Even though he appeared to be completely immobile inside his sled, the Exemplar who called himself the Capo of the Judgment’s Watch was proving to be far more nimble than his motionlessness might suggest. For Scott, this was more than a little frustrating.
“'You degenerates are no match for the Judgment’s Watch Cohort,” boomed the voice of the Exemplar. With his lower extremities completely encased inside a sleek sled of some silvery metal, he looked almost as though he were seated in a motorcycle’s sidecar. If, that is, a sidecar could fly and had somehow managed to lose track of its motorcycle. “Stand down, and submit to the will of the Kh’thonic Collective.”
Scott didn’t respond, but opened the aperture on his visor, sending a wide beam of scarlet energy lancing toward the Exemplar.
In the split second before the beam connected, the Exemplar suddenly blurred into motion, moving blindingly fast for the briefest of instants, and then stopping again only a few yards away.
“What the blazes?”
“This resistance is pointless, and is an insult to our shared masters. Desist!”
Scott gritted his teeth. His first instinct was that the Capo had teleported the short distance, but there’d been no sound of inrushing air, no flash of energy discharged. It was only on reflection that Scott realized that the sled had simply moved, albeit extremely quickly.
“just what is your talent, anyway, Capo?” Scott taunted, darting to one side, looking for an opening. “Boring your opponents to death?”
“Mine is the power of mentation, degenerate.”
Scott opened the visor again, and another scarlet beam lanced out. Again, though, the sled moved at lightning speed, so that when the beam arrived the space in which the sled had been was now empty.
“A futile effort,” the Capo said.
“Maybe,” Scott said, and scarlet beam after scarlet beam shot from the visor, one after another after another. “But I’m not done trying.”
Scott’s powers flowed through his eyes, so that to look at a thing and to aim a beam at it were the same action. And yet, though he had only to glance at the Capo to send a beam of concussive force lancing toward him, still the beams always failed to connect.
The Capo made a sound something like laughter. “Fool. My cognition is so far advanced above your own that I stand in relation to you as you yourself do to a lowly amoeba.”
“Stop thinking, Scott!” came a voice from behind him.
Scott turned to see a man hanging from the side of a lamppost a short distance away, suit disheveled, tie askew, huge feet bare.
“Don’t think!” the man repeated. “Just keep shooting at random in his general direction.”
Scott nodded, then turned back toward the Capo, opened the visor, and let fly, one beam after another, not bothering to line his gaze up with the Capo, but simply loosing blast after blast in the Exemplar’s direction.
For a few seconds, it seemed as though this new strategy would be no more successful than Scott’s had been, when suddenly one of the beams struck home.
Scott stopped, and held his breath.
The Exemplar made a sound like a groan, as his sled listed slightly to one side.
“Quickly, Scott, hit him again!”
Scott didn’t waste time replying, but poured it on, his visor opened all the way, his eyes as wide as he could make them. For several seconds, scarlet force lanced out, and the sled-riding Exemplar was buffeted back, like a car slowly pushed across the pavement by the force of a fire-hose blast.
Finally, Scott could feel his power reserves begin to wane, the beam gradually reduced to little more than a red light, and he closed the visor’s aperture.
The blasts ceased, the Capo briefly surged forward, his resistance no longer finding anything against which to push. Then he hung motionless in midair for a moment.
“I am . . . the superior . . .” the Capo said, his voice faint and distant, and then his eyes closed, and he listed far over to one side.
As the Exemplar drifted high overhead like an errant balloon, Scott turned to the barefoot, suit-wearing gentleman who’d come to his aid at such a crucial moment.
“Good to see you, Hank,” Scott said, extending his hand and treating his old friend to his broadest smile. “What kept you?”
‘Ah, well,” the man named Hank McCoy said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “I was down at the Coffee A-Go-Go in Greenwich Village, enjoying the pulchritudinous prose of Bernard the Poet, when his epic ‘Amorphous Ode to the Bebop Bonobos’ was interrupted by the sounds of invasion. I’ve been working my way uptown ever since, but traffic, as I’m sure you can imagine, has been a beast.” Scott grinned a bit wider, if such a thing were possible. “Have you heard from the others?”
