CHAPTER 138 – PHOENIX IN THE LABYRINTH
The sea beat hard against the cliffs of Muir Island, a ceaseless rhythm that seeped through stone and steel. In the laboratory, its pulse was echoed by the steady hum of monitors, the flicker of readouts, the sharp scratch of Moira MacTaggert's pen as she made her notes.
Jean sat on the diagnostic table, shoulders square, eyes forward. Her hair was flame in the sterile light, and her gaze seemed almost to glow with an inner sun. She submitted to the tests with a quiet grace that was half patience, half challenge.
Moira lifted her eyes from the charts. "Jean, ye ken what ye did—holdin' a star in yer hands, stitchin' back the broken seams of the universe. That… that power is godly. But even so, you lost tae Magneto. Which means this power, for all its infinity, is limitin' itself tae what ye can wield. It's the only reason you're sittin' here alive."
Her words were clinical, detached, but her mind was not. Fear licked at the edges of her thoughts. This power… it changes her. It'll tempt her tae flaunt it more and more, until the girl is gone and only the fire remains.
Jean heard it all. The whispered thought. The private fear. It pricked her pride, but she forced a smile and brushed it aside. What's wrong with flaunting? With showing my family, my friends? As long as I never turn it loose in front of the world, it harms no one.
The door hissed open, and Moira excused herself, her heels clicking brisk down the corridor.
Elsewhere in the lab, Havok shuffled the cards with careless flair, Polaris resting her chin on her hand as she watched. Jamie Madrox sat opposite, every flick of the deck echoed by a dupe that appeared beside him and grinned.
"You always cheat, Jamie," Havok said flatly.
"Not cheating," one dupe protested. "Merely optimizing."
"Call it what ye like," Polaris said with a sly smile, "I'll still clean the table with you both."
Their laughter echoed warm, unaware of the storm creeping closer.
Moira's rounds took her deeper into the warren of Muir's research wings. She paused outside a chamber, frowned, and stepped inside. For a heartbeat her face froze, then—shifted. Features rippled as if she'd pulled on a mask. Something else looked back from the mirror.
Jean, in her quarters, jolted upright. Panic lanced across her mind—not hers, but Moira's. She felt the thrum of terror like a blow to the chest. Her power surged in answer.
Flame danced across her skin, her eyes molten. She rose without thinking, and the Phoenix within rose with her.
The walls melted away. She was no longer in her room but in a royal palace of gilded marble. Her clothes were gone, replaced by silks that shimmered with impossible light. Courtiers bowed as she passed. The air itself seemed to sing her name.
Her senses screamed confusion. Sight, sound, smell, touch, all told her this was real. Her psi probes confirmed it.
Then came the ambush.
Figures leapt from the colonnades, armored and armed. She raised her hands, power flaring, and the palace shivered—then cracked.
"No!" Her voice was a roar of fire. The illusions fell away like torn paper. The marble became steel, the silk became cotton, the courtiers shadows that fled into nothingness. Only the echo of her own scream remained.
It carried through the halls.
Polaris dropped her cards at the sound. Havok was on his feet in an instant, energy flickering across his hands. Madrox and his dupes tumbled up in a rush of limbs and curses.
"That was Jean!" Polaris gasped.
They sprinted, tearing down the corridors, flinging open doors, finding nothing. Labs, storage rooms, empty chambers. The scream still rattled in their bones, but Jean was gone.
"Not possible," Havok muttered, wild-eyed. "She can't just vanish!"
Polaris's hands trembled. "Tell that to the girl who rose from the dead and caught the sun in her fist."
The halls of Muir Island felt suddenly colder, the sea's pounding now a dirge. Somewhere in the dark, the Phoenix had been swallowed by a maze not of her own making.
And no one knew how to bring her back.