"At a time like this, the Professor isn't here?"
"The Professor..."
Scott hesitated and parted his lips. "Before Stryker's army arrived, Magneto ambushed him and took him away."
"And the army wasn't driven back by the Professor either. Fenris almost stopped them by himself."
"Fenris?"
Seeing the astonished looks from Jean and Ororo, Fenris shrugged. "Don't look at me. This isn't the time for your curiosity."
"Fenris is right. What matters most right now is why Magneto chose this moment to make his move."
Jean Grey shot to her feet. "He can't be planning to kill the Professor, can he?"
"Absolutely impossible. Magneto might hurt anyone else, but he would never hurt the Professor." Scott rejected the idea outright.
"What if Magneto wants the Professor to use Stryker's Cerebro..."
"Stryker's was only a half-finished model. It couldn't possibly work. Otherwise why would he have gone through all that trouble to attack the school?" Jean shook her head.
She had always been the one responsible for Cerebro. No one understood its complexity better than she did. Anyone who did not fully understand it could never have built one from scratch.
"No!"
Just as everyone was looking at each other, Beast burst in through the door.
"The first-generation Cerebro was built with Magneto's help. He absolutely has the ability to repair Stryker's half-finished version."
"What?"
The sudden revelation left everyone in the room stunned. "So Magneto really plans to make the Professor wipe out those innocent ordinary people?"
"He really is a complete madman!"
"Jean, can you find the Professor's current location?"
In the rising panic, Ororo looked at Jean anxiously.
Everyone had seen how quickly Jean's power had been growing lately. Using the Professor's Cerebro should not have been a problem for her.
"I think so."
Jean clenched her teeth.
For some reason, that crimson dream surfaced before her eyes once more. She could feel a powerful force inside her stirring restlessly.
And as time passed, that force was becoming harder and harder to control, as if it might erupt again at any moment.
But with the Professor's situation unknown, Jean had no time to stop and think about it carefully.
"Then let's go to the Cerebro chamber now."
No one noticed that anything was wrong with Jean. They all rushed toward the door. None of them knew when Magneto intended to act, so all they could do was try to move as fast as possible.
"Fenris, where are you going by yourself?"
At the back of the group, Logan turned and happened to catch sight of Fenris silently turning away and heading out of the school.
"Logan, there's something I need to deal with personally."
"If any of you run into danger later, call me anytime. I'll be there immediately."
Fenris did not look back. He only waved a hand casually, then disappeared from Logan's sight at an easy stroll.
Magneto's plan was full of holes to begin with. As long as even one link in the chain went wrong, it could never succeed. The X-Men themselves were more than strong enough to handle this crisis.
And even if something unexpected really happened, Fenris had dimensional portals. He could reach the battlefield and support them at the first possible moment.
Most importantly, before any of that, there was still one bastard he had not personally dealt with.
"Stryker!"
Rounding the corner, Fenris opened a dimensional portal. When he appeared again, he was already standing by the lake beside the Alkali Dam Base.
He stood there quietly, looking at the calm dam before him.
He wondered whether this dam would survive this time.
With a wave of his hand, the space in front of him gradually began to shimmer with tiny prismatic lights.
A moment later, at the entrance to the dam base, inside the massive flood tunnel, Fenris kept surveying the surroundings through the Mirror Dimension.
Stryker had disguised this place extremely well. At first glance, it looked like nothing more than an ordinary dam. But behind the thick dam walls, there was a whole hidden world inside.
From outside, getting into the base would have taken some effort. But inside the Mirror Dimension, he had many more options.
Fenris lifted a hand lightly. The structures around him immediately began folding and rotating, as though the whole world were turning upside down. The sight was dizzying.
Before long, a passage leading straight to the core of the base appeared before him.
"When I get stronger later, I'm just going to bulldoze my way through. I'm terrible at arithmetic and geometry. Using this spell actually takes some brainpower..."
Rubbing his brow lightly, Fenris moved forward through the newly opened route.
As he went, the soldiers who had originally been guarding both sides of the corridor had all already been disarmed. Steel bars bound their bodies, leaving them sprawled on the ground without moving.
Nearly all the armed forces inside the base had already been neutralized.
"Magneto, you'd better not kill Stryker before I get to him."
Fenris unconsciously quickened his pace.
At the same time, inside the control room.
Emma gently withdrew her hand from Stryker's head, then familiarly found a hidden compartment in the wall nearby and took out a small, exquisitely made helmet.
"A neural inhibitor. It can suppress Charles's abilities and trap him completely inside the illusion created by the Master of Illusions."
Emma handed the helmet to Magneto.
"What a fascinating invention." Magneto examined it for a moment. "Are you confident you can control the Master of Illusions?"
"Mhm."
Emma neither confirmed nor denied it directly.
Even the Master of Illusions had trouble suppressing Charles once he was wearing the neural inhibitor, and she was a telepath powerful enough to contend with Charles himself.
"I'll be relying on you again, Emma."
"And Stryker, thank you for your generosity."
Magneto turned, placed the neural inhibitor on Charles's head, smiled at Stryker, and then took the lead in walking deeper into the base.
The half-finished Cerebro was there.
"Magneto, you're going to regret this!"
Watching Magneto's figure recede farther and farther, Stryker struggled wildly and shouted at the top of his lungs.
"That's billions of people. You're completely insane!"
"You'll regret it! You'll regret it!"
...
"Whether he regrets it or not, I don't know. But I do know you're about to start repenting."
Just as Stryker was collapsing helplessly onto the floor, the crisp sound of shattering glass suddenly rang out behind him without warning.
In the next instant, a pair of icy hands had already climbed onto Stryker's thick neck.
"You are..."
Stryker turned his head with difficulty and found himself staring straight into a pair of cold eyes he had only just seen on a screen.
"You!"
"Me."
Fenris bared his teeth in a grin.
"I'm here to settle accounts with you."
(End of Chapter)
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