Chapter 6

Logan growled under his breath as he eyed off Scott Summers and his wife Madelyne sitting on the lounge in the staff room with Storm and Hank. As much as he hated to admit it, Scott smelled just like Scott. Madelyne smelled a lot like Jean—looked like her too—but not completely.

"I don't understand," said Storm, looking more at her cup of tea than their unexpected company. "If you've been alive all this time, why didn't you ever tell us? Why..."

"Because by the time I escaped from Sinister, you guys already thought I was dead," Scott replied. "Not to mention Jean and the Professor. What was I supposed to do? Walk in and say, 'oh hey guys, the guy you buried wasn't really me, it was a clone that Sinister replaced me with.'"

"Yes!" Storm exclaimed the same time Logan said: "We never buried a body at all; Phoenix disintegrated it."

Scott let out a long, slow breath and shook his head. "I always knew Jean was powerful, but Phoenix? I could hardly believe it."

"Believe it, bub," Logan said, then nodded towards Madelyne. "And just how does the broad come into all of this?"

"My name is Madelyne," she said, glaring at him.

"I moved back to Alaska when... when I found out you guys thought I was dead," Scott said, reaching over and taking his wife's hand in his. "I stayed with my grandparents, and that's when I met Maddy. She's a charter pilot—I am too, now."

"She one of Sinister's clones too?" Logan asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

"I most certainly am not," Madelyne replied, affronted. "I don't even have any mutant powers."

"And Sinister's pretty obsessed with mutants," Scott said. "Besides, if she was a clone of Jean, he would have had to create her when Jean was still a kid, and he had to transfer my memories to my clone in order for him to replace me perfectly."

"I have clear, concise memories of my childhood," Madelyne added firmly. "Not to mention every other year of my life. And as far as we know, none of those memories are any that Jean would have had."

"No, we're satisfied that Maddy's not a clone, it's just an uncanny resemblance," Scott said, smiling fondly at his wife. "Look, guys, I'm sorry about not coming forward earlier, but you guys thought I was dead, and I just... I didn't think I had anything to come home to. I had a chance to start a new life, and I decided to take it. But now..."

"Sinister has taken our son," Madelyne said, swallowing hard.

"You have a son?" Storm asked.

Scott nodded and pulled out his wallet so he could show her the pictures.

"Nathan Christopher Charles Summers," Scott said. "He's two and a half years old."

"He's adorable," Storm said, looking at the photos and feeling very much like she just found out she had a nephew. "And you're sure it was Sinister?"

"Convinced of it," Scott said without a single shred of doubt in his tone. "Scalphunter's not exactly very subtle about his abductions."

"Scalphunter?" Storm asked.

Scott nodded. "Sinister's Marauders: Scalphunter, Blockbuster, Harpoon, Scrambler, Riptide, Vertigo, Lady Mastermind, and our old friend, Sabretooth."

"Sabretooth?" Logan repeated, instantly alert.

"Yeah. He looks a lot different than he did our last meeting though. I almost didn't recognise him at first," Scott said.

"Short black hair?" Logan asked.

"Yep."

Logan growled.

"Sabretooth decided to pay Logan a visit a few months ago," Hank explained to Scott's puzzled look. "We thought he was still with the Brotherhood."

"Possibly. They're not always all there at the same time, maybe half the Marauders at most at a time, except on 'special' occasions. What they do elsewhere—aside from kidnapping mutants for Sinister's experiments—I have no idea," Scott said. "Look, guys, I understand if you're angry with me for taking off and not contacting you, but we need your help to get Nate back. I know where the base is, but Maddy and I can't take on the Marauders alone."

"Of course we'll help you, Scott," Storm said firmly, handing the photos back to him. "And I only have one condition."

"Anything," Scott replied urgently.

"You don't get to just disappear on us again after we get Nate back," Storm said, brandishing a finger at him. "You have a phone, call us occasionally."

