Jean knew there was a first aid kit up here with a dose of fentanyl in it. Because it was basically a narcotic pain killer, she doubted it would work on Logan - nonetheless have a possibly averse effect on his already low blood pressure - but she was keeping it in mind as a last resort. If he was in pain, she wanted to have some way to help him, no matter how slight the effect.

"Stable," she replied, as she retrieved the kit from beneath the copilot's seat. "He's in shock and he's lost a lot of blood, but he's Logan, so he's hanging in there. But he may need a transfusion."

Ororo looked around from the controls, the shock naked on her face. "You're kidding."

"I wish I was."

"Why is his healing factor not working?"

She sighed and leaned back in the passenger seat, feeling more tired than she had a right to be. She'd been trying to answer that question herself. She filled her in on the Rhedoc story he told her, even though she herself was not clear on it - she left out the vampires, though, because she wasn't clear what they had to do with it.

Ororo took it all with a grain of salt. She quirked an eyebrow at her, but turned her attention back to the controls before saying, "I thought he was immune to most poisons. To most everything, in fact."

"Yes, but I guess demons are a category unto themselves." She pulled out the fentanyl and quickly scanned the kit to see if it had anything else she didn't have in the back, but no, the fentanyl was it.

"Will we be calling Bob then?"

"I think we'll have to. His system can't fight it off, and I don't know what else to do."

"You don't think it will ..." Ororo paused, as if unable to finish her own thought. Jean was obscurely glad about that.

"No, not Logan. He's too stubborn to die."

They exchanged weak smiles, both aware that fear was starting to erode fragile confidence. When had Logan ever been this bad? Only when Rogue had absorbed him that second time, and even then his heart beat had been stronger, his blood pressure better, even in spite of the open wounds left by Sabertooth. "I'd better get back to him," she said, standing up. "ETA for the mansion?"

"Thirteen minutes."

"Good. Can you tell Scott to prep the i.c.u. for me? He'll know what to do."

"Of course," Ororo agreed, then gave her a look that was intense, almost pained. "Are you going to be okay?"

Jean glanced at her, puzzled. "What? Why would you ask that?"

"It's just that ... "She seemed to struggle to find the right words. " ... it's Logan."

"Yes?" Jean wondered if she was missing subtext, or if she got the subtext loud and clear. Either way, she didn't like it.

"I just mean that - "

"That what?" She almost winced at how defensive she sounded.

An exasperated look flashed through Ororo's eyes, like she was being deliberately obtuse. "Come on Jean, it's just us."

"Yes it is. What are you saying?"

"You and Logan have kind of a thing going."

"Kind of a thing?" She repeated coolly, crossing her arms over her chest. "What does that mean?"

"It's just ... we all know he talks to you. He doesn't really talk to the rest of us unless he absolutely has to."

"He's just more comfortable with me; I don't know why." She felt extremely defensive and she loathed feeling defensive, especially when there was no reason for it. Yes, they kissed ... twice ... but no one knew about that, and no one was ever going to know. Besides, they were both Logan's fault.

Ororo scoffed faintly. "I know why - he likes you. You two have a kind of vibe thing going on."

"A vibe thing. What the hell does that mean?"

"Don't take offense, it's just a chemistry thing. Some people just click, you know? And don't worry, Scott doesn't know. Men aren't good with the vibe catching."

For a moment Jean just stood staring at her, hands on her hips, and wondered if she should be angry or not. "Are you implying something?"

"No, of course not," she said, perhaps a little too quickly. "I know you and Scott are ... you and Scott." She seemed to be aware she was on the verge of babbling, and tried another tack. "I think I'm a little jealous. I've never met a man I had instant chemistry with. It must be nice."

"It must be," she replied flatly, and went into the back, determined to forget this conversation and check on Logan.

Storm was implying something, wasn't she? It was bad enough she suspected something was going on ... but nothing was going on, so she had no reason to be nervous about it. Yes, Logan seemed to be a little sweet on her, but hell, he was a bit of a horndog, wasn't he? She doubted he'd turn away the attention of any woman. Take Helga for example.

