An Accidental Interception
of Fate:  Fallout
Minisinoo

"Whoa.  Back up.  How much force?"

"At full power, about ten kilotons of TNT.  I could pretty much level a city block.  Maybe a couple of city blocks, if I left my eyes open long enough."

"Holy shit."  But it was said almost perfunctorily, and EJ wasn't watching him.  He was staring out over the dark bay water where the wind made little white caps and passing motorboats stirred up wakes.  They'd left the clearing some time ago and now sat on the hill above the Big C, overlooking the Berkeley campus on one side and the San Francisco Bay on the other.  After Scott's demonstration, EJ had wisely suggested that they move elsewhere, in case anyone came looking for the source of the red light.  So they'd pushed their bikes all the way to the top and sat down to talk, a little off the beaten track.  The Big C was a bright splash below, a letter of poured concrete branded flat onto the hillside and painted yellow.  To the west, the Golden Gate Bridge was just visible in the hazy distance, its outline indistinct and gray.  Scott had told EJ everything he knew about his own mutation, and a little about the professor's school.  Through it all, EJ had remained remarkably --­ almost inhumanly ­-- calm, listening, asking questions, absorbing.  

"The beams don't normally strike with that much force," Scott explained now.  "I actually have to push harder with them.  I don't know how I do that; I mean, how do you piss harder?  Your body just learns to do it.  It's kinda the same with this."  

"So you can control it?"

"To a limited degree.  I just can't shut it off.  The professor thinks I'll get better at controlling it as time goes on, maybe even learn to stop the beams entirely.  They're still not sure why I can't, and my brain is so different now, Hank can't tell much from MRIs or CAT-scans, and X-Rays just come up blank from all the energy in my head.  But who've they got to compare me to?  Most mutations are pretty new at this point."  

"I thought you said they been around a while.  Your professor is, what, in his 60s?"

"Yeah, but there were very, very few mutants back then.  He might've been one of the first.  But if Jean's calculations are right, it's hitting some kind of critical mass ­-- exponentially more mutants born in each generation."  Scott frowned down at the dirt between his knees.  "Our existence isn't really a secret, but it's been specialized knowledge within the medical community.  Now though . . . you saw that news report on TV down at your parents' house.  If enough things like that happen, and people find out about us because of weirdoes turning over cars on highways, people will wind up scared of us."  

"And that's why you didn't tell me?"

"Yeah.  Kinda.  I didn't know what you'd think.  At least you're not going postal on me."  

For a while, EJ didn't respond, then he said only, "I've got some mixed feelings."  

Scott's stomach twisted.  "So you are scared?"

"No, not scared.  That's the least of it.  You don't scare me, Slim."  He fell silent again.  He'd picked a few blades of grass and now shredded them in his fingers.  It kept his hands busy.  

"So what is it?"

EJ shook his head.  "For six months you been giving me this crap about being 'light sensitive.'" He threw away the bits of grass.  A breeze blew them back in his face.  He was frowning.  "And yeah, I do kinda see where you're coming from but . . . I wish you'd told me from the beginning."  

"How was I supposed to know you weren't going to freak out and run off to the administration building, saying, 'My roomie's a mutant!  Get me a new roomie!'"

"So what if I had, man?  Would you've wanted to room with someone who didn't want you?  How was I to know, when I first saw you, that you weren't going to run to admin and say, 'Whoa, my roomie's a nigger!  Get me a new roomie!'"

"Like they'd have listened to that anyway, even if it had mattered?"

"Well, no, but you think I want to live with someone who wouldn't want to live with me because of my skin color?   No way.  I'd rather know upfront if it's going to be an issue.  And so what if I had run to admin to say you were a mutant?  Why you trying to hide it?  I thought you said mutants weren't no secret."  

"We're not, exactly, but I might not have been allowed to stay enrolled if they knew."  

"Man, this is Berkeley!  Did you fucking forget that?  They'd probably invent a new minority scholarship for you, so they could claim you!  But I still don't buy that as a good reason.  Lot of black men couldn't even get into colleges because they was black.  They had to fight for the right to an education.  I wouldn't be here if they hadn't fought, and I'm not going to spit in their eye by pretending to be something I'm not.  I'm black.  I'm proud of that.  Some of us can't pass, and I don't have a lot of sympathy for those who try.  If the administration were to kick you out --­ big, damn if ­-- why not stand up and fight, man?  They'd have no reason to expel you just because you're a mutant.  You meet the entrance requirements, you got an academic scholarship, you got the drive to make it ­-- so you got weird DNA, too.  So the fuck what?  Who cares?"

"But you heard how the newscaster talked about mutants.  And your own family, too!"

"Well, yeah!  Because that was all we knew!  You just said yourself you was afraid people'd fear you because of guys like the one up in Winnipeg.  But of course they will unless they know better.  What if we'd known you were a mutant yourself?  We'd have seen the whole thing differently.  You gotta tell people, man.  They gotta get to know you, so they know what mutants are like."  

Abruptly, he rose up to dust grass off his legs and behind.  His expression was still hard, but determined, as if he'd finally reached some internal conclusion.  "No, I'm not scared of you, man.  I'm mad at you.  I'm pissed as hell.  I called you my friend, but you lied to me.  Come talk to me again when you feel like being real with the rest of us."  And he walked away to get his bike from where he'd left it leaning against a pine tree.  

Angry now in his own turn, Scott stood up to shout, "I am trying to be real with you!"

EJ just raised a hand and made a dismissive gesture as he got on his bike --­ but he glanced back before he rode off.  "With me?  Okay, yeah, after six months, you're finally leveling with me.  How about with everyone else?  Get out of the damn closet, Summers."  

After EJ left, Scott sat and brooded for a long while.  Late afternoon light fell warm on his shoulders and hair, and slanted shadows with fuzzy edges over the clearing, ­ like his moral quandaries.  Had he been wrong, he wondered?  Or was EJ being unreasonable?   Or, just maybe, they were both wrong and both right.  Pulling out his cell phone, he started to place a call ­-- almost on instinct --­ but stopped and laid the phone on the ground between his knees to stare at it.  Overhead, a crow made a caw-caw-caw sound, like laughter, and he finally picked up the phone again to dial the number of the person he most needed advice from, and not Jean.  

When the man on the other end answered, he said, "Professor?  Do you have a few minutes?"  Xavier said that he did and Scott told him everything, ending with, "What should I do?"

"It seems to me that you need to tell him the whole truth."  

For three beats, Scott didn't reply, because he didn't understand.  "But I did tell him the truth," he said finally.  "Well, most of it.  I didn't tell him about Cerebro, or Hank's new toy, but I didn't think you'd want me to."  

"Scott, you are missing my point.  And you did not tell him the truth.  You gave him an excuse.  This isn't about why you did not tell him at first, I think.  EJ might have preferred that you had, though I believe he understands why you did not --­ "

"But he gave me all that shit about minorities and not being able to pass!"

"Mmmm.  But was that why he was angry with you?  It seems to me that EJ was trying to sort out his own feelings.  We may know what we feel, Scott, but not always why we feel it.  In the end, what reason did he give you for being angry?"

