When he stood up, Wolverine was furious.

“Once again you ignore the terrible Toad!” Toynbee shouted, his righteous anger a poor mask for his fear. He couldn’t hide the fear no matter how brave he tried to sound.

Wolverine could smell it on him.

“You hit a normal guy like that,” Wolverine snarled, his claws popping out with a snikt, “woulda broken every bone in his body. Guess it’s lucky I ain’t normal.”

The Toad leaped at him again, with astonishing speed. Anyone else might have gotten overconfident, assumed Toynbee’s fear would have made him hesitate to attack again. But Wolverine was the best there was. He knew better. To Logan, the attack was telegraphed by the tiniest motion, the smallest change in scent. He ducked. As Toynbee passed above him, Wolverine raked his claws across the diminutive mutant’s legs and the Toad let out a piercing wail of agony.

Even as the Toad hit the ground, feeling his legs to check the damage, Wolverine had already moved on. The X-Men were prevailing, but the fight had not been won yet. And, given Magneto’s plans, it would hardly be the last battle they fought that day. Unless, of course, they lost.

The Beast was bounding around the dull-witted, quick-tempered Blob, getting a blow in here and there while avoiding the Blob’s enormous fists. He was going to need help, but Wolverine banked on Hank’s ability to keep dodging a few moments longer. He had to prioritize, and right now, Storm seemed to need him more.

Pyro would normally be no match for Ororo, but before he had gone up against her, the psycho had set fire to an old, boarded-up movie theater. The flames had kindled quickly within the dry wood and dusty curtains, and he had stoked them high. Now the theater was a raging inferno, and Pyro had the flames at his disposal.

He could not create fire, and Wolverine knew they had to be thankful for that. Pyro wore a complicated getup on his back that fueled the dual flamethrowers he held in each hand. His mutant ability was to control the fire once it existed, to direct it, shape it into whatever he wished. The key was, while Storm ought to have been using her weather control abilities to attack Pyro, she was forced to battle the blaze. Giant hands of solid fire shot suddenly from the theater lobby, reaching for Storm

where she had suspended herself on the winds.

A gale force wind kept the flaming hands back, even as torrential rain began to fall on the flames. But the fire burned brightly still. Eventually, Pyro might actually be able to wear her down. And if Storm weakened, the hands of fire might be able to reach her. Fortunately, the X-Men were a team.

Wolverine approached Pyro from behind, with a predator’s silence. Allerdyce never knew what hit him. With one swipe of his claws, Wolverine severed the tubes supplying fuel for Pyro’s flamethrowers, making certain he could not create any new fires. With the second, he punctured the tank on the mutant terrorist’s back. The fuel began to spill out onto the sidewalk, and Pyro spun to face him.

“Wolverine!” Pyro said, his Australian accent tainted with false levity. “’Ow are ya, mate? It’s a pleasure to see ya as always. Let’s be gentlemen about this, eh?” Logan said nothing. He brandished his claws before him, the sunlight glinting off the adamantium with blinding radiance, except in those spots where the Toad’s blood had dried.

“Come on, now, Wolverine,” Pyro pleaded, backing up several steps. “What’d I evah do to you, eh?”

Pyro tried to smile, but his smile faltered as he realized Wolverine was backing him toward the burning building, as the highly combustible chemicals he used to fuel his flames were pouring off his back. He began to move, to attempt to go around Wolverine, but Logan darted in and nicked his arm, very lightly, with one claw.

“You’re cornered, Allerdyce,” Wolverine said grimly. “You’d better hope Storm puts out that blaze before you get a little too close, or a spark jumps our way.”

“You’ll be killed as well, you madman!” Pyro shouted, panicked.

Again, Wolverine did not respond. With his peripheral vision, he watched as Storm lifted her hands and gathered the air itself into her control. Suddenly, a small tornado seemed to spring up from nowhere. The vortex lowered itself out of the sky to encircle the burning theater. It was there for a few seconds, no more, and when it lifted into the air and dissipated, the fire was out. Rain fell on charred wood.

Moments later, Pyro was doing his best to plead for his life without making it sound too much like begging. Wolverine bared his teeth but did not advance upon the mutant. Storm rode the winds at her command until she lightly touched down on the pavement. When Pyro turned to her, prepared to continue his pleas, Ororo lifted a hand, flicked her wrist in a dismissive gesture, and the winds whipped Pyro from his feet and slammed him through the display window of a GapKids across the street.

He did not emerge, and Wolverine had a moment to wonder if he was unconscious, or merely hiding. Logan and Storm did not speak, then, for they did not need to. It reminded Wolverine of the time they had spent on the road together, just the two of them, forming a bond of friendship that could never be broken. It was a pleasant memory amidst a barrage of hellish new events.

* * •

“I’m really beginning to enjoy myself, Bishop,” Un-uscione ranted. “Thank you for being so cooperative, and giving so freely of yourself... and your blood!” The shimmering green exoskeleton Unuscione’s psionic powers generated was completely at her command. She raised an arm encased in a giant block of glowing energy, and swung it down toward Bishop. He barely escaped being crushed by it, but could not save himself completely. Unuscione struck him from behind with her exoskeleton—the third time she had connected—and Bishop stumbled forward and slammed his head against the pavement.

When he stood, blood flowed from his nose and mouth, and from several scrapes on his right cheek.

“You are a madwoman, Unuscione!” he shouted. “Perhaps I sound as mad as you with my raving, but you must listen to me. You all must listen. What Magneto has built this day cannot stand. The Sentinels may be temporarily under your control, but that cannot last. They have but one purpose, to keep the human race dominant through the containment and eventually the destruction of mutants.

“I have seen it, don’t you understand?” he cried. “If Magneto should triumph, all mutants will suffer, millions will die!”

“Magneto is the savior of mutantkind, Bishop, not its destroyer!” Unuscione retorted, even as she swung at him again. “It is because of such blasphemy that the X-Men must die!”

Bishop was slowing down, becoming slightly disoriented. It was impossible for him to dodge Unuscione this time, and he was battered down beneath her onslaught. For the space of several seconds, he lay stunned. Unuscione likely believed him beaten, for she appeared about to move on to another foe. Bishop felt a strange tingling all through his body, and his hands felt as though they’d fallen asleep, all pins and needles.

To his great surprise, he found himself charged with energy. With throbbing in his head, he looked up at Unuscione. When he saw her, Bishop realized where he had garnered this power supply. Unuscione’s exoskeleton had dimmed noticeably, its glowing green a far lighter hue. In the sunlight, it was gossamer as cowebs. And the woman, overconfident in her abilities, did not seem to have noticed it as of yet.

Without either of them realizing it, Unuscione had, with each blow, filled Bishop with explosive energy. If he had a few moments to recover, he felt he would be all right. But Unuscione would not allow him those moments if she suspected he was not completely defeated, or even dead. Painfully, Bishop rolled over onto his stomach, facing Unuscione. Immediately, she lashed out again with her exoskeleton. But this time it barely fazed him. It was as if she had dumped a bucket of water on him, for all the harm it did.

And when she withdrew, the green glow had faded even further. Bishop felt it growing inside him, the heat stoked like a furnace.

“For the future,” he grunted, and released all the pent up energy he had unwittingly stolen from Unuscione.

Even if her exoskeleton had been at full strength, Bishop was attacking with the same energy, only rechanneled through his own body. His blast passed through her force field as if it were not there. Unuscione screamed and crumbled to the ground.

‘ ‘For the future,’ ’ Bishop muttered again, then began to drag himself to his feet in order to help his comrades.

Fred Dukes was a little bit concerned. All four of his companions, including his old buddy Unus’s little girl, had been downed by just four X-Men. He wasn’t worried that he might lose. No, the thought never even occurred to him. After all, he was stronger than the Beast, Wolverine’s claws couldn’t penetrate his rubbery hide, Storm could not call up a strong enough wind to move him, and this Bishop guy . . . hell, all he had was a gun, it looked like.

No, the Blob was mainly concerned because he didn’t think he could capture them like Magneto had ordered. Sure, maybe he could keep them busy until the other Acolytes came around, that was possible. But just as he didn’t think they’d be able to defeat him without Professor X or Jean Grey, who might be able to get into his head, or Cyclops, who had once burned a hole in his body, he didn’t think he could do much in return. If he could get his hands on any of them, why, he’d snap them like twigs. But they were all much faster than he was.

Storm’s winds buffeted his body, but he did not even have to lean into the wind to stay upright. They started to whip around him like a tornado, and at first he thought she might be trying to lift him off the ground with it. Then it hit him—this was something she had tried in earlier fights. Well, actually, it had worked before. She was trying to cut him off from oxygen so he wouldn’t be able to breath and he would just pass out.

Just before all air left him, Dukes inhaled deeply, filling his massive lungs. He’d be able to hold his breath like that for several minutes. That’s all the time he had to do something, something that would let him win.

Fred Dukes knew he wasn’t the smartest guy in the world. But he also knew a good idea when he had one. Rolling his eyes as if he was about to pass out, Dukes fell to the ground, sending a tremor through the street around them. As soon as Storm let up with her winds, he sank his fingers into the pavement and tore a huge chunk out of the street. Sitting up, he threw it at Storm with all his strength. The pavement broke apart in the air, and one piece did clip her arm, enough to distract her for a moment.

“All right. Beast, Wolverine, come on,” the Blob taunted. “I’m ready for ya. I’m gonna take you guys down, then grab that Storm chippie and make like Kong. I’ll be the Blob, the Eighth Wonder of the World!”

Suddenly, both the Beast and Wolverine stopped moving toward him. For a moment, Dukes didn’t understand. Then he got it.

“Oh, no...” he began, but it was too late. The X-Men were laughing at him.

“Why, thank you, Fred,” the Beast said. “Without Iceman, we were going to have a decidedly difficult time finding Magneto. If I am not mistaken, and I do not believe that I am, you have just told us precisely where to look.”

The Blob was flustered.

“Okay, maybe so, but you rubes still have to get by me, and you know from experience that nothing moves the Blob!” Dukes said, sure he could still pull it off. He’d blown it big, that was for sure, letting it slip where Magneto’s headquarters were. But it wasn’t over yet. Not by far.

“We don’t have to move you, Fred,” the Beast said.

“We don’t even have to get by ya, bub,” Wolverine added, lighting up a cigar that Dukes hadn’t even seen him produce.

“What are you...” he began to ask, then saw that the one called Bishop, who the Acolytes had said was from the future, if you could believe it, had slung his plasma rifle over his shoulder. He wasn’t even aiming at the Blob anymore.

“Indeed, Mr. Dukes,” Storm continued as she walked calmly to where the other X-Men stood. “In the past, you see, we have been forced to fight you to the finish because you were committing some crime, or endangering innocent lives. We were, obviously, after you.” “This time,” the Beast continued for her, “you are after us, as it were.”

“That’s right,” Dukes said, still baffled by the X-Men’s behavior. “So come on an’ mix it up. I’ll hand all you jerks your heads this time around.”

“It ain’t gonna happen, Dukes,” Wolverine snarled. “See, we don’t have to fight you. All we gotta do is make sure we’re all faster than you. An’ I seen you runnin’, bub. No problem there.”

“You gotta be kiddin’!” the Blob shouted, understanding suddenly what they were saying. “You’ve gotta stay an’ fight me. I’m dangerous.”

“True,” Storm said. “But Magneto is our priority today.”

The X-Men turned and started off in the direction of the Empire State Building, moving at a good clip. Though he knew he had no hope of keeping up with them if they started to really run, and he was resigned to the idea of failure yet again, Fred Dukes started to move after the X-Men as fast as he was able.

Which wasn’t very fast at all. When he had gone half a block, they had gone two. He was so wound up in the chase, and in his disappointment, that he stopped paying attention to where he walked. His right foot landed on one of the eight by eight sewer gratings that ran along above the subway lines throughout Manhattan.

The grates were sturdy steel, but no match for eight hundred and fifty pounds, in motion and concentrated in the fourteen inches of flesh the Blob called a foot. The grating caved in, and Fred Dukes went with it, tumbling down into a darkened subway tunnel forty-seven feet below.

