Or perhaps, she thought, with the cure destroyed, he had simply had no reason to detain her any longer.
The sounds of battle still echoed around the throne room, although the combatants themselves were no longer visible through the hole in its ceiling. As Sebastian Shaw emerged from his hiding place behind the Black Queen’s throne, he let out a quiet sigh of relief. He had risked much by staying behind and taking cover when the X-Men had left; had Blackheart not been distracted by Phoenix and Rogue, then he could have lost his life. However, much of Shaw’s prosperity had been built upon his willingness to take such risks in the name of progress.
Alone now, he pulled a purple drape from the back of the throne and laid it across the seat. The floor was strewn with slush left by Iceman’s attack upon one of the fire demons; Shaw filled his cupped hands with the half-melted ice and dropped it onto the velvet. Then he removed one of his padded gloves and popped open a compartment in his belt, from which he produced a small, thin vial. He held it gingerly between two fingers as he strode over to the alcove in which the Beast had been held.
It was unfortunate that Rogue had escaped with the Beast’s blood, but the ultimate prize was not yet out of Shaw’s reach. Slimy green-brown tentacles grew out of the wooden wall; most of them hung limply as if dead, but a few still thrashed about defiantly. He seized one of them in his gloved hand, being careful to avoid its barbed end, and gave it a sudden, savage tug. It tore, leaving him with a length of about eight inches. As he had hoped, a trickle of blood seeped from the tendril’s severed end. He held it over the vial and closed his gloved fist around it until he had squeezed it dry. Then he stoppered the full container with a rubber cork and, discarding the dead tendril as he returned to the throne, he pressed it into the ice. Donning his glove again, he ladled another scoop of slush on top of it before wrapping the whole bundle inside the velvet drape and gathering it into his arms. His makeshift icepack would serve, he hoped, to keep the blood fresh until he could get it to a refrigerator.
Fortunately, before he had met the X-Men in Central Park, he had had the foresight to plan a quick retreat. He activated a signaling device on his belt, knowing that his personal assistant Tessa would be standing by to receive the signal and to home in on its point of origin. Indeed, from her point of view, she would have waited only an hour or two for his call.
The thought of Tessa gave Shaw pause. She hadn’t betrayed him yet—not in this time period—and perhaps she never would. But he had been wrong about her. He had seen a side of her that he had never imagined could exist, and it had left him disconcerted. He couldn’t think of her, couldn’t trust her, in the way that he once had. He had nobody now. Perhaps he was destined to remain alone, But there would be time for such troubling thoughts later. For now, it was enough to know that Tessa would serve him as she had always served him before. Shaw slipped out of the door, pausing in the corridor outside to listen for sounds of movement. He heard nothing, but he knew that Rogue had turned to the left with Blackheart on her heels, so he headed to the right, picking his way through the unconscious and dead bodies of the Black Queen’s vanquished demons. While Selene was occupied above ground, he would make a surreptitious exit through the catacombs and the sewers beyond them.
When next he entered this building, he swore, it would be as its owner again.
In the ballroom, the battle was almost over. Wolverine knew when an opponent was defeated, and Selene had been on the defensive for minutes, still fighting with all her might but losing ground. She ripped up more floorboards, forming them into a barrier as nails flew at the X-Men like shrapnel. They stung Wolverine’s cheeks and made him blink, but no more than that. “Watch out,” he cautioned the others, “she’s trying to get below ground again.”
Cyclops had already realized that: he aimed a series of staccato blasts at Selene’s feet, forcing her to skip back from the hole she had made. Storm lifted her into the air, where she kicked and squealed in impotent fury as Iceman plugged her would-be escape route.
Wolverine fought his way through the hovering floorboards as Storm dropped the Black Queen into his path. She screamed out loud as he lunged for her, his claws coming a hair’s breadth from gutting her. He had planned it that way, of course—there was no need to kill her this time-but he took a certain pleasure in imagining Cyclops’s reaction to the near miss.
In dodging his attack, Selene had left herself open as he had planned. Cyclops concluded the battle with a stunning optic blast, which knocked the sorceress off her feet. Wolverine was on top of her in an instant, his claws at her throat. “It’s all over, sweetheart!” he growled. “Make one move, or say anything that sounds like a spell, and I’ll cut out your voice box!”
“Easy, Logan,” said Cyclops, “she’s beaten.”
Wolverine glowered at him; he was about to make a remark about being patronized when Iceman spoke in a quivering voice: “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
The menacing figure of Blackheart had appeared in the doorway. Iceman tried to keep him there by forming a block of ice around his feet, but the demon simply strode through it like a ghost. “I thought we decided he couldn’t come upstairs,” protested Bobby, backing away.
“We did,” said Cyclops tersely. “Wolverine?”
“Can’t smell a thing,” said Wolverine with a grin, “and believe me, that sucker gives off some stink. We’re looking at a projection.” “Indeed,” said Blackheart calmly, coming to a halt before the wary mutants. “With my physical body bound to the underground levels of this building, I can send only my astral form into this room. That form is sufficient, however, to inform you that there is no longer a reason for us to fight.”
“What do you mean, Blackheart?” snapped Selene from her prone position.
