Excerpt from Review #184030-2556
Circa December 1997, classified deep-black:

Subject 184030: There's something different about today. You're done with
me, aren't you? They need me for something.
Interviewer: You've shown remarkable progress...
Subject 184030: Bullshit! Don't talk down to me. I've proven that I can play
"pet assassin" and follow orders here just as well as I could back under Sinister's
command, and I'm more than ready to prove it. I have been for months.
Interviewer: Well, we believe that--
Subject 184030: Don't interrupt, dammit, just let me finish for once. I handled
the last assignment perfectly, and they told me that my "status" had been bumped
up, but STILL you keep me here, like a--a goddamn mental patient or something.
Poking at me with the same tired questions over and over when you're not running
me through tests and training and whatever else. What's so special that you've
finally decided to give me another shot at the outside? If you're not going to let
me out of here and give me the truth, at least give me a straight answer about
what you want me to do. Or I won't do it. Plain and simple.
Interviewer: So...you're determined to be difficult?
Subject 184030: Ohhh, this isn't difficult. Now...THIS...is difficult.
Interviewer: What--I--uhh!--

(At this point review session #2556 was terminated. Subject 184030
was sedated and restrained; interviewer #46 was rushed to intensive
care and diagnosed with a massive heart attack, resulting in death
within ten minutes of onset despite full emergency procedures.)

(Regardless, Project Mirror will continue on schedule.)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

All in all, it had been a pretty good day for Jack Andreas. He was through with this semester's college finals, that nasty spat with his girlfriend had finally blown over, and it had been a good night at work. In fact, he was going to get a healthy tip for this particular delivery.

He leaned over the duct-taped passenger seat of his battered Toyota and squinted up at the building to double-check the address. Yep, this was the place all right. Some slavedriver of a Radio Shack boss was keeping his employees up inhumanly late with inventory on a Wednesday night...but at least he was keeping them fed.

Jack tucked the pizza carrier up under his arm, grabbed the additional paper bags, and stepped out of his car, leaving the ignition running; it was, after all, a safe neighborhood...

Two steps later, the dizziness hit him like a tornado, twisting his senses upside down and his stomach inside out. He barely felt his knees crack into the pavement as he fell, retching and gasping. Something tugged at his delivery box -- he had enough presence of mind to fumble out the little tube of mace on his keychain (he'd thought it was a lame idea when his girlfriend had insisted that he take it!) and fire a spray wildly in the general direction of his attacker. Then a foot connected solidly with the side of his head, heel-first...and that was the end of Jack Andreas' good night.

Oddly, his car was still purring at the curb when he came groggily to ten minutes later, and his money pouch was quite untouched. All that was missing was a package of Pizza! Pizza! and several batches of Crazy Bread.

On the roof of a nearby trendy coffee shop, Vertigo sat hunched over with the heels of her hands pressed into her watering eyes, taking deep choking breaths as the agonizing burn of whatever the man had sprayed at her finally died away in a ragged wash of tears. Her stomach was settling out too, back into the dull empty ache which had dogged her for two days now.

The instant she was able to take her hands away from her reddened eyes, she tore into the box of pizza. Even in her hunger she had the presence of mind to strip off the cheese and chuck it away -- the stuff always made her ill, "lack-something-intolerant" Sinister had called it -- and wolf down the delicious pepperoni first despite her now sore throat. Almost the entire pizza was gone by the time she slowed down and was curious enough to look into the fistful of paper bags she'd snagged too. Looks like bread, smells like bread. Hmm. All right then. Most of that vanished too, leaving her thirsty but more content than she'd been since parting company with Blockbuster at the port two days earlier.

He'd been easier to convince that she'd thought. Not happy with her decision to desert the team, but not about to stand in her way. He'd been quiet for an entire day as if thinking about the subject in great detail -- of course, being who he is, he probably needed the whole day to think about it, she thought with a grin. Then he'd offered to teach her how to play poker and it had been as if nothing had happened between them.

