The Legacy Quest Trilogy

by Unknown Author

  Ruby quartz: the substance from which his visors-and his glasses, when he wasn’t in costume—were made. The only substance that could keep his destructive power in check.

  Nevertheless, Cyclops opened his visor again and pivoted slowly on the spot, in a full circle, testing every square inch of the walls, floor and ceiling. The crystal glowed a brighter red wherever it was hit, but showed no signs of breaking. He had to accept that his powers were useless to him in here. But that didn’t mean he was beaten.

  He couldn’t see any kind of opening. But logically, there had to be one. He spent the next several minutes running his hands patiently over every surface-even the ceiling, which he could just about reach if he stood on his tiptoes. He was searching for a hidden mechanism, or even just a seam in the crystal to show that a door existed. He found nothing.

  Which left only one option: brute force.

  He removed his boot and struck with the heel, as hard as he could, again and again at the unyielding red wall. Intellectually, he knew it was hopeless. It would have taken somebody of Rogue’s strength to smash through ruby quartz, and even she would have found it difficult. But if he could just find one flaw, one stress point in the crystal....

  To his elation, he felt something give way. A thin crack spread across the red surface, and he set to work with renewed strength, concentrating his blows upon the same point, smiling as ruby shards flaked away to collect at his feet. The more he worked, the faster his progress became. Within minutes, layers of crystal were shattering like glass with each swing of his boot, and even before his flailing fists. Shaw must have cut costs, used imperfect materials.

  At last, Cyclops punched his way through to air, whereupon it was the work of just seconds to widen the hole, to propel himself through the disintegrating red barrier, one arm in front of his face to protect his exposed skin. He couldn’t see where he was going-and he was hardly likely to take any prospective foes by surprise. So, he had to be ready for anything.

  But he was not prepared at all for what greeted him on the far side of the wall.

  He had broken through to another cell exactly like the first. Another giant ruby quartz crystal. Another room with no doors.

  And as Cyclops stared, aghast, at his own myriad reflections, he thought he could hear Sebastian Shaw’s rich, mocking laughter echoing from the red walls.

  Storm woke to the dark, and a stifling atmosphere which stirred an old fear.

  She was lying on her back on a hard wooden surface, her arms folded across her chest, her skin dry and hot and prickling, her own breath loud in her ears. She stirred and felt more wood, hemming her in on each side. She reached up, but there was wood there too. It was only an inch or two above her upturned face but, in the absolute darkness, she couldn’t see it.

  Goddess, don’t let this be!

  A wooden box.

  No. Something worse.

  She reached past her head, but felt more wood. She stretched out her legs and kicked at yet another wooden surface. It surrounded her, confined her, and took her back to the worst hours of her life.

  She fought down a rising tide of panic. She had confronted and beaten this phobia before. She could do so again. But had she ever really vanquished it, or had she just learned to cope? Had she only sent the fear to lurk in the shadowy corners of her subconscious mind?

  She pushed frantically against the box’s upper surface-the lid of the coffin, she knew with a cold, sick certainty-hoping against hope that her worries were unfounded. But the lid didn’t budge. Something weighed it down.

  They had buried her alive. Encased her in wood and left her to rot in the earth.

  She screamed and thrashed, and brought her full strength to bear on the walls of her cramped prison. The release of emotions was cathartic, but ineffective. She forced herself to calm down, before she exhausted her scant reserves of air. She closed her eyes-although open or closed, it made little difference—and breathed, slowly and deeply, concentrating on the gentle rhythm and trying to forget where she was. She pictured herself in the African rainforest, and tried to imagine she was still there, enjoying her years-long respite from a life of hardship. Before Professor Xavier had brought her back to painful reality.

  Instead, her thoughts drifted back to an even earlier time.

  She was five years old, lying in the rubble of her house in Cairo, pinned by fallen beams and choking on thick dust. Her mother lay beside her, battered, bloody and deathly pale. Ororo Munroe screamed her throat raw, and cried until there were no tears left. Then, at last, she allowed the pain and the dizziness to reclaim her, and drifted into a restless sleep.

