Miracle Man
January 15, 2005
Elise opened the safe in the closet of her parents’ New York City apartment. She needed her birth certificate to renew her passport, which had expired a couple of years ago. The last time she had gotten it renewed had been when she was nineteen, and her mother had done the paperwork for her. Too old for that now, she thought wistfully. It was a lot of paperwork. No wonder I waited so long. Has it really been over two years since I’ve been out of the country? Well no. But that time had been business, and she had hardly had time to bother with such niceties as customs and passports.
Elise had seen her birth certificate before, of course. She had flipped over it while looking for other papers in the safe. It was right there in the same pile as her parents’ certificates. This time, however, she had to read it, to make sure she didn’t grab the wrong one. And she noticed something.
The use of her mother’s surname when she usually used her father’s was just odd enough to make her look twice. Although she knew it was her legal surname, she was always startled to see it in print; she had always thought of herself as a Kent. The next thing she read, though, was more than odd. Her parents were not listed as Lois Lane and Clark Kent. Instead, it read Mother: Sandra Lane, Father: Unknown.
January 27, 2005
Waiting in line has to be the most boring thing ever, Elise thought. She looked at her watch. It was a good thing they’d arrived at the airport early. They were going to be in line for a very long time.
Mike poked her.
“What?”
He nodded at something across the room. She glanced over and saw several cops congregating.
“Wonder what’s up,” he said.
“I hope you’re not asking me. Not only could no normal human hear a thing they’re saying, eavesdropping is morally wrong.”
He just smiled and raised an eyebrow. She sighed and shook her head, but smiled back anyway.
When she shifted her attention to the cops, though, the smile faded, replaced by a look of concern. Not wanting to repeat what she had heard out loud, she slipped her arms around his shoulders, using the embrace as an excuse to bring her lips to his ear.
"Bomb threat," she murmured. "Maybe terrorists."
"Are you going to play the hero?" he asked, just as quietly.
"Don't think so. Sounds like they think they've already got it under control. They haven’t even evacuated the building."
One of the things she had learned from her mother - not her father, oddly enough - was only to meddle when needed; if you offer help to someone at their wit's end, they'll think you're a saint, if you offer help to someone who's perfectly capable of handling it, they'll think you're a meddling, patronizing busybody.
later...
It happened when Mike was watching the carry-on baggage, while Elise was in the washroom. The man confronting the cops looked young to Mike. Too young to be a killer, a terrorist. But then he realized, how old do you have to be to die for what you believe in? The young man opened his jacket. The bomb was strapped to his chest, and the message to the cops was clear: if you shoot me, I'll blow up. Mike didn't see his life flash before his eyes, but in that moment of hesitation, before all hell had a chance to break loose, the world did seem to shift into a sharper focus. What do I believe in? The answer was clear. Freedom, and the sanctity of human life.
Neither the cops nor the young man with the bomb noticed him moving closer, staying on the balls of his feet. But Mike noticed the bomber was also on the balls of his feet, one hand at chest height. He was going to make a break for it, try to get past the cops into the crowd to set the bomb off. Mike made his own break, running straight at the bomber. Sorry, El. The bomber noticed him, moved his hand to the trigger on his chest. I guess I'm the hero this time. Mike jumped at the bomber, catching him in a bear hug as the bomb went off.
January 28, 2005
Mike groaned, not wanting to look.
"How many?"
"A lot," admitted Elise. "I didn't bother counting."
"I hate reporters."
"Hey, watch who you're talking to!" retorted Elise, pretending to take offense.
"You're not a reporter. You're a photographer."
Elise smiled and squeezed his hand.
"You've got to admit, it's a news-worthy story."
"Then how come it's only the tabloids who've shown up?"
"'Cuz the serious reporters have more manners." Abruptly she became serious. "Do you mind if I let someone in? He's a friend, and he's willing to help me get you out of here."
Mike looked at her askance. "A tabloid reporter?"
"No. A photographer."
Mike smiled ruefully. "I guess I really can't object then, can I."
