Hank drew himself up to his full height. “Sir, I serve at the pleasure of the president. It has been an honor and a privilege. But I serve my conscience more.”
The president poured them both a measure of scotch from the drinks tray on a sideboard. Single malt, very old, very rare, and worth every drop.
“You know, my friend, it’s only going to get worse.”
They clinked glasses in farewell, and Hank nodded.
“All the more reason why I need to be where I belong,” McCoy said.
They finished and set the glasses aside. “I try to do the right thing, Henry. It’s not always easy.”
“It’s not supposed to be, sir.”
Xavier pushed the chair to its limit, forcing Ororo into a quickstep that was almost a run in order to keep pace down the long, gleaming hall that led to the infirmary.
“Professor,” she demanded, irked as always that there wasn’t a sufficient volume of air down here for her to fly, “talk to me. What is it?”
“Something’s happened.” He paused, then more quietly, “As I feared…”
“What? What aren’t you telling me?”
She stopped as they reached the wide-open doors and beheld the mess inside.
“Why didn’t the alarms—” Ororo started to ask.
“For the same reason,” Xavier broke in before she finished, “none of us were the slightest bit aware that anything was amiss until it was far too late.”
Logan was awake, seated on the floor, back to the wall beneath a major dent that he’d clearly made with his body, knees drawn up to his chest as he idly examined one set of his extended claws as though surprised to find them in view. His clothes were in rags and from the gingerly way he moved as he pushed himself to his feet, Ororo realized that he was still in the midst of a major healing.
Ororo rushed at once to his side, immediately taking in the fact that he was alone in the room. The monitors had been reduced to less than junk, components strewn across the floor like a high-tech carpet. If they did try to access the data they’d recorded, Ororo knew they’d find it irretrievably corrupted as well.
Fearing the answer, she had to ask anyway, “Logan, who did this?”
“Jean,” he said.
Logan hesitated before explaining things further. “She’s…she’s not herself.” It took an effort to say this, because he still hurt more than ever, but also because each word seemed like a betrayal of Jean. “I think…she…” But the truth had to be faced, and his honor required him to face it. So, when he spoke at last, there were no doubts. He told them what he believed to be the case. “She killed Scott.”
Ororo refused to believe. “No, that can’t be!”
Xavier was grimly calm.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Logan said to him.
“I warned you about her,” Xavier replied, and his own sadness was palpable. “I told you what she was capable of.”
“What does that mean?” Ororo asked.
Logan tossed a thumb in Xavier’s direction. “Ask him.”
Xavier’s thoughts, however, were obviously elsewhere. His eyes were closed, and he was concentrating.
“She’s left the Mansion,” he reported. “She’s blocking my thoughts.” He kept trying to reach her, clearly a struggle. “She is very strong. I hope we’re not too late.”
“What about Cerebro?” Logan suggested.
Xavier shook his head tersely, as if it was all the effort he could spare. “She’s keyed into it, just as I am. Given her current state, she could easily wrest control of it remotely and use it to amplify her own abilities beyond comprehension. Believe me, that is a scenario you do not wish to behold. I’m afraid…I must do this…on my own.”
He redoubled his efforts, and for the first time Logan could remember, he actually saw sweat building on the professor’s forehead.
Magneto held the guard’s plastic pistol in his hand. He’d yanked it clear the instant Pyro had torched the wretched creature and had spent much of the time since examining it. Now he was explaining his discoveries to his troops. Quite a simple device, really. It took a magazine like any ordinary automatic pistol and used compressed air to propel the darts at an equivalent range—which in the hands of a superior marksman, as they’d seen themselves, could be considerable. Worst of all, one hit was evidently all the drug needed to take effect. Whether a direct hit was required or even a scratch would do, he did not care much to find out.
“I told you they would draw first blood,” Magneto reminded them, brandishing the weapon.
He stood surrounded by a half dozen of his new Brotherhood, in a bunker of his own construction, built entirely of metal, with a metal staircase leading up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Not the most elegant or comfortable of surroundings, but for their present needs it would serve.
Pyro gestured at the gun: “What do we do with that? Hand it over to the walking wrecking ball?” By that, he was referring to Juggernaut, who undoubtedly didn’t take to his sense of humor as tolerantly as any X-Men used to.
Magneto shook his head: “This weapon…will become our weapon, my friends. A lightning rod that will bring countless more to our cause.”
He faced his troops. “Come,” he told them, calling them to arms. “It’s time to gather our forces.”
The trapdoor overhead swung open, allowing light to fan across the room below.
Callisto closed the door behind her, hopping lithely down the stairs and over to Magneto’s side. As the only one present who remembered the way things used to be, Pyro noticed how naturally she assumed Mystique’s role and relationship, as well as how easily Magneto accepted her. Another difference between the Brotherhood and Xavier’s, and even though he told himself that he didn’t care, deep down inside it bothered him. If Magneto could so instantly abandon someone like Mystique, where did the rest of them stand? And when the shit truly hit the fan—because that was what they were planning, right?—who could a fella truly count on here?
