A/N: Okay, this one took longer, but it also is a longer chapter ._. Have fun reading

Chapter 6

When Emma entered the young man´s mind… Never before had she experienced anything like this. She could read his thoughts, but at the same time, she couldn´t.

She simply wasn´t able to follow his mind or process this enormous … overload on information. She barely grasped his intention, knew he was aware of what he was doing but anything else…

It was the mental equivalent to a tsunami.

Geographic information, Road names and their lengths and geographic position by longitude and latitude, statistics and computations far over her head drowned her in complexity. And she could not follow that, was not able to, but the information kept coming. The sense of warning hit her. A warning to pull away, but she didn´ the same time, she was bombarded with statistics of things she never knew, never thought necessary to know. Passages of books and she just knew the recollection of the words was exactly the one of the printed version and – too much, he processed the words to fast. She knew she should leave when the warning became more urgent, but- She struggled to stay, to grasp anything of value. She needed to know what was going on. Emma ignored the warning and found herself regretting it the next moment when she was confronted with information she gladly would have lived without knowing. Diaries of serial killers, profiles of people who she would stay were far away from as a telepath. Pictures of crimes that made her nauseate and memories of –

Emma stumbled to her feet and away from the young man as a murderous headache hit her and her vision blurred and her stomach revolted violently. She didn´t make it to the door and certainly not to the bathroom before she fell to her knees and pretty much puked out what felt to be her guts. She could hear Magneto talk as her breakfast decorated the floor and her face heat up in both humiliation over the ungracious display she must provide as well as the effort it took her to empty her stomach. At the same time, she attempted to get her mind out of the labyrinth it found himself in and the feeling of danger arose in her. Looking up, she saw Doctor Nemser pull out a syringe and try to get a blood sample out of Reid. But the young man struggled and Creed had to keep him in line– She noticed the moment, when Reid himself didn´t pull out the memories on purpose. She wanted to scream at them to back away from him and not trigger memories while she was in his head, but her mind was overtaken by the memory of a youngman with haunted eyes and a syringe in his hand. Promising to make things better but the feeling of despair was whimpered and reached for her head. No longer concerned of the weakness she was showing.

Because there was craving. Just a faint memory, in the back of her (?) mind and now, as her walls crumbled, it was taking over. The need, the temptation was clawed at her nerves, filled her entire mind, her entire being and she needed it. She needed it so badly, she wanted it. She would beg for it, if she just knew what. Other than Spencer, Emma didn´t know what it was. It let her stumble out of the haze and the realization suddenly was there.

An addiction.

Emma knew she needed to get out of that mind, but within his head, she felt disoriented and lost. For some reason, the connection was more intense than it should be.

More pictures, memories. The things she saw… in her life, Emma had entered some really twisted minds but..What kind of sick bastard did such things?! She wanted to sob when she saw what people were forced to live through. She saw corpses and lifeless bodies. Sometimes just parts of those with the knowledge that what they at some point belonged to a human, living being. She saw victims of mutilation, abused both physical and psychical. Sometimes, no matter how gruesome death was the better option and those memories proved it. The intense feeling of sorrow hit her and Emmagrieved for the deceased and those who had to go on, scarred and scared for the rest of their lives.

This afternoon, Emma Frost was introduced to a new world. People told their children about monsters and shortly after her mutation awoke, Emma had been convincedthat as a mutant, she was one of the so called monsters and as such, there was no need to be afraid of her own kind, no matter what humans called them.

As a telepath, she had soon learned that no matter if human or mutant, some people were the real monsters. Now, she learned that among those monsters, there are predators out there far worse than anyone she had encountered so far.

She knew she would scold herself for it, but this evening, she would check her room, lock her doors and leave the light on.

Victor chuckled in amusement when Frost stumbled away and puked up her breakfast.

Served the arrogant bitch right.