Okay, she was probably a bad example. Probably half the continent had taken her - she didn't seem like either the moral or picky type.

Jean was so caught up in her train of thought that she had knelt down on the floor beside him before she noticed there had been a change in Logan's vital signs.

His heartbeat was even more erratic now, thready, pounding out an irregular rhythm indicative of distress. "Oh god," she muttered, dropping the fentanyl and grabbing up the oxygen canister. She slipped the mask over his nose and mouth and opened the valve, hoping paradoxically that this would solve the problem and that this wasn't the problem. If it was the problem - lack of oxygenation in the bloodstream or simple ( if there was such a thing ) breathing difficulties - then this was the best stop gap measure until she could figure out the root cause. But either of those things indicated a severe problem, beyond blood loss.

She quickly checked his other vitals, and hoped this wasn't the onset of shock induced organ failure.

"Don't give up on me, Logan,"  she said, touching his still, cold face. But she knew, without bothering to attempt a telepathic scan, that he could no longer hear her.

16

The search for unusual seismic activity in the New York area over the last two weeks had yielded only one hit,besides what happened tonight: an unexplained and "bizarrely localized" tremor on a single block just outside of Albany. It lasted only twelve seconds, but collapsed a "shipping warehouse" and did almost a million dollars' worth of damage. That had to be the work of their girl - it made him wonder what that "shipping warehouse" really was.

Xavier gave him the okay to check it out as soon as he had the time, although he warned him the Organization had probably cleared out every hint that they had ever been there. Scott knew that, but he didn't care; if they had been there, he'd know. He'd feel those evil bastards no matter what.

But now, to make him delay the search even more, Logan was coming in, injured or something. The Professor was concerned long before Storm radioed in that Jean needed him to set up the i.c.u. for her, and he was glad they didn't have video phones so she couldn't see him roll his eyes. The day Logan actually needed serious medical attention was ... well, the day he was looking forward to, which was exactly why he was sure it hadn't come today. His luck didn't run that good.

He was slamming around instrument trays and muttering curses under his breath when the door slid open, and Jean entered, telekinetically pushing a gurney with Logan laid out on it ahead of her. "Scott, call Bob for me, now." She let the gurney settle in its slot across the room as she started searching the appropriate cabinet for some kind of i.v. bag.

"What?" As if Logan wasn't bad enough, now she wanted him to talk to that Australian loony.

For his part, Logan looked like shit. Jean had put an oxygen mask on him and a portable i.v. bag on the gurney, resting above his head. His shirt was torn open - when wasn't it torn open - and his right arm was covered with blood, and .... "What the hell is that?" Scott exclaimed, gaping at his arm.

Beneath the dried blood, several veins in Logan's right forearm were black. They looked like long, thick worms under his skin, cables barely threaded beneath the flesh and about to burst at the seams.

"A demon called a Rhedoc poisoned him, and now he's dying and I don't know what to do." She told him, desperation evident in her voice as she swapped Logan's tiny i.v. bag for a larger one. She sounded so frustrated he didn't know if she was going to burst into tears or molecularly destabilize the wall - it could have gone either way. "Please, do this for me."

"Of course," he agreed, instantly heading out the door. Yes, he actually detested Bob more than Logan ( a close thing - and there was no fucking way he was a god. That had to be a sick joke on his part. But if by some freak cosmic incident it was somehow true, he was becoming an atheist ), but did he really want Logan to die?

Okay, yes. Maybe sometimes.

No, no - he just wanted him to go away, or learn to be like a civilized person, or become a crazed loner on his own time and stay out of their hair, and stop bringing his goofy friends around. And stay the absolute hell away from Jean.

It was stupid, of course. It made him seem insecure and jealous, and he was neither. He loved Jeannie, and he trusted her ... but why did she worry so much about Logan? And he absolutely hated the way that Logan looked at her sometimes, like she was a piece of meat.

( And sometimes she looked at him in exactly the same way... )

Scott had no great desire to see anyone dead. No one, not even Logan. But he wasn't going to call Bob for Logan; truth be told, he wasn't really doing it for Jean either, although he tried to tell himself that.

