Lucifer
Lucifer looked down on the crowd in the valley. He paused when he saw the Vulgates. Where had they come from? He searched the valley some more and spotted the hole just as the two young Vulgates peered out. Lucifer glanced at Todd to see if the mutant had noticed the two new arrivals, but he was pacing restlessly by himself, completely unaware. Lucifer watched as one Vulgate child nudged his friend and approached Todd.
Lucifer inched away from the spot that he had occupied for much of the night and stood in quiet contemplation. He had found Todd; his every instinct screamed that the figures huddled below him were not enemies, and with the help of the new Vulgates, it would have been easy to get the rest of the mutants in the city. On the other hand, banding up with Todd and his large group just meant that they'd all have to split up again and from what he gathered from Logan and Jean, every single one of the people he was looking at was supposed to be dead. The humans wouldn't take being split up again very well.
Lucifer stood and thought, weighing both options carefully. He had an awful suspicion that the choice he made would determine whether his companions lived or died.
For once, that meant something to him.
Storm's Group
"All I'm saying is that it could work." Bobby muttered to himself. He had been arguing with himself for the past half hour of cold trudging. No one else had commented on his talking to himself. They were all either not paying attention, or grateful to hear any noise at all.
The browns and grays of their surroundings had taken on a vampiric quality after the first hour of travel. It sucked up all the color from the world, and with the color, all feeling disappeared. Gone were the occasional sparks of hope that accompanied a tiny patch of green grass. The mutants were covered in grime so thick that it covered the stink of their bodies and between the cold and monotonous surroundings, they were all too drained to notice that their feet hurt, their fingers were frozen and their stomachs were empty. Indeed, Bobby's rants were a welcome relief because as annoying as he was, he was more interesting than the nothingness that surrounded them.
Bobby was beyond caring as well. The quiet was unnatural, uncomfortable, and above all, unnecessary. He wanted to talk to someone about everything that had happened. A sense of suffocating had descended upon him in the brain-choking silence and he struggled to combat it by talking to himself out loud. This death march was like nothing he had ever been forced to endure, except maybe history class last year. Things had finally calmed down, in a sense, but no one was willing to come to terms with the past few weeks. The X-Men were clinging desperately to the impossible: that the Professor was not dead and would call upon some untapped resources to save his students, that with enough perseverance and clever tricks, they could defeat this impossibly powerful enemy that had burst into their lives from right underneath their feet, that somewhere above was a god who was simply taking its time preparing a miracle to make everything the way it used to be. Understanding what was going on became a waste of time in the light of these hopes, these pointless but beautiful trinkets of the mind and heart that dangled, well-worn, but not dusty, over the cold mantle that was Bayville.
"What could work?" Bobby heard someone ask.
He shrugged and answered. "I have subthermal control. Technically speaking, I could do something about the temperature, right? I mean, it's not cold to me, but everyone else is freezing, right?"
"Why not try it then?"
Bobby gave a short laugh. "Because we're supposed to save our energy."
The voice was silent for a minute. "Is that why you're walking though the cold?"
"Nah. We're ou-" Bobby paused. He turned quickly to his companions. "Jean? Did you hear that?" He glanced at her.
Jean Grey sighed. "Bobby, all I can hear is you talking to yourself. Don't drag me into the conversation too."
Bobby stopped walking and looked around frantically. "Someone's watching us then. They just asked why we're walking in the cold."
"Bobby... Look I understand that you're bored but-" Jean's voice was drowned out by the strange voice.
"Who's that?" It asked.
Bobby looked up at the sky, as that seemed to be where the mysterious voice was coming from. "That's Jean. She's just tired that's all."
Jean stared at Bobby for a moment and then gasped. "He's right. There's a telepath nearby. I heard them just now."
"Friend?" Storm asked as everyone stopped and looked around for the stranger.
Jean put her hands to her temple. "I can't tell. I can't tell where they are, but I just heard them."
Mystique frowned. "How long were you talking to this person, Bobby?"
"Not long." He looked around bewildered. "I thought it was one of you guys until they asked why we were walking in the cold, that's all. I didn't mean it."
"Shut up. Right now we need to find out where they are." She stared at the mountains surrounding them. There was no way of knowing how many people were hiding in there.
"Inside." The voice said. "We're inside the city. Your name's Bobby, huh. Is your nickname 'Iceman', cause if it is, then it's a good thing I found you."
"Jean..." Bobby whispered.
"Keep him talking. I'm trying to find him." She whispered back. Jean Grey and Bobby stood unmoving, as everyone else but Storm headed towards the foot of the mountains to search for the stranger. Jean was focusing so hard that she didn't even notice that everyone left.
"Why? Why were you looking for me?" Bobby asked shakily.
"Scott mentioned that there were other people who would probably be headed towards this place. I wanted to find you first. There's an underground cave near one of the entrances to the city. You can't go anywhere near there. It's got some kind of gas in it. If you walk over one of the soft spots it might collapse and blow you to little pieces."
"Where?" Jean asked as Bobby explained the situation to Storm. "Where's the entrance with the cave?" Storm dashed to retrieve the rest of the mutants before they triggered the gas explosion.
"Hang on." There was silence for a moment and none of the mutants dared breathe. "Oh it's okay. You're nowhere near it. It's in the other direction."
"No." Jean gasped. "LOGAN!"
"What?" The voice sifted through Bobby's panic. "What's a Low gan?"
Logan
"Bingo. Start sending up the signal, Alex. We've found ourselves an entrance." Logan pronounced with an air of finality. Pietro and Kitty began jumping up and down singing praises while Alex braced himself to shoot his flare.
"NO! LOGAN!"
The force of the telepathic message brought Logan to his knees just as the flare went up. It sparked and its light spread like a firework from hell.
It sounded like one, too.
Logan was just beginning to stand when he felt a strange rumble beneath his knees. A low pitched whistle started and he jumped to his feet to find the source. Three feet away from Kitty, a small chunk of earth exploded upwards. Everyone started and stared at the spot. There were three more explosions, all in different areas.
"Yikes!" Pietro yelped and zipped behind Logan.
"You smell that?" Logan asked the others.
"Smells like gas." Remy muttered.
There was a long, strained silence.
"I guess we'll be going then." Pietro grinned nervously.
"I guess we will."
They looked at each other and, as one, the whole group began running.
Storm's Group
"This is terrible, we have to do something. We have to..." Jean was on the verge of panic.
"Hey, wasn't that the flare?" Lance asked. An enormous explosion that sent dirt and rocks flying everywhere answered him.
"Northstar and Drake, you two go check it out. Jean, keep working on that other telepath. We have to know if there's anyone else around here." Storm took charge of the group. "The rest of you can start looking for shelter. We'll work out the detail of food a little later."
"Yes sir, boss lady." Bobby saluted.
"Get him out of here." Mystique growled at Northstar. There was a blur and gust of wind and the two of them were gone.
"This keeps getting worse." Lance muttered.
"Doesn't it." Wanda stated flatly. "As bad as it is, it could be worse. We could be ordinary humans."
"I wonder what happened to all of them."
Mystique interrupted their musings. "I think I'd rather not know. Go find shelter. I'll guard Jean."
They split up, but no one ventured too far from Mystique and Jean. They all knew without a doubt that if they got lost they were as good as dead.
They all knew that they weren't alone in that vast wilderness.