that ‘something’ that concerns me,” said Rao. “Understand this: If I take advantage of this work…if I take it to its logical conclusion—no one is to be hurt.”
    “Are these
your
strings, then?” He didn’t sound annoyed; indeed, he came across as slightly amused.
    She nodded. “Whatever your feelings about mutants, I will not be a party to murder.”
    “Why, Doctor,” he said chidingly, “I have just this day done the opposite. I have resuscitated a mutant your Earth-based science thought deceased.”
    19 “
What?
”
    A slight rise and fall of his shoulders, as if this pronouncement were a casual accomplishment that he performed every day. “I understand your mistrust. In point of fact, I respect it. But there are millions of lives at stake and my only interest is in saving them. I don’t believe you can turn your back on that opportunity.”
    She knew that he was right. She knew she couldn’t, in fact, turn away from it. But that didn’t mean she had to go into it blind, either. Boldly she came around the table and stepped right up to him. “Come into the light,” she said. “I’m tired of this cloak-and-dagger nonsense.”
    “As you wish,” he said, and did so.
    She gasped as the light fell upon him. It took her long seconds to fully process who and what she was looking at.
    Finally she found words:
    “Is this where you say, ‘Take me to your leaders?’”
    “I’ve already been to your leaders,” he said, and produced a final file that he seemed to have plucked out of nowhere. “And they gave me this.”
    She tentatively took the folder from him and squinted in the dimness at the name on the upper tab.
    “Tildie Soames? Who’s Tildie Soames?”
    She flipped open the file and started reading. With each sentence she became more horrified, more distressed. The police reports, the psychiatric profiles, and the pictures, oh dear lord, the pictures filled with what was essentially a crime scene, blood and gore spattered everywhere. What must those people have felt when they died? What must they have thought? They couldn’t have had the slightest comprehension of what was happening to them, and the girl, God in heaven, 20 the girl. It was astounding that she was something other than a complete basket case, curled up in the corner of a room having gone totally fetal.
    “Right now, as we speak,” said this strange being who had just dropped into her life, “little Tildie is in a small, dark room. Isolated, talking to no one, fearing everything including, most particularly, herself. She’s the poster girl for post-traumatic stress disorder. She has no human contact because no human will get near her, for fear of ending up the way her father and mother did. That’s no way for anyone to live, much less a child. And as we both know, Doctor Rao,” and he showed what passed for teeth in his massive mouth, “we must think of the children.”

I was a child.
    At the time I deluded myself into thinking I was an adult. Kitty Pryde, the adult. It wasn’t all that tough to feel that way when I was with kids back in “normal” school. They were so freaking immature. Like that day when all the kids got together and everywhere I turned, they said, “Hello, Kitty” in these really annoying nasal voices. And all of them—girls, boys, jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, everybody—were wearing “Hello Kitty” shirts with that stupid-ass cat emblazoned on it in pink and white. And I opened my locker and—how they cracked it, I don’t know—about a hundred Hello Kitty dolls fell out. And I felt so embarrassed and so frustrated 21 and so stupid. I hated my name, I hated my stupid hair, I hated