X-Men 2

by Chris Claremont

  “We’re not here to hurt you,” Storm called out. “We just want to talk!”

  Even as she spoke, she turned in response to another faint and distant shift in the air patterns, so that she started facing one way and finished having turned right around toward the entrance.

  “Ich bin die ausgeburt des Bösen,” the lurker cried in something close to a primal howl.

  Storm had a sudden, awkward thought. “You know,” she told Jean, “we’re assuming he speaks English.”

  “Not a problem,” Jean assured her. “He’s a teleporter.”

  “I noticed.”

  “That must be why the professor had so much trouble locking on to him with Cerebro.”

  “Will it be any easier for us to catch him?”

  “Not a problem.”

  Another howl, much closer, although try as they might neither Storm nor Jean could see him in the gloom of the church.

  “Ich bin ein dämon,” he called.

  Jean rolled her eyes and shifted her stance into a picture-perfect ValGal Barbie.

  “Are you bored yet?” she asked Storm.

  “Totally,” was the reply.

  “You want to bring him down, or shall I?”

  Storm narrowed her eyes in momentary concentration and snapped her fingers. Obediently, a bolt of lightning erupted from her hand, sizzling up one of the support columns and into the rafters of the church’s single spire, where it struck with an explosion of light and sound, a clap of thunder that pounded the air and stone around them like a hammer.

  They had a momentary glimpse of a vaguely human shape before it vanished. But when it reappeared almost instantaneously, at the far end of the nave, right above the altar, Jean was ready. As soon as she had a sense of his mental signature, she reached out with telepathy and telekinesis together, freezing his thoughts at the same time she locked him in place a dozen feet above the rubble-strewn floor. Trapped, he still fought her, defiant to the core.

  “Got him?”

  “He’s not going anywhere.” Jean brought him closer. Then, to the prisoner’s surprise, she smiled—genuine, winning, friendly—and held out her hand. “Are you?”

  “Please don’t kill me,” he pleaded in English, with a soft German accent that marked him as an educated man. It had a mellow timbre, the kind more suited to cabaret songs than playing the matinee-movie monster. “I never intended to harm anyone!”

  “I wonder how people ever got that impression,” Storm remarked wryly. “What’s your name?”

  “Kurt. Kurt Wagner.”

  “I’m Ororo. Call me Storm,” she told him. She flashed a sideways look to Jean to complement her thought. This is our assassin?

  Appearances are deceiving, Jean projected back at her. But—which way?

  Your call.

  With that thought from Storm, Jean cut loose the prisoner. He dropped lightly to the floor, landing on the balls and toes of his outsized feet. He looked poised to bolt, but Jean took it as a positive sign that he hadn’t immediately teleported. She kept her hand held out to him.

  “I’m Jean Grey. We’re here to help.”

  Kurt Wagner followed Quasimodo’s lead and lived up in the spire, on the level below the belfry. The walls were solid there, and he’d replaced the panes of broken stained glass with the precision and craftsmanship used for the originals. By day, when the sun was shining, both women recognized, the room would be ablaze with color. He used candles for illumination instead of electricity; their light was less likely to be spotted from the street. The height of the steeple gave him a panoramic view of the neighborhood. He had privacy and a decent chance of spotting any intruders. For a teleporting acrobat like him, whose natural coloration made him invisible in shadows, this was an ideal hideout.

  The furnishings were spartan, a function more of choice and aesthetics than of poverty. True, the pieces were mainly scavenged from the derelict and abandoned homes nearby, but they’d been restored with the same painstaking care and attention to detail as the windows. A bed, a table, some chairs, a pantry, a bookshelf. Dried food mostly in the pantry, chosen for ease in storage and in preparation. The books were an unexpected mix. Religious works mainly, a well-thumbed Bible sharing space with a copy of Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood and George MacDonald Fraser’s classic pastiche, The Pyrates.