The only thing hurt was his pride.

The Blob looked up and down the darkened tracks. After a moment’s consideration, he headed south, in the general direction of Magneto’s headquarters, and hoped he’d find a subway station—and steps to the surface— before too long.

The open-air observation deck that circumscribed the top of the Empire State Building had been closed to the public for years. Too many children, and immature adults, had dropped things off the building from there. A nickel or quarter dropped from that height might kill a human being. Too risky, the authorities had apparently believed.

Magneto had opened the observation deck, made it the seat from which he would survey his domain. And it was a glorious view, without a doubt. Everything below was tiny, insignificant, which Magneto felt was appropriate given the gravity of the decisions that would be made from this, his new aerie. Decisions that were already being made.

It had begun to come together quite nicely. Mutant recruits were pouring in by the dozen, both from within the city and from around the country. Soon, he expected to receive the first foreign immigrants, and he would welcome them with open arms. Their international citizenship would be an example for the rest of the world, an example of how to live in peace. But the humans would not have time even to learn from it, since Magneto planned to rule the rest of the world before long.

When the sun had risen, Magneto’s pulse had quickened with the spreading of the light. Office buildings gleamed in the distance, light glinted off the surface of the Hudson River. The sky was perfectly clear and blue, the kind of summer day from which memories were made. Magneto could see much of the city from his perch, could see several of the Sentinels he had positioned to keep watch over the mutant sanctuary, their deep purple armor shining.

Though his dream had always been to improve the world for his fellow mutants, as selfless a goal as any man had pursued, still he felt the swell of pride in his chest. It was not completed yet. There was still so much to do, so many obstacles to overcome, but it had begun. It occurred to him that he would need a name for the place. Manhattan would most definitely not do. His space station was Avalon. Camelot or Shangri-La would be laughably trite. Still, something simple, direct, would be best.

Haven. He could think of nothing more apropos.

Below, the many citizens of Haven were beginning to gather. The word was going out to the odd groupings that had sprung up around the city that there was to be an address by Magneto. By the emperor. He had wondered what kind of resistance there might be to his leadership. But, according to the Acolytes, other than some humans and, of course, the X-Men, there had been no open opposition. After all, there would be no Haven without Magneto.

Ah, but the X-Men. One of the obstacles he had been considering a moment earlier. Xavier’s students were vast in number, and yet only a handful had appeared to oppose the foundation of Haven. Magneto was both puzzled and somewhat alarmed by this. What might Xavier have planned, he wondered. It was possible the small group sent in advance was merely a diversion, to mask a greater, more ingenious attack.

It did not seem likely, given how far Magneto had already progressed with his plans. Xavier would normally have made his move already. But then, Charles had been changing of late, becoming somewhat unpredictable. It made him a more dangerous opponent. Not

that Magneto was concerned. Merely curious.

Still, though there were only a handful of X-Men on hand, Magneto had long since learned that even a single follower of Xavier’s dream was enough to create serious problems. That was why they needed to be captured and made an example of as expediently as possible. The citizens of Haven needed to have their faith in Magneto bolstered by the realization that Xavier’s chosen path could only lead to failure.

First, though, he needed to capture the X-Men.

Magneto breathed deeply of the air, despite the pollution that clogged it. Wind whipped his white hair across his eyes and he felt a bit of a chill, though it promised to be a very warm day. There was much to be done. But he did not feel as though he could move forward until the nuisance of the X-Men was eliminated.

The wind carried a sound to him, then, a chittering noise as though a swarm of locusts was about to descend. It lasted only a moment. Then the gossamer, three-dimensional image of Scanner flickered into existence directly in front of him, suspended in the air many hundreds of feet above the street.

“My lord,” Scanner’s projected image addressed him, performing a proper reverance with her hands to her forehead, then her lips, and finally her heart.

“Yes, Scanner, what news?” he asked.

“Mixed, I am afraid, lord,” she answered. “The team you sent out eliminated Iceman, who appears to be dead. They then confronted the other four X-Men, but were soundly defeated. Inadvertently, the Blob revealed our location. The X-Men are on their way here, and will arrive within minutes. They are, of course, attempting to be inconspicuous in their approach, but we have little time before their attack.”

“Excellent,” Magneto said happily.

“My lord?” Scanner asked, and the puzzled expression on her face amused Magneto greatly.

“It is almost over, Scanner,” he said. “Very soon, we will consolidate our gains, and move forward. And there won’t be anybody to stop us.”

“I am honored to play whatever small part I may in your grand design, lord,” Scanner said proudly.

“Scanner, please ask Voght to gather up Unuscione and the others,” he said. “Have those who are badly injured seek immediate attention, and assemble the others in the lobby. The X-Men will have a surprise waiting for them.”

Scanner shimmered and disappeared, even as a smile of real pleasure spread across Magneto’s features.

“I only wish I could see Xavier’s face,” he said. Then, for the first time in a long time, Magneto laughed.

* * *

“What the hell are we doing here, Kevin?” Trish Tilby asked, somewhat rhetorically.

Trish had worked with Kevin O’Leary a dozen times, maybe more. He’d always been a pro, no matter what kind of crisis they were trying to cover for the network. But this was another story entirely.

“Well, I don’t know, Trish,” Kevin said, a caustic tone to his voice. “You tell me. Are we doing our jobs, or just trying to stay alive?”

A little of both, was how Trish wanted to respond. But she figured Kevin was too on edge to be anything less than argumentative, perhaps even hostile, so she kept her thoughts to herself. They were, indeed, doing their jobs. In fact, there was no question that this was the biggest story either of them had ever covered, probably ever would cover. And from the inside, no less.

But that was also part of the problem. Though Trish had always been on the side of the angels where mutants were concerned, as liberal as they came, she had recently begun to wonder if there were not some truth to the argument that mutants, as a race, were dangerous to humanity. Now, with Magneto’s latest triumph, she was certain of it.

Certainly mutants were the next step in human evolution, and therefore by their very existence threatened the human race. But it was more than that. In the here and now, mutants were hazardous to the world’s health.

It shamed her that she would even consider punishing all mutants for the actions of a few, but the potential for death and destruction was just too high. If Magneto could be defeated, and the world recovered from this incident, there would be a host of politicians calling for mutant work camps, which Trish would find abhorrent. But there would also be calls for the forcible registration and tracking of all mutants, an idea that had been made law and repealed once before. She wasn’t sure where she would stand on that issue.

Her uncertainty bothered her deeply. The X-Men, the Beast in particular, had trusted her. Though she and Hank were no longer involved romantically, the change in her philosophy that Magneto’s actions had brought about made her feel as though she had betrayed them. Betrayed him. She had been their ally. Trish knew the X-Men were virtuous and necessary, and admired all that they stood for.

But they were constantly protecting humans from other mutants, essentially saving the world from themselves. Which only proved the danger they posed to humanity.

On the other hand, Trish wondered if her feelings, and the feelings of those so afraid of mutants, weren’t really based on the fear that humanity was going to die out soon. If humanity was making its next evolutionary step, what did that mean for their comfortable little lives and lifestyles?

“God, I feel so guilty!” Trish said aloud.

Not only did it seem to her as though she had betrayed Hank and the X-Men in her heart, but she and Kevin had become Magneto’s propaganda machine. Already they had sent half a dozen videotapes by mutant messenger to the network studio in Manhattan, where two producers and an anchor had apparently stayed on through the crisis.

Censored by Magneto, the material really was propaganda. They wouldn’t be able to tell the real story until they were allowed to leave his presence. They had no choice. At least, that’s what Trish tried to tell herself. In truth, she did have a choice. She could simply have said no.

“Hey, Trish, listen,” Kevin said, trying to assuage her anguish over the events of the past few hours. “We’re doing all we can to serve ourselves, our beliefs, and the public here. I know you’re worried about your buddy McCoy, but he and the X-Men have been through worse than this. They’ll be fine. And he would definitely understand...”

The air buzzed with energy and the holographic image of the Acolyte called Scanner appeared in the middle of the office space they had appropriated.

“Lord Magneto has commanded that you appear on the street in one hour, prepared to document his victory over the X-Men, and his first state of the nation address to the citizens of Haven,” Scanner said.

Then she was gone.

“Haven?” Kevin asked.

“Obviously where we live now,” Trish answered.

But that wasn’t the part that had piqued her attention, the part that had made her wince with painful regret. “Victory over the X-Men,” Scanner had said.

“Hank,” Trish whispered to herself. “Oh, God. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

» t *

Operation: Carthage was well under way. Surgical Ops Unit One made its way in stealth through the maintenance tunnel that ran parallel to the PATH train tracks. Several minutes had passed since they had moved directly under the invisible barrier set up around Manhattan island by the fleet of Sentinels at Magneto’s command. Major Ivan Skolnick felt like he’d been holding his breath for an hour.

Skolnick held up a hand, halting SOUl’s progress. They stood completely still, each of them listening for the mechanical whine that would signal a Sentinel’s approach, the crumbling of pavement and tons of soil that would give way under its attack.

One hundred and twenty seconds ticked by without incident. For good measure, Skolnick waited twice that time before signalling the team to move forward again. Not long after that, they were hustling into the World

Trade Center PATH station, up two sets of escalators, and then out to the street.

By the time they emerged from the World Trade Center building, the sun had risen. It was strange to Skolnick. Most covert operations took place under cover of night. This was different, however. The freedom of the world was at stake. The future of Major Ivan Skolnick, his children, and their children hung in the balance. He would do whatever was necessary to safeguard that future.

“Major,” Sergeant Greenberg, the point-man, stepped up to report. “Firefight up ahead.”

“It’s time, then,” Major Skolnick said, and sighed, steeling himself for what was to come. “Let’s do it.”

* * *

The Blob was considerably out of breath when he took the last step out of the subway station into the sunlight. It was warm on his face and neck, and he was already sweating. There was a light breeze, but it didn’t help. He hated the summer.

There was a sudden flash in front of him, accompanied by a brief burst of sound that reminded him of one time when Pyro had torched an old wooden footbridge, just for fun. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes, but it was over as soon as it had begun. Where the flash had been, Amelia Voght now stood.

“Time to go, Mr. Dukes,” Voght said. “I hope you’re in the mood for a rematch.”

Dukes grimaced.

“Am I in trouble?” he asked, knowing from experience just how much of a drag it could be to have Magneto pissed at him.

“In trouble?” Voght repeated, as if she had not understood the question. “Certainly not, Mr. Dukes. This is your country now, and it is your duty to defend it. You would only be in trouble if you did not do that. In any case, you are about to get another opportunity to beat the X-Men.”

“Yeah,” Dukes said, and nodded. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Before he realized it, the Blob was disappearing. Every inch of him.

* * *

“Y’know, this might just amount to the craziest thing we’ve ever done,” Wolverine said grimly. “But I don’t see as how we have much of a choice.”

He looked around at his teammates and saw that each of them wore the same expression: one of fierce determination and somewhat reckless abandon. Bishop was fidgety, could barely keep his fingers from his weapon. Storm’s brow was creased, her voice firm, resolute.

“Whatever the odds,” Storm said sternly, “we may well be the world’s only hope against Magneto and the Sentinels. The job has fallen to us, as we have always known it would.”

“Let us be off!” the Beast said, attempting to lighten the mood by quoting one of his favorite bad movies, The Sword and the Sorcerer, which Wolverine had seen with him half a dozen times. “There’s a battle in the offing! We’ve got kingdoms to save and women to love!”

“Speak for yourself,” Storm said, and her harsh countenance crumbled in favor of a small grin.

They moved fast, rounding a comer a block away

from the Empire State Building and hugging close to shop windows as they ran for the glass doors of the lobby. Wolverine felt the wind kick up around him, and didn’t have to turn around to know that Storm had taken to the air. He had point, with Beast and Bishop flanking him a few steps back and Storm above.

