Sprinting across the outer chamber and back down the corridor, Scott was blinded by the afternoon sunlight even before he emerged into it. Still, he could see well enough to understand that his team was under attack.
Their assailants looked like normal human beings-the kind of people one might run into at a pancake house, a church social or a bowling alley. But normal human beings wouldn't have been firing sizzling white beams out of their fingertips or finding traction on a steep, ice-coated slope.
Or glowering at the planet's premier mutant fighting force with wild, silver flames in their eyes.
"They were on top of me before I knew it!" Bobby yelped, hurling a hastily-made ice ball at one of the interlopers-only to see his target backhand the missile aside.
It was pretty clear who had gathered and empowered these anonymous individuals-twelve of them, by Scott's estimate-and sent them trudging up a remote mountainside. Lucifer, from his vantage point in the Nameless Dimension, had obviously observed what the X-Men had done and was making a bid to seize Hanks' machine.
Opening his visor a crack, Scott projected a seething, red optical blast at the nearest intruder. It didn't send him hurtling down the slope the way it should have, but it did knock him senseless.
More importantly, it gave Scott an idea of how much punishment Lucifer's troops could take. It was knowledge all five X-Men could use as they went toe to toe with their ionic-energy-powered adversaries.
"Hit 'em hard!" Scott bellowed.
His comrades did exactly as he told them. Jean propelled one assailant headfirst into a tree. Hank leaped through the air and dropkicked another one. And Bobby whipped up a storm of diamond-hard ice pellets, bringing a couple more of the enemy to their knees.
To Scott's chagrin, he couldn't find Warren right away. Then he saw his winged teammate come zipping through the trees, little more than a blue and white blur.
Naturally, Scott thought Warren would use his momentum to take out an opponent as quickiy as possible. But to the surprise of the team's leader, the winged man overlooked a couple of logical targets and headed straight for the spot Bobby was defending.
At that point, Scott figured his friend had a less obvious tactic in mind—one that might take some heat off his beleaguered comrade. But instead, Warren headed for Bobby himself, looking as if he meant to rip the X-Man's head off his frozen shoulders.
At the last possible moment, Bobby seemed to sense what was coming and threw himself to the ground. But even then, Warren missed him by only the narrowest of margins.
"Hey, watch where you're going!" Bobby told him, shooting his teammate a pained look as he flew by.
But before he knew it, Warren had turned and was buzzing him a second time. And though he saw the winged man coming, Bobby could barely move quickly enough to get out of the way.
“Are you out of your mind?" he demanded, watching Warren loop around again. "I'm not one of Lucifer's zombies!"
"No," shouted Scott, as the truth hit him with the force of one of his own optical blasts, “you're not, Bobby." He tracked Warren's flying figure with his pointing finger. “But he is!"
And Scott drove his friend off with a short, fiery optical burst. Barely managing to escape it, Warren wheeled, hov-
ered and fixed his team's leader with a shockingly malevolent gaze.
Bobby's expression said he didn't understand. "What's going on?" he demanded of Scott.
Ves, what? Jean wondered, transmitting her thought faster than she could have given voice to it.
Warren's mouth twisted and a single word came out. "Halt.”
As if they were telepathically linked to the winged man, Lucifer's energy-powered raiders paused in their advance up the slope. With the suspension of hostilities, the mountainside grew serene enough to hear a breeze rustling the pine trees.
"My god,” said Hank, as he came to the same conclusion as Scott. “It seems the Xavier doppelganger wasn't the only one planted among us."
Bobby's jaw fell. "You mean—?"
"That's right," Scott told Bobby grimly. "Our friend Warren is an ionic-energy construct too."
\n
.Congratulations," Warren responded, his voice thick with malice. "How exquisitely perceptive of you."
Except it wasn't Warren, Scott reminded himself. It was an ionic-energy-powered duplicate of his friend, not unlike the copy of Professor Xavier back in Salem Center.
