by Stuart Moore
* * *
ORORO WENT quiet for a moment. Kitty sipped her drink and frowned, trying to figure out what to say.
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Jean was the most…” Ororo paused, wiped a tear from her eye. “The most alive person I have ever known. She died once before, and—I believe—literally forced herself back to life. We all believed she would be with us forever.”
“She sounds like… like somebody you’d want to know.”
“She was the best of us. But she is gone.” Ororo turned her intense gaze on Kitty. “And now we seek new recruits.”
“Recruits…” A thrill ran through her, half excitement and half alarm. “You mean new X-Men?”
“Students, to begin with. Mutants who seek training, instruction in the use of their abilities. Eventually, perhaps, X-Men as well.”
“You… you’re Storm, aren’t you? And that’s Wolverine, with the lousy attitude.”
Ororo nodded.
“I don’t recognize the big guy,” Kitty said.
“He is Colossus.” Ororo smiled. “But I think he’d prefer you to call him Peter.”
Again, Kitty blushed.
“Peter is young,” Storm continued. “He is not accustomed to losing teammates, and has taken Jean’s death hard.”
Over by the counter, a young clerk was asking Logan about the juice bottle in his hand. As Peter watched, grimacing, a single claw shot out of Logan’s hand, making a snikt sound, and pierced the plastic bottle. He held the bottle up to his mouth, drinking through the newly created claw-hole.
The clerk backed off, eyes wide.
“But the one I worry about is Logan—Wolverine,” Storm said. “At the best of times, his temper threatens to consume him. Now he seems to be inviting violence at every opportunity.”
“Hang on a minute.” Kitty held up a hand. “Before… you said you were looking for mutants.”
“Yes. Like ourselves.”
“So you think I’m a…?”
“Are you?”
Kitty looked away.
“We have methods of detecting the emergence of mutants, Kitty. A machine called Cerebro, which alerts us when a young person’s powers begin to manifest. Your actions recently triggered such an alarm.”
Kitty swallowed nervously. She remembered the odd sensation of falling through wood and plaster, one floor after another, through the walls and ceilings of Deerfield High.
“However,” Storm continued, “Cerebro was constructed by our founder, Professor Xavier. He is currently off-world—”
“Off-world?”
“It is a long story.” Storm smiled. “The point is, only the Professor’s mind is capable of linking fully with Cerebro. The rest of us… well, the process can lead to errors.” She leaned forward, took Kitty’s hand in hers. “So I ask you again. Do you believe you are a mutant?”
Kitty’s mind raced. The X-Men were heroes who’d saved the world a dozen times, but people still distrusted them—hated and feared them because they were different. No, not just because they were different. Because they embraced that difference.
And why shouldn’t they? Mutants could do amazing things. Fly, read minds, lift buildings. If Kitty really was one of them— if her abilities could help people in need, contribute to the advancement of humanity—why on Earth would she want to hide that? To pretend to be less than she was?
Even as she framed the questions, she knew the answers. Because of people like Robin. She and Kitty had been best friends for years. They’d gone to dance classes together, built homebrew computers from kits, stayed up all night gaming more times than Kitty could count. There was no one in the world who knew her better. But it had only taken one display to erase that friendship forever.
“Storm…” Kitty began, not knowing what she was going to say next. She felt a sudden urge to disappear, to run away and forget she’d ever heard the word mutant.
The back wall exploded.
CHAPTER FOUR
KITTY LEAPT to her feet, shielding her eyes from a fusillade of glass and metal. Before she knew what was happening, Storm’s arm had slammed across her chest, pushing her back from the table.
Three huge men stood in a giant hole that led to the back parking lot. At least, she assumed they were men—they might have been robots. Their bodies were entirely covered in thick red metallic armor. Each of them held an identical high-tech weapon, like a cross between a dueling staff and a laser gun.
The coffee-shop patrons took one look at them and fled, almost trampling each other on their way out the front door. The hipster clerk just stared. A china mug slipped from his grip and shattered on the floor.
One of the armored men stepped forward. “Targets acquired,” he said in a heavily filtered voice. “We’ve found the X-Men.”
