X-Men; X-Men 2

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  They’d get over it real quick, John knew, if he gave them the chance.

  He had a better idea.

  While the two main streamers he’d manifested kept them occupied, he snaked a pair of much thinner strands along the surface of the lawn and underneath the cars to their tailpipes. This would be fun.

  He ignited both gas tanks at once, pitching the cars up into the air and flipping them over like they were sandbox toys. A third car had just then rolled onto the scene, and John grinned as he surrounded it with a cataract of fire. The driver threw the gearshift into reverse, but John melted the tires to the street. The cops tried to bail from the unit, only to reel back inside as he turned the flames around them into a wall so thick and hot they’d be crispy critters before they took a decent step. He saw one of them calling frantically for help on the radio.

  This would be the best. He’d let ’em cook slowly until the fire department arrived. He’d allow them the illusion of hope. Then—kaboom! Instant inspector’s funeral, film at eleven.

  Logan’s eyes fluttered as the shattered remains of the officer’s bullet fell from the healing wound. Rogue was right; his head was murder. This was a great power, no argument there. But the downside was that all the sensations of the process of natural healing were compressed into a fraction of the time and, as a consequence, hugely intensified. Yes, he had long ago learned to endure the pain; yes, it passed relatively quickly; but it always remained a brutal experience, to be avoided whenever possible.

  Some of the other cops, the mutants on the porch forgotten, tried to save the two who were trapped. John played with them a little, letting them almost break through before generating a flash furnace to force them back.

  He never felt Rogue’s hand on his shin as she grabbed him from behind. She wasn’t holding back this time, as she had with Bobby, trying to control a power that seemed as untamably rebellious as her name. She couldn’t have done better if she’d clipped him with an iron bar. Without any warning or preamble, John’s eyes simply rolled up in their sockets, and he dropped to the porch. The lighter skittered from his grasp.

  Rogue’s mouth twisted with disgust as his psyche rolled over hers like an oily tide. She wanted no part of it, so she called up a burst of flame within her own head to torch the images as they appeared.

  At the same time, now that she’d successfully imprinted his power, she held up a hand in a summoning gesture. She was breathing very hard, almost panting, in and out to the same metronomic pattern John established with his lighter. Her visual perceptions skewed far away from normal to embrace the infrared. Her world became defined by the heat it generated; she could actually see the primary states of being on a molecular level, she understood instinctively how to sustain and manipulate fire itself.

  The raw passion of it left her breathless, because by playing with this elemental force, she became it as well, tasting an insatiable hunger that made her want to ignite the whole world. It would be so easy—so much energy to torch a tree, so much for a vehicle, so much for a person. To her, they were all becoming mere objects, without any value or purpose other than as fuel. It was a temptation, a glory, she’d never known, nor imagined could even exist.

  But she had picked her name for a reason. Rogues don’t play by anybody’s rules unless they choose to, and they never ever do what’s expected of them.

  She called the fire home—not merely the streamers that John had initially created but all the conflagrations they’d ignited. On the street, the trapped car whose metal surfaces had been glowing red hot became amazingly cool to the touch. The other cars were likewise smoldering wrecks.

  For that instant, Rogue herself burned, shrouded in flames from head to foot, so hot—hotter than a blast furnace—that Bobby quickly pushed himself clear in a frenzied crab scuttle, dragging John with him, to keep from being blistered. The fire faded at once, without leaving a mark on the girl, although the porch wasn’t as fortunate. The planks beneath her feet were deeply charred, as was the roof overhead.

  She swayed a little with fatigue, and Bobby leaped at once to her side. John stirred as well, the shock of her imprinting wearing off. As he shook off the effects, he grabbed reflexively for his lighter and looked sour to find his flames all gone. No doubt he would have said something, done something, very foolish—except that Logan also got to his feet.

  The boys had never seen him shot before. They didn’t believe it any more than the watching cops did. They were so caught up in the aftermath of the moment they didn’t realize their danger.

