Marvel Classic Novels--X-Men and the Avengers

by Greg Cox

  “The vat?” she guessed. Hellish memories of floating helplessly in that tank full of liquid, breathing through a respirator while molten adamantium poured into her bones, lingered in her mind. It seemed like a bizarre nightmare now. Had Wolverine actually endured that ghastly experience for real?

  Judging from the somber look on his face, apparently so. “Picked up on that, didya?” he said gruffly. “My apologies, kid. That’s nothing I’d want anybody else to go through.” He glared angrily at the sterile test chamber surrounding them; Rogue decided she wouldn’t want to be the guilty party behind these experiments when Wolverine got his claws into him or her. “This whole screwy setup reminds me too much of that other place—that’s gotta be why you got hit with those particular memories. I keep having flashbacks to the bad old days.” He gave himself a searching look in the mirror, perhaps taking note of his red-streaked eyes or the flecks of foam still clinging to his chin. “Can’t say it’s helping my self-control any.”

  Rogue couldn’t blame him, not if he’d really suffered through the nightmare of the tank. She felt awful for invading his privacy, like she’d accidentally stumbled onto one of his most intimate and traumatic secrets. “Logan,” she whispered sheepishly, “you know ah didn’t want to do that to ya.”

  “We can spend the whole day apologizin’ to each other, Rogue, and it won’t get us any closer to findin’ a way out of here. From where I’m sittin’, you got nothin’ to be sorry for.” A bushy black eyebrow lifted as another thought occurred to him. “Tell me the truth, kid. Did they test you the same way they tested me?”

  “Uh-huh,” Rogue admitted. How could she forget the blades slicing into her flesh, the red-hot laser stripping away her skin? The torture instruments had been powerful enough to overcome even her own natural invulnerability. Thanks to Logan’s amazing healing powers, no scars or burns remained on her much-abused body, but the whole grisly exercise had been one of the most sadistic ordeals she’d ever had to endure. “It was pretty bad, as I guess you know, but it stopped when your healing factor went away.”

  “Sounds like we’ve both got some debts to settle,” Logan said darkly. He looked past her to the sarcophagus to her right. “What about the Witch?” he asked. “How’s she holding up?”

  “Ah’m not sure,” Rogue confessed. “They’re doin’ somethin’ to her, ah think, but ah’m not sure what.” The blindfolded Avenger had seemed caught up in her own private struggle ever since Rogue managed to shake off the last vestiges of Wolverine’s personality and powers. “She just keeps whisperin’ the same thing over and over. Something ’bout keepin’ away the black, whatever that means.”

  Even now, Rogue heard the other woman chanting hoarsely, “Not the black, not the black, not the black …” The Scarlet Witch was obviously being subjected to some sort of ordeal. She was breathing hard, her chest heaving like she was running the last leg of a marathon. Her voice sounded exhausted. Rogue could smell her sweat and fatigue. “Not the black, not the black …”

  A momentary flash of resentment surged through Rogue. How come the Witch was getting off easy, with some sort of fancy psychological torture, while she and Logan got literally cut up and burned? Why did that snooty Avenger rate special treatment? The anger passed as Rogue realized she was reacting irrationally. It wasn’t Wanda’s fault that their unknown captors had reserved a different torment for her. Besides, whatever the Witch was going through right now, it was no picnic, that was for sure.

  “See what you mean,” Logan muttered, his ears lifting a tad. Recalling the extraordinary senses she had so recently borrowed, Rogue figured that Wolverine could smell and hear the Avenger’s distress better than she could. “Hey, Witch … Wanda!” he shouted. “You still with us?” When she didn’t answer, he called out again. “Pagin’ the Scarlet Witch. Sound off if you can.”

  “Be quiet!” Wanda yelled vehemently, acknowledging her fellow prisoners for the first time in hours. There was an unmistakable edge of desperation in her voice. “Don’t distract me!”

  It was too late, however. The damage had been done. Wanda let out an agonized scream as her body convulsed; it looked to Rogue like the other woman was being electrocuted. The Witch’s back arched as much as her restraints allowed, then she sagged limply within the wired sarcophagus.

