The X-Men were here.
OMETHING’S GOTTEN hold of the Blackbird!”
Cyclops had known something was wrong, even before Rogue’s urgent ciy had confirmed it. He had been looking out of ;Twindow, down at the small, uncharted, wooded island beneath them. Rogue had been guiding the plane in closer, as per his instructions. Cyclops had strained to make out as many features as he could, searching in particular for any signs of habitation. He hadn’t found any.
At first, the gentle vibrations had been indistinguishable from normal air turbulence. But then, they had intensified a hundredfold. The X-Men had braced themselves as they were tossed from side to side, and the Blackbird’s engines had begun to scream in protest.
Heedless of his own safety, Cyclops pulled off his seatbelt and jumped to his feet. The cabin bucked beneath him as he struggled to make his way forwards. It felt as if a giant fist had taken hold of the plane and was shaking it at will. Finally, he reached the pilot’s seat and supported himself against its back. “What’s happening, Rogue?” he asked tersely.
“We’ve flown into some sort of interference.” Rogue didn’t turn around. Her eyes were fixed on the dials before her, her knuckles white on the joystick and her expression grim. “I can’t pull us out of it. It’s taking all I’ve got to keep this crate in the air!”
“We’re losing altitude and airspeed,” Phoenix confirmed from beside her. Cyclops could see that for himself. The artificial horizon indicator was gyrating wildly, unable to keep up with the plane’s repeated changes in altitude.
“This isn’t a natural phenomenon,” Storm informed them from behind. “I can summon winds to help keep us level, but I cannot calm the vibrations themselves.”
“I’m gonna have to bring us down before we tear ourselves apart,” said Rogue through gritted teeth. “Sorry, Cyke, looks like we’re about to lose another ’Bird.”
“That’s the least of my worries right now, Rogue.”
“I suggest y’all bail out,” said Rogue. “Leave me to it. I might be able to keep the plane in one piece, but I can’t guarantee a soft landing!” ,
“No,” Nightcrawler spoke up. “I’ll take the controls. If the worst comes to the worst, I can ’port myself out of here before we hit the ground.”
“Agreed,” said Cyclops. “Besides, we need all the fliers we can get to help us evacuate. Ororo, I want you to concentrate on keeping this plane as steady as you can. Jean, take the controls until Kurt gets into the pilot’s seat. Rogue, take Wolverine and get out of here!”
The X-Men moved into action, obeying their leader’s commands. Even if they disagreed with him, they were trained well enough to know that there was no time to argue. As Cyclops stepped aside to allow first Rogue and then Nightcrawler to pass him, the Blackbird gave a particularly violent jolt, and he tumbled against the hull. He rubbed his bruised shoulder ruefully, and clung to a chair for dear life as Rogue wrenched open the hatchway and a fierce gale gusted through the cabin. Wolverine wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and his legs around her hips, and she carried him out into the sky. Storm followed them, gliding gracefully on the wind.
“Jean!” yelled Cyclops, over the roaring sound of evacuating air, the increasingly sick whining of the engines and the screeching of the plane’s tormented chassis.
“I’m ready!” she yelled back, as Nightcrawler took the controls from her.
Cyclops trusted her, enough to place his life in her hands. He made his way unsteadily to the hatch, and let the wind take him. His stomach lurched as he dropped away from the Blackbird, and saw the ground—far nearer than he had expected—rushing up towards him. He spread his arms and legs wide, and free-fell towards it, almost grateful for his visor because it kept the wind from stinging his eyes.
He could almost have reached out and touched the tops of the trees when, finally, he felt his rate of descent slowing. He smiled to himself, and angled his body so that he dropped into the forest feet first. He landed in the undergrowth, with no more force than if he had just stepped off the bottom rung of a ladder. He looked up in time to see Phoenix and Iceman gliding to a similarly gentle halt beside him. With Rogue carrying the heaviest X-Man, Jean’s telekinesis had been more than up to the task of lowering the others.
