A/N: I prostrate myself at the reviewer's feet and beg forgiveness. This is literally a month late. Better late than never? You decide. I have been purposefully not watching the new episodes so that they won't affect my fic, so obviously, this is AU.

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

All That Glitters

Part Six – Encounter

He floated in a void where time held no meaning. Vague images flitted across his vision, but he made no effort to grab hold of them. Had he once cared? He couldn't remember. It no longer seemed worth it to try.

Dimly, a strange sensation vibrated through his arm. He discovered that it no longer moved properly. That was odd. He was sure arms weren't supposed to bend like that. Then even that brief awareness faded.

The pale boy's body went through the motions of daily training flawlessly, earning fewer injuries then all of the other trainees. He didn't notice. His mind was gone, far away from the cold white place where he drilled and fought and prepared to die.

* * *

Three men in lab coats stood around an occupied hospital bed. The motionless figure on it was hooked up to countless machines; their incessant beeping filled the room with sound. The men constantly checked the machines, their patient, and made notes on their clipboards.

In the next instant the door swung open with a bang, crashing into the featureless white walls of the room and startling the three men. The person in the doorway strode in confidently and stood with his arms crossed. The door swung shut behind him, though he had not so much as looked at it. 

The original occupants of the room looked shocked. One stepped forward hesitantly. "My lord Magneto, is there a problem? You aren't due to check on the patients for – " The man cried out in pain as Magneto raised his hand. He slammed back against the wall, testimony to the awesome power of a genetically-enhanced mutant who had such control over metals that he could even reach the iron in a person's blood.

"My actions are not to be questioned by the likes of you." The voice, despite the cruel incident that preceded it, was cold and impersonal. He turned his gaze to the figure on the bed. "Get him up. I have need of his services." The imposing man turned away immediately, not waiting for a response.

"But…but my lord!" Magneto froze and turned slowly. The man in question quailed visibly and swallowed. "That is to say…I do not mean to question you, of course, but…" Magneto's cold gaze reduced him to stammers. "The patient…he has just received a treatment, as per your orders, of course, and is not in any condition to get up just now…"

With a cry of terror, the second man joined the first against the wall. The third man now stood alone, shaking visibly. "Will there be any problem?" Magneto questioned, as calmly as if discussing the weather.

"No, my lord," he managed to say. Magneto turned and walked out of the room. After a few stunned moments, the two other men climbed painfully to their feet.

"What are we going to do? He's supposed to be kept docile for eight hours after the dose in order for the drug to fully grip his mind. If we let him go now he still might be able to question orders. I don't even know if we can wake him up!" The second man was nearly hyperventilating.

"We'll have to give him a stimulant. He must be awake when Lord Magneto comes back."

"But we don't know how the drugs will react with each other! It could kill him, and then Magneto would kill us!"

"It won't kill him! The mix of chemicals could damage his brain, but even that's not so bad, since Magneto hired us to make sure the kid can't use his brain." The third man cut off a protest. "It's our only option." He waited until he received two grim nods of acceptance and then gestured to the unconscious form on the hospital bed.

With that, the three men turned to their patient and got to work.

* * *

"He's in a building at the edge of town."

Wanda stalked through the alleyways on the outskirts of Bayville. Unwashed men leered at her from doorways; she disposed of them with her powers with hardly a backwards glance. All of her attention was focused on her goal.

"Past 8th Street, to 23rd Avenue. It's an old-looking building, rather large. I think it used to be a factory of some kind."

She spun a hard right at the end of an alley, taking brief notice of the road sign she could just make out in a harsh streetlight further ahead. Let Jean talk of openly taking the roads; she wasn't about to risk sauntering down the main roads as if she was simply out for a stroll. If she did that, she might as well call Magneto and tell him she was coming, and she hadn't waited this long for him to escape now. She had certainly wandered these streets often enough in the past months that she had refused to stay on Professor Xavier's charity, though she had never paid attention to the large, condemned factories before. Now she cursed that lack of interest. Her search for her brother and father should have ended long before this.

"There's sure to be guards. I could definitely sense other presences in the building. You may want to – "

Wanda snarled. She had cut Jean off as soon as she knew where her brother was. The idiotic X-Man (or was it X-Woman?) actually thought she would give Wanda advice on getting to her father. Wanda had no time for such lunacy. The popular redhead had never encountered Magneto like she had. She knew Magneto's tricks, and while they might have changed in recent years, she doubted it highly. Magneto had lived a long time and had become rather fixed in his ways. Besides, her powers could handle anything Magneto could throw at her.

