——directly into the trail of the engine blast. Their tethers were incinerated immediately, and had they been wearing anything other than the Shi’ar pressure suits Corsair had given them, their bodies would have fared no better.
With a burst of power, Rogue lashed out with her left arm at a silver flash of hull that whipped past her peripheral vision. She snagged the ship and, with her extraordinary strength, dug in to the Starjammer’s hull, hanging on for dear life as the ship continued to spin. It was already slowing, but it was all Rogue could do to keep from vomiting inside her helmet.
When she regained her equilibrium, though the ship still moved, she began to look around for the others. Raza was still tethered to the Starjammer, but his un-moving form was being towed along behind the ship as it turned. Rogue assumed the force of the explosion had knocked him unconscious. Anything else was unthinkable.
But what of Cyclops and Ch’od? As the ship’s rotation slowed further, nearing a stop, Rogue frantically searched for some sign of them. Her last image of them was that of the moment the warp engine blasted all three of them, destroying their lifelines. She had been lucky enough to grab hold of the vessel to keep from being shot out into space.
Now there was no sign of either of the others. Ch’od and Cyclops were, quite simply, gone.
IJD race yourselves, people,” Bishop said from the B^cockpit of the Blackbird. “We’ve just crossed W0into Manhattan.”
There were no more words. There didn’t have to be. The five X-Men on board the plane went on immediate alert. The Sentinels were supposed to guard the city’s perimeter, but Magneto had claimed all mutants would be allowed entry into this new “sanctuary” he had carved out of one of North America’s largest cities.
Question was, did that hospitality extend to the X-Men, or had the Sentinels been given specific programming to keep them out? They’d know in a minute, Wolverine thought. Some part of him hoped the answer was yes. If they were attacked upon entering Manhattan, they’d get down to the nitty gritty all the quicker.
That’s what he was here for. To fight. To win. The politics of it just bored him. It didn’t matter to Wolverine whether the government sanctioned their presence or not—and so far they’d had no word one way or the other. In any case, there was a job to be done, and the faster they got around to this latest fracas with Magneto, the better.
After what happened in Colorado, Wolverine was looking forward to throwing down with the Acolytes again. He didn’t want to think about the combined resources of Magneto and the Sentinels—one thing at a time.
There was no way he was going to let Magneto win. New York would turn into the tyrant’s private playground only over Wolverine’s dead body. If that was what it took, that’s what it took. As the tension grew aboard the Blackbird, he could feel the low growl build-
ing in his throat. Not loud enough for the others to hear, but loud enough for him to feel it in every fiber of his being.
“Well?” Iceman finally broke the silence. “Any sign of them?”
“No visuals,” the Beast said from the cockpit. “Bishop, have you got anything on radar?”
“Nothing,” Bishop answered. “Apparently we’re as welcome as the next mutant.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” Storm cautioned. “Simply because we were not stopped at the ‘door’ doesn’t mean we are welcome. It could very well be that Magneto would rather have us in here, where he can keep an eye on us.”
“Then he’s a hell of a lot dumber than I gave ’im credit for up ’til now,” Wolverine snarled. “Magneto oughta know better than to think he can cage the X-Men. I ain’t exactly a domesticated beast.”
“I, on the other hand, am entirely house-broken, thank you very much,” the Beast said from up front.
“Laugh it up, McCoy,” Wolverine said grimly. “It ain’t gonna be a party down there, though.”
“True enough, Logan,” the Beast acknowledged. “But humor is oftimes all that distinguishes man from savage animal. It serves me well as a reminder that I am, head to toe, human first. Mutant, second.”
“Ah, Hank,” Storm said wistfully, “if only the world could see that.”
They were quiet again, then, and Wolverine could not help thinking of Hank’s words. He was not without a sense of humor. In fact, he could be quite a practical joker in his own right, given the chance. But there was a time for that kind of thing, and as far as Wolverine was concerned, this wasn’t it. Still, if that was what the Beast needed to deal with the scenario, Logan figured he’d best leave his teammate to it. There were things he needed, ways he had to feel, to get by as well.
But for Wolverine, those feelings were quite a bit more hostile.
“Central Park below, team,” Bishop said quietly. “Bobby, is that mini-Cerebro tracker functioning properly?” Storm asked.
Iceman picked up a small black metal and plastic unit that looked more like a hand held video game to Wolverine than any useful technology. Looks could be deceiving, however. In truth, it was a much smaller version of Cerebro, the computer that Professor Xavier used in the Institute’s efforts to find developing mutants and keep track of those they were already aware of.
“It’s lit up like a Christmas tree,” Iceman said, then turned the tracker unit so both Wolverine and Storm could see the green dots that filled the grid on its face. At the bottom of the grid were a group of dots that were enveloped in a red, warning glow.
“It can’t pinpoint Magneto specifically,” Iceman explained, “but it can point us in the right direction. From here, we go south.”
“The ol’ Canucklehead is right on your tail, Bobby,” Wolverine said, his voice even more guttural than usual. ‘-‘Time to take Magneto down a peg. He’s gone way over the line this time.”
Retro-thrusters on the VTOL unit kicked in, and the Blackbird seemed to rise a moment as if cresting an ocean wave. Then the plane dropped. There was no hesitation, nothing gentle about it. The Blackbird wasn’t built as a comfort vessel. It was made for action. Wolverine admired that in people and things alike.
The quick-drop hatch opened out of the belly of the Blackbird, even before the plane touched down on Central Park’s Sheep Meadow. With the Beast at his side. Wolverine leaped from the hatch and landed in a crouch on the grass, which was buffeted by the Blackbird's retros.
The whole park, Wolverine thought, was a lark, a foolish dream. There in the middle of the city, Central Park pretended to be peaceful countryside, just as the city dwellers pretended when they escaped to the park. It may have been a jungle at night, predators stalking the wood, but the falsehood of it insulted Wolverine. Even if his senses had not been so far superior to the average human’s, it would have been impossible not to smell the stench of the city infiltrating the park.
“Fire,” the Beast said as he touched down next to Wolverine.
“Got it,” Logan responded. “Southeast, less than half a mile.”
“Spread out,” Storm commanded from the air, even as Bishop piloted the Blackbird to a final stop in the park. “Logan, Hank, I can see flames from here. Scout one hundred yards south, and return. Bobby, do a perimeter check with me on flyover.”
Bishop emerged from the ship just as they were moving to comply with Storm’s orders.
“Bishop, lock the Blackbird up tight, all defenses armed,” she added. “It wouldn’t do to have our exit destroyed. All rendezvous back here in five minutes.”
It was a fast five minutes. Wolverine melted into the woods with predatory silence. He could hear the Beast off to the west, making little attempt to mask his passage. Hank might have the look of an animal, but that didn’t mean he had the primal instincts.
He moved in the direction of the fire, alert to any sign of offensive movement. It felt foolish, surreal. Manhattan island had suddenly become a war zone. Indeed, if all they found were masses of hysterical civilians, it wouldn’t surprise Wolverine at all. But there was a chance that they had been detected and that an ambush would be waiting. He wasn’t about to let that happen.
The fire filled his nostrils, though still several hundred yards away. Then he detected something else. Something human. It was a dense, sour smell, mixed with alcohol. Even before the homeless man cut and run from the brash up ahead, Logan had spotted him with nothing more than moonlight to see by. The poor man, perhaps fifty, took off like a startled deer. Though not nearly as quick, of course. It might have taken Wolverine twenty seconds to down a startled deer.
This guy took five.
Up close, he stank to high heaven, his odor so powerful Wolverine could barely smell the fire anymore.
“God, no, please, don’t kill me,” the man squealed. “Please, no, I ain’t got nothin’ in this world. I just don’t wanna die.”
“Stop squirming!” Wolverine snarled, bringing the man up to his full height by tugging on his loose shirt-front. “I ain’t gonna hurt you. Relax, will ya? Stop jabbering!”
There was a tone that he allowed into his voice at certain times. Wolverine wasn’t sure he liked the tone, or what it said about him, but it was there, and it worked. The homeless man responded immediately, and Wolverine finally got a good look' at him. He wasn’t at all glad that he did. The man was shabby looking, his clothes stained and tattered, and he looked as though he hadn't shaved or had his hair cut in a decade. He was sick. Smelled sick, now that Wolverine could scent anything beyond the man’s stink. But he wasn’t more than thirty.
He only moved like he was fifty.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, more softly, almost kindly, to the wide-eyed man, then let go of the poor soul’s shirt.
“But,” the man began, “you’re a mutie, aren’t—I mean, a mutant, aren’t you? You guys are takin’ over, that’s what Bemie says.”
“There are some mutants trying to take over the city,” Wolverine admitted. “We’re here to stop them. I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything that could help us track ’em down.”
The homeless man suddenly snapped to attention, in a salute of surprising quality. A military man, then, maybe Gulf War. Not so long ago and already come to this. For a moment, Wolverine had to wonder if the guy would be better off with Magneto in charge.
“Yes sir,” the man said then, obviously disappointed to see that his salute had not been returned. “Me an" Bemie were down right where that fire was, where the people burned down the toy store, you know, the one with all the letters? Well, we seen them muties ... I mean, mutants ... well, we seen ’em killing people. They’re gonna murder us all, man. That’s what Bemie says.”
“Where’s Bernie now?” Wolverine asked, surprised that he didn’t smell anyone else out in the Park.
“I don’t know,” the homeless man said, then lowered
his head, ashamed. “I kind of, well, I ran away. To get help, see. That’s it, to get help. Only I didn’t find any.” Wolverine put a hand on the man’s shoulder, and their eyes met. Despite his mad talk, there seemed to be some kind of awareness in there.
