The X-Men Arrive

Three in the afternoon.

Across the street from a glass-fronted hotel in Midtown Manhattan, a dark gray van sat quietly beside a fire hydrant.

It had no markings, and its windows were covered in opaque tint. From outside, it looked no different from the thousands of work vans on New York's streets.

Inside, Scott Summers took off his Ruby-Quartz Visor and rubbed his aching eyes.

He had watched the hotel's revolving door for forty minutes. Apart from a few business travelers and a couple dragging suitcases, nothing had happened.

"Professor, are you sure he's here?" He turned toward the old man in the specially made wheelchair at the center of the van.

Charles Xavier did not answer immediately.

His fingers rested against his temple, his eyes were nearly closed, and his brow was faintly furrowed—the familiar expression he wore when concentrating deeply.

A few seconds later, he opened his eyes and nodded.

"He is." His voice was calm, though it carried a trace of fatigue he could not quite hide. "In the Presidential Suite on the top floor. I can clearly sense him, but—"

He paused, as though choosing his words.

"But what?" Scott pressed.

"His mental barrier is stronger than before." Charles's expression grew complicated.

"Last time, I could make brief contact with him. Now... I can only sense that he's there. It's like hearing someone speak in the next room through a wall. I can hear his voice, but not make out the words."

In the back of the van, Ororo Munroe, the X-Man known as Storm, drew her gaze from the window. Her long white hair gleamed silver in the dim light.

"That shouldn't be possible." Her voice was low, with the natural steadiness of a leader. "How long has he been out of the base? How could his Mental Defense improve this quickly?"

"Unless... he's growing far faster than we expected." Charles looked toward the revolving door. He sounded as though he were speaking to himself, or perhaps to someone else.

The van fell silent for a few seconds.

"There's something else," Charles said suddenly, a hint of intrigue entering his voice. "There are two girls with him. One of them... her mental signature is familiar. Very familiar."

"Who?" Scott asked.

"Laura." Charles spoke the name with a complicated emotion, something between nostalgia and a heavy sense of responsibility.

"Designation X-23. She was created from Logan's Genes. You could call her his daughter."

The air in the van seemed to freeze.

"Logan has a daughter?" Scott's voice rose despite himself.

"A daughter in the genetic sense," Charles corrected. "Like Logan, she has a Healing Factor and an Adamantium skeleton. She was born in a laboratory and raised in one.

That boy didn't bring her out of the base for—"

He left the sentence unfinished.

But Scott and Ororo understood.

A Mutant with Telekinesis, Superhuman Healing, and Mental Defense, accompanied by a girl who had inherited all of Wolverine's fighting abilities.

Together, they were well beyond the level of people who merely "warranted attention."

"We waited too long." Ororo looked out the window, a faint reproach in her voice. "Magneto—"

"I know." Charles cut her off, calm but firm.

"But we had to deal with Senator Kelly. If we let Erik turn those senators into Mutants, the country's policies toward Mutants will be set back twenty years. Both matters need our attention. We could only handle one first."

What he did not say was that he had chosen Magneto because that conflict could be foreseen and prepared for.

The boy who had escaped from the base was utterly unpredictable.

"Now." Charles turned his wheelchair toward the revolving door again. "It's time to meet this mysterious young man."

"Professor, let us go. He just killed his way through a battle. It's too dangerous..."

"I have to go." Charles did not heed Scott's warning.

On the hotel's top floor, inside the Presidential Suite.

Russell had just returned from the Training Room, still carrying the mingled scents of ozone and ink on paper.

Felicity was curled up on the living room sofa, reading a novel borrowed from the hotel library. Laura sat cross-legged on the carpet beside the floor-to-ceiling window, idly flipping a hotel fruit knife through her fingers. Its blade traced circle after circle of silver light.

Russell dropped onto the supremely comfortable sofa and was about to close his eyes and probe the limits of Molecular Vision again—

The hotel phone on the coffee table rang.

Felicity glanced at him and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

The person on the other end said a few words.

Her expression changed. Not to fear, but to something more complicated, somewhere between surprise and uncertainty.