  She never saw her mother again. Nor her father, whose last words to her had been that he would protect her, protect them all, as the fighter plane had careened towards them.

  He had lied.

  The fear had crept up on Storm again. Her heart raced, and she was on the verge of hyperventilation. She gritted her teeth and scolded herself inwardly. She was not five years old now. She would not let this scar from her childhood, this irrational claustrophobia, defeat her. The rescue parties had overlooked her then, salvaging her parents’ corpses but leaving young Ororo sleeping. She had had to dig her own way to freedom, even though it had taken long, hard, suffocating hours. She could do it again.

  She reached out with her very soul, working blindly, trying to shape weather patterns that she could neither see nor feel. Perhaps she wasn’t too deeply buried. Perhaps she could turn the soil above her head to mud, wash some of it away, give herself a chance to break free. But as more time went by, the air in her coffrn grew staler, and Storm couldn’t even hear the rain and the thunder and the lightning that she thought she was bringing down.

  She kept on trying. What else could she do? Perhaps, at least, a freak rainstorm might alert somebody to her plight. It might bring help.

  From down here in the darkness, though, there was no way of telling.

  “Incredible!” breathed the Beast. “Amazing, stupendous, sensational!” His borrowed white lab coat billowed out behind him as he leapt across the laboratory, ricocheting off the wall and coming to rest beside a laser printer, which was spewing out paper like tickertape. He glanced over the freshly inked numbers, even though he had just seen them on a computer screen. Then, with a whoop of delight, he performed a standing backflip, bounced off a desk and landed back where he had started, at Rory Campbell’s side.

  “I take it you’re impressed,” said Campbell, with a raised eyebrow.

  “ ‘Impressed’ would be a major understatement of my condition of exuberance,” Hank assured him, sorting frantically through a stack of papers on the bench in front of him, scribbling notes on some with a red ballpoint pen, which he produced from behind his ear. “I had no idea the Kree had carried out so much research into the human genome. Why, the work they’ve done with the Inhumans alone-the records they’ve kept here on the long-term effects of their genetic experimentation-it’s as if I’ve spent the last few months fumbling my way around a forest in the dark, and somebody has just handed me the map.”

  “A partial map, at best,” said Campbell.

  Hank refused to be daunted. “To substitute another metaphor, then, it’s as if I’ve found a dozen missing pieces of a jigsaw. Not enough to complete it, perhaps, but at last I can see what the picture ought to be.” To himself, he muttered: “As soon as I get a few spare weeks, I have a lot of reading to catch up on.” Aloud, he said: “In the meantime, you and your people have done some very useful number crunching with this remarkable computer.”

  “You think we might be heading in the right direction?”

  “Oh, I do, Doctor Campbell, I most certainly do. The Legacy Virus was specifically designed to attack the mutant gene, to catalyze a reaction that eventually causes total cellular collapse. If we can change the nature of the gene, and consequently of that reaction. ...” He let out a whistle at the sheer possibilities. “Moira and I pursued a similar line of research some time ago,
but came up against what we thought were insurmountable obstacles. If only we had known then what you know now....”

  He bounded across the room again, startling Doctor Scott as he dropped a sheaf of papers into his arms. “Very impressive, my friend, very impressive. I’ve made a few corrections to your calculations and marked some areas you might wish to pursue further.” He moved on, making similar observations to Takamoto, encouraging Travers to rerun some tests and pretending not to notice that all three of the scientists regarded him with open resentment.

  “You know, I’m actually beginning to see a solution to all this,” he said, pacing the room fretfully. “Ideally, of course, we should have some Inhumans here to examine first-hand.”

  “I’m sure Shaw could arrange it,” put in Campbell.

  “No, no, no,” said the Beast hurriedly. “I think we’ve all seen quite enough of our kind benefactor’s recruitment methods.” His words were meant at least partly for the others, but he had his back to them and couldn’t tell if he had made an impression or not.

