Salvation

by Unknown Author

  With an eye on the battle, Gyrich wandered into the no man’s land between the military and media camps, prepared to give a statement to the press, just to get them to stop hounding him for fifteen minutes. Halfway there, he passed Cooper’s trailer.

  Charles Xavier sat in front of the trailer in his wheelchair, eyes closed as if he were resting, or asleep.

  “Enjoying the show?” Gyrich asked.

  Xavier didn’t move.

  “Xavier?” Gyrich said, a bit louder, wondering if the man was all right. After all, he had never learned why Xavier was in a wheelchair. What if something was wrong with him?

  “Professor Xavier?” he asked again.

  The man’s eyes snapped open, looking directly at Gyrich. If he had been sleeping, Gyrich had never seen anybody wake up so thoroughly so quickly.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Gyrich?” Xavier asked.

  “Sorry to have disturbed you, Xavier,” Gyrich said.

  “Not at all,” Xavier answered. “Just a little meditation to keep alert. After all, none of us really got any sleep last night, did we?”

  “No,” Gyrich said, “I don’t suppose we did.”

  Though he shrugged it off, Gyrich found something eerie in what Xavier had termed his “meditation.” And the comment about sleepless nights had him wondering just what Xavier had been doing all night. Perhaps merely advising Cooper and the President, as he had originally explained. But perhaps something more as well. Gyrich wondered if he would ever know the answer to these questions. Though he was usually confident about such things, for some reason, he doubted he would.

  “What was it you had asked?” Xavier inquired.

  “Just if you were enjoying the show,” Gyrich explained, though the humor seemed to have gone out of the question now.

  The two men, allies yet enemies, gazed across Exchange Place toward the scene of the battle. To Gyrich, it seemed less likely with each passing moment that the Sentinels would even be harmed by conventional weapons. He had seen the specs, he knew that was part of the robots’ design. But most things the Defense Department built didn’t function as well as they were supposed to. He silently cursed them for having hit a bull’s-eye with the Sentinels.

  Another Stinger shot at the Sentinel’s chest was destroyed without any damage.

  “No,” Xavier said finally, after Gyrich had given up waiting for an answer. “No, I’m not enjoying the show at all.”

  Gyrich nodded slowly. For several minutes, he stood next to Xavier’s wheelchair, and the two men watched the conflict in silence.

  * * *

  Xavier wanted Gyrich to go away. Val Cooper, Gambit, and Archangel had found the Alpha Sentinel. He had been monitoring their progress when Gyrich interrupted. He was still with Val, his subconscious mind tracking her and maintaining the illusion—for the Sentinel’s sake—that she was a mutant. But it was no simple feat to communicate with Gyrich while doing so. He wished he could simply tell the man that Cooper had found the Alpha unit. It would make all their lives easier. But Gyrich would want to know how Xavier had come by such knowledge. That would lead to disaster.

  “I am quite drained by all of this, Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier said. “What can I do for you?”

  Gyrich narrowed his eyes a moment, obviously irked at Xavier’s dismissive tone. The Professor was not at all concerned. Gyrich was a dangerous man, but Charles Xavier could be a dangerous man, too, when he wished to be.

  “I thought you would want to know,” Gyrich said grimly. “The President has ordered a full-scale incursion into Manhattan island. We go in thirty minutes.”

  “What of the X-Men?” Xavier asked, astonished. “They were to have more time than—”

  “Their time ran out when the Sentinels started killing us, Professor,” Gyrich replied. “I assumed you would realize that.”

  Xavier frowned, took a calming breath, then turned back to Gyrich.

  “You’d best hope that they succeed despite your foolishness, Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier said. “Otherwise, you’re going to have a lot of dead soldiers on your hands.”

  “This is a war, Professor,” Gyrich said, without missing a beat. “I’m pleased that the President has started to think of it as one. Perhaps it is time for you to do the same.”

  Though Gyrich seemed far more composed and more solemn than Xavier might have expected—he would have thought the man would be almost gleeful at this news—his air of superiority, his assumption of greater purpose, was intensely grating.

