X-Force

That felt good.

At the sight of Alex Summers’s limp form at her feet, Lorna Dane flashed the first genuine smile she knew since before she’d been betrayed by Alex and the love between the two that just had not existed for some time: She had come to him for help months ago, the only man she could trust in a world that was rapidly closing in on her--at least, she thought she could trust him. But when she told him that the government had blackmailed her into working for them, and that if she refused, they would kill him...he thought her crazy, he didn’t help her--he turned his back on her that night, and her world changed.

No, it didn’t completely close in on her. Instead, it was more focussed. Everything was clearer, even the damnable task forced upon her by the government-- especially that task--in how it related to Alex, and ultimately, to Lorna’s redemption. Everything she did from that point on was in preparation of Her Plan. For months, the government, the Agents Cooper, had thought her a pawn in their big, shadowy plan--but as far as her life was concerned, she’d held all the cards all along. When she went AWOL in the newly-formed Magneto Territories nearly a week ago, she essentially dared the Agents to act against her, kill Alex as punishment. Instead, they played the hand she’d hoped, and they called Alex in to save her from herself.

It was then that, with a bluff, then a triumphant sneer, she dropped her four aces and blasted Alex with a brilliant burst of magnetic energy, the seeds of which he’d planted with his betrayal, and which she had watered and nurtured with months of determination, all the while imagining him in the same, prone position...the very position in which he lay before her now.

(*That’s pretty much everything from FANFARE #96 to now...caught up? - Silkee!)

And still she wasn’t satisfied. While she savored the shock and fear on his face--the same face she’d worn the night he turned his back on her--she knew he could do better. She didn’t want to kill him. That was never her plan. But that look, it had to remain until it replaced the glacial countenance he’d worn That Night. It had to be painted onto her brain until it defined Alex Summers.

So with another concussive force, she hit him again.

“For God’s sake, Polaris--what are you doing?!” Mystique gasped with a horrified tone embodied on the faces of the occupants in the expansive chamber.

Lorna couldn’t hear the blue-skinned mutant, it seemed. Couldn’t see the faces of the other mutant-hunting mercenaries. Not that she would have stopped her fury if she could.

Something needed to be done to stop Polaris, but Mystique was without her laser rifle, having overloaded it in her and Sabretooth’s earlier escape from Magneto.*

(*see last issue - Silkee!)

“Now would be a good time to place another call to the Agents Cooper, eh doll?” Victor Creed--Sabretooth--said to Mystique. “Tell ‘em to turn off this inhibitor chip in my head so I can dispose of Polaris ‘fore things get out of hand.” A fang-filled grin was all he could contribute to the one-woman-war before him, giving away his envy; the beastly, mutant psychotic wanted to join in the carnage.

Mystique thought on his suggestion a moment, but shivered at the mental image of Lorna Dane’s innards spread across the icy, Canadian plains. There were other options. Polaris could still be salvaged.

“Domino, Black Marvel, you have your weapons,” she said to the pale-faced, mutant merc and the dark-cowled vigilante. “Help me get this situation under control.”

They only acknowledged her command with stares, then turned their eyes back to Polaris’s continued, boundless furor. Was it that they wouldn’t take orders from Mystique, as the mercs had no established leader--or did they admire, even envy, Polaris’s unconstrained insubordination?

“If we don’t do something, I will have to call the Agents, and Sabretooth will most certainly kill Polaris,” she pleaded.

Bitten lower lips, wringing leather gloves. Then finally, Domino cocked her pistols, and Marvel unsheathed his titanium, telescopic asp, and they started after Polaris, joined by Sabretooth and an airborne Mystique, who used her innate shape-shifting ability or grow leathery, gargoyle wings.

“Halt!” a booming voice from the rafters of the chamber echoed over the din of Polaris’s assault on Havok.

They looked up to find the ruler of the sovereignty descend upon them under a platform of unseen, magnetic energy. Magneto.

“Domino and Black Marvel have yet to make a decision,” he said smugly.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mystique seethed.

“I gave them two options:* either stay with me here in the Territories, or return to your overseers to offer them not subservience to their unjust orders, but rebellion!”

(*also last issue - Silkee!)

“We told you where to stick your options!” Marvel replied.

“Yes, and you would simply continue as the U.S. government’s henchmen. Indeed, that choice saves your families--but your souls...? It’s my content--ACH!!!”

Magneto clutched his head and began to fall helplessly toward the ground, but was retrieved by a fist nearly the size of him!

