Chapter 32

Kitty woke up to knocking on the door of the X-Girls' dormitory. She sat up and grabbed for her head scarf. "Who's there?"

"It's me," said Lance's voice from the hallway. "I'm here on official business."

Kitty pulled the first piece of it over her bald head, settling it on her brow and over her ears. "How official?"

"I'm supposed to officially tell you that your turn in the laundry started fifteen minutes ago."

"Oh, drat." She fished the straight pin out of her scarf and put it in her mouth while she got the cloth settled around her head and neck. "Thanks for waking me up."

"That's my job."

"What do you mean, that's your job?"

Kitty gave herself a glance-over. She had no clothes to change into; she'd been living and sleeping in the same set of mint scrubs for the last while . . . somehow the word 'days' didn't convey the passage of time on Avalon very well. She'd been hoping to switch these out for a fresh outfit when she was in the laundry today. Still no shoes, but the floors were clean, and she hadn't stepped on anything so far.

"Pietro and I got assigned to . . . look, this is weird. Will you just open the door?"

Kitty got up, hesitated a second to make sure she wouldn't get woozy again, then went to open the door. "Pietro and you got assigned to what?"

Lance was still wearing the gray training uniform he'd borrowed from the X-Jet's supply, but there was a metal thing, like a small upside-down horseshoe, pinned to his shirt. He twisted it so the reflective surface caught the florescent light. "We're in charge of keeping order on the station. Like police, or something."

"We need police up here?"

"Just in case."

Kitty privately worried a little bit . . . Lance? The police? . . . but he looked so proud of himself that she couldn't help smiling. "That's really great, Lance. That's a good job for you."

"So I have to officially escort you to the laundry room, or else I will have to officially arrest you, which means we will have to make a jail to officially throw you in—"

"My gosh, Lance! I'm coming already!" Kitty found herself giggling. It felt good. She closed the door of the dormitory behind her and went with Lance to the elevator.

The light in the hallway was . . . weird. Nearly everything in Avalon was lit with high-efficiency LEDs, all a little too white and glaring for Kitty to feel comfortable under. They gave everyone a washed-out, exhausted look. But as she walked up the corridor, flickers of movement drew her eyes. Cool blue light was whipping along the walls, like the light reflected off the surface of a swimming pool.

"What's that?" she asked, reaching out a hand in a futile attempt to touch one of the flickers.

"I dunno," Lance admitted, frowning. "It's been doing that all morning."

"Huh."

The flickers followed them into the elevator, so whatever they were, they weren't localized to the hallway. As the doors closed and the car started to move, the color shifted. Instead of blue, they were surrounded by wavering gleams of dark red. The change lasted until they got out on one of the lower levels, then subsided into blue again.

Two other people were on duty in the laundry . . . a dark-haired, bright-eyed little boy of about thirteen called Julio, and a woman in her forties named Tia. Magneto had 'acquired' (probably stolen) five big front-loading washers, and three of them were spinning loads of bedsheets, blankets, kitchen rags, hospital scrubs, and whatever else Avalon used that was made out of cloth. Julio and Tia were folding a still-warm load of the same, and Kitty sat down to help out. Lance hopped up onto one of the dryers.

"Are you just going to sit there and watch?" Kitty asked, feigning annoyance.

"Yup. You're not supposed to be lifting anything heavy yet, so I have to make sure you don't try moving the loads of wet stuff."

"Then at least get down here and fold something."

He seemed to have been waiting for an invitation; he slid down and sat down next to her, grabbing the first thing that presented itself. This turned out to be a fitted sheet, and Kitty let him struggle with getting it folded flat before she laughed and showed him how to do it right.

The light patterns kept dancing along the walls, and even though they were unexplained, Kitty found them soothing. Every few minutes, the color would shift to red, then settle back into blue.

"Residents of Avalon Station, could I please have your attention?"

It was Professor Xavier's voice, but he was nowhere in the room. The voice had none of the scratchiness that would have indicated a traditional PA system; it sounded like he was standing right there.

"This is just an announcement to test our station-wide announcement capabilities, and I'd like to thank Memorex for volunteering her talents in this capacity."

"Cool," said Kitty.

