A Desperate Call

Posted on Sun May 31st, 2026 @ 3:29pm by Jean Grey-Summers & Cecilia Reyes M.D. & Jennifer Bryant & Drew Williams

3,645 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Episode 7: Pathogens and Contagions
Location: Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters
Timeline: March 13, 1992

Friday nights were usually rather quiet around Xavier’s, those who were old enough often went out for the night and those who were younger were enraptured by TGIF and the hours of prime time television it provided. So when the phone rang it was no surprise that it took several rings before someone finally picked up.

“Xavier’s School, this is the Headmistress. How can I help you?” The silvery sweet voice said as Jean she reached for the pad of paper and pencil that lived next to the hallway phone.

A confused and nervous voice replied. "Um, this is Drew...Drew Williams. I was a student there last year for a few months. My sister, Angela, and I were both students. I...something has happened and I didn't know who else to call. Um...is Professor Xavier there. I really need to talk to him or someone else who could help." Drew shifted nervously standing at the bank of pay phones in the hospital lobby.

“Hello Drew, yes I remember you.” The woman’s voice was soft and reassuring with a tone of kindness that was needed when someone was scared and desperate. “This is Jean, we met briefly before you left. Professor Xavier isn’t here right now but I can help you.”

She wasn’t sure how to break it to him, that Charles was so close to dying from the Legacy Virus and placing him in stasis until a cure was found had been their only option. It was a bizarre and strange solution to a dire situation.

“In fact all of us are still here to help.” The inflection in her tone was a subtle clue that she was speaking of the X-Men. “You sound upset, what can I do for you?”

There was a significant pause as he considered his options. He really had no choice but to ask for help. "Angela is in the ICU at the ESU Hospital. Doctor's are saying she has contracted the Legacy Virus. I overheard the doctor say her temperature is already spiking to dangerous levels and that her organs may start failing soon. She needs help now. Like right now. She could be dead in the next 24 hours. Please! Help her!" Drew's voice started cracking by the time he was finished speaking.

Drew heard a small gasp from Jean as he revealed Angela’s desperate and fragile state. She was lucky to have found a hospital that was willing to submit her, most mutants were turned away if they were discovered. It was borrowed time for Angela thanks to both of her conditions.

“Yes, of course. We have a doctor here who specializes in the virus. I’d like to bring Angela here if you’re okay with that?” Jean asked but he could tell but the tone in her voice that she was always telepathically speaking to others, planning for their arrival.

"Of course." Drew felt a slight wave of relief washing over him. The facility here was good, but it was not designed or funded to providing medical treatment for a disease that primarily attacked mutants.

“Good, okay.” Jean sounded relieved that he had agreed. “Don’t leave the hospital, we’ll be there in about half an hour.”

Time was a strange concept, sometimes it passed so quickly and other times it seemed to drag on for an eternity, and if it wasn’t for the sudden and almost forced departure of all the medical staff from Angela’s room Drew was positive he would be waiting like this forever.

Once the twins were alone in the hospital room, a ring of energy, vivid and kinetic, appeared in the far corner. It blazed as the circle of fiery purple light split open and created a window cut through reality. Framed in a halo of light, inside the ring was another medical facility. Drew recognized the location as the school’s medical bay from when he was in a coma at Xavier’s.

“Come on, let’s move her in the bed.” Jean said as she stepped through the portal that had appeared, they would have time for greetings and proper introductions once they brought Angela to the safety of Xavier’s. The redhead went towards the hospital bed and began to look for the latch that would free its rolling wheels. “I’ve convinced all the doctors and nurses they were late for a meeting, but it won’t take them long to figure out that no one knows what the meeting is about and they’ll return to their rounds.”

Drew assisted Jean in preparing to wheel the hospital bed through the portal. He glanced at the portal with no small amount of awe. "Um, that's new." He glanced at the door to the hallway. "What about the hospital staff? Won't they be alarmed that Angela just disappeared into thin air?"

“That’s my stepson’s neat trick,” Jean said, nodding toward the portal. A note of quiet pride threaded her voice, the kind of fondness parents carried when speaking about their children. “I think he’s ruined commercial flights for me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to go back to them now.”

Her gaze shifted to the desk where the ICU nursing staff usually sat. “I’ve embedded a false memory in their minds. They’ll complete their charts stating that Angela was discharged and the room cleared for cleaning.”

