Chapter 4
Scott Summers was walking along the ruins of Hammer Bay's town center, named Magda Square after Erik Lehnsherr's dead wife. At the same time, his team was helping injured Karima Shependar, found right after landing on the destroyed island. Only Amelia Voght, who was a guarantee of the easy-going conversation with the former master of the state of mutants, accompanied Cyclops. Finding Xavier, as well as Magneto's children responsible for the change of the reality and later deprivation of superhuman abilities of hundreds of thousands of mutants, was the X-Men's task. Scott guessed that Erik could protect Wanda and Pietro and he knew that if the man still had magnetic powers, he didn't have the smallest chances in the clash with him. The ginger woman had been a member of the team respecting Magneto's ideology at one time, therefore her presence could temper the first contact with the Genosha's master. Cyclops was surprised by the vast emptiness surrounding him, because he knew very well that a few groups of mutants lived on the island along with Xavier and the Magneto, trying to salvage everything what remained from the destroyed civilization. At one point, he got the telepathic call from Emma Frost.
"Scott, he is in this big building with the terrace. I have a bad news, Karima was attacked. Henry and Katherine are trying to help her, but we don't have an equipment to examine her odd physiology."
"Thanks Emma, have you seen somebody more?"
"No. The desolation is all around us. Fever Pitch is observing the area from above. Piotr is checking nearby rubble heaps."
"Don't split up! You must be ready for every possibility." Scott answered telepathically.
"What happened?" Amelia asked seeing Scott revealing by his behavior that his thoughts glided somewhere in the distance.
"It was Emma. Erik is in this building." He pointed at the residence with the terrace.
" We must be careful, because Karima was attacked."
"Do you think that it was Erik?"
"I don't know, we must be prepared for everything."
Cyclops and Voght entered the extensive terrace and went up the stairs into the interior of the residence where Magneto was hiding. The man was sitting by a big, wooden desk. He noticed mutants coming near to him, but he didn't react to their appearance. He was sitting motionless fixing his eyes on the wall cut through by propagating cracks. When Scott approached closely enough that the shadow of the wall covered his face, Erik looked at him and smiled.
"The visor on eyes. It means that my daughter spared you." He said. After a moment, he got up from the chair.
"I can see that there is my old friend with you." He added looking at Amelia.
"You change sides, but now it doesn't have the smallest significance. The fight ended. My children did it."
"You look horribly." Voght commented on the unshaven face of the man and his torn up cape.
"The same as the land, whose I am the master." Erik replied pointing at windows behind which one could see ruins of Hammer Bay.
"Scott, will you join me to raise a toast to dream that died?" He asked showing a bottle of wine lying on the table.
"Erik, I have no time for chat. After the Decimation, the situation of mutants is worse than ever before. The time has come to forget about all differences and combine forces to save what is left."
"Scott, my help will be of no use to you. I'm only an old man, tired out man who lost a purpose. Wanda took everything from me. I'm surprised that you still must carry the visor on eyes. Have Really Scarlett Witch's curse affected only us living in Genosha?"
"No Erik. Mutants worldwide lost their abilities. Wanda's spells affected also the school. There are about 198 active mutants in the world."
Erik sat down on the chair. He fell into a pensive mood and then continued.
"All these years I believed that we were something exceptional. I believed that we would inherit the Earth and I did a everything for my vision to come true. All my sacrifices and blood poured in the defense of my race... everything was nothing. I prophesied fall of the mankind but it is us who are an extinct race, it is us who are a blind alley of the evolution..."
"Erik, mutants who lost their abilities on the M day are disappearing in mysterious circumstances. Somebody is hunting for them, we don't know why." Amelia cut in on a conversation. She was made impatient with conversation of men.
"I'm not surprised. People are having a revenge on us, when we are helpless. Do you remember when I taught you that this will happen in the future, if we don't become operative and force their obedience?" Magneto replied smiling.
"And you Amelia, were you also stripped of your abilities?" He asked.
"No, I still have my powers. But the rest of Acolytes... Sarah, Carmella, Spoor... they lost them. And they were kidnapped before my very eyes. I was completely helpless, I could not help them. My powers saved my life. Now we want to find Xavier. We don't know if he is a mutant, because we aren't able to detect him by Cerebra. Charles lived here right before the M Day, right?"
