One fragment at a time fell into place, and there was no rushing it, no forcing it to speed up. He simply had to lay there, waiting for his sense of self to return, and then everything else, coloring itself in slowly, like dye suffusing itself into oil.
What did he know? He knew something terrible had happened to him - he felt stripped to bone, bared of flesh and blood and memories and thoughts, a void that somehow had shape and form. Filling was a slow process that he was sure would never be completed.

Eventually the grey fog produced light, and he realized his name was Logan, and he was staring at a fire.

It was longer before he realized the fire was in a hearth, a red brick one, with the low fire crackling, filling the room with scent of burning cedar and pine. But it was minutes before he could smell it, and longer for him to feel its heat.

The room started out as a vague outline, became a sketch, and slowly began to fill and color, taking on degrees of light and shadows, and he knew there were several things wrong with it, even though it took him a time unmeasurable to figure out what it was.

The problem was this place was two different places smashed together; the chimney and the hearth belonged to a more rustic place than the rest of the house, where whitewashed walls and rice paper screens with delicate ink designs dominated, imparting a sparse sense of elegance quite at odds with the somewhat ugly and ramshackle fireplace.

Over the mantel were two long swords with ornate black hafts, the silver of the blades reflecting the dancing shadows the fire threw out into the room. They looked familiar somehow, and he thought of them as katanas, but he had no idea what that meant.

There were objects on the floor, which resolved itself to hardwood planks that fit together snugly if not perfectly, and clearly matched the fireplace. Within several inches of the sofa he was on, the floor changed to one of a delicate, finely napped azure carpet, and he knew it matched the other half of the house. Weird.

The things on the floor looked like tiles, but as they slowly surfaced from the grey fog they were sunk below, he could see they were Polaroids, scattered haphazardly as if thrown up in the air and allowed to land wherever gravity and air currents brought them down.

It took longer for the images in the photos to coalesce, amorphous blobs that took on colors before form, and even when they were done shaping themselves they still looked washed out and ill formed, weathered by time.

When he realized he had arms and could move them, he reached out and started picking them up, glancing at them before letting them fall back to the floor. At first, it didn't make any sense at all - they showed random scenes, snatches of hallways and buildings, rooms and people, landscapes and car interiors, bars and hotels and freeways. But then it slowly dawned on him these were memories: in some kind of metaphor, they existed as physical artifacts, but ones that seemed to be fading before his eyes.

Here was one of a cage, which should have meant something to him but didn't; here was one that showed nothing but snow, an endless, featureless blanket of white that still managed to give him a sense of deja vu that was anything but good;  something that looked like the Statue of Liberty; a metal walled corridor; a shattered bathroom sink; a door that looked like it had been clawed open by a bear;  a bed that looked similarly attacked;  a motorcycle; and a tank of green fluid that made him drop the photo in a spasm of pure, sour tasting fear, even though he had no idea what it was, or why it scared him so much.

The people took longer to appear, and longer to recognize. The redhead, the bald guy, the white haired chick, and the guy with the weird headgear meant nothing to him; the girl had a slight familiarity, but still meant nothing; there was a picture of a brunette woman with tired eyes that made him feel melancholy; a photo of a pretty man with a sly grin and cobalt eyes made him feel exasperated, and the image of the green woman next to him made him feel more so. The next photo showed a smiling Japanese woman, partially embracing and leaning her head against a white guy with a close cropped beard and weird brown hair, who was so broad chested  it looked like it would take at least two and a half of her to make one of him. He hated the guy on sight.

It was him, wasn't it? Shit.

He didn't know who the woman was for a long time, but as focusing on her face brought a hollow ache to his chest, and when he remembered her name, he also realized he could finally feel his entire body. Couldn't really move, but hey, at least he could sense he had a form. He also realized the warm, slightly uncomfortable thing he was laying on was a leg; if he could trust his strangely encyclopedic sense of smell, it was hers - Mariko. And that gentle breeze ruffling his hair was her fingers stroking it, gently gliding across his scalp. He wanted to look up at her, but he still couldn't move that much.

When he remembered how to speak, he asked, "What happened?"

