Logan rocked back to sit on his heels, cold and shaking. His breakfast was gone, down the toilet. No food would stay down and he ached from head to toe. Something was wrong, definitely wrong. He had to go to Hank. Washing his face and rinsing his mouth again, he steadied himself before heading below to the Med Lab.
*
Shelly waited at the chessboard in the park, amidst the old men and pigeons; a half-caff in a paper cup her only lunch. When Eric Lensherr said to meet him, one didn’t wait around for a hotdog cart to magically appear. She barely recognized the infamous Magneto when the tall, elderly man in the snap-down cap and plaid jacket sat down across from her, until his soulful, piercing eyes riveted her to the spot.
“Has anything changed since your last report, Miss Hanson?” His hands rested lightly on the table’s edge, then began to deftly arrange the chessmen for a new game while she spoke.
“Not much, sir. There was one mission last night, but Logan didn’t go on it. He was kept behind along with Rogue, but he left the mansion and didn’t come back until earlier today. He was entering when I came downstairs this morning, and in my opinion, I think he’d been out on a real bender. He looked bad; tired, pale, not the man I’ve heard him described as, a fierce warrior. He looked beaten to me.”
“Is he using their practice area for anything other than programming?”
“Not that I know of, and even that he’s ignored the last two days. The place has been hectic on most levels, but he looks like he’s walking through deep water while everyone around him is running full tilt. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d be an easy target right now.”
“Guesswork is without value, Miss Hanson,” Eric stated with flat dismissal in his voice. “I want facts, details, and physical observations from you. I will make my own conclusions. Do you see any reason why you should stay there longer?”
“If you think you have all the information you need from inside that mansion, then I’m willing to be relocated; but sir, I do want to continue working for you. I want to be one of the Brotherhood, to serve against humanity. I can help you, and I’m willing to do that on a daily basis. I want to make us strong. I want to make them pay,” she whispered, sweeping her eyes to the apparent-humans populating the park.
“Thank you, Miss Hanson. I will take all those things into consideration. For now, I want you to return to the mansion and appear to go about your usual routine. Later today, you will receive a telegram with devastating news about the death of a close family member. You will be expected to travel to another state immediately to attend a funeral. You will pack your belongings and leave the Xavier estate as expediently as possible, grieving and in shock, but accepting no assistance or companions on your journey. Tell them you’ll contact the school later with your plans for the future. Then take your suitcase, Miss Hanson, and leave. I’ll have Toad call you after you’re well clear of the mansion, and tell you where to meet him for your pay and a place to contact you again. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” she smiled gratefully at the elder man.
“Do you play chess, Miss Hanson?”
“No, sir - I never learned. It seemed too complicated for little ol’ me. I play checkers, though,” she beamed a bright, Vaseline-coated smile at him.
“I thought as much. Good day, Miss Hanson.”
A young-ish man wearing a voluminous hooded sweatshirt and baggy pants dropped from a tree across the green from where Shelly entered her car and drove away. Pulling a phone from his pocket, Kurt dialed Storm, “She was in the park with Magneto, talking for several minutes.” He listened intently, side-stepping and turning away as bicyclists pedaled by close enough to spot his blue face, “Ja, just now.” The call ended with a click and a disgusted look on the blue mutant’s face. Kurt abhorred traitors. He slipped into the bushes and headed for his car on the next block.
*
Bobby Drake met Logan in the hall outside Med Lab. Logan stopped in his tracks, met Drake eye to eye, and said, “Sorry I broke your finger, bub,” with no hint of emotion in his eyes or voice.
“Fuck off, Logan,” Bobby snapped and kept walking. Logan just smiled a half-smile and went on to Hank’s office.
“Somethin’s wrong, doc. Check me out.”
Hank peered over his glasses momentarily, then started an examination.
*
As his last challenger departed, thoroughly defeated in a mere five moves, Eric pondered the scattering of chess pieces and reminisced his games with Charles. No one in the park thought anything unusual in the sight of an old man feebly talking to himself over a chessboard. They would just laugh it off as senility. Eric leveled a finger at one of the pieces, and saw it begin to shake.
The dawn of a smile broke over his craggy face as he concentrated on the sterling silver-banded chessman, slowly sliding it to the adjoining square without touching it. The thin metal band surrounding the base felt like a dry martini in the late afternoon: elegant, cool, sophisticated and yet feminine in it’s energy and flavor. The metal sang against his blood, into his cells, through his mind, and he nearly laughed aloud.
