X-Men: The Last Stand (44 page)

The FBI had Magneto at the top of its Most Wanted list and every intelligence service in the world had the word out to find him. There were the usual chorus of rumors that he was dead, as well as those which maintained he’d never existed, that it was all a hoax perpetrated by the X-Men to make their reputation.

He enjoyed the stories immensely, dividing his thirst for news between the
New York Times
and the
Economist
. TV wasn’t for him; the drama was too harsh and the comedies weren’t terribly funny. Having endured so much of the reality, he had no stomach for pretend violence.

Hollywood went big budget on
The Battle of Alcatraz,
with one of Britain’s finest Shakespearean actors, a knight no less, tapped to play the role of Magneto. It was scheduled to premiere in San Francisco in May.

Somehow, he meant to find a way to see it.

He’d always been a careful man. He’d scattered his resources across the globe, so that regardless of whatever setbacks he encountered along the way, he’d be able to sustain himself and start again. This was the first time he’d had to do so without the use of his powers.

He had a job, working one of the trawlers that still pulled out of Fisherman’s Wharf every other week; he’d been “adopted” somewhat by
Arcadia
’s skipper, Aleytys Forrester. She cooked him meals, he taught her Greek. She asked him no questions, he told her no lies. In many respects, he was in the best physical shape of his life.

He was surprisingly at peace while he remained awake. His nights, of course, were haunted.

His custom was to nurse a large muffin—freshly baked, organic and obscenely delicious—and a tall cup of dark, rich coffee over a book, basking in the sun until the afternoon fog rolled down off the heights to shepherd him home.

Occasionally, though, in remembrance of happier days, he’d take a seat at the chess table down below the knob of Arthur’s Seat and play a game with Charles in his head. It wasn’t exactly kosher, playing both sides of the board, far too many draws, but it passed the time and kept his wits keen.

Very rarely, he’d pull a collection of bottle caps from the pocket of his pea coat and spread them out before him, pitting his improvised pieces against the ones supplied his adversary from his imagination. And he would stare at them with ferocious intensity, with all the still considerable will power he possessed, and try to make them move.

Today was such a day. And as with every such attempt since that fateful confrontation on the bridge, Magneto was disappointed.

A shadow fell over him and he glanced up from under lowered brow to see a woman of medium height, forty-something and quite handsome, dressed with careless style that told him she had the wealth to afford good clothes but little interest in appearing fashionable. What marked her most was an obvious intelligence.

He ignored her and hoped she’d go away. She didn’t take the hint.

“May I join you?” she asked, with an evident Scots burr.

He said nothing.

“I can help you,” she said.

Again, he said nothing, thinking that the fact that he was here should have made abundantly plain that he wanted no such help.

She set a business card on the table:
MUIR ISLE RESEARCH CENTER; KINROSS, SCOTLAND.
And beneath it:
moira kinross mactaggart, director.

“And I pray y’can help me.” The slight hitch in her voice made plain that what she was asking was both intensely important and wholly personal.

“I’m at the Fairmont these next few days, for a conference. If y’wish, ring me on my mobile. If not, I’ll not bother y’again.”

She had a Highlander’s directness, of speech and manner, and a brilliance to match that of the two men she’d teamed with fresh out of University. The work she and Charles had done with him was groundbreaking; by rights, it should have won them all the Nobel Prize. But both men insisted she was the one to go to Stockholm, to be the public face of their joint researches. Her second Prize she’d won on her own.

“The next move is yours, Erik.”

He watched her all the way down the hill, until she turned the corner towards Market.

He tapped his fingers absently on the table in a random pattern. He thought about what she’d said, and how she’d acted and what they’d all once meant to one another. Lee was cooking cioppino tonight, from fish they’d caught with their own hands.

He couldn’t go back. That path had brought nothing but grief, to those he cared for, those who trusted him, to himself. This was better.

Magneto reached out to gather up his bottlecaps…

…and one of them trembled, ever so slightly, as if caught by a puff of breeze—except that the air had fallen completely still.

And then, just a little bit, it moved.

Also available from Del Rey Books:

X-MEN by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith

X-MEN 2 by Chris Claremont

SPIDER-MAN by Peter David

SPIDER-MAN 2 by Peter David

HULK by Peter David

X-Men The Last Stand
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Del Rey Mass Market Original

™ & © 2006 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D
EL
R
EY
is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

X-MEN Character Likenesses: ™ & © 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

All rights reserved.

eISBN-13: 978-0-345-49383-5

eISBN-10: 0-345-49383-4

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