Thanks to:
Todd Fan – There will be lots of Todd in this story, because I love him too. Just not in this chapter.
Lyranfan – I will be dropping you a line shortly about the area Sam and Rogue live in – thanks for the help! I'm going to be needing the general layout in a couple of chapters so you can probably expect that mail in the next couple of days ;)
Southern Goth Gal – I haven't actually decided if there will be any romance at all so I can't tell you Romy or Rietro (sorry sis!). But there will be plenty of Rogue and Remy will be showing his face at some point soon!
Crimson Lipstick – Thanks, I'm glad you like it!
LadyEvils – You're right about things getting bad, but for now there's only a whisper that something might be in the air (no pun intended lol). I read somewhere that in the comics Toad was actually born in England and moved to the US when he was small, which explains a lot about my ex-boyfriends!
Fudje – Much longer chapter this time! Hope you continue to enjoy.
Disclaimer: If life is like a lovebank I want an overdraft..
00000000000000000000000000"Men. You're all the same!" Jean Grey smiled affectionately, although there was no way her boyfriend could see her over the phone. "Just rest up, drink orange juice. I'll get your schoolwork for you."
Scott Summers glared and took a swig of his own orange juice. He could guess exactly how much Duncan cared about missed schoolwork. His suspicion was confirmed when Jean laughed at Duncan's response.
"Just get well soon, OK? I'll drop your work of tonight. Bye!" She put the phone down and wandered over to the table where she and Scott were having breakfast before school.
"You should think about taking the day off too," she said to him. "Why not lie in bed all day and get over this flu before you sneeze so hard you lose your shades?"
"No thanks. I'm not a jerk-off like Matthews." Scott sniffled and glanced at his cereal. He had no appetite at all.
"It's not a case of being a jerk-off. You don't need to be so serious all the time." Jean took a bite of toast and chewed thoughtfully. "Even Storm and the Professor decided not to get up today. You have their permission to be ill!"
"You don't seem to be feeling so bad," said Scott.
"I feel fine," replied Jean. "Guess I must be disgustingly healthy."
It was Scott's opinion that nothing about Jean was disgusting. He quietly worshipped her but there was no way he was ever going to have a chance with her, not with Duncan Matthews in the picture. Sometimes he wondered if she knew how he felt about her – she could read minds after all – but if she did she never mentioned it. Although she did seem to be able to charm him into doing anything she wanted.
She might have a point though. He felt lousy; he knew he was beginning a temperature and his head felt too heavy for his body. The last thing he felt like doing was quadratic equations and the history of the civil rights movement. "Would you mind grabbing my work if I took the day off?"
"Of course I will." Jean leant over the table and put her hand on Scott's forehead. "You're very warm. Will you call me if you or the others get any worse?"
"Sure," said Scott, suddenly very glad he'd decided to ditch. It was worth it jut to feel Jean's hand against his head. "I guess I'll go back to bed."
"OK." Jean watched Scott leave the room feeling concerned. With three of the four members of the Institute down with the flu, she had to wonder when she was going to get sick. And it seemed odd, all of them at once.
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Lance Alvers lay back against a tree, enjoying the mild weather. He wasn't scheduled for a free period but what the hell; he didn't feel like being cooped up today. He'd been up to late the night before and now he could feel himself drifting, not quite asleep but certainly not aware of his surroundings.
A hand fell on his shoulder. "Late night Lance?"
"Back off Griff," said Lance, not bothering to open his eyes. "I'm tired."
"I've got something that's gonna make you a lot less sleepy." Griff sat down next to Lance. "They're putting a new security system in the office. Saw the van outside just now."
"Oh shit." Lance opened his eyes and glanced sideways. "That's not good."
"How are we supposed to get inside now?" Griff glared in the general direction of the office. "Do you think they're on to us?"
"No. They'd have questioned us about it before now." Lance folded his arms moodily. The answers to the many tests that Northbrook High held were all on the computer in that office and Lance had a nice sideline selling the answers to kids who were desperate or lazy or just afraid of failing. Now the office was alarmed there was no way he could get inside unnoticed.
