Sven Kleinstock started to move forward, but Harlan stopped him.

“What, Sven?” Voght snapped. “You want to try me too? You don’t think much of me as leader, but, by God, you follow orders or I’ll teleport your numbskull head right off your shoulders. I don’t think either of us wants that, now do we?”

No answer.

“Get moving, all of you,” Voght commanded. “Magneto has made a home for all of us. The least you can do is defend it!”

• • •

Magneto rose above the Empire State Building and propelled himself, effortlessly, toward the Hudson River. The pessimist in him had always assumed that the Mutant Empire could not succeed unless the military had tested his power, and the power of the Sentinels, and realized that they could not be overcome by any conventional means.

But at heart, he was an optimist. He had hoped very deeply that such a conflict would not be necessary. Magneto had no desire to see humanity destroyed, to see cities crumble. His goals raised him above such petty sadism.

Unfortunately, it appeared that the American government was not as rational as he had believed. His opinion of human politicians and soldiers was so low already that this attack, forcing him to lower that opinion even further, was nothing short of astonishing for him.

Already he could hear the plasma cannonfire, and see one of his Sentinels ahead, responding to its attackers with cold, calculated, deadly assaults. As Magneto looked on, the Sentinel blasted an army chopper from the air, and he wondered, idly, why there had not been an air force strike on the Sentinels yet. It didn’t seem to fit. It was almost as if the military had not been prepared for the attack, though they had initiated it.

No matter. Let the humans underestimate me, he thought. It will be the end of them. The Mutant Empire will only come more quickly.

A low, familiar voice whispered in his brain: Magnus, it’s time we had a little talk, wouldn’t you say?

Magneto smiled to himself. He had known it was only a matter of time before Charles Xavier would attempt to contact him directly. Now that war had finally come, Xavier could put it off no longer. Which did not necessarily mean Magneto had to acknowledge him.

I don’t think there’s anything to talk about, Charles, Magneto thought in response, knowing that Xavier, the world’s most powerful telepath, would pick it up.

No, Xavier retorted, and as their minds touched. Magneto felt his old friend’s essence, familiar and yet hostile. The foundation of their present relationship. No, I doubted that you would. However, I must insist. You would be well advised to get something solid beneath you now. You have five seconds.

Magneto sighed, and lowered himself rapidly to the roof of an apartment building below. Just as his feet touched down, he felt a little queasy, and the world about him began to change. It didn’t happen in an eyeblink, but unfolded as if the real world were being tom away, leaving a fabulous landscape behind.

His eyes wide open, Magneto could barely perceive the moment when he moved from tangible reality onto the Astral Plane. But the moment the world began to collapse, the moment buildings and sky peeled away to reveal a dark void, he knew Xavier had yanked his consciousness from his body, into the Astral Plane, so that this conversation could take place.

It appeared to be an asteroid field, the huge stones hurling leisurely through space. But it was an odd version of space, with air and gravity, but no sound. Somehow, in the back of his head, Magneto could hear the sounds of the city he’d left. Or, rather, the city his mind had left. His body was still there, lying, or perhaps standing, since the ground beneath him felt so real, on the top of that same apartment building.

But there was no sound on the Astral Plane. Nothing. Dead air, with a trace of the hiss you hear when you pick up a phone and the lines are down. That was it. It was a sensation he had never become completely comfortable with.

He was also uncomfortable because, without reservation, the Astral Plane belonged to Charles Xavier. Other of the world’s telepaths might travel through it, but Xavier was, for all intents and purposes, its master and proprietor.

Magnus, Xavier’s mental voice said, and Magneto heard it inside his mind, just as all conversations were held in the silence of the Astral Plane.

Glancing around, he saw Xavier standing on an asteroid

m

just a short way from his own. He did not approach, however. Let the master of the game make the first move, he had always believed. That was the only way to learn.

It’s nice to see you standing, Charles, Magneto said pleasantly. The chair always makes you look so old.

Xavier ignored the statement, as Magneto had known he would. But it had always fascinated him that Xavier’s astral image did not share his physical body’s affliction. He had never been sure if that was because Xavier did not truly consider himself crippled, or because the man was embarrassed by his vulnerability.

I did not want to do this, Xavier thought. You have left me no choice but to become more directly involved. You realize I could end this now, simply make your mind, your every thought, just go away, though we are separated by miles?

Of course I know that, Charles, Magneto scoffed. Just as I know that you would never take such a radical course. It isn ’t in you. That is part of your weakness, and part of the weakness of your great dream of harmony between humans and mutants. You 've just never been very realistic about such things. If I were you, I would have taken me out of the game long ago.

There was a silence on their mental connection. Then, finally, Xavier’s voice in his head again.

Food for thought.

Indeed. But you had something you wanted to discuss, I believe. Don’t worry, I haven’t killed any of your X-Men. At least, not yet, Magneto thought.

And you won’t, Xavier replied calmly. Not in cold blood. In any case, I haven’t dragged you here to discuss the X-Men. As I don’t imagine my asking you to set them free would do any good, let’s move on to the more immediate subject, shall we? The topic, old friend, is war.

It surely is, and history is written by the victors.

There are no victors in war, only victims.

Are you going somewhere with this, Charles, or shall I get on with the defense of my nascent empire? Magneto thought.

Xavier sighed. I am the eternal optimist, Magnus. I continue to overestimate you, I suppose. In any case, I have something to show you.

The image of Xavier on the Astral Plane lifted its right hand and gestured. The depths and blackness of space, the moon and stars and asteroids, disappeared. The universe dropped away beneath Magneto and Xavier, and was replaced by a scene of human madness. A highway, cars packed in bumper to bumper, moving just slightly faster than grass grows. People walked alongside, or hung from buses and the backs of military transports.

They’re evacuating, Magneto observed, and he could not hide the tinge of surprise in his mental voice. Not that he could have hidden anything from Xavier if the telepath was determined to discover it.

They’re evacuating, he thought once more. Why?

Come, now, you know the answer to that, Xavier thought. One of your greatest flaws has always been your underestimation of humanity. In this case, that flaw could be fatal, not merely for yourself, but for hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people, and an entire city. Never mind the outlying areas.

They wouldn’t dare, Magneto thought, aghast.

That’s precisely the attitude I’m talking about. It could cost us our world if you’re not careful. In truth, it may already be too late.

What are you babbling about?

Only this, Xavier thought, spreading his arms wide once again to indicate the massive evacuation effort “below” them. Everything within forty miles of the island of Manhattan is being evacuated, even as we speak. Now that your Sentinels have attacked federal troops—

They started it! Magneto barked.

How mature of you, Xavier thought, with a shake of his head. His eyes slowly closed, then opened again, a reaction to frustration and disappointment that Magneto knew all too well.

Now that this war has begun, did you honestly think that the President of the United States was going to allow you to win, under any circumstances? Xavier asked.

Magneto smiled. This was more familiar, more confident, territory for him. Xavier was underestimating him again.

Allow me? he laughed. I don’t need anyone to allow me to win. Nor do I need any assistance. Haven is established. It exists. It is too late for anyone to stop that. They may send all the soldiers and weapons they have against me, and they will eventually be forced to respect the sovereignty of the island. And then the growing empire. If you mean to imply that the President is considering the use of nuclear weapons, I find that rather amusing, actually. New York City is far too important to be destroyed. Even if they could get the coordinates recalibrated instantly, between myself and the Sentinels, we could repulse any nuclear attack.

You believe I underestimate you, Xavier observed. Untrue. What is true, unfortunately, is that you underestimate the pride, will, and arrogance of humanity. Let me tell you, now, the truth. See if you can recognize it as it presents itself to you. The Pentagon does not need to recalibrate its trajectories and coordinates with any great speed. Russia, a nation that hates you above all other living creatures, is more than willing to take the first shot, destroy all of New York City, if that’s what it takes. The American missiles can take their sweet time. No matter how powerful you believe yourself to be, neither you nor the Sentinels can turn them all back.

Xavier moved his astral form closer as he continued: These people are being evacuated from their homes to prevent them from being incinerated in case the bomb drops. Not only is nuclear attack one of the options the President is considering, but he has the backing of a lot of Americans. You have drawn about you nearly twenty percent of the world’s mutant population. You’ve made yourself the perfect target. If they destroy New York, they kill you and many of the world’s mutants as well. A banner day, a lot of humans would say. Especially now, after what you 've done.

You’ve miscalculated, Magnus, Xavier thought, shaking his head as he seemed to hover above the ground. You may have cost us all our lives.

Ah, Charles, Magneto replied, shaking his own head. You consider yourself an optimist. I would call you a pessimist. Perhaps I have underestimated the courage or the insanity of human society. Even so, I am not concerned. You see, I will be the victor here today. And every day after. It seems to me, if you are so concerned about what the humans might do to our mutant brothers, your only logical course would be to pray I am triumphant. It’s entirely possible that, for once, I am the lesser of two evils.

Now, if you’re through, I have a war to run.

Magneto felt the heaviness of his body, bogging him down as uncomfortably as if he’d taken a swim fully clothed. He opened his eyes, and blinked back the glare of the sun. The sounds of battle returned to him, and he rose once again into the blue sky over Manhattan.

Xavier had certainly been uncharacteristically curt in ending their communication. Not that Magneto minded; he had better things to do than float around in the psionic ether with a man unwilling to make the most of his extraordinary power. Xavier followed the old maxim, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Magneto believed it as well, but interpreted it differently. He could never understand why Xavier would not work to make a home for mutantkind by any means necessary. That was Magneto’s maxim.

By any means necessary.

His contact with Xavier had disturbed him a bit. It was entirely possible that Charles was right, that he had begun a chain reaction that could not possibly end in anything but tragedy of incredible proportions. Not that Magneto had lost faith in his ability to triumph. But things had now progressed past the point at which he might be able to prevent whatever catastrophe might result from his defeat.

Therefore, defeat was not an option.

Magneto again considered the brief moments he had spent on the Astral Plane with his old friend and longtime enemy. The nature of the Astral Plane is pure psionic energy—in this case, energy manipulated by Charles Xavier. When Magneto had been drawn there in the past, the place had always been sterile and cold. But this time, there had been a pervasive

feeling of despair in that limbo of souls, of minds.

Charles Xavier’s despair.

That bothered him. Xavier was the self-described eternal optimist. Yet he did not merely fear the potential outcome, he was tortured by it. Otherwise Magneto would never have been able to feel even a hint of Xavier’s true emotion in his astral presence.

Magneto took a cleansing breath, pushing from his mind anything that might distract him from the protection of the sanctuary he had fought so hard to establish. Several blocks away, a Sentinel was under constant attack from a military helicopter with astounding evasive capacity.

With a moment’s concentration, Magneto reached out with his power and grabbed hold of the machine. An errant thought, and the copter was hurled to the surface of the Hudson River, where it exploded on impact.

By any means necessary.

Cmptii I

The rhythm of the elevator, up and down, the swoosh of opening and closing doors, the drone of people talking ... all of it had started to get to Bobby. He struggled to keep his eyes open, stifled a yawn, and tried to pay attention to what was happening in the elevator. Another fifteen minutes, that’s all he would give it, and then he’d have to think of some other way to find the X-Men.

By now, he figured, Magneto’s followers must know that someone had broken into the building. Were probably looking for him even now. And if he was captured, well, that would be it for the X-Men.

The elevator lurched to a stop. Even before the doors slid open, he could hear the shouts on the floor they’d reached.

“Move it, move it, move it!” a woman barked. “They want a war, people, let’s give ’em one! Let’s go, move out. You’ll get assignments when you hit the street!”

“What the hell’s happening here?” a man barked from inside the elevator, and then it rose slightly as the man stepped out onto the floor.

“The feds have attacked!” the same woman snapped in response. “The Sentinels are responding, but we’ve all got to be in position to finish this fight. You want a home in Haven, buddy, you’ve gotta fight for it!”

“I had guard duty in the basement in half an hour,” the man said. “What about that?”

