... and then, as suddenly as it had struck, the pain went away. She felt fine. She was making apologies all around, her boss insisting on a full debriefing, someone mentioning what they all feared, that this was some new kind of mutant attack...

... and then, everyone around her dropped, pretty much the same way she had. She felt fine, but they were dying, and that staffer's offhand remark about mutants took on a whole new coloration that made her want to flee the building, that made her wish she had died moments ago. She was dying, they were fine. Now they were dying and she felt great. Did that mean, God forbid, she was a mutant?

She decided then and there it didn't matter. She was an agent of the United States Secret Service, assigned to the protective detail of the President. That made him her sole concern.

She drew her weapon from its holster and levered herself across the floor, collecting a couple more guns along the way. She couldn't quite muster enough strength yet to stand. The President had collapsed behind his desk and lay partially covered by his chair. With a convulsive heave, Alicia shoved it clear and, bracing her back against the wall, moved it to where she had a clean line of sight of both entrances. As gently as she could, she gathered the President's head into her lap, keeping her own Glock in hand while laying the other ones aside-but keeping them in quick and easy reach-to use a handkerchief to wipe his face of the blood that was now leaking from nose and eyes.

"Alicia," he choked. "My God, what's happening?"

"Sir, I don't know," she told him. "But I'm here, I'm okay, I'll keep you safe."

George McKenna didn't care about himself in that instant, because he knew Alicia's words were a lie. He didn't matter anymore, not as President, not even as a man; the only roles that had any substance were husband and father, and the bitterness he felt at this terrible moment was at being so far from those he loved. And even though he had no real hope of a miracle, he prayed for his wife, he prayed with all his heart and those coherent thoughts that remained to him for his children, that they be spared this awful end. He asked for mercy...

Below the pontiff's balcony, three Vatican and CitiRoma ambulances stood on the periphery of St. Peter's Square. Some among the crowd gathered below had apparently been taken ill just before the pope's appearance. He'd signaled a secretary to make the proper inquiries, then proceeded with the day's events.

Now that handful of people were the only ones left standing, on the plaza and inside the Vatican itself. Elisabeth Braddock, who was taking a free day before driving to Milan to showcase Giorgio Armani's couture line for the fall show, picked herself up off the gurney and carefully stepped off the back of the ambulance. There was blood on her face and on her new dress-linen, expensive, designed exclusively for her by Kay Cera and now utterly ruined-and her shapely lips curled as she saw more pouring from the noses and eyes and ears of everyone in sight.

Bracing herself for what she knew was out there, Betsy opened the gates to her own mind and cast a telepathic net out across the plaza, hoping to find some clue to the cause of this mass affliction. She staggered as if she'd been physically struck and grabbed desperately for the handrail on the back of the ambulance to keep from falling. It was worse, so much worse, than she had imagined.

This wasn't just happening here in Vatican City. People were dropping throughout Rome itself.

She thanked her stars her mutant power had limits, sensing that no matter how far she cast her perceptions she'd just find more of the same.

Only the people in the ambulances appeared unaffected. Yet initially, they'd been the ones who were struck down by what was essentially the same effect. She knew one of the others was a mutant. It didn't take a rocket scientist to put the rest of the pieces together. Someone had tried to take out mutants, possibly the world over. And now those tables had been turned.

"No," she breathed. " No, please no! Don't let this be happening. For God's sake, for mercy's sake- stop!"

Her pleas fell on deaf ears, or perhaps they had just been drowned out by the screams of the multitude as extinction reached out to claim them.

This was Bobby's fault, Ronny Drake knew that for a fact. His brother must have figured out that Ronny had called the cops and this was some kind of mutie revenge, only he never dreamed his brother could be so cruel as to actually kill him. Brothers were supposed to look out for each other, that's what Mom and Dad always said, that's the way Bobby used to act before he went away to that damn school. Ronny was sobbing through the pain, clutching at his bedspread, calling weakly for his parents, why couldn't they hear, why didn't they answer? He'd never been so scared, he'd never understood before this moment how awful and all-encompassing a thing real fear could be. He grabbed for every breath, counted every heartbeat, cherished every thought, weighing them all against scenes from the movies and TV shows he'd seen, the video games he'd played. He knew this wasn't make believe, he knew there was no reboot, he didn't want to die, he said that over and over and over again, hoping repetition would guarantee his supplication being heard by the Almighty.

