Chapter 4: Fair Warning

Scott and Bobby were driving on the highway. They had been riding in silence. Bobby felt very alone and lost even though Scott was sitting right next to him. Bobby suddenly felt panicked, something was wrong. Something was wrong with the darkness.
"Look out!" Bobby yelled and Scott steered hard off of the road. For one instance as the high beams slashed across the roadway, Bobby swore he saw a pale girl with long black hair and wearing a white dress standing in the middle of the road. The car slammed into a tree nearly ripping in half. When the dust had settled, neither of the occupants moved.
Logan, Storm, and Kurt were very nervous as they road the elevator up by the professor's office. Storm and Kurt were only worried because they knew that Logan was worried. When the elevator doors opened, they were nearly run over by a flood of students scrambling to make it to their last day of class on time. The trio let out a huge sigh of relief and headed towards the office. As they walked down the hall, the power went out and the Institute was encased in darkness.
"What's going on?" Storm asked a little panicked. She was claustrophobic, so the darkness made her uneasy. She was working very hard to keep her erratic heartbeat under control.
"Quiet!" Logan snapped. He heard something. A scratching sound, tow surfaces being scraped together, one sharper than the other, was coming from near the stairs at the front of the house. He cautiously started in that direction and then broke out into a run. He was standing at the top of the stairs and he wished the day wasn't so overcast, he hated when he couldn't see. He heard a rustling coming from the bottom of the stairs. Logan started down them when the lights coming back on blinded him. Behind him the professor, Kurt, Storm, and several students had gathered on the landing. Someone gasped. Logan looked up. On the wall, two feet above the door, a message was scrawled:
FAIR WARNING

X23 was crouched in a tree outside the Institute's gate. She had initially been very angry because Logan was not where he was supposed to be. It was probably good that she had only been angry about that because she never calmed down enough to realize that there were too many people around. She really hadn't thought this plan out. So, she decided to buy some time and send Logan a message while she was inside. She jumped down from the tree and headed down the road. She'd need at least a week to case the place.
Bobby awoke to silence. At first he thought he could no longer see, that the crash may have done something to his eyes, but then reality checked in and he realized that it was just dark. He slowly sat up, rubbing the back of his head as he did. He looked around for Scott and discovered that he was in a room of a house. Something was wrong with the house though, like whoever had helped them only wanted them to think it was a house. He tried to stand but thought better of it when the room started to tilt and whirl. After he could see clearly he tried to stand again and found that he could with a little help from the headboard.
He needed to find Scott. If whoever had taken them in was like anyone else, they would have taken Scott's glasses off. If Scott were coming around too, they would be in for a lot of trouble. He opened the door and found that there were five doors to get through, and that was just on this level if the stairs at the end of the hall were any indication. Bobby decided to start with the room next to his, but no one was there. The same result showed up in the next four rooms as well. So, Bobby did the next systematic and logical thing. He headed downstairs. The first room he came to looked like a living room, but again there was something off about it. Just as he thought he could place what was so eerie about the rooms, he heard a noise. He hoped he wasn't too late and took off in the direction of the commotion.
Scott had awakened, mentally that is. Since the last thing he remembered was crashing, he knew it would be a pretty good idea not to open his eyes. The fact that no one had tried to pry them open after the crash was short of miraculous. He heard someone come in and tried to look as unconscious as he could, but something must have given him away because the person spoke to him.
"Nice to see you awake. We were beginning to think you'd taken off for good." It was a woman's voice, a down to business voice, a pleasant insanity voice. "I'm just going to check some things, make sure you don't have a concussion." To Scott's horror he felt her hands on his forehead. She was going to make Scott open his eyes. It was normal procedure, but Scott was normal. He panicked and rolled off of whatever he was lying on. The woman gasped, mumbling something. She must have bent to help him up, but Scott couldn't keep his eyes squeezed shut any longer. He managed to grit out a tight, "Duck." before he opened his eyes. .
Bobby was nearly hit on the side by Scott's beam. At the last second he dodged to the left. He looked around the corner to see Scott kneeling on the floor, a woman was near Scott but Bobby couldn't tell if she was hurt or not. On the table next to Scott's bed were Scott's glasses, which had somehow survived the crash undamaged.
"Hang on Scott. It's Bobby. I'm going to get your glasses but you have to close your eyes so that I can get to them."
"I'm trying." Scott replied. It was a lot harder than Bobby thought for the amount of effort it was taking Scott just to close his eyes. Suddenly the red beam stopped and Bobby ran for the bed.
"Talk about your wake up call." Bobby tried to lighten the situation some. He didn't think that Scott got it or he just didn't find it all that funny. He handed the glasses to Scott and turned toward the woman on the floor. She was lying face first and it looked as though she had been hit on the shoulder by Scott's beam. Scott propped himself up on the bed.
"Is she all right?"
"I think so." Bobby replied. "I think you just stunned her." She let out a low moan and slowly pushed herself up until she was able to kneel.
"What was that?" She asked. She managed to stand and looked at Scott. Scott was staring down at his hands. The woman took in Bobby for the first time. "Normally I'd yell at you for being out of bed already after a crash like that, but I don't think I would have ever figured out to hand him his glasses either." She noticed that Bobby looked a little confused. "Oh sorry, I'm Irene Baker. I'm a doctor who happened to be close when you swerved. Since the nearest facility is in the next county over, I had you brought here. Neither of you were injured enough to send you to a real facility." She said anticipating the next question that Scott was about to ask. "Now I'm really glad about that decision. If the doctors had been treated to that kind of display you'd be on your way to God knows where. You're mutants aren't you?"
"Unless you know of anyone else who can shoot energy beams out of their eyes, than yeah I am a mutant, but Bobby here isn't." Bobby just nodded at Scott. No sense having them both branded in case being a mutant was a bad thing, which it usually was.
"Oh well, I'll have to ask both you boys to get some rest. You both hit your heads pretty hard." Irene forcefully led Bobby out of the room and back to his own. Bobby eventually began to feel very sleepy, but something was still bothering him. Just as he was on the brink of sleep it hit him. The house had absolutely no windows in it. As soon as his mind registered this he swore he heard a lock clicking into place and the darkness sucked him down.
Don't leave me. The girl was back again.
What do you want me to do?
Come find me. The girl replied. It bothered him that he still couldn't see her face
Tell me where you are. It felt as though he'd already had this conversation.
I can't remember. Help me!

