X-Men(tm) The Last Stand

by Chris Claremont

  She leaned forward. Inviting the interrogator to meet her halfway.

  Hank’s eyes flicked a warning to Trask. Both men were on the same wavelength. This was too soon, too easy, way too good to be true. Trask already had a phone in hand, a direct line to the holding cell, but he never got the chance to warn him.

  Even as Hank heard the ringing phone through the main display, Mystique struck, grabbing the interrogator by the ears and delivering a vicious head-butt that would have him in the hospital for the better part of a week with a wicked concussion.

  Now the previously unseen guards made their entrance, hard and fast and in no mood to play. Their adversary was faster than they were, stronger as well, likely more skilled in the martial arts. She’d slipped herself free of every restraint, making her hands momentarily boneless so that they’d slid loose from her cuffs. But the room was too small and suddenly filled wall-to-wall with muscle. She had no room to maneuver, and when she tried morphing into one of them Hank saw that they’d been biotagged. External surveillance systems told the team outside who was who so that they always knew who to hit.

  It was a gallant, desperate struggle that reminded Hank too much of a wild animal being caged. It was doomed from the start and quickly over.

  Trask shut off the feed.

  “One down,” he said quietly, “one to go.”

  Hank stared at him. “You know her capture will only provoke Magneto.”

  “So? Do we forgo the capture of terrorist lieutenants because we’re scared of their boss? If that’s our policy, why don’t we just hand over the country to him and be done with it?”

  Trask gestured to the screen.

  “Henry, be real here. You see what we’re dealing with.”

  “All the more reason to be diplomatic.”

  “You expect me to negotiate with these people?” asked the president pointedly.

  Hank’s first reaction was a thankfully unspoken thought: And what people precisely would you be referring to, sir? The “terrorist” mutants or mutants in general?

  Aloud, he chose to follow his own advice and speak diplomatically: “All due respect, sir, I thought that’s why you appointed me.”

  Hank shook his head, realizing from the look on the president’s face and the way the other man’s eyes shifted ever so slightly that the venue for this meeting hadn’t been any last-minute change, nor had its earlier start.

  “This isn’t why you called me here, is it, sir?”

  The president shook his head. “No,” he said, his tone conveying what was surely meant to sound like a sincere and heartfelt apology. He slid a file towards McCoy.

  “This is what she was after.”

  Hank used a ritual with his glasses to regain his inner composure: he removed the bifocals, puffed on the lenses, wiping them clear on the thick and luxurious fur protruding from his cuffs.

  When he was done reading, when the axis of the Earth had finished shifting beneath him, he didn’t know whether he felt rage or terror, but assumed it was a decent measure of both. He pressed his hands together, resting his face against them, like a man assuming an attitude of prayer, determined not to allow them to tremble and hoping his voice wouldn’t betray him when he spoke.

  “Is it viable?” he asked.

  “We believe it is, yes.”

  “Do you have any idea of the level of impact this will have on the mutant community?”

  The president nodded, choosing his words very carefully.

  “Yes, I do. That’s precisely why we need some of your ‘diplomacy’ now.”

  Hank closed his eyes, his inner child hoping against hope that this was merely some wild flight of fancy, and that when he opened them again he’d be back in his old room at Xavier’s, young and carefree, with no thoughts for the day ahead other than charming the daylights out of Jean and teaching Ororo how to slow-dance.

  And then came a darker image, of a movie he’d watched far too often, one to complement the books and files he’d committed to memory while researching his first doctoral thesis, which hadn’t been on medicine of any kind, but history. In 1942, there’d been a conference in Wannsee Villa, a resort outside Berlin, chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, who’d go down in history as “Hangman Heydrich” (his fellow Nazis called him “the Blond Butcher”). He was then Deputy Reichsführer, a handsome, powerfully commanding presence who everyone assumed would claim the leadership of the Third Reich if and when Hitler passed from the scene. He’d gathered the top bureaucrats in the Reich, from all the key departments of state, and in a meeting that lasted ninety minutes, they’d resolved the “Jewish question” in Europe. In terms both barbaric in their racial virulence and damnably chilling in their institutional banality, these men signed the death warrant of millions.

  One or two among them weren’t comfortable with the idea, one may have vaguely considered opposing it, but in the end the vote was unanimous. The choice was stark and terrible: consign the Jews to their fate, or share it.

  A part of Hank knew there was no comparison between that room and this. None of the men and women around this table considered themselves bigots, or monsters—if anything, far too many people still considered the likes of Hank the true monsters—but neither then did the men at Wannsee. They were simply trying to deal once and for all with a perceived threat to the survival of their country, their culture, their race.

  And for the first time in his adult life, he found himself facing what had previously been utterly unthinkable, alien to everything he’d been taught and believed—that Magneto, who’d been a victim of the decision made that day at Wannsee, who’d grown to manhood in the most terrible of those death camps, Auschwitz, might actually be right.

  “Power corrupts,” Charles Xavier told his ethics class, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is a lesson every one of us must learn and live. Why? Because we are mutants.

