Chapter 9: Conflagration
"Is Amy not awake yet?" Jean asked the X-Men at large as she sat down at the breakfast table. "She's usually up early, especially for breakfast."
Ororo blinked. "I haven't seen her yet this morning, Jean," she said, putting her napkin down on the table. "And you are right, she usually is quite punctual, especially for meals. I will go and check on her."
Storm went up the stairs and down the hall to where Amy's room was, raised a hand, and tapped on the door lightly. When there was no answer, she turned the knob and opened the door. "Amy?" she said, and stopped short as she realized the room was empty. The bed was rumpled a bit, but it didn't look like it had been slept in.
Ororo turned and raced back down the stairs. "Jean, she is not here. Her bed does not look to have been slept in, and her shoes are missing. Where could she have gone?"
Jean flicked a thought upstairs, to Xavier. Charles! She said. Amy's gone, we can't find her. Can you use Cerebro to try to find her? Or should we just go straight to the orphanage?
The orphanage, Xavier said. She went back there to get her things from Gilmore. I'm fairly certain that he is keeping her there.
Just then, Bobby came in. "Did you guys see the news?" h said excitedly. "There was a robbery at the Manhattan Savings Bank this morning, and now the building's on fire."
Jean's eyes widened. Charles, did you hear that?
Yes, Xavier sounded grim. Get to the orphanage, as quickly as possible. I'm fairly certain that you're going to find Amy there, in the middle of all the mess. Be careful, and don't hurt her, or any of the kids. She may be under some kind of coercion.
They arrived at the end of the drive just as the last of the children were being ushered into the minibus belonging to the orphanage. Gilmore, Amy, a boy Jean recognized as Greg Gilmore, and another man who they assumed was one of the staff were standing at the end or the drive. As soon as Jean got close she could feel the psychic web woven around Amy's mind by the younger Gilmore. Xavier's guess was correct, then.
"Gilmore!" Scott called as the X-Men ranged themselves around him, watchful but not really ready for trouble from an innocuous group of kids. "Let the kids go! Turn yourself in to the police! We know you robbed the bank this morning by using the kids!"
Gilmore turned to his son. "Use Amy to kill them, then we can go," he said. Jean felt a sudden surge in psychic activity between Greg and Amy, then Amy raised her arms stiffly, her eyes blank, and pointed at the X-Men. A sheet of flame rolled toward them. Bobby barely got his ice shield up in time; but it was going to melt in no time at all, as the intense heat of the flames got stronger.
Storm took to the air, calling on the clouds hovering overhead to produce rain. At her urging, they obliged, and the flames began to die.
Amy bought both hands up, and the flames sprang back to life. They were much higher now, and the rain Storm was calling down wasn't doing much to quell them. It leaped toward them as the last of Bobby's ice wall collapsed. Jean saved them in the nick of time by setting up a telekinetic bubble around them. "Amy!" she screamed at the girl from inside the bubble. "Amy, stop this, we're your friends!" The girl just looked at her blankly, and the flames rose higher. The grass around them caught fire. Jean watched helplessly as the flames raced across the lawn toward the building. The wooden steps caught fire almost as soon as the flames licked at them.
The fire raced up the old wooden steps, their way only accelerated by the new coating of paint on the wood. Soon the entire front of the building was burning. Jean spared only one anguished glance at it as all the orphans' hard work went up in flames; she was trying to keep her and her teammates alive, and she couldn't worry about a building.
Amy turned her attention from the group inside the bubble to the figure hovering in air above her head, whipping up monsoon-like rains. A long ribbon of fire leaped from her hands and hurtled toward Storm, taking the form of a long, sinuous, fiery dragon. Storm dodged the manifestation easily as it shot past her, sizzling as raindrops hit it. It coiled around itself, changing directions almost faster than the eye could see, and went after her again. As Storm dodged around it, she pelted it with heavy rain, but that didn't faze it a bit. It opened its mouth and spat a gout of flame at her. Jean heard Storm scream in pain as the flame seared her arm. She tumbled out of the sky, and Jean barely had time to collapse the telekinetic bubble around them and spread a glittering web below her friend. Storm landed in the web, and the X-Men pulled back warily as she assessed the damage. Storm's face was contorted in pain, and her arm was badly burned. She wasn't going to be able to help them any further.
Bishop snarled in rage and drew his gun. Before Jean or Scott could stop him, he fired at the young girl. Jean's anguished "No!" turned into a gasp of surprise as the bullets stopped in midair, turned into molten balls of flame, and dropped to the scorched, bare earth. Bishop lowered his gun, surprise plastered all over his face, and Amy used the moment to attack them. A wall of flame sprang up around them. Bobby cried out in surprise as the flames licked at his leg, burning through the ice coating and his uniform.
