FSE

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London, November 2013. Two years before the end of everything.

Kamala conceals her nose in the collar of a sleek pink trench-coat as she treads warily under the cover of dense London fog. She's been away from the manor for nearly a year now, cautiously maneuvering through fragments of her past as if she were walking on shattered glass, each painful step bringing her closer to the truth hidden in the heart of London. She's been here once before, with the others after their first successful mission, but all she saw then were the insides of elegant hotel suites and unadorned government offices.

This is her first time getting a sense of what London really is, every gritty, foggy, ice-cold part of it.

The echo from her boots on cobblestone meets the silence of a narrow lane of terraced houses, indistinguishable from one another as she searches for an address burned into her memory, one she discovered from a little black book hidden in Thaddeus Axton's private study.

The rose panther freezes and swiftly glances over her shoulders when she realizes the iron and white wood door to the home is open. She tosses aside her gloves on a frozen flowerbed and illuminates the space with her power, treading cautiously into the rose-tinted unknown.

The home is smaller than she imagined it would be. The cozy den alone could easily fit within her bedroom back at the manor, yet it's much larger than the hotel rooms she's been breaking into across the city. The cream-colored walls are sparsely decorated, but every piece of meticulously framed artwork seems to be meaningful to the stranger who lives there.

No matter how intensely Kamala examines, there's no sign of a struggle, but every indication the rumors are true, that Soraya Singh vanished into the midnight mist with no intention of ever returning. Kamala isn't worried her mother might be in danger, she's worried about how dangerous her mother might be.

She made her after all.

Kamala stares into her mother's dark eyes in a photograph from London long ago. Her long, silver hair glitters in the sun as she poses with a bright smile on her beautiful face. Standing beside her is another panther, who she immediately recognizes as her father because of an intense stare that reminds her so much of Kyran.

A soft thump from the floor above snaps Kamala back from her wandering thoughts. Illuminating the narrow stairwell with pink light, confusion stirs in her mind when she reaches the landing and walks into a small bedroom with lilac walls unmistakably belonging to an adolescent girl.

Kamala glances behind her, as if to make sure she's still in the correct home.

Smoke still lingers faintly in the air, and Kamala's tired eyes catch small glimpses of light reflecting off shimmery pools of candle-wax. Whoever this room belongs to is still here, and they couldn't have made it far, as the glass surrounding the candle is hot to the touch.

Kamala picks up the dark violet clothing weighed by heavy metal laying on the floor, examining it against her own body before a tall mirror when she catches someone moving from inside the closet in her peripheral.

She raises one fist to attack as she pulls the door open, breaking it apart. A pair of teal eyes glare intensely under a perfectly straight fringe of hair dyed deep burgundy. A violet raccoon brushes dust off her lacy black shirt. She glares at Kamala intensely, hesitation in her eyes.

"Shit. You really do look just like mom, only pink," Quinn says.

"Mom?" Kamala asks, standing in shared bewilderment with the sibling she never knew about.

***

Kamala rips open blinds, allowing the faint sunlight that slips through heavy clouds to fall into the small space they gather in, a small kitchen with chessboard-like tile.

"What happened here?" She asks, opening the squeaky drawers to examine a small bottle of unfamiliar spice as she searches for tea to keep her awake after several restless nights.

Quinn hands Kamala a tin as she places her hands on a kettle, causing steam to instantly whistle from it. The raccoon is no older than sixteen. Her shiny, teal eyes are bordered by a dark mask of both plum-colored fur and pitch-black eyeliner placed with a heavy hand. Every bit of clothing from the tight choker around her thin neck to the tall black boots she stands awkwardly on, tells Kamala everything she needs to know about her.

"Mom left with this big creepy wolf a few weeks back. He's been here before, and every time he comes over, Mom would tell me to go to my room and lock the door. She usually comes back, but not this time," Quinn says somberly, passing her two mugs.

"Big creepy wolf? Did his face look skeletal, and like it was pieced back together? German accent, red eyes?"

Quinn nods. "I never got a good look at his face, but he definitely had an accent, and I can't forget those eyes, even if I tried."

"A few weeks ago? Ziegler's alive then. Why didn't you go get any help?" Kamala asks as she takes a seat at the end of a small dining table with four chairs.