Scott thought about it, then frowned and poked holes in the sandy California dirt with his forefinger.  Shame ate at him.  "Because I lied to him for so long."  

"Yes.  He thought you were his friend, yet you kept this from him for months until he doubts now that you feel as close to him as he had believed --­ as close as he feels to you.  And people rarely like to be vulnerable that way, do we?  That very vulnerability is what kept you from telling him the full truth:  that the reason you had difficulty trusting him in the first place was because you feared to lose his friendship."  

Scott laughed and rubbed at his eyes under his glasses.  "You're not even here where you can read my mind.  How do you know all these things anyway, professor?"

"I don't always need telepathy to tell me what people are thinking, or feeling," Xavier replied, and Scott could hear the humor in his voice.  "Sometimes simple common sense and a little life experience serve just as well.  Besides, I know you.  I am certain that you were very academic in your explanations.  You gave him all the information he could possibly want, and then some ­-- but did you give him your fears and insecurities?"

Scott lay back on the ground and stared up at the sky through the tree branches.  "I really hate it when you do that to me."  

"Do what?"

"Tell me what I did wrong, and you're right."  

The professor's soft laugh came out of the phone.  "Scott, your friend has shared his anger with you, and the reason for it.  But you shared with him only your generic fears.  Why not meet his courage halfway and be fully honest?  You weren't afraid that he might go to the administration -- you feared that he wouldn't like you anymore if he knew the truth.  And you wanted him to like you.  But EJ had a point, you know.  How could he be the friend you wanted him to be if he didn't know the full truth about you?"

Scott sighed.  "Yeah."  Then, "Thank you, sir."  

"Of course, Scott.  You may call me any time, you know."  

Closing the receiver, Scott lay on his back for a while, arms above his head, phone in one.  The sun fell on his body, dappling him in late afternoon light.  He could feel where it kissed his skin and where it left him wanting.  Fickle lover.  The air smelled of pinesap and salt air, and some crawling insect tickled his empty palm as it crossed.  He didn't twitch.  

Despite his conversation with the professor, he wasn't ready yet to return to the dorm.  He needed to ponder how to approach this second discussion with EJ.  Then he laughed aloud at that.  Think, think, think.  He always had to think.  He used how much he knew as a shield against how much he felt.  His father had taught him that, had taught him to keep his feelings to himself.  It was easier to live amputated at the neck than to risk the dizzying vertigo of looking down into that well of his private terrors and needs and jealousies.  He was tender inside because he'd never learned how to take an emotional sucker-punch, so he protected his feelings like a boy learned to protect his crotch.  

EJ didn't have that particular problem, and it had drawn Scott to EJ from the start.  Feelings didn't scare EJ Haight, and Scott Summers wanted to learn that kind of fearlessness.  

Get off your back, Summers, and do something on instinct for once, he told himself, pushing up to his feet and brushing crisp, dry leaves and pine needles out of his hair.  They fell to the ground like the binding ropes of his inhibitions.  Mounting his bike, he guided it back down the narrow pathway and returned to his dorm.  It was too much to hope that EJ would be unoccupied in their room.  Instead, he was down the hall, visiting the only other black student on their floor.  Idly, Scott wondered if that were mere chance or if EJ had sought out some sort of racial reassurance.  

Their voices drifted out into the hallway through the open door, EJ's raised to make some point.  One could usually find Elijah Jerome by following the lilting-emphatic timbre of his conversation.  Now, Scott stopped just beyond the doorway and took a breath, making himself acknowledge the pounding of his heart.  He'd been less nervous asking out pretty girls, but never had so much lay on the line.  Here, he risked rejection by a man whose good opinion mattered to him.  It was the same fear that had kept him silent for so long, and that hadn't proven to be a wise choice.  

So he knocked.  

Both boys looked up, and in EJ's face, Scott read a rapid succession from surprise to wariness to something that looked as if it might be hope.  "Hey," Scott said, forcing the sound from his throat with a tearing like birth.  Something new entered into the space between them.  "You, um . . .  Can I see you for a minute?"

EJ glanced at Dominic.  "See you 'round."   And he pushed himself up out of the chair, following Scott into the hall, but no further.  "What?"  The wariness was back and his arms were crossed. 

"I can't talk here."

"Why?  Still trying to hide, Slim?"

The question brought an abrupt stop to his thoughts, like a slap -- guilt and shame and anger burning in the back of his throat -- and how did he reply?  Honesty, honesty.  It wasn't exposure of his mutancy that he feared.  "Maybe," he said very softly, "I just don't feel like parading my feelings in front of all our dorm mates." 

Like a tripped switch, EJ's whole demeanor softened and his arms uncrossed, though Scott didn't realize that the change owed as much to the plain pain on his face as to the words he'd said.  That pain had cut the Gordian knot of anger that had coiled in EJ's gut, a knot that all of Scott's elaborate explanations and rationales had failed to loose.  "Okay," EJ said.  "Fair enough."

So they returned to the room they'd shared for over half a year, both of them stiff and anxious with the risk of taking a chance on the other, and sat down cross-legged on their beds.  The necessity of looking for EJ had drained some of Scott's resolve, and EJ himself felt too resentful still to help.  So they sat silent.  Outside, the sun was setting, and with their window facing north and no lights on in the room, it was dim and close, furniture ill-revealed and sinking into shadows near the floor.  Normally, suspense would have made EJ speak; he'd never been one to sit still or stay quiet for long.  Now, though, it was Scott who was driven to speak first. 

"I didn't tell you earlier because I was afraid you wouldn't want to be my friend, if you knew what I was."  Shifting slightly in a soft chaff of sheets, he went on, "I won't apologize for not telling you the first day.  Or even the first month.  Maybe that makes me a coward, but I didn't know you, and I've learned to hedge my bets.  When the power first came on me, only a few people were willing to talk to me after.  To most, I was just a freak show, and they'd known me for years.  I haven't been back to San Diego since I left with the professor, and if I never go back, it'll be too soon."

"You didn't tell me that, earlier," EJ said.  

Scott merely shrugged by way of answer.  "I should have told you about the blasts after I got to know you.  But it would've been easier if I hadn't liked you so well.  I wanted you to keep liking me, too."

"What made you think I wouldn't?" EJ asked, his voice dough soft with disillusionment.  Scott just shrugged again, and EJ pressed, "I'd like to think I didn't give you a reason to believe I'd be prejudiced, Slim." 

"Not prejudiced on the basis of race, or gender -- no.  But genetics?  You're a preacher's son.  I didn't know if you'd see me as some kind of freak, too, like the others did, or an abomination in the eyes of God."

"I don't judge people like that, man!  I thought you knew that by now.  How many conversations we had, in this very room, about tolerance?  Even if I don't agree with something, it ain't right to persecute people.  Ain't no way Jesus of Nazareth ever taught that!"

Scott looked out the window, which glowed faintly in the room's dark, like an invitation to escape.  "But when it's your own ass on the line, it's not just philosophical anymore.  I didn't want to be tolerated, Eeej.  I wanted you to like me."

