Only a human.
Another irony, he thought glumly. All those years of fighting, of struggling for a dream, and I face the end of my life on the same level of those I sought to subjugate. How the mighty have fallen, indeed. . .
The work started immediately, Lensherr angrily stabbing at the hard soil with the point of his shovel as others fumbled with the tools. He kept to himself; the last thing he wanted before Death claimed him was to get to know any of these people. Occasionally, the sound of sobbing could be heard over the digging, but he was able to tune it out by focusing on the task—and on his own thoughts. It was difficult, though. Humility has a way of opening the mind, of making one more aware of how their actions affect those around them. And between Doctor Doom and the Red Skull, the great Magneto had learned a good deal from being humbled . . .
His thoughts turned back to the village of Araouane, in Africa, on von Doom’s version of Earth. It was there he had met a woman named Abena Matou, one of the “sandwomen” who fought daily to keep the edge of the Sahara Desert from enveloping what few homes remained. He had been surprised by her buoyant spirit, even more so by her unflinching dedication to what he considered a useless exercise—eventually, despite her efforts, the desert would win. And yet, still she battled, moving the sand from one place to another, day after day, comforted by the fact that her work put food on the table for her family. To see that even a lowly human could give so much of herself for a thankless task, not to mention the genuine warmth she had shown him when he joined the village, made even Magneto begin to reconsider his harshness toward her kind. So much so, apparently, that when he gained possession of the Cube, one of his first acts—after laying claim to the planet under his leadership, of course—was to transform the desert around Araouane into a paradise, and to restore the village to its former glory. It was an act he was still bewildered by, given his unbridled hatred for humanity in general, but one he soon stopped questioning as he focused on running the empire he had built. In the back of his mind, though, he knew why he had never used the Cube to create internment camps, and force the humans to live—and die—in them, as so many of them wanted mutantkind to do: It was because it would have made him no better than the Nazis—the same monsters who had murdered his parents. And having seen what such a world might have been like, as it was now under the reign of the Red Skull, Erik Lensherr had begun to wonder how he could have fallen so far from grace in pursuit of a dream. . .
* * *
The hours passed quickly. As the pit widened, whispered explanations of what they were really doing began to spread among the prisoners. Some suggested fighting against their captors; others simply resigned themselves to their fate. Lensherr knew it would be a hopeless battle, if it came to that—the guards would cut them to pieces with their weapons once the first fist was raised in defiance. An odd belief, coming as it did from someone from who had not only survived, but escaped from, Auschwitz. Yet that escape had only come about near the end of the war, because American G.I.s were in the midst of liberating the camp, fully occupying the guards’ attention so he and another prisoner—later his wife—Magda could slip away. Had it been attempted any other time, he had known even then, neither of them would have survived.
But there would be no distractions this time, no last-minute rescues that might mean salvation for prisoners for whom the Nazis apparently no longer had a use. There would only be the chill of the grave, and then blessed oblivion . . .
The pit was completed all too soon. It wasn’t very deep—no more than four or five feet—due to the hardness of the ground; to go any deeper would have required earth-moving machinery. More guards arrived, and the prisoners were lined up along the edge of the shallow grave—all except for Lensherr, much to his surprise. Instead of joining the ranks, he was hustled off to one side by Carl and Wilhelm, his tormentors from the yard, who had accompanied the other soldiers.
“Don’t worry, freak,” Wilhelm muttered to him. “You’re not scheduled for extermination—yet. But you’ll come to wish you had been, soon enough.” As if providing a preview of things to come, he punched him in the stomach, driving the air from his lungs. Lensherr collapsed at his feet, gasping for breath—
And then the shooting began. Bursts of gunfire that seemed to go on forever, loud enough to rattle his teeth, but not enough to drown out the screams that pierced his eardrums. Then came the impact of the last bodies as they tumbled into the pit, on top of those already fallen. It was a wet sound, of boneless flesh squelching onto pools of blood and bits of brain, and not even covering his ears with his hands prevented him from hearing it. And when the shooting was over, one of the camp’s officers called for the flamethrowers.
