Chapter 7: The Next Step

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Izabelle sat up and Hank's arm was already across her protectively. Someone was pounding on the door and since they were the only ones who resided on the first floor, they were the first to hear it.

"Stay," Hank ordered, an edge of worry in his voice.

"Like hell," Izabelle fired back, grabbing her robe and following him down the hall. She may be pregnant but the baby and/or hormones had her powers blasting at full force right now and she was sure she could level a city block.

"I mean it, Izabelle," Hank reiterated, trying to block her way.

"Listen," she hissed back in the hall, "I'm not supposed to be stressed, right? And nothing will stress me more than lying in bed while you creep around in the dark by yourself against who knows what!"

He sighed, knowing he couldn't move her and motioned for her to be quiet. They padded down the hall as Scott and Jean were tip-toeing down the stairs. The small group huddled around the door, with Hank insisting on pushing Izabelle behind him.

With a strong yank, Beast threw the door wide open and a figure dropped to the floor, apparently having been propped against the door. White-blonde hair spilled around her on the floor and Izabelle let out a shriek. Everyone stared as she knelt by the figure and, wiping away blood with her robe, revealed the woman's face.

"It's her Hank! It's the waitress!"

Hank knelt quickly by his wife, earning more puzzled glances, now from Cannonball and Sunspot as well. A group was growing, the banging having woken more than a few people in the school. Leaning down, Beast inhaled deeply. The smell of blood masked other smells, among them sewers, but her own smell was one he recognized; he had met her before somewhere and if Izabelle recognized her…

"Get her into my lab." Sam and Roberto acted quickly to carry her between them down the stairs.

"X-Men, down. Everyone else, back to bed," Logan barked. Grumbling arose but the sound of claws coming out sent the students back to bed. "Come on." Logan took Izabelle's bloody robe from her and led her with a firm grip on her elbow to the labs below.

"I can carry my robe," Izabelle protested.

"Best if you don't," was the curt reply. "Blood diseases."

Izabelle nodded, slightly embarrassed that Logan was more aware about how to protect the baby than she was. But at the same time, Logan generally was more aware of things that could do harm than she was.

When they reached the lab, Hank had already begun working at closing the wounds on the woman's body. There was a sizeable gash across her high cheekbones and she had a bleeding hole in her shoulder.

"We need to get her clothes off of her," Hank spoke, thinking aloud. "Cannot get at her shoulder with this jacket… Forge, cut."

Forge blushed but acted quickly, his arm morphing into perfectly sharp blades, and running the scissors down the length of the woman's shirt. Hank peeled away her top and there was a gasp from Jean Grey. A massive burn, long since healed, covered the midsection of the mystery woman.

"Someone has a knack for getting into trouble," Logan mused.

"What do you mean by that?" Scott asked quickly.

"This is hardly a first for her, now is it?'

Hank dropped an object into a metal dish, checking to see that no pieces of clothing had gone into the shoulder with it.

"Not a bullet…a bone." Hank showed the tray to Jean.

"But it's not hers!"

"It would seem not."

Quick stitches and her shoulder would be fine; the shot had missed her bone entirely and the muscle would heal. Superglue, applied by Jean because Hank had a tendency to get fur in the glue, patched the woman's cheek and would reduce the scarring.

Inside of twenty minutes, a woman lay before the X-Men, sedated and quietly sleeping under a sheet, with no indication to who or what she was. For this they turned to Izabelle, at least until the Professor arrived. Jean had already attempted but her memories were so fragmented that it would take someone with more power than her.

"You said she was your waitress?" Bobby asked, sitting on a counter as Hank washed his hands. Once they were clean, a firm shove sent Bobby off of the counters.

"At the Debate dinner. I felt horrible and she healed me. Then she made a point of telling me it was her."

"And why would she do that?" Logan snorted, suspicious.

"I had just chewed someone out about how some of us have to try pretty hard to suppress our powers, for the sake of humans. I think she wanted to say thanks."

There was a contemplative silence in the lab. That was something most of them could identify with.

The sound of the Professor's chair caused everyone to jump. "That is most interesting. Did you have any physical signs of illness?"

"No. Just usual pregnancy stuff: hot flashes, nausea, pain…"

Xavier put his fingertips together, looking at the woman on the table. "I wonder what her powers could be."

"Sir? Isn't she a healer?"

"No, Cerebro did not recognize her as such. She didn't heal you; she made you feel better."

"Isn't that the same?"

"No…" Xavier carefully aligned his fingertips across the woman's head and closed his eyes.

