Ben Canaan Compound, Israel, 1956

Erik? Erik, can you hear me?

Charles had gotten through to him before -- he KNEW he had -- but Erik's mind was farther away now. No matter. He'd just keep calling. Keep looking. Keep trying to go through his jumbled emotions: Was it his anger or Hazim's? His grief or Dr. Avidan's? Charles couldn't tell, and the confusion added to his misery. Just when he would gain a few moments of equilibrium, another wave of emotion would hit him; he was off-balance, overwhelmed. And the terrible weight of Marcellina's final despair still hung over him, gray and shroud-like.

Charles stayed in Marcellina's room until two of the guards came to take her out. Ben David didn't come.

When they carried her away (wrapped up in a rubber bag), Charles left Dr. Avidan to her weeping and went into the hallway. Dully, he realized Erik was no longer with him; his bitter fury was still so close that Charles had somehow believed that Erik was still standing at his side. He tried to summon the energy he'd used earlier, when he first realized the truth and kicked down her door -- when he'd managed, finally, to speak to Erik with his mind.

The energy was gone, sapped from him. And yet, having once gone through that doorway, he could find it once more: Erik?

Erik didn't respond in words, but his pain coalesced within Charles' mind, drawing him as surely as though Charles had been made of metal. He began to hurry down the hallway; he did not know whether he wanted to comfort Erik or be comforted by him. All Charles knew was that he had to find him.

Yet as he turned one corner, he stopped. There, balled up in one corner, her hands clamped over her mouth, was Shriek.

Forcing himself to be patient, Charles knelt by her side. "Shriek? Are you all right?"

She shook her head slowly from side to side. Her hands were pressed so tightly over her lips that her knuckles were white, and Charles understood the many layers of her fear.

"Shriek, I want you to try something. Right now, you can't scream with your voice. But do you think -- do you understand what I mean when I say, 'scream with your mind'?" So vague. He tried again. "Imagine yourself screaming. Take the deep breath and tighten your muscles and do everything else you would do. But scream with your mind instead."

Though she made no movement of any kind, Charles realized that she understood, and felt the one thing that held her back. He steadied himself and said, "I'll hear you."

Slowly, she inhaled, and then --

-- cold wind ripping through him, ripping him to shreds, no skin no hair no hands no eyes --

-- cold metal beneath, a table, leather straps above with steel buckles and locks, push and push and push and never breaking free --

-- cold room, a tank, breath turning to frost, body shaking, teeth chipping from the chattering and men outside the window who took notes --

-- cold mud, dragging down shoes, chilling feet down to the bone --

-- cold steel, cold locks, cold doors, cold keys, a world of steel and pain and nothing but cold --

Charles gasped in a breath of air -- blessedly warm desert air -- as Shriek's mental scream trailed away. For a moment he couldn't do anything but stare at her and think, numbly, that he knew how it must feel to turn to stone.

Shriek let her hands fall from her face. She whispered, "Marcellina's dead."

"I'm sorry, Shriek. She is."

In that entire shocking night, nothing stunned Charles so much as what Shriek asked next: "Did Erik kill her?"

"What? No! No, of course not. Why would you even -- no, he didn't." Charles realized only as he continued talking that the real answer wasn't much more comforting. "Marcellina did it herself. She -- I suppose you'd have to say she was sad." He didn't know how much more Shriek was capable of understanding.

"Everyone's upset."

"Yes, they are. We all are, and I expect we will be for some time." Charles considered Ben David's arrogance, Dr. Avidan's grief and Hazim's temper. He thought about the soldiers downstairs, and then he shook his head. "Listen to me. For a little while -- until everyone's not upset anymore -- try to stay out of the way. Keep your distance from people as much as you can. Just until things calm down. If you're frightened and you want to talk to someone, come find me."

"And you'll keep me safe," she said simply.

He felt another wave of sadness wash over him as he patted her hair. "I'll try. I promise you, I'll try."

Shriek got up without another word and hurried down the corridor; Charles was free at last to go into Erik's room.

Erik was sitting on his bed, still dressed. The light from the small lamp beside his bed outlined his face, created deep shadows. He had not been crying; Charles almost wished he had been. He'd have known what to do then, though he could not touch a despair so deep and acute. "Erik," he said. "I'm so sorry."

