Chapter Sixty



“Wait–wait!”

Scott called out at Hank and Ororo as the floor swallowed them up and sent he and Jean spilling out further down the metallic hallway. The two of them scrambled to stand back up, waiting for the next contortion of their metal surroundings. It was only moments ago that there was five of them, and Jean was no about to let Magneto separate them any more. She looked around the hallways wildly and spotted the cameras. Just as the walls started to close in on them Jean reached out with her mind and yanked the cameras from their foundations, crushing them and letting them drop to the floor. The walls snapped back into place.

“There,” she said with a heavy breath. “If he can’t see us he can’t attack us.”

Scott looked around desperately, his carefully laid plan for infiltration now in tattered. The spinning red lights and sirens were making it hard to focus and he was clearly growing desperate. “Damn it all,” he said. “That’s it. Stealth is shot. Which way was Beast sending us?”

Jean pointed diagonally at one of the walls and Scott pulled off his visor, folding it in his hands as he clutched his eyes shut. “What are you doing? Don’t you think you need that?”

He faced the direction Jean was pointing. “New plan. We’re getting to Magneto as fast as possible and we’re taking him out. I’m not letting him divide us any further.”

“If you give me a second I can link up with the others, maybe if we regroup we can–

He wasn’t listening. Scott opened his eyes and a mass of crimson energy spilled out, tearing through the wall he was facing and reducing it to shreds. Scott started a steady jog forward, his eyes open all the while clearing a path in front of him. He didn’t wait for Jean to catch up on his path of destruction, even as she called out to him.

Still, she had to admit it was effective. She followed after him, stepping over the rubble he left in his wake. The stream of energy just kept pouring out of him, punctuated here and there as he blinked and then picking up again to rip through everything in their way. Eventually she caught up to him as his pace slowed. “What is it, what’s the matter?” she asked.

Energy still spilling from his eyes, denting the wall opposing him more and more, he answered “I think this is it, this must be Magneto’s chamber. Jesus, how thick are these walls?” The wall cried out as it crumpled more and more and then released a terrifying shriek as it finally gave way. Scott closed his eyes long enough to replace his visor and he and Jean stepped into the large chamber.

It was just like Cerebro. The room was spherical, with large curving panels along each wall. At the center of the room was a massive seat with wires pouring out of the ceiling into it, plugging into every angle of a helmet worn by the man they were pursuing. Magneto sat in the helmet surrounding by a soft blue glow, his fingers tented as he watched them.

“Cyclops!” Magneto let out, “I see you haven’t been neglecting your training. A pity you still need that crutch, however.” Magneto swung his hand out, but nothing happened.

Scott smiled, stepping forward as he tapped his visor. “Hard plastic, made especially for you. We’ve been training to take you down for years now, Magneto. This time we’re not letting you go.”

“This time I am more powerful than I have ever been before,” their former mentor retorted. Steel cables snapped up from the ground and tried to ensnare them, but Jean caught them with her mind before they made contact. The cables trembled, caught between Jean’s power and Magneto’s.

“So are we,” she said. Scott let out an optic blast straight at Magneto, and the mutant stood up and pulled panels from the walls to block it. The shield held up as Cyclops’ energy poured into it. So much of his strength was drained from tearing their path through Asteroid M. She could see the sweat beading on Scott’s face as he closed his visor and stopped the beam.

The metal panels parted to reveal Magneto standing from his seat, the absurd helmet leashing him no more than a foot from it as he tried to step away. There was a new look in his eye, a madness Jean had only glimpsed before in their previous battles. He now wore it proudly, the psychosis buzzing around him like electricity. He was still mangled from his fight with the Avengers, his right arm a scarred and twisted piece of flesh at his side.

“I’ve spared you for the last time,” Magneto said, his voice shaking with anger. “This is it. This is the end for them, and it will be the end for you if you continue to stand in my way. You’ve used up your allowances and you’ve wasted them for the paltry gratitude of a dying race.” His eyes darted toward Jean, his face aghast. “You’re trying it now, aren’t you? You’re trying to reach into my mind and cripple me like Xavier crippled his brother.”

Jean wasn’t. She knew it would do no good while he was wearing his helmet, and even without it he had shown before his ability to resist attacks of the mind. “You aren’t well, Erik,” she said, taking two tentative steps toward him. “Something’s wrong with you, and we’re going to get you help.”

Luckily, it was Scott and Jean who received the help. The wall behind Erik burst open in a cacophony of wind and lightning. Ororo floated in, lightning crackling from her fingertips and her eyes consumed by a foggy white.

“Storm!” Scott called out. “Where’s Beast? Is he alright?”

“He’s…yeah. He’s mauling every Brotherhood member he can get his claws on right now and we might have to pull him out of it a bit, but he’s alright.” She kept her focus on Erik, now wild-eyed at the idea of being surrounded.

Erik let off a short cackle. “Just like that first night, isn’t it? The first night my students turned their backs on me and their very race.”

Scott didn’t leave time to trade more banter. “Everyone, now!” he commanded, letting loose a beam from his visor. Once again Erik formed a barrier around himself, but Jean and Ororo knew the beam was only a distracted. They attacked the machinery around him, with Jean tearing out cables and wires as Ororo fried everything she could with her lightning.

Smoke began to fill the room. A piece of metal shot through Scott’s beam and hit him square in the chest sending him spilling over. Jean swept the smoke out of the way with her mind as best she could, coughing into her fist and squinting her eyes against the sting.

