X-Men 2

by Chris Claremont

  Henry McCoy was in his lab, measuring coffee grounds into a beaker while a nearby Bunsen burner had the water merrily boiling. Using gloves, he added the water to the grounds and savored the heady smell. This was what made every morning worthwhile, because a superb cup of coffee was for him the precursor to a successful day of research.

  Without warning, his hand twitched so violently that the beaker went flying, shattering glass and steaming hot water across the worktable. McCoy convulsively threw himself back from the table with such force that his stool upended and he crashed head over heels against the wall. His body spasmed as though he’d plugged himself directly into an electrical outlet, and he cried out in horror and disbelief, and no little pain, as nails bulged from the tips of his fingers into cruelly hooked claws. His arms doubled in width, splitting the seams of shirt and lab coat, the pigmentation of his skin turning a deep blue as he sprouted hairs of the same color all over his body.

  He tried to call for help, but what emerged from his mouth was a roar, like a lion’s.

  What he saw reflected in the polished steel of his refrigerator was no longer anything that resembled a man. Hank McCoy was now a beast.

  Kitty and Siryn were shopping for food, as much as two kids could buy with the handful of bucks they had between them. In the blink of an eye, Kitty found herself at the far end of the aisle from her friend. Another blink, she was through a wall and across the street. Another blink, she was inside a tree and partially sunk into the ground. She tried to move, but hands and feet could find no purchase, and with a wail of horror she realized that she wasn’t the one who was moving. She’d suddenly become so intangible that gravity itself had no more effect on her. The Earth was spinning on its axis and leaving her behind. Worse, it was also revolving in its orbit around the Sun. How long before she found herself floating in space, while the world that was her home went on its merry celestial way?

  Siryn didn’t know quite what had happened to her friend. She heard a yelp of surprise, caught a glimpse of Kitty disappearing ghostlike through the back wall of the store, and then she was shrieking across the full range of her accessible frequencies, calling forth a lunatic choir of howls from every dog within earshot as, at the same time, she managed to shatter every piece of glass in the store.

  In a back room at Delamain’s on the Rue Rogue in New Orleans’ Vieux Carre—the French Quarter—the usual high-stakes game of poker was well under way, in defiance of the paddle-wheel casinos moored along the Riverwalk at the foot of Canal Street. The casinos had the flash, this game had substance, not so much because of the size of the bets but because of the quality of the players.

  Remy LeBeau was a regular and one of the best. The cards, it was said, loved him the way he loved the women who invariably went out of their way to mix with his life, which could be a wild and risky thing. He was a thief by trade, and better at it than at cards, which was saying quite a lot. Stealing hearts was for him far more interesting and a whole lot more fun than stealing jewels or whatever, especially since the trick was always to make sure the stolen heart was never broken. In that regard, he had no equal. When the affair was over, his ladies loved him more than when they met.

  This had been a fair night thus far in terms of winnings, but only because he’d been taking his measure of his fellow players. Now was the time to get down to business and make a killing.

  Alas, this time, no joy. It was not to be.

  He was dealer and from the deck came the joker, the jack of hearts, to complete his full house. But as he flicked it from his hands a spark popped between his fingertips, igniting the card not with fire but with some kind of energy that made it blaze brighter than a maritime searchlight and strike the table with force enough to split the thick wood right across the middle. At the same time, as the other players reeled back in shock and alarm, the other cards he held likewise ignited.

  He had a split second to look at the others, his face marked with confusion, his free hand reaching out for help—but all they saw were his eyes blazing red as fresh blood, and so none of them reached back. Then his cards exploded, shattering the remains of the table to kindling and scattering everyone to the walls.

  Mystique wasn’t moving anymore. That wasn’t a good thing. Like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz after Dorothy splashed her with water, she was melting. Flesh was liquefying, puddling beneath her, the shape of her skeleton starting to stand out in sharp relief. Soon, very soon, the bones would be exposed. Would she be aware of that? Would she be conscious to the end? She didn’t believe that Stryker had an ounce of mercy in him, only that he was thorough. Whatever it felt like, the process would be final.

  Magneto was still on his feet, glaring hawklike at the sealed door before him. He wasn’t interested in the door any longer; he could breach it at his pleasure, with hardly any effort. His focus was on the configuration of the energy patterns that made up the Cerebro wave. Manipulating energy was what he did best. All he had to do was nail down the frequencies and signal characteristics of the wave. . . .

  He set up a countervailing pulse and watched the two collide. Close, but not quite there.

  He made the necessary modifications and repeated the process, creating in effect a wall of white noise around the entire chamber, a resonance field that utterly neutralized the Cerebro wave at its source.

  Just like that, all around him, there was silence.

  Blessed silence.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  Inside Stryker’s Cerebro chamber, Charles Xavier sat straighter in his wheelchair as the globe around him stopped spinning and the entire system progressed through its shutdown cycle.

  “That’s strange,” he muttered, and paused a moment to consider why that simple phrase seemed to have two meanings for him. The obvious related to what was happening around him and to why Cerebro suddenly seemed to acquire a mind of its own. The other, disturbingly, also seemed to relate to that nagging, persistent sense of wrongness that had plagued him ever since his escape from Alkali Lake.

