chaos engine trilogy

by Unknown Author

  Turning on his heel, the Major walked off, trying to ignore the smell of death that filled his nostrils.

  WELL, THAT could have gone better ..Elisabeth Braddock commented dryly.

  _ A groan forced its way through her lips as she struggled to

  sit up. It was taking considerable effort—her leg muscles felt like soft taffy, her arms appeared to have lost their strength, and her head ached as though some tremendous weight was pressing down on it.

  And that, she dimly realized, was because there was a tremendous weight pressing down on it—a large stone block that rested on her skull, pinning it to the ground on which she lay.

  How she’d gotten into this particular situation she couldn’t exactly recall, but she knew it would come to her... eventually ... once her head stopped throbbing ...

  Her problems began, as far as she could remember, only a few days past, when her fellow members in the mutant super hero group called the X-Men returned to Earth from a mission offworld. They’d been gone for a month, helping an old ally—Roma, Supreme Guardian of the Omniverse—with a troublesome other-dimensional tyrant named Sat-yr-nin. Short on humanity but disturbingly long on hostility, Sat-yr-nin was the dictator of the fascist Great Britain of a parallel reality, and a woman who had caused the X-Men—and Betsy, in particular—quite a bit of grief over the years. For this mission, it had been decided by Professor Charles Xavier, the leader of the X-Men, that only a handful of his students should accompany him; Betsy and their other teammates would remain behind, to watch over the Institute for Higher Learning he ran in New York’s Westchester County.

  Wishing the group “good luck” before they departed was the last memory she had had of the X-Men, or even the life she led with them, until their recent return. The time between the two events was a jumble of conflicting recollections and psychological digressions. All she had known was that, while she was still a purple-haired, Japanese-featured British woman in her twenties, she was no longer a mutant—no longer genetically gifted with the telepathic abilities that had made her such a formidable member of the team. Somehow, those memories had been stripped from her mind, replaced with new ones of a world without the X-Men, or even most super heroes for that matter. A world in which Victor von Doom—the armored super-villain known as “Doctor Doom”—had expanded his dictatorship of the small, Eastern European country of Latveria to encompass the entire planet, and the X-Men’s greatest enemy, Magneto, had become a fugitive. How any of this had been accomplished hadn’t been of concern to Betsy. In this Brave New World of thought police, mutant revolutionaries, and enforced global harmony, she had been far more focused on her career as a cabaret singer.

  That was another aspect of this bizarre reality in which she had found herself: Of all the possible career choices she might have considered in her life, being a smoky-voiced chanteuse warbling love songs and show tunes for a roomful of nightclub attendees wouldn’t have even made it onto her list. True, she had made an appearance or two at the Starlight Room, the midtown Manhattan hot spot owned by her boyfriend, Warren Worthington III—who, as the winged Angel, was one of the founding members of the X-Men—but she’d never thought of pursuing it on a professional level; she preferred thinking of herself as a gifted amateur.

  Still, a singer is what she had been, and it was as a singer that she was personally chosen by Arcade, von Doom’s Minister of Entertainment, to perform at a Washington, D.C., gala celebrating the Emperor’s tenth(!) year in power. The invitation had come as a total shock, but she hadn’t hesitated in jumping at the chance to entertain a worldwide television audience that could be counted in the billions (viewing the broadcast being a mandatory requirement for all citizens of the empire).

  But then she’d started hearing voices, and life didn’t seem quite so rosy ...

  It wasn’t a sign of mental illness, she later came to realize, but rather a slow return of her telepathic abilities—the “old” Betsy Braddock re-establishing her identity, forcing her way out of the subconscious to take control of her mind and body. Unfortunately, the process had been a painful and increasingly disturbing one—for a while, she’d begun to fear she was going mad. And yet, despite this unwanted complication in her life, she still managed to put on a performance that brought the house down-—both figuratively and literally, though the latter was no fault of hers . . .

