Interlude: The Arizona Desert

Sitting in a darkened room, watching reports on a bank of televisions in front of him, Erik Lensherr carefully considered his options. It had taken several days after the incident at Alkali Lake for him to gather enough courage to speak to Charles, a conversation that had not gone as well as he might have hoped. In fact, he had contacted his old friend in order to ask him what his involvement was in the dramatic address the late President had given the day after the events at Alkali Lake, to which Charles had replied with a cool "I showed him the truth. The rest is up to him." Erik had feared he had irreparably damaged his relationship with the telepath and he wouldn't be wrong. Neither man could forget the years they'd spent working together for the good of all mutants, but there are some things that just can't be forgiven. Being willing to sacrifice a little girl he had no connection to was one thing. Being willing to sacrifice his oldest friend was something else entirely and he'd often thought, after the fact, if he'd simply gone too far.

After the late President's surprising announcement that the government was going to begin working with the mutant community to bridge the gap between them, Erik had adopted a "wait and see" attitude. He knew that if anyone could convince the world that mutants were not a threat, it would be his old friend. It was true that in the months that followed, mutants were enjoying a new level of tolerance on many levels, although there would always be individuals who refused to accept them. Those people were also intolerant of other races, religions or anything they thought was "different", so it didn't surprise him really. Still, it looked like Charles may have been right after all and Erik was secretly glad for it.

Then, a few short weeks ago, both the President and Vice President had been killed and the man who was sworn in was the late President's polar opposite. In the space of a few days, the few freedoms that mutants had been enjoying were stripped away. Mutant hysteria was at an all-time high and with this latest announcement about mutants in the military, Erik was once again back where he started. He knew it was only a matter of time before the current government started rounding the mutants up and sending them to designated areas, then work camps, all for the "greater good". Finally, mutants would be herded into remote areas and exterminated. It angered him to think that Wolverine might be the only mutant that would survive this new holocaust, his healing factor making him well nigh invulnerable. As long as he'd been around, faking his own death wouldn't be a problem for him. Much as he hated to admit it, Wolverine might just be the one thing that could save mutantkind.

But that was something to worry about in the future. For the present, he needed information and there was only one person who could get it for him. Turning in his chair, he leveled his gaze on the only other person in the room and smiled. She was strikingly beautiful, her red hair swept back from her forehead, her yellow eyes unblinking. She was naked, with scales covering her in strategic spots. No one ever really knew if the scales were an actual part of her skin or something she affected for the sake of decorum. She never wore clothing; when she needed it, she just shifted her form to affect it. "Mystique, I have a job for you."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter 13

(Angela)

Near the end of March, Hank called Logan and me down to his lab for a meeting. Naturally, we were both worried that it had to do with the baby, that he or Dr. Owens had discovered some problem or other. In the end, we were only half right.

He ushered us into his office and got us settled down in the comfy chairs in front of his desk. "I know you two are very busy and I also have a class to teach, but I think it can wait." He said as he reached for a file on his desk. "Now, if you recall, you came to me a couple weeks ago with a question about how mutations are inherited."

I nodded. "Yeah, we did. I don't know why I never thought about it, but the last time I had true dreams, I was pregnant with my daughter and she turned out to have precognition."

"And you've never had true dreams otherwise?"

"No, nothing even close. I used to get strong feelings of…well, doom is the only way to put it, before our missions that turned out to be more difficult than others had been, but nothing specific." I laughed bitterly. "But hell, when you do the stuff we did, there usually was doom involved, even if it wasn't our own."

Hank chuckled and removed his glasses. "I suppose that's one way to put it." He opened the file and took up a pen. "Now, before I give you my opinion, there are few questions I would like to put to the two of you." I looked at Logan and he shrugged, then we both nodded. "Excellent. Now, Logan, I know that your memories are quite new to you, but what do you remember of your family?"

"Can't tell you too much, really." He said. "I had a brother who died when I was really young. Found out later he must have had the same mutations as me."

"I see." Hank said, scribbling in the file. "What about your parents? Grandparents?"

