He sat up with a start, crying out as he registered the sight of a woman clad in black leather standing over him and thought of Selene. He threw up his hands and reinforced his half-melted ice armor with a thought, although the effort sent a shard of pain into his skull.
“We have no time to waste,” said the woman. “I have need of your powers.”
Iceman finally recognized Shaw’s lapdog, Tessa. She was dressed in full Hellfire Club regalia: a black leather teddy, boots up to her upper thighs and a red-trimmed cloak secured at her left shoulder by a trident-embossed clasp. The look was unusual for her, at least in public: he was used to thinking of her as a demure young woman, a silent pen pusher, but now she looked like a Black Queen in waiting. He suppressed a shiver.
“How long have I been out?” he asked, still feeling dizzy.
“Long enough,” she said pointedly.
Iceman’s eyes widened as he realized that the room around him was a mess, the bed upended, and he remembered the battle that had been fought here. “Hank!” he cried.
“Selene has him,” said Tessa. “There’s nothing you can do for him right now. Your other teammate, however, will not survive much longer without your assistance.”
“Storm’s in trouble? Well, why didn’t you say so?” That was just the wake-up call he had needed. Iceman shrugged off his grogginess and clambered to his feet, although he was a little unsteady and Tessa had to take his arm and guide him out into the corridor.
An embarrassing memory came to him unbidden, and he hoped that it was just a fragment of his fading dream. Or had he really mumbled “Just a few minutes more, mom,” to the loyal confidante of one of the X-Men’s greatest enemies?
‘Yes,” said Tessa without a trace of humor, “I’m afraid you did.”
She led him to the stairwell, or rather to the gap where the stairwell had once been. Hellfire Club agents-human agents, he was relieved to note-were busy tying ropes to a wheel-mounted gun that looked like a cross between a cannon and a giant laser weapon from an old science-fiction B-movie. Iceman stared into a dark pit, frowning as a dim light spilled out of the corridor behind him and glinted off a rectangle of water.
“It’s rising,” he said, suspecting that the observation was unnecessary.
“That’s why we need you,” said Tessa. “You have to stop it. Freeze it.”
“It won’t be easy,” he told her. “You can’t just hold back the full force of an ocean.”
“Two lives depend upon your being able to find a way, and quickly.”
Iceman was already lowering the water’s surface temperature. “Two?” he queried.
“Your friend is trapped on Level Nine along with Shaw.”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded to himself. Now that he had gleaned Tessa’s true motive for helping the X-Men, life made just a little bit more sense. “And you’re worried about Storm, right?”
“In fifty-four seconds,” she said coldly, “it will become an academic point.”
Iceman’s throat went dry as he saw that the black water was lapping at the lower edge of a blocked corridor opening. “That’s Level Nine?” He didn’t wait for an answer. The water wouldn’t stop rising until it had equalized its level with that of the ocean without. To stop it, he would have to hold back thousands of gallons, defying immense pressure. His lower lip protruded stubbornly as he concentrated, pushing himself to his limit. He was able to freeze a thin surface layer, but it cracked and shattered as the water pushed up from beneath it. It had begun to sluice down the Level Nine corridor now: the torrent found its own way through the wreckage, carrying lumps of ice in its flow. Bobby imagined the claustrophobic Storm, trapped and helpless as the frigid liquid began to pool around her.
He dropped his ice shell, diverting all his resources to his arduous task. He started to sweat as his mutant gene abandoned the unconscious chore of regulating his body temperature. He reached deeper into the water, drawing all the heat he could from its molecules. His own body was dehydrating with the effort, and his head was pounding. Soon, all he could feel—all he could sense—was the pain, and he couldn’t tell if he was even having an effect any more.
He wasn’t consciously aware of the moment when he was forced to surrender. As the world came back into focus, Iceman found himself doubled over, leaning on a wall for support, his lungs heaving. Bereft of his armor, he was clad only in a pair of black trunks into which was sewn a red “X” logo. Normally he didn’t feel the cold, but now the beads of perspiration that rolled down his exposed skin felt like jagged ice shards.
