Their eyes had met then. Trish had known what his hesitation signified. Hank had wanted to say “for me,” not “for us.” He’d wanted to acknowledge their past, and the small reconciliation that her actions had created. But he hadn’t said it. He’d been afraid, she knew, that she hadn’t done it for him at all. Afraid that she might mistake his gratitude for something more intimate.
“You’re very welcome,” she had said, and she’d kissed him on the nose the way she had always done in older, better times.
Then he and the others were gone, running to aid their teammates. Trish was on her way as well, heading north on Broadway. In her time with Magneto, she had discovered that her tapes were being delivered to the MTV offices, where they were continuing to broadcast coverage of the occupation of Manhattan.
She reached Times Square and glanced quickly around to orient herself. Just a few years earlier, Times Square had still been one of the more dangerous areas of the city. It had been cleaned up, spit-shined, and marketed to Boomers and GenXers nationwide.
Now it was trashed again.
After a moment, she identified her destination. The Viacom Building, named for MTV’s parent company, at 1515 Broadway, the northwest corner of Broadway and Forty-fourth Street. The doors were open, but the escalators were off, so she had to trudge up the long flight of steps to the lobby. At least the elevators were running.
When the elevator slid open, there was a moment of tension as those in the MTV foyer froze, probably wondering if the mutants had finally decided to shut them down. Trish also froze, wondering if they had instituted any security devices she should be aware of.
“Trish?” a male voice asked.
Among a group clustered around the lobby was Doug Samuels, a camera operator she had worked with before he’d gone on to ABC.
“Oh, Doug, thank God,” she said, and rushed to him.
Only when she broke the embrace did she realize that she had been holding on to him for dear life. Then the whole story spilled out of her, with the group surrounding her and Doug growing larger as she spoke. When somebody came out with a camera, though, Trish clammed up.
“What’s wrong?” the woman with the camera asked. “We’ve got to report on all of this. Keep going.”
“No,” Trish said, shaking her head. “No way. I’m not the subject here, I’m the reporter. I don’t care who wants to carry it, but I’m going to be the one reporting the story.”
Nobody argued with that. Which was good. Trish would not have been able to handle argument.
When all the cameras were set up, Trish began to speak. “This is Trish Tilby reporting from hell,” she said. Nobody snickered.
“You’ve all seen my reports, I assume, but I have no idea what parts of them were censored,” Trish continued. “Before I tell you the story, what I’ve been through, before I talk about Magneto, or the X-Men, or what’s really at stake here, I want to tell you about two people.
“Their names were Kevin and Caroline, and they died a little while ago. A man and a woman, a human and a mutant, they gave their lives to see that you, the people of our world, would have an opportunity to decide for yourselves what you want to make of it. They died believing that we, as a race of beings, could separate what Magneto and other mutants have done, from mutantkind in general. That we would do the right thing.
“What saddens me is, I’m not certain if they died in vain. I truthfully don’t know if we’re all grown up enough, we humans, to judge all beings individually. Or I should say, I know that some of us can and will be fair and logical and rational. Others will not. What I am uncertain about is the numbers. How many of you are the ones Kevin and Caroline died for? And how many are the kind whose words and beliefs motivate a monster like Magneto?
“I’m trying to have the same faith Kevin and Caroline did. I’m trying so very hard.”
* * *
THE Harley had been abandoned as they got within half a block of the Alpha Sentinel. Archangel grabbed Gambit and Val Cooper, each by an upraised hand, and flew. Val knew it had to be a strain for Warren. He was powerful, but he had no super-enhanced strength to go along with his other mutant gifts.
Val felt extremely vulnerable, dangling there in the sky with only one man’s grip between her and certain death on the street below. Still, it wasn’t as if she had any real choice. The Alpha Sentinel had to be reprogrammed and she was the only one who could do it.
As they flew to the height of the Alpha unit’s waist, it spoke, its voice a soulless, mechanical drone that seemed, nevertheless, to have a distinctly hostile personality.
