Gene Hayes

Origin

Both Gene and Alice Hayes are mutants.  Strangely, they both have similar physical traits and both possess exactly the same telepathic powers.  They are both tall Caucasians with dark brown hair and brown eyes.  When using their mutant powers, both of them display the same red glow in their eyes.  Despite being fully qualified and practising doctors, the Hayes  were persecuted by their neighbours.  As mutants they only sought to live peacefully in the predominantly Homo Sapien community.  However, living in a time when the Mutant Registration Act threatened to become law was not easy, and therefore they were receptive to the offer of enhanced powers and possible immortality.

The Pride

Together, Gene and Alice were the focus of an anti-mutant hunt by their neighbour they were summoned by The Gibborim.  While his wife implored that they had only ever been good neighbours, Gene was more interested in retaliating.  However, just before they had the chance to use their powers offensively they were instantly teleported to the underwater Vivarium where five other married couples had also been gathered.  An initial threat on the lives of Leslie and Frank Dean caused all the various gathered couples to start using their powers and throwing insults about.  Just as Alice was verbally defending their innocence The Gibborim appeared before them.  

When The Gibborim made the offer of 25 years of unlimited power over Los Angeles and the possibility of immortality, they classed the Hayes as “The Outcasts”.  They agreed to have their powers enhanced, and the chance that they would be among the six offered immortality after The Gibborim destroy the Earth.  As such, they became founding members of The Pride.  

While publicly the Hayes were amenable, caring and jovial, in secret they wouldn’t give a second thought to using their powers to wipe clean the memories of their neighbours and anyone else around them.  As members of The Pride, Gene wore a similar outfit to his wife, with dark maroon and black robes and fishnet inserts, he wore a black surgical mask to cover the lower half of his face. 

Family Life

After Victor and Janet Stein announced that they were going to have a baby and intended to give their chance of immortality to their child, the Hayes also hoped to have a family.  However, unlike the other couples in The Pride, they continued to try for several years before Alice conceived.  Eventually they had a baby girl, Molly Hayes, and had her screened for the mutant genes as soon as possible.  However, all tests had negative results, and as such everyone presumed that Molly did not inherit her parent’s mutant powers.   

On the night of the Ritual of Blood, when the sacrifice of a young prostitute had been observed by Alex Wilder, Chase Stein, Gertrude Yorkes and Nico Minoru, Molly was still in the Wilder’s games room with Karolina Dean.  The others decided not to tell Molly about what they had seen, and therefore when they all met up at the observatory she was still in bed at home.  As such, after the others had finished raiding their homes for weapons and information, they decided to go to the Hayes residence and liberate Molly.

Gene does show concern about the mental state of the children as they had witnessed the sacrifice, but freely used his telepathic powers to disable Nico and Alex.  Gene was quickly knocked unconscious when Old Lace burst in through the window in a surprise attack.  He was therefore unable to see Molly’s power activated for the first time and when she left with the other children.  
 

Betrayal & Death

A year before the Runaways ran away from home, both Alice and Gene Hayes had begun to conspire with Leslie and Frank Dean.  The Deans were aliens, classed as “Colonists” by The Gibborim.  Since they had been set aside from the rest of humanity, the Hayes did not consider themselves to be human and therefore bonded with the Deans.  Together, the four adults realised that instead of just giving their children the chance to become immortal, they could join them.  

The pact with The Gibborim meant that six out of the twelve members of The Pride would become immortal.  Together the Deans and the Hayes realised that if they were to remove the remaining eight members of The Pride, then they could become immortal along with their children, Karolina and Molly.  However, realising that the future of The Pride was already recorded in The Abstract they set about decoding their own copies.  After they had identified which pages revealed their treacherous plot, they silently broke into the houses of the other Pride members to remove those pages from the other four copies of The Abstract.

While breaking into the Wilder residence, they were silently observed by Alex.  Discovering their scheme to murder his parents, Alex began to form a plan of his own.  Like the plan of the Deans and Hayes, Alex’s plan would guarantee immortality for his family, and for the Minoru family, as he had fallen in love with Nico.  However, Alex’s plan begun to fail when Nico rejected him.  The Gibborim were angered when their human soul was released before they could devour it, and turned their wrath on all The Pride and the Runaways.  As a last act of familial loyalty, the Pride used their powers to hold The Gibborim back while their children escaped.

Gene Hayes has not been seen since the Vivarium was destroyed in an underwater explosion.  Both he and his wife have been presumed dead.