Kurt stepped out into the corridor. Between him and the restrooms, a man and a woman were leaning against each other and giggling. He let their bodies cover him as he slipped behind a potted plant on an antique table and crouched down, pretending that his shoelaces needed tying. Peering between the leaves of the plant, he could see what Rogue had already described: two more corridors led off this one, directly away from the ballroom. In her Lavinia Smith persona, Rogue had affected drunkenness and stumbled towards the nearest, only to be turned around and sent back the way she had come by two muscular men in tuxedos who lurked just around the comer.
Kurt waited until the giggling couple had returned to the ballroom. Then, when he was alone, he turned off his inducer and crawled straight up the wall. And, clinging to the shadows where the wall met the ceiling, he advanced towards the first junction.
Nightcrawler’s body tended to get lost in shadows. It wasn’t just that his dark coloration made him blend in. It was one of the more bizarre effects of his mutant gene that, when there were no lights upon him, he became almost a part of the darkness himself, even down to the red and white highlights of his costume. Thus, as he rounded the corner and set eyes upon the two bruisers about whom Rogue had warned him, they didn’t see him. They were deep in conversation below him, talking about a recent poker game, their postures relaxed, not expecting trouble. It was simple enough for Nightcrawler to slip past them.
He turned another comer, and was pleased to find himself in an empty corridor from which several doors led. One of these doors opened, and two Hellfire Club agents emerged, uniformed and armed. Nightcrawler caught his breath, but the mercenaries hadn’t seen him. They marched away, in step with each other, and disappeared down a flight of stairs. He smiled grimly to himself. He was in the heart of the Hellfire Club building now. The real face of the organization was exposed to him; the one that the public weren’t ever meant to see.
He checked the corridor for security cameras, but didn’t see any. He relaxed his adhesive grip on the ceiling, and somersaulted to a soft landing.
Now, he wondered, which of these doors led to Sebastian Shaw’s office?
He spent the next half-hour searching, peering through keyholes and listening at doors, staying in the shadows when he could, and scampering back up to the ceiling if he heard anything that sounded like an approaching footstep. He ventured inside a couple of likely-looking offices, but didn’t find what he was looking for.
At last, through a keyhole, he spied a room that was conspicuously more opulent than the others, with expensive wallpaper and exquisite furnishings. Fit for a Black King, he thought. And Shaw’s never been one to be modest about his position, nor his wealth. If this isn’t where he hangs his hat, then I’ll program the image inducer to create a hat of my own-and eat it.
His restricted view of the room hadn’t revealed any occupants, but he decided to be careful. He climbed the wall again and, reaching down, knocked three times on the door. He waited long enough to be sure that nobody was going to answer, before dropping back to the floor and trying the handle. The door was locked.
After taking one final glance up and down the corridor, Nightcrawler concentrated, visualized the inside of the office, and disappeared in a cloud of brimstone.
The hairs on the back of Wolverine’s neck stood up, an instant before the comm-set on his belt began to beep. “Sounds like Rogue and the elf are in trouble,” he grunted.
The X-Men had found the office of a Hong Kong investments firm, deserted for the night, midway up a skyscraper overlooking the Hellfire Club building. Wolverine had spent the last two hours here, with Storm. They had made good use of the company’s coffee-making facilities and had taken it in turns to keep watch at the window. Having seen nothing out of the ordinary so far, they had begun to hope that their teammates would return soon, their mission accomplished. This signal meant that, instead, they were in danger.
“Time to send in the cavalry!” said Wolverine. Storm had already thrown open a window and summoned a wind, to keep her aloft as she carried her Canadian teammate the short distance to their enemies. But suddenly, Wolverine detected a faint whiff of ozone in the air, and, with a cry of, “‘Ro! Get down!” he flung himself to the floor behind a desk.
