She recalled how the Hellfire Club had been formed in London in the eighteenth century, just another exclusive gentlemen’s organization. She had paid it little heed at the time, but it had grown in both size and influence until it had become worthy of her attention. Nowadays, it had branches all over the world. It catered to society’s rich elite, and it was a powerful mechanism by which they maintained their financial and political positions.
If the Hellfire Club was comprised of the elite, however, then the members of each branch’s Inner Circle-the Lords Cardinal, who awarded themselves ranks based on the names of chess pieces and operated from the shadows-were the elite of the elite. Selene had wheedled herself into the Inner Circles of first New York and then
Hong Kong, albeit both times playing a subordinate role to Sebastian Shaw as the Black King. Recently, however, she had seen an opportunity to take the New York branch-considered by most to be the brightest jewel in the Hellfire Club’s crown-for herself. Now and forever, she was the Black Queen.
And she had pawns that weren’t even aware of the power she had over them.
The Black Queen sat upon her throne in a small room beneath the Hellfire Club’s Fifth Avenue headquarters. She had made a start on decorating what had once been a dull office to her tastes—an exquisite mixture of the grand and the sinister, with carved demon faces leering out from behind velvet drapes and black candle wax melting onto gold holders—but it was not yet regal enough for her. She would rectify that soon. For now, however, her attention was taken by events occurring eight thousand miles away.
Eight days ago, Selene had had an encounter with the X-Man known as the Beast. He had been on a personal journey, and she had sensed that his eventual findings were likely to be of interest to her. She had wanted to see his journey through to its conclusion.
Selene’s crystal ball was glowing white, and she summoned it to her with a thought. It rose from its marble dais and hovered in front of her. The mists beneath its surface were clearing, and a face came into focus. It was a young face, topped by mousy brown hair, and it wore an expression of concern.
Selene leaned forward expectantly, her chin resting on her bony fist, and watched.
“Hank! Hank!”
Somebody was shaking him. He didn’t want to wake, but he had no choice. He rose to the surface of sleep, feeling as if he were swimming up through a tar pit.
Hovering above him was the youthful face of one of his oldest friends. His name was Bobby Drake-but, thanks to the incredible powers with which he had been invested by an accident of his birth, he also went by the nom de guerre of Iceman.
“Come on pal, time to get up. It’s time for your treatment.” Bobby tried to smile, but the gesture seemed forced. His eyes betrayed the fact that something was worrying him.
Hank wondered what it could be. He wondered why he had woken in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room with dull metal walls, and he wondered why he felt so weak and sick, why his body was running hot and cold and why his blue fur was matted with sweat. He tried to stand, but the movement made him feel dizzy. Bobby took him by his arm and gently helped him into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.
Hank sat with his fragile head in his hands, staring down at his clawed feet on the gray floor as the final veil of his deep sleep lifted and his recent memories settled back into place.
His name was Doctor Henry McCoy, but to the world at large he was the Beast. And like his friend Bobby, he was hated and feared by that world. Like Bobby, he had been born with a certain anomaly in his genes; an anomaly which made him a mutant, part of the next evolution of humanity. Where Bobby had the power to create and shape ice, Hank had been gifted with supernormal strength and athletic prowess.
He had also sprouted blue far, claws, pointed ears and fangs.
He recognized his surroundings now, and an old weight settled back upon his shoulders. He was a long way from his New York home. He had gone to sleep-passed out, more like-in a tiny dormitory in a research facility located beneath an island in the Pacific Ocean.
The island was artificial, built thousands of years ago by an alien race of master geneticists known as the Kree—and they had left some of their secrets behind. Hank had come to their abandoned base in search of those secrets. He had seen a chance to realize his most fervent desire: to find a cure for the Legacy Virus, the disease that was ravaging the world’s mutant population. A week ago, he had achieved that goal at long last-or so he had believed.
