Remy

How had he let himself get talked into this?

Remy took a slow look around at the cabin of the X-Men's Blackbird. Kitty Pryde had made her case for action, and Magneto had finally agreed – the time to strike was now.

After years of searching, their little mutie recon team had found the base of Dr. Essex, evil scientist extraordinaire, busy cooking up god knew what in his secret laboratory. It had long been rumored that Essex got his pick of Farouk's slaves for his genetic experiments. The good doctor was even the boogeyman mutant mothers used to frighten their children – 'don't go out alone, or Dr. Essex will get you' – but the X-Men and the world truly had a reason to fear him. According to their sources, Dr. Essex was a heartbeat away from cloning the Shadow King.

Remy had his own reasons to fear the man, and had spent the last few years staying as far away from Essex as he could, but part of him felt he owed it to the memory of his father to help the X-Men take the bastard down if there was a chance, and owed it to himself most of all.

Remy's stomach was a mess of guilty knots. He hadn't told Rogue he was leaving with the X-Men in the dead of night. She had still been recovering and he wanted her to stay that way. Was he just too cowardly to say goodbye? Would she have tried to talk him out of it, or tried to come with? She was still too hurt and their mission was too dangerous. But deep down, Remy knew he didn't tell her because there was too much to explain about the Guild and his father and Essex…he just couldn't bring himself to tell her. Not yet, anyway. Instead, Remy the martyr was charging off with a band of mutant heroes, making one more bad choice in a lifetime of many.

"Any thoughts, Gambit?"

Remy snapped back to the conversation, and realized a half dozen mutants were staring at him. The Blackbird had been coasting on autopilot since Argentina, and the whole lot of them were strategizing over schematics and surveillance photos taken by Kitty, Forge, and Pietro – the mutants Remy had met last night on the return from their mission.

"At the least, any sign that you're still breathing," Pietro, Magneto's son and Lorna's half-brother, rolled his eyes at Remy and crossed his arms over his chest.

At least they had found Remy a new jacket before they left, black leather. It wasn't a trench coat, but it had enough pockets to make it worth his while. He had refused to wear the X-Men's metal laced uniform again, opting instead for the duds Yukio had lent him in Japan. The body armor was a little charred, but still functional, and he reached into one of the pockets and pulled out his ammunition - a deck o recipe cards. Playing cards weren't high on the supply list in Antarctica, so he had to scrounge for whatever he could find to charge for their mission. A hand-written sugar cookie recipe stared back at him beneath Pietro's withering glare.

Remy scowled and cleared his throat, feeling chastised like a naughty kid caught by the nuns at Catholic school. "I'm thinkin' that, except for the extra firepower, I'm not really sure why you brought me."

"That's the most intelligent thing you've said so far," Pietro replied.

Lorna hid a snicker behind her hand, but the others didn't share in the siblings' humor.

"Why would you say that, mein freund?" Kurt was perched on the headrest of one of the seats, his tail draped lazily over the arm, his face lost in the cockpit's shadows.

"Well," Remy shuffled his recipes and stuffed them back into his pocket. "Partly because of you and the Kitty cat there." He pointed towards Kitty, who opened her mouth to speak, but Remy held up a hand and continued. "You got a teleporter and a girl that can walk through walls. Why do you need a thief like me to break into Frankenstein's lab?"

They couldn't know, could they? That Remy owed his life to the evil doctor? That he had spent time in the very lab they were raiding? Remy certainly hadn't volunteered any information, but nothing he knew would have helped in their planning anyway, it was all too muddled, confused. One thing he knew for sure was that it was past time he freed himself from the shadow Essex cast over his life.

Kurt nodded slowly. "I can teleport, this is true, but I must know where I am going. If I 'port in blind, I could materialize into a wall, or worse."

"And," Forge, the man with the moustache, queued a change in the schematic hologram floating between them all. "We don't know how many mutants we could potentially find being held hostage in those cells. Kurt can't ferry all of them and us back and forth. It'd take too much time, and it'd probably kill him."

Kitty leaned forward. "I could get us all in and out, maybe, but my power disrupts electrical systems when I pass through them. We have no idea what that kind of break in the system could trigger. We need the element of surprise on our side. We have to be sneaky."

Remy sighed and ran a hand along his jaw. "That's where I come in," he acknowledged.

"Comrade Cassidy said your people are the best." The big Russian, intimidating even in his human form, loomed behind Kitty's chair. "Are you calling him a liar?"

Busy planning the ultimate heist, Remy's eyes moved shrewdly over the information Kitty's team had brought with them for what seemed like the fifteenth time since they had boarded the Blackbird, satisfied he had finally committed it to memory. It had been a few years since his indentured servitude to Dr. Essex, and from what he could tell, the monster's base had undergone some serious renovations.

