The Legacy Quest Trilogy

by Unknown Author

  Magneto smiled. “You could even say that, by weeding out the perpetrators of anti-mutant hate crimes, we will be helping evolution to take its natural course.”

  “There is nothing natural about germ warfare,” snarled Cyclops, “especially not when your weapon is a man-made virus.”

  Magneto drew closer to the X-Men’s field leader, an eyebrow raised in mock surprise and a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “Always so disapproving, Scott—but don’t you see? I am about to create a world in which mutants need not fear, need not hide their very natures. That is the much-vaunted dream of your precious mentor, is it not?” He clapped a hand on Cyclops’s shoulder, like a benevolent father. Scott wanted to recoil from it, but he was held too fast, and so he settled for showing his distaste in his features instead.

  “We may be fighting for the same thing,” he said, “but Professor Xavier would never tolerate your methods-and nor will I!”

  “You cling to the belief that humanity can be persuaded to improve our lot. But for how long have your X-Men fought that lost cause, and what have you gained? I have tried it your way, Scott-Xavier’s way—and it does not work. The humans hate us, as the Nazis hated the Jews. They know that we are destined to replace them, and they fear their passing.”

  “And people like you only give them all the more reason to hate and fear. Your plan won’t change that, it will only make things worse!”

  The good humor drained from Magneto’s face, and now his eyes burnt with a white fire. Suddenly, Cyclops was reminded of what a formidable opponent this aging, gray-haired man could be. “What do I care for the opinions of a miserable, stunted species that will die out within a few generations anyway? My only concern is that we are free from their mindless persecution-and if they must be coerced into leaving us alone, then so be it. They started this war-and it was their choice, not mine, to fight it with deadly force!”

  “You’re wrong,” said Cyclops quietly. There was nothing else to add. He and Magneto had had this argument many times-but it wasn’t in his nature to stop trying, to say nothing in the face of such overwhelming hatred.

  “A shame, then, that your opinion no longer matters.” Magneto turned on his heel and strode toward the door. “I am leaving now for Genosha, from where I will coordinate the release of the Legacy Virus. When next we meet, it will be in a better world-and you will thank me for what I am about to do, one day.”

  “We’ll get out of here,” Cyclops shouted after him, “and we’ll come after you. Even if you release the virus, we can still take the cure from you!”

  Magneto paused on the threshold and looked back at the captive X-Men. “Do not strain yourselves. My associate will release you himself in two or three days. By then, the cure will have been distributed to Genosha’s mutates, and I will be more than adequately defended. Be warned, my former allies: anyone who dares violate the boundaries of my country from that day forth will face the wrath of a vengeful nation.”

  He left then, and the mutate called Raul scurried uncertainly after him. Lady Mastermind threw a lopsided smirk in the X-Men’s direction before following. As the Black King made to do likewise, however, Storm stopped him in his tracks with an angry bark of “Shaw!” He turned to face her slowly, his expression placid. Tessa frowned. Miranda, who had been about to retake her seat, hesitated.

  “You may be a snake, Shaw,” said Ororo hotly, “but I thought better of you than this. I cannot believe that even you would go along with Magneto’s insane scheme.”

  “As my colleague said,” said Shaw evenly, “it will benefit all mutants, myself included.”

  “And ultimately,” said the Beast, “it will bring about a world in which non-mutants have no place. Over whom would you laud your enhanced physical prowess then?”

  Cyclops waited to see how this confrontation would play itself out. This was why he had brought Ororo and Hank to Sydney, after all: because they had both had recent dealings with the Black King. They had each been forced to work with him. They knew him better than either Cyclops or Phoenix did, and they knew how to get under his skin.

  “Oh, I’m sure Sebastian has everything worked out,” said Storm with a hint of contempt in her voice. “His strength will be of little use to him once he has achieved his life’s aim. What has Magneto offered you in exchange for poisoning your world, Shaw?”

