Salvation

by Unknown Author

  “Gyrich, in case you missed it, you’ve been relieved of any responsibilities in Manhattan at this time,” the President said sharply. “You have your orders.”

  The screen went dark. Val tried not to smile. She needn’t have worried. Gyrich stormed away immediately, boarding a helicopter that would start him back to D.C.

  “That’s one troubled soul,” Colonel Tomko said, without a trace of the venom she might have expected from the man.

  “The bad news is, he isn’t the worst of them. The world is full of people much more radical in their views on mutant-human relations than Gyrich. All that hate is going to tear us apart,” she said.

  * * *

  “Ms. Tilby, I’m—”

  “Police Commissioner Wilson Ramos,” she finished. “I’m pleased to meet you, sir, and very impressed with what you’ve done here today.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “But we’ve no time for mutual admiration.”

  “What can I do for you?” she asked, slightly put off by his intensity.

  “Gabi?” he said, deferring to an attractive girl standing just behind him.

  “These men and women are mutants, Ms. Tilby,” the girl—Gabi—said. “They came here because of what Magneto promised them, but when they realized what was happening, they turned on him and did everything they could to help the X-Men.”

  Trish admired the young woman, obviously one of the resistance fighters she’d heard about. She was courageous and yet obviously compassionate. But Trish thought Gabi seemed uncomfortable talking to her, and wondered if it was because she was a reporter. Reporters, she knew, had worse reputations than lawyers these days.

  “What can I do for you, or for them?” Trish asked, quite sincerely.

  Gabi hesitated, so Ramos stepped in.

  “The military will take them into custody,” Commissioner Ramos said. ' ‘Who knows what might happen to them, then? They just want to go back to their homes, back to the world they knew, no matter how flawed. Some of them have kept their genetic differences a secret, and now they only want to slip back into their old lives.

  “I think they’ve had a hard enough lesson the past couple of days, don’t you?” he asked.

  Before Trish could answer, Gabi said: “Iceman told us we could trust you.”

  Trish smiled. It pleased her to know that, no matter what had happened between them, the X-Men still trusted her. She thought of Caroline, and of Kevin, who had both died because they were good people, people who didn’t care about genetic differences.

  “We’ve all suffered enough, I think,” she said finally.

  With Ramos assisting, she gathered around all the members of the media that she knew. Together, and using the police officers who had backed Ramos up in the war, they spent the rest of the night, and well into the morning, shuttling mutants back out of New York. An underground railroad for the twilight of the twentieth century.

  When Trish first thought of the analogy, it saddened her greatly to realize that it was all too accurate. Hate never went away, it only changed to take advantage of the times.

  Later, she would try hard to believe that wasn’t true.

  Sometimes, she could almost do it.

  * - * *

  One by one, Amelia Voght teleported the original Acolytes back to space station Avalon in Earth orbit. Senyaka, the Kleinstocks, Frenzy, all of them were badly injured. They would heal, but not in time to make a difference in the final battle.

  It was all up to Magneto now.

  * * *

  Years had passed since Magneto had first faced these five, the original X-Men: Iceman, the Beast, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Archangel, who had been just Angel back then. He remembered the day well. He had been attacking the military base, Cape Citadel, when they came seemingly out of nowhere, offering a challenge he had never expected, from a man who had once been his closest friend. Surprise had been their advantage, as had his reluctance to simply kill them all, and Xavier as well, if necessary, to achieve his goals.

  The stakes had risen since then, the consequences grown more deadly. The X-Men had grown in number, and become far greater warriors. But Magneto had evolved as well.

  And they no longer had the advantage of surprise.

  Cyclops continued to batter Magneto’s force shield with his optic blasts. Magneto admired his persistence, but thought the man foolish. It was clear his beams were no match for Magneto’s power. Although the constant attack was tiring him a bit, forcing him to constantly focus on his own defense.

  The other four moved as one.