"Didn't see much of my mother. She was kinda crazy, I think. My father didn't have any mutations I know of, if he really was my father." He furrowed his brow in concentration. "Now, if Tom Logan was my real father, he was just an asshole an' a drunk. My grandfather was just an asshole."

"So we have no way to be certain about possible gifts?" Logan nodded and Hank made more notes before turning to me. "Angela? What about your family?"

"Well, I don't know if anyone was psychic or anything," I said, "but Mother always knew where anything was, no matter where it got lost. Father never got sick a day of his life." I rubbed my forehead, thinking hard. It had been so long since I thought about my family and calling up the memories was harder than I thought it would be. "I remember Mother telling me that her grandmother always knew what the weather was going to do, like if it was going to hail to cover the beans or if there was a blizzard coming to get more firewood inside."

"Interesting. Anything else?"

I wracked my brain, but nothing else came out, so I shook my head. "No, that's about it."

"So doc, whattaya thinkin' here?" Logan asked.

Hank finished up his notes and closed the file. "In genetics, different traits are passed on in a variety of ways. For example, hair and eye color are generally inherited from one parent or the other. Other traits have been known to skip a generation." He sat down behind his desk and leaned forward with his hands clasped. "I will admit that this is actually new territory for me. I have never before had the opportunity to observe the gestation of a child that is the product of two mutant parents. While I am certain that you are not the first mutant couple to have a child, you are the first couple I know personally. With the evidence I do have, it is my opinion that there is a psychic mutation in Angela's family that seems to skip a generation."

"That's not very definitive, Blue." I said. "And it doesn't explain the dreams."

"On the contrary, my dear. As I said before, I don't have extensive experience with the children of two mutants. But again, it is my opinion that what happened to you before and is happening to you now is the result of a psychic mutation your child will most likely posses. As his brain develops, the synapses will begin to fire. When they fire in the area that controls the mutation, it is altogether possible that he is receiving visions of things to come. However, since he is not yet born, he lacks the necessary language, visual and auditory information to interpret these visions. Thus, he pulls that which is appropriate from your own memories, which in turn sparks the memory in your own mind, even if it's something you have not thought about personally in a very long time."

"I thought mutations didn't come out til puberty." Logan stated. "Why would this be happenin' now?"

"Again, I point out that I've never been in this position before. It could be a by-product of cerebral development and the actual mutation will not manifest until puberty. Or perhaps he'll exhibit his mutations from birth. This is very new ground for me."

I chewed on my lip as I thought about what he'd told me. On the one hand, it was fascinating to think that my child was probably going to be psychic. On the other, I was deeply fearful that I would wind up with more horrible dreams based on stuff I'd already been through. And there was something else as well. "Hank, do you think…will he remember these visions?"

"It's very unlikely. Although there have been a few cases in those with eidetic memory who claim to remember everything from birth, I have not seen enough evidence to support this."

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and smiled. "Thanks Blue, for everything."

"It was my pleasure, my dear. Now, if you'll excuse me. I have to get to class before the children decide to attempt dissecting their frogs without me." He stood up and waved us out of his office before heading to his biology class. I leaned against the wall for a moment, relieved beyond measure now that I understood what was going on.

"Well, I'm glad we got that figured out." Logan said, smiling.

"Yeah, me too." I replied and pulled him down for a kiss. "Of course, it gives us new things to worry about after he's born…"

"Nah, he'll be fine. He'll have Chuck to teach him everythin' he'll need to know."

"True." I kissed him again, then pulled away with a smirk. "See Logan? I told you I wasn't psychic!"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Nightmares were abundant at the mansion, almost no one able to sleep an entire night without waking up from the torment of their own inner fears. The youngest children were the worst, especially the newer ones who were trickling in one and two at a time from all over the country. Many of them were dropped off by tearful parents who'd had their children tested at birth and had been simply waiting to see if the mutation would manifest or lay dormant. Needless to say, we had a rash of prematurely awakened gifts due to the emotional stress the poor babies were under. Fortunately, the senior students rose to the challenge admirably and helped them to understand what was happening to them and to gain some control over their powers. Some of the seniors were so good at it, we assigned them permanently to teach the younger students the use of their powers.

