X-Men; X-Men 2

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  She read quickly, printing everything on screen. As she proceeded through the documents, the set of her mouth tightened and her eyes narrowed. This was worse than she’d ever suspected.

  Downstairs, a second Yuriko strolled into the lobby, barely acknowledging the man at the desk. Since he’d just come on duty, he had no idea there were two of her loose in the building.

  In the office, a few minutes later, Mystique looked up suddenly at the faint klik of the door locks disengaging. Her time was up, right on schedule.

  The real Yuriko walked to her desk and began to hunt through the main drawer for something, seemingly unaware of the other presence in the room. Then, without warning and with a speed that defied description, she whirled around to level a Glock 19 at the intruder.

  “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

  A uniformed janitor stirred into view, hands waving before his body, fear plain on his face. He wanted no trouble.

  “Lo siento, a puerta fui abierto!” he said.

  Yuriko reached out for the man’s ID, hanging from a lanyard around his neck, comparing face to photo. Then she used her own terminal to access the night’s crew roster to make sure both were legitimate.

  With a wave of the hand, she dismissed the janitor and returned to her desk without giving the man another thought. It never occurred to her to wonder what a janitor was doing in her office without his cart of supplies.

  Mystique considered that as she strode quickly down the outer hallway, right past the man whose face she was using. The real janitor stared at her in disbelief—it was like watching your mirror image pass you by—and reflexively crossed himself. Mystique was thinking about Yuriko. This caper had gone down far more easily than she’d anticipated. That gave her hope, an emotion she hadn’t allowed herself since Magneto’s capture. Before long, if all went well, maybe it would be Stryker who was on the run. And the society he championed that lay in ruins.

  The Blackbird approached Boston low and late, literally skimming the surface of the harbor at an hour when they had sea and sky all to themselves. Their objective was a stretch of waterfront near the Marine Industrial Park that was in the nascent stages of urban renewal and gentrification, a city planner’s attempt to upgrade this part of the South End into a reasonable facsimile of the more respectable neighborhoods across I-93.

  They found a derelict slip with more than sufficient underwater clearance for their needs and gentled the Blackbird to a landing. They disembarked first, then signaled the autopilot to submerge the jet to its resting place on the bottom. There was a good ten-foot clearance to the top of the vertical stabilizers, the aircraft’s tallest point. Even at low tide, there was little chance of contact with the kind of small surface craft that cruised these waters, and even less of being seen.

  Hopefully, the women wouldn’t be around here long enough for either to become a problem. They both put on trench coats to cover their uniforms.

  As they made their way through the deserted and randomly derelict streets, Storm played with the atmospheric balance around them to roll a dusting of mist over this part of the city. She didn’t want a real fog, that would be too blatant, cause too much disruption to the local community; her goal was just enough to make it easy for them to slip out of sight if they had to.

  The coordinates Xavier had provided led them to a church.

  In better times, this had been a house of worship worthy of its parish. Constructed to last by stonemasons and old-world artisans who were building more for their children’s children than for themselves, it still presented a proud and dignified front to the desolation that surrounded it. The spire towered over the scattered clumps of row houses that remained and the long-abandoned factories that gave their owners and tenants work. Much of the stained glass, produced by contemporaries of Louis Comfort Tiffany, still remained, although it was probably only a matter of time before it was looted or destroyed.

  The wall of one of the buildings opposite had been tagged with some fresh graffiti: CLEAN THE GENE POOL! KILL MUTANT SCUM!

  Storm didn’t appreciate the sentiments.

  “They’ll never let us lead our lives,” she said, and this time she let her anger show. She clenched her fist, and from off in the distance, out to sea beyond the entrance to Boston Harbor, came the kettledrum beat of thunder.

  They circled the church without approaching it, and Jean used her teke to try every doorway they passed. To their surprise, all of them appeared to be stoutly locked.

  “Somebody taking care of this old place?” Storm wondered aloud.

