I wrote an article about Children of the Atom. It'll be posted soon but I dont believe that they are "side kicks". Whoever this Ayala woman is, she wrote them "like" they were sidekicks. I think this is an elseoworld story that takes place during the 9th life of Moira MacTaggert, or in the near future, but still along the same lines. In the 9th life of Moira, she and Apocalypse allowed Sinister to create what became known as Chimera- custom made mutant soldiers to fight the machine-mutant alliance. The first generation were people with singular powers from past mutants. Which would explain why that girl seems to have Gambit's powers. Later generations had up four power sets like what we saw in Rasputin.
In the 9th life this took place years into the future. This may be the same. IMO Children of the Atom telling the story of that world, or something that happens years for now. Ayala says that they "grew up with posters of Storm and Wolverine" Only way for that to happen is for it to take place years or decades for now... In short, this'll have nothing to do with Gambit. To be honest, if you were Marvel, would you trust a cast of Jean, Cyclops, Angel, Gambit and Nightcrawler to someone that's never written the X-Men, at all? Nah.