"She didn't have to die," Erik said. "Like a test rat in a cage. If I'd made her believe in what she was -- convinced her of what she could do -- she wouldn't have just ended up turning her powers on herself."

"It's not your fault," Charles said.

"No, it's that bastard Ben-David's fault. But all the same -- I might have changed it, and I didn't. I decided that I couldn't change her mind, and so I never tried. The self-fulfilling prophecy." Erik ran one hand through his wild, dark hair. "I could have done something."

"I'm the one who could see inside her heart," Charles said. "I knew her sorrow. I felt it. And I still didn't understand what she was going to do."

That drew Erik's attention in a way nothing else had. He reached out and took Charles' hand in his own. "You did your best for her, more than any of the rest of us. I won't have Ben-David destroying you from within too."

Charles turned Erik's hand over in his own. Everything else about this night seemed so surreal, so unfathomable, but Erik's hand was so comfortingly real. He didn't let go. Erik didn't pull away.

"Earlier tonight," Erik said. "I heard you. I heard you inside my mind."

Erik smiled at little as he said it. At any other time, their breakthrough would have been cause for celebration. But now, that link between their minds --

And then he could think of nothing but Shriek's mental scream, the coldness of it, and what she had said --

"Charles? Are you all right?" Erik's hand tightened around his own.

Best to go ahead and ask. "I ran into Shriek in the hall. She knew what had happened to Marcellina. And she -- Erik, she had the strangest idea --"

"Shriek thought I did it," Erik said flatly. Then his face twisted in something too terrible for tears, and he pulled his hand away. "You want to know why she thought that? You must have known for years how she fears me."

Charles felt even worse than he had before. "I suspected that she associated you with -- you don't have to explain anything to me."

"She's right to be afraid of me," Erik said. "I've killed people. I killed them right in front of her."

The words hung in the room, still and heavy. Charles looked down at Erik -- proud, strong Erik -- and saw him hunched over, burdened with the weight he carried. When Charles spoke again, he knew his voice sounded strange. "During the war?" Erik nodded. "Were you -- were you trying to escape?"

Horribly, Erik began to laugh, a broken, wretched sound. "How noble that would be. How brave and pure. If I had tried to escape from Auschwitz, and to take little helpless Albinka with me. But I didn't, Charles. I never tried to escape. Though I could have bent the barbed wire to tinsel, and sent every bullet flying backwards through the guns to kill the shooters, I never tried."

"You don't have that kind of control -- you wouldn't have had anything even close back then."

"Nor did I try to gain it." Erik was twisting his hands together, looking at the floor or the ceiling, anywhere but at Charles. "I was scared to. I was scared of what I would become."

Charles could think of nothing helpful to do, nothing good to say. Some of what he had done for Shriek before came to him, so he sat carefully on the floor in front of Erik and spoke the only words he had: "Tell me."

Erik finally met his eyes, and Charles could not look away.

"My powers manifested the day they brought me to Auschwitz. When they separated me from my parents -- when they sent them to be gassed -- I knew what was happening. We'd all heard the rumors by then. I tried to get to them. Tried to go right through the gate, and tore it to pieces before they finally knocked me out. By then they knew I wasn't ordinary. They knew Dr. Mengele would want to see me.

"To my surprise, Dr. Mengele had others like me. Other mutants, though he had no such name to call us. Some of the Nazis thought we were manifestations of some Jewish magic, some occult power that might be wielded against them. So they killed the few adults they found, kept the children. Most of them didn't live long -- the experiments he did on us weren't any less twisted than those on the others, the ones you've read about. More, perhaps, because he wanted to see how we were different from normal children. Normal Jewish children, I mean. But two of us survived. Albinka and I."

Erik's hands were still now. The entire room was so utterly still.

"Anytime we would try to use our powers against one of the guards, they'd kill someone. They made sure we saw it, too. Sometimes they brought them right into the lab. There would be blood from the beatings on the floor and the walls and our faces, before it was all done. After the first few times, we never tried again. Never, Charles. In the middle of that hell, I didn't dare let one life to be lost, even to save hundreds or thousands of others. I had no sense of perspective. I only saw pain and knew that I had caused it."

