xp_logs | Hotel California: Escape

After the assault, a brief respite.

With a huff of relief Jim withdrew his hand from the front door. "I can feel minds on the other side," he reported, swiping an arm across his forehead. "Far away, but it's contact."

"Problem is, with the anchor gone, things are a bit more... slippery." Amanda was looking pale, the patch of road beneath her feet decidedly smaller and less solid. "We should be able to make a door, but it'll only work the once."

"Then we will make the effort count," Wanda responded from where she was resting against the nearest wall. The place seemed to zap energy even when it wasn't actively trying to kill them.

"Take de door out." Remy said quietly, eyes tracking something unseen to them all. "Remy not leaving yet."

Jim turned to face the Cajun. "Gambit's still here," he said. It was not a question.

"For now." He shook his head. "A month from now? A year? No, dis place won't hold him for long. Wanda, take Amanda and de others out. Get to a safe distance, and burn dis place until dere's nothing left. Not a scrap of wood or a roof tile. Destroy de whole fucking thing. I'll buy you de time you need."

Wanda nodded at Remy. "I will wait as long as possible," she said softly, "but if it comes to that, trust me, there will be not even be a blip on the astral plane once I am done with it."

The telepath glanced at Jean. The redhead was conversing with Scott, showing every minute of her hours in the dimension and the damage she'd taken along the way. She didn't have much left. Not for something like this.

"I'll help you," Jim said, turning to Remy. "I'll tell the others."

"Remy..." Amanda started to protest, but bit her lip instead. She knew the stakes when Gambit was involved. "Do what you have to," she said.

"You do de same."

Gambit is returned to where he belongs . . .

WARNING: Graphic violence.

Heat was the first sensation. The dull burn of infection pressed against them, creating the dull tingle of incipient neuropathy. The miasma, too, was no longer only darkness. Now it was flecked with particles of red. Blood-spatter mist.

"It wasn't like this before," said the telepath. Unlike Jean, Jim did not wear astral armor. His defenses did not manifest in that way. Instead there was only a flicker of light around him, like the edge of low-burning flame. His alters, pulled closely into himself, left minimal evidence. He didn't look at Remy; his mismatched eyes scanned the limited visibility. He kept close. "Any buffer left disappeared with the original summoner."

"He'll reshape it into what amuses him. Don't be surprised at whatever you see." Remy said darkly.

"At this point I can't afford to be," the X-Man said. They wouldn't have much time. Eyes were already on them. He held out a hand and concentrated.

"Here." The telepath tossed Remy something small and indistinct. "This template will help you control the re-absorption. Gambit came from you. Even embedded in the demon there's a gravitational pull to return. It's going to take all my concentration to cut him away from the entity. After that, it's up to you."

Remy turned the item over; a psychic version of his wedding ring. The clearest line that separated him from his past. "Poetic."

This earned a faint smile. "Your mind is what gave it shape. Make of that what you will." Jim turned away, and his posture slid into that of readiness. "Okay. Let's go."

Remy slipped the ring on, made a fist, and then opened his hand again. It was a simple gold ring; no inscriptions, no excess. Anonymous for anyone but him. With it, he could feel Ororo like an anchor in the back of his mind. Settling him, reminding him that he wasn't the man that he was hunting. He wouldn't ever be him again, in part because of her.

They stepped out into the plane. The images were flickering, fractured as Gambit clawed to hang on to the realm. The fractures contained memories, horrible ones, running like a nightmarish collection of horror films. Death, cruelty, torture dominated them, with not hesitation for age or sex.

"Kind of like a best-of video, don't you think?"

The telepath didn't need to turn to know precisely where the voice came from. He could feel it. The miasma had been crushing, but the astral representation of Gambit was something else. A human mind was highly textured, constructed upon internal paradoxes and situational masks, ethical boundaries and acceptable transgressions. They were muddied, complex. Gambit was not.