  “She’s out cold,” Logan pronounced. “I can tell by her heartbeat.” Rogue figured that the electrifying shock, combined with exhaustion, had caused the mutant Avenger to pass out.

  Even in her unconscious state, however, Wanda could not escape her trials. Her lips kept murmuring the same pitiful refrain, “Not the black, not the black …”

  What did they do to her? Rogue wondered. Whoever they are.

  She had only a few seconds to sympathize with the Scarlet Witch’s cryptic plight before her own steel casket began moving again, this time toward the Witch instead of Wolverine. Rogue’s sudden fears were confirmed when the right wall of the sarcophagus slid downward in tandem with the left wall of Wanda’s coffin.

  “No!” she protested loudly. “Not again! Not with her!” Not content to have forced Rogue to steal Logan’s mind and powers, if only temporarily, their unknown jailers clearly now intended to have her absorb the Scarlet Witch’s essence as well. Rogue flinched inwardly at the prospect. Wanda already hates me for what I did to Carol Danvers, she despaired. Now I have to do the same thing to her! She could only pray that the transference would not prove as permanent as it had in Ms. Marvel’s case, but how could she prevent that when she didn’t have any control over what was going to happen—and for how long?

  Rogue had often wished for a mutant power she could turn on and off at will, like Storm or Iceman had. Hopelessly, she yearned for that impossible blessing again as concealed mechanisms carried her ungloved hand closer to the Scarlet Witch. The curved metal shell enclosing the Witch’s left hand rolled to one side, revealing Wanda’s five fingers resting within a hand-shaped depression; with the Avenger unconscious and unable to employ her mutant sorcery, the unseen experimenter had obviously judged it safe to partially liberate her hand, although a metal band still stretched across her slender wrist. Rogue knew too well the danger of exposing the Witch’s warm skin to her own thirsty touch.

  “Please forgive me,” she pleaded as her hand brushed against Wanda’s.

  Their minds and memories merged, proving strangely compatible. Rogue found herself experiencing a sort of inward double vision, with faces and feelings from Wanda’s past superimposed upon her own remembrances, two different lives intersecting and amplifying each other, like synchronized waves that meld together to create a single wave greater than the sum of its parts…

  * * *

  HER name is Rogue/Wanda, and she still pines for the lost days of her idyllic childhood in the backwoods of Mississippi/the countryside of far-off Transia. Tragedy consumes that childhood one sunny afternoon/smoke-filled night, and she finds herself homeless and on the run, until Mystique/Magneto offers her refuge within the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The Avengers/X-Men become her enemies, which feels wrong somehow, even as she tests her newfound mutant powers in battle after pointless battle. The life of a super villain unsettles her conscience, and in time she rebels against her ruthless mother/father, finding a new life with the X-Men/Avengers. A different kind of loneliness awaits her, though, as she loses her heart to an enigmatic thief/android whose flesh/soul she can never truly touch.

  Then the puppets/garments attack, pecking at her face and suffocating her, and she wakes to find herself here, entombed in a mechanized sarcophagus and subjected to cruel and seemingly senseless experiments. Knives cut her, lasers burn her, and a clicking white ball bounces endlessly around a spinning disk divided into equal slices of red and black…

  * * *

  “NOT the black!” Rogue shouted as, in reality, a metal visor slid into place above her eyes. Metal shells enclosed her hands, immobilizing her fingers. In the darkness into which she had been abruptly thrown, a virtual roul
ette wheel began spinning before her eyes. A sibilant voice whispered in her ears, but Rogue required no explanation of the test ahead, all she needed to know had already been extracted unwillingly from Wanda’s recent memories. She recalled the pain in store if she failed as vividly as if she already experienced it many times before.

