Somebody had found a stout stick from somewhere. The Beast heard it whistling through the air, and sidestepped a fraction of a second too late. He winced, momentarily staggered, as it cracked against his ribs. The crowd took full advantage of his weakness, and suddenly he found himself beneath a pile of bodies.
This was not going the way he had planned.
He pushed one man away with the butt of his hand, another with his foot. He wriggled out of the way of a second blow from the stick. He pulled one thug down on top of him, using him as a shield and then pushing him into someone else, sending both to the ground. He reined in his anger, knowing he dared not use all his strength. These weren’t evil mutants. They were normal human beings, and he didn’t want to hurt them no matter how much they provoked him. So the Beast fought defensively, keeping them off-balance and guessing what he would do next, until he managed to open up a gap, and then he went for it.
The rest of the crowd had drawn in around the combatants, thinking themselves safe, baying for the blood of a monster they had thought defeated. They cried out in horror and shrank back as one, as said monster suddenly emerged from the melee and hurtled towards them. They tried to duck as he leapt into the sky, muttering apologies—“Pardon me ... excuse me ... oh, was that your face?”-as he bounded across their heads. And then, at last, he was clear, and the angry crowd streamed after him as he raced for the high railings at the edge of the cemetery. He knew that none of them would be able to follow him, as he cleared the barrier easily and landed on the sidewalk. But some of the mob had second-guessed him, and they were already spilling out of the gates just down the road and racing towards him.
The Beast ran-an easy, loping gait-until he was out of sight on a secluded street. He had achieved his objective. He had broken up the fight by giving its participants a common foe. Not that the trouble was over yet, of course. Some of them would not give in so easily. They would keep on looking for him, roaming the streets in gangs. There might be other skirmishes throughout the day—but they would be on a smaller scale, at least, and the police would be able to handle them. And, with luck, they would be far away from William Montgomery’s grieving parents and his freshly dug grave.
All the Beast had to do now was remove their target.
He reached into his pocket and produced the image inducer. His face fell at the sight of the dent in its side, and he stared at the device in dismay as he operated it and nothing happened. He remembered the stick that had cracked into his side, and he realized with growing dread that he had nowhere to hide now. He could already hear footsteps and voices approaching.
“Excuse me, mister?”
The Beast whirled, ready for an attack, but the unexpected voice had come from a young girl, no more than about ten years old. She was standing in the small front garden of one of the neat, white, wooden houses, and there was no fear, no hatred, in her face.
“You used to be in the Avengers, didn't you? I saw you on the TV, fighting some scary man with a beard. My mom said you saved all our lives that day. You’re a super-hero.”
“Bless you,” said the Beast, his features breaking into a toothy smile.
And then the angry mob rounded the corner behind him, and he was running again.
Hank! Hank, are you there?
The words bypassed his ears, popping into his head like thoughts, except that he hadn’t thought them; it was not his own internal voice that had spoken them. He recognized and welcomed the telepathic presence of an old friend. I’m here, Jean. He formed the answer in his mind, knowing that she would hear it. I’m in a small town called Newhill.
1 know. We’re not too far away. Is everything OK down there?
Let’s see—how can I put this? The Beast skidded around another corner, and came up short at the sight of a second group of people running towards him. He telesent an emphatic: No!
Hold on, Hank. I’ve got your position, and we’re almost there.
Surrounded, the Beast sprang into the air again and landed on top of an orange, new-style Volkswagen Beetle. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he goaded the crowd, as they gathered around him, shouting out their hatred. “I believe it’s customary for the lynch-mob to cany pitchforks and flaming torches!”