Along with a group of fellow scientists, he had developed a serum. In order to test it, however, he had needed to find a newly-infected mutant. Events had conspired to make the search urgent-and in an act of desperation, Hank had volunteered himself as a test subject. He had infected himself with Legacy, and then literally taken his own medicine.
But the injection of the serum was only the first stage in a long, frustrating process-and now Hank was a lot less confident that his untested cure would work at all.
His nausea had receded-at least as much as it ever did, now that he was dying. He put an arm around Bobby’s shoulders and allowed himself to be lifted to his feet. He had been given the nearest room to the laboratory-a storeroom, which had been cleared out for his use and furnished with a bed and a single chair from the residential level below-but the connecting corridor still felt like it was a mile long.
He tackled the arduous trek the only way he could: with one faltering step at a time, leaning heavily on Bobby for support.
“Easy now. That’s right, just take it steady. There’s no hurry. Doctor MacTaggert can wait. She’s only got one patient.” Bobby kept up his pointless commentary, talking for the sake of talking even when he didn’t know what to say. No doubt he thought he was keeping Hank’s spirits up. Grateful as he was for the intention, Hank would rather have been left in silence. His eyelids were heavy, and he couldn’t believe that another six hours had passed already. He had slept through most of it, which was probably a blessing.
“It’ll be better news today,” said Bobby, “you’ll see. The treatments have got to start working soon. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? You checked all the figures a hundred times, and you’re the smartest guy I know. You’ll be up and about before you know it.”
Try as he might, Hank couldn’t be so optimistic. Whenever he tried to look ahead, all he could see was a big, black cloud hanging over his future.
“This time next week, we’ll be back home, you’ll see. In fact... say, Hank, did you ever wonder what happened to Vera and Zelda? Maybe we could look them up when we get out of here, take them out on a double date... to celebrate, you know? It’ll be like old times.”
Doctor Moira MacTaggert was waiting for them in the laboratory as usual. There were four other scientists-Hank himself excluded-working in this facility at present. However, he had seen little of Scott, Alahan, Travers or even Rory Campbell in recent days. Moira was an old friend and colleague, and she had taken it upon herself to supervise every stage of his treatment herself. Despite this, she had never been one to let overt displays of emotions get in the way of her work, and her manner was businesslike to the point of brusqueness. The sleeves of her white lab coat were rolled up to the elbows, and Hank couldn’t help but notice the dark rings around her eyes. He wondered when she had last slept.
“And how is the patient today?” asked Moira in her rich Scottish accent as she helped Bobby to lay Hank down on his back on a hard metal bench. The Kree had designed this base with efficiency rather than comfort in mind.
He described his symptoms in clinical detail in a painful, rasping voice as Moira drew blood from his arm into a syringe. He had had so many needles inside him recently that he was surprised she could even find a spot on his skin that hadn’t already been punctured.
Set into the walls of the laboratory were an assortment of keyboards, screens and dials: user interfaces for the Kree computer which ran this base, and from the memory banks of which Hank and his fellow scientists had sifted the inform
ation that had allowed them to come this far. Moira placed a vial of his blood into a small compartment in one wall, and allowed the computer to analyze its composition. It was a familiar process by now.
A screen above Hank’s head lit up, casting green light across his face. He was too tired and weak to stand up and inspect the data for himself, but Moira’s dour expression told him all he needed to know. “I’m sorry, Hank,” she said softly.
“Has there been no improvement at all?” he asked hopefully.
“The progress of the virus is still slowing.”
“Well, there you are!” chimed in Bobby, trying to sound cheerful.
“It isn’t good enough, Bobby,” sighed Hank. “My immune system is manning the metaphorical barricades, but it is still being forced back. We need it to repel the invader.”
On another day-a better day-Hank’s own loquacious nature would have urged him to explain the process to his young friend again. He would have reminded Bobby that the serum with which he had injected himself was designed to react with his own mutant gene to create a new, temporary type of cell within his system: a super-cell as he had dubbed it, which would go to war with the Legacy Virus until each had cancelled the other out. Unfortunately, a course of radiation treatment was also needed to encourage the reaction to run its course.
