Three Months Ago

Molly Sutphen ran her hands down over her scrubs, trying to press some of the wrinkles out. Creamed spinach color, she thought, looking at her image in the mirror. The scrubs were part and parcel of being a nurse, but that didn't mean she had to approve of the color scheme. It certainly didn't do much to compliment her dark complexion.

Blinking away the exhaustion in her eyes, she stepped back out from the restroom and headed once more for the desk. Canmore Hospital's emergency room was never all that heavy with activity, at least not outside of the camping season. Tonight, however, was duller than most. And although Molly knew that was technically a good thing, it didn't make it very easy for her to stay awake at her post. She forced herself to recall the image of head nurse Loughlin snapping at her, jolting her out of a light doze. At least she had only gotten a reprimand, but that was just three days ago. If Loughlin caught her napping at the emergency desk twice in one week, she wasn't sure what he'd do, and she knew she didn't want to find out. She couldn't imagine how he'd gotten to be head nurse in the first place. The guy had all the bedside manner of a wild boar.

Slumping back into her chair, Molly turned her attention to the TV in the corner of the empty waiting room. The anchor behind the CTV news desk was talking to some self-proclaimed "mutant expert" about the implications of today's announcement. She'd heard quite a few of the doctors talking about the supposed "cure for mutancy" that some pharmaceutical bigwig had announced that afternoon. Dr. Wischard had noted that "at least we'll know how to treat the cured ones," which got a few knowing chuckles from the rest of the staff in the break room.

Molly had only been working at Canmore for a couple of months and had just moved to the area one month before that, so she wasn't around when a six-year-old girl with a "broken tailbone" had been brought into the emergency room some four and a half months ago. But the way she heard it, the girl's tailbone had possessed an actual tail, and Canmore's doctors were so stymied about how to treat the injury to her unorthodox physiology that they ended up calling over someone from the Veterinary Hospital who had experience with primates. The girl's mother was enraged to learn that her daughter was getting treated by a "damned monkey doctor," and the local paper had seen fit to make it front page news. They even printed a lengthy op-ed piece about the Canadian medical system's "failure to prepare for the implications of the mutant phenomenon," or some such blather. Not Canmore's finest hour.

An American politician with the label of "Sen. Roberts – (R, Minn.)" was on the TV now, advocating the use of the cure as a possible punishment for criminal mutants. Molly frowned. She didn't know any mutants personally, but the suggestion still made her uncomfortable in some way that she didn't-

Molly's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of commotion down the side hallway. Voices, talking fast, seemed to be advancing towards her. She heard the telltale squeak of a rolling stretcher… the paramedics? She jumped up from her chair and headed down the hall.

"-itals were stable when we got there, but he's been out the whole way," she heard one of the paramedics say. She recognized him, vaguely recalling that his name was… Mike? Matt? She thought it was Mike. The other paramedic was a woman about her age. Molly remembered her name was Katya.

Dr. Wischard was walking alongside the stretcher, glancing down at the unconscious young man wheeling down the hall. "Concussion?" he asked. "Coma?"

Katya shook her head. "We have no idea how long he was out there."

Molly took up a spot along Dr. Wischard, following along as the paramedics turned the stretcher down an adjacent hall. Wischard shot her an annoyed glance.

"Molly, you should be cover-" he began.

"What's the story?" she interrupted, nodding at the man on the stretcher. He was a young adult with short brown hair. The thing that was most striking about him was his clothing. Or rather, his lack of clothing. Pieces of cloth were hanging loosely from his body, barely covering him. It was like his clothes had been shredded to the point where huge chunks had fallen right off. His body showed a number of scrapes and bruises, but something about them didn't seem right…

"Hiker found him on the side of the road not far from the lake," Mike explained.

"His clothes…" Molly ventured, confused.

"Motorcycle crash?" Mike guessed. "No bike on site, but I've seen people get pretty cut from scraping across pavement… "

"The exposed skin doesn't match the bruising," Wischard responded, shaking his head. That was what was bothering her.

"No sign of the, um, rest of his clothes," Katya added. "I mean, where we found him. Like someone took them, maybe?"

"Someone took chunks of clothes?" Molly responded skeptically.

Wischard sighed. "And no wounds that suggest animal attack… light?"

Katya reached over the stretcher to hand him her penlight. He pushed it on and moved it over the man's torso, examining him for signs of additional trauma.

"What's his name?" Molly asked, looking at the man's face.

"John Doe," Mike replied. "No pants means no ID."

Wischard shook his head again. "Clothing doesn't just vaporize," he muttered with frustration. He reached a hand towards the man's eyes, lifting the light in his other hand. "What's his-"

"Don't-!" Katya began.

Too late. The doctor lifted the man's eyelid to get a look at the patient's pupil. Instantly, something came rocketing out of the man's eye. A reddish beam, like some kind of laser, shot up and into the ceiling, rattling the hallway with the noise of the blast. It glanced Wischard's wrist, knocking him away with a shout of pain, and blew a smoking hole through the overhead lights. Mike and Katya both jolted backwards, and Molly felt herself jump and cry out in shock.

Wischard was seated on the floor now, gritting his teeth and clutching his wrist. Katya covered her mouth and shook her head. Mike was looking up at the damage to the ceiling, and Molly's eyes could only lock onto the man's face in disbelief.

In the long moment of silence that followed, she finally hazarded a glance at the ceiling to find an elderly patient peering down through the new hole in the floor of her room, her face plastered with horror. Molly could only return the woman's shock.

"…we tried to check his dilation when we found him," Mike slowly expounded. "And yeah, that… we think he's some kind of-"

"A mutant," Wischard finished.