Or it might have been Scott’s influence. He was so serious.
In the end, it didn’t matter what forces had shaped Jean Grey, made her the woman she was now. The only thing that mattered was how the day ended, who was still standing when it was over. That was all she could think of.
Her jaw was set in a hard line of grim determination, and though her teammates made comments to one another during battle, Jean said not a word. Through the psychic rapport that they shared, she could sense that Cyclops was on edge. As well he should be, she thought. They might not all survive the next few minutes, never mind the many hours till morning. But his anxiety was not going to get them through, and so she tried to counter it with the confidence she had in him. With the determination she had summoned to keep going.
Thank you, he thought, and she picked up the gratitude, acknowledged it with a small nod.
They would make it through. No other outcome would be acceptable.
Though she could not see most of her teammates, she touched briefly on all their minds. Iceman was in a dark, furious rage that was quite unlike him, as he battered Harlan Kleinstock with all his might. Wolverine was vaulting down the stairs of an office building, hurrying to get back into the fight. He had just taken Avalanche down, and hard, but he shut out her psi-scan when she tried to inquire further.
Bishop and Cyclops fought side by side, the heir to Xavier’s dream and its far-removed descendant, grimly upholding the principles Charles had always espoused, willing to give their lives for that dream. That hope.
Ororo, lost in the power of the storm, thundering her judgment down upon the enemy with righteous anger, even a taste of which made Jean realize how the woman could once have allowed humans to call her goddess.
Rogue, tired of fighting. Inexhaustible, but nearly ready to drop. Jean wondered which of them would collapse from exhaustion first.
Finally, the Beast. She could actually see Hank, just ahead, through a screen of violent flesh. He was ...
Hank, look out! she psi-shouted. Senyaka had moved in and was about to snag Hank around the throat with that terrible psi-whip of his. Hank turned in time, batted the Acolyte’s hand away, and the two were one on one after that. Jean turned away. Senyaka didn’t have much of a chance.
“Hello, little girl,” a deep voice said.
When she turned, Jean was startled to find that the speaker was a woman, a huge, musclebound female whose eyes blazed with murderous intent. Arclight, Jean thought she was called.
“Such a pretty, flimsy, little thing,” Arclight said. “But I’m still going to have to break you in half.”
She moved in fast, hands up, fingers curled into a horrible set of claws. Jean didn’t flinch, didn’t turn, didn’t run. Reaching out with her mind, she tore a phone kiosk loose from its moorings and brought it flying across the street to slam into Arclight’s upper body and chest, driving her backward and to the pavement.
Jean wanted to move on, but a moment later, Arclight was up and after her again.
“Now you really did it, Red,” Arclight snarled. “I’ll enjoy killing you.”
“I’ve seen Caged Heat,” Jean said dismissively. “You didn’t impress me then, and you don’t impress me now,”
Arclight roared. Jean turned and walked away. With every ounce of psychic strength she could muster, Jean picked up what was left of the Oldsmobile Bishop had stood on earlier, and threw it at Arclight. Pain spiked through her head, like a migraine, but she ignored it. The price of power, she thought.
The car slammed into Arclight, knocked her down, and rolled over on top of her. She was not dead, Jean knew that she wouldn’t be. But she wasn’t conscious either.
Jean felt the tension exuding from all the X-Men. They had reached the end of their respective ropes. They’d crossed some lines that day, and she was sad to think that they would probably cross more before the night was through. It disturbed her.
Success! Professor Xavier telepathically shouted in her ear. Jean almost jumped a mile.
Professor? Charles?
Success, Jean, they’ve done it! They’ve taken the Sentinels away from Magneto!
Jean Grey smiled. Her eyes welled up with moisture. A single, ecstatic tear slid down her right cheek. She returned to the war with renewed vigor.
Nebulous hope had suddenly become tangible.
« * *
“No!” Magneto shouted.
Valerie Cooper thought he sounded like a petulant child. But whining toddlers were not capable of killing with a thought or a gesture.
