Jean was pacing nervously back and forth up and down the sparkling hall when she was accosted by a little boy in a blue sweater. It was Jamie Madrox, and in the chaos that had erupted in the last several hours, she and Ororo had taken to using the boy's copies as messengers. See, Jamie's power was that he could latterly duplicate himself through the energy provided by physical contact. So right now about a dozen identical little boys were running about the mansion, handling various tasks. Apparently this one was intended for her.

"Dr. Grey?" he asked softly, approaching slowly. She paused mid-pace and put on her best encouraging smile.

"What is it Jamie?" The boy's eyes lost focus for a moment as he tried to remember what he was sent to say.

"Uh…" he muttered, then, "Oh! I'm supposed to tell you that Piotr said Scott's heart rate climbed slightly about five minutes ago, but that…uh, there was no other change and it's settled back into normal…rhythm, no…ryth-something patterns or waves or something like that." He shrugged and smiled tentatively. "Okay?" Jean sighed and fought down the urge to go sit in the corner and cry. Instead she plastered on another hollow and falsely confident smile.

"Thanks honey," she told the boy in an even voice. "Why don't you go back and keep Piotr company for a while longer. Tell him I want to know the minute anything else changes." The little clone took off with another winning grin as he trotted away down the hall.

When the main med-bay doors closed behind him with a soft 'Whoosh' Jean slid down the wall, weakly, and slumped down on the floor, her legs pulled up tightly against her chest. She couldn't do this now! She shouldn't…she couldn't. She had to be strong…in control. For the kids, for Scott and the Professor and Storm…but oh, God it was so hard. How…how could be strong when she had failed everyone that had depended on her. If only she'd put thing together faster, then Xavier and Scott wouldn't by lying in hospital beds. If she'd just gotten there a little faster, than Rogue might be sitting with the other kids upstairs right now. If only, if only if ONLY! She banged her fists down hard against the floor beneath her, furious at the tears that leaked out from her eyes.

"Jean?" someone asked, surprising Jean out of her stupor. "Are you okay?" The doctor dug the heels of her hands into the corners of her eyes as she shot up from the floor. "Hey, it's alright." She felt herself being embraced strongly and pulled her hands away only to find her face buried in a shock of white hair.

"'Ro, I'm fine," she said weakly. "Leggo." But Ororo wasn't buying any of it. She gave her best friend another tight squeeze before holding her out at arms length to get a good look at her.

"Look Jeanie," she said, sounding a lot like a mother. "Everyone understands that this is hard for you. No one expects you to be superwoman." Jean squirmed out of her friend's grasp and fluffed her hair, trying to relieve how awkward she was feeling. She was a teacher, used to dealing with the out of control emotions of the teenagers around her, but when it came to her own feelings that was a whole different ballgame. She didn't like feeling vulnerable, exposed. So she did the only thing she could think of: she changed the subject.

"So, uh…where's Logan?" 'Ro sighed and slumped back against the wall. There were dark circles under her eyes, and the energy that she usually projected seemed gone, drained away by the events of the past several days.

"Upstairs, brooding," she shrugged. "I left him in charge of the rest of the kids. I think all he's managed to do is scare the shit out of the girl's through." Jean groaned.

"At least he's not breaking things anymore," she muttered, trying to find a silver lining in all this mess. That was getting tougher and tougher to do though as their lives started to spiral out of control faster than the X-Men could learn to cope.

"How about our other little patient?" Ororo asked, a hint of her old humor present in her voice. "Did you find him?"

"Yeah," Jean said. "Kid got himself stuck in the danger room in security lockdown." Storm winced.

"He's okay, though?"

"Yeah…left us quite a mess to clean up. Even injured, the kid has some skills. Some kind of projectile energy power, it looked like. I still can't figure out what he was doing with Rogue." She shrugged.

"He didn't say?" 'Ro asked. Jean shook her head. "And you didn't…you know," Ororo shrugged, "peek?" Jean let a soft sigh slip from between her lips. It was just part of the plight of being a telepath, she figured. Privacy was always her foremost prerogative when it came to using her power, but in cases such as this, when lives could be at stake, she tended to bend that rule a little. Fact of the matter was that Jean had tried looking into the young man's mind as she doctored up the neck wound he'd reopened during his fight, but she'd been unable to. Mutant or not, some folks just happened to have a natural mental shield, and this kid was one of them.

"Tried to, but I couldn't get in," Jean admitted. "Did Logan say anything more about him?" Ororo smiled slightly.

"A few things that I won't repeat, that the kid's name is Remy…I think," she shrugged, "and that he doesn't like him. What did you do with him, as he obviously wasn't too happy to be here in the first place."

"I gave him a sedative," Jean explained, wringing her hands together. "A strong sedative. Hopefully it'll deter him from attempting another escape until we're equipped to handle it." She glanced nervously back towards the med lab behind her as she finished speaking. Ororo noticed.

"Have you…" the weather goddess started to ask. "You know…yet?" Jean shook her head and wrapped her arms tightly around herself.

