X-Men(tm) The Last Stand

by Chris Claremont

  “Psylocke, what about her?” asked one of the others, giving Kavita a rough shake. She was crying, praying, lost within herself with the certainty of her imminent doom.

  “She’s the brains,” Psylocke said. “He’s the money. Kill her.”

  Worthington stared at Kavita in horror, two sets of wide-open eyes momentarily locking glances. He tried to reach out to her, only to find himself yanked roughly away.

  Over his shoulder, he saw the other boy deploy quills across his shoulders and down his arms. A single flex of the forearm hurled a demonstration set into the neighboring wall with the force of a nail gun.

  As Worthington was tossed around a corner, his captors not caring if they raised bruises or broke bones, he saw the mutant reach for Kavita and heard her last, despairing howl.

  Kitty had no time to spare. She was surrounded by three mutants of her own. She went solid for them, spinning side kicks to the face, backed by the strength of a dancer’s leg, bouncing one guy into the next, shaking both up enough for her to complete the pivot and punch the third in the belly, dropping him at last with a knee to the nose.

  The others made uncoordinated grabs for her but she stepped right through them and turned solid from behind to give them her version of the Vulcan neck pinch.

  Everyone was down but breathing. There was no time to do more because the sound of smashing walls was far too close for comfort, and her lead over the Juggernaut was perhaps a wall away from vanishing.

  As if on cue, he thundered into view below, scattering chunks of masonry, bars that were more like spears, into his path as he lumbered the length of the tier.

  Saving grace—the boy he was after wasn’t on the ground floor.

  Up he came, without slackening pace, each step bowing the metal stairs as if they were tin, while Kitty sprinted along the gallery to catch him.

  She phased him with her, so that his next step—instead of landing solidly on the metal grating—plunged right through. She’d meant to leave him there, dangling from his midsection, deck and body inextricably merged until she came back to pull him free, but he proved quicker and more on the ball than she’d anticipated.

  The instant he sensed the unique tingling that came from her nervous system interrupting his, he slammed his great hands down on the gallery with force enough to tear this entire section loose from its mountings and pitch both himself and Kitty to the main floor below.

  They landed close enough together for him to make another grab at her, which failed as she went reflexively ghost—only to discover that was precisely what he wanted, as he used that momentary intangibility to wrench himself free of the deck grating.

  Not only quick, but cunning. And now, really pissed off.

  Thank Heaven, she thought, at least something’s going right!

  Kitty bolted. As hoped for, he followed.

  She couldn’t give the others an update; one of the major repercussions of her power was that it shorted out any electric circuit she passed through. Total murder on circuit boards, which was appropriately ironic for a natural gearhead. Advantage, she could neutralize surveillance systems, electronic locks, even people, with just the right touch. Problem, put a radio on her, it died.

  She couldn’t call for help, which meant she was on her own.

  She considered a Wile E. Coyote stratagem, maybe leading Juggernaut around in circles until he’d undermined the body of the prison so much that it collapsed on top of him. Then decided, from recent experience, that not only was he probably a tad too smart for that, but the crash wouldn’t stop him.

  Now she understood the nickname. His power made Cain Marko unstoppable.

  She’d reached a wholly refurbished section of the prison that managed to make the great, gray edifice look quite comfortable. Fresh paint, modern furniture, total climate control; it reminded her of the wealthy of days gone by who transported stately manors or castles—or London Bridge—from Europe to rebuild them brick by brick over here. In this case, if she hadn’t known better she’d have figured she was standing in any top-flight lab in the world.

  The floor trembled, the echo of collapsing walls reached her, and she was galvanized into action. She’d lost her lead again.

  Kitty phased through the nearest doorway, then raced from room to room, assuming that sooner or later she’d get lucky.

  Figures. The room she wanted was the last, at the end of the hall, with a spectacular corner view of the now-empty straits. She made a face. It was some interior designer’s vision of what a kid’s room should look like, with all the personality of a magazine layout.

