The preacher’s audience mumbled amongst themselves, but there were none of the catcalls such an address normally drew. Amelia Voght was amazed. As one of Magneto’s inner circle of Acolytes, perhaps the closest to a confidante the new emperor of Manhattan had, even she had not expected such a reaction.
Certainly, there had been those who resisted. Hundreds of thousands, in fact. Most were in the midst of an orderly exodus from the city, across bridges and through tunnels, shepherded by Magneto’s fleet of Sentinels. Still, there had been far more incidents of looting, pillaging, mass destruction, and violence than Magneto would have liked. But Voght thought it was going remarkably well.
There had been very few individuals willing to stand up to him. Certainly the mayor and the police commissioner had been a problem, but Magneto had ordered Amelia to simply teleport them to New Jersey, and that’s what she had done. She cherished the look on the mayor’s face as he began to dematerialize.
It seemed that most New Yorkers were either so afraid that they would not leave their homes, or else they simply didn’t care. Magneto had guaranteed that, despite the changeover in sovereignty, businesses would continue to function. People would still have jobs and income, and be able to travel to the mainland when absolutely necessary. For a lot of humans, that was apparently all the reassurance they needed.
Amelia had lived in Manhattan for a time, and she thought she could see a pattern in who stayed and who went. The majority of the city’s transplants were moving out. But native New Yorkers, and the very wealthy, weren’t going anywhere. Both groups thought of the island as “their” city. Which worked fine for Magneto’s purposes. Not only had he created a sovereign state from nothing, but it had come complete with subjects.
Magneto had had them working all night. It was nearly dawn now, and things were starting to calm down. There had been an armed insurrection on the Upper West Side, and a spate of looting in the fashion and diamond districts, but the Acolytes had ended them all promptly.
Amelia was certain things would get a bit hairier once the mutants began to show up. Magneto had issued an open invitation. That meant that the immigrants to Manhattan would include mutants who truly needed a place to go, but also every lowlife loser and scum looking for a way to escape the authorities. Not to mention a place where they were guaranteed the status of feudal lords.
Things may have been going smoothly, but the plan definitely had its drawbacks. Still, when it came down to it, Amelia had to admit Magneto had scored a huge victory for mutantkind. There had been a time, in her younger days, when Amelia Voght took Charles Xavier as her lover. Xavier was the founder of the X-Men. He was both Magneto’s oldest friend and his greatest enemy. The two men were on opposite sides of a war with the same goal: peace. Magneto felt that it could only be achieved if mutants ruled humanity. Xavier felt the two human races could live in harmony.
Even though she long ago left her feelings for Xavier behind, and despite that she had become one of Magneto’s Acolytes, Amelia had often wondered if either man was correct. Now, it seemed, the truth had come to light. Magneto was right all along. He’d won.
A low buzz like the distant shaking of a tambourine filled her ears, and Amelia looked over her left shoulder to see the shimmering holographic image of Scanner, a fellow Acolyte, appear behind her. Humans spread out, in fear of some attack, but Amelia raised her arms to calm them.
“Please, citizens, relax. You have nothing to fear,” she said. “I am Voght, and this is Scanner. We are Acolytes of Magneto. Go about your business and you will not be harmed.”
Amelia did not fail to register the terror that filled so many of the faces around her, but the humans did as they were instructed. For the majority of them, that was how it had always been. They merely answered to a different authority now.
“Scanner,” she snapped. “You frightened these people. What do you want?”
“My apologies, Amelia,” Scanner’s image responded. “There is a disturbance on Fifth Avenue at Central Park South. Lord Magneto has asked that you meet Senyaka there and attend to it.”
“It will be done,” Amelia responded formally.
As Scanner’s image disappeared, leaving bright spots on her retina, Amelia sighed. Perhaps, she mused, she had been hasty in her optimism. After all, it would take quite some time to convince hardened criminals and opinionated cynics alike that there was no place in the new world for disobedience. Magneto’s word was law, and the Acolytes were his punishing hand.
