The portal spat them out onto a hilltop cloaked in smoke and sirens.
Wind whipped Jean's red hair across her face as the earth beneath them trembled with distant detonations. The island below burned in pieces, gunfire, roaring powers, collapsing barricades.
Soren surveyed the battlefield.
"Too late for subtlety." Jean muttered beside him.
Professor X gasped suddenly. His eyes turned glassy, glowing faintly from within. "They're here. The Brotherhood's advance line is collapsing the southern perimeter."
"The army is... already overwhelmed."
Soren stepped forward into the wind, eyes scanning the base. "The Brotherhood hasn't breached the center yet. That gives me a window."
"Don't waste it." Jean said, reaching for his wrist.
Her fingers brushed his skin, a grounding touch in a world unraveling. "Get her out, Doctor…"
"And please come back to me."
He looked down at her hand, then up into her eyes.
"Always."
Then he vanished in a blink.
Inside Facility
The teleport dropped him into an abandoned corridor, stark white, pulsing with emergency lights.
Alarms screamed overhead, and the walls shook with the thump of distant combat.
Soren's mind reached outward like a net, filtering through thoughts, emotions, disturbances in psychic pressure.
There, a small presence buried in a locked basement level. Silent.
Like a radio that's been switched off.
He started moving.
Outside, the battle had gone from bad to biblical.
Magneto hovered above the burning ridge, arms wide as metal debris curled around him like a crown of knives.
"So Charles." He called out, voice booming over the field.
"You chose them over us again. You always were good at groveling for scraps."
Charles Xavier's stood firm, even as fire rained behind him. His expression was resolute. "You want a world that fears you because it has no choice. I want one that understands us."
"And that's why you're losing!" Magneto spat, then raised a hand. "End them."
A tidal wave of Mutants surged forward, some hulking and snarling, others wreathed in flame or shadow. Many bore scars from past purges, all were ready to die.
Hank, Logan, Ororo, and the others stepped up beside Charles without hesitation.
"Buy the doctor time!" Logan growled.
Jean closed her eyes, bracing herself as she reached into the minds surging forward, a thousand voices, twisted by fear and Magneto's rhetoric.
She slammed mental walls into their thoughts, staggered some, soothed others, all while praying Soren was still alive.
The corridor trembled under Soren's boots, each vibration stronger than the last. Dust trickled from the ceiling like falling ash, and the sterile white lights flickered in protest.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Soren slowed, hand instinctively curling into a spellcasting position. "That's not artillery."
The wall ahead exploded in a spray of steel and concrete.
A shape emerged from the smoke, massive, armored, and impossibly loud. As the dust cleared, the monster stepped forward.
"Tell me where the girl is!" Juggernaut growled. His voice was rough iron scraped over stone, and his eyes, half-shadowed under a dented helmet.
Soren tilted his head. "You?
"I thought someone without a sense of direction would be chasing tanks, not children."
Juggernaut snarled, cracking stone blocks together. "I don't need a reason to smash someone like you."
"You don't need a brain either, apparently."
Without warning, a pale violet circle ignited above Soren's palm, a glowing glyph woven from sigils.
Space magic pulsed outward, and in an instant, jagged chains of translucent energy lashed around Juggernaut, snapping shut with a clap of compressed gravity.
Juggernaut roared as the bindings held tight. "You think this, AHH! can hold me?! I tear through tanks like tissue!"
"And I bend dimensions." Soren replied coolly.
"So unless you've learned how to punch a singularity, I'd recommend shutting up."
Juggernaut's body ballooned, muscles bulging unnaturally as he fought the restraints. His helmet sparked as his shoulders twisted in rage.
But the spatial cage didn't creak, it pulsed tighter. Like a sealed vacuum.
Soren studied him with mild curiosity, like watching a bug bounce against glass. "You're strong."
"But you're not clever. That's why you lose."
With a flick of his fingers, a tear in reality opened beside Juggernaut, a swirling maw of endless black, laced with knifelike void currents.
A heartbeat later, Juggernaut vanished into it with a furious, echoing scream.
Then the rift sealed. The corridor went still.
"Enjoy the turbulence."
Moments Later
Soren phased through several sealed doors with warped steps, making sure no cameras or tracking tech could follow.
A delicate flick of his fingers distorted light and sound around him like a flowing cloak, a perfect shadow ward.
He appeared without warning inside a sterile chamber lit by cold fluorescent panels.
In the center of the room, strapped to a steel gurney, was the girl.
Maybe eight. Maybe ten. Her hair was matted in places, and the oversized white surgical gown hung from her like a curtain.
Her wrists were bruised from restraints. Tubes fed into her arms.
Her skin was far too pale.
She looked up and screamed.
Soren cursed under his breath and raised both hands.
"Whoa, hey! I'm not one of them."
The scream stopped, not because she believed him, but because her lungs had already run out of air.
꧁𓊈𒆜༺⚜༻𒆜𓊉꧂
PhantomDream