X-Men 2

by Chris Claremont

  Slash struck a flame and lit his cigarette, making an exaggerated show of blowing a lungful of smoke into John’s face.

  Later, much later, they all told themselves they should have seen this moment coming, they should have been prepared, they should have stopped him. Truth was, though, they never imagined it could happen. John, of all people, knew the nature of his mutant power and how important—how essential—it was to use it properly. They didn’t think he was serious, and once it started, there was simply no time.

  John was a pyrotic. His mutant ability was to control flame. Before any of them could stop him, before they realized the danger, he amplified the tip of the burning cigarette to white-hot incandescence and sent it flashing all the way to the boy’s fingers and beyond. Instantly what was left of the cigarette was reduced to ash. Slash opened his hand, even as the tips of his fingers blistered from the sudden, scorching heat, but it was far too late as raw flame raced up his sleeve to ignite his jacket and hair and set him aflame from head to toe.

  Slash screamed—mostly in terror, there hadn’t been time yet for any pain to register—and reeled away from the corner, slapping at himself in a doomed attempt to extinguish the flames. A succession of other screams were heard as patrons of the food court reacted to what was happening, scrambling to get clear of the young man or pull their own children to safety, calling for fire extinguishers, starting a stampede for the sole exit.

  John stayed where he was, watching with a smile.

  With a curse, Bobby leaped to his feet, reaching out to Slash with his right hand, which suddenly turned transparent, as if the skin had turned to crystal-clear ice. The temperature in the corner dropped so low, so fast, that every breath around their table left clouds in the air, but more importantly a stream of frost embraced Slash like a blanket to smother his flames.

  Marie stood, but before she could get clear of the corner the second boy—Bobcat—made a grab for her. In her hurry, her coat had slipped off her shoulder, baring a stretch of bicep. Bare hand closed on bare arm, flesh made direct contact with flesh, and all of a sudden Bobcat looked like he’d just been hit in the belly by a battering ram.

  His mouth opened wide, but he couldn’t find the air—or even the will—to shriek his heart out as veins distended on his head and throat and Marie bared her own teeth in a grimace of sympathetic pain, giving voice herself to the raw terror the young man felt. In midscream, she wrenched free of him, breaking contact with such force that Bobcat collapsed forward onto the table, and Marie stumble-spun into John’s arms, which made his day.

  Bobcat pulled himself up and cocked a fist to deliver a blind-side punch to John’s head.

  The punch was never thrown.

  The three Xavier students looked around in amazement to discover that every person in the food court was frozen in place. They looked accusingly at Bobby, but he only shrugged in helpless demurral: This wasn’t his doing.

  Then the penny dropped, and four sets of eyes turned as one to the doorway, where Charles Xavier sat grim-faced in his chair. Clustered close behind him were Jean, Scott, and Storm, and, farther back, the rest of the tour group. One look at the faces of their teachers told the students how badly they’d just screwed up. “The next time you feel like showing off, don’t!” the professor said curtly.

  Standing, Charles Xavier would have matched Scott Summer’s height, but he was in a wheelchair and had been for as long as the young man had known him. He was twice Scott’s age and more, but he carried those years easily, and the wiry strength of his body made no concession to his disability. He spoke with a rich English accent he’d acquired as a student at Cambridge and although he possessed a smile as generous as his nature, he generally presented himself in a manner as formal as his attire. When he looked you in the eye, he gave the impression that your whole being had suddenly gone transparent. Scott was one of the few who knew that wasn’t hyperbole. Xavier was a telepath, perhaps the foremost on Earth. He could read minds as easily as anyone else might read a book. Jean was his prize pupil.

  He had founded his school to provide a venue where young mutants could learn not simply to use their powers properly and safely, but also responsibly. The core curriculum was as much about the ethics of being a mutant as the practicalities. At the moment it was plain that he was wondering why he even bothered.

