“Move it, move it, move it!” a woman barked. “They want a war, people, let’s give ’em one! Let’s go, move out. You’ll get assignments when you hit the street!”
“What the hell’s happening here?” a man barked from inside the elevator, and then it rose slightly as the man stepped out onto the floor.
“The feds have attacked!” the same woman snapped in response. “The Sentinels are responding, but we’ve all got to be in position to finish this fight. You want a home in Haven, buddy, you’ve gotta fight for it!”
“I had guard duty in the basement in half an hour,” the man said. “What about that?”
“The Acolytes have the X-geeks covered, man,” the woman snapped. “Just do as you’re told. I don’t have all day to waste explaining myself to every moron who comes along. Just move!”
Bobby heard pounding feet, cursing ... an exodus of sorts. Then the elevator started to move up again, called to another floor. That was okay. Ten more minutes, and the place would be near empty. He could slip into the elevator and head for the basement. Or, he could use the a/c ducts. Maybe the stairs? What the hell, he’d figure it out. The most important thing was, he knew where the X-Men were being held. And since
the enemy was practically evacuating the building, he would have no trouble getting to them.
Of course, the faceless woman had said the Acolytes were guarding the X-Men. That could be a problem. Bobby crossed his fingers and prayed that it would be Acolyte, not Acolytes. Which was pretty likely. After all, Magneto would need all the help he could find for a war with the United States.
That thought also troubled him. How had it come to war? Was the President really that foolish? Or perhaps it had been Gyrich’s doing. That sounded more likely.
Still, Bobby pictured all the places in Manhattan that he treasured, from Central Park, to Fifth Avenue, to the Coffee-A-Go-Go, to the White Horse Tavern in the Village, and Keen’s Chophouse on the Lower West Side. Broadway. The Museum of Natural History. It was all in jeopardy.
Iceman was the joker on the team, but as he began to plan his next move, he dwelled too much on what fate might hold for what he considered the greatest city in the world. And there was nothing funny about it. Nothing at all.
* * *
Val Cooper clung tightly to Remy LeBeau. The Harley was flying along the FDR Drive, headed north. With the wind buffeting her face, whipping her hair back and forth like a flag, her hands on Gambit’s washboard abdomen, and the motorcycle humming with power beneath them, she should have felt great. The sun shone down on them, and the sky above Manhattan was unusually clear. None of that mattered.
Instead, she was filled with a profound sense of dread. Not nausea, really, but that first sickening stomach lurch that tells you nausea is on the way. It was that, feeling, yet sustained.
With the pavement speeding by below her, and nothing holding her on the Harley but her grip on Gambit and the scissor lock her knees had on the seat, she felt extraordinarily vulnerable. But that wasn’t the cause of her extreme unease. She’d been on a motorcycle many times before.
No. Val was disturbed because of the distant thump-thump of explosions she could hear. It was war. She knew it was.
Which meant they had very little time in which to prevent armageddon. It had fallen to them, really: herself, Gambit, and Archangel. She only prayed that these two unpredictable men would come through at perhaps the most precipitous moment the United States had ever faced.
“Number six, dead ahead, Val,” Archangel’s voice crackled on the comm-link.
“We got visual, ’Angel,” Gambit replied, before Vai could even think of anything to say. “Valerie, can you see from ’ere, or we gon’ have to get a bit closer, eh?”
He barely turned to look at her when asking the question, but Val was entranced by the red glow of his eyes. She had been fascinated by those eyes from the very first time she had met Gambit. The eyes were the window to the soul, it was said. A cliche, she knew. But there was a point to it. You could always read the truth in someone’s eyes. Except for Gambit’s. His eyes were like burning coals in any battle situation. Impossible to read anything in them but danger.
Cooper slid a hand away from its grip on Gambit, reached up, and tapped a button on the side of the infrared goggles she wore. They had the capacity to magnify anything in view, so it had been possible from quite a distance to check Sentinels for the invisible markings that would signify the Alpha unit. This one, however, was turned away from them at an angle.
