Marvel Classic Novels--X-Men

by Christopher Golden

  “You are one cold son of a bitch,” Iceman said, and there was an anger, and a danger, in his voice that Wolverine could not recall ever hearing there before.

  “You can abuse me and insult me all you like, pal,” Iceman continued, “but Hank McCoy is the best of us, bar none. You show him the respect he deserves.”

  There was a challenge growing in Bishop’s face as the man listened to Iceman speak. Wolverine saw it there, rising, about to be unleashed. It was to be expected. Bishop was a hard man to hurt, even harder to kill, and Bobby Drake was so lighthearted it was difficult to imagine what his implied threat might actually entail. Wolverine waited for the challenge, the “or else?” that he knew would come from Bishop at any moment.

  But it didn’t.

  After a moment, Bishop merely nodded slightly. A lesson had been learned. None of the others was close enough to have heard Bobby’s words, not even the Beast, and Wolverine was not about to discuss it. Not with Iceman, or with Bishop, or anybody else. He knew, also, that he would never forget it. Bobby Drake had been the class clown all his life, the butt of jokes. But if he’d been a different person, he would have been an extraordinarily dangerous man. The potential was there.

  “Logan,” the Beast asked, the moment of reflection ended. “Which way did they go?”

  “All roads lead to Rome,” Wolverine said, and pointed to where firelight still turned the black sky a sickly yellow to the southeast. “Everything around here seems to be pointin’ to that fire, and that’s definitely the direction Trish was headed.”

  Without another word, the Beast set off in the same direction.

  “Bobby,” Storm asked quietly, “what do you read on that mini-tracker?”

  “Same deal, Storm,” Iceman responded. “Bunch of green dots all around, but a big concentration to the south. And the red dots are south as well.”

  “Thank the goddess for small favors,” Ororo said. “Let’s go.”

  They moved quietly into the woods after the Beast, all except Wolverine. He hung back a moment with Jerry, who had seemed to disappear when things got tense, though he never left their sight. Somehow, he had learned how not to be seen. Or—and Wolverine hoped this wasn’t the case—they had simply learned how not to see Jerry, and those like him.

  “Listen, bub,” Wolverine said. “You stay here until this is all over, okay? Until you know that things are back to normal, you stay in the park. And if your friend Bernie shows up, keep him here with you. It isn’t safe for you to be in the city.”

  “It isn’t safe anywhere, Mr. Logan,” Jerry said grimly, and there was a flash of intelligence, of sanity and wisdom in the homeless man’s face that made Wolverine wonder exactly how crazy Jerry was.

  The look stayed with him as he caught up with the X-Men, and the words rang in his head as they emerged from the park several minutes later to find that utter chaos reigned supreme.

  Screams and gunshots echoed in the distance, and Wolverine could see the light of other fires on the nighttime clouds far to the south. The city had become a madhouse, a maelstrom of frustrated and terrified people who had either locked up their homes or decided to vent their fears with violence.

  As the X-Men stepped into the street, two teenagers shot past, screaming with rapacious delight before throwing a Molotov cocktail through the window of a movie theater. The restored woodwork and beams in the lobby as well as the ticket booth burst into flames. Down Fifth Avenue, Wolverine could see looters pillaging the most expensive stores in the city.

  “Wolverine,” Bishop said to his left, “we’ve got media coverage.”

  In the fifth story window of a Fifth Avenue building half a block away from the burning F.A.O. Schwartz, fire reflected off the lens of a video camera. It might have been an amateur if not for the boom microphone that hung out the window beside it. The Beast had noticed it as well, and started to move forward excitedly. Wolverine stopped him.

  “It’s not Trish, Hank,” Wolverine said.

  “Come now, Logan,” the Beast responded. “It is not even conceivable that you might be able to tell her scent from here.”

  “You’re right,” Wolverine admitted. “But I still say it ain’t her. That camera’s got us dead in its sights. There’s no way, no matter what the danger, that Trish Tilby wouldn’t identify herself to us if we ran into her in the middle of a crisis like this. Think about it.”