“Are you sure you want to try again?” asked Moira. She had asked him the same question every six hours for the past three days. By now, Hank’s affirmative response was almost automatic, as was their next exchange: “Are you ready for this, then?”
“As prepared as I will ever be.”
Moira nodded curtly, flashed Hank a tight smile of encouragement and operated a series of controls on the nearest vertical surface of the Kree computer. A curved piece of metal slid smoothly out from the underside of Hank’s bench and encircled him, until he was completely enclosed in the darkness of a flat-ended tube. He breathed in deeply in nervous anticipation, but his chest wheezed with the effort of even that small task.
Intellectually, he knew he shouldn’t have been able to feel the radiation that bombarded him. Still, he couldn’t help but imagine the invisible rays ripping through his already-weakened cells. He could almost feel his dizziness and nausea—the cruel side-effects of the treatment—worsening, and his left eye was moistened by a tear as a rattling groan of pain and dismay escaped his throat.
Now, when it was too late, he began to think about what Moira had asked him. Did he really want to keep doing this? The treatments should have borne fruit by now. By continuing with them, he was clinging to a hope that became slimmer each day. At what point, he asked himself, would he have to accept failure? More than likely, he considered, the decision would be taken for him. He could tell that Moira was worried about him: she would refuse to treat him soon, for fear that his body would be unable to stand further punishment.
But he couldn’t face the thought of giving up yet. He couldn’t face going back to the start again, knowing that this time he would be racing against the clock; that the virus he was seeking to eradicate was coursing through his system, killing him in turn.
He thought about Moira, and immediately felt selfish. The prospect that he was dreading so much was her reality. She had contracted the Legacy Virus months ago: the first non-mutant to catch the so-called “mutant disease” but by no means the last. The symptoms had progressed slowly in her case, but the end result would be the same. She had to be under as much strain as he was right now, but she got on with her work-and with her life—with a characteristic determination, a refusal to give in to despair and death.
It was for Doctor Moira MacTaggert-and for all the people like her, now and in the years to come—that Hank knew he had to do this. Once the super-cell had been created inside his own body, it could be isolated and injected directly into other sufferers. It would save hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of lives. That was why he had to hold on to those last threads of hope for as long as they lasted, no matter what the cost to his own health.
His eyelids had drooped, and he had almost drifted back to sleep. He didn’t notice that the curved hood of the radiation machine had slid back until he felt the recycled air of the lab pricking at the perspiration on his forehead, and heard Moira’s voice. “All done!” she said with forced levity. “Now, you get back to your rest—and get better this time, do you hear?”
“I shall certainly endeavor to do so, Doctor,” said Hank with a weak grin.
“Och, Henry, you’ll have to do a lot better than that, I’m afraid. Our Lord and Master was in here earlier, wanting an update. I think the poor dear’s getting a wee bit impatient.”
“He isn’t ‘our Lord and Master’,” snapped Hank, sounding more irritable than he had intended. Without meaning to, his fellow scientist had hit a raw nerve.
In order to gain access to this island base and its facilities, the X-Men had had to make a deal with one of their most persistent and dangerous foes. Moira herself had argued strongly against it-but when Hank had infected himself, he had forced the issue in his favor. He had believed that the possibility of finding a cure for the Legacy Virus overrode all other concerns, but the wisdom of his decision still remained to be proven.
When Doctor Henry McCoy had stuck that syringe into his arm, he had taken a gamble with more than just his own life. He had allied his team to an influential and utterly corrupt organization known as the Hellfire Club.
And to its Black King: a powerful and ruthless mutant by the name of Sebastian Shaw.
