Legends

by Unknown Author

  But that was the outer world. Xavier’s estate was a refuge from all that, and she and Scott had it to themselves for the weekend. The Professor, bless him, had arranged a trip to New York City with all the others and a full agenda of museum tours and stage plays. Consider this an extension on your honeymoon, he had whispered to her before everyone departed. Enjoy yourselves.

  With that thought in mind, she took Scott’s hand and led him back inside.

  The ordnance building went up in a roiling ball of fire and fury. The post exchange followed. Enemy dive bombers pounded the parade ground, the hangars, the barracks. Choking smoke rolled across the lawn, and on the southwestern horizon a blacker, thicker smoke rose over Pearl Harbor.

  Jean Grey ran toward the hospital, her blue cloak falling from her shoulders to the grass. Machine-gun fire tore the earth around her, throwing up chunks of the sidewalk’s concrete. With a scream, she shielded her eyes and kept on running. She'd be needed at the hospital. Another explosion. An invisible hand smashed her down. Such pain in her ears! Blood on her face! And deep inside her head, something waking, stirring.

  Through the pain in her ears, she heard her name. Across the lawn, in the doorway of the hospital, Scott saw her fall, and his face twisted with fear for her safety. Heedless of the danger, he ran to her aid.

  A yellow-winged plane, its bombs dropped, strafed across the lawn, and the ground in front of the hospital erupted. Still reeling from the blast, Jean shouted his name.

  “Stephen!”

  Like a broken doll. Captain Stephen Maxwell sprawled on the grass. For an instant, Jean stared in disbelief and shock. Overhead, the yellow-winged plane climbed away. She screamed again in rage at the enemy that had harmed the man she loved. And it was getting away! She wouldn’t let it.

  Hot fury churned inside her, and a force unknown yet instinctively familiar ripped outward from her mind. Suddenly she saw the plane with different eyes opened as they had never been before. She saw the face of her enemy within, saw his thoughts even as that force smashed into his brain. In an instant, she tasted his arrogance, felt him recoil as he sensed her impossible presence in the cockpit with him. No, not in the cockpit—inside his head! How she savored his unexpected fear.

  She screamed, and inside the plane the pilot screamed with her. The plane’s fuselage crumpled, fuel tanks ruptured, exploded. For an instant the blue sky burned with a bright red sun.

  Jean ran to Stephen’s side. Stephen? But his name is Scott. Confused, frightened, she lifted his bloody head in her hands. “Stephen!” she cried as she tried to wipe away the red blood that filled his eyes. Yes, Stephen seemed to fit him somehow better than Scott. His lids fluttered, and he clutched at her sleeve. His lips moved.

  But she couldn’t hear him. Pain in her ears, and so many other voices in her head, all so loud! The soldiers on the rooftops firing back with machine guns and pistols; the pilots in their planes making cold calculations; the nurses in the barracks behind her so full of terror and confusion; a mechanic in pain half-buried in the rubble of a hangar. The ernest prayers of a B-17 crew in the midst of a crash landing. . .. She heard them. More, she felt their fear, their rage. It all rushed upon her, a sensory tidal wave of chaos.

  Stephen’s hand clutched at her sleeve, then at her uniform’s lapel. He attempted weakly to pull himself up, and suddenly his voice rose stronger, more clearly, over all the others. Except it wasn’t his voice. Jane, I—I wanted to marry you, he managed. His thoughts seemed to enfold her with a sad, fading tenderness. I’d have made you a good husband, Jane. We won’t have time now. No time.

  His hand slipped, and something tore from her uniform. His fingers curled open, revealing her name tag on his palm and her name: Jane Somerset, 1st I.t.

  Jean started, shook her head. But that wasn’t right, she thought, snatching at the pin, reading the name again. She was Jean Grey!

  Another yellow-winged plane dove out of the sun, engines screaming. Enraged, Jean whirled, her red hair flying around her like flame. Her mind opened; her strange new power erupted forth, and in the sky above the hospital, an enemy aircraft exploded even as the finger of its pilot began to tighten on a trigger. Fire and metal rained down; the plane swerved crazily, crashed on the runway in a seething fireball beside the burning tail section of the Ameiican B-17.