"You didn't --"

"Don't. Don't say anything. If you stop me, I shall never say it, and it has to be said." Erik took a deep breath and continued. "It was just Albinka and I, locked up in there, night and day. Sometimes they left us alone. Especially at night. We'd be strapped down. And she'd beg me -- Charles, she begged and begged and begged me to use my power to open the door. Or at least just to loosen the straps -- I could have used the metal buckles and loosened them. Shown her that much mercy. But I didn't, because I was too scared."

Charles could feel the fear now -- it was coalescing, becoming distinct from the misery that surrounded them in the Ben Canaan compound. He knew the pain of the straps, the cold of the room, and young Erik's depthless terror. He closed his eyes, letting the sensations take him, as Erik continued to speak.

"After a time, they wanted to know if our wicked Jewish magic could kill. They thought it only reasonable that other Jews should suffer the agonies no doubt intended for the soldiers of the Fatherland. They would bring them in -- women, mostly, I don't know why women, but -- they would bring them in to me, and hold iron bars in front of their necks, or their chests, right above the heart. The soldiers told me -- 'Mach's noch fester. Mach's noch fester.' And I would wrap it around their throats until they strangled. Or collapse their chests until they drowned in their own blood. I wasn't very skilled then, Charles. It -- it took me a long time, sometimes."

Charles controlled his terrible urge to be sick, for Erik's sake, and somehow managed to look again into Erik's eyes.

"And Albinka would cry. I would listen to her crying -- it was easier than listening to those poor wretched women plead for their lives, or struggle for their last breaths. You see, they only tried to make Albinka kill someone once, and the result of that was a Nazi with a stone hand. Then they never tried with her again -- thought she couldn't control it well enough, that it wasn't worth the risk. It was true, so far as it went. So she thought it was that easy. Stopping them. She never understood why I didn't. And I didn't understand either. I still don't. I never will."

Erik fell silent again, his revelation ended. They were quiet together for a few moments, until Charles' tears had subsided and they were both breathing more normally. Then Erik said, "So. Now you know what I am."

"How could you --" His voice cracked at the wrong moment, and Charles had to feel the lash of renewed pain from Erik for the instant before he could speak again. "How could you think I'd ever -- ever -- blame you for that?"

"Can't you?" Erik was the one near tears now. "I blame myself."

"You mustn't. Erik, please. Those men -- they did that to you."

"Because I let them. Because I was afraid."

"You were afraid because you were a little boy in horrible danger and pain. Of course you were afraid. Anyone would have been." Charles would use every power in his possession to make Erik stop blaming himself if he had to, but he prayed that he would be able to get through to him some other way. Using his powers on Erik felt too much like forcing him -- which echoed too strongly what he'd just heard about the horrors Erik had endured.

Erik shook his head. "All you're really telling me is that anyone can be a savage murderer, as long as enough fear is involved."

"That's not who you are," Charles said.

"You can say that? After what I've just told you?" Erik was trying to be skeptical, to strike out at Charles through words. But Charles felt his dawning comprehension, his inexpressible relief at being understood, even now. "How -- how can you say that?"

"Because I know you," Charles said. "I KNOW you." Then -- he didn't plan it an instant ahead of time, but at that moment he couldn't have done anything else -- he took Erik into his arms and embraced him tightly.

Erik returned the hug, tentatively at first, then with a kind of desperate release. His tear-damp face was against Charles' neck. Charles ran his hands through that wild, dark hair, unable to believe he'd gone two years without doing so. As he rose to sit beside Erik on the bed, he could hear himself whispering vague shushing noises, the kinds of murmurs people instinctively make for babies, and didn't know when or how he'd begun.

His voice muffled, his breath warm against Charles' throat, Erik whispered, "You don't really know everything, Charles. Not even now. You don't know what's inside me, or you wouldn't -- hold me -- like this."

After all Charles had seen and heard that day, the idea that this -- what Erik was now speaking of -- could repel him seemed almost laughable. "I know what's inside you," he said. Then he admitted it for the first time, both to Erik and to himself. "I know because it's inside me, too."

And Charles kissed him.

