AN ACCIDENTAL INTERCEPTION
Of Fate:  Like Agamemnon
Minisinoo

Henry McCoy knew that something was seriously wrong as soon as he awoke in his own bed and saw Frank half-dozing in the chair at his desk.  It wasn't the presence of Frank that alarmed him, but the decidedly different feel of his own body that extended beyond any cotton-fuzzy effect of pain meds.  He felt larger, stuffed like a teddy bear, and a spinning-dizzy chill flashed through his limbs as he stared at the ceiling a moment, watching the ripple of evening shadows from the dancing limbs of the black hickory beyond his bedroom window.  Finally, he said, "Fff-- Fffanses . . . sssses . . . co?"  He could make neither an "r" nor a "ch" sound.  

Jerking awake, Frank uncrossed his legs and arms, then smiled.  But it was sad.  Frank's smiles were often sad.  "Welcome back."  Rising, he came over to perch on the edge of Hank's bed.  "Are you in pain?"

"No.  But, I fffeeel odd.  Cannntalk."  In point of fact, his tongue felt too large for his mouth, or his teeth were . . . different.  That was it -- his teeth were different.  Was he missing some?  But no, running his tongue over them, he met a full wall of slick enamel, but very sharp.  My God, he thought, I have incisors.  

Well, everyone had incisors.  But not like these.  

What on earth had happened?  He started to struggle up, but Frank's hand on his shoulder pushed him back.  "Lie still.  You are wounded.  The doctors sewed you back together from the pieces."  Abruptly he grinned.  "Well, not so quite.  I am Italian; I am allowed to exaggerate.  But you must not begin new bleeding, no?"

"Wwwhat happ-- happen'd?"

"An accident.  You remember the explosions, yes?"  Hank nodded and Frank sighed.  Here came the difficult part.  Your own fault, he thought.  He'd had the power to stop it, and hadn't.  But everyone had to make choices.  

Before he could go on, however, Henry asked, "Shhheen?  Buce?"

"Jean is fine.  Bruce . . . we do not know."  Well, he knew, but he would keep that to himself yet.  

"What ten?  Tell me.  And how long out?"

Already Henry was adjusting to the changes in his mouth.  It would take time, but he'd relearn how to talk.  

"We do not know what happened, not past the obvious.  You haven't been unconscious so long, not two hours since we came back."  There was no putting it off, so he reached down to raise one of Hank's hands into his friend's field of vision.  "There are changes, Henri." 

And the expressions that chased across Hank's face pierced Francesco.  Confusion, horror, pain, fear -- disgust.  He started to rise again but Frank pushed him down once more, and weak still, he didn't fight.  But his eyes were terrified.  "Mihah, mihoh, mi . . ."  

"Mirror," Frank said for him.  "Lie still.  I will find one."  

In fact, he'd brought one along from the room that he shared with Ororo, an antique tooled, brass-backed hand mirror, small enough to avoid a whole-body effect.  It was sometimes better, he reflected, if shocks came in digestible bites.  He handed the mirror to Hank, who stared into it a long while, then dropped it reflective side down on the bed's blanket and turned his face away.  

"You are still Henri McCoy," Frank told him.  "This" -- he indicated Henry's new form -- "changes nothing of the you that matters."  

"Why?" Hank asked.  "Why did it happen?"

"It was the machine, I am thinking."  

And Hank pondered that because knowledge was Henry McCoy's god, the solace he'd always sought for the differences that had set him apart from the very beginning.  He could recall seeing the gravimagnetic field escape the GFG containment cylinder and spread outward, enveloping Ted Roberts and moving beyond even as the machine itself had cracked apart under pressure.  He'd leapt over the table to knock Jean and Bruce to the floor, but that had been to save them from the shrapnel of a disintegrating machine, not from the field.  

"Sheen -- ?"  Then in frustration, he shook his head and mimed writing.  Frank nodded and fetched a yellow pad and pen from the desk while Hank studied his hands, now covered with very short, dense, pale-lapis-blue fur everywhere except the palms, the skin of which had thickened and turned a darker royal shade.  But otherwise, their shape hadn't changed; they were as outsized as they'd always been.  

You were born a freak, Henry McCoy, he thought bitterly as he took the paper from Frank to scribble, Has Jean changed?  

Frank shook his head, and Hank breathed out in relief, then wrote, My mutation must never have completed itself.  That's what the GFG was supposed to do: trigger recessive or incomplete mutations.  I was born with a physical mutation, but it must never have reached its intended conclusion.  He stopped, twisted the pen a moment, then added, This is what I'm supposed to be.  

He remembered the face in the mirror.  "What beast haff I become?" he muttered.  

"Yourself," Frank told him softly.  Reaching out, he took the writing tools from Henry and laid them down on the bedside, then took Hank's hand and held it up, placing his own against it, palm-to-palm.  Not only was Henry's hand larger, but the fingers were longer, more apelike.  "You are our friend," Frank said.  "We will find the way through this, and we shall not forsake you."  

"My caheeah?"

Frank held up the pad with his free hand.  "Words.  You still have your words, mi amico.  You still have published more articles this year than anyone else in your specialization.  You are still Henri McCoy."  He released Hank's hand and eyed him.  "You are not a beast.  Unless it is the Cookie Monster."  

And despite himself, Hank laughed.  Then he cried.  Frank sat with him for a long time, saying nothing else as shadows lengthened and the sun went down in watercolor streaks of blood red, obscene orange, and the deep purple of a bruise.  
 
