by Alex Irvine
Could he, in other words, defeat himself?
The other reason he shied away from teleportation, of course, was more practical. If he were to beat the doppelganger into unconsciousness quickly, the double might not revert to his original shape. Then the investigation would be delayed—and time was something the X-Men did not have. This was clearly a Brotherhood member, and Nightcrawler needed to identify which one as quickly as possible.
So he would fight his double, and taunt his double, and in the end wear his double down and force him to reveal his true nature.
“You are not me, either,” the double said.
“Stimmt,” Kurt replied, and they came at each other again.
* * *
WHEN she saw the Blob catapulted into the air, Storm paused in surprise. How had—? Then she looked down and saw Wolverine standing up, shrugging off the long steel beam. Storm almost cracked a smile. Her concentration wavered for a moment.
Then she saw Avalanche, refocused on Colossus and Wolverine. Storm’s smile faded. She was going to have to hit him now—with everything she had. But she would not kill.
Then she figured out the second part of Peter’s plan, and her smile came back.
The Blob was in the air for more than seven seconds, but less than eight. That, as it turned out, was exactly how much time Colossus needed to twist the I-beam until it snapped, discard half of it, and cock the other half over his right shoulder as if he had grown up in Brooklyn instead of Siberia.
Blob fell back within range, tumbling through the air. He saw Colossus. He saw the broken-off I-beam. His eyes widened. Colossus swung.
The impact bent the I-beam into a comma with a sound loud enough to hurt Wolverine’s ears. Blob rocketed over the plaza—straight toward Avalanche, whose eyes were visibly widening through the slot in his helmet. “Blob! No!” he yelled.
The sound of Blob’s hurtling mass hitting Avalanche was almost as loud as the crack of Colossus’ makeshift bat. Avalanche was leveled and out cold, his helmet knocked off and spinning across the plaza. The impact barely slowed Blob’s progress. He continued on another hundred feet or so before tumbling over the broken plaza and coming to rest not far from the military cordon.
“That is what you’d call a frozen rope,” Wolverine said.
“I am unfamiliar with that expression,” Colossus said. “Also, I thought you were Canadian.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time south of the border,” Logan said. “Hard to be here this long and not catch a ballgame once in a while.”
“It is a long trip to the Bronx,” Colossus said.
“For a good game, it’s worth it. Plus, there’s always the Mets. And what, you never heard of the Blue Jays?”
Colossus didn’t answer.
That was two of the Brotherhood down. “Logan! Peter! Are you all right?” Storm descended toward them.
“We’re fine, ’Ro,” Wolverine said. “Let’s handle Pyro. I’m not done bustin’ heads yet.”
“I’m afraid it’s my turn, boys,” Storm said. “I didn’t bring all these clouds in for nothing.”
She accelerated away from them, up into the sky again. Pyro was guiding his fire monster toward the soldiers. Two of the concussion cannons were slag, and the third lay in pieces from Blob’s concrete barrage. The soldiers were trying to keep the fire monster—and Pyro—away from the civilians behind the cordon, who lacked the common sense to stay a prudent distance away from explosions and fire.
Storm had a solution to all those problems, however. Below her, Wolverine and Colossus were running toward the fighting Nightcrawlers, swinging wide around the inert bodies of Blob and Avalanche.
Storm got to altitude and spread her arms. Static electricity from the gathered clouds flickered, intensified, and licked down toward her in the form of lightning. Crackling along her skin, the lightning spread her cloak wide.
“Hell of a show she puts on,” Logan said. “Her only problem is she doesn’t know who needs killing.”
“Let it go,” Colossus said. He knew what Logan was getting at. “Imagine you strike at Kurt with your claws, thinking he will disappear. What if you are wrong, and he doesn’t?”
It was tough to shrug and run at the same time, but Logan managed. “I trust him. You’ll see.”
