Chapter Forty-Two: Resolution pt 1

The Xavier Institute for Higher Learning

Scott Summers sat staring at the white computer screen, the jumping cursor waiting for the first typed word. He could dictate a verbal report and save it to Cerebro's memory, but he preferred the tedium of laying out his thoughts into text. There was something almost cathartic about it. Also de-humanising; the recitation of fact, the distillation of past events into objective phrases, it all helped to remove Scott Summers from the experience. Except that the magic of report writing wasn't working today.

Scott Summers stared at the white word document screen and couldn't think how to start. He wondered what Charles would say. He wondered how the professor would have done things differently. He imagined the debriefing the professor would give him, looking over the steeple of his fingers at Scott, satanic eyebrows arched and true feelings hidden.

The door to the study opened and Jean stepped in, swiftly closing the door behind her. She was wearing ratty old jeans and a green t-shirt and her hair was still a little damp from a shower. Her face was pale from fatigue.

'There was nothing you could have done,' she told him handing over a steaming cup of black coffee. She raised her own cup to her lips, eyes pinched and hard. 'There was nothing any of us could have done any differently.'

'Small comfort,' Scott looked down into the depths of his coffee mug. 'Ororo still up on the roof?'

Jean just nodded. 'Still – it's been four hours already. She won't answer me when I call her.'

Scott sighed and pushed the chair back so that his wife could shimmy over and settle on his lap. 'At least it's not raining, hailing, or anything else.' He pointed out with a failed attempt at not very great humour. Jean smiled thinly to make him feel better. She dropped her head against his shoulder.

'I can't help but feel he did all this on purpose.' Scott admitted after a small silence, wherein the bigger silence of the house seemed far too loud.

'Gambit, I mean.' He clarified when Jean remained very still in his lap. 'I can't help but feel that he wanted to make the X-men pay.'

Jean closed her eyes, 'Pay for what?' Her question didn't so much dismiss Scott's theory as confirm it by inference.

Scott Summers tipped his head back against the back of the chair and stared up at the moulded flowers of the ceiling borders. For some reason he had always thought they were ugly, yet every time the mansion was rebuilt so too were ceilings in exactly the same style. Scott wondered why he was thinking about ceilings right now. He supposed he just wanted a distraction.

'For not being the answer he was looking for,' He answered the question slowly, 'for not having the power to absolve Gambit of his past.'

'Oh,' Jean said shifting a little as she sent out a tendril of thought to float both her mug and his back onto the desk. Scott tilted his head back down so he could look his wife in the eyes. Jean wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her forehead against his.

'Do you think we failed, Jean? Did the X-men fail?' He asked her wrapping his hands around her waist, revelling in the feel of her soft, supple skin under the run of his palms as he slipped his hands under the thin fabric of her old t-shirt. 'Are we just kidding ourselves thinking we can make a better tomorrow?'

'No Scott,' Jean told him with absolute conviction, 'we didn't fail. We didn't win, but we didn't fail either. Failure is not trying….and we did try, and we always will.'

Scott grimaced, even as he pulled Jean closer to him, 'I'm tired of trying,' he admitted, 'Just once I'd like to win too.'

'Everybody does.' Jean smiled, her lips brushing his as she spoke, 'We're not the answer to every problem, Scott, but we're at least trying to find one. That has to mean something.'

'You'd think so.' He murmured darkly.

Scott closed his eyes, memories of secret sinister labs deep under the New Mexico desert dancing behind his eyes. He saw Sinister defeated and he saw a silent flash of fuchsia light eradiate the night sky. He heard Rogue's scream in his memories. He opened his eyes to see Jean watching him.

'Kiss me.' She told him.

Scott lifted one hand to curl into the thick vibrant hair at the back of Jean's head. He kissed her like his life depended on it, holding on tight as, gentle as tears, the rain began to patter against the big study windows.


Garden Core Promontory:

'Cyke just blast it!' Rogue demanded as the crackling tension in the chamber ratcheted up another notch.

Cyclops curled a hand around his visor but hesitated. He had no idea of the tensile strength of the metal capsule containing Gambit. If he blasted it he might end up punching right through the metal and his blast would smash into Gambit with enough concussive force to pulverise bone and send the other mutant flying down into the abyss of energy seething below. He also didn't know what adding more energy to the writhing storm of Gambit's powers would do; they were trying to stop critical mass here, not add to it.

