chaos engine trilogy

by Unknown Author

  But there had been no escape, no solace, from the images that played and replayed on the projection screen of her subconscious: Magneto using his fearsome powers to tear apart the limousine containing Emperor von Doom and his wife, Ororo; Warren, ruggedly handsome, wings bright against the storm-tossed sky, swooping down to protect the tyrant; the blinding crackle of magnetic energy as it erupted from the mutant overlord’s hands, enveloping Warren; his limp body dropping to the ground, landing with a sickening, bone-crushing impact on the grass as she raced to join him; the smile that had won her heart twisting into a pain-racked grimace as he drew his last breath. No, sleep hadn’t been an escape—it had been a chamber of horrors.

  Betsy swept lavender-hued tresses back from her eyes, her gaze immediately falling upon the velvet evening gown. A wisp of a smile played at the comers of her mouth as she gently ran her fingertips over the material. It had been a gift from Warren—one among many she’d received during their time together—for her “Big Night”: a solo singing performance at the Von Doom Center for the Performing Arts, part of a celebration held in honor of the Emperor’s tenth anniversary in power. He’d convinced her to wear it in place of the red “lucky dress” she’d often worn at his New York nightclub, the Starlight Room, by explaining that if she was going to make an impression on the Emperor she should at least do it in a gown befitting the occasion. He’d been right, of course, but, as eye-catching as the dress was, it had been her singing that really caught the attention of von Doom—his, and that of the hundreds of attendees at the gala that night.

  But then, Magneto and his followers had attacked, and Warren had gone to von Doom’s aid, and—

  Betsy bit her bottom lip to stifle another sob—hard enough to draw blood—and angrily threw back the sheets, forcing herself to step from the bed before she could allow herself to collapse into another crying jag.

  “Lights—fifty percent,” she said hoarsely, throat raw from the screams that had awakened her. The citadel’s computer responded instantly, and the room filled with dimmed lighting—bright enough to see by, yet low enough that it didn’t cause her to wince as her eyes became accustomed to it.

  Now that she was awake, Betsy decided that the only thing to do was to get ready for the day ahead; by keeping active, by focusing on the mission, she’d at least be able to escape the memories that haunted her. She hoped.

  She stalked across the suite to the bathroom, the lights automatically snapping on as she stepped over the threshold. The lavatory was similar to that found in any home or apartment, its floor and walls tiled—the alternating blue and white pieces of ceramic forming intricate Celtic symbols—its facilities consisting of a toilet, sink, and shower.

  Betsy looked at herself in the mirror above the sink, and grimaced. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. Her lower lip was swollen where she’d bitten it. Her hair was tangled, wispy strands floating around her hair like cobwebs caught in a slight breeze. And at some point during the night, her mascara had gotten smeared from all the tears she’d shed. All in all, she looked more like a bloody purple-haired raccoon than a glamorous super heroine.

  “Oh, pants, ” she muttered. She waved a hand under the tap, activating the hot water, and cupped her hands in the flow so she could splash her face and wash away the ruined makeup. But then, gazing at herself once more, a slow smile came to her lips.

  She remembered being awakened one morning by the gentle prodding of Warren as he poked her in the shoulder, asking if she were awake in that playful, wolfish tone he affected whenever he was feeling particularly amorous. But, considering the celebrating they’d done the night before—in honor of a recent victory over Kuragari, the selfproclaimed “Shogun of the Shadows,” who had tried to make Betsy one of his followers—and the night of passion it had ultimately led to, every muscle in her body ached. It was hard to try and put even two coherent sentences together with her brain so addled. Nevertheless, she had rolled over in bed to point out that not everyone had the stamina of a man who could fly cross-country under his own power, only to see him draw back in horror, yelping sharply like an injured dog.

  For a world-renowned playboy, one would almost think he’d never seen a woman with her makeup in disarray; not that she’d remembered to take it off, of course, given the heat of the moment. But then, he’d smiled, and commented that he’d never slept with a raccoon-woman before, and . . .

