“Welcome,” the tour guide announced, “to the northern anchor of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

The big Prevost bus was pulled off to the side of the road, onto a paved overlook that provided a sweeping sea-level panorama of the Bay, with a spectacular view of San Francisco and Alcatraz. Almost a full load, a little shy of fifty tourists, mainland Chinese on holiday, had come to view the sights and visit relatives who’d emigrated generations ago. There was a lot more variety in clothes than the guide remembered from previous tours and a significant improvement both in general style and quality. It was fascinating to him how much like everyone else they’d become, surprisingly indistinguishable in outward affect from their counterparts from Des Moines. Made sense in a way; for all he knew, they made a lot of the clothes heartland America wore—why shouldn’t they wear them as well? Generational splits certainly transcended national and societal boundaries, that much was obvious: the older folks were totally excited, the parents looked harried, torn between caring for their parents and their kids, while the kids, who ran the spectrum from very early teens to barely twenties, clearly wanted to be anywhere but here. On their own, they might have found this fun, but stuck in this crowd, they were determined to proclaim their independence by radiating ennui.

“If you look in this direction,” he said, leading them around the front of the bus for a better look, “you’ll see the foundation anchors for the north tower. The bridge was the brainchild of engineer Joseph Strauss, and executed by architect Irving Morrow—who we have to thank both for the Art Deco design touches and the bridge’s distinctive and unique color—along with engineer Charles Alton Ellis and designer Leon Moissieff. Construction began on the fifth of January, 1933, and the bridge itself was completed in April, 1937, and officially opened a month later, in May. It’s one point seven miles from end to end, with a central span of forty-two hundred feet rising two hundred twenty feet above mean high water. The two towers that support the roadway stand seven hundred forty-six feet high, ninety feet above Golden Gate Strait.

“Couple of more fun facts before we move on,” he continued, preening ever so slightly as a number of cameras turned his way. “Each of those anchorages, the one here in Marin and its counterpart over there at Fort Point, weigh better than sixty thousand tons. The total weight of the bridge—soup to nuts—is just shy of nine hundred thousand tons. Each main cable is about a mile and a third in length, a yard in diameter, and is made up of twenty-seven thousand separate strands of galvanized wire. The total weight of the main cables, the suspender cables, and all the bits that hold them together is nearly twenty-five thousand tons.

“There are a couple of bigger bridges in the world,” he finished proudly, “but none more beautiful. Take your time with pictures but save some film, because I guarantee that the view from the Marin headlands,” he pointed up the road ahead, “will take your breath away. It’s the shot you see in all the movies, but take it from me, the reality is even better!”

 

 

“Are we there yet?” Georgina wailed, delivering a pretty solid kick to the back of the driver’s seat, and for the umpteenth time since they’d hit the road, all of twenty minutes ago, Allan Ryerson wondered why he’d taken the plunge when the salesman had suggested the Mercedes SUV with the integral video-game monitors and DVD player—it seemed to be no help at all with keeping the kids quiet.

He tossed a glance at Blair, who returned a semihelpless shrug and twisted around to remind her daughter yet again not to bother daddy when he was driving, which Allan very much appreciated, as the bridge was a bit more crowded than usual. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Tim huddled in his own seat, taking refuge intermittently between his Playstation controller and his stash of comics, wanting nothing to do with his kid sister’s demands for attention and the parental outburst they were sure to provoke.

Allan felt a bump down by the small of his back and figured for that first fleeting moment that Gee Gee had again ignored her mother, and given him another boot. But it happened again and he thought of potholes and speed bumps or that perhaps he’d drifted over a line of lane-separating cat’s-eyes.

Then, impossibly, terrifyingly, the bridge gave a sudden and violent sideways lurch. His tires squealed as Allan fought for control, instinctively stomping on the brake as he registered taillights flashing scarlet all across his field of vision as every other driver in view did the same. He fishtailed slightly—eyes wide and staring into the rearview mirror, praying the guy on his tail was just as much on the ball—and he registered a deep rumble, like a convoy of fully loaded super dump trucks passing close at hand. He skidded laterally and wailed inside as he heard the telltale crunch of contact with the SUV to his immediate right. The repair cost would likely be obscene, and even if insurance covered the bill his rates would skyrocket, assuming the company didn’t cancel his policy outright. Then he cried out in shock, Gee Gee screamed, and Blair cried his name, as a pickup on the other side collided with enough force to shower him with glass. He was dimly aware of someone in the other car calling out over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but he had more important things to terrify him as they were hit one last time, from behind.

The shaking around them was getting worse, cars bouncing on every side like toys. The constant contact was horrible; metal ground together, and sprung bits of plate and bumper got tangled so that doors torqued out of line and locks were jammed. Something whizzed across his line of sight and slammed into the hood of the SUV next to them with a terrific bang! He stared at it, uncomprehending, for what seemed like a long while, trying to place the origin of an object colored so bright a red. Then, after what had really been only a second or so, his mind made the proper connection and he paled with recognition and craned his neck around for a view of the south support tower they’d been passing when this nightmare began.

It was a rivet.

The shaking was popping the rivets that held the bridge together.

There was only one thing with force enough to do that, and from the way everyone who was able was piling from their cars and racing pell-mell for shore, he wasn’t the only one to come to such an obvious—especially for San Franciscans—conclusion.

Gee Gee gave it voice, with a shrill scream: “Daddy, it’s an earthquake!”

Allan tried his door, but it wouldn’t budge. He looked to Blair, but knew at once that hers was just as jammed. He knew the passenger doors most likely wouldn’t work either. And with the truck jammed up tight against their rear bumper, they wouldn’t be able to get out that way.

No sunroof—an option he’d passed on to chisel down the price. His own window was shattered, but there wasn’t enough clearance for him to wriggle through. The best hope, the only hope, was to smash the windshield.

Everyone around him was making noise: Gee Gee was howling in terror, Blair struggling with her seat belt, twisting herself between the seats, the better to reach her babies, while Tim was nonstop with questions—“What’s happening, Dad? What’re we gonna do, Dad? Are we gonna die, Dad?”

Allan’s breath caught in his throat—What was happening up ahead?

“I…” he started, then worked his lips and tongue, partly to moisten his mouth, partly to remind himself how to speak. He spoke more loudly this time, to make himself heard. “I don’t think it’s an earthquake.”

He craned upwards in his seat as best he could to give himself a better look, then gasped in astonishment as a Hummer up ahead bounced into the air as though shot from a catapult.

It didn’t go far, but it wasn’t alone. Allan found himself reminded of the most memorable scene from The Ten Commandments, the parting of the Red Sea—only in this instance it was cars being shunted aside instead of water. An invisible wedge was moving down the centerline of the roadway from the Marin shore, blasting aside everything in its path and piling vehicles up with the careless abandon of a kid who’s been asked to clear away his toys.

