His senses gave him advance notice of the arrival of two teammates. It took them seconds to enter striking range, but to him the delay seemed huge. Then a blast from Cyclops’s eyes stunned the demon on his back and dislodged it, as Phoenix hurled a second creature away with her mind. Freed at last, Wolverine lunged at Deathstrike. Her torso, he knew, was protected, so he aimed for her eyes. She was too able, and he was too hurt already, for him to risk holding back.
She was fast. She pulled her head away from him, but he marked her face. She struck back but, unhindered now, Wolverine dropped beneath her arms, drove his shoulder into her stomach to unbalance her and delivered a double uppercut to her jaw.
The Hellfire Club demons had tried to follow him, but Cyclops and Phoenix had reached them and they were keeping each other busy for now. “Looks like it’s just you and me, lady," snarled Wolverine as he and Deathstrike circled, each looking for an opening, each waiting for the other to let down his or her guard.
“I would have it no other way, gaijin,” she hissed. The skin of her cheek was already being regenerated, knit back together by microscopic nanites; her artificial healing factor was at least as impressive as Wolverine’s natural one.
“Yeah? Looked to me like you were quite happy to hide behind Selene’s foot soldiers a few seconds ago. What’s up-they change the definition of ‘honor’ while I was away?”
“It is not my fault if you were foolish enough to be caught alone.”
“What are you doing here, Deathstrike?” sneered Wolverine. “You ain’t a mutant, you’re a cyborg. Selene let you through the barrier in return for doing her dirty work, did she?”
“My agreement with Selene—” Deathstrike began, but he didn’t hear the rest. He saw an opportunity and seized it. He flew at her, concentrating his attack upon her face again; he cut her skin to ribbons, exposing metal beneath it, but she wasn’t hurt. Mechanical modifications to Deathstrike’s nervous system ensured that her brain no longer received pain signals. Wolverine should have been so lucky.
Deathstrike was an excellent hand-to-hand fighter, perhaps even too good. Her apparent savagery masked her mastery of the martial arts. Wolverine knew a few moves himself, but she kept him on the defensive, forever having to shift his body weight as she tried to throw him, denied an opportunity to take the initiative. Had he not already been wounded, had she not begun the battle with the advantage of numbers, then things might have been different. As it was, it was all he could do to keep his opponent busy.
The merest slip on his part and she would kill him.
Even as the X-Men had leapt out of the subway train, they had heard screams from the platform and realized that, whatever was happening, it was a two-pronged attack. As Cyclops and Phoenix had rushed to help Wolverine, Rogue had headed in the opposite direction, followed by Storm and Iceman. Nightcrawler had teleported ahead of her.
At first, it was difficult to tell what was going on. The dim lighting cast indistinct, undulating shadows on the hanging white sheets. Storm took to the air for a better perspective, but a bloodcurdling shriek just a few meters ahead of Rogue convinced her that she had no time to wait for a report. She waded into the labyrinth, trusting to her tough skin to shield her from unexpected attacks. She found herself in an empty sleeping cubicle.
“Rogue,” called Storm from above her, “an assailant is heading your way at two o’clock.”
She turned, in time to watch as a partition was torn down the middle and a Hellfire Club demon sprang through the gap. It seemed pleased to have found a victim, and saliva dribbled from its mouth in anticipation. Rogue’s fists soon changed its expression.
A klaxon alarm began to sound; it was tinny and swamped in static, and she guessed that it was being broadcast over the station’s public address system. “This base has been compromised,” reported the calm voice of Sage. “All resistance fighters will evacuate immediately and regroup at Location D.” Simultaneously, she heard Phoenix’s voice in her head, informing her of the identity of one of the intruders.