Scott grinned. "Done. And I'm sorry, 'Ro."

"So you should be."

To say that the younger X-men were completely shocked when they caught up with Scott and Madelyne would be putting it mildly. Shock gave way to joy, denial, and anger, and Storm was not the only one who scolded Scott for letting them think he was dead all this time.

One of the more curious meetings was between Scott and Kurt. Kurt recognised Scott, but Scott hadn't met him before in his life.

"You must have met my clone," said Scott after the moment of confusion had passed. "Stryker sent Lady Deathstrike to pick up myself and Professor Xavier when we went to visit Magneto, and Sinister evidentially decided that Stryker didn't get the privilege of experimenting on me twice, so he sent his Marauders after us. They replaced me with a clone, and I ended up Sinister's guinea pig instead."

Madelyne rubbed Scott's shoulder gently.

"Twice?" Kitty asked curiously.

Scott nodded. "When I was a teenager, I got abducted, ironically, by Sabretooth on behalf of Stryker. Why is that guy always involved in my abductions? Dark haired Sabretooth, as I recall, both times."

The younger X-men were filled in on what had happened, and after everyone had some time to deal with the fact that their old friend and teacher was alive and well, they settled down for some planning. Scott had plans drawn up of Sinister's base, all done from memory, and then lectured them on the Marauders; who they were and what they were capable of.

"Lady Mastermind," Tabitha said with a frown. "That name rings a bell."

"The Brotherhood," said Kurt. "There was a woman, Mastermind, who was one of Wanda's bridesmaids."

"So is that a coincidence, or is Mastermind working for both?" asked Tabitha, looking at the group.

"Lady Mastermind," Scott corrected firmly. "She gets testy if you shorten it."

"Really?" Kurt asked curiously. "The Mastermind I met never stated a preference; everyone called her Mastermind."

"Maybe there are two Masterminds," Bobby suggested. "It's not like mutant names are copyrighted or anything."

"Well, either way, Lady Mastermind is an illusionist and a telepath," Scott said, and continued his lecture.

After the meeting came to a close, Scott and Kitty went to the Danger Room to program a simulation of Sinister's base for them to practice in. It wouldn't be perfect, neither would the simulations of the Marauders, but it would give them some chance to warm up and prepare before doing the real thing.

The X-men did not dare to delay long, not when the life of a little boy was at stake. They crammed in as much of Scott's briefing as they could, made allowances for the students, and set out with the hope that Scott's intel, although many years old, wouldn't be too much out of date.

The team was made up of Scott, Logan, Storm, Bobby, Piotr, Paige and Psylocke, and they planned the attack for a weekend where they could get away with minimal supervision for the students. They left first thing in the morning, for Scott had observed that certain Marauders were more prone to things like hangovers and sleeping in, especially on Saturday mornings. This was why he chose to escape during a morning, rather than in that afternoon or at night, when he had been held prisoner there.

Hank, Kitty, Tabitha and Kurt saw them off, and were left with the task of waiting. Since the Marauders were hardly the only ones who were into sleeping in on Saturday mornings, none of the students were up either, so they didn't have a whole lot to do at that moment.

Hank went about checking that his medlab was in order. Although no one liked to say it, the reality was that if fighting broke out—which they were expecting it would—then people would get hurt. Kurt assisted him. There wasn't really much for them to do, as Hank always kept the med lab in good order, and they ended up doing more talking than working. They also kept an ear out for the communications in case the team tried to contact them. Kitty decided to busy herself by preparing a large breakfast for everyone; normally people got their own breakfast on Saturdays, but Kitty was feeling restless.

Tabitha was the only one who was able to relax, which she did so by playing World of Warcraft. Since none of the other X-men were on, or even any of the students, Tabitha quite happily signed onto her blood elf rogue, and checked the guild roster to find that a couple of others were online. She signed into Ventrillo and put on her headphone.

"Hey all," Tabitha said.

"Hey. Tabitha, right?" came Rogue's voice.

