Chapter 13
POV: Jean Grey
Nothing could have prepared Jean for the horror that waited beneath New York City, buried deep within the suffocating labyrinth of tunnels where the Morlocks had once tried to build a life for themselves far away from the hatred of the surface world.
Corpses covered the ground so completely that there was nowhere left to step without crushing what remained of someone’s body beneath her boots. The narrow tunnels had become rivers of blood and ruin, the walls smeared black and red from gunfire and explosions, while the stench of death hung so thick in the air that every breath felt poisonous in her lungs.
Some of the Morlocks had been riddled with so many bullets that their bodies no longer looked human, their flesh torn apart into mangled masses of crimson meat and shattered bone. Others bore deep puncture wounds from spears that had impaled them through the chest or stomach and pinned them against the stone walls like butchered animals.
There were claw marks carved across faces and throats, great savage tears that looked like the work of predators playing with prey before the kill.
Some bodies had been crushed so violently that Jean struggled to understand what she was even looking at. Faces had been flattened into the concrete floor until teeth and bone protruded from the remains like broken porcelain. Limbs bent in impossible directions littered the tunnels. Tiny bodies lay among the adults, children who had never even been given the chance to understand why they were hated before someone came down into the darkness to murder them.
Jean’s stomach twisted violently, her chest tightening so painfully she thought for a moment she might suffocate.
This is wrong, her mind said numbly.
The thought repeated itself over and over in her mind with desperate insistence, as though saying it enough times might somehow undo what she was seeing.
This isn’t right. This cannot be real. People cannot do this to other people.
Yet the corpses remained.
“Blughrrk!”
Jean turned sharply at the sound and saw Kitty stumble against the wall before vomiting onto the bloodstained floor, her entire body shaking violently as tears streamed down her face.
“Are you okay, Kitty?” Scott asked quietly, though the restrained fury burning behind his visor was impossible to miss as his gaze swept over the massacre surrounding them.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Kitty whispered weakly, wiping her mouth with trembling hands before repeating herself again as if the words themselves might somehow force her body to believe them. “H-how… how can anyone do this? W-why would anyone do this?”
Jean wished she had an answer for her. Her mind kept searching desperately for some explanation that could make sense of the horror around them. There was none. No explanation could justify this. No ideology, no cause righteous enough to excuse slaughter on such a scale, no hatred, no fear could ever make this acceptable. Entire communities did not deserve extermination because they looked different. Children did not deserve to die screaming in the dark because humanity found them ugly.
Her breathing became uneven as wave after wave of emotion crashed through her mind, because her telepathy made it impossible to endure the horror alone. The terror and grief of everyone around her bled directly into her consciousness until she could barely separate her own emotions from theirs anymore.
Years of training under Professor Xavier had taught her how to maintain control over her formidable psychic powers even in moments of stress, yet none of that training had prepared her for this. Nothing could have prepared her for this.
Scott stood at the front of the group with rigid control, projecting calm leadership because that was what he believed the team needed from him, yet Jean could hear the screaming buried deep beneath the surface. Terror clawed at him as violently as everyone else. He was horrified by how utterly powerless they had arrived, horrified that they were already too late.
Alison’s trembling grew worse with every step forward, her eyes locked straight ahead because she could no longer bear to look down at the dead staring sightlessly up at her from the ground. Angel looked pale enough to collapse, her wings twitching uneasily behind her as guilt and nausea churned through her in suffocating waves. Rogue openly cried beside them, tears falling freely down her cheeks while part of her mind desperately tried to detach from reality because what she was seeing felt too monstrous to fully process.
Bobby looked sick to his stomach while Kurt quietly whispered prayers beneath his breath in German, each broken sentence filled with grief and disbelief. Even Piotr, whose enormous frame usually carried such strength and steadiness, felt hollowed out by disbelief.
Jean felt all of it, every ounce of fear and surge of grief. Every desperate attempt to understand how this could happen. An entire community had been forced to survive beneath the earth like forgotten vermin, hidden away from the world because of how they looked, and now they were being hunted through tunnels like animals while nobody came to save them.
No one deserves this.
The thought echoed through Jean’s mind again and again with growing desperation. It was as if her mind kept repeating the words because it could not comprehend the reality before her otherwise.
The adults handled the horror marginally better, though Jean could still feel the cracks spreading beneath their composure. Storm stood tall among them with regal stillness, her white hair unmoving despite the growing wind curling through the tunnels around her, though Jean could feel the fury raging beneath that fragile control like a storm waiting to break apart the heavens themselves. Dr.McCoy fared no better. He looked at the dead and saw every failure of the professor’s dream laid bare across the blood soaked tunnels.
Strangely enough, Logan remained the calmest among them.
Jean could still sense anger within him, though it lacked the shocked horror consuming the others. Wolverine looked upon this massacre with the eyes of a man who had seen too many battlefields already. The tragedy sickened him, yet it did not surprise him.
Then suddenly a scream pierced through her mind.
“Callisto, help us!”
Jean staggered violently as raw terror exploded across her consciousness. The psychic cry carried such overwhelming desperation that for one horrible instant Jean felt herself drowning in the sender’s fear.
“What’s wrong, Jean?” Storm asked immediately, her sharp eyes catching the sudden change in her expression.
“I heard someone calling for help,” Jean said urgently, already moving toward the source of the psychic scream. “There are survivors still alive, but we have to move quickly.”
Nobody hesitated. They ran after her immediately while Jean followed the fading psychic call through the endless maze of tunnels twisting beneath the city. The screams in her mind grew weaker with every passing second, and panic clawed violently through her chest as she pushed herself faster.
No.
Please no.
Please don’t let us be too late.
She did not even know who she was praying to anymore as they raced through darkness and smoke and the lingering scent of blood.
After several agonizing minutes they burst into a massive underground chamber filled with chaos.
Gunfire thundered through the cavern in deafening bursts while terrified Morlocks fled in every direction, screaming as bullets tore through the air around them and jagged spears crashed against stone walls with explosive force. Mothers dragged injured children through the mud while others desperately carried the wounded across their shoulders despite their own bleeding injuries. Several Morlocks collapsed mid run as bullets ripped through their backs, and their bodies vanished beneath the stampede of panicked survivors trying desperately to escape slaughter.