"The real Archangel," Warren explained, “was incapacitated by the Quistalian security system he encountered in Antarctica. I am what you rescued instead-leaving your friend to freeze to death."
Bobby's icy features twisted with fury. “You no-good sonuva-" he began-but never finished his exclamation Instead, he let his powers do his talking for him.
A moment later, a mallet-shaped hunk of super-dense ice went hurtling in the winged man's direction. Had it hit him, it would surely have battered him unconscious, ionic energy or no ionic energy.
But the Warren-doppelganger was as lightning-quiek as his namesake. Twisting out of the way before the ice-mallet could strike him, he executed a tight loop and came back at
X-1E8
Bobby with a vengeance. And with that, the battle was rejoined.
Instantly, Scott staggered one of Lucifer's puppets with a bright red optical blast. But before he could finish the job, another adversary released an energy bolt in his direction.
Scott threw himself to one side in an attempt to elude it. Unfortunately, he couldn't avoid the bolt entirely. It slammed into his right arm, spinning him halfway around.
His side numb with the impact, the mutant told himself he had to move. Otherwise, he would be hammered with another energy assault, and that one might take him out for good. Whirling as quickly as he could, he faced his enemy again.
But before either of them could strike, something blue bounded into the fray and sent Lucifer's henchman sailing toward a solid-looking tree trunk. The man slammed into it with skull-rattling force, then spilled down the slope and lay still.
As the blue "something" paused for a moment, Scott recognized it as his friend Hank. Of course, he couldn't look directly in his teammate's direction-not while his visor was open.
Capitalizing on the help Hank had given him, Scott squeezed the mechanism closed again and looked for Jean. He found her beyond some close-growing trees, spinning an enemy in the air like a majorette's baton—a tactic she had perfected years earlier. As long as the man couldn't get his bearings, he couldn't fire off an ion-bolt at her.
But one of Lucifer's other lackeys could-and in fact, one of them was about to do just that. Opening his visor again, Scott planted a beam in the center of the man's chest, sending him skidding head over heels down Bobby's icy surface.
A moment later, Jean's adversary slid down after him,
SDIHS If HE MSI
albeit a little faster and with a bit more torque. They hit a tree one after the other and lost consciousness.
As Scott paused to reassess the odds against them, he caught a glimpse of something. Whirling to face it, he saw that it was Bobby-a look of surprise on the mutant's crystalline face as Warren's duplicate propelled him headfirst in Scott's direction.
Had Bobby been anything but an ally, Scott could have neutralized him with an optical blast. And had Scott not been his teammate, Bobby could have protected himself from the collision at his target's expense.
However, neither was equipped to cushion the impact for both of them-which was, no doubt, why Lucifer's agent had made a battering ram of Bobby in the first place.
Scott threw his arms up to try to soften the blow. However, it was too late. Bobby hit him full in the face with piledriver force, driving the X-Men's leader to the ground.
Scott had the eerie sense that he was rolling down the slope, sunlight and carpets of pine needles spinning by too fast for him to follow. Then he felt a second impact and darkness descended.
Through the eyes of Jeffrey Saunders, Professor Xavier had witnessed the
entire startling battle on the mountainside.
Xavier's heart sank as he watched his protege go down under the force of the energy duplicate's assault. After all, Scott was the first mutant the professor had recruited to his school, and not coincidentally the one on whom he depended more than any other.
Bobby was somewhat less stunned than his friend, but the Warren entity rectified that problem instantly. Without slowing down one iota, he slammed the icy X-Man headfirst into a tree trunk.
K-iEil
Bobby slumped to the ground, unconscious. And a moment later, one of Lucifer's soldiers blasted Scott with an ion stream, making sure he was out for the count as well.
Without Scott and Bobby to keep Lucifer's troops off balance, the other X-Men would be at a severe disadvantage. In fact, they would be fortunate not to fall victim to Warren's doppelganger themselves.
