It was just like Shaw, she thought, to have anticipated her doubts; to know that, left to herself, she might never have taken that first step out of her room.
He hadn’t even come for her personally, hadn’t given her the chance to slam the door in his face. He had sent one of the Hellfire Club’s hired mercenaries. The man was dressed in the red and blue uniform and blank-faced, skin-colored mask of his organization. He also wore a white dinner jacket and bow tie. As he executed a formal bow, Ororo couldn’t help but giggle at the incongruity of it. Her anticipation thus dispelled, if only for a second, she found herself taking his proffered arm and allowing him to lead her out into the corridor.
Somehow, without Ororo ever having taken a firm decision, a meeting with Shaw—if not an actual dinner date—had become an inevitability. She tried to prepare herself. She didn’t know how to react to him, what she should say. Perhaps she ought to throw his meal back in his face, metaphorically if not literally; tell him exactly what she thought of his attempts to manipulate her, turn around and walk away. But then, she was already wearing the red dress. So, perhaps she would play him at his own game instead—only she would show him that she wasn’t as suited as he might expect to the role of the mouse.
The agent led Ororo down several flights of stairs, deeper and deeper into the base, and a familiar anxiety rose within her. As Shaw well knew-as he had said to her on the surface-she suffered from a fear of enclosed spaces. She had managed to conquer that fear, but it never quite went away. She tried not to think about the weight of the island above her, of what might happen if the walls of the facility should buckle beneath it. She tried not to think about being buried under rubble, unable to move as she had once been, a lifetime ago.
She must have reached the lowest level of the base, because the stairs went no further. Down here, the walls throbbed in rhythm with the generators hidden behind them. By now she was ready for anything, suspecting every shadow, afraid that Shaw’s invitation-and the red dress-had been no more than an elaborate plan to lure her into an ambush. Would he really be so brazen? Even if he could overpower her and hide her body down here, if he could feign ignorance of her disappearance, the others would still be suspicious. They would call in the rest of the X-Men.
Unless Bobby, Hank and Moira were even now walking into similar traps.
The agent pulled open a door and ushered her into the green-tinted light beyond. Ororo’s hand hovered over the pocket in which she had secreted her comm-set-her direct line to her teammates—but she passed him with her head held high, determined not to betray her apprehension. She failed to hide her surprise, however, at the sight that greeted her.
She was in a huge, semicircular room, and the curved wall facing her was transparent. It was the first window she had seen in the Kree base, and she had always imagined-she hadn’t been able to stop herself, especially at night-rocks pressing in behind the metal walls. Here, however, she was beneath the island itself, looking out across the crystal clear Pacific Ocean at the unspoiled works of Nature. Green fronds waved gently in the underwater currents as shrimp and cod swam by, blithely unaware of her eyes upon them. Patches of underwater algae clung to vast outcrops of rock and shingle, providing a touch of pastel color to the panorama, and she caught her breath at the beauty of it all.
“Do you like it?” asked Sebastian Shaw. He stood in front of the window, his unblinking eyes upon her, hands clasped behind his back, his face illuminated by the emerald light.
“Veiy much,” said Ororo.
“We could dine on the surface if you’d prefer,” he said, “but I thought we would be more comfortable in here. I find the view quite soothing.”
“It’s perfect,” said Ororo, despite herself.
Shaw inclined his head graciously. Set up beside him was a rectangular dining table with a white cloth and napkins and a place setting at each end. He pulled back a chair and waited for Ororo to take it. “I’m glad you decided to wear the dress,” he said. “I think it suits you.”
“It’s a perfect fit,” she said. “How did you know my size?”
Shaw gave her a half-smile. “I have a talent for such things, one of my non-mutant gifts.” More likely, thought Ororo, he had had his telepathic personal assistant, Tessa, pluck the information from her mind. She considered leveling the accusation against him, but it felt too soon to break the mood of strained formality. Let him make his move first, she thought. She still hadn’t found out what he expected to gain from this assignation.