“Sure you did,” Wolverine said. “You found me, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” the man happily agreed. “I ran to find help, and I found you.”
“What’s your name, bub?” Wolverine asked. “Jerry,” he answered. “Name’s Jerry. What’s yours?”
“Logan.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Logan,” Jerry said, sort of bouncing on the balls of his feet now that he’d made a new friend. “Mr. Logan, you going to want to look at that chopper now?”
“Chopper?”
“Yeah, the all-scrunched-up one.”
The X-Men stood around the news helicopter in silence. Jerry had led them there at his own request, but now Wolverine was wondering if that had been a mistake. The broadcast affiliate’s call letters had been stencilled on the side of the chopper, and the Beast recognized them immediately.
“Lord, no,” Hank said. “Trish?”
“There’s nobody inside,” Wolverine said quickly, sensing the Beast’s distress.
“There was a man,” Jerry insisted. “He jumped out right before it got crushed, at least that’s what he said.” Jerry hung back away from the X-Men slightly, and
Wolverine couldn’t blame him. The man was clearly not in his right mind, and while the whole team looked fairly intimidating, Beast and Iceman were clearly non-human. And, after all, Jerry’s buddy Bemie had told him that the “muties” were going to kill him.
“What man?” the Beast asked. “Where did he go?” “Walked right out of the park,” Jerry answered. “Said he was going to get out of the city.” Jerry snorted in derision, then added, “Yeah, I’m sure he made it, too.”
“Hank, we don’t know that Trish was covering this story,” Storm reasoned, but the Beast was having none of it.
‘ ‘In the midst of this crisis, in the hour of need, with her notoriety on mutant issues, where else would she be, Ororo?” the Beast asked grimly. “Our relationship may have ended, but I still care for her very much.”
Wolverine couldn’t hold back any longer. They had wasted too much time. And the Beast deserved the truth.
“She was here, Hank,” Wolverine said. “I picked up her scent in the woods before, but I didn’t recognize it ’til we found the chopper.”
“See, buddy,” Iceman said with his usual enthusiasm. “She’s okay.”
“Just because she walked away from this disaster, doesn’t mean she’s okay,” Bishop chimed in. “We’re in the middle of a genocidal civil war, Drake. It isn’t that simple.”
Silence descended upon the group as Bishop’s words sank in. Far to one side, Iceman crossed the several steps to where Bishop stood and whispered, though not so low that Wolverine could not hear his words.
“You are one cold son of a bitch,” Iceman said, and
there was an anger, and a danger, in his voice that Wolverine could not recall ever hearing there before.
“You can abuse me and insult me all you like, pal,” Iceman continued, “but Hank McCoy is the best of us, bar none. You show him the respect he deserves.” There was a challenge growing in Bishop’s face as the man listened to Iceman speak. Wolverine saw it there, rising, about to be unleashed. It was to be expected. Bishop was a hard man to hurt, even harder to kill, and Bobby Drake was so lighthearted it was difficult to imagine what his implied threat might actually entail. Wolverine waited for the challenge, the “or else?” that he knew would come from Bishop at any moment.
But it didn’t.
After a moment, Bishop merely nodded slightly. A lesson had been learned. None of the others was close enough to have heard Bobby’s words, not even the Beast, and Wolverine was not about to discuss it. Not with Iceman, or with Bishop, or anybody else. He knew, also, that he would never forget it. Bobby Drake had been the class clown all his life, the butt of jokes. But if he’d been a different person, he would have been an extraordinarily dangerous man. The potential was there.
“Logan,” the Beast asked, the moment of reflection ended. ' 'Which way did they go?’ ’
“All roads lead to Rome,” Wolverine said, and pointed to where firelight stili turned the black sky a sickly yellow to the southeast. M Everything around here seems to be pointin’ to that fire, and that’s definitely the direction Trish was headed.”
Without another word, the Beast set off in the same direction.
“Bobby,” Storm asked quietly, “what do you read on that mini-tracker?”
“Same deal, Storm,” Iceman responded. “Bunch of green dots all around, but a big concentration to the south. And the red dots are south as well.”
“Thank the goddess for small favors,” Ororo said. “Let’s go.”
They moved quietly into the woods after the Beast, all except Wolverine. He hung back a moment with Jerry, who had seemed to disappear when things got tense, though he never left their sight. Somehow, he had learned how not to be seen. Or—and Wolverine hoped this wasn’t the case—they had simply learned how not to see Jerry, and those like him.
“Listen, bub,” Wolverine said. “You stay here until this is all over, okay? Until you know that things are back to normal, you stay in the park. And if your friend Bernie shows up, keep him here with you. It isn’t safe for you to be in the city.”
“It isn’t safe anywhere, Mr. Logan,” Jerry said grimly, and there was a flash of intelligence, of sanity and wisdom in the homeless man’s face that made Wolverine wonder exactly how crazy Jerry was.
The look stayed with him as he caught up with the X-Men, and the words rang in his head as they emerged from the park several minutes later to find that utter chaos reigned supreme.
Screams and gunshots echoed in the distance, and Wolverine could see the light of other fires on the nighttime clouds far to the south. The city had become a madhouse, a maelstrom of frustrated and terrified people who had either locked up their homes or decided to vent their fears with violence.
As the X-Men stepped into the street, two teenagers shot past, screaming with rapacious delight before throwing a Molotov cocktail through the window of a movie theater. The restored woodwork and beams in the lobby as well as the ticket booth burst into flames. Down Fifth Avenue, Wolverine could see looters pillaging the most expensive stores in the city.
“Wolverine,” Bishop said to his left, “we’ve got media coverage;”
In the fifth story window of a Fifth Avenue building half a block away from the burning F.A.O. Schwartz, fire reflected off the lens of a video camera. It might have been an amateur if not for the boom microphone that hung out the window beside it. The Beast had noticed it as well, and started to move forward excitedly. Wolverine stopped him.
“It’s not Trish, Hank,” Wolverine said.
“Come now, Logan,” the Beast responded. “It is not even conceivable that you might be able to tell her scent from here.”
“You’re right,” Wolverine admitted. “But I still say it ain’t her. That camera’s got us dead in its sights. There’s no way, no matter what the danger, that Trish Tilby wouldn’t identify herself to us if we ran into her in the middle of a crisis like this. Think about it.”
The Beast seemed to deflate slightly, then simply nodded.
“We’ll find her, Hank,” Logan insisted, and he meant it. No matter how bad a situation was, Wolverine had never been the type to offer false assurances. There was no benefit to it. Fear, desperation, rage, reckless abandon; in a hopeless situation, sometimes those things and the sheer force of will were the only things that could tip the scales. Hope was for children and dreamers, Wolverine often said. Though, in truth, he had relied on it more than once. Still, he tried to stay away from it. Not real healthy in his line of work.
“Beast, Wolverine, Bishop, see if you can calm the locals, find out what you can about Magneto’s whereabouts, if possible, and if any other mutants have yet been sighted with the Acolytes,” Storm ordered, and then allowed the winds she commanded to lift her from the pavement and carry her aloft.
“Iceman, put out the flames in that theater, then come help me with this larger blaze,” she added. “We can’t have this spreading uncontrolled, or it could take down the whole city.”
Then she was gone, rising up into the darkness. Wolverine watched as Bobby raced to the theater, lifted his hands, and, in seconds, buried the entire fagade in a heavy, moist mixture of ice and snow. He turned back toward F.A.O. Schwartz, held his hands beneath him and began freezing the air there, building an ice ramp below him and adding to it so rapidly that he propelled himself along it toward the blazing building.
Thunder rumbled above them, and then the sky simply opened up above F.A.O. Schwartz in an uncommonly severe downpour specifically directed at the blazing structure. As it fell, Bobby began to turn it to ice, which would not only douse the flames, but help keep the crumbling structure from toppling onto the people below.
“Well, gentlemen ...” the Beast began, but then was cut off by a shriek that tore aside the veil of surreality that had hung over the chaotic scene.
“There,” Bishop said, and pointed south a block and a half.
Wolverine had already seen it, though. Five men stood around a figure, probably female, who crouched on the ground, cowering in terror. They were pounding on her with their fists, and as she fell to the ground, they began kicking.
Logan was made for hunting, for sliding in stealth through a tree-lined ridge or an urban jungle alley. He was made for the consummation of the hunt, for the fracas, the brawl, the life and death combat, the taking of life up close and personal. But there were things about the hunter most people forgot. One of them was speed. Wolverine was faster than he looked. Bishop lagged slightly behind, but the Beast kept pace with him as he raced toward the helpless woman and her attackers.
“Muties,” he heard someone exclaim as they raced past.
“More of ’em,” somebody else said.
“I seen ’em on TV,” a woman cried. “They’re the X-Men!”
The tone of each voice was identical. Not relief. Not the tone of someone about to be rescued, not the relief of the oppressed when the cavalry finally arrived. Disgust, hate, fear—especially fear. But Wolverine was used to it, it was always the same. Maybe in the wilds of Canada, in the backwater towns where most people thought mutants were a myth, maybe there he was just another hunter. Just another guy who’d watch your back and buy you a beer, as long as you didn’t get up in his face.
But this was America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. A nation of diversity whose own nature filled its people with self-loathing. A nation where unrealistic expectations forced citizens to look for someone to blame because they aren’t what the “dream” says they should be. Someone, anyone. Any color, or religion, or sex, or age, or birthplace. But, especially, mutants. After all, hating mutants was something they could all agree on. It wasn’t even considered politically incorrect to hate mutants.