  Above the headboard, a Catholic crucifix. On the table, a set of rosary beads, polished from handling. Icons and images galore, of Christ himself, of the Blessed Virgin. The beads were lying on a pile of newspapers, all headlining the attack on the President and showing an artist’s sketch of the assassin that was a devastatingly faithful likeness.

  On the wall, though, something completely different—a series of circus posters, from venues all over Europe: Paris, Florence, Barcelona, Munich, Prague, Krakow. They all were pictures of Kurt, showing him on the trapeze, celebrating the performances of the INCREDIBLE NIGHTCRAWLER! As well, a couple of movie one-sheets: Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in Sinbad the Sailor, and almost in a place of honor, Errol Flynn’s film adaptation of Captain Blood, the role that made his swashbuckling career.

  Jean shook her head. A man of obviously deep religious faith who loved classic pirate stories. Didn’t fit any profile she’d ever read of your basic assassin. He picked up the rosary as she asked if she could examine his wound, but even though she knew she was hurting him—she couldn’t help it—the only sound she heard from him was a cadencelike muttering that she soon realized was a prayer: “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, blessed be Thy Name . . .”

  The 9mm shell had missed the bone as it passed through his shoulder, but it had still done its share of damage. Kurt had administered some decent first aid; he’d stopped the bleeding and applied sufficient antiseptic to prevent any major infection. Without proper treatment, however, his athletic ability would be crippled, and she told him so in a way that also told him she was willing and able to provide it.

  “You’ll be fine,” Jean told him as she finished suturing the wound and began wrapping it in the necessary bandages. “The worst you’ll have is a small scar.”

  “You are not the authorities,” he said with a hint of a question.

  Storm snorted, “Not hardly.”

  “You wear uniforms.”

  “We like to look cool,” Jean told him. “I’m sorry if I’m hurting you.”

  “I know it cannot be helped.” He shook his head, a little bit of misery, a lot of confusion. “I just don’t understand—any of this. I could . . .” He paused, glancing at the papers on his table, trying to come to terms with images and memories that made no sense to him, yet could not be denied. “I couldn’t stop myself,” he said desperately. “It was all happening to someone else, like a bad dream. That would be nice. But then—I move my arm and realize that is a lie. It was real. It was me!”

  He twisted and rolled the rosary beads in his two-fingered hands until he held the crucifix that anchored the strands together. On his face was a terrible and haunting desolation.

  “I fear He has left me,” he said with a grief, a sense of loss, that was palpable. “I even found a mark, perhaps like the mark of Cain. See? Look here!”

  He tilted his head, sweeping aside the thick indigo curls to reveal a mark at the base of his skull. It was a scar, Jean recognized, that reminded her of kinds of insect bites or the welt left by some topical irritant akin to what was found on poison ivy or oak. It was placed right above the brain stem, and it formed the shape of a perfect circle.

  “What do you think?” Storm asked Jean.

  “Let’s get him back to the professor,” she replied, her concern and worry as plain for Storm to see as the intricate markings that covered Kurt Wagner’s body.

  Interlude

  Normally he sleeps without dreams. A quiet time, restful, a relief from the cacophony of input assaulting his physical senses every waking moment. So much to process just to determine the appropriate levels of threat. Every person he meets
, a potential enemy, to be sorted into its appropriate box in that split second of initial contact.

  Lately, no peace, anything but, no chance to recharge his batteries, psychic or physical, forcing him to stay awake to the point of absolute exhaustion, when he doesn’t have any choice about it anymore. Yet that carries its own price, because it leaves him with fewer defenses against the nightmares that invariably come.

  He hears himself scream with rage, giving himself completely to the berserker in his soul.

  He’s fighting fighting fighting, against what he never knows. People? Things? Demons? Monsters? Fate itself? All of that? None?

  He has no clothes, the better to see the marks drawn on skin that’s been stripped of hair, the better to see the livid scars that follow the marks as he’s opened from crown to crotch, shoulders to fingertips, hips to toes.

