Quetzal was not expecting to appear thirty feet above the ground. "Flipping heck!" she cursed and tried to recover. She flailed very briefly to try to regain attitude and landed hard on the ice below. Thirty feet- less than a second of free fall - was not enough time to do much of anything except twist around. She tried to land in a crouch to cushion the landing. Her heel slipped and she fell backwards, smacking her head and knocking herself out.

The ice cracked with the initial impact of her fall. It gave away completely under her full weight after she slipped. She slid under the icy water without ever gaining consciousness. Instinctively she stopped breathing and her hot blood fled from the surface of her skin to protect her vital organs, but it was still only a matter of minutes before she drowned or her body temperature dropped too low to survive.

The girl's rescue had been a near thing. She had fallen from nowhere and crashed through the ice, knocking herself out in the process. It was sheer luck on her part that Beast had been tramping around near the lake.

The lake was in the woods behind the school, so his distress call to the mansion was swiftly answered. He carefully went out on the ice, sliding on his stomach as he got near the hole to keep from cracking it further. The fur on his arms insulated him against the cold as he supported the girl, keeping her head and torso out of the water. She was pale and her lips were blue, but there was at least a weak pulse under his fingers when he checked. Her breath was shallow. When he pulled her eyelids back her pupils were dilated. She was in shock. He held her there, unwilling to risk falling in the icy cold water and turn a relatively simple rescue into something more complicated.

Hank held the young woman for a minute until Jean was there. Jean hadn't even bothered to put on a jacket. Her telekinesis made it easy to safely remove them from the ice and quick as a thought, she was flying them back to the mansion. Once inside Hank rushed the girl down to the medical room.

"I've got this!" Jean said. She had been scanning the minds of top doctors for treatment as they were carrying the girl back to the house. "Change out of those wet clothes before you get hypothermic too."

Hank left and Jean stripped the wet clothing off the girl, attaching monitor leads as she went. The clothes were summer wear, a tank top and jeans, completely inappropriate for the chilly January weather. The girl's temperature was 93 degrees and her heartbeat was frighteningly slow. Surfing the mind of an emergency room doctor, Jean turned the room upside down looking for what she needed. In the third cabinet she went through she found the device she was looking for. It would pump a steady stream of hot, humid air into the girl's lungs, warming her from the inside out.

Jean fitted the mask over the girl's mouth and nose and turned the pump on. She pulled an electric blanket to cover the girl modestly. The blanket was set on its very lowest setting to keep from damaging the tissues closer to the surface. Once she had her warming up, Jean checked the medic alert necklace around her neck. A blue and yellow caduceus locket hung next to a small gold cross. Inside the locket was the alert.

Genetically Atypical.

May Go Into Hibernation

Elevated Body Temperature

Avoid Contact With Saliva

Beast was buttoning his shirt as he entered the room. "How is she?"

"Her heart is weak but beating, I've started her on warmed air. The next thing to do is stick a tube in her nose, down into her stomach, fill her up with warm water to raise her core temperature. Her temperature is much lower than I'd thought, her medalert locket says it's supposed to be high. She might also be hibernating. Put on some gloves. It says to avoid contact with her saliva."

"I'll get the tube into her stomach, you see if you can figure out who she is."

Jean looked puzzled. "I can't reach her mind. It's . . . I can see it's there, but I can't read it."

Beast unwound a length of plastic tubing. "You might try checking her wallet."

Jean resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him as she retrieved the sopping wallet from the pile of the girl's things. "Wow, this is a mouthful. Quetz – Quetzal – you try." She held out the driver's license.

"Quetzalcoatl Hope dos Santos."

"Thank you. Let's see, red hair-"

"That's an understatement," Beast muttered as he gathered the rest of what he would need. The girl's hair was a vivid blood red from her scalp to where it ended, halfway down her back. No sign that she dyed it either.

"Caucasian. Eyes, golden. Five-foot-ten-inches. Lives somewhere called Asylum, Texas. She's not an organ donor."

"How old is she?"

"Born June 8 . . . ." Jean frowned. "Thirty-five years from now." She shuffled through the wallet. "I think we have a genuine time traveler here. All of her cash is dated about fifty years or so from today. Library card, ATM card, GameHaven discount card, Sheds and Royal Books membership card, all with expiration dates set for at least fifty years from today. This is weird - "Jean pulled out a card and flipped it over. "This one doesn't match the others. It looks like an ID for an organization called Teen Titans. The expiration date on this one is just two years from now."

"She has an ID card printed for thirty years before she was born?"

"Registered in some place called Gotham City. You ever hear of it?"

"No."

Jean tucked the card back in the wallet. "Very peculiar. We'll have to ask her about this when she wakes up."

Quetzal's core was warming up rapidly. Natural processes were ticking away; primeval, reptilian functions that had no business existing in the body of a young woman. Her body was clicking on, forcing her out of a dormant state. Warm blood was being pumped to the areas of her body most able to quickly deal with danger. Forced through the kidneys to strain out toxins and pumped out to major muscle groups, it largely bypassed the parts of her brain used for conscious thought and impulse control. Adrenaline flooded her system. She was waking up quickly and with her fight or flight instincts raging at full tilt.

Beast had measured and lubricated the hose and was preparing to insert it in the girl's nose. He was distracted by a sudden and very dramatic rise in her heart rate. When he turned back to her, her eyes were wide open. The first thing that struck Beast was that they were actually golden, not yellow. The second thing that struck him was her heavy claws. He roared in pain and clutched his torn up nose.