It wasn’t everyone. Wolverine knew that. But as he ran past looters cowering in shadows, and angry citizens too stunned to decide whether to flee or attack, as he approached five young street toughs battering and kicking a defenseless woman, it became harder and harder to remember it. They were there to stop Magneto, to save humanity from the most feared mutant the world had ever known. Maybe they could do that. But Logan knew there was no way to save humanity from itself.
“Enough!” Wolverine growled, hauling two of the woman’s attackers away and throwing them to the ground.
A third rounded on him.
“Hey, man, whatcha doin’?” the man snapped, looking at his friends in astonishment before looking up at Wolverine. “She’s a goddamn mutie freak! She deserves to get..
The punk’s eyes bugged out when he saw who it was he was talking to. Wolverine grabbed him by the front of his muscle shirt and pulled him close. Logan wasn’t tall, and he had to haul the man down to look at him eye to eye. But size didn’t matter in the end. The man was terrified.
“So am I,” Wolverine snarled. “You want to give me what I deserve?”
The Beast took down the last of the woman’s attackers, and Bishop knelt by her battered form.
“Ma’am, are you all right?” he asked softly. “Are you badly injured?”
“Oh my God!” the woman shouted as she looked up at him. “You’re them! You’re X-Men!”
“We are,” Bishop agreed, reaching out to move her hair from a gushing wound on the side of her head. “That looks pretty bad. Here, let me ...”
“Don’t touch me, you mutie freak!” she howled, and leaped from the ground, backing away from Bishop like a cornered animal. “I’m not one of you, hear me? I’m just a norma! human being! I’m not some freak like you!”
She turned and ran, as best she could.
“I wish we had time to teach these miscreants a lesson,” the Beast said, holding his two captives off the ground.
“Me too,” Wolverine snarled. “But we don’t.” “Man, I thought she was a mutant,” one of the punks on the ground whispered to the other. “I can’t believe we did that.”
Wolverine dropped the man he’d been threatening and pulled the other one from the ground. His face was badly scraped from his impact with the pavement when Wolverine tossed him, and Wolverine slapped his hand away as he tried to wipe the blood from his face.
“So now you’re filled with regret ’cause she turned out to be human, huh, bub?” he snapped. “But if she’d been a mutant after all, then it would have been okay to stomp her like that?”
The man snarled back, his lip curling in hatred as he blinked away the blood on his face.
“Damn right,” he said coldly.
Wolverine could feel it happening inside his head, the berserker rage that had overcome him often in days long past. He fought it down, fought the red haze that threatened to blind him the same way the blood was blinding the ignorant cuss in his hands. Barely in control, he held his right fist up to the man’s face and popped his claws,
“You and the rest of your little Nazi party can go in a minute. All we want to know is where Magneto and the Acolytes have shown up. I’m sure the word’s on the street, and you’re about as low to the street as can be,” he said grimly.
“Why don’t you—” the bigot started to say, but swallowed his words when Wolverine held the tips of his claws level with the man’s eyes.
“He was here,” the man said quickly. “We’d pinned down a couple of his freak soldiers. We was gonna show ’em what happened to muties who get too big for their britches. They killed a couple of people, murderin’ freaks. Then Magneto shows up, sends everybody run-nin’, and turns around and takes off with that lady from the news.”
In his peripheral vision, Wolverine saw the Beast snap to attention.
“What woman?” Logan asked. “Trish Tilby?”
“That’s the one,” one of the other punks said. “Damn mutie lover.”
Wolverine watched the anger pass like a wave over the Beast’s face, then disappear.
“Get out of here,” Hank said coldly, and they ran in terror, calling threats back to the X-Men they did not have the courage or the ability to fulfill.
“No good will come of this race war,” the Beast said.
“Apparently, none of you have been listening,”
Bishop snapped. “I’ve told you all exactly what is going to come of it, but you aren’t paying attention.”
“Say what you want, Bishop,” Wolverine replied. “I know where you’re from. I know what you went through. But just because it happened for you, doesn’t mean it has to happen for us. The future is always uncertain.’ ’
Bishop kept silent after that, but Wolverine found himself reminded of an old Doors song. The lyrics were disturbing. The future’s uncertain, the song said, just as he’d told Bishop. But the song went on from there. And the end is always near. It wasn’t something he wanted to think about.
“I suppose we should try to do something about these looters,” Wolverine said.
“At least until Storm and Iceman finish putting out that fire,” Bishop agreed.
The glint of the video camera caught Wolverine’s eye again, and he glanced up toward the window, half a block away, where the camera was pointed down at them.
“And the media coverage ain’t gonna hurt,” he said cynically. “Let people know that not all mutants are followers of Magneto.”
“Let us take action, then,” the Beast agreed. “But I am compelled to speculate if the presence of the camera has influenced this judgment. We must find Magneto with all due haste, and yet we interrupt that pursuit for petty looting and raging fires we might customarily forbear, I would hate to conclude that we were performing to garner support, instead of pursuing the most direct course to the termination of this fiasco.”
“We’ll head after Magneto as soon as Ororo and Bobby are through,” Wolverine said. “For now, though, let’s forget about the cameras. We do what has to be done. ’Cause we can. Simple as that.”
“I hope you’re right, Logan,” the Beast answered slowly. “I do hope you’re right.”
There was a crash to the left, and then a plate glass window shattered as a chair burst through it and smashed to the street. A short man wearing a long coat leaped through the jagged remnants of the window and started off down the street, gold and diamond necklaces and bracelets stuffed in his pockets, a trail of rings, earrings, and coins falling behind him like bread crumbs in a fairy tale.
“Halt!” Bishop shouted.
“My stuff, man!” the thief shouted. “It’s my stuff!”
“I doubt that,” the Beast said, and in three bounds, he tackled the man about the waist. Hank hauled him up by the jacket and carried him back to the jewelry store. An aging Asian woman stood just inside the shattered glass. There were tears in her eyes as the Beast handed over the thief’s jacket.
“Thank you so much,” the woman said softly. “I... 1 don’t suppose it will be long until someone tries again, though.”
“Ma’am, is there a secure site where you might remain hidden until this crisis has passed?” the Beast asked.
“Upstairs,” she nodded. “I think I will be safe upstairs.”
“Go there,” Hank said, holding the woman’s small hands in his own, his blue fur looking not at all out of place in that moment. “We shall endeavor to conclude all of this as expediently as possible.”
“Do you think you can stop them, then?” the woman asked, and Wolverine thought she sounded skeptical.
“Indeed,” the Beast said, then turned back toward Wolverine and Bishop. “Indeed.”
In that moment, Wolverine knew without a doubt that there was always room for hope. Sometimes, he realized, it was all you had.
Jean Grey put her hand to her forehead and smeared sticky wetness down one cheek. There was blood on her head and on her fingers, and she didn’t know why. She was lying down on a cool metal surface, disoriented, still somewhat dizzy, and slightly nauseous.
“Jean!” someone shouted nearby, and she wished they would stop. “Jean, you’ve got to snap out of it! Scott needs you! Scott’s going to die if you can’t help him!”
Scott? she thought, confused.
Then she heard his voice, his mind in hers, speaking to her. Thinking his thoughts inside her own mind.
Jean! Jean, you ’ve got to help us!
It hit her hard and fast, Scott’s mental voice triggering her return to reality. The explosion, the Starjammer spinning out of control, Scott and Ch’od ... lost. Untethered. Somewhere in space.
“Jean?” Corsair asked, above her, holding out a hand to help her up.
She took it, rising immediately to her feet and then using his shoulders, strong like his son’s, to steady herself.
“How long?” she asked.
“Just a few seconds,” he answered, his words just as curt, just as hurried. “Jean, can you ..
“Quiet, Corsair,” she snapped unintentionally. “I’ve got to concentrate, search space just to find them. Then, we’ll see if I’ve got the strength it’s going to take to pull them back.”
Corsair’s mouth snapped shut. He squeezed her arm once, gently, and helped her sit in the pilot’s seat. As much as she tried to focus all of her thoughts on her
search for Scott, there was still a part of her left disoriented by the injury to her head. She had banged it pretty good on something there in the cockpit, and couldn’t even recall what it had been. In the few seconds she had been semi-conscious, her mind had heard and recorded much, only some of which was beginning to register with her. Raza had been injured, rather badly. Rogue was bringing him into the Starjammer and she and Corsair would rush to treat the cyborg’s wounds. That made three wounded, not including herself, and two possibly ...
No. She would not allow herself even to think it. Dead, lost in space, it meant the same thing. There was no way that Jean Grey was going to give up on the love of her life. No matter how vital the X-Men were, how important Professor Xavier’s dream was to the world, none of it meant anything to Jean without Scott Summers by her side.
Scott! she thought, sending the alarmed voice of her mind out into the ether of space. It was a wave of power from her brain, a huge net that she hoped would capture something, anything. She had heard his voice before, she was certain of it. So he had to be out there. But where, and how far? Would she be able to ...
“Jean, is that necessary?” Archangel said from the cockpit hatch behind her. She turned to see that he was clutching his head with both hands. Blood flowed from his nose.
“Only if you don’t want Scott to die out there, Warren,” she snapped, perhaps more harshly than she wished.
Archangel only nodded and moved back into the cabin. Jean knew it was going to hurt them, all of them.
But she had to try at least one more wide-spectrum mental sending, to try and get Scott to respond. She could sense him out there, in space. Knew that he was still alive. But she couldn’t locate him. She would need real communication to do that.
Scott, answer me, please! she sent, and heard a groan from the main cabin behind her.