"Erik, will you tell us where Charles is?" Scott asked firmly.
"Scott, I have no clue where he is. When the world became white and I woke up stripped of mine gift, he wasn't by me. My children were not here also. Perhaps Wanda wanted to give me the greatest pain erasing Charles out from the reality and later also herself and her brother? Perhaps they no longer exist. I'm sure that my daughter would be able to something like that."
"If you are hiding something, I have the X-Men group with myself... we can search the entire island." Scott looked at the grey haired mutant with stern eyesight.
"What would be my purpose of hiding Charles? I don't have the helmet on, can see you? Bring Miss Frost here and make sure that I have no secrets from you."
"All right. Will you help us with our search?"
"No. I will stay on the island which will become my grave the way it became the grave of Xavier's dreams. Take Callisto and the rest with you. Even if they don't have their abilities, it will certainly be easier for them to start new live in America than in this hell."
"Rest of them?" Amelia was surprised.
"We found only injured Karima. We met nobody else." Cyclops said. Magneto got up from the chair. He came up to the fence of the terrace and started looking all around as if he wanted to spy somebody or something in extensive deserts of red sand and rubble from demolished buildings.
"Perhaps your mysterious kidnapper appeared even here." Erik announced looking in the direction of the huge sculpture of him, built by Polaris, his younger daughter, a few months before.
"I'm coming back to the team. Perhaps they managed to learn something more." Cyclops set off to the exit.
"Are you going with us?" He asked, but not waiting for the answer, he left the building. Amelia stayed with her old teacher.
"Won't we help them?" She asked.
"Did you join the X-Men?" Erik asked changing the subject and completely ignoring her question.
"I was wounded and horrified. Charles Xavier was the first person about whom I thought. Unfortunately I didn't find him, but Scott offered me his help."
"Cyclops is right in one thing. We can't repair what my daughter destroyed, but there cannot be divisions between us anymore. We must be together and not let people hit us in the moment our greatest weakness. When all of this ends, join the X-Men Amelia. You will be there safe."
"Will you come back with us?"
"No. I don't fit in the new reality. My role in the world dreamt by Wanda would have no meaning. How can you stand up for laws of the race which practically doesn't exist? I will help you find missing mutants from Genosha, but right after this our roads will diverge. Forever."
"I'll move us there in the gas form. It'll be the quickest way." The ginger woman suggested. She didn't want to continue the conversation, because the sad tone of the speech of the man, who once had been able to stop asteroids in a flight, caused that sensation of the approaching disaster, which she had from the moment of the contact with the mysterious kidnapper of former mutants, returned. She used her abilities on herself as well as on Erik and teleported in the form of the cloud of pink colored gas.
Cyclops came back to his X-Men. Beast and Kitty were helping injured Karima, treating her biomechanical body and Emma stood close by trying to reach telepathically into her mind and to restore her consciousness in a painless way and not causing any permanent damage to her mental state. Fever Pitch noticed approaching X-Men's leader and landed on the piling up rubble.
"Fever Pitch, did you notice something unusual?" Scott asked.
"I don't belong to your gang of scouts! I don't have to obey your orders." the burning skeleton answered. Cyclops became nervous. He wasn't in the mood for jokes or taunts.
"Answer my question or I will cut your head off with optic blast." He said angrily.
"Ok. Nobody in the distance of a few miles. Are you pleased? " Fever Pitch replied.
"Piotr, and what about you?" Scott asked approaching Colossus.
"Nothing's there, but there are many abandoned buildings here. They can have basements in which somebody can hide."
"Start the search." Scott ordered his friend and moment later he came to Beast and Kitty Pryde kneeling near unconscious Karima.
"What about her?"
"Her organism is being repaired by nano-machines in her blood stream. I cannot assess how long she will stay in such a state, Scott."
"Try to wake her up quickly. Only she can tell us something more about what happened here."
"Have you met with Magneto? Do you know where Charles is?"
"No. Magneto is a victim of the M Day, he lost his abilities. He has not a clue what happened with the professor. Charles is probably no longer a mutant or he was entirely erased from the world by Scarlett Witch."