  Jean turned her attention back to Stephen and flung her arms around him. In a manner she couldn’t understand, she felt his heartbeat, sensed his diminishing life spark, touched the evaporating chaos of his thoughts, tasted his passion, his regret and terror. “Don’t leave the!” she cried, pressing her face to his. “I won’t let you go!”

  The force inside her uncoiled once more, plunged deeper into his mind, entangled him, entangled them both, and drew them together, bound them. Stephen fell toward a black yawning abyss, and unable or unwilling to let him go, Jean fell with him.

  Jean fought her way up from the dream, her breath ragged, heart racing. Scott bent over her, shaking her, worried. “Wake up!” he said. “Jean?” A ray of sunlight streamed through a gap in the window’s curtains. She blinked and passed a hand over her eyes.

  “That’s it!” Scott said softly as he brushed a lock of hair back from her temple. “No more war movies before bedtime.”

  She pushed herself up on the pillows and forced a smile. “I fell asleep,” she answered simply. “Is it afternoon?”

  Scott looked at her for a moment, inscrutable behind the ruby quartz lens that hid his eyes. Then he pushed his lower lip out in a mock pout. “You were calling someone’s name,” he told her, “and it wasn’t mine.”

  “Stephen,” she acknowledged curtly. She chewed her lip. “Stephen—something. I don’t remember clearly.”

  She flung the blanket back, and with the barest nudge of her teleki-netic power, eased open the closet door on the far side of the room. A pair of black slacks and a green turtleneck sweater floated from the shelves and settled on the bed at her feet.

  Scott continued to watch her as he paced to the large double-windows and opened the curtains wider to let in more light. She watched him, too, from the comer of her eye as she dressed. The sight of her husband, naked in the light, stirred her. Her husband! There had been times when she thought she might never have the chance to call him that, and she had wondered if being an X-Man meant ruling out love.

  But she had loved Scott Summers as long as she could remember, since their first days as students in Professor Xavier’s school. Through dangers both from space and time they had persevered, grown stronger, closer. And she knew now with a perfect clarity that, rather than ruling out love, love was an X-Man’s greatest strength.

  She shared a subtle rapport with Scott, a small effect of her telepathic power. It let her sense his moods, his thoughts. She sensed his concern as he watched her in silence. “You’re thinking of Jason Wyn-garde,” she said with a quiet shudder.

  Adjusting his ruby quartz glasses on his nose, Scott nodded. “And the Shadow King—we have so many enemies. Some of them could strike at you through your dreams.”

  Jean shook her head stubbornly, frowning, as she pulled on her boots. She’d already thought of such things herself. Rising, she planted a kiss on Scott’s lips, turned toward the windows and opened them with the gentlest telekinetic shove. “Don’t worry,” she whispered.

  Effortlessly, soundlessly, she glided into the air and out the window, like Peter Pan on the way to Never-Never Land. Not even the curtains rustled at her parting, and Scott made no attempt to call her back. Past the lake and over the pine trees she flew. Even here, safely out of sight on the Xavier estate, she seldom used her power in such an ostentatious manner, but the thrill of sun and wind on her face chased away the shadow on her spirit and the chill left by the dream.

  A squirrel nibbling a walnut near the kitchen door of the mansion chittered and scampered away as she touched ground again. She let herself in and stood for a moment, listening to the silence. With so many

  X-Men in residen
ce, so many visitors in and out, the mansion was seldom silent, and this was a rare moment.

  Her heels made soft sounds on the bare wood floors as she walked through the halls and made her way to the library. The School for Gifted Youngsters—she still thought of it by that name, though it was now the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning—boasted a wonderful collection of books on every subject, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined every wall. It was not to the books she went, however, but to a personal computer on an antique oak desk in the warmest comer of the room where she settled herself.

  With a sigh, she turned on the machine. This wasn’t quite how she’d expected to spend the afternoon, but she had questions, and a little research might turn up some answers. And if it didn’t? Well, there was always the Danger Room. Maybe all she really needed was to work off a little tension.