They expected opposition, and immediately. Like the Blob, most of that opposition would assume the X-Men were there for a fight. But they were there to take down Magneto, or remove him from Manhattan, and so draw the Sentinels away as well. Wolverine knew that the Beast and Storm would both hesitate to kill Magneto if the opportunity arose. Under any other circumstance, Bishop might have been undecided as well, but if it meant preventing the future holocaust, he would kill Magneto in a heartbeat.

And Wolverine? Hell, he’d been waiting for the opportunity to pop a claw through Magneto’s skull for years. But they weren’t there quite yet.

“Suddenly, I think of Dante,” he heard the Beast mumble behind him as they hit the pavement and rushed toward the glass doors.

“You got it, bub,” Wolverine growled. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

“Shouldn’t we have hit resistance already?” Bishop asked.

Nobody responded, but it was a thought Wolverine had already had. He imagined the others had as well. If this was indeed Magneto’s' headquarters, Scanner, or some electronic surveillance, would surely have picked them up by now.

“It’s a trap,” he said, completely certain.

“Indeed,” the Beast concurred.

They did not slow down.

“Bishop, the doors,” Storm ordered from above.

In mid-stride, Bishop slung his weapon around front and let off a stream of concussive plasma bolts that shattered the long row of floor to ceiling windows and the revolving doors in a deafening crash that lingered like an infinite echo on the ear.

“There they are,” Bishop snapped, and Wolverine scanned the lobby again, eyes fighting to adjust to the differential between daylight and the interior shadow of the building.

The enemy had been spotted, all right. And sure enough they had spotted them as well. Inside the lobby stood the Kleinstocks and Senyaka, along with half a dozen unarmed combatants who were unfamiliar to Wolverine. New recruits, no doubt. That meant mutants.

“This could be a problem,” he snarled. “They got a bunch o’ rookies over there. We’re runnin’ into this blind. We got no idea what we’re up against.”

“It won’t be the first time,” Bishop said.

“We shall merely have to hope it will not be the last,” the Beast added.

Then they were inside, in the thick of it. Wolverine ducked a plasma blast from one of the Kleinstocks and dove at the man. Senyaka’s whip snagged his ankle, and Wolverine fell short of his aim, claws tearing a ragged gash in Harlan Kleinstock’s chest instead of ripping him open.

Logan lashed out, hacking through Senyaka’s psionic whip and making the mutant cry out in pain. A young boy of not more than fourteen was tossing Bishop around off to one side, while a feral teenage girl with a mouth full of hundreds of needle-thin fangs faced off against the Beast.

Without warning, Storm drove a huge blast of cold air, damp with rain, into the lobby and knocked all of the combatants from their feet. Wolverine tried not to become disoriented as he was borne aloft and slammed into a marble column. A moment later, the wind died down and Wolverine leaped to his feet once more. Bishop and the Beast were pulling themselves free from the rookie mutants, and Wolverine knew they had to make quick work of the group or they would never reach Magneto.

“Enough o’ this penny-ante crap,” he snarled. “Let’s move!”

Wolverine went for the stairwell, knowing the elevators would not be safe for them. Sven Kleinstock blocked his way, side by side with a muscle-bound guy who seemed to be sweating acid that ate into the marble floor wherever it dripped from his body.

“You hurt my brother,” Sven Kleinstock said angrily. “You’re gonna pay for that, wild-boy.”

Wolverine lashed out at Sven Kleinstock before the Acolyte could even begin to formulate an attack out of the threats he had made. Rather than skewer the man, as he wished, he slashed Kleinstock’s chest just as he had done to the man’s brother.

“You guys are twins,” Wolverine said, his voice a cynical drawl. “Figure you oughta have a matched set o’ scars, too. Don’t want to make it too easy for people to tell you apart.”

“You’ve made a mistake, X-Man,” the acid-dripping brute said, his voice confident and menacing. “Magneto’s will is law. I am called Acid, and you cannot touch me. The chemicals in my skin will instantly eat away your flesh if you try to harm me. Surrender, or I will be forced to attack.”

Wolverine looked at the rookie in astonishment for a moment. The guy was either ignorant or stupid.

“Should’a made your move when you had a shot, bub,” he said, and grabbed Acid’s throat with his left hand even as he buried the claws of his right into the chest of the novice Acolyte. He didn’t kill the guy, just perforated him a bit. With the neophytes, there was always a chance they’d come around to ol’ Charlie Xavier’s way of thinking.

“What are you ... aarrgh!” Acid shouted. “But you can’t touch me! The acid ...”

Wolverine let go and Acid toppled to the marble floor. His adamantium claws were not even scratched or pitted from contact with Acid’s skin, but the palm of his left glove had been eaten away, along with much of the flesh beneath. The knuckles of his right hand had suffered the same fate. They were already healing, and Wolverine steeled himself against the pain. There were times when the healing hurt more than the injury itself, and this was one of them.

Off to Wolverine’s left, Senyaka attacked Bishop, which was foolish of the Acolyte if he knew anything of Bishop’s powers. The force of his psionic whip was absorbed by the future X-Man, and Bishop shocked Senyaka with a blast of his own power. The Beast leaped above the needle-fanged girl and caused her to slam into the wall, where she howled in agony.

Harlan and Sven Kleinstock were concentrating their efforts on taking Storm down. She stood in a scatter of shattered glass where the revolving doors used to be. When they went for her, Storm raised her hands and out of nowhere came a massive bolt of lightning. The Kleinstock brothers were frozen in place as the electricity of the lightning coursed through their bodies, and then they slumped to the ground.

“Now, let’s take Magneto!” Storm yelled, and they headed for the stairs. Already Wolverine could feel the wind swelling behind them, a wind Storm might be able to use to shoot them up toward the top of the stairwell. In other circumstances, moving all four of them would be difficult, but the stairwell was enclosed, and Storm would be able to focus her power.

They raced for the stairs, were about to pass the elevators when their doors exploded outward in a shriek of metal. Wolverine had only a moment to notice Magneto floating, in all his imperial grandeur, out of the elevator shaft. Then he and his teammates were thrown back by a wave of magnetic power. While he might move the other three X-Men by the iron in their blood, Magneto could simply grab mental hold of Wolverine’s adaman-tium skeleton and push. He did.

The four X-Men tumbled to the ground in front of the shattered face of the Empire State Building. The Beast was first to his feet, but the rest quickly followed. Wolverine’s claws had retracted during Magneto’s attack, but they slid out once again, gleaming in the sunshine.

“You can bring on as many toy soldiers as you like, Magneto,” Wolverine snarled. “But at the end of the day, it’s us against you. And like always, you’re gonna lose!”

“Surrender, Magneto,” Storm urged. “Do not push this insanity any further.”

“You X-Men are either brave or very stupid,” a female voice said, and Wolverine spun to see Amelia Voght, and a few unwelcome friends.

Voght stood at the center of the street, with the Blob, Pyro, Cargil, Unuscione, Scanner, and a whole bunch of other mutants that Wolverine would have called losers any other day. He recognized Hairbag and Slab, a couple of super-strong stooges who once worked for Mr. Sinister. There were other faces he recognized as well, and none of them friendly.

Emerging from the Empire State Building were Magneto, Senyaka, half a dozen rookies and a pair of angry, bleeding Kleinstocks.

“You are hopelessly outmatched, X-Men,” Magneto said calmly. “I don’t think I will even need to call any Sentinels in to subdue you. In fact, I believe I can say with confidence that you are as good as defeated already.”

“The X-Men can never be defeated, Magnus,” the Beast said. “You know that. Take down one or two, or four of us, but there will always be more X-Men to pursue Xavier’s dream.”    ,

“Charles Xavier is a fool,” Magneto snapped, and Wolverine took satisfaction in that. The Beast knew how to push the mutant terrorist’s buttons, that was for sure.

“I didn’t hear nobody yellin’ forfeit, Magneto,” Wolverine growled. “Come on, slick. Just you an’ me.”

“I'm tempted to kill you, you know,” he said. “Particularly you, Wolverine. Your boastful ranting has become most tiresome. But I believe I will allow you to bear witness to my great triumph, the victory of mutants over humanity. Perhaps I bear some small foolish hope that you will begin to see the wisdom of my actions and join with me.”

“You madman!” Bishop shouted suddenly. “You’ve doomed all mutants with your actions!”

Bishop fired off several plasma rounds, but Magneto easily deflected them.

“That will do,” he said. “Take them, Acolytes. Now.”

A sea of mutant warriors charged the X-Men from all sides. With the Beast and Bishop at his back, Wolverine began to fight. Still, he knew it was useless. Magneto could probably beat the four of them singlehandedly, and he was simply hanging back and allowing his Acolytes to make a go of it. They didn’t have a chance in hell of winning. Not without reinforcements. And reinforcements were not forthcoming.

“Now, Magneto, it is time to face your destiny!” Storm cried as she rose into the air and began whipping her hands around to command the winds and the storm, to call lightning down on Magneto.

“Ah, Ororo, perhaps the most powerful of the X-Men in your way,” Magneto called to her. “But with a fatal flaw.”

Wolverine saw what he was going to do, but Storm, unfortunately, did not. Before Logan could warn her, Magneto had used his powers to tear off the trunk of a Toyota parked nearby. The huge metal square flew through the air behind Storm. She didn’t even see it coming, and then Magneto had wrapped it around her as though it were nothing more than tissue paper. The noise it made as it hit the ground, with Storm inside, was terrible to hear.

His mind reeling, heart sick and gut on fire, Wolverine resisted the urge to tear Magneto’s throat out. The man knew Storm was a severe claustrophobe, and had played On that fact for amusement. Still, by himself, even with his comrades, Logan knew he could not win. There was only one thing to do.

With a roar of fury, he charged toward Magneto, who looked up in surprise, then narrowed his eyes with displeasure.

“Oh, please, Wolverine,” Magneto said. “You of all people...”

With a flick of his wrist, using the magnetic power at his mental command, Magneto picked Wolverine up by his adamantium skeleton and threw him a block and a half.

« * *

“Enough!” Magneto shouted. “It’s over!”

The fighting had finished, and his Acolytes were just taunting the X-Men now. Beast and Bishop were restrained, barely conscious, and Storm was still confined within the car trunk. Magneto could hear her screaming. At some point, he would have to release her from that metal shroud. The sooner he was able to get the restraints on them that would prevent their minds from accessing their powers, the more comfortable Magneto would be. As confident as he was now, any living X-Man was dangerous.

Why, then, was he letting them live?

It was simple. For the moment, at least, it was the next best thing to being able to rub his victory in Charles Xavier’s face personally. His philosophy had triumphed, but it would do no good if his opponents did not witness it, and concede defeat. It was even possible that, before long, he might be able to force Xavier to concede defeat. In person.

That moment was a long time coming. It would be wonderful.

Yet, something was amiss. Something ...

“Where is Wolverine?” he asked, realizing immediately what had gone wrong.

A moment later, Amelia Voght confirmed it for him.

“I am sorry, Lord Magneto,” she said, uncharacteristically using the proper deference. “It appears that Wolverine has escaped.”

Magneto breathed deeply, wondering whether he should simply allow Wolverine to run. It was not as if he could do much harm to the mutant empire, now that it had begun. Yet, his Acolytes would expect him to give chase, and it would not do to allow them room for wonder or conjecture. Now that he had truly assumed the mantle of emperor of mutants, his plans demanded complete obedience in the ranks.

“Amelia, take Senyaka, the Kleinstocks, and Needle, and go after Wolverine. Do not return without him,” Magneto instructed.

Amelia nodded and began to withdraw.

“Attention, followers of Magneto!” a voice boomed over a bullhorn. “This is Major Ivan Skolnick of the U.S. Army. Surrender yourselves immediately, or you will be terminated!”

Stunned, Magneto turned to see a dozen soldiers, armed with weapons even he was unfamiliar with.

“Scanner, how did they ...” he began, but already he could see that Scanner was shaking her head in anticipation of his question. She did not know how they had gotten past the Sentinels.

Then it hit him. “Followers of Magneto,” Major Skolnick had said. But what of Magneto himself? It was all too obvious. He was to be slaughtered, eliminated.

They were taking no chances. And Magneto had no idea what their weapons were or what they could do. With his magnetic ability he reached out for those weapons, prepared to shatter them. He was hardly surprised when he realized the weapons had no metal parts, none at all.