A cloud of gas appeared and two people emerged from it, Amelia and Magneto. Henry stopped the inspection of the cyborg woman's body, then came up to his leader.
"Don't you don't think that we should arrest him Scott?" McCoy asked looking simultaneously at the grey haired man.
"It isn't our purpose here. We have much more important things to do, such as finding Charles."
"And my group of mutants." Erik said, coming up to other X-Men members.
"Karima was with a few young mutants who lost abilities. Somebody probably kidnapped them. Perhaps even it was the same person who attacked me and my former friends." Amelia cut in on the conversation.
"It could be Dark Beast, your bad alter ego Doctor McCoy. Or Unus' people. I don't know, if they kept their abilities." Magneto informed.
"Scott, why you are standing here doing nothing? This man killed hundreds of people in New York! He killed Jean, have you already forgotten?" Henry was irritated.
"Henry, you know very well what Charles said. Erik isn't responsible of what happened in New York. It was somebody else, we don't know who, but not Erik. " Scott said coming up to Beast.
"Charles is not here to can confirm your version of the events." Henry was stubborn.
"McCoy... a headless body of the monster, whom you are talking about lies in vault of my former residence. Do you want evidence? Go to underground and see for yourself. You can cut him up to small pieces and examine wounds inflicted by Wolverine and Cyclops."
Magneto was ready for the confrontation with the mutant. In spite of loss of his abilities, he didn't lose his pride and could not let somebody accuse him of something which he didn't do. A silence prevailed, but soon Shadowcat ended it.
" Karima is waking up! Come here everyone!"
"Fever Pitch! Colossus! Come back!" Scott shouted. The Russian with metallic skin approached him announcing, that he had found a few closed entries to basements.
"These are corridors leading to old bunkers from times when magistrates ruled the island. If my students were taken there it was certainly Dark Beast' doing. I knew that we shouldn't have trusted this rat." Erik said.
"I'm surprised that you let him settle in here." Henry interjected after a moment of thought.
"Every pair of hands was needed. Nobody from X-Men, apart from Charles, was interested in what had happened with this island."
"When we have been here for the last time, there were no signs of life, only a message left by you, how could we know... " Henry was provoked by Magneto.
"Calm down, better listen to what Karima has to say!" Kitty had to react swiftly to stop verbal clash of her acquaintances.
Karima was sitting on a little wall which was actually the small fragment of the fence which had survived the attack of robots on the island. She looked weakened and mentally absent, but she was feeling better with every minute and was ready for the conversation.
"These were Unus' people. They surprised us when we tried to find a way out of the island. They attacked me first, because they knew that the others could not defend themselves. I don't know what happened after I lost consciousness, but I know one thing. They live and they are somewhere nearby."
"Where? Can you determine more precisely?" Scott asked.
"No... my sensors aren't working properly."
"Emma?" Scott turned to the blonde.
"I can't catch any thoughts. But I have something more interesting. Inspecting all underground bunkers I came across something very interesting. One of them is protected from telepathy."
"We know where to search for them." Amelia butted in.
"Let us not wait longer." Kitty added.
"Who will stay with Karima?" Scott asked. The dark-skinned woman got up from the wall.
"I'm also going. I'm responsible for them and I must rectify my mistake."
"Are you able to fight? A moment ago you were in a really poor condition."
" In a few minutes I will be in the full combat readiness. Don't worry Cyclops."
"Well. Prepare, we're going to basements in a minute!"
At the same time in underground bunkers, Dark Beast prepared his experiments. He was looking at the screen of the only working computer on which patterns representing some organic substances were rotating. Medical instrumentation, which surrounded him, looked like it was taken from a few completely different places. Fragments of strange devices seemed to be not suited for each other, as if every apparatus was sewn up from many different machinery taken straight from some electronic scrap yard. Cables hanging on walls and the ceiling, chairs with belts to bind forced patients, syringes and the broken laboratory glassware lying everywhere as well as the person of the chief laboratory technician resembled the hiding place of crazy Doctor Frankenstein. Beast was wearing the torn up apron and his sleight hands wrote something on the computer and entered enumerated parameters into one of bizarre apparatuses after a minute. In the same moment, Unus entered the lab or rather the torture chamber.
