Storm relived the moment when Magneto had entered the Hellfire Club’s ballroom, when she had been surrounded by four formidable foes. Again, she summoned a lightning strike—and again, she aimed it not at Magneto or even at Shaw but at her teammate, Phoenix. She delivered as mild a shock as she dared: she didn’t want to hurt her dear friend, but she had to get through to her, to penetrate Lady Mastermind’s illusions. Shaken back to reality, Phoenix took in the situation and broadcast a telepathic wakeup call to Cyclops and the Beast.
By then, however, it was already too late for Storm.
If only she could have reacted more swiftly, if she had not let her weakness cloud her mind, if she had come to her senses a moment earlier. If she had had that extra moment to think, to develop a more effective stratagem. But then, what could she have done?
Again, Magneto manipulated the iron in Storm’s blood, the pain no less intense for the knowledge that it was only an echo of what she had truly suffered. He could have torn her apart, he could have stopped her heart, but he contented himself with rendering her helpless. As she hit the floor, fighting unconsciousness, she saw her teammates rushing to the attack again, knowing-even more certainly than she had known the first time—that their efforts were in vain. Lady Mastermind fell first, doubtless the loser of a psychic struggle with Phoenix-but, while Jean was thus distracted, Shaw felled her with one punch. And then, the Beast’s eyes rolled back into his head and his legs buckled beneath him, and Storm knew that Tessa had shut down his mind.
Cyclops took out the telepath with one shot from his eyes, and turned to Magneto—but his optic blasts were absorbed by his enemy’s magnetic force field. Then, Magneto cut off the X-Man’s connection to gravity itself, and he hurtled into the ceiling with an impact that sent spider-web cracks crazing across the white plaster.
That was when Storm’s eyes had closed at last, and where the dream now thankfully ended too. All she remembered after that was the feeling of something covering her nose and mouth, and the sweet smell of chloroform. The part of her that knew she had to wake was screaming now as it struggled impotently in the depths of her psyche.
But it too faded as the blissful darkness enveloped her once more.
The magistrates’ automatic rifles spat a hail of bullets, and Rogue leapt into action. The shells were armor-piercing: they still bounced off her near-invulnerable skin, but they hurt like hell. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she grabbed the leader’s gun and bent the barrel back on itself so that it pointed at him. If she had expected him to be startled by this display of strength, however, then she was disappointed. He reacted instantaneously, discarding the weapon to aim an ineffectual punch at Rogue’s chin. She tried to knock him away from her, but he ducked beneath her arm and took hold of her jogger top, using her weight and momentum against her and hurling her to the ground. She berated herself inwardly for not realizing that he would be combat trained and well used to fighting foes with special powers.
Determined not to make the same mistake again, she ploughed into the magistrates like a bowling ball, and scattered them. As two fell, two more jumped onto her back, but she twisted around and dislodged them, knocking one out with a punishing blow. The other jammed a gun barrel into her face and yelled out: “Chew on this, you freak!”
Recognizing the voice of the woman who had identified her, Rogue batted the rifle out of her hands and cracked her mask with a punch. “That’s for the remark about my hair!” she quipped. She was actually beginning to enjoy herself. After a hard night, an easy fight like this was a good way to blow the cobwebs out of her brain. And she couldn’t think of any more deserving targets for her fists than this bunch of xenophobes.
But then, a new noise reached her ears: a whine, increasing in pitch as it became louder. And she realized too late that one of her foes was holding a blaster weapon, almost the size of a small cannon. He was charging it for use, and the whining reached an ear-splitting climax before cutting out abruptly. Quickly, Rogue grabbed another of the magistrates and swung him around in front of her. His comrade fired anyway.
There was an explosion, but no sound and no pain, just a split-second of blackness and a sensation of disconnectedness from the world. Then, Rogue was surrounded by fire-but, for a moment, she thought she could fly through it, attack the magistrate before he could recharge his blaster again. Except that, when she tried to move her legs, she couldn’t. And then she realized that she was falling, the ground rushing toward her in slow motion, and she tried to put out her hands to catch herself but she couldn’t move her arms either.