'We cannot take that risk – there is too much energy building as it is.' Storm spoke for Cyclops and he was grateful.

Rogue was not. 'Do ya hate him that much?' She demanded and Cyclops winced. Now was so not the time for this. Thankfully Rogue seemed to realise this herself and said nothing more. Ororo said nothing at all, as if she had simply not heard Rogue's rebuke at all but there was a thunder clap building behind her eyes.

'Something is happening.' Bishop spoke up.

The big man was kneeling on the floor of the promontory platform, palms flat to the metal plate trying to absorb the overflow of energy. He was shaking with power and the veins branching along his forearms stood out against his dark skin. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging; he couldn't take much more. 'I can feel a change in the current of energy.'

'Good change or bad change?' Rogue asked for Cyclops.

'I don't know.' Bishop admitted through gritted teeth.

Cyclops took a deep breath; time had run out and he knew he had to get the team out of here now. They had one last chance to try and free Gambit and after that……well….sometimes there just aren't any happy endings.


Xavier Institute

Ororo sat on the roof staring at the middle distance. She wore an old leather jacket salvaged from her punk days and her arms were wrapped around her middle as she hunched in on herself.

The sky was blanketed in thick, smog like greyish-white clouds and it was neither hot nor cold. The preternatural lethargy of the weather was, as ever, an accurate manifestation of Ororo's inner feelings. There was a numbness; something deeper than shock, deader than resentment eating away at her. She could not truly form a coherent thought, nor know her own heart.

'Yer goin' to stay up here long, 'Ro?' Logan, crouched like a waiting cougar on one of the eaves, an unlit cigar clenched between his lips.

'That is no concern of yours Logan.' She snapped.

The allegedly feral Canadian snorted and with surprising nimbleness he came to sit beside her, lighting his odious cigar. 'So yer say, but between yer sulkin' up here on the roof an' Cyke lockin' himself up in Chuck's office the team's bang out o' luck fer leadership.'

Ororo gave her old friend a rather sour look, 'If this is your attempt to manipulate me, then I suggest you give up now. I am unmoved.' She turned back to watch the heavy clouds congeal over the sky further.

Logan chuckled and released a breath of foul smoke, 'So yer gonna take a page from Gumbo's book and have a pity party all damn day?' Logan shook his shaggy head, 'Cajun would laugh himself sick to see the way the lot o' yer are moping about.' The sly Canuck shot Storm a rather shrewd look, 'Never saw yer as a hypocrite, 'Ro.'

Ororo jolted in surprise and turned sharply on Logan, 'I am not a hypocrite.' The clouds shifted ominously, darkening with thunderclaps of rain.

'Sure yer are.' Logan argued easily. 'Gumbo screwed yer over, 'Ro. Ain't gonna claim the Cajun didn't love yer,' the man tapped one big knuckled finger to his nose sagely, 'the nose knows an' Gambit could never hide his feelin's to save his life.' Ororo tensed visibly at this last statement but Logan pretended not to notice, 'but that don't mean he didn't mess yer around; did as much of a number on yer as he did, Rogue.'

Those keen, bright blue eyes stared fixedly into Ororo's. 'He lied to yer face, cuz the Cajun knew there ain't no way the truth wouldn't hurt yer and he knew that yer knowin' the truth would hurt him too. Gumbo made his choice, darlin'. He knew what the rest o' yer just ain't got the balls to face.'

'And what is that?' Storm asked him archly, quietly seething.

Logan shrugged turning away to blow a thick, yellowish smoke ring up into the still, heavy air.

'Forgiveness kills.' The old berserker stated without inflection.

Ororo stared for a long, long moment at the dissipating smoke ring fading on the air. She wrapped her arms more firmly around herself. 'I wanted him gone.' She said softly. 'I thought that if he was dead I would be able to forgive him.'

The Wolverine stubbed out the butt of his cigar on the guttering and rose to his feet. 'Figure Gumbo knew that.'

'Yes,' Ororo said in bloodless voice, 'and now that he is gone I find that I still cannot forgive him.'

Almost silently it began to rain, falling in sheets to skitter over the roofing tiles and down into the gutters. The still smouldering remnants of Logan's cigar hissed as the rain water washed the butt away.

'Yeah,' Logan stated simply as the rain fell down in a soaking curtain, 'Figure Gumbo knew that too.'


