Chapter 6: The Lab
Hank put his bags down in his room at the mansion and unpacked, thinking about the strange request he had received. He wanted to dismiss it all as a hoax, but Dr. Greene had been quite earnest about her request, and a little voice in his head was telling him he shouldn't ignore it. Finally, unable to decide, he went in search of Xavier.
Xavier looked up as Hank came into his study. "Hank! I thought you weren't due back until tomorrow," he said. "How was the conference?"
"The same as always," Hank said. "Charles, I was approached by another doctor at the conference, Dr. Amanda Greene. She has had some good research papers published in some respectable journals, her choice of company notwithstanding." At Charles's blank look, he said, "She is supposed to marry Bruce Garrett at the end of the month."
"Bruce Garrett? I am surprised," Xavier said dryly. "He's not the nicest person in the world."
"No, he is not," Hank said. "Do you remember Jubilee telling us that he wished her to come up to his laboratory in Snow Valley Massachusetts to 'work' with him?"
"Yes," Xavier said.
"Well, apparently he made sure he could get what he wanted," Hank said grimly. "Dr Greene told me Mr. Garrett has 'acquired' a mutant with the ability to manipulate subatomic particles, and has extended an involuntary invitation to reside at the laboratory for the duration of the study. The mutant is apparently suffering from amnesia."
Xavier stared at Hank. "That's a complete breach of research ethics," he said in shock. "He doesn't think he's actually going to get away with this, does he?"
"Apparently he does," Hank said, adjusting his glasses. "Dr. Greene asked me to contact the Avengers and request that they consider 'liberating' this mutant from the laboratory. I told her I would take her request under consideration, and she gave me what I believe to be her cellphone number."
Xavier rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I believe maybe the X-men might be better suited to this task that the Avengers," he said. "Do you know where this lab is?"
Hank looked at Xavier over his glasses. "No, I don't, he said. "But finding the location shouldn't be difficult. It's in Snow Valley."
"Massachusetts?" Xavier chuckled. "It will not be hard, indeed."
* * *
Bruce showed Julie around the labs, puzzled but not overly concerned when she said she didn't feel any memories returning. The medical section was in the back of the building, and he swiped his card to open the doors. She walked around, looking at the well-appointed space, the well-stocked cabinets, and turned to Bruce. "This is all very impressive, Bruce,' she said, "But I don't think this is where I belong. None of this is bringing up any new memories."
Bruce took her arm and tried to steer her toward a section of the lab used for experiments. Sensing something wrong, she nervously tried to shake off his grip. "I should really be going," she said.
Bruce dropped his charming, nice-guy façade, and snapped his fingers behind his back. The two security guards standing by the doors came forward and grabbed her arms.
"Bruce? What's going on?" Julie looked troubled.
"Oh, nothing," he said airily. "I'm just going to make you the subject of my next paper."
She started to struggle, but it was much too late.
A metal collar snapped around her neck, and she was dragged, struggling, over to where a flat table lay half under a massive MRI machine. Julie struggled, but she couldn't fight the guards as they forced her to lie down on the table. When she tried to get right back up, Bruce sighed. "Looks like restraints will be necessary," he said. She screamed in terror and panic as the guards began to pull heavy nylon straps from under the table and buckled them around her wrists. "No! Please, not my wrists, I can't stand anything on them, please…" but they didn't listen, instead going to her waist and buckling the heavy strap around it, then doing the same thing to her ankles. She stared at the tiny aperture in the machine, the narrow tube she was shortly going to be in, and begged Bruce, "Please, I'm…I'm claustrophobic, I can remember being confined to a tiny space, like this, please…" but the table slid inexorably into the tiny space, and her pleas turned to terrified shrieks.
Bruce rolled his eyes. "Stop her making that noise," he snapped at the two security guards. They pulled the table back out from under her and slapped a piece of surgical tape over her mouth. Thus effectively silenced, they slid her table back into the tube and Bruce scanned her with the machine.
