Chapter 8: The Kidnapping
Amanda stared at the whole, unblemished skin under the bandages on her arms as Hank began to cut away the cast on her leg. "I wouldn't have believed it if I weren't seeing it with my own eyes," she said in wonderment. "A week, and it's all healed!"
"Well, not quite," Xavier said. "The bones may not be completely knitted together yet, so you will need to be careful not to re-break anything over the next couple of weeks." He leaned forward as Amanda watched Hank unwrap the bandage around her ribs. "Amanda, you must promise not to tell anyone what you've seen here. There are many people who would literally kill for the technology in this mansion."
"I don't wonder," Amanda said, looking around at the now-familiar instruments in the medlab. After a week of living down here, and having Hank explain all their functions more than a few times, she was fairly sure that a lot of it was technology that a lot of people would cheerfully give various body parts for. Though she still believed that the technology should be shared, Xavier's revelation about the source of the technology had shocked her, and she understood why he wanted to keep the knowledge private.
She still couldn't believe that there was a whole universe full of aliens out there…and that one of them, she was reasonably certain, was Xavier's lover. She'd seen the expression on his face whenever he spoke of the 'Shi'ar Empress Lilandra', and she recognized it as one she'd seen on her own face many times in the last week or so. Love.
"Of course I'll keep it a secret," Amanda said.
Xavier smiled. "That being said, Amanda, I have been considering it, and I believe your research is too important to be allowed to lapse for lack of proper facilities in which to conduct it. I spoke to Hank, and he says he has no objection to sharing his laboratory with you. So if you would like, feel free to bring your research and notes here and leave them in the lab. Don't hesitate to come here anytime you want to do some work. I'm sure that Hank would be willing to assist you should your teaching duties require you to be elsewhere during a critical stage in your experiments."
"Really?" Oh, to be able to work in that lab, to have access to all that equipment…the equipment would allow her to be able to keep track of results she normally wouldn't be able to. This beat Bruce's lab all hollow. "I'd love that. Thank you so much!"
The cast came off her leg, and Hank took her am. "Now try to stand," he said. Amanda slid her feet off the edge of the bed and stood, albeit a bit shakily. Hank brought forward a contraption of aluminum rods and Velcro straps, and Amanda hung onto the bed as he strapped the brace onto her leg around her ankle, knee, and hip. He finally stood back, handed her a pair of crutches, and watched as she took a step.
She got out into the hallway, then headed for the stairs that would take her up to the kitchen. "You can take the lift," Hank said, gesturing at the elevator at the other end of the hall, but Amanda shook her head. "I have to figure out how to do steps," she said. "My apartment building doesn't have elevators. All the handicapped people have first floor apartments. It's a pain in the neck for the elderly woman upstairs, but even though we've complained to the building's owner, he hasn't done anything about it."
She balanced gingerly on her two feet and braced her crutches on the bottom step, then with a grunt of effort, she lifted herself up onto the step. She stopped, sighed, and then took the next step, grimly determined to make it.
Xavier watched Amanda struggle up the steps. He would have to find out who owned Amanda's apartment building. Not having handicapped-accessible apartments and facilities was against building codes. The tenants might not have gotten results, but he was fairly certain if he wrote a letter to the owner and then to the building inspectors, improvements…like elevators and handicapped ramps…would be installed around the apartments quite soon.
He winced as the end of one crutch slipped on the step and she fell back a step, only saved from tumbling back down the four steps she'd already taken by grabbing the banisters. The crutches fell to the step she stood on, and she sucked in a breath and bit her lip as muscles in her barely functioning arm protested. Even shielded Xavier could feel the spike of pain running up her arm, and a tear started involuntarily to her eye. Nevertheless, she braced herself on the banister and bent to pick up the crutches to try again.
Hank rushed forward to get her crutches for her, but she held up a hand to stop him and tried to pick them up herself. "Hank, I have to do this myself," she said gently. "You might be able to help me up the stairs a few times, but you can't be there all the time. You can't be there when I'm coming in from the night classes at the college. I have to do this myself." She started up another step.
Xavier winced at the pain she was feeling and not telling Hank about. He was also worried. She couldn't keep pushing herself like this with re-injuring something, and hurting herself again. "Amanda," he said. "How many steps are there up to your apartment?"
"Two sets of twelve," she said grimly, leaning on a crutch and resting for a moment. Xavier looked at the six steps she'd already climbed, and realized that no matter how hard she tried, there was no way she was going to be able to make her way up twenty-four steps without assistance.