"So how are we supposed to get those answers now?" Griff pulled up a blade of grass from the lawn and busied himself peeling strands from it. Lance sighed. He wasn't exactly the smartest guy in school but he was way more intelligent than Griff or their other partner in crime Pete. It bugged him sometimes that he was supposed to come up with all the answers.
"I don't know," he said, letting his gaze wander over to the school building where a bunch of the younger kids were just emerging. "But there's nearly three weeks until midterms, I'll have a plan by then."
Griff looked like he wanted to say something else, but Lance had already forgotten about him. His eye had been caught by a group of four girls of maybe fifteen or so. Three of them were attractive enough but there was something about the fourth that made him pay attention. She was laughing at something, her dark hair caught in a ponytail and her books hugged tightly to her chest. She wasn't the type he usually liked – he could tell just by the clothes she wore that she was too goody-goody for him, the pink cardigan a dead giveaway – but right then and there she seemed so far removed from the other problems in his life, so happy to just enjoy the day, that he wanted to talk to her, to see if some of that would rub off on him.
"Cute," said Griff, following his gaze. "I call the blonde."
"What happened to Cindy?" asked Lance, not really interested, continuing to watch the brunette.
"She's a bitch," grumbled Griff.
"Well you can just forget about those girls. You'll never be good enough for that type." Lance saw his object of affection sneeze into her hand and he realised that what he had thought was inexpertly applied make up was actually high colour.
"So why are you watching?"
"No harm in looking."
Griff snorted. "Until they see you. About the midterms…"
"I said I'll deal with it." Lance reluctantly looked away from the girl and focused on Griff. "Maybe there's some way to override the alarm or they might not set it during the day. There isn't always some one in there."
"But you can't tell when it's going to be empty and if some one sees you hanging around outside they'll suspect something!"
"I said I'll…"
"KITTY!"
Lance turned his head over to the school building. The girls he'd noticed before were now clustered around in a tight circle, looking panicked. The brunette he'd casually appraised was nowhere in sight and it took him a moment to realise that she had fallen, apparently fainted. Other students were heading over to her and one boy raced inside to find a teacher.
"Whoa, drama," said Griff, craning his neck interestedly. Lance didn't reply. The beautiful girl he'd been casually appreciating moments before was suddenly in some kind of trouble. He wasn't superstitious but somehow it felt like a sign.
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"School sucks." Sam Guthrie shoved a piece of pasta around his plate, glaring at it like it was personally responsible for all his woes. "Can you believe I have detention? For no reason!"
"Didn't you forget to do your homework?" His friend Amy smiled at him and his stomach flipped, not thanks to the terrible cafeteria food for a change. Amy was pretty, she was smart and she understood him better than anyone else. Including his parents and his numerous brothers and sisters.
"Well yeah, but the whole family's down with the flu and I had to look after them. By the time I was done feeding them and doing chores, I was too beat to think about Kenya's main exports. I mean, who cares?"
Amy sipped her milk through a straw. "So what are you gonna do? You can't do detention if you've gotta look after the family."
"I guess I'll have to skip it." Sam frowned. Their geography teacher always gave a week of detention for missing just one session but there was no choice.
"I'll talk to him," said Amy. "You know what a pushover he is."
"For you maybe."
"I'll tell him you have family troubles and you had to go deal and he'll probably let it slide this time."
"Amy, you are the best!" Sam grinned at her.
Amy tried to look stern. "But you owe me Guthrie!"
"Whatever you want, name it." Sam was vaguely hoping she'd ask for him to take her somewhere at the weekend, maybe a movie or for a burger. He could never make a move on Amy, who was the prettiest girl in class, but he could always hope that she'd make a move on him.
"I'll think about it. Maybe when your family are all better I'll collect."
Sam tried not to grin goofily. Amy understood how hard it could be for him to be the oldest sibling especially when they were all ill, so maybe she was waiting for him to be free of his responsibilities before she asked him to take her out. Hey, a guy could dream couldn't he?
