She was a good daydreamer. Fantasies full with the thrill of t.i.tillation, acting upon the forbidden. Touch me, touch you. One warm palm sliding against a cheek, a throat, and oh, some kiss, something sweet on the lips. Heaven. Heart's desire.

And now she had ita"or at least, the possibilitya"and she found that the flesh was not so forgiving, that her dreams frightened her.

Ah, Remy. I wish you were here.

She was also quite grateful that he was not. Too many complications. She was not even certain he would want her, looking as she did. Old, rough, the product of a hard life. The irony being, of course, that this body with its scars and aging aches, was probably a better reflection of her heart than the real thing.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You got no time for pity.

Right. She had work to do. One thing the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants had taught her, long before she ever joined the X-Men, was that you did your work or you died. Only the strong survived. Life never favored whiners.

And at least she was still a woman. Poor Scott. He and Kurt had already slipped out of the dining room, and it was funny watching them; Rogue did not know who Mindy and Renny had been before, but now they looked like troublea"the cartoon kind, little rascally animals that tiptoed about with mischief on their minds. Scott could not help himself; there probably wasn't a lick of humor in him right now, certainly no mischiefa"but in that body, with that delicate face reflecting his stubborn frowns, there was an aura of the surreal, the ridiculous, that Rogue simply could not shake.

Kurt did not make it any easier. She could tell he was enjoying himself. But that was Kurt, always able to take the best out of any situation. Rogue wished she had that talent Despite wanting to laugh at her friends, she did not have the same sense of humor about her own predicament.

At the far end of the dining room was an area filled with shabby orange couches and battered faux-wood tables. Games littered the floor and scratched surfaces: chess, checkers, playing cards, even a shabby version of Monopoly. Bodies, too. Some of the men and women looked like tattered versions of the games, old and plastic, so heavily medicated as to be near death. They smelted like urine and sweat and despair. Rogue hated it.

This could have been you, if you had never learned how to control all the voices in your head.

Friends, enemies, strangersa"men and women who had been sucked into her soul over the long years, thanks to her powers. Some of them still spoke to her, still whispered schemes in her dreams. Yes, she could have ended up in a loony bin. Still might, if she wasn't careful.

Actually, forget that. She was already here.

There were patients in the recreation area who looked like they were having actual conversations. Rogue wandered over to them. She needed to find this Patty, and those folks seemed like a good place to start. If she got desperate, she might try the nurses and security guards. She hoped it did not come to that. Based on what she had already heard, "Crazy Jane" had a reputation, and asking for the whereabouts of another patient might look suspicious. The less contact she had with the authorities in this place, the better.

She chose her targets carefully; she did not want to be seen with people who might not normally a.s.sociate with someone like Crazy Jane. Too many questions, and in this place, she had no powera"nothing to protect herself with except brains and caution.

Not that she could complain. The alternative, after all, was deatha"and considering how easily she and her friends had been taken over, she was surprised to still be breathing. Why anyone would go to the trouble of stealing their bodiesa"and then keep their minds intacta"was beyond her.

Rogue found what she was looking for in the far corner of the recreation area, sitting at a small table. A young man and older woman, both of whom looked capable of handling someone like Janea"but sane enough to actually know something. She moseyed over. Their voices carried.

"My mom is coming today. G.o.d, is she a nightmare." The young man tapped his fingers along the edge of the table. Up close, he looked and sounded so youthful, Rogue revised her opinion and downgraded him to "boy." Scraggly hair, pointy chin, shiny forehead.

"Love, Kyle," said the woman across from him. She was eating an apple, holding it tight in a pudgy fist. "You can't complain about that."

"The h.e.l.l I can't, Suzy. Did you knowa"" He stopped, finally noticing Rogue. She cast a shadow on their table. "The h.e.l.l you want, C.J.?"

C.J. Huh, cute. Rogue said, "Just company. Anything wrong with that?"

"This is a private conversation." He gave her the finger, but it was halfhearted, like an old habit.

Rogue grabbed the nearest chair and sat down. "If it was so private, sugah, you shouldn't have been talking so loud. Ain't just the walls that have ears in this place."

