X-Men: The Last Stand (2 page)

For Jean, this was beyond revelation. She understood none of it, on any level. The emotions were too primal for a child’s mind to comprehend, and she had no resources of intellect or spirit that could give her even a hope of coping. She’d been cast into a maelstrom and knew only enough to hold fast to herself until it ran its course, praying fate was smiling on her enough to survive.

She thought the darkness would return but the light remained, as though someone had just lit the match of Creation within her, intoned those fateful first words of Genesis. Around her, it seemed as if tangible shapes began to gradually assert themselves, although in reality only the merest fraction of a second had passed. She couldn’t help but be fascinated, as motes resolved themselves into electrons and protons and neutrons, as these various particles bound themselves into atoms and those atoms into molecules, growing ever larger and more wondrously complex as they evolved into increasingly intricate combinations. And then, with the blink of an inner eye, she found herself looking at a road, where a moment before had been a vast plain of scattered particles defined more by the subatomic spaces between them than the illusion of solidity they created.

There was a sour smell to the air, the scorched residue of burned rubber, and a metallic taste in her mouth she knew was blood. Not her own; this was a sense memory of Annie’s, and with that realization came the bone-deep certainty that none of what she’d just experienced had been a dream. All of it had actually happened, and as if to add a stamp of authenticity to the thought, came that last, wondrous image of Annie’s grin.

Jean’s tears burned scalding hot against her cheeks, scoring channels that would mark her always, of that she was sure. She couldn’t stop crying. In part it was because of her lost friend, lying so still in her arms, a look of peace on her face, replacing the one of shock and outraged disbelief that had been there before. But also, it was for what had happened to Jean herself, and for all that was to come.

She heard more voices, cries and calls from the surrounding houses, but paid them no attention. What mattered so much more was the richer symphony inside her head, composed of not simply what was said aloud, but also what was thought and felt.

Annie’s mother, gripped by a terror that would never leave her. Jean’s own mom, feeling that selfsame spike of anguish at the sight of her daughter’s bloody face, giving way immediately to a sense of heartfelt relief. That had been Jean’s doing, inadvertently. She’d wanted Mom to know she was all right and just like that, the message was sent, not so much as a string of words, like speech, but more a complete certainty.

Hands took hold of her, gentle as could be, and she howled with what everyone assumed was anguish over her friend’s death. They couldn’t be more wrong. She was discovering that windows opened aren’t so easily closed, and that proximity and physical contact amplified the ambient psychic noise around her to an unbearable degree. Everywhere she turned, there was another life, in all its myriad textures, crashing down on her like a rogue wave, sucking her into a riptide undertow that refused to let her come up for air, threatening to overwhelm her own psyche—more fragile from this trauma than she could know—with all of theirs.

Her psyche did what it had to for its own survival. Yet as she collapsed into what was later described as a fugue state brought on by extreme trauma, the last image that came to her was a memory of her body in Annie’s soul, wreathed in flame, turning the darkness of forever into magnificent, glorious light, and the certainty that somehow she had touched the very stars.

1985

Jean was reading up in her room when she heard them talking. One of her favorite authors, one of her favorite books, one of her favorite scenes: the unveiling of the Overlords from Arthur C. Clarke’s classic
Childhood’s End.
Aliens who’d effectively ruled the Earth in peace and prosperity for a human generation while keeping their true features hidden behind space armor, deciding at long last that humanity had matured to the point where they could look upon their friends and not be afraid. The joke being, of course, that the Overlords turned out to be the spitting image (horned heads, skeletal wings, cloven hooves and tail) of the classic cultural depiction of Satan.

Nice ride,
she thought, seeing it through the mind’s eye of some neighbors, pulling a memory from one of them to more properly identify it as a Mercedes-Benz Maybach saloon car, evidently some kind of classic. She didn’t care much for cars. But she caught a resonance from one of the occupants that made her quirk an eyebrow in fascination, a surprisingly adult gesture for a girl of such ostensibly tender years. Given his history and the emotional memories held on a very tight leash, she wondered why he’d possess a German-made car. Spitting in the face of the past, perhaps? She considered probing further but even that cursory stroke of his thoughts had left her with a skull-splitting headache. Neither of the men, she realized, much liked psychic intruders.

They were expected. She picked that up from her parents right away, bothered a little that she hadn’t noticed earlier. It was second nature to pry; minds for her had quickly become so transparent that it was like walking through a world made of glass. Almost nothing could be hidden from her, and so much of it was stuff that was so banal, so beyond boring—occasionally so disgusting—that she’d had to remind herself, then force herself, more and more often lately, to mind her own damn business.

She put the novel back on its shelf, pausing a moment to caress the spine of the one beside it, James Blish’s equally classic
A Case of Conscience,
and beyond that Frank Herbert’s
Dune
trilogy. She’d always enjoyed them; now, though, they had resonances that she found comforting while sending chills skittering through her heart at the same time.

She heard a voice, in her thoughts, not her ears, although the man in the car spoke aloud.

“I still don’t know why we’re here, Charles. Couldn’t you just make them say yes?”

She didn’t much like that, and stepped to her window to see for herself who’d come to meet her parents.