"So, why are you here if everyone's ill?" Amy looked genuinely curious and Sam could understand. They came from a small farming community and for many people school just wasn't important.
"Well…I'll be forced to kill you if you ever repeat this."
"Cross my heart and hope to die." Amy made a criss-cross motion over her left breast and Sam really wished she hadn't drawn attention.
"Someday I'd like to live somewhere else. Maybe New York. But I don't want to go there and work some dead end factory job. So I need some kind of an education."
"There's nothing wrong with that," replied Amy. "Who wouldn't want to get away from this dead end town and move to the city?"
"Most of the people we go to school with."
"That's because they're afraid of change," said Amy dismissively.
"Or maybe they're happy here," said Sam. Much as he didn't want to argue with Amy, he couldn't disparage his home.
"Maybe they are. But that doesn't mean that you have to be. You can go anywhere you want."
Sam considered this idea. He'd never told his parents that he was hoping to move when he graduated, at least try to go to a university away from Kentucky and see what life was like away from the area. He was well aware that most teenagers thought the place they lived the worst place in the world to be. But Amy was right. He wouldn't be in high school forever and then he could make up his mind where to go.
The idea was intoxicating.
"Hang on…" Amy paused, then sneezed into her cupped hand. "Excuse me."
"Bless you," said Sam.
"Typical," grumbled Amy. "Probably my damn hay fever coming back. Some years I sneeze maybe twice, other years I can't leave the house all summer."
Sam glanced at his watch and sighed. "I guess we ought to think about moving."
"For a guy who wants to go to university, you sure don't sound too pleased to be getting back to learning!" Amy gave a lop-sided smile that made Sam's heart leap.
"I want to leave Kentucky. Doesn't mean I wanna be in class!" Sam shoved aside his half-eaten pasta and followed Amy from the canteen, trying hard not to sneak glances at her butt as she walked.
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Pietro Maximoff shoved his books into his locker and slammed the door. Finally, the end of the day. School went so slowly it made him want to scream. There was only one thing at school he really enjoyed, really excelled at without his own unique brand of cheating and that was basketball. This year he'd made the team and tonight was practice. He tried to time it so that he didn't arrive first but it was hard. The others were so slow.
He made his way to the locker room, reminding himself to walk. It was harder and harder lately to just go at a pace that other people were used to. He always knew he was destined to have power, but he'd never known how it would manifest. He'd always hoped for something frightening, like Wanda…
Oh, but it hurt to think about his sister.
Instead, he thought about the basketball team. If he could use his powers it would be better but his father – his real father – had warned him years ago the consequences of playing his hand. Instead he had to stand by while others took the glory that rightly should have been his.
People like Evan Daniels. That brought a wry smile to his face. Evan and him had been nothing more than friendly rivals until Wanda had been taken away…
It hurt to think about Wanda.
…And then Evan had asked where she was. Pietro had slammed the other boy against the wall and told him never to mention his sister again. Evan never had and as the two had entered high school the incident had been forgotten. By Evan at least. Pietro never forgot that Evan had been in his business.
Pietro let his hand close over the money in his pocket. He'd stolen it from Evan's locker the previous day. Knowing what he was capable of was welcome but more than that, it was a way of getting back at Evan, the person who kicked him when he was down. The only person who asked where his sister had gone.
Walking into the locker room, Pietro paused. There were only three other people there, one of whom was the coach, a quivering mass of muscles and temper.
"Practice cancelled tonight Maximoff," he said. "The rest of the team have the flu."
"All of them?" Pietro found it hard to believe. Even during an outbreak of illness that hit the schools hard due to the close proximity of the students, it was unheard of to have most of the team incapacitated.
"Believe it." The coach sneezed and looked disgusted with himself. "We'll be fine for the play-offs."
"That's just great." Pietro turned and walked back through the doors before the other team members could engage him in conversation. The one thing he looked forward to cancelled because a couple pf guys had the sniffles. It was a joke.
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"Irene! Ah'm home!"
