Sanctuary (33 page)

"Find her!" Magneto shouted. "Kill her if you must!"

And so his true colors were revealed, Storm thought. For all his talk of "rehabilitating" the X-Men, he was just as happy to kill them in the end.

The thunder increased in intensity. No longer did it sound like a distant explosion. It was closer, a deep bass rumble that pounded the ears and buffeted the body as violently as the wind itself. Each thunderstrike was longer than the last, until it sounded as though the sky was being violently rent asunder. Storm brought her wrath down upon the crowd. She willed the black clouds to open wide, to pour out their wet burden onto the streets below. But when it fell, it fell not as rain, but as sleet and hail. Ice pelted Magneto's followers, driving them from the street.

Finally, though she herself remained nearly immobile, held aloft by gentle winds at cross currents, Storm lashed out at Magneto's hordes with the wind itself. Fifty, sixty, eighty mile-per-hour winds whipped through Times Square, and the pieces of the platform began to blow away. At one hundred and ten miles per hour, it began to tear itself even further apart. Those people not already inside were beginning to grab hold of things to keep themselves from blowing away. Some already had. Storm vowed that the only thing left standing in Times Square would be the Blob. Then she reconsidered. Perhaps, she thought, it was time to test Fred Dukes' claim that there was nothing on Earth that could move him against his will.

The more destructive forms of precipitation did not reach her, but Storm allowed the rain to drench her entirely. Her hair hung, heavy with it, and partially across her face. With a toss of her head, Ororo whipped it away, sending a spray of water falling on its way with the rest. No longer did she control the storm, she had become the storm.

And she reveled in it.

• • •

Magneto was astounded. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined Storm capable of the power, the fury that now raged around him. Not only was his public address over, but if he was not able to stop her immediately, Storm might well be able to end the dream of Haven before it had ever truly begun. For the first time, Magneto wondered if Ororo Munroe was, after all, the most powerful of the X-Men.

"My Lord," Unuscione cried, holding on to what remained of the platform with her exoskeleton, barely able to keep herself from being swept away by the winds. "What can I do? How can we kill this woman?"

"How, indeed?" Magneto said aloud, his words tom away by the wind. Just as he himself would have been carried away if not for the bubble of magnetic energy he had drawn around himself. He pondered Unuscione's question, even as the Acolyte herself was pried loose by the storm and blown, cursing Storm all the while, across the street and through one of the huge windows of the Marriott Marquis, which had already been shattered by the wind.

Magneto knew the answer already, though. Despite his words, he did not want Storm dead. He had always had more respect for her than for most of her comrades, and this display only heightened that respect. Storm could be of great use to him in the future. Of course, if she forced his hand, well then he would have to kill her.

Still intent upon that train of thought, Magneto began to rise up through the fog, wind, and hail. The ball of magnetic energy that surrounded him glowed green and its surface steamed away the impact of any precipitation. He was surprised to find that it took far more effort than usual to keep his course and maintain the integrity of the force shield. The hurricane threatened at any moment to tear away his focus, to hurl him to the pavement, or into the side of a building or a billboard.

Several moments later, he broke through a low cloud and saw her there, at the eye of the storm. Magneto took a moment to admire how beautiful she appeared then, in all the glory of her mutant power. She was a shining example of the magnificence that was the genetic x-factor, the reason why humans must give way to mutant rule. There was a grandeur about her that took his breath away.

Then she saw him.

Immediately, Storm lashed out at Magneto with every ounce of her power. The tempest that had raged in and above the street now seemed to turn, like some predatory animal, and use him as its focus. Magneto was unprepared for its effect.

Hurricane force winds battered his force shield, and it vibrated under the attack. He poured everything into maintaining the shield, then began to muster up enough extra to launch a counterattack. In an instant, the shield was struck three times by lightning.

Magneto cried out in pain, entire body quivering as if he had been electrocuted, which, in some sense, he had. The shield lost its resolution, and he began to fall, whipped into some kind of aerial maelstrom by Storm's power. The breath began to leave him.

"Command: seize alpha mutant designate Storm," he said, wheezing the words into a comm unit on his gauntlet.

Then he felt himself snagged, almost grabbed by hands made of nothing but the gale. His helmet had long since blown off, and his white hair was now soaked with rain, his uniform drenched, and he shook his head to clear the momentary disorientation he had experienced.

Storm was beckoning him, drawing him toward her with the weather at her bidding. He saw her, finger pointed at him in accusation, or perhaps in some kind of mute command. Then he remembered the lightning, and wondered when it would strike. It was a novel moment, as Magneto wondered if he might actually die, if Storm could bring the lightning down on him and stop his heart.

He had no desire to find out. In an instant, Magneto surrounded himself with yet another bubble of magnetic energy, stronger than before. When he used his mutant power, Magneto could tap into the electromagnetic field of the entire planet. Charles Xavier might have been the most powerful mind on Earth, but for sheer power and potential devastation, Magneto knew that he was unmatched. Every time he had faced the X-Men he had lost because of outside intervention, because he had been surprised, or because of his own, foolish hesitation. Surprise had been the only reason Storm had survived the current battle as long as she had.

Summoning his mutant power, drawing up magnetic energy like a fisherman drawing in his nets, Magneto reached out for Ororo Munroe. If she did not surrender, he would destroy her. As an example to other rebellious mutants, he would impale her on the same spire from which the well-known ball dropped on New Year's Eve.

Magneto found himself saddened by the thought.