As Xavier thought that, he saw the winged man rocket into the sky. It seemed to the professor that he was gathering momentum for a rush at Hank or Jean. But instead of plummeting into the thick of the battle, Warren's duplicate swooped toward the doorway in the side of the mountain.
And Xavier understood why. The apparatus intended to free him from the Nameless Dimension was fully assembled and ready to effect a transport... and the mountain doorway led right to it.
There was no possibility of Jean or Hank trying to stop the doppelganger. They were too busy battling Lucifer's other pawns. And both Scott and Bobby were lying on the ground, unconscious.
That left only one person who could intervene-one individual who could stand between the imprisoned alien and his hunger to conquer Earth in the name of the Arcane.
And that person shared a body with Xavier's consciousness.
The professor spoke urgently to his host. H/e must stop him, Jeffrey. V/e must keep him from using Hank's machine.
Jeffrey didn't hesitate. He clambered back up the slope and scampered inside the doorway. Then he pelted down the corridor, which the Warren entity had already left behind, the echoes of his footfalls resounding all around him.
When he reached the large outer chamber, Jeffrey saw that it was empty and began to bolt across it. But Xavier,
m
SIMMS If Ilf FIST
spurred by a hunch, compelled his host to glance back over his shoulder.
Seeing a flash of white wings, Jeffrey dove for the floor-and felt the too-close wash of air from their enemy's passage. Then he watched as the Warren duplicate alighted effortlessly in front of him, a cruel grin on his handsome face.
"You know your servant well," Lucifer observed through the medium of his energy construct.
Warren was Xavier's student, not his servant-his ally, not his slave. However, the professor couldn't question his adversary's choice of words-not when his host lacked the ability to speak.
“I know him well now too," said the winged man, though the sentiment was still the Quistalian's. "I know his strengths and his weaknesses. And therefore, I know you do not possess a way to defeat him."
It was true, Xavier was forced to admit. It wasn't even remotely possible for Jeffrey to stop Warren. But the thing facing them wasn't the true Warren. It had the mutant's memories and abilities, but not his determination, his courage or his penchant for innovation.
And that changed the equation entirely.
“Cower there like the beaten primitive you are,” said the imposter, widening his cruel smile. "Or come after me in your fragile human shell. It makes no difference. In the end, Lucifer will prevail."
And with a last, confident glance at Jeffrey, the winged one turned and headed for the semicircular portal.
The professor had his host follow, albeit at a cautious distance. He didn't want the Warren entity to feel threatened or challenged. He just wanted to be in striking distance when his chance came.
Stopping short of the threshold, he watched the winged figure walk around the smaller enclosure and inspect Hank's handiwork from all sides. After a moment or two, it nodded its head with satisfaction. Obviously, it was pleased with what it saw.
Kneeling, the doppelganger took hold of the second toggle on the side of the already active machine. It seemed to listen for a moment. Then, acting with Lucifer's knowledge of Quistalian technology, it flipped the toggle up alongside the first one.
The machine didn't hum any louder. However, Xavier knew what had happened by the blinking of the amber nodes embedded in its side.
The Warren duplicate had created the zero differential region of which Hank had spoken. He had established a tenuous middle ground between Earth and the bizarre reality of the Nameless Dimension.
There was only one more switch left on the alien device-the one that would open a temporary passage leading through the area of zero differential, permitting someone like Lucifer or the professor to transit from one frame of reference to the other.
The winged man flipped it up.
Instantly, the component that resembled a heat lamp began to burn with terrible intensity, casting a lurid, crimson radiance over the seamless floor of the enclosure.
There was no time to waste. Before the Warren entity realized that Jeffrey might try something, before he even had an inkling of it, Xavier used Jeffrey's speed and quickness to his advantage.
Jeffrey took two long, powerful steps and shot across the enclosure like a cannonball, shoving the winged imposter into the energy cone cast by the gateway machine.
For a fraction of a second, nothing happened. Xavier had the sinking feeling that he had miscalculated somehow-and therefore placed his host in peril of his life.