Before him was an entity stripped down to its purest purpose. Without conscience or inhibition there was no internal conflict. Without internal conflict there was no complexity, and without complexity there was no psychic fault. The avatar was unbelievably dense, and as impenetrable steel ball. It weighed on the plane like singularity.

Gambit was the purest entity the X-Man had ever seen in a human mind. Crafted for a singular purpose, simple and lethal as stiletto to the base of the skull.

And taking joy in it.

The telepath's jaw tensed, but he said nothing; the persona would use anything to its advantage. The only outward sign of his tension was a slight flare in his aura and a subtle shift in his stance.

"Remember the last time we did this, Remy? You got lucky that time. Today, not so much." He smiled, spreading his arms wide. "Bringing the mental cripple was an inspired choice. He know that his girlfriend has gone down on pretty much every agent between Croydon and DC? You know, I think I'm going to shove that psychic knife up her cunt, so she can read what passes for her mind while I rape her to death in my real body."

The astral plane rippled with the movement. It whirled with old screams and wet flesh, the hot spray of blood and the stench of decay. The foulness was so strong he almost missed the entity's words. Words were the tip of the iceberg. All the telepath could see was the dark mass below the surface.

Fear and anger would be used. Revulsion would only feed it. So Jim's mind resorted to the survival method that had never failed it: dissociation. Instead of the reaction the entity craved, the telepath only raised an arm.

"Thank you for the incentive," he said quietly. Energy began to gather around his hand. "Remy, get-"

His voice strangled itself off as the blade emerged through his hand. It twisted and pulled right, removing two of Haller's fingers as it tore out.

"Haven't you figured it out yet? I'm in charge here. Just me. The Alpha and the Omega. Normally, this is the point that I'd tell you if you give me what I want, I won't torture you to death. The thing is that what I want is to torture you to death. I'm not sure how the math on that works." So focused on Haller, he ignored Remy slipping off.

The telepath staggered back, clutching dumbly at the maimed hand. The pain was so intense at first it didn't even register. The blade was more than an astral weapon. It was the ecstasy of snapping bone, the joy of violating a begging victim. The essence of Gambit, cutting through his defenses like battery acid over the brain.

"Works out," Jim panted, voice thin with pain, "because what you want is . . . nothing I would give you." As he spoke a swirl of energy began to build around him, stronger than the effort in his voice would indicate.

"Not entirely true. It's a bit boring, sure, but you can die. That's always fun." The blade spun in his fingers and drove back in. But this time a hand caught the wrist and twisted, angling the arm up.

"Forgot about me?" Remy snarled as he placed on the joint lock. The problem was that this Gambit was a lot stronger than him, and the effort to hold back the knife arm was already taking a toll on him.

"Of course not." His other hand shot out, and Remy grabbed it just before a second knife plunged into his stomach.

The face-off was interrupted by a joint-snapping blow to the back of Gambit's knee. The injury reknit almost instantly, inflicting permanent damage on the thing he had become was impossible, but Gambit's stance was already fouled and for just an eyeblink his only support was Remy's grip on his wrists. Without missing a beat, Jim followed through with an overhand punch backed with such psychic force the avatar's spine snapped at a right angle.

Remy ripped the knife away as Gambit staggered, but astonishingly, a third arm jabbed out and slammed a blade into Haller's hip, inches from the groin. "You haven't figure it out yet, have you? I am untouchable here. Unkillable."

"Dat's what you think. De demon might be god, but Gambit is still a man." Remy said, and as the flicker of uncertainty crossed his eyes, he flicked out a card. It slashed through Gambit's neck, spraying Haller with bright arterial blood.

"No he . . . isn't." Jim staggered back, hand clenched over the wound. Remy was on its mind; the blade had brought memories of the flesh of the girl on the altar, the sobbing please of the cousins, the weight of a screwdriver in his hand. Old memories used like burning matches on Remy's conscience. Memories he now knew had steeled the Cajun's voice when he'd told them "I'll buy you de time you need".