He could see people now, a crowd following the lead of a tall and commanding figure wearing a formal-looking coat that seemed to Allan some kind of uniform. The crown of his head gleamed in the waning light of day, and for a second, watching, Allan was puzzled—until he recognized it as a helmet, and then saw more clearly the kinds of people that trailed behind him. And Allan knew with an icy stab of terror who they were facing.

The man was Magneto, the mutant terrorist described on the news as the Master of Magnetism.

Close behind Magneto were two men and two women. The women, one a tall redhead, the other darker, both wore leather like it was a second skin. One of the men was slight and surprisingly young, and as he approached, Allan could see he was playing with a Zippo lighter, constantly flipping it open and shut, open and shut. The other was a mountain with limbs, so monumentally massive he put even the most powerfully built pro wrestler to shame, the armor he wore making him even more impressive.

Behind them came a crowd of mixed folks, some who looked like average people but others who were outright monsters—a hundred strong.

Around the Ryersons, everyone who could was scrambling from their cars and fleeing for shore. He wanted nothing more than to join them, but try as he might—he pounding with his fists and Blair kicking with her foot—they couldn’t pop the damn windshield. Then, startlingly, provoking more cries from the children, and a yelp from Blair as she found herself tugged off balance, everything inside the vehicle that contained even a scrap of ferrous metal began to rise to the ceiling. Blair’s problem was her belt, composed of interlocking steel links, and she dangled semi-helplessly until Allan was able to release the buckle and help her twist free. She ended up huddled in the back with the kids, and he wished he could join them.

Something heavy hit the roof, the first in a series of impacts that reminded Allan of a prairie hailstorm, until the shattering of glass demonstrated that what was falling here was considerably heavier.

He heard a terrible snap from overhead, and cried a primal and atavistic wordless protest—rage, defiance, denial, despair—as it was followed by a high-pitched and metallic twang and then a tremendous crash, as one of the great suspension cables landed alongside them.

Allan was crying, his family was crying, Blair sat with the kids clutched close, and even though he couldn’t hear a word for all the din that enveloped them, he could see her mouth forming the words of the Lord’s Prayer. She believed they were going to die. He was sure they would, too—but even as the thought occurred to him it was banished by another, just as profound and far stronger, the certainty that they would not. He would not allow it. Hopeless as things seemed, utterly crazy and impossible as it sounded, he would find a way to save his family.

Magneto was very close. Allan could see him with perfect clarity as the man raised his arms high.

It was a grand and theatrical gesture……and it achieved an immediate, equivalent response…

…as the Golden Gate Bridge was torn free from its northern anchors.

Magneto turned to his troops, every inch a conqueror, and all of them save one cheered him accordingly.

The redhead looked bored.

 

 

On the Marin side, the tour group ran for their lives. They didn’t bother with the bus. A piece of concrete from overhead that was twice its size had squashed it flat and the air was filled with debris of every material and size, peppering both water and shore with shrapnel. Some of the group tried to pause to take proper photos, while others simply held their cellphones and digital cameras over their shoulders and shot on the run, hoping something appropriately dramatic would develop that they could use to make their fortune. The guide heard screams he knew would haunt him until the day he died, which he prayed with all his might would not be today, and was thankful he couldn’t see what caused them. He was the last up the hill, making it his business to look after his passengers, assuming the same sense of responsibility assigned to the captain of a ship or an aircraft. The ground was shaking, the air thick with a choking cloud of dust; even if he could find breath enough to speak, it was likely impossible to make himself heard over the sheer volume of noise.

Something caught him behind the legs and slapped him down, hard enough to bloody his nose. He didn’t know what it was, and didn’t care; he was being sucked and dragged downslope. He scrabbled for handholds, broke nails on tarmac, cried out with shock as he was doused in bitterly cold water, and then regretted the impulse as his mouth filled with salt water that made him gag, on the brink of drowning.

Just as suddenly, just as violently, he found himself jerked clear of the flood, his arms draped across the shoulders of his rescuers, while other hands clutched at his belt to keep him upright. Without prompting, he found the means to propel his legs into action and kept pace with the men on either side as they scurried clear of the maelstrom.

They probably climbed a hundred feet without pause, moving at a rapid, relentless clip, before they reached a bend in the road that seemed to be a safe vantage spot.

When the guide’s vision cleared, as he tried to stammer thanks to men who’d hear none of it, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d been felled by a titanic wave caused when the entire north tower of the bridge moved past them and into the bay, as though pivoting on some monumental axis.

In the distance, he saw what seemed to him like minor puffs of smoke from the San Francisco base of the bridge. Close-up, he knew, for those in the Presidio with a grandstand seat—as he and his tourists had over here—there’d be nothing “minor” about it at all. Whatever had wrenched the bridge from its Marin moorings was doing the same across the Golden Gate.

Something flicked across his peripheral vision and he caught sight of a TV news helicopter buzzing the scene, taking advantage of what little light remained to broadcast the event live.

But even as the helicopter approached, it twisted into sudden and unexpected evasive action as one impossible event was eclipsed by another. Freed of all its anchors, from both shores and the foundations of the towers, the Golden Gate Bridge rose silently and majestically into the air, to proceed in stately procession deeper into the bay, leaving in its wake a trail of tumbling cars and collapsing superstructure from either end, like Hansel and Gretel depositing breadcrumbs so they might find their way home.

 

 

Magneto placed one foot on the coaming of the bridge walkway and leaned forward on bent knee, surveying the way ahead with cool confidence and no small amount of pride, like a shipmaster bringing his vessel into harbor.

“Charles always wanted to build bridges,” he commented.

And Jean thought, It’s always about Charles. Every action, every decision, you measure against him, as though you can’t accept the rightness of your cause until you prove him wrong.

As though sensing the tenor of her thoughts, he turned to face her, indicating their fast-approaching destination—the former prison island of Alcatraz.

“Once that cure is gone, nothing can hold you back. Nothing.”

And Jean thought, Silly, foolish man, you talk as if that’s a good thing.

She couldn’t deny, though, how much she was tempted, and she knew the intoxication of the moment, the anticipation of what was to follow, showed in her eyes, on her face.

Aloud, with a smile he should have found dangerous, she said, “I know.”

She closed her eyes, released her power, took a count of the souls on the bridge, and those awaiting them on the island. If Magneto asked for their disposition, she’d tell him. Otherwise, she decided to hold her peace.

She wondered if she should tell him the X-Men had arrived.

 

 

Everyone crowded the flight deck for a view of the bridge as Ororo brought the Blackbird over the bay in a wide, sweeping turn that allowed them all to see what was happening. Further aft, at Hank’s tech station, every screen on the main display revealed a variation of the same event, pulled from all the local TV channels, plus the national and international news networks. Far more than the incidents at the Worthington clinics, this was something the whole world was indeed watching.

“Oh my stars and garters,” Hank murmured, taking refuge in a catchphrase he hadn’t used for years. It went with the costume.

