X-Men: The Last Stand (18 page)

“We don’t castrate them, sir. Nothing is permanent. This process
is.
My God, David, have you even
begun
to consider the slippery slope you’re on?”

The president nodded, his eyes gone hard.

“I have, Henry. Long and hard. And I also worry how democracy—that very Constitution and the Republic I swore in my oath of office to defend, ‘so help me God’—survives when one lone man can move cities with his mind.”

“Honorable and well-meaning as you are, sir, what about the next man? Suppose he uses your rationale to strip mutants of more rights?”

“That’s why I ask you to reconsider your resignation. I need you by my side, Hank, to be that voice of reason. Your country needs you.”

Hank drew himself up to his full height. “Sir, I serve at the pleasure of the president. It has been an honor and a privilege. But I serve my conscience more.”

The president poured them both a measure of scotch from the drinks tray on a sideboard. Single malt, very old, very rare, and worth every drop.

“You know, my friend, it’s only going to get worse.”

They clinked glasses in farewell, and Hank nodded.

“All the more reason why I need to be where I belong,” McCoy said.

They finished and set the glasses aside. “I try to do the right thing, Henry. It’s not always easy.”

“It’s not supposed to be, sir.”

Xavier pushed the chair to its limit, forcing Ororo into a quickstep that was almost a run in order to keep pace down the long, gleaming hall that led to the infirmary.

“Professor,” she demanded, irked as always that there wasn’t a sufficient volume of air down here for her to fly, “
talk
to me. What is it?”

“Something’s happened.” He paused, then more quietly, “As I feared…”

“What? What aren’t you telling me?”

She stopped as they reached the wide-open doors and beheld the mess inside.

“Why didn’t the alarms—” Ororo started to ask.

“For the same reason,” Xavier broke in before she finished, “none of us were the slightest bit aware that anything was amiss until it was far too late.”

Logan was awake, seated on the floor, back to the wall beneath a major dent that he’d clearly made with his body, knees drawn up to his chest as he idly examined one set of his extended claws as though surprised to find them in view. His clothes were in rags and from the gingerly way he moved as he pushed himself to his feet, Ororo realized that he was still in the midst of a major healing.

Ororo rushed at once to his side, immediately taking in the fact that he was alone in the room. The monitors had been reduced to less than junk, components strewn across the floor like a high-tech carpet. If they did try to access the data they’d recorded, Ororo knew they’d find it irretrievably corrupted as well.

Fearing the answer, she had to ask anyway, “Logan, who did this?”

“Jean,” he said.

Logan hesitated before explaining things further. “She’s…she’s not herself.” It took an effort to say this, because he still hurt more than ever, but also because each word seemed like a betrayal of Jean. “I think…she…” But the truth had to be faced, and his honor required him to face it. So, when he spoke at last, there were no doubts. He told them what he believed to be the case. “She killed Scott.”

Ororo refused to believe. “No, that can’t be!”

Xavier was grimly calm.

“Don’t look so surprised,” Logan said to him.

“I warned you about her,” Xavier replied, and his own sadness was palpable. “I told you what she was capable of.”

“What does that mean?” Ororo asked.

Logan tossed a thumb in Xavier’s direction. “Ask
him.
”

Xavier’s thoughts, however, were obviously elsewhere. His eyes were closed, and he was concentrating.

“She’s left the Mansion,” he reported. “She’s blocking my thoughts.” He kept trying to reach her, clearly a struggle. “She is very strong. I hope we’re not too late.”

“What about Cerebro?” Logan suggested.

Xavier shook his head tersely, as if it was all the effort he could spare. “She’s keyed into it, just as I am. Given her current state, she could easily wrest control of it remotely and use it to amplify her own abilities beyond comprehension. Believe me, that is a scenario you do
not
wish to behold. I’m afraid…I must do this…on my own.”

He redoubled his efforts, and for the first time Logan could remember, he actually saw sweat building on the professor’s forehead.

Magneto held the guard’s plastic pistol in his hand. He’d yanked it clear the instant Pyro had torched the wretched creature and had spent much of the time since examining it. Now he was explaining his discoveries to his troops. Quite a simple device, really. It took a magazine like any ordinary automatic pistol and used compressed air to propel the darts at an equivalent range—which in the hands of a superior marksman, as they’d seen themselves, could be considerable. Worst of all, one hit was evidently all the drug needed to take effect. Whether a direct hit was required or even a scratch would do, he did not care much to find out.

“I told you they would draw first blood,” Magneto reminded them, brandishing the weapon.

