AN ACCIDENTAL INTERCEPTION
Of Fate: Big Green
Minisinoo

"Four, three, two, ONE -- whoo-hoo!  Happy New Year!  Happy New Year!'

On the TV screen, the new Times Square Waterford crystal ball had descended seventy-seven feet to set off the flashing "2000" light display at the flagpole bottom.  Balloons, streamers and confetti erupted skyward right along with fireworks and cheers from tens of thousands of throats packed into the square for this special -- and frigid -- New Year's Eve.  In the mansion den, which was considerably warmer with a fire going, there were also cheers and noisemakers and balloons, but no confetti.  No one wanted to vacuum up the carpet in the morning.  

Fortunately, the celebration wasn't marred by any sudden loss of power or other dire disaster.  "So much for Y2K!" Warren shouted.  Scott had been saying the same thing for months, but doubt had remained in the minds of the rest of his adoptive-family.  

Now, the professor raised his goblet in the midst of noisemakers and laughter.  "Happy New Year, children.  Let's hope for as much peace and quiet to come as we've enjoyed this last year."  

"Amen!" Hank agreed, and they all raised their glasses in answer -- Xavier, Hank, Jean, Warren, Ororo, Frank, Scott, and even young Bobby (who'd been allowed a little champagne).  "To peace," Jean echoed, and they drank.  Scott thought that Frank's expression appeared a bit troubled, but he said nothing aloud.  

"Wow!  This is like, so cool!" Bobby was saying.  "It's, like, a whole new millennium!"

"Actually," Hank corrected, "the new millennium began either three or four years ago, depending on what argument one follows regarding the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.  Thus, if one wishes to count back to the Year One -- as there was no year zero -- 2000 is actually 2003, or thereabouts.  And even if that were not the case, the new millennium would begin next year -- with 2001.  2000 would be the final year of the old millennium."

And the rest of them just broke up laughing.  "What?" Hank asked.  "I wasn't trying to be funny."

Jean, who stood beside him, set down her flute to slip both arms around one of his sizable biceps and hug tightly.  "Hank, dear, we're laughing because you would know all that, but . . . we really don't care!"  Yet it was said fondly, and she grinned up at him.  "Happy New Year, old friend!" and she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, then let him go to move over to Scott, saying softly, "Happy New Year to you, too."  And she clinked her retrieved flute against his.  

"Happy New Year," he replied, hugging her fiercely with his free arm.  "I've missed you."  

"I've missed you, too, boy-O.  I'm glad we had tonight."  

"Ditto."  And he was indeed grateful for whatever bribe had secured her freedom on this most special of New Year's Eves.  He'd talked to her more in the past six hours than he had in the last six months, and he chalked up the closeness of their hug now to simple pleasure in a renewed camaraderie.  Finally, she released him to move on around the room, and he did the same.  When he got to Xavier and bent to embrace the professor, Xavier sent, You have something to tell me, Scott?  It was a question that wasn't a question.  You've been avoiding it, haven't you?  

Surprised -- though he shouldn't have been -- Scott pulled back.  "Yes," he said softly.  "But it can wait."  

"It can wait, but not forever.  Come see me sometime tomorrow."  

Scott tensed, and reading that as clearly and easily as a flare, Xavier added, "I'm not angry, son, but we need to talk about your future."  And then he turned away to exchange well wishes with Bobby.  

Troubled, Scott moved back, and if he smiled at the others, he didn't feel so celebratory now; after half an hour, he found an excuse to retire to his bedroom.  There, he tossed and turned for a while, twisting the sheets in an echo of his own confused thoughts.  Finally, he slept.  

The next morning, feeling both sluggish and nervous, he fetched a letter from his luggage and made his way downstairs.  I'm in the conservatory, the professor sent.  I've been waiting for you to wake.  Please join me.  

The mental message almost made Scott jump out of his skin, but he took a deep breath and headed in that direction.  Memories floated up to the surface of his mind of another letter shown to another father four years ago.  Both letters had involved a wish to follow a dream, yet the first had been perceived as a defiance, a betrayal, and that was the last impression he wanted to give this time.  

Scott found Xavier sitting in a patch of sun, a blanket thrown over his useless legs.  He was dressed casually, or more casually than usual, in a loose, dark sweater over a light turtleneck.  His face was sad, but not disappointed, or angry, and he gestured to the bench near his chair.  Feeling lightheaded and a little weak, Scott took it.  His stomach, which had been roiling since he'd woken, now issued a nervous belch.  It embarrassed him, and he flushed, but Xavier merely held out a hand for the letter and Scott turned it over to him.  

Educational Testing Service read the upper left-hand corner return address, with its distinctive oak leaf symbol.  Slipping out the form, Xavier read the scores that ought to have been a cause for celebration, not Scott's shamefaced hesitation.  "Verbal," he said aloud, "630, quantitative, 760, and analytical, 780."  He glanced up and waved the paper.  "You do realize these GREs will likely ensure you a graduate assistantship at all but the most competitive schools?"

Scott shrugged with one shoulder.  That hadn't been quite the response that he'd expected.  "That's what Fred said -- Dr. Hand, in the anthropology department at Berkeley."  

Xavier nodded.  "So I take it that you've applied for the graduate program?"

Leaning over, elbows braced on his knees, Scott sighed.  "Not yet.  I just took the tests to see what my scores might be.  Everybody in anthro is telling me I should apply, though.  Well, not everybody, but you know."  Xavier did know.  Any graduate program would be happy to acquire a student of Scott's caliber.  

"Are you going to apply, then?"

The boy looked away.  "I don't know."  

And he didn't.  He still hadn't entirely made up his mind.  It would mean abandoning his previous plans and he'd never considered himself flighty by nature, but was it flighty to recognize that the goals one had at eighteen might not be relevant at twenty-one?  And yet, and yet, and yet . . . he felt that he owed Charles Xavier.  The professor had put him through college, and pride made Scott view that kindness as a scholarship, not a charity -- an education in return for service.  Now, he was considering going back on the implied promise of service and his conscience pricked him.  Moreover, common sense required him to ask how he'd pay for graduate school.  Even if he were able to secure a graduate assistantship that waived his tuition, he'd have to work in addition to the assistantship, just to survive the cost of living in California.  

"If I do apply," Scott said now, "I'll pay you back for putting me through school."  

"You will not.  I told you before -- "

"That was when I was planning to come back here and teach!"

And his exclamation stopped them both -- a moment of honesty brought out by guilt.  

"And now you don't plan that," Xavier finished softly.  

Rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses, Scott said, "I don't know."  The tone was pained, and half-choked, and despite the chill of midwinter, Scott felt suddenly hot all under the skin.  

Charles leaned forward.  "Tell me what you do want, son.  Not what you think you ought to do."  

Something in the timbre of the question unlocked the dungeon inside Scott, and words spilled out of his mouth.  "I always thought I wanted to be an engineer and design planes.  Then I thought I wanted to teach math.  But now I find I'm more curious about how people learned to do things -- why some things developed in one place, but not in others.  I think plain engineering would bore me now."  Abruptly he grinned.  "Pun not intended, but appropriate.  I like asking 'why,' y'know?  Not just the what and how.  Maybe Jean and her theorizing is rubbing off on me, but I read stuff, and I keep thinking, 'Okay, yeah, but why?' I never really thought I'd be interested in a bunch of dead people, but I am.  I want to find out how they did things, and why."  Abruptly, he looked away again.  "It's not very practical."  

Xavier smiled.  "No, it's not.  But if all we ever did was the 'practical,' would life be much fun?"