"Are you ready?" The man asked. McCoy turned around violently, took the flask standing close by and threw it with all his might at the black-haired former mutant. Unus ducked and the glassware broke on the wall.
"I didn't call you, so you didn't have to come here! Go away from here!" McCoy was furious. All the experiments which he planned didn't bring him expected results. Unus quickly fled from the kingdom of the crazy scientist. Meanwhile Hub, Shola and Freakshow were locked in one of rooms of basements. They were closed inside the warehouse, which was empty apart from two boxes and tens of webs on walls and on the ceiling. All lamps, which lightened the chamber up at one time, were broken or taken out into other rooms, where they were much more needed, therefore an impenetrable darkness prevailed there. Freakshow was sitting on the floor leaning against the wall and Hub and Shola were close to each other trying to gave each other a courage for surviving this moment so difficult for them. Callisto was not there, she was taken by Unus from the cell in some unknown direction. Nobody knew what had happened with her, nobody had the courage to raise this subject. Book was lying unconscious in the corner of the room. The woman tried to stop Unus people from taking Callisto and it cost her a blow straight at the face. Young mutants lost hope for any rescue.
"I'm wondering if Magneto comes to our rescue.." Hub said. Tears in her eyes betrayed that she didn't believed in what she had said. She wanted to feel better, to give hope herself and her friends.
"If he comes, he will join us in this hole." Shola replied embracing the girl. Hub closed eyes and gently put her head on his shoulder.
"I'm wondering if it happened to Wicked also. Has she met the same fate as Callisto..." the blonde man sitting on the other of the cell side joined to the conversation.
"How can we know what happened to Callisto? Perhaps they will bring her back right away... perhaps she escaped and she will rescue us soon... didn't you think about it? Perhaps she will appear here with Wicked?" Shola tried to support his friends. He was oldest of the entire threesome and felt obliged to perform the role for the leader, when Callisto was absent. At some point he felt that the brown skinned girl sitting by him was sobbing and shaking.
"Hub..." he wanted to say something, but he refrained himself.
"I cannot believe it... I cannot believe in what Hack and Purge did!" The girl wasn't able to contain her emotions inside herself.
" I've known them since childhood... we spent so much time with each other but they..."
"When people are struggling for survival, they are sometimes forced to do terrible things..." The boy tried to calm his friend.
"If we're supposed to survive this fight we should stick together! We should help each other and not fight with each other! I don't understand why they betrayed me and I will never understand it!"
"Now you know at least who is your real friend and who's not."
Hub started to cry again and cuddled up to the shoulder of her friend. Freakshow didn't say a word. He was thinking about Wicked, he was wondering if she had betrayed him the same as Purge and Hack had betrayed his black friend. Meanwhile, Unus' group gathered around unconscious Callisto tied to the pole and beaten up. Lighting Rod and Caiman watched with contentment the blood dripping from her broken nose and cut lip. Their joy was stopped by Glamour's appearance. The ginger woman was horrified, as if saw the ghost a minute before.
" They are here!" She shouted out looking at Unus.
"Who? Who is here?"
"X-Men! They're right above us!" The girl said with a voice in which it was possible to hear fear.
"Bloody hell! They're going to McCoy! Be sure that this witch doesn't escape!" He ordered looking at tied mutant woman. Unus turned up at the Dark Beast's laboratory. McCoy wasn't ready to see him again and he didn't hide displeasure at his appearance. This time, in a total silence, he took the scalpel from the table and after a moment he threw it at Unus. The man managed to duck literally at the last moment. The sharp surgical instrument was stuck in a hard door.
"McCoy! You psycho! X-Men are outside! They're searching for us!"
Beast could not believe words of the friend, therefore he came up to the computer and saw a view from cameras tracking the area in immediate surroundings of basement's entries. He became convinced that Unus had told the truth.
"It's bad. They cannot disturb me now. Bring Callisto here. Prepare the rest. I have a small surprise for the X-Men." He announced disappearing in the smaller room right behind the main laboratory. At that very moment, one of buildings on the surface shook and soon steel behemoths started surfacing from its inside. In front of the eyes of Scott's team, large battle machines appeared, Sentinels. They weren't models of robots that mutants had fought in the past but rather copies done in garage conditions, in a hurry and from parts which were thrown away from large factories of robots. Huge machines slowly came near to mutants turning all their sensors in their direction.