He stood surrounded by a half dozen of his new Brotherhood, in a bunker of his own construction, built entirely of metal, with a metal staircase leading up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Not the most elegant or comfortable of surroundings, but for their present needs it would serve.

Pyro gestured at the gun: “What do we do with that? Hand it over to the walking wrecking ball?” By that, he was referring to Juggernaut, who undoubtedly didn’t take to his sense of humor as tolerantly as any X-Men used to.

Magneto shook his head: “This weapon…will become
our
weapon, my friends. A lightning rod that will bring countless more to our cause.”

He faced his troops. “Come,” he told them, calling them to arms. “It’s time to gather our forces.”

The trapdoor overhead swung open, allowing light to fan across the room below.

Callisto closed the door behind her, hopping lithely down the stairs and over to Magneto’s side. As the only one present who remembered the way things used to be, Pyro noticed how naturally she assumed Mystique’s role and relationship, as well as how easily Magneto accepted her. Another difference between the Brotherhood and Xavier’s, and even though he told himself that he didn’t care, deep down inside it bothered him. If Magneto could so instantly abandon someone like Mystique, where did the rest of them stand? And when the shit truly hit the fan—because that was what they were planning, right?—
who
could a fella truly count on here?

“I picked up something,” she informed their leader. “An electromagnetic anomaly. Massive.”

Magneto obviously wasn’t interested, but she wouldn’t let him push past, speaking hurriedly while she had the chance.

“I thought it was a power grid, a surge in the system. But it’s
not
—it’s a mutant!”

She had him now, Pyro saw.

“Class Five,” she said triumphantly. “More powerful than anything I’ve ever scanned. More powerful than
you
!”

“Where is she?” he asked, and Callisto looked at him in surprise. He actually
knew
this mutant?

Xavier’s first thought was how little the neighborhood had changed in better than twenty years. How calm and peaceful everything looked. He wondered if he’d be able to say the same an hour from now.

Storm parked the Mercedes in front of the Grey house, and Logan helped Xavier into his wheelchair, grousing just a little under his breath about the impracticality of certain European touring sedans for folks in Xavier’s condition. On one level, Charles had to agree—a minivan with a ramp would probably make more sense. But he loved the Maybach, and rationalized its use by telling himself that the X-Men had their toys. This was his.

“Wait for me here,” he instructed. “I need to see Jean. Alone.”

But there was already someone waiting for him. Magneto sat on the garden bench beneath the arbor outside the front door.

“You were right, Charles,” he said charmingly, as if they were picking up right where they’d left off after that first meeting with Jean, as though the intervening years of conflict were no more than a dream. “This one
is
special.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Logan demanded with a quality to his voice that suggested all of them—Xavier included—take notice, and perhaps even a wary step back. The look Logan gave Magneto made it eloquently plain who his primary target would be, and that nothing whatsoever would stop him from trying. There was no threat or bluster to the man, Charles saw, just a calm and fundamental certainty, and like knowing the sun will rise, he knew that if the need arose Logan would kill.

If Magneto was bothered by any of this, he gave no outward sign. Instead, he responded as blithely as though they’d all come for afternoon tea: “The same as the professor, dear boy. Visiting an old friend.”

Charles noted that Logan’s eyes briefly slipped sideways, the Wolverine’s sole reaction to the presence of Juggernaut, Callisto and another of the Brotherhood who called himself Kid Omega.

Xavier, however, had eyes and thoughts only for the civilians around them: kids on foot and bikes, some bound for playdates or already well under way, others doing homework, a couple holding hands, some gossiping, playing catch, griping about the day’s events, anticipating tomorrow’s, parents taking care of life and family, tending to gardens, grousing about cluttered rooms or bills, or stressed because of an approaching birthday, eager for an evening on the town.

“I don’t want any trouble here, Erik.”

“Nor do I, Charles.” The awful truth was that while Xavier knew Magneto meant it, that at heart considered himself an ethical being, he also held with equal certainty that so-called humans didn’t count. To Magneto,
mutants
were the sentient species; all others on the planet were merely placeholders, to be disposed of as casually as one would throw away a spent tissue.

It was a revelation he’d never actually, truly, allowed himself to face, and it struck Xavier like a spear through the heart, that his friend—whom for so long, in so many ways, he’d considered his other half, the passion to his intellect—had taken his own seat at the conference table at Wannsee. The wheel had turned full circle and brought Erik Lensherr, without him realizing, to the place where
he
had begun, except that now and quite likely forever he stood among those he hated. He had become at last the very thing that had nearly destroyed him.