  The Beast seemed to deflate slightly, then simply nodded.

  “We’ll find her, Hank,” Logan insisted, and he meant it. No matter how bad a situation was, Wolverine had never been the type to offer false assurances. There was no benefit to it. Fear, desperation, rage, reckless abandon; in a hopeless situation, sometimes those things and the sheer force of will were the only things that could tip the scales. Hope was for children and dreamers, Wolverine often said. Though, in truth, he had relied on it more than once. Still, he tried to stay away from it. Not real healthy in his line of work.

  “Beast, Wolverine, Bishop, see if you can calm the locals, find out what you can about Magneto’s whereabouts, if possible, and if any other mutants have yet been sighted with the Acolytes,” Storm ordered, and then allowed the winds she commanded to lift her from the pavement and carry her aloft.

  “Iceman, put out the flames in that theater, then come help me with this larger blaze,” she added. “We can’t have this spreading uncontrolled, or it could take down the whole city.”

  Then she was gone, rising up into the darkness. Wolverine watched as Bobby raced to the theater, lifted his hands, and, in seconds, buried the entire façade in a heavy, moist mixture of ice and snow. He turned back toward F.A.O. Schwartz, held his hands beneath him and began freezing the air there, building an ice ramp below him and adding to it so rapidly that he propelled himself along it toward the blazing building.

  Thunder rumbled above them, and then the sky simply opened up above F.A.O. Schwartz in an uncommonly severe downpour specifically directed at the blazing structure. As it fell, Bobby began to turn it to ice, which would not only douse the flames, but help keep the crumbling structure from toppling onto the people below.

  “Well, gentlemen …” the Beast began, but then was cut off by a shriek that tore aside the veil of surreality that had hung over the chaotic scene.

  “There,” Bishop said, and pointed south a block and a half.

  Wolverine had already seen it, though. Five men stood around a figure, probably female, who crouched on the ground, cowering in terror. They were pounding on her with their fists, and as she fell to the ground, they began kicking.

  Logan was made for hunting, for sliding in stealth through a tree-lined ridge or an urban jungle alley. He was made for the consummation of the hunt, for the fracas, the brawl, the life and death combat, the taking of life up close and personal. But there were things about the hunter most people forgot. One of them was speed. Wolverine was faster than he looked. Bishop lagged slightly behind, but the Beast kept pace with him as he raced toward the helpless woman and her attackers.

  “Muties,” he heard someone exclaim as they raced past.

  “More of ’em,” somebody else said.

  “I seen ’em on TV,” a woman cried. “They’re the X-Men!”

  The tone of each voice was identical. Not relief. Not the tone of someone about to be rescued, not the relief of the oppressed when the cavalry finally arrived. Disgust, hate, fear—especially fear. But Wolverine was used to it, it was always the same. Maybe in the wilds of Canada, in the backwater towns where most people thought mutants were a myth, maybe there he was just another hunter. Just another guy who’d watch your back and buy you a beer, as long as you didn’t get up in his face.

  But this was America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. A nation of diversity whose own nature filled its people with self-loathing. A nation where unrealistic expectations forced citizens to look for someone to blame because they aren’t what the “dream” says they should be. Someone, anyone. Any color, or religion, or sex,
or age, or birthplace. But, especially, mutants. After all, hating mutants was something they could all agree on. It wasn’t even considered politically incorrect to hate mutants.

  It wasn’t everyone. Wolverine knew that. But as he ran past looters cowering in shadows, and angry citizens too stunned to decide whether to flee or attack, as he approached five young street toughs battering and kicking a defenseless woman, it became harder and harder to remember it. They were there to stop Magneto, to save humanity from the most feared mutant the world had ever known. Maybe they could do that. But Logan knew there was no way to save humanity from itself.

  “Enough!” Wolverine growled, hauling two of the woman’s attackers away and throwing them to the ground.

  A third rounded on him.