  The boy was huddled under the bed, clutching a stuffed animal that was almost as big as he was to his chest.

  She really didn’t have the time, but she spared him her most reassuring smile anyway.

  “I’m Kitty,” she said, holding out a hand. Another crash. Wouldn’t be much longer. “I’m one of the X-Men. We’re the good guys.”

  “I know,” he said, “I’ve seen you on TV. I’m Jimmy,” he continued. “But they call me Leech.”

  Nice name, she thought, casting shame on whoever was responsible for it.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, terrified through and through.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said, motioning him towards her. “Right now, Jimmy, we’ve got to get you out of here.”

  She caught his hand and yanked him into her arms, shoving herself towards the nearest wall.

  Major mistake. She led with her head and for a moment, as stars did a fandango across her mind’s eye, she thought she’d broken it for sure. Cracked it wide, just like Zeus, only instead of Athena springing forth full grown, she was losing brain cells by the multitude.

  Damnation—the shock actually made her cry.

  “What happened?” she yowled, pressing the heel of her free hand to her battered forehead.

  “Your powers won’t work around me. That’s my power.”

  She couldn’t help grinning: “Honey-bunny,” she told him hurriedly, “Rogue’s just gonna love you.”

  Enter Juggernaut, beyond rage.

  “Come over here,” Kitty said loudly to Jimmy, making a show of putting him behind her, flat against the wall. They both looked trapped.

  Jimmy dropped to his seat on the floor, staring through Kitty’s legs at the man-mountain who faced them.

  Juggernaut savored the moment.

  “Two for the price of one,” he growled delightedly, forgetting that Kitty could always phase herself to safety. Or perhaps assuming that maybe she’d run out of gas, that she couldn’t play the ghost any longer. Or maybe she was staying solid to protect the brat.

  The reason didn’t matter to Juggernaut, only the result, which in this case would mean blood—theirs.

  He dropped his head to ramming position and kicked himself into gear.

  Kitty waited until the very last possible moment as he barreled towards her, building up an impressive head of speed for such a small space. She couldn’t afford to misplay this in the slightest, as she had no illusions about her ability to face Juggernaut in a fair fight. For all her strength and skills, she’d be a toothpick in his hands.

  He was almost on her when she dropped, a boneless puppet with severed strings, right to the floor to cover Jimmy’s body with her own as Juggernaut…

  …crashed full tilt into the wall.

  Put a hole in it, too—right through the Sheetrock that formed the outer wall of the refurbished room to the two-foot-thick granite underneath, reinforced by concrete and brick and steel.

  Kitty gathered Jimmy close against her and shoved them both along the floor between Juggernaut’s legs until they were well clear of him. She’d heard a monstrous crack! on impact but wasn’t yet willing to put any faith in that as she levered herself back to her feet, keeping hold of Jimmy, ready to start running again if needed.

  Juggernaut was starting to wobble. Stiff legs turned spongy, his butt popped a bit back from the wall as gravity exerted its hold, and he
was done. His eyes were open, wide as could be, but the pupils were wholly dilated. Nobody home at all inside that skull.

  Kitty pumped a fist and laughed aloud as Jimmy echoed her.

  She started towards the entry hole Juggernaut had made, then changed her mind. She had a better idea, something she hadn’t had to do since she turned thirteen.

  Leading Jimmy by the hand, she reached for the handle…

  …and opened the door.

  The two mutants laughed as they hustled Worthington Jr. to the roof of the cell house. It was a sheer drop, four stories, to the ground, but since the building came dangerously close to the edge of the island itself, a hefty shove—which his captors were more than physically capable of—would send him plummeting down the cliff to the rocks over a hundred feet below.

  “You still think we need a cure?” Psylocke demanded.