Shaw took a seat opposite her, rolled back the cuffs of his velvet smoking jacket and clapped his hands twice. Immediately, the door opened again and three of his lackeys appeared. Each was dressed in the same manner as Ororo’s erstwhile escort, but their masks made it impossible to tell if any of them was the same man. The first agent brought a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and, at Shaw’s signal, poured a glass for each of the diners. The second agent bore two large plates, which he set down in front of them. They contained king prawns in their shells, in a red sauce. The third agent placed two silver bowls in the center of the table, and lifted the lids with a flourish to reveal steaming rice and noodles.
“I hope this meets with your approval,” said Shaw as his colorfully clad waiters departed in silence. “I had the ingredients—and the chef-flown over from Hong Kong this morning.”
Ororo thought the food looked and smelled wonderful—but rather than flatter her host with another compliment, she said, “It all seems a little extravagant.”
“I place little value on money,” said Shaw with a shrug. Ororo raised an eyebrow pertinently, and he smiled. “It has no intrinsic worth, it is simply a means to an end.”
“And your end, in this case, is ... ?”
“Simply to enjoy good company and intellectual discourse.”
He raised his glass toward her, but she did not respond. “I know you better than that, Shaw. There is an ulterior motive behind your invitation. There always is.” He smiled again, but did not contradict her. She stared at him with narrowed eyes for a moment. Then she sighed, lifted her glass and clinked it softly against his.
“You have never appeared short of company,” said Ororo as she ladled rice onto her plate.
“I am often surrounded by people,” said Shaw. “It is not the same thing.”
“I believe you were close to Madelyne Pryor.” She tried to make the statement sound as casual as possible: she began to eat and concentrated upon her plate, avoiding Shaw’s gaze. Madelyne had once been a member of the X-Men, but she had become a bitter foe. Shaw had taken her into his Inner Circle—and if the rumors were true, into his bed too.
“I am under no illusions about Madelyne Piyor,” he said stiffly. Ororo glanced up to see that his expression had darkened. “I took a succubus to my chest. Now she has gone.”
“Oh?” Ororo was genuinely surprised.
Shaw met her gaze and, in a perfectly even voice, he elaborated: “She could not get what she wanted from me. Therefore, she left. No doubt she has returned to her pet, the Grey boy.” He was talking about Nathan Grey: a mutant from an alternative dimension, the son of an alternative version of Ororo’s teammate, Jean Grey. Ororo was aware from Jean’s reports that Nathan and Madelyne had been spending time together, although even Jean didn’t know the precise nature of their relationship. “Perhaps she will return,” said Shaw. “She has done so in the past. She has also betrayed me in the past, although she thinks me unaware of it. Perhaps I will not see her again.” He shrugged as if he did not care either way, but Ororo thought she detected a flicker of sadness in his eyes.
“And your Black Queen? She has defected to the Hellfire Club’s New York branch, has she not?” It was an impolite question, and she wasn’t sure why she had asked it. Perhaps it was because she had rarely seen anything get under Shaw’s skin, and some malicious part of her had wanted to see if she could unsettle him further.
“Selene has made no move against me.”
“Not
this time,” said Ororo, “not yet. But she has betrayed you before.”
“In that, she is no different to many people.”
“True. And yet you continue to strike these dangerous alliances: Madelyne, Trevor Fitzroy, Donald Pierce ... are you really so bad a judge of character?”
Shaw held his expression carefully neutral, but his eyes had darkened. “As I have already said, I labor under no illusions. In my business, the stakes are invariably high. I choose my partners for what they can offer me, even if only in the short term. I deal with the great and the powerful or with those who have the potential to be both. I expect no less of such people than to seek to use me in return. And once they have taken what they want from me, or more likely found that is not for the taking, they will turn on me like snakes.” “As you would them,” said Ororo, “if the situation were reversed.” Shaw inclined his head as if accepting the truth of the accusation. Feeling daring, Ororo added: “As did your son.”
There was silence for a moment. Then Shaw cracked open a prawn, and the sharp retort resounded around the spacious room. “I taught Shinobi well,” he said quietly, grim-faced.
