DISCLAIMER: in first part.
A Laying On Of Hands: Part Ten
by Cascade
"What are you doing here?" Cyclops asked Dana as he stepped into the Blackbird.
"She's with me," Cable said forcefully from his seat.
"Let me try to fix things, Cyclops. Please?" Dana pleaded.
Scott didn't answer, but stalked to the cockpit. Cable was starting to get irritating... again.
Jean reached out to her husband telepathically. She'd come back to conciousness and had demanded to be brought along. She rubbed the bandage on her head absentmindedly.#Just calm down.#
*But Cable...*
#But what? He didn't bring her along just to annoy you. He obviously thinks that she could be of some help. He wouldn't have let her come along otherwise.#
Cyclops sighed and began lift-off procedures.
Dana knelt on the wet ground and peeked over the crest of the hill. A large complex lay out before her. She could just make out the sign at the front gate: Springfield Mental Institution. She ducked back into the shadow of the hill to escape the driving wind and rain. Her hiking boots slipped a little in the mud as she jogged back down to the base of the hill with the other members of the team who had sneaked a peek.
Cyclops pulled everyone into a huddle. "Okay. We'll split up into groups. Cable, Wolverine, and...Dana, you take the West side. Apparently Cannonball is closest to that side. You get him out and make sure he's all right..." *If Cable wants Dana around he can be responsible for her.*
Wolverine snorted as he ran next to Dana and Cable. He could smell their exhaustion easily. They shouldn't be here. "Martyrs," he grunted, as the three of them slid behind cover.
They knelt in mud as they waited for the message from Jean that meant that Gambit had disabled the security system for the West wing of the facilities. Wolverine wished that Storm would do something about the rain. It didn't help for tracking any, but Cyclops thought it would provide a little cover. He snorted again.
#All right. The security system on your side is dead. Go on in,# Jean's Mental voice interrupted Wolverine's brooding.
#What about the psi-shielding?# Cable asked Jean. #It feels like the whole place doesn't exist.# #Still working on that. Regular communications could be jammed as well,# Jean paused. #Be careful,# she added. #I will... Mom,# he replied, his voice tinged with humor. A wordless answer came back over the link, the telepathic equivalent of a raised eyebrow and folded arms. Cable chuckled. "Let's go," he whispered aloud, getting up and moving towards the door. Wolverine sniffed the air. The sparkling white corridors unnerved him. He wished he could've tracked some mud in here to dirty them up, but that would let the bad guys onto the game too early. "I think I've got 'im," he whispered and waved the small group on. They snuck through the halls, ducking behind doors whenever Wolverine smelled orderlies. Cable looked uncomfortable. He still had his TK power, but his telepathy was muffled. He felt like he was blind. Dana enhanced her shielding a little more. Every time they walked by a door her powers flared. At least the psi-shielding prevented her from picking up on their emotions. She didn't know if she could handle all that depression. Wolverine sniffed the air again. "These are all normal humans here. The actual 'Mental Institution' part of this place. The mutants must be hidden on a different level." "I'm guessing down," Dana mumbled. "You've seen too many movies, kid." He opened the door that lead to the stairwell. There were stairs leading up and down. "But it never hurts to check." Dana and Wolverine ran downstairs while Cable ran to check the upstairs level. "Looks like you were right," Wolverine grunted, as he examined the heavy duty security system. "Pass cards, retinal scan, fingerprints... Whatever's behind this door is something they don't want many people to see. Go get Cable, I don't think he'll find much up there. 'Sides, I can smell Cannonball through the door."
Dana returned with Cable as Wolverine finished examining the door.
"Can't you just cut through it?" Dana asked, impatient.
"I could, but we'd probably set off a couple alarms we don't want set off. Let's let Gumbo take care of this."
A shower of sparks issued from the open panel where Gambit was working. He glanced up at the retinal scanner, which had just gone dead. Gambit chuckled to himself as he started in on the hand scanner. "Amateurs," he sighed.
"Good t'ing we got two thieves on hand," he muttered as he reached further into the wall for another wire. "Stormy can pick up where I left off outside."
The hand scanner flickered and died. Gambit got to his feet and brushed himself off.
"De scanners will t'ink you are doctors, an' de pass card reader will accept all major credit cards," he chuckled, pulling a American Express Card from his pocket and sticking it in the slot. Dana was pretty sure the card didn't belong to him.
The door slid open and Gambit handed Dana the card. "Y' gonna need dis on de way back. Don' lose it."
Dana glanced down at the card.
"Warren's American Express Card. I never leave home wit'out it." He started laughing in earnest as the door slid shut again.
