Blinking his eyes rapidly, wiping the heels of his hands across his face to wipe away the arterial spray, Logan finally succeeded in clearing his vision—just in time for him to see Sabretooth plunge adamantium-tipped claws into his chest. Sharpened metal raked across his heart.
Logan howled.
“What’s the problem, midget?” the wild-maned sociopath asked as his victim thrashed about, unable to pull free. “Need t’get somethin’ off yer chest?” He grinned. “Well, spit it out—I’m all ears.”
And that’s when the transformation happened.
There had always been a darker side to Wolverine—a savage, bestial part that he always fought to control; often winning the battle, but sometimes giving into it wholeheartedly. In Norse legends, it’s referred to as a “berserker rage”: a situation when a Teutonic warrior, inspired by the god Odin, momentarily lost his sanity in the heat of battle and gave into an unquenchable desire for bloodshed, for destruction. Possessed by such drive, the warrior would feel no fear or pain. Logan was all too familiar with the sensation—it was what gave him the advantage in a fight, and made him so deadly an opponent to his enemies ... and sometimes even his friends.
“His friends.” Even now, Logan still found it hard to believe that he could regard anyone as a friend, let alone a group of do-gooding men and women like the X-Men. And yet, it was among the X-Men that he had at last found acceptance—of his mutant powers, of his acid-tinged personality, of his savage nature. If not for people like the X-Men’s leader, Professor Charles Xavier, Logan might have given into the darker, bestial urgings that made him so dangerous. But with the help of Xavier and his students—especially Jean Grey, the redheaded beauty who had once stolen his heart—he had been able to rediscover the man who still existed within the hard-edged warrior. To face the monsters that lurked in his psyche, and defeat them. To avoid taking that last, fatal step into the depths of madness.
But now, he gave into the madness, even welcomed it.
With a roar that took even Sabretooth by surprise, Logan raised his arms and swept them in front of his body, raking his claws across Creed’s face and throat. Sabretooth cried out in pain and staggered back, loosening his grip on Wolverine, who dropped to the ground and immediately rolled to his feet. Logan sprang forward, giving his opponent no time to recover. He slashed back and forth, time and again, at Creed, cutting deep swatches from his legs, arms, and body, then reopening the wounds when the larger man’s healing factor started closing them. There was no logic to the assault, no plan of attack considered—this was simply a case of a smaller animal trying to bring down a larger one.
Around them, the security force froze, as though uncertain of what to do now. Some members looked on in horror, some in admiration of the two opponents, while others, sickened by the savageness of the battle, moved away to disgorge whatever meal they’d had earlier in the evening. A few turned and ran, joining the throngs of attendees who were fleeing the area.
Wolverine continued pressing forward, claws moving so swiftly that they only registered as a flash of white to the naked eye before striking their targets. Sabretooth tried to fight back, but it appeared that the severity of the pain he had experienced at the outset of the attack, coupled with the surprise he’d shown when his victim had somehow summoned the strength to continue fighting, had cost him any chance of duplicating the smaller man’s mindless rage. The best he could hope to do was put some distance between himself and Wolverine, and allow his body a few moments to heal before starting the next round.
But then Creed stumbled over the prone form of the White Rabbit, lost his balance, and fell to the ground.
It would prove to be the deciding factor in this struggle.
With a triumphant roar, Wolverine pounced, landing on Creed’s chest as the larger mutant started to regain his feet, driving him back down onto the neatly-trimmed grass. Adamantium-sheathed claws flashed in the moonlight, then swept downward, slicing across Sabretooth’s throat—one of the few areas on Creed’s body not protected by metal-encased bones. A geyser of blood erupted from the carotid artery and jugular veins, coating Wolverine’s arms and face, coloring his gleaming metal bio-weapons a deep crimson.
The fatal blow had been delivered—one that not even an advanced healing factor could repair in time to save Creed, considering it had already been overtaxed by Wolverine’s continuous assault.
Stepping back from his prey, Wolverine cracked a malicious smile and licked the blood from his lips, savoring the taste of the kill.