"I don't see any physical abnormalities," he muttered to himself after almost a half hour of staring at cross sections of her body under the scanner. "Take her over to the electroshock machine," he said. "Let's stimulate parts of her brain with electroshocks directly to her cranial nerves and see if the brain-mapping technique I theorized really can work."
Julie's face was streaked with tears when they slid the table out from under the machine. They didn't bother unstrapping her; they pushed the whole table itself over to the electroshock machine. A helmet bristling with electrodes was placed over her head, and Bruce turned on the machine. When it was humming and ready, he took the red and black positive and negative leads and clipped them to one of the electrodes on the helmet.
Julie convulsed, her face twisting in pain, and her mouth worked under the tape. She tried to scream, but nothing came out except a muffled cry. Bruce paid no attention, watching the display as sections of her brain slowly started to fill with green as the computer marked the sections already mapped. By the time he finished, Julie was shaking in pain, and barely conscious.
Bruce snapped his fingers, and the two security guards unstrapped her. They half-dragged, half-carried the stumbling girl over to the room where banks of cages held the mice and rats used in the experiments. Bruce indicated a larger cage, six feet high, four feet wide, and six feet long. It was made of the same metal the collar around her neck was made of. "Leave her in there," he said carelessly. "She can't get out; I don't think she's even capable of trying right now."
The doctors and lab technicians looked up as the bell rang for the closing of the lab, and Bruce locked the lab animal room as the light went down, leaving the girl sitting in the cage in darkness.
* * *
Amanda dropped her bags in her room and looked around. Nothing had changed since she'd last seen it.
She was alone in the house; this early in the morning, obviously, Bruce had gone to the labs, but she wondered where Julie was. Oh, well. She unpacked her bag and then tiptoed to Bruce's room and put his bag under his bed. He'd already replaced his toothbrush and toothpaste, she noticed as she passed the bathroom. She lay back on the bed, closed her eyes for a moment. Just a few minutes, then I'll get up and go down to the labs…
When she opened her eyes next, it was to the sound of a door slamming downstairs. She ran down the stairs and stopped short as she saw Bruce coming in the door. Only Bruce. No Julie. "Bruce, where's Julie?" she said in surprise.
"Oh Amanda, I didn't know you were coming home today!" he said. "I thought it was tomorrow!"
"It was supposed to be tomorrow," Amanda said, crossing her arms where she stood on the stairs, "but a seat opened up on an earlier flight, and I wanted to come home and see if Julie was adjusting okay."
Bruce smiled…a bit nervously, Amanda thought. "She's fine, Amanda, don't be such a worrywart. She decided to stay at the labs to do some work."
Amanda looked past him to the clock in the hall. "It's almost four o'clock!" She said. "She shouldn't be tiring herself out like that!" she ran upstairs, grabbed her purse, and rummaged around in it for her keys. "I'm going to go talk her into coming home for the night. I'll be back soon--" and she bumped squarely into Bruce.
"You're not going anywhere, Amanda," he snapped nastily, grabbing her arm.
"Bruce! Let go of me!" she yelled at him, trying to shake off his grip.
He refused to let go, grabbing her arm and practically dragging her back into her room. He shoved her roughly into the room and slammed the door. "You're not going anywhere!"
"Oh yes I am!" Amanda slammed her body against the door he was leaning on, and felt it give a little. She hurled herself at the door again, and this time Bruce lost his balance and fell over. The door opened with a crash. She ran down the hall, then turned as she reached the steps. "Bruce, take this ring and shove it," she snarled at him. "I don't know what I ever saw in you!"
She ran down the stairs, out the door, and was in her car before Bruce could get into his. She roared off down the road, heading for the labs. She was stopped at a red light, in the middle of traffic, when her cellphone rang. She flipped it open. "Hello?"
"Ms. Greene?" came a polite male voice.
"Yes?" she said, tapping her foot impatiently on the brake.
"Where is Garrett Industries' lab building?"
She perked up. "Who is this?"
"A friend. Where is it?"
