He knew his captors thought that the most hollow of boasts.

He also knew he would live to make them regret it.

"I'm sorry, Charles," he said with his last conscious breaths. "You should have killed me when you had the chance." Then he looked toward the distant observation booth, but the face that marched into his mind's eye was Stryker's. "So should you," he finished, and then he let his own consciousness go.

At the mansion, the cavalcade of images cascading before Jones' eyes suddenly and unexpectedly paused. Something else had caught his attention, an image on the screen but having nothing whatsoever to do with it. Jones peered closely at the screen, then clambered up the back of the couch to see who'd entered the room behind him.

It was a man dressed just like the commandos Jones watched on TV. Black from head to toe, face decorated with camouflage paint and a knit wool balaclava. Battle fatigues, combat boots, weapons and equipment harness, night-vision goggles. His name, though Jones didn't know it, was Lyman. He was in command of the assault force.

Finding himself facing a boy who was barely a teenager, Lyman wavered.

Wondering if this was some prank, or test, or maybe a new teacher, Jones swung his legs over the couch and padded, barefoot and in pajamas, toward the stranger.

"Hi," he said. He wasn't afraid. In this mansion, he truly believed he had nothing to be afraid of.

His eyes widened slightly in disbelief as, without a word in response, Lyman pulled a pistol from its holster and fired.

Jones felt a sting in his neck, grabbing at it reflexively in time to pull free the tranquilizer dart but not before the drugs took effect. He collapsed to the floor, his eyes fluttering, the TV changing channels so fast behind him that the flickering images registered more like static.

Lyman used hand signals to motion the rest of his team forward. Silently, weapons leveled, they spread throughout the mansion.

In the kitchen, Logan sat slumped deep in his chair. Until tonight, he hadn't slept since leaving Alkali Lake, and the nightmare that had sent him wandering through the mansion had been worse than a knockdown, drag-out bar fight. As a consequence, his healing factor was so busy fixing the damage that, even though he looked awake and was carrying on a decent conversation, he was mostly in a kind of hibernation. Whatever enhanced awareness he possessed right now was limited to this room and the boy across the table. Even that was pretty piss poor.

They quickly polished off one six-pack of soda, Logan chugging four while Bobby was still nursing his second, at the same time picking at the mostly melted remnants of his container of ice cream.

"My parents think this is a prep school."

"Hey," Logan said pleasantly, amused that he was coherent since he was speaking through a mental haze that put a pea-soup fog to shame, "lots of prep schools have their own campus, dorms, kitchens."

"Harrier jets? The Blackbird?"

"It's a free country."

Logan leaned back in his chair, establishing a balance so precarious that Bobby was sure he would fall. He thought of saying something, thought better of it. Logan struck him as the kind of guy who always knew precisely what he was doing.

"So," Logan growled, "you and Rogue, eh?"

"Marie," Bobby corrected.

"Whatever."

"It's not what you think." Logan quirked an eyebrow, making Bobby wonder with a suddenly racing heart just what the man thought. "I mean," he stammered, closing his eyes in misery, "I'd like it to be..."

Which, from the look he got now, could not have been more totally the wrong thing to say if he'd tried.

"It's just," he explained hurriedly, sure that he was making things worse with every word, but having no idea how to stop or make things right, "that it's not easy-when you want to be closer to someone, but... you can't be. Y' know?" He paused, utterly miserable as Logan's expression changed and sharpened before his eyes. He'd screwed up, big time, no doubt of that at all. "You probably don't understand."

Logan wasn't listening to the boy anymore, and he wasn't in hibernation, either. He knew exactly what was happening and he was furious at himself for allowing it.

There was a green dot right in the center of Bobby's forehead. The boy hadn't noticed.

Bobby yelped in terror and sprang back from the table as one set of Logan's claws extended and slashed through the air right in front of where he sat. They both heard a small clink, and a dart, sliced perfectly in two, dropped into the ice cream.

The targeting laser shifted at once from Bobby to Logan as Logan erupted from his chair. Too late the intruder realized his fatal mistake. He'd been thrown off by Logan's size, especially slouched so deeply in the kitchen chair. He assumed he was dealing with a pair of students.

He had a submachine gun, a Heckler & Koch MP5, and managed to squeeze off a round before Logan reached him. Good shot, too; the bullet grazed Logan's shoulder. He barely noticed as he grabbed the weapon's barrel, forcing it upward as the intruder squeezed the trigger on full auto. Bullets peppered the ceiling and walls. Bobby sensibly dived for cover beneath the table, and the temperature of the room turned Arctic.

