Dazzler’s hands began to glow as her body absorbed Sage’s singing. The urge within her to unleash her stored energy was overpowering, but she held it back. She was going to need everything she had to face Shaw and couldn’t waste it on something simple like blasting a door open.
“My heart was made for destruction…” Sage sang in her Eastern European accent.
“Louder!” Dazzler ordered Sage. “You’re at Madison Square Garden, not a dive bar.” Dazzler began to sing to demonstrate the volume she needed. “Your heart don’t stand a chance against me…”
Sage raised her voice to match Dazzler’s volume. “My heart was made for destruction. Your heart is weak at the knees…”
And the glow at her palms grew brighter.
“Wh- what is that?” her father asked, taking a step back as he stared at the light emanating from her hands. For a moment her powers faltered and receded at the sound of his voice, but she gritted her teeth, blocked him out of her mind, and pushed the energy out again.
“Alison?” he said quietly.
“Quiet!” she barked, needing to concentrate before Shaw realized the flaw in her imprisonment – that although his cell blocked out external noise, it could not stop her from absorbing Sage’s singing.
“My heart was made for destruction…” Sage yelled louder, commanding her focus.
“Get ready!” Dazzler yelled, surging a wave of light energy from the pit of her stomach, up through her chest, into her arms and hands, and blasted the door right off its hinges.
And she made sure to reabsorb the sonic energy that blast released.
“What the…?” her father breathed. Dazzler quickly glanced around to see him staring at her from where he cowered from the blast.
“Guard him until I get the others!” she told Sage.
Dazzler moved through the doorway to see two Reds running for her. She raised her palms and blasted them with a concussive light burst. They fell unconscious to the floor, and she raced to the next cell door. “Keep singing!” she called over her shoulder to Sage.
“My heart was made for destruction…!” Sage yelled, sounding like an Eastern Bloc Lila Cheney metal cover band.
“Get back from the door!” she yelled to the cell’s inhabitants, suspecting it was Polaris and Magneto as the door appeared to be plastic. She surged her energy and blasted the door inward.
Laser fire struck the doorway, then scorched the edge of her arm. She gasped in pain, ducked and cowered as she felt a breeze, then looked up to see Magneto in the doorway. Eyes burning with fury and hands raised, he swiftly pulled the weapons from the soldiers’ hands and beat them over their heads with them.
“You OK?” Polaris asked, helping her up.
Dazzler nodded. “Keep the guards off me while I get the others out.”
“You’re hurt,” Polaris said, eyeing the burn across her arm.
“I’m fine,” Dazzler said.
“Get the others!” Magneto ordered. “I’ll take care of these fools!”
They saw more Reds running their way and Dazzler quickly ran to the next doorway, soaking in Sage’s vocals, and blasted the door open. They moved inside the third cell. Polaris headed straight to Rachel and pulled out her drip.
“Rachel! Rachel, wake up!” Polaris shook her.
“She’s drugged,” Cyclops said, turning his back to expose his restrained hands to Dazzler. “Get me out of these!”
“Hold still,” she told him and placed her hands over the manacles on his wrists. She slowly pushed her light energy through until the manacles melted enough for Cyclops to tear himself free. He instantly rubbed his wrists, then raised his hand to the side of his visor, opened it, and let his mutant eyes take care of the manacles on his ankles.
Dazzler looked back at Polaris whose hands rummaged through a medical cart beside Rachel, calling out the contents. She found a vial of something, took a syringe, loaded it, then stabbed it into Rachel’s arm, injecting her.
“What are you doing?” Dazzler asked.
“Sage just told me this will wake her up,” Polaris said, tapping her temple.
Cyclops, free of his restraints, glanced concerned at Rachel, then moved to the door to see what was happening in the hallway.
More commotion sounded outside, but based on Magneto’s insults, he seemed to be doing just fine. In fact, it sounded like he was enjoying himself. Then again, after being kept prisoner for a good part of a week, she wasn’t surprised he wanted some payback.
Rachel began to stir and blink her eyes open.
Dazzler moved up behind Cyclops. “She’s waking,” she told him.
“Good,” he said, as they watched Magneto taking care of more Reds that came his way, ripping weapons from their hands, and slamming metal helmets into the walls.
Outside the cells she saw a small guard station and walked to it, searching for her phone and earbuds. Then she spotted a metallic safe placed on a cupboard close by.
“Polaris?” she called. Through the doorway to the cell, she saw Polaris leave Rachel sitting up on the bed with Cyclops, who’d now moved back into the room. Polaris saw the safe, raised her hand, and tugged, but nothing happened. She growled, concentrated, then tried again, and pulled the door off.
There, inside, was Dazzler’s phone and earbuds, along with Sage’s glasses and weapons.
“Bingo!” she said, pocketing her phone and putting her earbuds in. She looked up and saw Sage at the doorway to their cell. “Nice singing, Lila,” she smiled as she threw the glasses to her.
