My story is set just after Chris Campbell's chapter one. If you haven't read that yet, all you need to know is that the Avalon Project's universe diverges from the Marvel one during the Age of Apocalypse story line. Blink is the only character in this story from the Age of Apocalypse, all the others are from Marvel-Prime. Mags is awakeand Avalon is gone, as are some of the Acolytes. Blink and Sabretooth have joined them. Thanks to Chris Campbell and Al Kehn for critical comments.

The usual disclaimer: all of these characters are copyright and TM Marvel comics. I'm only borrowing them and am not making one thin dime off this project.

The Avalon Project, Chapter 2:
The Bloody Morning After

by Rebecca Teed

We huddled behind a dune and looked at the vast bulk of Asteroid M off in the distance, lying in the sand, surrounded by Syrian troops, who were watching it as closely as they did the UN team inside it. Magneto had estimated that it was almost half a mile long, though most of that length was buried deep in the sand. The troops been there for months, ever since it had crashed to Earth. Its master had returned to power since then and been struck down again without showing any interest in it. They had spotlights trained on it, surrounding it as if they expected it to reach out and attack them. Well, they were only helping us by doing that, giving us a good look at our objective.

I pulled my cloak more tightly about myself and shivered. It hadn't occurred to me that deserts were cold at night, really cold. I started when a purple-gloved hand appeared in front of me, holding binoculars. I accepted them gingerly.

"Over there, Blink," Magneto told me. "You are to teleport to the open door. It's an airlock. Shut it from the inside and proceed towards your right."

A hundred meters to the right of the door was a huge hole in the side of the asteroid/space

station/whatever it was. That was going to be Exodus' problem. As far as I knew, Exodus couldn't just close the hole, but had to clear out the enemy and keep him out of that opening. However, this Exodus, like the one I remembered, seemed to have almost limitless psionic powers, a brown-skinned boy with eyes that glowed. This one was just crazy as a bedbug. And the rest of them might be every bit as bad I told myself, and shivered again.

Magneto himself looked exhausted. He'd dropped us off last night, in Europe, I guess, in a castle, to patch ourselves up and get some rest. Amelia Voght and some others had gone to scout out the Asteroid and he'd gone somewhere else. He'd been back this morning to brief us, get us equipped and over here. He'd obviously only told us what he thought we'd needed to know, which wasn't a lot.

"Colossus and Sabretooth will be handling enemy personnel at your end," Magneto continued. Sabretooth chuckled.

"I want them alive," Magneto's voice grew cold. Listen to him, Creed I thought. This man is your last hope.

I'd heard Magneto briefing the other team, the Acolytes, just moments before. I looked around at them. There were eight of them, in red and purple uniforms, and they thought Magneto was a god. The youngest (I thought her name was "Skids") smiled back at me. They were to go into the asteroid with Exodus and to clean out any other troops that might be in there. It didn't sund like a fun job to me, but they were fanatics.

Colossus also grinned at me. He was huge and made of metal. I couldn't think of either him or Sabretooth as Acolytes, even though Colossus wore the uniform, because I remembered them, or rather people just like them, but somehow different, as Magneto's X-Men, my comrades back in a reality that no longer existed. Exodus I'd never understood anyway, and he'd been such a recent addition to the team...

"Are you ready?" Magneto asked. Rather than answer out loud, I pulled out my flashlight and switched it on, stepping between Colossus and Sabretooth. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Amelia Voght, the Acolyte-in-chief, nodding as her team assembled. "Go!" Magneto barked. I called up a teleportal and pushed Sabretooth into it.

***


We landed on a gangway made of planks. Sabretooth dove towards the airlock. Behind me, I could hear gunfire and clanging noises as bullets ricocheted off Colossus, who had positioned himself between us and the guards.

I could see the muzzle of a gun swinging towards us in the dim airlock ahead, but Sabretooth was on top of him almost instantly. The soldier screamed and the gun went off as Colossus and I piled into the airlock behind Sabretooth. I moved immediately for the controls and shut the airlock as boots pounded up the gangway after us.

When I looked up, the other two were arguing, with the soldier lying on the floor between them. Colossus was shouting, "Creed! We are to take them alive!"