In a brilliant flash, Amelia disappeared from Washington Square. Her teleportation was the duration of an eyeblink, and when it was through she was standing on Fifth Avenue in front of the Trump Towers, just south of Central Park.
Smoke and flames shot high into the sky up ahead. The looters were everywhere. And why not? Fifth Avenue had all the most expensive stores, the best that Manhattan had to offer. Jewelry, fashion, furs. Yet, as Amelia walked further north, the looters ignoring her in their ecstatic frenzy, she realized what was burning. A toy store. Who, she wondered, would want to burn a toy store?
A large crowd of humans had gathered in front of the burning store, and in the flickering firelight, even from two blocks away, she could see the fervor on their faces. Several of them were armed, and some actually had torches! Amelia almost laughed, thinking about the terrified villagers in the first Frankenstein movie.
Then she saw Senyaka. Her fellow Acolyte was doing his best to keep the crowd at bay, cracking his psionic energy whip at them like a lion tamer. But he wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long. Not against those numbers. Not if bullets started to fly.
“This is our city, mutie!” one man yelled, as he tossed an orange metal mesh city trash can in Senyaka’s direction.
“We don’t want you here, mutant scum!” another man shouted. “Your kind got no place in a human city. An’ we ain’t takin’ orders from your murderin’ boss, Magneto, neither!”
The man, a brawny thug with too much belly and not enough brains, was about to launch into a further tirade when Senyaka stepped forward and lashed his whip around the man’s throat.
“Back, human dog!” Senyaka screamed, even as the man choked and tried to pull the whip from his searing flesh. The man fell to the ground, and though they could have pressed an attack then, the crowd was too appalled by the agony of their comrade to move. In seconds, the man was dead.
Amelia had never been taken by the near-religious fervor with which the other Acolytes followed Magneto. And so she could not withhold a shudder as the man expired. Needless death had always disturbed her.
“You flatscans had better learn to live under mutant rule, or you will die under it!” Senyaka declared, and lifted his whip as an invitation to further challenge.
It should have ended there, with Amelia just to one side of the crowd, unobtrusive in the night. But this was New York, a city whose people were known around the world for their hostility. Amelia had never believed it was worse in that respect than any other city, but there was no questioning the fury of the gathered crowd. The taunts had ended. In angry silence, they advanced upon Senyaka. Then, finally, one young woman snarled, “C’mon, guys, he can’t take us all.”
Even as the crowd surged forward, Amelia ’ported the few feet to Senyaka’s side.
“Enough!” she commanded, and her sudden appearance was enough to startle the crowd to a momentary stop.
“Another mutie!” someone yelled.
“So? We can take her down, too! We gotta take ’em all down!”
“Your arrival is well timed, Amelia,” Senyaka said, his expression hidden behind the linen cowl that covered his face. Still, she thought he meant it. Unusual, for one so proud.
“I try,” she said quietly, then turned to the crowd. “Apparently, many of you have failed to grasp your new situation as citizens of the new sovereign state of Manhattan,” she announced. “Perhaps you feel that because the Sentinels patrol the shores of this island, and Magneto can only be in one p
lace at a time, that you are still free to do as you please.
“You are wrong.”
“Mutie freak!” a man screamed, then jumped into a crouch, pistol leveled at Amelia and Senyaka.
Before either of them could move, he squeezed off several rounds. Her reaction was immediate and instinctive, self-preservation skills she had honed over years as the object of humanity’s hatred. Without conscious thought, Amelia teleported the bullets away, then brought them back headed in the opposite direction. The gunman did a little three-step jig as his own bullets caught him in the chest and abdomen.
The crowd gasped in horror and astonishment, and drew more tightly together, an unconscious defense mechanism.
“You’re nothing but monsters!” the same young woman shouted. “This is our city, and we don’t want your kind here.”
