He turned to see Cyclops coming toward him, taking advantage of their enemies’ momentary confusion and fear to run a clean path and leap up onto the car.
“I give orders for a reason, friend,” Cyclops said sternly. “Get back to your teammates so we can give each other cover.”
He wanted to snap at Cyclops. Wanted to say something about “getting results” in a flip way that would let the man know he didn’t like to be ordered around. But, though he didn’t like it, he was used to it. Hierarchy was valuable, leadership important. Summers wasn’t perfect, but he was a good leader. And Bishop? Bishop was a good soldier.
“Bishop?” Cyclops asked, a note of concern in his voice.
“I’m okay,” Bishop said, “it’s all just a bit too close to my reality.”
“Down!” Cyclops shouted, and Bishop responded instantly, no thought given to the rapid change in tone on the battlefield.
A burst of energy shot from Cyclops’s visor, and tore up the street and the advancing enemy behind them. Bishop fired his plasma rifle in the opposite direction, defeating the quickly hatched two-pronged attack.
Two-pronged. But they were dealing with mutants, so ...
Bishop let himself fall backward off the roof of the car, firing straight into the air even before he slammed into the hood of the Olds. A woman, whose body was so distended she resembled nothing so much as a manta ray, had been floating down on top of them, her open mouth lined with rows of razor teeth and her talons reaching for the next kill.
Bishop shot her out of the sky, and rolled off the car to hit pavement. Cyclops took out two more attackers on the ground with his optic blasts, then jumped down to join Bishop in the street.
“Let’s move,” Cyclops said.
Bishop led the way, breaking bones and banging heads as he went. When they reached the X-Men, Bishop at first thought the team was about to be ambushed. He trained his plasma rifle on three mutants who stood by Jean Grey, ready to shoot them down.
A huge hand landed on the rifle, and pushed its barrel up.
“They’re with me,” the Juggernaut said. “The odds are bad enough without you firin’ on your allies.”
Bishop nodded. It disturbed him to have the Juggernaut fighting at his side. There was no question that the man was fighting in earnest, that he was fully aligned with the X-Men for the duration of the battle. But who knew what might happen after? That was what disturbed Bishop. Enemies never made comfortable allies.
But with the team so horribly outmatched, with so little on which to pin their hopes, any help was appreciated, no matter its origins.
Rogue and Wolverine seemed to be handling an enemy attack without help off to one side. The woman Arclight, who’d been among the Marauders they had defeated in the small hours of the morning, was attacking once more. Apparently she was too stubborn or too stupid to quit while she could still walk upright.
Bishop trained his weapon on her.
“Who’s that?” Jean Grey asked, and he was startled that she’d come up so close by without his noticing her approach.
He glanced at her in confusion, and she pointed toward a commotion taking place a block or so to the south. Mutants were turning to face some new threat, but the weakest ones had hung back, not wanting to risk battle with the X-Men. A line of humans—humans!—marched down the center of the street. Many of them were police officers, armed with guns and tear gas. Both were fired into the tightly knit group of mutant aggressors, which was broken up quickly enough.
Some wore gas masks, but most did not. It didn’t matter, though. The man in front, who Bishop thought looked familiar, lifted his hands, made a small movement with them, and the gas seemed to be lifted from the street, pushed into the sky. Hacking, coughing mutants tried to stumble away, but the same man motioned again and they went down as if rammed by a fast-moving car.
That’s when Bishop knew him. Skolnick was his name, a military man who’d defected to become one of Magneto’s lap-dogs. Bishop had seen him on the dais with Magneto that very morning. Magneto had crowed about his defection, about what it meant for mutantkind. Obviously, Skolnick had seen the error of his ways. He was fighting the good fight again, and this time, he wasn’t alone. Bishop didn’t have time to count the cops and human civilians backing Skolnick up, but there were well over one hundred.
He worried for them, that they would be cattle to the slaughter in a battle of mutants. But the X-Men could use all the help they could find.
The odds looked a little brighter. Now if the others could only take care of the Sentinels, he thought....