Sabretooth snickered. "This one had an accident. Fell down and broke his neck."

I pressed the right buttons to lock the door and avoided looking at the dead man as we left (he had a SHIELD uniform), with Colossus now in the lead. Back on my world, it was the other way around; Colossus had been a brute and Mr. Creed... had been a different person altogether.

***


The UN people had set up a generator and lights within the asteroid. As we crossed another corridor, I glimpsed a face, a boy no older than I, not wearing a uniform. He seemed to fade into a wall and vanished. "Colossus!" I called ahead, but there was more gunfire and clanging in front.

Colossus rushed up and grabbed the soldier who was shooting at him. After some thumps, he slung the unconscious soldier over his shoulder. "Their ordinance cannot hurt me," he called back, cheerfully. "So do not worry. We are almost there."

I bit my lip and followed him and Sabretooth to the hull rupture that Exodus had been sent to secure. Several of the Acolytes came in behind us, dragging bound people, some in SHIELD uniforms, some in lab coats and a few in suits, UN people.

That boy is too young to be with the UN I thought. And he had no uniform and no gun. And he's a mutant; it looked like he phased through that wall. I had to tell someone, but Sabretooth might just kill him.

Exodus was standing and looking through the hole at the outside, ignoring us. He had put up some sort of glowing forcefield, but they had stopped shooting at it. I went up to look outside with the others and saw an eerie glowing shape approach. It was Magneto, surrounded by his force field, with another glowing shape behind him, too far back to make out. I could hear the Syrians babbling at eachother in Syrian...? No, Arabic, Syrians speak Arabic. One of the well-dressed prisoners on our side of the hole started to shout back at them, but stopped when Amelia held her pistol to the back of his neck.

"I have disabled their weapons," Magneto called to us as he got closer. "They are preparing to retreat, so it would be best to return our prisoners now." The Acolytes started dumping the people they had captured out of the hole onto the sand outside. They seemed glad to go.

As Colossus pushed his prisoner outside, he glared at Sabretooth, who looked back blandly. "One of our... antagonists... suffered a mishap. He is dead." Colossus told Magneto.

Magneto raised his eyebrows and looked back at Sabretooth. "Surprisingly careless of you. Bring the body here. Quickly."

Sabretooth glared back at him and disappeared back down the corridor. I opened my mouth to tell Magneto about the boy I had seen, but he turned and gestured behind him. The glowing shape that had been following him floated through the hole and into the asteroid.

Within the force field were a couple of crates and three beautiful metal statues: a young woman in a long robe, a huge bald man with a beard, and a girl my age with a huge gun. All of them wore the uniforms of Acolytes and they were all kneeling with their heads bowed. I recognized the man, at least who had been in another reality. Delgado, a minion of Apocalypse. Oh no...

Magneto stepped through the hole and told two of the Acolytes, the Kleinstock twins, to grab the crates and to get them to the control room. "They were preparing to take these away. A good thing they waited this long." Magneto remarked. He scratched irritably at the thick white beard he had not had time to shave away.

Sabretooth returned, carrrying the dead man. I'd seen a lot of people die recently, but for some reason my gorge rose. Magneto nodded and pointed back to the hole. Sabretooth lifted his arms to pitch the body out, but Magneto growled, "Gently!"

As Sabretooth shoved the corpse outside, a pair of hands grabbed it from the other side and jerked it through. One of the Acolytes snickered and Colossus murmered, "A brave man." I wondered whether it had been a Syrian or a UN soldier and how he would feel when he realized that this one was dead.

Magneto gestured at the holed and the ceiling above us wriggled as material flowed down to form a new wall, sealing the hole. "Stations!" Magneto barked at us as he levitated the metal statues again. We headed back into the bowels of the asteroid.

***


The Acolytes had actually been trained to read and to use Magneto's equipment, so they swarmed over the consoles in the control room returning the components from the crates to their proper places and hooking certain systems to freshly charged-batteries. "Life support and artificial gravity will be operational once we get a real power source." Milan, another of the Acolytes, told Magneto, "And I'm establishing a local gravity field in here."

