X-Men

by Stuart Moore

  “Sorry!” He moved toward her, pointing at the sky. “Did you see…?”

  “See what?”

  He realized, from her furious expression, that she hadn’t even seen the flame bird. The whole incident had taken less than a minute.

  “I don’t think this is going to work out,” she said.

  Peter’s spider-sense faded to a dull hum. Whatever that thing had been, the danger it posed was gone… at least for now. He turned back to Cissy with an apologetic shrug.

  “Probably not,” he sighed.

  * * *

  DOCTOR STEPHEN Strange stared at the bookcase. It stretched from floor to ceiling, covering an entire wall of his study. He scanned the shelves, making certain not to focus on any single title. That would defeat the purpose of this exercise.

  When he’d come home with his morning coffee, a large garden slug had been crawling up the door. A disquieting omen. After several hours of meditation, he’d been unable to pinpoint the source.

  So, with some reluctance, he had turned to an exercise taught to him long ago by his mentor, the Ancient One. The books in this room included ancient Chalcedonian texts, relics from the Library of Alexandria, and even a few 1930s pulp magazines with spells encoded in the patterns of their ragged-edged pages. He had asked his associate Wong to randomize the books, moving them deliberately out of their customary order.

  Letting out his breath, he closed his eyes. Where diligence fails, he thought, perhaps synchronicity may serve.

  He reached out and grasped hold of a thick, weathered volume.

  Before he could open his eyes, however, a powerful mystic wave struck his mind. Images of passion, anger—and great evil. An avatar from ancient Greek writings: the Phoenix, symbol of fire and rebirth.

  Instantly he knew: This is no threat from without—no incursion from some otherworldly realm. This is happening right here, right now, in this very city.

  I must summon others.

  He ran from the study, dropping the book on his desk. Only later would he note its title: Magick Without Tears, by Aleister Crowley.

  * * *

  SCOTT LANG, the hero called Ant-Man, stared at the computer monitor. He climbed up the side of the display, pausing to lean over for another look. When he reached the top, he braced himself with his legs and hung down in front of the screen.

  “Nope,” he said. “Doesn’t make any sense upside down, either.”

  He glanced across the small monitoring room located on the top level of Avengers Tower. Natasha Romanoff paced back and forth, talking intently on a cell phone. She wore her Black Widow uniform, which—Scott realized—probably wasn’t a good sign.

  Tony Stark leaned against another desk. He wore a two-piece Armani suit and a single Iron Man glove, from which rose a high-res hologram showing heat measurements and spectrometer readings. His lips moved rapidly, silently, his eyes flicking back and forth as he paged through the holographic display.

  Scott leaped down onto the desk. “Tony,” he called.

  Stark twitched, turned his head.

  “What’s that?” Scott pointed at the screen with his entire, inch-long arm.

  Stark walked over, casually deactivating the hologram. “That,” he said, “is a thermal reading from a source of enormous power. The blip originated in Central Park, just north of the Great Lawn, and is currently climbing into Earth orbit.”

  “Yeah, but what is it?”

  They stared at the image together. The “blip” was roughly oval in shape, with wing-like protuberances on each side. It was solid red at the center, fading to orange and yellow at the edges. An altitude counter on the side of the image showed its progress through the upper layers of the atmosphere.

  “I don’t know,” Tony said.

  A clatter came from across the room. Scott whirled to see Natasha staring at them. Her phone lay on the floor.

  “Sorry,” she said, scooping up the phone in a graceful motion. “I just don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that before.”

  Tony rolled his eyes. “I say that all the time.”

  “Is it Thanos?” Scott asked. “Please say it’s not Thanos. I’m getting pretty tired of that mitten of his.”

  “It’s not,” Stark replied. “Readings don’t match. Any luck contacting Thor?”

  “Nope.” Scott shrugged. “He’s… what do you say? Off-planet. Off-realm? Off… someplace.”

  Tony nodded.

  “What about Doctor Strange?” Scott asked.

  “He’s clueless, too.” Tony let out a dry laugh. “First time I’ve seen that guy’s magic wand droop.”