Betsy chose that moment to come down the stairs, and Amanda fumbled with her crutches for a moment to try to move aside. She didn't make it. Her crutches tumbled out of her grasp, and she was just saved from falling all the way down by Betsy's quick grab for her upper arm. Amanda nearly cried out in pain at the sudden grip. Xavier saw the look of anguish on her face, and winced.
Betsy spoke to him telepathically, on a tight thread so that Hank and Amanda couldn't hear her as she descended the last few steps and allowed Hank to ascend them with Amanda's crutches. Charles, why is she trying to take the stairs? She's not going to make it. Her arms can barely grip the crutches.
Because she has to go home, and the only way up to her apartment is stairs, he told her.
Isn't that against building codes? Don't the regulations say there has to be handicapped access to the apartments?
Yes, well, apparently the owners of her apartment building have not been too concerned with ensuring that everyone can get to where they need to go.
That's awful. Betsy was silent for a moment. She's going to reinjure something. Her arm's killing her right now. I didn't realize I grabbed so hard. Charles, why can't she live here until she's completely healed?
Xavier was silent. Betsy looked at him sharply. Is this about this attraction between Amanda and Warren?
Xavier stared at her. How did you know?
Betsy smiled. I was sitting beside Warren at the table, she said. I saw the way she looked at him. If that's the only reason, Charles, you really don't need to worry.
Really? He must have sounded skeptical, because Betsy rested a hand on his shoulder.
Really, she assured him. I took Amanda up to my room later to find her some clothes to wear so she could go out and get some air. She reacted that way simply because Warren looks like her ex-fiancé. There's no serious attraction there, Charles. Amanda's got eyes only for Hank.
Hmm. Xavier was silent for a moment, then said aloud, "Amanda?"
She paused on the tenth step, looking back down at him, and he dropped his shields long enough to feel the pain coming from the overworked, still-healing muscles in her arms and legs. There was no way she was going to make it up to her apartment. "If you continue to have this much trouble you'll never make it up to your apartment. Why don't you stay here until you can get about on your own?"
Amanda shook her head. "No, I couldn't impose on you like that," she said. "I can make it, I just need to take my time getting up the stairs." She gritted her teeth, set her crutches on the top step, and tried to pull herself up the last one to the kitchen.
The rug at the top of the step slipped out from under the foot of one crutch, and it flew out of her weak arm. Unable to keep her balance, she reeled wildly, then with a cry she fell backward, down the steps she'd just laboriously climbed up, and landed in a heap.
"Amanda!" Hank was beside her instantly, lifting her from where she lay crumpled at the foot of the stairs. As her tangled hair fell away from her face, Xavier saw the expression of pain as she cradled her left arm. Betsy disappeared, and came back holding Hank's scanner. He ran it up her upper arm. "It's fractured again," he said grimly. "Come on, let me get you back to the lab. Amanda, you're staying here. Don't argue with me." He led her off toward the medlabs, followed by Betsy.
Amanda bit back her sob of pain as Hank ran the bone-knitter up her arm again. The fracture on the screen of the scanner pulled together, but the bone knitter wasn't designed for use on a human. All the equipment Lilandra had given them was designed for use on mutant physiology, and it wasn't going to heal Amanda as fast as it would the X-Men. Hank grimly splinted and re-bandaged her left upper arm bone, and then gave Amanda an injection of painkiller to relieve the pain. "You're going to stay here," he said.
"No," Amanda said weakly, but it wasn't as vehement as it had been a few minutes earlier.
"Why?" Hank asked.
She sighed. "I'm tired of being down here," she said quietly. "I want my own bed and my own clothes. These biobeds aren't exactly the most comfortable. And I can't keep borrowing clothes. I just…I really want to go home."
"You don't have to stay down here," Xavier said. "You could move upstairs into one of the spare bedrooms. The lift extends up to the second floor; you could use that until Hank says you're well enough to take the steps. And I don't see why you and Hank couldn't take a trip out to your apartment and pick up your clothes. And your research notes and samples."
Amanda looked at him wryly. "You just want to see the research," she said, but there was no accusation in her voice. "But all right. I'll stay here." She held up a warning finger. "Only until I'm healed, mind you," she said to Hank, but her smile belied the firm words.
* * *
So it was that a few hours later Hank was driving Amanda downtown to her apartments. On the way, he began asking her questions. Amanda answered them as best she could, patiently explaining all the aspects of her research, until they pulled up outside her apartment building. Amanda was about to get out her crutches when Hank swept her up in his arms and began to carry her up the stairs, still talking.