“And he tried to kill you. We thought he had succeeded.”
“He disappointed me.”
“Is that all, Shaw?”
“You misunderstand, my dear. He disappointed me because, when I returned from the dead-so to speak-he chose to flee, to go into hiding, rather than face me.”
“Perhaps he had good reason.” Shaw didn’t answer that, and his expression was inscrutable. Ororo changed tack. “Then you have no idea where he is?”
“j should rather ask that question of you,” said Shaw. “You have spoken with him far more recently than I; indeed, I understand the two of you shared a great deal.”
Ororo’s startled eyes flicked upward towards him—she couldn’t stop them-and she felt sure that he could read the guilt therein. He smiled, probably with satisfaction at having disconcerted her, having turned the tables. “My dear Miss Munroe,” he said pleasantly, “you must realize that there are some things a son simply cannot keep from his father.”
“My relationship with Shinobi was extremely brief,” she said coldly, “and not entered into by choice on my part.” She had pushed the whole affair to the back of her mind. Had she not, then Shaw could never have taken her by surprise like this.
“I am well aware of the circumstances of your dalliance." Abandoning his meal, Shaw leaned forward with an eager glint in his eye. “But tell me, my dear, do you really believe that even the most powerful hypnotic drug can cause somebody—an X-Man, no less, one of the most strong-willed people I have ever encountered-to completely betray her nature?”
“What are you implying?”
“That on some level—oh, one buried deep within your subconscious mind, 1 don’t doubt it—you were attracted to my son.”
“No,” said Ororo firmly.
“It is understandable,” continued Shaw as if she hadn’t spoken. “A younger man; a handsome man, I am led to believe; a man with so much power. The head of the Hellfire Club’s most influential Inner Circle, no less, at that time. You have always been attracted to powerful men, haven’t you, Ororo? And if those men have a touch of the darkness about them-as most powerful men have-then so much the better.”
She was lost for words. Half of her wanted to jump to her feet, to slap him across the face and leave, but she refused to let him see her lose her cool. Her blood had rushed to her cheeks in shame, and she still wasn’t sure how Shaw had managed to turn the conversation around so that it was now her life, not his, that was under scrutiny. He was playing her at her own game, she realized, and winning. She had to regain control, but she didn’t know how-because in her heart she feared that what the Black King had said was true.
“I apologize,” said Shaw, although he sounded insincere. “I did not mean to embarrass you. I myself know how seductive power can be.” “I do not agree. The old adage that it corrupts is, in my experience, well founded.”
“Or perhaps it is just that the corrupt seek power.”
“Either way,” Ororo snapped, “you are wrong.” She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. Bad enough that he had touched a raw nerve; she didn’t have to let him know it.
“Are you sure?” asked Shaw with a hint of amusement. “Would you have accepted a dinner invitation from Fitzroy? Or Tessa? Or from one of my uniformed agents?”
Ororo set down her cutlery with an annoyed clatter. “Is that what this is about? Do you expect me to profess my undying admiration for you? A secret crush? If so, Shaw, then you overestimate your own charms. Like the people with whom you deal, you are a snake. A ruthless, selfish, amoral man. You represent everything I find loathsome in humanity.”
“More so than the infamous Victor Von Doom?”
Ororo winced. Shaw seemed to know everything about her life, her every failing. Her relationship with Doom—the ruler of a small European nation, and probably one of the most evil men in the world-had never had a chance to get started, but there had certainly been a spark between them. The memory of it often haunted her.
Shaw abandoned his food too, and leaned back in his chair. He rested his hands on his chest, interlacing his fingers. “You may not like me, Ororo, but I possess everything you desire.”
“No,” she said bluntly.
“I beg to disagree. Why did you join the X-Men? Why do you wear that garish costume and make yourself a target for those who would render our kind extinct? I think your Professor Xavier offered you something you wanted; something for which you would do anything.”
“The Professor awakened me to my responsibilities, that is all.”