Logan moved toward them. He held up both fists and unsheathed his claws.
“Sure have,” he said.
“Kitty,” Ororo said, motioning her away. “Leave this to us.”
She looked from Storm to the armored men. One of them raised his weapon, aiming it at the table.
“Go!” Storm said.
Kitty broke and ran. She skirted a round table, heading for the side of the shop. When she reached the wall, she stopped, turned to look back—
—and gasped.
Peter, the young X-Man, had positioned his body between his teammates and the attackers. As Kitty watched, his entire form swelled, growing even more massive. His skin shimmered and glistened as every inch of it turned to solid, gleaming metal.
Fire erupted from the armored man’s staff. Kitty’s breath caught in her throat, but the X-Man’s steel body blocked the flame, shielding Storm and Wolverine from its searing heat.
They really are mutants, Kitty realized. They’re used to this— using their powers in combat, facing incredibly powerful enemies. Risking their lives.
They’re used to it.
I’m not.
Concentrating, she turned and ran—straight through the side wall. Phasing through solid objects had become easier these past few days. Her head barely throbbed at all. She found herself in a narrow storeroom piled high with T-shirts and canvas bags filled with coffee beans.
I’m not running away, she told herself. I’m not. I’m just going to get help!
On impulse, she turned and charged toward the back of the store. She phased through the wall, emerging into the parking lot right next to the gaping hole the attackers had blasted into the building. Pieces of wood and plaster lay strewn across the pavement, littering an unoccupied loading zone. A clash of alarms blared out from the nearby stores.
A strange black vehicle the size of a minibus floated just off the ground a few feet away. It looked like a cross between a hovercraft and a manta ray, and it bore a stylized “H” logo with a pitchfork design. Armed men—more of them—poured out of the vehicle. They wore Kevlar body armor, with eerie blank-faced masks bisected down the middle. They drew hand lasers and ran toward the now-exposed coffee shop.
Before the men could spot her, Kitty ducked back through the wall into the storeroom. From there she could hear the sound of laser blasts and tables crashing in the adjacent room.
What am I doing? she thought. I’m not an X-Man—but I can’t just abandon them, either!
She crept up to the side wall, allowing her power to build slowly inside her. Then she crouched down and pushed her head through the wall, back into the main seating area of the coffee shop. The first thing she saw was the man with the flamethrower. He’d backed Peter—Colossus—up against the wall, pushing the flaming tip of his weapon closer and closer to Peter’s face. The X-Man’s steel skin remained untouched, but the expression on his face showed he wasn’t invulnerable to pain.
A flash of steel caught Kitty’s eye—Wolverine’s claws. He was slashing, leaping, running faster than she’d ever seen a person move. Sweeping a single deadly claw through the air, he forced another of the red-armored men to back away.
“Don’t know who you fellas are,” Wolverine said, “and frankly, I don’t care. Right now I just feel like killin’ something.” He unsheathed the rest of his claws and jabbed forward, straight toward the man’s chest. The gleaming metal blades seemed to slow and stop, skittering off some invisible barrier in a shower of sparks.
“Logan!” Storm called. “He is protected by some sort of force field.”
The man lunged forward, his staff catching Wolverine hard on the chin. The hairy X-Man grunted and fell to the ground, then scrambled back to his feet.
Across the room, Storm faced off against the third attacker, keeping a table between them. As he took a step forward, she raised a hand; a gale-force blast of wind appeared from nowhere, flipping the table into the air and slamming it into the armored man’s chest. He grunted, lurched back, and swept aside the table with a swipe of his gauntlet.
Kitty watched in a state of shock. She’d seen super hero battles on the news, read accounts of these fierce, rapid-fire exchanges of power—but she’d never witnessed one in person. The X-Men really were more than human.
Am I like that? she thought. Will I have to fight for my life, too?
Storm turned toward the hole in the wall, her eyes strobing from yellow to white. Outside, the sky turned dark. Lightning flashed.
“Ororo!” Wolverine yelled.