Her hands clenched into fists, and she bit back a scream of rage. Magneto had made sure that her powers were strong, in ways that had traumatized her during her long years in captivity. Now those same powers he had cultivated were going to destroy him, for they were under her control now. She smiled – how deliciously ironic.

The windows of the surrounding homes flexed and shattered.

* * *

Scott walked quickly through the hallways of Bayville High, avoiding eye contact with the other students. It wasn't hard to do – for some reason, the students seemed reluctant to meet the gaze of someone who could destroy the entire building if his glasses slipped. Scott couldn't imagine why.

There's one perk to all this, Scott thought, only half joking. I get to class much faster this way. Everyone avoids me.

He called himself on the thought immediately. This was something he could never let his friends see. As much as they moaned and complained about his overbearing attitude and dawn training sessions, Scott knew that his friends – particularly the younger ones – looked to him for guidance. They did not need to know that their so-called fearless leader had doubts of his own – and that one of those doubts, as he saw a group of girls that used to giggle when he passed them turn away with fear and hostility thinly veiled in their eyes, was whether humanity would ever accept them for what they were.

Scott reached his English class with time to spare. He sat at his desk and studiously ignored the students walking in, who threw apprehensive looks in his general direction. It was sad how quickly he was getting used to that – he didn't even flinch, as he had in the initial days after their powers had been discovered.

The class passed in a blur. Scott didn't remember any of it, though he had dutifully taken notes. He figured he would re-read them later, maybe get some idea of what the lecture had actually been about.

Near the end of class, his teacher reached over to her desk and held up a stack of papers. "I have graded your Macbeth essays." This pronouncement was met with several groans. She raised an eyebrow. "That was about the reaction I had. People, this is your senior year, not grade school. I found the lack of quality papers among this class truly appalling. I expect many of you will find the motivation to do much better on your next one."

Scott waited patiently as she handed back the essays. He wasn't too worried; he had worked hard on his paper and actually thought he had raised some good points. Then she was at his desk, leaving his paper face down. He picked it up and stared at the grade in utter disbelief. 

I earned a D? How? He hadn't done this badly in a class since…actually, he didn't think he'd ever done this badly in a class. He flipped rapidly through the pages of his essay, looking for errors marked in his teacher's trademark red pen. He found none.

The bell rang, and Scott walked straight up to his teacher's desk. "Mrs. Rosen? Can I talk to you?" he asked, trying to calm himself. There had to a logical explanation for this – an explanation that was not the one his ever-pessimistic brain insisted was the answer. He composed his thoughts and said, "Mrs. Rosen, I have a question about my essay. The grade on it is a D, but there are no errors marked within the essay, and…" His voice trailed off as a strange look came into Mrs. Rosen's eyes.

"Ah, yes, Scott. I remember your essay. It was very well written, very…advanced." Scott was doubly confused now. So why had he received such a bad mark? And why did Mrs. Rosen sound so odd?

With a sigh, Mrs. Rosen turned to look at Scott directly in the eyes. He was shocked but hid it – no one but his fellow X-Men had done that in a long time. "Scott, this essay was written on a level far above that of this class. Given the circumstances, I could come up with only one logical answer." She looked at him as if waiting for something. When he stayed silent, she continued. "You know, Scott, that I keep examples of college essays within my filing cabinet?"

Dread filled his heart as he answered. "No, I didn't know that."

She acted as if she didn't hear him. "I can only assume that you read those essays and took your ideas from them. You know how I feel about plagiarism, Scott."

Scott could hardly believe what he was hearing. He had though Mrs. Rosen had liked him, before…His eyes turned to the filing cabinet. "But your filing cabinet is locked! How could I have gotten in there?" Mrs. Rosen was silent – but her eyes darted to Scott's ruby sunglasses, then away.

Understanding hit Scott like a slap in the face. "You think I used my powers to steal the papers." He didn't need to wait for an answer. "Mrs. Rosen, I would never do something like that! And besides, I can't break into something without leaving it destroyed afterwards!" Upon seeing the look on her face, Scott realized that might not have been the best choice of words.

"I do not pretend to understand your…abilities," Mrs. Rosen said stiffly. "But I do think there must have been a reason that you and your friends sought to hide them for so long. Why would you be afraid to reveal something that was entirely lawful?" The complete absurdity of her argument left Scott speechless. Mrs. Rosen's gaze only grew more stubborn. "Without any evidence to the contrary, I have to assume you cheated. It's only fair to the other students."

"So now I'm guilty until proven innocent? What kind of farce is this?" Scott knew he had gone too far, but he didn't care. A month ago Mrs. Rosen would never have dreamed of accusing Scott of cheating. The complete unfairness of the whole situation had burned away his sense of caution – he valued fairness over almost everything else. "I thought this school was supposed to be above prejudice and discrimination!"

