Chapter Three:

Even a timid mouse will fight like a lion when cornered

~ William Stryker ~
"It will take you twenty years," Adler says without preamble. "To amass something that can kill two of the most powerful mutants ever been born is not an easy task. Of course, keep in mind that by then, the X-Men will have been established, and the Brotherhood will be well on its way to a full-fledged organization."

"Why do I care?"

She looked sideways at me. "Do you really think they'll just vanish?"

"Yes. If you cut off the head, the body falls."

"Perhaps."

The weaponry, apparently, was more of those strange robots. Sentinels, Adler told me they were called. They would be armed with weaponry the likes of which sounded like they came from fairytales. They would be built with special materials that were not susceptible to magnetism, and their human controllers would be across the country, well out of Xavier's telepathic range. They would be as tall as a house, and built strong enough to withstand a house, if it came to that. And they would be designed to kill.

"Will they work?"

"If they didn't, you would be viewing a different vision of how to kill them."

This time, Xavier and Magneto were together. Not in the one-night-stand type of together or a chess game together, but apparently an actual putting-aside-of-differences-and-taking-a-vacation together. They went to Cuba, surprisingly, and Magneto had somehow managed to fashion a safe house there on the same beach where once they had parted with blood and tears shed.

"They're crazy."

"Actually, that would just be the Professor. Magneto thinks he's crazy too." Adler's tone softened. "But then again, love makes fools of us all, sometimes."

I looked sideways at her. Her strange sympathy for them. . . "Are you talking from experience?"

Adler smiled and shrugged. "I see many loves. Every future is possible."

"And you're arrogant enough to think you know all?"

A flicker of unease flashed across her face, and she crossed her arms. "My mutation is just as limited as everyone else's. I don't know everything. I wish I did. But I don't. There are thousands of visions in my head, William Stryker, but only a handful will come true. Do I have any influence? Not really. But I wish I did. Just like you do."

I turned my attention back to Xavier and Magneto, slightly repulsed and slight curious. Here we were again with that strange mix of childlike idealism and adult words. It was so odd.

Of course, that wasn't to say that the scenes in front of me weren't any odder.

They were so familiar with each other, and yet so hesitant all the same. Very close. Oddly close. And yet they had such opposing views as to drive them miles apart, to send their own recruits against each other in battle, to fight and fight and fight. It sounded more like a star-crossed love than anything else.

"It's only star-crossed because you insist on driving them apart."

"Oh, now it's my fault?"

"Yes," Adler said.

"How do you see that?"

Adler eyed me and seemed to laugh. "William Stryker. Magneto is basing his need to create a revolution because of people like you, humans like you, who keep trying to cage him. How is it not your fault?"

"You're just a child. You can't know these things."

She pointed in the distance, where Magneto lounged gracefully at Xavier's side, the two hovering over a chessboard, bright laughter ringing in the air to frame their joy-filled faces as they argued fiercely in between moving chess pieces. "Maybe I am a child. But tell me – do they look like terrorists?"

The bad part: the answer was no.

"How can you even see them?" I asked irritably instead.

"I can't. I have no idea what they look like," she answered wistfully. "I wish I did."

I turned to her, feeling uneasily sympathetic despite it all. "How long have you been blind, actually?" I wanted to say that I asked to fish out more information. Instead, I found myself just genuinely wanting to understand her.

Adler shrugged. "I don't remember a time I could see," she confessed.

"Do you know what colors look like?"

"No."

And now she definitely looked like a child, a little lost in an adult's world, backed into a corner only to realize that the room was so much bigger than she thought and quite beyond her. Of course, appearances could be deceiving. But somehow I was starting to think that her confident act was just that: an act. Designed to fool me and anyone else, but she definitely couldn't fool herself. She was just as desperate to change my mind as I was to kill off Magneto and Xavier.

One of the robots walked up – not as well-armed, but dressed and crafted to look and mimic humans to the point where it took me several minutes to realize it was a robot.

Magneto shifted onto his knees, carefully maneuvering himself in between the robot and Xavier, the bright smile vanishing to be replaced by an impassive expression so cold it looked like it was carved out of stone.

"What?"

Xavier laid a hand on Magneto's arm chidingly, tilting his head at the robot –

Then his eyes widened, and Magneto stiffened.

A knife was in Magneto's hand seconds later, warping to warp around the robot's throat and send him hurtling backwards, even as Magneto leaped to his feet and looked around for other sources of metal to use and Xavier raised his fingers towards his temple, presumably asking for aid –

"How did that help?"

Adler shrugged. "It was inevitable that the first wave would fail. You can only overwhelm people like Magneto with numbers."

And numbers came.

Wave after wave of robots came pouring down to the sand, firing the second they fixed target locks on Xavier and Magneto, and although the two mutants put up a valiant defense, it really was beyond them. Numbers could bring down even the most powerful of mutants, and Xavier had no one to work his telepathy on while Magneto could only draw upon so much metal, and neither would abandon the other to get help or simply survive, and –

They were doomed.

A sudden thought occurred to me. "Last time you showed Xavier taking over the world. Why not now?"

Adler frowned slightly, poking at mid-air as though it would give her an answer. "Onslaught is the Professor's unconscious power," she said finally. "By now, he would have had enough time to lock him away. I think. I'm not quite sure how level 5 manifestations work."

She looked at me. "This is a one chance thing, William Stryker. If you don't try it exactly now, when both Magneto and Xavier have their guard down, it won't work."

