Jean woke up reluctantly to a pounding in her head and pain throughout her upper body. "Anyone get the number of that truck?"

"Jean! Thank god!" Scott's voice seared through her skull.

"What happened?" She raised a hand to her head and felt a bump the size of a goose egg. "Is the girl okay?"

"That 'girl' almost killed you. Hank pulled her off."

Jean opened her eyes and winced at the light. "What happened to her?"

"Hank has her sedated and strapped down to a bed in the medical ward. Logan's keeping an eye on her. It won't matter much if she kicks him in the ribs."

"Most powerful psychic in the world and I get taken by surprise by a panicked teenager. It's been a long time since I was taken off guard like that," she said. "What's the damage?"

"Mild concussion, a cracked rib."

"She was so frightened. I couldn't reach her mind, but I could feel her fear. She was so afraid. Is she okay?"

Scott frowned. He had been frightened. Jean had been seriously hurt. That her first thought was how scared her attacker had been instead of her own welfare was upsetting. "She's groggy, but she's fine."

An inhumanly loud and primal screech of terror made a liar out of him. Scott and Jean were out of the door in a shot. The shriek was followed by a crashing sound and a lot of swearing. Down the hall Logan was standing outside the room, staggering a bit. "I swear I didn't touch her," he stumbled into the wall. The shriek in the enclosed room had ruptured his ear drums. There was a sharp pain, hearing loss, and a nauseating vertigo. "I think I'm going to sit down for a minute here." He sat and leaned against the wall, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

In the small room, the girl was flailing against the restraints, once again in a state of panic.

"What's wrong with her?" Scott asked the air. The girl did look very young and vulnerable.

She went rigid. Her eyes were wild, rimmed with panic and fear. "Wake up, Quetzal. Wake up." She bit her lip. "Please wake up."

"You are awake," Scott said

Reluctantly she accepted that. "Where's my dad?" she asked him. "Where are my sisters?"

"You were the only one we found. We'll find your family."

"No!" she screamed, flinging herself against the straps; the leather creaked against the force. The murderous look was back in her eyes. "You deal with me now," she bared her teeth at him. "If you've got enough juevos to deal with a tied down girl."

Jean got a few more roughly sketched thoughts. There was worry, rage, and fear. "You don't want us to find your family."

Quetzalcoatl's grin was fierce. "Don't worry your pretty little head. My dad'll find you. And when he does he's gonna kill you all." She laid back, making an effort to look calm. Her body was still tense but she closed her eyes and leaned back into the pillow. "You and Dark Beast, and every other flipping clone, construct, and other thing who's had a hand in this."

"Wherever you were," Scott said. "You aren't there anymore. You fell into a pond out back."

"Who is Dark Beast?" Jean asked.

The girl was trying hard to keep up the calm façade, but her face was tense. She was bracing herself for the worst.

Jean pressed the point, fearing the answer. "Tell us about Dark Beast."

Quetzalcoatl squeezed her eyes tighter. "Go. To. Hell," she said through clenched teeth. The wave of thought fragments, emotion, and rough images were more clearly defined. The contents nearly sent her reeling. Small bodies, large bodies, family in danger, a crystal, and a large dark creature full of malevolence and evil intent. A creature with a terrifyingly familiar face.

Jean grabbed onto Scott's arm. Half to catch herself and half to pull him out of the room for a quiet talk. "I got something from her."

"Hank said you couldn't read her at all."

"I can't really. It's like listening to a foreign language. You recognize a word here and there and the tone, but you can't understand anything specific." And she could only read the girl by making an effort, for which Jean was now thankful. "The Dark Beast she was talking about . . . . it was Hank. But evil." She shuddered. "He was doing horrible things."

"Hank? Evil?"

Jean's brow furrowed as she recalled the girl's memories. It wasn't pleasant. They were electric with ragged and raw emotion. The substance of the memories was foul, Jean shied away from the images of tiny bodies cut open and displayed. She was grateful that the translation problems kept her from seeing the small bodies with any more clarity. "I saw some of what she's thinking. Images, feelings. It's all in a jumble but from what I see . . . . she's got good reason to want Dark Beast dead. There was something about a cousin or a sister he got his claws on. That's why she's so violent. There's all this fear and hate wrapped up in the memory. She's scared for her life." The Dark Beast held in the girl's mind was intimately associated with death and fear and dismemberment. Nothing at all like Hank.

