Jason would have none of it. Using the motor controls of his own chair, he backed out of reach just as the huge pieces of wreckage smashed into the gallery.
Then they were all falling as the platform gave way. Xavier felt Storm's arms, and something else that he belatedly realized was Nightcrawler's tail, but he didn't really register their touch. He had eyes only for the tortured, and now broken, semblance of a man whom he prayed had finally found his measure of peace.
The next thing he knew, after a moment of altogether sublime misery-which Jean's thoughts had not warned him about-he was in her arms, with Storm, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, and the stolen children crowded close around.
Chapter Seventeen.
While Magneto climbed aboard and settled into the copilot's seat, Mystique finished the start-up sequence. A rapid press of three buttons in sequence was rewarded by the rising whine of the twin jet engines coming on-line and spooling up to speed. She checked the gauges, satisfying herself that performance was nominal across the panel, and then engaged the rotors. Above their heads, through the clear canopy, the big blades began to spin.
One hand on the control yoke, the other on the secondary, Mystique was about to lift off when she nudged Magneto with an elbow and thrust her chin off to the left. He followed her direction and quickly found the figure of a boy standing on the tree line, face expressionless as he watched the helicopter prepare to leave. The only part of him that moved was his right hand, flicking open the lid of his Zippo lighter and snapping it closed, over and over, steady as a metronome.
Mystique looked at Magneto, wondering which way he'd jump.
He watched the boy for perhaps a minute, until Mystique found herself about to remind him that it was past time to go. The longer they stayed, the greater the risk of being caught by the dam when it collapsed. Not a good thing.
As if intuiting her thoughts, Magneto nodded once and beckoned once.
The boy just stood there.
John was thinking back to Boston, to how Bobby Drake had looked on the Blackbird 's ramp, staring up at his parents and his home as if he were saying good-bye to them forever. He'd ditched his own family ages back, and forgotten them, so for him the guy's hesitation had no meaning. Totally bogus moment. Now he found his cynicism and contempt thrown back in his face as he came face-to-face with the exact same choice. Walk away from Xavier's now, he knew, there'd be no turning back. Things would never be the same. The friendships he'd made would probably come to an end. Rogue...
What did he care about Rogue, really? The girl had the hairy wow-wows for Bobbeeee, for God's sake, talk about your total lack of taste! That pair of lames were made for each other, and both of them made perfectly for Xavier's. No way would John Allardyce turn out like them.
Pyro was made for better things.
He dropped the lighter into his pocket and headed for the open door of the helicopter.
The smile he saw from Magneto when he came aboard made it all worthwhile. He'd made the right choice.
As the helicopter lifted over the trees and Mystique accelerated toward the nearest line of mountains, Pyro had no regrets. And no worries, either, about the X-Men. He didn't believe they were in any danger. After all, they had their Blackbird-and here he uncorked a wicked nasty grin-that is, assuming Rogue or Bobby found enough gumption to fly that puppy to their rescue. Of course, that would mean breaking the rules, disobeying Storm's order. Fact is, Pyro didn't think they had it in them.
That thought didn't bother Pyro at all.
Storm led the way, wishing there was sufficient volume of air within the tunnels to generate a wind capable of carrying them all. The complex hadn't seemed so huge going in, but now the tunnels seemed endless. Fast as they hurried, she knew this was taking too long.
Nightcrawler was closest behind her, carrying Xavier in his arms as if the X-Men's mentor weighed next to nothing. Poor Kurt didn't look happy, either, probably because he wasn't altogether comfortable moving on two legs. He could make much better time galloping upside down along the ceiling on all fours.
Next came the children, with Scott and Jean bringing up the rear. She had one arm across his shoulders to take the burden off her broken leg.
After what Storm decided was just shy of forever, they reached the loading bay. They'd felt no more big explosive shocks the past few minutes, but it was clear that something just as bad was taking their place. Dust and small bits of debris were falling from every surface.
