There was a construction site nearby, and some of the crowd had collected some loose bits and pieces of rubble in passing; it didn’t take long for them to start throwing. The troopers used their shields as they’d been taught, linking them as the ancient Roman Legion had done to create the “turtle,” putting an unbreakable roof over their heads for protection.
But the shield wasn’t foolproof and not all the projectiles were deflected. One soldier went down, blood streaming from a gash below his helmet. Charlotte helped drag him clear and an NYPD uniformed officer took his place. The line bowed, retreated perhaps a step, but otherwise held.
Slowly, patiently, the snipers and their spotters swept the crowd with their high-powered lenses. Rounds chambered, safeties off, fingers rested beside the triggers, but not on them. Boring, meticulous work, maximum stress, because they couldn’t relax their vigilance even a smidge, and when the time came to act, they had to be perfect. It wasn’t even that warm a morning, yet, one and all, the snipers were sweating.
At Bishop’s command, the line of guards advanced, step by relentless step, easing the protestors back to their original position. The order for the day, emphasized repeatedly all along the chain of command, was restraint. No screwups were acceptable, not in the face of such comprehensive media coverage, not with the whole world watching. He spared himself a ghost of a grin at the thought, because some among the protestors—although he couldn’t yet tell which side—had begun that very chant, as their parents and grandparents had before them. “The Whole World Is Watching! The Whole World Is Watching!”
A stir among the anticure crowd snagged his attention. He began to respond. He noticed Charlotte turning as well, reacting to the same cop instinct, the same subconscious cues.
Someone was charging out of the crush and into the open. Lizard skin, with legs made more for jumping than walking.
“Green light,” Bishop said into his headset. “At your discretion.” There wasn’t an instant’s thought given to the repercussions if he was wrong, and he trusted his men as he did himself.
Sniper Team One across the avenue, twelve stories up, had the best angle. Officer Zak Penn stopped chewing his gum, tapped lightly on the button that laid the scarlet dot of his laser square against the center of the mutant’s back, and shifted his finger to the trigger.
The charging mutant leapt into the open, covering half the distance to the police line with the first jump and reaching a height that told them his second would put him on the roof. He had a bomb, of course. He also intended to be long gone when it detonated; he’d only need a second to drop the thing and another to be an entire block removed from the blast.
Penn made the necessary adjustments, pulled the trigger, and started chewing again while chambering the next round. He was ready for a second shot, but knew he wouldn’t need it.
The mutant was barely off the ground when the projectile hit him, right on the money.
He dropped as hard as if he’d just been hit by an invisible linebacker, going into violent convulsions the moment he landed. Bishop started forward, hand on his own weapon, while Charlotte yelled for the paramedics. But the seizure passed as quickly and abruptly as it had begun, and concern turned to astonishment as scales flaked off the man’s body, revealing clean, human flesh underneath. His head had been crowned by a succession of bony ridges, running front to back, rising to a central crest. Now he was nearly bald, with a definite shading of hair. And as for his legs—originally they’d formed a shape something like a wild S, made for leaping huge buildings with a single bound. Not anymore. Pink feet and ordinary—normal—toes were what could be seen sprouting from the hem of trousers which had fit perfectly before but were now hugely oversized.
Slowly, wobbling because his balance and center of gravity had changed so markedly, struggling to get used to the new configuration of his body, the man—who’d been a mutant—rose to his feet. He stared, dumbfounded, at his hands and then lifted them and his face skyward, unleashing all his grief and rage in one monstrous bellow of denial that echoed and re-echoed throughout the suddenly silent plaza:
“Nnnnooo!”
Nobody else said a word as a couple of cops and troopers trundled forward—nothing quick or graceful about moving in all that gear—to trip him up and put him gently down so they could bind his wrists with zip ties and hustle him to the nearest police van for processing.
The protestors said nothing, did nothing, although some shot nervous looks at the neighboring rooftops, wondering what would happen next.
Off to the side, watching from the roof of their truck, which afforded the best vantage, one of the local reporters elbowed her camera guy in the ribs: “Tell me you got that,” she demanded of him and was rewarded by a terse, satisfied nod.
Worthingon Jr. snapped off the TV. He couldn’t bear to watch anymore.
“What have I done?” he asked. “What have I done?”
It wasn’t just the violence done to the clinics that haunted him; in a way, he’d half-expected such a reaction, as it was emblematic of the times. What struck him to the quick—coming on the heels of his own son’s terror at the prospect of the needle—was the look on the mutant’s face as he realized what had been done to him. Thus far, the only mutants Worthington Jr. had encountered directly were those who’d embraced what he offered. Here was the first time he’d seen someone transformed involuntarily. The fact that he was likely a terrorist, committing a criminal act that might have gotten people hurt or killed, didn’t matter to him—which was strange because he was a devout proponent of law and public order. It was coming face-to-face with the realization that he’d done something irrevocable.
