Chapter 1

Xavier's Institute, 2023

BOOM!

"Take that you undead freak of nature!" Bobby Drake yelled, practically jumping off the couch as his fingers slammed repeatedly against the buttons of the gaming controller. "Dude! Did you see that?!"

With a triumphant yelp, Kurt Wagner jumped into the air and landed swiftly onto the backrest of the sofa. He balanced there for a moment, still yelling at the television screen.

Kitty Pryde was so over it.

"GUYS!" she yelled from her cozy spot on the other end of the L-shaped couch, slamming her hand against the armrest.

All she wanted was a little bit of peace and quiet to study for her college midterm on Monday, but apparently that was far too big of an ask in a place like Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning.

"Sorry," Kurt gave her an apologetic smile. He turned to Bobby and slapped him on the shoulder with a fuzzy, blue, three-fingered hand. "I think we've done enough damage for one night."

"Yeah, probably," Bobby shrugged and turned off the console. "We should head to bed anyway. We've got a session with Cyclops in the morning."

Kurt gave a dramatic shudder and hopped onto the floor.

"Right, well, good night Kitty," he said.

"Goodnight," Kitty replied haughtily.

Bobby and Kurt continued to talk and laugh as they headed out of the spacious rec room; she listened to them head upstairs and eventually could no longer hear anything at all. Finally Kitty was alone with her thoughts. She could maybe get a solid two hours of uninterrupted work done—

CRASH!

"Oh for heaven's sake! Is it such a big ask?!" she groaned and collapsed against the backrest of the couch.

Slamming her laptop shut, she got to her feet and quickly stomped across the room, determined to give someone a piece of her mind. "Kurt? Is that you?" she yelled into the darkness.

No one answered.

"This really isn't funny!" she called out.

She edged slowly toward the entrance hall of the old mansion, eyes darting back and forth in the gloom. No alarms were tripped, which meant no intruders had gotten in through any of the doors or windows — not that they couldn't have done it some other way…

That was when she noticed a crumpled, human-shaped silhouette on the floor just a few feet from the locked front door.

"Oh no!" she spoke under her breath, rushing over and falling to her knees next to the semi-conscious person. "HELP! SOMEBODY!" she yelled at the top of her lungs, hoping maybe Bobby or Kurt would still be in earshot.

"Don't try to move, okay? My name is Kitty. I'm gonna help you," she said without skipping a beat, grabbing her phone from the pocket of her sweatshirt and turning on the flashlight.

He tried to say something.

"It's okay. You're gonna be okay. You're safe here," she assured him.

He grabbed her wrist and Kitty let out a little yelp of surprise. She looked into his pale face as he tried to speak again.

His eyes were a bright gold color with specks of brown near the pupils — if she'd met him in any other situation she might've thought they looked cool. She stared into them now, seeing right through to the fear and desperation.

What was he trying to tell her?!

It sounded kind of like he was saying the word 'eggs', which made absolutely no sense considering his current circumstances. She highly doubted he was asking her to cook him breakfast.

Nobody would be that foolish.

Kitty couldn't cook.

She moved her head a little closer to his lips but she still couldn't quite understand. His voice was very weak, and it sounded like he was speaking in another language entirely — one she didn't recognize.

"I'm so sorry," Kitty told him. "I don't know what you're trying to say… Don't worry, okay? I know it's scary, but just try to relax. I'm gonna help you. You're gonna be alright."

There was a deep red scar on the left side of his scruffy face that looked at least a few weeks old. That was definitely the least of his worries right about now. She moved the light from her phone down the rest of his body, assessing the damage and feeling completely powerless to do anything about it. She was studying computer programming in college, not medicine.

Even if daylight had been pouring through the windows, she probably would have been barely able to tell the color of his shirt; the fabric was shredded and completely charred. She could see obvious burns on his chest and arms—

Wait, there was something melted into his skin. It was a device of some kind. Was it an explosive?! Did he come here with a bomb?! She noticed it was still smoking slightly and it smelt strongly of burnt plastic.

"Kitty?!" she heard Bobby's voice call out, causing her to jump.

"I'm down here!" Kitty replied over her shoulder.

"What the hell happened?!" he asked frantically, running down the stairs and hopping right over the last three steps. "Who's that?!" he added when he reached her side.

"I don't know. He just sort of… appeared out of nowhere," she answered dumbly. "We need to get him down to the medical bay."

"What's on his arm? Holy shit. Look. Is that a bomb?" Bobby asked, gesturing toward the device she'd only just noticed herself moments earlier. "Do you think he's with Friends of Humanity?"

"I don't know!" Kitty yelled. "But we can't just leave him here! Are you gonna help me lift him up or not?"

Dr. Cecilia Reyes didn't get all dressed up for a first date very often. She certainly didn't go home with a woman after only a few hours of knowing her either. Tonight, she was two for two and it felt amazing. It felt—normal.

But then she got a phone call from Hank McCoy sometime after one in the morning and her perfectly ordinary evening went up in a puff of smoke. The X-Men needed her… again.

She arrived at the school in the same little black dress she wore to dinner, pulled her hair up into a bun and immediately got to work. She didn't ask many questions, mostly because she really didn't want to know what the X-Men were up to. It was probably safer that way.

She spent all night treating the burns of a man with no name.

As she carefully debrided his wounds, she noticed a lot of other scars on his body. Some of them were faded while others seemed to be fairly recent. They all led to the same conclusion: this guy had been through some crazy ass shit.

She registered the sound of the heavy metal doors sliding open and shut as a few of the school's residents came in and out throughout the night, asking for updates on the patient's condition. Hank also came by to gather the remains of the device that had been embedded in the man's flesh, where the worst of the burns had been located. He also took fingerprints and a DNA sample in hopes of IDing him.

The only person that never left the medical bay at all was Kitty Pryde.

"You should get some rest," Cecilia said. "I'm almost done here."

"I'm okay," Kitty replied softly from her seat by the door, knees pulled up to her chin. "I wanna stay."

"Okay," she echoed and turned her attention back to the patient lying in the bed. "Do they teach you how to change dressings in superhero school?" she added.

"I think I skipped that class," Kitty replied.

"Come here. Let me show you how," the doctor told her.

When Kitty hesitated, Cecilia gave her an encouraging smile. "He's gonna be fine. They were partial thickness burns — there'll be some scars, but by the looks of things he's plenty used to those. He should be up to his old shit in a couple weeks."

"How long before he's awake?" Kitty wondered as she approached the bed and looked at the man's face. She thought his hair was black or dark brown before but under the bright fluorescent lights it looked to be a dark purplish blue. Even his eyebrows and scruff were the same color.

She didn't really peg him as the type of guy that went to the hair salon to get his roots done every couple weeks. It could always be natural, she thought. There were other mutants with blue hair and yellow eyes in this mansion right now. Her best friend Kurt was one of them. Hank was another.

"It's hard to tell," Cecilia admitted and Kitty looked up from the hospital bed. "His EEG came back normal. Ideally I would want to do a CT scan, but I have a feeling hospitals are a no-go."

Kitty suddenly looked like she was ready to pick a fight.

"We can't—" she began.

"I know," Cecilia cut her off with a slight wave of her hand. It wasn't her first time arguing with someone about the new bill preventing mutants from getting access to adequate medical care. "It's not safe for mutants right now. I understand that, and I think you did the right thing by calling me."

"The Professor will be back in a few hours with Scott and Jean," Kitty informed the doctor with a small sigh. The poor girl looked absolutely exhausted. "They'll know what to do."

"I'm sure they will," Cecilia replied. "But in the meantime, I'm putting you in charge."