The aftermath was always quieter than the battle.
Smoke still drifted through the destroyed corridors of the X-Mansion, curling like faint ghosts against the walls. Sparks spat from torn wiring. Dented metal husks of Cerebro drones lay scattered across the marble floors, their once-sleek bodies crushed, slashed, webbed, or melted by mutant power.
Cyclops' voice cut through the chaos, calm but taut, "Everyone move! Injured students to the infirmary—now! Jean, Rogue, take the south wing. Spider-Man, stay with the evac routes and keep the halls clear."
"Yes, sir!" Peter called with a salute, already helping two kids to their feet.
Jean stood motionless for a heartbeat, breathing hard, eyes unfocused. Her hands trembled slightly—something few people ever saw.
"Jean?" Cyclops turned back. "Talk to me."
"I'm listening," she murmured, but it wasn't to him.
Her psychic sense stretched across the mansion like a thousand invisible fingertips brushing over broken stone, bruised students, scorched metal… and something else.
Something had changed.
A mental signature that should have been present was gone.
A presence she had never felt before, but she felt it briefly during the attack—small, alert, strange—but now…
Gone.
Her brows creased.
It wasn't the absence of a student. That she would've felt clearly. This was different. Like sensing a thought brushing hers—and then dissolving the moment she tried to identify it.
Rogue jogged over, brushing bits of drone shrapnel off her gloves, "Jean, girl, you look like you swallowed a wasp. What's wrong, sug?"
Jean didn't answer immediately. Instead, she asked, "When you came up from the sub-levels to assist the others… did you see anyone down there who shouldn't have been?"
Rogue blinked, "Sugar, Ah saw nothin'. Hallways were empty except for those tin cans swarmin' everywhere."
Jean's eyes narrowed slightly.
Rogue wasn't lying. She could feel that plainly.
But the phantom she sensed still hovered at the edge of her mind, refusing to resolve into a face or a memory. A loose thread she couldn't pull tight.
"…All right," Jean finally said. "Thank you."
Rogue nodded and sprinted off to help guide a group of dazed students.
Cyclops stepped beside her, lowering his voice, "You sensed something."
"I don't know what," she admitted. "But something was here during the attack. Not hostile. I think."
She exhaled. "And now it's gone."
Cyclops scanned the hall with that tactical, commander's gaze, "You think Cerebro pulled something off before we noticed? Or took someone?"
"No." Her voice was certain, "This was… different."
Before Scott could press, another explosion rumbled through the west wing. Both turned toward the sound.
"I'll check it," Scott said. "Coordinate with the med teams."
Jean nodded, though her mind was still half in that drifting psychic fog.
Peter Parker didn't have time to think. He moved like a blur, threading through the damaged hallways and lifting fallen ceiling panels off trapped students, "Hey, it's okay, I've got you—careful, careful—don't step on that, it's hot!"
Two boys leaned on his shoulders as he guided them out from a collapsed doorway.
"Spider-Man?" a girl sniffled. "Is it over?"
"Yeah," Peter smiled softly. "Yeah. It's over."
When she nodded shakily, he squeezed her hand and passed her to another teacher.
From across the hall, he heard a calm, steady voice, "Here…"
It was Ethan.
The kid knelt beside a trembling mutant boy with metal shards embedded in his arm. Ethan's hands were gentle—too gentle, Peter thought suddenly—as he wrapped a strip of cloth around the wound.
"You're okay," Ethan said quietly, smoothing the bandage. "Just breathe. You're gonna be just fine."
The boy nodded, tears streaking down his face.
Ethan offered him a small, reassuring smile. A perfect one. The kind adults practiced.
"Spider-Man?" Jean called from behind him.
Peter turned. "Yeah?"
"Any sign of missing students? Was anyone buried under the rubble?"
"No," Peter said, glancing back at Ethan—who was already helping someone else. "From what I can see, it looks like everyone seems accounted for."
Jean nodded, though her brow remained furrowed.
The nagging feeling—the invisible tug had now fully faded. Whatever it was, she had lost it.
Two hours passed.
Students were escorted to the infirmary. Drone parts were swept away. Repairs began before the fires were even out.
But Jean kept looking over her shoulder.
Something didn't add up.
And every time her gaze passed by Ethan Kane, quietly folding blankets or handing out water bottles, her senses snagged—just for a second—on the fuzzy outline of that psychic absence.
Like standing on a shoreline and feeling a wave pull backward before something rises.
But Ethan only looked up at her, blue eyes bright, smile shy and harmless.
"Is this where these go, Ms. Grey?" he asked, holding a stack of towels.
Jean blinked.
Her psychic sense brushed him again—nothing. Clean. Surface thoughts mild and ordinary.
A little tired.
A little worried about Paige and Amy.
A little overwhelmed by the day.
Perfectly normal.
"…Yes," Jean said slowly. "Thank you, Ethan."
He nodded and moved along.
And Jean felt that same whisper of wrongness follow him as he went.
Just a ghost of it.
A psychic residue she should have been able to identify—unless someone was very, very good at not wanting to be found.
Cyclops approached, hands on his hips, "Security sweep's clean. No breaches besides Cerebro's drones."
Jean didn't answer immediately.
Scott leaned close. "Still thinking about that… presence?"
"Yes," she whispered. "It was subtle. Almost delicate. Like a thought that didn't want to disturb anyone. But I felt it."
"You think it's connected to Cerebro?"
"I don't know," she admitted.
But deep down, she knew the truth. Whatever she sensed wasn't a machine; it was power. As for what the power was doing she could not tell.
Ethan lingered behind a partially collapsed pillar, pretending to check for injuries as he listened to the senior X-Men talk.
His pulse stayed steady. His breathing was calm, and his smile was soft.
Jean had been close—closer than anyone else, even Emma Frost hadn't gotten so far probing his mind.
'I guess that's the difference between an Alpha and Omega level telepath.'
But if anything, he always adapted quickly, cloaking his mind in white noise and background thoughts and emotions the way he'd learned to hide from telepaths in comics. He'd even let her brush against harmless thoughts—fabricated, shallow, calculated to be forgettable. Unless she deeply probed as Emma did, would she even have a chance of reading his real thoughts.
And she bought it, or rather… Ethan made sure she had nothing solid to doubt.
He slipped another medical kit onto a table, wiped nonexistent dust from his hands, and stepped back into the controlled chaos as naturally as any other teenager trying to help.
Just another student.
Just another good kid.
Ethan glanced once more at Jean across the hall.
She was still watching the room. Still searching for what he assumed to be the system.
'Still, if Jean can sense it, then maybe the system uses power close to psionic energy. I'll have to take my time in the future to research it later,' thought Ethan as he smiled inwardly.