Chapter One

Waiting impatiently at a busy uptown intersection, Wanda Maximoff was tempted to throw a hex at the traffic lights. One little burst of probability-altering mutant power would change don’t walk to walk easily enough, but that probably wasn’t appropriate behavior for a card-carrying member of the Avengers. She could just see the headlines on the front page of the Daily Bugle: SCARLET WITCH CAUGHT JAYWALKING. MAYOR DENOUNCES NEW MUTANT MENACE TO PEDESTRIAN SAFETY.

Not that she was in uniform, of course. As near as she could tell, none of the assorted New Yorkers and tourists milling about at the crosswalk recognized her as a practicing super heroine; intent upon their own errands and itineraries, they paid little attention to the tall, auburnhaired woman standing in their midst.

Fine with me, she thought. For today’s outing, which promised little in the way of super-powered conflict, she had foregone her distinctive “working clothes” in favor of strictly civilian attire. A stylish trenchcoat, belted at the waist, protected her from the chilly breeze blowing off Central Park while a pair of sensible brown boots insulated her feet from the sidewalk, the toe of one boot now tapping restlessly against the pavement. Reddish-brown curls tumbled past her shoulders. Large silver loops hung beneath her ears, matching the bracelets that jangled around her wrists. The hastily thrown together ensemble was more than suitable to her purposes, although, to be honest, her scalp always felt somewhat naked without the

high-pointed headdress she usually wore into battle.

No melees today, Wanda reminded herself. As far as she was concerned, she was taking a personal day. Heinous super-villains and would-be world conquerors would just have to wait their turn; even an Avenger deserved a day off now and then.

The traffic signals changed of their own volition, and she crossed Central Park West, then headed north on Columbus Avenue. Although well into June, the day was overcast and surprisingly cool. Glancing up at the gray skies overhead, Wanda wondered fleetingly if she should have grabbed an umbrella before leaving the mansion. No matter, she decided, even as the first sprinkles of rain began to fall. She would be indoors soon enough.

The Manhattan Museum of Folk Art was located on the Upper West Side, across the park and a few blocks north from Avengers Mansion, her home for many years. Wanda paused for a moment outside the museum’s un-imposing concrete facade, inspecting the banners on display in the ground-floor windows that flanked its main entrance. As advertised in the Arts section of the New York Times, the building was proudly hosting an exhibition titled “Beyond Gepetto: A Century of Eastern European Puppetry.”

Just what I came for, she thought.

The pelting raindrops and her own curiosity drove her past a pair of glass doors and into the lobby of the small museum, whose spare white walls and utilitarian design were presumably intended not to call attention away from the homespun art on display. Apparently, neither puppets in particular nor folk art in general were big draws these days; there were few other visitors in attendance. In fact, it looked like she had practically the entire museum to herself.

Just as well, Wanda reflected. I don’t mind a little privacy.

After making a modest donation at the front desk, she followed a series of helpful signs, past displays of colorful quilts and whimsically-designed weather vanes, until she came to the exhibit that had lured her here.

Hand-carved wooden marionettes, painted in once-vibrant colors that had faded with the passage of decades, adorned the walls of a dead-end gallery near the back of the museum, where the curators no doubt hoped their presence would draw visitors past the institution’s other exhibits. The marionettes’ jointed legs dangled freely while whittled hands and arms pointed out informative blocks of text affixed to the walls between the puppets. Wanda declined to read the descriptive copy for now, preferring to focus first on the craftsmanship and imagination embodied by the puppets themselves.

As she admired their intricate detail and expressive, if exaggerated, features, she noted that the various artists had largely taken their subjects from the history and folklore of Russia and Eastern Europe: Baba Yaga, the Firebird, Peter and the Wolf, Rasputin, and so on. There was even a miniature puppet version of Dr. Doom, which would surely get its maker a stiff prison sentence if displayed anywhere within the borders of Latveria.

Not a bad likeness, Wanda judged, eyeing the forbidding metallic face beneath the doll-sized green hood, although she knew from personal experience that the real Victor Von Doom was infinitely more intimidating.