  And this time, Betsy couldn’t stop the tears that ran hotly down her cheeks. Her knees buckled, and she slipped down to the tiled floor. As her sobs mixed with the sound of running water, she wondered when the ache in her heart would finally subside.

  It was going to be a bad day.

  Charles Xavier knew it—the weight in the pit of his stomach told him so. The last time he’d felt that weight was only a few months ago, when he and Piotr Nikolievitch Rasputin—the Russian-born, armored X-Man whose codename was “Colossus”—had been trapped in the realm of a nightmarish creature called the Synraith. True to form, his stomach had been right: it had been a bad day.

  A very bad day.

  And so, the Professor now sat on the edge of his bed, buttoning his starched, white dress shirt while he listened to the gurgling of his abdomen, staring out at the forces of Creation that endlessly roiled beyond his windows, wishing the new day wouldn’t come . . . yet knowing it was unavoidable.

  He’d slept poorly, his dreams peppered with images of Warren in happier times, and what might be happening to his other students with Magneto in possession of a Cosmic Cube: Scott’s force beams raised to such an intensity that his body could no longer contain the energy; Jean’s mental powers turned against her, driving her insane; Nightcrawler’s teleportational powers run amuck, until the strain ultimately tore him apart; Gambit’s kinetic energy making him avoid touching anything or anyone, for fear of causing them to explode; Rogue’s “power-leeching” ability gone wild, her slightest contact instantly killing whomever she was near. And as for Wolverine . . .

  Well, Logan had already undergone painful torture at Magneto’s hands once before, when the mutant overlord used his powers to seize control of the adamantium that coated the feral X-Man’s skeleton—and draw out every ounce of it through Logan’s pores. If it hadn’t been for Wolverine’s mutant healing factor, the process would have killed him. But Magneto would be well aware of that, and find some way to compensate for that ability—perhaps by killing Logan, only to resurrect him time and again, never allowing him the peace of oblivion.

  As Xavier knew so well, Erik Lensherr was a man with an extremely vivid imagination . . .

  But the fate of his “advance team” was not the only thing on Xavier’s mind. What also troubled him was the unknown—specifically, what might have happened to the other members of the X-Men, the ones left on Earth 616 while he and his hand-picked group had gone to aid Roma against Opul Lun Sat-yr-nin. Psylocke’s arrival on the citadel made it clear that she and Warren—Archangel—had been “restructured” to reflect the changes made to the world under Doctor Doom’s rule, but what had become of Colossus and Shadowcat? Iceman and the Beast? Storm and Marrow? The members of Generation X? And where would they fit into the schemes of Erik Magnus Lensherr?

  Xavier felt the threads of his life unraveling. For so long, he had fought the good fight, striving constantly to find a way to bring peace between mutants and humans; sacrificing any chance of having a normal life, a normal relationship, as he focused all his energies on that dream; putting at risk people who trusted him with their lives, who believed in his cause even though they were despised for what they were; watching as friends, even family members died around him. But now, apparently, it had all been for nothing—the lives lost, the battles won, the selfless dedication. Once Magneto had placed his hands on the Cube, Charles Xavier lost his chance to realize his own dream, lost the opportunity to create a world of equality, based not on the genetic composition of an individual, but on their strength of character, their willingness to use their talents—whe
ther superhuman or not—to usher the races into a new Golden Age.

  But now, though, there would only be Homo superior in control, with mankind looked upon as something akin to offal; a reversal of the situation before then, true, but Xavier had always believed in a peaceful solution to the problem. He never would have resorted to forcibly changing the world to get his way.

  Would he? '

  Here, then, was the real question that puzzled—and deeply disturbed—the world’s greatest telepath as he considered it. When he figuratively stepped back to look at the “big picture,” was he bothered by what Magneto was doing with the Cube ... or jealous that Erik had succeeded where he had failed . . . ?

  A soft chiming sound interrupted his thoughts; he had never been so grateful for an interruption.

  “Come!” he called out.

