“Don’t give up, Logan,” said Kurt. “If anyone can lick this, you can.” He took one of Wolverine’s hands in his own: his white glove felt uncommonly warm against Logan’s palm.
He didn’t feel like talking any more. He was too tired. He let his eyes close, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the alien cells that had invaded his body, of the wound that hadn’t yet closed up because his system was too busy waging a war to keep him alive.
He remembered discussing this scenario with the Beast, not long ago, when it had still been comfortably hypothetical. Hank McCoy, of course, had been exploring another avenue in the quest that had come to dominate his life; he had run a battery of tests on Logan to ascertain if his unique biology might provide a much-needed breakthrough. “Theoretically,” he had concluded, “your body ought to be able to deal with the Legacy Virus. Unfortunately, the precise action of said virus is unpredictable, and its converse effects upon your mutant gene are an unknown quantity.”
“In plain English, Doc,” Logan had said, “my healing factor should be able to zap that sucker-but only if the virus doesn’t get to it and screw it up first, right?”
“That is an accurate summation,” Hank had conceded. A week and many more tests later, he had reached the conclusion that, even if Wolverine could shake off a dose of Legacy, there was no way to isolate his healing factor and pass on the benefits to other sufferers. His research had reached another dead end. He would probably have considered it ironic, thought Logan, that his theory was being put to the test anyway.
He must have drifted off to sleep, but the first he knew of it was when he was peeling his eyes open and looking at Kurt Wagner’s concerned face again. “What’s the matter, elf?” he asked with a weak smile. “Ain’t you got a home to go to?”
“There’s something else you ought to know, mein freund,” said Kurt gravely.
“Don’t tell me-more good news?”
“If you do have this virus, then the mutates here must not learn of it.”
“Don’t take kindly to sharing their living space with plague victims, I take it?”
“They don’t understand, Logan. Every one of them has lost friends to the Legacy Virus, but they don’t even know how it’s transmitted. They’re terrified of it.”
“Can’t hardly blame them. So, what do they do with their sick-put them out of their misery, I suppose?”
“Out on the streets, at least. They call them ‘the unclean’-although according to the mutate Priest, Magneto has set up facilities for them in Hammer Bay and the other major cities.”
“I can just imagine his face if I turned up there asking for treatment. Don’t suppose there’s even much hope of getting a bed incognito: Genosha’s mutates are all individually numbered, aren’t they?” Logan’s moment of good humor was spoilt by a painful coughing fit.
“By all accounts,” said Kurt, “these so-called field hospitals are little more than quarantined camps anyway. Half the mutates are more concerned with keeping the infected penned up away from them than they are with their health. They believe that Legacy is a punishment inflicted upon the unworthy by... by their deity.”
“I thought Maggie had the cure. That’s why we came here, isn’t it?” “If he does, Logan, then I’ve yet to see a single sign that anyone has benefited from it.”
“You think we might be on a wild goose chase after all?”
“I’ve heard rumors, but nothing concrete. Magneto might still be testing the serum—and I suppose it would take some time to mass produce it.” Kurt looked doubtful.
“Or maybe,” rumbled Wolverine, “Charley Xavier was right to be worried. Maybe old Bucket-Head has higher priorities for that cure than distributing it to the needy.”
CHAPTER 8
AS CYCLOPS returned slowly to consciousness, his first instinctive thought was to check that he was wearing his visor. To his relief, he could feel it, cold against the skin of his face. But something nagged at him all the same. Something was wrong.
He could feel a rough, lumpy surface at his back and nothing beneath his feet, but his sense of equilibrium insisted that he wasn’t lying down. He was attached to something, sprawled across it at a thirty-degree angle. His limbs were pinned, one arm twisted almost behind his back. He had fought Magneto, he recalled—for all of about ten seconds. He didn’t know exactly what had happened-it had all been so quick-but he could guess.