Elise gave his hand one last squeeze and got up to open the hospital room door. Several reporters were hanging around in the hallway. More were down at the water cooler at the end of the hallway. Yet more would be down at the nurse's station, or the reception desk, or tailing the doctor's out to the parking lot. Someone was talking on his cell phone, right under the prominent "NO CELL PHONES" sign. The moment Elise opened the door, however, all attention was on her, all previous conversations forgotten.
"No comment," she told them flatly, before they even had time to decide which question to ask. She pointed to a young man with a camera. "Peter. Come in."
As soon as he was in, she shut the door against the collective groan of those still outside, and their ensuing babble of conversation.
Elise returned to the chair she had just vacated. Peter pulled up another and straddled it. Elise introduced them.
"Mike, this is Peter Parker. He's a photographer with the Daily Bugle. Peter, this is Michael Stenner, this week's Miracle Man."
Mike rolled his eyes. "So how are you going to help get me out? or am I missing something completely obvious because I don't watch enough spy movies?"
Peter turned to Elise. "What did you tell him?"
"Nothing." She shrugged.
"Does he know about you?"
"You mean the family business? Of course. Looks like he's joining it, too."
"You mean heroing?" interrupted Mike.
"Yeah," replied Peter. "I'm in the business too."
"All right. Do we have a plan?"
"Try this on for size. I take you out the window. After we've put a comfortable distance between us and here, Elise goes and gets you officially checked out. The reporters will try to blockade the hospital to catch you on the way out, but we'll already be gone."
"How come I always get stuck with the paperwork?" asked Elise. When Peter would have answered, Elise waved him off. "I know, I know."
"Sounds good then," said Mike, eagerly getting out of bed. "Do you fly, or what?"
"Do I look like her dad?"
Elise shot him a dirty look.
Peter went behind the privacy curtain, and Elise walked over to look out the window. It looked clear. No window washers, no one leaning out the window of the building opposite, no balloons or banners to draw anyone's gaze upward. Luckily, no reporters directly below the window, for their gaze would have been drawn upwards anyway.
Spider-man stepped out from behind the curtain. He tossed Peter's street clothes to Mike. "Here. We should be close enough to the same size."
"What?" Mike looked confused, then looked down at his hospital gown. "Oh, right. Thanks." Then he went behind the curtain to change.
"Where to do want me to take him?" Spider-man asked Elise.
"The Mansion. I'd like the Beast or Jean to take a look at him."
January 29, 2005
"We just have two more tests to run, and then you can go for dinner." Hank told Mike, who was sitting on a bed in the X-men's infirmary, looking exhausted. "Elise," he continued, "Would you rather stay to hear what we discovered about you, or would you rather wait until after dinner?"
"Oh, I'll stick around," replied Elise, "I will definitely stick around."
Something on the other side of the room began beeping. Hank ran his fingers through his fur and went to go figure out what it was. He returned with a small Geiger counter, which continued to beep intermittently.
"What's up?"
"It appears," he replied, "that your boyfriend is emitting gamma waves."
"He wasn't before." She peered over his shoulder at the machine. "They checked."
"Most unusual. Would you take him down to the Danger Room? At present levels, he is not particularly dangerous, but the output may increase."
"Sure. Can we take that?"
"I would appreciate it if you would." Hank turned on the "record" feature of the counter, and handed it to her.
"What's the Danger Room?" Mike asked, as Elise led him down the hall.
"It's the X-men's training facility. More to the immediate point, it's radiation shielded."
"Training facility? Why would a glorified gymnasium be radiation shielded?"
"More like glorified gymnasium-slash-dojo-slash-shooting arcade. And when Cannonball and Bishop and Cyclops start to let loose, you need all the shielding you can get."
later...
Elise looked blankly at the test results spread in front of her. They didn't make sense, and she told as much to Hank and Jean. Jean looked over at her curiously.
