Sanctuary (12 page)

But what of his son?

"Scott?" he asked. "Can you hear me, son? Scott, are you awake?"

Behind the helmet of his suit, behind the ruby quartz of his visor, Corsair thought he saw his son's eyes flutter momentarily, opening slightly, and then they were closed again.

"You'll be all right, Scott," Corsair said softly. "We've had far too little time together, son. You have to be all right."

His arms and shoulders taut with the strain, Corsair lifted his son into his arms. For a moment, he was struck by a memory of Scott as an infant, crying with fever and unable to fall asleep unless his father held him. As much of a strain as being a new parent had been, as frustrating as it had been, there had been a certain joy in rocking his baby boy to sleep.

He felt that again, now, and it brought back the pain of his wife's death, and all the years he and Scott had spent apart. Ch'od rose to his feet, and steadied himself against the bulkhead.

"We have no time to lose," Ch'od said. "Corsair, we must try again to repair the warp drive. And now, or it may well prove too late."

Rogue moved to help Corsair with the burden of his son's weight, but he ignored her. The terror he had felt every moment since the explosion abated slowly, leaving him nearly breathless. After a moment, Scott groaned in a low, guttural voice, and lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the light that filtered through his helmet and visor.

"Scott," Corsair said. "You did it son. You're all right."

"For the moment, Dad," Scott answered. Like father, like son, ever the pragmatist.

"Corsair, did you not hear me?" Ch'od asked. "We've got to—"

"I heard you, Ch'od," Corsair answered. "And I'll join you on the hull, since Raza cannot. Scott's in no condition to—"

"I'm okay, Corsair," Scott said, sitting up. "You're going to need backup out there, and Rogue and I are all you've got."

Corsair did not fail to note the change in his son's tone. He merely nodded, resigned to their fate. His fear for Scott had never interfered with their ability to work or battle side by side in the past, and he would not allow it to do so even in this crisis.

"I'm happy to go back out there with y'all," Rogue said with a smile. "But this time, let's be a little more careful, okay?"

• • •

Jean lay in the cockpit, recovering, and Archangel found himself in the unusual role of duty nurse for the wounded members ofthe
Starjammer
's crew. He wasn't terribly concerned for Hepzibah or Raza; when they awoke from their sedation they would be greatly weakened, and temporarily unable to use their injured limbs, but awaken they would.

Gambit was another story. The on-board Shi'ar medical computers could have done a simple diagnostic program, but the system had shorted. and crashed, along with most of the
Starjammer
's programming. If they were certain of the voltage, or even the nature, of electric current Gambit was hit with by Warstar of the Imperial Guard, they might be able to guess at what Remy was going through, and what the long term effects of his electrocution might be. But Warstar could have fried every synapse in Gambit's brain, and they wouldn't know it until they got him back to Earth.

If any of them got back.

A sobering thought, and one that Archangel had been trying to avoid. Dwelling on his "patients" had given him a momentary respite from their situation, and from his growing case of cabin fever. He was definitely getting a little stir crazy, cooped up in the ship. It helped a bit that he was the only person walking around in the main cabin, but that was a superficial improvement at best.

He felt that nervous energy building inside of him once again, and found, to his surprise, that he'd been tapping his foot for a while without realizing it. The cabin wasn't shrinking. Archangel wasn't delusional. But it certainly felt smaller. He closed his eyes a moment and he could feel it pressing in around him. The cabin, the ship, and space beyond.

A ruffle of fear went through his bio-metallic wings where they lay fiat against his back beneath the pressure suit. Archangel felt the twinge .of muscles that would spread them to their full span, and he mustered what control of them he had to keep them from tearing apart the Shi'ar space garb.

Turning away from Gambit's prone form, Archangel began to pace the cabin. He had never felt so completely useless. And not since his days with Apocalypse had he felt so close to the edge of losing control. But he wouldn't lose it. Absolutely would not. He had been twisted into something that just wasn't him, wasn't Warren Worthington, and it had been a long road back. He still had yet to completely convince his oldest and best friends in the X-Men that he had recovered, that he was flying high again.

