All characters owned by Marvel Comics

Author's notes: All right, here we go! I have been dragging my feet on finishing and posting this story for quite a while - which is usually a sign I just need to stop picking at it and share with the class.

In this AU, Professor X never survived to form the X-men, and you can probably guess from the title which villain rules the world in his absence. The first few chapters will be filling in a little history on the new timeline, but I'll just be showing the highlights that get our characters where they need to be for the main story. We start off with a scene from Uncanny X-Men #117 written by Chris Claremont, and some of the dialogue is pulled directly from that particular issue, but after that we'll be jumping ahead a few years at a time as the chapters progress.

Remy will eventually be our main narrator, but there will be other POVs scattered throughout the story, especially at the beginning. Once we get to the "present" of this story, our heroes are just a bit younger than they are in the 616 universe - Gambit and Rogue late teens to early 20s - and of course it is a Romy story because I just can't help myself. Lots of cameos so keep your eyes peeled!

This is a mature story because of some graphic violence and maybe a little smut, so adults only please.

As always, I write with minimal accents. The "Ah" and "Dis" can get a little annoying for me when writing or reading Romy stories - I figure you all have imaginations and can hear their voices however you want - though I did slip the accents in more than usual with this one.

Thanks as always for reading and reviewing! Hope you enjoy!

Chapter One

Charles

The patterned rugs adorning the stands were as unfamiliar to his eyes as the thoughts and words of those he passed by.

Cairo's bustling streets were a nonstop assault to the senses, and every direction in the marketplace Charles Xavier turned seemed to bring forth the spicy perfume of silk or roasting meat, all smothered beneath an oppressive heat that was like nothing he had ever experienced, even in the jungles of war.

It had been months since Charles left his war behind, and even longer since a broken engagement had torn him to pieces, his love life the final casualty of a conflict that had taken so much from so many.

Unable to return to his home in the states or to his research following his discharge from the army, Charles had instead run away – from duty, from responsibility, from everything he had once expected of himself. Lost on an endless journey, he spent his days wandering unknown ports and cities in an effort to numb the emptiness he felt inside.

After a great deal of soul searching, a sort of healing had begun, a self-imposed exile transforming itself into a much needed vacation. For the first time in years, Charles was actually enjoying himself, and was through feeling guilty or selfish for the time spent away from his work. His scientific research, begun years before the war while at University, focused on genetic mutation and the next step in human evolution. What he hoped to prove would change the world, but surely the world could wait until Charles Xavier figured out his next step? Didn't he deserve that chance?

Pulling a linen handkerchief from his shirt pocket, he removed his hat and wiped the perspiration from his scalp. Not yet thirty, Charles had been completely bald since his late teens, a strange side effect of his body's personal evolution. He was a mutant, or at least that was what he was calling himself and others like him. As a child, Charles discovered he had the power to read minds. Telepathy was the scientific name for his condition, and this special ability made navigating the crowded marketplace difficult, but not unbearable as over the years he had learned to shield himself and block out the thoughts and musings of others.

Through the course of his research he had found more individuals like him, all mutants with varying abilities or powers. The possibilities seemed limitless – so much untapped genetic potential to be used for the benefit of mankind! He often wondered how different things could have been for his younger self if there had been someone to explain what he was, someone to help him understand what a gift he had been given. There were times he thought he must be going mad, and there had been no one to tell him otherwise.

His work as a therapist during his college days had uncovered several children in need of such guidance, of someone to train them in the use of these mutant abilities. After the war he and Moira had planned on returning to his family home in upstate New York to…

Moira.

Moira Kinross. At the thought of her name - of the beautiful yet stubbornly brilliant woman who had broken his heart - Charles felt the breath rush from his lungs and had to stop to regain his composure.

There was so much they had planned, so many dreams left dead on the floor. When he had been drafted, Moira said she would wait for him forever, but a 'Dear John' letter - their final goodbye - lay folded in the front pocket of his khakis.

Unconsciously, Charles reached for the careworn paper, but jumped when he felt feather light fingers snatch the wallet he carried in that same pocket. A small laugh, that of a child's, bubbled in his mind, and he caught a glimpse of a dark-skinned girl with a head of snow white hair before the little pickpocket disappeared into the crowd.

