Shadow of the Past

by Unknown Author

  had discovered Jeffrey in time to retrieve him and reenter the fray.

  As it turned out, his celebration was premature.

  For when the professor tried to take the reins of the young man's mind as he had before, he found that Jeffrey's mentai state had changed. Fear and mistrust assailed Xavier, cloying about him like a cold, foul-smelling mist, chilling him to the depths of his soul.

  The mutant believed he knew the reason. Having been daunted once, his host was no doubt reluctant to confront Lucifer's doppelganger a second time. But as he plumbed deeper, he found to his surprise that it wasn't Lucifer’s doppelganger whom Jeffrey feared.

  It was Xavier himself.

  The professor recoiled from the realization. Me? he asked himself numbly. The boy fears me?

  But the more he mulled it over, the more he understood Jeffrey's reaction. After all, Xavier was the one who had invaded his mind, asking him to do things he had never done before... asking him to leave the safety of the familiar and venture into the dark, dangerous unknown.

  As the professor considered this, Jeffrey's mind seemed to sense his presence ... and like an eye with a painful irritant in it, it squeezed itself shut. Suddenly, Xavier was forced back to the outskirts of the young man's consciousness, a murky place from which he could observe Jeffrey's thoughts but was unable to direct them.

  The mutant wasn't pleased with this turn of events. He would have to do something drastic to win back Jeffrey's cooperation. What’s more, as much as the prospect chilled him, Xavier knew what that something would have to be.

  He would have to make plain to Jeffrey how alike they

  were, despite appearances to the contrary. The professor would have to show the younger man the constant price he was forced to pay to maintain his facade of calm and selfassurance.

  In short, he would have to bare the raw interior of his soul-the intense suffering, anger and regret he had kept bottled inside ever since Lucifer deprived him of the use of his legs, the dark corners of himself of which even his X-Men were unaware.

  He detested the idea of exposing his weaknesses, of inviting pity. But he would do it anyway, he resolved-because the alternative was to watch Lucifer destroy his X-Men step by step, and the professor couldn't live with so hideous a conclusion.

  Gritting his teeth, he projected an image into Jeffrey's mind-an image of his innermost fears and insecurities, his most private stock of resentments and frustrations. And yes, an image of the hatred that raged in his heart from moment to moment.

  Hatred for those who saw how he held himself apart and felt sorry for him. Hatred for those who looked at his mangled legs and dismissed him as a cripple. But most of all, hatred for himself, because Xavier wished desperately to be above such base emotions.

  Here I am, he thought. This is my essence. In the end, I am like you-incomplete, afraid, terribly and unutterably alone.

  You feel pain, Jeffrey's mind observed on a plane that transcended any spoken language.

  Yes, he admitted. I feel pain such as you have never known.

  You made me feel pain, Jeffrey remembered.

  I couldn't help it, the professor said. I needed your help. I still need your help.

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  You will make me hurt again? came the response.

  There will be pain, yes, Xavier responded. Perhaps more than before. But if you don't help me, the world will feel even greater pain.

  The whole world... ? Jeffrey wondered.

  That's right, the professor told him. You, me, Mrs. Stoyanovich ... everyone. But you and I, together, can prevent that.

  Jeffrey shook his head. But the pain ...

  For what seemed like a long time, Xavier forced his spirit to remain naked and vulnerable, enduring the childlike scrutiny of Jeffrey's mind. Fie allowed Jeffrey to see him for what he was, not how he wished others to think of him.

  But the professor received nothing in return-which made him more and more concerned that he was going to fail in his effort. Despite all he had put into it, despite the awful indignities he had permitted himself to suffer, he began to despair.

  Then, as if the young man's psyche sensed his heartsickness, it started to unclench. Not a great deal, but enough to give Xavier hope. Then it unclenched a bit more, and a bit more than that. And as the mutant looked on in that strange, dim world of the mind, Jeffrey's consciousness opened up to him like an exotic flower.