“I picked up something,” she informed their leader. “An electromagnetic anomaly. Massive.”
Magneto obviously wasn’t interested, but she wouldn’t let him push past, speaking hurriedly while she had the chance.
“I thought it was a power grid, a surge in the system. But it’s not—it’s a mutant!”
She had him now, Pyro saw.
“Class Five,” she said triumphantly. “More powerful than anything I’ve ever scanned. More powerful than you!”
“Where is she?” he asked, and Callisto looked at him in surprise. He actually knew this mutant?
Xavier’s first thought was how little the neighborhood had changed in better than twenty years. How calm and peaceful everything looked. He wondered if he’d be able to say the same an hour from now.
Storm parked the Mercedes in front of the Grey house, and Logan helped Xavier into his wheelchair, grousing just a little under his breath about the impracticality of certain European touring sedans for folks in Xavier’s condition. On one level, Charles had to agree—a minivan with a ramp would probably make more sense. But he loved the Maybach, and rationalized its use by telling himself that the X-Men had their toys. This was his.
“Wait for me here,” he instructed. “I need to see Jean. Alone.”
But there was already someone waiting for him. Magneto sat on the garden bench beneath the arbor outside the front door.
“You were right, Charles,” he said charmingly, as if they were picking up right where they’d left off after that first meeting with Jean, as though the intervening years of conflict were no more than a dream. “This one is special.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Logan demanded with a quality to his voice that suggested all of them—Xavier included—take notice, and perhaps even a wary step back. The look Logan gave Magneto made it eloquently plain who his primary target would be, and that nothing whatsoever would stop him from trying. There was no threat or bluster to the man, Charles saw, just a calm and fundame
ntal certainty, and like knowing the sun will rise, he knew that if the need arose Logan would kill.
If Magneto was bothered by any of this, he gave no outward sign. Instead, he responded as blithely as though they’d all come for afternoon tea: “The same as the professor, dear boy. Visiting an old friend.”
Charles noted that Logan’s eyes briefly slipped sideways, the Wolverine’s sole reaction to the presence of Juggernaut, Callisto and another of the Brotherhood who called himself Kid Omega.
Xavier, however, had eyes and thoughts only for the civilians around them: kids on foot and bikes, some bound for playdates or already well under way, others doing homework, a couple holding hands, some gossiping, playing catch, griping about the day’s events, anticipating tomorrow’s, parents taking care of life and family, tending to gardens, grousing about cluttered rooms or bills, or stressed because of an approaching birthday, eager for an evening on the town.
“I don’t want any trouble here, Erik.”
“Nor do I, Charles.” The awful truth was that while Xavier knew Magneto meant it, that at heart considered himself an ethical being, he also held with equal certainty that so-called humans didn’t count. To Magneto, mutants were the sentient species; all others on the planet were merely placeholders, to be disposed of as casually as one would throw away a spent tissue.
It was a revelation he’d never actually, truly, allowed himself to face, and it struck Xavier like a spear through the heart, that his friend—whom for so long, in so many ways, he’d considered his other half, the passion to his intellect—had taken his own seat at the conference table at Wannsee. The wheel had turned full circle and brought Erik Lensherr, without him realizing, to the place where he had begun, except that now and quite likely forever he stood among those he hated. He had become at last the very thing that had nearly destroyed him.
“Charles?” repeated Magneto, sensing that something was percolating in his old friend’s brain but unsure what—which was strange because generally Magneto found Xavier quite predictable. “Shall we go inside?”
“I came to bring her home, Erik. Don’t interfere.”
“Just like old times, eh?”
“You must trust me, just this once, when I tell you that Jean is more dangerous than either of us ever imagined.”
“Well, then,” Magneto responded, in a tone of complete assurance, accompanied by a smile of infinite confidence, “it’s lucky I’m here to protect you.”
As they passed the three members of the Brotherhood, Magneto spoke quietly to Juggernaut: “Nobody gets inside.”
Xavier entered first, with Magneto following.
The house was utterly still, and Xavier recognized the same eerie and unnatural quiet, the deadening of all sound he’d seen while reviewing Ororo’s memories of Alkali Lake.
They passed the archway that opened onto the living room and saw curtains stir as if in a breeze, although Charles didn’t feel the slightest movement of air. Chairs moved across the floor, as though being rearranged by an unseen hand that was impossible to satisfy. Xavier had psi-scanned the house on the drive over and found it substantially blocked to him, gleaning instead from the neighbors’ recollections that Jean’s parents were away for the week, visiting her older sister, Sara, and the grandchildren, in Boston. This knowledge had been a monumental burden lifted from his shoulders.
In the kitchen, water hung reversed in a cooler, floating up at the top, air bubbles going down. More chairs were shifting, along with the lights. Nothing was at rest. Everything quivered just a little, reminding Xavier of the preshocks before a great earthquake, or the faint rumble that tells you the train is coming right before it hits.