It belonged to Greystone. He of the Hounds, the cadre of clandestine government agents secreted from the mercenaries by the government, until they were captured in the Magneto Territories, and the mercs were sent to rescue them along with Polaris. Their field leader, Stone, had divulged to the mercs some of the government’s guarded secrets, though his motives for doing so were unclear--yet still clearer than those of his enigmatic underlings, the young, black warrior Greystone, the bubble-helmeted Archer, and the raven-haired female named Fixx, the last two of whom wore a tell-tale brand over their right eyes: M.

Now, as Magneto writhed in the young man’s giant grip, and Fixx’s apparent mental assault squelched the fight in the Master of Magnetism, perhaps their intentions were being revealed.

“Go,” the giant, suddenly grotesque Greystone urged.

And as the four mercenaries resumed their course toward the battlefield Polaris had established, Black Marvel took Domino by the arm and steered her another direction, out of view of the others.

“What are you doing?” she asked, confused. “What about Polaris?”

“Mystique and Creed can handle Green, but she’s taking her anger outside the chamber. There are innocents in the buildings around here,” he replied matter-of-factly. “We have to protect them.”

Domino peered admiringly into the eyes of Black Marvel, and noted that Mystique would flip if she knew what they were doing. She liked that.

When Japheth Anansazi--call him “Joey”, or even “Maggott” if you must--last tuned into the world, he was being thrust through his third story hotel window, drug down the fire escape, and shoved into a jeep parked along the curb outside the entrance of the hotel. And Maverick had the nerve to say he was helping him!

Then again, it beat whatever the so-called Brotherhood of Evil Mutants had planned for him.

Speaking of that freakish clan of ruthless mutants who had stormed Joey’s hotel room in an attempt to kill him (for reasons he only wished he knew!)*--well, after Maverick’s little rescue, Eany and Meany had tried to put the chomp-chomp! on the Brotherhood.

(*it’s ALL in our last issue - Silkee!)

“Who?” Maverick asked. The brooding, golden-armored mercenary veered the jeep onto Cape Town’s Main Street.

“Eany and Meany, they’re my mechanical slugs. They...eat for me,” Joey explained. “We’ve got to go back for them.”

“Negative. In case you didn’t notice, the Brotherhood is trying to kill you.”

“Yeah, why? I gave up the X-Men gig a long time ago, not that I was ever very involved in the first place.” Joey remembered not-so-fondly his days as a lonely South African all but lost in the United States, ever searching for the man named Joseph. He’d since given up that search, given up that life, in favor of the relative peace and black and white beauties of Cape Town.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Maverick replied. The jeep wove in and out of thick, nighttime tourist traffic, toward the approaching Victoria and Alfred Waterfront off Cape Town harbor, the majestic ocean in the distance, dancing in the moonlight.

Suddenly, where there had been several car lengths of emptiness, now stood the lanky teleporter Vanisher beside the robust Blob and Uniscione. Maverick slammed his boot against the brake pedal, but the jeep screeched into the Blob’s unyielding mass. The hood curled up and the front end was mashed in, but the jeep was still in relatively good shape. Maverick pulled the jeep into reverse, but Uniscione, wearing her powerful, psionic exo-skeleton, rammed her fist into the rear of the vehicle.

Maverick cranked the wheel to the side, but with traffic stopped in every lane on both sides of the road to gawk at the strange events unfolding in the middle of the street, and the Blob hulking before the jeep, his options for escape were limited.

“Any ideas?” he groaned.

Just as Joey shrugged, an explosion of water shot from out of the asphalt and enveloped Uniscione, carrying her high into the air. The Brotherhood’s leader, Toad, leaped out of the night to grab her out of the air, but dared not land at the sight of the two creatures emerging from the hole in the ground.

“Girls!” Joey exclaimed at the sight of his two, small, slug-like friends, Eany and Meany, who munched through the water pipes and asphalt with a robotic drone and the ear-numbing screech of gears shifting without ease.

“What the bloody--?!” With Uniscione under one arm, Toad hung from the ledge of one of the street-side eateries.

The girls chomped their way around the vehicle, sending even the Blob scurrying for cover from the disgusting robo-slugs. Then they wriggled into the rear of the jeep, and Maverick punched the accelerator and sped between two lanes of halted traffic, the street’s occupants befuddled by the most recent event.

