X-Men 2

by Chris Claremont

  Xavier didn’t like Mount Haven. It gave him a headache.

  He knew the reason: ultralow frequency harmonics whose pitch was specifically calibrated to inhibit any form of extrasensory perception, including his own telepathy. He could overcome it, of course; that was no problem. It just took a little more effort and exacted a more than equivalent cost. Far easier, while he was here, to keep his thoughts and his powers to himself.

  What disturbed him was the notion that the designers knew what they were doing. It suggested a far greater familiarity with mutants than most people realized. Over the past months since Magneto’s incarceration Xavier had made discreet inquiries to learn as much as possible about the government department responsible for the establishment of the prison, but painfully few of those questions had been answered. Perhaps the time had come to dig deeper.

  Following the security protocols, his wheelchair had been exchanged for a plastic counterpart back at the main entrance. Under escort, he and Scott had proceeded to the cell block for the final series of identity and security checks, this time under the supervision of Magneto’s warder, Mitchell Laurio.

  With the peremptory manner of a man used to instant obedience, Laurio waved Scott back from Xavier’s chair.

  “I’ll take it from here,” he said.

  Scott didn’t like the tone, didn’t like the man, and for a moment the two men bristled with challenges.

  “Scott,” Xavier said quietly, forcefully, to defuse the tension, “it’s all right. I won’t be long.”

  “Nice coat,” Laurio said to Scott over his shoulder as he wheeled the chair toward the hatchway leading to the umbilical tunnel.

  “Thanks.” There was a little more of a flat, prairie Nebraska twang to Scott’s voice, the kind you expect to hear from a gunfighter marshall whose job was to bring order to a lawless frontier.

  “Nice shades.” Meaning “I’d like to take them away from you, pretty boy.”

  “Thanks.” Meaning “You’re welcome to try.”

  The hatch opened onto a small platform where both men had to wait while the tunnel unfolded toward the cell itself, suspended in the middle of the room. Even through the translucent walls of the tube, it was possible to get a sense of the chamber’s immensity, and especially the tunnel’s height above the floor. It was designed to make visitors uncomfortable as they realized their lives depended on the strength and integrity of the network of rings and cables that held the tunnel aloft. Most quickened their pace. Laurio slowed his down, his own way of emphasizing that he was in charge here. He was the man! He left Xavier alone with the prisoner.

  Lehnsherr had his back to Xavier and didn’t turn around when he spoke.

  “Have you come to rescue me, Charles?”

  “Not today, Eric. I’m sorry.” There was a quality of genuine regret to Xavier’s voice, as though someday that circumstance might change and there would be a rescue.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Lehnsherr asked, and he sounded genuinely amused.

  “The assassination attempt on the President. What do you know about it?”

  “Just what I read in the newspapers.” He turned to face his friend. “You shouldn’t even have to ask.”

  Xavier couldn’t hide his revulsion, he didn’t try, as he beheld the bruises on Lehnsherr’s face. The way the other man held his body revealed more eloquently than words that the damage wasn’t simply confined to his face.

  “What happened to you?” Xavier asked, aghast.

  “I . . . fell,” Lehnsherr said without irony. “In the shower.”

  “This isn’t funny!”

  “No.” For emphasis, a shake of that leonine head.

  “This is unconscionable.”

  “I’m a terrorist, Charles. An enemy of humanity. Given that status, and the circumstances of my capture, it’s been made repeatedly clear to me that I should be . . . grateful for my treatment.”

  “Told by whom?” Xavier demanded, already formulating his protests to the authorities. “Who is responsible for this outrage?”

  “You remember William Stryker?”

  “I haven’t heard that name in years.”

  “I’ve had frequent visits from him lately. His son, Jason, was once a student of yours, wasn’t he?”

  “More a patient than a student. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to help him. At least not the way his father wanted me to.”

  At the mansion, Jones donned a set of Bose headphones and cranked the volume, his flickering eyes changing channels faster than ever.