"Well, no -- but I'm not talking about taking up a hobby.  Can I make a career out something so esoteric?  Should I?  Is saying, 'Because I like it,' good enough?  Or is that just selfish?"

Xavier shook his head.  "You've asked a very hard question.  Not everyone has the luxury of pursuing their interests.  And not everyone has the ability to consider graduate school -- and I do not mean simply in terms of their intellect.  Graduate school requires both perseverance and an ability to self-start -- to choose a research topic and pursue it for reasons of interest, not external pressure.  You have both of those -- as well as the intellectual capacity."  And the professor waved the printout with Scott's exceptional test scores.  

"So you think I should do it?"  Scott was amazed.  

"I think you should consider it."  

"But, I don't -- "

Xavier held up a hand to stop the flood of questions.  "Right now, I want you to consider only two things -- is this what you want, and do you want it badly enough to invest what will be the next six to eight years of your life in it, assuming you go for a full Ph.D.?  If you answer 'yes' to both of those, then we shall consider other questions . . . such as the cost, which I know concerns you."  

Too stunned to speak for a moment, Scott leaned back.  Finally, he said, "I can already answer those questions you asked.  Yes, to both of them."  

Xavier nodded.  He wasn't surprised; he'd felt this moment coming for months.  "Then you must follow where your heart leads, Scott.  You must live your own dreams, not what you think are mine because you have a misplaced sense of obligation."  And he winked.  "Why don't you go get some breakfast?  We'll discuss the details later, and prepare your application package before you miss the deadline."  
 
 
 

"And that was it?" EJ asked Scott when both returned to Berkeley for the spring semester.  

"Well, there were still details, but that was pretty much it," Scott replied, still astonished himself that his graduate school fancies had been received with calm understanding, even encouragement, although intellectually, he knew that the professor wasn't like his father.  He'd still been prepared for the worst.  Chris Summers might deny being a hothead, but in some matters, he had a trigger-temper.  And -- if he were honest with himself -- Scott knew that he did as well.  Stereotypically, Scott and Chris were too much alike in all the wrong ways.  

Scott's application did make the deadline, if barely, and then began the wait to see if he'd be accepted for the next fall, and be accepted with a graduate assistantship.  In the final call, that had been the compromise on which he and Xavier had settled.  The professor would've been willing to pay the cost of his graduate education as well as his undergraduate, but Scott had refused, pride unable to accept that much generosity.  Xavier had realized as much, so they'd agreed that the determining factor would be a graduate assistantship.  If Scott received one, he'd go on to graduate school.  If he didn't, he'd return to the mansion to teach.  Xavier himself had little doubt that Scott would receive one, but being under the pressure gun, Scott wasn't so sure.  

That spring, Scott lived somewhere between anticipation, sadness, and an increasing disconnection, but disconnection from whom he couldn't say -- his friends in Berkeley, or his family back at the mansion?  The summer's end would bring his college career to a conclusion, and graduate school, if he were accepted, would be different, more serious.  If he were not accepted, then this would be his final semester at Berkeley, summer being merely a coda.  Placed thus between a rosy past and an uncertain future, life took on shades of pastel nostalgia and fey shadows.  He spent more effort on his schoolwork, but also played harder, dating heavily if never seriously and performing with an exaggerated showmanship for Soapbox, who now gigged as far away as San Francisco and San Jose.  The band, too, was reaching the end of an era.  Even if Scott did make it into graduate school, Rick would finish at the end of this spring and leave town.  They'd be looking for a new guitar player.  

Scott heard less from New York as well, increasing his dissociation.  Warren was busy in the city, Frank was now in college himself locally, and despite their reconnection at New Year's, Jean had sunk back into the final months of her clinical rotations and preparation for her second set of medical boards, disappearing from Scott's life once more.  She became a ghost from his past, the muse of his youth, traveling her road now while his diverged.  What had they really had in common anyway?  An X-gene?  A brief belief that they could save the world?  In retrospect, it all seemed rather silly -- a prophecy of a dark future, a secret sub-basement, and a mutant power training room like something out of a science-fiction movie.  He read that stuff; he didn't live it.  Raiders of the Lost Ark was closer to what he had in mind for his future.  

Scott remained in Berkeley for Spring Break that year to work on a paper, instead of going home with EJ as he had for the two previous years.  If he and Clarice had finally grown easy again in one another's presence, he wasn't prepared for the Haight Family Pressure Cooker, and EJ didn't press.  So he spent his time working in the library, and watching over a friend's newt.  His paper faired well enough, the newt did not.  It took him a few days to realize it was dead, not simply hibernating (or the amphibious equivalent), but a rotting-fish stink finally alerted him to the truth and with a wrinkled nose, he cleaned the tank after wrapping the newt's body in cellophane and storing it in the freezer -- then forgot to tell EJ, who found six cans of Coke, three bottles of Michelob, one dead newt, and three boxes of Toni's frozen pizza in the entire fridge, when he returned from LA.  

"I am never leaving you alone for a whole week again, Slimboy.  You're fucking dangerous on your own, to newts and your digestion both.  Don't tell me you ate like this last summer, too."  

"Okay, I won't tell you."  

EJ rolled his eyes.  "That's what I was afraid of.  And ain't you ever heard of flushing dead stuff down the damn toilet?  That's what I did with my goldfish, man."  

"I thought Jerrod might want it back."  

"It's freakin dead."  

"Yeah, well -- whatever."  

When Saint Patrick's Day rolled around a week after spring break and Soapbox wasn't scheduled to gig, EJ and Scott set out about four-thirty in the afternoon on a bar tour of Telegraph Avenue.  As EJ was now twenty-one, it was even legal for a change, and in the course of the evening, Scott discovered just how well his mutated metabolism could process alcohol.  He'd been aware for some time that he grew tipsy quicker and crashed sooner, and that a bag of Oreos shot his sugar levels high enough to qualify him for a temporary attention deficit disorder.  But he'd had no idea just how ill he could make himself.  They plowed through five bars and five pitchers of green beer in six hours that night, but first they had dinner in a nice restaurant with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and antique farming implements on the walls.  

"So what did you think of me when you first met me?" EJ asked while wolfing down a decidedly un-Irish double-portion of pasta with marinara sauce.  They'd been reminiscing about their first year in a pre-emptive attack of Glory Days.  

"I thought you were something out of the hood."  Scott's own meal was the more traditional corned beef.  

EJ glanced up at him.  "It's in the hood, white boy."  But it was said with humor, then he added, "I thought you were some spoiled rich Hollywood wannabe."  

Scott spit beer out his nose.  "You're fucking kidding."  

"Nope.  It was the shades and the Gap wardrobe.  Why'd you assume I was in the hood?  Just my skin color?"

"Christ, no.  It was the clothes and the hair -- or lack of it."  

"Well, fuck -- I was moving, not going to a job interview.  What'd you expect me to dress like?" 

Scott shrugged.  "So we both made assumptions."  

"Yeah, okay, true."  They ate in silence a while, then EJ said, "I've learned a lot, living with you.  I wouldn't trade it."  

"Me, either."  

"If you get into grad school, you gonna go into the grad dorms?" 

Surprised, Scott glanced up.  "I hadn't especially planned on it."  Then a thought occurred to him.  "Why?  You want somebody else to move in?"  He couldn't help but grin.  

"What's that supposed to mean?"  

Scott leaned back in his booth to lace hands together behind his head.  He was still grinning.  "Oh, nothing."  

"Bullshit."  

"I was thinking of someone, you know, with the XX chromosome."  