"The initial tests indicated the presence of a hexagonal ambyloid reovirus protein, which is what a virus needs to meld with the coat of a living cell. The reovirus we're talking about attaches itself to a cell, the releases an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to 'eat' through a cell's wall and inject its contents into a cell. The proteins inside the reovirus take the mutant X-factor in the carrier cell and dissolve the rest of the normal proteins inside the cell, until all that's left is mutated DNA inside the cell. Then the cell (no longer a carrier cell, but a fully mutated one) splits in the process called mitosis, and begins to multiply. It produces more mutated cells, crowding out the normal cells."
"So what happens when the reovirus comes in contact with a normal cell?"
"It 'searches' for the X-factor, and if it doesn't find it in the cell, it dies, and takes the cell with it. The dead cell dissolves and then the material is absorbed into the rapidly multiplying mutant cells. The mutated cells multiply until they're all that's left. The individual is no longer human, or a carrier. It's a mutant." Hank put her down on the landing outside her apartment, and she opened the door.
The inside of the apartment was clean; a few days after Amanda had arrived at the mansion, Jean, Betsy, Rogue, Ororo, and Jubilee had come in and cleaned up, taking the pieces of the bed frame out to the dumpster. They had also paid Amanda's rent for another month, under Xavier's orders, so that she wouldn't be evicted. Hank had told her all this when she awoke, so she was spared the sight of her blood all over the floor.
She pulled her suitcase out from under her bed and started to pack it as Hank opened her closet door and took out the box of notes and research materials. "I'll take this out to the van," he told her. "Please go on packing."
He disappeared, and Amanda went on packing. It was only a few minutes until she heard her front door open. "Hank?" she said. He couldn't have gotten all the way out to the van yet. "Hank?"
She stared in surprise as her next-door neighbor, the man living in the apartment next to her, came in. "Excuse me, you're not supposed to be in here," she said. "Please leave."
The man crossed the room to where she was standing by her bed, and Amanda stiffened as he placed the edge of a very sharp knife against her throat "Not a word," he hissed into Amanda's ear. "Scream and I cut your throat. We don't need you whole."
Amanda drew a sharp breath and held very still as the man pressed against her back. "'We' who?" she whispered.
"I'm a member of a group called the Acolytes," the man said. "I heard you talking in the hall about finding a virus that can trigger mutations in normal humans?"
Amanda was silent. The man exerted a slight pressure against the knife at her throat, and Amanda felt the small prick of pain as it punctured the skin of her throat. "Yes," she said tensely.
"Then that is something that interests us greatly," the man said. "And as luck would have it, we can also capture the X-Men's Beast, too. How very fortuitous."
Amanda heard Hank's footsteps coming up to her apartment door, but before she could scream at him to run, the knife pricked her throat again. She was in no condition to fight the man.
Hank walked into the bedroom and froze. "Neophyte," he breathed in sharply as he saw the face of the man holding Amanda. His eyes widened as he saw the thin trickle of blood running down her throat. "Let her go."
"Oh, no," Neophyte purred. "I think Magneto will want her, you, and the research. You see, Beast, Lord Magneto has been searching for a way to banish the line between 'us' and 'them', between humans and mutants, and this virus is exactly the thing we need to do it. After we infect the normal humans with her," and he tightened his grip on Amanda's arm, "virus, there will be no more 'us', no more 'them'. We will all be mutants, and they will have to deal with that." He nodded toward the closet. "Grab that last box in there, Beast, and we will go." Neophyte began to nudge Amanda toward the door. Hank followed, carrying the last box of notes. They were outside when Hank said, "The virus samples are in Amanda's refrigerator."
Neophyte was already badly encumbered by Amanda's brace and crutches, and not inclined to walk back into the apartment. "Go get them," he snapped, jerking his head back at the apartment door. "I know there's no other way out, so go get them. But Beast, if you're not back in a few minutes, I'll cut her throat."
Hank nodded, set the box of papers down, and went back in. As soon as he got inside the kitchen, he grabbed for the pen sitting atop the answering machine, and for the pad of paper. He scribbled one word on it, then rushed to the freezer. The plastic bags with the words 'virus samples' written on them were in her icebox. He grabbed the packets and closed the door as he heard Neophyte call, "Get out here now, or she dies!"
Wordlessly he joined them out on the landing. Neophyte didn't bother trying to hide what he was doing, and kept the knife out. There was little chance that anyone would see them anyway, it being almost ten o'clock.
"You drive," he snapped to Hank as he climbed into the back of the van and forcibly wrestled Amanda into the backseat. "Do what I tell you, or I'll kill her." To emphasize his point, he jabbed Amanda in the neck again. Another trickle of blood joined the drying one already on her neck.
Hank turned his attention to the road.