Chapter 1: The Acolytes

Magneto stared inside the chamber. "How is she?" he asked.

Amelia Voght checked the readouts again. "She's still alive, Lord," she said with just a touch of irritation. It was the third time he'd asked her that in an hour.

He stared at the chamber in front of him. A dim figure hung silently in the center of the tank, encased completely in swirling liquid. "Please be careful, Amelia," he said. "We want to kill the organism, not the girl. How long has Sara been submerged?"

"An hour, Lord Magneto," she said.

"How are the organisms doing?"

She bent over another screen. "They are definitely slowing down. The computer estimates that at least sixty percent of them are dead now. Your hunch about the lowered temperatures was correct, Lord."

Magneto sighed. It had been a week now since they had picked up the young mutant woman off the surface of the planet. He had to time it carefully, waiting until Lilandra and Charles had gone, before he went to the small silver craft, stole a spacesuit, and gone down to the surface. He had found Sara, unconscious but alive, caught out of her fall by a rocky outcropping jutting out from the face of the sheer drop into the lava pit. She had been brought up to his ship, where he had tried to revive her using the mind probing technology he had based loosely on Charles's Cerebro. When he did, though, all he could 'hear' from her mind was the cacophony of a thousand voices screaming in anger and fury in her mind. Sara herself had just lain there, blank-eyed, staring, unmoving. So Magneto had begun trying numerous ways of separating her from the organisms. When that failed he played a desperate hunch.

The surface of the planet was so hot, and the creatures were so used to that heat that Sara felt intensely cold in normal room temperature. Magneto remembered seeing her back at Xavier's mansion in the middle of June shivering in a sweatshirt and coat. Maybe if the temperature dropped low enough around them they would die. And since the human body was capable of surviving in cold temperatures, he had submerged her into a vat of arctic-temperature water, freezing cold.

The organisms had begun dying, slowly at first, then more rapidly, with each immersion in the freezing water. The amount of the silvery flexible metal on her skin hadn't diminished, but the level of noise in her mind was gradually decreasing in volume.

"Bring her out," he said finally. "Her body temperature's getting lower. If she stays in there too long she'll freeze. We'll give her a couple of hours before we put her in the tank again." Voght touched the appropriate buttons, and the apparatus that Sara was strapped to rose dripping from the tank. Magneto caught it as it swung free, and took the oxygen mask from her mouth and nose. He wrapped her in a thick towel, lifted her clear of the apparatus, and placed her on a nearby bed. Voght sealed the tank as he mindprobed Sara again. The voices were all nearly silent, now. He could hear a faint cry of despair from one of the organisms, but it was like a drop of sound compared to the ocean of noise he had heard when he had first picked her up from the surface of the planet.

"Not many left, now," he said in satisfaction, draping a blanket over her. He took a moment to stroke her hair, unaware of the sharp look Voght was giving his back. Her hair had been long, waist length, when she came aboard. But it floated in the tank, and was too heavy, and he'd felt a pang of regret when Amelia had cut it all short to her shoulder. He'd braided one lock of it and kept it, secretly, and wondered what he was doing.

Had he only known it, Amelia was thinking the same thing. There was very little love lost between the Acolytes and the X-Men, but Magneto and Professor Xavier were old friends. That had been a long time ago, though. Now, although sometimes they all found themselves on the same side of the line, more often than not they were at odds with each other. Why was Magneto now saving one of Xavier's students? She didn't know, and she suspected that Magneto didn't know either. "Let's let her rest, Amelia," he said. His red-haired Acolyte and lover left the console and followed him out into the hallway.

There was silence going down the hall for a while, and then Magneto said, "You are wondering why I'm trying to save her."

"The thought had crossed my mind, Lord Magneto," Voght said carefully.

He walked on in silence for a time. "I don't know, Mia," he said. "I guess maybe I feel sorry for her. There was a great deal in the papers about her divorce to that Senator, and the kind of treatment he subjected her to. Imprisoned and tortured…I see her and think about my own past, and I want to help her. It's not much of an explanation." He stopped at the intersection of a corridor and turned to her. "Please let me know when you're ready to put her back in the tank. I'm going to get some rest." He turned off down the corridor to his own room.

He let the door close behind him and sighed. He couldn't bring himself to say what he really felt, and he was glad that Voght couldn't see his face. He felt a strong attraction to the young woman in the medlab; had, in fact, since he saw her looking so vulnerable at the mansion. And despite what he had told her, when she had removed her clothes he had admired her trim, slender body. She was a beautiful woman. He sat back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and thinking.

Voght returned to the medlab, staring for a while at the somnolent figure on the table. She was, by nature, a possessive woman. When she'd seen Sara at Xavier's mansion and saw the way Magneto looked at her, she'd fought the urge to scratch the other woman's eyes out. She didn't want to share Magneto with anyone, let alone this skinny short little black-haired witch.