  Worthington couldn’t answer, even if he wanted to, his throat closed by a mixture of stark terror and absurd pride as the strangest memory coursed through his head, one of the climactic scenes from The Lion in Winter: three young princes, facing execution as traitors to the Crown. Young Prince Richard, still building his reputation as the Lionheart of legend, intends to meet his end with courage—he won’t beg for his life. His brother Geoffrey thinks him a fool, as if it matters how a man dies. Richard’s final words: When the fall is all that’s

  left, it matters.

  Worthington’s insides were ice. He feared that he would lose control and shame himself, and he knew that’s what the mutants wanted, why Kid Omega kept mimicking—with fearful accuracy—that last, awful cry from Kavita. But at the same time, he found himself gathered in a strange and unexpected cocoon of calm, as though he was suddenly snuggling deep within an emotional comforter. He was measuring the last moments of being with each step across the roof. He could hear the sounds of battle but they seemed very far away, and since the two mutants paid them no mind, he assumed their side was winning. The wind off the bay seemed refreshingly cool on his skin, sharp enough blowing straight into his face that it brought tears to his eyes; the air was as crisp and clear as he’d ever seen it. He was so used to seeing the straits framed by the towers of the Golden Gate that seeing it open like this made him think of a door being suddenly flung wide, leaving him with an unreal sense of liberation.

  The mutants made no effort to match their pace to his. They liked it when he stumbled, even though they wouldn’t let him fall. They were in a rush, talking about places to go, things to do.

  “Well, guess what, Warren,” Psylocke told him, getting right up in his face. “It’s time to cure you!”

  They shoved, harder than he expected……and his arms flailed reflexively, pinwheeling as he shot out and well away from the prison wall.

  He cried, “No!” but that was an automatic denial. At the same time, he found himself cataloguing the sensations, body remembering his training and experience as a skydiver to shift from the shock of his violent launch into the limbs akimbo pose of flight.

  If I only had a ’chute, he thought. And then he recalled the classic joke about the man who leapt from the top of the Empire State Building. As he passed each floor, people heard him say, “So far, so good.”

  So far, so good.

  He was falling faster. He wouldn’t clear the rocks, and he wondered how much it would hurt, how long he’d feel it before final oblivion.

  And then, his son caught him.

  There was a terrific shock of contact, then an even stronger jerk as the boy’s great wings beat at the air, both to arrest the older, larger man’s headlong fall and to gather sufficient lift to maneuver. Warren had stooped like a diving hawk, dropping with the speed of a race car to tackle his father and grapple him with arms and legs, making sure not to hurt him, wrapping himself around his father as he used to do as a little boy.

  It was a tremendous effort and for the first frantic moments it didn’t look like he’d be successful. Angel cried out in very real pain, his voice breaking with the strain; there was fire across his shoulders, down his arms and spine, and he suddenly feared his wings could not withstand the strain of lifting someone twice his weight.

  Adrenaline surged through his system as he refused to accept the possibility of defeat, his beating wings generating a pulse of ground effect sufficient to give him just enough lift to skim the crest of the rocks and transform his crazed descent into a semblance of level flight, barely a tall man’s height above the waves.

  Worthington got his feet wet as they skimmed a couple of crests, but that was all as Warren kept beating his wings, startling the gulls and pelicans out for their own daily excursions.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Worthington caught sight of his son’s face, in profile, taut with the effort of keeping them aloft—and yet, also transported with a fierce and primal joy the father would never himself feel. He looked to the birds that joined them, then back at his son who was as much a part of their world as of Worthington’s own, and he felt a tremendous sorrow. This was not something to be feared, or to be denied—the fact that his son had wings, that he was a mutant, that he could fly—but to be celebrated.

  Perhaps others might feel differently. Perhaps there were powers that should be neutralized, as there were sure to be people who should not be allowed to keep them. That was a question for each individual and the society they were a part of. With mutants, as with all people, the judgment should be one of action and character, not genome. He didn’t regret his part in creating the cure, although he would always bear the burden of Kavita’s death, and of the harm that had come from his actions. What was wrong, however, were his reasons for it: the shame of having what he thought was a freak for a son, and the fear of what that represented for the future.