Inevitably, the sight of the puppets, so like the ones her adoptive father had made in the dimly-remembered days of her childhood, raised poignant memories in Wanda: memories of Django Maximoff, the kindly gypsy toymaker who had raised her and her brother Pietro after their mother’s death during childbirth. Those had been among the happiest days of her far too turbulent life, until that fearful night an angry mob attacked the gypsy camp, separating her and Pietro from the only family they had ever known.

Torches in the night. Gaudily-painted wooden wagons going up in flames. The crackle of burning pitch. Thick smoke filling her lungs, choking her. Furious shouting and screams of terror. The darkness of the forest as they fled in panic, only to fall at last into the freezing river which swept them away.. . .

Wanda shuddered involuntarily. For years, she had repressed her recollections of those days, as her past slid into a morass of confusion and contradictions, but in recent years, as she uncovered more and more about the events that had shaped her youth, the memories had returned as well, sometimes springing forth from her unconscious mind with surprising force and clarity. Gazing now upon the handcrafted figure of the Wolf, its painted tongue hanging comically out of one side of its toothy jaws, it seemed to her that she could practically smell the smoke of the campfire, hear the horses whinny and the tambourines jangling, as she sat upon her now-dead papa’s knee.

Her mind in the past, her body in the present, she reached out to touch the Wolf upon the wall. Was it just her imagination, or was the Wolf looking back at her, a feral gleam in its hungry, hand-painted eyes? Her fingertips hovered just out of reach of the hinged wooden jaws.

“Excuse me,” a voice piped up behind Wanda, yanking her consciousness back to the here and now. She glanced back over her shoulder to discover a young woman, roughly college age or younger, standing behind her. “I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman said hesitantly, “but... you are the Scarlet Witch, aren’t you?” “That’s right,” Wanda admitted. Engrossed in her memories, she had not even heard the other woman approach. Turning around to face the newcomer, she observed two more young people, about the same age, looking on from a few yards away while whispering furtively to each other.

Not quite as brave as their friend, Wanda guessed. Apparently, the museum was better attended than she had first thought. Art students, Wanda surmised, or maybe just broke college kids looking for a cheap diversion on a lazy Saturday morning.

“Wow,” the boldest of the students exclaimed. She wore a faded Lila Cheney tee-shirt and a pair of kneeless black jeans. Tiny silver rings pierced the skin above one eye. “Would you mind?” she began, holding out a sketch pad and a felt-tipped pen. “I mean, could I have your autograph?”

“Why, certainly,” Wanda said graciously, accepting the proffered pen and pad. Despite years spent in America, her voice still held a trace of a Balkan accent. “To whom shall I address it?”

“Janine,” the fan answered, wide-eyed. Wanda greeted the interruption with good humor; she realized that, as an Avenger, she was definitely a public figure. Sometimes she wondered if, at the onset of her colorful career, she should have assumed a mask and secret identity like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers and some of her other colleagues. No, she decided once again—her life had been complicated enough without adding the difficulties of a dual identity to the mix.

TO JANINE, she wrote. WITH BEST WISHES, THE SCARLET WITCH. She had learned long ago that autograph seekers preferred the somewhat exotic alias to her legal signature.

All part of good public relations, she mused. Captain America would surely approve. She handed back the pad and writing implement even as, out of the comer of her eye, she thought she spotted a shadow moving on the adjacent wall.

What’s that? she wondered, but when she looked to the side all she saw were the Rasputin and Baba Yaga puppets hanging as lifelessly as they had before. But wait—hadn’t the scaly chicken legs dangling beneath the witch’s mobile hut been positioned slightly differently the last time she had looked at them? Wanda tried to remember. ...

“Thanks!” Janine enthused, eagerly reclaiming her prize and shooting a triumphant grin at her two lurking cohorts. Her jubilant eyes devoured the inscription. “This is so great! I’ve been a fan of yours for, like, forever. Even before you were one of the good guys.”

Ouch, Wanda thought. Even though her beaming fan clearly meant well, the longtime heroine could have done without that reminder of her dubious days as one of the charter members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. So much had happened to her since those distant nights around the gypsy campfire. Many hardwon victories to be proud of, true, but also too much tragedy and heartache.