"Non," Remy smirked, "just seeing where I stand. Didn't come along to be no redshirt."

"Redshirt?" Lorna frowned, but Bobby's face split into a frosty grin.

"Oh, come on. Star Trek? The poor dead suckers that always went on the away team with Kirk and Spock?"

Lorna's eye roll should have had its own sound effect. "Can we get back to the real world, please?"

"Right." Forge's holograms were touch activated, and the man broadened the view to include a large complex of buildings and an underground network of tunnels. "He's been hiding in plain sight in the middle of Corn-Hole, Nebraska. Upper buildings are pretty non-descript, just industrial offices and equipment sheds. The underground facility is intertwined with one of the state's Niobium mines - a rare element used in steel manufacturing. Looks like Essex took the mine over and piggybacked its tunnels when he built his own. Niobium plays hell with a lot of scanning equipment, probably why we could never get a decent lock on his location." Forge rocked back in his chair. "I know you don't like it, boss, but we're going to have to split up. There's just too much ground to cover."

"Blast it, I know." Lorna still looked out of her depth to Remy, he only hoped she was truly a chip off the old Magneto block. "The clone baths have to be our priority," she said, the statement eliciting a cry of protest from the big Russian.

He shifted in a flash to his organic steel form. "Boshe moi! There could be hundreds of mutants trapped down there! Are we to just ignore…!"

A magnetic zap zipped his lips. "I know what's at stake here, Peter, it's why we're splitting up. Kitty, Forge, and Gambit will find the cloning facility and disable it while the rest of us free as many as we can. No matter what, we can't let Essex clone the King a new body! Stealth is the name of the game here, people. It's all over the second they know…"

Her words were drowned by a piercing alarm and a flashing red light from the pilot's seat.

Kurt was the first to the controls and banked the Blackbird a hard right. "I believe, fraulein, the element of surprise has just been taken from us!"

Everyone staggered, but kept their footing. Pietro took the co-pilot's seat, while Lorna stood between her brother and Kurt, her hands gripping the headrests of their chairs knuckle white.

"Strap in everybody!" Pietro shouted, and his hands were a blur across buttons and switches. The airplane pitched back and forth. "Lorna, we've got company!"

"Missiles on our tail," she growled. "I got one, but…"

The rear of the Blackbird exploded, flaming shrapnel scattering through the cockpit. A chunk headed straight for Remy, but, thanks to Kitty's fast hands, it passed through him to lodge into the back of his chair.

"Merci, petite!" he shouted over the rush of air, but he spoke too soon. Kitty couldn't let him materialize, not with the hunk of metal sticking through his ghosted chest, but she forgot to anchor him. When the plane went into a tailspin, the phantom pair of them slipped through the decking of the Blackbird to float freely into the sky.

"Don't let go!" Kitty screamed and held his hand tight. "I can slow us down, at least until they can come back for us!"

Overhead, the horrible thunder of another explosion, and the streaking flash of gravity called the now flaming Blackbird to Earth. Kitty screamed, and Remy's insides clenched when he felt his jacket flapping in the wind, solid again with her concentration shattered.

"Kitty! Kitty!" They tumbled end over end, but he kept hold of her, trying his best to ignore the smell of burning fuel and the ground coming closer.

Magnus

The idea came to him in an instant, the possibility with all of its frightening potential enough to drive the fresh sting of rage and grief from his body.

Monitoring the team's mission in the early morning hours, Magnus had sent Sean to wake the rest of the children and prepare for their day. As a result, he alone had borne silent witness to the destruction of the Blackbird - the craft ferrying his children and students completely obliterated on the radar's screen. All further attempts to reach the X-Men had proven futile.

Magnus sat in stunned silence. Their mission had failed. His children were gone, but that wasn't what had sent his heart leaping into his chest. His thoughts should have been on Lorna and Pietro and the X-Men, on more lives owed to the monster Essex and his terrible master, but all of his attention turned instead to the girl Rogue.

If what Magnus was contemplating could become reality, if what Moira had said all those years ago about Charles Xavier held true, they could gain the upper hand in one masterful stroke.

It was dawn, or what passed for it in Antarctica, and Magnus headed across the grounds towards the building that housed Xavier's body. With each step he shoved thoughts of his children from his mind, lest his grief drown him. Instead, his inspiration gave him focus.

Xavier had been a gifted telepath in his lifetime, the likes of which the world hadn't seen before or since. Not for the first time, Magnus wondered how different things could have been if not for the accident that had injured Xavier as a young man. Would Xavier have had the power to stand up to Farouk? Would he have gone on to train the mutant pupils he had hoped to gather, taught them to fight back against tyranny and oppression? Would Lorna and Pietro and Wanda…would Moira…?

