There were tears in Louise’s eyes now, but her glare was mutinous as she jumped to her feet. “I don’t care what you say,” she shouted back, “and I don’t need to read your thoughts. I know the truth!”
“You know what your Priest has told you-but he’s using you, Louise. He’ll say whatever it takes to maintain his own power over the mutates. Why can’t you see that?”
“If it weren’t for Magneto, I wouldn’t have my son!”
“He controls magnetic fields,” scoffed Kurt. “He can’t create life!” “He is our Savior, and I won’t let you persuade me otherwise!” “Are you so narrow-minded that you won’t even consider another point of view?”
Louise’s expression hardened, and she scowled at Nightcrawler with a steely determination that he hadn’t imagined she could possess. She drew herself up to her full height, and said primly: “I am not narrow-minded, Mr. Wagner. I simply have faith!”
The words hit him like a crossbow bolt to the heart.
He had lost his temper with her, frustrated by her stubborn insistence on clinging to her own worldview in defiance of all reason. But how would he have reacted himself in her position? Could he have constructed a logical rationale for his own religious beliefs? Of course not: his faith was an instinctive thing. He couldn’t prove the existence of his God-but he would have refuted to his dying breath the suggestion that Jesus Christ was just another man.
“The difference between my God and yours,” he said quietly, “is that mine wishes me to not to kill, especially not in his name. There is no greater sin.”
“It is people such as you and the humans who cause all the suffering and death in the world. Magneto only exacts divine retribution. He brings justice.”
“He has blood on his hands,” said Nightcrawler, “as will all the mutates if you stand back and let your Priest murder my friend.” But it was hopeless. He knew now what he was up against, that this was an argument he could not win.
And from that moment on until the Priest came for him, he said nothing more.
CHAPTER 11
OST PEOPLE thought of her as efficient and ruthless, without conscience or feeling. But those people didn’t know the real her. Nobody did. She had worked hard to build a facade around f, and to maintain it whatever the circumstances, whatever the
tiersel cost.
M
If anyone had read her mind now, if they could have seen her agonizing uncertainty, they wouldn’t have recognized her. They would have wondered what she was doing, standing alone in this corridor with her ear pressed up against a closed door. She could hear nothing from the room beyond. The X-Men had been prisoners for many hours now, and they had run out of things to say to each other. She could sense their presence, though. Her mind brushed against theirs—just a light touch; nothing that they, without the powers of Phoenix, could have detected-and she knew they had given up hope. They couldn’t escape the trap in which Magneto had placed them. Not without some form of outside intervention.
She wondered if she could help them.
Her name was Tessa. She had no surname: she had left it behind a long time ago, along with her old life, when she had joined the Hellfire Club.
She had been a teenager, then. She had spent most of the intervening years at the side of Sebastian Shaw. She had come to know him as nobody else did, as few ever had. Away from him, she had no existence. And in turn, she had earned his rare trust. She hadn’t used her psychic powers to manipulate him-she hadn’t dared be so overt-but she had been able to read any suspicions in his mind and act to quell them. Shaw had never realized quite how powerful a telepath she was. She had had to be. Her own mind had been probed several times by Hellfire Club members such as Selene, Emma Frost and Madelyne Pryor. She had always been able to conceal her true self from them. Sometimes, she had had to bury it so deeply that she had become, in thought as well as deed, the woman she pretended to be.
She had had to make many tough choices. In order to prove her loyalty to Shaw, she had done things of which she wasn’t proud. But she had known, when she had accepted this assignment, that it would be difficult. And lonely. Not even the X-Men knew that their founder had also recruited Tessa, and sent her on a mission deep undercover. Charles Xavier had foreseen a time when the Hellfire Club would become a major threat to the world. Her job had been to keep him appraised of its activities-and, only when it was absolutely necessary, and when she could do so without jeopardizing her cover-to intervene.
Tessa had saved the X-Man Psylocke from the organization’s clutches, but she had been unable to do the same for Phoenix. She hadn’t known about the original Mastermind’s plans for Jean Grey until it had been too late. If she had been able to anticipate the outcome of those plans—the accidental unleashing of the creature known as Dark Phoenix-she would have acted sooner. She didn’t want to make the same mistake again.
