The Ultimate X-Men (29 page)

A woman passerby backpedalled into the street, shrieking as she caught a glimpse of Logan’s savage expression. He ran by, caring nothing about her as long as she wasn’t in his way, but ahead, a policeman on the corner turned, saw the commotion, and reached reflexively for his pistol.

Logan closed the gap between himself and the man before the latter could unsnap his holster. Logan swiped, and his claws ripped through the leather, knocking the gun to the concrete. He scooped up the weapon, tossed it onto the roof of the next building, and raced into an alley that led to the fringe of the wood.

The shrill call of the cop’s whistle faded as Logan lost himself amid boughs heavy with pine needles and trees higher than the town’s tallest building. Finally he slowed, though he was only mildly winded. His first truly conscious

act was to bring up the hand that had torn the pistol loose and stare at it.

The hand was scarred, powerful, with fingernails sharp and thick. But no claws protruded, as they had they when he slashed at the holster, no matter how
^r
fiercely he flexed and squeezed.

He growled, trying to drive from his mind the memories of a life where he was a cutter in the lumberyard from which he had just fled, one of a series of jobs he’d held during a life spent entirely in the Great White North. He’d often imagined such a life—one he might have lived had he not been a mutant, and never been the subject of Weapon X experiments.

The false identity clung to his mind, eroding the essence of his Wolverine self. He had endured many kinds of madness, but this was new. He wasn’t sure how to fight it. He had done the one thing that made sense—got out among the trees, away from the stench of civilization. What now?

A weak telepathic voice called from deep in his brain— a shout reduced to a whisper.

“Red? ’Zat you?” He asked aloud because he couldn’t remember how to answer mentally.

An image came to him of a face. He knew' he should know her, but her name wouldn’t surface. He felt that if he tried too hard to recall it, he would forget his own.

The hunter in him recognized that she was
that
direction—over the hills, through more forest, and then who knew what. Far away. Hopelessly far.

Yet lurking here, passively accepting a transformation into a new self, was not something he would tolerate. He

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needed to take action. Until he could think of something better, at least he could run.

He set off, the trail seeming more faint with every tree passed.

Hank McCoy, still ensconced in his office, unwound the cuff of a blood pressure gauge and tossed the device in its drawer. Once more he checked the printout of the treadmill test he’d performed on himself.

The proof was right there, stark and irrefutable. An hour earlier he had still shown indications of mutant, Beastlike physiology. Now his scores had fallen to levels within the reach of a trained athlete. At this rate another hour would bring the results down to a point that could only be described as “normal.”

And it was getting so, so hard to recall why that should bother him.

Bobby Drake lifted the ice cream cone to his mouth. How fascinating the cold felt as it caressed his tongue. The flavor almost seemed superfluous. Temperature mattered far more.

On the other side of the parlor, the freezer case beckoned. He had half a mind to crawl right in there among the tubs of Rocky Road and Orange Sherbet. Was that weird? Quickly he checked the faces of the servers and the other customers. They weren’t looking at him.

He laughed inwardly. Who the hell would care what off-the-wall ideas he had, as long as he kept them to himself? No one. Strange, then, that his paranoia lingered. Some part of him was accustomed to people staring at him, at-

OUT Of
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tacking him, or running as fast as they could away from him. The eerie depth of the perception sent chills up his spine.

Chills were good, though. He relaxed.
Get real, Drake. Just who or what do you think you are?
The windows reflected back the image of a healthy, young, all-American guy. Nothing strange whatsoever.

Just hanging out, having a cone. A zen moment. Life didn’t get much better.

He licked again, letting the dollop of full-sugar, all-the-fat Mocha melt on his tongue until nothing remained but a tiny speck of ice that had crept into the mixture. Now, what was so hypnotic about
ice?

The carousel sounds and popcorn aroma of a carnival surrounded Rogue as she took a place in line for the fourth time. Beneath her feet, straw kept the dust down; she liked the way it tickled her bare feet. The sun of the Deep South kneaded her skin—and there was a lot of that showing around her halter top and cutoff denim jeans. She treasured the heat with a fervor that verged on nostalgia. Now, why should that be? She'd lived in Dixie her w'hole life, hadn’t she?

