X-Men: Evolution

Blood Magics

32. Pressure Fractures

The return to the mansion was a somber affair. The entire ride back, the scent of fear was so strong that even Rahne's human nose could pick it up, and it burned.

When they landed in the hangar, Rahne was a bit surprised to see that Dragon and Amara seemed to be in the same place they had left them in. Amara had brought her schoolwork, it looked like, but with the XM- Velocity coming in for a landing, both of them had their attention on the jet. Amara looked anxious; Dragon's expression was rather stormy.

Once the jet was securely parked and the door was open, they all filed out. Amara rose up from her seat on the ground and hurried to meet them.

"Did you find them? Are they okay?"

"No." Roberto answered, voice tight.

"They were gone. Rahne tracked their scent inside the lab, but they never came out… and the lab was empty!" Sam said.

"Not completely empty." Jean corrected. Her own face was white; her expression suggested she might throw up. "Professor Xavier's wheelchair was down there. Rahne confirmed it was his. It had been knocked over on its side. But none of our friends were there."

"Of course not! You went the wrong way!" Dragon complained. Rahne looked down at her in surprise.

"What? What are you going on about now, Savage?" Tabitha snapped. Rahne suspected the bite in her voice was stronger than usual because she, too, was worried. Normally, Tabitha let very little rattle her; she focused on enjoying herself more than taking anything seriously. But this had gotten even to her.

"She's been talking about it since you left." Amara groaned. "Going on about wanting me to call you and tell you that you're going the wrong way."

"I told you she wasn't there, though! And I was right, wasn't I? They went, and they didn't find anybody!" Dragon snapped back at her. "I told you!"

"Alright, alright, yes, you said that!" Amara cried. "Can we please hear what they did find first?"

"Actually, I want to know what Dragon is saying." Jean shook her head. "You could tell they weren't there?"

"I could tell you weren't going in the right direction. Rogue is that way." Dragon pointed in a southward direction with her paw.

"You… know where she is?"

"I know she's that way, and not the way that you were going before. But Amara wouldn't listen to me!"

Amara threw up her hands. "You see? She's been going on about that. I don't know what she's talking about! How could she possibly know where the others are!"

Jean stared down at Dragon; Dragon stared back up at her, visibly upset.

"I'm not lying! Rogue is that way!"

The entire hangar fell silent as everyone there observed the staring contest between Jean and Dragon. Finally, Jean raised a hand to rub at one of her temples, and quietly said,

"I believe you, Dragon."

Dragon sat on her rump with a huge sigh. "Finally!"

Jean kept rubbing her head. "Alright everyone… look. It's late afternoon… let's make some lunch. While we make it and eat, we can catch Amara up- Amara and Dragon, I mean- on what we found, and then I'm going to see for myself what Dragon is sensing. It's… It's complicated, but back on Saturday, Dragon and Rogue accidentally got each other's blood in their own open wounds, and it opened a… a mental link, of sorts. That's the fastest way to explain it. But that's what you're sensing, isn't it? The mental link with Rogue is telling you where she is."

"I guess. I can feel fear coming from her, from that direction." Dragon pointed a paw southward again.

"Alright. We'll eat, first. We're going to need it. We'll catch up Amara and Dragon on what we found, and then I'll sit down with Dragon and we'll go from there. Come on, everyone. Let's get moving."

As soon as she finished speaking, Jean herself headed towards the door into the mansion hallway. The others began slowly filing that way, as well.

"If you've got a mental link, Savage, why haven't you used it to ask Rogue what's going on?" Tabitha asked. It was a fair question, really, but the attitude in Tabitha's tone, as far as Rahne was concerned, was not necessary.

Dragon bristled. "Because I can't! I couldn't even feel anything myself until last night. Only Rogue could feel it. And would you please stop calling me that!"

Tabitha scoffed. "Convenient, isn't it?"

Rahne bent down and scooped up Dragon before she could reply.

"Oh, shove off, Boom- Boom. I don't see you coming up with anything helpful." She barked at the girl herself. Had she been in wolf form, her own hackles would have been up.

"Right, because you've been so helpful yourself, Wolfsbane."