"What's these devilishness? " Fever Pitch asked. Cyclops smiled.
"They are Sentinels. You just became a full time X-Men member." He added after a moment.
Meanwhile, the second group of mutants was at the airport belonging to Department H, Canadian organization financing the group of superheroes well-known as Alpha Flight. Havok, Polaris, Iceman, Rogue, Gambit, Wolverine as well as recently additions: Mammomax and Arclight were walking along the runway, guarded by a few armed, uniformed men. Logan's good friends from old times, James and Heather Hudsons and Michael Twoyoungmen known better under a pseudonym Shaman, met them.
"Logan, Thank you for deciding to help us." The black-haired man announced greeting with the mutant.
"You could not choose worse times. We're decimated after the M Day, somebody blew a supermarket in the States blaming some mutant and we had to escape out of the Institute surrounded by the army and large battle machines. We're probably on the top place on the wanted terrorists list." Logan replied.
" Therefore we're even more grateful that you're helping us and you brought the team with yourself."
"Former mutants are also disappearing in the States, I'm not doing it for you, but to be closer to the solution to this puzzle."
"I know your acquaintances, but I can see new faces amongst you." Native American looked at large elephant man and woman unknown to him.
"The new recruits. Don't ask more." Wolverine finished the conversation, simultaneously cutting all speculations of his friend.
"Let us go inside." Heather said inviting everyone. Havok approached the Alpha Flight's leader.
"Did they kidnap many people from your team ?" He asked.
"Almost everyone who lost abilities after the M Day. Radius, Flex, Murmur as well as Stitch disappeared. Ghost Girl is in one of our bunkers, guarded 24 hours a day. What's interesting, Pathway disappeared also, although she didn't lose her ability. Just as her sister. And what about you?"
"Nobody dared to attack the X-Men directly. But we know that many of our old enemies were kidnapped." Alex replied.
"And probably professor also." Rogue cut in on the conversation.
"Was Xavier kidnapped? Did he lose his abilities" James was surprised.
"We don't know. He has disappeared after the M Day and we aren't able to locate him. Scott and his team flew to Genosha to start the search." Logan answered his question.
"And he isn't being registered by Cerebra, this can mean that he isn't a mutant anymore."
"The situation is grave..." James said looking at clouds moving all over the sky.
"What triggered the M Day? My magic suggests me, that it was something very powerful, something which can't be reversed." Michael asked.
"We cannot tell you. Not now, when the situation in the world is so terribly serious." Logan replied.
"Do you know?"
"Yes, but as you said, it won't be possible to reverse the effect. We can only struggle against the consequences."
The entire squad went inside one of buildings belonging in to Department H. They could see clean corridors lighted with the bright light coming from fluorescent lamps hanging on the ceiling and tens of people dressed in suits, laboratory coats and military uniforms. Arclight looked all around gazing at armed men. She smiled. Mammomax looked at her mysteriously.
"You think about the same thing as me? Can we smash everything? If you try, even Polaris and Havok won't be able to stop you."
"And what would be the purpose of this, you idiot? It would be no benefit from this! The army men reminds me of the past. I... or mine copy or the original one served in the army... memories from that time are the most vivid. Everything else becomes blurred with every next iteration of my body and the mind." The woman fell into a pensive mood. Mammomax, dissatisfied with the fact that Philippa called him an idiot, passed on the other side of the corridor almost trampling some grey haired woman in a laboratory coat. Lorna was still quiet and stayed apart from the rest of the group. Gambit tried to talk with her.
"What's going on? You try to avoid all of us." He asked.
"Nothing. I already said that I was feeling bad and my head ached. These bloody lamps are making it even worse. I would like all of this to end as soon as possible."
"Maybe you should stay in the institute. Maybe you aren't able to be involved in a mission."
"I am the member of this team, same as you and all the others!" Lorna became nervous.
