And yet, there was an aching hope in his heart too, because there was still a chance that he could achieve everything for which he had aimed. He could retrieve the cure and ensure that it was distributed to the needy. He could save countless lives. The question was, how could he face himself if even one X-Man had to be sacrificed in the process, for his hubris?
“Comes with the territory, sugar,” said Rogue, jerking Hank out of his reverie. He looked into her sympathetic eyes, believing for a moment that she must have read his mind. “The important thing is, you get that cure to Muir Island and you save the whole darn world. After that, Magneto can do what he likes to the rest of us-it won’t matter!”
“It would matter to me, my friend,” he murmured.
Raul Jarrett had had a strange and wonderful dream. A dream in which the Savior of mutantkind had restored him to full health. A dream in which he had visited a distant land at the Savior’s side. A dream in which he had spoken to cabinet ministers and foreign businessmen, seen costumed X-Men and been privy to the thoughts of Magneto Himself.
It had been terrifying.
But it had only been a dream, real as it had seemed at the time. In its latter stages, he had even felt his real-life aches beginning to intrude upon his fantasy. He had a distant recollection of waiting outside Phillip Moreau’s office, his lungs on fire, gasping for breath and wondering what was happening to him; a moment later, he had woken here, his limbs spread like overcooked spaghetti across a hospital bed as his mutant gene failed him again.
Even now, he was sure-from the glimpse he had taken, before white light had overwhelmed his senses and forced his eyes closed-that he was in the private room in the command center, rather than at the dirty field hospital. But then, his head was buzzing, and he couldn’t hold on to a coherent thought for longer than a few seconds. The Legacy Virus was in its final stages, causing him to hallucinate.
He was only grateful that, in one of those hallucinations, he had been afforded some respite from his pain. A few sweet moments of relief before the end.
He imagined that he could hear voices.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I’ve only known myself for a few hours, Phillip.”
“We only had a few hours to stop that maniac!”
“I don’t know how to stop him!”
“He has to listen to his cabinet, doesn’t he? We should call an emergency meeting. If we could get Pietro back here . .
“It wouldn’t make any difference.”
Slowly, Jarrett recognized the female voice as belonging to Jenny Ransome; at least, it had belonged to Nurse Jenny in his dream. Proof, then, that it was not real-that the dream had not quite lost its hold on his waking mind yet—but he couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t drive it away, no matter how many things it said that his weaiy brain didn’t want to think about.
“You didn’t see him, Phillip,” she insisted. “He told me about this... this scheme of his to spread the Legacy Virus because he knew I couldn’t stop him. And he made it pretty clear what would happen if I tried.”
“He threatened you?”
“He didn’t have to. I shouldn’t even have told you about this. But... ”
There was a long silence, broken only by a soft clink of glass against glass. And then, Jenny spoke again, in a quiet, tremulous voice. “Oh, Phillip ... the blood test. . .”
“It’s positive, isn’t it?”
Another silence, shorter this time. Then, Jenny said: “It’s worse than we thought. This is more than just a relapse, Phillip. It’s as if the virus has evolved to resist the super-cell. It’s more virulent than ever.
We could try the cure again, with Magneto’s permission, but. . She dropped her voice to a whisper as if afraid that her patient might be listening. She needn’t have bothered. The rest of his body might have given up on him, but Jarrett’s hearing was unbearably acute, and her words filled his head. “But I don’t think it’s going to work. I think we’re going to lose him-and in minutes rather than days.”
He didn’t hear any more voices after that. Perhaps the dream had ended at last-or perhaps it was just that sleep had claimed him again, and a new dream had begun.