EJ's fork clattered to the stoneware pasta plate.  People in booths around them glanced over and he bent across the table to say, more softly, "Whathefuck?  Like who?" 

Scott's grin deepened.  "I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't freakin' count."  

"You're full of shit."  EJ went back to eating.  

"How many nights of the week is she over at our place?" 

"Fuck you."  

"I'm just pointing out a fact, Eeej.  I thought maybe she could save time going back and forth if she just moved right in."  

"Fuck you."  

Scott laughed and drank his beer.  "Come on, admit it.  You have it bad for her."  

"Yeah?  And if I do?" 

"Good for you."  

EJ glanced up at him.  "I'm serious," Scott said.  "You two are good together.  In fact" -- he leaned across the table in an echo of EJ's previous gesture -- "I think you've never gotten serious about anyone else in the three years I've known you because you've been in love with Diane Hernandez the whole damn time and just weren't ready to admit it to yourself."  

EJ's mouth dropped open, giving Scott a clear view of half-chewed pasta.  Then he swallowed and went back to his meal.  After a minute, he said, "I haven't even asked her out, man."  

"Well, maybe you ought to, lugwit."  

"Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Maybe I will."  

Grinning, Scott toasted EJ with his beer.  

As things turned out, supper wasn't the last meal they shared that night, though the second was five pitchers later and far less pleasant.  EJ hadn't realized that he needed to watch Scott's alcohol intake, and Scott hadn't realized that he needed to watch himself, and the drunker Scott became, the less he could judge how drunk he was.  By a little after midnight, EJ had to half-carry him out of their fifth and final bar, though EJ himself wasn't sober.  "You're trashed, man.  I'm about three sheets to the wind, but fuck -- you're five.  Let's get some food into you, and coffee."  And he hauled Scott down to Blondie's, the Berkeley branch of a San Francisco pizza parlor that served pie by the slice in an atmosphere balanced between McDonalds and an Italian highway trattoria, with decor in bold primary colors.  The food was good, but greasy, and when one figured in burnt, bad coffee and too much alcohol in his bloodstream already, Scott's stomach simply rebelled less than halfway into the meal and he spewed the counter with green-tinted barely digested bits of pizza.  "Shit!" EJ yelled, embarrassed and appalled at once as watery vomit dripped off Formica onto the floor.  Scott had it all over his front, as well as on the counter, the stool, and even on EJ's jeans.  Grabbing Scott, EJ hauled him through the restaurant and into the bathroom, after leaving a generous tip on the counter.  Scott was reeling still and emptied the rest of his stomach into a toilet, then knelt shaking on the bathroom tile.  Worry began to replace EJ's disgust.  "Man, this is serious bad news.  You been drinking longer than me, Slim.  Don't you know when to quit?" 

"Never drank that much," Scott whispered.  The room stank of disinfectant and piss, in addition to vomit, all of which only twisted his stomach more, but at least his head had cleared a bit, along with his field of vision.  Objects didn't swim in and out of it.  And while he'd always hated the sensation of vomiting, at the moment, it was the best thing for him so he stuck a finger down his throat to make himself vomit again, but succeeded only in triggering his gag reflex and coughing.  He was sweating and dizzy and unsure if he could get to his feet.  "I am dog sick," he whispered.  

"No shit, Sherlock.  Ever heard of alcohol poisoning?" 

"I didn't drink any more, any faster than you did."  

EJ thought about that.  It was true.  "So maybe in the future you go light on the beer, just like on the sugar?  Your body obviously don't process food the same way mine does."  

Scott just nodded.  This, he thought, was the downside of his mutation.  And then he started to giggle.  Here he was, trying to get into grad school, and he didn't even have sense enough to know when to quit drinking.  There was something ironic in that.  
 
 
 

"Come in, come in!"  Beyond the wide-open door, Bruce's face was almost luminescent, and he waved her into his lab with great excitement.  

Grinning, Jean pushed past him to see his new toy, the product of three grants totaling thirty-seven million dollars, including one from the National Science Foundation, and a year's worth of careful construction.  It was a gravimagnetic field generator, designed to test a theory of Banner's:  that a sufficient combination of gravitational force and magnetic field drag tuned to the bond frequencies of DNA would accelerate the emergence of existing quiescent mutations, the same as excessive cortisol in the system.  Among the most formidable hurdles that Banner had faced in getting his grants, though, had been the question, "But what would the long-term practical application of such a research direction be?" -- meaning that mutations were to be avoided if at all possible, not helped along.  Bias in science tended to show itself in masked forms, yet in the end, the grants had come in and Bruce had built his machine.  It amounted to a kitchen-table-sized housing with a half-cylinder on top that was broken up into three sections.  The outermost section was metal, and the center was a Plexiglas door over the incubation chamber to permit readings and pictures.  This was the actual testing chamber.  But the majority of the machine, in terms of size, was given over to the two big engines powerful enough to bombard the chamber with gravitons.  

"So what do you think?" Bruce asked her.  

"It's . . . gray."  

"God, Jean!  You're no fun!"

She laughed.  "Bruce, it looks like a box.  A big, gray box with a cylinder on top.  When are you going to start running experiments so we can see what it actually does?" 

"Next week.  We're going to have a little party on Wednesday morning and break a bottle of champagne on it."  

"Champagne?"  She couldn't help but giggle.  "It's not a ship!"

He shrugged.  "So are you going to come?" 

She sighed.  "Oh, I can't.  I've got to be at the hospital, you -- "

"I know, I know."  He held up a hand.  "Rotations.  So tell me -- it's actually been a few years -- when do I have to show up to play brightly-colored lemming?  It's reminiscent of Halloween in kindergarten, you know, lining up in files to march around and show off the fancy costume."  

She put a hand over her mouth to conceal her grin.  Bruce had never been one for ceremony and often couldn't be bothered to wear anything more dressy than jeans to the lab.  But if he didn't take ceremony seriously, he took his students seriously, and, traditionally, each doctoral candidate was accompanied by his or her primary advisor for graduation, which meant that Bruce would be walking with her.  She'd received special permission for her father, also a college professor, to walk on her other side in his robes, so they'd make quite a set, John Grey in Emory's royal blue and gold with the white of history, Jean in Columbia's ugly Dutch blue with the Kelly-green trim of medicine, and Bruce in Harvard's distinctive scarlet and that funny velvet hat.  Like many Harvard doctors, Bruce had adopted the medieval-style tam instead of a mortarboard.  Jean thought it looked ridiculous.  In any case, in just three weeks, she'd be finished at last.  She still found that difficult to process.  She had a residency to do yet, of course, and her second and third medical boards, but she really and truly could see light at the end of the tunnel.  Sometimes she thought she'd been in school forever -- twenty-four years from her first day of kindergarten.  "The instructions say we're supposed to be there at least an hour in advance, so they can line us up to march in.  That means by six o'clock."  

"Which translates to getting here at four in order to find parking.  Good thing I'll be in that day anyway.  Ah, the Graduation Zoo.  The main campus is already gearing up for the big show on Wednesday.  Thank God you didn't want me to do that."  

Laughing outright, she said, "I figured getting you to one ceremony was bad enough.  I have to go, but you don't."  Medical school graduates were administered the Hippocratic oath, so she wasn't permitted to skip, however much she might have liked to.  

The wry look had disappeared from his face, and he regarded her solemnly.  "It's not every day that I get to hood a new doctor, Jean.  I'll be there."  Then his kid's smile stole back.  "Come on, I want to show you the schedule for preliminary tests."  And he led her over to his cluttered desk. 
 
