It was a pleasant dream. Actually, it was more than pleasant. This dream contained the Lexa of Jesse's fantasies, a Lexa who had, just this once, softened around the edges for him and for him alone. No clothes, that perfect backside turned sideways to him with a cascade of raven black hair shimmering down hiding just enough to keep him ecstatically aware of her nakedness. He wanted her, his own body ready to respond and take her gently into his arms. She caressed him, a gentle hand along his cheek, a perfect nail running past his ear, murmuring his name ever so softly…

Wait a minute. Lexa did not speak in a baritone voice.

Jesse's eyes flashed open to be greeted by several things. First and foremost, a blinding headache that made him want to cringe. Second, he was still lying on the hard clinic stretcher in Windom's lab, inside the cage that Windom had stuck together just for him, staring at the instruments of torture that Windom was all too accustomed to using. And third, the baritone voice belonged to Ben. Crap.

"Jesse, wake up!" Ben hissed.

The memories crashed back, and Jesse's hands started to shake of their own accord. He sternly commanded them to stop. They refused.

"Don't try to sit up," Ben whispered. "Mother says that will make the headache worse."

"Nothing could make this headache worse. It's already a twelve on a scale of ten." Even talking hurt. "Get me out of here. Where are the others?" Had Windom captured them, too? Jesse struggled to get up. Blackness beckoned, blackness rimmed with knife-edged agony. His moment of strength drained away with miserable swiftness.

Ben caught him, eased him back flat onto the stretcher. Then he removed the inhibitor that Windom had wrapped around Jesse's skull. That in itself was a relief. The headache decreased from twelve to a paltry eleven. "I will, but first you have to help me."

"Why is there always a catch? Catch to save Shalimar with appendicitis, catch to get me out of this hell hole…"

"Jesse, Windom put a packet of explosives inside me. I need you to take it out."

"Find a doctor," Jesse muttered.

"No time." Ben looked around. "Windom will be coming back shortly, and I'll need a few hours to heal or I'll never be able to fool him. Jesse, I need you to reach inside me and take out the explosives."

"What?" Either Jesse was crazy, or Ben was. Hopefully it wasn't both.

"Phase," Ben insisted in a demanding whisper. "Reach inside me and phase it out. Hurry, Jesse! Once you've done that, I can stop Windom."

It was crazy. It was impossible. But, hell—Jesse was a mutant. He had done crazier things every day and twice on Tuesdays. He hurt too much to phase, so of course that was what he needed to do. And Ben had just removed that damn inhibitor of Windom's; Jesse didn't have that excuse to say no and when one is a member of Mutant X, whining aboutexhaustion just didn't cut it. Jesse took a deep breath.

And phased.

Just his hand; more wasn't needed and he didn't think he had the strength to do even that much. The molecules of his hand slid effortlessly through the abdominal wall of the super-soldier, casting around for something inorganic, something that didn't belong. Jesse didn't question the sense of what he felt. It wasn't the sense of touch, or smell, or anything so commonplace. There was no word for it; Jesse simply knew the molecular structure of whatever he touched. It was like asking a blood-hound about following a scent trail, a hawk about the air currents that it drifted upon. Jesse was aware of the molecular structure of everything he touched.

There it was, resting below the liver, nestled within the folds of the small intestine. Jesse extended his phasing to the small packet, drawing it out with him, wires dripping with blood.

Too much. His arm snapped back to reality, the explosive packet with him. Jesse dropped the packet to the floor in exhaustion, unable to hang onto the fiendish device. He fell back against the hard stretcher.

"Done!" Ben hissed triumphantly. But—"shit." The super-soldier dropped to his knees beside the stretcher, hand clenched to his waist.

"Ben?"

"I'm…all right," Ben gasped. "Just give me a moment."

Ben didn't sound all right. Ben sounded like a man in mortal agony. Ben sounded like a man who had been gut-shot and was hemorrhaging. Jesse wished he had enough energy to get up and look. Great. My head and his gut. Together we'll make a wonderful corpse.