 
 
 

"Something terrible has happened to Bruce!"

Jean was shouting it almost before she got in the main foyer door, Warren right on her heels.  Caught in rush-hour traffic, it had taken them almost two hours to get back to Westchester from midtown, and the grandfather clock in the hallway was about to chime seven.  

"Professor!" Jean called.  "Professor!   Something has happened to Bruce!"

Everyone on the first floor came running, Xavier in his chair the last to arrive, and right there on the grey-veined foyer marble, Jean laid down a selection of papers that she'd printed out earlier and had been studying in the car on the drive back.  "Here, here and here!" she said, pointing to three lines of numbers that, of course, meant absolutely nothing to anyone else present.  

"Begin at the beginning, Jean," the professor suggested.  

Looking up from where she knelt, she met his eyes.  "What happened to Hank.  It happened to Bruce, too.  I'm almost sure of it.  That wave mutated them.  I wouldn't have thought of it, if I hadn't seen Hank in the hospital but -- " Abruptly, she interrupted herself to ask, "How is Hank?"

"Hank is fine," said a new voice on the main spiral staircase.  Having heard the shouting below, Francesco and Henry had come to investigate and now Frank was helping him down the stairs.  

"Hank!" Jean yelled, darting up the stairs to throw her arms around him with great enthusiasm, if no little care.  It wasn't the reception he'd expected, but it was the one he'd needed, and he put an arm around her, too, hugging her back.  

"What papeas?" he asked, still adjusting to the new teeth.  

"Copies of the printouts that Bruce was showing us earlier."  

"Let me see."  

So Jean and Frank helped him to descend the rest of the way, then sat him down on the final step so that Jean could move the papers closer, pointing out the crucial results.  "What haffened to Buce?" he asked, almost idly, as he picked up and shuffled through the printouts.  Focus, focus, he thought.  The papers gave him something on which to focus the one thing that hadn't changed -- his mind.  

"I'm not sure exactly," Jean explained, glancing back at Warren.  "I didn't see him.  I'm not entirely sure it was him but --"  She gestured silently at Hank, who just stared at her a moment.  "He's green."  

"Green?" the rest echoed.  

"Big and green," Warren added, "or that's how one of the Hammer Center secretaries described him.  Apparently, he was hiding in a supply closet and when she opened it, he ran out.  We -- Jean and I and some other students -- heard a growl and then her scream all the way up on the floor above.  By the time we got there, he was gone.  But whatever happened, he scared the daylights out of her.  She called him a 'big green thing.'"

"And what makes you think this was Bruce Banner?" the professor asked.  

"Bruce's body wasn't found," Jean said.  "A cop came to take my statement before I left ER.  He admitted that Ted Roberts had been found -- " she choked, then went on, "had been found dead at the scene.  But apparently Hank and I were the only other people in the room.  No Bruce.  And" -- she indicated Hank again -- "the wave changed Hank.  I think it changed Bruce, too."  

"But it didn't change you, Jean.  And Bruce Banner is not a mutant," the professor pointed out.  

"Maybe he was," Hank said, and they all turned to stare at him.  Pulling out the pad he'd grabbed, he wrote, One impact of the wave is to complete mutations in partially mutated individuals.  That is the only explanation I can think of for my own state.  My mutation at birth was partial, and for whatever reason, never finished.  But the other impact of the wave is to bring about mutations in latent mutants.  Bruce hadn't yet told Jean this, but his son is a mutant.  It's part of what spurred his original interest in mutations.  While running some DNA scans, he discovered that Brian carries the X-gene; he's simply not old enough yet to manifest.  Yet that means either Bruce or Betty carry a recessive, and I think we know now which of them it is.  

"It's got to be Bruce," Jean agreed.  "He must have woken before the paramedics arrived, or he was never knocked out at all.  He saw what'd happened and panicked -- went to hide in that closet."  

Hank nodded.  "Could be."  

Neither voiced their private thoughts:  it was very unlike Bruce to run.  He'd never before ducked his responsibilities, or a fight -- at least not an academic fight -- but waking up green might have been more than he'd been prepared to face.  

Jean glanced back at Hank.  "Why didn't he ever tell me about Brian?"

This time, Hank shook his head.  "Phivat."  He wrote, I think he would have eventually, but not while you were a student of his.  

Jean pondered that.  Bruce had always been old-fashioned about some things.  "We have to find him," Jean said, "before he gets hurt."  She turned to the professor.  "If he's a mutant now, can you find him with Cerebro?"

The professor nodded.  "I can certainly try."  
 
 
 

"Hey, Slim -- phone!"

Scott wandered out of his bedroom where he'd been studying for an exam.  This was the first summer that EJ hadn't returned to LA, supposedly because he wanted to get some gen ed classes out of the way, but Scott thought the real reason had more to do with the fact that Diane had elected to spend the summer in Berkeley.  

Scott took the receiver to the kitchen phone.  Its long cord had been twisted into impossible pretzels.  "Hello?"

"Scott?  It is Ro.  There was an accident in the Hammer Building -- "

"What?  Is Jean okay?" Scott interrupted.  

On the other end of the line, Ororo smiled to herself.  In small gestures were the hearts of men revealed.  "Jean is fine.  Hank is . . . going to be fine."  She hoped.  "Sadly, Ted Roberts was killed, and we are uncertain what became of Bruce -- though Jean and Hank have a theory."  