Gilmore waved the bus of the other orphans off while watching his son and the girl out the corner of his eye. He was surprised at the amount of power the girl was wielding. He'd never known how much she had at her disposal, though he'd had a vague idea that it was considerable, given her ability to burn an entire bank. So engrossed was he in watching his son and the girl, he never saw the police cars pull up at the end of the long drive in front of the building, and several police officers get out.
Greg had his eyes closed, concentrating. Amy was fighting his control, battering at his mental barriers, and he was having trouble controlling her powers and fighting her at the same time. She was beating at his mind, much like a caged wild bird fighting the bars of its cage, but he was stronger, and she wasn't focusing her mental strength to fighting him.
Jean and the other X-Men stood in the center of the rapidly shrinking fiery circle, at a loss for what to do next. Amy's power was phenomenal; Jean had never seen its like before. She bit her lip, eyes wide, looking apprehensively at the girl. "Amy!" she called once again, "Amy!" Getting no response, she focused her telepathic powers at the girl and spoke to her mentally. Amy!
She's under my control, said a harsh, male mental voice, and Jean opened her eyes, looking straight at Greg Gilmore. He was smiling. I control her body and her powers. You've no idea how powerful she is! It's intoxicating! I'm going to kill you all, and she's going to have to watch!
Jean pushed against the mental shield around Greg Gilmore's mind first gently, then more strongly. You can't have her! She said grimly into Greg's mind. I'm not going to allow it! She shoved with all her strength at his shields.
He shrieked. Stop it! He doubled over, clutching his head in his hands as he fought to keep control of Amy and repel Jean at the same time. Jean began a steady barrage against his mind, keeping him off balance. The control was starting to erode, little by little…
Mom! Came a new voice in Jean's head. It was Nate. He opened his mind completely, giving her access to his telepathic powers. It wasn't much, but it was enough.
Greg Gilmore fell over backward, screaming in frustration and anger as his hold over Amy's mind snapped. Jean gasped and stopped attacking him, exhausted, as she felt Amy's consciousness fill her own mind again.
Amy turned to Greg, filled with rage, and Jean gasped as she saw the flames dancing in her eyes. If she was powerful before, what she was now was beyond power. Orange and gold sparks began to dance over her body and through her hair, and gathered at her fingertips. The fire dragon burst into being again, over her head, and hovered again, becoming larger and more powerful. Then it turned, swift as light, and coiled around Greg Gilmore. The eighteen year old disappeared, screaming, in a maelstrom of fire. The X-Men stared in shocked silence as it writhed in circles around the boy. From within the flames, the screaming stopped, and the dragon uncurled itself, springing into the sky with a roar of flames. Behind it, on the ground, lay a smoking, charred heap of scorched bone and burnt flesh. The stench of burned human flesh filled their noses, and Scott grimaced in distaste.
But there was no time for them to stop, because that terrible flaming manifestation was turning its attention to Headmaster Gilmore. "Amy! Amy, stop!" Jean screamed, but her words went unheeded as the dragon descended on Gilmore himself. The man's screams were awful to hear as the fire devoured him, burned him, seared the flesh from his bone and leaving a smoking ruin behind.
Amy turned, her face expressionless, as Gilmore screamed his last behind her, and walked into the burning orphanage. She disappeared inside, and Jean could follow her progress through the building as more and more windows burst outward from the flames raging within. It was only a few minutes before Amy reappeared, and in her hands, safe in the middle of the flames raging around her, was her precious book.
Fire engines and police cars with their sirens on came screaming up the road and stopped. The police stared in shock at the flaming building, at the flaming girl, at the two charred bodies lying on the ground as the firefighters hooked up a hose to a hydrant. "Wait!" Jean cried out, "Wait, we can stop her, we can get her out of it, please wait…" But the firefighters aimed the hose at Amy and turned on the water.
The force and pressure of the water slammed into her, and they all heard her scream in shock and pain as the blast knocked her off her feet and pushed her in the side of the building. All the flames stopped, as if they were snuffed out by a giant hand, but they kept battering Amy with the hard spray from the fire hose until she lay, semi-conscious and moaning, on the ground. The police stepped forward, snapped a collar around her neck that would prohibit the use of her mutant powers, then cuffed her hands behind her back.
Jean walked up to the officer who seemed to be in charge. "Officer, wait," she said. "She's only a child, you don't need to take her to jail, we saw it all…"
The man pushed his hat to the back of his head. Jean recognized him as an officer they'd seen before at other incidents all around the city. "Please, Officer Cohen," she pleaded. "Amy's a friend of ours; she didn't mean to do this, she was under someone else's mind control."