Wolverine’s enhanced senses made it all but impossible to sneak up on him. But one of Sebastian Shaw’s subordinates in his Inner Circle was a teleporter, like Nightcrawler. Except that, in his case, he used the stolen life energy of others to open temporaiy portals between places, times and dimensions. Wolverine knew this, and he had been prepared-at least, as prepared as he could be—to face an attack from nowhere.
Sure enough, the air shimmered and the room itself seemed to turn inside out as a hole was ripped through the fabric of reality. An upright circle of roiling energies opened to hang, impossibly, suspended in midair, and a dozen or so costumed mercenaries emerged, guns at the ready.
Standing in their center was a green-haired young mutant, almost swamped by his cumbersome battle armor. Wolverine knew his name. It was Trevor Fitzroy-but these days he was also known as the White Rook.
This was obviously part of a two-pronged attack. Whatever danger Nightcrawler and Rogue had found themselves in, they couldn’t expect any help from their backup team now.
They were on their own.
FIVE MINUTES earlier:
Sebastian Shaw had left his desktop computer on: its monitor
_displayed a screensaver on which an eternal flame licked at an
upturned trident. If nothing else, it provided a useful light source, as did the glow from the streetlights outside, which filtered into the office through bamboo blinds. It may not have been much-but Nightcrawler had excellent night-vision, and he was able to search the room without turning on any telltale lights. He found nothing of note, however, until he turned his attention to the computer itself.
He took a quick look around its directories and noticed that there was something in one of the CD drives. A backup? Could he be that lucky? He clicked on the CD icon.
And, at that moment, he heard a sound outside the door. A key in the lock.
He leapt onto Shaw’s desk and bounced up towards the motionless ceiling fan, via a backward flip that landed him squarely on the underside of its four rotors. He only just made it before the door opened, and two uniformed mercenaries burst into the office. They were followed by an albino woman, with angular features and long hair that was as white as her skin. She was clad in red leather, which matched the severe shade of her lipstick and nail polish, and left much of her skin exposed. Nightcrawler recognized her face, if not the costume, Her name was Scribe, and she had worked for the Hellfire Club’s English branch before its downfall. He remembered hearing that she had been bailed out of prison-and that she, along with another of the club’s associates, had dropped out of sight. But she had never been a member of London’s Inner Circle, merely a paid lackey, and he hadn’t expected to find her here.
She was looking right at him.
With a narrow-eyed smirk, she reached for two switches, which sat side by side on the wall. She flicked them both. A harsh light robbed Nightcrawler of his concealing shadows, and he leapt from the fan, startled, as it began to turn. He could have stayed out of Scribe’s reach on the ceiling, but the agents were already bringing up their machine-guns to cover him and, now that he couldn’t hide any more, he thought it best to take the fight to them.
Anyway, if this was the best the Hellfire Club had to throw at him, he shouldn’t have to exert himself too much.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s polite to knock?” he quipped, as he planted a three-toed foot squarely in each of the mercenaries’ blank-masked faces, throwing off their aims and staggering them. Before they could recover, he had ’ported across the room, putting Scribe between him and their weapons, and giving him a free attack at her back. It wasn’t very chivalrous, he chided himself, but then the odds were three to one. He reached for Scribe’s throat, but was
dumbfounded when she evaded his grasp almost without seeming to move. He had never faced her in combat before, and he hadn’t realized how fast she was. Indeed, she had already turned to face him, and she lashed out with savage precision. He threw himself backwards, but her fingernails still came within a hair’s breadth of his face. While he was still reeling, she took an impossible standing leap backwards over the heads of the agents, giving them a clear target again. They strafed the front wall of the office with machine-gun fire, but their bullets passed through a cloud of brimstone.
Nightcrawler appeared in between them, took hold of their heads and knocked them together. They fell, but Scribe had already taken her opportunity to close in, and he felt a white-hot slash of pain as she raked her nails across his back. Instinctively, he teleported again, denying her the chance to press her advantage. But, almost as soon as he had appeared on the ceiling, Scribe reacted to his new position, swept up a heavy chair and hurled it at him. It hit the X-Man full on, dislodging him. He tumbled towards the floor, where Scribe was already waiting for him. “Come to Scribe, little goblin!” she cackled gleefully.
