This is it, folks. The last "official" chapter of this story. All that's left after this is the epilogue, which will tie up the more obscure loose ends. Do not cry, my loyal ones. This story will end in a thoroughly delicious DEMONIC way. I'm ebil. Most ebil. You shall see. You SHALL see.

A/N: This is the last official chapter of the story. There will be an epilogue, which will tie up some of the loose ends that still linger. Just so y'all know.

Chapter Nineteen: End of the Line

My dear professor Xavier. Ya've told me that ya want the truth. As the old cliché goes, ya can't handle the truth. However, Ah'll tell ya what Ah know. Ya'll be going over all this posthumously, so forgive me if Ah take my time with it. It's difficult for me.

The massacre Down Under was swept under the carpet by the Australian government, or rather, what remained of it. The official story of the carnage was alternately an explosion of dangerous gases or a rapid outbreak of some unknown disease that just as rapidly disappeared. Journalists after a hot story strung their stories with innuendoes and hints, but no one knew the truth except for the higher-ups of a few governments. No one that high up wanted to admit that such a thing was possible given the extreme and prejudicial laws they'd all passed. Secretly, some were thinking it was those very laws that caused this, but others thought they needed more strict ones.

The pressure was on for X-Force, what remained of them, to leave the matter alone and let the clean up crews handle what remained of "Genosha" and it's political plans. In the wake of Rogue's death and the promises he made, he couldn't do that. However, given the ordinances they were breaking by going into Genosha, he did give the option to X-Force. They did not have to go. Not surprisingly, none opted out.

Together, the mutants descended to the small island of Genosha. With aid of Storm and advanced technology, they landed outside the Citadel in relative safety. The air outside the plane was stale, as if even the land knew that it's time had passed. Xavier led the way in, with Magneto levitating him over the crumbling door frame and into the dark front hall.

They stood their in silence, their minds struggling to keep up with their hearts, whom beat fast as a hummingbird's wings and nowhere near as quiet. It was Xavier who spoke next. "We're to go downstairs."

The truth started with me, but it won't end with me. That's part of the reason Ah'm telling ya this, so ya can finish what Ah started.

Approximately three years ago, Ah woke up in a hospital room, and my life hasn't been the same since. The doctors there explained my whereabouts by saying that Ah'd been reborn, as a Mutate, one of god's chosen. Ah have since learned the truth, though admittedly Ah was a bit of a dunderhead for the first couple of months. Ah did what they told me, because Ah couldn't understand what had happened. Ah could remember another life, before Genosha, but Ah couldn't feel that life. Ah had no emotions tied to that, and by extension, no real emotions at all. Ah was the perfect little drone.

Then, however, Ah started to feel something. An urgent something, calling me. At the peak of that urgency, Ah followed it into a place Ah couldn't remember going before. To the sub-basements, off-limits to all Mutates. The only one ever seen entering those levels were the doctors and the Leader. Given my abilities, it was little effort for me to gain access.

The way down to the sublevels would be impossible for baseline humans, and still was quite difficult for the mutants. Someone had taken great pains to cut off all direct entrances into the basement before leaving. However, they hadn't counted on Magneto.

With a wave of his hand, chunks of concrete littered with metal wire lifted from the floor. A quick glance from Gambit, whose sight had returned fully in the days following the "incident" showed that the way was clear for them to proceed. He jumped down first, with the others following, and Magneto and Xavier floating down. Storm looked unsettled the deeper they went, but she didn't say anything, so neither did anyone else.

They continued deeper into the facility, with Xavier leading the way, and seeming to know where he was going despite never having been there. However, to lessen their worry, he didn't let them know that mentally he had been there. Both Lucas and Rogue had taken this walk, Lucas more than once. In his mind, he walked within them as they did so, felt was they felt, thought what they thought. Lucas was blank, his thoughts idle as he walked toward the impending horror, without so much as a care in the world. Rogue had been confused. Decidedly child-like in her mannerisms and thoughts as she's snuck down the hall. He walked along with them both, torn in two directions. On one side, the son he failed in everyway. On the other, the student he hadn't failed, but had lost anyways.

Soon, they came to a small red door. It had no visible knob or lock. If not for the color, none of them would even have noticed it (which was, of course, a lie. They had various abilities, and eventually one of them would have noticed the damn thing). Once again, Magneto's great magnetic abilities came in handy. Rather, they would have. The door was made of wood.

Wolverine shredded that will ease, but couldn't help the smirk he let sail over his shoulder. The magnificent Magneto couldn't take down one itty bitty door? For shame.

However, once inside those doors, all feelings of congeniality disappeared.

For the longest time, Ah couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Ah knew it was something, because Ah could remember a time when Ah was different. Xavier, darlin', Ah walked into that room and Ah knew. Ah knew what was wrong with me.