"No, but I was just about to," the red head muttered softly. 'Ro regarded her friend with the utmost sympathy.

"You don't have to, you know," she said in a quiet voice, but Jean shook her head emphatically.

"No, I do. And I'm going to," she said with more determination than she felt. She turned on heel and walked back towards the med lab with resolution.

"Well good luck," 'Ro called after her. "I'm going to go see what Kitty's up to, but come get me if you need anything." Jean nodded once before the doors slid shut behind her.

She'd postponed the inevitable long enough. Jean walked through the med lab, past where Scott and the Professor were lying still in their beds, passed the little room where she'd stashed Remy after his last escape attempt, across the room to the far wall. There was a single door there that led to a small, private medical room. It was where she'd placed the strangest piece in this puzzle: the ill Senator Kelly. She nodded at Piotr, where he sat, telling a story to Jamie and two of his clones, one eye constantly on the monitors of his teachers.

"Why don't you guys go take a break. I'll be nearby if anything happens." With a nod Piotr grabbed Jamie around the wrist and hauled the rather reluctant boy out of the room.

Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer in her chest as Jean opened the door and crossed the floor of the small room, the 'click, click' of her heels against the floor pounding loudly in her ears. There was a mass of wires and monitors obscuring the frail man beneath them, making him look on the outside like the monster Jean believed him to be inside. Her pace steady, Jean walked to the head of the bed. With his eyes closed, and a shock of white hair covering his head the man could have almost passed for someone's kind grandfather. But Jean had learned first hand just how little looks meant in the world today. This man was a monster….a monster and he always would be.

Piotr and Jubilee had said that, beyond asking for her, the Senator had been almost delirious when he arrived, babbling on about men who controlled metal and blue reptile women. The younger students found this almost comical as Piotr and Jubes had hauled the man to the med lab. But those two, the older students, had truly understood the deeper meaning behind those words, and the dire message it could bear for all of them.

Gently, as she regarded him lying there, Jean touched the prone man's temple. Even the feeling of his skin beneath her fingers made her squirm. Silently, she wished once more that the Professor was awake and ready to do this. He should be the one to do this. In all honesty, the thought of what she might find in that twisted mind terrified Jean. But she had to do it. Rogue's, and all of their futures, might depend on what that man knew.

Taking a deep breath to settle her shaky nerves, Jean place first one hand, then the other, beside the man's temples. She closed her own eyes and focused, imagining her mind as a drill, boring into the very being of the man before her. There was a period of darkness, of blackness so deep it seemed to go on forever, then…

….there was an explosion of sound, of color, of touch and sensations that were foreign to her. It was madness, a chaotic vortex and Jean was caught in the middle of it. 'No,' she ordered herself. 'Focus. What happened to Kelly? What happened to Kelly?' And then she saw, felt, knew. There was pain, blinding pain, screaming. She/he was tied to a chair. Magnus was there. The Jean/Kelly merge was frightened of him. Then he was above them, in a metal ring. And then the pain was there again, sinking all the way down to his/her bones. Magnus was there again, but this time the Jean/Kelly merge wasn't frightened. Submerged, he/she was plummeting out of the sky, completely surrounded by water until…

…there was nothing left. Jean was panting but still she couldn't draw enough air to fill her lungs. Her head was pounding, her forehead thick with sweat. But she had done it, she had ventured in and returned unscathed. Reaching out with a shaking hand, Jean placed it against the wall and steadied herself as she backed away from the bed. She had seen so much…how was she supposed to make sense of it all? She closed her eyes and tried to sift through each image bit by bit.

Kelly wasn't human anymore, this she knew. In the water, he had been able to breathe. His genes had been tampered with by Magneto.

"But how?" she asked herself aloud. She went through the series of pictures again. "The machine," she answered herself. The whirling metal ring that had produced the bright light. Kelly had had no idea what it was, but Jean was a scientist by nature. Her money was on some kind of radiation, randomly altering the genes. "So then why's he standing in the middle?" She focused, remembering what she had seen. Magneto had stood inside the swinging ring, his hands gripping some kind of sensors. "Of course, because he power's the machine."

Jean leaned back against the doorframe, her legs as weak and shaky as if she'd just run a marathon. "Great, so then why take Rogue?" That question was the real kicker. "Why track her halfway across the country?" She didn't fit into the puzzle at all. What could she possibly do? What did Rogue do?

"She drains the life force and powers of those she touches," Jean answered herself. "So what?" And then it hit her! Kelly hadn't been afraid of Magneto after he used the machine because Magneto had been weak, near death, barely able to stand. So he was going to let Rogue steal his powers, and kill her instead of himself. "Crap! What's he going to use the machine for anyways?" But Jean was out of answers, and she was starting to feel like the room was closing in on her. She reached behind her and turned the doorknob. Looking back over her shoulder at the figure in bed, illuminated softly by the light of the monitors overhead, she felt no sympathy. He'd served his purposed, and Jean could honestly admit that she no longer cared whether the man lived or died. But that was a feeling she'd take to the grave.