"Leave me alone, please. Perhaps after the meeting I'll feel better, then we'll talk." The woman finished the conversation coming back to her tacit walk through the firmly lighted, unpleasant to her corridor. Soon the squad came inside the big conference room. The room was much darker than the rest of the base and a large screen presenting the map of Canada and the United States was its main equipment. X-Men met old acquaintances there, Puck, Walter Langkowski and Snowbird as well as a few new members of the team with which they haven't a chance to meet, Zuzha Yu and Major Mapleleaf. Puck said hello to Logan simultaneously introducing the girl with blue hair as his daughter.
" Fortunately she isn't like her father." Wolverine said looking at the very short man.
"And where is yours daughter? Everyone's says that she is as wild as her father." Eugene replied.
"Laura isn't my daughter. It is far more complicated."
"But she protected you as some wild animal. Or maybe nothing really happened in your danger room?"
"Who do you know it from..." Logan asked rhetorically falling into a pensive mood.
"I will have to hush Northstar up..." He added after a moment.
"Let us start talk about the more pressing matters." Heather said. When all Alpha Flight members and X-Men took the places on chairs standing everywhere in the dark room, Guardian set about discussing problems which met Canadian superheroes.
"The entire world was touched by the secret plague depriving mutants of abilities. We could not avoid its effects. Our best, the most promising agents were brutally deprived of their powers." Murmur, Flex, Ghost Girl, Radius as well as Stitch images turned up on-screen at the same time. After a moment, an inscription "Kidnapped" appeared on faces of all of them, except Ghost Girl. Hudson continued the speech.
"Our people were kidnapped. We don't know by whom and to what purpose, they simply disappeared as if somebody blotted them out from the existence. Each of Alpha Flight members has a transmitter under the skin which was operative even after our recruits became the ordinary men and women. Now we can't register signals from Radius, Stitch, Flex and Murmur. Their signals came off suddenly and unexpectedly, within a dozen hours, literally one after the other."
"Is it possible, that they are dead?" Gambit asked.
"No. Their death would also be recorded on our computers. But the signal simply disappeared."
"Perhaps they got rid of these bedbugs themselves." Arclight cut in on a conversation.
"We also took this into the consideration. The stress after loss of the mutant powers certainly did its share. But every attempt to damage the device would be detected by us. We detected nothing, completely nothing. What's more Pathway and her sister also disappeared. The fact that they didn't lose powers is the strangest."
At the same moment, a signal of an alarm sounded. Behind the back of Hudson, the map of Canada and a marked red point with the great exclamation mark appeared on the hanging monitor. After a moment a face of some grey haired man in uniform appeared on-screen.
"Alpha Flight must immediately report in the hangar. An Omega threat appeared, I repeat, an Omega threat appeared!" The frightened man said.
"What does it mean?" Logan asked getting up from the chair.
"Trouble, huge trouble..." Heather said.
"A very dangerous mutant appeared in Alaska. He is moving to the Canadian border. All attempts to stop the mutant turned out to be fruitless. I repeat, all current attempts to stop the mutant turned out to be fruitless... The mutant leaves the trail of destruction behind himself, the body count is rising..." Three persons which faces appeared on-screen were talking at the same time.
"If he's the mutant, it is also our matter. X-Men will help your team to stop the mutant." Havok announced looking at all members of his group.
"You also!" He added looking at Arclight and Mammomax standing in the out-of-the-way place.
"Sure, I feel like punching somebody." The man with the appearance of the elephant replied.
"Thank you. We will need every pair of hands." James said smiling. He turned to heroes from Alpha Flight.
"We have no time to gather the rest of the group. We're rushing out immediately. I was just notified over radio that the last barricade of American police had been completely destroyed by the mutant. Nobody survived."
"How many?" Logan asked.
"About 35 people, perhaps far more." Guardian informed.
"We must stop him at all costs. And remember, we cannot afford being delicate. He cannot reach a major city, or else we'll have a massacre on the world scale."
"I understand very well what you mean." Gambit said simultaneously looking at the direction of two criminals. Alpha Flight and the team of mutants left a room. Remy turned to Phillipa.
"If one of us will be in danger, you can act as if you didn't have any restrictions. You have a completely free hand in the clash with this shit."