Ah could feel her, ya see. Ah found her easily. She was third on the left, two rows down. She looked asleep, but Ah could tell she wasn't. She dreamt. Ah thought for a minute that Ah was what she dreamt, but the second Ah touched her hand Ah knew. Ah was the nightmare, not the dream. Ah took from her information, identity, memories. The first ones taken, but these given. She wanted me to help, and instead Ah put her back into the sleep the damn doctors started.

She was gone from my head, that urgency gone. Ah couldn't forget it though, and knowing what Ah knew, Ah didn't want to. Ah began to plan. As Ah did so, Ah made allies, found information, and plotted. As ya stare into that room, Ah want to tell ya the truth of what happened there. The travesty.

The door opened into a cavernous room with a large column in the center, walls lined with strange glowing portals. A few steps closer and you realized that they were not portals at all. They were cells. Filled with a liquid that was lit from within by unseen lights. Inside those cells, bodies floated. Not bodies as in corpses, bodies as in people. The doors on the cells were covered in rime, though not truly was it frost. It looked more like dust and mold.

Xavier rolled forward, to the edge of the balcony that overlooked the room. They'd entered at the very top of the room, and as he looked over it, he could see hundreds of such cells surround the walls, and forming a large circular pillar in the center of the chamber. X-Force stared in wonder. Every single cell in that chamber had a person in it.

Down the balcony, Jubilee suddenly gasped and took a step back from one of the cells, her step so sudden only the banister kept her from falling. "Xavier! Come see this!"

Of course, they all had to troop down and see what had shaken the oh-so-solid Jubilee. As they peered into the cell, Storm was the first one to speak.

"Is that...Nightcrawler?"

Jubilee nodded. "Yeah, it is, and that green goo totally doesn't look good on him."

Storm resisted the urge to smack the young girl (on the principle that this was a young girl and allowances must be made). "I was under the impression that he was deceased."

Xavier turned his chair to stare at his team. "He is. Rather, the one Rogue knew is deceased."

"The one Rogue knew?" Magneto asked.

"Was not the real one," Xavier finished. "You see, these are the real mutants. The ones we fought and watched died, including Rogue, Shadowcat, and others, are not."

"Then what are dey?" Gambit asked, his red on black eyes wide open and child-like in their innocence. Xavier knew it was an act, and that even now Gambit's mind was working frantically to come up with an answer.

Xavier fought back a triumphant grin, and remained stoic. "They were clones."

It all starts with Magneto and the X-Men. Four and a half years ago, he kidnapped us, the best of the best, and took us to Asteroid M. We all know how that turned out. Asteroid M was destroyed, we were freed, and all the pretty gems of Cyttorak that he'd been planning on using to subvert us were destroyed.

The issue of that was settled between us and Magneto after that, and it never came up again, but it wasn't forgotten. The gems of Cyttorak, first used by Cain Marko, ya brother, to become Juggernaut, had long been an interest to the Black King, Sebastian Shaw. Though the last remaining gems on Earth were supposed to have been destroyed with Asteroid M, as soon as it was safe, Shaw had divers in the water searching for any sizable pieces. After a year and a half, all they'd found were small slivers. Enough for Shaw to at least begin his plan.

Right around that time, Shaw was forced out of leadership of the New York Hellfire Club, and migrated to Japan. He'd lost his "test subjects" in the process. Normally, he'd have waited a while and found new trustworthy subjects. However, his partner, Dr. Sinister, convinced him to take another route. What better way to form the perfect army than of fellow mutants? And not just any mutants...the most formidable team on the planet. X-Men.

X-Force stared at Xavier like he was crazy, or at the very least, possessed by some alien force trying to control them and perpetuate some unseen plan. They decided to go with crazy.

"What are you talking about, Chuck?" Wolverine asked, idly cleaning his teeth with a claw and staring at Nightcrawler, who didn't looked to have aged a single day since the last time he'd seen the fuzzy elf. Whoa. Now there was a term that took him back. Back to days filled with girls giggling and boys blushing, the food in the fridge being gone (as well as several of his bottles of beer), the bathroom always occupied, and the living room constantly cluttered. He'd missed those days.

"These are the real X-Men. Unaged, unchanged from that day they disappeared three years ago. Using telepaths, their memories were transferred to the empty minds of clones created specifically for that purpose. In all ways, physically and mentally, the people we met were Rogue and Shadowcat. In reality, they were merely really good copies."

Magneto studied the rows upon rows of mutants, all in stasis, kept sleeping at the will of machinery and their captors. "What do we do about this?"

Xavier looked surprised. "We wake them, of course."

Magneto looked sharply at X-Force and Xavier. "We do not have the experience necessary for this. These people are going be confused, angry, depressed. They've been kept here against their will while abominations walked around in their skin and lived their lives. We should notify the UN and leave it be."