“We’re going to need to get closer,” she said finally. “Or at least find another angle on it.”
“You jus’ tell Gambit where you need to go, Valerie. I take you dere.”
Bellevue Hospital and NYU Medical Center blurred past on the left. It struck Val that there were probably a lot of people holed up in hospitals and places of worship around the city. People too stubborn to leave, but too frightened to remain in their own homes. With every concussive blast on the other side of the island, she grew more worried for Manhattan, and its people.
The Sentinel towered above the UN building, just blocks ahead now. There was a huge explosion to the south, and Val shivered as she realized the war was quickly spreading. She wanted to blame someone. Magneto. Gyrich. The President. Somebody. She needed a face to focus her hatred upon, to condemn for starting the war that would surely kill innocents.
But it was too late for blame. She’d seen enough warfare, in the Middle East and Genosha, not to know that. War was the villain now, war was the enemy. It was the ultimate killer, primal rage unleashed without any conscience whatsoever. It had to be stopped.
“Warren,” Val said to Archangel over the comm, “we’re going in for a closer look. I can’t get a decent view from the highway.”
“Be careful, Val,” Archangel cautioned. “All three of us are vital to the success of this mission. We can’t afford any screwups.”
“You’re the master of understatement, Warren,” Val observed. “With the battle started, the clock is ticking.”
Gambit steered the Harley down off the FDR, and they hit the side streets of Manhattan. At First Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, several teenagers came running across a small park, shouting at them, trying to get their attention, and, apparently, assistance.
“Great, more trouble.” Archangel sighed softly into the comm. “What now?”
“Nothing, Warren, keep moving,” Val said.
Gambit started to slow the Harley.
“Gambit, keep going!” she snapped. “Didn’t you hear me? The clock is ticking! We don’t have time for anything but the mission now. No matter what we see, we’ve got to keep going!”
The Cajun started to open his mouth, likely with some smart-aleck response. Then he closed it again. Gambit knew she was right, of course. But she took no pleasure from having her way. As they passed the teens, who still cried out for their help, Val could see that it was not a trick of any kind. These kids needed help; someone, or something, was threatening them.
“We be back for you, kids,” Gambit called to them, but even if the kids heard and understood him, their faces did not
betray any indication that they believed what he had said.
Frankly, Val didn’t believe it either. Even if they took the Sentinels out of the game, the fight wasn’t over. But as long as the Sentinels were a part of the equation, the answer was always going to be the same. Magneto would win.
“Hang a right here, Remy,” Val said, and Gambit nodded once and swung over to the east side of the avenue. “That’s going to put us right between the thing’s legs.”
“An’ you t’ink dis is a good idea?” Gambit asked, his sarcasm as cutting as ever.
But he took the turn. They slowed to make the corner, and Val finally saw Archangel out of the corner of her eye. He didn’t acknowledge them, and even from the ground, he looked so grim that Val imagined him to be some colorful angel of death. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
“Der
e,” Gambit said, as they took the turn.
Directly in front of them, the Sentinel straddling the street like a modem Colossus of Rhodes.
To their left, the south wall of the United Nations building exploded outward in a shower of glass and concrete. Gambit opened up the throttle, speeding away from the explosion and toward the massive Sentinel.
“Incoming!” Archangel shouted, and now he was close enough so Val could have heard him without their comm-link.
“A little late on dat one, mon ami” Gambit called back.
Val exhaled, and couldn’t remember when she’d last taken a breath. Her body was humming with the energy of anticipating the next explosion, or whatever else might come. For it wasn’t the Sentinel attacking. The huge constmct was itself under attack.
“We getting too close, petite,” Gambit said, and Val was so absorbed by their situation that she ignored the diminutive, sexist reference.
Gambit braked, the Harley slid sideways, tires streaking pavement, black on black. They stopped, and Val took another breath. For the first time since they had turned the corner, Val ignored everything around her, tapped the button on her goggles, and studied the Sentinel ahead.
