Chapter 6: Changes

Jean paused to crack her neck, stretch her back, and survey her work. Fix the jet. Get it back into the air. She knew that she could fix it, it would take several hours but she could do it. Jean had logged countless hours in the hangar with Scott performing maintenance on the jet. She knew what had to be done. Scott could do it faster, but she knew everything that she needed to know about the jet.

Jean wasn't intimately involved with this jet like Scott was. She refused to call it 'Madelyne', the name Scott's picked for it, except once.

"I think you are cheating on me, Mister Summers. Does the name Madelyne, sound familiar?"

He smiled patiently at her complaint. He then softly took Jean by the hand, led her into the hangar, brought her onboard his…um…mistress, and placed her in the pilot's chair. He knelt in front of her, pushed her skirt to her hips, and tore her panties off. Scott then proceeded he gave her the most mind blowing oral sex that she had ever experienced. Tapping her fingers on the console, she found herself smiling at that memory. He always referred to that day as when they 'christened' Madelyne.

It didn't happen often, but sometimes Scott could truly surprise her. Once Jean started to think about Scott, her stomach clenched up, her thoughts became clouded with worry for Scott, Charles and Morgan.

"Where are you?" she whispered to herself.

She needed some fresh air, her mind kept snapping back into worry mode. She couldn't work like this, she might make mistakes.

Jean took a deep breath as she walked down the jet's gangplank and then down the stairs wiping her hands on a greasy rag. She immediately noticed Logan; he was staring off into space, deep in thought and smoking a cigar. He audibly sighed when he heard her footsteps.

"Hey."

"Hey," he replied, quickly glancing back at her. He took another puff on his cigar. Jean tried not to wrinkle her nose up. She hated that smell.

"You okay?" Jean asked.

"Yeah."

"You sure?" Jean asked.

He turned towards her, his eyes catching hers.

"How we doing?"

Ah, he wants to get out of here, and back to Alkali Lake, she thought, he is looking for his answers. Magneto gave him more to think about than Charles ever did. Jean glanced back up into the jet.

"Not good," she replied, stepping down off of the stairs, "it'll take four or five hours before I can get it off the ground."

Logan stepped closer to her. She caught several thoughts, images that he was strongly projecting. He was thinking about her, thinking about her physically. Jean cringed away from those particular images. She would be lying to herself if she said that she hadn't thought about him in that way, as well. It was hard not to, Logan possessed a certain appeal for her. It was all purely sexual. These urges and fantasies of hers, which were perfectly acceptable and harmless, a few days ago, seemed out of place now. Jean never would have acted upon them, she was just enjoying the attention.

But now, her fiancé and Charles are missing. They were stranded here with Erik and Mystique, and she had to quickly finish these repairs. Everything had changed. There was no time for this harmless flirting, anymore.

"That's not what I meant."

"I'm just worried about Scott," she said flatly, hoping that he'd understand that this was not the time for this.

"I'm worried about you," Jean looked up at him, his tone of voice conveyed concern. Her eyes flickered warily, not liking that he'd stepped closer to her, closing the distance.

"That was some display of power up there."

"Obviously it was not enough."

"Hey, hey. Come on. All right?" Logan grasped her shoulder before moving his hand up to the side of her neck and then back down to her shoulder. Jean knew now that she had to nip this in the bud right now and let Logan know that whatever 'this' was, it wasn't going to happen.

"I love him." She said emphatically

"Do you?" Jean instantly regretted every time that she had flirted with him. She now could see that, it meant more to him, than she ever intended.

"Girls flirt with the dangerous guy, Logan…" she looked up at him, hoping to see that he understood what she was saying. He didn't. So she continued, "They don't take him home. They marry the good guy."

Scott.

Logan sighed, his mind trying to come up with anything to keep this conversation going.

"I could be the good guy," he replied, smiling slightly.

"Logan, the good guy…" Jean stopped in midsentence when she felt the communicator in her pocket vibrate. She reached down, pulled it out, and flipped it open. Logan's eyes were staring hard at her mouth when she glanced back up at him, she knew now that he intended to kiss her. Saved by the bell, she thought to herself.

"Hello? Oh…Remy. No, no we all are okay. What? No, let me tell you what happened," Jean says, speaking into the phone, walking back up the stairs. Logan shoved his cigar back into his mouth and stormed away, silently cursing whoever this 'Remy' person was.

"I understand how hard it is for you to stay there, with Morgan missing, but I am concerned about the safety of the children. I…"

"Jeannie, I understand what y' sayin', but I want y' to know that de children will have protection," Remy explained as he finished typing out an email to a 24-hour security firm that he has had dealings with in the past. He requested twenty armed guards to be at Xavier's Institute within an hour, he wrote explicit instructions about what he wanted. They were very good at what they do. Remy had no reservations about entrusting the children's lives in their exceptionally capable hands.

"What happens if those soldiers come back?" Jeannie asked, her voice rising in annoyance. She didn't want to deal with this bullshit right now; she was just as worried as he was, and she had work to do.

"It's taken care of," he stated matter-of-factly, trying not to allow too much anger to seep into his voice. Jean did not understand just what she was up against, but she was acting as if she did. That pissed him off to no end. Jean had lived a lot of her life through the thoughts of others. There were times that Remy felt she was naïve to how things really worked.