Mrs. Rosen's lips tightened. "I will not hear another word on this subject. The grade stays. And if you continue to argue with me, Mr. Summers, then I will be forced to give you detention." Scott stared at her a moment longer, then spun on his heel and stalked out of the classroom, anger written in every line of his body.

As he struggled with his books at his locker, fury made his hands shake. Scott mentally called Mrs. Rosen every name he could think of and then started over again. Things had been bad over the past few weeks, but he had never thought that his own teachers would turn against him! Somehow he had mentally placed them in a realm outside the prejudiced student body, as people old enough not to take things at face value. Apparently, he had been very wrong.

It was even worse to know that if he complained, nothing would be done about it. The only person he could think of to complain to was Principal Kelly, and he had already established himself as anti-mutant. There was nothing he could do.

Scott was glad that none of his teammates could see him like this. At times like these, he almost seriously considered joining the Brotherhood.

* * *

Wanda curled her lip in disgust. The building, once she had found it, had been pathetically easy to infiltrate. The security cameras had been no trouble to deal with, and if Magneto had placed guards, she never encountered them. He puts too much faith in his precious metals, she thought disgustedly. As if technology and cameras couldn't fail. Either that, or he hasn't enough fighters to spare for a guard. If that's the case, then his cause is doomed already. Either way it didn't matter. It was still a huge advantage for her.

The outside of the building had been typical of a factory abandoned in a slum – broken windows, crumbling exterior, and walls that were more graffiti than regular paint. The inside, however, was quite different. The main hallway was painted in pristine white. Even the floor and ceiling were white, with harsh fluorescent lighting lending a sickly feel to the whole place. Many doors and hallways led off from the main passage, and each one Wanda looked into followed the same dead, colorless pattern.

Wanda kept walking. She figured that Magneto would have his place of command from a place in the center of the building, safe from outside attack yet easily accessible through the main routes. Indeed, his ego would demand that his quarters, whatever they might be, would lie at the end of such a major hallway. That way, anyone coming in would be led straight to him.

Far away down the hall, Wanda heard footsteps. She cursed underneath her breath, then sprinted back down the hall to a side passage she had noted earlier. She could only hope that the people coming did not need to use this particular hallway.

"…be away long?" Wanda didn't recognize the voice, but that didn't matter. The next words, spoken by the person's companion, captured her full attention.

"Not very long. You know Lord Magneto – he thinks this place would fall down around our ears if he wasn't here screaming at us every second."

"I heard that he left to find another doctor."

"Doctor," sneered the second voice. "What would a null know about doctoring mutants? All these nulls running around, actually working for Magneto – it makes me sick."

"Don't worry." Wanda swore she could hear the sadistic smile in the first voice. "When they're no longer needed to keep the trainees in one piece, Magneto will get rid of them - and maybe they'll let us have some fun with them first."

They were close – Wanda turned her face to the wall and held her breath, straining her senses for any hint that the men had noticed her. She allowed herself a cold smile when they passed her straight by, though inside she was fuming at the revelations they had imparted to her unknowingly. Magneto was gone!

Magneto couldn't be gone! To work so hard, and to finally be so close to getting her revenge – she could nearly taste it! She would not let this stupid turn of events stop her!

For a few moments her rage threatened to consume her. She forced herself to calm down, and as she did so, a thought came to her. Pietro. The little brat had always catered to Magneto's every whim. If she could find him, he would know where exactly Magneto had gone. She clenched her fists so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. She would get her revenge, and she would get it now.

Wanda continued down the hallway, this time with a new purpose in mind. She checked each door and glanced down each side passage. Some of the doors had windows in them, and the equipment they revealed reminded Wanda of a hospital or a science lab. She had nearly passed by one of them before she realized what she had just seen. She turned back sharply and peered in through the glass.

Wanda stared. Yes, Pietro was in the room. He sat nearly motionless on the bed in the middle of the stark white room, his pale skin, hair, and white clothes blending in with the walls. She could not remember ever seeing Pietro that still. It shocked her momentarily, but she shook it off. So her brother had managed to tone down the hyper-energy. So what? He would know where Magneto was. He would tell her what she needed to know. And when he had, she could take him down as well for his betrayal.

With her anger sufficiently aroused, she slammed the door open hard enough to nearly take it off its hinges. She let out a wordless scream of rage as she did so, hoping to frighten her brother into submission.

Pietro didn't move.

She stopped, her anger draining somewhat in confusion. She walked cautiously up to him, ever mindful of a potential trap. Wanda stopped a foot away from Pietro's bed, and still the white-haired teen stayed completely still.