"I'd also like to reassure you about the light displays that some of you have reported seeing. One of our residents, Karen, went into labor this morning. Karen is photokinetic . . . she manipulates light. Her labor has stimulated her powers. I'd like to ask any of you that practice prayer or other forms of positive energy channeling to keep Karen and her child in your thoughts today."

Tia nodded. "Oh! I get it! The red's the contractions." Her voice had a soft, rolling Spanish accent to it.

The light shifted even as she spoke, maroon glimmers squirming across every wall, the ceiling, and the large pile of still-to-be-folded laundry.

"Yep. If I could make light shows, that's what it would have looked like."

"You have kids?" Kitty asked.

"Three," said Tia, smiling. "All boys. Eleven, nine, and six."

"Are any of them up here with you?"

Tia shook her head, her smile fading. "They're at home with their dad. I e-mailed my parents before I left, to ask them to help out while I'm gone, but . . . who knows how long that's going to be?"

The light shifted back to blue, and Tia let her breath out a bit. "I'm going to be having flashbacks all day now. Poor woman. I'm glad we have this place, but it's no place to be having a baby."

"Do you think they can get her to a hospital on the planet if something goes wrong?" Kitty asked.

"She's registered," said Lance, shaking his head. "Even if she didn't give her real name at an emergency clinic, the light show would give her away."

"And Canada is closing its borders to American mutants," said Tia. "It was on the news yesterday. They've had too many people going north to get away from registration."

"Rrrrgh!" Kitty grabbed a bedsheet in both hands and yanked on it, twisting her fists into the fabric. "I hate this!"

Lance grabbed a flat pillow that someone had tossed in the laundry without pulling off the case. Holding it towards Kitty, he offered, "Need to punch something?"

Kitty let go of the sheet and slugged a couple of respectable hits into the padding. Her third one went straight through, leaving her arm sticking out. She froze, startled, then saw the absurdity of the pillow wrapped around her arm like the world's stupidest bracelet. She reluctantly started to laugh.

Lance, Tia, and Julio all laughed, too. Lance pulled the pillow off of her arm and tossed it back onto the pile. He was grinning. He was so nice-looking when he grinned like that . . .

Piotr, said a voice in the back of her head. Her laugh faltered.

"You okay?" Lance asked.

"Yep," lied Kitty, picking up another sheet.

Carol wasn't asleep when she heard the whisper, but it startled her anyway. She sat up from her bunk and looked around. A familiar face was smiling at him through the barred window of her cell.

"Hey, Carol!" said Rogue.

"Hey yourself," Carol answered automatically. She stood up and looked out.

Rogue was hovering in the air outside the window, which was on the third floor. Her brother, Kurt, was riding on her back.

"We came tuh rescue you," Rogue announced.

"Well, that's very considerate," Carol deadpanned. "You are aware this is a secure facility, right?"

Ve vere careful," Kurt assured her, "but ve shouldn't hang around to get coffee."

"So here's the big question," Rogue continued. "Would'ja like tuh be rescued the quiet way . . ." She gestured with her head towards Kurt, "or the loud way?" She put a hand on the wall and pushed. Carol heard the beams creak.

She put a hand on the spot where the interior wall of her cell was bulging inward a fraction of an inch. She should have been able to push back, just as hard . . . the wall should have yielded like it was made of rubber.

That was why she was locked up here. If she'd still had her powers, her superiors would never have tossed her under the bus like this. But without them, she was just a waste of resources. If Rogue hadn't . . .

But Rogue hadn't meant to. She'd been robbed of her free will and made to inflict this state of helplessness on Carol. Senator Creed and all his allies had known exactly what they were doing when they declared her a second-class citizen.

"Let's do the quiet way," Carol heard herself saying. "It'll make for a cleaner exit."

Rogue sighed. "Fahne, if you wanna be all boring."

There was a puff of smoke that stank of sulfur, and Kurt was standing next to her. He put a furry hand on her arm. One more puff, a rush of heat, and she was hanging in the air with Rogue's arm wrapped around her back.

The feel of her feet hanging into nothingness . . . the lurch in her stomach as they accelerated . . . the wind whipping at her eyes, her hair . . . it was glorious. How long had it been since she'd felt like this? How could she have forgotten how much she needed it? Carol Danvers was flying again.

