X-Men

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Rogue reached Logan’s door and slowly opened it, peeking inside.

  “Logan?” she said softly.

  No response.

  She moved inside and closed the door behind her, staring at him. He was sleeping fitfully, grunting and talking some in his sleep. She couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  She watched him for a moment, then moved over to the big round chair near his bed. There, in the chair, she curled up and closed her eyes.

  Just being close to him made her feel safe.

  After a few moments, she too was asleep.

  Magneto’s Headquarters

  Senator Kelly slowly came to, the pain in his head a pounding drum, throbbing with each beat of his heart. At first he couldn’t remember what had happened. Nothing around him, from the trees to the clearing floor and rock cliffs, looked familiar.

  When he tried to touch his head, he discovered his hands were tied behind his back. He was bound to a metal chair.

  He looked down slowly, so as not to increase his headache, trying to focus his eyes. He could tell that he was still dressed in his suit and tie. Maybe he was being robbed? No, that didn’t make sense, since he could still feel his wallet in his back pocket.

  Slowly but surely, the memory came back, like a bad dream drifting in over the pain: Guyrich turning into a blue mutant. The blue woman had beat him, kicked him in the head.

  The memory sent a sharp stab shooting through his skull.

  Had it really happened?

  His vision slowly cleared a little more, so that he could focus over the throbbing ache. He let himself move his pounding head slowly, looking for anything around him that just might seem familiar.

  Most of the space that surrounded him was shaded in darkness. It was a clearing of some sort, inside a covered place. There were trees and rocks and massive stone walls with arching metal entrances. The sound of running water was a continuous background noise. The air was warm, and there was almost no breeze. He could smell a faint aroma of pine and ocean salt.

  He had never seen anyplace like this before. Fantastic architecture blended right in with the forest and rocks, as if the two belonged together, yet it was clear that the man-made features were dominant.

  Then Kelly noticed a heavy man standing on one side of the clearing, just in the shadows, staring up into a tree. A bird was chirping there, jumping from limb to limb. The man watched intently until something shot out of his mouth and grabbed the bird, pulling it right out of the tree.

  Kelly stared, not believing what he was seeing. It was the man’s tongue stuck to the bird.

  One very long tongue.

  The bird struggled but couldn’t get loose. The guy’s mouth opened extra wide, as if his jaws had come unhinged, and he took in the entire bird. Then, with his eyes closed as if savoring a special treat, the man chewed up the bird, eating it alive, bones and all. Senator Kelly could hear the smacking and cracking sounds even from where he sat.

  He wanted to be sick. He turned away as much as he could, closed his eyes, working to keep his empty stomach from pushing up through his throat. Never in all of his life had he seen such a perverted act.

  He struggled with his bindings, fighting to get loose. He had to get out of here, wherever here was.

  Slowly another man—a powerful-looking, stately man—emerged from one of the tubelike entrances in the cliff wall and moved into the light. He smiled at Kelly.

  “Who are you?” the senator demanded. “Where is my aide? Why have you taken me?”

  “My name is Magneto, Senator Kelly,” the man said, his voice rich and deep and in control, with just a hint of an accent. “Your aide, Mr. Guyrich, has been dead for some time. But I’ve had Mystique here keep you company.”

  The blue woman stepped out of the shadows and wrapped her arms around Magneto, as a lover might, claiming territory.

  Kelly pushed back, wanting to get as far away from her as he could. But his bonds wouldn’t allow him to move at all, and the chair was far, far too heavy to push. So instead he decided to confront this Magneto.

  “You know, don’t you,” Kelly said, “that whatever you do to me will just prove me right? Every word I’ve spoken will be confirmed.”

  Magneto laughed, letting Mystique slip off and step back. “Gosh, I sure hope so.”

  That wasn’t the answer Kelly had expected. He watched as the man stepped closer. He didn’t look dangerous. Not like the blue woman. But with mutants there was no way of telling. And with a name like Magneto, he had to be a mutant.

  “Are you a God-fearing man, Senator?”

  Kelly pushed back, trying everything he could to get away from the man who just kept getting closer and closer.

  Magneto laughed. “Seems you are certainly afraid of something at the moment. But God-fearing man? Such a strange phrase, don’t you think?”

  Kelly said nothing, trying to catch his breath as Magneto went on. The throbbing in his head increased.

  “I’ve always thought of God as a teacher. As a bringer of light, wisdom, and understanding.”

  To his own surprise, Kelly found it was everything he could do to keep from screaming. The man had moved even closer and was almost leaning down in front of him. In the background, the man who ate birds and the blue woman stood, watching, smiling. They were clearly enjoying what Magneto was doing to him.

  “You see,” Magneto said, coming right up into Kelly’s face, “I think what you really are afraid of is me. Me and my kind, the brotherhood of mutants.”

  Kelly’s head felt as if it were going to explode. His entire body was shaking with fear.

  Magneto smiled, looking Kelly right in the eyes for the longest time. Then, without blinking, he stood, turned, and walked away.

  Suddenly Kelly’s chair moved, clearly being dragged along the ground behind Magneto by some unseen force.

