"Hold your little green tounge!" ~Sam the American Eagle.

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But shortly after the mutant attack something came to her attention that Laurel had to deal with. Again she was watching the news, and at the tail end of the program, the announcer re-shuffled his papers and added, "In other news, the abandoned dam at Alkali Lake in Canada has sprung a leak, letting thousands of gallons of water in the local ecosystem. However, since no one lives in the nearby area, officials say that they will allow the ecosystem to regain its ecological balance."

She broached the news to Hank over dinner. "I have to go," she said, slicing her ham. "That's where Stryker had his base. I have to know what went on there. I want to make sure that the computers are destroyed, and if Stryker was there. There's a pretty good chance of that happening, and if he was, I want to dance on his grave, so help me God."

"It's all the way up in northern Canada," Hank said. "How are you going to get there?"

"The helicopter. I've pretty much figured out how to use it. It's got enough gas in it for another trip."

"Laurel," he said, looking up into her eyes. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"I don't know," she shook her head. "But I have to go."

"All right. Then I'm going with you."

She bridled, and her eyes were wide. "Hank?"

"Don't argue," he said, pointing his fork at her. "Just say 'Thank you, Hank'."

"Thank you, Hank."

Laurel grinned. But she was happy that Hank had decided to come with her. She liked his company, and she was afraid that she wouldn't have been able to do it alone. As they hopped into the helicopter, the next day, Hank gave her a puzzling look.

"How did you learn how to fly this monstrosity, anyway?"

"The internet," she shrugged. "And a bit of practice. Hand me my notes."

"What???"

"Just kidding," Laurel sang as the helicopter proceeded to take off. The first thing she had done had been to move the chopper to a different location a few miles off. She didn't want it connected with Hank's house, and when she saw his reaction at the sight of his garden when he first left the house, the last thing she needed was an irate scientist. She adjusted the navigation controls.

It was a good chopper; within minutes they were hovering over the newly extended Alkali Lake. At the familiar territory, Laurel felt her stomach drop in fear. No, not fear: terror, a terrible combination of fear and panic that she could throttle down only so much. She brought them down next to the lake, and pulled out the scuba gear.

"I thought you were just going to, you know, sort of move the water aside," Hank said, smoothing down his fur after the ride. The helmet looked absurdly silly on his large toothy head.

"You have far more faith in my abilities than I do," she said, pulling a wetsuit over her swimsuit. "My control over liquids is no where near that powerful. I can only do enough to make sure the coffee won't splash out of the cup. Parting the lake is way beyond achievement. I'm not Moses." She checked the double tank that she had acquired for long term diving. "Look, I'll be down an hour. I know I've got more air than that, but that's all the time I want to waste here."

Laurel slowly sank into the water. She loved scuba diving; everything was so quiet and peaceful. The water was like a muffling heavy blanket around her. The ground right under her feet showed strange markings, like the water had been held back by some unseen force, and then released again. But there were no signs of a wall or anything. It must have gotten pushed away, she thought. There's probably the wall or statue considerably downstream.

As she slowly finned her way forward, she saw the top of a building. Metal bars had been wrapped around the sides of it, forming some sort of cage, but they had been cut open again. She gently brushed the tip of one of the bars with her fingers. The cut marks looked familiar: as if they had been slashed open with large animal claws. But not adamantium, she thought, peeling away part of a black fingernail. She carefully tucked it in the bag at her waist, and moved on.

Finally she found the entrance to the underground base. Pulling out her flashlight, she made her way slowly down the halls. The light lit on the faces of fallen military men. Most looked like they had been killed by the terrible water pressure, but here and there some bore signs of a fight. She certainly wasn't going to move them. They all knew what they had been working for, and this was far more of a burial than she would have given them, recognizing a few faces. She began to chew on her lower lip as she made her way through the rooms to the main control room. The computer had been fully destroyed, she saw with satisfaction. Her eye lit on something small sitting on the ground. She picked it up: it was an earpiece, for a radio, with a tiny X in a circle on the outer side. Tucking that in her bag, too, she moved closer to the computer, and tried a little hacking. There was no power, but just in case anyone ever tried to power it again, she felt in the back and yanked out the motherboards. Crushing strategic pieces with her flashlight, she left the control room.

