"Okay, son - let's go through this again", sighed Ryan Fulcher, massaging his furrowed forehead. "You - you're psychic...?"

"Telepathic", corrected Tony, a sigh suppressed, yet still evident in his voice, too. "'Psychic' is kinda like saying 'football', when you could be meaning the NFL, the CFL, soccer, touch football."

"You... can read minds?", asked his mother Emily, anxiously. Tony didn't need mental powers to see that she was desperate not to get left behind this time.

"I can 'hear' thoughts, when they leak out", Tony tried to explain, every moment wishing that Mane-of-Night or Darkhawk were here to help him through the mine-field of subtle nuance associated with the world of psionics. "I never tried to penetrate anyone's mind - I didn't know how. I still don't, in case you're worried."

"'Worried' doesn't begin to describe it", muttered Mr Fulcher. "I haven't been this scared since... since we took you to the hospital..."

The last few days had all been like this, since Tony had been moved from the hospital in Seattle to a place called "Beacon Ridge", to the east in Idaho. Officially, Beacon Ridge was an "executive retreat" for employees of some big company, but unofficially it was used by SCORPION - Special Command - Operations Response and Pre-emption - Interplanetary Oversight Network - as a recuperation facility for staff members injured in the course of their duties, and the medical facilities far outstripped anything any hospital on Earth could provide.

Tony was as healthy as he had been before his accident at five years old, but SCORPION still wanted to keep him "under observation" as they examined the circumstances of his transition from comatose child to "super-hero". He couldn't tell the scientists any more than he could share with his parents, simply recycling everything he could remember being told by Darkhawk or Mane-of-Night, and more often than not he left the SCORPION people with more questions unanswered than answered...

In return, Tony was plagued by the spectre of more questions and more tests, casting a shadow over his times away from the scientists and their laboratories, souring what should have been a joyous reunion with his parents.

"Can - can we not do this?", be begged, suddenly feeling quite weary. "Can't we just be a family again...?"

Mrs Fulcher immediately reached over from her bedside seat to hug her son, but Tony didn't miss that his father was, if only briefly, reluctant to do the same. He's just nervous, Tony tried to tell himself. He never expected me to wake up, and he's afraid to touch me in case that somehow shatters the dream...

Tony tried to swallow down his apprehension, but the truth remained lodged in his throat. He's terrified I'll read his mind, the young man admitted to himself. He's afraid he can never trust me again - his own son...

"You're tired", said Mr Fulcher. "Maybe we should... go, let you rest...?"

...get the hell out of here before he sucks our brains dry, you mean, thought Tony. He immediately regretted thinking that way about the only family he had in the world, who had been at his bedside every day for the last ten years, but the only way he could be sure what they were thinking would be to do the very thing they clearly feared, and spy on their thoughts.

In the end, Tony agreed with his father, trying his best to seem reluctant to let them go, and his parents quietly exited. They didn't go far, stopping a few doors away, down the corridor - and Tony couldn't help but feel his mother's emotions, a suddenly upwelling of anguish and fear, like a gust of storm-force wind, rattling one's bedroom windows. They're both scared, he said to himself, and they have every right to be. This... this all used to be so simple, so easy - I wish I'd just stayed in a coma...

Tony turned onto his side, away from the door, but once again, sleep wasn't the refuge it promised to be for those without mental powers. First of all, Tony's body and mind had "forgotten" how to sleep, having been in a comatose state for two-thirds of his life, and the transition from waking to sleeping felt quite alien, something he couldn't remember how to trigger - and it didn't help that the very idea of sleep brought with it the fear of a loss of control, exactly what frightened his parents. If he was to allow himself to surrender conscious control, what secrets would his mental powers steal? What dark corners, better left untouched, would they probe...?

Tony rolled back over onto his back, sighing angrily. No matter how hard he tried, he wasn't going to get any rest, let alone sleep - and again, a return to his former state seemed a lot more attractive than trying to deal with waking life.

This should have been the happiest of times for Ryan and Emily Fulcher, but all Emily seemed to do was cry.

Once again, Ryan offered his wife the shelter of his arms, and hugged her, praying that he could somehow soak up her sorrow like a great sponge. He'd had to be strong for both of them for more than a decade, throughout Tony's hospitalisation, and he'd done his very best, keeping his own emotions bottled up whenever they were together. When he'd been on his own, however, he'd sometimes struggled to stay in control of his feelings - on the drive to work, he'd had to pull over on several occasions and just cry it all out, even if it meant he was going to be late. He had an understanding boss - one of his dad's army friends - but Ryan hated to have family business affect anyone outside the Fulcher household...

"I.. I have my son back", sniffed Emily, mopping up the last of her tears. "I should be happy. He's my boy, but I keep thinking, when I look at him, that what woke up isn't the same boy who went to sleep..."

"It was never going to be a case of just going back to the way things were", Ryan told her, struggling to pick the right words to say. "The doctors always told us that someone doesn't come out of a coma like that - it was even more than just a coma - and just be the way they were before."

