"Nope." Adam declined the beer that Brennan offered. "Designated driver, remember?" He kept his hands on the controls of the Double Helix, guiding the sleek jet through the darkening skies and between the mountain tops, enjoying the feel of the responsive joystick. Too often one or the other of his passengers were at the controls, leaving him the helpless passenger and wishing that there was a spot for another co-pilot. Here was his chance to get in a little flight time of his own. "You go ahead, both of you. You earned it."

"Damn straight," Brennan agreed cheerfully, a subtle slur in his words. Next to him, the seatbelt carefully wrapped around his waist, sat Jesse with yet another bottle in his hand. The molecular raised his own bottle in a small toast to victory: "Hear, hear."

The mission had been a hairy one, with all three of them convinced that breathing would no longer be part of their immediate future. It had taken a combination of brains, electrical energy, and a solid wall made of Kilmartin to extract their target mutant from enemy hands and deliver him to the underground. A victory celebration had been the least the recipient community of New Mutants could do, and both Brennan and Jesse had been eager to engage in some serious de-stressing. Adam, with a grin, had cheerfully bade the pair to indulge. There was little enough joy in their collective lives, and the occasional well-earned break from the responsibilities of those lives was all the more cherished for its rarity. And since the community made their living off an amazing microbrew… Well, even Adam permitted himself just one. With a caffeine chaser so that he wouldn't crash the Helix.

Adam, however, had some other things on his mind, other things like the computer program that he'd left running, the one that he anticipated would take a minimum of four weeks of 24/7 computer time to emerge with results. And a particular culture that was so slow growing that the lifespan of a sequoia tree seemed rapid in comparison. Both projects were scheduled for completion sometime in the near future, and Adam was grateful that he now expected to be around to enjoy the outcomes.

And then there was that letter from Rosalie, the one with the subtly scented perfume that his nose caught right away—as had Shalimar's. Her eyes had widened when the mail came in, and a small corner of her lips quirked upward. But not a word did she say, and Adam appreciated the discretion of the feral. There were some parts of his life that he didn't need to share with his team, and Rosalie was one of them. It wasn't as though she was a mutant, although the way she seemed to read his mind…

He shook in head, smiling. Six hours of flight time, he estimated, and they'd be back at Sanctuary. The bottles pressed upon the two mutants in the Helix wouldn't last them the whole trip, but if one or both happened to fall asleep? Well, he wouldn't let it bother him. Adam enjoyed occasionally flying the Helix. Reminded him that there was a life outside the lab.

He glanced at the radar, listening idly to the weather on the radio. There was a storm off to the north that ought to pass by them without incident. Adam glanced at the positioning equipment, then frowned and adjusted their course with a definite southward bent. He hadn't realized that they'd drifted so far north. Must have been the wind drafts through the mountains. More to come; Adam mentally plotted a route directly south in order to pass between a more southernly set of peaks.

The ride grew more rocky. Brennan nearly spilled his beer; he looked up in dismay. "Hey."

"Hitting a few down drafts," Adam reassured him, concentrating on the controls. "We'll be out of them in a few moments."

Jesse unlatched his seatbelt to come forward and plop into the co-pilot's chair, tapping at a few of the gauges. Adam recalled the younger man playing with those dials just yesterday before they took off on their mission, tweaking the instruments until they could literally pinpoint a needle in a haystack. Adam also remembered being distinctly delighted at that tweaking, for it allowed them to locate their target a scant fifteen minutes before their opposite number. That in turn allowed a hurried escape, a dash across a wheat field with a few lightning bolts to cover their backsides. It didn't matter that the sky had been clear blue, not a cloud in sight. Their very own elemental was all the thunderstorm that they needed.

But Jesse frowned at the dials, playing with one of them.

"Jesse?"

"You didn't accidentally or on purpose take us anywhere near the North Pole, did you, Adam?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"And the Helix is fast, but the South Pole is out."

"Get to the point, Jesse."

Jesse indicated the bank of read-outs. "Adam, these dials are acting as though confused by a magnetic pole. And that doesn't make sense. We're too far away for that to be happening. And even if you were making a bee line for the North Pole, we're too far away even for the Helix to get there in the amount of time we've been airborne."

Adam glanced over and confirmed his navigator's findings. "That explains why I've been drifting off course. I'll bet the entire directional system's been affected. Can you find out anything else?"

"Like, where we are?" Brennan put in, coming up behind to hunker over their shoulders, peering interestedly at the control panel. All thoughts of the case of microbrew were left behind in stowage, and any remnants of inebriation vanished under the onslaught of adrenaline.

