Alamos Atomic Proving Grounds in New Mexico. A year before Nekra was born, her mother and Frederick Beechman, a Caucasian scientist, were exposed to a massive dose of radiation. Beechman's wife gave birth to a son named Jerome at about the same time Nekra was born, and somehow the racial patterns displayed by the children were reversed: the girl born of the black parents had chalk-white skin, and the boy born of white parents was a deep brown. |
The young Nekra grew up despised by her parents and hated by other children. When she was ten years old, she ran away from home, and met her male counterpart Jerome Beechman (who had been similarly mistreated) in the New Mexico desert. Sensing the kinship between them, the two began to wander together. For the next six years, they lived on the edge of civilization, surviving by stealth and cunning, and educating themselves by reading stolen books. But one night, angry New Mexican townspeople, believing the two children to be "monsters," attacked them with pitchforks and guns. Nekra responded to their fear and hatred in kind, and as her rage grew within her, her latent mutant powers surfaced. She and young Beechman slew some of their attackers and drove off the rest. |