 
 

"I think this is what you been haunting the mailbox for, Slimboy."  

An envelope was dropped in Scott's lap where he sat on the couch, trying to read a book.  It fell face down so Scott couldn't see the return address, but EJ knew perfectly well what Scott was waiting to find out.  This was the letter that would determine the direction his life would take, and he stared at it for the course of five breaths, unable to summon the courage even to touch it.  His stomach shook.  But EJ stood right there, waiting to see, and so Scott picked it up.  He wanted to take it back to his room, to open in private -- just in case -- and EJ belatedly realized that he was hovering.  "I'm going into the kitchen to finish dinner.  DeeDee's coming over, then we're going out to see if we can catch MI-2 tonight.  Lines are probably hell."  And he walked away, leaving Scott alone with the couch and the book and the letter and his anxieties.  

Picking up the envelope, Scott turned it over.  "University of California at Berkeley, Department of Anthropology" read the return.  Wiggling a pinky into the edge of the flap, he ripped it open along one side and tried to pretend that his hands weren't shaking.  Then he turned the envelope on end and shook out the letter -- three sheets, which he supposed was better than one.  They only needed one to turn an applicant down.  

He read it twice, just to be sure, then erupted off the couch with a bellowed, "I'm in!"

EJ came back out into the living room, wooden spoon in hand, to find Scott standing atop the cheap coffee table, waving the letter above his head.  "I'm in!  I'm in!  They gave me a graduate assistantship!  I'm in, dammit!"

"Congratulations, man!  I'm glad you're sticking around."  In fact, EJ had been almost as nervous as Scott for the last few months.  While he knew theoretically that all good things did end, he'd been distressed by the prospect of losing his best friend.  This past year had renewed the deep tie that had bound them as freshmen, and both had tacitly agreed that it was like a hummingbird -- brilliant and lovely and rarely seen, and not to be spoken of too loudly, lest it be frightened off by excessive attention.  Now, EJ, no less than Scott, felt as if a weight had been lifted from his back, and thus lightened, he said, "I think a dinner party's in order -- but not tonight.  Tomorrow.  You name it, I'll fix it.  Well, within reason."  

Slyly, Scott grinned.  "What?  No fried newt?" 

At that, EJ burst into laughter.  
 
 
 

Subject: School News
From: scottsummers@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Date: 4/24/2000 4:18pm
To: jegrey@xavier.org

Hey, long time, no speak.  Sorry I've been so busy.  I just thought you'd like to know that I got the graduate assistantship, so it looks like I'm going to grad school after all.  Now I just have to decide if I'll focus on the Med or the Maya.  -S2

Jean found the note in her mail in the wee hours of the morning when she had some downtime while on call.  She debated phoning him to tell him congratulations, but didn't because even if he was in California, she'd probably still wake him up.  She also didn't call because the news depressed her.  She was glad for him, but this was, she thought, the beginning of the end of their little mansion family.  Scott wasn't coming back.  He'd go on to get his doctorate, then be out looking for a tenure-track position and would wind up wherever he could get a job.  She was getting ready to graduate herself, and while she planned to do a year of residency at Columbia, she had no idea where she'd go after that.  Warren was rarely at the mansion now, his father using him heavily in business affairs, and he even had his own office suite on West Street.  And Hank was considering an offer from Brand Corporation Laboratories.  Only Frank and Ororo still lived at the mansion in Westchester, and Bobby occasionally.  

Leaning back in the chair at the little desk in the interns' room, Jean bit the edge of her index finger lightly.  Fluorescent light glared down on the desk, but the fitting above faced backwards so it didn't shine out into the room itself and her fellow interns could get some rest.  Rising, she walked over to the window and pushed back the heavy vinyl curtain, looking out over the city skyline.  In the distance, she spotted the World Trade Center and leaned her shoulder against the cool glass, musing fancifully that she could tell which windows were Warren's.  As for Scott, he slept on the other side of the country, and she wondered, just as idly, if San Francisco seemed as picturesque in person as it did in pictures.  She'd been to Europe seven times but never west of the Mississippi.  California was another world to an East Coast girl.  

She'd always just assumed that Scott would return to Westchester, and not because it was what he'd planned to do when he'd left.  He'd simply been a mansion fixture, even if he hadn't lived there for the last three years -- and wasn't it funny how the mind got itself stuck like that in a looping video of the past?  People changed.  He had a different set of interests these days, and she wasn't sure she knew him anymore.  Between one thing and another, they hadn't spoken much either before or after New Year's, and a few hours on one evening couldn't make up for months and months of silence.  She honestly couldn't pinpoint the last time she'd gotten email from him before this present letter.  Early March?  It was now the dregs of April.  How different that was from his first semester at Berkeley when they'd written once a day and talked once a week.  

She walked back to her laptop and hit the "Reply" button, sending him well wishes electronically instead of verbally.  It was what she would have done with a colleague, or a virtual stranger.  And that's what he was now, wasn't it?  A virtual stranger.  Melancholy tinged her thoughts. 

"The nightmares are back, aren't they?"  Ororo asked, dropping down to sit beside Frank on a bench in the back garden.  He was looking off at the maze, but she was not quite sure he saw it.  Now, he simply nodded.  "Have you told the professor?" Ro asked.  

Frank shook his head.  

"Are you going to?  

"I don't know."  

"What are they this time?  The visions?" 

Frank didn't answer immediately, or directly.  He'd come up against the quandary of his own ethics.  Did the good of the many outweigh the good of the few, or the one?  You've seen too much Star Trek, he scolded himself, amused.  "Scott isn't coming back."  

She studied him.  "He was accepted to grad school, yes.  What does that have to do with it?" 

"He's not coming back.  He'll go on to his own life, take a professorship, marry --" And not marry the right person.  Not unless . . .   But did he tell Ororo everything he knew and involve her in his choices?  He'd never held so much power in his hands as he did this afternoon.  He could save one man's life, one man's self-image, one woman's sanity, and one man's dream.  Or he could save his people.  

"We must all make choices, Francesco," Ororo said, referring to Scott.  

"I know," he replied, meaning himself.  He stared down at the cell phone in his hand, then put it away and begged forgiveness of a shade yet to be.  The sky above was obscenely blue.  

Jean hadn't seen Ted Roberts since the evening of her dissertation defense -- the evening they'd broken up.  She'd kept herself apprized of what he'd been up to, that he'd successfully defended his own dissertation earlier that spring, and that he was dating another girl.  No doubt, he'd heard that she'd finished her clinicals and had graduated the month before in May.  But it had been over a year since they'd met face to face, and neither had been prepared for it coming by accident.  She'd been walking into Bruce's lab and he'd been heading out on some errand.  They literally bumped into one another, exchanged awkward greetings, and then stood looking at their feet.  "How've you been?" he asked.  "Fine," she said.  "I was headed down to the computer lab," he said.  "Okay," she replied, and moved aside.  Then he was gone and she breathed out, slipping into the lab herself.  She'd come because Bruce had told her that he had some results she might find interesting, and now she wondered if Bruce had been trying to get rid of Ted first, or if he'd meant for them to run into each other and quit practicing the avoidance they'd been engaged in since the previous spring.  

Whatever the case, Banner looked up now.  "Jean!  I'm glad you could make it."  Hank was also there, she noticed.  

"What's gotten you so excited?" Jean asked.  

"This."  And Banner handed her a set of printouts.  "These" -- he pointed to a set of figures -- "are cortisol readings of mutants immediately after their mutation manifested.  And these" -- he pointed to another set -- "are readings of mutant cells tested in the GFG."  The gravimagnetic field generator.  