At first he was only vaguely aware that Tessa had clicked her fingers and gestured toward the Hellfire Club agents. Then he realized that they had wheeled the laser-weapon-cum-cannon out over the edge of the precipice. They had taken the strain of the ropes that held it, and they were lowering it slowly but shakily into the pit.
“Hold on a minute!” he protested weakly. “I’m not sure if the ice is strong enough to take the weight of that thing.” The truth was, he had no idea how much water he had succeeded in freezing; he was just relieved that, for the moment at least, it had apparently ceased to rise.
“It will have to be,” said Tessa in a tone that brooked no objection. “My employer and your friend cannot have much time left. We must blast our way through to them.”
The weapon landed clumsily, and a sharp crack echoed up the erstwhile stairwell. Iceman winced and took a deep breath, steeling himself. He could feel his frozen barrier losing its integrity, returning to liquid form. He fought to maintain it, to repair the cracks, as two Hellfire Club agents dropped the end of a rope ladder into the pit and scrambled down it.
A minute later, he winced as their weapon blasted fire at the obstructed corridor, bucking on its stand and sending fierce vibrations through his head.
Cyclops hadn’t garnered much information from Iceman’s hurried distress call. However, the X-Men had been on standby ever since they had left three of their own-not to mention a good friend-with Sebastian Shaw and the Hellfire Club. They had expected trouble. Their Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird stealth jet, modified with alien technology, made short work of the long journey to China and beyond, but Cyclops still fretted and wished he had stationed reinforcements closer to the Kree island.
Four of the Blackbird’s occupants bailed out as the island came into view. Wolverine rode on Rogue’s back, his keen eyesight locating their destination even in the dark. Phoenix used her telekinesis to lower herself and her husband. Nightcrawler stayed at the controls: he would teleport to join the others once he had put the plane down.
Cyclops and Phoenix made a gentle touchdown in the forest clearing that housed the raised entrance to the underground Kree base. Rogue and Wolverine had already landed and rushed inside. Cyclops took in the situation at a glance: smoke was drifting up the metal steps to dissipate on the night air, and Hellfire agents were coughing up bile and nursing fallen comrades. Doctors Moira Mac-Taggert and Rory Campbell were present: they were tiying to help the injured, but they could do little more than wrap their wounds in scraps of clothing and offer words of comfort.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” said Moira, pale and breathless. “Half the base has collapsed. They’ve pulled a dozen bodies out of the wreckage-Shaw’s goons, mostly-but there are still people down there. We were lucky to get out ourselves.”
Cyclops nodded and opened his mouth to ask about his missing teammates. But the question was answered, at least in part, as a group of eight uniformed agents staggered out into the clearing, led by Tessa. Two of them carried a barely conscious Bobby Drake between them. Bringing up the rear of the procession, bedraggled and weary, their arms around each other’s shoulders for mutual support, were Shaw and Storm.
“What happened?” asked Cyclops. “Where’s Hank?”
Storm shook her head; it was clearly an effort for her to speak. “Taken,” she rasped.
“By whom?”
The answer came from Shaw. “Selene,” he said grimly.
Cyclops scowled. “If this is a trick...”
“Selene and I may have been allies once,” said Shaw, “but evidently no longer.”
Cyclops chose to accept his word for that, at least for the present. There was no more time for talking; despite the Beast’s predicament, the rescue effort here had to take priority.
Under his direction, working as a team, the X-Men speeded up the process considerably. Phoenix probed the ruins for thought patterns, and Cyclops’s optic blast pulverized the more difficult obstructions. This allowed Rogue and Wolverine to get in closer to the few survivors, whereupon they bent their combined strength to the delicate task of digging them free. Meanwhile, Nightcrawler’s teleporta-tion and his ability to cling to any surface enabled him to reach places that the others, for all their raw power, could not.
Some people, however, were already beyond help.