The traffic light turned green, and she floored the pedal. "1800 Garrett Lane," she said. "You can't miss it, the whole road's named for the Garretts. Who is this?" But the line went dead. She put the cellphone back in her purse, hoping fervently that Dr. McCoy had told the Avengers about her request and they were on the way.
She turned onto Garrett Lane and parked in front of the building. She wasn't planning on being there long; just long enough to get Julie out. She flashed her badge at the old security guard behind the desk, then ran back into the darkened lab space.
The laboratory was only two stories tall, but it covered nearly nine acres of land. The medical labs were toward the rear of the building, and she raced for it with a pounding heart. She swiped her card into the door, waited impatiently for it to open, then stopped short. It was empty.
Where was Julie? Amanda tried to think where she would be. After a moment, she snapped her fingers. The lab animal room! Of course! She headed toward the back of the labs to where the door was, and tried it. It was locked. She rattled the doorknob in frustration.
Behind her, the door opened, and she turned, to see Bruce standing there with three security guards; the one who had been watching the door and two se recognized as being internal security. Not really security; they didn't have weapons permits or anything, they were just there to take care of any problems that might arise with the equipment, the lab subjects, and the occasional protesters that picketed the facility because of their use of mice and rats as subjects. Amanda had never been a fan of using the rodents, but some of the cures and medicines they had developed had worked, so she was willing to concede their uses.
Bruce snapped, "You should have left well enough alone, Amanda. What do you care about one little mutant, anyway? She's nothing to you. You didn't even know she existed two months ago. Think it over. Is all this," his gesture took in the entire facility, "worth the trouble you're going to be in if you're caught stealing lab property? She is property now, you know. My lab property."
Amanda snorted as she looked through her keyring, looking for the key that opened up the animal room. "Come off it, Bruce," she snapped. "Julie is a human being. She's not property. In case you didn't realize it, slavery went out last century. People don't own other people anymore."
"Well, maybe it should be instituted again," and Amanda found her elbows grabbed by the two security guards. "Now what should I do with you," Bruce mused aloud.
The back wall of the lab blew in.
Standing framed in the opening was a group of mutants Amanda recognized from TV as the X-Men. The X-Men? She'd asked Dr. McCoy for the Avengers!
But she wasn't about to complain.
The short, feral, snarling mutant in the yellow suit with black slashes was Wolverine. The tall redhead and the muscled, handsome brown-haired man were Cyclops and Phoenix. She only had a vague idea who the others were, but they were all looking ready to fight.
Wolverine stepped forward. "What ya gonna do with her?" he snapped at Bruce. "How 'bout nothin'?" there was a sharp snikt! And menacing ten-inch long adamantium claws popped out of his knuckles. Amanda stared at them as he advanced on the two security guards holding Amanda's arms. They, having no weapons, turned and ran.
The remaining security guard drew his gun and held it out at arm's length. When Wolverine didn't back down, he fired.
Amanda watched in amazement as the red-haired woman formed some kind of glittering forcefield in front of Wolverine, and the bullets bounced harmlessly off the shield onto the floor. The security guard kept firing, however, until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Wolverine continued to advance, and he suddenly dropped the gun, turned, and fled. Bruce turned to run, too, but was stopped as the glittering forcefield formed around him and lifted him several feet off the floor.
Amanda walked up to him. "Give me the keys to the animal room, Bruce," she snapped. He crossed his arms.
Wolverine poked his claws easily through the force bubble, and slashed the leg of Bruce's pants. "Wanna rethink that, bub?"
Bruce couldn't get the keys out of his pocket fast enough.
* * *
Logan almost sighed, disappointed. He needed to work out some anger, and he'd been hoping this mission would provide the distraction he desperately needed from the empty room. When Chuck had mentioned security guards, he'd been hoping for a fight. Looked like he wasn't going to get that here.
