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Synopsis: Charles Xavier wakes, Jean Grey lies, and an ATF agent discovers a most unwelcome fate among the crickets.

Disclaimer: This fanfic is rated PG-13 for language, mild violence and mature themes. It was written for entertainment purposes only and no profit is sought or accepted. Many characters and situations are owned by DC Comics, Marvel Comics and Stephen King. No challenge to the copyright of the creators or controlling companies is intended.

The story may be freely distributed and/or archived (though the archivist should let me know where to see my name up in lights). I dig feedback the most and appreciate it greatly. Drop a line to XanderDG@hotmail.com and I will enthusiastically fire off a pithy reply.

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X-Men: Half Lit World
by
Alexander Greenfield
Prologue: Montana
1

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The setting sun bled down upon the open field. Stunted brush and crabgrass browned from months of drought took on a desolate, illusory beauty at this magic hour. With a mild breeze blowing, they shimmered in impossible hues of gold and red, stretching into the liquid infinity of the Great Plains, all the way to where the sky met the earth. A cricket hopped up onto a dried reed. He rubbed his legs together imperceptibly, beginning a solitary and mournful song that echoed across the field. Moments later, an answer came. Then another, and another. In only minutes a chorus, a cacophony of crickets filled the dusk with their chaotic, toneless opera.

A small cabin hunched in the middle of the field, squat and out of place in the sterile beauty. The wood was dry as tinder, having baked in the arid climes for untold years. The architecture was frontiersman, but then, that's what this corner of the world was. There had been a driveway once, but it went to seed long ago. The skeleton of a burned outbuilding stood like a scarecrow. Lightning maybe. A single great window dominated the front of the homestead, but no one looked out. Nothing stirred within.

The crickets continued their merriment, carousing, playing cricket games, growing louder. Then another noise penetrated the twilight. This one was shrill and mechanical: the squelch of a radio. There was a second of snow and static, then a distant voice spoke.

"Status alpha?" it asked.

"Nothing," came a response.

"Status bravo?"

Perhaps sixty yards in front of the cabin, an empty patch of grass came to life. Palmer Canon raised himself on his elbows. Fully camouflaged in combat gear, he blended in perfectly with the earth itself. Slowly, so as not to draw attention to himself, he placed binoculars to his eyes, mindful not to reflect the low red sun. He examined the facade of the cabin, the roof, the base of the building, looking for any evidence of movement beneath the porch. He looked into the window, seeking the faintest shadow. In the end, he found the same thing as every other check during the previous eight hours.

"Negative movement, control." He slowly sank down into the tall grass, trading his binoculars for the scope on his M-16. "We're losing light here," he said into the lavalier microphone mounted on his collar.

Canon looked to his left. His longtime partner, Evan Davis nodded in agreement. There were five of them in the grass. Bravo team's senses were attuned to the cabin, looking for signs of life. The men were professional, but no amount of training could prepare a body for an entire day spent motionless in the unforgiving Montana sun. They were sore, tired, and dangerously close to losing their edge. Palmer knew it was coming, and knew it wouldn't be long. The receiver crackled in his ear.

"Stand by."

Palmer sighed, wishing that he really could stand. Suddenly, the view through his scope changed. No longer was the bleak cabin the center of his view; instead, a monster filled his eyes. Green and horrible with mandibles and glossy black eyes, the creature wriggled and seemed to stare right through him.

Canon tilted his head slightly to the side to look at the cricket on the barrel of his weapon. It seemed to look back, and Palmer knew that he was beginning to get loopy. He turned to Evan again, and his friend shrugged. Canon keyed his walkie-talkie.

"If we don't go now," he said, "we go blind." Normally, his gravelly voice didn't carry that kind of edge, but the day was beginning to wear.

"Stand by, bravo." Canon settled in, trying to find a comfortable perch. The cricket on his rifle chirped, and he blew on it lightly. The insect took the hint and scuttled into the evening.

"Why is it always Montana?" Evan whispered. Palmer snorted despite himself, and the other agents grinned in agreement. The brief levity quickly dissipated, and the men focused again. The cabin. The crickets. They were everywhere, hopping around and singing their songs. They crawled on the impassive men, and on the grass that surrounded them, the thwip thwip noise of their jumping strong in the air.

