Bobby looked incredulous. "I do?
“Indeed," the professor told him. "If the entire team goes in and it turns out that I have miscalculated, we may all be trapped inside. But if only one of you enters the facility, we will still have additional options if something goes wrong."
"And who would that be?" asked Jean.
Scott believed his wife already knew the answer to her question. Certainly, he did.
“That would be me," he said, just to make it official.
"That is what I was thinking," Xavier admitted. "Scott is clearly the one best equipped to gain access to the globule mechanisms and to destroy their links to the power source."
“I wouldn't mind riding shotgun with him," Hank suggested.
"Me either," Bobby chimed in.
But the professor shook his head. "No. It would be more prudent for Scott to go alone."
When Xavier put it that way, Scott reflected, none of his students were likely to argue with him.
"I will be in contact with you the entire time," the professor told him. "Good luck.”
"Thanks," said Scott.
He glanced at his wife, reminding her of how much he loved her... just in case things didn't work out the way they planned. Then he lowered himself onto the beginning of Bobby's slide and pushed off.
The descent into the crevasse made Scott's head spin as he negotiated curve after curve. But as he approached the bottom, the angle of descent gradually flattened out and he slowed down accordingly. By the time he reached the end of the ice slide, he had decelerated enough to be able to leap off without hurting himself.
That left him standing in front of the ice-encrusted pile of silver spheres blocking the way into the alien facility. The pile looked dormant, harmless... but Scott wasn’t fooled for a second. He knew from experience how formidable the globules could be.
Nonetheless, he took up a position not six feet from the pile, opened his visor and unleashed an intense crimson blast. Bobby's ice began to crack under the assault, exposing the silver spheres.
At first, they broke free one at a time, shuddering with long-restrained energy. Then it was like a dam breaking, as the entire pent-up swarm of them burst from the narrow exit and surrounded Scott on all sides.
Quickly, he closed his visor, willingly giving up his only means of defense. If he was going to yield to the spheres, he was going to have to do so utterly and completely.
Unfortunately, Scott was unprepared for the enormous pressure the globules exerted on him. They clustered around him, squeezing him, crushing the breath from him. He felt as if he were drowning in a sea of shining rubber.
And yet, this was the outcome the mutant had hoped for. This was the result he had invited. And for better or worse, this was the fate he would have to live with.
There were too many of the globules for Scott to see past them, so he didn't know for certain if the professor's plan was working. But he had the impression, right or wrong, that they were squeezing him back down the corridor toward the main chamber.
He did his utmost to remain conscious, to find air in the relentless press of gelatinous surfaces. It wasn't easy, however. More than once, he found himself gasping for breath without success, darkness starting to close in all around him.
But somehow, Scott hung on. It was only a matter of time, he told himself, before the spheres released him. Only a matter of time before he reached the end of his journey.
And suddenly, his prediction came true.
The globules spit him out like a watermelon seed, spilling him onto something hard and cold. As the X-Man greedily pulled breath into his starving lungs, he opened his eyes and looked around.
And saw that he wasn't alone.
"Warren?" he rasped, his voice echoing in whispers.
The feathered mound on the other side of the chamber
MEI
stirred at the sound. Then one of its wings lifted a bit and revealed the huddled, shivering form of Scott's teammate.
"S-Scott... ?" the winged man croaked back at him.
"It’s me," Scott confirmed, getting up and crossing the immense chamber to join his friend.
En route, he couldn't help glancing at the entrance to the corridor. It was packed with quivering, eager-looking globules. They looked as if they couldn't wait for Scott to try to make it through them.
But that wasn't why he had come. He had bigger fish to
fry.
When Scott reached his teammate, he knelt down beside him. Warren was shivering so hard it hurt to look at him.
“So ... it was... the professor.the winged man got out.
It took Scott a moment to understand. Then he nodded. "It was him, all right. Hang in there a little longer, buddy. We've got a plan to get us both out of here."
Warren managed a smile. “You're just.., trying to make up ... for the time you ... shot me in the back..."
Scott remembered it well. In fact, it had come up in the Blackbird on their way to Columbia.
He had felt guilty at the time. Even if he was only doing what the professor demanded of him, even if it was for Warren's own good, it had gone against his grain to turn his beams on a fellow X-Man.
“Quiet," Scott told his friend. “I've got work to do."
Right on cue, Xavier made his presence known. I'm here Scott, Start by moving Warren and breaking up the floor where he's been sitting.
Scott did as he was told. He helped his friend up and moved him to another part of the chamber. Then he opened
SIIIIIS IF IDE PAST
his visor and trained his beams on the place where Warren had been huddling.
The Quistalian material that comprised the floor was tcugh, but Scott's optical blasts were tougher. Before long, the smooth, dark surface began to buckle, to groan-to exhibit stress fractures which gradually grew into much larger stress fractures.
Finally, with a shriek like that of twisting metal, the floor gave way-revealing the complicated maze of dark conduits and alien mechanisms that lurked underneath it.
Closing his visor for a moment, Scott approached the ragged hole he had created. He could feel the warmth emanating from it-waves of thermal radiation generated by the Quistalians' lusty power source. However, he couldn't actually see the thing. It was buried too deeply beneath the viper's nest of alien components.