Surprisingly, it was Jubilee who objected. "We can't do that. These are our people. We can't leave their fates to some drone in some office. What if they decide it's not worth it, and let them keep sleeping?"

They all stood there silently as they contemplated that. True, the United Nations, though Earth's foremost politically correct organization, they were still human and subject to prejudicial practices. There was no telling what they'd do in the face of this.

Xavier rolled forward, his wheels to the very edge of the balcony. "We take the X-Men. Leave the rest. We'll contact the UN as soon as we're away from here and detection."

There in lay the gambit. X-Force wasn't supposed to be here at all, and to have found this and taken from it before it could be processed as a crime scene as UN procedures demanded was risky. For all they knew, the UN might lash out at X-Force. There was little they could do, but even X-Force didn't want bad publicity. It might affect funding.

Still, X-Force started to search out for the rest of the X-Men. They would take their family with them when they left.

Given the size of the shards, and the uncertainty of the process itself, Shaw was hesitant to risk injuring the mutants. If the process failed, then the mutants would die as the first experiments proved. All that potential would be lost. That is where Sinister really came in. Years ahead of the public knowledge of technology, he had successfully cloned humans. Shaw hired Dr. Essex, or Sinister as he calls himself, to do just that. It was the perfect ploy. If the process worked, then the most powerful mutants, ie the ones who survived past a certain testing period, would be cloned again and again, the later ones without memories and personality implanted mentally. The perfect soldiers.

The test period was three years. At the end of those three years, the mutants that passed inspection would be mass-produced and put under his employ. Problems arose much earlier than that.

Dr. Sinister didn't like being someone's employee and taking orders. With the cooperation of the "dummy" leader of Shaw's front (a small Genoshan company specializing in microchips), Sinister began to plot against Shaw. After one year, all communications between the two men was cut off. The Genoshan "factory" was going solo with plans of it's own. At the three year mark, when all the other "factories" around the world would begin their partial shut down and begin evaluations, Sinister's army would begin it's march. By the time the other factories were active again, it would be too late. Sinister would have taken Shaw's headquarters, in Japan. He'd have had the world.

Shaw wasn't taking it lying down, and that's where my plan begins. Shaw contacted me, put me in contact with his aide, Tessa. Ah smuggled her into the Citadel, where she was "captured" by security. Within a week, Sage, her clone, was out and about. Ah freed Tessa, who reprogrammed the clone with her real objective. Tessa escaped, and Sage and Ah continued to plan. Ah assumed that she and Ah was the only one working for Shaw, but on retrospective, Ah think Ah was wrong.

X-Force were in various places around the room, searching for the X-Men. Only three had been located so far; Nightcrawler, Cyclops, and Wolfsbane. Magneto used his control over magnetism to wrench the cells from the walls, and they floated in the air, still operating, though now under the power of Storm's electric storm. Magneto and Storm both flew along with the cells, watching as the ground-bound members of the team continued to search, at the same time, looking through the central pillar that housed cells the other people couldn't see or even reach. Storm found the next X-Man.

"I've found Amara!" She called in her crisp worldly accent. Magneto instantly held his hand toward the cell she gestured to, and pulled it from it's moldings. It floated passively for a few seconds, before soaring to join the other three.

In rapid succession, Bobby, Roberto, and Ray were found. They joined the other floating cells. No other X-Men could be found by the team. They turned to Xavier.

Steadying himself, Xavier reached out with his mind, feeling the small blips on his "radar" that represented each mutant. They were all freakishly small and nominal, the sleeping state of this prison making it almost impossible to detect them unless you were looking for it.

Xavier let his mind roll over that room, row by row, wall by wall. Minds that he knew, that he'd touched before, flickered under his eye, burning a bit brighter as he passed over. He prodded Magneto's mind as to where the cells were. Tabitha, Warren, Kitty, Jaime, and Rogue had been found. The only remaining missing X-Man not to be found...was Jean.

From the beginning, things kept going wrong. Phoenix always seemed to be in the right place at the wrong time, almost catching my plotting, but never letting on if she did. It should have clued me in, but Ah was so focused, Ah never paid attention. Ah think now Ah'm paying for that.

Shaw contacted me a year ago. He told me that the plan to take down Sinister was off indefinitely. He had a new target for me. It'd been told to him that you, Xavier, had the last remaining whole Cyttorak gem on Earth, and he wanted it. With it, he could evolve himself completely, and wouldn't have need of large armies and the like. Yes, Sebastian Shaw, Black King of the Hellfire Club is a mutant, and he surrounds himself with them as well. Just so ya know, for future reference...

