Oh, his father and aunt would have loved this.

The world in flames, mutants freely roaming the streets taking destruction wherever they went, the military woefully overwhelmed…

They would have revelled in it.

He had rung Ellen a few times before the phonelines went down. She had said the prosecution offices in Atlanta were one of the first places attacked, which meant Reed…

Otto tried not to think about that too much.

He had more basic problems these days, like food, and water, and the daily random anti-mutant checks and attacks on the street.

Still, he did think of them. What had become of his son, he wondered, his wife and children? They must be teenagers by now, old enough-

But no.

They couldn't be.

They mustn't be.

It hurt the most that he would probably never know. If Reed had survived he would be the last person on his mind, and if he hadn't his wife and children wouldn't know where to look. And he didn't even know where to start looking for them himself.

If he had been a younger man, if he had done what his father wanted him to do, maybe his situation would be different, but he was old, unskilled, and unable to get past the checkpoint without being shot dead for being a mutant.

So he stayed, and he worried, and he wondered.