"Attacked. Place is a mess."

His mind? That's what he assumed she meant. "Attacked by what?"

"I can't say."

He didn't know if that meant she didn't know, or if she actually couldn't say. Did it matter? "Why can't I feel my outer body?" Logan knew, as nonsensical as it seemed, that the body he could feel simply belonged to this ... this corner of his mind. Whatever it was.

It was a long moment before she answered, her fingertips brushing through his hair in a comforting gesture. "Something's gone wrong."

"I know. I can't remember anything; I can barely move." He swallowed hard - or at least it felt like he did - as he asked, "Can you help me?"

"I don't know," she replied, and for the first time, he realized she sounded sad. "There's so much that's gone."

"Is it permanent?"

Another long pause. "Some of it."

At once that thought was both comforting and frightening, and he knew there were things he best never remember at all.

***

Maybe all Pacific islands had such mercurial weather - but this fucking moody? One moment it was clear, and then next it was grey with cotton candy clouds, the sun smothered, and anemic breeze became a screaming tempest.

Well, for all of a minute.

"Stop," Miranda said, never getting up from the daybed. The winds stopped dead, as if she had simply closed a window. But considering she wasn't even in a house, that's probably not what happened.

"This is boring," Cressa complained. "Let's do something."

Miranda shifted the covers off her head, so she could glare at Cressa, who was sitting on a path made of glass, smashing diamonds into dust with a hammer. It was a pointless activity that seemed to make her happy. She liked breaking stuff.

"I think it's killing me," she pointed out, not bothering to lift her head. Her skull felt like it was full of molten lead, searingly hot and impossibly heavy, the pain like a constant dull drilling, like someone had turned on the jackhammers.

Cressa frowned at her, stopping her smashing for now. "Don't be so melodramatic."

Technically, her daybed was in the middle of a tropical sward, surrounded by birds of paradise shrubs (she didn't know if they were shrubs, but imagined they were) and palm trees, pineapple trees and ferns (ferns were everywhere, weren't they). The sky had turned blue again, but she brought in so wispy clouds to cover the sun, as the light hurt her eyes, which already felt like throbbing, open wounds in her head.

"I'm not being melodramatic," she snapped, anger making the pounding in her head that much worse. "I can't even fucking stand up anymore, or haven't you noticed?"

Cressa sighed, like she was the one in pain, and stood up, brushing the diamond dust off her skirt. "Wish it away."

"Don't you think I've tried that? I've also tried to wish in some pain killers, but they don't work either."

"How about some vodka? I hear that's a good pain killer."

There was a lightness in Cressa's tone that suggested she either thought she was faking, or honestly didn't care how much pain she was in. Some friend she was.

In fact, it was safe to say she had tired of her pushy 'friend' very quickly. "Do you even care?"

"Of course I care," she replied, adding a slight chuckle at the end, like she couldn't believe she'd ask such a stupid question. But her eyes remained as hard as the diamonds she had been smashing, and Miranda knew she was lying.

"Go away," she said.

Cressa cocked her head and smiled nervously. "What?"

"I wish you would go away," she reiterated, and absolutely nothing happened. That wasn't right.

None of this was right, in fact. This whole wishing things into and out of existence was fun, for a while, but it seemed to be causing her brain to compress inside her skull.

Cressa's grin turned leering, almost mocking. "You didn't try and wish me away, did you?"

"It didn't work." She was surprised, but not really as stunned as she should have been.

"No, because you really didn't mean it."

"Bullshit, I meant it." She looked at her with narrow eyes, the pulsing in her head a thousand times worse, the roaring of the blood in her head covering up the roar of the ocean. "What the fuck are you?"

Cressa's smile suddenly faltered, and she seemed to look around nervously. "Tell you what - take us to the mainland, and I'll show you."

"No."

"Come on - something bad's on the way. Let's get out of here, huh?"

She looked positively nervous, and this was the first time Miranda had seen her express any emotion without a hint of smugness. "I can take care of it. What's coming Cressa?"

"No, you can't," Cressa sniped impatiently. "You have no idea what's going on. Get us the fuck out of here!"

