X-Men: The Last Stand (11 page)

“Is it true?” Rogue suddenly asked from the doorway. “Can they…
cure
us?”

All of them exchanged looks, but Ororo was the first to answer. “No,” she said flatly. She stepped towards Rogue, holding out her hands, offering all her strength and courage, sick with fury at the realization that it wouldn’t be enough. “They can’t ‘cure’ us. D’you want to know why, Marie? Because there’s nothing to cure. You might as well cure Mozart of writing music, or daVinci of the ability to make machines, or Edison, or Archimedes, or Shakespeare.”

She tried to take Rogue’s hands, but the young girl pulled them away, flinching.

“Marie,” Ororo said, in a tone that would not be denied. “
Nothing
is wrong with you. Or
any
of us, for that matter. You understand?”

She nodded, but Ororo knew that her words had fallen on rock. Rogue heard, but would not listen.

Ororo turned to Xavier, and this time the thunder outside wasn’t shy. It came in a burst that shook the house like the end of the world, and the sunny day gave way to rain that fell in torrents.

She held his gaze and said, softly, “Guess you were right about the weather.”

The meeting started badly and then it went to hell.

Jack Stover held the mike and tried to keep at least a semblance of order. He looked like your classic Harley-riding outlaw biker: long-haired, bushy-bearded; massive in the body with a belly that was, surprisingly, mostly muscle spilling over his Levi’s; a black singlet that showed off a torso and arms crowded with magnificent body art. Those who’d seen him at the beach knew every inch of him was covered, except for his face and hands and feet, making him Valle Soleada’s very own “Illustrated Man.” What was even more delightful was that the images always changed, because they were constantly being refreshed and played with by his wife, also a mutant, whose talent was painting on flesh.

Folks had gathered at the old Sea Breeze, on the boardwalk, and emotions were running hot.

“…listen to me,” Jack bellowed into his mike, making folks wince as he generated a wicked pulse of feedback. “
Listen
to me.” He’d have better luck yelling at a typhoon, but he somehow persevered regardless. “This is about getting organized, bringing our complaints to the right people! The DMA won’t take us seriously if—”

One of the razor-boys from up on the Heights cut in, “The DMA is bullshit!”

Jack ignored him. “We need to put together a committee and talk to the government!”

Someone else yelled, “Goddamn it, Jack, they want to
exterminate
us!”

Jack tried again. “The cure is
voluntary,
Louis. Nobody’s talking about extermination.”

“No one
ever
talks about it.”

The rich and resonant voice filled the theater, making those six words sound like a call to arms.

“By all means,” Magneto continued as he strode into view onstage, followed by a young man who took a position where he could watch the much older man’s back, and who then proceeded to start flicking the lid of a Zippo lighter open and shut, open and shut, like he was channeling a pulp fiction bad guy. “Go about your lives. Ignore the signs all around you. And then, one day, when the air is still and the long night has finally fallen, they will come for you. And it is only then—”

Jack knew who he was, and what he could do, probably with less thought than anyone else would take to squash a bug. But this was his town, his family, and he was prepared to stand up for them, to the feds if he had to, and certainly to the world’s most wanted mutant terrorist.

“Excuse me,” he said, “this is supposed to be—”

Magneto cut Jack off with a warning smile, and addressed the hall as if
he
was the one who’d summoned them.

“It is only
then,
” he repeated, with emphasis, “you realize that while you were talking about organizing and committees, the extermination had already begun.”

Jack was about to try again to reclaim the floor, when a flick of the igniter wheel sparked a flame from his lighter, and a gesture from Pyro intensified it to a white-hot flame.

Jack got the message and allowed his wife to draw him into the shadows as Magneto went on.

“Make no mistake, my brothers,
they
will draw first blood,
they
will force this cure upon us.
They
will steal away our future! The only question you must answer is this: What side are you on? Who will you stand with? The
humans
”—from him, that sounded like the dirtiest of words—“or with us?”

“You talk pretty tough for a guy in a cape.”

Although Jack dressed the part of an outlaw, Callisto was the real deal, utterly hard-core, an urban legend from the catacombs of Manhattan to the Cali backcountry. She lived in her leathers, and her skin—like that of the gang who followed her—was painted with art and accented with piercings that would make any gangbanger worthy of the name appear modest by comparison. Rumor had it she’d almost been affiliated with Xavier back in the day, that she’d even been responsible for the loss of the use of his legs, but that was a place nobody went, to her face. Not more than once, anyway. She kept her past a private thing, and at present she placed herself on the cutting edge of mutant rights. If anyone did harm to a mutant, they maybe had to answer to her. After all, the X-Men couldn’t be everywhere.

Except, unlike the X-Men, there was no mercy in her.

