Lorna Dane had always wondered what an epiphany was. What it would feel like.

Now she knew.

There was nothing left to figure out.

She smugly, boldly made her way through the early afternoon, along the rocky, dogwood-shaded terrain of eastern Virginia’s Potomac River landscape, as the constant rush of the mighty waterway filled her ears and further focussed her devisive thoughts. The scattered remnants of what was once X-Factor’s Fall’s Edge headquarters lay not a quarter-mile over the golden-brown hill. The clumsy moan of government machinery--bulldozers, Caterpillars, cranes, and such--echoed through the mountainous, summer-dried region. But Lorna could hear only the river, in all its inborn determination.

And there was nothing to figure out.

She didn’t care what the government agents would think of her appearance upon her arrival. She couldn’t acknowledge her dissheveled, shoulder-length top, lime green streaks emerging from a hasty, brown dye job, nor the dried, forest streams of eyeshadow rolling unevenly down each pink, puffy cheek--the remains of last night’s momentary and pitiful bawling fit--nor the downright stench of a black leather jacket, a blue tank top and jeans worn through more than a lifetime in only a day. None of it affected her.

There was nothing to figure out.

On her continued trek up the hillside, a glance past a man-sized rock became a proud gaze, as she observed with a smile the crimson smear of blood along the colorless boulder, faded by a full day’s sunlight. Her blood. Not two days removed. She began to rub the thick scab along her elbow as if it was a charm.

Funny, she noted, that she remembered the beginning of this two-day ordeal with fondness. Pride. After all, two nights ago, she began a journey into change--into direction.

***

Lorna Dane was scared. Angry. Confused. And so, quite naturally, she ran from that which induced those unwelcome emotions. In this case, she ran from her own government, whom she had learned long ago not to trust.

The previous night, she had been summoned to the government’s hidden installation at Fall’s Edge--a place she had once reluctantly called home as the X-Factor member known as Polaris. And though her association with that mutant-hunting cadre had ended quite unceremoniously months earlier, she answered the call. Curiosity had gotten the best of her.

It was during an unexpected meeting with Washington’s chief pompous ass, Henry Peter Gyrich, that Lorna’s world began to fall apart. Gyrich had put a price on someone’s life, and that price was Lorna’s complete cooperation with the most corrupt incarnation of government mutant-hunters ever conceived. He had never called it X-Factor, but that’s what it was. Lorna could have no part in it, and informed Gyrich of just that in rather inflamed words.

What had followed that verbal transaction was a blur now. She remembered releasing a lethal wave of electro-magnetic energy--her talent, and curse, as homo-sapien superior--a mutant. She remembered dashing through electronically sealed doors that her magnetic energy had inadvertantly, and quite fortunately, forced open. She remembered instinctively re-directing the hungry bullets fired by the ensuing, heavily armed, would-be captors. And she remembered running like hell from the towering installation, and into the dense, pitch black woodlands that surrounded the area.

She was still running. And the installation’s guards still followed, closing the thirty yard distance between themselves and their prey. During her time at Fall’s Edge with X-Factor, over a year ago, Lorna had been aware that the guards frequently held training sessions in these woods, firing paint-pellets at each other, or hunting the local wildlife. Even in the dark, they would be able to navigate the hillside. Faster than Lorna, who clumsily dashed through the woods, tearing her denim jacket on a low-hanging tree limb and scraping her elbow against a rock. The guards would snare her soon.

Then what?

Would she be abducted, mind-wiped, and forced into this new, sinister band of mutant-hunters?

Or, now that she knew of the government’s intent for this new X-Factor, would the guards simply shoot her down here in the woods like any other prey, then dump her bullet-riddled body into the nearby Potomac?

Just then, she was regretfully certain of only two things: From this point on, her life would not be the same; and no matter what Gyrich and the guards had planned for her now, it wasn’t good.

There was nothing left to figure out. It would be them, or it would be her.

She turned to face her swiftly approaching pursuers and let her mutant power course through her fragile and volatile form, angry and unchecked.

And then she let it all out.

The hillside erupted in a gust of unseen electro-magnetic energy that swiftly robbed the healthy dogwood and assorted shrubbery of its green and golden foliage. Further up the hill, the guards were swept thirty feet into the night, back, back, helplessly away from their prey-turned-predator. And even further up, the Fall’s Edge installation buckled under the potent wave of magnetic force, and with a brief-but-distorted crunch, the eastern side of the massive compound was gently and quickly whisked into the western half. A hushed moment later, the new, grotesquely mergered complex crumbled in upon itself, and a rushing cloud of dust and debris rolled into the surrounding forest. Olives and yellows were enveloped in a misty brown interrupted only by the speck of life still standing in the naked woods.

It was her.

***

A long night had turned into a rather pleasant mid-morning, all things considered, Lorna mused as she thoughtfully mulled over several floral arrangements at the quaint, thankfully serene flower shop two blocks down from her Manhattan apartment.

