Nightcrawler bowed, with a circus performer’s flamboyance. “Kurt Wagner, mein herr. But in the Munich Circus I was billed as ‘The Incredible Nightcraw—’ ”
“Whatever. Storm?” he called.
“Ready to roll, Logan,” came back from the flight deck.
“Not yet! We’re one short!”
Bobby stood in the hatchway. He hadn’t boarded yet; he was looking back at his house, thinking of the life he’d lived there, realizing that perhaps he could never go home again, not to the way it was. He’d never considered being a mutant in those terms, never imagined the consequences of possessing these fantastic powers might cost him his family.
He knew at that moment that every memory of this house and his life here would be defined by this scene, the stink of burned rubber and metal and plastic, the groans of the wounded and the cries of the terrified, the sight of scorched wood on the porch where he’d played, the burn hole where the front door had been.
He saw his parents and his brother in the upstairs window and knew their faces would remain to haunt him always. His father, shocked and hurt—not just by what had happened, but by his own sense of responsibility; if his son had come to this, then he had failed as a father. His mother, sobbing, like he wasn’t her son anymore but had become, now and forever, a stranger.
He wondered if he could forestall all that by going back. Like that old Cher song said, “If I Could Turn Back Time”! He had to laugh a little at the yearning: Where was a mutant with a truly useful power when you really needed one?
He gave his family a final wave, and closed both ramp and hatch behind him.
Descent to dust-off, maybe a minute. Engines shrieking, the Blackbird hovered above the rooftops for a few seconds, then oriented itself and shot up and away at an incredibly steep angle and a speed those watching couldn’t believe.
The cop on the lawn holstered his weapon, then thumbed the call button on the walkie-talkie handset clipped to his shoulder to make sure the unit was working.
“Dispatch,” he reported when he got them to calm down enough to hear him speak, more than a little amazed himself to discover that he could speak, “all units are down. We have casualties. We need fire and rescue units onsite, ASAP. Perps positively identified as mutants and hostile. They’re mobile, escaping aboard some kind of high-performance aircraft, heading west and climbing fast. You’d better notify Hanscom Air Force Base. If we want these guys, they’d better scramble some interceptors right now! An’ you tell ’em from us, good hunting.”
But he had to wonder, as he picked his way across the lawn toward his ruined squad car, against adversaries like this, if the Air Force would have any better chance of success.
Chapter
Eleven
Charles Xavier never tired of the view from his office.
The main floor of the mansion was built up a level from the ground, creating a distinct separation between the reception areas of the house and those rooms and areas where the household staff actually did their work. He could turn from his desk and look out through the big bay window, across the tiled expanse of the terrace to the lawn and formal gardens beyond. In summer, the garden caught the eye, with its cavalcade of flowers and shrubs. In autumn, once the flowers faded and the leaves began to turn, the trees beyond took over, painting the distance in a riot of fiery orange, scarlet, and gold. In winter, if he arose early enough after a snow, he was usually assured of about an hour to look on the yard in an unmarked, pristine state, as nature intended. Then, of course, his students—regardless of age—erupted from the house to embark on an endless succession of sled races down the far slopes, the construction of various animals, and the obligatory snowball fights. By sunset of that first day, the snow had become so trampled it resembled a beach under the onslaught of midsummer bathers.
The moments he cherished best, though, came in spring. The air, still crisp with the bite of a winter reluctantly passing, was filled with the promise of new life and new hope. The garden was scattered with dots of brightness and color, teasing the onlooker with hints of the coming glory.
A breeze riffled the treetops, creating that shushhhing sound he loved, and stirred his senses as it brought a sharp and heady mix of smells through the open window. The pleasure was acute, but for some reason it brought to his face not a smile, but tears. In the midst of this natural wonder that was so familiar and usually so comforting, he felt an inexplicable and aching sense of loss.
