Chapter 46

Charles, the Cerebro helmet still on his head, pushed his chair along the lower corridor of Avalon station as fast as his arms could take him. No one was down this far; they were all upstairs, anxiously watching the news and taking comfort in one another's company.

Eric wasn't taking the typical entry route through the airlock landing bay. Instead, he brought his transport sphere straight through the station wall, like two soap bubbles merging into one.

Logan was the first one out. Jean was in his arms, her body limp and passive. She and Logan were both drenched in blood. Not sparing a word or a glance for Charles, he headed at a run up the corridor.

Eric was just behind him, though he had the courtesy to lift Charles's chair and bring it along as he sped down the passage.

"Will it work?" Charles demanded. "If the machine enhances his powers, can he save her?"

"In theory, it's possible."

"And in practice?"

Eric didn't answer.

The door of the machine was already standing open. Logan barreled inside without a twinge of hesitation, and the massive round door slammed itself behind him.

Eric let Charles's chair come to rest on the floor as he powered up the enhancement chamber. Magnetic energy hummed and buzzed through the room.

"Do you think she has a chance, Eric?" Charles demanded.

"No," Eric told him flatly. "I think she's already dead. I think his power is going to overexert itself trying to reanimate a corpse, and it's going to end up killing both of them."

"Then why did you let him go in there?"

"Far be it from me to deny a man the chance to die with the woman he loves."

The machine whined to a fever pitch.

Charles reeled back into his chair in astonishment. Logan and Jean? Preposterous. Logan had practically raised her. He saw her as a daughter or a younger sister, not as . . .

He ceased his protestations as memories flooded back. A thousand little things, over the last year. A strange formality between the two of them. The tendency for one or both to decide to leave the room if they were about to be the only people in it. A physical and emotional distance that hadn't been there when Jean was younger. Charles had thought that it might have been an argument, or just Jean's growing independence, that had made them drift apart, but in retrospect . . .

"How could I not have seen it?" he asked himself, aghast.

"I've told you a thousand times, Charles. You trust people far too easily."

"Come on, Jean. Just a couple more seconds. You're gonna be fine."

Logan was trying to convince himself. It was hard.

Part of him was yelling that it was no good—that she was already gone, and that he'd known she would be. He'd known that it was all too good to be real. He hadn't cared. This was his fault, and she wasn't breathing, and there was thing he could do to change it—except to kill Sabertooth, but Sabertooth was long gone, and Logan had let him go because saving Jean was more important. But she was dead all the same . . .

"Stay with me, Jean." He pulled her tight against his chest and kissed her forehead. "Stay with me. Please, darlin.' Please."

He felt a prickling start to run along his spine and across his back. It felt like his healing ability, but the only injury he'd received in the past few minutes was the bullet to the lung, and that had already closed.

The itch spread along his limbs and across his chest, intensifying as it went. Then it spread farther—out of him and into Jean. He could feel it tingling and stinging inside her body, as though she were just another of his limbs.

The stinging got worse. Now it was burning through every bit of his body and every bit of Jean's, like a sunburn at first, then like flame, then like burning tar. Logan's neck snapped backwards involuntarily, and he snarled, gritting his teeth against the pain. He could handle pain.

Or maybe not.

Too late to change anything now, though . . . he couldn't have escaped, even if he wanted to. The pain was immobilizing. He was stuck here. If he could save Jean, it would be worth it. And if he couldn't . . . well, dying now was as good as anything else.

Then the pain was too intense for thinking anymore.

Somebody was screaming.

The entire little chamber was humming and glowing with power. The light rapidly grew toward blinding as the pain intensified, far beyond what Logan had thought his brain was able to process. Why didn't this just end? Why couldn't he just die?

Jean convulsed in his arms.

She didn't just twitch; she nearly bent herself in half, twisting backwards as far as her spine would allow, and gasped in one huge, wheezing breath of air.

