Warren heard the thumping upstairs of a metal suit and carefully eased himself from under Jamie, who was using his leg as a pillow. As he reached the stairs he heard his name. "Tony! Down here!" Moments later, Tony appeared at the top of the stairwell, encased in his garish gold and red metal suit, and began walking carefully down the steps.
"Goddammit, it's a war zone up there!" Tony said, he voice somewhat echoey from coming inside the suit. "How did anyone survive?"
"Logan managed to get everyone down here just in time and I was in the back 40 with Jamie." Warren explained.
"Speaking of the Wolverine, why didn't you just have him cut through all this stuff?" He asked as he made his way over to the door panel.
Logan answered that one. "It's too thick. I've got one foot claws, everything down here is at least two feet thick." His tone was growlier than usual. Obviously, he'd thought of that and it hadn't worked. "Can you get the damn thing back online?"
"Give me a minute." With nothing more than apparently a thought, the tips of Tony's metallic fingers sprouted a series of fine tools. After about ten minutes the power flickered and came back on and the door slid open. "All you need is a delicate touch." He glanced down in time to see a puppy go through the door and into the hanger. Now he remembered why he didn't hang out here much. It wasn't just the kids, it was the whole weirdness factor.
At that moment, Charles wheeled up. "Thank you, Tony. Is all the power back on?"
"Just in this sector. I was able to hack in and re-route the grid to shunt all the power that was left here," Tony answered, glancing back at the panel. "Give me a little bit and I might be able to give you thin power throughout the lower levels, but the upper levels are shot to hell."
"That's fine. I don't need it all over. I just need it in here and inside Cerebro." Charles told him. "Can you manage that?"
Tony considered. "I think so, but you've got a complicated system, Charles. It could take me a while."
"Do it. Recruit the students to help if you need to." Tony nodded at the order. One thing he'd never do was cross Charles Xavier, especially not when there were lives on the line. He got to work on channeling the electricity where it needed to go. Charles turned to Logan and Warren. "You two, as soon as he's got that power going, I want us to be in the air. Take some of the older students and make sure that the explosion didn't block the waterfall." Logan and Warren nodded and went to recruit. It was going to be a long day.
The landscape was barren. The trees were bare and the flowers were withered. It didn't look anything like the flourishing Institute gardens that Millie had tended. But it somehow felt accurate. She looked down at her ragged clothing and broken skin. Even in her dreams she couldn't escape what David did to her.
She walked absently until she came to her tree. It was as dead as all the others. Unbidden, a memory of sitting with Warren under it when it was alive came to her mind and she watched it play out. It had been the time she'd been playing with Jamie and Warren had come over with some bottles of water. That had been a nice afternoon. Almost normal.
She reached to touch the trunk of the tree and it crumbled to ash under her hand. She gasped and pulled back with a broken sob. It was really gone. Just like how in her dreams when she'd had her powers she'd been able to make the plants flourish without a thought, here, without her power anymore, the extreme opposite was true, and they all shattered.
"Flora?"
She turned and saw her father. "Daddy? How are you..? I thought- They gave you the cure."
"It didn't work. Not completely, it seems. It took a while, but when I heard you screaming, something broke through the barriers and they came back." He walked over to her and wrapped her in his arms. "God, baby. What have they done to you?"
Millie couldn't take it. She broke down, sobbing against her father's chest. It was several long moment before she was able to speak. "It's David. He's... sick. It's just a game to him. Ask a question and make a cut. On my skin or hair or clothes. There's four that he's made sure will scar. So I won't forget him." She gripped his shirt tightly in her fists.
"Has he..?"
Millie seemed to know what her father was asking without him completing the thought. "No. He wouldn't. Doing that to a mutant, even as a show of power, is too disgusting even for him. He told me that much. Thank God for small blessings, huh? But he does other things. The cuts he wants to scar, he keeps breaking them open and licking the blood." She swallowed. "I'm sorry. I told you I wouldn't leave the Institute and I did anyway."
"It's ok, Flora. I should have known you wouldn't be able to do that forever. It was only an old fool trying to stop the inevitable. It's not your fault." He rubbed her back comfortingly.
"What are you, Daddy? I mean, what are all of your powers?"
"Before? Limited foresight and a small amount of telepathy. The attack apparently triggered a secondary mutation that made my telepathy strong enough to reach you and your brother when you were asleep, despite the distance."
"And now?"
"I don't know. It feels like they're stronger since the cure failed, but I don't know the extent. I suppose I'll have to start taking lessons from Charles when we get out of here."
"So, you're some kind of Oracle then?"
Jefferson smiled sadly down at her. "Something like that."
She swallowed hard. "What about me? Do I... your powers came back to you. Can you see if mine will too?"