Perhaps I was never intended to be happy, she thought ruefully, but to defend the happiness of ordinary people like this girl.

Then, without warning, the excitement in Janine’s eyes turned to shock and fear. Her face went pale and her mouth fell open, while behind the young woman her two friends looked frightened as well. One of them screamed and dropped an armful of textbooks, his panicky shout echoing through the hushed atmosphere of the museum.

A severe overreaction to my notorious past, Wanda wondered momentarily, or something else altogether? She spun around just in time to see the puppets leaping impossibly from the wall, using their tiny legs to propel themselves straight at Wanda, attacking her. Closest to her, the wooden Wolf lunged for her throat.

Her reflexes trained by years of hand-to-hand combat against everything from Norse gods to the Lunatic Legion, she batted the fanged marionette away with the back of her hand, sending it skittering across the tile floor several yards away. But she could not stop its companion puppet, carved in the cherubic image of Peter the child huntsman, from landing heavily upon her shoulder and grabbing onto her reddish-brown tresses. The Peter puppet yanked her hair across her face, obscuring her vision while he tugged on its roots.

“Run!” Wanda shouted to Janine and other students. Suddenly, the museum was no place for civilians. She clutched at Peter, who was now straddling her neck piggyback-style, choking Wanda with her own hair, until she managed to pry him off her shoulders at the cost of two miniature handfuls of hair. Discarding the auburn curls, he snagged one of her silver earrings, ripping it from the tender lobe.

“Aiee!” the Scarlet Witch cried out. The pain distracted her, made it hard to call up her powers, but she hurled the marionette away with all the force she could muster, hoping the wooden simulacrum would shatter upon the hard, gray tiles.

No such luck. The oaken boy bounced twice upon the tiles, then sprung back onto his feet, joining Rasputin and Baba Yaga as they rushed across the floor at her. Unlike the playthings she recalled, these marionettes required neither strings nor visible puppeteer to give them animation. The gnarled head of the Russian witch protruded from the thatch roof of her doll-sized hut as it hurried forward atop oversized hen’s legs, taking the lead from Rasputin and Peter. Malevolent cackling escaped, absurdly, from Baba Yaga’s wooden lips. Painted yellow eyes leered above a jagged nose crowned by a bulging wart. The hut took a flying leap, the claws of the chicken’s feet extended at Wanda’s face.

You’re giving us witches a bad name, she thought, ducking out of the way. Her hands came up to form a protective hex, but all at once the Firebird was flapping its gilded wings in her face, pecking at her eyes. At the same time, wooden jaws closed around her ankle, pointed teeth digging through her leather boot. The Wolf, she realized, trying to shake her leg free even as she snapped her face from side to side, striving to keep her eyes away from the Firebird’s angry beak.

Who could be responsible for this? she wondered, her eyes tightly shut, grabbing unsuccessfully at the sound of the flapping wings. The Puppet Master? The Brothers Grimm? There was no time to even try to decipher the mystery. Between the Wolf gnawing on her leg and the Firebird jabbing at her face, she couldn’t begin to think straight, let alone play detective.

The witch’s hut rejoined the fray, clawing at Wanda’s back, and she was grateful that she had chosen to wear the heavy coat instead of her somewhat skimpier gypsy garb. Despite her own peril, she feared for her comrades as well.

The others might be in danger, too, she realized. An attack on one Avenger often meant an assault on the entire team. I need to alert Captain America and the rest. There was a communication device in one of her coat pockets, but how could she get at it when she had to defend herself from these homicidal Pinocchios?

Her face turned downward, eyes squeezed shut, she forced herself to ignore the fangs and the claws and the beak and the flapping wings, putting aside the sharp, jabbing pains so that she could concentrate on a hex. Her fingers instinctively formed the right configuration, the gestures focusing her unique mutant ability to manipulate the laws of probability.

Even after countless efforts and exercises to hone her special gifts, she still had trouble describing what it felt like when she used her birthright. It was like breathing, in a way—you didn’t think about it, you just did it. Wanda visualized the effect she desired, then let the power flow from somewhere deep inside her out to her fingertips, which tingled slightly as they released her mutant magic into the world.