"We know we're somewhere over the North American continent," Jesse muttered, his attention on the offending gauges.

"Not helping, Jess."

Adam glanced at the ground below. It looked tree-covered and jagged. "Wait until we get through this mountain pass. Then I'll use an old pilot's trick."

"Oh? What's that?"

Adam grinned crookedly. "Fly low enough to see the street signs. If a big green one says Route 98 Eastbound, and Dubuque, Iowa 30 miles, we'll know approximately where we are."

Brennan snorted, and grabbed onto the back of Adam's seat when the jet took a sudden plunge in a chimney of cold air.

"Better strap in," Adam advised. "This could be a little rough."

"Uh, Adam, maybe we want to turn back?" Jesse suggested. "As in, our weather gauges are now telling us that we have some nasty weather on our tail?"

Adam too looked at what Jesse was seeing. The storm that he'd carefully turned to avoid was almost upon them, courtesy of some erratic previous readings. He ground his teeth; no use complaining now. What was done, was done. Time to get out of this mess. "Shortest way away from here?"

"Due west," Jesse said thoughtfully. "Do a one eighty, Adam. The storm is coming down from the north—"

The Helix bucked. Brennan yelped, and grabbed for his chair, wishing that he too had a panel of controls to fight with. Leaving the work up to others was not something that he did willingly.

Adam was in the pilot's seat. He banked the Helix, sending it into a tight spin, seeking an escape from the oncoming storm.

"West is the shortest way out!" Jesse half-yelled over the din. Rain suddenly beat on the outer hull with a drum-like staccato and they heard the whipsnap crash of a nearby lightning strike. Brennan could feel every electron as they flashed through the atmosphere, calling to him and begging him to come out into thin air and play catch.

Brennan declined.

Adam wrenched at the controls, trying to persuade the Helix to obey him. It was not a fragile craft but, compared to the gale force winds that had suddenly sprung up, the Double Helix was feeling like a small satchel of feathers. The jet dropped again, leaving his stomach behind.

It went too fast. The massive air pockets tossed the jet up and down, turning them upside down and just as quickly right side up. It was clear that the storm had more decision-making power than the pilot.

"Adam?"

"Call in our position, Jesse!" Adam yelled back. "Let them know where we are."

"Where we think we are," Brennan growled from his back seat, seriously unhappy and not afraid to let them know it. "Any place to put this bird down and wait out the storm?"

"You see it, I'll land it," Adam replied, his attention on the controls. "Jesse?"

"Nearest airport more than sixty miles away."

"Field?"

"On these mountain tops?" Jesse snorted. "Get real."

Behind them, Brennan was already busy on the comm. link. "Sanctuary, this is Helix. Mayday. Mayday." He kept his voice cool and collected. Panic was not his style.

"I've got you, Helix. What is your position?" Emma, back at Sanctuary, took her cue from her teammate.

"Position unknown. We're caught in a storm, Emma, that we ran into when something jammed our navigation gear. Some kind of magnetic thing, Jesse said. We may be going down in the trees. And mountains."

"Looking to fix your position," was the response. "Triangulating. Damn, how does Jesse do this so easily?"

"Run the TR-4 program, pull down the file menu for Helix," Jesse called over his shoulder. "I've got the sub-routines already loaded."

"You get that, Emma?"

"Yeah, I got it. Jess, this thing is slow."

Jesse shot a nasty look over his shoulder at Brennan. "You been downloading files of supermodels again, bro?"

"Not me, Jess. I learned my lesson."

"Well, somebody's been clogging up the cache," he grumbled, fighting with the dials, grabbing onto his seat when the Helix took another plunge downward. "I had that thing set to go in a nano-second. Whoa," he finished when yet another air pocket tossed the Helix back up into the atmosphere.

"Sorry." Adam's attention remained on the control panel. "Everybody strapped in?"

"Adam?"

"We are going down," he announced grimly.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Shalimar!" Emma exclaimed. "The Helix just crashed in the mountains."

"Position?" Shalimar snapped into action, darting to another computer console. "Sanctuary to Helix. Come in, Helix. Helix, can you hear me?" Only static chattered back at her. She turned back to the psionic. "What was their last known position?"

"I don't know. I didn't have time to triangulate."

"What's the best that you got?"

"Here." Emma pointed to a darkly forested area on the computer generated map. The topological features indicated a mountainous range. A very large, mountainous range with many mountains. The terrain could be described as up and down, and very little flat.

Shalimar stared. "How large a search area?"