Logan's nightmares returned with a vengeance, only with variations of the same theme. Some nights, it was him in the tank, others it was me. On occasion it was someone like Rogue or Chasca. The worst was when he dreamed it was an infant and he knew it was our baby in there. He woke up from those in such a state that he was almost inconsolable. He would sit there and shake for hours before I could calm him enough to go back to bed. On those days, we had Kyro take over the defense class so Logan could rest.

March gave way to April, but the optimism that usually accompanies spring was dampened by the ongoing turmoil in the nation. Thanks to Buzz, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters was still seen as no more than a prep school. He'd long ago hacked into Stryker's old server and systematically found every copy of his report about the "mutant training facility" and purged them. Charles had long ago stolen the only hard copy that had ever existed of it, along with the photographs. And since everyone that had been a part of the invasion of the school almost exactly a year before had been killed either during the invasion or later at Alkali Lake, there was no one left to tell the new President about us. For the time being, the school was still the only safe place in the country to be a mutant.

The funny thing was, Stryker was ultimately correct in his assessment. Sure, we still held classes and taught the kids in academic subjects, but we were also training a veritable army. As time went on, it became more and more obvious that Magneto had been more right than anyone ever wanted to admit out loud. It was because of this that the teams were training harder than ever and even those that weren't officially on a team were putting more effort into it. We knew that he would make a move sooner or later and we needed to be ready for it. I secretly hoped that if the country could see the X-Men defending normal humans from Magneto that they would start to question the decisions made by the President. Otherwise, I didn't give mutants a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the next two and a half years under this guy.

The snow finally started to melt near the end of April and I entered my twenty-sixth week of pregnancy. I felt like I was as big as a house and I made good on the promise I made all those months ago at the cabin. Storm and I went into the city for some baby shopping and I found a boutique that did customized maternity wear. I came out with several tops with different things printed on them. I had the promised "Touch my stomach and die" as well as the "I'm fine, don't ask" one. Added to those were "My baby daddy can kick your baby daddy's ass", "Future tyrant, don't piss me off" and "Zero to bitch if you try to give me advice", amongst others. Storm wasn't sure that Charles would be happy with me if I tried wearing them to teach classes and insisted I buy at least a few that didn't have smart assed sayings on them, so I bought couple that had cutesy pictures on them like butterflies and fairies. I am pleased to say that Storm was wrong and I never had to wear those.

Little Wolvie was practicing to be a soccer player and had also discovered where my bladder was. It was now impossible for me to go for more than thirty minutes at a stretch before he would start kicking me and I'd all but run to the nearest bathroom. The students took it all in stride with no comments, although Sam liked to give me a good-natured ribbing about it every once in a while. Logan on the other hand was thrilled with all the moving going on in there. He now slept firmly curled around us with his hand on my belly. I think he was afraid he might miss something, I don't know for sure, but I never complained. This whole experience had been so good for him. He scowled less, smiled more and even went whole days without picking on Scott. The last was a minor miracle in itself, considering Scott's courtship of Sarah.

He spent the first week after she arrived with Peter and Alex trying to figure out if she was involved with either of them. I finally got so exasperated with him that I simply asked her outright. When the answer came back "no", he spent the next week trying to figure out if she was involved with ANYONE. Sam beat me to the punch on that one, which was also a "no". So, taking a page from the Samuel Levison Handbook on Courtship, he started by leaving a dozen pink roses outside her bedroom door one morning so they'd be the first thing she saw when she opened the door. However, he included a note asking her to join him for breakfast, which she did. In the space of two weeks, it was painfully obvious that he was deeply smitten with her and she had it just as bad for him. Naturally, he was still holding back a little, probably out of a sense of misplaced guilt over Jean's memory. Ultimately, it was Logan who told Scott he was being an idiot and that moving on was perfectly ok. It made sense, since there was no one else in the mansion that had same feelings for Jean. At any rate, I was happy for Scott.