Until three days later, when she'd made her move to escape. He'd loomed out of the darkness, huge and disconcertingly silent, to crush the skulls of those two guards in his bare hands before she'd even spotted them. No words had been exchanged -- she understood instinctively that it was the only and the last piece of help he could offer.

They hadn't exactly been friends (the word "friend" had never been spoken aloud) but she felt more than a little uneasy when she thought that the next time they met, he'd be her enemy.

Vertigo mentally sighed and shrugged, concentrating instead upon licking buttery parmesan crumbs off of her fingers as she leaning back against a brick accessway on the chilly rooftop -- one of many she'd haunted since leaving the port, staying out of the alleys and definitely out of the sewers. Her teammates, now out to kill her or drag her home to Sinister for far worse? So be it. It wasn't like they'd ever been the fondest of friends, anyhow. Let them try to find her. She might not be the greatest Marauder in the world, but when she put her mind to it she could obliterate her trail so well that even four Scalphunters wouldn't be able to track her down.

She didn't know how she knew how to do that -- she just did. Something bubbling up from the flat blankness before her "birth" at the gnarled little hands of Brainchild, most likely. She didn't want to look the gift horse in the mouth. She was just happy that for once she was able to DO something.

Brainchild...now THERE was a name she hadn't thought of in years...

Sirens passed on the streets below, the flicker of their red-and-blue strobes reflecting off of the windows on both sides of the street, their kaleidoscope glitter bouncing up even to her third-story-level retreat. It was the fourth police car to pass this way in the last hour. She'd never really bothered to get a feel for life in the city, any city, and so she didn't know if that was normal or not. She knew it was silly and egotistical to think that it had anything to do with her, but if the others were already out on the streets looking for her...

She shook her head, pulling her stolen sweater tighter around her shoulders. No, they were more professional than that. They'd hit quietly, when she least expected it...

Great. Now I'm getting paranoid. Suddenly she felt colder than the night air warranted. She stood up, stuffing the leftover Crazy Bread in the hip pocket of the stained sweat-pants Blockbuster had found for her aboard the Hanjin Hammer Bay. Time to get moving for real. Somewhere, anywhere, just away. Far away. She had a sinking feeling that once again her so-called "plan" was far too simplistic to be useful, but what could she do but try to...

Out of nowhere, light splashed over the rooftop in a brilliant white flood and waves of wind beat around her like a hurricane. She instinctively threw one arm over her still-raw eyes and shrank back against the bricks as a helicopter roared overhead. They're after me! They found me! How did they find me?

In a blind instantaneous panic she "lashed out" at the helicopter even as she sprang to her feet and dove for the fire escape. Behind her she heard the beat of the 'copter's rotors change pitch as it veered off, swerving violently and barely missing the slightly taller building to the west. The light swept away too, leaving her dazzled and blind against the night, but she'd already grabbed the railing and swung her feet onto the metal ladder, and she didn't need her sight to scramble down towards the ground.

"...in airborne support of the ground units on the East Lexington Street break-in when all occupants were hit by intense dizziness and nausea -- pilot reports seeing a multicolored flash from ground-level. Suspected mutant interference, one female suspect spotted. Do we pursue, over?"

While the harried dispatcher dealt with the situation from Baltimore PD HQ, giving a negative and directing the helicopter back to its initial assignment, other listeners made careful note of the conversation. This was exactly what they'd been waiting for, though they hadn't counted on getting such a clear confirmation! Within ten minutes, that area would be flooded with agents under the jurisdiction of Project Safari...

However, there were other agencies within the government with an interest in the case. A personal interest. A flag flashed red on a single computer, activating a pager across town and alerting someone only a few streets away from the disturbance -- so close that the helicopter in question thudded unsteadily past overhead even as the pager beeped smugly on its beltloop.

The woman checked the little device and then looked up through short-cropped green-and-silver bangs, allowing herself a triumphant smile. "Ah. So THERE you are."