"Look, as much as I hate to say it, Jeannie. Magneto is right. Colonel Stryker means business. He will try to kill us all." Remy explained, walking down the hallway to take the elevator down to the subbasement. He was heading towards the Weapons Room.

"You know him, don't you?" Jean asked, hoping that this wasn't the man who held Remy hostage for two years, several years ago. Sometimes Remy would have nightmares about that time of his life and he would project horrible images. Jean saw things that made her skin crawl.

"Oui, I know him," Remy replied softly. Fucking Stryker, should have blown that asshole sky high when I had the chance, he thought bitterly. There was no way in hell he was going to stay here and babysit these kids, if Colonel William Stryker had his hands on Morgan. He took a deep breath, and forced several volatile emotions back down and continued.

"Jeannie, I know that this is hard to imagine, but what if Stryker now controls Cyclops, de Professor, and Morgan. Y' said y'rself that he forced that teleporter to attack the president. That right there is another reason for me to come and help. You'll need help."

Remy punched his number in and stood still as the security device scanned his retina, the light on the panel flashed green.

Remy LeBeau. Code name: Gambit. Access granted.

He rolled his eyes at the feminine voice of the computer, who came up with that little gem, was anyone's guess. Probably Cyclops.

Stepping into the Weapons Room, Remy grabbed a large duffel bag from a shelf and began shoving several high caliber weapons into it.

Silence on the line.

"Jeannie, y' still there?"

"Yeah."

"Well?"

"I hadn't thought about that," she replied softly, finally thinking about what they must have done to Kurt to turn him into a mindless assassin. He really was the gentlest person that Jean had ever met. She now understood what they might be coming up against. If they were under Stryker's control, Morgan could easily incapacitate them, render them unwilling to fight and Scott could then blast them away as Charles destroys every living mutant on earth through Cerebro.

"It is a strong possibility," he said, his voice thick with emotion.

"Okay, Remy see who you can get, and get here as soon as possible," she said, making the decision that usually was Scott's to make.

"Be careful, Jean."

"I will."

Remy shifted the heavy bag on his shoulder as he clicked his phone off. The door of the elevator slid open and Remy found himself staring eye to eye with Warren Worthington, and Hank McCoy.

Sergeant Timothy Lyman was the only medic at Alkali Lake; Stryker insisted that he be present for initial serum administration. At times, he just observed, and then later noted in his personal records, a successful procedure. Other times, Lyman was there to initiate CPR, and sometimes he had to note the time when the subject died. The serum was toxic to some subjects.

His opinion and his emotional response to this procedure fluctuated on the actual subject. It really depended on the mutant's disposition before administration. The feral ones were easier to watch, it was more like putting a rapid animal down. A humane thing to do. They howled in pain, but they howled anyways, so there was not much difference. The intelligent ones, the kind ones, the meek ones, these were harder to stomach.

Lyman thought, given his demonic appearance, the teleporting mutant, would thrash around and snap at them with his sharp fangs like an animal. He didn't. He prayed to God to forgive them all and he made very little sound during the pain. Afterwards Lyman went back to his bunk and read from his Bible, hoping to find words of comfort, hoping to find the words that would assure him that what they were doing was right. He found none. Stryker wasn't affected in the slightest by that subject's docility. In fact, he taunted the mutant's faith, and explained that he was an abomination in God's eyes, before burning his control away. He tortured the mutant, Kurt Wagner, pure and simple, in Lyman's opinion.

Scott Summers, Xavier's field leader, was quiet and calculating. Even when he was vulnerable in the bound up state, his voice and body language never betrayed any emotions or weaknesses. He was stoic. Lyman respected him for that, even if he was a mutant. He was not quiet during the serum administration, however. His screams were loudest of any of the other subjects. Stryker deduced that the brain damage that prevented Summers from fully controlling his optical force blasts might have blocked some of the serum from inundating his brain. There was some property about the serum that searched out alternate paths to obtain full brain saturation. These paths, apparently, were more painful than others.

Up until this day, all of their subjects were mutants, and that, most of all, made it easier for Lyman. He didn't feel they were an abomination or have an intense hatred for them like some of his men harbored. They were dangerous, and definitely a threat to his country, and therefore they needed to be controlled.

She was different. She wasn't a mutant. She attacked because she was protecting the lives of children. She was born with powers that Lyman didn't even know existed in this world except those with the X-factor. Stryker only wanted her because he needed strength by his side; he was used to having the advantage. Yuriko would be dead by tomorrow.

Timothy Lyman clenched his jaw and ground his teeth together to keep silent as Stryker approached Morgan. He wanted to stop this; it didn't feel right to him. Stryker grabbed her roughly by her hair and yanked to elongate her neck, which they knew facilitated better serum saturation into the central nervous system. He watched as her knees buckled, and he heard the sizzle of the serum hitting her flesh and then Sergeant Timothy Lyman only knew pain.

Morgan knew her family history. She knew that many of her ancestors were burned at the stake accused of witchcraft. Gifts such as theirs were thought to be gifts given out by demons, for their loyal servitude.

Morbidly, Morgan had often wondered what that must have felt like, to be burned alive.

She now knew.