“The Acolytes have the X-geeks covered, man,” the woman snapped. “Just do as you’re told. I don’t have all day to waste explaining myself to every moron who comes along. Just move!”

Bobby heard pounding feet, cursing ... an exodus of sorts. Then the elevator started to move up again, called to another floor. That was okay. Ten more minutes, and the place would be near empty. He could slip into the elevator and head for the basement. Or, he could use the a/c ducts. Maybe the stairs? What the hell, he’d figure it out. The most important thing was, he knew where the X-Men were being held. And since

the enemy was practically evacuating the building, he would have no trouble getting to them.

Of course, the faceless woman had said the Acolytes were guarding the X-Men. That could be a problem. Bobby crossed his fingers and prayed that it would be Acolyte, not Acolytes. Which was pretty likely. After all, Magneto would need all the help he could find for a war with the United States.

That thought also troubled him. How had it come to war? Was the President really that foolish? Or perhaps it had been Gyrich’s doing. That sounded more likely.

Still, Bobby pictured all the places in Manhattan that he treasured, from Central Park, to Fifth Avenue, to the Coffee-A-Go-Go, to the White Horse Tavern in the Village, and Keen’s Chophouse on the Lower West Side. Broadway. The Museum of Natural History. It was all in jeopardy.

Iceman was the joker on the team, but as he began to plan his next move, he dwelled too much on what fate might hold for what he considered the greatest city in the world. And there was nothing funny about it. Nothing at all.

* * *

Val Cooper clung tightly to Remy LeBeau. The Harley was flying along the FDR Drive, headed north. With the wind buffeting her face, whipping her hair back and forth like a flag, her hands on Gambit’s washboard abdomen, and the motorcycle humming with power beneath them, she should have felt great. The sun shone down on them, and the sky above Manhattan was unusually clear. None of that mattered.

Instead, she was filled with a profound sense of dread. Not nausea, really, but that first sickening stomach lurch that tells you nausea is on the way. It was that, feeling, yet sustained.

With the pavement speeding by below her, and nothing holding her on the Harley but her grip on Gambit and the scissor lock her knees had on the seat, she felt extraordinarily vulnerable. But that wasn’t the cause of her extreme unease. She’d been on a motorcycle many times before.

No. Val was disturbed because of the distant thump-thump of explosions she could hear. It was war. She knew it was.

Which meant they had very little time in which to prevent armageddon. It had fallen to them, really: herself, Gambit, and Archangel. She only prayed that these two unpredictable men would come through at perhaps the most precipitous moment the United States had ever faced.

“Number six, dead ahead, Val,” Archangel’s voice crackled on the comm-link.

“We got visual, ’Angel,” Gambit replied, before Vai could even think of anything to say. “Valerie, can you see from ’ere, or we gon’ have to get a bit closer, eh?”

He barely turned to look at her when asking the question, but Val was entranced by the red glow of his eyes. She had been fascinated by those eyes from the very first time she had met Gambit. The eyes were the window to the soul, it was said. A cliche, she knew. But there was a point to it. You could always read the truth in someone’s eyes. Except for Gambit’s. His eyes were like burning coals in any battle situation. Impossible to read anything in them but danger.

Cooper slid a hand away from its grip on Gambit, reached up, and tapped a button on the side of the infrared goggles she wore. They had the capacity to magnify anything in view, so it had been possible from quite a distance to check Sentinels for the invisible markings that would signify the Alpha unit. This one, however, was turned away from them at an angle.

“We’re going to need to get closer,” she said finally. “Or at least find another angle on it.”

“You jus’ tell Gambit where you need to go, Valerie. I take you dere.”

Bellevue Hospital and NYU Medical Center blurred past on the left. It struck Val that there were probably a lot of people holed up in hospitals and places of worship around the city. People too stubborn to leave, but too frightened to remain in their own homes. With every concussive blast on the other side of the island, she grew more worried for Manhattan, and its people.

The Sentinel towered above the UN building, just blocks ahead now. There was a huge explosion to the south, and Val shivered as she realized the war was quickly spreading. She wanted to blame someone. Magneto. Gyrich. The President. Somebody. She needed a face to focus her hatred upon, to condemn for starting the war that would surely kill innocents.

But it was too late for blame. She’d seen enough warfare, in the Middle East and Genosha, not to know that. War was the villain now, war was the enemy. It was the ultimate killer, primal rage unleashed without any conscience whatsoever. It had to be stopped.

“Warren,” Val said to Archangel over the comm, “we’re going in for a closer look. I can’t get a decent view from the highway.”

“Be careful, Val,” Archangel cautioned. “All three of us are vital to the success of this mission. We can’t afford any screwups.”

“You’re the master of understatement, Warren,” Val observed. “With the battle started, the clock is ticking.”

Gambit steered the Harley down off the FDR, and they hit the side streets of Manhattan. At First Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, several teenagers came running across a small park, shouting at them, trying to get their attention, and, apparently, assistance.

“Great, more trouble.” Archangel sighed softly into the comm. “What now?”

“Nothing, Warren, keep moving,” Val said.

Gambit started to slow the Harley.

“Gambit, keep going!” she snapped. “Didn’t you hear me? The clock is ticking! We don’t have time for anything but the mission now. No matter what we see, we’ve got to keep going!”

The Cajun started to open his mouth, likely with some smart-aleck response. Then he closed it again. Gambit knew she was right, of course. But she took no pleasure from having her way. As they passed the teens, who still cried out for their help, Val could see that it was not a trick of any kind. These kids needed help; someone, or something, was threatening them.

“We be back for you, kids,” Gambit called to them, but even if the kids heard and understood him, their faces did not

betray any indication that they believed what he had said.

Frankly, Val didn’t believe it either. Even if they took the Sentinels out of the game, the fight wasn’t over. But as long as the Sentinels were a part of the equation, the answer was always going to be the same. Magneto would win.

“Hang a right here, Remy,” Val said, and Gambit nodded once and swung over to the east side of the avenue. “That’s going to put us right between the thing’s legs.”

“An’ you t’ink dis is a good idea?” Gambit asked, his sarcasm as cutting as ever.

But he took the turn. They slowed to make the corner, and Val finally saw Archangel out of the corner of her eye. He didn’t acknowledge them, and even from the ground, he looked so grim that Val imagined him to be some colorful angel of death. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

“Dere,” Gambit said, as they took the turn.

Directly in front of them, the Sentinel straddling the street like a modem Colossus of Rhodes.

To their left, the south wall of the United Nations building exploded outward in a shower of glass and concrete. Gambit opened up the throttle, speeding away from the explosion and toward the massive Sentinel.

“Incoming!” Archangel shouted, and now he was close enough so Val could have heard him without their comm-link.

“A little late on dat one, mon ami” Gambit called back.

Val exhaled, and couldn’t remember when she’d last taken a breath. Her body was humming with the energy of anticipating the next explosion, or whatever else might come. For it wasn’t the Sentinel attacking. The huge constmct was itself under attack.

“We getting too close, petite,” Gambit said, and Val was so absorbed by their situation that she ignored the diminutive, sexist reference.

Gambit braked, the Harley slid sideways, tires streaking pavement, black on black. They stopped, and Val took another breath. For the first time since they had turned the corner, Val ignored everything around her, tapped the button on her goggles, and studied the Sentinel ahead.

Painted on the Sentinel’s back with a substance invisible in all but one light spectrum, infrared, was a massive symbol: the Greek letter Omega. The end. A small joke, back when Val Cooper could still find anything funny.

“That’s it!” she cried. “That’s the Alpha Sentinel!”

“All right!” Archangel cheered. “Now let’s take this tin man apart.”

Without warning, a barrage of plasma fire and concussive blasts slammed into the Sentinel, which still faced away from them. It turned its massive head, apparently toward the source of the attack, and lifted a hand. Energy lanced from its palm and ought to have flash-fried whatever it had aimed at. But the attack continued.

“It’s time, Valerie,” Gambit said. “Maybe you should contact Professor Xavier before we go any farther. Dat Sentinel, he won’ let you near him if he knows you’re human.” Val nodded, then leaned forward to switch channels on the comm-unit.

“Charles?” she asked. “Are you there?”

Yes, Professor Xavier answered, but the voice was in her head, not on the comm. I’ve been monitoring your progress, Val. Now that you have need of me, I’m going to stay with you from here on in.

“Thanks,” Val said aloud, knowing he could hear her one way or another. “It’s a comfort to know you’re with us. Okay, Warren, Remy, let’s get inside that robot’s head and see if we can’t rearrange things a bit.”

Gambit opened the throttle and the Harley shot forward.

* * *

“Do you think she’ll go for it?” Trish Tilby asked.

Kevin O'Leary shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

After a moment’s consideration, Trish went to the window and looked outside again. The madness in the street was growing, with mutants congregating in front of the lobby and then marching off in groups in different directions. Even inside the building, they could hear the muffled, rapid-fire crack of far-

m

away explosions, like fireworks in the distance. Trish wondered idly if the war might not look like a massive fireworks display, once the sun set.

It dawned on her, then, that Manhattan might be gone long before sundown. Someone had to do something. The only people capable of halting the insanity and destruction were captive in the basement of the Empire State Building, many floors below. They had to get down there, no matter what. No matter who was hurt by it.

“Get your gear,” she told Kevin, and he nodded grimly.

More often than not, he was an outgoing, generally happy guy. Not today. But, hell, who could blame him?

Kevin packed up his camera bag with everything he might need. Magneto had seen that they lacked nothing by way of equipment. He hefted the bag to his shoulder, picked up the camera, and gave Trish the thumbs-up.

“Let’s go,” she said.

They headed out of the small office into the larger foyer area of the firm that had used the space before Magneto took over. Caroline was there, waiting for them.

“What the hell are you doing?” Caroline asked, in a hushed voice, talking more to Kevin than to Trish.

“We’re here to cover Magneto’s new world order, Caroline,” Trish said simply. “This is the biggest part of the story so far. We’ve got to do our job.”

“Yeah, but...” she sputtered, then moved to block their access to the door. “Look, you guys, I’ve put my butt on the line for you already. I really like you, and I know you’re not, like, the enemy or anything. But you aren’t supposed to go out and tape—heck, you’re not supposed to go out at all— without Magneto’s say-so.”

Kevin approached Caroline and put a hand on her cheek. Trish winced at the way the girl almost seemed to lean into that hand, looking for something to lean on, someone to care. She hoped Kevin really did care, that it wasn’t all just a game, a way to get out. Caroline was a sweet kid, though obviously misled. Or, at the very least, misinformed. She didn’t deserve heartbreak.

But then, Trish thought, who did?

“Caroline, let’s get down to it, huh?” Kevin said.

Not at all the way Trish thought he’d handle it.

“I like you,” he said. “I really do. If the world wasn’t upside down, I’d love to go out to a movie, maybe have one too many drinks at the Slaughtered Lamb. Hell, I’d like to buy you some roses and rollerblade through Central Park, if you’d like to know the truth of it.”

Kevin shook his head just a bit, and his sigh told Trish what she’d wanted to know all along. He wasn’t just playing. He really did care for the girl. But with that settled, she still had to wonder if they were using her unfairly.

Hell, she thought. It’s war, right?

“Kevin,” Caroline said. “I—”

“No, let me finish,” he interrupted. “I’d like to do all those things. But I can’t. We can’t. And you know why we can’t, don’t you?”

Their eyes met, locked, and suddenly Trish felt very much like an intruder. She wanted to crawl under the rug, to flee into the back office. But she didn’t dare. Too much rested on the next few moments.

After an excruciating pause, Caroline nodded.

“Good,” Kevin said. “If you didn’t get it, I don’t know how I could have explained it to you. This isn’t utopia, sweetheart, and it isn’t hell either. One thing for certain, though, it isn’t anything like the land of the free that Magneto promised.”

“You’re not really going out to cover the war, are you?” Caroline asked, looking up at Kevin from beneath long eyelashes.