“Any time,” Sage said, as she caught them in one hand and swiftly slid them on, then deftly took the knives, garroting wire, and other strange implements the guards had removed from her person.
“Are you OK?” Cyclops asked Rachel, placing his hand on her shoulder.
Rachel, fully awake now, nodded and shrugged his hand off as she stood. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Cyclops watched her a moment, then moved back to the door and looked down the corridor to see Magneto at work. He raised his hand to his visor mask and released a blast of optic force down the corridor to keep more Reds back.
“What’s the plan?” he asked.
“We get the hell out of here,” Dazzler said.
“You got backup?”
“No. It’s just us.”
Cyclops glanced at her. “And what about Shaw?”
“If we get a chance, we take him out, but I’m not sure how we can do that with his mutant ability.”
“No,” Cyclops said, moving up behind Magneto, as Dazzler, Polaris, and Rachel followed him. “He’s a tricky one.”
“Not if we get our hands on a CAP-89,” Sage said.
Magneto had managed to push the Reds back to the corridor intersection, allowing for Sage and Dazzler’s father to step out of their cell.
“Sage.” Cyclops gave a nod. “And who’s this?”
“My father,” Dazzler explained.
“They’re falling back,” Magneto said. “Let’s go!”
“There’ll be more of them,” Sage warned.
“Piece of cake,” Magneto said, as though they were vermin, “now that I’m not drugged.” He began to move forward.
“We need to be careful,” Dazzler warned. “They’re jacked up on MGH. They’re fast and strong.”
“So are we,” Cyclops said, following Magneto.
“They have a small army,” Dazzler said quickly, “here on this station, in this dimension, and countless others back on earth. They’re about to mobilize and attack. They mean to wipe us out. All mutants. Everywhere. Shaw’s calling it S-Day.”
“We’re in another dimension?” Cyclops paused and looked at her. Magneto paused too, quickly glancing back. The two mutants hadn’t learned that much before they were taken and had not realized the scale of the predicament they were in.
“Shaw is leading a group called the New Earth Alliance,” Dazzler quickly explained. “They’re going to use the MGH to wipe us mutants out by jacking up humans with the steroid to compete with us. Did they take any MGH from you?”
Cyclops nodded, concerned. Magneto did too.
“Then we’re in trouble if they managed to manufacture that in large quantities.”
“Yes, you are,” a voice sounded over a hidden speaker. It was Shaw. “Stand down now, and you’ll live to see another day. But if you continue with this little uprising of yours, I can’t guarantee the outcome.”
“We can’t guarantee yours either, Sebastian,” Magneto said, glancing up at the ceiling, his eyes narrowed in spite. “You want to fight? Come and face us. Out in the open. Not in our cells where you control our powers.”
Shaw laughed. “You forget, Erik, I can take whatever you throw at me. Literally.”
Dazzler stepped closer to Cyclops.
“If we can get our hands on a CAP-89, we can capture Shaw inside its bubble-like prison,” she whispered. “It won’t touch him, and he can’t use the kinetic energy against us.”
“So where do we get one of those?” he whispered back.
“Hopefully there are still some lying on the dock from our boarding assault.”
“You have transport here?” Cyclops said.
She nodded. “And the man who can get us out of this dimension. Provided he’s still trapped on the flight deck where Polaris wrapped him in metal.”
Cyclops looked back at Magneto. “We push forward!” Then, he looked up at the ceiling. “We’re not letting you get away with this, Shaw. Your little uprising, this New Earth Alliance, ends today!”
“You can’t win. You’re outnumbered,” Shaw said, his voice dark and dangerous.
“Our mutant numbers might be down,” Cyclops said, glancing at Rachel, “but the ones we have left were made to last.”
A smile slid across Magneto’s lips as he glanced at Polaris. She smiled back at him.
Dazzler looked at her own father. He was terrified and cowering in the doorway, his eyes jumping from mutant to mutant and landing on her, unsure what to make of her.
“Oh, how sweet,” Shaw said sarcastically. “Is this like a daddy-daughter day out?”
Rachel snarled. “No, this is the day where we annihilate you!”
Shaw laughed again. “You’re not your mother yet.”
Rachel surged forward in anger, but Cyclops whipped out an arm to block her path.
“Steady, considered actions,” he told her firmly. “Rashness will get you killed.”
Rachel pushed his arm away but didn’t continue her advance.
“Time’s a-wasting!” Magneto said, pressing forward. Polaris walked shoulder to shoulder with him, and Cyclops and Rachel followed. Dazzler looked at Sage who stood by Judge Carter. “We do the fighting. Your job is to protect him until we get to the ship. Understood?”
Sage gave a nod. The truth was, with the other mutants present, Sage was best playing bodyguard and letting the others clear their pathway.
Dazzler quickly locked eyes with her father, then looked away, clearing his judgement from her thoughts. She followed the others, blasting her new song through one of her earbuds, while tucking the other away, soaking up the crunching guitars and pounding drumbeat.
“If you try to break me down… I’m gonna take you out…”