"We're waiting on the go order, boys," control whispered into the ears of the men. "Should just be another couple of minutes." Evan gagged, and Palmer whipped his head to look at him. His partner coughed out a cricket, and Canon shook his head, frowning. The team is losing it, he thought, and that is no good. He began to consider calling for a mission abort when the world seems to stop.

All at once, the crickets stopped chirping. Canon looked around sharply, as did his fellows. There was not a single sound in the field, and even then, Palmer suspected more. An intuition of terror crept in, and he thought (knew) that all of the sound in Montana had stopped.

"Shit," he whispered. Then he finally saw what he had been looking for the entire day. The window -- movement. Subtle, little more than an elongating of shadow, but it was there. Palmer's trigger hand flited down to depress the button on his radio when the moment seemed to stretch out forever.

The cabin's window blazed with a white light of such blinding intensity that Bravo team winced as one. Brighter than any incendiary grenade, as bright as the sun, the light cut a swath across the field, making it seem like noon had returned to pick a fight with the lateness of the hour. The scorching illumination was not the worst of it, though. The worst was the noise.

The radios howled into the men's ears. A long treble tone loud enough to burst an eardrum. The men of bravo company ripped out their earpieces, but their fear rose. The sound continued in the open air, like the death scream of a tenor god, painful and endless. From nowhere, from everywhere.

The light from the window lanced out across the field like a javelin. Palmer Canon gritted his teeth against the noise. He drove his knuckles into his temples, attempting to trade one pain for another in some fight or flight reflex. Then, almost as a percussive instrument beneath the incomprehensible braying, he heard something he knew all to well. Distinctive and dangerous, there is no sound on earth like the one a twelve-gauge shotgun makes when it is fired. It is a final noise; an exclamation point.

With the others paralyzed in paroxysms on agony, Canon stood, bringing his rifle to bear. Wincing against the impossible noise, he moved forward as trained by years of experience: fast and low to the ground, weapon at the ready. As he approached the cabin, he noticed a trickle of blood running out of his ear. He was briefly concerned at what his wife would say about having to clean his uniform. For a moment, Palmer was silhouetted by the blistering light, then he rolled, clambering to the porch of the cabin and pausing by the door. He panted, once, twice, then whirled and kicked it in.

Inside the cabin it was impossibly dark and quiet. Canon blinked in confusion at the silence. The noise, so painful only moments before, had receded. On this side of the broken wooden doorway, it was only a shrill undercurrent. Stranger still was the darkness. No bright light filled the house, even in the room with the window. Indeed, Palmer could barely see, so he flipped on the tactical flashlight mounted to the end of his rifle.

Palmer Canon thought that he was in hell. The walls of the cabin were covered in unspeakable, glistening gore. They were black and reflective, sharing more with gristle and tissue than post and mortar. Canon gagged, clenching his jaw to keep his stomach. The cabin was a charnel house, an abattoir of human misery. Palmer was a professional, though. He took a deep breath and moved through the slaughterhouse, reporting in on his radio.

"Control? Control, this is bravo leader," he said into the radio. At first there was only the sound of (crickets) static. Then the voice of central control came, though it sounded much further away than only moments ago.

"Can you see them? Can you see them?" the voice asked.

"I'm in the house," Canon said, confused. "It looks bad. There is no sign of the target." He moved into the next room, the one with the window. The walls here seemed as though they had recently been burned by fire, and what once may have been a dining room table actually smouldered in the dark.

"They're so beautiful. The ladies. The ladies."

"Say again, control." Palmer placed his hand on the blackened wall, finding it cool to the touch. Shining the light around the room, he found a door in the back and began walking carefully toward it.

"The ladies . . . the beauty . . ." The voice was becoming incoherent.

"What's happening out there, control?"

"Mother, mother . . ." Canon frowned and moved on, disconcerted by the loss of any real connection with the world outside the cabin. Nonetheless, he felt compelled to continue. Palmer was not given to flights of fancy, but even he would acknowledge a feeling of otherworldliness as he moved to the door at the rear of the dining room.

He kicked the door, splintering the charred wood. He leaned in at the side of the door and peeked around the corner. A set of stairs descending into blackness -- a basement? Palmer slowly came around the corner and aimed his light into the inky darkness below, but found nothing discernable. He began to carefully descend the steps.