Rogue stumbled into the main passageway to find a melee in progress. A blinding flash—Storm’s doing, no doubt-seared her eyeballs but allowed her to see that Nightcrawler was fending off another three demons. He teleported into the air above them, wrapped his prehensile tail around one of the ropes from which the sheets hung, and swung past them like a trapeze artist. One of the demons tried to follow him by climbing a sheet, but only brought it down upon its own head and those of its fellows. Nightcrawler confused them further by striking out from above, behind, beside them while they were blinded.
Rogue threw him a quick grin and a wink as she flew by. She had set her sights upon another figure, who had appeared at the end of the passageway. He was taller-or perhaps simply more upright-than the demons. She realized who it had to be a second before she saw him clearly; after all, if Deathstrike was here, then he couldn’t be too far away. She was still too late to react, though, as beams of force stabbed from his eyes. The pain knocked her out of the sky, but she gritted her teeth, picked herself up and continued towards him on foot.
“Where is Shaw?” he demanded in a deep, resonant voice.
“Y’all know how to make a girl feel unwanted,” complained Rogue. “Shaw’s dance card is all full at the moment, so you’ll just have to tango with me, Donny boy.”
Donald Pierce met Rogue’s charge unflinchingly. She had forgotten how strong he was—or perhaps he had made himself stronger. Like Deathstrike, he was a cyborg. When the X-Men had first encountered him, as a member of Shaw’s Inner Circle, he had passed for human. Some years and many self-inflicted operations later, he looked like a tall, gaunt android. His regal red robes disguised the alterations somewhat, but the powerful arms that shot out from beneath them to return Rogue’s blows were pure metal. He wore a black headdress, the inside of which was doubtless imprinted with circuitry, and long scars on his face betrayed the fact that the skin had been folded back to allow devices of various kinds to be implanted.
There was something wrong with his eyes and, as Rogue grappled with him, she realized what it was. He had three eyeballs in each; knowing Pierce, at least two of them had to be weapons. She held him in a headlock, forcing him to look away from her so that he couldn’t blast her again. Her ears were full of the klaxon alarm, and of Sage’s voice as it repeated its message word for word. It was recorded, she realized, playing on a loop tape.
“I’m not interested in you, girl,” snarled Pierce, “only Shaw. Step away from me now and I will allow you to live.”
“That’s mighty big of you, sugar,” said Rogue, pummeling him in the face, “but you’ll forgive me if I don’t take the word of a self-mutilating freak for that.”
He let out a furious roar, flexed his muscles of steel and sent Rogue reeling. Suddenly, she was in danger from his eyes again; he stunned her with her another blast and leapt on top of her, metal fingers reaching for her throat. She staggered backward into one of the cubicles and fell onto a camp bed, flattening it. Pierce landed on her like a ten-ton weight. She succeeded in rolling out from beneath him-but before she could regain her footing, he drove a fist into the back of her head. She returned the gesture in kind, but stars were exploding in front of her eyes. She blinked, and suddenly Pierce was lifting her off the floor by her neck.
She heard footsteps, and hoped for a moment that reinforcements were arriving. Two young mutates came into view, both reacting with horror when they saw what was happening. They ran for the exit, giving Rogue and her attacker a wide berth. So much for the White Knight’s “resistance fighters,” she thought. And her teammates were obviously still occupied with the demons and who knew what else, oblivious to her predicament.
Pierce was channeling more power into his hydraulic fingers, strengthening his grip. Rogue was used to considering herself near invulnerable, but even she had her limits. It was getting hard to breathe, and black shapes crowded her vision. She kicked against him with her dangling feet, but only hurt
her toes on his armor. She clamped her hands onto his head, dug her thumbs into his eyes and tried to pry his headdress loose in the hope that it would take a few mechanical parts of his brain with it. It came free at last, the tiny wires on its underside sparking and popping, and the dead skin of Pierce’s scalp peeled back beneath it to reveal the top of a metal-plated skull. His eyes fizzled and sent an electric shock into Rogue’s hands, which made them spasm and lose their hold. His face went blank for a second, but then his expression of clenched-tooth fury returned and his fingers tightened further around her throat.