It wasn’t until he was fully awake that Scott realized what was needling him. His eyes felt different. The pressure behind them, so familiar that he rarely noticed it any more, was no longer there. He opened them, and felt nothing. No burning sensation as raw power erupted through his retinas and strained against his ruby quartz lens for release.
And Jean was gone.
He couldn’t feel his wife through their telepathic link. The realization sent a stab of panic into his heart, but he calmed himself with logic. Something had taken his mutant power from him; it wasn’t unreasonable to assume that the same thing had happened to the rest of his team, Phoenix included. She was still alive, still with him, but psi-blind.
He was attached to a hulking metal sculpture, facing a blank wall. Turning his head as far as it would go, he could just make out a large blue, clawed foot at his ear. It could only have belonged to one person. “Hank?”
“Ah,” came the familiar voice of the Beast, “our esteemed leader finally extracts himself from the tenacious grip of the sandman. I was beginning to wonder for how much longer I would remain the only one of our number cognizant of our predicament.”
“Are the others here?” asked Cyclops. “I can’t see.”
“If I extend my neck muscles, I can avail myself of a glimpse of Jeannie’s red hair—and I believe I may have heard our resident weather elemental stirring a few moments ago.”
“You’re still in your Beast form.”
“So it would appear—but I’ve been testing the limits of my strength and have found myself decidedly enervated. Am I to infer from your inquiry that you are likewise impaired?”
“Something must be nullifying our powers.”
“I have visual contact with a probable culprit,” said the Beast. “A young lady whose skinsuit identifies her as a Genoshan mutate.”
No matter how he strained, Cyclops couldn’t see who his teammate was looking at. The metal that held him wouldn’t give: when he tried to break it, to pull his hand away from the twisted sculpture, it only dug into his wrist and drew blood. “What is she doing?” he asked.
“She is immersed in a rather tawdry form of literature. I have attempted to attract her attention, but she has steadfastly ignored my overtures toward her.”
“I’m open to suggestions, Hank.”
“Bereft of our paranormal abilities, and unless we can muster the physical power to break our bonds, I would conclude that we are helpless.”
“That isn’t what I wanted to hear,” sighed Cyclops.
Storm came round next-and, after she had been filled in on the situation, she asked if the others had any memory of breathing in chloroform. Cyclops hadn’t, but he didn’t doubt the evidence of Ororo’s senses. The revelation worried him, and made him redouble his futile efforts to break free. He had assumed that he had been out for an hour or two at most-but if he had been anaesthetized, then who knew how much wasted time had passed? The room had no windows, and he had no way of knowing the time. The X-Men had been on a tight deadline from the start; what if Magneto and Shaw had put their plan, whatever it was, into action? What if it was already too late to stop them?
Scott was as relieved as he was apprehensive, then, when a door opened and footsteps marched into the room. At least he might learn the worst of it now; he would know what he was up against. To his frustration, he was facing the wrong way to see the newcomers: by his estimation, there were at least four of them. However, there was no mistaking the voice of the X-Men’s oldest and most intractable foe: deceptively laid back and tinged by world-weariness, but with a thre
atening undertone.
“Our guests are awake, I see.”
“I still say we should kill them.” Cyclops guessed that the unfamiliar voice belonged to Lady Mastermind. He had glimpsed her in the ballroom, realizing who she was even as Phoenix had taken her out. Surprised as he had been to see her at Sebastian Shaw’s side, it made a certain kind of sense. The original Mastermind had been affiliated with Shaw’s first Inner Circle; clearly, Regan Wyngarde intended to follow in her late father’s footsteps in more ways than one. Scott felt a painful mixture of anger and sadness as he remembered what she had put him and Jean through. He had to tell himself that the experience hadn’t been real, that the emotions weren’t relevant.
“I think we can afford to be magnanimous in victory,” purred Magneto.
“You know better than that, Lensherr,” said Cyclops, clenching his gloved fists. “You’ll never defeat the X-Men until every one of us is dead!”