Erik embraced him even more tightly as they kept on kissing, getting lost in the physical sensation of it for as long as they could. Finally, their mouths parted, and Erik slumped against Charles' chest. Charles kept stroking Erik's hair, making the shushing noises, trying to ignore the thumping of his heart. They'd figure out what to do about the -- well, the kissing -- some other day. Tonight, all that mattered was being near one another, bringing some sense of peace to Erik's troubled soul.

A rifle shot cracked in the night. Charles and Erik stared at each other. Then they heard another shot, then another. For a moment the building shook, as if its very foundation were loose.

"What's going on?" Erik said. "What do you think --"

Charles felt his body go cold. "It's Hazim."

Caliburn Falls, British Columbia, Canada, 2006

Rogue never had made it as far as Alaska, and she'd always meant to. And after reading so many of Logan's books, Japan sounded more inviting than ever.

Would Logan like to go to Japan? she wondered one day, as they sat in the town grocery/saloon, eating burgers and drinking beer and watching TV with the rapt attention only non-TV-owners can give it. Every ad seemed like a little miracle of color and sound. "Have you ever been to Tokyo?" she said, not taking her eyes away from the New Orleans Saints, who were playing surprisingly well, which was to say, well at all.

"Years ago," Logan said. "Didn't go so great."

There was a story behind that, she was sure. Rogue resolved to get it from him later. For the meantime, she said, "It's supposed to be pretty stable there. They've stayed pretty much out of the mutant thing. For now, so far."

"What the -- They're going to try and run it? On a third down?" Logan swore at the Saints' coach, then stuffed a couple of fries in his mouth. "Shit. The Chiefs deserve to win this one. The Saints have lost their goddamned minds."

Men swearing about football reminded Rogue pleasantly of home, so she just smiled at him while she painted her own fries with ketchup. She could ask him to go to Japan, or just go by herself. She could stay right where she was, living by Logan's side, just like she'd always dreamed.

Rogue wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about what was going on. She'd left Professor X and the others, and she still didn't know whether that was the smartest or dumbest move she'd ever made. She was living in a shack with Logan, which was kind of like her best fantasies, only severely downscaled in terms of luxury. And she was stuck back with her old powers, the ones that locked her inside her own skin, forever and ever.

No, she had no idea how she was supposed to feel. She only knew how she actually felt. And when she tried to put words to that, to who she was now, she could only come up with this:

I am a complete and total BAD-ASS.

She'd had sex with Logan. The guy she'd been dreaming about since she was 17 years old -- she'd just walked into his life, asked him to go to bed with her, and he had. Not just to make her happy either; Rogue could still remember the way he'd moved, the sounds he'd made, the way his face had looked when he came. She'd made Logan want her, and in return he'd given her everything she'd always thought she would be denied.

Only for one night, she thought sometimes. One night is not enough. But one night was more than she'd ever thought she would have, and it had been great -- better than great. She could live off that memory for a long time. Rogue felt as though she'd somehow tricked the deities that defied her. Stacked the deck. Loaded the dice. She'd cheated fate, and she got what she wanted, and everything else she felt was swaddled in a thick, enveloping pride.

Rogue glanced sideways at him: flannel shirt, jeans, beat-up bomber jacket. Nothing fancy. But he was still the best-looking guy in the room; the other women glanced at him as they walked by. Back at the school, she had been far from the only girl who'd nursed a crush. Those dog tags had been the subject of a lot of envy, and she'd worn them like a badge. As much as she'd liked Bobby, he was still a boy. Logan was a man, and it still seemed unbelievable that she'd taken him to bed.

Funny -- it felt a little bit like the first time she'd been able to fix the car. Or like using her powers. Only about nine zillion times better.

Someday, and someday soon, Rogue realized she'd have to stop and take stock of the situation. She liked living with Logan -- liked it more than she ever would have thought possible, except in her earliest, most crushed-out phase. They had fun together when they felt like it, went their own ways when they didn't. Bobby had been, well, clingy sometimes. Rogue hated clingy. Logan was as far from clingy as you could get. But he was so quiet, so guarded; she couldn't tell if he was glad she was there or desperately wishing she'd leave. And regardless of what he wanted, she wasn't sure what she needed to do next. Still, she quailed from the idea of going back to Cuba. But did that mean her days of battling Magneto were over? Was she really going to let him get away with the stuff he was getting away with?

