Rebekah

Kitty frowns and looks at my hand again. I hate it when people guilt-trip me into things but Kitty managed to get me to allow her to paint my nails. So now I have deep purple claws, as she said it would look terrible if I only had a little bit of my nails painted. So I can't actually sheath my claws until the top coat has dried.

"They look great."

I smile slightly. It's impossible to get annoyed with Kitty. She's just so bright and cheerful, always wanting to laugh. Then Rogue opens the door.

"Hank wants everyone down in the labs."

She looks worried so I don't think whatever it is is good. Kitty and I exchange glances and hurry down, me wafting my hands in an attempt to get my nails dried in time. We congregate in the lab and Beast looks up with more than a hint of nervousness in his eyes.

"I've been getting some odd readings for a while and I've been checking with Henry and Reed and they've come to the same conclusion as me. And… We… We think the world is going to end."

Oh. Brilliant. I stick up a hand.

"Like, end end or just maybe end unless we do something about it?"

"Well, unless we've discovered a way to stop the very fabric of reality from unravelling itself and then the universe imploding in the last five minutes, then no, there's nothing we can do."

I stare at him in horror.

"You mean, being torn to little bits?"

"No. Nowhere near as dramatic as that. History will simply unravel. And then we will all cease to exist. We will have never existed."

"So you have no idea where this is coming from?"

He lowers his gaze.

"Yes… We have our…hypothesis. The collapse of the timeline started close to three months ago."

I arrived here three months ago…

"There are two points where the implosion is happening faster. And they appeared centred on… Antarctica and… and… Westchester."

Everyone's gaze fixes on me.

Isaac

I woke up to the sound of shouting. I must have drifted off. I hadn't intended to. I tuned in my hearing to the voices outside.

It was definitively Magneto. The hotel manager was trying to tell him a teenage boy had not been here recently. Magneto pushed him aside and moved towards the door. The one I was behind. I could see Quicksilver and Sabretooth behind him. I steeled myself for a long port and shifted. I landed in a heap of snow. I knew I didn't have much time. If Quicksilver was with them, he couldn't be too far behind. I started to run. I crossed the ocean and started across central Africa. I'd been running for five minutes when I heard a humming noise. I piled on more speed but the sound just got louder. Before I could teleport, I was pushed to the ground. I burrowed a tunnel of earth into the ground. My skin had been grated almost down to the bone. I looked up at Quicksilver. I gripped myself in an attempt to stall the pain.

"Why did you leave?" Quicksilver asked.

"I couldn't take it anymore. I've got these powers now. I can help people. I'm through with teams."

Quicksilver was silent. "Go," he whispered.

I didn't need to be told twice. I shifted. I landed in the ocean. The salt water stung my wounds viciously but it helped them heal faster so I gritted my teeth and withstood the pain. I was totally unprepared for what happened next. Everything was totally still and silent.

Then like a small atomic bomb, I was speared out of the water and gripped between two huge jaws. My first reaction was to scream. The shark plunged back underwater with me. I tried to hold my breath but I couldn't. The shark was crushing me. I tried to teleport but I couldn't budge something as big as the shark. I vibrated as fast as I could and the shark let go of me. I swam to the surface and gulped in a breath of air. I tried to think what could have enticed the shark to attack me. I looked down at my almost healed wounds.

My blood. I had been bleeding into the water. I froze. Everything was totally silent. I listened intently but I couldn't pick up anything. There was a small splash behind me and I twisted around. I could see two fins coming towards me. The sharks poked their heads above the water and came straight at me. I ducked beneath the water and fired my laser vision at one of them. The beam struck the first shark and cut it almost in half. The second one didn't stop to hesitate. He made straight for me. I drew my hand back, and with Quicksilver's speed and Colossus' strength, I swung my arm towards the shark. There was a thump that reverberated through the sea. I watched as the dead shark sank to the bottom of the ocean. I shifted above the water and started to run. I made it to New York where I bought a hot dog. I had lost most of my money when the shark had rammed into me so I had to find a job. Life was so complicated! I tramped through the streets. I saw a sign in the window that read, "Help for Hire."

I pushed the door open and walked into the shop. It was a pizza shop. I walked up to the counter and rang the bell. A man and a woman appeared. The man dusted his hands off.

"What is it you're looking for son?"

"A job actually. I saw your sign in the window," I replied.

"Sorry, you need to have a car. And you have to be seventeen."

"I have a car, and I am seventeen," I lied. The man stared at me.

"Where's your ID?" He asked.

"I don't have it on me. All I can say is, if you hire me, I'll get each and every pizza to its destination faster than you can blink."

The man glanced at his wife who looked at me strangely.

"Give him a chance Harry," she said. "We'll see if he can live up to his promise."

Harry gave me a hat and a uniform and gave me a pizza.

"Deliver this, on the double."

I saluted and jogged until I was out of his view. I teleported back and tuned into the conversation in the pizza shop.

"Do you think he's a mutant then Harry?" His wife said to him.

"Of course he is. But let's not do anything hasty. We'll let him work a couple of days before we call it in. There's no point in letting an obviously talented mutant slip through our fingers just yet."

I smiled and shifted to the adress. I delivered the pizza and shifted back. I was gone less than a minute. I walked back into the shop and pasted a fake smile onto my face.

"Next," I said. The women handed me another pizza wordlessly. I walked out and shifted. I'd have to be very careful around those two. After a hard day of work, I slept under a bridge. I pulled my coat around me tightly. I looked up at the stars and thought about my family back at home. All that seemed so long ago now. I missed them so much. For the first time in weeks, I sat down and cried for my lost humanity.