After all, they had been made to kill him.    <r

V

“On my mark!” Skolnick shouted.

Too late to attack, Magneto braced to defend himself.

Magneto instantly erected a magnetic force shield around himself that he hoped would protect him from their assault. And after the initial barrage, he would destroy them.

That, at least, was his intention. What happened next astonished him, as well as the rest of the mutants gathered in the street. But it was clear that no one was more astonished than the soldiers under Major Skolnick’s command.

“Abort mission!” Major Skolnick shouted.

Silence reigned supreme for the space of several heartbeats. All eyes were on Major Skolnick. Magneto stared at the man as though he had spoken in some ancient, forgotten language. So did his subordinates. Magneto’s gathered followers, the new citizens of Manhattan, of Haven, began to close in on the soldiers.

“No!” Magneto said, his deep voice rumbling through the air, breaking the silence. None of the mutants moved again.

“Major?” one of the soldiers shouted across the street to Skolnick. “What the hell... ?”

Major Skolnick hung his head, lowered his weapon, then dropped it to the pavement.

“He must be under the mutie’s control somehow,” a female soldier shouted. “Take them down!”

“No!” Skolnick commanded.

Weaponless, he lifted his hands and gestured toward the members of his squad. Magneto watched in fascination as the air in front of Skolnick’s hands seemed to bend and warp. Then there was a resounding boom as a blast of directed sonic energy burst from Skolnick and slammed the rest of the soldiers to the ground, covering

their ears. None of them moved to get up. In truth, none of them moved.

“Are they dead?” Magneto asked as he moved slowly, warily toward Skolnick. It had occurred to him that this could still all be part of some plot to capture him. There was a more likely scenario however.

“God, no,” Skolnick said, self-loathing tainting his response. “I could never do that to my own people.”

“We are your people, Major,” Magneto said, testing his hypothesis.

Skolnick looked up at him, perhaps preparing a sharp retort, but then the man seemed to collapse with relief.

“Promise you won’t hurt them,” he said. “They’re good people, just doing their jobs.”

“If only they had known that which they despised the most was also the leader they looked up to and admired,” Magneto said, truly saddened by the state of the world. “Don’t worry, Major, we will deposit them at the border unharmed. In the meantime, welcome to Haven, my friend. With your obviously substantial mutant power, you will be a great asset to the community, I am certain.”

“I joined the army to fight for freedom, for people’s right to be free,” Skolnick said. “Now, I want to make sure that I stay free, that what children I may one day have will remain free, even if they’re mutants like their father.”

Magneto looked closely at the man, and decided to accept him at face value. His emotions were so powerful, so raw, that they had to be genuine.

“Then you share my dreams, Major,” Magneto said. “Come with me, now. I need someone to organize my many new recruits, and I believe you’re the man for the job.”

Skolnick seemed to brighten somewhat at the prospect of responsibility, to stand a little straighter with the knowledge that he would still be part of the hierarchy, commanding a fighting force.

“I don’t relish the idea of fighting against my former comrades,” he said, not quite saluting but speaking in tones reserved for a commander.

‘ ‘If they will allow us our freedom, you will not have to,” Magneto said. “I know you may feel as if I forced your hand, forced a decision upon you by my actions. Indeed, that was my intention. To force a decision upon many hundreds of thousands of mutants around the world. My message to those mutants is simple: stand with us, or stand aside.”

“I stand with you,” Skolnick said.

“Excellent,” Magneto responded. “In twenty minutes, I will address the citizens of Haven. I would be honored if you would stand with me on the platform.”

“Yes, sir!” Major Ivan Skolnick snapped. And this time, he actually did salute.

Magneto liked that. Quite a bit, actually.

» * *

When Magneto had bent and twisted the car trunk around her like a metal shroud, Storm had begun to scream. Thirty seconds passed before she was even capable of rational thought. She had forced herself to stop crying out in panic, then fought to slow her fast, heavy breathing to avoid hyperventilation. It was an exercise she had been through before, each time she had needed to fight against her claustrophobia. It had not become any easier.

Childhood trauma had given her an obsessive, uncontrollable fear of confinement in small spaces. Magneto had known that, and taken advantage of the fact. Unlike so many other enemies they had faced over the years, Magneto did not consider himself one of the bad guys. Indeed, for a time, he had affiliated himself with the X-Men, attempted Xavier’s dream, tried to live within the parameters of the life the X-Men led.

The attempt failed rather spectacularly. But that had not stopped Magneto from learning about them. Who they were. What made them tick. Their strengths and, unfortunately, their weaknesses. They had never completely trusted him, never really thought of him as a friend, or even as a teammate, but he had gotten in close. Magneto knew them better than any warrior should ever know his enemy. Many times, it had worked to their disadvantage.

But to Storm’s thinking, never so horribly as now.

Storm was sweating, but her arms were trapped at her sides making her unable to wipe the beads of moisture from her face. She blinked to clear them from her eyes and fought against the urge to grind her teeth, or, conversely, to open her mouth and scream again.

“Goddess, no,” she whispered.

It took all of her concentration, every good memory she could summon into her mind, every scent of air that snuck into her iron coffin, but she held the scream inside, held back the tide of panic. She could not defeat the fear, however. The fear was there, monolithic in its stature, completely insurmountable. It washed over her in waves with the ache of her body, bruised and battered by the fall to Earth. She didn’t think anything was broken. She hoped not, anyway.

She had tried to close her eyes, but that did not help. Better to stare at the darkness, stare at the tiny cracks of light that seeped into the seam Magneto had left. Using mental exercises taught her by Professor Xavier and Jean Grey, Storm began to block out, little by little, her predicament. She removed herself, her mind, from that confined space and delved instead into her memories.

As a child, she had been an orphan thief in Cairo, Egypt. The city was stifling, heat and humanity pressing in from all sides. Though the sky was blue above, she had never felt comfortable there. As a young woman, she had come into her mutant abilities and ventured out over the verdant African plains. The people of the plains called her Wind-Rider, and when she brought the rain, they began to call her goddess.

Goddess.

Soaring the skies by azure day and sable night, she grew into the role, became protective of her people. From a ragged, barely noticed street urchin, she had grown into the focus of an entire people. Yet still she was blind to the world and its problems, fortunate enough to be innocent. Until Charles Xavier arrived to recruit her. He opened her eyes, then, and try as she might, she had never been able to close them again. When Ororo became Storm, she started on a road that would give her a hard, jaded edge.

But inside she was still the little street thief. Inside she was still the Wind-Rider. Inside she was still the goddess of the plain. Still innocent. That was where she retreated with the flow of memories. Somewhere neither

Magneto nor her claustrophobia could ever hurt her, at least until panic overwhelmed her again.

And just as she had arrived there, at a kind of tenuous peace, the metal sheet wrapped around her began to shriek as it was peeled away from her body. Harsh sunlight rushed in, and Storm lifted her hand—she was able to lift her hand!—to block out the sun. She blinked several times, trying to force her eyes to adjust. Someone was leaning over her, though she could not quite make out who. She didn’t have to. She knew his voice well enough.

“I’m so very sorry, Ororo,” Magneto said with apparent sincerity. “I know how terrible this must have been for you, but it was all I could think to do in order to expedite matters. I hope you understand.”

“You’ve made a grave error, Magneto,” she said, even as he lifted her from her premature tomb. “The world will not allow you to go on unchallenged. If you’d picked some deserted island, a frozen tundra or desert wasteland, perhaps they would not have bothered with you. But there’s no way you can simply appropriate one of the largest and most important cities in the world.”

“It’s just the beginning,” Magneto said proudly, and now she could see him clearly, white mane gleaming in the sunshine, looking as regal as he hoped to be.

“Restrain her,” he said.

After the time she’d spent confined, Storm was still somewhat disoriented and unable to focus quickly enough to defend herself. Before she even realized what was being done, metal alloy clamps had been placed over her hands and wrists, and a similar collar around her neck. The restraints not only held her body in check, but cut off access to her mutant ability. It was not the first time Magneto had used such technology on the X-Men, but Storm silently vowed that it would be the last.

“What are we now, Magneto, pets to keep you company?” she asked, and though her voice seethed with sarcasm, a part of her was sincere.

“Nothing of the kind,” he replied, feigning shock. “No, Ororo, though 1 hope one day you will be converts, for now you are witnesses to the creation of Haven, the mutant empire. And, of course, you will also serve as excellent teaching tools, examples to show that Magneto cannot be defeated. A kind of ornamentation if you will.”

“You are as vile as Wolverine has always insisted,” she spat.

“You’ll never know how sorry I am that you feel that way,” Magneto said gravely. “I hope one day you will see that I have offered you what Xavier never could, freedom. I offer you brotherhood, a homeland where you are loved and embraced instead of hated and feared. Today I am a terrible villain in your eyes. But mark my words, Ororo, there will come a day when you and all the X-Men will hail me as a hero.”

Storm breathed deeply, truly feeling her freedom from confinement for the first time, shaking off the terrors of her claustrophobia. She looked away from Magneto a moment, considering his words not for their value but for their delusion. It was a beautiful day, and Storm felt as if something had been stolen from her because she could not enjoy it.

“I want what you offer, Magneto,” she said honestly, looking once more at his face, into his steel grey eyes. “I want it more than I have ever yearned for anything.”

Magneto seemed surprised at first, and then pleased.

Finally, his eyes narrowed. For he knew Storm, knew the X-Men, all too well.

“But the price you ask is far too high,” she continued. “I am not willing to sacrifice so much of what I believe. The ethical fight is, in many ways, far more important than the physical one. For the moment, you have won the latter. But the former you lost decades ago. Thus, in effect, you cannot win.”

A cloud seemed to pass over Magneto’s face. Ororo knew she had angered him with the truth, and it felt good.

“You are mistaken, Wind-Rider,” Magneto said, his animosity revealing itself. “Look around you, Storm. I have already won. It is over. Xavier’s dream has been defeated forevermore.’ ’

Magneto spread his arms wide, and Storm turned fully around for the first time. She was astounded and appalled by what she saw. They stood on a thrown together platform, as if at a political rally, at the center of Times Square. Filling the street for blocks in every direction, packed tight shoulder to shoulder, were people. Magneto’s people. Mutants.

Storm saw many she recognized, but far more she did not.

“Goddess,” she whispered to herself. “Where have they all come from?”

“From fear, from hiding,” Magneto answered from behind her. ¹ ‘I have drawn them out of their terror, given them freedom, given them life. They have traveled here, are even now traveling here from around the world. They are the citizens of Haven. They are our long-suffering brothers and sisters, now vindicated. They are the hope for the future. Now do you see what I have done?”

Storm scanned the crowd, still stunned. There had to be many hundreds, perhaps a thousand already. And it was only the beginning. If Magneto was correct, there would soon be tens of thousands of mutants in Manhattan. At that point, it might be too late to reverse what the madman had begun.

To her left, Bishop and the Beast stood, trussed as she was, the object of ridicule from many in the audience. Several of the Marauders they had faced the night before were there. The Blob and Pyro were also in the crowd, but the Toad was nowhere in sight, apparently too badly wounded to appear. On stage near the X-Men were several of the Acolytes.

Where were the others? Storm wondered.

Then it hit her. Wolverine was not here. Magneto must have sent them out after him. That was when hope began to bloom in Storm’s heart. As long as Logan was free, she knew that victory was still within their grasp. Someway, somehow, they would find a way to stop Magneto’s mad dream before it tore the world apart.

* * * .

The Beast was despondent. Iceman had been ambushed, might even have been ... but no, he dared not even think it. In any case, Bobby would be no help to them for the moment. Wolverine had escaped, but was likely to be heading out of Manhattan. Even if he made it, and found help, Hank wondered if Logan could make it back in time.

And after all, what help was there? The military would be of little or no assistance. Unless Scott and the others had returned from Hala, or X-Factor had made it back from Genosha in time, they were on their own. That was how he’d have to play it. He would have to assume they were on their own, that they could not expect help from any quarter.