No, she didn't know what she was going to do next, but she felt sure of her journey, if not her destination. Despite her uncertainty, for the first time in years -- maybe for the first time since she'd kissed David Barksdale in Meridian -- Rogue felt powerful. Hopeful. Free.

"Everybody get their hands in the air!" The shout rang through the bar, riding over the ball game and the chatter. Rogue whirled around to see the troops coming in, guns in hand.

Oh, God, she thought. Mutant search. That's it. We're dead.

The soldier who had spoken swaggered forward. "No sudden moves. Not from anybody. You know what we're here to do, so just let us do it, and nobody gets hurt."

Logan shifted a little on his bar stool, and Rogue could almost hear his thoughts. One or two of the soldiers, he could have taken out, guns and all. But there were ten of them, and Logan was with her in the corner, and they were just screwed.

Rogue turned to face him, trying to say with her eyes what she couldn't speak aloud. Thank you, she thought. Thank you for making the last couple weeks of my life the best ones I've had in years. Maybe ever. Crappy cabin and disgusting bathroom and all. I wouldn't trade it for anything. The truth of that hit her hard, and she tried to blink back tears.

For his part, Logan said nothing, and she didn't expect him to understand any of it. But he reached over and took one of her raised hands in his; his skin was warm, even through her glove. She wrapped her fingers around his gratefully.

Okay, she thought, steeling herself. Okay. Best-case scenario, we go to a detention camp, and what if we don't go to the same one? What if I never see Logan again? Or anybody else I've ever known? Am I ever going to see the sky again? Rogue tried to remember the last time she'd looked up at the stars, really looked at them, then realized it was the first time she'd flown. She had hated flying, had hated the sky, and she felt like a fool.

The soldiers' leader (a captain? A sergeant? Rogue didn't understand stripes) walked slowly through the rows of people, all of whom were shaking with terror. Of the mutants or the soldiers? Could go either way, Rogue figured. The leader said, "I can see why people would try to hide here. Nice, friendly little backwoods place like this. Everybody knows his neighbor. But how well do you know him? How well, really? Sometimes, one little thing changes, and then you realize you didn't know your neighbor at all."

It's me, she thought in despair. The white hair. Somebody recognized it. Logan had himself hidden, and nobody suspected, and then I showed up and ruined it for him. I got myself killed, and I'm getting him killed too. Oh, God. I'd rather be dead than live knowing that I did this to him. Just let them shoot. Go ahead and shoot, and get it over with.

Rogue met Logan's eyes again. He wasn't afraid, not even now. That comforted her in some way she couldn't begin to explain. She tightened her hand around his, felt his fingers return the pressure.

The soldiers' leader said, "Yeah, you never know. Sometimes it's the last -- the very last -- person you'd ever suspect." He grabbed the man behind the counter, the guy with gray hair who'd served up their burgers. "Okay, mutant. Time to go."

"No! No! You've got it all wrong!" The man waved his hands weakly, but nobody believed him -- not even Rogue. People began screaming and pushing themselves away as the man pleaded, "Who told you this? They're lying, I tell you!"

The TV blared: "First down, Saints!" Tinny electronic cheers echoed through the hushed bar.

"What?" The soldiers' leader said. "You're gonna tell me that you're just like any other guy? You're going to tell me you really have a problem with this?" Lightning-fast, the soldier slashed at the man's outstretched hand with a knife. In an instant, the man's hand split in two, forking apart to avoid the blade, then instantly resealing when it was pulled back. Rogue gasped, but her reaction was only one of the dozens of shrieks and wails and curses in the bar.

The man -- the mutant -- stared at his offending hand. His voice shaking he said, "I -- I can explain."

"You'll have your chance underground, buddy." The leader nodded to his troops, who all cocked their guns. "Don't think you can dodge all them bullets. Can you? So it looks like you're coming with us."

The gray-haired mutant made no protest as they handcuffed him and led him out. Rogue wanted to say something, do something, even look at him in some way that might show that she cared -- but she didn't dare. Even she and Logan together couldn't fight ten men with machine guns, not without endangering the humans around them; anything she did could only get them dragged off with the poor old man.

He must be 60, Rogue thought. All those years, he lived alone, never letting on. But he got found out anyway.

