Truth is Overrated: I was a late bloomer. An old man swooped in and then dropped me into the crazy world of his School for Mutants my senior year of high school. To the surprise of everyone else, I turned out all right. It's been a long time since I called the Institute home, but now I'm back and I think I might be here to stay. Sequel to Normalcy is Overrated.

Disclaimer: The X-Men, SHIELD, the Avengers, the Brotherhood of Mutants, and any other familiar characters are not my property. I claim no ownership of them. They are the creation and property of their creators and the rich assholes that control their every movement. I simply like to toy with them.

The truth is overrated. – Paul Westerberg

~Chapter Forty-One~

Once he'd successfully begun the first stage in his mental and emotional torture, Essex called for his guards to escort me back to my cell. One applied some sort of foam to the punctures in my side that caused the small wounds to close over immediately, and I followed the two guards limply back to my cell.

Scott's cell was silent and I didn't even glance in his direction to verify that he was still present, too lost in my own thoughts to spare any concern for the leader of the X-Men. No, I couldn't think about anyone but myself until I was shoved into the cell and I rammed into Marie.

Her voice broke through my own thoughts, but I ignored her and allowed the guards to shut the cell door behind me before I slipped my wrists through the slot so that they could remove the cuffs. Mechanically, I blinked and rubbed my bare wrists where they had been rubbed raw and turned on my heel and dropped down onto the lower bunk with a heavy thud.

Marie's hands skimmed over my cheeks, my jaw, my arms and my sides, and finally she smacked my forehead. Her eyes were brimming with fury, but I ignored her and rolled onto my side and faced the wall.

"You're going to talk to me, Dani. You ain't shutting me out."

"I can't think right now. Go away."

She snorted loudly and I winced when she drilled her fist into my lower back. My breath wheezed out and I grimaced in pain in reaction, but merely twisted further away from her. Not one to be easily deterred, she cursed at me under her breath and then began to bump me with her hand.

"I need to think this out! Leave me alone!"

When she didn't immediately respond, I risked a glance over my shoulder. Her face was flushed with rage, her eyes glimmered with unshed tears, and her expression was pinched with worry. "Don't think. Tell me exactly what happened. Tell me everything that you saw, everything that was said – now."

The order clicked somewhere in my brain and it allowed me to push all emotional response aside for the moment. I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the mattress of the upper bunk blankly and exhaled once before I summarized all that had transpired. She didn't interrupt, but once I had finished, she made me go back to the beginning and she dissected every detail with a critical mind.

Exhausted from talking it over so many times, I closed my eyes and prayed for sleep to take me. Instead, she placed her hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. Tears welled in my eyes, and I blinked a few times before I was able to meet her empathetic expression.

"I can't even imagine how you're feeling right now, sugah, but I do know that you're not in this alone. That's where Essex is wrong; that's where he will always be wrong. This is about more than you and about even more than Jean. He's gotten SHIELD involved – what's that tell you?"

"I don't know, Marie. I don't know!"

"Yes you do, dammit! You are the tactician. You are the brains. I don't give a shit what Bobby might say: you would have made the best leader of Bravo."

"I don't know," I repeated, exhausted and alone in spite of her presence. "I feel so overwhelmed."

She pursed her lips and I watched in confusion as she laid down on the small bed beside me, rolling onto her side so that she faced me. The tight confines made me uncomfortable, and I wondered how difficult it was for her to let her guards down around someone other than Johnny. Inhaling deeply, she met my gaze levelly as I turned my head to face her.

"I'm sorry, Marie."

"Don't be sorry, Dani. Be productive. Essex has ties to SHIELD?"

I nodded dumbly and tried to force my tired mind into action. Fuzzy with the details, I tried to envision all of the different puzzle pieces that we'd discovered in my mind's eye. "Yes. Morgan and, I assume, the entire SRU was involved or is currently involved."

"You can plan out how you'll punish Kurt Morgan later. Right now, focus on the bigger picture."

Bigger picture. "It's possible that Essex is working with SHIELD. The Superhuman Soldier Serum was one thing – I can't even imagine what the brass would think if they knew that they could get their hands on the genetic material necessary to create the perfect soldier before he is born." My words caught in my throat and Marie's eyes widened in horror, and the realization of the truth in my statement left me speechless for several moments. "That's it, isn't it? I bet the stats were on Essex's side when he worked at the military base. Children of soldiers are more likely to follow their parents into the armed forces."

"There's more to a person's choices than their genes. Just look at me," she reminded me with a soft whisper. "We're more than that."

