“Oh, shut up, ya swamp witch!” Rogue said, and as Rose came in for another attack, Rogue grabbed her arm and swung her toward the technojerk.
“What about you?” Rogue asked, turning to the fourth flyer, who had not yet attacked her. “What do you do?” “I’m Gravity,” the man said. “It’s self-explanatory.” Gravity pointed at her, and Rogue fell seventy feet to the street, landing hard on top of a guy who seemed to be made of sharpened glass, or crystal. He shattered beneath her momentum, and she hit the pavement. The glass man didn’t get up again, and Rogue found that, while she could stand and fight, she could not fly. Though she suspected the effect of Gravity’s power would wear off, not being able to fly threw off her battle rhythm considerably.
That moment of confusion cost her. Rogue tried to orient herself in the crowd. Where were Cyclops and Jean? Where was the Juggernaut? She knew they would still be fighting, that despite the odds, they were, all three, people of extraordinary will and endurance. But where—
Rogue cried out in pain as Senyaka’s psionic whip lashed around her throat, choking off her air and burning her flesh. She was nearly invulnerable, true, but that merely meant the burning whip would not scar. It still hurt like hell.
Driven by pain and fury, Rogue simply grabbed on to the whip, bent over and pulled, her great strength launching Sen-yaka deep into the crowd. Without him in proximity, Senyaka’s whip quickly dissipated. Before she could even catch her breath, Rogue was set upon by the former Marauder called
Blockbuster, and another musclehead with four arms that she believed was called, unimaginatively, Forearm.
Blockbuster hit her once and her teeth clacked together hard enough that she bit her tongue, but she only moved back a step. Forearm tried to grab her from behind, set her up as a punching bag for Blockbuster, but she turned in time to grab them both. She was about to take them down, about to knock their heads together like something out of the Three Stooges. Then small arms wrapped around her neck and a weight fell on her back, dragging her down.
It was Tusk, or at least a part of him. A large mutant with some kind of armadillo-like shell, and several miniature versions of himself running around. Together, all the aspects of Tusk began beating on Rogue, along with Blockbuster and Forearm. She could take it. Could take them all. But how long could she take it for? That was the question.
Tusk. Forearm. That meant Mutant Liberation Front. Or Dark Riders. Or whatever they were calling themselves these days. Reaper, Dragoness, Tempo, and the others. If they were all there. God, she was finding it so hard to think; she had just enough brainpower to fend off her attackers’ blows. Not all of them, though. Some—a lot of them—connected. Hard. And more mutants were joining in.
Faces flashed above her, overpowering her, and Rogue knew her only chance was flight. She willed herself into the air.
Nothing happened. Gravity’s power was still affecting her, no telling how long it would last. Through the breaks in the heads and fists moving above her, Rogue saw that the blue had begun to drain from the sky. Late summer afternoon, then. Maybe early evening, dinnertime, A beautiful day.
“Rogue!” she heard a familiar voice snarl. “Get away from her!”
Something wet spilled on Rogue’s face, she recognized its coppery smell. Blood. Whose blood?
Mine?
“No!” she cried, brought back into action by the fear that she might actually be bleeding.
With all her strength, she pistoned her legs, kicked out hard, and heard Blockbuster’s ribs crack as he went sprawling back. Forearm was trying to hold her, but she swung her legs up again, snagged him by the neck, and whipped him down, across her, onto the pavement. Then there was Tusk, all three of him.
One of them was bleeding. All of them were attacking someone else.
“Kind o’ figured you’d fallen asleep down there, Rogue,” Wolverine snarled, and slashed at Tusk—the biggest one.
“Just resting,” she managed to say, though it was barely funny.
To make sure she could, Rogue flew just off the ground across the few feet to Wolverine, snagged both of the smaller Tusks by their armor-plated necks, and simply threw them.
“No!” Tusk cried, and followed his miniature selves into the crowd.
“Why didn’t you stay down, girl?” Senyaka snapped as he moved in toward Rogue and Wolverine.