“You know we’re not,” Kevin said.

Trish knew that was her cue.

“Caroline,” she said, the apology explicit in her voice, “we can do this a lot of ways, but however we do it, it’s going to be fast. We can tie you up and leave you here, or we can take you with us. You can try to stop us if you want to, but I think you know the difference between right and wrong, though it’s taken you a while to see it.”

“You’re going to try to free the X-Men?” Caroline asked, though in her face Trish could see that the woman already knew the answer.

“We’ve no choice,” Kevin said. “They’re the only hope we’ve got. Don’t you see that nothing good can come of this? Magneto is just going to get himself and a whole lot of other people killed.”

“Magneto will kill me,” Caroline replied, the terrible words delivered in a drifting, matter-of-fact tone.

“No,” Trish interjected quickly. “No, I don’t think he would. But the Acolytes would do it in a heartbeat. You’ve got to come with us.”

“You need my help?” Caroline asked.

“We can use all the help we can get,” Kevin answered. “But you don’t have to help us. Even if you don’t, I—I’d still like you to leave here with us, with the X-Men. It isn’t safe for you around here, no matter what. Please say you’ll come.” Trish was a little taken aback. Kevin usually hid himself behind an impenetrable wall of good humor and sarcasm, a potent mixture. Charm ruled, but it hid raw emotion as well. What she saw now was a Kevin O’Leary stripped bare of all pretension.

Trish could feel the afternoon shadows lengthening in the room around them.

“We’ve got to move, Caroline,” she said. “Everything depends on the X-Men, and the X-Men are depending on us.” Caroline looked at Trish, then back at Kevin. She reached up and grabbed the back of his head, pulled him down, and kissed him long and deep.

“That’s for luck,” she said when she released him. “Don’t play with me, Kevin. I may not be the brightest girl in the world, but I won’t be toyed with.”

“No games,” Kevin promised.

Caroline paused a moment, then nodded. “Giddyup,” she said, and gave Kevin a shove out the door.

In the hall, they were challenged immediately.

“Whoa!” cried a burly guard, whom Trish had never seen before.

The man was hideously ugly, and his skin had a gray, lifeless color to it. He wore some kind of assault weapon slung across his chest, a good indicator that he had no particular powers behind obvious strength. Definitely not an Alpha mutant, as Caroline had called them.

“Where do you think you’re all going?” the man asked.

Trish was going to speak, afraid Caroline would blow the whole thing. But before she could utter a word, the mutant woman stepped right on up to the guard.

“I am Caroline Zarin, Acolyte cadet,” she announced. “These people are from the press, not prisoners. I am under direct orders from Lord Magneto to see that they get whatever cooperation they need to correctly document and report upon this incredible event in history. Get out of the way.” Caroline’s voice was pregnant with ominous, yet false, authority.

The guard moved. “Sorry,” he said. “Just relax. Sheesh.”

Caroline pressed the elevator call button and looked at Trish, who raised an eyebrow in appreciation of the woman’s performance.

“Brava,” she whispered.

. When the elevator had arrived, and the doors were closing behind them, she turned to Caroline again.

“No stairs this time?”

“We’re in a rush,” Caroline answered. “Plus you need to conserve your strength. Lord knows who they’ve left to guard the X-Men, but you can be sure it’s somebody with a bit more brains than Mr. Magoo back there. Whatever your plan is ..

She stopped. Looked at Trish. Then Kevin. Then back at Trish.

“You don’t have a plan at all, do you?” Caroline gasped.

Trish stood, trying to think of a reply that would make any kind of sense. She failed miserably.

“Sure we have a plan,” she finally said. “We’re going to break out the X-Men. Whatever it takes to get that accomplished, that’s our plan.”

“Jesus,” Caroline hissed, and Trish couldn’t tell whether the look on the woman’s face was one of horror or admiration.

“All right, look,” she continued. “I’ve been working a little on my narcopathy, and—”

“Narcopathy?” Trish asked.

“You know what telepathy is? You know what narcolepsy is? You know what I can do? Figure it out, Trish, we’re almost there!” Caroline said, her patience obviously wearing thin.

Trish was appropriately chagrined. Here was a woman she had thought of, until a couple of minutes earlier, as pretty much a dim bulb, making her feel like a moron.

“I think I can get someone to sleep if I concentrate enough,” she said. “But I need time, and if there’s more than one of them, well...”

Ping!

The elevator slid to a stop, the doors began to roll back. Trish braced herself and Caroline squinted with intense concentration. After a moment, Kevin peeked out into the hall, then turned back to them.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Real smooth, Mr. Bond,” Trish cracked.

Kevin smiled, and the mood lightened for all three of them. What they were doing was insane. As far as Trish was concerned, when you were going over the abyss into bananaland, angst just wasn’t acceptable.

As quietly as possible, they moved down the hall toward the L-turn that led to the room where the X-Men were being held. As they approached, Trish had the nearly overwhelming urge to turn tail and run. She had been joking with herself about the mission: impossible they were on, even running the old theme song through her brain. But suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. It was just her and Kevin, and Caroline, two frail humans and a ... narcopath, whose power worked so slowly that Ted Koppel put people to sleep faster.

Eyes wide with horror at her own thoughts, Trish clamped a hand over her mouth to keep a Woody Woodpecker, maniacal cackle from coming out.

Kevin was first. He paused at the comer and looked around, just barely inching his head forward to get a look at whoever was guarding the captive mutants.

He pulled back fast.

“Good news and bad news,” he whispered. “Bad news first: it’s Frenzy.”

“Who?” Caroline asked in the same tone.

“Joanna Cargil. She was called Frenzy before she joined Magneto’s cause,” Trish explained, then turned to Kevin. “You did say there was also good news, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yeah.” He smiled. “We don’t have to worry about Caroline’s power working. She’s already asleep.”

Trish wanted to laugh. There just wasn’t time.

“More good news,” Kevin added, lowering his whisper even more. “She left the door open. Probably wanted to keep an eye on the hallway and the X-Men.”

Trish nodded. Hushing Kevin and Caroline, she slipped around the corner and began to move as rapidly and quietly as possible toward the steel door. On the other side of that door, four X-Men were shackled to a wall. A moment later, the others fell into line behind her.

Immediately upon seeing her, Hank and the other X-Men began to make facial motions, to mouth words, to try to warn her off. They couldn’t move their arms or legs, but they were doing their best to get her to turn back without actually calling out.

She would have been hurt, would have been angry at them for being so foolish, but they could not have known just how bad things had become in so short a time. Trish knew she was doing the only thing she could do. It was a risk, certainly. But there was so much at stake, it was a risk she had to take.

As Trish passed the slumbering Cargil, Hank’s face crinkled like the mug of one of those ugly dogs as he tried to use exaggerated lip movements to warn her off. Trish ignored him. All she had to do was look around for whatever device would bypass the X-Men’s bonds, and they’d be home free. Cargil wouldn’t last half a second against four X-Men.

She looked back to the prisoners. Each of them was making a strange face at her now, but still none of them would speak for fear of alerting the sleeping Cargil. Storm and Bishop were mouthing words as well, but Trish never claimed to be able to read lips.

Then she saw Wolverine. His face wasn’t moving. Only his eyes. First he would stare at Trish, then his eyes would glance past her, behind her, with obvious purpose. He wanted her to turn around.

Frowning in confusion, she turned slowly to see Cargil, wide awake, standing with one hand clutching Kevin’s throat, and the other wrapped firmly around Caroline’s neck.

* * #

The first sounds of large-weapons fire had stunned them all. So much for our window, Cyclops had thought. The clock was no longer ticking on their mission, it had stopped. They were working within that silent moment between the last second ticking away, and the explosion that would end it all. In this case, maybe literally.

Even if they found and defeated Magneto, he had thought as the sound of far-off explosions increased in frequency, it all still depended upon Gambit, Archangel, and Cooper taking the Sentinels out of play.

That had been several minutes ago. The sounds of battle and destruction continued, but Cyclops ignored them now, concentrating only on the goal at hand. He stood in the recessed doorway of a deli on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street. Across the street. Jean and Rogue hugged the front of a discount music store. The Juggernaut was barely concealed by a massive brown box that would have been a newsstand if its owner hadn’t fled in the great Manhattan exodus.

The Juggernaut. It was still difficult for Scott to deal with the fact that they were working with one of their greatest enemies. But he reminded himself of what Cain Marko had said earlier. He was a career criminal, not some menace looking to take over the world. The Juggernaut had just as much of a stake in stopping Magneto as any of them. After all, he wasn’t a mutant.

With a rapid gesture, Cyclops signalled for Rogue to take

to the air. He flattened out his hand so she knew to fly close to the tops of buildings.

Now you, Jean, he thought, certain that the psychic rapport they shared would carry the words to her. Time to cross the street.

Cyclops smiled. The situation was as tense and dangerous as any he had ever found himself in, but he was not beyond being amused when the idea of crossing the street became ominous. As they neared the Empire State Building, the atmosphere among them, even the air around them, seemed weighted with the expectation of conflict, of consequence, of death.

The smile disappeared from Scott’s face.

Jean sprinted across the street. Scott wanted to watch her move, watch her lithe form, wrapped in the snug, practical combat uniform they all wore some version of. But the time for such luxuries was past. He poked his head out from the doorway and glanced around for any sign of attack, any hint of the enemy. Like the laser sighting on many modern weapons, anything Cyclops laid eyes upon was a potential target.

No targets, though. Not this time.

He signaled Juggernaut, and the two of them moved out together, taking it slow and hugging the opposite sides of the street. Cyclops didn’t figure they had much chance of sneaking in and breaking out the other X-Men. But it would have been foolish to just charge down the street. It was impossible to predict what they might find when they reached the building. There might be a way in other than the lobby, or they might be able to bluff their way in, using Jean’s telepathy as a mask.

No real plan could be instituted until he had seen the building’s setup.

Jean moved ahead, with the Juggernaut close behind, and Scott watched them both and monitored his own surroundings. He sped across the street and they all continued up Sixth Avenue. It wouldn’t be long now, he thought.

Scott, we’ve got—Jean’s telepathic voice filled his head.

“Cyclops, hang back!” Rogue’s voice came over the comm-link. “It’s an—”

—company!

“—ambush!”

“Hell, it’s about time,” the Juggernaut cried joyously from across the street. “This sneakin’ around crap was gettin’ real old real fast!”

Hairbag and Slab came around the comer of Thirty-first Street. They weren’t alone. Cowards they might have been, and none too bright. But in some ways, they were far from stupid. At least a dozen other people backed them up, male and female. Mutants, obviously. Most of them looked relatively normal, but there were two figures so gone over into the feral stage common to many mutants that they could no longer stand upright. A strikingly tall woman with tentacles growing out of her face and a dark-skinned man with a massive, scorpionlike tail in back were other standouts.

Then there was the big guy. Forty feet high if he was an inch.

“They call me Humongous!” he bellowed, shattering every window for half a biock. “Surrender now, or I’m going to have to crush you.”

afeaa

Chapter 9

JjJUjloy, are you flatscans dumb,” Cargil sneered, then gpltossed Kevin and Caroline to the floor in a tumble of BsHimbs. “You didn’t think Fd hear the ding of the elevator arriving on this floor?”

“You weren’t asleep?” Trish asked, still confused.

“Are you dense?” Cargil snapped. “I heard the elevator. 1 pretended to be sleeping.”

She spun on Caroline, who lay on the floor, eyes slitted in concentration as she stared at Cargil.

“You stop that, girl,” Cargil snapped. “I know you’re that little sleep-witch, but if you don’t quit playing sandman with me, I’m going to have to kill you just to stay awake.”

Caroline looked at Trish, then at Kevin. Her eyes opened, her face relaxed, and she began to rise to her feet. She had not abandoned them, at least not as far as Trish could tell. But she wasn’t going to throw her life away either.

“Sorry, Kevin,” Caroline said. “I did my best.”

