Flashes of echoes ran through my mind pulling me from the dark oblivion of unconsciousness.
I slowly opened my eyes, sat up, and looked around me.
I was in a large, bright room. The floors were made out of large slabs of bluish metal. The walls were bare and hospital like. Stainless steel medical equipment was everywhere and I could tell it was high tech.
Pushing away the quilted blanket, which was over me, I took a breath and stepped onto the floor, hopping off of the examination table I was on.
After the first wave of echoes had hit me I was able to walk towards the exit only slightly dizzy.
The door swished open for me and I continued down a large open hallway. Echoes of who had walked this hall, and those that had built it, flooded my mind. But I had perfected the ability to push the echoes back into the person or object they had come from leaving me with only the fuzzy memory of them, which were soon forgotten.
One echo stopped me short. Turning to my right I pressed a hidden panel in the wall. A secret door slid open into a tiny, round room which I knew was an elevator as soon as I stepped inside. The door closed behind me. In the next second it had opened to a large area which looked like an entry to a house. The walls were done in dark wood panelling and the floors in contrasting brown wood with soft Persian rugs in the middle of the floor. Large windows let in warm sunshine and beautifully crafted furniture was placed strategically against the walls.
The echoes in this place were stronger than they had been anywhere else so far. There were also so many more that by the time I had taken only two steps I was already dizzy and had to force many echoes away.
It was a school I realised. Just then a bell rang and the sound of footsteps reverberated through the entrance hall where I was standing. School was out.
Pushing myself against a pillar I was able to avoid the mass of students. Some gave me funny looks, others ignored me completely. Every once in a while a few echoes would touch my mind as students accidentally bumped me or their bags touched me. I didn't notice a girl standing in front of me until she cleared her throat.
"Excuse me, are you lost?" She asked.
I studied her for a moment. She had dark brown hair with a white streak through the front of it and brown eyes. She was wearing a t-shirt and jeans but also had on black silk gloves, which disappeared under her t-shirt sleeves, and a purple scarf around her neck.
"No." I answered. "Just a little bit confused as to how I got here." I smiled noticing as I did that we were attracting the attention of a small crowd of people.
"Hey, what's going on here?" A large, well-muscled man asked as he shouldered his way through the crowd of teenagers and children. I recognised him as the dark short-tempered man from the alley. Now, I knew his name was Logan. Following behind him was a bald man in a wheel-chair.
"You don't need to fear us." A voice said in my head. I looked at the man in the wheel-chair and realised he was the one who was speaking. So here was a telepath. And a strong one at that. I thought to myself as I built up some of my mental walls.
"We mean you no harm." The man in the wheel-chair said, out loud this time; an English accent apparent in his voice.
"Where am I?" I asked making sure to keep an eye on the man from the alleyway knowing he was my closest threat.
"Xavier's School for the Gifted," the man, who I knew was Professor Charles Xavier, said. I had managed to sort through the information I had taken from the memory echoes I had felt. I now knew everyone in this school was a mutant and each one of their powers as well as their weaknesses. I saw Professor Xavier stiffen and Logan reach for me.
"Logan, don't."
But it was too late for Xavier to stop him. As his hand touched my bare arm pain exploded in my skull as the echoes of his memories slammed into my mind. Flashes of a large room bathed in the glow of a fire, a dark forest and a teenage boy called Victor, the same boy as he grew into a man, war after war, pain but never death. Unable to take anymore I reached out and pressed my fingertips to Logan's forehead channelling his memories back to him. But as I did more flashes took their place.
Six men in military gear, a woman with beautiful blue eyes, more blood, fiery pain, a man with flashing red eyes and a betrayal, a fight and then the woman was back. Suddenly there were three sharp echoes of pain and then waking up to nothing.
With a gasp, I pulled my touch away from his skin and my vision snapped back to the room and the children around me. Logan was on his knees in front of me, his head bowed and his shoulders heaving in exertion.
"I-I'm sorry," I said as I realised what I had done.
I felt something warm trickle from my nose. Touching my top lip I pulled my fingers away from my face to see blood. There was a growling yell from Logan and I watched as he sprang to his feet and slammed me back against the pillar behind me, one hand at my throat. The other in a fist near my face as long metal claws slid slowly from between his knuckles.
"Logan, that's enough," Xavier ordered. Logan ignored him.
"What did you do to me?" He snarled his face close to mine.
"I didn't know you had lost your memories," I gasped as he squeezed the breath from my lungs.
He growled low and I realized he wanted to kill me. Tears filled my eyes as fear chilled my blood.
"Logan, let her go!" Professor Xavier commanded.
"Please," I whispered. "Please, don't." A single tear slid down my cheek as I stared into Logan's furious dark hazel eyes.
He snarled at me, the children around us stepping back in fear. "Are those my memories?" he asked slowly. I pushed at his hand trying to get more air into my lungs and heard the voice of the other man who had been in the alley when I had been taken. But Logan tightened his grip on me. "Answer me," he growled low.
"Yes," I managed to gasp out as the corners of my vision turned black. "Yes."
His hand was gone in the next moment and I fell to the ground. Confused, I dragged air into my aching lungs and looked up through the curtain of my hair to see the man from the alley and another young man with skin like metal pulling Logan away down the hall. He just let them drag him away, his angry gaze locked on me.
I shuddered as I was helped to my feet by a beautiful, mocha skinned woman with white hair. "Are you alright?" she asked me but before I could answer she had turned to a tall redheaded woman. "Jean, will you check her?"