Painted on the Sentinel’s back with a substance invisible in all but one light spectrum, infrared, was a massive symbol: the Greek letter Omega. The end. A small joke, back when Val Cooper could still find anything funny.
“That’s it!” she cried. “That’s the Alpha Sentinel!”
“All right!” Archangel cheered. “Now let’s take this tin man apart.”
Without warning, a barrage of plasma fire and concussive blasts slammed into the Sentinel, which still faced away from them. It turned its massive head, apparently toward the source of the attack, and lifted a hand. Energy lanced from its palm and ought to have flash-fried whatever it had aimed at. But the attack continued.
“It’s time, Valerie,” Gambit said. “Maybe you should contact Professor Xavier before we go any farther. Dat Sentinel, he won’ let you near him if he knows you’re human.” Val nodded, then leaned forward to switch channels on the comm-unit.
“Charles?” she asked. “Are you there?”
Yes, Professor Xavier answered, but the voice was in her head, not on the comm. I’ve been monitoring your progress, Val. Now that you have need of me, I’m going to stay with you from here on in.
“Thanks,” Val said aloud, knowing he could hear her one way or another. “It’s a comfort to know you’re with us. Okay, Warren, Remy, let’s get inside that robot’s head and see if we can’t rearrange things a bit.”
Gambit opened the throttle and the Harley shot forward.
* * *
“Do you think she’ll go for it?” Trish Tilby asked.
Kevin O'Leary shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
After a moment’s consideration, Trish went to the window and looked outside again. The madness in the street was growing, with mutants congregating in front of the lobby and then marching off in groups in different directions. Even inside the building, they could hear the muffled, rapid-fire crack of far-
m
away explosions, like fireworks in the distance. Trish wondered idly if the war might not look like a massive fireworks display, once the sun set.
It dawned on her, then, that Manhattan might be gone long before sundown. Someone had to do something. The only people capable of halting the insanity and destruction were captive in the basement of the Empire State Building, many floors below. They had to get down there, no matter what. No matter who was hurt by it.
“Get your gear,” she told Kevin, and he nodded grimly.
More often than not, he was an outgoing, generally happy guy. Not today. But, hell, who could blame him?
Kevin packed up his camera bag with everything he might need. Magneto had seen that they lacked nothing by way of equipment. He hefted the bag to his shoulder, picked up the camera, and gave Trish the thumbs-up.
“Let’s go,” she said.
They headed out of the small office into the larger foyer area of the firm that had used the space before Magneto took over. Caroline was there, waiting for them.
“What the hell are you doing?” Caroline asked, in a hushed voice, talking more to Kevin than to Trish.
“We’re here to cover Magneto’s new world order, Caroline,” Trish said simply. “This is the biggest part of the story so far. We’ve got to do our job.”
“Yeah, but...” she sputtered, then moved to block their access to the door. “Look, you guys, I’ve put my butt on the line for you already. I really like you, and I know you’re not, like, the enemy or anything. But you aren’t supposed to go out and tape—heck, you’re not supposed to go out at all— without Magneto’s say-so.”
Kevin approached Caroline and put a hand on her cheek. Trish winced at the way the girl almost seemed to lean into that hand, looking for something to lean on, someone to care. She hoped Kevin really did care, that it wasn’t all just a game, a way to get out. Caroline was a sweet kid, though obviously misled. Or, at the very least, misinformed. She didn’t deserve heartbreak.
But then, Trish thought, who did?
“Caroline, let’s get down to it, huh?” Kevin said.
Not at all the way Trish thought he’d handle it.
“I like you,” he said. “I really do. If the world wasn’t upside down, I’d love to go out to a movie, maybe have one too many drinks at the Slaughtered Lamb. Hell, I’d like to buy you some roses and rollerblade through Central Park, if you’d like to know the truth of it.”
Kevin shook his head just a bit, and his sigh told Trish what she’d wanted to know all along. He wasn’t just playing. He really did care for the girl. But with that settled, she still had to wonder if they were using her unfairly.