Telepaths wielded an extraordinary kind of power. They couldn’t alter reality itself, but they could convince others that they had. In moments like this, it felt like a blessing yet when considered too closely, it was also deeply unsettling.

“If anyone decided to review the security footage, they might notice inconsistencies,” Jean went on, pragmatic as ever. “But time is critical, and I wanted to get her to Dr. Reyes as quickly as possible.” She offered him a faint, almost sheepish smile as she reached for Angela’s IV pump. Jean wasn’t as carefully reserved as Xavier, but there was something undeniably endearing in her candor. “Dr. Reyes is an expert in the Legacy Virus, if anyone can help Angela it’s her. I’m glad you called us, Drew.”

Drew nodded in response to Jean’s answers to his questions. "Ready to go." He pushed the hospital bed as Jean steered and passed through the portal. The school infirmary looked much the same as when he’d last seen waking from his coma almost fifteen months ago. He did notice new monitors and diagnostic equipment though, which he gathered was due to Doctor Reyes' research into the Legacy Virus.

Drew stood up straight once the bed was in place and the wheels were locked. He felt a sense of relief to have Angela someplace she could get proper treatment for her condition. He just hoped that it was in time. He glanced at Jean and sighed. "Thank you for this. I wasn't sure...."

Drew, who hadn't eaten in hours, had a sudden blood sugar drop. His voice trailed off mid sentence and he appeared to wobble for a moment just before he collapsed onto the infirmary floor.

As the portal snapped shut behind them, Dr. Reyes moved instantly, dropping to her knees beside Drew. She checked his pulse, his breathing, his pupils, working with practiced efficiency while muttering a string of curses under her breath. Despite the sudden emergency, she remained calm and razor-focused. “Set the girl up over there,” she ordered without looking up. “She can wait until I’m done with this one.”

“Sure, Cecilia,” Jean replied as she continued assisting Angela. She knew better than to get in the doctor’s way. Dr. Reyes was blunt and utterly lacking in bedside manner, but she was an excellent physician.

“Pick him up,” Reyes said, finally glancing toward Alaric, who had been lingering nearby after opening the portal for Jean.

“Of course,” Alaric agreed. With a grunt of effort, he scooped Drew up and carried him to the hospital bed, laying him down as Cecilia immediately got to work.

“You really do keep me busy, Jean,” Cecilia said as she ran diagnostics on Drew, the machines humming softly while his sister wheezed and coughed from the bed across the room.

“Welcome to Xavier’s,” Jean replied with a smirk, never taking her eyes off Angela.

---

A few hours later, Drew stirred awake. An IV line ran into his arm, steadily dripping a dextrose infusion to stabilize his hypoglycemia. Soft voices carried from the other side of the room, instantly recognizable as Dr. Reyes and Jean.

“How bad is she?” Jean asked, her voice sad.

“Pretty bad,” Cecilia replied. “I can already see the rash spreading across her abdomen.”

Jean clicked her tongue, a quiet sound of frustration. “The incubation and infection rates are accelerating. She shouldn’t be this sick for another few days.”

“This virus feels engineered,” Cecilia said grimly. “Designed to kill mutants by something other than Mother Nature.”

“After everything I’ve seen, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Jean said. “What are our options for Angela?”

“A funeral,” Dr. Reyes said flatly, then paused, her voice softening just enough to betray the weight of the words, “or stasis.”

Drew listened to the conversation. The EKG monitor beeped faster after Dr. Reyes made her statement regarding Angela’s condition. He felt tears well up. Other than his horrid Great Aunt, Angela was the only family he had left in this world. He realized that even with his powers, after what he’d accomplished as an X-Men and over the last few months on the campus of ESU as the masked guardian known as the Blur, he was helpless to save his own sister.

He turned his head to look at his sister laying in another bed of the infirmary. He called out softly. "How...how long does she have?"

Jennifer stepped into the infirmary and froze. She didn't say a word. It was like all the air had gone out.

Dr. Reyes looked up and over at Drew, then at Jennifer who had arrived unannounced. This conversation was going to be hard and she didn’t want anyone else to be privy to it. “Jean, how about you take Jennifer into my office and show her where those patient records are. They need to be sorted and put away in the filing cabinets.”

“Of course, Cecilia.” Jean nodded her head in agreement and waited for Jennifer to follow her. In any medical or hospital setting, patient information was usually reserved for the family members. Whatever conversation that was about to occur wasn't for them and Jean respected Cecilia enough to listen to her.

