X-Men(tm) The Last Stand

by Chris Claremont

  “No”—McCoy shook his great, shaggy head—“although we’re making progress on that front. Actually, Mystique was apprehended last week.”

  “They caught her?” He sounded so certain, but Ororo had her doubts.

  Xavier took him at his word: “The question is, how will they keep her?”

  “For the moment, that’s Bolivar Trask’s problem, thank God,” Hank said. “I—”

  “Who’s the furball?” challenged a new arrival, from the doorway.

  McCoy bristled. Storm knew he hadn’t been fond of the nickname when he was a student here. But he’d also learned manners. “Henry McCoy. Secretary of Mutant Affairs.”

  “Right,” Logan acknowledged, “the secretary.” The way he said Hank’s title, it wasn’t a compliment. “Nice suit.”

  Hank held out his hand. Logan ignored it. Xavier sighed, mainly to himself. Not a great beginning.

  Xavier said: “Hank, Logan is—”

  “The Wolverine,” Hank acknowledged. “I read the file.” To Logan directly, “I hear you’re quite the animal.”

  Logan sniffed. “Look who’s talking.”

  Ororo was done watching this display of testosterone. She addressed Xavier: “Magneto’s not going to be happy about Mystique.”

  “Hope your prison has plastic screws,” offered Logan.

  “Magneto isn’t the problem,” Hank told them. “At least, not our most pressing one.”

  He had their attention.

  “A major pharmaceutical company has developed a…mutant antibody. A way to suppress the X-gene.”

  “‘Suppress’?” asked Logan after a very awkward silence.

  Hank looked at him. “Permanently.” Another, longer, silence while they digested the news. “They’re calling it a ‘cure.’”

  Logan snorted in disgust, which took care of his opinion.

  Ororo spoke up: “This is crazy. You can’t cure being a mutant.”

  “Well, scientifically speaking—” Hank began, but she allowed him to get no further.

  “Since when are we a disease? I’ve been called many things in my life, Henry, but a disease?” Raw rage and contempt laced her words.

  “Ororo,” Xavier said quietly, and then, when she didn’t respond, “Storm!”

  She looked at him.

  “It’s being announced right now.”

  “They’ve been called saints and sinners,” announced Warren Worthington Jr. to the assembled crush of media. “They’ve committed atrocities and been the victims of atrocities themselves.”

  He stood hatless against the stiff breeze blowing into San Francisco Bay through the Golden Gate, in the shadow of the long-decommissioned prison of Alcatraz, with Kavita Rao, bundled far more snugly, standing a bit behind him on the dais.

  “They’ve been labeled monsters, and not without reason,” Worthington Jr. went on. “But these so-called monsters are people just like us. They are our fathers and mothers, our brothers and sisters—they are,” and here, just for the briefest instant that only Kavita noticed, his voice caught, “our children. Their affliction is nothing more than a disease. A corruption of healthy cellular activity. Finally, there is hope. A way to eradicate their suffering and the suffering of those who love them.”

  He held up a slide of a DNA helix in one hand. And in the other, a photo of Kavita’s long-time patient, young Jimmy.

  “A few years ago, we found a mutant with the most extraordinary ability—to repress, and even reverse, the powers of those other mutants who came close to him. Now, after much research and experimentation, we’ve found the means for all mutants to get ‘close’ to him.”

  He set down the photos and held up a vial. He paused while the crowd before him erupted in flashbulbs. He didn’t need his media advisor screaming through his earbug to know that with those words, every news channel on the spectrum had just gone live to this press conference. He wasn’t just a sound bite on the evening news any longer, he was speaking to the whole world.

  Among them, President Cockrum, watching with Bolivar Trask and others of his key staff in the Oval Office.

  “This site,” Worthington was saying, “which was once the world’s most famous prison, will now be the source of freedom for mutants everywhere.”

  Among them, the students of the Xavier Institute, gathered in common rooms throughout the great mansion.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Worthington concluded, “I proudly present the answer to mutation. Finally, we have a cure!”