They were close to the Nightcrawlers, who were very evenly matched. This was to be expected, certainly, but Kurt’s natural use of his abilities should have given him the advantage. One way or another, Logan thought, they were going to get this figured out. The backs of his hands itched, like they always did when he wanted to bare his claws.
When they were less than fifty yards from the Nightcrawlers, with the fire monster pinning the soldiers against the cordon and Pyro following close behind, Logan felt something in the air change. He looked up and saw Ororo lean her head back, her mouth opening in a smile of pure ecstasy. Electricity flared around her. With a peal of thunder, she brought the rain.
Ororo had read once that the average storm cloud weighed approximately five thousand tons. She had just brought several of them together, and now she made the smallest adjustment to the clouds’ chemistry and temperature. What had been suspended water vapor became billions of droplets of rain, falling in sheets that emptied the clouds in seconds. Rain crashed down over Pyro and his fiery creation, snuffing it out with so much water that even the steam of its vanishing was swept away before anyone could see it.
Pyro didn’t last much longer. He looked up and saw what Storm was doing. He tried to use the lightning as seeds for new fiery creations, but Storm snuffed them out as quickly as they were born. Then the rain hit him with the power of a firehose.
Wolverine saw Pyro go down, flattened into the concrete of the plaza by the force of the downpour. Serves him right, Logan thought. Even if I didn’t get to cut him up. Ah well, everyone’s gotta make sacrifices.
He looked over at the soldiers. Already they were forming up, preparing to come after the X-Men. Figures, Logan thought. Every time it has a chance to be over, it’s not over. Maybe it’ll be this way no matter what Kate does in Kitty’s body. Maybe we’re all headed for the Sentinels, anyway.
But even if that was true, he was going to fight it every step of the way.
* * *
KURT was getting tired. But so was his doppelganger. They had parried and struck, attacked and countered, battered each other with fist and foot until both were panting and growing sloppy.
Kurt decided to try a favorite feint of his, involving a dropped shoulder that led to a reverse spin taking advantage of the opponent’s hesitation upon seeing the initial feint. If the opponent was slightly tired, but still trying to react as if he was fully capable, the timing would work.
Kurt dipped a shoulder as if he were tensing to lead with a kick from the opposite leg. Then, flexing that leg, Kurt spun into a reverse kick. He aimed high enough that the doppelganger would have trouble bringing up his tired arms to block the kick, but low enough that he wouldn’t be able to contract his fatigued core muscles fast enough to duck.
It was harder than Kurt had anticipated to not use his teleportation abilities—but also more satisfying. He felt his heel make solid contact with bone and followed through, the momentum of his leg carrying his body around on the axis of his other leg to face the toppling doppelganger...
...who began to transform as he hit the ground. “Unglaublich!” Kurt said.
Not he. She.
So much for all my assumptions, thought Kurt. “You’re… Mystique!”
* * *
ANGEL, sweeping down from the sky after seeing Storm’s watery coup de grace on Pyro, hesitated over the fighting Nightcrawlers and watched as one of them delivered a decisive shot to the other. Angel drifted lower, unsure whether to help the downed Nightcrawler or congratulate the one that was still standing. Then he saw one of the Nightcrawlers begin to change, although the blended form continued to have indigo skin, pupilless yellow eyes…
My God, Angel thought.
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“You?” Kurt said, staring at Mystique. “You’re the shapechanger?”
Mystique smiled at Nightcrawler. Angel thought it was the saddest and most hateful expression he had ever seen.
“Your skin,” Kurt continued. “Your eyes. If this is your true form, mein Gott. We are so alike!”
The soldiers who were not already engaged in binding Blob and Avalanche flooded across the plaza toward them. They didn’t have much time to wrap this up. The soldiers would be on them in moments.
“Could it be, Kurt Wagner,” Mystique said, emphasizing the hard W and short A of the German pronunciation, “that you are not as unique as you once thought?”
Shocked, Nightcrawler moved toward her. “Who are you?”
Then the soldiers were surrounding them, screaming for Nightcrawler to put his hands in the air and get on the ground. Mystique stepped back easily, melting into them, her features and clothes already shifting again.
