Chapter Sixteen: Emergency!

"I'm sorry Lucas, the sequence is all-ready armed. I can't stop the countdown. It's targeted the girl."

"How long?" Lucas barked.

It almost threw her off "Ahhh, four minutes until firing sequence is complete."

"Right. I'm heading for the airlock. I'll suit up and manually disrupt the targeting from the outside."

"Have you ever done his before?" Emma was worried now.

"I've seen the schematics." Was all he replied.

At three minutes and counting he entered the airlock.

At two minutes and ten seconds he exited the station in to space.

At one minute and seventeen seconds, using the magnetic clamps he rounded the outer skin of the station.

And at six seconds he was standing right over the microwave weapon, attempting to attach his magnetic clamps so that he might tear it loose or point it off in to space.

At zero seconds and firing, Lucas, son of Logan, took the blast meant for Jubilee, dead center in the chest.

Have you ever put metal in the microwave?

The microwaves attempt to align the already dense and compact molecules in the metal. This results in discharging energy, much like the electrical discharges that form over tectonic disturbances or earthquakes.

When you've got a metal skeleton, it's best not to force yourself in to a microwave oven. Barring that, it's also best to avoid being blasted in the chest by your own microwave weapons. If you must be blasted in the chest by your own microwave weapon, be sure your magnetic clamps are holding you to the station.

If your clamps weren't attached, it's quite possible that you would be blasted off in to space, plummeting to earth, your body erupting in electric discharging seizures, while you were caught in a cloud of dimensionally unstable microwaves at they attempted to destroy an innocent girl below.

Who knows what might happen to such an person? What fate might befall such an individual? Could anyone truly know?

Anyone, that is, save for Lucas?

In the pristine station, Emma sobbed. She cried for Kurt, she cried for Lucas, and she cried for herself.

After a moment she rose from her knees and looked to the monitor. The girl was staring up, in to the sky, as though she had seen something. She was no longer a threat, according to the meter anyway, and Emma rose on trembling legs. She crossed over to the object retrieval station.

She turned on the targeting scanner and locked in on Jubilee.

"Hello?" Jubilee called out to the wilderness around her. She was having that feeling again. That someone was watching. "Lucas?" She asked hopefully.

Suddenly the world was jerked away and she felt as though she were spinning in place, soon the dizzyness passed and she was in a large white and black room. As she stood up, a woman's voice called out.

"Do you know what you've DONE?" Emma roared.

For a moment Jubilee took a defensive pose as though the recrimination were destined to be followed by violence. When it wasn't, she let her eyes adjust to the stations interior lighting.

Suddenly she felt the attack. Not a physical one, but a mental one instead. Emma was fierce and angry. Her mental attack stretched Jubilee's mind out for examination. Jubilee had never felt so helpless. She was mentally tied eagle and exposed.

Emma delved in to Jubilee's psyche. Picked over her most personal thoughts, and dissected her motivations.

Lucas. Jubilee realized. He was dead. It was him that she had seen, out of dimentiona phase, and falling to earth, dying, to save her.

And her mind convulsed on the thought, throwing off Emma's mental hold and jolting their awareness back to the three dimensional world around them.

"You weren't trying to cross dimensions again?" Emma wanted to be clear.

Jubilee shook her head. She was going to be sick.

"You were just trying to get Lucas' attention?"

She nodded, wrapping her arms around her stomach and rocking back and forth.

"He had offered to take you... to bring you here?" Emma was recalling the shared contact. "But you didn't trust him?" She made the next connection as well. "With your heart." She smiled ruefully. "You didn't trust your self"

Jubilee stopped moving.

"You knew he was true to his word. That's what you were afraid of. Because you lose everything you love."

"Shut up." Jubilee warned.

"So you were afraid, not just of your real feelings, but of the ones you might have too?"

"Shut up." She hissed.

And Emma's demeanor changed. She slid down next to Jubilee and wrapped her arms around her. Jubilee held herself resolutely for a moment and then fell to pieces in Emma's arms.

Waves of torment, horror, and insanity rolled out of the girl, and Emma sat, amid the storm of Jubilee's grief, stroking her hair with her fingers and soothing her slowly with her intimate mental touch.