Despair began to sink in as the pointlessness of the children's flight took hold, but they didn't stop running. Mud and water soaked their clothes, but now they ran on concrete instead of grass. They were still carrying out their frantic argument over the storm.
"He's following us. I-I can f-f-feel him coming. I f-feel him inside m-my mind—"
"Don't slow down! Don't you dare!"
The first child only sobbed in response, her voice raw. She ran harder to keep up with her taller companion, who seized her wrist and refused to let her slow her pace.
Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the girl's prediction to come true: as the two children neared the Institute's outer gates, a familiar mental voice bore down in their thoughts.
Stop running, both of you! That's an order!
And it was an order, in every sense of the word—in the next moment, as surely as if they'd been turned to stone, the two children suddenly found themselves completely unable to move. Their legs were frozen.
"We're trapped!" the boy shouted, his tone stricken with rage and panic. "But how? What'd he do to us!"
His smaller companion only let out a low moan, squeezing her eyes shut. "No," she sobbed, tears streaming down her face. "No, no, no..."
I'm afraid so, a telepathic voice said with reproach, intruding again upon their thoughts. Under ordinary circumstances, I would be loath to use my powers in this way...but given your actions tonight, you've left me little choice.
"Stop it! Let us go!" the boy screamed as his companion began to soundlessly hyperventilate. "You can't do this! You can't!"
"That's quite enough. From both of you," a female voice called down from above, calm and deep despite the warning tone. The words were accompanied by a violent crash of bright lightning and thunder: moving as one, the two children jerked their gazes upward in horror, to see the familiar silhouette of Storm descending upon them from the clouds above.
"You've given us plenty of trouble tonight, but it ends here," the weather-witch said with anger, stopping at a hover just low enough in the air that she could clearly be heard. "We expected better from our students at this Institute."
"Storm, you have to let us go!" the boy pleaded, anger disappearing from his tone to be replaced by desperation. His eyes were now wide and frightened behind the dark sunglasses covering his face; he might well have been crying alongside the raindrops that streamed down his cheeks. "Please! He'll be here any second! You can't let him do this to her!"
"Professor Xavier is only doing what he feels is best. You may not understand now—"
"I understand plenty! She was fine before he started this!" the boy shouted, trying in vain to gesture toward his frightened companion. "Look at her, Storm! She's a mess! He's tearing her mind completely apart!"
Without warning, the boy's legs suddenly collapsed from beneath him: with a grunt of shock, he felt himself collapse bonelessly in a heap to the ground, with nothing he could do to stop it. Beside him his companion sank to her knees as well. It had to be more telepathic interference—his doing. Their bodies were being controlled through their minds.
Knowing it was as good as over now, the two children began to tremble in place from chill and anticipation, watching mutely as Storm lit down gracefully on the ground before them. The boy bit down on his lip until it bled in order to keep from making any frightened noise; beside him, the smaller girl wept silently with her eyes tightly shut. Storm said nothing further to either of them, waiting.
Seconds passed, and the whirring sound of electric wheels filled the the air from the driveway. The noise was impossibly loud, clearly audible over the howling wind and rain. On the ground, the boy stiffened, watching the silhouette of a familiar wheelchair slide ominously into view. Another flash of lightning from the storm fully illuminated the scowling visage of Professor Charles Xavier.
He stared down at the children from his chair, disappointment written clearly on his face. He said nothing for a long moment, deliberating in silence—or else he was waiting for one of them to speak. When neither made any attempt to do so, and a minute had passed without any words exchanged, the professor sighed in anger and rolled his chair closer to where the children knelt on the ground, immobile. He still held them paralyzed with his telepathy.
"At this point in our relationship, I feel that it should be unnecessary for me to say this—but it bears repeating I am not here to harm either of you," Xavier said, glancing down at the two trembling forms on the pavement. "I understand what happened earlier tonight frightened you both very badly, and I do sympathize, but that doesn't change that fact that your behavior that followed was completely uncalled for. It was lucky I sensed your intentions well before you tried to leave the Institute."
"Yeah, lucky for you, maybe!" the boy suddenly yelled, a surge of renewed anger making him brave again. "If we'd gotten away, someone might've found out your dirty little secret! You didn't want us to tell anyone what's really going on in this place!"
"Your idea of what's been going on is sorely mistaken," Xavier said at once, trying and failing to keep his calm composure. "If you would both just calm down for one moment and stop trying to run away—!"
"Stop pretending we're the ones who did something wrong!" the boy screamed back, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of tumultuous emotion flooding his mind. Anguish and confusion that were not his own overrode his other thoughts, so strongly that he didn't even recognize their true source—his glassy-eyed companion, kneeling motionlessly beside him on the ground. She was so distraught by the night's events that she could act in no way but to project.
"I saw what was going on in your office!" the boy kept shouting, nearing the point of hysterics. "She showed me everything! Professor, you're killing her!"
"No, I am saving her!" Xavier barked in rebuttal, hands tightening their grip on his wheelchair. "You have NO idea the kind of power she possesses, the danger of it to herself and especially others—and you of all people should understand the importance of control in a situation like this!"
"But you're not controlling her powers!" the boy shouted. "You're trying to control her! You just want to take away all the stuff you don't like about her powers, cut 'em off and block 'em so they can't hurt you—"
"I would never—"
"You would! You did the same thing to Logan!" the boy screamed, livid beyond the capacity for reason. "That's why he can't remember anything, isn't it? That's the real reason he left! You did something to his head, you messed him up, and now you're doing the same thing to Jean! Did you wipe her mind, too, the first few times she told you to stop screwing around with her powers? You're just like Jack, just like everyone else that says they're here to help people like us—all you care about using us for your own gain, or else your sick, twisted little experiments...!"
Out of shock or something deeper, Xavier's mental hold on him broke at these words: still howling, words degenerating into nonsense, the boy staggered to his feet and clutched his pounding head in both hands. His body shook with pent-up sobs as he stood protectively over the motionless form of his companion. His mind was a wreck of unfamiliar emotions he couldn't control, any better than the crying little girl kneeling by him on the ground.
"SOMEONE HELP US!" the boy finally screamed, tearing off his sunglasses in one swift motion and opening his eyes toward the heavens above. A concussive burst of light blasted forth from the boy's eyes up into the sky, wide brilliant red beams that shone visibly for miles in all directions. "SOMEONE, LOGAN, ANYBODY, HELP US! WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE...!"
He needn't have used his beams at all, however. By that time, the temporally displaced Shadowcat and Nightcrawler were already in range, drawn in despite themselves by the continuing flash of lightning bolts and shouting voices. Even Shadowcat couldn't ignore the chill that crept up her spine at the sight of Storm landing in an obvious temper near the gates, seemingly targeting an unfortunate soul caught in her sights on the ground below. What was going on? Was there an intruder on the grounds, some threat that she was trying to stop? Did Ororo need backup? And if she did—could they really risk it, given where they were both from?
Neither teen had noticed, but several small panels on the device in Kitty's hands had lit up in the midst of their running debate, signalling a countdown toward a second time-displacement event. The activation had been triggered manually by another hand in a different era, namely Forge's, with the frantic intention of canceling out the first accident before any permanent damage could be done to the timeline. Unfortunately, both he and his displaced friends were in for some nasty surprises.
The chaos awaiting the X-Men back in the future had only begun to unfurl...