Issue 1 Downtime

Nate made do with an empty office to see what was up with Jane. He messaged Madison quickly to let her know what was up before he sat down and asked, "So you want to tell me what Peter Pan did to you that was so bad that you needed to rip him to shreds?"

Jane touches her throat with one hand, before miming the need for a piece of paper.

"Oh, right," Nate said, retrieving a pad of paper and a pencil and handing it to her.

Jane bows her head in gratitude.

Apparently some of her lessons with Mike were paying off, she wrote a single word.

"Sorry."

"I'm not the one you should be apologizing too," Nate said, inadvertently slipping from security mode into parental mode for a moment.

Jane cocks her head in confusion.

"Do you understand why she was upset with you?"

Jane nods, writing, "Ruined."

"What I want to know is why you ruined it."

Jane frowned and writes carefully, having to take time to think of every word.

Finally she hands Nate back the pad of paper.

"It's not that easy to get back your shadow."

The statement might seem cryptic at first, but looking carefully at Jane, someone aware of the fact might notice that she doesn't cast any shadow.

It took Nate a minute to put two and two together, but when he did, he muttered, "Well, I'll be damned." He got up and walked around her, just to make sure he wasn't seeing things... or not seeing them in this case. When he sat back down, he asked, "What happened to your shadow?"

Jane wrote, "Lost."

"Lost? Lost how?" Nate had never been good at Twenty Questions.

"Doctors cut it away."

Jane frowns.

"Very sharp knives?"

She shrugs her shoulders, apparently unaware of the details herself.

Nate's fist unconsciously began clenching as he thought about what she was 'saying', "Okay. Is there anything else that you can think of that would help?"

Jane frowns, "Nothing that makes sense."

She pauses and then adds a word, "Yet."

"Well, anything might be useful, so if you have anything bring it to myself or Miss West, okay?" He added as an afterthought, "Oh, and I'd stay away from the library for a while if I were you."

Jane nods.

"Okay. Well go on and be nice to books from now on."

Jane nods and then makes her way out of the office.

As soon as she is out of the office, Nate dials Madison's number.

Madison picks up the phone, "Ohoyhoy."

"Madison, we need to talk. I've got some more pieces to Jane's puzzle," he said with a specific emphasis.

"Coolbeans," Madison says, "Here, let me 'port over."

In a blink, Madison was standing in the center of Nate's office.

"Well, for starters she trashed a copy of Peter Pan in the library. The librarian's pretty pissed," Nate said with a shrug. "But that got us to 'talking'." He held up the pad, showing her the page with the bit about the shadow. "This is what she wrote when I asked her why she ruined the book. That's when I noticed that she has no shadow."

Madison looks at the paper for a moment before grinning a little, "...Interesting."

"I'm either telling you something you already know or you know something I don't," Nate said. "But at any rate, she wrote that she 'lost' her shadow. When I asked her how she lost it, she wrote this." He flips to the page about the doctors."

Madison's grin fades.

"Was that everything she told you?" Madison asks seriously.

"When I asked her if she had anything else, she wrote 'Nothing that makes sense. Yet.'," Nate said. "And I wasn't going to mention it because it didn't seem like a big deal, but there was a report that someone 'vandalized' one of the art rooms. Gave it a new large mural. Looked like finger painting. Hadn't bothered looking into because the art teachers kind of liked it and it didn't seem like a big deal, but now I'm wondering."

Madison frowns, "I'm really hoping this isn't another ring of people thinking they can improve mutants."

"Been way too many of those."

"Preaching to the choir," Nate said, his eyes obviously hard.

"I've tracked most of her movements for the past year," Madison says, "She's lived in the slums of San Francisco, but I have no idea how she got there. She was working as a waitress. Everyone interviewed said she just showed up one day with a little money in her pocket."

"If she is some sort of twisted experiment, why dump her in the middle of a crowded city?"

"Either they dumped her or they lost her, either is possible. If they dumped her, I can guarantee you they're still observing her watching and waiting for something. If they lost her, they're looking for her and things might get messy if they find her. It's really an even chance right now. For the former, you have to think like a scientist to figure out what they're up to. It's an experiment, so what results are they looking for?"

"It'd help if I knew anything about her abilities," Madison says, "Shadow abilities? Some sort of light control? How do you even have a person without a shadow."

"That's more Stan's department than mine. I'm just the crazy white werewolf ninja. You think she'd let Stan run some tests?"

"Probably," Madison says, "It's worth a shot at least."

"I'd say do that. Maybe he can find some sort of marker or something to compare against. Beats the bupkiss we've got right now."

"So, you're a bright and hairy ninja," Madison asks, "What do you suggest we do with this?"

"Well, we've been trying to squash stuff like this when we find it, but when you've got enough evil bastards with money to bankroll them, new ones are always popping up. I can ask around and see if anything's popped on our radar lately, but I doubt it. They usually let me know since putting the bastards out of business is something of a personal... crusade... hobby... yeah we'll call it hobby." He thought for a moment, "The equipment to do something this wouldn't be cheap and it would be highly specialized. This isn't something they cobble together out of paper clips and drinking straws. Let's see if we can pull some strings and get some order histories from the big medical supply companies sending things to out-of-the-way places. Start with Western Canada, Southeast Asia, and South America. We'll see what that turns up."

"Good," Madison says, "I'm going to continue tracking down her history. I want you on trying to track down this end of things. You probably have the resources and contacts already anyway."