On the windowsill, he saw a chess set, arranged to suggest he was playing someone outside, although the terrace and grounds beyond—indeed, the entire school—were empty. No sound of voice, of movement, when usually the challenge was to create some small semblance of peace amid the constant clatter. Not even a hint of a stray thought.
He’d never known such silence, nor felt so utterly alone. For as long as he could remember, there had always been someone or other’s thoughts to reach out to. He rarely did, he liked to be as respectful of the privacy of others as he was protective of his own, yet it was always reassuring to know they were there.
Now, nothing.
He looked again at the chess set. He was white, and he’d lost almost all his pawns. His king was in jeopardy, virtually checkmate, and while his queen remained on the board, she was sufficiently threatened to prevent her coming to his aid. His only effective ally was a knight.
Thinking about the game made his head ache. Rubbing his temple didn’t help. Perhaps a walk . . .
That made him pause.
He was standing.
He looked over his shoulder at his office, unwilling yet to make a move that trusted these newly functional limbs. He saw only normal furniture and a desk that made no provision for the presence of a wheelchair.
Xavier closed his eyes, reaching deep into memory for the exercises he’d first learned to help him focus his abilities, the way he’d taught himself to stay afloat against the riptides of outside thoughts crashing against the shores of his own conscious awareness. Gradually, as he gained an increasing measure of control, he had crafted a series of psychic levees to guarantee the integrity of his own personality, no matter how many minds he interfaced with.
Evidently, all those meticulously constructed defenses had been subverted. He didn’t like that and liked even less the struggle he went through to keep that anger from showing. Instinctively, he knew the source of his troubles.
“Jason.” He spoke aloud, severely. “Stop it.”
Jason had other ideas, so Xavier returned once more to his most basic mantras, building upward from that essential psychic foundation. The first thing to change was his own personal perspective. The view out the window lowered somewhat, dropping by more than one-third to the level of a tall man sitting in a chair. Carved stone morphed into Sheetrock, painted in institutional greens and beige and looking very much the worse for wear. Natural sunlight gave way to the passionless radiance of overhead fluorescents. His favorite things went away, to be replaced by his prison cell . . .
. . . and the demented monstrosity that Stryker called Mutant 143 and who Xavier remembered as a quietly frightened little boy.
There’d been only the one consultation. The boy’s DNA contained markers for the mutator gene, and Stryker’s contacts within the American intelligence community had led him to Xavier. He had no idea then that Xavier was himself a mutant, only an acknowledged expert in the field. And while Xavier could confirm that the boy possessed the requisite gene matrix and that in all likelihood he would be active, there was no way to determine the type and extent of abilities the boy would manifest. Xavier suggested admitting the boy to the school, but Stryker would hear none of that. He wanted the mutantcy removed. When Xavier told him that wasn’t possible, the other man lost his temper. He took away his son, and that was the last Xavier had heard of Jason, even though, in the years following, he made a number of his own discreet inquiries to try to determine what had happened. Finally word came that the boy had died.
Sitti
ng across from him, Xavier couldn’t help thinking, Would that he had.
The buzzing in Xavier’s ears, radiating through his skull with the annoying fury of a bone saw, was murder, leaving his teeth bared and clenched in a perpetual grimace of pain. Stryker’s neural inhibitor, doing its job.
The hell with that man, the hell with his toys.
“Jason,” he said, speaking with care to avoid triggering further retaliation from the inhibitor, “you must help me.”
No response, so he tried again. And again, his eyes meeting the mismatched gaze of the poor creature in the other wheelchair, ignoring the seething cauldron of emotions that were so nakedly displayed.
“You must help me,” Xavier repeated, ruthlessly crushing the surge of elation he felt when the boy’s mouth began to move in concert to his words. No distractions, not till the job was done.
“You must help me,” he said once more, and this time he could hear the words from Jason, a beat behind.
Gradually, with each repetition, Jason caught up with Xavier until their speech was totally in sync.
