chaos engine trilogy

by Unknown Author

  Marty looked over his shoulder, half expecting to find the woman standing on the other side of the cage. Thankfully, she wasn’t. “Yeah, I’d like to talk to somebody in the newsroom,” he said to the operator. “I think they might be interested in a story I’ve got to tell. It’s all about a major TV actress—who’s married—who’s doin’ the nasty with a guy—who’s not her husband—in the hotel where I work right now. ” He grinned broadly. “I’ll hold, if you want—I don’t think the lovebirds are goin’ anywhere anytime soon....”

  7

  SHE FELT almost like a new person.

  The shower had been an absolute godsend after that unex-. pected visit to the garbage scow; she hadn’t even been bothered by the brown-colored water that spewed from the showerhead when she first turned the faucet. Now squeaky clean, lightly perfumed, and with a fresh shade of lavender applied to her hair, Betsy was ready to face the world once more . . . even if it wasn’t really her world. Tucking a new silk blouse into the leather miniskirt she now wore, Betsy slipped into a pair of black leather high heels and headed for the door, grabbing her sunglasses along the way. She didn’t really want to leave her belongings in a room with a lock on it that a child with a safety pin could open, but carrying around a bagful of weapons all day had become a burden—the muscles in her back had already started to protest, and her hands were reddened and tender from the straps cutting into her palms. She could do with some time off. Besides, she and the Professor would only be gone for a few hours while they did their research—the bag should be safe enough under the bed until she got back. And if anyone really wanted to steal from her, she had been nice enough to leave her previous outfit draped across a weatherbeaten armchair in a corner of the room—that should fetch a few dollars. She doubted anyone would want something that odorous, but then, this was New York. . .

  She stepped into the hallway to find Xavier also exiting his room. His skin was still a little rosy from the heat of the shower, and he had changed into a light gray linen suit, white shirt, and dark blue silk tie. “Ah,” he said. “I was just coming over to see if you were ready.” “As ready as one can be, considering the conditions of this place.” Betsy waved a hand toward the worn carpeting—it may have been burgundy in color when it was laid down, but it was hard to tell from the decades of dirt and food ground into its fibers—and the faded, peeling wallpaper. “Really, Professor—I know you wanted to avoid the more expensive hotels that would have required credit cards, and I know you want to avoid running into a situation that might make Magneto aware of our presence ... but I think this is going too far.”

  “Oh, it’s not so bad,” Xavier replied, “once you get past the cracked plaster and roach droppings. I’ve stayed in far worse surroundings. Remind me sometime to tell you about my lodging experience in Marrakech— you may wind up thinking this place is a paradise by comparison.” Betsy wrinkled her nose in disgust. “No thanks—this experience is quite enough for me.” She looked up and down the corridor. “So, now that we’ve showered and changed our clothes, what’s the next plan of action?”

  “Intelligence gathering,” the Professor replied. “We need to know how this world functions, where Erik is keeping himself, and how we might be able to get to him.”

  “Well, I doubt this cozy little hostel has Internet access,” Betsy said, “so our best bet is a library or some sort of cyber-cafe. And given the neighborhood we’re in, there are probably a half-dozen of the latter within walking distance.”

  “Excellent,” Xavier said. “I’m in the mood for a latte and a bit of web-browsing.”

  They walked to the elevator, and Betsy pressed the down button. A few moments later, they were rewarded with the familiar sound of gnashing gears that heralded the car’s arrival. Thankfully, no one was inside, so Betsy was able to squeeze into the tiny space left unoccupied by the bulky hoverchair. She pushed the button for the lobby, and the car began its slow descent.

  “I hope that desk clerk has gone off-duty,” Betsy commented. “Did you see the way he was staring at me?” She shivered. “I was beginning to feel like a prize mare on the auction block. I’m amazed he didn’t ask to see the condition of my teeth!”

  “I would imagine the notion of a woman of your obvious beauty coming into such a disreputable place such as this is unheard of,” Xavier said. “And, given the poor man’s physical condition, having such a woman carelessly throw double-entendres his way must have been a shock.” He frowned and shook his head. “ ‘I feel ever so dirty.’ It’s a wonder you didn’t send him into cardiac arrest.”