"Something happened in the lab?" he demanded.  

"Yes.  The new machine exploded.  The cause is not known."  

"Shit."  He turned around to look at EJ, who was chopping broccoli on a cutting board as he listened with a concerned frown.  Scott mouthed, Jean's all right, and EJ nodded.  "So what's their theory?"

"That Bruce underwent a mutation himself."  

"What?"

Ororo explained in brief what Jean and Warren had seen at the Hammer Building, Hank's theory, and also Hank's own transformation.  Scott just listened until she got to the part about Hank.  "He's blue?"

"Who's blue?" EJ asked.  

"Hank's blue!  Ro says that Hank's turned blue!"

"Whoa -- "

"It seems," Ororo interrupted over the phone line to drag back Scott's attention, "that Henry's mutation was unfinished.  Scott, we must try to find Bruce Banner, if that was, indeed, the doctor."  

"I'm flying back there," Scott said.  He had no idea how fast he could get a ticket, but renting a plane for himself was out of the question at such short notice.  

"Do not bother.  Warren is already on the way out to get you.  That is why I am calling.  You will need to drive to the San Pablo Reservoir picnic grounds."  

"Why?"  He was baffled.  "It's closed at night, Ro."  

"We know.  That is why we are using it.  I do not think they will let this plane enter the local airport."  

"Huh?"  But the reason for that hit him before she could reply.  "Wait a minute!  He's not bringing the Blackbird?   I didn't know it was ready!  Or that you'd tested it!"

"It is ready, but this is the first flight it has taken."  

"No fucking way!  Crippled Christ on a crutch!  Don't let him off the ground -- "

"He has left already."  

"He's crazy!" Scott Summers, son of an air force test pilot, was nearly livid.  "You don't take up a newly refitted plane at night and fly it all the way across the goddamn country!"  Especially not that plane.  "He's not trying to fly it at mach speed, is he?"

"It is an emergency," was Ororo's simple answer.  

Scott sighed; there was no use crying over spilled milk.  He just hoped to God that Warren and the Habu made it out to California in one piece.  "When did he leave?"

"Two hours ago.  So you have slightly less than two hours to travel to meet him."  

"Fine.  I'll be waiting."  

Scott hung up and turned to face EJ.  "I need a favor, man.  I need you to drive me up to San Pablo Reservoir State Park."  

EJ looked out the window at the setting sun.  "Slim, it's almost dark.  It'll be closed soon."  

"Yeah, I know.  That's the idea." 
 
 
 

Scott and EJ arrived with time and to spare, which was a good thing; with the park closed, they had to hide the car and climb the fence to get in.  "What are we waiting on, man?"

Scott didn't want to spoil the surprise.  "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."  EJ's answering expression was disgusted, and Scott felt guilty.  "Sorry.  It's an SR-71, rebuilt and remodeled."  

"A what?"

Scott had to laugh.  Of course EJ wouldn't know.  Planes were Scott's obsession.  "It's a Blackbird."  

"Never heard of it."  

"You won't see it, either, until it's on top of you.  Fastest plane the air force ever built and the second highest-flying plane in the world.  A Russian MIG goes higher, but the Blackbird's a beauty."  

That won a smile from EJ.  "You're plane-drunk, Slim."  

"Runs in the family."  

"I guess."  

Twenty minutes later, the 'bird was there, coming in low and slow from the north, a darker shadow on a dark sky until the landing spots came on.  Warren set it down in an open field and Scott held his breath as the landing gear descended for the first time since its refit.  His father had told him more than once that every Habu had a temper of her own and that her pilot had better learn to finesse her.  Landing a plane this powerful was like courting a fickle girl -- make the wrong move and one was dead.  

Though her descent was rough, the plane remained in one piece as she touched down and tore up dirt.  "How long he been flying, man?" EJ asked as the 'bird came to a final tail-wagging stop.  

"It's a field, not a runway, Eeeej.  And that plane's not like any other."  Scott shook his head.  "I can't believe he brought her down for the first time here.  I just hope we can get up again."  

EJ eyed him, expression genuinely concerned.  "You sure about this?"

Scott shrugged, repeating the same thing Ororo had said on the phone.  "It's an emergency."  But when he boarded the bay-gutted, revamped cockpit to take the newly installed co-pilot's seat, his hands were shaking.  "How'd she fly?" he asked his friend, deliberately casual.  It was better than, 'Are we gonna die in a bright, fiery ball?'

"She's cantankerous," Warren replied, strapping back in, "But the daf-ek Hank reinstalled has worked great.  No unstarts and the APW didn't shake the stick once."  

"Terrific," Scott muttered sotto voce.  "How many times have you practiced in a sim, War?"

"Enough.  And with all the scenarios."  

Nonetheless, lift-off wasn't much better than the landing had been, and Scott gripped his armrests as they barely cleared the tops of the tall cedars.  "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," he muttered.  

"Can it.  Unless you want to fly her."  Warren was tight-lipped and as white in the face as Scott.  

"Yeah, actually, I would."  

"What?"  Surprised, Warren glanced around.  

"I'd like to fly her."  And Scott did want it.  Desperately.  His fingers stroked the slick inner skin of her hull.  

"When was the last time you did a simulation, hotshot?"