"Yep," said Tabitha, having another glance at the guild roster and not seeing Rogue's tauren druid listed. "Created an alt, didja?"

"Yup. I'm the blood elf mage. The orc rogue is my new friend, Gris Gris."

"Hey," said a man's voice, presumably 'Gris Gris'. "We're friends now, are we?"

"Well, we're not colleagues, and we're not quite acquaintances, and you are staying here as our guest... I think 'friend'll do," Rogue said merrily.

"Sounds complicated," Tabitha said. "How come you guys are on so early?"

"Olivier," Rogue said, as if this explained everything.

"I see."

"What about you?"

"Oh the X-men are on a mission," Tabitha replied. "Someone had to stay back and see them off and look after the kiddly-winkles."

"Lucky you."

"I'm thrilled to pieces. I get to play WoW."

Rogue laughed.

Two hours after the team left, those waiting back at the mansion finally heard back from them. It wasn't good. In fact, Piotr's opening line was "Hank! Prepare for incoming wounded."

It wasn't until after the Blackbird finally got there that they realised just how bad it was. Bobby was in iceform, but had whole chunks missing from his body and was afraid to change back into human form. Logan was covered in blood, his uniform had more holes in it than Swiss cheese, and he actually had been in danger of bleeding to death on the flight over, but fortunately his healing factor seemed to have kicked in enough to deal with that. As it was, he was still unconscious. Storm's left arm and leg were both broken. Scott was bleeding badly with a collection of calcium shurikens sticking out of his right side. Piotr and Paige were fortunately still intact as their alternate forms had been sufficient to protect them.

Psylocke was dead. She had been gutted by Sabretooth.

Hank was immediately on the phone, calling up an old contact of his, Cecelia Reeves, and at the same time trying to attend to their wounds. Kurt got Cecelia's address as soon as she agreed to come, and set out on a series of teleports to get her and bring back to the mansion as quickly as possible. After so many teleports, the latter half with a passenger, Kurt had to bow out of being able to help any more; he was too exhausted.

Cecelia and Hank worked on Scott together, and it was hours before they were done. Even then, they weren't sure if he would make it.

"If he gets through the night, he'll have a chance," Hank told a distraught Madelyne.

It was only Bobby they didn't know how to help. If he went back to his human form as he was, given the pieces of his body that were missing, he would die. It was a reality that Bobby knew long before Hank reluctantly told him, and Bobby took off to be alone for awhile, in an attempt to come to terms with the fact that he may be stuck in iceform for the rest of his life.

Despite their losses, Storm was not willing to give up. The following day, she called in Kitty and Kurt.

"I cannot in good conscience give up Nate Summers," Storm said. "If you're willing—and I will understand if you're not after what happened yesterday—I would like for you two to go in. Of all of us, you two have the best chance of getting in and out unseen and unhurt. I hope that stealth will succeed where force failed."

Perhaps the part that worried Storm the most was that they'd only encountered four Marauders; Sabretooth, Riptide, Blockbuster and Veritgo. Four out of eight, and they were thoroughly trounced. She didn't like to think about the possibility of meeting all eight Marauders at once.

"Of course I'll go, Storm," Kitty said. "Nate's still in trouble, and I can't just sit by and do nothing, or let all of this be in vain."

"I will too," Kurt said.

"Thank you. I'm sorry that we can't provide you with any more intel than we already had," Storm said.

"We'll manage," Kitty assured her.

Kurt and Kitty decided not to waste time, and set off for Sinister's base only a few hours later. It was dark by the time they arrived, but that was all to the better as Kurt had a knack for disappearing into shadows. Kitty was unable to hack into Sinister's surveillance system. They found a wall of his base, Kitty stuck her head through to check what was on the other side, and phased them both through after determining that it was empty.

Kitty and Kurt crept silently and cautiously through Sinister's eerily quiet base, and used their powers liberally. As they descended into the lower levels, they started to realised that for such a big place it was strangely empty. At one point they stopped in a small, bare room.