"What can we do? We can't keep her tied down."

"I'll talk with her."

"Jean she tried to kill you."

"I'll be okay Scott, she's strapped down and I'm not taking any more chances with her. I'm not the one she's afraid of anyway."

****************

Quetzal was trying to calm down. Her biggest ace was still tight against her vest and she needed an accurate idea of what her situation was before she pulled it out. She tried to bat down the rising panic and find the patient reptile part of her mind. The part that could sit for hours and not think much of anything, the part that didn't panic. She was warming up and finding it easier to think, but there wasn't anything about her position that was causing her less worry. She hardly noticed the loose pajamas that had been slipped on her while she was out.

She was strapped to a bed in typical hospital fashion. Leather restrains with magnetic locks circling her wrists and ankles, straps going over her chest and thighs. Her arms were outside of a blanket that was pulled up to collarbone. It was a common restraint and the escape was one her dad had covered. There was the patient way to get out and the messy way. Quetzal opted for the patient way. It would calm her down and give her something to occupy her mind. She curled her hands and started digging into the tough leather with her claws. Her claws weren't terribly sharp, but they were strong.

The door swung open and Quetzal lifted her head. It was the red-haired teeker that had been in the lab room. "Hello, Miss dos Santos." the woman smiled soothingly.

She was probably a psion too. Quetzal dove even further for the reptile part of her mind. Psis couldn't follow her there. "Call me Quetzal. Who the flipping heck are you?" Quetzal snarled.

"My name is Jean Grey."

"Jean Grey's snuffed." Her eyes smoldered with sullen anger. "Everyone knows she's dead. If you actually believe you're her than you're stupider than a brain dead goose."

The girl came from at least fifty years in the future, but it was still a bit of a blow to hear it said so bluntly. Still, Jean forced a friendly smile. "You're not in your time anymore. You've traveled backwards."

". . . . What?"

"According to your driver's license, you won't even be born for more than thirty five years."

". . . . . No, that's impossible. Ezzy said the crystal only moves from quanta-verse to quanta-verse. It doesn't travel along a single dimension like time."

"Who is Ezzy? And what crystal?"

The stony hostility was fading from Quetzal's face, replaced with bewilderment and dismay. "The M'Kraan crystal. That's why he took Ezzy. She understands multi-universe theory stuff."

"So you're from another universe then?" Jean drew it out, half drawing the conclusion and half asking.

Quetzal's eyes sparkled in thought for a moment. "I have a few questions that I want answered now," it was clear that she wasn't asking out of curiosity, what she had to say next would depend on what kind of answers she got. "Where exactly am I?"

"The Xavier School for Gifted Students. New York."

"So you're the really real Jean Grey. You ain't a clone or a replicant or something?"

"Yes. I am Jean Grey. The one and only."

Quetzal rolled her eyes. "That what he's told you? And he's got you believing it?"

"Hank is not your enemy. He only bears a passing resemblance to your enemy. You've come from another world, but you're safe in this one."

"Well flipping heck," Quetzal muttered to herself, processing what she'd been told. "Wonder how that happened." Louder, she asked Jean, "And what do you want with me?"

"You fell into the lake out back. You were hypothermic. We were trying to help you."

"Why should I believe that? There's people who'd want to hurt me."

"If we'd wanted to hurt you then we would've done it while you were in hypothermic shock. Now, who would want to hurt you?"

"Dark Beast, Wolverine, the Perseus corporation, anyone else who hates my family or would want to see my genetic code teased apart. There's actually a pretty good sized list of people who'd want to hurt me."

"Wolverine?"

Quetzal's eyes narrowed. "You going to tell me he wasn't here for me?"

Jean got another image flash. The dark under the bed lit up with glowing yellow eyes and drooling fangs. And six wicked claws dripping blood and gore. A childhood monster, but one that resonated with a very real fear. The strength of that fear nearly knocked her off her feet. "He was here keeping an eye on you for us. You did just try to stomp in my ribcage."