And then she was down, her body twitching involuntarily but otherwise paralyzed, and she was screaming inside, desperately trying to work out what they had done to her.
Another toecap in her ribs. She was rolled over onto her back, staring up helplessly, oddly embarrassed as she felt a trickle of drool brimming over her bottom lip and could do nothing about it. Her human shield, she saw, had fallen too, and two of the other magistrates were dragging him away from her, making him comfortable. She was looking down the lead magistrate’s rifle again, and she couldn’t even engage her larynx to say a word.
He flipped up his mask to let Rogue see her executioner. He was surprisingly young, but his thin face was hard beyond its years. His brown hair was long and lank, and his chin sported a two-day growth of stubble. His eyes were wide and fanatical, his nostrils flaring as he grinned at his helpless victim in triumph. “What’s up, gene-joke?” he sneered. “Didn’t think a few human beings were any match for you, huh? Well, surprise! We learned a few things in the service. We got ways of dealing with uppity freaks like you!” He dealt a vicious kick to Rogue’s side, but it hurt a lot less than his inflammatory words. Burning with indignation, she tried to reach up to him, but she was still frustratingly helpless.
Another shape loomed over her: the female magistrate again. “Neural paralyzer, honey,” she explained. “We just knocked out the connections between your nerve endings and your brain. The effect’s only temporary, like-but for the next couple of minutes, you won’t be able to move a muscle, so don’t waste your breath trying.”
“And that’s plenty of time,” said the leader, with a sadistic smirk as he worked the breach of his rifle and lowered its muzzle to hover an inch above Rogue’s face, “to see if our bullets bounce off your eyes like they do the rest of you.”
Rogue tried to say something, to stall him, but the only sound to emerge from her throat was an impotent mewl. She couldn’t even close her eyes. They were beginning to water.
The leader let her sweat for a few more seconds, evidently enjoying his power over her. Then he withdrew the gun. “Unless,” he said, “you tell us what we want to know.”
“Think about it,” said the woman. “You should recover your power of speech in a minute.”
“Something else to think about,” said the man. “They say that repeated shots from the neuralyzer can screw up your nervous system for good. I wouldn’t try to escape if I was you.”
“Thought... you were ... gonna kill me ... anyway,” said Rogue. At least, that was what she tried to say—but her jaw wouldn’t move, her tongue lolled in her mouth and the wrords came out without consonants.
“What do the X-Men want in Genosha?”
Rogue’s curt answer was as indistinct as her last attempt at speech, but her forceful tone got the message across nonetheless.
The magistrates’ leader scowled and hefted his rifle again. “We can make this quick,” he spat, “or we can make it very, very painful for you.”
With an effort, Rogue managed to lower her eyelids at last. She breathed in deeply, feeling control of her muscles slowly returning to her. She rolled her numb tongue around her mouth. Then, hearing the whine of the recharging neuralyzer, she opened her eyes again and saw that two more magistrates had gathered around her, their knuckles white on the grips of their respective weapons as they waited for her to make her move. She flexed a hand experimentally; it responded to
her command, but sluggishly. If she made a break for it now, she would be gunned down before she could take two steps.
“OK,” she sighed indistinctly, “I’ll tell you why we’re here.”
“Did Magneto send for you?” asked the woman.
Rogue tried to shake her head, but the effort was too much for her. She managed a weak laugh instead. “The X-Men are no friends of Magneto.”
“You’re mutants, like he is!” snapped the leader in an accusing tone.
“So? You’re a human; does that mean you support Adolf Hitler’s policies?”
“You were one of the ones who freed the mutates,” said the woman. “You started all this!”
“But it wasn’t our idea to put Magneto in charge of your country, sugar. That was the good ladies and gentlemen of the United Nations-your own kind—and believe me, we’re just as unhappy with that development as you are.”