Scott thought about it.  "On the computer?  Day before yesterday."  He had not, in fact, been in the sim machine itself since Christmas, but he was rather embarrassed to admit how often he ran the adapted simulator that Hank had sent him.  

Silence reigned for a minute, then Warren said, "Okay, you can fly her a little.  But let me get us to cruising altitude, and I'm going to land her."  

"That's fine."  

They flew at 45,000 feet, but below the subsonic range when Warren carefully let Scott slip into the pilot's seat and turned over the plane to him.  As Scott's hands closed on the control stick, he felt a shiver go through him.  He was in the pilot seat of a Habu.  A modified Habu, but a Habu all the same.  "Hey, baby," he whispered.  She trembled under his hands, her AB engines roaring so hot they turned their own interiors translucent and shook his teeth.  But she trembled because this was too slow for her.  She wasn't made for tortoise speeds.  Free me, she sang to him through the metal.  He raised her nose, advanced the throttle and opened her up.  

"Whoa!" Warren said, plopping down into the other chair as she leapt forward.  "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Taking her to a speed she wants to go."  

"Scott -- !"

"I was born for this, War."  And he was -- a combination of his father's genetics, his lesser-sung mutant abilities, and an instinct for the stratosphere.  He watched the plane's speed pass the sonic barrier and then approach the critical 1.6 as inlet spikes unlocked and moved aft of their forward position.  This was it, he thought.  They'd either unstart the engines and be knocked all over the sky, or she'd straighten out like a greyhound.  

She straightened out, vibrating with a cat's purr of pure power.  Take me home, baby, he thought to her.  

They flew through the night, very high, her engines making quartz-blue flames in the darkness.  
 
 
 

On the long flight, Warren filled in Scott more thoroughly on everything that had transpired since the accident.  By the time they touched down on the little private landing strip by the lake, it was the wee hours of morning, but the lights were still on in the mansion.  They entered through the rear kitchen door and Scott was met with a bear hug first from Ororo, then from Jean.  Scott held onto Jean a bit longer than he might have normally, then asked, "You okay?  I'm sorry about -- "

"I'm all right," she interrupted, pushing him away.  She didn't want to discuss Ted Roberts and knew that was what he'd ask about.  How she knew it, she didn't pause to consider.  "Come see Hank."  She took him by the hand and led him out of the kitchen.  "And whatever you do, don't wince."  

"I won't."  

The dark-wood hall between kitchen and den was dim and haunted with uncertainties as the four of them made their way down to where a still-weak Henry McCoy was propped on the den couch with pillows and blankets and warm tea.  The professor was with him, and Frank and Bobby, and all the room's lights were on.  He was both more and less shocking than Scott had expected, though in truth, Scott's expectations had been indistinct, like a child's fear of monsters in the closet.  

Hank was no monster at all.  He'd gained significant body mass but his facial features were still familiar -- all but the mouth.  That looked slightly stretched.  The greatest change was the color of the new fur; it appeared purple to Scott, though Ororo and Warren had both said it was blue.  The skin beneath also seemed to have changed as his lips were purple, too, though the hair on his head was the same dark shade it'd always been.  Then again, Scott thought, if his own beard could be auburn while his hair was brown, maybe the contrast of Hank's body fur to his scalp hair was the same.  

Face blank by force of will, Scott walked over to seat himself on the edge of the coffee table that fronted the sofa.  "How are you?" he asked -- a foolish question, but the only one he could think of to express his concern.  

Hank didn't quite look at him, glancing somewhere indefinite over his left shoulder instead.  "I suppose I sssall be seeking a new address on Sesame Street."  

Unsure how to reply to that, and embarrassed and half-guilty, Scott looked away.  The rest of the room was silent.  Abruptly, Hank sighed.  It was loud.  "I know, I know.  Self-pity is so unbecoming."  

It was Frank who dared to reply.  "But understandable."  

And no one immediately replied to that, either.  After a space of ten breaths, Scott asked, "So if this big, green . . . person . . . is Dr. Banner, how do we find him?  He may be big, but New York is bigger."  

"I believe I can help, on that score," the professor said.  
 
 
 

Fort Tryon itself, built on Manhattan's highest point, dated back to the Revolutionary war, but only the ruined foundations remained on the banks of the Hudson across the river from the New Jersey Palisades.  Even that might have been swallowed by the burgeoning New York metropolis but for the sixty-two acres surrounding the fort that had been purchased by John D. Rockefeller in 1909, and given to the city in 1930 for a park; the landscaping had been done by Frederick Law Olmsted, the same man who'd designed Central Park.  Yet the public draw of Ft. Tryon wasn't the historic ruins, but The Cloisters, a mammoth sub-branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art built in the chunky, forbidding style of medieval French monasteries, and housing (appropriately) art and artifacts of the Middle Ages.  The Cloisters was located centrally at the park top, while numerous paths led up and down hills, some of them so steep that walkways had to be bordered by stone walls.  There was a rock garden at the south entrance near the old fort, a stone gazebo, a café, a terrace, and a pair of sizable playgrounds, all in addition to the lawns, groves, chasms, and gardens one would expect to find.  Here at the height of summer, the trees and bushes were leafy and verdant, providing extensive cover so that, after dark and even with a half moon and the ever-present glow of the city, it was pitch black in areas.  

