Chapter 28

It brought back memories both vivid and sweet to be handed a warm, handle-less earthenware cup of green tea by the graceful hands of Mariko Yashida. Logan accepted the cup with both hands, nodding his head in as much of a bow as he could manage while sitting in an armchair this deep.

Mariko took her seat across from him and picked up her own cup. How many years had it been? Sixty? Seventy, maybe? Surely not that long. The decades had been kind to her; she had aged with the timeless grace that only the women of Asia seemed to manage. As she took her first sip, she watched him over the top of her cup, smile lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes. There was no embarrassment anymore, no resentment . . . there'd been way too much water under the bridge for that.

She lowered the cup, cradling it in both hands. "What are you looking at?" she asked, almost teasing.

He smiled. "Your eyelids. You've had them done."

She cast her eyes down, having the decency to be a little embarrassed but at the same time reflexively showing off the deep crease in each lid, like that of a westerner. He'd remembered her eyes with smooth lids, the skin folding invisibly under itself at her lash line. "A silly piece of vanity, but it is impossible to be taken seriously in the business world these days without it."

"Silly's right."

"You're hardly in a position to criticize." She looked him over pointedly.

"I told you this would probably happen, Mariko."

"Yes, you did. And I'm astonished by how it doesn't seem strange to me. It's like we met three weeks ago. You haven't even changed your hairstyle."

He combed one hand self-consciously through his hair, and she laughed, discreetly hiding her mouth with her free hand.

"A lot about me has changed," he assured her. "Just not where it's visible most of the time." He held out her hand to her, palm down, and slowly pushed his claws into his hand and through his skin. It hurt like hell to do this so slowly, but he didn't want to scare her. It would make him sick if he ever scared her.

He heard her catch her breath, but she accepted his unspoken invitation and put down her teacup and took his hand in both of hers, studying the heft of it and the magnificent, gleaming blades.

"Who did this?" she asked softly.

"A bunch of mad scientists. Back in the eighties, I think. Hard to pin it down. My memory's shot."

"You have kept your face and lost your mind, whereas I have kept my mind and lost my face."

Logan chuckled and slipped the claws back inside, flexing his fingers to alleviate the healing itch. Somehow, being teased by Mariko made all the craziness seem so much less important. He took a sip of the tea and swallowed slowly, savoring the warm, clean feeling of it in his mouth.

"What has brought you back, Logan?" Mariko asked, and her voice was gentle and calm.

"I'd love to be able to give you some half-decent answer to that, but the plain truth is that I need a favor."

"You are more than entitled to one."

"It's a very big, very personal, and possibly very dangerous favor."

"Anything and everything that I have to give is at your service." They both knew the one thing she would not give him; the fact that she didn't mention it suggested to Logan that she assumed he would no longer want it.

Logan paused a second before continuing, marvelling at this woman and what a lucky sod he was to have known her. To still know her, technically.

"It's Laura."

Mariko nodded. He'd introduced Laura and Jean to her immediately after they'd landed, before the two girls had been escorted away by a hotel concierge to a room, which he assumed would have a shower, which he expected would make Jean the happiest person on the continent of Asia. "Is she yours?"

"She is now," said Logan, glossing over the complicated problem of Laura's lack of parentage. In as few words as possible, he summed up who and what she was: a clone, a weapon, a supersoldier, a runaway, a guerrilla, a refugee, and finally a child.

"If things weren't such a mess, I'd bring her to the Xavier Institute . . . it's where I've been living these last few years, and they've got the kind of resources to maybe help her."

"The name sounds familiar. I've heard of this place recently."

"You should have. The U.S. military attacked it last week."

"Ah, yes."

"The kids are evacuated to as safe a place as we can hope for, but there's no way it's a safe place for Laura. And SHIELD wants her bad, now that they flushed her out of where she's been hiding. I need to hide her somewhere, with people who can handle the kind of crazy she's had beaten into her head, who can stand up to Nick Fury if he tries to kidnap or extradite her, and who I can trust to keep her safe until I can come back to get her."

