by Alex Irvine
“You’ll see. I haven’t told anyone everything,” Mystique said. “If you believe nothing else, believe that. Now listen to me carefully. We are making a statement today on behalf of all mutants, even those stupid enough to believe that coexistence with nonmutants is possible. We are going to kill Senator Kelly. That part of the operation will be simple. But more importantly, we are going to make something clear to the millions of people who will see this: Mutants will not be oppressed. We will not be bullied. We are taking our fates into our own hands. That means we should not appear to be murderous barbarians.”
“Then you should have left him out,” Pyro said, nodding at Blob.
“I’m tellin’ ya, that’s the last—”
“Silence! Both of you! You represent all mutants now. Petty idiocies that interfere with our goals will not be tolerated.”
“Very well, then, fearless leader,” Pyro said with a mocking smile. “Please. Instruct us.”
“I am about to do exactly that,” Mystique said. “But first, one more introduction is in order. Blob, this is Destiny.”
“Yeah. You told me when we came in.”
“What a pleasure to know you were paying attention. Destiny, you know what we are planning to do. Here is where you play your role. Tell us how it will all happen, so we know what to look out for.”
But Destiny’s face was troubled, and she did not speak.
“What’s she do?” Blob asked. “If she catered the room, hey, congratulations. But I’m not hearing anything to make me think we need her.”
“What a caveman you are,” Pyro said. “Listen to your betters, and perhaps you will learn something.”
For a moment, Blob looked like he might answer Pyro’s provocation, but he held himself back. “Seriously,” he said. “What’s she do?”
“She is a precognitive,” Mystique said. Seeing the blank look on Blob’s face, she clarified: “Destiny can see the near future before it happens. She can tell us how the police and, potentially, the X-Men in attendance at the hearing will react. She can tell us where everyone in the hearing room will be seated so we know which way to enter, maximizing our chances of success. In a fight like this, that is at least as valuable as the ability to knock down a wall or set a fire.”
“We’ll see about that,” Blob said. “Okay, ‘Destiny.’ Let’s hear it. What’s gonna happen?”
Destiny did not answer for a long moment, long enough that all of them grew uncomfortable waiting. Then she said, “I—I am not certain.”
EIGHT
THE PLAN, as plans always do, started to go wrong the minute they left the tunnel and headed up from the lower level of Grand Central Terminal to the main concourse, where they planned to split up. Grand Central had long since ceased being a transportation hub, but it was by no means empty. Its former storefronts and kiosks had blended together over the years and gradually become an indoor bazaar, where everything from rice to human beings could be bought and sold. A militia, easy to pick out because of their secondhand fatigues and M-16s, patrolled and kept order.
“Easy to blend in here, soon as we get you some new clothes,” Rick said. “Hang on a minute.”
He headed into the bazaar and came back fifteen minutes later with an armload of clothing. “Put it on over your jumpsuits, or change, whatever,” he said. “Just don’t go running around with a big letter M on your back, right?”
Peter, whose jumpsuit was in shreds, stripped to his skivvies on the spot and put on heavy canvas pants and a thigh-length jacket. “Good guess about the size,” he said.
“I bought everything as big as I could get it,” Rick said. “Works for you, might not work for some of the others.”
Rachel, Storm, and Kitty found this out right away. They wrapped themselves in coats, but none of the other clothes would fit them. “Still, this is better,” Storm said. “You’re correct that we should avoid identification as mutants, for as long as—”
The Vanderbilt Avenue side of the balcony level exploded inward, burying that end of the concourse under granite and the churned remains of the upstairs level of the bazaar. Spotlights stabbed through the smoke, revealing a Sentinel patrol outside.
“Patrol has encountered escaped mutants,” one of them boomed out. “Reinforcements required.”
“How did they find us?” Kitty asked. “None of us did anything.”
“They’ve got plain old-fashioned security cameras, too, Kit,” Wolverine said. “Here in the station if not in the tunnels. We were never gonna stay hidden forever.”
