X-Men; X-Men 2

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  The bed was basically splinters, the mattress and linens shredded. The floor was badly scored as well. His flailing hands had cut through the parquet to expose the joists beneath. He moved carefully as he shifted his weight to sit up and determined which sections of the floor were still capable of supporting him. He wondered a moment why no one had come to investigate, then remembered that he was the only adult left in the mansion. Considering the looks he’d gotten from the students, and the stories Rogue had no doubt been telling, any kids close enough to hear what had happened in here more than likely had sense enough to make themselves scarce.

  That made him grin, although there was little humor in it.

  He’d left his clothes on the far side of the room. They were untouched by his unconscious berserker outburst, but as he approached to get dressed he had to admit they didn’t look much better than the room. He made it a point to travel light. Anything that couldn’t be carried was expendable, and he wore his clothes to their limit before replacing them. The boots and the leather jacket had some mileage left; the jeans were near the end. That didn’t used to matter to him, because he never used to care what others thought when they saw him.

  He took his time under the shower, muttering darkly that the spray wasn’t as powerful as he liked. Truth was, what he liked was a fire hose at full pressure, enough to scour his flesh the way it could be used to flay paint off a wall. He started as hot as he could bear, which wasn’t quite hot enough to burn, then went for cold. That wasn’t satisfactory, either, for a man used to mountain rivers and lakes where the water was usually a degree or two shy of turning to ice. The immersion left him tingling all over, totally raw and feeling better.

  He’d known the moment he awoke what time it was. Another instinct, an uncannily accurate awareness of time and space and of his self. It was almost impossible for him to get lost, and he always knew immediately if something had changed around him while he was unconscious.

  Past 3:00 A.M.

  Silently despite the boots, he prowled the empty halls of the mansion, registering the photographs and paintings and antiques displayed along the walls even if his mind took no active notice of them. Quizzed, he could have described his environs perfectly, but the objects themselves meant virtually nothing to him. Tools he understood, but he had no use for ornamental artifacts.

  The sound of a television led him to an upstairs common room. He’d assumed at first that somebody had left it on, but as he approached he registered an active presence, early adolescent and male, and wide awake.

  Before going to bed, Logan had used Jean’s terminal to review the files of every student in the school. He told himself he was simply being responsible, but he acknowledged that it was also another way of getting close to her, which made him shake his head in dismay. This wasn’t like him, yet the impulses and the emotions were too primal, too powerful to be ignored. Or denied. Guaranteed trouble, no doubt about that. No hope of a happy ending. He didn’t care.

  Anyway, if Jean was going to entrust him with the kids here, he’d do his best to be worthy of it. That meant putting names to faces, and powers to names.

  This one was Jones. He had a first name but nobody used it, Jones included.

  He was sprawled on the couch, picking at a full bowl of popcorn. He’d watch the big plasma screen until he got bored, then he’d blink his eyes. The channel would obligingly change. Watch a while, repeat the process. It happened often. Jones had a low threshold of boredom.

  He noticed Logan’s reflection in the screen but didn’t look around. He didn’t much like what he was watching, but he wasn’t about to miss a moment of it.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

  “How can you tell?” Logan retorted.

  “ ‘Cause you’re awake.”

  No arguing with that ironclad logic, that’s for sure. Kid had a mind like a steel trap.

  “What’s your excuse?” Logan asked.

  “I don’t sleep.”

  “Your loss. You guys got any beer?”

  “Try the kitchen.”

  He did, and found one of the professional Sub-Zero fridges filled with all manner of healthy food: yogurt and greens, fruits and eggs and meats. Primarily organic, the produce of local farms and green markets. Minimal snack food. He grimaced, recognizing the influence of both Jean and Storm, and wondered how often the students made a break for the local Mickey Dee’s.

  The other one held fruit juice, mostly fresh squeezed, bottled water, and dozens of cartons of chocolate milk.