  Betsy flashed that wicked smile of hers again, and chuckled in a most sinister fashion.

  Xavier sighed. “It seems I can’t take you anywhere . . .”

  With a jolt, the elevator came to a halt at the first floor. Poorly greased rollers moved along their tracks, opening the door—and plunging the two X-Men into madness.

  Lights flashed. People screamed. Momentarily blinded by the explosion of a strobe close to her face, Betsy staggered back, shielding her eyes with one hand while she fumbled in the breast pocket of her blouse with the other to grab her sunglasses.

  “W-what’s going on?” she stammered as she bumped into the back wall of the elevator.

  “It appears we’ve been discovered,” Xavier said morosely.

  Blinking rapidly to clear her vision, Betsy began to make out a group of hazy shapes huddled in the lobby, all pushing and pulling and straining against one another. It reminded her of the strange creatures she had glimpsed lurking in the shadows of Roma’s throne room. As her eyesight slowly returned to normal, she realized these shapes were actually dozens of people holding photographic and television cameras— and they were all calling her by name.

  “Reporters . . . ?” Betsy muttered.

  Beyond the legions of press and paparazzi, out on the sidewalk, was what seemed to be a street full of people. Like the news folk, they pushed and fought for the best position that would allow an unobstructed view of the hotel interior. Someone pressed up against a picture window pointed in Betsy’s direction, and the crowd cheered.

  Close the door! Xavier told Betsy through the mind-link.

  She stabbed at the button, and the door started moving. But before it could separate them from the howling mob, a dozen arms slipped between the frame and the padded emergency panel that prevented the door from trapping passengers halfway in or out. The door opened wide, and the press corps poured in, pinning the two X-Men against the wall.

  “Betsy! What brings you to New York?” asked a man with thinning hair sculpted into a hideous comb-over—a vain attempt to hide his increasing baldness.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in New Zealand right now, working on your series?” a woman with collagen-injected lips demanded, shoving a microphone in Betsy’s face.

  Another man pointed an accusatory finger at the Professor. “Is it true that this is the man you’re sleeping with?”

  The question was like a slap in the face. Startled, Betsy looked to Xavier—he seemed to be in as much a state of shock as she.

  “Does your husband know you’re having an affair?” the reporter asked, following up his first unexpected question.

  Betsy started. “Husband?”

  “Get back, all of you!” Xavier roared. Much to Betsy’s surprise, the mob complied, moving back a couple of steps. Elisabeth, get us out of here!

  But what about—

  If Erik doesn ’t know we ’re here by now, he will soon enough, Xavier interjected. Now, do as I say.

  All right, Betsy replied, and triggered her ’porting ability. This should make for some interesting headlines . . .

  It also made for interesting television, especially when the broadcast was seen by members of the teaching staff at the Lensherr Institute for the Genetically Gifted.

  Unlike Charles Xavier’s Westchester-based facility, this school was not only public knowledge, but after Jean Grey and Scott Summers’ appearance on Viewpoints only a few days
past, its web site and toll-free number had been flooded with an astonishing number of requests for more information from parents of mutant children. The institute was located on Ellis Island, near the New Jersey shore at the entrance to New York Harbor, and the buildings now housing its classrooms and dormitories had originally been used—from 1892 to 1954—for processing newly-arrived immigrants who had come to America in search of a new life. Erik Magnus Lensherr, his wife, Magda, and their daughter, Anya, had been among those “huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” as Emma Lazarus’ 1883 poem “The New Colossus”—inscribed on a plaque on the nearby Statue of Liberty—had described these travelers arriving on a foreign shore. And when Lensherr eventually became the world’s leader, he had commanded his “subjects” to transform the island into a learning center for his kind, partly from a sense of nostalgia, but mostly to send the message that the institute was a gateway, as Ellis Island had once been, to an amazing and wondrous new life; this entry point, however, would be used solely for ushering the genetically gifted into a wondrous new world.

