Up and up they climbed, past levels of dark quiet cells. The prison below Genosha had never been so empty. Erik stepped into the low brick building that housed the main prison entrance, and then ushered Pietro through the outside door. "You're standing on the last piece of Earth in this universe," he said.
Outside, the familiar scenery was lit by the cheerful glow of an artificial sun that hovered at the pinnacle of a dome of glass, metal, and energy encapsulating the meteor. What appeared to be the night sky hung above the semi-transparent dome surface, inky black and streaked with stars flying past at a dizzying speed. The air around them was temperate, but there was a strange stillness to it. There were none of the sounds of wild life or the whisper of tropical breezes. The grass underfoot was springy and verdant, the trees dotting the landscape seemed alive and flourishing. But that strange sky above Genosha's bubble was bizarre, even unsettling. This both was and was not the world his son knew and, as they trekked up the path winding along the city's highest hill, Erik explained its operation.
Asteroid M's mutant inhabitants had become integral to the functioning of their home, their abilities useful and necessary in keeping them all alive. It was an intricate self-sustaining system never fully realized on Earth, where the mutants of the city were still so dependent on the planet's resources and the technology of humanity. Here they had only themselves to rely on. Erik hoped that in utilizing their powers, giving them an essential role in the survival of mutantkind, it might quell rebellious tendencies and provide his people with a higher purpose. With a note of pride in his voice, Erik told Pietro of the little girl who powered their sun, the man who made the grass grow and gardens bear fruit, the mutant who generated electricity, another that produced a gravity field for the city. Cooperation and unity were a matter of life and death on the asteroid.
The pair finally topped the rise of the hill above the city, where Magneto's manor sat. This was not the ostentatious brick affair his children had grown up in, but his rebuilt home of white walls and a red tiled roof, better suited to Genosha's location and climate. Now it was as incongruous in space as Pietro's childhood home had seemed in its paradisaical island. Magneto led him past the house to the tall cliff that used to overlook miles of open sea. The view from the bluff now was a decidedly different one.
The night sky zooming past overhead was, in reality. the vastness of the cosmos, stretching out into deepest darkness around them. Magneto pushed his powers into the earth, slowed their progress so that Pietro could see the millions of stars twinkling beyond the dome. Many of the people on the asteroid had hated this view the first time they'd seen it. Knowing they were leaving Earth behind was one thing, seeing the cold endless nothing of the galaxy was something else entirely. It was a lot to take in.
After a moment's silence, Magneto gestured for Pietro to turn and put the infinite universe at his back so that he could take in the view of the whole of the city, shimmering under its synthetic light, filled with the last of Earth's mutants.
"I saved them," he murmured. "From destruction, from the foolish path humanity chose." He looked out over Genosha and smiled faintly. The things he said now we're not simply manipulation for his son's benefit. Erik believed them. "We will survive. That's all I ever hoped to accomplish."