• • •
“Gyrich!” Val Cooper screamed. “We don’t have time to waste! Let’s have that code!”
“God, I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” he answered over the comm.
“We’re dead,” Archangel said, mostly to himself, as he and Gambit raced to the hole tom out of the Sentinel’s skull.
Magneto floated in a ball of electromagnetic power, just beyond the hole, and a sixty-foot drop waited below. Archangel knew that he alone was no match for Magneto. In the end, none of them were. But up there he wasn’t even sure what kind of help Gambit would be, given that he could not fly.
He moved to the attack, but it was a futile gesture. He knew it in his heart, and he saw it in Magneto’s eyes, in the face of the greatest enemy Archangel, and the X-Men’s mentor, Professor Xavier, had ever had. Magneto could destroy him utterly, with little effort, if murder was his goal. And there was so very little that Warren could do, given that sphere of energy that protected Magneto from attack.
Together, Archangel knew that he and Gambit could buy Valerie mere moments. No more. But it might be ...
“Allez-vous-en, Magneto! Go home, we don’ want you here!” Gambit cried madly.
But his manic chatter was a pale shadow of the insanity of his actions. Before Archangel could even register what his teammate was up to, Gambit had telescoped out his bo-staff and was catapulting himself into the air. He flew toward Magneto, sixty feet from the ground. The mutant tyrant only watched in amused and somewhat surprised silence as Gambit slammed into the force shield surrounding him.
Gambit screamed. Archangel imagined it was something like being electrocuted; then he remembed that the Cajun actually had been electroshocked days earlier.
Slowly, he slid down through the field that surrounded Magneto. Magneto only watched. In seconds, Gambit would fall to his death, or Archangel would have to save him, leaving Valerie defenseless, and it would all be for nothing. Warren was at a loss. He had never felt more vulnerable.
Then he saw Gambit’s eyes. Despite the pain he was in, despite the danger, he was fighting. Halfway in, halfway out of Magneto’s defensive shielding, Gambit still held on to his bo-stick. He charged it with the explosive power that genetic fate had given him, and shoved it toward Magneto’s chest.
The stick exploded, throwing Magneto backward through the air.
Gambit fell.
Archangel dived after him, ignoring Magneto for that moment. Gambit was nearly unconscious when Warren snatched him out of the sky, but he could not take the time to put Remy down. As fast as he was able, he turned in midair, and carried Gambit back toward the Sentinel’s gaping head, and back toward Magneto.
Magneto had fallen for a moment. Warren had seen it out of the corner of his eye. But he had quickly recovered and was moving toward them again. Magneto’s uniform was durable enough to have significantly protected him from the blast. Still, he was shaken, and there was a blackened circle on his abdomen.
Warren did the only thing he could do. He launched a flurry of his wing-knives, biometallic feather blades, at Magneto’s newly restructured force shield.
Magneto was no longer amused, but he barely reacted to the attack. Archangel’s new wings were, after all, metal. His facing Magneto was almost laughable. Or it seemed so.
Until the wing-knives penetrated the shield and hit Magneto’s body armor. Where Gambit had attacked, on that bu
rnt area of Magneto’s uniform, the knives passed through, slicing into Magneto’s skin.
The look of surprise on Magneto’s face was almost comical. He could control any metal, even the iron in human blood, if he concentrated, if he focused on it enough. Surely, Archangel’s wings, created by Apocalypse, had some kind of metal alloy as their base. But there was more to them than that, perhaps more flesh or living tissue than Warren had ever imagined. Magneto had miscalculated, a mistake he would not make again.
But once was enough.
Magneto was momentarily paralyzed.
Archangel could not believe his luck.
Then he realized that Magneto did not need to move to use his power, and all that good feeling went away fast.
Val had seconds. Seconds.
“Gyrich!” Val screamed. “I need that back door code now, or we’re dead!”
‘ ‘I—I—’ ’ Gyrich fumbled. ‘ ‘I just.. . What dreams may cornel’’ he shouted.
“What?” she cried.