Smoke and dust filled the chamber, illuminated by flickering fires that cast monstrous shadows across walls slick with blood. Jean saw one Morlock collapse while shielding a child with his body, bullets tearing through both of them at once.
Jean’s stomach twisted at the sight.
Near the center of the chamber stood a dark haired woman wearing an eyepatch who fought with savage determination against a group of heavily armed attackers, throwing herself into impossible odds simply to buy the others time to flee.
“Everyone run!” the woman shouted desperately. “Don’t ever stop! Run in groups and protect each other! Carry those who cannot run!”
“You must be Callisto, huh?” one of the attackers called mockingly while firing his weapon casually into the fleeing crowd. The man wore metallic armor and smiled with sadistic amusement as people died around him. “You must be the leader of this tribe of losers down here. Trying to sacrifice yourself so these filthy creatures can escape instead of saving yourself. That’s admirable in a pathetic sort of way.”
“Shut up, you bastard!” Callisto screamed. “I’ll kill you even if it’s the last thing I do!”
The man laughed. A fresh storm of bullets erupted toward the fleeing Morlocks.
Jean moved instantly.
Without hesitation she thrust both hands forward and unleashed her telekinesis across the chamber, erecting a massive psychic barrier between the attackers and the panicked civilians. Hundreds of bullets slammed into the invisible wall with explosive force before dropping harmlessly to the ground in glittering piles of metal. The impact nearly drove her to her knees.
Pain exploded through Jean’s skull as she struggled to maintain the barrier under the relentless storm of gunfire. Holding back that many projectiles simultaneously required an enormous amount of concentration and power, far beyond anything she had attempted even within the Danger Room.
Stopping individual bullets would have required reflexes beyond even her current abilities because they moved far too quickly for precise telekinetic control in such overwhelming numbers. The barrier was the only option available to her, though maintaining something so large and durable against continuous automatic fire strained her body far beyond anything she had ever attempted before.
Sweat poured down her face immediately.
Her hands trembled violently.
Still she held the line.
Scott reacted immediately beside her, unleashing powerful optic blasts that vaporized incoming spears and sent one of the attackers flying backward into the cavern wall. The remaining Marauders paused briefly at the sudden resistance, giving Jean a precious second to breathe while the rest of the X Men rushed forward to stand beside her and Callisto.
“Who are you people?” Callisto demanded breathlessly, staring at them in shock.
“We’re the X Men,” Scott answered quickly. “And we’re here to help.”
“Hmm?” The armored man tilted his head slightly while examining them with open disdain. “You people definitely aren’t Morlocks. You all look far too pretty to belong with these sewer rats.”
“Who the hell are you?” Storm demanded furiously as wind began spiraling violently through the chamber around her.
“I’m Greycrow,” the armored man said with a grin. “My colleagues are Vertigo, Archlight, Harpoon, Blockbuster, Scrambler and Riptide. We’re the Marauders, and we’re here to kill mutants. Nothing personal, sweetheart. We’re professionals.”
Silence followed his words for half a heartbeat.
Jean felt something inside her fracture.
Thousands of people had been butchered beneath the city, entire families slaughtered like livestock, children hunted through tunnels and executed where they fell, and this monster spoke about it with the casual indifference of a man discussing a business transaction.
No hard feelings…
The sheer monstrosity of it flooded Jean with such overwhelming rage that her psychic control nearly shattered completely. Power surged violently beneath her skin while fury and grief crashed together inside her mind with devastating force.
She reached instinctively for Greycrow’s thoughts, intending to shut down his mind before another innocent could die. And hit a wall.
Jean recoiled instantly in shock. Something blocked her telepathy completely. It felt unnatural, alien, similar to the impossible resistance she had encountered when she tried entering Adonai’s mind.
“Oh?” Greycrow grinned wider as he noticed her reaction. “Well now, looks like we’ve got another psychic here, and a powerful one too. Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart, but you won’t be getting inside our heads. We’ve got the best mutant power expert in the business backing us up.”
Then the chamber exploded into violence once more as the Marauders opened fire again from every direction.
Jean cried out from the strain as she reinforced her telekinetic barrier, holding back another devastating storm of bullets while chaos consumed the tunnels around them.
The chamber exploded into chaos so suddenly that Jean barely had time to process what was happening before another wave of violence descended upon them. Gunfire and screams and collapsing stone blended together into one endless roar of violence that battered against her senses from every direction while she struggled desperately to maintain the massive telekinetic barrier protecting the fleeing Morlocks.
Then the woman known as Vertigo attacked. Jean felt the psionic distortion hit them like a tidal wave crashing directly into her nervous system, and suddenly the entire world lurched sideways with horrifying force as the ground beneath her feet lost all solidity and transformed into something fluid and unstable, as though the cavern floor had become a violent ocean tossing her helplessly through invisible waves.
The chamber twisted grotesquely around her.
Jean staggered violently as her equilibrium shattered completely, while the cavern walls warped and bent around her in impossible directions that made her stomach twist painfully. It felt as though she had been thrown into the center of a hurricane while the earth rolled beneath her like storm driven ocean water, and every instinct inside her screamed that she was falling despite the fact that her feet still touched solid ground.
Her telekinetic barrier flickered dangerously.
“What’s happening?” Rogue gasped while clutching her head in visible pain. “Ah can’t see or think straight!”
Vertigo stood several meters away with a cruel smile spreading across her face while swirling waves of psionic distortion pulsed outward from her body in visible ripples that distorted the air itself.
“Do you like it?” Vertigo laughed softly. “I always enjoy watching people try to stand while their minds convince them the world is drowning.”
Jean nearly lost control of her telekinetic barrier as another wave of nausea crashed through her nervous system, and panic seized her chest at the realization that if she lost concentration for even a second hundreds of bullets would tear through the Morlocks fleeing behind her.
No!
She could not fail. Not here. Not now.
Through the violent dizziness clouding her senses, Jean suddenly felt Kurt’s focus sharpen with sudden clarity. Unlike the others, Nightcrawler adapted quickly, because years of teleporting through impossible spatial disorientation had prepared him better than most for sensory chaos.
Kurt vanished in a burst of sulfur and blue smoke before reappearing directly behind Vertigo with astonishing precision despite the distortion assaulting all of their senses.
“You’re very good at dishing out misery, fraulein,” Kurt said grimly as he wrapped both arms around her waist. “Let’s see how well you take it.”