Covering the receiver, Felicity turned to Russell. "The front desk says... someone downstairs wants to see you. He says he's... an old friend."

"An old friend?" Russell frowned.

Where would he have an old friend in this world?

"What else did they say?"

Felicity asked a few questions into the receiver, then shook her head. "They say he's an old man in a wheelchair, with two companions. The old man said—"

She paused, recalling his exact words. "'Charles Xavier would like to speak with Mr. Russell about the future of Mutants.'"

The room was quiet for about three seconds.

The fruit knife stopped turning in Laura's hand. She looked at Russell, her eyes holding an emotion he had never seen in them before.

It was not wariness, but something more primal, almost instinctive, as if she had heard that name in a past she did not want to remember.

Clearly, Laura and Professor Xavier had spoken before.

Russell sat up.

Professor X.

He was here.

Honestly, Russell was not surprised.

He had known someone would come looking for him as soon as the fight in the slums ended.

The military would keep trying to capture him. S.H.I.E.L.D. was probably on its way, too. The X-Men were only one of several groups.

The only surprise was that Charles had taken so long. With that bald head of his, he should have learned everything that happened here within an hour of the battle ending—or even an hour before it began.

Unless something had held him up.

"Magneto," Russell murmured, suddenly putting it together.

Senator Kelly had vanished, the plan for Liberty Island was moving forward, and the X-Men had been tied down on another front.

They had broken away from it, perhaps even made a special detour for him.

He stood and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.

From there, he could see across much of Downtown Manhattan. Traffic flowed along the streets like slow-moving rivers of color. He spotted the gray van across the street, parked beside a fire hydrant with its engine running and its windows darkly tinted.

His Psychic Power spread outward... It was them.

"Lord Russell?" Felicity called from behind him, a note of unease in her voice. "Should we... see them?"

Russell did not answer at once.

Professor X could only have come for one of two reasons.

Either he wanted to hold Russell accountable, or he wanted to recruit him.

Knowing Charles, recruitment was more likely. The old man had spent his life doing the same thing: bringing lost Mutant children home.

But did Russell need that "home"?

He looked down at his hand.

His fingertips still held a faint memory of manipulating molecules that afternoon, of what it felt like to crush anything—or reshape it.

He looked at the quiet girl by the window, then at the girl on the sofa waiting for his answer.

"Yes." Russell nodded. "Let them come up."

When the elevator doors opened, the first thing Charles Xavier saw was the young man standing at the end of the hall.

He was even younger than Charles had imagined.

Eighteen, according to the file, but in person he looked younger still.

Pale skin, a high-bridged nose, and eyes as blue and vast as a starry sky. Something lay in those eyes, something Charles found both familiar and strange.

Magneto's arrogance? Wolverine's savagery? No, neither.

It was a third quality, one he had seen in neither man's Genes.

"Mr. Russell." Charles wheeled himself out of the elevator, wearing his trademark smile, so gentle it seemed incapable of threatening anyone.

"I'm Charles Xavier. I'm sorry to disturb your rest, but I do need to speak with you."

Russell leaned against the doorframe. He neither moved aside nor invited them in.

His gaze shifted from Charles to the two people behind him.

A young man wearing a Ruby-Quartz Visor and a tall woman with white hair. Cyclops and Storm, presumably—core members of the X-Men.

"You're later than I expected," Russell said.

Scott's brow twitched. Ororo's expression did not change, but she subtly adjusted her stance. It was not a fighting stance, merely a guarded one.

Charles was unperturbed. His smile even deepened a little. "We were delayed. An old friend gave us some trouble."

"Magneto," Russell supplied.

This time Charles was surprised. It flashed across his eyes before giving way to a deeper interest.

"You know more than I expected."

"I know much more than you think." Russell's voice rose sharply.

It was no bluff. It was the truth.

He had seen every X-Men film and read most of the comics. He knew what lay ahead for these people.

Charles's degenerative illness, Wolverine's death, the dark future in which Sentries nearly wiped out Mutants.

But he would not tell them any of that. At least, not now.

Silence lingered for a few seconds.

Charles grew serious. He set aside his social warmth and spoke more directly, more candidly.