A repulsor beam from one of the Sentinels destroyed a row of booths near an old ticket kiosk. All three Sentinels entered through the hole they’d made in the wall, stepping down from street level to the main concourse.
“Hit ’em, Rach!” Logan called out. “I’ll get in close!”
“I can’t!” she shouted. “The roof will cave in!”
“You better think of something!” came his reply. Then Logan was gone into the chaos.
“Mutants will be terminated,” one of the Sentinels said. Hearing it, a group of militia members pointed, waving their M-16s.
“Those are the escaped muties!” one of them shouted. “Get ’em!”
Ororo had known mutant life was cheap in New York, but she’d assumed other lives had at least a bit more value—until the militia began firing without regard for the bystanders standing between their muzzles and the X-Men and FCA guerrillas. Two of the FCA went down immediately. The rest scattered for cover, returning fire as they could, but handicapped by their unwillingness to take out civilians. The Sentinels, like the militia, charged forward toward their targets.
Ororo picked up Kitty and flew upward, adding fog to the smoke by drawing moisture in from outside and up from the subterranean dampness of the tunnels. Rain began to fall inside the terminal, the sound a constant drumming backdrop to the automatic-weapons fire between the militia and the FCA.
A telepathic message from Rachel made Ororo’s eyes water momentarily. Get into the tunnels, the FCA guy says. They can’t follow us there.
They also can’t follow us if they’re in pieces, Storm answered. To Kitty she said, “Remember what you did before, at the other station?”
Kitty nodded.
“I’m going to need you to do it again.” A repulsor beam burned past them, close enough that rain flashed into steam. Kitty cried out. Still holding on to her, Ororo swooped higher, arcing around behind the Sentinels. “Ready?”
“No!”
“Go anyway!” Ororo said. As she passed over the nearest Sentinel’s head, she let Kitty go.
Kitty screamed and the Sentinel looked up at the sound. She landed on its forehead and phased, falling straight down through its head and torso. She emerged from the inside of its left thigh, landing between its feet. Its electrical systems disrupted by Kitty’s passage, the Sentinel threw its arms up and started to fall, knocking the Sentinel next to it into a balcony pillar. Kitty dodged out from under the falling robot, straight into a burst from a militia M-16—but Peter, ever watchful over her, interposed his organic-steel body between her and the gunfire. The bullets ricocheted away. Peter charged into the militia, steel fists crushing flesh and bone.
As she always did, Ororo felt a pang of sadness at Peter fight. It was not his nature, and fate was cruel to have made him so good at it.
The second Sentinel braced itself against the edge of the balcony and turned again to look for the mutants. Rachel rocked it with a telekinetic blast that shattered the remaining windows on the balcony level. Then she directed her powers toward the militia, turning their bullets away and flinging the men into the rubble with a push of her mind.
The third Sentinel had forced its way inside and was closing in on them. Logan met it, slashing at its legs and slowing it down. It fell to one knee and smashed an open hand down on Logan. Cracks spread out in the granite floor from the impact. Then the Sentinel lifted its hand; Logan was dangling by one set of his claws from its huge palm. W
ith his other hand, he amputated three of its fingers in a shower of dark fluids before pulling himself free, driving both sets of claws into its midsection and carving it open as he fell.
Storm saw her opening, just as she had on the street before. She drilled a lightning bolt straight into the wound Logan had created, blowing the Sentinel back out through the hole onto Vanderbilt Avenue. But that took her attention away from the remaining active Sentinel, which swatted her out of the air to smash into the balcony façade directly over Kitty’s head.
Storm hit the ground limp and bloodied. Kitty ran to her, along with four FCA guerrillas. “We have to get out of here!” Rick shouted. “Now! Into the tunnels!” He shouldered his rifle and picked up Storm, running for the stairs that led back to the lower level. His soldiers followed, and so did Kitty, with Logan close behind. Peter and Rachel came last, Peter shielding them as best he could from the militia’s last volleys.
At the top of the stairs, Rachel turned. “I’m not done yet,” she said. Gunfire chipped the wall over her head.