There were tears in her eyes when they landed among some uninhabited Montana hills a few minutes later, and Carol honestly couldn't tell if they were from the wind or the emotion. She dabbed the moisture away with the shoulder of her shirt and tried to pretend it hadn't happened.

It was no use. Rogue saw. She hesitantly reached out, drew back, then reached out again and finally rested her gloved hand on Carol's arm. "Ah'm so sorry," she murmured, not for the first time. "Ah cain't even . . . Ah'm so sorry."

"It's okay," Carol assured her. "It's not even that, really." This was partly a lie . . . it did sting, seeing Rogue standing there, rich with the power that had once been Carol's. "It's just that . . . when all that happened, and I lost my powers, I got a lot of comfort out of thinking 'Well, at least I can still fly planes.' And now . . ." She smiled, trying to laugh at the irony, not quite succeeding. "Now the Air Force locked me up, after I gave them my whole life. I gave them my life, and they just threw it away." She felt anger boil up inside her, smothering the sadness. "If I had one hour with those powers back, I'd show that smart-faced senator a thing or two about how scary mutants can be."

"Hey, don't vorry," said Kurt. "I sink you're still pretty scary."

Carol laughed. "Thanks, I guess."

"He thinks it's a compliment," said Rogue. "You kin ignore him, if you want."

Carol smiled, for real this time. "So where do we go from here? Over the border?"

Kurt nodded, grinning. "Vay over."

"I do not understand what you want me to do!" Laura seethed.

"I want you to only use one hand," Jean repeated. "Two hands is cheating unless you're going to pass to another player or make a shot. See?" She dribbled the basketball a few times, switching it easily from one hand to the other, then caught it and passed to Laura.

The twentieth floor of the hotel was a gym. Rather than stay cooped up in the hotel room with only the nerve-wringing news for company, Jean had decided to teach Laura to play basketball. The court wasn't regulation size, but it was still large enough to work with. Laura's unique worldview was more of a problem.

"I don't understand 'cheating'." Laura folded her arms and glared, annoyed and frustrated. "If the objective is to put the ball in the hoop, I should hold it in both hands and run there. Or hold it under my arm. I have a much higher chance of losing it if I don't hold onto it."

"That's the point! It gives your opponent the chance to take the ball from you."

"Why would I give my opponent that kind of opportunity?"

"Because it's a game, Kiddo."

Jean turned to the doorway. Logan was standing there, smiling at some private joke. Mariko stood next to him. They'd evidently finished, or at least found a good place to pause, the private conversation that had started before Jean and Laura had woken up.

Logan approached them, holding his hands out for the ball. Reluctantly, Laura hefted it to him, underhand.

"A game is a competition of skill under controlled conditions," Logan explained, using vocabulary that was more likely to make sense to her. "It's not combat. The parameters are very specific. Violating the parameters invalidates the competition."

"It's stupid," said Laura.

"You just say that because you can't do it," he shot back. "All claws, no class."

Laura popped a fistful of claws, glaring a warning. Logan just smirked at her. He dribbled the ball a few times, slowly, casually, enjoying how much it was annoying her.

After about seven bounces, Laura snarled, pulled in her claws, and grabbed for the ball with the required one hand only. Logan swivelled neatly out of her reach, dribbled up the court, and sank a two-point shot. Laura ran after him and rammed into his back, knocking him off balance long enough for her to catch the rebounded ball.

"That's cheating, too," Logan told her, "but one thing at a time." He tried to steal the ball back from her, but she copied the move he'd just pulled on her and danced it out of his reach.

Jean turned to the elderly Japanese lady standing beside her. "Did Logan tell you about what happened?"

"He did," Mariko assured her. Her eyes were following Laura as she and Logan chased one another up and down the court. "You would think, wouldn't you, that so many millions of dollars of military hardware and training would make her a little better at basketball?"

Jean laughed, but her smile faded almost immediately. The images of last night still lingered in her mind: claws and blood, snarls and screams. "I hope you know, ma'am, that you're not obligated to help us . . . to help Laura. We all know how dangerous she is, and how dangerous the people looking for her are. If anything were to happen, because we'd left her in your care . . ." She trailed off, unable to think of an articulate ending to that sentence.