"A twenty mile radius," Emma whispered. "Pi r squared."

Shalimar swallowed hard. "That's over a thousand square miles."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Double Helix teetered on a bed of trees and then slowly, majestically, tilted and slid sideways to the forest floor. Branches cracked and crashed beneath the weight, arguing with the force of gravity on an object no longer permitted to be airborne, demanding retribution for the unwanted intrusion by stabbing splinters the size of spears through the formerly sleek sheet metal. The windshield shattered, sprinkling shards of glass on the occupants close by. Smoke wafted upward.

"Everyone okay?" Adam detached his hand from the joystick. It came away unwillingly; Adam recalled clenching the controls so fiercely in a futile attempt to stop the crash that the steel now showed the imprint of his fingers. Not a bad thing, he decided. If they'd all died, they could have identified the remains by his fingerprints etched in metal. Look on the bright side, Dr. Kane. "Jesse? Brennan?"

"I'm alive," Jesse said in wonderment. "Nice flying, Adam. I thought for sure we were goners." He unhitched the crash harness, sidling out of the webbing. "Brennan?"

"I could use a little help over here." The elemental's voice was strained. "Something's pinning me down."

"Brennan?" Adam scrambled out of his own crash harness, Jesse right behind him.

"Oh, man," Jesse breathed.

Brennan winced. "Yeah. Real lucky."

"You can say that again." Adam inspected the damage. "Don't move. We'll get you out of there."

"Not a problem. I won't be moving any time soon."

Brennan had indeed been lucky, lucky to have avoided being skewered on a hefty pine branch. The tree limb had entered through the side of the Helix, shoving the sheet metal aside, and pushed the heavy shielding across Brennan's upper torso. Even so, the elemental was fortunate. Had the branch continued through the sheet metal instead of being turned aside by it, Brennan would have been looking sightlessly down at a three inch pine-scented spear through his chest. He would have died instantly.

"Something to be said for an old-fashioned shield," he added weakly. "You gonna be able to get me out of this mess?"

"We'll get you out, bro," Jesse promised, looking frantically around at the mess, looking for a way to lift both branch and Helix-shield off of his teammate. "Anything hurt?"

"Not sure yet. Hey!" Brennan yelped as the Helix tilted once again.

"We've got to get out of here," Adam realized. "If the Helix is on a cliff, we may be about to go for another ride."

"Stop the merry-go-round, I want to get off," Brennan muttered.

Adam peered out of a newly created window, the metal edges jagged against the view. "We're about four feet off of the ground, and yes, we're on about a sixty degree slope." He surveyed the wreckage pinning Brennan in place, swiftly estimating the possibilities. "Jesse, I want you to get out of here and come up under the Helix to where Brennan is. Do you think you can phase him out through the bottom?"

"On it." Jesse made his way to the door, pausing briefly as the Helix tilted once more. It seemed almost anti-climactic to open the lock, given that another tree branch had positioned itself through the nearby wall. The Helix shuddered once again as he dropped out of the craft onto the dirt below, shifting uncomfortably in the direction of down the steep slope. Lightning flashed above them, bright against the cloud-darkened sky.

"Guide to the sound of my voice, Jesse." Adam directed the molecular around the downed craft and toward the right spot, raising his voice to be heard above the staccato rain. "Move further under the Helix. That's right, a little farther to your left. No, your other left. Another six inches; okay, another six inches beyond that. There."

Jesse placed his hands against the underbelly of the Helix, closing his eyes and feeling with a sense not available to mere humans. He ignored the wet rain that started drizzling down his collar, setting his feet more firmly against the incline. "Got him," he reported.

"All right," Adam said, sitting back on his heels. He rested a comforting hand on Brennan's shoulder. "You ready, Brennan?"

"Just get me out of here," Brennan whispered, closing his eyes. "Just get me out."

"Go ahead, Jesse," Adam called.

Jesse exhaled. The outer metal hull of the Double Helix wavered, and shimmered into insubstantiality. Brennan fell through the suddenly empty space, crashing down onto Jesse and tumbling them both to the ground. The Helix snapped back into reality.

The craft moved. It slid another three feet down the mountainside, carrying Adam and a quantity of mud and broken tree branches with it.

Jesse sprang to his feet. "Adam!"

"Still here." The older man tried not to sound shaken from inside the vehicle. Not ten feet away was a sheer drop, and the Helix appeared determined to become airborne again, even if it was straight down to the crevice below. "You got him?"

"He's here. Your turn."

"I think I'll try the exit."