  He looked suddenly and sharply at the little girl, as though to catch her by surprise. She looked apprehensive, indicating that the shutdown wasn’t what she’d expected, either. Xavier made a comforting gesture, spoke some comforting words, to reassure her that he was still in control, that everything would be all right. That appeared to help, although her mismatched eyes of green and blue still glowed disconcertingly bright.

  To work, he decided. Identify the problem and resolve it, that was the ticket.

  Still, as he reached for Cerebro’s controls, he found himself hesitating, he found his eyes returning to the girl, his thoughts reaching out to her through the veil that surrounded him. Something about her . . . felt . . .

  He shook his head, dazzled by the afterimage of her eyes like blinkers in his mind. He knew what had to be done, and his hands moved with practiced skill over the controls. Someone was jamming the scanning wave. He had his suspicions who was responsible and, from there, what was necessary to break free.

  Seeing him hard at work, the girl looked away, toward the massive door at the end of the gallery. This wasn’t part of the program, and she didn’t like it.

  Magneto needed a little time to gather his strength. The battle against the Cerebro wave had been as hard for him as for the others and, in its way, had taken as great a toll.

  At last he turned, and because she couldn’t see him, wasn’t aware of anything beyond herself, he allowed his face to show the sorrow Mystique’s pitiful condition brought forth in him. Over their time together, he’d grown used to having her by his side, strong and utterly fearless, indomitable in will and surprisingly indestructible in form. He hated to think of her being vulnerable, and hurt.

  He knelt beside her, unsure of what he’d find. Her eyes were opaque, as blank and lifeless as a doll’s. She looked like a wax figure who’d been exposed to raw flame, so much of her lay in congealed folds beneath her body.

  Then an aspect of
her eyes changed. Still opaque, but no longer blank or lifeless, they took on the otherworldly depths of a shark’s eyes.

  She blinked, and color returned to those eyes, as it did to the whole of her body.

  She flexed her muscles and stretched, to remind herself of how the parts of her all properly fit together, and flowed upward to a sitting position to look her companion in the eye.

  He didn’t say a word, nor did she. There was no need.

  He stepped over the threshold and along the gallery to the scanning platform, roving his gaze until he’d taken stock of every part of the huge, circular space, impressed at the degree of accuracy that Stryker had achieved.

  Xavier sat on his dais, facing a creature that made Magneto’s lip curl in reflexive disgust. It had nothing to do with outward appearance. In his time, Magneto had seen more than his share of mutants who did not conform to baseline norms of human physiognomy. In his time, Magneto had also come face-to-face with living embodiments of what he chose to call evil, and that was what he was responding to here. The creature in the other chair, whatever his origins or upbringing, would have been right at home working by the side of Josef Mengele.

  Under the circumstances, given what he had in mind, Magneto thought that quite appropriate.

  “Hello, Charles,” he said companionably.

  The celestial song had ended. Jean was herself once more. She was whole, she was alive, more fulfilled than she could ever remember, and yet hollow and aching with a need more keen and primal than she had ever known, without the slightest clue how to answer it.

  Instead, she woke up.

  She looked toward Cyclops, who was lying nearby, telepathy revealing instantly that he was fine—battered but fundamentally unbroken—and she welcomed him awake with a radiant smile. As he gathered himself, she continued taking stock. The substance of the walls within the complex had been designed to inhibit telepathic communication, so she found herself pretty much isolated, with only a vague sense that the others were all right and a growing disquiet whenever her thoughts turned to Xavier. Whatever had happened, they weren’t out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.

  She shifted her broken leg and winced, the lance of pain up the length of that limb making her breath hiss through her teeth. Her subconscious had done a superb job, every piece had been placed precisely where it was supposed to be—but the task wasn’t quite finished. The bone bits still had to knit themselves together, and with a doctor’s inherent caution, she didn’t want to rush the process, even though she suspected she could.

  That automatic realization gave her pause. She hadn’t magically acquired Logan’s healing factor, but somehow she’d tapped into a part of his psyche that allowed her to mimic it on her own terms. She had done consciously what he did as an autonomic function of his own body, and that—disturbingly—implied a measure of rapport between them she didn’t care to think about.

  She shook her head in dismay. If she’d wanted complications, she’d have gone into psychiatry. Oddly, but understandably for some whose powers were wholly invisible to the naked eye, she preferred tangible solutions to tangible problems. Like fixing a broken leg.

  Push the process now and she risked messing up all her good work, leaving herself functionally lame.

  Thank Heaven, she thought of Scott, for having you to lean on, baby.

  And immediately felt a rush of shame, as though she’d been caught cheating on a commitment that wasn’t even formal!

  Worry about that later . . . if there was a later.

  Nightcrawler was praying, curled into a ball of indigo, borderline invisible where the dim light from the corridor bulbs ran out of energy, hands curled protectively around his head, which, in turn, lay against his knees in a pose of abject supplication.

  “What’s he saying?” Artie asked.