The gears of his mind began to click, turning their predicament over, trying to find a way not only to escape, but to take Magneto out of play simultaneously. Hank did not expect to find an answer, but it was not in his nature to surrender. He was considered among the most brilliant minds the United States had produced in the twentieth century. He wasn’t going to give up just because some fascist mutants had tied his hands.

Searching for inspiration, he scanned the crowd, the street, the buildings around him. Inevitably, he thought of King Kong, who had scaled the building just to find some private time with the woman he loved, and died for his trouble. Stupid ape. Granted, that was fiction, but unless you could fly, up was never an option for escape.

On the platform behind him, Storm and Magneto argued heatedly. Hank barely paid attention. To his right, Bishop stared out at the gathered mutants, his eyes glassed over with horror. He didn’t move, or speak a word. Bishop wasn’t going to be much help.

Hank looked to his left, checking to see which Acolytes were still there, what the odds were if he managed to get his restraints off. There seemed to be more of them every time he looked. With them were a man with a TV camera, and a slender woman with dark hair and...

“Trish?” he mumbled to himself in wonder.

Trish Tilby had been his girlfriend for a while, before it got to be too much for her. He wasn’t sure if it had been his constant disappearing act when he ran off with the X-Men, or if she just couldn’t handle going out with a mutant, but she had ended it. She claimed she still wanted to be friends, but Hank had heard that before.

Still, the Beast could not help it. He knew they had no future together, but he cared for Trish Tilby deeply. Probably always would.

The woman turned slightly, and Hank saw her in profile for the first time, the glare of the sun not obscuring her features. It was her! Trish. Immediately he assumed that Magneto had taken her captive, that she must have been covering the story and been discovered, along with her cameraman. Now Hank really needed to wrack his brain for a plan. Not only did the X-Men have to escape, and take down Magneto, but they had to get Trish and her friend out as well.

Magneto turned from Storm and stalked across the platform, directly toward Trish. The Beast tensed, planning to at least make a try for Magneto if he did anything to harm Trish. Instead, as soon as Magneto neared them, the cameraman focused his lens on the mutant terrorist and Trish began to ask Magneto questions. She was doing an interview, of all things!

It was almost impossible for Hank to believe. She was not a prisoner of Magneto’s, after all. She had the air of total professionalism about her, just a woman doing her job. It sickened him to even consider that she might be that callous.

Suddenly, Trish looked his way, as if Magneto had made mention of her and indicated that she should do so. She did not try to break loose of the guards, did not rail against Magneto or curse him. Just a pro, doing her job.

“Hank!” she finally saw him. “Hank, it’s me, Trish. Are you okay?”

Their eyes met across the platform, and Magneto turned slightly to observe the exchange. She seemed about to approach, to speak with him, to explain, but Magneto said something to her and she merely looked away. Then the Beast looked away as well. His mind continued to work on the question of victory, but part of him seemed to wander far away for a moment.

“No,” he said, softly enough that Trish could not possibly hear him. “No, I am most definitely not okay.” That was when Bishop went ballistic.

- * * *

During the battle with Magneto and his growing number of Acolytes, Bishop had lost consciousness. When he came to, he discovered that his enemies had used the intervening time wisely. He and the Beast were captive, each of them stretched out in a sort of pseudo-crucifixion on large steel struts, set up at cross angles to form, ironically, a huge “X.”

He found that his hands were bound with some kind of metal alloy restraints, and there was a metal collar around his neck that matched. There seemed to be an energy emanating from the restraints, but he could not seem to use his mutant power to absorb it. It finally occurred to him that this might be the hidden secondary, and more valuable, purpose of the restraints. Bishop could almost feel his power draining away.

They had lost.

A crowd of mutants had gathered to listen to Magneto speak. Bishop could see the fervor in their expressions, could feel the excitement in the air. Many of them, he knew, were noncombatant, nonviolent individuals who likely spent their lives trying to hide their genetic mutations. To them, Bishop realized, Magneto must have seemed like some kind of savior, a mutant messiah come down to free them from the hatred and humiliation, the fear and frustration of their lives.

Bishop understood, perhaps far better than the other X-Men. Though he came from a future where the X-Men were legends, where the ideals espoused by Charles Xavier had been perpetuated until they were almost religious doctrine. But like religious doctrine, they were seen by most average people as unattainable and unrealistic. In a world of violence, where self-preservation was the first order of business, harmony seemed as distant as judgment day.

It had been quite a shock for Bishop to be thrust back in time, to meet the X-Men and realize that Xavier’s dream had once seemed so very possible. Violence was part of their lives as well, but their cause was far greater than self-preservation. They had a different code of honor, different dreams, different attitudes. Bishop had adopted these as best he could. But he could never completely abandon the world he had grown up in.

Xavier’s dream meant hope, and the X-Men believed wholeheartedly in that dream. But Bishop came from a time of hopelessness. As he glanced at individual faces among the crowd, he knew he was seeing people who were experiencing the same epiphany he had upon traveling back in time. From a world of hopelessness, they had been given hope.

Though the X-Men were sworn to protect humanity, despite humanity’s obvious fear and hatred of mutants, these poor souls had no such noble goals. Magneto had offered them a home, a better life, a place where they might raise children to be proud of themselves and their heritage. If the cost of all that included war, included conquering humanity, well that was okay. What had humans ever done except ridicule them, hound them until they had to hide from the world?

Without question, there were many in the crowd, some he recognized and some he did not, whose motives were not so benevolent. Many mutants who now followed Magneto had been using their gifts for anarchy, power, and personal gain all along. This was just the latest step in their careers, as the X-Men had already seen with the Marauders.

But the others, those whose hearts were numbed by the world, whose minds had come alive at Magneto’s promise of sanctuary, Bishop could understand them. He could not blame them even a little for anything they did from that point on. But it was also those people that he knew he must appeal to. For despite his intentions, Magneto had likely put mutantkind on the road to armageddon. Bishop had lived in the shadow of that armageddon, and it was his duty to do all he could to prevent it.

“Listen, all of you!” he shouted, vying for their attention with whatever else was happening on the stage. “You must listen. I know that you have been greatly wronged, as have we all. But this is not the way to right those wrongs! By using the Sentinels to achieve his goals, Magneto may have doomed us all!”

Several dozen people, among the hundreds gathered, glanced toward him, then looked away just as quickly. They were ignoring him, unaware of the insight he had to offer, or simply uncaring. Which meant that Magneto had already won. The future that Bishop had vowed to prevent seemed, all at once, to be inevitable. It was not merely going to happen, it was happening. The Sentinels were already in use, and as soon as the government got them back under control, they would be turned on mutants the way their creator intended.

It was over.

“Noooooo!” Bishop screamed in despair. “Listen, I said! You all must listen to me! I have seen the future, I have lived it! Magneto cannot succeed! The Sentinels will be used to destroy him, to destroy the X-Men, to destroy you all! Don’t you understand what he’s done, what you’re doing? I know you only want freedom, but you are bringing about your own terrible destiny! You must fight him, you must show the world that mutants do not have to be feared! And then the Sentinels must be destroyed!”

There was silence for several moments. Somewhere, Bishop heard a bird singing. Overhead, cottony wisps were all that marred the perfect blue summer sky. It was warm enough already that he had begun to sweat in his heavy XSE uniform. His heart beat loudly in his ears as he sent a prayer up to a god he was not even sure existed, a hope, a dream, that these people would listen.

Someone in the crowd began to snicker, and one by one, the gathered mutants erupted in a deafening roar of laughter.

All the energy left Bishop. He went slack in his restraints, hanging from the clamps that held his hands. Desperately, he searched for some shred of hope to cling to, and found none.

For the first time, it occurred to him that the only hope of avoiding the catastrophic future might he with the X-Men’s greatest enemy. If Magneto were to triumph, were truly to conquer the world for mutants, Bishop’s future would never be.

Yet, who was to say if that future would be any brighter?

* ft ft

Surgical Ops Unit One had not reported in at the assigned time. Operation: Carthage was a failure. Gyrich had no idea what happened to his team, but it didn’t matter. They had been expendable from the beginning, but he had hoped they would be able to achieve their goal before they were decimated by the mutants gathered in New York.

Gyrich sighed. He did not relish the idea of a full-scale attack on Manhattan any more than the next guy; despite Val Cooper’s claims, he was no warmonger. Yet he was, above all, a realist. He was willing to make the tough decisions. He only wished they were his to make. Instead, he would have to begin in earnest his attempts to- convince the Secretary and the President that there was no other way.

Every second that passed further jeopardized their chances of success.

There was a knock at his trailer door.

“Who is it?”

“Colonel Tomko, sir.”

Tomko. The same idiot soldier who’d screwed up the Colorado operation. If he’d done his job, none of this would have been happening. But the President did not see it that way. In fact, Gyrich thought the President might have assigned Tomko as some kind of reprimand directed at him, personally. Granted, the man had more experience with mutants than most officers. But...

In any case, he was stuck with the colonel. He would have to make the best of it.

He took two steps down and opened the trailer door. As Tomko moved to enter, Gyrich blocked his way and stepped outside instead. He closed the door, and checked to see if Tomko looked offended. He saw no sign of such a reaction, but knew it had to be there. Gyrich didn’t care. His trailer was off limits to everyone but himself, the Secretary, and the President. To hell with anyone else.

“You called for me, Mr. Gyrich?” Colonel Tomko asked.

“Indeed I did, Colonel,” Gyrich responded. “This is not my operation, as you know. You are not under my command. I will not be giving any orders here.”

Gyrich thought he caught a slight smirk of pleasure on Tomko’s face, but then wondered if he wasn’t just being paranoid.

“Still,” Gyrich continued, “I wanted to make you aware that I am urging the President to immediate action. There is no time to waste. I thought you should be aware of that, and prepare accordingly.”

Colonel Tomko did not respond immediately. He looked past Gyrich, and seemed to be contemplating what had been said.

“You have a problem with that, Colonel?” Gyrich asked, hostile, ready for an argument.

“Not at all,” Tomko answered. “I was just wondering, if the President does order us to attack, do you think we’ve got anything in the arsenal that is even going to be a nuisance to one of those?”

Tomko pointed east, and Gyrich turned and looked out over the Hudson River. A Sentinel stood there, certainly aware but completely unconcerned about the massive military buildup across the river. The sun gleamed on its metal body. It did not seem quite so sinister, quite so dangerous, in the daylight. But Gyrich had seen the schematics on the massive robots. He knew what they were made of, what they were capable of, and he had to admit he had no answer for the colonel.

If he were able to convince the President to attack, he could not be absolutely certain that they would win.

The first things Scott Summers became aware of were the motion of the Starjammer as it sliced through space, and the hum of the hyperbumers that traveled through the entire vessel as tiny vibrations. In fact, he could feel the vibrations against his cheek, which lay on cool metal. There were voices, but his brain hadn’t woken up enough for him to focus on any one in particular, so he had no idea what they were saying.

His eyelids opened a crack, almost of their own volition, and light flooded in. Annoyed by the sudden light, he closed his eyes tight, then began to open them more slowly.

Scott? He heard Jean’s telepathic voice, felt her probing to see if he was awake. Then he heard her true voice, speaking to him, and of him.

“Scott?” she asked aloud. “Corsair, I think he’s finally coming around.”

Scott opened his eyes fully, and was immediately reminded, as he was every time he awoke, of the limitations of his vision. Through a red veil, he saw Jean’s face above him. He opened his eyes as wide as they could go, scrunched them shut, and opened them wide again, trying to fight off the urge to sleep once more.

“I’m awake,” he said in confirmation. “I’m still here, I guess.”

Jean smiled, and Corsair stepped up next to her.

“We’re all still here thanks to you and Rogue,” Corsair said happily. “I’m proud of you, son. How do you feel?” '    ’

“Like I’ve been running with the bulls, Dad,” Scott answered, and pulled himself up to a sitting position. He stretched out his arms, testing his muscles and back,

then rolled his head around to work the kinks out of his neck.

“I’m a little bruised, and I’ve got a bit of a headache, but nothing compared with the migraine I was expecting,” he said. “More importantly, how are we, really? What’s our status?”

