[A/N]: Second Bonus Chapter for 600 Powerstones Goal; The first goal of the week is 250 Powerstones, so let's get it done! Please comment, review, and share!
Xavier sat in his office, monitoring the raid's progress through Trinary's technological connection, and Director Fury's operation was proceeding smoothly, too smoothly perhaps.
Clint and Natasha had Pierce cornered as the former SHIELD director was being systematically beaten while maintaining consciousness for interrogation.
Coulson and May were making arrests at the White House with their evidence ironclad.
Steve and Hill had the Helicarrier under control though there'd been some complications.
Logan was in Siberia fighting the Winter Soldier, and Xavier could feel the conflict through their psychic link, the pain of watching a friend reduced to a weapon.
Everything was going according to plan.
Except Xavier couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness.
He'd expected to hear from Eric by now with some update or some boast about how easily he'd crushed the submarine's defenses.
Twenty minutes passed, then thirty.
Radio silence.
Xavier's unease grew into genuine worry as he tried reaching out telepathically to Magneto, but the distance was too great without Cerebro, and even with it the Arctic Ocean's isolation made the connection difficult.
"Trinary," Xavier said carefully. "Can you get a feed on the submarine? Any idea what's happening there?"
Trinary frowned with her eyes going distant as she reached out with her technopathy. "I'm trying, Professor, but there's something strange. The submarine's firewall is more advanced than anything I've encountered. It's adaptive, learning from my attempts to penetrate it. Every time I find a weakness, it closes before I can exploit it."
She pushed harder as sweat beaded on her forehead. "This isn't normal technology. It's almost like it's alive, like it's actively thinking and responding."
Xavier felt cold dread settle in his stomach.
Two hours passed as the other raids were wrapping up and entering their final phases with success across the board.
But still no word from Magneto.
Xavier had his X-Men on standby, ready to teleport to the submarine if needed, but without confirmation of what was happening, sending them in blind could be disastrous.
Then Trinary screamed.
The sound was high and agonized, cutting through the quiet of Xavier's office like a knife, and her body convulsed, jerking in her chair as blood began to pour from her nose.
"Trinary!" Xavier moved immediately with his telepathic senses reaching out, trying to help, but before he could reach her blood started flowing from her ears as well. Her eyes rolled back with the whites going red as vessels burst.
All the machinery in the office went haywire as monitors flickered and sparked while the specialized computer terminal Trinary had been using exploded in a shower of sparks, and electrical fires started in three different places simultaneously.
Xavier tried to reach her telepathically to understand what was happening, but the moment his mind touched hers he felt it.
Something vast and wrong, a consciousness that existed in the space between code and thought.
It was tearing through Trinary's mind, using her technopathic connection as a highway to attack her directly, overloading her nervous system and frying her brain from the inside out through pure digital assault.
Rogue and Storm rushed in, responding to the commotion, and they found Xavier trying to pull Trinary away from the destroyed terminal with the young woman's body still convulsing and blood pooling beneath her.
"Get her to Hank!" Xavier ordered. "Now!"
They moved immediately with Rogue scooping up Trinary's convulsing form with enhanced strength while Storm cleared a path with wind that scattered debris.
Xavier sat alone in his destroyed office with electrical fires burning around him and his hands shaking.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
Suddenly a flash of light announced Astra's return as she materialized in the center of the room and immediately collapsed, unconscious from exhaustion.
Behind her the Brotherhood members appeared one by one, and each materialized and immediately fell or stumbled, all of them hurt, bleeding, some missing limbs.
Mystique appeared clutching her side with blood seeping through blue fingers, and her shape-shifting was flickering, unable to maintain form, showing the pain underneath.
Blob materialized and dropped to his knees with his invulnerable skin scorched and burned, somehow penetrated.
Pyro appeared screaming with his hands blackened and charred, the flesh melted, the bones visible through muscle.
Avalanche came through convulsing and seizing.
Toad materialized missing his left arm, gone at the shoulder and cauterized.