Wanda began to grow angry again. Was he ignoring her? Was he mocking her? How dare he! She grabbed his chin in her hand and forced his face upwards to direct a glare directly into his face – and stopped in absolute shock.

Pietro's eyes were dull, lifeless. There was no spark of recognition there at all. There wasn't even a sign that Pietro was aware anyone else was in the room.

She backed away before she realized what she was doing. Her brother's pale eyes frightened her, staring into nothing at all. Wait, she thought suddenly. This could still be all an act. Pietro must know where Magneto is, and he will tell me. Now! Before she could act on this idea, however, she heard footsteps coming towards the door.

For the first time in her life, Wanda stopped to consider whether she should fight. Her first instinct was to destroy whoever was coming and hang the consequences. However, her counseling was apparently kicking in, because she found herself considering the ramifications of her actions. If she attacked these people now, Magneto could catch wind of it and escape before she could face him. That was the last thing she wanted to have happen. So for the first time ever, Wanda hid from a fight.

She had closed the door quickly the moment she heard someone coming. Now she darted behind the door as they opened it, then waited until they had moved farther into the room to dash for the exit. She left the door open the barest crack so that she could hear what the men were saying. The two men were apparently blind and deaf, because they had completely missed Wanda's escape.

"What do you think?" one of the men asked.

"It wouldn't hurt to dose him again," answered the other.

"I don't know," the first objected. "Look at how dilated his eyes are. He doesn't look like he'll be breaking loose any time soon, and we don't know how an overdose will affect him."

"That's what we thought last time, and when we came back he was trying to pick the lock on the door," snapped the second. "We can't afford to let that happen again." He smirked and added, "Besides, the little bastard's system works so fast that an overdose would leave his system in just a few hours."

"I still don't like it," the first one said, frowning. "We gave him an increased dosage last time, so it shouldn't run out soon. He shows no signs of developing a resistance to it, so there should be no problem. And we've already dosed him easily three times as much as the others!"

"It won't hurt him, his system works too fast. We need to dose him more often. Believe me," at this point a shudder passed through the second man, "I don't plan on offing the boss's kid. If we did that, Magneto might start testing the radiation on us instead."

His companion shuddered as well. "Don't even joke about that – I've seen how this radiation affects people. It's a wonder he's still alive."

"You know, Magneto's been dosing him ever since he was a kid," the second man offered. "Maybe he was introduced to it gradually. He tests all the radiation treatments on the kid before he tries them on himself. That's why the kid's hair is white – the treatments have destroyed the pigments."

"That's not the half of it," the first one sighed. "Did you know there used to be another one? Another kid, I mean. White-boy's twin, name of Wanda. The early radiation experiments Magneto did affected her differently and caused her to lose control of her powers. No one knows what he did with her after that, but she disappeared."

The second man looked startled. "Wanda? That's the name he said last training session that got Magneto so upset! He gave us hell after that, said that if Pietro ever became coherent enough to remember that name then he'd fire us." He shuddered slightly.

His partner filled in the words he didn't say. "And Magneto never fires anyone who knows as much as we do. He…removes them." He grimaced. "Sometimes I wonder if we're in this too deep."

The second man ignored this and checked his watch. "Look, we've got others to check on. Do we dose him or not?"

"No," the first one decided. "Magneto will be in here in about an hour with some more of those crystals of his. That should keep him docile enough that we won't need the extra medication."

"I hope you're right," the second said dubiously. "If he mentions her name or anyone else from that hick town he came from, our lives won't be worth a dime."

"They'll be worth even less if we overdose and kill him," reminded the first. "Let's go."

Wanda scrambled to get out of the way and around a corner before the men could see her. She stopped for a brief moment and leaned against the wall, her thoughts whirling. She remembered all too well her father's experiments with DNA-altering radiation – those rays had been what caused her powers to mutate too quickly, too uncontrollably. Those rays had been the reason her father abandoned her.

She gripped at her hair in frustration. No! She had hated her brother for so long, with such intensity. Her hatred had kept her alive and fighting for all those years locked up. She wouldn't…couldn't change that now.

She had never thought that Magneto had continued his experiments. Never dreamed that Pietro could be hurting like she was hurt…No! He left me! He left me all alone and never did anything to help me and I hate him and I want him dead…

But according to those two men, Magneto still experimented on Pietro. He controlled his son through injections, radiation, and the twisted bonds that still joined father and son. That meant that maybe Pietro hadn't wanted to leave her. Maybe he had no choice.

And that was something that Wanda could not deal with.

With a growl, Wanda turned and charged down the hall. Maybe she would find information about Magneto elsewhere. Still, she couldn't help but look back one last time. Pietro, what the hell is going on?

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