Swearing under his breath, Charles gave chase. The money could be replaced, but his ID and passport were things he could not afford to lose in a hostile land. The child was quick and sure-footed, and able to squeeze through the throngs of people much easier than Charles. He received several angry rebukes in foreign tongues before he finally reached out and halted the girl's steps with his mutant powers. Under his telepathic control she froze with his comically large billfold in her tiny grasp, and Charles knelt to retrieve his belongings.

He paused after taking a good look at her. The girl was malnourished and dressed in rags. When had she last eaten a proper meal, he wondered? Was there no one to take care of her?

Probing her mind for answers, he was instead surprised to detect the mental cues or psychic keys he had discovered during the course of his research, markers in the brain that signaled the future development of mutant powers.

Opening his mind to investigate further, he was slammed by a psionic bolt of tremendous power, the blow the mental equivalent of a cast iron skillet to his temple. The world went black and he collapsed in a dusty heap.

When he came to, the little thief was gone, but she had not been the source of the psychic sucker punch. Instead, a telepathic whisper beckoned to Charles from within a nearby saloon.

Parting the beaded curtain draped across the bar's entrance, Charles stepped from the bleached wheat daylight of the marketplace into the darkened, smoke filled space. The few scattered patrons hunched over their drinks barely acknowledged him, and though the tension in the room was palpable, none were the source of the psychic assault. Charles knew he would not have long to wait before he was introduced to the force that had summoned him inside, so he settled back and ordered a coffee from the server.

An obese man dressed in an out of fashion white suit emerged from a private balcony, flanked on either side by raven haired beauties. The man's girth strained the buttons of the maroon dress shirt he wore beneath his jacket, and a matching fez perched atop a bald head. Tiny sunglasses accentuated the roundness of his face and hid the man's eyes from view, but Charles knew in an instant he had found the source of the mental attack. Another telepath, the first he had met face to face, and the very touch of the man's thoughts made Charles's skin crawl.

'I am Amahl Farouk.' With the help of his scantily clad entourage, the man eased into a chair at his own table and spoke to Charles without moving his sneering lips. 'I rule what you tourists call the Thieves' Quarter. Who are you, my friend?'

'A stranger,' Charles replied, his telepathic shields wrapping him in a cocoon. Even so, he felt the push of psionic abilities against his own.

'I bid you welcome, 'stranger'.' Farouk waved a swollen hand and the waiter was at his side in a flash with a ready drink. 'I own this establishment. Should you wish to partake of any of its manifold…delights…you have but to ask.'

It wasn't really an invitation. Charles felt the warning beneath the man's words.

'Thank you, no,' Charles replied. What had he gotten himself into? Farouk seemed to be the king of his own little empire. Those around them in the saloon were trembling in fear and Charles caught flashes of what constituted the 'delights' Farouk had offered to him in their memories.

'Your loss.' Farouk smiled and reached out to one of the beauties sitting next to him and brushed sausage fingers along her cheek. 'I sense we are kindred spirits. Join me, stranger. I will show you pleasure – and power – beyond your wildest imaginings!'

The bitter coffee turned to acid in Charles's stomach. Before him sat a man who used his mutant abilities to take advantage of those less powerful, bending the weak minded to his every sadistic whim. People like Farouk went against everything Charles believed in. Humans and mutants must co-exist for the benefit of all, but normal humans would never accept their mutant brothers so long as predators like Farouk stalked them at every turn. He was taking a tremendous risk, but Charles knew he had to stop this monster before anyone else fell sway to his power.

'You and I are mutants,' Charles implored in a last, foolish offering of peace, 'true, we have exceptional abilities, but we also have a responsibility to use those abilities for the benefit of our fellow man…'

His words brought only a smirk from his newfound rival. Charles knew in his heart that Farouk would never listen to reason – and why would he? Through his power he had everything he could ever dream of – money, influence, women – small dreams for a petty man.

The sick anger and fear in Charles's belly resolved itself. The human authorities could never overpower such a creature, indeed there were few in the world who could. Farouk would continue his tyranny unchallenged unless someone like Charles acted.

'We are not kindred spirits,' Charles challenged, his astral form slipping free of his body, 'and I swear I will not rest until you're brought to justice for your crimes!'

Farouk laughed out loud, and Charles found himself yanked from the reality of the saloon onto the astral plane -the battleground of the mind – floating in a galaxy of weightless dark that echoed to the ends of the universe and beyond. He could feel everything and nothing, at once connected to each living being on the planet and yet separate, alone, insignificant. It was a place Charles had only dreamed of, but even his wildest fantasies had not prepared him for such a foe as he faced in Farouk.