Vertigo barely had time to react before Kurt teleported again.
And again. And again.
Blue smoke exploded repeatedly across the battlefield while Kurt dragged the screaming Marauder through a relentless barrage of teleports that sent both of them ricocheting wildly throughout the cavern. Jean caught fragmented glimpses of them appearing high above the chamber floor before vanishing again instantly, only to reappear upside down against distant tunnel walls or balanced momentarily atop crumbling support beams before another teleport hurled them elsewhere.
The psychic distortion abruptly weakened.
The world stabilized enough for Jean to breathe again.
“Babe, you’re pushing yourself too much,” Greycrow mocked while continuing to unleash a relentless storm of bullets against Jean’s barrier. “I wonder how long you can keep holding that shield of yours together.”
Jean glared at him furiously while sweat poured down her face from the immense strain of maintaining the barrier.
“This is all a joke to you, isn’t it?” she demanded angrily while another barrage of bullets slammed against her telekinetic shield hard enough to send pain stabbing through her skull.
Greycrow grinned wider.
“Nope,” he replied casually while mechanical components shifted and assembled themselves across his armored vest, transforming into entirely new firearms directly in his hands. “I’m a serious man engaged in serious business, and I never joke with people who are about to die.”
Fresh weapons formed from shifting metal across his body before immediately opening fire again.
Jean gritted her teeth as hundreds of rounds crashed against her shield simultaneously.
Then another voice echoed through the battlefield.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” a cultured voice announced theatrically. “I am a man of skill and grace. Riptide by name.”
A horrifying spinning sound erupted nearby.
Jean turned just in time to see Riptide begin rotating at monstrous speed, his entire body becoming a blur while razor sharp bone projectiles erupted from his spinning arms like living shrapnel. The calcium spikes screamed through the air at nearly subsonic velocity, tearing through the cavern hard enough to punch directly through solid stone.
Piotr stepped directly into their path. The razor sharp projectiles slammed against Colossus’s armored steel body in showers of sparks.
“Your attacks are meaningless,” Piotr growled before charging forward.
Riptide laughed madly while spinning faster, creating a violent vacuum that dragged loose debris and corpses across the chamber floor toward him. Bone shuriken erupted endlessly from his body like a storm of knives while Colossus forced his way through the barrage with relentless determination.
Meanwhile Storm lifted both hands toward the ceiling as wind began spiraling violently throughout the cavern. Lightning illuminated the chamber in blinding flashes while hurricane force currents gathered overhead.
Then a hand touched her shoulder and Storm froze instantly.
Jean felt the disruption spread through Ororo’s body like poison.
The Lightning vanished and the winds died with it. Storm collapsed to one knee, her muscles refusing to obey her commands while horror filled her expression.
“Why are you doing this?” Storm demanded shakily.
The man standing beside her smiled coldly.
“An’ we got a philosophy,” Scrambler replied casually. “The only good mutant is a dead mutant. Unless it’s us, of course. An’ it’s our job to rid this world of your filth, and we take pride in doing it real well.”
Jean sensed immediately that Storm’s nervous system had been completely disrupted by his touch. Scrambler raised his weapon toward Storm’s helpless form.
Jean reacted instantly. Even while maintaining the barrier protecting the Morlocks, she reached out telekinetically and yanked Storm violently backward across the battlefield moments before gunfire tore through the space where she had fallen.
“Thank you,” Storm whispered weakly, still unable to move properly.
Rogue attacked Scrambler immediately afterward, slamming into him with enough force to crack the concrete beneath their feet.
“You wanna touch somebody so badly?” Rogue snapped while driving her fist directly into his jaw. “Try me!”
Scrambler grabbed her arm instinctively. But unlike how he paralysed Storm, nothing happened. Both of them froze briefly in surprise. Rogue’s absorption powers failed to affect him, while Scrambler’s disruptive touch failed to neutralize her abilities.
“Aw hell,” Rogue muttered before punching him directly across the jaw.
The fight instantly devolved into brutal hand to hand combat. Scrambler fought viciously and skillfully, though Rogue possessed strength enhanced by the overwhelming physical power she had previously absorbed from Adonai. Every punch she landed sent shockwaves through Scrambler’s body until blood sprayed from his mouth.
“You picked the wrong damn day,” Rogue growled before slamming him bodily into a concrete wall hard enough to crater the stone inward.
Nearby Logan collided violently with Arclight. The impact alone shattered the ground beneath them.
Archlight struck Logan across the chest with glowing hands that unleashed devastating vibrational shockwaves powerful enough to pulverize nearby stone pillars instantly. The cavern shook violently from every blow she unleashed, while her monstrous strength allowed her to hurl Logan across the battlefield repeatedly.
Jean watched him rise from shattered rubble with blood covering his face while his adamantium claws extended slowly from his fists.
Arclight charged him again with another shockwave exploding from her glowing fists. Logan moved underneath it. Then the screaming started.
His claws flashed with terrifying quickness as he carved through Arclight’s limbs in seconds, severing tendons and muscle brutally until both her arms and legs hit the ground separately from the rest of her body.
Arclight collapsed screaming into the blood soaked concrete while Logan stood above her breathing heavily, his claws dripping crimson.
Scott meanwhile fought Harpoon across the far side of the chamber. Harpoon hurled glowing spears charged with volatile bio energy that exploded violently against every surface they touched, each impact capable of vaporizing chunks of stone instantly.
Scott never allowed him close. Optic blasts hammered relentlessly across the battlefield, forcing Harpoon backward repeatedly until one devastating blast struck him directly in the chest and launched him entirely across the cavern.
Harpoon crashed headfirst into the wall hard enough to leave a crater before collapsing unconscious.
Above the battlefield Alison and Angel Salvadore fought Blockbuster together.
Blockbuster tore through the battlefield like a living tank, shrugging off Alison’s dazzling light bursts while swinging enormous fists capable of crushing stone.
Angel flew above him on rapidly beating insect wings while firing explosive streams of corrosive saliva downward in rapid succession. Each blast exploded against Blockbuster’s skin with bursts of acid and flame while Alison blinded him repeatedly with concentrated flashes of brilliant light.
“You little freaks!” Blockbuster roared furiously while swiping wildly at Angel.