  “I caught a couple of thought flashes from that bar up the street.”

  “From the guys we saw through the window?” Storm made a face. “You’re a braver woman than I am.”

  “Tell me about it,” Jean agreed, matching her tone to her friend’s disgust. “Thing is, this church has a rep. It’s supposed to be haunted. By its very own demon.”

  “Get out.”

  “No lie. They believe it. Even the local tough guys steer clear of St. Anselm’s.”

  “I’ve never met a demon.”

  “After you, then.”

  An artful combination of telekinesis and a push of wind popped the bolts on the main doors, which swung wide to their stops, creating an echoing boom throughout the body of the church. From the rafters, coveys of pigeons exploded into view, startled from their nighttime slumber.

  The women said nothing as they made their way down the nave. Most of the pews had either been taken or were trashed in various corners, leaving a large open space leading to the transept and the altar. Up in the shadows below the vaulted ceiling, a pair of chrome yellow eyes watched their progress. And then, in a faint bamf of imploding air, they disappeared.

  Just as suddenly, Storm stopped, looking steeply upward and to her right.

  “What?” Jean prompted.

  “A shift in the air,” she replied quietly, matter-of-factly.

  “Movement?”

  “More than that. A sudden vacuum there.” She pointed to where the lurking figure had been. “And an outrush of air from something popping into being.” She turned her arm to the altar. “There.”

  “Gehen sie raus,” came a whisper from the deepest darkness ahead of them, in a voice calculated to chill the soul. They saw a lit candle set beside an open Bible. As they watched, the flame flickered from a sudden breeze and the topmost pages stirred.

  “He’s gone again,” Storm said, and Jean nodded as they both heard from a balcony high overhead: “Ich bin ein Bote des Teufels!”

  “We’re not here to hurt you,” Storm called out. “We just want to talk!”

  Even as she spoke, she turned in response to another faint and distant shift in the air patterns, so that she started facing one way and finished having turned right around toward the entrance.

  “Ich bin die ausgeburt des Bösen,” the lurker cried in something close to a primal howl.

  Storm had a sudden, awkward thought. “You know,” she told Jean, “we’re assuming he speaks English.”

  “Not a problem,” Jean assured her. “He’s a teleporter.”

  “I noticed.”

  “That must be why the professor had so much trouble locking on to him with Cerebro.”

  “Will it be any easier for us to catch him?”

  “Not a problem.”

  Another howl, much closer, although try as they might neither Storm nor Jean could see him in the gloom of the church.

  “Ich bin ein dämon,” he called.

  Jean rolled her eyes and shifted her stance into a picture-perfect ValGal Barbie.

  “Are you bored yet?” she asked Storm.

  “Totally,” was the reply.

  “You want to bring him down, or shall I?”

  Storm narrowed her eyes in momentary concentration and snapped her fingers. Obediently, a bolt of lightning erupted from her hand, sizzling up one of the support columns and into the rafters of the church’s single spir
e, where it struck with an explosion of light and sound, a clap of thunder that pounded the air and stone around them like a hammer.

  They had a momentary glimpse of a vaguely human shape before it vanished. But when it reappeared almost instantaneously, at the far end of the nave, right above the altar, Jean was ready. As soon as she had a sense of his mental signature, she reached out with telepathy and telekinesis together, freezing his thoughts at the same time she locked him in place a dozen feet above the rubble-strewn floor. Trapped, he still fought her, defiant to the core.

  “Got him?”

  “He’s not going anywhere.” Jean brought him closer. Then, to the prisoner’s surprise, she smiled—genuine, winning, friendly—and held out her hand. “Are you?”

  “Please don’t kill me,” he pleaded in English, with a soft German accent that marked him as an educated man. It had a mellow timbre, the kind more suited to cabaret songs than playing the matinee-movie monster. “I never intended to harm anyone!”

  “I wonder how people ever got that impression,” Storm remarked wryly. “What’s your name?”