Even as they watched, the Helix trembled with the mere tiptoeing of its creator toward the door. It almost slid once again.

"Uh, Adam?"

"Yeah." This time the nervous quaver did make it into the open air. "Jesse, you up to another phasing?"

"Just stay still. Stay right where you are. Don't move, and the Helix won't either." Leaving Brennan lying in the rain-soaked dirt and leaves, Jesse squirmed back under the Helix. The space had decreased to a mere two feet, high enough for crawling but not much more. He stopped every few feet to feel against the bottom of the craft until he sensed the reassuring density of his mentor. "All right, I've got you. Adam, there isn't much room here. You're going to need to lie down so that I can get you all the way out into this space down here. Can you do that?"

"This goes against every instinct I have," Adam complained, but did as he was told. The Helix shuddered unhappily at the movement. "Jesse…?"

"I'm hurrying," was the reply. "On the count of three. One. Two. Two and a half…"

"Jesse!"

The bottom of the Helix phased, and Adam tumbled out through the sudden lack of support and onto the cold and wet ground.

Jesse grinned unrepentantly. "Three."

"Jesse," Adam started to admonish him when the Helix rumbled once again. Jesse flashed into a rock hard shield over his mentor, covering the man with his own body as the Helix shifted one last time, sliding across the hard surface and down the slope. It teetered on the edge of the incline and then slowly, majestically, tilted and disappeared sideways off the edge of the cliff. The three heard crashing and metal shrieking, until it slid to a stop in the ravine below.

Lightning cracked.

"Damn," Jesse breathed. "That's gonna be a bitch to haul out of there."

Adam spared him a glance. "Let's work at getting ourselves out of here first. Brennan?"

"Right here." The big man still lay on the ground where Jesse had dragged him, clutching his arm, rain droplets pelting his face. He blinked, trying to keep the water out of his eyes.

Adam was at him in a flash, poking and prodding. "Broken, but I suspect you already knew that. I won't be able to tell if there's any other damage until we get you back to Sanctuary. Anything else hurt?"

"Everything else hurts," Brennan groaned, "but nothing feels broken. Just my arm. And my pride." He winced. "Damn."

"Shelter," Adam realized. "Shelter first, then we'll splint your arm." He looked around, spotted a grove of trees that had blown over in a previous storm. "Jesse, help me get Brennan over there, under those bushes. It's drier than here. We can wait out the storm."

They hauled the larger man to his feet, almost tumbling back to the ground when he staggered, guiding him and pushing him under the farthest branches where it was dry, or at least less wet. Above, lightning cracked again. Jesse braved the rain once more to toss more brush on top of the impromptu structure to improve the water-tightness.

He looked around their snug quarters. "Put up a campfire, and this place might even be comfortable," he quipped.

Adam snorted. "With what firewood? Everything's soaked." He too scanned the area, his eyes and then his hands lighting on a stout piece of wood. He looked back at Brennan, worry etching his face. "Brennan, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to set that arm. If I don't, you may suffer permanent damage."

Brennan paled. "I don't suppose you have any morphine in your medical kit?"

"Actually, I do. But the kit is at the bottom of the ravine with the Helix."

"I'll get it," Jesse volunteered, getting to his feet.

Adam stopped him, his face grave. "Sorry, Jesse. There's no time." He indicated the rapidly swelling area on Brennan's arm. There was no doubt that that was where the injury was. "It has to be set now, or the edema will make it impossible to do. And there's too great a risk that you yourself could be injured trying to get it out of the Helix."

Jesse set his jaw. "I'll take that chance."

"But Brennan can't. I need you here, Jesse, to help me with Brennan. Afterward you can go after it, once the rain has stopped and it's safe."

The rebellious look in Jesse's eye didn't abate, but he only said, "what do you need me to do?"

Adam set his own lips in a tight line at what had to be done. "Just hold him."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"We haven't heard from them since last night," Emma fretted. "Their comm. links are down, the entire area is socked in with rain, and we don't know whether they're dead or alive." The tourist center at the entrance to the national park service was deserted except for one bored looking young man behind a cheap metal desk trying to catch up on sorting and filing. Standard pictures of local birds and mammals dotted the walls with odd facts about the afore-mentioned critters, facts that any school kid could have recited without looking. Both women had wasted no time with their own travel arrangements, heading for the closest point that they could determine that the Helix had gone down. It was going to be a long search. And it was starting here.

"They're alive," Shalimar said grimly.