  Rogue let out her breath, unaware that she’d been holding it all this while, trolling her gaze over the assemblage of students, noting how folks were sitting, what they were wearing. She was covered head to toe, a fact of life for a girl who could steal memories and lives with the slightest accidental touch. She licked her lips, remembering a moment like it had just happened, the taste of Bobby Drake when she’d kissed him, the delight she’d found when her breath puffed cold just like his. That taste hadn’t been enough, and they’d tried again—he promising it would be all right, assuring her he wasn’t scared, she wanting to believe, certain it would end badly. She was the one proven right.

  Her eyes went to the TV, which had cut to a talking head recapping the announcement while they rustled up learned commentators, promising an in-depth interiew and analysis with author Laurie Garrett. Then, Rogue looked down at her hands, gloved as always. She made a face, glanced towards Soraya, sitting demurely by the window in her burqa. At least the Afghani girl covered herself up by choice, as an article of her faith. Rogue was stuck like this, she’d thought for forever.

  But now—and her eyes rose once more to the screen—but now…

  Storm looked ready to hit something, radiating a violent fury that seemed to impress even Logan, and Hank thought it was probably because it reminded the Wolverine of himself.

  “Who would want this cure? I mean, what kind of coward would take it, just to fit in?”

  Hank bristled ever so slightly.

  “I understand your concerns, Ororo. For God’s sake, that’s why I’m here! But not all of us have such an easy time as others ‘fitting in.’”

  She looked at him, and the pain that showed in his eyes wholly belied the joking words that followed.

  “You don’t shed on the furniture.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it that way—”

  “Don’t apologize,” Logan told her, sounding one small step removed from a snarl. “For all we know, the government helped cook this up. I mean, let’s be rational for a second and consider the civil liberties side of things. Do parents have the right to impose this cure on their kids? Employers on their employees? Suppose someone decides mutants are a public safety issue and society’s better off without ’em? Or better yet, let’s turn the tables—if you can make a drug to erase the gene, how ’bout one to create it? You thought nukes were scary, folks, howzabout us? Why bomb an army when Storm can drown it? And what then, the feds decide—for our own ‘protection’—maybe we belong on a reservation, where we’re available if needed but can be kept isolated from the general population? Pandora’s box has nothing on this.”

  “I can assure you,” Hank said stiffly, defensively, because Logan’s impassioned argument walked the same path as too many recent, increasingly heated, conversations between himself and Alicia Vargas, himself and his own soul, “the government has nothing to do with this.”

  Logan looked at him pityingly: “I’ve heard that before, bub.”

  “My boy,” Hank snapped, provoked past caring about propriety, “I’ve been fighting for mutant rights since before you had claws!”

  Logan looked to Ororo. “Did he just call me ‘boy’?”

  “Enough.” Hank apparently wasn’t the only one short of patience. Xavier’s voice was harder and flatter than he’d ever heard before. “All of you.”

  “Is it true?” Rogue suddenly asked from the doorway. “Can they…cure us?”

  All of them exchanged looks, but Oro
ro was the first to answer. “No,” she said flatly. She stepped towards Rogue, holding out her hands, offering all her strength and courage, sick with fury at the realization that it wouldn’t be enough. “They can’t ‘cure’ us. D’you want to know why, Marie? Because there’s nothing to cure. You might as well cure Mozart of writing music, or daVinci of the ability to make machines, or Edison, or Archimedes, or Shakespeare.”

  She tried to take Rogue’s hands, but the young girl pulled them away, flinching.

  “Marie,” Ororo said, in a tone that would not be denied. “Nothing is wrong with you. Or any of us, for that matter. You understand?”

  She nodded, but Ororo knew that her words had fallen on rock. Rogue heard, but would not listen.

  Ororo turned to Xavier, and this time the thunder outside wasn’t shy. It came in a burst that shook the house like the end of the world, and the sunny day gave way to rain that fell in torrents.