The brown-haired woman he recognized from Hank's description as Amanda Greene, the one who had tipped off Hank to the fact that Bruce Garrett had found a mutant to experiment on, like he'd threatened Jubilee a while back. She seemed to be having trouble with the door. He stepped forward and drove his claws through the doorknob, breaking the locks, and she stepped into the darkened room. Storm followed as he felt for a light switch.
The smell of animals hit him almost as soon as the door opened, and for a moment it overwhelmed the other scent in the room. Logan sniffed, and his eyes widened. It couldn't be! She was dead! Maybe it was just his senses tricking him…He stepped into the room.
In the far corner of the room Amanda Greene was fiddling with the lock on the door of a metal cage, in which a woman slept with her back to the door. Logan gave a cry as he saw the dark hair and thin figure, and smelled that scent. There was only one person it could be.
"JUBILEE…!" he cried out, running past Amanda Greene and slashing apart the cage to reach the woman inside. He took her in his arms, cradling her as he whispered her name, over and over, his breath coming in ragged sobs from somewhere deep in his chest. It was too much. To hold her, alive and breathing, in his arms when for the last few months he had thought her dead…relief and joy overwhelmed him, and he buried his face in her hair and cried, and he didn't care who saw him cry. "Jubilee, Jubilee, darlin', yer alive, I thought you were dead…darlin', fergive me…" he whispered into her hair over and over.
Amanda stared, perplexed, as she watched this man, who a few minutes ago had been ready to tear something apart, fall to his knees with her friend in his arms and begin to cry. She turned to the regal silver-haired woman, trying to ask a question, but she was staring at the black-haired girl in Wolverine's arms with tears running down her face, and then she whispered, "…alive…she's alive…Jean! Scott! Jubilee's alive!"
Logan picked his head out of Jubilee's hair, touching her face gently, seeing the hollows in her cheeks brought on by pain and hunger, fever and tension, and tears stung his eyes again. She was alive! He struggled to his feet, holding her, and carried her out the door to face the other X-Men, tears on his face, and choked out, "She's alive!"
Then his eyes focused on bruce, really focused on him, and a feral light filled them. "Here, Gumbo, hold her," he said, handing the fragile form to the auburn haired man wearing a long brown duster, and advanced on Bruce as Phoenix lowered him to the floor.
"Ya stinkin', filthy piece o' crap," he snarled. "Ya knew who she was all along. Ya asked her ta work with ya all that time ago. Hurt yer pride when she refused, didn't it? So when she unexpectedly turned up on yer doorstep, ya didn't even think 'bout tellin' her who she was, didja? Ya jus' figured ya could keep her in the dark, and use her fer yer own purposes. Yer gonna pay fer this, bub!"
He lifted those sharp, menacing, deadly claws, and Amanda cried out "No!" Despite what he'd put her through, she didn't think he deserved to die. "Don't kill him," she said weakly as he turned those eyes toward her. They were bottomless pools of hatred so deep she flinched from them.
He turned back to Bruce, and snarled as he brought his fist around. Bruce screamed in pain as Blood spurted, and Amanda screamed, covering her eyes involuntarily. When she finally dared to uncover them, she saw Bruce, standing there, freed from the force bubble. Across the bicep of his arm were three deep, bleeding gashes…but no more. He hadn't killed Bruce. Amanda sighed almost audibly in relief, and Phoenix looked at her. "He wouldn't have killed him," she said. "I'm a telepath. I know."
The tall, silver-haired woman turned to Amanda. "I am Storm. You are the one who told Dr McCoy that she was here, aren't you?" she said.
"Yes," Amanda said.
"Thank you," she said. "We have missed her very much. Please accept our thanks. Is there anything we can do for you?"
Amanda looked at the girl she had called Julie, felt her eyes sting with tears as she saw how carefully Wolverine cradled her in his arms. "Is that…Logan?" she asked. Storm nodded. "Then she's in the best hands," Amanda said. "I'd just like to know when she's okay."
"We will call you," Storm said. Amanda followed them outside, watching as they boarded a sleek, black jet and lifted off. Then she got into her car, feeling a great sense of satisfaction.