Then he’d hit Cyclops again, hard, leaving a dark inky stain behind. It wasn’t much more than one on one, it seemed, and Gambit moved forward to help Cyclops, figuring his presence would make the difference, change the balance of power. It was so close to being over.
There was a small sound behind him, creeping cat’s paws, and he started to turn. Too late. Senyaka’s burning psionic whip wrapped around his neck, choking off his air before he could take a breath. Gambit tried to get his hands on the whip, to use his power, to use the whip against Senyaka, something. It moved side to side, snakelike, avoiding his grasp. He kicked out, taking Senyaka in the chest. The hooded Acolyte let out a grunt, but the whip did not let go.
Gambit tried once more to get his hands on the whip, then
lunged for Senyaka himself. But the air was gone. Completely.
He went down hard. When his face hit the street, he barely felt it.
• * *
From above, Rogue saw it all.
“Remy!” she screamed, and shot toward him out of the sky.
Rogue had never worried for herself. She worried about consequences all the time, worried for her friends, worried for the world. But never for herself. She was nearly invulnerable. Anything that might hurt her very badly would likely also kill her. Nothing she could do about that.
But Gambit was not invulnerable. Not hardly. Sure, Remy LeBeau knew how to take care of himself. That had been his full-time occupation before joining the X-Men, covering his own hide. Things had changed. He knew family now. Rogue flattered herself to think he knew love as well. She most certainly loved him.
Down on the street, the man she loved, the sharp-tongued mystery man whose Cajun charm had won her over from their first meeting ... Gambit was dying.
“No!” she cried, shot like a bullet to street level, and didn’t slow down a bit before slamming into Senyaka.
Ribs cracked under her assault. She slammed through glass partitions and into a row of ATM machines. His cowled head clanged off the machines and he stumbled for a moment, unsure of where he was. A weak glow formed in the palm of his right hand, a feeble attempt to create his psionic whip. Rogue spun him around, and Senyaka’s cowl slipped down.
She recoiled.
“My God but you’re ugly enough, ain’t ya?” she observed.
Rogue hit him in the gut hard enough to carry him off his feet and back out onto the sidewalk, then he rolled into the street. Senyaka held tightly to his belly, doubled over, and vomited blood in the gutter.
She went after him. As she reached to pick him up, a powerful hand grabbed her right arm, and she spun, lashing out at this new attacker.
Hank McCoy blocked her swing with the flash of one blue-furred arm.
“Ow!” he hissed. “Now, that’s going to leave a significant contusion.”
“Let go of me, Beast,” she demanded.
“Apologies, Rogue, but no,” Hank replied. “Another blow and you would have killed him.”
She glanced back at Senyaka. The blood was coming from his nose as well, now. The Beast relaxed his grip, but she didn’t go after her target again.
“In truth, he may yet die from the injuries you’ve given him,” the Beast said sadly.
“Let him,” she said, though she did not really mean it. She was no killer. Rogue said nothing as the Beast knelt to see what medical assistance he could give to Senyaka.
Across the street, Gambit lay very still. Rogue wanted to go to him, feel his pulse. That way she could breathe again. But she couldn’t drive herself through the night. It had all become surreal to her suddenly, and touching Gambit’s neck or wrist would bring them back to reality. If he were dead, she didn’t think she ...
“Oh, thank God,” Rogue gasped.
She had seen his chest rise and fall. Even now, it continued to do so.
Rogue rushed to Gambit’s side, knelt by his unconscious form. They’d all been through a lot the previous few days, but Gambit had had it even tougher than the rest of them. She ran her gloved fingers over the stubble on his chin, pushed his hair away from his face. She longed to be able to touch him, her own skin to his flesh. But the pleasures of such simple contact were denied Rogue forever. With her personality-, memory-, and talent-absorption powers, she could permanently damage anyone she touched.
It was the worst kind of isolation. And yet, with Gambit, Rogue had begun to feel a little less alone.
“You rest now, sugar,” she said quietly. “You’ve done your part.”
She kissed the fingers of her gloved right hand, then pressed the kiss to his lips. Rogue didn’t even glance back at the injured Senyaka, at Hank McCoy, who was trying to undo at least part of what she’d done. It didn’t matter. In many ways winning didn’t even matter anymore.
The only thing that did matter was an end. Now, Rogue wanted nothing more than to go home, to bring Gambit back to Salem Center to heal.
She prayed that it would be over soon.
* * *
“You tried to kill my brother!” Harlan Kleinstock shrieked, more astonished than accusatory. “Oh, you’re dead, man.”
“Please,” Iceman said, sarcasm like venom from his mouth. “If I’d wanted to kill him, I’d have flash-frozen the air in his mouth and nose, or freeze-dried his chest and just shattered it.”
Harlan fired a blast of kinetic energy from his fists, but Iceman blocked it with a concave ice shield, deflecting it back at his attacker. Kleinstock was too angry to be impressed.
“Go down and stay down, pal,” Kleinstock snarled. “I’m getting a little tired of you, of this whole thing. Give it up, will you?”
“Wait,” Iceman said, flustered and angry. “You’re tired of me? You’re tired of me? Oh, that’s rich!”
Bobby formed the moisture from the air into a battering ram of ice that tore Harlan Kleinstock off his feet, drove him back several yards, and slammed him into a brown UPS truck parked askew at the corner. Kleinstock didn’t get up.
With a long sigh, Bobby sat down on the street corner, chin in his hands, not even bothering to look and see if his teammates needed help. He didn’t think they did. It was almost over now.
“I’m going to Disneyworld,” he said softly to himself.
When Ivan Skolnick spotted Colonel Tomko standing with Henry Peter Gyrich, he froze in his tracks. His human allies continued to swarm from the battlefield toward the growing ranks of the media on the sidelines. But that was not Skolnick’s proper path and he knew it.
Approaching Tomko and Gyrich was the most courageous act he had ever performed. When he was only a short distance away, Gyrich looked up and recognized him. The man’s eyes went wide and he glanced nervously at Colonel Tomko, then at a blonde woman behind him, who Skolnick recognized as Valerie Cooper, the mutant affairs expert. Then Gyrich turned his attention back to Skolnick’s approach, and glared.
The look was an eloquently wordless threat. Skolnick ignored it. When he was ten feet away from Colonel Tomko, he snapped to attention.