Our new guests were quite a mixture. Sarah was in her late twenties and had planned on being career military until the President's announcement. When faced with being dishonorably discharged for being a mutant, she instead chose to go AWOL. She'd been sneaking out of her barracks when she ran into Alex doing the same thing. He told her about the school and offered to take her with him, which she accepted. Four days later, they ran into Peter at a diner when they stopped for a quick lunch. After comparing notes, they invited him to come with them, seeing there would be safety in numbers. They only had one close call on the entire trip out here, which they managed to avoid thanks to Peter's mutation. He could turn himself and anything he touched invisible, a talent that would definitely come in handy. He was still visible to such things as infrared and electronic surveillance, but they'd only needed to fool the human eye.

Sarah's mutation was one none of us had ever encountered before. By heritage, she was one-eighth Native American and she had the most beautiful straight black hair to show for it. It was also part of her heritage that she not cut her hair unless someone close to her died, so she'd been able to keep it long even in the military due to religious reasons. This was fortunate, because her hair was prehensile. I'm still not sure how it works, if it's a mental power or if her hair is like a living organism, but she could do everything from make it braid itself or coil itself into a bun to make it stand straight on end. That might not seem impressive, but her hair was about thirty inches long and she could use it to whip an opponent or, when it was standing straight out, use it to pierce flesh. The look on Logan's face the first time she did that in the Danger Room was absolutely priceless. I wasn't there to see it when it happened, but Rogue brought me the video capture later and I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe.

Alex's mutation was in the same category as his brothers, in that he absorbed ambient energy (such as sunlight) and could project it outward from his body or in focused bursts from his hands. In an interesting twist, Scott and Alex discovered that they're immune to each other's powers. I would like to say it was a discovery that was made accidentally, but about four days after Scott started his wooing of the lovely Sarah, Alex made a snide comment about it and they wound up in a knock-down, drag-out fight that even had me gaping in astonishment. The two of them tried to blast each other simultaneously and when nothing happened, they immediately took off for the Danger Room for "further testing". Hank swore that was true, but I still think it was man talk for "fight in a setting where we can't hurt anyone else". Logan even offered to kick both their asses, but Scott just glared and Alex declined when he saw the claws.

At least there was some good news on the political front. The President was still trying to pressure Congress into passing the Mutant Registration Act, but there was little progress on that front. No matter who he thought he was, he was still bound by the political process and if the thing didn't make it out of Congress, it would never get passed. Research into the X gene was at an all time high and another colleague of Charles', a Dr. Moira MacTaggart in Scotland, was at the forefront of it. What the world at large didn't know was that she had a son whose mutation was so out of control that he had to be kept in isolation in a forced coma. He was also hopelessly psychotic, which only made it worse. She'd originally started her research as a means to cure him, although it has never been clear to me if she wanted to cure his mutation or his psychosis.

At any rate, she was considered the top expert on the X gene and scientists from all over the world were consulting with her on a daily basis. It was her stance that being born a mutant was no different than being born blond or with Tourette's. The biggest problems she had to face were the scientists who truly believed that mutation was nothing more than a disease and they were using her research to try and prove that. I won't deny that there are some mutations that are harder to live with than others (Rogue's inability to touch, for example), but calling it a disease was just plain wrong. I'm no scientist, but even I know that in order for something to qualify as a disease, it has to present very clear and predictable symptoms and progression. Mutation is so widely varied and can manifest at any age from birth to adulthood that it in no way qualified as a disease no matter what anyone wanted to believe. What pissed me off the most was that these men and women couldn't find a cure for things like certain cancers, which kill more people than mutants ever have, yet they wanted to find a way to cure mutation. I didn't want to kill them over it, but a good solid beating sounded better every day.

Buzz and Sage were still working on the Sentinel problem every day, analyzing data as it came in from his friends all over the world. Governments all over the world would freak completely if they knew how easy it was for them to hack into their systems. Had anyone stopped to think about it, they would have realized that hacker attacks were at an all-time low during this period, mostly because the best of them were hard at work helping us out. Instead, the software giants simply congratulated themselves for finally coming up with "uncrackable" protection software. In the world the rest of us live in, hackers had simply stopped gloating when they managed to break into a supposedly secure system. So, the information kept coming in a steady trickle, each bit analyzed and filed away in the secure (i.e. offline) central computer Buzz had purchased specifically for the project. With Sage there to assist, the project was going even faster. However, no one had been able to find anything about the current location of the Master Mold and Buzz suspected that all of that was either kept strictly on hard copy or, even worse, was only known to a few select people and had never been put down in any retrievable format. The few leads he'd had in the past couple of months had come to nothing and he was frustrated beyond words. At least he still had Jubilee, who kept him smiling in his off hours.