  But it didn't just give him access again. It gave him a lot more.

  To Xavier's surprise, Jeffrey did exactly what the professor had done. Fie bared the raw, red recesses of his soul, showing Xavier all the pain and terror and frustration he had endured in his life.

  Jeffrey painted a picture of a loving home, a place where both his parents were alive and doting on him. A place with a basketball backboard nailed to a closet door and a little

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  ball that fit in the basket, and a joyful clatter of applause every time he put the ball in the hoop.

  It was a scene of warmth, of contentment. A scene that promised to go on forever.

  Then the young man showed the professor a different picture. He showed Xavier how it felt when he realized he would never see his parents again.

  The blackness. The emptiness. The awful, unexpected weight of loneliness.

  The boy had tried to understand what happened to his mother and father. He had tried to figure out if he had perhaps done something to make them go away. But there hadn't been any answers to his questions-just a hole in his life where his parents had been, a hole that nothing could seem to fill.

  Fortunately, his grandfather had been there to help him through the bad time. He had cared for Jeffrey, provided him with a home and an adult-sized, outdoor basketball court, given him as much love as an old man could give. It wasn't like a mother's love or a father's love, but it was love nonetheless, and it was all that the boy had.

  In time, Jeffrey had allowed himself to trust in his grandfather's permanence. Maybe his parents had gone away, for some reason he still couldn't understand. But his grandfather wouldn't do that to him. He would stay and love him always.

  And then, to the young man's utter confusion and dread, his grandfather had left him too. He had left without saying goodbye, without giving Jeffrey any reason for his departure.

  The boy was older than the last time. He was able to cope with the pain of loss a little better. But he was alone again, as alone as a person could be, and he had to wonder... who would love him now? Who in the world was left?

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  The professor felt Jeffrey's sorrow and fear as if they were his own. He felt the way the world had been ripped apart for the young man, not once but twice, leaving him wary and distrustful.

  And more than ever, Xavier had to question whether he was doing the right thing. He wondered if he had the right to ask someone like Jeffrey Saunders to help him.

  To trust him.

  Are you sure you want to go through with this? he asked Jeffrey. Are you willing to pay what might become a terrible price?

  If you can do it, the younger man's mind replied, I can do it too.

  Outside, in the material world, the police car conveying Jeffrey came to a stop. In control of his host again, Xavier looked out the window and saw the reason. There was a red light up ahead-the last one they would encounter before they reached the ramp to the highway.

  There was no time to waste, the professor reflected. After all, he couldn't ask Jeffrey to fling himself from a car going fifty miles an hour. If Xavier was going to make his move, he would have to do it now.

  First, he directed Jeffrey to close his eyes and groan as loudly as he could. Then he had the youth clutch at his stomach and double over, as if he were in pain.

  There were two police officers in the front seat. The one on the driver's side was tall and rawboned, with a spray of freckles and thick red hair. His partner was a much bulkier man with a neatly trimmed moustache and dark hair graying at
the temples.

  At the sound of Jeffrey's discomfort, the dark-haired police officer turned around, his forehead creased with concern. "What's going on?" he asked Jeffrey.

  Xavier had Jeffrey groan again, even more loudly than the first time.

  “Is he all right?" the redheaded officer asked.

  “I dunno," said the dark-haired one. He turned in his seat and put his hand on Jeffrey's shoulder. “Hey buddy, you all right?"

  The youth couldn't answer, of course. But the professor had him place his hand over his mouth.

  The officer with the freckles glanced at Xavier's host in his rear view mirror. “Looks like he's about to get carsick or something. I’m pulling over before he spews on the seat.”

  "Good idea,” his partner told him.

  A moment later, the professor could feel the police car swerve to Jeffrey's right. Then, with a squeal of tires and a jerk, it came to a stop on the road's asphalt shoulder. Both officers got out and came around to open the door for Jeffrey.

  As he felt the cool air on Jeffrey's skin, Xavier had his host groan a third time.