Canon's light cut the darkness as he crept forward, sending bright shafts of light down in front of him. Then he heard something and stopped cold, tilting is head to listen. Voices? He understood nothing articulate, but was sure what he was hearing was human.

Whispering voices. Several? Or just one? It was impossible for him to be sure. He moved a bit more quickly down the rickety wooden steps, and heard one crack loudly just in time to step back. The voices continued unabated, and Palmer decided to call to them.

"ATF!" he yelled in his most commanding voice. After the silence, the booming base of his own yelling startled him. Nonetheless, Canon continued. "Step into the light with your hands raised!"

If anything, the strange whispering gained intensity. Palmer began to suspect that the voices were not speaking in English; they were talking in a language close to one he could understand, but just removed enough that he could not comprehend the words.

"We have this building surrounded! Everyone can still come out of this in one piece if you just step out!" There was silence for a moment, then Palmer heard a sound that would stay with him for the rest of his days: a giggle. It could have been a little girl. Or an old woman, perhaps. For the first time it occurred to him that he might only be hearing the voices in his own head.

As he told junior agents, fear produced sloppiness. Palmer took two steps on the staircase in one leap, trying to avoid the cracked stair. He heard the loud snap, and was fast enough that he almost found his footing before the entire staircase crumbled beneath him. Instead of falling under the stairs, though, and landing on some crude basement floor, the impossible happened. Palmer tumbled end over end through the dark, whirling like a pinwheel through an enormous black space. While Palmer watched the light on his rifle twirl away from him in the darkness, he had time to consider how much landing would hurt.

2
Charles Xavier had no fondness for funerals. He had been to many in his time, and felt that if he was ever forced to attend another, it would be too soon. He knew instinctively that the gathering he was part of now was a burial of some kind, that this long goodbye was for someone he would miss terribly, and that it was the biggest ceremony he had ever seen.

The crowd around him was enormous. Somewhere on the periphery of his consciousness Xavier suspected that there were more than only the thousands of people he could see along the rock lined river. Everyone was here, from everywhere. He looked up at the pretty red headed girl who was standing next to him. She had a blond streak running through her hair that reminded him of his student, Rogue's white stripe. The girl stood with a boy she was close to, a relative if appearances did not deceive. Her brother, maybe? Xavier smiled. He liked seeing happy families. This didn't completely blot out his annoyance for forgetting whose funeral he was attending.

"Excuse me," he said to the redhead. "Have you seen my students?" The girl turned to look down at Charles, who was sitting in his wheelchair. She smiled at him.

"I'm sorry. I don't think I have."

"Can you tell me what is happening here?"

"Guess you missed the wake last night," she said.

"Yes. I suppose I must have. How was it?"

"Well, it was sad, of course. I'd met him a couple of times over the years. At least, I'd been close enough to call it meeting. Anyway, it seemed like a bunch of us just sat up all night talking and remembering, you know? I don't ever remember having a dream this long and involved before."

Charles frowned. "You can't be dreaming. This is my dream. And I long ago mastered the art of dreaming lucidly. My friend Erik taught me."

"I'm sure you're right," the girl smiled. "But I don't think this dream is only mine. I think this is more of a group project." She gestured around them at the giant crowd. There were a great many human beings, of course, but there were also other things that Xavier couldn't identify despite his broad experience. He saw a man dressed as a clown talking to a giant spider nearby. Further afield, several large, floating goldfish appeared to be dancing with a talking dog of various breeding.

Confused by his surroundings, he reached out with his mind. Xavier was a powerful telepath with the ability to both read and control the thoughts of his fellow man. However, Charles believed strongly in the notion of individual freedom, so he rarely used that latter permutation of the awesome force.

There were a cacophony of voices speaking in an infinitum of languages. All of them were mournful. More strange, though, he heard others with telepathic abilities doing exactly what he was -- using their abilities to try and gather their bearings in this strange place. It occurred to Charles to wonder if mind-readers were not naturally prone to being what Kitty might have called control freaks. In the waking world they always had an edge, but here, ruled as things were by the subconscious . . .

There it was. He found the recognition of place, at least. Charles was sound asleep, and so were the others here. Millions of minds, more even, all in the same dream. It was impossible, but it was happening. "This is extraordinary," he said to the redhead.

"I know. It really is. We're standing here surrounded by broken hearts. Last night I saw this woman I used to babysit for and I told her I was pregnant. Do you know what she told me?"

