"I like not fair terms and a villain's mind."

The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene III


Jean came awake and wished she hadn't; her head was throbbing, making it difficult to think with any sort of clarity. Her eyes flickered open, and immediately shut again under the glaring onslaught of fluorescent lights. This was much worse than her earlier headache, and she didn't think a psychic blackout dream was going to magically resolve it.

"Awake, I see," a man's voice said nearby. He sounded pleased. He sounded pleasant: a smooth, rich baritone with a slight accent. A cultured voice. A respectable voice. A doctor's voice.

She opened her eyes again, more cautiously this time. Blinking, she tried to figure out where she was. It seemed to be... a hospital room?

No, not quite, she realized as her eyes adjusted. The walls she could see were polished metal; the overhead lights blazed with operating-room intensity. She was lying on a steel table (like an autopsy table, she thought involuntarily), not a proper bed. There was an instrument tray to one side of the table, with rows of syringes, scalpels, and other assorted equipment.

And she was strapped down: restrained at her wrists and ankles. There was something on her head, too, that felt like a metal band. It dug slightly into the skin of her forehead and pinched her temples.

But the smell of the place - bleached and antiseptic – that was like a hospital.

Or a lab.

Or a morgue.

"Where am I? Where are my friends?" she demanded, although she couldn't see who'd spoken. "Who are you?"

"Oh, you already know the answers to those questions, Jean Grey." The man moved into her field of view. He was tall, handsome and dark-haired, wearing a white lab coat and surgical gloves over his gray suit and red tie.

Jean narrowed her eyes, in part due to anger and in part to see him better against the white-hot glare of the overhead lights. But his face remained partly shadowed, no matter how hard she looked. "Lapouge."

He smiled, displaying excellent teeth. "You are a clever girl, finding that breadcrumb. Brava! But Lapouge was a monumental fool, I'm afraid. Call me Milbury instead."

Where was Scott? Or Rogue? She tried to search for their thought patterns and received a lot of mental static in return for her trouble. Focus, Jean. Her head wasn't hurting that badly. "If Lapouge was that stupid…"

"Why use his name in the first place? Simple nostalgia," he said. He assumed a slightly chagrined air, as though he'd admitted a weakness. "Those were heady times, my dear. All sorts of new ideas, new paradigms – mostly flawed, of course. The early eugenicists confused genetic worth with race and social order. Homo europaeus, Homo alpinus… Nonsense, as you know, being so interested in the subject yourself."

He knew her major? She tried to remember if the university records were public... They couldn't be. Could they? Because if they weren't, they had just entered an entirely new level of creepy.

Milbury hadn't noticed her lapse in attention. He went on, saying, "Wyndham, at least, had the sense to recognize that evolution does not automatically favor blond-haired, blue-eyed Deutschlanders, or even humans in general, although his later work was not what I could have hoped for."

Keep him talking, Jean thought desperately. She called out to Scott and Rogue, again, and got nothing, again. The throbbing intensified, as did her fear. Something was going wrong. Something was going very, very wrong.

Still. Keep him talking. "What – um, what do you hope for?"

Milbury smiled beatifically. He spread his hands, palms upturned. "Life. It's so precious, isn't it? So beautiful. And there are so many fools out there who are doing their best to end it, one way or another. You and I, in fact, have a mutual acquaintance who's just embarked on an extremely stupid project."

Jean couldn't begin to guess who their "mutual acquaintance" might be. "Is that why you kidnapped Scott?"

"Very clever!" Milbury said approvingly. "Yes. But I don't want you to feel slighted, Jean. You, of course, were next on the list. 'There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female.' That sort of thing."

"What's… what's going to happen now?" she asked. Next on the list… echoing in that smooth voice… she'd heard that before. Hadn't she?

Milbury's expression and voice didn't change, but something in the room chilled perceptibly as he answered: "Forty days and forty nights. Or perhaps years. It depends on whether our friend is as successful as he wishes. But you, Jean Grey, you have nothing whatsoever to worry about. You're quite safe here."

Funny; Jean didn't feel particularly safe. Especially not with Milbury hovering over the instrument tray. "We're at the Boys' Home, aren't we?"