  The assault force closed on the mansion from three directions, two by silenced helicopters flying a map-of-the-earth profile that had the wheels of their Sikorsky Blackhawks literally brushing the treetops while the third unit used SCUBA sleds to approach from the lake. The teams had been handpicked by Stryker himself, culled from the finest special operations cadres on Earth—American SEALs and Army Rangers, Great Britain’s Special Air Service, Russian Spetznatz, German GSG-9, Israeli Pathfinders, and some Vietnamese. They’d trained for this op for months, not only familiarizing themselves with the layout of the mansion but also exhaustively learning how to protect themselves from the myriad of powers and abilities they might encounter. Now, with all the adult staff of Xavier’s School absent from the estate, the time had come to put that preparation to the test.

  In quick and practiced succession, as the first units rappelled to the ground from their hovering aircraft, all the mansion’s power and communications lines were interdicted and the security network neutralized. On command, the school would be completely isolated. Even cellular and radio communication would be off-line. From high overhead, an orbiting C-130 Hercules kept the entire estate under constant electronic surveillance, using thermal imagery to mark the position of the students. Only a couple of signatures indicated contacts who were awake. For the rest, it was already too late.

  In the observation booth at Mount Haven, Scott leaned closer to the phalanx of monitor screens. He’d seen the bruises, too, and Xavier’s reaction to them, but there was no sound.

  The guard at the console shrugged apologetically.

  “It happens,” he said, by way of explanation, not for Magneto’s condition but for the lack of audio.

  “Here?” Scott asked pointedly. “With this prisoner?”

  “We got backups on backups,” Laurio growled. “You got nothin’ to worry about. Joey, put in a call for a techie. Let’s get this fixed before Movie Star here makes a federal case.”

  Both guards laughed, and Scott felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. This was wrong, and he called out to Xavier with his thoughts as loudly as he could. He yelled inside his head, but the figure he could see plainly on the screen gave not the slightest indication that he heard any of it.

  Lehnsherr picked up a pawn from the plastic chessboard on his cupboard, then exchanged it for a knight.

  “And now you think that taking in the Wolverine will make up for your failure with Stryker’s son?”

  He placed the pieces back on the board and turned slowly to look at his friend.

  “You haven’t told him about his past, have you?”

  Reluctantly Xavier shook his head. “I’ve put him on the right path, but Logan’s mind is still fragile.”

  “Is it?” Lehnsherr obviously thought differently. “Or are you afraid you’ll lose one of your precious X-Men?”

  Xavier didn’t reply at once. He looked distracted, brow furrowing, head cocked slightly to the side in concentration as though trying to make sense of some noise or other right at the edge of his awareness. He blinked, marshaling his telepathic resources against the low-frequency harmonics and the realization that the headache that was merely infernal now would be brutal by the time he was done. But this increased psychic sensitivity didn’t give him the answer he sought. Instead it gave him insight into something far more serious.

  “Eric,” he cried, shocked at the scraps of memory he was perceiving and all their terrible implicat
ions, “what have you done?”

  “I’m sorry, Charles,” Lehnsherr replied, swinging his hand across the chessboard to knock down both kings at once. He was a proud man who had sworn long ago never again to become a victim. That he had failed, utterly, was a hard admission to make. “I . . . couldn’t help myself.”

  “What have you told Stryker?” About my school, Xavier thought desperately, about my X-Men? He recognized the source of that burr in his awareness that had been bothering him, and called out a warning to Scott in turn, with all his own considerable strength.

  “Everything,” Lehnsherr said with the simple finality of a death sentence.

  Both men reacted to a faint hiss from all around them. From apertures on every wall a cloud of mist could be seen flooding into the cell.

  Xavier had time for one last, desperate outcry—“Scott!”—before oblivion claimed him.

  On the monitors, Scott saw Xavier lunge forward in his chair, heard a faint echo of that call in his thoughts, watched his mentor collapse. It was over in seconds.

  “What the hell?” he cried.