“A waste of fuel,” the man commented to one of his subordinates, “but we’ve had some trouble with animals these past few weeks.” He chuckled hollowly, and gestured at the fresh corpses. “I guess even these wretches might be good for a meal or two ... if the creatures are that desperate.”
“Or the Wendigo,” the soldier replied.
The officer glared at him. “Listening to old wives’ tales, corporal? I wouldn’t think a soldier of the Empire would pay any attention to a bunch of backwoods talk from rabble such as this.” He waved a dismissive hand at the bodies clustered beneath them. “There aren’t any ‘cannibal men’ stalking the Canadian wilderness, corporal. And if I hear you’ve been perpetuating this ridiculous myth among the prisoners, you can join the next group out here. In the pit. ” He leaned in close and bared his teeth. “Understood?”
“Y-yessir,” the corporal stuttered.
It was at that moment that the moaning began.
Weakly, Lensherr dragged himself to his feet so he could look over the lip of the grave. There, trapped under the weight of two corpses, was a young woman—she couldn’t have been older than nineteen or twenty; somehow, she had survived the slaughter. She was struggling to get free.
The clatter of footsteps drew Lensherr’s attention to the guards. A quintet of men dressed in fireproof gear had arrived, each of them carrying a large flamethrower. In horror, he looked from them to the girl, then back again. A blue-white jet of fire sparked at the end of each nozzle.
“God, no,” he said. “NO!”
He leapt forward, only to be beaten to the ground by his captors. Unable to rise, he could only stare mutely as sheets of flame erupted from the devices, setting alight everything—and everyone—in the pit.
The girl shrieked as her hair and clothing caught fire, as her flesh began to sizzle. And then she turned her head, and Lensherr suddenly found himself staring into her eyes. They were so bright, so light brown in color; so like Anya’s.
Anya.
The memory of her tore at his soul. Like this girl, he had had to stand by and watch as his daughter burned, kept from aiding her by barbarians who feared what they could not understand. Had to watch as she tumbled from the apartment window, her cries of pain melting his heart. Had to watch as she died in his arms ...
“NO!” he roared. “NOT AGAIN!”
And then he was on his feet, lashing out at his two tormentors, snatching the weapons from their hands and bludgeoning them to death. There would be no more punishments at their hands.
As the other guards rushed forward to attack, Lensherr felt his anger building, building, until it demanded release. He snarled, calling upon the power that was his to command, ignoring the crackle of electricity that shot through his body as the neural inhibitor acted to override his nervous system. The pain was unbearable, and he fought the urge to stop this foolish act before the device killed him.
The guards halted mere feet from him, clearly uncertain of what to do as tendrils of electrical energy spun away from his body, growing more intense with each second. At the center of the storm, Lensherr forced himself to remain on his feet, to remain conscious, refusing to allow anything to keep him from taking his measure of revenge.
He felt one final stab of agony from the inhibitor, one that almo
st caused him to black out—and then the pain ended.
He was free.
A slow, feral smile came to his lips as he raised his hands, reveling in the familiar way his fingers tingled as the power built in his hands, seeking release. He glanced up, to find the guards staring at him, their faces chiseled with blood-drained expressions of terror. His smile widened.
“Die, ” Magneto said.
“THERE HE IS!”
Lensherr looked over his shoulder. In the bright moonlight, he could see the surviving guards from the camp charging through the woods, rifles and flashlights clutched tightly in their hands. The man who had spotted him was a bumpkin named Faust, a rotund sergeant with a bushy mustache who was always nosing around the prisoners, looking for troublemakers; his dark gray uniform was stretched tightly across a belly that was intimately familiar with all the meat-and-potato pleasures of German cuisine.