Magneto had been paralyzed by Archangel’s wing-knives, but his powers were unaffected. He didn’t need to move to use them, could, in fact, propel himself wherever he wished to go using those powers. He seemed awkward, for a few moments, as he got his bearings, as he dealt with the crushing blow to his dreams of empire that Valerie had just struck.
But in a moment, he might well come into the Sentinel’s command center and take her life in retaliation.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he cried in astonished fury.
A stupid question, really. Of course she knew. Now what she needed to know was whether or not he was planning to kill her. The Sentinels were on their way, she knew, to take Magneto down as she’d reprogrammed them to do. But he would have ample time to crush her to death in the immobile Alpha Sentinel’s skull if he so desired.
Seconds ticked by, matched by her heartbeat. Magneto’s disorientation was leaving him. She could see it in the cold and silent rage burning in his eyes. Val looked away. She didn’t want to see. She felt him moving toward her, and turned her body to the side. If death was coming for her, then ...
“Val, let’s go! Move it!” Archangel shouted at her.
Val snapped her head around to see Warren, silver wings almost invisible in the night air, hovering outside the shattered skull of the Sentinel, Gambit held in one outstretched arm.
“Here we go again!” she shouted, then ran to the blast hole and leaped through.
When Archangel caught her, he was already in motion, flying down and away from where Magneto stood in midair.
“Faster! Faster!” Gambit shouted, and though she didn’t want to look, Val had to glance back at their enemy.
Magneto was not giving chase. Instead, he had toppled the crippled Sentinel and it was falling toward them, would crush them to death in seconds.
“Faster!” Val cried, joining Gambit’s urgent call for speed.
Archangel knitted his eyebrows, gritted his teeth, and poured on the speed. Val thought for sure they had cleared it, but the thing was so tall it seemed to be chasing them rather than merely falling. Its head slammed into a mostly glass hotel building, barely missing them on the way down.
“He still cornin’, ’Angel,” Gambit said. “An’ he don’ look too happy.”
“I’m sure,” Archangel said, and as Val watched, a smirk appeared on his face.
Then Warren started to laugh.
“What’s so funny, Archangel?” she snapped. “He’s going to kill us.”
“Maybe,” Warren replied, and tried to get serious, putting all his effort into flying.
“But, Val,” he said, as the smile came back, “you should have seen his face.”
Archangel burst into a fit of laughter, and they dived lower as he roared helplessly on. A second later, Gambit began to laugh too. A snicker at first, and then full-throated bellowing. Val was afraid Warren was going to drop them, or smash into a building. They were still losing altitude. Warren just couldn’t keep going, not with the two of them in tow and the tears streaming down his face as he fought to breathe through a fit of giggles. .
Val was about to tell them they were getting punchy, that Magneto was gaining. That they were going to be killed.
Warren was right, she hadn’t seen Magneto’s face when he lost control of the Sentinels. But the idea of it, and Remy and Warren’s cackling, was enough to get her going too. She didn’t know if she was laughing at M
agneto, or at them.
“You clowns,” she said between breaths. “You’re sleep deprived and you’re going to get us all killed.”
They thought that was funny too.
Then they were going down.
“I just can’t—” Warren huffed for breath “—can’t keep going.”
They hit the street too fast, Warren let them go a few feet too high, and Val and Gambit both stumbled and rolled before leaping to their feet again. Together, the three of them turned to face Magneto.
He was just behind them.
“You’re pathetic,” he said. “Particularly you, Worthington. Once, I thought you might have been of some value to me, but now I see you are as worthless as these others.”
“God,” Warren said in mock-seriousness, unable to get control of himself despite the danger. “I feel like I’m back in grade school.”
Val watched as Archangel and Gambit made a halfhearted attempt at holding the laughter in, then both of them were bent over, holding their bellies as they howled.
“You dare laugh at me?” Magneto cried. “I have spared you one time too many I see. The time has come—”
“Oh, shut up!” Archangel snapped.
