Kurt had sat up to watch Doctor Grey bandage his leg properly. Her aim seemed to be to put it under as much pressure as she could to stop the bleeding. He… he could feel it, but it wasn't really pain any more.
"Okay." She said after a minute. "Can you stand?"
Kurt swung his legs off the bed and stood up. Doctor Grey put a hand out to steady him, but he didn't need her. He wouldn't have wanted to run or do tricks with his leg like this, but it was good enough.
"Thank you."
"I'll need to look at it again when this is over. Can you teleport?"
"Yes."
"Then can you go get Storm?"
,
Peter stood outside the doors of the lift, exoskeleton up, waiting. The doors opened. Not Logan. The only man left standing was wearing full black, like all the invaders were. Peter grabbed him by the shoulders - the bullet the man sent in to his chest just ricocheted off – and headbutted him. The man went limp. Peter threw him aside. He stood between these men and a hundred children. They used lethal force because the invaders did. They had no choice.
Logan lay at his feet, Peter dragged him clear. There was scarcely an inch of him that wasn't drenched in blood. There was a knife sticking out of his back. Oh no.
"Doctor Grey!" He though frantically, hoping she'd hear him. "Doctor Grey, help!"
At that moment, Mr. Summers came round the corner.
"What's happened?"
"Logan-"
"Jam the lift doors."
Peter let go of Logan and dragged two bodies in to the doorway. The lift doors pinged, but stayed open. Mr Summers crouched over Logan. Peter kept on shifting bodies. He was covered in blood too now. He could feel Doctor Grey running towards them through the network. Thank God. She dropped to her knees beside Logan, touched a hand to his neck, then pulled the knife from his back.
"I thought you said you shouldn't-"
"You shouldn't. He's an exception. See? It's already closing."
Ms Munroe and Kurt appeared behind Doctor Grey. Mr Summers looked up.
"How many more left up top?"
"I don't know." Storm said. "Twenty? More?"
"Gott in Himmel." Kurt breathed as he looked at Logan.
"He's alive." Doctor Grey said.
Peter felt Mr Summers pushing out through the network. "There are six of us here. Where are the other three?"
"Kitty's at the retreat –" The Professor replied
"Bobby? Rogue?"
"I don't know." Everyone in the corridor went still. If the Professor couldn't find them… "I found Bobby briefly before they came in sight of the school, in some distress. I have not felt Rogue since I came to Cerebro."
"Where was Bobby?" Mr Summers asked
"South of the school."
,
Scott set his jaw. They'd found Bobby, and probably Rogue, first. Had they been killed or taken alive? Right now, there was nothing they could do and they had no way of knowing. There was only so long they could hold the invaders by jamming the elevator. Sooner or later they'd hotwire it or discover the second one, the one that took them closer to the children.
Logan groaned and shifted. A wave of his pain came through the network before The Professor dampened it.
"Keep still." Jean said.
Their priority was to protect the children. He had six X-men, if Logan got up, and Kurt. He should keep a couple of them back in case it all went to hell and they had to run the children across country.
"Okay, do you think you can get up?" Jean asked Logan.
"Think so." He said. He pushed himself to hands and knees, then got his legs under himself, huffing with effort. He shook his head. "I'm okay."
"You've lost a lot of blood."
"I'm okay." He repeated. "What'd I miss?"
"We've lost Bobby and Rogue." Storm said.
Logan blanched under his mask of blood. "How? Are they-?"
"We don't know." Scott said. "And there's nothing we can do for them right now. In a minute or two, they're going to find the second lift and have two ways down here, unless we let them use this one again. Storm, you lose more than half your power underground. Get to the retreat with Kitty. We'll send Kurt for you if we drive them back out of the mansion." Storm hesitated, then went. "Kurt, just… keep out of the fight. One way or another, we're going to need you before this is over." Kurt nodded once and followed Storm away. The other three were looking at him. "We four retreat to The Stand, two and two, as we practiced." He looked at Logan. "I know what I'm asking of-"
"Can it, one-eye. I'm fine."
Scott sighed. "Kurt, if this all goes to hell-"
"Don't say it, Scott." Scott did as The Professor advised. Probably better to convince all four of them, including himself, that they could do this.
"Right, we clear the lift, then we run. Peter, you draw them in. Even two down, we should be able to hold them. Peter, guard your head, Logan, I'll try to keep them off you."
Jean raised a hand and all eight bodies slid out of the lift, leaving great smears of blood across the floor. Scott swallowed hard. There'd be worse than that in a minute. Almost immediately, they heard the lift start upwards.
"Okay, come on." He, Jean and Logan ran towards the Danger Room. Peter turned himself metal.