He teleported in mid-fall, materialized at her right hand side and immediately ’ported again to appear at her left. He had time to land just a single punch as she turned first one way and then the other, then he made three more ’ports in quick succession, and struck a second blow.
He kept up the hit-and-run tactics, trying to keep one step ahead of his opponent, but her speed was inhuman. She struck out at random, almost seeming to be able to attack in three directions at once. Her reflexes outperformed his; at last, her questing hands found the front of his red tunic and she drove him backwards into Shaw’s desk, the impact winding him.
Nightcrawler gasped for breath as Scribe pinned him into place. He brought up his feet to kick against her-and his senses reeled as he thought he saw an insubstantial face, like that of a ghost, hovering in the air between them. He blinked, and suddenly remembered Scribe’s erstwhile colleague: the second bail-jumping servant of the Hellfire Club in London.
That was when he realized how he had been tricked.
“Mountjoy!” he wheezed.
The spectral face was clearer now. Nightcrawler recognized its blank, staring eyes, and the lank brown hair that hung untidily down to its shoulders and formed a tuft on its pointed chin. The body-jumper must have been hitching a ride, inactive, inside Scribe, as he had done before, waiting for a chance to strike. His image was already becoming less distinct again as, instead of reforming his own physical body, he poured his essence into a second host. Nightcrawler could feel him, insinuating himself upon his every cell, taking control of his muscles. It was too late to teleport away. He could barely move his own arm, but he managed to reach inside his tunic for his comm-set, and to clumsily activate the emergency signal.
“He’s summoned his teammates,” Nightcrawler told Scribe, but the words didn’t come from his mind even though he felt them emerging from his own throat, being modified by his own tongue and lips. “I couldn’t take control quickly enough to stop him.”
“Do you have full control now?” asked Scribe.
“I do.”
She relaxed her grip, and Nightcrawler stood and flexed his arms and legs, testing out his muscles as if they were new to him. They were new, of course, to the intelligence that controlled him. Kurt Wagner didn’t feel any different—he was still there, still conscious; he couldn’t even feel Mountjoy’s presence any more, not as such-but his body was acting independently of his commands. No matter how hard he concentrated on even such a simple act as lifting a finger, he couldn’t make it happen. He could have screamed with frustration, except that he no longer had access to a mouth and lungs to scream with.
“Then we’d better make some more noise, hadn’t we?” said Scribe, with a twisted grin on her face and a dark fire in her eyes. “I’d hate for the other X-Men to be unable to find us.”
She seemed supremely confident, but Nightcrawler was sure that Rogue, Wolverine and Storm together could beat her, even if Mount-joy forced him to fight at Scribe’s side.
He only hoped the Hellfire Club hadn’t prepared any more unpleasant surprises.
Fitzroy was using the Hellfire Club’s mercenaries as cannon fodder. They formed a living barrier, keeping Wolverine from reaching their White Rook, without any sign that they were worried about the likely cost to themselves. He ploughed into them hard. His adamantium claws popped through his skin with a snikt, and he sliced through the barrels of three machine-guns. The agents themselves he attacked with fists and feet. He didn’t want to kill them, not if he didn’t have to. Still, the first one who came too close—thinking he could grapple the X-Man to the ground—earned a shallow slash across his cheek that cut through his mask and drew blood. He would probably bear the scar for life.
Wolverine could have dealt with goons like this in his sleep. The frustrating thing was, it would take time, during which Trevor Fitzroy could be up to anything. Storm, meanwhile, had taken to the air, although the office had a low ceiling, which prevented her from climbing too high. More than Wolverine, she believed in using reasonable force; she had excellent control over her elemental powers and, where necessary, would soften her blows to avoid killing or maiming a foe. But she had faced Fitzroy before, and she knew the strength of his bio-armor. She brought down a lightning bolt, which smashed its way through the window, crackled over the heads of Wolverine and the mercenaries, and struck the villain squarely in the chest.