Ben lifted his head, listening. "Crap! Windom's coming back. I can't let him see me like this." The super-soldier looked swiftly around. There was nothing, no place to hide. Windom had stuffed the place full of equipment. "Stall him, Jesse, for both our sakes! I'll get you out of here, I swear!"

Stall him? Stall Windom? Was Ben out of his mind? Jesse didn't have enough life left in him to lift one arm, and Windom was coming back to torture the rest of that life away, and Ben wanted Jesse to stall him? Passing out again sounded like a very reasonable alternative to this insanity.

Windom entered the clinic, letting the door swing closed behind him. He was alone. His eyes glittered to see Jesse awake. "Mr. Kilmartin. I see that you're ready for me."

Stall him. How the hell do I do that? Jesse could no longer see Ben, but he wasn't about to say that Ben had magically disappeared. Jesse's vision was seriously compromised by the lack of blood flow to his brain, and every photon seeping into his eyeballs was swimming around as if Lexa were up to some weird chromatic trick. Stall him. "Go to hell."

Windom chuckled. "Come, come, Mr. Kilmartin. Another session or two, and I'll have what I need. Look, she's already reappearing." Windom caressed the outside of the over-sized fish tank, a lover waiting for the light of his life to reappear. Either it was a figment of Jesse's already tortured imagination, or a psychedelic arm swirled by the glass plate. Jesse wasn't certain which was worse.

Windom looked around. "Where is that boy? They said Sutter was down here. I need him. I need them both." He tapped on an intercom, summoning help. "Find the Sutters. I need them both in the lab. I'm ready to begin."

Dr. Sutter was the first to arrive. She took one look, and her face fell, although she quickly rearranged her features to impassivity. "You said eight hours, Abner. It's only been six."

"And you said that you'd given him narcotics, Bea. You lied." Windom wagged his finger at her. "You can't protect him, Bea. You can't have it both ways. Either this mutant, or your son. I need his spinal fluid to restore my wife, and I will have it with or without your cooperation."

"Don't do this, Abner." Bea Sutter was losing the battle, and they both knew it. "Don't hurt him any more. I'm begging you! This is inhuman! Jesse saved my son's life! Don't make me hurt him!"

"Where is that boy of yours, Bea?" Windom wasn't really speaking to her any longer. He tapped again on his intercom. "I'm not waiting any longer. Three of you, get in here to help me move the mutant." He paused, puzzled. "How did you get the inhibitor off, Mr. Kilmartin?"

Can I pretend to be unconscious again?

"I'll have to keep a closer eye on you," Dr. Windom decided. "Put the inhibitor back on him, then get him into the chair. We have work to do."

Jesse let them, not that he had any choice. Windom's men buckled him into the fiendish chair, positioning him so that the needle for withdrawing the sample of his spinal fluid could be easily placed. He tried not to think of what was ahead. Something would happen to stop this. Mutant X would burst in through the door. Ben Sutter hadn't been as bad off as Jesse thought, and the super-soldier, in gratitude for Jesse's pulling the explosive device from his gut, would blast an opening in the wall and stop Abner Windom before Dr. Sutter was forced to insert another harpoon into his back and draw the life out of him.

None of that happened. All Jesse had was Beatrice Sutter.

"No," she said quietly. "Abner, I can't do this. I can't go through this again, listening to Jesse scream. I won't."

"Be careful, Bea. I won't put up with your whining for much longer.Insert the needle into his spinal canal."

"No, Abner." Jesse wished that he could turn his head to look. It sounded as if Beatrice Sutter had straightened herself up. As if she'd grown a backbone. "I can't stop you, but I won't participate in this travesty. You'll have to do it by yourself."

"Fine." Windom waved to his men. "Put her into the cell where I keep Kilmartin. You're so concerned about him, Bea, you can care for him when I'm finished. That should satisfy you; keep him from dying too soon. And you, there: fetch my son. I need his help."

Then it was Jesse's turn. Windom turned to consider the problem. "I need your adrenaline," he mused. "How to get it? How to get it if I cannot stimulate him empathically?" He looked around the clinic, hunting for a solution. His gaze lit upon something outside of Jesse's line of sight, and he brightened. "Yes, of course. The old standby's always work the best. This should produce an excellent quality of adrenaline for harvesting." He turned back to Jesse, his eyes glittering with fervor. "A favorite for interrogation chambers, I'm told. Have you ever stuck your finger in an electrical outlet?"