Without realizing what he'd done, Bobby generated a cold so intense that it overwhelmed all the heat signatures in the room. Aboard the circling Hercules, the remote observers suddenly couldn't tell what was happening there.

Logan wrenched the gun from the other man's hands and flung it aside. They traded punches, to no effect, but the man was able to grab a combat knife from its scabbard on his vest. He was bigger than Logan and possibly stronger. Their struggle had given him the advantage of height and leverage, and he used both to push the gleaming blade straight for Logan's eye. The man's gaze flickered slightly, to acknowledge the sight of the gash across Logan's shoulder-which was healing rapidly. But mainly he concentrated on the task at hand: Kill the enemy.

Then he realized he could see that same flat, utterly merciless expression in Logan's eyes, and he knew in that awful moment that it was over, that he'd never had a chance, that up till now, Logan had been trying to take him alive.

He heard a snikt from the hand he couldn't see and felt an awful, stabbing pain in his chest that reached all the way to his heart...

... and felt no more.

Chapter Seven.

In Kitty Pryde's dreams, the Cubs were sweeping the Yankees for the World Series in straight shutouts, Sammy Sosa was making people forget that Babe Ruth had ever existed, and she and her mom and her dad had front-row field-level seats for every game, right behind the Cubs dugout. Her folks were together again, they were a family, and her life was back the way she wanted it. She watched Derek Jeter whiff a fastball straight up into the air. She knew from that moment of contact it was coming for her, and she leaped to her feet, eyes on the ball, glove poised to grab it.

But she started to lose it in the sun. She squinted her eyes as she'd been taught, but she couldn't filter out that wicked glare. She also couldn't understand why the sun was turning green. Then, to make matters worse, somebody grabbed her across the face, a gloved hand covering mouth and nose, choking off her cries of excitement as they turned to protests, choking off her air.

She lashed out at him, still determined to catch the ball, but the emerald radiance was brighter, unbearably so, and next to it in the sky, bigger than anything she'd ever seen up there, she saw a gun.

Her dream popped like a soap bubble and she came instantly, totally awake, one part of her mind automatically cataloging everything around her while her active consciousness came up to speed.

She was in her dorm room at Xavier's, which she shared with Tracy Cassidy. It was night. The lights were out, except for right around the two girls, and they were no longer alone. Two men, one looming over her, the other over Tracy. Both wearing combat gear, full commando rig with night-vision goggles and laser sights on their weapons. The laser was what she'd reacted to.

Both men were bringing their pistols up to shoot.

Tracy screamed.

In terms of raw decibels, a military jet on full afterburners would have been quieter. The cry covered the full range of the ultra-high-frequency spectrum, and it went through the surrounding ears like a shower of white hot needles. Glass shattered throughout the room-not only lightbulbs and mirrors but the focusing lenses of the soldiers' lasers and their goggles as well. Siryn was living up to her name and then some, generating a sound so powerful it overwhelmed the anechoic baffles built into the walls of her room to protect the rest of the school and students from just such an incident.

Down the hall, where the boys lived, Peter Rasputin and Jamie Madrox found themselves jolted awake. Alone in the room he shared with Bobby Drake, John Allardyce flailed so wildly against unseen enemies that he pitched himself out of bed. The same went for Marie and every other student in the school.

Nobody yet understood the reason for Tracy's outcry, so in these first moments of alarm and confusion, the general reaction wasn't charitable. Yes, Tracy sounded terrified. So what else was new? That was why her room was sound proofed. That was also why Kitty was her roommate; her own phasing power gave her a measure of protection against Siryn's sonic powers.

As for the assault force, they knew then they'd lost the element of surprise. No more time for subtlety. Time to shift into overdrive and apply brute force, to take down the kids before they could muster sufficient wits to resist. The problem for them was, even with ear protectors, they found themselves almost as incapacitated by Siryn's outburst as their targets.

The difference was only a matter of moments here, moments there. But that difference proved critical.

As suddenly as the sound began, it stopped-Siryn had run out of breath.

Before she could draw another, one of the commandos snap-fired his dart gun. The drug's effect was instantaneous; she was out cold before her body even began its collapse back onto her bed.