  As the students gathered their gear and trudged across the court, a look suddenly swept across Jean’s face, as if she’d heard something from outside the building. Xavier’s concentration was occupied keeping the patrons of the food court “off-line”; he hadn’t noticed what she had.

  There was a television set suspended from the ceiling, turned off. A faint flicker of energy appeared around Jean’s eyes, and the set came on. The channel quickly changed to Fox News as a title banner at the bottom of the screen announced the news that the midday anchor was breathlessly repeating aloud: MUTANT ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT. Behind the anchor there was a secondary window showing a live shot of the White House, surrounded by Secret Service and a detachment of Marines in full combat gear.

  “. . . we repeat,” the anchor was saying, relief as palpable on her face and in her voice as terror, “the President is unharmed. We are awaiting confirmation from the White House, but informed sources have told Fox News that an attempt was made on the President’s life less than an hour ago by an assailant who has been tentatively identified as a mutant!”

  No one said a word for what seemed like the longest time. Scott finally broke the silence.

  “Professor, “ he said quietly, “people, I think it’s time to go.”

  Xavier drew a deep breath and nodded his head.

  “I think you’re right,” he agreed.

  A moment later, the food court came back to life—with a startled yelp from over by the soft ice cream machine as the attendant found his hand covered with chocolate/vanilla twist. Slash couldn’t recall why he was on his hands and knees—or why he smelled like he’d just walked through a smoke factory—as he sucked on a set of scorched fingertips, but right then and there he made a silent vow that he and cigarettes were done. As for the rest, they had no idea that a minute was missing from their lives, or that the table in the corner had been occupied by a pair of boys and a girl. Or that those three teens had ever even existed.

  Outside, Scott pushed Xavier’s chair while Jean and Storm kept the children in line as they hurried past a succession of momentarily “frozen” patrons on their way to the parking lot.

  Marie had her coat wrapped close around her, her hood pulled up to hide her face, and while she kept pace with the group, she kept a definite distance between herself and everybody else. Bobby tried to walk beside her, but she made it clear she wasn’t interested, and he had sense enough to back off.

  Chapter

  Three

  A straight line from Xavier’s School on Graymalkin Lane in the town of Salem Center to the Empire State Building runs forty-five miles. An hour by Metro North from Grand Central Station, generally two by car at rush hour.

  Scott made better time than that. There wasn’t much traffic on the roads, everyone seemed to be glued to the nearest TV, waiting for word from Washington on the President’s condition and what might happen next. Lacking definitive hard news—beyond the initial announcement of the attack and the fact that the President was alive and unharmed—talking heads filled the airwaves with blather and speculation, almost all of it fixated on the as-yet unconfirmed report that the assailant was some kind of mutant, and almost all of it hostile. Was this a follow-up, people wondered, to the recent mutant terrorist attack on the World Unity Conference on Ellis Island? Had any other nations been attacked? Was the President the only target? Was this a conspiracy? Was it a declaration of war?

  The questions fed on one another like a brushfire. Even the President’s hurried appearance and brief statement from the White House Press Room didn’t make much difference. It was as if there was this incredible reservoir of anxiety where it came to m
utants, held back by a dam of faith and hope that the government had a handle on the situation, that maybe mutants weren’t so bad. With this one terrible blow, the dam had cracked and people across the country, across the world, were venting their fears about what would come next.

  As more details about the attack were revealed, this proved a far more damaging blow to the national psyche than the Ellis Island incident. That had involved some incredible machine whose fantastic energies had lit up the New York skyline more vividly than any fireworks display. No one had really understood what was going on, save that official spokesmen said it was really dangerous.

  This, though, was a man with a knife, who’d penetrated one of the most secure locations in existence. If mutants could get that close to the President, where only a miracle had saved him, nobody was safe.

  The irony was, the mutants—young and old, students and teachers—driving through the wrought-iron gates that marked the entrance to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters felt just the same. Fearful that a suddenly uncertain present was giving way to an ominous and threatening future.

