Fear Underground

Once upon a time, on a grey November morning, a message arrived at the Xavier Institute from deep beneath the streets of New York City.

It came from the Morlocks — mutants who lived in the tunnels and chambers of the old subway system, hidden away from a world that had never quite known what to do with people who were different. They were proud and fierce and they took care of their own. But today something had gone wrong deep in the tunnels, and they needed help that could only come from above.

Professor Xavier read the message and looked at Storm.

"Will you lead the team?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. Immediately, without hesitation.

But in the quiet of her own chest, something tightened.

The entrance was a maintenance shaft: a narrow door in the base of a subway wall, leading to a passage low enough that a grown person had to duck. Storm stepped inside, flashlight on, and heard the sound she had dreaded — the soft, final thud of the door closing behind her.

Walls on both sides. Ceiling just above her head. No windows. No sky.

The fear came like floodwater. She knew it well. It had first found her as a young child in Cairo, when a building had collapsed and the rubble had folded around her like a fist. She had been trapped for two days in the dark — two days with the stones pressing down and no sky anywhere. She had been rescued. But some things leave a mark.

Claustrophobia, Professor Xavier had explained, was not weakness. It was a real and physical response born from real experience, and there was no shame in it. And there was also, he had said very gently, no requirement to let it stop her. She could feel it and keep going. Those two things could exist at the same time.

Storm breathed. She counted. One. Two. Three. She walked forward.

Behind her, Cyclops moved carefully, the faint blue glow of his visor a small comfort in the dark. Storm counted her steps instead of her heartbeats, because counting steps gave her forward direction, and forward was the only way she needed to go.

The tunnel opened eventually into a wide underground chamber with a high ceiling. The Morlocks were gathered there, led by their sharp-eyed leader Callisto. Behind them, a section of the tunnel had collapsed. And on the other side, reachable only through a narrow gap in the rubble, was a young mutant boy named Skids.

The gap was three feet wide. Twenty feet long. Low, dark, full of sharp edges.

Storm looked at it. Her heart was very loud.

She put her flashlight in her teeth, put her palms flat on the damp stone floor, and crawled in.

What followed is difficult to describe. The stone pressed against her back. The ceiling was so close she could feel it without touching it. The air was cold and still and tasted of earth. There was no wind. No sky. There was only the passage, and the child waiting at the end of it.

One arm. One knee. Breathe.

One arm. One knee. Breathe.

Forty seconds. She reached him.

"Hello," she said softly. "I'm Storm. I'm going to take you home."

He stared at her with large eyes. "Are you scared?" he asked.

She thought about that for one honest second. "A little," she said. "But it doesn't matter. Are you hurt?"

He shook his head.

"Then follow my voice. Nice and steady."

She turned and began crawling back, talking as she went — not about the dark or the fear, but about the warm lights of the Xavier Institute and what Wolverine was probably making for dinner. Her voice was even and calm. Skids followed every word.

When they came out into the chamber, Callisto reached past Storm to pull Skids close. Then she straightened and looked at Storm with dark, measuring eyes.

She said nothing. But she nodded.

Storm stood up slowly and breathed out — one long, slow breath — and waited for her hands to stop shaking. They did. They always did.

They led the Morlocks out, and when Storm finally stepped into the cold grey air of a New York City street, she tipped her face up and let the sky fill her eyes completely.

It tasted like coming home. It always did.