Marie turned from the closed door to look upon the faces of her friends and teammates. Finding the weary face of the team leader, she asked, "How, Scott? How did it happen?"

Cyclops walked over, joining her at the door. He slouched against the wall, the weight of command obviously pressing on him more than usual today. He pursed his lips, and she could tell he was trying to decide how much to tell her.

"I need to know, Scott," she said, trying to hold back the tears to convince him she could handle it.

He sighed and began. "Magneto was trying to steal some plutonium. We still don't know what he wanted with it, but we had to stop him.

"When we arrived at the installation, we ran into Sabretooth almost immediately. Logan attacked, of course, yelling at us to go on without him. He'd fought Sabretooth before, and we all figured he could handle it, so we continued our search for the reactor, splitting into three groups.

"My group found the reactor first. We also found Magneto. As we entered the reactor room, St. John's flamethrower flew out of his hands and my visor was yanked off. I was able to close my eyes in time, but that took us out of the action.

"Jean called for backup, but the rest of the Brotherhood were keeping our other teams busy. Jean tried to telekinetically freeze Magneto while Jubilee fired her paffs, but even though he couldn't move, he started willing metal pieces off the walls of the reactor room and attacking us with them.

"The whirlwind of metal shards forced us back into another room, and while we were pinned down, he started to shake the ceiling, trying to bring it down on us. We were trapped, Rogue. Magneto wasn't playing around. He was going to kill us.

"I don't know where Logan came from. He must've heard Jean's distress call. Anyway, Magneto's attack suddenly stopped, and we made it out of there right before the ceiling crashed down.

"When Jean gave me back my visor, I could see six metal points poking from Magneto's chest. Logan sheathed his claws, allowing Magneto to drop. It was obvious that the man was mortally wounded, but with the last of his powers, he turned on Logan.

"It was so fast, Rogue. If I'd known what he was going to do, I would've blasted him, but it was just too fast. One second, Logan's walking towards us, the next he's writhing on the floor, metal and blood pouring from his body. I fired at Magneto but it was already too late.

"Logan doesn't have the adamantium anymore. Magneto ripped it out of him."

Scott bowed his head like a confessed sinner awaiting punishment. Marie knew that he was waiting for her to say something, but she couldn't, feeling the tears welling up. It was worse than she could have possibly imagined. She knew the damage that Magneto's powers could do. How could Logan possibly survive something like that?

Hours passed. A chair appeared and someone urged her to sit. A mop and bucket were produced and someone cleaned the red-streaked floor to a metal shine. People touched her shoulder, squeezed her hands, whispered cliched expressions in sympathetic voices. Marie took hardly any notice of it. Instead she focused on praying to whoever was out there that Logan would be spared. She promised to give up everything she had if only he was ok.

Three hours into the operation, Jean appeared, rushing out of the Med Lab, tubing and IV equipment in hand. Silently, she looked at Kitty. Kitty nodded and followed her into the map room.

Marie jumped from her chair, running after them, desperate to get any news from Jean on Logan's condition, but the door was locked.

"What's going on?" she yelled at the barrier.

"Rogue," Scott's voice behind her, his hand on her shoulder turning her around. "They're running out of Logan's blood type. Jean's taking volunteers. Some of the students will be coming down soon, too."

"My blood..." she started.

"Isn't the right type."

Finally twelve hours after the surgery had begun, Dr. Jean Summers emerged from the Med Lab, her surgical scrubs rumpled and bloody. Marie immediately rose from her chair.

"He's still alive, Rogue, but he's badly injured. The next 24 hours are crucial."

"I want to see him."

"We're not done bandaging him. Give us time to get him settled and clean up, then..."

"I want to see him," Rogue interrupted, pushing past the exhausted woman.

The smell of blood assaulted her senses as she entered the room. Blood was puddled on the floor and bloody sponges and instruments were strewn on the tables. Logan lay in the midst of the chaos, wrapped like a mummy in white gauze, but at least he wasn't covered in blood anymore.

Hank was bent over Logan's newly shaved head and face, starting to bandage the stitched wounds revealed there. If Logan's head was any indication, the damage wasn't as extensive as she'd initially thought. The ugly wounds still covered a good portion of the surface, but there were several unaffected patches. The blood had lead her to believe that his skin was so badly damaged it couldn't be stitched back together.

Marie walked to the head of the table, watching Hank start his bandaging, when she noticed something odd about Logan's appearance.

"Hank, why is the right side of Logan's face drooping like that?"

Jean came up behind her and started to explain. "He lost a lot of blood, Rogue. We tried to stop it, and we were eventually successful, but we had to give him a lot of transfusions. Part of Logan's healing factor is in the platelets and white blood cells in his blood. The new blood didn't have those special properties, and any healing he had been doing stopped all together."

"Jean, that doesn't explain..." Marie started to say, but Jean held up a hand and continued her speech.

"When the blood clotted, a clot broke off and was swept into his blood stream. This clot..."

Exasperated and more and more anxious every second, Marie interrupted. "Give me the Reader's Digest version."

Jean sighed and said. "He's had a stroke, Rogue... a pretty bad one."