  “Aw, jeez, let's get him outta there," said the officer with the freckles. "He's gonna toss his cookies for sure."

  “I hear ya,” his partner responded. He reached in, grabbed Jeffrey's arm and tried to pull the young man out.

  The professor didn't ask Jeffrey to resist. In fact, he had him lean in the officer's direction to make the fellow's job that much easier. Seconds later, Jeffrey was standing outside the police car in the thin autumn sunshine, an arm around him for support.

  "Easy,” the dark-haired policeman told him. "Take a deep breath, son. Maybe it’ll help."

  "You think he understands you?" asked his freckled partner, clearly skeptical of the possibility as he leaned back against his patrol car. 'The kid's not all there, remember?"

  "I dunno what he understands," the dark-haired one said.

  "But I gotta do something, right? I can't just stand here and-"

  Xavier chose that moment to make Jeffrey bolt. The young man's body moved so quickly, so unexpectedly and with such power, he was fifty feet up the road before the officers had any idea what was happening.

  The policemen cursed volubly and shouted for him to stop, but the professor didn't have any intention of complying with their wishes. Instead, he kept Jeffrey running as fast as he could, knowing that the officers couldn't catch up with the youth on foot and would need several seconds before they could get in their car and turn it around.

  Several undeveloped acres of dense woodland opened immediately to Jeffrey's right. Propelling his host into the thick of it, Xavier increased the odds of their eluding the police officers.

  Fortunately, the professor knew intimately the ins and outs of Salem Center. He was confident that that familiarity, coupled with Jeffrey's considerable speed and endurance, would get them back to the grounds of his academy unmolested.

  Then Xavier and his host would see if they could improve on the results of their last visit.

  half-mile short of Xavier’s estate, Jeffrey stopped. He was flushed and wet with perspiration, his blue warmup suit soaked through at his armpits and in the middle of his back.

  But then, he had already dashed four miles across one stretch of private property after another, constantly on the lookout for indications of police pursuit. Even someone in the best of shape couldn't have accomplished that without showing a few signs of fatigue.

  Suddenly, a sound drew the professor's attention-a loud sound, reverberating in the nearly cloudless autumn sky.

  It was a small black plane knifing through the air-and not just any plane, Xavier realized. He recognized it as the Blackbird, his X-Men's preferred means of long distance travel.

  The professor's heart sank. I'm too late, he thought.

  If the Blackbird had left its carefully concealed underground hangar, Scott and the others were no longer at the mansion. They were on their way to the Quistalians' base of

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  operations in the Antarctic, unwittingly serving the doppel-ganger's nefarious purpose.

  Then Xavier realized he had a chance to stop Lucifer after all. If he could remove the energy duplicate from the equation, he could bring the Quistalian's scheme grinding to a halt.

  It would not be an easy thing to accomplish. The imposter enjoyed all or most of the professor's psionic abilities, not to mention all the surveillance technology Xavier had installed at his estate over the years. Lucifer's pawn would be a formidable adversary indeed.

  But the professor had defeated more than his share of formidable adversaries. He wouldn't shy away from this one, no matter how badly the odds were stacked against him.

  With that thought in mind, he had Jeffrey run the last half-mile separating him from Xavier's school. In a matter of minutes, the professor again found himself at the gates to his estate, looking through Jeffrey's eyes at his red brick mansion.

  But it wasn't his mansion any longer, he reminded himself. It was the doppelganger's fortress. He would have to think of it that way if he was going to have a chance at disabling his enemy.

  In the privacy of Jeffrey's mind, Xavier ticked off the estate's defenses one by one. First and foremost, there was Cerebro, the mutant-detection device he had developed years ago. But he didn't have to worry about Cerebro for the time being, since Jeffrey wasn't a mutant and the professor himself was still imprisoned in the Nameless Dimension.