  “It’s always been war for me, Mr. Gyrich,” Xavier said. “You have no idea.”

  * * #

  When Trish had left the Empire State Building with Beast, Iceman, and the other X-Men Magneto had held captive, she had been stunned to find so little resistance to their escape. When they hit the street, they realized the reason. Every powered mutant among Magneto’s followers, and a good number who were not, were out in the street, attacking Cyclops and the others who had come on a belated rescue attempt.

  “Thank you,” Hank had said, and Trish knew that meant they were about to part ways.

  “For what?” Trish said. “All I did was get some people killed.” " '

  “Don’t think that!” Hank had snapped. “Don’t ever think

  m

  that! You did what you had to, the only thing you could do. Your friends knew what they were getting themselves into. I’ll always be grateful to you for laying it on the line for—for us.”

  Their eyes had met then. Trish had known what his hesitation signified. Hank had wanted to say “for me,” not “for us.” He’d wanted to acknowledge their past, and the small reconciliation that her actions had created. But he hadn’t said it. He’d been afraid, she knew, that she hadn’t done it for him at all. Afraid that she might mistake his gratitude for something more intimate.

  “You’re very welcome,” she had said, and she’d kissed him on the nose the way she had always done in older, better times.

  Then he and the others were gone, running to aid their teammates. Trish was on her way as well, heading north on Broadway. In her time with Magneto, she had discovered that her tapes were being delivered to the MTV offices, where they were continuing to broadcast coverage of the occupation of Manhattan.

  She reached Times Square and glanced quickly around to orient herself. Just a few years earlier, Times Square had still been one of the more dangerous areas of the city. It had been cleaned up, spit-shined, and marketed to Boomers and GenXers nationwide.

  Now it was trashed again.

  After a moment, she identified her destination. The Viacom Building, named for MTV’s parent company, at 1515 Broadway, the northwest comer of Broadway and Forty-fourth Street. The doors were open, but the escalators were off, so she had to trudge up the long flight of steps to the lobby. At least the elevators were running.

  When the elevator slid open, there was a moment of tension as those in the MTV foyer froze, probably wondering if the mutants had finally decided to shut them down. Trish also froze, wondering if they had instituted any security devices she should be aware of.

  “Trish?” a male voice asked.

  Among a group clustered around the lobby was Doug Samuels, a camera operator she had worked with before he’d gone on to ABC.

  “Oh. Doug, thank God,” she said, and rushed to him.

  Only when she broke the embrace did she realize that she had been holding on to him for dear life. Then the whole story spilled out of her, with the group surrounding her and Doug growing larger as she spoke. When somebody came out with a camera, though, Trish clammed up.

  “What’s wrong?” the woman with the camera asked. “We’ve got to report on all of this. Keep going.”

  “No,” Trish said, shaking her head. “No way. I’m not the subject here, I’m the reporter. I don’t care who wants to carry it, but I’m going to be the one reporting the story.”

  Nobody argued with that. Which was good. Trish would not have been able to handle argument.


  When all the cameras were set up, Trish began to speak.

  “This is Trish Tilby reporting from hell,” she said.

  Nobody snickered.

  “You've all seen my reports, I assume, but I have no idea what parts of them were censored,” Trish continued. “Before I tell you the story, what I’ve been through, before I talk about Magneto, or the X-Men, or what’s really at stake here, I want to tell you about two people.

  “Their names were Kevin and Caroline, and they died a little while ago. A man and a woman, a human and a mutant, they gave their lives to see that you, the people of our world, would have an opportunity to decide for yourselves what you want to make of it. They died believing that we, as a race of beings, could separate what Magneto and other mutants have done, from mutantkind in general. That we would do the right thing.

  “What saddens me is, I’m not certain if they died in vain. I truthfully don’t know if we’re all grown up enough, we humans, to judge all beings individually. Or I should say, I know that some of us can and will be fair and logical and rational. Others will not. What I am uncertain about is the numbers. How many of you are the ones Kevin and Caroline died for?

  And how many are the kind whose words and beliefs motivate a monster like Magneto?

