by Stuart Moore
“Easy, child,” Nightcrawler said, moving toward her. “Slow down.”
Kitty scurried away from him, planted herself at a console across from the pilot’s seat. Her jeans were torn, her arm clotted with blood.
Can’t blame her for being anxious, Jean thought. It took us all a little time to get used to Kurt’s demonic appearance.
They sat in the large command area of the X-Men’s skyship, hovering just off the shore of Lake Michigan. Stealth screens protected the ship from prying eyes. Jean didn’t trust that tech, so she’d blanketed the area with a psi-probe as an extra precaution. So far, no swimmers or boats had triggered her alarms.
Cyclops walked out of the back area, carrying a first-aid kit. “Kitty, let me have a look at that arm.” The girl stuck out her arm and resumed speaking.
“Storm and Peter and Hairy Guy, they mopped the place up with the armored goons, but then that lady came in—the one I told you about before, the one that came to my school and tried to recruit me at my house? She looked… well, she looked different, that’s for sure. Major wardrobe change… less preppy, more burlesque.”
“Emma Frost,” Jean murmured.
“She’s supposed to run this school in Massachusetts,” Kitty continued. “Like yours, I guess. Well, more like the Dr. Evil version of yours. Anyway, she just kind of… blinked, I guess… and your friends all grabbed their heads like they’d been tasered. I heard it, too, like a dentist’s drill in my head, but not like they did. She took ’em out without firing a shot.”
Jean looked over at Cyclops. He paused in the act of unspooling a bandage, nodding as their eyes met.
“A telepath,” he said.
She nodded. “Powerful one.”
“Then a bunch of other guys carried ’em off, into the sci-fi hovercraft. She called ’em pawns—they wore the other kind of armor.” Kitty gestured. “That kind.”
Jean glanced toward the back of the command room. The two attackers from the alley sat propped up against a storage locker, bound at the wrists and ankles.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I tagged along for the ride. Ms. Frost, she took Peter and them to this big industrial park just outside the city. Locked ’em up in cages, said something about experimenting on them, one by one. I freaked out, lost it a little I guess, and Ms. Frost spotted me. I think she actually heard the panic in my head.
“I ran, hid inside another one of their hoverthingies while it was taking off. When we got to the city limits, I bolted. I’ve been running ever since.”
Cyclops sealed a large bandage around Kitty’s thin arm. She winced.
“You’re mostly just scraped up,” he said, “but some of these cuts are pretty deep. Keep this on for a day or two, you should be okay.”
He stood up, walked over to Jean, and smiled. She’d missed that smile, more than she knew. She reached up and touched his glove with her own.
“I’m through tangling with shadows,” he said.
Jean nodded and rose to her feet. Kitty and Nightcrawler watched, curious, as the two of them crossed to the back of the room. They stood above the prisoners for a moment, studying them. What had Kitty called them?
Pawns.
Cyclops gestured at one of the men. “Can you mind-scan him?” The pawn still wore that blank, bisected mask—but Jean could feel the fear radiating from him.
“As good as done.”
She knelt down and reached for the man’s head. He tried to wriggle away, but his wrists and ankles were bound. The Phoenix fire rose up, forming a faint halo this time. Jean touched the man’s head, allowing her power to reach out. All at once, she was inside the mind of—
* * *
—LAST NAME Quinones—first name Juan to one side of the family, Johnny to the other. Mother from Texas, father from Puerto Rico. Birth certificate? Don’t know—nobody knows—
Rough childhood in Chicago—runt of the family—four older brothers—Johnny/Juan a punching bag—prove myself make ’em proud make ’em pay. Running numbers good money till it’s not— damned internet—poor hungry need cash—Mom’s damn oxy problem not helping—
Filipe says Frost Enterprises hiring. Stupid mask heavy armor but pay’s good pay’s real pay’s fast. The hell is this place anyway? Call us pawns—some knights, bishops. Rich people, expensive suits. Lady in charge—White Queen—don’t ask about her. Last guy did is drooling in a straightjacket. Don’t—
Somebody else, too. Even worse. Don’t sneak up on him, he don’t like that. Looks different, they say, at night or when he’s angry. Sometimes smooth and suave, sometimes dirty like a scarecrow. The Mastermind, he calls himself. Master Master MASTERMIND—
* * *
THE MAN bucked, his body flopping like a fish. Jean held onto his head, gritted her teeth, and probed deeper. Mastermind, she thought. Whoever that was, the name was enough to terrify this pawn.