Alison seized the opening instantly. A concentrated light blast struck Blockbuster directly across the eyes while Angel’s explosive projectiles detonated against his face simultaneously.
The enormous Marauder staggered backward blindly before collapsing beneath falling debris from the damaged cavern ceiling.
Jean barely had time to register any of it before agony exploded inside her mind. A cold alien presence slammed violently against her consciousness.
Malice. She knew the name of the thing inside her mind instinctively. Jean gasped as the psychic entity forced its way into her mind like poison flooding through her thoughts.
Oh dear, such grief… such rage... so many dead children... You can feel every single one of them, can’t you Jean?
~ Look at them, darling ~
The voice slithered through Jean’s consciousness with malicious delight.
~ Look at all the corpses around you ~
~ They died screaming ~
~ You were too weak to save them~
Jean’s breathing became ragged as Malice flooded her thoughts with images of mutilated Morlocks and terrified dying children buried beneath endless psychic anguish.
~ You failed them ~
~ You were too weak to save them. ~
Jean saw the dead again through Malice’s assault, except this time the images no longer came as distant memories or fragmented glimpses caught at the corner of her consciousness. Malice forced her to experience every horror as though Jean herself stood among the dying Morlocks during every second of the massacre.
She saw children crawling desperately through blood soaked tunnels while gunfire tore apart the adults trying to shield them with their own bodies. She felt their terror so vividly through her telepathy that her lungs tightened painfully with secondhand panic.
She saw shattered corpses piled against sewer walls with their faces frozen forever in expressions of disbelief and agony, while rivers of blood flowed through the uneven stone floor beneath them like crimson streams carrying away the remnants of entire lives that nobody above the city would ever know had existed.
Malice laughed softly within her mind while forcing the images deeper and deeper into Jean’s consciousness until the horrors became impossible to separate from reality itself.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Malice whispered with cruel delight. “All that fear clawing at your mind. You can hear them screaming even now, Jean Grey, because they died terrified and helpless while you arrived too late to save them.”
Jean trembled violently as the psychic voice slithered through every corner of her mind like venom, and her control over her immense powers began to strain beneath the overwhelming pressure building inside her consciousness. Around her the cavern lights flickered erratically as telekinetic energy leaked unconsciously from her body, while cracks spread across the stone floor beneath her boots with sharp explosive sounds.
“You should have heard them beg for mercy like the vermin they are,” Malice continued mockingly while another wave of horrific images flooded Jean’s mind. “Children crying for their mothers while bullets tore through them. Families trying to hide together before the Marauders dragged them out screaming. They died afraid, Jean, and now you are drowning in their fear because deep down you know this is your fault.”
Jean gasped sharply as another surge of emotion ripped through her mind, because her telepathy made it impossible to shield herself completely from the lingering psychic residue left behind by so much suffering and death. The terror of the Morlocks still echoed faintly throughout the tunnels around them, lingering like ghosts pressed into the stone itself, and every scream Malice forced her to relive pushed Jean closer toward losing control entirely.
Her breathing became uneven while psychic energy flared visibly around her body in violent crimson waves.
Scott shouted something nearby, though his voice sounded distant and distorted beneath the roar of emotion consuming her thoughts. She could feel the concern radiating from her teammates, their fear growing sharper as her power spiraled dangerously higher with every passing second.
Then Malice struck harder.
Jean suddenly saw herself standing among the corpses. Except this time every dead Morlock opened their eyes simultaneously and stared directly at her accusingingly.
Why didn’t you save us?
The psychic scream hit Jean with such force that she nearly collapsed.
“You failed them,” Malice hissed triumphantly. “You failed every single one of them, and now your power is slipping because you know I’m right. You’re terrified that one day your emotions will overwhelm you completely, and when that happens you will destroy everyone around you just like you always feared you would.”
Jean’s hands clenched violently as memories of the professor's warnings flashed through her mind. For years she had feared the terrible potential sleeping inside her own psychic abilities, feared what might happen if grief and rage ever shattered the fragile restraints she kept around her immense power.
The cavern shook around her. Chunks of stone ripped themselves free from the walls and floated upward uncontrollably as telekinetic force radiated outward in unstable waves. Nearby water pipes burst apart beneath the pressure, spraying freezing water across the battlefield while loose weapons and debris began lifting into the air around her.
Yet beneath the grief consuming her and beneath the fear Malice desperately tried to provoke, another emotion slowly emerged from the depths of Jean’s mind.
Rage. Pure incandescent rage.
“Fuck off, bitch!” Jean screamed.
Her psychic power erupted outward like a supernova. Malice shrieked in absolute terror as Jean’s mind blasted against her with overwhelming force far beyond anything the Marauder expected. The psychic entity was ripped violently out of Jean’s consciousness and hurled screaming across the astral plane.
Jean could still hear Malice’s terrified cries fading into the distance. For several seconds the battlefield fell silent except for distant screams and collapsing debris.
Then Piotr roared.
Jean turned just in time to witness Colossus finally overpower Riptide completely. The spinning Marauder tried to break free, though Piotr grabbed him by the throat with both massive steel hands before twisting violently.
The snap of Riptide’s neck echoed loudly throughout the cavern.
Jean froze briefly in shock.
Piotr Rasputin, perhaps the gentlest person she had ever known, killed someone. For one fleeting moment she saw horror flicker through Colossus’ expression as he stared down at the corpse, though Jean could not bring herself to condemn him after witnessing the slaughter surrounding them.
Riptide had earned his death a thousand times over.
One by one the remaining Marauders fell until only Greycrow remained standing.
The X-men surrounded him slowly through the wreckage of the battlefield while Morlock survivors watched fearfully from behind shattered barricades.
Greycrow glanced around at his defeated comrades and for the first time since the battle began, the Marauder finally stopped smiling.
A sudden rustling sound echoed through the cavern, and Jean’s head snapped instantly toward the source just in time to see Harpoon dragging himself upright from the shattered crater where Scott’s optic blast had thrown him earlier.
Blood streamed down the side of his face while chunks of broken stone slid from his body, though the murderous hatred burning in his eyes remained completely undiminished. His trembling hands closed around another long spear lying nearby, and almost immediately bio energy began crackling violently across its surface in unstable waves of glowing light.
Jean felt the danger instantly. The surviving Morlocks behind them had barely begun recovering from the massacre, many of them wounded and unable to flee again if another attack came.