“Major Ivan Skolnick, reporting, sir!” he barked. “Remanding myself into your custody, sir.”
Tomko looked at him quizzically, then at Gyrich and finally at Cooper.
“Custody?” he asked. “What for, Major? You aren’t in my command.”
“Yes, sir, I know, sir, but you’re the highest ranking officer present, sir,” Skolnick said quickly, every word a sharp pain in his heart. His career was over.
“Major, I think you should—” Gyrich began.
“You overstep yourself, Mr. Gyrich,” Colonel Tomko said, and Skolnick could hear the pleasure the colonel got from telling Gyrich off. He liked the sound of it himself.
“Colonel, sir, I was leader of Special Ops Unit One, orders to terminate Magneto,” he said. “But I’m a mutant, sir—”
“What?!?” Gyrich nearly shrieked. “No wonder!”
“I turned on my own unit and joined Magneto’s cause,” Skolnick said, eyes on the pavement.
Gyrich was fuming.
“But you led the human resistance in this decisive battle, didn’t you?” Colonel Tomko asked.
“Yes, sir,” Skolnick replied.
“Were any of your unit hurt?” the colonel asked.
“No, sir,” Skolnick said, “I wouldn’t have harmed a hair on their heads.”
“Colonel, this man should be court-martialed for treason,” Gyrich said emphatically.
“You’re not a military man, Gyrich,” Tomko said. “It’s none of your business. Besides, the major is hardly a traitor.”
“But he—” Gyrich spluttered.
“He is a genius!” Tomko finished. “He used the fact that he was a mutant to construct an elaborate ruse, kept his men safe from harm by causing them to be incarcerated, and infiltrated Magneto’s infrastructure in order to position himself to usurp Magneto when the time was right. If anything, he is to be commended.”
“Commended?” Gyrich squealed.
“Mr. Gyrich, if you have a problem with my version of events, perhaps you’d care to discuss exactly whose orders SOU1 were operating under, in direct conflict with the President’s very specific instructions?” Colonel Tomko said.
Gyrich grumbled something Skolnick couldn't hear. Behind him, Valerie Cooper had an enormous smile on her face.
“Good work, Major,” Colonel Tomko said, and held out his hand.
Major Skolnick couldn’t shake.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but it isn’t the way you—” he began, trying to explain.
The colonel held up a hand, gesturing for him to be quiet.
“Major,” he said patiently, “I don’t know what you’re about to say, and I don’t want to know. I know what’s going in my report, and I’m sure Gyrich’s report will reflect the same. You’d do well by yourself and all involved to just keep quiet.
“You have something you want to say to your unit, Major, you say it to them in private. You hear me?” the colonel asked.
“Yes, sir,” Major Skolnick responded, and offered a salute.
The colonel saluted in return.
All of it had gone away, like an awful nightmare. Well, not all of it.
The guilt was still there.
. * * * •
To Amelia Voght, Wolverine looked like some feral beast, a warrior out of barbarian times, a stone killer. As far as she was concerned, he was all of those things. His adamantium claws were nearly black with blood. Moonlight and neon glinted off speckles of crimson on Wolverine’s face and chest.
Voght was terrified. The worst part was, she thought Wolverine could smell her fear.
“Come on, X-Man,” she said. “Try me. If I can teleport your arms back to Avalon, those claws would make great trophies.”
To her growing horror, Wolverine smiled. Voght wasn’t sure—didn’t want to be sure—but she thought she saw blood on his teeth. But no, she told herself, he wouldn’t—She stopped herself. She didn’t know for certain what Wolverine would or would not do, when pushed. And she prayed she wouldn’t find out.
“Back off, or I’ll take you apart,” she warned, weakly.
“Threats don’t mean much to me, little girl,” he said, taking several steps toward her, stalking her. “You try to ’port my arms off, that means you gotta get real close. Before you lay a hand on me, your guts’ll be painting the street.”
Voght shivered.
“You’d best surrender, now, or we’re gonna have to throw down. It’s gonna be messy too,” he promised.
She said nothing. Biting her lip, Amelia Voght considered all that she owed Magneto, all that his dream meant to her and to so many others. It had always seemed to her that Haven would be worth dying for, but here was her death now, taking another step toward her, and, by God, she didn’t want to die.
“Let’s do it,” Wolverine said, and started for her.
Voght steeled herself. No matter how much she feared him, she wouldn’t run. He was just another mutant. She’d beaten him before. If she had to kill him now, to save her own life, then that was the way it would be.
“Give it up, Voght!” somebody shouted to her left. Wolverine slowed as Amelia turned to see who had spoken. Her breath slowly leaked out of her, and for several seconds, she forgot to take another.
It was the X-Men. All of them. Or nearly all, since Gambit was out of it. Jean Grey had spoken, and with her stood Cyclops, Rogue, the Beast, Bishop, Storm, Archangel, Iceman, and their unexpected ally, the Juggernaut.
Voght didn’t know what to do. Then she knew there was only one thing she could do.
In a crackling flash, she teleported away.
* * *
“Quick, look around!” Cyclops ordered. “See where she turns up. It could be an ambush.”
“Ain’t nobody left to ambush us, Cyke,” Wolverine snarled. “The party’s over. I don’t think Voght is coming back.”
“Jean?” Scott asked, realizing that she would be able to sense Voght if she popped up anywhere near them.
After a moment, Jean shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Great,” Iceman said. “Can we go home now? I’m going to sleep for about a year.”
“Sounds good,” Archangel chimed in. “Then we can go to Paris and sleep there for a few months.”
“What’s wrong with all of you?” Cyclops asked. “This isn’t over. Hardly over. It’s just begun. Remember what the Professor said?”
“Indeed,” the Beast said. “But, then, where is he?”
They were all silent, then, as they tried to push their exhaustion aside and focus on the war still to fight.
“Well, I don’t wanna look for him,” Iceman said finally. “Maybe he figured it was done with, and went on home?” Nobody thought that was very plausible.
Then Jean’s eyes went wide, and Scott heard her voice, both as she spoke and telepathically.
“He’s here,” she said.
They all looked up at once.
“I don’t think I’m ready for this,” Iceman said quietly.
“None of us are,” Cyclops admitted. “But we haven’t come this far to lose. This is the real thing, the core of the fight. This is the battle the X-Men were created to fight.”
