In a Heartbeat

They were all scattered through the five stories above ground and another five stories underground of MX's new private clinic, registered under their public persona, Axis Research and Development. All of them had their eyes opened, looking for anything that might seem out of normal. At the same time, they all admired the slick lines and practical design of the hospital's many wards, offices and infirmaries. On the first floor, directly through the front door, were the reception and patient admittance desks, the ER facilities, connected to the ambulance entrance was on the back. On the second floor, operating rooms, semi-intensive, post-surgery care units and the fully operational ICU capable of holding twenty Intensive Care patients. The third floor held the maternity ward, nursery, neo-natal ICU, delivery rooms and private regular and special rooms for mutant mothers with special needs. On the fourth floor, there were regular and special needs rooms for admitted patients, and on the fifth floor, doctors offices and administration. The hospital was even larger underground, the five stories sprawling under the whole range of the parking lots. The real mutant-oriented clinic and hospital facilities were underground, besides the Pathology, Pharmacology, Serology and Hematology laboratories and blood bank. There were state-of-the-art computer and laser diagnostic, genetic manipulation, therapy and research units only found before in Sanctuary, as well as the special units for podding and restraint of mutants deemed capable of harm to themselves of others. It was a hospital planned and designed for the special needs of the mutant population MX had sworn to protect.

"I must admit, Kane, I'm impressed," praised Zack Coniglario, flicking his forked tongue and looking around the genetic therapy laboratory. "We don't have anything like it back home, do we, honey?"

Dr. Makenna Coniglario was also highly impressed. This was a golden opportunity to establish a joint-venture for research on mutant-oriented treatments and therapies, and maybe, in the future, build a simmilar facility in the Ring's West Coast base. With a sigh, she sent a little prayer to her friends back home. Lux's vision were always accurate and the attempt on the orphanage was too close for comfort. The children were evacuated from the building and the bomb squad was still working. First St. Mike's, now the orphanage... The New Order was more than a nuisance, it was an outright disaster!

Discreetly but thoroughly, MacGyver, expert on explosives, was combing the building with Jim Ellison, Jax MacManus, Brennan Mulwray, Jesse Kilmartin, Cory Buchanan and Sam Malloy. They had spread through the building with the classic question on their heads, "If I were a bomb, where would I be hidden?"

On his way to the lower underground level, Jim Ellison stepped into the Genetics Lab, while MacGyver, Buchanan and Sam were already down another level, giving Pathology and Hematology the once over. He greeted Adam, Makenna and Zack and started his search, reaching out with his heightened sentinel senses.

Emma DeLauro, Shalimar and Cat were examining the fourth and third floors while Riley Jackson and Lux Windsor were on the fifth floor, in the director's office, glued to the computer system, following the work of the bomb squad disarming the charges rigged in the Ring's orphanage in Southern California. So far, three C-4 charges had been deactivated, two orders remained hot, waiting for the experts to get to them.

Angela Fontenelle, Donna Gryphon and Blair Sandburg were on another terminal, in contact with Cascade PD's captain Simon Banks. With the frustrated bombing of the Ring's orphanage, Cascade's safehouse was a potential target. Joel Taggart was on his way to check on the premises. As Donna typed the address on the Instant Messenger window, a strange hand seemed to grip her heart and squeezed it hard. She pushed the chair away from the desk and the keyboard, gripped her chest with her right hand and turned to Blair, her face drained of color. Icy cold sweat trickled down her back, between her breasts, drenching her clothes. The pain in her left arm and side was unbearable as her heart skipped beat after beat and her blood pressure plunged. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she slipped to the floor.

Angela wasted no time, helping Donna lay down on the carpeted floor. Her taloned fingers ripped the front of Donna's T-shirt and pulled off her bra, while she flicked her comring. "Adam, quick! Donna's got a hit and it's giving her a coronary! She's going into cardiac arrest! I need epinephrine here and a defib! Hurry!" And she started CPR, hoping against hope they'd get there fast enough.

