X-Men

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Behind her the fire spread, smoke pouring through the cab and up into the falling snow.

  The man-creature stood, staring at her with its cat’s eyes. They almost seemed to be glowing.

  “Mister,” Rogue said, shaking Logan. “Mister, wake up, okay?”

  She shook him harder, making sure to touch only his clothes, while still trying to pull her legs free.

  “Come on, come on,” she said as the man-creature stepped toward the burning camper. “Please wake up.”

  Chapter Four

  Alberta, Canada

  Storm shifted awkwardly in the X-Men jet’s seat, trying to get comfortable. Beside her in the pilot’s seat, Cyclops dozed lightly, his visor strapped firmly to his face. The last two hours had dragged inexorably past, the white snow around them falling hard, covering everything. On the tracking monitor, their subject, Sabretooth, was still a half mile away, stopped.

  Waiting. They had no idea for what, but he was clearly waiting. And so were they.

  Sabretooth was a mutant whose abilities had manifested themselves as animal strength, speed, sight, and smell. From what Storm had learned in their premission briefing, Sabretooth had been helping Magneto. Why the professor had wanted them to track Sabretooth out here into the Canadian wilderness was anyone’s guess. He certainly hadn’t bothered to tell them, if he even knew.

  But Storm didn’t know a lot about the relationship between the professor and Magneto. All she had gleaned was that they seemed to be old friends, fighting in different ways for the same cause.

  She and Cyclops had just been told to trail Sabretooth until something happened. They would know when it did, the professor had said.

  She certainly hoped so.

  Storm glanced around at the raging blizzard falling around the jet. She could see the nearby outline of a highway and the snow-covered trees and rocks. She could stop the snow around them if she wanted. But at the moment she didn’t mind it at all. It was soothing, almost relaxing. She had a feeling about weather, could touch it, and almost any type of weather was good as far as she was concerned.

  This snowstorm was certainly a far cry from the arid heat of her native Kenya. The first time she’d ever seen snow there was the day she had caused it.

  The day the other kids of her village had tortured her.

  The day she had come into her powers.

  Thank heavens Professor Xavier had found her, or there would have been no telling what her people would have done to her after she had destroyed their village. She certainly had had no idea what to do with herself at that point.

  No mutant did, when first coming into his or her powers. There was no way any of them could. It was something completely unexpected, and in this world that feared mutants, certainly none of them had been trained to cope.

  Until now. She had been lucky. The professor had found her, and had offered her the training and education she had needed. She knew there were thousands of others out there who weren’t getting the breaks she had recieved. She was determined to help them, at least as much as she could.

  The sound of a hard crash echoed through the trees, waking Cyclops from his light sleep. He glanced at her, his powerful energy gaze contained and controlled by the visor covering his eyes.

  “What was that?”

  “Darned if I know,” Storm replied.

  They both studied the scope. Two other blips were now stopped where their subject was located, just down the highway. “Seems Sabretooth found a way to stop traffic.”

  Cyclops laughed. “What traffic? We haven’t seen a car in hours.”

  “Let’s go,” Storm said.

  As they climbed out of the jet, she created a warm breeze around them that held most of the snow back. Better they face whatever was going on fresh and dry and ready to fight.

  Within a few seconds they were headed at a fast walk up the road, her breeze and their form-fitting X-Men uniforms keeping them warm and comfortable, despite the subzero temperatures of the Canadian forest.

  It wasn’t long until they saw exactly what was happening.

  As they moved around a slight curve in the road, they could see where a camper had hit a downed tree, smashing the camper and scattering the contents of a trailer it had been pulling. The camper was on fire, with one person trapped inside, on the passenger side of the cab.

  Sabretooth was fighting with another man, and as Storm watched, Sabretooth picked the man up and smashed him through the windshield. Judging from the force of the throw, that person was going to be lucky to be alive.

  But it was clear the woman in the camper was still alive, and she was struggling to get out—clearly trapped. And now she had a dead weight on top of her.

  Side by side, Storm and Cyclops moved up and stood twenty paces behind Sabretooth. The hulking mutant started toward the camper; then he must have sensed them.

  He turned, then growled with a low, mean rumble, like an angry animal. He even looked like one, with the skins and long yellow hair.

  “Seems we aren’t welcome company,” Cyclops said.

  Sabretooth charged at them, moving quickly on the snow-covered road.

  Storm stepped aside as Cyclops fired a hot red beam from his eyes. The beam hit Sabretooth square in the chest.

  Hard.

  Sabretooth roared as the beam picked him up and flipped him through the air, end over end, smashing through the high branches of the trees and disappear-ing in a snapping of limbs and brush.

  Storm nodded. Their foe wasn’t going to be coming back anytime soon.

  The only sound now was the crackling of the fire in the camper. Storm ran over to the passenger side, seeing instantly that the intense flames were almost to the camper’s propane tank. She kicked up a swirling wind filled with snow and rain to douse the fire, but it wasn’t going to work quickly enough. The flames were just too close to the tank and too hot to be put out easily.

  Cyclops had also run to the passenger side and yanked open the door.