"And when will that be?"

"Perfect world? Couple of weeks."

"And in our world, perhaps never, I suppose."

Logan shrugged, admitting it.

"And what about Jean?" Mariko asked gently. "Will you leave here with me as well?"

"Nah. Jean's an adult. I can't make her stay anywhere she doesn't want to. Besides, this is her fight—that's her boyfriend they've got locked up in New York. She's got a right to get in a few hits for his sake."

Mariko's eyebrows went up in surprise. "Really? And does this boyfriend know that you're in love with her?"

Logan was silent for a second, then chuckled. "I guess I must have forgotten how canny you are. That's a dangerous talent you've got."

"And yours is a very dangerous weakness. You write your soul in your eyes, Logan. You must learn to keep them down if you want to keep your secrets. Does he know?"

"Nah. But she does, and if she thought for one second I was trying to keep her outta danger because of it, she would skin me alive."

Mariko smiled. "She has a strong will?"

"The strongest."

"I can see why you would love her, then."

His amusement faded, several different kinds of guilt rising up to replace it. "Mariko, it's not—"

"I know," she assured him, cutting him off with a firm but graceful gesture of her hand. "Will you be leaving tonight?"

He should. He should get back into Velocity and head back to Avalon as fast as he could. The X-Men were going to need him, and to need Jean, trapped as they were in an indefensible position without Scott and soon to be without Charles. He needed to get back.

But there was Laura. She'd trusted him, if her hesitant acceptance of his presence in her life could be called that, for less than a day. Leaving her alone in this strange place with people she'd never met before was the worst possible thing he could do to her. There were lots of people to take care of the team . . . at least for a few more days. Laura didn't have anyone else right now.

And there was Jean, who'd reached for Cerebro, then left it alone. Why had she left it alone? And what was he going to doabout her, when Sabertooth was prowling the station but she refused to be stashed somewhere safe? He very deliberately wrenched his train of thought back to where it was supposed to be.

"No. I'll stay a little while. Long enough for both you and the kid to figure out what you're getting into and have a fair chance to back out. How long are you in Seoul?"

"Two weeks. I only arrived yesterday."

"Well, at the very least, the girls and I could use a shower, and a meal, and a decent night's sleep on some actual mattresses. If it's not too much trouble."

"It would be my great pleasure."

They had obviously ended up at the fanciest, most expensive hotel in Korea, and the shower was magnificent. It was such a relief to be clean.

Jean emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a thick and fluffy bathrobe monogrammed with the hotel's logo, toweling off her tangled and dripping hair. The shampoo she'd used claimed to have ginseng in it, which smelled odd and strong and earthy and non-shampoo-like. There was a comb in the bathroom, but she wanted to let herself dry off a little before attacking the mess.

Laura, sharing the double room with her, had gone straight to the computer set up at the desk by the window. She obviously didn't like having her back to the center of the room; she checked over her shoulder when she heard the bathroom door, and didn't look back at the screen until Jean had sat down unthreateningly on the edge of one of the beds. She looked so peculiar, barefoot in rags and dreadlocks, sitting in the austere modernist luxury of the hotel room.

"What did you find?" Jean asked, nodding at the computer.

"The mutant registry has reached thirty thousand entries," Laura told her.

Jean's breath caught in her throat. "Thirty thousand?" She'd never in her wildest dreams imagined mutants to be so numerous. And that was just the registered ones. "Is there anything about Scott?"

Laura cocked her head.

"Scott Summers. He's the team commander."

Laura made a brief, wordless noise of acknowledgment. "Combat name Cyclops. Ocular energy beams."

"That's him."

Laura twisted back to the computer and started typing, her fingers flying competently across the keyboard. "Arrested in the White House press room. Pleaded not guilty to numerous charges. Moved to New York for arraignment and trial. Made accusations of torture—"

"Torture?" Jean dropped the towel and jumped for the computer, forgetting for a moment who was sitting at it.