Rahne took a deep breath and let it out quietly rather than using it to voice the comment on her tongue. Everyone was upset right now.

Ray, on the other hand, did not let the silence lie.

"Actually, her nose has been more useful than your bombs so far."

"Oh, yeah? Well how about-"

"That's enough!" Jean snapped; she'd stopped at the doorway. "Tabitha, put those bombs out. And all of you, cool it! Fighting amongst ourselves is not going to help the situation at all. We're going to have lunch. We're going to let Amara and Dragon know what we found. I'm going to find out exactly what Dragon is sensing. And then we're going to work out our next move. And we're not going to make that more difficult for one another by fighting each other! I know you're all worried. I am, too. But we can't find the others if we're fighting amongst ourselves."

Rahne glanced at Tabitha, who scowled, holding a handful of bombs the size of bottle caps; the other girl flung them at the hangar door, where they all exploded, rattling the metal, but doing little damage aside from a few scorch marks.

The situation diffused for now, Rahne headed pointedly towards Jean, still carrying Dragon. Jean turned back around and headed into the hallway; behind them, the rest of the students followed.

The fight had stopped, but the air was still tense as they all made their way to the kitchen; lunch was made, everyone making their own sandwiches; Rahne made one for Dragon as well, letting the girl dictate what went on it; apparently, a lot of turkey slices. Rahne set Dragon's plate with her sandwich in the hall just outside the kitchen when it was done, out of sight but not earshot of the table. Once everyone was sitting down, Amara spoke softly.

"So there was no sign of them?"

"Oh, there was sign." Roberto told her grimly. "None of them good. We found the X- Jet, hidden in the swamp. Rahne even tracked their scent once the ground was dry enough, and tracked it right down into the lab. The door was wide open and everything, no problem finding it. But there were no scents saying they came back out, and there were no people in the lab. Just the professor's overturned wheelchair. We brought it back with us, on the Velocity, but we had to leave the X- Jet where it was, 'cause none of us could fly it. Jean could, but then she couldn't fly the Velocity and we'd have to leave that."

"So you know that wherever they are now, they didn't go because they wanted to." Sam said, eyes downcast. "Not only would they not leave the X- Jet there, but the professor couldn't have gone anywhere without his wheelchair unless someone was dragging him along."

"And… it was definitely his? I mean…" Amara winced. "I don't mean to say…"

"I understand. But yes, it was his. His scent was all over it." Rahne told her softly. "No mistake."

"But… how could they disappear?"

"Kurt." Jamie contributed. "Rahne smelled him down there, too, and a strange man. If Kurt teleported them all, they wouldn't have left a scent trail."

"And if the strange man's scent was Sinister, then that means Sinister's done something to control Kurt, because we know that guy wouldn't help him willingly." Ray added.

"Jean said they had evidence that the stuff Sinister tried to use in that old video was some kind of mind control thing." Jubilee put in. "So it looks like he used that."

Amara looked appalled. "But then… if Kurt's helping Sinister, how do we find where they've gone, and… and can Kurt be snapped out of it?"

"We have an antidote." Jean announced, finishing her sandwich and putting the plate in the sink. "Professor Xavier got his hands on it… I can't tell you more than that. But if we can bring Kurt home, we can give him the antidote and get him back to normal."

There were a few relieved faces.

"Yeah, but can we really depend on Dragon to find them?" Tabitha called. "Like… this connection you say she has. Is it actually reliable?"

Jean looked at her, expression and eyes cold, until Tabitha actually shrank back a little.

"I hope so. I don't have any more ideas."

"I'm not lying, if that's what you think." Dragon sounded defensive from the hall.

"It's not, Dragon." Jean assured her. "I just need to see exactly what it is that you're feeling. Hopefully we really can use it to locate Rogue and the others. Are you done eating?"

"Not yet. Hey, what about Remy? He's still downstairs. No one's brought him lunch yet."

Rahne didn't recognize the name "Remy," but Jean's eyes widened, and for a moment, she looked very much like she wanted to say something rather inappropriate. After a moment she seemed to struggle the words back, and managed to settle for groaning.