  She held his gaze and said, softly, “Guess you were right about the weather.”

  The meeting started badly and then it went to hell.

  Jack Stover held the mike and tried to keep at least a semblance of order. He looked like your classic Harley-riding outlaw biker: long-haired, bushy-bearded; massive in the body with a belly that was, surprisingly, mostly muscle spilling over his Levi’s; a black singlet that showed off a torso and arms crowded with magnificent body art. Those who’d seen him at the beach knew every inch of him was covered, except for his face and hands and feet, making him Valle Soleada’s very own “Illustrated Man.” What was even more delightful was that the images always changed, because they were constantly being refreshed and played with by his wife, also a mutant, whose talent was painting on flesh.

  Folks had gathered at the old Sea Breeze, on the boardwalk, and emotions were running hot.

  “…listen to me,” Jack bellowed into his mike, making folks wince as he generated a wicked pulse of feedback. “Listen to me.” He’d have better luck yelling at a typhoon, but he somehow persevered regardless. “This is about getting organized, bringing our complaints to the right people! The DMA won’t take us seriously if—”

  One of the razor-boys from up on the Heights cut in, “The DMA is bullshit!”

  Jack ignored him. “We need to put together a committee and talk to the government!”

  Someone else yelled, “Goddamn it, Jack, they want to exterminate us!”

  Jack tried again. “The cure is voluntary, Louis. Nobody’s talking about extermination.”

  “No one ever talks about it.”

  The rich and resonant voice filled the theater, making those six words sound like a call to arms.

  “By all means,” Magneto continued as he strode into view onstage, followed by a young man who took a position where he could watch the much older man’s back, and who then proceeded to start flicking the lid of a Zippo lighter open and shut, open and shut, like he was channeling a pulp fiction bad guy. “Go about your lives. Ignore the signs all around you. And then, one day, when the air is still and the long night has finally fallen, they will come for you. And it is only then—”

  Jack knew who he was, and what he could do, probably with less thought than anyone else would take to squash a bug. But this was his town, his family, and he was prepared to stand up for them, to the feds if he had to, and certainly to the world’s most wanted mutant terrorist.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “this is supposed to be—”

  Magneto cut Jack off with a warning smile, and addressed the hall as if he was the one who’d summoned them.

  “It is only then,” he repeated, with emphasis, “you realize that while you were talking about organizing and committees, the extermination had already begun.”

  Jack was about to try again to reclaim the floor, when a flick of the igniter wheel sparked a flame from his lighter, and a gesture from Pyro intensified it to a white-hot flame.

  Jack got the message and allowed his wife to draw him into the shadows as Magneto went on.

  “Make no mistake, my brothers, they will draw first blood, they will force this cure upon us. They will steal away our future! The only question you must answer is this: What side are you on? Who will you stand with? The humans”—from him, that sounded like the dirtiest of words—“or with us?”

  “You talk pretty tough for a guy in a cape.”

  Although Jack dressed the part of an outlaw, Callisto was the real deal, utterly hard-core, an urban legend from the catacombs of Manhattan to the Cali backcountry. She lived in her leathers, and her skin—like that of the gang who followed her—was painted with art and accented with piercings that would make any gangbanger worthy of the name appear modest by comparison. Rumor had it she’d almost been affiliated with Xavier back in the day, that she’d even been responsible for the loss of the use of his legs, but that was a place nobody went, to her face. Not more than once, anyway. She kept her past a private thing, and at present she placed herself on the cutting edge of mutant rights. If anyone did harm to a mutant, they maybe had to answer to her. After all, the X-Men couldn’t be everywhere.

  Except, unlike the X-Men, there was no mercy in her.

  The only mark all of her gang had in common was the Greek letter omega on their necks, signifying the end of things. In the case of her Marauders, that applied to anyone who actively did a mutant harm—in other words, it would be the end of them.