“Not so fast,” Pyro said. The longtime Brotherhood member engaged the flame-throwers mounted on his wrists, and directed a screaming stream of flame toward the puddle of fuel that had grown since Uniscione had driven her fist through the jeep’s gas tank.

At a flash of light, Maverick focussed on the rearview mirror. “We’ve got a problem.”

Joey turned to see the flame racing down the street behind them, feeding off of their trail. Maverick could imagine the grin on Toad’s face, knowing he’d actually seen a plan come to fruition. Or at least that was what the notorious lackey would claim.

“So what do we do now?” Joey asked. “Jump?”

“As soon as we leave the jeep, the Vanisher will teleport the others to our location, and we don’t stand much chance against their numbers.” He pointed toward the water ahead of them. “That’s our only shot.”

“You’re a madman! You can’t drive into the bloody ocean!”

“Watch me.” And he kicked the jeep into a higher gear.

At the squeal of the engine gunning, and then the sight of the approaching fire, the tourists on the harbor began to scatter in fear. With the flame stretching to meet the jeep, it was all Maverick could do to maintain the few feet between the jeep and Pyro’s hostler. But just as the jeep crashed through the barricade separating the street level from the rocky shore below, the flame ensnared the rear of the jeep, igniting an airborne explosion that echoed across the harbor. With a muffled thud!, the engulfed jeep bounced off of the water, then began to sink lifelessly.

“Nice work, my Brotherhood,” Toad announced as Vanisher transported all of the Evil Mutants to the emptied harbor to watch the jeep submerge. “With both Maggott and Maverick dead, perhaps our employer will offer a bonus favor in return.”

The band of wicked mutants laughed as the ocean swallowed the jeep and its occupants...

The rampage had made its way outside, and Mystique and Sabretooth weren’t far behind. They charged toward their prey, and slammed into thin air with a pop.

“A forcefield,” Victor Creed growled, staring at the backside of Polaris as she continued to thrust Havok into the air, then into the snow with her magnetic force. “That no-good, dirty--”

“Not a forcefield,” Mystique corrected. “Must be the residual electromagnetic energy from all of Polaris’s bursts. She’s in no state of mind to erect a forcefield. She’s possessed.”

Suddenly, the booming tumult of the attack stopped, and Polaris turned to Mystique with a victorious grin. A few beads of sweat had formed on her brow, and her green top was slightly frazzled, but she seemed no more drained than a bubbly, teenage girl. “No, Mystique. For once, I’m not possessed. And I haven’t gone postal. I’m not crazy--crazy was me in the last few months. The Polaris you knew then was a facade, hiding...” she threw her hands out, as if on display, “...this!”

“You have gone crazy. The real Lorna Dane is no killer,” Mystique replied. She was convinced of that fact, and even if she hadn’t been, she was still desperate to end this dire situation, even if negotiation was in order.

“You’re right, and I don’t have any intention of killing Alex. I just want to make him hurt like he made me hurt.”

Mystique raced through her brain, dug for other alternatives.

Polaris knew that there were none.

“Give it up, Mystique. Go home. There’s nothing you can do to convince me or blackmail me into going back with you. No loved ones Uncle Sam can threaten. Alex was that loved one, and you see what I think of him!” Mystique was anything but convinced. “Go back! You won’t be blamed for my...mutiny. As far as the Agents Cooper will know, I am crazy--out of control, a loose cannon. There were no other options for you, you’ll tell them.”

Her overture only intensified the burning glow in Mystique’s yellow eyes.

“Except to kill you,” she said. Polaris inspected Mystique’s expression further, as if in disbelief. “They will say,” Mystique amended.

“Well, you wouldn’t do that.” It wasn’t a statement so much as a plea. “You’re not that committed to the government’s agenda, are you? No, you wouldn’t do that.” Finally convinced, Polaris rolled her eyes and returned to her game...

...only to find hollow footprints in the snow. Alex had escaped! Polaris rumbled and followed the footsteps into the half-built villages that comprised the Magneto Territories.

And Mystique clenched her fists. “I would do that.”

“Drop him, Devlin!”

At Stone’s command, Greystone hesitantly lowered Magneto to the floor and began to blush at his field leader’s reprimand.

Embarrassed and angry, Magneto dusted off his uniform, and his eyes narrowed toward the three tributary Hounds. “You are fortunate that your leader has more brains than the rest of you combined, and that I have other matters which need my attention.”

“Or what?” Archer challenged from beneath his translucent helmet.

“Archer!” Stone scolded.