A lot of people had died in one direction, she noticed, following through. What shocked her were the huge doors, with the slight opening down the middle. She frantically looked around for something to pry them open with. Finally settling on a piece of the fallen wall supports, she wedged the doors open enough so she could glance inside. It was another copy of Cerebro! She shone the flashlight on all the fallen wall panels that would have otherwise made it look exactly like the one in Xavier's mansion. There was a familiar wheelchair on the edge of the precipice, but she was relieved to see it was empty under all that fallen debris. The occupant of the one closest to her, however, wasn't so lucky.

"Oh, Jason," she thought, covering her mouth. "God, I'm so sorry." The tubes from his head had been pulled out from the collapse, and the back of the wheelchair had been crushed. He would have died almost instantly, and for a moment she said a small prayer that he had. Finally she reached out and shut his eyes, and pulled one of the metal panels over his head. He deserved better.

With that done, there was only one other room that she had to go see. She paused at the door before going in. Taking a deep breath, she swam inside. The table was still there, which she couldn't bear to look at, as were most of the machines. Most of them were destroyed by slashes from a blade. Had Logan been back here? She was examining the room when something caught her eye: the x-rays on the plates were different. The bones were thinner, more feminine. She should know. By those times were over she knew Logan's skeleton as intimately as her own. One drew her glance: instead of claws, the fingernails were lengthened inhumanly. She examined the x-rays, and then her eyes were dragged back to the table, that she hadn't been able to see before. In the liquid cell underneath the table was a woman.

Laurel sped forward. She moved the top aside the best she could and tried to grab the woman. A familiar metal was coming out of her eyes and mouth, and Laurel tapped it with the tip of her flashlight. When she got the same ringing sound when she tapped the woman's fingernails, she knew that it was the owner of the x-rays. She hauled her out of the tank and steadied her against a shelf, thinking. She stared blindly at the shelves before she realized what she was seeing. A handful of Japanese fishing floats bumped softly against the top of the cabinet. She could use these to help raise the woman to shore, at least a little bit. It wouldn't be good as her BC, but it would be close.

She managed to attach them to tiny wires, and then roped the wires around the woman's waist. They provided a little more buoyancy than she thought, and dragging the woman out of the room and into the open lake. She finally had to drop her weight belt and slowly fill her vest with air until they rose to the shore. Wrapping one arm around the woman's chest in a practiced manner, she slowly swam towards shore.

"What on earth did you find down there?" Hank asked.

"Stop talking and help me out," she muttered, spitting out her mouthpiece.

"Who is she?" The woman hit the ground with a metallic clink.

"Dunno." Laurel took the towel that he handed her. "Another victim of Stryker."

"Laurel," Hank said quietly. "She's dead."

"Not all the way dead," she replied, feeling like Miracle Max from "The Princess Bride". "She's actually in stasis. I know about healing mutations. No matter how bad it looks, they can always be revived. The hard part will be getting all the metal out of her."

"The hard part??!" Hank tossed her scuba gear in the back of the chopper. "Laurel, how do you even know she has a healing mutation? Isn't this what we talked about?"

"Look," Laurel snarled, feeling a bit fed up. "I spent eighteen months looking for Logan when he disappeared, and when I finally found him, I couldn't help him. I couldn't help Jason, who should have been safest of all in his family, and is now dead. I can't help Logan anymore because I can't find him! Stryker is alive still, I just know it, and I have to help this woman because she has been treated the worst of all and it's all my fault!!!"

"Laurel…" Hank said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"You don't get it," she said, her voice harsh with sobbing. "You just don't get it. I was supposed to be her! I got away, and they had to find someone else. It was supposed to be me." She looked up at him, blue eyes filled with tears and darkened with guilt and sorrow. "I can help her, and I have to."

Hank nodded. "Alright. Dry your eyes and I'll load her into the helicopter."

"Thank you, Hank. Just….. Thank you."

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