Storm ignored him, reaching out to summon the lightning. A jagged bolt lanced down, arcing through the hole in the wall to engulf her attacker in a burst of light. The armored man stood perfectly still as the electrical corona around him glowed bright, then faded. He shook his head, brushed a hand against his shoulder—then he continued forward, unharmed.
“Listen up,” Wolverine said. “Each of these clowns seems equipped to counter our specific powers.”
“So I see,” Storm said, eyeing the man moving toward her. “Your recommendation?”
Logan leaped up, grabbed hold of a hanging light fixture, and swung toward Storm’s opponent.
“Let’s switch,” he said.
Storm glanced at Colossus, who still stood backed up against the wall by the third armored man. She caught Peter’s eye for a moment, then spread her arms and flew—flew!—toward him, knocking the armored man off his feet with a savage blast of wind. The man’s weapon pinwheeled through the air, trailing a gout of flame. She gestured, creating a sudden, localized rainfall to douse the fire.
Wolverine had landed on the back of Storm’s first opponent. The attacker lurched and swung his arms, but Logan held on tight, raising a fist and slashing his claws deep into the man’s armor. The man cried out and dropped to the floor.
A pool of blood spread slowly from the man’s unmoving body. Kitty stared at it in shock. I’m gonna be sick…
Across the room, Colossus’s steel fist slammed down on the last opponent’s head. The armored man’s force field stopped the blow short of his helmet, but the impact was heavy enough to knock him out. He struck the floor with a metallic CLANG.
“Sweet dreams, tovarisch,” Peter said.
All at once, it was over. The three attackers lay unmoving in the remains of the coffee shop. Tables were overturned; coffee stained the floor, pooling in dark brown puddles. Storm moved toward Wolverine, who waved her off.
“I’m good,” he said. “Barely worked up a sweat.”
“I sweated a bit,” Colossus said, gesturing toward the smoking flamethrower on the floor. His face was gleaming metal, his eyes blank.
Kitty blinked. None of them had noticed her yet, in her hiding place half-inside the side wall of the coffee shop.
If I show myself again, she thought, I’ll probably wind up going with them. But if I run—if I just bail, right now—
Suddenly there was pain. Something like a whining noise, just below the audible spectrum, seemed to stab into her skull. Colossus cried out, grabbing his temples. Storm fell back; Wolverine doubled forward. Before Kitty realized what was happening, the three X-Men had fallen to the floor.
“They’re unconscious.”
Kitty gasped. She knew that voice. She forced herself to focus, to concentrate on staying intangible within the wall. Not daring to move.
A woman strode into the coffee shop, through the hole in the back wall. She was clad entirely in white: thigh-high boots, tight shorts, an ivory corset stitched tight in back, and a swirling cape fastened at the neck with a ruby pendant.
Kitty recognized her right away, despite the bizarre clothing.
It’s Ms. Frost!
The blank-faced men poured into the coffee shop. Two of them took up position at Wolverine’s arms and legs, lifting him with some effort. Another pair hoisted Storm off the floor.
“Load them in the speeder,” Ms. Frost said. “No, wait—strip them first. Search their uniforms and their persons; remove anything that might be a weapon or signaling device. Take special care with Storm. We know about the lockpicks in her headdress— make sure she hasn’t got any other surprises.”
“What about the Pryde kid?” one man asked.
Ms. Frost looked around. Kitty ducked behind a bookcase, staying out of sight.
“The X-Men were our primary target,” Frost said. “I can find the girl whenever I like. Where’s she going to hide? Math class?”
The sound of sirens filled the air. “That’s enough,” she snapped. “Pawns! Come on. Let’s move.”
The teams assigned to Logan and Storm hefted their bodies, carrying them toward the waiting hovercraft. Colossus—Peter— had reverted to his human form, but even so, the two men assigned to him struggled to lift his large body. Ms. Frost snapped her fingers, summoning reinforcements.
A blank-masked figure gestured toward one of his heavily armored comrades, lying limp on the floor. “What about the knights?”
Ms. Frost smiled. A terrible, cruel smile.