He remembered a movie from his youth, seen on a day one afternoon in London, Fellini’s Satyricon. Early on in the movie, a man—an extra, a derelict drafted off the streets—had actually allowed his hand to be severed at the wrist, in a scene presenting how ancient Rome punished criminals. He had never understood how that person had permitted himself to be so mutilated, or how any other rational, decent person could have committed the act. What was done could never be undone, the hand gone forever.
Just like that mutant’s powers.
He remembered that tragic moment in the bathroom, beholding his son, the light of his life, slashing at himself with a boning knife, desperate to pluck away the wings sprouting from his back, unable to accept the cruel alterations in his body that would make them practical. He’d held the boy in his arms, the two of them rocking back and forth, as so much blood flooded over them that when his wife came home from work she screamed and damn near fainted, thinking husband and son had both been murdered. They’d all sobbed themselves to sleep that night, without any answers to their prayers. Why, oh why, had God done this to their bright and beautiful boy? Ultimately, they’d homeschooled their son because Warren hated to go outside. He had to strap his wings into a cruel harness that made him feel like he was walking around in a perpetual hammerlock, desperately afraid of what would happen if anyone found out. He broke contact with his childhood friends; he hardly left his room. Briefly, they considered consulting with Charles Xavier, but neither of them wanted their boy to be lumped in with a student body that was described in the popular press as either freaks or terrorists, or both.
Beyond that, Worthington Jr. had begun to consider the course of his son’s life after school. Who would hire a man with wings? What work could he do? And what would this mean for any grandchildren should he ever marry?
So many hard questions, so few satisfactory answers, so much misery for all concerned. He found himself imprisoned in a box, and so he had sought a solution that was outside the box, which is what led him to Kavita. Her research seemed to him a godsend, her discovery the ideal solution to everyone’s problem.
Until this moment, when all his good works and intentions turned to ashes in his mouth.
“All I wanted to do was help,” he said, a little bit lost, a little bit helpless, recalling out of nowhere the old sayin
g about what paved the road to Hell.
“Perhaps,” Dr. Rao offered, “we hadn’t considered the full ramifications of the cure.”
“I just…” Worthington Jr. said, his explanation more for his own ears than hers, “I thought this would bring us together.”
Rao shook her head. “Let us hope—let us pray—it doesn’t tear the world apart.”
The room shook with the powerful downdraft of rotor blades as a pair of Apache attack helos circled the building, providing air cover for a Sikorsky Black Hawk troop transport that was already touching down. They heard a minor tumult in the outer office, the repetitive thunder of boots hurrying along the hallways, and then were faced by a civilian flashing a badge that identified him as FBI, accompanied by a stick of paratroopers, assigned to secure the location and especially anyone and everything relating to the cure.
Worthington’s discovery was no longer his. And its fate, like those of his son, and mutantkind in general, had just been assumed by greater hands.
Logan knew nothing about what was happening in the world, and at the moment cared less. He was hunting.
Jean had shown him the way, but he was too innately wary to follow her trail directly. Once he found the jumping-off point, he used one of the handheld computers Kitty was fond of gimmicking together to pull a landsat overview of the scene off the Net. Cute little gizmo, he discovered, in keeping with its creator—full of surprises—it contained a miniature version of the holo-projection systems in the Blackbird and the Mansion, allowing him to view the target area in three dimensions rather than as a flat picture on a screen. This enabled him to follow Jean’s trail virtually, a dry run that told him where he had to go, so that he could find his own way.
Normally, he’d go for the impossible route, the one nobody would think to watch. But Magneto had such a bug up his butt about the Wolverine, chances were he’d have guards posted everywhere, just for spite. The Master of Magnetism was no fool—he had to assume Logan would make a play for Jean, and establish his defenses accordingly.
So Logan found himself a backdoor that was a rugged traverse, but nowhere near impossible. It was one of a score of ways into the depths of the untracked, minimally charted mountain forest.
He came with the clothes on his back, trusting to senses and tradecraft, along with his claws, to see him safely—whatever that would mean—to the finish. No weapons, no gear. He’d sustain himself on whatever he found along the way and face the elements as he had done as a boy.
Speed was of the essence, but as he closed on his objective, it was far better to be silent. A ghost couldn’t have been less conspicuous as he slipped from shadow to shadow without making a sound—not even the shush of clothes as he moved, the touch of boot soles to leaves on the forest floor—or leaving a sign.
Security was quite respectable. Magneto—or the flunky who replaced Mystique—knew the business. He encountered the first cadre a klick from the clearing, chose to watch them rather than engage, to get a sense of what kind of adversaries they were. Their woodcraft was lousy—they made as much noise walking as a kid busting a wilderness trail aboard his brand-new ATV. If this was the best Magneto had…
As it turned out, they weren’t. Nasty surprises awaited him as he encountered snares and deadfalls, mostly in the obvious places, but a few sited quite ingeniously. Fortunately for Logan, he could smell the mutants who’d laid the traps and see where they’d covered their tracks. Gradually, painstakingly, he learned how his adversaries thought, and how well they worked. As he did so, he learned how best to beat them.