  He’s really worried, Scott realized, watching his teammate closely. Whatever this is, it’s a big deal.

  Natasha strode over, frowning at the screen. “What’s our blip doing now?”

  “It’s accelerating,” Tony said, leaning down for a closer look. “Veering… toward the sun, it looks like. Whoa, that’s fast… aaaand it’s gone.” The blip vanished from the screen. A text window appeared.

  OBJECT HAS PASSED

  BEYOND SENSOR RANGE

  “Gone.” Scott blinked. “Gone is good, right?”

  “Maybe,” Natasha said. “Maybe not.”

  Tony Stark didn’t reply. He paced from one side of the room to the other, then back again. Finally, he stopped and touched a stud on his glove.

  “Friday,” he said. “Open a channel to Starcore.”

  Scott and Natasha exchanged blank looks. Sometimes, Scott realized, Tony made him feel like a little brother who’d never be allowed to play with the big kids.

  “What the hell is a Starcore?” he asked.

  * * *

  “REPLY TO Tony Stark,” Dr. Peter Corbeau said. “We are not yet operational. Sensor units are still being installed, and half our staff is en route from Earth. Whatever infra-galactic attack or mole-people invasion he’s dealing with, he’ll have to handle it himself.”

  Corbeau looked around the gleaming, freshly built control center. Good thing it takes seven minutes for radio messages to reach Earth, he thought. I really don’t feel like arguing with Stark in real time.

  Starcore had been designed, funded, and constructed faster than any satellite installation in history. Corbeau had pulled out all the stops, used his fierce intelligence and charm to ram through multiple levels of financing in record time. But astronauts were still at work outside, hooking up sensor modules and monitoring equipment. Only two of the center’s eight command consoles were lit—the bulk of the instrumentation was still dark. The central wall screen hadn’t even been activated.

  “Peter.” A dark-skinned woman rose from the other operational station. “You’ll want to see this.”

  “I don’t have time, Shira. We’re a solar-monitoring station, not some playboy super hero’s personal cell tower.”

  She held out a tablet to him. “Look.”

  With an impatient swipe he grabbed the tablet. Turning away, he stared at the display—and froze. Icy panic coursed through him.

  “Punch it up,” he said.

  Shira frowned. “Punch what up?”

  “All of it! Everything we’ve got.” He crossed to a terminal, began accessing work logs. “Order all EVA crews to cease operations and get back inside the station. Camera Four is operational, right?”

  “I think so.” She returned to her station, began working controls. “I take it you’ve seen that wavelength before?”

  “Yes,” he said. “In—in a way.”

  He stared at the screen, at the data sent by Stark. A simple table of figures, a few blurry thermal images—but to Corbeau they recalled things he’d spent the past year trying to forget. Images of dark fury, fueled by a passion beyond human comprehension. Memories of cold fingers probing his brain, tiptoeing through his darkest secrets.

  “Camera Four,” Shira said.

  The wall screen flickered to life. It showed stars shining in the void—and something else. A brightly burning dot, at the extreme left-hand edge o
f the image.

  “Magnify that,” he said.

  Shira manipulated the controls. As the image zoomed in the dot grew larger, wavering from side to side. The camera stabilized—revealing the fiery shape of a birdlike creature, raging with power. She stared at the screen.

  “What the hell is it?”

  “Not it,” Corbeau said. “She.”

  “It’s coming from the Earth, vectoring sunward,” she said. “Radiating energy… levels are off the charts.”

  “Are our people all inside?”

  She nodded. “Last crew just sealed the airlock behind them.”

  Corbeau stared, mesmerized, as the bird shape drew closer. A year ago, Jean Grey had used the skills taken from Corbeau’s mind to pilot a shuttle down to Earth. She’d passed through lethal levels of radiation, but somehow she had survived. Corbeau theorized that the solar rays—the heavy radiation—had altered her at the molecular level, jumpstarting her mutant ability to some unknown degree. In this new form, he believed, Jean had literally forced herself back to life.

