II.
Later that night, Pietro woke from a disturbing dream that he couldn't quite remember.
He lay there for a moment, listening to the quiet sounds of breathing from the other bed.
He got up slowly, knowing he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep for a while, and decided to check the other rooms. Remy and John were in their beds. Sabretooth was sprawled across the sofa, snoring. Pietro tiptoed past him to the kitchen. The dirty dishes in the sink had all been cleaned and put away, but there was still some soda left in the fridge. He poured some into a paper cup and sipped it while sneaking into the third bedroom.
It was empty. No clothes thrown over the back of a chair, no shoes kicked off across the room, no personal items. Nothing. Magneto hadn't come home yet.
Pietro moved into his father's bathroom. No razors or shaving foam in the medicine cabinet. No robe hanging on the back of the door. It was as if he didn't even live there . . .
"What are you doing?"
Pietro jumped, but it was only John. "Nothing. What are you doing up?"
"I heard a noise. Why don't you use the other bathroom?"
"Uh . . ." His mind worked at lightning speed to come up with an explanation. "Cold medicine! There's none in the other bathroom, so I came in here to see if maybe there was some in here." He made a show of opening the medicine cabinet. "Nope, nothing in here. Guess I'll go back to bed."
"Yeah, me too." John looked like he was about to say something else, but he gave up and went back to his own room.
Pietro did likewise. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of anything. Especially not that his father might not be coming back.
He blinked . . .
And he was sitting in the car. It was a warm autumn night, and Daddy had agreed to take them out for ice cream. He and Wanda sat in the back, excitedly chatting about what flavor they would get. They were eight years old, nine in a few months.
It wasn't until they passed the baseball field that Pietro realized this wasn't the way to the ice cream stand. Didn't Daddy know they were going the wrong way?
"Daddy?" he called out. "Where are we going?"
There was no answer, not right away. Daddy didn't like anyone to talk to him while he was driving. They stopped at a red light a little further on, and he looked back and said, "We're going for a ride first. There's something I have to do."
"I don't want to go for a ride!" Wanda said. Her toys began to rise off the back seat and float around on their own.
"Stop it!" Pietro whispered. "You'll get in trouble again!"
"I want to go home!"
They left the main road and started down a back street, one with very few lights. Wanda's toys were now flying around the inside of the car in a hundred different directions. One of them hit Daddy in the back of the head. Pietro held his breath, expecting Daddy to stop the car and yell at them, but he just kept driving, like what he had to do was too important to stop.
Eventually they pulled into a long driveway in front of a big building that looked like a library. Daddy turned off the engine, then came around to let them out.
Some men came out of the building and spoke to Daddy. Then they took Wanda by the arms, and she started screaming . . .
Suddenly it was as if things had shifted around, and Pietro was the one being taken away, watching Daddy and Wanda standing by the car and getting smaller and smaller. "Daddy! Don't leave me! No! Don't leave me!"
He tried to tell the men that this was all wrong, that it hadn't happened like this, but all he heard was this buzzing noise coming from inside the building—
He opened his eyes. The buzzing was an alarm clock.
He wondered what time it was.
"Pietro?"
Peter was standing beside his bed. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah," he said, as the dream began to fade away. "Just a bad dream."
As he tossed the sheets aside, he could smell something cooking. Eggs, he thought, and bacon, and maybe toast too. He was hungry.
It was around ten o'clock, when Pietro was waiting for his turn in the shower, when John made the announcement.
"Suit up and get ready," he said. "The boss is on his way."