The Best Deceptions: Part 1, Thief in the Night (Backdated)

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As Dr. Alice and Dr. Gene Hayes get their daughter, Molly, ready for bed they receive an unexpected visitor.



Molly Hayes did not want to go to bed. She didn't understand why she had to go to bed when she wasn't sleepy. She'd gone a little crazy on the candy from her Christmas stocking that Mom thought she'd hid from her so she was, in fact, quite not sleepy at all.

After taking a bath and running through the house and then dropping an entire glass of chocolate milk on herself and then taking another bath, she was finally in her pajamas and sitting on the bed. She wore her frog hat to bed, it kept her head warm and made a ribbit noise. Well, it used to, but she'd dropped it in a coin fountain once so now it sounded like a horror movie with dying mutated robot frogs.

"Hey! Mom, can I stay up for New Years Eve and watch that ball thingy?" she said, peering up at her mother from her giant rainbow pillow that she had her arms wrapped around with big, pleading eyes. There was also a tiny touch of lip pouting. "Please?"

"No." Alice's tone was brisk and matter-of-fact as she collected several items of discarded clothing and hung them over the back of a chair. "You need your sleep."

Molly frowned, sighing with dejection as she bit her lip. "But, it's just once!"

"Don't argue with your mother, honey. We'll consider it next year." Gene said while passing the doorway, a medical journal in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.

Molly dropped the pillow and folded her arms, scrunching her nose as her eyes lowered. The pouty lip intensified. "That's a year away."

Picking up the pillow, she covered her face with it, knowing she had lost the battle. But a thought occurred to her and she pulled the pillow away, beaming brightly.

"Can I at least have a New Years hat?" she said. She could add it to her collection. Sometimes the New Years hats looked funny. She loved those.

It was rude to not knock, but he was helping another kid, just like him. So even though his counselors had told him to always knock, Peter didn't. He kicked the door, just like the police on TV did. It was -very- effective. Possibly because he was wearing his armor again, and while he'd been gone, Nanny had made his armor even better. The door came right off its hinges and splintered around his foot and that was pretty cool. It was also loud.

"Don't you have enough ha--" Alice's admonishment about her daughter's millinery obsession was cut off by the loud crash downstairs.

She dropped the hoodie she'd been folding, spinning to face the door. "Gene?!" she gasped. "It's alright, Molly." Gene said, the glass of wine dropping from his hand unnoticed.

~Get her out of here. Now!~ With that, he was running towards the noise, pall mall down the stairs, expecting to see black clad government troops pouring through the doors.

Even if that was the case, he could cause enough chaos to let Alice use her mental distractions to get away with their daughter. Peter pushed the rest of the door down. In his armor, the doorway was just a little bit smaller than he was, and the doorframe splintered around him as he entered the house.

He didn't see the man coming towards him at first, the helmet obscured his vision, and when he did, he stopped and stood still. He wasn't to hit first, not anymore, the people on the Island and then the people at the Center taught him that. It didn't mean he couldn't hit second, and he wanted to see what this man would do.

Molly let out a shriek of surprise when the door made a huge boom noise downstairs and her daddy went to go see what it was. He could tell her it was alright but she knew he was lying. He sounded too scared. She jumped out of bed, staring wide-eyed at the door. "M-mom? What's going on?"

Brian Alphona, the Hayes family's neighbor, was out on a walk with his dog in front of Alice and Gene Hayes house whenever he heard the commotion. They'd always acted a little off, suspicious and sneaky, but nothing like this. Curiosity got the better of him and he slowly made his way toward the sound to see what it was.

Gene looked at the figure, in his ridiculous outfit. It wasn't SHIELD. Some other government agency? Foes of Magneto? Regardless, he reached out telepathically, trying to dip into the figure's mind.