  The door to his suite irised open, and Psylocke stepped inside. She was dressed in her X-Man uniform: a dark-blue, high-necked, one-piece outfit that resembled a swimsuit, with matching thigh-high stockings and gloves that ran from her upper arms to her wrists; a red belt was cinched around her waist, its buckle a stylized “X.” The Professor realized that, since she hadn’t been wearing it when she came aboard, Elisabeth must have used the citadel’s matter replicators to create it. Her hair was drawn back in a severe ponytail, allowing the lights of the room to accentuate her Asian features . . . and the blood-red, J-shaped tattoo that ran down the left side of her face, from her temple to just below her cheekbone—a side effect of her acquisition of the mystical powers of the Crimson Dawn. Equally as red as the tattoo were her eyes; it appeared he hadn’t been the only person unable to sleep.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you, Professor,” Psylocke said quietly.

  Xavier smiled warmly as he tucked his shirt into his dark trousers. “Not at all, Elisabeth. I was just getting ready for the day.” He reached for his tie. “Do you feel up to talking?”

  Psylocke nodded. “Yes, but. . . first, I’d like to apologize for my earlier behavior. You were right: I shouldn’t have attacked Doom like that. It was wrong, and pig-headed, and unquestionably stupid.”

  “Unquestionably,” Xavier said. His smile widened. “Apology accepted.”

  That seemed to relax her. “Thank you.”

  The Professor nodded and completed the Windsor knot in his tie, then shrugged into his dark blazer. He cast a quick glance at his hov-erchair, broadcasting a mental command to its computer system. The machine floated forward from its place by the observation windows, the top half of the chair quietly swinging open on well-oiled hinges to reveal the padded leather seat within. As the device pulled alongside the bed, Xavier grabbed hold of its sides and hauled himself into the seat.

  “Now, then,” he said to Psylocke as he settled in, “why don’t you fill me in on the situation . . .”

  He hadn’t liked what he’d heard.

  Psylocke had told him everything—well, at least as much as she knew from the brief contact she had had with Jean Grey’s mind, when the redheaded X-Man linked with Elisabeth in an effort to restore the latter’s memories, which had been “rewritten” by the Cube to reflect the changes in von Doom’s world. She knew of the team’s mission to find and correct the anomaly that threatened to unravel the omniverse; of their alliance with Magneto (a particularly upsetting revelation for the Professor); of the events leading up to Warren’s death, though that took some effort to get through. She described her confrontation with von Doom in his hidden chamber beneath the White House, where the armored dictator had admitted to the flaw in the Cube’s construction and the drain it now placed on its owner’s life-force in order to maintain his chosen reality. And then, hesitantly, she talked about his offer to resurrect Archangel in exchange for her promise to take possession of the Cube under his command, so that he could continue ruling the planet without the fear (her word, obviously) of having his remaining life-force taken away.

  She wouldn’t say if she had agreed to his terms.

  Instead, she related the final moments, when Magneto and his acolytes had burst onto the scene, just as the X-Men were on the brink of victory, handily defeating the heroic mutants and claiming the Cube for their leader. Then, von Doom’s hand had clamped around her ankle, and—

  “—here we are,” Psylocke concluded.

  “Indeed,” Xavier murmured.

  She watched him in silence for a few moments, obviously waiting for him to say something further. When he didn’t—mainly because his brain was still processing the information she’d provided—she softly cleared her throat. “Any suggestions as to what we should do next?” she asked.

  “Not at the moment,” Xavier admitted. “And you’re certain von Doom has no cure for this reality-cancer he’s created?”

  Her lavender eyes sparkled with mischief. “I could always go down to the infirmary and ask him again.”

  “No, that’s quite all right,” the Professor replied. His voice was laced with just enough of a warning tone to let Psylocke know she was treading on dangerous ground.

  The conversation once more lapsed into silence.

  “You know,” Psylocke remarked quietly, “on my way over to talk to you, I was thinking about all the times Warren and I spent together; all the fun we used to have.” A melancholy smile slowly tugged at the comers of her mouth.