"Environmentally, a child that is raised on a military base or in a military family is exposed to a different kind of life than a child that is raised in an average suburban home. After my mom died, my dad shipped me off to live with Grandma Janie. He wanted me to have a normal life," I added meekly, deeply troubled by my own line of thoughts. "So, yeah. Hell yeah. If SHIELD thought Essex might be successful, they might give him the funds he needed, the facilities. But, it would take a long time to show results."

"But you said it yourself: he had Stryker's help on that end. He's probably the individual responsible for showing SHIELD how great an asset a mutant can be."

"Assuming he didn't fabricate the stories he told me about my parents, we can speculate that my mother wasn't the only person that discovered the true nature of his assistance." I closed my eyes briefly and tried to filter out the confusion and anger that gripped me at the thought of Victor having been responsible for my mother's death. Even if he had been under the control of the serum…

"Stop it. I said stop it!" Marie slapped her palm against my cheek and my eyes flew open instantly. Her eyes were dark, pupils dilated, and anger rolled off of her in sharp waves. "We can't afford to get lost in our own emotions right now, and you know that. Whatever happened in the past, especially in the instance of a mutant under someone else's control… It isn't important. I'm sorry, Dani. I can't even imagine how it must feel to know – but it isn't important right now."

A sob caught in my throat and my eyes burned, but I managed to weakly nod my head in agreement. "He – he has been doing this for a long time. With or without SHIELD, he's probably had enough men and women under his thumb to carry out his own wishes for decades. He either has deep pockets or a varied collection of accomplices, and based on Fury's genuine response to what happened in Hawaii, I doubt that he's aware, or fully aware, of Essex's current dealings. The armed men that attacked during the reception didn't fight like SHIELD agents; they were mercenaries, no more and no less."

"It makes sense that a geneticist, especially one that admits he's successfully spliced decades ago, could have multiple mutants on-call that can negate mutant abilities."

I considered her speculation for several moments before I found myself nodding in agreement. "The pieces fit, so we're going with that for now. If all of this is true, it means that there's a lot of shit going on right under Fury's nose that he's completely unaware of. It could be a rogue sect looking to upend SHIELD, or it could simply be infiltrators from a different organization."

"Or sleepers."

I opened my mouth to counter her assessment and then quickly closed it. "Marie, SHIELD wasn't actually responsible for the Super Soldier Serum. The founders, yes, but SHIELD wasn't actually created until well after the War. No." I wracked my brain and tried to put the puzzle pieces into place, but I still couldn't quite visualize the final picture. Slowly, I opened my eyes and met her probing gaze. "But, I've read the reports, the real ones, about Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos. Dr. Erskine and Howard Stark worked together, with others of course, to create the Super Soldier Serum. But, the boys in blue weren't the only ones working on it. Zola, Dr. Arnim Zola. Red Skull and Zola failed where Erskine succeeded."

"I remember reading about Red Skull and the Commandos at the Smithsonian, Dani."

"But, you don't remember Hydra. Hydra – Red Skull and Zola and the toughest damn Nazi forces you could ever imagine, Marie. While everyone here and across the rest of the Allies Forces was worried about Hitler and his Nazis, Red Skull and his forces were the real threat. If it hadn't been for Captain Rogers and his Howling Commandos, we would have lost the war. They took down Red Skull. And Hydra."

Her eyes widened in surprise, but she pursed her lips together and waited for me to piece more details together.

It fit together well, jagged pieces meshing carefully with smooth pieces but I still didn't know the final image. There were too many unknowns and we were postulating too much for comfort.

Then another image filled my mind and I exhaled sharply in shock. "There's a black and white photograph hanging up in Fury's office. It's a copy of a copy. The original, he told me once, burnt up in a fire in one of the original SHIELD HQs. But, it's a photo of the original founders of SHIELD. Agents of the SSR – Strategic Scientific Reserve – that was the beginning of SHIELD. They had the tech, they had the brains, they had the drive thanks to a number of dedicated agents and Colonel Phillips – he led Carter and the Howling Commandos when Rogers took down Red Skull."

"You've got a point to make."

"I do." I nodded my head and exhaled again in order to give myself a moment to consider the levity of the situation. "That old photo in Fury's office? Zola was in that photo, Marie. Zola, the same man who worked with Red Skull, performed experiments, tried to figure out the secret that Erskine had discovered with the Super Soldier Serum – he was arrested and later helped to found SHIELD."

