by Alex Irvine
“Finish it, Ororo!” Peter shouted. “I will take these!”
He felt static electricity begin to play across his steel skin as Ororo gathered energy. Peter raced along the catwalk, changing the Sentinels’ angle of fire. They both discharged palm energy beams at him, and both missed—but one of the beams severed the cables along the catwalk, destabilizing part of it. Peter lost his balance and pitched over the catwalk’s edge, catching the closest beam and hanging over thirty feet of empty space.
Ororo saw this and changed her plan. The prone Sentinel was still scrabbling on the floor, squawking incomprehensibly. It was much less of a threat than the two converging on Peter.
Wind rose in the room, and the temperature began to fall. One of the Sentinels charged toward Ororo; the other reached both hands up to catch the dangling Peter. She would only have time to strike at one of them. She felt the energy exchange inside her body as she forced the heat from the room, creating a zone of intense cold around her, and prepared to focus it—on one Sentinel or the other.
Peter swung himself up, seeing the oncoming Sentinel reaching for his legs. He felt the wave of cold roll through the room and looked to Ororo, who was hidden behind a shield of ice. Then he looked down. The Sentinel that had targeted him was rimed with frost, its armor cracking under the molecular pressures of a sudden two-hundred-degree temperature change.
The other Sentinel swung a fist and shattered the ice shield, knocking Ororo out of the air in the same sweeping motion. The shield absorbed much of the blow’s force, but Storm hit the floor hard and tumbled. The Sentinel stepped closer, opening its hands. Its palms began to glow as its energy beams charged.
Peter found his feet and ran along the catwalk toward Storm. He held the end of the severed cable, popping it out of its fixtures as he ran.
Neither of them saw Logan’s remains start to move.
THIRTEEN
EVERY feed coming from the Senate hearing room whited out momentarily as a lightning bolt—from a clear blue sky!—struck the floor at Blob’s feet. He reeled back, along with the other four members of the Brotherhood. When the glare faded, five figures stood opposing the Brotherhood. These were names recently heard in the Senate: Storm in the middle, with Colossus, Wolverine, Angel, and Kitty/Kate Pryde arrayed around her in a loose half-circle.
“If you mean to harm Senator Kelly, or anyone here, you’ll have to go through us,” Storm said, her voice ringing through the chaos.
Mystique smiled, and her empty eyes flashed. “That will be a distinct pleasure.” She pointed at Storm first, then flung her arms wide to encompass the entire chamber. “Kill them!”
The few spectators who had remained in their gallery seats, stunned by the spectacle of the Brotherhood’s entrance, jumped up and ran. Police officers stayed long enough to make sure everyone else got out, and then they were gone, too.
Of the senators, only Kelly remained, on his marble isthmus projecting out over the empty space where most of the rest of the floor had been. A step forward, left or right, and Kelly would topple into the building’s basement levels. Most of the reporters and camera crews were gone, too, except for a few who’d crammed themselves behind the senators’ table, hoping they could get good footage and survive.
Playing to the cameras, Mystique let the other four Brotherhood members charge forward. “Senator Kelly is fond of speaking against the mutant menace,” she proclaimed over the chaos of fleeing civilians and cascading rubble. “My colleagues and I are that menace incarnate! As an example of our power—as an object lesson to those who would oppose us—we intend to kill him!”
Avalanche struck first, thrusting both fists forward to create a shock wave that plowed the remaining floor up into marble shards, splintered beams, and plaster dust. The wave broke over the X-Men, toppling Wolverine and Colossus down into the exposed basement. Angel grabbed Kate, rising into the air and bearing her to safety beneath the balcony overhang on one of the few stable patches of floor. Storm, too, was in the air. Suspended below the gallery ceiling, she watched the rest of the X-Men struggle against the wave of debris.
Colossus and Wolverine had just dug themselves out of the pile of wreckage in the basement and climbed back into the gallery when Pyro caught Colossus in a clawed hand of animated fire. “Let’s see what the melting point of your metal body is, Colossus!” Pyro said. The hand closed into a fist, searing Peter’s body and setting smaller fires along the broken ends of beams and timbers jutting from the debris.