Magneto eyed the dark, broad-shouldered Stone. “A smart man, indeed.” And then he flew out of the chamber and into the clouds, followed on foot by his assistants, Lil and Madison, along with Clarisse, holding baby Charles.

With the nearly sacked room alone to the Hounds, Stone started, “You three have some explaining to do. How dare you attack Magneto.”

“Our secret’s been blown to the mercs--what were we supposed to do?” Fixx replied defiantly.

“Nothing,” Stone said, keeping his cool. “Especially not take sides. We are left with the same choices as the mercs: stay here, free of our overseers’ wrath, or return to the outside world, armed with a revolution.”

“Neither of those things are on any of our agendas,” Archer said, removing his helmet to reveal a thick, brown mane and some chin stubble on a war-broken, Irish face. “We’ll never find what we came to this time looking for by staying here--”

“And frankly,” Fixx imposed, “I’m sick of war.”

“You’re the only person who knows what we’re looking for,” Greystone said, shrunk down to his normal size, thus resuming the normal appearance of an eighteen year-old black kid. “You know how important it is that we find it.”

Stone agreed, though unbeknownst to the Hounds, he wasn’t the only person who knew what they sought. As with all of their secrets, he had been forced to divulge that bit of information to their overseer.

“So you don’t know what you want to do,” he said solemnly, filled with all the disappointment of a father finding out his son wants to forego college and find a job.

“But we know what we don’t want to do,” Fixx finished.

Stone thought a moment. “In that case, if you should be found upon your return, you tell our overseers that I died here.”

“You’re...staying?” Greystone gasped.

Stone simply nodded.

“We’ll...we’ll miss you,” the young man admitted, despite his virile pride.

After a tender pat on the shoulder, Archer asked Stone, “Will you tell us who was giving you all our orders, man?”

Stone hesitated.

“We may need to know,” Archer urged.

Still, Stone said nothing.

“What if--?”

“The less you know about that person at the top, the fewer what ifs there will be in your lives, Archer,” Stone said sternly. He gave one last look at his three vagrant pupils, then sent them on their way.

He hoped they would heed his warning.

Observant of, even amused by, Polaris’s declaration, Victor Creed turned back toward Magneto’s chambers. “What say we see what kind of chow Mags keeps in his fridge, huh?”

Mystique stood still where Polaris had left her. Thinking. Always thinking.

“You heard the gal, let her go,” he said. “We got no reason to stop her.”

Mystique simply shook. “Someone has to stop this, before she lets the secret out.”

Creed chortled. “She’s not gonna tell no one about nothing. In case you didn’t notice, she’s got other things on her mind.”

“No. She has to be stopped.” With a robotic resolve, Mystique started for the distant Polaris. She was too determined to hear the crunching in the snow behind her.

Sabretooth grabbed Mystique by the arm and spun her around. “I said...Let. Her. Go.”

Mystique’s face contorted in shock.

Creed replied with a teasing, yellow grin. “Doll.”

“What are you doing?!” She struggled in his grasp until he forced her to the ground and stood over her with that same, demented grimace.

“That’s the second time you’ve stopped me from hurting Polaris, and just a few minutes ago, you were the one who wanted to tear into her!” she growled. “Where’d the killer go? Has he gotten old? Lose his marbles? Or do you have a thing for her? Hm?”

He snickered. “Please.”

“Then...then what the hell’s gotten into you?!”

“I don’t know, but if it upsets you this much, it can’t be all bad.”

Domino wrapped her coat around a little girl and led her to the caravan of cars in the middle of the snow-cleared road. About a dozen people had observed her advice to flee the frenzy near Magneto’s chambers, but still several dozen more were just getting around to questioning her about the commotion. She never imagined the sparse training Ned Barrett had given her in crowd control when he deputized her for Pleasantville’s sheriff’s department would come in handy.

“Who are you? What’s going on?” one middle-aged man asked. He wasn’t the first.

“Trouble to the west. We need you folks to head as far out of the village as you can.”

“Like hell! This is my home!”

She tired of the resistance and frankly wanted to chew him a new one, but she reminded herself that all of the few inhabitants of the Magneto Territories had come to the refuge because they possessed mutant powers; with her luck of late, this guy would turn her to ash if he didn’t like her tone.

“Keep it movin’, fella. Magneto’s orders.” At Black Marvel’s clever urging, the man followed the pack to the caravan.

“Good call,” Domino said as the flood of citizenry passed them.

“Scary to think all these people follow Magneto so blindly.”