"Gambit is . . . less than a man," the telepath said, white-faced as he fumbled with his wound and surreptitiously began to pinch it closed through force of will. "Just the same id we all have that s-someone brought out and took the time to hone to a point."

He did not look at Remy, but thought, And carrying that with you does not make you as expendable as you seem to believe.

The creature made a hissing, guttural sound, breath whistling through his ruined throat. "...weak... you are all weak..."

Remy pushed back the grip, and dug his fingers into the wound, tearing it open further.

"Dis is where Gambit dies."

"You- you fool." The creature snarled, and sudden, the figure shifted. Gambit collapsed for a moment, like an empty suit in Remy's grip. Now Haller could feel hot breath on his neck. "Humans are weak, even that one. You want to see strength? To see what you face?" The first spur jutted through Haller's stomach, festooned with his blood. He gasped as a second one punched through next to the other.

"I am your death." He said triumphantly, as he wrenched his arms wide and tore Haller in half.

There wasn't even a scream. The telepath fell in two pieces, limp as raw meat. Blank eyes stared up at Remy from the head still attached to the right shoulder like a grotesque wishbone.

"You can't beat him..." Gambit rasped with his broken voice. "Not without me."

Remy rammed his head into the ground. "Enough from you."

"I . . . agree," said a hoarse voice.

Just as Gambit began to lift his head a tsunami of pure energy slammed into the pair. To Remy it had no more effect than a breeze, but to the avatar it could have been an acid scouring. Torrents of black filth streamed away from the creature, taking with it the febrile heat in the air and sense of oppressive weight. All the power and essence of the demon was stripped away, leaving only what Gambit had always been: a dark, twisted mirror of humanity.

Remy still held the limp body of Gambit. The ring around his finger started to grow warm as he shook it. "After all of dis, you think dat you are death to me?"

Gambit's body started to particlize around his hand. With a smooth motion, he hoisted it up, and yanked it up like a parka. Gambit's body stretched and he pulled it over his head. For a moment, the pair of them blurred before Gambit dissolved into Remy. Something in the Cajun's eyes changed.

Behind him the telepath struggled to his feet, each move halting and painful. His first thought was: I'm alive. His second was:Oh.

His body was moving as a whole, but he wasn't -- his astral form was still bisected. There was simply another one beneath it. He could see the solid, broader frame of the second most prominent personality beneath the wound.

Jack was wearing him like a shredded Halloween costume.

With a detached sense of horror, Jim put his hand on the ragged seam that ran from pelvis to shoulder. Oh. This is bad.

"Remy," he said, tearing his mind away from the ramifications. He moved slowly, watching the tension in the other man's back as he did. He began to gather energy, weak and sputtering but the only hope he had if something had gone wrong. "Remy," he repeated softly. "Do you have him?"

"I've got him."

Remy's voice was controlled, but there was a cast to his face that indicated there was nothing clear-cut about the victory. Jim nodded once, sharply.

"Let's get the hell out of here."

. . . and all hell breaks loose.

The hotel shrieked.

A noise like tearing metal scoured eardrums and vibrated bone as the entire building lurched. The walls split like the skin on a rotten fruit, and the floor began to spasm. The stench of fresh-cut flowers and rotting meat flooded the air as if even the sense of smell had gone mad.

The dimension began to disintegrate.

"Well. I'm never staying here again," Jean muttered as she looked for an exit. But as she took a step she felt the ground loosen and start to buckle under her weight.

"The floor's giving out. I'll try to give us some solid ground but please stay close." The less square feet she had to worry about concentrating on, the better control she had. It felt like the exhaustion had started to creep into her bones.

"Dat's not-" Remy doubled over as a spike of pain shot through his forehead. He had grabbed the persona back from the weakened demon, but it was still partially tethered. He could hear Gambit's snarls of frustration as he tried to seize control of his mind. He beat back the first assault, only to look up just as a malformed statue hurtled through the air and slammed into him. It was brittle and thin, like decaying stone, but the impact knocked him clear off his feet.