“You impress me as always, Scott,” said the man once known as Erik Magnus Lensherr. “Even in the face of such overwhelming odds, you retain your characteristic bravado. One day, perhaps, I will take your hollow boasts at face value and dispatch you and the rest of Charles’s misguided students. Not today, though. We stand on the threshold of a new world order, my friends, and I want you to experience it.”
“You have made such claims before,” said Storm.
“Indeed,” said the Beast. “Were I to indulge in a little armchair psychiatry, then I might diagnose an over-inflated confidence in your own capabilities.”
Cyclops felt the metal shifting at his back, and he wondered for an instant if the master of magnetism had lost his temper and intended to crush his tormentors. He was powerless to resist as he was swung around to the front of the insane sculpture. Now, he was hanging vertically, his arms spread above him, his feet not quite touching the floor. The Beast hung to his left, Phoenix beyond him, and Storm settled into a similar position to Cyclops’s right.
He could see his enemies now, through the faint ruby haze in which the world was washed by his protective lens. Magneto had swapped his robes for a black suit and tie, and he was accompanied not only by Lady Mastermind but also by Shaw and Tessa. In the corner of the room, by a wooden chair on which lay a battered paperback novel, stood a blonde, teenaged girl in a pink and black skinsuit. Lurking nervously at her side was a tall, wiiy male mutate in black and green, with a shaved head.
“I never thought Magneto would work with the Hellfire Club again,” commented Storm.
“A temporaiy alliance, I assure you,” said Magneto, “but one that serves us both well.”
“In my native Africa, we have a saying: ‘If the tiger sits, do not think it is out of respect.’” The words were ostensibly directed at Magneto, but Ororo was looking at Shaw.
Magneto nodded graciously, but chose not to respond. “Allow me to introduce two of my fellow countrymen.” He beckoned the mutates forward with a coiled finger. “Miranda, as you have no doubt deduced, is responsible for your current weakened state. Her control over her ability is excellent: she can maintain her power-dampening field around you with minimal effort, whilst ensuring that my allies and I are not affected.”
“So, if any of you so much as twitch,” said Mastermind icily, “you had best be prepared to face your most terrifying nightmares.” “Until recently,” Magneto continued as if irritated by the interruption, “Miranda was kept on a leash and used against her own kind; those who had mind enough to rebel. Raul here has spent most of his adult life working in mines in intolerable conditions. Now, they have become free, equal and productive members of our burgeoning society.”
“OK,” said Phoenix quietly, “you’ve made your point.” Cyclops was overjoyed to hear her voice again, to know that she was awake and well.
“Oh, but I’m not sure I have, Jean.”
“The mutates may think you’ve improved their lives,” said Cyclops, “but what happens when you show them your true colors? What happens when they realize that their sovereign is a fanatic; a man who will abuse anyone and anything to further his own cause?” “Most of the mutates don’t yet know half of what I have done for them,” contested Magneto. “Take Miranda and Raul, for example. Not so long ago, they could have counted the remaining days of their lives on their fingers. I have restored them to full health.”
“Then the Legacy cure is effective,” surmised the Beast, and there was a hint of excitement in his voice despite the situation.
“It has eradicated the virus from their systems-and they will be the first of many to benefit from it. I have a team of scientists working to duplicate the cure. Oh, they had difficulty at first—the alien composition of the super-cell we extracted from your blood defies analysis-but they soon found that, given the right conditions, the cell was only too quick to reproduce itself. The poor, disease-ridden mutates of Genosha call me their Savior, and that is precisely what I will become.”
“Your friend Shaw stole that cure from us,” snarled the Beast. “We would have ensured that everybody had access to it.”
“And how would you have done that, Hemy? By handing it to your government? By waiting as they performed months, years, of product testing? A mutant disease is hardly at the top of their political agenda, is it? And what then? Distribution through one of your pharmaceutical companies at a price that my country cannot afford? No, my friend, my way is better.”