“From Hamlet,” he said. “ ‘For in such sleep, what dreams may come’I”
Val keyed in the phrase, praying as she never had before that Magneto’s tinkering would not have affected the back door Gyrich’s people had built into the Alpha Sentinel’s control systems.
The word online blinked on the screen. Then the command prompt.
Val typed one more word.
RESET.
She waited half a dozen eternal seconds, holding her breath.
mutant target designate? the system, now back to its original programming, prompted.
She typed his name, and Magneto’s file scrolled across every screen, as if the Alpha Sentinel had suddenly gone mad. It couldn’t move, she had made certain of that. Now she had to make sure Magneto couldn’t get back in.
lockout until target acquisition? the computer asked.
Oh, yes, Valerie thought, and hit the affirmative command.
Nobody could abort the new mission until it had succeeded. Nobody.
* * *
Rogue was on the ground with the rest of the X-Men, backing their play. Storm was still in the air, though. Crowds played hell with her claustrophobia, Rogue knew. And she was much more effective from the sky. After all, Ororo had already been
decisive in the battle, literally sweeping one end of the street clean of enemies with hurricane-force winds. A number of those were injured, still others simply walked away, realizing that Storm could keep them away for as long as she wished.
For the first time, Rogue began to think that they might all have a chance at surviving to see the next day. And, if they were extremely fortunate, the day after that as well.
“Rogue,” Cyclops barked. “Get Iceman somewhere safe. We can’t fight and protect him at the same time.”
“Any ideas, Cyke?” she asked, only half sarcastically. Cyclops ignored her, so Rogue gathered the unconscious Iceman up into her arms, and flew north.
“Rogue?” he asked weakly, coming around for the first time since his extraordinary effort had evened the odds in the war, at least for a little while.
“Relax, Bobby,” she said gently. “You’ve earned it.” Bobby Drake started to drift off again, comfortable in her arms. Then his eyes snapped awake, as if he had truly realized, for the first time, exactly where he was.
“Whoa,” he said. “Where we going?”
“Someplace you can rest,” she answered.
“No.” ’
Rogue ignored him.
“No, Rogue, take me back,” Bobby demanded.
“Bobby, listen,” she began.
“No,” he interrupted. “I’m an X-Man, Rogue. As long as I’m alive, I’m not leaving my team in the field. Take me back there. We need all the help we can get.”
She thought about it for a moment, then turned back toward the field of battle, which had moved now to just outside the Empire State Building, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, “Y’gonna have to explain it to Scott,” she said.
“You let me worry about Scott,” Iceman responded. “I’ve been disobeying his orders since I was sixteen years old.” With pained concentration, he began to ice up again. Rogue was concerned for him, as well as impressed, surprised, and proud, all at the same time.
“How we doing?” he asked.
“See for yourself,” she suggested.
With Bobby hanging beneath her now, her hands holding him under the arms, Rogue flew a circuit of the battlefield. The only mutants she recognized from above were Arclight, the Blob, and several Acolytes including Amelia Voght, Senyaka, and the Kleinstock brothers.
“God,” Bobby said. “The Kleinstocks again? I feel like we’ve been fighting them for days.”
“You have,” Rogue said, and smiled to herself.
“Then I wish they’d just stay down,” Iceman said grimly. “In fact, why don’t you drop me down by them?”
“In a few minutes, if you think you can...” She let the comment trail off. Bobby was a big boy. He could take care of himself.
She flew down until she was about twenty feet above Sven and Harlan Kleinstock, then she let Bobby go. He did a forward roll, and when he came out of it, he was forming an ice ramp beneath him as if he were surfing a curl. She watched a moment longer, as he whipped up a huge club or bat made of ice, and as he fell on the unsuspecting Kleinstocks, he nailed a home ran off Sven Kleinstock’s head. Rogue heard the crack, and when Sven crumpled to the pavement, she knew he wasn’t getting up soon. He was out of it.
From above, she scoped out the war again. Since the Juggernaut had arrived with converts, and the huge wave of cops and civilians had shown up, the battle had most definitely turned. It was chess, now. Piece by piece, they would all be taken off the board. Pawns. Knights. Kings. Attrition ruled.