"Ah shit."  Abruptly EJ rose up from the bed and paced across to the door and back, stopping in front of Scott.  "Look, Summers, you're my friend.  I care about you, man.  That's not tolerance.  I tolerate the way you eat, which is so unhealthy it's fucking crazy.  I tolerate the fact that you leave your clothes all over your half of the goddamn room.  But I don't tolerate you.  I like you.  You're the best friend I've had in a long time, maybe the best friend I've ever had.  That's why I got so damn pissed.  I took you home to my family, but you was hiding all this?"

"I was afraid --­ "

"I know you was afraid!  But even if I'd had some religious objection to your mutancy -- which I don't -- it wouldn't change the fact that I like you, and that's a lot bigger than any of the differences between us, y'know?"

Scott just nodded, because he couldn't get sound out.  Finally, he managed, "You're the only person I've ever told about this" ­-- he tapped his glasses --­ "who I didn't have to, or who wasn't a mutant.  You're the first person I trusted that much.  It may not seem like it, considering how long I took to tell you, but you're the only one I've ever trusted that much."

"Come here," EJ answered, pulling him up off the bed to hug him.  It was awkward for Scott, who found such displays of affection difficult under most circumstances and all the more so between men, but EJ didn't let him go.  "God, you're like a freakin' store mannequin, Summers.  Learn to take a hug, man.  It don't mean I'm coming onto you.  Your boobs ain't big enough."

And that made Scott laugh until he finally relaxed, accepting the embrace.  "It wasn't that," he said, squeezing EJ tightly once before letting him go.  "It's just . . . hard for me."

"I know.  Sometimes I think you're the tin man, Slim.  You and Lee-Lee got a thing or two in common on that score, but you gotta open up more.  You might be surprised.  People like you, or they want to . . . but they ain't always sure if you like them.  Give 'em a chance." 

Summers snorted.  "What?  You think I should tell everybody?"

"Maybe not everybody.  But yeah --­ you oughta tell more than just me." 

"Right.  So I can get called a freak here, too?"

EJ shook his head.  "This ain't San Diego, man.  People are gonna find you more interesting than scary.  Phoebe's spent this entire goddamn semester trying to figure out the Berkeley UFO.  Imagine her face when she finds out she been living right next door to it!"

"She'll probably run screaming for the hills."

"That ain't true and you know it."  EJ rested both his hands on Scott's shoulders.  "Trust me on this, Slim.  Trust me, to trust them."

Scott tilted his head slightly, but then nodded.  "Okay.  But if it backfires --­ "

"I'll stand by you.  I told you -- you're my friend.  Anybody call you a freak, they gotta answer to me, too.  We clear on that?"

"We're clear."

"Then do the right thing."

Scott just nodded. 
 
 
 

Jean Grey was running late, and if Dr. Bruce Banner were fairly even-tempered as far as doctors and researchers went, he did have a few quirks, punctuality being among them.  Racing along the hall of the biology building, her glasses slipped down her sweaty nose and went clattering onto the tile floor, requiring her to stop and pick them up, and slowing her even further.  The edge of one lens had cracked, too.  "Dammit!" she snarled, shoving them into the pocket of her white lab coat.  

By the time she reached Banner's lab, skittering through the open door and sliding to a stop like a character in a children's cartoon, she was eleven minutes late.  Everyone in the room stopped to look up at her.  Three pairs of eyes where she'd expected only two.  The third belonged to a young man who, if his age were anything to go on, probably numbered among the med students the same as she did.  

"Glad to have you join us, Miss Grey," Banner said, pushing his own glasses up his nose.  He had an apple-round face and terminally straight hair -- not a handsome man, but pleasant in expression when he wasn't perturbed by something, either recalcitrant experiments or late protégées.  

"There was, ah, traffic."  She glanced at Hank, but he wasn't looking at her.  No rescue from that quarter.  They'd both driven into the city from the same place, after all.  

"There is always traffic in New York, Miss Grey.  And if doctors generally have a reputation for keeping golfing hours, I don't."  

"Yes, sir.  I know, sir."  

Banner nodded towards the newcomer.  "Why don't you help Mr. Roberts with the slides.  Ted Roberts, meet Jean Grey.  She's about a year ahead of you, in terms of her research.  She's also a mutant, like Henry."  

And that made Jean start in shock, that Bruce would so casually announce it, but the other boy --­ man, really ­-- didn't seem put off in the least.  He grinned at her and held out a hand to shake.  "Glad to meet you, Miss Grey."  He had an accent ­-- some flavor of Southern that Jean couldn't yet place.  

"Ah ­-- Jean.  Please."  

"Then call me Ted."  

She smiled, and blushed, and nodded, because she'd gotten a good look at his eyes, as black as Frank's but full of humor instead of sorrow.  Beyond that, he wasn't particularly handsome.  He had big ears that protruded slightly to create a Dumbo effect, and freckles across his nose.  But his smile was easy, and his eyes were beautiful, and he had a surgeon's hands, long and clever with tapered fingers.  She was a bit slow to let that hand go and smiled back at him, dazzling him completely.  

"Do either of you," Banner asked, making them both whip their heads around, "plan to finish those slides any time today?"

"Oh.  Yeah."  And Ted showed Jean the samples he'd been working with.  Buccal swabs -- cheek cell samples -- all carefully numbered.  "These are the mutant samples here, and these are the controls."  

"Gotcha."  And they set to work doing the DNA preps.  They might have used the genetics lab robot, but the number of samples wasn't quite large enough to justify it, and Banner believed in a hands-on approach.  He still took research notes in a hard-bound notebook, eschewing PDAs and laptops.  Last spring, when there had been an afternoon-long blackout, he'd proudly walked about, patting his breast-pocket with pens and a calculator, and saying, "I have my computer right here."  It was another of his quirks.  Banner might not have as many articles in refereed journals as some of his department colleagues, but his were widely cited, and his reputation in the field colossal, so his quirks were absorbed and tolerated.  He'd once told Jean, just a few weeks after she'd begun working with him, "Measure three times and cut once, m'dear.  My grandfather was a carpenter and he taught me that.  Do it right the first time, so you don't have to redo it.  Carpentry ­-- and science --­ is all about precision and care and noticing the small things."  

So Jean and Ted lysed cells with detergent, then set them to spin in a centrifuge and removed the clear supernatant that was forced to the top.  They conversed quietly as they worked, in counterpoint to the metal-music clink of instruments.  

"The Banner-Man's a bit edgy this morning, you think?"

Jean smiled.  "It's still before ten, and he hasn't had five cups of coffee yet.  How long have you known Dr. Banner anyway?"

"I took a couple classes with him, and when I applied to the genetics program, he agreed to direct my thesis."  

"You're interested in mutations?"

"Yep."  

"Why?  If you don't mind my asking ­-- "

" ­-- since I'm not a mutant?  Our interests aren't genetic, Jean."  He grinned, brief and wicked.  "That's just what we study."  

"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to sound aggressive."  