Slowly, people began to turn their attention back to the game. Nobody cared anymore, of course, but it was easier than dealing with what had just happened. Logan's powers of denial were at their limit, though; he turned to her and said, "Let's go."

They said nothing as they went to the truck and began driving home. The trees were all laced with last night's snowfall and this morning's ice; the truck's headlights revealed branches and needles outlined in silver, the only illumination in a dark and forbidding world.

At last, when they were on the road to their house, Logan swore again and pulled the truck over. "Dammit," he said. "Goddammit." He pulled the key out of the ignition and leaned his forehead onto the steering wheel.

"We couldn't have saved him," she whispered.

"I know," Logan said. "But we shouldn't have had to." His face was tired and grim, and for the first time in a long time, she remembered how much older than her he was. "I thought I could get away from it. That I wouldn't have to see it happen. I was fooling myself. I'm such a goddamned idiot."

Rogue said, "They'll be everywhere, eventually. It's all going to be Magneto or the people who want to kill mutants. I guess -- I guess there's no stopping it." She'd never said that out loud before. "No getting away."

Logan carefully, deliberately slid his arms around her and folded her against his chest. His embrace felt better at that moment than it ever had before -- even when they'd been in bed together. Rogue held him tight, listening to his heart thump against her ear. They could touch without touching. Be together without being together. It wasn't enough, and it was more than enough.

After a long while, she whispered, "My staying here -- it makes it that much more likely one of us will get caught. Which means both of us will get caught."

"Stay," Logan said. "I want you to stay."

For the first time, she realized that he understood just as well as she did. They would be caught. It was inevitable. So it didn't matter what they did, besides making the most of this last time they had.

Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin, Germany

"No, no, NO." Magneto pushed away his lover. Charles Xavier, aged 19, stared up at him guilelessly, unable to imagine what the trouble could be. Magneto sighed, exasperated. "You never get his hair right. It was curlier than that."

"Next time I'll have curls down to my waist. And be blonde. That will teach you." The young Charles Xavier frowned, then melted and morphed into her natural shape -- very feminine, very blue. Mystique continued, "I do my best, you know. You don't have any pictures. Did you burn them all? Anyway, you don't have to be such a bastard about it."

"I don't know why I let you talk me into this." Magneto rose with what little dignity he could still muster and pulled on his dressing gown. Once or twice a year, Mystique tried this. The younger he urged her to make Xavier, the worse it was. Why couldn't he let the image of that boy go?

"Because you still think that nothing in this world will be denied you." Mystique stretched languorously before pulling her laptop from a bedside table. "Someday I'll get it right. Can't wait to see what you do then."

"From the looks of it, that will yet be a while." He walked across the royal bedroom to the broad oak table against one wall. The plans for France were spread out it; holographic representations and computer graphics had their place, but there was something satisfying about having it on paper. Magneto let his fingers trace the coast of Normandy, then down to lands he now controlled. The Pyrenees. The Adriatic.

He stopped in the Mediterranean, remembering a boat trip long ago, with sunlight laughing on the waves.

"Hmm," Mystique said, peering at her keyboard. "I've been forwarded something interesting. An intelligence report you should look at. It sounds -- too farfetched to be true."

"Why then do you inflict it upon me?" Magneto said, wishing for a moment to be left alone with memory.

"It's from Hamas," she replied. "They're one of the few we had trouble getting through to, so their cooperation is either a good sign --"

"--or they think to lure us into a trap," Magneto finished. He held out his hand, gesturing for the laptop. Memories could wait, he told himself, before he began reading the report. But after she handed the computer to him and he began, he knew they couldn't wait any longer.

Mystique -- surprisingly, as she could usually sense shifts in people's moods almost as quickly as in her own body -- spoke matter-of-factly. "It doesn't make any sense for Xavier's team to relocate to Israel. It's less secure, the government's not willing to help them and if all our other intelligence is true, they'd just started making headway with --"

"It's true," Magneto said, cutting her off.

She opened her mouth to ask him how he knew, then shut it again, as he'd expected she would. Mystique hated admitting she didn't know something. Instead, she pursed her lips and shrugged. "His mistake, then."