“Halt, mutants,” it commanded, and Val was relieved that Professor Xavier’s psionic presence in her mind had fooled the killing computer.
“You are approaching too close to this unit,” it announced. “Please do not approach any further.”
Archangel flew higher, and Val felt for a moment as though she was going to slip from his grasp. She was tempted to grab for his hand with her other, but that would throw off his equilibrium, and they might all fall.
“You ready, Gambit?” Archangel asked.
“Gambit was born ready, mon ami,” the Cajun answered. “Hang on.”
Then he dive-bombed the Sentinel, trailing Gambit and Val beneath him. She wanted to scream. She didn’t. Perhaps Professor Xavier’s psionic presence was calming her, she thought.
“Warning!” the Alpha Sentinel barked. “You are too close to this unit. While this unit is programmed not to attack mutants, this unit is also programmed to defend itself against any attack which is hostile, or which this unit perceives to be hostile.”
“Bombs away!” Archangel shouted as he swooped low above the Sentinel’s head and shoulders.
Then he dropped Gambit.
“Allez!” Gambit shouted.
Val couldn’t look. As Archangel snagged her other hand, getting a better grip on her, she tried not to think about how close he might have come to dropping her. She tried not to imagine. Gambit’s calculated fall down to the Sentinel’s shoulder.
“Fast, Remy!” Warren shouted. “Move it, man!”
Then Val had to look. Gambit stood on the lip of titanium alloy that separated the Sentinel’s shoulder from its neck. With one hand on the upraised seam that surrounded the Alpha unit’s head like a crown, Gambit leaned out over open space, many stories above the street.
The Sentinel was reaching for him.
Archangel urged Gambit on. Val was not certain if that urgency was driven by fear for the Cajun’s safety—now that the Sentinel was reacting to his presence—or concern that he would not be able to carry Val much longer. She realized rather quickly that she did not want to know.
In the shadow thrown by the robot’s massive head, Gambit’s eyes glowed red. The Sentinel touched its own shoulder, its hand scrambling with a metal-on-metal scrape that made Val want to scream.
Gambit laid his palm flat on the back of the Sentinel’s head, precisely where Val had instructed him to. Instantly, the metal began to glow ever brighter. At the last possible moment, Gambit pulled away and the back of the Sentinel’s head exploded.
The Alpha unit reached for him. From within the long duster, Gambit pulled out his bo-stick, which telescoped out in his hands to a length of more than five feet. With one thrust, he threw off the Sentinel’s grasp, but that would be his only chance.
He took it. With only two steps to gain momentum, he leaped up on top of the Sentinel’s head, where he would be an easy target for its groping hands. Before it could react, he reached down, grabbed hold of the edge of the hole made by his volatile mutant power, and flipped down inside the Sentinel’s head, into the command center whose entrance he had blown wide open.
Once inside, Gambit disappeared from the Sentinel’s sensors as if into thin air. As far as it was concerned, he was gone. That left Val and Archangel to deal with.
“Go, Warren, quick, before it gets pissed off enough to swat us out of the sky!” she barked.
W
ith nauseating speed, Archangel swooped low toward the Sentinel’s back, then climbed rapidly in a straight line, out of its reach, toward the exposed computerized brain of the robot. A moment later, they were inside and Warren was massaging his strained arm muscles and stretching his fingers. Val let out a long sigh of relief.
Gambit smiled at her.
“Something funny, X-Man?” Val asked, in no mood for humor.
“Non, Valerie,” he said. “Gambit jus’ relieved, de same as you. Look around, mes amis, we did it. We’re inside.” Then they were all smiling.
“You do your job, Val,” Archangel said, “and then it’s dinner at Tavern on the Green for everybody, on me!”
Val liked the sound of that. Assuming, of course, that Tavern on the Green was still there. But the smile left her face the moment she turned her attention to the command center of the Alpha Sentinel’s brain. If she could reprogram it, something she had vowed to everyone that she could, indeed, do, then the war against Magneto would take an almost surely decisive turn in their favor.