Harpoon grinned viciously through blood stained teeth while pulling his arm backward to throw.
“You freaks should’ve stayed outta this,” he snarled hatefully.
Jean reacted on instinct.
Telekinetic force surged toward him while Scott simultaneously shifted his visor upward for another optic blast, yet before either of them could strike, something suddenly tore through the air with terrifying speed.
A javelin. The weapon moved so fast that Jean barely registered its existence before it punched cleanly through Harpoon’s throat with a sickening crack.
For one frozen moment Harpoon remained standing.
His eyes widened in shock while the glowing spear slipped uselessly from his fingers, and then blood erupted violently from his ruined neck as the force of the impact lifted him partially off the ground before hurling him backward into the wall hard enough to fracture the stone behind him.
The energized spear in his hand flickered once and then died. Harpoon collapsed lifelessly onto the blood soaked ground with the javelin still protruding completely through his throat.
The X-men turned immediately toward the direction the weapon had come from. Standing at the entrance of the cavern was Adonai Ezra looking positively furious.
There was no trace left of the composed calmness Jean had previously associated with him. Rage and bloodlust radiated visibly from every inch of him like heat from an open flame. His green eyes burned with such cold fury that even the surviving Marauders nearby seemed momentarily frozen by his presence alone.
Beside him stood the two strange alien boys, both of them staring silently at the carnage surrounding them with expressions filled with horror. Looming behind the group stalked the gigantic deerlike creature, though calling it a deer felt inaccurate when standing this close to it. The massive beast towered nearly as large as an elephant with enormous antlers spreading outward like the branches of some ancient forest god.
The creature snorted heavily while its massive hooves cracked the stone floor beneath its weight.
Jean felt an overwhelming wave of relief flood through her chest at the sight of Adonai standing there alive.
…
POV: Adonai
“Is everyone alright?” Adonai asked absentmindedly while his eyes swept carefully across the devastated cavern, quickly examining the surviving X-men and the shattered remnants of the Morlock community gathered throughout the chamber.
The situation was as bad as he expected. Bodies still littered the tunnels in grotesque piles while blood flowed through the cracks in the stone floor like narrow rivers, and the survivors who remained alive looked like ghosts barely clinging to reality after witnessing the annihilation of everyone they had ever known.
Every single Marauder had been defeated, Adonai noted with mild surprise, although from what he could sense only two of them had actually died. He would change that soon enough.
Before he could think further about it, Artie and Leech - who had been healed perfectly now- rushed past him toward the surviving Morlocks, both boys visibly overwhelmed with relief and grief as they threw themselves into the arms of weeping survivors. Several Morlocks immediately broke down crying the moment they saw the children alive, their exhausted minds barely able to process even the smallest fragment of hope after enduring so much horror.
“Callisto, are you okay?” Leech asked in broken English while clutching tightly onto the woman’s arm.
The woman in question was leaning heavily against a nearby wall for support alongside several others and was very clearly far from alright.
“I’m fine, Leech, Artie,” Calisto replied with visible relief before pulling both of them into a fierce embrace. “I’m glad you’re both okay.”
“Look, Callisto,” Leech said excitedly while pointing toward Adonai and the gigantic deerlike creature standing behind him. “Mr. Adonai’s big deer healed me and he promised me he will heal anyone who needs it. Can you heal them all, Adonai?”
Calisto looked at him skeptically before her eyes shifted toward the giant deer standing behind him, and Adonai could sense the fear and uncertainty radiating from her, which was understandable in his opinion. One hardly expected to encounter a gigantic deer in the depths of underground tunnels.
“Who are you?” Calisto asked calmly despite her heavy breathing.
“My name is Adonai,” he introduced himself in an even tone. “And I am with the X-Men. Like Leech said, the deer behind me possesses the ability to heal any kind of injury, although it can only heal three people at most simultaneously. It would be best if you gathered the most critically injured first so we can begin the healing immediately.”
The Morlocks stared at him incomprehensibly as though he had begun speaking complete nonsense, which was admittedly understandable, Adonai thought dryly. One hardly expected a deer to possess healing powers in a normal world, although this was hardly a normal world to begin with.
Adonai found the reaction mildly amusing despite the circumstances, because although mutants existed openly within this world, the idea of an enormous healing deer apparently stretched beyond even their capacity for absurdity.
However, Calisto quickly forced herself out of her shock and, whether due to desperation, hope, or simply because he sounded convincing enough, she immediately began issuing orders for the most severely wounded Morlocks to be brought forward.
Adonai then mentally transmitted commands to his giant Nen beast, and the enormous creature quickly began healing three Morlocks at a time.
As the wounds slowly disappeared before their eyes, flesh mending itself seamlessly while shattered bones reformed and blood vanished as though it had never been spilled at all, the Morlocks froze completely. Shock overtook every expression around him. Some stared with mouths slightly open while others trembled violently as though their minds could not properly process what they were witnessing.
A few even instinctively stepped backward despite themselves, their eyes widening with fearful reverence. It was the sort of expression one would expect from starving peasants witnessing divine intervention descending from the heavens. For people who had spent their entire lives suffering, hiding, bleeding, and surviving in filth beneath the world above, the sight of impossible healing unfolding before them looked like a miracle.
They looked at him as though he were some divine savior or messiah, and Adonai found that strangely uncomfortable.
He turned his attention toward the X-Men, who were staring at him with equal astonishment written plainly across their faces. Only then did he remember that he had completely forgotten to mention that he had created the giant deer. In fairness to him, there had hardly been an opportunity to explain it earlier. Now that he thought about it, perhaps he could offer to heal Professor Xavier’s spine as well.
He walked toward them slowly while many of the Morlocks watched him with expressions bordering on religious devotion, some even trying to reach toward him as though touching him might somehow bless them. Adonai carefully maneuvered around them all. Truthfully, he did not believe he had done anything deserving of such overwhelming reverence.
His eyes drifted toward the indigenous-looking man clad entirely in metal armor with a gun still clutched in his hand, frozen solid within a prison of ice. Bobby must have immobilized him with his powers, Adonai concluded. His gaze then shifted toward the X-Men themselves, who were still wearing their rather ridiculous costumes, although what surprised him most, despite the fact he should have expected it, was the look within their eyes.
