Marvel Classic Novels--X-Men

by Christopher Golden

  Frowning in confusion, she turned slowly to see Cargil, wide awake, standing with one hand clutching Kevin’s throat, and the other wrapped firmly around Caroline’s neck.

  * * *

  THE first sounds of large-weapons fire had stunned them all. So much for our window, Cyclops had thought. The clock was no longer ticking on their mission, it had stopped. They were working within that silent moment between the last second ticking away, and the explosion that would end it all. In this case, maybe literally.

  Even if they found and defeated Magneto, he had thought as the sound of far-off explosions increased in frequency, it all still depended upon Gambit, Archangel, and Cooper taking the Sentinels out of play.

  That had been several minutes ago. The sounds of battle and destruction continued, but Cyclops ignored them now, concentrating only on the goal at hand. He stood in the recessed doorway of a deli on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street. Across the street, Jean and Rogue hugged the front of a discount music store. The Juggernaut was barely concealed by a massive brown box that would have been a newsstand if its owner hadn’t fled in the great Manhattan exodus.

  The Juggernaut. It was still difficult for Scott to deal with the fact that they were working with one of their greatest enemies. But he reminded himself of what Cain Marko had said earlier. He was a career criminal, not some menace looking to take over the world. The Juggernaut had just as much of a stake in stopping Magneto as any of them. After all, he wasn’t a mutant.

  With a rapid gesture, Cyclops signaled for Rogue to take to the air. He flattened out his hand so she knew to fly close to the tops of buildings.

  Now you, Jean, he thought, certain that the psychic rapport they shared would carry the words to her. Time to cross the street.

  Cyclops smiled. The situation was as tense and dangerous as any he had ever found himself in, but he was not beyond being amused when the idea of crossing the street became ominous. As they neared the Empire State Building, the atmosphere among them, even the air around them, seemed weighted with the expectation of conflict, of consequence, of death.

  The smile disappeared from Scott’s face.

  Jean sprinted across the street. Scott wanted to watch her move, watch her lithe form, wrapped in the snug, practical combat uniform they all wore some version of. But the time for such luxuries was past. He poked his head out from the doorway and glanced around for any sign of attack, any hint of the enemy. Like the laser sighting on many modern weapons, anything Cyclops laid eyes upon was a potential target.

  No targets, though. Not this time.

  He signaled Juggernaut, and the two of them moved out together, taking it slow and hugging the opposite sides of the street. Cyclops didn’t figure they had much chance of sneaking in and breaking out the other X-Men. But it would have been foolish to just charge down the street. It was impossible to predict what they might find when they reached the building. There might be a way in other than the lobby, or they might be able to bluff their way in, using Jean’s telepathy as a mask.

  No real plan could be instituted until he had seen the building’s setup.

  Jean moved ahead, with the Juggernaut close behind, and Scott watched them both and monitored his own surroundings. He sped across the street and they all continued up Sixth Avenue. It wouldn’t be long now, he thought.

  Scott, we’ve got—Jean’s telepathic voice filled his head. “Cyclops, hang back!” Rogue’s voice came over the comm-link. “It’s an—”

  —company!

  “—ambush!”

  “Hell, it’s about time,” the Juggernaut cried joyously from across the street. “This sneakin’ around crap was gettin’ real old real fast!”

  Hairbag and Slab came around the corner of Thirty-first Street. They weren’t alone. Cowards they might have been, and none too bright. But in some ways, they were far from stupid. At least a dozen other people backed them up, male and female. Mutants, obviously. Most of them looked relatively normal, but there were two figures so gone over into the feral stage common to many mutants that they could no longer stand upright. A strikingly tall woman with tentacles growing out of her face and a dark-skinned man with a massive, scorpionlike tail in back were other standouts.

  Then there was the big guy. Forty feet high if he was an inch.

  “They call me Humongous!” he bellowed, shattering every window for half a block. “Surrender now, or I’m going to have to crush you.”

  NINE

  “BOY, are you flatscans dumb,” Cargil sneered, then tossed Kevin and Caroline to the floor in a tumble of limbs. “You didn’t think I’d hear the ding of the elevator arriving on this floor?”