Hell, she thought. It’s war, right?
“Kevin,” Caroline said. “I—”
“No, let me finish,” he interrupted. “I’d like to do all those things. But I can’t. We can’t. And you know why we can’t, don’t you?”
Their eyes met, locked, and suddenly Trish felt very much like an intruder. She wanted to crawl under the rug, to flee into the back office. But she didn’t dare. Too much rested on the next few moments.
After an excruciating pause, Caroline nodded.
“Good,” Kevin said. “If you didn’t get it, I don’t know how I could have explained it to you. This isn’t utopia, sweetheart, and it isn’t hell either. One thing for certain, though, it isn’t anything like the land of the free that Magneto promised.”
“You’re not really going out to cover the war, are you?” Caroline asked, looking up at Kevin from beneath long eyelashes.
“You know we’re not,” Kevin said.
Trish knew that was her cue.
“Caroline,” she said, the apology explicit in her voice, “we can do this a lot of ways, but however we do it, it’s going to be fast. We can tie you up and leave you here, or we can take you with us. You can try to stop us if you want to, but I think you know the difference between right and wrong, though it’s taken you a while to see it.”
“You’re going to try to free the X-Men?” Caroline asked, though in her face Trish could see that the woman already knew the answer.
“We’ve no choice,” Kevin said. “They’re the only hope we’ve got. Don’t you see that nothing good can come of this? Magneto is just going to get himself and a whole lot of other people killed.”
“Magneto will kill me,” Caroline replied, the terrible words delivered in a drifting, matter-of-fact tone.
“No,” Trish interjected quickly. “No, I don’t think he would. But the Acolytes would do it in a heartbeat. You’ve got to come with us.”
“You need my help?” Caroline asked.
“We can use all the help we can get,” Kevin answered. “But you don’t have to help us. Even if you don’t, I—I’d still like you to leave here with us, with the X-Men. It isn’t safe for you around here, no matter what. Ple
ase say you’ll come.” Trish was a little taken aback. Kevin usually hid himself behind an impenetrable wall of good humor and sarcasm, a potent mixture. Charm ruled, but it hid raw emotion as well. What she saw now was a Kevin O’Leary stripped bare of all pretension.
Trish could feel the afternoon shadows lengthening in the room around them.
“We’ve got to move, Caroline,” she said. “Everything depends on the X-Men, and the X-Men are depending on us.” Caroline looked at Trish, then back at Kevin. She reached up and grabbed the back of his head, pulled him down, and kissed him long and deep.
“That’s for luck,” she said when she released him. “Don’t play with me, Kevin. I may not be the brightest girl in the world, but I won’t be toyed with.”
“No games,” Kevin promised.
Caroline paused a moment, then nodded. “Giddyup,” she said, and gave Kevin a shove out the door.
In the hall, they were challenged immediately.
“Whoa!” cried a burly guard, whom Trish had never seen before.
The man was hideously ugly, and his skin had a gray, lifeless color to it. He wore some kind of assault weapon slung across his chest, a good indicator that he had no particular powers behind obvious strength. Definitely not an Alpha mutant, as Caroline had called them.
“Where do you think you’re all going?” the man asked.
Trish was going to speak, afraid Caroline would blow the whole thing. But before she could utter a word, the mutant woman stepped right on up to the guard.
“I am Caroline Zarin, Acolyte cadet,” she announced. “These people are from the press, not prisoners. I am under direct orders from Lord Magneto to see that they get whatever cooperation they need to correctly document and report upon this incredible event in history. Get out of the way.” Caroline’s voice was pregnant with ominous, yet false, authority.
The guard moved. “Sorry,” he said. “Just relax. Sheesh.”
Caroline pressed the elevator call button and looked at Trish, who raised an eyebrow in appreciation of the woman’s performance.
“Brava,” she whispered.
. When the elevator had arrived, and the doors were closing behind them, she turned to Caroline again.
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