He was sobbing, and wailing, making hard, racking noises that tore at his throat and gut as hard as the energy waves that caused them. His face was streaked with blood, and it had splashed all across his pillow and sheets and the wall beyond. His vision was smeared and he expected to go blind before the end, he wished the end would come quickly, anything to take away the pain.

He told his brother he was sorry.

He wished he was a mutant, too, so at least they'd be together. And, with his life reducing fast to flickering embers, he found the capacity to hate Charles Xavier with all his young and passionate heart, blaming Xavier for stealing Bobby away from the home that had raised him, the parents who loved him, the brother who so desperately needed him.

On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, hundreds of traders lay screaming...

A thousand feet below the Pacific, the crew of the fleet ballistic missile submarine Montana lay screaming...

A hundred fifty miles above the continental United States, the seven astronauts comprising the crew of the space shuttle Endeavor stood in silence as their commander tried to reestablish contact with the ground. They'd been in the middle of routine housekeeping traffic with Mission Control at Houston's Johnson Space Center when they'd heard a succession of increasingly garbled outcries and what sounded like screams.

After that, nothing.

"I say again, Houston, do you read? Endeavor to Houston, do you read?" The mission commander switched channels on the selector. "CapCom, do you read?" Switched again. "Edwards flight control, do you read?" One more time. "Cheyenne Base, do you read? NORAD ops, this is Endeavor, please respond." And finally, switching to 121.5, the international distress frequency: "Any station, any station, please respond. For God's sake," Peter Corbeau said, "is anybody there?"

The only answer was the static of an open carrier wave.

As far as they knew, they were all alone. And possibly the only human beings left alive.

Stryker wanted to scream, to shriek, to howl, but he couldn't. His mind, his body, his soul felt like they had all been snagged by monstrous barbed fishhooks that were now pulling away in every direction, determined to tear him apart. Something had gone terribly wrong. The only answer that made sense to him was that somehow the Cerebro wave had been reprogrammed to affect not mutants, but baseline humans.

All his work, all his planning, all his sacrifice-all for nothing.

With the whole world in his grasp, no power on earth could persuade Jason to stop. Strange that, after all this time referring to the boy as Mutant 143, Stryker could only think of him now by the name he'd given him. His father's name. It didn't seem... proper to call him anything else. As if this moment, with Stryker himself facing death, compelled him to accord his son the dignity, the identity, the... humanity that had been denied through the whole of his adult life. And Stryker felt a pang of grief, of misery, at the memory of the first time he'd held the boy, less than five minutes old, and marveled at how small and precious a gift he was. That had been Stryker's moment of sublime hope, when he had sworn to keep his boy safe, to stand by him no matter what. There'd been no hint then of what was to come, just this small and achingly vulnerable miracle who was the recipient of all the love that William and Karen Stryker had to give.

Ironically, humanity's only hope was now the dam. The shocks that set the ground to trembling were coming faster and stronger as water punched through the lowest levels of the complex like a pile driver, each collapsing section further undermining the foundation of the dam itself. Its collapse would destroy the complex and bury Jason. Stryker was no structural engineer-he couldn't build things worth a damn-but he'd spent a professional lifetime perfecting the art of destruction. Regardless, he was doomed, but survival for the world could now be measured in minutes.

Then a new but terribly familiar voice turned even that small hope to ashes.

"William," Magneto said, greeting him as an old friend, his rich and cultured English accent rolling the syllables of his name like a tiger savoring its prey.

Stryker glared up at him.

"How... good to see you again," Magneto continued as if he genuinely meant it.

Wolverine hadn't searched him, hadn't noticed the backup gun Stryker wore in an ankle holster. Molded plastic with plastic bullets that could kill a man as effectively as metal, designed to be totally impervious to Magneto's power.

Stryker grabbed for it, faster than he'd ever moved in his life.