  “The computer’s database has all the information we need,” said Campbell.

  “Indeed it has. I would have liked to have run some empirical tests, that’s all. Still, no matter. We have been given the opportunity to take some bold steps forward. We should take it. You’ve already carried out trials on the alpha and beta vaccines?”

  Campbell nodded. “Mr. Shaw donated a few pints of mutant blood.”

  “His own?”

  “Fitzroy’s. The results were informative, but not very encouraging.”

  “With the alterations I’ve suggested—and with a modicum of for-tune-we might be able to change that. I’ll need to see those figures.”

  “I’ll get them for you,” said Campbell.

  “I do hope I’m not interrupting.” The Beast recognized the voice before he turned to face its owner. Sebastian Shaw stood in the doorway, wearing his usual old-fashioned attire and his usual smug expression. Hank hadn’t heard him enter.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said shortly, “you’ve distracted me from a very delicate stage of my calculations.” It was partially true: he had a thousand figures and as many possibilities running through his head. The real problem, however, was that the mere sight of Shaw had dampened his ebullient mood.

  For the past few hours, he had immersed himself in work, forgetting all else. The Legacy Virus was the most knotty problem he had ever had to face, and to see those knots unraveling at last had been a wondrous experience. After too long, he had begun to rediscover the joys of scientific achievement. Now, all he could think of was the circumstances under which those gains had come about, the compromises he had made.

  “I don’t suppose there have been any sightings of my teammates?” he asked.

  “None,” said Shaw.

  Hank nodded. “They’ll be here, sooner or later.”

  “I don’t doubt it. I know how persistent your friends can be.”

  “And I’d like to talk to them when they arrive.”

  “Yes, I think you should.” Hank was surprised at Shaw’s willing agreement to his demand. He raised an eyebrow, and the Black King elaborated: “The X-Men have a tendency to—how shall I put this?— break things. It would be a shame if they were to end this project before you had a chance to explain its importance to them.”

  “I shall certainly endeavor to do so,” Hank rumbled.

  Shaw hesitated for a moment, then, as if unsure whether to say more. However, he turned and left without a further word, and the Beast watched him go with a despondent sigh.

  He wasn’t looking forward to meeting the rest of the X-Men. He feared that they would react as Moira had, when they learned what he was doing-and he couldn’t face explaining himself again. Not yet. He didn’t want another argument that he wasn’t sure he could win.

  Perhaps if they could stay away for a little longer, just until he had something more tangible to give them, some proof that he had made the right decision ...

  Campbell reappeared at his elbow and, without a word, handed him a manila folder crammed with paper: the file he had requested. Hank opened it and looked at the top sheet, hardly taking in the words and numbers upon it, unable to recall his enthusiasm of just a moment earlier.

  He turned slowly, examining his surroundings as if for the first time; as if only now realizing the possible consequences of the deal he had made.

  Doctor Takamoto looked quickly down at her work before his gaze could meet hers-but not quickly enough to conceal the naked hatred in her eyes.

  Wolverine’s cell was a large, white room, and somebody had left the door open.

  There was only one problem. He wasn’t the room’s only occupant.

  Standing between him and the door-through which he could see only a gray corridor wall-was a silver, skeletal figure. In fact, Wolverine realized, it was a perfect human skeleton, of a short man, fashioned from metal. Not another flaming robot, he thought.

  As if sensing his interest, the figure dropped into a combat-ready crouch. Wolverine wasn’t sure how it could move at all without joints or muscles, but it could. He circled it warily, and it shifted its position to follow him around the room, always staring at him with the blank eye sockets of its leering skull, always blocking his path to the door.

  All right, bub, thought Wolverine, if that’s how you want it!

  He extended his claws, only to hear the familiar snikt sound repeated a half-second later. A feral smile spread across his face as he saw what had happened. Three claws, identical to his own, had extended from the backs of each of the figure’s hands.