Kitty, sitting in the right seat, announced in response to a flashing telltale on her panel, “We’re being painted, TraCon Doppler radar from Oakland and San Francisco International.” She tapped a control, refining the sweep. “But—I’m getting some Q-band activity, high range, reads as an E2C Hawkeye AWACS off the Teddy Roosevelt, establishing a target portrait for possible air strikes.”

Ororo tapped a code into the center control console, between her and Kitty. “Going to stealth mode.”

From outside, the great black aircraft, already difficult to see in the gathering darkness, shimmered and then vanished, both to the naked eye and to all forms of electronic detection.

“On your toes, people,” Ororo said quietly. “Everyone back to your places and strap in. Henry, Kitty,” she added, “we’re depending on you now. This airspace is likely to get more than a little bit crowded and since we can’t be seen, we can’t be evaded. It’s up to you two to keep us from any collisions.”

“A circumstance most devoutly to be avoided, ma’am,” Hank agreed with mock solemnity, while Kitty, in the midst of tossing him a slightly jaundiced look, simply nodded.

 

 

In its way, M-day, as this would come to be called when it was all over, proved as significant and memorable a start to the twenty-first century for the City by the Bay as its fabled earthquake had been for the twentieth. It was certainly the kind of thing that nobody present ever forgot, especially those “privileged” enough to actually watch it unfold firsthand.

It had been just a normal Friday afternoon, with everyone going about their average and altogether ordinary pursuits, closing out the workweek, preparing for the weekend. Most folks downtown weren’t even aware of anything amiss, at first; Magneto’s seizure of the bridge occurred so fast, and the action itself was so incredibly unbelievable, that even with a helicopter on the scene, broadcasting live, it still took a little bit of time for the word to spread, and for it to be taken seriously.

Imagine the moment, riding the cable car up and over the crest of Russian Hill, thinking about what to do for dinner, bills to pay, aching back, walking the dog, watching cable, gazing out at the familiar sight of Alcatraz—the mind perhaps not quite registering what the eyes behold, the sight of this magnificent feat of engineering, one of the marvels of human history, gliding effortlessly across the waves.

In that, appearances truly were deceiving, because for Magneto the traverse was proving anything but effortless. Lifting this mass of better than a half million tons was but the first challenge, and moving it was nothing compared to the necessity of keeping the entire structure together.

Jean watched impassively, gauging the strain he was placing on his body, impressed by his determination. This would have been no small feat for him in his prime, and yet Magneto had first manifested his power in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, better than sixty years before.

She shrugged inside, tempted to let him succeed or falter on his own; if the world was truly a place defined by Darwin’s dictum of survival of the fittest, shouldn’t those same rules apply to him as to the sapien humanity he desired to supplant? But even as she acknowledged that consideration she found herself establishing a link between the two of them, on a level so slight he couldn’t possibly be aware of it, but which allowed her to share her own energies with him, granting him a sufficient reservoir of strength to complete his task.

The bridge passed Fort Mason, depositing as it did so a few more stray cars from the end of the roadway, a line of near misses across Aquatic Park, leading to a couple of direct hits smack into the belly of a Scarab cigarette boat moored at Hyde Street Pier, along with the working trawler tied up just beyond it, and lastly some dot-com zillionaire’s Lamborghini doing a swan dive right through the roof of a waterfront restaurant at the Cannery, to finish out its days as the centerpiece of the bar.

By this point, people down along the shore had gotten the message and were clearing the area as quickly as they could, especially as it became increasingly obvious that the bridge was about to make a landing.

The sound it made, and the effect it had on the city when Magneto brought it to rest, reminded many of the last great earthquake. The noise struck like a physical blow and while the ground trembled only for a moment, the shock wave was sufficient to break a fair share of windows and, far more annoyingly, trigger hundreds if not thousands of car alarms along the entire breadth of downtown.

Once the bridge had settled into place, with the tower a ways offshore and what remained of the roadway extending far enough to flatten a line of waterfront structures, people regained enough confidence to gather and watch what happened next as the other tower was brought into line with Alcatraz, and then deposited.

The bottom depths there weren’t anywhere near consistent with those at the mouth of the bay itself, so the bridge ended up canted at a dramatic and awkward angle, tilting downward from city to island, with one end of the roadway suspended at a decent height above the shoreline while the other wasn’t all that much higher than the water itself.

Magneto hadn’t really cared much about the people underneath the bridge as he maneuvered it into place. He had no actual intent of killing anyone. He just didn’t have the energy to spare and besides, they were only sapiens. They were functionally irrelevant to the future he was trying to bring about, and the sooner they were shuffled off the evolutionary stage the more merciful it would be for them. As for the troops assigned to the island—this was the risk, and price, that came with the uniform.

The journey concluded a bit more abruptly than Magneto would have preferred. He was a man of sublime precision, as much as Xavier, and it irked him to miscalculate the final descent so that the bridge crashed to rest with a jolt severe enough to knock everyone standing off their feet. Only he and Jean remained upright.

He shook off the hand she’d used to steady him and, as though to prove his might to all present, immediately levitated above the crowd, giving them all a grandstand view as he hovered to the forefront of the bridge and used his powers to partially collapse that end of the roadway, combining it with a gathering of debris from the crushed barracks to form an easily negotiable ramp from bridge to island. Beyond, at the highest point, rose the cellblocks.

 

 

In the White House Situation Room, Bolivar Trask was the first to take notice of what was happening. Only minutes had passed from Magneto’s initial incursion onto the bridge, and the news was still making its way up the government information tree. What caught Trask’s eye was a hard to watch visual on one of the TV monitors tuned to Fox News, what caught his ear was an anchor reduced to stammering incredulity.

He wondered as he spoke if his own voice sounded the same.

“Mr. President,” he said quietly, in that unimaginably matter-of-fact voice that one calls upon to announce the imminent end of the world, “I think you should see this.”

Even as David Cockrum turned to look at the screen, some techs in their cubbyholes had worked magic of their own, projecting network news feeds on subordinate screens while saving the main display for a Keyhole KH-13 surveillance satellite-view of the scene from orbit, enhancing the image to take into account the fact that it was almost nighttime.

There was a gap across Golden Gate Strait, as glaring as the suddenly toothless space in a hockey player’s mouth after a close encounter with a puck. And there was a landlink connecting the island of Alcatraz with the city on its doorstep.

“My God,” the president said in a whisper.

And then, because that was his job, he called his military advisors to order and started planning how to deal with it.

 

 

Allan Ryerson could barely believe he was still alive. In all the confusion, as the bridge swung across the bay and then crashed spectacularly to rest, the surrounding cars had shifted away enough for him to force open his door. But now that they could escape, he wasn’t sure it was such a great idea.