Ah told him no. Ah told him that he could find that damn jewel himself. Ah was taking down Sinister if it was the last thing Ah did. Turns out now, it prolly isn't going to be, eh? Maybe indirectly Ah'll finish what Ah started, but Ah got a feeling, a premonition if ya may, that Ah won't live to see another day. Promise me, Xavier. Ya'll finish what Ah started.

Ah can feel the dawn calling me, and it's time for me to go. Ah hope Ah've given you enough information that ya can understand what Ah went through, and why Ah did what Ah did. Ah hope that ya can tell what needs to be said to the world, and the things that don't need to be.

Ah was real. Ah may have been a clone, but, baby, Ah was real. Ah lived. Ah loved. And damnit, Ah made mistakes, but Ah learned. Doesn't that make me human?

Xavier thought of what Rogue had told him, and couldn't help thinking to himself that perhaps that Rogue had been more human than all of them combined. To be made so aware of your own life and death, and everything between. To know that without a doubt, you had a purpose in life. A destiny. Xavier envied the late Rogue her purpose, having so often floundered in life, unsure of where to turn next.

Magneto lined up the cells, and started to manipulate them out of the room. The door was much too small for them to fit, so he blasted the frame away, leaving a large hole. This whole idea, a sleep containment center for the mutants reminded him too much of his childhood for comfort. These people hadn't deserved this. Forced anonymity amidst torturing apathy of your captors. It was a scenario he was all too familiar with. The world wondered why he was the way he was, so bloodthirsty, so driven. They need only to look into the darkness of the human soul to see what he'd been born of. Magneto was the world's conscience, and he intended to be for a long time.

They all had a purpose, X-Force, X-Men, mutant, Mutate. Human. Destiny. So often entwined intimately, irreparable when separated. They had to believe that somehow, this was meant to happen, and that some good would come of it. It was the only way they could continue to even try to save this pitiful fucking planet called Earth. It was the only way they could continue at all.

Some of X-Force started to follow Magneto out the door, but Storm and Gambit stayed behind with Xavier.

"She's not here," Storm commented, observing the lack of the last member of the missing X-Men.

"Who?" Gambit asked, watching as Rogue's cell floated away, her short and striped hair moving slowly as she bumped along. She looked so young, not at all like the hardened and bitter version of her that he'd made love to not even two days ago. He could still remember her pants in his ear, her tongue on his lips, her...not good to go there now. That woman was gone, and left in her stead was the girl he'd first come to love so long ago. Gambit scratched behind his ear, waiting for someone to answer his question.

"Phoenix isn't here, Gambit," Storm answered him, her hand on his shoulder, turning him from the sight of the cells floating away.

"Oh...why?"

Xavier turned from the open space of that room, and stared at them sadly. "I fear she never was."

"What do you mean?" Storm asked, following Xavier as he slowly rolled out of the room.

"Phoenix was different from the other Mutates. She had her emotions, her memories. She felt. I'm beginning to think that she was never cloned at all, though I don't know why her, and not others as well."

Storm swallowed her nerves, and brought up the courage to repeat the one thing in all her years she'd never thought she'd hear, though she'd heard it not five years ago from Xavier's own lips. "Jean is possibly the most powerful mutant on Earth."

Xavier halted his progress, his head tilted as he silently agreed with her. "This is why if that was really her, then it's also quite bad."

Gambit watched the couple freeze and stare at each other. They were both thinking the same thoughts, serious thoughts that were eluding him at the moment. "Can we stop wit' da silent treatment and jus' say whats on our minds?"

Xavier turned his chair all the way around, the sound echoing in the long hallway. They were quite empty down here, the rest of the team already above and stowing away the cells for later deactivation. "Rogue believed that Shaw took them and did this to them because he was seeking to make a perfect soldier, and by extension, a perfect army. I am beginning to fear that that was only part of it."

"What else do you think he wanted?" Gambit asked.

"I think that Shaw wanted to perfect himself, and also, create a perfect counterpart for himself. The perfect mate."

Storm continued that thought. "The perfect powerful mate."

They stewed on that for a while, not moving until the other started to call down and ask what the hold up was. They knew nothing for certain, they told themselves as they left that cursed place. This was just a guessing game; they were trying to make sense of the unexplainable.

Xavier doubted they'd ever know the whole truth.

He also doubted that they really wanted to know it.

You told me once, that mutants are the next step of evolution. If all this war and deception and murder is what we mutants bring, then Ah think that they may be right. Maybe mutants should be stopped. Killed even. Lord knows, we spend enough time killing each other.

It's human nature to kill ourselves. It's human nature to kill each other. Will we ever evolve past that, Xavier? Can we? Or are we doomed to just repeat the same thing over and over again?

Ah'm thinking on it, and ya know what? Ah think Ah just might be glad Ah'm dead.