“I think he did more than that. You were bom into a poor country, Ororo. You saw suffering all around you. You watched as people died, knowing that humanity had the ability but not the political will
to prevent those deaths. Even in better times, in the rainforest where you were worshipped as a goddess, you must have felt unfulfilled.” “You presume to know a great deal about my feelings.”
“We are not so dissimilar, you and I."
“Now it is I who must disagree.”
“I am right though, aren’t I? You had the adulation of a superstitious tribe—you had power over them-but it was not enough, because they in turn were powerless. When you were offered a chance to change the world, you took it But that was a long time ago, Ororo, and it is time you asked yourself: did Xavier live up to his promise? Is your life with the X-Men everything you thought—and hoped-it would be?”
“We have made many things better.”
“You have had some minor victories, nothing more. You have failed to halt, much less reverse, the deterioration in mutant-human relations. After all your hard-won battles, all your personal sacrifices, you are further than ever from achieving Xavier’s much-vaunted dream.”
“We have prevented people like you from making the situation worse,” said Ororo.
“You have addressed some of the symptoms of the problem,” countered Shaw. “You are a long way from tackling the causes. Meanwhile, people still die in the Third World.”
Ororo looked down, her lips set into a sullen scowl. “There is only so much we can do. I have learned that lesson.”
Shaw shook his head. “No, no, no, no. One man, to use another old adage, can move mountains-but only with the right lever. And in this world of ours, it is financial and political power that affects real change. You can deny that if you like-you can cling to a dream that can never be realized-or you can accept the system and work it to your own advantage.” Shaw leaned forward again. “Between the Hellfire Club and my own company, Shaw Industries, I control vast sums of money. I have the ear of presidents, judges and, most importantly, the captains of industry. I can change the lives of thousands of people in real, practical ways in an instant. Can you honestly tell me that you would refuse such power, Miss Munroe; that you could not find a single positive use to which to put it?
”
Ororo had butterflies in her stomach and prickles down her back. Shaw was saying nothing that she hadn’t thought herself a thousand times before. Not that she intended to tell him so-but then she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him either. Instead, in as steady a voice as she could muster, she asked: “What are you suggesting?”
“Join me,” he said.
She started, her eyes widening. “You are proposing an alliance?”
“The Inner Circle must remain strong-and of late, it has become depleted. Only two of us remain, and I would not lay odds on Fitzroy’s continued loyalty. You, my dear, would make an excellent Lord Cardinal. So determined, so self-assured, so ambitious ..
“It did not work before,” she reminded him. Some time ago, she had shared the rank of White King in Shaw’s Inner Circle with the X-Men’s long-time adversaiy-at that point, an uneasy friend-Mag-neto. It had been, so she had thought, an opportunity to broker a new peace between at least some of the various mutant factions. It had not lasted. Magneto, like so many before and after him, had turned against Shaw. In time, he had turned against the X-Men as well. Ororo had attended only one full meeting of the Lords Cardinal, and she had achieved nothing.
“This time,” said Shaw, “you would be a member in your own right.”
“I would not be your pawn.”
“Indeed not,” he agreed. “You would be my White Queen.”
She didn’t have to ask what that meant. Sebastian Shaw was the Black King. As the White Queen, she would be his equal, at least in theory; the head of the opposing house. She could even, subject to the approval of her opposite number, recruit new members into the Inner Circle herself: a new White tier, separate from but allied to its Black counterpart. She could apply checks and balances to the excesses of Shaw and his followers.
She could share in his power. She could use it to pursue her own dreams.
Ororo was tempted; sorely tempted. But she was well aware of the magnitude of what she was considering. If Shaw wanted her to believe that she could somehow rehabilitate him, turn the Hellfire Club into a force good, then he would be disappointed. She knew him too well for that. He had already admitted to her that he made allies only for what he could get out of them, and discarded them when he was done. But he expected the same treatment in return. He was offering Ororo a chance to play a dangerous game, and in some ways she was still naive about the rules. The cost to herself, if she lost, was potentially huge.
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 30