Rogue threw her bag onto the stairs, planning to take it up later on. There was no way she could leave it lying around, not when Irene relied so much on memory to navigate the house.
There was no answering shout from the kitchen and Rogue frowned. Usually Irene was cooking up something fabulous when she got home from school, saying it made her feel good to be able to do things that sighted people said she shouldn't. She walked into the kitchen and there was no sign that Irene had been considering cooking. No chopped vegetables, no steaming pots on the cooker.
"Irene?"
"Up here honey." The voice was tired and Rogue grabbed her bag as she ran up the stairs. A part of her was panicking. Irene was the only mother she had known since the death of her birth mother when Rogue was just four. In the back of her mind was always the possibility that the same thing could happen to the woman who had taken her in as her own daughter.
She walked into the bedroom that Irene used and noticed the woman in the bed looking too pale and ill. "Irene! What's wrong?"
"I've got the flu that's going around." Irene was hard to read because her eyes were permanently hidden behind shades but Rogue thought she looked tired.
"Do you want me to make you some soup? Maybe ah can get you a hot water bottle?"
"Sweetheart no." Irene lay back against the pillows as if exhausted. "I need to tell you something."
Rogue frowned. "What?"
"In a week, you'll want to find out what was happening. There's a box in the bottom of my closet. Open it. Not now though!"
"Well, sure, ah guess…"
"The woman who adopted you…she loves you. Always remember that."
"That was you and ah always will." Rogue took hold of Irene's hand; not liking the direction the conversation was taking. "You're starting to scare me."
"Sweetheart, no matter what happens, know I always loved you and I regret nothing."
Irene began to breathe more deeply, indicating she was asleep. Rogue frowned. That was just odd and she had no idea what it was leading to…
Unless Irene was going to die.
Panic shot through Rogue and she shook her head emphatically, warning off such thoughts. No one was going to die around here. Irene had the flu. She would get better soon.
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There was nothing better than the open road.
Logan twisted the throttle a little more and was rewarded by the sound of the engine purring louder. Goddamn, he loved having nothing more to consider than the next place on the map, the next place to stop for a meal before he was history again. No one recognised him in places like that. No one wanted to stop him because he was different. No one wanted to capture him because he was special.
His memories of the Weapon X experiment were limited and for that he was eternally grateful. His real name, his age, they were all welcome trades as long as he didn't have to consider what it was like to have molten metal grafted to his bones. He healed fast. The healing factor did not exclude the pain of what he went through waiting for it to kick in.
But the open road swallowed all memory, demanded nothing from him. There was nothing but him and the future, whatever lay over the next horizon.
He kept track of what happened back in Bayville out of a sense of duty. Xavier really thought he could bring mutants together to exist in peace with the humans. Logan didn't want to dissuade him from the notion. It was about time some one had a dream for people like them. If there had been some one like Xavier around, then maybe what had happened to him and Sabretooth and Maverick and Rage…
And that was where it started to grow fuzzy.
Chuck meant well. Logan couldn't fault his motives but he wasn't sure how recruiting teenagers would help. Then again, Xavier was smart and he was just some guy with no memory and a little experience of how people though of mutants…
Some one was following him.
Logan wasn't sure which of his senses tipped him off, although he later suspected it was his hearing. One moment he was driving down the road without a care in the world, the next he knew he was being followed by a helicopter. Without slowing the motorcycle he popped the claws of his right hand and nodded as he realised he was right. In the reflection of the metal he saw a copter behind him.
He gunned the motorcycle and sped toward the edge of the cliff he travelled upon. He knew no one could take him if he didn't want to be taken, but the copter unnerved him. What was going on?
He came to a stop at the edge of the cliff and waited. Sure enough the copter made itself known, hovering right above his head and blowing his hair as he removed his helmet. A second copter pulled up from the dip in the cliff and Logan narrowed his eyes as he saw the sign on the side of the chopper and realised who was pursuing him.
The second copter landed and his sometime friend Nick Fury stepped out.
"What's this about Fury?" Logan gave the man a contemptuous glare. "In case you haven't noticed, I don't work for SHIELD any more."
