The Avalon Project:

Chapter 4: Copperhead Road

Jean Grey:

"Students, I have gathered you here to... discuss the results of your last combat-training exercise." The Professor went on from there, but I wasn't really listening. I was almost sick with relief. I had been afraid that there would be another mission, and that it might go wrong... But we weren't going out there after all. We stood in a circle in the Danger Room, the four boys, the Professor, and me. It was empty; all the obstacles were retracted into the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, although the Professor gestured to their various locations as he mentioned specific maneuvers.

Something odd caught my eye; there was someone in the observation booth: a dark woman with long hair, just sitting in a chair watching us, no, watching me. I looked away; the Professor and the boys seemed not to have noticed. I drew a breath to warn them, but a voice inside my head assured me: "Don't bother. They won't see me. Not because I don't want them to, but because you don't. It would rather defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"

I started. That accented voice, clearly telepathic, cut through my shields as if they weren't even there. I looked back up. She didn't seem to have moved, just staring back at me. "Excuse me," I muttered to the boys and the Professor, then turned and rushed out of the room. I stopped in the hallway outside, vaguely wondering where I could go to hide and wondering how long I would have to wait there for the dark woman to go away.

"I can't wait here forever," she told me, "And neither can you. You've got to face reality sometime, and to do that you must leave here." She had some kind of accent that projected even into her mental voice, which seemed oddly clear to me. My defenses were no good against her... I knew that if I couldn't shield myself against her, I couldn't hide from her. I had to run away, but I didn't dare leave the mansion. "I am where you last saw me," the voice continued, admitting a little impatience, "I have been here several times in the last few days, to see if you were ready. You are, and so it is time to finish this."

I waited several minutes, but the voice said no more. There were only two places I could go, and I wasn't ready to leave the mansion yet, no matter what she said. So I walked down the hall, climbed the stairs, and entered the observation booth.

As I came in, she sat in the same chair, facing me rather than the window, through which I could see the Professor and the others. She looked younger than she sounded, Hispanic maybe, and very calm.

"What do you want?" I asked, my voice shaking.

She replied telepathically: "I was asked, indirectly, to help you by your husband, Scott."

"He's not my husband yet!" I pointed out the window to the group in the Danger Room, who seemed oblivious to us. Tears were starting to choke me. "Listen, I'm not ready yet; I can't..."

She sighed. "You are as ready as you are going to be, and that is ready enough. You know that this place is not real, these... images-of -people are not real. Just you and I are real, and all those things you do not wish to face. I have brought you news that your husband is alive. Is that not encouragement enough?"

I took a deep breath and pulled myself back together, "Yes, I'm glad... I'm glad Scott's alright. But can't I wait just a few more days before I have to go back out there? Look, don't tell me that I'm needed out there. I might just make things worse. I've done it before and I'm not ready..."

"I can tell you that are not needed for any 'mission' with the X-Men, indeed your body is badly damaged enough that you would not be of much use on such a thing. But you need to return to consciousness to assist in your own recovery, and your husband could use your encouragement and company at this time."

The tears I had just forced under control started to stream down my face, "Oh, thank God! I was afraid that it would go wrong again and be a nightmare like the last one, or a mistake like that other time..."

"It is time to go," the dark woman told me. "You know what to do." And then she was gone.

I nodded at her empty seat, wiping my face. I sat down in another chair, and concentrated, then I was in the mansion's front hallway, facing the door. I opened it, and Scott jumped up from the step, where he'd been sitting, turning towards me. Another man who was sitting beside him, just looked up and around at me. There was a red wolf's head on the back of his jacket.

I forgot everything for a moment as I kissed Scott. He babbled for a few moments about my being back, being alright... We just held each other for a few moments.

"If you're ready to go..." Scott looked over at the seated man. "John, can you take us the rest of the way back?"

The seated man nodded and a black crack formed and widened in the blue sky above us, but I was ready for it when the imaginary world I had inhabited for the last few days finished tearing itself apart.

I was lying in a hospital bed in some sort of high-tech clinic, but not the familiar facilities of the mansion or of Muir Island. Scott and the stranger, John, were sitting next to my bed. The dark woman was nowhere around. Scott was in a wheelchair, I realized.