  “Warren mentioned a few of those occasions in passing,” Xavier said. He smiled warmly as he saw his student blush. “Nothing risque, however—he was always too much the gentleman for ‘locker room talk.’ ”

  Psylocke nodded. “Always. Even in the most uncomfortable of situations.” She gazed past the Professor, as though looking through a window, into the past. “I remember that one night, when I was singing down at the Den of the Night Wolf in the Village, while Warren was stuck entertaining Doom’s little toady, Sebastian Shaw—”

  Xavier raised an inquisitive eyebrow. ” ‘Entertaining’?”

  “Oh, you know what I mean, Professor—show him the sights, take him to a Broadway show, introduce him to a celebrity or three . . . ” Psylocke paused. “Oh, that’s right. You weren’t there for that.” She shrugged. “I’m certain you would have enjoyed it, though.” A bright smile lit her exotic features. “You should have seen the look on Shaw’s face when Warren brought him to the club, and I sat on his lap and sang ‘I Want to be Loved by You.’ ” She chuckled softly. “I thought the poor dear was going to have a stroke, his face had turned such a ghastly shade of red.”

  Xavier nodded, but said nothing. From what he knew of Elisabeth’s background, however, she had never been a nightclub singer in New York’s Greenwich Village; in fact, she had never even been to the United States before joining the X-Men a few years ago. He was aware of her time as a much-sought-after fashion model—when her name had often been spoken in the same breath with such notables as Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, and Mary Jane Watson—and her short and thoroughly unenjoyable time as a Psi Division member of S.T.R.I.K.E., the British spy agency equivalent of America’s S.H.I.E.L.D., not to mention her first brush with super heroics, when she had filled in for her brother, Brian, as Captain Britain—a well-intentioned but nearly fatal action that had cost her the eyesight of her original body at the hands of the superpowered assassin Slaymaster.

  But a career as a cabaret singer? Never.

  And as for Warren having to “entertain” Sebastian Shaw for an evening? Preposterous. The man was the notorious Black King of the equally infamous Hellfire Club, a hedonistic organization that believed in the pursuit of pleasure above all other endeavors in life. An organization that had caused more than its fair share of trouble for the X-Men over the years, from subtle psychic manipulation to outright blatant attempts at killing Xavier and his students, including Warren. Like Magneto, the upper echelon of the club were mutants bent on world domination, though Shaw and his cronies preferred pulling puppet strings from the shadows rather than do anything that would draw attention to themselves. No, Warren spending time with
Shaw would never have happened in the real world—it must be a fabricated memory; a remnant of the Cosmic Cube’s influence.

  But why, then, did Psylocke fail to see that as well? There had been no hesitation in her voice, no sign of confusion as she’d told her story, so clearly she must regard the event as part of her life experiences.

  Xavier frowned. If, indeed, Jean had restored Elisabeth to her proper self, why should she now be casually speaking of such an evening as though it had been real? Could von Doom still be controlling her mind without her knowledge, even though he’d been separated from the Cube? Or could she be allied with the tyrant, as part of the agreement he’d offered, but about which she refused to discuss further?

  A far more troubling question, though, now crept into his thoughts: Could Psylocke truly be relied upon to complete the mission? Knowing the amount of grief she must be bottling up inside over Warren’s death in order to concentrate on the work ahead, combined with whatever promises she might have made to von Doom, her ultimate goal might not be to deactivate the Cube, but to use it herself. As much as the Professor hated to admit it, Elisabeth had had her moments over the past few years when she’d been working under her own secret agendas, sometimes to the detriment of her fellow X-Men.

  Could she be doing the same right now?

  Xavier’s lips set in a thin, firm line. He could ask her straight out, but he knew she’d deny having any ulterior motives; she’d probably act surprised at his question, say her duties as an X-Man took precedent over her private life, that she’d never even considered using the Cube for personal gain, whether or not that involved the possible restoration of her lover, and how could he ever think that she would? And unlike Elisabeth, the Professor was unwilling to claw his way into her mind in order to find out the truth.