Magneto let him clear the gun from its holster and almost-but not quite-bring it to bear before he used his power to wrap a length of chain around Stryker's gun hand like a whip, yanking it aside just as Stryker pulled the trigger. There was a flat report, and the bullet went way wide, into the trees. Mystique quickly stepped forward and wrenched it from Stryker's grasp, twirling it around her finger like a cowboy as she sauntered over to the helicopter and climbed aboard, leaving Magneto and Stryker to make their final farewells in private.

Magneto smiled.

"It seems that we keep running into each other," he said. "Mark my words, it will never happen again."

Another length of chain wrapped itself around Stryker's throat as Magneto pronounced his final sentence: "Survival of the fittest, Mr. Stryker."

Storm and Nightcrawler stood within Cerebro, and as far as they were concerned nothing whatsoever was happening. The great machine was silent.

But then Storm knew different. As the shock wave thundered past, the girl had lost control of her illusion, allowing them to see things as they truly were. Around them was a vast holographic construct of the globe, festooned with an uncountable number of blinding lights that Storm intuited at once represented the nonmutant population of the Earth. Remembering what she had endured when the Cerebro had been calibrated for mutants, she closed her eyes in empathy. Even if they found a way to save everyone, what could they do about the traumatic scars left on their memories? In some ways, that would be far worse than death because with it would be the constant terror that it could happen again.

That couldn't be her concern right now. First and foremost, she had to save them.

The momentary disruption of the illusion had revealed one thing more: the true identity of their adversary, not a little girl at all but a misshapen creature in a wheelchair, whose mind had latched onto Xavier like a lamprey.

Her initial, her main, reaction was sorrow that something so damaged could come into the world and never find the help needed to make it whole, in spirit if not in flesh. Much like Magneto, she dealt with the primal energies of the world. It gave her perceptions far beyond those of normal vision, and those in turn gave her an insight into people that was almost as effective as Logan's physical senses. She had seen cruelty in her life and once, when she was very young, had encountered a being that became for her the living embodiment of evil. She had known that at first glance, the same way that her first awareness of Xavier told her that he was a man to be trusted.

The man in the other wheelchair was not to be trusted. There was a wrongness to his spirit that made the patterns of energy cast off by his body as twisted as his body itself.

And for the second time in her life, staring at the false face of the little girl, Ororo Munroe knew that she was face-to-face with evil.

"He'll be finished soon," she said in a voice rich with satisfaction, a glutton enjoying the feast of a lifetime. The agonies-the ones she remembered, the ones she imagined-that tore at Storm's heart only filled his with delight. "It's almost over."

"This is not good," Nightcrawler muttered, looking up and around them nervously in the vain hope he might find a way to pierce the veil that the girl had cast around them. It bothered him to know that the place was collapsing about their ears and yet be unable to see any part of it.

Storm nodded agreement. They were out of time. "Kurt," she told him, "it's going to get very cold."

He nodded back to her, understanding that she was talking about more than the usual winter chill.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"When the times comes, we'll likely have to hurry-and there won't be any margin for error."

"In my whole life on the trapeze, I've never missed a catch. Do what you have to... Ororo. Trust me for the rest."

She spared him a glance and a smile that had nothing to do with business. "I like the way you say my name."

She couldn't see him blush, not with his indigo skin, and for that he was supremely grateful. "I like saying it."

As he spoke, he saw mist on his breath and realized she'd started what she had planned. Her warning was no joke; the room's ambient temperature had already dropped enough to make him shiver.

Her eyes were silver, highlighted in a crystalline blue, the rich color of the Earth's sky as seen from space, standing out dramatically against her chocolate skin. Her hair stirred in a breeze of her own creation, and Nightcrawler knew that this represented the calm center of an increasingly powerful whirlwind.

"There are winds you find in the wastelands of both poles," he heard her say, as though she were conducting a seminar. "Gravity grabs hold of cold, dense air and pulls it down the slopes of mountains and plateaus. In a volcanic eruption, the same thing happens with a pyroclastic flow. The air picks up an incredible amount of speed and that speed makes it colder. It's a dry wind, there's no precipitation. You can consider it a sandstorm of ice and snow. This wind cuts. It can freeze you in a heartbeat, not by coating you in ice but by turning the marrow of your bones to crystal. You don't fight this wind, you go to ground, you endure. You find a way to survive."

