Chapter 7: The Senior Staff
Once Charles was back at the mansion, he headed down to Cerebro in the second sub basement. Que's powers were extraordinary, but they did not quite answer his questions about what had been going on.
Early last week, not long before he happened upon Que, he and Hank had picked up some environmental disturbances. The most notable had been small fluctuations in Earth's magnetic fields and some unidentifiable micro-particulate matter in the atmosphere. There had also been reports of multiple species altering their migration patterns. Charles feared the possibility that these were signs indicating Apocalypse's return. Maybe they were not truly rid of him.
"Professor? You're back! How did everything go?"
Jean Grey, now a part of the senior staff, had just woken up.
"Ah, yes. Good morning Jean. How are you this morning?" Charles thought back to her.
There was an anxious edge to the Professor's thoughts, and Jean immediately picked it up.
"Professor, are you alright?" she asked.
"Everything's fine. I'll call a meeting after breakfast," He assured her, though he felt anything but sure.
All of the senior staff gathered in the war or conference room not long after the Professor finished up in Cerebro. Around the table was the Professor, Quicksilver (Peter), Raven, Hank, Scott, Jean, Kurt, and Jubilee.
"Good morning everyone. I am glad to see the mansion is still in one piece. I have a few things to tell you. The first of which regards our new student Que. A few of you have already met her," Charles said nodding towards Hank. "I would ask that you all make her feel welcome like all of the other students and please notify me if you have any issues. From what we gathered, she has been on her own for quite some time, thus I do ask you to be vigilant. Since Storm has now joined us as a senior staff member, she and I will be Que's mentors."
Jean, Scott, and Kurt all gave approving smiles toward Storm who had just joined the table a tad late from breakfast. Hank stood up to speak when the Professor got to the most recent news.
"I have not yet been able to pinpoint an exact starting location of the phenomena, but we have found that there is a slow increase in weakly interacting and non-luminous particles called dark matter accompanied by fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field. There have been changes in creature migrations as well. The increase of this dark matter is slow, but there have been a few spikes."
At this, the Professor looked up. He and Hank hadn't been able to identify what the particles were before and had only discussed the one small spike in activity, but Hank had said a few.
Hank continued on "The largest spike occurred yesterday afternoon. Sorry Charles, I would have phoned you, but I figured you probably had your hands full. Before yesterday's spike I did not have much information, and I still don't, but it did allow me to identify it and find that it isn't localized. The dark matter can be found pretty much everywhere. The one exception is right along the north eastern seaboard of the United States."
"I don't understand. You said it was everywhere, but it isn't here? Why is that?" Scott asked.
"I don't know. Like I said, I don't have a whole lot to go on right now," Hank answered.
The meeting continued with the team making inferences and theories, but in the end, they came up empty handed and decided to just try and enjoy their Sunday. They would monitor the situation and look into the matter again if things changed.