And as Sabretooth watched his life pour out onto the ground, Wolverine raised his head . . . and howled in victory.
It was a bloodchilling sound that made the remaining soldiers gathered around the combatants turn on their heels and start racing after their teammates.
Then the storm broke, and rain began to fall.
It came down hard, big drops that fell like miniature missiles to impact on Logan’s skin; in less than a minute he was soaked, the blood of his kill washed away to pool at his feet before being absorbed by the thirsty grass. Slowly, a genuine smile came to his lips, and Logan closed his eyes, then sheathed his claws; the bio-weapons slid back under the skin of his forearms with a gentle snikt. He tilted his head back, allowing the water to douse the fire that burned in his soul, to ease the tension that had knotted his muscles.
To calm the beast, and return it to the cage from which he had released it, deep in the recesses of his mind.
He inhaled deeply, momentarily reveling in the tangy scent of the air— the mixture of a storm-tossed sky laced with ozone as lightning flashed high above, and the sweet, cloying odor of damp earth as the water worked its way into the ground. But then the stench of death filled his nostrils, a reminder of the carnage around him, and he opened his eyes.
Sabretooth still lay at his feet, lifeless eyes staring at the blackened sky. Raindrops splattered against the widened pupils, then streamed down the sides of his face to collect on the grass under his head.
Logan grunted, still not quite ready to believe Creed was dead, but the evidence was right there in front of him. But it was a hollow victory for the feral X-Man—this wasn’t his Creed, his lifelong enemy, no matter how much he had sounded, and acted, and smelled like the genuine article. This was just some poseur dreamed up by Doctor Doom.
Or was it?
Logan shrugged. He was too tired to figure it out, too angry to really give a damn. All he wanted to do right now was get his hands on von Doom and force him to put things right. After that, he’d down a few beers and contemplate his victory over Sabretooth; maybe he’d even like the answer he finally came up with when he was done.
The sounds of the battle between von Doom’s troops and Magneto’s forces were beginning to diminish, the echoes of weapons’ fire replaced by the moaning of the injured and dying, and the wailing of survivors for those lost in the fight. Logan glanced through the hole in the south wall of the Performing Arts Center and sniffed the air, but could detect none of the scents that would tell him whether Magneto or any of the X-Men were still inside the building.
They’d moved on, then, probably in pursuit of von Doom.
Logan jogged around to the front of the Center. Out on New Hampshire Avenue, fires were burning, created by limousines and troop transports that had exploded. Emergency vehicles were just arriving on the scene. Firemen moved quickly to control the blazes, while paramedics saw to the injuries of soldiers and policemen—and the dozens of innocent bystanders caught in the middle of the war zone. He pushed his way past the few humans and mutants still clashing in front of the arts center’s main entrance, and made his way to the street, then paused to sniff the air.
“Where the flamin’ hell did everybody go?” he wondered aloud.
And then an all-too-familiar scent filled his nostrils. A particular mix of pheromones and perfume—Wings—that could belong to only one person.
“Jeanie,” Logan muttered.
Ignoring his still-healing i
njuries, he set off at a full run, heading toward Constitution Avenue to the east and, further along it, the White House.
The Present
SO THIS is how the world ends, thought Betsy Braddock. Not from nuclear warfare, or an asteroid strike, or even from a world. devourer like Galactus dropping by because he felt a bit peckish— but from a wish. A simple wish, and a scientific Aladdin’s lamp to make it come true . . .
The Earth was literally coming apart at the seams—or at least that was how it appeared to the lavender-tressed telepath who was usually known in super heroic circles by the more colorful codename “Psy-locke.” Dressed in a glamorous, black evening gown and opera gloves that had never been designed for combat conditions, she was standing in a sub-chamber of the White House, amid the rubble created during a clash between opposing bands of superpowered mutants—one, a group of villainous renegades called the Acolytes; the other, the heroic X-Men, to which Betsy belonged. Nearby lay the unmoving bodies of her teammates: Cyclops, Phoenix, Rogue, and Nightcrawler, all rendered unconscious by their enemies before they had a chance to defend themselves. On the far side of the chamber, the only other conscious X-Man—the always deadly Wolverine, who had arrived only moments ago—was engaged in battle with the green-garbed speedster called Quicksilver. Moving almost too fast for the eye to follow, the swiftfooted mutant easily evaded Wolverine’s claws as they sliced through the air near his chest. It was clear to Betsy—and, more than likely, to Quicksilver as well—that the feral Canadian scrapper was doing his best to gut his enemy and bring a decisive end to their fight.