After the incident at Fall’s Edge, Lorna had sped away from the disaster area in her aqua Toyata Tercel, then played it cool up the interstate over the early morning escape to the Big Apple. An uneventful and uninterrupted getaway, save for the phone call she made at a rest stop midway through the drive.

By then, the news bulletin she heard over the radio in her car was not unexpected: she was now a fugitive of the law. An escapee from Virginia State Penitentiary. No doubt the cowardly and conniving Gyrich had fled Fall’s Edge and invented a vague story for the morning papers in his dogged effort to capture the one that got away. And no doubt he would go to any extreme to do just that. The phone lines were no longer safe. Her apartment was not safe. She was not safe.

Lorna had escaped Gyrich’s corrupt grasp once. She could do it again. But she was scared nonetheless. And so upon her return to Manhattan earlier this morning, she had purchased two boxes of brown hair color from the corner store and quickly treated her naturally green mane in her apartment’s shower. On her way out the door--perhaps for the last time--she had also searched her closet for the most unshapely, black, leather jacket and blue jeans to add the appearance of weight, and sported green-tinted sunglasses to hide her eyes. It was all she could do to disguise herself from the public, short of borrowing a holographic-image inducer from the X-Men. She need not rely on her old teammates and friends, however. There was someone else who would help.

Ah, daisies.

She hoped Alex could still appreciate the romance in a bouquet of flowers.

***

Lorna Dane and Alex Summers had not been an official item in some time. They were still friends--they would always be friends--they had been through too much together. However, Lorna had not seen or heard from her former lover in months, it had seemed. Not since they had both left the X-Men a few months back. Left separately, that is.

Earlier that morning, while at a rest stop during her overnight journey from Virginia, she had placed a phone call to the most recent number at which she knew to contact him.

“Alex, it’s Lorna. Not much time to talk. I wonder....well, could you meet me tonight? Outside the Holy Ghost Church on Forty-second at, oh, about nine-thirty? Please? It’s important. I’ll see you there. I hope.”

She paced the sidewalk outside of the church. She wore the scent out of the plastic-wrapped bouquet of daisies she held in her hand. She checked her watch. Nine thirty-four. Sigh. Four minutes late. Or maybe he wouldn’t show up at all.

There was not a lot of activity on 42nd Street at nine-thirty at night, outside of drug pushers and prostitutes. A man of Alex’s appearance would stand out. Just over six feet tall, blond hair cropped short, blue eyes that had always seemed to gaze upon Lorna the right way, a firm jaw that gave him a look of confidence that hid his private insecurities about his relationship with his brother, Scott Summers of the X-Men.

It was no wonder Lorna had been attracted to Alex since they were teenagers. With all his stubborn pride and pithy anxieties, Alex was a normal man forced into a shell of abnormality. He had been attracted to her as strongly and as genuinely as any object of metal, and that made HER feel normal, for despite all of the strange happenings in their lives, a normal man had loved her. They had even tried to run off together once--lead the normal lives of everday geologists--stopped being “Polaris” and “Havok”--but the preternatural had closed in on them once again. Just as it had trapped her now, in the form of Henry Peter Gyrich and his new X-Factor, which was why she needed Alex. Needed him to show up.

Alex Summers was a good man. He would not let her down.

No, he was a good man.

“Lorna, sorry I’m late,” a firm, brisk voiced said from behind, momentarily startling her. She turned, and saw a face familiar as her own, and as weighted with misgiving as her’s had been this day.

“You made it!” she replied with a warm, bright-eyed smile.

“I didn’t recognize you at first. Your hair, the jacket...you don’t look like you. Flowers?”

“Oh, yeah, for you,” she blushed as she set the bouquet into his inviting hands. “I hope you don’t take them the wrong way. I’m not looking to rekindle any old flames. I just thought that you’d be more likely to help out if I played to your--”

“I heard the news, Lorna.”

Of course he had. She should have realized.

“Bad news, huh?” she smiled, embarrassed. “I wish negative energy could make me strong again, like it used to. I’d be as big as the Hulk by now!”

“What were you doing in Virginia?” Alex continued. “And in the penitentiary, no less? What’s this all about?”

“X-Factor,” she replied. “I was never in any penitentiary. I was at the Fall’s Edge headquarters. Gyrich asked--no, DEMANDED I join the...er...his new mutant organization. His X-Factor, it’s...he’s--”

“Whoa, slow down, Lorna. Demanded? How so?”

“They tried to blackmail me! No, kidnapping is more like it! Well, I don’t know what to call it!”

Alex’s brow furrowed. This wasn’t good.

“I...I’m afraid to explain anymore,” Lorna frantically sighed. “Afraid...for you.”

“Lorna, you’re scaring me.”

“But you believe me, right? Don’t you?”

...

“Don’t you?”

Concern turned to worry on Alex’s face. Worry for her. “Look, I’m not saying you’re lying, but--”

“But?! Alex, can’t you see me? The trouble I’m in?!”