"There used to be things in this room," Kurt said, gesturing to a few marks on the walls and patches of floor that didn't have nearly as much ingrained dirt and dust as the rest.

Once they noticed such things in one room, though, they began to notice the same in other rooms. Both had an idea of what it might mean, but neither were willing to voice the possibility.

Then they came to one room, a lab, which was not only fully furnished, but also still occupied. Manacled to the table was a woman of Japanese descent, wearing only the barest minimum to preserve her dignity, if any dignity could be found in such a place.

"Kitty?"

Kitty big her lip. The voice she heard in her head sounded just like Psylocke. But Psylocke was dead. Kitty tried to ignore it.

"Kurt? Is that you?"

"Who is there?" Kurt asked, looking around.

"It's me, Betsy!" Psylocke said in a telepathic voice that was half-sob. "Oh please, please help me."

"Betsy?" Kitty asked, both disturbed by the contact and relieved that Kurt had heard the voice too. "Where... where are... No, no you're dead. Sabretooth ripped you open!"

Kitty swallowed hard and tried not to cry. This was a horrible place! The sooner they got out of here, the better.

"I'm right here. I'm on the table," Psylocke said. "I'm in the body on the table. Her name's Kwannon; she's telekinetic and there's something blocking her powers. Please, you have to get us out of here. Sinister... After the attack he decided to pack up and leave. He took Nate with him."

Kurt and Kitty looked at each other. The thought that this might be a trap occurred to Kitty, after all, didn't Scott say that there was an illusionist amongst the Marauders? Maybe this whole situation was one big illusion.

"No! Please, this is real!" Psylocke said desperately. "Please, you have to believe me. I've only seen part of Kwannon's memories, but bloody hell, the things that this guys does... You can't leave me here. You can't!"

"Of course we won't leave you here," Kurt said firmly, making his way over to her side.

"Oh thank you, thank you," Psylocke said.

"But how are you still alive?" Kitty demanded.

Before Psylocke could respond, Kurt put his hands on her and teleported her out of the restraints.

"My mind was on the astral plane when Sabretooth killed my body," Psylocke explained as soon as the teleport was done. "I was able to find refuge in Kwannon's body. Kwannon's mind... I think she might be a clone. There are huge tracts of memories missing. There's plenty of technical memories and knowledge, like knowing how to speak Japanese, but there's nothing personal here. Nothing except the torture Sinister's been putting her through. I can't stay here though. It's only a matter of time before Kwannon's mind rejects mine, or we end up merging and becoming one and the same."

"Well, there's not really a lot we can do about that," Kitty pointed out as she inspected the lab. "We don't exactly have any spare, living, mindless bodies hanging around."

"The cloning lab is downstairs," Psylocke said. "The cloning chambers are portable exactly because Sinister wants to be able to pack up his lab at a moment's notice. I don't know how they work, but if you take a chamber, I know there's samples of my DNA at the mansion."

"And we clone you a new body," Kitty said and she took a deep breath. "Okay, well, I won't make any promises, but we should probably double-check and make sure that Nate isn't here—not that I don't believe you, but I want to be able to tell Scott and Madelyne that we were thorough in our search. If we can get a chamber we will. Ah ha!"

"What's 'ah ha'?" Kurt asked, glancing over at Kitty as she leaned over one of counters near a computer monitor.

"I found me a computer that's still logged into the network," Kitty said smugly. "I'm gonna download everything I can onto the hard drive and we can take it with us. With any luck, we'll find out where Sinister's base is."

"Or even how the cloning machine works," Psylocke suggested.

"That's a possibility too."

"Well, while you get started on that," said Kurt, "I will get Psylocke to the Blackbird."

Kitty have Kurt a bare nod as she got to work on the computer. Kurt picked up Psylocke carefully and teleported to the Blackbird just as he said. He did his best to make her comfortable, and then teleported back to Kitty.