  The afternoon segued into evening, and sunset melted into darkness. Books piled up on either side of the computer as she worked, and when the desk was full, she pulled up a chair and stacked more books there. The lights clicked on, and it took her a moment to notice, so engrossed was she in her research. Scott entered the room with a tray of sandwiches and a pot of coffee. “I figured you could use some help,” he said. Setting the tray aside, he picked up one of the books and sat crosslegged on the floor.

  “Remind me to marry you someday,” Jean answered. Barely glancing from the computer screen, she took one of the sandwiches and continued reading an army web-site entry on Hickam Field.

  “I might even ask you,” Scott answered with a smile. “Someday.”

  Smoke rose black and heavy into the blue sky. Percussive shock waves, one after another, shook the ground as the rain of bombs continued to fall. Planes lined up in neat rows near the runway exploded and burned, so much grotesquely twisted wreckage. Hangars exploded; machine shops collapsed into fiery rabble; flames engulfed the hospital’s south wing.

  Jean screamed and could not hear herself. She clutched her bleeding ears in terror. Yellow-winged aircraft swarmed overhead like angry bees. Torpedo planes dropped their lethal loads. Machine gun tracers tore chunks from the earth. All around her, men and women, soldiers and nurses, ran for duty stations or in panic. On rooftops, some soldiers fired back with handguns. She heard none of it, not the whistle of the bombs, nor the roar of the explosions, not the voices, nor the guns.

  Yet, lying on the rubble-strewn ground where the last explosion had tossed her, somehow she heard. A cacophony of voices shouted in her head, the volume maddening, so many she couldn’t sort them. In the barracks, on the rooftops, even in the planes above—she heard them.

  Then, through it all, one familiar voice calling her name with a desperate fervor: Jane! Jane! And she looked up to see Scott—or was it Stephen?—running toward her. In that moment, she sensed the cold fear that filled him, knew it was for her safety, and it propelled him heedlessly across the lawn to her side.

  As if in a dream, Jean watched him run. In slow motion he came, like a character in a Bijou movie, while above him a yellow-winged plane began its dive. As if she had seen it all before, she knew the outcome. Her heart thundered in her chest, blood pounded in her ears, and this time, she fought the pain in her body, and struggled to rise.

  The man she loved—Scott or Stephen—would die. She knew that somehow, she had seen it. Unless I act this time to save him. She got to her feet, her eyes on the plane overhead. Something uncoiled inside her, something strange, yet familiar. It half-woke and stirred and shivered, and she reached out her hands toward the menacing aircraft.

  Its guns spat fire. Pieces of earth flew up, and Scott or Stephen flung out his arms dramatically. For an instant, he stood frozen with a stunned expression on his face; then he fell. Jean! Jean! She heard the echo of her name fading in his dying mind.

  No longer merely stirring, the sleepy thing inside her shot awake. It saw the yellow-winged craft through her eyes and, raging, lanced outward, following the line of her hand, and crushed the enemy plane with astonishing ease.

  Too late! Too late to save her man. But not too late for vengeance. Not this time. She reached upward again with a telekinetic fist, crushed another plane and another. Fury fed the thing inside her; she sent it out again and again, showing the attackers no mercy. Bright fiery flowers blossomed overhead, and the sky became a garden of death, and she rose to soar above it like a shining bird on wings of flame.

  * * *

  “Jean! Jean!”

  Her eyes snapped open. In midair, Scott spun like a top. Scores of books flew in circles about him, pages fluttering madly. Cables and cords, a desk lamp, pieces of the computer, a chair, all swirled throughout the library in the grip of a telekinetic tornado.

  In an instant, it was over. Everything fell to the floor in a clattering, except for Scott, who made a more colorful sound.

  Jean sat up on the brown leather sofa where she had fallen asleep, and the horror of what had happened struck her. Her power had gone out of control—her worst fear. The library was a shambles, books tumbled, shelves destroyed. The west wall was blown completely outward.