Silence. Several painful seconds ticked by, and then Scott’s voice returned to her mind.
Jean, thank God! he said. Can you get us back?
She didn’t respond for a moment, spending the time instead tracking his mental voice back to its source. Then she had him. Had both of them. Scott and Ch’od were still hurtling away from the ship. Already they were more than a mile distant. On Earth, it would have been impossible for her to use her telekinesis over such a distance. But this was different. The same rules hardly applied. There was nothing separating them but the hull of the Starjammer, nothing interfering with her powers. She thought, or rather, she hoped, it would be possible. But she would have to combine her telekinesis with her telepathy.
Scott, listen, she thought, sending it as a narrowly focused mental signal that would not affect the others on board the ship. You’ve got to get hold of Ch’od. If I can catch you, it’ll be a whole lot easier if I don’t have to worry about two objects that need to be halted. Grab him and hold on tight.
Their minds linked and clear once again, Jean could sense the struggle Scott went through, reaching out for and latching on to the amphibious alien. She knew his hates and fears, knew that his first inclination would be some act of selflessness, some way to help Ch’od even at his own expense.
Don’t even think it, her mental voice called to him. Just hold on tight, and be ready for the impact. If I can stop your momentum at this distance, it might be a heck of a tug.
Whatever it takes, Scott’s mind responded. Got him!
All right, prepare yourself, she thought. Jean Grey reached out her mind again. She felt more than ever the dichotomous nature of her mutant mental abilities. It was, in that moment, as if her telepathy was one arm, pinpointing and targeting Cyclops and Ch’od at that great distance, and her telekinesis was another arm, the fingers of which gently wrapped around the two, closing into a protective fist around them.
Then, with that mental fist, she simply pulled.
Jean Grey cried out in pain.
“Jean!” Corsair called, instantly at her side in the cockpit. “Are you okay? What’s happening?”
She waved him away without even opening her eyes, still focused on Scott and Ch’od, on the strain she felt as she tried to halt their motion. It felt as though someone were tearing her skull apart, some savage animal worrying at it to get to her mind.
Finally, she let go.
Scott, I think I could pull you back here if you didn’t have so much momentum, she sent, certain he would read the despair in her heart. But I can’t stop it, honey. God, I’m sorry. I can’t slow you down.
There was silence then, out in space, and through their rapport she could sense Scott’s mind churning, searching for an answer, a solution. When he found it, she felt that as well.
What is it? she asked, before he’d had time even to call her name.
It’s a long shot, Jean, but it’s all we’ve got, he said. Ch’od’s going to hold on to me, tight, from behind. With all the power I’ve leeched from our proximity to the sun, if I can let off every ounce of that in one optic blast, in the direction we are moving, it should act like a retro-thruster. It should stop us, and it might even start us back toward the Starjammer.
But you’ll never be able to stay conscious, she thought, and felt despair creeping up on her, familiar as her shadow.
True, he responded. But Ch 'od will. As long as he can hold on to me while I try this stunt, you can pull us both in by locking on to him.
It might work, Jean thought. Then, in unison, their mental voices said, It has to.
* • •
Cyclops explained his plan to Ch’od quickly. They had not a second to spare, as each moment moved them further from the Starjammer, and closer to the outer limits of Jean’s power to retrieve them.
“Get around behind me,” Scott barked, and, using the X-Man’s body to guide himself, Ch’od spun around with startling speed and efficiency. Normally he was extremely congenial and inquisitive. But in an emergency, he was all business. Corsair had told Cyclops that many times, but this was the first time Scott had really seen it in action.
Ch’od wrapped his arms around Cyclops’ chest, even as their legs twined together. It was as if he were giving the huge Timorian a piggyback ride, something that would have been physically impossible in normal gravity.
“Is this too tight?’ ’ Ch’od asked, ever courteous, even in the worst of times.
“A little uncomfortable,” Cyclops admitted. “But I’ll live. Whatever you do, don’t let go. And don’t squeeze too tight, or you’ll have nothing left to hold on to. Just mold your body to mine. Do as I do, and brace yourself.”
They were spinning, end over end, and Cyclops knew they were only going to get one chance at this. It had to be timed perfectly, and his aim was vital to their survival. In this he relied on a special talent that had nothing to do with his mutant abilities. For, ever since childhood, Scott Summers had had an innate skill that had always helped him during battle. Some kids were natural spellers. Scott had an almost uncanny knack for spatial geometry.
He prayed that extended to outer space. Jean had planted in his mind the direction of the Starjammer. She held onto him like a dog on a leash, so he knew where they needed to go. He tucked his legs under himself, and Ch’od did the same. Their roll brought them around one more time.
“Straighten your legs on my mark,” he said. “Now!”
Cyclops and Ch’od shot their legs out simultaneously, so that their bodies lay on a flat plane parallel to the direction their momentum was pulling them. In that instant, Scott looked down along the line of his body, and, head cocked uncomfortably, let loose with every ounce of power he could summon to his optic beams. It was an extraordinary catharsis unlike anything he had ever experienced, a complete emptying of his reserves that he had never dreamed possible. His eyes burned and his mouth was dry. For some reason he thought he ought to have a headache, but he didn’t.
He could feel their momentum slowing, the pull on their bodies was tangible, and he believed they actually began to move in the opposite direction.
Finally, the well ran dry. Suddenly spent, his eyes rolled up into his head and even the stars disappeared.
* * *
Corsair ran through the main cabin, careful not to stumble in the awkward pressure suit he wore. There were three medi-slabs laid out in the cabin now, one each for Gambit, Hepzibah, and now Raza. Raza’s arm had been badly injured, and they had been forced to sedate him to speed the healing process, but both he and Hepzibah were likely to be up and around soon. Gambit, on the other hand, Corsair wasn’t willing to take any bets on. None of them were certain how badly the Cajun X-Man had been injured. Only time would tell.
While Rogue stood by the medi-slab where Gambit lay, Archangel checked the instruments reading Raza’s life signs. The Starjammer was in bad shape, and there was no telling what was working properly or not. All Corsair knew was that life support systems were slowly failing. They had two or three days at best, and then they'd be dead.
If the sun didn’t torch them first.
“Rogue,” he snapped into the comm-unit in his helmet. “Jean’s bringing Scott and Ch’od into the airlock. I need your muscle.”
She turned, startled out of her preoccupation, and blinked twice. Archangel looked at him as well, and it suddenly struck Corsair that each of them was with one of their wounded comrades, but his own lover, Hepzi-bah, was untended, alone. He knew he should be at her side, yearned to be there. But he was captain of the Starjammer. Survival had to be his priority. Silentiy, he sent her his love.
“Rogue,” he snapped. “Let’s go!”
“But Remy—” she began, and Corsair wondered if she was still disoriented from the explosion, not even five minutes ago.
“Archangel will watch Remy,” Corsair said sternly. “We’ve got our friends to attend to.”
He set off deeper into the ship, past the cargo hold and toward the airlock. Rogue fell into step behind him and kept pace all the way. They stopped short at the small window and instrument board that manually controlled the airlock. Hands on either side of the clear surface, Corsair peered into the small cubicle that separated the airlock door from the outer hull door.
That outer door was already open, waiting for Jean Grey to telekinetically reel Cyclops and Ch’od in from space. Corsair stared out at the stars, feeling helpless and frustrated. It wasn’t enough that they were dead in space, that the ship was becoming a furnace where they might well be boiled alive by the heat of the sun. It wasn’t enough that nearly half of them had some injury or other, some quite serious. No, that wasn’t enough. The warp drive had to misfire, throwing Corsair’s best friend and his eldest son out into the ether of space.
But as angry as he wanted to be at God, as much as he wanted to shout curses to the heavens, something he’d become.quite proficient at over the years, Corsair couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. It was only, after all, through the sheer will of a young woman named Jean and by the grace of God that Scott and Ch’od were alive.
Then they were there, growing quickly larger in the window, hurtling toward the Starjammer so fast that Corsair thought they might actually slam into the ship. At the last moment though, and with some reserve of strength that Corsair found incredible, Jean must have used her psi skills to slow them. Ch’od and Cyclops drifted into the airlock cubicle, the amphibious Staijam-mer clutching on to the unconscious leader of the X-Men even as he reached for some purchase within the small space.
“My Lord,” Rogue said, and Corsair wasn’t sure if the hushed words were a prayer or merely astonishment. “I don’t guess I ever expected to see either of them again. Not in this life, anyway.”
But Corsair’s joy was short lived. He had ever been the pragmatist.
“Let’s hope we haven’t gotten them back just so we can all die together,” he said, then slammed the button that would seal the outer hull door and cycle air into the cubicle. Moments later, the airlock hissed loudly as the inner hatch released, and Corsair slid it aside.
Ch’od, who had been using the door to brace his weary body, stumbled and fell to the deck of the Starjammer with Cyclops in his arms.
“Ch’od!” Corsair called, kneeling by his friend.
“Not to worry, Corsair,” Ch’od said quickly, though still taking quick breaths within his pressure suit. “I shall be fine in a moment. Your son also, if I’m not sorely mistaken. Which is excellent news, for we don’t have a lot of time to devise an alternate plan.”
Corsair stared at Ch’od, then at Scott’s unconscious form. It seemed surreal to him, Ch’od adapting so easily to the aftermath of such a trauma. But he was right, they had to move on, and quickly. Corsair even chuckled slightly, as Rogue helped Ch’od to his feet. He would never cease to be amazed by his friend’s extraordinary constitution.
But what of his son?
“Scott?” he asked. “Can you hear me, son? Scott, are you awake?”