"Fine," he replied, "Then the rest of it can be repaired in orbit. And it will be, before anyone after us comes in with artillery heavy enough to harm us."

"Like what?" sneered Exodus. "What do the flatscans have..."

"The Avengers." Magneto snapped. "The Fantastic Four. That sort of thing. Not that it matters. The hull is now intact and we're leaving."

"Uh, before we go, boss," said Sabretooth. "You'll want to know... we've still got an intruder on board. Just one: male, young, scared, no gun. Not one of the soldiers."

Magneto furrowed his brow at this. "Milan, Carmella, Skids, there are intact anti-surveillance devices in that crate and batteries are here. Have them in place and operational as quickly as you can. Exodus, Rusty, Colossus, each of you escort one of them and don't go haring off after this intruder. You'll need to remember your zero-g training. The rest of you remain here with me and get the other systems operational."

Sabretooth shook his head impatiently, "Listen, Mags..."

"There's no time!" Magneto snapped at him. "I took us off the ground before we even entered this room and this asteroid must be cloaked before any pursuit of us can be readied! Go! Now!"

They left and I sat down as Magneto put the other Acolytes to work. Space sensors, jamming devices, artificial gravity... My Magneto, back in that other world, had never used those. We'd been fighting a ground war...

Magneto opened a cabinet and pulled something out of it. A bottle of whiskey I realized, and was shocked when he opened it and gulped some down. This guy really was different from the Magneto I had known... I realized that all the Acolytes were looking pointedly away from him.

It also occurred to me that this guy had picked up a vast quantity of iron, half a mile long, and chucked it into Earth orbit while he stood and argued with his underlings. That was well out of the range of the abilities of the Magneto I remembered. Still, I couldn't think of a damned thing I wouldn't give up at that moment to have my Magneto back.

He put the bottle back and walked over to the statues. He touched the face of the statue of the robed woman, and the silver color flowed away from his hand, to be replaced by the colors of ordinary flesh, hair and cloth. I stared in amazement. Her eyes opened and she cried out something in Spanish as she looked up.

"You're fine, Anne-Marie," Magneto told her, "We're safe, for the time being." He touched the other two statues and they also became living people again.

I shuddered as I recognized Delgado's harsh voice: "Where the hell...?"

The girl quickly stood and backed up, hoisting her gun and looking around her, her eyes bright and alert. "Where are the X-Men?"

The three of them noticed me and the Acolytes and fell silent. Voght, standing behind Magneto, cleared her throat. "Ah, sir, We've got the sensors online using that damned generator and... we're approaching our target."

Magneto turned back towards her. "I know. Blink, tell these three what has been going on. I have to take care of this."

The three former statues looked back at me. I wondered if maybe they couldn't tell me as much about what I'd gotten into as I could tell them...

***


"All I can tell you is my side of it, and that probably doesn't make much sense at all," I began. "I'm from another world, a parallel reality. I've been fighting alongside Magneto for years. He founded the X-Men to fight over Apocalypse, who'd taken over North America."

I noticed the look of glazed shock coming over the faces of my audience and quickly shifted ahead, "Well, I ended up here where none of that ever happened and found the X-Men with Professor Xavier, and my old friend... Sabretooth. At least, someone who looked just like him." Sabretooth waved and grinned from the console he was sitting on.

I took a deep breath and continued, "It was just too weird: some of these people I remembered as friends and others who had been enemies, so I... and Sabretooth bugged outa there... I should warn you, you guys have been out of it for a long time. By the time we made it to Avalon to find Magneto, he was in a coma, had been for months. The people who'd been chasing us caught up with us, and the X-Men too. Avalon was destroyed, but Magneto had woken up and we got out of there alive, well most of us..." The shock and the events of yesterday started to hit me and I was having trouble going on.

"What's Avalon?" asked the blue-haired girl, who had put her gun down.

"Who are these guys?" demanded Delgado, gesturing at the other Acolytes.

"Why was Lord Magnus in a coma?" asked Anne-Marie, looking very anxious.

"Well, Avalon was a space station, like this one, and there had been an earlier fight with the X-Men. Professor Xavier had..." A spate of cheering erupted from the Acolytes clustered around Magneto and some equipment.

