by Alex Irvine
Ever. And mutants were permanent underdogs.
Permanent, Destiny mused. An interesting word to use, for one who could see potential futures born and dying in every moment, every action, every hesitation and impulsive choice. Now she was seeing a door opening, a man entering. And even as those things happened—even as Senator Kelly stopped upon seeing Destiny—she could feel that something was still wrong with her precognitive perceptions.
Destiny rarely fought. Her strength was no better than the average woman’s, and she had little stomach for physical confrontations. She was much better at orchestrating a plan, and her temperament suited her abilities. In this case, however, events dictated that she take a more direct role in the final act of the Brotherhood’s plan. She carried a weapon for those rare occasions when it might be necessary to use it: a small crossbow—not well-suited for battle against Wolverine or Colossus, but more than sufficient to put an end to Senator Kelly’s life.
Or, for that matter, to finish what Mystique had started in the hall outside. In the anteroom, Professor Charles Xavier and Doctor Moira MacTaggert both lay incapacitated—but they would not remain so forever. Mystique believed them useful pawns in whatever game was to come. To Destiny, they were the enemy, and enemies were to be eliminated. That was the only valid solution to a conflict such as the one between the X-Men and the Brotherhood.
If Mystique did not return soon, Destiny intended to end the lives of both Xavier and MacTaggert. She would not consider allowing them to leave the Senate office building alive. Mystique at times outplotted herself and therefore did foolish things. Destiny knew how fickle the future could be because she saw it changing from moment to moment around her, solidifying only a few minutes or hours ahead of time. She knew better than to plan too far ahead.
Or perhaps it was not that she knew better, but that she had no need of long-range planning because her short-term planning was perfect—usually. Since that morning, she had been plagued by a precognitive blind spot—an uncertainty like a quantum superposition, a particle of action that refused to settle itself onto one path or another. The feeling was even more intense now than it had been earlier in the day, as if its source was drawing nearer—or as if the moment at which that blind spot would move from the future to the past was close at hand.
Was Senator Kelly the blind spot? Was he the anomaly preventing her from getting a firm picture of the near future?
Impossible. Nothing Kelly had done felt the least bit unnatural to Destiny, either before or after he did it. He fit perfectly into every temporal-historical moment he occupied—which was one reason why he had to be removed from history altogether. Too many other dangerous possibilities and potential sequences radiated out into his matrix of futures. None of them were good for mutants.
Who, then? It was like asking a blind woman, such as Destiny herself, what color blindness was. There was no way to pin down the nature of the uncertainty, because its nature as an uncertainty prevented this. It was almost physically painful, this indeterminacy intruding into her precognitive sense.
At least there was only one indeterminacy. She was still very confident that the next few minutes would contain certain events very beneficial to the Brotherhood—and equally unfortunate for Senator Robert Kelly.
That sequence of events would begin soon after she cocked this crossbow and placed a bolt in the flight groove, while stepping quietly back into the shadowed corner diagonally opposite the office door…
The door opened and Senator Kelly rushed in, shutting the door and locking it. He pulled his phone from the pocket of his suit coat and dialed. “Kelly here,” he said, crossing the office to his desk and pacing in front of it. “I made it to my office. I don’t think they know I’m here…yes, the damn mutants! All of them! What’s going on outside?” He peered past the closed curtains out the window. Destiny stood patiently in the shadowed corner at the other end of his office, behind the couch and chairs he used for meetings and photo ops. “I can’t see anything but smoke out there. Well, hurry! I can’t wait in here all day. If you don’t round them up, they’ll find me sooner or—”
He saw Destiny then. “You’re going to hang up your phone now,” she said.
“They found me,” Kelly said, and ended the call. He put the phone on his desk, straightened his tie, and faced Destiny. “Go ahead, then, coward,” he said. “Do what you came to do.”
“I will,” Destiny said. “My colleagues have been defeated, but victory will be ours.”