“That’s a fancy flamethrower you’re packing, bub,” Wolverine said. “Wonder what’ll happen if I punch my claws through the fuel tank and into your stinkin’ hide!” He lunged forward, his claws catching the firelight as they arced toward the tank on Pyro’s back.
“Logan, no!” Storm commanded, landing on the floor and reaching out to stop him. But he wasn’t listening. The fury of battle was upon him as surely as it had always come over men like him, dating back to the berserkers who fought in bear skins in the forests of Germania.
Everything, Storm knew, was going out via live feeds to the entire world. The reputation of all mutants was at stake here—not to mention their survival, if what Kate Pryde said was true. They absolutely could not be seen killing each other in the halls of the Senate. That was what the Brotherhood wanted, and it was also what the enemies of mutantkind wanted. Storm refused to give it to them.
She raised a pocket storm, a whirlwind of tornado intensity less than thirty feet across, and drew all the ambient moisture in the room straight into it. Logan, caught in mid-lunge, was thrown up and away from Pyro. “Storm, have you flipped?” he raged. “Whaddaya think you’re doing?”
Saving all of us, she thought. Leading.
With Logan safely out of claw range, she flicked her fingers. The whirlwind’s accumulated water sprayed out in a wave, drenching Pyro and Colossus and extinguishing the flame that held Peter in its grasp.
“Now you see, Senator Kelly,” she said, loudly enough for the camera crews to pick up. “You tar all mutants with the same brush, but some of us will fight to save even our deadliest enemies.”
“He’s gone!” Kate Pryde said from above. Storm looked up and saw Kate hanging on to Angel. Then she looked out over the yawning hole in the floor to the small patch left intact when the Brotherhood had tried to isolate Kelly. The Brotherhood had not counted on the X-Men’s opposition—but why not, since they had Destiny on their side?
Senator Kelly had indeed vanished. Ororo looked down into the basement. He was not visible there. He must have picked his way along the small path left to him and fled, she thought, taking advantage of the X-Men’s protection.
Destiny was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Mystique. “Nice move, Storm,” Angel commented. “Last thing we need is Logan carving someone up on live TV, even if it’s a villain.”
Infuriated by Storm’s interruption, Pyro raised another stream of fire and sent it in a sweeping arc toward Angel. “One thinks of Icarus, does one not?” he called, laughing. Angel dodged the flames licking at his wingtips, but he had to let Kate go. Fire slashed through the space where she had been.
Kate Pryde fell. She landed as gracefully as could be expected on the intact part of the floor, in front of the senators’ long table.
She looked across the scene. Angel was desperately dodging Pyro’s fiery creations, trying to get close enough to incapacitate him. Avalanche deflected a clawed strike from Wolverine and answered with a tremor that lifted the floor under Logan’s feet, pitching him up and back into a row of seats. Colossus and Blob were trading blows, but even Peter could not do much damage to the Blob.
The only positive so far was that no mutants had been killed on a worldwide newsfeed. But if she couldn’t find Senator Kelly, it was only a matter of time. Kate hesitated. She could stay with her friends and fight to save their lives—or she could leave them to find Kelly and perhaps save the lives of every mutant in the world.
She thought of the cemetery in the South Bro
nx. She thought of her own children. There was really only one choice.
Kate Pryde ran—out through the open door that led into the private, secured areas of the Senate office building. If Mystique and Destiny were hunting Senator Kelly, as Kate suspected, she might already be too late. Thinking back, she remembered that the news reports of Kelly’s assassination had not said precisely who killed him. An exhaustive investigation had failed to uncover critical details, likely because traditional forensics and police protocols were ill-equipped to deal with mutant powers. The actual killer could be any one of the Brotherhood.
Blob, Avalanche, and Pyro were in the hearing chamber, though. Destiny and Mystique were not, and neither was Senator Kelly. Kate would have to play the odds, long though they might be.
