“For myself, maybe, one day,” laughed Fitzroy. “Yeah, maybe I will go back a year and take that cure. I can be the Black King-but if and when I do that, I won’t be taking any passengers with me. And right now, old man, I’m enjoying myself far too much here.”
“Then you leave me no option,” said Shaw softly, “but to use force.”
He made no move to carry out his threat. He waited for his nervous opponent to take the initiative. Fitzroy ran at him, his hands outstretched; he only needed to touch Shaw to begin to drain his life force from him. Shaw, however, struck like lightning, and Fitzroy reeled with the impact of a powerful punch to the head. Shaw pressed his advantage, leaping forward and gripping the front of Fitzroy’s tunic. He threw him, spinning him so that he lost his orientation and fell. His head glanced off a console, and blood seeped from the resulting gash.
Shaw stood astride his fallen foe, satisfied with his easy victory. Fitzroy looked up at him groggily, and Shaw was about to speak when he heard a clanking noise from behind him.
He whirled around in time to see that the empty suit of bio-armor had raised its left hand towards him. He was staring down the huge circular barrel of a blaster weapon from the future, and he could see fire flashing in its innards.
He couldn’t leap out of the way in time. He was caught in an explosion of searing pain-but more agonizing still was his own disgust at himself for not having seen this coming. He had already been told that Fitzroy had upgraded his armor over the past year; why hadn’t he allowed for the possibility that he might be able to control it remotely?
His kinetically-charged body withstood the attack, but he was dangerously weakened. The armor lurched towards him, its long metal claws raised, and he barely staggered out of its way as it made a swipe for his throat. Then Fitzroy reared up in front of him and assailed him with a barrage of furious punches. He was an unthinking fool-and for that at least, Shaw was grateful, as the blows replenished some of his spent energy. He threw Fitzroy away from him with less force than he would have liked, and turned to face the bio-armor. It raised its blaster again but Shaw moved first, shoulder-charging it. It rocked but remained on its feet. It clamped a metal gauntlet onto his shoulder and he was dismayed to realize that he no longer had the strength to break free. He curled his foot behind its leg and bent all his remaining reserves to the effort of trying to trip it. At first it appeared that he would be unsuccessful-but then, to his surprise and satisfaction, the bio-armor tumbled backwards and crashed to the ground. Shaw almost fell too; he kept his knees from buckling by willpower alone.
While he had been occupied, a new combatant had joined the fray. He had realized some time ago that Tessa-or rather Sage-had followed him from the subway station. Out of curiosity, he had chosen not to challenge her. He had waited for her to show her hand. She must have cut off Fitzroy’s psychic connection to his armor. She had also engaged him in physical combat, keeping him from pressing his advantage against his foe. Shaw was interested to see that she had picked up a lot of new moves since her days as his assistant. Unfortunately, Fitzroy denied her the time she needed to concentrate, to strike at him with her mind. Conversely, he was able to use his own mutant abilities to devastating effect.
Sage struggled to break his hold on her, but it was too late. Drained of energy, she passed out, her slim body hanging limply by the wrists until Fitzroy chose to drop her.
By that time, Shaw had crossed the short distance between them, pulled the young mutant’s arm up behind his back and looped his own arm around his throat from behind. “Try doing that to me,” he snarled in Fitzroy’s ear, “and I’ll snap your neck like a twig!”
The Technomancer thought hard about that before demonstrating the characteristic lack of courage on which Shaw had been counting. “What do you want?” he squealed.
“A portal,” said Shaw.
“To the past?”
“Not yet. There’s somewhere else I have to go first. And before you even think about betraying me, boy, think about this: I’ll be taking you with me.”
He recited an address, and Fitzroy obligingly tore a hole in space for him. The once and future Black King stared into it suspiciously, although he knew that he wouldn’t be able to see past the maelstrom of clashing energies which rendered its surface opaque.
