Shadow of the Past

by Unknown Author

  As on their other flights, Warren found the banter soothing. But he had to wonder if Jeffrey felt the same way.

  Jeffrey looked a little frightened as he gazed out his window at the wintry wastes that surrounded them. No doubt, he would have been overwhelmed completely if not for the professor's influence on him.

  "You'll be safe here," Warren toW him. "With luck, we'll be back before you know it."

  Jeffrey looked up at him and nodded slowly. Yes, he seemed to say, I'll be safe. Do what you have to.

  “Any last-minute instructions?" Warren asked.

  Jeffrey’s head moved from side to side.

  “Then let's go," said Scott.

  With that, he swung the door to the plane open, letting in a blast of frigid air that made him wince despite the protection afforded by his jumpsuit. Then he jumped out onto the snowy surface and made a crunching sound as he landed.

  Jean came out next, dropping into Scott's waiting arms. She was followed by Hank, who no longer needed his yellow backpack now that the doppelganger's scheme had been exposed, and then by Bobby. Warren brought up the rear, unfurling his wings with such untrammeled eagerness that his feet never touched the ground.

  With a powerful thrust of his feathery appendages, he sent himself hurtling upward into a dazzling blue and white sky. Reveling in his freedom, which was that much more satisfying after his confinement in the Blackbird, Warren had to remind himself that he was there for a reason.

  Gazing down on his teammates, who seemed tiny as they made their way across the frozen waste, he reflected that only Hank stood out against the ice. But then, blue fur was a lot easier to spot than Bobby’s faceted ice-form or the white jumpsuits worn by Scott and Jean.

  Like Bobby and Hank, Warren didn’t need thermal outerwear. After all, his body was equipped to handle the subzero wind chill factors he often encountered at high altitudes.

  Folding his wings close to his body, he allowed himself to plummet earthward. At the last moment, he came out of his dive and glided parallel to the ground until he had caught up with the others.

  "Showoff," said Bobby.

  Warren smiled. "Eat your heart out.”

  The closer they got to the crevasse, the more it seemed to open up to them. By the time they reached its brink, they could see how immense it really was-a hundred meters across at the very least.

  And deep, Warren thought. Deep enough for its bottom to be lost in a haze of soft blue shadows.

  Unfortunately, the Quistalians' facility was at the bot-tom-or so Lucifer's energy duplicate had told them. If they were going to secure the last component, they were going to have to make the descent.

  The last time the X-Men had been forced to negotiate a chasm to reach a Quistalian hideout, the aliens had been considerate enough to supply them with an elevator. This time, there was no sign of such a conveyance. They were completely and utterly on their own.

  Too bad, Warren thought. As cold as it was for his teammates, he wished there had been an easy way down.

  Scott turned to him, frozen vapors issuing from his mouth. “Warren,” he said, “take Jean.”

  The winged mutant didn't answer. He just scooped Jean up in his arms and hovered over the crack in the ice.

  Next, Scott turned to Bobby. "Can you get Hank and me down there safely?" he asked. -

  The polar light glinted in Bobby's crystalline eyes. "Could Joe DiMaggio play centerfield?"

  Scott smiled at the auip-but only a little. He had already assumed his "field leader" frame of mind.

  "I'll take that as a yes," he said.

  Before he got all the words out, Bobby had begun building something icy at the edge of the crevasse. At first, Warren couldn't tell what it was. But after a few seconds, it became clear to him.

  It was a slide-one that wound its way out past the sheer drop of the cliff and back again in a tight spiral, with raised sides and sufficient width for a grown man to negotiate it.

  As Warren looked on, Bobby leaped onto the slide and began to surf it as only he could, all the while adding ice onto its lower extremity so it wouldn't end up flinging him into thin air.

  Satisfied with Bobby's approach to the problem, Scott clambered on and slid down after his teammate. Hank came last, opting to cling to the lip of the slide with his hands and his dexterous feet instead of playing it safe and staying in the middle.

