“Did you zap the curse away?” Kitty asked.
Amanda hesitated. “I think so.”
Dracula shook his head, his almost pitying expression telling her that she was woefully inadequate to the challenges before her. That she’d best embrace the knowledge he had to give her before it was too late, before she failed Kurt, her friends, and the entire human race. Fearful that he was right, she wrenched her eyes away.
“Good,” said Wolverine. “I, uh, guess I could apologize too. ’Specially to Petey and to you, Cyke. You don’t always screw up. Just mostly.”
“You know what’s odd,” Cyclops replied. “During the time when Belasco’s spell was presumably making you irrational and obnoxious, I never noticed any difference.”
Logan smiled. “I don’t believe it. Was that solemn Scott Summers tryin’ to make a joke! You better give him another jolt of that green light, Amanda. He still ain’t back to his normal self.”
“I apologize as well,” said Ororo. “Much as it troubles me, I know that on occasion it’s necessary for someone on the team to strike with deadly force. Simply promise me that when we find Rogue, you will only do it if there’s absolutely no alternative.”
“Of course,” Cyclops said.
‘ ‘Then I think you should lead, my friend. In case someone must give the order that I could not.”
“That’s fine with me as well,” Nightcrawler said. “Ex-calibur is at your disposal.”
“Fair enough,” said Scott, visibly reassuming the nononsense demeanor he so often presented in the field. “I’ve already told you the plan, so ...” He hesitated.
“Got a bright idea?” Logan asked. “We could use one.” “Maybe I do,” Cyclops said. “We aren’t the only ones chasing Rogue. SAFE is after her too, and they have enough people and the freedom of movement to investigate the scenes of the attacks and interview any surviving witnesses. It’s conceivable that they’ve uncovered information we don’t have, and I think it would be smart to go and get it.”
<2 Chapter 12
Kneeling, peering around the corner of a little concrete block gas station, Kitty studied the National Guard armory across the street. With its perimeter wall and steel gate, the old, sprawling building had no doubt always resembled a fortress, and now that SAFE and the Army had commandeered it for their headquarters, it had become one in truth. Armed soldiers guarded the entrances and stood watch on the roof, while trucks, APCs, and one of the hovercraft sat in the parking lot, the rain drumming on their metal bodies. Pinkish lights burned atop tall posts, illuminating the grounds.
“It looks,” said Ororo, peeking over Shadowcat’s shoulder, “as if they’re afraid that Rogue will attack here.” Cyclops had chosen her, Kitty, Logan, and Dracula to infiltrate the command center, on the assumption that a sneak thief, a ninja, a secret agent, and a creature with supernatural powers of stealth ought to be able to slip in and out of the place undetected.
“Maybe that’s smart,” Logan said. Now that he was headed into action, he’d discarded his cowboy hat and duster and pulled his cowl over his head. “She’s crazy enough to try, and maybe powerful enough to get away with it.”
“I suggest,” said Dracula, “that we examine the other faces of the enclosure. It will likely be easier to approach from another direction.”
“Yeah,” said Wolverine, pointing. “Let’s go that way.” In the twinkling of an eye, Dracula dropped to all fours and shifted into the form of an enormous gray wolf. With his head lower to the ground, he’d be harder for anyone to spot, and, at a distance, likely mistaken for a stray dog even if somebody did.
Taking advantage of every bit of cover, still keeping their distance from the armory’s perimeter wall, the four companions skulked through the downpour. Ororo glided along in much the same way that Kitty did. The tricks of stealth she’d learned in Cairo had much in common with ninja techniques. Though Logan too was a master of Japanese martial arts, to Shadowcat’s knowledgeable eye, his slinking progress differed from that of the women. It looked more natural, feral, akin to the flowing gait of the huge beast Dracula had become.
There were no gates in the rear wall. Summoning a sudden updraft that tugged at Kitty’s tangled, sodden tresses, Ororo bobbed just high enough into the air to peer over the barrier, then instantly dropped back down to earth. “I don’t see anyone on this part of the grounds,” she said.