Hank shook his head. “Bobby was down in Texas, as I understand, while Warren and Jean were answering a call in Detroit.”
A cloud passed over Scott features, if only momentarily. “They’re big enough to take care of themselves,” he said, his tone strained.
Hank reached out a massive hand, and laid it on Scott’s shoulder. “She’ll be fine, Scott. We’ve faced worse and gotten through it unscathed.”
Scott looked at the confusion of Times Square, the pitched battle still going on here and there.
“Have we? This was all done by six extraterrestrial mutants, Hank. How many do you suppose they’re keeping in reserve up there?”
The two men looked skyward, where only the brightest stars were visible through the city’s light pollution. Neither of them had an answer to that.
All around the world, battles broke out and fires raged, as more and more of the landers touched down, each disgorging a cadre of the super-powered Exemplar. By now, there was not a man, woman, or child on Earth who had not heard the news of the invasion. In many areas, where the combined might of the police and military were insufficient to combat the invaders, and where no powered individuals stood in the breach, the populations had already been herded into hastily erected containment centers, just hours after the first of the alien landers touched ground.
But in other places, where the local authorities were sufficiently well armed and organized, or where superheroes or other powered adventurers were on hand, resistance was still being mounted.
On the astral plane, Doug Ramsey stood, holding hands with an angel.
Well, he wasn’t really standing, as such. This was some sort of idealized self-image, projected telepathi-cally from his mind, that only seemed to be standing. If
Doug had a greater degree of self-control, he was sure, then his body could take on any shape he imagined, could fly, crawl, or swim. But Doug imagined himself standing, just as he always did, and so that’s what he appeared to be doing.
But it was an angel at his side, that much was certain. An angel, strangely, with a butterfly over her eyes.
“What?” Betsy had asked when he’d pointed out the butterfly. He’d just noticed it, as they materialized side by side here on the astral plane, and couldn’t help but mention it.
“It’s almost like a domino mask,” Doug explained, “but it seems to be made out of light, and is glowing. Orange, pink and other colors I can’t even describe.”
“How strange ...” Betsy reached up and touched her face, and again Doug remembered that this was not her body, but merely a memory of it. “Let me see, if you don’t mind.”
Doug felt something brush against his mind, like butterfly’s wings, and he realized that Betsy had just reached out and touched his thoughts, briefly.
“Very strange, indeed,” Betsy mused. “But a mystery for another time, I think. Now, though our bodies are still in that little room off the headmaster’s study, so long as my powers are amplified by Cerebro and you remain in contact with me, our astral forms are free to travel whatever distance we like, to whatever destination we wish.”
“Understood.” Doug nodded, marveling at the sensation of moving a body that wasn’t there.
“Very well,” Betsy said, clapping her hands together.
“I was able to make contact with my brother in England, and the New Mutants in Colorado, because I have an image of them in my mind. Cerebro appears to work on a system of sympathies, somehow checking that image against all of the minds on the planet, like a fingerprint matched against all the entries in a database, until it finds the one it’s searching for. In order for us to contact the X-Men’s allies around the world, you need only imagine them, one at a time, and via our psychic connection I’ll be able to do the rest.”
Doug thought for a moment, and then nodded again. “Seems simple enough. So where do you want to start?”
Betsy shrugged. “Distance is no object, and any place is as good as another.”
“Fair enough,” Doug answered. “How about we start close to home, then?”
In Boston, a group of young mutants wearing uniforms of red and black stood in Quincy Market. Doug identified them as the Hellions, students at the Massachusetts Academy, and rivals to the students at the Xavier School. There’d been bad blood between them and the New Mutants, and bad blood between their headmistress the White Queen and the X-Men, but now that the Earth was under threat of invasion from forces beyond the stars, such grudges and jealousies could be put aside, at least temporarily. Against a common foe, mutant stood with mutant, to protect the world itself.
If they survived, perhaps, then they could return to their old war. For the moment, they were allies, of a sort.