Also by the end of April, we rounded out Delta team by advancing a boy named Julio Richter, code name Rictor. He had the ability to release seismic energy through his hands, with effects ranging from breaking a glass to earthquakes. We didn't really have a way to gauge how strong his power was, simply because we didn't want to go around causing random seismic events for the sake of knowledge. But he was a good kid and had pretty tight control over his gift, so we felt confident that he'd be a good addition to the team. The rest of Gamma team was informed that they'd have to wait until the next school year to have a chance to advance, unless they wanted to train in the summer months as well. Since most of the rest were permanent residents at the mansion, the only exception being Sam Guthrie, who I always called by his code name "Cannonball" to avoid confusion, they readily agreed. We had more students begging to be allowed on Gamma team every day, but the majority of them were too young and we had to turn them down. It pained Logan and I to do so, but we didn't feel it was right to ask anyone under fourteen to fight in a war. We still had reservations about some of the kids on Beta and Delta as it was, but we were quickly running out of options. Whether we liked it or not, war was on the horizon. All we could do was hope to be ready for it.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On May first, Rogue, Storm, Kitty and Jubilee treated me to a surprise baby shower. I really didn't want to have one in the first place, what with all the horrible stuff that was happening in the world, but it did cheer me up a little bit in the end. Everyone on the staff had been invited along with Beta team and the senior students. By the end of the day, I had everything this baby would ever need for the first four years of its life. The most touching gift by far was a crib from the Professor, which he said has been in his family for generations. The most amusing was a pair of rag dolls that Kitty had made that bore a striking resemblance to me and Logan. The largest gift was a new suite of rooms for me, Logan and the baby that had a connecting door to the nursery. I tried to turn it down, stating that there were bound to be families coming to the mansion sooner or later who would need the space more, but Storm and the Professor wouldn't hear it. The nursery came complete with a mini-fridge, since I was planning on breast-feeding and I'd need somewhere to store my milk in the event that I was called away for an emergency after the baby came. The rest of Alpha insisted that there would never be anything so urgent that it would take me away from the little one, but I was more realistic than that. Logan was just thrilled that he now had somewhere he could hide his beers closer to our room.

Of course, we couldn't have a high note without a low one coming right after. It was a couple weeks later and I'd been monitoring the security system, since Little Wolvie was a nightowl and I couldn't sleep anyway, when the computer in the corner gave a loud beeping sound. I jumped in my seat, having been mesmerized by the monitors in front of me that showed absolutely nothing. The computer in question was the one we used for all communications with our safe houses. Buzz had personally designed all of the software on it so that it was hack-proof, although Scott always liked to point out that Buzz himself was all the evidence anyone needed to show how hack-proof computers really weren't. Buzz simply ignored the statement and to date, we haven't had anyone succeed in an attempt to get into that system.

The computer gave another loud beep and I rolled my chair over to it. A red icon was blinking in the corner, an encircled X. My heart leapt into my throat when I clicked on it and quickly scanned the message that had been sent. A heartbeat later, I hit the alarm that would summon Alpha team to the office. Within two minutes, everyone was there.

"Angela, vhat's happened?" Kurt asked, suppressing a yawn.

I hit a couple keys and the message appeared on an oversized screen that took up about a third of one wall. "I just received this from one of the safe houses. It was triple-encoded and sent as urgent."

Red Riding Hood to Buzzkill, it began. Big Bad Wolf is here. Repeat, Big Bad Wolf is here. Send the woodsman 911. Will try to hold off until he gets here.

We used fairy tale characters for all of our people in charge of the safe houses. Red Riding Hood was the person in charge of the one near Des Moines, Iowa, which was actually one of the smaller ones. "No time for uniforms, get your asses out of here!" I barked and only Logan hesitated and that just long enough to give me a quick kiss. All told, it only took about three minutes from when I hit the alarm to when the jet took off. If Storm took it sub-orbital, she could get there in less than half an hour. I still wished I could have gone with them.