In the waking world, their bodies sat immobilized, the only sounds in the bar the soft swish of the ceiling fans and the clink of glassware, but in the astral plane the landscape twisted itself inside out, swirling rainbows in an endless starry sky that danced to his opponent's every gesture.

Farouk's astral form was spry and youthful, far more powerful than the man's flesh and blood body, and cloaked himself in a black suit of psychic armor, striking at Charles with a blade made of pure energy. Charles generated armor of his own, but his inexperience showed.

'For all your bluster and bravado, stranger,' Farouk taunted, 'I think you're a novice!' He struck, and Charles's meager shields shuddered against the barrage of psychic energy.

So much raw power, it was like nothing Charles had ever imagined! The blade his opponent wielded slashed across Charles's astral form, and in reality the skin of his back burned and blistered in the heat of the saloon.

The fight was waged on a thousand different levels of consciousness simultaneously. The landscape bent to Farouk's every whim, whatever he visualized became their reality. Farouk danced and shifted the world around Charles, his psychic avatar changing shape, becoming an enormous green skinned monster that caught Charles in the grasp of his clawed hand.

Cold spread out from the creature's hand to wrap Charles in a numb shell. He did not want to die, but he was losing. Someone needed to stop Farouk, but his strength had failed him. Was there anything left?

Calming himself, Charles focused every last bit of his telepathic power...

There was a flash – a single burst of the noonday sun - then nothing.

In the bar, the body of Charles Xavier fell forward onto the table with a sickening thud. Amahl Farouk grinned and gestured towards him.

"Search him," he purred in his native tongue, "then dump him in an alley like the trash that he is."

Farouk smiled and ordered another drink.

Raven

She wasn't sure if it was the frantic scratching that woke her or the empty bed, the blankets icy beyond her warm cocoon.

The alarm clock on the nightstand proclaimed 2:55 in blazing red digits, and Raven Darkholme held her breath to listen, hoping that the manic scratching would slow. When it didn't, she swore and fumbled for her silk robe. Her slippers were nowhere to be found, and she kept up a steady stream of cursing on her way down the frigid hardwood stairs. Washington D.C. in the middle of January hadn't been her idea, but Raven often found it hard to win arguments against someone who could see the future.

Steeling herself before she entered the kitchen, Raven took a deep breath. Now that she was closer, she knew the scratching for what it was - the sound of a pen moving across paper. The strokes hadn't missed a beat, and Raven pushed open the swinging wooden door to darkness. The only light in the kitchen was the glow of the moon falling through the latticed windows over the table.

Seated at that table was Irene Adler, a woman Raven had loved since the moment the two had met, too many years gone by to count. Raven hit the dimmer switch and stepped towards Irene.

"You could have at least started the coffee," Raven called out as she crossed the room, but either Irene hadn't heard or chose not to acknowledge her. The frenzied writing continued, and Raven's empty stomach burned when she came up behind her lover.

Spread across the table's surface were hundreds of sheets of loose leaf paper, so dense with handwritten text they were black in places. There were haphazard piles of pages that looked as if Irene had finished one and flung it aside to move onto the next, the writing equivalent of chain smoking a pack of cigarettes. The floor around Irene's hunched form was littered with more, and when Raven bent to pick one up, she was horrified to see the red streaks of blood following the lines of text. The knuckles of Irene's hand were bloodied and staining the papers beneath it as she wrote.

"Irene! You're bleeding!" she gripped Irene's shoulder and shook her. "God dammit, Irene! You can't see me, but I sure as hell know you can hear me!" Raven shook harder and wrestled away the pen.

Opaque, unseeing eyes blinked at Raven as if trying to focus.

"Raven?"

Irene's voice seemed so much smaller than her body, and Raven took the frail, weathered hands into her own blue-skinned grasp. One of life's cruelest jokes had been watching the love of her life fall prey to father time, while Raven's own shapeshifting ability kept her as youthful as the day the two had met.

"Come back to bed, sweetheart," Raven soothed. "I was cold without you."

Tears gathered at the corner of Irene's pearly, vacant eyes. She clutched Raven's hands to her chest and bowed her head.

"What is it, Irene? What's wrong?"

The warm pitter patter of Irene's crying splashed onto Raven's skin.