  “I’m trying to have the same faith Kevin and Caroline did. I’m trying so very hard.”

  • • *

  The Harley had been abandoned as they got within half a block of the Alpha Sentinel. Archangel grabbed Gambit and Val Cooper, each by an upraised hand, and flew. Val knew it had to be a strain for Warren. He was powerful, but he had no super-enhanced strength to go along with his other mutant gifts.

  Val felt extremely vulnerable, dangling there in the sky with only one man’s grip between her and certain death on the street below. Still, it wasn’t as if she had any real choice. The Alpha Sentinel had to be reprogrammed and she was the only one who could do it.

  As they flew to the height of the Alpha unit’s waist, it spoke, its voice a soulless, mechanical drone that seemed, nevertheless, to have a distinctly hostile personality.

  “Halt, mutants,” it commanded, and Val was relieved that Professor Xavier’s psionic presence in her mind had fooled the killing computer.

  “You are approaching too close to this unit,” it announced. “Please do not approach any further.”

  Archangel flew higher, and Val felt for a moment as though she was going to slip from his grasp. She was tempted to grab for his hand with her other, but that would throw off his equilibrium, and they might all fall.

  “You ready, Gambit?” Archangel asked.

  “Gambit was bom ready, mon ami,” the Cajun answered.

  “Hang on.”

  Then he dive-bombed the Sentinel, trailing Gambit and Val beneath him. She wanted to scream. She didn’t. Perhaps Professor Xavier’s psionic presence was calming her, she thought.

  “Warning!” the Alpha Sentinel barked. “You are too close to this unit. While this unit is programmed not to attack mutants, this unit is also programmed to defend itself against any attack which is hostile, or which this unit perceives to be hostile.”

  “Bombs away!” Archangel shouted as he swooped low above the Sentinel’s head and shoulders.

  Then he dropped Gambit.

  “Allez!” Gambit shouted.

  Val couldn’t look. As Archangel snagged her other hand, getting a better grip on her, she tried not to think about how close he might have come to dropping her. She tried not to imagine Gambit’s calculated fall down to the Sentinel’s shoulder.

  “Fast, Remy!” Warren shouted. “Move it, man!”

  Then Val had to look. Gambit stood on the lip of titanium alloy that separated the Sentinel’s shoulder from its neck. With one hand on the upraised seam that surrounded the Alpha unit’s head like a crown, Gambit leaned out over open space, many stories above the street.

  The Sentinel was reaching for him.

  Archangel urged Gambit on. Val was not certain if that urgency was driven by fear for the Cajun’s safety—now that the Sentinel was reacting to his presence—or concern that he would not be able to carry Val much longer. She realized rather quickly that she did not want to know.

  In the shadow thrown by the robot’s massive head, Gambit’s eyes glowed red. The Sentinel touched its own shoulder, its hand scrambling with a metal-on-metal scrape that made Val want to scream.

  Gambit laid his palm flat on the back of the Sentinel’s head, precisely where Val had instructed him to. Instantly, the metal began to glow ever brighter. At the last possible moment, Gambit pulled away and the back of the Sentinel’s head exploded.

  The Alpha unit reached for him. From within the long duster, Gambit pulled out his bo-stick, which telescoped out in his hands to a length of more than five feet. With one thrust, he threw off the Sentinel’s grasp, but that would be his only chance.

  He took it. With only two steps to gain momentum, he leaped up on top of the Sentinel’s head, where he would be an easy target for its groping hands. Before it could react, he reached down, grabbed hold of the edge of the hole made by his volatile mutant power, and flipped down inside the Sentinel’s head, into the command center whose entrance he had blown wide open.

  Once inside, Gambit disappeared from the Sentinel’s sensors as if into thin air. As far as it was concerned, he was gone. That left Val and Archangel to deal with.

  “Go, Warren, quick, before it gets pissed off enough to swat us out of the sky!” she barked.

  With nauseating speed, Archangel swooped low toward the Sentinel’s back, then climbed rapidly in a straight line, out of its reach, toward the exposed computerized brain of the robot. A moment later, they were inside and Warren was massaging his strained arm muscles and stretching his fingers. Val let out a long sigh of relief.