Quetzalcoatl was shrieking. "Get the hell away from me you twisted son of a whore!" She flung herself away from him. Her wide eyes took in the room and became wilder. "What did you do to my family?!"

Instinctively Jean tried to reach out to the girl's mind and calm her. The girl reacted by backing further into a corner and flinging a chair at Beast. Jean halted it in midair. Quetzalcoatl made a break for the door. Beast made a half-hearted attempt to block her, still clutching his bleeding nose. Jean thought she was going to just knock him over, but at the last moment the girl turned. Quetzalcoatl turned quickly and sprung at Jean, both her clawed hands reaching for Jean's face.

Jean used her telekinetic force to stop Quetzalcoatl's leap. The claws were a scant quarter inch from Jean's face. Behind the claws the girl's face was filled with an even mix of terror and rage. Frozen in midair Quetzalcoatl snarled. "Where's my family?"

"Calm down," Jean managed to keep from flinching. "And we can talk about this."

The words didn't seem to make any impact. Her eyes tracked over to Beast and the snarl became fiercer. The panic left her voice and it became steely and full of loathing. "I'm gonna kill you by inches for what you did to those kids. I'm gonna use that flea-bitten mangy-ass pelt as a rug, whatever flipping color it is."

"What kids are you talking about?" Jean asked, stepping backwards, away from the claws. She still couldn't read the girl's thoughts, but hate was rolling off her in waves. Roughly sketched scenes slammed into Jean's mind. Small bodies and horrible experiments, exposed organs, mangled corpses. "What kids?" Jean was more insistent.

But being held motionless like she was made the girl's mental state deteriorate further. The sketches burst into colors of pure emotion. She wasn't paying attention to Jean any longer. Quetzalcoatl started fighting the telekinetic force like an animal in a trap. "You twisted asshole! Let me go! Who's this bitch!? Where's my family? Why the hell are you blue?!" She thrashed as best as she could against the invisible force; her fingers opening and clenching into white knuckled fists and tossing her head back and forth.

"Calm her down Jead!" Beast tried to stem the flow of blood from his nose.

"I can't! You'll have to sedate her." Jean gently set Quetzalcoatl flat on the ground and pinned her there.

Quetzalcoatl's wild eyes didn't have any semblance of humanity in them. She was trapped and she was panicking. "Let me go!" she howled. "Where's my dad? What did you do with my sisters?!" She continued to kick and scream under the telekinetic field. "You son of a whore I'm gonna kill you! I'm gonna rip out your throat. I'll gut you from one side to the other! Child-murderer!"

Beast quickly filled a syringe with a sedative. Hopefully chemicals would work better than Jean's psychic ability.

Quetzalcoatl's roar turned into a shriek of mortal terror and she squeezed her eyes shut as he approached. After the ear-splitting screech she was silent. She was stiff as a board and shivering. When he knelt next to her she flinched and whimpered. She was crying. "Don't," she moaned. "Please don't hurt me. Please, don't kill me."

"Poor girl is terrified," Beast said. "We're not going to hurt you."

The girl was still shaking and whimpering. When he laid the point of the syringe against her skin she wailed piteously.

He lifted the syringe away. "Will you stay calm if we let you up?"

She snuffled and nodded. He looked to Jean for confirmation and all she could do was shrug. The girl's mind was still unreadable, but her terror was clear. There was no guarantee Quetzalcoatl would remain calm.

"Let her up," Beast stepped back. "I promise you young lady, I have not hurt any children."

Quetzalcoatl didn't get up when Jean let her go. She curled into a tight ball on the floor and continued whimpering. She looked very young.

Beast turned and got a fistful of tissues to clear his nose. "Damn, she packs quite a wallop."

Cautiously, Quetzalcoatl scooted so her back was to a wall and sat up. She snuffled loudly and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Her gilt eyes were full of terror and rimmed red with crying.

"It's okay," Jean said. "We're not going to hurt you. You aren't . . . wherever you were. You're safe here. Whoever you were afraid of, he's not here."

Quetzalcoatl stood up, leaning against the wall, trying to disappear into the drywall and plaster. Trying to cover herself. "Where's my family? I want my dad." Her voice was a plaintive whine.

"We'll find him," Jean promised. "You're safe."

The girl looked over at Beast, who still had his head tilted back in an attempt to staunch the blood flow. "Safe?" she finished the word with a bitter, disbelieving laugh.

Jean stepped forward and checked the girl's reaction. The girl's lip quivered a little but she didn't try to get any further away. "Nobody here wants to hurt you." Jean projected as much sincerity and trustworthiness as she could muster. Quetzalcoatl should have been utterly contented and calm with everything Jean was hitting her with.

But Quetzalcoatl kept staring at Beast like she thought he was going to spring at her.

Jean smiled and rested a hand on the girl's shoulder. "I'm not lying. We want to help you. Tell us about your family, we'll help you find them."

Without warning, Quetzalcoatl lashed out. She whipped around and slammed Jean's head into the wall. Jean crumpled to the floor, unconscious. Quetzalcoatl dove for Jean's helpless form, clawed fingers already reaching for soft flesh, when Beast wrapped his arms around her and pulled her up and back. The girl, squealing and twisting like a demon, lashed out with her feet. One heel connected with Jean's head and the other foot crunched into Jean's ribcage.

Beast hauled her away from Jean. He released one arm to grab the syringe and didn't hesitate a second before plunging the needle into her and drugging her into oblivion. Three seconds later the girl called Quetzalcoatl was limp in his arms.