"I always knew it would happen. You're such a rough rider. Always asking for trouble."

"Well, I got it in spades. I just hope the others can find a way out of here before they take me away. Otherwise, I'll be sitting behind bars until you guys figure how to switch me back into my real body."

"Good vacation. Lots of time for self-reflection."

"Make new friends?"

"Prison friends are the best kind."

"They got your back?"

"Sometimes literally."

Rogue laughed. Logan nudged her with his shoulder. "See? It'll be okay, darlin'. Remember that time we were in Genosha together? No powers then, either, and they strung us up like a couple sides of meat. Worked out okay, though."

"Yeah." She remembered the terror of waking up naked and alone in a small cement cell. That had been infinitely worse than this. Here, at least, there were rules. In that other place, all she'd had was the tender mercy of soldiersa"and they weren't all that merciful. Then, as with now, not having access to her mutant abilities felt more like punishment than a gift, and she wondered if that was not the way it would always be. If perhaps that wasn't what she preferred.

Of course, continuing to think like that was just a waste of energy when she had far more pressing matters at hand. Like not going to jail and being separated from her friends.

Somewhere distant Rogue heard a man scream, and she thought, I'm right with you.

Rogue listened a little longer, but the sound was too heartrending, broken. Trying to distract herself, she said, "How are we going to get out of here, Logan?"

"Easy," he said, his voice low, gruff. "We're going to run."

"And how do you know that?"

He smiled and pointed with his chin at the door. "Because there's our ticket out."

And Rogue looked and saw Kurt peering through the observation gla.s.s, and thought that Logan might be on to something.

Kurt, knowing himself to be a natural charmer and quick-escape artist of fabulous ability, was quite accustomed to enteringa"on purposea"situations that some might consider volatile and dangerous. Whether it was the high trapeze or a b.l.o.o.d.y brawl with the Friends of Humanity, he was always ready to meet difficulty with a smile. Easy as a breeze, for a man with a light heart.

Until now. Kurt still smileda"even as he and Scott and Jean prepared to enter the most crowded part of the inst.i.tutea"but it was a struggle, a cheer he had to force upon himself in order to stave off despair.

Kurt missed himself. He had, since awakening in this place, fought a continuous battle against his instincts, those basic primal desires to use what came so naturally: teleportation, agility; his tail, even. He missed those parts of him, felt the ache of their loss, and though he was a man who did not dwell on things that could not be changed, this struck him at the core of his heart.

He thought he knew who he was without his gifts. Maybe. He hoped the others had a stronger sense of their ident.i.ties. Ahead of them lay a hard road; he could not imagine what would happen if they found themselves incapable of separating personality from power, if they lost their resolve simply because the easy way was not open to them.

You worry too much. The X-Men have suffered and endured worse than this, and have survived. You do not need to fear for them. Or yourself.

Except, he could not shake the feeling that this was different, the loss so deeply personal, so sharp, that the cut would go deeper than any bullet or knife, go deeper than anything they had yet encountered.

Or maybe he was just being dramatic. He got like that, sometimes.

"Are you ready?" Scott asked. The three X-Men stood inside a tiny broom closet filled with cleaning supplies that Suzy a.s.sured them were never used in the early evening hours. The janitor, according to her, went home earlya"and the nurses did not like to clean. The closet was located beneath the stairs and was within hearing distance of the recreation room. Even now, Kurt heard the loud sc.r.a.pe of pushed-back chairs, the heated rumble of voices.

"Are you sure you trust her?" jean asked. "She seems unbalanced."

"Yes," Scott agreed, "but right now we need all the help we can get."

"And you really think I can just . . . slip past those nurses and security guards in there?" Jean pointed at herself. "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not the woman I used to be."

"We need to rescue Logan and Rogue. I could leave you here and go retrieve them, but you would still have to cross the recreation room in order to access our best escape route."

Jean sighed. "Better to get it over with now. I just wish ..."

She did not finish telling them what she wished, but Kurt thought he knew. Jean wished she had her body back. Kurt had a similar wish for himself. Living as a mutanta"with all the powers granted hima"was easier than existing as a human.

You have become so very spoiled by the incredible things you can do. Your only saving grace is that you have not known any other kind of life.

Kurt heard a commotion out in the hall; a man screaming obscenities, howling like his heart was being torn from his chest. Something large crashed; a table, perhaps. Or a body.