“Not a good time, Rachel!” Logan shouted up the stairs.
She ignored him, focusing a second telekinetic pulse on the last remaining Sentinel. The impact caved in its torso and blew one of its arms off. Behind it, another section of the balcony collapsed. The Sentinel, falling, took the brunt of the cascading granite on its head and shoulders.
Rachel watched her handiwork a moment too long, and a burst of gunfire chopped through the upper part of the stairwell. Blood spattered the wall at the head of the stairs; Rachel stumbled forward and fell, tumbling down the steps. Peter charged to meet her, but she slipped out of his grasp and slid another few stairs down. He turned, slipping on blood, and bent to pick her up.
A group of militia appeared at the head of the stairs. Peter gathered Rachel up, hunching over her and pressing himself against one wall as he dropped down the last few stairs. From around the corner at the base of the stairwell, along the opposite wall, some of the FCA guerrillas fired at the militia, putting one man down and scattering the rest.
Firing blindly from his stomach, one of the militiamen hit Peter square in the back of the head. He shook it off. “I’ve got her! Let’s go!”
They ran. Rick led the way, with the X-Men following close behind and the rest of the surviving FCA guerrillas taking turns carrying Ororo. The FCA kept an eye out for militia pursuit, but there wasn’t any, and the Sentinels couldn’t get to the deeper tunnels. Once the group reached the lowest level of old tracks coming out of Grand Central, they paused.
Rick walked back to Peter with a flashlight and trained it on the limp Rachel. “Let’s get a look at her.”
“What about Ororo?” Kate asked.
“I’ll be all right,” Ororo said. “Just a little bruised.”
“Damn, lady,” one of the guerrillas said. “Way you hit that wall, I figured we were bringing you along just to bury you.”
Ororo smiled. “Not today. At least not yet. You—are all your soldiers here, Rick?”
He shook his head. “Lost four. Anyone else need attention?”
“Look after the redhead first,” one of the guerrillas said, indicating Rachel. The left arm of his coat was shining and dark with blood.
“JP, take a look at Marc,” Rick said. “We’ve got enough Band-Aids to go around.” He helped Peter set Rachel down gently. She opened her eyes, but not all the way. Rick probed gently under her coverall, pausing a couple of times as she gasped in pain. He stood up and took a step back, to where Logan was waiting.
“If you have something to say to her, better say it now,” Rick said quietly.
Ororo heard and came to join them, moving slowly and stiffly. “Are you certain?” she asked.
“She might not make it even if we could get her to a hospital,” Rick said. “As it is—”
“I can hear you talking about me,” Rachel said.
“No telepathy,” Logan said. “Sentinels, remember?”
“You’re right,” Rachel said. “Okay. But I won’t be around for them to track in an hour.” She caught her breath and tensed, closing her eyes. “Or…maybe not that long.”
Blood pooled under her. Peter’s arms and legs were slick with it from carrying her.
“Are you…well, I guess you’re sure, aren’t you?” Ororo asked.
Rachel nodded. Her eyes were starting to close. “Hey, Rach,” Logan said. “Stay with us. Rick’ll get you patched up.”
Rick looked up at him, then back to what he was doing. The bandages he applied turned red as fast as he could put them on her.
“Don’t think so, Logan,” Rachel said. “I’ll…I’ll try to hang on long enough to send Kitty back. But make it fast, okay?”
“Rick,” Logan said, “whatever the timetable was before, change everything to right now.”
“Got it. We’re ready to go.”
Peter still looked troubled. “I remember when the Sentinels seemed to be just robots. These…they have minds. That makes killing them a little different.”
“Not to me,” Logan said. “I’ve killed plenty of things with minds. And we’re about to kill more, unless you want all of our minds to be fallout blowing over the North Atlantic. Come on. If Magneto’s still around, he’ll find us.”
“He’s in a wheelchair, Logan. How’s he going to get anywhere to find us?” Rachel asked.