  “Our Father,” Storm replied, “Who art in Heaven . . .”

  “That’s not what it sounds like.”

  “He’s praying in German, and French, and in Latin.”

  Storm winced as she rose to her feet, trying to ignore the rude smells rising from the back of her uniform where the lightning had struck. Her nerves were a mess, as though a legion of fire ants were roaming beneath her skin, leaving a trail of itches the size of a superhighway that she couldn’t scratch. She moved gingerly, like an old woman, taking care with every step and gesture—especially any that required turning her head—lest she lose a precariously maintained balance. She envied the children their resilience and used that as a goad to maintain a confident and solid facade.

  She knelt beside Nightcrawler and stroked her hand down his back from neck to the middle of his shoulders, enjoying the richly delicious sensation of his luxurious skin. She’d never felt anything so smooth or plush, even the fur of newborn lion cubs.

  He caught her with his tail, taking a couple of wraps around her palm and giving her a gentle squeeze of thanks and reassurance that he was all right.

  She turned to look at Artie and past him to the others.

  “Everyone else okay?” she asked. Whether they were or not, they’d be moving in a minute, faster than before. The sooner they were quit of this place, and far away, the happier she’d be. Unless, in departing, she could scourge the landscape with her lightning right down to the bare rock, wiping away all trace that the Alkali Lake installation had ever existed. That would be a real pleasure.

  And if William Stryker happened to be inside at the time, so much the better.

  Stryker’s escape tunnel ended at a small clearing on the periphery of the main complex, about a mile downriver from the dam. A helicopter was waiting, gassed and ready to go.

  Quickly, because he was never a man to waste time, Stryker released the chains that anchored the vehicle to the landing stage. He pulled the safety flags free of all the flight control surfaces, cleared the air intake of the twin jet engines, and at the last, removed the wooden chocks from the landing gear.

  In a matter of minutes, he would be safely away, and not long after, if his mental estimates were correct, the dam itself would eliminate all evidence of what had happened here.

  Perfect.

  Magneto spared Mutant 143 a momentary glance and smiled humorlessly at the creature’s evident frustration.

  He tapped his helmet and said, “You can’t come in here.”

  Then, drawing a magnetic field close about him, he rose into the air to the core of the holographic globe, doing a slow pirouette and letting his excitement show as he beheld all the mutants revealed on the display. He’d never dared dream there were so many, and he remembered how people felt in the internment camps after the war—on the one hand, cut to the soul by the realization that so many had perished in the camps, and yet at the same time restored by the discovery that, despite the Nazis’ best efforts, there were survivors. Enough to form the bedrock of a nation. He thought then of Moses, standing on the shores of the River Jordan, gazing across a promised land that he would never reach.

  How would posterity judge him, he wondered.

  If that posterity was mutant, he didn’t mind. That he had succeeded, that they survived and prospered, was satisfaction enough. If it wasn’t, he didn’t care, because that meant he had failed. Either way, he would do today what needed doing.

  Xavier paid no notice of him, so entranced was he by the glamour cast by Stryker’s pet mutant.

  Magneto shook his head in sorrow. “How does it look from there, Charles?” he wondered aloud, and while there was pity in his voice for his old friend, there was also an edge to his words, a contempt for the weakness that had brought Xavier to such a state. Here was a rich irony. If not for Xavier, Magneto would not have been captured and used by Stryker to crack open the secrets of Xavier’s School—and most especially, of Cerebro. Yet, that selfsame act had in turn presented Magneto with the means to deliver his people forever from the threat of annihilation. Each act required the sacrifice of the same man. To Magneto, that was a more than fair exchange.

&n
bsp; “Still fighting the good fight?” he mocked, turning away from Xavier to examine the device around him. His assessment completed, he used his power to begin a global reconfiguration. At his direction, Cerebro began to deconstruct and rebuild itself, the air filling with ceiling panels, metal braces, conduits, cabling, every key component that went into the construction of the machine, all moving swiftly and purposefully to their new destinations.

  “From here, old friend, it doesn’t look like they’re playing by your rules.”

  The work finished to his satisfaction, he descended to the platform.

  “Perhaps it’s time to play by theirs.”

  On the far side of the doorway, Mystique smiled and strode briskly into the chamber. By the third step, when she emerged from the shadows, she was a perfect match for William Stryker.

  She paused for a cruel and dismissive glance at Xavier, still oblivious to everything other than what 143 was feeding him. Then, she crouched beside 143, taking care not to touch him as she whispered into his ear: “There’s been a change of plans. . . .”

  As she spoke with Stryker’s face, in Stryker’s voice, 143’s eyes bulged and a measure of saliva drooled from the corner of his mouth. He actually looked excited by the prospect.

  Still presenting her masquerade, Mystique returned the way she came, reverting to her true form only after she was clear of the chamber.

  Magneto stood before his friend one final time and tried to think of something to say. At Ellis Island, he’d been willing to sacrifice a child—Rogue—to achieve his goals. Now it was a friend. Nothing he could say, precious little he could imagine doing, would ever make that right. Some scales simply could not be balanced.