Brennan bit back a curse. "Ow. Take it easy, Adam."

"Sorry." Adam re-fastened the make-shift splint on the elemental's arm, helping him to slip it back into the equally make-shift sling. "I can't tell for certain, but I think the bone is healing extremely quickly. Which makes sense; it's been well-documented in medical literature that small amounts of electricity can encourage bone growth in hard to heal fractures. If we're lucky, your own mutantcy is doing the same for you here and now only without the 'hard to heal' part. I'd like to get you back to Sanctuary and take a few x-rays over the next week, just to document the speed of recovery. And give you a little more calcium to make up for what your bones are using."

"Wonderful. And how does that help us get out of this mess?" There was a healthy dose of sarcasm, but the underlying feeling was sincere. Brennan adjusted the sling to a more comfortable position.

Adam's return smile was lop-sided. "Well, for one thing, it would mean that we were home instead of here."

"Okay. Point taken." Brennan glanced over at the sleeping figure at the side of the cave. Adam had won his argument with Bartholomew and the other beast mutants. They had given him two blankets somewhat worse for wear to keep away the cool air of the mountain nights. The blankets reeked of animal musk and had holes in them, but were better than nothing. As Adam had pointed out, the beast mutants had as much or more to lose by allowing Jesse to die prematurely.

Or so they thought. Adam and Brennan had another idea in mind.

"It's getting dark," Brennan mentioned. "Think they're going to come back soon?"

Adam agreed. "I don't think we can wait any longer for Jesse to wake up. Okay, go make a fuss at the door. Ask for some water, whatever. Something relatively innocuous so that they'll look us over thoroughly and then leave us alone. Don't annoy them too much, though. We want them to ignore us for a while. Give us some room to work."

"Leave it to me." Brennan sauntered over to the edge of the cave. There was the wolverine, Darryl, on duty, and Brennan blessed the circumstances. From things he'd overheard, the wolverine wouldn't be up for the miracle cure for several opportunities, which meant that his attention span was somewhat limited by boredom. That would only last for so long; as the pool of recipients got whittled down, the beast mutant would get far more interested in their continued health and well-being as well as their immediate location. Brennan casually leaned against the cave wall, going for inoffensive, staying far enough away from the beast mutant so that blows couldn't be exchanged yet close enough for conversation. "How about some water?"

"Get it yourself."

Great conversationalist. "You don't really want me out there, wandering in the camp, do you?" Wouldn't that liven things up? Not to mention keeping you on my tail.

Heavy sigh. "Hey, Boris. Get this bozo some water, will ya?"

"Get it yourself."

"You want I should leave these guys unguarded? You get it."

Another heavy sigh, this one gusting from a mutant with musk ox leanings. Brennan held his breath until the foul stench wafted away. Then held it again when the musk ox mutant ambled back to hand over a chipped mug with some poorly defined liquid inside.

"Thanks." Brennan accepted the mug, being sure to glare at the wolverine for not being faster about the whole affair.

Darryl smirked. "You're next, spark plug. Maybe I'll be the one to suck out your DNA."

"I can hardly wait." This time Brennan didn't bother to hide the sarcasm. Darryl the wolverine turned away to watch Wilbur the bear over the campfire, preparing the concoction as he had yesterday, and the day before. The preparations for the potion were far more interesting than watching a few helpless prisoners. A handful of powder here, a few leaves there, and a blue-colored flame shot up periodically to glow in the darkening sky. Inside the cave was tiresome. The prisoners weren't going anywhere. Walls all around, and Darryl himself at the entrance—no, the captives were stuck.

Just as Brennan had a few moments earlier, Jesse bit back a curse. "Ow. Take it easy, Adam."

"Sorry." Another echo of the previous victim of Adam's ministrations. "Where does it hurt?" He probed gently into Jesse's mid-section.

Gentleness didn't help. Jesse curled around his hand, batting him away, trying to drag the groan back inside. "Yeah, that's the spot," he managed.

Adam looked serious, pulling his hands away and motioning to Brennan to bring the water closer.

"Adam?"

Adam's eyes said not now. "Jesse, try drinking a little water. It will make you feel better."

"Gonna throw up."

"Try anyway. You're getting dehydrated."

"Okay. But don't get in my line of fire, Adam." Jesse allowed the pair to help him to a sitting position, Adam holding the cup to his lips. "Aargh. This is water?"