Logan grinned. “You didn’t know him as well as we did. All of you ditched your collars, right? Right. Well, Magneto got out of Auschwitz alive. He got out of the Savage Land alive. He got out of freakin’ Battleworld alive. Now, if he made it out of the South Bronx alive, you think transportation’s gonna be a problem for him? Let’s go.” Logan tapped Rick on the shoulder. “Can we move her? We can’t stay here.”
“Buddy, it’s not gonna make any difference what you do to her at this point,” Rick said. “Sorry.”
“You can move me,” Rachel said. “I’ll…hold myself together, at least for a while.”
“I’m afraid you can’t,” Ororo said. “If you use your powers, the Sentinels will know where we are.”
“Then I’m going to die pretty soon, Ororo,” Rachel said.
Ororo nodded. “I know. That’s why we have to keep moving.”
Rick finished placing pressure bandages over Rachel’s wounds. Peter picked her up, holding her against his chest while Rick bound her to him with strips of cloth. “The less she bounces around, the less she’ll bleed,” he said. “So…”
“I understand,” Peter said.
“Okay, gang,” Logan said. “New plan. We were gonna wait until we had the whole thing set up with all our A-class sympathizers upstairs. But whatever we do now, we need to do it while Rachel can still send Kitty back.” He looked at the FCA guerrillas. “I’ll explain that part later, if there is a later.”
He ticked off names on his fingers. “Still two teams: me and ’Roro on one, Pete and Rachel and Kate on the other. I’ll go first with ’Ro, give you guys a chance to get Rachel settled somewhere. Then you come running. Rick’s boys are gonna—”
“And girls,” one of the FCA guerrillas interrupted.
“And girls,” Logan amended, “are gonna crash the building right behind me and ’Ro. You don’t want to tangle with the Sentinels, but any human walking in that building is fair game. We do whatever we can to shut down the Baxter Building. If we don’t, we’re all gonna be dead this time tomorrow, no matter what the Sentinels do.”
“Hell of a pep talk,” Rick said.
“Pep’s not one of my virtues, bub,” Logan said. “The Sentinels’ve got every advantage in the world—except we’re fighting to survive, and who knows what the hell good that will do us. We ready to go, or should I try to make everybody feel better first?”
“Ready as we’re gonna get,” Rick said.
Logan started walking. “Then let’s do it.”
NINE
“WHAT do you mean, you aren’t certain?” Mystique snapped. “How could you be cert
ain when I left for New Mexico last night and uncertain at noon today?”
Pyro, Avalanche, and Blob were watching, and she could already feel each of them figuring angles. If her plan wasn’t going the way it was supposed to, she could expect challenges sooner rather than later. Pyro especially concerned her. Avalanche and Blob were bruisers, but he was a schemer.
“Something has changed,” Destiny said simply.
“What?”
“There is…uncertainty.”
Mystique froze. A long moment passed. “What kind of uncertainty?”
“A variable has been introduced. I do not know its nature.”
“How long ago was this variable introduced?”
“This morning. Before that, all was clear. All was as we wished it to be. Now…” Destiny looked troubled. She did not like uncertainty, was offended by variables and probabilities. Mystique could tell she was frankly terrified by the idea that her precognitive powers might be vulnerable to sudden changes in external factors. “Now there is…I cannot be certain what will happen.”
“Focus,” Mystique said. “We have been friends long enough that I know when you are not entirely present. We need you if we are to accomplish the Brotherhood’s mission here.”
“The problem is not a lack of focus on my part. It is, rather, the refusal of one variable to settle itself.”
“What the hell is she goin’ on about?” Blob demanded.
“All people have infinite futures,” Destiny said, “if one looks far enough ahead. But in the near term, over hours or days, their actions are circumscribed by thousands of other events taking place around them and removing the vast majority of their potential actions. I see what remains following this winnowing of possibilities. But now, as of this morning, something new has appeared in the future. A…doubling, perhaps? That is not exactly the right word. The important thing is that where I saw certainty, now there is doubt. Someone today will act in an unexpected manner, and there is no way for me to reduce the possibilities beyond a final either-or. And before you say it, Blob, let me just advise you to remain silent.”