Both women were gifted with abilities far beyond normal humans, those gifts part of the connection that had drawn them to each other in the first place all those years ago. 'Mutant' was the new word the world was calling them, in public anyway. On the streets it was still freak, abomination - still fear, hatred, and violence from normal people. With her power, Raven could hide her true face and become anyone she pleased, but Irene? It was never a good thing to find someone whose power let her see the future sobbing her guts out in the middle of the night.

More troubling were the reams of loose leaf paper covered in writing. Irene had told Raven the story of how she had lost her eyesight long ago. The ability to see the future wasn't cut and dried, the timelines never completely set in stone, but Irene's special gift let her perceive different paths that would lead to the ultimate outcome, different roads the future could take to get to the same destination. Irene had thought she was losing her mind when those powers emerged in her late teens, but to make sense of the chaos she had written down everything she could see into a set of diaries. When finished, the enormous task had cost Irene her eyesight.

Over the years the pair had used the resulting diaries as a guideline to help in their work to shape future events, but a quick glance at the pages spread before them showed Raven events she had never seen before in Irene's volumes.

"Time is…broken," Irene whimpered. "The tapestry has been undone."

A cold sweat prickled Raven's skin. "I don't understand," she squeezed Irene's hands. "What does that mean, time is broken?"

Irene shook her hands loose and felt across the piles of paper for her pen. "It means, what was to come cannot be!" She started drawing. "Something else has happened instead, something that was never meant to happen." Her drawing was of a straight line. Over top the first, Irene then drew another line that followed the same path until she veered the second line sharply away and continued its path parallel. Her pen traced the second line over and over, carving it so deeply into the paper that it tore. "The tapestry has been undone. The fabric of time must be woven once more."

Raven sat in helpless horror as Irene abandoned her drawing and began writing again. It had all been for nothing, Raven thought bitterly. All of the sacrifices they had made in the name of saving a future that would never come to pass. How could this have happened? How could Irene have gotten it so wrong?

"That's it, then?" Raven's tears were threatening to join Irene's, but she dug her fingernails into her palms to hold them at bay. "There's no hope?"

Irene grabbed a clean piece of paper and kept writing. The new sheet, Raven realized, was a list of names. Most were unfamiliar to her - Erik Lehnsherr, Moira Kinross, Remy LeBeau, James Howlett, Charles Xavier, Anna Marie - but it was Raven's own name that topped the list, followed by another very distressing entry for those who followed the news of the world - Amahl Farouk.

"Every piece of cloth has the strings that anchor it in place," Irene whispered, "the warp through which the weft travels. There are those on whose backs this new history will be woven."

Moira

"Moira!"

The brown eyes behind the thick glasses were a welcome sight, and she took the hand offered to help her up the great stone staircase leading to the hospital's entrance.

"Daniel, it's so good to see you again!"

Moira Kinross smiled, trying her best not to wince. It had been a week now since she and Joseph MacTaggert had said their final goodbyes. The worst of the bruises had begun to fade, but unfortunately they weren't invisible. Joe had been so angry when she broke off their engagement that she thought he was going to kill her, and she thanked her lucky stars again that she hadn't gone through with the wedding. Dr. Daniel Shomron's telegram had arrived just in the proverbial nick of time.

"When I asked you to consult on Charles's case, I didn't mean for you to drag yourself all the way to Israel, especially with the shape you are in." Daniel pursed his lips into a thin line and halted their steps. "Moira, whatever happened?"

Her stubborn Scot's temper took over, and she squared her jaw and lowered her sunglasses. "Daniel, I appreciate your concern, but I'm jet-lagged and filthy, not a great combination. I'm here to see Charles. You said it was urgent."

He opened his mouth as if to say something more, but nodded and opened the door for her instead. She had hoped to be bathed in the deliciously recycled cool of central air, but it was just as sweltering inside as out. The perspiration gathered at the back of her white cotton blouse started to drip its way into the southern hemisphere.

Dr. Shomron caught the expression on her face. Offering her his handkerchief, he grinned.

"Have you ever been to Israel before, Dr. Kinross?"

She laughed and dabbed her face. "Cannae say that I have, Dr. Shomron. Is it always so blasted hot?"

He joined her laughter and gestured down a tiled hallway. "Only when it is not raining."

Another door led to a spacious office with a large desk set in front of an open window, curtains floating on a slight breeze. The desk was cluttered with slapdash piles of patient charts held down by fossil paper weights. Moira raised an eyebrow at her colleague in warning, but Daniel headed to the desk and retrieved one of the files, turning to face her.