"I've gone out to look for her, but I don't know where her job is even located," Quinn responds in a dreary tone Kamala is uncertain any amount of tea could make livelier.

"Did you expect her to walk through the door you left wide open?" Kamala gestures to the raccoon with her mug.

"Sorry about that."

Kamala sips deeply, after a few moments she asks what's been flooding her mind.

"So, did she adopt you?"

The expression on the raccoons face changes.

"Does that really matter?"

"I didn't mean anything by it. I come from a mixed family too. It's just, this may be the first thing to ever surprise me. She gave me the impression she never really wanted children is all, given the fact she gave me and my twin brother away to be experimented on," Kamala says, grinning awkwardly.

Quinn sips quietly before Kamala breaks the silence.

"You're not, one of us, are you?" Kamala asks, thinking of Aarden.

"I used to wonder the same thing," Quinn responds, her tone shifting slightly. "Growing up, I remember seeing The Zenith, looking all proper in your little matching suits and ties on the cover of every mag."

"Why would she hide you from us?" Kamala wonders before being interrupted by the piercing sound of shattering glass.

Several objects crash at their feet, their impact breaking apart the tile floor. Fearing the worst, Kamala generates a crystalline shield around them, pulling Quinn closely to shield her from the sound and fire.

"Cover your ears!" She yells, hoping the shield will be enough.

But instead of a loud explosion, a chilling hiss that still haunts Kamala resonates from two sources, one from the metal canisters and the second from a shadow lurking between the vapor spewing into the air.

Kamala launches a powerful burst of energy at the floor by the canister, launching it out of the window and into the rainy street outside.

"Get upstairs!" Kamala shouts to Quinn, pushing her as she refocuses her adaptation.

Having learned to repress her connection to a world of energy constantly buzzing in all her senses, the pink panther feels for every bit of electricity and metal in the small kitchen, ready to use any of it as a weapon.

Quinn crawls away, finding an opportunity to escape amongst the chaos as the smoke burns her insides like fire. She stays low to the ground, only able to see Kamala's dark boots and the massive tail of a dark blue Komodo dragon swiping across the tile floor.

Kamala coughs as the smoke lingers stagnant in the air. Somewhere in the unseen, Ulysses Thorne's bloodcurdling hiss breaks through. Remembering Ziegler's mountain base, fear rushes through her as she tries to focus on the dark shadow veiled in silvery smoke, but her eyes are watering from the sting of the chemicals creeping into her system.

Thorne leaps from the cover of the poison air and swipes at Kamala, tearing into her pink trench coat, barely missing the skin under her shimmering coat of fur. Thorne snarls wildly, more monster than anything else after years of experimentation at the hands of Dietrich Ziegler.

"How the hell did you survive?" Kamala shouts, backing away as far as she can from the lizard's sharp, black claws as bright pink light ebbs and flows from her arms like a strobe light.

Thorne shoves Kamala against the wall, caving it in with her body. Kamala's shoulders shatter glass as she's pushed back into a frame by the dragon. As glass buries itself deeper into her shoulder, she pushes herself against the wall and toward her assailant, pressing the palms of her hands against his chest, melting his uniform into metallic scales. She converts the stabbing pain in her hemorrhaging shoulder to energy, sending the lizard crashing through a large window and into a row of neatly parked vehicles in the heavy rain outside.

Kamala coughs as silence falls back over them. She calls out for Quinn, dashing up the stairs as quickly as her heavy boots allow her to. She's near the top of the narrow stairwell when powerful claws grip her, pulling her down, the stairs digging into her ribs as she tumbles down.

Finally able to channel her grief into power, the exhilaration of the fight erupts within Kamala. Free to use her adaptation, she manipulates every piece of metal she can sense, throwing blasts at the shadow. Thorne circles her, the iron tea kettle she launches bouncing off the hard bone beneath his scales as he tastes the acidic static in the poison air with his long, forked tongue.

The panther presses her palms onto the broken tile floor, tapping into the grief for Zephyr within her to repel Thorne with the bolts of pink plasma erupting from her fingertips, singeing the wallpaper with blackened rings.