  It was only a theory, of course. To verify it, he’d have had to examine Jean Grey personally. He’d tried to contact the X-Men, but they hadn’t returned his calls. Apparently they only sought him out when they needed his help, in between battles with the Sentinels or Magneto.

  Or maybe, he thought, they just didn’t want to face the truth.

  The burning figure—the Phoenix—spread its wings, nearly filling the large screen. At this proximity, Jean’s form was clearly visible at its center. Her face was savage, inhuman. The countenance of a wrathful god, sent to rain down judgment on the mortal world.

  Panic struck Corbeau again. Is she coming for me? To kill me, destroy all remnants of her past? Does she blame me, somehow, for what’s happened to her?

  He took a deep breath.

  No. That’s just… more hubris. Whatever Jean Grey has become, she’s far beyond caring about one man.

  Any man.

  “Sensor unit beta just came up,” Shira said. “Generating a plot now… the object is veering away from us.”

  Corbeau turned away from the screen, called up a schematic on his own monitor. A dotted line indicated Jean’s path, arcing elliptically away from Earth, passing by the Starcore station to curve around the flaming orb of the sun. A winking dot at the end of the line indicated her current position.

  “My god,” he said, “she’s still accelerating. She’s at point eight nine of lightspeed.”

  “She’s diving into the sun!” Shira came up behind him, staring over his shoulder. “Skimming through the corona, moving dangerously close to the photosphere. How can anything survive that?”

  “She’s using it,” Corbeau said. “The sun. She’s slingshotting around it, using it to boost her velocity.” He called up a counter to analyze the object’s speed. Point nine of lightspeed. Point nine two. Point nine five.

  A shockwave passed through the station. Screens flickered, lights winked off and on again. Corbeau grabbed his armrests, turning to see Shira stumble into a chair at a dormant workstation. Then the wall screen caught his eye. It was frozen on the image of the Phoenix, blazing its way through deep space. Burning deep red, fiery yellow wings bleeding energy, and at its core—like a child trapped in a burning house—a tiny human figure.

  The screen went black.

  “What the hell was that?” Shira shook her head, toggled the workstation to life.

  Corbeau frowned, holding down keys to reboot his own station. “Have you ever seen a hyperspace manifold being formed?”

  “No.” She stared at him. “No one has.”

  “Then we’ve just made history. Another Peter Corbeau first… Remind me to update my personal bio.” He turned, and realized she was staring at him. “What?”

  “Hang onto that ego, Doc.” Shira gave him a wry smile. “It might go down in history, too.”

  Corbeau stood up and paced across the room. The wall screen flickered back to life as the external camera rebooted. The image blurred, wavered, and refocused automatically on the subject of Starcore’s research.

  The sun. Source of all life in the solar system, the most powerful fusion generator in twenty-five trillion miles of space. It blazed steady, small flares dancing on the edge of the chromosphere. Nothing disturbed its surface, no anomalous readings showed on the electromagnetic counters.

  There was no sign of Jean Grey, of the Phoenix.

  She—they—were gone.

  The smile faded from Corbeau’s face. I should be relieved, he thought. A threat to my life—to all humanity, perhaps—has fled our solar system, possibly forever. Headed for the stars, where she might finally find… well, peace.

  I should be relieved.

  Yet somehow, as he returned to the task of rebooting Starcore’s systems, all Corbeau felt was a vague, nameless dread.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  HYPERSPACE HIT her like a drug, like needles coursing through her blood. Tachyons redshifted past, quarks tingled on her skin. Stars rushed by, bright stones in the ether-current, no sooner glimpsed than left behind.

  The Dark Phoenix threw back her head and laughed.

  Her power was no longer a song, but a rich symphony played on the superstrings that held all of time and space together. Here, in this realm beyond lightspeed, she could see them—the forty-two bands of hyperspace. Six points, seven strings emerging from each. They shone through the walls, burned away the thin membranes of existence, laying bare the inner structure of the universe.

  She stretched out a talon to pluck a string. It vibrated, sang, sent echoes rippling out among the stars. She was one step closer now. Closer to the primal forces—the last truths. The final knowing.