A couple of car-lengths ahead of him, Magneto descended once more to the roadway. Now that the sun had set, and with the power to the roadway lights severed when the bridge was torn from its moorings, it was dangerously difficult to see. The only illumination came from the city behind them, the ambient radiance cast by its apartments and skyscrapers, which barely lit up the opposite end of the bridge. The way ahead, to Alcatraz, was shrouded in total darkness.

Magneto didn’t seem bothered by this in the slightest. He glowed, just a little, outlined in a pale blue corona like a minor display of Saint Elmo’s fire. Allan yelped as his SUV’s lights came on, along with those of every other car that remained on the bridge. The vehicles had been arranged with purpose, so that their headlights created a more than sufficient pool of illumination that stretched the length of the bridge and extended out onto the island.

Allan couldn’t help staring, awestruck and impressed. Acknowledging his reaction, Magneto inclined his head and allowed Allan one of those practiced, professional smiles favored by British royalty.

Blair was far more practical. She slapped the door lock closed and protectively gathered her children about her.

That actually made Magneto chuckle—although there was a haunted aspect to the shadowed eyes beneath the brow of his helmet that Allan would never forget, and which belied the outward and very real humor of the moment.

 

Magneto’s memory was not as pristine and absolute as a telepath’s, but there were certain instances that could not be excised. Looking at Blair Ryerson reminded him of one, from an age he wished he could forget, when he was huddled in the arms of a woman who wasn’t his mother, yet who was determined to protect him just the same, crammed into the corner of a cattle car trundling through the bleak wilderness of a Polish winter, from one camp of misery to another.

Auschwitz wasn’t up and running as a death camp in those days. They were among the first inmates, the ones who had to help construct the facilities, and that spared them the fate of those who followed, those sent to the gas chambers. They were simply worked to death, under that damnable legend Arbeit Macht Frei—Work Makes Freedom.

“Never again,” Magneto breathed to himself, turning violently from the past—his own and humanity’s—and waving his makeshift army of revolution towards what he was determined to make a bright and shining future.

Jean watched Erik take the lead, more aware of his thoughts and what they meant than he was, and she took a moment to sweep her gaze across the family in their Mercedes GL500. They were confused, they were afraid, they were angry at the wanton assault—and yet, there was no hate.

What to make of that, she wondered, and suggested with another thought that this was no fit place for them. And just to make it easier, she used a little twist of telekinesis to make sure all their car doors opened freely.

The moment Jean passed, Allan Ryerson burst from the driver’s seat, wrenching open the sliding door beside his daughter and gathering Gee Gee into his arms while Blair and Tim tumbled free, Tim still clutching his handful of comics like they were a talisman, and Blair holding on to him just as tightly, for the same reason. Gee Gee started howling. They’d left her stuffed bear, and Allan handed her off to Blair, made a frantic dash back to the car, cursing a blue streak as he tore through the clutter until he found the animal. Then he gathered his family and they fled for their lives.

Jean watched them go. Only when she was positive they were safely on shore did she turn to follow Magneto.

 

 

On the island, frantic radio calls for help went unanswered, as all the emergency frequencies were occluded by sleet storms of impenetrable static. The same applied to video and cellular links, and internal communications were also crashed, as was every computer on the island, from network superservers to handheld PDAs. The lights were still on, but that was more for the convenience of the invading force than any defenders.

In his office, which used to be the warden’s, with a view that overlooked the entire prison, Warren Worthington Jr. and Kavita Rao stood at the window and stared straight down the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge and into the faces of the mutants who’d come to destroy their life’s work.

Deep within the main cell house, on the opposite side of the island, in his room which afforded him his favorite view of the great bridge, young Jimmy—code-named Leech—took one last look at the yawning empty space where it used to be before burying himself in a cocoon of quilts and covers and stuffed animals of his own beneath the bed.

 

Back on the bridge, Magneto led the way, Callisto by his side, flanked in a shallow arrowhead formation by Pyro and Juggernaut on one side, Arclight and Kid Omega on the other.

Jean, as always, was a little bit behind.

Callisto advanced a few steps, taking point, casting her perceptive net across the whole of the island.

“Boy’s in the back,” she announced with satisfaction. “Southwest corner of the big building.” She pointed to the squat, massive structure of the cell house.

“Well then,” Magneto informed them, “this place has long since outlived its purpose. Let’s take it down to the nails.”

He reversed position and raised his hands.

At that signal, the mass of mutants who’d been following surged forward with a great, accompanying cry, a dozen fliers assuming the vanguard, scattering in combat pairs across the rock while twenty more streaked after them across the ground.

Juggernaut began to follow, but Magneto motioned him back.

“In chess,” he said meditatively, “the pawns go first.”

Jean shook her head. Scott wouldn’t have been so dismissive; for him, for Charles, even pawns had value. But they were dead. It was left to Magneto to seize the day, and lay claim to the future.

In a sequence of bounds, a young woman whose mutation made her mostly lizard, with the predatory speed and power of a Komodo dragon, raced through the ruined barracks, up a wall, leapt to a rooftop and from there to the lighthouse—where she took a perch at the top, using eyes that saw as well by night as by day, and a forked tongue even better at finding prey, to scout the way ahead. The eyes saw nothing untoward.

The danger tasted by her tongue came too late.

Even as Komodo raised the alarm, troopers arose from hidden ambush points, and grenadiers on all sides unleashed a volley from shoulder-mounted missile launchers. Football-shaped projectiles, smaller than regulation balls, more akin to the ones given to grade-schoolers, arced through the air, detonating over the roadbed of the bridge where it met the island, filling the air with a cloud of minute flechettes the size of toothpicks.

At first it seemed like a joke, like being attacked by gnats. The darts were so fine they could slip through the weave of an ordinary cotton shirt, though the heavier thickness and construction of a jacket or military-issued cloth could quite easily deflect them. Even when they struck home, they barely stung. Some of the mutants didn’t even realize they’d been hit. But the mutants in the first wave were the target of a score of projectiles from which came uncountable numbers of darts, enough to carpet the roadbed in a veritable lawn of plastic, many exploding upwards as well, to strike any of the fliers overhead.

Everyone froze for a moment, expecting—assuming—the worst.

Komodo plucked one dart from her neck.

“It’s a dud,” she crowed, convulsively sweeping all the others she could reach from her skin, furious with herself for being so spooked when the bombs had been launched. She had been sure they were goners.

“Keep up the attack!” she yelled, and bared her teeth ferociously, deciding it was time to run down some soldiers and scare them just the same as she’d been.

But then—with staggering suddenness—her snarl twisted into a rictus of pain. Komodo wanted to cry out in denial, she wanted to beg for mercy, because she remembered what she’d seen on TV, how it had been with the mutant in Brooklyn, and knew it was the same now with her. A cascade of pain stole away both breath and thought and she collapsed to hands and knees on the observation platform, watching in anguish as her skin rippled like a pond of water with fish fighting over bait right beneath the surface. Her hands lost their webbing, her skin its bright pattern. She screamed, wanting to hurl herself to the rocks below, better to end everything than endure such misery—not simply the agony of transformation, for she knew much worse was to come as her bones reshaped themselves back to their original baseline sapien configuration, but the awful fate of living with the memory of what she’d been, the certain knowledge that those days were gone forever.