"Straight from the nearest clear mountain stream, bro. That's all they've got up here. People pay good money for this."

"Straight from the stream through the nearest mud bath, you mean." Jesse coughed, doubling over until the coughing stopped and he could sit back up. "What's been happening while I played Sleeping Beauty? It seems fairly safe to say that the girls haven't found us yet."

"No, not yet." Adam eased the man back against the cave wall so that he could sit up without human assistance. "I'm thinking maybe we'd better come up with an interim plan. Just until they get here."

"Sounds good to me." Jesse closed his eyes. "Let me know when you've figured it out."

"We've figured it out, Jess," Brennan said immediately.

"That was fast." Jesse didn't move. "Let me know when you've implemented it."

"We need you, bro."

"Great. How 'bout another plan?"

"Fresh out." Adam kept his voice sympathetic. "You feel up to phasing?"

"No."

"Tough." Brennan hooked his hand under Jesse's arm. "Back of the cave. Now, bro."

"There's a way out back there?"

"Sort of." Brennan kept pulling. Adam too slid in on the other side, forcing Jesse to his feet. "But if we don't take this chance, we're not going to get another. They're coming for you, bro. Soon. And you won't be walking away from this next one."

"Okay." The longer he was on his feet, the more coherent Jesse seemed to become. "Escape before Goldilocks has to drink the Three Bears' nasty porridge again. I think I can handle that concept."

"Now you're getting the picture." Adam stopped them in front of the back of the cave. There was nothing to see, and little light to see it in: just a smooth and dark gray interior wall surface. "We need you to phase us through this wall. Then you can go back to sleep," he added as an incentive.

But Jesse balked. "There's a way out through there?"

Adam tried to back-pedal. "We think so. We think there's a large enough chamber—"

"Adam, in case you don't remember, small spaces are not my favorite type of place to be." Jesse was all awake now. It was amazing the effect that adrenaline had on people.

"I know that, Jesse, but we don't really have much of a choice—"

"Adam, what if it's too small in there for us all to fit?" There was no mistaking it; Jesse's voice was climbing.

"Jesse, I don't think that's the case—"

"But you don't really know!"

"Jesse, we don't have any other options, man!" Brennan stepped in. "We're crunched, and we're getting more crunched every night we stay here. In another hour, you might not be alive and I'll be next on the menu."

"We could fight—"

"Been there, done that, got our asses kicked." Then Brennan softened his tones. "Face it, bro. Right now, you're our only hope. Either you phase us into that back cave or the only thing Shalimar and Emma will be retrieving are our gnawed up bones."

"It's up to you, Jesse," Adam added quietly, appreciating the struggle the man faced.

Jesse's jaw tightened. "There really isn't any other choice, is there?" It wasn't a question.

Battle won. "There could be a back door exit, someplace that these mutant guys don't know about," Brennan offered. Fool yourself into believing that, bro. We need this. "All we need is some breathing room, some time for the girls to find us."

"Back door." Jesse didn't believe it. He looked at the smooth gray of the cave wall, a mere few inches from safety. A temporary safety perhaps, but safety none the less. All it would take would be a little mental exertion, a sighing exhalation.

The light at the front of the cave darkened. Bodies filled the entrance, and an all too familiar stench of a steaming green potion steeped through the air.

"It's now or never, Jesse." Adam stepped in front of the beast mutants' target, placing himself between the molecular and the beast mutants, determined to fight. He'd lose—these were ferals—but Mutant X would go down fighting. Yesterday no one had had a chance to escape a battle; the trio had been too far away from the back of the cave to implement Adam's idea. Today, positioned at the back of the cave, Jesse with his hands on the cave wall, was a different story. Adam readied himself. Even if his two protégés escaped…

Brennan had the better idea. Ignoring the sharp stab from the broken bones, he slipped his arm out of the sling. Electrons crackled; lightning flashed.

Darryl the wolverine went flying back. As the first one in, he had the dubious honor of being the first one to go down. That, however, turned into a very large signal that the captives were not about to submit tamely this time. The snarling, therefore, was entirely expected and warranted, as was the wild rush forward from the beast mutants.

"Jesse!" Brennan yelled. "Do it now!"

There really was no other option. Exhaling, Jesse placed both hands against the cool gray stone—

—and phased.