Certainly, the image of the Genegineer, his blurred face hovering over Jarrett as he prepared to operate, belonged to his past. Unless, of course, the time since then had been a dream itself: a tortuous, anaesthetic-induced nightmare bom from his fear of being mutated, of becoming less than he had been. A non-person. If that was indeed the case-if he was to be given a chance to live the past ten years or more again-then it would be different this time. He would stand up for himself. He would fight back. He would have to-because he couldn’t face the thought of another lifetime of being a victim. Of being betrayed by humanity, by fate and ultimately by the would-be Savior who had turned out to be a cruel despot after all.
As the pain drained from his body, however, he knew that his days of being victimized were over at last. He didn’t know where he was going, but suddenly he was certain-more so than he had been of anything before—that it was to somewhere better.
He could see his family, but he didn’t know if they were a final figment of the life behind him or his first glimpse of the one to come. He swam toward them through the darkness.
And somebody peeled back his eyelid, and white light stabbed into his skull again.
A voice called out his name as if from the end of an infinitely long tunnel. But he didn’t want to go back to that place of bewilderment and hurt, so he ignored it.
Raul Jarrett closed his eyes again, knowing beyond doubt that it was for the last time.
CHAPTER 14
WOLVERINE KNEW from hard-earned experience that there was only one way to deal with Magneto. Fortunately, it was just the
______ way he preferred to fight: hit the enemy hard and hit him fast.
Seep him off-balance—otherwise, he would strike out through his superb defenses and win the battle in seconds. Nightcrawler and Iceman knew it too, and the trio took full advantage of the fact that their arrival had taken the master of magnetism by surprise.
As they launched an all-out assault upon his force field, Phoenix—who was down but evidently not out—telepathically updated them on the situation, stressing the importance of keeping their foe busy until the Beast and Rogue had escaped with the Legacy cure. To hell with that, thought Logan. They were fighting the most dangerous man in existence. As if that weren’t bad enough, his control over metal made Wolverine particularly vulnerable to him. His thoughts flashed back to the time when Magneto had peeled the adamantium from his bones, and drawn every atom of it out through his pores. The process had taken seconds, but the agony had seemed to last for hours. The eventual operation to replace the metal, while less painful, had taken a great deal longer.
He dismissed the image from his mind, along with the unwanted feeling of apprehension that the memories engendered. The anger and the resentment, he kept hold of. They fuelled him. When Wolverine fought Magneto now, he fought to kill—and he Would not be entirely at peace until he had succeeded. It was against the X-Men’s code, of course, but they could argue about that later, when the necessary deed was done. What would Summers do about it, anyway? Throw him off the team?
He raised his right arm to strike again, expecting his claws to glance off the magnetic force field but aiming for Magneto’s heart just in case. But something prevented him from landing the blow. A familiar sensation. He cursed under his breath as his arm twisted around in front of him, against his will. Now, Wolverine was looking at the points of his own claws, and straining with all his might to keep them from stabbing into his eyes.
Magneto had obviously gotten his second wind. With a hand gesture, he drew billions of microscopic ferrous particles out of the air and caked them around Iceman. Suddenly encased in a dull gray shell and unable to breathe, the young X-Man fell to his knees and clawed at his face. Nightcrawler was teleporting constantly, trying to keep his opponent
disoriented by punching and kicking at him from all sides like a one-man army. But Magneto could sense his passage along the magnetic lines of force, and predict where he would appear next-and, inevitably, a hunk of hurtling metal finally found its target.
By now, though, Cyclops and Storm were back on their feet. Wolverine’s control of his claws was restored to him as the room was filled with the flash of electricity and the scent of ozone, and Magneto reeled. Cyclops rushed to Iceman’s side and freed him with a delicate but well-practiced, highly-focused application of his eye-beams. As Wolverine rejoined the fray, he fancied that he could also feel the telekinetic influence of Phoenix, straining to part the force field in front of him. His claws were penetrating closer to their target than ever.
But Cyclops was already down again, his feet pulled out from beneath him as a metal fragment ricocheted off his skull. Magneto turned to Wolverine, his weathered face twisted into a snarl, and he strengthened his field and thrust outward with it. A spike of magnetic energy punched into Logan’s chest and knocked him back.