She reached for the lowest bar of the railing, pushed with her feet against the wall behind her, but she didn’t move. She had no strength. In every respect, save perhaps for weeping, she was done.

Overhead, some of the fliers who hadn’t been hit made frantic, diving grasps for their fellows who had, reflexively trying to save their falling friends. Some they caught, some they missed, some yanked free of the hands that held them, and the night was broken by the sound of dull, scattered impacts, like sacks of meat striking the earth.

Thirty-five mutants had been hit.

Thirty-five men and women—although some might better be called boys and girls, they were so young—in varying stages of devolution, took their place.

“That,” remarked Magneto from his summit on the bridge, “is why the pawns go first.” He shook his head. “Humans and their guns.”

Ahead and below, mop-up teams emerged into view—a full company of regular army, evenly split between those equipped with the dart weapons and those with riot gear, plus a contingent of medics to deal with any wounded. A Humvee rolled into the courtyard, sporting a water cannon to help the riot troops deal with the prisoners while the combat platoon took up new positions to prepare for the expected second wave.

A lieutenant spoke into his radio, tried again, then tossed the set aside in disgust; electronics were useless. Using hand signals, he passed word to his platoon sergeants and squad leaders to begin their advance. These were tough, experienced professionals, veterans one and all, who’d learned their trade in urban warfare.

Magneto faced Jean.

“Destroy them,” he told her.

She ignored him, concentrating her attention—at least in part—on the view ahead, as the last airborne mutants were picked off by snipers.

“Jean,” Magneto snapped commandingly, in a tone of exceptional harshness, “do as I say!”

She let him see a hint of the fire in her eyes, in her soul.

“You sound like him again.”

He met her gaze without fear.

From the island, the lieutenant’s voice rang out: “Fire!”

A volley of missiles arced towards the bridge.

Magneto snatched up a pair of cars and brought them together well ahead of him to form a barrier, instantly flattening and expanding the metal fabric of the vehicles to form a bowl-shaped shield that enveloped the bombs the instant they detonated, to ensure not a single dart escaped.

Just as quickly, he rounded on Arclight, a tall and rawboned woman who looked as though she’d just stepped out of an ancient Hellenic portrait of some Amazon warrior battling before the walls of Troy.

“Can you control your shock waves,” he demanded, “to target those weapons and destroy them all at once?”

She looked dismissively towards the advancing troops.

“You find the right wavelength,” she replied, “everything breaks.”

“Amen to that,” agreed Juggernaut.

Arclight popped another stick of Beeman’s gum into her mouth to complement the one she was already chewing, then moved a few steps clear of the others to stand alone in the center of the roadway, seemingly intent on making herself the ideal, irresistible target. This was why Magneto had let her experiment with one of the weapons they’d claimed from the transport guards—to find the precise frequency to destroy them.

As soldiers moved warily into view—understanding full well that while Magneto couldn’t affect their weapons, there was nothing to stop him from using the very bridge against them—Arclight clapped her hands together. The air before her shook with the generation of a localized sonic boom, and visible ripples marked the progress of its energy-charged shock waves as they rolled outward towards the oncoming troops, who responded by bringing their guns up to fire.

Before a single dart could be unleashed, the shock wave was on them, shattering each and every plastic pistol and rifle they held. Stunned, the soldiers watched the darts they held clatter uselessly to the ground.

The shock waves continued their advance across the entire island, doing the same to every plastic weapon on the Rock.

As the soldiers on the bridge hastily withdrew to join their fellows on the island, Arclight turned to Juggernaut, hand upheld, and he slapped it in a high five.

 

 

“What about jets?” demanded President Cockrum of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Tanks? There’s an aircraft carrier just offshore. Can’t the Teddy Roosevelt launch an air strike?”

Bolivar Trask shook his head. “Magneto’ll turn them into scrap metal.”

Cockrum pounded his fist on the table in frustration. “Where the hell are our ground troops? We have to be able to do something!”

 

 

With the paramount threat neutralized, Magneto led his troops ashore. Jean remained at her perch on the bridge, head cocked to one side as though listening to a conversation only she could hear.

The X-Men weren’t attempting to mask their thoughts, although they had tech aboard the Blackbird that would allow them to try. Ororo was testing her, Jean knew: would she reveal the X-Men’s approach to Magneto? Ororo wanted to determine now, before the situation escalated, where Jean’s loyalties lay.

Truth be told, Jean still wasn’t sure.

Magneto looked, searching for the source of a sound that shouldn’t be there—the muted roar of a pair of jet engines. Jean allowed herself a rueful smile. Apparently, the sound baffles weren’t quite properly tuned.

“We have visitors,” he warned.

Ororo announced her arrival with lightning, a bolt powerful enough to illuminate the island bright as day, dazzling those who saw it almost to the point of blindness and opening a crater in the ground.

In quick succession came three more, bracketing Magneto’s cadre of mutants on all sides as Ororo streaked into view from a point only Magneto could perceive atop the main building of the prison.

While this was happening, in those precious seconds that their adversaries were reeling from Ororo’s assault, the X-Men took the field.

Hank McCoy leapt impossibly from roof to wall to roof to wall to wall, bouncing effortlessly back and forth as he made his way to a landing in the yard.

Peter Rasputin simply dropped, full metal body, like a solid steel rock—despite the risk that represented against the powers of Magneto—to make a nifty crater of his own.

Logan slid down the face of the building, using his claws to thrust into the masonry wall and slow his descent.

Kitty Pryde came down with Bobby Drake in her arms, phasing the pair of them so that when they reached ground level, they simply disappeared into the earth. A moment or so later, they popped right back up, like corks on a wave. Kitty, with Bobby by her side, clambered to the surface. She was grinning with delight. He looked ready to hurl.

“Don’t ever do that again.”

She rolled her eyes. Some guys were just plain useless.

The lieutenant commanding the force on Alcatraz recognized McCoy, despite his outlandish getup, and couldn’t help staring. Presidential cabinet officers don’t generally take the field of combat, much less clad in formfitting costumes.

“Pull back your troops, Lieutenant,” McCoy told him, with the full authority that only someone used to having the ear of the president can muster. “Let the X-men handle this.”

“Sir,” the lieutenant swallowed, well aware of what McCoy was asking and not altogether sure his men would follow, “this is our post, sir. Six of you, sixty-five of them. Those odds suck! We can help.”

Hank acknowledged the offer, knowing what it meant for sapien troops to volunteer to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with mutants, allowing himself the hopeful thought Perhaps some lasting good might come from this mess.

