To Forgive is to Forget
Chapter 1
by
Hunter
DISCLAIMER: When my plot for world domination comes into effect, I will buy Marvel comics, 20th Century Fox, and all characters attached thereto, but until then, nothing is mine, only the lame characters I make up to play with the X-Gang.
DEDICATION: With major hugs to Leylue, All Great and Powerful Wolverine Lore Protector and Guide. . . without whom, this little South African wouldn't of even have gotten this far. And to Barbara, Tyger, and whoever gets this site next. . . excellent job grrrrls.
Heather sat in her car and stared at the flashing neon open sign of the diner. Her fingers drummed along aimlessly with the tune that she liked on the radio, but whose title she could never remember. Glancing at the Jeep's clock, she turned the radio down in annoyance. It had been 45 minutes since her brother Lloyd had phoned her. It was at least half an hour since then that she had been sitting in the freezing cold waiting for his scrawny ass to turn up. The engine whirled away, pouring heat into the 4x4's cab. Five minutes later an old, rusty, beat-up sedan came tearing into the parking lot churning up snow in it's wake.
"At last!" Heather sighed as she switched off the engine.
The sedan pulled up into a parking space across from her, and Heather smiled as Lloyd almost fell out of his car in his haste to get inside the cheap diner to meet her.
"Never keep a lady waiting, Lloyd."
Heather let another 10 minutes pass before she decided that her brother had waited long enough. Crossing the parking lot herself, she walked to the front door and went in. It was a typical diner; there was a jukebox in the corner, and the whole place smelled like grease. Unfortunately, it also looked like that same grease had moved itself over every surface.
* * * * *
Lloyd was sitting at the last table in the back. He was sipping a steaming cup of coffee. How he drank liquids so hot always amazed her. Walking quickly between the tables, Heather only spoke when she was right on top of him.
"Hello, Lloyd."
She jumped back abruptly as his scalding coffee went flying into the air almost landing on her.
"Jeez, Heather! Don't do that!" Lloyd gasped.
Grabbing the nearest napkin, he began to mop up coffee heading for the table edge. Sliding into a seat across from her brother, Heather laughed as Lloyd got all flustered over the mess.
"Neat freak," she grinned.
"Dork," he retorted.
"Oh, that hurt. Stop worrying about the mess. These places come attached with folks who must earn their keep," Heather said, gesturing towards a sulky middle aged woman who was already headed for the small coffee puddle.
Lloyd was Heather's older brother by two years, but for some strange reason, Heather had always seemed to play the role of older sibling. Lloyd composed himself, and ordered more coffee for the both of them.
"So, what's the big mystery?" Heather said, referring to the excited call Lloyd had made to her cell phone when he asked her to meet him in this dump, "another nuke go missing?"
She burst out laughing again as once more he got all flustered.
"Shut up, idiot!" he said in an irritated whisper, "You know that's not funny!"
Turning around to make sure the sulky waitress was not in hearing range, he continued, "You of all people should know how serious that was."
"Yeah, yeah, but you of all people should know just how much I love to torment you." Heather smiled, and took a sip of her own scalding coffee. She decided she had better be more serious. It wasn't like Lloyd to call her out for brotherly love cups of coffee.
"OK, So tell me what you're so secretive about." she asked, "Is it the office?"
Brother and sister both referred to the military base where Lloyd worked as the 'Office' for discretion and personal safety. Lloyd was just a lab rat in a wing where most governmental projects where carried out, but he was an important lab rat, and moving up the ranks fast. Heather was the only person outside of the base to know just what went on in there, and was very lucky to still be alive with that knowledge.
Needless to say, Heather and Lloyd shared a close relationship. They had confided and relied on each other since childhood. They had formed a bond unlike anyone else Heather knew of. Both of them were mutants. Lloyd had been born different. He had a small tail removed, and some minor cosmetic surgery done when he was an infant. Certain personal aspects, like his tolerance for scalding food and an incredible learning rate, marked him as different, but his mutation was not as evolved as Heather's. She had discovered what she could do when she was 15. Both of their parents had been under the assumption that at least one of their offspring had been born normal. They still thought that, as Heather had never told them about her 'gift.'