“At least this time it’s not out of fear. He...this place, it’s their last hope.”

Black Marvel snickered beneath his cowl. “You didn’t change your mind about stayin’ here, did you?”

Domino thought longingly of her two kids. “Of course not.”

“Good. We make too good a team to split up.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you use the word ‘team’ in a positive light.”

“First time I used it around you,” he said. Domino saw the closest thing to a smile Black Marvel could muster.

Then, with an awe-filled roar, the crowd before them stirred and pointed to the sky. Domino and Black Marvel followed their gazes and found Magneto coming down to meet them.

“Is everything going to be okay?” one concerned mother asked her leader.

“Everything is going to be fine,” Magneto replied reassuringly. “Now move along, my people, as these two fine citizens have urged.” He smiled down on Domino and Black Marvel, and they shook their heads.

“Shouldn’t you be helping contain Green?” Marvel said.

“My chambers are the least of my concerns. Justice and trust are more important right now. I trust Lorna that she won’t go too far in exacting justice on her former lover, and I need her to know that she has my trust if she is going to remain a valuable citizen to the Territories.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Domino shrugged apathetically.

“Speaking of valuable citizens, this is quite impressive,” he indicated the orderly evacuation of his denizens. “This is why I want you to do something other than waste your talents away fighting for the side of injustice, capturing other mutants. Imagine your skill, your compassion, put to use for the rights of mutantkind.”

“It’s as easy as imagining my kids dead, or without a mother,” Domino replied.

“You’ve heard it before, I’m sure: Sometimes the good of the many outweigh the good of the few, or the one,” Magneto offered. “Think on that, friends. Please.” With that, he lifted himself higher and into the distance.

Domino and Black Marvel were left with an awkward silence.

“You know I can read the electromagnetic signatures of people, Alex,” Polaris taunted under the steel beams of an unfinished edifice, “so why don’t you quit hiding and show yourself. Or were you always this much of a coward and I never knew?”

She heard a series of muffled footsteps crunch through the layer of snow around the construction site, turned, and saw Havok wearily approach her. His short, blond hair stood straight up from all of the electromagnetic energy that had coursed through him in the span of ten or so minutes; his clothing was torn to shreds, and he walked with a profound limp. Good, she wanted him to feel vulnerable.

“I’m not hiding, Lorna. I wanted to make sure you weren’t still--”

“Mad is what I am.”

“I was going to say crazy.” Alex cracked an empathetic smile, but Lorna would have none of it. Sensing as much, he said, “You did good. You screwed your bosses, you screwed me, and as far as I can tell, we all deserved it.”

Lorna cocked an eyebrow at his unexpected statement. Then, “No, I’m not falling for some stupid...charm. Where was this nice-guy routine the night you stabbed me in my back and fed me to the sharks? You could have at least acted like you cared about me.”

“You have no idea how much I care about you. But at the time, I had no idea how serious your situation was, and I had an important job do.”

“You never did tell me what that job was,” Lorna spat at the mention of his excuse.

He took on a look of further defeat and distress. “I still can’t--I’m sorry.”*

(*see the LIGHTHOUSE series - Silkee!)

She crossed her arms and shook her head and embraced a smile that said “screw-it-all!” “When did you become such a careerist, huh? When did the action become more important than the people you loved? When--”

“I never--”

“Let. Me. Finish.”

He shriveled up in his form.

She continued with the words that suddenly felt better to throw, stung him harder than the magnetic attack she’d dreamed of for months. “Remember when it was so much simpler between us? When we were idealistic kids who were sure this mutant thing would blow over, and if it didn’t, at least it wouldn’t touch us for the rest of our lives like it would Scott and Jean and the others? We had much simpler dreams then, too. Just to live normal lives, maybe in the fields we loved, but at least together. What happened to all that?”

He looked up apprehensively under his brow.

“Now you can talk,” she nodded.

“The real world happened, Lorna. It caught us both, like it or not. There came a point, I suppose around the time we first joined X-Factor, that we were forced to take the world, and what it had planned for us, seriously. No doubt, it hit me first in X-Factor, when the pressures of being a mutant became too much. I realized then that being a mutant wasn’t a game, and it wasn’t something I could just drop when I wanted to live a normal life. It kept getting in the way. It was serious, and it was my life. So I resigned myself to that fact. You...you were always the idealist between us, and you held out longer.”