  Grumpy now, Logan shut the door,

  He wasn’t alone in the kitchen anymore. Bobby Drake sat at the table, methodically excavating a quart container of ice cream.

  “Hey,” the youngster said, making an effort to keep his voice steady. Logan had sensed him coming, but clearly Bobby hadn’t realized it was Logan in the room until the man had closed the refrigerator door, and by then pride wouldn’t allow for even the thought of flight.

  “Hey,” Logan replied offhandedly, poking through cabinets and the walk-in pantry. “Got any beer?”

  Drake’s laconic response brought an amused twist to Logan’s lips. “This is a school,” Bobby said.

  “So that’s a no?”

  Bobby smiled broadly and pointed to the fridge. “We have chocolate milk.”

  Logan growled and emerged from the pantry carrying a six-pack of Dr Pepper bottles. He pulled two from the cardboard holder and took a chair opposite Bobby. He made a small gesture with one bottle.

  “Want one?” he asked. When Bobby nodded, he added, “They’re warm.”

  Without a word, Bobby reached across to take the proffered bottle in hand. Air crackled and frost formed on his fingers and the fluted glass. He gently blew on the neck.

  “Not anymore,” Bobby said as he handed back the ice-cold Dr Pepper.

  Logan popped the cap and took a long swallow. Just the way he liked it.

  “Handy,” he conceded.

  Bobby gave a nod of acknowledgment as he repeated the process with his own bottle.

  “So,” Logan asked bluntly, with a sidelong look to the boy from beneath lowered brows, as he held up his right hand and, for show, popped the middle claw out, snikt, and in, snakt. Bobby’s response was a choked spit-take that sent soda bursting from his mouth and nose, followed by a desperate grab for paper towels as he struggled to regain his self-possession. Through it all, Logan hardly moved, apparently engrossed in an examination of his knuckles for any sign of the blade’s extension.

  When Bobby had settled back into his own chair, Logan gave him his most dangerous smile and administered the coup de grâce: “What’s with you and Rogue, eh?”

  Xavier didn’t like Mount Haven. It gave him a headache.

  He knew the reason: ultralow frequency harmonics whose pitch was specifically calibrated to inhibit any form of extrasensory perception, including his own telepathy. He could overcome it, of course; that was no problem. It just took a little more effort and exacted a more than equivalent cost. Far easier, while he was here, to keep his thoughts and his powers to himself.

  What disturbed him was the notion that the designers knew what they were doing. It suggested a far greater familiarity with mutants than most people realized. Over the past months since Magneto’s incarceration Xavier had made discreet inquiries to learn as much as possible about the government department responsible for the establishment of the prison, but painfully few of those questions had been answered. Perhaps the time had come to dig deeper.

  Following the security protocols, his wheelchair had been exchanged for a plastic counterpart back at the main entrance. Under escort, he and Scott had proceeded to the cell block for the final series of identity and security checks, this time under the supervision of Magneto’s warder, Mitchell Laurio.

  With the peremptory manner of a man used to instant obedience, Laurio waved Scott back from Xavier’s chair.

  “I’ll take it from here,” he said.

  Scott didn’t
like the tone, didn’t like the man, and for a moment the two men bristled with challenges.

  “Scott,” Xavier said quietly, forcefully, to defuse the tension, “it’s all right. I won’t be long.”

  “Nice coat,” Laurio said to Scott over his shoulder as he wheeled the chair toward the hatchway leading to the umbilical tunnel.

  “Thanks.” There was a little more of a flat, prairie Nebraska twang to Scott’s voice, the kind you expect to hear from a gunfighter marshall whose job was to bring order to a lawless frontier.

  “Nice shades.” Meaning “I’d like to take them away from you, pretty boy.”

  “Thanks.” Meaning “You’re welcome to try.”

