"... in the wake of the assassination attempt on President McKenna, there are unconfirmed reports of a raid on what is believed to be an underground terrorist mutant organization based in Westchester County, New York...

"Authorities refuse to comment, but it's believed that a national manhunt for several fugitives from the facility is now under way..."

Watching, listening, looking from the screen to the sodden shirt on the floor, Ronny's expression changed. Bobby was his big brother, but he didn't know anything about the people who were with him, except that they creeped Ronny out, big-time.

He picked up the phone, hoping he was doing the right thing, terrified of what might happen if those other mutants found out. Half expecting his brain to be incinerated at any moment, he pressed 911.

Downstairs, Madeline Drake put her head in her hands.

"Oh, God, this is all my fault."

Before Bobby could even try to make things better, John Allardyce jumped in to make them worse.

"Actually," he said, "they've discovered that males are the ones who carry mutant genes and pass them on to the next generation, so I guess that makes it"-he jutted his thumb toward Bobby's dad-"his fault."

William Drake ignored the comment, although his son looked ready to make the other boy eat the words.

Madeline tried again to be the gracious hostess: "And you," she said to Rogue, "you're all gifted?"

Rogue shot daggers at John, who returned them as a grin. "Some of us more than others," she replied tightly. "Others who shouldn't ever be allowed out in public."

"What's that?" William said, reacting to a beep.

Logan had the little com unit in his hand. "That's mine," he said. " 'Scuse me." And he slipped through the kitchen to the backyard porch, with Madeline's next line to her son to speed him on his way.

"Bobby," she said, "dearest, have you tried... not being a mutant?"

Bobby sighed. John laughed out loud.

"Charley," Logan said, and his face lit up at the voice that replied.

"Logan," cried Jean, "thank God it's you! We couldn't reach anyone at the mansion."

"No one's left," he told her bluntly. "Soldiers came."

Aboard the Blackbird, Jean sank into her chair. They'd speculated about the possibility of some kind of hostile action, they'd made what they hoped were adequate preparations, but none of them really took it seriously. In a way, they believed too much in their own press: Xavier's was a school. How could anyone perceive that as a threat?

But then again, she considered, Islamic madrasas were schools as well, and many in the intelligence community believed them to be the spawning ground for terrorists.

"What about the children?" she asked.

"Some escaped," he reported, "but I'm not sure about the rest."

Jean created sparks as she shifted position, and she shot a warning glare at Storm, whose anger was supercharging the air inside the plane with electricity. Not a good thing, generating a bolt of lightning inside a plane loaded with jet fuel and other combustibles.

"We haven't been able to reach the professor or Scott, either," she said. The conclusion was obvious to both of them: In all likelihood, they were lost, too.

Storm spoke into her own headset: "Logan, where are you?"

"Quincy," he said. "Outside Beantown, with Bobby Drake's family."

"Do they-" Jean started to ask, provoking a snort of amusement from the other end.

"Oh, yeah!"

"All right," she said, leaning across to the center console to initiate the engine start-up sequence, "we're on our way."

"Storm?"

"Yes, Logan?"

"Make it fast."

The two women looked at each other, both recognizing the subtle change in Logan's voice.

"Five minutes," Jean told him as she locked her harness closed and mentally told Nightcrawler to grab his chair and do the same.

"Make it fast," he repeated, and signed off active audio, leaving only the carrier signal for them to home in on.

The picture of nonchalance, he patted his pockets for a smoke, sighed loudly when he didn't find one, and reentered the house in two quick steps. Without turning his body, he snapped the lock closed on the door and took the next two steps into the living room.

"We have to go," he said without preamble. "Now." The kids took their cue from him and leaped to their feet.

"What?" William asked.

"Why?" Rogue echoed.

"Now," he said simply, as sound and scent told him they'd run out of time. One assault team at the back, another out front, boxing the house. Bobby's parents jumped, William grabbing his wife into his arms, as Logan extended his right-hand claws.

"Logan," Rogue demanded, "what's going on?"

John mouthed an answer: "What d' you think?"

"Follow my lead," Logan told them.

There were two cops waiting on the front porch, flanking the door with guns drawn. They locked on Logan as the primary threat. A police cruiser was parked on the lawn, another partially blocking the street, its patrol officers taking aim from behind the cover of their car. Sirens closing in from the near distance told them all that more were on the way.

Bobby's face tightened with anger. He knew what had brought them here.

"Ronny!" he fumed under his breath.

Directly upstairs, Ronny watched the officers take position, anxiety quickly giving way to excitement. This was cool, better than TV.

"You," barked the cop to Logan's right, "get down on the ground."

"What's going on here?" Logan inquired calmly.