“We’ll be okay, hon,” Kevin answered. “Don’t worry.” “I wouldn’t be so quick to make any promises, flatscan,” Cargil said. “I’m just trying to figure out what to do with the three of you.”

“Let them go, Joanna,” the Beast said. “They’ve done nothing, really, it’s not as if they have a chance of defeating you. Just let them leave.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Cargil said. “I’ll have to think of something just a little better than that.”

“I have an idea,” Kevin said happily. “Why don’t you bleed!”

He leaped at Cargil and landed a solid kick to her face. Then he fell on his butt.

Cargil had barely flinched, Trish knew the woman had scarcely felt Kevin’s attack, and a more even-tempered person might have simply ignored it. Or laughed. Nobody had ever accused Joanna Cargil of being even tempered.

“Well, I guess that decides that,” she growled. “I’m just going to have to kill you.”

“Don’t do it, Frenzy!” Storm spoke up, and Cargil turned to stare at her. It occurred to Trish that the women were polar opposites, Cargil a twisted mirror image of the nobility and purity of Storm’s African features. But Cargil was twisted, by hate and rage and lust for murder and power. She was Hyde to Storm’s Jekyll.

“Back off, Cargil, or I’ll spill your guts all over the floor as soon as we’re down from here!” Wolverine warned.

Bishop remained silent, his eyes revealing him to have been a witness to far too many hopeless conflicts.

Kevin hopped to his feet and into a kickboxing stance. Trish knew he’d done a little kickboxing, but wasn’t sure how good he was. One thing she was certain of, though. Not good enough.

“Go release the X-Men, Trish,” Kevin said.

“I’m not leaving you,” she said.

“Neither am 1,” Caroline added, moving closer to him.

With a flurry of blows to the face and body, Kevin did the best he could to slow Cargil down. Caroline frowned again, trying despite Cargil’s threats to force the muscular black woman to sleep. They had nothing left to lose, Trish knew. Caroline obviously knew it too.

Kevin threw a haymaker with a lot of power behind it. Cargil blocked it with the side of her hand. She reached in, grabbed him by the throat again, and snapped his neck with a crack so loud it echoed off the tile floor.

“Kevin!” Caroline and Trish screamed in unison.

“Cargil, no!” Storm shouted, and all four X-Men pulled at their restraints.

“And as for you!” Cargil shouted, turning 011 Caroline. “First you sell out the emperor to a weakling flatscan genetrash loser, then you actually try to use your teeny tiny power on meT ’

“Oh, my God ...” Trish said, in a small voice choked with tears and heartache. She and Kevin hadn’t been the best of friends, but friends they had been. He had been there because of her, and she felt more than a bit responsible for his death.

She lifted the chair Cargil had been sitting on. Cargil shoved Caroline hard against the wall. Trish shattered the wooden chair on CargiPs head. The Acolyte’s head swung

around as if she were some kind of mechanical thing.

“Don’t worry,” she hissed, glaring at Trish. “You’re next.”

“No!” Trish shouted. “Please, don’t—”

Caroline’s spine shattered under Joanna Cargil’s blows. The life went out of her eyes. Trish couldn’t help but think of the ancient TV in her parents’ home, and the way the old picture tube seemed to fade away before winking out for good.

The X-Men shouted, screamed for Cargil’s attention, trying desperately to distract her. They all cursed her for the coldblooded murders they had just witnessed. Wolverine and the Beast strained against their bonds. Either of them could easily have ripped the restraints from the wall if their mutant abilities had not been inhibited.

Then Cargil turned toward Trish.

“You’re not running,” she said. “Why aren’t you running, flatscan? I know you’re afraid.”

Trish said nothing. Her mind was too numb to reply, body too frightened to move.

“Oh, man,” someone said softly, just at the end of the hall.

“Well, well, well, a challenge, finally,” Cargil said, looking toward the source of the voice.

Iceman.

“Good God, Frenzy, what have you done?” Bobby Drake said.

A lunatic would have laughed, then, grinned and kept on trying to kill. Cargil didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile. She took a deep breath, shrugged her shoulders with some semblance of regret.

“They pissed me off,” she said. “Couldn’t be helped.”

She wasn’t insane. She had killed Kevin and Caroline with full knowledge of her actions, the murders nothing more than petty, immature revenge, committed for lack of a better idea what to do with three unwanted visitors.

Insanity would have made it so much easier to take. Or at least, that’s what Trish thought. That she’d done it out of malevolence and immaturity, that was worse. But Iceman had come, to stop Cargil from a third murder. Trish’s heart cried out in glee that she was saved, but in the part of her mind

m

where guilt lay waiting, she couldn’t shake the idea that it wasn’t right. That it was her fault the others were dead, and it wasn’t fair that Iceman should have come in time to save her, but too late for them.

“Take her down hard, Drake!” Wolverine growled down the hall.

“Trish!” Bobby yelled. “Move!”

Then there was no more time for regrets. Cargil was reaching for her, hoping, more than likely, to use her as a hostage. Which would be a major handicap for Iceman. Even if he had been the kind of person who would ignore a life in jeopardy, he and Trish knew each other. She and Hank had double-dated with Bobby and several of his girlfriends.

They were friends. She couldn’t compromise the fight, she had to get out of the way.

She wasn’t fast enough. Cargil snagged her by the hair and started to pull her back.

“No!” Iceman shouted. “No more, you crazy—”

Trish felt cold on the back of her neck, then heard a crackling noise and fell free of Cargil’s grip, sprawling to the floor. She scrambled to turn around, to back away. When she looked at Iceman and Cargil, when she understood what had happened, she stopped moving and just stared.

She blinked, then reached around to the back of her head to feel the ragged, ice-flecked edges of the hair that Cargil had clutched. Bobby had frozen Trish’s hair on her head, supercooled it to such a low temperature that it had simply shattered in Cargil’s grip.

“Trish, you okay?” Bobby asked.

Trish nodded. Iceman turned back to Cargil, who was encased in a block of ice so thick it barely left room to pass by her in the doorway. Only CargiFs head was free, and she was cussing loud and long.

“Shut up,” Iceman snapped. “I don’t know what happened to you, Joanna. You were never this bloodthirsty before.”

“I was never in a war before,” Cargil snapped. “You got lucky, Drake. Your problem is, you’re not willing to finish it. There will always be a next time, and next time I see you.

there won’t be any flinching. You’re already dead, Iceman. You just don’t know it yet.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it before,” Iceman said.

Trish waited for the characteristic sarcasm, one of the jokes that invariably found its way out of Bobby’s mouth. It never came. He took her by the hand, and led her quietly down to where the X-Men were being held.

They looked at one another, all of them: Trish Tilby, Iceman, Storm, Beast, Bishop, and Wolverine. They spoke quietly, gravely, among themselves. They were pleased to know that Bobby was still alive. There was none of the telltale levity that was usually so common, particularly between Iceman and the Beast.

Rather than waste time attempting to figure out how the power-dampening shackles worked, Iceman simply froze the mechanisms, rendering them brittle and useless. All four were then able to free themselves with simple flicks of the wrists and ankles.

As they walked out, Wolverine glared at Cargil, began to walk toward her, but Storm held him back with a hand.

“Not a word,” Bishop snarled at her as they left.

Wisely, she remained silent.

Trish whimpered as she stepped past the bodies of her friends.

“God, I’m so sorry,” she said quietly, but she wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for not having prevented their deaths, or for having remained alive.

A strong hand landed on her shoulder, and then the Beast pulled her close to him. They walked side by side, his blue-furred arm hugging her tightly to him, warm and safe.

“You did what you could,” Hank McCoy said. “You did everything you could, Trish.”

“I couldn’t save them,” she said softly.

“No,” Wolverine said, the ferocity in his voice startling. “But we can go out and make sure that it ends here, that nobody else dies on some maniac’s whim.”

“I’ve got your back, Logan,” Bishop said gravely.

“No quarter, X-Men,” Storm commanded. “Eliminate any resistance hard and fast, and don’t forget our main objective. Magneto must be defeated.”

* * *

The summer day had moved on, the shadows lengthening into that long stretch of waning sunlight called late afternoon. The canyons of the city were already plunged into shadow where the buildings were the tallest. It being summer, night was still a long way off, but those shadows were a warning that it was on the way.

With a nervous glance from side to side, Gabriela Frigerio hurried across the street with her brother Michael and the group she’d come to think of as the inner circle of the resistance: La-marre, Steve, Joyce, and their de facto leader, Miguelito.

“I don’t know about this,” Joyce said, her usually radiant face eclipsed with concern. “I mean, how do we know we can trust these people? Isn’t it better to stay in the underground, get more organized, before making a move?”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. He was her husband, however, so his support wasn’t particularly persuasive,

“That sounds good, lady,” Lamarre said, “but it won’t work. You don’t get it. We’ve got to make the stand now, before Magneto gets any stronger than he is.”

“Lamarre is right,” Miguelito said.

He was short enough that they all had to look down to pay attention.

“Magneto is at war now,” Miguelito continued. “If the government wins, great, we’re all set. But if they lose, it will be over for us, no matter how hard we fight. No, the best time to take a stand is now, when Magneto won’t have much time or firepower to dedicate to us.

“We’ve got hundreds of people waiting for the word, and there are probably thousands of others who will respond if we just set an example for them,” Miguelito said.

“Thousands?” Gabi asked

Miguelito smiled, shrugged. “One can hope,” he said.

“Hope isn’t going to keep us alive,” Michael mumbled.

They all looked at him, Gabriela in particular. Just as they

had to look down to meet Miguelito’s eyes, they had to look up to see Michael’s. He was six foot six, at the least, and rarely said a single word.

“Actually, Michael, I disagree,” Gabriela said. “I think hope will keep us alive. I think it already has. It’s all we’re running on, right now. We may not be capable of taking this city back from Magneto on our own, but we can certainly make things more difficult for him. We can make absolutely certain that the human population of this city does not cooperate with him.”

“We don’t even have to do it for long,” Lamarre added. “Much as I hate to rely on any mutie for help, we know the X-Men are going to be moving in on Magneto at any time. As long as we—”

“My God!” Joyce shouted. “Don’t any of you hear the bombs falling? Don't you hear the war? We shouldn’t be out here at all, we’re not ready for this.”

For a moment, nobody responded. Steve tried to pull Joyce into a comforting embrace, but she brushed him away. Lamarre started to say something, but Miguelito hushed him.

‘ ‘Do we hear the war?’ ’ he asked rhetorically. ‘ ‘Of course we do. But I’m not willing to let somebody else fight it for me, to let someone destroy my city in order to save it. You want to go back into the subways and take charge of feeding people and giving medical attention, get all that organized, that’s okay with me. Nobody is going to think any less of you.”

Her eyes widened, and Joyce looked around the group. Finally, she nodded.

“Let’s go,” she said, pulling Steve after her.

He offered an apologetic glance, but Gabriela thought he seemed more than a little relieved. The man had probably been as frightened as his wife, but she had voiced her fear, risked condemnation and accusations of cowardice. Gabi wondered if that made Joyce any more courageous than her husband. She kind of thought that it did.

With Lamarre and her brother trailing behind, Gabi continued up the sidewalk next to Miguelito. Their weapons were held at the ready, in case they should be set upon by Magneto’s forces, or human beings who had used Magneto’s conquest as an excuse for vandalism, theft, and chaos.

They walked in silence for several blocks. Halfway down a side street, Miguelito stopped and pointed.

“That’s it,” he said.

“Who are we meeting here, man?” Lamarre asked.

“What’s that, Lamarre, the fortieth time you’ve asked me that question?” Miguelito responded. “Well, you’re about to find out.”

It was a bar, a slightly seedy-looking place that was far from being one of the trendy pickup bars that Gabi had frequented before the madness came to New York. This was a place for drinking, not a place for meeting people or socializing.

A glowing window sign advertised Guinness stout, and above the door, a neon tube spelled out the words tom’s taproom.