Val had been staring at Magneto in trepidation, but now her head swung around in shock. The humor was gone from Archangel’s face, and quickly draining from Gambit’s as the other X-Man watched the exchange.
“If you’re going to kill us, then just do it,” Warren said.
“I’ve been listening to your posturing and watching you feed off this world’s fears for too long. You’re the worst kind of leader, Magneto. You ignore your press, but believe all your own PR.”
Archangel stepped forward, into the spray of light thrown by a street lamp. He spread his arms wide, and his wings out to their full span.
“Go ahead, then,” Warren urged. “Strike me down with the wrath of the god you want us all to think you are. But when I’m dead, ask yourself one question. If your goals are so noble, why do you always leave corpses in your wake?”
Magneto opened his mouth to reply, took in the breath that would fuel his words, lifted his hands to launch the assault that would end all their lives.
Then he did something that Valerie Cooper would remember for the rest of her life.
He smiled.
“Bravo, Worthington,” Magneto said. “I hope you feel your words are a fitting epitaph.”
Gambit and Archangel had never been powerful enough to hold Magneto off for long, and now both were completely spent. In the next moment, they would all be dead.
“Mutant Target Designate Magneto, surrender yourself or face grievous injury during acquisition!” a robotic voice boomed.
Val looked up. They all looked up. Three Sentinels looked down at them. Several more were rocketing toward them across the night sky, their eerie running lights glowing in the darkness.
“Ah, a reprieve, then, Worthington,” Magneto said coldly. “Another time, perhaps.”
He turned, tore a signal lamp from the street corner with the wave of his hand, and send it flying. It tore through the lead Sentinel’s face like a razor-sharp arrow, savaging the robot’s operational equipment.
Then Magneto was airborne, headed south, and an entire fleet of Sentinels gave chase.
A winged man with a face and body reminiscent of a carrion bird dived from the sky toward Storm. She could easily have evaded him, or manipulated the winds around him to, very simply, keep him away from her. But exhaustion was starting to overwhelm her, and her patience was wearing thin. Yes, Jean had passed on that the Sentinels were no longer in Magneto’s control. Yes, they had been joined by human and mutant reinforcements. Yes, they had a chance, now, at long last. A chance.
But after a couple of hours in the sky, using the weather to slowly chip away at their overwhelming opposition, providing Iceman with all the moisture he might want to replenish what he stole from the air, Ororo Munroe was nearly spent. She did not have a single ounce of extra energy to use in her own defense. Storm was forced to use the simplest, and most drastic, tactic to keep the twisted bird man away from her.
She nailed him with lightning.
Ororo was an elegant woman, with elegant tastes. She was the very model of courtesy, nobility, and self-respect. But she had once led the Morlocks, a tribe of underground mutant warriors. To do that, she had to become an uncompromising warrior herself. And there was nothing elegant in war.
The charred mutant plummeted from the sky, and had the good fortune to land on the roof of a nine-story building rather than the street far below. Broken bones would heal. Storm breathed a sigh of relief, but there was no question in her mind that she would do it again.
Below, the battle raged on, the X-Men the center of a chaotic conflict, the focus of a maelstrom of blood and hatred. The combatants had merged so completely that she could no longer really use her power to advantage. At least not at the center of the battle.
At the edges, there were still mutants struggling to get into the fight, to take their anger out on anyone who would oppose Magneto. The Blob was with this group. She was too high to hear his oafish boasting voice, but she could imagine what he might say to exhort his comrades into battle. Just as she imagined the rest of the team was, Storm was tired. Tired of fighting, and just plain worn out. She had no patience with any of them, but Fred Dukes least of all.
Her problem was that no wind she might summon, even hurricane force, could make Dukes leave the battlefield. If they knew that the Sentinels were no longer under Magneto’s control, a lot of them might surrender, or flee, but Storm and Jean had discussed it telepathically. They wouldn’t believe the X-Men. Why should they? No, Storm had to think of...