Pushing away their hands after the Professor had ordered the children back to their classes and Jean had pressed at the quickly fading bruises on my neck I followed the echoes to find Logan and the man with the red tinted glasses who I now knew was Scott in a large sitting room arguing.
"Try and stop me, One-Eye," Logan snarled pushing past Scott who caught his arm.
"She's no threat, Logan. You can't just go around strangling innocent women," the shorter man said.
Logan turned on him. "Oh yeah? And who's gonna stop me, bub?"
I decided that it was time to diffuse the situation feeling the tension between them palpably. "If you touch me again I will stop you myself." I said stepping fully into the room.
Logan rounded on me and lunged with an angry growl. Spearing him with a look I used my powers to push him to his knees before he got half way across the room. He struggled against the hold I had on him but I ignored it. "Would you just stop?" I asked exasperated and feeling mentally drained.
He lifted his gaze to mine only to stop struggling long enough to crack his neck and answer me. "No."
"Alright." I turned as the soft whirr of the Professor's wheelchair announced his arrival. "That's enough of that," he added.
I relaxed, letting Logan get to his feet slowly. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, tense and ready to run if he tried to get to me again.
The Professor turned to me. "Please Miss…"
"Jenna Hughes," I supplied him with my name, willing to give him that at least.
"Please Miss Hughes," Professor Xavier said with a kind smile. "Take a seat. We need to talk…." He glanced at Logan's rage filled face. "About many things."
I took a breath feeling dizzy for a moment as echoes crashed into my conscious. For some reason the most vivid were the memories I had read from my contact with Logan. Taking my hesitation to mean I was afraid, Storm, the dark skinned woman with white hair who had followed the Professor into the room stepped forward. "You don't need to fear us. Logan will not hurt you and we want to know more about you."
Taking her word about everything but Logan, I walked to a chair in the corner and sat down. I had a wall at my back which was good if I had to fight and there was also a window to my left that was easily accessible if I had to leave quickly.
"What do you want to know?" I asked softly.
Logan, predictably, stepped forward and opened his mouth to say something only to be interrupted by Scott. "What's your power?"
I looked away, my gaze turning to the window as I wished suddenly that I hadn't agreed to answering questions. I sighed and turned back to the room to find four very inquisitive gazes and one very angry gaze on me. "I can read echoes." Knowing they wouldn't understand I elaborated, "Echoes are the remnants of your memories left on something you touch. For example, I know who each of you are. Your names, the people you associate with, and your powers and weaknesses. With skin to skin contact I can read memories and transmit them back to you or into something else." I looked down at my hands lying in my lap and stopped my fingers from twisting around each other in a nervous habit I had picked up over the years. I swallowed fearfully and then decided to tell them the rest of what I could do. "I can also break down the matter of any object, manipulate it and also reform it with my mind."
"Show us."
I looked up to see Jean step forward. Sighing I turned my eyes to the bookshelf behind her and made a book slide off the shelf and float to the middle of the room. As it hung suspended in mid-air it started to disintegrate into nothing before it reformed in front of me and dropped to my lap. The Professor's look was one of quiet thought. "You should not have brought me here," I told the people in the room around me my eyes still on the leather cover of the book in my lap. "I am being hunted. If they find me here they will not spare anyone."
"You're safe here." Storm said coming to sit down on the couch near me.
I clenched my jaw and looked away. They didn't understand how much danger they were in. The book in my lap disintegrated and reformed back on the shelf as I stood up. "I can't stay here. I will only bring evil to this place."
I was stopped by Jean's soft question. "How old are you?"
My gaze jumped to her face and I was aware of Logan tensing in the corner ready to grab me again. "Older than you'd think." I said softly.
"You can heal." Scott said also stepping forward.
I nodded. "It is a part of my gift. I can put myself back together but if the wound is too bad my body can heal itself slowly, but the process is by far faster than a human's body healing itself."
"How old are you?" Jean asked again and I felt her pushing at my mental walls.
I shut her out of my mind. "I was born in 510 BC the year Rome became a Republic."
There was a heavy silence in the room after I revealed that particular truth. Then Logan managed to mutter about how that was impossible.
I folded my arms across my chest. "I became an oracle for the Emperors, a high priestess, until I ran from them and their bloody reign. I have lived through hundreds of wars, seen generation after generation of the human race kill each other and every other thing they touch." I walked toward him anger building within me as I remembered the horrors I had lived through. "The Coliseum was bad enough but then the higher powers of democracy and science found nuclear warfare to their taste and the world has become darker than I have ever seen it."
"You sound bitter." He growled as I stopped in front of him.
I laughed, itching to hit him. "It is what it is and when it ends it will be no one's fault but ours."
"So, you didn't have a hand in any of those bloody reigns or the killing then?" he asked.
The others in the room protested but I was too far gone in my anger. I raised my hand to slap him. He was faster than I had anticipated. He grabbed my wrist and swung me around throwing me back against the wall and trapping me between his arms as he put his fists against the wall on either side of me. I realised he had been goading me and glared up at him.
"What do you want from me, Logan?" I asked my voice calm even though I was still angry.
He leaned into me and I saw the others in the room start forward. "Give me my memories back," he snarled. "All of them."
I paled at his command. My hands starting to shake as flashes of the memories I had already given back to him filled my mind. I could still feel the pain he felt when his memories were taken. "I can't." I gasped out my eyes shut tight against the tears that filled them again.
A growl rumbled through him and he swore before grabbing my sleeve covered wrist and pressing my hand to his forehead. I screamed as his memories assaulted my mind before everything went dark.