They still looked shaken to their core, as though their minds had not fully returned to reality after what they had just witnessed. Their expressions carried the hollow instability of soldiers who had survived a battlefield massacre only for their minds to remain trapped within it long after the fighting ended. Their gazes wandered slightly unfocused at times while their bodies remained tense even in stillness, every distant sound making them subtly flinch.
They looked as though some invisible part of them had fractured permanently after witnessing human beings butchered like animals right in front of them. The younger members especially looked profoundly disturbed, their faces pale and emotionally numb in the way people became when the sheer scale of suffering exceeded what the human mind was prepared to process.
Adonai felt genuine pity for them.
They were only teenagers. Children, really. Children who had been dragged into endless violence and horror merely because of a single gene that made them different from everyone else. Seeing that trauma lingering within their eyes only strengthened Adonai’s resolve to finally do something about the state of the world.
He had always considered himself a deeply self indulgent person whose priorities revolved primarily around pleasure, comfort, and avoiding unnecessary burdens. People suffering somewhere far away had never disturbed his sleep before arriving in this world, and if he remained completely honest with himself, even now he still possessed no grand heroic ideals driving his actions.
However his very nature can not allow for this to exist. He enjoyed pleasure, beauty, comfort, laughter, and peace far too much to tolerate a world overflowing with ugliness and suffering. Seeing such hollow devastation on faces that should have been lively and youthful was deeply unpleasant to him on an almost instinctive level.
It irritated him in the same way seeing something beautiful broken apart unnecessarily irritated him. He did not want to witness expressions like that ever again if he could help it.
Rogue suddenly leapt toward him and hugged him tightly enough that he could immediately tell she had been crying.
“Why do you have claw marks on your clothes?” Rogue asked with clear concern in her voice.
“A rabid dog attacked me,” he replied calmly. “I’m fine, so don’t worry. Is everyone here alright?”
Jean hugged him next with equal forcefulness and he returned the embrace gently, immediately noticing the faint trembling still running through her body.
Poor thing. With her psychic powers, she had probably felt every ounce of suffering the Morlocks experienced as vividly as though it had happened to her personally, he thought as he gently caressed her hair.
“We’re fine,” Scott answered while still staring at the giant deer healing people with visible awe. “We dealt with the Marauders here.”
“Is that man one of them?” Adonai asked while pointing toward the armored man. He could not remember the man’s name from the comics. The Marauders had always been little more than third-rate villains in his opinion, and none of them had been memorable enough for him to remember aside from Sabertooth.
“Yep, the name’s Greycrow,” the man himself replied with a smirk despite being frozen in ice. “From the claw marks on your clothes, I’m guessing you fought Sabertooth, didn’t you? I’m surprised you managed to come out alive. Though Sabertooth is one of the few people you would rather die to than escape from. He’ll make your life a living hell from now on.”
Logan visibly stiffened at those words and immediately glanced toward the higher tunnels as though Sabertooth might emerge at any moment.
“That will be rather difficult, I imagine,” Adonai replied calmly. “He’s probably burning in hell as we speak.”
Utter shock spread across the area immediately. Logan looked completely stunned while even Greycrow stared at him in disbelief.
“Seriously?!” Greycrow cried out in astonishment. “You actually managed to kill Sabertooth?!”
“Oh?” Adonai replied with a hidden grin slowly spreading across his face. “It appears you cared about him somewhat. Don’t worry. You will be joining him within the next few seconds.”
“Really? You’re going to kill me? In front of your dear friends?” Greycrow mocked, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth as he forced a crooked grin onto his face.
“You see,” Adonai began calmly, “all my life, I’ve lived by the belief that only the present truly matters. The past can’t be changed, so I never saw any reason to chain myself to it. And the future is invisible, and forever beyond anyone’s grasp. So I immersed myself completely in the moment, indulging in whatever life placed before me without plans, without restraint, without concern for what came after.”
“A fascinating story, kid,” Greycrow said dryly. “But I fail to see why you’re telling me this.”
“The reason I’m telling you this,” Adonai replied, “is because that belief shaped every part of who I am. I was born to Christian parents, but I could never accept their understanding of justice. My father used to tell me that evil people would suffer in hell after death, and that divine judgment would eventually punish every cruelty ever committed. But even as a child, I kept asking myself the same question over and over again. What comfort is there in punishment that happens somewhere beyond reach, after everything is already over? What meaning does justice hold if the victims can never witness it for themselves?
“Where is the justice in suffering delayed to some distant eternity? To me, justice only has value if it exists here, in this world, in the present where people can see it with their own eyes. Evil should answer for itself in the same reality where it was committed. Otherwise the punishment means nothing.”
Greycrow’s smirk faded at once as realization spread across his face, and around him the surviving Marauders stiffened in visible alarm. Even the X-Men looked toward Adonai with growing unease as they sensed the shift in his tone.
Adonai slowly raised one hand. “With this treasure, I summon the Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga.”
The cavern trembled violently. A monstrous wheel rotated behind him with a metallic scream that reverberated through the stone itself, and from the shadows emerged the towering abomination, its grotesque smile carved permanently into its face like the expression of a god that had forgotten mercy long ago.
Several Morlocks recoiled in terror.
Even the X-Men stared at the creature uneasily.
Adonai calmly pointed toward Archlight’s mutilated body lying several meters away, screaming weakly through blood and agony.
“Bring her to me.”
Mahoraga obeyed instantly. The creature grabbed Archlight by what remained of her torso and dragged her across the cavern floor while she shrieked in pain and terror.
“Adonai, what are you doing?” Storm asked, unable to hide the worry in her voice.
“When I fought Sabretooth,” Adonai said calmly as he walked toward the center of the cavern, “he revealed something interesting. He told me this massacre was orchestrated by a single individual. A mutant geneticist called Mister Sinister. According to him, Sinister wanted the Morlocks exterminated, and he commissioned the Marauders to carry out his will.”
“That’s bullshit!” Greycrow shouted immediately, panic breaking through his voice. “Sabretooth would never tell you that!”
“You would be surprised what people are willing to say when survival becomes uncertain,” Adonai said as he smiled faintly. “He also revealed another detail I found particularly important. Mister Sinister possesses advanced cloning technology. So I started thinking. Even if all of you die tonight, what stops him from digging up your corpses tomorrow, extracting your DNA, and simply recreating you to continue doing his work over and over again?”
