Magneto, the master of magnetism and King of Mutants, walked into the throne room. His outfit was perfect, not a single loose thread; he looked every part the king he wished to be.
Though beneath the clean clothes and washed face was a bone-deep exhaustion that no quick wash could remove.
Alongside him came none other than Charles Xavier, the two voices within the mutant race.
Charles too looked clean and fresh, though that was likely just because he hadn't needed to be present on the battlefield himself and therefore hadn't needed the change of clothes that Magneto clearly had.
"Erik," I said with a slight nod of my head. "Charles."
They both nodded back, but didn't speak to me directly, instead looking at Tony and Reed.
"So, you finally found a way to end this?" Magneto asked, not with arrogance or expectation, but with calm seriousness. "Because while we have been successful so far, the losses have not been insignificant."
"We have a plan," Tony said, a confident smirk on his face. "A good one, too. But we need your help."
"My help?" Magneto asked, raising an eyebrow. "You talk as if you could do this without me, or somehow expected that I wouldn't be the first to take action against the Sentinels. Never forget, their main target is my people," he said with an unusual amount of seriousness.
For a man who had once been so quick to anger, he had changed; he had grown into a king, a leader, one who was far more measured.
Though that didn't mean he was harmless; far from it.
"We would not dream of excluding you," Reed said, stepping forward. "Stark is just tired; he hasn't slept much for weeks," he explained, trying to defuse the tension he sensed between Tony and Magneto.
"I've slept plenty," Tony grumbled, not liking the implication that he was too tired to think straight. "But I guess it's true that this is an all-or-nothing problem. So, let me explain the situation. The Sentinels have a central network, a hive mind that allows them to learn and adapt at an exponential rate. This network is encrypted with a level of complexity that we've never seen before. We've tried to hack it, to break it, to find a backdoor, but we've failed. Every attempt has been met with a counter-response that is faster and more sophisticated than the last."
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in.
"But," he continued, a glint of excitement in his eyes, "we've found a vulnerability. A physical one. Their central core, the very heart of their network, is located in a secret facility, a place we call the 'Nexus.' If we can get to the Nexus, if we can get physical access to the core, we can take control of their network, either give them new commands or, if that is impossible, at least introduce a virus that will shut them down permanently."
He looked at me, then at Magneto, then at Charles, a silent invitation for them to join him.
"Getting to the Nexus is the tricky part," he admitted. "It's heavily fortified, protected by every kind of defense imaginable, not to mention it's in an underground nuclear bunker, so even using another wave of nuclear weapons won't work, which is why we have been unable to act until now."
"Yes," Reed took over. "The facility is beyond protected, and should we move against it, the entire host of Sentinels will no doubt move to stop us, and while we have thought about using that to force them all into one location where we can kill them..."
"It would be suicide," Stark added.
"Tony is correct; a full nuclear assault would be required to deal with the gathered Sentinels, and, well, they wouldn't gather unless the threat to the Nexus was real. And given the defenses there, only the full might of the Illuminati could threaten it."
"And their anti-mutant measures would be too strong to allow us to withdraw using mutant teleportation," Charles added, explaining in full why the Illuminati had been unable to deal with the Nexus until now.
The current Illuminati's most powerful members were Magneto and Charles, and they would both be without their powers in an area completely covered in anti-mutant technology.
If one excluded the mutants, all they had left was Bruce Banner, and as the Hulk, he wasn't easy to make use of, as he didn't really understand complex tactics.
Looking at the data about the Nexus's defenses, I indeed saw every type imaginable. This was a military fortress, able to shoot down a massive number of missiles, and with the Sentinels backing those ground-to-air defenses, attacking would be useless.
Useless unless enough power was brought to bear.
And bringing that would just be a death sentence... as the Sentinels would be strong enough to kill any force, even the Illuminati, when gathered together in such numbers.
The only way they could kill them was with heavy weapons, and by heavy, Tony and Reed had clearly calculated that only nuclear or equally powerful weapons would be enough.
But they too would be within the blast radius.
Indeed, there was little they could do.
They needed to first weaken the Sentinels enough that they could withstand an assault from the remaining ones.
And it just so happened that my return had dealt a major blow to the Sentinels... and with the power of my knights and me added in?
This plan that had once been impossible suddenly became very possible.