In Ottawa, in the Canadian province of Ontario, a group of heroes gathered in the shadow of the Parliament Buildings. Led by a woman wearing a power suit emblazoned with the red and white of the maple leaf flag, they numbered a pair of mutant speedsters, a goddess, a shaman and his daughter, a man of metal and a master of metal, and a feisty little person. Together, they were Alpha Flight. In their time, they had been allies, then enemies, and then allies again of the X-Men, and while the mutants ofXavier’s school ranged all over the world and beyond, the men and women of Alpha Flight were dedicated to securing the borders of their native land. But threats to the world at large were threats to their homeland, as well, and in the face of an alien invasion the Alphans would not consider surrender.
They stood, shoulder to shoulder, as a phalanx of invading Exemplar approached, prepared to raze the house of Canadian governance to the ground. Alpha Flight had no intention of allowing that to happen.
Across the Atlantic, in Glasgow, Scotland, a motley assemblage of scientists and civilians, human and mutant alike, had gathered together, armed with weapons, powers, and determination. At their head were a human woman, Moira MacTaggert, and the man she loved, Sean Cassidy. Once a mutant, his abilities stripped from him years before, Cassidy had been a tearaway, a policeman, an unwitting criminal, an adventurer, and a hero. For a time, he’d even been an X-Man. But now, he was simply a man, looking to protect what was his, in which count he included the woman at his side. The head of the Muir Island research facility, Dr. MacTag-gert had long been a friend of the X-Men, and longer a friend to their founder, Charles Xavier.
With them was an army, but an army of one man. Numbering in the dozens, and growing by the moment, the bodies of Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, spilled out into the surrounding streets. Any impact, any kinetic energy, was transformed by Madrox’s unique mutant makeup, creating a complete and autonomous duplicate of Madrox himself These duplicates could be reabsorbed by Madrox’s body at will, but if he chose, he could let them continue their independent existence indefinitely. Each body, on its own, was unremarkable; no stronger than the average man, nor faster, nor smarter. But taken together, in their dozens, or even hundreds, the army of Madroxes could be formidable, indeed.
Two lovers and an army of one. They stood together, Scotland’s last line of defense against the invaders.
In Tokyo, in the middle of the normally crowded Ginza Strip, two mutants stood back-to-back. Cousins and sometimes enemies, the two now shared a common enemy, their feud momentarily forgotten. Both were scions of the Clan 'Yoshida, both born with abilities that set them apart from their families and their fellow Japanese. Sunfire, for a brief moment a member of the X-Men, controlled the nuclear fire that burns at the heart of the sun itself. Silver Samurai, frequent foe to Wolverine and his teammates, could direct strange energies into the sword he wielded, making it capable of cutting through virtually any substance short of adamantium.
In the shadows, far from the bright neon lights of the Ginza, a woman named "¥11130, with no particular powers or abilities beyond an aptitude with knives, the ability to pick locks, and a complete lack of fear, eyed the advance of the Exemplar, wondering how to turn the situation to her advantage, and considering, for perhaps the first time, if this might not be the time to do something selfless. To try, for once, to be a hero.
Into the small hours of the morning, Doug and Betsy moved hand in hand through the astral plane, touching first one mind and then another. Coordinating the efforts of the X-Men’s allies around the world, sharing strategies as to the best ways to defeat the alien invaders, the two persevered, hoping against hope that this might not be mankind’s final stand.
So the kid can change into any kind of animal, looks like.
Logan faced off against the green-skinned Exemplar. In those rare moments when his body reverted to a humanoid shape, while transforming from one animal shape to another, he looked like the Hulk’s scrawny kid brother. Couldn’t weigh more than one hundred and fifty pounds, tops, standing only a couple of inches taller than Logan himself Where all the extra mass was coming from for each of the transformations, Logan couldn’t say, but it didn’t seem to matter much. All that mattered was that the kid was proving to be more difficult an opponent than Logan would have guessed.
That’s alright, Logan thought with a tight grin. I’ve got some animal in me, too.
