Sentinel Attack

Have you ever had a morning when everything changed before breakfast was even finished?

Hank McCoy was halfway through a stack of blueberry pancakes — he had made them himself, with a little extra butter, which he felt strongly about — when the alarm sounded in the lower levels of the Xavier School. The tone was low and steady, the one that meant Cerebro had found something serious.

He was in the hangar in ninety seconds, still carrying his fork.

Three Sentinels had appeared in Midtown Manhattan. Sentinels are enormous robots — thirty feet tall, built of heavy purple-and-grey metal, with domed heads that sweep red targeting beams across anything they're searching for. They were designed by an engineer named Bolivar Trask to hunt mutants. Three of them, moving in formation down a crowded street, was not a small problem.

What made it urgent was the girl.

Her name was Maya. She was twelve years old, from a neighborhood in Queens, and just yesterday she had discovered that she could create small pockets of intense cold wherever her hands moved. She hadn't told anyone yet. She was still figuring it out. And now three Sentinels had detected her mutant signature and were moving toward the taxi she was hiding behind, red beams sweeping closer every second.

The Blackbird — the X-Men's sleek, black, whisper-quiet jet — lifted off in less than four minutes. Storm generated a thick cloud bank as they approached from the west, hiding their descent. They set down on the Hudson River bank unseen.

From there, they could see the Sentinels clearly.

Cyclops looked at each teammate once. Then he spoke quickly and quietly, the way he always did when there was no time to waste. "Beast gets Maya clear. Storm takes the air — keep their sensors busy. Jean, lock the first one's arms down. I'll handle the joints."

No one argued. They moved.

Jean's hands came up and the nearest Sentinel froze, its arms held rigid at its sides by her telekinesis. The machine hummed and strained but could not raise its hands.

Storm rose on a column of wind into the grey morning sky — and brought her arm down — CRACK — and lightning split the second Sentinel's sensor array like a tree hit by a thunderbolt. The machine lurched sideways, blind.

Beast was already gone. He crossed twenty meters in two bounds — his enormous legs eating the distance — and he came in low behind the taxi, scooped Maya up in one arm, and placed her gently behind a solid concrete barrier three seconds later. She had barely had time to gasp.

"I've got you," Hank said simply, in his deep kind voice. "You're all right."

Maya nodded, wide-eyed, pressing herself against the concrete. She watched through a gap as the X-Men worked.

Cyclops fired twice. The first Sentinel's knee joint sheared under the force of a precisely aimed optic blast — CRASH — and it sat down hard on the pavement. He tracked to the third Sentinel and waited for Jean's signal. She swept its targeting array aside just as it tried to turn toward Storm. Its arm swung wide into empty air. Storm drove a wall of wind into its chest and pushed it two full city blocks back. Then Cyclops fired once more.

The third Sentinel folded.

The city block went silent.

Dust settled on the empty street. Somewhere in the distance a taxi honked, oblivious. Three enormous robots sat crumpled and still on the pavement.

Beast set Maya down carefully on steady ground. Jean crouched in front of her.

"What happened to me?" Maya asked. "Last night, I touched a glass of water and it froze solid."

"That's your power," Jean said gently. "And I know that's a lot to take in right now. But I promise you — you are not alone in this."

Cyclops watched from a few steps away. He thought about the first time he had looked in a mirror after the accident, wearing ruby-quartz glasses, afraid to open his eyes. He thought about the letter that had arrived for him afterward.

That evening, a letter arrived at Maya's home on Bainbridge Avenue in Queens. It was written in careful, steady handwriting on thick cream paper. It said all the right things.

She read it three times before she went to sleep.

Goodnight. Some things are worth being brave for.