But at the same time, Jason’s withered arms were struggling upward from his lap, his face contorting with effort and with rage as he extended them toward Xavier. His chair moved forward as well, bringing him within reach. Jason’s hands came to rest on Xavier’s shoulders, those burning eyes, pulsing with inner light, filling his vision. He felt them on his neck, so little strength in them it was more like being grasped by a toddler. Tears burned at the corners of Jason’s eyes, sympathetic counterparts squeezing from Xavier’s, but he couldn’t read the emotions behind them, save that they were powerful and primal.
“Stand,” Xavier said simply, putting the full force of his will behind that single injunction.
“Stand,” Jason repeated, same tone, same inflection. And they said it again until they were one.
His mouth forming a great O of astonishment and protest, Jason levered his body forward and pushed himself erect. With disturbingly liquid popping sounds, the junctions on all his connectors pulled free of their housings, allowing cerebrospinal fluid to leak from the port in his skull. His legs were as spindly and apparently useless as his arms, but he gained his feet with far more ease. His hands rose with him, up from Xavier’s throat, to catch hold of the circlet of sophisticated electronics that rested on his head.
A quick tug, followed by a clatter as the circlet slipped from Jason’s fingers to the floor below, and the buzzing was gone, the pain as well.
Xavier exhaled in relief. “Thank you, Jason.”
“Thank you, Jason” was the boy’s mumbled response.
For Xavier, it was like staring down at the world from some Olympian height and watching all the lights come on. First one thought came to him, and then a multitude, the same way the first few drops of rain in spring herald the approaching monsoon. Most would drown in such an onslaught.
For Charles Xavier, it was a rebirth. Of self, of purpose.
He felt Jason touch him once more, gently, on the cheek, and used that momentary contact as the physical link to release the controls he’d established over the boy. He might as well have thrown a switch. All expression immediately faded from Jason’s features. As the boy lowered himself to his own chair, Xavier assumed that the passion he’d seen earlier was merely a reflection of his own.
“This should not have happened,” he told Jason. “I don’t know what can be done, my boy, but you have my word, I’ll find some way to help you.”
His mind was on other things, flush with the excitement of his reawakened telepathy. He didn’t see the flash in the boy’s eyes that belied the quietude of his behavior.
Xavier wheeled himself toward the locked door, making sure to roll across the inhibitor, taking a rude pleasure in the sound of its delicate workings crushing under his wheels.
“Mr. Smith,” he called, aloud and with his thoughts, “are you there?”
Of course he was; his mind was as plain to Xavier as the sunrise on a clear day. In short order, the door was unlocked, and Xavier’s arms were released from their restraints. His companion guard simply stood where he was, as Xavier told him to, watching disinterestedly.
“I arrived here with a friend,” Xavier ordered. “Take me to him.”
Scott Summers had a cell all to himself, his optic blasts restrained by a high-tech inhibitor of their own. He was also shackled to the bed, to keep him from getting ideas about unleashing his beams himself.
“Remove his restraints,” Xavier told the guards.
While Smith did as he was told, his partner hurried forward with Cyclops’ visor. Taking great care to keep his eyes tightly closed and his face turned away from any living targets, Scott donned the visor.
“Thank you,” Xavier said to the soldiers, and then to Corporal Smith: “What is the quickest way out of here?”
“The helicopter, sir” was Smith’s reply, at attention, as if to a general.
“Take us there, now.”
Two-thirds of the way eastward across the continent, in the passenger cabin of the Blackbird, on its way to the mansion, Bobby Drake wasn’t happy with his roommate. John Allardyce, cheerfully flicking his lighter cap open and shut, open and shut, couldn’t care less.
“You think it’s funny,” Bobby fumed, refusing to let up even though he’d been speaking to deaf ears since they went airborne. “Let’s go set fire to your house next time!”
“Too late,” John said cheerily.
“You almost killed those cops, John,” Rogue told him.