"I said no."

"What an awkward position," a man suddenly said. He had an Australian accent, like that actor guy, but she couldn't see him from her vantage point. "Strong enough to cripple, but not strong enough to transport."

Cressa started backing towards her, her spine stiffening. "You don't want it hurt, Drai' shajan.Stay back."

"Don't start none, won't be none," the man replied, with an almost perverse sense of cheeriness. But while he was probably being funny, Miranda wasn't so far gone that she didn't hear the hard edge - and implied threat - in his tone.

"How did you get here?" Miranda asked, rearranging herself and the blanket so she could him. Movement made the pain swell in her head, turned her vision to a brief fireworks display, but once things had settled down, and the real world came surging back in, she saw a tall guy in leather pants and a white t - shirt standing on the glass path, his black leather boots crushing diamond dust to an even finer powder. When he looked at her, his eyes were too blue to be believed.

"I zapped myself in. Nice place you got here, darlin', even if you were a bit fuzzy on the details."

"Zapped yourself in?"

"Get him out of here, now," Cressa hissed. She was within arm's reach of the bed.

"Are you tryin' to make her head explode?" The Aussie asked. "You know she can't wish me away."

"Is that a dare?" She really didn't like Cressa telling her what to do, but she really resented this pretty boy dropping out of nowhere and telling her what she could and couldn't do. "I wish you'd go away."

The man held his hands up at his sides in an exaggerated shrug. "Told ya, sweetheart."

If she had the energy, she would have been furious. "Why can't I fucking wish you people away?!"

"I'm not a person, technically," the man said. "And certainly your friend there doesn't even come close."

Miranda had a feeling whatever fragile grasp she had on reality had gotten lost a long time ago - she was no longer sure what day it was, week, month, or year. Her head hurt so much she couldn't even think. But some things were getting through. "If she isn't a person, what the fuck is she?"

The man - he was good looking, in an irritating sort of way - stared straight into her eyes, and said, "The pain is going away, Miranda. Distance yourself from it."

She opened her mouth to tell him he could go fuck himself - there was pain; it was the worst pain she had ever experienced - but then she realized the pain really was ebbing away, becoming incrementally more bearable. She sat up as it did, and asked one more time, "Cressa, what the hell are you?"

Then the pain came crashing back, making her cry out in pain and grab her head between her hands before it exploded like a balloon. She could barely hear Cressa say, "You're too late, asshole. She belongs to me now."

"Let her go, and you can live in some other dimension. This is your only chance, Zayrith."

Her head must have imploded. None of this made any sense. In a strange way, she wished someone would kill her, just so she wouldn't hurt anymore.

Cressa chuckled coldly. "Hardly. Maybe I can't move myself places yet, but I can remove things. Hope you can swim, Drai' shajan. Because the ground beneath is going to disappear right now."

Miranda waited to hear it happen, and belatedly wondered what Cressa had meant when she said she belonged to her now.

"Can I fight him?" He asked, aware that that was probably a stupid question. If he could do something, would he be here?

"I don't think so." She paused for a long moment. "I'm not sure."

"What? Is there a chance?"

"Not directly."

"Indirectly?" He pondered that a moment, but found it impossible to get his head around it. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"

She didn't answer for the longest time, she just kept stroking his hair; now it seemed like a nervous gesture. "I'm not the strategist."

He wondered what part of his mind was; if it even existed anymore.

Logan closed his eyes, the firelight turning the inside of his eyelids blood red, and tried to remember Mariko. He vaguely remembered the dream he had before Heydon had taken him, but it was more a sense memory, something his skin and his body remembered more than his mind. He recalled the feeling of her wrapped around him, her breasts and hips pressed against him, her hands moving over his body like he was a sensual piece of kinetic sculpture, something coded with a message in Braille that she had to seek out. Her warmth and her scent seemed to tingle on his skin, like she was actually here, and a strange desire curled inside his gut. He wanted her right now, to feel her again and have her fill up his emptiness. But since he was in his own mind, that was probably some form of mental masturbation, and he had no time or inclination for that. Well, not really.