For the last few minutes, Logan had been tussling with an oversize apelike creature with talons for fingers, and big scalloped ears like batwings. With a bellowing roar of rage, the green ape-thing lunged at Logan, but the X-Man danced easily out of the way
Thing is, it isn’t the animal that counts, most of the time. It’s the man.
Evidently deciding it was time to try a different strategy, the Exemplar retreated, and transformed, first into a skinny, green-skinned kid, and then into some sort of green-furred bear. Its snout open wide, revealing double rows of vicious teeth. It was even taller than the ape-creature had been, taller than Logan and Peter Rasputin put together. And on the end of its powerful arms were long, razor-sharp claws.
Logan smiled. He’d faced bears once or twice in his time.
Bears, I know how to handle.
Before the newly transformed Exemplar could move in to attack, Logan surged forward, and swiped his adamantium claws downward in a wide arc, connecting with the bear-creature’s right arm.
The unbreakable adamantium blades cut through the green-furred arm like a hot knife through warm butter, and as Logan’s swing continued its downward arc, the severed limb flopped onto the pavement at his feet.
This’ll be easier’n I thought.
But then, as Logan watched, the severed arm skittered across the pavement, like some sort of strange, fur-colored crab. When it touched the bear-thing’s foot, it suddenly flowed like mercury, reabsorbed back into the body.
For a brief instant, the Exemplar reverted back to human shape, a momentary expression of discomfort flashing across his features, and then he treated Logan to a wicked smile. Without preamble, he transformed again, this time into a giant scorpion, as big as a Cadillac, its tail raised and poised to strike.
Or maybe not.
Kurt Wagner crouched low, legs compressed like springs, and then leapt high in the air, just as the beams of black light blasted chunks of asphalt out of the pavement where he’d stood.
“You’re getting closer, mein Freund,” Kurt laughed. He dangled from a traffic light, suspended by his prehensile tail. “Keep trying, you’re bound to hit me sooner or later.”
The pale-skinned, green-eyed Exemplar replied with a wordless moan.
“What’s the matter? Wake up on the wrong side of the sarcophagus this morning, mummy?”
The Exemplar raised his hands, palms first, and black light leapt out, lancing directly at the spot where Kurt dangled.
Bamf.
Kurt displaced a few dozen yards to the north, appearing in a buff of brimstone and smoke on top of an abandoned yellow cab.
“Missed ... again ...” Kurt said, out of breath.
For all his cocksure bravado, this constant ’porting and acrobatics was taking its toll. He’d so far managed to keep a step ahead of the pale-skinned Exemplar, providing a distraction while giving the civilians who’d previously crowded the street a chance to get to safety. But now that the streets were almost empty, Kurt wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to keep it up.
Then, like clockwork, the Exemplar swung around, and fired another pair of black light beams in Kurt’s direction. He teleported out of harm’s way, but when he appeared halfway up the block, he had to hold his side, doubled over, like a marathon runner reaching the end of the race.
Okay, Kurt thought, ruefully. This is growing tiresome. .. .
Peter Rasputin, meanwhile, had problems of his own.
At the moment, he clung to the shoulder of the giant woman like a tick, as the Exemplar batted at him with her massive hands, trying to knock him loose. When they’d first set to, he’d been worried about her treading on innocents underfoot, but in the time that he’d been occupying her, most of the pedestrians had fled to the safety of the surrounding buildings, or down into the subway tunnels, beyond the Exemplars’ immediate reach.
Now, of course, Peter had to work out what to do next. Sadly, his strategy had not extended much beyond harassing the giant, and he wasn’t quite sure what his next course of action should be.
The woman had grown to such a size that Peter was no taller than one of her fingers was long. He’d contented himself with tugging at her earlobe and delivering punches to her neck and jaw, but they’d proven little more than irritants. If he was going to end this skirmish, he’d have to find a way to do a bit more damage.
And then he saw it.
It hung on the side of a theater, above the marquee. The giant’s struggles had carried them farther up Broadway, away from Times Square, so that now they were in the theater district.