The usually proud woman acted like weak puppy and Victor knew she just lost a lot of authority and position. The Ice Queen, who liked to parade around so much, was now utterly pathetic as she lost her balance and fell face down on the floor. Barely missing the stinking puddle of barf she had left there.

Victor tightened his grip on Reid, who had paled and tried to back away from Nemser. Whatever the young man did to Emma, Creed sure didn´t mind it. It weakened Spencer enough for Victor to hold him in place without much effort as Nemser took his blood sample, ignoring the young man´s protest.

"Now, Reid, it´s just a little sample." Magneto said, ignoring the silently crying telepath on the floor, obviously disapproved about the lack of progress.

"I must say, this was rather impressive." Erik said, as he leant back. "Emma is a very strong telepath and I´ve never seen her or any telepath being dealt with so successfully." Lehnsherr smiled ruefully and almost regretted not being able to see Charles attempting to get into Reid´s mind. Reid obviously had paid a price for whatever he had done, but Erik couldn´t help but wonder if he would be able to train this… whatever it was.

The agent starred back in defiance and bit his lips to keep himself from commenting. He stopped struggling against Creeds hold, but was apparently not willing to cooperate either as he didn´t utter a single word.

Magneto sighed. Then he turned to Nemser and nodded. The man quickly packed his equipment back into his box and almost fled the room as fast as he could while he avoided getting anywhere near Frost or the puddle on the floor.

When Emma finally managed to pull herself out of Spencer´s mind, her face was tear strained, her chin covered in both bile and spit and no one had cared to pull her hair away from the danger zone, so there were little bits of… she didn´t care to try out which part of her meal the pieces sticking to the blond hair had been.

Emma pulled herself up in a sitting position and closed her eyes relieved. Her mind was wonderfully void again compared to when she had read the young Doctor´s thoughts. But the knowledge of what was lurking outside in this world would never leave her again.

On shaking legs, Emma pulled herself up and looked to the skinny man sitting on the couch. He looked fragile with the bite marks on his neck, easily held by Creed as the mutant kept him in line so Nemser could get his samples. He looked young and vulnerable and Emma knew it was the memory of Tobias doing that to him. The craving coming to the front, awoken both by Emma pulling at his shields and the picture of Nemser with his syringe though a blurry vision. Looking at the man, Emma imagined even a resemblance to Hankel, but it could also be her mind playing tricks on her.

When Magneto looked back to her, she quickly schooled her expression.

Lifting her chin and straightening her back, she again became aware of the picture she must provide. Her face heated up again under the scrutinizing look from Magneto and the leer Creed send her way. With as much dignity as she could muster, she whipped the remains of her breakfast from her chin, ignoring the shaking hands. She became aware of the tears she hadn´t noticed she cried, but she was unwilling to run her hands over her face again. Suddenly, she felt disgusted with herself. Looking back at Magneto, she knew she had just lost a lot of influence in the brotherhood. Instead of arguing or fighting for her position, which she knew would be pointless or even sent her further down the ladder, she starred at the Master of Magnetism and held her chin high.

"Why don´t you go and clean yourself up, dear?" He asked and Emma felt the need to hit Sabretooth as the feral chuckled. Lehnsherr did a show of threatening her as weak by attaching the 'dear' and Creed seemed in way to much agreement over this. She should send him a headache just for the sake of it, but she was mentally to exhausted and raw to do so.

Everything left for her to do was keep as much dignity as she could and leave the room with her head held high.

"So, basically, we are almost two months behind Magneto and the government." Alex said as he watched Bobby sent a glare towards his ex-girlfriend. As if to provoke him, she sent a flirty smile towards the thief next to her. But Alex was –almost- sure she was not aware of Iceman even being there. All her attention was on LeBeau, who however seemed to have noticed Bobby. Or he caught the wave of animosity coming from him. The thief sent a glance towards Drake and then exchanged a few words with Rogue, before he made his way over to Logan. The girl did her version of a pout, which was not very successful, she was far too hot-tempered to pull off a gesture like that. Nonetheless, she finally seemed willing to take in her surroundings. Sure enough, appeared surprised to see Bobby and Alex in the room, who had entered after she had started to talk to Remy. Alex wondered if this was just a better act than her pout or if she really was this fixated on Gambit. Considered how often both Gambit and Logan were absent from the manor these past few days, he almost couldn´t blame her for not wanting to be shoved aside.