Quetzal made a disgusted little face and looked away. "In my world he killed a lot of my family. He's the stuff night terrors are made of."

"Jesus."

"Don't blaspheme!" Quetzal snapped. She fell back against the pillow. "I didn't go home!" her hands curled into frustrated fists and she banged her head on the pillow. She snuffled. Her calm mask was cracked and emotion was leaking through. "This has to be a bad dream. Dark Beast, Wolverine . . . . it can't be real." Tears were pricking at her eyes again.

"Hank isn't Dark Beast. He's not the evil creature you encountered." Wincing and carefully trying to avoid jarring her ribs, Jean sat down. "You were pretty badly injured. You had a pretty severe case of hypothermia. We were trying to warm you up."

"Could be a trick," Quetzal said, not really believing her own words. "Dark Beast does a lot of cloning, and fur's easy enough to dye."

"Why bother? Why not just kill you when you were out cold." Jean pulled a tissue from the box and dabbed at Quetzal's face, cleaning up the tears.

Quetzl seemed to smile a little. "Good point. Okay, I'm willing to accept everything is as it seems . . . for now."

"Good." Carefully, Jean leaned back in her chair. "Now why don't you start your story at the beginning."

"In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God." Quetzal smirked.

"Cute."

Quetzal sighed. "A few weeks ago I guess, my cousin Ezzy – Esmerelda - got kidnapped by Dark Beast. She's a genius about quantum mechanics and dimensional mathematics. He wanted her help to figure out how to travel from universe to universe with this crystal he had. Of course, we had to go rescue her."

"Who was 'we?"

"My dad, my sisters, and my cousin."

"Why not call the authorities?"

"We're from Asylum." The tone in Quetzal's voice implied that it was a complete and comprehensive answer. "We take care of our own." There was pride in her voice. "Dad's retired special forces and my sister's a sheriff's deputy. We ain't just gonna sit around and wait for someone else to take care of us. Dark Beast took Ezzy to his base on this island. He did . . . some bad stuff to her. We rescued her. But we splintered the crystal. Part of it got inside me. Then . . . . poof. I was someplace else. Someplace that didn't exist in my world. Gotham city." Quetzal picked at the sheet. "I was there for a few weeks. I thought when I left there . . . . I thought that I was going home."

"So when you saw Beast you panicked then."

"Pretty much yeah. Thought I had gone back and ended up in. . . . in a very bad situation."

"And when you saw Logan you flipped out."

"You'd flip out too if you woke up eyeball to eyeball with the man who had done his damndest to wipe out your whole family." Quetzal sighed. "So now what?"

"I just have a few more questions. Why can't I read your mind?" It shouldn't be possible for Quetzal to be such a mystery. She could read aliens that had nearly no genetic resemblance to human beings.

"My mutation has altered the structure of my brain." Quetzal shrugged as best as she could. "Probably that's why." She wasn't about to go into detail about what made her brain unusual.

"One more question. I can understand why you attacked Hank and screamed your head off when you saw Wolverine, but why did you attack me?"

Quetzal's golden eyes glittered with a predatory coolness. "Well that's just tactics. In any fight, you take out the teekers and psions first."

****************

Scott, Jean, Logan, and Hank sat down to discuss the problem of the new girl. Despite their injuries, Hank and Jean were the most sympathetic. They were the ones that had witnessed the sheer animal panic. There was no maliciousness in her actions, just fear. "We inadvertently put that girl in the worst possible scenario we could," Hank said. "We can't entirely blame her."

"There is something I don't like about her," Logan growled.

"Besides the shattered eardrums?" Hank couldn't help smiling just a bit.

"Besides the shattered eardrums," Logan snapped back.

"We can't leave her tied down," Jean said. "We're going to have to take a chance sooner or later."

Scott frowned. "The last time she was given a chance she nearly stomped your ribcage in."

Jean was adamant. "She's willing to give us a chance. And she's got a lot more reason to be frightened of us."

"Keep her away from the kids," Scott said. "And for a little while at least I want someone keeping an eye on her. I don't want her trying to kill you again Hank."