Using the back of his hand to wipe away the last traces of bile on his chin, Lensherr staggered to his feet and lurched deeper into the woods. He breathed sharply through clenched teeth, rubbing the base of his spine, where the lump of the neural inhibitor reminded him of its presence. Although he had shorted it out, he was still feeling some lingering effects of the damnable device: He was too exhausted to fight now, too weak to tap into the severely depleted reserves of his mutant abilities. The release of all that pent-up magnetic energy at the gravesite had placed too great a strain on his tortured body. He would need time to recover—time the guards were not about to give him as they closed in. But, he had to admit, exterminating their fellow vermin before the chase began had been worth the effort. Watching their bodies writhe as his magnetic powers tore them apart had felt so natural, so ... exhilarating.
He flinched as a bullet tore into a tree trunk, at a point level with his head. They were shooting to kill, then; whether or not it was being done with the Skull’s permission, however, wasn’t a subject he wished to discuss with them.
More bullets, and even a few particle beams, began exploding around him, and suddenly the once-peaceful area was transformed into a war zone. Bushes around him burst into flame, and the ground was torn up by rifle fire. He zigged and zagged, ducked and jumped, pushing his body to the limit.
For a man who had resigned himself to dying, he thought with a grim smile, I certainly seem to be putting up quite a struggle to do otherwise. . .
He vaulted over a fallen tree, then cried out in surprise as he saw there was no ground on the other side—just an embankment, which he slid and tumbled down, until coming to rest in a clump of bushes. Bruised and bloodied, he fought his way out of the thick vegetation . . . to find himself facing a quartet of soldiers. All of them were pointing rifles at his head.
“Damn it. ..” Lensherr muttered. For a short while there, he had even convinced himself that he might succeed in escaping. It was depressing to think he’d been right about his fate all along.
The rest of the guards made their way down the embankment to join their comrades, Faust huffing and puffing as he brought up the rear. They formed a rough firing squad, standing in a semicircle around Lensherr. He glared at the men, then at their metal weapons. Had he been able to call upon his overtaxed magnetic powers, he thought darkly, he would have shown these scum exactly what he thought of their guns and rifles—and what he was capable of doing with them. But there were no powers to call upon, no strength to fight back left in his pain-wracked body—and no chance of escape.
“Have you anything to say, Jew, before the men fire?” Faust asked after he’d managed to regain his breath.
Lensherr sneered. “Not to any of you pigs.”
“A man of few words, eh?” Faust smiled. “Sehr giit. I hope you will be as equally accommodating, and have the courtesy to die quickly after you’ve been shot.” He turned to his men and nodded. A dozen weapons were leveled at the mutant overlord—
—and then all hell broke loose.
A . . . thing leapt down from the trees, landing in the middle of the group and lashing out with thick fists—and something metallic. Lensherr dove for cover as the soldiers fired wildly, seeking to hit their attacker, but succeeding in only cutting down their comrades.
Was this the “Wendigo” he had heard other prisoners talking about?
Lensherr wondered. If so, he was surprised—from the descriptions he’d been given, he had expected the flesh-eating monstrosity to be well over seven feet tall, and covered with thick, white hair. The man-like animal he saw before him didn’t seem nearly that tall, and there wasn’t a trace of white hair to be found on its body. Still, it certainly growled and roared and cut men to pieces with its claws well enough to possibly be related to the legendary “cannibal man,” if it wasn’t the actual beast.
The fight was over in seconds, the last of the guards grasping his throat to try and staunch the blood that was flowing from the brutal gash across his neck. His efforts didn’t last for long.
Slowly, Lensherr rose to his feet to face the assailant. With widening eyes, he watched as the creature stepped from the shadows and into the full light of the moon.