Frost Enterprises, she thought. Tell me more.
Outside city. Map, location, fences all around. Guards at every station—
She concentrated, reading the floor plan in his mind. The guard schedule, the nature and extent of its weaponry and defenses. He didn’t know everything…
Who are they? She pushed harder. Who’s behind all this?
Inner… Inner Circle—
She struck a wall. Jean blinked, surprised. This man had no psychic powers, no innate defenses—yet her probing had triggered some sort of barrier, forcing her back. Oddly, she found herself smiling.
That might have stopped Marvel Girl, she thought. But not the Phoenix.
Who? She pressed forward, her power an angry song within her. Who do you work for?
The man stiffened, cried out. The wall within him began to buckle.
The—
The Phoenix flared bright, forcing itself inside his mind. It was fierce, terrible. Unstoppable.
The Hellfire Club—
* * *
“JEAN!”
Cyclops’s hands on her shoulders pulled her back to reality. She loosed her grip on the masked man’s head, barely noticing as he slumped to the floor.
Hellfire Club, she thought.
Nightcrawler appeared in a puff of smoke, startling her. The blue-furred mutant pulled off the man’s mask, began examining him. His eyes were blank, staring.
“What did you do to him?” Cyclops asked.
Anger flared in her. Again? Again you question me?
“I need a moment,” she said.
She walked away, toward the pilot’s seat. There wasn’t space for privacy in the command room, but she had to get a bit of distance. Not just to calm her thoughts, but to process what she’d learned.
The Hellfire Club. She’d heard that phrase before, in the vision she’d experienced just before her arrival at the mansion. Things had happened so quickly since then—a young mutant in trouble, teammates captured, the battle with the armored men. She’d had no time to reflect on the nature of the time slips, no time to process what had been happening to her. The sinister room in Jason Wyngarde’s house on Kirinos, the horrific hunt—what did it all mean?
Wyngarde. He was the one who’d mentioned the club, referred to himself as a member. Was it some sort of secret society? Had an ancestor of his belonged to it, decades or centuries ago?
“Jean?”
Cyclops was staring at her again. Not with alarm, but with concern—the concern of a man in love. That look, the expression on his face, made her heart ache.
I’ve got to tell him, she thought. All of it, everything that’s happening to me. I’ll explain that some unknown force—maybe a new manifestation of my mutant power—has been catapulting me back through time. He’ll be alarmed, but he’ll understand. Together, we can face anything.
Then she remembered the tingle up her spine when she’d touched the black corset. The thrilling scent of Wyngarde’s cologne. The pumping of her blood as she rode to the hounds, knife raised to end the life of a helpless man.
How do I explain all that?
/> “This man is alive,” Nightcrawler said, climbing to his feet, “but he appears to be in some sort of coma.”
“It wasn’t me,” Jean said.
They all turned toward her.
“All I did was trip some sort of… psychic switch in his brain,” she explained. “Somebody else must have planted it there. To keep out nosy telepaths.”
“Somebody else?” Kitty let out a laugh. “Somebody with a platinum dye job, I bet.”
Jean nodded. “The White Queen.”
Kitty blinked. “White what now?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Jean straightened herself. “I know where Logan and the others are being held, and I know how to get in.”
Scott was staring at her. In his eyes, she saw a terrible flash of doubt. He turned away quickly, but the damage was done. For the first time, she wondered: Does he actually think I’m lying to him?