"No. Congratulations, by the way."

"Thanks a lot. I won't know when I'm awake for a while yet, but I'm pretty sure this is a great thing. Anyways, Lyta, that's the woman I babysat for, she told me that I should kill my baby. That I ought to kill it before it broke my heart."

"That's a terrible thing for her to say, dear."

"Yeah. I sort of understand it coming from her. Her kid, Daniel was kidnaped, and I think they found him dead. I can get why she would say what she did. But still, at the same time I have to think. To worry . . ."

"To be concerned that your children really will break your heart, yes." They were right at the edge of the river, and Xavier and the redhead paused for a moment to stare into the impossibly blue water. A hot breeze blew in, and Charles shivered despite the temperature. His friend Moira might have said that a goose walked over his grave. He could sense that the rest of the crowd felt it as well, a ripple of fearful emotion passed over the throng with the gust, and then Charles noticed something else.

Across the river he saw a familiar figure. The distance was great, and the man was weaving in and out of the crowd, so Xavier could not identify who it was. Still, he recognized the gait, the carriage. Charles tried to seek the figure out with his telepathic ability when something peculiar happened. He caught a trace of intimacy; it registered to his mind in smells, an aftershave, perhaps, or wet beach sand. As suddenly as the traces appeared, they were replaced by a single, much darker smell. Charles "felt" this smell immediately behind the center of his forehead, where the Hindu visualized the third eye. It was a scent similar to copper, but there was no mistaking it. The familiar and comfortable smells were replaced completely by the electric smell of blood.

"Are you all right," the redhead asked.

"I have to go. I'm worried about . . ."

"Go on. It's okay. We'll be meeting again soon enough."

"Of course you're right. I'll see you soon," Charles said, without knowing exactly why. He wheeled away from the girl and her brother, following along the edge of the river. Though the pace was slow on the craggy ground, even more when he had to maneuver around small groups talking in hushed tones, he managed to keep track of the figure on the other side of the river. He was well in front of Charles, and moving at a rapid pace against the flow of the masses. This was a man with somewhere to be.

At last Charles came to a massive stone bridge, and he carefully wheeled over it, apologizing when he inadvertently wheeled over someone's toes. A creature who resembled a pile of sticks with an angular head cussed him out but good, but that was all the thing did, and Xavier was pleased that it didn't do more in its anger. When he rolled off the bridge, Xavier caught sight of the figure moving toward a massive stone staircase. He panicked a little bit, and pushed his chair as quickly as it would go -- if he lost his quarry up the stairs the game would be up. As he bumped rapidly over the cobblestones, Charles did not ask himself why it was so imperative to catch the familiar stranger. He only knew that he had to do it.

He arrived at the staircase only a moment too late. The figure climbed the steps with neither hurry nor lethargy. When he looked up, Charles could not see the top of the stone steps, the apex was shrouded in mist. This was his last chance.

"Wait!"

The figure stopped in mid stride. Xavier was momentarily hopeful that the man would turn around and face him. Instead, the figure only turned his head slightly, revealing a familiar sliver of profile before continuing up into the fog. Charles turned his chair in a complete circle, unsure of what to do. Then he caught sight of a woman standing nearby, and he wheeled over to her.

She was tall and beautiful, regal even, with perfectly unblemished green skin. She wore a tiara of silver and a dress so black that light itself become lost within its folds.

"Pardon me," Xavier said.

"Yes, mortal?" He noticed that the streak of a single tear was burned into her cheek.

"Can you tell me what lays at the top of those stairs?"

"It is the stone garden of the Lord of this realm," she answered. "We once walked there together, telling lies to each other. Making promises that we both knew we did not mean." The woman smiled.

"Is there another way up?"

"No. The staircase is the only way into the garden."

"Damn. I cannot climb those stairs."

"Of course you can, mortal. Though the ability to walk does not necessarily mean that one ought to run in headlong."

Charles looked down then, and saw that he was standing. His legs were as strong as they had been in his youth. He looked at the woman with a broad smile, and she reached out to him, lightly touching his bald head.

"I am lonely, mortal. I despise funerals, and this one will soon begin. Would you forget your quest and keep the company of a Queen?"

Charles looked in the woman's piercing eyes, and then back at the staircase. He was torn. The woman's voice was like wind chimes, and he might have listened to it for hours, forever, and more. Then he remembered the copper taste, and his students, and his dream for the world. "I have to go," he said to the Queen.