Someone was chasing. They tackled her and her screams broke the night air. Someone produced hairspray and someone else, a lighter. She was stretched out and then…blinding pain.

Charles visibly jerked as he experienced the burn through her memories.

She had been left. She was dying, her clothes melted and burned to her body. But someone was there. A group was carrying her, down below the streets, through the sewers and through the darkness…

From there, nothing was solid. It was clear she had stayed with her rescuers because many of the images were in darkness. And many were violent as well. Xavier saw a flash of something very familiar but he did not have time to place what it had been and he could not go back. Her memories played out without any control from him, fractured and disconnected.

"Professor!"

Charles jerked his hands away and Hank quickly leaned over the shaking woman, working to stabilize her.

"Seizures…" Hank murmured, injecting another vial into her IV drip.

"Are you okay, Professor?" Jean asked, obviously recognizing something had gone awry.

"Her memories are scattered and broken beyond repair." Logan stood up, looking more attentive. Charles continued, "However, I have no control over what I see. They almost took on a life of their own, playing out without order or sense."

"I would hazard a guess that she will have physical symptoms like this whenever a further attempt is made," Hank added, perched on a stool and checking her pupils.

"Your reason, Henry?"

"Those seizures had nothing to do with her health. Aside from weariness and blood loss and maybe slight malnourishment, she is perfectly healthy." Hank passed the papers the computer had been spitting out since he had fed it a blood sample. He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It would seem related or triggered by your delve into her mind."

"Someone did this to her?" They had all nearly forgotten Forge until he raised the question they were all thinking.

"Yes. But not human. Another mutant," Xavier mused, thinking over what he had seen. "She is from our sewer group."

Logan bristled, remembering the slaughter and the ambush. "And why is she here?"

"It would appear she needs help."

Logan started to protest but Xavier held up a hand to silence him. "Regardless we won't be pushing her out of our doors tonight. Someone will be left with her at all times and we will deal with this in the morning."

Scott volunteered for the first shift, with Jean following, then Bobby. But even after they were back in bed, Hank could tell Izabelle could not sleep.

"How is our child?" he asked sleepily.

"Calm, for once. It's not that."

"The woman?"

"Yeah." Izabelle rolled onto her side, hazel eyes meeting blue. "I can't help but feel she means well."

"I understand," he sympathized, brushing hair out of her face. "But you have to admit, showing up with a hole in your shoulder after being part of a terrorist cell looks bad."

She nodded. "But still…"

He leaned over, planting a kiss on her head. "All in good time. You need sleep."


The next morning there was talk of the new mutant being up and about. Fall brought the beginning of the new school term and it took quite some doing to get the students to their classes, what with the promise that the woman might show up. But a very pregnant (nearly seven months) Izabelle scowling at them got rid of quite a few of them.

"Seriously! She isn't a zoo animal," Izabelle huffed into the fridge.

"Just an animal, then?"

Izabelle jumped about a foot and smacked her head on the fridge she had been leaning into. She rubbed her head and found herself facing the waitress. Cleaned off and mostly whole (her arm was in a sling to support her shoulder), it was clear she was the same woman. And the accent was very distinct. Her hair hung in long blonde waves and her face looked like it had been carved from stone. Not unattractive but very sharply built with high cheekbones. She was wearing the standard sort of things that were given to people arriving with nothing: grey Xavier's shirt and sweatpants.

"Not quite what I was getting at," Izabelle quipped back. "How are you feeling?"

The waitress smiled, though it did not look like it came easily. "Glad I made it."

"This was your endgame, then?" Hank asked, from behind her.

The woman's reaction to being snuck up on was immediate and more drastic than either of them would have expected. She spun sharply and had placed the island between herself and Hank within moments. Hank did not react, merely raising his eyebrows at her calmly.

"Sorry," she mumbled, though now she kept her back to a wall. "Old habit. Yes, I did want to be here. Any of us have heard of this place."

"What is your name?" It had just dawned on Izabelle that though she remembered who the woman was she did not at all remember her name.

Another tight smile and she replied, "Anesthesia. You?"

"Izabelle. Or Amnesia, I suppose. That is my husband: Hank."

"Beast," he volunteered. He was not at all convinced that this woman could be trusted. Sure Wolverine was like this, but Wolverine could not be implicitly trusted either.

"So that's your" Anesthesia pointed at the two of them, "baby?"

Izabelle could not help but smile broadly. "Yes. It is."

"When are you due?"

Hank's head cocked to the side. An interest in children was not what he would have credited this woman with but she seemed to perk up when the conversation had come around to the baby.

"Late November."

"Boy or girl?"

"Don't know."

"I could tell you."