  The hatch opened onto a small platform where both men had to wait while the tunnel unfolded toward the cell itself, suspended in the middle of the room. Even through the translucent walls of the tube, it was possible to get a sense of the chamber’s immensity, and especially the tunnel’s height above the floor. It was designed to make visitors uncomfortable as they realized their lives depended on the strength and integrity of the network of rings and cables that held the tunnel aloft. Most quickened their pace. Laurio slowed his down, his own way of emphasizing that he was in charge here. He was the man! He left Xavier alone with the prisoner.

  Lehnsherr had his back to Xavier and didn’t turn around when he spoke.

  “Have you come to rescue me, Charles?”

  “Not today, Eric. I’m sorry.” There was a quality of genuine regret to Xavier’s voice, as though someday that circumstance might change and there would be a rescue.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Lehnsherr asked, and he sounded genuinely amused.

  “The assassination attempt on the President. What do you know about it?”

  “Just what I read in the newspapers.” He turned to face his friend. “You shouldn’t even have to ask.”

  Xavier couldn’t hide his revulsion, he didn’t try, as he beheld the bruises on Lehnsherr’s face. The way the other man held his body revealed more eloquently than words that the damage wasn’t simply confined to his face.

  “What happened to you?” Xavier asked, aghast.

  “I . . . fell,” Lehnsherr said without irony. “In the shower.”

  “This isn’t funny!”

  “No.” For emphasis, a shake of that leonine head.

  “This is unconscionable.”

  “I’m a terrorist, Charles. An enemy of humanity. Given that status, and the circumstances of my capture, it’s been made repeatedly clear to me that I should be . . . grateful for my treatment.”

  “Told by whom?” Xavier demanded, already formulating his protests to the authorities. “Who is responsible for this outrage?”

  “You remember William Stryker?”

  “I haven’t heard that name in years.”

  “I’ve had frequent visits from him lately. His son, Jason, was once a student of yours, wasn’t he?”

  “More a patient than a student. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to help him. At least not the way his father wanted me to.”

  At the mansion, Jones donned a set of Bose headphones and cranked the volume, his flickering eyes changing channels faster than ever.

  The assault force closed on the mansion from three directions, two by silenced helicopters flying a map-of-the-earth profile that had the wheels of their Sikorsky Blackhawks literally brushing the treetops while the third unit used SCUBA sleds to approach from the lake. The teams had been handpicked by Stryker himself, culled from the finest special operations cadres on Earth—American SEALs and Army Rangers, Great Britain’s Special Air Service, Russian Spetznatz, German GSG-9, Israeli Pathfinders, and some Vietnamese. They’d trained for this op for months, not only familiarizing themselves with the layout of the mansion but also exhaustively learning how to protect themselves from the myriad of powers and abilities they might encounter. Now, with all the adult staff of Xavier’s School absent from the estate, the time had come to put that preparation to the test.

  In quick and practiced succession, as the first units rappelled to the ground from their hovering aircraft, all the mansion’s power and communications lines were interdicted and the security network neutralized. On command, the school would be completely isolated. Even cellular and radio communication would be off-line. From high overhead, an orbiting C-130 Hercules kept the entire estate under constant electronic surveillance, using thermal imagery to mark the position of the students. Only a couple of signatures indicated contacts who were awake. For the rest, it was already too late.

  In the observation booth at Mount Haven, Scott leaned closer to the phalanx of monitor screens. He’d seen the bruises, too, and Xavier’s reaction to them, but there was no sound.

  The guard at the console shrugged apologetically.

  “It happens,” he said, by way of explanation, not for Magneto’s condition but for the lack of audio.

  “Here?” Scott asked pointedly. “With this prisoner?”

  “We got backups on backups,” Laurio growled. “You got nothin’ to worry about. Joey, put in a call for a techie. Let’s get this fixed before Movie Star here makes a federal case.”

  Both guards laughed, and Scott felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. This was wrong, and he called out to Xavier with his thoughts as loudly as he could. He yelled inside his head, but the figure he could see plainly on the screen gave not the slightest indication that he heard any of it.

  Lehnsherr picked up a pawn from the plastic chessboard on his cupboard, then exchanged it for a knight.