Mr Fulcher fully expected to have Emily break down in tears again, wounded by his blunt approach to the whole mind-numbing business, but she had cried herself dry for now. "I know", she sighed, "and I know they don't just mean the physical stuff, muscle wastage and all that. They told us there was some kind of brain damage, when he hit his head, but that got better, didn't it?"

"Some swelling of the brain, that reduced blood flow to some parts", Ryan recalled - that conversation was burned deep into his memory, and would surely remain there until his dying day. "They said there was every chance he'd come round in a couple of days, and every chance he'd never wake up..."

"Maybe... maybe all this telepathy stuff is because of that damage", Emily suggested. "There's all that talk of those... those 'stem cells' - the science channel said those could be the key to curing all sorts of things!"

"But they also said any of that was years away", Ryan reminded her. He'd watched the same documentaries, read the same books - he'd even learned how to use a computer, and surf the internet, just to see if there was any glimmer of hope, no matter how bizarre. "And don't forget the President pretty much banned the research."

"Well, I know who I'm voting for", declared Emily. "It's plain to see that idiot in The White House has never had a child suffer..."

Ryan allowed himself to momentarily swell with pride. If anything was going to come of all this, it was that his wife had at last found a reason to be interested in politics, and that was worthy of celebration, after years of disinterest. Unfortunately there was no champagne readily available, just a cluster of vending machines further down the corridor - and Ryan had fallen foul of those twice in the last couple of days, trying to get drinks for himself and Emily. He appreciated the care the people at Beacon Ridge were giving to Tony, but Mr Fulcher knew the value of a dollar, and that machine had already helped itself to several of his...

The vending machines were stationed at a corner of the main building, where seats looked out through tall windows on the Idaho countryside. Ryan and Emily had sat there several times, talking, trying to relax, and they'd almost always been alone, but as they approached, they saw that that wasn't going to be the case this time. Someone had the offending drinks machine open, and was peering into its innards, apparently shining a small pen-torch around inside, and Ryan sensed that justice was being delivered - apparently by some freckle-faced girl with fiery red hair, tied back with a scrap of faded fabric.

"Glad someone's gonna take a look at that thing", said Mr Fulcher. "If it took any more of my money, I'd have taken it back by force, I don't mind telling you."

"Oh, you get that with these Model 54s", said the girl - her accent was hard to place; definitely not American, but neither was she English. "Poor design of the coin-drop assembly. They fixed it in the Model 60 - surprised this one wasn't replaced years ago."

"The great capitalist conspiracy?", Ryan suggested. "Tax people through faulty vending machines?"

"No, the management just didn't bother, 'cause not many folk coming through here drink diet", answered the girl, leaning further into the machine's workings; Ryan couldn’t tell if she was serious, or joking. "And to be honest, local politics stop outside these walls."

That had to be a joke. "Wishful thinking", Ryan told the girl. "These are the United States..."

"Far from it", interrupted the girl, emerging from the machine with smears of machine lubricant to go with her freckles. "Technically, this is a diplomatic safe haven. If anything, this complex could be counted as part of Mars."

"I know this whole thing is... not exactly government-operated", said Ryan, "but you can't be serious..."

"I try not to be", said the girl, closing up the machine's interior. "My greatest asset, some say - or my greatest failing. Those who suggest the latter regularly come up to me and say how wrong they were, sooner or later. So, what do you want out of here...?"

"Diet Coke", murmured Ryan, "and a Diet 7-Up for my wife..."

The girl fished out two cans, and handed them to him. "Compliments of the house", she said, shutting the machine's side-panel. "Courtesy of SCORPION Deputy Commander Pippi Korax."

The girl, smiling broadly, extended a hand for Mr Fulcher to shake. He tried to juggle the cans to free up a hand to return the gesture, but Emily quickly came to his rescue, taking the drinks from him.

"You... you seem a bit, well, young", mumbled Mr Fulcher, taking the Deputy Commander's hand, and almost finding his whole arm shaken out of its socket in a surprising show of unexpected strength.

"'Seeming' and 'being' are two completely different things", assured the strange female. "In my line of work, you come across it all the time."

"And that line of work isn't repairing vending machines, I'm thinking", Ryan remarked.

"Well, I'm 'between jobs' at present", Deputy Commander Korax replied. "Officially, I'm 'former Deputy Commander' - more of an honorary position these days, given that I helped to set all of this up. I was just passing through, and thought I'd pay the old stomping grounds a quick visit. Also, someone told me of a rather intriguing case that'd come to the attention of my friends out here - I am, of course, telling you this under the assumption that the two of you are Mr and Mrs Fulcher..."

"Guilty as charged", said Ryan.

"And I'm sure that, right now, you're scared", Pippi continued, "scared out of your wits about what your son has become. Well, let's see what we can do about that. It might not be much help to you, but you might like to know that you're not the first mother and father to find out they had an exceptional child. You should've seen my mother when I arrived..."

...to be continued...