"What are you doing?" the girl wailed.

Nightcrawler, already shivering violently because Ororo couldn't spare the concentration or the effort to shield him, clutched at her arm.

"Storm," he cried, "she's a child."

"She's an illusion."

"Does that give you the right to condemn the being who created her?"

"Do we have a choice, Kurt? That mutant's life for the professor's, and likely the world!"

"That's a decision Magneto would not hesitate to make, I know. Nor have the slightest regret over it," he replied.

Storm said nothing, but her eyes blazed like silver beacons against the darkness.

"I'm freezing," the girl shrieked, her voice breaking, turning masculine and adult, then back to a girl once more. "You're hurting me. Make it stop!

"Stop it," the girl cried. And then, in 143's own voice," Stop it!"

Just like that, the illusion flickered, faster and faster, like a manic strobe. The girl vanished, as did the illusion of the silent room and the deactivated Cerebro. They found themselves in chaos, with chunks of scaffolding and shielding plate tumbling all around.

Feeling frozen solid, Nightcrawler ducked as a piece the size of a limo took out a portion of the gallery back by the doorway. Storm ignored it all and stood her ground, her eyes fixed on her adversary.

Mutant 143 sat hunkered deep in his chair, eyes radiant with fury as he tried to grab hold of Storm's thoughts, only to discover what Xavier had learned years before-and just as painfully. That when she was fully in tune with her powers, when they were active on this level, it became virtually impossible to access her mind. The energies she manifested created too much psychic interference. To the unwary telepath, it was much the same as trying to grab hold of a bolt of lightning.

Mutant 143 cried out, so staggered by the backlash that his leash on Xavier also slipped.

Xavier felt the chill and knew it at once for what it was. He sensed the ripples of static on the fringes of his awareness and understood at once what Storm was doing. He beheld the hologram of the globe at life-size and the lights that blazed across its surface, bright, so bright, like candles on the brink of going out forever.

And he knew, with a realization that would haunt him to the end of his days, what he was doing here.

His first instinct was to shut down the Cerebro wave at once, but he held back. The process of disengagement had to be gradual, to allow the afflicted bodies and psyches to decompress, lest the shock of instant recovery do as much damage as the attacking wave itself.

To do that, though, he had to deal once and for all with- "Jason," he said quietly as he turned. He didn't ask Storm to temper her winds. The young man who sat across from him knew too many pathways into his mind, he dared not allow him another opportunity to reassert control.

"No," the girl pouted defiantly, narrowing her eyes, shaking her head, fiercely trying to compel obedience.

"No," she repeated.

There was no inhibitor on Xavier's thoughts now; with it in place he couldn't operate Cerebro. That was why he had to be completely under 143's influence before he was allowed into the chamber. The pathways that 143 had used to worm his way into the core of Xavier's being now provided equal access to their source. The young man was gifted, and powerful, but Xavier acknowledged no equals, especially with the survival of humanity at stake.

"No," she cried again, with tears. "Stop! You're hurting me!"

The air rippled outward from her, looking much like the heat flow from a jet-engine exhaust, and in its wake the substance of the room's reality once again changed. It reminded Xavier of some of the classic cartoons, where the animator would swipe his brush across the screen, unleashing a cascade of color like a waterfall, which in turn would transform the scene into something altogether different from what had come before.

They found themselves on a battlefield, an image Xavier recognized from his own past, before the X-Men, before he lost the use of his legs, when he'd found himself cut off from his unit and caught in the middle of a firefight that was rapidly turning into a major pitched battle. Death came from all sides: It claimed men with stakes buried in the grass, with bullets, with cannon shells, with splinters blasted every which way by exploding trees, by a carpet of bombs tumbling from planes that flew so high no one knew they were in danger until the world erupted around them. They died from fire, they died broken, they died in agony, they died weeping and screaming and cursing and lost and lonely.