“Magneto has talked about the X-Men as enemies,” offered one of the other magistrates in an uncertain tone.
“So, we’re expected to believe that this gene freak is on our side?” sneered the leader.
“I’m sure you’ll believe whatever suits you best,” snarled Rogue.
“That’s how bigots operate, isn’t it?” The leader’s eyes flared, and he brandished his rifle as if he were about to strike her with its butt. Quickly, Rogue added: “But if you don’t want the mutates getting the upper hand in Genosha, you’ll at least listen to me before you make up your mind.”
She was feeling better now, and she hauled herself into a sitting position. Nobody made a move to stop her. She took a moment to steel herself for what she had to do, for what she had been unable to do before. Then, in a low, throaty voice, she told them: “Magneto has found a cure to the Legacy Virus. We’ve come here to take it off him.” A murmur of disbelief and fear rippled through the magistrates. “If this is a trick-” began the leader.
“It’s no trick!” snapped Rogue, letting out some of her anger. “And the way I see it, the Legacy epidemic here is the one thing that stops the mutates from wiping out the likes of you for good and all. If I were you, I’d be getting very, very worried about now.”
“So, why are you involved?” asked the leader. “What’s in it for you?”
“Good question,” said Rogue with feeling. “Moments like this, I’m tempted to just head for home and leave you to slug it out. But that’s not how the X-Men operate—and believe it or not, we don’t like the idea of Magneto heading up an army of perfectly healthy mutates any more than you do.” She tried not to think about what Nightcrawler had said back at the mansion: Would you rather see those mutates die? She was loath to think that she could have any goal in common with her captors, but her survival depended upon convincing them of it.
“What do you think?” the magistrate leader muttered to the others out of the corner of his mouth, as if that would prevent her from overhearing him.
“It would make sense of the rumors we’ve been hearing out of Hammer Bay.’’
“There are always rumors. No one ever knows Magneto’s plans for sure. He’s a madman.”
“As far as I’m concerned, the Legacy Virus is a punishment from God. I don’t see how those genejokes could have found a cure for it.” “But what if they have? What about our own people?”
The leader nodded thoughtfully and turned back to Rogue, “We’ve had a few humans go down with Legacy too.”
“Filthy mutant freaks,” spat one of the other men, “spreading their infection to us.”
“We’ll come to the Citadel with you,” decided the leader. “We’ll help you find this cure on condition that you leave it in our hands.” A cruel smile pulled at his mouth as he thought about the possibilities. “We’d soon have those genejokes dancing to our tune.”
“Uh-uh.” Rogue shook her head vehemently. “This is strictly a solo flight.”
Scowling, the leader clicked his fingers in the direction of the magistrate with the neuralyzer. The weapon was brought up to cover the X-Man again. “I think you’re forgetting who's got the upper hand here!”
“You’re right,” said Rogue, struggling to her feet. She was still weak, but at least her muscles were working now. “You’re in control. So, it’s time to decide. I’m leaving now. Shoot me in the back; I can’t stop you. But if you kill me, Magneto wins. You’ll wake up tomorrow or the day after to find your enemies ten times stronger than they were today. Leave me to get on with my business, on the other hand, and you can go back to fighting your petty little war as if none of this ever happened. You won’t see me again. Your choice.”
Her fierce tone had riveted the magistrates to the spot. Even so, as she pivoted on her heel and limped away from them, she didn’t know how they would react. She fancied she could feel a prickling sensation in her back where the sights of the neuralyzer were trained on her.
She was relieved, then, when, having succumbed to the urge to look back over her shoulder, she saw that the magistrates were gone. But they had left her with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and a flush of shame in her cheeks. She had hated having to deal with them, to pander to their prejudice, and eveiy word had left a bitter taste in her mouth.
She couldn’t help but feel that, if the X-Men were successful in their mission, then it would be at the expense of every poor, persecuted mutate in this country.