No, he was doing it for himself. He had to get out of that room before Jean caught even a smidgen of his emotional state. If Logan died, and for even a millisecond he took some sick, bleak pleasure or relief in it, Jeannie would never forgive him - he knew that, and it made him resent Logan even more.

So he was going to call Bob, and transfer that frustration somewhere safer; somewhere where she wouldn't blame him.

And hope that Logan didn't become greater in death than in life to the woman who was slowly slipping away from him.

17

Bob wondered how he was supposed to take that. Being called insane by Osiris wasn't just a case of the pot calling the kettle black - oh no, the hypocrisy went far, far deeper than that. It was like a koala calling you a furry, lazy, grey marsupial who did nothing but get stoned on eucalyptus leaves all goddamn day. It was hypocrisy at its highest level; cranked all the way to eleven, totally devoid of self-awareness. "Thank you," Bob said, deciding it was a compliment.

Sy's hawk eyes burned into him, as he obviously didn't get the joke at all. Poor man. No wonder he was crazy - he had no sense of humor at all.

"Your plan seems foolish," Eris claimed, following up Sy's statement.

"That is why they will never see it coming," Fudo pointed out.

Bob nodded. "Nobody ever sees me coming. That's why I have so many ex-wives."

No one got the joke, but he didn't expect them to - too Human plane, that joke. He should have went with the "nobody expects the Spanish inquisition" joke. Didn't Eris have something to do with that?

"Are you even taking this seriously?" Eris continued.

"Of course I am! What a thing to say." He scowled at her, crossing his arms over his chest and wondering when they were going to let him get on with it. They were so hot and heavy for this, and yet they seemed to be stalling. "If you think I'm gonna fail you or fuck ya over, why bring me in?"

"We don't think that," Fudo said.

"You're a fucking joke," Sy sneered.

Ah, good old Sy. Bob couldn't help but laugh.

This, of course, did not sit well with the humorless Osiris. "What the hell's so funny?"

"You're too small, furry, and squeaky, says the mouse." Sy wouldn't understand that anymore than he had ever understood anything that Bob had ever said. No irony, no self-awareness, no sense of humor ... and they wondered why he preferred the company of "lower gods". At least they could let loose once in a while.

Bob was tired of standing, so he visualized a nice black marble chair to match the landscape and sat the hell down, and knew what Eris was going to tell him before she actually said it. "If you didn't fully inhabit a corporeal frame, you wouldn't feel any need to quench its desires," she said, pointing out not only the patently obvious, but also the number one problem between him and these real higher realmers.

"But the fun's where the desires are," he replied, knowing it was wasted on them. To them corporeal frames were a gross sentence, a necessity on the lower planes but a penance nonetheless - something to be borne, like a stigma or a smelly old costume, until it could be properly shed. They didn't know the fun you could have with a body - they didn't know good food or a really wicked beer or Helga with a pair of handcuffs and a can of chocolate whipped cream. They had no idea what they were missing out on, and he felt sorry for them. Of course the big irony here was they felt sorry for him,not knowing the full rapture beyond the physical plane.

But that was the funny thing - he knew both. And he had made his choice. And that was the thing they could never - would never - understand.

"You are a low being," Sy snapped, sneering in disgust.

Bob just grinned at him. "Ooh, I like it when you talk dirty to me."

"You believe this is the best plan?" Fudo quickly interjected.

Bob wasn't sure if Fu meant taunting Sy or referring to his plan to catch up the big bad guys. He just assumed Fu meant the latter. "I think so. They'll never predict it, will they?"

"No one can predict you," Eris said, in a tone of voice that was at once admiring and disgusted.

"That's why I'm here - got it. So are you gonna let me shake my moneymaker my way or what?"

"What language are you speaking?" Sy asked, annoyed. He wished Osiris knew how easy - and positively fun - it was to annoy him.

"It's a tongue of the low people called Uradik. You're not familiar with it? I'm surprised."

Eris actually got that joke, as she discreetly looked away to hide a ghost of a smile. Fudo probably got it, but remained as serene as always. Sy just looked puzzled, and - again - annoyed. "Why would I know a language of the low people?" He demanded.