"I mean, the genetic tests show definitely human, definitely mutant. But I know what I can do, and I know that it's exactly... " She paused to reorganize her thoughts. "The old theory, that the shape a mutant's abilities take is determined by personality and environment, would have explained this fine. But you two helped prove that it's the innate mutant abilities that shape personality, and help determine how a mutant will influence the environment around him- or herself. So how come I ended up with the exact same range of powers as my dad? What are the chances of that?"
It was Hank who answered. "There is no need to suppose that you are endowed with exactly the same abilities as your father, only that you were able to emphasize certain aspects of those abilities in order to mimic your father's powers."
"So what are my unemphasized powers?"
"As near as we can tell," replied Jean, "Telekinesis, improved reflexes and improved senses, especially hearing and vision."
Elise thought about that. Flight from telekinesis. Laser vision and cooling breath, mimicked by telekinesis as well. Faster than a speeding bullet... increased reflexes, a bit of telekinesis... okay. She'd never been quite that fast, anyway. Not running or flying, that is, though she could pick a bullet out of the air if it was coming straight at her. Increased strength could easily be chalked up to telekinesis. Improved vision and hearing, okay, but...
"What about the x-ray vision?"
"Telekinesis," replied Jean.
Elise shook her head skeptically. "How do you figure that?"
"I could be wrong, because I've made an assumption about how you actually perceive things," began Jean. "I can affect something with my telepathy even if I can't see it, but when I do that, I can 'feel' what I'm doing. You once mentioned that you couldn't see things in color when you used your x-ray vision. I'm not entirely sure you actually see them at all."
Elise thought about that, sorting through memories, reasoning it out. Eventually she nodded. It fit. So, maybe she wasn’t Superman’s daughter. But from the numbers on these sheets, she was one hell of a powerful telekinetic.
January 30
Elise led Mike into the bedroom that had been set up for him.
“Sorry about leaving you in the Danger Room overnight, but you were still radiating, and they just now finished getting this set up for us.”
“No problem,” he replied. He had eventually managed to catch some sleep, but since the beeping of the Geiger counter had kept him up half the night, he knew why no-one had suggested he find a more comfortable place to sleep. And he had been given enough blankets and pillows to make himself a comfortable enough nest. “So where were you all night?”
“Not sleeping, that’s for sure.” She shook her head. “Discussing my powers with Doctors Gray and McCoy, discussing your powers with same, plus Bishop and the Professor. Then this morning I was helping get this room set up, after the shipment of lead and everything showed up.”
Mike took a good look around. Soft draperies covered every wall. The ceiling, however, showed only the dull gray of lead.
Elise followed his gaze. “Full inch of lead – ceiling, walls and floor.” She pulled back a corner of the draperies to show the lead beneath. “The curtains were cheaper and easier than replastering the walls over the lead. We tore the carpet up, put down the lead, and put the carpet back on top. We didn’t bother with the ceiling yet.”
He glanced down at the carpet. Where she had pulled aside the corner of the curtains, he could see that they had replaced the baseboards. Probably the only thing holding the carpet down. They probably used something heavier than finishing nails on the baseboards too; something that would hold when they punched it through a full inch of lead. That was probably why the curtains pooled on the floor instead of showing off the baseboards. Or maybe they hadn’t thought of it that way, they had just judged that using the fabric slightly too long was easier than trying to cut it to an exact length. Elise had crossed the room, and he shut the door and followed her. She pointed out a ceiling-height closet that wasn’t covered by the fabric. He took a quick look. Walk-in, sheathed in lead. No surprises.
Elise opened another door. This one lead to an ensuite bathroom. The entire room had been covered in lead, but nothing had been done to hide that fact. However, other than the obviously metallic walls and floor, and a tube of caulking that had been left on the corner of the tub – an old-fashioned one with feet – it did not look like a room that had just been renovated.
Elise gestured at the caulking. “I have to put another coat on that tonight, and then we have to wait 24 hours before we can use the tub, but everything else is in working order.”
“You’ve been busy.”
She shrugged. “I had help. I hope you weren’t too bored this morning.”