He was not a large man, barely just over five feet in height. His dark hair and sideburns were overgrown and unkempt, as though he hadn’t seen a comb or brush in years, and there was an almost animalistic look to his features—the sharp angle of his nose, the wild gleam in his eyes, the feral snarl that showed abnormally long incisors. He wore combat fatigues and boots—both black, both obviously tended to with pride. But it was the weapons he had used to dispatch the soldiers that caught Lensherr’s attention: a half-dozen, foot-long metal spikes that jutted out from the backs of the man’s hands. If he were truly as close to being an animal as he seemed, one could almost consider them his claws.
“Logan . . . ?” said Lensherr.
The man stepped closer, raised his head slightly, and sniffed the air. “This ain’t the time or place fer jawin’, bub,” he growled in English. “More soldier-boys’re on their way.” The claws retracted into his hands with a sharp snik!, and he pointed down a thin footpath. “Got a safe-house a few miles down this way—we can yak all ya want when we get there.” He glared at Lensherr, and frowned. “An’ then ya can tell me how it is ya know my real name. ’Specially since I ain’t gone by it in almost forty years.”
“No?” Lensherr asked. “How are you addressed, then?”
He gestured toward the corpses scattered around him, and flashed a chilling smile. “Most of ’em—least the ones who manage t’survive long enough t’mention their run-ins with me—call me ‘the Wendigo.’ “But you can call me ‘Wolverine.’ ”
T HIS IS ridiculous,” Warren complained loudly, not for the first time I in the past three hours or so. “You’d think with the kind of crisis 1 ' I we’re facing, Roma would drop whatever it is she’s doing and have us rushed in for an emergency meeting.” He flapped his wings sharply in frustration. “Damned inefficient way to run an omniverse.”
Draped across the cushions of a mahogany settee, Betsy couldn’t help but grunt in agreement. Since being escorted to one of the many suites dotted throughout the Starlight Citadel, neither X-Man had been allowed to leave. Their numerous requests for an audience with the Supreme Guardian, more often than not, had been met with a noncommittal shrug or an uncomfortable shuffling of feet as their guards muttered excuses for why they couldn’t do anything to help. Generally, their responses fell into three categories: “I’m just doing my job, Sir/Madame”; “I wouldn’t know anything about that, Sir/Madame”; “If you’d care for a swim, there’s a pool in the room behind the master bedroom.” That last one was aimed at Betsy, whom the trio of male Captain Bri-tains concluded was wearing a bathing suit, rather than the (admittedly scant) working clothes of a former Ninja assassin. She’d picked up their thoughts about it the last time she’d stuck her head out the door to ask for (what seemed) the hundredth time about Roma’s availability.
She let out a sharp breath. “Maybe Satumyne is debating with her again
over the merits of destroying our dimension before the Cube’s reality-cancer spreads further. It seems to be a favorite topic of hers these days.”
Warren gazed at her in alarm. “Are you serious?” Betsy nodded grimly. “Wait a minute—I thought she was supposed to be our ally! Is that the best solution she could come up with?”
“Well,” Betsy replied, “given the severity of the situation, and the limited time we have left to reverse the Cube’s effects . . . yes.”
Warren frowned. “Not very big on putting a research group on the problem, or having her techs run simulations to devise some alternate plans, is she?”
Betsy shrugged. “Well, not everyone has your business acumen, luv. Most of us have to get by on our instincts—and Satumyne’s are telling her that eliminating the problem at the source is a great deal easier, and far less time-consuming, than trying to fix it.”
“Not very practical, though,” Warren commented. He paused for a moment, eyes narrowing as he tried to work out the problem.
A small smile tugged at the comers of Betsy’s mouth as she watched him gently pull at his lower lip—an unconscious habit of his, one reserved for only his most serious thinking sessions. He stared into space while he considered potential options, frowning occasionally as he discarded those less likely to succeed. She didn’t need her telepathic abilities to tell her what was going on inside his mind—his body language alone spoke volumes.
Eventually, Warren’s eyes widened, a broad smile lighting his features. He pointed at Betsy. “How about this? Roma isolates our dimension until we’ve found a solution, then we—”
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