“Murdering me will accomplish nothing. People will fear mutants just like they fear any other terrorists, yes—but they won’t be cowed. They’ll fight back. They’ll destroy you.”
“Possibly,” Destiny said. On that point, she was in fact uncertain. It lay too far in the future for her to make a decisive prediction, especially with the irritating kernel of uncertainty fogging her understanding. “But you are a greater threat alive. You may try to evade this bolt as I fire it if you wish, but I will know which way you intend to move before you do.”
“I know who you are…Destiny,” Kelly said, scorn twisting her name. “I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction. If I could kill you with my bare hands, I would. But I won’t run.”
* * *
KATE Pryde watched this exchange from her hiding place in a small alcove behind Kelly’s desk, where she had pressed herself up against a low bookshelf underneath a globe. The alcove was partially obscured by a large, hanging American flag. Kate recognized Destiny. They’d crossed paths a few times during the fraught years following the passage of the mutant-control legislation, when the Brotherhood had kept up its fight against the X-Men despite the increasing threat to all mutants. Later, Kate had walked by Destiny’s grave in the camp hundreds of times. There was an unsavory irony in her knowing Destiny’s destiny, when the precog herself did not.
And on that topic, why did Destiny not know Kate was there? She should have known that Kate would try to intervene, but she gave no sign of being aware of Kate’s presence. That made no sense—unless Destiny was playing dumb in order to spring some kind of trap, which seemed an unnecessary complication in an already complicated plan. Or unless Kate was somehow invisible to Destiny’s precognitive sense because of the temporal projection. Could that be? There was no way to know.
Destiny smiled. “No,” she said. “You will not run. You are a hatemonger and a despicable human, but you are no coward. Let that be your epitaph.”
Her finger tightened on the crossbow’s trigger, and Kate made her move.
She sprang forward, phasing through Senator Kelly’s body. She heard his gasp—and felt it as well, sensing the twitch of his diaphragm and the sudden expansion of his lungs as she passed through him. She heard the sharp twang of the crossbow’s string. As she emerged headfirst from his chest, she solidified the parts of her body that were no longer occupying Kelly’s space—and the crossbow bolt that would have punched through his sternum and into his heart struck her instead.
Kate tried to make a sound, but could not. Phasing had always made her acutely aware of the minute sensations of her body, inside and out, and this time was no exception. Even as shock flooded through her system, she felt the length of the bolt’s shaft—from its entry point just under her right collarbone down through where its head had come to rest just touching the wall of her heart’s right atrium. She fell the rest of the way through Senator Kelly, hitting the floor without feeling the impact.
Destiny was screaming, as if Kate’s violation of her plan had caused her physical pain. Perhaps it had: If her precognitive sense was part of her, damage to it could be like damage to sight or hearing. That thought flickered through Kate’s mind and was gone.
There was a rushing in her ears, or maybe in her mind—she couldn’t tell which. She felt like she was falling.
* * *
KATE smelled smoke and felt the light start to change. She felt unstable, as if she had a case of synaesthesia so bad that all of her senses had merged together.
There was a curious doubled sensation to all of her perceptions, too—as if in addition to figuring out which perception fit which sense, she had to sort out
—which of us—
was having which perception.
Some tidal force drew her out of the teenage body so gravely wounded on the floor of a dim office in a burning building at a point in history where even precognitives did not know what came next…
…back to what? To the South Bronx? Back to humiliating searches and everyday debasements and the looming prospect of nuclear annihilation? Back to being one of the last of her kind?
Kate met herself.
But it’s your time, Kitty said. How did you do this? Rachel’s dead.
She is? Kate replied. How did you do this? I didn’t…oh.
Oh what?
You’re in for a shock when you get there.
But you’re going to let me come back?
It’s not up to me. Did you…?
I don’t know. There was…I don’t know.
There’s something you’re not telling me.
I was about to say the same thing to you.
Touché. Are they still calling you Sprite?