"I forgot about him! Ugh, that's going to make everything more complicated."

"Remy?" Sam asked.

"She means Gambit. He's down in the containment cell, still… I didn't even think about the fact that someone's got to keep bringing him food."

"Why don't we just let him out?" Dragon asked from the hallway. "He seems nice. And Mrs. O thinks that he'll be joining the team soon, anyway. She thinks the professor will give him a chance. Maybe he could even help."

"I can't make that decision, Dragon."

"Why not? Professor Xavier left you in charge."

"It doesn't work that way! Listen, please just let me know when you've finished your sandwich. Then I'll see if I can figure out what we're dealing with, and I'll try to make a plan from there.

Her look into Dragon's head didn't help much.

Dragon was sensing Rogue, alright, and was sensing what general direction she was in. Jean was able to finally find and understand that much, even though this was the first time Jean had found out for herself that Professor Xavier hadn't been exaggerating; her mind was very hard to navigate.

Unfortunately, there was no other helpful information to be had. Dragon could sense Rogue's general direction, but not how far away she was, or anything like that. She could only determine, as Dragon had already put it, that Rogue was "that way." Even worse, when Jean felt the emotions rippling down the bond the two had, the emotions that Dragon had called "fear and sadness" were actually what Jean would label as "absolute terror and despair."

Knowing that Rogue was feeling those emotions pushed Jean into feeling them, too. What had happened? Were they already too late? Had someone been killed already? Or perhaps Rogue was watching one of theirs be tortured? It could be both. It could be something else that Jean couldn't even think of.

What if it was Scott? What if he was already gone forever?

Jean went down to Cerebro and used the direction she knew to look. She scoured an entire strip of the world with its help, rapidly. She set her focus on finding Scott; if anyone would be easy for her to find, it would be him.

Nothing.

She was faced with an impossible decision. Right now, she was in charge of the mansion, the remaining mutant kids, and the prisoner in the basement; those were her official duties, not counting that she had been tasked with making more of the antidote for Sinister's control serum, as well. Now, unofficially, she seemed to be in charge of finding and rescuing the others.

In order to rescue them, she was going to have to put all the kids she was watching over into the same danger they had gone into. In order to find them, the only choice Jean could see was to have a poorly- trained nine- year- old lead them, potentially straight into battle. And she had no idea how far away they were; if they were in the southern hemisphere, then they would be away from the mansion for too long to leave Gambit in the containment cell with no way to feed himself. They could leave some food with him, she supposed, but that idea didn't sit well with her.

If she could sit down, she could surely figure out a good plan, given some time. But, they didn't have time. Rogue was tough; anything that could scare her like that was serious. Given the man they were facing, there probably were plenty of things that could cause that kind of terror and despair, but all Jean could think was that if they were already too late for someone. Or maybe multiple someones. Every second that they wasted could be that second that meant life or death for one of their friends. And since she didn't know how long they were going to take to reach them, that meant that they had to leave soon, preferably yesterday. They had to move.

Still sitting alone in Cerebro, Jean covered her face. She never would have considered herself indecisive before, but she felt like she didn't have any good options. Her head was pounding, as well, and she suspected that the little sleep she'd gotten the night before contributed to that.

She had to think of something, and she had to think of it fast. She had no choice but to bring Dragon this time, so that Dragon could help track down where the others were. Jean didn't like it, not at all, but she couldn't see a different possibility.

The other students would also need to come. Everyone's help was going to be needed if they were going to actually have a chance at staging a rescue. And, she reminded herself, those kids had faced down danger before. They were all being trained for it. All had taken part in the battle against Apocalypse, even Jamie.

As for the antidote to the control serum, Jean had managed to make four doses. She would bring three with them, she decided, carefully packed into a case. That left an emergency dose at home, and she could make more when they returned, as well.

As for bringing them back… three doses were all well and good, but if he'd used it on everyone? That wasn't enough. They would have to subdue everyone else somehow…

The room next to the containment cells, Jean remembered, had inhibitor collars. Two weeks after Logan had requested his government contact keep an eye on Trask, they had gotten in touch with him; Trask had managed to develop collars that inhibited a mutant's powers. At Xavier's request, they had sent several of them to the mansion, so that the adults- primarily Xavier and Hank, though the others had all taken a look at them too- could determine how they worked, just in case the day came where those collars were used for more than just the mutant criminals they were supposedly developed for.