The home stretch came, their last line of defense—the best of their breed. These guys, he didn’t want to leave on his six; they’d have to be dealt with. By this time, he had their communication protocols down pat. If he took them hard and fast, before they could get the word out, he’d have enough time before they were missed to reach Jeannie and bail. The question was, did Magneto have himself a telepath—other than Jean, of course. If he did, the psi would likely be in constant link with the sentries, and shriek the alarm at the first sign of trouble. No way of knowing for sure, he just had to throw the dice and hope for the best.
But even as he allowed himself that thought, with it came the certainty that Magneto had no psis among his new Brotherhood.
Jean, he knew; helping again. He took that for a good sign.
Two guards patrolled the woods, with another trio in the trees.
Leaves rustled. The guards responded, more wary with each approaching step, bringing rifles to bear, gearing for a fight. Nothing worth reporting yet.
He left them a footprint, and as one of them put fingers to lips to alert the others with a whistle…
…Logan blindsided him into oblivion. His partner took a swing. Logan blocked it, stabbed thumb to throat to forestall any outcry, ducked under a second swing, clipped the guy’s legs out from under him, caught him as he fell, and sent him off to dreamland with his partner.
There hadn’t been a lot of noise, but it was sufficient to bring the others. They came in fast from all sides, trapping Logan at their convergence.
They found their two fallen comrades, but not the man who dropped them.
They should have looked up. Pretty uncanny how well, how quickly, how quietly, a fella can claw his way up the side of a tree if there’s a need.
A scrap of torn bark fluttered past one of the mutants. By the time his gaze rolled up to find the cause…
…Logan was on his way down. He dropped into the center of the trio—no claws, there was no need for blood. These weren’t hardcore Brotherhood. He moved in a blur, with a focus and precision most would consider wholly unlike him. They tried their best to land both punches and kicks, but he either parried them or slipped out of the way, returning their strikes with interest, the adamantium laced through his bones impacting with more force than solid steel bars. Tough as mutant physiognomy might be, they were no match for his enhanced skeleton, or his natural strength.
Three men, three seconds, six or seven moves by all concerned, and the fight was over. They never really knew what hit them, and Logan didn’t even break a sweat.
Now for the main event.
He was after Jean, and her scent took him away from the encampment, which was altogether fine with him. Mayhem wasn’t on his dance card tonight, if it could be avoided. Much more fun to find a way to outthink Magneto than to play the brute, to show the old man that he wasn’t the only mutant with an affinity for chess.
As Logan snaked his way along the ridgeline, a very slight shift in the wind flooded him with the scents of the mutants gathered below and tossed all his well-laid plans into the Dumpster. Thinking back over his trail, he realized that he’d been so intent on Jean and the sentries that he’d discounted the other scents filling the air—only now acknowledging that they really did fill the air. Carefully, taking not the slightest chance, he parted some brush along the edge of the cliff for a view of the encampment.
He had to concede that Magneto had been busy the past few days. The old man must have made a helluva case, too. He’d expected a few score, max, to rally to Magneto’s cause; what lay before him easily numbered in the hundreds. Both sexes, all ages, individuals and families—not merely the ones who could fight, but the future generations they were fighting for.
Magneto stood upon a makeshift platform, giving a speech.
“They wish to cure us,” he said, giving that sentiment and those who held it the contempt they so richly deserved. “But I say we are the cure, to that infirm, imperfect condition of nature called Homo sapiens.”
They cheered.
“They have their weapons, we have ours!”
They cheered more loudly. Logan hoped Magneto, like Fidel Castro, would go on for hours. That would make his life so much easier.
“We will strike with a vengeance and fury this world has never witnessed. We will destroy the very source of this cure…”
It doesn’t have to be this way, Logan thought, and k
new as he did so that for Magneto there could be no other. He seemed as hardwired into the patterns of his life as he so firmly believed Logan was into his.
“…and if any mutant should stand in our way, then we will use this poison against them….”
Logan paused and took a moment to look long and hard at his hands, as if his skin had turned transparent and he could see the claws in their housings, tucked into his forearms, see how intricately the molecular structure of his bones had been interwoven with that of the adamantium that made them unbreakable. The process had cost him a significant portion of his bone marrow; the key element that sustained him was his healing factor. It not only healed the gashes made between his knuckles every time the blades extended and retracted, it produced red and white blood cells with incredible efficiency. Take away the healing and he was a Dead Mutant Walking.
It was not a happy thought, and a fate he was determined to avoid. He wasn’t always comfortable with the X-Men, but life with them had definitely gotten interesting over the years, more than enough to keep him coming back, and maybe even to consider sticking around.
“We will end this where it all began.” That caught Logan’s attention. “And then, my brothers and sisters, nothing can stop us!”
And suppose you win, smart guy, Logan thought, what then, eh? What about the people who’re left, you just gonna make ’em “disappear”? Beat Hitler’s score by a factor of a hundred or more? Can even you embrace genocide? Or do you exile everyone to Australia? Or turn them into the perpetual underclass? Is that the future you promise these folks, to become lords of an Earth populated by slaves? Look in the mirror, bub, you’ll see how that scenario plays out.
X-Men(tm) The Last Stand Page 17