It was also closed, so getting inside had been an adventure, but this was where Cerebro had pinpointed Bruce Banner, and this was where they'd come, hoping to find and fetch him back to the mansion at a time of night when he wouldn't attract too much unwanted attention.  Jean was armed with an oversized coat and a hat.  It wasn't perfect, but after dark, it might be sufficient to conceal someone big, and green.  Only Hank and Bobby hadn't come, Hank because he was too wounded -- never mind blue -- and Bobby because he was too young.  Scott led Ororo, Frank, Jean and Warren into the park while the professor drove the handicap-modified Bentley about the neighborhood, waiting.  Dawn was only an hour and a half away, so they had to find Bruce quickly.  They split up into two groups, but even so, the park would have been too large for them to canvas in that time, so the professor helped them better narrow the area of their search.  They knew that Banner was on the western, or elevated side of the park, near the museum.  At Scott's suggestion, they were wearing the protective gear that had been designed for them -- dark clothes to cover most of their exposed skin, and the kevlar vests.  Jean had protested, "Scott, it's Bruce, not some strange and dangerous mutant."  

But Scott had shaken his head.  "It's not Bruce I'm worried about; it's the other crazies."  Scott was still amazed that Banner had managed to make it from the medical center to Ft. Tryon Park at rush hour without attracting attention.  

In fact, the big, green man had attracted attention, but New Yorkers being New Yorkers, they'd assumed him involved in filming a movie or some sort of publicity campaign, so he'd traveled two blocks west to Ft. Washington Park without anyone calling the police, then moved north through the park grounds until he'd been able to cross into the much larger, more densely landscaped Ft. Tryon Park where his own panicked suspicion had made him avoid joggers and tourists until sunset had emptied the paths.  Now, hunger had driven him out to prowl and he made a midnight snack of unfinished popcorn, half-eaten granola bars, and abandoned chili dogs, leaving a trail of plundered trash cans that Scott and Jean picked up near Linden Terrace and followed like a reversal of Hansel and Gretel.  "I can't believe he's eating trash," Jean said, after the third overturned bin.  

Scott was more concerned by the fact that Bruce was casually upending concrete containers than by the fact he was eating someone's half-finished dinner.  Fists on hips, he studied one of the displaced canisters lying on its side not far from a sign that read (ironically), Let no one say, and say it to your shame, that all was beauty here, until you came.  "He's probably really hungry.  When was the last time he ate?  Noon?"

"No doubt, but Scott, it's garbage.  He's a doctor.  He knows how unsanitary that is."  And she fastidiously wrinkled her pretty nose.  "I'd think he'd have to be a good deal hungrier than a missed supper before he'd eat out of the trash!"

It was yet another clue in the case Jean was reluctantly building that more was wrong with her old advisor than a change in skin tone.  The Bruce she knew would never have threatened a secretary, no matter how frightened he was.  And the Bruce she knew wouldn't be eating out of the trash unless he were a good deal more hungry and desperate.  Moreover, the Bruce she knew would've made some effort to contact someone, not hole up in a park for hours on end.  Perhaps he didn't have his cell, but she'd seen a few scattered pay phones since entering the grounds.  Why hadn't he at least tried to call his wife collect?  Jean had phoned Betty Ross-Banner from the mansion only to find her frantic, with no idea about what had happened to her husband.  

Standing on one of the many paths, Jean squinted off through the trees.  They made a black wall all around them and the beam of her flashlight barely pierced the foliage.  Crickets sang their night songs and she could smell the heavy perfume of summer jasmine.  Dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, pants and the heavy kevlar, she was hot, and pushed up her shirt sleeves as she followed Scott.  The white X on the back of his vest glowed faintly in the moonlight.  It really did look like a big target mark.  

Scott had raised his little wrist communicator and now spoke into it.  "Anything?"

"Nothing," came back Warren's voice in a static-distorted warble.  

"We've found some emptied trash bins between the terrace and the rock garden but no further sign of Dr. Banner."  

"Why do you assume emptied trash bins have anything to do with Banner?  Might be dogs."  

"They're a couple hundred pounds of concrete turned upside down, War.  Find me the dog who can do that."  

"Oh."  

"Yeah, 'oh.' Let's converge on the trail headed up towards The Cloisters."  He hesitated, then added, "Be careful," before closing the connection.  He and Jean turned back and followed the Promenade north towards the looming complex of buildings above them, the yellow-white beams of their flashlights dancing across the landscape around them.  

"Shall we call to him?" Jean asked after a while.  "He might not know who we are otherwise."  

It was a good suggestion, and Scott might have agreed, but before he could reply something large and hulking crashed through the bushes to their right and leapt onto the path in front of them, pounding his chest Tarzan-style and snarling.  Already on edge, Jean squeaked and stumbled backwards, falling onto her ass on the sidewalk, her flashlight rolling away and the overcoat falling from her grasp.  Scott jumped in front of her, hand on his visor trigger, "Dr. Banner!  We're not here to hurt you."  He could only hope that the seven-foot, snarling, man-shaped creature was, in fact, the mutated Bruce Banner, but when he swung up his flashlight into the other's eyes to blind him temporarily, the beam did reveal skin a brilliant grass green.  

"Bruce, it's Jean!"  She'd recovered her equilibrium and her feet rapidly enough.  "We want to help!"

Between the light in his eyes and the use of his name, Banner hesitated.  "Who you?" he asked.  