The only thing he could honestly recall about her in his memory was that she made him feel Human, in the best sense of the word. With her he was a normal man, with a normal life, and not a freak with a tortured past jumping at shadows and running from a thing that had neither shape nor form in his traitorous brain. He wanted that feeling back; he wanted her back.

"It was a delusion, wasn't it?" He said aloud, opening his eyes. But he didn't dare look at her, just at the dying flames in the hearth. Their warmth was distant, as if took ages for it to cross the room. "That feeling. I wanted to be normal for you so bad I almost convinced myself I could be."

"Normal is subjective."

In that moment, she sounded like Bob.

As he forced himself to sit up (why it was so difficult he had no idea; he felt like he was trying to move through a sea of molasses), her hand trailing from his hair, down his neck and back, she said quietly, "I didn't want normal. I wanted you."

That could be taken in a couple of different ways, but he knew that she - or whatever aspect of his mind she represented at the present moment - only meant that in the best way possible.

He propped his elbows on his knees, rested his head in his upraised hands, and tried to think. Attack Heydon indirectly; come at him from an angle he wouldn't expect ... where the hell would that be? He was trapped inside his own fucking mind; he was limited in what he could do.

What Logan wanted to know was why the nightmare memories that drove other telepaths from his mind didn't work on Heydon. Maybe because he was a demon, and maybe because he was a fucking sadist and liked it. So the main arsenal in the weapon hadn't worked - time for plan B.

Now he just had to figure out what the fuck was plan B.

**

It was then Miranda noticed that there was someone sitting cross legged on the ground several feet behind the Aussie; she would have sworn she hadn't seen her before now.

And in fact she stopped seeing her - it was like light stopped near her, and would go no further.

"What the fuck is that?" Cressa demanded.

"Zero - she'd say hi, but she's busy right now, keeping the molecules of the ground in place. Wanna try again?"

Miranda propped herself up against the headrest, and glared at the side of Cressa's face. "What the fuck are you?" She was starting to get the idea that she hadn't created Cressa at all, any more than she had created the guy, or the strange girl who now seemed to be hidden behind a black hole of her own devising.

Cressa suddenly reached behind her, and grabbed Miranda by the leg. Another sizzling pain knifed through her brain and she screamed, trying to pull away but unable, as the electric pain had rendered her weak, making her feel positively boneless. "I warned you, Drai'shajan -"

But whatever Cressa was going to say was cut off, as she was hit from behind by what looked like a bolt from a laser cannon, a red flash that sent Cressa flying as if hit with a wrecking ball. She landed hard, face first on the ground, and only a couple of feet from the Aussie.

The guy looked down at her, and asked casually, "What were you saying, darlin'?"

Pain ebbing to tiny little shocks in her head, a little prickling sensation not unlike the pins and needles sensation you got when you tried to move a body part that had fallen asleep, she looked behind her to see a red haired woman coming across the grass. She wore the same kind of black leather/proto-Nazi outfit the laser beam guy coming out of the trees wore, so she assumed they were together, but she didn't have the laser beam glasses. She had a look of intense concentration on her face, though, and her black gloved hand was raised palm up, as if preparing to ward off something.

The Aussie crouched down in front of Cressa, and as Cressa looked up, gasping as desperately as a fish on dry land, he said, "She's paralyzed your vocal chords, so there's no more foolishness on your part. And unless you want to get used as target practice, I suggest you stay down and think about how you want to play this."

The redhead was now next to her, giving her a concerned look. "Miranda, are you all right?"

She squinted at the woman, and asked, "Who the fuck are you? How do you know my name?"

"I'm Jean, and that's Scott," she said, gesturing to headgear guy. "We're here to help."

"Help what?"

"I know you know that Cressa ain't exactly what you thought she was," the Aussie guy said, standing back up. Why wasn't he wearing a snazzy biker get up? Well, he had the pants and the boots ... "What she is is a parasite who's killin' you. That pain in your head? It's her. She's using your abilities to create a better vessel for herself. It'll kill you in the process, but ask her how much she cares. Oh, right, you can't. But if she could talk she'd tell you a lot of bullshit that still equals up to not at all."