But things had changed recently. She didn’t know why, but her relationship with Shaw had felt strained ever since his trip to the future. It had been a subtle shift in his manner, at first, and the odd stray thought. She had hoped it was unimportant but, without knowing exactly what he had seen, it was impossible to be sure. She had considered probing his mind, but he had built up his defenses to the point where that would have been extremely dangerous.
And then, he had challenged her about Emma Frost-as if he had expected her betrayal, her passing of his secrets to the erstwhile White Queen. He had appeared to accept her explanation this time, and he had said nothing more about the matter. But his trust in her had been eroded, and that made her position increasingly untenable.
It would have been easy for Tessa to do something. Almost too easy. She could steal into the mind of the young mutate Miranda, and alter her perceptions. Miranda would believe that she was maintaining her dampening field around all four prisoners, but in reality it would have shifted just far enough for one X-Man to regain his or her abilities. A month ago, she could have done it, and Shaw would never have suspected her involvement. The X-Men’s escape would have been blamed on a momentary lapse on Miranda’s part. Now, it was likely that he was watching her, waiting for her to prove to him what he already suspected.
He had not confided his plans in her. In itself, this was not unusual, but it presented Tessa with a problem. Storm and the Beast had been right: she had no doubt that Shaw planned to turn on Magneto somewhere down the line. Perhaps he had the situation in hand, in which case she would be foolish to risk exposing herself. But what if he intended to wait until after the Legacy Virus had been spread and lives imperiled? What if he made his move only for Magneto to second-guess and defeat him?
And what if he was counting on Tessa to free the X-Men behind his back? The Black King considered himself an expert reader and user of people, and that was just the sort of game he might play. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t appeared too concerned when she had brought the mutant heroes into play in the first place. Perhaps this was a test for her: a test that he expected-and needed-her to fail.
It would have been easy for Tessa to do something.
But what if she made the wrong move?
The party had been in full swing above Cyclops’s head for at least two hours. A regular drum beat and the sound of conversation, muted by the ceiling, had lulled him into a fitful doze. As he surfaced now, chiding himself and wondering how he had been able to sleep no matter how tired he had been, he realized what it was that had coaxed him awake.
He could sense Jean in his mind again. He smiled at her loving telepathic touch. You 're back, he said to her without speaking.
I don’t know why, she confided, and my psi-senses are still weak—but at least I can feel them again. She sounded overjoyed; Scott realized that, for her, having her mind imprisoned in her own body must have been like being blinded.
My optic blasts aren’t working, he reported. The dampening field must still be in force, it simply isn’t affecting you. Are you strong enough to deal with Miranda by yourself?
<
br /> I don’t think she even realizes what’s happened yet. I’m going to try stimulating her sleep centers. She probably won’t read that as an attack, in which case she might not think to rectify whatever it is that’s gone wrong.
Good plan!
Cyclops waited tensely as a minute passed, and then another. He could still hear the beat of the music upstairs, like a clock ticking down the seconds until midnight. They had to be approaching the final hour now. But in this small, well-lit room, nothing seemed to happen.
Then, finally, Miranda’s head began to nod, and she let her book fall into her lap and took a deep yawn. She looked over at the captive X-Men, and for once, Cyclops was glad of his visor because it concealed the fact that he was staring at her intently, willing her to succumb to Phoenix’s psionic manipulation.
The Beast, hanging between Scott and Jean, must have noticed something or picked up on a change in the atmosphere, because he threw a questioning glance in his leader’s direction. Miranda, fortunately, did not appear suspicious. She yawned again, and her head nodded onto her chest. She probably thought she could rest her eyes for a moment—but Phoenix had other plans, and soon the loudest sound in the room was that of Miranda’s rhythmic breathing.
A minute later, Cyclops’s eyes began to bum again.