The childlike puzzlement in his face, the poor grammar, and the fact -- just registering with them both -- that he wore not a stitch of clothing on his body, sealed Jean's suspicion that more than his physical form had altered.  "Bruce, it's Jean," she repeated, hands spread in a placating way as she moved a few steps past Scott.  Scott grabbed for her but she shook him off.  "It's Jean Grey.  Your former student, Jean Grey?  Do you remember me?  We want to help you.  We want to take you someplace safe."  

Bruce Banner was wary, but he did recognize his own name, and the young woman seemed familiar, though he understood less than half of what she'd said.  He understood 'safe,' at least, and as she held nothing dangerous in her outstretched hands, he took a step towards her.  Smiling, she continued, "Betty asked us to find you.  Betty and Brian are really worried, Bruce.  They want you to come home."  

Betty.  He remembered Betty.  Soft hair, soft breasts, pretty smile.  Betty.  And for the first time in hours, both fear and hostility drained out of Banner.  Pretty Betty.  But she wouldn't like to see him like this.  She wouldn't love him anymore like this.  He sat down heavily on the grass verge, knees up and forearms on them, giving Jean a clearer view of his privates than she'd ever wanted.  "Betty," he whispered, great sorrow in his voice.  "Betty no see me like this."  

Whatever he'd lost intellectually, he clearly still understood shame of one kind, if not another.  Jean moved closer yet, squatting down to put herself on his level, close enough to touch.  "Bruce, Betty loves you.  She just wants to know that you're safe."  

"No see me like this!"  Banner's sorrow was transforming back into fear, and anger

"Jean -- " Scott warned.  

She waved him silent and tried again, thinking that they had to get Banner out of this park, back to the mansion -- and lab -- where she and Hank could find some way to restore his memories, and his intellect.  "Betty won't be angry.  We want to help you.  We want to take you someplace safe where we can feed you" -- Banner's expression perked up at that -- "and then we can call Betty and Brian and -- "

She got no further.  In an instant, Banner's mood shifting from interest into rage and he leapt at Jean, knocking her onto her back even as Ororo, Frank and Warren came hurrying up the path from the opposite direction, having been called by the commotion.  "Jean!" Scott shouted, stepping back to get off a shot even while the other three stared in confusion.  

But though Banner was holding Jean by the throat, he didn't seem to be hurting her beyond that and Scott hesitated.  Banner, however -- hearing the others approaching and realizing that he was hemmed in -- shouted, "Trick me!  You trick me!"

"No, Bruce," Jean managed to choke out, "They won't hurt you," even as Scott said, "Let her go, Dr. Banner."  

Warren had spread his hands in an unconscious imitation of Jean earlier, "We're not your enemies."  

"Sneaky!" Banner retorted, and lifting Jean a few inches by the neck, he slammed her down against the sidewalk.  Scott heard her skull connect with the asphalt and fear squeezed his heart.  

"No, Scott!" Frank called.  "If you shoot -- "

But Scott had already triggered his visor.  A low-impact beam struck Banner to knock him off Jean, but Scott hadn't counted on Banner's grip, and both Banner and Jean were blown across the path onto the grass and almost down into a ditch.  Furious now, Banner stood up yowling and charged Scott, who shot again, a little harder, knocking Banner back against a tree.  Ororo began to whip up a wind; it pulled at branches and rustled leaves.  Frank stood beside her while Warren hurried over to kneel by Jean, helping her to sit up.  She was rubbing at her throat.  

Ororo's winds were getting stronger, pushing Banner back as he tried to push forward, yelling furiously, "You trick!  Me smash!"  But the winds were safer than Scott's blasts.  Scott wasn't sure what to do now.  

"Dr. Banner," he called.  "You've got to stop.  We won't call Betty if you don't want, but you've got to let us help you!"

"You no help!  You sneaky!  You sneaky up on Bruce and hurt him!  Me smash!"

"No, Bruce!  You were strangling Jean!  I had to get you off her.  I didn't hit you as hard as I could and I wasn't trying to hurt you.  Stop fighting us and we'll take you somewhere you can eat, somewhere you'll be safe -- "

A shot interrupted.  Nothing mutant -- quite a normal gun blast, followed by a second, then a third.  The body of Bruce Banner jerked three times as dark blood bloomed on the bare skin of his left arm, upper chest, and shoulder.  It would have felled a normal man.  Banner merely screamed louder and leapt at the one who'd fired -- a security guard who'd been on duty up at The Cloisters and, hearing their shouts, had feared gangs and called the police, then come to investigate.  In the darkness of the trees, and focused as they were on Banner, none of them had seen him approach.  

Now, Banner grabbed him by the neck before he could get off a fourth shot and raised him high, closing the fist.  Bones crunched as the man's neck was pulverized; it was the most sickening sound Scott had ever heard.  Then Banner threw the body sideways into the bushes before turning to face the five of them, growling like a furious grizzly.  "Tricky!  Tricky!"  Blood was dripping down his skin and caught by their flashlight beams, it made an obscene Christmas-toned contrast.  "Hurt me!"

"He wasn't with us!" Scott called, knowing it was futile, even while he became aware of sirens in the distance.  

Banner could hear the sirens, too, and they panicked him.  Despite his wounds and belying his new size, he sprinted up the path towards The Cloisters.  "Get out of the way!" Scott bellowed at Ororo and Frank.  Ororo leapt.  Frank didn't.  Face undecided, he stood rooted to the ground for three precious seconds.  A great, green arm swept out and Banner knocked him flying so that his body crashed into the bushes to the side of the path and rolled down the incline.  "Frank!" Ororo cried, racing after him as Banner disappeared around a corner.  