"I wasn't going to be delicate. Refraining myself from acting against you tires me more and more." The woman replied.
"You have a chance to use your hate in the right way." Remy announced walking outside through the slightly opened door.
Dark Beast tied Callisto to the bed using thick, black belts and gagged her mouth. He looked at her face smiling.
"My people prepared you very well for experiment, but we can't take adequate safety means. Nobody knows how my therapy will work on you. I must expect the worst. What I'm going to do to you can turn out to be salvation for everyone of us. Perhaps you will be the first person in whom I will reverse the effects of the M Day. You should be grateful!" McCoy approached bizarre apparatus and, after a moment, he took the syringe with some green substance out of it.
"My formula isn't excellent. I had no time for completion. You can fall ill, even die in terrible torments, but you know who will be guilty? Your acquaintances, the X-Men! Because their appearance stopped my calculations, because of their intervention I had to go to practical tests. I know that my Sentinels won't stop them. They are rustheaps which I didn't also have time to do some work on! But I will be able to use the extra time to finish me tests, at first on you and later on your young friends!"
Meanwhile outside, the X-Men struggled with lethal battle machines. Cyclops was shotting at legs of the spidery robot and Colossus hit huge legs of huge humanoid Sentinels which was pointing it hand towards Emma and other mutants. Fever Pitch rose up into the air attacking two steel monsters with streams of the red flame. Karima also joined the fight, although her systems still didn't return to the hundred per cent efficiency. Kitty assumed the immaterial form and then ran towards the robot with which Piotr fought. Phasing through electromechanical devices of its leg she caused that the machine had wobbled and then was knocked by the strength of Rasputin. Scott turned to Amelia.
"Amelia, take Hank and try to get inside. I could see ventilation gratings, in the gas form you should go inside easily."
" Scott, and what about you?"
"We will be ok. It 's probably the worst junk robots which we've met." The man replied. Ginger came up to Beast.
"Doctor McCoy..."
"Okay, we are going there. I hope that your teleportation is more pleasant than Kurt jumps."
"My gas is odorless." Amelia said laughing.
Erik looked at the group of mutants fighting fiercely with mechanical opponents. He was furious and clenched his fists.
"Until recently I would still finish this farce with one thought. And now... whom I became..." He talked to himself.
Beast and Voght turned into the cloud of white gas got inside the underground bunker. It turned out that the ventilation had led straight to the laboratory of the evil version of Beast from parallel reality. Amelia and her shaggy passenger quickly materialized. Dark Beast smiled seeing his counterpart from world 616.
"Ah, it's wonderful that somebody who is able to understand the importance of my work will be a witness of my success. " He said moving the syringe close to the dazed Callisto's neck.
"What are you doing!" Henry shouted gearing up for the attack.
"Wait! I'm sure that you don't want to interrupt me now!"
"Don't be so certain! You kidnapped people, you hurt one of my friends. You sent Sentinels after my team. You won't escape the responsibility."
"I will perform the first trial of a substance on which I worked many weeks. You can attack me as some barbarian and we will be bite and scrape each other as large cats or perhaps and your friend will join us. But it isn't the only solution! I propose to sit down comfortably and observe how my genius is reversing the effects of M Day!" Dark McCoy said being convinced that Beast will not be able to stop his moment of the triumph.
Meanwhile in the vacated residence of the Master of the Magnetism, a lonely person was a witness of the fight proceeding in the distance, in the destroyed city. Wicked stood on the balcony observing flashes of Cyclops' optic rays and streams of the fire generated by unusual Fever Pitch physiology, she was listening closely to sounds of blows of organic steel against rusty metal and the sound of energy discharges created by the cyborg woman. The girl had Magneto's helmet on her head which protected her from telepathic detection by Emma Frost. It was a gift from the former master of the island handed over to her. She wanted the fight to finally end, irrespective with which side winning. She wanted intruders to finally leave her homeland so that she can be alone with her thoughts and ghosts of everyone who died again. She knew that it had been impossible and every thought about the fact that she was going to have the utter silence in the head to the end of her days caused that suicidal thoughts had overcome her. In spite of the lack of any superhuman abilities, the girl intuitively sensed that soon something unusual had been supposed to happen.