“Then we might as well go in this way,” Kitty said.
“I agree,” said Storm. “Everyone, close your eyes.” The younger woman obeyed, and brilliant, strobing radiance shone redly through her eyelids. With luck, the lightning flaring in the sky would dazzle the sentries on the roof.
When the display stopped, the would-be trespassers darted toward a section of wall equidistant between two lights, where it was darkest. Dracula leapt over the barrier. As the wind shrieked, Ororo levitated, gripped Logan’s hands, and carried him to the other side. Kitty simply phased through the tiers of bricks and mortar.
Crouching low on the soggy grass, she waited a moment for an alarm to blare or for someone to start shooting. During her career as an X-Man and member of Excalibur, she’d occasionally run afoul of surveillance systems so cunningly designed that it was difficult for any intruder, even a ninja, to defeat or even detect them before they revealed her presence. She doubted that the armory possessed such a system—even if the new occupants wanted one, they’d scarcely had time to install it—but you never knew.
Nothing happened. So far, so good, she thought.
She and her companions crept on toward the armory, from one patch of shadow to the next, more or less directly under the noses of the soldiers on the roof. Trained infiltrator though she was, Kitty found the process nerve-wracking. At that moment she would gladly have traded her phasing power for, say, invisibility like Susan Richards of the Fantastic Four had.
Since that exchange was impossible, she took each step with an absolute economy of movement, grateful that at least she didn’t have to worry about her intangible feet raising a telltale splash or squish from the muddy ground. Her senseis had taught her that, though technique was vital, stealth was ultimately achieved through a kind of faith. If she believed that no one could see her, her confidence would lend her body the grace to make that belief a reality. She did her best to embrace that attitude now.
After what felt like an hour but had likely been only a minute, she and the others reached the side of the armory. Solidifying, Kitty permitted herself a sigh of relief. As long as they hugged the wall, the sentries overhead probably wouldn’t see them.
“Door,” Logan whispered, nodding toward the left. The intruders took another wary look around, then skulked toward the entrance in question.
Unfortunately, a yellow light bulb shone above it. Phasing, Kitty surged from the shadows, into the pool of amber illumination, onto a concrete stoop, and through the substance of the door itself, all in a single second.
On the other side was a narrow, dimly lit hallway with walls in need of painting and a dingy linoleum floor. It looked as if Kitty had invaded a service area, where no one but the maintenance staff would ordinarily come. She opened the door and her companions instantly lunged through. Dracula returned to human form, his muzzle sinking back into his skull, his ashen fur lightening into bone-white skin or darkening into funereal garments, the toes on his forepaws lengthening into fingers.
The intruders stalked on toward the front of the armory, toward brighter illumination and the echo of voices and footsteps. Kitty tried not to dwell on the fact that, now that they were sneaking through the confines of an occupied, well-lit building, their risk of being discovered had increased enormously. Water dripped from their soaked hair and garments, but some application of Ororo’s power dried it as it fell and kept them from leaving a trail.
They peeked into one area after another, searching for something that appeared to be a repository of information. Then Logan halted and gave the hand signal that meant, take cover.
> The next moment, Kitty heard what he’d heard, or possibly smelled. People were proceeding down the intersecting hallway up ahead. Becoming intangible, she stepped into a wall, with only her eyes sticking out to observe what happened next. Logan, Storm, and Dracula hid in doorways.
Half a dozen fit-looking, crewcut men in combat boots and mottled gray, urban camouflage jumpsuits trudged into the juncture of the two corridors. Three were carrying automatic rifles, and they all had pistols hanging from their belts. They looked wet, haggard, and disgruntled, not unlike the X-Men themselves. As if, after a long day of fruitlessly hunting mutants out in the miserable weather, they were spoiling for a fight. Her pulse beating rapidly, Shadowcat watched until they disappeared from sight.
The infiltrators prowled on, backtracking at one point to avoid passing by the open door of a cafeteria where some three dozen soldiers and SAFE agents sat eating biscuits, fruit cocktail, and fragrant, steaming beef stew. They were just about to turn down a branching corridor when Kitty heard a gasp.