Laura shot out of her chair like a bullet, rebounded off the wall, and flew at Jean's head with all four claws out. It happened so fast that Jean doubted that either of them really knew what was happening. Jean barely managed to deflect her in time, pushing her jump sideways and throwing her onto the double bed at the other side of the room. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" she yelled, throwing a TK wall between the two of them lest Laura fly at her head again.

Laura already had her balance back, crouching low in the middle of the bed with her claws spread wide and her skinny chest heaving as her body grabbed for the oxygen she needed to sustain the fight-or-flight response. Her eyes were wide with panic, but she didn't jump again.

"Okay," Jean said, as much to calm herself as to calm Laura. "Okay. We're just going to take it easy for a second." She sat down on the other bed and took a few deep breaths herself. "Look, you know I'm not going to hurt you."

"I don't know anything," Laura told her, still panting.

Jean paused again, taking a second to try to see the situation from Laura's point of view. She'd left what she'd established as her home territory, trusting her safety to two people, only one of whom she knew at all. She was in an unfamiliar space with no resources and very little to rely on but those claws. And she had no reason to assume that anybody could be trusted-she'd probably never met anybody who could.

"Okay," she said again, pulling her feet up onto the bed and crossing her legs underneath her. Laura, seeing Jean take this less-defensible position, pulled in her claws and sat back on her heels. "I understand how scared you must be. I know this is all really new for you." Like it's all so comfortable and normal for me . . . "But I need you to believe that I only want to help you. That's it. I would never, ever do anything to hurt you."

Laura just watched her, impassive, suspicious. Talk was cheap.

Jean sighed. They were going to have to find some common ground in this hotel room, or Laura wasn't going to be the only one up all night worrying about being knifed in her sleep.

"Let's try this," she suggested, and switched to telepathy, stretching her mind open wide. Can you see me?

Laura's head tilted a couple of degrees to the side.

I'm going to keep my mind open like this. That way, you can see me, see everything that I'm thinking. If you see me thinking about hurting or betraying you, or if I close my mind, you'll have some warning. Sound good?

She felt a tentative nudge inside her head. Laura was no telepath herself, but she had the focus and the presence of mind to explore what Jean showed to her . . . which was anything and everything Jean had to think about.

On the top of the list was Scott. Scott, and torture . . . what did they mean by torture? What was happening over there? She'd told him this voluntary-arrest scheme was a bad idea . . . and Logan had assured her that they wouldn't hurt him . . . she wanted to get to the computer, but she couldn't turn her back to Laura until Laura was willing to do the same.

Laura shifted her weight forward onto her knees, her posture relaxing a little as hostility was replaced with curiosity. Jean let her mind wander, showing the younger girl everything that she herself wanted to see right now . . . her own beautiful house on Greymalkin lane, with the statue of Peace presiding over the fountain in the front driveway . . . Scott lounging on the loveseat in the front room, looking up from his homework to tell off Bobby and Roberto for making too much noise, smiling reluctantly at her when she called him out for being a stick-in-the-mud . . . Storm and Logan teasing each other as they set the table in the dining room . . . Professor Xavier looking up from his work to thank her for the announcement that dinner was ready . . . and Laura could not only see and hear the memory, but feel it. There was nowhere in the world where Jean felt so safe, so accepted and so needed, as the Institute that she'd called home since she'd been twelve years old. If Laura had never felt that way, then it was no wonder she reacted to the world the way she did.

"Is this okay?" Jean asked. "Does that help?"

"It helps," Laura told her, her voice breathy and distracted. Her eyes weren't focused, either. All of her attention was still inside her mind, watching what was happening in Jean's.

Both of them felt Jean's mind tug back to Scott, back to the computer, the craving to know what was happening at home. Jean carefully released the TK shield that divided the room and clambered over the bed back to the desk where the computer waited. The image flashed across her mind of Laura lunging at her back, and they both knew exactly how scared she was. But Laura didn't move.