Garden Core Promontory:

Zark!

Cyclops loosed a medium intensity optic blast directly towards the foot of the capsule. He hoped the promontory floor, and the energy pulsing within, would absorb the brunt of the force. The platform shuddered but the capsule remained untouched, almost as if Cyclops power simply bolstered and fed the nimbus of energy dancing through the metal.

'Cyclops!' Storm admonished him. He shook his head readying another blast.

'We have to do something Storm and time is running out.'

Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, and Bishop were all preoccupied and Phoenix was still focused on the Astral Plane and so no one saw the serpent like tendril detach from a power hub fixed to the wall of the chamber behind the gathered X-men, and snake towards Cyclops. Faster than a whip crack the tensile, sinuous data cable had coiled around Cyclops ankle and jerked his leg out from under him.

'Whoa!'

Cyclops had no chance of catching his balance as the tendril wrenched his legs out from under him and he hit the floor of the platform hard. He felt the static burn of kinetic energy chasing through the layers of flesh under his uniform as the tendril released its charge into him. He twisted to blast at the cord wrapped around his ankle before it could explode and take his leg with it.

Rogue was a split second faster however, and in an instant she had ripped the cable from the wall, killing the flow of energy, and torn it free of his ankle. The glowing cord spat dying sparks and writhed like a snake in its death throes for a few seconds before fading to empty, colourless transparency.

'Ah don't reckon it liked ya shooting at the metal box sugar,' Rogue drawled acidly picking up the deadened cable and throwing it over the edge of the railings, 'Seems ta me that means we're on ta something, right?'

'Maybe,' Cyclops was not so convinced but he brushed himself off and loosed another optic blast. This time he aimed high and was able to shave off a few of the outlying data cables forming a complex Gordian knot around the capsule. Energy flashed through the walls of the chamber, shivering through the air.

'Nice one, sugar.' Rogue grinned savagely. 'Hit it again.'

Cyclops was about to speak when he noticed something happening to the platform a few feet ahead of them.

A patch of steel clad platform floor started to glow dark, dark indigo, contrasting with the whitish luminance of the rest of the chamber. Cyclops was not the only one who recognised what that meant. He had seen Gambit's cards flash that lurid neon brilliance hundreds of times before.

'Get back!'

Cyclops snapped out the order, reaching out to pull his mentally absent wife back with him to a safe distance. The other X-men jumped back and a large section of the promontory platform exploded in a spray of twisted metal and concrete.

'No!'

Rogue tried to lurch forward into the air but a searing wave of ionised air knocked her back as most of the platform fell away with nothing left to keep it up. The end of the platform where the capsule stood crumbled to flakes and motes of whitish-pink dust and larger chunks of glowing debris before falling into the roiling ocean of power below.


Xavier Institute:

The man known in this time and place only as Bishop stood under Storm's deluge in the shadow of the mansion grounds' periphery wall; he was supposed to be patrolling but he knew his attention was not what it should have been.

After returning from New Mexico a week ago, Cyclops had stated categorically that Bishop was not to be reprimanded for the part he had played in the Almogordo meltdown. Cyclops had argued that until they knew all the facts he wasn't about to sanction an X-man versus X-man witchhunt. He had also pointed out the purpose of the X-men wasn't to stand in judgement over one another. Bishop was not sure if he was grateful for this or not. He was not sure it truly mattered either way. What did any of it matter now that Bishop had destroyed his own future?

Tracking through the early evening darkness, made all the more complete due to Storm's rain shower, Bishop did not waste time questioning his choices. There was no point. He had acted in error and the repercussions of his actions would be felt for some time. All Bishop could do was wait to find out what it would all mean for his future.

I won't save you.

LeBeau had told him that when he had sealed the man away in the Witness Capsule. Bishop had been so convinced of the rightness of his own actions that he had all but ignored that warning. He above all others should have known that the future is ever changing, the present an unreliable viable, and the past open to all manner of interpretation. How could he have been such a fool?

Bishop stopped in his tracks and turned to look up at the mansion roof. He could just make out the seated silhouette of Storm against the darkness, and Logan's prowling shadow descending from the eaves. In his time and place, back in the XSE, an officer who turned on another, no matter the reason, would be brought up for an immediate court marshal, usually followed by execution via firing squad.