Yeah. Not my idea.
I know. I always hated Sprite. You know what name I liked?
What?
Shadowcat.
Oh. Kitty paused. I like that, too.
* * *
KITTY rolled over and felt something grind against her collarbone. She cried out and saw, standing over her, the figure of Senator Robert Kelly. He was staggered, leaning on his desk for support. He stared as if he could not understand how she had come to be where she was—which, of course, he could not. Kitty Pryde—Shadowcat!—was not one of the X-Men he could have known about.
At the other end of the room, a woman dressed in pale blue was screaming, on her knees with her face buried in her hands and the backs of her hands pressed into Senator Kelly’s office carpet. Kitty had no idea who she was.
Senator Kelly knelt next to Kitty. “Who are you, child? How did you…what did you do?”
Kitty moaned, then cried out as she tried to move. You’re in for a shock when you get there, her older self had said. Something had pierced her shoulder, pushing deep into her chest. She couldn’t breathe, but she wanted very badly to cough at the same time.
“You saved my life, little girl,” Senator Kelly said. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“I hope you’ll remember saying that, Senator,” came a voice from Kelly’s windows. Kitty looked up and saw Storm floating in, an arch smile on her face.
The tender expression left Kelly’s face. “It’s true, Storm. Credit where credit is due. That changes nothing about the nature of the mutant menace.”
“Mutants, like any other people, are good and bad. You would do well to remember that, Senator. A mutant would have killed you today, had another mutant not saved you. Do not be so quick to condemn us all.”
“Words to live by, Senator,” Professor Xavier said as Moira MacTaggert wheeled him into the office. Both of them looked haggard. MacTaggert was using Xavier’s wheelchair as a support.
“Professor Xavier! Doctor MacTaggert! Thank heavens you’re all right,” Kelly said. He was instantly the politician again, as if he had not savaged the two of them in the hearing chamber less than an hour before.
“We are well…or as well as can be expected. One suspects we would all be dead had Kitty not intervened,” Xavier said, looking at Destiny. Her screams had subsided; she was in a near catatonic state. “Storm?”
Storm had gone to Kitty’s side. She helped Kitty sit up. The wound around the bolt bled freely, and Kitty’s face was ashen. Storm said, “Sprite, are you…?”
“Not Sprite…” Kitty said. Her eyes seemed to be having trouble focusing.
Storm looked more closely and dropped her voice to barely above a whisper. “Kate?”
Kitty shook her head. “She’s gone back.”
Storm looked over at Xavier. He nodded. “We need to get you treated,” she said to Kitty. She picked the girl up, amazed at how little she weighed, and stepped to the window. “The world saw mutants fighting to save you today, Senator Kelly.”
“And mutants trying to kill me,” he said.
“Which ones were victorious?” Storm said. She had intended it to be a rhetorical question—and so it remained, as she lifted herself and Kitty out through the window. Then, picking up speed, she flew toward the Blackbird, waiting on the ground below.
He will never be our friend, Xavier said in Storm’s head. But we may have slowed his progression to being a deadly enemy.
Maybe we have, Storm thought. Please tell Logan to be ready for takeoff immediately.
I will also have a discreet doctor ready in the Blackbird, Xavier said. Kitty is doubly in shock, both from the time dislocation and from her wound.
Television cameras followed Storm across the Mall, tracking her progress. She could imagine the reporters speculating about the identity of the costumed figure in Storm’s arms. “Kitty,” she said. “Stay with me, Kitty.”
“Shadowcat,” Kitty mumbled.
“What?” Storm asked.
“That’s what she called me…”
Storm started to ask who Kitty meant, but she had a feeling she knew. She didn’t want to pressure Kitty, but she needed to keep the girl focused and aware. Already blood streaked the yellow parts of her X-Men uniform—Storm could feel it cooling on her own skin as she rushed through the skies over Washington, D.C. “What was it like?” she asked.