"Don't lose control," Kamala whispers to herself, remembering the punishment Thaddeus would deliver onto her when she lost control of her adaptation growing up. But it's too late, the energy running through the home doesn't stop there. Thunderous fractures splinter up the walls of the kitchen as glass rains down from exploding lightbulbs. Kamala's untapped potential is quickly becoming an unstable predicament as distant sirens grow nearer.

Hissing rings in the air again, echoing off the plaster walls.

"I'm warning you; you don't know what I'm capable of," she says, surges of neon pink lightning crackling within her. Kamala tries to stifle her fear, but her vision grows blurry as the air ripples toward her, fading the lines between being a conduit to her power and a catalyst to cataclysm.

Thorne leaps toward her, his teeth bared to bite into her neck. The fur all over the panther's body darts up as she emanates a powerful burst of pulsating energy, launching Thorne back until the brick walls of the fireplace stop his momentum, allowing her time to rush up the stairs.

"Quinn!" Kamala yells out as she enters the largest room, heaving from the gas burning her lungs. She covers her ears as the sound of surrounding electromagnetic fields ring deep within her head.

Kamala's already teary eyes are flooded over when she peers into her mother's bedroom. The neat space is filled with bright multicolored patterns reflecting Soraya Singh's deep roots in India, and none of it carries any significance to her weeping daughter, who holds her heritage in trembling hands stained with the same blood running through her mother's veins.

Quinn buries herself in her bushy, ringed tail in a dark corner of the room.

"Quinn, we have to get the hell out of here!" Kamala calls out to her, leaning against the doorway, painting the walls with her blood.

"We have nowhere else to go," the raccoon says.

"As long as you're with me, you'll be safe."

"What about mom?"

"Will you please stop calling her that!" Kamala says irritably, the pain becoming too much to bear.

The charcoal-black lining around Quinn's eyes seeps into her fur along a stream of tears. A knot builds in Kamala's stomach followed by a heavy pull at her waist. Lifting her sweater, she realizes her belt buckle is being magnetically pulled downward by an unstable electromagnetic field of her own creation.

The metal piercing in Quinn's ear and the metal on her clothes pull her downward. She screams as she's pinned to the floor by her choker, the studs trying to slice through her neck on their way to the floor below.

Kamala generates a shield around Quinn, invalidating the heavy electromagnetism. She gasps for air, ripping the studded choker off her neck with trembling hands.

"What's happening!?" Quinn's muted voice yells through the bright barricade.

"I'm losing control of my adaptation!" Kamala shouts, tearing the belt off with her sharp claws. A bolt of pink lightning tears through the floor between them, striking Kamala squarely across her chest as it showers Quinn with shards of sharp wood and shrapnel. The panther is launched backward onto Singh's bed, causing it to collapse.

The neon glow of the lightning flows through every vein in her body, illuminating through her skin before transforming into bright pink light. Kamala rises, rubbing her chest as she struggles to contain the power within her.

"Are you alright!?" Quinn asks, tapping the crystalline shield in an attempt to break free from it.

"I'll be fine, I just need to get this energy out one way or another."

"How are you alive!? You just got struck by a bloody bolt of lightning."

"I thought you knew what I am," Kamala says, rising despite the energy surging within her, begging for a release. She leaps over the last dozen steps of the stairs, the fur on her body rising from the palpable static clinging to the air. Thorne stirs from his position on the floor of the den, the iron in his blood and fortified scales pulling his body toward a heavy polarity.

Kamala's growls echo in her own ears as she stares at her sparking fingertips, shaking them to try and stop the waves of electromagnetism emanating uncontrolled from her hands.

"Kamala, you have to relax!" She urges herself, panic only adding to the surge of energy, "you were never trained to control your powers. Relax!"

Tires screech in the streets outside as the rows of parked vehicles slide toward her. Kamala looks around for anything she could use to stop herself, but the humming in the air grows louder.

The walls burst as copper pipes tear through the plaster, drowning her in a torrent of icy water. The immobilizing bath shocks her senses, the magnetic strength fading away from Kamala as the link between her adaptation and her brain is temporarily severed by the numbing freeze.

"That's fucking convenient," Kamala says, shaking the water off her fur and hair.