  “Not the black,” she repeated, unsure where Wanda’s memories ended and her own ordeal began. They all blurred into a single continuous struggle to keep that accursed ball from landing in the wrong place. “Not the black…”

  “Stop it!” Somewhere in the background, Wolverine howled in rage, growling every syllable. “What are you doing to her? Stop it, you heartless sleazes!” His words sounded more like snarls with every moment, until she could barely make out what he was saying. “Stop it—or I’ll tear your heart out!”

  Who is he roaring at? she couldn’t help wondering. Who is on the other side of that mirror?

  * * *

  “INTERESTING,” the Leader declared. “Very interesting.”

  Once, a lifetime and an identity ago, he had been merely Samuel Sterns, a common laborer making his way through a mediocre and uneventful life with only the limited intelligence and perceptions of any other human drone. Then a fortuitous accident exposed him to the transforming power of gamma radiation, expanding his brain and intellectual capacity until it became increasingly obvious, at least to his superlative awareness and understanding, that he had evolved into the destined master of the earth. On that day, Samuel Sterns had died, shed as readily as a monarch butterfly discards its humble chrysalis, and the Leader was born.

  Now the mutated mastermind sat behind the one-way mirror, thoughtfully contemplating the unfortunate subjects of his current experiment. His enlarged cranium, swelling above his brow like an overinflated beachball, rested against the padded back of a futuristic metal chair. The bulbous lobes of his mega-brain were riddled with pulsating convolutions. Pale green skin, the sickly shade of some nocturnal fungus, marked him as a product of gamma radiation. Thin, bony fingers were tented above his lap as he watched the experiment progress, clad in a seamless orange labsuit not much different than those worn by his unwilling specimens. The control room was dimly lit, the better to provide an unencumbered view of the highly informative proceedings in the test chamber. The only illumination came from a lighted control panel that stretched before him like the keys of a grand piano. An elegant experiment such as this was like any great musical masterpiece, he reflected; both required a genius composer adept at both conception and execution.

  Beethoven would be proud, he decided, as a recording of the German composer’s Piano Concerto No. 5 played softly in the background. On the other side of the glass, three captured mutants displayed any number of intriguing behaviors and characteristics. Yes, this is a true scientific symphony.

  “Note,” he pointed out, with the slightly pedantic air of one who preferred delivering lectures to exchanging dialogue, “how the stress of his captivity is triggering an atavistic regression in the subject called Wolverine. The physical and/or psychological trauma appears to be inducing a marked devolution in the subject’s personality, as the facade of civilization gives way to the barely-sentient animal at the core of his identity … not unlike a certain muscle-bound green primitive of my acquaintance.” He stroked the thick black mustache above his lip, his sole concession to mundane vanity; in fact, it was the only body hair that still sprouted upon his body. “Interesting indeed.”

  “So you say,” his partner said gruffly, standing in the shadows behind the Leader’s chair. His voice was deeper and more guttural than the Leader’s epicene tones. “For myself, I needed no further evidence that these primates are little more than beasts.”

  As though you are significantly more evolved, the Leader thought sarcastically. He did not bother looking at his belligerent and impatient ally, whom he privately considered his intellectual inferior. But, then again, who wasn’t? As long as his new associate contributed resources that were useful to their cooperative enterprise, the Leader was willing to maintain the polite fiction of an equal partnership.

  “In any event,” the Leader stated, “our plans are developing precisely as I predicted.” He consulted his wristwatch, easily adjusting for the time difference between his present location and the probable whereabouts of his various pawns. Ah, yes. Exactly time for the inevitable altercation.

  “Observe,” he instructed.

  A greenish-white finger pressed a touch-sensitive pad on the control panel. The transparent window before them turned into a large television screen, their view of the three prisoners hidden behind pirated satellite feed from CNN. The Leader nodded smugly, totally unsurprised by the live footage depicting a three-way battle between the Avengers, the X-Men, and his longtime nemesis, the Hulk.

  “You see,” he boasted. “Right on schedule. As I calculated, the clues we left behind when your operatives appropriated our three subjects have drawn their various heroic peers into a pointless contest of arms, while simultaneously inconveniencing the Hulk as well.”

