Using her powers made Jean spaced out. That didn't generally go well with trying to give him directions to drive.
"No, it's still that way, straight on – agh, he's… I'm losing him. He's passing out. Come on, come on. Right. That right, there."
Scott started the turn slightly too late. In a car or on a motorcycle, he would have got away with it comfortably, but this thing was top heavy and hard to steer.
"Then that left, I think. He's… He's being pulled out of the car, he's too far gone to fight any more." If they were taking him from the car in to a chopper, they were in a whole heap of trouble. Scott put his foot down.
"No. Come on, come on. Turn right, there."
Scott turned and saw Storm bracing herself against the door out of the corner of his eye. He was doing his best.
"Stop." Jean said suddenly. Scott pulled over, looking around. This was just a normal suburban street. What was going on?
"Out." Jean said. All four of them got out of the van, Scott locked it behind them, then jogged a few paces to catch up with Jean. Not that many lights were still on in the houses, not many people were still up. Jean seemed to have a sense of where she was going. She turned sharply up a driveway, the porch light was on. A pair of legs was sticking out of the front door. They looked suspiciously like Logan's legs. A late middle-aged woman straightened up as they approached.
"Hi." She said. She looked terrified to have been seen, and that was Logan she was trying to drag in to the house. "This is… this is my best friend's husband. He's really drunk."
"Is he?" Scott asked. She nodded, smiling unconvincingly. "What's his wife's name?" The woman didn't answer, she was looking between Scott's visor and the little bit of blue skin showing under Kurt's hood. She looked almost frozen with fright. Jean was looking at him, asking permission. The Professor had tried to teach her a way to stun people briefly without doing lasting harm. She'd struggled to get the hang of it for years, but if she could hold back that much water and lift a jet, she could probably knock this woman down. But if she was a mutant too, they might have to act quickly. It was, of course, possible that this woman was Mystique, in which case she'd have some idea of what Jean was capable of, so would attack Jean the moment she moved forward. They'd just have to be ready for that.
Scott nodded. Jean stepped forward, spanning her hands, preparing herself. The woman took half a pace back "No, wait, what-" Jean raised a hand to the woman's head and the woman dropped as though Jean had clubbed her. Jean stooped and caught her before she fell on top of Logan.
Jean lifted a hand to the woman's neck. "She's okay. Someone take her." Storm and Scott stepped forward to pull the woman clear. Jean crouched by Logan's head. His hands were pulled up as though he'd been dragged by the wrists. "Logan?" If Logan reacted at all, Scott didn't hear him. "Logan, open your eyes."
"Jean-"
"He's alive,"
"Jean, let's just get them in the van. I don't want anyone calling the police on us. You and Storm take the woman, Kurt and I'll take Logan."
"I can do it." Jean said, stepping back through the door and extending her hands. Logan rose as though on an invisible board. Scott had never seen her do that before.
"Let's hope no one looks out the window." Storm said.
Jean set Logan down, as gently as she could, in the back of the van, the others came in with the woman a moment later.
"How long before she wakes up?" Scott asked, as he closed the doors.
"Minutes."
"Okay, let's put something over her eyes and tie her up then."
Jean didn't take that as an instruction. Someone else could do that. Her priority right now was Logan. She didn't like how shallow his breaths were. His pulses were okay, they weren't strong, but they were okay. Brain and breathing were her worries right now.
"Logan, open your eyes." She grabbed him by the jaw. Nothing. Okay, response to pain. She pinched him across the nail of his middle finger, as hard as she could. He twitched, but didn't properly pull away from her. She didn't like this. She pressed on his supraorbital fossa. Nothing. Glasgow Coma scale score of six. Fantastic. At least he was breathing and had a sensible heart rate, was this a Morgan's response? Last time she'd seen Logan show a Morgan's response, he'd been completely insensible to pain and he'd breathed slowly and deeply, not in irregular, shallow huffs, so possibly not.
"Scott, I need to get him to the infirmary."
"Right. Storm, you're helping Jean, Kurt, keep on her," He gestured to the woman and clambered over the seats to the front. "You need me to go slow?"