“I think it’s safe to say that we’ve found the right island,” said Phoenix.
“Unless there’s more than one super-villain base in these parts,” said Iceman, dryly. “I didn’t see any buildings as we came down, though.”
“An underground installation, most likely,” said Cyclops. “Can you sense Hank or Moira yet. Jean?”
“Not a trace. I’ve swept the island telepathically, but the only people I can detect are our own. If the Hellfire Club are under our feet, then they must have very good psi-bafflers.”
The trio looked up in unison as the Blackbird screamed over their heads, trailing a plume of smoke. Cyclops resisted the urge to duck. The plane was low now, almost scraping the trees. He tried not to wony about Nightcrawler. He knew how to look after himself. And the X-Men were more than used to being shot out of the sky. It was beginning to seem like a monthly occurrence.
“I doubt we’ve seen the last of this island’s defenses yet,” he considered. “It’s dangerous for us to be separated.”
“I agree,” said Phoenix. “We should get back to the others as quickly as possible.”
“Gee,” mugged Iceman, shielding his eyes as he looked up into the sky at the Blackbird’s lingering smoke trail. “Do you think we’ll be able to find them?”
Cyclops chose not to answer that. He set off through the forest at a run, and his teammates fell into step beside him.
Rogue hovered in midair, her fingers crossed as she watched the Blackbird diving towards the trees, Storm flying beside it. She was aware of Wolverine’s breath, warm against her ear. “The imp’s never gonna make it!” his rough voice growled in her ear. “He’d better have the sense to get out of there while he can.”
The trees were clawing at the plane’s hull now, gouging lines in the paint-work. One of the engines was on fire. With Storm’s help, Nightcrawler had succeeded in lifting the nose so that the craft was almost level. Without a clear spot to land in, though, he was still in trouble. He had waited until the last possible minute before lowering the landing wheels, but Rogue could see that they were already taking a beating.
The Blackbird ran out of momentum at last, and belly-flopped into the forest, crashing through a nest of branches and sending up a cloud of smoke and dust, which obscured Rogue’s view of the landing site for a full minute. She landed as near to it as she dared, and Wolverine immediately leapt to the ground and scuttled forwards.
The Blackbird lay lopsidedly on its broken undercarriage, at the end of a surprisingly short set of skid marks, in a clearing it had made for itself among the trees. It would need some work to get it into the air again—but, considering what it had just been through, it was a miracle that it wasn’t a write-off. Storm had summoned a localized rain shower to extinguish the flames that still burnt in the engine housing, and to put out the small, scattered fires that had started in the wake of the plane’s tumultuous landing. Steam rose from the battered metal as cold water pelted down upon it.
Anxiously, Rogue looked for the erstwhile pilot, but could see no sign of him. In front of her, Wolverine crouched and sniffed the air, but she doubted if he could pick up anything useful over the acrid smell of burning.
Someone was knocking on the inside of the Blackbird’s dented hatch. Before she could react, the door flew open, to hang limply from one hinge. Framed in the aperture, Nightcrawler looked unsteady on his feet, and he held his shoulder as if wounded. Rogue’s heart leapt in horror at the realization that he had stayed in the plane. But he sprang into the air, somersaulted to the ground and took an elaborate bow. “Please, please, no applause—just throw flowers!”
“You almost got yourself killed!" growled Wolverine, but he couldn’t mask the affection and reli
ef in his voice.
“Hey, where’s the fun in fighting to protect a world that hates and fears you if you can’t make a stupidly heroic gesture once in a while? And, whatever our fearless leader might say, I doubt if the X-Men’s budget can stretch to another new Blackbird just yet.”
He took a step towards them, and his legs buckled beneath him as his eyelids closed and his head lolled back on his shoulders. Wolverine must have seen it coming: he moved with lightning speed and was by his teammate’s side in time to catch him.
“Is he all right?” asked Rogue.
“He’ll live. He’s just taken one too many knocks lately.” Rogue was uncomfortably aware that she was largely responsible for that. If Kurt was badly injured, she would never be able to forgive herself.