Then Riptide was there as well, spinning like a miniature twister, tossing sharpened projectiles that sliced Wolverine’s flesh and stung Rogue, though they bounced off her body and fell to the street.
“We were coming to free you,” Rogue said amiably.
“You were doin’ a bang-up job o’ it,” Wolverine grumbled. “Anyway, Drake beat you to it.”
Rogue raised an eyebrow. “Iceman broke into Magneto’s headquarters by himself and got you guys out?’ ’
“Him and Trish Tilby,” Logan answered.
“Good for him,” Rogue said, then launched herself at Riptide even as Wolverine feinted at Senyaka, who dodged right into the spot Logan wanted him.
Rogue squinted, fighting the urge to close her eyes as she flew directly into the tiny storm that was Riptide. He moved so fast, she doubted she would be able to grab hold of him. Instead, she simply slammed into him and kept flying. Riptide went down hard.
Up she flew, then turned around for a better perspective on
the battle, making certain to stay away from enemy flyers.
And there they were. Together again at last.
Cyclops. Jean Grey. The Beast. Iceman. Bishop. Storm. Wolverine. And the wild card in the group, the Juggernaut.
For the moment, these were the X-Men.
Despite the incredible odds against them, standing together, Rogue knew they had a chance. Better than a chance.
Off to the left, Harlan Kleinstock was blasting away at her gathered teammates, her friends. Her family. Rogue scowled and went after him with new confidence.
The melee at City Hall had gotten ugly. Ivan Skolnick had recognized the police commissioner, Wilson Ramos, immediately. Of course, when the man announced that he was there to arrest all those who were siding with Magneto, it had been almost amusing. To be sure, he had the greater numbers. But he didn’t have any mutants on his side. And one or two Alpha mutants, Skolnick had long since realized, made all the difference in the world.
When Funnel had attacked, exhaling a blast of energy that displaced anything in its path into some kind of otherworldly limbo, Skolnick had been forced to attack as well. He was in charge, after all. It wouldn’t do for his subordinates to be undermining his command.
But that was one of the many problems with this new world order, too many rebels. The only one anybody obeyed regularly was Magneto, and who knew where the hell he’d gotten off to. No, this was nothing like the hierarchy of command that Skolnick had learned as a military man. Nothing like commanding Special Ops Unit One.
Whom he’d betrayed.
SOU1 was his team. They had faith in him, followed his orders implicitly, the way any crack military squad must do. And he had turned on them. It had been for their own good, he thought, attempting with little success to reassure himself. It was true, though. They were better off as captives of Magneto than as corpses. Taking them down his way had been the best way.
But now, as he hit the rioting crowd with another blast of concentrated sonic energy, Skolnick realized that it had not been the best way. He was frightened, to be sure, of a world where mutants were hated and feared. He expected that one day he would be outed, despite the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy the government had adopted, and on that day, he would be forced to leave the military in shame. His family would ignore him. He would become an outcast. He didn’t want to live that way, and he could certainly understand how Magneto,
and all the other mutants there in Haven, could have come to such a radical decision.
But he was a man first. A military man second. A mutant last. He had not taken the best way out of a tough situatio
n, but the worst. He knew that now. He ought to have gone down with his team, if that was how it had to be. Now even if he turned on Magneto, he would be considered a traitor, court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, and revealed as a mutant. His team would turn their backs on him, without question.
Ivan Skolnick would be alone. He did not want to be alone. And yet, what was he, amid the anarchy of the fight before him, as policemen shot at their brothers-in-blue, as citizens of a city stormed the walls of their own seat of government? What was he, if not alone?
“Skolnick!" Steve Tyree, the man Magneto had appointed police commissioner, shouted at him. “Come on, you idiot. You’re the big mutie here, do something!”
Ivan snapped. Rounded on Tyree.
“Mutie?” he cried, marching toward Tyree, who backed off until Skolnick was screaming, spraying spittle into his face, with Tyree against the oaken doors of City Hall.