  How? she wondered. How could I ever have denied myself this?

  This was where she belonged. Among the stars, but apart from them. Within the universe, yet beyond it. Feeding on the fundamental forces, feeling them course into, through, and beyond her. The Phoenix needed no man, no woman, no mortal being. It was pure passion, pure joy. It would live forever.

  I will live forever.

  As soon as that feeling struck her, another sensation followed. Hunger. Dark, savage, consuming. An instinct from her host’s animal past, a need that could not be denied. She doubled over, wrenched with need, desperate for sustenance.

  Shivering, she summoned another gateway. It bloomed like a flower before her, a six-dimensional manifold in perfect symmetry. The stars slowed, and the strings of hyperspace gave way to still, frigid vacuum. The Phoenix spread her arms, extending fiery wings to warm herself.

  Ahead lay her prize. A main sequence, G-type star. Diameter a little less than one million miles; composition stable. Expected lifespan approximately six billion years.

  Eyes blazing, she dove in.

  As she entered the heliosphere, the solar wind slammed into her. Rippling through her hair, stinging her face. Whipping around in a spiral pattern, weaving powerful magnetic fields all around. There was something familiar about that.

  Spiral patterns. DNA.

  Mutation.

  Gasping with relief, she drew the energy inside herself. Continued down through the corona, into an area of sharply rising heat, ten million degrees kelvin. Twelve million. Fourteen. She laughed, sang, and drank it all in.

  The Phoenix arrowed down, her course straight and true, past the star’s dark photosphere, through the turbulent convective zone, into an area of hard radiation. Arms wide, she absorbed it all: heat, plasma, hydrogen and helium, and all the heavy elements.

  Voices cried out, faint in her mind. They seemed far away, separated by space and thought and centuries of evolution. She paid them no heed, continuing onward, drawing closer to the center—the source, the beginning, the place where light and heat and life were born.

  The core of the star.

  When she broke through, the heat around her surged again—up to sixteen million kelvin, hotter than any living being in the universe had ever before endured.
Pure fusion, wild and uncontrolled, blasting atoms apart, sundering time and space. Here in this floating hell, all matter—all energy—was absorbed and enlisted into a single, unstoppable process: the birth of fire.

  The Phoenix spread her wings and fed.

  Protons fused together and split violently apart, filling the void within her. Fueling her rage, her passion, her joy. The endless hunger of the Phoenix.

  Minutes later she soared through space, blazing with newfound power. The pain was gone; her vitality, her drive, had returned. Again, she laughed.

  This is my life, she thought. This is the life I was meant to lead.

  An object caught her eye. A tiny metal box, powered by controlled-tachyon engines, closing rapidly on her position. The Phoenix’s eyes widened; a predatory smile spread across her face.

  Changing course, she welcomed this new challenge. Not stopping, not even slowing her pace. Never pausing to look back at the smoldering cinder that—a mere six minutes ago—had been a healthy, shining star.

  * * *

  “FIRST OFFICER. What am I looking at?”

  “Transmission from the D’Bari system, Milord Captain. Sent… twelve minutes ago.”

  Aboard the Shi’ar Imperial dreadnought, First Officer Eluke stared at the horrific image on the main viewscreen. Captain Juber strode forward to join him, past the hovering communications and security stations, through the open space at the base of the three-story bridge.

  The screen showed a city street, tall buildings flanking a busy intersection filled with stalled vehicles. Dozens, hundreds of people thronged the street—citizens of D’Bari, with their distinctive olive-green skin and elongated faces. They stared upward as a blinding light washed over them, filling the sky from one horizon to the other.

  “The light of Armageddon,” Juber whispered.

  The people looked up, shielding their eyes. Their large mouths hung open in horror, confusion, fear. One of them turned to the camera, gesturing frantically as he made sharp guttural sounds.

  Eluke frowned. “I can run that through the translator—”

  “Don’t bother,” Juber said.

  The transmission ended abruptly. The image shifted to a view of D’Bari’s sun, throbbing and pulsing wildly.