Inside the office.
Watching Magneto get ready to rush out the door, Professor X let out a sigh. "Don't be hasty, Erik. What I mean is, once I switch to a hover wheelchair, we'll go together."
"You're going too?"
Erik looked at Professor X with open suspicion.
He missed the old days too, the days when he and his old friend fought side by side. But the enemy they were facing this time was no soft target he could crush at will. Psychic abilities would be of no use at all.
The Sentinels countered Professor X even more brutally than they countered him. Bringing Charles along really would not amount to dragging along dead weight?
"We're only going to look for clues. I know that place better than anyone, and with me there, the search will be much more efficient."
Professor X smiled faintly, then glanced at Fenris, who had just returned from Nick Fury's side. "More importantly, I'm curious how a living person could simply vanish over there. And if we run into Sentinel robots, I trust Fenris can send me back to the school ahead of time."
"As long as you don't mind me grabbing the wheelchair and tossing you back directly, I have no objection."
Fenris shrugged.
The Sentinels were indeed powerful, but not so powerful that he could not even protect Professor X.
"I have no objection. Just don't use too much force."
Professor X made a rare joke.
A moment later, under Professor X's guidance, Cyclops successfully pulled up the satellite images of the target location.
Fenris gave the photos a quick glance. With a casual wave of his hand, a huge dimensional portal opened.
"Ever since we got Fenris, the Blackbird gets deployed less and less."
Keeping close to Professor X's side, Cyclops followed behind Fenris and stepped through the dimensional portal, speaking with some feeling.
It had been a long time since he had flown the Blackbird.
Jean was still adjusting to her new powers and was not suited for intense combat. Wolverine, the moment he saw Magneto, had quietly retreated into the distance. Hank was busy researching those Sentinel robots. So Cyclops had naturally taken it upon himself to come along.
Besides, Scott's power was equally simple and direct: pure energy output. It was not easily countered by the Sentinels.
"Be careful. Don't let your guard down."
Fenris turned and warned them. Then he stepped forward first, passing directly from the school to a desolate island.
It lay in northern Canada, within the Arctic Circle, where the climate was harsh.
Looking out across the landscape, there was only emptiness in every direction. Even with Fenris's eyesight, he could only make out the faintest traces of human habitation far, far away.
"Our target is over there."
Professor X had already changed into a wheelchair capable of low-altitude hovering. After briefly orienting himself, he decisively lifted a hand and pointed toward a small rocky hill not far away. "That contact was last seen there."
"These people really were cautious, picking a place like this."
After taking in the surroundings, Magneto commented with a sigh. Then he turned his hand and gently lifted all four of them, carrying them toward the hill. "Could there be a hidden base underground here too?"
"I don't know. But this was probably just a concealed temporary foothold. I still can't figure out how Bolivar silenced that contact out here."
Professor X shook his head, equally puzzled.
Magneto's control was steady, and the four of them moved quickly. After only a few breaths, the full outline of the hill gradually came into view.
"This is…"
The sight before them made Professor X's expression change at once. "It wasn't like this before."
The climate here was brutally cold. Day after day, bitter winds eroded the mountain, and layers of ice built up over time, hardening the rock until it was incredibly solid.
But now, as if struck by some unknown force, the once-hardened hill had been almost completely blasted apart. Broken stones littered the ground in every direction.
The hill looked ready to collapse at any moment. From time to time, chunks of stone still tumbled down its slope, striking the ground with sharp, brittle cracks.
Fenris instinctively narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping across the area again and again. The devastation here stood in stark contrast to the surrounding landscape.
"Professor, our earlier guess may have been wrong."
The four of them landed lightly. Fenris strode forward, picked up a fragment of rock, and examined it for a moment in his hand. "This wasn't done by Sentinel robots, and it definitely wasn't the result of a military heavy-weapons strike. It looks much more like some kind of high-energy laser weapon directly destroyed the entire hill."
"And a weapon at that level is something the military's current technology simply could not produce."
"What do you mean?"
Leaving Scott to guard Professor X, Magneto walked over to Fenris. He stared at the broken stone for a while, but saw nothing meaningful in it.
"Before we came here, we all assumed that contact was betrayed by Bolivar after the Arctic base was exposed."
"But judging from what we see now, this probably wasn't Bolivar's doing. It looks more like another force got involved and intercepted the target before either we or Bolivar could reach him."
At that point, Fenris suddenly froze. The images he had glimpsed through Mothra abruptly surged back into his mind.
It was in the royal palace of Wakanda, when King T'Chaka had told his son T'Challa that Wakanda had recently captured a smuggling ring trafficking vibranium.
And meanwhile, the Sentinel robots were still being continuously refined. Based on the intelligence Magneto had previously obtained, Bolivar had clearly set his sights on vibranium, that miraculous metal, and was trying to replicate its properties in other materials.
But vibranium happened to be under Wakanda's strict control.
Clearly, driven by completely different motives, this group had drawn the attention of Bolivar, the mutants, and Wakanda all at once.
Wakanda had simply moved faster. Before anyone else could act, they had already taken those people back.
The effect of the strike was nothing like modern weaponry. And as for the advanced technology needed to cross half the globe in a short time to capture enemies, other than Wakanda, which had devoted itself to staying hidden, there was no one else on Earth at this stage who could do it.
Since the location of the main base was top secret, if this so-called contact was also one link in the vibranium smuggling chain, then the truth was already obvious.
"To conceal the existence of vibranium, they didn't hesitate to blast an entire mountain apart and erase every possible threat at the physical level…"
"No wonder it was Wakanda."
Fenris drew a deep breath. The lives or deaths of vibranium smugglers did not matter. But if they wanted to get that contact back, then a trip to Africa had become unavoidable.
"There's nothing else here worth seeing. Come on, let's go check the place where those smugglers disappeared."
"If I'm right, then the first enemy we have to face now may not be Bolivar at all."
Scott was still using his instruments to gather data from the area, while Magneto and Professor X stood deep in thought. Fenris glanced at them, waved a hand, and opened another dimensional portal, this one leading to a small island in the Pacific.
"We're leaving already?"
Scott stopped what he was doing and turned toward Fenris, puzzled. "The data collection isn't finished yet. Shouldn't we hand it over to Hank for analysis?"
"By the time Hank gets the results, that contact will already be dead."
Fenris stepped forward first and crossed through the dimensional portal.
"Scott, trust Fenris. We're going."
Magneto and Professor X exchanged a look, then followed without hesitation.
(End of Chapter)
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