“Someone got the Danger Room going with a really easy setup for me.” He smiled ruefully. “Leastways, he said it was an easy setup. So I had a good workout. By the end of it I thought they could probably train the Seals on an obstacle course like that. What was his name? Bob? Bobby?”
“Bobby Drake.” Elise guessed. “Blond guy?”
“Yup.”
Elise nodded. “Actually, they probably couldn’t train the Navy Seals in the Danger Room; it would probably kill them. It’s been designed to push mutants to the limits of their abilities after all, mutants who are pretty much involved in an unofficial war with other mutant groups.” She shrugged and offered a lopsided grin. “So anytime the Danger Room isn’t actually shooting at you, yeah, that’s considered easy.”
Mike grinned back and draped an arm around her shoulders, leading her back into the main bedroom. “I suppose if it was that easy, then I’ve got enough energy left to thank you properly,” he told her, and kissed her.
“Thank me for what?”
“Well,” he told her between kisses, “let’s start with everything, and we’ll see what else I can think of from there.”
February 4
The Beast, Phoenix, Supergirl, and This Week’s Miracle Man —“Please don’t call me that,” he had said, “with my luck, it’ll stick.” — were sitting around a table, discussing the information contained in the report currently spread between them.
To put it less pretentiously, Hank, Jean, Elise and Mike were discussing Mike’s newfound mutant powers.
“The problem is,” Jean was saying, “It’s difficult to find a pattern in a single isolated event.”
“The other problem,” added Hank, “is that we don’t have an accurate number for the amount of radiation you absorbed from the bomb. However, we still were able to derive a reasonably likely hypothesis on the nature of your powers.”
“Wait,” interrupted Mike. “You mentioned genetics. I don’t know anything about genes, but you obviously do, Hank. Can’t you tell what abilities I have from that? I mean, you only mentioned one gene, but doesn’t it take three genes just to define eye color? Wouldn’t it take a bunch more to define a mutant’s ability?”
“One for eye color, three for blood type,” Elise commented.
“One for mutant ability,” added Jean. “It’s just a flag – either you have it, or you don’t. However your abilities are defined, it’s not genetic. It’s not inherited either.”
Mike nodded. “Sorry, Hank, go on.”
“Don’t apologize,” the Beast replied. “That’s what we’re here for – to answer you’re questions.” He paused, then started in on his explanation again. “Because you have the X factor gene, we were able to look at the data from the incident at the airport and the succeeding days as a typical performance of an inborn mutant ability rather than the initiating event causing a mutation or a mutant-like ability.”
Mike decided that, other than the blue fur, it could have been any of his college professors sitting across the table from him.
“Although we can’t claim to have entirely accurate information regarding the amount of radiation you absorbed, the best estimate we could come up with, using computer simulations and all the information we have about the event, was about 15% more radiation than you emitted.”
“Basically,” Jean continued, cutting off the developing lecture on research methods, “You absorbed a considerable amount of alpha, beta and gamma radiation, stored it for two days, and released some 90-odd-percent of the total energy, entirely as gamma radiation, over the course of 20 hours. There’s also the point that there was a physical explosion, which you also seem to have absorbed without ill effect.
“We think this is likely a typical example of your powers. However, we don’t know whether you can control how soon or how quickly you release the radiation. We don’t know whether there’s an upper limit on how much radiation you can absorb.” She shrugged. “There’s a lot we don’t know. You’re welcome to stay here and see if your powers can be trained, but I’m not going to say that you ought to. As it stands, you’re not a danger to yourself or others, and as long as you aren’t in the vicinity of any radioactivity, I can’t see that your mutant powers will ever surface again. If they do, remember we’ve got a lead shielded room for you now.”
Mike couldn’t remember what the difference between the different types of radioactivity was, but in light of the last few things Jean had said, he didn’t think it made much of a difference. Besides, he didn’t feel like advertising his ignorance again, so he merely said, “Thank you, but I hope I won’t have to take you up on that. I think I’ll go home and try to live my normal life, away from terrorists and dirty bombs.”
“Normal?” asked Elise, eyebrows raised. “What, were you planning on dumping me?”
He grinned. “Never.”