“So?” John turned toward her. He spoke with exaggerated patience, as though explaining the most obvious facts of life to the terminally dim-witted. “Logan would have”—he gave a pointed look at the man across the aisle—“if he hadn’t gotten shot in the head.”
Logan ignored the boy. He wanted no part of this argument, because in this one instance, both sides were right. John was right. Given the circumstances, he would have charged those cops and likely used lethal force. But he also sided foursquare with Rogue. Just because he was prepared to shoulder that karmic burden didn’t mean it was right for these kids to do the same. Hell, it probably meant precisely the opposite.
Mercifully, Jean gave him a high sign from the flight deck, and he clambered up the aisle to join her and Storm.
“They’ll be all right,” she assured him. Unconvinced, he growled, crouching down behind the cockpit seats and occupying himself with an examination of the dials and display screens. Jean was staring at him, first at his reflection in the windscreen, then straight on as she swung around in her chair to look him full in the face. He thought he’d welcome such attention, but her direct gaze made him distinctly uncomfortable.
She must have picked up the cue, from body language or his thoughts, because she reached out and used her thumb to wipe a smudge of blood off his forehead, from where the bullet had struck back in Boston. She didn’t move her hand away, though, but stroked him again with her thumb, a quick caress right over the now-healed wound.
More than anything right then, he wanted to take that hand. He wanted to kiss those lips, he wanted to lose himself in the scent of her hair. He wanted—
Too many things.
“So,” he said, taking refuge in the proprieties, “any word from the professor?” Seeing a faint quirk at the edge of her mouth when she shook her head, he remembered to add, “Or Scott?”
“Nothing,” she told him.
“How far are we?” he asked.
“We’re coming up on the mansion now. Once Storm whistles up some cover—”
“I’ve got two signals,” Storm interrupted, “coming in fast.”
Accompanying her announcement, a proximity alarm sounded. Warning lights flashed on the main console, and the main display shifted channels to a radar field. Two blips, rising and approaching from behind, identified by the plane’s onboard computer as F-16s. They were armed and trying to paint the Blackbird with their target acquisition systems.
; The Blackbird shuddered in wake turbulence as the Falcons shot past to announce their presence, then throttled back to pace the bigger aircraft, taking up flanking positions on either side. Each of the pilots was making a downward gesture, telling them to land at once.
They made the same point over the radio: “Unidentified aircraft, this is Air Force two-one-zero on guard. You are ordered to descend to twenty thousand feet and return with our escort to Hanscom Air Force Base. Failure to comply at once will result in the use of extreme force. Do you acknowledge?”
When there was no reply, the fighter pilot repeated his instructions.
“Somebody’s angry,” Storm commented.
“I wonder why” was Logan’s pointed response, with a glare over his shoulder at John Allardyce.
Logan hung back in the shadows so that the fighter jocks could only see the two women at the controls. Nightcrawler had started mumbling prayers again, and the kids aft were demanding to know what was happening; they weren’t shy about sounding scared, either.
Jean looked at Storm, then at Nightcrawler. She’d already come to her decision.
Logan was about to ask, “What now?” when the lead fighter told them.
“We’re marked!” Storm cried as the Blackbird’s systems confirmed the worst. “They’re going to fire! Seat belts!”
She slapped the throttles to their firewalls and pointed the big black aircraft toward the stars. The Blackbird surged forward as though it had been launched from a catapult, and Logan had his hands full grabbing hold of the back of Jean’s chair with one hand and catching Nightcrawler with the other. Strangest damn feeling for Logan, and then some, to find some guy better than a head taller wrapping himself like a monkey around his arm and using it to climb up to his torso.
They felt another minor shudder as the Blackbird broke the sound barrier. In their wake, the F-16s went immediately to afterburner and rocketed after them. Alarms and displays on the main panel revealed two minor blips separating themselves from the pursuing fighters and beginning to close the gap at a significantly greater speed.
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