He sighed.  "No, my fault.  I keep hearing the same question over and over, so I'm a tad defensive.  Dad's got a practice down in Chattanooga and he still can't figure why I might want to go the research route instead of coming home to join him in the office."  

"So why don't you?"

"I want to do something that makes a difference.  I was interested in looking at the effects of genetics on the HIV virus, how much it contributed to the likelihood of developing AIDS or ARC."  That wicked grin again.  "I had delusions of winning the Nobel Prize, y'know."  

She laughed.  "I think it's been done, Ted.  The research, I mean."  

"Yeah, so I found out.  When I took Dr. Banner's class on evolutionary biology, I was just . . . fascinated.  Think of the potential for genetic engineering . . . " And off he went on the subject in that charming, lilting accent that she could now place as Tennessee -- like North Carolina on speed.  She could listen to him talk for hours, and more or less did as they saturated the DNA samples with ethanol and spun them again, removed the clear supernatant a second time to wash the sample pellets, then spun them further, finally drying and suspending them in Tris-EDTA for Banner and McCoy to dilute and sequence.  Tedious, but necessary.  Jean had become quick and proficient in the past year with Banner, and Ted watched her with respect while she watched him from beneath lowered lids, head tilted just so.  When they went for a coffee break, Ted asked her if she'd like to go out and grab a bite after they were done for the day, and Jean agreed.  Neither noticed Banner watching them with amused approval and Henry McCoy with stiff-faced inscrutability that concealed a dim jealousy he wasn't entirely prepared to admit to.  He'd never expected to win Jean for himself.  What would the graceful Jean Grey see in a big, hulking ape of a man?  But there she sat, head bent close to a jughead from the Appalachians, laughing at all his jokes.  Hank had tolerated Scott Summers' crush because Summers was a kid, and as for Warren . . . .  Well, Warren wasn't much older than Scott, and Hank had yet to decide if his flirting with Jean were serious or reflexive.  So while Hank hadn't had much hope of claiming Jean, neither had the other two.  But this non-mutant Southern gentleman was another story entirely, and if Hank had never thought of himself as unkind or envious, he was envious now.  

Banner, who sat beside him at the little round table in the building café, nudged his foot.  "What is it, Henry?"

"How well do you know Mr. Roberts?"

Leaning over the tabletop, hands folded in front of his face, Banner studied his former student and current colleague.  Although Hank was easily the most brilliant young man that Banner had ever had the pleasure to work with, in some ways, he could be a tad dim.  "Ted's a good kid.  Smart as a whip, but a bit lazy.  We'll train him out of that.  I have high hopes for him."  Henry was still watching Jean and Ted Roberts chat.  "If you're going to make a move, Hank, it's now or never.  She can't read your mind."  

And Henry McCoy nearly choked on his Coke.  "What makes you think I have any interest in Jean?  She's five years younger than me!"

"And so . . . ?"

Blushing furiously, Henry set the bright red can down on the table.  "She's not interested in me, Bruce.  She never was, she never will be.  I'm like a big brother to her.  And . . . that's okay."  

Banner shook his head faintly, but he'd had a long-standing policy of not getting overly involved in his students' --­ or his ex-students' ­-- lives.  "Your choice."  

"My choice.  And I made it a while ago.  I just don't want to see anyone mistreat Jean.  She . . . had a hard time, down at Vandy, with men."  

"Hmmph," was all Banner replied.  After a minute of watching the two young med students, he added, "I'm more worried for Ted than for Jean."  He grinned.  "She has him wrapped around her little finger in less than three hours." 
 
 
 
 

Scott chose to make his revelatory trial run to his fellow band members.  Rick accepted the news with the same nonchalance that he applied to most everything, but Lee had more questions.  As with EJ, she wanted to know why Scott had kept it a secret for so long.  She, however, was more inclined to accept his caution.  Being cynical herself by nature, and private, she agreed with him that discretion was sometimes the better part of valor.  Not everyone could be as forthright as EJ, but EJ was still young enough that he couldn't understand why such might be so.  Seeing in shades of gray was a privilege of age.  In this case, too -- as Charles Xavier had surmised even without telepathic assistance -- EJ's peevishness stemmed as much from wounded affection and pride as from any ideological disagreement.  He might have forgiven Scott in word, but matters were still cool between them in the weeks that followed.  Forgiveness was not acquittal, and telling the truth to others was a part of Scott's penance.  Revelations to fellow band members were just the start.  From there, Scott moved on to a handful of dorm mates.

"Whoa!  You can do what?" was Phoebe's reaction to the news.

So Scott demonstrated again.  At EJ's suggestion, he'd selected a less dramatic manner to reveal his gift to others.  After the UFO rumor, he'd found that not only could he cut up fallen branches to release excess energy, but he could use the beams to carve wood, as well.  So now, he adjusted the aperture on his visor to release a knife-thin beam of energy, cutting into the block of maple that he'd brought.  It was his own unique method of whittling wood.

Both Phoebe and Elizabeth watched, their mouths agape in comical Os of astonishment.

"That is so cool!" Phoebe squealed as soon as he'd closed the visor cover, but Elizabeth was silent.  "What else can you do?  I mean, can you, like, start a fire with them?"

"They're not heat, Phoeb, just force.  Friction from the beams could make something hot, but the beams themselves aren't hot."  

"So you don't burn holes in things."  

"No, just knock holes in things."  

"This is so cool!" she said again, hugging herself and dancing about the music room where'd they'd asked the two girls to come so that Scott could do his thing.  The walls were more insulated here than in the dorm.  "Scott Summers is the Berkeley UFO!"

Elizabeth, however, was far less sure.  "You could hurt somebody, couldn't you?"

"I could," Scott replied.  "Usually, I try to avoid it; blood is so hard to wash out of the carpet, y'know."  Yet making light of it didn't lighten her mood and her eyes remained wide while she glanced towards the door.  "Liz," he said again, "I'm not dangerous."  Not strictly true, but true in essentials.  "I'm not going to hurt you, or Phoebe, or EJ, or anybody else.  I'd rather hurt myself."  

She was not, he thought, entirely convinced, but her muscles did relax, and by the time she and Phoebe left, he didn't fear that she would rush right to the administration -- or worse, the police -- to report him as a danger to the public.  A small victory, perhaps, but a victory, and he waited for his weekly chat with Jean, to tell her the news.  But Jean never called.  
 
 
 

"You took cocaine?"

"Yes."  Jean stared up at the sky through the still-bare branches of a big maple on the mansion property.  "You've never taken coke, have you?"

"No," Ted replied, his voice edged about with echoes of both righteousness and curiosity.  

"It makes you feel as if you can do anything.  I know that's such a cliché, but it's true.  You're just . . . on top of the world.  No fears.  No insecurities.  You have no idea how much I needed that, Ted.  I was a mess -- afraid of everything.  But the first time I snorted coke at a party, all that changed.  I was funny and outgoing and the boys asked me to dance."  