****************

Quetzal paced the nice but bare room she had been given. All her worldly possessions were laid out on and in the dresser. The pouches of the utility belt had been opened and the contents rifled through, weapons removed. But the 'secret' pouch was untouched and apparently undiscovered. Robin had helped her design the pocket within a pocket so that documents could remain hidden. Frantically Quetzal checked the hidden pocket. Inside the water-proof, flame-resistant fabric was a half dozen photos, her most valuable possessions. A sense of paranoia made her take them out of her wallet and hide them as soon as she found herself in a world that wasn't her own. She waved her long tongue over the photos and tasted no one's scent but her own. They were photos of her family. The only keepsakes she had now that she was whole universes away from them. That and the crucifix her father had given her. She traced her claws over the faces of her dad and sisters. "I'll come home. I promise. I'll find my way back." Briefly she clutched the pictures to her chest then tucked them back into the pocket.

Photos were too dangerous to leave around where someone might see. Her wallet had been rifled through, but the only photos in there were of the family pets. Photos could put your family in danger. They could be used as a lever to tear down defenses. Or they could put the people you loved most in the world in a dangerous situation.

Still, nice to have a memento now that she was so far away. And didn't know when she'd see them again. In the meantime, out of sight, out of mind and thank goodness the psi couldn't tap her brain. She'd find a better hiding spot once she had a chance to explore the room some more.

She tossed the Titan communicator into one of the drawers. It wouldn't be much good in a world where they didn't exist. "Not much to show in the world Quetzal m'gal," she said. "A empty belt of toys, a hundred bucks in cash that'll get flagged counterfeit, and some bad fitting clothes they gave me." She tapped a heavy claw against her teeth. "And a load of friendly enough folks I pissed off."

She'd been given a chance to calm down and wash up. She spent a lot of time in the shower, trying to calm down and fit everything that had just happened into a reasonable framework. The hot water took the cold out of her bones but her heart rate was only beginning to normalize. Waking up and seeing that face, those eyes . . . . she shuddered. And then waking up again and this time to a childhood nightmare made incarnate. . . .

"Dad would be so disappointed," she muttered, brushing out her hair. "Screaming my fool head off, lashing out without taking the time to think and evaluate." She shook her head and wagged her finger sternly at the mirror. "It's our instincts that get us in trouble Baby," Quetzal repeated her dad's admonishment in a fair imitation of his stern manner. "You have to think before you act." She shook her head. "And such language too! Dad raised me better than that."

There was a polite knock on the door before it opened. "How's the room?" Mr. Summers asked her.

Quetzal smiled. "It's great thank you. And thank you for the clothes too." She finished twisting her damp hair up into a bun. "Look, I have to apologize again for earlier today. It was a . . . . . really, really bad reaction on my part." She shuddered. "I'm just glad y'all were able to stop me from doing anything . . . . permanent."

"You understand we'd like to keep close tabs on you for a few days."

"Yeah. It'd be different if Ms. Grey could read my mind I know, to make sure I'm really not a threat." She laughed a little. "Flipping heck. All my life dad told me and my sisters 'If you get in a bad fix, see the X-Men, they'll help." She shook her head. "And what's the first thing I do when I finally meet the X-Men? I start brawling."

"He told you that?"

"Yeah, said he'd never heard of them ever turning away someone they thought they could help." She shrugged. "It's a good place for a kid to run to if things get bad."

That made Scott smile a little. "Was your dad close to the X-Men . . . in your time?"

"Not really. He doesn't approve of them at all. Says that they are genetic isolationists. Says if they really wanted to promote integration they'd let genetically typical kids into the school too, not just the atyps." She shrugged again. "Doesn't really approve of heroing work either."

"Atyps? You mean mutants?"

Quetzal blinked several times in rapid succession. "Wow, I guess I really am in the past. I haven't heard anyone use the m-word like that before."

"Mutant' is offensive?"

"Well . . . yeah. I mean, you can talk about mutated genes. But you just don't call another kid a –" her voice dropped. "A mutant. That kind of language is genecist. It'll get you a beat down." The tips of her ears colored in embarrassment for him. She gaped for a second before finding an excuse for him. "But from what you're telling me about the date – I guess I have to get used to things being a little wild and wooly in the area of genetic tolerance."

"Yeah, just a lot." He pointed to the locket around her neck. "I can't wrap my mind around you actually wearing something that marks you as a muta – atyp."

