Chapter Two - Blown

"JESSIE! WAKE UP!"

Jessie Crowell awoke with a start, and she screamed so loud that her throat hurt; her back hit something and it made her stop and she rolled awkwardly off, falling to the floor and gasping in pain as her right arm in its cast got the brunt.

She was breathing hard although the nightmare was already slipping away from her, disappearing away like bathwater in a drain. She looked around the room in confusion, everything was in darkness but the half-light from the very early morning gave her limited sight. Miss Pryde was there, and Logan, looking dishevelled and slightly annoyed wearing nothing but a sheet around his waist.

And it was perhaps the image of the naked man in front of her now that reminded her of the naked man in her dream. The man with the long brown hair, the man hanging from the wall, the man with that glowing red eye who spoke in a strange tongue she couldn't understand.

She whispered "Mr. LeBeau..." and took in a shuddering breath. "I saw Mr. LeBeau."

"Jessie, Mr. LeBeau is in Scotland..." Miss Pryde rushed over, "Are you alright..." she tried to touch Jessie but she snapped her hand back as a spark jumped between them.

"Power is out," came a voice from the hall. "She's blown out the electricity and the backup generator. Now that's impressive..."

The yellow glowing eyes of Kurt Wagner reminded her of yellow eyes in her nightmares. The Doctor. That was all she'd ever known him as. Things she hadn't thought about in years...things she had completely forgotten, seemed to come flooding back to her in torrents like the flood following the bursting of a dam.

"Jessie..."

"I saw Mr. LeBeau..." Jessie said again, she was gasping for breath, "I saw him!"

"You were just dreaming," Miss Pryde tried to comfort, she gestured for Jessie to calm down, making sure not to touch her this time.

"No!" Jessie yelled, she was annoyed that no one was hearing what she was saying. "It wasn't a dream! It wasn't!"

"Where'd you see him?" Logan asked, sounding frustrated and tired.

"In...in a cold shiny place...strapped up on a wall...with his long hair...and no clothes...and a big cut on his top half..." she said, she patted her chest. "Right here..."

The three X-Men looked at each other curiously, then back to her. "In a cold shiny place?" Mr. Wagner asked softly.

"With big slidy doors..."

Miss Pryde put her hand to her mouth, her eyes were wide. She glanced towards Logan and Kurt as if asking what she should do...or say.

"It's real!" Jessie said loudly, "I've been there..."

"Stay there..." Miss Pryde said to Jessie, then she gestured for the two men to follow her into the hall. She closed the door most of the way and Jessie rushed over to the door to listen into their conversation.

"Is it possible?" Miss Pryde was asking, "that she was there..."

"The Genoshian Mutant Containment Facility? Would they have taken a kid there?" Logan asked./

"If she is empathic...like the Professor thinks..." began Mr. Wagner, "couldn't she be picking it up from one of the others who saw the place?"

"Which one of us saw Remy strapped to a wall?" Kitty asked.

Logan pondered, "None of us. Monet was the one who apparently let him out the room Sinister had him kept in...but come on...empathic mutants pick up feelings, they don't read minds and they certainly don't recall memories from other people, do they?"

"No...that's telepathy..." Mr. Wagner replied. "And Jessie isn't telepathic...is she?"

"Not that we're aware," Miss Pryde said quietly. "So...is it possible she was on the island?"

"She definitely wasn't there when we were," Mr. Wagner confirmed. "We got everyone out of there one way or another...we'd have seen her."

Logan took a moment, "then she would have been there before us...perhaps long before. I mean...didn't Remy tell the Professor he'd been in and out of the GMCF for years? For all we know Jessie might have been there a year...maybe two years ago...maybe even three...she probably forgot."

"Or was made to," said Mr. Wagner, suddenly with an angry tone in his usually whimsical voice.

"We need electricity...Kurt, can you fix the generator to get us some kind of power...?" Miss Pryde asked.

Mr. Wagner sighed, "I can try...but what are you gonna do?"

"Once I get Caleb back to sleep, hopefully by then the Professor will be awake. We need to have a big discussion about the possibilities..." she responded softly. "If Jessie was on that island...and if she did meet with Sinister...then suddenly it's no surprise she's having nightmares of that capacity..."

Moira MacTaggart slammed the lab phone down hard, she swore under her breath in a succession of half-incoherent words before speaking up. "We built that plane a little too well. My friends in the Airforce haven't even been able to locate it on radar..." she sighed.

Hank sat upon the counter, a hot cup of tea in his hands. "You designed the plane with the same cloaking and anti-detection systems...the government shouldn't be able find it on any radar regardless."

"I know that," Moira grumbled, "we were going to fit our own tracking system into the plane...but Kurt decided to stop work on it and go back to Bayville for his visit."

"I'll return to Bayville at the next opportunity," Hank decided, "I'll have to book a flight from Edinburgh airport..." he realised.

"That's a sixteen-to-seventeen hour journey and a change over," Moira reminded.

"What else can I do? You don't have any other untested planes standing by, by any chance, do you?"

"Don't be daft."

"So...what now?"

"What can we do? We'll never catch up with him. If that plane goes down midway over the ocean, there's no way he'll survive and we'll never be able to locate him for a rescue mission. He has no official training as a pilot...how did he even know how to use the controls...it's not like I left a bloody manual in the cockpit!"

"He's flown the blackbird before...and the Redeye planes...I guess that counts as some training. For all we know he's had training in the years when he was out of our radar. He has seven years unaccounted for, you know."

Moira rubbed the back of her neck, "does the man have no concept of safety?"

"If it's concerning his only living daughter, I'd guess not," Hank reminded. "He's always been the reckless type...and we shouldn't be surprised."

"Charles isn't going to be happy about this," Moira sighed as she picked up the phone again and began to dial.

"It wasn't your fault," Hank stood up, "if anything, it was mine. I should have been keeping an eye on him...and I should have taken that phone call in a private room instead of in the hallway where he could have heard."

"Either way, I need to call and let them all know Gambit is on his way..." Moira finished dialling and waited. She raised an eyebrow, hung up, waited a moment, then redialled.

"No answer?"

"No service," Moira frowned, "on their end. Perhaps there's a storm..."

"Try a cellphone..." he reached over to end the call, then dialled in the lengthy code before trying Jean Grey's personal cellphone number.

Moira paused, "Just going to answer phone..." she shrugged and hung up. "I'll go to the communications room and try to get through from there."

"Good idea...do that, I'll try a few of the other numbers, see if I can get through."