Both men turned as one to Kitty, who pitched herself right through her bed in a clumsy dive that sent her staggering toward and then through the floor and nearest wall. They had no shot against a target who'd turned intangible, and then, just like that, it didn't matter, as the door to the room burst open to reveal the bare-chested Peter Rasputin.

Peter's big brother was Russian Air Force, part of the Federation space program, and more than a few neighbors' sons had served their tour in Afghanistan; he knew soldiers, and he knew how to handle himself when there was trouble.

The moment he registered the armed intruders in Tracy's room, even as the two commandos raised and fired their weapons, he triggered his own power. In the doorway, before their shocked and disbelieving eyes, he grew, quickly becoming too big for the opening. His pajama shorts, which he wore loose and extrasized for this very reason, stretched to the breaking point. Beneath his feet, the floorboards groaned as his mass increased to match his new size. His skin changed in color and texture, acquiring the sheen of polished chrome. More importantly, however, his flesh took on the actual density of metal, until it was transformed completely into a kind of organic armor that possessed the tensile strength of steel.

For all the good they did, the darts that struck his chest might have been spitballs.

With gleaming gunmetal eyes he looked to where Siryn lay sprawled on her bed. He looked back at the two commandos as they grabbed for their submachine guns.

No one heard the sound of firing, and thanks as well to the soundproofing and thickened walls, none of the bullets left the confines of the room. That couldn't be said for the commandos themselves. Peter's code name was Colossus, and with strength to rival his classical namesake, he put both men right through the wall and into the hallway outside.

A moment later Colossus himself emerged, Siryn cradled protectively in his arms so that they formed a steel shell around her. He heard voices and commotion, registered bare feet instead of boots, and turned a corner to find a couple of the younger students huddled in an alcove. A brilliant light speared through the windows just beyond them, and the glass panes shuddered under the force of the downdraft from the rotors of a Sikorsky AH-64 Apache attack helicopter as it muscled into position right outside.

For a moment, Colossus and the kids just stood there, striking a classic deer-in-the-headlights pose, none of them sure whether the spotlight would be followed by gunfire, all of them fearing the worst. Colossus reacted first, leaping forward to put his body between the gunship and the youngsters, wondering as he did so if even his armored form could withstand the impact of depleted-uranium "tank buster" shells from the Apache's fearsome 30mm chain gun. That cannon could shoot right through the mansion, punching holes as big as he was as easily as through rice paper.

"This way!" he bellowed, cursing himself royally as the kids looked at him, uncomprehending. In all the excitement, he'd spoken in Russian. "This way," he repeated in English, gesturing for the nearest set of stairs. "Go, go, go!"

The light behind him didn't move, but that provided little solace. He'd already marked at least three more from directions that told him the mansion was surrounded. Common sense told him there had to be more troops. There was no safety above ground. And, he feared, precious little chance of reaching the escape tunnels below. But he had to try.

In the kitchen, Bobby Drake refused to move, refused to breathe, refused to think. If he didn't do the first, maybe Logan wouldn't remember he was here. If he didn't do the last, he wouldn't have to face what he'd just seen.

He heard the snakt of claws being retracted, watched Logan lower the man's body to the floor. The claws had left their bloody mark on the refrigerator door, and the body left a trail before forming a puddle on the floor.

He'd never seen this in real life, only in movies or on the tube. Even when he was watching the news, it didn't seem real. They were just images, without any tangible impact.

But he'd heard the huff of the man's breath as Logan struck and knew with awful finality that the man would never draw another. He'd watch the tension flow out of the man's body until he had no more substance than a rag doll and, worse, had watched Logan's face while it happened. He saw no mercy there at all, and suddenly what he wanted more than anything was to be in his bed at home, cradled in the eternal security of his mother's arms while she sang him to sleep with a tune she'd made up for him alone.

He was crying, ashamed to show such weakness, yet strangely thankful that this was his body's only instinctive reaction. The tears blurred his vision, and when he wiped his eyes, crumbling the frozen water off his cheeks as they formed an icicle mustache, he saw only the body of the soldier. Logan had gone.

He didn't jump when Logan placed his hand on his shoulder, but the face he turned to the older man had lost any pretense of adulthood. It was a child's face, desperately scared.

"We've gotta go," Logan said simply.

Again without a thought, never knowing how high his stock was rising in Logan's opinion, Bobby pulled himself out from under the table and fell into step behind his companion.