“Well done, Jean,” he breathed. He twisted his head to look up at the band of metal that held his left arm in place. His wrist was bloodied and his sleeve tom from his previous attempts to break it. He aimed carefully at the manacle and closed his fingers, tapping a palm stud to activate his visor. He opened it only a fraction, allowing a pencil-thin beam of energy to escape but concentrating all his power into that beam. At first, he feared it wouldn’t be enough, that he was still too weak. But the beam grew in strength with each second away from Miranda’s influence, and it began to cut through the metal like a laser.
It took Cyclops another five painstaking minutes to free first his left leg and then his right arm. He was able to drop the short distance to the floor now, and stoop close to his remaining trapped limb. At such close range, he could risk a wider-angled blast, and he made short work of the thick loop of metal that encircled his leg above the knee. By now, the Beast had removed a constricting band from across his chest, and one from around his arm, his restored strength augmented by Phoenix’s telekinesis. Ignoring the shooting pains of pins and needles in his hands and feet, Scott helped them to finish the job. It took less than two minutes, after that, for the combined efforts of the three X-Men to pry Jean loose.
Once they had stepped away from the sculpture, Storm could act at last. Three forks of lightning stabbed through the air, targeted precisely to explode her bonds at their weakest points. Anyone still touching the conductive metal would have been electrocuted; anyone but her. A beatific expression settled upon the weather elemental’s face as she soared free, and the smell of ozone filled the small room.
“What now?” asked Phoenix.
“Now,” said Cyclops, “I think it’s time we brought an end to the festivities.”
He led the way through the corridors of the Hellfire Club building, relieved to find them empty. Music still played in the ballroom, but most of the well-heeled guests had spilled out onto the verandah and down toward the harbor. The trident display, Phoenix had learned from Shaw’s mind, was to be set off from the roof, so she and the Beast headed up there to stop it. A grandfather clock told Cyclops and Storm that it was half past eleven: time enough to deal with the situation here, but what about the other parties across the world?
They created a stir as they raced out into the warm night, Storm spreading her black and golden cloak and taking to the air. Some people didn’t notice them at first—or, filled with alcohol, were slow to react to their appearance-but others gasped, and more than one glass was dropped. Cyclops shouldered his way through the crowd, faster than it could part for him: he had to find Shaw and Tessa before they knew what was happening.
Fortunately, from her vantage point, his teammate had already spotted one of their targets. A powerful updraft caught Tessa’s old-fashioned black ball-gown and lifted her into the air, where Storm was waiting for her. The trick to dealing with the Black King’s assistant was to keep her off-balance, unable to concentrate to use her telepathic abilities. Her physical strength was no greater than that of any normal human being: now that Storm and Tessa had closed in hand-to-hand combat-and in the air, at that-the battle would be brief and the outcome in no doubt.
Cyclops knew where to head now: it was unlikely that Tessa would have strayed too far from her employer. Sure enough, he soon spotted Shaw being hurried away by concerned guests, along with a man and a woman who must have been members of Sydney’s own Inner Circle: non-mutant members, hopefully. In a sea of monkey suits, the anachronistic finery of the fleeing trio was hard to miss.
As he went after them, some people tried to intercept him. He handed off the first three with ease, but their example inspired others to find their courage. A wide but low-powered burst of energy from his eyes shocked, discouraged and scattered them.
Cyclops caught up to his prey even as Shaw reached the front of the Hellfire Club building. He waded through the Black King’s would-be bodyguards, spun him around, seized him by the ruffled front of his shirt and slammed him against the French windows, an arm across his throat. The expression on Shaw’s face was thunderous.
“Go on,” growled Cyclops in his ear. “Fight hack! Show these good ladies and gentlemen what you can do. Let them know that their precious club is really run by mutants. And give me an excuse to wipe the floor with you!”
Shaw glared at him for a long moment before composing himself and readopting' his familiar smirk. “I do not intend to fight you, Mr. Summers,” he said. “However, I am afraid I cannot speak for all my associates.”
Without relaxing his grip on the Black King, Cyclops turned his head to find Lady Mastermind behind him. He unleashed an optic blast, which struck her in the chest—but as she fell, she metamorphosed into a stunned partygoer in an elegant white frock. An illusion. And now, because he had fallen for it, the crowd was beginning to panic.