They weren't identical, but they were close.  Jean carried both printouts over to a lab table so she could examine them more closely.  "I looks like you were right," she said -- needlessly.  Hank had come over to pull out a stool on the table's opposite side and she turned the printouts sideways so he could see, too.  She started to feel a bubble of excitement rise up under her breastbone.  "Bruce, you know what this means?" 

"Why do you think you're here, m'dear?"  And Banner crossed to lean elbows on the edge of the tabletop and look at the printouts upside down.  Jean was quite certain he already knew them by heart.  He wouldn't have called her -- or Hank -- in here unless he'd made triple sure.  

"How many trials did you run?" she asked anyway, needlessly.  

"Six."  

That was a lot even for Bruce, but she was dying of curiosity.  Jean looked up.  "Will you show me?  Will you run one more?" 

He grinned.  "Why do you think I brought you and Hank here?  Let's wait just a minute for Ted to get back.  I've got the samples all prepped."  

Laughing, Jean leapt up to grab Banner around the neck, kissing him soundly on the cheek.  "Thank you, thank you!"

"Hey!" he said.  "You'll make my wife jealous."  

So they sat for half an hour, shooting bull and waiting on Ted.  Banner wanted to know what Jean had been doing since graduation.  "Relaxing," she told him.  "I think, after all these years, I've earned a summer off."  Though that was only partly the truth.  She'd been spending her summer at a different sort of training.  For the first time in far too long, she's begun to exercise her TK again.  It was rustier than she'd have wished but, like riding a bike, it was coming back at a faster rate than she'd expected.  She could lift her own weight now, and could perform fine tasks, including threading shoelaces.  

In any case, Ted was back and Bruce rose up to join him by the GFG, talking quietly over the printouts Ted had fetched..  Despite her curiosity, Jean chose to remain at the table rather than rub elbows too closely with Ted Roberts.  He'd glanced at her as he'd entered, but then had kept his attention on the machine, the printouts, and Bruce.

Jean's presence made Ted nervous.  He'd known that Bruce had intended to invite Hank, but he hadn't realized that Jean would be here, too, though common sense might have told him as much.  Banner didn't interfere too much in his students' lives, but he wasn't above a bit of manipulation.  Just now, he was frowning at the new printout with the thoughtful expression he sometimes got.  "Go ahead and start her up," Bruce told him absently, and walked back towards Jean.

Ted snapped the cylinder clamps into place as Banner reached the table and set the new printouts down on it.  Then he, Hank and Jean bent over them in a huddle.  Ted's eyes kept drifting in that direction as his fingers found the power switch for the engines.  Jean Grey was still beautiful.  It was so damn unfair.

That was the last thought he ever had as he switched on the double engines.  

Henry McCoy happened to glance up just as the gravimagnetic field generator incubation cylinder blew open and the brilliant white and almost fluid gravimagnetic field burst outward, swallowing Ted Roberts instantly.  But it wasn't the field that killed Roberts.  It was flying shrapnel from the overstressed and shattering cylinder.

Hank had less than a second to think, but the full advantage of X-enhanced reflexes, mutant strength, and the presence of mind to explode across the lab table, grab Jean and Bruce in one arm each, and fall beneath the other lab table behind Jean.  Stools struck them haphazardly and he heard Jean cry out in pain, but his quick thinking saved their lives, keeping them from being struck by flying parts as, without its safeties in place, the GFG disintegrated under the stress of its monstrous engines.  Hank heard a metal scream and then a blast.  And then nothing.
 
 

 

If not for Frank, Charles Xavier would have heard about the accident at the Columbia Genetics Lab on the evening news, along with everyone else.  Neither Jean Grey nor Hank McCoy were his children or immediate family.  But only minutes after it had occurred, Frank showed up in the kitchen where Xavier was making tea.  "There has been an accident," he said, face grim.  

"Has been?" the professor asked.  "Not will be?" 

"Has been," Frank reiterated.  "You will find Hank, and Jean, at Columbia Medical emergency room.  They are alive.  It would be . . . best . . . if we retrieve Hank as soon as it is possible."  

Xavier studied Francesco for a long moment and the boy met his eyes calmly.  In the space of those few heartbeats, the professor understood several things:  first, that Frank had known beforehand and had chosen not to reveal what would occur, second that it was a choice Frank would suffer under for the rest of his life, and third -- for the first time in literally years -- Charles Xavier knew what it was like to surrender himself to the wisdom of another.  

There was a certain godlike aspect to telepathy as strong as his, when he so easily knew the thoughts of everyone around him.  Even if he didn't manipulate them directly, he couldn't help but respond to people with that knowledge.  Yet he didn't know the future, and he understood at last the fear that could be generated by a mutant whose powers allowed him to make decisions for Xavier that might or might not reflect Xavier's own.  Trust.  The professor had to trust a twenty-year-old boy with the prescience of Apollo.  "What did you see, Frank?" 

The younger man didn't answer directly.  Instead, he said, "It was this, or the death of thousands.  This is the pivotal event; it all turns on this.  If I had called them, warned them, made sure it didn't happen, everything that should come after would unravel -- was about to unravel."  He turned then and walked out, calling after him, "I shall phone Warren, and ask Ororo to drive us there."  

It took them a good hour.  Emergency vehicles still clogged the street outside the Hammer Building, and one of the windows on sixth floor was stained black with the glass shattered out of it.  But they didn't try to stop there.  Ororo pulled into the hospital visitor parking lot down the street, and Frank and Ororo wheeled Xavier into the emergency room.  Every hospital smelled alike, the professor thought.  Warren was already there waiting for them.  "They won't tell me anything!" he complained, the anxiety spiking out of him.  "I'm not family!  They won't even take my money!"

Shhh, Xavier sent.  Though he wasn't surprised that Warren, in desperation, might have tried to grease some palms, it didn't pay to announce it.  All of you, come with me into the waiting rooms.  And they followed.  

Once out of the main walkway and ensconced in a corner of the cramped waiting room with two chairs for his three students, Charles closed his eyes and folded his hands in front of him.  Others would no doubt think him praying.  There was always a moment's disorientation as he slipped through minds like an eel through coral, looking for the particular signatures he knew.  Jean's he found first, surprisingly strong and steady though she was unconscious still.  Hank's was . . . oddly blurred, perhaps by pain killers.  Xavier could sense the massive lacerations along his back and side, but he was too high-happy to care about it.  

Now came the harder part, searching through a plethora of minds he didn't know -- the medical personnel working over his students -- to learn Hank and Jean's condition.  As he was more concerned with Hank, he searched for his attending first, but it took him a moment to realize that he'd found the woman and was seeing the situation through her eyes . . . and then he got a shock.  

Hank was . . . not Hank.  

"Stay here," the professor told the three in the waiting room.  He was about to do something of a questionable ethical nature, and he didn't want them involved, at least not until he knew more.  He understood now Frank's warning that they needed to fetch Hank as quickly as possible.  

When younger, Charles Xavier had been almost casual in his manipulation of minds.  Now, older and more aware of human grays, he understood why angels might fear to tread, but he wouldn't stand by and watch such a gentle man as Henry McCoy bleed to death in a hospital emergency room just because he now looked like something from Charles Lamb's Beauty and the Beast.  Taking the swinging doors backward, he wheeled himself into the ER proper and moved like a ghost among the medical staff.  No one spoke to him.  He didn't try to make them not see him; he simply made them not care.  Fortunately, the ER had no security cameras, so he had only to worry about a mental record of his presence.  