Without running, they moved quickly through the ground floor. Bobby had no idea whether they were simply trying to escape or rescue the others. Logan didn't offer any enlightenment, and Bobby understood that his job right now was to follow Logan's lead and do as he was told. End of story. He heard the sounds of booted feet all around them, men shouting orders counterpointed by the higher-pitched cries of kids in a panic. He thought he heard shooting, he knew he heard a crash that sounded to him like a wrecking ball making contact. Then suddenly, at the short hallway leading to the servants' back stairs, Logan slapped him to a dead stop with an arm like steel rebar across his chest.

"Stay here," Logan snapped, and then he charged.

Bobby couldn't resist a peek, and yielding to that temptation made him more scared than ever.

Two troopers were carrying Jones down the stairway. Another few waited below in the hallway.

Logan turned the scene into a demolition derby. A fist backed by adamantium bones smashed one man's face and hurled the man aside, blinded and broken and bloody. Momentum carried him into the main body of the group, and a piercing shriek of surprise and pain told Bobby that Logan was using his claws.

There was nothing he could do to help Logan, not here, not in this kind of scrap, short of maybe freezing everybody in place. But then what would he do if more bad guys showed up, with Logan occupied?

At the same time, he wasn't prepared to hide anymore, the way he had before in the kitchen. One of the school's rules-written and unwritten-was that the older kids looked out for the youngsters.

He didn't think about what he was going to do; that would have iced him in place more effectively than his power. He lunged across the hallway, straight for the servants' elevator, expecting with every one of the three steps it took him to feel the shock of a bullet to the back. He was so totally out of breath when he made it, and squeezed so deeply into the recessed alcove, that when the door slid open behind him he tumbled flat on the floor and almost couldn't get up.

At the other end of the hall, Logan was peppered with anesthetic darts. They didn't even slow him down. From above on the stairs, one of the men carrying Jones opened up with his sidearm, a 10mm automatic, but only managed to fire a couple of rounds before Logan took off the barrel and his forearm with a single sweep of his claws.

Logan never stopped moving, shifting from one adversary to the next with quick and deadly efficiency. He was a born scrapper, and in a crowd like this the advantage was all his. Everyone he faced was an enemy, whereas the soldiers had to be careful lest they cut down some of their own. The smart play for them would have been to withdraw and try to cut him down with automatic weapons or explosives, but they were boxed in by the tight confines of the hallway and there was no time for them to do more than react purely on reflex and training.

His reflexes were better by far, and their training didn't begin to prepare them for what they faced tonight.

He didn't care if they cut him, if they shot him; he'd bleed a while and then get better. By contrast, the blades that were part of his hands cut body armor and flesh and bone with equal facility, and if he chose not to use the blades, his unbreakable bones would do almost as much damage.

The fight didn't last a minute longer. When it was done, Logan was the only one left standing, one of a precious few left breathing.

He saw a dart sticking from his arm and pulled it out, flexing his fist and clenching it to make sure there were no ill effects. He found another in Jones and plucked it free as well. He pressed his fingertips to the boy's neck to confirm what his other enhanced senses had already told him. The pulse was slow, but strong and regular. The boy was asleep, otherwise unharmed.

He didn't bother looking back to where he'd left Bobby; he knew the older boy was gone. Hearing told him the elevator was engaged, scent told him which floor he'd gone to.

Logan hauled Jones off the stairs by an arm and pitched him across his shoulders in a fireman's carry. Before the boy was settled in place, Logan was moving up the stairs, two and three at a time. His senses had also given him a pretty decent picture of the opposition's numbers and general location. There was no time to waste, no margin for mistakes.

On the third floor, Bobby stepped out into chaos. The youngest kids, and some of the older ones, were panicking as wind pounded the roof and windows around them. Someone was screaming that the glass was going to shatter; another collapsed to his knees on the floor, face upraised and howling, certain a plane was going to crash right through the wall and bring the building down on their heads. The helicopters were perched outside the windows, using their million-plus candlepower spot lamps to light up the interior of the house in absolutes of black and white. The glare was so intensely bright that everyone was forced to close their eyes, just to keep from being permanently blinded.

Bobby grabbed for the first figure within reach. It turned out to be John Allardyce.

"What the hell's happening?" John demanded between racking coughs that doubled him over. Somewhere he'd swallowed a lot of smoke, and he didn't much like it. Smoke was useless to John without a flame.

"Guys with guns," Bobby said, because that was all he knew for sure and trusted himself to say.