Ted Roberts listened to her explanation, caught somewhere between confusion and awe -- awed that she'd trust him enough to tell him this, but confused as to why anyone as beautiful and classy and intelligent as Jean Grey would be afraid of anything, least of all boys.  Truth was, she terrified him, and sometimes he felt an irrational need to pinch himself, to remind himself this was real.  They might share the same interests and career, and even similar backgrounds as children of the privileged upper crust in their respective hometowns, but beyond that, she was Aphrodite and he Hephaestus, limping and ugly and chained to the forge of his research.  Or he had been.  Now, they found time to rent a movie, or go to dinner, or ride the horses at the mansion where he'd been made welcome by Xavier and reluctantly tolerated by Hank McCoy.  

"I would have asked you to dance, shy or not," Ted told her now.  

Sitting up on the bench under the maple tree so that her shoulder-length hair swept back from her face like an auburn veil, she smiled at him.  "In other words, I left Vandy too soon?"

"I guess you could say that."  

Another thing they both shared was having attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, she for a single semester of her freshman year while he had earned his undergraduate degree there.  He had fond memories of the place, but hers were mostly a spiral down into spectacular self-destruction.  

"Unfortunately," she said now, "I didn't have a choice about leaving."  But she wasn't looking at him.  She was looking towards the long reflecting pond in the mansion yard, watching a mother mallard approach, followed by a line of fuzzy yellow and brown ducklings.  They waddled in the spiky shadows of new daffodil leaves, and she tossed the last bit of her bagel towards them, but too skittish, they all fled into the water.  

"What happened?"

"I screwed up so much my first semester, I wound up on academic probation.  Me, the high school valedictorian.  Needless to say, my parents were outraged.  Christmas break that year was pure hell, I practically fled back to Nashville.  Early in my second semester, though, I had the classic O.D. experience.  I was lucky; cocaine can be lethal.  My friends rushed me to ER over my own protests, and my parents were called in from New York.  They withdrew me from school and took me home for drug rehab."  She smiled again, but it was as bitter as stale tea.  "I hated it.  I went to Nashville in the first place to get as far away from my mother as I could manage."  

And Ted had thought he had issues with his parents.  "She that bad?"

"With bells on." 
 
 
 
 

A bloodcurdling scream catapulted Ororo out of deep sleep, making her screech in response and flop over in the bed -- still half-asleep -- to clutch at Frank where he was sitting upright, shaking and breathing heavily.  But it wasn't the first time he'd woken this way, and her responses were automatic now:  hold him close and stroke his hair until he had his breath back, then see if he wanted to talk about it.  Slowly, his arms slipped around her and he let himself be held.  This was part of why she loved him so.  He was strong enough to let himself be weak.  "Francesco," she whispered in French, voice rough with the tears that were always at the back of her throat these days, "when is this going to stop?"

"I don't know," he replied in the same language.  

"The Vision?"

"Yes."  

Silence.  The space heater hummed in the background.  Although mid-spring, nights could grow quite chill in New York, and it was easier to heat a room than the entire house.  If Xavier had little concern for money, he did eschew unnecessary waste.  The mansion put out a recycling bin every trash day, as well.  They were responsible citizens, quiet neighbors . . . why, Ororo wondered, would the government seek to hunt them down as Frank's vision warned?  It seemed too enormous to be real.  "Maybe it's just a bad dream," she said.  

"No.  They're going to come and take us away, put us in prisons and mark us, then kill us if they can.  Our own holocaust.  It will happen unless we find some way to stop it."  

"It's America, Francesco."  

"It makes no difference.  They are quick to pursue freedom on others' land, but if 'national security' is threatened, they will react like any other people.  Fear conquers reason.  They will see us as a threat, and label us inhuman.  We will have no rights, no recourse.  They will kill those of us who are strong, and sterilize the others.  I have seen it."  In fact, he had seen faceless men in riot gear kill her as she fought them with all she had, lightning and gale-force winds and bullets of hail, but he would not tell her that.  There was, he firmly believed, such a thing as too much truth, and he didn't believe in fate, not in any usual sense.  Riding time as he did, he understood that nothing was simple.  Men and women made choices that produced their own fates, but sometimes their natures determined the choices they made, natures shaped by previous choices.  To Frank, fate was merely the sum of a life, combined with random chance.  New choices could change it.  

He clung to that belief because anything else killed hope.  

And she clung to him still, continuing to rub his back.  "What does the professor think?"

"That the vision is too big this time.  Too many possibilities, and the terrible ones press hardest until it seems as if there is no escape; but at this distance from matters, there are always choices.  The professor has an idea that may permit me to see more futures than are available to me in dreams.  I just need help to control it."  

"What's his idea?"

"He's going to put me in Cerebro."  

"Absolutely not!"  Letting him go, she pushed herself up to her knees, even as her eyes went white in the room's darkness.  "Cerebro was made for the professor!  Not for you!"

"They're going to modify it.  The professor is calling in someone to help.  Hank has been taking EEG readings on me, and they're going to modify Cerebro so that I can use it."  

"That's insane.  He's almost sixty.  You're not even eighteen!  You don't have his experience!"

"I'm not going to argue with you, Ro.  He knows more about it than you do.  If he thinks this will work, I'll trust him."  Frank looked up at her.  "He kept me from going insane before.  I need him to keep me from going insane again.  I can't maintain this.  I'm too exhausted, and when I'm exhausted, it just gets worse.  Catch-22."  

Sighing, she slumped on the bed sheets.  "But even he admits he doesn't fully understand what you do."  

"We understand enough.  The problem is that I'm too bound to my body.  I need Cerebro to free me, so I can see further.  So I can see an answer."  

His gift was psionic and predictive, but Xavier suspected it to be more than simple precognition.  Francesco Placido wasn't bound by the same dimensional constraints as others.  His body lived in one dimension, but his mind existed outside them.  Thus, he saw the future and past as a series of reflecting mirrors extending into infinity.  "It's like a fun house," he'd said once.  "Many mirrors of what might be, and you can't always find the path through -- or really, there are many paths.  Any of the mirrors could be real, but some are closer to you and some are further away.  They move, too -- becoming more or less likely -- depending on the choices made.  I can't control the choices unless they're mine, but sometimes I can see what a particular choice will lead to."  

He rarely shared that information, though.  "I'm not a god," he'd said.  "I see some things, but not everything, and sometimes I must guess at what I think the pivotal choice was.  I could be wrong."  So he kept his visions to himself except for the small and mostly insignificant, or the far-reaching and important.  He had occasionally called the police to report a crime in progress.  No doubt, the police had thought him an eyewitness, which he was, in a manner of speaking.  But he did this rarely -- he did not, after all, see everything -- and he was still trying to decide on the most responsible application of his gift.  Francesco was an idealist and an ethical man, and that was the other reason Ororo loved him.  He had returned to her a belief in basic human goodness.  It would have been so very much easier either for him to withdraw entirely, or to exploit his gift for fame, or because he thought he had the answers.  But he wasn't arrogant that way, or selfish.  So he pursued the toughest road of all:  a middle one -- to tell what needed to be told, but not to interfere in the lives of others, even if he thought he might spare them personal pain.  