“We’re doing okay, Scott,” Jean began. “We—” “Listen, I’ve got to check on Ch’od and Warren, then see about waking Hepzibah up for re-entry,” Corsair interrupted. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”

He moved off into the cabin, and Scott looked around for the first time. Raza and Hepzibah were still on the medi slabs in the cabin, with digital lifesign readouts displayed above their heads, now that the ship had much of its power back. On the other side of the cabin, Rogue spoke quietly with Gambit, who seemed to have made a complete recovery.

That was when Scott realized that he had not noticed a major change on board. None of them were wearing their space suits. Even his had been removed sometime while he was unconscious. He remarked on this to Jean. “I guess we’re doing okay,” he added.

“We’re not out of the woods, yet,” Jean answered. “There are a number of variables that have come up.” “Well?” Scott urged.

“For starters,” Jean began, “and the real complicating factor, is that, now that we’ve got the hyperburners engaged, we can’t afford to slow down until we’re well within Earth’s atmosphere. The engines could cut out at any time, and we’d either be back where we started, floating in space, or we’d be making an unguided descent through the atmosphere, which has all sorts of problems of its own.”

m

“That’s not good news,” Scott agreed. “An unguided descent would more than likely mean crashing the ship. Of course, if we can’t slow down, that’s going to put a huge strain on the heat shields. We might melt into slag before we ever shut down the engines.”

Jean nodded solemnly, then took in a long breath. “That was my next point,” she admitted. “Add to that the fact that, though we can’t slow down, we also can’t be sure the navigational system is working correctly.”

“So we could hit the atmosphere at the wrong angle, slice right through and be back in space,” Scott said in realization. “Which might not leave us enough power to turn around.”

“Actually,” Jean said, “it might force the engines to cut out again, which would leave us stranded one more time. I don’t know about you, but I don’t relish trying that jumpstart stunt again any time soon.”

“No,” Scott agreed. “It’s not first on my list of things to do. But Corsair said Ch’od and Warren were piloting. What’s going on?”

Jean cocked her head slightly to one side and her face was transformed into a look that Scott had become familiar with over the years. He was missing something, something obvious. He looked around the cabin again, anywhere but at Jean. Then he saw Hepzibah, lying prone on the medi-slab. Alone.

“I thought she was going to be okay?” he said, realizing immediately that Corsair would stay by his Me-phisitoid lover’s side until she had recovered.

“She is,” Jean answered. “In fact, we’re all a little surprised she hasn’t come around already. We had thought to keep her sedated, in case there are any injuries

m

we’re unaware of. But Corsair said he didn’t want to be a burden to anyone, that if anything went wrong, we had to be able to move as fast as possible. That means Hepzibah’s got to be up and around.”

“I understand his concern, his needing to be with her,” Scott said. “I know how I’d feel if it were you on that medi-slab. But Warren, good as he is, isn’t half the pilot my father is. Isn’t that more of a risk than anything else?’ ’

“Ch’od’s piloting,” Jean answered. “Warren’s co-piloting. If anything happens, if they really need him, Corsair will be there as always. You know that.” “You’re right,” Scott said, nodding slowly. “I just wish we had a little more going for us on this one.” Look at it this way, sweetheart, Jean’s mental voice said in his head. It’s amazing we’ve lived this long. I can’t believe the powers that be would get us this far if we weren ’t meant to go all the way.

“Faith,” Scott said. “I thought we’d used up our supply on this trip.”

“Not quite yet,” Jean answered.

“Good,” Scott said, and smiled. “We’ll need it.”

* * *

“I guess I missed a whole lot, eh chereT' Gambit said, and smiled.

“Y’ain’t exactly been the life of the party, sugar,” Rogue replied. “But don’t worry none, Remy. As long as you ain’t glowin’ after that shock you got, I’d say you’re doin’ pretty good.”

They shared a knowing look, a slightly forced chuckle, and slowly, their hands crept across their laps to meet in the middle and intertwine. Gambit was greatly

disturbed that he had been unconscious for so long, that he had been so useless to his teammates. Not that he was any expert on space travel or repairing starships.

He was also more than a little embarrassed by his attack on Archangel, and the way he had snapped at Jean earlier. Something had been shaken loose in his head when War star electrocuted him. It had sent him into dreamland, yes, but it had also brought him great hostility and anxiety. Something told him it would be best not to share his concerns with the X-Men, even with Rogue, but it would be on his mind every moment. He would have to watch himself for odd behavior.

Still, he felt fine, so maybe it was all over. On the other hand, fine was a relative term. Every single muscle ached, as if he’d been bent over hauling nets of crawfish into his Uncle Louis’ fishing boats all day. But he was really okay, he knew it. And just seeing the sweet relief in Rogue’s eyes, knowing that she had been worried about him, well that was worth what little pain he had left.

“I feel like I missed a lot, Rogue,” he said. “I can’t believe dat Cyclops stuck his face in de engine. I might butt heads wit’ ’im now and again, but dere’s a man wit’ more guts den I ever seen before. I don’ know if I could have done dat.”

Rogue looked at him with scolding eyes.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Remy,” she chided. “Scott Summers is a brave man, sure. And maybe you’re a little rougher around the edges, but you’re cut from the same cloth. When there’s trouble, y’come through for the people y’care for, the people who care for you.”

Gambit said nothing. He valued Rogue’s good perception of him too much to argue, but her words rankled within him. He was a good man, a courageous one as well, given the chance and no time for second thoughts. But he had not always been there when he was needed, not for his family, nor his ex-wife, Belle. He had reasons for everything he had done, had never had a choice. But still he was haunted by the times he had let other people down. Silently, he vowed that would never happen with Rogue. He would always be there when she needed him. Remy only wished he could do something to help her now. To help them all.

Corsair appeared from the cockpit, checked on Hepzibah briefly, then turned to address the X-Men.

“We’re getting close, folks,” he said. “We’ll be scratching the atmosphere in just under four minutes. Time to get strapped in.”

Gambit looked at Rogue, saw anxiety and regret in her eyes and realized that, with all her power, she must be feeling as helpless as he was. Probably more so. He squeezed her gloved hands between his own and realized, finally, that there really wasn’t anything either of them could do except hold on tight to one another.

Just hold on.

• • *

Once he was certain that Scott, Jean, Gambit, and Rogue were strapped in, Corsair returned to the medi-slab where Hepzibah lay. He stood over her prone form and looked, for just a moment, at her peacefully unconscious face. For a moment, he wished his lover could find such peace in her waking times. More often than not, she could barely rein in her ferocity, her hostility.

Corsair had been fascinated with Hepzibah the first time he had seen her, when they had been slave-prisoners of the Shi’ar Empire together. She had already formed an unbreakable bond with Raza and Ch’od, and when Corsair met the three of them, despite their differences, it felt as though the last pieces of a puzzle had been put in place. And a big part of that feeling had to do with Hepzibah.

Not that he did not have his misgivings. In truth, Christopher Summers had always worried that Hepzibah had returned his affections because it was convenient, because they were a team. He believed that she loved him, but he could never quite understand why. Beyond that, however, was something more. Something perhaps more troubling.

Corsair had led them to become the Starjammers, interstellar pirates, out of need. Certainly they needed to survive in a system still ruled by the Shi’ar emperor D’Ken, who had murdered Corsair’s wife. There was that need. But it was more than that. He had fancied himself some kind of galactic Robin Hood, a rogue hero. It felt good. Necessary.

For Hepzibah, however, Corsair had come to suspect more and more over the years that the fight itself was the thing. She seemed to thrive on combat, to hold eternal grudges. There were times when he believed she incited battle where it had not been necessary. It was all far from the way he wanted to live his life, from the philosophy to which he had attempted to remain faithful.

There were things about this woman that Christopher Summers did not like very much at all. But when he heard her soft, trilling laugh or her intimate purr, when he saw those blue feline eyes sparking, when they surged into battle side by side, he knew beyond any doubt that he loved her. It was a conundrum, but such was the nature of love, he believed.

Corsair ran his fingers over the light fur on Hepzibah’s face, just as he felt the first rumble of atmospheric turbulence beneath his feet. The ride was about to get very rough, and he cursed himself for delaying so long. Quickly he turned his attention to the medical readouts on the display above Hepzibah’s chest. He entered a series of commands that would introduce adrenaline into Hepzibah’s system, eliminating the sedative.

The Starjammer shimmied slightly.

“Corsair,” his son warned from the other side of the cabin. “Get strapped in, now. You don’t have time for anything else.”

“I just need a moment,” he responded.

The adrenaline kicked in, and Hepzibah opened her eyes with a feline hiss of anger.

“Sorry, m’love,” Corsair said gently, even as Hepzibah’s features softened with affection at the sight of him. “We need you up and around now.”

“What’s happening?” she asked, obviously confused. “Where are we?”

“Entering the atmosphere of Sol-3,” Corsair answered. “Hyperbumers only, and they’re so fried we can’t slow down or they might shut down. Just stay there and hold on tight.”

“Set... VTOL ... for landing,” she muttered. Corsair had thought Hepzibah still seemed disoriented, and her nonsense words confirmed it. She seemed to drift away slightly, but did not lose consciousness. That was good enough, he thought. As long as they didn’t have to carry her in an emergency. Though, of course, if it came to that Corsair would accept the burden of her weight without a second thought.

The Starjammer lurched, as though it had slammed into a barrier and broken through, and Corsair stumbled several steps toward the cockpit. Before anything further could happen, he pulled himself along the cabin to his seat, right by the medi-slab, and strapped in.

* * *

Archangel knew he was a hell of a pilot. He’d trained on planes at the age of nine, flown solo at thirteen, and had his own jet when he turned eighteen. All thanks to the Worthington family fortune. Part of his mutant gift, so that he could understand how to use his wings, was an instinctual comprehension of the laws of flight. He had flown the X-Men’s Blackbird dozens of times, had a higher performance rating on it than anyone else on the team. But this was much different.

Once, in a crisis, he had flown a Starcore space shuttle. But that had been several years earlier, and the Starjammer was a much bigger ship. Still, as co-pilot, which meant watching the instruments and backing up the pilot’s judgement calls, he seemed to be doing okay. Just as long as Ch’od held it together.

“You’re doing great, big guy,” Archangel said. “How are you feeling?”¹    .

“To be honest, my friend, not so well,” Ch’od admitted. ‘ ‘I am afraid the explosion during my spacewalk might have left me with what you would call a concussion.”

Warren felt slightly nauseous.

“You can’t be serious,” he said.

“Of course I can,” Ch’od replied, unaware of the

sarcasm in Archangel’s voice. “Though I urge you not to worry. I am confident that I will be able to complete this mission without succumbing to disorientation.” “Oh,” Warren said, raising his eyebrows, “that makes me feel so much better.”

An alarm sounded on the command control readout. A red light began to flash rapidly, then burnt out with a small puff of smoke.

“What the hell was that?” he asked, then proceeded to check the instruments himself. Ch’od was busy trying to keep them on course, and Warren didn’t dare interrupt him again.

He scanned the instruments, and was appalled by how fast things had gone from bad to worse. The communication system had never been repaired, but it had been left on. The resulting power drain had gone unnoticed until, with maximum demands placed on the ship, the comm system had shorted out, taking the navigational computer with it. When he informed Ch’od, the reptilian alien only nodded his huge head and kept glancing back and forth from the space-window to the readouts still on his display board.

“More good news,” Archangel said. “Heat shields are at 91 percent capacity, but they’re already placing a drain on life support.”

“Brace yourself,” was all Ch’od said by way of an answer.

The Starjammer lurched as if it had smashed into the ocean. The seat harness was the only thing that kept Archangel from smashing his face into the command control unit. Momentum threw him forward, whipping his head toward the viewport, then back with a tearing of muscle tissue. Warren felt the pain immediately, and held his neck as straight as possible. After a moment, when the worst of it had subsided, he turned his head from side to side and found that only a little pain remained.

Then he noticed the instruments, flashing lights, warning him of impending danger.

“Ch’od,” he said softly.