"Um, where are we?" I asked, feeling almost sorry that I was awake.

"On a space station, made out of pieces of Avalon and of Asteroid M," Scott said with surprising calm. "I'm afraid we are Magneto's guests, but so are Storm and the Professor. The government found out about the Professor and the mansion. We're wanted for questioning, and the government would have caught us if we had stayed on Earth."

I didn't feel surprised to hear this. Was this the truth I'd been afraid to wake up to? "What's Magneto doing?"

Scott licked his lips, "Actually, nothing I really disapprove of, for the change. He's gone through with his plan to establish a mutant colony in Earth orbit, and that's keeping him pretty busy right now. There's a pogrom against mutants going on right now, a really serious one, and getting mutants out of there seems like the only viable plan we've got in the short term."

I looked over at John, who was watching us. His shields reminded me that he was also a telepath. There was another wolf's head on the breast of his jacket. I recognized the emblem this time: Cry Wolf. They were vigilantes, really nasty ones. They hunted down gay-bashers, child molesters, rapists, wife-beaters, that sort of thing, and killed them.

John looked steadily back at me. He had sharp features, short grey hair, and cold blue eyes that could easily be a killer's. I shivered and looked away. "What about the Acolytes? And Exodus?" I asked Scott.

"Mostly behaving themselves, for the moment," Scott remarked glibly. "The worst of them died in the fight with the Brood. And Magneto seems to have gotten Exodus under control..."

The memory of that last mission, and the battle with the Brood, struck me full force and I gasped. The bullets flying out of nowhere, tearing me apart. And then Scott!

He was holding me, shaking me. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he repeated. When I felt like I could breathe again, he went on: "I guess you may know: Hank and Betsy died, but they're really dead; the Brood didn't get them... transform them. Warren... will live, but the government has him. The others are still down there. Gambit's leading the X-Men now, I hear... We'll see how long Wolverine puts up with that." Tears were starting to trickle from under his ruby- quartz glasses.

Things had really, really changed. I realized, without probing, that Scott's physical therapist had told him that he would never walk again, that he would be in that wheelchair for the rest of his life. Like the Professor. Oh, the joys of a permanent psychic link. Perhaps that was how I had learned of the other things I didn't want to know about right now, such as Hank's and Betsy's deaths, and the things Scott was waiting to tell me.

He was waiting until we were both feeling better before he said anything about the fact that Sabretooth was on board and on the loose, and that Sabretooth was trying to get Scott to convince Magneto to make him a lieutenant, because Scott was Magneto's right-hand man these days. And Scott didn't know quite how to explain that he was disturbed by Professor Xavier's political activities aboard the station and was considering moving away from him.

Scott was right, all this and more would have to wait. I simply couldn't bear to think of it all at once, and I knew perfectly well that none of it would go away before I could get to it.

A voice spoke from behind Scott's shoulder. "Perhaps I should get Henry. She'll need to meet him."

"Er, thanks, John," Scott said, sitting back up and gingerly reaching under his glasses to wipe his eyes.

So we waited, and a few minutes later, a black man with bright eyes and a wide smile walked into the alcove where my bed was. "I'm Henry Johnson," he announced as he shook my hand, "I'm Scott's physical therapist, and yours too, now. And we've got a lot of work ahead of us! I'm glad you made it out of there, before you could deteriorate much further." He was also, I learned without effort when I shook his hand, a normal human, not a mutant, and John Steele's boyfriend. The cold, scary John Steele that I didn't want to be in the same room with. I just nodded.

"Dr. Xavier will be relieved to hear that you finally woke up on your own!" Henry added. "You managed to block him and John out of your mind while you were in that coma." I just nodded and wondered who I could ask about the dark woman.

"Excuse me, sir! Excuse me!" I could hear a woman's voice coming from outside my alcove. Another figure rounded the corner. It took me a moment to recognize him with the beard and the civilian clothes.

"Magneto, we're not quite ready to admit visitors..." Henry began.

Magneto smiled down at me, ignoring him. "Mrs. Summers, I'm happy to see that you are starting to recover."

To Be Continued...
Feedback is welcome! Please e-mail me at teed0003@tc.umn.edu
Last updated 6/15/97.
Return to the Avalon Project home page