No, but I've been on the receiving end of an elemental who I'd really like to see get his butt-kicking ass down here.

"We'll see if we can get what we need using this." Windom held up a handful of wires, and carefully began tacking electrodes to Jesse's chest. "You, there. Hook this up to the generator over there. The one with the dial; I'll want to keep him at a constant rate of discomfort for optimum results. After all, we can't have him passing out too soon."

Yes, we can. The sooner, the better. Guys, where are you?

Shalimar needed a shower. Lexa needed a shower, too, after jogging the five miles back to the Windom facility. They needed food and water, they needed rest—but even more, they needed answers. And until those answers arrived, neither one was in the mood for anything else.

There were guards at the gate; those guards sensibly let the pair through without so much as a challenge, recognizing them as guests of the Windoms. Good thing, too, for Lexa would have been happy to torch the guard house around them as soon as one of them opened their mouth to say, "good morning."

They trotted down the main drive to the facility itself, aiming for the main entrance and more than ready to blast the doors wide open at the first sign of resistance. They wanted answers, and they wanted them now: where was Jesse Kilmartin?

Lexa reached out to open the door. Shalimar stopped her. "Wait."

"What?"

"Ben."

"Big old, about-to-be-cut-down-to-size Ben?"

"The very one." Shalimar pointed. "Over there. In those trees."

"What's he doing there?" Lexa started to ask before realizing that she really didn't care. What she cared about was burning the answers out of the super-soldier, and she really didn't care about anything else.

"Just remember, we need him alive," Shalimar hissed. "He's as fast as I am, and as powerful. Don't get caught in a bear hug. He's tough."

"Aren't I supposed to be reminding you of that, feral? Take left; I'll circle right."

Ben seemed oblivious to their presence, leaning against a tree and apparently involved in contemplating the universe. Lexa wished that she had Shalimar's powers, that she could anticipate which way the super-soldier was going to jump. For she couldn't imagine that they would catch him unaware. That simply couldn't happen. Ben Sutter was a genetically-engineered soldier with the senses of a feral and the strength of five men. He would be one of the few people alive fast enough to dodge her laser blasts, not because he was faster than light but because he would be able to anticipate Lexa's every move and react even before she summoned the photons to her fingers. He was a very dangerous opponent.

But so am I.

Shalimar made the first move. Leaping down from her perch in a tree high above, she whirled into the super-soldier, taking him to the ground. Round one: Shalimar. Both jumped to their feet, but Shalimar was quicker. She whipped out one leg in a vicious back kick that landed center stage, one inch above the belt. Ben folded.

Lexa gaped. Ben, taken out by a single blow? Ben, the super-soldier, gasping for breath from a lying position on the cold forest floor? Ben, heaving up blood and guts—crap. The man was seriously hurting.

Shalimar didn't care. "You reek of Jesse's scent!" she hissed. "Where is he?" She grabbed Ben by the shirt, lifting him up off of the ground and slamming into the tree trunk he had just been leaning against. Her golden eyes shot daggers. "Where is he?"

Ben only groaned, not making an effort to defend himself. He wrapped his arms around his belly, in obvious pain.

"Where is he?" Shalimar was ready to shriek.

"Shal, stop. Look at him," Lexa commanded. "Ben, what the hell is going on? Where's Jesse?"

Ben summoned the effort to pull himself together. "Windom's got him. Downstairs, in his special clinic. He's got Mother, too. You have to hurry."

"Got that part right," Lexa muttered dryly. "You?"

A ghost of a smile passed over Ben's lips. "Jesse just saved my hide, too," he admitted, wiping a smear of blood from his lips. He winced. "Shal, I think you just undid the work of the last two hours. Gonna take me a while to be able to stand up. Windom's not gonna like it."

"There are a whole bunch of things that Windom isn't going to like," Lexa told him, "starting with getting Jesse out of there. Get up, Sutter. You're going first."

"Walking isn't such a good idea right now—"

"Breathing won't work too well if you don't get those pole-sized tree trunks moving," Shalimar snarled. "Move."