  “Don’t touch me!” the girl shouted. “Just help me get the seat loose. I can’t move my legs.”

  Storm focused on the fire, but the propane tank was going to explode, and soon. There wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it.

  “Cyclops!” Storm said. “Hurry!”

  Cyclops focused carefully and used his optic beam to dislodge the seat behind the trapped girl. The seat snapped and came loose.

  The girl quickly climbed out and over the hood of the camper, dropping to the ground. At the same time, Storm pulled the unconscious man free.

  Suddenly she heard the valve on the propane tank blow off.

  It was now or never.

  She brought up a massive wind behind them, forcing it in low and hard along the passenger side of the camper. The wind caught her, Cyclops, the girl, and the unconscious man and slid them all down the road on the slick surface, as if they were sliding down a ski slope. All of them were knocked from their feet, and the unconscious guy was rolled like a limp doll. If he wasn’t already dead, that hadn’t done him any good at all. But Storm hadn’t had a choice.

  She was just climbing back to her feet when the camper exploded, sending flames and debris into the air, lighting the falling snow with bright orange and yellow colors.

  Beside her, the girl and Cyclops stood and stared at the flames. Then the girl said softly, “Thanks.”

  Chapter Five

  Magneto’s Headquarters

  Mortimer Toynbee laughed when Sabretooth came through the tunnel in the rock and into the laboratory. He was alone.

  The lab was a massive space, with towering cliffs of rock, trees, and a giant meadow filled with the machine. Magneto’s machine. It sat like a modern statue in the middle of the clearing, its polished metal thrusting toward the invisible roof above. Toynbee had been painting the bottom of the machine, carefully, so as not to miss even the slightest spot.

  “Weren’t you supposed to bring somebody back with you?” he asked sarcastically. Toynbee was mo
re often called Toad, due largely to his agility, his ability to leap great distances, and his superhuman strength.

  Sabretooth paused and turned to face Toad, who only sneered and went back to work. With a growl Sabretooth moved on into Magneto’s personal office, through another tunnel in the rock.

  Magneto watched him come, shaking his head. Around him the walls of his large office were stark, made of cold, polished stone and metal, just the way he liked it. The space at one time had been a cave, but he’d changed it for his own purposes, placing a massive desk under a single light source, covering the floor with polished tiles.

  “My instructions were simple,” Magneto said, keeping his voice low and level, not letting his anger seep into the words. “In fact, I made them that way especially for you. And yet you were unable to retrieve our friend.”

  Sabretooth moved across the room through the shadows and stopped in front of Magneto’s desk. The smell of the hides he wore carried over to Magneto, but he ignored it.

  “So what happened, brother?”

  “Xavier’s people,” Sabretooth said, his voice low and almost a growl. “They knew.”

  Magneto nodded and sat back in his chair, musing. Charles was going to be a little harder to beat than he had at first thought.

  “Good for you, Charles,” Magneto said to himself. “Good for you.”

  Then Magneto caught a glimpse of the metal dog tags hanging around Sabretooth’s neck. He held out his hand, summoning the tags to him.

  They snapped off Sabretooth’s neck and flew through the air, dropping into his hand. He inspected the tags, staring at the one word at the bottom that didn’t seem to belong: Wolverine.

  “Strange,” Magneto said to himself. Then he looked up at Sabretooth. “Where is the mutant now?”

  “With Xavier’s people,” Sabretooth said.

  Magneto nodded, tossing the tags across the desk back to Sabretooth.

  Then he pushed himself away from the desk, stood, and headed around the desk. “I have made the first move. That is all they know, because that is all you know.”

  He headed for the door. “Come. We only have three days.”

  Sabretooth shrugged, grabbed the tags off the desk, and turned to follow.

  X-Men Mansion—Westchester County, NY

  Logan slowly came back to consciousness, like a swimmer twenty feet down, stroking for the surface of a lake. The light got slowly brighter; then his hearing returned. Then his sense of smell.

  He kept his eyes closed, kept his breathing paced, letting his mind clear, giving himself some time. The last thing he could remember was the ugly beast picking him up and tossing him through the window of his truck. The guy had been strong. Very strong. But in a rematch, Logan knew he would get the best of him.

  Logan could tell that he was lying on his back on some sort of padded bed in a very sterile place. Some sort of hospital or lab, more than likely. And a very fresh-smelling woman was working nearby.

  He let his eyes slit open just a fraction as the woman moved toward him. The room was white and was filled with modern-looking equipment. A box behind her floated off a shelf and came to rest gently in front of her on a tray.

  For a moment he was puzzled; then he realized that she was a mutant also.

  The woman opened the box and pulled out an IV needle, then turned to him. He kept his eyes in the same position, his breathing consistent, even though her wonderful scent was almost overpowering.

  With a gentle touch she picked up his arm, then a moment later he felt the slight prick of the needle. At least she was good at what she did.

  Instantly he reacted, sitting up and grabbing her around the throat. The needle broke in his arm, and the box was knocked to the white floor.