"Should I see where Banner went?" Warren asked.  

Scott made a sharp negating gesture and trotted over to where Warren still sat with Jean.  "What a fucking mess," he snarled, though he was angry with himself, not them.  "War, go help Ororo with Frank.  Get him back up to the path, then we'll decide what to do next."  

Warren hurried off as Scott directed his flashlight beam so he could see without blinding Jean, and peered into her face.  "How are you?"

"Can't talk," she whispered, fingering her bruised neck.  "Sorry.  He might have listened to me."  

Scott just shook his head.  "Not after that idiot shot him."  

"He killed that man."  Jean's dark eyes were tearing.  "He was a doctor, Scott.  He saved lives."  It struck them both at the same moment that she'd just spoken of Banner in the past tense.  "Oh, God.  That's not Bruce.  That . . . thing isn't Bruce."  

Scott shook his head and helped her to stand even as Warren and Ororo returned, Frank in Warren's arms.  "He broke his leg, I think," Warren said.  "And he's out cold."  

"Shit!"  Scott wanted to hit something.  They'd lost Banner, the sirens sounded right outside the park now, and one of their own was wounded.  "Warren -- in the air.  Get out of the park and back to the professor with Frank.  Tell him what's happened so far if he doesn't know already."  He'd been monitoring them mentally.  "Ororo, Jean, you're with me.  I don't know what we can do about Banner, but we've got to do something.  That guy shot him three times and it didn't even slow him down."  

The others all nodded, unconsciously submitting to Scott's command even though no one had put him in charge.  Warren rose up into the night sky with Frank still in his grip while Jean and Ororo watched him expectantly.  "I'm not sure what to do aside from going after him," Scott said.  "Well, that and trying to stay away from the police.  This time, we're sticking together."  And he led them up the path.  Jean left behind the hat and overcoat; they seemed a futile gesture now.  

The police arrived within minutes, converging on The Cloisters and hoping for a report from the hapless security guard.  Finding him missing, they began a search of the area while Scott, Jean and Ororo stayed well away, hoping that Banner had turned in some other direction and that they'd find him before the police did.  But surprised shouts and a sharp interruption of gunshot told them luck wasn't on their side.  Crouching in the shadow of Linden Terrace, Scott studied the remnants of his team -- Jean who could barely speak, and Ororo whose concentration was now divided between their mission and worry for Frank.  Dawn was approaching.  "Ro, can you raise a fog from the river?  Give some cover for as long as possible?"   She nodded and did as instructed, an unseasonal and eerie white creeping over the Henry Hudson Parkway below and then up the steep bank to curl across the ground into the park trees.  Scott could hear more sirens on the way, and there were shouts in the distance as police called to one another.  Banner must have run again.  

"Which way will he go?" Scott muttered.  Banner wouldn't flee like Scott or any other adult would.  He apparently had the mind of a child and would run like a child -- which meant a straight line directly away from the threat, probably through the park towards the exit.  Perhaps their luck was turning and they could get him outside to the professor . . . or so he thought until he heard the whup-whup of approaching helicopter blades.  "Fuck!"  Grabbing both girls by the wrist, he dragged them after him, saying, "Stay under cover of the trees!  They're bringing in a chopper with a searchlight!"  The three of them might not do Banner much good by hiding, he knew, but getting caught themselves would make them even more useless.  

Within minutes, a bright white light sliced across the open grass and the tops of trees, and the three of them could hear the sounds of a chase approaching as bodies crashed through brush and feet pounded down paths, one set quite close to their hiding place.  They could hear the men call to one another, "He was headed southwest to the river, through the pine grove!"

Scott exchanged a glance with Jean and Ororo, then pointed wordlessly in the same direction the cops were headed.  The three of them set out after the cops.  The men were making so much noise trying to keep up with Banner, they'd never realize they were being trailed.  

"And what shall we do when we find them all?" Ororo whispered to Scott.  

"I haven't got a clue, but I'm open to suggestions."  

"We have to keep Bruce from killing anyone else," Jean said, voice cracking.  

"Shhh," Scott scolded.  "Quit straining your voice."  

Jean shook her head and stopped, forcing the other two to stop as well; they came back to see what she wanted, peering at her through the darkness.  "We can't let him kill again," she said, voice barely ghosting out.  "Bruce wouldn't want that.  I know he wouldn't.  We have to stop this . . . creature."  

"And assuming we can stop him, what if the police catch him then?" Scott asked.  "No telling what they'll do to him!"

She nodded and waved, swallowing painfully.  "Then they catch him.  It's what he'd want, Scott.  No more killing."  

So be it, Scott thought, but remembering the upended concrete trash bins, he doubted the police had anything here that could hold Banner.  A pair of steel handcuffs?  The idea was laughable.  

They went on.  

The cops had Banner cornered on Billings Lawn not far from a high bank above the Hudson and just west of the old fort.  The chopper circled overhead, two searchlights focused down, reflecting off the fog as a good dozen police officers ringed the furious and protesting green creature.  One of the police used a bullhorn to urge Banner to surrender.  

"Yeah, like he's going to give up and go meekly," Scott muttered from where he, Ororo and Jean peered out from the shadow cover of the pine grove.  