"Stay here," Alice instructed her daughter. "Lock the door. Don't open it for anyone except your father or me." She didn't want to leave Molly, but she wasn't going to leave Gene to face whatever was going on alone. "If we don't come for you in fifteen minutes, I want you to climb out of your window and run to the neighbor's. I know you can do it," she continued as Molly seemed about to protest.

"You climb out of the damn thing plenty of times when you think I don't know. Understand?"

Molly searched her mom's face. She was scared too. She heard thuds coming downstairs like footsteps, big footsteps. Like a monster. But they said monsters weren't real. Were they wrong? What if they got hurt? What if the monster hurt them? She closed her mouth and bit her lip when her mom stopped her from speaking.

She held her arms to her sides, really straight, clenching her fists. She could help fight the monster, maybe, but mom seemed like she really wanted her to hide. She still seemed really scared. She didn't want to make her worry. Frowning, Molly kept nibbling her lip and finally quickly nodded. "Okay," she said quietly.

Pulling her hat a little tighter on her head, She watched as her mother left and once she was gone she locked the door behind her, fidgeting with the hem of her pajamas. After a few moments, Molly stood on her tip toes, putting her ear to the door to see what she could hear.

Peter stopped and stared at the man. Why wasn't he yelling or hitting or even trying maybe to shoot the armor? That's what all the other bad parents had done. He couldn't figure out what the man was doing, except that it felt a little like sometimes when Nanny grounded him. But not really. He didn't like it, he was sure about that, and no one was watching anyway, so he picked up the largest piece of the destroyed door and threw it.

Gene scrambled away from the debris, as it shattered through the drywall. he swore he could feel the joists crack under the blow. In the mind glow, he could feel the shields shift, and a crack appear. Someone had done a very good job shielding the man's mind, but he wasn't a natural psion himself. That left him vulnerable intermittently.

Peter could only watch as Gene slipped through the defenses for a brief moment; long enough to make a fist with one gauntleted hand, and in front of Peter's horrified stare, make the man punch himself hard enough in the face to send him tumbling end over end, dazed, back out through the front door.

Brian had little trouble making his way up to the house. The Hayes always had a nicely manicured lawn. His dog, Rigby, started to get really uncomfortable and pulled at the leash as Brian approached one of the windows near the front foyer. Brian peeked in the window, his eyes widening as he saw a man in armor attacking Gene.

His eyes got even larger as the man seemed to stop...and then start punching himself, with a distant look in Gene's eyes. Was he doing it somehow? What in the world? As the man in armor fell out of the front door with a large thud, Rigby and Brian jumped at the same time, only Rigby was less quiet about it and let out a startled yipe, ripping away from his leash and tearing off into the bushes.

Brian decided to take Rigby's idea and take off behind him.

Alice had come down the stairs in time to see the invader toppling backwards out of the front door and used the distraction to press the advantage, finding another crack in Peter's shields to slip inside and begin to wipe his memory of them. She would have loved to have been able to scan for how he had found them, but her skills weren't up to par. ~Forget all of this.~

"Who was-" Gene stopped as he saw Brian in front of the intruder. The last thing he needed was his neighbour spreading stories about the attack. Police would ask questions, and the more they asked, the greater the chance that their secret lives might be uncovered.

Brian was turning to run, and Gene knew he didn't have time to deal with both him and the invader. The armoured man was looking stunned - Gene chose to dash past him and after Brian.

Brian heard someone coming up from behind as he ran, brushing past leaves and grass. He turned his head to see Gene coming toward him, and, after what he'd seen, was hesitant to slow down, but he did, holding up his hands to beg. "Gene...look...man...I...I won't...say anything, please," he said.

"No, you won't, Brian." Gene said, breathing heavily. He reached out, easily slipping into Brian's mind. The man had no shields, and his memories were laid open like a filmstrip. He selected the most recent memories, and began to pull them out of his conscious mind. The memories were fresh, hard to detangle, and Gene began to sweat as he tried to keep all the pieces in place.