Professor? he thought.
He had expected to hear Xavier's voice in his head. Instead, he saw a pale blue line superimpose itself over the Quistalian machinery-as if someone were drawing it in the air.
Scrutinizing the line, the mutant saw that it corresponded exactly with one of the narrower, more straightforward conduits. Unfortunately, the thing was occluded by a great many other conduits. Only an inch or so of it was exposed at any given point.
But it wasn't the first time Scott had been called upon to exercise pinpoint accuracy. Far from it.
That day in the Balkans, for instance, when he and Professor Xavier had shimmied their way to the top of Lucifer's bomb and peered down an almost unnoticable seam to find its fuse ... that, he had to say, had been an even greater challenge.
ME!
Do you see it? asked Xavier, the author of the pale blue line.
I do, Scott assured him.
Be careful, the professor cautioned him. If you damage one of the other conduits, you may cause an explosion.
Despite the severity of the situation, Scott had to smile. I'll try to keep that in mind, sir.
Kneeling at the edge of the hole, he scanned the highlighted conduit from end to end. It took him a few seconds to identify the easiest part of it. Then he took a breath, let it out...
And opened his visor the slightest crack.
Instantly, his optical beams leaped out and speared the conduit he had been aiming for, slicing it in two with surgical precision. And before the beams could carve any deeper into the tangle of alien technology, the mutant shut his visor again.
It's done, he told the professor.
&nb
sp; And? asked Xavier.
Scott turned and gazed at the mouth of the corridor. It was still jammed tight with an accumulation of silver globules. However, they didn't look as if they were so eager to go into action anymore.
To be sure, he opened his visor and blasted one of the spheres for just a second. The thing flattened a little under the impact, then came bounding in the mutant's direction like a big rubber ball.
But Scott could tell immediately that it didn't have any propulsion behind it. It was just reacting to his optical barrage the way anything of its shape and consistency might react.
In other words, the sphere was dead-and so was the defense system that had driven it
Before Scott could celebrate, he heard a hacking cough come from elsewhere in the chamber. Turning, he saw that
SIMMS IF Fit PAST
Warren had slumped over on his side. Obviously, his friends had to get him someplace warm, and fast.
Well? the professor prompted.
The spheres are inoperative, Scott reported. But Warren's in a bad way. I'll start digging us out from this side.
And we'll do the same from our side, Xavier assured him.
Acknowledged, Scott replied.
Then he went to Warren's side, put his arm around his friend, and opened his visor to pound at the globules in earnest.
When Warren Worthington III opened his eyes, he had no idea where he was at first. Then he saw the face of Jeffrey Saunders looming over him, looking as worried as Warren had ever seen him.
The mutant smiled.
"It's okay," he told Jeffrey, his voice weak but stronger than it had been in the chamber. "I'm not dead."
In fact, Warren felt pretty good, considering how perilously close he had come to freezing to death. It occurred to him that Professor Xavier had had something to do with his miraculous recovery. After all, the man was an expert on everything that concerned mutants-ineluding how to bring one back from the depths of hypothermia.
He sat up a little and looked around. Apparently, he was in the Blackbird's rear cabin—and he had more company than just Jeffrey.
"Looks like sleeping beauty is awake," remarked Hank, sliding onto the seat beside Jeffrey.
"You know something," Warren whispered to his teammate, "right now, even you look good.”
"Careful," said Bobby from the front of the cabin. "You'll give our pal Hank a swelled head."
MEI
"The one deformity I don't have already," Hank noted, displaying his long, lower teeth in a broad grin.
"Scott?" Warren asked them.
“In the forward cabin," said Bobby, "along with Jean and the professor. For some reason, he thinks he can fly this tub better than I can."
Warren chuckled. “For some reason, so do I."
"I’m wounded," Bobby told him.
"And I've got organs that are still thawing," Warren returned. "Welcome to the club."
He glanced at the door that led to the forward cabin. When he got a chance, he would have to thank Scott for saving his life. His teammate really had made up for blasting him in the back that time.
Not that Warren wouldn't have done the same for Scott a thousand times over. That was, after all, what friends were for.
Hank put his big, furry hand on Jeffrey's. "It’s all right," the mutant said. "He's the real Warren."
The winged man didn't get it. “As opposed to ... ?"
Bobby laughed. "Hoo boy. Have we got a story to tell you."
"Indeed," Hank agreed. "You know how Lucifer replaced the professor with an energy-based lookalike?”
Warren nodded. "So?"
Hank shrugged his shaggy shoulders. "He did the same thing to you."
Bobby fashioned a cigar out of ice. "And outside of the improvement," he quipped, "we couldn't tell the difference."
"You do a lousy Groucho Marx impression," Hank observed clinically.
"Says the tribble with the high IQ," Bobby shot back.
While his teammates exchanged friendly barbs, Warren absorbed what Hank had told him. A doppelganger... that looked like him? He began to see why it had taken so long for his comrades to rescue him.
"What happened to him?" he asked Hank. "My duplicate, I mean."