The kids were scared, and rightly so. This was the second time in a day they'd been threatened by guns, only these didn't fire stun darts. This was the real deal, 9mm, Glocks with fifteen-round magazines, and one of the cops in the street had unlimbered his shotgun. Logan heard the frantic click, click, click of John's lighter. The cops heard it, too. They didn't know what to make of it, and that made them even more jumpy.

"Put the knives down slowly," the same cop said. "Slowly. Then down on your knees, cross your ankles, and raise your hands in the air. You kids do the same. Right now!"

"Hey, bub, this is just a misunderstanding," Logan replied.

Inside, Bobby's parents were only just starting to comprehend what was happening on the porch when the glass of the kitchen door shattered under the impact of a nightstick. They barely had time to turn their heads before a trio of uniformed officers rushed into the room, guns leveled, all of them yelling at the top of their lungs: "Police!"

"Nobody move!"

"On the floor, on your knees, keep your hands where I can see 'em!"

Madeline screamed, William tried to protest, Bobby reacted like any son. He turned to help. The cop on the left shifted aim. His partner screamed louder: "Put down the goddamn blades!"

"I can't," said Logan, and raised his hands to show they were a part of him.

The gunshot took them all by surprise.

The left-hand cop had fired, straight to the temple. The point-blank impact blew Logan off his feet, twisting him as he fell so that he landed on his face, partially sprawled down the steps.

Rogue screamed and the three kids all dropped, Bobby trying to shield Rogue's body with his own, yelling as loud as he could for the cops to stop firing. "Don't shoot, don't shoot!"

A crowd had begun to gather on the sidewalk across the street, drawn by the flashing dome lights and the commotion. The sharp report of the officer's gun startled those close enough to see what had happened. They ducked as well. But mostly, folks kept milling about, confused, intrigued, like rubberneckers passing an accident, blissfully oblivious to the danger.

The cops were just as startled, just as scared. The one who'd fired had made himself a statue, his weapon centered on Wolverine like he expected the man to leap up and charge him. Or maybe he was praying for him to do precisely that, to take back the action of the last half minute.

"Easy," his partner yelled, in a voice meant to be heard inside the house as well as out to the street. "Everybody take it easy. Get a grip!" That last was directed mainly at the shooter. His partner knew this was bad, every shooting is for the officer involved, but under his breath he thanked God and all the saints they hadn't popped the kids as well. After that kind of mess, there'd be hell to pay.

"Okay, kids," he told them, "same as before. Stay cool, we'll get out of this just fine."

"We didn't do anything!" Rogue shrieked at him.

"On your knees, girl!"

She yelled at him some more, partly to purge her own terror, but most of all to keep attention away from Logan. She knew the adamantium interlaced with his skeletal structure meant that his bones couldn't be broken. All that bullet had likely done, aside from breaking the skin-which was decidedly messy-was give him a royal headache. More importantly, though, his healing factor would be speedily dealing with both the wound and the headache. She didn't know what he could do once he recovered, but it would be one more asset than the kids had right now.

Bobby gave her a hand as they both did as they were told. John had other ideas. He stood up.

"Don't be stupid, kid," the left-hand cop said. "This is no time to flash attitude. We don't want to hurt you!"

John's attitude was plain: Like I care, he seemed to be saying. Like, you could?

"Hey," he said, "you know all those dangerous mutants you hear about on the news?" He paused a moment to let the implications sink in.

"I'm the worst one."

He popped the lid on his Zippo, but this time, he ignited a flame.

From the wick grew three distinct streamers of flame, which whirled sinuously around him like the fearsome salamanders of medieval tales. One shot right, the other left, the third burned its way through the door to scorch across the main floor of the house.

The cops on the porch dove desperately for cover as flame roared past, close enough to leave their uniform shirts smoldering. Those inside weren't quite so quick, or so lucky. One was struck head-on, with force enough to hurl him into his companions, who had to scramble to save him as his clothes caught fire.

John turned his focus to the cars. It all happened so fast, the attack was so savage and shocking, that the cops on the street didn't know how to react. Those news reports notwithstanding, none of them really believed in mutants; they couldn't believe a kid was doing this.

They'd get over it real quick, John knew, if he gave them the chance.

He had a better idea.

While the two main streamers he'd manifested kept them occupied, he snaked a pair of much thinner strands along the surface of the lawn and underneath the cars to their tailpipes. This would be fun.

He ignited both gas tanks at once, pitching the cars up into the air and flipping them over like they were sandbox toys. A third car had just then rolled onto the scene, and John grinned as he surrounded it with a cataract of fire. The driver threw the gearshift into reverse, but John melted the tires to the street. The cops tried to bail from the unit, only to reel back inside as he turned the flames around them into a wall so thick and hot they'd be crispy critters before they took a decent step. He saw one of them calling frantically for help on the radio.

