Three weeks later: (October 16, 2006)

"This is your heart." Jean held the instrument to Grace's chest. The steady rhythm of a healthy beat filled the infirmary.

"All right." Grace, who was lying back on the examining table, fully dressed except for her belly, lifted her head and looked at her friend.

Jean did not look as though she had been sleeping well lately, but she smiled as she moved the instrument down to Grace's abdomen. "And this is your digestive system." Sloshing and bubbling sounds replaced the heartbeat.

"It sounds disgusting, but normal." Grace commented.

"Perfectly normal. Now can you guess what this is?" Jean moved the instrument again.

This time, a tiny rapid sound came from the speakers, faster than the ticking of a watch. Grace thought of a hummingbird's wings, of snowflakes falling in a blanketing blizzard, of a kitten's loud purr, and she smiled wider, until her face ached. "It's the baby's heart beating."

"Right! And right on schedule. This is the best indication possible that your baby is developing normally. Congratulations; you are now officially out of Phase One—the first trimester, and into Phase Two, the second."

"Thank you. I knew things had changed when the morning sickness went away and my sense of smell became so acute. I could smell that there was a sour carton of milk at the back of the fridge this morning."

"That's not so unusual."

"From three floors away?"

"That is unusual. Does it bother you?"

"I'm getting used to it. Actually, I find myself appreciating nuances of scent I never noticed before. Fresh water is beautiful. Clean linens have me standing there sniffing for five minutes." And Erik smells utterly wonderful, even right before he showers. It's probably biology's way of saying that he's my mate.

I can't believe I just thought that.

"Speaking of senses of smell, Logan is about to walk in that door. He's been exercising, so he's all sweaty, bare-chested, and gleaming." She pulled down her sweater.

"Grace!"

"Hey, I'm committed to someone. That doesn't mean I'm blind or dead. Besides, he's not doing that for my benefit."

"I can't—." Right on cue, the door opened, and a man like a Greek god, only somewhat hairier, walked in, his damp t-shirt hanging from one hand and his torso steaming slightly. "Logan. Hello. What brings you to the infirmary?"

"Just giving you an update. The papers came through from the University of Michigan. Bobby has the green light to audit accounting, Pyro is taking journalism, and Arclight went for philosophy. Don't ask me why."

"She said somebody needed to be on hand to do all the heavy thinking." Grace said.

"She's welcome to it. Did you know that her name was actually Incarnacion Hernandez?"

"Yes. She told me she got tired of everyone calling her 'Ree'. Think about it for a moment."

"'Ree'? Oh, I get it. Reincarnation. So we're set to head out this afternoon, just in time for your lawyer to drop the first bombs." He paused, and waited.

"Was there something else?" Jean asked after a moment.

"Don't I get a goodbye kiss?" He stepped forward, until he was in Jean's personal space.

"You're not leaving for four more hours."

"You never know. Once you kiss me—."

"Tell him he should brush up on his Japanese while he's there." Grace's lion advised.

"I beg your pardon, but my little friend says you should audit Japanese while you're in the area." Grace sat up a bit awkwardly, unused to a rounder belly than she used to have.

"What?" He stepped back, the moment broken. I swear that man sends out some sort of pheromone cloud that stuns most females. "I already speak, read and write Japanese."

"That may be so, but according to him, you need a refresher course."

"I didn't know you spoke Japanese, Logan." Jean said.

"There's a lot about me you don't know…yet." He tried That Look again.

"Uh-uh." The lion shook his head. "Wrong one. Boy needs a girl, but not that girl."

"You're trying it on the wrong girl, he says." Grace held up the lion. "He says you need a girl, but Jean's the wrong one."

"Well, you tell him I—Now you've got me doing it. Has Cyke been bribing them?"

"No." Grace was enjoying the conversation. "I think your Ms. Right must speak or be Japanese—maybe both."

"Hey, your little pals might be able to make you dance when they pull your strings, but they can't make me."

"You want to bet? You might as well surrender to destiny, Logan. If there is anything I have learned, it is that struggling against the workings of the universe is useless. If it's destiny, there's a good reason for it."

"Yeah, well, they'll have to make me."

"I'm sure they will." Grace smiled at him.

He looked at her, and shook his head before leaving the infirmary. "Later."

Once the door was closed, Jean laughed, and said, "I shouldn't tell you this, but when he shook his head, he was thinking, 'Something's got to be wrong in a world where Magneto's getting more than I am.'"

"Ohhhh…" Grace laughed. "That's too good. But soon his troubles might be over. I don't mean his future Japanese speaking ladyfriend, I mean moving into my townhouse complex. All he would have to do is be seen without his shirt, and he'll be fending the neighbor women off with sticks. Seen without his shirt? Try being seen, period. It's like that show, Desperate Housewives, only they aren't quite so pretty and so thin. I have to ask Eleanor to keep me abreast of things. So to speak…"

"Okay, back to medical issues. Lay back and lift your hips. I want to measure your fundus."

Grace complied, asking, "Are you sure that's legal in New York? It was outlawed in Michigan five years ago."

"It was not! Your fundus is the height of your abdomen. Measuring it regularly is one of the best ways to be sure your baby is continuing to develop as he should."