"Thank you for your forthrightness," said Mariko, inclining her head. "There was a time when Logan asked me to take a risk, and I refused. It is not a mistake I would care to repeat." When Jean didn't respond immediately, Mariko turned away from the game to examine her face. "He hasn't told you of our history, has he?"

Jean shook her head. "He likes to keep his secrets."

"Indeed he does. I can understand his reasons, but . . ." She hesitated, studying Jean with her dark, intelligent eyes. "I disagree. Because of who you are, and the position in which you find yourself, you should know."

Jean felt herself recoil a little, startled and unsettled. The position in which she found herself? Even without employing telepathy, she knew that Mariko was not referring to her position as a fugitive from her country or guardian of a psychologically damaged mutant teenager.

She shot a look at Logan, but his attention was entirely focused on the basketball game. Mariko disagreed with Logan. She was willing, even determined, to go behind his back and disclose what he wanted to keep secret. This tiny Japanese woman was either the craziest or the gutsiest person that Jean had ever met.

Did she want to know? If Logan judged it unwise to tell her, should she second-guess him?

Yes.

Jean nodded decisively. "Yes, I should."

Carol was impressed. The check-in process that had been jury-rigged into existence up here was surprisingly efficient. She only had to kick around the hangar for about ten minutes before one of Xavier's kids got to her.

"Oh, hi, Carol!"

"Hi," responded Carol hesitantly. "I should know your name . . ."

"I'm Jamie," said the kid with a grin. "It's okay, nobody remembers me on their first try. Okay, here we go." He held up a clipboard and clicked his pen importantly. "Name, please."

"Carol Susan Danvers," Carol recited.

Jamie applied himself to writing this down. Before he'd managed more than two letters, an identical Jamie was suddenly standing next to him. With another pen-click, the next Jamie asked, "Handle? Like, Mutant Super-Name?"

"Um . . ." It was a tricky question to be asked when suddenly confronted with a kid-copy, but Carol rallied well. "My Air Force buddies called me Miss Marvel, but that was just a joke."

"It works," said Jamie Two happily. He started writing.

"Are you up here with anyone that you'd like to room with?" asked Jamie Three, clicking his pen open.

"Nope."

"Mutant powers?" asked Jamie One, who had evidently finished writing her name down.

"Nada," said Carol with a self-deprecating smile.

"Right. Any allergies or special medical needs we should know about?"

Before Carol could reply, the un-ignorable bass voice of the man who'd brought her up here cut across the conversation. "In asking, I am aware that I risk provoking another display of Institute/Human solidarity, but if she has no powers, what is she doing up here?"

Carol turned to survey the interloper. He was older than she was, and his bearing indicated that he was in charge even if the question hinted otherwise. She wished futilely for some rank insignia on his sleeve, to let her know if she could tell him to go screw himself or of she had to tell him to go screw himself, sir.

"I'd been given to understand that this was a facility for American mutant refugees," she told him, her tense politeness hinting that it would disappear at the slightest provocation. "I am an American mutant refugee."

"With no powers? No physical mutation?"

"Well I've got blue eyes."

The older man glared at her, and the glare was formidable. "Explain yourself, or you will be dealt with."

"I am a mutant," Carol barked. "My powers are temporarily unavailable, but I am still a mutant, and if this is a place for mutants, then I have a right to be here."

Jamie cleared his throat. Two of his duplicates were doing their best to cower behind the third. "This is Rogue's friend Carol. Rogue's got her powers. She's got powers, but Rogue's got them right now."

The man gave Jamie and his explanation a cursory glance, then turned his attention back to Carol. "Is this true?"

"Close enough," Carol told him.

"I had assumed that the donor of the Rogue's increased powers would be dead."

"A lot of people did," said Carol, and she allowed herself a trace of a gloating smile. "I may not have my powers, but I still don't die that easily."

His posture relaxed a little, too; he seemed to appreciate her attitude. "Evidently not. I apologize if I spoke hastily. I was not aware of your unique situation."

Carol shrugged.