  Jean Grey wrapped the Beast in her telekinetic web and lifted them both off the ground, rising toward the spot where Magneto hovered over the devastation. Iceman shot from the ground toward Magneto on a pillar of ice he was building beneath himself, then extended it into an ice slide that drove him forward. Archangel took to the air, diving and swooping back and forth, not giving Magneto an easy target.

  The others were easy targets, though, and could be dealt with easily and soon enough. He turned his attentions to Archangel, who had already hurt him once. Magneto wasn’t going to allow that again. As Warren Worthington tucked back his wings and dived, Magneto held up a hand, waiting for Warren to fire his wing-knives.

  In that moment, Iceman flash-froze a huge block of ice on the side of Magneto’s force shield, disrupting the field as if it were a window of ice on the side of the sphere.

  Jean Grey dropped the Beast, who bounded off the ice slide Bobby Drake had left behind, and smashed through the ice-window, scattering shards of jagged ice and slamming into Magneto’s chest before flipping into a backward somersault and landing behind Drake on the ice-slide.

  Archangel didn’t fire his wing-knives. If he had, he was too close now for Magneto to do anything about it. But instead, Worthington dived in at extraordinary speed, banked in at an angle, and flew past the hole in Magneto’s force shield before he had had time to repair the sphere. His right wing sliced out, through the break in the sphere, and cut Magneto’s side in several places.

  Blood poured. His concentration faltered.

  “No!" he cried.

  Even as he knitted his force shield back together, Cyclops took advantage of the opening, and fired a full-power optic blast through the narrowing gap. It slammed into Magneto’s chest, and threw him backward and down. His concentration evaporated; he fell.

  To one side, a row of windows exploded outward, powered by Jean Grey’s telekinesis, and the shards rained down on him, lacerating his scalp, face, and neck. The rest of him was protected by body armor, but if he hit the street, he would most certainly be dead.

  That would not do. His destiny was one of greatness, not the ignominy of such easy defeat.

  Several yards above the asphalt, Magneto gathered the Earth’s magnetic field around him and simply stopped his fall. He hovered there a moment, took a painful breath—Cyclops’s last attack had broken several ribs and blackened his body armor—then lifted himself back into the air. His force shield knitted itself back together, the sphere of green electric energy even stronger than before.

  “Hit him again, X-Men, before he is fully recovered!” Cyclops shouted from below.

  “Not to worry, Scotty,” Iceman replied. “We’ve got the bum on the ropes.”

  But Drake had always been a foolish young man. His ice making propelled him forward, up toward Magneto. He was cocky now, foolish. Iceman thought it was over. And it was.

  For him.

  Magneto gestured, and magnetic power arced from his fingertips, shattering the ice slide. Iceman fell. He tried in vain to form a new slide beneath him, but Magneto struck him again, and Drake fell, disoriented.

  “Bobby, go limp!” the Beast cried from below. “I’ve got you.”

  “No,” Magneto said softly, “no, you don’t.”

  The Beast bounded across Sixth Avenue, trying to get under his falling comrade. Magneto wrapped his magnetic tendrils around a yellow cab, lifted it off the ground quickly, effort
lessly, and dropped it on top of the Beast.

  Hank McCoy died without screaming.

  Bobby Drake crashed through the windshield of the cab. Inside, the warmth of his blood began to melt the ice from his body.

  “Oh, my God!” Jean Grey screamed. “Hank, Bobby! Scott, he’s killed them!”

  Archangel screamed a curse, dive-bombing Magneto from above, apparently hoping for a replay of his earlier, successful attack.

  It wasn’t going to work.

  “You are appallingly stupid, Worthington,” Magneto said. “All of you. I never wanted you dead, don’t you see? But you have backed me into a comer. You have put me in a position where killing you is the only logical option.”

  Archangel launched dozens of wing-knives.

  Magneto reached out, focused, attuned his power to the strange metallic structure of Archangel’s wings, and then he pulled. Warren Worthington screamed, wailed, shrieked, as his wings were tom from his back.

  While Archangel fell, Magneto didn’t even watch.

  Only Grey and Summers were left, the loving couple in whom Xavier had placed the future of the X-Men. They were to be the parents, both literal and figurative, of the next generation of X-Men. His heirs.