  “Oh, fearing mutants is not surprising, really,” Magneto said as he walked, talking as if he and Kelly were just engaging in a normal conversation while they strolled in a forest. Only Kelly wasn’t walking.

  “As a friend has pointed out to me often,” Magneto continued, “humans have always feared what they don’t understand. True?”

  Magneto glanced back at Kelly, but Kelly stubbornly refused to give the mutant the pleasure of an answer. So Magneto went on, talking and walking, with Kelly’s chair bumping along the ground behind him.

  “And mankind has always made laws to protect itself from what it doesn’t understand. Laws like your mutant registration law.”

  “The intention of the Mutant Registration Act—”

  Magneto stopped and turned on Kelly, cutting him off in midsentence. Kelly’s chair slammed to a stop.

  “Intention?” Magneto’s eyes flashed with some sort of inner pain, and his voice rose almost to a shout. He calmed quickly. “Senator, you and I both know all about the road to hell and what it is paved with.”

  Kelly said nothing, but he didn’t look away.

  “We are not talking about intentions, Senator. We are talking about mankind. Human fear. And trust me when I tell you, it is only a matter of time before mutants will be herded into camps, studied for weaknesses, and eventually wiped off the face of the Earth.”

  Magneto pointed to the faint blue numbers tattooed into the inside of his arm. Nazi prison camp tattoos. Despite himself, Kelly was shocked.

  “Trust me, Senator. I know,” Magneto said. “I’ve seen it happen in my lifetime.”

  Kelly shook his head. There was nothing he could say. Nothing he dared say at this point.

  Magneto shrugged and turned. “Well, I’m much more giving than that. I simply want to show you, to help you understand.”

  Magneto waved his hand, and the entire area lit up. It became clear that Kelly was in a forest clearing, with towering cliff walls all around. Something stretched overhead, from cliff wall to cliff wall, enclosing the clearing, but Kelly couldn’t see what it was.

  Stonework and metal structures blende
d into the cliff walls, almost as if they had been formed there. Tunnel openings disappeared into the cliffs in a number of different places. Every line was flowing, yet everything seemed stark and oversized.

  The center of the clearing drew Kelly’s attention.

  A machine?

  A sculpture?

  Kelly wasn’t sure. The metal seemed to flow upward from a round base supporting three pillars that held up a platform forty feet in the air. On the platform sat two curved, almost tusk-shaped metal spires, arcing into the air twenty feet above, pointing at each other but not touching. It all appeared to be made of metal, and it seemed to shine under its own power.

  It was the most fantastic thing, sculpture or machine, that Kelly had ever seen.

  Magneto walked toward it, still talking. “Don’t fear God, Senator. And certainly, most certainly, don’t fear me.” Magneto laughed. Then he added, “At least not anymore.”

  “What is it you intend to do to me?” Kelly shouted at Magneto’s back.

  “Let’s just say that God works too slowly,” Magneto said as he stepped up onto the base of the sculpture.

  Suddenly Kelly realized that his first impression had been right. It wasn’t a sculpture, but instead some incredible machine.

  Magneto stood facing Kelly, his feet apart. He placed his hands on two upright posts.

  Magneto jerked as his hands seemed to be yanked solidly against the posts; then he was whisked up the center to the top of the machine, where he was locked into place under the two curving metal shapes.

  A set of metal rings rose up around Magneto, spinning slowly at first, then faster and faster.

  The air around Kelly seemed to be charged with energy; the light seemed brighter. A slight wind started to blow, swirling around Kelly.

  Everything gained in intensity as the rings moved faster and faster, forming a blur around the mutant.

  Then the air started to ripple off the machine, like waves on clear water.

  Kelly wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Energy seemed to pour from Magneto’s hands, through the post and into the rings swirling around him.

  The rings were now moving so fast that they weren’t even a blur, but instead formed a ball. The air around the machine was rippling away harder and harder. Magneto had his eyes closed. He was straining with all his might to do what he was doing.

  Then the rings began to glow.

  Dull red at first, then brighter and brighter, until they became almost a white ball around the mutant. Kelly wanted to shade his eyes, but his hands were tied. He turned his head, the headache growing again from the intense light.

  Magneto was barely visible behind the light. Nonetheless, the strain was very evident on his face.

  Where before it had been silent, now a whine came from the machine. It started to grow. The light coming off the rings vanished. Yet Kelly could still see the faint outline of the ball that showed the incredibly fast rings.

  Louder and louder the whine cut through the vast chamber.

  The sound filled the space, bounced off the cliff walls, echoed back even louder.

  The ground under Kelly’s chair was shaking.

  Then, suddenly, everything seemed to just . . . stop.

  Silence.

  Dead, heavy silence.

  Kelly was afraid to even breathe.

  Then the entire top of the machine, Magneto and all, appeared to vanish, leaving in its place a light that seemed to ooze rather than radiate, a light that filled everything around it, expanding outward.

  Liquid light, creeping and unstoppable.

  There was nothing like it in all of Kelly’s experience.

  And it was coming right at him.

  He tried to shove back as the white light reached him, then washed up and over him, crawling into his eyes, his mouth, his ears, and flooding his mind.