  The cops knew now what they were up against. They were shaken to the bone. As far as they were now concerned, it was their lives or the lives of these . . . monsters. They were ready to shoot and keep shooting until the threat was over.

  That’s when Jean landed the Blackbird, maybe a minute ahead of schedule.

  Storm announced their arrival with a clap of thunder that shook the very air and a gust of gale-force wind that forced both cops and onlookers to flee from the scene. Jean made a combat approach, a vertical descent straight down to the street in front of the house. Between the wild weather and the sleek, dangerous-looking aircraft, the cops didn’t know what to think. Maybe the military, come to the rescue?

  As soon as the wheels touched down, Storm dropped the boarding ramp and beckoned Logan and the kids inside. Nobody needed to be told twice. The kids went with a rush, Logan more slowly.

  A flicker of movement revealed one of the cops from the porch, the one who hadn’t fired, who’d tried to keep the situation calm. He looked a mess, uniform scorched and torn, some hair burned off, soot all over his face, but he held his Glock in an unshaking grip, determined to do his duty.

  Logan looked at him, held his hands open at his sides to show they were empty, no claws. He didn’t want a fight, never had. But the implication was clear: You know now what’ll happen if one starts. Is that what you really want?

  They held the pose for a few seconds, but to those watching it seemed an eternity.

  Then, with a tremble, the cop shifted his gun barrel upward.

  Logan nodded and made his way up the ramp. Jean gave him a smile he’d never tire of; he gave her back a wink. Then, while he was giving the kids a quick once-over to make sure their harnesses were secure and that Rogue had come through her ordeal okay, Nightcrawler popped up from the row behind. Rogue and John yelped—too many shocks, too little time, they were way over their limit.

  “Guten Morgen,” Kurt said.

  “Guten Abend,” Logan corrected. “Who the hell—”

  Nightcrawler bowed, with a circus performer’s flamboyance. “Kurt Wagner, mein herr. But in the Munich Circus I was billed as ‘The Incredible Nightcraw—’ ”

  “Whatever. Storm?” he called.

  “Ready to roll, Logan,” came back from the flight deck.

  “Not yet! We’re one short!”

  Bobby stood in the hatchway. He hadn’t boarded yet; he was looking back at his house, thinking of the life he’d lived there, realizing that perhaps he could never go home again, not to the way it was. He’d never considered being a mutant in those terms, never imagined the consequences of possessing these fantastic powers might cost him his family.

  He knew at that moment that every memory of this house and his life here would be defined by this scene, the stink of burned rubber and metal and plastic, the groans of the wounded and the cries of the terrified, the sight of scorched wood on the porch where he’d played, the burn hole where the front door had been.

  He saw his parents and his brother in the upstairs window and knew their faces would remain to haunt him always. His father, shocked and hurt—not just by what had happened, but by his own sense of responsibility; if his son had come to this, then he had failed as a father. His mother, sobbing, like he wasn’t her son anymore but had become, now and forever, a stranger.

  He wondered if he could forestall all that by going back. Like that old Cher song said, “If I Could Turn Back Time”! He had
to laugh a little at the yearning: Where was a mutant with a truly useful power when you really needed one?

  He gave his family a final wave, and closed both ramp and hatch behind him.

  Descent to dust-off, maybe a minute. Engines shrieking, the Blackbird hovered above the rooftops for a few seconds, then oriented itself and shot up and away at an incredibly steep angle and a speed those watching couldn’t believe.

  The cop on the lawn holstered his weapon, then thumbed the call button on the walkie-talkie handset clipped to his shoulder to make sure the unit was working.

  “Dispatch,” he reported when he got them to calm down enough to hear him speak, more than a little amazed himself to discover that he could speak, “all units are down. We have casualties. We need fire and rescue units onsite, ASAP. Perps positively identified as mutants and hostile. They’re mobile, escaping aboard some kind of high-performance aircraft, heading west and climbing fast. You’d better notify Hanscom Air Force Base. If we want these guys, they’d better scramble some interceptors right now! An’ you tell ’em from us, good hunting.”