It did not seem to concern Shaw overmuch that he had lost nineteen of his men in the attack. To him, Cyclops supposed, they were nothing more than resources, a number at the end of a column, hired mercenaries who could be replaced with a telephone call. Moira, on the other hand, was wounded by the deaths of two of her fellow scientists, crushed beneath a falling ceiling as they had fled their quarters. She had only known Professor Travers and Doctor Scott for a week, but she mourned their loss all the same.
And there was something else.
“They didn’t just destroy our work,” said Rory Campbell dispiritedly as the tired X-Men rested in the clearing, enjoying a fine, refreshing watery mist that Storm had conjured up. Ororo herself was slumped against a tree, her eyes closed, breathing deeply. “They trashed all the equipment we’d need to ever have a hope of duplicating it.”
“That’s not to mention the small fact that they killed two of our colleagues,” said Moira bitterly, “and took Hank, who understood what we were doing here better than any of us.”
“There’s no chance of salvaging anything?” asked Cyclops glumly.
“Och, you saw what it was like down there, Scott-and those demons deliberately targeted the laboratory. Selene wanted this project well and truly terminated.”
“But your serum,” said Phoenix, “it’s still in Hank’s bloodstream, isn’t it?”
“Not the serum itself, not any more. But the super-cell it created: aye, that’s in there right enough. And maybe-just maybe, mind-Hank’s had enough radiation treatments to give it the strength it needs to have a fighting chance against this damned virus.”
“Either way,” sighed Campbell, “win or lose, the super-cell itself will be destroyed in the fight. If you want to rescue it as well as the Beast, you don’t have much time.”
“How long?” asked Cyclops.
Campbell shrugged and looked at Moira, who was equally uncertain. “It’s impossible to say-but I wouldn’t like to lay odds on it lasting much more than another twelve hours.”
“Then our course of action is plain.” Cyclops hadn’t noticed Shaw sidling up behind him; he wondered how long the Black King had been standing there, listening. “Tessa and my agents can deal with the situation here. We must retrieve the Beast from Selene’s clutches.”
“You make it sound like you’ll be coming with us,” said Rogue in an unkind tone.
“That is indeed my intention.”
“Not a chance, Shaw,” snarled Wolverine, his hackles rising.
“I think you will find,” said Shaw, “that I know both my former Black Queen and the building she currently occupies better than any man alive.”
“You mean the New York Hellfire Club?” asked Rogue. “Who’s to say she’s taken the Beast back there? She must know it’s the first place we’d look.”
“If she thinks she can hide anywhere,” growled Wolverine, “then she doesn’t know the X-Men very well.”
"Indeed," said Shaw, “so where better to prepare for the inevitable confrontation than at the seat of her power?”
“He’s right,” said Phoenix. “Selene has allied herself with the demon Blackheart-and, according to our latest information, he’s confined to the underground levels of the Hellfire Club building. With him by her side, she’s almost invincible.”
“May I also remind you,” said Shaw, “that the Hellfire Club and Shaw Industries do still maintain a controlling interest in the Legacy project. What Selene has taken is as much my property as it is yours.” “What Selene has taken,” said Nightcrawler, “is our friend—or are you forgetting him?”
“And we’re not likely to rescue him without a fight,” said Cyclops. “In that eventuality, we need to know we can rely on each other implicitly.”
“Comes down to it,” said Wolverine, “we don’t know whose side you’ll fight on.”
“I believe we can trust him.”
Cyclops was surprised by Storm’s quiet interjection. She had opened her eyes and sat up, but she still looked weak. Her expression, however, was determined. He gave her a quizzical look, and she elaborated: “Sebastian saved my life down in the tunnels.”
“Saved his own life, more like,” scoffed Moira.
“No,” said Storm, shaking her head firmly. “He didn’t have to shield me, too.”
A long silence followed, during which Cyclops tried to think of a way to refute that statement but could not. “He is also right,” Storm added quietly. “His assistance could prove invaluable to us.”
“OK,” said Cyclops, unable to conceal his reluctance. “But this is an X-Men mission, Shaw—and as long as you’re fighting with us, you’ll follow my orders. Do you understand me?”
“Oh, I understand perfectly,” said Shaw with an infuriating smirk.