A few seconds after I heard them leave, I hit another key on the computer that would bring Beta team to the office. They were already awake, having heard the jet and it took them less time to get down there. I outlined the situation for them before I sent them to suit up and patrol the grounds. I had Alpha team on the main radio, so I kept Beta on the earpiece coms we use on missions. Not surprisingly, Delta team showed up a few minutes later, Buzz hot on their heels.

"What's the situation?" Sage asked without preamble.

I repeated my story for the third time and she took a seat at another terminal. Buzz went to the safe house machine (nicknamed "Fairy Godmother") and tried to raise the house that way. His message bounced back a few seconds later and he cursed softly under his breath.

"What's wrong?" I asked, a sinking feeling in my gut.

"Messages won't go through, which means their computer is offline." He scratched his head and went to another computer. He typed rapidly, calling up some kind of schematic and cursed again. "Damn it, they've cut power to a whole city block."

"Who's 'they'?" Warren asked.

"Fucked if I know." He said and kept typing.

"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to keep up.

"Seeing if I can go around whatever they did and restore power, but it's not working." He typed in more commands and cursed. "They must have cut a line, I can't get it back on through the power company. Damn it!" He slapped the desk and I jumped in my seat. I've known Buzz for a long time and this was the first time I'd ever seen him actually angry. He sat back and frowned at the screen before typing in another series of commands. Before I could see what he was looking at, Totem spoke in my earpiece. "Beta leader to base."

"Beta leader, report." I said, turning my back on Buzz.

"All clear." He said. "Should we return to base?"

"Negative. Stay on alert until Alpha team returns or I say otherwise."

"Roger that. Beta leader out."

I turned back to Buzz, but he quickly closed the screen he'd been looking at. "Hey, what was that?" I asked.

He turned to me, pale and shaking. "You don't want to know." He replied.

"What? Why not?" Before he had a chance to answer, Logan's voice came over the main radio.

"Alpha to base, come in." He said and I could hear the barely controlled rage in his voice.

"This is base, report." I replied even though something told me I wouldn't want to hear it.

"Arrived on scene half a minute ago." He growled then took a deep breath. "We were too late."

I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. "Survivors?"

"Negative." I heard him take another deep breath and for the first time I caught the sound of weeping in the background. "Situation jigsaw."

I clenched my jaw to keep from breaking down myself. "Rog-roger that." I stammered. "Was it our old friends from the Bad Old Days?"

"Negative. Never seen anythin' like this."

I nodded even though he couldn't see me. "Any clues?"

"None. We're comin' home."

"Roger. Base out." I cut the connection and turned to the others. "Well, you heard him." I looked at Buzz. "You saw it, didn't you? That's why you closed that screen so fast."

He nodded and swallowed hard. "You really didn't want to see that. Hell, I didn't want to see it. Now I can't un-see it."

"What is dis 'situation jigsaw'?" Remy asked, his red eyes wide. "We have not learned dat term in class."

"Just what it sounds like. It means they found the bodies in pieces."

"Sacre bleu!" He exclaimed. "Who would do a ting like dat?"

"I'm more afraid that it might be a 'what' and not a 'who' that we're dealing with."

"You mean the Sentinels." Sage stated and I nodded. She cursed softly and turned to her computer. "I don't see how! We haven't found the damn Master Mold anywhere!" She started typing and called up the files she and Buzz had compiled over the previous weeks. "Illegal weapon factories, hidden military bases, stuff like that in plenty. Hell, we even found Area 51. Thermal imaging hasn't helped and there's nowhere anything as big as that thing has to be could hide for long without disturbing the local area."

"Have you looked underwater? Polar regions? Deserts?" She nodded to every suggestion and I cursed. "In orbit?"

"Look for yourself." She said and I scanned the file again. "The damn thing isn't anywhere we can look with a satellite and that includes the moon."

"We're missing something here and I'll bet anything I own that it's right in front of us."

"Even your car?" Buzz piped up, looking a little excited.