Then the doppelganger began to shrivel in the glare of the alien projector, its seemingly human form twitching and dissipating like smoke in a strong wind. It opened its mouth, either to accuse its tormentor, call for help or simply bemoan its fate, but the only sound that emerged from it was thin and pitiful and impossible for the professor to understand.
Despite that, Xavier knew exactly what was going on. The Warren entity's ionic energy bonds, carefully crafted in the moment of its conception, couldn't retain their integrity— not when they were exposed to the unusual physical forces that prevailed in the zero differential zone.
As he looked on through Jeffrey's eyes, Xavier saw the doppelganger waver wildly like a scrambled picture on a television set. Its hands curled into fists, evidence of its futile resolve to survive. Then, still crying its silent cry, it faded from view entirely.
The professor gazed longingly at the crimson energy projected by the alien apparatus. And why not? It represented his highway home, his escape from the awful limbo of the Nameless Dimension.
There was just one problem.
The gateway's terminus in the Nameless Dimension had opened some distance from Xavier's true body. He could sense the disturbance it made, even feel its throbbing presence in the thick, fluid atmosphere. But it would take several minutes for the professor to reach it.
And for all he knew, Lucifer would reach it first.
From his vantage point in the Nameless Dimension, Lucifer had seen his energy construct open the critical passage between reaiities-only to be destroyed a few moments later by Xavier's human host.
The Quistalian didn't mourn the imposter's passing for even a second. It was, after all, just an agglomeration of ionic energy, a thing to be used and discarded as the mood struck him.
All he cared about was that an escape route had been opened for him. In his eyes, Earth was beckoning like an impatient lover, inviting him to execute his long-delayed plan of conquest.
And all Lucifer had to do was reach the transdimensional gateway before his captive did.
It sounded so easy-ridiculously so. Unfortunately, though the Quistalian had an inkling of Xavier's location, he couldn't tell with any certainty which of them was closer to the exit.
And if the mutant reached it first, he wouldn't oblige Lucifer by leaving the doorway open. He would close it by any means necessary.
Gritting his teeth, t
he Quistalian took off in the direction of the transdimensional gate, his purple cape undulating behind him. He had waited too long to be turned away now, he told himself.
One way or the other, he would have his heart's desire.
Professor X knew exactly what he had to do. He had to shut down the machine and eliminate the link between dimensions.
Then he had to destroy the apparatus that his student had worked so hard to put together.
If Xavier did this, he would likely be giving up his only chance to return to his rightful reality. After all, as far as he knew, the gold and scarlet cylinders his X-Men had acquired
were the only ones that existed on Earth. And without them, there was no way to build a second machine.
However, he couldn't take the chance that Lucifer would beat him to the gate and gain access to Earth again. It was far too dangerous a possibility to even contemplate.
A pity, the professor thought, feeling the pang of lost opportunity. He had come so heartbreakingiy close ...
He reached for the third toggle switch with Jeffrey's hand, intending to collapse the transdimensional passage ... when he met with an unexpected layer of resistance.
At first, Xavier feared it was Lucifer, exerting some sinister kind of influence over Jeffrey. Then he realized it wasn’t the Quistalian's doing at all.
It was Jeffrey's.
The realization took the professor by surprise. Since the moment he had convinced his host to bolt from the police car at the outskirts of Salem Center, Jeffrey had gone along with Xavier's every wish.
Why would the young man wish to depart from that policy of compliance? And why now?
The professor had barely posed the questions when the answers swam up to him out of Jeffrey's consciousness. You have to go home, Jeffrey told him, more in feelings than in words. I can help.
No, Xavier replied. The risk is too great. If Lucifer should reach the gate before I do____
The professor expected Jeffrey to react in one of two ways-either by continuing to plead his case, futile as it was, or by depressing the toggle and cutting the transdimensional link. As it turned out, his young host did neither of those things.
Shadow of the Past Page 20