"Go then," she said. "There are other worlds than these." The Queen frowned, as though unsure of herself for a moment. "Perhaps we will see one another again."

"Perhaps," Charles said. He left her there and bounded up the stairs, momentarily overtaken by joy as he felt the muscles of his legs ignite with the exercise. He entered the fog and couldn't see even a foot in front of him, yet he still charged ahead. It seemed to Charles that he was climbing for hours, that someone had built stairs into the side of Everest. Finally, the thick fog resolved itself into a mist, and Xavier arrived at the top of the staircase, out of breath but pleased with himself. He wiped his head with his handkerchief and looked around.

The stone garden reminded him of Stonehenge, only grander in scale. The massive slabs of granite were placed end to end creating a path in front of him. Xavier knew full well that the trail would not remain easy; that he would enter a maze if he followed the figure into this place, but he did not even hesitate. Even if he were lost for days, he would be walking on his own two legs, and that would be enough. Besides, this was only a dream.

He proceeded, and as he expected, path diverged from path in the mist. He decided that he would follow a pattern through the labyrinth -- left turn, right turn, left turn -- in hopes that he would eventually find an edge wall. His nerves only manifested when he heard a noise behind him. The clop-clop sound of run down boot heels had been following him for some time, always just too far afield for him to spot the source. Charles moved faster, and the day grew colder and colder. He began to shiver as he moved, the mist clinging to him like a sheen of frigidity.

Whispers. Charles heard whispers in front of him, and he broke into a run attempting to find the source. He turned wildly through the maze, both in flight from the ceaseless noise of boots striking cobble behind him, and toward the noise he was certain was the figure he was chasing. He rounded a final corner, and his hypothesis proved correct -- the figure was there, and he wasn't alone.

It must have been the locus of the maze, the terminus of the labyrinth. A broad grassy area with a seemingly endless number of entrances and exits. Looming above, perhaps hundreds of miles distant, Charles Xavier saw a tower of pure obsidian. The structure was black as coal and difficult to discern through the mist, but it was clearly huge. In the center of the courtyard, two men stood talking. Clad all in black was the figure that Charles had been pursuing. His back was to him, and the man was speaking to an ephemeral creature shimmering red (crimson, Xavier thought, not red, crimson). It was impossible to tell the true shape of the crimson thing. Its form shifted like heat off summer asphalt. Charles's jaw trembled in the cold. Though he could not see his breath, he thought that the temperature must be well below zero.

Neither of the figures responded to his entrance, either ignoring him or finding him too insignificant to warrant attention. Xavier quelled the preternatural feeling of dread that had overtaken him and crossed the courtyard. Despite the lack of response, he was still sure that the man in black was someone he knew. Someone he had to speak to. Behind him, Charles heard the boot heels clop-clopping close at hand. He moved faster, not daring to turn around, but wondering nonetheless why the boots were so loud on grass.

Xavier approached the figure in black, reaching out to touch the man's shoulder, to pull his attention from the seductive crimson shape. The copper taste was heavy on his tongue, and his forehead throbbed. Then a voice spoke behind him, the man with the boots. It was friendly and fraternal and smooth as silk. It chilled Charles to his very core.

"Hey, there, Old Hoss," the man whispered, breathing warmly into Xavier's ear. "Time to be moving on. Oh yes. Time for everyone to be moving on." Charles's hand finally came to rest on the figure in black's shoulder when the world began to slip away. The rock wall was the first to go, then the grass at his feet.

"Yeah, pop, time to move on." Then the voice was gone, too, and the figures before him. The last thing Charles remembered was the feeling of cold in his spine, and the distant tower looming before him, in desperate danger of falling into the void.

3
The rifle clattered in the distance, and Palmer Canon worried that it might be damaged. That was the last kind of paperwork he wanted to deal with. He landed heavily on the floor, knocking the wind out of him. As he was trained, he ran his hands over his body, feeling for breaks. Nothing. He sat up gingerly, taking in his surroundings. Canon saw his hand in front of his face, but only barely. In the distance, he noted a luminescent shimmering against a rock wall; light reflected off of water.