  “Will it be for the greater good,” he continued, “or personal, destructive, and tyrannical? This is a question we must all ask ourselves. Why? Because we are mutants.”

  Kitty answered him with a sigh and briefly considered relaxing her hold on her power, just for a heartbeat, her phased form remaining at rest while the Earth continued merrily spinning on its axis. Just that little burst would put her outside the building. If she held her breath for a couple of minutes, she could be miles away.

  It was tempting, but it would be wrong. Like it or not, responsibility had become her second nature. She had Xavier to thank for that.

  “Riiight,” she agreed. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

  Xavier shook his head. He didn’t like it when she was intellectually lazy.

  “Kitty, that’s not an argument, it’s a cliché and a generalization. And like all generalizations, it’s only partly true. Unfortunately, students”—he expanded the colloquy to embrace the entire class—“there are no absolutes when it comes to questions of ethics. For psychics, such as myself…” As he said this, Kitty felt his thoughts jump into her mind: and as well for those who can walk through walls. She got the message, sitting straight up while her cheeks flushed tomato scarlet, pursing her lips in embarrassment at being busted. Xavier continued, “…this presents a particular problem. When is it acceptable to use our powers and when do we cross that invisible line that turns us into tyrants over our fellow men?”

  “Professor,” Kitty countered, seizing the opening with a question that was actually pertinent, yet also just that faintest bit naughty, “if the line is invisible, how do we know when we’ve crossed it?”

  Some of the others grinned, and even Xavier permitted himself an itsy-bitsy quirk of the lips that might be interpreted as a smile. His game of choice had always been chess, but Kitty’s was tennis, and she served to win.

  Behind the professor, a flat-screen display revealed a hospital room, together with a legend that identified the source as the Muir Isle Research Facility, Scotland. It was an isolation cubicle, marked with the internat
ional biohazard trefoil and an M stamped in the middle to indicate mutant biohazard. A man lay on the single bed, clearly not in the best of health. Beside him stood a woman, Dr. Moira MacTaggart, old friend of Xavier’s, a former lover, and partner in many of his current researches.

  “This case was forwarded to me by a colleague, Dr. MacTaggart.”

  Everyone took notes. Kitty couldn’t help sneaking an envious peek over at Weezie, who was merely running a pair of fingertips along each line of her notebook page. In their wake, every word Xavier spoke was transcribed automatically from her ear to the page. Although it seemed to be going smoothly now, it wasn’t always as easy as that; when she got distracted, Weezie’s transcription power tapped into her thoughts and her notes became a stream-of-consciousness exercise that put Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to shame. Then, of course, it was all hands to the rescue among her best friends at school, Kitty included, to try to separate out what was supposed to be there. This morning, though, she looked totally on track.

  Dr. MacTaggart was speaking, the screen obligingly providing subtitles for those who found her Highland accent a bit hard to fathom.

  “The man you see here,” she said, indicating her patient, “was born with no higher-level brain functions. His organs and nervous system function normally, but he has no consciousness to speak of. That has been confirmed both by the most comprehensive medical scans available to us, and telepathic examination as well.”

  Xavier paused the transmission.

  “What if,” he asked the class, “we could transfer the consciousness of one person, say a father of four with terminal cancer, into the body of this man?”

  Kitty couldn’t help muttering, “Sounds like someone wants to play God.”

  Weezie giggled.

  Xavier ignored them both.

  “How are we to…”

  He paused, looking off to the side for just a moment, then tried to move on.

  “How are we to decide what is within the range of ethical behavior and what is…”

  His voice trailed off and this time he wasn’t the only person to look out the window. When class began it had been a bright, sunny afternoon; now it was completely overcast, dark with clouds that were growing thicker and angrier by the moment.

  “We’ll continue tomorrow,” Xavier announced suddenly, to the surprise of very few. You didn’t have to be a student at Xavier’s very long to figure out what moments like this were all about. “Class is dismissed.”

  Charles tried reaching her telepathically as he rolled his wheelchair through the halls, but as was usually the case when her powers were this active, there was so much charged electrical energy coursing through her system that it coated her mind with a sleet storm of psychic static. Even the fleeting contact necessary to determine her location threatened a nasty headache.

  By the time he left the shelter of the doorway, wind was whipping enthusiastically across the Great Lawn and the scattered figures of students were racing for cover. He could taste the ozone in the air; it made his skin crawl.

  The cause of the sudden weather change stood alone, staring off over the trees, so lost in thought she had no idea what was happening around her.

  “Ororo,” Xavier called quietly, when he’d approached close enough for her to hear him and not be startled. Taking Storm by surprise at moments like this, he risked a close encounter with one of her lightning bolts. Not a happy experience. “The forecast was for sunny skies.”

  She blinked, pulling back to herself, reintegrating both halves of her mind. Storm glanced upwards, her shoulders twitching with the sudden realization of what she’d unwittingly done.

  “Oh,” she said, and then, underneath her breath, “Shit.” And finally, “I’m sorry.”

  She turned to face him, a courtesy, acknowledgment that movement wasn’t easy for him. Her eyes had turned as silver as her hair, no sign of iris or pupil, indicating that her power was under her active control.