Milbury picked up a hypodermic needle from the tray and uncapped it. "Yes and no. It's complicated, my dear, that's all you need to know."

Absolutely certain of it – even though she still didn't know how – she said, "Scott is here."

Milbury made a humming noise that might have been agreement. He set the hypodermic down beside a couple of test tubes with purple caps, and picked up an antiseptic swab. "Your 'Rogue' is not. It's an interesting mutation, on paper, and it could certainly prove fruitful with some judicious adjustments. In her current state, however…. Hmm. A bit of an evolutionary non-starter, isn't it? – not being able to touch anyone? Still, I've found a way to make her useful."

"How?" Jean asked, unable to keep the fear out of her voice as Milbury rolled the sleeve of her uniform up and ran the antiseptic swab over the inside of her elbow. He'd obviously done it many times before – his movements were elegant and economical, no motion wasted. Jean didn't find that reassuring.

"She'll be teaching my pet," he said jovially, taking up the hypodermic and a test tube, "how to play cat-and-mouse. Now, I'd appreciate your cooperation on this, Jean. It's just a blood sample for my records. There's no reason to fight."

That's what he thought. She gathered together her muddled thoughts and shoved them out at Milbury's chest, intending to knock him across the room.

A faint breeze rippled over his lab coat and he took a fractional step back. At the same moment a sharp pain ripped through Jean's skull like a shaft of red lightning.

She screamed.

Milbury tsked. "While I admire your spirit, my dear, I must confess to some disappointment. I'd thought you were more reasonable than this. Well. That is what the neural scrambler is for."

The pain faded somewhat, leaving her gasping and weak. Her eyes had teared involuntarily and now she blinked them clear. "You… You're blocking… my powers?"

He flashed another perfect smile. "Of course. Hold still, please."

Anger surged up, obliterating the fear if not the lingering pain, but she swallowed the desire to fight. It wouldn't get her anywhere and might prevent her from acting when she had the chance.

Because she would: she was going to make this man very, very sorry.

Milbury slid the hypodermic needle into her vein with expert grace; she barely felt it. He drew enough blood to fill the test tube, then removed it and popped in the second, empty tube. He filled that one, removed it, then withdrew the needle and laid it aside. In the same motion, he produced a cotton ball and a small roll of elastic bandage. He pressed the cotton against the puncture site, wrapped the bandage around her arm, and tied it off.

The entire procedure had taken less than thirty seconds. It was long enough for Jean's clouded brain to turn, worriedly, to Rogue. "Playing cat-and-mouse" – obviously, Milbury had given her over to Sabretooth. Jean just had to hope that Rogue could hold her own for a while.

She pulled her thoughts together and demanded, "I want to see Scott right now."

"'An eye like Mars, to threaten and command'," he quoted, instead of answering. "And the sun and the moon, in trying to rescue Mars from dire evil, have fallen into the trap themselves. 'What fools these mortals be!'"

She'd been living under the same roof as Henry McCoy for much too long. Even with her mind struggling through an electric fog, the retort, "'What, can the devil speak true?'" popped out almost instantly.

Milbury laughed.

It was unexpectedly genuine. Warm. Affectionate, even.

He was serious, she realized with a sick internal jolt. All that talk about protecting them - it was true; he'd meant every word. That knowledge was more terrifying than anything else.

Almost.

She had to steel herself to ask the million-dollar question. "Why do you need my blood?"

"Because Charles Xavier is not the only one with a dream for the future, my dear. And because time is running a bit short these days." He picked up the test tubes and held them for Jean to see. The glass sparkled in the bright light, but the blood itself looked dark.

"Excuse me for a moment," Milbury said, every inch the amiable, avuncular doctor. "You'll understand why I need to get these into cold storage."

He walked out of sight, his shoes clicking on the floor. A door swished opened and then shut.

Silence.

Jean was alone.

She closed her eyes and tried desperately to focus. Pain was nothing; she could work past that; she might be Rogue and Scott's only hope. She had to-

"Get up!" a girl's voice hissed in her ear. "We don't have much time!"