The power manifested first as a shimmering sphere of crimson light that spread outward to enclose both the Scarlet Witch and her attackers. Within that sphere, mathematical probabilities shifted so that the most unlikely of possibilities became not just likely but an absolute certainty.

The Firebird’s crystalline eyes blinked in surprise as an extremely improbable fluctuation in the air currents stole the wind from beneath its wings, causing it to drop like a stone, fortuitously slamming into the wooden Wolf at the very moment that, behind Wanda, Baba Yaga’s ambulatory hut lost its balance and toppled forward. Her foot at last freed from the jaws of the Wolf, the Scarlet Witch deftly evaded the falling marionette so that it landed in a heap upon its fellow puppets.

The odds that three such happy accidents would combine to rid Wanda of her attackers simultaneously were ridiculously small, of course, except within the radius of her hex sphere.

That’s better, she thought. The rose-colored radiance dissipated as she took a deep breath to collect her thoughts before the murderous marionettes regrouped. At last, she had a moment to try to figure out what was happening and why?

Who is behind this? She sensed no sorcerous energies at work, but some force had to have brought the seemingly harmless puppets to life. Telekinesis? Nanotechnology? Her mind grappled for a solution, even as she readied herself the puppets’ next attack. There were too many possibilities, too many enemies old and new.

These might not even be marionettes at all, she surmised, but cleverly disguised android assassins.

Floodlights mounted into the ceiling called attention to the empty stretches of wall that the puppets had occupied only moments before.

Thank heavens I didn’t go to the Natural History Museum instead. She could just imagine the dinosaur fossils and stuffed mammoths coming to life in place of the puppets.

Her fingers groped through her coat pockets in search of her Avengers I.D. card, which also doubled as a communications device, thanks to the ingenuity of Tony Stark.

If she hurried, she could still alert the team before the puppets came at her again. Manicured nails, painted in her trademark shade of red, tapped against the laminated surface of the card, and she had just started to draw it out of the pocket when she heard someone call out in alarm:

“Help! Keep away from me!”

The Scarlet Witch glanced back over her shoulder, where her cape usually was, and saw Janine cornered by puppet replicas of Rasputin and Ivan the Terrible. Blast, Wanda thought. The starstruck fan must have stayed behind to watch her heroine in action. Now, Rasputin and Ivan, brandishing miniature daggers, had backed the college student up against a glass display case on the opposite side of the gallery. Wanda wasn’t sure what frightened the poor girl more: the puppets’ hostile intent and weapons, or the fact that they were alive at all.

Just to complicate matters, a security guard, whom Wanda had seen posted in the lobby earlier, came running around the corner, only to come to an abrupt halt at the bizarre sight that greeted him. Pistol in hand, he froze, uncertain what to do.

Wanda sympathized with his confusion. He was surely hired to protect the exhibits from the patrons, not the other way around!

“Stay back,” she warned him, flashing her I.D. “This is Avengers business. Let me handle it.”

Not waiting to hear his response, she unleashed another hex at the puppets menacing Janine. The floodlights above the predatory marionettes suddenly exploded, showering Ivan and Rasputin with white-hot sparks that nevertheless missed Janine entirely.

Am I good or am I good? the Scarlet Witch thought, smiling with satisfaction as the puppets retreated frantically from the rain of sparks, whiffs of smoke rising from their wooden heads and shoulders. But after all, they’re only puppets, she reminded herself. Maybe she didn’t need any other Avengers after all.

“Get her out of here,” she instructed the security guard, who hurried to comply. This time, Janine seemed perfectly willing to flee the scene. Keeping one eye on the smoldering forms of Ivan and Rasputin, not to mention the tangle of fallen puppets at her feet, Wanda breathed a sigh of relief as both guard and fan exited from sight. She still had no idea what force had animated the marionettes and until she did, she didn’t want to have to worry about innocent bystanders.

I can take care of myself, no matter who is behind this. Ordinary humans are different.

An overwhelming blast of concussive force, striking her at the base of her neck, shattered her confidence and sent her reeling forward. Gray institutional tiles seemed to rush at her face as darkness encroached on the periphery of her vision, casting the stark white walls into shadow. Her I.D. card slipped from her fingers.