  “And now you think that taking in the Wolverine will make up for your failure with Stryker’s son?”

  He placed the pieces back on the board and turned slowly to look at his friend.

  “You haven’t told him about his past, have you?”

  Reluctantly Xavier shook his head. “I’ve put him on the right path, but Logan’s mind is still fragile.”

  “Is it?” Lehnsherr obviously thought differently. “Or are you afraid you’ll lose one of your precious X-Men?”

  Xavier didn’t reply at once. He looked distracted, brow furrowing, head cocked slightly to the side in concentration as though trying to make sense of some noise or other right at the edge of his awareness. He blinked, marshaling his telepathic resources against the low-frequency harmonics and the realization that the headache that was merely infernal now would be brutal by the time he was done. But this increased psychic sensitivity didn’t give him the answer he sought. Instead it gave him insight into something far more serious.

  “Eric,” he cried, shocked at the scraps of memory he was perceiving and all their terrible implications, “what have you done?”

  “I’m sorry, Charles,” Lehnsherr replied, swinging his hand across the chessboard to knock down both kings at once. He was a proud man who had sworn long ago never again to become a victim. That he had failed, utterly, was a hard admission to make. “I . . . couldn’t help myself.”

  “What have you told Stryker?” About my school, Xavier thought desperately, about my X-Men? He recognized the source of that burr in his awareness that had been bothering him, and called out a warning to Scott in turn, with all his own considerable strength.

  “Everything,” Lehnsherr said with the simple finality of a death sentence.

  Both men reacted to a faint hiss from all around them. From apertures on every wall a cloud of mist could be seen flooding into the cell.

  Xavier had time for one last, desperate outcry—“Scott!”—before oblivion claimed him.

  On the monitors, Scott saw Xavier lunge forward in his chair, heard a faint echo of that call in his thoughts, watched his mentor collapse. It was over in seconds.

  “What the hell?” he cried.

  He looked up, heard an almost inaudible pop, and reacted to the impact of something small striking the middle of his chest. He didn’t know what it was, but that didn’t matter as his body reacted of its own accord to this sudden and unexpected a
mbush.

  He quickly registered a new presence in the room. A young woman, Asian, beautiful, wearing a guard uniform and carrying a dart pistol. That told him they wanted him alive. In that same instant, he also assumed that the dart hadn’t done its job, working on the presumption they’d want to neutralize him as quickly and efficiently as they did Xavier. It probably hadn’t been strong enough to penetrate his leather coat and his uniform beneath. He knew they wouldn’t make that mistake twice. He had to act first.

  All these thought processes occurred in the split instant it took him to complete his turn. He identified the woman as the primary threat, and he wasn’t overly gentle with his response. He tapped a control on the wing of his visor, the ruby quartz depolarized, and a beam of scarlet force exploded through the lens.

  For the woman, it was like being hit by a battering ram. He caught her full in the belly, doubling her over and hurling her into the wall behind her. The whiplash of the impact cracked her skull against a projection and she dropped to the floor, bloody and unconscious from a nasty scalp wound. The same beam shattered the pistol and knocked off her lightly tinted sunglasses.

  The guard at the console made a grab from behind, but Scott elbowed him in the face, used the same fist to deliver a sharp jab that dropped this adversary from the fight. That left Laurio and his partner.

  A snap shot of optic blasts took care of the partner, but Laurio proved a lot faster than Scott expected from a man of his bulk. He tackled Scott before the young man could bring his eyes to bear. Laurio had seen how Scott manipulated the beams, and he was doing everything he could to keep the mutant’s hands away from his visor. Without the power, Laurio likely figured this to be an easy fight.

  Now, though, it was his turn to be surprised. Scott’s slim and rangy figure was as deceptive in its own way as Laurio’s. There was a wiry strength to him that matched the guard’s, and a willing ability to take punishment. Laurio delivered a couple of hard shots to the body that were usually good enough to take the fight out of anyone, but all Scott did was wince with the shock and hit back just as hard.