Rachel watched Wyngarde fall to the floor -- unconscious or dead, she couldn't tell without a telepathic scan, and that was more effort than she felt able to make at the moment -- and sagged against the nearest wall. Or would have, but Logan was at her side before she even touched the wall, his strong arm around her, supporting her. She settled against him and studied the true room around them.

Far from the hospital it had appeared to be, it was a basement, finished but otherwise featureless.

"Are we secure?" her father asked. He no longer wore a hospital gown, but instead his distinctive X-armor.

"I don't hear anyone outside," Logan said.

"Rachel?"

She felt Logan stiffen at her father's prompt, squeezed his hand, and concentrated for a moment. "The rest of the club is upstairs. There are a bunch of guards, but only the club elite are mutants."

"How'd you know it was an illusion?" Kitty asked.

"The devil's in the details," Rachel responded automatically, remembering how she'd detected the illusion Emma Frost had inserted into her mind.

"Precisely," her father agreed. "He slipped on a few details, which made me suspicious. Then I tested the theory --" he nodded at Logan, and Rachel wondered why Logan tensed beside her -- "and realized I was right. So we had to overload him. Give him too many details that don't fit the story he was telling with the illusion, and eventually he'd lose track of them all."

"Some details I'm never gonna forget," Kitty muttered.

Her father ignored her, all Cyclops now. "Alex, can you fight? Hand to hand, I mean?"

"Been a long time since those martial arts lessons Dad made us take."

"Then help Rachel. Logan, take point. Kitty, behind him. Let's take the fight to them."

- X -

Jean paused at the head of the stairs to the second floor and strengthened her psychic shields. Even from here, she could feel Jonesy's despair seeping through the mansion like a heavy fog, and she needed the extra shielding before she knocked on his door.

She didn't expect a response, and got none, but she waited a slow count of thirty before opening the door. "Jones?"

He sat on the bed, staring at the wall, and she winced internally at the sight. Nobody should ever look that … empty. It was the only word she could think of, and in the face of it, all of the words she'd planned to say deserted her. She could only blurt, "I can fix it."

At first she wasn't certain he'd heard her, but then he turned his head just enough that he was looking directly at her. His expression hadn't changed, but there was a glimmer of hope in his eyes and in his psychic sense.

"I can fix it," she repeated, and held up the syringe she carried. "Do you want a technical explanation, or do you just want the shot?"

He just extended his arm, and she came forward to administer the shot. Jones wanted hope, wanted to believe, but was reluctant to do so. She gave him the shot, then sat on the bed next to him, offering silent support.

The blare of the radio and the blinking of the overhead lights told her the shot had worked as she'd hoped. And then Jones was hugging her fiercely tight. "Thank you," he said, over and over.

She hugged him back, allowed her psychic shields to drop so she could feel his joy. It would help brace her for what was coming next. Lorna.

- X -

For all that he'd told Alex to help Rachel, Scott found himself on her other side as they followed Logan out of the room they'd been in and toward stairs leading up.

"Rachel," he asked quietly as they moved toward the stairs thirty feet ahead of them, "can you shield us from Frost? Without making your injury worse, I mean?"

"I've never heard of using telepathy making a head injury worse. It's just harder for me to concentrate," Rachel explained. "I'll do what I can."

Scott nodded acknowledgment, then hurried the few steps to join Logan at the foot of the stairs.

"Anything?" he murmured, knowing Logan would hear him.

"Two at the top of the stairs. Can't hear any more."

"Nobody else?" Surprise made him ask for confirmation.

Logan shook his head. "Want me to take 'em?"

"Wait," Scott said, or thought he said. His mind had stilled to that starburst of clarity he'd come to know so well over the years. If they were in a basement, other people should be moving around above them. "Rachel -- you sense others. Where?"

"That way." She pointed over her shoulder.

"Up or down?"

Rachel frowned. "I'm not sure."

"Spread out," Scott ordered. "Look for an elevator or stairs down."

In the end, it was Kitty who found it, by circling the exterior walls with her arm phased through them. "Here," she said. "There's air back here, not ground. But there's no door or controls here."

"Recon," Scott told her. "What's inside?"

She disappeared into the wall, then stuck her head back through it. "Anyone have a flashlight?"

Logan chuckled, and Peter and Alex looked disappointed. Scott just asked, "Is there a ledge in there?"

Kitty frowned, backed into the space, then poked her head through again. "Uh-huh."

"Phase me through, then." He offered his hand, and she took it, then pulled him through the wall.

It wasn't the first time she'd phased him, but still he found himself clinging to her hand. The thought that his hand might slip out of hers, causing him to end up with a wall through his brain, was never a comfortable one. The moment passed, and he fumbled for the ledge beneath his feet as she gradually solidified them.

He grabbed a rail for support as he found his footing, then let go of her hand and carefully twisted around so he could look down the shaft and turned his power on, low. The glow from his optic blasts served as a kind of emergency lighting, casting red light down the dark elevator shaft.

"Thanks," Kitty said, and then she was drifting down the shaft. He knew she wasn't floating so much as controlling the density of her body so she fell slowly, but it never failed to make him question the laws of gravity when she did it. Of course, the first time she'd actually climbed up the air, he'd spent an hour trying to write equations to explain it. He'd eventually given up, though he suspected that he, Hank, and Kitty could have a fun evening trying again.