Magneto stood in the middle of the wreckage, his breath haggard. A steel cable coiled around Ororo’s neck and held her choking in the air behind him. “Enough!” he let out. “Enough of all of you!” He reared his hand back, a spear-shaped shard of metal lifting from the wreckage, and then thrust his hand forward, carrying the spear along with it. The spear flew straight at Jean, but she held out her own hand…

…and caught it. She grabbed it with all her power and Erik pushed back with all of his. The spear shook violently in place, caught between the two mutants, and as Erik honed his focus even more Jean saw Storm slip from the coil he held her with. She felt a trickle of sweat work its way from her forehead down her cheek. “I’m not the little girl from a broken home anymore, Erik. I’m a grown ass woman now.” The spear inched closer toward Erik, his teeth grit in determination. “You may have found me, but it was Charles who raised me. It was Charles who taught me what “might makes right” really means.” The spear inched closer still and Jean stepped forward with it. “You think you’re right just because your stronger than the humans? Well. What does it mean when someone comes along who’s stronger than you?”

She saw it in his eyes before it happened, the look of recognition. The spear sprung from its place in the air and impaled Magneto through the abdomen. He let out a cry of anguish and fell to his knees. Ororo let off the final blow, shocking him into unconsciousness and letting him fall unconscious to his side.

Charles’ voice came alive in their heads. “You did it! My word…you beat him.”

Scott stepped up to Jean’s side holding his arm at an odd angle. “The mission’s still not over, Professor. Have you gotten through to Hank?” he asked.

Hank’s voice appeared to them. He sounded strained. “I’m here, I’m here. I managed to, uh, collect myself.”

Scott wasted no time. “Hank, if you were right before the generators could give out at any minute. We’re going to need to find a way to keep everyone on this asteroid safe and we need to do it ASAP.”

“Many of the Brotherhood are already using the escape pods, but there can’t possibly be enough for everyone. I’ll see what I can do.”

Scott turned to Jean and Ororo dust coating one side of his visor that he didn’t seem to notice. “I know you two are tired and you’ve already done a lot. Hell, you probably just saved the day for us once, but we’re going to need you to do it again.” Something ruptured in a faraway corner of Asteroid M and the whole room shook. “That was probably one of the generators, and the others won’t last long either. We need you to keep this whole thing afloat until Hank can come up with another solution.”

“The whole base?” Jean asked. “This place is like a city block, how are we going to–

“We’ll do it,” Ororo cut in. She turned to Jean. “You just went toe-to-toe with Magneto and won, girl. We’ve got this.”

Jean nodded and held out her hands. “Together,” she said. The two of them sat down with their legs crossed, their hands intertwined, and their eyes closed.

A breeze of serenity passed through them as Xavier offered his encouragement. “I believe in you both. Just focus on your breath and the task at hand. There is nothing else in the world but your breath and the task at hand.”

There was another rupture in the distance and Ororo was already spinning a cyclone beneath Asteroid M. She gathered it up slowly at first, focusing on a single swirl, but soon the swirls began to multiply and feed into one another, growing ever faster at the base of the facility. Jean’s mind stretched out like two colossal hands that cupped beneath the mass of stone and metal. She felt it press into her hands, weighing down as she pushed up. One last rupture sounded in the distance and the whole facility gave way, dropping into the psychic hands as if craving the earth below.

Jean felt the veins in her temples pulsing as she strengthened her grip. Ororo pulled in the clouds from ever greater distances and gathered them underneath like a cushion. The air grew thick, rushing around and upwards and any direction but down. Jean’s whole head began to throb, and she realized that she and Ororo both were squeezing eachothers fingers in a vice. She did not open her eyes to look, she just did exactly as Charles said. She breathed. And she held the world.

Hank’s voice came crashing into their minds. “I’ve got it! Let it drop!” he yelled.

Jean’s eyes shot open, the pressure in her head disappeared to be replaced by a dull ache. She saw the blue leak back into Ororo’s eyes and the two exchanged a smile. Then the white strands of Ororo’s hair began lifting into the air and suddenly everything was rushing toward the ceiling.

Gravity completely reversed. Scott, Jean, and Ororo screamed at the top of their lungs as the floor stretched away from them and gave a collective “Oof!” as they smashed against the ceiling. They were falling. Everything was falling.

But it wouldn’t last, and Jean knew she had to focus just one last time. She prepared herself for the moment, and then it came. Asteroid M smashed into the ground below and sent out an explosion of rock. The floor came rushing back at them, but this time Jean caught the trio before they hit it, her preparation worth it. They settled easily into the floor and Jean brushed her hair out of her face, spitting out some debris that found its way between her lips. She could feel the pulsing migraine pushing out on her eyes, but as she stood up and looked at the others she grinned at them. “We did it,” she said. “We freaking did it.”

“Hank?” Scott called out. “How are we alive?”

Hank appeared in person then, crawling through a hole in wall with the unconscious figure of the Italian girl they crossed paths with earlier. Hank pointed at her with a toe as he held her up with one arm. “This lovely jewel is the one they call ‘The Untouchable.’ The forcefields she creates are unstoppably powerful, but I don’t think she ever attempted anything of this size before.”

“And she volunteered to do that all on her own?” Ororo asked skeptically.

“I may have helped convince her when Hank couldn’t,” Charles cut in. Jean smiled up at the ceiling, knowing that it was absurd to think Charles was looking down on them, but wishing she could meet eyes with her mentor nevertheless. “Bind those two up as best you can and come outside. I think we can consider this the X-Men’s first impromptu press conference.”