"I'd rather you went fast, but if I tell you to stop, stop."
"Okay."
"Why would you need..?" Kurt started.
"If he stops breathing." Jean said. She didn't think it was impossible right now.
"I know how this is going to sound," Scott said slowly, starting the engine, "but is it possible he's just drunk?"
Jean leaned forward and sniffed Logan's breath. He smelled of beer, but not that strongly. "I think I've got…" She reached for the road medical bag. She dug around for a moment, then found a roadside breathalyzer. Crude tool, but it would do.
"And then was being dragged off somewhere by her?" Storm asked, gesturing at the blonde woman. "Bit of a coincidence."
Jean put the breathalyzer tube in Logan's mouth and pinched his nose shut, then leant on his sternum. Fortunately, the thing read.
"Point one five. No way he's passed out drunk with a blood alcohol of point one five. He's had a couple, but he shouldn't even be disorderly on that much."
"So what is it?" Storm asked.
"I'm thinking drugs." Jean said, settling a hand in the middle of Logan's chest, where she could feel his heart and his breathing. "When he called, acute meningitis crossed my mind, but it's progressing too fast even for that. As for which drug… could be benzos, could be opiates," She lifted Logan's eyelid. His eyes had rolled up in to his head, but she could see the edge of his pupil still. "not opiates then, but it definitely could be GHB."
"Antidotes?" Storm asked.
"There isn't one for GHB, and the benzo antidote often causes more problems than it solves."
"So…"
"So we ride it out. We bag him if he stops breathing, we hold his blood pressure up."
His chest had gone very still. She could still feel his heart, but… She put her hand under his nose. She was sure now, he'd stopped breathing.
"Logan!" She pinched his nasal septum. He twitched and huffed, then started breathing again. Jean let go of her breath. "No respiratory arrests." She said quietly. "We don't like arrests."
"Do you think he could actually die?" Scott asked. "He seems pretty…"
"I don't know." Jean said. "And I don't want to find out."
,
Once in the infirmary, Jean hooked Logan up to an ECG and told Storm to watch him and make sure he was breathing, he'd nearly stopped three times on the way in.
"What did you do with the woman?" Storm asked Scott as he came back in.
"Tied her to a chair and left her in the Danger Room, blindfold." He replied. "She's not Mystique, I think Mystique would have been more of a challenge to catch, but we still have no idea who she is or what she's capable of."
"Gonna want a telepath to figure that out." Storm said, looking pointedly at Jean.
"I'm busy." Jean replied, reaching out a hand for an inch-and-a-half needle and a small syringe, which came flying towards her out of their boxes on the other side of the room. She wanted to identify the drug, so they knew what they were up against. For that, she needed a urine sample.
"Is it worth waking The Professor then?" Storm asked.
"Probably." Scott said.
Jean undid Logan's belt, which wasn't even buckled properly, had someone already undone his trousers and done them up again in a hurry? She'd think about that once she knew what he'd been drugged with and whether he was likely to arrest. She pulled his pants and his underpants down to expose his pelvic brim. She glanced up to see Storm raising her eyebrows at her.
"Stop it."
"Stop what?" Storm asked.
"Like you don't know. I need to find his bladder." Jean put a gel-filled glove over the end of the probe, then soaked the few inches of Logan's skin over his bladder with spirit. She put the probe on and started hunting. She hissed in frustration.
"What?" Storm asked.
"It's tiny." Jean said. "He must have been to the bathroom not long before he passed out." Which might explain why his belt hadn't been done up properly, probably better that than having had that woman do anything to him. "I'm gonna really struggle to get a needle in to that."
But she did manage it, with rather more poking about than she'd normally have risked, but she was confident Logan would repair himself. Barely half a mil, but it was enough to test it for benzodiazepines.
"How's his blood pressure?" She asked Storm, as she wet the end of the test stick.
"Reading… eighty-four over fifty-eight. Fluids?"
"Fluids." She started to get the equipment out, this was so much faster with telekinesis, she could almost be in three places at once. "A thousand mil per hour, and I need to read that test in two minutes."