Bishop stared down at his empty hands; he was a traitor. A traitor to his new team, a traitor to these X-men he had once revered as a boy. He had betrayed not just a teammate but also a man he had believed was his surrogate father. He had stayed with the X-men to catch the traitor in their midst, and instead, he had become that traitor.

'I am sorry.' Lucas Bishop said, letting his empty hands drop to his sides as the rain pounded down. 'I am sorry.'

That the big man didn't know if he was more sorry for what he had done to the teammate and friend, or for the future he had put in jeopardy only furthered the sense of guilt and shame he suspected he would shoulder for the rest of his days.


Garden Core Promontory:

For a terrifying moment, as the end of the promontory platform fell away, Cyclops thought he had just cost his erstwhile teammate his life. Then he realised that the capsule was not falling with the rest of the promontory platform.

'Remy!' Rogue hissed again trying to take flight, but the very air was so rife with crackling energy that breathing was painful, let alone movement or flight. The X-men could do nothing but back away from the collapsing platform towards the door and watch the situation spiral even further out of their control.

The capsule containing Gambit did not fall at all, instead the writhing nest of data cables lifted it from the falling debris and held the capsule suspended from the ceiling in a thicket of glowing multi-coloured vines right above the bio-kinetic flood. For all the world it looked like a brightly glowing Easter egg hanging from a tree branch. The mental image was so incongruous that it snapped Cyclops out of his surprise.

'We have to get out of here!'

Almost on the heels of his exclamation a series of muffled explosions rocked the chamber as parts of the Garden that had previously survived Gambit's massive power out, blew to kingdom come, and the structural integrity of the entire complex came into doubt. On the end of Cyclops arm Phoenix jolted, coming abruptly back to herself.

'What about Remy?' Rogue demanded.

Phoenix threw up a telekinetic shield and speared one hard green eyed glance back to the hovering capsule. 'He's made his choice. He's conscious in there and he knows what he's doing.'

Jean shook her head, eyes flashing with frustration and anger. 'He never wanted to be rescued; he's decided that he's going to swim with the crocodiles instead.'

Cyclops and the other X-men frowned, 'What do you mean?'

Jean's eyes were hard, 'It doesn't matter, Scott. Gambit's made his choices. He's taking his chances against the Garden – alone – and there is nothing we can do. Nothing he'll let us do to help him.'

Another ferocious explosion rocked the X-men on their feet and the remaining sections of the platform began to fall away, eaten by power inch by inch. Cyclops stared up at the capsule and then turned away unable to look at the searing light.

In a strange way he could almost understand why, faced with all that had been revealed, Gambit would rather go out in a blaze of glory doing what he always intended to do, than live with the consequences of all he had done to reach this point.

Still Cyclops might have understood the mentality, but he couldn't agree with it. He didn't know if it was the ultimate expression of selfishness on Gambit's part, or just cowardice. In the end it didn't really matter. Gambit had dealt this hand and he was not about to the let the X-men change the outcome of the game.

'X-men – retreat!' Cyclops barked out and he, the silent Wolverine, Bishop, and Phoenix started to run as Rogue and Storm flew towards the exit. Rogue stopped before leaving and stared wretchedly behind her as pieces of masonry and steel I-beams began to fall from the vaulted ceiling.

'We can't just leave him!'

Rogue broke rank and flew forward, towards the hanging capsule; fighting the waves of loosed kinetic energy all the way. Phoenix screamed at her to stop, to come back, but Rogue was not listening. She ploughed forward through the biting waves of energy in the chamber and dived toward the capsule, risking the pain she had previously experienced all over again.

'No!' Phoenix increased the strength of her telekinetic shield so that it appeared wings of flame enfolded her team. The X-men could only watch what happened next.

Gambit - don't hurt her again! Jean screamed out mentally as she tried to arrest Rogue's motion and wrench her back to safety with a telekinetic tendril of thought and will. Rogue was too fast for her, however. The southern mutant dived straight for the nest of cables shielding the capsule.

There was a silent, tremendous flash of power, a wash of blinding greenish light. Rogue didn't have time to know what had hit her. Power pressed against Phoenix's shield and her mind like an army of fire ants prickling against her skin, forcing her and the other X-men back.

They all heard Rogue's scream.


Salem Centre - Westchester:

Lorna Dane sipped her beer from the bottle as she watched the other patrons of Harry's Hideaway go about their business. The atmosphere back at the mansion, a place that had never really been a home to her, was too much like the worst kind of funeral for her liking. She'd had to get out of there before she said something she might regret later.