  “Kurt. Kurt Wagner.”

  “I’m Ororo. Call me Storm,” she told him. She flashed a sideways look to Jean to complement her thought. This is our assassin?

  Appearances are deceiving, Jean projected back at her. But—which way?

  Your call.

  With that thought from Storm, Jean cut loose the prisoner. He dropped lightly to the floor, landing on the balls and toes of his outsized feet. He looked poised to bolt, but Jean took it as a positive sign that he hadn’t immediately teleported. She kept her hand held out to him.

  “I’m Jean Grey. We’re here to help.”

  Kurt Wagner followed Quasimodo’s lead and lived up in the spire, on the level below the belfry. The walls were solid there, and he’d replaced the panes of broken stained glass with the precision and craftsmanship used for the originals. By day, when the sun was shining, both women recognized, the room would be ablaze with color. He used candles for illumination instead of electricity; their light was less likely to be spotted from the street. The height of the steeple gave him a panoramic view of the neighborhood. He had privacy and a decent chance of spotting any intruders. For a teleporting acrobat like him, whose natural coloration made him invisible in shadows, this was an ideal hideout.

  The furnishings were spartan, a function more of choice and aesthetics than of poverty. True, the pieces were mainly scavenged from the derelict and abandoned homes nearby, but they’d been restored with the same painstaking care and attention to detail as the windows. A bed, a table, some chairs, a pantry, a bookshelf. Dried food mostly in the pantry, chosen for ease in storage and in preparation. The books were an unexpected mix. Religious works mainly, a well-thumbed Bible sharing space with a copy of Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood and George MacDonald Fraser’s classic pastiche, The Pyrates.

  Above the headboard, a Catholic crucifix. On the table, a set of rosary beads, polished from handling. Icons and images galore, of Christ himself, of the Blessed Virgin. The beads were lying on a pile of newspapers, all headlining the attack on the President and showing an artist’s sketch of the assassin that was a devastatingly faithful likeness.

  On the wall, though, something completely different—a series of circus posters, from venues all over Europe: Paris, Florence, Barcelona, Munich, Prague, Krakow. They all were pictures of Kurt, showing him on the trapeze, celebrating the performances of the INCREDIBLE NIGHTCRAWLER! As well, a couple of movie one-sheets: Burt Lancaster in The Crimson Pirate, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in Sinbad the Sailor, and almost in a place of honor, Errol Flynn’s film adaptation of Captain Blood, the role that made his swashbuckling career.

  Jean shook her head. A man of obviously deep religious faith who loved classic pirate stories. Didn’t fit any profile she’d ever read of your basic assassin. He picked up the rosary as she asked if she could examine his wound, but even though she knew she was hurting him—she couldn’t help it—the only sound she heard from him was a cadencelike muttering that she soon realized was a prayer: “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, blessed be Thy Name . . .”

  The 9mm shell had missed the bone as it passed through his shoulder, but it had still done its share of damage. Kurt had administered some decent first aid; he’d stopped the bleeding and applied sufficient antiseptic to prevent any major infection. Without proper treatment, however, his athletic ability would be crippled, and she told him so in a way that also told him she was willing and able to provide it.

  “You’ll be fine,” Jean told him as she finished suturing the wound and began wrapping it in the necessary bandages. “The worst you’ll have is a small scar.”

  “You are not the authorities,” he said with a hint of a question.

  Storm snorted, “Not hardly.”

  “You wear uniforms.”

  “We like to look cool,” Jean told him. “I’m sorry if I’m hurting you.”

  “I know it cannot be helped.” He shook his head, a little bit of misery, a lot of confusion. “I just don’t understand—any of this. I could . . .” He paused, glancing at the papers on his table, trying to come to terms with images and memories that made no sense to him, yet could not be denied. “I couldn’t stop myself,” he said desperately. “It was all happening to someone else, like a bad dream. That would be nice. But then—I move my arm and realize that is a lie. It was real. It was me!”