A giant metal lightning bolt, it was a promotion for the new Arkon: The Musical. It was easily twenty-five feet long, made out of a skin of aluminum over a skeleton of steel.
Da, Peter thought. That should do.
Peter grabbed the giant woman’s earlobe, steering her like a horse on a lead. As he’d hoped, she pulled to one side, coming closer to the theater and the giant lightning bolt. When they were only a short distance away, Peter leapt off jumping as far and as fast as his legs would propel him, launching like a missile at the theater.
He landed with a shower of sparks on the top of the marquee. The lightning bolt was just within reach, and with little effort he was able to wrest it from its moorings.
“Over here!” he called out, and the giant woman spun around.
Before the Exemplar could react, Peter swung the lightning bolt like a baseball bat, its end connecting with her chin.
As the giant fell to Earth, insensate, Peter felt a pang of guilt. It somehow didn’t seem right, doing violence to any woman, however dangerous she might be.
Muttering a brief apology to the unconscious giant, he carefully returned the now-mangled lightning bolt prop to its moorings. From his vantage point atop the marquee, he was unable to see the street directly below, but it appeared that all pedestrians had cleared the area, and so, shouting down for anyone below to stand clear, he leapt to the ground.
He landed, still armored, with a deafening thud.
From behind him came a slight moaning sound.
“Bozhe moi!” Peter shouted, alarmed. “Have I hurt someone?”
He spun around, and behind him, only a half-dozen feet away, stood a pale-skinned, green-eyed Exemplar, who held his hands out before him, palms forward.
Before Peter could react, twin beams of black light lanced from the Exemplar’s palms, striking him point blank. And then the world went black.
Knocked unconscious, Peter was unable to maintain the levels of concentration needed to sustain his armored form, so that by the time his body struck the pavement, he was merely flesh and bone.
The pale-skinned Exemplar slowly stepped closer, raising his hands to finish the task.
“Cornin’ through!”
The Exemplar glanced over, mouth opened lightly in the barest hint of confusion, and before he could respond Logan barreled into him like a freight train, knocking the Exemplar off balance and sending the black light beams shooting harmlessly off into the night sky.
“Nightcrawler!” Logan shouted, wheeling around and facing the giant green scorpion lumbering close behind him. “Front and center!”
Kurt teleported in, appearing just a couple of feet from Peter’s side.
“Get Petey out of here, will ya?” Logan said, and scrammed himself, just in time to avoid being impaled by the scorpion’s tale. Behind him, the pale-skinned
Exemplar regained his footing, and raised his hands, palms first, menacingly.
“What about you?” Kurt said, kneeling down beside Peter.
“Don’t worry about me, elf,” Logan said with a smile, turning to the pair of Exemplar advancing on him. “These two’ll keep me entertained for a little while, at least.”
Kitty Pryde wasn’t sure what time it was. Sometime in the early morning hours, she guessed. She felt like they’d been at it all night and really, she supposed, they had. It had been right at sunset that the Blackbird had brought them from the Xavier mansion, and Kitty wouldn’t be surprised to see the sun pinking the eastern sky any minute now.
Oh, boy, is tomorrow going to be a heck of a day, she thought ruefully.
This was going on all over the world, whatever the hour, whatever the time of day. A while back, Betsy Braddock had checked in with the team, telepathically, with Doug Ramsey riding shotgun, psionically speaking. Betsy had been busy coordinating the resistance to the Exemplar invasion, redirecting the X-Men’s allies from places where they weren’t as needed to places where they were. The only problem was, as the night wore on—or day, on the opposite side of the planet, if you wanted to get technical about it—there were fewer and fewer places where the defenders weren’t needed, and more and more places where they were.
Kitty wasn’t one to use pessimism as a first resort. Heck, her outlook was so sunny she could practically have starred in her own animated musical, complete with cute little anthropomorphized animal sidekicks and a dreamy Prince Charming to win over. But she was beginning to suspect that this might be a fight they couldn’t win.
At least, the fight she was in was one she couldn’t win.
