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Oliver half-rose when he saw Anna, then sank back into his chair as she collapsed against him, and held her close. He hadn't realized just how anxious he'd been until he saw her safe and sound. The hours had dragged by while he sat here, worrying. He'd tried to distract himself by walking around town, but couldn't keep his mind off her. Well, obviously - his girlfriend had gone off to Magneto himself!

He barely paid any attention to the map Anna handed him at first, instead brushing aside her hair to look her in the face. "He didn't hurt you, did he?" he asked, knowing he would never be able to forgive himself if Magneto had caused her harm. If only he could have gone with her!

But she seemed to be the same as always, if understandably a bit tired, so he contented himself with a quick kiss on her forehead and turned his attention to the map. He kept one arm around her shoulders, though. He didn't want to let her go again. As he examined the map with its detailed directions, he asked, "How did you get such good information out of Magneto? What did he say?"

((Oh, and I decided on Arizona.))

Oliver wanted to ask her more, to at least find out if she was hurt, but she was already asleep. He did his best to investigate and make sure nothing was bruised or broken, but he couldn't do much when she was asleep, at least not without compromising her modesty. And then, Magneto could have tortured her in ways that wouldn't leave marks. He was unable to believe that their nemesis would have just given her the information she asked for right away, with no strings attached.

Oh well. He would just have to ask her again when she woke up and was feeling better. For now, all he could do was get them on a bus to Arizona.

----------

It took them three whole days to reach their destination. They had to switch buses a couple times and spend nights cramped up on bus station benches because they couldn't afford a hotel, but they made it. The knowledge that they would soon find answers to all their questions bolstered them and gave them the strength to keep going.

In the end, Oliver wasn't able to get much more out of Anna than before. She assured him she wasn't hurt, but was strangely evasive about how she'd managed to get this information. Oliver didn't want to press her too hard; she seemed preoccupied and anxious. He supposed that was understandable; everything they thought they'd known could soon come crashing down around them. So he stopped asking her, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she was hiding something important, just because she thought he wouldn't like it.

But now they had no time to think about that. They stood in a deserted wasteland with not a living soul for miles, facing a heavy steel door flat on the dusty ground. It looked ancient, as though it were as deserted as it was supposed to be. But there was no dust and dirt blown across the door, as there should have been with all the wind this place got. It had obviously been opened recently.

Oliver shared one last look with Anna and heaved the heavy door open. It opened on concrete stairs leading into complete darkness. Taking a deep breath and Anna's hand, Oliver started down the stairs.

((Oh, I forgot to mention before, but feel free to make up descriptions and things to happen while they're in here. I doubt anything will really mess up the plans I have for the secrets being revealed.))

"Thanks," Oliver muttered, clicking on the flashlight and cautiously descending the stairs. The blazing sunlight only illuminated the top half of the staircase, leaving the rest encased in thick darkness. The thin beam of light led them safely to the foot of the stairs, and they found themselves at one end of a long hallway. The light faded away before it could illuminate the other end, and there were no doors. Oliver turned the flashlight up and saw that there were fluorescent lights set into the ceiling at regular intervals, but he decided not to go fumbling around for a light switch, just in case.

They walked down the hallway, soon leaving the welcoming light of the entrance far behind. Oliver tapped into Anna's power, feeling the eddies of wind curling around their feet and preparing as best he could for whatever might happen. He knew that, because they were so close, he couldn't use his plant power and Anna was as helpless as any regular teenager. That meant all responsibility for protecting them fell to him. And he wasn't about to let anything happen to her.

After what felt like an eternity, they reached the end of the hallway, where a heavy iron door stood facing them. Oliver was sure it would be locked and that was the joke of Magneto giving them directions, but when he tried the handle, it turned easily and the door swung open soundlessly. Again, it had obviously been used recently and kept in good repair; even in this dry desert, the soil drew moisture into this passage, yet the door bore no signs of rust.

When he pulled the door open, bright light suddenly blinded them again. Oliver threw up a sloppy shield of solid air in front of them, blinking quickly to see what threats might confront them in the light. But when his eyes adjusted, he saw nothing but a white hallway lit by fluorescent lights just like the darkened hallway they had come from. He let the air flow away again, and tentatively stepped into this new hallway. Why was it lit up like this when the previous hallway had no lights whatsoever?

This hallway, however, soon came to a two-way intersection. A sign had been posted conveniently on the bare, white wall, with arrows pointing towards each hallway. One read Gene Lab and the other read Records. Oliver turned to Anna, silently nodded towards the sign. Both ways looked promising, so where should they start?

((Lol, this feels like a Choose Your Own Adventure story.... xd ))

((Yeah, I would always put tons of bookmarks in my Choose Your Own Adventure books, so I could go back to where the story branched off and choose a different path if I didn't like the way the story was going - or just to see what would happen if I made a different choice.))