I recognized Colossus' voice through the loudspeaker. "Yes, we can see it, and we're all suited up. Exodus and Milan are going across now..."

My audience got up and wandered over to the crowd at the radio station. "What's going on?" I demanded, a little crossly.

Magneto got up. "I was able to salvage a little of Avalon last night and put it into orbit. The solar collectors on those pieces are operational and should be able to provide full power to most of the asteroid," he explained smugly. I felt more annoyed than ever. "I'll be joining you immediately, Colossus," he told the radio microphone and headed out the door.

The next voice out of the loudspeaker was Milan's "We've got her hooked up! Hit the switches!" Anne-Marie reached out to one of the consoles and pressed something. I jumped as bright light filled the room, drowning out the dim light provided by our lanterns and the UN's lighting system.

"I've established artificial gravity across most of the asteroid," Anne- Marie told us. "It's broken in some sections, but I'll shut and seal the bulkheads on those."

"Great" I muttered, sitting down.

Sabretooth walked over to me. "Cheer up, kid," he said in a low voice. "They don't trust us worth a damn, partly 'cause they've just met us. They'll get over it."

I looked up, hopeful all of a sudden. "You mean, you'll stay here?"

Sabretooth sat beside me. "I don't see a better option. I've burned a lot of bridges behind me. I don't wanna go crawling back to the X-Men. Mags needs us, and he'll do right by us. Turns out that someone nasty has put a price on my head, and that'll get collected someday. I'd rather it be later than sooner."

Anne-Marie, ensconced at the controls, happily punched buttons. A screen on one of the walls lit up, showing a breathtaking scene of the outside of Asteroid M. I could make out Magento standing, protected by a glowing forcefield, and a couple of figures in hardsuits struggling with huge cables. The camera receded from the scene, presumably being let out on a tether, and two huge angular shapes came into view. Pieces of Avalon, I realized. There was the glowing form of Exodus floating nearby, presumably dragging them towards Asteroid M telekinetically. Magneto gestured as they got close enough, and a pseudopod extended from Asteroid M's surface towards one piece. The metal of the Asteroid and of the fragment melded together where they met. The camera kept moving out and out, until I could no longer make out the people. As the three units, the asteroid and the two fragments were pulled into their final configuration, the whole package looked like a giant butterfly, with the fragments as wings and Asteroid M as the body.

"At least our boy has learned to plan," Sabretooth mused, "There's a time to build and a time to fight if you really want to change anything for long."

I sat and looked at the image on the screen a little longer.

Amelia Voght walked up to us and said, "I'm going aboard one of the fragments. You and Sabretooth may want to come with me." So we got up and fell into step behind her.

"Why?" I demanded once we were out of the control room.

"The pieces of our last haven were not all that Magneto retrieved from the ocean." Voght replied cryptically, "And we've got some news of things that are happening on the planet below. Bad news."

***


We followed her up a spiral staircase into the almost familiar architecture of Avalon. He must have just built that staircase I thought, When he united the stations. We took a few more turns and entered an area labelled "Medical Center". Storm and Iceman were resting in two of the beds, heavily bandaged. "Hello." Storm managed weakly.

"How did you escape drowning?" asked Amelia.

"There was air trapped in the remains of Avalon," said Magneto from behind her.

Amelia spun around, looking indignant. Magneto ignored this and walked up to Storm's bed. "Fortunately, I had shielded the Medical Center heavily, so the equipment was largely intact. With it to tend them, I decided that they could wait for us up here."

"Yup," said Iceman from his bed. "You actually had us rooting for you, Maggie. If you hadn't made it up here, we'd almost be well in time to die when this thing's orbit decayed, and it fell out of the sky and burned up on re-entry."

"I have just told the Acolytes that you are under my protection," Magneto said, "But, just to make sure, I'm leaving Sabretooth to protect you." He grinned at the looks of consternation on their faces, and so did Sabretooth. "If you recall, some of the Acolytes have very little love for you..."

