But what if she didn’t lose?
Her thoughts were in turmoil. There were so many things she wanted to say, so many questions, but she didn’t know where to start. Shaw sat back in his seat again, and watched her with the ghost of a smile on his face. He was confident. Too confident for her liking. He knew that he had hooked her, and she hated being so transparent.
In some ways, then, it was a relief when the door crashed open and a Hellfire Club agent raced into the room.
It was one of the waiters, still dressed in his white dinner jacket, but he now carried one of the lightweight machine-guns that were standard issue for Shaw’s uniformed troops. Ororo leapt to her feet, momentarily recalling her earlier suspicions-but she could see from Shaw’s expression of barely controlled anger that he had certainly not planned this interruption.
“Sir, sir,” panted the agent as he skidded to a halt, “we’re under attack!”
With immaculate timing, there came a muffled explosion from one of the upper floors.
“By whom?” asked Shaw, tight-lipped, taking the time to dab at his mouth with a napkin.
“I don’t know, sir. One of our agents on Level Four radioed in a distress message, but he was cut off before he could finish.”
Shaw nodded curtly, stood and laid his napkin aside. Ororo reached for her comm-set and activated it. “Iceman, we have trouble.” “I’ve just heard,” Bobby Drake’s voice crackled in the tiny receiver. “Any idea what we’re up against?”
“Not yet—but whoever they are, they’ve taken out half of Shaw’s agents already.”
Shaw marched out of the room, and Ororo followed him as she continued her conversation. “Where are you?”
“Outside Hank’s quarters. I don’t want to leave him.”
She nodded in approval, although her teammate couldn’t see her. “Stay there.”
The jacketed agent was joined by his two colleagues in the corridor outside. The bizarre trio scampered ahead of their employer protectively, guns at the ready. The Black King himself maintained an unhurried air, but his strides were deceptively long and Ororo found it an effort to keep up with him. “Level Four,” he growled. “They’ve already penetrated deep into the base without us knowing about it. They can only have teleported in.”
Ororo acknowledged the information with a nod. She reached down, took the hem of her red dress in both hands and pulled, creating a tear up the side of her right leg. It seemed a shame—but if she was to go into combat, then she would need absolute freedom of movement. And a part of her also took a childish delight in destroying Shaw’s gift to her.
She reached the foot of the stairs and looked up to see that somebody was crouching in the shadows at the first corner. The figure had its back to her, but it was wearing the familiar Hellfire Club uniform. The three agents were already hurrying forward, concerned for what was apparently an injured colleague. Storm frowned as she detected something unnatural about the figure’s posture. It didn’t quite fit into its clothing, and its skin, exposed through tears in the blue cloth, was yellowing and flaking. The faint, musty scent of decay played with her nostrils, and she made to cry out a warning but it was already too late.
The figure whipped around, razor claws extended through the fingers of its red gloves, staring blankly out of a jagged hole in its flesh-toned mask. With one fluid movement, it gutted two of the agents. The third, his white jacket spattered with blood, pumped bullets into its chest, but the creature’s lip-less mouth split into a grin as it shrugged off the attack. It lashed out with its claws again, but its would-be victim dodged its swipe and backed away from it. Storm tried to help him, but it was difficult to generate weather patterns in such a confined area. She was forming a heavy cloud above the stairwell, ready to bring down a lightning bolt, when the creature sprang for the last agent’s throat. Its weight bore him down the stairs to land at Storm and Shaw’s feet, his head lolling at an impossible angle.
Standing astride its third kill, the creature looked up at Storm. Its tongue tumbled out of its mouth and saliva flowed down its chin. With the speed of a striking serpent, Shaw moved in behind it and delivered a chopping blow to the side of its neck. A bone snapped, and the creature’s white eyes misted over. A moment later, its legs folded beneath it.
Iceman was shouting over the comm-set, his tinny voice almost swamped by static. “Ororo, it’s Selene’s demons-and they’re wired to explode!”