The hallways were still pristine white here, but on every door there were sophisticated locks. Wolverine lead the way down the hall, finally stopping in front of a door. Wolverine narrowed his eyes.
"Is he in there or not?" Dana demanded.
"Don't rush me, darlin'," Wolverine growled. "He was here, but he's been moved."
Cable picked up the medical chart that hung by the door. He flipped through the pages as he skimmed through the information. "He's scheduled to be in surgery in a few minutes... He's probably in Pre-Op."
"Well, let's go!" Dana started off down the hall. Wolverine grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him as he started down the hall himself.
Cable pulled her around to face him. "You can't get impatient now, Dana."
"But..."
"You shouldn't go into a battle without all the available information. That can get you in trouble. We're all very concerned about Sam, but if we get ourselves caught, we won't do him any good. Right now you have to push all those feelings aside, they can cause you to make mistakes. You are not just tagging along to help your friend. You are an X-Man and this is your job."
Cable held her a moment longer to let the words sink in, and then let her go and moved up next to Wolverine.
Dana stared at Cable's back. She hadn't considered herself a member of the team yet. Cable's words came from years of being a soldier. Wolverine had probably joined the X-Men before Dana had even been born. Even Sam had major battle experience. She bit her nail thoughtfully as she walked behind them. Cable was right. As a member of this team she was bound to get a lot of fighting experience. She might as well start now. She shoved her fear, worry, and frustration into a small corner of her heart and tried to scrounge up as many scraps of bravery as she could find. She took a deep breath and followed after the two warriors, trying her best to become one herself.
The two men in lab coats lay in a rumpled, unconscious pile next to the wall. Wolverine, Dana, and Cable knelt so as not to be seen through the large window that looked into the operating room. Dana's heart raced as Wolverine reported.
"Four men... middle aged, out of shape... shouldn't be a problem. Sam's unconscious..."
Cable nodded. "I'll take two, you take two. Dana you get to Sam and see if you need to reverse anything that's been done."
With a ready signal from Cable, Wolverine sliced through the door. Dana waited for the two men to rush in, and then hurried to Sam's side.
"Oh Sam," she murmured, gazing down at him. Her empathy inhibited, she had to examine him by sight. Her eyes were instantly drawn to the small line of sutures in his neck.
"Wolverine, wait!" she called out.
Wolverine paused midway through a punch. "What is it?" he seemed irritated at being stopped.
Dana strode towards the last conscious human in the room. "What did you do to him?" she asked.
The man stayed silent defiantly.
Wolverine could have sworn he heard her growl. A thought drifted into his mind that she resembled a mother lion protecting her cubs. He moved out of the way and tossed a set of keys he'd lifted off of the other man to Cable, who went about freeing Sam from the restraints.
Dana's normally gentle nature would have prevented her from doing anything to the man, but this man had hurt Sam. Gentleness could take a seat.
She grabbed the man by the neck and slammed him into the back wall. "I said, 'What did you do to him?'"
"N... N... Nothing," he stammered, shaken a bit by his collision with the wall.
"Look..." She glanced at his name tag. "Doctor Andrews... I'm not stupid. I saw the sutures. What did you put in his neck?"
The man stayed silent. She glared at him, her hazel eyes flashing with anger.
"Wolverine? Show this weasel how to breathe through his neck."
Wolverine pinned the man to the wall, a claw on either side of the man's throat. Doctor Andrews swallowed.
"The lady asked you a question, bub."
"It's just an internal inhibitor." Doctor Andrews stammered out in order to save his life.
"Really. How fascinating. One of those is responsible for my mother's death," Dana formed a fist and connected with the man's jaw. "and for all I know you could have been the same bastard who put it in her," she growled as the man slumped against the wall. "in this very same room!" she added, punctuating the comment with a kick to the man's ribs. Tears began to form in her eyes.
She turned from the man and walked back to the table where Sam lay. Cable was almost done freeing him. A strange feeling overcame her. She had an intense desire to right all the wrongs that were done in this room. It was going to start now. She reached for a scalpel on the tray beside the operating table.
"Dana?" Cable didn't like the cavalier way she'd picked up the knife.
"Excuse me." She shouldered him aside and quickly cut through the stitches on Sam's neck.
Cable frowned. He couldn't scan her mind because of the Psi-shield. He examined her face instead. A look of determination had spread over it. A look he'd seen before in the faces of soldiers, a look that meant 'This is something I have to do.' He backed away a step to come standing next to Wolverine and let her work.