  He twisted and rolled the rosary beads in his two-fingered hands until he held the crucifix that anchored the strands together. On his face was a terrible and haunting desolation.

  “I fear He has left me,” he said with a grief, a sense of loss, that was palpable. “I even found a mark, perhaps like the mark of Cain. See? Look here!”

  He tilted his head, sweeping aside the thick indigo curls to reveal a mark at the base of his skull. It was a scar, Jean recognized, that reminded her of kinds of insect bites or the welt left by some topical irritant akin to what was found on poison ivy or oak. It was placed right above the brain stem, and it formed the shape of a perfect circle.

  “What do you think?” Storm asked Jean.

  “Let’s get him back to the professor,” she replied, her concern and worry as plain for Storm to see as the intricate markings that covered Kurt Wagner’s body.

  Interlude

  Normally he sleeps without dreams. A quiet time, restful, a relief from the cacophony of input assaulting his physical senses every waking moment. So much to process just to determine the appropriate levels of threat. Every person he meets, a potential enemy, to be sorted into its appropriate box in that split second of initial contact.

  Lately, no peace, anything but, no chance to recharge his batteries, psychic or physical, forcing him to stay awake to the point of absolute exhaustion, when he doesn’t have any choice about it anymore. Yet that carries its own price, because it leaves him with fewer defenses against the nightmares that invariably come.

  He hears himself scream with rage, giving himself completely to the berserker in his soul.

  He’s fighting fighting fighting, against what he never knows. People? Things? Demons? Monsters? Fate itself? All of that? None?

  He has no clothes, the better to see the marks drawn on skin that’s been stripped of hair, the better to see the livid scars that follow the marks as he’s opened from crown to crotch, shoulders to fingertips, hips to toes.

  He sees himself in the reflector overhead, lying on a table, dissected like a frog, skin peeled back, organs laid bare, watching his heart beat, his lungs pulse. He hears voices, dissecting him as clinically as their scalpels, hears a voice, his voice, asking over and over what was happening, why were they doing this? Hears laughter, they aren’t interested, they don’t care, they think this is funny. Hears threats of bloody vengeance give way, impossibly, to words he never imagined saying, begging, pleading for mercy.

  He can’t wake up. He has to watch.

  Knowing that he was conscious thro
ugh whatever was being done to him. They didn’t use anesthetic, they wanted him to experience every bloody moment.

  They took lots of notes.

  Someone holds up a set of claws.

  He pops the claws from his hand—snikt!

  He slashes the claws into the wall, making an indelible mark on the armored plating too thick for him to cut all the way through.

  He’s in a tank, lights are flashing red and green, the lights resolving into what’s supposed to be a pair of eyes in a face too terrible to be remembered except as repeating images of pain and horror. The tank is filled with liquid, covering him, drowning him, turning bright yellow as the face spits venom at him like a cobra, burning him inside and out.

  Rage now, beyond comprehension, beyond control.

  He’s fighting fighting fighting

  No more yellow anymore, but lots of red

  He’s alone

  No more floors beneath his feet, only earth, then rock, then nothing but air as he tumbles from a precipice

  Then water as a cataract sweeps him away

  Then earth and rock again as he grabs for salvation and pulls himself ashore

  Then, miraculously, mercifully, snow, falling fast and hard, burying the world, burying him, allowing him to sleep, to heal, to

  forget

  Snikt!

  Snakt!

  Chapter

  Six

  Logan woke up on the floor, amid the ruins of yet another bed.

  Reflexively, he started to raise his hands to rub his face, smooth his hair. Then he paused in midgesture and opened his eyes to see if his claws were still extended. No fun to accidentally slice open your own scalp, even if the wounds healed in next to no time.

  His hands looked normal, with only the damage that surrounded him and the dull and familiar, and fading, ache between his knuckles.

  He spit some feathers from his mouth, plucked scraps of pillow off his chest.