“And what of the mutants outside Genosha?” asked Storm. “Will you be making the cure available to them too?”
“Not to mention the baseline humans to whom the disease has spread,” added the Beast.
“Well,” said Magneto, “that rather depends on a few conditions.” “Such as?” rapped Cyclops.
“Or need we ask?” said Storm coldly. “Magneto's goals are the same as they always are. The same as Selene’s were. He wants to control other people, make them think as he thinks—and how better to do that than to wield the power of life and death over them?”
“You do me an injustice,” said Magneto. “My plans are more grandiose, further-reaching and ultimately more beneficial to the world than those of that soulless vampire.”
“Beneficial?” Phoenix’s voice was still quiet, but it carried an angry intensity. “Is that what you call spreading Genosha’s epidemic further? Is that what you call infecting hundreds of millions of innocent people with a terminal disease?”
Alarmed, Cyclops craned to see his wife’s face. “What is it, Jean? What do you know?”
Phoenix didn’t look at him. She was glaring at the Black King, her eyes burning with contempt. “Why don’t you tell them, Shaw? Tell them what I saw in your mind.”
“If you insist.” Shaw stepped forward, his habitual smirk on his face, apparently unfazed by Jean’s challenge. He addressed all four of the prisoners. “As you already know, the Hellfire Club will celebrate tonight’s solstice with a worldwide pyrotechnic display. However, as you must also have suspected, there is an ulterior motive to the celebrations. Our fireworks contain an unusual payload. As midnight strikes and our trident symbol lights the night in each time zone, we will be spreading a great deal more than just seasonal joy to the masses.”
Cyclops’s stomach tightened, but he stopped himself from speaking. Shaw and Magneto were both in talkative moods-they had come here to gloat-and he needed to learn all he could from them.
“For the most part,” said Magneto, “the Legacy Virus has spread slowly. Only the Genoshans have suffered in great numbers: perhaps the operations performed upon our mutates by the previous government made them somehow more susceptible. However, in the course of their study of the virus, the scientists at our Kree facility in the Pacific Ocean found a way to change that.”
“It’s quite simple, really,” said Shaw. “All we have to do is piggyback Legacy onto a common cold virus, and release that hybrid into the upper atmosphere.”
“At first, we had no practical use for such a discovery. We would not have been able to cont
rol its effects. But now-”
“Now, you can infect as many people as you like,” snapped Cyclops, unable to hold his silence any longer, “and treat only those who swear allegiance to your twisted ideals.”
“The rate of transmission will increase exponentially,” confirmed Shaw. “My dear?”
He looked at Tessa, who responded obligingly: “I estimate that there will be almost a hundred thousand new cases of Legacy by the New Year. By the end of January, the figure will be closer to a million. Within a year, it will be almost impossible to avoid infection.” “Most satisfying of all,” said Magneto, “the virus will no longer discriminate between humans and mutants. In fact, I must confess to enjoying one rather poetic irony of the situation. Our cure was evolved from the Beast’s mutated blood cells. I am told that, when injected into human sufferers, it may well activate any dormant mutant genes in their own DNA. Any human who wishes to survive this plague, then, will not only have to rely upon the blood of his sworn enemies, but will risk becoming a mutate himself.”
“And, of course, he will have to come crawling to you first,” said Phoenix.
“Of course. But I do not intend to be unreasonable. Only a small number of people—those who have shown their intolerance of our kind-wili be denied the cure. The rest will be given an opportunity to prove that they deserve it.”
“You’re talking about cold-blooded murder!” spat Cyclops.
“I am talking about making those who have power in this world accept their responsibilities-for if they do not, then their successors will. I am giving them an incentive to do the right thing. We will start by demanding new anti-discrimination legislation.”
“Along with greater power for yourself and your associates, I presume,” said the Beast.
“We will never have equality until mutants are represented at the highest levels of society,” said Shaw. “That is an ideal to which my Inner Circle has always subscribed.”
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 61