  Scott crawled up from the floor and hung his arms over the end of the sofa. His brown hair flopped down across his forehead; his ruby-quartz lenses sat crooked on his nose. “Do you ever wonder,” he said with an exasperated sigh as he stared at the wall, “what the construction companies in town must think of us?”

  She flung her arms around his neck, trembling at the thought that she might have hurt him. She knew now she had to do something about these dreams—these nightmares.

  “I felt it, too, this time,” Scott confessed. He stroked her hair as he held her. “Through the rapport we share. It’s not just a dream, Jean. There’s . . . someone.”

  Jean tried to calm herself and broke free of Scott’s embrace. As her trembling subsided, anger replaced it. Too many people had tried to manipulate her in the past, to use her. She didn’t like it, and she didn’t like the idea that someone might be trying now.

  She drew a deep breath, then another, and set even her anger aside as she closed her eyes and gathered subtle mental resources. She sensed Scott behind her, all love and worry, then tuned him out of her awareness.

  Not just a telekinetic, Jean Grey was one of the most powerful telepaths on the planet. Opening her mind, she found what she sought—a barely detectible psychic residue hinting at the presence of another unfamiliar mind.

  So she was under attack, as Scott had believed, from some unknown foe. Well, the X-Men were no easy prey, she least of all. “Keep the coffee boiling,” she told Scott as she lowered herself once more to the sofa. “I'll be right back.” She let her body go slack against the soft leather.

  Freed from the flesh, her mind moved onto another plane, an astral plane accessible only to telepaths and mystics, where her powers were amplified to new degrees. Now the psychic residue she had detected hung in the air like a tenuous veil of light. She touched it, and it sparkled in response. She recoiled at first, then touched it again, and the sparks seemed almost to dance around her fingers. But already the light was dimming. When she tried to follow it back to its source, back to the mind from which it sprang, it faded completely.

  “It’s strange.”

  Scott sat on the arm of the sofa looking carefully down at her. He felt helpless, she could tell, and she didn’t need to read his mind to know that. The expression on his face said it all. “Of course it’s strange,” he answered. “We’re X-Men. It’s not like we could have a quiet, normal weekend alone.”

  She patted his hand. “I was angry a moment ago,” she admitted. She gestured at the mess the library had become. “But for all this violence, and for all the violence in the dreams, I can’t sense any hostility. I don’t understand it. Nor do I understand why a psychic trail just fades.”

  Scott frowned. He rose from the sofa and, if only to feel useful, began picking up and stacking the scattered books. “While you were asleep,” he said, inclining his head and giving her an amused look
, “and before your little telekinetic storm picked me up and gave me The Wizard of Oz treatment, I ran a computer search on the name you gave me.” Jean stood up. “Jane Somerset,” she said. “She was an army nurse, a first lieutenant.” She folded her arms sternly. “Have you been hacking into military records again, dear?”

  “Well..Scott pretended sheepishness. “Nothing turned up there. The army doesn’t seem to have computerized their records back that far.” He shrugged. “However, a patient named Jane Somerset turned up in the records of the Veterans’ Administration. Seems she’s been in and out of VA hospitals, mostly in, for the past fifty years.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Her last discharge was twelve years ago,” Scott answered. He touched the temple of his glasses as he glanced toward the ruins of the computer. “I was interrupted before I could learn more.”

  Jean rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “You’re such a good husband,” she said. “As a reward, let me help you with the housekeeping.” She took the armload of books he had gathered, and turning, telekineti-cally righted overturned chairs and tables. A lamp returned to its comer on the desk. Books flew about the room again and darted to the shelves.

  “Do you think anyone will notice they’re not alphabetized?” Jean asked impishly as she sent her armload of books after the others.

  “Do you think anyone will notice the hole in the wall?” Scott answered.

  “I want to go for a drive,” Jean said, changing the subject. “A nice romantic drive in the moonlight. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s too late to snow me, Red,” her husband answered. “What’s the plan?”

  “More of an impulse,” she admitted. “I think Jane Somerset is somewhere near.”