Alexis looked through the glass, and gasped when she saw the shriveled body of a once handsome boy, his face locked in an expression of pain, and suffering. He was lying down, clothed in a kind of plastic armor, with a few holes through which tubes protruded. His face was covered by a see-through plastic, which steamed up with his breath every twenty seconds or so, and his eyes might flutter open, or his face contort into another horrible position. "Oh my god! What happened to him?" she enquired, horrified.

"He was to powerful. His body couldn't contain all of it," answered Mort, grimly. "Just to give you an idea of that kind of power, did you ever wonder why you weren't thrust into depression by the horror of waking up to see your parents, dead?"

"I- Well- yes, but I just thought that it was because everyone was so busy, getting used to the responsibility, and my new power. . ." Alexis stuttered, intrigued, but still horrified.

"He hurt so much after he found his parents dead. He called me, and he was speaking through tears. He had been very close to them, and. . . well. . . then the floodgates opened, and I noticed that my sister wiped away her own tears, and slapped herself, and got down to business. He made everyone forget," Mort informed her, grimly, but almost. . . wistfully, too.

"Everyone?" Alexis yelped, surprised beyond belief.

"Yes. Everyone. Except. . ."

"Except?"

"Except me." Mort took one last look at his former friend, and then left.

"He still powers all of France, and he has to try his hardest to not destroy earth into itty bitty pieces. Remember Io? We told everyone that because there wasn't anyone manning the moon's defenses, it threw a missile at it, but actually he ripped it apart. A TP mind healer entered his mind, a powerful one, and didn't come out for another ten days, insane." Anne too was grim, though not wistful.

"Why not Mort?" Alexis asked, even more interested, now.

"Well. . . I think his power rivals Nick's. He has. . . unlimited resources, but in a different way. Jake's power overflowed his enormous proverbial glass, but Mort's proverbial glass is. . . infinitely large in his powers, which are. . . different."

"How are they different?" Alexis queried, very, very interested, her curiosity now piqued.

"He'll tell you when he's ready." Anne replied with finality, steering Alexis away from the room.

"Wait. . . could I help Jake?"

"Possibly. We have an idea which we could try with you. We didn't have any portal makers, and now that we have you, we were considering something with destroying black holes. . . if you can make a portal for that far away. . .?" Anne asked, hopeful.

"Oh, sure. That's only bending the fabric of the universe, its much harder to create something from nothing, actually break the fundamental laws."

"Excellent. We'll begin soon. Come on, let's meet everyone else." She hurried off after Mort, dragging Alexis away from Jake.

They came to the "average" dorms, and went up to the first dorm, on the right. Anne knocked, hard, on the plastic door, and yelled through the door, "ARE YOU DECENT?"

The three of them heard back, "YES, COME IN!"

They opened the door, and heard rock music blaring out of a stereo, obviously the reason why they were yelling, and a short Asian boy jumped off his bed, and rushed to turn down the music. "Hey, Mort, Anne. Hold on. . ." he turned to Alexis, and said bluntly, "Who're you?"

"I- um. . . am- gah. I"ll start over. I'm Alexis, a new recruit."

He smiled, and said, "Cool! I'm Sam, and I was a transfer student from China at the time of the incident. I'm an enchanter, and I worked with cars before the incident, your car busted, you could bring it to me, and I'd fix it right up. Car production has really slowed down after the incident, a real shame, so many nice cars." He shook his head. "So, what kind of music do you like?"

"Well, ah, I like. . ."

"That's great! I like rock. Well, I suppose you could tell, from the blaring rock music, everyone says I'm going to ruin my hearing, but I think I'm fine." He grinned. "My seeing is fine too. Just the other day, I was looking out my window, and some 300 meters away. . ."

"Shut-up, Sam," Anne interrupted, smiling widely.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, Alexis. Sometime I just can't shut up, yeah, I know it's a bad problem, I just don't know what to do. I know some other people, like me, and. . ."

"Sam!" Anne yelled.

"Oops," Sam said, sheepishly. "Sorry, again."

"S'okay, I like to talk, too." Alexis replied, amused.

"Cool! Talk to you later!" he said, a kind of dismissal, visibly trying his hardest to not start rambling again. The trio left, and met four others, a female aloof magician, a depressed, young, female speedster, twin male black TK/TPers, a sympathetic empath, and a very tall female, who had the talent to get a good "reading" on you, know what you liked, if you'd be a good friend, trustworthy, your mental state, and how often you had sex. (A.n 0_o) After all of that, and Alexis had reassured them that she loved their friends, they went to the boss, a prodigy who, at the time of the incident had been just under eighteen, and had won two Nobel's in biology, and one of those young mathematician rewards, he had become a powerful TP with the rare ability to talk to more then one person at once. He was the perfect candidate for liaison, because he could communicate with multiple parties at once.

"Hallo, people. Right back from a mission, neh?" he swivelled around in his chair, as in all spy movies, except that he was remarkably young, and good looking.

"Right. Failed, unfortunately." Anne just shook her head, ruefully.

"Ah, yes. But that's just too bad. Happens to everyone. You'll be staying around for a while, right?" he enquired, hopefully.

"Aye." Mort affirmed.

"Excellent. While you're back, go talk to Ted, he's one of our enchanters, found something interesting." He seemed genuinely pleased, and had a twinkle in his eye.

"Aye, aye, cap'n." Alexis saluted, and the marched off.