“Then you happened. I asked for your help, and you burst my bubble. You brought our happy little world,” she gestured sardonically, “down around my feet, then went on your way, back to ‘real life’.”

Alex thought a moment, then looked up into her eyes, probably for the last time, he lamented. “I did. You didn’t deserve that. You were better than me.” Oh, those eyes. “You still are.”

“Yeah, but now I’m different,” she condescended. “A little more grounded in your real world.”

A distinct voice revealed itself from above, assuringly. “You still have a place in my world, Lorna.” Magneto floated down between the construct’s steel beams.

“Thanks...Erik, but I never was the militant mutant, and no matter what the world hands me,” she shot Alex a scolding glare, “I won’t resign myself to being that.”

“Then what will you do?” Magneto asked, hiding well his disappointment.

She thought for a moment. Life without Alex. The chance to discover Lorna Dane without wondering where Alex bloody Summers fit into it all. A life unanchored, independent. The possibilities.

“We’ll see.”

And then, before their eyes, she disappeared. Looking not to anyone. Looking up.

“Where’d she go?” Alex asked, alarmed.

“She’s phased her own magnetic field out of synch with the rest of the planet,” Magneto explained somberly. “She’s around. We just can’t see her.”

Alex Summers stared longingly at her footprints. “Maybe we never will...”

The next day, Washington, D.C.

Indeed, Agent Valerie Cooper had grown accustomed to these briefings, but this one--this one she feared. Polaris had stamped a big “F-U” on the government’s plans and left the ranks of the mercs, and there was no way to bring her back, nothing to hold over her head--not with the state of her relationship with Alex Summers. And if Lorna Dane would not face the consequences, someone would have to.

“She really made us look like boobs,” Val’s younger brother, Shawn, said out of the corner of his mouth as the two waited for their boss, Representative Mickey P. Primrose, to step into his office. “You and Polaris are old friends, though, Sis. I’m sure you’re loving this.”

With all the alarm over Polaris’s revolt and departure, it hadn’t even occurred to Val.

They heard the lever door handle rattle behind them, and turned to see Primrose step through the door, the thick-bellied, southern politician standing out in his over-the-top cowboy get-up, carrying his white Stetson under his arm.

“What a night, huh kids?” he joked as he fell into his seat behind his desk. “What a night. That Polaris...she deserves an award.”

“Sir, if there was anything else we could have done to--”

He put up a gentle, silencing hand, a pinky ring gleaming under the light. “I know, Ms. Cooper. Frankly, I still haven’t determined how t’deal with the situation. I’m sure I’ll come to a decision soon. In the meantime, our mercs are another man short, an’ Creed’s gone more nuts than a virgin in a frat house.”

Val couldn’t help but chuckle inside; when Creed wasn’t killing, he was considered crazy.

“Is it possible that his inhibitor chip is malfunctioning, sir?” Shawn suggested. Val couldn’t get over how much of a brown-noser Shawn would become in Primrose’s presence.

“We ran tests once the mercs returned last night. Found nothin’ wrong. An’ until we do have somethin’ t’go on, we’ll have to find somethin’ else for him t’do, cuz he’s jeopardizin’ the mercs’ missions as it is.”

“Like what?” Val asked.

Primrose shrugged. “But it’s better he’s under our control than runnin’ loose, that’s fersher.” He looked up at the two agents...almost menacingly. Val shifted uncomfortably in her seat at his beady-eyed scowl, and he repeated, “I’m sure there’s somethin’ for him t’do.”

Much later...

Lorna Dane liked Lorna Dane.

She ditched the old apartment. She trashed that stupid brown hair coloring--long live the green. She took a few months to think, just to think, about who Lorna Dane was. What Lorna Dane liked. What she wanted to do. What she needed to do.

She dated a lot of guys. None of them were...you know who.

Oh, just say it, girl.

Alex.

She read, she traveled, she watched tee-vee, she got stood up, she screwed, she made love, she ate ate ate. And she did it all on her terms. No one and no one’s Dream and no one’s memory peering over her shoulder, ready to hold her back. There was only her.

But still, something was missing. In the end, after Lorna Dane found out who she was, she realized that she liked the action. And she remembered a time when it was all so sweet. People she would always remember fondly. A place where Lorna Dane could contribute and still be Lorna Dane.

So she put on her Sunday best and took to the air, until she came upon an elegant mansion, cozy in its familiarity to her. Like home. She couldn’t wait to step through its doors, reunite with its brave tenants. And if they would have her, she would once again be one of