  Cute, Shaw. Very cute!

  So, not just a human skeleton, then. A replica of his own skeleton. And sheathed with the same near-invulnerable material?

  There was one way to find out.

  The skeleton made no attempt to evade Wolverine as he rushed it. It simply braced itself for the impact, then lashed out with incredible speed and matched him blow for blow. It was strong—far stronger than its spindly frame suggested—and it had all his moves. It was like fighting a taciturn, scrawnier version of himself. His claws clanged against the skeleton’s bones without damaging them, confirming his theory that, like his own, they were laced with adamantium. But, unlike his opponent, Wolverine had flesh to cut, blood to spill.

  He winced as he took a deep gash to his side. He fell back and, to his surprise, the skeleton let him go. Clearly, it was programmed to leave him alone so long as he didn’t attack it, and so long as he wasn’t trying to get to the door. Your first mistake, Shaw! he thought. The skeleton had shredded what little had been left of his costume above the waist, but his body was healing. He could feel the pain in his side receding, and new skin was already growing over some of his more shallow cuts. He flung the remnants of his mask aside and flexed his fingers. Seconds later, not only restored to full health but with the experience of his first defeat to inform him, he hurled himself at his opponent again.

  With the same result.

  For a second time, Wolverine withdrew, wiping blood from his face with the back of his hand, his heart burning with a rage that he knew he couldn’t afford to surrender to.

  When his healing factor had done its work again, he tried a different approach.

  He ran at the skeleton a third time, and it dropped into its usual defensive stance. But, instead of attacking it, Wolverine leapt over it, performing a handspring off its shoulders.

  For an instant, the open door beckoned to him.

  But, before he had even landed, the skeleton pivoted and knocked his legs from under him with a sweep of its arm. Wolverine landed heavily, and the skeleton stood astride him. It lashed out with its claws, and he knew he had given it the opportunity to drive them through his heart. But it simply cut his skin, and, once again, allowed him to scramble away from it, beaten.

  On his fourth attack, Wolverine grabbed the skeleton’s wrists and concentrated on keeping its claws away from him. He grappled with it, for
cing it around until he had his back to the door. Then he pushed it away from him and turned to flee, but the skeleton had anticipated this move too, and it leapt on him from behind and wrestled him down.

  On his fifth attack, he used his claws again and simply tried in vain to outfight his opponent, because he had to let off some steam.

  And, somewhere between the sixth and seventh attacks, he succumbed to the voice in his head. The voice that told him that the skeleton was too good at predicting his moves, at countering them. And that the way to beat it was to become more unpredictable.

  His eighth attack was the most brutal and sustained yet. A red mist descended over Wolverine’s eyes, and he punched and slashed at his android foe with no regard for the injuries he was taking in turn. He had no intention of disengaging again, but the skeleton made the decision for him. It lifted him bodily, and hurled him away. He got to his feet, let out an animal roar and immediately rushed back into the fray.

  He had lost count of the number of attacks he had made when the skeleton finally punched him too hard, and he slipped into unconsciousness.

  An indeterminate time later, he woke to find his injuries all but healed, his heart rate slowed and the crazy fog lifted from his mind. The skeleton had returned to its guard position, the door still temptingly open behind it. Wolverine regarded it through hooded eyes, and it glared back at him sightlessly.

  He began the process all over again.

  The corridor was lit only dimly, by a blue-tinted source, which Night-crawler couldn’t see. He could barely make out his own threefingered hand in front of his face, but this was quite normal. His body was melting into the shadows, as it always did.

  He spread his arms and found that, as expected, he could touch the dull, gray metal walls on each side of him simultaneously. That wasn’t good. Nor was the fact that the ceiling was low, only a foot or so above his head. He felt hemmed in.

  In front of him, the corridor turned to the left. Behind him, it passed the openings of three side passages-two the left and, between them, one to the right-before it stopped short at a T-junction. In all, six possible directions to take.