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. I refuse to believe otherwise." Shalimar marched up to the clerk at the desk and turned on blinding charm. There was more than one type of hunting, and the feral knew them all. "I need some maps of the area," she cooed at the clerk. "Topological maps, with outline of the mountains and elevations."

The clerk melted under the onslaught. "Miss, you don't really want to go in the backwoods country right now. They've got some flood warnings going on. It rained last night something fierce; there are going to be flash floods coming down off of the mountains. Nobody's allowed in for camping or hiking. Better wait until next week when it will be safe."

"That's what we intend to do," Shalimar purred, "but there's no harm in looking at maps, is there? Plan our route?" She leaned over the counter, treating the young man to a generous display of feminine charms, despising herself for the deception but seeing no better—or faster—way. "Out in the mud, and rain? It would ruin my hair." She tossed blonde ringlets over her shoulder to look at the clerk under hooded eyes. "I'd be ever so grateful if you could get me those maps. The ones that the rangers use? My friend and I want to go up to the family cabin next week."

Emma too radiated harmlessness and good will, in a slightly more direct manner. The clerk never had a chance.

He handed over the requested maps. "I didn't know there was a cabin up that way. I've never seen it when I've gone hiking."

"Oh, it's very far up," Shalimar cooed. "It will take all day to get there. But it's so beautiful." She tossed her hair once again, trying to keep from getting nauseous at her own antics. It's working, she told herself.

Emma too tightened her control, pushing on the young man's hormones until he could barely think straight. "Is there a nearby hotel we could stay at until the danger is past?" she asked, thinking to give him an out. Tell him that they intended to head out directly, and the spell would be broken. One or the other of Mutant X would end up knocking him unconscious in one fashion or another. Better to engage in a harmless deception.

The clerk beamed. Waiting was consistent with what he thought ought to happen. And if he should happen to wander over to the hotel restaurant for dinner tonight and catch sight of the two lovelies that he'd helped today? He preened. "Certainly, miss."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

At least the rain had let up. The clouds were still prominent, leftover water would cascade from one leaf to another, and the high elevation ensured that the water-soaked survivors were thoroughly chilled, but it was still better than before. One cloud was currently masquerading as fog, ringing the mountaintop where they were, covering their world with a quieting mist that dampened both vision and sound.

Brennan's eyes were closed and his arm splinted and bound to his chest. He snored. True to his word and Adam's disapproval, Jesse had scrambled down the slope to the wreckage of the Helix and dug out Adam's first aid kit as soon as the arm was set and the rain had let up. Adam had wasted no time administering a hefty dose of pain-killer and splinting up Brennan's arm. There still was no warming fire, none possible with the water-soaked kindling, but the survival blanket almost covered all three of them huddled around the sleeping Brennan, sharing warmth through the night.

Their comm. links were inoperative. Without tools, Adam couldn't determine why but guessed that the same problem with magnetic resonance distracting their navigation had something to do with it. The reason didn't matter. What did matter is that the three of them were alone in the mountains, no help in sight, one of them injured.

Brennan stirred. One eye levered itself open, acknowledging that the night was over and the morning had begun. "Adam?"

"Right here, Brennan." Adam checked the circulation on Brennan's wrist. "How are you feeling?"

"Feeling no pain," Brennan slurred. "Where are we?"

"Good question." Adam looked out from under the tree-branch shelter. "Jesse's down with the Helix, seeing what he can find out."

A rustling in the bushes told them that Jesse was no longer at the Helix. The molecular came into view, hauling on bushes to pull himself up to where he'd left the other members of the team. He didn't look happy.

"Jesse?"

Jesse sighed. "Not good, Adam. Power's completely gone. Not a spark anywhere. The comm. system is junk, and even the compass is smashed. There's not a thing in the Helix that we can use right now. I'm not even certain that I'll ever be able to raise it again, even given enough supplies to fix it." He looked around him, more for emphasis than anything else, since they'd both thoroughly surveyed their surroundings during the night. "Any ideas what we do now?"

Adam shrugged. "We need to get out of here. We'll only be able to last another night or two out here; after that, the exposure will be too great. And it's the middle of autumn. I wouldn't put it past the weather to start snowing at this high an elevation. We were lucky that it didn't happen last night."

"So we head down the mountain, toward warmth." Jesse glanced up toward the sky, noting the position of the sun. "That would be south. How appropriate. Going south for the winter. Like geese, bird-brains that we are."

"We get out of this, you can take a Florida vacation," Adam promised. He eyed Brennan worriedly. The elemental was still on the ground, wrapped in the silvery survival blanket, shivering. "We'll pack what we can along with us."