Recovering in a second, he leapt forward again, adding his strength to Storm’s winds and lightning bolts, Iceman’s ice boulders and Phoenix’s telekinesis.
The pitched battle raged on, wearing down its participants as neither side was able to gain any significant ground. As far as the X-Men were concerned, this meant that they were achieving their objective, giving their teammates the vital minutes they needed.
But, for the frustrated Wolverine, it wasn’t anything like good enough.
Rogue waited, tensed for action, at the end of the corridor that led to the basement laboratory, watching as the Beast tapped the combination into the numeric pad. To her relief, it hadn’t been changed yet. The locking mechanism whirred into action: its painfully long cycle could almost have been designed to give Holocaust time to get into position beyond it. She flew forward before the heavy door had slid aside, her top rate of acceleration turning her into a hurtling torpedo. For a horrible instant, she feared she had mistimed her launch and that she would smack into the door itself. Then, suddenly, it pulled out of her way and she caught the briefest glint of gold plating as she cannoned fists-first into Holocaust’s abdomen.
The hulking creature toppled backward, the satisfaction of the moment dulling the pain of impact that shot through Rogue’s muscles. She kept on top of him, pounding at the transparent dome at the top of his armor, ignoring the howl of fury that emanated from his fire-shrouded skull face. A blue blur shot past her—and, under her breath, she murmured, “Go, Hank, go!” For all her earlier bravado, she didn’t know how long she could keep this up. Holocaust was already struggling to rise beneath her, bucking and almost throwing her off him. She had been trying to keep his weapon arm pinned with a foot, but he yanked it free and turned its rounded end toward her. Rogue saw bright energy building behind the weapon’s holes, and jumped for it, delivering a final kick to Holocaust’s head in the process. He fired, and she rolled beneath the explosion, wincing from its heat against her face.
They scrambled to their feet simultaneously. Rogue wanted to duck for cover, but she couldn’t take the chance that, if he couldn’t see her, Holocaust would target the Beast. She spared a glance for Hank, who was bounding around the large, white room, prying open cupboards and drawers with manic urgency. And she realized that they weren’t alone.
A man and two women in white coats were cowering behind a lab bench. Blast it, thought Rogue, she could have done without the innocent bystanders. That was, if they could be considered innocents: clearly, they were doing Magneto’s dirty work for him. Of course, like Shaw’s scientists, they might not have had the option to refuse him.
She took to the air and buzzed Holocaust, keeping herself out of his grasp but not so far out that he lost interest in her. By drawing him further into the lab, away from the door, she was giving the whitecoats a way out. Two of them took it without hesitation; the final woman, to Rogue’s chagrin, must have been too scared to break cover.
She had cracked her foe’s head plate. She hadn’t realized it before, but she saw now that a hair-thin line crazed across the dear surface. Holocaust’s energy-his very self-was seeping out through it, leaving an orange vapor trail on the air. Her heart soared. She was winning.
And then, he caught her with a stunning backhand, flinging her backward across a hard bench. She bounced once, rolled and crashed to the floor. Holocaust was upon her again in a second, hauling her to her feet and delivering another solid blow. Rogue slammed into the doors of an upright cabinet, leaving her imprint in the thick metal. Her eyes closed, but she could hear his heavy footsteps approaching again—and her brain was screaming at her to get out of his way, but her muscles weren’t responding.
She let out an involuntary groan as she crumpled.
“Get away from her, Holocaust!” yelled an angry voice.
The Beast dropped onto Holocaust’s shoulders, sprawling across his domed top and covering his head plate with his arms. Blinded, the creature reached up to dislodge him, but the Beast propelled himself away with a kick of his powerful leg muscles. Rogue realized that he had deliberately targeted the crack in Holocaust’s armor: he had widened it, just a little, and the vapor trail was thicker now.
“Hank, don’t do it!” she groaned. “You’re no match for his strength.”