It made no sense; he could not have fallen as far as it seemed he did without the slightest injury, yet here he was. He scrambled about on his hands and knees looking for his flashlight, but it was nowhere to be found. Finally, he stood and stumbled forward, feeling his way through the darkness. He had to crawl over moist mounds of earth as his path contracted, narrowing, the ceiling sinking down to the level of his head. Palmer walked in a crouch, finally having to crawl in and around the teeth of stalagmites and stalactites before he realized that he was in some kind of ancient cave. He crawled through a narrow space and came to a rock blockage with a glowing fissure. Frowning, Canon peered through the crack and smiled triumphantly.

On the other side of the gap laid his rifle, the all-important flashlight pointing off into oblivion. He reached into the breach, attempting to grab the strap and pull his weapon to him. Too far. He tried again, straining mightily and pressing his face to the wall. Gritting his teeth, Canon felt the webbed shoulder strap on the tips of his finger -- an inch more, maybe less. Then he felt something else.

Palmer screamed at the feminine touch of a hand to his own. He instantly recoiled, jerking his arm away, but he found himself caught in the rocks. The soft skin of a woman's hand massaged his own. Her skin was warm, feverish, and her touch frankly erotic.

"The old laws have been ridden down, my love," came a voice through the wall. Her tone was wistful, and her voice touched by smoke. Canon felt her other hand begin working on his forearm, massaging in slow circles. He strained his neck, urgently endeavoring to see through the breaks in the cave in, but there were only shadows.

"Wrenched from my grasp," the woman intoned.

"What are you talking about!?! Let me go!"

"Robbed me of our birthright. Suffering, great with wrath, I loose my very poison over the soil." Her touch, though it was soft, was beginning to burn him.

"The other agents are surrounding this building right now. We will storm the premises and . . . " Canon screamed again when a third and fourth hand began working his arm. These hands were different, rougher, old and rheumatic. They caressed and cajoled Palmer's skin as though trying to divine something from it. Tears came to his wide gray eyes then, for the first time since his father died of cancer. He began to hyperventilate as well, his heart rate dangerously high.

"Oh, I very much doubt that my child," came an ancient, croaking voice. Then the two voices spoke together, but they said different words.

"It's just us, now," said one of the voices.

"It's justice now," said another.

"What do you want from me?"

"I loose my poison," said the young voice.

"Poison to match the grief pouring out of our heart," answered the old.

"Now the land grows cursed, burning sterile, blasting leaf and child," they both breathed.

"Let me go," Canon cried, convulsing violently in an attempt to free himself. He failed.

"Fate has picked you, child."

"She has tasked you, love." They spoke together again, a dissonant chorus.

"Raise her as your daughter," said the ancient voice, commanding and sure. "Keep her safe from harm. When the time is right, she will find her place."

"Raise us as your daughter," came the virgin whisper, secret promises hidden in the tones. "Keep us safe from harm. When the time is right, we will find our place."

"Please! I don't understand."

"Poor dear."

"You needn't understand, lover. Only act."

The hands stopped their circular kneading, grabbing Palmers arm and pulling him abruptly, holding him immobile. His eyes showed their whites when he felt hot breath on his fingers, then the soft flesh of a woman's lips. A tongue lightly brushed the tip of his index finger, then he felt the unforgiving bone of teeth.

Canon screamed again in pain and terror, thrashing violently. Finally, his arm came free and he lurched around apoplectically in the constricted cavern. There was no room to stand, no room to move. No light to see. He surged backwards on all fours, growing more and more disoriented.

4
A glowing halo in the blue moonlight, Jean Grey-Summers' crimson hair framed her. It spread over the pillow in liquid rivulets, surrounding her pained face while she slept. With a sharp inhale, she awakened, her green eyes flitting open. She looked around her room briefly, trying to get her bearings. Moments ago, she had been somewhere else. Familiarity quickly set in, but her troubled thoughts removed some of the sanctuary of home and hearth.

She looked down at her husband, Scott slumbering beside her. Jean could not suppress a small smile at his snoring. Behind the ruby goggles that he had to wear even in sleep, his face seemed impassive. Jean wondered that a man with such disarming, boyish looks could hold an uncontrollable power as great as his. Through red haze of the special glasses, Scott could look out on the world as anyone else. Take them away, though, and a torrent of plasmatic energy was unleashed. Now her love was at peace; no dreams appeared to trouble his slumber. Jean had telepathic abilities like Xavier, though her ability with telekinesis was far more developed. Still, had she wanted, she could easily have known whether Scott was asleep or not. She had long ago promised not to probe his mind beyond the natural rapport they shared, though, so she went with the direct approach. Calming herself after the intensity of her nightmare, Jean reached down to shake Scott gently.