“Then I humbly suggest we not screw it up,” the Beast said calmly.
Nobody laughed.
* * *
Despite his intimate knowledge of them, despite all the times that he had thought them beaten and the X-Men had risen from the ashes to triumph over him again and again, despite all of that, Magneto was stunned to see them standing, nearly unscathed, amid the wreckage of several city blocks. Unconscious or semiconscious mutants littered the streets along with debris left behind by the battle. There were the dead as well, not too many, but some. Then there were those who were still walking, crawling, or dragging themselves from the battle-scarred streets.
The X-Men had survived. More than survived. They were triumphant. As far as Magneto could see, only Gambit had sustained any grievous injuries. The Cajun was not a factor. That left nine X-Men. And the Juggernaut.
Xavier’s students stood ready, but made no move to attack. Magneto understood their trepidation. This was the final battle between them. He knew that. They must know it as well.
“Perhaps you feel as though you’ve won, X-Men,” he called down to them. “You have not. You have merely prolonged the inevitable, merely made my life more difficult. Haven shall be. Once you are all destroyed, I will rid Haven of dissenters even if I must do it alone.
“It is almost too late for mercy, you see. Summers, Grey, McCoy, I appeal to your intelligence, and your instincts. You have thirty seconds to begin to withdraw from my empire. Then, sad as I am to say it, I will be forced to kill you all. You are just too much trouble to be allowed to live.”
“Well, guys, it’s been real, but I’m outta here,” the Juggernaut said, and Magneto allowed himself a small smile. It was as he had expected.
“What?” Cyclops cried.
“Hey, Summers, no offense man, but I helped you out as best I could. I got you this far. But I didn’t come here to die, okay? I’m gone/- Marko explained.
“Cain ... ?” Jean Grey asked.
“Sorry, Grey,” the Juggernaut said with a shrug. “I’m not one of the white hats, okay? I’m not a black hat. Maybe I’m a gray one, but I don’t think so. For me, it’s all in the green.”
There were several hushed exchanges, then the Juggernaut left and the X-Men turned their attention back to Magneto.
“Coward!” Bishop screamed as Marko walked away. None of the others would even look at him.
Cyclops gathered the X-Men closer to him and spoke softly to his team. Magneto wished that he could hear Scott Summers’s words, better yet his thoughts, but he was no telepath.
Then, as he knew they would, the X-Men tamed and attacked.
Cyclops let loose a barrage of optic blasts that did not injure Magneto but instinctively, he dodged. Faster than he would have given her credit for, Rogue was there. She could not harm him through his force shield, but the blows she rained upon it drove him lower.
Lightning tore from the sky and struck the sphere of energy that protected him, passing a terrible jolt of electricity into Magneto’s flesh. He shook with it, and his body went numb a moment. Then it was over, but he didn’t want to experience it again.
Bishop fired upon him with some kind of plasma weapon and Jean Grey tried to pry open his mind, to force him into unconsciousness. Bishop’s weapon was laughable, and Magneto had taught himself how to defend against psychic attacks decades earlier.
Ice began to form within his protective sphere, and Magneto was amused by the audacity of Bobby Drake. He’d been a boy the first time they’d clashed, and Drake still had not learned his lesson. Magneto thought it might be time to teach him one. For now, he simply modulated his sphere to drop the ice out through it.
That was when Archangel launched dozens, perhaps hundreds, of his wing-knives. Two of them had paralyzed Magneto for minutes. Nearly a hundred might kill him, if they were allowed to get that far. But he knew their biometallic compound now.
With a gesture, Magneto turned the wing-knives away from him and sent them flying, his control over the metal moving them so fast, they were little more than a blur. The wing-knives slashed through Rogue’s costume, and though she was nearly invulnerable, some passed through her skin.
Rogue fell from the sky and hit the pavement with a crack. She did not rise again.
Magneto tore Bishop’s weapon from his hands with little more than a thought, then he reached out along the magnetic lines of power and did something he had wanted to do for a long time. He picked Wolverine off the ground by the ada-mantium in the Canadian mutant’s skeleton, forced his claws out of their sheaths, and sent Logan twisting through the air following those deadly claws.
Wolverine plowed into Bishop, his claws slicing the future X-Man to bloody shreds.
“You bastard!” Logan screamed as he stood up. “You made me kill him! You’re next, Magneto! Once and for all, you’re next!”
Magneto forced Wolverine to turn his claws around, and drive them into his own chest, perforating heart and lungs. Wolverine fell.
Lightning struck his force shield once more, and Magneto jerked and writhed in pain for several moments. His guard slipped, and one of Cyclops’s optic blasts slid through the field, tearing into his right arm. Then he knew that he wasn’t the only one who knew it was the end. Either the X-Men would be destroyed, or Magneto would be dead. Even Summers knew that. He was using deadly force against Magneto.
Good, Magneto thought. If they were trying to kill him as well, it didn’t feel so much like murder.
Storm, noble as she was, had annoyed him. She had hurt him for the last time. It was all too easy. Magneto snagged up a brown delivery truck that was essentially a steel box. In the web of his power, he flung it toward her.
“No!” Storm screamed. “Not again. Please, no!”
Thunder shattered windows for seven blocks, lightning flashed and struck at the steel prison that sped toward her. But Storm could do nothing. Magneto tore the truck apart, bending and warping it with his mind and then wrapping it around Ororo Munroe. He crushed her with it, and rather than set it gently down, Magneto merely let her fall.
Optic blasts hit his force shield again. Cyclops wouldn’t give up. There were just the five of them left, the five original X-Men: Cyclops, Jean Grey, the Beast, Archangel, and Iceman.
Magneto knew he would have to kill them, or at least hurt them badly enough that they would be out of the war, permanently.
It saddened him, but it could not be avoided.
The X-Men had to die.
e’ve got to go in,” Gyrich demanded. “We’ve got yu to take Magneto down now, while he’s distracted!” Wm Colonel Tomko looked to Valerie Cooper, she assumed for some kind of rational response to Gyrich’s raving. She didn’t have one.
“Gyrich, you’re out of your mind,” she said, her tone as matter of fact as she could keep it. ' ‘The X-Men are in there, right now, trying to stop him. If we throw everything we’ve got at Magneto—and that’s what it would take, if even that would do it—the X-Men are at ground zero. We kill him, and we’d be killing them too.”