Cressa was looking back at her, shaking her head vehemently since she supposedly couldn't talk, and Miranda scowled at her. She didn't know who the fuck these people were, or what their deal was, but she wasn't so far gone that she didn't know that Cressa bitch had been lying to her all along. And hadn't the pain in her head gotten worse since she'd known her?
Cressa scowled back at her, the skank, and looked back at the Aussie. The Aussie looked down at her with a hint of a smile, like she was the funniest form of insect life he had ever seen.

"You're lucky, Cressa. If Logan was here, I'd have just had him grab you and put those claws of his in your face. Somehow, I don't think you'd be very spunky then. Let her talk, Jean."

The redhead seemed to relax, dropping her hand to her side, and Cressa shoved herself up to her feet, face contorted in rage. "You stupid fuck, it's too late!" She snapped, almost getting in the pretty boy's face but not quite daring. "The process can't be undone now. So take your little mutant bang buddies and get the fuck out of here before I really lose my temper."

The wind started kicking up again, but it seemed warmer and nastier this time, charged with ozone. The clouds had turned gunmetal grey too, almost black, and Miranda didn't get how a storm could move in that fast, unless Cressa was doing it somehow.

The Aussie didn't seem impressed. In fact, he gave her a toothy grin that was almost a leer. "Last chance, Zayrith. Let the girl go and revert to form - I'll send you to a dimension where you can be a slave driver or an overseer. I know you'll get off on that."

"Go fuck yourself, Drai'shajan."

Was that his name? Weird name.

"Jean, remember you have to hold me in place until this is all over," the guy said, looking at Cressa but talking to the leather girl.

Cressa scoffed. "Hold you? What, you really that worried about me kicking your butt?"

"No, I'm worried about the lightning bolt."

"What?"

The guy grabbed Cressa's upper arms firmly, and shouted,"Now!" For a millisecond, Miranda was sure she'd seen his eyes turn completely blue, whites and all, and saw blue energy outlining his fingers on Cressa's arms as she went suddenly rigid, like someone had shoved a pole up her ass.

But it happened so quick she was never sure. Because then a lightning bolt came out of the sky and hit Cressa straight on the top of her head, and laser beam guy fired, a continuous stream of red energy that hit Cressa full on her back.

Miranda didn't know what they were doing, or how Cressa hadn't burst into flames or blown up into a million pieces.

Before she could consider it for too long, it felt like something twisted deep inside her brain, sending out a deep, sharp pain that was both icy and unbearably hot, and finally her consciousness ebbed away with the pain.

**

According to Bob, this all had a background in the same physics he had mentioned to Ororo: they'd overwhelm the Zayrith with energy. He'd pump it full of psychic energy, while Ororo and Scott would hit it with more 'conventional' energy, and it would, in Bob's words "make her pop like a tick too full of blood". Wonderful imagery.

Follow the law of physics that says energy can't be destroyed, Bob figured the Zayrith would be, but the energy she stole from Miranda would go back to its source - Miranda. But he still couldn't offer any guarantee that she'd survive it. As he said a possibility that she would was better than the certainty that she wouldn't. There was no other way to destroy the Zayrith without killing Miranda.

It was hard to hold Bob in place - since he was holding on to Cressa, who was the brunt of it, the electricity was traveling through him too ( Bob had told Ororo not to worry about holding back, as electricity couldn't kill him) - but after several interminable seconds, Cressa did something weird. She exploded.

Well, not in a conventional sense. She appeared to be almost see through, as if bathed in x - rays, then turned into a figure of golden light that burst like a star and dissipated violently, as if torn up by the wind.

Storm and Scott both stopped their attacks, and she let go of Bob, only to see him flung backwards about twenty feet. He landed flat on his back, sprawled on the ground, smoking slightly, and not moving at all.

"Shit," she muttered to herself, wondering how damaged he could be. He never said it couldn't hurt him, only that it couldn't kill him, a strange parsing of consequences that Bob must have picked up from Logan. Or maybe that was just something they had in common.