Of course, she recalled right before she blacked out. That blasted Doom puppet...!

Chapter Two

He crouched in the underbrush, sniffing the scent of his prey.

That way, he thought, nodding to himself. Just like I figured.

Most hunters might have never noticed the subtle deer path winding through the trees and bushes ahead of him, but Logan was the best there was at what he did.

The dense wilderness of the Adirondacks surrounded him. Towering pines and spruce trees branched out high above his head to form a verdant canopy that shielded the forest floor from the afternoon sun. A light breeze rustled through the branches, carrying with it a dozen separate aromas, each distinct and recognizable to Logan’s keen sense of smell. Out of sight, but not beyond earshot, a mountain stream rushed through the woods somewhere ahead. Logan could practically taste the cold, clear water.

It doesn't get much better than this, he thought, a rare smile creasing his rugged yet ageless features. Twin peaks of bristling black hair rose from his scalp, looking like the vee-shaped points of the mask he often wore. Logan savored the primeval sanctity of the untamed wilderness, along with the sense of solitude. Here in the woods of upstate New York, it was easy to fool himself into thinking that he was the only two-legged mammal around for hundreds of miles.

Yeah, I needed this, he decided, breathing in the clean, intoxicating aroma of the trees and loam, so similar to that of the Canadian timberlands he had long ago called home. Even though he was no longer quite the loner he once was, thanks to Professor Charles Xavier and his X-Men, sometimes he still needed to put some distance between himself and other people, mutant or otherwise, and get back to his roots. This is where I really belong. In the wild.

His heightened senses revealed all the secrets of the woods to him. A whiff of wintergreen in the air announced the presence of a stand of yellow birch to the west, while his ears detected squirrels scurrying through the branches overhead. His fingers brushed against the scaly bark of a tall white pine, guessing the tree’s approximate age from the feel of the bark. Probing gray eyes penetrated the shade, spotting the spoor of his prey as it led away to the north.

They were here less than an hour ago, he estimated. I’m gaining on them.

Rising from his crouch, Logan took off through the forest, moving with practiced speed and stealth. His well-worn cowboy boots trod softly upon a carpet of twigs, pine cones, and fallen needles, making little or no sound as he followed the trail. He had left his Wolverine uniform behind in Westchester; a red flannel shirt and faded Levi’s were all he needed for this hunting expedition. Besides, he wouldn’t want to give any stray hikers or forest rangers a heart attack by surprising them in his X-Men gear.

We’re unpopular enough as is, he thought.

The deer path led uphill, toward the peak. Logan came upon the stream he had heard earlier, cutting its way through the sylvan landscape, and paused only long enough to take a couple of deep mouthfuls of the icy water, which was just as refreshing as he had imagined. Like a cool beer on a hot day, he decided. Licking the last drops of moisture from his lips, he waded across the stream, then headed up-country. If his prey had thought that the flowing water would throw him off the trail, they were in for a big surprise.

Scotch pine and aspen gave way to balsam and paper birch as he climbed the mountain, gaining elevation. Snow-white flowers bloomed from the occasional mountain ash growing along the trail, a sure sign of springtime. Logan sniffed the air again and nodded to himself. He was getting closer. Hunching over, his flared nostrils scouting ahead of him, he stalked forward even more quietly than before.

Easy does it, he counseled himself. The last thing he wanted to do was startle his prey as soon as he caught up with them. Retracted for the moment, his claws itched within their metal sheaths.

The timberland opened up before him, exposing an open meadow awash in golden sunshine. Sneaking up to the edge of the glade, Logan knelt behind a fallen log, its rotting carcass covered with moss and mushrooms, and peered with feral satisfaction at the sight of a family of deer—doe, fawn, and even, surprisingly, a buck—grazing upon the wild grass near the center of the clearing.

Gotcha! he thought, eyes narrowing. Almost.

Logan, sometimes known as Wolverine, ached to unsheathe his claws and pounce upon his prey with all the ferocity of his namesake, but more civilized habits prevailed. He seldom hunted to kill anymore, at least where dumb animals were concerned; it was sport enough to track a deer through miles of wilderness, until he came close enough to touch the skittish creature without being detected first. Not as satisfying, perhaps, as indulging his predatory instincts to the full, but enough of a challenge to make it interesting.