Yup, Kitty thought. She’d lock me up in a tower, all right.
Frost glared at the fallen man. “The knights,” she sneered. “They had all the power they needed to defeat the X-Men, yet they performed like amateurs.” She lowered her head and furrowed her brow. Kitty felt a slight echo of the pain, the subsonic whine that had rendered the X-Men unconscious.
Ms. Frost, Kitty thought. She’s a mutant too!
Kitty jumped as a trio of small explosions went off inside the fallen men’s armor. Their bodies spasmed, arched, and went still.
Two of the Kevlar-clad men exchanged glances. One of them gasped.
“Compose yourself,” Frost snapped. “The Hellfire Club pays good wages, and we expect our money’s worth.”
The Hellfire Club?
Step by step, keeping pace with Frost, Kitty edged her way along the side wall. Peter, she thought. She barely knew him, but the sight of him so helpless made her…
…well, it made her furious.
She phased through the back wall, emerging into the open air and ducking out of sight. The Kevlar-clad men were loading Logan and Storm into the strange manta-shaped hovercraft, with Peter close behind. They still hadn’t noticed her.
Ms. Frost paused in the doorway of the hovercraft. She took one last look at the devastated coffee shop and smiled. In her ivory cape and boots, she seemed like an evil fantasy queen, somehow transported into the modern world.
Kitty hesitated. Wondered, again, just what the hell she’d gotten herself into. One last time, she considered bolting and leaving the X-Men to their fate.
Oh, screw it.
As the vehicle rose into the air, she sprinted toward it, willed her body to become intangible, and leaped inside.
CHAPTER FIVE
AT THE northernmost tip of Scotland—above the Highlands, past the Orkneys, beyond even the Shetland archipelago—lies an island that appears on no maps, no satellite surveys. An aircraft flying overhead would see nothing but a barren rock battered by waves, its craggy surface unmarred by the slightest trace of plant or animal life.
But if that aircraft were to swoop down closer, the rock would begin to
blur and shimmer. A complex of domes and towers would appear, protected by a highly sophisticated stealth shield. This remote speck of rock is Muir Island, home of the world’s foremost Mutant Research Center.
Inside the central dome, Jean Grey hovered in midair, wearing her green-and-gold Phoenix costume. Energy blazed forth from her outstretched arms, spreading high and wide to fill the four-story testing chamber. Collectors and sensors, studding the walls and the domed ceiling, hummed and cycled, monitoring and analyzing the fiery display.
The energies of the Phoenix coursed through her. It feels… rapturous, she thought. Glorious… otherworldly…
“You’re holding back.”
Jean looked down. Dr. Moira MacTaggert—lean and fiftyish, founder and owner of the research center—sat at a console, her eyes darting from a large monitor screen to a smaller laptop computer.
“What?” Jean felt a flash of anger. “Moira, I can see those readings from here. They’re off the scale.”
Moira pulled down a visor to shield her eyes from the blinding energy. “Nevertheless, you’re holding back,” she repeated.
Jean sighed, looked up toward the rounded ceiling, and closed her eyes. She reached deep inside, willing the power within her— the Phoenix Force—to emerge in all its glory, to spread its wings and take flight. Yet some part of her resisted the effort.
All her power, all the strength of the reborn Phoenix, hadn’t been enough to save Scott and the X-Men. And when she’d tried to heal her pain, sought sanctuary on the island of Kirinos, that same power had ruined a promising relationship with a handsome man.
No, she told herself, that’s avoiding the truth. Yes, her power had failed her at crucial times. Yes, she felt guilt over the loss of her friends, sorrow over the death of Scott Summers, and fear that the power would fail her again, would ebb and die when she needed it most. But her worst fear was that the power wouldn’t fail. That it would emerge full blown into a force beyond her control, beyond all comprehension.
“Power down, dear,” Moira said, rising to her feet.
The hum of the sensors dropped suddenly, cycling down to silence. Jean lowered her arms, allowing the cascading energies to fade, and dropped silently to the floor of the chamber. Moira walked over to join her, tapping on a tablet.