Izabelle's eyes locked with hers and worry covered her features instinctively. "How can you possibly know?"

Anesthesia held up her hand in defense. "Nothing bad. I could tell you that there are two teleporters here, two powerful telepaths, half a dozen energy manipulators, and one healer. And that's just in the next several rooms."

Hank could not help but be fascinated. "You sense mutations in others. But what about–"

"I'm not a healer," she cut him off. "But I can manipulate the senses. Touch is easy, obviously. Smell is the most difficult. Here…" She lightly touched Izabelle's arm and the throbbing in her head from the smack on the fridge went away.

"But I'm still hurt," Izabelle said, feeling the bump on her head.

"Yeah."

"And if you can sense our child…" Hank spoke his thoughts aloud as they came to him.

"Your baby is a mutant," Anesthesia finished with a genuine grin.

Izabelle and Hank did not have time to react to the news because Xavier chose that exact moment to appear in the kitchen.

"It would seem you are rested and well, Adine."

"Yes, Professor. Thank you, Professor." She bowed as she spoke to him.

"That's a lovely name," Izabelle volunteered. She felt as though she should give something in return for what she saw as very good news.

"My grandmother's," Adine responded with another tight smile.

"I have some questions I need to ask you," Xavier continued, maintaining eye contact with Adine. "About how you came to be here for example."

"Can't you read my mind?"

"Your memories are seriously fragmented."

"That's Boost." It was a comment out loud to herself, but at the questioning looks she explained. "A mutant. He can step inside of mutant and their powers triple, but it does something to the patterns of your mind. It scrambles them."

"So you voluntarily underwent this?"

"I never said that." Adine held Xavier's gaze. She knew with certainty that he could never find his way around her mind. She had ensured it. What she had told him about Boost was true and unless she actively recalled a memory, he could never see more than she wanted.

"And how did you come across Boost?"

"The Morlocks…"

"Is that what they call themselves? Our group below the city?"

"Yes, sir."

"Have you acted on their behalf?"

"Yes, sir." Adine's responses were short and it was clear she had no desire to elaborate, for whatever reason.

"What has changed this?"

"I had heard you would take anyone and I was working at the debate." She nodded toward Hank and Izabelle. "Heard them speak and I decided to come."

Izabelle gave her husband an 'I told you so' look and he made a teasing face in return.

"I take it that this decision was not met with appreciation by your colleagues?"

Adine snorted loudly at the word colleagues and leaned back against a counter. "I am sure you know well enough, Professor, that a lot of mutants slip through the cracks. Half of them are down there. Most of them are too…unattractive to reside topside. I was an unusual case. It was never much appreciated that I worked with people. When I tried to leave…" She indicated her shoulder.

"In which case you were very fortunate. Our X-Men have encountered worse from them."

Hank knew what Xavier was doing and was grateful. It seemed too lucky that no serious injuries had been sustained from a terrorist cell that had given him a run for his money. It also seemed fortunate that she had met, and helped, Izabelle before her arrival.

"I picked my moment well," she answered, unmoved. "Any night there is an attack and a scavenging party there are almost none left as guards."

Anesthesia recalled a memory, hoping to draw him out, and she was rewarded by the touch of his mind against hers. Charles saw her pursuers, saw her fall and inflict pain with one touch, and saw her run. A bone spur pierced her shoulder but she was already gone…

Xavier sighed inwardly. He did not like having to make these decisions at all. He did not entirely trust her but he could not bear to send her away either.

"I am willing to agree to let you reside here on two conditions."

Adine's eyes lit up for the first time in the conversation. "Professor?"

"One, you will join a team and train with them. You must learn how to use your powers in a constructive way, outside of inflicting pain."

She nodded, her blonde hair waving.

"Two, there is to be no contact between you and the Morlocks and you will not be assigned or allowed to join any missions involving them. We hope to establish some contact with them in the future and to negotiate with them and your position could be a danger."

She nodded again, waiting.

"I hope you will enjoy being here and will earn the trust of those on your team." He locked eyes with her and all he could see was someone who was honestly happy because of this news. He turned his attention to Hank and Izabelle. "I believe you both have classes in the near future so I will show her around the mansion myself."

Izabelle and Hank left with a wave and a smile. Once they were gone, Hank caught Izabelle up in his arms, spinning her and grinning from ear to ear.

"Our baby is a mutant," Izabelle breathed. "I wouldn't think that could make me this happy!"


As she followed Xavier down the hall, Anesthesia could not help but smile. She was now a resident of the Xavier Mansion, along side what could be the strongest mutant child yet born. This was very good news indeed.