  “You’re so proud of being a mutant, old man, where’s your mark?”

  She wasn’t a bit afraid of him. Pyro, not knowing any better, started forward, only to be held back by a signal from Magneto.

  “I have been marked once, my dear, and let me assure you…”

  He wrenched up his sleeve, with a convulsive violence that spoke volumes to the crowd about the depth of his wounds and the hatred that sprang from them, revealing the number etched along his forearm.

  “…Proclaim your loyalties as you will, no needle will ever touch my skin again.”

  Callisto shrugged, not so easily impressed as others present.

  “Hey,” called Pyro, “you know who you’re talking to?”

  The withering glare that she answered him with made clear that whatever she might think of Magneto, his companion didn’t rate any higher than a bug on her windscreen.

  “I know that you can control fire and he controls metal. And I know by my count there’s a hundred sixty-five mutants in the room, and not a one of ’em above Class Three. Other than you two.” And, unspoken but plain, herself.

  “So you have talents.” Magneto sounded intrigued.

  “That, and more.”

  Magneto pressed on. “You can sense other mutants, and their powers?” Callisto nodded. He was delighted, in his restrained, magisterial manner, like he’d just found a much-desired surprise beneath the Christmas tree. “A living cerebro, bless my soul,” he muttered, mainly to himself. “How utterly foolish of you, Charles, to let this one slip through your fingers.” And then, so that she could hear, “Could you locate one for me?”

  “If I wanted to,” she answered.

  “Trust me,” Magneto assured her, “you want to.”

  He turned to leave. He didn’t ask for recruits. The only ones who mattered were the ones who followed without being asked.

  Scott travelled as far as he could by bike, and went the rest of the way on foot. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had a decent meal, but he knew he hadn’t slept an unhaunted night since Jean died.

  Alkali Lake hadn’t changed. Scott had assumed—as subsequent rainfall and snowmelt ate away at what remained of the dam—that the lake would be well on its way back to its original state of being, a wild and untamed river. But Fate wasn’t done joking. Turned out there was a sharp bend about a mile downstream from the dam that formed a natural choke point, preventing the water from draining completely. The level had dropped by more than half since the breach, but had finally reached a kind of equilibrium that still left the industrial complex beneath the dam’s face
significantly underwater. Worse, the clearing where the Blackbird took off, where Jean had died, remained likewise buried.

  He looked haggard, his lean features gaunt, as he stood at the water’s edge, staring at nothing.

  Once more, he heard her call.

  “Stop,” he pleaded. “Stop it.”

  But she wouldn’t.

  “Scott,” he heard, in the voice she once used to call him to bed, “please. Help me!”

  That was the last straw.

  With a cry torn from the deepest part of him—“Jean!”—Scott tore off his visor and opened his eyes wide.

  Scarlet glory erupted through the air, as though someone had opened a window to the surface of the sun, and raw concussive energy gouged a momentary trench directly to the bottom of the lake, parting the waters like the hands of God through the Red Sea. Unchecked for once, wholly unrestrained, the bolt hammered at the rock along the opposite shore, following Scott’s line of sight so that when his gaze flicked towards one of the remaining towers of the dam, the entire structure shuddered with the initial impact, as though struck by a celestial battering ram. Then, with breathtaking suddenness, it shattered, not into rocks and boulders but powder, allowing the implacable beam to strike the mountainsides beyond.

  And then, just like that, the beam was gone, and the only sign marking its passage through the lake was the crash of water filling space, coupled with the rise of vapor.

  Scott collapsed to his knees, although even then—spent and exhausted as he was, in spirit and mind and body—he still reflexively groped for his glasses and snugged them back into place.

  He was done. He couldn’t even cry, not tears anyway. Wherever the optic blasts came from inside his head, they annihilated his tears the moment they were formed. He could feel the ache of sobbing, he could give voice to his grief, he just couldn’t physically cry.

  Then the water was stirring, almost boiling as he rose to his feet for a better look.