“Who are you?” Kurt screamed. He looked from soldier to soldier for some trace of the woman who bore so many features common to his own. But there was no way to pick her out, now. He began teleporting in quick hops through the entire contracting ring of soldiers. They pointed guns at him, screaming threats and commands while their fellow soldiers dove out of the fields of fire.
“Vamoose, buddy!” Angel warned him, swooping down and spreading his wings to slow the soldiers’ approach. They shouted orders, aiming their rifles upward and warning him to stay where he was—but they didn’t come any closer.
Kurt and Angel stood together. Wolverine joined them. He was healing now, but the effects of Pyro’s monster were still plain on his skin.
Madness, Kurt thought. Unglaublich!
“The Army’s got Blob, Pyro, and Avalanche,” Angel said. “Now they’re looking to add the X-Men to their collection. That was Mystique, right? Where’d she go?”
Storm angled in as Nightcrawler said, “Keine Ahnung. She blended in, changed her shape again. Who is she really? She looks so much like me. Or perhaps it is the other way around.”
“It appears that all our actions have not changed the Army’s mind about us,” Storm said. “But I have a solution. These clouds might prove useful again.” She brought the clouds down to drown the Mall in a thick ground fog. “We’ll rendezvous at the airport once we find Kitty.”
“Kate,” Peter said.
“Yes, Kate.”
“And Charlie,” Wolverine said. “Has he been in touch with anybody? I haven’t heard a peep.”
None of them had. They ran through the fog, trying to stay unobtrusive as the Army patrols swept the Mall for anything having to do with the mutant incursion and its aftermath. Flashlight beams pierced the fog. Officers called out instructions to form perimeters and search grids.
“Quickly,” Storm whispered. “We must seek out Professor Xavier. Given all that has happened, he would certainly have contacted us if he were able.”
They headed toward the Senate building, stopping at the corner farthest from the Capitol. None of them could see far in the fog, but the traces of the battle were everywhere—from the pieces of concrete torn from the plaza to the gaping holes in the Senate office building.
Kate Pryde was in there somewhere. Doubtless she had separated from the team to protect Senator Kelly. What was she doing now? Where was Destiny, the only member of the Brotherhood they had not seen since the initial confrontation in the hearing chamber?
Mystique was on the run. Three other members of the Brotherhood were in the Army’s custody. Now the X-Men had to make sure that Kate Pryde’s horrific future did not come to pass for them all.
SIXTEEN
RACHEL was fading. Kitty knew it, but she could do nothing about it. She couldn’t do anything about anything. All she could do was watch. Tomorrow, a nuclear strike would destroy New York and countless other cities. If she was still alive then, she would die. The story of mutantkind would end.
A boom sounded from high up, within the Baxter Building. A Sentinel burst through the wall, falling in a shower of glass and steel, limp and tumbling. It landed in the middle of the street with a deafening crash, followed by the smaller pings and clangs of the debris falling around it.
Other Sentinels ran to it, broadcasting alerts and status reports. “Sentinel Omega-J7,” one of them said. “Do you still function?”
Sentinel Omega-J7 did not answer.
Another thunderous crash from above heralded another falling Sentinel. This one landed on the trunk of an abandoned car, flipping the vehicle up into the air end over end. The car slammed into another Sentinel, staggering it.
Kitty looked up at the Baxter Building as Sentinel reinforcements lifted off from the street, rocketing up to the level of their command center. Six of them reached the gaping hole at once. Something struck one of them squarely in the face, smashing away part of its head. Its boot rockets cut out; it dropped straight down four hundred feet, punching through the sidewalk and embedding itself waist-deep in the ground. Sparks and flares shot out of the hole it had made, and it began to burn.
The other five powered up their torso repulsors. Another missile from inside the building hit one of those repulsor lenses, overloading the mechanism. The Sentinel exploded like a bomb, pieces of it ricocheting off the other four and shattering more windows. Its arms left curving trails of smoke as they fell, landing after its lower torso and legs—a long time before its head, which bounced south across the intersection past Kitty and Rachel. It came to rest on the sidewalk in front of the New York Public Library.