Storm joined them, having dissipated her rain clouds. “Have you noticed the flowers around here?” she asked. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anything quite like them.”
She indicated the small flowers that grew between the roots of one of the nearby trees. Their star-shaped petals were a startling lime green in color, and they sprouted in cup formations around violet buds. To Rogue’s eyes, the clashing colors made the flowers look quite ugly. She had never seen their type before, but then she didn’t share Storm’s interest in botany. Looking around, she saw more of the same flowers, growing in isolated clusters.
“Don’t recognize the scent,” said Wolverine, “but they aren’t artificial.”
“We have a mystery, then.”
“Which I suggest we investigate later,” said Rogue. “Somehow, 1 think we might have lost the element of surprise when we brought this here plane down.”
“She’s right,” said Wolverine. “We need to find the others.”
“She’s right. We need to find the others.”
“Too late,” said Tessa to herself, with a confident smile. Wolverine’s grim expression was framed on one of the screens in front of her. Elsewhere on the single wall of the circular room, she could see worm’s eye view images of the other six intruders. The sight of an unconscious Nightcrawler was especially gratifying to her. The vibro-screen had surpassed expectations. It had felled one of the X-Men and split them into two groups. Tessa intended to take full advantage of that latter fact.
Cyclops, Phoenix and Iceman were jogging through the forest towards their colleagues. They would reach them within minutes-unless somebody stopped them.
Wolverine had been right about the green flowers. They weren’t artificial—not entirely—but he hadn’t imagined that they might be alien in origin. The Kree were specialists in the fields of both mechanics and genetics. The flora of this island had been enhanced by a combination of DNA modification and cybernetic implants. The fact that it could act as a network of ground-level spy cameras was the least of its uses.
Tessa entered a series of commands into the Kree computer, her fingers moving quickly and confidently across the alien controls. She smiled at the knowledge that somewhere above her head-but below her enemies’ feet-mechanical devices were now releasing a controlled combination of pheromones, which in turn would awaken a biological imperative in the local plant-life.
An imperative to attack.
At first, Cyclops thought he had merely stumbled in the undergrowth. But then something strong and slender wound itself around his left ankle, and he realized that the undergrowth itself was trying to trip him. “Jean, Bobby, face front!” he rapped. “We’ve got a situation.”
“So I see,” said Phoenix.
It was easy enough for Cyclops to tear his foot free-but, wherever else he placed it, he could see the ground churning, as roots and tendrils crept towards their target.
“Not another living island,” moaned Iceman. “Please, not another living island!”
And then the trees themselves reached out, their branches like arms, and Cyclops barely had time to shout a warning before he was entangled. Thorns pricked at him, and snagged on his insulated uniform. He struggled, and felt the satisfying snap of a dozen twigs. But for every one that broke, more came grasping for him, scratching at the exposed skin of his face. He operated his visor, and branches crackled and withered in the destructive path of his eye-beam. In between blasts, he glanced over at his teammates. Phoenix was using her telekinesis. He could see it was an effort for her to locate and take hold of so many targets at once, but she was succeeding in pushing the branches away from her. Iceman too was keeping them at bay. He had surrounded himself with a field of intense cold, which rendered the living wood brittle and allowed him to snap anything that ventured too close to him.
In fact, it was Cyclops himself who was the least equipped of the three to deal with this threat. Effective as his optic blasts were, he could only shoot at what he could see. And, almost as if the vegetation could sense this, it launched a concerted attack upon him from behind. Before Cyclops could turn, his arms were bound to his side, and a creeper had wrapped itself around his throat and was squeezing tight. He gasped for breath as he clawed at it. By the time he had ripped it loose, more tendrils had seized his feet and pulled them from beneath him. He toppled sideways, landing awkwardly and still breathing heavily. He tried to stand, but he was already held fast. He found himself staring into the violet center of a flower with lime green petals. And, suddenly, the petals opened outwards and the flower puffed a sweet-smelling gas right into his face.
