X-Men: The Last Stand (43 page)

“This world will continue long after we are all laid to rest. And while our bodies may be gone…our lessons are eternal.”

Bobby Drake rose quickly, a little clumsily, to his feet as Rogue slipped through the doorway into his room.

His smile was bright, hers as shy as ever.

“Hey,” he said in greeting. “I heard you went home to visit your folks.”

“Been so long,” she replied, with a nervous toss of the head, “I figured they’d forgot all about me.”

“No such luck?”

“Go figure.”

“Probably make a whole lot more sense when you’re in their shoes.”

“That’ll be the damn day.”

“So,” he began.

“So,” she echoed, making him wish he was back on Alcatraz going toe-to-toe with Pyro.

“Kitty wants to be president,” he told her brightly, grasping frantically for anything to use to make conversation. “She wants us to be her brain trust.”

Her look presented her thoughts on that score with painful eloquence.

“You don’t—” he began, but she cut him off.

“Got no doubts about her, sugar,” she said, allowing a lazy smile. “That’s a slam dunk. It’s this ‘brain trust’ thing that’s got me worried.”

“So,” he tried again, after a pause.

She took a breath, crossed a Rubicon, pulled her hands from behind her back.

Her sweater was long-sleeved, but she’d pushed the sleeves up to her elbow. She wore gloves.

“I’m sorry, Bobby,” she said, her Bayou accent much more pronounced, the way it always was when she was majorly stressed. “I…”

“Rogue,” he started, “Marie, it’s okay.”

She smiled softly, counterpointing it with a slightly acid look that came totally from the girl he loved. “I know,” she told him, with a slight subtext:
dummy!
“It’s what
I
wanted.”

She held out her hand and he took it.

And for the longest time, sitting side by side in the bay window that afforded one of the better views of the estate, that was all they did.

At the end of the long underground hallway was a door that was easily the size of a bank vault, more imposing than anything you’d find protecting the United States Gold Depository at Fort Knox.

As they approached, it slid silently open, to admit the seven of them—four girls, three boys—to another world. They stepped across the threshold into nighttime darkness and found themselves amidst the ruins of what had once been a city.

“Where’s the door?” one of the boys asked, and they all turned as one to behold the same bleak vista behind them as before. One of the girls stepped forward, arm outstretched, and looked perplexed when she encountered only empty air.

“Ain’t that easy,” Logan told them, flicking a thumb across the tip of his match to strike it alight and then setting the flame to the end of his cigar. He stood at the crest of a pile of rubble, dressed in X-Men combat leathers, as were Kitty and Colossus among the group below. The rest wore the standard training uniform of gold and indigo. The yellow was intense on purpose; the kids were supposed to be seen.

“Pryde,” he said, calling the roll, narrowing his eyes at the sight of Kitty’s uniform, with pants riding dangerously low and her bolero jacket cut high and tight, showing off her superbly toned dancer’s body to the best effect she could. Girl was putting
way
too much faith in her phasing power to keep her from getting in trouble; he’d have to find a way around that. “Rasputin.”

He moved on to the newbies, a pair of very long, very lean drinks of water, one of each sex, blond mountain boy from the coal-mining hollers of eastern Kentucky, and a raven-haired Cheyenne out of Wyoming. “Sam Guthrie, Danielle Moonstar.”

Dark-haired fella was next, hanging back in the shadows, playing with a couple of cards, surprisingly hard to see despite the Day-Glo design of his uniform. Logan sensed at first sight this “Gambit” would be trouble, which suited him just fine. “Remy LeBeau?” No spoken answer, just a curt nod of the head and the flash of eyes that glowed red in the darkness.

The last was a woman identified as Sage. Dark hair, dark eyes, a pair of marks falling from the outer corner of each eye that made it seem as though someone had tattooed a line of tears down her cheek, although in the light allowed them now they looked much more like blood. She held herself perfectly still, giving away nothing, the epitome of graceful control, and with a single glance she caused every hackle to rise on the back of Logan’s neck. Instantly, he revised his estimate of the class. The Cajun with the cards and the attitude would be trouble; this girl was dangerous.