“Here?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking. “Our big powwow is in here?”

“Where did you want to do it, Times Square?” Miguelito cracked, then pulled open the door to Tom’s Taproom and entered.

They descended half a dozen steps and Gabi blinked several times, eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness of the bar. Dark wood, dim lighting, the eternal odors of old beer and cigarette smoke. The man behind the bar, a stout guy with gray hair but a young face, had one hand on the grip of a shotgun that lay on the oak bar.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re not open for business.”

“Hey, it’s us who should be sorry,” Miguelito said. “Though you are obviously back there ready to serve drinks to somebody, we’re not here to drink. We’re here to help.”

The stout man’s eyes narrowed.

“Miguel?” he asked.

“Yeah, Tom, it’s me,” Miguelito answered.

Tom smiled and came around the bar. Miguelito went over, allowed the Taproom’s owner to look him up and down, and then the two men did the last thing Gabi might have expected.

They hugged.

“God, it’s good to see you, kid,” Tom said. “Jesus, you grew up fast.”

“Nah,” Miguelito said. “You just got old, Tommy.”

Tom turned toward the murky-looking back room of the bar. Fluorescent light burned, and she was fairly certain there were a couple of pool tables back there.

“Wilson, get on out here,” Tom shouted. “You’ve got visitors.”

A man appeared from around a partition that screened much of the back room off from the rest of the bar. He was stock ' and dangerous looking, Latino, and Gabi was certain she had seen him somewhere before.

He wasn’t alone. One after another, men and women filed out after him. Gabi counted twelve of them in total, and several wore blue uniforms.

“The cops?” Lamarre snarled. “What are you, nuts? You know Magneto’s got the cops workin’ for him.”

“Not all the cops,” the man Tom had called Wilson said defensively.

That’s when Gabi recognized him. Wilson Ramos, the police commissioner of New York City. She understood Lamarre’s anger and confusion. What were they doing there, with the police, with the commissioner, for God’s sake? They had been told that City Hall, that the entire city government, was now working with Magneto. That meant that...

“You set us up?” Michael said softly, startling her.

“No, man, it’s not like that at all,” Miguelito explained. “Then what is it like?” Gabi snapped.

Lamarre was already backing toward the door. “This was supposed to be another resistance group, man, not Magneto’s pet human soldiers.”

“If my little brother hadn’t warned me you’d be armed, I’d shoot you just for saying that,” Wilson Ramos said. “Now can we get down to business, or what? City Hall is under siege, but the resistance fighters there are unorganized and their numbers are dwindling. They need our help.”

“Your little brother?” Gabi asked, astonished.

Miguelito smiled.

“I never used to tell people mi hermano was the Apple’s top cop,” he said. “Not that I was ashamed, but nobody would believe me. Now our differences don’t seem like such a big deal anymore.”

He turned to Wilson.

“Do they, Willie?”

“Not at all, ’Ito,” Ramos said. “But don’t call me that, or I’ll have to shoot you.”

“Seems to me you’re just itching to shoot someone,” Lamarre said, and Gabi could tell from his tone that he was still greatly suspicious.

“Oh, yeah,” Wilson responded. “Problem is, the guy I want to shoot can’t be killed with bullets. So, if I can’t take Magneto out, I can sure as hell take City Hall and sweep out the collaborator trash like Maxine Perkins and Steve Tyree. I’ll shoot them if I have to.”

Lamarre smiled.

“When do we leave?” he asked.

* * *

Magneto hovered more than one thousand feet above ground, breathing air that was both thinner and more polluted than below. He could see the Empire State Building to the north and the World Trade Center to the south, with the Statue of Liberty beyond it in New York Harbor.

As best he could, he surveyed the war around him, and realized that the military was not closing in at all, not as he had first believed. Indeed, while they were striking out at the Sentinels in a colossal waste of ammunition and losing soldiers to the massive robots’ return fire, they were not pressing the battle at all.

Apparently, they were awaiting final orders from the American President. But what Magneto could not determine was exactly what they expected those orders to be.

It was entirely possible that the President was simply being indecisive. But there were two other potential reasons for the military’s inaction, both of which concerned Magneto a great deal.

w

The first, and most bothersome, was that Xavier might be telling the truth. The President might actually be considering thermonuclear attack. They could raze New York City to the ground, and then claim that Magneto himself had set off the nukes to keep the city from returning to American control.

It seemed all too plausible. Even so, and despite the atrocities he had witnessed in his life, Magneto could not bring himself to believe that the leader of the most powerful nation in the world would knowingly murder hundreds of thousands of American citizens merely to save one city from conquest.

The other option was that the President was waiting for something. Perhaps he and Xavier had cooked up a plan. But without the X-Men, what could they hope to accomplish? Even if all of the X-Men were free and in top form, there would be nothing they could do against hundreds of other mutants and a fleet of Sentinels.

With an electric crackle, the gauzy image of the Acolyte Scanner shimmered into existence beside him. It was an odd thing to see, a ghostly female form standing in the middle of the sky without any apparent means of support. But then. Scanner wasn’t actually there at all.

“You signaled for me, my Emperor?” Scanner inquired.

“Order all units to await my word before becoming involved in this skirmish,” he said. “The war has not actually begun. It is still possible, I believe, to end this conflict without destroying the city. That would be my preference, since we all intend to live here.”

Scanner offered a low bow, and flashed out of existence.

Magneto wanted to think that the President was merely having a difficult time committing to a plan. The other two options were far less appealing.

In any case, he had determined to refrain from attacking the military himself unless they directly assaulted him first, or until the President ordered an invasion or a nuclear attack.

If he wanted Haven to still be standing when the conflict was over, Magneto knew he had to make his moves wisely.

Chapter 10 j

On the steps of City Hall, a swarm of humans wore away at the nerves and resolve of the combined mutant and human force responsible for the building’s defense. Police officers loyal to the city government, to the recently promoted mayor, Maxine Perkins, and those simply loyal to the job of keeping the peace, tried to put down the revolt with a minimum of violence. But the patience of policemen, particularly in urban areas, was notoriously thin. And they were well armed.

Side by side with the cops were Acolytes, mutant followers of Magneto, charged with forcing the remaining human populace to afford mutants the respect that was now required.

Heads were cracked open like rotten tomatoes, citizens shot with rubber bullets—and some with the real thing as well. Ivan Skolnick tried desperately not to use his mutant powers, which he still despised. Yet others around him were not so prudish. Senyaka, one of Magneto’s Acolytes, lashed his agonizingly painful psionic whip at any human in range. It was a vicious scene.

For a while, it seemed as though the human hordes were like the legendary Hydra: cut off one head and two more would take its place. But after a time, the flow appeared to dwindle.

That was about the time the war started in earnest. Perhaps, Skolnick thought, the attackers realized all was lost, that their efforts meant nothing. Or perhaps they felt there were more important battles to be fought that day. In any case, Skolnick’s troops, who were responsible for policing mutant-human relations, were thinning the crowd quite a bit.

“We seem to be winning this part of the war, Major,” the usually taciturn Senyaka said at his side. “Since it appears the Emperor may have need of me elsewhere, I assume I can be confident in leaving you to your appointed duties?”

“Absolutely,” Skolnick replied.

Senyaka made short contact with someone via comm-link. and was immediately teleported from the defense of City Hall. Skolnick was very happy to see him go. The burning eyes behind that cowl had disturbed him, most especially with the way they flared whenever Senyaka’s psionic whip would wrap around a human limb or throat. As if he was leeching some kind of energy from them.

Skolnick didn’t want to have to think about it. Nor did he want to think about Maxine Perkins, and the new police commissioner, the self-righteous Steven Tyree. He tried to turn it off, tried not to see the faces of men, women, and teenagers. The way he viewed it, they were all fighting for that magical place in every heart where a person’s hometown will always stay, perfectly preserved from childhood. Despite all its faults, New York inspired as much passion as any small town.

He could not stand those faces, etched with fear and desperation. These people were merely defending their homes, defending the rights that the greatest nation on Earth had given them. Rights that Magneto had taken away. Skolnick was beginning to seriously wonder if he had made a grave error. All his life, Skolnick had wanted to be a soldier. He had become an extraordinary soldier, a credit to his family, a servant of the American ideal.

Now he had betrayed all that. Yes, he was a mutant. Yes, there were hardships to be dealt with because of it. But hardships had been faced by those crusading for gender and race equality, and other “misfits” for centuries.

Had Magneto gone too far?

Bullets chipped brick behind Ivan Skolnick’s head, and he ducked, preparing to blast the shooter as quickly as possible. No time for self-recriminations, he thought. This was a war, and he a soldier.

Question was, whose side was he really on? Even he wasn’t sure.

* * *

“So much for the element of surprise, eh, Summers?” Cain Marko sneered.

Cyclops knew the Juggernaut’s amusement was not feigned. Marko was happy the time for battle had arrived. It was the only thing the man had ever done well.

In a way, though he was loath to admit it even to himself, Scott could relate.

“Rogue,” he barked, “take down the giant. Marko, you’ve got Slab. I’m on Hairbag. Jean, reign the others in until we’re clear!”

So I’m on crowd control now? Jean’s mental voice entered his head, even as Cyclops unleashed an optic blast that knocked Hairbag end over end into the woman with the octopus face.

Scott didn’t respond. No need. He knew Jean was just picking on him. And she knew that she had not been relegated to mere crowd control, but given the most work to do. She had to keep a dozen-odd mutants busy all by herself, while the others took down the major players and then came to her assistance. He hated laying all that on her, but they didn’t seem to have much other choice.

Not that things ever worked out the way he planned. His skill as a field leader was not even necessarily based on perfect execution of a plan, but on instinctive reaction to complications that might arise.

Like now, for instance.

Hairbag had untangled himself from the tentacles that extended from the forehead and cheeks of the tall woman he had landed on. Cursing her in a voice loud enough to be heard over shouts and cries of pain and anger, Hairbag leaped to his feet much faster than Cyclops might have expected. Rather than rush at him in attack, however, the spiky-haired mutant turned his back on X-Men and Acolyte alike. He bent over slightly, and as if some switch had been thrown, the hair on his back stood up straight and sharp.

That’s when Cyclops understood. The “hair” on the stout mutant was not actually hair at all, but a deadly covering of porcupinelike quills. He could guess the rest.

“X-Men!” he shouted. “Eyes on Hairbag!”

Razor-tipped quills erupted from Hairbag’s back and flew toward them, as deadly as a hail of arrows. Juggernaut and Rogue wouldn’t be harmed, and if she had heard him shout.

Jean could throw up a telekinetic shield. But Cyclops was on his own.

With a quick optic blast, he tore through the blanket of quills flying toward him. In perfect synchronicity, he pulled up into an aerial somersault, deadly quills flashing past him. When he landed on his feet, Hairbag had already lifted his arms to attempt another attack with the quills jutting from the flesh of his shoulders.

“Playing for keeps, now,” Cyclops mumbled to himself.

He brought Hairbag down hard with an optic blast to the upper chest that knocked the mutant flat on the pavement.

“You killed him!” octopus-face screamed. “You guys aren’t supposed to do that!”

“No one’s supposed to do that,” Cyclops snapped, though he knew that Hairbag was far from dead.

“Your turn!” the woman cried, and her tentacles reached out for him.

No more conversation, Cyclops thought. War required only action. With utmost concentration, he focused his optic beam into a tight, narrow line, and blasted the woman the moment she moved into profile. The blast neatly sliced off two tentacles on the left side of her face, instantly cauterizing the wounds.

Screaming in pain, she looked at Cyclops with agony etched in ever)' line of her face.

“Go away!” he snarled.

She turned and ran.

• * *

“Man,” the Juggernaut said in awe, “that was harsh. You guys aren’t fooling around this time, are you?”

“The stakes have never been this high, Cain,” Jean Grey said beside him. “We’re doing what we have to do, that’s all. Doesn’t mean we enjoy it.”