Gyrich glared at her. He didn’t respond verbally, only with that hateful, arrogant glare. But Val didn’t need words. She knew perfectly well what the glare meant, what the message was.
The first part of it was, Stay out of it, Cooper, it isn’t your affair. But it was her affair. She was in it, no question, and she had the power, no matter how limited, to get in his way.
The second part was, So the X-Men are in the way? So what? That’s another near dozen mutants we won’t have to be afraid of anymore.
Val felt sick. Gyrich wanted to blow up several city blocks with Magneto and the X-Men as targets.
“You want them dead, don’t you Gyrich?” she sneered. “And it isn’t just because you’re a bigot. It isn’t just because they scare you. It’s because your pride is hurt, because you couldn’t take Manhattan back from Magneto. You couldn’t stop the madman’s bid to be emperor of the universe or whatever. It took mutants to do it.
“You think they’re the scum of the Earth, you treat them like they’re some unmentionable thing you’ve got to wipe off the bottom of your shoe, but they took the Sentinels out. They took the Acolytes down. And if we’ve got any hope against Magneto, it’s in their hands.
“That burns you, doesn’t it Henry? You hate them even more for that.”
“Hatred has nothing to do with it,” he said smugly. “It’s
common sense is all. And if the X-Men are killed in the meantime, well, sacrifices have to be made. Victory' comes at a price, Cooper. They know that.”
Val was fuming. She wanted to beat some sense into Gyrich, or at least enjoy trying. There was no doubt in her mind that she could do it too. But she wouldn’t. Unlike Gyrich, she followed orders.
“Colonel?” an overweight sergeant called from the front seat of a communications vehicle that had just arrived. “I’ve got the President on the line for Mr. Gyrich and Ms. Cooper. He wants to talk to you too.”
Tomko’s eyes widened, but he said nothing. She admired him. The man could roll with the punches, that was for sure. The chain of command had not been bent, but shattered. First he’d taken orders from Gyrich, out in Colorado. Then his Pentagon superiors had reasserted themselves. Now the President himself had stepped in.
“Ms. Cooper,” the President said, when they had gathered to face his image on the vid-comm unit, “I want to thank you for your assistance in this matter. So far, the X-Men’s cooperation has kept loss of life and property damage to a minimum—though,” he added, smiling slightly, “I doubt the UN would agree with me. In any case, without them, we might truly have had to use the most drastic of measures. They disabled the Sentinels, brought the war down to Magneto against the rest of the world.”
“No argument, sir,” Gyrich put in quickly. “But they aren’t going to be able to finish him off. I recommend that we—”
“Frankly, Mr. Gyrich, I’m not prepared to hear any of your recommendations at the moment. If I’d listened to you from the beginning, we’d be in a world of hurt right now,” the President said.
“Colonel Tomko,” he continued, “you are to wait for the outcome of the X-Men’s attack on Magneto. If they fail, you have authorization to use any means at your disposal to destroy him, regardless of collateral damage. Rely on Ms. Cooper as your consultant.
“Mr. Gyrich, you are to return to Washington immediately. The Director of Wideawake will be awaiting your arrival. Apparently, you have much to discuss, including what to do now that the Sentinels have been destroyed,” he concluded.
“But, Mr. President, it isn’t over here, I can’t just—”
“Gyrich, in case you missed it, you’ve been relieved of any responsibilities in Manhattan at this time,” the President said sharply. “You have your orders.”
The screen went dark. Val tried not to smile. She needn’t have worried. Gyrich stormed away immediately, boarding a helicopter that would start him back to D.C.
“That’s one troubled soul,” Colonel Tomko said, without a trace of the venom she might have expected from the man.
“The bad news is, he isn’t the worst of them. The world is full of people much more radical in their views on mutant-human relations than Gyrich. All that hate is going to tear us apart,” she said.
* * *
“Ms. Tilby, I’m—”
“Police Commissioner Wilson Ramos,” she finished. “I’m pleased to meet you, sir, and very impressed with what you’ve done here today.”
“Thank you,” he said. “But we’ve no time for mutual admiration.”
“What can I do for you?” she asked, slightly put off by his intensity.
“Gabi?” he said, deferring to an attractive girl standing just behind him.
“These men and women are mutants, Ms. Tilby,” the girl—Gabi—said. “They came here because of what Magneto promised them, but when they realized what was happening, they turned on him and did everything they could to help the X-Men.”
Trish admired the young woman, obviously one of the resistance fighters she’d heard about. She was courageous and yet obviously compassionate. But Trish thought Gabi seemed uncomfortable talking to her, and wondered if it was because she was a reporter. Reporters, she knew, had worse reputations than lawyers these days.
“What can I do for you, or for them?” Trish asked, quite sincerely.
Gabi hesitated, so Ramos stepped in.
“The military will take them into custody,” Commissioner Ramos said. ' ‘Who knows what might happen to them, then? They just want to go back to their homes, back to the world they knew, no matter how flawed. Some of them have kept their genetic differences a secret, and now they only want to slip back into their old lives.
“I think they’ve had a hard enough lesson the past couple of days, don’t you?” he asked.
Before Trish could answer, Gabi said: “Iceman told us we could trust you.”
Trish smiled. It pleased her to know that, no matter what had happened between them, the X-Men still trusted her. She thought of Caroline, and of Kevin, who had both died because they were good people, people who didn’t care about genetic differences.
“We’ve all suffered enough, I think,” she said finally.
With Ramos assisting, she gathered around all the members of the media that she knew. Together, and using the police officers who had backed Ramos up in the war, they spent the rest of the night, and well into the morning, shuttling mutants back out of New York. An underground railroad for the twilight of the twentieth century.
When Trish first thought of the analogy, it saddened her greatly to realize that it was all too accurate. Hate never went away, it only changed to take advantage of the times.
Later, she would try hard to believe that wasn’t true.
Sometimes, she could almost do it.
* - * *
One by one, Amelia Voght teleported the original Acolytes back to space station Avalon in Earth orbit. Senyaka, the Kleinstocks, Frenzy, all of them were badly injured. They would heal, but not in time to make a difference in the final battle.
It was all up to Magneto now.