Her eyes shot open. They were black.

"This isn't how it's supposed to happen," Charles murmured.

"If wishes were horses."

"Not a wish. A vision. When you and I were taken by Apocalypse, did you see anything?"

"I hardly even remember the experience."

"I saw something. I saw Rogue flying, long before we ever dreamed she'd have that ability. I saw Gambit and Colossus joining the team. And I saw Jean."

"I'm guessing you didn't see her bleed to death on a courtroom floor."

"No. But maybe that would have been—"

The door of the chamber creaked.

The first creak might have been imagined, but the second was loud and agonizing. Eric caught his balance as the floor shuddered; Charles grabbed the wheels of his chair to steady it.

The door's lock mechanism wrenched clockwise.

"Are you—"

"No."

The door crashed open.

Jean Gray stood in the opening, though her feet were not touching the floor. Her hair whipped in mad waves around her as if she were standing in a hurricane. Her face was serene and regal, and her eyes—irises, pupils, and whites—were black as the empty space between the stars. Behind her, the chamber was filled with white-hot flame.

Charles grabbed the armrests of his chair and pushed himself up. His mouth was set in a grim, fierce line the likes of which Magneto had never seen. The Cerebro helmet was still fitted around his head. And before anyone could say or even think anything . . . before Eric could even decide if this little girl was truly a threat . . . Charles struck with all of the power of his impossibly powerful mind.

Just because Charles didn't use his abilities to inflict harm didn't mean he couldn't. Eric was in a position to know, having been hit by Charles's powers more than once. But he'd never been hit by the full force of what Charles's telepathy could inflict. The vein standing out on his forehead now told Eric that this effort was far beyond anything he'd ever seen his friend produce. And he was still wearing Cerebro.

Jean shrieked. It was an angry, piercing, inhuman sound, more like a bird of prey than a woman. The room wavered like a road in the sun, even to Eric's untrained eyes, as she lashed back against whatever Charles was trying to do. But it was obvious she wasn't ready to defend herself. Her cry became choked, as though Charles were strangling her, and her suspended body wrenched backwards so far it looked as though she'd broken her spine. The cry became a human scream, then a sob. Then she landed on the floor, limp and passive as a rag doll, and lay motionless.

The flames in the chamber vanished; the room stopped shaking. Everything suddenly seemed very quiet, dim, and cold.

Charles dropped back into his chair, his hands trembling visibly. In a voice almost as choked as Jean's had been, he asked, "Did I kill her?"

"Did you mean to?" Eric demanded.

Charles hung his head and said nothing, still struggling to catch his breath.

Eric cautiously approached Jean's crumpled form. There was no sign that she was breathing. There were traces of blood from her nose across her upper lip. There was no flicker of movement.

He dropped to one knee, brushed her hair aside, and pressed two fingers into the side of her throat. Nothing.

He held his breath, readjusted his fingers, pressed in deeper, and waited just a moment more.

Something inside her throat twitched, once. Then again.

"She has a pulse," he announced.

"Oh, thank God!"

Eric looked into the chamber of the machine. It was scorched and blackened, as though someone had attacked it with a blowtorch. In the middle of the floor lay a charred hunk of flesh through which gleaming metal bones could be seen.

It twitched.

"The Wolverine survived as well, I think," Eric announced, more out of politeness than because he thought Charles was listening to him. He shrugged out of his long coat and tossed it into the chamber before closing the door. He doubted there was a enough left of Logan's circulatory system to make morphine of any use to him; there was nothing to be done but to let him heal, and make sure he had clothes to hand when he was able to move again.

"You all but killed one of your own students," he mused aloud. "Deliberately. I never thought I'd see the day."

"Trying to change the future," Charles murmured.

"You've succeeded. For better or for worse, it's changed now."

Eric stooped and slid his arms under Jean's limp body, lifting her off the floor. Her breathing was all but imperceptible. But she was alive. For better or for worse.