He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, Flora. I can't see that. The version they gave you was different from the one they gave me. And right now there's so much that's in flux I can't get a clear fix on anything."
She nodded and looked at the dead grass at their feet. "I didn't think so."
"Look at me, Flora." His voice held a note in it that made her look up at him despite her desire not to. "What they did to you was terrible, but you can't give up hope. The formula is far from perfect, so there's still a chance. But even if your powers don't return, you're still you. Amelia Nicolette Bartholomew, my little girl, Jamie's big sister, the girl Warren Worthington III can't stop thinking about, gifted chef, great dancer, amateur poet, and fantastic gardener. And that's only a few of your wonderful qualities. Even without your powers, you know plants better than anyone I've ever known, and that includes your grandfather. No matter what they do, Flora, they can't take any of that away from you. Yes, they took away your powers, but it's like when a runner has an accident that takes their legs. They still find a way. You will find a way. I know you will. You got me?"
Millie took a shuddering breath and exhaled slowly. "Alright, Dad." She pressed her lips together and willed herself not to cry again. "We'll get out of here, right? And we'll go home to Jamie and the others and everything will be ok, yeah?"
He pulled her into another hug and kissed her butchered hair. "I hope so. I really hope so."
Repairing the electrical system enough to actually connect to Cerebro and give it enough power to open the hangar door beneath the waterfall had taken the better part of the day. At some point during the day, someone had gotten into the store of rations and managed to make something edible. Warren suspected Jamie and some of the girls; he remembered Millie telling him that she'd made the boy help her in the kitchen when they'd been living back in Nebraska. They'd eaten in shifts off of the paper plates and plastic spoons that were stored with the emergency supplies.
Once dinner was over it was full dark again. By that time everyone had to admit defeat against the exhaustion of being up for more than 24 hours and fall down for at least a few hours of sleep. They slept on a series of cots lined up in the hanger with Tony, Logan, Warren, and Hank all taking turns to run patrols outside throughout the night. Ororo would have joined the patrol shifts, but Hank refused to let her and after a long, drawn out argument between the two, Ororo had given in. Jamie had been given the all important task of guarding Ororo and making sure she didn't try to sneak out for a patrol. It was the first time in anyone's memory Ororo had ever called Hank a 'low bastard'. Hank had merely smiled grimly and gone for his shift on patrol.
They were all on edge and everyone's sleep was restless. When morning came, Logan came down from his shift and started waking people up. Tony made the coffee with a pointed comment towards Logan about things being bad enough without his particular brand of toxic waste on top of it, and Hank and Warren managed breakfast between the two of them. Warren had to marvel at just how much kitchen knowledge he'd picked up these last few months without even realizing it.
Less than an hour after everyone was awake the X-Men and Tony were suited up and belted into the blackbird. Charles had left the older students in charge of the younger ones before they left. Before they'd even reached altitude, Charles was linked with Cerebro and searching for the others.
"There's a compound at Silver Lake and I'm getting pairs of mutant readings throughout the building," he told them finally. "Most are on the lower levels, but there's one pair that's higher in the building. Warren, when we land, I want you to do a fly over and see if you can get a count of guards and entrances. Don't take any chances." Warren nodded. "Come back as soon as you have an idea of what we're up against." He looked up towards the cockpit. "Hank, Ororo, set us down inside Letchworth State Park."
Moments later they had landed and Warren was in the air flying towards Silver Lake. The compound itself was relatively easy to spot. It was a long rectangular structure built on the south side of the lake near a small forest. In deference to the natural surroundings, or more likely to better blend in with the look of the area, the building had been paneled with long wooden planks and natural rock. There were very few windows, however, and most of those set into the ground level at what would be assumed to be the front. Clever.
He flew high enough that he would look like nothing to anyone that saw him. A bird, maybe, or more likely with the blue and white coloring of his uniform, a speck of a cloud. But it was hard for him to see what he needed to see from that high up and he had to risk going lower. Fortunately, he knew from experience that humans rarely looked up. He did four flyovers, each one lower than the last. By the last one he was sure he'd garnered as much information as he could and was preparing to gain height to fly back to the Blackbird.
Warren was arcing over the lake when the first shot was fired. He barely had time to dodge the net that had been fired at him and it knocked into his foot with bruising force and skewed his flight pattern. Before he could right himself another was fired and wrapped around him, knocking him forward about ten feet and bending his wings at all the wrong angles before he started to drop head first into the lake.
He barely managed to take a deep enough breath before he splashed into the lake. Once under water, despite the weight of the net he was able to fight mostly free of it, first an arm, then a wing, and his head and shoulders. His air was running out, and he kicked at the net as hard as he could while fighting for the surface. Finally, it came loose and he shot for the surface. He broke through and took a deep breath just before he felt something slam against the back of his skull and blackness rose up to meet him.