“Mutie!” he shouted again. “What was that little shared moment of righteousness that you and Magneto had going, Tyree? When he made the speech about bigotry? You were gonna bring the thunder down on the evil bigots with both hands, weren’t you? But you're just as bad!”
Skolnick let go of Tyree, wiped his hands on his pants as if he’d gotten something nasty on them. He tried to turn his attention back to the battle, tried to ignore the officious little human, but Tyree pursued him.
“Who do you think you are?” Tyree demanded. “Mutants are a danger to society, not some social group that one is prejudiced against or not. If I live in a world where mutants are in control, I will do what I have to to get by. If that means
I can enforce equality, all the better. I have worked for civil rights my whole life, defended the rights of women, stood up for gay marriages. My father was in D.C. when Dr. King made his ‘I have a dream’ speech, he marched on Montgomery.”
“He’d be disgusted if he could see you today,” Skolnick said. “Mutants are human beings, you imbecile. With emotions and insecurities, just like everyone else. They need help, not persecution.”
Skolnick slammed Tyree’s head against the wall, then just let go. He had expended his anger, at Tyree, and at himself. Now he felt only revulsion, and profound regret. He had made a terrible choice. The only questions now were what it would cost him, and if he could repair any of the damage.
Several bullets took chunks of brick out of the wall behind him. Skolnick didn’t even duck. If death was justice, he would accept it without complaint. But he hoped to be able to bring about a more effective justice.
“Got you in my sights, Ramos!” Funnel cried, and blew kisses at the police commissioner, the destructive power of his exhalation cutting through half a dozen men and women, ally and enemy alike, on its path toward Ramos. This time it was moving much faster, but Ramos knew what was happening now. He was no fool. He’d get out of the way.
Which did nothing for the people unfortunate enough to have been in Funnel’s firing line. The steps of City Hall got bloody very quickly. Cops loyal to Tyree and, as such, to Magneto, fired on those trying to take back the city.
“That’s it!” Skolnick shouted. “That’s it! No more!”
• • •
In the Oval Office, the President of the United States sat slumped forward, elbows on his desk, face in his hands. He was at a loss. Completely and totally unable, in that moment, to make a solid decision as to how to proceed against Magneto.
Light was slowly leeching from the office, from the world, just as the life was being sucked from his political career. He glanced up through splayed fingers at the seal of his office on the marble floor. No lights were on in the office, and he could barely make out all but the most prominent features of the seal. Appropriate, he thought. It was disappearing with any chance he had of reelection.
If he did nothing, he was screwed. If he sent the troops in, a lot of them would die, and they had almost no chance of winning; in which case, he was screwed. If he nuked Manhattan, well, that one wasn’t hard to figure out. He was screwed no matter what tactic he chose.
Somebody knocked “shave and a haircut” on the oaken door of his office, but left off the “two bits.”
“Come in, Bob,” he said, and pressed a button under his desk that buzzed the door open.
The Director of Operation: Wideawake entered, looking just as haggard as the President felt.
“You want dinner?” the Director asked. “You haven’t eaten anything today, and it’s past six o’clock.”
“Couldn’t keep anything down, I don’t think,” the President replied.
The Director only nodded. He came all the way into the office, shutting the door behind him, and took one of the two large wood-and-leather chairs facing the President’s desk. “So,” the Director said.
“So,” the President agreed, wholeheartedly.
“Want to hear what the polls have to say?” the Director asked.
“First I want to know how the X-Men are doing, what’s happening with Cooper, and if you’ve been able to keep Gyr-ich from going over the line.”
“My answer to all three is, I don’t know.”
“Not the answer I was hoping for,” the President said, with a calm that didn’t fool either of them.
“Magneto has completely jammed our satellite view of Manhattan,” the Director explained. “CNN, ABC, and MTV are broadcasting out of the MTV building in Times Square, and Magneto is letting that through. Publicity he wants, observation he doesn’t. Reports say there’s war, in midtown and downtown at City Hall. The X-Men are involved. That’s all we know. No word at all from Cooper.”