Scott instinctively reached out to grab Remy, his eye darting around trying to spot anymore projectiles which the hotel breaking apart was sending their way. In short order a pair of optical blasts shot out shattering a flowerpot and a vase which weirdly were targeted precisely at Remy. "I think you managed to annoy someone here," Scott noted as he helped the other man to his feet.

Amanda groaned, her connection with the building slipping and shredding under the onslaught. The small patch of cityscape that was their sanctuary rippled and flexed and for a moment, disappeared entirely. Then Amanda pushed back, her stubborn will imposing that small haven again. "Nico," she managed, looking to her first student, now team member. "I'm not sure how long I can hold on. Stay close, yeah?"

In all honesty, Nico didn't know what she had been expecting. It wasn't as if you could kill a demon and just walk away, right? No, the whole building had to go to hell and back before you had a chance to get some fresh air. "Sticking around sounds like a good idea," she managed to say, Staff of One out and held more like a club, less like a staff. "This is when we slowly back down to the door, right?"

"If it'll let us." Amanda glanced over her shoulder at where the door had been. "Or if we can find another door. Looks like it wants to take us down with it."

The floor started to give away, dropping in even hexagons like the Giant's Causeway in reverse. Under Marie-Ange it dropped several feet, forcing her to catch herself on another piece of floor that had only dropped a few inches. And next to her, it was gone entirely. She chanced a look, and where floor had been, there was now an endless swimming mist of orange and grey and pink, with a cyclonic red shape that she took at first for a storm, like the one on Jupiter, until it blinked at her, red on black, and Marie-Ange screamed as she covered the hole with interlocking gold discs.

Jim stumbled as the carpet under him sagged like a sinkhole had just opened beneath him. He managed to find stable ground, but his eyes told him it wouldn't be that way for long. A section of wall peeled away and fell across his back. Instinctively he threw it to a patch of bubbling floor and was horrified to see it had grown dozens of tiny, blood-flecked mouths.

Shit, oh shit. He should have realized -- with the anchors gone, all that had been keeping the dimension in a stable, comprehensible form was Gambit.

It was a war on all fronts. Jean studied Remy a moment as movement in the corner of her eye made her turn and she knocked back a strange creature that vaguely resembled a notion of a living being, a mess of arms and legs and a mouth but not much else. The creature writhed back and forth, reaching for Remy, then let out a scream as Jean telekinetically ripped it apart in a splatter of blood and gore.

Shadows darkened in all corners as more monsters arrived in its place and surrounded them, each a twisted malformation of a thing shaped in different configurations, as if Francis Bacon had suddenly got angry at them.

"Does anyone see a door?" Jean said.

Remy wiped the blood from his mouth. "It won't look like a door. It will be-" The floor erupted around him, flinging Scott to one side like a rag doll. Remy instinctively curled into a ball as he was blown off his feet, legs lacerated by the shattered stone. He bounced when he hit, coming up in a roll to his feet. Whatever was left was acting on instinct, trying to get Gambit back.

Scott huffed as he slammed into the ground, struggling to catch a breath as the air was knocked out of him. Struggling to his feet the X-Man unleashed optical blasts at a pair of monstrosities which were charging at the group. "It will what?" he asked Remy, "What's the door going to look like?"

"Scott, give him a moment," Jean said, flinging one of the monsters into another one with enough force that it burst through the wall. Her overwhelming exhaustion had forced her to choose when it came to finite control: keep the floor at their feet and the monsters at bay or keep everyone out of her head. Her walls were currently relatively thin, a usual unconscious exercise given considerable challenge under the circumstances. She had burned her astral armor away immolating the demonologist's soul. It would take time to build it back. As a result she could easily sense the struggle within.