Adam grabbed Brennan by the collar, yanking him backward to tumble through the not-opening that Jesse had created. The three slipped through, the cave wall plunging them into darkness as it snapped back into Euclidian space. The howl of frustrated rage from nearly a dozen animalistic throats cut off suddenly, the sound chopped in half by the solidity of the wall now separating the prisoners from their erstwhile captors.

You did it, Jess! was what Brennan wanted to say, but the actual verbalization of relief had to wait until the pain of landing on top of his broken arm receded enough for him to breathe and catch his breath. By the sound of the retching in the background, it didn't matter. Jesse wouldn't be listening to anything Brennan had to say for the next few minutes, either.

To say that it was dark inside the cave pocket was an understatement. Night could be described as dark, illuminated by stars and a sometimes rather bright moon. Even cloudy, there was enough ambient light from fireflies to make out shadows and small movements that would coalesce into actual figures once the eyes had adjusted to the lack of excessive photons.

This was black. There was no source of light whatsoever, no fireflies, not even phosphorescent moss to glow in the dark. In order to reflect light, one must have it in the first place and that was not the case here. Eyesight was totally useless.

Not so the sense of touch. That, in fact, was the most valuable. Adam's questing fingers touched slime along one wall as he cast about frantically for his team mates. He found Brennan first.

"'m okay," the elemental gasped. "Where's Jesse?"

"Over here." Adam found his other team mate a moment later, his heart sinking. "Brennan, get over here! Help me hold him; I think he's seizing again!"

Damn oh damn oh damn. Brennan rolled over, broken arm forgotten, to clutch at the man he considered closer than a brother. He found a flailing leg first and grabbed on, finding the other and holding them close to prevent any further injury than that which was already happening. He could hear Adam himself cursing helplessly, railing against the beast mutants, wanting some magic potion of his own in a syringe that he could use on their teammate.

Then it happened again. Brennan hadn't seen it, but Adam had. Though Adam didn't understand how it could work, he had seen too many things not immediately explainable to ignore this.

There was no light in the cave pocket, but the mist didn't need any. It generated its own. It seeped from the still thrashing molecular, slowing the seizure until it stopped. Then the mist concentrated on its own agenda: a slender doll-sized figure with red hair wisping around the head coalesced into pseudo-reality. "Adam?"

"Emma?" Adam immediately recognized the tiny figure. There were no features, nothing to say that it was the psionic but somehow both Brennan and Adam knew that it was no one else. "Emma, help! You have to hurry!"

"I know." The mist looked serious. "Adam, Brennan, we're hurrying but we don't know where you are."

"At the moment, neither do we," Adam responded bitterly. "Jesse phased us into a sealed cave, so we're safe from the ferals for a little while—"

"—unless they know a back door in," Brennan injected.

"Unless they know a back door," Adam repeated, acknowledging the correction. "How close are you to locating us?"

"We've narrowed it down quite a bit," the mist told them. "We know you're in a mountain setting below the tree line but still high up. That lets out the valleys, rivers and streams, as well as the cities and towns. Shalimar is searching through the forests."

"Don't let her get too close!" Adam exclaimed, alarmed. "Tell her not to get caught!"

"Why?" Why are you holding back the one mutant who can take these mutant ferals down?

"It's a theory that I'm working on." Adam refused to be more specific. "Just tell Shalimar to be very, very careful. She mustn't allow herself to get caught."

"All right." The mist craned its head, looking at something only it could see. "I'm sending Jesse back now. He's had enough. This isn't good for him, you know, Adam."

"Not like we've had much choice in the matter. Tell Shalimar to be careful."

"I will." The mist faded away, and Jesse sighed. The tremors stopped, and he went limp in their grasp.

"Jesse?" Brennan suddenly had a terrified feeling that they were holding a dead man. "Adam?"

"It's all right, Brennan." Adam was closer to Jesse's head. "He's breathing. And sleeping. Very common after a grand mal seizure."

"Is that what that was? Because I thought it looked a lot like Emma."

"I don't really understand it, myself," Adam admitted. "Emma has told me that it's a lot easier to make contact with people's minds when they're asleep, or 'cut loose' is how she puts it."

"And Jesse is 'cut loose'?"

"Emma helped him back." Adam dodged the question.

"And the seizure did all of that?"

"A seizure brought on by whatever that potion was," Adam reminded him. "Emma just took advantage of the situation, and then helped Jesse overcome it."

"So it's not gonna happen again, right? I mean, we got Jesse away from them. No more potion means no more seizures, right?"