He spared a glance up and behind him, over his shoulder at the observation blister mounted in the ceiling, sensing without seeing the presence of Ororo, overseeing his first training class. He knew she was smiling, enjoying every moment of his discomfiture, but also trusting him to do the job right.

“Okay, firstly, this isn’t a game. Anyone thinks different, go out back and sit a spell by the memorials. The world could be a nasty place before we came along; the presence of mutants, with powers, has just upped the ante into the stratosphere. Most of the kids upstairs, they’ll leave this place with a degree and a future, and that’ll pretty much be the end of it. Mutant or not, they’ll go on with their lives. You lot, you’re cut from a different cloth. Here’s where we see what you’re made of.”

He took a long, contemplative drag on his cigar. “It’s gonna seem like this is all about ducking and dodging, staying in line…

“…but what it’s really about is…being a part of something. Not just a team. More than that.”

He made a face, certain he could hear Ororo laughing at him. The quick look Sage split between him and the blister—which by rights she shouldn’t have been able to see—made him wonder if she could hear her, too. Definitely
very
dangerous.

“Anyway,” one last puff and he tossed the cigar aside, “I’m not one for speeches. Or theory. Around here, we pretty much learn by doing. So—let’s get started.”

And on that cue, all hell broke loose.

His favorite spot was atop Corona Heights, just above the Castro, where a natural outcrop of rock known as Arthur’s Seat afforded a truly magnificent view of San Francisco.

If he looked over his shoulder, he could see the red and white spidery tripod of the Sutro Tower, a gigantic communications mast that dominated the western heights, like some Martian invader out of H. G. Wells. Downtown and to the left the skyline was completely transformed by the Golden Gate that now linked the city with Alcatraz.

The disruption caused by the bridge’s removal had been nothing short of monumental, and commuter traffic patterns had proved to be the least of it. Canny entrepreneurs were already attempting to fill the breach with large, fast hydrofoil ferries, such as were used up north in Seattle and Vancouver; the problem was terminals, either in Tiburon and Sausalito or here in the city proper. Pedestrian passengers could be accommodated except that they needed somewhere to park over there and access to mass transit over here. Driving around the bay—from 101 to the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge that separated San Francisco Bay from San Pedro and then down Interstate 80 to the “Governor Norton” Bay Bridge—was certainly feasible, if you didn’t mind a twoor three-hour drive each way. Housing prices in Marin had crashed and both the mayor and the governor in Sacramento were shrieking for federal disaster relief. On talk radio and blogs, the trial balloon was being floated—with a vengeance—that since mutants had made the mess, they should bear the responsibility of cleaning it up.

How hard could it be? they speculated ad nauseum. After all, it took only one of them—albeit the self-styled Master of Magnetism—who was said to be no spring chicken either, to move the bridge in the first place. Surely a bunch of them could replace it, or at least make the rebuilding go more quickly and cheaply? Or, failing that, why not find Magneto himself and force him to make restitution? Sure, the X-Men claimed that he’d fallen victim to the Worthington Cure and had been permanently stripped of his powers, but aren’t the X-Men muties, too? How can we believe them? How can we trust them, really?

That was the argument, across airwaves and bandwidths, day in and day out, each side, mutant and sapien, yelling at the other without regard to logic or the slightest effort to consider the other opinions.

Someday, eventually, a new bridge would span the straits. In the meantime, the city and its people would cope, as they had a century ago after their equally famous earthquake. For now, though, they had a perfectly wonderful and unique new tourist attraction.

Sightings of actual mutants were still surprisingly rare, with every paparazzi and amateur with a long lens searching the sky for a shot of the newly christened Angel out for a flight. The fact that he was at school back east didn’t seem to faze them; they still kept a perpetual stakeout on the Worthington town house. Some of the more enterprising professionals had thought to sneak onto Xavier’s property in New York, for shots of the young man and any other muties they could find. They spent a night straight out of
Blair Witch
lost in the woods, and fled to the coast on the earliest flight, never to speak to anyone of what happened.

The only such photo to actually see print came from an amateur birder and made the cover of
Audubon.

The world proceeded much as it always had.