But this new vision was too enormous, too all-encompassing, and too tragic for him to keep to himself.  It had begun the evening of the Winnipeg Marauder's first appearance, and had grown worse since.  In the past week, no night had passed in which he'd slept undisturbed, and Ororo was in a position to know.  She'd been sharing his bed for months now, and not for sex.  They hadn't needed to sleep together to find a quiet moment and privacy.  She slept with Francesco because his dormant mind was least anchored to his body, and in sleep he could slip free.  After he woke, he needed a body to cling to, to ground him again in his own dimension, his own reality.  Frank's mother had never objected to their arrangement, and neither had Xavier -- too practical to do so, both for Frank's sake and because Ororo wouldn't have taken kindly to being fettered after surviving on her own for years.  Warren had once teasingly referred to her as sixteen going on thirty.  It was not far off.  Like a feral kitten, Ororo Munroe had never enjoyed the luxury of a childhood.  

It was two days later -- with no improvement at night -- that a stranger arrived at the mansion's entrance.  "I'm Dr. Reed Richards," he said when Ororo let him in, a middle-aged man with a pleasant smile and a shocking white streak in his hair.  "I'm here to see Charles Xavier?"

And thus began the dismantling and reconstruction of Cerebro.  None of the professor's students saw much of either man -- or of Frank for that matter -- over the next few days, as the three of them locked themselves behind the cold blue-metal doors in the sub-basement.  
 
 
 

Rick Starr, the off-key crooner of Sproul plaza, was at it again, filling the dry California spring air with a butchered version of Frank Sinatra's "My Way."  High notes warbled and slipped, went flat and nasal.  "Somebody just shoot him and put him out of his misery," Scott muttered under his breath.  At times, he lacked both compassion and patience for the follies of others.  Did the man not realize how bad he was?   Or did he simply crave any attention, even the negative?  

Summers was eating lunch in the sun on the steps of lower Sproul, trying (unsuccessfully) to tune out the impromptu concert.  It was hot, but heat had never bothered him much, and bothered him not at all since his mutation had manifested.  Now, bored and seeking distraction, he pulled out his cell phone to dial Warren.  Like his friends back in Westchester, he was concerned about Frank.  He was also concerned as to why he'd heard from Jean only three times in two weeks.  What email she had sent had been a variation on, "I'm busy, but I'll write a long letter soon."  

"Soon" must be relative, and while he knew that she could fall into obsession with her research, he doubted that was the case here, and wondered if he wanted to know the truth, even while half-suspecting it already.  

"Hey, man," he said when Warren answered.  "How's Frank?"

"Grouchy, but Ro's worse.  She's getting no more sleep than he is."  

"Any progress?"

"Not really.  We're still waiting to see what this Reed guy and the prof have cooked up with Cerebro.  They hit some kind of snag and Hank's been doing test after test on Frank.  He just lives in the lab these days.  Hank gives him sleeping pills, but they don't stop the visions, they just keep him from waking up easily when he has them.  I'm not sure which is worse."  

"Shit," Summers muttered.  Idly, he watched fellow students pass, his eye caught now and then by girl with pretty hair.  It was hair that he noticed first.  He liked it full and shiny and a bit wavy --­ red, if he could get it, but dark brown if he couldn't.  He'd never much cared for blondes.  Jean's hair might be red, but it was thin and lank.  "Has Frank said any more about what he's seeing in the visions?"

"The end of the world . . . !" Warren replied, half in mockery, then sighed.  "I shouldn't joke about it.  It's freaking him out.  It's so far reaching, he can't see enough, and nothing he can see seems to connect to anything else.  Just bits and pieces.  So he can't figure a way around it."  

"And the professor is really going to put him in Cerebro?"

"That's the plan, m'man."  

"I don't know if that's brilliant or crazy."  

"Ro says crazy."  

"Ro would wrap him in felt and chain him to that pedestal she keeps him on in her head, if she could.  He's not that fragile.  What does Jean think?"  The question was out before he could bite it back.  

"Ah," Warren stammered.  "I don't know.  Haven't asked her."  

Scott didn't reply to that immediately.  In his belly something expanded, making him feel weak though he'd just eaten.  The sun was almost preternaturally bright, cutting sharp lines of light and shadow, like truth and lies.  No place here for polite vagaries.  "She's seeing somebody, isn't she?" he blurted out.  

Dead silence on the other end of the phone.  Then Warren's voice, unconvincingly bemused.  "Who is?"

"Don't play dense, you ass.  Jean's got a boyfriend, doesn't she?  That's why she's been blowing me off for two weeks."  

Silence again.  "I'm not sure he's a boyfriend . . . "

Scott snapped the phone shut and wadded up his empty sub wrapper, shoving it down into the paper bag his lunch had come in.  It crackled like an accusation.  Rising, he tossed it in a trash bin under the shade of a leafy oak, passing out of the sunlight to do so, out of heat into shade.  Light and dark; truth and lies.  All the way back to Norton Hall, he avoided shadows.  A voice in the back of his head sang a tune from childhood, 'Step on a crack and break your mamma's back . . . '  On his floor, he ran into Phoebe, who was hanging about the open door to her room, apparently bored and looking for company.  EJ was nowhere in sight, and neither was Elizabeth for that matter.  "Hey," he greeted her.  

"Hey yourself.  You eaten?"

"Yeah, on campus."  

"Wanna get a coke and keep me company while I eat then?"

There was something in her expression, eyes lowered, caught between shyness and seduction.  She had nice hair, a rich shade of black, and he remembered what EJ had said -- that she visited their room so often in order to see him.  "Sure," he said.  "I could go for a coke or something."  

On the way, Phoebe asked him, almost casually, "I don't suppose you're sticking around for the summer, are you?"

In truth, he hadn't planned on it.  He'd been counting the weeks until he could get back to New York.  Now, he said, "I don't know.  Maybe."  There were always some classes he could take.  
 
 
 

Never wear white dress shoes before Easter.  

One of many lessons taught to young, well-bred girls.  Walk straight; keep your knees together when sitting; dark nail polish is for older women; and don't laugh too loudly -- it's not ladylike.

Ladylike.  What Jean Grey had been trained to be.  What, to some degree, she hated; but such early lessons ran deep and she would never entirely shake them off.

Now, she sat --­ knees together, of course ­-- between her mother and elder sister, on the pew bench of Trinity Episcopal Church, Dutchess County, for Easter Sunday service.  Growing up, there had always been three Sundays a year when the family of Dr. John Grey, professor of modern European history and chair of the History Department at Bard College, was sure to be at church:  Christmas Eve service, Easter Sunday, and Mother's Day.  Other services throughout the year might find them in attendance, but these three were sacrosanct, and even now, Jean was expected to drive up from New York for them.