Jean forced her eyes to focus on the news article in front of her. Scott's name jumped out at her—Scott Summers at the top of the article, then just Summers in every reference thereafter. No one just called him Summers, except maybe Lance and the Brotherhood guys. She was being told about his situation by someone who'd never met him, some journalistic interloper invading her relationship with her boyfriend. The article described impassively this person named Summers and how he had been involved in something called an altercation (as opposed to a fistfight or a beating) and had sustained an injury (someone had hit him hard in the face). He'd received treatment at a local dental clinic, then claimed that the dentist had denied him any pain relief.

There were so many sentences in the passive voice, as though this person they described was a cardboard cutout being dragged through this nightmare by unnamed, uncontrollable forces. There was no hint of the man she knew who had set everything in motion—probably against the advice of everyone else involved, stubborn idiot that he was. The Scott that she knew was intelligent, proactive, assertive to the point of bossiness. This inanimate prop named Summers was a stranger to her.

She should have called. It was too late now—even with Velocity's little Cerebro, even with how much better she'd gotten at stretching her powers, there was no way she'd be able to reach him in New York when she was in Seoul.

She finally had to close the browser window when she reached the comments section below the article. She only caught a glimpse of the first few entries . . . I hope they bring back the NY death penalty for this Mutie, he killed American soldiers . . . . This kind of showboating is just to taint the jury pool. It's an underhanded ploy by his legal team . . . your a bigot, Scott Summers 4 President! . . . I totally needed another reason to be scared of dentists. Thanks alot . . . but it was enough to make her feel miserable and sick.

A few minutes ago, Korea seemed like a strange, uncomfortable, foreign place. Now she was inexpressibly glad to be so far removed from the United States. She felt so much safer here than she would have in her own country.

There was no use in thinking about it. She'd be back in calling range in a couple of days, right? That'd be soon enough to worry. The important thing now was to focus on the problems at hand—first and foremost, her filthy and volatile roommate.

Jean pushed away from the computer and turned back to Laura, who was now sitting cross-legged on her bed, not reading over Jean's shoulder so much as reading through her brain.

"You're pale," Laura observed bluntly. "Are you sick?"

Jean shook her head. "Not sick. Just upset. I don't like not being able to do anything, especially when the people that I care about need my help." She sighed and shook her head. "I hate feeling useless."

"You're not. You're a telekinetic telepath. You're very useful."

"Only for the right kind of problem." She forced a smile. "Speaking of problems . . . if you promise not to stab me, I would really, really like to do something about your hair."

Carol betrayed no concern, or even any emotion at all, as she waited in the interrogation room. She'd known she would end up here. She could see her reflection in the large one-way mirror across from her, her face blank. The walls were gray, and the table and two chairs were plain steel.

She was really almost astonished at how calm she felt. She'd expected to feel afraid, or conflicted, or angry, but instead she only felt the calm detachment of a well-drilled military officer. She knew exactly what was happening, and what she needed to do. She knew it could end up getting her killed. She could handle that.

The door opened, and the captain who'd picked her up walked into the room. His uniform was immaculate, the insignia gleaming. He'd dressed carefully to be the embodiment of the US Air Force, the organization to which she'd sworn her loyalty. Carol stood up and held herself at attention, her posture perfect even though her own uniform was back home in her closet.

"At ease, Lieutenant," the captain told her. Carol moved her right foot out and crossed her hands behind her, falling into parade rest. It was more formal than what the officer had ordered, but the familiar, well-drilled posture felt safe somehow.

The captain took the chair across from her, and she could see the back of his head in the mirror. "Have a seat," he ordered, indicating her chair. Carol sat, back straight and rigid.

"You're not under arrest," the captain assured her, and Carol almost let her mouth twitch up in a smile. Of course she wasn't; if she were under arrest, she'd have rights. "We just would appreciate your help in an ongoing investigation. We just have a few questions, and then you're free to go."