“You’ve done your part and more, Lieutenant,” he told the young man. “Go. Now. That’s an order.”

Hank had no place in the officer’s chain of command, but such was the natural force of his voice that the lieutenant responded with a crisp salute and did as he was told.

“Mind you,” Hank mused to Logan by his side, “given those odds, he does have a point.”

Logan snorted. Hank considered that for someone like the Wolverine, with his temperament and capabilities, he probably thought of this as a fair fight.

“Get together, people,” Logan told them. “Side by side. Whatever comes, we hold the line. We defend this place, and the people in it, at all costs.”

 

Magneto shook his head.

“Traitors to their own cause.” Forgive me, Charles, he thought. For the cause we both champion, I must destroy these children you hold most dear. “We must finish them,” he told his mutants, and both tone and expression left no doubt as to what he meant by “finish.” As far as he was concerned, this battle would be to the death. He would ask no quarter, nor grant any in return. “Every last one.”

He turned his eyes to Jean, who met his gaze but made no other move.

At Magneto’s signal, his mutants charged. A phalanx of almost forty against a line of five.

 

Logan didn’t wait for them to reach him; for him the best defense was always offense.

Ten came for him, and he took them down without breaking a major sweat, without even popping his claws.

He was quick, but that was just the start of it. His healing factor gave Logan a reaction time that was significantly greater than the average sapien, or the average mutant. He rarely needed to think as he fought, on any conscious level; his body—working through backbrain and instinct and physical memory—did that for him. He reacted to the slightest of cues, on levels more subtle than most hunting dogs, which allowed him to begin his counter at virtually the same time, so it seemed to his adversaries as though he was reading their minds, anticipating their every attack.

For his opponents, it was even worse when bodies actually made contact. The Wolverine’s skeleton was laced with adamantium, and striking him was akin to hitting bars of a metal far stronger than steel. Punching him in the jaw invariably broke a hand and the same applied to any blunt force object like a cudgel. When he struck back, it usually took only a single blow for lights-out.

The claws were a last resort, his ultimate weapon. He finished this initial engagement without needing them, save for a sideways slash through a lighting stanchion to drop it as a temporary barrier between one group of combatants and the next.

McCoy was even faster in speed and reaction time. Unlike Logan, he possessed an unnatural grace that made him seem almost weightless. He seemed utterly at home on any surface, floor or ceiling, vertical or horizontal, stationary or mobile. Even masonry in midcollapse could be turned into a momentary perch or pivot point that allowed McCoy to move from one opponent to the next without the slightest pause, as though the entire engagement had been choreographed. Combined with an acrobatic agility that would make an Olympian gymnast weep, the Beast was nearly untouchable, definitely unbeatable.

Hank caught a punch in one hand, flipped the man head over heels into the two beside him, leapt for a wall, bounced off the head of another mutant, yanked him into the air, grabbed a pole, and used momentum to make a 360-degree pivot in time to slam a foot into the now-falling mutant’s belly before dropping back into the heart of the fray. And all the while, his face was split by a grin of true delight, as he reveled in a true and outrageous physicality that had been straightjacketed for far too long within his bespoke Savile Row suits, strapped down as cruelly as young Warren Worthington’s wings.

Twenty of Magneto’s crew in as many seconds. That was the score when Hank and Logan came together, back-to-back, at skirmish’s end.

“We’ve cut their numbers by a third,” Hank crowed.

“Thought you were a pacifist,” Logan growled, looking for Magneto, crying out in his mind for Jean, thinking, This was way too easy.

“As Churchill said, ‘There must come a time when all men must—’”

The second wave came, as many as the first, but much nastier to look at.

McCoy shrugged. “You get the point,” he said, and leapt back into the fray.

Ororo rose skyward at the same time, eyes flaring white as she gathered winds and power to her, pulling moisture from sea and air to generate a massive cloud formation just off the island’s shore.

Thunder shook the rocky island, and a series of sympathetic, almost electronic twangs, like the plucked strings of an untuned guitar, sounded along the length of the bridge as the boom established a cascade of vibrations across the suspender cables.

In the space of a few heartbeats, Ororo ramped up her storm to better than Category Five on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, and unleashed its full fury into the heart of the attackers, striking them with wind-driven rain that knocked some off their feet and left the rest too dazed and disoriented to cope with the storm surge that followed, a wave that rose to twice their height and swept the battlefield clean of debris and combatants.

Because of the close quarters of the combat, Ororo had to come down low to wield her weather with the necessary precision of force and placement. There were no fliers left among Magneto’s troops, no sign yet of any energy casters like Pyro, so she thought her position fairly secure.

Callisto proved her wrong, demonstrating a strength and agility—and daring—that was on par with McCoy as she scrambled up one of the suspender cables and hurled herself at Storm with headlong abandon.

Ororo sensed the shift in the air that heralded the other woman’s approach, but had to make sure her weather was safely under control, costing her the split second needed to properly respond to Callisto’s attack. The woman had a knife and raked it across Ororo’s body, scoring the leather of her uniform and leaving a trail of fire in its wake that told Ororo she’d drawn blood. The impact followed a moment later, as Callisto wrapped both legs around the taller woman for an anchor, hammering at her with a clenched fist while trying again and again with the knife for more blood. Being up in the air clearly didn’t faze her in the slightest; she must have simply assumed that Storm’s power would keep them aloft until Callisto killed her or she got too distracted to maintain it. Either way, they’d fall, and she knew that Callisto would try to make sure that Storm landed on the bottom.

Ororo refused to fall. She did the reverse and shot the pair of them better than a mile straight up in the blink of an eye. Callisto paid no attention, instead cracking her forehead against Storm’s hard enough to revert the silver eyes back to normal. As they started to tumble, as shock severed Storm’s link with the winds that propelled them aloft, Callisto hammered at her with her fist, to the throat, the head, the face, to whatever part of her she could reach. She’d find her own way to survive, she had no doubt, just so Storm didn’t. She was good at that.

She tried stabbing as well, but Storm caught that hand in hers, using the greater length of her arm to keep it well clear.

Callisto squeezed her thighs together, as hard as she could, and was rewarded by a grunt of pain from her foe.

She grinned—this was her moment—and wrenched her knife hand loose. Callisto didn’t try stabbing, she knew Storm would block her, but instead flipped the blade end over end towards her own waiting left hand. She’d go for a quick grab, and a quicker stab to the other woman’s unprotected flank, end of story. She’d never know what hit her.

But her fingers closed empty……and Callisto felt an awful mix of fire and ice course through her own chest, which suddenly refused to draw in any more air.

Uncomprehending, she dropped her gaze, to behold the hilt of her weapon just below her breast, a perfectly placed thrust to the heart.

She looked back into Ororo’s eyes and saw a hardness in them that put her own inner armor to shame. Storm had plucked the knife from midair—Callisto couldn’t believe she had such speed in her—and delivered the final blow to Callisto instead, without a moment’s hesitation, without a shred of mercy.