  A world controlled by the one mutant who had made it all possible.

  Classes ranged from the basics—reading, writing, and arithmetic— to advanced Physical Education and science levels, all of which were designed to help the students understand what they were and how they could best reach their potentials in using their new powers. Based on their individual abilities, students were taught to fly, or run faster than the speed of sound, or teleport short distances with just a thought, or even read minds.

  And then there was the final test. Ten levels below the Main Building was an area called the “Danger Room,” where the most advanced students were expected to show how well they had learned to control their abilities during their time at the institute. It was a two-hour session in the Danger Room at the end of four years that separated the graduates from those who would be left back. An inexperienced mutant, the faculty often pointed out, was a danger not only to the mutant, but to the rest of society as well, and a student who didn’t learn that lesson the first time would not be allowed to graduate until it had fully sunk into their minds.

  Dozens of powers to work with; thousands of young minds to mold. It was a terrifying responsibility, but Lensherr knew just the mutants for the job. He had personally selected the staff members—why he had chosen the people he had was a topic he refused to discuss—and was pleased to see how well they responded to his orders, and how successful they were in keeping the spirit of his dream alive.

  Cyclops. Phoenix. Nightcrawler. Rogue. Storm. In the past, they had all sided against him as members of the X-Men, causing him no small amount of trouble over the years. But now, their codenames forgotten, their identities reconstructed, their minds reconditioned, they worked for Magneto—their greatest enemy—and followed his instructions with blind obedience . . . because he willed it to be so. And the Cube had made it all possible.

  Ah, he often wondered, what would Charles think of his most trusted followers now . . . ?

  The answer would not be long in coming.

  It was just after four o’clock that the day became really interesting. Classes had ended. And as the students filed back to their dorm rooms to eat and begin their homework assignments, some of their teachers headed for the staff lounge to unwind, catch up on small talk with their peers, and watch a little television before heading for their apartments on the other side of the island, or traveling to Manhattan for a quick dip in the nightlife.

  Acrobatics instructor Kurt Wagner was one of those teachers. In his mid-twenties, dressed in a skintight uniform—consisting of a red bodysuit, over which were worn purple gloves, boots, and trunks—he was one of the more unusual members of the staff, and it had nothing to do with his clothing, since all the teachers wore the same type of outfit. It did, however, have everything to do with the fact that his hair and the short, fuzzy fur covering his body were colored a deep blue, his hands and feet only had three digits each, and he possessed a three-foot-long, prehensile tail, which had grown from a spot just above his buttocks. Combined with bright yellow eyes and sharp, white fangs, his overall appearance was less like that of an educator, and more like that of a demon set free from hell.

  Oddly enough, it was a look that made him incredibly appealing to women—something about “good” girls being attracted to “bad” boys, he’d once been told. He’d never understood that particular psychological aspect of dating, but he did know that his sinister appearance seemed to fill all the requirements. And, even though he was really the epitome of an old-fashioned gentleman—well, who was he to disappoint a lady and her expectations?

  He was a rare catch, indeed: suave, well-mannered, highly romantic, he had an adorable German accent, and, most importantly, he was single. What woman didn ’t want to bed him?

  Well, for one, there was the woman he found sitting on the leather couch in the lounge. Boot heels resting comfortably on the teak coffee table in front of her, a bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips in her lap, Rogue—no one had ever been able to find out if that was her real name—thought Kurt was cute, maybe even sexy, but she just wasn’t attracted to him; and he, being a gentleman, never pressed the point.

  Like her blue-furred peer, Rogue wore a red-and-purple uniform, but hers was complemented by a worn, brown leather aviator’s jacket, befitting her title as “Flight Instructor” for those students capable of defying the laws of gravity, but still getting used to their powers. Her waist-length mane of dark-brown hair—its color offset by a large patch of white that started just above her forehead and ran down the center— was in a state of disarray, which was to be expected, considering the amount of time she spent during the course of the day zooming through the skies above the island with her classes.

