At that moment, Daisy cut an undeniably heroic figure—one hand bracing the plane, the other pressed to her temple, brow furrowed in concentration.
The image was about ten times more impressive than Stark tumbling through the air.
Locating Lorna wasn't hard. Just follow the magnetic field to its source. The real challenge was getting her feeble telepathic power to establish a connection.
Daisy failed twice. The distance was too great, and the intense magnetic field interfered with her mental projection.
She did, however, pinpoint the target. Through her vibrational "sight," the source was a girl just past ten. The child had slipped into a dazed, semi-conscious state, and the cabin around her was in total disarray.
Flight attendants fought to maintain order while passengers teetered on the edge of full-blown panic. Thanks to Daisy's support from below, the pilot had managed to angle the nose up by another ten degrees or so.
But that was the ceiling. Without further help, a crash was inevitable.
Time was running out. Daisy didn't overthink it—she fell back on her strongest tool: vibration.
If Hill or Viper had been nearby, they'd probably have shrieked something about her being just a child…
But Daisy's moral qualms about saving lives were minimal. A quake pulse penetrated the fuselage—accompanied by a moderate but unmistakable tremor—and struck young Lorna squarely.
The half-conscious girl was stunned by the impact. She groggily sensed something shaking her but hadn't figured out what before Daisy seized the opening and pulled her into a mental landscape.
Ice and snow blanketed everything in sight. Despite the frozen wasteland, little Lorna felt no cold at all. Far overhead, a dazzling streak of green light drew her gaze.
The light seemed to sense her attention. It danced playfully across the sky, then vanished beyond the horizon, leaving only a faint luminous trail.
Taking in the strange surroundings and the woman slumped on the ground in front of her, Lorna had no idea what had happened. Her last memory was her mother and stepfather arguing.
Where was this? What was this place? Who was this woman? She had no answers.
Having inherited Magneto's bloodline, Lorna was a sharp girl. Young as she was, her intellect far exceeded her years. But the eruption of her mutant gene had overwhelmed her rational mind with raw, volatile energy.
Now, inside the mental landscape, the genetic storm was temporarily walled off. She could think clearly again.
"Your genes have awakened. You remember that, right?" Daisy's intrusion into Lorna's psyche had left her dangerously drained. She had to keep this short.
"Get your power under control, or everyone on this plane dies—including you. Do you understand?"
In the original timeline, Lorna's mother and stepfather would both have perished in this crash, leaving Lorna as the sole survivor. But right now, Daisy was going to paint the bleakest picture possible.
Little Lorna eyed her warily. Some strange woman had dragged her to a bizarre place and was spouting things she didn't understand. Genes? What were those?
Daisy completely failed to account for the gaps in the girl's knowledge. She kept explaining the situation as if talking to an adult, right up until Lorna asked what "genes" meant—and she realized she'd been far too optimistic.
America's education system deserved its share of blame. Its emphasis on personal freedom, democratic ideals, and a tangled web of child-protection policies had produced an abundance of unruly kids.
Children who genuinely understood what to study and what to aspire to were few and far between. The majority drifted along—playing hard, staying up past midnight, living for the next thrill.
Growing up in that environment, a high IQ only went so far. That little Lorna knew nothing was hardly surprising. She'd been an ordinary girl with no ambitions of running for president and zero intention of becoming a martyr for the mutant cause. Her school performance could charitably be described as adequate.
Daisy didn't have time for a biology lecture. Every second she spent in Lorna's mental world burned through her already pitiful reserves of psychic energy.
She walked over to the girl. Ignoring Lorna's defensive flinch, Daisy grabbed a fistful of her emerald-green hair. "Look at your hair. You're not ordinary. Genetic mutation—your hair is living proof."
The sight of her own hair turned green stunned Lorna. As the realization sank in, the aurora overhead blazed to life—green light sweeping across the sky as if cheering for her.
"Face what's inside you. Look at that light." Daisy pointed upward. "Everything here is a projection of your inner self, and that light is your soul."
Lorna might have been hopeless at textbook subjects, but she wasn't stupid. Staring at her green hair, a storm of emotions churned inside her.
As an ordinary person living in a society hostile to mutants, all little Lorna could feel was helplessness—and terror about the life that awaited her.
Daisy read the girl's true feelings and found herself at a loss for comfort.
Everyone experienced things differently. Some people gained powers and immediately set out to conquer the world. Others played it low-key, hiding strength behind a harmless front. And some just wanted a normal life.
Superpowers weren't exactly a gift for a child.
"Take my hand. I'll help calm your emotions and teach you how to rein in your power." Daisy's own understanding of magnetic control was, frankly, about as clear as trying to read something at the bottom of a foggy lake. But Professor Xavier—now he was the expert. The old man had spent fifty years studying magnetic manipulation and had filled notebooks with his findings.
Through Peril—her freeloading spectral companion—Daisy had sneaked peeks at some of those notes. Now she picked out the methods that seemed simplest and most practical, and passed them along to Lorna.
The mental link was about to collapse. Daisy's psychic reserves were critically low, and she needed to save some for whatever awaited her outside.
She asked Lorna with barely concealed urgency: "Do you understand everything?"
Without waiting for an answer, she pressed on: "My connection to you will last about another minute, but I need to leave this space now. Remember what I told you—control your power. There are people out there who still need saving."
She yanked herself out of Lorna's mindscape. Her consciousness snapped back to her body. In the physical world, barely half a second had passed, but Daisy felt mentally hollowed out, her focus scattered.
Fortunately, years of training and a strong will kept her upright. She forced herself to concentrate, intending to guide the plane safely to the ground—only to discover that the magnetic force was still hammering the aircraft.
"Lorna, can you hear me? Pull your power back—I can't hold on much longer!" she shouted through the mental thread.
Lorna didn't know Daisy's name. She desperately wanted to comply, but her body kept shaking in some strange, involuntary way… making it impossible to focus.
By Daisy's third plea, Lorna—unable to reply telepathically—resorted to screaming at the top of her lungs: "I can't do it! Something keeps pushing me!"
Daisy was baffled. What was "pushing" her?
She extended her senses and probed more carefully. What she found left her equal parts mortified and bewildered.
The quake pulse she'd fired earlier to wake Lorna up… was still going.