"Watch out." Two minutes of heaving up blood, and Ben was ready to go, if not especially steady on his feet. That, to Lexa's way of thinking, wasn't a bad thing. A damaged Ben was a super-soldier who was easier to control.

But—"Who did this to you?"

"Jesse." Ben coughed, wiped away another smear of blood.

"Good for him. You beating up on moleculars now? Particularly ones who've saved your life in the past?"

"Lexa, Shal, you've got it all wrong."

"Enlighten me." Lexa gave his arm a twist.

Ben yelped obligingly. "Dammit, Lexa, I'm trying to help the man! Lay off, will you?"

"Enlighten me," Lexa repeated with a little more ice in her tones.

"I think I'd better sit down." Ben gingerly replaced himself onto the ground, arms still wrapped around his belly. The man really did look bad, Lexa had to admit. This was one mutant super-soldier that she'd be able to control with ease. And right now, they needed intel. Assuming that Ben would tell the truth. He spat another wad of blood away. "I need to start at the beginning."

"The short version," Shalimar warned him. "I never did make it through War and Peace."

Ben groaned. "Don't remind me. I have a paper due on Tolstoy next Wednesday."

"Keep dawdling, and you won't have to worry about it. You'll be dead," Lexa observed.

Ben took the hint. "Abner Windom is a mutant himself, an empath."

"Got that. Talked to Arrigo. The whole family is mutant. Got great genes, Windom is a proud papa. Keep going," Lexa told him.

"Right. Windom has always believed in eugenics, breeding for the ultimate perfection of the genome—"

"Perfect man, perfect living through controlled breeding. Hurry it up, before I hurt you again."

Ben winced. "He married a molecular. He was going for the perfect set of genes."

"Didn't get too far," Lexa observed. "Treo and Mandi are not my idea of great kids. Mutant or otherwise. Spoiled brats."

"Don't underestimate them," Ben warned. "You know how difficult it is to beat Jesse in full defensive mode. Treo is just as tough. Water is his specialty, all three phases: water, ice, and steam. Try to hit a fog bank. Try getting slammed by a ten foot icicle. Believe me, you'll know you've been in a fight."

"And Amanda?"

Ben snorted. "What do you think is going on with Brennan right now? She's got him reeled in like a lap dog, and she's not even trying. She's a powerful empath, for all that she can't receive."

Shalimar sniffed, unimpressed. Lexa didn't envy Brennan. The elemental would be a long time in living this one down, no matter how powerful the sixteen year old empath was. Nothing like a woman scorned. "Go on."

"Windom kept trying experiments on his wife, trying for the ultimate molecular, whatever that would be. He went a little too far: she dissipated."

"Dissipated?"

"Yes. As in, turned into a cloud of molecules and tried to float away into nothing. Windom just barely managed to get all the particles into a giant tank. I think he grabbed a vacuum of some sort and sucked up all the molecules. He's been searching for a way to get her back into one piece ever since. That was more than five years ago."

"And he thinks that Jesse can do this," Lexa said calmly, keeping her emotions under control. We need this intel to get Jesse out. Going in blasting will only get him—and us—killed. "Why doesn't he use Treo? The kid's a molecular, too, and more convenient."

"Both Treo and Mandi are incomplete," Ben answered. "Genetically speaking, both of them are a disappointment to their father. Treo is not a complete molecular. He can only do water; in fact, there was some speculation that he's actually a water elemental. Windom says that the chromosomes don't support the theory, but that kind of stuff is beyond me and Mother only says that it would take too much time for her to review the data to come a conclusion. Mandi is a projecting empath only, like her father. Both can project emotion, but can't receive."

"And Mandi projects a powerful come-hither look," Shalimar mused, her golden eyes slitted. "She projected it right at Brennan."

"It's not under her complete control," Ben offered weakly. "There are ways around it. She can't affect women."

"Not that kind of girl, is she?" Lexa asked dryly. "How fortunate for the rest of us. Does she have her hooks into you, too?"

So help him, Ben blushed. In pain, throwing up blood, lying on the ground confessing his sins to two fellow mutants, and he still managed to redden enough to glow in the dark.