"You awake, honey," she asked.

"Hmm?"

"You awake?" He rolled over to face her, his eyes seeming to float through the red filter.

"Sure," he said.

"I got the weirdest thing in the mail today."

"Uh-huh?"

"Yeah. One of those chain letter things." Scott frowned at her. Jean was not given to the fanciful, so he could deal with it this one time. "It was kind of scary," she added.

"Send five dollars and you'll be a millionaire in month?"

"No. Creepy. 'This letter has been around the world time and again since the very start of things. Send it to ten of your friends and they will avoid the coming of the storm and the end of all stories. If you do not, you will . . .' I forget. 'If you don't, you get bad luck and cancer,' or something."

"Lovely." Scott sat up against the headboard and looked at her seriously. "So what'd you do?"

"Threw it away."

"You're screwed, Jeannie."

"Nice. Thanks."

Scott nestled back down under the covers and laid his head on his wife's chest, almost immediately drifting back toward dreamland. They breathed like that for a moment before Jean broke the silence again.

"Do you believe in God, Scott?"

"Christ, Jean," he said, becoming annoyed. "I don't know. It's three in the morning." He propped himself up on his elbow to face her again. She only stared at the ceiling.

"I wish I did."

"It would be nice, baby, but based on our experiences, don't you see that we basically look out for ourselves?"

"Wow," she exclaimed. "Where did the selfish criminal mastermind streak come from? 'Look out for number one.'"

"Come on, Jeannie. I'm too tired for this right now."

"I'm just curious, Scott." Her husband paused for moment, then he took a deep breath.

"Jean, we've had a really long road, you know. I look around these days, I see everything we've gone through, and I have to wonder. I used to imagine God as this friendly bearded guy sitting on a cloud when I was a kid. Now . . . I don't know."

"Go on. Please."

"I'm just not too sure about God, Jean. At best, he's an arbitrary prankster. So why in the hell should we kneel before that. Before a being who is nothing more than a practical joker slipping frogs into the teacher's desk. There's a better way, lover. There is a better way." Scott abruptly rolled over, and Jean looked at his back. Then she stared back up at the ceiling, her hair continuing to glow under the moon's indifferent gaze. There would be no sleep tonight.

5
In a full on panic, Palmer didn't notice the shrill sound escaping his throat. He did not hear how like a child's the noise sounded, nor how similar it was to the banshee screeching the radios produced outside. Instead, without even the room to turn around, he powered backwards on his hands and knees horrified even when he felt himself enter a wider space. He inhales deeply and whirls around.

He stared at his surroundings with no small amount of amazement. His legs splayed before him, he sat at the foot of the rickety stairs in a perfectly normal basement. Disoriented, Canon's hand flies up to his forehead -- blood. He must have taken a pretty good bump to the head. He looked closely at the finger he was sure was (bitten off) lost in the fall, but it proved to be present and accounted for.

Canon shook his head. Could it all have been a hallucination? The product of a fall and a knock on the head? Consciously, the man knew that this prospect was impossible. The experience of the cave was as real and tactile as waking up in the morning and getting in the shower. At the same time, part of him truly wanted to believe that he had been party to some otherworldly phantasm. Palmer did not hold any serious misgivings about the supernatural. Nobody did any more. There were too many unusual occurrences in this day and age for a person to deny that anything was possible. But possibility and reality were two entirely different things, and Palmer Canon was content to watch the Fantastic Four battle aliens on the evening news. He wanted no part of it himself.

Pulling a strip of gauze out of one of his cargo pockets, he looked around the wide, low room. It appeared to be a garden variety root cellar, though he did not remember such a room being alluded to in the pre-dawn briefing. Canon tore the strip and used two band aids to stick it fast to the cut above his eye, stemming the blinding flow. Then he stood, and began to move carefully through the muddy room.

When he came around the corner, he found what he had been sent here for. Canon's dulled senses sharpened in a burst of adrenaline, and he pulled his side arm from the holster. In the corner of the room was a chair facing into the wall. It was a big leather job, the kind you would find in some New York tycoon's Upper West Side office. At the very apex, Palmer could see the top of a man's head.