Raul Jarrett pressed his face up against the ventilation grille, shocked by what he could see in the room beyond it. He was looking down at a lump of twisted metal: it looked like a modern art sculpture, but for the fact that it held four sleeping figures in a variety of poses in its inanimate grasp. Jarrett didn’t recognize any of them, but their garish costumes reminded him of talk he had heard of the X-Men, staunch enemies of Genosha. The “sculpture,” of course, must have been shaped around them by the Savior.
Sitting with her back to the prisoners, engrossed in a well-thumbed paperback novel, was Miranda. Jarrett had shared a cabin with her on the flight from Genosha to Sydney, but they had not talked. He had spent the journey in a state of nervous anticipation, aware of the brooding presence of the Savior and wishing that Nurse Jenny could have been with him. And the girl, he had come to understand, was deaf and mute. She was about sixteen years old, her blonde hair was beginning to grow out again, and she wore a pink skinsuit with a swirling black pattern on its front. He didn’t know what her special abilities were. He resisted the urge to attract her attention with a wave-the Savior himself had instructed him to tell nobody, friend or foe, about his task—and crawled on.
The air-conditioning ducts of the Hellfire Club building were narrow; too narrow for most people. That was why Jarrett had been picked for this mission. By elongating his body, he could slither down the confining tunnels like a snake. With a little concentration, and some pain, he could even squeeze himself through the grilles that blocked his path at irregular intervals. He felt honored to have been chosen, that Magneto himself considered his humble skills useful. At the same time, however, he was scared. He thought about the four figures held in the metal sculpture. Might that be his future if he disappointed the Savior?
He followed his directions, and came to the grille that led to his target destination: the suite of rooms currently occupied by Sebastian Shaw. He poked a fingertip through the metal latticework and, taking a deep breath, compacted the rest of his finger, then his hand, then his arm, to follow it. His body oozed into Shaw’s bedroom like silly putty rolled long and thin, pooling back into its humanoid form as it gathered on the floor. Jarrett was left feeling as if he had stretched his bones to breaking point. He lay on the carpet for a full minute, fighting back tears as he recovered from his ordeal, as his muscles settled gratefully back into their accustomed positions. Outside, the Australian morning was hot-but in here, the shades were drawn, and Raul Jarrett enjoyed the cool touch of the darkness.
It was dark in the outer room of the suite too, but by the time he had cautiously crossed the threshold, his eyes
had adjusted. He glanced at the large wooden desk, the high-backed chair behind it turned away from him and toward the window. To his disappointment, the desktop was empty but for a penholder—but his eyes alighted upon a wooden two-drawer filing cabinet, which stood against the wall beside it. Quickly, Jarrett stole across the room and stooped in front of the cabinet, his eyes forever flicking toward the closed door of the office. The Savior had told him that, above all else, he must not be discovered in here.
The cabinet was locked, but Jarrett knew how to shape his forefinger around the tumblers and trip them. His trembling hands made the simple task more difficult-but still, the lock soon yielded to his manipulations. He pulled open the top drawer eagerly to find a small stack of papers therein, divided by manila folders. The bottom drawer was empty.
He was reaching for the topmost folder when something—some sixth sense that made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle—told him that he wasn’t alone. Whirling around, he fell from his crouching position with a gasp as he met the burning gaze of the Black King.
Shaw was sitting in the high-backed chair, his face cast into shadow. He must have been there all along, not six feet away from where Jarrett now sprawled, his back against the incriminatingly open cabinet. He must have turned the chair around and watched in silence as the mutate violated his security. Jarrett tried to say something, but there was nothing he could say. He let out a defeated whine instead.
“Mr. Jarrett, is it not?” Somehow, the fact that Shaw knew his name made him even more uncomfortable. He and Miranda had been standing at their ruler’s heels when Shaw had greeted Magneto at his private airfield, but they had not been introduced. Magneto had acted as if they weren’t even present. Clearly, though, they had not escaped the Black King’s attention. Jarrett shivered with the illogical feeling that Shaw knew everything about him. “And may I assume that this intrusion was instigated by your master, my so-called ally?”
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 58
