In the height of summer, the Arctic Circle was in the season of the midnight sun.
In the Arctic, on a desolate stretch of uninhabited icefield, the sunlight was muted rather than harsh, casting a bleak, unspeakable stillness over the frozen wasteland.
Across the vast expanse of ice, if one looked far enough into the distance, it was possible to spot occasional patches of exposed land amid the snow and ice reflecting pale white light.
Nearly five hundred meters above the ground, Fenris and Magneto stood silently in midair, held aloft by a current of magnetic force.
A spherical magnetic field enclosed them, constantly distorting the surrounding light and hiding their figures from view.
"Fenris, and Erik too, I have a feeling the enemy we're facing this time is anything but simple. Be extremely careful."
"If anything feels wrong, come back immediately. Don't act rashly. We'll discuss it together before making a move."
Professor X's warning before they left still seemed to echo in their ears, yet after spending quite a while here, the two of them had found nothing.
It was as if this were nothing more than an ordinary icefield. If they had not obtained intelligence beforehand, no one would have believed that a massive secret base was hidden here.
"Anything?" Fenris asked, turning his head toward Magneto with a hopeful look when he sensed the fluctuation in the air beside him.
"Not here."
After quietly feeling things out with his eyes closed for a moment, Magneto slowly opened them and shook his head.
"There's a high probability they've installed some kind of shielding. On top of that, the magnetic field near the Arctic is unusual to begin with. We should take our time. I'd rather not miss them by accident."
"Let's check somewhere else."
Magneto was not discouraged. The intelligence could not be wrong. If they searched through the area step by step, then no matter how large the target zone was, they would eventually drag that base out into the open.
"Let me do it. At the rate you're going, this is way too slow."
Fenris let out a sigh. If the old man had started studying earlier in life, finding something now would not be this much of a struggle.
Youth wasted was effort regretted.
"You?"
Magneto shot Fenris a thoroughly skeptical look.
When it came to sheer combat power, Magneto had no doubts. But delicate work like locating people? Could Fenris really handle that?
"If you hadn't insisted on keeping things quiet and searching bit by bit, I would've made my move already."
Fenris loosened up his shoulders and limbs, and a faint luminous glow began to spread from his body.
The next instant, his figure vanished from Magneto's side, transforming into a streak of light that shot upward.
"We're going to fight sooner or later anyway. What's the point of sneaking around?"
"Stay sharp. Don't let someone catch you from behind."
As Fenris's voice faded into the distance, an even more dazzling brilliance suddenly erupted a thousand meters up in the sky.
A sharp cry rang out as prismatic light burst across the air, and a powerful sonic wave swept up broken snow and raced over the frozen ground toward the horizon.
It was as if a second sun had appeared between heaven and earth. Magneto looked up on instinct.
There, an enormous creature with a wingspan of more than thirty meters beat its wings in steady silence, while a strange force of perception spread continuously from its body, surging wildly in every direction.
"This kid…"
Magneto stared blankly at the sight before him. The powerful glow radiating from Fenris's wings forced him to squint, while his thoughts churned like a storm.
"Found it!"
Only a few moments had passed before Fenris's voice rang down from the sky, long before Erik had fully recovered from the shock.
"Due north. Seventeen kilometers away. Seventy meters underground."
The moment the words fell, Fenris flicked his wings. A massive sonic boom exploded, and he disappeared from Magneto's sight.
"Wait for me. Don't go in alone!"
Magneto pressed a device in his hand, sending a message back to the Brotherhood. Then the magnetic field around him surged, and a powerful force shoved him forward in rapid pursuit.
"Alert. Enemy intrusion detected!"
Fenris's almost openly provocative display, combined with the enormous form hurtling straight at the base at extreme speed, presented the people inside with the unmistakable posture of an invader.
The base reacted just as quickly. Knowing their position had already been exposed, the blaring alarm echoed through the facility within seconds.
"Unknown hostile. X-gene detected. Suspected unidentified mutant organism."
"Weapons systems activated. Anti-air systems switching to wartime mode."
"Human approaching from three thousand meters out. Magnetic fluctuation detected. X-gene detected. Identity confirmed."
"Target: mutant. Codename: Magneto."
"Activate nineteenth-generation Sentinel robots."
A series of commands was issued in orderly succession, and the entire base instantly shifted into combat mode.
"Magneto found us. These nineteenth-generation Sentinel robots aren't the newest version, but they should still be able to put up a fight."
"Saturate the target with anti-air fire. Shoot that creature down!"
"Turn the base's psychic suppressor up to maximum output. Everyone stays in the designated positions. No one is allowed to leave the effective range of the psychic suppressor, myself included. Anyone who moves without permission will be executed on the spot!"
"Upload all files. Destroy the remaining data. Self-destruct sequence begins now. Three thousand seconds. If the Sentinels outside fail to hold them off, none of us are getting out alive. If we die, we take them with us!"
"For humanity!"
"For humanity!!"
Deep underground, nearly a hundred meters below the surface, the atmosphere inside the base turned grave. Though there were only a few dozen people, every one of them wore a tight frown as they stared fixedly at the images being transmitted from above.
When Fenris came streaking across the sky and arrived over the area, he happened to see the ground below split open with a heavy rumble, forming a fissure dozens of meters wide.
The next moment, one giant robot after another, each close to three meters tall, leaped up from the bottomless black crack.
A cold silver sheen rippled across the surfaces of their mechanical bodies. Every inch of their curved frames was covered in dense dark patterns, and their crimson eyes glowed with murderous intent.
"So this is the newest generation of Sentinels?"
Fenris recognized the robots instantly. Their current form was already very close to the final version that would one day nearly wipe mutants off the face of the earth.
"Mutant!"
The instant they saw Fenris, the Sentinels' eyes lit up one after another, their crimson gaze turning even colder.
Their faceplates snapped open at the same time, and hundreds of thick energy beams blasted from their faces, shooting straight toward Fenris in the sky.
At the same time, nearly ten dark gun barrels silently rose from the ground several kilometers away.
Dozens of anti-air missiles roared out, dragging blazing trails behind them. After a brief burst of acceleration from their engines, their guidance systems locked firmly onto Fenris in the air.
(End of Chapter)
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