I'm sorry...

Logan! Don't leave me, I'm scared. Logan!
Logan awoke to the sound of someone screaming his name. He looked around but couldn't see anyone.
"I'm over here." Rogue's voice was calm but underneath she was scared.
"What are you doing over in the corner?"
"You were having a nightmare. Remember what happened last time I tried to wake you up from a nightmare?" Logan winced. One of the first couple of nights at the Institute he'd had a dream or a memory. When Rogue had tried to wake him up, he'd ended up stabbing her with his claws. It had been an accident, but if Rogue hadn't possessed the ability to absorb a mutant's power she would have been dead. She had absorbed his ability to heal and had nearly put him in a coma.
"Sorry." Just for good measure he looked down to make sure that his claws weren't extended. Rogue walked over to him.
"You all right? You were murmuring something."
"Yeah, like you said, just a nightmare."
"Also, the professor wants to see you."
"What time is it? Never mind, I'm probably better off not knowing." Logan headed towards the professor's office.
"No, they're down in the lab." Rogue called over her shoulder as she seemingly headed back to bed. He turned around and made his way down there.
"Logan, glad you could join us. There are several matters that need to be discussed. First of all, Scott has not checked in with me. I can't find him or Bobby for that matter. In fact, Bobby's home number has been disconnected. I'm worried. Storm, I want you and Nightcrawler to check it out and report back as soon as possible." Storm and Kurt nodded.
"You should let Rogue go with them." Logan added.
"Why do you propose that."
"Cuz I'm gonna go with them no matter what you say." Rogue's voice came from the corner. Storm and Kurt jumped, but Logan and the professor had already known that she was there.
"Very well Rogue, at least this way someone will be looking out for you I suppose you may go with Storm and Kurt." Storm, Kurt, and Rogue had a short discussion and then the three of them left.
"Logan, I'm curious as to what happened in the house earlier, but even more puzzling is the message left on our wall. Did you know that whatever carved that message seems to be fairly consistent with your own claws?"
"Do you actually have to ask that question?" Logan was fighting desperately to keep his mind blank. This was one thing the professor didn't need to worry about.
"Fair enough, what's going on? You looked pretty perplexed when the lights came back on."
"I couldn't smell anyone there." The professor just looked at him. "Look I could hear someone scratching that message into the wall. I could even feel them moving, but most of how I sense people is by smell, and whoever was there, didn't have a scent."
"Like a phantom, or a ghost." The professor added. Logan stared at the table. He'd had enough ghosts for one night. "Well, I suppose you should go back and get as much sleep as you can. It's going to be just me and you left to hold down the fort while everyone else is gone. The children are going to be quite a handful now that school's out." Logan cringed. He almost wished he'd go back to having that creepy nightmare.