Storm and Shaw exchanged the briefest of glances before they looked down at the fallen creature in unison. A bulky black belt was tied around its waist-and on the buckle, a red light had begun to flash insistently. Storm reacted without stopping to think, her X-Men training kicking in. She gathered Shaw up in her arms and summoned air currents to propel them both out of danger. They soared upward, past the next level; they had almost reached the one beyond it when they were engulfed by a tremendous blast from below, almost overcome by a ferocious wave of light and heat and sound. Blown off-course, eyes stinging, Storm struggled to regain her bearings—but there was another explosion above her, and suddenly she was being showered by hot shrapnel. A sharp edge glanced off her forehead and left a shallow gash. Her eyes were watering, and through a veil of tears she saw the opening of a passageway to her left and veered dizzily into it. Her feet hit the ground, followed by her knees. Her passenger tumbled out of her grasp and she collapsed on top of him.
Behind Storm, the staircase crumpled: it sent a thick cloud of dust along the corridor and enveloped her in a white shroud. Her lungs heaved and her throat burned and she fought to resist an old terror, trying not to think about the fact that she was now trapped underground. The floor beneath her hands was shaken by more distant explosions, and she knew now that the demon intruders wanted no less than the total destruction of the Kree base. She could hear a rumbling sound above her head, and the terrible shriek of tortured metal. She rolled over onto her back to see that the ceiling was bulging inward.
“Goddess, no!” she screamed—but she had no time to do anything else but throw up a futile warding hand as the world fell upon her.
CHAPTEI 5
WOLVERINE’S ENHANCED senses were on full alert as he followed Storm, Rogue and Shaw into the grounds of Avengers _Mansion. Manhattan Island may have been quiet, but its sidewalks were stained with old blood—and eveiy so often the scent of a decaying corpse hit him, drifting out through a broken window or up from beneath the rotting garbage stink of an overflowing dumpster.
He could smell something else too: fear. It permeated the very air of this nightmare future.
The mansion was abandoned, as Phoenix had predicted. Its gates had been wrenched from their hinges, its door hung open and vegetation had gained footholds in its masonry. The front lawn was neat and green, but Wolverine could tell that the grass was fake. Mixed in with the unpleasant, sterile aroma of plastic was the acidic tang of engine oil. He reminded the others that, despite appearances, the Avengers’ defenses may yet be active.
They inched their way cautiously along the driveway, gaining confidence when nothing appeared to bar their path: a misplaced confidence, as it transpired.
They were only a dozen steps away from the inviting doorway when the attack came. Wolverine’s sensitive ears picked it up first: a deep mechanical rumbling from beneath his feet. His barked warning came just in time for Storm and Rogue to take to the air, avoiding the thick metal coils that erupted from the ground and sought to entangle the quartet. Wolverine popped his claws from the backs of his hands, experience enabling him to ignore the pain as they shredded his skin: it would heal in moments anyway. He twisted and turned, pushing his squat but athletic body to its limit to keep himself out of reach of the grasping tendrils. He tried to cut one, and was disgruntled to see that he only struck sparks from its surface. Like his claws, the coil was constructed from—or at least sheathed in—near-impervious adamantium. He was keeping one step ahead of them-just about-but their attack patterns were designed to drive him away from the buildi
ng and he couldn’t get past them. Out of the comer of his eye, he noticed that Shaw had already been caught.
Then a second threat presented itself: small, square sections of the artificial lawn flipped over to reveal short, stubby, platform-mounted guns on their undersides. The guns rotated upon their mountings, tracking the two airborne X-Men, and one of them spat a stream of dark energy at Rogue. She had seen the danger, but evidently it had approached faster than she had anticipated. She swerved, barely avoiding the first blast, and flew into a second. The guns had been programmed well. Rogue was winded and in pain-which meant that she had taken what, to anybody not blessed with her tough hide, would have been a fatal hit. Which, in turn, meant that somebody must have refitted the guns since the Avengers’ departure from their headquarters.