“Back again?” asked an old lady with a wink.

Up ahead a sign read
“kisses
—$2.” Rogue blushed, then grinned. “Can’t seem to get enough,” she admitted.

“He’s quite a hunk, isn’t he?” remarked the matron.

The dark-haired, muscular occupant of the booth, just then lending his wares to a plump lady in a summer dress, was indeed a fine specimen of manhood, but Rogue didn’t really care about that. It was the kissing itself that compelled her to fork over her cash so generously. The contact of flesh

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against flesh, even in such a relatively chaste, public way, gave her an indecently intense satisfaction.

The hunk finished with his chubby customer and, scanning down the line, saw Rogue. He winked.

She grinned back. Funny thing, after their first kiss, he’d seemed rather pale. She’d thought he might faint. But the color was back in his cheeks. The second and third times had been fine.

Why did that make her feel so good? So . . . forgiven?

Scott stood at a revolving display rack in a drugstore, trying out various pairs of sunglasses. He felt like a kid let loose in a toy store, though why all these silly little plastic shades should appeal to him so much he didn’t quite understand. After all, he’d never needed prescription lenses in his life. He could have bought any style he wanted at any point in the past—what was the big deal about them now?

As he selected a gray-lensed, bronze-frame aviator pair and set them on his nose, an image of a great-looking redhead popped into his mind. He hardly paid attention, since her description didn’t match any of his friends or acquaintances. Then he remembered that this was the fifth or sixth time he’d thought of her that day.

And then he remembered much more.

Steeling himself against the delicious contentment he’d been feeling, he finally succeeded in framing a reply to Jean’s psionic query: “How many of us are here? Is anyone missing?”

In the bedroom at her parents’ home, Jean Grey heard Scott’s question. Though it was a reply to her own, it came

back as if it were nothing more than television-show dialogue overheard from the living room, having nothing to do with the here and now.

A cozy, soothing mood possessed her. She wanted to go downstairs and play cards, or simply indulge in the companionship of her family, especially with Sara. What a silly question, anyhow.

Is anyone missing?
The voice said it again, insistently.

Jean frowned, got a grip on her X-Man self, and laboriously combed her chaotically jumbled memories for the answer. Yes, other members of the team were “here” in this reality. She’d touched their minds, even if the brief comments of Logan and Scott were the only distinct examples of contact.

Or rather, she’d touched six out of seven. She’d completely failed with . . . Psylocke.

A cold sweat burst on her brow. Psylocke was another telepath. With the exception of Scott, with whom Jean shared a psychic rapport, Psylocke should have been the easiest to contact, even with weakened powers. Jean brought what little reserves she had left to bear, and from the place in her mind where she should have received a response— nothing.

“That’s the key,” Jean murmured to herself, and realized then how little time she had left to do anything. This new world had almost swallowed her true identity, and those of the others. If she were going to save the group, she had to find the answer to a puzzle quickly.

One option made the most sense. Before she lost track again, she broadcast a set of insistent telepathic instructions, but this time it was not toward Psylocke.

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* * *

Warren Worthington III was flying a small airplane, and having a great time doing it. Barrel rolls and sudden swoops—they felt like second nature to him. His aircraft behaved like an extension of his body. He laughed out loud as he climbed through a layer of thin, scattered clouds, regaining altitude in order to try more antics. He couldn’t remember an hour in his life when flying had seemed so grand. As an heir of wealth, he had always enjoyed taking the plane up; it got him away from corporate boardrooms and obligatory high-society gatherings, out where he could be himself. Today, though, his piloting skills seemed almost more than human.

The “almost” part struck him as particularly important. The seat beneath him, the cockpit around him, comforted him with their separateness from his body. It was a strange emotion, but he didn’t dwell on it. He had only a few more minutes until he’d have to land and immerse himself once again in the details of his busy life.

Warren!
called a voice so clearly that he looked behind him to see if he had a stowaway. Only when it came a second time did he realize it was in his head.