She went over to the console to check the readouts. Magneto had asked her to keep the water in the tanks at thirty degrees. Any lower, and if the time Sara spent in the tank wasn't shorter, she could get hypothermic. A sudden surge of jealousy guided Voght's hand to the temperature controls. Seconds later the temperature readout started dropping. Not much, just a few degrees, from thirty to twenty six degrees. It didn't look like much, but when Sara went back into the tank she would slip into hypothermia in forty-five minutes. Hopefully she wouldn't survive, then Voght wouldn't have to worry about her and Magneto. With her mouth set in a thin line, she left the medlab.

An hour later they were back. Voght's heart nearly skipped a beat as he crossed the room and paused by the console. Surely he wasn't going to check the controls! But he didn't, going instead to the tank, and just stood there for a moment, looking at it. Then he got Sara secured to the immersion frame again, positioned the oxygen mask over her face, and signaled Voght to lower her back into the tank.

He stood, just watching, for several minutes, then slipped into her mind via the mindprobe. The noise of the organisms in her mind was definitely almost gone. "This might be the last time we have to put her in there, Amelia," he said. He eased out of Sara's mind, pacing around the tank. He got another towel and a thick warm blanket from the closet, and probed her mind after another half-hour had passed. The organisms had stopped squealing. He felt a moment of satisfaction as he picked up on the background noise of her mind becoming a bit more active. He slipped out and made the bed as Amelia watched the controls.

When he slipped into her mind again he became alarmed. There was no background hum from Sara's mind. None at all. There was nothing there but a blank emptiness that scared him. "Amelia!" he gestured. "Take her out, now!" The machine moved, but too slowly for him. He raised a hand, manipulated the magnetic field around the metal structure, and the frame almost exploded out of the tank. He rushed to her, stripping the oxygen mask from her face and pulling her free of the frame. Her skin was ice cold. Too cold. She shouldn't have been this cold. He took a swift glance at the temperature controls as he went by with her. The readout said twenty-six degrees. He cursed inwardly; he'd have to talk to Amelia about carelessness.

He dropped Sara on the bed and wrapped her in the towel and blanket he'd brought. The beds of her fingernails were turning just the faintest shade of blue. Cold. She was too cold. He had to warm her up before her body shut down. He lifted a hand and a portable heating unit in the corner swung up to the bed and turned on obediently. But it wasn't enough. He sought frantically for another heat source. "Mia!" he barked. "The heat blanket in my quarters! Hurry!" As she ran out, he pulled his shirt off and lay down beside Sara, pulling her nude body close to him. He gasped as the icy skin touched his own warm bare flesh, then gritted his teeth and braved it, pulling her closer. And that was how Voght found them when she came back with the electric heating pad. Her face twisted in hatred for a moment before she schooled her expression and forced herself to walk calmly across the floor to give the blanket to Magneto.

He switched it on and wrapped it around both of them, feeling the need for the warmth himself after close contact with Sara's icy skin. "Mia, the temperature controls were too low. The water in the tank was down to twenty-six degrees. She should have come out of the tank twenty minutes ago. Did you check the temperature before we put her in?"

Voght arranged her face in what she hoped was a properly submissive expression. "No, Lord Magneto," she said. "I didn't. I'm sorry."

"Be more careful next time," he snapped, then turned his attention to the girl in his arms. Voght exited silently.

Out in the hall she ran into another one of the Acolytes. "Amelia!" Carmella Unuscione called to her. "How is Lord Magneto's pet doing?"

"Better," Voght said shortly, stalking off down the hall. She didn't fool Unuscione.

"Don't like her, huh," the other woman said as she followed Voght down the hall.

"No. I don't." Voght said shortly.

Unuscione leaned in to her, stopping her. "Neither do the rest of us," she whispered conspiratorially. "Come down to the mess hall. We're having a meeting about how to get rid of her."

"Get rid of her?" Voght reversed direction suddenly, turning to the direction of the mess hall. "Is that what I think it means?"

"Yeah. Kill her, or send her back to the X-Men where she belongs," Unuscione sneered. "My choice? I'd rather kill her."

"I tried to." Voght said.

Unuscione whirled. "Whoa. You? How?"

"I turned the temperature down on the tank. I hoped she'd freeze to the point where her body would shut down. But Magneto was probing her mind with the mindprobe machine and got her out of the tank before she died. That damn machine. I'm going to rip it up."

She rounded the corner and into the mess hall. "Okay, guys, I tried to take her out. You all tell me what you're going to do."

They all started to talk at once, and she waved them into silence. "You first," she pointed to Neophyte, who was idly phasing a knife through the table. And they all started to plan the death of the young woman who was just now waking, blinking confusedly, in Magneto's arms.

She rose slowly through the layers of darkness that wrapped themselves around her mind. It was warm where she was, and dark, and quiet, and the voices that had tormented her for so long were gone. She moaned, tried to turn away from the light that assaulted her eyelids, but it refused to go away, and she finally opened her eyes. "What…" her voice was hoarse, and rusty, and she cleared her throat twice before her voice came out coherent. "What am I doing here?" she blinked as the warm body stirred beside her, and for just a moment she had a vision of a muscular, dark-haired, gruff man with a feral smile and gentle hands. The actual sight of a tall, muscular man with silver hair and a slight smile replaced the vision. She returned the smile uncertainly and tried to keep her voice from quivering as she asked, "Who are you?"