  “You fought well,” he said, almost kindly, as he floated down to street level to face them. “You had almost beaten me, there at the start. Teamwork has always been the X-Men’s greatest weapon. But your time is done. In a way, I will miss you.”

  Grey was a beautiful woman, her red hair lustrous even in the neon-lit night. Her face was filled with loathing, but no fear. Her uniform in tatters, and yet she was still noble.

  Summers limped slightly; blood ran from wounds on his chest and legs.

  “If you don’t fight me, I will make it as painless for you as possible,” Magneto promised.

  Grey and Summers bowed their heads.

  The taxi slammed into Magneto from behind. His protective sphere held, but he was driven through the plate glass windows of a women’s clothing store and trapped beneath the yellow cab with whatever remained of Hank McCoy that still clung there.

  Grey and Summers had chosen their mode of death. They would die like warriors. He was glad. Proud of them, in some way. And never more sorry to have to kill them.

  “Enough!” he cried.

  Magneto lifted a hand, and the taxi levitated above him in a green glow of magnetic power. Cyclops and Jean Grey entered through the shattered wall. Summers continued to let loose with bursts of energy from his eyes, but they were growing weaker. Grey tried to use her telekinesis to wrest the vehicle from his magnetic grasp, but Magneto resisted her. She was greatly weakened as well.

  With the taxi as his bludgeoning tool, he crushed them both.

  When Magneto walked out of the shattered store, past the vehicle and the corpses of several X-Men, blood still ran freely down his left leg from the wound in his side. Every breath brought new pain to his broken ribs. But he was triumphant.

  Compared to the X-Men, a battle with the American military would be simplicity itself. He was determined to remake Haven, and to hold it this time. His mistake from the very beginning had been to rely upon the Sentinels. He ought to have done it himself from the start.

  He stumbled slightly.

  “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” a familiar voice said. Magneto looked up, held his chest in pain.

  In the center of the street, amid all the debris, among the dead and injured, Professor Charles Xavier sat in his wheelchair. Alone.

  “I’m glad you came, Charles,” Magneto said, coughing slightly, the pain in his chest intense. He wiped his fist across his mouth and was astonished to find blood there.

  “You’re not doing so well, it seems,” Xavier said calmly. “I doubt you’re happy to see me.”

  “No, but happy to know I can destroy you, now that you’ve saved me the trouble of finding you,” Magneto said.

  “You were never a killer, Magnus,” Xavier said. “Look around you. A man of your intellect, your courage—couldn’t you have found another way than murder?’ ’

  “My dream, my destiny... its fulfillment is worth any price.” Magneto coughed. “Haven will be a reality.”

  “Don’t you see,” Xavier pleaded, and at last the man sounded like the Charles that Eric Magnus Lehnsherr first met in Israel all those years ago. “Your dream cannot succeed. The best you can hope for is to rule a world that is in the process of self-destructing. Your dream will destroy the Earth, not only for humanity, but for all.”

  “I don’t believe that, Charles,” Magneto said. “We have been over this time and time again. I’m afraid, old friend, that we will have to agree to disagree. My way is the only way. You believe the same of your own dream, do you not?” “The difference, Magnus, is that my dream does not require force, violence, oppression, and murder,” Xavier said.

  “Never mind the philosophical debate,” Magneto said. “Only time will reveal who was right, and I intend to bend the future to my own whims. But let’s talk about you, shall we? For a man about to die, for a man who has just seen his entire family killed, you seem awfully calm.”

  “You just aren’t paying attention,” Xavier said. “I’ve never been more enraged, more disgusted, more disappointed. But it has nothing to do with the X-Men. In your right mind, you would never have committed such wholesale murder, especially of individuals you value so highly.”

  Magneto frowned.

  “You’ve gone mad, Charles,” he said. “They are dead. Their corpses litter the streets around you.”

  “No,” Xavier answered. “You often dream of killing me, Magnus. Of killing the X-Men and so many others. But you aren’t a murderer. You would avoid such things unless your hand was forced.”