  “Thank you,” he breathed.

  It broke his heart, in the best of ways, to behold the smile his son gave him in answer.

  “You’re my dad,” Warren told him, as though that represented the answer to everything.

  “And you’re my son,” Worthington replied, as proudly as he was able.

  Back on Alcatraz, the ground battle was winding down. Storm had rejoined the team. Beast was facing the last few of Magneto’s fighters still left standing. One had extensible limbs, grabbing for Hank with rubber-band arms. The burly X-Man bobbed and weaved, leapt and twisted, with seemingly aimless abandon, staying out of the other’s reach as he bounded from wall to pillar to post until he had the poor mutant all tangled up with himself.

  Before the mutant could sort himself out, Hank concentrated on his companions, springing off fingertips to flatten one with a foot to the face, while using prehensile toes to grasp his mate and pitch him better than twenty feet into Rubber Band Guy. Another leap dropped him into the middle of the impromptu scrum, and a quick flurry of blows dealt with them once and for all.

  He was sure somebody would have a minicam, if not among the mutants then certainly the soldiers, and that it was only a matter of time before images of the battle were all over the Internet. So much for his political career. He looked down at himself, clad in his old brown leather suit that was a size too small, and figured he’d come across as a laughingstock.

  Or maybe not. The uniform may leave something to be desired as a fashion statement, but the moves were as good as ever. Seeing the X-Man battling side by side with the army, defending the people against a common foe, might do some good. The clothes might make the man, as the saying went, but the deeds defined him.

  Speaking of deeds…

  Logan, up by the bridge, where the roadway met the island, was duking it out with a multilimbed mutant whose body was covered in a protective carapace that gave him some of the aspects of a lobster. Nothing funny about what he could do, though, as the bodies of a clutch of troopers scattered about him testified. He had a weapon in every hand and the muscles to make a single blow lethal. Near misses shattered concrete and bent steel and the number of appendages took away the advantage of Logan’s speed. Logan could dodge
one or two limbs, but not all of them. Fortunately, his unbreakable skeleton kept him from serious harm. Unfortunately, he was still vulnerable to strikes against the unprotected portions of his anatomy, and was taking some heavy hits to the belly.

  That wasn’t the worst of it, though. Logan used his claws to lop off an arm. There was minimal blood and he fell back quickly as the mutant redoubled his efforts with the limbs that remained.

  Even as Hank watched, the scientist in him utterly fascinated, a bud appeared at the base of the severed limb, regenerating at such accelerated speed that it was fully functional well before it regained its original size. Comparing all the arms, Hank noted that none of them were precisely the same, which told him this process had been ongoing throughout the fight.

  Logan, however, was done playing. Hank feared he would simply kill the mutant. That would certainly fit Wolverine’s well-deserved reputation, but he discovered that the X-Man was not without his own brand of rough humor as Logan hauled off and kicked his adversary soundly between the legs.

  The mutant went to his knees, gasping, face instantly pale purple with shock, all hands going reflexively to his crotch, none left to protect his jaw from the follow-up punch that Logan delivered to end their engagement.

  “Well,” Hank muttered, to himself he thought, until a quick turn of Logan’s head his way reminded him of just how keen the other man’s ears really were, “that’s one way to do it.”

  A few of Magneto’s fighters remained, but they collectively chose the so-called better part of valor and began a helter-skelter withdrawal back to the bridge. On Alcatraz itself, there was just some mopping up left to do.

  Warren took his father home, to the big house on Russian Hill. He thought this would be a safe place, but the bridge was almost close enough to touch. He stayed low to the rooftops as he made his way across the city. There’d been time now for the army to respond to the day’s events and the air was becoming increasingly crowded with gunships, observation helos and remote, pilotless drones, both for battlefield surveillance and for attack. Some were armed with conventional ordnance but Warren suspected that more than a few would be carrying air-launched versions of the missiles the Alcatraz troops had used against Magneto’s forces. He didn’t want to be dropped by “friendly fire.”