"Lux, help her!" yelled Revolution.

"I don't dare! It's her precog power that's making her arrest!" answered a frantic Lux Windsor. "My own precog power would only make her condition worse."

"She's not responding! Adam, where are you?" Angela was desperate, helpless. Her dearest friend, sister in fire, to whom she owed her sanity and her very life was dying beneath her hands. They were in a fully functional hospital, only still non-staffed and on the fifth floor, in a regular office. There would be no time to get her down to Cardiology. And where was that defib!

"What's going on here?"

"Jesse! Thank God! Help me here!" the bird feral yelled.

The molecular ran to her side and knelt down. "What can I do? I'm not Brennan to restart her heart!"

"You can be just as effective!" answered Angela. "Hold my wrist and phase my hand."

Jesse did as he was told, phasing the gnarled, ugly hand of the bird woman. Angela inserted her intangible hand just beneath Donna's left breast, under the diaphragm muscle. Angela would have given her life for five minutes with X-Ray vision. "Now," she instructed very softly, "start massing it up little by little until I can feel her heart in my hand. Yes... A little more... Enough, I have it..." And she started rhythmically to open and close her hand, delicately massaging Donna Gryphon's heart until the psionic head jerked back and a strangled gasp escaped from her mouth. "Phase it again so I can pull it out, Jesse." She pulled her hand out of Donna's chest and Jesse stood up, his breath caught in his chest. He had never tried anything like that! Turning around, he fell back on his knees, covering his face with his hands as Riley pulled him to her chest and held him tight.

Framed by the office's door, Makenna Coniglario saw it all and jumped into action. She bolted to Donna's side, pushing Blair out of the way. An already prepared long needled epinephrine syringe was inserted directly into the psionic's heart, while Angela checked her heartbeat and blood pressure, slowly returning to normal levels.

"Where the hell's Adam, anyway?" asked the bird feral.

"In the genetics lab with that tall guy in a crew cut," answered the human doctor. "The man seems to have slipped into a trance."

Waking up from a panic stupor, Blair Sandburg shoot up from his kneeling position by the side of the woman he loved and screamed, "Jim!" He hit the hallway running to help his sentinel.

&&&

The smell was very faint, wafting its way through his nose to his brain, acrid, acidic, running below the usual hospital smells of alcohol and disinfectant... It was an alien smell, almost intangible, but present in the air. Where was it coming from? Everything else was grey and fuzzy, no color, no taste... The world was echoing far and no touch could reach his mind, submerged in a sea of smells and sensations. Where was it coming from?

Softly, gently, a voice lightly touched his brain with silk tones, reassuring, coaxing, calling from another dimension, another time, another space. He had to come back, return to reality. Come back, Jim... Don't lose yourself in one sense... Don't drown in one sensation only... Come back... Come back...

The hand on his arm was solid enough, the grip on his shoulder, firm and friendly. Little by little, Jim Ellison's ears registered the voice calling him back to the world of five senses, pulling the threads of his mind and tying them back to solid reality. He knew the voice, only not as a guide's voice. But a guide it was, not his, not Cory's, not Mac... "Dr. Kane?!"

"You zoned out," the scientist answered. "I brought you back to reality the way I read described on Blair's paper."

Jim Ellison's eyes were bulging. Then... this mans was... yes, it made sense... Someone who dedicated his life to helping, instructing and protecting others might just be... No time for that! "Out!" he yelled. "Everybody out! There's C-4 in the building and I think I know where it is!"

Bad Company

They poured out of the building, exiting through the main door, the ferals jumping from second and third floor windows. Angela, with Donna Gryphon craddled in her arms, and Revolution, the flyers, left through the skylights and flew to the other side of the parking lot, alighting on top of a tall building. Angela's eagle eyes swept through the neighborhood, searching for any sign of strangers. On her lap, Donna was slowly returning to normal. "What happened?" she asked.