  He looked up, heard an almost inaudible pop, and reacted to the impact of something small striking the middle of his chest. He didn’t know what it was, but that didn’t matter as his body reacted of its own accord to this sudden and unexpected ambush.

  He quickly registered a new presence in the room. A young woman, Asian, beautiful, wearing a guard uniform and carrying a dart pistol. That told him they wanted him alive. In that same instant, he also assumed that the dart hadn’t done its job, working on the presumption they’d want to neutralize him as quickly and efficiently as they did Xavier. It probably hadn’t been strong enough to penetrate his leather coat and his uniform beneath. He knew they wouldn’t make that mistake twice. He had to act first.

  All these thought processes occurred in the split instant it took him to complete his turn. He identified the woman as the primary threat, and he wasn’t overly gentle with his response. He tapped a control on the wing of his visor, the ruby quartz depolarized, and a beam of scarlet force exploded through the lens.

  For the woman, it was like being hit by a battering ram. He caught her full in the belly, doubling her over and hurling her into the wall behind her. The whiplash of the impact cracked her skull against a projection and she dropped to the floor, bloody and unconscious from a nasty scalp wound. The same beam shattered the pistol and knocked off her lightly tinted sunglasses.

  The guard at the console made a grab from behind, but Scott elbowed him in the face, used the same fist to deliver a sharp jab that dropped this adversary from the fight. That left Laurio and his partner.

  A snap shot of optic blasts took care of the partner, but Laurio proved a lot faster than Scott expected from a man of his bulk. He tackled Scott before the young man could bring his eyes to bear. Laurio had seen how Scott manipulated the beams, and he was doing everything he could to keep the mutant’s hands away from his visor. Without the power, Laurio likely figured this to be an easy fight.

  Now, though, it was his turn to be surprised. Scott’s slim and rangy figure was as deceptive in its own way as Laurio’s. There was a wiry strength to him that matched the guard’s, and a willing ability to take punishment. Laurio delivered a couple of hard shots to the body that were usually good enough to take the fight out of anyone, but all Scott did was wince with the shock and hit back just as hard.

  Unnoticed in the struggle, the woman—Yuriko Oyama—stirred. Her wound had stopped bleeding and, covered now with fresh skin, was healing with a speed reminiscent of Wolverine.

  Scott used a knee to lever Laurio aside, quickly rolling the other way to yank a nightstick from the belt of the guard. Both men came to their feet together, but Scott had the advantage as he hammered the handle of the stick into the pit of Laurio’s gut. The bigger man staggered, gasping for breath, and Scott followed up with a roundhouse swing to the jaw that drew blood from mouth and nose as it threw the guard against the wall.

  Instinct warned of another attack, a fresh threat; training prompted an instantaneous response. But quick as Scott was, Yuriko was quicker as she slapped the nightstick from his grasp. Scott gasped in pain as if he’d just been hit by a bar of steel. In blinding succession, she struck him in the hands and forearms and body, leaving him unable to defend himself actively with his own martial skills or his optic blasts. He wasn’t sure how this had happened; he knew how hard he’d hit her, was certain when she fell that she was out for the duration. Yet here she was, attacking him, seemingly in better shape than ever.

  Without pause, she set herself and launched a sweeping, flying kick for his head. He saw it coming, tried to avoid it, watched her compensate impossibly in midair, felt a murderous shock to the side of his skull as her boot connected. On the way down, she gave him another kick for good measure.

  She reached down to check his throat pulse, satisfying herself that it remained strong, then turned to the monitors to check on Xavier. With a smile of triumph, she threaded her fingers together and cracked her knuckles. Mission accomplished.

  Inside the cell, Eric Lehnsherr watched his old friend fall. The gas had been specially mixed for Xavier’s genetic structure. It was effective against Lehnsherr, too, but it just took a little longer.

  He coughed, thinking as he did about every time he had seen the white cloud pour from the vents of the “showers” that claimed so many at Auschwitz, remembering the feel of lifeless flesh still warm beneath his fingers as he and the other Sonderkommando dragged the dead from gas chamber to crematoria. The hair was cut from their heads, the gold was pried from their teeth. Everything that was perceived to be of value was taken from them, before their wholesale murder and afterward. Especially their dignity.