  “The Presidency of the United States, perhaps?” suggested the Beast. Shaw smiled at that, then said, “Much as I would enjoy that role, I have set my sights a little higher.”

  “Sebastian will control the world’s business transactions,” supplied Tessa. “Nothing will be built, no contract signed and no fiscal policy passed without his authorization-and he will tolerate no inefficiency, no waste, no weak-minded liberalism.”

  “You intend to make the world over in your image,” stated the Beast.

  “I intend,” said Shaw, “to ensure that histoiy remembers my name.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt that it will. It will not forget your part in the instigation of a bloody interspecies war. Future generations will vilify the man who helped to reduce our civilization to ruins. Against that, I don’t imagine your efforts to rebuild will count for a great deal.” ' '

  “You are forgetting,” said Tessa, “that histoiy is written by the victor—and Sebastian Shaw will be the most powerful man in the world, and the richest.”

  “The second most powerful,” said Storm pointedly.

  “Ah, therein lies the rub,” said the Beast. “It does not sound like the self-styled Black King to subsume his ambitions to those of a transient ally.”

  “Do not presume to know me,” growled Shaw, “either of you.” “Unfortunately for you, Shaw,” persisted Storm, “we do know you. As does Magneto. He knows that you would not wish to live under his rule any more than we do. However and whenever you plan to betray him, he will be prepared.”

  “You fought alongside the X-Men before,” said the Beast, “when circumstances necessitated it.”

  “But this time,” said Tessa abruptly, “the game remains under Sebastian’s control. The introduction of extra players to the board would only complicate matters.”

  “Your lapdog is doing a lot of talking for you, Shaw,” said Storm. “But remember this: Magneto plays the game well too, and this time the stakes are dangerously high.”

  Shaw smiled, and his eyes glistened darkly. “Why else would the game be worth playing?”

  It was evident that the Black King had his own agenda, and that he wasn’t about to discuss it. Cyclops almost wished that Phoenix had read more of his thoughts when she had had the chance-but she would have intruded as little as possible, even in the mind of an enemy.

  Shaw turned to his assistant. “Miranda is to keep them helpless,” he said. Tessa must have passed the instruction on telepathically because, a moment later, the young female mutate nodded obediently and sat down on the wooden chair.

  “I’m afraid I too must take my leave of you now,” Shaw addressed the X-Men. “After all, I have a party to organize this evening-and it is past six o’clock already.”

  He looked directly at Cyclops as he spoke, a malicious grin on his face as if he knew the effect that his words would have. Scott gritted his teeth, determined not to betray the icy fear that formed in his stomach and spread to encompass his entire body.

  It was the Beast who put that fear into words, once Shaw and Tessa had left the room. “It appears that time is rather shorter than we might have hoped.”

  Phoenix called over to Miranda-and, undeterred when the girl did not respond, she talked to her in a gentle, reassuring tone. She sympathized with the hardships from which the Genoshan mutates had been rescued, but asked Miranda if it was right to make other people suffer as she had suffered. She met with no more success than the Beast had. The girl remained infuriatingly silent, occasionally turning the pages of her book.

  “I am beginning to suspect,” said the Beast, “that young Miranda is not merely unwilling to liste
n, but incapable of same.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Cyclops. “Remember how Tessa had to instruct her telepathically?” He strained at his inflexible bonds again. “We need ideas, people, and we need them fast. We have a lot of work to do, and we’ve got just under six hours to do it. As soon as that first firework goes up at midnight tonight, Magneto and Shaw will have won!”

  CHAPTER 9

  THE CLOSER Rogue drew to the center of Hammer Bay, the more building sites she passed and the more busy people she almost _ran into. Magneto had obviously decreed that Genosha’s reconstruction should begin with his immediate environs. Perhaps it would be easier to believe his work done once the poverty, disease and strife that were endemic to his country had been pushed out of his sight.