* * *
Years had passed since Magneto had first faced these five, the original X-Men: Iceman, the Beast, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Archangel, who had been just Angel back then. He remembered the day well. He had been attacking the military base, Cape Citadel, when they came seemingly out of nowhere, offering a challenge he had never expected, from a man who had once been his closest friend. Surprise had been their advantage, as had his reluctance to simply kill them all, and Xavier as well, if necessary, to achieve his goals.
The stakes had risen since then, the consequences grown more deadly. The X-Men had grown in number, and become far greater warriors. But Magneto had evolved as well.
And they no longer had the advantage of surprise.
Cyclops continued to batter Magneto’s force shield with his optic blasts. Magneto admired his persistence, but thought the man foolish. It was clear his beams were no match for Magneto’s power. Although the constant attack was tiring him a bit, forcing him to constantly focus on his own defense.
The other four moved as one.
Jean Grey wrapped the Beast in her telekinetic web and lifted them both off the ground, rising toward the spot where Magneto hovered over the devastation. Iceman shot from the ground toward Magneto on a pillar of ice he was building beneath himself, then extended it into an ice slide that drove him forward. Archangel took to the air, diving and swooping back and forth, not giving Magneto an easy target.
The others were easy targets, though, and could be dealt with easily and soon enough. He turned his attentions to Archangel, who had already hurt him once. Magneto wasn’t going to allow that again. As Warren Worthington tucked back his wings and dived, Magneto held up a hand, waiting for Warren to fire his wing-knives.
In that moment, Iceman flash-froze a huge block of ice on the side of Magneto’s force shield, disrupting the field as if it were a window of ice on the side of the sphere.
Jean Grey dropped the Beast, who bounded off the ice slide Bobby Drake had left behind, and smashed through the ice-window, scattering shards of jagged ice and slamming into Magneto’s chest before flipping into a backward somersault and landing behind Drake on the ice-slide.
Archangel didn’t fire his wing-knives. If he had, he was too close now for Magneto to do anything about it. But instead, Worthington dived in at extraordinary speed, banked in at an angle, and flew past the hole in Magneto’s force shield before he had had time to repair the sphere. His right wing sliced out, through the break in the sphere, and cut Magneto’s side in several places.
Blood poured. His concentration faltered.
“No!" he cried.
Even as he knitted his force shield back together, Cyclops took advantage of the opening, and fired a full-power optic blast through the narrowing gap. It slammed into Magneto’s chest, and threw him backward and down. His concentration evaporated; he fell.
To one side, a row of windows exploded outward, powered by Jean Grey’s telekinesis, and the shards rained down on him, lacerating his scalp, face, and neck. The rest of him was protected by body armor, but if he hit the street, he would most certainly be dead.
That would not do. His destiny was one of greatness, not the ignominy of such easy defeat.
Several yards above the asphalt, Magneto gathered the Earth’s magnetic field around him and simply stopped his fall. He hovered there a moment, took a painful breath—Cyclops’s last attack had broken several ribs and blackened his body armor—then lifted himself back into the air. His force shield knitted itself back together, the sphere of green electric energy even stronger than before.
“Hit him again, X-Men, before he is fully recovered!” Cyclops shouted from below.
“Not to worry, Scotty,” Iceman replied. “We’ve got the bum on the ropes.”
But Drake had always been a foolish young man. His ice making propelled him forward, up toward Magneto. He was cocky now, foolish. Iceman thought it was over. And it was.
For him.
Magneto gestured, and magnetic power arced from his fingertips, shattering the ice slide. Iceman fell. He tried in vain to form a new slide beneath him, but Magneto struck him again, and Drake fell, disoriented.
“Bobby, go limp!” the Beast cried from below. “I’ve got you.”
“No,” Magneto said softly, “no, you don’t.”
The Beast bounded across Sixth Avenue, trying to get under his falling comrade. Magneto wrapped his magnetic tendrils around a yellow cab, lifted it off the ground quickly, effortlessly, and dropped it on top of the Beast.
Hank McCoy died without screaming.
Bobby Drake crashed through the windshield of the cab. Inside, the warmth of his blood began to melt the ice from his body.
“Oh, my God!” Jean Grey screamed. “Hank, Bobby! Scott, he’s killed them!”
Archangel screamed a curse, dive-bombing Magneto from above, apparently hoping for a replay of his earlier, successful attack.
It wasn’t going to work.
“You are appallingly stupid, Worthington,” Magneto said. “All of you. I never wanted you dead, don’t you see? But you have backed me into a comer. You have put me in a position where killing you is the only logical option.”
Archangel launched dozens of wing-knives.
Magneto reached out, focused, attuned his power to the strange metallic structure of Archangel’s wings, and then he pulled. Warren Worthington screamed, wailed, shrieked, as his wings were tom from his back.
While Archangel fell, Magneto didn’t even watch.
Only Grey and Summers were left, the loving couple in whom Xavier had placed the future of the X-Men. They were to be the parents, both literal and figurative, of the next generation of X-Men. His heirs.
“You fought well,” he said, almost kindly, as he floated down to street level to face them. “You had almost beaten me, there at the start. Teamwork has always been the X-Men’s greatest weapon. But your time is done. In a way, I will miss you.”
Grey was a beautiful woman, her red hair lustrous even in the neon-lit night. Her face was filled with loathing, but no fear. Her uniform in tatters, and yet she was still noble.
Summers limped slightly; blood ran from wounds on his chest and legs.
“If you don’t fight me, I will make it as painless for you as possible,” Magneto promised.
Grey and Summers bowed their heads.
The taxi slammed into Magneto from behind. His protective sphere held, but he was driven through the plate glass windows of a women’s clothing store and trapped beneath the yellow cab with whatever remained of Hank McCoy that still clung there.
Grey and Summers had chosen their mode of death. They would die like warriors. He was glad. Proud of them, in some way. And never more sorry to have to kill them.
“Enough!” he cried.
Magneto lifted a hand, and the taxi levitated above him in a green glow of magnetic power. Cyclops and Jean Grey entered through the shattered wall. Summers continued to let loose with bursts of energy from his eyes, but they were growing weaker. Grey tried to use her telekinesis to wrest the vehicle from his magnetic grasp, but Magneto resisted her. She was greatly weakened as well.