On the beach, the firing ceased suddenly.

The beach was smoking under all the firing that had gone down, and blood stained the chessboard and blanket Magneto and Xavier had been using. Both were lying still in the sand, eyes wide and unseeing, fingers clutching uselessly at the sand. They were dead, and their corpses were barely recognizable.

For the first time, I felt slightly sick to my stomach.

I couldn't quite explain why, but I felt it all the same. Xavier and Magneto had looked so carefree, so happy – and then it had all been ripped away.

There was a poof, and suddenly the beach was crowded with members of the Brotherhood. There was Emma Frost, cool and grim; the red-demon teleporter, looking faintly shocked; the tornado-maker, startled and concerned; Angel Salvadore, drawing backwards in shock; and Mystique, Xavier's adopted sister, falling to her knees, tears shimmering in golden eyes, crying out in shock and disbelief, reaching wildly for the bullet-riddled bodies of her brother and her leader.

"So – that's it?" I asked.

Adler smiled tightly. "I wish it was. This scenario . . . it gives me a few more years of life, perhaps a decade or so. But it's just as bad, in the end."

"Why? Both of the leaders are dead. Cut off the head, and the body dies."

She gave me a sidelong look. "You expect them to cower before you simply because you have slaughtered their leaders?"

"It's what they've always done."

"Even a mouse will fight back, when the time is right," Adler said, very softly. "And homo sapien superior will always be stronger than a mere mouse."

The Brotherhood linked hands, and there was the oddest sensation –

And we were back in Westchester.

Standing on the lawn were other faces I'd become familiar with in the files of the X-Men. Ororo Munroe, Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Hank McCoy, Alex Summers, Sean Cassidy, Armando Muñoz, and even a few children, scattered around, ignoring the teachers too shocked at the Brotherhood to reprimand them.

It was Mystique who stepped forward to breach the divide.

What happened next was, perhaps, the worst thing of all – Alex Summers, the default leader of the X-Men in Xavier's absence, stepped forward and shook hands with Mystique.

My stomach sunk. "They unite."

"They always will."

The Brotherhood moved into Westchester, with Mystique serving as the bridge between the former X-Men and the former Brotherhood, with Emma Frost on one side and Alex Summers on the other, and the three were a terrifying triad now that they were going to avenge their leaders and prove the whole world that mutants were not to be trifled with. I saw labs fall, cities crumble, an entire country brought to its knees under the formidable force of the two greatest mutant organizations standing together in honor of their fallen leaders.

United, they were just as terrifying as Xavier or Magneto alone.

The visions resolved, abruptly, to linger on the headstone in the back garden: two delicate etches, powerful in their simplicity – Magneto and the Professor, Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier.

United even in death.

Then I was back in the CIA compound, breathing heavily, and Adler sat across from me and discreetly wiped at her own eyes.

I swallowed. Once. Twice. "Is that all?" I said, trying to be harsh.

Adler shrugged. "I can't really give you much more. You have all the information you might need, if you wish to kill the Professor or Magneto or both. And you know how to do so, and what will happen as a result."

"You're giving me no choice!" I protested. "Even if they both die, Mystique takes their place – "

Adler's eyes hardened, suddenly, her shoulders stiffening as her spine straightened, and despite her blindness and short stature she suddenly seemed to loom over me. "That is a cycle that cannot continue," she said, after a moment. "You can't kill every leader that arises in the Brotherhood or X-Men – they all can lead, eventually, when times get desperate."

"You mean the end of the world."

There was silence for a long moment.

Then Adler stood, very slowly, as if every movement pained her. "I've given you what you want, William Stryker," she murmured wearily. "Now, the choice is yours to make."

"Yes, what end of the world," I said bitterly, scrubbing at my eyes.

"Would it really be that bad to live with us?"

I glared at her. "You're all sins against God and humanity, all of you. I'd rather burn in the pits of hell for killing you than have to watch you run this country down. And I will destroy you, somehow, someday."

Adler fell silent.

"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to know that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice."

Adler's voice was rhythmic and gentle, as if she was reading to a child. Her eyes were closed, and tears still glimmered on her cheeks. She looked like a child.

Her eyes opened, again. "And there is the difference between us, William Stryker. Magneto was forged in fire, you know, in the camps, and the Professor in the ice. They are going to be the leaders who shape our future, whether or not you kill them, because they are the end of the world. The world as you know it. I have accepted it. Now it is up to you – whether you will continue in trying to stop the flow of water, or will learn to flow with the water, and make a difference your own way." She smiled crookedly. "As for me, I quite think that the Professor has enough power to destroy this world twice over as payment for your hate, don't you?"

Then she slipped around me and simply . . . left.

No one tried to stop her.

Possibly because she somehow knew exactly where to go, despite being blind, and probably had a few words with the guards who got in her way.

And I was left to forge a new future.

Irene Adler was overly optimistic, I thought, to leave me behind and not attempt to influence me any further. Then again, maybe not – even now, my mind was being to put far away the details she had imparted of how to kill off either Xavier or Magneto. I shuddered every time I realized how much destruction would be inflicted if either or both were killed. Instead, my mind kept returning to that scene, on the beach, the two worst enemies and greatest friends, somehow managing to compromise enough to love so deeply that the bond never faded.

I wondered, vaguely, what it might be like to feel a love like that.

And so I rose to make a new future.