"Russell, I know you escaped from that base. I know what you did in the slums, and how many people the military sent after you.

I'm not here to judge you, and I'm not here to capture you."

"Then why are you here?"

"To meet you." Charles's manner was gentle, his eyes smiling. "And to ask you something. Would you like to come to my school?"

The hallway fell silent for a moment.

Russell looked at the old man in the wheelchair.

Charles wore a neat gray-blue suit, with a blanket over his knees. His hair was cropped close, revealing faint veins beneath his scalp.

His eyes were bright with the light of someone who had seen much of the world and still believed in something.

Russell had seen that look in others—people life had not yet completely beaten down.

"Your school," Russell repeated flatly. "That charity for 'wayward Mutants'?"

"You could see it that way." Charles did not take offense. His voice remained steady. "But we prefer to call it a home."

"A home." Russell turned the word over as though hearing it for the first time.

He shifted aside, leaving half the doorway clear, and looked toward the girl by the window behind him.

Laura had risen. At some point, she had put away the fruit knife. Her hands hung at her sides, her steel claws still sheathed. She watched Charles with a look so complicated that it seemed she knew him.

Charles saw her, too.

His expression softened in an instant. It was not pity, but a deeper tenderness edged with guilt.

"Laura," Charles said softly. "I'm sorry, child. It took me so long to find you. I should have come sooner."

Laura said nothing.

Her fingers trembled slightly, but her face showed no expression.

She simply watched Charles like a young animal that had been hurt by humans since birth, seeing someone who did not raise a stick for the first time.

Felicity stood beside the sofa, twisting the hem of her shirt between her hands as her gaze moved between Russell and Charles.

She did not know the man in the wheelchair, but she had heard of this prominent Mutant. Meeting him for the first time, she found his presence gentle, like winter sunlight—never harsh, but warm.

Russell looked back at Charles.

"What does your school mainly teach?"

Charles's eyes brightened. "How to control your abilities without hurting anyone, and how to survive in a world that's afraid of us."

"And then?" Russell pressed. "What happens after graduation? Join the X-Men? Fight Magneto's Brotherhood? Protect people who call us monsters while expecting us to save them?"

The questions were pointed, but Charles did not dodge them. After a few seconds of silence, he asked, "Do you hate them? Ordinary people?"

Russell did not answer.

"Of course you do," Charles said for him. "You have every reason to. They locked you in a laboratory, experimented on you, and treated you like an object instead of a person.

Anyone who has endured that has reason to hate."

He paused, then spoke more softly. "But hatred is fuel. It can make you run fast, but it burns through everything in your engine. In the end, you may find you have nothing left but hate."

Russell looked at the old man. He knew Charles meant every word.

Charles Xavier had lived half a lifetime and seen people at their worst and at their best.

Ordinary people had hurt him, and ordinary people had helped him.

He had chosen the latter as the foundation of his faith. That was not naïveté, but clarity earned through hardship.

"I wouldn't call it hate." Russell thought for a moment before answering calmly. "I just don't care."

Would a player care whether an NPC lived or died?

Charles froze for a moment. He would have preferred to hear hatred from the boy standing before him.

Because sometimes indifference was more frightening than hate.

Then, as something occurred to him, Charles smiled. Not a polite, social smile, but a genuine one, carrying a measure of relief.

"You don't care," he repeated. "That's an answer I haven't heard before."

He rolled his wheelchair back half a step and looked up at Russell. Something new entered his gaze: not an assessment, but an earnestness close to admiration.

"Russell, your potential far exceeds what you can imagine right now." His voice was quiet, but every word was clear.

"I believe you know that you have three distinct Mutant Genes. They've reached a balance inside you unlike anything I've ever seen.

Your Mental Defense rose from level one to level two in less than a day. Your healing ability and control over Telekinesis are growing at an incredible rate.

If my senses are right, your potential exceeds both mine and Magneto's."

He said it as calmly as if he were reporting the weather.

Behind him, Scott and Ororo exchanged a look. They knew all too well what it meant for someone's potential to surpass the professor's and Magneto's.