  He sees himself in the reflector overhead, lying on a table, dissected like a frog, skin peeled back, organs laid bare, watching his heart beat, his lungs pulse. He hears voices, dissecting him as clinically as their scalpels, hears a voice, his voice, asking over and over what was happening, why were they doing this? Hears laughter, they aren’t interested, they don’t care, they think this is funny. Hears threats of bloody vengeance give way, impossibly, to words he never imagined saying, begging, pleading for mercy.

  He can’t wake up. He has to watch.

  Knowing that he was conscious through whatever was being done to him. They didn’t use anesthetic, they wanted him to experience every bloody moment.

  They took lots of notes.

  Someone holds up a set of claws.

  He pops the claws from his hand—snikt!

  He slashes the claws into the wall, making an indelible mark on the armored plating too thick for him to cut all the way through.

  He’s in a tank, lights are flashing red and green, the lights resolving into what’s supposed to be a pair of eyes in a face too terrible to be remembered except as repeating images of pain and horror. The tank is filled with liquid, covering him, drowning him, turning bright yellow as the face spits venom at him like a cobra, burning him inside and out.

  Rage now, beyond comprehension, beyond control.

  He’s fighting fighting fighting

  No more yellow anymore, but lots of red

  He’s alone

  No more floors beneath his feet, only earth, then rock, then nothing but air as he tumbles from a precipice

  Then water as a cataract sweeps him away

  Then earth and rock again as he grabs for salvation and pulls himself ashore

  Then, miraculously, mercifully, snow, falling fast and hard, burying the world, burying him, allowing him to sleep, to heal, to

  forget

  Snikt!

  Snakt!

  Chapter

  Six

  Logan woke up on the floor, amid the ruins of yet another bed.

  Reflexively, he started to raise his hands to rub his face, smooth his hair. Then he paused in midgesture and opened his eyes to see if his claws were still extended. No fun to accidentally slice open your own scalp, even if the wounds healed in next to no time.

  His hands looked normal, with only the damage that surrounded him and the dull and familiar, and fading, ache between his knuckles.

  He spit some feathers from his mouth, plucked scraps of pillow off his chest.

  The bed was basically splinters, the mattress and linens shredded. The floor was badly scored as well. His flailing hands had cut through the parquet to expose the joists beneath. He moved carefully as he shifted his weight to sit up and determined which sections of the floor were still capable of supporting him. He wondered a moment why no one had come to investigate, then remembered that he was the only adult left in the mansion. Considering the looks he’d gotten from the students, and the stories Rogue had no doubt been telling, any kids close enough to hear what had happened in here more than likely had sense enough to make themselves scarce.

  That made him grin, although there was little humor in it.

  He’d left his clothes on the far side of the room. They were untouched by his unconscious berserker outburst, but as he approached to get dressed he had to admit they didn’t look much better than the room. He made it a point to travel light. Anything that couldn’t be carried was expendable, and he wore his clothes to their limit before replacing them. The boots and the leather jacket had some mileage left; the jeans were near the end. That didn’t used to matter to him, because he never used to care what others thought when they saw him.

  He took his time under the shower, muttering darkly that the spray wasn’t as powerful as he liked. Truth was, what he liked was a fire hose at full pressure, enough to scour his flesh the way it could be used to flay paint off a wall. He started as hot as he could bear, which wasn’t quite hot enough to burn, then went for cold. That wasn’t satisfactory, either, for a man used to mountain rivers and lakes where the water was usually a degree or two shy of turning to ice. The immersion left him tingling all over, totally raw and feeling better.

  He’d known the moment he awoke what time it was. Another instinct, an uncannily accurate awareness of time and space and of his self. It was almost impossible for him to get lost, and he always knew immediately if something had changed around him while he was unconscious.

  Past 3:00 A.M.

  Silently despite the boots, he prowled the empty halls of the mansion, registering the photographs and paintings and antiques displayed along the walls even if his mind took no active notice of them. Quizzed, he could have described his environs perfectly, but the objects themselves meant virtually nothing to him. Tools he understood, but he had no use for ornamental artifacts.