Problem was, she wasn’t exactly certain what Magneto had done to them, how he had reprogrammed the Sentinels in the first place. Or if he’d prepared some kind of failsafe that might kill her merely for logging into the command center.
But she was about to find out.
It was the only option. Their only real hope.
TWELVE
“NOT another step, Marko, or you will face the wrath of the terrible Toad!” Mortimer Toynbee shrieked, as he leaped into the path of destruction the Juggernaut was tearing through Magneto’s forces.
“Hmm, hmm,” the Juggernaut said through a smile. “Ya gotta be … oh, come on, I …”
Then he laughed so hard, he threw back his head and tears rolled down his cheeks inside his mask. Infuriated, the Toad sprang at him and those extraordinarily powerful legs knocked Cain Marko on his butt in the middle of Thirty-third Street. But Cain was still laughing. He tried to get up, and the Toad knocked him down again.
Inside his mystical armor, the Juggernaut felt pain.
“Hey,” he said. “That kinda—”
The Toad leaped again, lightning quick, and laid him out in the street with a kick so powerful, it left the Juggernaut gasping for air, even inside his armor.
“I will teach you to laugh at me, you dimwitted …” Toynbee began, as he leaped at the Juggernaut for the fourth time, his pistoning feet aimed directly at the neck joint where helmet met armor, the spot where Cain was most vulnerable.
But even those who had seen him move often forgot how fast Cain Marko was, which was understandable given his size. Understandable, but unforgivable.
He snatched the Toad out of the air by his feet, then stood quickly, holding Toynbee upside down. The Juggernaut wasn’t laughing anymore.
“You pissed me off, Toynbee,” he said. “Yer lucky I don’t break both your legs.”
“Sure, you’re making nice with Xavier’s brood now,” the Toad said, the mockery quite clear in his voice. “You’re a Boy Scout, Marko.”
That did it. Cain righted the Toad with one twist, and held the little mutant up so they were face to face, Toynbee’s legs ratcheting beneath him, trying to get traction anywhere, even off the Juggernaut’s chest. Cain wasn’t having any of it.
“You can’t win, Marko!” he cried. “Magneto’s reign has come, as I always knew it would. Your kind will be trampled underfoot along with all the other flatscans, and traitors like the X-Men. You’re a dead man, Marko. Why don’t you lie down like a good boy, so we can bury you?”
Cain was flush with rage, so overwhelmed with fury that he couldn’t think straight enough to form any kind of cogent response. He spit his frustration, and gave up trying to speak. Instead, he cracked the Toad across the face with a backhand so massive, and backed by such extraordinary strength, that Toynbee sagged limp in his hands, unconscious from the blow.
“Runt,” Cain growled, and dropped the Toad at his feet.
He was tempted to step on Toynbee’s head, but he was acutely aware of the fight raging around him. That day, he was one of the white hats. It would probably never happen again, but as long as he could, and foolish as it was, he was going to play by Xavier’s rules.
“All right,” he growled. “Who’s next?”
“Try me.” A bass rumble came from behind him, and a hand, large even by his standards, landed on Cain’s shoulder.
The Juggernaut turned to face Javits, one of Magneto’s original Acolytes, a powerful mutant even larger than he himself was. The one-eyed Acolyte didn’t move.
“There’s a difference between brave and stupid,” Cain said, and slammed a fist into Javits’s left cheek.
The Acolyte blinked. That was all.
“Indeed there is,” Javits said. “But the difference is lost on you.”
Javits hit him and Cain stumbled backward. He’d heard a crack that he was afraid might be his helmet, and more afraid might be his skull. A second later, he realized it had been one of Javits’s fingers breaking. The huge mutant shook his right hand, sucking a breath in between his teeth.
The Juggernaut smiled as he stood, glad the jerk was in pain, and determined to make it continue. He’d been standing still when Javits hit him. When he was moving, it would be a different story. He launched himself toward the Acolyte.
Out of instinct developed over the years because of his size and strength, Javits stood his ground.
“Moron,” Cain mumbled under his breath.