But if the megaphone demands weren't eliciting any positive response, Banner also hadn't attacked anyone yet, and he wasn't, Scott thought, inherently dangerous.  He was just confused and frustrated and angry.  He'd killed the security guard because the man had hurt him, not because he was mean.  "If they'd just quit harassing him," Scott said, "they might get somewhere.  He's like a four-year-old having a tantrum."  

"A very big four-year-old," Ororo added.  "They are scared of him, and he is scared of them.  It is not a good situation."  

"And we're stuck here where we can't do a damn thing."  There was no Warren to drop down and effect another angelic rescue, even if Warren had been able to lift a seven-foot green giant who was quite a long way from jolly.  "I have no tricks up my sleeve."  

Ororo clasped his arm gently.  "You are not a magician, Scott Summers."  

"We came in unprepared!  We didn't know what we'd be facing!" he hissed.  

"Exactly," she said.  "We did not know what we would be facing."  She shook her head.  "Even Frank could not see.  Or he saw too many things.  He will blame himself as badly as you."  

She was right; Frank would, and Scott subsided, though his fingers continued to pick at the ground beneath his feet, digging nervous furrows in the dirt.  "Too bad his wife isn't here -- Dr. Banner's wife, I mean.  She's probably the only one who could calm him down right now."  

Beside Scott, Jean whispered, "That's it!" and rose up from where they were crouched.  "I'll go tell them to call Betty."  

"Jean, no!"

"Scott, you just said it yourself, we need Betty to calm him down."  

"Yeah, but there's theoretical and then there's doable!"

"We have to try!  Getting Betty is a good idea!"

And Scott might have let her go if the question hadn't been made moot by the arrival of new reinforcements.  These had dogs who barked and snarled and leapt at the ends of their leashes, enraging Banner further.  Grabbing an ornamental bench from the edge of a path, Banner laid about him with it so that dogs and handlers scattered.  Then he flung the bench at one edge of the encircling noose of cops and they scattered as well.  He escaped through the gap, racing almost due west towards the river.  

"No!" Jean cried out -- fortunately at nothing louder than a croak as Scott and Ororo both grabbed her to keep her from rushing out where she'd be seen, even as police opened fire on the fleeing figure of Banner and the dogs were released to give chase.  

But only a handful of police were shooting; the rest were in mild disarray.  The police chopper was another matter.  It circled out and down to hover off the edge of the park embankment above the parkway below, keeping its spots on Banner as he ran.  Behind Banner, the police regrouped and followed.  Scott would have followed as well, but there was little cover between the pine grove and the park edge.  

The chopper's placement proved strategic, but not for the police.  Dogs at his very heels, Banner leapt straight out from at the grassy embankment of the park edge that overlook the Henry Hudson Parkway below, and the river beyond that.  His burly arms sought and found the landing gear of the helicopter, clinging like a leech and making it swing wildly in the air as the pilot struggled to compensate.  It might have been a spectacular getaway, except the police were right behind and what a few shots from a security guard's .45 couldn't manage, a barrage of fire from high-powered rifles could.  Bullet spray struck Banner's naked torso, causing him to jerk convulsively where he clung to the landing gear.  For a moment, he hung on, but then his grip slipped as his consciousness failed and his body plummeted downward, missing the parkway to splash into the gray waters of the Hudson itself.  

Watching from even a hundred feet back, horror struck Scott mute as Jean broke into croaking sobs beside him.  Meanwhile, the police had rushed to the edge of the cliff to look down, and streetwise Ororo recognized their chance.  Tapping Scott's shoulder and getting hold of Jean's arm, she led them back inside the grove's concealment, out the other side, and then down paths until they spied a dark overhang of rock screened well by vines and boxwood.  There, they hunkered down to wait for full dawn, and Jean cried helplessly in Scott's lap.  

There were a few close calls as searchers passed near their hiding place while looking for the body of the missing security guard.  Scott wasn't sure why they didn't stop to check the hollow.  Did they not realize it was there, or had the professor somehow gently 'redirected' their attention?  Xavier was still out there, keeping tabs on them, waiting the same as they were.  Finally, the guard's body was found, the police reopened the park to visitors, and Scott, Jean and Ororo crept from their hiding place, doffing the kevlar vests and folding them over to hide the X-target, then making their way to the nearest exit.  They said little to one another -- had said little all morning, their faces pulled somber by defeat.  Scott held Jean's hand the whole way but Ororo remained aloof, resisting his touch.  "It is not the first time I have seen a man shot," she told him once, harshly, then apologized a few minutes later when they reached the sidewalk outside.  

"It's okay," Scott told her.  

The professor had arrived with the Bentley in any case, pulling up to the curb so they could pile into the back and sprawl in overheated exhaustion.  "Where is Frank?" Ororo asked.  

"Warren took him back to the mansion."  

Ororo nodded and stared out one tinted window as Jean laid her head on Scott's shoulder, short hair hiding her tear-stained face.  Xavier studied them all in the rearview mirror.  "You did your best," he told them as he put the car in gear.  "That is all that we can ever expect of ourselves, children.  And even so, sometimes, we fail."  

"A man's dead, Professor," Scott said, not in the mood for platitudes.  

"Yes," Xavier replied.  "But you neither killed him nor caused him to die.  And you did try to save his life.  Learn to recognize the limits of your responsibility, son, or like Agamemnon, you'll be guilty of hubris."  

Go on to Chapter 13: "Pomp and Circumstance"