Chapter 3

Death...Anger...flashes of red...claws plunging into...what?

I threw my body up and looked around wildly. I could smell sterilizing alchohol and cotton sheets. Around me, walls of polished steel, with cabinets and shelves lined up against them, made what looked like a hospital room.I tested the air. I could smell jars inside the cabinets, hydrogen peroxide and cotton balls. I tried to catch a few different scents, hoping to recognize them so I'd know where I was. The first was the most prominent, and smelled something like soft rose. I could also smell...another scent, one that I couldn't explain, but seemed oddly warm and comforting. And, I realized, the extremely sensual scent of Logan.

I looked around warily. I'd had a little trust in him, seeing as how it seemed he had saved me from that half-man half-animal back at the road. But like all the rest of the human race, he seemed to have taken advantage of that trust. I looked down, to see what I was wearing. I could feel that it wasn't my soft yellow tank top, and when I looked down, my suspicions were confirmed. I was wearing a stretchy white sleeveless T-shirt, made of cheap polyester. I still had my jeans, thankfully.

Suddenly, I smelled an aproaching scent. It smelled spicy, like cinnamon and cloves. Alongside it was the rose scent, and a third I hadn't yet identified. I wanted to move, but it seemed like someone had plastered me to the cold bedpan I had been laying in. My body wouldn't respond to my mind, which was at this point screaming:

Move Adrian! Move! What are you Doing! Run! Get in the Shadows! Find a window! Just get out of here!

A whir, and the doors flew open automatically. In came the three scents I had smelled. The spicy scent was a woman with coffee colored skin, and extremely frosty white hair. Her brown eyes were almost black. The rose scent was a smaller woman with light skin and short, flaming red hair. My senses were overpowered with signs of telepathy. They were always the easiest to tell about. The third was a man, who seemed to be out of his mind, or near so, because he was wearing some sort of visor over his eyes, with a garnet colored glass pane over it. I stared at the strangers, my mind torn. Fight or Flight was playing tug of war in my psyche. Half of me wanted to run, to where I had no idea. The other half was winning slightly, trying to tell me to tear the strangers to shreds and fight my out of wherever I was.

Jean Gray looked at the woman on the bedpan in her private hospital room. She looked as though she was apprehensive, not entirely scared but with a definite hint of panic. Jean delicatly reached into the woman's mind, trying to smooth out the worry, but she felt definite resistance to her presence in the woman's mind. She withdrew her connection, and saw the woman looking at her with a poisonous suspicion.

Jean stepped forward, unable to read the expression on this mysterious womans face. She started to say something, but the woman spoke first.

"Where am I?" she demanded, an unmistakable presence of aggitation mixed with fear in her voice. Jean breathed in deeply, as she answered.

"Xavier's School...for Gifted Children." She said. "You were...attacked. We took you back here to help with...your injuries." Her eyes darted from the spot where the gash in her head had been to the woman's incredulous eyes. "But," she added, " we can see we didn't need to when you got here." The woman's eyes flashed.

" If I was so hurt, why did you take me to a school, instead of a hospital?" Jean looked her over. She bit her lip before replying.

"You weren't safe out there. The man who attacked you was sure to come back. He's working for...someone else. We don't know why they want you, but...you're not safe outside with them out."

I looked them over. The rose scented woman seemed sincere, as did her spicy scented accomplice. I investagated further, but I could tell the rose one could sense what I was doing. Still, they didn't show any aura of menace, and even though the man next to them was as stiff and still as stone, I was...partially sure he wouldn't do anything he would regret later.

Sliding off the bedpan, I stared down the rose scented woman. I could immediatly sense it in her guilty eyes. She knew...everything. About my adamantium, about my healing, about my untamed side. Telepaths were the worst.

"I'm guessing you came for something?" I asked. I just wanted to get out of here. The woman seemed relieved that I had relinquished the steel grip that my eyes had had, revealing her secret of how she had picked my brains.

"Actually, the head Professor wanted to see you." she said. "But he's teaching a class now. We're asking you to stay, if only for a few hours. The man that attacked you, he was named Victor Creed. He's still prowling around out there, just waiting for you to leave. The Professor wanted to explain about...what happened back there."

I searched her for any signs of deciet, but I could find none. The two other people behind her had stayed silent. Nothing was threatening about their presence, nor their scent, but it wasn't kind either. I looked at them, still unconvinced. If there was one thing the cold, cruel world had taught me, it was that trust led to deceit.

"Just answer me one thing," I said, staring at the three with my mind torn in two. "Why should I trust you?"

The telepath looked at me, with something in her eyes reminiscent of pity. Slowly she sighed.

"Because," she said slowly, "If we cannot trust those around us...we find ourselves with nothing."