Cyclops crossed over to the pilot’s console, avoiding her gaze. “Fire up the engines, Kurt,” he said. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
FROST ENTERPRISES occupied seven secluded acres to the southwest of Chicago. Groves of thick fir trees surrounded it on all sides, shrouding the complex in darkness.
The limo glided through the night air, decelerating to an almost silent halt as it reached the guard’s station. The car’s paint job was spotless, its surface as clean and unmarred as if it had just been thoroughly scrubbed. The driver lowered the tinted window and stuck his head out. He wore a pawn’s mask and Kevlar armor.
“Juan Quinones,” he said, handing over an ID card. “Reporting in.”
The guard swiped the card, then smirked at the driver.
“Juan?”
The driver stared at him.
“C’mon, Johnny.” The guard waved the card in the air. “Since when do you go by ‘Juan,’ man?”
The driver shrugged. “Just trying it out.”
The guard swept his eyes across the front cabin. In the passenger seat, a second pawn sat huddled under a blanket. Only a masked face was visible.
“What happened to you, Rick?” the guard asked.
“Tangled with the muties,” the driver replied. “He needs a little patching up.”
The passenger waved a hand, feebly.
The guard gestured toward the back seat, which was hidden from view behind tinted windows. “You bag ’em?”
“Came up empty.”
The guard whistled. “Queen’s not gonna be pleased.”
“Tell me about it.” The driver sighed. “Time to take our medicine.”
“Vaya con Dios… Juan.” The guard reached into his booth, triggered the gate mechanism. “You’re gonna need it.”
Inside the gate, a narrow paved road wound around the complex. Warehouses and laboratories rose up at uneven intervals, shielded from one another by metal fences and copses of trees. The limo cruised toward an employee parking lot, moving at a steady, unhurried pace.
Cyclops parked the car. He whipped off his pawn mask and his ruby-quartz glasses, slapping his visor into place before his deadly eye-beams could blast forth. The passenger shrugged off the blanket and tore off her own mask.
“Slick job, Juan,” Kitty Pryde said.
Cyclops raised an eyebrow. “This is your audition for the X-Men? Sassing the leader?”
She shrugged, smirking. Cyclops toggled the privacy barrier down and turned toward the back seat.
“Kurt, you ready?”
Nightcrawler stuck his head through the barrier window. He gave an exaggerated thumbs-up sign.
“Good—you’re with me. Kitty, you’ve been here before, you said you’re good with computers… scout around, see if you can hack into the system, but do not engage these people. They’re armed and extremely dangerous. Got that?” He paused, then added, “If you find the others, free Wolverine first. Then stand back.”
Kitty nodded, eyes wide. She gave a little salute, melted though the car door, and was gone.
“That one,” Nightcrawler said, “is quite something.”
Cyclops nodded. “She might be just what we need. A fresh start.” He clicked open the doors, and they stepped outside into the cold air. A two-story laboratory building stood nearby, its entrance guarded by three men in pawn uniforms. They didn’t even glance over at the car. The parking lot was dark, gloomy enough to conceal two costumed figures from view.
“Something feels different,” Nightcrawler said, keeping his voice low. “About this mission, I mean.”
Cyclops shrugged. “It’s Jean’s plan.”
“Maybe that’s it.”
“Speaking of which…”
He gestured up at the top of a line of trees. A light was rising there—a distant glow. The pawns noticed it, too. They moved away from the building, pointing upward and talking in low voices.
Nightcrawler grinned. “Follow my lead.” He vanished in a puff of smoke, reappearing a few meters closer to the building.
Cyclops took off at a run, ducking low, keeping his eyes on the treeline. High above, the distinctive flame trail of the Phoenix resolved into view, blazing across the sky. The guards ran toward it, barking into their shoulder-radios.
Cyclops glanced back as he reached the door. The guards were clustered out in the parking lot, visible in the glow of a light pole, staring upward. Jean was too high, moving too fast, for them to make out her human form within the flame.
Nightcrawler teleported in, startling Cyclops. “You have the keycard?” he asked. Cyclops nodded, pulling out Johnny Quinones’s card and running it across the security pad. With a click, the door slid open.