"It will-" His words cut off as he spun and hit Scott square in the throat. As the man staggered, the atmosphere shifted and Remy was suddenly behind Jean. He grabbed her by the hair, and drove a slim knife that suddenly appeared in his hand towards her eye. It stopped an inch from the pupil, hovering that as his face twisted.

"Get out..." He hissed. "I don't think I can- hold-"

A barrage of optical blasts flew out of Scott's eye, striking the knife and sending it skittering out of Remy's grip before the rest of the blasts hit, knocking Remy backwards and away from Jean. Seeing Jean was safe, Scott coughed and greedily sucked in a breath of air as he sank to the ground.

In the aftermath it was a miracle that Jean remained standing. Because they were not in the aftermath, but still in the eye of the storm. The walls and ceiling and ground had all but disappeared: devoured, chewed up, and spit out.

Everything that had been was cannibalized to create the creatures that now surrounded them. They took up every space that the eye could see, save for the small telekinetic dome and floor that protected Jean, Scott and Remy. Space no longer had meaning except for the semblance of what Jean had created. The monsters pounded, rammed, and scratched at every surface, their only goal being to crack open the dome and get to the toy prizes inside.

Jean felt a certain sense of deja vu in that moment. Except this time it was not the power of nature that wanted to take her away, but the unnatural. And there was no way out this time for any one else by her sacrifice. Somehow she always knew the supernatural would be her undoing. Perhaps that was why she never liked it.

Her eyes flickered to the others for a moment, as tendrils of blood began to drip from her nose and she felt the dome start to flicker. At least she wasn't alone this time. But that was little comfort. Dead was still dead.

And in the midst of all the madness the remnant of a song drifted cruelly through her mind.

"Relax," said the night man. "We are programmed to receive. You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave..."

Around them, things were becoming more and more chaotic, as all sense of normalcy disappeared and even the laws of physics were overturned. Walls became ceilings, the floor dripped and melted away, and the ceiling was oozing, giving birth to creatures Hieronymus Bosch would have considered too much. "You shield the others, I'll try and give us something to stand on," the older witch gasped.

The blonde had exerted her will over the dimension before, and she began to do so again. However, before she'd been working with material firmly anchored and shaped by another. Now that anchor was gone, and so when the entity, still writhing around the wound Remy had torn in it, felt the will of another slip into its own it knew instantly the potential of what lay before it.

A channel.

Amanda stiffened, eyes rolling back in her head, spittle drooling from her mouth. Her body began to jerk, fingers splayed unnaturally, yet somehow she remained standing, rooted to the spot as she apparently went into a full seizure. A trickle of blood started from her nose and her throat worked, as if she was trying to scream and couldn't.

Then a deep and inhuman voice growled from her mouth, triumphant and gloating: "And who is going to shield you, little witchling? You will make a tasty morsel for me."

Nico felt the shift before it happened. It was as if Amanda's presence, always there in the back of her head, had suddenly been erased. No, she could still feel her, but it was quickly fading from her perception. Turning around, Nico felt rooted to the floor for a single second in which she lost focus. She wanted to be sick. She had wanted to just stop and be sick for hours now.

"Like fuck you're taking her." Anger took over her, filling the spaces where courage and intelligence had been, but receded due to her fear. She wasn't going to let the demon harm Amanda, even if that meant damming herself. Already damned though, she thought as she lifted the Staff of One and swung it wildly at the woman's back. "Get out of there!" It was a simple command, and true enough, she instantly felt how Amanda's presence reappeared in her mind. It lasted a second though, since darkness followed right away.

The Staff of One hit the floor as it slid from her hands, and Nico's knees hit the floor right after, hands coming up so she was in her fours, completely silent and unmoving.

Amanda dropped like her strings had been cut, but she managed to pull herself up to her knees, shaking and heaving. The demon's presence had felt so wrong, she felt tainted inside and out. And her back stung. "Nico..." she managed, looking over to the other witch and reaching out a hand trembling like a leaf. "Don't you dare sacrifice yourself for me, grasshopper..."