“Parity in that department is not required,” insisted the Beast, “as long as our other-dimensional friend fails to lay an armor-clad hand upon me.”
Indeed, Holocaust was swiping clumsily at him, but the Beast’s amazing agility kept him one step ahead. Rogue could even feel her own strength returning, and she started to lever herself up, leaning on the dented cabinet behind her for support.
“I may not be able to hit you,” snarled Holocaust. “Pity you can’t say the same about your teammate.” Rogue froze as he aimed his weapon arm at her again-and, with an anguished cry, the Beast threw himself at the swollen limb, trying to deflect it. That, of course, was what Holocaust had hoped for: with a gleeful cackle, he batted the blue-furred X-Man aside.
Rogue had no choice. She flew at him, even though she hadn’t yet fully recovered from her beating. If she could just widen that
crack____But she never reached it. Holocaust smashed her out of the
air. She hit the same cabinet again, causing it to rock and almost topple. And then, she was staring helplessly up at her foe’s lopsided sneer and his leveled weapon arm.
So much for learning from experience, she thought bitterly. So much for her grand plan. This round had ended even quicker than the first, and in exactly the same way.
“That deja vu is a bitch, isn’t it!” cackled Holocaust. “This is goodbye, Rogue. You had your chance. You don’t get taken alive twice.”
The Black King stood on the tarmac of Hammer Bay’s small airfield, his hands behind his back and his feet apart, an expression of studied calm on his face as a warm evening breeze ruffled his dark hair. It hadn’t been difficult to escape the bonds in with which the X-Men had left him. Because he had not used his strength against them, they had thought him drained—but in fact, he had been conserving his power, biding his time. He had pulled his ropes apart like strands of tissue paper. So far, eveiything was going well. Even so, Shaw’s casual demeanor was a mask for the anxiety that had coiled his nerves tight.
A patrolling aircar passed overhead at last, and he flagged it down. As it came to rest on its quiet antigravity jets, he allowed himself another quick glance at his pocket watch.
He instructed the car’s three mutate occupants to take him to Magneto. When they looked at each other uncertainly, he snapped: “Do you know who I am? I am Sebastian Shaw, the head of the most powerful organization in the world. Lensherr will see me.”
The mutates had obviously heard his name, because it was enough for them. Suddenly, they became attentive-almost syco-phantic-toward him. One of them held an aircar door open for him, while another got out of the vehicle altogether to affor
d him more room. A few minutes later, Shaw touched down in the street outside Magneto’s command center, and his pilot offered to escort him to the throne room of the Savior. Declining curtly, he strode into the building. The mutate guards at the main door did recognize him-he had been here several times in the past few weeks-and they jumped to attention as he passed them.
He didn’t miss the nervous looks in the guards’ eyes, and he soon realized what was causing them. He could hear distant thuds and cracks from the direction of the throne room. The mutates had been well trained not to approach their sovereign’s inner sanctum, whatever the situation, unless summoned. Magneto liked to fight his own battles.
Shaw smiled. The X-Men were nothing if not predictable. He had taken a gamble, and he had begun to fear that time would run out before it could pay off. The prospect of a lifetime under a dictator’s thumb had loomed like a shadow over him: he had thought about his own future self, turned into a cowering serf by the Black Queen, Selene, and he had hoped that he would have the courage to die before he let such a fate befall him.
But, by bringing him here, by occupying Magneto at this critical juncture, the mutant heroes had given him another chance. The game was in its final stages—but there was still time for his plan to bear fruit, for him to move his pieces into a winning position.
He took a circuitous route through the corridors of the center, avoiding the throne room and its brawling occupants. He had almost reached the infirmary when its door flew open, and two figures emerged at a run. He recognized Phillip Moreau and Jennifer Ransome.
“Shaw!” exclaimed Moreau, skidding to a halt.
The Legacy Quest Trilogy Page 71