Quetzal crossed her eyes to look at the locket. "I got it when I was fifteen. Most atyp kids wear 'em. How else is a paramedic gonna know if you don't have a heartbeat, or if you're allergic to epinephrine, or if you turn to rock when you get stuck with a needle, or something like that?" She dropped it to let it rest against her collarbone. "Dad wasn't particularly fond of the genalert jewelry himself. Old guard I guess." She smiled. "Can we finish the rest of the interview in the kitchen? I am starving."

****************

Scott handed Quetzal a sandwich and they discussed the nature of her mutation.

"I'm a saurian morphic. Purely physical capabilities and a tested super-sensitive."

"Super-sensitive?"

"Better sight, smell, and etcetera. I can 'see' in the infrared and taste things in the air." She ate half the sandwich in two bites, barely chewing. After she swallowed she continued. "I've also got some anatomical abnormalities. Bony back-plates, venom, some extra diaphragm muscles, and of course the claws." She rattled it off like she was used to the recitation and clacked her claws together.

"It sounds like mutants – atyps – are registered in your time." The thought made him queasy.

She shook her head and talked around the mouthful of food tucked into her cheek. "No, atyps aren't registered." She gave him a puzzled, sideways look. "I mean, you got to have words so everyone knows what you mean. Pyros, skinners, super sensitives, healers, teekers, psions, blasters, stoners, morphics . . . you get the idea. It's just . . . for talkin'." She shrugged. "Just like you got brunette, Latina, and tall."

He turned the conversation back to the topic at hand. "So you have saurian characteristics."

She shook her head again but swallowed the last of her sandwich this time. "Well yes, I have saurian characteristics. But I'm a saurian morphic. I can alter my form. A were-dinosaur if you like." Quetzal looked at her empty plate. "I don't like it though. It changes my brain too, makes me mean. But I can fly in that form. It takes a lot of calories."

Scott got the hint. He stood up to make her another sandwich. "So what's it like where – when you come from? What's the culture like between humans and mutants?"

"Well," she shrugged. "Things are pretty good I guess. There's still a lot of hashing out to do, mostly about what kind of accommodations have to be made for facilities considering various mutations. The AGAA passed about five years ago, and there's still another two years for businesses to bring their buildings and policies up to code before the lawsuits start."

"AGAA?"

"Americans with Genetic Abnormalities Act. Dad says it's going to be ugly when the lawsuits start up, the basic reality is if a pyro can't control when they burst into flames, they probably shouldn't hang out in shopping malls. Alternatively a super-sensitive makes a better perfumer than a typ would." She shrugged. "Still, good news for our family lawyer."

Scott handed her the sandwich.

"Thank you."

"So can you give me a timeline of events that led up to this?"

Quetzal chewed thoughtfully as she considered her answer. "I'm not sure that I should. One, I think I should just let things unfold the way they would. Keep my hands off to prevent any paradoxes or causality things. Two, this isn't *my* universe. I don't know how accurate that would be. I'll have to think about that. Three," her ears turned red. "I'm not a very good student. My history and English is especially weak. I uh, I don't think I could get anything that happened before I was born in the right order. Much less give any kind of analysis on the implications of the events."

That made her different from every other time traveler he had met. Normally they came from post-apocalyptic worlds and were only too glad to share dire warnings from the future. He decided not to press it in light of her embarrassment over her studies. "I wanted to ask you about one of the cards in your wallet. It's dated to expire more than thirty years before you're born."

"Oh yeah, the Titans. They were in the universe between this one and my home. After the confrontation with Dark Beast I ended up in the shipping district of Gotham. It's a heroing group, great bunch of kids. And I mean kids. At eighteen I was just barely qualifying to be one of the 'Teen Titans.' They did light hero work, nothing too hairy. The card gets me into the Gotham City base of operations."

"Where's Gotham City?"

"About where Chicago should have been." She took a large bite of her sandwich. "The main group was in Bay City, but I never made it out to the left coast while I was there." She shook her head. "Very weird. My geography's better than my history, but only by a bit. Every time I looked at a map I'd still get this niggly feeling something wasn't right though."

