The flight was long and uneventful. The view, though they knew it would be breathtaking, was mostly hidden by the clouds that hung just below the level of the plane. Sandra buried herself in a book, David in his gameboy and Sarah showed Liz a new photo editing package she had bought for her computer.

"So you see if I have two photos - like these two of you and me that I scanned - and I highlight all the major points on our faces, I can make a completely different person." Sarah looked up from the screen of the laptop where she was conducting her demonstration, meeting Liz's eyes. "You're not listening to a word of this, are you?" She asked laughingly.

"No, but I enjoyed hearing it." Sarah laughed outright at this, turning the screen so that it faced Liz.

"This is what our seventeen-year-old daughter would look like." She teased. Liz spent a minute taking in the dark brown hair, straggly where the two hair-styles met; soft hazel eyes; cheerful grin and structured cheekbones. A perfect midpoint between her face and Sarah's. She laughed after a moment.

"Good god, don't say things like that. Mum's already pining after another grandchild."

They stepped off the plane and were herded into a crowded terminal, P.A.s announcing every few seconds which flights were delayed and cancelled. They grabbed their bags as they appeared, weaving their way to them on slow conveyor belts and headed for the lounge where Kelly would be waiting for them. Sandra spotted her 26 year old daughter as soon as she stepped into the huge space. She was tall, like her father, and her strawberry blond hair - again, just like her father's - was very visible over the crowds. As she came into view Sandra thought, not for the first time, how very much like her father she looked. She might have questioned her own motherhood of the girl - woman, she reminded herself - if she hadn't carried her. Kelly's young daughter on the other hand, Shazné, looked very much like her grandmother had at that age, having only just turned three. Her white blond hair, which would darken as she got older as Liz's had and David's would, her pixi-blue eyes - the only feature that Kelly and her mother shared - and her hyperactivity which Sandra could remember used to be frowned upon in herself (and as a result intended to pander to at every possible opportunity).

She pulled her daughter and granddaughter into her arms.

"Hey." Kelly greeted when she was finally released.

"Nanna!" Shazné giggled, reaching out to Sandra, risking tipping herself out of her mother's arms.

"Nanna will carry you later Shaz." Her mother consoled, shifting her into a safer position and doling out hugs to the others. "Right now we have to get back to the hotel."

"Daniel's coming home." Kelly told Sandra gleefully as they drove the short distance to the hotel that Adrian owned and ran. "He was saving up some leave from before we were married for a holiday or something. It was going to be a surprise but he said this was more important. He'll fly in tomorrow morning and we'll have at least two weeks together."

"Is he OK to do that? I thought it was getting a bit tense out there." Sandra asked.

"It was all a big mistake. They thought they had found a huge group of mutants in this city. They were getting ready for a big strike on them. Turns out these people were just all taking some drug, strange after effects but nothing genetically freaky."

"What does Daniel think of all this?"

"He's glad. He hates going in and just wiping out a population where some of the people might just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He doesn't particularly like killing the mutants, but at least he knows that's the right thing to do." Sandra shuddered internally, consoling herself with the thought that, try as she might, she was never going to be able to protect her children from the outside influences that told them all mutants were bad. They'd been brought up in a world where just about anything strange could be shot on sight. It was a different world to the one she used to know.

"Did you know that Ade and Tammy's Dad was coming down?" Kelly asked.

"Yes, Ade said on the phone." She wondered when Kelly had started dropping the 'Uncle' and 'Aunt'.

"I don't think I ever met him."

"You did, but I'm not sure you would remember. We saw him a lot when you were very little, but his wife died before you were born and he did lots of travelling with Ade and Tammy as a way to get away from it so he wasn't in one place for very long. He came to Liz's first birthday party, you would only have been eleven. That was about the time he started to settle down again. We saw him a couple of times after that, but I think you were at College or away with Daniel. We never see enough of him. He and Mum are… were…" She sighed biting her lip. "It's going to take some getting used to, not having her around."

"He's not well either." Kelly said.

"Hmm?" Sandra asked absently.

"Their Dad, he's not very well either. It sounds like he's got the same thing Gramma had."

"Oh no." Sandra whispered.

"I thought you should know, to prepare your self. They don't come down until tomorrow either, Tammy's driving them." Sandra nodded.

"Thank you. Well, I guess it's going to be an interesting reunion." She fought out a smile, looking back at the others. "You ready for this?"

AN: I'm ignoring Nikki, she caused too much trouble for Katianna in Serum.

"It's been a long time." Amy greeted him at the door, smiling and pulling him into a hug. She hadn't changed at all, he mused, in the time it had been since he had seen her last. Her smile was a little quieter, she looked a little older, wiser perhaps. She didn't vibrate with the energy she had once lived for.