Boom-Boom appeared unconscious with her face swollen and unrecognizable, beaten beyond recognition.
Exodus came through last of the Brotherhood, hovering with his eyes vacant and his mind broken, staring at nothing, seeing something no one else could see, something that had shattered his sanity.
Magneto was last as he appeared and would have collapsed if Jean hadn't caught him with telekinesis, lowering him gently to the floor.
Xavier rushed to his friend's side. "Eric! What happened? How? Tell me!"
Magneto's face was pale with his breathing labored, and blood soaked through his costume in multiple places while his left arm hung at an unnatural angle, clearly broken. But worse than the physical damage was the look in his eyes.
Fear.
Xavier had known Eric Lehnsherr for decades, had seen him face down Sentinels, governments, and cosmic threats, and he'd never seen this expression on his friend's face before.
"Call all your X-Men," Magneto gasped, each word clearly painful. "They're too prepared. . My powers were useless. They were waiting for us, knew we were coming." His eyes rolled back as consciousness faded, body shutting down to preserve what was left. "They have an army, Charles. An army of..." He passed out with the words dying, the warning incomplete.
Xavier immediately began issuing mental commands as every X-Man in the mansion converged on his location with medical team to the infirmary, security protocols activated, and the school went into lockdown.
His hands moved on autopilot, activating emergency systems, but his mind was racing as he wondered what could have done this to Magneto, what could have prepared these humans so thoroughly that they'd destroyed the Brotherhood in two hours.
Xavier reached for his phone, dialling Director Fury's emergency line.
It rang once. Twice.
"Xavier, not a good time." Fury's voice was tight, stressed in a way Xavier rarely heard.
"Director Fury, we need help. Where's Logan?" Xavier's voice was weak, strained. "Eric, he's badly injured, and they're all together and prepared. They're a Cabal."
Xavier could hear chaos in the background with screaming, weapons fire, something that sounded like energy discharge.
"Xavier, I've got my own crisis here. Something's killing my agents. Some kind of robot with advanced tech. It's hunting them through the Helicarrier, and I can't stop it."
"What? What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the fact that we were all played." Fury's voice carried bitter realization. "HYDRA wasn't the main threat. They were the distraction. Someone waited until we were committed, spread thin across the world, then struck at our weakest points."
On Xavier's end X-Men began flooding into the room with Cyclops, Shadowcat, Iceman, Colossus and more, and they saw the injured Brotherhood members and immediately began coordinating medical response.
Hank rushed to Magneto's side with his medical training kicking in. "Good Lord, what happened to them?"
"That's what I need to find out," Xavier said. He looked at the broken bodies of the Brotherhood, at Trinary being rushed to the medical bay, at the destroyed equipment still smoking.
Xavier closed his eyes, reaching out with his telepathy and trying to sense what was happening, and the pieces were there, scattered across their psyche, but the picture they formed was terrifying.
Xavier focused as the pieces clicked together and the pattern emerged with HYDRA raid, submarine trap, digital assault on Trinary, robot hunting SHIELD, all coordinated, all timed perfectly, all designed to hit when they were most vulnerable, when they'd let their guard down, when they'd thought victory was assured.
Someone had been watching, planning, waiting, and they'd just sprung a trap that might consume them all.
"Professor?" Cyclops stood beside him. "What do we do?"
Xavier opened his eyes, looking at his students, his X-Men, the next generation who looked to him for guidance.
"We survive," he said quietly. "And we find out who's behind this. Because whoever they are, they just declared war on all of us."
In the infirmary Hank worked frantically to stabilize Magneto and the others while in Siberia Logan finished his fight with Bucky, unaware of the chaos erupting elsewhere, and on the Helicarrier the robot called Fury continued its hunt, killing SHIELD agents with mechanical precision.
And somewhere in the Arctic Ocean in a submarine that should have been crushed but wasn't, the Cabal watched their screens and smiled.
They'd been waiting for this moment, preparing for it, and now with SHIELD scattered and the X-Men wounded, they could finally make their move.
The timer continued its countdown.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
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