"Will this hurt?" Tessa asked as Hank helped her into the Shi'ar scanner.

"Not at all," he assured her. "You may even fall asleep. Many people do."

She closed her eyes as the table slid into the cylinder. She never liked closed in spaces. It wasn't a true claustrophobia but it came close. The large, blue furred doctor had assured her that the scan would be quick but very detailed. She hoped so. She didn't want to have to repeat this anytime soon.

She had the time to think while she was in the scanner. The X-Men were a wonder to her. So many different mutations were represented here. Some were hidden. Jean and Jubilee appeared completely normal, but there were others, like Hank and Kurt, that were so far away from normal that she couldn't help but be amazed and a little curious. How does someone so different deal with the rest of the world without becoming jaded and disillusioned?

She liked these people. They accepted others, and themselves, for who they are, not what they looked like. They had accepted her even though she wasn't a mutant. They didn't trust her but that was okay. Right now, the only person she trusted completely was herself. She trusted Logan and Jubilee but not completely. Logan told her this was a good thing. Trust is earned, not given. The only person he trusted completely was Jubilee. Tessa believed that he didn't trust himself as much as he did Jubilee.

Her thoughts were interrupted when the bed slid out of the scanner.

"I found it," Hank told her as he helped her up.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Can she access the data on the chip?" Xavier asked several hours later.

"I doubt it," Hank told him. "It's implanted near the base of her brain stem. If it were in her cerebellum, it's possible that she could with your help but the brain stem has no processing ability. It controls autonomic nervous functions and none of the higher, thinking functions. I don't think it's a data chip anyway. The nearest analog would be the identification chips that are frequently implanted in household pets. Occasionally, you will see them implanted in children"

"How long has it been there?"

"From the amount of scar tissue present, I would estimate it was placed approximately six months ago."

"Does she remember any incident that correlates to that time?"

"She had a minor surgical procedure around that time, a D&C. It was evidently done at a private hospital in San Antonio in July of last year. They could have taken the opportunity to place the chip then but it would have taken a skilled neurosurgeon to do it. San Antonio is thin on neurosurgeons so it won't be that difficult to find the one responsible."

"Can you remove it?"

"Not without doing irreparable harm to her brain." Hank admitted. "I am not a neurosurgeon."

"Will it harm her if it stays in place?"

"I don't think so. It is sutured to the dura so I don't think it will migrate."

"How could she not know she had brain surgery?" Xavier wondered.

"The surgeon was very skilled. I have never seen such precision by anyone before. The incision was hidden in her hair and it was very small. They could have told her that she thrashed while coming out of anesthesia and struck her head. Anyway," Hank sighed as he stood, "we will need to find a chip scanner to read it. The best place to look would be an animal hospital or a shelter. It's possible we could get one from the police but that would entail answering questions that shouldn't be answered at this time."

"Would a reader intended for animals work on this one?"

"The principle is the same for both. We may not be able to access the information on the chip but the code should give us a clue as to where the information is. Kitty could help us look. The majority of the time, this information is on the internet. You just need to know where to find it."

Gambit was mildly offended when Xavier asked him to break into the local vet's office and 'borrow' the chip scanner from the office. Why couldn't he do something more interesting, like taking the scanner from the police station? When he returned to the mansion, he was in a high temper indeed. Security was such a joke that Cyclops could have grabbed the scanner.

Remy flatly refused to return the scanner. He had never in his life returned an object he had stolen and he was not about to start with such a paltry thing as that. Ororo ended up returning it over Gambit's objections. Storm was a thief. Returning anything was a disgrace to the guild.

The code Hank found on the chip made no sense to him at all. Kitty, who responded to a video call from the mansion, was able to point him in the right direction but Jubilee, who can be sneakier than most, was the one who found the information. It was in an obscure SHIELD database.

Logan was beyond furious

"Ya knew!" he accused Fury in a heated phone call.

"Of course I knew," Fury scoffed. "You don't think I'd not know what is going on with the kids of every yahoo in DC? The problem was that we didn't know exactly where the information was. I needed Ms. Madison for that and they grabbed her before I could have her picked up."

"And ya didn't think I should know?" he demanded.

"I couldn't do anything officially," Fury told him. "Westerleigh came to me after I arranged lunch with you. I couldn't turn him down so I decided to change my plans. At least I made sure she had some protection until you could get to her." Realization hit Logan like a sledge hammer.

"You son of a bitch!" Logan exploded. "Yer dead! I swear, I'll kill ya!"

"Chill out, Wolverine. She's alive and back home."

"She almost got killed! Ya don't dick around with me when it comes to Jubilee and ya know it."