  But he had to wonder, as he picked his way across the lawn toward his ruined squad car, against adversaries like this, if the Air Force would have any better chance of success.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  Charles Xavier never tired of the view from his office.

  The main floor of the mansion was built up a level from the ground, creating a distinct separation between the reception areas of the house and those rooms and areas where the household staff actually did their work. He could turn from his desk and look out through the big bay window, across the tiled expanse of the terrace to the lawn and formal gardens beyond. In summer, the garden caught the eye, with its cavalcade of flowers and shrubs. In autumn, once the flowers faded and the leaves began to turn, the trees beyond took over, painting the distance in a riot of fiery orange, scarlet, and gold. In winter, if he arose early enough after a snow, he was usually assured of about an hour to look on the yard in an unmarked, pristine state, as nature intended. Then, of course, his students—regardless of age—erupted from the house to embark on an endless succession of sled races down the far slopes, the construction of various animals, and the obligatory snowball fights. By sunset of that first day, the snow had become so trampled it resembled a beach under the onslaught of midsummer bathers.

  The moments he cherished best, though, came in spring. The air, still crisp with the bite of a winter reluctantly passing, was filled with the promise of new life and new hope. The garden was scattered with dots of brightness and color, teasing the onlooker with hints of the coming glory.

  A breeze riffled the treetops, creating that shushhhing sound he loved, and stirred his senses as it brought a sharp and heady mix of smells through the open window. The pleasure was acute, but for some reason it brought to his face not a smile, but tears. In the midst of this natural wonder that was so familiar and usually so comforting, he felt an inexplicable and aching sense of loss.

  On the windowsill, he saw a chess set, arranged to suggest he was playing someone outside, although the terrace and grounds beyond—indeed, the entire school—were empty. No sound of voice, of movement, when usually the challenge was to create some small semblance of peace amid the constant clatter. Not even a hint of a stray thought.

  He’d never known such silence, nor felt so utterly alone. For as long as he could remember, there had always been someone or other’s thoughts to reach out to. He rarely did, he liked to be as respectful of the privacy of others as he was protective of his own, yet it was always reassuring to know they were there.

  Now, nothing.

  He looked again at the chess set. He was white, and he’d lost almost all his pawns. His king was in jeopardy, virtually checkmate, and while his queen remained on the board, she was sufficiently threatened to prevent her coming to his aid. His only effective ally was a knight.

  Thinking about the game made his head ache. Rubbing his temple didn’t help. Perhaps a walk . . .

  That made him pause.

  He was standing.

  He looked over his shoulder at his office, unwilling yet to make a move that trusted these newly functional limbs. He saw only normal furniture and a desk that made no provision for the presence of a wheelchair.

  Xavier closed his eyes, reaching deep into memory for the exercises he’d first learned to help him focus his abilities, the way he’d taught himself to stay afloat against the riptides of outside thoughts crashing against the shores of his own conscious awareness. Gradually, as he gained an increasing measure of control, he had crafted a series of psychic levees to guarantee the integrity of his own personality, no matter how many minds he interfaced with.

  Evidently, all those meticulously constructed defenses had been subverted. He didn’t like that and liked even less the struggle he went through to keep that anger from showing. Instinctively, he knew the source of his troubles.

  “Jason.” He spoke aloud, severely. “Stop it.”

  Jason had other ideas, so Xavier returned once more to his most basic mantras, building upward from that essential psychic foundation. The first thing to change was his own personal perspective. The view out the window lowered somewhat, dropping by more than one-third to the level of a tall man sitting in a chair. Carved stone morphed into Sheetrock, painted in institutional greens and beige and looking very much the worse for wear. Natural sunlight gave way to the passionless radiance of overhead fluorescents. His favorite things went away, to be replaced by his prison cell . . .