* * *
THE LOBBY of the Hart Building was as chaotic as the scene inside the hearing room, if less lethal. People screamed and shoved their way toward the exits, their panic bringing out the worst in them. Xavier could feel the intensity of their fear—and the way it decayed into anger and then into hate. Capitol police fought to keep order and make sure that the mass exodus didn’t degenerate into a stampede.
Moira MacTaggert pushed Xavier’s wheelchair along the wall, trying to stay away from the mob. If he were pitched out of his chair, he could be trampled. With the building shaking around them and the smell of smoke in the air, the majority of the fleeing spectators were headed for the closest door. But there was a second door at the far end of the lobby.
Xavier pointed toward the farther door, and Moira guided his chair that way. He guessed the extra time involved would be justified by the decreased probability that they would be swept up and injured by the mob.
There was also the possibility that one of the anti-mutant protesters would recognize them and choose this moment to make a violent statement. The more Moira and Xavier stayed out of the crowds and in better view of the police, the less likely that was to happen.
“Charles,” she said, “you had that I’m-doing-telepathy look on your face right before all hell broke loose. What is happening?”
“It’s almost too fantastic to believe,” Xavier said. He had to force himself to go on, knowing that Moira would not believe it at first—just as he had not. He chose his words carefully. “Apparently the mind and persona of the adult Kate Pryde, from twenty-two years in the future, has psychically exchanged places with her present-day self.”
Moira stopped pushing the chair. Xavier knew she was looking at him, wondering whether he had suffered some injury she hadn’t noticed. “Charles, that’s daft,” she said.
“I scanned her mind. It is the truth,” Xavier said.
He reached out to touch the minds of his protégés still fighting in the hearing chamber. They radiated anger, fear, and resolve. The battle was not going well, but neither was it lost. If Kate Pryde was correct, Storm was doing the right thing by holding as many of the Brotherhood as possible in place while Senator Kelly got to safety. Alive, he was a bigot and a demagogue, but he would become a martyr if he died. That left the X-Men with two choices—both poor, but one demonstrably better than the other.
“Kate said that someone named Rachel Summers performed the projection back in time,” Xavier said.
“Summers?” None of them knew of a Rachel Summers. “Charles, if this is…if time travel is possible and history is mutable, we’ll have to redefine our concept of reality itself.”
Leave it to an academic to theorize in the midst of a terrorist attack, Charles thought.
“We’ll never be completely sure what…is…from one moment to the next,” Moira went on. “Terrifying.”
“Perhaps we never should have been sure,” Xavier said. “God only knows what poor Kitty is experiencing in the future Kate described to me.”
The crowd had shifted as more escapees from the hearing chamber packed into the lobby—some injured, most panicked. Moira had to stop and wait for a cluster of people to pass, carrying an unconscious man by his arms and legs. He was covered in dust and bleeding badly from a wound on his scalp.
“Professor Xavier,” an approaching police officer said. She pointed toward a door that—if his memory served—led through the interior of the building to the other side, away from the wing currently in danger of collapse. “Let’s get you and Doctor MacTaggert out of here.”
A fine idea, Xavier thought. Particularly since he had heard a number of minds in the crowd register his name—and not in a positive fashion.
The officer opened a door and led them down a hall lined with doors. Some of them were open, revealing offices and meeting rooms. This was where the business of the Senate was really done, Charles reflected. Away from the cameras, in the quiet spaces where people could sit down, talk, and decide what they were willing to give up to achieve their goals.
“You’ll be safe here,” the officer said, opening a door to an unoccupied office. She reached for something on her belt—a ring of keys?
No, Charles thought. “Moira!” he said. “I sense some kind of energy field. This woman, she is not what she seems—aarrgghh!”
Moira jerked the wheelchair to a halt. The police officer turned, smiled, and discharged a spray of whitish-pink powder that coated both Xavier and Moira.