Iceman groaned and turned towards the wall, but Storm decided that she had better things to worry about. "I recorded the newscasts for you," she said to Magneto. He pulled up a chair and sat down, looking at her expectantly. Amelia sighed and leaned back against a wall.

Storm picked up the remote from beside her bed and poked at it until a screen on the wall across from her lit up.

"Trish Tilby reporting from Washington DC," chirped the reporter on the screen, "Trials have been scheduled for seven Senators and sixteen members of the House of Representatives. All of the Congressman indicted as members of the 'Mutant Underground' have been charged with conspiring to break Federal law, particularly those associated with Mutant Registration Act, various immigration laws, aiding and abetting criminals, and several acts of kidnapping. Charges have been brought up against people in various positions all over the country, but that list has not been released yet..."

The scene switched and Trish Tilby was walking backwards down a hallway, "Now we're going to speak to the man who first brought up these charges, Mr. Henry Gyrich of the National Security Agency." A door opened and a very weary-looking man with red hair in a crew-cut came out and did a double-take when he noticed the cameras. He looked as if he wanted to go back into the office he'd just left, but turned back towards Tilby.

"Mr. Gyrich, we understand that there have been some new developments in this case," said Trish, brightly.

"It's not my case," pleaded the red-haired man. "I have turned this investigation over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

"What were you doing when you were attacked this morning?"

Gyrich took a deep breath and faced the camera squarely, "As usual, every facet of my life is known to my good friends in the media! Well, let me make sure your facts are correct. My initial informant in the matter of the so-called 'Mutant Underground' claimed that he knew who had organized it and was running it. I was shocked to hear the name he gave, and further shocked when several of those indicted gave the same name. It was someone in whom I personally had placed a great deal of trust, and I... asked to serve the warrent for his arrest in person." He licked his lips and looked down. "I asked him to meet me in my office, here, as I have many times before on other matters. He came, of course, and I told him what he'd been charged with and why..."

Gyrich looked back at the camera again, "I'd been warned that he is a telepath. He... attacked me psichically. Trying to get control of my mind. I guess if he'd succeeded, he'd have been in a position to derail the investigation pretty thoroughly. Plant false information in my mind, that sort of thing. But I had prepared myself for this sort of thing. As of this morning, it's no longer classified information that the Soviets designed techniques to defend one's mind against such an attack. I've... charged him additionally with assault and he's on his way to the Vault now. The CATscan that was done on me a few hours ago shows the signature typical of someone who's been telepathically attacked." He rubbed at his eyes.

Both Magneto and Voght just sort of groaned at this news. Voght put her head in her hands. I just stood there, completely confused as to the importance of all of this.

Tilby asked the question that was driving me crazy at that moment, "So who is the telepath who assembled this conspiracy?" At least she wasn't smiling anymore.

"Charles Xavier," said Gyrich, staring at the camera again.

Storm switched the screen off with her remote control. "He never got to the Vault. The X-Men rescued him and ran away. The police have descended on the Massachusetts Academy and Charles' estate with warrents and mutant detection equipment. I think everyone got away, but only by the skin of their teeth. I think his accounts are frozen, at least the ones in the US."

Magneto nodded and Voght sighed deeply.

"Could make it difficult to return you two to the X-Men." Magneto commented dryly.

"What's going on?" I demanded. "Professor Xavier is some kind of criminal?"

"Not really," Storm answered, "Except insofar he was struggling against an unjust law. He had conspirators though, and one of those must have let him down. All of the misdemeanors he was guilty of were part of his efforts to protect mutants from their would-be oppressors and from the law that might deliver them into the hands of those oppressors, the Mutant Registration Act. In our timeline, mutants are hated and feared, but do not rule. So the US government attempts to control mutants within its borders, to make sure that they pose no danger..."

Voght spoke up, "That last thing Charles did, that was no misdemeanor. Attempting to mind-control and NSA official who was arresting him for other crimes..."

"Was foolish," Storm agreed. "Gyrich took him by surprise and Charles panicked."

"He's in a lot of trouble." That was as far as I had gotten.

Magneto stirred and pulled himself out of his chair. "We are all in a lot of trouble. I suspect that the backlash of this is going to hit a great many mutants less well-defended and less well-hidden than the X-Men are now, even with yesterday's casualties."