  “You weren’t asleep?” Trish asked, still confused.

  “Are you dense?” Cargil snapped. “I heard the elevator. I pretended to be sleeping.”

  She spun on Caroline, who lay on the floor, eyes slitted in concentration as she stared at Cargil.

  “You stop that, girl,” Cargil snapped. “I know you’re that little sleep-witch, but if you don’t quit playing sandman with me, I’m going to have to kill you just to stay awake.”

  Caroline looked at Trish, then at Kevin. Her eyes opened, her face relaxed, and she began to rise to her feet. She had not abandoned them, at least not as far as Trish could tell. But she wasn’t going to throw her life away either.

  “Sorry, Kevin,” Caroline said. “I did my best.”

  “We’ll be okay, hon,” Kevin answered. “Don’t worry.”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to make any promises, flatscan,” Cargil said. “I’m just trying to figure out what to do with the three of you.”

  “Let them go, Joanna,” the Beast said. “They’ve done nothing, really. It’s not as if they have a chance of defeating you. Just let them leave.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Cargil said. “I’ll have to think of something just a little better than that.”

  “I have an idea,” Kevin said happily. “Why don’t you bleed!”

  He leaped at Cargil and landed a solid kick to her face. Then he fell on his butt.

  Cargil had barely flinched. Trish knew the woman had scarcely felt Kevin’s attack, and a more even-tempered person might have simply ignored it. Or laughed. Nobody had ever accused Joanna Cargil of being even tempered.

  “Well, I guess that decides that,” she growled. “I’m just going to have to kill you.”

  “Don’t do it, Frenzy!” Storm spoke up, and Cargil turned to stare at her. It occurred to Trish that the women were polar opposites, Cargil a twisted mirror image of the nobility and purity of Storm’s African features. But Cargil was twisted, by hate and rage and lust for murder and power. She was Hyde to Storm’s Jekyll.

  “Back off, Cargil, or I’ll spill your guts all over the floor as soon as we’re down from here!” Wolverine warned.

  Bishop remained silent, his eyes revealing him to have been a witness to far too many hopeless conflicts.

  Kevin hopped to his feet and into a kickboxing stance. Trish knew he’d done a little kickboxing, but wasn’t sure how good he was. One thing she was certain of, though. Not good enough.

  “Go release the X-Men, Trish,” Kevin said.

  “I’m not leaving you,” she said.

  “Neither am I,” Caroline added, moving closer to him.

  With a flurry of blows to the face and body, Kevin did the best he could to slow Cargil down. Caroline frowned again, trying despite Cargil’s threats to force the muscular black woman to sleep. They had nothing left to lose, Trish knew. Caroline obviously knew it too.

  Kevin threw a haymaker with a lot of power behind it. Cargil blocked it with the side of her hand. She reached in, grabbed him by the throat again, and snapped his neck with a crack so loud it echoed off the tile floor.

  “Kevin!” Caroline and Trish screamed in unison.

  “Cargil, no!” Storm shouted, and all four X-Men pulled at their restraints.

  “And as for you!” Cargil shouted, turning on Caroline. �
��First you sell out the emperor to a weakling flatscan genetrash loser, then you actually try to use your teeny tiny power on me?”

  “Oh, my God …” Trish said, in a small voice choked with tears and heartache. She and Kevin hadn’t been the best of friends, but friends they had been. He had been there because of her, and she felt more than a bit responsible for his death.

  She lifted the chair Cargil had been sitting on. Cargil shoved Caroline hard against the wall. Trish shattered the wooden chair on Cargil’s head. The Acolyte’s head swung around as if she were some kind of mechanical thing.

  “Don’t worry,” she hissed, glaring at Trish. “You’re next.” “No!” Trish shouted. “Please, don’t—”

  Caroline’s spine shattered under Joanna Cargil’s blows. The life went out of her eyes. Trish couldn’t help but think of the ancient TV in her parents’ home, and the way the old picture tube seemed to fade away before winking out for good.