It must have been hours that she and the Exemplar telekine in the yellow-and-black getup and purple headdress had been going at it, but to Kitty it felt only like days.
I’m beat, she thought, as she phased through an airborne motorcycle, flying riderless and end over end through the air. I wonder if this chkk will agree to a temporary ceasefire, potty break, and snack time?
The motorcycle crashed into a city bus, and burst into flames.
I’m guessing not.
Kitty had been fighting a mostly defensive battle so far. Her strategy had been to get the civilians out of harm’s way first, and then see if there was any way of neutralizing the threat posed by the telekine. That meant that, for the first few hours, she’d been grabbing hold of hapless tourists and pedestrians, phasing them down through the city streets, and depositing them safely on the subway platforms below. Then she’d swum up through the stone and soil and concrete once more, and done the whole thing over again.
There’d not been hide nor hair of a civilian above ground in close to thirty minutes, and Kitty hoped that the last of them had cleared off to safety. Of course, that meant that, as a result, she was the sole remaining focus of the telekine’s attention, and target of her displeasure.
Delightful.
A short while before, their battle had carried them into and through the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Kitty had felt her strength begin to flag, her body weak and weary, but there was nothing to perk up your spirits like dodging a city bus thrown at you at high speed. Adrenaline rushing, Kitty had led the telekine on a merry chase, back out of the Port Authority—and away from the civilians Kitty herself had phased into the underground passage beneath it—and down toward the docks.
Now, the Hudson River was just a block or two away, and Kitty could feel the slight drop in temperature as they approached.
The temperature started to rise again, unexpectedly, and Kitty turned to see the fiery twist of wreckage that had moments ago been the motorcycle and the bus, slowly drag across the pavement toward her.
She glanced over at the telekine, who hovered a few feet off the ground, advancing from a hundred or so yards away.
“Are you kidding me with this?” Kitty said, hands on her hips. “Not just a bus, but a bus onftre?\”
“Surrender, degenerate,” the telekine said, her voice flat and affectless. “Resistance is pointless.”
“Bite me,” Kitty snapped back.
In response, the bus-and-motorcycle flaming wreck
picked up speed, sending up showers of sparks as the metal scraped cruelly across the pavement.
Kitty barely had the energy to phase, too tired to move left or right, and as the flaming wreckage passed through her body, she could feel the heat prickling the flesh of her cheeks and hands.
“Cripes,” Kitty said under her breath. “Does this chick ever get tired?”
Kitty turned and looked at the telekine, her shoulders slumped. The telekine raised her arms, and Kitty knew that she was going in for a killing blow.
Just then, a streak of black and green blurred in from one side, stoppingjust behind the Exemplar.
“Hey, Kitty, mind if we switch partners for a sec?” Rogue said.
Before Kitty could answer, Rogue reached around and covered the Exemplar’s eyes with her bare hands.
“Guess who,” Rogue said, as the telekine suddenly went limp, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
Rogue let go, and the Exemplar collapsed to the ground.
“Hey, good job with ...” Kitty began to call out.
Rogue looked up, and casually interrupted. “Hey, watch out there, Kitty.”
Kitty felt a breeze on her cheek, and phased just as a towering figure with huge muscles and golden skin barreled through her.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Kitty said mirthlessly.
The golden behemoth was clearly confused, stopping short and looking underfoot for the girl he was
sure he’d just plowed under. That hesitation was all the advantage Kitty needed. Drawing on some unknown reserves of strength, she took three running steps forward, and then vaulted into the air, just like she’d practiced in Stevie Hunter’s dance class.
She was pretty sure, though, that Stevie hadn’t had anything like this in mind for the dance step.
Landing gracelessly on the golden behemoth’s back, Kitty wrapped both arms around his thick, golden neck, and then phased both of them.
“Giddy up,” Kitty said, and hung on for dear life.
It was a tricky proposition, of course. Even though Kitty and the Exemplar were both phased, and so could pass harmlessly through people and objects alike, so long as they remained in physical contact they could still touch each other, which meant he could still do her some serious damage. It was all Kitty could do to keep from getting swatted off his back, while keeping him phased so that he couldn’t hurt anyone else.