Wolverine relayed that information to the others, including the team in Central Park, via Phoenix. Looks like there could be someone here, he telesent. Cyclops asked if reinforcements were needed, to which he replied: No need to send in the cavalry yet. We’ll keep you posted.
Storm disposed of two of the guns with well-targeted lightning strikes. Wolverine leapt upon a third: it was adamantium-plated, of course, but he forced his claws into its seams and pried it apart. Its power source exploded in his face, causing minor burns to his skin, but they too would be gone in no more than a few minutes.
The guns were ignoring Shaw, presumably on the grounds that his threat had already been neutralized. Rogue must have seen this too, as she landed and took cover behind him. She was still a little unsteady on her feet, but the gambit worked: hidden from the guns’ sensors, and with the nearest coils already occupied with holding the Black King in place, she was able to gain a short breather. As Storm and Wolverine rushed the coils nearest the door together, hoping that they couldn’t cope with two attackers at once, Rogue laid a hand upon Shaw’s shoulder, spun him around and punched him three times in the face. He was unmoved by the powerful blows, reacting only with a small nod of gratitude. Energized by Rogue’s gift of kinetic force, he flexed his muscles and tore the coils that held him right out of the ground. Relaxing their steely grips, they flopped lifelessly around his feet.
A coil whipped around the hovering Storm’s ankle, holding her fast and pulling her down. But her sacrifice allowed Wolverine to reach Avengers Mansion at last.
He dropped to his haunches in the cool, dark hallway of the building, detecting multiple scents in the doorways around him and the staircase above, presenting a smaller target to the unseen watchers. His keen eyes picked out their shapes through the gloom an instant before they rushed him. Their form-fitting two-tone costumes of various colors marked them out as Genoshan mutates: human beings whose latent mutant genes had been artificially stimulated by the corrupt government of their island nation. Once, they had served as a secret army of unpaid, super-powered slaves. Then Magneto had taken control of Genosha—which, to Wolverine’s mind, was not much of an improvement but at least its subjects had been freed.
It made sense, he supposed, that Genoshan refugees should have found their way here, given that the Legacy Virus was rife in their own country. These particular mutates, however, still had shaved heads and bore their old numbers upon their chests. Some attempt to reassert their pride, he wondered, by co-opting and subverting the former symbols of their servitude? Or had they simply exchanged one despotic master for another?
He didn’t have time to ponder that question. Sympathetic as he felt towards the plight of his attackers, he couldn’t afford to pull any punches with them, particularly as their powers were unknown. Rather than stand his ground, he rushed to meet them, fists and claws flailing.
Within seconds, he had been buried beneath a pile of heaving bodies.
Cyclops could see the flickering light of a dying fire through the trees, and he motioned to his three teammates to slow down and approach with caution. Gray smoke curled around the tree trunks and brought with it a deeply unpleasant smell that was familiar from a hundred battles. The smell gave Cyclops an idea of what to expect even before he reached the edge of a small, untended and overgrown meadow and had his awful suspicion confirmed.
Iceman was unable to suppress a gasp of horror. Nightcrawler lowered his eyes and crossed himself, no doubt offering up a silent prayer. Phoenix remained focused upon the matter in hand, and Cyclops heard her voice in his mind: I can’t detect any thought patterns in the vicinity. She sounded distant, no doubt because she was still concentrating on maintaining the telepathic link between the two X-Men teams. She was probably also monitoring the other team’s situation, after Wolverine’s warning that they had run into trouble.
They moved out into the open, but still trod softly. It felt right somehow, like a mark of respect for the dead. The stench of burnt flesh was stronger now, and Cyclops almost gagged on it. Iceman curled his lower lip into a snarl and extinguished the fire with an angry burst of wateiy ice, the consistency of snow. It was far too late, however, for the middle-aged African-American woman who lay suspended above the now-fizzling flames, lashed to a latticework of gnarled and blackened sticks like a wild boar on a spit.
Cyclops’s nausea deepened as he recognized the mutilated corpse.