"Before you go," said Storm, "Watch this." She picked up her remote control and turned the screen on again.

It looked like more news. A brown-haired man with an ugly, snarling expression was all but shouting into a microphone: "We have only begun to scratch the surface of this conspiracy! The FBI says that all of the Mutant Underground conspirators in custody are human! Where are their mutant masters?! They're out there, I tell you. They say that the Underground was only to hide unregistered mutants, to move them around so they'd be hard to find. What did they need twenty-three Congressmen for, then?! That only includes the ones who knew what they were doing, not the ones who let Charles Xavier, advisor on mutant affairs, rewrite their very thoughts! He's not the only telepath they've got in place either! They're out there, until we can hunt them down and free ourselves of their influence!" The ranting man was gone and the screen read: "The preceding was a paid political announcement brought to you by the Friends of Humanity and the Graydon Creed for President committee."

"Creed?" I began.

Sabretooth nodded, still looking at the screen. "My son. The bastard. He's a throwback and determined to spend the rest of his life gettin' back at mutants, all of them."

"People are going to listen to this?" I felt a little sick.

Voght said hollowly, "He's running for President. Takes a lot of signatures and a lot of money. The Friends of Humanity are good for plenty of both."

"I have to go see what effects this... business is having down below." Magneto headed for the door. "Voght, I may need your help."

When I looked back at Storm, she was lying back down, obviously worn out. Iceman was already asleep, apparently had been for a while. Sabretooth fixed himself a sandwich and settled down to guard the two X- Men. I walked back to Asteroid M by myself.

***


I got back in time to listen to a "history lesson" with the Acolytes- who-had-been-statues. Colossus, who had turned from his metallic form to the more human one, and Exodus started out with an explanation of what had happened to Magneto between the time he had first offered to let the mutants of the world resettle on his space station, back when he'd had the first Acolytes on Asteroid M. The "lesson" quickly devolved into a raging, but informative argument, through the founding of the new Acolytes by the treacherous Cortez, the creation of Avalon and the repetition of the offer of haven, Magneto's defeat by Charles Xavier (using a maneuver similar to the one which had just gotten him into so much trouble!), and the horrible civil war in Genosha. Delgado kept trying to interrupt and ask questions, but the blue-haired girl, Anne-Marie and I just sat and watched. I was increasingly convinced that Exodus was a dangerous loonie. He'd have fit right in with Apocalypse's prelates in my old reality. Colossus, on the other hand...

"Exodus!" shouted Milan from a console, "And the rest of you! Get your butts to Airlock six! The Old Man is back and he's brought a lot of company. Anne-Marie, Voght is teleporting wounded to the infirmary, 'scuse me, 'Med Center'; you need to get over there." He'd certainly gotten over his reverence for Magneto, I noticed.

We jumped to our feet in alarm, but had to wait for the blue-haired girl to show us where Airlock 6 was. By the time we got there, people were streaming into the airlock: Asians with haggard expressions, some of them bruised and bandaged. They were people of all ages, most of them lightly dressed (some with straw hats), carrying what looked like their worldly possessions. One woman had a cage with two chickens with it. They stopped pouring in when they saw us, and stood and looked frightened.

Magneto pushed through the crowd from behind, a well-dressed Asian man with him. The well-dressed man addressed the crowd in English: "We are here and we are safe. Form into your evacuation groups now! Evacuation officers, determine that your groups are complete!"

I watched as the refugees rushed about. Apparently while we'd been catching up on things, there had been a riot near a major mutant enclave in Singapore. This leader, the Light, had been assembling refugees there for years. When the hysteria over mutants had started in the States, the Singapore government had used a portable Cerebro that had picked up the huge concentration of mutants at once. The locals had picked up on this and descended on their neighbors wrathfully, probably not even knowing why they were attacking these poor mutants.

"I knew you would come through!" The Light clapped Magneto on the shoulder. "I knew it could not get too bad before you returned, and that was exactly what happened."

Magneto just shook his head, "You don't know how close it was."

The Light smiled. "I was in Cambodia in '75. I know about 'close', believe me, just as you do."