The door to the bar opened and an athletically built blonde man walked in to survey the crowd. The man was wearing an old denim jacket and stone washed jeans with what looked like a slightly avant-garde black top with a design of concentric circles radiating from the centre. He spotted Lorna on his second optic circuit of the room. He made a bee-line straight for her after picking up his own beer from the bar.

'This seat taken?' Alex asked her before dropping into the chair opposite without waiting for an answer. Lorna gave him an ironic smile.

'Couldn't stand the X-men angst fest either, huh?'

Alex smirked and took a swig from his beer, 'Figured I needed to get out before someone remembered that I'm supposed to be evil right now…..or worse, no one remembered that at all.' He added dryly.

Lorna grinned. 'Poor baby,' she purred with saccharine false sympathy. 'Is didums all bent out of shape because big brother won't take him seriously as a mutant hard-line terrorist?'

Alex rolled his eyes. 'Cut it out, Lorna.' He swallowed a good quantity of his beer in one pull. 'Scott's locked up in the study brooding, but before he went in he told me that we needed to talk.' Alex arched his blonde brows, 'You think I was going to stick around after that?'

Lorna laughed. 'For a Summers brothers talk?' She asked him brightly. 'I'd think most of the rest of the team would want to clear out before you and Scott went at it again.'

She gave him a very dry look, 'And think after the number we did on the Blackbird, you don't even have the option of throwing big brother out of plane if you don't like what he has to say.'

Alex grinned back and clinked his glass against her bottle in a toast, 'Hence the reason I bolted to the nearest bar I could find.' He admitted before his gaze softened. 'You get tired of the funerary dirge going down back on Graymalkin Lane?'

'Tired of the whole X-men bit, more like,' Lorna confessed. 'Sometimes I think this whole fight for mutant rights, protect a world that hates and fears us deal, is just an excuse for a bunch of twenty or thirty something slackers to navel gaze and avoid getting a normal nine to five paying job.'

Alex laughed, 'Yeah but you're forgetting that Logan's the best he is at what he does…'

'…And useless at anything else,' Lorna interrupted, finishing off her beer. 'Seriously Alex, don't you ever get sick of it?'

She gestured with one hand in a circular motion to encompass all and nothing. 'After a while it's like I just forget what it's actually like to live in the real world. It's like everything becomes an 'Us' and 'Them' thing.'

'Isn't it?' Alex asked her and she couldn't tell if he was deliberately playing devil's advocate or if he was serious.

'No,' she said. 'Not everything is that black and white, Alex.'

Alex's smile was soft, 'You're thinking about the Flamingos and the Crocodiles, aren't you?'

Lorna toyed with the peeling label on her bottle. 'I suppose so.' She conceded.

Jean had told everyone about her last psionic conversation with Gambit. Whereas most of the X-men couldn't understand it, Lorna had somehow understood exactly what Remy had been hinting at. The idea of the primal, yet somehow more innocent world of Remy's imaginings, a world full of flamingos wading safely surrounded by hidden crocodiles, had an oddly salutary effect on Lorna.

She looked up and met Alex's gentle gaze. 'I think Remy had it right; the world isn't black and white, it isn't even shades of grey….people everywhere live in full spectrum colour, except us X-men. We're trying to save a world that we hate and fear.' She shook her head. 'I don't want to play that sick game anymore, Alex.'

Alex reached across the table to take her hand in his habitually warm one. 'Let's go.' He said pulling her to her feet. Lorna let him do it; puzzled and curious.

'Go where?' She asked.

'To find a crocodile pit we can live and love in.' He told her simply.


Garden Central Core:

Rogue screamed as a three line whip of data cables, wide as a good sized tree trunk, slammed her out of the sky. The lash batted her away from the pulsing centre of the thicket of hanging cables in the same way a fly swatter might crush a bug.

Rogue ricocheted into the wall and a searing, prickling wave of bio-kinetic energy spiked through her body on impact. Dazed Rogue might have fallen bonelessly into the waiting surf of energy below, except that branches of smaller tendrils caught her about the arms and torso, pinning her against the wall.

'Leggo o' me!' Rogue bucked and twisted but despite her strength she couldn't break free; no sooner had she torn free of one branch then three more tendrils wound about her, sinuous and supple as static charged serpents.