  Having returned to Earth to find von Doom in charge, the X-Men formed an uneasy alliance with Magneto and launched an attack on the arts center, just as Betsy concluded her last number. In the chaos that followed, she and Warren fled the battlefield, any memories of their involvement with the team still eluding them.

  That didn’t mean they weren’t still heroes, in their own way. Shortly after their departure, von Doom and his bride, Ororo—who, under normal circumstances, would have been fighting alongside the X-Men as the weather-controlling mutant Storm—had also exited the hall, only to be confronted by an enraged Magneto. Without pausing to consider his own safety, Warren had flown to aid his emperor, only to be cut down by the mutant overlord. His body crashed onto the grassy fields of the Washington Mall, giving Betsy only a few last moments to comfort him before his life slipped away. He died, never knowing he’d sacrificed himself for a Doombot—a robotic replica of the dictator. The real von Doom had been safely holed up in a subbasement of the White House, as Betsy discovered a short time later.

  Before that revelation, however, came her reunion with the X-Men, and the restoration of her memories through the aid of Jean Grey—the fiery-haired telekinetic called Phoenix. It was Jean who finally freed the real Betsy from the darkest comer of her own mind, releasing the woman warrior the X-Men knew better by the codename “Psylocke.”

  But the reunion turned out to be short-lived, as Betsy disappeared from the war zone, transported against her will to von Doom’s sanctuary. It was there she learned of the means by which the tyrant had seized control of the planet: The Cosmic Cube.

  Originally created by the scientists of the international terrorist organization A.I.M.—an acronym for Advanced Idea Mechanics—the Cube was a device no bigger than a jack-in-the-box—but what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in power. Containing the energy of a “gray hole,” the Cube gave its possessor the ability to alter reality, to change the world however they wished to suit their needs. But, as was often the case—both with the original Cube, and the others that followed—the problem with using a “wish box” of infinite power was that, like the legendary “monkey’s paw” of short fiction, it usually created more trouble than it was worth—sometimes with deadly results.

  On “Doomworld,” the problem was even greater. Having fashioned his own Cube, the tyrant had neglected to confirm the accuracy of the mathematical equations used in the creation process; thus, the final product contained a dangerous—and deadly—flaw. As the “Emperor” explained to Betsy, this Cube relied on more than just cosmic energy to power its reality-changing properties—it also drew upon the life-force of its possessor. For von Doom, that meant it had leeched years from his life, reducing one of the most feared super-villains in the world to a frail old man barely able to raise his chin from his armor-plated chest. And yet, despite the fact he knew that the Cube was slowly killing him, von Doom refused to give up his “perfect” world, refused to surrender the device—unless, he off-handedly commented, the distraught X-Man was willing to accept the terms of an unusual offer . . .

  It was a simple proposition: von Doom wanted to go on living, before the Cube could strip him of his remaining years, yet also wanted his planetary empire to continue. Betsy, who had just lost the one, true love of her life, desperately wanted Warren resurrected, his deadly encounter with Magneto cast from their minds. Why not combine the two? von Doom asked. Why not take possession of the Cube and restore Worthington to full health, in exchange for becoming caretaker of the world—under the villain’s direction, of course. It wouldn’t last for long, though, as evidenced by his deteriorating physical con
dition—within a month’s time, Betsy would be just as frail, just as wizened, as the Cube stole her youth, her vitality.

  But for the chance to bring Warren back to life, even for one more month . . .

  “Are you willing to make such a sacrifice, Ms. Braddock?” von Doom had asked. “Are you willing to risk your life, your world ... for love?”

  She was, as the tyrant had known all too well, and almost did—if not for the timely intervention of her teammates. Tracking Betsy tele-pathically, Phoenix had led the group straight to von Doom’s lair, preventing Betsy from making a decision she knew in her heart she would have later come to regret.