  Magneto faltered. He was confused. Xavier’s words rang true. He had often felt driven to kill the X-Men, to kill Charles himself, a man who had once been his closest friend. But he never had. Had never intended to do so. Once, he had spent time with them, almost been one of them. In his own way, he cared for them, like an angry, impatient parent with naughty children.

  But he had killed them. He had killed them all.

  “I...” he began, and faltered once more. He didn’t understand.

  “But, just in case I had misjudged you,” Xavier said, “I couldn’t possibly allow you the opportunity. The X-Men are, as you say, my family. I love them as dearly as any good parent.”

  His mind was reeling, but Magneto knew what he must do.

  “Enough of your hysterical babbling, Charles,” Magneto said. “The time has come. I’ve got to kill you.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” Xavier said.

  Then he stood up, out of the wheelchair.

  Magneto could not contain his astonishment.

  “You—you’re walking,” he said in awe.

  Xavier walked swiftly toward him, stepping around debris and the still forms of human beings. When he reached Magneto, he balled his right hand into a fist, and hit him.

  Magneto fell, mouth still hanging open in surprise. He reached up to massage his cheek where Xavier had hit him. He looked up, saw Xavier glaring grimly down at him.

  Then he understood.

  “You’re walking,” he said, eyes narrowing with hatred as the full realization of what Xavier had done began to sink in. “If you’re walking, that means we’re—”

  “On the Astral Plane, yes,” Xavier admitted.

  Everything went black a moment, and Magneto felt nauseous, his equilibrium shot. Then the world came back. He was standing in the middle of Sixth Avenue. Xavier was gone. Or at least, his body was gone.

  Turn around, Xavier’s voice said inside Magneto’s head.

  He turned.

  A full-power optic blast hit him in the chest, driving him back. Lightning flashed from the sky, and only his own innate magnetism saved him from being electrocuted.

  Cyclops hit him again, and this time he felt his ribs crack for real. A second bolt of lightning struck pa
vement not far from him.

  A blue-furred hand grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around. Magneto tried to put up a fight, tried to get his hands up, to concentrate, to defend himself.

  He wasn’t fast enough.

  “You have wreaked enough havoc, stolen enough souls, for one day, Magnus,” the Beast said.

  McCoy hit him, hard, and Magneto stumbled backward into a yellow cab. He lashed out blindly, and the Beast was tossed away by a lance of magnetic force. The taxi began to feel warm beneath him, and when Magneto looked down, he saw that it was glowing with energy.

  Explosive energy.

  “’Bout time we got you on de run,” Gambit said. “You in trouble now.”

  Magneto tried to run, but only managed a few steps before the car exploded behind him, throwing him into the air. At great velocity, he slammed into something hard and unyielding. Nearly delirious, he looked up to see that Rogue was

  holding him up by the shoulders of his body armor.

  “See, sugar?” she said sweetly. “I didn’t even have to hit ya to take y’down.”

  Then she let him go, and Magneto fell. And fell.

  He hit something cold and slick, and began to slide. It was ice, he knew suddenly. Bobby Drake had saved his life. At the bottom of the ice slide, he rolled over, unable to get to his feet. A massive weapon was thrust into his face.

  “Up,” Bishop snarled. “Get up and walk before I incinerate your head just for the pleasure of it.”

  It was the disdain, the almost pitying disgust, that brought him back from the brink of unconsciousness. Mind beginning to clear, Magneto acted quickly.

  Bishop’s weapon exploded in his hands. Magneto reached for him, focused down and down and down until he could sense the iron in Bishop’s bloodstream. He was going to just pull, just burst every blood vessel in the man’s body.

  Then he remembered Xavier’s words, remembered his own misgivings about killing the X-Men. Bishop was a stranger to him, a recent addition to the team. He meant nothing to Magneto. But he meant something to Xavier, and to Xavier’s dream.

  “Kill me if you like,” Bishop said, already weakened by Magneto’s tampering with his blood. “But learn from the future I represent. Learn that you can’t win by tearing the world apart.”