Their plan was to leave the way they had come, out the massive double doors at the far end of the loading bay and then along the spillway to the forest and, ultimately, the Blackbird. It wouldn't take long, because the moment they were outside Storm planned to take to the air and rocket her way back to the X-Men's hidden aircraft. She'd be there and back in a matter of minutes, and they'd be free of this terrible place.
Ten minutes, she prayed to any deity who cared to listen, that's all they needed. Fifteen, max. Not so hard a thing to ask for, was it? Hey, they'd just saved the world, that ought to be worth a tiny break from the fates.
The doors were wide open, and as they crossed the broad expanse of the loading bay, the kids commenting excitedly on the smashed and burned-out wrecks they passed along the way, Artie and Jubilation Lee raced ahead, ignoring Storm's cross" Stop!"
There was a taste to the air she didn't like, plus a low-frequency rumble that reminded her of one of the great herds of wildebeest on the African savanna suddenly going stampede. She could see a violence to the eddies and currents around the entrance and beyond that raised the hackles on her neck and made her break into a dead run of her own, filling the room with a bellow that grabbed everyone's notice. This seemed like a voice that could very well call down thunder.
"I-said-stop!"
And they did, right at the bottom of the approach ramp to the doors. As Storm caught up with them, snatching them off their feet and into her arms, her conscious mind caught up with the clues her subconscious had been processing, and she felt almost overwhelmed by an avalanche of despair. The air outside these doors was being assaulted by the leading edge of an air ram, a pressure wave compressed to the point of being an almost solid mass, by the force that was pushing it down this channel. It wasn't a stampede she was witnessing. The gates to the dam had been opened. The spillway was flooding.
She saw Jean separate herself from Scott and take a stance at the foot of the ramp, gritting her teeth as the air before her started to shimmer. Her red hair stirred without the slightest breeze and Storm knew that her friend was going to pit the whole of her telekinetic ability against the unimaginable force of the water coming down that huge funnel. Even if she could buy them time to escape the loading bay, almost certainly with the sacrifice of her own life, they'd still have to find some escape route from the complex itself. And if the spillway was flooding, then the dam itself had to have been compromised. Once it collapsed, dumping the whole of Alkali Lake into this valley, no power on Earth-certainly none available right now to the X-Men-would save them.
A great grinding noise filled the room, and everyone first assumed it had something to do with the onrushing flood, building its own runaway train crescendo outside.
Then the kids, and Storm, and even Jean, jumped as the double doors slammed shut.
"Trust me, darlin'," she heard Logan say, "you don't want to go out there." And she turned to find him a short way along the wall, with one fist jammed up tight against a sparking junction box that looked as big as his own chest.
Then an even more resounding BOOM shook the space, knocking most of the mutants present off their feet as it made the room shudder so hard it felt like a real earthquake. The doors bowed slightly from the impact shock, and water spurted from the central seam with the force of a high-pressure fire hose.
Snakt!
Logan retracted his claws, and the kids, who'd never seen him use them, who'd only heard-and mostly mocked-the stories they'd heard from Rogue, stared in silent awe.
"Everybody here?" he asked. "Everybody okay?"
His eyes told him the answer to the first, his senses cataloged the rest, and he zeroed in on Jean.
She didn't give him a chance to say a word but turned her face to him, to show him her ruined eyes, and said, "We're fine, Logan." The fingers of one hand were interlaced with Scott's. It wasn't just that she was leaning against Cyclops for support, it was the body language of the way their bodies melted seamlessly together. Even in these dire circumstances, it suggested a relaxed intimacy that spoke volumes about their relationship and the true depth of their feelings.
"Please," she told Logan, with a gentle empathy and a plea for understanding that had nothing to do with the words she was actually speaking, "help the professor."
He nodded, and let Cyclops half carry her away. She'd made her choice.
Storm watched him, with full understanding of what had just happened and how he might be feeling. He didn't try to put a brave face on the moment, or anything like that. His emotions were as plain and primal as Jean's; he'd never be ashamed of them. Just because she'd chosen Scott as her go-to guy didn't mean Logan would care for her any less. Or that the decision was final.