"Okay, this is going to be awhile," Kitty said when Kurt returned. "We should come back to it."

Kurt nodded and they continued on their exploration. They saw neither hide nor hair of the Marauders or Sinister on their way down to the cloning rooms. Both were quite shock at just how many cloning chambers there were, or rather, how many cloning chambers there should have been; there was plenty of empty spaces where they would have stood, clearly marked by the dust on the floor. The five chambers they did find were all empty. They were also quite thick and tall, and only one would fit in the Blackbird.

"Can you teleport it into the Blackbird?" Kitty asked.

Kurt considered, looking at the chambers thoughtfully. "I don't usually teleport this much extra mass."

"It is empty inside," Kitty said in a hopeful attempt at being helpful.

"True, but the size is also an issue," Kurt said. "I will have to teleport back to the Blackbird first and figure out the best place and position to teleport it to, else it may end up through a chair or something."

"And it probably won't be any good to us then," Kitty said.

"I won't be either, I'm afraid," Kurt said, turning to Kitty seriously. "This is calling for a large, precise teleport, a fair distance away, since we didn't want to risk the Blackbird being see anywhere near here. Once I teleport the chamber, I won't be teleporting anything else."

Kitty nodded. "In that case, we should check on the computer first. If you can teleport that to the Blackbird first, that'll save me having to carry it out, and potentially damaging it if I have to phase."

"Let's finish our inspection, then get the computer," Kurt said. "I'll teleport it back, do my reconnaissance, and then get the chamber."

"And while you're doing that, I'll return to the Blackbird by foot."

There was very little more of the base to explore, although they did find the room where Nate had likely been kept. Even knowing that Sinister had a toddler on his hands Kitty hadn't expected to find a nursery in his lair; certainly not one with pictures of Thomas the Tank Engine on the walls. Even with no furniture left in it, walking into the nursery was like walking into another world by comparison.

Kurt and Kitty headed back to the lab where Kitty had set up the computer. It still had a few minutes to go, so they waited around impatiently until it was done. Kitty shut the computer down and Kurt teleported off. Once Kurt was gone, Kitty started the long trek back through the base and back to the Blackbird.

Having seen no sign of the Marauders, Kitty wasn't quite as cautious as she should have been on the way out; she relaxed even more when a weary-sounding Kurt contacted her to report that he had teleported the chamber safely and all was ready to go.

The last thing she expected when she phased through the front door was to walk right through one of the Marauders. He was armed with a few six foot long, barbed harpoons. His partner was pretty much the biggest man Kitty had ever seen, and it was all muscle. Going on Scott's descriptions, these were Harpoon and Blockbuster. She took a moment to recover from the shock and ran for it just as Blockbuster yelled "X-man!"

Kitty ran as fast as she could. She made herself tangible again long enough to yell into her comm for Kurt to close up the Blackbird, she was being chased, and be prepared to leave as soon as she got there. She felt conscious of Blockbuster's heavy footsteps behind her and went intangible again.

Kitty went through the motions of giving a little scream when one of Harpoon's bio-kinetically charged harpoons abruptly appeared in the ground in front of her. The charge actually felt like it burned her as it went through, which was unusual, as there were few things that could actually touch her while in phase. Still, the alternate result was actually being impaled by it, so she wasn't of a mind to complain.

At last she made it to the Blackbird, Blockbuster still on her tail. Kitty bounded up the ramp which began to close almost as soon as she was on it. The Blackbird, under Kurt's hand, began to lift and was out of reach by the time Blockbuster got to them. With relief she went to sit down on one of the seats, and immediately phased through it. Fortunately, she caught herself before she phased through the floor of the Blackbird completely.

"Kitty?" Kurt asked, glancing back at her. "You okay?"

Kitty started to say that she was fine, but no words came out of her mouth and for some reason she couldn't seem to make herself tangible again. She stared down at her hands and tried to concentrate, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't solidify.