Bob knew that had been coming but still laughed anyways. Man, sometimes you just couldn't make this stuff up. Osiris was the best straight man ever.

"Are you prepared, Bob?" Fudo asked, sounding concerned.

"I was born ready," he assured her/him.

"You were not born," Sy corrected him, glaring at him like he was an idiot.

"Well, I guess that depends on your interpretation of the word."

"Nothing is born," Fudo said, adopting a philosophical tone. "All is simply recycled."

Bob nodded sagely. "Fu, you oughta work for Greenpeace."

Yet another joke no one understood.

18

Helga sighed impatiently, like he was being the unreasonable one. "What don't you understand about the word missing? He's gone; disappeared; gone poof. And I don't mean poof in the British sense."

"When did this happen?"

"If I knew that, Boy Scout ... look, Bob warned me this might happen. Ever since he made Loki go bye bye, he figured some people might be in a tizzy. But he told me it was nothing he couldn't handle."

Scott rubbed his eyes, and resolved not to ask about Loki or whatever the hell she was going on about. "When is he due back?"

"How the hell should I know? I asked Ammy to look into it, but right now she ain't having much success." She paused, then asked, "What's your guys's problem now?"

He sighed, and felt suddenly very self-conscious. "Jean wanted me to call. Logan got attacked by a Rhedoc and seems to be - "

"Whoa, a Rhedoc?" She interrupted. "Is he okay?"

"He's dying."

"Shit," she cursed, almost under her breath. "Why the fuck was he in Mexico?"

That threw him for a loop. "Mexico?"

"Or wherever south of the border, Boy Scout."

"Stop calling me Boy Scout. And from what I understand he was attacked in Michigan."

"Bullshit! They only like hot, dark places, like yeast infections. What the fuck was one doing in Michigan, Groundskeeper Willie?"

Scott stared at the the telephone receiver for a moment - trying hard to pretend he hadn't heard that yeast infections comment -  before repeating, "Groundskeeper Willie?"

"He's a Scot too."

"That is the worst joke I have ever heard."

She didn't seem to care. "Why was it there, Willie?"

He sighed heavily, and had to tamp down the urge to bang the handset against the wall. "Fine, call me Boy Scout. And I have no fucking idea why he even fought the thing, Helga. All I know is his arm is turning black and Jean says he's dying."

"His arm? How long ago was he attacked?"

"I don't know. An hour maybe?"

"And it's only his arm that's tainted? Hmm."

"What do you mean tainted?" And he thought talking to Bob was as enjoyable as ramming your head repeatedly into a brick wall. It was nice to know Helga could be just as entertaining as sticking knitting needles in your eyes.

"See, the thing about Rhedocs is they're aren't like a lot of demons. They're highly toxic, but with them things could go one of
two ways - either they kill you or they transform you. But if it's been an hour, you should know one way or another by now."

"Transform you?"

"Well, they don't have genitalia, so they can't breed like things that do. To propagate the species, they infect others with their genetic material, but the process of cellular mutation usually kills most of the infected."

"Are you saying this thing impregnated him?" Scott couldn't help but laugh. He knew Logan would probably sleep with anything, but come on.

"No, asshole, I'm saying this is an infectious organism. If it can get some of its DNA under your skin - in a bite, a cut - it starts invading your cells, transforming you to it, if the toxic byproducts of the mutation don't kill you first: a much more deadly form of werewolves. Most people die long before that, so Rhedocs are pretty rare. But usually, if you're gonna survive to transform, by an hour you should be half way over - it happens pretty fast. Think of them as a sort bacteriophage in bipedal form, with people as the bacteria."

Scott managed to stop laughing, and consider what she said. That wasn't a good thing, and Logan turning into an infectious demon was obviously bad news. But he hadn't changed yet. "Could it be taking longer because he's a mutant?"

There was a pause as she considered that. "No, that doesn't make sense. The only thing I can think is that Logan's immune system has fought the stuff to a standstill."

"But he's dying."

"I know, it's weird." She paused again. "Is he injured in some other way?"

"What do you mean?"