Behind the helmet of his suit, behind the ruby quartz of his visor, Corsair thought he saw his son’s eyes flutter momentarily, opening slightly, and then they were closed again.
“You’ll be all right, Scott,” Corsair said softly. “We’ve had far too little time together, son. You have to be all right.”
His arms and shoulders taut with the strain, Corsair lifted his son into his arms. For a moment, he was struck by a memory of Scott as an infant, crying with fever and unable to fall asleep unless his father held him. As much of a strain as being a new parent had been, as frustrating as it had been, there had been a certain joy in rocking his baby boy to sleep.
He felt that again, now, and it brought back the pain of his wife’s death, and all the years he and Scott had spent apart. Ch’od rose to his feet, and steadied himself against the bulkhead.
“We have no time to lose,” Ch’od said. “Corsair, we must try again to repair the warp drive. And now, or it may well prove too late.”
Rogue moved to help Corsair with the burden of his son’s weight, but he ignored her. The terror he had felt every moment since the explosion abated slowly, leaving him nearly breathless. After a moment, Scott groaned in a low, guttural voice, and lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the light that filtered through his helmet and visor.
“Scott,” Corsair said. “You did it son. You’re all right.”
“For the moment, Dad,” Scott answered. Like father, like son, ever the pragmatist.
“Corsair, did you not hear me?” Ch’od asked. “We’ve got to—”
“I heard you, Ch’od,” Corsair answered, “And I’ll join you on the hull, since Raza cannot. Scott’s in no condition to—”
“I’m okay, Corsair,” Scott said, sitting up. “You’re going to need backup out there, and Rogue and I are all you’ve got.”
Corsair did not fail to note the change in his son’s tone. He merely nodded, resigned to their fate. His fear for Scott had never interfered with their ability to work or battle side by side in the past, and he would not allow it to do so even in this crisis.
“I’m happy to go back out there with y’all,” Rogue said with a smile. “But this time, let’s be a little more careful, okay?”
• • *
Jean lay in the cockpit, recovering, and Archangel found himself in the unusual role of duty nurse for the wounded members of the Starjammer’s crew. He wasn’t terribly concerned for Hepzibah or Raza; when they awoke from their sedation they would be greatly weakened, and temporarily unable to use their injured limbs, but awaken they would.
Gambit was another story. The on-board Shi’ar medical computers could have done a simple diagnostic program, but the system had shorted and crashed, along with most of the Starjammer'& programming. If they were certain of the voltage, or even the nature, of electric current Gambit was hit with by War star of the Imperial Guard, they might be able to guess at what Remy was going through, and what the long term effects of his electrocution might be. But Warstar could have fried every synapse in Gambit’s brain, and they wouldn’t know it until they got him back to Earth.
If any of them got back.
A sobering thought, and one that Archangel had been trying to avoid. Dwelling on his “patients” had given him a momentary respite from their situation, and from his growing case of cabin fever. He was definitely getting a little stir crazy, cooped up in the ship. It helped a bit that he was the only person walking around in the main cabin, but that was a superficial improvement at best.
He felt that nervous energy building inside of him once again, and found, to his surprise, that he’d been tapping his foot for a while without realizing it. The cabin wasn’t shrinking. Archangel wasn’t delusional. But it certainly felt smaller. He closed his eyes a moment and he could feel it pressing in around him. The cabin, the ship, and space beyond.
A ruffle of fear went through his bio-metallic wings where they lay flat against his back beneath the pressure suit. Archangel felt the twinge of muscles that would spread them to their full span, and he mustered what control of them he had to keep them from tearing apart the Shi’ar space garb.
Turning away from Gambit’s prone form, Archangel began to pace the cabin. He had never felt so completely useless. And not since his days with Apocalypse had he felt so close to the edge of losing control. But he wouldn’t lose it. Absolutely would not. He had been twisted into something that just wasn’t him, wasn’t Warren Worthington, and it had been a long road back. He still had yet to completely convince his oldest and best friends in the X-Men that he had recovered, that he was flying high again.
“Just suck it up, Worthington,” he muttered to himself, then took a long slow, breath and released it. He stretched, slowly, trying to relax the tension in his body. “ ... no ...”
The word was spoken very quietly, gruffly, with a dreamy quality that only the exhausted, the dying, or the feverish could muster. Archangel spun around, prepared to defend himself, though he suspected there would be no need. His suspicions proved correct a moment later, as he hurried to the medi-slab where Gambit lay, twitching as if in the grip of some horrid nightmare.
“...no...” Remy mumbled again, though more forcefully this time.
Then his face and his tone changed dramatically. Gambit’s breath came faster, more frenetically, and his facial features contorted as if he were in pain, or adamant denial. Perhaps both, Archangel considered.
“No, Essex!” Gambit snarled, still less than conscious, his attitude reflecting a savagery that Archangel had never seen in him. “You wan’ Gambit do a little t’ing for you, maybe dat seem okay before. But no more, Essex! You hear me, hommel Gambit not gon’ let you hurt anybody, ’specially not...”
Remy LeBeau’s entire body went slack then, his face draining of all color. Archangel thought in that instant that Gambit’s heart might have simply stopped, so quickly did the Cajun’s energy seem to leave him. Warren realized it would be impossible for him to check Gambit’s temperature with both of them in pressure suits, but from the flush on Remy’s cheeks and his delusional rambling, he had to assume the man’s fever was extremely high.
Who in hell is Essex? he wondered to himself. “Gambit?” he ventured, moving his helmet closer to Gambit’s own. “Remy, it’s Warren. Are you awake? Can you hear me?”
Gambit’s eyes snapped open, black and red light pulsing where pupils ought to have been, a mist of crimson energy seemed to spark inside his helmet.
Rage erupted on his face as he looked at Archangel, and he growled that unfamiliar name again, “Essex!”
Gambit reached up, faster than Warren had ever seen him move, and latched his fingers onto Archangel’s helmet. Sparks flew and the helmet grew immediately hot.
Archangel cursed in a panic, fumbling for the latches of his helmet. “Gambit, what the—”
He didn’t finish his question, too caught up in his struggle to be free of the helmet. Gambit had used his mutant power to charge Archangel’s helmet with explosive energy. He had seconds to remove it, or it would explode, taking his head with it.
“Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man...” he chanted, until finally the snaps slid under his thumb, the entire helmet twisted sideways, and he whipped it off his head and across the cabin.
It hadn’t hit the floor when it exploded. Archangel shielded his eyes, and when he looked back, there was a huge black smear on the cabin floor. Gambit stood over him, glowering with righteous fury, feverishly unsteady on his feet.
“Back off, Gambit,” he said, scrabbling backward and attempting to stand. Within the pressure suit, he felt weighted down by his wings for the first time. “You’re not well, man. You shouldn’t be up.”
“I’m done wit’ you, Essex,” Gambit snarled, and took another menacing, shaky step toward Archangel. “You leave my family alone, now, oui'V’
“Remy,” Archangel said, standing now and reaching out his hands in a gesture of comfort. “It’s me, Warren. Archangel. Snap out of it man, it’s the fever talking. I’m not this Essex guy, okay?”
“You don’ want to leave, you gonna have to die,” Gambit said, slurring his words a bit.
Archangel barely dodged as Gambit aimed a high kick at his face—a fairly weak kick by Remy’s usual standards. The Cajun followed through with a lunge at Warren’s throat, a clumsy move he would never normally have attempted, and Archangel easily sidestepped and batted him aside. Gambit stumbled toward the medi-slab where Raza lay, and fell over the wounded cyborg. He lay across Raza for a moment before returning to his feet.
When Gambit wheeled on Warren, he held a Shi’ar medical probe that Corsair had used earlier. Already, the red-tinged energy was sparking in his hands. The probe glowed with the explosive charge of Gambit’s mutant ability, and then the Cajun threw it like a dart at Warren’s chest.
Instinct alone saved Archangel’s life. Without conscious thought, his bio-metallic wings tore right through the pressure suit. They opened to their full span and wrapped themselves around Archangel in a heartbeat. The charged probe exploded upon impact with his wings, but Warren remained untouched.
He withdrew his wings, tucking them against his back, and Gambit was already rushing at him again.
“Remy, stop, dammit!” he shouted. “It’s me, Warren.”
Once more, he sidestepped, then slammed Gambit against the wall of the cabin. The Cajun fell to the ground, dazed by the impact. Archangel hoped that it might have shaken some of the fevered mania from the man.
“Come on, Gambit,” he pleaded. “Don’t make me hurt you worse than you already are.”
Gambit bobbed his head up, and squinted as he tried to see clearly.
“That’s it, man, look at me,” Warren urged.
“Essex,” Gambit breathed. “Time to die.”
As he pulled himself up, Gambit reached for a long metal tube strapped to the wall. Archangel had seen Ch’od use it earlier to put out the fire; some kind of chemical fire extinguisher then. The contents of which were more than likely under pressure. Gambit’s right hand was already glowing with volatile energy as he reached for the tube, and Archangel realized that Remy might very well blow a hole in the Starjammer’s hull with the combination of his power and that one metal cylinder.
Archangel couldn’t allow that to happen. Gambit’s hand was only inches from the cylinder when Warren’s wings flashed out to their full span. He wasn’t certain whether he commanded them or whether they simply intuited and precipitated his actions. It didn’t matter. Only one thing did: stopping Gambit.
Wing knives flashed across the room and sliced through Gambit’s pressure suit, imbedding themselves in his flesh. Immediately, Remy LeBeau slumped to the floor, paralyzed by the chemicals secreted by Warren’s bio-metallic feathers.