While Bobby´s scowl deepened, Hank thankfully answered his question.

"As far as I know Mystique's break out appeared roughly one and a half months ago." The blue furred man said. "I knew it for a week and I´ve been gathering as much Information as I could since then."

"Great!" Iceman hissed, making room for his foul mood. "So we´re the last in line, huh? Who knows what Magneto might be doing now?"

Ororo didn´t seem to appreciate the display of temper and frowned disapprovingly.

"Hank has been informed of this two weeks ago. We thought it appropriate to gather more information on it before we talk to you." Ororo said.

"So, what have you found out?" Rogue asked.

Storm sighed, she didn´t want to confront them – especially not Rogue – with the news that the cure was failing.

"Not enough." She finally decided to say. "That´s why we will need to get more."

"And what does that mean?" Rogue questioned, frowning. Obviously, it hadn´t slipped her mind that her question was left unanswered.

"It means we are reacting to their actions. And that means we´re at a , we´re going to change it." Logan said from across the room, where he sat at a desk with both Hank and Remy. The three of them had been scheming until Rogue had entered and pulled Remy into a discussion. Then the rest of the team had entered and now everyone looked to the Wolverine. Who sent a feral grin towards McCoy and LeBeau. The first one shifted in his seat, clearly uncomfortable while the second one appeared almost eager for this conversation to be over so he could do… whatever they planned to do.

"We will retrieve information from the Government." Hank finally said.

"What?!" That was a chorus of the three youngest people present and Bobby and Rogue immediately glared at each other while Alex added an: "How?" Did Hank have other means to gain intel? Things they didn´t know so far?

"Steal it." Remy announced with a smirk and Ororo reached for her temple. It was the first time she heard of it as well.

"That´s what you came up after two hours?" She asked. "Steal it? You expect them to just let you get in and take the files?" Clearly not impressed, Storm added: "There is no way we´re breaking into a high security building-"

"Kurt already did that, should be easy for him!" Bobby pointed out and Ororo send a glare his way.

"- and provoke another anti-mutant hype." She finished and Bobby actually cringed at that. "Even if we knew the location of Nightcrawler, which we don't, we are not doing that."

Hank lifted his hands in a reassuring gesture.

"No, we´re not. So we most likely won´t get all the information, but there´s something else we can do."

"So? What can we do?" Rogue urged on impatiently.

"There are various investigation teams involved." Hank elaborated. "Usually, they don´t take the files and information to the outside, but there might be an exception. And one of my contacts has been approached by someone from the BAU for more information as well."

"What´s so unusual about that?"Ororo asked. It was to be expected for investigating units to ask questions.

"The difference is, the agent didn´t make an official request. It was rather on a… favor basis." McCoy said. "And under the radar of the other investigation teams. My contact only told me about it, because I´ve known him for years and he swore to me that the agent was not out for harming any mutants. Besides Magneto and Mystique, that is."

That had the present people thinking. Logan and Remy, who both already knew of this, watched the team connect the dots.

"So, someone in the BAU is doing his own sniffing 'round." Rogue said.

"Isn't he going behind the government´s back with this?" Alex suddenly asked and Remy sent him a pleased smile at being the first of the extended group to make such a significant connection. Maybe just because it was Remy, Alex should have expected the wink that followed, but he didn´t and found himself fighting down a blush. He was not into men, but there was a certain charm and sensuality to Remy that just pulled people in. Thankfully, the thief did not comment on this other than with a playful smirk.