It was taking too long. The intruder wouldn't be dazed for long, they were in the middle of a suburb, and someone was bound to notice. Desperate, he gathered up the threads of the memory, and yanked. It was as crude as hacking away with a shovel, but he had no choice. The memories were wrenched out, but as he did so, he could tell something was wrong, as he watched Brian turn beet red, and blood begin to trickle from his eyes and nose.

He'd hit himself! It hurt and the inside of his head was ringing like he'd been hit in his head too. He must have hit himself there too, he thought, even if he didn't remember why.

The blood and snot dripped from his nose and got in his mouth and he was confused because he couldn't remember why he'd been hitting himself and he was supposed to be at the center, except... Peter sat down in the middle of the lawn and wiped his face with his hands, smearing blood everywhere.

No, he remembered, he wasn't going to the center, he was with Nanny, and he was supposed to go ... somewhere, but he didn't know where he was supposed to go anymore. He snuffled, and tried to wipe his nose with his elbow and got clumsily to his feet. He was lost, that had to be it, and he had his phone and if he got lost he was to call and someone would get him home. And now he could call Nanny, she always knew how to get him home.

Alice saw Peter's confusion, the blood running across his face and pushed harder, holding onto the stair rail with white-knuckled hands. No time for a finesse job, the noise was bound to have attracted attention, but she didn't want to damage the man's - boy, really, now she was in his mind she realized that he was an overgrown man-child - mind any more than she had to.

~Go home. Forget about us. You were never here.~

Peter wandered out towards the mailbox and bent down to peer at it. He had a number for this house, and that was half of what he needed to tell Nanny where he was. He stumbled once, crushing the mailbox and wandered out towards the street, leaving a large dent in a parked car when he pushed against it to try to steady himself.

His wanderings took him down the street, to where he pulled the street sign off it's pole and brought it close to his face to read it. Anyone listening would've heard him tell someone on the phone that he was at a street corner and read the street names out loud, and then apologize to the person on the other end. He started to walk further down the street, and a minivan, half painted in primer grey and half in neutral tan pulled up before he got more than another block away, and he clambered in.

As soon as she saw the intruder wander off, Alice clattered down the rest of the stairs, hunting for her husband. He wasn't downstairs, therefore he must have gotten outside somehow.

~Gene!~ she mindcalled. ~Are you there? Are you all right?~

"Shit." Gene had eased Brian back on the grass, but the flow of blood hadn't stopped. With mounting horror, he realized that in his haste, he must have pushed Brian's mind into a state of physical collapse. The pressure must have created a stress induced aneurysm. He was a doctor; he saved lives, not took them. He understood in Magneto's war, there would be sacrifices, but this was the first time he was faced with the consequences of it.

He put two fingers to Brian's throat and checked his watch. ~Brian's dead, Alice.~

~Dead?!~ Alice skidded around the corner of the house and found the grisly tableau - Gene kneeling over a bloodied Brian, his face pale and stricken. "Oh my God." Her own horror at the situation was quickly buried under the streak of self-preservation that had helped them survive this long without being identified as mutants. "We can't stay here, not now."

"We can't just leave him out here. If they find him, and a busted front door, they're going to eventually think 'mutant'." Gene grabbed Brian's hands, and started hauling him towards the house. ~Get Molly. Pack a few things and get the strongbox. We need to leave here as soon as possible.~

~Crack his skull. It will look less suspicious than an aneurysm~ Alice's reply was brisk and matter of fact as she turned and ran for the house. ~We won't be able to take our car far before we have to dump it, but we should be able to make it to one of the group's safehouses and switch.~

~Fire. If we torch the house, it will takes days to determine whether anyone was at home.~

As people gathered in front of their TVs wearing party hats and shouting the countdown to the New Year, yellow and orange flames danced across the remnants of a mansion in the hills, the billowing smoke pouring towards the moon.

The sounds of sirens from fire trucks filled the air as the red flash of their lights glittered on the ground, joining the fireworks that exploded in the sky.