"Except the car. And Logan." I replied as I went through the file. "Fuck, I used to be so good at this!"

"Don't beat yourself up." Sofia said, gripping my shoulder. "It's been a real long time since you had to be good at this."

"That's no excuse." I snapped and she jerked her hand away. I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. "I'm sorry. I'm just so damn frustrated!"

"I know." She whispered. "You'll get it figured out sooner or later."

"Should have been sooner." I muttered bitterly. "We could have saved lives if we'd…" I cut myself off. If there's one thing I had learned, it was to never fixate on what might have been. It's always best to focus on what you can do now and for that moment it was to send Delta back to bed. They grumbled and groaned, but eventually complied. I tried to get Buzz to go too, but he insisted on waiting for Jubilee and I reluctantly let him stay. About twenty minutes later I heard the jet making its final approach and Beta team came into the office. They reported that everything was quiet, so I sent them back to their beds as well and waited for Alpha.

They were a grim-faced lot as they filed back into the office and took seats. Piotr was all but carrying Kitty; it had been her sobs I'd caught over the radio. Logan came right to me, pulled me out of my seat and held me tight. "Darlin', it's a damn good thing you couldn't go." He whispered, his voice tight.

"Yeah, I heard." I replied. He pulled away to look at me and I gave him a weak smile. "You know Buzz and his skills. Had a satellite shot or something on his screen." Logan scowled and started to turn but I stopped him. "Don't worry, he closed it before I saw anything."

"Wish I'd closed it before I saw anything." Buzz grumbled. "How did you guys stand it?"

"Don't ask." Logan growled and sat down. I took my seat again and Scott launched into the rundown of what they found.

Storm had pushed the jet to sub-orbital and they'd gotten there in about twenty-five minutes. The mutants that had been living in that particular safe house were mostly children, but it was also one of the few that had more than one person who was AWOL from their respective military branches, a husband and wife team. The husband, a Brian Ford according to the underground files, had enhanced endurance as one of his mutations, so he'd been awake when the house was hit. He'd been the one who sent the message, for all the good that it did.

"Whatever it was that hit them, it was big." Scott said, still looking pale. "The house itself was in a little town just outside Des Moines, less than three thousand people in the whole place. By the time we got there, the house was obliterated, along with about two blocks to either side of it." He swallowed hard. "There wasn't anyone alive in all of that."

"You're sure?" I asked, a mixture of sorrow and rage warring inside me.

Logan nodded. "Yeah. We stuck around long enough for me to get a look around an' all I smelled was death." His fists were clenched in front of him and I could see the tips of his claws straining just beneath the skin between his knuckles. "I ain't wanted to kill somethin' this bad in a long time."

"There were babies in there!" Kitty cried suddenly, tears streaming down her face. "I was looking through the rubble, trying to find someone alive and I looked down and I thought it was a broken doll, but it wasn't!" She turned her face back into Piotr's chest, who wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair.

I closed my eyes and rubbed my stomach absently. Once I felt like I'd be able to speak without breaking down, I looked back up. "All right, this is over for now. We'll go over it in detail with the Professor tomorrow. Right now, we all need sleep."

"I don't think I'll ever sleep again." Jubilee said. "I'll take over in here for you."

"Thanks. I owe you one." She smiled weakly and I stood up. "We'll get whoever did this."

"Yes, we will." Scott said, his voice hard and it was that moment that he knew there was no turning back.

We were at war.

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AN: Well, tension is certainly building here, isn't it:) You might want to strap yourselves in and grab the handlebar, because this ride isn't getting any easier...Special thanks to Zac and Turiel Tincdaniel for beta reading and keeping me inspired...Extra Special thanks to DBK(tm) for his continued support and offers of some rather, um, creative bribes for his "next fix"...:) Super Special thanks to my readers for sticking with me this far...and Super Swanky Special thanks to the reviewers, sela103 and Inelutability for the last chapter...also Dee (MidLifeCrisis), who reviewed live over instant messenger...:) I had a 41st review, but FFN seems to have eaten it and i can't remember who it was...so, whoever you are, thanks for the review...:)

So, please click that little button marked "go" next to where it says "submit review"...all the cool kids are doing it!