  But the danger was far from over. The X-Men explained their real reason for hurrying back to their homeworld: The Cube was not only affecting Earth—its influence was spreading across the innumerable parallel dimensions that comprised the omniverse, destabilizing the space/ time continuum. If the device wasn’t shut down, the barriers separating those dimensions would weaken, allowing opposing elements of one to leak into the next, ad infinitum, until all—as well as the countless billions upon billions of sentient beings living in them—were destroyed. Sent by Roma to stop this “reality-cancer” before the damage became irreparable, the X-Men closed in on von Doom to complete their mission.

  And that’s when Magneto and his band of revolutionaries barged onto the scene, their non-aggression pact with Professor Xavier’s students dispensed with once the mutant overlord recognized the power that could be his if he seized the Cube . . .

  Betsy groaned as the stone block shifted its position, pressing down harder on her left temple. The pain was excruciating; bright flashes of light strobed behind her closed eyelids, growing with such intensity she half expected her brain to explode.

  And yet, despite the constant throbbing in her head, she was still able to hear the sound of one stone scraping against another—was the pile moving? Was that a good thing? For all she knew, the stones above her were about to come raining down, crushing the life from her bruised and battered body before she had an opportunity to figure out what she was doing here. Her heart began beating wildly, and she suddenly found it difficult to breath.

  But then another sound reached her ears—a calm, soothing voice that whispered through the cracks and crevices around her to slow her racing heart, ease her troubled breathing.

  “Hang on, Betts,” the voice said. “I’ll have you out of there in a minute.”

  She willed herself to relax, then—becoming agitated would do nothing to alleviate her situation, and that voice sounded so familiar, so reassuring—and concentrated on blocking the pain from her mind. She turned her thoughts once more to the days leading up to this predicament . ..

  A short battle had followed in the White House, as the X-Men did their best to prevent Magneto’s acolytes from getting to the Cube, but the outcome was never in doubt—at least to Magneto, that is. Smashing von Doom aside as the X-Men fell around him, he took hold of the Cube and activated it, rebuilding the world as he thought it should be.

  But von Doom wasn’t out of the fight just yet. Grabbing Betsy with a gauntleted hand, he activated a matter transportation circuit on his armor. With a crackle of energy, they were whisked away from the lair before the “chaos wave” generated by the Cube could restructure them to suit the needs of Magneto’s self-imposed reality—to suddenly reappear within Roma’s Starlight Citadel. That hadn’t been part of von Doom’s plans, however—he had been attempting to teleport himself and Betsy to his castle in Upstate New York, in order to make use of the time platform secreted in its subterranean levels. Once there, he intended to transport Betsy to a moment before the assault on the White

  House, so that she could prevent Magneto from acquiring the Cube. Of course, following through on that desperate act became a moot point once the Supreme Guardian of the Omniverse interceded—it was her technicians who diverted the transport beam to the citadel, so she could interrogate the only people to escape the world that lay at the heart of her most recent problems.

  Betsy explained the situation to Roma and her lieutenant, Satur-nyne—a far saner, alternate version of the villainous Sat-yr-nin, hailing from yet another Earth in the multiverse—as well as Professor Xavier, who had been devastated by the news of Warren’s death. Yet, despite his anguish, Xavier had made an impassioned plea to Roma to not carry out her plans to destroy the X-Men’s home dimension in order to protect the rest of the omniverse—not while there was a chance that he and Betsy could succeed where the others had failed. Much to Betsy’s surprise, Roma had acquiesced. Soon enough, she found herself back on Earth, with Xavier at her side, equipped with a recall device provided by Satumyne’s technicians that would transport the two mutants back to the citadel once they had secured the Cube.

  Their plan was fairly basic in its scope: find Magneto, leam the location of the Cosmic Cube, and confiscate it. However, what neither of them had taken into consideration was the possibility that Magneto might have used the Cube to better the world, to establish peace between the long-warring races of Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens superior. But that’s exactly what had happened, and Betsy could only imagine the shock—and, perhaps, jealousy?—experienced by Xavier upon seeing the actualization of the dream he’d spent so many years struggling to bring to reality. It was a startling revelation, especially when one considered the countless attempts Magneto had made over the decades to rule the world, constantly voicing his ideals of humanity as second-class citizens—or, worse, as slaves to their mutant masters. To see that just the opposite had happened, that perhaps Magneto had come to realize just how wrong his beliefs had been, quickly turned the X-Men’s task from one of saving a universe to one of destroying a potentially better one.