"Just suck it up, Worthington," he muttered to himself, then took a long slow, breath and released it. He stretched, slowly, trying to relax the tension in his body.

" ... no ..."

The word was spoken very quietly, gruffly, with a dreamy quality that only the exhausted, the dying, or the feverish could muster. Archangel spun around, prepared to defend himself, though he suspected there would be no need. His suspicions proved correct a moment later, as he hurried to the medi-slab where Gambit lay, twitching as if in the grip of some horrid nightmare.

" ... no ..." Remy mumbled again, though more forcefully this time.

Then his face and his tone changed dramatically. Gambit's breath came faster, more frenetically, and his facial features contorted as if he were in pain, or adamant denial. Perhaps both, Archangel considered.

"No, Essex!" Gambit snarled, still less than conscious, his attitude reflecting a savagery that Archangel had never seen in him. "You wan' Gambit do a little t'ing for you, maybe dat seem okay before. But no more, Essex! You hear me,
homme
? Gambit not gon' let you hurt anybody, 'specially not ..."

Remy LeBeau's entire body went slack then, his face draining of all color. Archangel thought in that instant that Gambit's heart might have simply stopped, so quickly did the Cajun's energy seem to leave him. Warren realized it would be impossible for him to check Gambit's temperature with both of them in pressure suits, but from the flush on Remy's cheeks and his delusional rambling, he had to assume the man's fever was extremely high.

Who in hell is Essex?
he wondered to himself. "Gambit?" he ventured, moving his helmet closer to Gambit's own. "Remy, it's Warren. Are you awake? Can you hear me?"

Gambit's eyes snapped open, black and red light pulsing where pupils ought to have been, a mist of crimson energy seemed to spark inside his helmet.

Rage erupted on his face as he looked at Archangel, and he growled that unfamiliar name again, "Essex!"

Gambit reached up, faster than Warren had ever seen him move, and latched his fingers onto Archangel's helmet. Sparks flew and the helmet grew immediately hot.

Archangel cursed in a panic, fumbling for the latches of his helmet. "Gambit, what the—"

He didn't finish his question, too caught up in his struggle to be free of the helmet. Gambit had used his mutant power to charge Archangel's helmet with explosive energy. He had seconds to remove it, or it would explode, taking his head with it.

"Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man ..." he chanted, until finally the snaps slid under his thumb, the entire helmet twisted sideways, and he whipped it off his head and across the cabin.

It hadn't hit the floor when it exploded. Archangel shielded his eyes, and when he looked back, there was a huge black smear on the cabin floor. Gambit stood over him, glowering with righteous fury, feverishly unsteady on his feet.

"Back off, Gambit," he said, scrabbling backward and attempting to stand. Within the pressure suit, he felt weighted down by his wings for the first time. "You're not well, man. You shouldn't be up."

"I'm done wit' you, Essex," Gambit snarled, and took another menacing, shaky step toward Archangel. "You leave my family alone, now,
oui
?"

"Remy," Archangel said, standing now and reaching out his hands in a gesture of comfort. "It's me, Warren. Archangel. Snap out of it man, it's the fever talking. I'm not this Essex guy, okay?"

"You don' want to leave, you gonna have to die," Gambit said, slurring his words a bit.

Archangel barely dodged as Gambit aimed a high kick at his face—a fairly weak kick by Remy's usual standards. The Cajun followed through with a lunge at Warren's throat, a clumsy move he would never normally have attempted, and Archangel easily sidestepped and batted him aside. Gambit stumbled toward the medi-slab where Raza lay, and fell over the wounded cyborg. He lay across Raza for a moment before returning to his feet.