Marie blinked a few times and then her dark eyes narrowed in doubt. "You're trying to tell me you think, what? Zola played nice and acted his part, but all along –"

"-Hydra has been a part of SHIELD from the very fucking beginning, sugar!" I interrupted, a mixture of dread and excitement causing my heart to race wildly in my chest. "My God, Fury doesn't even know. Nobody knows. They're the ultimate mixture of sleeper and rogue, and nobody has a fucking clue that the good guys are completely corrupted by the bad guys. I don't even know how in the hell they would go about weeding everyone out."

"Essex had to guess that you would be able to put the pieces together. He didn't tell you or show you the things he showed you for no reason."

She's right, I realized solemnly. "If he had any inclination that I might connect any of the dots, he only pushed me in the right direction because he's a sociopath. He wants me to know the truth and be unable to do anything about it. He wants me to know that I failed; that I failed everyone and everything that I ever stood for."

Silence reigned for several long minutes, minutes that I tried not to spend self-reflecting on just how obstructive Essex had been in my life. If his claims were the gospel truth, he'd been there, somewhere close enough to at least witness, all of the devastating moments in my life. He had orchestrated some of them, Bart's death and the end of my police career, for instance. Had he, I wondered, had contact with William Stryker when the man had infiltrated the Institute? Had he suggested that Stryker put Creed in my path?

Oh fuck, I thought, groaning quietly. Was it all some sort of plan come full circle? Had he planned to force us to meet at some point? The manipulator – he could have planned it from the beginning. Of course he would want to see what would happen when I met my mother's murderer, only I didn't know she'd been murdered. And I certainly had never been told my parents had gone to a fertility specialist.

"If he's just messing with your head, then our only choice is to get out of here," Marie whispered softly, her voice breaking through my own thoughts. "So think, Dani. Please. I don't think I'm strong enough to deal with him when he sends someone to get me. You know it's inevitable and – and so do I."

I hadn't seen Jean, but the mere thought of anyone laying their hands on Marie was enough to raise my blood pressure. After a few ragged breathes, I jerkily nodded my head in agreement, mind racing as I pushed away all of the dark and dangerous intel that I'd discovered. None of it mattered – my goal was to get my people out as soon as possible.

"You're right," I agreed quietly, inhaling sharply. "And I've got a few thoughts in mind. If we're on the right track, then I think we're in one of the old SHIELD HQs, maybe a training facility."

Her eyes widened and she looked confused, but nodded her head decisively. "I suppose you have a theory."

"I do." I already knew that Marie remembered nothing before she woke up in the cell with me – I'd remained unconscious for some time before she'd been able to wake me. Before that, the last thing she remembered was being shot in the foyer at the Institute. "You didn't see anything when you were brought in, but I paid attention when they took me to Essex. The corridors are a maze. Security cameras are obvious, and only located in hallways that lead to what I assume are local areas, or corridors that lead to other sections of the facility. We're in what I would call the holding facility, somewhere near the laboratories. Think of the Pentagon's lay out, use a rolling pin on it, and you've got the standard mouse seeking a chunk of cheese in a maze layout that SHIELD has always preferred. It's hard for a prisoner to escape their confines when they have no chance of finding their way out. Even if they were to escape their cell, they would be located before they ever found the right exit."

"So we're screwed."

"No. I think that you tend to forget that I pay attention. First off, we're underground. We could be anywhere in the world, Marie. There are no windows, and that wouldn't be so unusual if it weren't for the fact that the walls, the ceiling, the floors – they're all very durable. Concrete. Lead. Why? They have to be solid in order to act as the foundation for whatever building we're hidden under. Plus, the air's being filtered in, so the lower levels are probably on their own system. Similar to the lower levels at the Institute," I added, speaking quickly as the words came to me. "Where better to hide from SHIELD than in one of their old facilities, especially if whatever group or groups of individuals charged with maintaining old facilities were actually part of Hydra to begin with?"

She was silent for a couple seconds before she inclined her head ever so slightly. "You're making too much sense that it's almost creepy. But, I'm following you."

I closed my eyes for a few moments and retraced the path in my head and tried to recall every turn and every corner that I had taken and seen while being escorted to Essex. I didn't recall much of the walk back, but I remembered a few details.

"So what do we do now?"

I opened my eyes and met my best friend's gaze with no small amount of guilt. The chance of success, as far as I was concerned, wasn't great. But, I wasn't willing to not try. I had to get my people out. It was up to me.

"What do you think of…" I trailed off as I rattled off a rough plan.

There, laying together on the small lower bunk in our shared cell, Marie and I carefully planned our escape. It wouldn't be easy, it might not even be successful, but we both knew that we had to try. There simply wasn't any other option.

I wasn't going to let Nathaniel Essex play any further role in my life so long as I had breath left in my body.