The remaining four Sentinels reset their formation and fired their repulsors simultaneously. Kitty saw detonations inside the building. She couldn’t believe anyone could have survived—but someone had. A long metal beam, thrown like a spear, impaled one of the Sentinels as it tried to enter the hole. It squealed, the sound picked up and amplified by several other Sentinels down on the street as they relayed an emergency alert. Then its grip on the edge of the hole slipped, and it fell, bouncing against the side of the Baxter Building twice on its way down before landing almost directly on top of its partially decapitated comrade.
Madison Avenue was littered with pieces of Sentinels, and Kitty felt a predator’s glee at the sight. All of you die, she thought. All of you, for all the people you’ve killed.
Peter—for surely it was Peter up there, as neither Ororo nor Logan could have thrown those missiles with such force—was not done yet. Now she saw him, at the edge of the floor, reaching out for the closest Sentinel and dragging it headfirst into the building. He seemed enraged, almost possessed, stronger than ever before. The Sentinel’s legs kicked, then went limp and hung over the edge.
More reinforcements landed on the Baxter Building’s roof. Others entered on the ground floor, using an entrance refitted for their size. Still more lifted off to force their way into the command center directly.
Kitty’s fierce glee evaporated suddenly as she realized she had not seen Ororo or Logan fighting. “Oh, no,” she said.
“Yeah,” Rachel said.
Kitty looked down at her. “You knew?”
“Every time,” Rachel said with her eyes closed. “I feel them. I felt Franklin.” She started to cry, tears cutting pale tracks through the grime on her face. They were both filthy from their time in the tunnels and from the dust kicked up by the battles. “I felt Logan. I felt Ororo. I felt every one of the FCA.”
Kitty tried to clean the tears from Rachel’s face, but all she did was smear the grime around. “Magneto?” she asked. “Him, too?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “I wasn’t thinking about him, he was farther away…” Her energy failed her, and she fell silent.
Kitty looked up again. A series of flashes from within the building strobed out into the sky, dislodging more rubble. It cascaded down onto Madison Avenue, crushing two of the responding Sentinels and obscuring the building’s lower floors behind another rolling billow of dust.
“Peter,”
Rachel said softly.
“What about him?” Kitty asked.
“He’s dead,” Rachel said. “They’re all dead.”
Fires raged in the Baxter Building’s upper floors, but Sentinels were approaching from all directions. More and more of them arrived from other parts of the city, some marching on the street and others flying in tight V-formations from across the Hudson River. Their motions appeared well-coordinated.
Rick had told Kitty that as long as the Sentinels were communicating, the control antennas were still working.
The X-Men had failed.
“Kitty, it’s time,” Rachel said. “Time for you to go home.”
Kitty caught her breath. Home, she thought. Yes. Get out of this terrible place. But then she looked again at Rachel, her face drawn with pain and the effort of keeping herself alive.
“I don’t have much time left,” Rachel said.
“What if I stayed? What if this is what was supposed to happen?”
“No. We might…you going back isn’t going to change this future. Maybe nothing can be unmade, once it exists. But you might create a split in the future, and you’ll get to live in the better one. That’s what I would hope for. You should…” Rachel had to stop and breathe for a moment. “You should hope so, too,” she finished.
“It’s destiny, though, right? I was meant to come here. It couldn’t just be so I could watch everyone die.”
“You’re going back,” Rachel said. “Then the Sentinels are going to come and kill me. That’s just what’s going to happen, kid. No way around it now.”
Her other self, her older self, wouldn’t know that was about to happen. If the mind swap were reversed now, Kate Pryde would arrive back in her native time staring down the barrel of a dozen Sentinels’ guns. Or a hundred. How long would she survive? Would she die knowing all of her friends—and Peter—had died before her?