Logan stopped by the door and put his claws out, jaw set. Scott and Jean climbed up the barricade they'd built at the far end of the room, a vantage point for ranged attacks. Jean went all the way over it. She didn't need her own line of sight to use telekinesis, not when she could use theirs. Peter and Logan were to bottleneck them at the door, he and Jean would attack from a distance. Rogue was supposed to be with him on his side of the barricade, Bobby was supposed to be keeping the middle clear, taking any that got past Peter and Logan. Bobby and Rogue were down. They had what they had.
In theory, they ought to be able to hold for hours like this, but Scott had lain awake enough since they'd devised the plan to think of a few ways it could all come crashing down. Perhaps the worst of those was friendly fire. If he or Jean took Peter or Logan out of the fight by accident, the other probably wouldn't be able to hold the door. It would turn in to a melee. And if it turned in to a melee, he wouldn't last long, Jean might last longer than he did, but she couldn't withstand hits endlessly the way Peter could. Or the invaders could disable Peter or Logan. Logan was very hardy, but as he'd just shown, if he took enough damage fast enough, he would go down. Peter had also proven – by a very foolish stunt a few years back – that he lost his exoskeleton if he passed out. He seemed to be completely bullet proof, but Scott didn't want to assume that a shotgun slug to the temple at point-blank range wouldn't stun him.
Scott felt Jean's touch on his mind, seeking and giving reassurance at the same time. They'd survive this. They had to.
"There are only about thirty or forty left." The Professor said. "It's hard to count accurately by telepathy, but they're nervous now. Rather than trying to communicate between you now, I think my energies are better spent trying to force them to run. I'll keep an ear on Jean so you can call for help if you need to."
Scott spread his weight evenly between his feet. "Okay."
He heard the lift doors open. He heard the shouting start. He glanced down at Jean. She was very still, eyes dead forwards, hands tensed by her sides. He fixed his own eyes back on the door. Peter ran through it, bullets rattling off his back, he wasn't fast when he was armoured. Scott lifted his right hand to the side of his head. The challenge would be to find the lowest setting on which he reliably took a man down with every hit. The first invaders braved the door. Scott opened fire.
,
Charles Xavier was exhausted. When even his useless legs were starting to twitch in protest, he knew he'd pushed his telepathy far too far. He had to keep going. Linking ten minds – well, eight in the end, he'd failed Bobby and Rogue - together and maintaining and managing that network while almost every single person in it was dazed with combat... Every mind in the network had been close to overloading, never mind the one holding the thing together. He'd felt every blow inflicted on his X-men, then had to wall them off before pain distracted the rest of the group. That wasn't a problem they'd had in training. And to Charles's shame he hadn't foreseen it. As the invaders had come closer to Cerebro, he'd started to feel them, without really intending to, to feel their aggression, their fear, their pain when his X-men took them. Feeling the spasms of a dying mind as a telepath was among the most unpleasant things Charles had ever experienced, and he'd felt maybe thirty-five of the poor wretches die tonight. He felt shot to bits, but he had to keep going. He was searching for the minds of the ones furthest from the front line, from Scott's eyes and Logan's claws. He was trying to emphasise the pools of blood in the lift and outside it, the cars almost torn in two… surely these creatures were too powerful, too dangerous. But it was hard. Mutants were always easier to hear, particularly mutants he knew well, particularly telepaths he knew well. Jean was humming with restrained power. He'd not felt the like in her since Alkali Lake, maybe it was driven by desperation. She was… Charles was a little scared by what he felt, surely that was too much for her to control, and what would happen when she lost control? Would her desires shape it? Destroy the invaders utterly? Or would it burst from her like a bomb and kill Scott, Logan and Peter too? How far would it spread? Or could she contain it? She'd displayed beautiful control at Alkali Lake, maybe she would again, but maybe she'd have to sleep for a week afterwards.
He'd overcommitted himself; why had he ever thought he could do this? Handling the minds of nine people who knew they were in a training exercise, that the danger wasn't real, was one thing. Handling the minds of nine people who knew they were in mortal danger, four of whom had never fought like that before, and of course he'd had the minds of the invaders to deal with on some level, was entirely another.
He was looking for ringleaders, dominant men in the attacking force. If he could turn them, the rest would run. If he'd been fresh, he'd have been able to puppet them, command their bodies and make them run screaming from the school. But he was far from fresh. He'd taken on far too much. He'd been so distracted that he hadn't noticed Bobby and Rogue were gone. He didn't dare commit to more than trying to influence the invaders, not while he was being buffeted by every hit, every injury, every death. His X-men would hold. He was sure of them. He had to be.