"I know you are anxious to see Charles," he said carefully, "but I think you need to prepare yourself."

"I'm a physician, Daniel, not some bloody wetnurse. I deal with death every day."

"I realize that, but this is different. This is Charles." He held the chart out to her and frowned. "He was brought here from Cairo after having some sort of accident. His body sustained no physical injury, at least nothing that could cause his current condition according to his records."

Moira took the chart from him and flipped to the first page while her friend continued.

"There were no witnesses, at least none willing to come forward. He was found in an alley outside the city's Thieves' Quarter, what the hell he was doing there no one seems to know. The police, as ineffectual as they are, could find nothing. He was a John Doe, and eventually transferred here because of his prognosis - this hospital specializes in caring for the permanently brain injured. I was expecting some anonymous soul on my rounds, imagine my surprise when I recognized Charles." He pulled off his glasses and roughly wiped the lenses on his lab coat. "It's maddening. My staff hasn't been able to do anything for him. His body is perfectly healthy, but his mind is just….gone."

Moira closed the file and held it to her chest, fighting the sting of tears. What she couldn't bring herself to say out loud was that all of this was her fault – she was the reason Charles had been in Cairo in the first place. How could she tell Daniel? They were all colleagues from their days at university, but Dr. Shomron was Charles's friend. Would he understand, or would he hate her for what she had done?

"Take me to him," she said through clenched teeth, "Now."

After the war, she was supposed to wait for Charles, her days spent playing the part of the dutiful fiancée pining for her distant soldier, but Moira had ruined it all when she fell for a dashing smile and a broad pair of shoulders named Joseph MacTaggert. Their future, all that she and Charles had planned together, Moira had destroyed their dream and broken Charles's heart in one hot rush of lust.

Instead of returning to his family's home in the states, Charles had disappeared, running away to the ends of the Earth. The dream, the school…it was all over now, and Moira would have to live with her part in that. But, someone needed to continue their research. There were names of mutant children whose condition Charles had suspected and wished to contact, children that desperately needed help. If any of that information fell into the wrong hands, it could be disastrous. It was up to Moira to protect the children and their families, she owed Charles that much. She followed Daniel down the hallway, her mind a whirlwind of emotions.

The room he ushered her into was oppressive, and not just because of the temperature. Guilt pressed on her like a physical force. Moira held her composure until Daniel excused himself under the pretense of checking on another patient, but once she was alone with Charles, she couldn't stop the tears that ran down her face to smatter the bedsheet covering his chest.

"Oh, Charles…Charles, I'm so very sorry."

She dropped to her knees alongside the hospital bed and sobbed until it felt that her heart would burst. It was her fault he had been hurt, her fault that he was lying here, machines pumping his heart, moving the air out of his lungs, her fault that…

"That seems like a tremendous waste of energy."

A deep voice of slightly accented English startled her, the face when she turned towards him a salty blur.

"Ex-cuse me?" she hissed and bared her teeth to the stranger who entered the room and approached the medical chart that hung at the foot of Charles's bed.

"I spoke very plainly. There is no point exhausting yourself in this heat. He certainly cannot hear you."

Anger boiled away the grief when she rose to her feet. Tall, muscular yet trim, the man's face was youthful despite the gleaming head of white hair that framed it, and held the arrogance most medical doctors seemed to have in abundance.

"How dare you!?" Moira cried and swung blindly.

He caught her hand mid-strike. Tattooed on the forearm that held hers fast were the faded numerals of a concentration camp survivor. She swallowed. Her wide eyes caught solemn ones of crystal blue, and his touch was gentler than she had lately come to expect.

"Do not mistake my suggestion for a lack of sympathy," the man said softly. "I am responsible for his care, and since Charles Xavier's arrival, I have seen no sign that he can hear me, or that he is aware of anything that surrounds him. Save your tears. I speak from experience that they sap strength better served elsewhere."

He released her hand and stepped from the room, and though she spent the rest of the day holding a silent vigil at Charles's bedside, she did not see the man again until later that evening.

Seated alone at a street café with only her thoughts and a copy of Charles's file, she did not register his presence until he set two steaming cups of coffee on the table in front of her. The heat and emotions of the day had taken their toll on her temper, but Moira still had enough fire in her belly to arch an eyebrow at his intrusion.

He gestured to the seat next to her. "A peace offering. May I join you?"