“The Beast, my Queen, has been rescued—and the Legacy cure has been lost.”
“If this is a trick—” began Cyclops.
“It’s no trick, Cyke,” came a despondent voice from the doorway. Blackheart stood aside to reveal Rogue. She hobbled into the room as if her feet were causing her pain. The front of her green costume was stained by a large dark patch, which Wolverine identified by its smell as dried blood, and she wore a miserable expression. “I’m sorry, y’all. I tried my best to save it.”
“Then it seems,” said Selene with a tight smile, “that Blackheart is correct. The prize has gone; the game is over. None of us have anything to gain by prolonging this confrontation.” Her old arrogance was returning, and she pushed Wolverine’s claws aside and got to her feet. He glared at her, a growl in the back of his throat, but he did not move to stop her. Perhaps she would give him a reason, just one good reason, to put an end to her threat forever.
“Are you satisfied now, Selene?” asked Storm. “Because of your greed, nobody will benefit from the cure. Our kind will be as shunned and persecuted as ever.”
Selene looked at her with cold contempt. “Get out of my building!” she said curtly.
“For now,” said Wolverine, “gladly. But if the Beast dies, you can bet we’ll be back.”
The Black Queen turned away from him and swept towards the door at a dignified pace. Perhaps mindful of her recent defeat, however, she said nothing to provoke him further.
Blackheart’s astral form faded away, leaving the four X-Men standing in glum silence. For long seconds, the only sound they could hear was the background hum of New York’s nighttime traffic, carried into the ballroom on a cool breeze through the window that Phoenix had smashed. Then Nightcrawler shifted and groaned, and Cyclops went to tend to him.
“Where’s Shaw?” asked Iceman suddenly.
Wolverine shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since we moved the fight up here. He must have stayed behind in the throne room.”
“You don’t think he could have been captured?”
“No great loss if he has. Let Selene have her fun with him.”
“No!” said Storm.
Wolverine looked at her, his brow furrowed, but the
exclamation had not been meant for him. Ororo was already running past him, following in Selene’s footsteps out into the hallway. However, she turned not towards the stairs but towards the doors that led out onto the street. Cyclops rose from Nightcrawler’s side and called out her name in concern, but Wolverine dissuaded him from following her with a raised hand and a shake of his head.
“Leave her,” he said. “It looks to me like she’s got some unfinished business to deal with.”
CHAPTER 15
SEBASTIAN SHAW scrambled out of the sewers in a back alleyway, a few blocks to the south of the Hellfire Club’s mansion. For the sake of his dignity, he was glad that nobody was around to see him. The droning sound of helicopter blades would certainly have attracted the attention of any onlookers.
His assistant had arrived to collect him with her usual immaculate timing: even as he replaced the manhole cover, she was lowering the chopper into a hovering position above him. The end of a rope ladder fell beside him, its metal rungs clattering against each other as it unfolded itself. He clambered onto it and, sensing Tessa’s telepathic presence, confirmed to her that he was on board.
The helicopter rose again as Shaw climbed the ladder towards it. He made awkward progress, only able to cling to the rungs with his left hand as his right still cradled the vial in its velvet wrapping. Nevertheless, he proceeded with the confidence of one who knew that even a fall from this height wouldn’t hurt him.
Incoming at eleven o’clock, Tessa warned him. It appears we have company.
By now, Shaw had been lifted above the lights of New York City, and it took him a moment of squinting into the black sky before he discerned a flying cloaked figure. Storm.
He reached the top of the ladder and hauled himself through an open hatchway to find Tessa waiting for him. She was clad in full Hellfire Club regalia, her black hair piled up and held in place by pins. She gave him her full attention, waiting for his instructions.
He looked at her for a long moment, a hundred thoughts and images clashing inside his mind so that even he could not be sure what he was thinking.
At last, he brushed past her without so much as a nod of acknowledgement.
“Deal with the X-Man,” he said gruffly.
The dark shape of the helicopter pulled away into the night, and Storm knew that Shaw had to be on board. She increased the ferocity of the wind that carried her, flying faster and faster. She pushed herself to her limit as if trying to outrun the uncomfortable fact that she didn’t know why she was pursuing the Black King at all. All she did know was that, back in Selene’s ballroom when she had realized that he must have fled, her stomach had performed a somersault. She was acting on instinct, surrendering to the part of herself that couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving her like this. After everything they had been through, everything they had said to each other.... She had to see him again.
And maybe, when she did, she might finally know what she wanted to say to him.
Sebastian does not wish to speak with you.
The rebuttal popped into her mind unbidden—placed there tele-pathically, she deduced, by Tessa. She ignored it. She was closing in upon her target.
This vehicle is equipped with armaments, persisted Tessa. Come closer, and I will be forced to take defensive measures.
Storm formed a response in her thoughts. I am not leaving until I have spoken with Shaw.
Your business with him is concluded.
I do not think so. Your employer made me an offer.
You do not belong in the Hellfire Club, Ororo. Storm was surprised to “hear” Tessa using her first name, and more surprised yet when she detected a genuine hint of sadness behind the telepath’s words. You may have been tempted by a vision of another world, but I suspect you have known all along that it is a world of which you could never be a part. Nor do you need to be. It would be best for all concerned if you did not pursue this matter.