• • •

When Storm observed Magneto's swift recovery, she was quick to realize that she had lost her advantage. Instantly, her rage dissipated, to be replaced by survival instincts and deftly honed battle acumen. He would summon all his strength for an attack now, she knew. There was every chance he had been serious in his order to kill her. She had never been successful in repelling one of -his magnetic attacks, only in evading them.

But evasion was not going to be a possibility. She was already drained by the incredible amount of energy she had put into the storm. No, there had to be something...

Then she had it. Ororo cursed herself for never having thought of it before. The perfect, perhaps the only, defense against Magneto that the X-Men had. It would have been far easier if Iceman had been with her, but they weren't even certain what had happened to him. The Acolytes claimed that they had killed Bobby. Storm didn't want to think about that. Nor did she have the time.

Magneto was mustering his strength, so Storm did the same. While he was, most probably, summoning all the power he could to destroy her, she enacted a desperate plan to save herself from that attack.

Diverting some of her attention from the storm, from her attack on Magneto, she drew all the moisture in the air around in front of her, using the wind to sculpt clouds that had not been there a moment earlier. The sky was clearing already, the sun breaking through and shining down. Many citizens of Magneto's new empire crept from their hiding places or went to help one another up, tending to those wounded during the tempest.

Four feet from where she floated on the air, Storm created a blizzard from thin air. She concentrated her power on that spot, used the winds to whip up a circular motion, keeping as much of the generated snow from falling to the ground as possible. By the count of six, there was a gossamer layer of snow swirling together to form a weather wall between herself and Magneto.

At the count of seven, he reached out for her with his magnetic power. And he was rebuffed. Storm could barely make him out through the curtain of snow she had conjured, but she did not see him to sense his frustration. Like all the X-Men, Storm had received a college-level education at the Xavier Institute, once called Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. That education included the basic natural sciences. Electromagnetic energy was radiation. Snow absorbed radiation, such as the sun's heat, like a sponge. The blizzard she had created assimilated and diffused Magneto's blasts.

Try as he might, Magneto would not be able to break through the snow barrier as long as she could continue to generate it. The question was, which of them would become exhausted first? Ororo feared that she knew the answer. Just as she was attempting to determine her next move, she heard Magneto's voice very faintly over the roar of the storm.

" ... far more clever than ... credit for" she heard. " ... nearly as clever ... you thought "

The last part, she heard clearly.

"Look up!" Magneto shouted.

Surprised by the tone of victory in his voice, Storm could not help but obey. She looked up, through the heavy blanket of snow and clouds that she had called down on the city in her wrath. Only then did she notice that the sun was no longer breaking through the clouds. But it was not her doing. Something else was blotting out the sky above her. Something huge.

The Sentinel's eyes glowed red.

"Alpha mutant designate Storm, surrender now to avoid painful apprehension procedures," the Sentinel commanded in its fiat, emotionless voice.

Realizing she had lost, Storm attempted to retreat.

She did not get very far.

"W
e have hope now, Charles, that is what is truly important here, isn't it?" Valerie Cooper asked.

Xavier still felt some of the revulsion that had crept into his psyche when he lowered himself to steal the Sentinel override command codes from Gyrich's brain. The feeling lingered within him, never quite disappearing, the way the acrid odor of sulfur remained after a match had been extinguished.

"Indeed," he answered at last. There was no reason for him to burden Cooper with his troubles. In any case, a woman of her pragmatism would not understand them.

"We do have a chance at this, now," he agreed. "Perhaps the only chance we'll get. Once I have communicated the override codes to the X-Men, and redirected them to find the Alpha Sentinel, we'll have done all we can from here. What we need now is some visual cue to identify the Alpha Sentinel."

"Of course," Val said, a bit cynically. "That would be nice, wouldn't it? Thing is, you're not supposed to be able to identify the Alpha Sentinel. That would make things too convenient for someone, like us, who is trying to put the damn thing out of commission."

Xavier frowned. The X-Men certainly had their work cut out for them.

"If you'll excuse me, now, Valerie," he began.

"Do you want me to go?" she asked, very respectfully.

"Not at all," Xavier answered. "Just bear with me. For a moment, it will seem as though it is I who have left."

With that, Xavier cast his mind out over the island of Manhattan. He concentrated on midtown and began moving south. With the millions of minds on the island, it would take a few moments longer than usual to identify the X-Men's thought patterns. But, as he had once explained to Cyclops, mentally recognizing an individual mind was no more difficult than visually recognizing an individual face. In many ways, in fact, it was easier.

Professor Xavier had taught and trained the X-Men, some for many years. Some of the lessons he imparted to them had to do with the mind, and the protection of its secrets. Their thought patterns were as familiar to him as the faces of children he had never had. When he reached out with his psi power to scour the island in search of them, it was with the utmost confidence.

Indeed, he found them. One by one, he made contact with the X-Men. One by one, he found them unable to respond, or communicate in any way. They were unconscious, had somehow been sedated. At least, that was the case with Storm, Bishop, and the Beast. Iceman had been knocked unconscious, and was far from where the others were being held.

Held. The thought came to Xavier so easily, but he knew it was the only solution. The X-Men had been captured by Magneto, were his prisoners even now. Xavier could only thank God, in that moment, that they were still alive. As long as they lived, there was still hope. But it seemed, at that moment, a slim hope indeed.

Valerie must have noticed some disturbance on his face, for distantly Xavier heard her call to him.

"Charles, are you okay?" she asked.