It was just like riding a bucking bronco, Kitty guessed. She’d never ridden a bronco, but she’d seen it on TV a time or two. Of course, she didn’t have a rodeo clown there to help her, should she fall of the Exemplar’s back.
What she did have, though, was a superstrong friend, which was almost as good.
“Thanks, Kitty,” Rogue said, hovering in midair just in front of them. “I think we can switch back, now.”
Kitty sighed with relief. “He’s all yours!”
Still phased, Kitty pushed off the metal man’s back The instant they broke contact, the Exemplar was solid once more, while Kitty gently airwalked back down to earth, slow as a falling leaf.
Rogue, who now possessed the abilities of the telekine, crossed her arms over her chest.
“No point’n getting my hands dirtied,” she said with a sly grin.
As though in the grip of an invisible hand, the golden behemoth suddenly lifted up off the ground, and before he could do more than bellow wordlessly, was sent flipping end over end, high in the air, finally splashing down far out in the Hudson River.
Kitty slumped to the ground, exhausted.
“This has been fun, Rogue,” she said wearily. “We should do it every night.”
“Rogue, Shadowcat!” shouted a voice from somewhere nearby. “Let’s go!”
Kitty rolled her head around, looking in the direction of the voice.
It was Scott Summers, running at a healthy clip toward them, a barefoot Hank McCoy following close behind.
“Hey, look,” Rogue said, pointing languidly, “Scott’s found hisself a Beast.”
Scott skidded to a halt just before them, breathing heavily. Hank joined him a moment later.
“Good evening, Rogue,” Hank said mannerly, sounding scarcely out of breath. He turned, and nodded in Kitty’s direction. “Ms. Pryde.”
“So,” Kitty said, “how’s your evenin’ been, boys?” Scott gave her a sharp look, his expression taut. “This isn’t working,” he said. “We’re managing to
fight a holding action, and nothing more. We’ve occupied the invaders long enough for most of the civilians in the area to get to shelter, but the longer we stay and fight, the more collateral damage there will be, and the greater the risk of the deaths of innocents.”
“It would seem,” Hank put in thoughtfully, “that a different approach is in order.”
“You took the words out of my mouth,” Kitty said. A faint whine sounded from out over the Hudson, and Kitty leapt to her feet, wheeling around, expecting to see the return of the golden Exemplar or one of his fellow invaders.
Instead, the Blackbird hove into view.
At the controls sat Kurt, wearing a pilot’s cap on his dark curls, a white scarf wrapped around his neck.
“Did anyone call for a taxi?” his voice boomed over the spy plane’s external loudspeakers.
“Okay, everyone,” Scott said. “Pile in.” He pointed to the unconscious telekine laying a short distance off. “Let’s bring her with us. We might just be able to get some answers from her.”
“What kind’a answers, Scott?” Rogue asked, using her temporary powers of telekinesis to lift the unmov-ing Exemplar into the air.
“Just how to defeat these Kh’thon, one imagines,” Hank said.
‘Yes,” Scott said seriously. “For starters.”
The sun was rising over the waters of the Sargasso Sea, and within the high tower cell, signs of life were beginning to stir.
Lee had slept fitfully on the cold stone floor, if at all, but if their snores were any indication, Paolo and the others hadn’t had that problem. She’d finally fallen asleep, sometime shortly before dawn, only to be awaken in short order by a babble of voices from outside the high, narrow window.
A babble of voices?
Lee sat bolt upright. She was hearing voices.
Normally I’d expect that to be a sign of madness, Lee couldn’t help thinking, smiling slightly. I suppose it depends on what they tell me to do.
But it was clear that these voices had nothing to do with Lee. At least, not directly. And judging by the annoyed and worried expressions of her crew, the others were hearing them, too.
Lee stood and moved closer to the window. From her vantage point, all she could see beyond was clear blue sky, but if she titled her head and strained her hearing, she could make out individual voices, sounding as though they were coming from below. She picked out a few words of English from one, a smattering of German from another.