"Yes, and that means he might have some information the government doesn´t have." Hank elaborated, which earned him some surprised blinks. "And he also won´t store it within the bureau building. If you make it into the BAU, you´re not that much of an idiot to do that."

"But it also means he doesn´t have all the information they have either." Ororo pointed out. "I don´t see them trusting just anyone with this and if he needs to ask around. That agent already knows there´s more to this than what he´s been told."

"C'est la ´t 'aveever'ing." Remy shrugged nonchalant and Logan sighed. Remy was adaptingto situations fast enough to take what he could get and improvise his way out of any bullshit. Obviously, the Cajun was used to letting things come his way and then deal with them, and currently they couldn´t change the Government having a head start on information other than getting what they could. But the other people in the room clearly were not as impressed or careless about not knowing everything there was to know.

Being someone who suffered from not knowing the majority of his life, he couldn´t help but snort at would have thought they had learned something by now.

"We take what we can get." Logan summed it up. Remy inclined his head and despite the sunglasses, Logan felt the man observing him. Looking into the reflecting glass, the Wolverine met his eyes as best as he could and with a faint smile, he thief nodded, before he looked over to the rest of the team. Sure enough, they were debating among themselves. They even offered rather poorly thought through suggestions on how to gain information from the Government. Sure, they didn´t have as much time planning and not as much experience breaking in, but it was time to pull them away from this dangerous road. Before one of them decided to actually go through with one of their 'plans' to break into a high security building which was still on high alert after the break out.

Trust someone like Beast to manage an impressive clearing of his throat. Instantly, the rest of them quieted.

"Logan and Remy had observed the BAU the past few days. We came to the conclusion, that one team in particular seems to spend an unusual amount of their supposed private time together." Hank elaborated and Rogue peaked up at finally being told where Remy had been the past few days. Meanwhile McCoy continued his elaboration.

"For one, they always meet at one flat." He frowned. "And the one owning the flat is a known hacker, who was hired by the Government after successfully breaking into their network."

Now Alex let out a sharp and appreciative whistle.

Hank faltered for a moment, before he admitted.

"And I have not been able to break into her computer as of yet."

That left everyone stunned. Hank was known to be brilliant. After all, he had built the first Cerebro.

The blue furred mutant smiled at their dumbfounded expressions.

"I´m sure it can be done, but it takes time. As a matter of fact, I managed to break into her workplace computer within three days." Now his smile turned sheepish. "But it appears she´s quite paranoid when it comes to her private one. The deeper I want to get in, the more barriers I have to pass. I have been able to retrieve a few files, but the moment I did the security just tenfolded."

"What files?" Ororo threw in. Remy actually chuckled and Logan smirked. Hank on the other hand seemed to have troubles keeping his composure professional.

"Mostly photoshopped pictures of her fellow agents and other people, such as superiors or people I assume she isn´t very fond of."

Storm made a mental note to herself to go and see those pictures.

"It is much easier to access the files if you are in possession of the hard drive they are stored on." Beast finished.

"So you want to steal that laptop." Bobby concluded.

Spencer was exhausted.

He knew it had been risky to use his eidetic memory and his IQ to overload the telepath, but he had not expected to be thrown back down memory road and provoke such an intense flashback.

As tired as he was, he didn´t notice at first that Creed acted different than before. He walked closer behind him and stared more intensely at the people who crossed their path on the way back to the room. It the second provoked some people into rather obviously changing their routes and the first left Spencer feeling more than just a bit uncomfortable.

The relief at reaching the room he stayed in was short lived when instead of leaving, Creed stayed. The feral mutant starred as Spencer walked to the bed – the only furniture to sit on – and reached for the book lying on their covers. His body demanded to just fall onto the soft mattress and sleep, but the instincts he developed as a profiler were screaming at him to stay alert while Sabretooth was observing him so closely.