"I don't have an agent in the age group the slavers are targeting. Jubilee's in that age group."

"So ya decided ta recruit my little girl?" Logan yelled.

"She ain't a little girl anymore, Logan. She's a powerful mutant who is very well trained. She was the best choice to infiltrate the camp and protect Tessa."

"Did ya ask her first?"

"I can't do that! She's a minor."

Logan growled in anger. "Did ya even think about askin' her aunt or here's a concept; how 'bout askin' ME?" he demanded.

"Hope Lee is in your old stompin' grounds; Madripoor, and I knew what you'd say."

There would be no getting ahold of her if she was in Madripoor. If you wanted to disappear, Madripoor was where you went. Logan's temper was frayed to the limit. Fury had no right involving Jubilee in this. "Goddamn right ya know what I'd say." he yelled.

"I'll take it from here Logan," Scott said from behind him. "Emma heard and you're too angry right now. Go work some of it off and I'll take care of this dickhead."

Logan looked up to see Scott Summers and Emma Frost standing on the other side of the room, identical masks of rage on their faces. Logan knew he had every right to yell at Fury but coming from Cyclops, it would be official: The X-Men were pissed at SHIELD and no longer willing to put up with any more of their shit.

Logan nodded sharply and handed the phone to Cyclops.

"If we're goin' after him, I want in," he told Emma as he passed her.

"We won't," she said, "but we won't be working with them any longer." She grabbed his arm before he could leave. He looked down at her hand with surprised anger. "Tell Jubilee before she finds out from someone else."

"Frost," he growled, "unless ya want ta loose yer hand, ya'll move it." She released him and let him leave.

"Fury," Scott was saying, "the X-Men will have nothing more to do with SHIELD and if you value your life, you'll stay away from Wolverine for the next twenty years and Jubilee for the rest of her life."

"Ya really think Wolverine would do anything to me?" Fury asked smugly.

"What Logan does is his own business but if SHIELD gets within one mile of Jubilation Lee, I'll kill you myself." Cyclops slammed the phone down. He raised his hands to run them through his hair and found that he was shaking with rage.

"Scott?" Emma called softly.

"I'm going to the Danger Room," he snapped at her. "Cancel training for this afternoon." He swept past her without touching her and strode down the hall. She could feel the rage pouring off of him. The next few days were going to be difficult.

Cyclops and Wolverine spent a companionable four hours together beating the shit out of the robots in the Danger Room. At Scott's suggestion, every one of them wore Nick Fury's face. By the time they had regained control of their tempers, all the robots in storage were torn to very small bits. They didn't stop because the wanted to; they stopped because they ran out of targets.

They debated working on holographic targets but decided it was too close to dinnertime and quit. Scott told Logan what he has said to Fury and Logan agreed. He got Scott's promise that if SHIELD tried anything, Logan would be in on the action.

He returned to his room with his emotions in much better control. A noise from Jubilee's room made him pause outside the door.

"He doesn't know David kissed you?" Tessa was saying. Logan found that he was growling softly.

"I don't want him to know," Jubilee replied. "Wolvie can be very unreasonable when it comes to my sex life."

"It was just a kiss, Jubes. You didn't sleep with him."

"It doesn't matter," Jubilee said as she flopped onto the bed. "He gets all growly if a guy even touches my arm. I love him 'n all but he won't let me grow up. I mean, it ain't like I'm a virgin, ya know." The last comment was made with a small sob.

Tessa waited until Jubilee had regained her composure. "You're not a slut, Jubilee." she said quietly. "Don't let that bastard make you into one. If you do, he'll never go away and leave you alone. Don't give him that kind of power over you."

She watched as the girl struggled to control her emotions. "I was seventeen," she told her softly. "He was a junior Senator. Daddy had asked me to go to a reception with him for some Ambassador at the Plaza Hotel. I really didn't want to go. I had finals the next week and I wanted to study but a request from Daddy might as well be an order. There were a bunch of celebrities in the crowd and I was nervous so had a couple of drinks to calm my nerves. I had hidden my books in a small room near the ballroom so I could sneak away and study. One time, he followed me. He didn't beat me. God, I wish he had. I could have recovered faster if he had. I never told Daddy what happened."

Jubilee sat there, wringing her hands. "I was fourteen," she said, the pain in her voice hit Tessa hard. "The school was attacked and I got separated from the others. Bastian found me and pulled me out of the fray. I thought he was saving me. Next thing I know, I'm in this cage and he's asking questions. He wanted to know where the X-Men had their home. He threw an old, beat up visor of Cyke's at me and said he was dead but I'm not that stupid. No matter what he told me, I wouldn't believe it unless I could touch him and feel that he was dead. He put me in a straightjacket and crammed a helmet on my head that read my thoughts and dreams. He tried to get me to believe that he had Wolvie and was torturing him. He would ask me where home was. I finally came to realize that home was where ever Wolvie was.