When Gambit wheeled on Warren, he held a Shi'ar medical probe that Corsair had used earlier. Already, the red-tinged energy was sparking in his hands. The probe glowed with the explosive charge of Gambit's mutant ability, and then the Cajun threw it like a dart at Warren's chest.

Instinct alone saved Archangel's life. Without conscious thought, his bio-metallic wings tore right through the pressure suit. They opened to their full span and wrapped themselves around Archangel in a heartbeat. The charged probe exploded upon impact with his wings, but Warren remained untouched.

He withdrew his wings, tucking them against his back, and Gambit was already rushing at him again.

"Remy, stop, dammit!" he shouted. "It's me, Warren."

Once more, he sidestepped, then slammed Gambit against the wall of the cabin. The Cajun fell to the ground, dazed by the impact. Archangel hoped that it might have shaken some of the fevered mania from the man.

"Come on, Gambit," he pleaded. "Don't make me hurt you worse than you already are."

Gambit bobbed his head up, and squinted as he tried to see clearly.

"That's it, man, look at me," Warren urged.

"Essex," Gambit breathed. "Time to die."

As he pulled himself up, Gambit reached for a long metal. tube strapped to the wall. Archangel had seen Ch' od use it earlier to put out the fire; some kind of chemical fire extinguisher then. The contents of which were more than likely under pressure. Gambit's right hand was already glowing with volatile energy as he reached for the tube, and Archangel realized that Remy might very well blow a hole in the
Starjammer
's hull with the combination of his power and that one metal cylinder.

Archangel couldn't allow that to happen. Gambit's hand was only inches from the cylinder when Warren's wings flashed out to their full span. He wasn't certain whether he commanded them or whether they simply intuited and precipitated his actions. It didn't matter. Only one thing did: stopping Gambit.

Wing-knives flashed across the room and sliced through Gambit's pressure suit, imbedding themselves in his flesh. Immediately, Remy LeBeau slumped to the floor, paralyzed by the chemicals secreted by Warren's bio-metallic feathers.

Archangel rushed to his fallen teammate, lifted Gambit from the floor and put him back on the medi-slab. He tore away the pressure suit in a panic and began removing the wing-knives as carefully as he could. Normally, they were effective but ultimately not harmful. With Gambit's previous injuries, however, there was no way he could be certain.

"Corsair!" he shouted, hoping he would be heard. "Jean! Someone! I could use a little help in here!"

Silently, Archangel mumbled a prayer.

C
harles Xavier stood in the middle of Exchange Place in Jersey City, New Jersey as the maelstrom of anarchy swirled around him. In his youth, he had reined in the burgeoning power of his telepathy, closed out the billions of mental voices on Earth. It was effortless for him now, but even so, even with his nigh-impenetrable mental shields in place, there was a low hum in his brain. It was the babble of thousands upon thousands of panicked minds.

They climbed up from the PATH train station into the safety of Jersey City, a sea of human flesh, awash with a relief and a sorrow unmatched in their prior existences. The media swarmed around them, picking at their remains with the cold distance of carrion birds.

Beyond the PATH station, past the Hudson River, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were still beacons, the lights of Manhattan still made for a breathtaking panorama. But it was the view of another world now, the alien vista across a hostile border, where an invisible wall was imprinted with invisible words, something like, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

"I'm sorry, Professor Xavier, did you say something?" Annelise Dwyer asked.

"What's that?" Charles Xavier responded, startled from his reverie.

"I thought you'd said something," the CNN anchor said, then shook her head. "Never mind, I must be hearing things."

They sat in an area cordoned off from the rest of the Exchange Place plaza, the entirety of which had become a media tent city. The scavengers descended upon the catastrophe of Magneto's ascendance with a savage grace. Yet, despite his usual antipathy for news people, Xavier found himself strangely attracted to Annelise Dwyer. The hopeless optimist within him wondered if she had been able to reach the much-envied position of CNN anchor without becoming as jaded as the majority of her peers. She certainly seemed to care.