“Yeah? What about Wolverine?” Cain asked.

Jean shot him a nasty glance and turned to face two feral mutants who were ganging up on her. Cain kept moving, unconcerned. Grey was one lady who could definitely take care of herself.

To his left, Rogue was landing blow after blow on the face, head, chest, and back of the forty-foot giant who called himself Humongous. She didn’t seem to be faring all that well, and Cain figured he ought to lend a hand. First things first, though. He was working with the X-Men, and he knew firsthand that Scott Summers was an effective field commander. Summers wanted him to take down this big drooling moron called Slab. He could do that.

Like Hairball, Slab had been one of Sinister’s Nasty Boys. Cain had heard of them, but never run into them before now. They didn’t seem like much. Slab was over seven feet tall, nearly bald, and ugly as a bulldog but without the charm.

The Juggernaut moved, several mutants tried to stop his progress. He laughed. Obviously, they either didn’t know who he was, or didn’t believe his publicity. Nothing stopped the Juggernaut. He brushed aside the thin black man with the scorpion tail, its stinger striking for his face but hitting only helmet.

Then there was Slab.

“Come on, fiatscan,” Slab crowed. “Slab’s gonna pound your skull.”

Cain nearly laughed out loud.

“Man, I thought you looked stupid,” he said. “Turns out, you’re even dumber than you look! My rep says I ain’t the most intelligent guy in the world, but at least I don’t refer to myself in the third person.”

“Don’t make fun of Slab, buddy,” Slab warned. “You’ll die slower if you do.”

“Oh, shut up,” Cain said, and hammered Slab in the face with a massive fist that rocked his head back so far, Cain figured he’d given the guy whiplash.

Slab grew. Then he hit back, hard. Cain wasn’t in motion, and the blow hurt him. sent him stumbling back several steps.

“Every time you hit Slab, Slab gets stronger, hits back harder,” the mutant said. “Slab gets bigger. You can’t win.”

“That’s the game, huh?” Cain replied. “Well, check this out, dog boy.”

Cain launched himself at Slab, the Juggernaut steaming down on his enemy. He slammed into the mutant and lifted him off the ground, like a linebacker going for a hard tackle. But instead of knocking Slab down, the Juggernaut kept going. There was a massive financial office building just ahead, its walls constructed of thick granite blocks.

The Juggernaut bent low, and rammed Slab, skull first, into the granite side of the building. The stone gave way, some of it crumbling in chunks to the sidewalk. Cain dropped Slab onto the debris.

“You can’t hit me back harder if you’re unconscious,” he said.

* t •

“Keep hitting me, little bug, and when you get tired I can squash you!” Humongous cried in delight.

Rogue cracked him a good one in the left temple, and this time the forty-foot monstrosity actually yowled with pain and reached for his head. Rogue smiled. Good, she thought, it’s about time.

She was almost incomparably strong, and nearly invulnerable, but in spite of all that, Rogue was having a difficult time with Humongous. On the other hand, at least she was keeping him occupied so he could not help the rest of Magneto’s followers.

Humongous was large, but he was also slow and lumbering. If he got hold of her, Rogue suspected the giant might be able to pop her head off as if she were a Pez dispenser. The key, then, was simply not to let him touch her.

Giant hands reached out for her again, and Rogue ducked them, flew in toward his face, and used both fists in a hammer blow that shattered Humongous’s nose. The giant screamed in pain and humiliation, as blood began to flow freely over his lips and chin.

When Rogue shot around behind him, into the shadow cast by his massive form, she noticed something unexpected. Hu-mongous had shrunk at least five feet. The massive mutant clutched his face, blood on his hands, and he growled in rage as he spun, trying to find her.

“Hey, ugly,” a familiar voice boomed. “Down here!”

Rogue and Humongous looked down together, to see Cain Marko, the Juggernaut, running at the giant mutant. His footfalls echoed in the street. Humongous began to stoop, to attempt to snatch up the Juggernaut, but Rogue dashed through the air and struck him in the side of the head. In the moment that she had distracted him, the Juggernaut slammed into Humongous at ground level.

There was a massive crack, and Humongous cried out in pain. Rogue thought the Juggernaut had broken the giant mutant’s leg. Humongous began to fall.

“Uh-uh, sugar, not here,” she said absently.

With all her strength, she grabbed Humongous from behind and hauled him off the ground. Rogue flew quickly to the Hudson River and there, more than one hundred feet above the water, let Humongous fall. In no time, she was in the thick of the battle once more.

* * *

Jean lifted the two feral mutants and sent them crashing through the thick glass windows of a trendy Sixth Avenue eatery. Now she faced down half a dozen mutants who gathered around her in a circle of death. A woman whose hands and scalp were on fire. A boy, barely a teenager, who spit long streams of acid that ate the pavement by Jean’s feet. The man with the scorpion tail, and others.

Simultaneously, they attacked, intending to murder Jean Grey. But Jean wasn’t there, not at all. Her presence was an illusion, telepathically inserted into their minds. Acid burned the scorpion tail, fire scarred a shapeshifter, claws slashed at darkness, and a being of living shadow screamed.

Jean flinched. She hadn’t intended them to injure one another. Though it turned the fight to her favor, it gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The war between Xavier and Magneto had always been a philosophical one, a Cold

War, with a skirmish here and there. But this was real war, and Jean had quickly discovered that she did not have a taste for it. Not at all.

Several of the mutants had seen her now, and were attempting to close in again. They were more cautious this time, and she wondered if she could take them all down. She didn’t need to. An optic blast flashed past her, driving the blazing-skulled woman from her feet. Her head cracked against a fire hydrant, and she lay still. Jean checked psionically to see that she was still alive, and then moved on.

“About time you stopped playing around,” she said as Cyclops ran up beside her. “What about the others?”

Before Scott could answer, they heard Cain Marko bellowing.

“I told ya to cut that out!”

They spun in time to see him snag that scorpion tail and whip its owner around several times before slamming him into the side of an abandoned city bus.

“Man, he was drivin’ me up a wall with that stinger!” Marko exclaimed.

“Well,” Scott said, turning his attention back to Jean, “I guess that about does it for the element of surprise.”

“You could say that,” Jean agreed with a weak smile.

“Oh, I’ll go y’all one better than that,” Rogue said as she approached her three comrades.

All three of them turned to look at her. Rogue only pointed in the other direction. The fight had taken them a block and a half farther north, just a stone’s throw from the Empire State Building. Jean knew they should be right on top of Magneto’s base by now. Rogue shouldn’t be surprised if they had met up with more opposition.

That’s what she thought. Before she turned to see what Rogue was pointing at.

The street was literally filled with mutants, separating them from their goal: the Empire State Building and the freedom of the rest of the X-Men. Out in front of the pack were several Acolytes they were already familiar with, including Amelia Voght, the KJeinstock brothers, and Senyaka. But Jean could also see other familiar faces, including other members of the Nasty Boys, several Marauders, the Toad, even the Blob and Pyro, who had recovered too fast from their previous skirmish. Magneto obviously had a healer on his staff.

It was a sea of angry, resolute faces, all dedicated to destroying the X-Men in Magneto’s name.

“Oh, marvelous,” Jean sighed.

“Surrender, X-Men, or be destroyed,” Amelia Voght warned. “You have five seconds to decide.”

Jean and Scott exchanged a knowing glance. Rogue didn’t flinch as she prepared to go on the assault.

“You cannot win against these odds,” Voght continued. “Give yourselves up, live in comfort in an empire ruled by Magneto. It’s your only choice.”

Jean would never have imagined she would see the day, but the Juggernaut spoke for the X-Men, speaking the words that were in all their minds.

“Like hell.”

* * *

Her hand shook, the barrel of the gun wavering at her side. Gabriela Frigerio had never fired a gun before. They’d had no business giving her one, as far as she was concerned. But give her one they had. And it felt strangely comforting in her hand, though she knew that against the mutant hordes that had overtaken Manhattan, one handgun was little better than a slingshot.

But then, there was always David and Goliath to testify to the efficacy of the slingshot.

They moved together, the upstart resistance fighters led by Miguelito Ramos and the group of police officers and other former city employees led by ex-Police Commissioner Wilson Ramos. An odd group, to say the least, but all dedicated to a single cause: the salvation of New York City. Gabi didn’t know what they could do against Magneto. As far as she was concerned, they were powerless. But they might be able to take back City Hall, to become a thorn in Magneto’s side. That would have to be enough.

The mob had thinned in front of City Hall. As had its force of defenders. There were fewer than a dozen police officers now, and three or four people who might have been mutants.

“I recognize that one,” Wilson Ramos said next to her. “He’s one of Magneto’s boys; must be powerful too.”

“Do you want to hold back a bit?” Miguelito asked.

“Nah,” Wilson said after a brief hesitation. “I don’t think it’s going to get any easier, no matter how long we wait.”

“It’s now or never,” Gabi agreed, and the brothers looked at her oddly.

She wondered if they felt as strongly as she how suddenly real the whole thing had become. Up until that moment, it had seemed more like some college protest. But now the moment had come, the time for actual battle, actual bloodshed.

“My God,” she said softly to herself, not bothering to wonder if anyone could hear. “How did we come to this?”

She looked at Michael, at Miguelito and his brother, at Lamarre and all the others, and she wondered how many of them would die in the next few minutes.

“Go!” Wilson Ramos barked into a hand radio.

Several hundred men and women, civilians and police and fire personnel, hustled into the city block around City Hall. On the steps of the venerable building, Magneto’s security force and the citizens of Manhattan interrupted their battle to stare around in astonishment at what amounted to the cavalry.

Gabi saw the momentary uncertainty on every face as they attempted to determine whose side the new arrivals were on.

“Attention, Steven Tyree,” Ramos boomed into a megaphone. “As police commissioner of New York City, I am placing you under arrest. Every law officer answering to Mr. Tyree is also under arrest, as are Magneto and all of his so-called Acolytes. Throw down your weapons, and wait with your hands up for a duly authorized police officer or civilian deputy to take you into custody!”

The mob was elated. The cops still working for Tyree, whom Magneto had appointed commissioner, far less so. Nobody moved.

“Pileggi, Brereton, Willeford, I see all you guys up there,”

Ramos said. “Wambaugh, Caruso ... ah, the hell with it, I’m not here to play Romper Room. Surrender now. You all know the law, and you know you’ve broken it. Bring out Tyree!”

Another pause.

An Asian man wearing the colors of Magneto’s security force stepped forward as if to respond. But when he opened his mouth, rather than speak, the man merely took a deep breath and blew, as if trying to put out a candle.

At first, Gabi thought it was funny. It looked so bizarre. Then a hole appeared in the pay phone in the kiosk on the corner. No explosion, no fire, just a round section of the phone vaporized to nothing. The mutant must have emitted some incredible power from his mouth, a destructive force that eliminated anything in its path until it reached its target:

Wilson Ramos. Who hadn’t noticed the phone being perforated, who waited patiently for some response from once faithful officers.

“Down!” Gabriela cried, and dived on Ramos, dragging him to the pavement a heartbeat before she expected that invisible power to reach him.

The vaporizing funnel bored through the side and engine of a red Chevy Corsica parked behind them, leaving a clean hole they could have looked right through. Gabi saw from Ramos’s face that he had made the connection between the mutant and the destruction.

“Now, that’s bad breath,” he said, though she could see his heart wasn’t in the humor.

He frowned.

“Why aren’t the rest of them attacking?” he asked aloud. “Why hasn’t that other mutant, the guy in charge, ordered an attack?”

“Maybe they’re going to surrender after all?” she suggested.

“Yeah, right!” Lamarre said, startling her. She hadn’t realized he was so close behind her.

“You have three seconds!” Ramos called over the megaphone.

Gabi thought she could see the other mutant, the one Wilson Ramos obviously thought was in charge, shake his head and shrug. He lifted his hands, put them together in a kind of clapping motion.