Momentarily transfixed by the savage ballet that was being performed in front of her, Betsy shook her head to clear her thoughts. What
was she doing, just standing around while her friends had fallen around her?
She turned from the conflict, her attention brought back to the blindingly brilliant wall of light that had suddenly formed in the center of the room. Beyond that wall, she knew, was the device responsible for the madness unfolding around her. A device that—though small in size—contained enough power to transform an entire planet and its population into anything its owner desired. A device that, she had learned only a short time ago, threatened to tear asunder not only the Earth, not just the dimensional plane in which the world existed, but the length and breadth of the omniverse—an infinite number of parallel realities, each stacked one upon the other, separated by only the thinnest of celestial energy curtains.
A device called the Cosmic Cube.
But the Cube was not a living entity capable of restructuring reality on its own ... at least, not to Betsy’s knowledge. Rather, it was a tool whose energies were directed by whoever happened to be holding it. A paintbrush in the hands of an artist, as it were, if such an artist possessed the sort of vision and creative dedication needed to transform a simple canvas into an awe-inspiring masterpiece.
Of course, the quality of the final product would depend on who the artist was, and what their perceptions of beauty might be . . .
At the moment, that particular artist was a man known more for his acts of terrorism than his appreciation for the fine arts. A man who, like Betsy, was gifted with extraordinary powers, but whose all-consuming goal in life was nothing less than the total subjugation of humanity at the hands of mutantkind. A man by the name of Erik Magnus Lensherr, who, more often than not, preferred being addressed by his far more impressive—and fear-inducing—codename: Magneto. The self-proclaimed “Master of Magnetism.”
Just moments before, Betsy and her fellow X-Men had failed to stop Lensherr from taking possession of the Cube; failed in their mission to put an end to the threat posed by the device before it resulted in the destruction of all realities.
And now the entire world was going to pay the price for their mistakes. •
The energy wall surged forward, consuming everything in its path as it flowed across the chamber. Betsy could only stare helplessly as each of her friends were taken, absorbed by the power of the Cube to be reshaped, recreated, by whatever dark urges lurked within the mind of Erik Lensherr, driving him ever onward to attain his perverted dream of world domination.
Though it was difficult to see him clearly through the cosmically-charged barrier, Betsy could just make out the distinctive form of Magneto as he sat upon an elaborate throne, his hands wrapped around the Cube.
The throne, however, was not a construct of Lensherr’s mind, but of the mind of another power-hungry villain—the infamous Victor von Doom, dictator of the small European nation of Latveria, and the bane of almost every hero and heroine on the planet. It was his twisted genius that had created this latest version of the Cube, his mad desire to rule the world that had provided the Cube with the raw psychic material it required to fashion a suitable approximation of von Doom’s dream. Unfortunately for the super-villain-cum-Emperor, creating such a world had come at a terrible cost. ..
The wave moved closer. Betsy took a step back—knowing such a reaction was pointless, since there was nowhere on Earth she could go to escape the chaos forces bearing down on her—and gasped as a gaunt-leted hand closed around her ankle. She looked down to find von Doom staring back at her.