"Funny way you're talking. You been taking lessons in redneck?" Suzy's small eyes could have been blue or brown; every time she blinked, they seemed to change.

"Don't know," Rogue said, making a stronger attempt to dull her accent. "You been taking lessons in how to get your face punched in?"

That earned her a thin smile. "Good old Jane. Always so predictable. I love getting a rise out of you."

"That's not all you like getting," muttered the man. Rogue shot him a sharp look, wondering what that meant. The woman laughed.

"Bad, you're so bad!" She set down her apple and began shuffling cards. Instead of pa.s.sing them out, however, she cut the deck in half and then fanned the stack with her palm. She looked at Rogue and her eyes shifted from blue to brown. "Choose one, Jane. Come on. I dare you."

Rogue did not want to choose a card. She had come here to ask questions, not partic.i.p.ate in games. Nor did she like the peculiarity of the woman's shifting gaze, her intensity. Rogue, faced with that scrutiny, was reminded again of her precarious situation; she felt exposed, weak, utterly and miserably human. For all her fantasies to the contrary, Rogue wanted her powers back. She wanted to be a mutant and feel safe again. Safer, at any rate. She could not escape the irony of that.

"Well?" said Suzy, sly. She tapped the cards with one hard fingernail. "Let's see what fate has in store for you."

If Rogue had her way, fate would provide both of her missing friends, as well as a swift escape from this place and a safe return to their bodies so they could begin the a.s.s-kicking that someone so royally deserved.

Rogue chose a card. She had a job to do, and that came first. If she humored this woman, played along with her crazy games, then maybe she would be more willing to answer Rogue's questions.

A nine of spades. Rogue did not know what that meant. She looked at Suzy, and was not comforted by the flush creeping up her sagging neck.

"That's a bad card," she said.

"Of course," Rogue said. "Those are the only kind I get"

"It means you've cast yourself in an illusion," said the woman, leaning close. Her eyes shifted, dark to light: unmistakable and eerie and utterly unnatural. "You don't know the difference between dream and waking."

"I know enough," Rogue said smoothly, though on the inside a chill settled deep in her gut. Her eyes might belong to a different woman, but they did not lie. Suzy was a mutant. Probably low-level, perhaps only a physical permutation, but with enough kick in her genes to set her apart. Rogue wondered why she was in the hospital, if her incarceration had anything to do with her mutation. She wondered if this woman, because she was a mutant, might know something about why the X-Men were trapped here. It was no accident that Rogue and her friends were living in the bodies of strangers. Wasn't any machine she knew of that could accomplish that, which meant a person had done the deed. Another mutant.

Rogue shifted in her chair. She should have just stuck with a simple interrogation instead of an attempt to fit in.

You never could do anything simple.

"Why are you here?" Rogue asked Suzy. Another bad question, but she might as well go for broke. She wanted to know if the woman was here against her will.

Suzy said nothing. Kyle's gaze darted to both women, back and forth, back and forth. His fingers drummed the air. He looked worried.

"I want to talk about my mom," he said.

"I tried to kill someone," said Suzy softly, ignoring him. She stared into Rogue's eyes. "Bang, bang, you're dead. But you already know that, C.J. Or you should."

"Yeah?" Rogue said. "My memory's bad. Remind me of something else, Suzy. Did you enjoy the killing?"

"Suzy," said Kyle, imploring.

Suzy bared her teeth in a smile. "I was crazy at the time. I didn't know what I was doing. Something you should be familiar with."

Rogue shrugged, holding Suzy's gaze. The mutant woman was here for a good reason, and if her, then maybe othersa"if there were other mutants in Belldonne. Rogue had the feeling that Logan's contact was full of ita"or else had deliberately misled them. If so, it was the best trap that had ever caught her.

"C.J.," Suzy said. "You're not acting like yourself."

"That's because I'm crazy," Rogue said, and shoved the nine of spades back into the lineup of cards. "Did you hear about Patty?"

Kyle looked relieved by the change of subject. He shook his head, still playing air drums with his fingers. "Dumb girl. She screwed over the wrong guard."