He took one final look at the fallen Sage before he stepped through the portal. She was unconscious, but her breathing was regular. She would recover, provided at least that nobody else happened upon her while she was defenseless. She had endangered herself for his sake: a year ago he would have expected such loyalty, but in this time, this place, he hadn’t been so sure of it. Perhaps he had misjudged her. But then, the very fact that he couldn’t divine her motives was enough to change everything. He had trusted Tessa once, in a way that he had trusted only one other woman in his life. He could do so no longer.
The decision to leave her behind was harder than he could ever have expected. But he made it all the same.
The silence of West 25th Street was broken by the sound of a spluttering starter motor as it failed to jolt a reluctant engine to life. Storm sat in the passenger seat of an abandoned yellow taxicab and watched as the man behind its wheel attempted to turn the ignition again with a short piece of wire. The White Knight clicked his teeth in frustration as his makeshift tool slipped between his fingers, not for the first time.
“Battery Park is downtown, is it not?” said Ororo.
“It is,” confirmed the White Knight. He was leaning forward awkwardly in the confined space, straining to reach for the fallen wire. “Then how is it that I found you heading uptown?”
“I have other business to attend to before I rejoin my group.” “And may I inquire as to the nature of that business?”
“You may not,” said the White Knight shortly.
“If you still expect me to forge an alliance with you, you will have to be a little more forthcoming than that.”
He froze with the wire poised over the ignition again. He turned to look at Ororo, who returned his gaze evenly. “I suppose Wolverine identified me at the station?” he said.
“As did I,” she said coolly.
The White Knight nodded to himself as if amused. Then he took hold of the fabric of his white mask and pulled it off over the top of his head. Ororo was not at all surprised to see the face of the rebels’ leader revealed. “You have not changed,” she said.
Sebastian Shaw smiled. “Oh, my dear Miss Munroe, I have changed far more than you could ever imagine.”
“I wondered for a time how you could appear in two places at once,” said Ororo. “I arrived at a conclusion this morning. You are the same Sebastian Shaw who fought Selene with us, I believe. You are the same Shaw who arrived in this city, this time period, yesterday.” “Indeed. I remember it well.”
“And yet those memories are of events which, for you, are a year past.”
He inclined his head slightly, accepting the truth of her assertion.
Ororo’s voice hardened. “You betrayed us! You came here as the X-Men’s ally, but you saw a chance to claim Selene’s power for yourself and you took it. You traveled back in time, probably to the very moment at which she sent us away. You abandoned us, Shaw. After all your fine words, your promises, you abandoned me!”
“I can assure you,” he said, “that no personal slight was intended.” “Is this your idea of trust, then? Is this how you would treat your Lords Cardinal?”
“Let us not forget, my dear, that you never accepted such a role. Your allegiances are still first and foremost to the X-Men, and I could ill afford to involve them in my plans.”
“And what were your plans for me, Shaw? Did you think that, given more time, you could have won me around to your way of thinking? Did you imagine I could ever be persuaded to turn my back on my friends, to compromise my ethics?”
“On the contrary, it is that very strength of character that I most admire in you.”
Ororo let out a bitter la
ugh. “I know the true worth of your hollow words now, Shaw.”
“Believe me or not,” he said, “I have held you in nothing but the utmost regard since you first served on our Inner Circle; a grudging regard at first, I will admit, but a genuine one nonetheless. I regret that I had to leave you behind-but had circumstances been different, had things gone according to my plan, then you would have arrived in this future to find it very different indeed.”
“To find you sitting on Selene’s throne, no doubt.”
“And my offer to you would still have been open,” said Shaw quietly.
Ororo stared at him, trying to pierce his inscrutable expression. She considered herself a good judge of character, but something about Shaw dulled those senses. No matter how much her intellect and experience told her he could not be trusted, her instincts—her heart—longed to believe otherwise. She wondered if he made everybody feel this way.