Silence spread throughout the cavern. The surviving Morlocks stared in horror while several X-Men visibly tensed at the implication.
Mahoraga dropped Archlight before Adonai’s feet.
The reason Adonai was even bothering with this entire theatrical display at all was because, now that he had finally decided to do something about the miserable state of the world, he intended to do it properly. He had no intention of leaving loose ends behind simply because dealing with them was inconvenient.
Killing the Marauders might not amount to much in the grand scheme of things, and their deaths alone would hardly change the world, yet this incident had confirmed something important to him.
There were people like Sinister lurking in the shadows whose existence revolved entirely around ruining the lives of others for amusement, obsession, or ambition. Men like that spread suffering endlessly simply because nobody removed them quickly enough.
If Adonai was truly going to involve himself in the affairs of this insane world from now on, then he intended to reduce the number of pieces such lunatics possessed as much as possible before the game even properly began.
“What are you going to do to me?” Archlight screamed, trembling violently as blood pooled beneath her. “You fucking freak!”
Adonai reached into his pocket, removed a cigarette, and lit it calmly while staring down at her.
“I’m tying up loose ends,” he said coldly. “The only way to make sure Mister Sinister can’t clone you… is to leave him nothing to clone.”
Jean’s eyes widened in horror. “You’re going to burn her alive?”
“That’s the only way to guarantee this cycle ends permanently,” Adonai replied without hesitation.
He flicked the lighter toward Archlight. The small flame spun through the air.
Then suddenly it stopped. The lighter froze midair as though caught by invisible fingers before slowly rising upward toward the ceiling.
“Well spoken,” a deep voice declared from above, aged, commanding, and impossibly composed. “Yet such decisions should never fall upon the shoulders of children.”
Everyone looked upward. Floating above the cavern floor stood a tall imposing man clad in crimson and purple armor, his heavy cloak flowing behind him like the banner of a conquering king. Upon his head rested the iconic helmet recognized even by those unfamiliar with mutant affairs - Erik Lehnsherr.
Behind him stood several mutants. Among them was a blue-skinned woman with cold yellow eyes, alongside others Adonai did not recognize.
Magneto surveyed the ruined cavern in silence for several moments.
His gaze moved across the dead Morlocks, the blood staining the tunnels, the terrified survivors huddled together like abandoned animals, and finally toward the mutilated bodies scattered across the battlefield.
“What a tragedy,” Magneto said quietly, though every word carried effortlessly through the cavern. “What an utterly shameful tragedy that children are forced to stand amidst mountains of corpses and debate the mechanics of execution because the world above refuses to acknowledge their humanity.”
His eyes settled briefly on Adonai. “Young man, I understand your anger more than you realize. I understand the desire to ensure evil never rises again. I understand the instinct to erase every possible threat before it can return. Those thoughts are born only in people who have witnessed the true face of cruelty.”
Magneto slowly turned toward the Morlocks. “And what greater evidence of humanity’s cruelty exists than this place? Look around you carefully. Look at where these people were forced to live. Hidden underground like diseased animals because the world above could not tolerate the sight of them. And why? Was it because they committed crimes? Was it because they harmed others? No!
“You were forced into these tunnels because humanity looked upon your faces and decided you no longer qualified as human beings deserving dignity. They saw powers they did not understand, appearances they could not tolerate, and differences that offended their fragile sense of normalcy. So they pushed you underground where they would not have to acknowledge your existence any longer.
“They will tolerate monsters so long as those monsters resemble them,” Magneto said bitterly. “They will praise murderers, dictators, and criminals provided they wear human faces. Yet a child born with scales or strange eyes is immediately condemned as unnatural. Society rejects them before they are even given the opportunity to prove who they are. And tonight, this massacre occurred because monsters like Mr. Sinister understood a truth that humanity refuses to admit openly. No one was coming to save you. No government cared whether you lived or died. No human authority would mourn your suffering enough to prevent it.”
His eyes shifted toward the X-Men. “And this is the burden placed upon young mutants like these children standing before me. They are forced to become soldiers, executioners, and judges because the world leaves them no alternative. They are forced to stain their hands with blood because civilized society has already abandoned them long before they ever raised a fist in anger.
“And understand this clearly, mutants are still largely hidden from the world. Most humans don’t yet know how many of us exist. They don’t yet understand what is emerging among them. If this is how society treats mutants before our existence even becomes public knowledge, imagine what awaits us once humanity fully realizes that a new species walks beside them. They will fear us. Fear will become hatred, hatred will become violence, and violence will become extermination. Humanity always destroys what it fears once fear grows large enough.”
Scott stepped forward slightly. “That doesn’t mean coexistence is impossible.”
Magneto looked toward her with something almost resembling pity.
“You possess admirable hope, child,” he said. “I once wished to believe the same thing. I once hoped humanity would eventually outgrow its fear. Yet history teaches the same lesson repeatedly. Every civilization destroys what it cannot control. Every society eventually turns upon those it deems different enough to threaten the comfort of the majority.
And because of that, tragedies like this are inevitable so long as mutants continue begging humanity for acceptance instead of securing their own future with their own strength. Humanity will always fear us. And why would not? We are living proof that humanity is no longer the final stage of evolution. We are the future inheritors of this earth whether mankind accepts it peacefully or violently.”
Several Morlocks stared at him with growing fascination, much to the x-men’s worry.
“You have spent your entire lives begging for scraps of tolerance from people who already decided you are monsters. You hide underground hoping obedience will earn acceptance someday, yet obedience only teaches oppressors that they may continue abusing you without consequence.”
Magneto extended one hand dramatically toward the survivors. “I offer you something different. I offer you dignity. I offer you strength. I offer you a future where mutants no longer kneel before a species that fears them for existing.”
His cape billowed behind him.
“Join me, and you will never again suffer alone in forgotten tunnels while the world pretends your lives do not matter. Join me, and mutants will stand together as one people instead of isolated individuals waiting helplessly for extermination. Join me, and we will build a future where no child is forced to watch their family butchered simply because they were born different.”
Adonai hated to admit it, but the man was undeniably a gifted orator who understood exactly which words could ignite the fire buried within desperate people. He could see the Morlocks staring at Magneto with exhausted hope and quiet desperation, searching for someone capable of giving meaning to their suffering and offering an answer to the miserable reality of their existence.