"Come on," he told everyone, maybe a little more gruffly than he'd intended. The adults chose not to notice. "There's another way out."
The spillway wasn't enough to save the day or even slow the process of collapse. Quite the contrary. The sudden and tremendous rush of water had the same effect on the underground complex as the earlier explosions. Wherever there was a weak bulkhead, wherever access portals had been left open, wherever doorways failed, water crashed into Stryker's base, further undermining the foundation of the dam itself.
The first spiderweb series of cracks began to splinter the face of the dam itself, minute fissures that extended up from the initial breach underground in the generator room. They didn't look like much, nothing very impressive at all, until it became evident that the only way water could be leaking through them was if they extended clear through to the lake. That meant a crack right through better than ten meters of reinforced concrete.
Once more, the inexorable laws of physics and hydrodynamics came into play. Water burst through the holes at tremendous pressure, backed by the full weight of a lake miles long, a mile wide just behind the dam, and hundreds of feet deep. This water ground away at the concrete as it poured through the cracks. With every passing second, as the very structure of the dam eroded, those cracks widened. More water escaped. More of the dam was washed away. The force of the water increased, thereby accelerating the process.
For all intents and purposes, though the X-Men didn't know it yet, they were out of time.
Well clear of the complex, but still below the dam, the team emerged from Stryker's escape tunnel. Logan pointed them over the crest of the hill to the helipad, and Storm hurried ahead to prep the vehicle for takeoff.
They found her on the edge of the trees, staring at the empty platform.
"Logan?"
"Son of a bitch," he growled, and charged across the clearing.
They caught up with him where he'd left Stryker. Logan was kneeling by the body, tapping one extended claw against the chains that had wrapped themselves so tightly around the man's throat he'd been virtually decapitated.
They didn't need an explanation, but he provided one anyway. "Magneto."
And again, with dark and deadly feeling, "That son of a bitch!"
"After what he'd done, Logan," Xavier said quietly, "small wonder he wouldn't face me, or any X-Man."
"Charley," Logan growled, "you don't understand-"
"If you say so."
Logan looked up and around, back in the direction of the dam, reacting to cues only his enhanced senses could perceive. Well, not quite his alone, because Storm was looking, too.
They started up the slope together, intent on reaching the top of the hill and having their eyes confirm the disaster that had befallen them. What they would do next was anybody's guess.
At last a chunk of facing larger than a freight car bulged outward from the body of the dam. Girders and rebar held it somewhat in place for a span of seconds as the stream of escaping water erupted into a raging torrent, but the stresses it endured went far beyond the limits imagined by any of the design team. Steel snapped like breaking strings, and these countless tons of concrete went spinning along the crest of a brand-new waterfall as lightly as a flat stone skimming the surface of a tranquil lake. It flew through the air at a slight angle and shattered against one of the pump houses with the force of a good-sized bomb.
In its wake, cracks as wide as roadways exploded across the face of the dam, rapidly reaching all the way up to the summit so that the next section to go involved a significant area of the wall. All pretense of integrity was gone. One collapse triggered the next as inexorably as a falling line of dominos, so that by the time Storm and Logan, with the irrepressible Artie close behind, reached the crest of the hill with its unobstructed view, there was virtually no dam left to see.
Just countless billions of gallons of water, thundering down the valley straight toward them.
"What is it?" Artie asked in breathless disbelief.
"Alkali Lake," Logan told him. "All of it."
He turned to Storm. "How many can you carry?" he demanded. She wasn't sure, and said so. "How about the damn elf, what's-his-name? How many can he carry, how far can he jump? And Jean, her mind thing, the teke, can she use it to make some kind of boat?" He was speaking in a rush, hand on her arm, Artie-who for once kept his mouth shut-tucked under his other arm as he propelled her down the slope. They had maybe a minute to act, and he wasn't about to waste any of it.
"What about you?" Storm demanded of him.
He snorted with derisive laughter. He could take care of himself, even in a flash flood of such immensity.
The rescue was doable-it had to be; they all knew that any other outcome was utterly unacceptable. They didn't have to go far, just clear of the wave front.