"Ours, if we ignore it." Magneto gave the laptop back to her and ran one thumb under the words on the screen that had sliced through his complacency. "Do you really not recognize this name at all?"

"Dr. Yeshara Avidan," Mystique read. Then her face furrowed in a frown. "Wait -- that was the name on the research papers you gave us a few years ago. The one who had figured out how to induce mutations in human beings? The one whose theories we used for the machine that changed Senator Kelley?"

"She knew the theory," Magneto said. "If she'd had the technology, she would have broken through. She was a brilliant woman, Dr. Avidan."

Dr. Avidan. Curly-haired, too young to be a doctor. Erik remembered her speaking to him kindly in a hallway, telling him to patient with Charles. It seemed impossible that she could still be alive -- not from age, because he knew well that she was only a decade or so older than himself. But Dr. Avidan belonged to another time, another world.

Mystique's eyes went wide. "Do you think that's what Xavier's going to do? Try to induce mutations in human beings? Maybe he figured out what we did wrong with Senator Kelley. But what does he want to accomplish? It's too late for --"

"I don't believe that is his plan," Magneto replied. "If it is his plan at all, and not that of Cyclops or another of his lieutenants." Charles was still broken, still destroyed from his own failures. Wasn't he? That was what the young ones had said. Suggested. Left him to conclude. Magneto frowned. "The nine who came over from Xavier's team? I want them watched."

"Again? I thought we were past that."

"There was another layer to Dr. Avidan's work. She wasn't just learning how to induce mutations in humans. She was also trying to discover how to remove mutations from mutants."

"Make us human?" Mystique could not have looked more appalled if Dr. Avidan had sought to turn them all into toads. "He'd do it, too, wouldn't he? To end the war."

"Yes. To end the war." And to give succor to those fools who still couldn't face what they were. Charles had never learned. Never would.

"Okay." His second-in-command sighed, then steadied herself, becoming once again the sharp, well-honed instrument that cut where he slashed. "We secure our territory. And then we move into Israel and stop this Dr. Avidan dead."

Magneto snapped, "Not by our hands. Not if we can help it. Do you understand me?"

Mystique stared at him, frankly bewildered. "Why not?"

Heavily, Magneto said, "I owe her a debt." He was surrounded by memory again. "A very great debt indeed."

Mystique slithered toward him, her body in a posture of supplication. "Erik -- must we do this?"

Her submissiveness shocked him as much as her use of his human name. "Do what?"

"Keep fighting the war this way. Keep trying to take more territory, and more, and more." Mystique was being sincere, something so rare that it took Magneto a few minutes to place it. "It's risky. The humans we win to our side -- they're not stable. They're only out for themselves. One nation, we can hold forever. Three or four, we can hold for a long time. But six? Eight? Ten? All of Europe? We can't do that. We don't have the reach. Not even us."

"I don't like this kind of talk," Magneto said.

For once, Mystique ignored the gathering storm clouds. She continued, "You remember the boy you were. The one who was driven from his home. You think that if you grab all this land, that will make it all right, that nobody will be able to make you run away again. But it doesn't work that way. Not yet."

Magneto had one terrible moment of knowledge that she was right. Then his anger pushed it away, changed it into something hotter, more volatile, more welcome. "You're second-guessing me again, Mystique. I don't appreciate that."

She shivered. He knew well how much she liked that tone of voice. Her arguments vanished in the haze of potential gratification. No self-control, his Mystique. And so much the better. "Have I been bad?" she said, smiling lazily.

"Very bad," Magneto said. He ran one hand up her long, sinuous blue leg. "You'll have to be punished."

Mystique lay back upon the bed. "I'm wearing my own face this time."

"Do whatever you want," he said, throwing his robe open. The rest -- Xavier, Dr. Avidan, all of it -- could wait. For now.

Then the alarms began to blare, shrieking through the hallways. Magneto drew away from the bed. Mystique whispered, "Intruders."

Magneto found himself smiling. "Fools."

Bobby's feet were on the floor before he was even fully awake. His half-dreaming mind placed him at Xavier's school -- during the first attack, when the children were stolen by Stryker -- then during the second, when the school was destroyed for good. It was a shock to realize that the hallways were floored with marble, cold against even his feet, rather than wood; to realize that the screaming children he heard were inside his head.