Nico looked up, a certified insane grin plastered in her face, teeth sharp like razors. When she spoke, it wasn't her voice that came out. "I'm afraid it's too late for touching speeches." The girl stood up, her hands inspecting her body. "This is...different. New." Waves of black energy started to seep from her body. "So much...in such a little frame. I can get used to this. But first, a test run." She lunged forward, incredibly fast and with the clear intention to strike Amanda, but she never got anywhere near her; suddenly something flattened Nico's body to the floor, cracks appearing due to the sheer pressure.

Spitting blood, the demon looked up at Amanda, but before anything could be said the demon in Nico's body trembled violently like a rag doll thrown into a storm. Bones broke, dislocated, popped in and out her body as the same force that had squished her down lifted her up. Her eyes shot open in surprise as a black substance akin to tar filled them and then overflew into her face and clothes. Cracks appeared all over her, dark vectors materializing from her back as the top of her head became crowned by something that looked both like antlers and wings, all black energy, sizzling and cracking.

And then everything went still, silent, with only the whimpers of the demon coming weakly out of Nico's mouth.

"Enough." It was Nico's voice, and a thousand different ones. "This shell belongs to the First. You shall be punished for your insolence, demon."

Everything seemed to happen backwards then; the vectors, the horns, the tar, the cracks, Nico's broken body, everything seemed to deflate and pull itself inside of the girl's body until she was kneeling in the floor, arms hanging to her sides, eyes still wide open, as well as her mouth, a expression of sheer terror crossing her face. A thin black smoke came out as an exhalation, dissolving in the air. Nico stayed still for a second, and then crumpled down.

"No..." Weakly, driven more by will than by actual strength, Amanda crawled over to Nico's form. The girl was pale and cold, barely breathing, pulse weak and rapid. "C'mon, grasshopper, don't you dare..." she muttered, laying one hand on Nico's forehead. "You are not dying on me."

Nico stirred at the feeling of Amanda's hand. Then quickly, her color returned, her temperature rose and whatever damage she had seemed to vanish, leaving dark marks like ink smears wherever they had been before. She fluttered her eyes open, first unfocused, but they quickly found Amanda's face. "I can't die," she said, voice flat. "Now I know- he won't let me. I'm too important." For him, but no, that wasn't a thought of her own. She felt the First, invading every one of her cells, mocking her silently, and then he was gone. Sitting up slowly, Nico leaned on Amanda anyway. "I had to try," she carried on, without emotion. "Pity the dog with a bigger, meaner one. I guess my demons are actually worse than everyone else's."

"We have got to do something about that bastard," Amanda muttered as somehow, between the two of them they managed to stand, both leaning on and supporting the other. "But first..." She looked around - Jean, Scott and Remy embattled in one of Jean's TK bubbles, Marie-Ange, Wanda and Haller precariously balancing on Marie-Ange's imaged platforms. Exhaustion washed over her. "Any ideas on the escape plan?"

"Find a door!" Marie-Ange was still clinging to a columnar piece of carpet - it was carpeted the whole way down, soaked in something tacky and brownish-red. She pulled herself up, and the flooring she'd created of the discs spread under her feet. "If someone can find a door, I can get us to it, but quickly..." She had one hand cupped over her eyes, gaze fixed on the other arm, and the tattoo. "And lead me to it, I am not sure I should look away from a source image right now."

Jim scrambled onto one of the disks, kicking away an undulating portion of wooden floor. He cast about for the front door, the one they'd confirmed would lead them out, and discovered to his horror that it had disappeared. The place it had once been was now just a fleshy wall, puckered like an unhealing wound and oozing pus.

"It's gone!"

Wanda's gaze had followed Jim's gaze to find the same thing he had - no door and only a space that actually hurt her eyes to look. The entire room was starting to dissolve around them and unless they managed to find another door, there was very little chance that any of them would be able to survive much longer.