The only mark all of her gang had in common was the Greek letter omega on their necks, signifying the end of things. In the case of her Marauders, that applied to anyone who actively did a mutant harm—in other words, it would be the end of them.

“You’re so proud of being a mutant, old man, where’s your mark?”

She wasn’t a bit afraid of him. Pyro, not knowing any better, started forward, only to be held back by a signal from Magneto.

“I have been marked once, my dear, and let me assure you…”

He wrenched up his sleeve, with a convulsive violence that spoke volumes to the crowd about the depth of his wounds and the hatred that sprang from them, revealing the number etched along his forearm.

“…Proclaim your loyalties as you will, no needle will ever touch my skin again.”

Callisto shrugged, not so easily impressed as others present.

“Hey,” called Pyro, “you know who you’re talking to?”

The withering glare that she answered him with made clear that whatever she might think of Magneto, his companion didn’t rate any higher than a bug on her windscreen.

“I know that you can control fire and he controls metal. And I know by my count there’s a hundred sixty-five mutants in the room, and not a one of ’em above Class Three. Other than you two.” And, unspoken but plain, herself.

“So you have talents.” Magneto sounded intrigued.

“That, and more.”

Magneto pressed on. “You can sense other mutants, and their powers?” Callisto nodded. He was delighted, in his restrained, magisterial manner, like he’d just found a much-desired surprise beneath the Christmas tree. “A living cerebro, bless my soul,” he muttered, mainly to himself. “How utterly foolish of you, Charles, to let
this
one slip through your fingers.” And then, so that she could hear, “Could you
locate
one for me?”

“If I wanted to,” she answered.

“Trust me,” Magneto assured her, “you want to.”

He turned to leave. He didn’t ask for recruits. The only ones who mattered were the ones who followed without being asked.

Scott travelled as far as he could by bike, and went the rest of the way on foot. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had a decent meal, but he knew he hadn’t slept an unhaunted night since Jean died.

Alkali Lake hadn’t changed. Scott had assumed—as subsequent rainfall and snowmelt ate away at what remained of the dam—that the lake would be well on its way back to its original state of being, a wild and untamed river. But Fate wasn’t done joking. Turned out there was a sharp bend about a mile downstream from the dam that formed a natural choke point, preventing the water from draining completely. The level had dropped by more than half since the breach, but had finally reached a kind of equilibrium that still left the industrial complex beneath the dam’s face significantly underwater. Worse, the clearing where the
Blackbird
took off, where Jean had died, remained likewise buried.

He looked haggard, his lean features gaunt, as he stood at the water’s edge, staring at nothing.

Once more, he heard her call.

“Stop,” he pleaded. “Stop it.”

But she wouldn’t.

“Scott,” he heard, in the voice she once used to call him to bed, “please. Help me!”

That was the last straw.

With a cry torn from the deepest part of him—
“Jean!”
—Scott tore off his visor and opened his eyes wide.

Scarlet glory erupted through the air, as though someone had opened a window to the surface of the sun, and raw concussive energy gouged a momentary trench directly to the bottom of the lake, parting the waters like the hands of God through the Red Sea. Unchecked for once, wholly unrestrained, the bolt hammered at the rock along the opposite shore, following Scott’s line of sight so that when his gaze flicked towards one of the remaining towers of the dam, the entire structure shuddered with the initial impact, as though struck by a celestial battering ram. Then, with breathtaking suddenness, it shattered, not into rocks and boulders but powder, allowing the implacable beam to strike the mountainsides beyond.

And then, just like that, the beam was gone, and the only sign marking its passage through the lake was the crash of water filling space, coupled with the rise of vapor.

Scott collapsed to his knees, although even then—spent and exhausted as he was, in spirit and mind and body—he still reflexively groped for his glasses and snugged them back into place.

He was done. He couldn’t even cry, not tears anyway. Wherever the optic blasts came from inside his head, they annihilated his tears the moment they were formed. He could feel the ache of sobbing, he could give voice to his grief, he just couldn’t physically cry.

Then the water was stirring, almost boiling as he rose to his feet for a better look.

As the display built to a crescendo, water shot skyward in a magnificent fountain easily a hundred meters across, rising three or four times that into the air, better than a thousand feet, generating a shock wave that bent the lodgepole pines around Scott almost double and knocked him off his feet.

He picked himself up, stunned, senses kicking into proper gear, reacting now from his training and experience as Cyclops. And he found himself facing a radiance as welcome and comforting as the morning sun.

“Jean?” He didn’t believe it as he spoke, certain that somewhere along the way he’d stumbled headlong into madness, and he was beholding what he yearned for rather than what was.

Her laughter convinced him otherwise.

He could feel her in his heart, the special rapport that had always joined them, casting its warmth throughout his soul, spring arriving to a realm too long beset by the cruelest of winters.

She was fire.