Sebastian Shaw stood on the surface of the island, in the forest clearing that housed the entranceway to the underground Kree base. An electrical storm was raging-but he maintained an easy, untroubled pose, feet apart and hands clasped behind his back, not seeming to mind the rain that spattered around him and drenched his Victorian frock coat and breeches. His head was tilted back, his dark eyes fixed on the lightning patterns in the sky and the colors they painted on the clouds.
And on the woman who soared above the treetops.
She seemed to be one with the winds themselves, so graceful and yet so assured were her movements. Her black cloak billowed out behind her, and she stretched out her arms as she luxuriated in the raw power of Nature. From down here, Shaw couldn’t tell if she was conducting the storm or simply riding it. The truth probably lay somewhere between the two extremes: it was impossible for him to say where the storm ended and the woman began.
She descended from the clouds to land a few feet in front of him. Her cloak settled slowly around her lithe body as she flicked water from her long, white hair. Above, she had seemed serene; now, white eyes stared mistrustfully out of her dark-skinned face, and Shaw could see a trace of the lightning still trapped within those eyes.
“Were you waiting to speak with me?” she asked.
“I was simply enjoying the performance, Miss Munroe.”
“I was not putting on a performance, Shaw,” said Ororo Munroe: the X-Man known, thanks to her command of the elements, as Storm.
Shaw inclined his head graciously. “I am aware of that,” he said. “You feel claustrophobic inside our underground installation. Perhaps I can ease that discomfort.”
Ororo looked suspicious, and Shaw knew what was going through her mind. The pair had been cast as bitter enemies in the past: the altruistic X-Men had often obstructed the Hellfire Club’s more... extreme attempts to expand its power base. Storm didn’t like having to sleep only a few rooms away from Shaw, and she avoided him when she could.
In return, he had offered her nothing but undaunted politeness. And he was beginning to feel that, slowly, her attitude towards him had thawed from cold to merely cool.
“We are a long way from civilization,” he said. “Most of your teammates have returned to America, and I... I have only one assistant to distract me from the gray walls beneath us.”
“This base is still staffed by more Hellfire Club mercenaries than I feel comfortable with,” said Ororo. “If you are feeling lone
ly, then perhaps you should talk to them.”
Shaw waved a dismissive hand. “I do not hire my pawns for their conversational skills.”
“I have nothing to say to you, Shaw, that you would enjoy hearing.”
“Come now, Miss Munroe, the X-Men have won this battle. This island is no longer mine—but I am not bitter. Is it too much to ask that you be equally gracious in your victory? One meal, that’s all I beg of you. The pleasure of your company for a few short hours.” “You have made this request three times before,” said Ororo. “And I pray that, this time, your answer may be different.” Shaw spread his arms wide, his palms turned upward in a gesture of appeal. “We don’t have to be on opposite sides.”
“That, I believe, is where you are mistaken.”
“Will you not concede that, in the matter of the Legacy Virus at least, we have a common goal? We both wish to see a cure, do we not?”
“A common goal, yes—but I find your methods of achieving that goal deplorable.” The X-Man’s eyes flashed angrily. “You infected scientists with the virus to force them into working for you. You kidnapped our friend, Doctor MacTaggert—and somehow you coerced our teammate, Henry McCoy, into joining you as well.”
Shaw shook his head firmly. “In McCoy’s case, no coercion was needed. He saw the benefits that a cure would bring to the world—as did you. Why else would you be here? Why didn’t you shut down our project and destroy this island? You had the opportunity.”
“The damage had already been done,” contested Ororo. “There was no further harm-and as you said, a great deal to be gained-in seeing your work here through to a conclusion.”
“Nevertheless, I was grateful that it was you who came to the negotiating table rather than your Mr. Summers.” Scott Summers, alias Cyclops, was the X-Men’s field leader: however, a short-term injury had forced him to leave his deputy to thrash out the details of an uneasy partnership. “I’ve always thought he was a little too rigid. I doubt he would have been as quick as you were to deal with those he considers to be his enemies.”
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 27