For a few seconds, Creed stared, before his gaze settled on the bite mark on Spencer´s throat. Instinctively, the young Doctor reached up to cover the mark but the moment his hand got close to it, Creed's eyes narrowed dangerously. So he carefully lowered his hand again. The dynamic between them had changed, that much was obvious. Before, Creed had acted more like an annoyed and unwilling babysitter. Now he actually had the feral's attention, his awareness. He wasn´t just brushed off like before, but observed. It was not a change he welcomed at all.

Thankfully, it won´t be long before Mystique would check up on him and Creed would need to leave. At least if his estimation of the time passed was correct. The flashback had thrown him off balance and messed with his sense of time. They had taken his watch when they imprisoned him, so at the moment he had no way of telling how much time had passed. Spencer´s gaze still automatically went to the place on his wrist where he usually would wear his watch.

"Don´t bother, pub." Sabretooth growled, it sounded amused. "Magneto´s little pet is on a mission, she won´t come and babysit you."

That crushed Spencer´s hopes. Mystique didn´t seem to appreciate him speaking – and as a profiler, he naturally had tried to talk to her and find out more - but she also didn´t talk much. It was uncomfortable, but at least Spencer had the impression that she didn´t actually try to mess with him. There were enough possibilities for the shape shifter to do just that. She mostly ignored him and despite everything else, Spencer was grateful for that. Maybe she didn´t give him more information to build a profile on, but she also didn´t intentionally hurt him. That at least showed, she was no might be capable of a lot of things, but she didn´t hurt or torture others because it brought her pleasure.

He was not so sure that applied to Sabretooth as well.

Emma sat up and shifted to the edge of the bed she had been lying on. One glance at the clock made her frown. She had spent twelve hours in bed. At first, she had actively used her power, no matter how painful using her strained talent was, to recover her from the overload of information. Her shields had suffered. Her brain had suffered. Then, blissful sleep had claimed her and Emma was grateful that by the time she woke up, her headache had reduced to a faint pounding behind her eyes.

The last four hours Emma had been staring at the ceiling and thought about what she had seen in Reid´s mind. Again and again, her mind had shifted through the memories, thoughts and feelings she had been able to pick up from Doctor Reid.

Once she had things sorted, she had been able to at least analyze them a bit. Despite the gruesomeness of what she viewed, there had been a lot of emotions. As a telepath, she shouldn´t have been able to pick them up. She knew the connection was also far too intense. She had not intended to go in so deep. Some moments, she had not been sure whose thoughts they were and some moments, even though she knew the things she saw were not her own memories, it had felt to her that way.

For that, she had no explanation. Picking up his feelings, that she could explain. Either Reid was an empath or he felt emotions very strongly. Maybe both. It was an explanation, but Emma didn´t knew if it was the explanation. It also could be a result of her being pulled in too far into his mind.

If she had been a lesser telepath and not as experienced, she was sure she would have fainted simply for the overload on her brain. Her mind had not been able to process all she had viewed and felt, but there have been certain things she had been able to pick on. She had no experience dealing with projected or picked up emotions and most of them had been an inseparable, intense… mess of feelings she had not been able to single out or recognize. But others were intense and familiar enough to feelings she had felt at some point to recognize them.

One of the most prominent feelings she had been able to pick up was intense sorrow and grief. She knew those well. Horror. Fear. The feeling of being helpless. There was more to it, but Emma was at a loss of what feelings they were or where they came from. But they were painful. More than once, she had felt as if her heart has been ripped out of her chest by those emotions.

Respect. But she couldn´t make out for whom. Tenderness and fondness sometimes. The need to help. Determination. Joy. A lot of the feelings, she couldn´t place had been buried beneath the horror but now that she reviewed the experience and paid more attention to them, they left a warm and pleasant feeling in her. There was a faint sense of things being hidden. Secrets. More pain. But also love. She knew the last one, but again, she had no means to define for whom. So many things that could have been used as weapons and it bothered her to not being able to grasp it better.