He was a disturbing sight to behold, this man who had, only a short time ago, held the power of a god in his hands. His body was withering away inside the gleaming, silver-hued battle armor that was obviously keeping him alive. The degree of physical decay he was suffering was plain to see just by looking at his face—the skin was wrinkled, waxy, and paper-thin; blue-tinged veins pulsed frantically, just below the surface. The villain had been aged at an alarming rate by the Cube, drained of his life-force by the device in order to maintain the reality he had created—a “perfect” world in which von Doom had defeated every one of his enemies, and taken Betsy’s fellow X-Man, Storm, as his bride. For a time, his plan had worked: for the past ten years (or so it had seemed to Betsy, and everyone else in the world) he had reigned supreme as Emperor, his long sought-after dream at last made reality by a device no bigger than a Jack-in-the-Box.
The dream, however, had come to an abrupt end when the X-Men had returned from a mission in another dimension and set out to put things right. At least, they had tried to put things right, and would have, if not for the untimely intervention of Magneto and his followers.
As she gazed down at von Doom, it was immediately clear to Betsy, just by watching how he labored for every breath, how he struggled to raise himself up on one elbow, that the strain placed on his body by the Cube—not to mention the abuse he had suffered at the hands of Magneto when the mutant overlord forcibly took possession of the device— was too much for the man once known as “Doctor Doom”; he was almost at death’s door. But in spite of his failing health, the anger, the sheer hatred he obviously felt toward those who had robbed him of his victory seemed to give him strength. Tightening his grip on her ankle, he glared up at the Asian telepath.
“Doom never concedes defeat, girl,” the prematurely old man said, eyes burning with rage. “Not while he still has one last hand to play.” He pressed a hidden stud on his armor’s chestplate.
The air around the villain and Betsy crackled with electricity. Her nostrils filled with the smell of burning ozone, and her skin began tingling as a powerful current ran through her.
A transportation device? she thought with some surprise. But where could Doom be taking us? And why me?
Before she had a chance to voice those questions, however, the room and everything in it—her colleagues, her enemies, the Cosmic Cube itself—faded into darkness.
And then, her ankle still held fast in von Doom’s grip, Betsy was yanked into infinity.
1
SUPREME GUARDIAN, we must destroy the crystal!”
Sitting on her throne in the highest level of the Starlight Cit-. adel—a city-sized collection of soaring metal towers and minarets that floated at the exact center of all Time and Space—Roma, the Supreme Guardian of the Omniverse, closed her eyes and tri
ed to ignore the impassioned—and increasingly loud—pleas of her lieutenant, Opul Luna Satumyne.
She wasn’t having much luck.
“Enough, Satumyne,” she finally said, fatigue evident in her voice. “Your point has been made—emphatically so.”
“I apologize, Supreme Guardian,” replied Satumyne, speaking at a more tolerable volume. “I don’t mean to belabor the obvious, but under the circumstances...”
Letting her voice trail off, the white-haired, white-gowned woman gestured across the throne room toward a large crystalline globe that floated a foot above the highly polished marble floor. This was a scrying glass—a device Roma used to monitor the countless dimensions that fell under her protection. At the moment, the glass was dark, but not because it had been deactivated; quite the opposite, in fact. Humming softly, the cosmic viewer had been running nonstop for the past ninety-six hours (Earth time), tuned to events on the dimensional plane numerically designated as “616” by Roma’s father, Merlyn, the former Supreme Guardian who had created the citadel millennia ago.
Unfortunately, there was nothing to see. For reasons unknown to either Roma or Satumyne, something was preventing them from gazing upon the dimension that was home to an unusually high number of superpowered beings. Men and women like the members of the uncanny
X-Men had spent the past month aiding the Supreme Guardian end the reign of terror perpetrated on the inhabitants of Earth 794 by the mad dictator Opul Lun Sat-yr-nin, an alternate reality version of Roma’s second-in-command. The very same group of heroic mutants who had unhesitatingly volunteered to return to their home dimension in order to learn the source of the interference.
But it wasn’t just the poor reception on her scrying glass that troubled Roma. There was the crystal, too.
Twelve inches high, six inches wide, it should have looked like an ordinary sliver of quartz—one among hundreds of similar pieces that jutted up from a podium-like structure that stood near Roma’s throne— and normally would have, were it not for the disturbing imperfection that had formed just below its surface only days ago: a black spot that continued to grow with each passing hour.
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