****************

Quetzal licked the mustard off her fingers with her long blue-grey tongue. The caginess about her home came so naturally that she never thought it was weird. The where and what questions about her home were ones that she had been trained to talk around. Three hours from anywhere you'd want to be, a dead silver mining town, a little farming community with nothing to do – all stock phrases used to dodge the matter.

Avoiding the when of her home came just as naturally and with just as little thought. Answers that distracted from the topic or made her seem like an unreliable witness were something all Asylum kids were good at. Filling in a statement with a large quantity of nearly-irrelevant details to seem gregarious was also a popular way form of misdirection. How to turn black into white without ever telling a lie was something her family in particular excelled at. Tell half the story and let the listener fill in the blanks however they liked. Create an awkward silence and change the topic.

She knew what would come next. Next would be who. Family, friends, neighbors. Who was a dangerous topic. Who was why everyone was so careful about where and what. Who could get people killed. People like the town sheriff, her ballet teacher, and countless neighbors.

Somewhere she was aware that this was not normal. Other people didn't hide where they came from and who their neighbors were. But this was what she grew up knowing. And even if these folk were near a half century and a few thousand miles from her town (heck, an entire universe it seemed), and on top of that, unlikely as they were to mean any harm to her kith and kin, she wasn't inclined to buck against nearly two decades worth of ingrained habit.

Besides, it wasn't like she had any secrets that would hurt them.

****************

Quetzal was on her fourth sandwich by the time Scott asked her about her family history. She made the third and fourth sandwiches herself, happily raiding the refrigerator.

"You sure? I mean, I think it's pretty boring."

Every teen thought their family was boring. He didn't give it too much credit. "Yeah, let's start with your parents."

"Victor and Isabella dos Santos. Mom's dead now. Died when I was a bitty thing. My sisters are a lot like her – everyone says that. Me? I'm daddy's little angel."

"Were they both atyps?"

"Yeah, dad was a superhealer, but he doesn't patch up people. He's the town vet. He's got a pretty good large animal practice. There's a lot of cows and horses in Asylum – it's never really grown out of the whole 'wild west' phase. Does dogs and cats too though. He's the only vet in town y'see. Before he started doing veterinary stuff though, he spent some time with the army. He was special forces and he taught us kids a lot of what he knew." She took a bite of her sandwich. "That's why he took us to get Ezzy back."

"And your mother?"

"She was an atyp too, saurian morphic like me. Dad says all of us girls are a lot like mom." She smiled to herself briefly. "She was a cook for a while, then she got involved in the veterinary field. That's really where she connected with my dad. Dad says she was a very small-town gal at heart."

"Tell me about your sisters."

"Kimmie, Sally, and Charlie. They're identical triplets, practically clones of our mom. Saurian morphics too. Sally went to New York a few years ago to try her hand at being a big city chef. Kimmie's part of dad's veterinary business. And Charlie's a sheriff's deputy in town." Quetzal drummed her claws on the table. "If you're going to ask about grandparents next don't bother. Dad and mom both were both cut off from their families when their powers manifested. There's . . . . a whole lot of really bad blood there. We don't . . . . talk about it. At. All."

"Any other family?"

"Most of my extended family was killed before I was born."

She didn't put any finer a point on the matter. Not after the scene she'd made in the medlab a few hours ago.

Quetzal quickly filled in the awkward silence she'd created. "There was a friend of my dad who we called Aunty, and her daughters were our cousins." She rolled her eyes and propped her head against her fist. "Those two are who got me into this mess."

"What about your education?"

"I have a high school diploma and I'm EMT certified. That's it as far as formal schooling. I've taken fourteen years of dance lessons and twelve years of martial arts training. I've has some voice-coaching too, started in the church choir." Her smile was broad. "I'm fluent in Spanish and ASL – my cousin Grace was deaf y'see. Thanks to all the opera I used to sing I know a rough smattering of German and Italian."

"You quite accomplished for you age."

"Busy hands can't cause trouble," she said. Her smile was a little mischievous. "I've been known to cause a lot of trouble when I don't have anything better to do. There was this one time when I was eight and I found my dad's shotgun shells . . . well, that's really neither here nor there. Suffice to say, it's always best if I've got something I should be doing so I don't wind up occupying myself with things I should not be doing."