There was no response. Archangel turned his head gingerly, so as not to exacerbate his injury, and saw that Ch’od was limp in his harness. The pressure, the whip-crack of striking Earth’s outer atmosphere at that speed had taken its toll. He was unconscious.

“Oh Lord,” Warren said as he switched piloting controls to his own station. He got the ship under his control, at least for a moment, then he sounded the only alarm he had, his own voice.

“Corsair! Get your ass up here!” he shouted. “Ch’od’s out and we’re in major league trouble here!”

In seconds, Corsair had replaced Ch’od in the pilot’s seat. Turbulence was rocking the Starjammer hard. The only thing Warren could compare it to was flying a twin engine plane in a massive thunderstorm. Even if the heat shields held, he wasn’t at all sure that the Starjammer could take much more of the turbulence without shattering into a million pieces.

“Sitrep,” Corsair demanded.

“We’re in trouble,” Archangel said simply. “Hull integrity is in question. Life support’s being drained to support the heat shields, which are burning at 117 percent of capacity. They’ve gotta be melting, Corsair. I don’t think we’re going to make it.” “We’ve got a problem,” Jean said quietly, her voice trembling with the shuddering of the ship. “I can sense Corsair and Warren’s distress even without trying to read it. I don’t think we’re going to make it, Scott.”

Scott Summers was the only man she had ever really loved, the one part of her life she could literally not live without. Jean watched his eyes, hidden behind the ruby quartz lenses of his visor. She was looking for something to hang on to, some hope or idea or solution that would bring them out of this okay.

There was love there, no question. Undying and complete devotion the likes of which she knew most women searched for their entire lives but never found. She was fortunate in that, had always been fortunate. When most women might have gone for the playboy that Warren Worthington was in their first days at Xavier’s School, Jean wanted Scott. When most women might have fallen for the danger that seeped from Logan’s every pore when the second wave of X-Men came along, Jean wanted Scott.

He was strong, cute, tall, smart, sure enough. But he was never the strongest, the cutest, the tallest, or the smartest. He was quiet, with a fair to middling sense of humor and a total lack of confidence where girls were concerned. But he was, by unanimous unspoken consent, the heart of the X-Men. He was, second only to Professor Xavier, the team’s leader and its conscience. And in his eyes, Jean saw that he had silently become as devoted to her as he was to Xavier’s dream. She loved him then, at that very moment. For of all of them, in his way, he was the most passionate.

Now she searched those eyes again for a vision of the future. In them she found everything that had always been there, everything they meant to each other. But there was one thing in particular she sought: hope. At first she didn’t see it, then Scott squeezed her hands tightly in his own, and she heard his voice, the voice of his heart, speaking in her mind.

Don’t be afraid, Jean. We’re going to be okay.

There was no lying to a telepath. Jean knew Scott really believed they would be okay, that they would live through this. Silently, she struggled to believe him.

• • *

“Hull integrity is failing, Corsair!” Archangel shouted. “Heat shields at 123 percent capacity and barely holding. We’ve got about forty-five seconds until life support shuts down.”

The vibrations of the ship rattled his teeth in his skull so hard Warren thought he might actually have chipped a couple of them. He looked over at Corsair, whose entire body was locked in combat with the Starjammer's throttle, trying to keep the ship on course without putting her into a nosedive out of which they could never recover.

“Corsair!” Warren shouted. “If we can’t slow this ship down we’ve got less than two minutes to live!”

There it was. He’d said it. And now that the words had come out of his mouth, Archangel realized that they were true and there was not a single thing within his power to change it. He only wished that he was in the cabin now with the others, that he could say goodbye to his friends, that he’d shared a proper goodbye with Bobby and Hank before leaving Earth. Sadly, he knew there were no last wishes when the reaper came to call. The best they could hope for was ...

“Take the stick!” Corsair shouted. “Warren, take the goddamn stick!”

Suddenly the throttle came alive in his hands and he was piloting the Starjammer yet again. He pulled back on it as hard as he could and strained every muscle in his body, feeling once more the pain in his neck, trying to keep it straight on course.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” he screamed.

“I think I’ve figured out how to slow us down,” Corsair yelled as he dropped down to the deck and began fiddling with the exposed wiring of the console.

“Whatever you’re doing, do it fast,” Archangel responded. “We’ve got about ninety seconds here before we lose life support or the heat shields melt, one or the other.”

For a moment, the ship seemed to take on a life of its own, pulling down and away from him like a dog trying to escape its leash. Warren held on tight, then looked back to where sparks were flying as Corsair worked feverishly.

“Well?” he asked. “What exactly are you doing?”

“I thought she was delirious,” Corsair called up to him. “But Hepzibah said something about the VTOL, the vertical takeoff and landing program. It was knocked out with the navigational program, but I’m bypassing that right now,”

Sparks flew, landing on Corsair’s arms. He cursed, but kept working.

“The program the computer goes through includes retro thrusters that reroute energy from the hyperburners to the front of the ship. It’s supposed to stop the Starjammer in midair so the VTOL can take effect, lowering us to the ground,” Corsair explained.

Archangel was stumped.

“I thought we couldn’t cut power to slow down or the engines might flare out and drop us to Earth like a stone?” he said, shaking along with the ship as he tried with all his might to keep the ship on course.

“We can’t, but this doesn’t cut the power,” Corsair explained, cursing several more times as sparks landed on his exposed flesh. “The engines are firing at maximum, but a portion of the power is diverted in the opposite direction.”

“Can you do it?” Archangel asked.

“Done!” Corsair announced and nearly jumped into the pilot’s seat once more. “Now all we have to worry about is whether or not the hull can take the pressure. It’s going to be like hitting a brick wall.”

“Hey, X-Men!” Warren cried back to the cabin. “Hang on, back there! The ride’s about to get a whole lot worse!” Turning back to Corsair, he asked, “Can I give you back the stick now?”

“Nope,” Corsair responded, punching up some data on the command control display. “You’re going to have to pilot us until we’re into blue skies, Warren. The only way we’re going to be able to do this is if I turn the VTOL retros on and off and on and off in sequence, timed perfectly, otherwise we’ll be tom apart for sure.” Archangel was silent.

“Can I count on you, ’Angel?” Corsair asked. “Come on, now. We’re going to die here!”

“Do it,” Warren said.

“Hang on,” Corsair whispered, and flipped a toggle switch on the console.

Archangel shouted in agony as his head whipped forward once again, this time with much more force. He felt the harness cutting into his flesh and all the air rushed from his body. The hull of the Starjammer shrieked with the pressure and for a moment he pictured it simply shattering to pieces and all of its passengers being blown out into space.

Corsair was so far forward in Ch’od’s harness that he was nearly pinned to the console. He flipped the toggle switch again and they were slammed back into their seats so hard that Archangel felt his wings embed themselves in the soft leathery material.

“Again!” Corsair shouted, and turned on the retros.

They were all thrown forward once more as the ship fought its own momentum. But this time wasn’t quite as traumatic. Half a dozen times Corsair fired the retros, and each time the ship slowed even more.

“Life support systems at 70 percent, heat shields suffering only 46 percent capacity,” Archangel happily reported. “Corsair, I think you did it. I think we’re going to be okay.”

“Huh,” Corsair grunted in response. “Hepzibah did it, saved us all, and she doesn’t even know it.”

“We’re all right!” Warren shouted, and he could hear the others cheering in the cabin.

Then the Starjammer broke through a layer of clouds into blue sky.

The X-Men were home.

1 ’-I ■hat about that deli?” Lamarre asked.

" lnl Gabriela rolled her eyes.

W “What’s the matter with you, Lamarre?” she asked. ¹ ‘Most of the stuff in there is fresh, or already cooked. What’s it gonna last, a few days maybe? Let somebody else worry about tonight’s dinner, we’re looking for non-perishables, long-term stuff. Cans, boxes, frozen foods if we can get that damn cooler working. What we don’t need is sushi and Caesar salad!”

‘ ‘Hey Gabi, just chill okay? We’re all doing the best we can under the circumstances,” Michael said, and the entire hunting party fell into silence.

Magneto had ordered humans to either bow to the new order or evacuate the city. For Gabriela Frigerio and her brother Michael, neither option had been acceptable. So they had created a third. They had stuffed what they could of their vital belongings and some food from the kitchenette in Michael’s apartment, and gone underground. Via the subway, they had descended into a new world where they could set up a resistance to Magneto’s rule.

It wasn’t long before they realized that they weren’t the only humans either brave or foolish enough to flout the will of the new “emperor.” A short Puerto Rican man they all called Miguelito had become their de facto leader. He and Lamarre had been two of the first people Gabi and Michael had run into. Though their instincts told them to run, Gabriela had insisted they work together. That was the only way they had a chance of making any real stand against the mutant onslaught.

There were well over one hundred of them now. They’d split up into groups and gone above ground to

gather what supplies they could find. Now was the best time, before the new regime was firmly entrenched, before the humans who had stayed had the courage enough to return to their businesses. Gabriela wasn’t comfortable with looting, but at least they were looting for a reason, unlike the anarchist idiots they had already seen too much of.

It was a gorgeous day, by Manhattan standards, but its beauty was marred not only by the sudden outbreak of genetic war, but by the smashed shop windows, the burning buildings, and the shattered glass, garbage, abandoned cars, and abandoned lives that littered the streets.

Gabriela’s group consisted of herself, her brother Michael, Lamarre, and a recently married couple named Steve and Joyce, who mostly kept to themselves. They’d been sent on a food run, maybe the most important job they’d ever undertake. Gabi wasn’t about to let them screw it up.

“Look,” she said. “There’s a little market a few blocks from here. Let’s hit that, then if we get the cooler working, we’ll come back topside and hit a steak house or something, take all the frozen meat back. How’s that sound?”

Everyone seemed to agree that was a sound plan, even Lamarre, whom Gabriela had taken an instant dislike to when they had first met. He seemed to want to turn everything into a military exercise out of one bad movie or another. The man had obviously watched way too much cable in his life. He had a couch potato body, which was too bad because Gabi thought he had a handsome face. He was no Denzel, but then, who was?

“Hey, Gabi, check this out,” Michael said, overexcited about something, as usual. He was a handsome guy, her brother. Auburn hair and hazel eyes, chiseled features. And he was her twin. Strange thing was, though she was happy to think of him as handsome, she would never allow that she herself was equally attractive. “Poor self image,” he’d always tell her. She’d retort that it was easy to see how her esteem had dropped so low when the only man who ever told her she was pretty with any amount of sincerity was her brother.

He never had an answer for that, except “Move out of Manhattan.” As if you couldn’t have a real life or real relationship in the city. Maybe he’d been right. But it looked like it was going to be too late to find out.

“What is it?” she asked, her attitude tempered by her obvious fondness for her brother.

“It’s a guy,” Michael said. “Hurt. Maybe dead.”

Gabriela picked up her pace, and the others did so as well. They reached the spot where Michael stood, and on the other side of a badly banged up Cutlass, they saw him.

He was young, that’s the first thing that Gabriela noticed. Not a kid, but young just the same. Early twenties at most. Maybe younger, maybe younger than she was even. He had brown hair, and through the smear of blood on his cheek and forehead, she thought he might actually be pretty good looking.

And he sure wasn’t dead. Gabi had noticed right away that his chest was rising and falling, that he was breathing. It was just like Michael to overdramatize. But then, in their current situation, Gabriela had to wonder if it was possible to be too dramatic.

The guy lay on the ground in a large pool of water. In fact, the whole street seemed dotted with puddles and, in the distance, she thought she could see some kind of ice sculpture. He wore a very tight fitting uniform of light and dark blue, and she couldn’t help but notice what good physical condition he was in. Beyond that, she wondered what the uniform meant, if it was some military thing, if he was part of a team sent in to reclaim the island for America.

“What’s he wearing?” she asked.

“Some kind of uniform,” Joyce said, and she was surprised that the other woman in their group had spoken at all.

“I can see that,” Gabi responded, somewhat testily. “But what is it?”

“You’re all fools,” Lamarre said, pushing past them to stand by the injured man. “You don’t recognize that insignia?”