"Let's get out of here," Quinn says from the base of the stairs, glaring nervously at Thorne as he begins to regain consciousness, hissing as cold water douses him.

Kamala's drenched fur catches the frigid breeze as they maneuver around the jumbled vehicles, the sounds of their blaring alarms mixing with the rush of water running down the cobblestone street like a river.

"We have to go find Singh; she can't be too far off," Kamala says, shaking the freezing water off her fur.

"Sirs!" A voice calls out behind them.

"Please tell me you were kidding when you said you don't even know where she works."

"Would I still be here if I did? I don't need your help, so far you've put me in more danger than that seven foot tall lizard!"

"Sirs!" An anxious puffin yells, sounding a small aluminum whistle as loudly as he can to get their attention.

"What!?"

"What do you want?"

"Put your hands in the air where I can see them!" He says, his legs trembling as if he were the one drenched in a freezing torrent.

"Why would we do that?" Quinn says, laughing at the absurdity of his request.

"Piss off," Kamala says, crushing the whistle into a ball before catching it in her hands, venturing back into a life she knows she'll never be able to walk away from.

***

"Where do you think they've taken her?"

Quinn and Kamala catch their breaths on the cold concrete of a new construction in the heart of London. The evening breeze whistles through the hollow framework of the high-rise as they contemplate their next move.

Kamala winces as she pulls fragments of glass from her shoulder, the shards landing with a loud clink at her feet on the barren concrete floor.

"Do you need help with that?" Quinn asks.

"Please."

Kamala tosses her blood-soaked trench-coat aside, pushing her hair from her shoulders as the raccoon tears at a roll of gauze with her powerful pre-molars.

"You've done this before?"

"I've had my fair share of injuries playing football. You're going to need to get this stitched up."

"I'm already on it."

Kamala presses her hands firmly on her shoulder and bites into the sleeve of her sweater. Redirecting the blaze inside her, she cauterizes the wound as tears run down her face.

Kamala props her back on stacks of bagged concrete. "You know, I can't stop thinking about what you said, how I've been more a danger to you than Thorne. Maybe that's why Singh kept you away from us."

"I didn't mean it. Maybe she just wanted us to have a normal life," Quinn says, cutting another strip of gauze she swiped from a drugstore earlier that evening.

"Must've been nice."

"It was, until my house blew up."

Kamala rolls her shoulders, her sharp teeth biting into her lip as she fights a losing battle with her pain.

"Where do we even start?" Quinn asks.

Kamala thinks.

"Do you know anyone who can help us?"

"No. Why don't you call your brothers?"

"We don't need their help."

Quinn finishes wrapping her shoulder and sits in silence, staring up at the slate-colored ceiling.

Several hours later, as the predawn light glows in the horizon, Kamala looks out into a city she feels guilty for not recognizing, knowing that if her mother is out there, then so is Ziegler, lurking unseen in the shadows.

Quinn sits silently beside her, swaying her heavy boots over the edge as warm sunlight falls on her face.

"I hope dinner was okay, I didn't know what you liked so I grabbed anything I could."

"It was perfect, thank you Quinn," Kamala says, her gaze unbroken as her sharp eyes study London and all its mechanism.

"You know, I was a big fan of you lot growing up. I remember you were like a band or something, like the Spice Girls," Quinn says.

"The Spice Girls?" Kamala asks, remembering the posters Indigo would hang on the curved walls of their bedroom.

"I used to be different," Quinn says, rubbing her tired eyes, "The Zenith made me believe I could make a difference in the world. Everyone thought I was stupid to believe in you, especially with how things went to shit later. Imagine my surprise when I turned thirteen and found out I was related to you."

"That seems like so long ago. I hate to break it to you Quinn, but none of that was ever real. It was a sales pitch for a private army to the highest bidder. Looking back, I realize that if you're treated like a weapon for long enough, you fear accidentally going off and hurting someone you love. That's exactly what I did."

The raccoon stares off into the city, seeing something Kamala never will.

"I'm so sorry to hear about Zephyr," Quinn says. "Where do we go from here, now that I'm a part of this?"

"You don't want any part of this. Nothing good can come from someone like me. We'll find her, and then we'll get you all someplace safe."

Quinn is quick to respond.