He performed a desperate dance on the car’s roof, leaping over grasping hands and lashing out with his feet to repel anyone who tried to climb up beside him. This kept them at bay for a minute or more, before they started climbing up simultaneously from opposite sides of the vehicle. Then the Beast leapt past them before he could be overwhelmed. He bounced nimbly off the Beetle’s curved bonnet, and onto the trunk and then the roof of the next car. One man tried gamely to follow him, but cried out as he fell short and hit the road hard. The Beast had gained another few seconds, as the crowd moved to surround his new perch. But this time, somebody had the bright idea of rocking the car beneath him, and he found it increasingly difficult to keep his balance and avoid his attackers’ blows at the same time.
He was hugely relieved, then, to hear a familiar sound over the clamor: the bamf of a sudden displacement of air that could only have heralded the arrival by teleportation of one particular X-Man.
If the crowd had thought the Beast a character out of a dark fairytale, then they must have imagined Nightcrawler being birthed in that same evil place~if not somewhere worse. His skin, like the Beast’s, was blue-a darker, indigo blue-his fangs and pointed ears were similarly pronounced and, in addition, he sported a long tail with a pointed end. His white-gloved hands and white-booted feet had only three digits each, and his yellow eyes glowed like headlamps. He resembled a shadowy goblin demon. Only the Beast, of those present, knew the gentle, chivalrous, Christian soul that was the real Kurt Wagner.
Nightcrawler seemed to hover in midair above the crowd for an instant, before disappearing in a puff of sulphurous smoke and materializing almost instantly, a few feet to the left. He teleported again and again and again, always before gravity could take hold of him, until it looked like he was almost surrounding the mob by himself. They panicked, as Nightcrawler had no doubt intended, running this way and that, forgetting their prey, confused and perhaps unsure just how many dark allies the Beast had called upon. And then Nightcrawler appeared on the car roof beside his teammate. “Komm mit, mein Freund!” he instructed, lapsing into his native German tongue-and they jumped down onto the road and fled side by side.
They gained a considerable lead before anyone thought to follow them—and even then, their pursuers were neither as numerous nor as enthusiastic as before. “You have my lifelong gratitude, my friend,” the Beast panted. “I thought my branta canadensis was well and truly cooked.” Nightcrawler grinned at his teammate’s typically verbose turn of phrase. “I’m not sure we did much to further the cause of peaceful mutant-human relations, however.”
“I’ve dealt with mobs like that before,” said Nightcrawler. “You can’t reason with them. If it’s any consolation, half of them will be ashamed of themselves after the heat of the moment, when they realize what they’ve done.”
“Which leaves us to worry about the other half.”
“As ever, the stoiy of our lives. It looks like our lift’s arrived.” The Beast had already heard the drone of the X-Men’s Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird stealth jet overhead. Nightcrawler bamf-ed away, taking the most direct route possible up to the airplane. He could have carried his colleague with him if he’d had to, but a tandem teleport would have placed a great deal of stress upon both of them. The Beast was not surprised when, having taken only a few more steps, he sensed somebody swooping down behind him; somebody who wrapped a pair of strong arms around his chest and lifted him bodily off the ground. He recognized the green-gloved hands of Rogue, another teammate, even before she told him to “Hold on, sugar!” in her familiar Southern drawl. The wind whipped through his fur, as his astonished pursuers-along with the town of Newhill, Massachusetts-dropped sharply away beneath him.
Five minutes later, the Beast sat in
side the Blackbird with Rogue beside him, Nightcrawler in front and Phoenix at the plane’s controls. “Not that I’ve any wish to look a gift horse in its oral cavity," he said, “but what exactly alerted the X-Men to my predicament?”
“We got a call from Moira,” said Rogue. “She was worried about you, up and disappearing like you did.” She had removed the hood of her green bodysuit, and shaken loose her shoulder-length brown hair with its distinctive white streak. Even in here, though, she didn’t take off her gloves. Her costume covered every inch of her skin, from the neck down. The Beast was well aware of the reason for that. If he was ever tempted to pity himself for the problems that his mutation caused him, then he had only to think of Rogue. She was forever denied contact with other people, knowing as she did that she only had to brush her skin against theirs to absorb their physical abilities, their thoughts, their very lives.