Hymns, homily, the rite and the Eucharist, lots of pageantry and white Easter lilies.  Jean sighed.  It wasn't that she disliked church, but that she disliked the production into which her mother invariably turned it.  Growing up, Jean had been very conscious of the fact that she and Sara were display children.  The daughters of Dr. John Grey should be clean, well-dressed, and well-behaved.  Sara had behaved better than Jean, who, as the youngest and the apple of her father's eye, had been spoiled.  Nature had bestowed on her rich auburn hair and the pale skin of a china doll while Sara's hair was a mousy shade of brown, and Sara ­-- not Jean --­ had suffered the more severe case of freckles.  But Sara had learned her society lessons better, Jean being too inclined to go her own way and -- to her mother's great chagrin -- could be found outside more often than in.  It wasn't sports that drew her (Jean wasn't, precisely, a tomboy), but a fascination with the natural world.  She'd caught frogs to sail on sponges in the bathtub, and butterflies to loose in the living room as household decorations.  She had even devised a bird catcher made from her mother's upended laundry basket, one side raised on a stick with a string attached and a line of bread leading inside.  Then she would hide behind the laundry room door, thirty feet away, string in hand, patiently awaiting a bird to take the bait inside the basket so she could jerk the string and capture a jay, or catbird, or wren, and once, a beautiful male cardinal.  At first, her parents and sister had watched, bemused, certain her strategy would never work, but she'd proven them wrong, becoming a proficient bird catcher.  Once the bird was trapped, she would take out her little clipboard and record 'facts' about it -- the kind a child would notice -- her own version of tagging.  She could not have said why she was doing such a thing.  It had stemmed from some deep-seated need to get closer and understand, and then to organize what she'd learned.

By fifth grade, she'd become more interested in books than dresses, in animals than dolls, and in science than poetry or music.  But she had cleaned up nicely, and been quiet and contemplative by nature with a promise of rare beauty in the bone structure of her face.  Her mother had enrolled her in the same etiquette classes that Sara had taken, and in modeling and dance, and had hoped that once Jean entered adolescence, she would follow in her sister's footsteps to pursue more traditionally feminine interests.  Her father had secretly hoped she would not.  She was his smart one, and he made sure to keep her in as many books and child science kits as she asked for.  It was their passive rebellion against the tyranny of Elaine Grey.

Everything had changed when Annie had died, but that wasn't a time Jean cared to recall.  When her mind traveled back to the spring of her tenth year, it went white and blank -- the memories something she could only pick at, like nits, or lint on a dress.  In less than five minutes on that Tuesday evening, everything in her life had changed -- the touch of Fate, the finger of God, and sometimes it seemed to her as if her life were a series of such moments.  Perhaps that was why she struggled so hard to understand what she could.  She loved the beauty of paradigms and predictability because too much of her life had involved tripping from one crisis to the next.  Only now was she beginning to feel that she had some control.

"Sara, would you please make Joey sit still!" Jean's mother hissed across the space of Jean's lap, pulling her back to the present.  Joseph, the younger of Sara's twins, was scooting up and down the pew bench, systematically collecting offering envelopes from all the small racks on the pew backs in front of them, to what end only a small boy would know.

Leaning past her husband, Paul -- who was ignoring his son -- Sara said something into Joey's ear.  He replied with a very loud "No!" and frustrated, Sara blew out and whispered again in a timbre and hiss that reminded Jean exactly of their mother.  On Jean's other side, Elaine Grey's lips had thinned.  Sara was still talking to Joey, who was still refusing to comply with her words.

"Sara has completely spoiled them," Jean overheard their mother say, supposedly sotto voce but pitched perfectly for Sara to catch.  "When you two were that age, you could sit through an entire service."

"Well, you try to make him stop then!"  Sara hissed back, frustrated already and now with a struggling three-year-old on her lap.

Leaning over, Elaine gripped the boy's ear and spoke into it.  "You sit still or we'll take you right home!"

"I wanna go home!" he replied.

All their neighbors in nearby pews were either looking at them or trying not to.  Paul was ignoring the whole affair, as was Jean's father.  Sara was within a breath of spanking the boy and Elaine's entire face had gone from white to red.  Furious with all of them, Jean snatched up Joey, rose to her feet and pushed past legs to take him outside for the last fifteen minutes of the service.  They used rocks to draw on the concrete of the church drive, then Joey chased falling dogwood petals, blown about by the breeze, while Jean sat on the steps and watched.  By the time church had let out, he'd lost his little-boy clip tie and his suit jacket -- both in Jean's lap -- and had grass-stains on both knees of his khakis.  

Elaine Grey emerged from the church amidst several of her cronies, a society smile plastered on her face, conversing in her "phone" voice as Jean liked to think of it, modulated and sweet, none of the iron edge she used with her family.  Sara stalked across the church lawn to collect Joey while Elaine called Jean up to join her on the sidewalk, then put Jean through the familiar torture of introductions and recitations of her accomplishments at Columbia.  When the circus was over and they were headed back to the car, Elaine remarked, "Well, you made absolutely certain that Joey will be worse next time.  Taking him out of church was exactly the wrong response.  You don't give in to a child's tantrums.  He'll only learn that it works!"

"True," Jean agreed, seething inside but playing the rehearsed role of smiling at near-strangers as they passed along the sidewalk to the parking lot.  "But you also don't expect a three-year-old to sit through an hour-long service, mother."  

"You and Sara could at that age; even Gailyn can manage it!"

"We're all girls!  Joey is a boy!"

"It shouldn't make a difference."  

"It does.  Every child is unique, but there are distinct differences between the genders.  Joey is a typical boy, and you just can't ­-- fairly --­ expect him to sit as quietly as the average girl.  Blame biology.  I'm the doctor here, remember?"

"You're not a doctor yet," Elaine retorted, mostly because she couldn't think of a better reply.  She hated it when her youngest played the trump card of superior education as much as she hated it when her husband did it.  It made her feel weak and powerless.  Jean normally eschewed such tactics, but occasionally she grew desperate enough to use them.  
 
 
 

If Scott Summers were disinclined to seek the favors of Warren's wealth for himself, he had no such qualms when it involved a good friend, so he asked Warren to fly out to fetch him the day before Frank entered Cerebro.  It meant missing a few classes, but EJ had agreed to cover notes for him, and it felt right to him that all of them should be there.  This was pivotal.  Why he was so certain of that, he couldn't have said.  He wasn't the precog in Xavier's little mutant family, but he told Warren, "I have to be there," and so Warren came to fetch him.

The hardest part would be seeing Jean.  

And Jean didn't know he was coming, so of course she flushed and stuttered when she arrived in the sub-basement infirmary along with the rest of Xavier's students on that designated morning, only to find Scott already there with Warren and Frank.  It would have been kind, she thought, had someone troubled to prepare her, then wondered rebelliously why she should think so, or feel guilty to see him.  But she knew why.  She ought to have told him about Ted Roberts weeks ago.  Yet the complication of pain didn't necessarily require that she be on the receiving end of rejection.  Her role in life had been as a mediator, and she disliked hurting Scott precisely because she cared for him, even while she couldn't care for him in the way that he wanted her to.  He was just a boy.  The fact that she didn't always think of him so confused her, and she refused to examine it too closely.

Thus flustered, she used the excuse of adjusting lab equipment that needed no adjustment in order to orbit the three young men clustered about the central infirmary bed.  Acutely conscious of her, Scott followed her progress without once turning in her direction; she could read his awareness in his stance, slightly slouched, his side turned towards her so he could keep her in his peripheral vision, or as much of it as he had.