Jean had been transferred into one of the treatment rooms because her condition wasn't critical, but Hank still occupied Trauma Room A.  Nurses hung about gaping, and even a security man.  One resident, a woman, worked over Hank with the help of two assistants while the second, another woman, stood well back from the table, staring.  The doctors were yelling at one another, the working one in rage, the watching one in fear.  How sadly ironic that medical personnel who could face unflinching the worst that human carelessness and bad luck could throw at them now hung back instead of doing their job -- saving human lives.  But that was precisely the problem, wasn't it?  

Henry could no longer be mistaken for a normal human.  

Slipping into the minds of those present, Xavier calmed fears and soothed anger and brought the reluctant half of the trauma team back to the bed, even while he wondered how much of the man they'd known as Henry McCoy was left inside the oversized form occupying the table.  Charles remembered the fuzzed, confused sensation of Hank's mind.  But assuming a man did still remain inside the beast, it might be best if Hank's identity were not known.  When Xavier had entered the emergency room proper, he'd seen both Jean and Hank's names up on the board behind the nurse's station, information no doubt acquired from wallets, lab coats, or name tags.  That wouldn't do, and seeing that matters in the trauma room were now in hand, Xavier wheeled his chair back to the nurses station.  He hated tampering with others' minds or falsifying records, but when it came to protecting his 'children,' he'd do what was necessary as the lesser of two evils.  

It was easy enough to influence one nurse to erase Hank's name and replace it with a generic "John Doe 7," then fetch the chart from the spinning rack on the desk, rip out the information page, drop it in the trash, and replace it with another.  The other nurses remained oblivious, and Xavier wheeled past to fetch the balled up paper from the little trash bin and tuck it away in his chair.  Leave no evidence.  It wouldn't matter if there were a record of Jean's admission since she wasn't obviously a mutant.  

But much as he disliked it, he needed to wake her to see if she could tell him what had occurred, and he rolled down the hall to the examination room in which they'd placed her until they could treat her.  An IV had been started, but little else.  The room was strangely quiet after the bustle out in the hall.  She was still in the dusty, torn clothes in which they'd apparently found her, and her visible skin was covered with minor scratches, abrasions, and bruising, but nothing more serious.  He had no idea what damage might lie internally, but he could sense from her unconscious mind no severe pain.  For the moment, no one else was in the room and Xavier gratefully relaxed the loose telepathic hold he'd had over minds in the ER.  He'd learned long ago that if one looked like one knew what one was about, people rarely stopped to ask questions, so he'd needed only light touches to accomplish his goals.  But light touches or not, he'd make them to multiple minds and that was a strain.  Now, in Jean's room, and dressed in a business suit, anyone coming in was likely to assume he was medical personnel.  

He smoothed her hair back from her forehead and let his mind slip into hers.  She was only lightly out and would probably have woken soon.  Jean....  

Her eyes snapped open and she started to lunge upward, but he kept his palm on her forehead and she winced, moaned and relaxed.  "You're in the hospital, Jean," he said.  "Can you tell me what happened?" 

"Oh, God," she whispered and he could feel the shock stiffen her muscles and shudder through her.  "Oh, God, oh, God.  It blew up.  Bruce's new GFG.  It blew up.  And Ted -- " She choked and stopped.  "He was right there," she whispered.  "Oh, God."  

"Shhh."  Xavier stroked her hair and kept a very light touch on her mind, not enough to interfere but enough to keep her calm, just in case she did have internal injuries.  "Hank is here in the hospital.  He's going to be okay."  Well, he was going to live.  More than that, Xavier couldn't say, and no doubt Ted Roberts wasn't in the ER because he was in a morgue.  "Who else was in the lab besides you, Hank, and Ted?" 

"Bruce," she whispered back.  "Bruce was there, too.  The last thing I remember hearing was this . . . this awful whine.  It made the most terrible noise, like a hundred nails down a chalkboard.  And a white light.  The next thing I knew, though, Hank had leapt over the table and we were all falling backwards.  I think I hit my head on the edge of the other lab table."  She'd been staring up at the ceiling, and now her dark eyes slid sideways.  They were full of tears.  "Will Hank really be okay?  He saved our lives.  And what about Bruce?" 

"Hank doesn't appear to be fatally injured, though he took more damage than you."  Xavier stroked her hair again.  "And I'm sorry, Jean, but I haven't seen Bruce.  It may be that he was taken to another hospital."  Though the likelihood of that, with the Hammer Center right down the block from Columbia Presbyterian, was slim.  It grieved Xavier.  Bruce Banner was, or had been, a good man, a good researcher, and might have been a friend, if they'd had more time to interact.  As it was, their different callings had kept them too busy to do more than drop email on occasion and chat at conferences, yet he knew it would be a terrible blow to Jean to lose her mentor.  All that, however, had to wait.  "Jean, I must know what happened.  As best you remember."  

"I'm not sure.  Bruce had some new, really interesting data that he wanted to share with Hank and me, but especially me.  The readings of the cells he'd tested in the GFG all approached or matched the cortisol readings of mutants immediately after manifestation."  

"So his hypothesis was correct."  

"It looked that way.  But I don't know why the machine would explode.  This wasn't the first time they'd run it.  It wasn't even the twentieth.  Bruce has had it for two months.  If there'd been a problem with it, it would have showed by now."  She sighed.  "There really isn't anything else to tell.  We were looking at printouts while Ted started the machine.  Then it exploded.  That's all I know.  How much damage did it do?" 

"Unfortunately, I have no idea."  Though given what he'd seen of the Hammer building even at a distance, the damage had been enough.  As they would learn later, only Banner's lab had been utterly destroyed, but the exploding machine had torn a large hole in the wall nearest to it and there had been several fires, not to mention smoke damage to the entire floor.  At least the lab next door to Bruce's had been empty.  No one besides the four in the lab had been hurt.  What concerned Xavier most at the moment, though, was the apparent effect of the accident on Hank.  Had the gravimagnetic field escaped its protective housing somehow and set off a secondary mutation?  Or had Hank's original mutation never been complete in the first place?  

A doctor had arrived finally to check on Jean, so Xavier excused himself to see what had become of Hank, who now lay unconscious on a gurney in the hallway right outside Trauma A.  No one was quite sure what to do with him next.  The word 'mutant' came up several times, but his mutation was now so extreme that the staff doubted that could explain it.  Police had even been called in while Xavier had talked with Jean; they seemed to view him as a prime suspect in the cause of the lab accident.  Apparently 'just because.'

That was not good, and whatever the consequences, the professor decided abruptly that Henry McCoy couldn't be left to the tender mercies of the hospital, or the police.  Jean?  he sent.  What's your condition?  

I think I'll live, sir.  Apparently nothing more serious than some bad bruises and scrapes.  

Make no mention of Henry.  He was not in that lab, do you understand?  

Yes, sir.  But it was quizzical.  

And to his waiting students outside the ER doors, he send, I need the three of you.  Ororo, go out to the parking lot and drive my car around to the ER entrance; ensure that the rear doors are unlocked and spread a blanket on the backseat, if you can find one in the trunk.  Frank and Warren, I shall need you inside the emergency room proper.  As Henry's own father would say, we are about to pull a 'Hank Snow.'

Sir?  Warren sent back.  

'Moving on,' Mr. Worthington.  Hank Snow sang a song called 'Moving on.'

And on the very heel of that, both boys were inside the doors, staring around at arguing people . . . and then at Hank on the gurney.  Warren gaped, but Frank was unsurprised, and Xavier noted that.  He wondered, idly, just how much the boy knew.  