“You sensed the damper field that kept you from reading my mind, my dear distracted professor. Your worry for your little X-Men left you vulnerable.” As the police officer spoke, her physical form shimmered and melted, revealing Mystique. “And now it is too late for your mental powers to do you any good.”
Moira sagged, trying to hold on to the handles of Xavier’s wheelchair. She slumped to the floor, eyes half-open and unfocused. Her breathing was barely detectable. Xavier’s head slumped forward onto his chest.
“A little shot of nerve gas to paralyze you both,” Mystique said. “But I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the experience of hearing everything that goes on around you. Without your telepathic guidance, Storm and the X-Men will be crippled. We already had the advantage, Xavier. Now that advantage is decisive.”
Destiny appeared from inside the office. “You ought to kill him while you have the chance,” she said.
“He is of more use as a potential hostage,” Mystique said. “We can always kill him later. I would prefer to learn whatever he has to tell us first, and then dispose of him after our business with Senator Kelly is concluded.”
“Did you not just say, back in the suite, that we would kill these two in addition to Senator Kelly?”
“I did say that, and we still will,” Mystique said. “But I prefer not to act when I have incomplete information. That’s your role here. How fares our future?”
“It is as I told you before,” Destiny said. “Beyond a certain point, the images become jumbled, difficult to read. There is a random factor present, an anomaly that strikes to the very heart of the timestream. So long as it exists, nothing is certain.”
“Well, what is it? Locate it, and we will eliminate it.”
Mystique wheeled Xavier’s chair into the office, then returned to the hall to drag MacTaggert in, as well. This was Senator Kelly’s office. He would return here sooner or later. Of that much she was certain.
“Its nature prevents me from identifying it,” Destiny said. “It is not merely a new factor, around which other factors resettle themselves into predictable patterns. It is an uncertainty itself; while it exists, no certainty is possible.”
Mystique slammed the door. “Well, what are you here for if not to reduce uncertainty?”
Unperturbed, Destiny said, “Would you rather not have known that this new element had been introduced? I can remain silent if you would prefer.”
Mystique fumed for a moment. She contemplated killing Xavier and MacTaggert. It would make her feel better and prevent this conversation from ever leaving Senator Kelly’s office. After brief consideration, however, she rejected the idea. In an uncertain situation, the prudent leader amassed potential resources. A dead Xavier was no
t a resource. A hostage Xavier who could be forced to yield secrets? That was a resource.
She and Destiny had a long history together. Mystique valued Destiny’s advice, for obvious reasons. But she sometimes wondered whether she had made a strategic mistake allying herself so closely with someone who always knew what she was going to do next. A vexing question. Once the matter of Senator Kelly was settled, it might be worth re-thinking. One could not just throw away long friendships, of course—but neither could one let sentimentality become a fatal blind spot.
“Very well,” she said, in a calmer tone. “It doesn’t matter. With or without your foreseeing help, my friend, the Brotherhood will prevail.”
* * *
IN THE hearing chamber, the battle raged. Not all of the bystanders had managed to escape yet, and neither had the more foolhardy news crews. Their lives were in Storm’s hands. The entire building was going to come down with them in it, sooner rather than later, if she didn’t do something.
So she did.
A wind rose inside the chamber, drawing air from outside through the entry hole blasted by the Brotherhood. Storm held it in a spiral, like the tiny whirlwind she had used on Logan, and let it grow more powerful. Pyro attempted to counter her by sending bolts of fire toward her, but Storm blew them out before they reached her. Avalanche tried, literally, to shake her focus—but she floated free of the ground, and his shock waves passed around her with no effect.
The wind tore seats loose, lifted tables to spin through the air, and shattered the windows that looked down from beyond the balcony.Growing desperate, Avalanche started to shake the building itself, hoping to collapse the entire structure around them. No, Storm thought, as the windstorm grew and concentrated itself. She held it away from the corner where the TV crews still huddled, allowing everything else in the room to become an irresistible vortex. When she had drawn the energy of a pocket hurricane into the confined space, she unleashed it on the intact wall facing the open expanse of the National Mall.