And Frank suppressed his amusement along with his irritation.  There were days that he hated the boundaries he had set for himself.  Just then, though, he had more important matters to worry over than the private drama of Scott and Jean.  "I'm ready," he said to the professor and Dr. Richards, who waited with Henry beside the monitoring equipment.  Ororo was there, too.  She had made them explain it all to her, every part, from the remote electrodes they would attach to his cranium, to the failsafes built into Cerebro's design, set to pop the doors if he fell unconscious during operation.  Her unease was evident in the delicately-drawn brows pinched together above her sloped nose.  It was the same frown she had worn for the past week since Reed Richards had arrived.  Her struggles to protect him might have bothered him, but he adored her fierce self-sufficiency, and how she struggled to defend what she loved.  She reminded him of his mother in the most unexpected ways, but was different enough that she failed to trigger all that Italian maternal competition.

And it was the two women in his life to whom he turned last.  His mother kissed him roughly, but said nothing.  They had done all their screaming the night before, and the night before that.  Ororo didn't scream, but she had expressed her disapproval.  Now, she clung to his neck in a rare public display of personal fear.  Affection, she would show, if in a guarded way, but rarely fear.  Then he glanced at Scott, perhaps the only one of his fellow students who wasn't fighting him on this.  Scott nodded once, and he disengaged Ro, passing her to his friend so he could follow Xavier and Richards out, the rest tagging behind, all but Henry, who would monitor the equipment, and Jean, who would assist.  It felt almost like a funeral march, and perhaps he should have laughed at that, but he refrained.  He could die; he knew that.  The power of Cerebro could fry the synapses in his brain, leaving him little better than a vegetable.  But it was unlikely, and he knew that, too.

At the X-door, Xavier stopped, moving his chair aside to let Frank kneel down so Cerebro could scan his retina.  His eye blinked briefly at the assault of light.  "Welcome, Francesco," the machine's feminine voice said, doors whooshing apart on pneumatic hinges.  He entered without looking back.  Only Xavier followed down the suspended access tongue that led to Cerebro's core display.  A chair had been brought in for him to sit there; the professor didn't require one.  Seating himself, he glanced first about the geodesic room that enclosed them, then looked at his mentor and savior, smiling faintly.

"It will be all right," he said, because he knew that however calm Charles Xavier might appear, he feared this gamble that Frank was taking.  "You are not forcing me into this.  My gift is."

And here, at the crux, Xavier hesitated.  We might attempt an alternative solution.

And how long would it take?

Xavier didn't reply, merely turned his chair to wheel away.  He couldn't remain present while Frank ran Cerebro anymore than Frank could be present when Xavier did.  Different gifts.  And there was no need for final instructions; they had been reviewed multiple times.  When he heard the door snick shut behind him, he raised the headpiece and turned it to face him, studying it a moment like an ancient soldier might contemplate his helm.  Then he placed it over his head.

For a moment, there was nothing at all.  He looked out into open emptiness and wondered, irrationally, if he ought to push a button somewhere, even while he knew he didn't need to.

Your mind, the professor had told him repeatedly.  Cerebro responds only to the commands of your mind.

Eyes sliding shut, he regulated his breathing, listened for his heartbeat, and concentrated on his various muscle groups, tensing and relaxing as Xavier had taught him to do --­ releasing.  Releasing his body.  He was not a physical being; he existed outside himself, slipped free of his fence of skin, and reached . . . .

Time shattered.

Fragments of the future blew past like blizzard snow, like cottonwood seeds on the wind in spring, too light to catch but fogging the very air.

There was no air here.  There was nothing except the fragments, an impossible puzzle.  He touched a coalescing image ­-- concentrate on someone dear to you, Xavier had instructed ­-- so he brought Ororo into focus.  Ororo as he had seen her in his nightmares, but not fuzzed as in a dreamscape.  Ororo versus the riot police, and at her feet, the body of Warren Worthington, white wings broken and splattered with his own blood.  Off to the side, he could see his own body and there was an insane rage in Ro's face.  Somewhere, Scott's voice rang out.  "Ro, no!"  Lightning ripped the space between her and the riot police, followed by gale wind.  But bullets were faster, and Frank found that he could slow time, watch deadly slugs approach, but not stop them by the force of his will.  That was not his gift.  The first bullet struck her shoulder, the second just below her collarbone, and the third was placed perfectly in the center of her forehead, like a third eye into the mystery of human hate.

"Nooooo!"

He wrenched it -- twisted it sideways to a different version of the future.  

The first bullet entered her shoulder, the second just missed her neck, and the third grazed her forehead.  In the hot shock of agony, she went down, and a fourth pierced her heart.

Wrench again.  And again.  But there were always bullets.  And blood.  And death.  

He needed more perspective and rearing up, he pulled with him a rainbow strobe of divergent realities, but hovered above them all.  If he couldn't hope to see every one, like a man trying to look across the ocean, he could still see many, a thousand fragment glimpses of Ororo -- long hair, short hair, or no hair in a prison camp.  Young, middle-aged, or old.  With him or with someone else.  Thin, plump, emaciated or, in one vision, ancient and fat and happy, the flesh of her face puckered into a roadmap of the years.  So many possibilities for her, and how little he figured into most of them, but he had no time to explore that now.  Reaching for the fat and happy future, he traced it back across its alternate pasts, looking for the dark time, the nightmare vision that faced them now, and how she had evaded it.  All of a sudden it loomed out of the dark and off to the side, but just what, exactly, had been the pivotal roundhouse turn that had bypassed that terror track?  What alternative choice had been made?  He crossed the rail lines of other happy futures where human beings had avoided the mass butchery of other human beings, searching through each for the event that had made the difference.  Faster and faster and faster, futures and pasts danced across his mind, bending and blending and twining in myriad possibilities.

Until he found it.  The knot of commonality that he sought.  

Ripping Cerebro's helm off his head, he panted while the doors slid aside.  The abrupt stop had been a mistake perhaps, as almost immediately, he spewed all the contents of his stomach across the control board.  But he had been unable to bear the pressure a moment longer.  He could hear footsteps rushing in, and the sound of multiple voices.  "Is he all right?"  "Frank, are you all right?"  "Francesco, mi parli quello che ti ho vedere!"

And it was easier to babble in Italian, so he did.  English simply wouldn't come.  The professor could understand, and he was the one who mattered.  "A police force," he gasped as he accepted Warren's handkerchief to wipe his mouth.  "A mutant police force.  That's the answer.  Non-mutants will fear us, but if we show them we can contain our own, it might make a difference.  There is no guarantee, and in no future did I see complete peace, but in every future that escapes the massacres, this force exists."

"What force?" Scott asked, also in Italian, but his was awkward and inelegant.  "Who will create this force?"

Francesco just glanced at Xavier, who could sift his mind to see what he had seen.  And it was Xavier who answered, in English.  "We will, Scott.  We will create it, because we know now that we must."

Go on to Chapter 7, "Slippery Bright and Stupid"