Ausente sin Culpa ni Presente sin Disculpa | Preámbulo

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An unexpected phone call from an old colleague brings Cecilia some unfortunate news about her one-time X-Corps project.

Despite Cecilia's best intentions, the Internet always got the best of her.

She'd logged onto her laptop planning to look at surgical research, hoping that she'd make progress on one of the most-troubling medical mysteries of her career: Wade's cancer. Every few months, she'd pick up his chart, determined to finally make some kind of medical breakthrough.

This month had been no different. But a quick visit to Facebook led her astray, and now she was looking at Clueless nostalgia pieces and listicles about boricua heritage.

So the dulcet digital chimes of Skype, while surprising, were not totally unwelcome. She minimized the browser window with a ranked list of piragua flavors and stared at the message that popped upon the screen. The username wasn't totally familiar, and it didn't have any clues to which friend had decided to call her out of the blue.

No reason not to take the call, though. She fiddled with her hair slightly, then clicked accept.

Carmen Dueñas was tired. She was so very, very tired. But she was one of the lucky ones. She straightened up when Cecilia accepted the Skype call, pasting on a smile for her friend. "Hey," she said. Her voice was rough — smoke inhalation would do that to a girl — and she had to clear her throat before she continued. "It's good to see you."

"Ay, Carmen!" Cecilia put both her hands to her heart in a display of affection. "My God, it's so nice to see you too!" She looked down at the keyboard, finding the key to adjust the brightness so she could turn it up with a few taps. "Are you — I mean, how are you?"

Holding onto her smile by the skin of her teeth, Carmen says, "Y'know. Same old." She had to swallow, though, reaching for a glass of water to take a sip. "How are things up north?"

"Oh, they're fine." Cecilia looked around her bedroom, then shrugged at her webcam. "I guess it's been a while. Sorry about that. Things got kinda crazy after..." The connection improved, and Carmen went from being a blurry face with a choppy voice to something clearer. Cecilia studied the image. "Well, you know." She thought she could see the lines of tension in the other woman's face.

"Yeah," Carmen said, nodding. She hadn't wanted to make this phone call. She hadn't wanted to, but it was necessary now. "The start of the year, it was pretty bad for everybody, I think." She was tired and she was scared. This conversation alone would be enough to bring the local cartel down on her head. "I — Cecilia. We need your help." Her voice broke a little on the last word.

"Carmen..." Cecilia sat up a little straighter upon seeing Carmen's expression. This distress, this worry. Since the day Cece met her, stepping out of the car in Tegucigalpa, she'd never seen Dr. Carmen Dueñas look remotely defeated. For a doctor in Honduras, that was no easy feat. Gang violence, sexual assault, tropical disease and a never-ending migration crisis intersected at one spot on the Central American isthmus. Administering medical care there felt Sisyphean for anyone. For a woman, dealing with a society mired in machismo made things tougher.

And through it all, Cecilia watched Carmen Dueñas keep her head up. Cece had admired this colleague. Dr. Carmen Dueñas had been her rock in Honduras. It was no surprise when she and Cecilia became friends. They both were powered by the same plunge-in-head-first ethos. There was no time for exhaustion or fear.

So something was clearly wrong, and now Cecilia's heart was in her mouth. "Talk to me," she said. "What's going on?"

Allowing her shoulders to droop again, Carmen set her glass aside and rubbed her palms over her face before straightening again. "What do you know about Rave?"

"Rave?" Cecilia raised an eyebrow. "Not enough, probably," she admitted. "Highly addictive, and it seems like it came out of nowhere in the last few months, at least around here. A few reports of kids ODing on it in the city - heard some Columbia guy talking about it on the radio. I know that it's triggering the same reactions as a speedball, but in one drug." She stared above the laptop screen, trying to recall something she'd read. "And there's the mutant thing, but I think that might be fear-based bullshit."

Her phone vibrated, and Cecilia looked down at it before looking at Carmen. "Why?" She took the other woman's appearance in again. "Oh god." The concern was now written on her face. "Another drug to destroy Latin America."

Carmen nodded slowly. "It's... everything after M-Day, chica. Government people died, gang people died. Everything was a mess. Then, suddenly, a new cartel and Rave. It... I haven't been able to do any tests, it might be a derivative of Kick or in the same family." Shaking her head as though to clear it, Carmen said, "But the clinic in Tegucigalpa. It's gone, Cece. Ransacked and burned to the ground. We think it was because we treated mutants and you know how everyone feels after M-Day. But it might have been gang related, we were treating people regardless of affiliation, too."

"What?" Cecilia's hand went to her mouth, even though she didn't gasp. The pit in her stomach grew. It - she knew, on some level, that the call must be about the clinic. There was no other reason for Carmen to drop in like this, asking for help. But the idea that her pet project, the biggest public embrace she'd made to her mutation, was gone... that hadn't occurred to her. Troubles were to be expected, but this many months of work didn't just...

"Burned," she repeated, still staring off on space. "Burned to the ground."

Carmen nodded tiredly. "They used some type of accelerant and what isn't burned is broken. I'm sorry." She knew how important the project had been to Cecilia and she wished, she wished more than anything, that she had other news to offer.

"No, it's..." Cecilia sighed and looked down at her hands. "This the world now, Carmen," she said, a weary tone in her voice now matching Carmen's. "MSF thought it was bad when they pulled me, but everything's fucked up worldwide now." She was taking this news incredibly personally, but she was doing her best not to show it. The emotion wouldn't do either of them any good. "So, mutant hatred? Or gang bravado?"

"Si," Carmen said, nodding. "Those are our choices. And neither of them gets vaccinations into children or condoms to teenagers or antibiotics to villagers."

"Yeah." Cecilia said. "I know." She sighed again, her hand going to her hair, where it played with a loose curl while she considered their conversation. The clinic was gone, and rebuilding it would be an effort. And even if she did, there was the question of their apparent enemy — which could be anyone.

The medicine she could handle. But this was something else entirely. A kind of violence and destruction born out of an enmity with which she wasn't accustomed.

It had been silent for a while when Cecilia finally spoke. "Okay. No clinic. Lots of patients. Maybe I can..." She looked around her desk for a pen and some paper and after a brief search, found only a Sharpie and a Whole Foods receipt. "I dunno. I can do something."

"Anything would help," Carmen said. She wasn't expecting much. She knew Cecilia didn't have the type of disposable income necessary to fund another clinic, but even just some equipment would help at this point.

"Okay." Cecilia said, nodding. She straightened in her seat and did her best to look confident and reassuring. "Let me — hang tight, Carmen. I'll see what I can do."