She tried to speak, tasted blood, felt her face twist into an unaccustomed expression that was a silent plea for salvation. She’d never in her mutant life considered the possibility of dying. Facing it at last, she was terrified.

As her eyes closed, her head lolled, and her legs lost their grip. The face before her remained unrelenting.

But when Callisto fell, Ororo caught her.

She’d come of age in a war zone, in a place and at a time where girls were generally considered of no consequence, and learned to defend herself long before her mutant powers manifested.

Killing came easy.

That’s why she strove to find a better way.

 

 

Back on Alcatraz, further along the line, Bobby found himself confronted by a behemoth who called himself Phat for reasons that were grossly obvious. The files held in the Mansion mentioned a mutant who worked in a carnival, with a similar physique, who called himself the Blob, but Fred J. Dukes was a matinee idol compared to this guy. Phat’s footsteps set off tremors through the rock and threatened to bring down whatever walls of the barracks still remained upright.

Bobby tried freezing the ground to upend him, but Phat was so massive that the ice merely shattered underfoot.

Fortunately, he was no speed demon, and Bobby had little trouble ducking and dodging his grabs. There wasn’t a whole lot of wiggle room and the fight around them was devolving into a madcap melee. None of the X-Men could afford to devote themselves overlong to a single adversary, for fear of becoming vulnerable to someone else.

Desperation produced inspiration and, instead of a sheet of ice, Bobby chose to form a pillar instead, to enfold the other man. This way, except perhaps by tripping, Phat couldn’t bring his weight effectively to bear. And if he should manage to fall, Bobby was determined to build an ice mountain on top of him, to make sure he wouldn’t soon get up.

Phat still managed two or three more steps before the ice locked him in place. Despite Bobby’s efforts, he was still struggling and Bobby knew that if he eased off, even a little, the other mutant would quickly break free. Made sense, damn it, that a creature of such obscene bulk would have muscles to match; how else could he move, how else could he get his heart and circulatory system to function properly?

Then Colossus was there, landing a single punch to Phat’s jaw that broke the foot-thick encasement of ice as if it were nothing, and still connected with power enough to shatter the mutant’s consciousness before he hit the ground.

The big Russian turned at once to aid Kitty, who really didn’t need it against the woman with the axe. Time and again, the woman slashed her blade through the girl’s ghostly body without doing the slightest harm, while Kitty bobbed and weaved and backpedaled until she came within Peter’s reach.

A single backhand, not even full force, knocked the woman twenty feet and out of the fight.

There were a couple of quick glances from side to side and the briefest exchange of smiles back to Logan, who acknowledged that they were doing well.

At Logan’s signal to the lieutenant, the soldiers moved onto the scene, taking the fallen mutants into custody.

 

Up on the bridge, Pyro glared across the way at Bobby, chomping at the bit to confront his former roommate.

Magneto would have none of it.

“Not yet,” he said to the young man, in a tone that allowed neither argument nor defiance. “Stay by my side.”

Instead, Magneto turned to the Juggernaut.

“Mr. Marko,” he called out. “You have the coordinates from Callisto. The boy we seek is in the main cell house.” He pointed to the very top of the Rock. “Up there. Get inside. Find the boy. Kill him.”

Age didn’t matter, the fact that he was a mutant didn’t matter—no more than it had when he was prepared to sacrifice Rogue years before at Liberty Island. If it was necessary for the cause, that was all that mattered to Magneto.

As for Cain Marko, he really couldn’t care less. He just loved to smash things.

Buildings were fun, people better—and X-Men would be best of all.

He dropped his head, angling his torso forward as best he could so that his conical helmet appeared a bit like a massive cannon shell plowing through the air. The sloping roadway allowed him to build up a decent amount of speed, and he was fairly confident that nothing below would be able to even slow him down, much less bring him to a halt.

Squads of troopers were the first to fall, solid hits that made him feel the same satisfaction as when he threw a strike in bowling, with bodies flying as wildly as tenpins.

A Humvee rolled from cover and deployed its water cannon, which had about as much effect as a kid’s water pistol. Juggernaut struck the vehicle more solidly than any battering ram, shattering it on contact and bouncing all the bits and pieces off the surrounding walls.

 

Logan popped his claws, figuring they might do some good against the onrushing giant—what good was unstoppable momentum if you had no legs left to run with?—but he was at the wrong end of the yard, with too many bodies to fight between him and Juggernaut.

Colossus was much closer, and he made the interception on his own, without a signal from the others, setting himself right in the charging man’s path.

Juggernaut accepted the challenge and picked up his pace. Peter set himself, and cocked a fist.

He threw a great punch, but it never got the chance to land. Juggernaut body-slammed him right off his feet, turning the massive strength of the X-Man against his teammates, deflecting the armored Russian into a nearby wall that was already on its last bricks, forcing Beast to scramble to yank Iceman clear as the entire edifice crashed to the ground.

By then, of course, he was on his way to the cell house.

“He’s going for the boy,” McCoy yelled.

“Not if I get there first,” Kitty yelled back over her shoulder, for she’d started running the moment Juggernaut bounced Colossus aside.

Juggernaut couldn’t be stopped. Neither could she—only she was a lot less messy about it. Kitty phased straight into the body of the rocky island, and the hill that formed the foundation of the cell house.

 

 

Warren Worthington Jr., gun in hand, and Kavita Rao were running for their lives, and for the future. She was terrified—because they were in a headlong flight towards the sounds of battle, rather than away, scrambling through the rotted, shadowy warrens of the old prison in a desperate attempt to reach Jimmy’s room and take him with them.

“We need…to get…the boy,” Worthington spat out between gasps, as his body mercilessly reminded him of the twin tolls of age and the good life. He’d thought himself in perfectly fine shape, only to have the last few minutes puncture that balloon forever.

Not so far away, and coming closer, he could hear a series of hollow booms, followed by the shush of collapsing masonry; it made him think someone was taking a wrecking ball to the building. Didn’t much like the sound of that.

“There he is,” came a shout from a gallery overhead.

Before they could move, find an escape, bring the gun to bear, the mutants were upon them, led by Kid Omega. Kavita shrieked in reflexive terror as the three mutants—Psylocke, Arclight, and Kid Omega—surrounded them.

“You’re the guy that invented the ‘cure,’ am I right?” the female known as Psylocke demanded.

Worthington faced her, surprised to discover that while he was scared almost out of his mind, it didn’t really show. Outwardly, he appeared altogether calm.

“Yes,” he replied. “I am.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said, displaying a gorgeous smile that was filled with both mischief and menace.

“Psylocke, what about her?” asked one of the others, giving Kavita a rough shake. She was crying, praying, lost within herself with the certainty of her imminent doom.

“She’s the brains,” Psylocke said. “He’s the money. Kill her.”