Suddenly, Shaw stiffened and his eyes widened. A pack of six Hellfire Club demons had turned into the road in front of them-and, even at several blocks’ distance, they had seen that the cab was occupied. As they lumbered towards it, Shaw muttered something under his breath and fumbled with his wire again. Ororo stilled his clumsy arm with her left hand as, with her right, she slid a lock pick out of her belt. She reached over and slipped it into the ignition, manipulating it deftly. It took three attempts—but, thanks to her expertise, only a few seconds—for the engine to catch, whereupon Shaw took off the handbrake and stamped hard on the gas pedal.
“I suggest you put on your seatbelt,” he said as Ororo was flung back by the sudden acceleration. She hurried to comply. Shaw had no need of such a safety measure; his mutant ability would protect him from any knocks.
He aimed the car squarely at the demons, his eyes gleaming and his lips curling into a sadistic smile as he picked up speed. They scrambled to get away from him, falling over each other in the process. Ororo winced as the cab’s front wheels bounced over a fallen body to the accompaniment of an unearthly howling and a sickening squelching sound.
A demon had leapt onto the hood and sprawled itself across the windshield. Shaw couldn’t see where he was going, but his demeanor hadn’t changed. He was enjoying this. He slammed on the brakes and threw the steering wheel hard left. The cab’s back tires screeched in protest as they were dragged around in an arc, and the demon squealed too as it was flung into the road. The vehicle had turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees, and Ororo could see the fallen creature pulling itself up in the rearview mirror. Shaw reversed over it.
The four remaining demons had been loping after the cab but they froze now, their faces elongating in dull horror as they saw that it was facing them again. Shaw jerked the stick into neutral and revved the engine, for no reason that Ororo could see other than to taunt them. One of the demons turned and fled, but the other three dared to come closer.
He drove at them again, veering right to follow two of them as they dived onto the sidewalk. He hit one, ramming the glass door of an office building and driving the startled creature into the narrow lobby before him. The windshield shattered and Ororo threw up her hands to protect herself from flying glass. The hood buckled and steam hissed out from beneath it.
The engine wheezed and groaned but held out. The fifth demon climbed onto the roof of the cab via its trunk, and the sixth tried to follow it. Shaw reversed suddenly and crushed it against the burnt-out shell of an old Dodge on the opposite side of the road. Ororo braced herself against the dashboard as her belt snapped tight across her chest. Shaw spun the wheel again and headed east, but the final demon refused to be dislodged. Ororo started as its claws punctured the roof above her head and started to peel back the metal. She closed her eyes and concentrated, summoning a crosswind that caught it by surprise. It fell past her side window, screaming in anger and frustration.
Shaw drove around Madison Square and stopped the cab on Park Avenue South. In the aftermath of his adrenaline rush, he looked tired and gray, and suddenly Ororo could believe that he really was older-much older-than the Shaw she had arrived here with. He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, his breathing ragged.
“We should abandon the car,” said Ororo softly. “It’s too conspicuous.”
He shook his head as if it were too great an effort to speak. He made coughing, spluttering sounds as if unable to quite clear his throat. He looked pale. It took him a few seconds to compose himself enough to sit up again. “I have a long distance to travel,” he said weakly.
Ororo looked at him suspiciously. “Sebastian,” she said, “do you have the Legacy Virus?”
He avoided her gaze. “I have been trying to conceal the symptoms. My followers look to me to give them hope, and I would not wish to see them demoralized.”
“How ....?” she began, but she tailed off, realizing that no words were careful enough.
He answered the unspoken question anyway. “I contracted the disease one year ago. Selene infected me herself. It is in its final stages now. I am near death.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ororo. It sounded inadequate, but she reminded herself that Shaw’s cause was not hopeless. A Legacy cure did exist now, even if it was not yet free for all. “You have not been receiving treatment, have you?” she deduced.
“I will not humble myself before that witch.”