Lloyd referred to Heather's gift as hazing. As children, they had spent hours pouring over old 'The Shadow' comic books, and marveled over the similarities of the fictional character's power to 'cloud people's mind,' and Heather's power. To 'haze,' Heather used her mind to change her face to appear as someone else. She could blend into crowds by assuming a face that everyone ignored because she appeared to others as if she belonged there. She could also copy facial features from photographs. Her face didn't actually change, but in people's minds, she appeared to them as the person Heather wanted them to see. Lloyd had picked up 'hazing' from the shimmering light or haze that fell across Heather's features as she changed her face.
Lloyd's mutation, his superior mind, had worked him into the high powered labs of the US government. Heather's had worked her into crime and easy money. She had no complaints.
Lloyd waited for more coffee to arrive while absent-mindedly twirling a knife. He leaned closer to Heather, and conspiratorially glanced around the diner.
"I need you to help me out," he whispered.
Simple enough.
"Help you with what?" She gave him a funny look.
"This."
Lloyd pulled out a small manila envelope from a pocket in his jacket, and slid it across the table. Opening it, Heather scanned the contents. Spider writing and blue diagrams filled the neatly folded tech paper. She flipped through the sheets to find some semblance of order or sense, but finding neither, she said,
"Very pretty Lloyd, but I thought you had already chosen wallpaper?"
"Give me that!"
Lloyd grabbed the paper from her hands. A couple of sheets slid to the table and he quickly snatched it up before the waitress could see. He mumbled a 'thanks' for the coffee as he stuffed the papers back into the envelope. Heather picked up her cup and blew on her fresh coffee.
"You're totally helpless, you know that?" Lloyd said between gulps of his own coffee.
"Well," Heather quipped, "some of us don't come equipped with well endowed cranial cavities, you know." She was beginning to get annoyed with all this cloak and dagger shit. "Can you please just tell me what is going on?"
Lloyd took a deep breath and again moved closer to his sister.
"Since the trouble in the Middle East," he began, "all of our projects have been moved ahead of schedule and given new revision and priority dates. Anything with any destructive power was given the go ahead for development. That was until five months ago when they found something fantastic. At that time, I had landed a position with a team working on stealth weapons and met Doctor Cruin. He used to work for the Canadian government, but came over to us when potential development on his projects were ignored."
"Fiendish Canadians," Heather said sarcastically under her breath.
"Ha, ha. Anyway, he showed me a design for a bomb that is totally unlike anything you have ever heard of. He designed it, and has been working on it for the last twelve years. Now he feels the time is right for it to come into being."
"Not another bomb, Lloyd. You lot obviously haven't learned your lesson yet."
"No, listen to me, Heather. Dropping this bomb, just one, on any enemy power source will leave that power source totally drained. Power plants, factories, turbines, anything that has an energy field. Any kind of power source will be drained for four miles around. I'm not going to go into any technicalities with you."
"Oh, goody," Heather mumbled.
"But I can say that an enemy's power source will be stopped literally in it's tracks. We can just walk in with basically no resistance."
"You're kidding me?"
"Minimal lives lost. Imagine that. War with almost no bloodshed. Simply just walk in, sort out the trouble and leave."
"It's too simple, Lloyd. There's no way that war will ever be that simple."
"Look, I didn't ask you here for a moral debate. The reason I called is because I need you to help me get this into the second stage of testing. Both the Doctor and I can't get close enough to the Generals in charge to show them the importance of this project. They are more interested in larger guns and bigger bangs. General Portmen's on base next week and his right-hand captain is not going to be there."
Heather started to shake her head "no."
"Look," Lloyd continued, "all I need is for you to go to a meeting. You look like Captain Wallace long enough to show the General our diagrams and leave. The General is smart enough to know what he's looking at. That's it. Walk in, walk out."
"You've had too much coffee, Lloyd."
"Please, Heather," he begged, "This is really important."
"I'll think about it," she said taking a sip of her coffee.
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