"I am called Magneto," he offered.

"Carol."

"If you don't object to my asking," he continued, "have your powers recovered themselves at all since Rogue attacked you?"

"Rogue didn't attack me," Carol corrected. "But . . . no. I haven't felt anything come back."

"Hm." He looked her over critically. It wasn't the appraising look of a man sizing up an attractive woman . . . more the look of a mathematician presented with an intriguing new problem. "I'd like to show you something that may interest you, if you can tear yourself away from being processed by fifteen-year-olds."

Carol turned uncertainly to Jamie. "Anything else you need from me?"

"Not . . . really. Just, um, your room. You're gonna be in 3117. That's dormitory 117 on the third level. When you're ready to go upstairs, just ask anybody with an Institute logo to program your fingerprints into the security system."

"Okay, thanks." She returned her attention to Magneto. "So what do you want to show me?"

What he wanted to show her looked like a vault. An empty metal vault with electrical coils humming, half-dormant, in the walls.

"I designed this over a decade ago," Magneto told her. "I've discovered that certain types of radiation can hyperstimulate the relays in the brain coded by the X-gene. This chamber can produce extremely intense bursts of that radiation. When a healthy mutant is exposed to it, his or her powers expand and develop at a dramatically accelerated rate. A few more doses, and the change stabilizes, becomes permanent."

Carol ran a curious hand around the edge of the chamber's opening. "And what about when a human's exposed to it?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Humans don't interest me, scientifically speaking. I suppose the best case scenario would be several rather horrific cancers. More likely a quick death from radiation poisoning or burns. But the interesting question is you. If the extra pathways in your brain are still intact, it's possible that this device could stimulate them. Restore your powers."

Restore your powers.

"I could fly again?"

"Possibly even faster than you could before."

Carol slipped her hand inside the chamber, as though it were filled with something other than ordinary air. She'd touched clouds with that hand.

"I could fly again," she heard herself repeating.

"Or you could die."

Part of her . . . a large part . . . screamed that she didn't care, that a life anchored to the ground was no life at all, that she had to fly this second or her heart would break . . . but she heard in the voice traces of hysteria, and her military training kicked in, forcing her to be calm, and rational, and weigh risks with benefits.

"That's a big decision to make," she forced herself to say. "I'll need some time to think it over."

"Of course," Magneto responded graciously. "Take all the time you need."

Rogue and Kurt were eating lunch at McDonald's when they saw it.

Rogue stopped with her Big Mac halfway to her mouth. "Oh, mah gosh."

"Vhat?" Kurt twisted in his seat to see what she was staring at.

In the corner booth, five high schoolers were just digging into their own meal. One of them, a boy who was sitting at the edge of the bench seat, was leaning back just enough for the inscription on his t-shirt to be clearly read.

FREE SCOTT SUMMERS

"Oh, my gosh," said Kurt.

He dropped his food and jumped up out of his chair. Rogue hissed his name and grabbed for his arm, but he'd moved too quickly. He was over at the other table before Rogue could even get her chair out from under theirs.

"Hey, man, nice t-shirt," Kurt observed, by way of introduction.

The kid looked up at him and grinned. "Thanks. You can get 'em online."

"I ordered one, too, but it's not here yet," said the girl next to him.

"Somebody's sellin' these?" Rogue asked, finally catching up with Kurt. "And people are buyin' 'em?"

"Yeah, tons," said the boy. "You can get them on, like, Ebay and Etsy and stuff."

"But you're not . . ." Rogue trailed off, scanning the group for some indication of powers being hidden or restrained. There were no gloves, no glasses, no visible mutations of hair or eyes or skin or teeth. "Y'all ain't mutants," she finished lamely.

"My cousin is," said one of the other girls at the table.

"You don't have to be a mutant to think Registration's a load of crap," said the boy wearing the t-shirt. "Creed's a bigot."

"There's gonna be a protest in front of the state capitol on Saturday," said the other boy in the group. "You guys should come. I bet somebody will be selling t-shirts there."

"So people have something to change into after they get squirted with fire hoses," joked the girl whose cousin was a mutant.

"Are they gonna bring in fire hoses?" asked the boy. "Cool."