  The X-Men shouted, screamed for Cargil’s attention, trying desperately to distract her. They all cursed her for the cold-blooded murders they had just witnessed. Wolverine and the Beast strained against their bonds. Either of them could easily have ripped the restraints from the wall if their mutant abilities had not been inhibited.

  Then Cargil turned toward Trish.

  “You’re not running,” she said. “Why aren’t you running, flatscan? I know you’re afraid.”

  Trish said nothing. Her mind was too numb to reply, body too frightened to move.

  “Oh, man,” someone said softly, just at the end of the hall. “Well, well, well, a challenge, finally,” Cargil said, looking toward the source of the voice.

  Iceman.

  “Good God, Frenzy, what have you done?” Bobby Drake said.

  A lunatic would have laughed, then, grinned and kept on trying to kill. Cargil didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile. She took a deep breath, shrugged her shoulders with some semblance of regret.

  “They pissed me off,” she said. “Couldn’t be helped.”

  She wasn’t insane. She had killed Kevin and Caroline with full knowledge of her actions, the murders nothing more than petty, immature revenge, committed for lack of a better idea what to do with three unwanted visitors.

  Insanity would have made it so much easier to take. Or at least, that’s what Trish thought. That she’d done it out of malevolence and immaturity, that was worse. But Iceman had come, to stop Cargil from a third murder. Trish’s heart cried out in glee that she was saved, but in the part of her mind where guilt lay waiting, she couldn’t shake the idea that it wasn’t right. That it was her fault the others were dead, and it wasn’t fair that Iceman should have come in time to save her, but too late for them.

  “Take her down hard, Drake!” Wolverine growled down the hall.

  “Trish!” Bobby yelled. “Move!”

  Then there was no more time for regrets. Cargil was reaching for her, hoping, more than likely, to use her as a hostage. Which would be a major handicap for Iceman. Even if he had been the kind of person who would ignore a life in jeopardy, he and Trish knew each other. She and Hank had double-dated with Bobby and several of his girlfriends.

  They were friends. She couldn’t compromise the fight, she had to get out of the way.

  She wasn’t fast enough. Cargil snagged her by the hair and started to pull her back.

  “No!” Iceman shouted. “No more, you crazy—”

  Trish felt cold on the back of her neck, then heard a crackling noise and fell free of Cargil’s grip, sprawling to the floor. She scrambled to turn around, to back away. When she looked at Iceman and Cargil, when she understood what had happened, she stopped moving and just stared.

  She blinked, then reached around to the back of her head to feel the ragged, ice-flecked edges of the hair that Cargil had clutched. Bobby had frozen Trish’s hair on her head, supercooled it to such a low temperature that it had simply shattered in Cargil’s grip.

  “Trish, you okay?” Bobby asked.

  Trish nodded. Iceman turned back to Cargil, who was encased in a block of ice so thick it barely left room to pass by her in the doorway. Only Cargil’s head was free, and she was cussing loud and long.

  “Shut up,” Iceman snapped. “I don’t know what happened to you, Joanna. You were never this bloodthirsty before.”

  “I was never in a war before,” Cargil snapped. “You got lucky, Drake. Your problem is, you’re not willing to finish it. There will always be a next time, and next time I see you, there won’t be any flinching. You’re already dead, Iceman. You just don’t know it yet.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard it before,” Iceman said.

  Trish waited for the characteristic sarcasm, one of the jokes that invariably found its way out of Bobby’s mouth. It never came. He took her by the hand, and led her quietly down to where the X-Men were being held.

  They looked at one another, all of them: Trish Tilby, Iceman, Storm, Beast, Bishop, and Wolverine. They spoke quietly, gravely, among themselves. They were pleased to know that Bobby was still alive. There was none of the telltale levity that was usually so common, particularly between Iceman and the Beast.

  Rather than waste time attempting to figure out how the power-dampening shackles worked, Iceman simply froze the mechanisms, rendering them brittle and useless. All four were then able to free themselves with simple flicks of the wrists and ankles.

  As they walked out, Wolverine glared at Cargil, began to walk toward her, but Storm held him back with a hand.

  “Not a word,” Bishop snarled at her as they left.