This would be the best. He'd let 'em cook slowly until the fire department arrived. He'd allow them the illusion of hope. Then- kaboom! Instant inspector's funeral, film at eleven.

Logan's eyes fluttered as the shattered remains of the officer's bullet fell from the healing wound. Rogue was right; his head was murder. This was a great power, no argument there. But the downside was that all the sensations of the process of natural healing were compressed into a fraction of the time and, as a consequence, hugely intensified. Yes, he had long ago learned to endure the pain; yes, it passed relatively quickly; but it always remained a brutal experience, to be avoided whenever possible.

Some of the other cops, the mutants on the porch forgotten, tried to save the two who were trapped. John played with them a little, letting them almost break through before generating a flash furnace to force them back.

He never felt Rogue's hand on his shin as she grabbed him from behind. She wasn't holding back this time, as she had with Bobby, trying to control a power that seemed as untamably rebellious as her name. She couldn't have done better if she'd clipped him with an iron bar. Without any warning or preamble, John's eyes simply rolled up in their sockets, and he dropped to the porch. The lighter skittered from his grasp.

Rogue's mouth twisted with disgust as his psyche rolled over hers like an oily tide. She wanted no part of it, so she called up a burst of flame within her own head to torch the images as they appeared.

At the same time, now that she'd successfully imprinted his power, she held up a hand in a summoning gesture. She was breathing very hard, almost panting, in and out to the same metronomic pattern John established with his lighter. Her visual perceptions skewed far away from normal to embrace the infrared. Her world became defined by the heat it generated; she could actually see the primary states of being on a molecular level, she understood instinctively how to sustain and manipulate fire itself.

The raw passion of it left her breathless, because by playing with this elemental force, she became it as well, tasting an insatiable hunger that made her want to ignite the whole world. It would be so easy-so much energy to torch a tree, so much for a vehicle, so much for a person. To her, they were all becoming mere objects, without any value or purpose other than as fuel. It was a temptation, a glory, she'd never known, nor imagined could even exist.

But she had picked her name for a reason. Rogues don't play by anybody's rules unless they choose to, and they never ever do what's expected of them.

She called the fire home-not merely the streamers that John had initially created but all the conflagrations they'd ignited. On the street, the trapped car whose metal surfaces had been glowing red hot became amazingly cool to the touch. The other cars were likewise smoldering wrecks.

For that instant, Rogue herself burned, shrouded in flames from head to foot, so hot-hotter than a blast furnace-that Bobby quickly pushed himself clear in a frenzied crab scuttle, dragging John with him, to keep from being blistered. The fire faded at once, without leaving a mark on the girl, although the porch wasn't as fortunate. The planks beneath her feet were deeply charred, as was the roof overhead.

She swayed a little with fatigue, and Bobby leaped at once to her side. John stirred as well, the shock of her imprinting wearing off. As he shook off the effects, he grabbed reflexively for his lighter and looked sour to find his flames all gone. No doubt he would have said something, done something, very foolish-except that Logan also got to his feet.

The boys had never seen him shot before. They didn't believe it any more than the watching cops did. They were so caught up in the aftermath of the moment they didn't realize their danger.

The cops knew now what they were up against. They were shaken to the bone. As far as they were now concerned, it was their lives or the lives of these... monsters. They were ready to shoot and keep shooting until the threat was over.

That's when Jean landed the Blackbird, maybe a minute ahead of schedule.

Storm announced their arrival with a clap of thunder that shook the very air and a gust of gale-force wind that forced both cops and onlookers to flee from the scene. Jean made a combat approach, a vertical descent straight down to the street in front of the house. Between the wild weather and the sleek, dangerous-looking aircraft, the cops didn't know what to think. Maybe the military, come to the rescue?

As soon as the wheels touched down, Storm dropped the boarding ramp and beckoned Logan and the kids inside. Nobody needed to be told twice. The kids went with a rush, Logan more slowly.

A flicker of movement revealed one of the cops from the porch, the one who hadn't fired, who'd tried to keep the situation calm. He looked a mess, uniform scorched and torn, some hair burned off, soot all over his face, but he held his Glock in an unshaking grip, determined to do his duty.

Logan looked at him, held his hands open at his sides to show they were empty, no claws. He didn't want a fight, never had. But the implication was clear: You know now what'll happen if one starts. Is that what you really want?

They held the pose for a few seconds, but to those watching it seemed an eternity.

Then, with a tremble, the cop shifted his gun barrel upward.