"I'll take that as a bright and shining yes." Lexa heaved a sigh. "Two years of intelligent adulthood, Sutter, and already you've been sucked in by jailbait. Way to go, soldier."

"It wasn't—"

"Jesse," Shalimar reminded him with a shove. Ben grunted, winced. "Layout of the lab. Booby traps."

"It's on the lowest level," Ben replied obediently, "below the rest of the lab floors. Only Windom himself goes there, along with Mother and any additional help he needs. He grabs a body when he needs another hand, and tells them what to do. It's by invitation only."

"And you're invited?"

"Sometimes. Not often. Windom sampled my DNA and determined that I couldn't help him in his quest to restore his wife. He's kept me around as head of Security, while I'm not in school. It's Mother that he uses now, another researcher. Mother has a great deal of expertise with moleculars, especially since she and Dr. Kane came up with the technique that restored my intelligence. Dr. Windom has been using that knowledge. He's made a lot of progress with Mother, or so he says."

"Your level of intelligence is up for debate," Lexa muttered. "You're telling me that you stuck around here because Windom offered you a job with tuition reimbursement? That's all?"

Ben flushed again, this time more shame-facedly. "Not all. We needed a place to hide. The Dominion was after us as well, although lately they've been preoccupied with other issues. Windom gave us protection. It was getting more and more difficult to find a place where I could hide Mother and still allow her research to continue. At first, this seemed ideal."

"At first?" Shalimar pounced on the wording.

"Yeah." Ben sighed. "We'd been here about two months or so, and were talking about leaving. Mother and Dr. Windom weren't getting along too well any longer, and it was affecting my grades. I got my first B plus, in Ancient Celtic Literature, if you can believe it!"

"How appalling," Lexa put in with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

"For a guy who was carrying a 4.0 GPA, it was a wake-up call," Ben told her seriously.

"So what happened?"

"The Dominion happened," Ben said. "They tried to force Dr. Windom to give them his research. He refused, they attacked, we fought back."

"And—?"

Ben winced again. "I took one in the gut. It was a close thing; Windom saved my life. Mother was trapped in one of the upstairs labs. I wouldn't be living today if he hadn't stitched me back together."

"But—?"

"He put in a little insurance." Ben was clearly uncomfortable. "A little explosive device, to be exact. One where he held the trigger. A hold over both Mother's and my heads. It was a real eye-opener for us both."

"So? Your mother's a doctor. Windom put it in, she could take it out."

Ben shook his head. "Dr. Windom kept track of the supplies. Mother needed equipment, scalpels and anesthesia. We kept looking for an opportunity. We hadn't found it yet."

"And now?" Lexa thought she could see where this was going. And she also thought she saw color returning to Ben's face. Super-soldier boy heals fast. Maybe even faster than a feral. How convenient for the armed forces of the world.

"Jesse," Ben said grimly. "In order to get him out of there, I need to be in a position where Windom can't blow me up with a flick of a switch." He stared Lexa straight in the face. "Jesse took that device out of my gut. Windom doesn't hold that over me any more."

But Shalimar wasn't about to cut him any slack. "So why is Jesse still there?"

Ben winced, but to Lexa's eyes it didn't look as painful as previously. "Because he accidentally ripped out a chunk of intestine along with the explosives. I barely got myself out of the clinic without Windom catching me. I was about to go back when I got jumped by a couple of mutants with long hair and an attitude."

"So you say," Lexa challenged him.

"So I say." Ben didn't give an inch on this topic. "Believe what you want, Lexa, but Jesse saved my life, back before he ever knew you existed. Without him, I'd still be a drooling idiot asking for a bedtime story with fire engines in it." He held up his hands to show that he wasn't hiding anything, but as he rose it was clear that the mutant power to heal was in full force in the super-soldier. Lexa automatically felt for the photons at her fingertips. Ben was big! "I'm going back now to break him out. I have a debt to pay. Coming with?"

Lexa scowled. Could she trust this big lug? Dare she?

But Shalimar held out her hand to him. "C'mon, Ben. We've got a molecular to rescue."