Angela went mute on the spot.
The slow student had finally spotted the catch.
How come no one had ever flagged it before—back when she used to pull weapons out of her game inventory?
Every single one of them had just taken it completely for granted.
“No…
I mean, this…
I’m…
uh…
How about you just draw a tube of my blood and run a gene test?
That’ll settle it…”
Given her earlier “track record”—the time she’d cut her wrist and no blood had come out, just a number ticking down on her health bar—Angela briefly worried that Hank might not be able to draw any blood from her at all.
She’d even prepared a fresh “explanation” for it.
But the moment the needle slid into her vein, she watched dark red blood flow into the vacuum collection tube.
Angela let out a breath.
It seemed that in this world she was more of a “person” than a “game character” made of data.
Henry McCoy, the mutant “Beast”—though anyone who knew him well called him by the nickname “Hank.” He was one of the mutants Professor X had identified very early on, and one of the first X-Men.
His combat ability was nothing special, but he had a brilliant mind, and he served the team with that intellect, building all sorts of weapons, medicines, and support gear.
He was the team’s solid, dependable backbone and its intellectual core.
(The other core being, of course, Professor X himself.)
This bespectacled scientist gave Angela a very peculiar sense of familiarity, especially when he worked the lab equipment and computers with such practiced ease. Read the latest chapters at g.com.
Unfortunately, the source of that “familiarity” wasn’t exactly polite where Hank was concerned—because the acquaintance he reminded her of wasn’t, strictly speaking, human at all.
He was a gorilla.
Winston was, in fact, a gorilla—but one possessed of tremendous intelligence.
He was one of Overwatch’s most reliable scientists and one of the members most attached to the organization.
And he was the very one who, after Overwatch disbanded, had defied the Petras Act to bravely issue the Overwatch Recall.
(One couldn’t rule out the possibility that the Petras Act only had jurisdiction over humans and none whatsoever over gorillas.)
Looking at a clean-cut, handsome middle-aged man and thinking “gorilla”—even running purely through the combination of “scientist, intelligence, and glasses”—was the sort of thing that would understandably make a person angry if she said it out loud.
Angela cleared her throat and, rather than disturb Hank as he analyzed the blood sample, turned to ask Charles Xavier instead.
“Forgive me, my question might be a little rude… but I really am curious. Dr. McCoy doesn’t seem to have anything to do with his codename.”
Charles Xavier smiled mysteriously and winked.
“As for that, I think Hank would be glad to explain it to you himself when there’s time later, Mercy.”
No one could refuse this gentle, extraordinarily charming man.
He carried both the bright innocence of a teenager and the composure of a grown man at once, and that strange blend of different ages made his true age even harder to guess—even though he looked only thirty-something, Angela found it hard to convince herself that a man genuinely in his thirties could carry himself this way.
She suspected he had to be older—older than her current body, at the very least—otherwise the only way to explain everything about him that didn’t add up would be to chalk it all up to “genuine genius.”
Angela couldn’t press any further, so she only smiled and answered, “Then I’ll wait, and look forward to it.”
Charles Xavier said good-naturedly, “Angela, it looks as though you still have more questions. Don’t worry—feel free to say whatever’s on your mind. If it’s something I can answer, I’ll tell you.”
Angela hesitated a few seconds, then asked the question burning brightest in her mind at that moment.
“If you don’t mind my asking—how old are you, exactly?”
“Sixty-something.” Charles Xavier gave a self-deprecating little laugh.
“Old enough to be a grandfather, wouldn’t you say?”
Angela looked at that young, handsome face, and even knowing full well she stood before a telepath, she couldn’t stop the snide thought from surfacing: a grandfather with a face like that would put every actual father in the world to shame.
After a moment’s thought, she decided to return the favor.
“No need to sell yourself short—at the very least, you’re not old enough to be my grandfather. I’m already thirty-one this year.”
This time even Hank, at the lab bench, turned to glance over and couldn’t help cutting in.
“You look twenty at the most—well, if that’s the case, then I’d say the odds of you being a mutant just went up, Dr. Ziegler.”
Angela and Hank had only just been introduced to each other by Charles Xavier, so the two of them used relatively distant, polite forms of address—and, by unspoken agreement, both chose “Doctor” rather than “Ms.” or “Mr.” as the honorific.
As fellow scientists, each could sense in the other the same reserve and pride that came with the profession.
“Does looking younger than one’s true age have something to do with the genetic mutation unique to mutants, Dr. McCoy?”
“Of course.” Hank had finished the initial sample prep and now only had to wait for the machine to finish its run, so he stepped away from the bench and came over to join them.
He glanced at Professor X, and only after getting a nod of approval did he launch into his explanation.
“The concept of mutants was first proposed by researchers, based on the fact that all mutants carry a special ‘mutant gene.’ This gene sits on the X chromosome, which is why mutants can appear in men and women alike.
Compared with people who lack the mutant gene, mutants tend to have stronger bodies, longer lifespans, and slower aging.
Because women have two X chromosomes, their bodies age more slowly still.
Raven—Mystique—is close to the Professor’s age, yet by appearance she’s probably about the same as you, Dr. Ziegler.”
“…I see.
A gene on the X chromosome…”
Angela muttered to herself: surely Mei—Dr.
Mei-Ling Zhou—didn’t look so young because of this mutant gene too, rather than all her time in cryostasis…
right?
“Dr. McCoy, you explain things very clearly and simply. But I’m afraid I’m not a mutant—I’ve had any number of physicals over the years, and they never turned up anything genetically… uh… should I call it ‘abnormal’?”
Hank gave his glasses a light push and shook his head.
“Without specialized testing methods, this kind of mutation is easy to miss—especially when the body shows no special abilities or outward markers. But the Professor tells me you do have some sort of spatial ability, Dr. Ziegler? Even among mutants, that’s quite rare.”
Ask any gamer and they’d tell you that ability was about as basic as it got.
Angela looked at the two men in front of her, both wearing expressions of expectation for reasons she couldn’t fathom, and got the distinct feeling that if she kept denying it, they’d look terribly disappointed.
So she simply stopped talking.
The test result would be out soon enough anyway.
Facts speak louder than arguments—and there was only one truth.