“Jean,” he said. The knowledge of who Jean Grey was poured into him, and with it arrived the memory of being Archangel.

Go to Betsy,
Jean said.
She’s
. . .
she’s . . .
The voice fell below
⁷
the level of intelligibility.

Warren wasted no time. He wasn’t sure how long he could retain this sense of his proper identity. He brought his plane down low
⁷
over the landscape. As his altitude plum-

meted, that landscape began to shift, becoming the familiar settled woodlands surrounding the town of Salem Center.

A large set of buildings emerged from the leaves.
Emerged
was precisely how it appeared. He was certain the structures hadn’t been there until he willed them to be. He banked the plane and straightened to attempt a landing.

As he settled in, the aircraft dissolved. His back tingled fiercely. The wings used to land himself on the broad lawns were no longer propeller-driven. Down and on his feet, he flapped them twice just to reinforce his mutant identity.

The ivy-encrusted walls of the Xavier Institute wavered, threatening to fade out of this world once more, but Warren didn’t let them disappear. He rushed inside, making straight for the quarters of Elisabeth Braddock.

Psylocke woke on an exam table in the infirmary. Warren was leaning over her, his somber expression easing as they made eye contact. Several other X-Men hovered in the background. The Beast switched off a monitor, having obviously tended to her.

“How do you feel?” Warren asked.

“Awful.” She coughed. Her muscles seemed to be slung on her bones like overstuffed luggage, and her skin itched as if bathed in grit and insecticide. Even lifting her tongue to form words proved taxing.

“You had a tremendous fever,” Warren told her. “It created some interesting effects.”

“I think I remember,” Betsy said. “It was like I was doing psi-probes of each of you. You were in places you have tucked deep in your minds. Except you weren’t there by choice. You had been forced there ... by me.”

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“That is our working hypothesis,” the Beast confirmed. “While in the midst of your fever, instead of simply reading minds, you projected something—call it a fervent wish— into everyone in the building. Thanks to the abundant vigor of your psionic abilities, you overlaid alternate realities upon us all, each one a mixture of your own desires and those of the individual affected.”

Added Jean, “The illusions were so strong that we couldn’t break free of them until my telepathic red alert to Warren shook him awake here, in the real world, where we had all been rendered unconscious. He woke everyone up, then Bobby iced you down. We carried you to the infirmary, and Hank’s treatments brought your fever down the rest of the way.”

“I’m . . . sorry,” Betsy said. “I didn’t have any control over it. I don’t even know how it started. I’ve often had dreams where I was living in a world where I wasn’t a mutant—-where no one was. But I always woke up, same as ever. I had no idea anything like this would develop.”

“It was a narrow escape. This occurrence, thanks to the fever, activated a variation of your psychic knife,” Jean added, referring to Psylocke’s ability to telepathically “carve out” a person’s memories. “Those false memories we all experienced were given such a boost, they would have soon taken root permanently in our brains.”

“But when Warren realized that I was in distress, he found a way to get to me,” Betsy said, turning to gaze at him again. They clasped hands.

“Least I could do for my favorite ninja,” he replied. The words were flip, but the tenderness in the delivery was like a cool cloth on her forehead. It brought a romantic smile

to her lips, and worked to ease the guilt at having endangered everyone.

“Jean and Professor Xavier will do some scans of us all during the next few days, and make sure any residual effects are minimized,” Cyclops said.

“Well,” Iceman said, “I guess we can consider it a case of ‘no harm done.’ ”

Most of the group filed out, leaving Psylocke to recuperate. Archangel remained with her, trying out a joke or two to further revive her spirits.

No harm done?
wondered Hank McCoy as he sequestered himself in the med lab next door. In the gleaming metal of a cabinet, his blue-haired face projected back, as brutish as ever.

A narrow escape?
questioned Rogue. Bobby strode beside her down the corridor. She wanted very much to be able to take his arm in hers, laugh a little at another rescue accomplished, maybe even give him a peck on the cheek. All without having to restrain herself for fear that her power would drain him of things it shouldn’t.