"Don't you remember? I'm Charles's friend Magneto."

"Who's Charles?" she asked puzzled.

Magneto sat up and looked into the one violet eye and one white one, uncertain. "Don't you remember, Sara? Your friend, Charles Xavier?"

"Sara?" she frowned. "Is that my name?"

"You really don't remember, do you?" he looked at her, narrow-eyed. "Okay. What's the last thing you can remember?"

Her brow furrowed. "I don't remember anything," she whispered uncertainly. "Honest, I don't." Her face crumpled as if she were going to cry, and he wrapped his arms around her. For just a moment, she remembered another pair of arms, covered with short, dark, wiry hair, holding her just as close, just as tight, and saying, "Ssshh, it's going to be okay." The vision disappeared even as she tried to chase it, but that gave her a headache and she gave up the attempt.

Magneto was faced with a dilemma. How was he to get her memory back? They were still stuck in alien spaces, and he didn't know how to operate any of the alien machinery on the ship. Sara had taken the alien ship here, and they had simply followed her through the stargate. She would have to remember how they got here before she could get them back. Until her memory came back they were trapped here. And usually, when someone lost their memory showing them familiar items would help bring it back. But they had nothing here except the clothes she'd come in.

They were stuck.

She had probably lost her memory when she hit the rocky outcropping. He had seen a sizable lump on the back of her head when she first came aboard. It seemed to be gone now, and hopefully the loss would only be short term. Meanwhile, however, she was probably hungry. "Come on," he said, getting out of the bed, pulling his shirt on, and handing her clothing to her. She pulled them on over her body and followed him out the door of the medlab.

They found the others sitting in the room on the ship they called the mess hall. The wave of hostility she felt from the others was almost palpable, but he didn't seem to notice anything unusual. "Sara," he said, holding out a hand to a hard-eyed woman with striking red hair, "this is Amelia Voght." For just a moment, Sara's odd double vision showed her another room, a brightly lit kitchen, and another red haired woman with a kind smile. She shok her head to dispel the vision and concentrated on the here-and-now. "Amelia, Sara's just woken up. She doesn't remember anything, though. See what you can do to jog her memory." he smiled at Sara kindly. She gave him her best unsure-but-game smile, and turned to meet the others as he went out.

Their stares got a lot colder after he left. "Cargill," said a dark-skinned woman from her seat at the table.

"Katu," boomed a scowling man with a bionic arm sitting next to her. The two identical men sitting beside him were the Kleinstock brothers, Sven and Harlan, and next to them, the demonic-looking green being snarled around a mouthful of sharp teeth, "Melloncamp." The next man down identified himself as Neophyte, the blond was Scanner, and the next two were Unuscione and Spoor. Sara's breath caught in her throat as the last figure stood and she saw the whip hanging by his hip. She could hardly breathe as he said, "Senyaka."

Her mind suddenly dredged up a vision of a handsome man raising a similar whip over his head and smiling cruelly as he brought the whip down. She screamed as a burning pain erupted between her shoulder blades.

Voght let her go as her eyes glazed over and she fell to the floor. Sara scrambled into the corner, her eyes seeing nothing but the vision, and she started to scream. They sat silently, watching her cower in the corner of the room for several minutes, before Voght went to the intercom and flicked it on. "Lord Magneto."

"Yes, Voght?"

"Your…guest…is having problems. I think you will want to come down here."

Cargill went over to Sara, tried to touch her arm. "Sara," she said. Sara flinched, staring straight ahead, whispering over and over, "No don't hurt me don't hurt me don't hurt me please don't hurt me…"

Magneto rushed into the room, took one look at Sara crouched in the corner and the others who were obviously not helping her, and his heart sank. She was not going to be able to stay here with him, then, as much as he would like her to. His Acolytes were not going to allow her to stay. Not a former X-Man. He knelt in front of her. "Sara."

She screamed in terror and anger, and lashed out blindly. Her fist struck him across his face, and he reeled from the blow. She was stronger than she looked. Damn.

Sven Kleinstock's plasma burst knocked Sara back into the wall, hard as Unuscione's psionic exoskeleton reached out and grabbed the young woman. Sara flailed and fought her, and Unuscione's grip slipped. Before Sara could try to get away, Senyaka's whip flicked out, curling around her middle, and activated. Sara jerked as the whip began to drain her energy.

"Enough!" Magneto thundered, and everyone froze. "Senyaka, put her down. She didn't mean to hit me. If I'm right she just had a flashback that caused her to lose control. Your reactions were was unexcusable. Sara, are you all right?"

"Yes," she said, shaking her head dazedly, touching the gash on her temple, caused when she'd hit the wall. "Ow. Getting slammed into the Danger Room wall doesn't even hurt as bad." She blinked at him. "Magneto, what am I doing here? Where's everybody? Who are you?" she looked at the Acolytes in bewilderment.