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

When Magneto entered, she was surprised it had taken him so long. Then she remembered… were supposed to meet Mystique in half an hour. Magneto must have been busy. But of course not busy enough to not question her as long as they were alone.

"Well?" Lehnsherr asked. "What did you find out?"

The way he observed her set Emma on edge. Magneto had especially asked her to search for something to use against Reid and to pressure him into cooperating. But for a moment she wondered if there was something else she could have find out. And what it was.

Emma once again reminded herself that Magneto was not to be trusted.

On the other hand, she didn´t own Reid anything as well. After all, the young man had humiliated her and cost her a good deal of her reputation among the brotherhood.

Her thoughts returned to what she had found out. Love and respect. She didn´t know the details, but it was a good start to find out who they could use as leverage against Reid. And then there was the addiction. Again, no details. But they could find out more with a bit of research once they knew where to look. An addiction was a powerful weapon to use against anyone. It was hard to battle an addiction and it wouldn´t take much to throw an addict back into it. This, they could use. She could redeem her position within the brotherhood and regain the points she had lost.

Opening her mouth, Emma paused.

Conquering an addiction was anything but easy.

She thought about the horrors she had seen in the young man's mind. And Reid was young. Yet he had seen so much. And still had resisted the temptation of whatever addiction had swallowed him. The memory of the man with the string. And there was so much… he must have done this for quite some time.

Death, pain, loss. Enough to fill years and years with suffering. Good things as well, she was sure of that. Not all of it could have been bad, she remembered the warm feelings. Still, all this horror… all these people, these victims… all this knowledge of serial killers and crimin-

With a sudden start, Emma realized that that skinny, nerdy man was actually working in law enforcement. She never had been fond of the police or the feds and especially not of the human army but… she had seen and felt so much while connected with Reid's mind and the realization that he dealt with all that on a regular base and had not fled or surrendered to that addiction…

"Nothing of value." She said. "The memories had been shifting to fast to make sense of them."

For good measurement, she looked into Magnetos eyes and lied through her teeth when she said: "I´m sorry."

Spencer was unbelievable relieved when Creed finally left. He was even more grateful, when he was left alone. It didn´t happen often but judging by Sabretooth´s words, Mystique was busy. For a moment, Spencer wondered what the mutant was doing but he also knew there was no sense in wondering. He won´t find out as long as Magneto didn´t want him to know. Or as long as he was stuck here.

Being left alone finally gave him the opportunity to rest. He managed to stay awake long enough to be remotely sure he would be left alone for tonight, before he went to bed.

Sleep came fast, but so did the nightmares. He woke up covered in sweat and shaking. Disoriented, he starred at his surroundings before his brain registered where he was and his racing heartbeat finally slowed down.

Spencer took a deep breath and untangled his shaking legs from the covers. Being drenched in sweat, he started to freeze the moment he stood up, but the young man felt to restless to stay in bed. Slowly, he wandered through the small room while he tried to calm down.

And stopped suddenly when his eyes fell on the tiny gap between the door and it´s frame. It was not fully close.

Carefully, Spencer walked over to the door and reached for the handle. He held his breath and prayed that the lock had not caught as his fingers closed around the metal and then-

The door swung open soundlessly.

Somehow, the chapter feels slow again . Let me know what you think.

I´m nervous about the next chapter …. ~-~

Review-Replies:

Guest:I´m happy to hear you liked the last chapter. I´m trying to get more active ones but this one needed to be done first ^^ The meeting is getting closer – It´s about time, don´t you agree?

Silvermoon of Forestclan: You´re very welcome ^^ Glad you like the fic :D

noobz40: Thank you for another review :D I can´t answer your question without spoilering you ._. But I´m happy you enjoy the story ^^ I´m not sure which one is better: short chapters and faster updates or longer chapters and longer breaks between the updates? What do you think?

Awesomeness: Sorry it took so long, but at least the chapter is longer ^^ I hope you like it and I hear from you again :D