With the taxi as his bludgeoning tool, he crushed them both.
When Magneto walked out of the shattered store, past the vehicle and the corpses of several X-Men, blood still ran freely down his left leg from the wound in his side. Every breath brought new pain to his broken ribs. But he was triumphant.
Compared to the X-Men, a battle with the American military would be simplicity itself. He was determined to remake Haven, and to hold it this time. His mistake from the very beginning had been to rely upon the Sentinels. He ought to have done it himself from the start.
He stumbled slightly.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” a familiar voice said. Magneto looked up, held his chest in pain.
In the center of the street, amid all the debris, among the dead and injured, Professor Charles Xavier sat in his wheelchair. Alone.
“I’m glad you came, Charles,” Magneto said, coughing slightly, the pain in his chest intense. He wiped his fist across his mouth and was astonished to find blood there.
“You’re not doing so well, it seems,” Xavier said calmly. “I doubt you’re happy to see me.”
“No, but happy to know I can destroy you, now that you’ve saved me the trouble of finding you,” Magneto said.
“You were never a killer, Magnus,” Xavier said. “Look around you. A man of your intellect, your courage—couldn’t you have found another way than murder?’ ’
“My dream, my destiny... its fulfillment is worth any price.” Magneto coughed. “Haven will be a reality.”
“Don’t you see,” Xavier pleaded, and at last the man sounded like the Charles that Eric Magnus Lehnsherr first met in Israel all those years ago. “Your dream cannot succeed. The best you can hope for is to rule a world that is in the process of self-destructing. Your dream will destroy the Earth, not only for humanity, but for all.”
“I don’t believe that, Charles,” Magneto said. “We have been over this time and time again. I’m afraid, old friend, that we will have to agree to disagree. My way is the only way. You believe the same of your own dream, do you not?” “The difference, Magnus, is that my dream does not require force, violence, oppression, and murder,” Xavier said.
“Never mind the philosophical debate,” Magneto said. “Only time will reveal who was right, and I intend to bend the future to my own whims. But let’s talk about you, shall we? For a man about to die, for a man who has just seen his entire family killed, you seem awfully calm.”
“You just aren’t paying attention,” Xavier said. “I’ve never been more enraged, more disgusted, more disappointed. But it has nothing to do with the X-Men. In your right mind, you would never have committed such wholesale murder, especially of individuals you value so highly.”
Magneto frowned.
“You’ve gone mad, Charles,” he said. “They are dead. Their corpses litter the streets around you.”
“No,” Xavier answered. “You often dream of killing me, Magnus. Of killing the X-Men and so many others. But you aren’t a murderer. You would avoid such things unless your hand was forced.”
Magneto faltered. He was confused. Xavier’s words rang true. He had often felt driven to kill the X-Men, to kill Charles himself, a man who had once been his closest friend. But he never had. Had never intended to do so. Once, he had spent time with them, almost been one of them. In his own way, he cared for them, like an angry, impatient parent with naughty children.
But he had killed them. He had killed them all.
“I...” he began, and faltered once more. He didn’t understand.
“But, just in case I had misjudged you,” Xavier said, “I couldn’t possibly allow you the opportunity. The X-Men are, as you say, my family. I love them as dearly as any good parent.”
His mind was reeling, but Magneto knew what he must do.
“Enough of your hysterical babbling, Charles,” Magneto said. “The time has come. I’ve got to kill you.”
“You’re welcome to try,” Xavier said.
Then he stood up, out of the wheelchair.
Magneto could not contain his astonishment.
“You—you’re walking,” he said in awe.
Xavier walked swiftly toward him, stepping around debris and the still forms of human beings. When he reached Magneto, he balled his right hand into a fist, and hit him.
Magneto fell, mouth still hanging open in surprise. He reached up to massage his cheek where Xavier had hit him. He looked up, saw Xavier glaring grimly down at him.
Then he understood.
“You’re walking,” he said, eyes narrowing with hatred as the full realization of what Xavier had done began to sink in. “If you’re walking, that means we’re—”
“On the Astral Plane, yes,” Xavier admitted.
Everything went black a moment, and Magneto felt nauseous, his equilibrium shot. Then the world came back. He was standing in the middle of Sixth Avenue. Xavier was gone. Or at least, his body was gone.
Turn around, Xavier’s voice said inside Magneto’s head.
He turned.
A full-power optic blast hit him in the chest, driving him back. Lightning flashed from the sky, and only his own innate magnetism saved him from being electrocuted.
Cyclops hit him again, and this time he felt his ribs crack for real. A second bolt of lightning struck pavement not far from him.
A blue-furred hand grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around. Magneto tried to put up a fight, tried to get his hands up, to concentrate, to defend himself.
He wasn’t fast enough.
“You have wreaked enough havoc, stolen enough souls, for one day, Magnus,” the Beast said.
McCoy hit him, hard, and Magneto stumbled backward into a yellow cab. He lashed out blindly, and the Beast was tossed away by a lance of magnetic force. The taxi began to feel warm beneath him, and when Magneto looked down, he saw that it was glowing with energy.
Explosive energy.
“’Bout time we got you on de run,” Gambit said. “You in trouble now.”
Magneto tried to run, but only managed a few steps before the car exploded behind him, throwing him into the air. At great velocity, he slammed into something hard and unyielding. Nearly delirious, he looked up to see that Rogue was
holding him up by the shoulders of his body armor.
“See, sugar?” she said sweetly. “I didn’t even have to hit ya to take y’down.”
Then she let him go, and Magneto fell. And fell.
He hit something cold and slick, and began to slide. It was ice, he knew suddenly. Bobby Drake had saved his life. At the bottom of the ice slide, he rolled over, unable to get to his feet. A massive weapon was thrust into his face.
“Up,” Bishop snarled. “Get up and walk before I incinerate your head just for the pleasure of it.”
It was the disdain, the almost pitying disgust, that brought him back from the brink of unconsciousness. Mind beginning to clear, Magneto acted quickly.
Bishop’s weapon exploded in his hands. Magneto reached for him, focused down and down and down until he could sense the iron in Bishop’s bloodstream. He was going to just pull, just burst every blood vessel in the man’s body.
Then he remembered Xavier’s words, remembered his own misgivings about killing the X-Men. Bishop was a stranger to him, a recent addition to the team. He meant nothing to Magneto. But he meant something to Xavier, and to Xavier’s dream.