Fitzroy’s armor, like the man himself, was a product of the future. His arms and legs were plated with a tough, golden metal, but his head and torso were protected by something more elaborate: a clear, crystalline substance, which looked like diamond and was probably as endurable. Something black and indistinct coalesced in its depths, around its wearer’s chest and stomach: the unidentified energy that powered the armor. It flared white, and blue sparks coruscated around the outside of the crystal, as the armor absorbed Storm’s blast and, Wolverine had no doubt, converted it into a useable form. He was gratified to see, however, that Fitzroy winced beneath his transparent helmet. Something had gotten through.
Two mercenaries reached up and seized Storm’s ankles, dragging her down. She whipped up a wind to unbalance them, and to steady herself so she could land on her feet and face them squarely. But Fitzroy was free now, and—as if at a prearranged signal—six agents piled on top of Wolverine at once, and effectively blocked their leader from his view.
He shrugged them off within seconds, but by then Fitzroy was upon him. A golden gauntlet clamped onto his shoulder, and he found himself staring into the eyes of a lunatic. He could already feel himself weakening. Even through the armor, Fitzroy was draining his life force. He felt as if he had been fighting for hours, and his eyelids were beginning to droop. He had to break Fitzroy’s hold now, while he still had some strength left.
He hacked at the armor with his claws, but they slid off without leaving a scratch. He aimed his next blow at Fitzroy’s head—and, although this was repelled too, the young mutant recoiled instinctively. Wolverine shifted his weight and twisted, wrapped his hands around the giant metal fingers that held him and pried them apart, at the same time bringing up a foot and bracing it against Fitzroy’s broad, crystalline chest-plate. He succeeded in levering himself out of his foe’s deadly grip. He fell ungracefully, and his shoulder hurt like hell, but the drain had stopped. He was dizzy, and he wanted nothing more than to sleep, but Fitzroy was coming for him again, and the mercenaries were blocking his escape route.
Wolverine barged through them, as fast as he could, not caring where his claws landed in the process. He saw a desk and leapt onto it, scattering papers and, in one fluid motion, scooping up a chair and bringing it down onto an agent’s head, rendering him unconscious. A hail of bullets came his way, but he leapt over them, and Storm quickly dispensed with his attacker, blowing him backwards into a wall.
The agents were all down now. Only F
itzroy remained. He stood with his back to the crackling disc of energy through which he had arrived, and his expression had lost none of its confidence. “I can deal with this jerk,” said Wolverine, adjusting his stance on the desk and squaring up to his opponent. “Go answer that distress call; see what’s up with the others.”
Storm hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“Positive!”
“Yeah, right,” scoffed Fitzroy. “I only have to lay one more finger on you, and you’ll shrivel like a prune in the sun!”
“You’re forgetting a little something, bub: my mutant healing factor. I’m all done and rested, and ready to kick your butt!” It wasn’t quite true. Wolverine was beginning to feel better, but he was determined not to let Fitzroy know how weak he still was.
Storm glanced at both men, then made her decision and flew out through the pane of the window that her lightning bolt had shattered.
“Ready to dance this dance again then, are we, old bean?” Fitzroy taunted, in his cultured English accent. He circled Wolverine slowly, looking for an opportunity to pounce.
Wolverine showed him his claws, warning him off. He needed more time. “Think you can go the distance, Fitzroy? You ain't nothing but an upstart kid, cowering behind your toys.”
“Do your worst. This bio-armor’s constructed from omnium mesh. It’s a hundred years ahead of your time; same as I am, old man!”
“If you were such a big shot in your own time,” snarled Wolverine, “you wouldn’t’ve come running to this one. You think your gizmos make you something special in the twenty-first centuiy, kid? Think again! You’re nothing but a snot-nosed punk, wherever you end up.”
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 10