  Xavier’s ancestors had settled this part of Westchester County when Salem Center itself was little more than a tavern and trading post. They’d laid claim to a five-mile stretch of land along the north shore of Breakstone Lake and held on to it ever since. Some generations prospered, others struggled, as what began as the wilderness frontier gradually evolved into one of the wealthiest counties on the globe, home now to billionaires and ex-presidents. But the enduring constant for the family was that they never let go of their land.

  The original mansion had been Georgian in style, two stories high with pillared porticos offering a magnificent view down the sweeping lawn to the lake. A century or so later, it was replaced by the current structure, a late Victorian stronghold of dark, gray stone, meant to look as solid and eternal as the lake itself. They built big in those days, so what was entirely excessive for a family residence became ideal for a school. There were wings and battlements and turrets galore and a layout so eccentric every new arrival was told suitably spooky stories about kids who’d gotten lost, never to be seen again. The newbies scoffed, of course—until one of them actually did get lost. Then they paid more attention to the maps and the rules.

  Classes had already been canceled for the day because of the field trip, which left the students free to find their own ways of coping with the news.

  Theresa Roarke angrily stormed out of the common room, snarling to everyone within earshot how fed up she was with the doom and gloom that filled every channel and radio frequency. She’d grown up in Northern Ireland; terrorism was a fact of life for her. She learned early to cope with the moment but not to obsess. Feel angry, fine. Feel scared, fine. Wallow in it, not on a bet. Especially on so beautiful an afternoon. Especially if that afternoon could be shared with a certain boy.

  Tracy was everything her name and antecedents implied: sandy red hair and aquamarine eyes, pert features, a dusting of freckles across a classic peaches-and-cream complexion, a face and figure that nicely mixed cute and pretty. She was a girl of big gestures and big emotions. She had a voice like an angel, if that angel liked to hang out in honky-tonks and sing Motown, and she could dance everyone else in the school, teachers included, into the ground.

  On the surface, Jamie Madrox was her polar opposite, matching her fierce passion with an almost infuriating calm, still water where she was a roiling cataract. He was Canadian, from Saskatchewan, where the land is flat and covered with wheat. He was a farm boy and proud of it, he liked growing things, and soon after arriving at Xavier’s he took over the care and feeding of the estate’s formal garden. He was the only kid in school who could keep up with Tracy; that came from running mile after mile across the prairie, and from winters pounding up and down the community rink playing ice hockey. But what she really adored about him was his mouth. She tended to slash and burn anyone who crossed. She had a temper and a tendency to scorch those who ignited it. Jamie, though, had that trademark Canadian knack for irony. He’d smile at the person making fun, as though he was too dumb to realize what was being said, and then respond with such outward politesse that it took the other person a minute to realize how deftly the insult had been turned back. By then, of course, everyone else was in stitches laughing. There was always the possibility of a fight, but then again, Jamie was a farm boy and he had a farm boy’s physique.

  He and Bobby Drake were roommates. Jamie didn’t mind that Bobby had adopted his style.

  Tracy was waiting for him by the fountain that some Xavier ancestor had decided would be the perfect design element for the patio. The fact that it was a monstrosity, totally at odds with all the architectural elements around it, evidently hadn’t been a consideration. At one time or other, just about every student in the school had fantasized about using his or her mutant powers to make the fountain go away, but until somebody acted on those impulses, it was the ideal place to meet.

  She’d been picking flowers, and as Jamie approached she held them out for him to take a sniff. Too much pollen, or dust or something; he knew right away he was in trouble. He started to back away, but the sneeze caught him in midstep. The way he reacted, it might as well have been a rocket engine firing. Off balance, he went straight down on his butt, landing hard at the very moment the force of the sneeze doubled him over . . .

  . . . and, just like that, thirty identical copies of him filled the patio.