"Okay," Oliver softly agreed, following Anna down the hallway to the Gene Lab. He didn't really care where they started; all he wanted was for them to strip this place from top to bottom until they found the answer to all their questions. Simply knowing that there was a "gene lab" made him hopeful they would finally know why their powers had gone haywire.

The hallway was pretty boring until it ended in another metal door, though this one wasn't quite so heavy-duty. There was a tiny window in the door, and they peeked through. Oliver half-expected to see a bunch of white-coated scientists scurrying around, but from their vantage point the room seemed to be empty. Carefully, they pulled the door open and stepped into the lab.

It looked like a fairly stereotypical, high-tech lab. There were tables set up with bottles and beakers filled with various substances, colored brightly to make them more visible, and microscopes lined up at even intervals. Along one wall, next to another door, stood banks of computers hooked up to high-definition flatscreens, connected by wires to a small alcove filled with stacks upon stacks of computers humming away. If Magneto was really behind this place, he must have shelled out millions of dollars just to keep it running.

And the strange thing was, all the lights were on and the computers were on, the default screensaver displayed on every screen. The floor was clean, none of the surfaces were dusty, and there was even a white lab coat draped over the back of a chair, as if forgotten. It was as though this place had been buzzing with life until just hours ago. As if Magneto had warned them Oliver and Anna would be coming, and they'd evacuated. Or...were somewhere deeper in the building, waiting for them.

Oliver felt a little lost, not sure how they should begin analyzing this room, so he crossed to the computers and jiggled each mouse to see what the screens would display. A couple just went to the desktop that was just a flat, blue color. But some had documents open, and Oliver leaned in eagerly to see what they said. Unfortunately, it was all so technical he couldn't make heads or tails of it. One computer showed a long list of chemical equations that seemed only halfway finished.

Frustrated, Oliver turned to Anna. "We're never going to learn anything this way!" For the first time, he wished they had waited for Professor Xavier to come with them; he would have understood what these files were talking about.

((Don't worry about it. We can move through this fairly quickly unless they come upon something interesting to talk about.))

"Okay." Oliver let Anna pull him along; he wasn't about to argue when they obviously couldn't understand what any of the information meant. He just wished he knew what sinister chemicals they cooked up in this place.

Through the next door, they came to another hallway lined with doors. The first one they tried was just a broom closet, and the second was a locker room. They were all locked, and of course they had no idea what the combinations were, so they had to hope there were only more lab coats inside and move on.

Next they came upon some sort of break room, or conference room. It looked like any ordinary room one might find in an office building aboveground, with a coffee machine on a counter to one side and a long table surrounded by somewhat comfortable chairs. There was even a plastic potted plant in the corner, as if someone mistakenly thought it would brighten the ominous cloud that hung around this whole facility.

Oliver expected the last door on the hall to lead to the same sort of room they'd found so far, but instead it opened on a much larger room, dominated by a large bank of computers that, like all the other machinery in the building, was still humming with life. And off to the side, there was an operating table so much like the ones in evil scientist labs from cartoons that Oliver wanted to laugh. There were even leather straps to hold the person down. An identical bed stood in the corner, just waiting to be wheeled to the center as well.

But all humor faded from him when he realized what this meant. Who knew what experiments they carried out on their subjects, but.... "Do you think..." he faltered, "...that we were...."

"Yeah..." Oliver said slowly, wrenching his eyes away from the table that sent chills down his spine. "Yeah, you're right." He glanced at the table again, then turned his back on it and took Anna's hand. "We've got to destroy this place, Anna. Once we've looked through this whole place and found answers, we need to stop them from whatever they're doing. We don't know if they're still experimenting on kids like us, but we can't let them do to anyone else...whatever it is they did to us."

He led her back out of the room, but they'd explored all the rooms on this hallway. There was nowhere left to go except back. Oliver thought he detected reluctance in the way Anna hung back, but she said nothing as they went in the direction of the sign reading Records.

And then...they were there. A computer lab, much like the one now behind them, and all of these computers were on as well. Oliver jiggled the mouse connected to one, and found arrayed right on the desktop an assortment of folders, each dated by year. Slowly, he sank into the chair in front of it and clicked on one at random. Reams of documents appeared, each one detailing the results of whatever twisted experiments they'd done each day.

"This is it," he said in a hushed voice. "See if you can find your file."

((I decided to summarize what they find in the files, because I'm too lazy to figure out how to write pseudoscientifical babble razz ))

Oliver rolled his chair over next to Anna, his heart pounding. Here it was, the answers they'd been seeking all this time. Finally, they would learn the truth. Would they like what they had found, or would this throw a shadow over their whole lives? The files Oliver had glanced through in his own search had made it clear that the scientists working here had been trying to mutate genes themselves, apparently to create mutants from scratch rather than waiting for nature to do the trick.

He put his hand over Anna's, and nodded for her to open the files. Then they both leaned in and began to read. It was all here, the story of their lives.