“Kill me if you like,” Bishop said, already weakened by Magneto’s tampering with his blood. “But learn from the future I represent. Learn that you can’t win by tearing the world apart.”
Magneto was sickened by a sudden, terrible realization.
He preferred Xavier’s dream.
The blood drained from his face and he let Bishop fall to the pavement. He preferred Xavier’s dream. Xavier was right. No, not right, just more human. Xavier’s dream might be preferable, he knew now that it was, but Magneto did not, could not, would not, believe that it would ever be realized.
Therefore, no matter what he wished for, Magneto knew that his own dream of the future was the only practical solution.
Still, he could not kill Xavier, the dreamer. He could not kill the dream, for it represented something he had never had, not since the day his family was murdered.
The dream represented hope.
The X-Men were the living embodiment of Xavier’s dream.
He could not kill them.
Magneto turned to walk away from Bishop, and Archangel’s wing knives slashed into him. paralyzing him where he stood. He fell to the street, bleeding, something broken in his chest, for real this time. Magneto was horrified by his sudden new understanding, of himself, of Xavier, or their eternal struggle with each other.
He had been defeated.
Haven was lost.
The empire was gone.
* * *
Wolverine saw Magneto go down, and knew it was his only chance. Maybe the last, best hope they would have to rid the world of the scourge of Xavier’s dream. Magneto was the mutant bogeyman that humans told their children stories about. His actions had fed the flames of hatred for years. With him gone, they could begin the hard road to peace that Xavier had always talked about.
Logan was no optimist, but he knew an opportunity when he saw one.
“Wolverine, no, he still has his powers!” Archangel cautioned.
Ignoring the warning, he loped across the street, even as the other X-Men gathered around behind him. All of them. His friends, his family.
Wolverine leaped onto Magneto’s chest. His claws slid out with a snikt, and he leaned down, breathing in Magneto’s face, whispering low so only he could hear.
“It’s over, now, bub,” Logan growled. “You’ve given us all a world o’ trouble, but the end is here. I’m gonna put you out of the world’s misery.”
He held Magneto by the throat with his left hand and lowered his right, claws pointed at Magneto’s heart. Adamantium would slice through the tyrant’s body armor like a razor-wire garrote through tender flesh. Then it would be—
“Back off, Wolverine,” Cyclops ordered.
Logan wanted to ignore him, but Summers had that tone about him. He was a Boy Scout, sure, but he was something else as well. Scott Summers was good. Simple as that. Wolverine didn’t like to take orders from him, didn’t like knowing Summers was the boss. But all the things he loved about the X-Men, all the things that made the team so important to him, all those things were represented by Cyclops.
“He’s gotta die, Scotty,” Logan said, low, menacing. “If we let him live, who knows what he’s going to do next? What then? He may win the next time.”
“Magneto is paralyzed, Logan, but not without power,” Jean Grey cut in. “Why hasn’t he lashed out at you, tossed you away? I’d say he’s waiting for you to decide what you’re going to do.”
Wolverine looked around at his friends, at his team, his family. Jean, so beautiful, so benevolent. Scott, every bit the hero, filled with impractical ideals and the guts to try to make them work. Ororo, his best friend, the noblest of warriors. Hank, brilliant and tender. Warren, lost and brooding. Bobby, who didn’t think life was so funny anymore. Bishop, terrified of the future. LeBeau, injured, hurting, trying his charming best to hide how badly he needed the X-Men. Rogue, always alone, even with those who loved her most.
In the back, silent, stood Cain Marko. He had not participated in the final attack on Magneto. Xavier’s intervention had made him back off. The Juggernaut hated his half-brother more than anything. He was a bastard, but even he had helped the X-Men to defeat Magneto.
Wolverine let out a long breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s gotta end now.”
Logan drew his arm back, prepared to drive his claws into Magneto’s chest. Magneto’s eyes flared with surprise and hatred, and Wolverine knew he had a heartbeat to act before Magneto lashed out at him.
“Attaboy, Wolverine,” Marko shouted. “Perforate ’im!”
Adamantium claws touched Magneto’s throat, but went no farther.
“Hell,” Logan snarled. “If Marko’s eggin’ me on, it can’t be ...”
He looked into Magneto’s eyes, saw the anger and the amusement there.
“Ah, hell,” Wolverine said.
Then the power burst from Magneto and Logan was whipped up and back, tumbling to the pavement thirty yards away. He was up in an instant, and he ran back to help the X-Men if Magneto was on the attack again.
But Magneto was in no condition to attack. The paralysis was wearing off, but the tyrant was on his knees, coughing blood.
With a crackle of energy, Amelia Voght flashed into existence by her master’s side.
“Lord Magneto,” she cried. “You are injured.”
“It will pass,” he said, then hacked and coughed again, before spitting blood on the street.
Magneto looked up at the X-Men, gave a small laugh and grimaced with the pain of it. Then he turned to Wolverine and hatred altered his features.
“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” he said. “Next time, Logan, I’ll tear you apart.”
“You don’t look so hot, bub,” Wolverine said confidently. “I’m not real sure there’s gonna be a next time.”
“Amelia,” Magneto said, then turned to look upon Voght, almost tenderly, “let’s go home.”
The air crackled again, and they disappeared in a flash of phosphorescent light. Voght had teleported them back to Avalon.
In the midst of death and devastation, none of the X-Men said a word. When Wolverine looked around again, the Juggernaut had gone.
Finally, it was over.
Charles Xavier sat in darkness in his study. His thoughts were a burden, his dream, his mission, unforgiving. There would be no rest, no respite, though the X-Men had fought their most precipitous battle, and emerged the victors.
The war went on.
Xavier had monitored all that had happened after he had allowed Magneto to return to reality from the Astral Plane. He had witnessed Wolverine’s attack on Magneto, had not interfered. That was his way, to let his people choose their own paths. Taking their choices away would alienate them from him.
He knew that Wolverine had done the right thing. In some ways, he was proud of Logan.
But there was another part of him that wondered, merely wondered, whether the world might not have been a far better place if Wolverine had given in to his primal urge.