"Your last hit gave you a heart attack, dear," answered the bird feral. "And Jim found explosives in the building."

"Where?"

"Everywhere. They're hidden in the security cameras all over the place, in key positions. If they go off, the building will collapse," answered the feral.

"And where's everybody?" asked Donna.

"Out on the parking lot," answered Revolution. "Mac, Adam, Brennan, Jesse, Jim, Cory and Jax are still inside."

&&&

"Very clever," mused MacGyver, as he carefully unscrewed and lifted the side of the third security camera. "They're all rigged together. One goes off, all go off."

"Who could have replaced the real cameras?" asked Adam, unscrewing the fourth camera attached to a pillar. He could see all cameras were placed on pillars. "This place was heavily guarded by ferals we trust. Nobody stayed in the building long enough to do that!"

"According to the security log, Dr. Kane, it was you," Cory piped from the nearest computer terminal. "You were here last night and stayed in the building for four hours."

"I was here? You know I never..." Adam started.

"#%$ Aidaan Malone," growled Jax, as her eyes glowed bright yellow. "It was that son of a bitch, the pox on him!"

MacGyver was studying the rigging device attached to the camera. It was no good. Even if he disabled one of them, there was another dozen cameras scattered through the building. And if even one of them blew up, the others would follow suit. He had to find the central trigger. "Adam, there are three central columns on your building's design. The other pillars assist them, but the main weight is supported by the three main structure columns. The trigger must be on one of them, with the bulk of the explosives."

"The basement, where we store oxigen and nitrogen tanks," offered Adam. "If a bomb goes off down there, this place will turn into a bonfire."

"I'm going down there now," and Mac turned to leave.

"I'm with you," added Adam.

"No! I'm going alone. You're out of here." A little before departing to Viet Nam, MacGyver had met the then impossibly young overachiever while on a special chemistry course at Stanford. Mac was twenty years old, Adam was fifteen, they pulled prank after prank on one another, and became friends for life.

"This is my hospital, Mac. I have a responsibility."

"And I am the bomb expert. Out! All of you!" As Mac looked at Brennan Mulwray, the young elemental grabbed his mentor by the arm and started pulling him out of the building. If necessary, he'd zap him unconscious and carry him out.

"Jesse!" called Adam. "Stay with Mac! Don't let anything happen to him!"

&&&

As Adam, Brennan, Cory, Jim and Jax exited the building, Angela's eagle eyes continued to watch the surroundings. And she saw as four cars approached the clinic from the four corners of the block. She flicked her comring, "We have company."

The cars stopped, blocking the four corners.

The Alliance naturally split in four groups, with all mutants surrounding their leaders, Adam and Lux. Angela, sitting the now almost fully recovered Donna behind the railing, pointed the building on the other side to Revolution, so they could have one flyer on either side of the parking lot. She watched the young telekinetic silently float to her aloted station. Signaling that her friend should stay put, Angela quickly flew to the third building, the one facing the clinic. The three flyers were stationed in a triangle overlooking the parking lot, ready to react.

From the corner guarded by the Cascade Group, came a tall and wiry black man with long dreadlocks and a slender Oriental woman, graceful as a fully trained kung fu fighter, followed by two other man, eyes glinting feral as they looked at the surrounded defenders.

From the corner facing Jax, Emma, Jack and Makenna, came two men, one blonde with spiky hair and a dark one, with long curly locks gathered in a ponytail. They were also followed by two feral, women this time.

From the corner facing Brennan, Shalimar and Cat, came a strange man, with large shoulders and narrow hips, long armas and big hands, and a tall, thin girl with long straight blond hair and big blue eyes, walking as if on top of a surfboard. The eyes of the two ferals following the couple glowed green in the fashion of reptilians.

From the corner facing Adam and Lux, the tall figure of Nickolas Lareou appeared, followed by a small man dressed in white and turban and the now well known cruel features of Alex Tremayne.

The New Order was paying a visit.