She saw a man, thirtysomething and prematurely bald, eminently respectable in a bespoke suit. Hawklike features, piercing eyes, a born hunter. He carried himself with the easy grace of an athlete, comfortable in his strength, confident of his abilities. There was a twist of sorrow to what little of his inner self she could divine, a sense around the edges that he had been places and done things substantially at odds with his upright demeanor. He’d been to war, she realized, when he was very young; he’d needed to prove something to himself, and it had left its mark. First impression, she liked him.

His words cemented the feeling. “Of all people,” he said to his companion, “I would expect you to understand my feelings about misuse of power.”

The second man emerged and the contrast couldn’t have been more pronounced. Dress and manner, as well as accent, suggested a European background. The color of his suit made Jean smile. Not many men would dare to wear royal purple, but he made it work. It was like watching a pair of warrior princes take the field, and she had a sense that she was looking at two men who, in their own way, were as close as she’d been with Annie.

“‘Power corrupts,’ and all that,” said the taller man, the European, with the air of someone who’d had this discussion too many times. “Yes, Charles, I know. When
will
you stop lecturing me?”

“When you start listening?” Charles replied easily, using a very slight smile to take the edge off words that he meant seriously.

“We’re not going to meet every one of them in person, are we?”

“No, Erik. This one is special.”

Jean didn’t like the sound of that either and decided to let her attention drift. Mr. Pash across the street was mowing his lawn, wrestling with a plot point of his latest novel, while next door Mr. Lee was watering his prize roses. The scene couldn’t be more normal, yet Jean hugged herself the way you do when you sense a big storm building off in the mountains, suddenly fearful that afternoon peace wouldn’t last.

Ghosting her perceptions over to the periphery of her parents’, she caught all the appropriate introductions: the bald man was Charles Xavier; the other, his friend and colleague, Erik Lensherr. Mom ushered them into Dad’s study, where she’d already set out a fully laden tea tray.

“It looks wonderful,” she said, once everyone was settled, gesturing towards the pile of brochures that had arrived much earlier. “What a beautiful campus. And Salem Center’s only an hour and change down the Taconic; it’s not like Jean’s going to the far side of the moon.”

“The brochure is great,” her husband agreed. He was standing behind his desk, so that their guests couldn’t help seeing the wall of diplomas and awards that went with being a tenured professor at a major independent college. “But I’m concerned about Jean. What about her…illness?”

“Illness?” Lensherr said, so quietly that both John and Xavier got the message. The one bridled while the other raised an eyebrow in what he hoped was a subtle but unmistakable warning.

Sensing the spike in tension, Elaine hurriedly intervened: “Now, John!”

“You think your daughter is sick, Mr. Grey?” Lensherr asked in that same silken tone, choosing to ignore Xavier’s caution. On cue, as if to complement his undertone, the tea tray shifted ever so slightly.

“Erik,” Xavier said, speaking both aloud and with his thoughts, “please.”

“Call it what you like,” John Grey continued, refusing to be cowed. “What’s been happening to Jean since Annie’s death is not normal. No one can explain it—not medical doctors, nor psychiatrists—and
none
of them have been able to help. All we know for sure is that she’s getting worse.”

“Are you afraid of her?” Lensherr asked, almost as if he assumed they were.

“She’s my daughter,” John flared, “I want to
help
her.”

“As do we,” Xavier interjected, playing his usual role as peacemaker, biting back the flash of irritation he felt whenever Erik let his growing antipathy towards baseline humans get the better of him. “The whole point of our school is to help people like your daughter. Perhaps,” he suggested gently, “it might be better for us to talk to her. Alone.”

Clearly, John Grey had doubts. Only his obvious love and concern for his child kept him from showing his two guests the door. Elaine, equally concerned, a tad more desperate, didn’t give him the chance.

“Of course.” She stepped out into the hallway. “Jean,” she called, “can you come down a moment, dear?”

Jean was taller than when Annie died, but still lean and rangy despite the first curves of womanhood. Her hair was a dark red, like a fire seen in the heart of the deepest forest, where the flames are mostly hidden by trees and shadow. Her beauty was self-evident; by the time she was full-grown, it would be breathtaking, with the foundation of bone structure that guaranteed it would only improve with age.

“We’ll leave you, then,” John Grey told them.

Jean sat on the couch opposite the two men, her demeanor as polite as it was guarded. She’d decided on the way down to let them make the first move.

Xavier obliged her.

“It’s very rude, you know…,” he said—but his lips didn’t move.

Her breath went out of her all in a huff. It never occurred to her that he could do what she did.

“…to read my thoughts, or Mr. Lensherr’s, without our permission.”

He was sending her more than words; there was a vast and complex texture to their communication that told her she’d been busted from the first fleeting telepathic contact as they drove down the street. While she’d been spying on them, Xavier was taking her full measure as a psi, without her being the slightest bit aware of it.

Lensherr picked up the conversation from there—only
he
spoke aloud, suggesting to Jean that his abilities differed markedly from Xavier’s. “Did you think you were the only one of your kind, girl?”

She intended to keep her response to herself, and bridled ever so slightly when Xavier “heard” it anyway.
What kind is that?
she thought.

“We are mutants, Jean,” Xavier said. “We are like you.”

She felt a flicker of irritation, like the striking of a match within her soul, heralding a flash of temper that was coming more and more often lately, more and more intense, no matter how hard she tried to keep it under control.