“Your city, is it?” Amelia said acidly. “It’s so nice to see how well you take care of what is yours.”
With the fire, and the looting, all around them, Amelia was still uncertain if the people would understand the irony of the situation. She did not regret the death of the gunman. That, after all, had been self defense. But if they did not disperse immediately, she knew she would have to do something that she would regret.
“Return to your homes,” Amelia said loudly. “If you wish to leave, pack your things and go. There is still time. If you want to stay, you must live by Magneto’s law. For as of now, there is no other.”
“We’re not going anywhere, bitch,” the young woman said, then stepped to the fore of the crowd and produced a long knife from within the folds of her knee length leather jacket.
“That will do,” Amelia said, exasperated. They could not play at this all night. She had no choice.
Amelia lifted her right hand and made a gesture which helped focus her mind. The young woman dematerialized instantly, her knife clattering to the pavement. Someone in the crowd whispered a prayer.
“Bring her back, mutie,” a wiry dark-skinned man said ominously. “Bring her back or you’re dead.”
“If you could have killed me,” Amelia responded, “I’m quite sure you would have done so already. But, you wish me to bring back the shrill harpy who was standing here threatening me with a blade? Indeed, if that is your wish, I will be happy to oblige.
“Look up, if you will,” Amelia said, and pointed to a spot in the sky.
At first, though she knew precisely what she was doing, even Amelia could not see through the blanket of darkness that hung over the city. Then the woman started screaming, several hundred feet above them. It was easy to spot her after that, plummeting through the air, firelight flickering off her black leather jacket, and her pale, terrified face. She screamed all the way down, and when she struck the pavement, nobody looked. Not even Senyaka.
But Amelia watched. It was her doing. Her responsibility. She would have to live with what she had done. Though she knew that her cause was just, and that this one death might save dozens of other lives, it would haunt her. Killing always did.
“Now,” she said to the silenced crowd. “You can disperse immediately, and return to your homes, or I can do precisely the same thing to you. And if you doubt my ability to teleport you all simultaneously, I would be more than happy to prove you wrong.”
Amid muttered curses, prayers, fearful glances, and vows of vengeance, the humans began to slowly drift away. They watched her carefully as they departed, and she watched them back. Though it was there in her heart, Amelia showed them no remorse. She needed them to know that she would kill them if she had to, and feel nothing for their deaths. It was a useful deceit.
“A masterful peformance,” a soft voice said above her, and Amelia looked up to see their master, Magneto, hovering in the air, regal in his crimson and magenta uniform.
“Lord Magneto,” Senyaka said with hushed reverence, and fell to his knees. “I live to serve you.”
“Yes,” Magneto said, as he lowered himself to the ground beside them. “Yes, you do.
“I was almost frightened myself, Amelia,” Magneto said, turning to her with a smile. Amelia was pleased with the warmth that existed between them, but knew that such special attentions would not endear her to the other Acolytes. Senyaka was spiteful, and was certain to report Magneto’s preferential treatment of Amelia to the others. Still, there was nothing she could do about it. And they would not dare to harm her, knowing that she was “teacher’s pet.”
“Come,” Magneto commanded. “There are other fires to put out before dawn breaks on the Mutant Empire.”
“Where would you like me to transport us, Lord?” she asked.
Amelia looked into Magneto’s face, awaiting his response, but then his manner changed. His smile at first disappeared, and then returned, brighter than ever.
“Well!” he exclaimed. “It appears that not all the humans were frightened away by your performance after all.”
Amelia and Senyaka both spun to see what Magneto was referring to. Amelia thought she had seen it all, believed that she had witnessed the limits of human audacity. But at that moment, those limits were redrawn in her mind. For there, at the edge of the park, stood a human news crew, camera and all, recording all of the events that had just occurred, and were even now occurring.
Incredibly, Magneto was elated. For some reason, that bothered Amelia more than his anger.