At the top of the stairwell, amid the gathering crowds of angry mutants, Bobby caught sight of Pyro and yelled, "What the hell is going on?"

Pyro's hair was sticking out crazily from the edges of his helmet; no doubt he'd been sleeping without it again. "Somebody's trying to break in. They're about to find out why that's a real bad idea, right, Iceman?"

The shouting downstairs turned into screaming, and they all began to run toward the noise, toward the fight. Bobby heard glass breaking and pushed down his panic. As he grew more and more awake, his memories of the attacks on Xavier's school grew stronger, not weaker: Rogue, running in her slip, long hair streaking behind her. Piotr with one of the small ones in his arms. Bobby himself, running through a corridor that was already on fire, stumbling over a body -- no, just a torso -- and having to let it lie there, having to keep running.

Not again, Bobby thought. No, not again. With each step, the shell of ice formed thicker around him, encasing him, closing him off, making him as hard as steel and infinitely cold.

They hit the bottom of the staircase at a dead run, Bobby in the very front. He could see the intruders: dressed in black, darting around, guns in hand. One of them brought his weapon up, frame-shutter fast -- nearby, he heard Pyro yell out in pain and turned to see him falling heavily against the wall and sliding to the ground. What little control Bobby'd had left was gone.

Bobby blasted, full-bore, hitting the figure with ice so thick and so hard that it toppled backward almost instantly. The weapon discharged within the ice, shattering it, even as the gun kept firing toward the ceiling -- the figure within the shell couldn't move its arms -- Bobby kept striking, colder than cold. The firing stopped, though it seemed to Bobby that it echoed in his ears over and over again.

"John?" he called, as though his voice would have to carry a long way. "John, are you there?" Pyro didn't answer, just stayed slumped there against the wall. Bobby dropped to his knees and took Pyro's face in his hands, thinking frantically about CPR and mouth-to-mouth, trying to remember anything about the school demonstration besides his and Pyro's sniggering at Cyclops and the medical dummy. To his shock and relief, Pyro managed to smile, though somewhat unevenly. "You sure you're okay?" Bobby said.

"Never better," Pyro said. "Just nicked me. Hitting the wall hurt more." Something in his face changed, as he watched Bobby looking him over, something Bobby couldn't begin to name --

All around them, figures were fighting -- Spiral's bluish arms whirling, Mesmero slamming an attacker's own weapon into its gut. Bobby couldn't focus on any of that, only on Pyro as Bobby helped him to his feet. "You sure you can stand?"

"Yeah, yeah -- see, watch me --"

The black-clad figure appeared out of nowhere, grabbing Pyro from behind. It yelled something in German, then screamed for one instant -- before the scream dissolved into gurgles. Bobby stared, horrified, at the green, clawed hand now protruding through the attacker's chest.

When the attacker fell, Bobby could see Chameleon standing there, flexing her bloody hand. She rolled her gold eyes at them. "Stupid humans," she said. "They thought they'd get us while they were asleep? Don't they EVER learn?"

Pyro swore again and sat down on the stairs, his attention wholly on his own wound. Around them, the battle was dying down. The intruders were dying. The people who had come into this palace, to fight and die in an attempt to free their own.

Carefully, Bobby knelt by the attacker's side -- he was an older man, though his hair was unnaturally blacked, maybe with shoe polish. A similar substances was smeared under his eyes and over his forehead, an amateur's idea of combat paint. The man stared up at Bobby, frightened and angry and confused; his lips moved in a silent curse Bobby did not know, but understood nonetheless. Then the older man's eyes dimmed. Bobby had seen death many times since the war began, but he never stopped being shocked at how clear it was, that moment.

Bobby reached out to close the older man's eyes and realized his body was still encased in ice. He wished he'd shown the dying man a human face. But he'd forgotten. He'd felt like himself, nothing more.

The Brotherhood mutants were laughing now, even cheering. A couple started pushing their way up the stairs, bored with the process and clearly ready to go back to bed. Pyro stared at Bobby. "I could use a little doctoring, here."

"Sure thing," Bobby said, as he moved to help his friend. Somewhere, a few feet behind him, lay the body of the person he'd killed with ice, but he didn't turn around to see it.