  “Hey, man, whatcha doin’?” the man snapped, looking at his friends in astonishment before looking up at Wolverine. “She’s a goddamn mutie freak! She deserves to get …”

  The punk’s eyes bugged out when he saw who it was he was talking to. Wolverine grabbed him by the front of his muscle shirt and pulled him close. Logan wasn’t tall, and he had to haul the man down to look at him eye to eye. But size didn’t matter in the end. The man was terrified.

  “So am I,” Wolverine snarled. “You want to give me what I deserve?”

  The Beast took down the last of the woman’s attackers, and Bishop knelt by her battered form.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?” he asked softly. “Are you badly injured?”

  “Oh my God!” the woman shouted as she looked up at him. “You’re them! You’re X-Men!”

  “We are,” Bishop agreed, reaching out to move her hair from a gushing wound on the side of her head. “That looks pretty bad. Here, let me …”

  “Don’t touch me, you mutie freak!” she howled, and leaped from the ground, backing away from Bishop like a cornered animal. “I’m not one of you, hear me? I’m just a normal human being! I’m not some freak like you!”

  She turned and ran, as best she could.

  “I wish we had time to teach these miscreants a lesson,” the Beast said, holding his two captives off the ground.

  “Me too,” Wolverine snarled. “But we don’t.”

  “Man, I thought she was a mutant,” one of the punks on the ground whispered to the other. “I can’t believe we did that.”

  Wolverine dropped the man he’d been threatening and pulled the other one from the ground. His face was badly scraped from his impact with the pavement when Wolverine tossed him, and Wolverine slapped his hand away as he tried to wipe the blood from his face.

  “So now you’re filled with regret ’cause she turned out to be human, huh, bub?” he snapped. “But if she’d been a mutant after all, then it would have been okay to stomp her like that?”

  The man snarled back, his lip curling in hatred as he blinked away the blood on his face.

  “Damn right,” he said coldly.

  Wolverine could feel it happening inside his head, the berserker rage that had overcome him often in days long past. He fought it down, fought the red haze that threatened to blind him the same way the blood was blinding the ignorant cuss in his hands. Barely in control, he held his right fist up to the man’s face and popped his claws.

  “You and the rest of your little Nazi party can go in a minute. All we want to know is where Magneto and the Acolytes have shown up. I’m sure the word’s on the street, and you’re about as low to the street as can be,” he said grimly.

  “Why don’t you—” the bigot started to say, but swallowed his words when Wolverine held the tips of his claws level with the man’s eyes.

  “He was here,” the man said quickly. “We’d pinned down a couple of his freak soldiers. We was gonna show ’em what happened to muties who get too big for their britches. They killed a couple of people, murderin’ freaks. Then Magneto shows up, sends everybody runnin’, and turns around and takes off with that lady from the news.”

  In his peripheral vision, Wolverine saw the Beast snap to attention.

  “What woman?” Logan asked. “Trish Tilby?” “That’s the one,” one of the other punks said. “Damn mutie lover.”

  Wolverine watched the anger pass like a wave over the Beast’s face, then disappear.

  “Get out of here,” Hank said coldly, and they ran in terror, calling threats back to the X-Men they did not have the courage or the ability to fulfill.

  “No good will come of this race war,” the Beast said. “Apparently, none of you have been listening,” Bishop snapped. “I’ve told you all exactly what is going to come of it, but you aren’t paying attention.”

  “Say what you want, Bishop,” Wolverine replied. “I know where you’re from. I know what you went through. But just because it happened for you, doesn’t mean it has to happen for us. The future is always uncertain.”

  Bishop kept silent after that, but Wolverine found himself reminded of an old Doors song. The lyrics were disturbing. The future’s uncertain, the song said, just as he’d told Bishop. But the song went on from there. And the end is always near. It wasn’t something he wanted to think about.

  “I suppose we should try to do something about these looters,” Wolverine said.

  “At least until Storm and Iceman finish putting out that fire,” Bishop agreed.

  The glint of the video camera caught Wolverine’s eye again, and he glanced up toward the window, half a block away, where the camera was pointed down at them.