Just then, a tremendous wind blasted the clearing from above. It was too soon for the pressure ram leading the flood to reach them, and this downdraft was accompanied by the shriek of high-performance jet engines that sounded definitely not in a good mood.
Skimming the surface of the treetops, when it wasn't actually plowing through them, the Blackbird sideslipped through the air toward them with a pale and terrified Rogue doing her best at the controls. All around her in the cockpit, displays flashed red and presented ominous messages in both text and voice, telling her in unmistakable terms that she was not flying the big jet at all properly or well. She couldn't help herself, she yelled right back at the telltales, agitation bringing her lower Mississippi accent to the fore with a vengeance. "I'm doing the best I can, damn it! Leave me the hell alone!"
They didn't listen. They kept right on yammering-about airspeed, flight profile, engine temperatures, hydraulic pressure, ground proximity, the landing gear. At least the last warning was something that made sense. She slapped the big lever on the front panel, the same way she'd seen Storm and Jean do it, and was rewarded by the hollow thunk of the struts lowering from their wheel wells. Unfortunately, that also screwed up the plane's balance and performance, creating additional drag that she wasn't expecting and didn't know how to cope with.
One of the main bogies snagged the crown of a fir, creating drag enough to pivot the plane right around and tip it to one side. Rogue tried to compensate, twisting the control wheel and applying power to the throttles, but she overdid both elements so that when the plane wrenched itself loose it slipped immediately into a flat spin that overwhelmed the ability of the vertical thrusters to compensate.
Fortunately, the plane only had about twenty meters to fall, not a lot of distance for a vehicle whose length was close to double that.
As everyone below scrambled for cover, the Blackbird made about half a revolution-Rogue sensibly chopped the throttles to zero-before the impact. It was a hard landing, and the only saving grace was that it landed in deep snow instead of on frozen earth. Even better, while the leading edge of the port wing buried itself in a patch of ground that was fully exposed, that ground was nowhere near solid. For this was where Pyro had collapsed when the initial Cerebro wave had struck. His wildly out-of-control power had melted all the snow for three meters and more around him. All that water had soaked straight into the ground, resulting in a boggy quagmire of mud.
The good news: The wing hit without substantial damage.
The bad news: Like any vehicle lodged in deep mud, it was likely stuck fast.
As heads all around the clearing cautiously poked up to make sure all was well, the Blackbird 's main hatch cycled open, and Bobby Drake emerged.
"What're you waiting for?" he yelled. "The dam's collapsed, we've got to go! Hurry!"
Storm was first in with Jubilee and the children. While the others came aboard behind her, she scrambled to the flight deck.
Rogue hadn't let go of the yoke, she was sitting stock-still, teeth chattering, pale as Storm's own hair, convinced that she'd doomed them all.
Storm took a moment she couldn't really afford to ruffle the young girl's hair. "You did great, Rogue. I am so proud of you."
Aft, Cyclops helped Jean into one of the passenger seats, but as he reached over to fasten her harness, she waved him away.
"I've got it," she told him, and proceeded to buckle herself in without any hesitation or difficulty. Cyclops spared a quick glance to make sure the others were doing the same, then followed Storm to the flight deck. Rogue hadn't moved.
He crouched down and took her by both shoulders.
"It's okay, kiddo," he told her. "Storm and I, we'll handle things. Grab yourself a seat and strap in."
Convulsively, she released her harness and popped out of the chair, making sure not to touch either Cyclops or Storm as she sidled past them and rushed to where Bobby Drake was waiting.
Cyclops took her place, fidgeting a moment as he discovered that the sheepskin-covered seat back was so ice cold he could feel it even through his insulated uniform. There was the thinnest sheen of hoarfrost on the yoke as well, something he was used to finding wherever Bobby Drake hung out.
"What the hell-" he muttered, then relegated the concern to the back burner of his mind as something to worry about and deal with later.
He didn't waste time with preliminaries but initiated an emergency hot start. The engines obligingly spooled up to speed...