"All right…"

Jean wrapped a tape measure around Grace's middle, and continued, "Since we live under the same roof, I know you're eating right, but are you drinking your calcium-fortified orange juice?"

"And my calcium-added skim milk. Until I burp. Jean? Are you all right? You look tired."

"I haven't been sleeping well lately, and when I do, I hurl things around telekinetically."

"That's a rough one—on you and on Scott. Erik broke a window with a cast-iron table last week during a nightmare. Scared me half to death."

"Good thing you have a wooden bed frame and not a metal one."

"Yes. I didn't realize what a good thing that was when I chose it. I only know every metal bed I ever slept in creaked to wake the dead whenever somebody rolled over. But can't you take something for it?"

"If I take sleeping pills, then Scott can't wake me when I'm throwing things. And my dreams are…full of things coming apart."

"Have you talked to the professor about it?"

"No. Not yet…"


Elsewhere:

"Father? Are you awake?" Pietro couldn't knock on the door, as there was no door. It was a tent.

"Yes. I seem to have overslept."

"After last night, I thought you needed to sleep in."

"That was a kind thought, but through no fault of yours, not a good one. My air mattress must have a pinhole in it somewhere."

Erik had been speaking to a group of potential recruits in Northwestern Oregon the night before, and well into the night at that, around a campfire. It had gone well—until he went to bed. While his air mattress had been fully inflated the night before, his sleeping bag both comfortable and dry, the mattress had slowly deflated until Erik woke to find that several large, angular rocks were digging into his spine, and that the ground was very cold and very damp. He ached all over. I am too old to live like this. I want to be at home, I want a hot bath, a hot meal, and a back rub, preferably by Grace.

"Oh. Sorry. Here's coffee." His son handed him a thermos.

"Thank you." He poured a cupful, and drank. "How many do we have?"

"Six. A man who regenerates, a man who forms large spikes out of his own body and hurls them, a guy who's a finder, a girl who can read objects by touching them, a kid who sees and speaks to dead people, and a woman who can call and cast shadows."

"Good. We'll have to take them home for orientation and at least some kind of training. Today it begins. Angevin is serving the initial complaints before noon. What happened to the time? The last three weeks evaporated like a drop of water on a hot anvil."

"Don't ask me."


Stryker, too, had slept in. His sleep had been plagued for weeks with his image of the mutant Lilith. Her face, her hair, eluded him. All that he saw of her was the gesture of her hand protectively, lovingly cupping her pregnant and swollen belly, but that was enough. The night before, he had taken a sleeping pill and washed it down with bourbon.

His sleep was dreamless, but he felt like hell upon waking.

When his car, driven by Oyama, arrived at the laboratories, his second, the chief scientist of the Blocker Project, was waiting for him outside.

"Something odd has happened," the woman said.

"Yes? What?"

"All the mice are…gone."

"Gone? Dead?" His stomach fell at that. That was a huge setback. "What, even the control group? They didn't get any of the formula."

"They're not dead. They escaped."

She led him inside, to the testing room. "The technician in charge swears he closed up as normal, and I believe him. The cameras show no one entered or left. See for yourself…"

He went up to the first bank of cages and squinted at them. "There's a hole melted in the wire."

"Yes."

"What did this?"

"I don't know. But Marta—." She gestured at one of the cleaners, a Mexican wet-back who worked for less than minimum wage, "says holes like this have been turning up all over the facility for weeks now. Usually in cabinets where people kept their snacks. She thought it was part of our project, so she didn't say anything."

"She thought—How could she be that stupid?"

"Her English is not good, but she is not stupid. You can't tell what did this, can you?"

"Show me one of these cabinets with a hole in it." he commanded.

The hole in question was small, and low down. It looked…about the right size for a mouse.

Mutant mice. That was impossible. The mice had the 'human' mutant gene spliced into theirs, that was necessary for the experiments, but their mutations were guaranteed not to involve any powers. They just looked odd, with extra tails, extra toes, sometimes a third eye…

But the mother mouse who gave birth to healthy mutants wasn't supposed to have been any different than any of the others, either.

He looked at the hole again. It had been made from the outside.

What if one or more of her offspring had been able to withstand the heat of the incinerator? If even one escaped… If that one had some kind of thermal power…

Now all the mice had escaped. Because they had been set free. Food would be the first priority. Then…what? A mate? Surely even a mutated mouse wouldn't have been capable of the kind of sophisticated thought processes that would lead it to free all of its kind.

Surely not…

Once upon a time, before Jason had shown his true colors, when he was still an innocent harmless little boy, his father had read to him. One of those books had been Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H.

"Get poison in here, and put it around." Stryker ordered, but he knew it was no use. Some of them would eat it and die, but some would prove immune. Others would have escaped out into the world.

And if, no, when, the descendants of the mother mouse bred with the newly freed mutant mice…

It was then that he knew that he would never, never rid the world of mutants. Neither the human kind nor the mice. They were too resilient, too adaptable. And they stuck together.

However, that was not going to stop him from trying.


A/N: Had to jump ahead, or this story (already long) would take forever...