Worthington stared at Kavita in horror, two sets of wide-open eyes momentarily locking glances. He tried to reach out to her, only to find himself yanked roughly away.

Over his shoulder, he saw the other boy deploy quills across his shoulders and down his arms. A single flex of the forearm hurled a demonstration set into the neighboring wall with the force of a nail gun.

As Worthington was tossed around a corner, his captors not caring if they raised bruises or broke bones, he saw the mutant reach for Kavita and heard her last, despairing howl.

 

Kitty had no time to spare. She was surrounded by three mutants of her own. She went solid for them, spinning side kicks to the face, backed by the strength of a dancer’s leg, bouncing one guy into the next, shaking both up enough for her to complete the pivot and punch the third in the belly, dropping him at last with a knee to the nose.

The others made uncoordinated grabs for her but she stepped right through them and turned solid from behind to give them her version of the Vulcan neck pinch.

Everyone was down but breathing. There was no time to do more because the sound of smashing walls was far too close for comfort, and her lead over the Juggernaut was perhaps a wall away from vanishing.

As if on cue, he thundered into view below, scattering chunks of masonry, bars that were more like spears, into his path as he lumbered the length of the tier.

Saving grace—the boy he was after wasn’t on the ground floor.

Up he came, without slackening pace, each step bowing the metal stairs as if they were tin, while Kitty sprinted along the gallery to catch him.

She phased him with her, so that his next step—instead of landing solidly on the metal grating—plunged right through. She’d meant to leave him there, dangling from his midsection, deck and body inextricably merged until she came back to pull him free, but he proved quicker and more on the ball than she’d anticipated.

The instant he sensed the unique tingling that came from her nervous system interrupting his, he slammed his great hands down on the gallery with force enough to tear this entire section loose from its mountings and pitch both himself and Kitty to the main floor below.

They landed close enough together for him to make another grab at her, which failed as she went reflexively ghost—only to discover that was precisely what he wanted, as he used that momentary intangibility to wrench himself free of the deck grating.

Not only quick, but cunning. And now, really pissed off.

Thank Heaven, she thought, at least something’s going right!

Kitty bolted. As hoped for, he followed.

She couldn’t give the others an update; one of the major repercussions of her power was that it shorted out any electric circuit she passed through. Total murder on circuit boards, which was appropriately ironic for a natural gearhead. Advantage, she could neutralize surveillance systems, electronic locks, even people, with just the right touch. Problem, put a radio on her, it died.

She couldn’t call for help, which meant she was on her own.

She considered a Wile E. Coyote stratagem, maybe leading Juggernaut around in circles until he’d undermined the body of the prison so much that it collapsed on top of him. Then decided, from recent experience, that not only was he probably a tad too smart for that, but the crash wouldn’t stop him.

Now she understood the nickname. His power made Cain Marko unstoppable.

She’d reached a wholly refurbished section of the prison that managed to make the great, gray edifice look quite comfortable. Fresh paint, modern furniture, total climate control; it reminded her of the wealthy of days gone by who transported stately manors or castles—or London Bridge—from Europe to rebuild them brick by brick over here. In this case, if she hadn’t known better she’d have figured she was standing in any top-flight lab in the world.

The floor trembled, the echo of collapsing walls reached her, and she was galvanized into action. She’d lost her lead again.

Kitty phased through the nearest doorway, then raced from room to room, assuming that sooner or later she’d get lucky.

Figures. The room she wanted was the last, at the end of the hall, with a spectacular corner view of the now-empty straits. She made a face. It was some interior designer’s vision of what a kid’s room should look like, with all the personality of a magazine layout.

The boy was huddled under the bed, clutching a stuffed animal that was almost as big as he was to his chest.

She really didn’t have the time, but she spared him her most reassuring smile anyway.

“I’m Kitty,” she said, holding out a hand. Another crash. Wouldn’t be much longer. “I’m one of the X-Men. We’re the good guys.”

“I know,” he said, “I’ve seen you on TV. I’m Jimmy,” he continued. “But they call me Leech.”

Nice name, she thought, casting shame on whoever was responsible for it.

“What’s happening?” he asked, terrified through and through.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, motioning him towards her. “Right now, Jimmy, we’ve got to get you out of here.”

She caught his hand and yanked him into her arms, shoving herself towards the nearest wall.

Major mistake. She led with her head and for a moment, as stars did a fandango across her mind’s eye, she thought she’d broken it for sure. Cracked it wide, just like Zeus, only instead of Athena springing forth full grown, she was losing brain cells by the multitude.

Damnation—the shock actually made her cry.

“What happened?” she yowled, pressing the heel of her free hand to her battered forehead.

“Your powers won’t work around me. That’s my power.”

She couldn’t help grinning: “Honey-bunny,” she told him hurriedly, “Rogue’s just gonna love you.”

Enter Juggernaut, beyond rage.

“Come over here,” Kitty said loudly to Jimmy, making a show of putting him behind her, flat against the wall. They both looked trapped.

Jimmy dropped to his seat on the floor, staring through Kitty’s legs at the man-mountain who faced them.

Juggernaut savored the moment.

“Two for the price of one,” he growled delightedly, forgetting that Kitty could always phase herself to safety. Or perhaps assuming that maybe she’d run out of gas, that she couldn’t play the ghost any longer. Or maybe she was staying solid to protect the brat.

The reason didn’t matter to Juggernaut, only the result, which in this case would mean blood—theirs.

He dropped his head to ramming position and kicked himself into gear.

Kitty waited until the very last possible moment as he barreled towards her, building up an impressive head of speed for such a small space. She couldn’t afford to misplay this in the slightest, as she had no illusions about her ability to face Juggernaut in a fair fight. For all her strength and skills, she’d be a toothpick in his hands.

He was almost on her when she dropped, a boneless puppet with severed strings, right to the floor to cover Jimmy’s body with her own as Juggernaut…

…crashed full tilt into the wall.

Put a hole in it, too—right through the Sheetrock that formed the outer wall of the refurbished room to the two-foot-thick granite underneath, reinforced by concrete and brick and steel.

Kitty gathered Jimmy close against her and shoved them both along the floor between Juggernaut’s legs until they were well clear of him. She’d heard a monstrous crack! on impact but wasn’t yet willing to put any faith in that as she levered herself back to her feet, keeping hold of Jimmy, ready to start running again if needed.

Juggernaut was starting to wobble. Stiff legs turned spongy, his butt popped a bit back from the wall as gravity exerted its hold, and he was done. His eyes were open, wide as could be, but the pupils were wholly dilated. Nobody home at all inside that skull.

Kitty pumped a fist and laughed aloud as Jimmy echoed her.

She started towards the entry hole Juggernaut had made, then changed her mind. She had a better idea, something she hadn’t had to do since she turned thirteen.

Leading Jimmy by the hand, she reached for the handle…

…and opened the door.