The corridor inside was all metal, lined with heavy doors and clouded windows. They’d pieced together a rough layout of the complex from Kitty’s description and Jean’s mind-scan of the pawn. If the information was accurate, this building held the testing lab where the other X-Men were imprisoned.
“We appear to be lucky so far,” Nightcrawler said, indicating the empty hallway. In the next instant they heard footsteps coming from around the corner, several yards ahead.
“Why did you have to say that?” Cyclops reached for his visor.
“Hold on a moment, mein Freund.” Nightcrawler touched his arm. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to try.”
Cyclops stepped back, frowning. A pawn strode into view, his weapon raised. A second guard joined him, then a third.
“Kurt?” Cyclops said.
The blue-furred mutant vanished, reappearing in midair beside the first pawn. He punched the man in the face and teleported again, reappearing behind the second pawn. He brought both fists down on the man’s neck and vanished, just as the third pawn was turning.
He appeared again, slightly higher this time. “Boo,” Nightcrawler said, slamming his fist into the man’s masked face. The three guards dropped to the floor simultaneously. Another BAMF and Nightcrawler reappeared back where he’d started—at Cyclops’s side.
He hadn’t touched the floor once.
“Very impressive,” Cyclops said.
“Thank you, sir!” Nightcrawler gave a theatrical bow.
Scott.
Cyclops jumped, looked around. The voice had been in his mind.
Jean?
No. This was someone else.
Scott Summers? the voice said.
“Kurt, we’ve been spotted.” He whirled toward Nightcrawler. “Go. Find Storm and the others!”
Nightcrawler hesitated. “But—”
“They’ve got a telepath—she’s inside my head. I’ve been compromised; you need to go on alone. That’s an order.”
Nightcrawler nodded. “Be careful.”Then once again, he vanished.
Cyclops shook his head, tried to clear it. When he looked up, past the bodies of the fallen guards, he knew what he would see.
“Emma Frost, I presume.”
She stood alone, an icy vision in high boots, a tight corset, and a dramatic white cape. Her sharp eyes showed no fear, no hesitation at facing off aga
inst one of the most powerful X-Men. Again, her voice sounded in his head.
A pleasure.
He felt tendrils of thought, electrical impulses probing, reaching into his brain.
You’ve suffered a loss, she observed. I learned that much from your friends. But your psychic structure… it doesn’t match that of a man in mourning.
Cyclops stepped back, closing his mind as best he could. Forced himself to think of trivial things—celebrity gossip, traffic reports in Westchester, the topiary around the mansion.
Chilly outside. Do I need a haircut?
“Oh!” Emma said aloud. “You’ve been taught defenses. By someone close to you, perhaps?”
“What’s your game?” he asked. “Why are you kidnapping mutants?”
“That?” She made a dismissive gesture in the air. “That was Shaw’s idea. You’ll meet him soon enough.”
He stepped forward, touching the control stud on the side of his visor. She didn’t move.
“Do I have to go through you?” he asked.
“That’s one option.” She smirked, then looked strangely thoughtful. “Yet I think the two of us have a lot in common.”
He felt a burst of anger. Behind his visor, his eyes flashed red.
“Now I’m sure of it,” she murmured. “Summers, we’re both in the business of training mutants to use their gifts. My school is just a bit… stricter than yours.”
He shook his head, tried to clear it. She’d withdrawn her probes, respecting his privacy… for some unknown reason. Yet the sight of her, the sound of her words, touched something inside him. Something he couldn’t identify.
“Ms. Frost… Emma,” he said. “What do you want?”
“You know, no one ever asks me that.” She gave a little laugh. “I think of myself as a fourth-wave feminist. I seek to advance my status within a very stuffy, male-dominated—but powerful—organization.”
“The Hellfire Club.”
“Yes!” she said. “And it’s not just about me. I’m a sort of warrior, fighting in the cause of all women. That’s why I sought to recruit your little Kitten. Remember her? Frizzy-haired nerd with the annoying habit of walking through walls?”