No one liked the idea of them; not only was the fact that they were developed to supress the mutant population (those at the mansion had no doubt that was what was really in Trask's mind), but the way they worked was generally painful, causing agonizing headaches. They had the collars on hand because Xavier had wanted to make sure they could work out a way to remove them if needed; the idea of using them was repulsive, even if Wolverine had been threatening Gambit with one on the way back to the mansion on Saturday. The thought of putting one around the necks of her friends was horrifying. Desperate times, though… if they didn't need them, they wouldn't use them. Simple as that.

Which left… one problem. The thief in the containment cell. Jean thought for a moment, trying frantically to come up with something, when her mind presented her with an idea, one she could actually use. Jean sighed with some relief, and got up to head down to the containment room. It wasn't too far from Cerebro, though it was tucked down a different hallway. She entered, planning to speak with the Cajun about his options first.

He didn't look surprised to see her, despite it not being long ago that she'd hurriedly brought him lunch before leaving just as fast. His eyes were as serious as she'd ever seen, not that she'd seen much of the red- eyed mutant before, and his arms were crossed, expression stony.

"Something's happened, hasn't it?" He asked before she could even speak. "You've been bolting around like there's a timer about to go off. Your expression tells me that timer may as well be attached to a bomb."

Jean took a deep breath. He'd nailed it… but that didn't mean she had to give away more than she needed to.

"The rest of us have to leave the mansion to give the others a hand with the mission. I'm not sure how long we will be gone. It's very possible it might be long enough that there will be no one to bring you anything at supper… could even be longer than that. I could leave you extra food down here, but I don't really know how much to leave, so I thought I'd make you another offer. Once we're gone, I can put this mansion on lockdown; no way in or out. You would be let out of here. Certain rooms will be sealed off, but rooms like the kitchen and such would be available for you to use. Once we've returned, then we'll decide what to do with you… whether you go back in here, or something else happens. I just wanted to make the offer because of the help that you've given us up to this point."

She was, of course, worried about what Professor Xavier might think about this offer when he learned of it… but she, like Mrs. O, was pretty sure that he wouldn't still be in here if they weren't dealing with Sinister, and the idea of leaving him here for an unknown amount of time with only whatever food was brought in to him before they left… she didn't like it.

"Very generous. May I give you a counter offer?"

That took her by surprise. "What?"

"Take me with you."

Now she really had to be hearing things.

"Excuse me? I- I don't think we can do that…"

"Sinister is trouble. I warned Professor Xavier of that before they left this room. You are obviously in a panic and trying to hide it, which means something has gone very wrong. I can help you."

Jean started at him for a moment; he stared back. His body language screamed of deadly seriousness; she could find no reason to doubt what he was saying.

But…

"I can't. Professor Xavier-"

"Isn't here now, and could be in big trouble." He interrupted. "The more help you get, the better. Look, if it bothers you that much, put one of those inhibitor collars on me again. I know you have them; the Wolverine kept talking about using one to bring me here. Seemed to be quite pleased about being able to tell me that if he put one on me, he could use it to give me an electric shock, too."

"But I-"

"Need all the help you can get." He interrupted once again. "What could I possibly get away with with an inhibitor collar on? Take me with you."

Jean stared at him helplessly. He made some good points… but she wasn't sure she could trust him. Dragon apparently liked him, but Jean didn't know what it was that he actually wanted.

Her racing thoughts came down to just one:

What do I do?

A/N: Back at the mansion, Dragon is proven right. They fight amongst themselves; Jean is torn. She has no time to plan, and was never really trained as a leader, exactly, either- Scott was. And with no way to know what's happening on the other end that's causing the terror and despair Dragon is feeling from Rogue, a sense of panic sets in at the thought that it is already too late.

Rushed plans are often risky ones. But Jean has to make one anyway, and the clock could be running out.