"It's time," Scott said. He cracked open the closet door and peered into the hall, then slipped out, gesturing for Kurt and Jean to follow. They did, and followed the sounds of chaos until they reached the recreation room. Not one person paid attention to them. Everyone a" nurses, security guards, patientsa"stared at the scrawny young man writhing on the floor, contorting so wildly, with such abandon, that Kurt feared he would break his spine in half. From his mouth poured sounds of horror. Kurt wanted to clap his hands over his ears. Suzy had promised a distraction; her friend Kyle was certainly giving one.

Scott grabbed Jean's hand and tugged her across the room, pushing through the thin crowds of patients who stood in their way. Kurt ran after them. Not one paid attention to their pa.s.sage; the nurses surged toward the young man, shouting orders to one another as they grabbed his heaving body and struggled to hold him down. Kurt glimpsed Suzy; she winked at him and followed.

Past the recreation room the halls were almost empty of people, though several security guards raced past as Scott, Jean, and Kurt reached the stairs. No one looked twice; the three of them could not compete with screams that sounded like murder.

They ran up the stairs and at the top saw a nurses' station encased in gla.s.s. A woman sat inside, playing with the end of her braid, and when she saw the three X-Men she stiffened. Kurt approached first, but before he could say anything he felt a hand on his shoulder, a push, and Suzy slid past him. She placed her palms on the gla.s.s and stared at the nurse. Simply stared, and the woman went very still, her gaze open and gla.s.sy. Suzy said, "Go to sleep," and the nurse closed her eyes. Her face went slack.

Kurt heard voices, sounds of movement on the stairs. Suzy said nothing, simply ran off in that direction without a backward glance.

"I found them," Scott said, gesturing at the door nearest the office. The stolen keys rattled in his hand. Kurt pushed past and peered through the observation window. He saw Rogue, and beside her a small plump golden-haired woman who looked like the idyllic American country sweetheart. And then she gave him a nasty smile and it was all Logan.

Scott unlocked the door. Logan and Rogue were already on their feet and Kurt and Jean quickly freed them from their restraints.

"Are you both okay?" Scott asked, glancing out into hall.

"Peachy," Logan said. "Is that you, Jeannie?"

"No," said Jean, standing behind him. "That would be me."

Logan turned and stared. "Whoa. I wish I could have been there for that first meeting."

Jean narrowed her eyes. Logan held up his hands and backed off.

"Come on," Scott said, holding open the door. "We need to get out of here."

"You got a plan?" Logan asked. He rubbed his knucklesa"a familiar gesture, one that pained Kurt to watch. Logan, like the rest of them, relied on his mutant gifts as a natural extension of flesh: arms, eyes, legs. Metal claws.

"I'll tell you after we start moving." Scott entered the hall. Kurt followed close behind; his heart jumped when he saw a shadow in the stairwell, but it was only Suzy.

"You're moving too slow," she said, as dappled green and gold whirled lazy pinwheels around her pupils.

"Are you sure you can't get us past the front doors?" Scott asked.

"h.e.l.l, no, little red. My eyes can only work their magic on one person at a time, and the hospital's got multiple watchdogs on each exit. Unless you want to fight your way out, the back way is best"

"I could use a good fight," Logan muttered.

Scott led them down the long corridor to a set of locked steel doors. The metal showed off dents, chipped paint; the hinges were rusty. Scott abandoned the keys and took out his lock pick.

"What is this supposed to be?" Logan asked, glancing over his shoulder. Kurt followed his gaze. At the very opposite end of the hall he saw some of the facility's patients watching them.

"This wing of the hospital is almost seventy years old. According to the blueprints, there's a set of old service stairs behind this door. They lead down to the original laundry room."

"Ah, the laundry room," Logan said, as the doors clicked open. "You can always count on a laundry room for a great escape."

The stairwell was unlit and smelled like wet concrete and mold. Jean and Logan entered the darkness; Kurt began to follow them until he realized that Rogue, Scott, and Suzy were standing quite still, staring at each other.

"This is as far as I go," Suzy said. "I'll watch the doors, cause a ruckus if anyone tries to go down for a spot check."

"Why are you doing this?" Scott asked. "And why haven't you already escaped? No matter what you say, I know you could leave here any time you want."

