Cassandra took Nightcrawler's, fuzzy, three-fingered hand and the two leapt, upward, through the interstitial void.
An instant of black, cold, and silence, and then the rush of air and light and smell as they re-materialized through whatever spatial channel they had traveled. They emerged into the dining room of the house that Nova shared with Forge and Kate, the bottle and wine glasses from dinner still on the table. It was quiet.
"I'll go grab Jean," Nightcrawler said. He disappeared into a puff of black and manganese pink, leaving a sulfuric tang in the air.
Cassandra stepped through the kitchen and foyer and into the living room, which was lit faintly by only a small lamp on an end table. It cast an orange glow over the figure that sat in a chair, his back slouched and tired.
"Charles," Cassandra said aloud. She moved towards him and saw the body of a woman, no more than twenty, laying on the couch in front of him. Her eyes were closed and she was still, maybe dead. "Oh, Charles." Her voice was low and somber.
He turned in his chair and met her gaze with red, baggy eyes. "She's not dead, Cassandra. She's in a coma. I was able to get her under before...before anything else could happen." His face was flush, as if he had been crying. "Read her. See for yourself."
Cassandra clenched her jaw. "You know that I don't do that. Not without permission. Why don't you tell me what's going on the old fashioned way." Her stomach churned, and she willed her own nerves quiet into a psychic calm.
"I..." she could feel him trying to read her. He couldn't, nor could she him. Some condition of their twin, reflected mutant powers that had been present since they were children.
"Who is she?"
Charles sighed to himself. "Her name is Wanda. Wanda Maximoff. She's..." He stopped, turning back toward the sleeping woman.
"Maximoff?" That name sounded like it should ring several bells, but it didn't immediately. After a moment, looked down at her, and could see someone familiar in her face. "Charles, as in...Magda Maximoff? She's Magneto's daughter?" The stern lines of Eric's profile, transposed onto this girl's face, were striking. She had known about Pietro, their son, but neither Charles nor Eric had ever mentioned a daughter.
"I didn't know about her. Not until a year ago. She's Pietro's twin. Like us." She could hear him trying to muffle his own sobs. "Dizygotic. Fraternal."
"Was she in Genosha?" Cassandra asked, sympathy for her brother suddenly swelling inside her. "How could you not have known about her?"
"She wasn't a mutant. Pietro was. You know how Eric is...how he was." She did. Magneto, mutant supremacist, mutant dominionist, cursed with a bassline child. "She doesn't...or she didn't have an x-gene. Eric allegedly put her through every sort of test when she was a kid but it wasn't there. When he...when he died..." he paused again, as if the notion that his dearest friend's absence was still too painful. "Pietro told me at Eric's funeral that he had a sister. I offered to help him track her down, so he could at least have her. It was all so sudden."
"Charles, why is she in a coma?" There was some intangible sense of dread rising inside of her.
"She's not human, Cassandra. She's not a mutant but she's...she's something. She has powers. Awful, terrible, powers."
"Cassandra turned and left the room. Jean, she called out, telepathically.
I'm outside, she immediately replied. I heard you talking to Charles in there and I didn't want to intrude.
Please, get in here.
A moment later Jean entered through the back door and wound through the kitchen into the living room. Cassandra shot her an urgent glance. The girl, she said. Contain her. Now. She pointed to the sleeping woman on the couch.
What?
Please. Now.
Jean nodded but her face held a plainly apparent skepticism. She held her right hand off to her side and a soft, barely visible pink light swirled around the woman.
"Jean," Charles said as he turned towards her. "I'm sorry."
"Please, Charles. What happened? What can she do?" She came closer, trying to see in his eyes what she couldn't read in his head.
"I..I need her. I need her to help me, to help her." His whole body slouched downward, as if in some extreme state of physical exhaustion.
"Jean is right here, Charles," she said, her tone suddenly conciliatory and soothing.
"Not Jean, Cass!" he cried. "Tessa! I need Tessa to figure out what she is and...I...we..."
"What?" Cassandra demanded with a sudden ferocity. "What?"
"She has to cure her. Make her...make her a human."