"What'd they do to her?"

"Quiet room," Suzy said, still staring, eyes narrowing into pins of shifting color. Pain p.r.i.c.kled the spot between Rogue's eyes; watching Suzy's face was enough to give her a headache.

Kyle slid forward on his chair. "You thinking of busting her while she's down, C.J.?"

"Only if I can find her," Rogue said, allowing the rough gravel of her voice to pack the menace she needed. "Which quiet room is she in?"

"Third floor, near the west-wing station." Suzy picked up Rogue's discarded card. She ran the edges over her fingers and palm, and then pressed it to her lips. "You'll need a distraction."

"You offering one?"

Again, she smiled. "Interesting that you need to ask."

Rogue frowned, and glanced around. No one but the nurses and security guards were paying attention to them; most of the other patients slumped in chairs or shuffled across the floor, radiating a dull discontent that seemed borne of boredom, confinement. There were some areas of dynamisma"nervous anxiety, scattered bursts of laughtera"but beneath even that was an undercurrent of unease and fear. No one wanted to be here. If you did, Rogue thought, then you really were sick.

She stretched and kicked back her chair. This body still felt strange; an ill-fitting glove, one that had unfamiliar aches, an odd rolling looseness in her joints. She stood and Kyle grabbed her arm. It was startling, for a moment horrifying, to feel his hand on her bare skin.

Not my skin. Not mine. You're nothing but human here, sugah. Remember that.

Still, it did not matter that her skin was safe. Touch was unnatural, wrong. Dangerous. Rogue gave him a look that felt as unfriendly as her thoughts, and his hand flew off her arm. Kyle cowered, like he expected to be hit.

"It's all right," Rogue said, ashamed that he was so afraid of her, of the woman who had once inhabited this skin. Suzy laughed.

"You need to learn some things, Kyle," she said, still playing with the nine of spades: the illusion, the dream. "Some b.i.t.c.hes you just don't touch."

Truer words were never spoken. Rogue left to find Patty.

The hospital surprised her. It was, quite clearly, an asylum of some kind, but none of the hospital employees stopped Rogue as she climbed the stairs to the third floor. No one questioned her movements, or tried to restrain her. So much for having a bad reputation.

Not that there was much point to restricting anyone's movements; there was no place for the patients to wander other than the halls and other public areas. The facility felt more like a prison than a place of healing.

Chicken wirea"and, occasionally, barsa"covered all the window gla.s.s, which was often too cloudy and distorted to allow any kind of outside view. The only exitsa"and Rogue had found them both, first thing that morninga"were secured by locked metal doors guarded by security personnel. No security cameras, either, except by those doors. Rogue thought that was poor planning, but the hospital was clearly old and probably underfunded. Good for her and the others, but it did not speak well of the care real patients received, or the kinds of protection the staff had against those same patients. Rogue could not imagine being forced to live here, day after day, perhaps for years at a time.

The third-floor west-wing station was located right off the stairs. Unlike the station across from the recreation room and dining hall, this one was enclosed in gla.s.s and resembled an office s.p.a.ce rather than a medical treatment area. The desk had room for only one nurse, but there was a door behind her, and Rogue could not tell if more people might be sitting on the other side. She doubted it; the hospital had too few staff for anyone to be idle for long.

"Can I help you, Jane?" asked the nurse. A thick brown braid covered her name tag. She made no move to leave the protection of her station.

"No," Rogue said, fighting her southern accent. "I'm just walking. Doctor... Dr. Maguire's been teaching me some techniques, stuff to calm me. I'm just trying it out."

The nurse gave her a thin smile. "That's nice. The doctor has made such progress with you and the others. Really, he's a miracle worker. We're so lucky he decided to come here."

Yes, terribly lucky. Rogue thought he might be working more than just miracles. So far, he seemed to be the only connection between the X-Men and their new bodies. Scott was right not to believe in coincidence.

"I heard Patty went crazy on someone," Rogue said. "I guess those techniques didn't work for her."

The nurse sighed, glancing at the first closed door outside the station. Rogue glanced at it, too. The lock looked standard; easy enough to break, with the right tool.