Archangel rushed to his fallen teammate, lifted Gambit from the floor and put him back on the medi-slab. He tore away the pressure suit in a panic and began removing the wing-knives as carefully as he could. Normally, they were effective but ultimately not harmful. With Gambit’s previous injuries, however, there was no way he could be certain.
“Corsair!’’ he shouted, hoping he would be heard. “Jean! Someone! I could use a little help in here!” Silently, Archangel mumbled a prayer.
Charles Xavier stood in the middle of Exchange Place in Jersey City, New Jersey as the maelstrom of anarchy swirled around him. In his youth, he had reined in the burgeoning power of his telepathy, closed out the billions of mental voices on Earth. It was effortless for him now, but even so, even with his nigh-impenetrable mental shields in place, there was a low hum in his brain. It was the babble of thousands upon thousands of panicked minds.
They climbed up from the PATH train station into the safety of Jersey City, a sea of human flesh, awash with a relief and a sorrow unmatched in their prior existences. The media swarmed around them, picking at their remains with the cold distance of carrion birds.
Beyond the PATH station, past the Hudson River, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were still beacons, the lights of Manhattan still made for a breathtaking panorama. But it was the view of another world now, the alien vista across a hostile border, where an invisible wall was imprinted with invisible words, something like, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
“I’m sorry, Professor Xavier, did you say something?” Annelise Dwyer asked.
“What’s that?” Charles Xavier responded, startled from his reverie.
“I thought you’d said something,” the CNN anchor said, then shook her head. ‘ ‘Never mind, I must be hearing things.”
They sat in an area cordoned off from the rest of the Exchange Place plaza, the entirety of which had become a media tent city. The scavengers descended upon the catastrophe of Magneto’s ascendance with a savage
grace. Yet, despite his usual antipathy for news people, Xavier found himself strangely attracted to Annelise Dwyer. The hopeless optimist within him wondered if she had been able to reach the much-envied position of CNN anchor without becoming as jaded as the majority of her peers. She certainly seemed to care.
It did not hurt that Xavier found her attractive, in an odd sort of way. But then, he had long since established a history of being attracted to powerful, odd women. Moira MacTaggart, Gabrielle Haller, Amelia Voght, Lil-andra ... and thoughts of Lilandra brought back his concern for Cyclops and his “away team,” who had yet to arrive back on Earth. Quickly he sent a psi-probe out into the ether of Earth’s atmosphere, hoping against hope that there would be some response from Jean Grey.
There was none. They were either not yet within the range of his mental scan, or they had not emerged from the Shi’ar stargate alive. Another crisis, for another time. Now, the situation at hand had to be dealt with.
“We’re on in fifteen seconds, Professor,” the news-woman said as she waved away a production assistant who was fooling with her hair. “I hope you can put some kind of positive spin on all of this. God knows, we need it.”
Xavier smiled at that. He’d been right about the Dwyer woman. She still cared.
“I’ll do my best, Ms. Dwyer,” he answered.
“Please,” she said, nodding her permission. “Call me Annelise.”
“In five, Annelise,” the production assistant said, holding up five fingers and counting them off with the seconds. “Three. Two. One.”
Annelise introduced herself to the CNN audience, then greeted Xavier formally.
“Recently, you did a three way forum here on CNN with Senator Robert Kelly and Graydon Creed, Professor,” she pointed out. “Though the men seemed, at least in that debate, to be at odds, both have held press conferences recently advocating the use of armed force to take Manhattan back. Creed has even gone so far as to call for the rounding up of all known mutants into detention centers, similar to those used to hold Japanese-Americans during World War II. Would you care to comment on any of their points?”
“Absolutely,” Xavier said sternly, in his best administrative tone. “To begin with, I want to show my complete support of the President’s policies in this matter. He wisely proceeds with caution over a course that is both new and treacherous. While Senator Kelly and Mr. Creed do have different motives—one makes choices informed by fear, the other by hatred—their advocacy of a military solution is, simply put, ignorant of the situation.”
“That’s a rather inflammatory statement, Professor,” Annelise said, her surprise obviously genuine.
“Not at all,” Xavier countered, looking directly at the camera now. “I am here, as you can see. Neither Senator Kelly or Graydon Creed is in Jersey City, or anywhere near New York at the moment. Obviously neither of them has studied the capacity of these Sentinels as I have. In short, no massive military onslaught has any hope of achieving anything but mass property damage and probably the deaths of a great number of innocent civilians.”
“You have another solution, Professor?” Annelise asked. “We can’t just allow terrorists to claim our cities with impunity, can we?”
“Not at all, Annelise,” Xavier agreed. “And I’m told the President does have a plan. Also, I’m not saying incisive use of force is unwarranted, only that a mass attack would be useless. But, on to an even more disturbing issue, Graydon Creed’s detention center idea. This, as I’m sure you and all good Americans will realize, is nothing more than a concentration camp, though we should expect no less from a fascist whose communications on the Internet have revealed that he supports the idea of genetic cleansing through the genocide of mutants.”
“That is a stunning charge, Professor,” Annelise commented, though they had already discussed the point before broadcasting it.
“All supported by documentation available on the Internet, I assure you,” Xavier answered.
“Well, Professor,” she continued, “what of the media videotape of Magneto’s Acolytes killing humans in cold blood, and of Magneto’s abduction of local reporter Trish Tilby and her cameraman.”
“Despicable events indeed,” Xavier responded, treading carefully now. “Despite common opinion, however, Magneto is not a cold-blooded murderer. Fanatic he may be, terrorist, call him what you will, but he would not have committed the kind of cold-blooded murder we saw on that tape. Which seems to indicate that Ms. Tilby and her cameraman will be relatively safe so long as they accompany him. On the other hand,” he continued cutting Annelise off before she could, understandably, object, “all moral guides indicate that Magneto must be held responsible for the murderous actions of those who act on his behalf. He had foreknowledge of his Acolytes’ penchant for death when he became their leader.
“In addition, Annelise,” he said, and turned to the camera again as he relaxed into a paternal role and voice. “The American people have also seen the heroic actions of the X-Men, a band of mutants largely considered outlaws who are obviously attempting to put an end to Magneto’s ‘Mutant Empire’ before it really gets going.” “Now that you mention it, Professor,” Annelise began, and seemed to hesitate a moment, as if unsure she wanted to pursue her question. “Well, what of your rumored connection to the X-Men? Is it true you are working with them?”
“Please, Annelise,” Xavier said with an exasperated sigh. ‘ ‘It is true that I have, in my life, met several members of this group. In fact I know Dr. Henry McCoy, the renowned biochemist, quite well indeed. But I am, as you well know, among the foremost experts on mutation in the world. I understand how certain things might be misconstrued, however. It comes with the territory.
“But, listen,” he said, and turned once more toward the camera with his best paternal manner, “what the American people need to know right now, more than anything, is that they are safe. For the time being, they need not be concerned that there will be some sudden mutant uprising. The majority of the world’s mutants are law-abiding citizens. Those who aren’t may very well be making their way to Manhattan even as we speak. And if that is the case, well, at least they won’t cause any additional trouble.
“No, though Graydon Creed may attempt to foment some kind of genetic civil war, as long as the American people keep their wits about them, the only thing we have to worry about is how to get Magneto out of Manhattan.”
“Thank you, Professor Charles Xavier,” Annelise said. “This is Annelise Dwyer, live in Jersey City, New Jersey. We go back to Greg Lombardi at CNN Center in Atlanta. Greg?”
Xavier sighed as Annelise pulled off the staid jacket she had donned for the broadcast. He felt slightly nauseous, and slumped back in his wheelchair a bit, trying to shake loose the tension that had drawn the muscles in his back tighter than guitar strings.
“Professor Xavier, are you all right?” Annelise asked.
“Please,” he answered kindly, “call me Charles. And the answer to your question is that I am most definitely not all right. I feel quite ill, in fact.”
“Is there anything 1 can do?” she offered. “Certainly,” he chuckled drily. “You can lie and tell me I didn’t sound like a politician just now. That’s the one thing I promised myself I would never be. Politics means compromising your beliefs and goals, Annelise. I hope to God I haven’t come to that.”
“Don’t worry, Charles,” she said softly, gently comforting him. “As long as you feel like throwing up every time you placate the masses, you haven’t sold your soul yet.”
* * *
As Charles Xavier wheeled himself away from the CNN remote setup, he scanned the rest of the media tent for Valerie Cooper. Upon his arrival, he’d had no time to even touch base with Val before CNN hustled him off for his interview. He knew that if there was a solution to their predicament beyond that espoused by Graydon Creed, it would lay either in the hands of his badly outnumbered X-Men, or in the product of Val’s experience, knowledge, and skills combined with his own.
Even before he heard her call his name, Xavier felt the mental recognition of his presence in Val’s mind. Some emotions were too powerful to screen out, and her volatile mix of relief and frustration was like a beacon. He turned to see her striding purposefully through the media circus, ignoring the pleas of desperate reporters alerted to her position of authority by the federal badge she wore. It allowed her entrance into any building or situation during this crisis, but it was also little better than a bull’s-eye when dealing with the press.
“Professor Xavier,” she said, with a pleasantness Xavier knew was forced. “How good to see you again. Do you have a moment? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this whole mess.”
“Absolutely, Ms. Cooper,” he answered, just as pleasantly. “Let’s find a quiet place to chat, shall we?” Xavier hated such falsehood, but every reporter around them, from the lowest viper to the most scrupulous journalist, was listening to their every word. They had to take their conversation elsewhere.