"I wasn't sure you'd want to see me." Adam replied. She simply turned away, stepping inside and leaving him to follow.

"It's been too long, Adam, almost thirty years. It didn't take me long to realise that it was never completely your fault. But by then you'd disappeared into the realms of red tape and misinformation. I saw you make the papers a few times, it was nice to see that you were still alive." She turned back and gave him a grin. "Emmy, we have company." She shouted down a hall before leading him into a small sitting room and taking a seat.

"Emmy?" Adam asked.

"Emily, my daughter." She offered, grinning as a lanky blond teen appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, hair ruffled, and looking the picture of her mother when she was younger.

"Nice you meet you Emily." Adam said, holding out a hand to shake. She eyed it for a moment before taking it in a strong grasp. "I'm Adam, an old friend of your Mum." She grunted and headed back into what he assumed was her room.

"She's a teenager, what can I say." Amy laughed.

"I know exactly what you mean." Adam laughed along with her, thinking of Shalimar and Jesse when they had been in their teens.

"Have you had kids?"

"Not of my own, no. But I took in a young girl and then a younger boy at about that age. They've all grown up now."

"You missed the best bits."

"Oh, I don't know. To watch them grow into who they are today…"

"Do you know where she is?" The question seemed to jump out of the blue, but Adam didn’t need to ask who she was referring to. Her child, her and Rachel's child, the result of the combination of their genes and the small alterations that he had made to make the whole thing possible. The reason for Rachel's death.

"Yes, I've been keeping an eye on her, trying my best to keep her safe."

"Is she OK?"

"Yes." He wanted to tell her so much more, but it wasn't the way it could be. They had decided, a long long time ago. And no more would be said.

"I'm glad. I thought you'd sought me out to tell me…"

"Oh no." He shook his head. "I'm sorry to scare you. I came here… because I needed your help, your advice."

"Well, that's a new one." She laughed briefly, looking mildly shocked.

"I need you to dissuade me from offering this," He held the folder out to her. "To a couple I know."

She opened the simple cardboard folder, her breath catching as she saw the photo on front page. She trailed her fingers down the sides of it, her eyes shutting for a moment as she blinked away tears.

"But it didn't work…"

"The situation is different, I know things now I didn't then. I can make it work this time." She looked at the photo again.

"I… I don't have any pictures of her." She admitted, tears trailing down her cheeks unhindered. "I was upset, I threw them out. I was so angry with myself afterwards."

"Mom?" Emily was at her mother's side immediately as she saw the tears. "What is it? Do you want him to leave?" The older woman laughed softly.

"No, no. I'm OK. Just old memories." She handed the girl the file, showing her the photo. "My first love." She explained. "Eight years we were together. She died giving birth to our girl." Emily nodded and flicked through the file, seeming to read all of the information. Adam wondered exactly how much she would take in and understand from what she read.

"You tried to make a kid together? Two women? How is that possible?" She exclaimed, going back to a page and re-reading it.

"She's a smart kid." Amy laughed at Adam's surprise. He simply nodded.

"This is mind-blowing." The girl exclaimed again. She stopped on the last page, her face dropping. Adam knew what was shown there. The small note recording the day it all went wrong, the readouts, the information. The end. She looked at this for a moment, thinking of what she had heard them saying. A small slip of card fell out of the back of the folder, landing on her lap and she picked it up. 'A Thanksgiving' the main title read. It was a simple invitation card. "It didn't work." She said quietly.

"No." Adam answered simply.

"But the baby…" She looked between the card and the file, confused at the inconsistencies. Adam looked to Amy, this was her story to tell.

"I decided to put her up for adoption. I was a mess, I couldn't have taken care of her as well as she needed. I don't know where she is, but I know she's OK. She'd be almost thirty now. Your older sister."

They watched as Emily flicked back to the photo on the front page.

"She's prettier than Libby." She said decisively. Amy laughed out loud.

"Oh good. Just don't compare her to Steve."

"Steve?" Adam asked.

"Her 'Father'." She replied, putting the word in finger quotes leaving Adam no doubts about the lengths this man had gone to in fatherhood. "He stuck around long enough to get me pregnant and appears now and again with money to soothe his conscience. Libby got me through the pregnancy and out the other side in one piece. She's still around but it's more or less platonic between us now. It didn't work out, and it's better just us, isn't it Emmy." The teen scowled at the nickname and even more at the kiss on the forehead that followed it.

"What was she like?" Emily asked, voice quiet. For a moment it looked like Amy might refuse, or close up, or retort in anger. A barrage of emotions crossed her face in a short space of time but eventually settled on calm regret.

