Save me

The Name I Remember (Peter's POV)

The room was silent. Too silent. That was the thing that bothered me most. Places like this were never silent. There was always something.
Footsteps echoing down the corridors. Machines humming behind walls. Voices of people who were supposed to be working. Someone crying. Someone screaming.

But now?

Nothing.

I stood in the doorway, staring at the room in front of me.

The table was still there.

The glass.

The match.

The rock.

The three things that had haunted Crystal for months.

My stomach twisted. This wasn't just where it started. This was where they broke her.

"Peter." Jean's voice pulled me back. I turned around.

"What?"

She was staring at the room, her eyebrows drawn together. "I can't feel her." My heart dropped.

"What do you mean you can't feel her?"

"I mean..." She closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. "I can't find her. Usually, even if someone's far away, there's something. A connection. A thought. A feeling." She opened her eyes again. "But it's gone."

Hank stepped closer.

"Whoever these people are, they clearly had systems designed to interfere with mutant abilities. It would explain why Charles struggled to locate Crystallia originally."

Raven looked around the room. "Then we need to get back to the jet. We need to regroup and let Charles know what we've found."

"No." Everyone looked at me. I pointed towards the table. "They left this here."

Scott frowned. "So?"

"So they took everything else." I walked closer."They cleared this whole place out. Files, equipment, anything useful. They took everything." I looked at the three objects. "But they left this."

Jean's face changed. "Peter..."

"They wanted someone to find it." A cold feeling settled in my chest. "They wanted me to find it."
Nobody spoke. Because they knew I was right.

Then the lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
The entire building went black.

"Everyone stay together." Hank's voice echoed through the darkness. The emergency lights kicked in, bathing the corridor in a deep red glow.

I looked around. Everyone was there. Then the alarms started. A loud, piercing sound filled the building. The walls shook. Suddenly the floor beneath us rumbled.

"Everybody move!" We scattered as the corridor split open between us.

"Scott!" Jean reached out. He ran towards her.
But a metal door slammed down between them.

"No!" He hit the door. Nothing."Jean!"

I could hear her voice on the other side.

"Scott! I'm okay!"

A second later, another door slammed down somewhere else.

Scott.
Storm.
Kurt.
Jubilee.
Gone.

I looked around. The corridor was empty. Not abandoned. Empty. Like the building itself had swallowed them.

Then a voice came through the speakers.
"Do you know what I love about you, Peter?" I froze. I hadn't heard that voice before.
But somehow... It felt familiar. "You always run."
The speaker crackled. "You don't think. You don't hesitate. You just move. It's so predictable."
I clenched my fists.