  For an instant he was unable even to think as he stared into her beautiful face. He couldn’t remember ever having this reaction to a woman before. But now was clearly not the time. The way he was holding her, she wouldn’t be able to talk, that much was for sure.

  She just stared at him, calm and collected, as if his threat meant nothing really. Or as if she was convinced he wasn’t going to carry it out.

  Disgusted, he let her go, shoving her backward and to the floor. He jumped off the table, realizing he was dressed only in his underwear. And there was something besides his clothes missing: His dog tags were no longer around his neck.

  Logan pulled the broken needle from his arm and tossed it at the woman sitting on the floor. She just rubbed her neck and said nothing.

  He turned and ran for the nearest door. The sooner he found some clothes and got out of here, the happier he was going to be.

  The hallway on the other side of the door was much like the lab he’d just left—sterile, white tiled, and very quiet.

  Deathly quiet.

  Where the hell was he?

  He ran down the hall, away from the lab, letting his full senses bring him information.

  The walls were soundproof beyond anything normally done. He couldn’t hear anything at all—no sounds of people, machinery, distant traffic, nothing.

  The first door he came to was open, so he went through.

  It was a fairly large room, also very clean. One side of the room contained lockers, with a padded bench sitting in front of them. The other wall was full of black uniforms hanging side by side, each tagged with a strange “X” insignia.

  He quickly rummaged through the lockers, coming up fairly quickly with a pair of pants and a shirt that almost fit.

  Behind him in the hallway he could hear the sounds of someone’s footsteps. Quickly he finished dressing and headed out another door on the far side. He had no idea how to get out of this place, but if he kept going through doors, eventually he would find the exit.

  This door led to another hallway, almost exactly like the first. Logan stopped for an instant, trying to decide which way to go. But then his decision was made for him. A door slid open with the faint ding of an elevator. With the footsteps coming across the locker room he’d just left, he dashed into the elevator and let the doors close. The elevator started upward instantly, clearly running automatically.

  He got ready to attack whoever might greet him when the elevator door opened, but as it turned out, he didn’t need to. The door slid open on a very empty, very plush hallway, exactly the opposite of what he had found below.

  He sniffed, taking in the sights and smells. He was clearly in an older mansion, with a large number of people living in it. This hallway was wide and stately, with a high ceiling and expensive furniture along the walls. Plush carpet softened his footsteps, and the smell of furniture polish seemed to dominate.

  From down the hall to his right he could hear a voice, so he headed that way, staying to one side and moving silently.

  In a moment he could hear exactly what the voice was saying.

  “The Roman Empire, for centuries, persecuted and ostracized the Christians, to the extent that they were fed to lions for sport. Then, almost overnight, their religion rose to become the dominant faith in the empire.”

  “What the hell?” he said softly.

  He moved to where the door was slightly ajar and looked through. Inside he could see a strikingly beautiful black woman with pure white hair standing in front of a dozen or so fourteen- to seventeen-year-old children.

  Logan studied them, noting that even though they all looked basically normal, it was clear they were all mutants.

  An entire class of mutants.

  Where was he?

  “Does anyone know what caused the Christians to suddenly become accepted?” the woman with the white hair asked her students.

  “Yes,” one of them said.

  The woman nodded for the student to go ahead.

  “The emperor suddenly became one,” the kid continued.

  “That’s right,” the teacher said. “Which made for some very relieved Christians, I can tell you.”

  The children all laughed.

  Then the woman turned to face th
e door where Logan was watching through the narrow crack. “Can I help you?”

  All the students turned to stare at him.

  Logan just shook his head and moved away quickly, heading down the hallway toward a brighter area.

  The hallway expanded into a sort of foyer, with a high ceiling and massive antique chandelier. Beside the hall, which led off in both directions, the main way in and out of the foyer was a double oaken door.

  Down the hall the elevator he had used dinged faintly again, warning him that someone was coming up—most likely after him.

  And from the other direction he could hear the sounds of two people’s footsteps on the carpet. He clearly had no choice.

  He sprang for the oaken door, opened it silently, and stepped inside, closing it just as silently behind himself.

  “Good morning, Logan,” a voice said.

  Logan spun around and came face-to-face with a middle-aged bald man sitting behind a large mahogany desk. There was a blackboard set up beside the massive desk, and four students were sitting in front of the blackboard, clearly in some sort of class. They all now turned and stared at him.

  “Give me a moment, please,” the man said to Logan. Then he turned back to his students. “I think that’s enough for today, don’t you? Off you go.”

  The four kids all stood and filed past Logan, out the door, looking at him curiously.

  Logan didn’t know what to do. He knew there were people after him outside that door. Yet this man knew who he was and didn’t seem surprised at all that he was here.

  Suddenly one of the girls turned back around and ran to the desk. “Forgot my book,” she explained.

  She grabbed it off the man’s desk, then ran for the door.

  “Bye, Professor,” she said. But the oaken door beside Logan already had been pulled closed. The girl didn’t even slow down. Instead she simply ran through the door as if it weren’t there.

  Logan stared at the hard wood where she had disappeared, then back at the man she had called “Professor.”