"Maybe I'm already a part of this."

Kamala sits in silent contemplation.

"Can you help me find Dietrich Ziegler? If we find him, we find Soraya Singh."

"Why go looking for him, when you can just make him come look for us instead," Quinn suggests, a devious grin on her face as she taps on the steel with her boot, causing it to clang loudly, giving Kamala a destructive idea.

***

Axton Manor, November 2013.

Thaddeus Axton feels like he's staring into the mirrored surface of a serene lake as he peers into deep mauve eyes reflecting profound pain back into his own. The only sound breaking the silence between them is that of the peacock ruffling her cream colored-feathers as she readjusts in her seat across from his desk within his messy private study.

"I understand this will take time to process," Marina Fletcher says calmly, trying her best to comfort the lion as he focuses his attention to anything but the truth swimming in her eyes. The room glimmers golden with a brilliant sunset he once ignored, choosing to block the sun with blinds at the first sign of the orange light. Now, he doesn't know how many more sunsets he'll live to see.

The realization weighs heavy on Thaddeus's mind, keeping him from thinking about anything else but the inevitability of his fast-approaching end. The lion glares at the peacock again, trying to find the words to say. Deep guilt mixes with the numbing bleakness, as he realizes how much he's neglected to thank Fletcher for how indispensable she's been to The Zenith. There's so much he wants to thank her for, but he's all out of time.

"Are you certain?" Is all he can bear to ask.

"I am."

"How much longer do I have then?"

Fletcher rubs her exhausted eyes, rising to stare out into the approaching evening from beyond the wide open window.

"Thaddeus, you have to understand. The progression of the disease is already well advanced, so there's no real frame of reference for me to say definitively whether or not you have two months, two years, or even two decades if we somehow find a treatment strong enough to overcome it. I've consulted with several of your doctors and they all say the same thing. You have an aggressive form of cancer, and it's spreading quickly."

Thaddeus contemplates, his eyes rapidly re-reading over the black and white of ink and X-Rays before him, refusing to accept what he's being told is the truth.

"What about treatments not yet known? If we could find something fast and strong enough, then maybe--

"That's impossible for me to tell. If there's any geneticist who would know it's--

"Don't say his name. He did this to me."

Fletcher averts his eyes altogether, her hands tucked neatly behind her slender frame as she idly picks up journals and files off the floor.

"Surely, you're not blaming this on him?"

"Why can't I? If what you're saying is true, I'm not long for this world," Thaddeus says, his head spinning.

Fletcher sits on his desk, her long tail-feathers slumping lazily at her side as she flicks on a green lamp to illuminate the cluttered desk. She places her hands atop his, gripping tightly, surprised by how cold they are.

Unable to contain his pain, Thaddeus's eyes glisten as he thinks of the future robbed from him.

"What about the children? What will happen to them?" He asks, tears welling in his seas of aquamarine.

Fletcher pushes aside her shoulder length hair in an effort to conceal she's catching tears on her snowy feathers.

"They're not children anymore, Thad. But they will be taken care of, that much I can promise you. But I'm unsure if any force on earth, even something as tragic as your loss could bring them all together again. I can assist Kyran in taking care of the day to day, but as far as the missions, I don't see why those have to continue after you've left us."

"So that's it then? My life, as I know it, is over?"

Fletcher nods silently, detesting the way Thaddeus looks at her, as if blaming her for everything that's become of him. Out of words to say, she embraces him, resting the bottom of her beak on his shoulders.

"Forgive me for everything I've done, and everything you'll have to do after I'm gone," the lion whispers softly before collapsing onto his chair. "The missions mustn't cease, that's all I ask."

"I don't believe that's up to either one of us to determine," Fletcher says.

The sun slips away, sinking into the trees, and the first chilling breeze of night bites at their ankles as it hovers low over the ground, picking up loose pages and tossing them about through the cluttered room.

"What do I do now?" Thaddeus asks, wiping the tears from his eyes.

Fletcher pulls the words from a shattered heart.

"Thaddeus. You're ill, and you're running out of time. I suggest you come to terms with the inevitability of your own death and seek something deeper. Meanwhile, I'll do what I can within the limits of science and medicine to make sure you get there with relatively little pain and sufficient peace of mind. That's my promise to you as a friend."