  Wisely, she remained silent.

  Trish whimpered as she stepped past the bodies of her friends.

  “God, I’m so sorry,” she said quietly, but she wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for not having prevented their deaths, or for having remained alive.

  A strong hand landed on her shoulder, and then the Beast pulled her close to him. They walked side by side, his blue-furred arm hugging her tightly to him, warm and safe.

  “You did what you could,” Hank McCoy said. “You did everything you could, Trish.”

  “I couldn’t save them,” she said softly.

  “No,” Wolverine said, the ferocity in his voice startling. “But we can go out and make sure that it ends here, that nobody else dies on some maniac’s whim.”

  “I’ve got your back, Logan,” Bishop said gravely.

  “No quarter, X-Men,” Storm commanded. “Eliminate any resistance hard and fast, and don’t forget our main objective. Magneto must be defeated.”

  * * *

  THE summer day had moved on, the shadows lengthening into that long stretch of waning sunlight called late afternoon. The canyons of the city were already plunged into shadow where the buildings were the tallest. It being summer, night was still a long way off, but those shadows were a warning that it was on the way.

  With a nervous glance from side to side, Gabriela Frigerio hurried across the street with her brother Michael and the group she’d come to think of as the inner circle of the resistance: Lamarre, Steve, Joyce, and their de facto leader, Miguelito.

  “I don’t know about this,” Joyce said, her usually radiant face eclipsed with concern. “I mean, how do we know we can trust these people? Isn’t it better to stay in the underground, get more organized, before making a move?”

  “Yeah,” Steve agreed. He was her husband, however, so his support wasn’t particularly persuasive.

  “That sounds good, lady,” Lamarre said, “but it won’t work. You don’t get it. We’ve got to make the stand now, before Magneto gets any stronger than he is.”

  “Lamarre is right,” Miguelito said.

  He was short enough that they all had to look down to pay attention.

  “Magneto is at war now,” Miguelito continued. “If the government wins, great, we’re all set. But if they lose, it will be over for us, no matter how hard we fight. No, the best time to take a stand is now, when Magneto won’t have much time or firepower to
dedicate to us.

  “We’ve got hundreds of people waiting for the word, and there are probably thousands of others who will respond if we just set an example for them,” Miguelito said.

  “Thousands?” Gabi asked.

  Miguelito smiled, shrugged. “One can hope,” he said. “Hope isn’t going to keep us alive,” Michael mumbled. They all looked at him, Gabriela in particular. Just as they had to look down to meet Miguelito’s eyes, they had to look up to see Michael’s. He was six foot six, at the least, and rarely said a single word.

  “Actually, Michael, I disagree,” Gabriela said. “I think hope will keep us alive. I think it already has. It’s all we’re running on, right now. We may not be capable of taking this city back from Magneto on our own, but we can certainly make things more difficult for him. We can make absolutely certain that the human population of this city does not cooperate with him.”

  “We don’t even have to do it for long,” Lamarre added. “Much as I hate to rely on any mutie for help, we know the X-Men are going to be moving in on Magneto at any time. As long as we—”

  “My God!” Joyce shouted. “Don’t any of you hear the bombs falling? Don’t you hear the war? We shouldn’t be out here at all, we’re not ready for this.”

  For a moment, nobody responded. Steve tried to pull Joyce into a comforting embrace, but she brushed him away. Lamarre started to say something, but Miguelito hushed him.

  “Do we hear the war?” he asked rhetorically. “Of course we do. But I’m not willing to let somebody else fight it for me, to let someone destroy my city in order to save it. You want to go back into the subways and take charge of feeding people and giving medical attention, get all that organized, that’s okay with me. Nobody is going to think any less of you.”

  Her eyes widened, and Joyce looked around the group. Finally, she nodded.

  “Let’s go,” she said, pulling Steve after her.

  He offered an apologetic glance, but Gabriela thought he seemed more than a little relieved. The man had probably been as frightened as his wife, but she had voiced her fear, risked condemnation and accusations of cowardice. Gabi wondered if that made Joyce any more courageous than her husband. She kind of thought that it did.