"I'll be here, Drew," Jennifer said softly before she followed Jean.

"You can visit with your friends later." Once Jean and Jennifer had left the room, Dr. Reyes’ gaze turned to Drew. “First off, how are you feeling? You stopped paying attention to your body and got yourself into some trouble.”

Drew nodded his head in an absent minded manner. He was usually not one to miss meals and his school bag generally had large side pouch with power bars to snack on. All considerations had gone out the window when the administrator had entered clas to tell him Angela had collapsed in her own class and was being rushed to the hospital. Hours of sitting or pacing in a hospital waiting area with only vending machine coffee and less than nutritional snacks had put him into a serious blood sugar drop. He glanced at the IV stand with the nearly empty glucose bag. He sat up and pulled the line from his arm as he swung his legs around to get out of bed. He walked up to Angela and looked down at her, all pale, with beads of fever sweat on her brow. He looked at the monitors displaying her vital signs, then turned to Doctor Reyes. "You never answered my question. How much longer before she...." He couldn't bring himself to say dies. The last real family he had left. He wasn't about to lose her too.

Now that they were alone, Cecilia was finally free to speak to Drew candidly. “Angela is very sick, she is already showing the symptoms of someone who is going to succumb to the Legacy Virus. I would normally give someone in her condition three or four days, but seeing how quickly she became ill it might be less, maybe 48 hours.”

Dr. Reyes paused for a moment letting the brevity and weight of the news sit between them before she continued. “You haven’t had the chance to notice but Charles, the rest of the First Class, Kurt, and Connor, all of them are gone because they too became infected with the Legacy Virus and were given a grave prognosis. The Professor was the first to fall ill and Connor and Hank designed a stasis system to preserve him until a cure could be found… when they too became too sick, it seemed fitting they should go into stasis too.”

“I wish we could provide the stasis option for every sick person who comes to Xavier’s looking for help but the reality is that we don’t have the facilities to do that and to know of the stasis room means they would know we are the X-Men. As a doctor, this has been very hard for me to grapple with.” Cecilia sighed deeply and Drew saw the fatigue in her features. “But you and Angela are different, you’re X-Men too. Which means we can offer Angela a place in a stasis chamber.”

Drew listened quietly as Dr. Reyes explained what had been occurring at the school and her prognosis for Angela’s condition specifically. Less than two days and his sister could be dead. "So...there's no cure or treatment options other than placing her in stasis? How long can she survive that way? What progress have you made in findingacure? There's got to be something that can be done" He was quickly losing what hope he had felt when he first called and spoke with Jean about Angela’s condition. Tears began to pool in his eyes as he looked at Angela’s deteriorating health. He couldn't lose her too.


“Not at this point in time, no.” Cecilia answered basically every question Drew rapidly asked with those few words. “By the time a rash appears on a patient, they are usually too sick to recover. Sepsis kicks in and their organs begin to fail and that is what ends up taking their life. Getting her into stasis before her body is damaged is her best chance. As far as how long they can stay in stasis…” She shrugged her shoulders, “Indefinitely. That is as long as the system is online and functional but Cerbro is an impressive piece of technology.”

“As for a cure, that is my main focus.” Dr. Reyes said with a tone of defeat that wasn’t lost on Drew. “We have a mobile hospital set up on the back lawn for any mutant that can make it here in time. And while our survival rates are mixed at best, every person that walks through that door is a data point for me. I collect every sample that I can for my own research, then I compare my findings with Moira at Muir. We are the only two organizations that I’m aware of that are attempting to figure this disease out, humanity doesn’t care that mutants are dying.”

She paused and looked over at Angela, they had intubated her and she was breathing much easier now in that dreamless slumber that came from her treatment. “This virus feels like a designer weapon, something that was engineered in a lab and unleashed for this exact purpose. It finds the mutation in DNA and exploits it in order to invade the immune system… It's brutal. It’s also part of the challenge of understanding it, while all mutants have the x-gene there are different chromosomal pairings and expressions that creates the diversity of your mutant abilities. It’s hard to pin down a cure because the virus appears to be just as diverse as you all are and it’s always evolving. It’s diabolical.”