Though Xavier preferred not to rely on people to push him in his wheelchair, it was a welcome break when Val stepped behind him and began to do just that. When help was offered by anyone other than one of his X-Men, or someone equally close to him, he usually declined. In this case, however, he was glad that she had not asked. While at the Institute, he generally used the hoverchair that Lilandra had given him as a gift. But in public, he was forced to use the conventional chair.
It was really quite ironic, in a very cruel way. Xavier had been crippled as a young man, but later, in a miraculous series of events aided by the extraordinary technology of Lilandra’s people, he had been given the ability to walk once more. For a time, he had lived in peace as Imperial Consort to Lilandra on the Shi’ar throneworld of Chandilar, for all intents and purposes married to the empress of a culture for whom marriage was the most sanctified of events.
But his heart had never been torn. He loved no other above Lilandra. Yet there was a growing crisis for mutants on the world of his birth. The X-Men needed him, desperately. And, in fact, he found that he needed them as well. He had responsibility, duty, and though they both hated to part, Lilandra understood the concept. It was the very thing which kept her from accompanying him to Earth. The very thing that was, even now, blanketing their relationship in a terrible chill that had nothing to do with distance and everything to do with philosophy.
So he had returned to Earth, to the X-Men, and almost immediately fate had stepped in, in the form of his old enemy Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King. One moment, he stood proud as any other man, strong and able. The next, he was crippled once more, his body cruelly twisted, and he was confined to a chair again.
Perhaps that was the price he paid for his dream. He had long since decided that the dream was worth any price, however. As long as it came true. He and Val Cooper had to make certain that Magneto’s fantasies of empire did not get in the way. Though, Xavier thought, he would be fooling himself if he did not recognize how much damage had already been done.
“I think we’re as alone as we’re going to get, Val,” Xavier said, looking around on Washington Street, around the comer from the PATH station and the media tent. They weren’t far from the military encampment here, and Xavier could see a pair of Jeeps stopped parallel to one another, though facing opposite directions. Their passengers seemed in the midst of a heated debate, and Xavier knew it would not be the last on that day.
“Okay,” Val answered. “What the hell is going on? I thought you people were going to wait to hear from me?”
“The team couldn’t afford to wait,” Xavier answered simply. “We didn’t want Magneto to have the luxury of getting completely entrenched in his new ‘sanctuary’ without some kind of opposition.”
“So they’re taking the fight to him with no hope of winning,” she snapped. “Does that make sense, Charles?”
“There is always hope,” he said. “They’ve come through worse spots that this. We both know that.”
“So where’s the rest of the team?” she asked, sighing and glancing around in a pretense of distraction. “I didn’t see Cyclops, Gambit, Rogue—you know what I mean. Where are the others?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I’m not even sure they’re alive.”
The color drained from Valerie Cooper’s face.
“If we’re lucky,” Xavier continued, “they’re about to reenter Earth’s atmosphere even now. But I haven’t been able to reach them using any method.”
“We need help,” Val said softly, chewing her lip. “I got the President to approve my working with the X-Men on this, trying to get into the Alpha Sentinel
with the override codes. But if I’ve got no X-Men .. .’* Her voice trailed off, and Xavier saw tiiat Val was looking beyond him. She scowled, closed her eyes a moment and shook her head. When she finally spoke, he already knew what she would say.
“Here comes Gyrich,” Val said, and the despair and hatred in her voice could not have been more clear.
“Ah, Professor Xavier,” Henry Peter Gyrich crowed as he approached, “how nice to see you. Come to make a case study, have you?”
“As you well know, Mr. Gyrich,” Cooper snapped, “the Professor has been brought in as an expert consultant for the duration of this crisis.”
“Oh, yes, I’d forgotten,” Gyrich sneered. “And what of the X-Men, Professor? How do they fare?”
“It’s good to see you again, Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier said stiffly. “Regarding the X-Men, I’ve no idea. Though the television says they’re in Manhattan right now.”
Gyrich tipped his head to one side and gave Xavier an odd smile. Charles was chilled to the bone. The problem with Gyrich was that he wasn’t evil, or even “bad” per se. He was not an enemy that could be openly com-batted. Rather, he was a bigoted patriot who would do anything for his country’s benefit, even if his country did not specifically request it. Like Oliver North, he had his own ideas of what was good for America. But Gyrich also had some strong beliefs on the role that mutants did not play in the future of the nation.
Gyrich was not a villain, but he was an extremely dangerous man, just the same.
“So, what’s the story, Ms. Cooper?” Gyrich asked after an uncomfortable silence. “What’s your next move?”
“My next move, Mr. Gyrich, is to get the override codes for the Alpha Sentinel from you.”
“You mean you don’t already have them?” Gyrich asked, feigning astonishment with a caustic obviousness.
“You know I don’t,” Val snapped. “Given your position as part of Operation: Wideawake, it is implicitly your duty to provide those codes to me. I’m sure the President and the Director will see it that way.”
“You’re speaking out of school, Valerie,” Gyrich said coldly, his eyes narrowed to slits as he glared at her and Xavier.
“Not at all, Henry,” she said snidely, and Xavier realized for the first time that, in her own way, Val Cooper might be just as desperate to win at any cost as Gyrich was.
“Xavier has been cleared,” she continued. “You know that. Give me the goddamn codes.”
“There’s no need for cursing,” Gyrich chided. “I simply don’t have the codes right now. I’ll have to get them for you.”
“Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier interrupted, “I would caution you, at this juncture, not to impede Ms. Cooper’s plan. It is, in truth, the only sure way to resolve this situation, and even then not without massive risk.”
“Are you threatening me, Xavier?” Gyrich asked, in a tone that made it clear he was not unused to being threatened.
“Not at all,” Xavier answered. “For I have nothing to threaten you with. I am, very simply, advising you as I was asked to do by the President himself. And my advice is, play ball. If Magneto’s mutant empire succeeds due to your obfuscation and obstruction, I don’t have to tell you that your employers would be sorely vexed.”
“Magneto will not succeed,” Gyrich said, anger rising up behind his steely smile. ‘ ‘I will make certain of that. In any case,” he continued, turning back to Val, “the X-Men are not here. Until they are here, your plan cannot go forward. Therefore, we have no choice but to proceed with Plan B, as it were.”
“And what, exactly, is Plan B?” Xavier asked. “Sorry', Professor,” Gyrich said. “That’s classified to need-to-know. If Ms. Cooper’s plan is not going to be enacted, then the pair of you simply do not need to know.”
“You’re making a terrible mistake, Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier said.
“The X-Men will be here,” Val insisted. “You’ve got to give me more time.”
“Your time is up, Cooper,” Gyrich said with a chuckle. “You and all your mutant sympathizing friends. Some of us actually want to stop Magneto. And the damned X-Men are probably signing up to be knights of his accursed round table right now.”
Gyrich turned stiffly and began to walk away in an arrogant manner Xavier couldn’t help but think of as goosestepping.
“Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier said, in a tone that made Gyrich hesitate, then turn to face them once more.
“What is it, Professor?” Gyrich asked wearily. “I have a mission to put together.”
“You’re trying to take down Magneto, among the most powerful individual beings on the face of this planet. In some ways, perhaps the most powerful,” Xavier said. “Maybe you’ve considered that. Maybe it doesn’t disturb you. It is even possible that you’ve truly prepared for it.
“But don’t forget that the Acolytes are there as well, not to mention whatever new Acolytes have joined him since this whole charade began. Finally, you’ll have to contend with them.”
Xavier pointed across the Hudson River to the sinister figure of a Sentinel that towered above the West Street entrance to the Holland Tunnel, outlined by its own running lights, eyes glowing red in the darkness. For a moment, he thought of Cerberus guarding the gates of hell. He pushed the thought away as he turned back toward Gyrich.
“They’re not going to let you in,” Xavier said calmly.
“We built them, Professor,” Gyrich responded. “Why don’t you let us worry about them, hmm?”
Gyrich walked quickly away, his every step a testament to efficiency.
“Perhaps he’s actually figured out a way to do this,” Xavier mused aloud, but beside him Val snorted derisively in response.
“Not without billions in collateral damage and a lot of casualties,” she said. “The President won’t let the military go in full force, but a small strike force, specifically designed to assassinate Magneto? They’ll go for that.” - - -
“Do you think they actually believe it can be done?” Xavier asked, taken aback.
“They think they can do anything,” Val responded. “They’re invulnerable, unstoppable. They’re the federal government, by God, and nobody tells them when to sit up or roll over.”
“Fools,” Xavier said quietly.
“Gyrich is right,” Val said, “nobody is going to listen when I protest. It’s going to be a massive cluster fu—”
“Val,” Xavier interrupted. “I could contact the X-Men in Manhattan, as you well know.”
“Via telepathy,” Val said, nodding. “You could instruct them from there, at least to try to determine which is the Alpha Sentinel. But we’d still need those codes.” “True,” Xavier said. “Likewise, I don’t think it is in our best interests to pull them out of there right now. They’re on Magneto’s trail. If they can get close to him, engage him, then we still have a chance at this. Even Gyrich’s plan may work if the X-Men keep Magneto busy long enough.”
“You contact the X-Men,” she decided. “If they run across the Alpha Sentinel, we need to know about it. In the meantime, I’ll try to get those codes from Gyrich. Of course, if we end up helping Gyrich, we can’t let him know we helped or he’ll have confirmation of his suspicions regarding your connection to the X-Men.” “Let’s do our best to avoid that,” Xavier said, in that instant making a decision that brought home to him how truly dire their situation was.
“On the other hand,” he said gravely, “considering the stakes here, we may all have to make sacrifices if we expect to prevail.”