The officer shook his head. While not exactly a fan of theirs, they'd never done him harm, and he'd made a promise to himself to leave them alone. This girl, though…"Ma'am," he said, "As much as I'd like to believe that, I saw her shake off the other boy's mind control before she killed the man. And the stolen money from the bank is in the car they were planning to escape in. And ma'am, I don't know if she was under mind control at the bank or not, but there are six dead boys back at the bank. Their bodies are burned almost beyond recognition. She did it. We have to take her in."
Jean stepped back, tears filling her eyes as they dropped Amy's limp body across the back seat. "Amy," she said to the exhausted girl, "Amy, we'll see you down at the police station."
A short time later, Jean, Scott, and Xavier were at the police station, looking at the girl slumped at the interrogation table. A detective was questioning her, and Amy answered dully, exhausted and dispirited.
"Were you part of the group that robbed the bank this morning?" he asked. Amy nodded.
"What happened?" he switched on a tape recorder as Amy started to speak.
"Mr. Gilmore, Drew, Stefan, Matt, Luke, Shawn, Chris, Greg, and I went out to the bank early this morning," she said. "Drew, Stefan, and Matt took the money; I was supposed to set fire to the building after they were all out. I didn't want to, so Greg took control of me...he was a telepath…and made me set fire to the bank. Then when Mr. Gilmore told him to, he made me kill them. Greg made me set fire to them and push them out. We left them there and came back.
"This was going to be his last heist. He put the other kids, the normal ones, into the bus and tried to send them off, when the X-Men came. Greg made me fight them; I hurt St—I hurt a couple of them badly. Then the one called Phoenix broke the hold he had on my mind.
"I should have stopped. I didn't. I got angry. I've never been that angry before. And the dragon—the manifestation of my powers—woke inside me, and I couldn't stop it. It fed off my anger, and went and destroyed Greg, then Headmaster Gilmore, and then the orphanage. I did kill him. I'm sorry I did." She looked up for the first time, and the watching X-Men saw despair and anguish in her eyes. "I didn't mean to kill him. I didn't. I just couldn't control the flames anymore," she finished. Her head bowed, and her face fell into her hands, and she began to sob in sorrow and remorse. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she cried.
Xavier drew in a breath and turned to the man standing beside him. "What will happen to her now?"
The District Attorney sighed. "She's going to have to go to a secure facility for mutants, I'm afraid. She killed a man in cold blood, and while my instinct as a man is to give her a medal for stopping the long string of bank robberies happening up and down the east coast, my duty as a district Attorney is to put her where she won't hurt anyone again. And that means she's going to have to go to Mount Haven." He turned to Xavier. "You know the place, you helped to build it. You can see her whenever you wish. She will, of course, be treated by a psychiatrist, and perhaps she'll be released after we're sure she won't be hurting anyone again." He scratched his head. "I still don't see how you got mixed up with her in the first place."
Xavier thought back to the evening by the lake. "The 'orphanage' Harvey Gilmore was using as a front was on the property adjoining mine," he said. "She wandered over the line and I found her one evening sitting by a lake on my property, reading. We struck up a conversation."
"Reading this?" said an officer, coming up with Amy's sodden clothes and a waterlogged volume. Xavier took it with a pang of regret. It was Amy's copy of King Lear. He took it, opened it, looked inside. Inside, on page twenty, was the letter, wet, soaked, but the writing on the envelope was still legible. He took it with tears in his eyes.
The officer went in and took Amy's arm. As she was going out, she saw Xavier. With a moan she pulled away from the officer and hurled herself at him, burying her face in his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she wept, "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have gone back, but I wanted my book. Please forgive me."
"There's nothing to forgive," Xavier said gently, patting her shoulder. "Just go with them, Amy. Nothing will hurt you. They'll help you learn to control your anger and your powers at Mount Haven. I'll come and see you as often as I can, and when you're in control again you'll be released. And you can always come back, Amy, when they let you go."
"Can't you make them let me go?" she said pleadingly, looking at him. He shook his head. "Amy, having released your powers like that once, we can't be sure you won't do that again. You're a danger to yourself and to others as long as you can't control your anger and your powers."
She stood at the officer's prompting. "I'll come back," she vowed, standing up and stepping back. "I'll learn to control it all, and then I'll come back." She turned and followed the officer out of the interrogation block.
Xavier sat there, watching her leave, feeling the rough texture of her book under his fingers, and knew, with a certainty that went bone deep, that he would see her again.