'Rogue.' The shout was a warning and Rogue immediately held completely still as a focused beam of ruby red energy lanced across the cords of cable holding her bound. Cyclops optic blast distracted the cables, which loosened their grip and Rogue was able to force her way free of them.

As soon as she was free Rogue made another headlong dive for the pulsing, thrumming knot of greenish-black corded energy hanging from the centre of the chamber. Remy was still trapped inside there; she could feel it in her bones.

'Yowch!' Another stinging wave of energy deflected her dive, forcing Rogue back and momentarily blinding her.

'Fall back – Rogue that's an order!'

Even as Cyclops bellowed the command Rogue felt the warm tingle of Jean's telekinesis catching hold of her mind and body. Rogue did her best to fight it, trying to break free of the compulsion and make another dive for the mass of cables, but she couldn't. The heatless light and energy radiating in bursts from that twisted knot was too much for her. Rogue flew back to the rest of the team, who had retreated to the fragment of platform by the door that still held.

'Phoenix – Bishop, any ideas on what's happening?' Cyclops demanded as he loosed another wide angled optic blast towards a tentacle of twinned cables that rose up from the underside of platform like the arms of a kraken. Both X-men shook their heads in the negative.

The cable fell away, but others rose to join it as a network of spiderweb-like veins of glowing data spread across the walls and branched out into the empty space towards the main pulsing centre of power containing Gambit. The effect was eerily like watching oil slick black and neon sulphur frost creep over a windowpane made of pure energy.

'What about Remy?' Rogue demanded. 'He's still in there, ah know it!'

Phoenix pursed her lips, 'I…..' her eyes grew suddenly wide. 'Oh my god - look!'

As one the X-men turned to stare at the pulsing knot hanging from the centre of the chamber as one by one the other threads of cable joined it, forming an even tighter trap. Greenish-white light and energy hissed and bubbled out from the dwindling gaps in the roughly egg shaped knot of cables. If Gambit had truly been inside there he would surely have already suffocated, and was likely about to be crushed.

'Goddess preserve and keep us.' Ororo whispered hoarsely. The entirety chamber was thick with an interlocking tapestry of glowing cables and wild energy ran up and down those lines and cords like ice melt over cobweb.

Bishop jolted on his feet, a spasm running up his spine; his eyes went wide and wild. 'Phoenix shield us – Now'.

From the centre of that next of cables a band of agonisingly bright light and energy ripped forth. There was a silent as complete as all creation and the entire chamber was lost in a soundless release of pure energy. The X-men had no time to turn and run.


Almogordo - outside of the facility

'What the fuck was that?' Alex Summers demanded as the aftershocks of some kind of subterranean tremor passed through his body from the feet up. He looked down at the ground and swore again. 'Jesus Christ almighty.'

Alex Summers jumped back as the hard, gritty, sandy ground under his feet began to glow a familiar and worrying pinkish hue. 'Jeez this can't be good.' He hissed as looking up, he saw that the wreckage of the cooling tower was also beginning to glow as was the deep hole he and the other X-men had bored into the ground to enter the underground complex to begin with.

Archangel, flying about seven feet off the ground slapped a hand over his comm. Badge. 'Cyclops? Archangel to anyone – can you hear me?' After a moment of complete silence he shook his head angrily. 'Still nothing; I don't know if it's energy interference or what it is, but the comm's are completely down.'

Alex nodded grimly and glanced over at the indigo haired X-woman, 'Psylocke?'

With her eyes closed, the odd tattoo across one side of her face seeming oddly bright in the lurid glow of the fuchsia lit night, Psylocke shook her head. 'I can't sense much of anything; Gambit's powers play havoc with telepathy,' she paused and actually smiled thinly, 'No pun intended.' She shook her head. 'I'm sure if the team was in danger – or dead – I'd sense it. Other than that we're totally in the dark.'

'Great.' Alex's mouth twisted sourly. He glanced at Polaris who was standing a little ways away looking away from the complex and out into the night. 'Okay – I'm open to any and all ideas. Should we evacuate the area or go back down there?'

From the place where Belladonna Boudreaux watched the two Marauders, Scalphunter curled his lip and spat on the ground. 'You that keen to die, X-man?' he demanded. 'Don't you get it? The kid's gonna blow this place. If we get out now we'll be safe. If we stay we'll be vapour.'