  Then there were the concealed electric eye beams set up at intervals around the grounds. The first ring of beams, positioned in the woods some sixty-five yards from the mansion, was set at a height of three feet. The next ring, hidden

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  among some bushes at a distance of twenty-five yards, was set at a height of two feet.

  A bit closer to the house, an intruder would have to get past a checkerboard of pressure-sensitive pads lying a couple of inches below ground, as well as two dozen tiny surveillance cameras covering almost every angle of entry. And to detect swiftly approaching airborne visitors, there were four separate radar dishes concealed on the roof.

  All in all, it was a rather thorough array of security systems. Until this moment, it had always worked to Xavier's advantage. Now, for the first time, he had to look at it as his enemies looked at it.

  As an obstacle.

  Before he could attack it, however, he had to visualize the few small blind spots behind the mansion that the video surveillance cameras didn't cover. By making his way from one of those areas to another, he could minimize the odds of his being spotted by the doppelganger.

  Unfortunately, the professor didn't have a lot of time with which to work. The police might call the energy duplicate at any moment and alert him to Jeffrey's flight. In fact, they might have called already.

  The professor was glad there was no one around to see Jeffrey as he crawled across a patch of grass, or as he made a sharp left turn to take advantage of a camera-blind section of the lawn. He was glad there was no one to question his behavior as he rose, sprinted forward, then dove for the ground again and wriggled forward on his belly.

  To Jeffrey's left, the breeze pulled dead leaves from the highest branches of the trees and sent them fluttering earthward. They would soon fall across the same laser beams the professor was diligently trying to avoid. But they

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  wouldn't trip any alarms; the mansion's security systems were programmed to respond to much larger bodies.

  Once past the inner electric eye perimeter, Xavier had Jeffrey scramble to his feet again. Then he had him spring for the back door with all the speed at his disposal.

  If it was unlocked-and there was no way for the professor to know that in advance-it would provide Jeffrey with an entrance into the house. But even if the doppelganger had seen fit to bolt the door, Jeffrey could still clamber up a copper drainpipe alongside it and slip in through a second story window.

  Either way, it seemed the pro
fessor had made it through his estate's security gauntlet—and inched that much closer to his enemy.

  The Xavier doppelganger had barely finished monitoring the X-Men's departure in their Blackbird when something in the top drawer of his desk began to produce a soft beeping sound.

  Opening the drawer, the energy duplicate pulled out a dark metal cylinder about the length and thickness of his thumb. It was the control device for the Quistalian surveillance system he had secretly installed when the X-Men were away in South America. A small amber screen in the cylinder confirmed the reason for the alarm.

  There was an intruder on the grounds.

  Pressing a button on the arm of his anti-gravity unit, the doppelganger swiveled around to face his desktop computer. Then he tapped out a command, activating a link that would slave the device to his Quistalian sensor network. Instantly, a red and black graphic appeared, showing him the location of the interloper along with some vital statistics.

  Armed with that information, he was able to access the appropriate video camera in Xavier's security configuration. What he saw was instructive, to say the least.

  Jeffrey was back, it seemed. And judging by the ease with which he was circumventing Xavier's security measures, the professor's mind was in control of him again.

  The energy duplicate scowled as he followed the intruder's progress. He knew that Lucifer would not be happy with this turn of events. He had believed himself rid of Jeffrey forever.

  Fortunately, the doppelganger had been warned of the danger in time. As a result, the unsuspecting Xavier would fail as he had failed before. But this time, the imposter vowed, the Terran would fail in a significantly more violent fashion.

  Xavier was less than two strides from his mansion's back door when he saw it fly open in his face.

  Before the professor could sort out what was happening, his doppelganger came hurtling out of the house in its borrowed antigrav chair. Its hauntingly human-looking mouth was set with determination, its blue eyes narrowed to a deadly intensity beneath its upswept brows.

  Instantly, Xavier realized he must have tripped an alarm after all—either through his own miscalculation or because the duplicate had installed a system the professor knew nothing about. He also realized that he and Jeffrey were in a great deal of trouble.