You see our dilemma, he sent.  I need you to wheel Hank out to the ER entrance, then get him loaded into the car.  

That's Hank?  Warren asked.  

Indeed it is.  Warren, after he's safely in the car, you'll remain here to assist Jean.  She will probably be released after the paperwork is complete, which could take half a day, given how hospitals operate.  Her parents may arrive in the meantime, if the hospital has contacted them.  

Oh, gee, thanks, Warren sent back.  Sic Mrs. Grey on me, why don't you?  He was still staring around at the people.  They don't see us, do they?  And then, God, they're talking about arresting him!  

Yes.  We cannot permit him to be taken into custody, particularly for a crime he didn't commit, if it was a crime at all and not mere human error.  Now, quickly.  One of you on either end of the gurney -- just wheel him out the door.  And no, no one will see us.  Or rather, their minds won't register what they do see.  

And Xavier became aware then of Jean standing in the doorway behind him, her doctor calling her back inside.  Xavier turned to look at her.  Her face was white.  Utterly white.  Go back and lay down, Jean.  You could still be suffering from shock, at the very least.  

"What happened to him?" she whispered.  Then, "My God -- it changed him."  

Apparently so.  We shall handle it.  He hoped.  Remember what I told you to say, if anyone should ask you questions.  You know nothing about a blue, hirsute figure.  Now, go back in and lay down, and he tweaked her mind just so.  She obeyed.  

Frank and Warren were already moving Hank's gurney.  Xavier followed.  He could hardly erase memories of Hank's presence in ER.  Or rather, he could, but it would cause more trouble than it was worth.  Better to effect something simpler -- the patient had been moved to a different room, then had woken and apparently escaped.  It wasn't perfect, but would do.  The main thing was to prevent anyone from making a connection between the extraordinary blue-furred mutant admitted with wounds to the torso, and a research colleague of Bruce Banner by the name of Henry McCoy.  On the way out by the nurses station, Xavier paused to remove the wallet that the ER team had taken from Hank's back pocket and deposited in a personal effects bag.  Then he followed his students out.  

It was a strange 'escape,' Warren thought, when they could simply roll Hank out through an oblivious crowd, but saying as much to Frank got no reply.  The younger man been acting rather oddly ever since the professor had arrived, or even odder than he usually did, and Warren had long ago given up on actually understanding Francesco Placido.  He shook his head.  

By the time they got outside, Ororo was waiting with the car, and her reaction to Hank was much like Warren's had been -- shock and disbelief.  But she helped them haul the unconscious bulk off the gurney into the Rolls' rear seat.  It took all three of them, and much grunting.  "He's added at least a hundred pounds!" Warren huffed.  

"I hope that we are not doing him worse damage," Ororo replied, panting.  

"It is better than the alternative.  They would have taken him into custody," Frank reminded them.  "And do you think they would have believed his story?  It is best this way."  

Neither of the other two was inclined to argue with a precog, and the professor had joined them in any case.  They helped him into the Rolls, then Ororo and Frank got in, and Warren was left to see Jean home, and deal with the Greys if they arrived.  When he considered it, he decided that facing an angry Elaine Grey would be preferable to facing Hank when he first looked in a mirror.  

Whatever Hank had been given in the ER, it kept him unconscious for the entire return to the mansion, which was fortunate, Xavier thought, as having him wake in a moving vehicle, in such a changed condition and with God only knew what mental alterations in addition to the physical, could result in all manner of crises.  Yet when they had returned, they found themselves seriously compromised without Warren's mutant strength to help them unload Hank.  If, wings aside, Warren might not have appeared significantly different, his mutation included alterations to his sight, his bone structure, and his musculature.  In short, he was a lot stronger than he looked.  

And now, without him, Frank and Ororo couldn't budge the suddenly increased bulk of Hank McCoy.  Xavier had to call in additional assistance from two of his staff.  Not Bobby.  Not yet.  The two men were used to being around mutants, of course, but even their expressions showed alarm at Hank's altered form.  

They deposited Henry upstairs in his bed, though Xavier had considered putting him downstairs in the sub-basement lab . . . just in case.  But Henry didn't need to wake to a shiny metal room and an antiseptic atmosphere.  Better to be surrounded by the familiar, though one could hardly say that waking in the lab would be the unfamiliar to him.  

Frank and Ororo stood in the bedroom door beside the professor's chair.  "So now what?" Ororo asked.  

"Now, we wait," Xavier said.  
 
 
 

The moment of truth came more rapidly for Jean than she might have expected, as the doctor didn't need much time confirming that she had sustained nothing more serious than some bad scratches and a mild concussion, and noted as much in her chart so they could clear her out of an overfull ER.  Her clothes -- a nice blouse and khakis -- were a mess, but there was no help for that.  She hadn't come prepared with a spare change of clothing, and Warren being Warren, he could hardly give up his shirt and jacket in public.  A nurse offered Jean a spare blue scrub top to replace her shredded blouse, and some mild pain killers, and then she was on her way to the front desk, Warren hovering like an anxious parent.  "You sure you're okay?"  "Yes, I'm sure."  "They let you go awfully quickly."  "Warren!  I'm fine!"

She had other things to worry about in any case, such as what had happened to Hank.  The more she thought about that, the more concerned she became, but when she asked more information from the staff (people who, come the fall, she'd be working alongside daily) no one could remember much that was specific.  That was the professor's handiwork, she knew.  And no one could tell her anything about Ted or Bruce, either.  It was while she'd paused to query a nurse that a police officer stepped up beside her.  He was a tall man, thin, with medium brown skin and an all-business attitude.  "You're Jean Grey?  You were at the site of the accident?  Can I ask you a few questions?" 

"Officer, I think she needs -- "

"Shh," Jean told Warren, raising a hand.  Any apparent lack of cooperation would be that much more suspicious.  "I'd be happy to help," she said.  "And maybe you can help me, too.  I'm trying to find out what happened to the two other people in the lab."  

"There were only two?" 

"Yes.  Myself, Bruce Banner -- whose lab it was -- and Ted Roberts.  I was brought here, but I haven't seen either of them."  

He gave her a quizzical glance.  "What, exactly, happened, Ms. Grey?" 

"Dr. Grey," Warren corrected.  

Jean pinched his arm as irritation washed over the officer's face.  "I'm sorry, Dr. Grey," the officer amended.  

"It's okay.  As for what happened, I'm not sure myself.  Bruce -- Dr. Banner -- had invited me in to share some particularly exciting test results and demonstrate them in the GFG -- the gravimagnetic field generator.  Dr. Banner and I were sitting at a lab table, looking over the results when Ted -- Mr. Roberts -- started the GFG engines.  There was a terrible whine, and then the explosion.  That's pretty much it, for what I remember.  I must have hit my head on a lab table.  I have the concussion to prove it."  She rubbed the side of her head, both for effect and because it did genuinely hurt.  

He'd been taking notes while she spoke, and now glanced up.  "Did anyone else come into the lab while you were there, and then leave?" 

And Jean paused, frowning.  She wasn't sure what to say.  Certainly other people in the genetics department had seen Hank around that day.  It probably wouldn't do to lie entirely, never mind that if Bruce had been taken to another hospital and anyone took his statement, he'd no doubt name Hank as there in the lab, and incriminate her in the process.  Easier if she could claim confusion.  "Well, when I first arrived, Mr. Roberts was on his way down to the computer core to pick up a new printout.  Hank -- Dr. McCoy -- had been there earlier, but he left with Ted.  When Ted came back, he started up the machine."  She'd felt Warren stiffen beside her at the mention of Hank, but she didn't react herself.  