"I see," I said as I leaned back, looking at the data. "So your plan is to attack this Nexus facility and rely on my knights and my forces to withstand the power of the Sentinels gathering, allowing you and a small elite force to enter the facility itself and get to the core," I said, summarizing the whole thing.
"Exactly," Tony replied, a little surprised at how quickly I had figured it out.
Something I could read on his face and found highly insulting, but I guessed he had been surrounded by people he considered fools lately, which might explain his current behavior.
That, and as Reed said, he was tired.
One did not simply produce new weapon after new weapon, creating new tactics and means for weeks on end without needing breaks.
And Tony had had none of those.
That much I could see; everyone could see it.
"Good, but first, you all need to rest. You have been fighting without breaks; you have stretched yourselves to your limits. If you do not rest, you will break yourselves, and once the dust settles, the world will need the Illuminati more than ever," I said, a little more commanding than I had intended.
But as a king, it was my responsibility to take care of my allies, to make sure they were able to continue helping later.
Even Tony Stark and Reed Richards.
"I'm..." Tony was about to say something, a snarky comeback for sure, but Reed put a hand on his shoulder.
I was slightly surprised by the wisdom. Reed was often considered the smartest man alive, but hardly the wisest.
Yet here he was, calming Tony down and agreeing with me. "She is correct, Tony. We can't keep going on like this. We need to rest, recharge, and plan properly."
This, coming from the man who often worked for days without rest, was a big deal.
Tony looked at Reed, then at me, and then at Magneto and Charles, who both nodded in agreement.
He let out a long sigh, and for a moment, he looked every bit as tired as he truly was.
"Fine," he grumbled. "But just for a few hours. We don't have much time. The Sentinels won't wait for us to have a spa day."
"No," I said, shaking my head. "You need proper rest, and a good meal or two, maybe even a full night's sleep. You can't think straight when you are this tired. We've already lost people; we can't afford to lose more because you made a mistake from exhaustion."
It might seem harsh, but it was true.
They had been making mistakes; I didn't want to blame them, but they had allowed the Sentinels to be created in the first place. They, as the Illuminati, hadn't been willing to use their authority, and that had led to this.
Now, that mistake had little to do with their current sleep-deprived state, but they weren't infallible, and for this important mission, there could be no errors.
It was this argument that finally got Tony to agree.
Not because I was a king or goddess, but because I was right.
He was a genius, and a genius could easily understand the logic behind a good argument.
"All right, I'll rest," he said, raising his hands in surrender. "But I'm holding you to that 'good meal' promise. I haven't had much to eat but sandwiches lately; it's nearly impossible to get a good cheeseburger anywhere here," he said with a slight smile.
"Consider it done," I said with a smile of my own. "I'll have my best chefs prepare a feast for you all."
I turned to look at my own people, the members of the Veiled Hand and my government. "You too. You have all worked hard, and while a hero gets to rest after the battle is won, we still have much rebuilding to do once we are done here, so rest while you can," I said to them, and they all bowed in understanding.
With that, the meeting was over, and everyone started to disperse, heading toward the guest quarters, where comfortable beds and hot meals awaited them.
In the end, only Agravain and I remained behind.
"Sir Agravain, what do you think of their plan?" I asked once we were alone.
"It is a sound plan, Your Majesty. A risky one, but sound. The Sentinels are a unified force, and as long as their central core remains operational, they will continue to be a threat. We could hunt them down one by one, but that would take years, and the losses would be catastrophic. Taking out the Nexus is the only way to end this war quickly and decisively."
He paused, looking at the holographic map, which was still floating in the air.
"However," he continued, "the risks are significant. The Nexus is heavily fortified; assaulting it could take time, and during that time, the Sentinels will not be idle. They might come to defend it, as they said, or they might decide to do something else."
I nodded once.
Yes, that was my own concern.
A human was indeed likely to try and save itself should it be threatened, but this wasn't a person; it was a machine, and who knew how it would react?
And beyond that, Trask, the person who made it... what kind of surprises had he left behind? What measures had he taken to ensure what we wanted would fail?
Because anyone, anyone would know that the best way to defeat a machine was to turn it off.
And there had to be a switch, or Trask wouldn't have been killed... Well, that was my assumption, at least; it was equally possible he had simply been killed because he was human, and a human could father a future mutant.
Truly, sometimes a person could be so very intelligent, but so very unwise.
(End of chapter)
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