  Worried at first, Rogue had tried to take back roads and alleyways, but it was impossible to avoid being seen. She was comforted, however, by the fact that nobody had spared her a second glance. Why would they? She could probably have taken to the air, she thought, without raising an eyebrow. Most of the site laborers were mutates, after all. Many of them could stretch or fly, reaching difficult areas without having to erect scaffolding. Welders could do their jobs without the benefit of expensive machinery, using their own bio-energies, and hod-carriers could lift three times the load of their human counterparts. It occurred to Rogue that the mutates had been bred precisely for this type of work, and she shuddered.

  She had found a woolen sweater left unattended by the side of one site, and had taken it gratefully, disposing of the half-melted jogger top that could only have drawn attention to her. The sweater had a roll-neck, and it was baggy enough for the casual observer to imagine that she wore a skinsuit beneath it. Emboldened by her apparent anonymity, she ventured closer than she might otherwise have dared to the command center: a former magistrate base, which now seived as the seat of the newly formed government. She observed it from all angles; at one point, she walked right past it with the assured gait of one who had somewhere to get to. She pretended not to be interested in the mutate guards, members of-what were they called again?-the Genoshan Unified Military Patrol.

  The last time she had come here, an ally had teleported her into the main control room. But then, her intention had been to confront Genosha’s new sovereign. This time, she hoped to keep Magneto unaware of her presence.

  She thought about flying to the top of the tower and trying to pry open a window, but she would probably have been seen, if not from inside then certainly from without.

  Finally, she took a deep breath and ran up to the relatively secluded back door of the building. Two guards brought up their rifles suspiciously. “You’ve got to come quick,” Rogue panted, clutching her sidfe as if injured. “They’re killing us back there!” She tugged at the sleeve of one of the mutates, but he didn’t move. “Humans,” she elaborated, “with magistrate technology. They’ve attacked my building site. We need reinforcements, fast!”

  The mutate blinked at her impassively. His lips were thin, his nostrils pinched. “Didn’t you hear me?” she cried, her desperation only half-feigned.

  “I have already notified Command of the situation,” said the mutate.

  “We cannot leave our post,” said his female colleague with an equal lack of emotion.

  Well, thought Rogue, it was worth a shot. But on the whole, this was why she usually left the big plans to Cyclops. Not that it was exactly her fault that one of the guards had turned out to be a telepath-and at least she had had the foresight to work out a backup plan.

  She had already removed her gloves in preparation, which was just as well. She could feel an itch in her brain, and the male mutate’s brow furrowed as he came up against her unusually strong psychic barriers. Rogue clapped her hands to his cheeks before he could probe further or raise the alarm. It was lucky for her that his magistrate gas mask was slung around his neck, leaving his skin exposed.

  She held on to him until he sagged and fell away from her; longer than she would normally have risked, but she had to be sure that she was leaving him unconscious. Everything that he was, she was now. Her name was Aidan Morgan, and she could feel the hole in her life, the years she could barely remember when she had been brainwashed into trailing around after human magistrates, warning them of rebellious sentiments in her fellow mutates. She felt sick as she saw herself standing over one of her fallen masters, ignoring his pleas for mercy, reaching into his mind and twisting it until the pain killed him. She felt pride that she wore the uniform now, she had taken control. Most of all, she felt Aidan Morgan’s burning passion for revenge. And then, as his telepathic abilities—her abilities, now-kicked in, she felt her mind invaded by a million stray thoughts, until finding her own thoughts, finding her self, was like searching for a single voice in a cacophony.

  And she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t know why. She didn’t even know who or where she was any more, but an emergency signal was banging away in the back of her head, and every time her lungs tried to take in air, she found her mouth and nostrils blocked. She tried to fight it, tried to find the neural pathways that connected her brain to her arms and legs, and lashed out with all her strength.

  It was one of her worst struggles yet. But finally, Rogue emerged whole from a world of noise and confusion-to find herself spread across the Genoshan sidewalk.

