Dr. David Sinh held out his hand. “Dr. Essex, thank you for coming so quickly.”

Dr. Nathanial Essex took the hand in his and gave it a small shake before letting it go. “I dropped everything as soon as my staff called and told me what happened. How is he?”

Dr. Sinh motioned down the hall and they headed in the direction that he indicated. “According to your staff Scott Summers was cleaning his room when he apparently collapsed for no reason. The staff was unable to tell us how long he had been unconscious since he was alone at the time. One of the other children found him and called for help. Our ER doctors looked him over, but could not find anything wrong with him, so they sent him for a CAT scan.” Dr. Sinh opened the file he was carrying and glanced over it.

“The CAT scan didn’t show anything different from his previous scan after the airplane accident, so the doctors transferred him to me and I did an EKG.” He handed Essex a sheet of paper. “As you can see there seems to be little brain functioning. Just enough for us not to label him as brain dead, but he is clearly in a very deep coma. We can find no reason for him to be in this coma.” He stopped in front of the ICU.

“Since he is an orphan and you are the owner of the orphanage, the state has listed you as his guardian. It’s your decision of what to do. I’ll leave his medical files with you, as you are a medical doctor. The faculty break room is through that door, or you may use Dr. Henderson’s old office. It’s empty since his death. It’s on the top floor.”

“Thank you, Dr. Sinh. The break room will be fine.”

“All right, I’ll have one of the nurses bring you his previous files.” Dr. Sinh handed Essex the file that was in his hand.

Essex thanked the doctor and headed for the break room. He sat down at one of the tables by the window and opened the file. He quickly looked through the charts and graphs.

“Excuse me, Dr. Essex.” Nathaniel looked up at the nurse standing next to his table. “I have the rest of Scott Summers’ files.”

“Wonderful. If you could set them there please?” He pointed to the other side of the table. “Thank you.” Once she set the files down he dismissed her from his thoughts.

The files really didn’t tell him much that he didn’t already know. The doctors could find no reason for the coma that Scott had dropped into without warning, and they had no idea what part the brain damage was playing. At first the damage didn’t seem to affect the boy, but as he got older, he started having painful migraines.

As his legal guardian Essex told the staff at the orphanage to send the boy to a specialist in neurology. What he didn’t tell his staff was that HE was the specialist. He examined Scott and ran some tests on him. Some of those tests weren’t exactly medically approved.

Essex had been a doctor back in the 19th century and had been granted immortality by the Eternal, Apocalypse. He would have shuddered (if he was the type) to think what his life would have been like if Apocalypse had lived, but another Eternal named Tayla had killed Apocalypse and Essex had taken all of the dead Eternal’s equipment.

Essex had been fascinated with the Summers family for generations. He first came to know about the family in the late 19th century. He had heard about a woman with the amazing ability to see into the future. He had managed to get a sample of her blood and found that she was a mutant. A relatively weak mutant, but the DNA showed the possibility of becoming stronger.

He decided to follow the family line and was rewarded for his patience when Scott was born. Nathanial had been working on various plans to kidnap the boy when Scott’s parents and brother were killed in a plane crash, leaving Scott in a coma. Once the boy had come out of the coma and had been discharged from the hospital it had been absurdly easy to get Scott sent to one of Essex’s orphanages.

Once there it had been easy to get Scott into his labs for testing. He’d used a variety of ploys. The first had been the simplest. He’d simply played the good doctor that checked all of the orphans. He had also used his abilities to shape shift to become Jeff, one of the few children that Scott talked to. He had used that to lure Scott into his lab and then wiped the boy’s mind of the memories.

The one thing he hadn’t expected was for the tests that he had performed to have caused this reaction in the boy. Scott had been complaining to Jeff that he had been having horrible headaches of late. Scott hadn’t told the orphanage staff because they were already considering him a problem child and he didn’t want to make it worse. A few days before Scott started complaining about the headaches, Nathaniel had changed from testing to treatments. He was hoping to find a way to reverse the brain damage that Scott had suffered. He was sure that the damage was impacting Scott’s mutant abilities.

Scott’s DNA showed that he would be a fairly strong mutant, and Nathaniel felt that his abilities should have showed themselves by now, however there was no indication of the abilities reveling themselves.

Nathaniel closed the files with a snap and left the room to find Scott’s doctor. He quickly found Dr. Sinh and informed him of Nathaniel’s plans to have Scott moved to a private hospital that he knew that specialized in comas.

He left the hospital and returned to his labs to make ready for Scott’s arrival. He had a few ideas of how to reverse the boy’s condition, but it would take more tests to decide which of the plans had the most chance of success. He also decided to file for adoption of the boy. This way he would be able to have the boy with him at all times, and not have to worry about the state government coming to take a look.

He realized that he had more things to think about then just the test and treatments. Scott would eventually become a man, and hopefully would become Nathaniel’s partner. The boy would need schooling. He quickly thought through his associates and smiled. There was one man that he could use to help teach Scott, and might also be a part of the healing treatments.

He set his computer to track down his associate and turned his attention to preparing the lab for the comatose child.