He swallowed a scream and mounted the steps, casting a fleeting glimpse towards Moira's holographic image as he stalked across the foyer. His late wife would not have approved of what he was hoping to set in motion.

The girl, Rogue, could transfer the mutant powers of others to herself. Though Xavier's mind was gone, would the potential for his fantastic abilities still reside in the flesh of his wasted body? If so, could Rogue claim his telepathy for her own, perhaps permanently? Their data on the girl had extrapolated such a thing was possible, but the length of physical contact required for such a transfer was daunting. Magnus didn't know if she had the strength of will.

If only he could convince her, to make her see how dire their situation was, how imperative it was that they act, if only he could make it her choice! But they were running out of time for such frivolities. If Essex was truly manufacturing mutant clones, how long until he made Farouk a new body? Or an army? Not even the ravages of time would save their miserable world. But a telepath to rival the Shadow King? Magnus knew that Rogue would have to be made to see that this was the only chance they had left.

He had intended only to check Xavier's latest scans and vitals, but when Magnus stepped into the room, he was astonished to see Rogue standing at the man's bedside. She was supposed to be resting in the infirmary. His appearance startled her as well, and she jumped.

"I'm sorry," she stammered and stepped back from the bed. "I know I'm supposed to be in bed, and this place is probably off limits or something. I just…"

Magnus forced a smile and walked towards her. "An apology is not necessary, Rogue. I would have brought you here myself eventually."

A small smile touched her features. Was it fate, Magnus wondered, that had brought her to Xavier's bedside in their most desperate hour? He took a measured breath before speaking, afraid the grief he was holding at bay would overwhelm him. He didn't want to believe that his remaining children had perished. Lorna and Pietro were resourceful, strong. He had taught them, and the rest of the X-Men, how to survive whatever the Shadow King's world could throw at them. They had to be all right, he refused to allow himself to believe otherwise.

"What is it?" The girl had reached a hand for him, the one not enclosed in a sling, but froze before touching him, pulling back and biting her bottom lip. Magnus's best efforts to conceal his anguish and desperation were failing, the cracks showing.

The girl's companion, the arrogant and cocksure Gambit, had joined the X-Men on their mission. If their aircraft had been destroyed, Rogue's friend was among the missing. Would sharing in his misery show her the justness of Magnus's cause, or harden her heart against him?

He cleared his throat. "I often wonder how this must look to outsiders – the X-Men keeping a dying man locked away in a dungeon." A simplification of the story to be sure, but Rogue shifted her penetrating gaze from Magnus to Charles.

With her good hand, she straightened the sheet draped over Xavier. "Doesn't look like he's dying to me."

His heart sank into his bowels. Convincing her of their need would surely take precious time they no longer had. If Farouk were allowed to claim a new body - young, in his prime of power - all would be lost.

Magnus laughed, unable to disguise the bitterness. "You sound just like Moira," he pronounced.

Rogue didn't turn her head, but answered anyway. "Moira? The woman from the display upstairs?"

"Yes. She fought for Xavier's right to live for many years, against my better judgement." Magnus stepped closer. "She was also…my wife."

"Was?"

His answering sigh was heavy. "She, and our unborn child, were murdered by agents of Farouk, along with my daughter Wanda."

Rogue gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

All that was left of his family possibly taken from him again. He couldn't touch it yet, couldn't allow himself to acknowledge all that he had lost.

"After Moira's death, I felt an obligation to care for Xavier in her stead. Over the years, he has served as an inspiration of sorts, but also a constant reminder of my failure."

His greatest sin, underestimating the enemy. Inaction, appeasing Farouk by his unwillingness to strike first, by an unwillingness to make the necessary sacrifices. Instead hiding, reduced to reacting, always on the defensive.

Rogue turned her back to Magnus and bowed her head. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

"Because," Magnus replied, "I want you to understand what Amahl Farouk has taken from me…what he has taken from us." The time to strike at the monster was now, the perfect weapon dropped on his doorstep. "I want you to understand, child," he whispered, "and I want you to forgive me."

Her wide eyes found his too late. Using the metal bed rails, Magnus ensnared Rogue, drawing her and the bare flesh of her face towards Charles Xavier. She screamed and struggled, but he wrapped her bonds tighter with liquid metal coils, ignoring her cries and the strange pressure building in his own mind the longer the two bodies stayed connected.

Pain clamped around his forehead and blurred his vision. Magnus staggered back, driven by an invisible force of energy emanating from the pair intertwined before him, crashing into a nearby chair.

He sealed the girl's bonds with his last ounce of strength before succumbing to the darkness.