Fletcher presses her beak on the top of Thaddeus's head, closing her eyes as a tear falls onto his mane like rain.

Outside the golden doors of the study, Fletcher finds Aarden sitting in the dark hallway long past the sunset. She kneels down to tell him that yet another father-like figure in his life is slipping away from him. He takes the news well, saying nothing but developing an understanding and acceptance for it too quickly for someone only sixteen. Of everything that's happened, that's what pains Fletcher most of all, that Aarden is already so accustomed to loss, he accepts it as a fact of life and not an injustice he must find retribution for. She can't help but to feel as if she failed him the same way she failed the others.

In the foyer, as Fletcher and Aarden make their way through the meticulously carved front doors and into the courtyard outside, Kyran peers down at them from the railing on the third floor, having overheard Fletcher break the news to Aarden.

The panther teleports into the manors' modern kitchen to find Phoenix digging through the fridge, his thin tail raised in the air.

"Where have you been?" Kyran asks, sitting on one of the stainless steel counters.

"Why do you care?" Phoenix asks, reaching down for a silver tray.

"I know you're not that dumb. You must have some idea what's going on with Dad." Kyran says, trying his best not to raise his voice.

"I know exactly what's going on," the lion responds, ignoring him as he leans against the counter.

"Aren't you going to say something to him?"

"Are you?" Phoenix is quick to ask back.

"I was thinking we should together--

"We're not kids anymore Kyran. Zephyr's dead, Thaddeus is dying. You're the fucking team leader now, act like it." Phoenix says, trying to push past him to take the plate to his bedroom in the solarium on the top floor before Kyran teleports before him.

"One of us has to. I know it's much easier to just run away from it all, but you can't do that this time."

"Who said I couldn't," Phoenix says, pushing his older brother aside, too old to have him stand in his way any longer.

"You just said I was the team leader, and as a part of this team, I say you come with me."

Phoenix turns around, his milk and honey muzzle crumpling as he glowers at him, baring teeth stained red from biting into dragon fruit.

"So, now you want me to be a part of this team? Where was that acknowledgment when I came back, you didn't want me around then, why do you want to cling to me now?"

"Because I don't think I can do it alone!" Kyran blurts out. Phoenix steps closer, a whole head taller, glaring down at him with fire in his eyes.

"Now you realize that. Do you know what's the funny thing about you being leader Kyran? Is that you're just a team of one, but it's always been that way to you, hasn't it?"

Kyran allows Phoenix to pass. But as the lion is halfway up a narrow set of hidden stairs between paintings, the panther calls out.

"Why are you so afraid to confront him!"

Phoenix faces him, sneering.

"I'm happy he's dying, and everything is falling apart. Maybe now we can be normal for once in our miserable fucking lives."

"You don't mean that--

"Why would you care! You never cared about anyone except yourself," Phoenix says, raising his voice.

"I care about Aarden, and you should too."

"Don't bring him into this!" Phoenix says, tossing the tray aside and rushing down the stairs to meet him.

"We're all he has and you're just going to run away from all that!?" Kyran asks, his breathing staggering. At this point, Phoenix is so close to his face, every breath he takes fogs his glasses.

"I'm not running away!"

"Then what is it?" Kyran demands.

"I'm scared, okay!? I'm scared I'll end up the same way as him, all alone. I don't know why I keep coming back here, as if I'll find something worth sticking around for, but not having someone chase after you kind of defeats the purpose of turning your back from all of this. I guess I'm guilty of not thinking about Aarden, but you have to be there for him."

Kyran swallows his pain, his heartache bubbling up as nervous laughter before he exhales and says what's on his mind.

"I can't. I haven't been the same since Zephyr died, you know that. Everything just became numb after that. I try to be there for him, but I can't swim out of this abyss I find myself sinking deeper into every morning."

"Then I'll stick around and help you through it," Phoenix says, the tense muscles on his face giving way to concern.

"I don't need you," Kyran says, teleporting away.

"No one does, but maybe sticking around will annoy you more than me leaving!" Phoenix shouts, unsure where Kyran has teleported to, but knowing him he's close by, ear pressed against the wall.