  As smoothly as it had arrived, but far more quickly, the supercell above the mansion went away, restoring the lovely day that had been before.

  “I needn’t be a psychic to see that something’s bothering you,” he said.

  There was a stone bench nearby, and she sat down so they could converse more as equals.

  “In the village where I grew up,” she said, referring to the wilds of northern Kenya, among the Masai, although Ororo herself was no part of that tribe, “when droughts were at their worst, I brought the rain. My powers were seen as a gift.”

  “As I remember, they were worshipped.”

  There was much left unsaid between them, although Charles knew the story. Ororo’d had no one to teach her, and she’d learned the use and extent—and the price—of her abilities the hard way, with the toll exacted on the very people she sought to help. She’d had to learn through experience that when she generated rain in one place, she ran the risk of taking it from somewhere else; a drought easily ended might as a consequence trigger one elsewhere, and ultimately do far more harm than good. Such a harsh lesson for such a young child!

  “Yes, they were.” Unspoken: and so was I. “And yet, here, Charles, in what calls itself the most advanced and enlightened society on the planet, ‘home of the brave, land of the free’”—she’d clearly reversed the order deliberately—“we keep our gifts a secret.”

  “Why don’t we go inside?” Xavier suggested.

  She nodded, stood and followed, and both of them noticed—far off in the distance—the faintest ripple of thunder across a clear and cloudless sky.

  “Magneto’s a fugitive,” she said as they crossed the threshold into the main foyer. “We have a mutant in the cabinet, a president who campaigned on mutant understanding and tolerance—so why are we still hiding?”

  “We are not hiding.”

  “Professor,” Ororo objected, “we live behind stone walls, we keep our true identities a secret!”

  “As a precaution, Ororo. I have to protect my students.” Unspoken, reflexive, came another thought from Ororo: “Protect them” from what? Why must we be so afraid? “You know that.”

  She looked at a couple of passing students, then back at her mentor and friend.

  “Charles,” she said, “we can’t be students forever.” We have to learn—we have to be trusted—to protect ourselves.

  “Ororo, I haven’t thought of you as my ‘student’ for years. In fact…”

  They reached his office.

  “…I’ve been considering that you might take my place someday.”

  Storm wondered if she had heard him correctly.

  “But I thought Scott…”

  Xavier shook his head. “Scott has taken Jean’s death so hard.” His thoughts now came through to Ororo as plain as if he were speaking aloud: Some are tempered by adversity, others are broken, no matter how much we may wish otherwise. Time has not healed this wound. Despite all our efforts, it’s as though Scott himself had died with her.

  “As for Logan”—and they both smiled, simpatico in both their affection for the man and their mutual awareness of his shortcomings—“well, Logan is a loner. He has neither interest nor real aptitude, not for this.”

  Having nothing to say, Ororo kept silent.

  “Things are better out there, Ororo—and certainly much better by far in America than in other parts of the globe. But you of all people should know how fast the weather changes.” He offered a playful grin and surprised her with his next comment. “What’s that Mel Brooks line, from The Twelve Chairs? ‘Hope for the best, expect the worst.’”

  She’d shared popcorn and wine with him and Hank McCoy and Scott and Jean, watching those classic comedies, and had damn near split her sides with laughter. She completed the couplet: “‘You may be Tolstoy, or Fanny Hurst.’”

  Then, more seriously, responding to the undertone beneath the banter, “Charles, you know something you’re not telling.”

  He opened the door and she found the answer rising from one of the big, co
mfy chairs in front of the desk.

  “Hank,” she said in greeting, following Xavier into the room.

  “Ororo,” McCoy replied.

  The hug she gave him matched her strength to his and was filled with very real affection from them both. It was like snuggling with a lion, and she grinned wide, wondering if he knew how many girls at the school wove their fantasies around his silken coat and romantic hero manner. Not for nothing were DVDs of Beauty and the Beast among the most popular in the library.

  She gave his side whiskers a tug: “I just love what you’ve done with your hair.”

  He gave hers a flick. “You too—what there is of it.” What once had fallen most of the way down her back now barely touched her shoulders, and she was considering cutting it back farther still. Seasons change, so could she.

  Hank and Xavier shook hands, and Ororo’s eyes were drawn to one of the photos on the wall, of the original class of students. She couldn’t help noticing the sight of herself sitting so stiff and formal beside a girl whose hair looked like it had been dipped in blood-hued flame. Jean in her Goth phase, which had lasted barely a semester before she got bored; she got bored so easily back then, Ororo remembered. She was so desperately hungry to learn—they all were. Know the world as the key to knowing thyself. Had they ever truly been that young? And what could have possessed them to wear those dreadful costumes in public? Thing was, and this she had to admit to herself, back then they considered them the height of cool. New millennium, new attitudes, something else that had changed.

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Charles,” McCoy told his mentor.

  “You’re always welcome here, Henry. You’re a part of this place, as much as anyone.”

  “I have some news.” This wasn’t a social call.

  “Erik?” Xavier asked, obviously fearing the worst.

  It was the right impulse, just in the wrong direction. And again, Ororo thought: Everything changes.