Ororo was still trying to take all that in, still trying to work out what it meant, when a pair of missiles shot out of the helicopter’s backside and streaked towards her. Avoiding them wasn’t a problem—but mindful of the overpopulated city below, she also had to manipulate the air currents around them so as to set them down gently on a nearby flat rooftop. She would fetch Wolverine to deactivate the missiles safely later. Shaw’s helicopter, in the meantime, had receded into the distance. She could have caught up to it again, but she was beginning to think that perhaps Tessa was right, that she should leave well enough alone.
She thought about Sage, the person that Tessa had become in a now-obsolete future. Perhaps she would become that person again. Only now did Ororo regret that she had not taken the time to question Sage about her ties with the X-Men, and about how far back they went.
For days, she had been asking herself what she might become if she were to join Shaw’s Inner Circle, even for the purest of motives. She had wondered if she could live the life of a double agent or if it would consume her; how many compromises she would have to make. Blackheart’s dream reality, little as she could remember about it, had failed to answer that question, showing her only what she had wanted to see. But perhaps, she thought now, the answer had been in front of her all along and she just hadn’t noticed it.
She took a long detour on her way back to the Hellfire Club building, not wishing to see her fellow X-Men again until she had imposed some order upon her chaotic thoughts.
Shaw had charmed her into believing that he was not beyond redemption. But the White Knight—the Shaw of the future-had lied to her. And the younger Shaw had never told her how he had come to usurp his older self. Ororo had her suspicions, but she hardly liked to think about them. She had been reminded of how ruthless Shaw could be: she certainly could not trust him, and she realized now that she would never have been able to change him. It was far more likely that, given the right circumstances, he would have changed her.
He had not waited for an answer to his proposal. It had probably been this, more than anything, that had prompted her to take to the air and follow him. Unfinished business. She had been looking for a sense of closure. But Tessa had been right about another thing: in her heart, she had known that she could never have become Shaw’s White Queen. She had known it ever since she had challenged him in that abandoned office alongside Battery Park, when he had turned up in the White Knight’s costume. Perhaps even before that.
She couldn’t help but wonder how long he had known it too.
When the Beast awoke, he was lying flat on his back in a bed. A drip was attached to his left hand, and a band around his right arm monitored his blood pressure. He felt empty, like a sack of flesh with no substance, and his head was stuffed with cotton wool-but his overwhelming feeling was one of joy. He was alive.
As his vision cleared, two shapes came into focus. Moira MacTaggert and Bobby Drake were sitting by his bedside. He did not recognize the room behind them, but his nose detected the familiar antiseptic scent of hospitals everywhere. “Is it... all over?” he asked weakly.
“You don’t have to worry about a thing, Hank,” Moira assured him. “The X-Men dealt with Selene, and you’re on your way back to being fighting fit.”
“Jeannie got you here just in time,” chipped in Bobby. “She sat with you until she was sure you were out of the woods.”
“We’ll transfer you to the infirmary at the school as soon as we can,” said Moira. “A few days’ rest there and you’ll be fine.”
“It’s a good thing Moira was still in New York,” said Bobby. “She took over here and made sure you got the best treatment. She did the operation herself.”
Moira shot him a silencing look; obviously, she had not wanted Hank to hear that information just yet. He smiled to show her that he wasn’t upset. “I took it as read that you must have performed a transfusion. May I assume that the medical staff of this establishment were less than thrilled at the prospect of exposing themselves to my mutant blood?”
“When they heard you’
d had the Legacy Virus...” said Moira apologetically.
“I understand,” said Hank. There was no use getting angry about such things; not if he couldn’t change them. “And ...” He didn’t want to ask the question, but he knew he had to. He summoned up his courage and forced the words from his throat. “... the cure?”
Moira laid a gentle hand on his, and shook her head sadly.
Hank didn’t know how to feel. Things could have been a lot worse, he knew that-but still, he couldn’t quite accept that he had worked so hard, suffered so much, for nothing. He thought about the funeral he had attended in the small town of Newhill, Massachusetts-less than a fortnight ago, although it felt like much longer. A young man had been buried that day: a non-mutant by all accounts, but he had fallen victim to the Legacy Virus nonetheless.
Hank knew that there would be more funerals.
“You should have taken more of my blood!” he insisted as if, in his anguish, he could turn back time and make it happen.
“You had none to spare,” said Moira, “and the reaction in your bloodstream had probably run its course anyway.”
“You might have been able to salvage the super-cell before it extinguished itself!”
She responded with a firm shake of her head. “A small chance, at the expense of your life. No, Hank. You might be prepared to play those odds, but I’m certainly not.”
“We took the cure away from Selene,” said Bobby in an optimistic tone, hoping to inject some cheer into the conversation, “that’s the main thing.”
“He’s right, you know,” said Moira. “We don’t have to make compromises, Hank. You don’t have to put your life on the line and you don’t have to throw in your lot with the likes of Shaw. You’ve developed a cure once, you can do it again.”
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 48