It was time for desperate measures. Rogue was weakening, and her arms felt leaden but she forced them to move, forced her right hand to meet her left and to remove its green glove. Her eyeballs had rolled back into her head and she could no longer see, but she reached out blindly, finding metal, metal, metal.. .flesh
It took only the briefest of contacts, her bare skin to Pierce’s, to activate Rogue’s mutant ability. His thoughts, his memories, rushed into her head and threatened to overwrite her own. As she struggled to hold on to her sense of self, she could feel her body changing too, taking on the characteristics of his. She didn’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved that his cybernetic augmentations were not part of the deal. Without them, Pierce had no more strength than a normal human being—less than most, in fact—but at least she didn’t have to learn what it felt like to have enslaved herself, body and soul, to machinery.
It was hard enough to cope with Pierce’s hatred. It was a living thing, a black snake which slithered its way through her mind and left a trail of poison. She hated the X-Men for standing in her [his] way, preventing her [him) from attaining the power and respect that was due to her [him). But her loathing for them was nothing compared to that which she felt for the Hellfire Club. She hated Fitzroy, but she was forced to work alongside him. She had only contempt for Selene, but she (fre-this was Donald Pierce, not her; Rogue would be lost if she forgot that) saw some advantage in serving her as a Black Bishop for the present.
Most of all, Pierce hated the man who had expelled him—twice— from the Hellfire Club’s upper echelons. He remembered being hurled from Sebastian Shaw’s helicopter, left to die at the frozen heart of the Swiss Alps. Rogue burnt with the all-consuming desire for bloody vengeance against Shaw-and just for a moment, nothing else mattered to her and she was prepared to go to any lengths, do anything to herself, to achieve it.
Then the moment passed and she found herself on the floor, her own personality dominant again, and Donald Pierce was reeling as if out of control, his hands clutched to his head. He steadied himself and revealed his face. It was blank again, his mouth hanging open, and his movements were jerky. He looked like a zombie. It took Rogue a second to deduce that her energy drain had knocked him out, that only his cybernetic limbs and computerized systems were keeping him standing. As his eyes flashed, however, she realized that they were doing more than that. She moved sluggishly, but fortunately he did too, and she was able to avoid an optic blast that tore a hole through the canvas of the broken camp bed.
Pierce’s head turned to track her, and Rogue prayed that she could keep dodging him until some of her strength returned.
At that moment, however, a bolt of electricity stabbed down from the ceiling. Pierce was enveloped in a blue corona and one of his eyes exploded. He didn’t fall, but his arms fell to his sides and his chin lolled onto his chest. Storm landed beside Rogue and helped her to her feet. “Hurry,” she said. “I think we should gain some distance before Pierce has a chance to recover and reboot his systems.”
“We’re running?” asked Rogue, surprised but not entirely unhappy with the idea.
“I have been in telepathic contact with Phoenix. The White Knight and his followers have already evacuated. We have nothing to gain by prolonging this conflict.”
“You’ve sold me,” said Rogue. “Let’s go!”
Phoenix was relieved when the last demon fell. She had restricted herself to fighting them hand-to-hand or with her telekinesis, because reaching into their minds-as she had discovered to her cost a year ago-was like plunging into a pit of black bile from which she feared she might never be able to resurface.
Deathstrike’s mind, however, was little better. It was cold, and its contents were so fragmented that they were almost impossible to make sense of. Phoenix shuddered with revulsion as she realized that the cyborg’s implants had taken over some of her brain functions. She couldn’t detect thoughts that were being transmitted through wiring, nor read memories that were stored on hard drives.
Cyclops had a different problem: Wolverine and Deathstrike were fighting at such close quarters, their moves so fast and precise, that it was hard for him to get a bead on the villain without endangering his teammate. He fired one optic blast, which staggered her for a second and gave Wolverine a brief advantage-but before he could target her again, she had recovered, and now she was deliberately using her opponent as a shield.