Then Kitty had done exactly that and hovered beside him. "The car's about another hundred feet down. I didn't look to see what's on the other side of the car doors."

Scott blinked, and his optic blast disappeared, plunging the shaft into darkness. "Back through the wall, then."

Once they were back in the basement room and Kitty had explained what she'd found, Scott said, "Kitty will phase us all down and into the elevator car. Then we'll open the doors for a surprise attack. Take down the bad opera singer as soon as you can. Then we'll have to improvise."

Logan balled a fist, extending his claws. "I'm good at improvising."

- X -

At her father's insistence, Rachel stood at the rear of the elevator, crowded in with the rest of the team. She understood his concern, and for all her casual assurances that she could do the job she needed to do, she had no experience with head injuries and telepathic powers. Maybe there was a chance that her powers would be affected, though she hadn't noticed any difference in her perceptions or how it felt to use her powers. She'd have to talk to her mother about it when they were finally back at the mansion.

The team was quiet as they moved into the positions her father ordered, and she grabbed at the handrail behind her as the car swayed. "Whatever you do, Peter," she murmured, "don't transform."

Peter chuckled, and she heard Alex's low, "At least not until the rest of us are out the elevator."

"Ready?" her father asked, his tone all business.

Silence answered him in the affirmative, and now his voice held a hint of excitement, of eagerness. "Then let's do it. Kitty, pop the doors, if you please."

"Sure thing."

A moment later, the doors opened, and the team moved swiftly but quietly into the small lobby that divided it from whatever lay beyond the door. Once they were deployed, her father nodded to Logan.

Logan extended a claw to slice through the manual lock. Peter yanked the door open, and Logan dove into the room, a move designed to draw immediate fire and distract anyone inside from the rest of the team. Rachel itched to be by his side, but her father had firmly told her to stay back. She'd resent it more if her head weren't still throbbing in time with her pulse.

She heard the shrieks of surprise from inside the room, but the press of armor-clad bodies in front of her blocked her view. When Peter shifted to his metallic form, she might as well have been standing behind a block wall for all the view she got. But she needed to see what was happening, so she stepped inside and to one side.

She had a glimpse of a manufacturing facility and row after row of the daughter-drones that had felled her father, Lorna, and Jonesy. If they'd had any doubt that they were in the right place, that glimpse would've confirmed it.

Rachel didn't see Emma Frost in the brief glimpse she had of the room, and she didn't feel psychic pressure on her shields, so she risked lowering those shields to find the screamer. Instead of the screamer, she sensed a feral, menacing intention directed at her. She turned in time to hear the wolf-like howl before a blow landed on her temple and her world went dark.

- X -

Logan heard the lupine cry, Rachel's soft grunt and the squishy thud of flesh against flesh, then the harder thud of flesh against concrete floor, and he knew someone had gotten the drop on her. He couldn't go to her -- he'd caught sight of the screamer -- no, screecher -- and launched himself toward her. Their best advantage was surprise, and he meant to make the most of it, getting to her before she could focus her power and cripple them all.

He leapt over a narrow conveyor belt as though he were a hurdler at a track meet. Only after he'd landed and taken another step did he register what lay on the belt.

"Goddamn drones," he muttered into his comlink in time with his steps.

"We have to destroy those, too," Scott responded, then Logan heard him grunt. Apparently he'd joined the battle, too -- or had it joined for him.

His words made the screecher turn. She, apparently, hadn't heard him before that despite the -- to his ears -- abominably loud squeak of his uniform armor.

Her eyes widened when she saw him, and he launched himself at her even as she opened her mouth to draw a breath.

He heard the first notes of her power as he tackled her, his momentum sending them crashing to the ground and turning her sonic scream into a cry of pain.

She tried to wrestle him, scratched at his face and eyes with her nails. He slammed his head into hers. The blow rang in his head, despite the adamantium casing on his skull, but he was already recovering while she blinked dizzily. A chop to her throat, and he sat back, confident she was out of the fight.

He turned to regard the rest of the room over the network of conveyor belts filling it. Scott and Alex were engaged with -- Logan blinked at their opponent. Given the howl and the scent, he'd expected to see a wolf-man of some sort. Instead, he saw a man who'd grown bulkier yet sleeker, his jaw elongated to show canine teeth and his fingers stretched into claws. Apparently von Roehm had more than one form when he shifted.

But Scott and Alex both had their attention on von Roehm, so Logan scanned the rest of the room.

Peter, in his metallic form, had engaged Sebastian Shaw, and the two traded thunderous blows in one corner.

He saw Kitty walking through one of the conveyor belts, obviously intent on disrupting their electronic components. A dark-skinned young man, da Costa, had turned toward her, but Logan figured she could handle herself.

That left Leland, who sat in a chair to one side, his hands resting on a silver-tipped cane, observing the proceedings with detached interest. Logan started toward him, his claws extending.

The man looked at him, and Logan felt his movement slowing. Each step became harder and harder to take, as though he'd suddenly gained several hundred pounds.

"Now, now, dear boy," the fat man said, "no need to be hasty."

Logan stumbled a step forward, then fell to one knee.

"Much better," the fat man said. "Just sit there a while and think it over."

Logan strained to get to his feet, even to straighten his spine, but it was no use. He was well and truly pinned.