Dana swallowed and reached for a pair of small forceps. Carefully she reached into the cut and pulled the small inhibitor out from it's place next to Sam's spine. There was an awful lot of blood, and she probably had caused paralysis in his left arm. Fortunately for Dana, that was remedied easily enough.
Sam blinked his eyes open and flexed the fingers of his left hand. He hated the feeling of pins and needles that he was now experiencing through his whole arm.
He blinked again and looked around at the room he was in.
"Dana?" he called as he saw her familiar form being supported by Wolverine.
She smiled weakly at him, before strong arms picked him up. "Now can we get out of here?" Cable asked as he hefted Sam.
"Ah can walk, Sir." Sam said.
Cable nodded and set him down on his feet.
"Leaving sounds like a good idea to me," Dana said.
Dana moaned quietly as Sam helped her out of the room.
"What's wrong?" Sam asked, concerned.
"The psi-shielding is down... All the pain and despair..."
Sam looked up at Cable. His pace had slowed a little, his concentration pulled internal as he strengthened his mental shields.
"Sir?"
Cable waved him off as he sought a link with Jean, who was struggling a little with the new sensations herself. #Jean? I've got an idea...#
Dana started as all the cell doors in front of them were flung open by Jean simultaneously. Mutants of all ages staggered out from the rooms, their collars gone thanks to Cable's TK power. The few guards who roamed the halls were hopelessly outnumbered. The foursome, now followed by dozens of mutants, made their way to the security door.
"Thank you, Warren," Dana chuckled as she slid the card into the pass card slot. They were greeted by Rogue and Iceman and three more unconscious guards.
"We were just comin' ta find y'all," Rogue explained as the mutants behind Cable surged around the X-Men to their freedom.
"There are some mutants unable to walk. I'll lead you to them." Cable motioned Rogue and Iceman down the hall.
"I'll go help them," Wolverine said. "Cannonball, you get Dana to safety."
"Understood." Sam swept Dana into his arms and flew up the stairs and out through the wall to join the other X-Men outside.
Rogue, Iceman, Wolverine and Cable came speeding out of the facility. Iceman had the crippled ones on an ice sled that he sped towards the Blackbird.
"That's all of 'em!" Rogue shouted.
"All right people, let's move out!" Cyclops lead a mass retreat back to the Blackbird. He hoped he could fit all these people on.
The few remaining security guards fired after them. "They just don't give up," Jean mumbled as she created a TK shield to guard their retreat
Dana struggled to keep up with the others. She'd sent Cannonball on to help with the other mutants, after assuring him she was okay. She wasn't. She was fighting just to stay inside the boundary of the shield Jean had set up.
Sam looked back to see Dana trip and fall. He flew back to pick her up. "Yer more tired than ya think," he laughed good naturedly at her clumsiness.
"Sam..." Dana broke into coughs.
"Wha..." he paused when he saw the crimson stain spreading across her abdomen. In a panic he sped towards the Blackbird. Dr. McCoy would be able to patch her up. He forced himself to think positively.
She reached a hand up to touch his face. "I'm sorry. I should have let you help me."
Sam cleared an area on the floor in the crowded plane and laid Dana down.
"Doc!" he screamed, holding her close.
"Samuel, I..." Beast paused as he turned to see the scene on the floor. "Oh my..." He hurried to Dana's side with his medical kit in tow.
It didn't look good. The bullet had passed completely through her body, and had caused a not of damage. It must have nicked a major blood vessel, because she was bleeding heavily. There wasn't much to be done. She was going to bleed to death.
Hank glanced at Dana and then at Sam. Dana was slowly losing consciousness, and was fighting to keep her eyes open and fixed on Sam's face.
"Please, Dana, hold on. Ya gotta stay here with us... with me. Don't leave me," he pleaded desperately.
Iceman knelt on the other side of Dana and touched her shoulder. He tried to lower her body temperature enough to slow the blood flowing from her, but there was too much gone already. He glanced to Beast, who shook his head sadly. Iceman swallowed and removed his hand.
Beast put a comforting arm around Sam's shoulders.
"No!" Sam sobbed, holding Dana tighter to him, as if that would prevent Death from snatching her away. "It's too soon. She can't go yet... God can't have her!"
Dana swallowed hard and with the last of her strength raised her hand to his cheek. "How can there be a Heaven," she mumbled quietly, "if I've got everything I ever wanted right here?"
Her eyes fluttered closed. The barest hint of a smile formed on her lips at the thought that she'd managed to make Sam's face the last thing she'd ever see.
A piece of Shakespeare mingled with her mind as it plunged towards darkness. It was a piece from Hamlet that she'd always liked.
"But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered
country, from who's bourn,
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And
makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know
not of."