  Shoveling another handful of chips into her mouth, Rogue chewed noisily, her attention focused on the flatscreen television mounted on the wall across from her. There was some sort of courtroom scene being played out in the broadcast she was watching, the cameras focused on a female judge who was yelling at one of the two litigants standing before her.

  “Hey!” the judge barked. “You think I was bom yesterday?” She pointed to her forehead. “Does it say ‘STUPID’ here?”

  “Catching up on the latest adventures in jurisprudence, meine freunde?” Kurt asked with amusement.

  Rogue turned from the set and smiled wearily. “Hey, Kurt—how’d it go today?” she asked, her normally throaty Southern drawl sounding unusually flat. Picking up the remote from the cushion next to her, she lowered the volume on the television. As he drew closer, Kurt could see her features were strained, a dull light shining in her eyes. She looked exhausted.

  “Better than it did for you, it seems,” Kurt replied. He sat down beside her. “What happened?”

  Rogue brushed broken pieces of chips off her uniform and, groaning softly, shifted position to face him. “Well, a couple’a the kids decided to have a race t’see who was faster when my back was turned. I didn’t even notice they were gone ’til they were almost halfway t’Manhattan, an’ then I had t’go an’ chase ’em all the way to Battery Park.” She reached up to rub the area between her shoulder blades; the pain was apparently severe enough to make her bite down on her bottom lip and grunt. “Got so focused on gettin’ my hands ’round their scrawny little necks I didn’t even see that freighter cornin’ down the Hudson ’til it was too late.”

  Kurt raised an eyebrow in surprise. “I would not think something as large as a ship would be difficult to miss.”

  Rogue glared at him. “I told you I wasn’t payin’ attention.”

  “So you did,” Kurt said hastily. He knew all too well that flight was not the only mutant power his friend possessed: she was also virtually indestructible, and had enough strength that, if she became angry with him, could easily result in him being thrown through a wall—and into the harbor. “Are you in much pain?”

  “It only flares up when I’m movin’ around,” Rogue said t
hrough gritted teeth. “Or breathin’.”

  Kurt smiled warmly, and waved his hands at her, indicating she should turn around. “May I?”

  Rogue grinned and nodded gratefully, then moved to turn her back to him. Kurt began easing the walnut-sized knots out of her back with the skill of a trained masseur. She moaned softly in appreciation.

  “So, what did your hellraisers say when you finally caught up with them?” Kurt asked.

  “ ‘We’re so sorry, Mistress Rogue,’ ” she said in a whiny, nasally voice. “ ‘We’ll never do it again.’ ” She snorted. “Like I’d believe the little polecats after this.”

  Kurt’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ” ‘Mistress Rogue’?”

  “Yeah,” she said wearily. “It’s somethin’ the boys started callin’ me, an’, y’know, I’m gettin’ kinda tired of that crap. Makes me sound like a dominatrix or somethin’.”

  Kurt playfully hung his head over Rogue’s right shoulder to gaze down at the latex-like uniform she wore, and the way it hugged her considerable curves. “I do not know where they’d ever get that idea.” Rogue laughed. “You’re one t’talk, Kurt Wagner. I’ve seen the way

  the girls in your classes look at you when you’re hoppin’ all over the gymnasium.” She reached back to poke his knee with her thumb. “That outfit don’t leave a whole lot t’the imagination, either.”

  “Yes, I know.” Kurt sighed dramatically. “But if I am to be objectified by young women, then it is a burden I am willing to bear for the good of the school.” Still working on her shoulders, he shifted his gaze to the flatscreen television. “What exactly are you watching now?” Rogue turned her head in the direction of the set. “Hey, that ain’t Judge Judy.”

  A ruggedly handsome, sandy-haired man sitting at a news desk had replaced the courtroom scene. In the upper right-hand comer of the screen, near the reporter’s head, was a publicity photograph of a woman with light purple hair and a jagged, J-shaped mark across the left side of her face, dressed in what looked like a blue swimsuit, and holding a pair of samurai swords, the blades crossed in front of her chest to form a razor-edged “X.”