"It's such a shame," said the nurse. "Patty has been so calm lately. We thought for sure it would last after Dr. Maguire left. He did warn us, though. We should have listened more carefully."

Rogue said nothing, simply stepped up to the door and peered through the gla.s.s observation window. She saw a tiny plump body wrapped in a straitjacket, blond hair spreading wild over the white tile. If that was Patty, then she was either unconscious or pretending. Rogue did not feel lucky enough to place a bet.

"Please move away from there," said the nurse. She looked wary now, and Rogue did not miss the way her hand crept beneath the desk. Call b.u.t.ton, no doubt. Rogue thought it strange that simply looking at Patty would be enough to make the nurse concerned, but she was not familiar with Jane's history. Could be she and this Patty had a fighting past, much like the one she supposedly had with "Renny."

Rogue shuffled backward toward the stairs. The nurse said, "Have you taken your meds today, Jane?"

"Yes," Rogue said, and then left, fast. The last thing she wanted was to get into a protracted conversation about medication, especially when she did not plan on taking any. The pills offered to her early that morning had met a quick end after being cheeked, then spit into her palm and tucked beneath her mattress. When that first nurse had unlocked her door, Rogue had not yet figured out what was happening, but she knew enough to recognize that her body was remarkably differenta"and that pills of any kind had to be a bad thing.

She heard shouts before she reached the dining hall, the crash of something large. She ran, dodging other patients who hovered in her way, trying to move fast in a body where her knee ached and her lungs labored for air.

What she found was a fight. None of the partic.i.p.ants were familiar, though it was somewhat difficult to tell, given that a nurse was facedown on the floor with blood spreading around him, and the three laughing people kicking him had their backs to her. There was a terrible smell, like feces had been spread on the walls, and sure enough she saw dark stainsa"not on the walls, but on the floor, on the white uniforms of the nurses trying to reach their fallen colleague.

She forgot she did not have superpowers, or maybe it did not matter. She was closer to the fight than the nurses and she slammed her way through the crowd until she reached the smallest of the attackers. He did not see her coming and Rogue grabbed both his ears, twisting them, yanking backward with all her strength. The man screamed in pain, but Rogue did not let go. She twisted harder, and when his knees buckled, kicked the weakest one out from under him and rode him hard to the ground. Hit his head once against the floor, not holding back as she was accustomed to doing, because she was weak now, just human, and she needed all the strength these muscles could give her. She heard a satisfying crack, and the man went very still.

Rogue stood, muscles unaccustomedly sore. She never hurt this bad when fighting Magneto. She turned to go after another of the nurse's attackers and got slammed in the gut with a nightstick.

"Get down!" screamed a security guard, two words which Rogue dimly realized she had been hearing a lot of for the past minute or so. He hit her again and Rogue fell to her knees, trying to protect her head as he landed a third blow across her shoulders. Everyone near the fight, partic.i.p.ant or not, was getting slugged into submission. The people in charge were too upset to differentiate between good and bad. Rogue huddled in a tight ball, waiting for another blow. It never came; the security guard had already moved on to someone else. The fight was dying down; the nurse's attackers were all on the ground, and several people cared for the injured employee.

A not-so-gentle hand touched Rogues back. She peered up into Suzy's face.

"Bad cards," she muttered, the colors of her gaze twirling like a pinwheel. Blood flecked her chin. "You're in a lot of trouble."

No kidding. She hurt bad. Stifling a groan, Rogue tried to stand. Her knee popped. If this was what getting old felt like, then she knew why people fought it, kicking and screaming.

She saw Scott and Kurta"or rather, their new bodies- edging close. They appeared concerned. She waggled her fingers at them and mouthed, "I'm okay."

"No," Suzy said, gazing down at the man lying so still at their feet. "You're not."

Rogue stared at her, and then studied that quiet body, the unmoving chest. A deep chill spread through her, accompanied by dread, horror.

"No," she murmured, bending down to feel the man's throat.

No, it's not possible, I'm not strong enough, I'm only human.

Human, maybe. But still strong enough to kill.

4.