Silently, Xavier vowed that the next time the X-Men faced Magneto would be the last. He would find a way to take Magneto out of the game for good, and he would do it himself, so none of the X-Men were left to feel responsible. It was the only way, he knew. The only way for the dream to come true, the only way to assure victory.
Charles Xavier had determined, not to kill, but in some way to destroy a man who had once been his best friend. What he had yet to consider, what he resolutely refused to consider, was what that decision would cost him.
* * *
On the observation deck of the space station Avalon, Eric Magnus Lehnsherr stood alone, gazing down at the planet of his birth with a heavy heart. He was no longer welcome on Earth. More than a man without a country, he was a man without a world. And he feared such would be the fate of all his kind.
Slowly, Magneto let out the breath he had been holding. He nodded slightly.
He had made one final effort to turn his dream of mutant
domination into a reality. The X-Men had opposed him, as he had known they would, but in the end, it was Charles Xavier who had won the day. Xavier had triumphed by doing the unexpected, by using his abilities in a way that Magneto had never imagined the man’s delicate philosophical bent would allow.
So be it. There would be now an entirely new set of rules based upon this latest engagement. Magneto would put all his efforts behind turning Avalon into the sanctuary Haven had not been allowed to become. A massive headquarters in which to build a conquering army. It might take years, but when all was at the ready, they would strike.
It was only a matter of time. Indeed, the ascendancy of mutants, of homo superior, was an inevitable product of natural evolution.
Put simply, Magneto planned to speed evolution along.
* * *
Valerie Cooper sat in the Oval Office staring across the long desk at the President. It was the first time she had ever met with the Commander-in-Chief without anyone else present. Despite her bluster and natural confidence, she was nervous.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” she asked.
“Yes. Thank you for coming, Valerie,” he answered.
“You are the President, sir,” she joked.
He didn’t smile. Not even a little. Val sat up a little straighter and erased the smile from her own face. Apparently, this was not going to be a cordial visit.
“New York is rebuilding, Valerie,” the President said. “There wasn’t as much damage as there might have been—I don’t have to tell you what might have been, do I? But the cost of rebuilding has been estimated at anywhere between fifteen and two hundred forty-seven billion dollars.”
Val blanched.
“I’d no idea,” she said.
“And when you leave you’ll forget I mentioned it,” the President ordered. “If we’re to keep peace between humans and mutants, avoid a civil war, such things must be downplayed as strongly as possible.”
“I understand,” she said.
“I know you do,” the President replied, with the first trace of warmth she had received from him. ‘ ‘What I want to know is, what happened to all the mutants who aided Magneto?” “They returned with him to Avalon, sir,” she answered. “Not the Acolytes,” he said. “What of the others, the recruits?’ ’
“Well, we do have several dozen mutants in custody for treason, Mr. President,” Val said. “But I don’t know if they’ll ever get to trial.”
“That’s not your problem,” the President said sharply. “Those numbers are. There were hundreds of mutants, nearly a thousand according to some estimates, helping Magneto in Manhattan. What happened to all of them?”
Cooper felt sick. Most of Magneto’s mutant allies had escaped. The President wanted to know where they went.
“Some left long before the military showed up,” she explained. “Those that looked human melted back into the landscape of the city. Those who didn’t had a more difficult time of it. The forty or so mutants who were captured all had mutations that were apparent. Not a single mutant who looked human was captured. I believe bias got in the way of our efforts sir.”
There was more to it than that, but Val wasn’t about to tell the President that Police Commissioner Ramos and Trish Tilby had helped many mutants escape. He just didn't need to know. She could be tried for treason if it were discovered that she knew of it. That was her risk, and she was comfortable with it.
“Ridiculous,” the President said. “But I don’t have a better explanation, so it will have to do. You may go.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Val said, and rose to leave. “Oh, one last thing.”
“Yes, sir?”
“It’s over, now,” the President said. “Everything returns to status quo. That includes your situation and your relation-
ship with the Director of Wideawake and with Gyrich.” “But, sir,” Val protested. “Gyrich was a—”
The President held up his hand, and Val’s protest faltered. He was the President, after all.
“Gyrich is my concern, Cooper,” the President said. “I will deal with him as I see fit. It isn’t your problem anymore, nor is it your business.”
Val wanted to scream, to demand Gyrich’s punishment. She knew better.
The best she could do was make a silent vow to herself that she would watch Gyrich very carefully in the future. He was a dangerous man.
* * *
Scott and Jean stood on the terrace of the Xavier Institute. They stood in silence for quite some time, idly holding hands.
“They’re doing well,” Scott said, after a bit. “Most of the injuries have healed. We seem to be getting back up to fighting condition.”
“Mmm,” Jean mumbled noncommittally.
“What is it?” he asked, and glanced at her, concerned. “Not all of our injuries were physical, Scott,” Jean answered.
“I know that,” he said. “But the apocalypse didn’t happen, Jean. What with Trish Tilby’s network coverage, the President’s public appreciation, and Magneto’s defeat, well, for the most part, mutant-human relations are no worse off than they were before Magneto decided to play emperor.”
Jean didn’t respond, only watching the stars with a growing look of concern.
Jean? Scott thought, knowing that she would telepathically hear him through the psychic rapport they shared. What is it, sweetheart?
It’s us, Scott. All of us. We went to war. We got a glimpse of the future that Bishop fears so much, and it made us brutal, as brutal as we have ever been, even in the worst of circumstances.
“After all that’s happened,” she said aloud, turning to look at him finally, meeting his eyes, “I just have to wonder what impact it’s going to have on each of us. Personally, I have been profoundly affected by the past few days. So many mutants responded so quickly to Magneto’s promises, despite his terrorist tactics, that I have to wonder what hope there is for us. For the dream.”
“Losing your faith? Is that what this is about?” Scott asked.
“God, no,” Jean said. “I believe with all my heart in what we do. But I wonder who will take up the banner and carry on when we can’t do it anymore. We could all have been killed, Scott. How can we be assured that the fight will continue, when all I want to do is gather up the next generation of mutants and bundle them off somewhere safe? They shouldn’t have to live like this.”
Scott pulled her close, and Jean let him. They stood like that a moment, the embrace more powerful than any words, any thoughts, they might share.
“If we do our jobs,” Scott said quietly, “if we fight hard enough, maybe the next generation won’t have to.”
They kissed, then, a brief and tender kiss, filled with promise.