  “You worry too much about that brute,” his partner scolded. “He is even less intelligent than the average human.”

  “Never underestimate the disruptive efficacy of naked force and aggression,” the Leader replied. His mood darkened as he recalled the innumerable instances when Banner and his monstrous counterpart had interfered with the Leader’s plans for world domination; if not for the untamed violence of the Hulk, he would have long ago achieved all his grandest ambitions.

  True visionaries have always been opposed by the mindless vandalism of the barbarian, he consoled himself. The Hulk’s persistent obstruction of my plans only confirms my ultimate destiny as the precursor of a new age of enlightenment.

  “I have learned through hard experience that the Hulk must always be factored into my computations.” He gestured toward the screen. “This prearranged imbroglio will serve to keep the infernal creature busy while we continue with our preparations.”

  Besides, he admitted silently, beyond all valid logistical concerns, there is an undeniable satisfaction to be found in making that misanthropic monster’s life even more tumultuous and tormented than it is ordinarily. Thankfully, the Leader was not so highly evolved that he couldn’t appreciate the simple pleasure of revenge. All the world is against you again, Banner. How delectable.

  The Leader savored the sight of the assorted heroes pitted against each other in a contest he provoked. Niagara, he decided, provided an attractive and enjoyably hazardous setting for such a diverting spectacle. “There’s something to be said for gladiatorial entertainments,” he commented, “especially when conducted amidst scenes of breathtaking natural splendor. I must remember to include a few such coliseums in any world of my devising.”

  On the screen, the Hulk tore the Vision asunder, then consigned his separate parts to the less-than-tender mercies of the plunging cataract.

  Behind the Leader, his hard-to-please partner grunted in approval. “Good,” he declared bluntly. “Not so long ago, that android came between me and an enemy of my people. I was unable to punish him for his impertinence then. It is well that he suffers now.”

  “Yes,” the Leader agreed, glad that something had met with his surly confederate’s approval; he was getting weary of hearing the other constantly complain. “It’s a shame we can’t count on them destroying each other completely, but the odds are dramatically against such a delightful resolution. Their innate heroism and foolish reverence for human life will doubtless prevent them from inflicting mortal injuries on each other, although, where the Hulk is concerned, you never can tell. He can be surprisingly ruthless when he wants to be, which is usually at the worst possible moment.”

  As if to prove the latter point, the camera zoomed in on the top of the Falls, where the Hulk appeared seconds away from hurling Captain America to his death. The Leader leaned forward in his chair, a malicious smile revealing his eager anticipation. Captain America was a re
lic of a bygone past; he had no place in the brave new world the Leader intended to create.

  “Hmm,” he said, “this looks like an unexpected bonus. Still, regardless of the final body count, all of Earth’s super-powered defenders are living on borrowed time. Once our plans reach fruition, we will eliminate every one of our enemies from the face of the planet!”

  He did not need to look behind him to know that his dour partner shared the same glorious vision. “But what if all these warriors join forces?” the other asked, his metaphorical cup half empty as usual.

  “Not if, when,” the Leader conceded. That, too, was inevitable; super heroes had a regrettable tendency to put aside their differences in the end. “Have no fear. That is where you assume a personal role in the saga I have scripted, one that will strike at the very heart of our mutual foes…”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THANKS to Keith R.A. DeCandido, for agreeing that Iron Man and his Avenging comrades should meet the X-Men, and the Hulk, too. Thanks also to Marvel, for letting me play with their characters, and to all the various comics writers and artists whose decades of work have given me so much to build upon. And to Julie Bell, for the exciting and inspirational cover art; Sumi Lee, for tips on military hardware; and Marina Frants for yet more scuba advice.

  Finally, as always, thanks to Karen and Alex, just because.

  GAMMA QUEST

  Book Two

  SEARCH AND RESCUE

  Greg Cox

  “But search the land of living men,

  Where wilt thou find their like again?”

  – Sir Walter Scott (1808)

  “If there are people in need—mutate, mutant, human

  or otherwise—the Avengers are there!”