* * *
“THIS is Annelise Dwyer at the CNN newsdesk. If you’re just joining us, we’re continuing live, uninterrupted coverage of the Crisis in Manhattan. Several hours ago, a band of mutant terrorists led by Eric Magnus Lehnsherr, known and feared throughout the world as Magneto, infiltrated and attacked New York, using robots known as Sentinels, to conquer Manhattan. Magneto has declared the city a safe haven for mutants, and a sovereign state with himself in place as ruler.
“This is not the first time that Sentinels have flown over the skies of Manhattan, but it is the first time they have been on the side of mutants. First created by Dr. Bolivar Trask, the Sentinels were mandated to combat the so-called mutant menace. However, Magneto has apparently reprogrammed these Sentinels to serve mutants rather than hunt them. Some CNN sources have suggested that these new Sentinels were created by the U.S. government, but so far, Washington denies any knowledge of the robots.
“According to official sources, half a million people have already fled Manhattan on foot, and more are pouring through every tunnel and over every bridge as we speak. We take you now, live, to Jersey City at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, where Steve Williams has recent footage of this mass exodus, and an interview with the governor of New York, in just a moment. First, though, Steve, tell us about this exodus. What are people saying? Are their friends and families trapped in Manhattan, or have they stayed by choice?”
* * *
ON the TV screen, thousands of people fled in terror from the Holland Tunnel. The reporter discussed concerns about the safety of people walking through tunnels and PATH underground train railways as well. He reported on the taking of hostages, the anti-mutant backlash, and the fact that, already, various mutants had been seen flying or levitating over the river to get into the city, to accept Magneto’s offer of sanctuary.
Wolverine sat in the darkened den, the flickering TV screen all the light available, and more than he needed to see the room in perfect detail. His eyes were slitted, brows knitted together, and his lips curled back in a low, unconscious growl. He was getting itchy.
He’d been screwed by the system dozens of times. His mind had been sifted and fried so often that he still had a hard time separating the real memories from the implanted ones. And there was so much he had forgotten, so much he’d been made to forget. Nearly every time Wolverine had worked within the system, he’d been betrayed. It chewed people up and spit them out, or made them its own. He’d lost friends to it. Not their lives, though he’d lost plenty that way as well. No, he’d lost them to its philosophies, its twisted malice.
There was no love in Wolve
rine’s heart for government or authority. He was a loner by nature, answering to none but himself. But then, what was that old saying, “We get the government we deserve?” True. People, at least in America, voted for their government. They had the ability to do something to remove those they did not approve of. Free will, freedom of choice, freedom period, that’s what Wolverine believed in. For better or worse.
But in Manhattan, Magneto had taken that away. Wolverine understood why. Sometimes he wished he didn’t. He understood the frustration when Charles Xavier’s dream of harmony between humans and mutants seemed so far away as to be almost impossible. He understood better than most what it was like to be hounded for what you were. But Magneto was doing the exact same thing, with the tables turned.
Magneto had gone way overboard, this time. It was too much. Not only had he taken away the rights of the people in Manhattan, but the rights of everyone they cared for, of the entire nation, the world. Wolverine didn’t care one whit for the businesses that would suffer because of his actions, but the people, that was different.
While their lord was not known for wanton killing, the Acolytes had established a reputation as murderers. There was no telling how many people had already died in this “occupation.” And there would be more. Follow Magneto’s law, or else. That was clearly the message. While it was a swift brand of justice that seemed almost admirable in light of the recent failings of the U.S. court system, it was simply wrong.
With one fell swoop, Magneto had placed himself as some medieval king over Manhattan island, allowed some of the cruelest mutants alive to take the place of feudal lords, and relegated every human to the status of peasantry.
Wolverine hated the system, but what Magneto had done in New York was infinitely worse. As he watched the terrified faces that filled the TV screen, the growl deep in his throat became louder, the itch in his soul to go to the city and take it back grew almost uncontainable.
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