She pivoted. A dozen feet behind them stood a gangly, freckle-faced GI who looked no older than sixteen. Evidently he’d just emerged from the restroom doorway on his left. His eyes wide, he clawed for his sidearm even as he sucked in a breath to yell.
Dracula lunged and knocked him cold with a single backhanded blow. To Kitty, the sharp crack of the impact seemed dreadfully loud, but with luck, it wouldn’t be enough to alarm anyone all by itself. The soldier started to fall, and the vampire caught him. Then, to her horror, he bared his fangs.
She and Ororo both scrambled forward to stop him, but Logan was ahead of both of them. His claws snapping from their sockets, he whispered, “Don’t even think about it. Give the kid to me.”
“No,” Dracula replied, just as softly. “I pledged that I wouldn’t harm Excalibur or the X-Men. I said nothing of anyone else.”
“Please,” said Storm, “you spared one man for me.” Dracula smiled sardonically. “And therefore you assumed that I would always curb my natural urges to indulge you? Despite the love I feel for you, I fear that isn’t possible. And isn’t it sensible that I make certain that the boy won’t wake and warn his compatriots of our presence?”
“He ain’t wakin' up any time soon,” said Logan, “not as hard as you tagged him.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” the vampire said. “But I can. If I partake of his blood and so place him under my control—’ ’
“You ain’t gonna pass even a mild dose of your flamin’ curse on to anybody else,” the Canadian said. “Not for any reason, not while you’re runnin’ with me.”
“But you’d have to attack me to prevent it,” Dracula replied, sneering, “and our battle would undoubtedly make enough noise to draw everyone in this garrison down on our heads. I daresay we could then fight our way clear, but we might hurt or even kill any number of humans in the process.
and in any case, we would fail to achieve our objective. You wouldn’t want that.”
“Nope,” said Logan, “but it won’t stop me, either. Count on it.”
The two men, one tall and gaunt, the other short and muscular, stared into one another’s eyes. At last Dracula grimaced and thrust the unconscious soldier into Wolverine’s arms. “By defying me, you’re jeopardizing the entire world for the sake of this one life,” the vampire said. “You truly are as mindless as the animal you resemble.”
“Yeah,” said Logan, grinning and retracting his claws, “that’s what people tell me. But on the plus side, I’m not the guy who blinked. I’ll stash Beetle Bailey here in one of the bathroom stalls. With luck, nobody’ll find him for awhile.” He effortlessly lifted the soldier over his shoulder, then carried him into the men’s room.
When he reemerged, the foursome skulked on. In another minute, they found a room containing half a dozen softly humming computers. Stacks of printouts and heaps of files stamped classified and eyes only littered the work tables, and maps of the Natchez area hung on the wall.
It looked like a place for analyzing data and formulating strategy, and to Kitty’s relief, no one was inside. Maybe the occupants were currently scarfing down supper in the mess.
The intruders hurried into the room and closed the door. Dracula remained beside it, perhaps to listen for people coming down the hall. Wolverine studied a wall map. “Interesting,” he muttered, scratching his chin, his fingertip rasping against his beard stubble.
“What is?” Ororo asked.
“We can talk about it when we’re out of here,” he replied. “We may only have a couple minutes before somebody comes back. You’re the computer ace, Kitty. Work a little magic for us.”
Shadowcat dropped into the office chair in front of one of the terminals. “Magic coming up.” she replied, grabbing the mouse and pulling down a menu. She clicked on an item and a prompt on the monitor asked her for her password. “Darn.”
“Trouble?” asked Storm, flipping rapidly through one of the printouts.
“I hope not,” Kitty said. She opened her belt pack and brought out a square gray plastic gadget half the size of a pack of cigarettes. She and Forge had designed the device together, the Cheyenne inventor creating the hardware and Kitty writing the software. She inspected the back of the computer, disconnected it from the other machines in the network, plugged her device into the port, and turned it on. The message on the monitor flickered, and the government computer’s hard drive chattered.