The sun was rising, coloring the North Pacific Ocean in shades of red. But Shaw’s mood was dark as he perched upon the edge of a plush leather couch in the back of a Hellfire Club jet and stared out of a tiny window at the water far below him. He had told the X-Men-much to their annoyance—that he had some business to attend to before he could meet them in New York. Still, as much of a lead as he gave them and as fast as their Blackbird was, he knew he could beat them there. He would reach the Club’s headquarters on Hong Kong Island in a matter of minutes, whereupon his White Rook, Fitzroy, could open a portal between continents for him.
In the meantime, he glared at the portable computer in his lap as if it might explode. His agents had fetched it for him along with the plane. His old one had likely been flattened along with his office beneath the Kree island-although he would still have to retrieve it, whatever the cost or the danger to his people. He couldn’t leave open the possibility that the files stored upon it might be salvaged by political opponents.
On the screen of the laptop, a trident icon was blinking. Shaw’s partner in the Legacy project wanted to speak with him. Impossible as it seemed, Shaw had no doubt that he knew what had happened already. He had been putting off the moment when he would have to return his call. He sighed and glanced around, but the only other person in the spacious compartment was Tessa. She was lost in thought, presumably adapting to the loss of the island, running cost projections and situation analyses through her computer mind.
As Shaw’s fingers flickered across the small keyboard, he set his lips into a line and his face into a studiedly neutral expression. His partner usually kept him waiting, but this time his digitally disguised image sprang onto the screen almost immediately. The man’s eyes burnt in his blacked-out face. His voice, electronically filtered, was harsh with contempt, making the laptop’s tiny speakers pop and crackle. “Can I trust you to do nothing, Shaw?”
Shaw bit his lip but fumed inwardly.
“First, you allow the X-Men to become involved in our project. Now, as a direct result of that folly, you have lost both the Beast and the island.”
“Selene’s intervention was unexpected,” Shaw conceded, “but not necessarily unfortunate.”
“It happened as a result of your ineptitude. It was your choice to welcome that witch back into your Inner Circle, to share your sec
rets with her when she had betrayed you before.”
“And now,” said Shaw through clenched teeth, “we have the opportunity to play off the X-Men against another force. I can turn this situation to our advantage.”
“As you have promised before. You are running out of chances, Shaw.”
“May I remind you,” said Shaw, controlling his anger, “that we entered into this partnership on equal terms. I do not care to be spoken to as if I were a mere lackey.”
“And may I remind you," snapped his anonymous partner, “that had I not raised the abandoned Kree island from the seabed and helped to fund your research into the Legacy Virus, then we could not have come even this far.”
Shaw bowed his head as if accepting the point. The truth was that, of all the temporary alliances he had made in his life, all the dangerous deals he had struck for the sake of expediency, he had resented none more than this one. His current partner’s money alone could not have bought him a stake in a project so close to the Black King’s heart. His offer of alien technology, however, had proved impossible to resist.
Shaw had taken a tiger by the tail; he was under no illusions about that. He had to tread very carefully. He couldn’t afford to reveal his contempt for this loathsome man just yet.
“There is still hope,” he said evenly. “The cure may still exist in McCoy’s blood.”
“Clearly,” snapped his partner, “That, I imagine, is why Selene took him in the first place.” He leaned forward until his angry eyes seemed to fill the screen. “Get him back, Shaw.”
“I intend to.”
The communications link was abruptly broken, and Shaw allowed himself a secret scowl. He wouldn’t put up with being belittled for much longer.
He sank back into the soft couch and formed his fingers into a steeple in front of his nose and mouth as he slipped into quiet contemplation. The X-Men, he knew from hard-earned experience, were formidable opponents. With him at their side, he prided himself that their chances against Selene were quite good. Whether they could defeat her in time to rescue their ailing comrade before the super-cell in his system extinguished itself was another matter. But Shaw’s most challenging task would not be to dethrone the Black Queen; it would be to ensure that the Legacy cure, should it be retrieved, was kept out of the outlaw mutants’ hands. Out of their hands, and out of the hands of his so-called partner.
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 34