Carol nodded.

"Please state your name, rank, and serial number."

"Carol Susan Danvers, second lieutenant, three seven five three one four four seven." She spoke loudly and clearly, so that wherever the microphone was, it would pick up her voice.

"Lieutenant Danvers, are you or are you not X-gene positive?"

"I am X-gene positive."

"What is your classification?"

"I am a 3-beta mutant."

"Are you registered in the National Mutant Registry?"

"I am not."

"Why are you not?"

"Because I am already registered with United States Air Force Special Operations."

"Are you acquainted with Professor Charles Xavier?"

"I am."

"Who is he?"

"He is the founder and director of the Xavier Institute for the Gifted."

"Are you in regular contact with Professor Xavier?"

"I am not."

"Are you in regular contact with any of his students or colleagues?"

"I am."

"Please describe that contact."

"I regularly exchange letters with Rogue, who is one of his students."

"Why?"

"Rogue is my friend. I consider her like a younger sister."

"And why is that?"

"Because she is currently the custodian of the powers with which I was born."

"And how did that come about?"

Carol gave her first evasive answer. "It's very complicated, sir. You can read the full account in my official report."

"Have you been in contact with Rogue at any time in the last four days?"

"No."

"Has she made any attempt to communicate with you?"

"No."

"Have you made any attempt to communicate with her?"

"No."

"When you were in correspondence, did you at any time discuss the Mutant Registration Act?"

"Yes, it came up."

"Did she tell you of any plans her team had made in case of the Act being enforced?"

"Why don't you tell me, sir? I assume you've read all her letters by now."

The captain paused, as if startled that anyone so placid and professional could lash back at him like that."Yes," he admitted, "we have. And they haven't been very helpful in determining where Rogue and her schoolmates are now."

"That must be very frustrating for you, sir."

"Do you know where they went?"

"No."

"Do you have a means of contacting them?"

"Possibly."

"What do you mean by 'possibly'?"

"The group includes at least one very powerful telepath. Telepaths are generally very easy to reach."

"Please contact this telepath now."

"No, sir."

"That was a direct order, Lieutenant."

"And mine was a direct refusal, Captain."

"A refusal would be insubordination. That's grounds for a court martial."

"I'm aware of that, sir."

"Lieutenant," the captain, growled, rising from his chair to loom over her, "may I remind you that when you put on your uniform, you swore an oath to obey the orders of the officers appointed over you?"

"You may, sir." Carol was not intimidated by opponents larger than herself; she hadn't since her powers had manifested, and her confidence had remained even after the powers were gone. "But before I swore that, I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. My oath didn't include any exceptions for domestic enemies who outrank me . . . or even domestic enemies who are U.S. senators."

For a second, he looked so angry that Carol thought he might even hit her. That would certainly be interesting.

"One more chance, Danvers," he informed her, his teeth barely unclenching enough to let the words out. "You'll cooperate with this investigation, or your career in the Air Force is over. I promise you that. I'll personally make sure you're locked away for the rest of your days, you insubordinate slut."

Carol smiled. If he'd descended to name-calling, she'd really yanked his chain. "I'd prefer the term 'conscientious objector slut,' Captain. And my career in the Air Force has been over for years . . . since the day I lost my powers. I know perfectly well that Harken and the rest of his cronies have been trying to think of a legitimate excuse to get me off the payroll, now that I can't take out fighter jets with my bare hands. Go ahead and court-martial me, lock me up . . . just don't think you're fooling anybody when you claim this is about patriotism. It's just a stinking mix of hatred and money. Sir."

She sat back in her chair. Even though her voice had never risen above the calm, professional tone in which she'd started, it still felt deeply satisfying to have a proper rant. Now that she'd said it all, she felt strangely triumphant. Even if she was to be locked up for the rest of her days, she'd have this memory to gloat over on every single incarcerated morning.

The captain turned to the two-way mirror. "Lock her up," he ordered the people behind it. Then he stalked from the room.