“That there’s Portuguese,” Paolo said, raising up on his elbows, eyes squinting sleepily.
“Come on over here, old man,” Lee whispered impatiently. “Give me a leg up.”
It had taken some maneuvering, and more than a little complaining on the part of the old man, but in short order Lee was standing on Paolo’s shoulders, stretching her legs, neck, and back as far as she was able.
“Almost... got it...”
With the final fraction of an inch her neck was able to extend, her pulse roaring in her ear, Lee was able to peer out the window. She could see only a small segment of the courtyard below, but that was enough. Down there, in some kind of enclosure, were men, women, and children of all races and nations. Individually or in small clusters and groups, they moved randomly around their small enclosure, desperate to find a way out, and failing.
Lee couldn’t make out much of what they were saying, but the expressions on their faces were plain enough. They were terrified.
“Ah, you waken,” said a voice from behind her. “This one is pleased.”
Startled, Lee barely managed to avoid falling flat on her back which starting out five and half feet up in the air, would have been none too comfortable. As it was, she was scarcely able to maintain her balance, and she lurched gracelessly to the ground, landing with a sickening thud on her left leg, her foot twisted at a wrong angle.
She stifled the bloodcurdling scream that rushed to her throat, but tears stung the corners of her eyes. Lee was sure that she’d sprained her ankle, if she was lucky, perhaps even broken it, if she weren’t.
Hobbling painfully, she collapsed into something like a sitting position against the wall, just beneath the high window, and looked up into the smiling face of Vox Septimus. He had brought with him a tray, on which were arranged bowls of some sort of greenish sludge. He set the tray on the ground, and when he backed away, his crystal rod held casually before him, Richie crawled over and grabbed the bowls, sliding one to each of the crew.
“Mornin’, Vox,” she managed, not a trace of warmth in her voice. She picked up the bowl that Richie had slid over her way and sniffed. It smelled profoundly unpleasant, but Lee was hungry enough not to mind too much. She took a bite, and discovered the stuff tasted even worse. It was, at least, filling. Around bites, she continued. “Something... we can do for you?”
Vox Septimus tilted his head to one side, and turned his ear toward the high window.
“Ah, so you have heard the sounds of the new arrivals. Splendid.”
“Just what you doin’ with all them people, anyway?” Merrick asked, his tone a mixture of fear and anger.
“These are those in whom the randomizing element is present but not yet expressed,” Vox Septimus said simply. He turned from the window to face Lee. She noticed that no matter who spoke, he always addressed his answers to her. It was the product of living in a deeply hierarchical society, she assumed. “They have been culled from those population centers the Exemplar cohorts have pacified since yesterday, and brought here to the city of Dis for closer examination.”
The pain of her injured ankle throbbing in her head like a kettle drum, Lee tried not to think about all that the word “cull” suggested. She tried to puzzle out the servitor’s circuitous, obfuscated meaning instead. He had said “randomizing element.” Lee had established in earlier conversation that the servitors used the phrase to mean the X-gene.
“'fou mean . . she began, then paused, weighing the implications for a moment before continuing. “These are all mutants?”
Vox Septimus glanced at the ceiling, considering his reply. “Whether these are ‘mutants’ as you term them— congenitally modified—or ‘mutates’—modified in later life through accident or design, each of these specimens is in some way gifted, when compared to unaugmented individuals such as this one. Some of them may even have capabilities that they don’t yet know themselves. Living feral, as you have, your people have bred without any limitations or controls. There is no way of telling what characteristics these may have. But there is a chance that they could be of use to the Kh’thon.” There was that suggestion again, implicit in the servitor’s words, but never said outright.
“And what about those that don’t prove to be of use?” Lee asked, eyes narrowed.
“Oh,” Vox Septimus said with a casual shrug, “their remains will be disposed of quickly.” He paused, and then gestured to the bowls of green sludge they were all eating, helpfully adding, “Possibly even reconstituted into nutritional supplements.”
Lee looked down at the half-finished bowl of gunk in horror.