In times like these, a man who appeared certain of himself and spoke as though he possessed a plan for the future became dangerously attractive to people who had long since lost faith in the world.
The most irritating part was that Magneto was not entirely wrong either. The massacre they had just witnessed stood as proof enough that mutants truly were hunted, feared, and brutalized simply for existing. Any mutant who survived long enough would inevitably come to understand why a man like Magneto had been created.
Yet the way he framed everything deeply bothered Adonai.
Every word Magneto spoke carried the mentality of a man who had divided the world permanently into two irreconcilable sides, mutants and humans, victims and oppressors, us and them. It was the mindset of someone whose trauma had calcified into the very foundation of his worldview.
After surviving genocide once, Magneto had come to see all fear as the beginning of extermination and every act of hatred as proof that coexistence itself was ultimately impossible. To him, compromise was little more than naive self-deception that delayed the inevitable conflict between species.
Adonai could understand why he became that way. A man who spent his childhood watching people marched into camps and slaughtered like animals would inevitably begin viewing the world through the lens of survival above all else. The problem was that trauma had long since stopped being merely something Magneto suffered from and had instead become the lens through which he interpreted reality itself. Every event, every conflict, every act of cruelty only reinforced the belief that mutants and humans could never truly share the same world peacefully.
And that mentality, Adonai thought with irritation, guaranteed endless conflict no matter how justified its origins might have been.
Sure, Adonai was nothing like the idealistic heroes this world seemed so determined to produce endlessly. Heroes, at their core, existed to embody something greater than themselves. They cling stubbornly to ideals and moral principles while sacrificing pieces of themselves for strangers who would rarely appreciate the cost of such devotion.
From his perspective, most heroes lived fundamentally miserable existences that revolved entirely around denying their own desires for the sake of abstract principles that the world rarely rewarded. There was something deeply self-destructive about the way heroes constantly forced themselves to carry the burdens of others while pretending martyrdom was in any way noble.
Frankly, Adonai considered that mentality borderline insane.
Life was already cruel and absurd enough without voluntarily turning oneself into a martyr for society’s endless problems.
He preferred comfort - things that made existence worth enduring.
But despite his deeply self indulgent nature, Adonai had never become cynical enough to believe Magneto’s worldview represented the inevitable truth of the world either. He understood perfectly well why Erik Lensherr believed humanity and mutants could never coexist peacefully after everything he had suffered, but understanding pain did not magically transform terrible ideas into correct ones.
Magneto’s world, if brought to reality, would be a deeply ugly one. Because in the end, Magneto’s dream still condemned everyone to endless war.
And Adonai hated war. War destroyed comfort. War destroyed beauty.
“Ironic,” Adonai said softly while a dark chuckle escaped him, “that you speak so passionately about mutant suffering while manipulating desperate people at their absolute lowest for your own purposes. I wonder where you were while the Morlocks spent years rotting beneath this city like abandoned animals. Why didn’t you come earlier? A great deal of suffering could’ve been prevented.”
Magneto’s expression darkened slightly, though his voice remained calm and controlled.
“You don’t agree with my methods,” Magneto observed quietly.
“No,” Adonai replied immediately. “I don’t.”
The Master of Magnetism studied him carefully.
“Young man,” Magneto said with growing intensity. “You have witnessed their suffering yourself. Surely even you can understand that this world will never willingly accept our kind.”
Adonai listened calmly before sighing softly.
“The problem with people like you,” he said slowly, “is that you view the world entirely through the lens of conflict. Everything becomes a war between opposing sides until eventually you can’t imagine human beings as anything except enemies divided by species, ideology, race, or power.”
Magneto’s eyes narrowed slightly. “And am I wrong?”
“Yes,” Adonai answered bluntly. “Because your solution merely recreates the exact same cycle you claim to hate. Your answer revolves around establishing mutant supremacy through fear and violence. Humanity fears mutants, so you respond by giving them even more reasons to fear mutants. You despise persecution, yet you constantly divide the world further into categories of superior and inferior people. Frankly, it sounds exhausting.”
“You speak from naïveté,” Magneto said coldly. “Humans have spent centuries proving what they truly are. They fear anything different from themselves, and eventually fear always becomes violence. Mutants will either rule this world or perish beneath it.”
“Your endless fascination with domination is very disturbing,” Adonai sighed softly. “Humans against mutants… Mutants against humans… One group crushing another while convincing themselves they are morally justified because they suffered first.”
Magneto’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “And what would you suggest instead?” he demanded. “More Xavier nonsense about peaceful coexistence while children are butchered in tunnels?”
“I would create a world where people actually enjoy living.” Adonai looked toward the wounded Morlocks again while the healing light continued illuminating the cavern softly. “These people needed warmth. They needed music and good food and laughter and lovers and beautiful homes. They needed ordinary happiness long before they needed revolution or martyrdom. Any philosophy incapable of giving people that is fundamentally worthless to me.”
“And how exactly do you intend to create this utopia of yours?” Magneto asked with visible curiosity.
“I don’t know,” Adonai answered truthfully without the slightest hesitation.
The admission seemed to genuinely surprise them.
The truth was that Adonai had absolutely no concrete idea how he intended to change the world or improve it in any meaningful, large-scale way. He only knew one thing with certainty. Xavier’s ideology was far too passive while Magneto’s was far too extreme.
One path led to endless martyrdom while the other led to endless war, and neither left much room for the things Adonai actually valued in life.
There would be no peace beneath Magneto’s world. No genuine beauty. People would spend their lives preparing for the next conflict, consumed by resentment and survival. Even pleasure itself would eventually become hollow in such an existence.
And Xavier’s path irritated him almost as much for entirely different reasons. Adonai could not stand the idea of endlessly enduring ugliness while waiting for morally enlightened progress that might never arrive. There was something profoundly miserable about sacrificing one’s happiness for ideals that the world itself consistently rejected.
So the question was this: what exactly should he do?
AN: And with that, the Mutant Massacre arc comes to an end. It ended in a rather nihilistic manner, which isn’t what the story is ultimately meant to be. The plan is for the story to become much more lighthearted once we reach the timeskip and start interacting with the outside world more.
Anyway, the chapter got a bit too preachy toward the end there, but it was necessary for Adonai to establish some kind of stance or ideology against Magneto so that he can finally begin his real journey.