(Author's Notes- I haven't been keeping up with the X-Men comics, so I'm not sure if Spyke is actually in them or if he's just on X-Men Evolution, so bear with me. Either way, it DOESN'T take place in X-Men Evolution. Also, you might notice a difference in Marrow's mutant abilities, but this is just my perception of her. Thanks)

She saw herself slip and fall, right off the cliff ledge. It was an out-of- body experience as she watched herself fall in slow motion, hands stretched upwards, helpless. She looked on as two hands belonging to two different people reached out to grab her own hands that were begging for a hold.

But that was after she saw herself get attacked from behind, ambushed by Sentinels. It was another third-person view as one of the robots fired an anti-mutant ray from the palm of it's mechanical hand. She twitched in pain as she watched her other self go through agony. The pain was what caused her to slip, she vaguely remembered.

She was back to the fall, slipping over the edge. She experienced that falling sensation as she watched herself fall again, watched the hands reach out to grab hers, and saw as they missed and she plummeted down into the raging waters below...

Rogue woke, startled, in a cold sweat. Ever since that day, she's had the same dream, the same nightmare, over and over. She cursed softly as she remembered that day and what really happened before her dreams distorted the event.

It was a warm Sunday and the team was out in exercises. Professor X had decided to break away from the Danger Room for a while and have them all train on the grounds.

But after they had been training for only a short time, warning sirens rang for an intruder. Sabretooth had managed to infiltrate the grounds. Caught unawares, Cyclops was injured before Wolverine took him on in a one-on-one battle. But that was all a distraction. The rest of the X-Men had to take the Lockheed out to the Grand Canyon, where Mystique, Toad, Magneto, and Juggernaut were having a massive battle. Toad and Juggernaut were losing to Magneto and Mystique, and Toad was almost dead.

At first, the X-Men didn't know what to do, but then the Sentinels arrived. Five of them, all big and red and purple. The X-Men battled two of them as the other mutants took on the rest. But these were newer, updated sentinels, each with an anti-mutant ray in it's palm, which negated mutant powers by distorting DNA patterns through a massive bombardment of Z-Rays, a recent discovery.

Rogue was watching her mother, Mystique, as the anti-mutant Z-ray tortured and distorted her, almost killing her. Just as she was about to fly in to help, she got hit with a ray herself, just for a few seconds.

Those few seconds were the worst of her life. She felt her body convulse in pain as it twisted her, trying to get to her DNA. It hurt even more because of the nature of her abilities, which tried to absorb the ray like she would any other person's power.

When the ray released her due to Jean Grey's quick action, she stumbled as her body smoked. This brought her to the edge of the Grand Canyon, and almost over it. A rock gave way, and plummeted downwards. With a cry of dismay she followed suit.

She couldn't fly, that was temporarily taken from her by the Z-Ray. She reached up her hands, but did not feel her body respond and soar upwards. Instead, she felt two hands grab her own.

When she was pulled up, she looked at her rescuers who were already rushing to join back in the fight. Marrow and Spyke. That was two weeks ago.

But since that day, Rogue has made an astonishing discovery about the Z- Rays and herself. This is the story of that discovery.