“You would rather die than accept her handouts of medicine?” Shaw’s eyes flashed. “Count yourself lucky, wind-rider. You have not seen a fraction of what I have had to see. Can you imagine what this past year has been like for me? I crossed the time barrier itself to prevent all this from happening. Selene and her pet demon defeated me. I was infected—but worse still, I was humiliated. I was forced to watch as this world came into existence around me all over again!” “It is little wonder you wish to strike against her as soon as possible.”
“I have waited a long time for the X-Men-and my younger self— to return.”
“But surely she will have prepared for just such an attack from you?”
Shaw shook his head. “I have ensured that the Black Queen thinks me dead. She is aware of our movement, but she does not appreciate the extent to which we are organized. She will anticipate resistance from the X-Men, of course, but we can still strike earlier and in greater numbers than she expects. We can gain the advantage of surprise over her.”
“And then what, Shaw? What happens after you have reclaimed your precious Hellfire Club? You have already demonstrated that your word cannot be believed.”
“I have no taste for Selene’s brand of mischief; you must see that, at least.”
“But you do have a taste for power. You may lower the barrier around Manhattan Island-you may even keep your promise to distribute the Legacy cure-but how are we to be sure that we are not merely exchanging one type of avaricious would-be dictator for another?”
“That, my dear Miss Munroe,” said Shaw coldly, “is your decision to make.”
“Then you leave me with no choice.” Ororo took a deep breath, steeling herself for what had to be said. “A year ago, Shaw, you offered me the post of White Queen in your Inner Circle. I have given the matter much consideration—and I have decided to accept.”
Sebastian Shaw was an expert at disguising his feelings. There was something very satisfying, then, about the expression of incredulity that spread across his face now.
“You need not look so surprised,” said Ororo. “Even after Selene has been usurped, it will be necessary to repair the damage she has done. The Hellfire Club, with its extensive resources, could lead that effort. We could work together to rebuild this city.”
Shaw spoke at last. “No,” he said.
“No?” Ororo’s stomach sank. She had convinced herself that she was making a bargain of necessity, but now she felt as if she had had a lifelong dream crushed.
“Under other circumstances ...” Shaw took her hand in both of his, and his sad eyes suggested that he actually meant what he said and that he wanted, ne
eded, her to believe it. “In a different time, dear lady, I would have been proud to have you stand at my side. We could have been unstoppable, you and I.”
“Then why-?” she began.
He silenced her with a gentle finger to her lips. “Even I cannot always choose my path in life. What I do now, my sweet, strong Ororo, I can only do alone.”
“There is no other way?”
“Regrettably not. The course of my future has already been plotted. I know I have done nothing to deserve your trust, Ororo, but I must beg you for it this one time.”
They sat in silence, then, for what seemed like an age. Ororo’s insides were churning and she felt that there were so many things she ought to say but she couldn’t think of a single one of them. In the end, she climbed out of the cab without another word. Shaw didn’t spare her a backward glance as he put the battered vehicle into gear and drove it north, away from her.
She didn’t move until long after he had disappeared from sight.
And even then, she couldn’t explain to herself why she had let him go.
A pack of demons had caught Iceman’s scent, and he couldn’t shake them off.
He had outpaced them in his traditional manner: by skating along a thick slide of ice, condensing each fresh section out of the air as he reached it. The problem with this was that it left a very clear frozen trail for his pursuers—and they were nothing if not persistent. As he stopped for a breather, they emerged from the shadows again. He frosted the ground beneath their clawed feet to throw them off-balance, but he didn’t stop to press his advantage. He was too badly outnumbered, and he remembered all too well how his last solo encounter with Selene’s infernal servants had ended.
He had been heading east ever since he had left the PATH station, and now he found himself on FDR Drive. This highway, more than any other, ought to have been bumper to bumper with rush hour traffic, but it was as eerily deserted as the rest of the city. Beyond it, Manhattan Island gave way to the East River, and Iceman was startled to see that he was a lot closer to Selene’s mystical barrier than he had realized. The shifting white shell arced down in front of him and disappeared into the placid water just a few hundred yards offshore.
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 39