“Take them down,” he ordered, and concentrated sound erupted from the slightest tap of his hands together, shooting out toward them.

He missed, but across the street behind them, brick walls began to tumble in on themselves.

“Let’s take back our city!” Ramos shouted over the megaphone.

In a wave, the resistance fighters moved toward the steps of City Hall.    "

• • *

A whirlpool of violence swirled in the street in front of the Empire State Building, with the X-Men at its center. Flashes of energy burned through the massive crowds, Magneto’s followers so overcome by their urgent need to defeat the X-Men that they thought nothing of striking down their own comrades just to get at one of Xavier’s people. Already, they were fighting among themselves, which offered some little relief for Scott, Jean, Rogue, and the Juggernaut.

There had been a moment, when they were first confronted by such a huge number of enemies, when Rogue wondered if the Juggernaut would bolt. But Marko stood fast with the X-Men, who had been—who, in fact, still were—his enemies. She had to admire that. You didn’t generally find career criminals who were also stand-up guys.

Then there was no more time for thought, only action, as Magneto’s hordes swarmed in.

Rogue tossed off several attackers, then took to the air, flying to attempt a better view of their circumstances. She ought to have known better. There were a lot of flyers already in the air. Simultaneously, she was buffeted by a bright red, phosphorescent flame, a rainbow-colored laser blast that burned through her costume and singed her flesh, and a hail of tiny darts not much larger than the thorns on a pricker bush.

She let out a cry of pain, surprise, and anger, then glared around at the four flyers closing in on her.

It was easy to tell who was responsible for what. The fire came from a man whose head and neck were intact, but the rest of his body was in flames. The laser from some jerk in a shiny technosuit. The darts flew off a woman with massive insect-type wings, whose body seemed a cross between some kind of bug and plant life.

“They call me Rose,” she called. “You’ll find it difficult to avoid my thorns.”

“Oh, shut up, ya swamp witch!” Rogue said, and as Rose came in for another attack, Rogue grabbed her arm and swung her toward the technojerk.

“What about you?” Rogue asked, turning to the fourth flyer, who had not yet attacked her. “What do you do?” “I’m Gravity,” the man said. “It’s self-explanatory.” Gravity pointed at her, and Rogue fell seventy feet to the street, landing hard on top of a guy who seemed to be made of sharpened glass, or crystal. He shattered beneath her momentum, and she hit the pavement. The glass man didn’t get up again, and Rogue found that, while she could stand and fight, she could not fly. Though she suspected the effect of Gravity’s power would wear off, not being able to fly threw off her battle rhythm considerably.

That moment of confusion cost her. Rogue tried to orient herself in the crowd. Where were Cyclops and Jean? Where was the Juggernaut? She knew they would still be fighting, that despite the odds, they were, all three, people of extraordinary will and endurance. But where—

Rogue cried out in pain as Senyaka’s psionic whip lashed around her throat, choking off her air and burning her flesh. She was nearly invulnerable, true, but that merely meant the burning whip would not scar. It still hurt like hell.

Driven by pain and fury, Rogue simply grabbed on to the whip, bent over and pulled, her great strength launching Sen-yaka deep into the crowd. Without him in proximity, Senyaka’s whip quickly dissipated. Before she could even catch her breath, Rogue was set upon by the former Marauder called

Blockbuster, and another musclehead with four arms that she believed was called, unimaginatively, Forearm.

Blockbuster hit her once and her teeth clacked together hard enough that she bit her tongue, but she only moved back a step. Forearm tried to grab her from behind, set her up as a punching bag for Blockbuster, but she turned in time to grab them both. She was about to take them down, about to knock their heads together like something out of the Three Stooges. Then small arms wrapped around her neck and a weight fell on her back, dragging her down.

It was Tusk, or at least a part of him. A large mutant with some kind of armadillo-like shell, and several miniature versions of himself running around. Together, all the aspects of Tusk began beating on Rogue, along with Blockbuster and Forearm. She could take it. Could take them all. But how long could she take it for? That was the question.

Tusk. Forearm. That meant Mutant Liberation Front. Or Dark Riders. Or whatever they were calling themselves these days. Reaper, Dragoness, Tempo, and the others. If they were all there. God, she was finding it so hard to think; she had just enough brainpower to fend off her attackers’ blows. Not all of them, though. Some—a lot of them—connected. Hard. And more mutants were joining in.

Faces flashed above her, overpowering her, and Rogue knew her only chance was flight. She willed herself into the air.

Nothing happened. Gravity’s power was still affecting her, no telling how long it would last. Through the breaks in the heads and fists moving above her, Rogue saw that the blue had begun to drain from the sky. Late summer afternoon, then. Maybe early evening, dinnertime, A beautiful day.

“Rogue!” she heard a familiar voice snarl. “Get away from her!”

Something wet spilled on Rogue’s face, she recognized its coppery smell. Blood. Whose blood?

Mine?

“No!” she cried, brought back into action by the fear that she might actually be bleeding.

With all her strength, she pistoned her legs, kicked out hard, and heard Blockbuster’s ribs crack as he went sprawling back. Forearm was trying to hold her, but she swung her legs up again, snagged him by the neck, and whipped him down, across her, onto the pavement. Then there was Tusk, all three of him.

One of them was bleeding. All of them were attacking someone else.

“Kind o’ figured you’d fallen asleep down there, Rogue,” Wolverine snarled, and slashed at Tusk—the biggest one.

“Just resting,” she managed to say, though it was barely funny.

To make sure she could, Rogue flew just off the ground across the few feet to Wolverine, snagged both of the smaller Tusks by their armor-plated necks, and simply threw them.

“No!” Tusk cried, and followed his miniature selves into the crowd.

“Why didn’t you stay down, girl?” Senyaka snapped as he moved in toward Rogue and Wolverine.

Then Riptide was there as well, spinning like a miniature twister, tossing sharpened projectiles that sliced Wolverine’s flesh and stung Rogue, though they bounced off her body and fell to the street.

“We were coming to free you,” Rogue said amiably.

“You were doin’ a bang-up job o’ it,” Wolverine grumbled. “Anyway, Drake beat you to it.”

Rogue raised an eyebrow. “Iceman broke into Magneto’s headquarters by himself and got you guys out?’ ’

“Him and Trish Tilby,” Logan answered.

“Good for him,” Rogue said, then launched herself at Riptide even as Wolverine feinted at Senyaka, who dodged right into the spot Logan wanted him.

Rogue squinted, fighting the urge to close her eyes as she flew directly into the tiny storm that was Riptide. He moved so fast, she doubted she would be able to grab hold of him. Instead, she simply slammed into him and kept flying. Riptide went down hard.

Up she flew, then turned around for a better perspective on

the battle, making certain to stay away from enemy flyers.

And there they were. Together again at last.

Cyclops. Jean Grey. The Beast. Iceman. Bishop. Storm. Wolverine. And the wild card in the group, the Juggernaut.

For the moment, these were the X-Men.

Despite the incredible odds against them, standing together, Rogue knew they had a chance. Better than a chance.

Off to the left, Harlan Kleinstock was blasting away at her gathered teammates, her friends. Her family. Rogue scowled and went after him with new confidence.

The melee at City Hall had gotten ugly. Ivan Skolnick had recognized the police commissioner, Wilson Ramos, immediately. Of course, when the man announced that he was there to arrest all those who were siding with Magneto, it had been almost amusing. To be sure, he had the greater numbers. But he didn’t have any mutants on his side. And one or two Alpha mutants, Skolnick had long since realized, made all the difference in the world.

When Funnel had attacked, exhaling a blast of energy that displaced anything in its path into some kind of otherworldly limbo, Skolnick had been forced to attack as well. He was in charge, after all. It wouldn’t do for his subordinates to be undermining his command.

But that was one of the many problems with this new world order, too many rebels. The only one anybody obeyed regularly was Magneto, and who knew where the hell he’d gotten off to. No, this was nothing like the hierarchy of command that Skolnick had learned as a military man. Nothing like commanding Special Ops Unit One.

Whom he’d betrayed.

SOU1 was his team. They had faith in him, followed his orders implicitly, the way any crack military squad must do. And he had turned on them. It had been for their own good, he thought, attempting with little success to reassure himself. It was true, though. They were better off as captives of Magneto than as corpses. Taking them down his way had been the best way.

But now, as he hit the rioting crowd with another blast of concentrated sonic energy, Skolnick realized that it had not been the best way. He was frightened, to be sure, of a world where mutants were hated and feared. He expected that one day he would be outed, despite the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy the government had adopted, and on that day, he would be forced to leave the military in shame. His family would ignore him. He would become an outcast. He didn’t want to live that way, and he could certainly understand how Magneto,

and all the other mutants there in Haven, could have come to such a radical decision.

But he was a man first. A military man second. A mutant last. He had not taken the best way out of a tough situation, but the worst. He knew that now. He ought to have gone down with his team, if that was how it had to be. Now even if he turned on Magneto, he would be considered a traitor, court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, and revealed as a mutant. His team would turn their backs on him, without question.

Ivan Skolnick would be alone. He did not want to be alone. And yet, what was he, amid the anarchy of the fight before him, as policemen shot at their brothers-in-blue, as citizens of a city stormed the walls of their own seat of government? What was he, if not alone?

“Skolnick!" Steve Tyree, the man Magneto had appointed police commissioner, shouted at him. “Come on, you idiot. You’re the big mutie here, do something!”

Ivan snapped. Rounded on Tyree.

“Mutie?” he cried, marching toward Tyree, who backed off until Skolnick was screaming, spraying spittle into his face, with Tyree against the oaken doors of City Hall.

“Mutie!” he shouted again. “What was that little shared moment of righteousness that you and Magneto had going, Tyree? When he made the speech about bigotry? You were gonna bring the thunder down on the evil bigots with both hands, weren’t you? But you're just as bad!”

Skolnick let go of Tyree, wiped his hands on his pants as if he’d gotten something nasty on them. He tried to turn his attention back to the battle, tried to ignore the officious little human, but Tyree pursued him.

“Who do you think you are?” Tyree demanded. “Mutants are a danger to society, not some social group that one is prejudiced against or not. If I live in a world where mutants are in control, I will do what I have to to get by. If that means

I can enforce equality, all the better. I have worked for civil rights my whole life, defended the rights of women, stood up for gay marriages. My father was in D.C. when Dr. King made his ‘I have a dream’ speech, he marched on Montgomery.”

“He’d be disgusted if he could see you today,” Skolnick said. “Mutants are human beings, you imbecile. With emotions and insecurities, just like everyone else. They need help, not persecution.”

Skolnick slammed Tyree’s head against the wall, then just let go. He had expended his anger, at Tyree, and at himself. Now he felt only revulsion, and profound regret. He had made a terrible choice. The only questions now were what it would cost him, and if he could repair any of the damage.

Several bullets took chunks of brick out of the wall behind him. Skolnick didn’t even duck. If death was justice, he would accept it without complaint. But he hoped to be able to bring about a more effective justice.

“Got you in my sights, Ramos!” Funnel cried, and blew kisses at the police commissioner, the destructive power of his exhalation cutting through half a dozen men and women, ally and enemy alike, on its path toward Ramos. This time it was moving much faster, but Ramos knew what was happening now. He was no fool. He’d get out of the way.

Which did nothing for the people unfortunate enough to have been in Funnel’s firing line. The steps of City Hall got bloody very quickly. Cops loyal to Tyree and, as such, to Magneto, fired on those trying to take back the city.

“That’s it!” Skolnick shouted. “That’s it! No more!”

• • •

In the Oval Office, the President of the United States sat slumped forward, elbows on his desk, face in his hands. He was at a loss. Completely and totally unable, in that moment, to make a solid decision as to how to proceed against Magneto.

Light was slowly leeching from the office, from the world, just as the life was being sucked from his political career. He glanced up through splayed fingers at the seal of his office on the marble floor. No lights were on in the office, and he could barely make out all but the most prominent features of the seal. Appropriate, he thought. It was disappearing with any chance he had of reelection.