The hated mutant cure vaccine wore off! The vile potion could not stop Magneto!
Everything changed at that moment. Pulling a cell phone from his pocket, Eric summoned Toad for a meeting. Within minutes the black sedan pulled up to the curb and Eric slid into the back seat. “Take us somewhere quiet, Toad. Things are afoot.” Toad checked his mirrors and eased the sedan into traffic, as always half-suspicious of Magneto, and half in awe of him.
At the first stoplight, Toad rested his foot on the brake pedal and waited. Eric concentrated on the gearshift of the car and maneuvered it into ‘park’ with his mutant power. Noticing the movement of the gearshift, Toad yelled, “What the fuck?” as his eyes scanned the dash and the surrounding cars, then to the rearview mirror. He saw Magneto smiling at him.
“I have been accused of being a backseat driver,” Eric stated dryly, and the gearshift slapped into ‘drive’ again just as the light changed.
They glided through traffic, going nowhere in particular, as Eric spoke from the backseat, “Obviously their ‘cure’ is a sham, my brother. Everything changed just moments ago. All our plans are changing as well, as this revelation about the temporary effects of that vile potion came to light. We must pull back and re-organize, refine a new strategy. Timing is everything. My powers have returned, thus we must calculate the days elapsed between my injection and Wolverine’s. That will give us a time frame to hit them at their weakest, before his mutations return as well. Patience, my dear Toad; patience and timing.”
Toad savored Eric’s smug, sinister laughter from the rear of the sedan as they accelerated along the highway, heading out of the city.
*
Shelly entered the school, striding quickly toward her first afternoon class when Storm intercepted her with a broad smile, “Shelly, I need you in my office for a very short meeting, right away. I promise it won’t take long.”
“Sure, Storm,” Shelly tossed her blonde locks behind her shoulder and followed the older woman to her office where Storm held the door open graciously, ushering Shelly inside. Shelly saw Rogue, Jubilee and Kitty waiting, arms crossed, faces stern, lips silent. Her palms started to sweat and she rubbed them on her skirt.
As soon as Storm seated herself behind the desk, Shelly noted Jubilee move to lock the door behind her, and Rogue stepped right up to her face, dangling a cluster of loose blonde hairs before Shelly’s eyes. “I found these under Logan’s bed.”
Kitty dangled a hair, “We found this knotted around the leg of Storm’s desk.”
Rogue added, “I went through Logan’s closet just now, and found these stuck to his shirts,” and raised another hand holding long blonde hairs.
“Little Miss Rogue surely can’t blame a girl for jumping the best-looking guy in the state; that’s just life,” Shelly lied. “Turns out the wild man has a taste for blondes!” Shelly giggled to cover her nervousness.
“Nice try, bitch, but you’re a gawd-awful liar,” Rogue snapped. “You’ve been spying on us, spying on Logan, listening, and reporting back to Magneto.”
“We know everything,” Kitty added. “Logan and one of the students saw your picture on the wall at O’Houley’s, where you worked as a waitress a short while ago, watching Logan, learning his routine, his hang-outs.”
“And,” Jubilee added with a cold grin, “we know about your pageant traumas and dramas, and about your motivation for going over to the Brotherhood, not that we give a damn now, since you backstabbed us.”
Storm pressed her palms flat to the desk, “We also know about your string of ‘identities’ and your connection to Toad, to Eric Lensherr, and your reason for being here. You’re not a teacher, Shelly; you’re a traitor.” Storm’s face registered her disappointment, “Shelly, I took you in, taught you, helped you get your life back together, and you turned on me, on us!”
Shelly instinctively stepped back as Storm rose to her feet, her eyes glowing white as her temper sizzled. Even Kitty held her breath for a few moments while Storm calmed herself, then stated, “And you helped the Brotherhood hurt one of us.”
“You’re wrong... I don’t know what you think I did, but...”
“Oh, save it,” Rogue growled, “you’re busted. We even had a tail on you today, in a very literal sense. He followed you just now and saw you meeting with Magneto. No one can tail a mutant like another mutant, especially a teleporter.” Storm grinned to herself at her idea to have Kurt trail along after Shelly to her ‘lunch meeting,’ keeping himself out of her sight.
“So, where do we go from here?”
“Surprisingly, you have two options, which is more than they gave Logan,” Storm explained.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Logan consults Hank, Eric has a revelation, Bobby gets an apology and a splint, and Shelly tries to cover her ass.