Charles' already frail body crumpled the moment the laser struck. He collapsed into the chair behind him, too weak to stand, yet a flicker of sharp resolve still burned in his eyes.
"I thought I'd have a lot to say to you."
William showed no expression as he stepped forward, one slow step at a time. Simultaneously, he pulled out a vial, the brain secretion meant to control Charles.
"Ever since I learned the truth, I've spent the last two years thinking about what I'd do when you finally collapsed before me like this. What could I say or do to ease the hatred inside me? But now I know... I don't need to do anything at all."
As he said this, William reached the mutant and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off the ground with one hand.
"I'll make you kill every one of your own kind. Just the thought of it... it makes any torture I could inflict on you feel like mercy."
With that, he plunged the contents of the vial into the back of Charles' neck.
"Ahhh! Aaahhh!!!"
Charles screamed in agony.
Both he and Jason had the ability to manipulate minds, but their powers were fundamentally different.
Charles controlled the mind itself. He interfered with others' thoughts using psychic energy. Jason's ability, however, operated on a more physical level. He distorted a person's bodily sensations to indirectly shape the world they believed they saw.
As such, Charles didn't have strong resistance against the effects of Jason's brain secretions.
Before long, his eyes lost focus. He became still, no longer able to resist, forced to follow William's orders.
"Alright, now listen to me, Xavier. Use the machine behind you. Find every mutant in the world... and kill them all."
Jean frowned slightly at that but didn't say anything. She just quietly formed a mental barrier around herself.
If Charles focused his mind directly on her, it would be hard to defend. But if it was a wide-range attack targeting all mutants, she was confident she could hold her ground.
After receiving William's command, Charles began to move. His steps were slow, but one by one, he activated the Cerebro behind him and placed the neural link cap on his head.
Just then, William noticed Rogue standing silently nearby.
"And what's this girl for?"
He could tell Charles had used his powers to suppress her mind. That was the only reason he hadn't shot her yet. But before he could figure out why Rogue was even here, the controlled mutant had finished his preparations.
The door to the Cerebro chamber closed. The lights dimmed.
Then, as Charles' powerful mind connected to the machine, the entire room seemed to transform, like a vast and beautiful starfield created from human consciousness.
Each tiny white light floating in the space represented a unique mind. Slowly, some of those lights began to glow red.
It was clear. After locating every human on Earth, Charles had begun sorting out the mutants with incredible precision.
"Yes. Yes, that's it," William whispered, his voice trembling with anticipation. He was so close to completing his revenge.
Gradually, no more red lights appeared. At that moment, mutants all around the world felt their hearts tighten. Their minds had been locked onto by Charles.
"Good! Now, kill them all! Every single one of them!"
William shouted the next order without hesitation. But right then, something went wrong.
The second Charles unleashed his massive psychic power into the device, Cerebro suddenly sparked violently. A burst of electricity shot out, blasting William backward.
"What the hell is going on?!"
He hadn't expected this. But Jean understood what was happening.
"The device is out of control. Charles must've modified it ahead of time. He boosted the amplification of mental power way beyond what it can handle."
William clearly heard Jean's explanation. As he watched Charles slowly become engulfed in arcs of electricity, anxiety welled up inside him.
"Then what's going to happen?"
He wasn't worried about Charles' safety. What he cared about was that if something happened to him, his plan to wipe out all mutants across the globe would no longer be so simple.
The President had only authorized an armed assault on the academy, not a global extermination of mutants.
"The result... obviously, the user of the amplifier will be destroyed by the uncontrolled mental power backlash. There's no avoiding it."
Jean calmly stated what was about to happen. In the next instant, a violent burst of lightning exploded from the machine, and Charles' body was instantly reduced to ash by the overwhelming current.
But Jean could still see it—despite his death, the mind amplifier had completed its task.
Charles' body was gone, but his consciousness had survived, supercharged a thousand times over. It had transformed into a giant psychic presence that nearly blanketed the entire world, piercing through the mental barrier Reid had previously constructed.
"Charles!"
At the same moment, Reid, still in Gotham, was immediately alerted.
There was no stopping it. Charles had sacrificed his body to transcend the physical, and now, with Cerebro's help, his psychic power far surpassed anything Reid could reach.
That massive surge of psychic energy rushed straight toward the LexCorp space station floating in orbit.
That station still held what remained of Magneto's brain.
In the next moment, Charles' psychic force poured into the mutant's mind.
Inside a pure white mental space, the two old friends met again after two years.
"Charles. I didn't expect you to take it this far."
"Erik. One last fight, together. Even if we can't win, we can still give mutants a future."
They smiled at each other. Then, the mental space faded away.
Charles and Magneto's consciousnesses fully merged. The latter's brain couldn't withstand the overwhelming mental force and died immediately. But the fused psychic power they created returned to Westchester.
And it descended upon the one person everyone had overlooked: Rogue.
Her own consciousness was instantly suppressed. As both mutant leaders took full control, her body began to change rapidly. The once teenage girl transformed into a towering adult man over two meters tall.
At the same time, Magneto's magnetic powers awakened again. The metal parts that had built the Cerebro chamber flew toward him, reshaping themselves into an unbreakable armor around the new body.
If Reid had been there, he would have immediately recognized who this being was.
He wasn't Professor X. He wasn't Magneto. And he definitely wasn't the girl whose mind had been buried.
His name… was Onslaught.
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