“I guess no news is good news on that front.”
“I’d have to agree,” the Director said. “Gyrich, on the other hand, is itching for a resolution.”
“He’s not alone,” the President said. “The whole country wants to know how this thing is going to turn out. Every idiot in the world thinks they know how to solve it. But none of them have to make the decision.”
“We can’t wait for the X-Men or for Cooper, sir,” the Director said.
“Now, just a—”
“No, listen. If Cooper succeeds, all it does is give us an edge. It doesn’t win the day, necessarily. The X-Men can’t do it alone. There are hundreds of mutants, maybe as many as a thousand, all lined up against what? Eight or ten X-Men? I don’t care how good they are, those are not workable odds.
“Then there are the polls. Graydon Creed may be sitting back and taking this all in, but the media knows he’s made noises about running against you next election. So they’re polling. You’re neck and neck, sir, and Creed hasn’t even announced. The polls also say why. They like Creed’s thinking on the mutant issue, and the Manhattan catastrophe. Between Creed and Senator Kelly, the world is looking for a swift solution, and punishment for Magneto and his followers.
“You can’t afford any of this,” the Director said. “I’m not saying you nuke the city. Not yet, anyway. But if you don’t give the order for full-scale invasion, somebody else may try to give it for you. You need this.”
The President shook his head, then swung his chair to gaze out the window at the White House lawn. For a moment, he regretted his rise to political power, considered the gradual change in the decision-making process he had undergone. Once he had done what he wanted to. Now, he was forced to do what he needed to.
“Do it,” he said, without turning around. “Full-scale attack, whatever it takes. Get that city back.”
“Yes, sir,” the Director said. “Should I warn them to be prepared for instant dust-off, in case we have to go with the nukes?”
Still looking out the window, the President shook his head.
“We expect collateral damage and loss of life,” he said. “We can’t risk giving Magneto warning if it comes to that.”
The Director didn’t respond. The President heard the other man’s shoes click on the tile. The door opened and closed. When he was gone, the President ran his hands through his hair, turned to f
ace his desk, and prayed silently.
• • •
Henry Peter Gyrich had a headache. It wasn’t the explosions, the weapons fire, the shouting, the choppers slapping the air above. They made it worse, no doubt about that. But the headache was caused by bureaucracy, pure and simple.
“But, sir,” Gyrich pleaded, “Cooper’s little plan to fight fire with fire, to use mutants to defeat mutants, was bad enough before conflict erupted in earnest. Things have obviously changed now. We can’t just defend ourselves, we’ve got to go into this thing to the hilt, or we don’t have a chance in hell!”
On the tiny vid-comm screen in Gyrich’s trailer, the Director of Wideawake shook his head slowly and sighed.
“Gyrich,” he said, “if it were up to me, not only would we have gone in full force from the get-go, but my finger would be poised over the panic button, okay? But it’s not up to me. The President wants to avoid whatever collateral damage we can. That means giving Cooper more time, giving the X-Men more time. For now, we attack the Sentinels from remote points, but we do not invade. Are you clear on that, Gyrich? At this juncture, we do not invade!”
Gyrich massaged his temples, slowly at first, and then with more vigor. The headache wasn’t going away. It was getting worse.
“Gyrich?”
“My head’s going to explode.”
“Gyrich!” the Director snapped, and he looked up at the man’s stem features.
“Yes, sir, we’re clear,” Gyrich said. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“No,” the Director agreed. “No, you don’t.”
Gyrich clicked off the vid-comm and pushed back his chair. When he stepped out of the trailer, he noted how the afternoon had moved in, and the temperature had dropped quite a bit. In a way, he was disappointed. As far as he was concerned, hell was supposed to be hot.
In the distance, the shelling and plasma fire continued. Stinger missiles had been brought in, and even now a pair burned toward the face of the Sentinel that overlooked the Hudson River. Without turning its attention from its own attack on the troops massed on the riverbank, the Sentinel burned the Stingers out of the sky.
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