“Yes, but, well, I...I can’t tell you why, but if I stand beside you against the authorities, I lose my job. Maybe more.”

Not the answer she had expected. Not the decent man she had asked to help her.

“Your job? Doing--?”

“I told you, I can’t explain. But--”

And worry turned to fright on Lorna’s face. “But you’re not willing to risk your ‘job’ for me--the woman you loved for years. The woman who...who still loves you.”

“Please, Lorna--”

“Or do you love me at all?” Tears. Dammit. “Now I’m really scared, Alex, because I don’t know know what’s worse: that you’ve stopped trusting me, or that you’ve stopped loving me.”

The face of the man she knew as Alex Summers, her former lover, her best friend, was unrecognizably blurred by the increasing stream of tears in her eyes. Tears shed for a man who would not help her--who did not love her. Alex Summers.

How could it be?

Lorna hastily, unconsciously, walked away, down the sidewalk, away from the old church, and into the riffraff of New York City’s 42nd St., oblivious to Alex’s desperate, torn, and ever-fading pleas for her to “...calm down...” and “...come back....” She would not.

She had to get away, and found a battered and vandalized bus stop several blocks away from the church, where it was quiet--save for the occassional squad car siren and low-flying police helicopter--and where no one would help--much less mind--a strange looking woman in tears.

She had to figure some things out. She had to figure out how a man could be so giving for years, then so selfish one day. She had to figure out what she would do if Alex came to her in a time of need--would she cave and help him? Or would she hold a grudge, and justifiably so?

She had to figure out how to deal with Gyrich. She had to figure out how to escape his menacing clutches without running, for to try to evade him would end in a man’s death. She had to figure out how she would protect a distant Alex from the government’s vengeance, for it was in fact Alex’s life that Gyrich had threatened if Lorna would prove uncooperative with this new X-Factor.

Yes, that was her dilemma in whole: she had to figure out how to resolve to protect Alex’s life when he had shown no regard for her own.

And then it all came together for her. That epiphany.

There was nothing to figure out.

***

Lorna ascended upon the bustling Fall’s Edge rescue and recovery operation without pageantry or pomp. She strode evenly and confidently toward a unit of five armed and uniformed guards, who were positioned fifty yards from the primary area of the debris, specifically to keep people--especially the press, if they could be classified as people--clear of the region.

Of course, they would make an exception for Lorna.

“Oh guards! Guards!” she chimed. All five men turned at her voice. “Hi there. I’m here to surrender,” she continued, quite cheerily, though she hoped not overly so.

“Who the blazes are you?” a middle-aged guard asked with a contemptuous cowl.

“Lorna Dane. Polaris.”

“Hm?” the men asked, clueless.

Typical government boys.

“The woman who blew this place up the other night,” Lorna clarified. “Mister Gyrich’s new best friend.”

“Ah jeez!” the men gasped in unison. The middle-aged guard alerted his superiors via his two-way shoulder radio while the other four quickly pulled their sidearms.

How cute. “Look boys, I control the magnetic spectrum, okay? Which means I could have all those guns in my hand faster than post-haircut ‘Felicity’ lost ratings.” The guards eyed each other nervously at her threat. She loved this new thing called control. “Of course, I’m here to play your game, so I won’t. Just thought you should know, is all.”

“Get some restraints on that woman, agents!” a grizzled voice cried out in the distance. Lorna gazed past the guards at the tall, lean, man in the business suit, complete with his characteristic red crew-cut, tinted sunglasses, and armed entourage responsible for protecting his cowardly person.

“Gyrich!” Lorna greeted with a scornful warmth.

Henry Peter Gyrich hesitated to approach before the agents had placed two large, hypersensitive heat-shrink sleeves over Lorna’s permitting jacket-sleeved arms, then connected the tubes behind her back with two six inch polyolefin bars.

“Thanks for acknowledging my power, Gyrich,” she smiled as he finally, cautiously, made his way toward her defenseless form.

“You destroyed an entire installation, Polaris! I almost died that night!” he shouted in return. “I’m the one responsible for that place and everyone in it, and now it’s gone!”

“Sorry about that.”

He continued, oblivious to her mocking apology. “And then you don’t even give us the satisfaction of capturing you! You come all the way back here and surrender?!”

“I reconsidered,” Lorna replied. “I didn’t really have a choice, did I? If I kept running, you’d kill poor Alex--the love of my life. Please, accept my apologies for leveling Fall’s Edge. It’ll never happen again--especially considering the place doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Don’t take that cocky tone with me, lady! I’ll slap that smug grin right off your face!” He ceased his tirade and simply glared at Lorna through his glasses. Suspiciously.

“Take her away,” he mumbled as he started back toward the wreckage.

A guard at each arm, Lorna was led the opposite direction, toward a large, van-like transport, confident and proud. Gyrich must have known she was up to something. Even he could put that together. Didn’t really matter.

She had it all figured out.

(note: the events in this story takes place after LIGHTHOUSE: LITTLE GREEN MEN #4)