"I know." Fury sounded placating and Logan was instantly on his guard. "We need you."
"Need me?" Logan glared at Fury. "What for?"
"We have a situation."
"So what else is new?"
"Logan!" Fury sounded odd and after a moment Logan placed the emotion. Desperation. He'd never heard that from Fury before.
"What do you want from me bub?"
Fury exhaled, trying to look in control of the situation. All he managed to look was scared, which was another first. "There's been an outbreak of a virus."
"So?" Logan turned his attention back to his motorcycle and rubbed an imaginary spot. He knew there was no real way of drawing out Fury unless the SHIELD member knew he wasn't about to help.
"This virus is against the regulations of the Geneva convention."
"Man made." Logan still didn't turn to Fury.
"It's gotten loose. We can't quarantine. It's too late for that."
Logan had to pause for a moment before he caught the magnitude of what Fury was saying. "You mean there's some fucking superbug on the loose?"
"This wasn't our fault. There was some one in Thailand who was experimenting…"
"And I'm supposed to believe the American government didn't have something similar." Logan snorted. "What are we talking about here?"
"If we knew who brought it here, we could maybe find ground zero. But we don't and we can't. All we know is that this virus is highly contagious and we need a cure. Now."
"Oh shit." Logan realised why he'd been cornered. "You want me to be your guinea pig?"
"There are literally millions of lives at stake Logan. This bug has shown up all over America and also all over Europe and Australia as well as tentative reports from other places. You might be the only chance we have."
Logan gave a regretful look at his motorcycle, remembering how only five minutes before he had been driving down the road not bothering anyone, before turning back to Fury. "Fine," he growled. "You think I can beat this? Do your tests. But remember, this was down to politics and not mutants."
"I will," replied Fury.
Fury might remember that the whole thing had been political but Logan would bet his motorcycle that there were those who wouldn't. Mutants were a secret kept from the general public but there were plenty of people who knew they existed and Logan knew they weren't all friendly. It was unlikely that his help would change their minds. But there was more than mutant rights and hurt feelings at stake.
"Do you have a facility in the area?"
Fury nodded, pulling a cigar out of his breast pocket to try to hide the intense feeling of relief he was sure was written all over his face. He'd never really doubted that Logan would agree to help them but as well as he knew the mutant; it was impossible to predict his reactions. He could have made it hard for them and it was unlikely that Logan would look forward to being used as a lab rat after what he had been through.
"I'll get there on my own." Logan got back on his bike as Fury gave directions and gunned the engine, roaring away without responding. Both of them knew that Fury would have him followed by one of the copters but it would be an unnecessary precaution. Logan was a loner by nature but he wasn't going to ignore a problem like this if there was something he could do to help.
Always assuming there was something he could do and if it could be done in time.
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The girl had no name but if she had the chance to choose one it wouldn't be anything Madame Hydra was calling Dr Risman.
"You have to find the cure!" Madame Hydra paced the room and Dr Risman watched her nervously. "Do you know how much it would be worth? We could make millions!"
"I haven't been able to isolate the disease yet…"
"So do it!" Madame Hydra gave a contemptuous look at the equipment that Dr Risman was using to study blood samples. "I did not get you all this expensive junk so that you could fail me on this!"
"I'm doing my best."
"Do better." Madame Hydra noticed the girl in the corner. "Why is she in here?"
"I was thinking that if I were to introduce the virus to a sample of her blood then I could examine the antibodies she produces and possibly synthesise a cure."
"So take the blood sample and put her back in the isolation room."
The girl felt her heart speed up. She hated the isolation room, the place where she spent all her time when she wasn't training. The walls, floor and ceiling were white and there was nothing for her to do at all but sit in a corner and be alone with her thoughts. No distractions.
But she was a soldier, a weapon and she didn't complain about it. Silently, she allowed Dr Risman to take a blood sample and followed Madame Hydra down the corridor, knowing that this couldn't go on forever. Someday she was going out into the field without a chaperone.
And then she was going AWOL.