“Ah, yes,” said Hank contritely. “I’m afraid I owe the esteemed Doctor MacTaggert an apology. I haven’t paid her much consideration of late.”
“It was Moira who worked out where you’d be,” explained Phoenix. Gently, she added: “She said you were pretty upset about what happened in Newhill.”
The Beast sighed. As the adrenaline rush from his exertions subsided, depression settled back upon him like a heavy shroud. Not every problem in his life could be solved by a last-minute cavalry charge. “You didn’t see William Montgomery’s parents today, Jean-nie. Two more innocent victims in the war between homo sapiens and homo superior.”
“But what possessed you to go to the funeral in the first place?” asked Rogue. “You must have known the locals wouldn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for a mutant right now.”
“I hardly planned to reveal myself as a member of our beleaguered species.” The Beast shrugged. “And, to answer your question as best I can, I don't entirely know why I came here. It was not my intention when I left Muir Island. I acted on instinct. I didn’t know for sure that I'd be boarding a flight until I had reached the airport.” “Moira told me the work wasn’t going too well,” Jean prompted sympathetically.
“A polite euphemism, no doubt, for my latest abject failure.” “Don’t you think you’re being a bit hard on yourself?” said Nightcrawler.
“Am I? A man was buried today, Kurt.”
“You can’t blame yourself for the Legacy Virus!”
“I can blame myself for not stopping it in time. For how long have I been seeking the cure to this damnable disease? How many people have suffered and died for my mistakes? And how many distractions have I allowed myself in the meantime? I shouldn’t even be here. I should be with Moira, working to ensure that nobody else has to lose a son or a daughter, and yet what am I doing? Indulging my own feelings. I didn’t come here for William Montgomery’s sake, nor for his family’s. No, if I were to analyze my own behavior today, I would be forced to conclude that I was looking for a way to expunge my own deep feelings of culpability.”
“What have you got to feel guilty about?” protested Rogue.
“The news reports didn’t help,” recalled Hank, in a distant voice. “Every time I turned on a television set or listened to the radio, I was confronted by evidence of my own shortcomings; a reminder that the Legacy Virus is still spreading. I couldn’t save its latest victim. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to save the next one.”
“You can’t think like that,” said Nightcrawler. “Legacy isn’t the only disease out there, you know. It isn’t even one of the most common. People die of cancer every day, but do you blame the doctors who are trying to find a cure?”
“Of course not.” The Beast sighed again. “And 1 know you’re right. This is something I’m going to have come to terms with.” He leaned back in his seat and barked a short, bitter laugh. “Do you know what the most ironic thing is? While I was down there, surrounded by the rampaging mob, I felt more alive than I have in days. I felt like the bombastic Beast of old. I even found time to dispense a few quips—and not because the situation wasn’t perilous, but because my enemy was tangible. I could act against it. I could leap past one of my tormentors, or knock one aside, and see how my actions improved my circumstances. I miss that feeling of accomplishment, that simple chain of cause and effect.”
“You blew off some steam,” said Rogue. “That’s good!”
“Do you think so? Look at me: I pride myself on being a man of words, a man of science-and yet I appear to be most at peace with myself when I can attack a problem with my fists!”
“Sometimes we don’t have a choice,” said Rogue firmly. “Some people won’t listen to reason-especially not those who’d cheerfully see us all dead because of what we are.”
“It’s only natural to feel frustrated,” said Phoenix. “You and Moira have set yourselves an almost impossible task. But I know you, Hank. I know both of you, and I know that, if anyone can cure the Legacy Virus, you can. It’s not in either of your natures to give up.” “I’m gratified by the vote of confidence, Jeannie. And you needn’t fret overmuch on my account. I believe I may have worked the surfeit of negative emotions out of my system for the present. In fact, if you wouldn’t mind turning the Blackbird around, I would very much appreciate a ride back to the Muir Island research facility. I have work to do.”