He pointed at the unconscious man’s belt, where a black ‘X’ on a field of red was affixed. Then Lamarre did something that astonished Gabi. He pulled a pistol from a holster under his arm and aimed the gun at the injured man’s head.

“Lamarre, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

Lamarre looked at her, then back at the man on the pavement, and Gabriela thought he was deciding whether to explain himself before shooting the poor man. Finally, Lamarre looked up again.

“He’s a mutie,” Lamarre sneered. “One of the X-Men. That’s what that thing on his belt stands for, X-Men.”

Lamarre knelt and touched his hand to the puddle of water around the prone man, and pulled his fingers back quickly.

“It’s gotta be near on ninety,” Lamarre said, standing up again. “That water’s cold still. This has gotta be Iceman.”

He smiled at her, and Gabriela felt a chill in her bones. “We finally bagged one,” Lamarre said with perverse glee. “One of Magneto’s mutie crew. An’ I’d say it’s time to ice the Iceman.”

He pointed the pistol at Iceman’s face. Part of Gabriela wanted to turn away, to hide from the violence, from the reality that had reared up around them. But another part of her knew that the only solution, the only way to survive in that new world, was to act. She stepped forward and batted Lamarre’s hand away.

“Girl, what the hell you think you...” he started, but she got up in his face, waving a finger at him.

“No killing!” she said. “I mean that, Lamarre. That’s not what we’re here for. If it’s us or them, fine, but this guy needs help more than we do right now. You want to leave him here, fine, but we don’t kill him. We’ve got no way of knowing if he’s who you say or not, nothing but your opinion. And I’m not going to be accomplice to some murder just because you’ve seen Red Dawn one too many times.”

“You’re starting to get on my nerves,” Lamarre said in a low, angry voice.

“Good, then we’re even,” Gabi snapped, unwilling to be frightened off. “Now, let’s take a vote on what to do with your Iceman, here. Killing isn’t an option. Then do we leave him or bring him back and let Miguelito decide what’s to be done.”

“Let’s bring him back to Miguelito,” Lamarre said happily. “He’s only going to tell me to kill the mutie anyway.”

“I think we should leave him,” Steve said. “If he’s a mutant, all we’ll be doing is bringing them right into our headquarters. It’s suicide.”

“There are a hundred of us, Steve,” Joyce said. “And what if he’s really injured? He could die because of us. I don’t want to live like that.”

“I agree,” Michael said. “Let’s take him back to the tunnels.”

“Do it then,” Gabi said. “Who gets to carry him?” “I’ll take him,” Michael said. “He doesn’t look too heavy.”

And, apparently, he was not. Michael, who tipped the scales at more than two hundred twenty pounds and was over six feet tall, lifted the smaller man, mutant, whatever he was, over his shoulder with relative ease.

“Steve, Joyce, you two hit that market and then rendezvous with us,” Gabriela said. “We’ll see what’s to be done about this Iceman character.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Lamarre said disparagingly as she fell into step with her brother. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Me too,”

* * *

It was already mid-morning, and despite the psychic barriers he had placed in his own mind, Charles Xavier could not shut out the overwhelming sense of imminent catastrophe that enveloped all of Exchange Place. Whatever was going to happen, the gathered civilians, media, and military all believed it would happen today. There was an all-encompassing feeling of dread, as if the thousands of people crowded into the area were collectively holding their breath.

It might have been calm before the storm, Xavier

thought grimly, but the sky became awfully dark. All of which was little more than metaphor. The sun was beating hot upon the pavement and the people, its heat only slightly diminished by the light breeze off the Hudson River. It should have been a glorious day, but it was devoid of pleasure.

He had been interviewed by news organizations he never knew existed, by everyone and anyone with a camera and a microphone, and he had issued the same call for rational behavior, the same message of peace, each time. Frankly, he was becoming tired of being a spin doctor. And simply tired. It had been too long since Charles Xavier had rested. But his X-Men had not had any more sleep than he. Nor had Valerie Cooper. And so he went on. They all went on.

Xavier sensed Cooper’s approach a moment before she reached him, and turned to face her. He could see from the grim set of her jaw and the coldness of her eyes that she brought more bad news.

“What is it now, Val?” he asked, exasperated. “Are we officially at war yet?”

Cooper tilted her head to one side, regarding him with a surprised look.

“You don’t sound like yourself, Charles,” Val said. “You’re ruining the image I have of you as eternal optimist.”

Xavier offered a slight smile in appreciation, and nodded his head.

“You know, Val, that’s one of the biggest misconceptions about me,” he said. “I’m actually a terrible pessimist. I don’t believe that humans and mutants are such good souls that they can live in harmony simply because it is the best way to live. That just isn’t reality.

I dream of a world where humans and mutants live in harmony, that much is true. But I know that if it happens, it will be because the alternative is so terrifying that we have no other real choice.”

Cooper was visibly stunned. Xavier understood her reaction. He was rarely so verbose without cause, and even more infrequently so bitter. But he found it difficult not to become bitter with the gleaming Sentinel just over his shoulder as an illustration of how close they already were to losing the dream. And maybe he had lied a bit. Maybe a part of him believed in the innate goodness of people, believed that peace could arise for its own sake. Even if that were true, a greater part of him had begun to grow cynical.

He didn’t like it one bit.

“What was it you wanted, Val?” Xavier asked, attempting with his demeanor to erase the previous minute. And failing.

“Well, to answer your question, we’re not at war yet,” Cooper answered, running a nervous hand through her blond hair. “But it’s getting close. I don’t have all the details, but apparently Gyrich did just as we suspected. He sent a team in.”

“And they failed,” Xavier observed.

“He just came out of a meeting with Colonel Tomko,” she continued. “They were on the line with the President and the Director of Wideawake, but they’ve cut me out of the loop. That means that they’re close, that they’re really considering going in full force. If Gyrich has his way, that’s just how they’ll do it.” Xavier raised an eyebrow.

“I know what you want, Valerie, and I cannot do it. I won’t compromise myself like that.”

Cooper flushed, seemed about to speak and then bit back her words. After a moment, she turned to leave, then stopped with her back to Xavier.

“No!” she said finally, turning and angrily advancing on the Professor where he sat in his wheelchair. “I never thought Fd say this but I don’t think you understand exactly where we are, Professor. And with all you’ve done in this fight for harmony, with all you’ve sacrificed,

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re being a very selfish man.”

“You forget yourself, Ms. Cooper,” Xavier said coldly.

“No, Charles,” she snapped. “I’m afraid it is you who forgets himself. Everything you have fought for, your entire life, and everything you believe in, is wrapped up in what you do today, right now, to resolve this crisis. If we can stop this without full-scale military assault, people will still hate mutants more because of what Magneto had done. But there will still be a battle to be fought, still a chance for your dream to come true.

“If we have a civil war here today, you will have lost that dream forever. The people will never forgive. Before you worry about compromising yourself, why don’t you think about what you are compromising by not using your every ability in this struggle.”

At that, Cooper turned and stormed away without a look back at Xavier. Charles flinched, not merely at the harshness of her tone, but at the ring of truth he suspected lay therein. Her words resonated within him. If they could avoid using military might, avoid Gyrich’s method of dealing with the situation, that would save lives. And Val’s description of the long-term effects, he was forced to admit, sounded accurate. If they could avoid military conflict, the public would remain split on the mutant question. There was still hope.

Without hope, they would be lost.

That was the deciding factor, then. Suddenly Xavier realized that, argue the issue as vehemently as he might have, he had never really had a choice in the matter.

Instantly, he let down the walls that kept the rest of the world’s thoughts from his own mind. Before the torrent of babbled words could flood into him, Xavier focused his psi power into a mental net, which he cast out over the people gathered in Exchange Place. He sifted through them like a prospector sifting for gold, but he sought something much darker: the mind of Henry Peter Gyrich. It took him only a moment to pinpoint it.

Xavier hesitated. What he was about to do was an invasion of privacy of the highest order. It violated every tenet of his belief system. There had been times he had entered the minds of others without their consent, but with few exceptions, it had always been done in the best interest of the violated party. That was not the case here. No, instead, Xavier was about to cast himself in the role of the common thief.

Though his mind was, quite literally, wandering, his eyes were still focused on the here and now, in case anyone should approach him. Slowly, he wheeled his chair around to stare across the river, for perhaps the hundredth time that day, at the Sentinel that stood there symbolizing everything he had fought for, and against.

He hesitated no longer. It was the only way. Xavier reached out to Gyrich’s mind with his psi power once again, and this time he entered. He would do his best not to give attention to anything but the information he specifically sought, but it would be difficult not to come away with anything else.

Then he hit a barrier, a psychic shield erected by some mercenary psi employed by the federal government to protect their top agents from precisely the kind of mind-theft Xavier was currently perpetrating. For most telepaths, it would have been enough. It might even have stopped Jean Grey. But Charles Xavier had the most powerful mind in the world. The mental barrier fell beneath the force of his probe in seconds.

Without desiring to, he began to get a much clearer picture of Gyrich as a person. As he had suspected, the man was not nearly the villain Cooper always painted him as. And yet, he was perhaps even more dangerous because he fought for what he believed to be right. Patriots were always more passionate than mercenaries. The greedy were never martyrs.

Pushing away everything but the information he had entered Gyrich’s mind to find, Xavier moved on. Several minutes passed, for the information was buried very deep. Finally, though, he discovered everything Gyrich knew about Operation: Wideawake. Xavier concentrated on the override codes for the Alpha Sentinel. With a last, fleeting, thought of regret, he extracted the codes.

Gyrich would never know they had been stolen.

• • •

“I don’t get it, Amelia,” Needle asked. “I mean, Wolverine is, like, this great tracker and stuff. How does Magneto expect us to find him in a city as big as this?”

Amelia Voght kept moving at a good clip, with Needle at her side and the Kleinstock brothers bringing up the rear. Senyaka was on point about twenty-five yards ahead.

Needle was new to the game, Voght realized. Not much more than a kid, really, a young woman whose genetic mutation had destroyed any hope she might have had of a normal life. Unlike Amelia, who could ‘pass’ for human without any trouble, Needle had changed far too much to ever be considered human again. Her mouth had distended slightly, and was filled with several rows of long, thin, razor sharp teeth like needles. They seemed to extend when she opened her mouth, and retract within the girl’s head when her mouth closed.

It was not an attractive mutation. She had been bitter, angry, despondent. Then Magneto had come along and shown her that the world had a place for her, that she was as good, no, better, than the humans who had ridiculed her. As part of her mutation, Needle had become more savage. But as Voght considered it, she wondered if that had been more of an environmental change than a genetic one.

In any case, she was the perfect recruit. In it one hundred percent, with nothing to lose and everything to gain. She also illustrated, for Amelia, one of the prime differences in the conflicting philosophies in the mutant community. Charles Xavier touted harmony between the two races. Magneto spoke of conquest. What Xavier would never understand was that, like abused children, mutants like Needle would never be able to rise completely above the past. They could forgive, if they had the heart for it, but they would never forget.

Harmony, for Needle, was out of the question. And if it was out of reach for some mutants, it was out of reach for them all.

“Amelia?” Needle asked tentatively.

“Sorry, I heard you,” Voght responded. “Just thinking for a moment. Back to Wolverine, though. What do you know about him?”

“He’s the best there is, and the meanest,” Needle said. “That’s what I’ve always heard.”

“And it’s true,” Voght agreed. “Which means that Wolverine isn’t afraid of us. Sure, with the five of us against him, he isn’t likely to win. But it’s possible. He’s not afraid of us at all.”

“I get it, but I don’t get why you're so sure we’ll catch him,” Needle said. “We’re headed straight for the Lincoln Tunnel, as if he’d make a beeline for the closest escape without even trying to cover his tracks.”

“I’m betting that’s just what he’ll do,” Voght said. “Magneto was too, otherwise he never would have sent us out after him. That’s my point, exactly. He just isn’t afraid of us at all. He’s running, but not running scared. He’ll go for the quickest way out, because he wants to get reinforcements as quickly as possible.”