"We met at a party when we were in college. I walked past her a couple of times and she was hidden in a corner looking terribly worried. She looked so adorable… I pulled her on to the dance floor. Of course, I'd never seen her before so I didn't know about her leg and there was me trying to get her to dance. She tried so hard, but it was just… hysterical. We had such a laugh." She smiled at the memory; her face lit, if just for a moment, with the energy Adam remembered from all those years ago.

"What was wrong with her leg?" Emily asked, curious.

"She was caught in an earthquake, a building landed on her." Adam knew that was only part of the story. He also knew the truth, the truth she had told few people in her life. Of her disturbed mother and often absent father. Found by her mother kissing another girl her mother had flown into a rage and dragged her to the nearest church where she had been locked in the catacombs under the church when the earthquake had hit. The church, of old construction and not to the standards usually requested of buildings in the area, had collapsed around her and she had only been found before she suffocated because the girl who she had been found with told the rescue crew where she was. Her mother had died in the quake and her father seemed somehow relieved to get as far away from them as possible. She had moved in with her grandmother as soon as she had recovered enough from her injuries to be moved. "It left her with this terrible limp. At first I thought she was faking it to get out of the sports, or at least making it seem worse then it was, because we went out one day on a botany project and we walked miles that day and her limp got softer as we went along. By the end of the day you might not have thought she was the same woman. So I dragged her up this mountain somewhere, I can't even remember where it was. I decided that if I saw her struggling we'd stop and go back down. I didn't even think that it would be worse for her going down than going up. We got to the very top of this peak and I almost had to carry her back down. We had such a good laugh though, we did it again. It didn't half get me fit." She looked down at her hands and they all sat silent for a moment, waiting for her to go on. "Adam, if you think you can get this to work." She lifted the file and handed it back to him. "If you really think you can make it work then give it to them. Nothing will make them happier than a child. I couldn't imagine life without Emily. I only wish I could have Rachel here to share it with me."

He looked at the piece of card in his hand, feeling his heart race. He couldn't do it. He couldn't.

"A thanksgiving," The card read, "For the lives of Rachel Waiter and her unborn child." Her unborn child… He hated it. For the first time in his life he hated what his work represented, here on this page. Hated the secrecy that Genomex demanded. That he'd agreed to. Hated that the child - another success for Genomex - would disappear because one parent had died and the other… The other couldn't live without her.

He put down the gilt edged card, feeling his hands shake as the emotions flooded over him. He had killed one of his best friends, destroyed the life of another. The look in her eyes when he had stood there and told her.

"She's dead Amy, I'm so sorry." The hatred. He had run then, to hide behind the plans and the readouts. To try and find out why. Why he had failed her, failed them.

The child, greatly premature would need the best the Genomex had to offer if she was to survive. Her immune system would need bolstering and she would need strengthening in bone and muscle if she were to have any chance of a normal life. He knew the techniques that would be used on her and knew that they had been proven to work in the past - producing in some cases astonishing results in premature or genetically damaged infants. Maybe he would work her case himself, keep and eye on her as she made her way into the world. He was her godfather after all.

But now her family mourned her passing and her mothers, even though she, though alone, had survived. He couldn't go to this funeral and watch Rachel's friends and family mourn the passing of two lives when it should only be one. He couldn't listen to them telling of what the world had lost when he was responsible for her death. He couldn't look into Amy's eyes…

Some part of him was angry with her for being weak. For leaving the child in the cares of Genomex, like she meant nothing to her second mother. For asking him to never talk of her again. For putting that weight on him. She was her child, however hard it was to explain.

No, he wouldn't go. He would stay at home. There was a young couple whose case he was working on, they wanted to have a child but were aware that due to their particular genetics there was a high probability that any child they had would suffer from the genetic disorder muscular sclerosis. If he could find a genetic alteration to remove and replace the damaged genes they could have a healthy child.

He scribbled down another set of notes in the border of the readouts and scans from the couple's genetic profiles. He had an answer to the problem and the couple were free to have their child. If they needed the treatment then it was available to them and the genetic fault could be completely corrected.

He closed the folder and sat for a moment in the silence that his apartment offered. It seemed for a moment that it might swallow him as, the work put to one side, he began to think of his friends once more.

It was late, the ceremony would be over by now and people returning home to spend a little time mourning privately before they returned to their lives proper.

He wondered what Amy would do now. He couldn't imagine her sat in their flat alone, it was a place that held memories of them both, together. It was hard now to see them separately in his mind at all. Except for that one moment… "I'm so sorry" They had been perfect together. It was all his fault.