Phoenix focused her mind upon Lady Deathstrike’s foot, pressure building up behind her eyes. It took only a small telekinetic nudge at a critical moment to shift the cyborg’s center of gravity. Wolverine did the rest, throwing Deathstrike over his shoulder before she could adjust to the upset. She landed on her back, and Cyclops pounded her with the full power of his eyes. She was still conscious, struggling to rise against the beams of force, until Wolverine launched himself at her in a flurry of fists and claws.
“I could’ve handled her myself,” he said gruffly as he stood over Deathstrike’s prone form. Phoenix smiled to herself; it would have been unwise to dispute his claim out loud.
“The X-Men are a team, Wolverine,” said Cyclops, tight-lipped. He turned to Phoenix. “What’s the situation? Where are the others?” She had anticipated the question, and was already looking for Storm’s mind. She found it, and reported that the African X-Man was leading Rogue, Nightcrawler and Iceman to the surface. “We’ll leave through the tunnel,” decided Cyclops. “It’s best to remain in small groups if Selene’s demons are on the prowl. Do we have any idea where this emergency hideout of Sage’s might be; this ‘Location D’?” Phoenix was about to answer in the negative when she realized that Wolverine was kneeling beside his fallen foe, his claws poised above her heart as if to strike. Cyclops saw him at the same time; he whirled around and, without stopping to ask questions, stung his teammate’s hand with a low-intensity optic blast.
“What the hell are you doing?” cried Wolverine, leaping to his
feet.
Cyclops squared up to him. “I was about to ask you the same question.”
“That psycho would kill us all without a second thought. You might not be attached to your hide, Summers, but I’m not giving her another chance to scalp mine.”
“That’s not how we operate, Logan.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. ‘X-Men don’t kill.’ But in case you hadn’t noticed, this ain’t Kansas any more—and desperate times breed desperate measures.”
“Not while I’m in charge of this team,” snapped Cyclops. “Now sheathe those claws and step away from Deathstrike—and that’s an order, mister!”
Wolverine glared at his team leader mutinously, until Phoenix stepped between them. “I think we should talk about this later,” she said gently. “Selene knows where we are now. We could face another attack at any moment.”
“Jeannie’s right,” conceded Wolverine. He popped his claws back into their housings, but his eyes were still narrowed and fixed on Cyclops. As the trio of X-Men hurried down the subway tunnel, away from the compromised PATH station, Phoenix heard him muttering under his breath: “But this discussion ain’t over yet. Not by a long shot.”
CHAPTER 8
A BRIGHT YELLOW light spilled out of the brownstone mansion house and seemed to stain the Fifth Avenue sidewalk. New York was twelve hours behind Hong Kong but, although its night was now giving way to the dark hours of morning, the muted sounds of rev
elry continued unabated. Membership of the local branch of the Hellfire Club had fallen off under Selene’s stewardship, or so the X-Men had heard, but it evidently still held its attractions.
Nightcrawler couldn't understand why. It was well known that the Black Queen was consorting with a demon, and that she had turned the catacombs beneath her new abode into her own personal underworld. She had paraded both facts in front of an unwitting audience on Halloween night, only a month ago, shortly after she had claimed her throne. The Hellfire Club’s rich patrons had dabbled with the trappings of diabolism for over two centuries, but this was different. Kurt didn’t know how they could even set foot across Selene’s threshold, knowing that to do so was to place their souls in jeopardy.
Many of them, he supposed, knew no better: bored billionaires looking for a vicarious thrill, a temporary release from their dull lives, tempted by the allure of the dark. They probably didn’t quite believe the rumors or didn’t understand the significance of them. They didn’t have his experience. Nightcrawler couldn’t prove that a Hell existed-although he had faith that it did-but his time with the X-Men had exposed him to many infernal realms that were only too real. He knew what evils lurked in the deepest dimensions, and the idea that foolish men still thought they could play games with such terrible entities scared him silly.
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