  He tried to scream, but the light muffled everything, filling his every pore, touching his every nerve with hot tips of agony combined with ecstasy. His senses ran through the range of everything he had ever experienced.

  First every scent he had ever smelled, from baking bread to an overused latrine. From a woman’s perfume to the smell of fear when someone faced him in the Senate.

  Then images started flashing through his mind, faster and faster, like a movie on fast forward. He was able to see everything he had ever done in his life. And then things others had done around him.

  He saw it all.

  Understood it all.

  Then he heard over again what he had said. Everything, clear and distinct, all at once. And then what people had said around him. And about him.

  He took it all in.

  The touch of old girlfriends, of soft shirts, of burning plates.

  He could feel every detail one moment, then nothing the next.

  And then, far, far quicker than it had started, it was over.

  The light just seemed to crawl back out of every pore, then vanish.

  Inside the machine, Magneto slumped, clearly exhausted by what he had done. He looked drained. Mystique ran to him and supported him as he came down and slowly walked toward Kelly.

  Kelly looked down at himself. His entire body seemed to be glowing under his clothes. His skin was glistening, almost luminescent.

  “Oh, God,” he said, crying now. “What have you done to me?”

  He wanted to push back the memory of all the sensations, all the understanding, but they wouldn’t be ignored. He knew the last few minutes could never be ignored.

  Magneto stumbled over to a place in front of Kelly and weakly smiled. “Welcome to the future, brother.”

  Chapter Ten

  X-Men Mansion

  As Rogue slept soundly nearby, the dream returned to Logan. The nightmare.

  The dream Logan knew was real. Had been real. But he could only remember the dream. And the nightmare.

  And, of course, the pain.

  Flash!

  The military lab loomed over him, crazy instruments, older-looking stuff. Bottles, machines, tanks of fluid.

  Bright lights filled the ceiling over him.

  Belts held him down, secure to the bed.

  The images were there, but never anything that could tell him where he was. What was outside the walls.

  Flash!

  He was naked. Someone in a mask had drawn on his body with blue pen, showing every branch of his skeleton. The person was a man, but Logan could see only the eyes. Cold eyes.

  Others came in as Logan fought against the belts that held him. Rubber gloves.

  Masks.

  White gowns and hats.

  Cold eyes.

  One rubber-gloved hand shoved a mask over his mouth and nose. He struggled but lost the fight.

  The air from the mask tasted metallic.

  The images swam before him.

  He could no longer fight. His body wouldn’t respond to his thoughts.

  They picked up the bed and lowered it, with him still strapped to it, into a tank of liquid.

  It sloshed around him.

  Scalpels flashed over him.

  A black figure loomed in his vision.

  The scalpels cut.

  Pain!

  And cut.

  Pain!

  And cut.

  Unbearable pain!

  Flash!

  He screamed.

  Beside him a figure loomed out of the shadows.

  He reacted. Instantly. Instinctively.

  His hands weren’t belted down as they had been in the dream. Yet he still thought he was in the nightmare.

  Snikt. His claws cut through his attacker.

  Silence.

  His scream was long gone into the walls and hallways of the mansion around him.

  He didn’t move.

  His attacker didn’t move. Logan could feel the weight of whoever it was on his claws. And he heard the gasp of pain.

  A familiar gasp.

  His nightmare-fogged mind tried to wake up, remind himself whe
re he was.

  Suddenly his door burst open. Cyclops stood frozen there for an instant until Storm and Jean shoved past him, flipping on the light.

  Logan was sitting upright in his bed. The claws from his right hand were still extended through Rogue’s shoulder and out her back.

  She was frozen on the end of his fist, standing beside his bed. He held her there, staring into her shocked eyes, not knowing if he should move or not.

  What had he done?

  Cyclops jumped to help, but Storm grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t touch her.”

  Rogue nodded, then smiled at Logan. “You were having a nightmare,” she said, her voice raspy.

  “I know,” Logan said.

  Rogue eased one arm up slowly and gently touched his face, as if he were a long-lost lover and this would be the last time she would ever see him.

  For a short moment her touch was light. Wonderful.

  Then what felt like a blast of electric current shot through his body.

  His claws instantly retracted, pulling through Rogue like a knife through butter.

  Rogue staggered back, mouth open in a silent scream. Her eyes were wide with fear, with shock, with horror.

  The electric charge stopped as suddenly as it had started, the moment her hand left the side of his face. Blackness threatened to swarm in from the sides of his mind and take him, but he shoved it back.

  Rogue stood staring at him, with Cyclops, Storm, and Jean gathered around her but not touching her. And as they all watched, her wounds healed, leaving not even the slightest scar. She stood for a moment, a stunned look on her face. Then she bolted from the room.

  His fuzzy mind wouldn’t let him understand what had just happened. He was just glad that she was okay.

  Then he couldn’t hold the blackness back any longer.

  This time he didn’t dream.

  Twenty minutes later, Storm stood in the hall as Scott came out, leaving Jean and Professor Xavier to deal with Logan. She didn’t need to be a telepath to see that Scott was angry. Deeply angry.

  He nodded to her and stalked past.

  “Scott, wait!” Storm said, moving to catch up with him.