Then she had it. She’d used winds, rain, lightning, to fight the battle. They could be devastating. But she didn’t need to destroy the Blob and his cohorts. Only to hurt and annoy them.
A moment later, hail the size of baseballs and hard as stone began to fall from the sky in a dense and destructive rain. The hailstorm only covered an area half a block long. Windows were smashed, cars and a newsstand pulverized.
All but the Blob ran for cover. After trying to escape the hail by moving closer to the fight and finding that the freak storm was following him, Dukes finally realized who was behind it. With surprising intelligence, he did not look up into the sky. Ororo assumed he didn’t want to be blinded.
Finally, likely cussing a blue streak, he stomped away from the battlefield. She hoped for good.
Now, she thought, time to see about the rest of Magneto’s pawns.
* • *
“Can’t you fly this thing any faster?” Gyrich snarled at the helicopter pilot.
The man ignored him. He was about to tear into the pilot, when Colonel Tomko’s hand landed on his shoulder from the back of the chopper.
“I’m not even sure why you’re along for this ride, Mr. Gyrich,” the Colonel said. “Why don’t you just sit tight and let your nation’s armed forces do their jobs?”
It was a jab. He knew it was. But he wasn’t Tomko’s commander on this one. There wasn’t anything he could say now.
But Tomko had made a mistake, allowing himself to feel comfortable enough to insult Gyrich to his face.
Gyrich never forgot.
“What have got down there, Sanchez?” Colonel Tomko barked from the rear.
The pilot mumbled something into his headset, maneuvering between two particularly tall office buildings, then turned his head slightly to respond.
“Control says the media’s flooding the city, coming in through all the routes the Sentinels had blocked. Except the GW Bridge, of course,” the pilot said.
For a moment it didn’t click, then Gyrich remembered that there no longer was a George Washington Bridge.
“All right,” the colonel said, “see if we can’t get to the battle site first and seal it off from the media. That’s all we need, is a caravan of press from all over the world surveying the damage and getting
in our way. We’re lucky to have taken such comparatively little collateral damage so far. Let’s try to keep it that way.”
The pilot relayed those orders on his headset.
Gyrich scanned what he could see of the city. Tomko tapped him on the shoulder, then pointed out the window to the southeast.
There were tanks moving through the streets. It occurred to Gyrich that the cumbersome metal war machines were far swifter than he would ever have imagined.
Gyrich smiled.
“With the Sentinels out of the way, Magneto doesn’t stand a chance,” he said gleefully.
He had to repeat himself, at much greater volume, for Tomko to hear. The colonel made a face.
“Let’s not forget who we’re dealing with here, Mr. Gyrich,” Colonel Tomko said. “We can do the rest, but without blowing up half the city, the X-Men are still the best chance at taking Magneto down. Maybe the only chance.”
Gyrich glared at the colonel. Neither man spoke again until the helicopter touched down several blocks east of the Empire State Building.
Magneto rode the planetary energies he controlled, propelling himself faster and faster to outpace the Sentinels that pursued him. It was hopeless. The faster he flew, the faster they flew. When he had reached New York Harbor, and the ocean was beneath him, he turned to make his stand.
He was trying not to think. Trying not to deal with the blow that had been struck against his plans for Haven, plans for empire. And the best way he knew to avoid thinking, considering, analyzing ... was to destroy things.
“Mutant Target Designate Magneto,” the new lead Sentinel droned at a painful decibel level. “Surrender now, or face painful acquisition procedures.”
Magneto warped the Earth’s magnetic field around him, reached out with nebulous hands of pure magnetic energy, and tried to tear the Sentinel’s head off.
Nothing happened.
The seven Sentinels who were first to arrive, all fired upon him at once. He erected a force shield just in time, but the brunt of their attack sent him reeling, falling, splashing in the salt water, cold even in July. Heavy body armor and helmet weighing him down, Magneto surfaced, gasping for breath, and a numbness came over him, body and soul.
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