  Not surprisingly, that wasn’t the only complication Betsy and Xavier faced. It wasn’t too long after their arrival on Earth that their presence was detected by their teammates—who had become devoted followers of Magneto. During a confrontation with them in a Manhattan hotel, Betsy had been forced to abandon her mentor in order to avoid capture, using her own powers of teleportation to transport her to France, the research they had conducted before the attack indicating that the mutant overlord spent most of his time living there with his family.

  Unfortunately, any plans she might have been formulating for a counterstrike were soon forgotten when Warren happened to walk past her on a busy Parisian street.

  It wasn’t her Warren, of course—she knew that. The man she had loved more than any other in her life had died in her arms only the day before, so this—this imposter had to be some duplicate created by Magneto with the aid of the Cosmic Cube; for what reason that might be, Betsy couldn’t even begin to fathom. What she could understand, though, was the ache she felt in her heart as she watched him go by, oblivious to her presence in that half-distracted-by-other-thoughts way of his. Yes, she knew he was some sort of imitation, a Cube-generated fantasy given form—but it didn’t stop her from following him to a quaint little apartment that stood in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower ... and then confronting him.

  That turned out to be nothing short of total disaster. In this world, Elisabeth Braddock and Warren Worthington III were a happily married couple—he a much-envied multimillionaire, she the star of a popular action/adventure television series syndicated around the world. Having thought that his wife was filming an episode in New Zealand, Worthington had been stunned to see a report about her on an entertainment news channel, the story detailing an apparent tryst between Elisabeth and a bald-headed, wheelchair-bound man in a New York City flophouse. That man, of course, had been Professor Xavier, but Betsy had felt no compunction to explain the situation to an overly jealous duplicate of the soulmate she had just lost—especially when that duplicate had been created by the same monster responsible for Warren’s death. Her anger got the best of her, then, and she summoned forth her psi-blade—a foot-long dagger of mental energy that she often used in battle against her opponents, capable of overloading ever
y synapse in their brains.

  Worthington had partly experienced that first-hand, as Betsy rammed the blade into his skull, forcing her way into his mind. She’d wanted answers—for why Magneto felt the need to re-create Warren, what other plans the self-imposed Master of the World might have, now that he possessed the Cube—but it quickly became apparent that Worthington knew nothing of any value.

  Well. . . that wasn’t entirely true. As she explored his subconscious, Betsy couldn’t help but wonder exactly how much of this reality had been fashioned by Magneto—and how much by the Cube. The question continued to nag her as she studied Worthington’s memories—they were too complete, too detailed for a simple doppelganger created out of cosmic energy. Magneto could never have known so much about Warren that he could guide the Cube in creating flawless recollections of every moment of his life from childhood on up—and why would he, for that matter? But if Magneto was incapable of that task, did that mean the Cube was therefore capable of reconstructing the thought patterns of a dead man? It was a disturbing consideration—and one she’d preferred not to dwell on for too long. Pulling herself together, she prepared to exit Worthington’s mind and resume her mission—

  And then Warren—her Warren—called out to her from the deepest recesses of Worthington’s subconscious.

  He was alive.

  She’d wasted no time in pondering the hows and the whys of the situation before plunging into the depths of this foreign yet hauntingly familiar mind—if there was any chance that Warren’s mind was trapped within the body of this Cube-construct, she would do whatever was necessary to free him.

  She wasn’t going to lose him again.

  The journey seemed to take days, but time was subjective on the psychic plane, as Betsy well knew; based on prior experience, no more than a few minutes would have passed since she entered Worthington’s mind. But no matter how long the passage of time, every moment was sheer agony for her as she tried her best to rein in her emotions, part of her almost giddy with excitement at the prospect of being reunited with her lost love, part of her fearing this might be some trick of Magneto’s.