As she approached Bob, Tanith stood up, no longer using her powers since they were no longer needed.  "Oh god, Bob! Is he all right?"

"I'm sure he is," Jean lied, seeing no point in worrying the girl. She was already deathly pale, a stricken expression on her face. "He said he could take it."

She remembered she couldn't touch him, so she crouched beside him. He was smoking, all right, and most of his shirt had burned away; she could smell charred leather too. But he wasn't burned, not in the conventional sense, not like Humans. His skin was cracked open, like arid desert sand, cobalt blood oozing from the tiny fissures on his torso, arms, neck, and face. And for some reason, his hair was now completely golden blond (and smoking, but not burned).

"Oh Christ," Tanith said, kneeling on the other side of him. "Is his blood supposed to be that color?"

Oh shit. How did she explain that? "I've never seen it in another shade," she admitted.

It looked like Bob was breathing ( did Bob need to breathe? ), and it seemed his blood was starting to slow, the cuts not exactly healing yet, but clearly getting ready to do so. He didn't heal as quickly or dramatically as Logan, but it was obvious he was just as resilient.

"He was like her, wasn't he?" Tanith asked. "I mean, not a parasite, but from another dimension, right?"

She considered lying, but why? They'd lied enough to this poor girl. "Yes. I guess the blood is a giveaway, huh?"

"Oh no, I already figured he was," she admitted, grimacing in embarrassment. "I mean, he talked about wormholes and portholes to other realities not like he was speculating on them, but like he'd really seen them and been in them. I was always hopin', if I asked nicely, he'd take me through one sometime."

Tanith smiled shyly, and Jean returned it, proud of her. She always knew she was bright.

Bob groaned, and moved a limp hand to his forehead. "Who's bakin' snake?" He wondered, covering his face.

"Snake?" Tanith repeated, not sure if he was joking or not.

"Yeah. Tasty, makes a great casserole, good source of protein, low in fat. Like me." Bob uncovered his face, and while all the fissures on his face hadn't healed over, he was no longer bleeding. "Oh shit, the smell is me, isn't it?" He propped himself up on his elbows, giving himself the once over, and admitted, with a sly grin, "Hey - I'm the other white meat. Who knew?"

Tanith giggled, and Jean knew Bob was fine. He was already cracking jokes and charming the girls.

She stood, and looked back towards Scott, only to see him gently shaking Miranda's shoulders, trying to get her to come to. Oh no.

She quickly joined him, and without a word he moved aside and let her take over. "Miranda? Can you hear me?" She asked, prying her eyelid open. The eyes had rolled back into her head, exposing only the whites. At best, she was unconscious; at worst, she was comatose.

"Will she be all right?" Ororo asked, coming up beside them.

Jean shook her head. "I don't know. We need to get her back to the mansion, I'll see what I can do for her there." She was still alive, so that was something. Maybe they could do something to help her.

But even as she began to strategize about Miranda's treatment, she couldn't help but wonder where Logan was, and if he was this bad off.

No matter that it was still sunny outside - in the club Halcyon it was night, the bloody red and gang - green neon lights pulsing from the ceiling and highlighting the wrought iron chairs and railings and faux marble floors that were this place's lame attempts at gothicism.

He shouldered his way through the poseurs to the polished ebony bar, where a sleek looking Hispanic bartender held down the fort, with enough facial piercings that he could probably be terminally snagged by a thrown knitted afghan. Heydon ordered a whiskey straight, and glanced around at the mingling people and the dancers writhing as best they could to the grinding industrial music. They were mostly young - ish (twenties ) and Human, although there were a few other demons, like him, looking for some hot, fresh prey.

Logan was still locked up in some dark corner of broken mind,a wounded animal licking his wounds, and Heydon was content to leave him there for now. But he decided when he was about to make his kill he'd drag him out kicking and screaming, so he got to watch and enjoy as he fed. Probably make a pseudo - good guy go fucking nuts. Which was the point, of course - torture didn't always have to be physical.

He had just started nursing his drink when he got a sense of vampires near him.

"Hello - "

" - big - "

" - guy. You're - "

" - an Auhminra - "

" - aren't you? "