There were more images, none, thankfully, from Xavier's life, all of them skewed toward the cruel and the painful. As Xavier had sensed during that first interview, there was no empathy in Jason, no acknowledgment of the people around him as living, sentient beings worthy of even the slightest respect. To him, they were a different order of interactive toy. He took his pleasure from "mounting" them as the practitioners of voodoo believed their gods did when possessing their worshipers. He created scenarios that literally put his victims through Hell and gloried in the agonies that resulted.

There was nothing in him that responded to joy or that even recognized its existence. He considered his life a misery, and by sublimating those feelings through the torment of others, he made himself feel not so much better as less awful.

Had Xavier worked with him from the start, perhaps things might have been different. But Stryker had closed that door. Perhaps he had been right. Perhaps Xavier had been afraid of Jason. Had he only wanted those students at his school who could be saved?

"Get out of my head!"

"No," Xavier said. All those years ago, when he wasn't so sure of his vocation, or his own abilities, he'd made a terrible mistake. Could that be explained, could it be excused? That didn't matter to him now. Those options didn't exist today. He could no more abandon Jason now than one of his own. Succeed or fail, he had to try now, as he'd refused to then.

The ripples bounced off the wall, shunting all the images they carried with them into an incredible collision that made it impossible for a moment to tell which pieces of wreckage and shattering realities were illusion, and which were actual pieces of the room that was collapsing about their heads.

Through all the chaos, the only constant that remained was the facsimile globe, but at long last even that seemed to lose form and substance. Its outlines smeared, as transmitted images do when overtaken by static. Unnoticed in the ancillary din, the hum put forth by Cerebro gradually faded, as did the lights on the globe.

Xavier took a deep breath, mustering his strength for a last effort, and sent a thought pulse of his own along all the linkages that had been established between his mind and the rest of the world. Deep down inside there was a part of him that was tempted to try a global rewrite, something on the order of "love thy mutant neighbor as thyself," but it was an enticement easily resisted. Storm was fond of telling him that nature moved at its own pace, that some things had to be taught-and learned-in their own time. Short-circuit the process, shortchange the result, little good would come of it.

Having just endured firsthand what that meant, he had no desire to compound the resulting mess, just to try as best he could to set things right.

What he sent was a little bit of energy, or personal grace. A psychic aspirin. He couldn't banish the physical effects of the Cerebro wave, but at least he could ameliorate the residual pain. The victims might remember that pain, but they would no longer feel it. Quite the contrary. They'd actively feel better, like waking at the dawn of a fresh and beautiful day, whose sunrise contained the promise that anything was possible. And that those possibilities were good ones.

He reached up and removed his helmet, and with that severed his direct contact with Cerebro, which obligingly completed the full shutdown process. The globe vanished as if it had never been.

With it went Storm's winds, her eyes reverting to normal as Nightcrawler took her by the hand. Because the air was so dry, there was no evidence of the terrible cold she'd created beyond the residual chill itself.

Jean must have been monitoring the situation with her own telepathy, because the moment the helmet cleared Xavier's head, the vault door blocking the entrance was blown wide open, taking with it a fair chunk of surrounding wall.

Hot on its heels, Cyclops plunged into the chamber, only to backpedal frantically as a new series of explosions deep within the complex dropped another length of ceiling on the entrance, hopelessly blocking it.

The room shook as if it were a ball being worried by a playful puppy, and this latest assault proved far more than its structure could bear. As the platform and gallery began to twist alarmingly, Xavier chose to ignore the risk as he pivoted his chair and pushed toward Jason. The young man, grotesque as he was, had taken on the aspect of a waxworks mannequin. There was no expression on his face, no emotion in his eyes. Xavier sent thought after thought to him, but the harder he reached, the more defiantly Jason pushed him away.

He wanted no part of what Xavier had to offer.

A massive plate clipped the edge of the platform, and Xavier looked up to see most of the upper hemisphere crashing down on them. He knew what had to be done and lunged forward in his chair, attempting to grab Jason by the body or the chair-by some part of him-in hopes of creating a daisy chain of physical contact that would allow Nightcrawler-whose capabilities he could see clearly in Jean's mind-to teleport them all out of harm's way.