Drew considered Cecilia's words carefully. He looked at the monitor display. Angela’s body temperature was 104.5. Two hours ago it had been 103.7. If what she (Cecilia) said was correct, then Angela would need to get into a stasis pod very soon. He was about to say as much, but paused as he pondered Cecilia's statement regarding the suspected origin and purpose of the Legacy Virus. His father had been a Harvard professor. A researcher in genetics who had worked extensively over the years as a consultant with numerous agencies for the government and in the private sector. While Drew was not privy to the exact nature of the consultant work. There was a slight possibility his father's research could offer insight into the Virus. "Get Angela into stasis and I will do whatever it takes to help you find answers."

“Welcome back to Xavier’s,” Cecilia said as she stood up and began to spring into action. “Do you want to stay with Angela while she’s placed in stasis or go visit with Jennifer?”

Drew looked at his sister laying in the hospital bed, then to the office where Jennifer and Jean were. He shook his head as he finally turned back to Cecilia. "I can talk to Jennifer later. I want to help get Angela taken care of first." He moved to assist Cecilia with Angela.

Cecilia gave a small, resolute nod, and together they began preparing Angela for stasis. The procedure felt suspended between medicine and ritual. Each clinical step performed with reverent hands; monitors were calibrated, lines secured, vitals recorded in hushed voices. When everything was finally ready, they wheeled her down the corridor and into the stasis room.

The chamber was lined with a dozen pods, their curved glass fronts gleaming under soft white light. It looked like something lifted from science fiction with its sleek metal, seamless panels. It was sterile and silent, as if even time had been disinfected in this room. A low mist drifted inside and around the bases of the pods, cool and ghostlike.

Through the fog, Drew recognized familiar faces.

Bobby, his usual mischief gone, features stilled into an uncharacteristic solemnity. Scott, forever composed, the ruby visor resting over eyes that would not open. And Charles Xavier, suspended in unnatural sleep, his expression caught somewhere between wisdom and surrender.

“The process is similar to a medically induced coma,” Dr. Reyes explained as they maneuvered Angela into the open pod. “Brain activity drops to almost nothing. When we wake them, they shouldn’t remember this. They’ll be groggy and disoriented, like waking from a long sleep but they should still be themselves.” She adjusted a setting with steady hands. “Our working plan is to administer antiviral therapy before revival, so their immune systems are ready to fight whatever remnants of the virus remain.”

Once Angela was settled gently inside, Cecilia pressed a sequence of buttons along the pod’s side. With a soft pneumatic sigh, the glass canopy lowered and sealed. Cold vapor curled across the surface as frost began to bloom along the edges. On the monitor, Angela’s vitals slowed, each beat stretching farther apart until they leveled into the quiet rhythm of engineered stillness.

There was something unexpectedly peaceful about it.

She had been fighting for every breath, her body ravaged and exhausted. Now she truly rested in a way the virus had denied her.

“Take your time,” Dr. Reyes said, resting a hand briefly on Drew’s shoulder in her typical clinical sincerity. “When you’re ready to get back to work, you know where to find me.”

When they turned, Jean and Jennifer were waiting in the doorway.

Perched on Jean’s shoulder was a bird the size of a crow, its form wrought from unearthly fire. The flames did not burn the fabric of her clothes, nor the air around it, the creature simply existed both cosmic and alive. The unearthly bird was new for Jean, then again so was the grief etched across the Headmistress’s face. It clung to her, heavy and visible, as though sorrow itself had taken shape and chosen to roost beside her.

“Jennifer can show you to your room,” Jean said softly. The strain in her voice was carefully contained but unmistakable. “Please remember to eat and rest. We can’t have you back in the hospital again.” Her eyes flicked toward the stasis pods before returning to him. “You may visit Angela whenever you like. Xavier’s resources are yours. I’m staying in the Professor’s quarters and office if you need me.” She hesitated, the words costing her. “I’m sorry, Drew. But we’ll keep searching for a cure… together.”

Drew nodded at Jean and glanced at Jennifer, then to the still form of Angela in the stasis pod. He took a deep breath as he finally turned back to Jean and Jennifer. "I just...I need a couple of minutes alone with my sister." He turned back to Angela’s stasis pod.

They left the stasis room as one, the doors sliding shut behind them with a muted whisper. Tragedy had drawn them back to Xavier’s, but even in the shadow of loss, there was something steady beneath it all, like an old foundation of loyalty and love. They walked the hall not just as survivors of disaster, but as a family gathering its strength for the fight ahead.

 

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