The door opened fully. Wolverine emerged first, expression grim. Behind him, a woman in white—blonde, beautiful, and radiating contempt. Emma Frost.
Her gaze swept over us with clinical precision. Assessing. Judging.
"Well," she said. "How much of that did you hear?"
"All of it," I said.
Her lips curved into something too sharp to be a smile. "Honest. How refreshing." She looked at Laura. "Your trigger scent—can you identify it?"
"I took care of it already. Severed the connection between her and the scent." I interjected.
"You can do that?"
"Yeah"
"Charming." Emma's eyes flicked to me. "And you? Any convenient programming we should know about?"
"No." True enough. I'd never been conditioned the way Laura had. I'd simply been... shaped. "But I'm tactically trained to kill efficiently."
"Even more charming." Emma crossed her arms. "Charles wants to give you a chance. I think you're ticking time bombs. Prove me wrong, and I'll reconsider. Prove me right, and you'll wish you'd never heard of this place."
She brushed past us, heels clicking down the hall.
Laura watched her go. "She hates us."
"She's afraid," I corrected. "Different thing."
Wolverine grunted. "She'll come around. Or she won't. Either way, you're in." He jerked his head toward the door. "Come meet the others."
We stepped into what appeared to be a study. Bookshelves lined the walls. A massive desk dominated one corner. Windows overlooked manicured grounds that extended into forest.
Two people remained: a Black woman with white hair and kind eyes, and a man in a wheelchair who radiated calm authority despite Emma's departure.
"Laura. Adrian." The man in the wheelchair rolled forward slightly, offering a gentle smile. "Welcome. I'm Professor Charles Xavier. This is Ororo Munroe—Storm."
"We're glad you came," Ororo said warmly.
My assessment, they were genuine. No deception in her vocal patterns or body language. Interesting.
"You heard our discussion, I assume," Charles said. He didn't seem embarrassed. "I apologize for the lack of privacy. Emma's concerns are... not entirely without merit."
"She's right," Laura said flatly. "We're dangerous."
"So is everyone in this school," Ororo countered. "The question is whether you'll learn to control that danger or let it control you."
Laura said nothing. I could see her processing.
"We don't have anywhere else to go," I said. Simple truth. Stating facts. "The Facility will hunt us. She needs training to defend herself. I need..."
What did I need?
The question hung in my mind, unfamiliar. I'd never considered it before.
"...to ensure she survives," I finished.
Charles studied me with eyes that seemed to see through skin and bone into the calculations running beneath. "Is that all you need, Adrian?"
No.
I didn't say it. Didn't know how to articulate the hollow space inside where an identity should've been. The questions that had no answers. The strange, uncomfortable sensation when Laura trusted me enough to cry against my shoulder.
"For now," I said instead.
Charles nodded slowly. "Then we'll start there." He gestured toward the door. "Logan, would you show them to their rooms? We'll begin properly tomorrow."
"Yeah." Wolverine moved toward the exit. "C'mon, kids."
We followed him into the hall, up a grand staircase, through corridors that smelled like old wood.
"You'll be in the student wing," Wolverine said. "Separate rooms. Co-ed floor, so don't be stupid about it."
He stopped at two doors across the hall from each other. "Laura—left. Adrian—right. Bathroom's shared between the two rooms. Try not to kill anyone before breakfast."
"No promises," Laura muttered.
Wolverine's mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "Yeah. Figured." He looked between us. "Listen. This ain't the Facility. Nobody's gonna hurt you here. But you gotta meet 'em halfway. Charles'll push you to talk about feelings and shit. Emma'll test every boundary you got. The other students..." He shrugged. "They're kids. They'll be curious, stupid, annoying. Don't gut 'em for it."
"Understood," I said.
"Good." Wolverine turned to leave, then paused. "For what it's worth—I meant what I said in there. You deserve a shot at this."
He left before either of us could respond.
Laura stared at her door. "This is a mistake."
"Probably," I agreed.
"They don't know what we are."
"They know enough."
She turned to face me. "Emma was right. We're dangerous. What if I—" She stopped. Swallowed.
"Then I'll stop you."
Her jaw worked. "Adrian—"
"We agreed," I said quietly. "We do this together. That doesn't change because someone's afraid of what we might do."
Laura's shoulders dropped. Exhaustion bled through her carefully maintained control. "I don't know how to be anything else."
"Neither do I."
The admission hung between us. True for us both.
"So we figure it out," I continued. "Or we fail. Either way we're together in this."
Her expression shifted into relief, and maybe, gratitude. The emotions I could identify but never quite replicate convincingly.
"Okay," she said finally.
"Okay."
She pushed open her door. I caught a glimpse of a room with an actual bed—not a cot, but a real bed with a headboard and everything—before she closed it behind her.
I opened my own door.
The room was... excessive. Bed. Desk. Chair. Window with curtains. Bookshelf, currently empty. Closet. My entire living space at the Facility would've fit in one corner.
I stood in the doorway, cataloguing the details, searching for cameras or monitoring equipment.
Found none.
Slowly, I stepped inside. Closed the door. The lock engaged with a soft click—from the inside.
I sat on the bed. The mattress yielded under my weight, nothing like the rigid cot I'd known for fifteen years.
Through the wall, I heard water running. Laura, using the bathroom we apparently shared.
Outside the window, students laughed in the distance. Normal teenage sounds. Foreign as another language.
I laid back, staring at the ceiling.