  It was as if her entire skeleton had dissolved, leaving her a fleshy sack without structure. She fought down the urge to panic, to scream. She told herself that this couldn’t possibly be real, it had to be a bad dream. Somebody else’s bad dream. But she was in control again now, and the world fell back into place around her as she sifted out which of her recent experiences had been her own and thrust the others into a dark recess inside herself from which she prayed that they would never emerge.

  Somehow, she knew how to peel herself off the floor and reshape herself. Her bones were there, she realized, but they bent and stretched like rubber. Humanoid once more but feeling giddy, she looked down at the mutate guards, both of whom were unconscious. The woman had splayed herself out to three times her normal width, and lay almost flat against the floor. So, that was where Rogue’s unexpected pliability had come from. The mutate must have wrapped herself around the X-Man and tried to suffocate her, not realizing what would happen when she touched her. No wonder she had been so confused. Indeed, now that she could tune out the distracting telepathic voices-at least to an extent-Rogue felt the woman’s additional presence inside her. Her name was June.

  The voices disturbed her. They reminded her of her nightmares. Sometimes, she felt as if she held onto a part of everybody she had ever absorbed, kept them locked up in a prison cell in the back of her mind. Sometimes, at night, she heard their voices screaming at her and she woke up in a cold sweat, fearing that they might break free and overwhelm her.

  She felt unsteady on her feet, unsure of herself as if she weren’t quite here, weren’t quite controlling her own actions. She tried to ignore the sensation, concentrating on the matter in hand. She dragged the two guards inside the building. They would be missed soon, if only by the mutates whom they had sent to an imaginary disturbance. Rogue had to move fast.

  She accessed June’s memories and found her knowledge of the command center’s layout. Magneto, she learned, had installed a team of scientists in a basement laboratory, where they were working on a top secret project. She smiled. Things were going her way at last.

  She hurried along a deserted hallway and down a flight of stairs. With luck, she thought, she could frnd the lab, snatch the cure to the Legacy Virus and be out of this place before anybody else saw her.

  Bobby Drake glanced nervously around the tiny, empty storeroom. Having given up hope of leaving the magistrates’ base through the main door, he had plucked up the courage to search a few more rooms for an alternative exit. He had bumped into several people as he had explored, but fortunately nobody had seemed interested in what he was doing. He hadn’t really expected to frnd anything, but
now here he was, staring up at an inviting hatchway in the ceiling and wondering what lay on the other side of it.

  He was on the topmost level of the base-at least, he could find no stairs to take him higher. Was it possible that the hatchway led outside? It made sense, after all, for the magistrates to have had an emergency escape route.

  He peered out through the storeroom door and, seeing nobody, closed it gently. The walls of the room were lined with dusty shelves, and he tested one to see if it would take his weight. Then, he climbed upward and reached out across the ceiling until he could take hold of the hatch’s locking wheel and turn it. It spun easily, and the thick, circular hatch fell inward and away from him with a heavy clang that made Bobby wince. He was horribly aware that, if anybody caught him here, he would have no explanation for his actions.

  The hatchway didn’t lead to daylight, but nor did it lead to another section of the white-lit base. The space beyond it was dark, and it smelt faintly of wet rot. Straining his muscles, Bobby reached up until his fingers found the lip of the hatchway. Then he swung out across the room and hauled himself up through it.

  He found himself on the flat roof of the base. The surface beneath his feet was steel, but he was standing among the timbers of the surrounding warehouse. The ceiling of the old building was barely a foot above his head-and his heart skipped with delight as he saw dust motes dancing in a vertical shaft of light. He hurried toward the filthy skylight and operated its clasp, but it was locked.

  He made to smash the glass, reasonably sure that nobody could hear the sound from below-but closer inspection showed that it was reinforced. He formed a crowbar out of ice instead, and forced it into the narrow gap between the skylight and its frame. His first attempt to lever the window open ended in the shattering of his makeshift tool-but he repaired it, making it stronger this time, and tried again. The window began to give, just a little.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”