He cast around for a glimpse of his true foe—and saw her, striding unhurriedly toward him. She was wearing a black gown: the same one, Scott realized, that Tessa had been wearing. And she was carrying Storm, slung unconscious across her shoulders. The onlookers drew away from her, unsure who she was and what she was about to do. If this was an illusion, then everybody could see it this time. Even so, Cyclops held his fire, his fingers hovering over his palm stud, until he could be sure. He couldn’t risk hurting another bystander.
Lady Mastermind stopped a few feet in front of him, and dropped his teammate. “Poor, confused Storm thought she had picked up Tessa,” she smiled. “Imagine her surprise when I switched the concepts of up and down in her mind. She saw the ground coming toward her, and tried to pull up. The result was quite spectacular. Fortunately, her body gave me a soft landing.”
“Whatever you do to me,” said Cyclops, setting his jaw determinedly, “I’m ready for it. I’ll know it’s not real. I won’t let go of Shaw.”
Lady Mastermind laughed. “So sure of that, are you, X-Man? So sure you know what is real and what is not?”
And suddenly, Cyclops could feel the manacles around his wrists and the ache in his muscles again. “No . . .” he whispered to himself as a cold realization enveloped him.
“Oh yes,” she said, “I’m afraid it’s true. You never escaped from Magneto’s trap. You’re still there.”
And he could see it now: the plain walls of the room breaking through what he had thought of as reality. He could feel the metal at his back, see Miranda at her guard post again. Shaw, the Hellfire Club building and the late-night revelers faded away, and the only thing that remained constant was her: Lady Mastermind, regarding him with malicious glee. “Did you really think you could escape us? I have enjoyed toying with you, X-Man; giving you false hope only to snatch it awa
y. But now, the time for games has past.”
“Are you all right, Scott?” asked Phoenix, still trapped as he was. “What did she do to you? What did she make you see?”
“Whatever it was,” lamented the Beast, “I fear it will pale in comparison to the real-life horrors about to be unleashed.”
Cyclops’s eyes widened. His throat felt diy. “What time is it?” he croaked.
“Midnight,” said Lady Mastermind with satisfaction.
And even as she spoke, Scott heard the dull crump of an explosion from somewhere above him, and knew what it had to be. The first trident firework. The first Legacy bomb.
A door loomed ahead of the Beast, but he could already hear the bolts on its far side being drawn back: Phoenix had employed her telekinesis without breaking her step. Likewise, Hank shouldered his way through the obstruction as if it weren’t even closed, and the two X-Men burst out onto the flat roof of the Hellfire Club building.
They were greeted by the true face of the organization: the face that most of its members never saw, but with which they were only too familiar. The uniformed agents, a dozen in all, were concealed from the guests below by a waist-high parapet. They were gathered around a rocket-shaped firework, four feet tall, held vertical by an A-shaped metal frame. A long fuse dangled ominously from its lower end.
As the heroes had hoped, their sudden entrance had taken the mercenaries by surprise: they were scrambling to their feet, still reaching for their guns, when the Beast threw himself at them, tucked in his arms and legs and barreled through them like a bowling ball.
I’ll keep the goons occupied, Jean telesent to him as he landed nimbly beside the A-frame. You see to the rocket.
She was gesturing with her hands, causing rifles to spring from their owners’ grasps or their barrels to bend back upon themselves. But some of the agents had set their sights on the Beast. He delivered a roundhouse punch to one, toppling him into the man behind him and avoiding a retaliatory strike with a deft handspring, which also gave him the opportunity to plant his foot in another man’s face. “Excuse me sir,” he said, catching sight of an agent with a tool belt slung around his waist, “but could I trouble you for a short loan of your screwdriver?” The agent swung the butt of his bent rifle at the X-Man, but Hank ducked beneath it and plucked his prize from its pouch. “Thank you,” he said as he straightened and sent the bemused technician reeling with an uppercut to the jaw, “and goodnight!” Two more men tried to rush him, one from each side—but he dodged their blows, planted his hands on their shoulders, pushed himself upward and bounced off their heads, somersaulting over the rocket to land on its far side.
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