The officer was frowning.  "This Dr. McCoy -- how long was he in the lab, and would he have been in the lab alone at any time?" 

And realization struck Jean -- they were looking for a saboteur.  "I'm sorry," she replied, voice cold, "I have no idea how long Dr. McCoy was in the lab, nor if he'd have been alone with the machine, but as he helped to build it in the first place, if he'd wanted to do anything to it, he'd have had multiple opportunities before now.  He and Dr. Banner are very close."  

The officer winced.  "I'm sorry, ma'am, but we have to ask these questions."  

Jean nodded.  "Then understand this -- Hank McCoy would stand to lose as much, career wise, as Bruce Banner if something went wrong with that machine.  Accidents happen, you know.  Even if it wasn't an accident, there are more likely suspects than Dr. McCoy.  Now, it's my turn to ask a question.  What happened to Mr. Roberts and Dr. Banner?" 

The officer sighed and shook his head.  "I'm not really supposed to tell you -- "

"-- but you will, because they're my friends," Jean finished.  

He eyed her, but then shrugged.  "Well, as for Ted Roberts -- I guess he was the guy we found right next to the machine.  I'm sorry.  He didn't make it."  

Jean had suspected as much, but her hand still went out to grip Warren's arm, and he slipped an arm around her waist.  "And Bruce?" 

"I don't know ma'am.  The only ones found were you, the body and . . . well, this sounds crazy -- but some big blue furry guy.  They brought him in here, but he woke up and escaped.  That's what they're telling us, anyway.  But God, you'd think somebody would notice him walking out!"

"You'd think," Jean echoed, and leaned more heavily into Warren, her head on his shoulder.  He stroked her hair.  "I'm sorry.  I don't know anything about a blue furry man in the lab.  Could . . . could Dr. Banner have woken up and walked away?" 

"Possible, I guess.  Not likely.  You were, well, buried under rubble.  If he was with you, he'd have been there, too.  This blue guy was lying on top of you."  

"So he did save my life," Jean said, then swallowed, hoping the officer hadn't caught her peculiar phrasing.  

But all he said was a dubious, "I guess.  Or maybe he caused it."  

Jean shook her head.  "I told you, Bruce and I were looking at the printout and Ted started the machine, which exploded.  No blue guy."  

The officer added a few more comments in his notebook, then he said, "Thank you.  I imagine someone else will want to talk to you about it again.  Where can we reach you?" 

Jean gave him the phone number of her city apartment, and then grabbed Warren to pull him out into the busy ER waiting room area, where a dozen other conversations concealed theirs.  "I want to go back to the lab."  

"Forget it, Jean.  Even if you were in any shape to go, I'm sure the whole floor was evacuated.  They're not going to let you up there."  

"Then I'll have to -- " Abruptly, she stopped.  She had an idea.  Surely it couldn't be so easy, surely not . . . but it was worth a try.  "Warren, I don't need to get onto the floor; I just need to get into the computer lab.  I hope.  And as long as that wasn't damaged in the blast, they're not going to shut it down or they'd have nine hundred furious grad students."  

He eyed her curiously, but shrugged.  "Okay, but I don't see the point."  

She ignored that and set about checking herself out before her parents arrived with their particular brand of paranoia and sucked her into it for the next week.  Once out of the hospital, they walked up the street to the Hammer Building and on the way, she dialed her father's cell.  Warren caught only her half of the conversation.  "Dad, this is Jean.  I just wanted to call and tell you I'm fine.  There's no need to come down here."  "No, Dad, I'm fine."  "Yes, really."  "Yes, there was an explosion.  It was an accident.  I'm fine."  "Dad, I'm fine.  You and mom turn around and go on home."  "Dad, I have to go.  Someone wants to ask me some questions.  I won't be home until late I'm sure.  I'll call you tomorrow.  Bye."  And she snapped the phone shut.  

"Liar, liar, pants on fire."  

"Fuck you, War."  

"Such language."  

She shot him a bird and he laughed.  They'd nearly reached the building.  The emergency vehicles were all gone by this point.  It was verging on the dregs of afternoon, but the place was swarming with the curious, talking about the explosion.  People stared at her, as she was dressed -- or partly dressed -- in torn clothing and had scratches all over her face, but no one stopped her.  She didn't even see anyone whom she immediately recognized.  She and Warren took the elevator up to a floor with a computer lab full of Sun stations.  There, at least, she ran into people she knew and had to field questions.  They were relieved to see her, but plenty of people had also seen the EMTs wheeling out a shrouded body, and knew that someone had died, but not who.  Jean claimed ignorance -- the news would be out soon enough -- and stuck to her story that only Bruce, Ted and herself had been in the lab.  "But I thought I saw Hank hanging around up there today, too?" Evelyn said.  

"He was, but he left," Jean replied.  No one questioned that.  Why would they?  

Observers had, however, seen the blue furry version of Hank.  "What was that?" and "Where did it come from?"  were the main questions.  Jean claimed ignorance about that, too, and after a good twenty minutes, people left her alone.  She sat down at an open machine, a little away from the chattering others, and pulled herself up to the keyboard.  Warren joined her.  

"What are you after?" 

"Test results," Jean replied, and turned her attention to the machine.  She'd graduated, but only a month ago and she should still have access to the system until the following September.  Please, please, she whispered to herself as she typed in her user name and password.  And . . . 

It worked.  She breathed out and closed her eyes.  Thank God for small miracles.  As long as she was still in the system, she was sure that she was still a part of Banner's research group and had access to those protected files.  The trick now was finding the ones she wanted.  

In the end, she had to print out the past-five-days'-worth of test and research statistical results, but found the ones she wanted, the same ones that Bruce had shown her earlier in the lab.  Waving these under a still-confused Warren's nose, she said, "Now, maybe I can get some answers."  

"For what?" 

Jean glanced around quickly, but they were alone.  "For Hank, War."  

Warren opened his mouth to inquire further, but at that moment, they heard first a wild bellow, and then a shrill scream.  It sounded as if it was one floor down, and everyone in the lab -- including Jean and Warren -- raced out and down the stairs, to see what had happened.  

They found a terrorized secretary sitting on the floor of her office.  She'd obviously been getting ready to go home, as she had her purse clenched in one hand and a plastic bag with an empty Tupperware lunch bowl gripped in the other.  She was glassy-eyed and panting, and had slid right onto the carpet . . . which was dark with liquid.  She'd wet herself in her fright.  Jean and Warren pushed to the edge of the small crowd.  "Oh, my God, oh, my God," the secretary kept repeating.  

"What happened?" someone asked.  

"In the closet.  It was in the closet.  I went to shut the supply closet and it was in there!"

"What?" 

"A big green . . . thing!  A beast!  Like a man, but bigger.  And all green!  It ran away down the hall.  Oh, my God, my God.  It yelled at me!  I thought it was going to kill me!"

Jean and Warren exchanged a glance.  Hank was accounted for.  Ted was, unfortunately, accounted for.  "Bruce?" Jean asked, and stared down at the sheaf of printouts in her hand.  A big green thing?  

She had to get back to the mansion with these results.  

Notes:   Obviously, I've played around with comic history making Bruce a geneticist, not a physicist, and altering both Bruce and Hank simultaneously by an energy wave intentionally reminiscent of Magneto's machine in the film.  Condense, condense, condense.  Many thanks to Tarch for the genetic assistance and ideas. 

Go on to Chapter 12: "Like Agamemnon"