"He caught them in the end. I saw the bring my family in. Wolvie was so badly hurt that they were just going to cremate him. He broke free and got the rest free but they couldn't get out of the Hulkbuster base. Bastian brought me to the control room to watch them try to break out of the blast shields. When he wasn't looking, I slammed my head against the control panel and opened the doors. He was so mad that he threw me to the guards and let them do whatever they wanted." she started shaking. The memories were so vivid. "Oh god! It hurt so bad! They beat me so bad that I couldn't even breathe without pain. Then the rapes started." She began to whimper.

Tessa found that she wanted to protect this child, to go back and remove this ugly incident from her life, but she knew she couldn't. She did not try to stop her words. Jubilee needed to talk about it and come to terms with what happened.

"I went back to school when I got back. A month later, I missed my period. Emma helped me take care of it. She paid for the abortion." Tears were flowing down her cheeks. "I didn't want to but I didn't have a choice. I couldn't have a baby. I was just a kid myself."

Tessa pulled her into her arms and held her. There was not anything she could say to make her feel better. In time, Jubilee would understand that she did what she had to do. In time, she would be whole again as long as she had people she could depend on to support her and love her.

Neither knew that Jubilee's primary support had overheard their conversation and was curled in a ball of agony beside her door.

He somehow found the strength to get to his feet and cross the hall to his room. After closing and locking the door, he grabbed a towel and went into the bathroom to turn on the shower. When the water was hot enough, he stripped out of his clothes and stepped into the shower. Only then did he give in to the tears that had lodged in his throat and cried.

Logan is not a man who cries easily but there are things that happen that can rip his heart out. He never let anyone know that "Brian's Song" could reduce him to tears or that he couldn't watch "Forest Gump" with the rest of the team for the same reason.

Jubilee was his best friend, his only confidant and his partner in crime. Her pain went through him and ripped open his body like nothing ever had before.

"She was fourteen!" he cried to the air. "She was just a little girl, dammit!"

He had no idea how long he stayed there, sitting on the floor of the shower with hot water pounding down on his head and tears streaming down his face. Finally, he reined in his emotions and turned off the water. He needed to talk to Emma. He quickly dried, dressed and left the room in search of the White Queen.

He found her in the sunroom talking to the three identical girls who were the surviving Stepford Cuckoos.

"Need ta talk ta ya, Frost." he interrupted.

Emma looked at him coldly. A quick mental probe told her what he wanted to talk about. She sighed heavily. She had hoped he would never find out.

"I will talk to you later," she told the girls. "Go back to your studies and no peeking."

He waited until the girls had left and the door was closed before turning back to Emma.

"Why didn't ya tell me?" he asked, his anger simmering below the surface.

"She would have told you herself if she wanted you to know." Emma said haughtily. "It's her body, Wolverine. She didn't need you to second guess her decision."

"I'm not second guessing her decision, Em." he yelled angrily. "I think she made the right choice but I would've liked to have been there for her."

"Dammit, Logan, I wanted her to tell you," she told him, just as angry. "I thought she needed you to be there for her. She wouldn't even let me go with her. God, Logan. I tried to get her to call you."

He whirled away from her, unable to look at her anymore. She could hear his ragged breathing as he struggled to control his temper. His shoulders were shaking. Emma sent an questioning probe into his mind and gasped. He was crying. Never in her life would she have thought she would witness Wolverine cry.

A look of sympathy came over her face. "She never wanted you to find out," she told him softly. "She knew it would hurt you and she didn't want you hurt."

"My pain is nothing compared to hers. God, Em. What kind of a world do we live in where grown men would do that to a little girl?"

"How did you find out?" she asked. "She hasn't told me anything about what happened. She just came to me and told me she was pregnant."

"She told Tessa," he said. "Her room is across from mine so I couldn't help but hear."

"She told Tessa?" Emma asked, astonished. "Why did she tell her and not us?"

"Tessa was raped when she was seventeen," Logan said. "I guess Jubes felt that she would understand where we wouldn't."

"Oh god," Emma gasped. Logan looked at her stricken face. "I should have told her."

"Emma?" Logan asked.

"I should have told her what happened to me." She ran out of the sunroom. He could smell her anguish as she passed him.

"Oh, Emma." he moaned. "How many more will suffer before we learn to behave ourselves?"