He felt ribs snap under his helmet as he slammed headfirst into Javits’s chest. The Acolyte cried out and went down, trampled under the Juggernaut’s massive boots. He didn’t look back to see if Javits was still alive, and despite his attitude about being one of the good guys, he didn’t much care.
Half a block away, he saw a group of several dozen people, probably mutants, turning down Fifth Avenue. They might have been moving on to another skirmish, ordered to another location because the Acolytes figured they had the X-Men contained. But the way they were nervously glancing back at the battlefield on Thirty-third Street, Cain didn’t think so.
He thought they were running away. It made no sense, but that’s how he figured it.
A sudden blast of energy struck him between the shoulder blades, and Cain actually stumbled forward slightly. He turned, ready to fight, but his opponents were not advancing. Not yet.
Three Acolytes faced him: the field leader, Amelia Voght, whom Cain remembered as an old flame of his half-brother’s, and a pair of blond bruisers, identical twins down to their Marine buzz-cuts. These were the Kleinstocks, the twerps who had tried to recruit him earlier that day.
“You’ve caused enough trouble, Juggernaut,” Voght said. “Why don’t we see if I can teleport that helmet off your head without taking your head with it. Either way, I’m going to win.”
“You can try, babe,” he snarled. “Either way, I’m gonna—”
Cain faltered. Gears churned in his head, actions and consequences roiled together. He glanced quickly around at the battle that, no matter how long they held out, the X-Men didn’t have a chance in hell of winning.
“Ah, screw it,” he said.
The Juggernaut turned and ran.
* * *
IVAN Skolnick had had enough. He was loyal to the government, to human society, to the Earth, not because any of those things were perfect—in truth, humanity was little better than a primal beast. But tyranny, like Magneto’s new empire, was the ultimate primal beast. Humanity was about choice and evolution, about the collective will of billions of people, not the new order demanded by one individual, no matter how powerful.
Skolnick knew that his own nagging self-doubt and fear had driven him to betray his fundamental faith in humanity, and he now regretted it. He knew, also, that he could never turn back. That he could not expect to be forgiven for actions the American government would consider the most heinous of crimes. There was fear, there, as well, fear of the consequences of his actions.
But all doubt was gone. He knew what he must do.
In the space between breaths, that certainty coalesced into action. As Funnel renewed his attack, as human police officers loyal to Manhattan’s conquerors turned their guns on their brothers in blue, Major Ivan Skolnick called up every ounce of concentration he could muster, and turned his mutant powers on his allies.
With a single clap of his hands, Skolnick sent a wave of stunning force toward Funnel, pummeling the other mutant and several police officers. They were driven across the steps, several stumbled and fell, but Funnel stayed up until the force of Skolnick’s blast slammed him into a hand railing. Skolnick heard bones break, but he couldn’t allow himself to be concerned. It wasn’t that difficult. Special Ops had trained him not only to fight, but to kill when necessary and feel remorse only in church.
Funnel wasn’t dead, though. He simply wouldn’t be getting up for a while.
“Freeze!” two police officers shouted simultaneously.
In the moment it took them to swing their weapons toward Major Skolnick, the moment in which he also swung his empty—but no less deadly—hands toward them, he noted and filed a thought for later amusement. They actually say “freeze” in real life, he thought. But then, what else would they say?
The officers fired just as Skolnick snapped his fingers, slapping the bullets back along their trajectories and blowing out the doors of City Hall.
* * *
GABI Frigerio hung back as the resistance fighters stormed City Hall, crying out in triumph over a victory they owed to the other side. Well, not exactly the other side. Still, it had been one of Magneto’s top people, the former soldier, Major Skolnick, who had been the deciding factor.
The people of Manhattan streamed into City Hall and the police officers who had remained loyal to Commissioner Ramos began to incarcerate those who had followed Magneto. In minutes, the building was completely in their control. Maxine Perkins, the woman Magneto had appointed mayor, did not even argue as she was placed behind bars. Gabi liked to think it was because the woman had enough sense to be ashamed of herself.
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