* • •
Gyrich was in his glory. Cooper had failed, plain and simple. Now it was his turn. There was no way his superiors would balk if he went forward now, with the X-Men unavailable. None of which meant that he had any intention of clearing his plan or getting authorization before moving ahead. He was the commander of this operation. He would take the fall if it went awry, and the credit if it succeeded.
And it would succeed.
It was very clear to Gyrich that the proper way to proceed was to first sanction Magneto. The Acolytes would not be a problem after that. Once opposition was eliminated, they would have to deal with the Sentinels. Without using mutants, which Gyrich was dead set against—after all, what was to stop them from commandeering the Sentinels for their own purposes?—the only way to take down the Sentinels might be through massive force. If they could be drawn out over the river, they might avoid some of the collateral damage. But it would be very messy, just the same.
Which was fine with Gyrich. While he was not prepared to allow Magneto his little empire, he was more than happy to take advantage of the terror created by the incident. The lasting memory of it, particularly if there was a lot of damage, even a few casualties, would allow him to operate with far greater freedom in his antimutant efforts. When it was all over, Gyrich intended to have a long talk with Graydon Creed of the Friends of Humanity, who was sounding more and more like a politician, and a potential candidate for public office, every day.
Gyrich hurried toward the entrance to the PATH station, where civilian evacuees were being shepherded quickly away by military personnel. The soldiers at the door saluted in deference to his position, but Gyrich did not return their gesture. He wasn’t a soldier, after all. He was the boss.
He descended the down escalator into the depths of the station, barely noticing the stream of displaced New-Yorkers on the up escalator. On the train platform, he was met by an army sergeant, who guided him down onto the tracks. They walked at a brisk clip, still parallel to the flood of humanity leaving their homes. Finally, they came to a doorway to one side of the tracks. A keycard unlocked the door, and Gyrich waited for the sergeant to move away before he opened it and entered.
Inside was a much smaller tunnel, ten feet high and perhaps twenty across. It was an access and maintenance area that ran alongside the PATH train tunnel all the way into Manhattan.
So much for getting past the Sentinels.
“Attention!” a harsh voice growled, and the nineteen soldiers inside snapped to. Their commander, Major Skolnick, stood rigid as he saluted Gyrich.
“Surgical ops unit one ready, sir,” Major Skolnick announced. ‘ ‘Our gear will be delivered within one hour, sir. At which time, Operation: Carthage will be a go!”
“Excellent,” Gyrich responded, a smile of anticipation creeping across his face. He had named the mission for the most malicious military action in history. The Roman government had determined that their ancient enemies in the north of Africa, Carthage, had to be utterly eliminated. They ordered the city razed to the ground, the soil sown with salt so that nothing could ever grow there again. They had done this with a very simple directive: “Carthage must be destroyed.” It meant utter annihilation. Gyrich felt that same all-encompassing need for destruction as well.
No matter what else happened, Magneto must be destroyed.
Word had spread like a virus down Fifth Avenue that the X-Men had come, and the looters scurried into their holes like frightened rabbits. It reminded Bishop of his days, now far in the future, with the XSE. Their name, and his own reputation, had been enough to send criminals fleeing in mortal terror. Here and now, in a time long before he was ever bom, he had become part of a team, an institution he had previously considered little more than legend.
But the legend had a terrible ending. An ending where the legend died, where each and every member of the X-Men team was horribly slaughtered. Where the Sentinels mled, at least for a time, and mutants became the hunted. His teammates knew of this; Bishop had told them. But he understood how difficult it was for them to really understand it, when they had not lived with the results of it.
His every muscle was tensed, body humming with energy, as they made their way down Fifth Avenue, Storm flying above them. Professor Xavier had contacted them mentally several minutes earlier, and given them instructions regarding the Alpha Sentinel, and Bishop had paid close attention. He understood how vital it was to take Magneto out of the game as quickly as possible, but in his own mind, the Sentinels were the greater threat. Still, Magneto’s dream of domination might be exactly the thing that set events in motion leading to his disastrous future.
In any case, the X-Men had their orders. Take Magneto down first. And Bishop was a dedicated soldier in the war for Xavier’s dream. He followed orders.
“Bishop,” Wolverine growled low, appearing at his
side. “You gotta calm down, bub. You’re running so hot I can smell it like burnt rubber. We’re gonna need you frosty when things get tight.”
“I appreciate your concern, Wolverine,” Bishop said stiffly. “But I am fine. You do not need to worry about my performance.”
“That’s only part of it, pal,” Wolverine responded. “The X-Men take care of our own. You’re wired like a junkie in sore need of a fix. Gettin’ crazy could get you killed.”
“Thank you,” Bishop said calmly, meeting Wolverine’s eyes though he had to look down at the much shorter man. “Truly, thank you. But I will be fine.” “Okay, then, enough o’ this military march crap,” Wolverine said, raising his voice slightly to get the attention of the Beast and Iceman, who were just off to one side.
Bishop thought it interesting that with Storm in the air, it was Wolverine who took charge rather than Hank McCoy. Then again, though McCoy was one of the most brilliant men of his time, that did not make him an exceptional warrior. Something that Wolverine undoubtedly was. In truth, Bishop did not think he had ever met another so perfectly suited for the art of war than the man they all knew only as Logan.
“We’re like the Earp brothers at the OK Corral walkin’ down the street like this,” Wolverine said, and Bishop nodded. It had been bothering him all along that they were so vulnerable, walking along the middle of the street the way they had been.
“Magneto probably knows we’re coming, but there’s no reason to let him know exactly when,” Wolverine continued. “For starters, let’s get off Fifth. We’ll head west two blocks, then south on Seventh to Times Square. Hank, Bobby, take the west side of the street. Me ’n Bishop will take the east side. And stick to the shadows when you can. The X-Men usually come in with a bang, but this situation calls for a little caution, a little stealth.” “As you suggest, Wolverine,” the Beast answered. “Bobby and I will continue to track Magneto, but all readings still indicate a southerly direction.”
They began to move west at 47th Street, sticking close to the buildings as Wolverine had suggested. It was going to be a bit slower going, which Bishop found cause for concern, but there was nothing to be done about it. There were only the five of them against Magneto, the Acolytes, the Sentinels, and whatever other mutants had been in New York at the time of the takeover. They had to err on the side of caution.
Bishop knew they were only going to get one shot at this.
* * *
The silent, muscle-bound Inuit man made his way north from Times Square, staying to the right on Seventh Avenue. Behind him, several kids, barely in their teens, raced across the neon-lit expanse of the huge intersection brandishing pistols with an abandon that he envied. No one told them what to do. If you got in their way, you were the enemy. When they shot someone, more often than not, that person would die, or at least fall down. Things were not always so cut and dried, the large man knew.
But perhaps, with Magneto making his move at long last, things were about to attain a clarity they had not had previously. Perhaps there would be more to his life than obedience and death. Or, it was possible he would merely be trading one master for another, foregoing a life with direction for one with responsibility, as he had done for so long.
His massive form was sheathed in black kevlar body armor, with a light raincoat covering that, as well as the quarrel which held a large supply of slayspears, his own personal weaponry. As projectiles, they would have been deadly on their own. But when charged with his potent, killing energy, and thrown with his extraordinarily accurate aim, they became far more effective. The man carried the burden of death heavily on his back.
Half a block further ahead, he saw the blinking sign for a club that promised “Live Girls,” and knew he had reached his destination. Even as he stepped through the entrance, he could see the shattered mirrors that lined the walls of the strip club, the bare runway whose blinking lights flashed without purpose now that the “live girls” had gone.
To the right was the bar. Three familiar figures sat there, backs to him, sipping shot glasses full of whiskey in silence. None of them looked up at first, but he recognized them all just the same. The woman was Arc-light, a powerhouse of a female he had never expected to see again. There was another bruiser, a huge, grossly muscled man known as Blockbuster. Finally, the third, the man who had called him here: Scalphunter. His metallic armor was festooned with gleaming steel parts which could be put together to create more than one hundred different weapons, all deadly in his hands.
Scalphunter turned from the bar and offered a chilly smile.
“I’m glad you came, Harpoon,” the gleaming killer said. “I wasn’t sure if you would. But then, it’s not as if we have any place better to go these days, is it?”
Harpoon grimaced. Scalphunter was right, of course. None of them had any real purpose, nor had they had any contact—at least he had not been in contact with any of them—since Mr. Sinister had disbanded the Marauders. It had amused Harpoon at the time. After all, he was a criminal. They all were. Hardcore, at that. Murderers all around, and happy to do the job at the time. But they’d been fired. How did you fire a murderer? Not as if any of them would have dared go after Sinister. The man was far more dangerous, and unpredictable, that the lot of them combined.
“Hey, ’poon! How’s it hanging?” a voice cried from the back of the bar.
Harpoon spun, on guard, but relaxed as soon as he saw the blur that was fast approaching. Piles of mirror glass shards swirled and eddied in one comer as a mansized tornado moved toward him. Harpoon smiled, both at the comparison with the Tasmanian Devil that came to mind, and in greeting. The tornado had a name, Riptide. And Riptide was a friend. The only one of the Marauders that Harpoon was glad to see. Scalphunter was a stone cold killer, but Riptide was just out of his mind.
The tornado stopped, and there he stood. Riptide was a lanky six feet, dressed in a uniform thinly striped in black and white, nearly invisible pockets hiding a multitude of throwing weapons, from knives and shuriken to weighted razors. He was deadly, he was crazy. But Harpoon trusted him.
“Come on, pull up a chair,” Riptide said. “You look like you could use a drink.”