“The worst thing I’ve ever…nothing could be worse.” Kitty’s eyes widened. “You, Storm. I was there when you…”
“Hush,” Storm said. She burned, however, to know the rest—and know it now. After Kitty had had a chance to recuperate, she might decide some memories were better kept to herself.
“Everyone died,” Kitty murmured.
“Hush, Kitten,” Storm said. “Hush.” Below, she saw the Blackbird. They were nearly there.
* * *
HANK McCoy, the blue-furred mutant known as the Beast, looked after Kitty in the Blackbird’s medical bay. Logan sat in the pilot’s chair. Storm, Colossus, and Angel clustered close around. Xavier sat nearby, at the front end of the passenger compartment.
Nightcrawler brooded nearby. Since his encounter with Mystique, he had barely said a word.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” Logan asked. “We saved Kelly, we put away four out of the five Brotherhood members, we made some great TV—but did we win?”
“I’m not sure what it would mean to win, Logan,” Storm said.
“Beg to differ, Ororo,” Angel said. “I’m pretty sure we did. Not permanently, but a lot of people who saw what went down today are thinking they need the X-Men. Know why? Because someone has to protect them against the Brotherhood. Everyone hates monsters until they need a monster on their side.”
“I think it would be better if they did not think of us as monsters at all,” Peter objected.
Angel nodded. “Sure would. But that’s not the world we live in, Pete.”
“We can gripe about this world all we want,” Logan said. “But from the sound of it, what Kitty saw was a hell of a lot worse.”
That was undoubtedly true. None of them was sure about how much of Kitty’s muttering to believe—but if even half of it was true, Kate Pryde had actually minimized the horrors of the future she came from. New York in ruins, overseen by armies of Sentinels against a fiery sky—it was apocalyptic. Kitty had slipped into a fugue from shock and blood loss before Hank got her stabilized, and they were still trying to piece her story together.
“So Magneto controlled the Sentinels?” Logan said. “Figures. We should have made sure that guy never came up once he went in the ocean.”
“I think you have it wrong, Logan,” Angel said. “Isn’t she saying he showed up and destroyed them all?”
“Not what it sounded like to me. But if that’s what happened, hey, I take
it back.” Logan didn’t look convinced. The truth was none of them had a complete understanding of what Kitty had gone through, and they wouldn’t until she could give them a clearer account.
“The part I can’t figure out is your pet army of Canuck guerrillas,” Angel said. “You planning that now?”
“You’re their first target, bub,” Logan said.
“The banter is natural in the aftermath of something like this,” Xavier said. “But let us focus on what we need to understand. All those Sentinels had to come from somewhere, and very few currently exist. Who is going to begin the new construction program, who will finance it, and when will it begin?”
“All things considered,” Angel said, “I think we came out of this pretty well. The Brotherhood’s debut was not exactly successful, we all looked good on camera, nobody died, and now we have a lead on where a huge threat to all of us will come from.”
“When you put it like that…” Peter said.
All of them looked out the window at the approaching airstrip. From the back, Kitty said, “Ugh, I hate landing.”
Kurt got up and rushed back, putting an arm around her. “Kätzchen, what are you doing up? You have to rest.” She leaned on him for support and he walked her forward, settling her in a seat next to his as they all buckled themselves in for the descent. She was pale and shaky, but he admired her desire to return to the team, despite the severity of her wound.
None of them said anything for a while. Kitty had been ripped from her own body, placed in an older version of herself living in a future that even Robert Kelly could not have imagined, and then torn from that future and returned to her body just in time to experience the near-fatal penetration of her heart by a crossbow bolt. Such an experience would have been difficult for anyone to handle, let alone a thirteen-year-old girl with very little experience in the kind of… unusual situations the X-Men tended to encounter.
Finally Hank McCoy spoke. “I’m more of a biologist than a doctor, but I got her stitched up. She’s young, healthy—pretty soon she’ll be doing cartwheels again.”