Belladonna moved forward, fast and smooth, and struck Scalphunter around the head with the butt of her gun. The mercenary staggered, blood welling from an opened divot in his temple, but he did not fall.

'Mouth shut homme.' Belle warned him sweetly, holding a second handgun in her other hand pointed at Arclight as she aimed the first back at Scalphunter's head. 'Or mebbe de nice X-men gon throw you back down in de pit, to take your chances wit' m' husband, non?' she smiled humourlessly.

Alex cocked his head to the side and smiled – this smile was also not that friendly, 'There's a thought.'

'Alex.' Archangel's voice was all disapproval and for a moment it rankled but then Alex reminded himself he was no longer seeking approval from men like Warren Worthington and shrugged it off.

'It's a valid idea – I mean it is kind of Scalphunter's fault in the first place. He's the one who started up this machine that supercharged Gambit's powers.'

Alex flexed his fingers meditatively feeling them heat with plasma energy. 'Plus Scottie would only have to find some place to lock these two up in the mansion, and he's already got Sabretooth and Dark Beast to deal with.'

Havok looked over at Psylocke and Archangel, 'Think of it as garbage disposal.'

Psylocke looked as if she might actually be seriously considering the idea, while Warren remained morally implacable. Polaris sauntered over then. 'Boys – we're getting side tracked.' She pointed out.

'We have to figure out what to do about this.' She gestured at the fissure of glowing energy the entrance hole in the wreckage of the cooling tower had become.

Alex felt his eyes widen as he realised that even in the time he and Warren had been talking the outhouses around the complex had started to glow along with the ground under their feet and the night air had taken on a static-y thickness reminiscent of the breathless tension within the complex.

'Oh crap.' Alex swore with feeling. 'We have to get out of here right now.'

As if on cue, as soon as the words left his mouth, the first of the charged outhouses near the fallen cooling tower, erupted in a geyser of greenish-white energy. The X-men scattered, running for the waiting Worthington jet.


Garden Central Core:

In various states of dazed the X-men picked themselves up off the ground. Cyclops helped Jean to her feet; the effort of shielding the team from the wave of discarded energy from the capsule had shaken Phoenix and Scott could feel it through the link he had with his wife.

'Oh mah lord,' Rogue was the first to her feet and she could only stare horrified, at what had become of the capsule wreathed in data cables, 'Remy – mah god, Remy!'

Wolverine stood nearby snarling almost unconsciously through his teeth, his stance that of a predator at bay. Storm and Bishop rose to their feet and turned to stare at the glowing, pulsating orb that floated within a nest of cables in the place of the capsule that had contained the mutant Gambit.

'What is that thing?' Cyclops asked, squinting behind his visor against the shimmering whitish-green glare emanating from the orb-like object hovering in space. He didn't expect an answer, truthfully, and was therefore surprised when Bishop offered one.

'The Princess,' he whispered as if awed, 'The Momentary Princess – the Witness' greatest secret and the source of much of his power.' The big man shook his head in wonder. 'It is not supposed to exist in this time zone – or at least it was not discovered until much later.'

'What is it?' Storm asked, holding a hand up to her brow to shade her own eyes against the glow. 'What is its purpose and how did it come to be here?'

'The Princess is a temporal anomaly; it is time and space condensed.' He turned to stare at the X-men, 'It is a literal crystal ball granting the wielder the ability to know all possibilities in time.' Bishop turned back to stare at the glowing orb. 'In my time it was the Witness' play thing – he was the only man in the history of human or mutantkind to ever master the object; the only man who could control it.'

'Then this is it?' Cyclops breathed out in a rush as the pieces of the puzzle came together. 'This is what Sinister wanted Gambit for all along. He wanted to use Gambit, the Garden, and the Princess to control time itself.'

The Princess began to spin, turning in a corona of its own eldritch energies. As it did so tiny capillary tendrils of data began to crawl over the amorphous, only semi-solid surface of the orb; sparks flew and the light pulsing from the Princess went from green-white to hot pink. The entirety of the chamber shuddered and the air grew tight once again with rising power. From everywhere and nowhere a mechanised voice rang out in soulless tones:

Witness integration complete: pick a card, any card……..

There was a tremendous rush of energy, like a soundless firework, and in the aftershocks of fuchsia luminescence the boundaries of time and space collapsed.