Find - or make. "I have an idea!" Wanda shouted, leaping onto another disk with the intent of making her way to a wall. "I just need to get ..." She found a spot that looked ideal, looked slightly less destroyed than the others. "There! Marie-Ange, make a door!"

"What?" Except it didn't come out in English, and Marie-Ange didn't bother correcting herself. She just pulled paper out of somewhere in her clothes -a small sketchpad not much bigger than her hand, half spotted with blood and dirt and a little bit ruined with water and flung it like a frisbee in Haller's direction. A crumbled packet of broken crayons followed. "Draw one. I do not have a image. I cannot draw and hold the flooring at the same time. Be fast." She wasn't sure if any of that was English either, but it did not matter. It probably was understandable anyway.

Jim didn't even ask why. He couldn't; he could barely respond enough to catch the notepad and packet. He grabbed the first crayon that came out but almost dropped the notepad when he tried to place it. The two fingers Gambit had sliced off were numb, and he kept slipping in and out of derealization as his bleeding psyche stutteringly tried to switch. No, he told himself. He dropped into a squat and jammed the pad against his knee, forcing his hand to cooperate. Jim's the one who draws. We have to be Jim.

"Here!" The telepath threw the pad back to Marie-Ange as something made of dozens of twisted arms slithered across the disc.

The pad slid across a disc, with more discs following it, pushing it along. It slid just inches shy of Marie-Ange's fingers, but she didn't need to touch it to use it. She cupped her hand closer around her eyes and leaned in, the drawing and her arm tattoo becoming her entire world for a moment - long enough to form a doorframe around the sketchpad. It was lopsided and made of something shiny and black scratched with grey - the colour of a broken crayon, but it held, and the door crept up inside the frame, made of more of the same dingy off-black.

The discs that were the flooring, held up only with Marie-Ange's power seemed to dim as she held the door in place, and where they dimmed, they started to grow soft, sucking at feet and hands like melting permafrost.

Jim scrambled across the discs to join her; sustaining multiple images in this environment had to be draining her fast, and he caught a glimpse of Amanda hovering over Nico as if the girl had been hurt. For the first time he realized the space beyond them was packed with a roiling mass of -- things. Where were the others?

No time for what-ifs. This place was equidistant between reality and the astral plane. Thought was form, form was function. Before they'd extracted Gambit he'd felt the minds beyond the door; now, too, he felt that same echo. He gripped the handle and wrenched open the door. Come on . . .

Nothing. The door opened into nothing. Jim's stomach dropped.

"It didn't work!"

The noise from Wanda might have been the word "Move!" but it was less a spoken word and more of an actual growl. She used her long legs to her advantage as she leaped from the disc she had just landed on to the one that Jim was balancing on. She almost knocked him off but he caught himself just in time and Wanda wrenched the door out of his hands and slammed it shut on the bricked-up wall that had been the only thing they could see when Jim had opened it.

"Move," she said again, softer this time but no less intense and she waited until he had moved to another disc - one of only a handful around them now that looked only passingly solid - before she situated herself in front of the door. Wanda shuffled her feet backwards until her heels were hanging over the edge and her fingers tight on the door were the only things keeping her from falling backward into the rolling sea of floor.

When she moved, she did not so much channel the chaos energy as she was the chaos. For a moment she allowed herself to become the creature that Chthon lusted after - powerful and angry, using the pain and hurt she'd suffered through to fuel the red power surging through her; a powerful front kick was the physical component as she channeled the power through her and into the door in front of her.

Had it not worked, she would have broken her leg badly as the door refused to move. But luck - or rage - were on her side and where once a door was ... there was green grass and blue skies racing towards them.

Turning back, she held out her hand to Jim and Marie-Ange as the wall behind her - and every aspect of the dimension around them - developed sparkling red spider cracks that grew with every heart beat until the entire thing was shuddering around them. "We," Wanda said grimly, "are going home."

And the world collapsed around their ears.