She was waiting in her father’s study, surrounded by all the photos and records of accomplishment: diplomas and citations, prom pictures, wedding pictures, baby pictures, all the tangible substance of her life floating in the air along with every piece of furniture in the room. Jean herself was sitting on nothing at all, using telekinesis to create an invisible chair that held her as easily as she did all the rest.
The moment they entered, the furniture crashed to the floor with a tremendous racket. Only her own personal items floated gently to the floor.
Jean sat mainly in a shadow of her own making, very much like a queen upon a throne, surveying them through hooded and wary eyes.
“I knew you’d come,” she said, the tension in her voice establishing that this wasn’t a ferociously good idea.
Magneto was perfectly content to allow his friend to play Daniel, and let him walk first into the lion’s den.
“I’ve come to take you home,” Xavier said, gently as any father.
“I have no home.”
“Yes, you do. You have a home and a family who loves you.”
She clearly didn’t want to listen.
“You know,” Magneto interjected, ignoring the sharp glare and warning thoughts hurled by Xavier; indeed, he reveled in them. “Charles thinks your power is too great for you to control.”
“Erik!”
Magneto stepped fully into the room, relating to Jean as one monarch to another, manner alone dismissing Xavier as some kind of uppity peasant. “I don’t think your mind games are going to work anymore, old friend.”
Jean’s eyes fixed on Xavier.
“So you want to control me?”
“Yes,” Magneto answered for him. “He does.”
“No,” Xavier said forcefully at the same time, “I want to help you!”
“Help me?” Jean wondered aloud, as if considering something she found utterly distasteful. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Magneto assured her, daring Xavier to say different—and thereby, given Jean’s evident state of mind, strike match to gunpowder.
“Erik,” Xavier warned again, with a thought that expressed both desire and exasperation, for God’s sake, stop!”
“No, Charles, not this time. You’ve always held her back!”
Xavier spoke to Jean, with a measure of desperation, “For your own good!”
A silver-coated softball, her sister’s, shot away from where it had dropped to the floor and shattered a mirror across the room with such force that Xavier had to shield himself from the shards of flying glass.
“Get out,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “Both of you.”
“ ’Ro,” Logan said to catch her attention, as the Greys’ mailbox began to shudder.
“I’m going in,” he told Storm, but she grabbed him by the arm.
“The professor said he’d handle this.” Her subtext was plain: She’s my friend, too, for longer than you’ve known her; don’t you dare screw this up!
Juggernaut, obviously sensing a challenge, looking for a fight, strode forward to confront them.
Logan extended his claws. One hand only, three blades, ramming into view with their characteristic SNIKT!
“I heard those claws, they can cut through anything,” Juggernaut announced. “Wanna take a shot?”
“Don’t tempt me, bub,” Logan cautioned, but to Storm’s great relief, even though she knew how close to the edge he was, he retracted the blades. For assholes like this there’d always be another time. What mattered now, all that mattered now, was Jean.
Xavier, of course, didn’t take Jean’s hint.
“Look at me, Jean.”
“No,” she snapped. “Stay out of my head!”
Lightbulbs exploded in a cascade that started in the kitchen and made its way through every room. Xavier’s wheelchair began to slide backwards, despite the application of its brakes. The walls began to tremble.
“Perhaps you should listen to her, Charles,” Magneto suggested, not unkindly.
Xavier was beyond hearing him. “Jean,” he said, speaking with his voice while at the same time opening wide the access to his mind so she would see that he was speaking the truth. It was the most calculated of risks, because he was also leaving himself dangerously vulnerable to attack.
<
br /> “You must trust me when I tell you, you’re a danger to yourself and others….”
He forced himself forward, stubbornly determined to overcome her resistance, even though the walls advanced from trembling to outright shaking.
“But we can help you.”
Magneto had a flash of inspiration, but it was dreadfully, fatally wrong. “You want to give her the cure?”
He of all people should have known that was anathema to everything Xavier held dear, but perhaps in the final analysis he didn’t really know his friend as well as he thought he did.
Regardless, Xavier barely heard him. He had eyes only for the fire flickering in Jean’s. He refused to be cowed, and held her gaze while the walls shook like they were being pounded on by trolls.
“Look what happened to Scott,” Xavier told her. “You killed the man you loved because you couldn’t control your power. You damn near did the same to Logan.” His thoughts were racing far beyond his voice, trying just as hard to reach her. The potential within you is glorious, my child, but it must be embraced by the maturity to know how to properly wield it. The reward that awaits is beyond belief, but you must travel the entire path to reach it. There can be no shortcuts.
She was a grown woman, a kind and generous soul, yet on the levels she was reaching, in the terms Xavier was applying to her, she was still mainly the child he’d met so many years before. And the willful flash of temper displayed then burst forth in his face now as a full-fledged tantrum.
“No!” she cried.
The walls bulged outwards and the stone facing of the house cracked from foundation to roof. The fieldstone hearth behind her shattered, the chimney collapsed. Xavier was bounced back in his wheelchair, smashing into the wall behind him, while Magneto was shot through a set of glass doors to the kitchen.
X-Men(tm) The Last Stand Page 12