He was caught by surprise, unable to stop himself from breathing in until it was too late. He opened his visor again and pulverized the flower, but the smell of the gas was already overpowering, and he could feel himself beginning to black out. He could sense Jean’s concern through their permanent telepathic link, but there was nothing she could do. She was weakening too. And Cyclops could feel himself being pulled into the soft earth, and he almost welcomed its embrace as he sank into a dreamless sleep.
Wolverine cut a swathe through the living forest like an angry whirlwind, running too fast for the trees and shrubs to fully react to his presence before he had passed, lashing out with his claws at any branch or creeper that was still able to get close to him. The vegetation around the Blackbird’s landing site had been too damaged to pose a threat. But a telepathic distress cry from Phoenix had alerted him to the perils elsewhere.
He hadn’t stopped to think. She was nearby, and she was in trouble.
If Wolverine was at all disappointed to find that Phoenix had summoned him on her husband’s behalf, rather than her own, he didn’t show it. He didn’t let himself think it. He took in the situation at a glance. Cyclops had already sunk halfway into the ground. He was asleep, and Wolverine’s keen sense of smell told him why. The green-and-red flowers were pumping an anaesthetic gas into the atmosphere. It had affected Phoenix and Iceman too: they were groggy, but at least they were still standing, and still fighting. And Storm was already on the scene, having flown ahead. She had summoned a fresh breeze that was dispersing the gas before it could do more harm.
Wolverine leapt towards Cyclops, but a tangle of vines reared up before him, and he lost precious seconds as he hacked his way through it. By the time he reached the spot where the X-Men’s leader had been, only his yellow-gloved hand was still visible, protruding forlornly from the ground. And, even as Wolverine reached for it, it sank beneath the surface.
He dug with his claws, carefully at first but more frantically as he realized that Cyclops was already deeply buried. Phoenix lent him a telekinetic assist, having extricated herself from her own predicament. But the more dirt they shifted aside, the more poured in to replace it, and their hole remained stubbornly shallow. Wolverine took a step back, recognizing the hopelessness of the situation—and, within seconds, the hole had been filled. There was no way of telling that it had ever existed.
A heavy silence fell. Storm landed quietly beside her teammates, and the X-Men stared at the ground and considered their loss. The plants were no longer a threat, although some broken branches and shredded vines still thrashed helplessly as if in death-th
roes,
“I can’t feel Scott in my mind any more,” said Phoenix, in a distant, hollow voice.
“Doesn’t mean a thing,” said Wolverine. “In case you ain’t worked it out yet, whatever’s down there is shielded from your telepathy.”
“You’re right,” said Phoenix, with a determined nod.
“We assume that Cyclops is unharmed until we see evidence to the contrary,” said Storm. As the X-Men’s deputy leader, it was up to her to take command now.
“Fair enough,” said Wolverine, “but I think there’s more bad news on the way.”
The others looked up, only now seeing what Wolverine had scented seconds earlier. Rogue had stayed behind with the Blackbird, to look after the unconscious Nightcrawler. She flew towards them now, and the elf was not with her.
“The earth just swallowed him up,” she explained, apologetically. “I tried to keep hold of him, but it was too strong. If I hadn’t let go, he would have been tom down the middle.”
“We’re getting creamed,” grumbled Wolverine. “Two people down, and we ain’t even seen the enemy yet.”
“Then it is past time we took this fight to them,” announced Storm. “Clearly, it is too dangerous to travel through the forest on foot. We will take to the air, and search for sites where their helicopter could have landed.”
From below, Tessa was still watching.
The X-Men had destroyed or disabled several of the flower cameras, but there were many more. The computer told her that Cyclops and Nightcrawler had been brought to the base. She had transmitted an order to a team of Hellfire Club agents, to collect the anaesthetized heroes from their arrival bays and to take them to the holding cells until she was ready to deal with them. She concentrated on tracking the flight path of the remaining five, allowing herself a smile at the thought of what lay in store for them.
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 17