  . . . and the demented monstrosity that Stryker called Mutant 143 and who Xavier remembered as a quietly frightened little boy.

  There’d been only the one consultation. The boy’s DNA contained markers for the mutator gene, and Stryker’s contacts within the American intelligence community had led him to Xavier. He had no idea then that Xavier was himself a mutant, only an acknowledged expert in the field. And while Xavier could confirm that the boy possessed the requisite gene matrix and that in all likelihood he would be active, there was no way to determine the type and extent of abilities the boy would manifest. Xavier suggested admitting the boy to the school, but Stryker would hear none of that. He wanted the mutantcy removed. When Xavier told him that wasn’t possible, the other man lost his temper. He took away his son, and that was the last Xavier had heard of Jason, even though, in the years following, he made a number of his own discreet inquiries to try to determine what had happened. Finally word came that the boy had died.

  Sitting across from him, Xavier couldn’t help thinking, Would that he had.

  The buzzing in Xavier’s ears, radiating through his skull with the annoying fury of a bone saw, was murder, leaving his teeth bared and clenched in a perpetual grimace of pain. Stryker’s neural inhibitor, doing its job.

  The hell with that man, the hell with his toys.

  “Jason,” he said, speaking with care to avoid triggering further retaliation from the inhibitor, “you must help me.”

  No response, so he tried again. And again, his eyes meeting the mismatched gaze of the poor creature in the other wheelchair, ignoring the seething cauldron of emotions that were so nakedly displayed.

  “You must help me,” Xavier repeated, ruthlessly crushing the surge of elation he felt when the boy’s mouth began to move in concert to his words. No distractions, not till the job was done.

  “You must help me,” he said once more, and this time he could hear the words from Jason, a beat behind.

  Gradually, with each repetition, Jason caught up with Xavier until their speech was totally in sync.

  But at the same time, Jason’s withered arms were struggling upward from his lap, his face contorting with effort and with rage as he extended them toward Xavier. His chair moved forward as well, bringing him within reach. Jason’s hands came to rest on Xavier’s shoulders, those burning eyes, pulsing with inner light, filling his vision. He felt them on his neck, so little strength in them it
was more like being grasped by a toddler. Tears burned at the corners of Jason’s eyes, sympathetic counterparts squeezing from Xavier’s, but he couldn’t read the emotions behind them, save that they were powerful and primal.

  “Stand,” Xavier said simply, putting the full force of his will behind that single injunction.

  “Stand,” Jason repeated, same tone, same inflection. And they said it again until they were one.

  His mouth forming a great O of astonishment and protest, Jason levered his body forward and pushed himself erect. With disturbingly liquid popping sounds, the junctions on all his connectors pulled free of their housings, allowing cerebrospinal fluid to leak from the port in his skull. His legs were as spindly and apparently useless as his arms, but he gained his feet with far more ease. His hands rose with him, up from Xavier’s throat, to catch hold of the circlet of sophisticated electronics that rested on his head.

  A quick tug, followed by a clatter as the circlet slipped from Jason’s fingers to the floor below, and the buzzing was gone, the pain as well.

  Xavier exhaled in relief. “Thank you, Jason.”

  “Thank you, Jason” was the boy’s mumbled response.

  For Xavier, it was like staring down at the world from some Olympian height and watching all the lights come on. First one thought came to him, and then a multitude, the same way the first few drops of rain in spring herald the approaching monsoon. Most would drown in such an onslaught.

  For Charles Xavier, it was a rebirth. Of self, of purpose.

  He felt Jason touch him once more, gently, on the cheek, and used that momentary contact as the physical link to release the controls he’d established over the boy. He might as well have thrown a switch. All expression immediately faded from Jason’s features. As the boy lowered himself to his own chair, Xavier assumed that the passion he’d seen earlier was merely a reflection of his own.