Chapter 38 - Revelations

"Nice to meet you, as you mentioned, my name's Sara" Sara replied, flashing her friendliest smile possible. 

Right after those words, a tentacle emerged from Sara's back and began wriggling slowly until a head emerged, surprising Ororo and leaving Jean and Kitty somewhat uncomfortable. Even though they had witnessed this scene before, it didn't change the fact that it was terrifying.

"This is Prime" Sara explained. "You can think of him as my mutant power, but I see him as a companion. By the way, he said "hello"."

This was the first time Ororo had witnessed Prime. Initially, Sara thought she would react more defensively, but instead, Ororo seemed relatively interested in Prime and even returned his greeting.

"Well, you all must be hungry, right? The line's right over there. You can grab as much food as you want. satisfying your hunger might be a bit more challenging than usual, thanks to your friend" suggested Ororo.

Upon hearing this, Sara blinked briefly, surprised, as Ororo seemed to be the first person to notice that Sara needed to eat more than usual to feed both herself and Prime.

"I'm surprised you noticed" exclaimed Sara, looking directly into Ororo's eyes, who just smiled warmly at the young girl.

"My job involves a lot of contact with mutants of different kinds" explained Ororo. "Some, like you, need more food than usual"

After this brief conversation, Ororo needed to quickly return to her work as some kids were starting a food fight nearby. Sara's impression of Ororo was that she seemed to be genuinely kind and caring towards the children. In a way, it reminded her a lot of one of the caretakers from the orphanage, who still remained in Sara's memory. That particular caretaker was especially kind to the orphans.

"Anyway, let's eat. Honestly, I'm starving" exclaimed Kitty, drawing Sara and Jean's attention.

The three of them quickly headed to the cafeteria to have their meal.

***

Days before Sara's arrival at Xavier Mansion and shortly after her fight with the Hulk and the Abominable, Phil Coulson, a high-ranking member of the S.H.I.E.L.D. spy agency, was walking down a long corridor. When he reached his destination, he stopped and tapped twice on the door. A voice answered from inside.

"Come in"

As soon as he heard the reply, Phil quickly entered the room. In front of him, a man with an eye patch was sitting, examining some important-looking documents. Among them was one entitled "Top Secret" but his gaze quickly shifted from the folder to Phil.

"Any news on the incidents at Culver University in Virginia and New York?" Nick Fury asked the reliable Agent Phil in front of him.

"Yes, sir. By gathering all the information we have so far and investigating the sightings where the monster has been observed along with its recent appearances, we've identified some specific locations and ranked them in order of priority"

As he said this, Phil placed other folders containing even more information and images on the table, as well as a USB stick with additional videos of the events.

"Also, sir, I have another matter to report" Phil exclaimed, indicating that the matter was urgent.

With a nod from Fury, Phil continued.

"There have been new moves by Hydra. For some reason, they seem specifically interested in our new red friend" Phil explained, with a serious expression.

His agent's words were enough to make Fury's eyes widen slightly. This information undoubtedly changed the course of things significantly. It's well known that Hydra is an ancient and hidden organization with as yet unknown objectives.

The question on Fury's mind was: why were they so interested in it? What made it so special that even Hydra, which had always kept quiet, finally came out of hiding this time? Fury had no answers to any of these questions, and he hated that feeling.

"Tell me about what we know so far about that thing"

Upon hearing these words, Phil nodded and immediately started talking.

"Based on the sites of the fighting, we've gathered information about the immediate surroundings, including residents, homeowners and illegal activities that took place there in the past. However, although we found several minor clues, nothing conclusive emerged. But we did get some names"

Hearing those words, Fury thought that at least they were one step ahead of Hydra in this situation.

"The names"

On hearing this, Phil quickly handed over photos of the various events in chronological order.

"Carlton Drake, CEO of the Life Foundation" Phil said as he showed a photo.

"Issac" he added, showing another photo.

"And lastly, we have this"

As he listened to Phil's words, Fury examined each photo, but his eyebrows rose when he saw the last image: a rat coming out of an alley, followed by Issac, both going in different directions.

"What's more, we've got more information about what that creature is" Phil explained. 

"From the documents from the Life Foundation, it's apparently a living organism from space that they found during a patrol on one of their ships. According to the reports, the creature showed caution when encountering humans at first, but quickly attached itself to one of the scientists and killed everyone on the ship. After this incident, it was apparently brought to Earth, where experiments began on it"

Fury finally felt that they were making progress with this new information, but he still realized that there was much more to it than met the eye. For a start, what was that creature doing on the ship? And why was its first reaction one of caution rather than attack? There were many loose pieces to the puzzle.

"Moving on" said Phil, holding out a photo of Isaac to Fury, along with a photo of the rat coming out of the alley.

"These two photos seem to be linked. It seems that this was the creature's first host when it arrived on Earth. As soon as it merged with it, the creature fled with its host and they arrived in New York. Although we don't have concrete proof, we think this rat is our creature"

Hearing this, Fury nodded, looking closely at the picture of the rat. Shortly afterwards, however, he noticed another photo: that of a girl with white hair and blue eyes, a somewhat unusual combination in the United States.

"What about this photo? The girl doesn't look like a native of the United States" Fury asked.

Hearing Fury's question, Phil quickly replied. 

"She's our most promising lead on the creature's whereabouts"