The sidewalks and streets around the café were alive at that time of night. Throngs of people hurried home from work, heading out for dinner, shopping, or a night on the town, and Moira allowed herself a moment to let her eyes drift over the hustle and bustle as he stood awaiting her response.

"That depends," she finally met his eyes and the corner of her mouth turned upwards. "Just how much whiskey did ye put in that cup?"

His answering laugh was deep, and she shuffled her papers into a pile to give him some elbow room across from her.

"I believe I owe you an apology." His voice was cautious footsteps, but there was a strength underlying the words. "I do not often interact with those who can speak, and I am afraid it has made me…"

"An arse?"

He swallowed the smile that tugged at his lips before he answered her. "I was going to say 'blunt'."

Moira leaned back in her chair. "Blunt I can handle. I don't take sugar in my coffee, and I would prefer not to have it candy coating the truth. I appreciate your honesty, Mr.…?"

"Magnus."

Turning her attention to the file again, she began flipping through the pages. "Well, Mr. Magnus, any other harsh, steaming truths you'd like to offer up? Daniel seems to think there's no hope for Charles."

She looked up from the sheath of papers to find him watching her intently between sips of coffee. He placed the delicate cup onto the saucer and tented his fingers in front of him.

"I am inclined to agree with Dr. Shomron's assessment of Charles Xavier's condition. There has been no brain wave activity since he arrived at our facility. We are keeping his body alive, but he is functionally brain dead. My recommendation is, and always has been, to cease the life support that is sustaining him."

Her heart lurched into her throat. "We cannae do that," she whispered, unable to keep the emotion from her voice.

"He is already dead, Dr. Kinross. We are merely delaying the inevitable. It is not right to keep him alive to ease your guilty conscience."

Cheeks pink from the heat flared a terrifying red. She stood and leaned over the table, one furious finger jabbing at his face. "Now listen here. Guilt is something I'll have to live with the rest of my life, but my conscience is my own damned business. Hear me when I say that Charles Xavier is not your average man. He's like nothing you've ever seen, with extraordinary abilities your puny brain can't even begin to fath…"

Her tirade was drowned by the sound of an explosion - a car bomb on the busy street nearby. Moira, Magnus, and their table were swallowed in a tidal wave of screams and heat.

Her first thought was that she was dead, she had to be, but did you still feel pain when you were dead? Smoke, the smell of burning diesel and charred flesh suffocated her, her skin sizzling with shrapnel raindrops. The deafening ring muffling her ears faded, replaced by a new, more terrifying sound.

"Fa-rouk! Fa-rouk! Fa-rouk!"

Voices, it sounded like an army's worth, grew steadily louder, their chorus joined by bursts of machine gun fire.

Fear seized Moira's stomach and gave it a sharp twist. The Middle East had never been the safest of places, but the region's instability had been increasing thanks to a group of radical terrorists pledging loyalty to a crime lord known as Amahl Farouk. Even in Scotland, Moira had caught wind of the rise in run of the mill crimes like fraud and robbery, along with an alarming increase in suicide bombings, kidnappings, and murders, spreading out from Egypt like a sadistic spider web, Amahl Farouk the fat arachnid sharpening his pincers in the center.

With everything that had happened to her since learning of Charles's injuries, it had honestly never crossed Moira's mind to pay a little more attention to the news before she charged headlong into the thick of it. Along with the poor people too close to the explosion, Moira was convinced she was about to become a statistic of a war she didn't fully understand.

The chanting grew closer. Forms began to take shape through the haze, bodies brandishing the menacing outline of semi-automatic weapons. They were sitting ducks. Moira struggled to free herself from the weight of the overturned table, but there was no place to go. Where was Magnus? Was he hurt? She wanted to scream for help, for somebody, anybody, but the spurts of gunfire and answering cries glued her tongue to the roof of her mouth.

The smoke began to clear, and suddenly there was Magnus, crouched over her with his hands extended. Moira felt a strange energy emanating from every pore of the man's body, being close to him like grabbing hold of a live wire. The wreckage around her shifted, and the legs of the table become fluid, almost liquid with the motions of his hands as he worked to free her.

Magnus rose to his feet, and Moira watched in horror when the terrorists turned their guns on him. She found her voice and screamed bloody murder, but to her shock the bullets stopped, frozen midair. Hovering centimeters from his chest, the shining metal tubes danced at his fingertips.

"Extraordinary abilities?" His eyes met hers, and they were the color of hardened steel. "Perhaps I understand better than you know, Dr. Kinross."