  "Hang on," Warren told his passenger.

  “I'm hanging," Jean assured him.

  Then he described a spiral of his own, flapping his mighty pinions slowly, almost languidly, as he wafted down into the frigid depths of the crevasse. Little by little, the blue haze yielded to them, giving up more and more of its secrets.

  Finally, after what seemed like a long time but couldn't have been more than a minute, they came to the bottom of the iey chasm. As Hank joined Bobby and Scott on a surprisingly level surface, Warren lowered Jean into their midst. Then he landed on the ground beside them, giving his powerful wings a well-deserved rest.

  'There's the door," said Bobby.

  He pointed to a vertical surface covered with a thick, slick-looking veneer of ice. But it was clear that there was a dark, regular surface beneath it—and that it was about the size of the portals they had opened in Columbia and in the Sahara.

  Of course, it would be useless to the X-Men if they couldn't penetrate the ice that covered it. But then, they had Scott with them to take care of things like that.

  Opening his visor a bit, he unleashed an optical beam that cracked away the ice in a matter of seconds. Suddenly, the dark, oily-looking slab was eminently accessible to them.

  Scott closed his visor, cutting off the ruby-red beam. Then he reached into the pouch on his shoulder strap and produced the alien key the doppelganger had given him. Inserting it into the tiny hole in the door's center, he pressed the stud on the side of the key.

  Instantly, Warren saw a familiar emerald glow in the aperture, and Scott took that as his cue to remove the key. For a moment or two, nothing happened, and it occurred to the winged man that the Quistalian metal might have frozen into place.

  Then the slab began to slide down into the living ice, revealing the entrance to a narrow, dimly lit corridor. Scott glanced back over his shoulder at his teammates.

  "We're in business," he said, his normally resonant voice strangely muted by their surroundings.

  “I’ll check it out," Warren volunteered, assuming their

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  strategy would remain the same as in their previous explorations.

  Scott nodded. "Be careful."

  "Always," said Warren. And with that, he launched himself into the Quistalians' passageway, feeling its serpentine environs envelop him like the arms of an unwelcome lover.

  The corridor he traveled was just like all the others—constructed of dark, slick-looking metal and packed with serpentine circuitry. Alert for boobytraps, he penetrated deeper and deeper, flapping his powerful wings in quick, economical bursts...

  And finally found what he was looking for.

  As Warren alighted, he inspected the cylindrical chamber before him. It was every bit as massive, every bit as imposing as the first two he had seen-like a foreboding alien sepulcher full of Quistalian ghosts.

  And the usual collection of communication cylinders was sitting across the way, exactly where he had expected to find it. The gold and scarlet specimen stood out invitingly from the rest.

  "Eureka," Warren said under his frozen breath. "Flip 'em, trade 'em, collect the whole set.”

  Spreading his wings again, he flew inside and took a look around. Skirting the walls as closely as he could, he scanned the place bottom to top, alert for the least sign of an intruder response system.

  He didn’t find a thing. The chamber appeared to be defenseless, ripe for plucking by a blue-furred thief. But then, the other chambers Warren had scouted had looked that way as well, and they had turned out to be chock full of surprises.

  What
are you hiding? he asked the mammoth facility,

  gazing into the shadows at the top of it. Another plague of spider-robots? Another swarm of flying laser-beam generators? Or some new kind of treat-one you've been saving up for us?

  They wouldn't know for certain until Hank removed the gold and scarlet cylinder from its pedestal. With that in mind, Warren veered in the direction of the corridor.

  Then something occurred to him.

  To this point, Hank had been the key to their acquisition of the cylinders. With his strength and dexterity, he was the logical choice to lift what they needed and replace it with its status quo-transmitting replica.

  But they no longer had to worry about a replacement, since the doppelganger had lied about the need for a status quo broadcast. So why was it necessary to get Hank involved at all?

  For that matter, why get any of his teammates involved ... when Warren could snatch the cylinder by himself and be on his way in record time?