  The sound of a television led him to an upstairs common room. He’d assumed at first that somebody had left it on, but as he approached he registered an active presence, early adolescent and male, and wide awake.

  Before going to bed, Logan had used Jean’s terminal to review the files of every student in the school. He told himself he was simply being responsible, but he acknowledged that it was also another way of getting close to her, which made him shake his head in dismay. This wasn’t like him, yet the impulses and the emotions were too primal, too powerful to be ignored. Or denied. Guaranteed trouble, no doubt about that. No hope of a happy ending. He didn’t care.

  Anyway, if Jean was going to entrust him with the kids here, he’d do his best to be worthy of it. That meant putting names to faces, and powers to names.

  This one was Jones. He had a first name but nobody used it, Jones included.

  He was sprawled on the couch, picking at a full bowl of popcorn. He’d watch the big plasma screen until he got bored, then he’d blink his eyes. The channel would obligingly change. Watch a while, repeat the process. It happened often. Jones had a low threshold of boredom.

  He noticed Logan’s reflection in the screen but didn’t look around. He didn’t much like what he was watching, but he wasn’t about to miss a moment of it.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked.

  “How can you tell?” Logan retorted.

  “ ‘Cause you’re awake.”

  No arguing with that ironclad logic, that’s for sure. Kid had a mind like a steel trap.

  “What’s your excuse?” Logan asked.

  “I don’t sleep.”

  “Your loss. You guys got any beer?”

  “Try the kitchen.”

  He did, and found one of the professional Sub-Zero fridges filled with all manner of healthy food: yogurt and greens, fruits and eggs and meats. Primarily organic, the produce of local farms and green markets. Minimal snack food. He grimaced, recognizing the influence of both Jean and Storm, and wondered how often the students made a break for the local Mickey Dee’s.

  The other one held fruit juice, mostly fresh squeezed, bottled water, and dozens of cartons of chocolate milk.

  Grumpy now, Logan shut the door,

  He wasn’t alone in the kitchen anymore. Bobby Drake sa
t at the table, methodically excavating a quart container of ice cream.

  “Hey,” the youngster said, making an effort to keep his voice steady. Logan had sensed him coming, but clearly Bobby hadn’t realized it was Logan in the room until the man had closed the refrigerator door, and by then pride wouldn’t allow for even the thought of flight.

  “Hey,” Logan replied offhandedly, poking through cabinets and the walk-in pantry. “Got any beer?”

  Drake’s laconic response brought an amused twist to Logan’s lips. “This is a school,” Bobby said.

  “So that’s a no?”

  Bobby smiled broadly and pointed to the fridge. “We have chocolate milk.”

  Logan growled and emerged from the pantry carrying a six-pack of Dr Pepper bottles. He pulled two from the cardboard holder and took a chair opposite Bobby. He made a small gesture with one bottle.

  “Want one?” he asked. When Bobby nodded, he added, “They’re warm.”

  Without a word, Bobby reached across to take the proffered bottle in hand. Air crackled and frost formed on his fingers and the fluted glass. He gently blew on the neck.

  “Not anymore,” Bobby said as he handed back the ice-cold Dr Pepper.

  Logan popped the cap and took a long swallow. Just the way he liked it.

  “Handy,” he conceded.

  Bobby gave a nod of acknowledgment as he repeated the process with his own bottle.

  “So,” Logan asked bluntly, with a sidelong look to the boy from beneath lowered brows, as he held up his right hand and, for show, popped the middle claw out, snikt, and in, snakt. Bobby’s response was a choked spit-take that sent soda bursting from his mouth and nose, followed by a desperate grab for paper towels as he struggled to regain his self-possession. Through it all, Logan hardly moved, apparently engrossed in an examination of his knuckles for any sign of the blade’s extension.

  When Bobby had settled back into his own chair, Logan gave him his most dangerous smile and administered the coup de grâce: “What’s with you and Rogue, eh?”