She started to turn back toward where her teammates were fighting hard, joined now by so many others that it was hard to tell who was friend and who was foe. There was a low rumbling noise, and Rogue turned just in time to see the earth erupt in a geyser of pavement, cement, stone, and soil—how deep it had come from she could not have said—a tower built instantaneously, and just as quickly put to use.
Like some monstrous earthen tentacle, the tower whipped and turned and slammed down on top of the Juggernaut and half a dozen other mutants. Rogue could only watch in horror.
When Cain Marko crawled from the massive tumble of debris, he was alone. There was no other movement under the stone and pavement. Nor had Rogue expected there to be.
The fury came upon her sudden as a heart attack, and Rogue scanned the street for the one man she knew might be responsible for such an assault. After a moment, she realized that he would need a line of sight for his power to work properly, and she raised her search up several stories. She saw him a few seconds later, standing atop a four-story office and retail building. She wouldn’t have seen him at all in the dark, despite the streetlights and still-burning neon, but the silver metal of his body armor caught the multicolored city lights and threw back a twisted reflection.
Rogue thought of Bobby and the Kleinstock brothers, of the five or six lives just snuffed out beneath an artificial avalanche, and she knew that the man had to be removed from play now, before he could take more lives on a whim.
As fast as she could, she flew down to fight at Wolverine’s side.
“It’s Avalanche,” she said.
“Saw him ’bout ten minutes ago,” Logan responded indifferently.
“We can’t afford to have him runnin’ around,” she urged.
“So stop him, Rogue,” Wolverine said. “Steal his powers, knock him off the building. You can take him.”
“I know I can take him,” she said testily. “But I don't want to steal his powers. I do that when there’s no other way to win. Plus, I don’t want to do it ’cause that means I get his mind, too, at least a little bit—”
She belted a man with walrus tusks and a long sharp tongue that she thought looked as though it could punch holes through st
eel beams.
“—I don’t want to see that. Ever. He’s a demented little sucker.”
“So what do you want with me?” Wolverine asked.
“Fastball special,” Rogue said simply.
Wolverine actually smiled, in the middle of so much bloodshed and destruction.
“I miss that Russkie,” he said.
“We all do,” she agreed. “So, you ready?”
“I’m a whole mess o’ ready,” he said, still smiling. “Give me a bull’s-eye, Rogue.”
Rogue lifted Wolverine up with both hands. In the old days, their former teammate Colossus had been able to do the man-uever with just one. It was something they’d practiced in the Danger Room, and in the field, many times over.
Taking air. Rogue flew up and to the side of the building where Avalanche stood. When she was about level with him, she simply hurled Wolverine with all her might across the sky. He landed on Avalanche, and his adamantium claws flashed in the same neon rainbow that had glinted from Avalanche’s armor a moment before.
She left Wolverine to his own devices, and returned to the fight. Seconds after her feet touched the ground, the Juggernaut was beside her.
“Saw that fastball special you ’n the runt pulled,” he said gruffly. “Well done.”
“What do you know about it?” she asked.
“The fastball special?” he said with a smile. “You’re kidding? You’ve used it against me enough times. I should know what it is. Fact is, I’ve done that move with Tom Cassidy a few times myself.”
“Thief,” Rogue said, doubly amused at finding herself bantering with a hated enemy, and in the middle of a war, no less.
“Yeah,” Marko agreed. “But a successful thief.”
Rogue couldn’t argue there.
The tide was turning in their favor, finally, and it felt good. Felt good, that was, as long as she didn’t think about lives already lost, and what else they might have to lose before the day was out, if they intended to defeat Magneto.
Chapter 15
Over the years that she had spent with the X-Men, Jean Grey had grown from an immature teenager who was happy to be known as Marvel Girl, into a woman of strength, a woman in control of her destiny. She had always been relatively quiet—though she seemed a chatterbox next to Scott. She thought that, maybe, she had become so introspective because, as a psi, she was always listening to the constant telepathic babble in her mind.
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