  He could hear Scott's rebuttal in his head, an echo of previous conversations. The X-Men work best when they work as a unit. And in most cases, Warren wouldn't have argued the point.

  But in this case, when speed might be all they needed ...

  Making his decision, the winged man came to a hover in front of the gold and scarlet cylinder. Taking a last, quick look around, he made certain that he hadn't tripped any alarms yet.

  Then he whisked the component off its dark metal pedestal and took off in the direction of the exit, his great, white pinions beating as hard as they possibly could.

  For the space of a heartbeat, Warren wondered if he had lucked out and gotten away scott free. Then he heard a

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  slithering sound behind him and risked a glance over his shoulder.

  What loomed behind him wasn't at all pretty.

  Hank peered down the alien corridor and found himself frowning. "Warren's been gone a long time," he observed.

  “Maybe we ought to go in after him," Jean suggested.

  “Just in case," Bobby chimed in.

  Scott considered it for a moment, then nodded. "Let's go."

  Hank bounded ahead as if he had been shot from a cannon. After all, he was the fastest of them with the exception of Warren. If his winged friend needed help, he was determined to be the first to provide it.

  As it happened, he hadn't covered a hundred meters of winding corridor before he saw something up ahead. Unfortunately, even with his superior intellect, he couldn't quite figure out what it was.

  Then Hank got closer and gained a deeper appreciation for Quistalian ingenuity. The passageway ahead of him was choked with a battalion of large silver globules, each one as determined and relentless as a white blood cell attacking a raging bacterial infection-and as physically impressive as a well-fed St. Bernard.

  And in their midst, imprisoned and all but suffocated by their bulk, was none other than Warren Worthington III.

  Hank didn't think he would have much time to act before the globules attacked him as well. So instead of slowing down, he did his utmost to accelerate-and hit the mess of silvery globes with all the force his mutant body could muster.

  His strategy turned out to be the right one. Jarred by the impact, the globules released Warren-and something else along with him. Hank's eyes widened as he realized what it was.

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  The third component.

  Warren lay sprawled on the smooth, dark floor beside it, dazed and battered, drawing breath in huge, wracking draughts. Clearly, his body was trying to compensate for his near-smothering-which meant the mutant was in no condition to use his wings.

  Before the globules could surround them again, Hank grabbed both his friend and the Quistalian device and leapfrogged back down the corridor for all he was worth.

  Bobby, who was riding a crest of ice not far behind him, looked confused for a second as he saw what was headed his way. Then his training took over and he sent a volley of ice darts whizzing over Hank's shoulder.

  Jumping aboard the frozen path that Bobby had left in his wake, the most agile of the X-Men allowed his momentum to carry him and his burdens along. Darting a glance behind him, he saw that his frigid teammate was fleeing the globules as well.

  Bobby cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, "What are they?" His voice echoed savagely in the narrow corridor.

  "I wish I could tell you," Hank growled back at him. "My advice is to reach the exit before we concern ourselves with such analyses."

  He looked forward again to see where he was going—and his eyes were seared by a flash of seething, red light. Scott, he thought, blinking away after-images. Sure enough, he caught sight of the team leader and his mate pelting down the corridor to join him.

  "Retreat!" Hank cried out as he went whooshing past on Bobby's slide. “I've got the component!"

  But retreat wasn't Scott's strong suit. Instead, he adjusted his visor again and blasted the pursuing globules.

  Jean stood her ground as well, using her telekinetie abilities to slow the alien entities by sending them smashing into each other like pinballs.

  Hank sighed. He would have liked to stay and join in the mayhem. But with Warren and the component in his arms, he had to remain more escape-minded. So he continued to glide along Bobby's ice trail, glimpsing the battle at an ever-increasing distance.

  Finally, he reached his destination-the exit from the installation. As the ribbon of ice neared its end, Hank bounded off and leapt through the open doorway. The brilliance of the Antarctic landscape made his eyes hurt, but not so badly that it slowed him down.