"Does he have other injuries? Maybe he's dyin' 'cause he's maxed out. His system can't fight anymore because it's all fucked out, but because this is Logan we're talking about, it's still fighting anyways."

"To the point where it will kill him?" Although that sounded perfectly illogical, it still had a ring of plausibility to it. That sounded just self-destructive enough to fit Logan to a T.

"Yeah. An immune response taken to its most lethal extreme. You know if it's gonna happen, it's gonna be Logan's system responsible for it, 'cause he's just that sort of guy. Beauty's skin deep, but stubborn goes to the bone."

Scott realized that was probably it, and how sad was it that it was Helga who figured it out? Logan's system was fighting this stuff so hard - and on top of whatever other injuries he had - that it was literally killing him. Jean didn't know what to do to save him because, ironically, he was inadvertently killing himself.

After a moment, Helga said, "I'll get Amaranth on it, see if she can whip up a spell to remove Rhedoc traces or whatever, but it may take a while, 'cause I'm pretty sure there's nothing on the books. How long do you think he has?"

"I don't know. He seems pretty bad right now, though."

"Damn it." He heard her sigh impatiently, then ask accusingly, "How come all you men act up at once?"

"Hormones?" He replied flippantly. But he wondered what he could tell Jean, and how she would take the news.

19

After Scott told her what Helga had said, it was like the bottom had dropped out of the world for a moment. What bitter irony - could Logan's immune system be killing him? Maybe he didn't want to die right now, but his healing factor had apparently missed the bulletin.

It did make sense though. And considering all the other injuries she had catalogued, nonetheless a skirmish with vampires, he had so much to heal he no longer had the energy to sustain it all.

And it was the word energy that gave her the idea.

Scott was still talking to her when it occurred to her, and she did something that she had rarely ever done to anyone: she sent him the slightest telepathic suggestion that he could no longer keep his eyes open.

Jean knew he felt bad, and wanted to stay with her, but at the moment she needed peace and quiet to think. She was able to convince the yawning Scott she'd be okay if he went and got a couple hours rest. He said he'd be back in an hour, but she knew - even aside from her subliminal suggestion - he was far more tired than that. She was too, to be brutally honest, but how could she sleep while Logan slowly died?

But if it was his healing factor, unable to rein itself in, killing him, then she had to find a way to stop it - which seemed out of the question: what if that Rhedoc stuff took over? - or a way to give it ( or him ) so much energy it could get him over the top, heal him and not at the expense of his life? But how could she do that, exactly?

What she needed was a reverse Rogue - someone who could transfer power to him rather than take it out of him. But they had no one like that here, and save for Bob - who was apparently out of the question right now - she knew of no one who could do such a thing.

She was sitting beside his bed, holding his cold hand in hers, and thinking of telepathically contacting him ( if possible ) to let him know what was happening to him, when she suddenly realized she had been overlooking the obvious.

Telekinesis was what? Exerting energy over matter from a distance. Logan could contain vast amounts of energy with no apparently ill effects ( they knew this courtesy of the over - energized Bob ), so, if she could somehow transfer energy to him, to his immune system/healing factor, Logan could save himself. But the question of how was a stumbling block - the idea was purely theoretical, so how could she accomplish that? Energy could not be created - it could be transformed ( transferred ) or otherwise altered, but not destroyed either. She would have to take it from something else, and there was but a single answer to that - herself. She'd have to give energy from herself to him. Which sounded easy, but again, there was no medical manual that explained that procedure.

She found herself thinking about blood transfusions, as that was her best model: a material transfer from one to another. To carry that further, it would mean her immune system - or mutation - hooked up to his, which was impossible. But what she could do was go into his mind, and hopefully figure it out, and not kill him or herself in the process.

It was experimental and risky, and even the Professor had warned her - under different circumstances - about ever venturing into a mind as fractured and dangerous as Logan's. But the alternative was to sit here and do nothing and watch him die, and that was unacceptable. Or wait for Helga and/or Bob to come through, but that was equally unacceptable. She was just going to have to do this herself, and hope she knew what the hell she was doing.

Oh, since when did that ever stop her before?