"I hope not." Adam looked around, not that it helped in the Stygian darkness.

"What do you mean, 'you hope not'?" Brennan too sounded on the edge. "Don't you know?"

"No, I don't, Brennan." Adam was having a hard time keeping his own cool. "I'm working in the dark. Literally in the dark. I have no tools, no equipment, no lab, one mutant with a broken arm and another who could die at any minute, and a dozen feral mutants who would like nothing better than to get their hands on you right after they finish murdering Jesse. Does that sound like I have things under control?"

Brennan calmed down. "Adam, I'm sorry." He too looked around, also forgetting that sight was totally useless under the circumstances. "We need to get out of here. And not back the way we came."

"Then start feeling around," Adam said. "How big is this pocket? And is there any way out?"

"I've got a better idea." Adam could hear the elemental rustling in the dark. "I happened to pick up a chunk of wood, back at the ranch, before making our escape. A few finger-snaps—" electrons flickered in the blackness, too bright now that eyes had adjusted to nothingness—"and we have light." Brennan held up an inch thick branch, the top building a solid flame from his efforts. Light danced from the meager torch to the edges of the cave pocket. Adam shielded his eyes until they had a chance to become accustomed to the influx of photons.

Adam eyed the make-shift torch in calculation. "That should last for a least another hour, maybe two. All right, we have an hour to explore. Let's make the most of it." He glanced down at Jesse, still lying on the cold floor, a trickle of blood spotting the corner of his mouth. He didn't like the man's color, tried to tell himself that it was merely bad lighting that did it. It was hard to lie to himself: Jesse was dying. Poisoned.

"Adam?" Brennan had seen the expression on their mentor's face.

Adam bit his lip. "Let's just get him out of here."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shalimar took no pleasure in crossing off mountain number three. "They're not here."

"Only six more to go." Emma was equally not pleased, perhaps more so since she had carefully not told Shalimar quite how desperate the situation was. On her last trip to the psychic planes the evening before, Jesse had been huddled in a corner of his mind, trying to detach himself from unpleasant reality. It had broken Emma's heart to force him back but to do otherwise would have been to lose him forever. And that Emma wasn't willing to do. Tough love, girl.

"This is not fast enough," Shalimar snarled. "They could be dying, for all we know!"

They are. Emma carefully didn't voice the comment. She didn't need to.

"And why did Adam tell me to be careful and not you?" Shalimar went on. "There has to be a clue here somewhere, something that he told you!"

"They're in a cave," Emma repeated. "Adam told me that they've bought themselves a little more time, that they're safe for the moment. It won't last forever, but we can still find them."

"How?" Shalimar couldn't sit still. She petulantly slapped the map. "We need more information to go on! Which of these six peaks is it?"

Emma gazed off into the distance, looking at the mountains rolling away from them. All six mountains were clearly visible to the naked eye, all but one snow-capped. And all looked impossibly far away.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Brennan sniffed. "It's fresh air, Adam. I don't know how far back it goes, but if the air is fresh, then there's a connection to the Great Outdoors."

"What does it look like?"

"What else? A long tunnel with no light at the end of it. Which makes sense. It's still night outside." Brennan brought the torch closer to his wristwatch, removing the light source from the distressingly narrow passageway. He'd have to crawl through most of it that he could see, and slide through the rest on his belly. His broken arm ached in mere contemplation alone. "Five AM." He glanced back at the other two. Jesse hadn't yet woken up, but the dim torchlight made Adam look far older than his years. "You want me to try it?"

"Don't have a better option, and there's no way that Shalimar and Emma will be able to find us in here. Go for it."

Brennan nodded, his features looking oddly satanic in the flicker of the flame. "You want to keep the torch?"

Adam considered, but shook his head. He adjusted Jesse's limp form in his arms, trying to make the molecular more comfortable. "We know what it looks like in here. You'd better keep it, in case you have to make a decision about the best of two paths."

"Yeah, but I have my own built-in flame-starter."

"And nothing to set on fire," Adam pointed out. "We're lucky that you brought this piece of wood with you. Take it. I'll stay with Jesse. We'll follow if he wakes up."

"I'm counting on it." Brennan turned back to the narrow passageway, pushing his way through and leaving a scraping of skin behind. "Ow."

And behind him he could have sworn that he heard Adam mutter, "if six foot Brennan can make it through, it'll be a cakewalk for Jesse and me."