  The huge, roller coaster style ice slide that had gotten the team down the crevasse looked even more impressive as Hank gazed up at it. Unfortunately, without gravity on his side, going up wouldn't be nearly as effortless a proposition as coming down.

  What's more, his arms would be full, since Warren wasn't yet strong enough to fly. But almost since he was born, Hank's feet had been more powerful and more dexterous than other people's hands. With luck, they would be equal to the task ahead of them.

  Making sure he had a good grip on both Warren and the cylinder, the X-Man took a running leap at the ice slide. As he sailed over it, he hooked it with his right foot. Then he executed a loop-de-loop around it and used centrifugal force to propel himself to the next level.

  Again and again, he repeated the maneuver, swinging ever closer to the dazzling upper reaches of the ice structure. He twisted deftly, even gracefully, exercising a muscle control and a sense of balance to which other humans could only aspire.

  However, even Hank's amazing body had its limits. Little by little, the rigorous nature of his gymnastics took their toll on him. With each swing, each circus turn, his breathing came that much harder, and his muscles grew heavier with fatigue. Sweat dampened his face and his fur and almost instantly stiffened with cold.

  But still, Hank went on, flipping dizzily from one level to the next, putting his pain and his weariness out of his mind lest he miss a toehold and plummet back down. And eventually, by refusing to even consider the possibility of defeat, he reached the top.

  From there, it was simplicity itself to lope across the frozen terrain and return to the plane. Flipping the cylinder high into the air, he swung the door open and placed Warren inside. Then he caught the device before it could hit the ground and stowed that away as well.

  Jeffrey had obediently remained behind in the Blackbird. He sat there in the back of the cabin as silent as ever, darting glances at Hank and the exhausted, still-gasping Warren. But there was no mistaking the deep, questioning concern on his face.

  "It's all right,'1 Hank assured him. "Warren will be fine. And I’ll be back with the others before you know it."

  Jeffrey seemed to take a moment to absorb the information. Then he nodded his head up and down, indicating that the professor inside him understood what he had heard and accepted it.

  As Hank scampered back across the icy landscape to lend his t
eammates a hand, he still believed what he had told Jeffrey-that he and the rest of the X-Men would return to the plane in no time. But when he reached the beginning of Bobby's ice slide and started his descent, he saw that his teammates were in more trouble than he had thought.

  Some of the silver globules were escaping from the entrance to the Quistalian facility, squeezing their way out into the open. Certainly, that was bad enough. But to add to Hank's chagrin, he could find no sign of Bobby, Scott or Jean.

  With his teammates' lives in danger, he had no time to spare. Clenching his jaw, the furry mutant launched himself out over the space described by the icy spiral and plummeted like the proverbial stone.

  At the last possible moment, Hank latched onto the lip of the slide with powerful blue fingers and swung around it, expending the kinetic energy of his drop. Then, his fingers still hooked around the ice, he slid the rest of the way down.

  By the time he reached the entranceway, even more of the globules had squeezed themselves out. Leaping without hesitation into their midst, he wedged himself between two of them and pushed as hard as his muscles allowed. As the silver spheres parted, he lowered his shoulder and tried to insert himself between a couple more up ahead of him.

  It didn't work. As soon as Hank let up on the pressure between the first two globules, they snapped back together. The effect was to squirt him back to square one.

  Worse, there were additional globules pouring out of the entrance every second, placing the entrance further and further out of reach. They looked like silvery detergent bubbles from the world's biggest and most overloaded washing machine.

  Had Hank been a character in an old black-and-white situation comedy, he might have sighed at his misfortune while the rising tide of bubbles took over his kitchen. How-

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  ever, this was anything but a sitcom. His friends' very survival was at stake.

  With that in mind, he threw himself at the globules with redoubled resolve. He wedged himself between a first pair and, with great effort and concentration, made it between a second. But it wasn't until he inserted himself between a third pair that he began to feel encouraged.