If he did nothing, he was screwed. If he sent the troops in, a lot of them would die, and they had almost no chance of winning; in which case, he was screwed. If he nuked Manhattan, well, that one wasn’t hard to figure out. He was screwed no matter what tactic he chose.

Somebody knocked “shave and a haircut” on the oaken door of his office, but left off the “two bits.”

“Come in, Bob,” he said, and pressed a button under his desk that buzzed the door open.

The Director of Operation: Wideawake entered, looking just as haggard as the President felt.

“You want dinner?” the Director asked. “You haven’t eaten anything today, and it’s past six o’clock.”

“Couldn’t keep anything down, I don’t think,” the President replied.

The Director only nodded. He came all the way into the office, shutting the door behind him, and took one of the two large wood-and-leather chairs facing the President’s desk. “So,” the Director said.

“So,” the President agreed, wholeheartedly.

“Want to hear what the polls have to say?” the Director asked.

“First I want to know how the X-Men are doing, what’s happening with Cooper, and if you’ve been able to keep Gyr-ich from going over the line.”

“My answer to all three is, I don’t know.”

“Not the answer I was hoping for,” the President said, with a calm that didn’t fool either of them.

“Magneto has completely jammed our satellite view of Manhattan,” the Director explained. “CNN, ABC, and MTV are broadcasting out of the MTV building in Times Square, and Magneto is letting that through. Publicity he wants, observation he doesn’t. Reports say there’s war, in midtown and downtown at City Hall. The X-Men are involved. That’s all we know. No word at all from Cooper.”

“I guess no news is good news on that front.”

“I’d have to agree,” the Director said. “Gyrich, on the other hand, is itching for a resolution.”

“He’s not alone,” the President said. “The whole country wants to know how this thing is going to turn out. Every idiot in the world thinks they know how to solve it. But none of them have to make the decision.”

“We can’t wait for the X-Men or for Cooper, sir,” the Director said.

“Now, just a—”

“No, listen. If Cooper succeeds, all it does is give us an edge. It doesn’t win the day, necessarily. The X-Men can’t do it alone. There are hundreds of mutants, maybe as many as a thousand, all lined up against what? Eight or ten X-Men? I don’t care how good they are, those are not workable odds.

“Then there are the polls. Graydon Creed may be sitting back and taking this all in, but the media knows he’s made noises about running against you next election. So they’re polling. You’re neck and neck, sir, and Creed hasn’t even announced. The polls also say why. They like Creed’s thinking on the mutant issue, and the Manhattan catastrophe. Between Creed and Senator Kelly, the world is looking for a swift solution, and punishment for Magneto and his followers.

“You can’t afford any of this,” the Director said. “I’m not saying you nuke the city. Not yet, anyway. But if you don’t give the order for full-scale invasion, somebody else may try to give it for you. You need this.”

The President shook his head, then swung his chair to gaze out the window at the White House lawn. For a moment, he regretted his rise to political power, considered the gradual change in the decision-making process he had undergone. Once he had done what he wanted to. Now, he was forced to do what he needed to.

“Do it,” he said, without turning around. “Full-scale attack, whatever it takes. Get that city back.”

“Yes, sir,” the Director said. “Should I warn them to be prepared for instant dust-off, in case we have to go with the nukes?”

Still looking out the window, the President shook his head.

“We expect collateral damage and loss of life,” he said. “We can’t risk giving Magneto warning if it comes to that.”

The Director didn’t respond. The President heard the other man’s shoes click on the tile. The door opened and closed. When he was gone, the President ran his hands through his hair, turned to face his desk, and prayed silently.

• • •

Henry Peter Gyrich had a headache. It wasn’t the explosions, the weapons fire, the shouting, the choppers slapping the air above. They made it worse, no doubt about that. But the headache was caused by bureaucracy, pure and simple.

“But, sir,” Gyrich pleaded, “Cooper’s little plan to fight fire with fire, to use mutants to defeat mutants, was bad enough before conflict erupted in earnest. Things have obviously changed now. We can’t just defend ourselves, we’ve got to go into this thing to the hilt, or we don’t have a chance in hell!”

On the tiny vid-comm screen in Gyrich’s trailer, the Director of Wideawake shook his head slowly and sighed.

“Gyrich,” he said, “if it were up to me, not only would we have gone in full force from the get-go, but my finger would be poised over the panic button, okay? But it’s not up to me. The President wants to avoid whatever collateral damage we can. That means giving Cooper more time, giving the X-Men more time. For now, we attack the Sentinels from remote points, but we do not invade. Are you clear on that, Gyrich? At this juncture, we do not invade!”

Gyrich massaged his temples, slowly at first, and then with more vigor. The headache wasn’t going away. It was getting worse.

“Gyrich?”

“My head’s going to explode.”

“Gyrich!” the Director snapped, and he looked up at the man’s stem features.

“Yes, sir, we’re clear,” Gyrich said. “But I don’t have to like it.”

“No,” the Director agreed. “No, you don’t.”

Gyrich clicked off the vid-comm and pushed back his chair. When he stepped out of the trailer, he noted how the afternoon had moved in, and the temperature had dropped quite a bit. In a way, he was disappointed. As far as he was concerned, hell was supposed to be hot.

In the distance, the shelling and plasma fire continued. Stinger missiles had been brought in, and even now a pair burned toward the face of the Sentinel that overlooked the Hudson River. Without turning its attention from its own attack on the troops massed on the riverbank, the Sentinel burned the Stingers out of the sky.

With an eye on the battle, Gyrich wandered into the no man’s land between the military and media camps, prepared to give a statement to the press, just to get them to stop hounding him for fifteen minutes. Halfway there, he passed Cooper’s trailer.

Charles Xavier sat in front of the trailer in his wheelchair, eyes closed as if he were resting, or asleep.

“Enjoying the show?” Gyrich asked.

Xavier didn’t move.

“Xavier?” Gyrich said, a bit louder, wondering if the man was all right. After all, he had never learned why Xavier was in a wheelchair. What if something was wrong with him?

“Professor Xavier?” he asked again.

The man’s eyes snapped open, looking directly at Gyrich. If he had been sleeping, Gyrich had never seen anybody wake up so thoroughly so quickly.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Gyrich?” Xavier asked.

“Sorry to have disturbed you, Xavier,” Gyrich said.

“Not at all,” Xavier answered. “Just a little meditation to keep alert. After all, none of us really got any sleep last night, did we?”

“No,” Gyrich said, “I don’t suppose we did.”

Though he shrugged it off, Gyrich found something eerie in what Xavier had termed his “meditation.” And the comment about sleepless nights had him wondering just what Xavier had been doing all night. Perhaps merely advising Cooper and the President, as he had originally explained. But perhaps something more as well. Gyrich wondered if he would ever know the answer to these questions. Though he was usually confident about such things, for some reason, he doubted he would.

“What was it you had asked?” Xavier inquired.

“Just if you were enjoying the show,” Gyrich explained, though the humor seemed to have gone out of the question now.

The two men, allies yet enemies, gazed across Exchange Place toward the scene of the battle. To Gyrich, it seemed less likely with each passing moment that the Sentinels would even be harmed by conventional weapons. He had seen the specs, he knew that was part of the robots’ design. But most things the Defense Department built didn’t function as well as they were supposed to. He silently cursed them for having hit a bull’s-eye with the Sentinels.

Another Stinger shot at the Sentinel’s chest was destroyed without any damage.

“No,” Xavier said finally, after Gyrich had given up waiting for an answer. “No, I’m not enjoying the show at all.”

Gyrich nodded slowly. For several minutes, he stood next to Xavier’s wheelchair, and the two men watched the conflict in silence.

* * *

Xavier wanted Gyrich to go away. Val Cooper, Gambit, and Archangel had found the Alpha Sentinel. He had been monitoring their progress when Gyrich interrupted. He was still with Val, his subconscious mind tracking her and maintaining the illusion—for the Sentinel’s sake—that she was a mutant. But it was no simple feat to communicate with Gyrich while doing so. He wished he could simply tell the man that Cooper had found the Alpha unit. It would make all their lives easier. But Gyrich would want to know how Xavier had come by such knowledge. That would lead to disaster.

“I am quite drained by all of this, Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier said. “What can I do for you?”

Gyrich narrowed his eyes a moment, obviously irked at Xavier’s dismissive tone. The Professor was not at all concerned. Gyrich was a dangerous man, but Charles Xavier could be a dangerous man, too, when he wished to be.

“I thought you would want to know,” Gyrich said grimly. “The President has ordered a full-scale incursion into Manhattan island. We go in thirty minutes.”

“What of the X-Men?” Xavier asked, astonished. “They were to have more time than—”

“Their time ran out when the Sentinels started killing us, Professor,” Gyrich replied. “I assumed you would realize that.”

Xavier frowned, took a calming breath, then turned back to Gyrich.

“You’d best hope that they succeed despite your foolishness, Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier said. “Otherwise, you’re going to have a lot of dead soldiers on your hands.”

“This is a war, Professor,” Gyrich said, without missing a beat. “I’m pleased that the President has started to think of it as one. Perhaps it is time for you to do the same.”

Though Gyrich seemed far more composed and more solemn than Xavier might have expected—he would have thought the man would be almost gleeful at this news—his air of superiority, his assumption of greater purpose, was intensely grating.

“It’s always been war for me, Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier said. “You have no idea.”

* * #

When Trish had left the Empire State Building with Beast, Iceman, and the other X-Men Magneto had held captive, she had been stunned to find so little resistance to their escape. When they hit the street, they realized the reason. Every powered mutant among Magneto’s followers, and a good number who were not, were out in the street, attacking Cyclops and the others who had come on a belated rescue attempt.

“Thank you,” Hank had said, and Trish knew that meant they were about to part ways.

“For what?” Trish said. “All I did was get some people killed.”    "    '

“Don’t think that!” Hank had snapped. “Don’t ever think

m

that! You did what you had to, the only thing you could do. Your friends knew what they were getting themselves into. I’ll always be grateful to you for laying it on the line for—for us.”

Their eyes had met then. Trish had known what his hesitation signified. Hank had wanted to say “for me,” not “for us.” He’d wanted to acknowledge their past, and the small reconciliation that her actions had created. But he hadn’t said it. He’d been afraid, she knew, that she hadn’t done it for him at all. Afraid that she might mistake his gratitude for something more intimate.

“You’re very welcome,” she had said, and she’d kissed him on the nose the way she had always done in older, better times.

Then he and the others were gone, running to aid their teammates. Trish was on her way as well, heading north on Broadway. In her time with Magneto, she had discovered that her tapes were being delivered to the MTV offices, where they were continuing to broadcast coverage of the occupation of Manhattan.

She reached Times Square and glanced quickly around to orient herself. Just a few years earlier, Times Square had still been one of the more dangerous areas of the city. It had been cleaned up, spit-shined, and marketed to Boomers and GenXers nationwide.

Now it was trashed again.

After a moment, she identified her destination. The Viacom Building, named for MTV’s parent company, at 1515 Broadway, the northwest comer of Broadway and Forty-fourth Street. The doors were open, but the escalators were off, so she had to trudge up the long flight of steps to the lobby. At least the elevators were running.

When the elevator slid open, there was a moment of tension as those in the MTV foyer froze, probably wondering if the mutants had finally decided to shut them down. Trish also froze, wondering if they had instituted any security devices she should be aware of.

“Trish?” a male voice asked.

Among a group clustered around the lobby was Doug Samuels, a camera operator she had worked with before he’d gone on to ABC.

“Oh. Doug, thank God,” she said, and rushed to him.

Only when she broke the embrace did she realize that she had been holding on to him for dear life. Then the whole story spilled out of her, with the group surrounding her and Doug growing larger as she spoke. When somebody came out with a camera, though, Trish clammed up.

“What’s wrong?” the woman with the camera asked. “We’ve got to report on all of this. Keep going.”