  He took a great breath, desperate to calm himself before another such outburst triggered a second attack of doubling. That was his power, to take the kinetic energy of any physical blow and use it to manifest duplicates of himself.

  Tracy’s power was the embodiment of her code name: Siryn.

  She was startled enough when Jamie fell. Seeing him megadouble for the first time spooked her completely.

  She screamed.

  Jamie covered his ears, but that didn’t do much good as the sonic waves lanced right through the bones of his skull. The air around him shimmered with the raw force of her outburst, flowers and shrubs bent as if they’d been hit by a sudden gust of wind, and every lightbulb within eyesight instantly shattered.

  Tracy stopped, covering her mouth with both hands in shock and shame as the echo of her shriek hung between them a few moments longer. She looked around at the shattered bulbs, the cracked and crazed windows, and she bolted.

  Jamie knew better than to follow. He wiped his upper lip and took a big sniff to stop his nose from bleeding. Tracy hated losing control, and whenever she did she demanded to be left alone until she worked through it enough to come back and apologize.

  He looked up, saw Scott Summers looking down from an upper-floor turret window, where Jamie knew the staff had their lounge, and shrugged. The course of true love—yada yada yada.

  Scott offered a small smile he knew the boy down below couldn’t see and traced his fingers lightly over the hairline cracks that Siryn’s scream had caused in the windowpane. If Jamie’s doubles lasted long enough, he’d put them to work replacing the glass. Afterward, when he had the time, Scott would have to see if he could make the panes more resistant to sonic attack.

  Everything all right?

  His smile broadened inside at the sound of Jean’s thoughts mixing with his. It was the strangest and most wonderful sensation, to know that they were standing on opposite sides of the room yet to feel her inside himself, as real and tangible as could be. When she spoke to him telepathically, he processed it the same as verbal speech, but it came with so much more besides. He had a sense of her emotions, as well, layer upon layer of subtle textures that made the most innocent exchanges incredibly intimate. For someone as private, as guarded, as he, the miracle wasn’t that she could share herself so with him, but that he didn’t mind.

  I think young Jamie’s going to need your services, Doctor, he thought.

  Siryn? she asked, and her silent laughter thrilled him to the core. The poor boy must have such a headache! Then
her manner turned serious and professional. Oh, dear, this actually could be serious. If he integrates his doubles before taking any medication, he’ll have to cope with a headache times thirty. But if all those doubles take a dose and then they integrate he’ll be processing thirty times the medication his body can safely absorb.

  Can you help him? Scott asked.

  Hush, she cautioned, and he knew she was multitasking as only she could, listening to the ongoing conversation with part of her brain while reaching out to Jamie Madrox with another, using her telepathy to effect a homeopathic remedy for his pain. The image that came to him, from Jean no doubt, was of a form of psychic acupuncture.

  Satisfied that Jamie was in the best of hands, Scott turned back to the room, to behold a holographic image of a man’s head hovering at eye level above the portable projector that had been placed on the coffee table. It was a handsome face, almost that of a fallen archangel, tempered and textured by a lifetime of struggle, which had borne witness to horrors beyond imagination. Where Charles Xavier was bald, Eric Lehnsherr possessed a thick shock of white hair, swept back from the face in a leonine mane. Where Xavier’s smiles were generous and offered without reservation, Lehnsherr’s had an edge. Xavier looked at the world and saw its possibilities. Lehnsherr’s gaze was more guarded and wary. He had no trust in him, and when you looked into his eyes you felt as if he had no mercy, either. He was a man who’d long ago drawn his line in the sand: You stood beside him, or against him.

  He was a mutant, as powerful in his own way as Xavier himself. When they were both younger, they had worked together. They’d been friends. Perhaps in some ways they still were. He held dominion over all the forces of magnetism; hence his code name, Magneto. Scott had seen the projections that Xavier had extrapolated of his power; given the right circumstances, it was conceivable that Eric Lehnsherr could manipulate the magnetic field of the Earth itself.