Soft, rustling noises.

            There they go again.  Keeping me awake.  It's hard enough to sleep in this damned tent without decent blankets, with the enemy so nearby.

            But are they really the enemy anymore?

            My name is Robert Drake—well, Bobby—but no one calls me that.  To my friends, I'm Iceman.  That's on account of my mutation.  I make ice.

            "John?  John, you hear that?"

            John's my best friend, has been ever since I got to the Institute.  They call him Pyro, because he can control fire.  We're like polar opposites.  You wouldn't think the two of us would be friends at all, but here we are.  He's sleeping a couple of feet from me, peaceful as can be.  One thing I can say for John is that he's the jumpiest damn guy I've ever met in my whole life, but he sleeps like a baby.

            When I first figured out how to make ice—hell, it was pretty simple how it happened.  I was thirteen.  I'd been ice skating with Ronnie, my baby brother, and the lake started to just fall apart beneath our feet.  It was the scariest thing I'd ever seen in my whole life.  The ice was cracking, see, and so I guess our mom was right about spring being right around the corner.  It sure as hell felt cold out, but it wasn't cold enough.  When that ice started to crack, it did it fast, snaking out into little translucent tendrils, splintering and scattering shards as hard and sharp as glass.  I got out of the way pretty well, but Ronnie was only eleven and when he saw that ice going, he panicked and threw himself down.  Dumb kid.

            It's ironic when you think about it, I guess, because if it weren't for the mutation, Ronnie woulda died right there, that day.  He woulda sank to the bottom of the lake and froze before I could do a thing about it.  But there I was, alla thirteen years old, watching my kid brother sputter and scream in the ice cold water.  It took me about three seconds to realize that I had better do something, anything, and I skated forward, lowered myself onto the ice, and began to crawl, hand outstretched.

            Suddenly, I felt it.  It was like I could see the individual droplets of water—every single one, and there musta been millions—right in the palm of my hand.  They weren't cold or anything, just there.  Those little droplets began crystalizing.  I could see them in my mind's eye, spheres to jewels, beautifully multifaceted, like snowflakes densely packed.

            "Ronnie!!"

            "Bobby!!"

            I shot my hand out and concentrated on that feeling, the feeling of the droplets turning to icy little stars, and damn if the water around Ronnie started to look slushy.

            "Holy shit."

            Ronnie's eyes bugged out a little, hearing me say that, and I guess in any other situation he woulda run home to tell Mom.  But here, he just kept flailing, screaming my name.

            "Shut up, Ronnie, just shut up."  I felt kinda awful saying that to him, but I needed to concentrate.  It took a few minutes back then, not like now.  Now it's instantaneous.

            He blacked out from the cold before I finished.  The area surrounding him had turned to thick, solid ice and I crawled forward, totally unsure of what had happened, pulled him out of the water.  Poor kid.  Sopping wet and blue.  Coulda used Pyro that day, that's for sure.

            I never told my parents, not 'til a coupla days ago.  Who tells their parents anything at thirteen?  And Ronnie wasn't any trouble—he didn't remember a damn thing that had happened.  Convenient, that blackout. But that's what makes the whole thing so ironic.  'Member I mentioned that earlier?  Ronnie was the one who turned us in.  My baby brother.  Maybe blood isn't quite as thick as I thought.  From now on, I put my faith in water. 

I guess I always have.