They had been brought here in a delapidated sea-going warship. I could see it in a viewscreen in the airlock, held to the outside of Asteroid M by claws that had grown out of its side. Exodus had gone out another airlock to make sure that it was secure. We were going to need all the scrap iron we could get, apparently.

The blue-haired girl started to lead the evacuation groups to quarters that had been established for mutant refugees before Asteroid M had fallen to Earth. The Light explained that his people were already organized and trained for this move. A certain number would cook for the rest (I was very glad to hear about this), some would take on child care, and the rest were ready to go to work to maintain their new home. Magneto seemed obviously relieved about this; his Acolytes certainly did not seem ready for the task of actually caring for refugees once they got here.

This also seemed to have occurred to Magneto "Colossus, draw up a roster. We must get this station online, and we also have to pick up refugees as we learn of other enclaves being discovered. But some of us have got to get some rest, and I'm putting myself on that list before I fall over. You probably know the capabilities of the Acolytes as well as any of us. Set up three shifts. Give yourself charge of one, I'll take the next and Amelia should have the third. Good night." He staggered back towards the door leading deeper into the station.

The Light, the last of the Asians in the airlock, walked up to him. "Do not worry, my friend. I have some experience with this and will help your people with their organization and any more emergency evacuations we must arrange in the next few hours."

"Thank you," said Magneto, "That would be... most helpful."

Colossus looked at the Light warily, but nodded. "I would appreciate experienced assistance."

Magneto looked back at us, sighed and went on out.

"Blink, I'm putting you on this shift," Colossus told me, "The one that is starting right now. What would help most is if you would go find a map of the station layout and learn it and start teaching it to the others."

I headed for the control room, happy to have something to do. Milan and Skids were there, so asked them where I would find a map.

"You picked a good time to ask," chuckled Milan, "Now that we've finally got the mainframe booted up, we'll just print one out." He set about doing that.

"Uh, Blink, all those refugees that just came on board were Asians, weren't they?" Skids asked.

"Yes, they were."

Milan and I hurried over to her station. Skids was sitting in front of a bank of screens showing out put from random security cameras around Asteroid M. Many of them were dark, but one showed a paused image, the young, red-haired intruder I'd spotted a few hours ago, back when the asteroid was buried in the sand back in Syria. "That guy just followed Magneto into his quarters, through a closed door."

"Get ready to follow him!" I stared intently at the screen while the other two grabbed weapons and stepped close to me. It was safest to teleport only to places I'd actually been to, but an image would work too.

We jumped through the teleportal into the hallway shown by the screen. Milan hit the safety override to Magneto's door and he and Skids charged in, guns drawn. I followed with a javelin in my hand.

Magneto sat at the foot of his bed, wearing a bathrobe and holding a towel. The intruder stood in front of him, staring at us wide- eyed.

"The traitor!" shouted Milan. "Move away from him!"

The intruder turned back to Magneto "This is why I had to wait until they weren't around." To Milan he said, "I came her for protection, for a place to live, just like last time."

"Last time you sold us out!" snarled Milan. "You led the X-Men right to us! Exodus banished you to Earth; you have no right to be here."

Magneto looked at the intruder, "So you have a history."

The intruder swallowed. "I joined the Acolytes when Cortez refounded them. I overheard him admitting he'd... killed you. He pursued me and tried to kill me before I could tell the others. The X-Men saved me, so I brought them back to take revenge on Cortez."

"Putting your fellow Acolytes in danger, since they knew no better than to protect Cortez," Magneto observed.

"Yes, sir," said the intruder softly, looking at the floor.

Magneto sighed, "Well, I've forgiven various of your comrades, as much as I am able, for killing schoolchildren and elderly invalids in my name. You weren't visible in either of those escapades, so you might as well be forgiven, too. What's your name, boy?"

"Neo... I mean, Klaus,... sir,"

"Fine. Milan, tell the others he's back and not to be harmed. Now, please get the hell out of here and let me take my shower."

We led the new arrival away. I decided that this Magneto might not be anything like the one I remembered, but that he'd be good enough.
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Last updated 2/2/96.
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