The furry X-Man jerked a big, blue thumb at Jeffrey. “Our friend here took him out. Otherwise, he would have freed Lucifer and trapped Professor Xavier in the Nameless Dimension."
"At which point," Bobby added sourly, "freezing to death would have looked like a pretty good option."
As pleased as he was surprised, Warren smiled at Jeffrey. “Hey, pardner," he said, “way to go."
For the very first time, he saw Jeffrey smile back at him.
Professor Xavier hovered in his anti-grav unit in front of the large titanium cube and peered through one of its windows.
The cube was empty, devoid of the energy entity that the professor and his X-Men had left inside it. What's more, he wasn't the least bit surprised at this turn of events.
"Lucifer opted to withdraw him from our frame of reference," Xavier concluded.
"Why bother?" asked Bobby.
He and his teammates had accompanied the professor to the underground room. Jeffrey was with them as well, looking a little daunted. But then, he was peering at the cube on his own this time.
Hank shrugged. “An incarcerated doppelganger was of no use to Lucifer," he said, answering Bobby's question.
The professor nodded. 'True. And it probably nettled him to see his creation hopelessly imprisoned here—much as he himself was imprisoned in the Nameless Dimension."
"So that's that?" Warren asked skeptically, his voice still a little weak from his experience in the Antarctic.
Scott smiled. "You don't sound confident.”
"How can we be?" Jean added. "Lucifer has proven he can strike anytime, anywhere. We've all got to be on our guards."
Hank chuckled. "And when has it ever been any different?"
"Comes with the territory," Bobby pointed out.
It did come with the territory, Xavier reflected. Danger was a fact of their lives, a reality his students had accepted since the first time they put on their original black and gold uniforms.
However, a triumph was a triumph—and this one was more impressive than most. They had beaten back the darkness for one more day, proving yet again that no force in this or any other universe could prevail against a determined band of X-Men.
"At least we can relax for a little while," Bobby declared hopefully. "Say, long enough to watch the Lethal Weapon trilogy."
Hank sighed. "Once a heathen, always a heathen."
"Actually," said the professor, "we still have some work to do. For instance, my energy duplicate installed a Quistalian surveillance system in my study. And—"
Hank held his furry blue hand up. "And we need to uninstall it. It's as good as done, sir."
Xavier inclined his head slightly. "Thank you, Hank.”
The X-Man smiled. "You're welcome, Professor.”
Xavier turned to Jeffrey. "We will also need to return our friend here to Westminster House. Judging from the calls we've received from the police, people there are worried about him."
SIMMS if Ilf MSI
"I'm not surprised," said Jean, smiling at Jeffrey.
"I'll go with you," Warren volunteered. “I could use some fresh air that's not thirty degrees below zero."
"Me too," said Bobby. "Especially if it means I don't have to help with that Quistalian surveillance system."
The professor turned to Hank.
"I can handle it on my own,” the furry X-Man assured him. "In fact, it will probably go faster that way."
"Very well," said Xavier. He turned to Scott and Jean. "And you?"
Scott put his arm around his wife. “There's a breeze blowing, sir. I think we might attempt another overnight on the boat."
"That is," Jean added dutifully, “if there's nothing to keep us here.”
"Go," the professor told her, sending h
er off with a flip of his hand. "If I need you, I know where to reach you."
Jean's brow furrowed. "You—?"
“I'll explain some other time,” Xavier assured her.
And he would, of course. The professor was good at keeping secrets-but not from his X-Men.
In the Nameless Dimension, the being called Lucifer watched his enemies revel in their triumph.
How right the mutants were when they observed that he could strike at any time. How perceptive of them to underline the importance of their being on their guards.
Someday, Lucifer would find a way to escape his imprisonment. And when he did, he would crush the X-Men under his boot like the annoying insects they were-especially their cursed leader.
It might take time, but he would return to Quistalium in
triumph, once more the conquering hero. He would receive medals and praise and gifts of property from the Supreme One. He would see throngs cheer him again, their cries echoing wildly in the synthetic canyons of the capital.
"My time will come!" Lucifer spat at the nothingness, his mouth twisting cruelly beneath the forward edge of his helmet, flecks of spittle finding purchase in the severe, dark brush of his beard.
It would happen. Someday....
l|
i
I rofessor Charles Xavier caught sight of Westminster House as his van negotiated a shoulder of pine-covered woodland. The red brick structure seemed to rise out of the hills around it, exuding the kind of quiet confidence many modern buildings lacked.
Though Xavier had seen the place ever so recently, it had been through the obscuring filter of an interdimensional barrier. As he gazed at Westminster now, without that impediment, it looked like a sturdy old friend—a good choice of institution for Jeremiah Saunders' grandson.
The professor turned in his seat to glance at Jeffrey. The young man was craning his neck to get a look at the grounds, his expression clearly one of eagerness. Apparently, he had come to feel comfortable there despite the briefness of his stay.
The leader of the X-Men was happy about that. He couldn't have departed Westminster knowing Jeffrey felt unsettled-especially after all the fellow had been through of late. The least Jeffrey deserved was a chance to rest, to gather himself.
Shadow of the Past Page 23