X-Men: The Last Stand (16 page)

He attacked the truck directly, but on a subatomic level, refining his perceptions to the point where the world was no longer composed of tangible, readily identifiable objects, but instead flash points of energy, lines of force. It wasn’t easy, and here he cursed the ravages of time, wishing he’d had such a level of insight at an age when he’d been hale enough to utilize it properly. A slight reshuffle of the alignment of atoms within a molecule, molecules within a lattice, and
presto
!

What had been unbreachable was now as brittle as rice paper.

With a confident smile, he restored his perceptions to normal, then reached up to the nearest lock, giving a hearty tug—and the whole door popped off its hinges.

Callisto caught it as it fell, and tossed it aside with an ease and power that revealed an impressive physical strength. Magneto filed this information away for future reference.

Mystique was standing in the doorway, and at the sight of him she struck one of her more delicious poses, radiating irresistible temptation and intolerable insolence, all in the same sultry look.

“About time,” she chided.

He answered with a thin smile, “I’ve been busy, my dear.” She ignored the veiled reprimand because she was clearly happy to see him, telling him so with a smile. Which he didn’t answer.

“Did you find what we were looking for?”

She nodded, and the smile went away.

“The source of the cure is a mutant, code-named Leech. A child at the Worthington Labs in Berkeley. Without him, they have nothing.”

Magneto took a moment to consider what she’d told him, and then decided to acknowledge the tumult coming from the other cells.

“And who do we have here,” he mused aloud, eyeing a clipboard on the catwalk and using a minor burst of power to toss it into Pyro’s grasp.

“Read off the guest list, if you please.”

As they made their away along the catwalk, John Allerdyce flipped to the appropriate page.

“James Madrox,” he announced, at the cell next to Mystique’s.

“This one robbed seven banks,” she told them. “At the same time.”

“His mutant name is…” Pyro began.

“Multiple Man,” finished the voice within the cell.

Magneto popped the lock and a normal-looking young man—dark hair, average height, athletic build—rose to his feet.

“I could use a man of your talents,” Magneto told him.

As Madrox approached, he stepped momentarily through a pool of deep shadow, and just that quickly, between one step and the next, he was leading a column of identical duplicates, all of whom responded to Magneto with a different expression or greeting, establishing their innate individuality. They were all cut from the same cloth, so to speak, but they could apparently operate independently.

“What they know, I know,” Madrox boasted. “What they learn, I remember.”

With a glance at her nails, Mystique asked innocently, “And if they’re hurt, do you feel it? If you’re knocked out, do they stick around?”

The multitude of sour expressions was all the answer they needed. Magneto understood the limitations, but repeated his invitation regardless.

“I’m in,” Madrox told them, in a chorus of eager voices.

“Splendid,” Magneto acknowledged. “Welcome to the Brotherhood.”

The next cage was massively reinforced, with huge locks for emphasis. Magneto peeked through the small access port.

“Careful with this one,” Mystique cautioned.

Shackled to a chair, complete with head restraint, was the largest figure Magneto had ever seen, more impressive than Sabretooth, far more so than the X-Man Colossus in his armored form. A veritable mutant behemoth.

“Cain Marko,” Mystique announced, prompting a wry sidewards glance of bemusement from Magneto. She shrugged back as if to say, not her fault,
she
certainly hadn’t christened him.

“Solitary confinement,” Pyro told them, reading from the file. “Zero contact. Check this out.” His voice rose in excitement, reminding Magneto that he was still a lot younger than he liked people to think. “‘Prisoner must remain inert at all times. If he builds up any momentum, he becomes virtually unstoppable.’”

“How fascinating,” said Magneto, and proceeded to open the cell.

“What do they call you?” he asked, once inside.

“Juggernaut,” was the reply.

“I can’t imagine why.”

The huge truck creaked ominously as Juggernaut propelled himself from his chair. As he reached down for his helmet, Pyro couldn’t resist a jibe.

“Nice helmet.”

Juggernaut looked at the boy as if he were a bug about to be squashed. “Keeps my face pretty.”

Pyro had sense enough to leave things at that.

The remaining cells were empty.

As they exited the truck, no one noticed a stir on the monitor console. Hermán Molina knew the safe play, the smart play, was to stay right where he was and do nothing. But he’d earned his six stripes in the Marine Corps, and the Navy Cross, as the hardest of hard chargers. Being assigned as security for this run wasn’t a dead-end job for losers who couldn’t cut it elsewhere—they had recruited the best of the best, and drummed into them from the get-go how vital their responsibility was, how dangerous their charges were.

Now the three prisoners were not only loose, but they were walking out with Magneto. Something had to be done, and after taking a glance around, it was plain that he’d drawn the short straw.

He was a first-tier sniper, as deadly accurate with a pistol as a rifle. But the range was too great; he had to get closer.

Mystique caught the green dot of a laser sight out of the corner of her eye, centered on Magneto’s back. They were too far apart to push him clear and there was no time to yell a warning as she registered the faint
thip
of a weapon discharging.

She dove forward, and felt a sting between her breasts as the dart struck home.

