X-men The Last Stand

Chapter One The moment her best friend died, Jean Grey first dreamed of fire, and dancing among the stars. Neighbors since they were born, inseparable once they could crawl, she and Annie Malcolm shared toys and sandboxes, secrets and dreams, their parents, their entire lives. They had ten years together. They never saw the car that brought that to an end. Blind curve, guy's in a hurry, Annie feeling competitive, totally focused on the Frisbee Jean had thrown. Reacting, not thinking, no consideration of anything but the prize, as a wayward breeze scooped the plastic disk up just beyond her reach. Tantalizing, infuriating, beyond wicked, to come so close and then fall short. For Annie, that was unacceptable. She made a spectacular catch. Jean cheered. Her smile was so special, a flash of pure delight that burned itself indelibly on Jean's memory. Then she was gone, wiped away so suddenly, so completely, it was almost as though she'd never been, thrown aside like a sackcloth dummy. There was a flash of shape and color, something big and powerful moving too fast to properly registerafterwards, when Jean tried to describe the vehicle to the police, what came out was more monster than machine. It was the first timethe only timethat her perfect memory ever failed her. Or perhaps it was just that she didn't care about the car. She heard a squeal as the driver fought for control, stomping on his brakes too late to make a difference, then the roar of an accelerating engine rapidly fading in the distance, as shock gave way to panic and he decided to save himself instead. Jean had eyes only for her friend, draped against the wall of piled fieldstone that formed the property line along River Road. Annie lay unmoving, all crumpled and bloody and broken. Sobbing, face twisted with denial, Jean dropped to her knees, hands trembling as she reached out, not a sound issuing from her lips save Annie's namealthough every family in the neighborhood claimed later that they heard her piercing scream of anguish and horror. She repeated the name over and over, like a mantra, as if simply by saying the word she could anchor spirit to flesh and keep her friend from slipping away. Then, she heard Annie call her name. Instinct guided her to take a hand in both of hers, and Jean cried out again, a hoarse coughing exclamation that gave voice to all the pain balled up inside her friend. There were bursts of ice and fire along one side, scrapes and busted ribs, and a burning within one arm that told Jean it too was broken, and more pain where Annie had cracked her skull against one of the stones. That was the source of a lot of the blood, painting her face and now Jean as well as she stroked Annie's brow and tried to kiss the pain away. There was a dull ache near the bottom of her back, a gaping hollowness in the center of her chest. With a start, Jean realized she'd forgotten to breathe, and with a frantic gulp of air realized to her horror that Annie couldn't. Her back was broken. She couldn't bear to look anymore and closed her eyesonly that didn't help. Instead, it simply took her somewhere else. Her own heart was a trip-hammer, pounding too hard and fast for her to separate the beats, her breath coming in shallow gasps that matched its cadence, like an animal in a terror trance, standing helpless before the predator who seeks its life. That made Jean angry; she hated being afraid and refused to be a victim, even of fate itself. She thought at first she'd blacked out, because around her all was darkness. And then, of course, she assumed hallucinations as images rolled towards her out of that darkness, blurry in the distance, resolvinClaremont, Chris is the author of 'X-men The Last Stand ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780345492111 and ISBN 0345492110.