  Gambit smiled at her.

  “Something funny, X-Man?” Val asked, in no mood for humor.

  ‘Won, Valerie,” he said. “Gambit jus’ relieved, de same as you. Look around, mes amis, we did it. We’re inside.”

  Then they were all smiling.

  “You do your job, Val,” Archangel said, “and then it’s dinner at Tavern on the Green for everybody, on me!”

  Val liked the sound of that. Assuming, of course, that Tavern on the Green was still there. But the smile left her face the moment she turned her attention to the command center of the Alpha Sentinel’s brain. If she could reprogram it, something she had vowed to everyone that she could, indeed, do, then the war against Magneto would take an almost surely decisive turn in their favor.

  Problem was, she wasn’t exactly certain what Magneto had done to them, how he had reprogrammed the Sentinels in the first place. Or if he’d prepared some kind of failsafe that might kill her merely for logging into the command center.

  But she was about to find out.

  It was the only option. Their only real hope.

  uy ot another step, Marko, or you will face the wrath of Mthe terrible Toad!” Mortimer Toynbee shrieked, as

  ■ »he leaped into the path of destruction the Juggernaut was tearing through Magneto’s forces.

  “Hmm, hmm,” the Juggernaut said through a smile. “Ya gotta be ... oh, come on, I...”

  Then he laughed so hard, he threw back his head and tears rolled down his cheeks inside his mask. Infuriated, the Toad sprang at him and those extraordinarily powerful legs knocked Cain Marko on his butt in the middle of Thirty-third Street. But Cain was still laughing. He tried to get up, and the Toad knocked him down again.

  Inside his mystical armor, the Juggernaut felt pain.

  “Hey,” he said. “That kinda—”

  The Toad leaped again, lightning quick, and laid him out in the street with a kick so powerful, it left the Juggernaut gasping for air, even inside his armor.

  “I will teach you to laugh at me, you dimwitted ...” Toynbee began, as he leaped at the Juggernaut for the fourth time, his pistoning feet aimed directly at the neck joint where helmet me
t armor, the spot where Cain was most vulnerable.

  But even those who had seen him move often forgot how fast Cain Marko was, which was understandable given his size. Understandable, but unforgivable.

  He snatched the Toad out of the air by his feet, then stood quickly, holding Toynbee upside down. The Juggernaut wasn’t laughing anymore. •

  “You pissed me off, Toynbee,” he said. “Yer lucky I don’t break both your legs.”

  “Sure, you’re making nice with Xavier’s brood now,” the Toad said, the mockery quite clear in his voice. “You’re a Boy Scout, Marko.”

  That did it. Cain righted the Toad with one twist, and held the little mutant up so they were face to face, Toynbee’s legs ratcheting beneath him, trying to get traction anywhere, even off the Juggernaut’s chest. Cain wasn’t having any of it. “You can’t win, Marko!” he cried. “Magneto’s reign has

  come, as I always knew it would. Your kind will be trampled underfoot along with all the other flatscans, and traitors like the X-Men. You’re a dead man, Marko. Why don’t you lie down like a good boy, so we can bury you?”

  Cain was flush with rage, so overwhelmed with fury that he couldn’t think straight enough to form any kind of cogent response. He spit his frustration, and gave up trying to speak. Instead, he cracked the Toad across the face with a backhand so massive, and backed by such extraordinary strength, that Toynbee sagged limp in his hands, unconscious from the blow.

  “Runt,” Cain growled, and dropped the Toad at his feet.

  He was tempted to step on Toynbee’s head, but he was acutely aware of the fight raging around him. That day, he was one of the white hats. It would probably never happen again, but as long as he could, and foolish as it was, he was going to play by Xavier’s rules.

  “All right,” he growled. “Who’s next?”

  “Try me.” A bass rumble came from behind him, and a hand, large even by his standards, landed on Cain’s shoulder.

  The Juggernaut turned to face Javits, one of Magneto’s original Acolytes, a powerful mutant even larger than he himself was. The one-eyed Acolyte didn’t move.