Magneto whirled about, saw the guard tracking to take a second shot, and instantly manipulated magnetic fields around him, popping the plastic weapon from his grasp as though it were a wet and slippery bar of soap. He brought it carefully to rest, making sure the barrel was pointed well away from everyone present. A second later there was an awful shriek from inside the truck, mercifully cut short, accompanied by a rush of heat and smoke from a fireball so instantly powerful it managed to stagger him. Pyro’s doing.

The young man pulled the flames back into himself, leaving only the charred and stinking remnants of the guard. Magneto turned in frantic concern to Mystique.

Mystique wasn’t interested in what was happening around her. She had problems of her own. It was asthough she’d been stabbed by a spear of ice, and a cold more intense than anything she ever imagined radiated outwards from the point of contact, behind a wave front of such agony that she found herself hammered to hands and knees on the ground. Without any conscious direction, her body curled in on itself, impossibly tight, returning instinctively to the fetal position as—in a very real sense—she was being remade and reborn.

Gradually, her vision cleared and she blinked many times, trying to center herself. The impossible cold she’d felt had passed, not even leaving a memory, yet she didn’t feel quite right. She felt chilled in a way that was new to her. She shivered, something she’d never done before.

The others were staring. She was used to that, it was the price to pay for walking around in her skin. Their expressions didn’t register—or perhaps, she simply chose to ignore them.

She plucked the dart from where it had landed, brow furrowing as she felt a small trickle of blood. Her morphing ability allowed her to cope with injuries as instantly and comprehensively as the Wolverine’s healing factor; usually it took the near-mortal wounds to draw blood.

Then she saw her hand.

It wasn’t blue, it was pale.

She rose to her knees, with the same balletic grace as always, and stared aghast at her body. No more scales and ridges—she was truly, completely naked and nothing she could do would change that.

“Erik?” she called, lost and aching, as she raised a hand towards him.

The look he returned matched her grief.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” he said gently, as to one dead, but who hadn’t yet realized it. “You’re not one of us anymore.”

Her mouth opened to register her shock, her eyes brimmed with unbidden tears. After all they’d shared, after her sacrifice to save him, the finality of his rejection was too terrible to accept.

He ran his hand along her cheek in a farewell caress.

“Such a shame,” he mused in a kind of eulogy. “You were so beautiful…”

He rose with a snap of his cloak and signaled the others to follow. Mystique stayed on her knees, watching like one who’d just been turned to stone. Pyro, at least, had the decency to appear torn, switching looks between her and Magneto. But then, with a final, farewell shake of the head, he scurried after the Master of Magnetism.

Through her head ran memories of the times she’d sneered at the X-Men, and thought them fools for following Xavier instead of Erik. And especially, the realization that, if she had stood with them, powers or no, they’d have stood by her to the very end.

Logan hadn’t left the infirmary since they’d brought Jean home. He watched her with his senses as intently as the machines did with theirs, and probably came away with as accurate an assessment of her condition. When Xavier came in to perform his own examination, plus whatever else he did to her in the way of his personal psychic voodoo, Logan stepped aside, staying close enough to intervene if needed but otherwise deferring to the professor. He also took each opportunity to keep tabs on Xavier as attentively as he did on Jean. The couple of times Ororo visited, she was actually as concerned for Logan as her best friend. Logan wasn’t used to that, wasn’t sure how to deal with it.

Occasionally, he’d talk to Jean as though they were sitting in some saloon or bar, having a normal conversation, telling her of all that had transpired with the school and the world since she’d been gone. Mostly, he just sat, with the infinite patience that was one of his hallmarks. He watched, and he listened. When she needed him, he’d be there, he’d be ready.

He saw that some wires were tangled, so he reached over to smooth them out…

…and she grabbed him by the hand.

She looked up at him with that same long, lazy smile that he remembered and yet, with something new, something…more. He couldn’t help returning the smile in kind.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she noted, making him chuckle. “It seems so familiar, doesn’t it? Except I was in your place and you were in mine.”

He couldn’t help thinking,
you’re wearin’ a lot more clothes than I was, darlin’,
which made her blush and grin the wider. So there was nothing wrong with her telepathy, he observed, although she was keeping her own thoughts to herself. He half-expected to hear from the professor, who Logan assumed was monitoring his thoughts or Jean’s, waiting for just this very moment. Thus far, though, they had complete privacy.

She swallowed, mouth dry, and he held out a glass of water for her to sip from its straw.

“How long was I…?” she tried again.

“Too flamin’ long,” he told her, more gruffly than he’d intended, not from anger, but because seeing her awake and all right made him suddenly admit to himself just how much he’d missed her.

“You feeling okay, Jeannie?”

She sat up with surprising ease and grace for someone who’d been (a) dead and (b) flat on her back in the hospital. Jean was still smiling, radiating more happiness than he’d ever seen from her. But then, he realized, he’d hardly ever seen her truly happy—save for a couple of instances when he’d caught her by surprise, just off guard enough that he got that special smile of hers, the one that came without any of the filters of duty and responsibility that Xavier had layered on her. He wondered if things had been any better with Cyclops.

Logan had never felt this way; his heart was full to bursting with the brightest and best of emotions and yet, at the same time, on the verge of breaking. How could any moment seem so wonderful and potentially terrible, all at once?