Suzy glanced sideways at Rogue. A small smile touched her lips. "I stay here because I should. Everyone has their proper place. You should understand. These bodies aren't yours, after all. Just dreams and illusions."

A card appeared in her hand: a battered nine of spades. Suzy gave it to Rogue, who held it gingerly between two fingers.

"I'm crazy," Suzy said. "But Jane is crazier. I miss that."

"Maybe you'll get her back," Rogue said quietly.

"No," Suzy said. "She's gone. But at least now I don't have to look at a stranger wearing her face."

Kurt, Scott, and Rogue entered the stairwell. Suzy, still smiling, closed the doors after them.

He went blind in the darkness and pressed his back against the wall. Careful, they made their way down the stairs one tiny step at a time. Kurt brushed up against a soft arm.

"Hey," Logan said. "Jeannie and I waited for you."

'Thank you," Kurt said. "But please, ladies first."

"Funny."

"Do you hear anything ahead of us?" Scott whispered.

"No," Jean said. "How long do you think it will take them to find out we're missing?"

Logan snorted. "More than the five minutes we've been gone. These aren't exactly agents of SHIELD we're dealing with here."

"Maybe not, but they hog-tied you just fine, now didn't they, sugah?"

The stairs curved, but at the bottom they found a door. A thin line of light cut the air below it and they carefully watched for any flicker, any distortion that would signify movement on the other side. Nothing changed. Logan got down on his hands and knees and after a moment patted Kurt's ankle.

The door was not locked from the inside. Holding his breath, Kurt carefully opened it. He saw a bare wall, with thick pipes hanging from the ceiling. The room was empty except for canvas sacks heaped in a pile on the floor. Large metal push bins lined the far wall beneath a small dingy window, where the only view was the underground portion of a cement holding wall. The weak light of dusk trickled through the gla.s.s.

The room had no door, only a narrow hall that led deep into shadow. Logan followed it until he disappeared from sight; he returned less than a minute later and said, "This place is a maze. About twenty yards out I started to hear machines running, maybe even people talking. Is all of this locked off or do we have to worry about wanderers?"

Scott shrugged. "It should be locked, but I can't say for certain."

"Someone may check this area after they find out we're gone. It would be stupid not to."

Jean peered into the darkness. "Did you see places to hide beyond this room?"

Kurt saw Scott glance at Jean, and then look quickly away. Too quickly, it seemed. Kurt thought she noticed, and it hurt him to see that flicker of uncertainty pa.s.s through her eyes.

"Some crawl s.p.a.ces that'll get mouse droppings up your nose. They don't go back very far, so a flashlight would be enough to catch us."

"Then let's get out of here before anyone comes looking." Scott peered up at the window. Kurt followed his gaze and studied the late evening sky.

"Mein freund, if you wait only fifteen minutes, it will be full dark."

"We're sitting ducks," Rogue said. "Though I prefer my chances when it's not still light out."

"But they'll have tightened security by then," Logan said. "a.s.suming, of course, that anyone notices we're gone."

"Security is heaviest inside the building. They've got double entry checkpoints, metal detectors, and all the windows but these are covered in wire. It's not easy getting out of here, at least for a regular person. I don't think the hospital will spend much man power looking for us outside the building. At least, not initially. By the time they do, we should be far and away from here. The Blackbird is parked only ten minutes away."

a.s.suming it was still in the overgrown playing field where they had left it.

"You're forgetting the fence," Rogue reminded him. "I've seen the barbed wire."

"Suzy said there's a place where the chain link is loose."

"Suzy," Logan said. "That's the woman who helped us?"

"A mutant," Scott said. "And listen, Logan, I think we were fed false information to lead us here. This place was a trap."

"You don't say." Logan crouched against the wall, resting his hands on his knees. "Problem is, I trust my source, Cyke, and he promised me some illegal antimutant activity. Besides, a body-s.n.a.t.c.hing trap? Wouldn't there be easier ways to take us down, other than drag us all the way out here on some false lead? Especially for the person strong enough to do this?" He pointed at his b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"I don't have all the answers, Logan, but this," and he pointed at his own b.r.e.a.s.t.s, "is an indication that something went horribly wrong when we came here, and I don't think it was an accident. The one thing all of our new bodies have in common is that they shared the same doctor, a man named Jonas Maguire. He took quite an interest in us."