  “And the media coverage ain’t gonna hurt,” he said cynically. “Let people know that not all mutants are followers of Magneto.”

  “Let us take action, then,” the Beast agreed. “But I am compelled to speculate if the presence of the camera has influenced this judgment. We must find Magneto with all due haste, and yet we interrupt that pursuit for petty looting and raging fires we might customarily forbear. I would hate to conclude that we were performing to garner support, instead of pursuing the most direct course to the termination of this fiasco.”

  “We’ll head after Magneto as soon as Ororo and Bobby are through,” Wolverine said. “For now, though, let’s forget about the cameras. We do what has to be done. ’Cause we can. Simple as that.”

  “I hope you’re right, Logan,” the Beast answered slowly. “I do hope you’re right.”

  There was a crash to the left, and then a plate glass window shattered as a chair burst through it and smashed to the street. A short man wearing a long coat leaped through the jagged remnants of the window and started off down the street, gold and diamond necklaces and bracelets stuffed in his pockets, a trail of rings, earrings, and coins falling behind him like bread crumbs in a fairy tale.

  “Halt!” Bishop shouted.

  “My stuff, man!” the thief shouted. “It’s my stuff!”

  “I doubt that,” the Beast said, and in three bounds, he tackled the man about the waist. Hank hauled him up by the jacket and carried him back to the jewelry store. An aging Asian woman stood just inside the shattered glass. There were tears in her eyes as the Beast handed over the thief’s jacket.

  “Thank you so much,” the woman said softly. “I … I don’t suppose it will be long until someone tries again, though.”

  “Ma’am, is there a secure site where you might remain hidden until this crisis has passed?” the Beast asked.

  “Upstairs,” she nodded. “I think I will be safe upstairs.”

  “Go there,” Hank said, holding the woman’s small hands in his own, his blue fur looking not at all out of place in that moment. “We shall endeavor to conclude all of this as expediently as possible.”

  “Do you think you can stop them, then?” the woman asked, and Wolverine thought she sounded skeptical.

  “Indeed,” the Beast said, then turned back toward Wolverine and Bishop. “Indeed.”

  In that moment, Wolverine knew without a doubt that there was always room for hope. Sometimes, he realized, it was all you had.

  FIVE

  JEAN Grey put her hand to
her forehead and smeared sticky wetness down one cheek. There was blood on her head and on her fingers, and she didn’t know why. She was lying down on a cool metal surface, disoriented, still somewhat dizzy, and slightly nauseous.

  “Jean!” someone shouted nearby, and she wished they would stop. “Jean, you’ve got to snap out of it! Scott needs you! Scott’s going to die if you can’t help him!”

  Scott? she thought, confused.

  Then she heard his voice, his mind in hers, speaking to her. Thinking his thoughts inside her own mind. Jean! Jean, you’ve got to help us!

  It hit her hard and fast, Scott’s mental voice triggering her return to reality. The explosion, the Starjammer spinning out of control, Scott and Ch’od … lost. Untethered. Somewhere in space.

  “Jean?” Corsair asked, above her, holding out a hand to help her up.

  She took it, rising immediately to her feet and then using his shoulders, strong like his son’s, to steady herself.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Just a few seconds,” he answered, his words just as curt, just as hurried. “Jean, can you …”

  “Quiet, Corsair,” she snapped unintentionally. “I’ve got to concentrate, search space just to find them. Then, we’ll see if I’ve got the strength it’s going to take to pull them back.”

  Corsair’s mouth snapped shut. He squeezed her arm once, gently, and helped her sit in the pilot’s seat. As much as she tried to focus all of her thoughts on her search for Scott, there was still a part of her left disoriented by the injury to her head. She had banged it pretty good on something there in the cockpit, and couldn’t even recall what it had been. In the few seconds she had been semi-conscious, her mind had heard and recorded much, only some of which was beginning to register with her. Raza had been injured, rather badly. Rogue was bringing him into the Starjammer and she and Corsair would rush to treat the cyborg’s wounds. That made three wounded, not including herself, and two possibly …