"Lie down on the floor and put your hands on your head! Move slowly! Do it NOW!" The figure in the chair did not respond. Indeed, it didn't move at all. Canon quickly closed the gap, his weapon trained on the figure's head. With his free hand, he double keyed his radio, the universal silent sign for "assistance needed." There was nothing by way of a response in his ear piece. What was happening out there?

"Joshua Leonard Kirby," he shouted. "You are wanted on suspicion of multiple counts of homicide in the first degree. I am an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and I am armed! Now put your goddamn hands on your head!"

Nothing. Palmer quickly came around the front of the chair, and his jaw dropped in horror at the sight before him. The man who had once been suspected child killer Joshua Leonard Kirby was now a blistered, molten thing. It was as though somebody sat on the floor beneath the man and fired a blowtorch directly at him.

It didn't make any sense, though. Keeping his gun talismanically trained on the dead man, Canon reached forward to touch the corpse's untouched clothes. He ran his finger along the soft leather of the chair. Palmer drew back a bit, then, disconcerted. The dead man had been burnt to a cinder, but not a stitch of his clothing had been touched. In the dead man's hand was a long dagger, almost ceremonial in appearance.

Sniff!

Palmer wheeled around to the sound, his pistol finding the target almost before his eyes did. In front of the corpse in the corner of the room rested a burlap sack. As Canon moved toward it, the bag twitched. The agent reached forward and untied the top, pulling at the string. The bag fell away, and Palmer gasped.

The little girl looked at him with neither suspicion nor fear. She had a burst of flaming red hair, and astounding green eyes whose color was so bright that they showed even in the gloom. She looked at Palmer expectantly.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" Simply, without any histrionics, the child shook her head no. Canon holstered his pistol and scooped the girl up in his arms.

"Let's get you out of here." He hustled the girl away from the scene when she turned her head to look at the dead man. "Don't look, honey," Palmer said. He moved quickly out of the room, taking the stairs two at a time. Canon paused only once with the child, looking at the step that snapped, plunging him into the darkness below -- it was perfectly undamaged. He hurried up the rest of the staircase, and through the cabin.

Two ATF helicopters hovered over the field, shining spotlights down to guide the dozens of agents at work below. Even with the impressive noise of the choppers and the engines of the SUV's the agents were driving, the loud chorus of the crickets was still audible in the twilight. When Canon burst out the front door with the girl, all attention immediately focused on him. Alpha and Bravo teams trained their weapons on him for half a second before they recognized their missing comrade.

Evan ran to greet his partner, and he called forward the EMTs. They tried to take the girl from his arms, but Canon would not let her go any more than she would release her arms from around his neck. Instead, they hustled him away from the cabin just as another team in full SWAT gear charged in to clear the building. As Palmer and the child rushed toward a waiting transport, a cricket landed in the girl's hand. The child smiled at it, laughing musically and showing the insect to Palmer. In the growing noise, the questions from the medics grew unintelligible, but the man and the child were paying little attention at any rate.

The girl held the cricket to her lips and blew, sending it flying into the dusk. She smiled up at Palmer and held him tight, and the sound of the crickets grew, overtaking all of the other noises. The agents looked around in confusion, and only Evan seemed capable of making any sort of intuitive leap. He turned back to look at Palmer and the orphan girl; they seemed to be glowing in the spotlight of one of the choppers.

Then the child laughed, and raised her arms heavenward.

At once, all of the crickets in the field took flight. They moved as one, a single organism, a giant living thing. Before Evans's startled eyes, the small creatures blocked the light from the chopper, as they blocked the light of the setting sun. More and more seemed to come, and Evan thought briefly of the plagues in the Bible, pestilence of the Old Testament variety. He fell to his knees and attempted to shield his eyes from the living fog, but it did little good. Through it all, he kept his eyes on his partner and the laughing child in his arms. They continued to stand with an air of unconcern even as the swarm enveloped them and blacked out the sky.

Even then, Evan Davis could hear the child laughing.

To Be Continued...

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NEXT: Cracks begin to appear among the residents of Graymalkin Lane, while Logan discovers an ancient mystery in Alexandria, Egypt. Join me next time for . . .
Half Lit World
Chapter I: The Library of Echoes

Go to Chapter 1!