Jean half-turned towards him, and flashed him a radiant smile. “We’re already on our way. Our ETA is in about one hour and forty-five minutes. I can think of a certain Scottish lady who will be very pleased to see you.”
jjjl't} ALEM CENTER was a small town in Westchester County, New j^l York, just near enough to Manhattan to make commuting feasibly ble, just distant enough to qualify as a peaceful suburb. Its peace, however, would have been shattered had its residents only been aware of what really went on in a certain building at the top end of Graymalkin Lane.
The Xavier Institute for Higher Learning was just far enough away from the town center—and set back far enough into its own grounds-for few people to notice the odd telltale sign of its true nature. And those who did see occasional flashes in the sky, or thought they heard the odd explosion, tended to assume that they were the results of some outlandish experiment being carried out within. They voiced concerns that, one day, Professor Charles Xavier’s so-called gifted youngsters would go too far and wipe out the whole town, but they were only words. No one really believed them.
Inside Xavier’s school right now, a young man was under attack.
The drones flew at Scott Summers from all sides, the nozzles of their tiny, in-built weapons flashing as their internal systems locked onto him. They were the size of dragonflies, but the shape of slightly flattened spheres, with silver metal plating. They were propelled not by wings but by antigravity systems, which allowed them to stop and turn on a hair.
He waited until they were about to fire, then dived. He passed beneath a cluster of drones, dropped into a crouch, and twisted around to face his attackers again. They had already reacted to his movement, and were swarming towards him in a great silver cloud.
He rolled the fingers of his right hand into a fist, and activated the sensor in the palm of his glove. He opened his golden visor to its fullest extent, and a powerful beam of red energy ripped forth from his eyes and cut through the first rank of drones. They were halted in their tracks, each emitting an almost pathetic bleep as it clanged to the floor, a dead weight.
Explosions would have been more satisfying, but also more costly. Each damaged drone would have to be paid for.
Like all of Xavier’s students, Scott Summers was far more than he seemed. His mutant power—his optic blasts—had earned him the code name Cyclops, and he was the original and current field leader of the X-Men. It was a role that often thrust him into fierce combat-which was why the Danger Room existed. This soundproofed, hi-tech training facility lay beneath Xavier’s school, and offered the X-Men an environment in which they could hone their combat skills and learn to cope with their unique abilities.
“Hey!” protested Wolverine
, Cyclops’s Canadian teammate, from across the room. “I thought the object was to take these critters down one at a time. A test of reflexes, you said.”
“Just narrowing the odds a little,” grunted Cyclops, “that’s all. Any objections?”
“Hell, no. ’Bout time you cut loose a bit, if you ask me. Can’t be good for a fellow to be so uptight all the time.”
*1 didn’t cut loose. It was a tactical maneuver. I’m perfectly in control.”
“Whatever.”
Cyclops had downed five drones, but the rest—another fifteen-had split up again, to ensure that he couldn’t hit more than one at a time. They learned fast.
He scowled, picked one of them at random and hit it with a narrow, focussed beam of exactly the right strength to trigger its cut-off circuit. But he had no time to bask in the satisfaction of having proved his point. As soon as he had turned his attention to one drone, three more had swooped in behind him. He tried to leap out of their way, but too late. A thin, yellow beam pierced his shoulder, delivering a stinging jolt of electricity. It did no more harm than that-Cyclops knew better than to operate the Danger Room on anything other than its lowest setting when there was no one in the control booth to monitor the session—but he was angry with himself for letting it happen. He had made a mistake, let his emotions influence his actions, and in combat that could have cost him his life.
Control was vital to Scott Summers. Without control, his optic blasts were a deadly danger to everyone around him. They could only be kept in check by a shielding of ruby quartz-the substance from which the lens of his visor was fashioned—or by his own eyelids. When he woke each morning, or during the night, he had to have the discipline to keep his eyes tightly closed until he had found and donned his special ruby quartz glasses.
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 3