They had been taken from the same hospital on the same day, as (apparently) many other newborns were as well. They were paired up for testing, and their genes were found to be "compatible," whatever that mean. What sent a thrill of horror down Oliver's spine was that, when they first came in, their genes were perfectly normal. Then began the experimentation. Increasingly large dosages of various chemicals were injected into them, and the effects on their bodies and genes were carefully monitored. Oliver noticed that he seemed to have been given many more injections of these chemicals than Anna, and wondered what that meant. Page upon page listed the many medical minutiae that the scientists were hoping to see effects in.

But the strange thing was, there didn't seem to be any effect. Again and again, the scientists recorded their surprise that these two subjects were showing no change when others had "failed." Oliver shuddered to think how many infants must have died with all these chemicals being injected into them and mutating them beyond functionality. But Oliver and Anna seemed to resist all that, not even displaying any change in their genetic structure.

And so, after almost two years, the scientists seemed to give up. They shipped the two infants off to be placed with specially trained couples, who continued to monitor their behavior. Oliver slowly clenched his fist around Anna's hand; he'd known it might come to this, but here was solid proof that they hadn't grown up in their real, biological families. Everything he'd held dear had been a lie. Every time his mother had asked him how his day had gone at school, every time his father had helped him out or protected him, they had been doing so only to protect this valuable specimen of human genetic construction.

One day - the exact same day for both of them, he noticed - the DNA samples their "parents" had kept sending in for analysis had turned up positive. A genetic mutation had been pinpointed in both of them, years after the experimentation but long before the onset of puberty that would trigger the rise of their powers. After that, they progressed as any mutant would, with no seeming abnormalities. It chilled Oliver to realize just how closely they had been watched all their lives, leading right up to the point where Xavier had taken them out of scrutiny in his academy.

Slowly, Oliver sat back in his chair and let out a long sigh. He ran a hand through his hair and just stared blankly at the wall, trying to process all this. Finally, he looked up at Anna again, his expression mutely asking, Now what?

Maybe this was why they'd been drawn to each other ever since they first met. Maybe this was why they'd become friends, why he had felt so right in her presence, why he had fallen for her so easily. They had always been linked, and here they were, returned to the place where they had been contained as babies. The circle was now complete, and they were back where they'd started.

But Anna was right. They needed to break that circle. Oliver set his jaw in resolution, and laced his fingers through hers. "Yeah. Let's put a stop to this once and for all."

The hollow sound of a single person clapping echoed around the room, and they whirled around to see a balding black man in one of the lab coats like the ones they'd found in the locker room. He stood just in the doorway, flanked by two other scientists wearing helmets and bullet-proof vests, and pointing deadly-looking rifles at the two mutants. Oliver wondered how on earth they could have made it into the room without making a sound, but he supposed there were more important things to consider at the moment.

"I must say, I'm proud of you for making it this far on your own," the black scientist said, seeming completely at his ease. "It's not just anyone who would be tenacious enough to pursue their past this far. But then, I always knew you were something special."

"Who are you?" Oliver asked warily, slowly raising his hands over his head but also trying to craft a wall of air to thrust at them if necessary.

"Tut tut, we'll have none of that." The man clicked his fingers, and a translucent orb surrounded him and his guards, like a gigantic soap bubble. Alarmed, Oliver pushed the wall of air forward, but it seemed to have no effect on the shield at all.

"You're...a mutant too?" Oliver asked slowly.

"Yes, as a matter of fact. But I would choose caution, if I were you: These shields do not block physical movement. I will have you shot if you resist." He folded his hands complacently before him, and continued as if they were chatting over coffee, "To answer your other question, I am Dr. Smith - never mind that all my associates are Dr. Smiths as well." He laughed somewhat unpleasantly. "I can't say just how thrilled I am to see you two again. I haven't seen you since you left this facility. Oliver and Anna were the names chosen for you, were they not?"

Oliver realized every muscle in his body was slowly tensing up. He didn't recognize this 'Dr. Smith' at all, but here was a man claiming to know his past. From what Oliver understood, this man had even been one of the ones who had experimented on them in the first place. Here was someone responsible for everything that had ever happened to them. He didn't know if he was terrified out of his skin, or so angry he wanted to murder this man.

When he received no reply, Dr. Smith merely smiled and said, "Very well. I'll cut to the chase, since that's what young people so often seem to wish. I have an offer to make: Forego your decision just now to destroy Copperstone, let us continue our work here, and...let us run just a few tests to see how you have progressed since you passed out of our radar." A glint appeared in his eye, the glint of a scientist following his passion. "If you do, we will let you go free, without fear of pursuit, and we will take our leave of you, never to meet again. By all means, return to your life at Xavier's school, but let us return to ours."

It sounded so reasonable. So why did Oliver feel so uneasy?

((Dun dun DUNNNNN!!!! xd I was listening to this while writing, and it fit really well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poMwWRFBZEM))