  Never again, he had sworn then.

  He knew his captors thought that the most hollow of boasts.

  He also knew he would live to make them regret it.

  “I’m sorry, Charles,” he said with his last conscious breaths. “You should have killed me when you had the chance.” Then he looked toward the distant observation booth, but the face that marched into his mind’s eye was Stryker’s. “So should you,” he finished, and then he let his own consciousness go.

  * * *

  At the mansion, the cavalcade of images cascading before Jones’ eyes suddenly and unexpectedly paused. Something else had caught his attention, an image on the screen but having nothing whatsoever to do with it. Jones peered closely at the screen, then clambered up the back of the couch to see who’d entered the room behind him.

  It was a man dressed just like the commandos Jones watched on TV. Black from head to toe, face decorated with camouflage paint and a knit wool balaclava. Battle fatigues, combat boots, weapons and equipment harness, night-vision goggles. His name, though Jones didn’t know it, was Lyman. He was in command of the assault force.

  Finding himself facing a boy who was barely a teenager, Lyman wavered.

  Wondering if this was some prank, or test, or maybe a new teacher, Jones swung his legs over the couch and padded, barefoot and in pajamas, toward the stranger.

  “Hi,” he said. He wasn’t afraid. In this mansion, he truly believed he had nothing to be afraid of.

  His eyes widened slightly in disbelief as, without a word in response, Lyman pulled a pistol from its holster and fired.

  Jones felt a sting in his neck, grabbing at it reflexively in time to pull free the tranquilizer dart but not before the drugs took effect. He collapsed to the floor, his eyes fluttering, the TV changing channels so fast behind him that the flickering images registered more like static.

  Lyman used hand signals to motion the rest of his team forward. Silently, weapons leveled, they spread throughout the mansion.

  * * *

  In the kitchen, Logan sat slumped deep in his chair. Until tonight, he hadn’t slept since leaving Alkali Lake, and the nightmare that had sent him wandering through the mansion had been worse than a knockdown, drag-out bar fig
ht. As a consequence, his healing factor was so busy fixing the damage that, even though he looked awake and was carrying on a decent conversation, he was mostly in a kind of hibernation. Whatever enhanced awareness he possessed right now was limited to this room and the boy across the table. Even that was pretty piss poor.

  They quickly polished off one six-pack of soda, Logan chugging four while Bobby was still nursing his second, at the same time picking at the mostly melted remnants of his container of ice cream.

  “My parents think this is a prep school.”

  “Hey,” Logan said pleasantly, amused that he was coherent since he was speaking through a mental haze that put a pea-soup fog to shame, “lots of prep schools have their own campus, dorms, kitchens.”

  “Harrier jets? The Blackbird?”

  “It’s a free country.”

  Logan leaned back in his chair, establishing a balance so precarious that Bobby was sure he would fall. He thought of saying something, thought better of it. Logan struck him as the kind of guy who always knew precisely what he was doing.

  “So,” Logan growled, “you and Rogue, eh?”

  “Marie,” Bobby corrected.

  “Whatever.”

  “It’s not what you think.” Logan quirked an eyebrow, making Bobby wonder with a suddenly racing heart just what the man thought. “I mean,” he stammered, closing his eyes in misery, “I’d like it to be. . . .”

  Which, from the look he got now, could not have been more totally the wrong thing to say if he’d tried.

  “It’s just,” he explained hurriedly, sure that he was making things worse with every word, but having no idea how to stop or make things right, “that it’s not easy—when you want to be closer to someone, but . . . you can’t be. Y’ know?” He paused, utterly miserable as Logan’s expression changed and sharpened before his eyes. He’d screwed up, big time, no doubt of that at all. “You probably don’t understand.”

  Logan wasn’t listening to the boy anymore, and he wasn’t in hibernation, either. He knew exactly what was happening and he was furious at himself for allowing it.