“Her name was Pearl Scott,” he said numbly. “Storm and I met her a few days ago at her home in Poughkeepsie. Her husband Clyde was one of the scientists kidnapped by the Hellfire Club.” Having made that connection for the others, he didn’t need to continue. They already knew how Sebastian Shaw had captured three prominent geneticists and put them to work on finding a cure for the Legacy Virus in the research facility beneath his Kree island. Even after the X-Men had ostensibly liberated Clyde Scott and his colleagues, the trio had had little choice but to continue their work: they had been infected with Legacy themselves to ensure that it was in their best interests to cooperate.
Cyclops remembered Clyde Scott’s ultimate fate, and a dark wave of sadness—tinged with a small amount of guilt—washed over him. “He was one of the people who died when Selene’s demons attacked the island.” He had promised to get Pearl’s husband back for her. He hadn’t even had the chance to tell her what had happened to him. From her point of view, Clyde had been killed a year ago and she almost certainly hadn’t even been told. She must have gone to her own death with that aching void of uncertainty in her heart.
His gloomy reverie was interrupted by a sound from behind him. The snap of a twig.
It had come from somewhere beyond the tree line. The others had heard it too, and they reacted instantaneously. Nightcrawler teleported away: Cyclops felt him through the link as he materialized in a nearby tree, only to report that he could see nothing even from this new vantage point. Phoenix performed another quick scan of the area, but she shook her head as she came up blank for a second time. If there was indeed somebody there, then he or she was not only invisible to the eye but also to Jean’s extra-sensoiy powers.
Cyclops cast a meaningful glance at Iceman, who knew what to do. He stepped forward and sent a wide-angled flurry of snow ahead of him. Five blank spaces were picked out by the blizzard; five short figures, each no taller than four feet, among the trees. They realized that they had been sighted, and their postures betrayed their alarm. Three of them turned to run, but Nightcrawler appeared behind them in a cloud of brimstone and they recoiled from his demonic form. Scanning the figures, Cyclops saw that one stood a short way apart from the others, its fingers to its temples, its head bowed in concentration. He targeted it with a low-powered optic blast, no more than enough to shock it.
His hunch was proved right. The figure recoiled, startled, and the cloaking field that it must have been maintaining around itself and its fellows was dropped. The holes in Iceman’s snowstorm were abruptly filled in, and Phoenix gasped: “They’re children. Just children!”
“That doesn’t mean they can’t be dangerous,” Cyclops reminded her, aware of Pearl Scott’s toasted corpse behind him.
The children-three boys and two girls-looked like
the archetypal impoverished orphans from a movie adaptation of a Dickens novel. The eldest of them was about ten, the youngest about four. Their faces were grimy, their hair unkempt, and they were dressed in rags. However, as if acting upon some inaudible signal, they sprang at the X-Men in unison. Blue sparks emanated from the clenched fists of one boy; another sprouted protective spines all over his skin. One of the girls was coming right at Cyclops: her short body elongated in midair, her clothes dissolving into a coating of white fur as her forehead receded and her eyes became scarlet. Staring into the salivating jaws of a monster, Cyclops prepared to unleash his eye-beams again. Despite his warning to the others, however, compassion stayed his hand. He simply threw himself out of the way of his attacker—to find that she hadn’t been aiming for him at all.
The children scattered, leaving the X-Men in disarray. “Wait!” cried Phoenix. “We don’t mean you any harm.” Her plea was to no avail.
“I don’t think they did it,” said Nightcrawler quietly. Cyclops turned to him with a quizzical expression. He was looking at Pearl, and his headlamp eyes were dimmed by sadness. “Those claw marks on her body-none of those kids could have made those. They’re too deep even for the lycanthrope.”
“They weren’t killers,” concurred Phoenix. “They were just afraid.”
“But they were going to ... to ... if we hadn’t come along____”
Iceman couldn’t complete the sentence. He turned away and put a hand to his stomach as if he were about to be sick.
“Perhaps they felt they had no choice,” said Phoenix.
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 31