"Guys, it's almost one," observed the girl who hadn't yet spoken. "We've gotta get back to school or we're gonna be tardy."

Rogue and Kurt retreated to their own table so the students could cram the last of their food and rush back to class.

Kurt was all but glowing.

"It can't be just zem," he told her. "Zere have got to be more." Rogue could hear the whup whup whup as his invisible tail lashed back and forth to hit the legs of his chair. "Zere's a counter movement. People are on our side. Rogue, zey're on our side!"

"Humans are on our side," Rogue echoed. "Ah cain't hardly remember the last tahme Ah had a kind word from a . . ." She trailed off, catching herself. Bobby and Memere were human. It was easy to forget about them, when the word human conjured up images of high school bullies and U.S. Marines.

"Ve're going to win zis," Kurt exulted. "It's going to be all right!"

"Don't git yerself all worked up just yet," Rogue told him, the ever-depressing voice of reason. "It ain't them kids that count. It's the jury. If they rule against Scott, then Magneto's gonna launch his war, and those nice kids are gonna get shot down like animals along with everybody else."

"Not vhile ze X-Men have anysing to say about it," Kurt told her confidently. It was clear that nothing she could say would dampen his buoyant mood. He picked up his burger and dug into it with gusto.

He was right, of course. If Magneto wanted to start a war, the X-Men would be there to stop him. It was what they were trained for . . . what they had to do, or they would cease to be X-Men. And Rogue had to be there with them.

Not because she owed Professor Xavier . . . although she did . . . or because she was loyal to Scott . . . though that was true, too . . . or even because she needed to stick with Kurt, her own brother and only family. Even if they were all gone, she'd still stand up to Magneto. Because she was an X-Man. Because there were good people in the world who didn't deserve to be punished for the crimes of the rest of their species. Because she was a gosh dang superhero, and that was what superheroes dang well did.

The horrible realization slipped out of her mouth almost before it had formed in her mind. "Ah gotta do somethin' about Gambit."

Kurt glanced up at her, his mouth full of burger. "Whoh?"

"Gambit. If war starts, he'll take Magneto's side."

Kurt swallowed. "No, he von't."

"He might. And we cain't let him. He's too powerful. He's got my powers, an' his powers, an' his thief's training, an' our training. Ah cain't let him fight."

"But . . ."

"Ah'm gonna have to stop him."

"How?"

"Ah'll lock him up."

"How?"

This one stopped her. Lock up Gambit. Keep him confined somewhere he didn't want to be. For more than fifteen seconds.

Couldn't be done.

"Ah'll think a' somethin'," she insisted.

"Good luck," Kurt told her, not sounding at all as though he actually wished her good luck on her endeavor. "Ze only way you can lock up Gambit is if he's unconscious." Satisfied that he'd made his point, he dunked three french fries in the puddle of ketchup he'd made on the wrapper of his burger and stuffed them all into his mouth.

If he's unconscious.

The answer burst into Rogue's mind in a flash of terrible inspiration.

"Ah kin do that," she breathed. She wasn't looking at Kurt anymore . . . her eyes were focusing on the empty air as she examined the picture that had just popped into her head. "Ah kin make people unconscious."

"Noh Gambih," said Kurt, his mouth full.

"Yeah, Ah can. He's got mah same powers, but he don't know how to use 'em, not the way Ah do. Ah kin touch people and drain less of their energy . . . ain't no trick at all tuh take more. Ah kin take his powers. Ah kin knock him out cold and leave him in a coma until this whole thing's over. Ah kin do it. And that way he cain't fight for Magneto."

Kurt swallowed. He stared at her, and for the first time in the conversation, he stopped eating. "Rogue . . . no. You can't. You might kill him!"

Rogue shook her head. "Ah won't. Ah know what Ah'm doin'."

"But vhat if you're wrong? Vhat if you're right? You sink he's going to be okay vith you doing zis to him?"

"That's his problem." Rogue grabbed her half-eaten hamburger in both hands and took a huge bite, almost enough to choke her.

"Rogue—"

"Oo you mahn? Ah'm hrying hoo eat!" Scowling, Rogue focused all her attention on the burger and refused to say any more.