Yeah, right. Brennan dropped to his knees, shoving the torch before him, trying to keep the flame at the highest point to prevent it from eating up the wood too soon. It felt like the entire mountain was on top of him and ready to crush him into mush. The tunnel was tiny; Shalimar would have been able to scramble along at a good clip but the one time that Brennan tried it he nearly cracked his skull open on a rocky protrusion. That slowed him down, and he learned to be more circumspect.

And the rock was slimy with condensation. Moss grew here and there, pallid white stuff that suffered from the lack of good, clean sunlight. It got all over his hands and clothes and Brennan decided on the spot that if he ever got out of this mess he would take a hot shower for a week and not come out. The only thing the moss had in its favor was that it was resistant to the torch. With so much water soaked up into the primitive plant, burning was not a reality. Which was a good thing, because the flame kept hitting the sides and the ceiling and the floor of the tunnel, sometimes at the same time. Brennan held his breath and squeaked past another narrow spot.

Another five feet, and the tunnel would open up. Brennan could see it just beyond the slight bend up ahead and denied himself the half-pleasure half-agony of looking at his watch to see how long it had been. The other two were okay. He had to believe that. The comm. links wouldn't work this deep under this much rock and he didn't have Emma's psionic powers, but Brennan had to believe that the other two were all right. That Jesse had woken up and was even now fussing over being in tight quarters. Jesse never liked being closed in. Adam had once theorized that it was part of what provided that last little shove for Jesse to be able to use his mutant talents to phase. You can't be closed in if you can slide through the wall. Right now Brennan could understand where his teammate was coming from. This walls closing in feeling was getting to him, too. Hm. Wonder if I could suddenly turn molecular? He tried closing his eyes and exhaling.

Rats.

He tumbled into the sudden large cavern, the floor a good four feet below him and littered with rocks. Brennan yelped as one of those rocks dug itself into his broken arm, and he spent several precious moments simply clutching onto himself until the pain receded far enough away to make thought possible. He looked around, and grinned. What he saw made the pain worth it.

Good points: large and roomy, big enough not only to stand in but jump up and down. Water running through in an underground meandering stream and when Brennan brought the torch closer he could see several anchovy-sized pale white fish darting through the water. Even better point: Brennan could smell fresh air. Really fresh air, not stuff with a slightly mildew-y tang from being underground for more than six months at a time. Best point of all: there was an honest-to-Murgatroyd opening to the outside world. Brennan could see the welcoming light of the dawn seeping in.

But into every life a little rain must fall: the opening was some twenty feet above Brennan's head. And whatever local nature deity had designed the cavern had neglected to add in a step stool.

And there was no other way out.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Shalimar's eyes turned golden, and she surveyed the forest in front of her. Everything impinged upon her senses; nothing went unnoticed. Not the songbirds twittering in the trees, not the fox trying to remain incognito behind the gorse bush, and certainly not the mountain lion high on the cliff almost a quarter mile away. The air brought the scents of over a hundred different wild animals that had passed this way, the older scents washed away by a passing rain storm two days ago.

But no sign of her teammates.

Not that Shalimar had expected to find them. According to Emma, the guys were safely trapped behind stone walls in a cave with no way out except through the good graces of a molecular whose health was a little uncertain at the moment. No, what Shalimar wanted to discover was traces of the soon-to-be-extinct band of ferals that had caused all this mess—and Shalimar was not in a forgiving sort of mood. Adam wanted Shalimar to be careful? She would: she would be careful not to leave even one standing and able to do more than whimper 'uncle'. No one messed with Shalimar's pack.

"Anything?"

Shalimar shook her head angrily. "We'll set up camp so that you can sleep. I'll do a fast circuit around this mountain, but I don't think I'll have any luck. Any ferals here would be likely to do a lot of wandering. It's what I would do if I lived here. Which means that I would have already scented them." She calmed herself. "Nice place, though."

Emma smiled gamely. The night time work was getting to her, and last night had been particularly trying. She set up the tent where Shalimar told her to, knowing that the feral was putting her teammate in some place safe from the local grizzlies. Then, if the last two days were any indication, before she left the area Shalimar would mark the territory with keep out signs in typical feral fashion. So far the ploy had been successful; Emma had slept undisturbed and rested and ready to take up her own night's vigil. That rest had been the only thing that had kept Jesse from leaving his body forever. Emma needed it, so that she could protect Jesse in the Overworld.

Both mutants got at their own particular tasks.