“What is that thing?” asked Dracula. Evidently the clash with Logan hadn’t left him too grumpy to be curious.
Kitty smiled. “A specialized minicomputer. Forge and I call it Raffles, in honor of a burglar in some book he read when he was in the hospital recovering from his war wounds. Basically, it’s sort of like a cyber version of you. It takes control of other computers. If the guy who wrote SAFE’s security software left himself a back door, or if it just isn’t a superwonderful program, then Raff should crack it open and let me at the good stuff.” The message on the screen changed to password accepted. “Outstanding! She shoots, she scores!”
“Good,” said Logan. He and Storm came over and crouched behind Kitty’s chair. “What’ve we got?”
“Looks like profiles of a whole bunch of super people, including the X-Men,” Shadowcat replied. “Along with contingency plans for taking us out if the government decides it needs to.”
“Pretty much the same reports that I was just looking at on paper,” Ororo said.
“We also have forensics from the scenes of Rogue’s attacks and the autopsies of the victims, transcripts of testimony from a couple witnesses, and hey! Somebody shot some video.”
“Let’s see that,” said Logan. Dracula strode over to watch with the others, and Kitty double clicked on the icon for the MPEG file that contained the video.
The picture quality was miserable. The camera operator had shot it outdoors in the gloom and the pouring rain, backing away from the subject, hands shaking badly. Nonetheless, the video showed more than Kitty could easily bear.
The eye of the camcorder was peering through the plate-glass facade of a supermarket. The store was crowded with shoppers who had no doubt ventured out in the nasty weather to stock up on supplies to ride out the storm. Now, panic-stricken, they were scurrying this way and that as Rogue swooped around slaughtering them. She broke one elderly woman’s neck with a slap of her open hand. Caved in a stock boy’s chest with a front snap kick. Contemptuous of the flashing pistol in his hand, she flew straight at a policeman, picked him up, and hurled him twenty feet to crash through a display of Coca Cola bottles. At one point she paused in her rampage to shout. Kitty was no lip reader, but she assumed her former teammate was ranting about mutants striking back at humankind.
Kitty realized that up until now, some part of her hadn’t quite believed that her friend could really have gone crazy and started killing innocent people. The actuality was horrible in a personal way that even the threat of Belasco devastating the entire world couldn’t match. She st
ruggled to swallow away a lump in her throat.
After about half a minute, Rogue turned directly toward the camcorder, and at that point the video ended. No doubt the camera operator had prudently run away.
“An impressive display of ferocity,” Dracula murmured, “but at first glance, I see nothing helpful.”
“No?” Logan said. “Roll it again, Kitty.” Shadowcat obeyed. On the monitor, Rogue lifted her hand to strike the old woman. Kitty wanted to flinch.
“Pause it,” the Canadian said, and Kitty froze the image. “Notice anything?” She studied the screen, but saw' nothing significant.
“She’s wearing gloves,” Ororo said suddenly. “When she attacked me above the river, her hands were bare.”
“Give the lady a cigar. And when Cyke, Jean, and I fought her in the stable, they were the same way.”
“Is that significant?” Dracula asked. “She could have removed her gloves, then put them back on again.”
“No,” said Storm, “I remember when she attacked me, her right glove and sleeve had been shredded. We’ve been assuming that she’s attacking people because, with a vampire’s essence poisoning her psyche, she wants to absorb their vitality. That certainly seemed to be the reason she turned on me. But she can’t drain anyone through her gloves. That’s why she wears them. She isn’t... feeding here, simply battering her victims to death.”
“Bring up those autopsy findings,” said Wolverine. Kitty put them on the screen. “Now flip through them. I just need to skim.”
“Weird,” said Shadowcat a minute later. “Every body recovered at the scenes of the massacres was mangled in one way or another. There w'asn’t a single guy whose heart and other organs apparently just quit working, which I’m guessing is how the remains would look if Rogue grabbed him and sucked the life out of him.”
Soul Killer Page 17