This outline is another one that Audrey saved from a chat I had with her.  It's a spin-off of another story idea of mine ("The Psionic Suicides") which involved a sort of psionic virus passing to every psionic that came in contact with it and making them kill themselves.  However, the show killed off Emma, and the bunny mutated into a season three story that's actually very different from what it started as. "Ex Nihilo" is about a psionic girl whose mother killed herself after her father died (supposedly murdered by Genomex), and she’s trying to understand why people want to die.  The feeling doesn't just come from nothing.  Anyway, she’s only able to connect to other new mutants (but any type, not just psionics) and she’s probing around in their minds and finding whatever is there that could make them commit suicide, what reasons would drive somebody to it.  So after she offs a nice trail of mutants, MX gets involved. So yada, yada, yada (that being me skipping over the whole confrontation that goes wrong scene).  At this point, she’s formed a connection to Jesse and MX is still clueless that she’s actually killing people (because they’re all suicides), they just know she’s somehow involved due to being able to place her at several of the scenes when the suicides happened.  So they think she can somehow predict them, or sense it, or she's actually spreading whatever is causing it, or something. Anyway Jesse figures it out because Jesse has a brain (LOL, sorry), so then she appears to him (but she’s not really there – psionic thing, you know?). The girl shows up as herself to talk to Jesse (before he tells anybody what he knows) and she tells him he’s not going to tell because he’s going to kill himself next.  At which Jesse is basically just like "What? That’s it? That’s the best you can do?"  Because he’s expecting her to get into his deepest darkest fears or whatever.  She tells Jesse that she doesn’t need to use any fancy deception on him because he already wants to die, she’s just there to watch. Now of course this is her way of convincing Jesse. He knows she basically tricked everyone else into it.  But she’s not even bothering with him.  She goes on blah blah blah about how alone Jesse feels now that Adam and Emma are dead, and Shal and Bren are closer to each other these days and ignoring him, and so on about how he’s not happy with his life and has no real future beyond MX and no life outside of it, and if he died, he’s right, nobody would care.   Because somewhere in the back of Jesse’s mind, he feels like nobody thinks he matters.  Jesse is now feeling rather insecure about all this because she’s pulling up all these little fleeting thoughts that really don’t mean anything – except it’s working because he was expecting a totally different approach.  He’d never thought she would just sit back and watch because she thinks he’s already suicidal. Then she changes tactic (but not really, she’s just driving it home), and tells Jesse never mind, his friends do care about him.  And Jesse is all confused now, but like "yeah, they do" and they would never let him kill himself, right?  And he’s like "no, of course they wouldn’t."  So she says wouldn’t he like to prove it.  All he needs to do is overdose himself and see if they save him before he dies.  Jesse says he has nothing to prove and isn’t going to do it.  She replies that if that’s the case, why not make a little wager on it. Jesse is confused again now because he’s clearly holding all the cards, right?  He knows about her, the upper hand is his.  She replies with she has several people under her control already.  If he wins, she’ll let them all go.  If he refuses or loses, they all jump off the nearest bridge.  So he agrees and goes to the lab where he empties a container of pills and takes them all.  Then she smiles and says now all the others she has contact with get to kill themselves anyway.  Jesse is outraged that she lied to him.  She responds that he did too – she’s in his head, she knows what he took can’t actually kill him, only knock him unconscious for a while and he was hoping it would be enough to fool her.  He didn't have enough trust that the others would actually get to him in time for him to risk it. So he quickly opens his comlink and tells the others it’s her and to get her now.  Then he's forced to lie down and wait for the drugs to wear off. So the others rush to capture her, and Shal and Lexa actually do, and they give her the "it's all over, we know about you" speech.  But she laughs and says it doesn’t matter.  She finally found what she was after. This is when they notice that Brennan never showed up and didn't answer his com.  The psionic just smiles and tells them they’re already too late.  So they tie her up and rush back to Sanctuary. Meanwhile however, Brennan is in his room... talking to Emma.  Well, the psionic got to him too obviously.  So she tells Brennan he failed her and let her die.  Brennan is a complete mess and in tears before he tells her Emma would never say these things to him.  And then he figures it out.  But she already found what she was looking for with Bren.  He feels guilty still, and sorry, and he feels he should have died instead or at least also.  Even though he thinks he should be there for Shal, Jesse, and Lexa, he already failed Emma, and he'll let the others down also, so they're better off without him.  The psionic has already worked him over to where he thinks he has to die. So back to the others.  Lexa for some reason suddenly feels the need to untie the poor girl (yeah, she's been psionic zapped to make her do so).  The psionic tells her everybody else is free too now, she got what she wanted – she finally understands, yada, yada, yada, whatever.  Then she somehow manages to kill herself before the others can stop her. They finally do get back to the Sanctuary, and they shout for Brennan and Jesse, because now Jesse isn't answering his com either, and they just know they’re going to find him and Brennan both dead.   Shalimar goes to Brennan's room, and Lexa searches for Jesse.  Jesse actually wakes up when Lexa finds him, and he checks the time.  If he'd actually over-dosed himself, it would be too late to save him.  But of course he'd sent them to go after the psionic, so the test really didn't count, but after everything the girl said to him, he knows it's still going to nag at him even though it shouldn't and doesn't mean anything.   Getting back to Brennan, they find him collapsed on the floor in a pool of blood after having slit his wrists.  And Jesse is feeling bad for not having realised sooner that the psionic had had Brennan also, and if he dies Jesse will never forgive himself for him being the one to not get to Brennan in time. Brennan nearly dies on them, and drama and angst ensue, but they eventually manage to get him to the lab and stop the bleeding and are able to revive him. And after he wakes up, there’s a scene between him and Jesse in his room later.  They talk a bit about what happened, Jesse regretting that they hadn't been able to help the girl, despite what she'd done.  Brennan thinks maybe he did somehow help her, but he's not certain about anything, just thankful he and Jess are both alive.  Jesse asks what she made him see.  He replies with "The same thing that brought me back."  So Jesse leaves, wondering what that meant.  And Brennan looks at a picture of Emma and says "thanks" and that’s the end.