’Sides, he thought, what’d Bambi and family ever do to me? These days, he preferred to reserve his claws for those folks that really deserved them, like Magneto, for instance, or the Hellfire Club.

Officially, deer hunting season did not begin until winter, but the law didn’t say anything about just tracking the animals. Logan liked it better this time of year, when he didn’t have to worry about any trigger-happy weekend warriors tromping through the woods, shooting at anything that moved. I’ve got the whole forest to myself, just the way I like it.

This close, the musky scent of the deer was almost overwhelming. Logan started to creep around the lichen-wrapped log, then paused and sniffed once more, A scowl creased his feature; something wasn’t right. The deer smelled like deer, all right, but the pungent odor was almost too pure, like someone had distilled the essence of deer musk and sprayed it on the trio of animals grazing a few yards away. Logan couldn’t smell any evidence of fleas or ticks or even dried deer droppings; it was like all three deer had been raised, or at least painstakingly groomed, in a pristine laboratory environment, instead of the wilds of the Adirondacks. .

There was something vaguely wrong about this perfect little domestic tableau—what was the buck doing here, hanging out with his family? Typically, adult male deer went their own way.

Maybe I’m just getting paranoid in my old age, Logan thought, but I don’t like the smell of this. As far as he knew, nobody but nobody knew where he was right now, not even his fellow X-Men; still, he’d made plenty of enemies in his time, and he was too smart to underestimate any of them. There was always a chance that these

harmless-looking deer were being used as bait in a trap. Maybe I’ll get a chance to use my claws after all, he thought hopefully, looking forward to a good scrap.

Retreat was not an option. He had tracked this game too far to give up now. More importantly, if this was a trap he wanted to know who was behind it. A frontal assault, even into the jaws of danger, was better than looking back over your shoulder all the time, at least as far as Logan was concerned.

Let’s get on with it, he decided.

Getting down on all fours, his nose only inches from the fragrant soil, he slipped around the overgrown log and into the tall grass. He crept through the clearing on his hands and knees, eating up the distance between him and the grazing deer. His senses and reflexes were geared up to razor-sharp intensity, yet he could detect nothing in the vicinity except a few birds and rodents here and there. If an ambush was in the works, he sure as blazes didn’t know where it could come from; there was nothing here but the deer.

The fawn, its tawny fur still spotted with patches of white, was the closest to Logan. Balancing awkwardly on four spindly limbs, it nibbled on the grass within the protective shadow of its mother and father. So far, none of the animals appeared aware of Logan’s approach, which was just the way he liked it. He came within reach of the baby deer, then stretched his fingers toward the fawn's flanks.

Here goes nothing, he thought, suspecting that the trap, if any, would be sprung once the deer reacted to his presence.

Before he even touched the unsuspecting animal, however, that unlikely father deer lunged at Logan, his head lowered so that an impressive rack of antlers came straight at the crouching mutant. The deep-throated roar of the attacking buck sounded in Logan’s ears. He was only a heartbeat away from being gored.

“I knew it,” he muttered. Something wasn’t right about that buck.

Snikt. Matching sets of twelve-inch steel claws emerged from the backs of his hands as he swiped out at the oncoming antlers, responding instinctively to the threat. The sharpened edges of his claws sliced off the points of the antlers, sending the bony tips flying off into the scrub. The buck reared up on its hind legs, kicking out at Wolverine with its forward hooves. He threw himself backward, dodging the blow, and scrambled to his feet; mutant healing factor or not, he didn’t feel like having his adamantium skull slammed by a tw'o-hundred-pound deer.

What’s this about? Logan speculated. Primal aggression from a protective papa or something more sinister? He glanced quickly to each side, but saw no sign of any human attackers—or inhuman, for that matter. Maybe, just maybe, all he had to deal with was some irate wildlife. That would be easy enough to handle. The only tricky part would be resisting the temptation to lash back with deadly force against an animal protecting his family. He clenched his fists, keeping the claws raised in front of him. There were three on each hand, all six poised to strike out at all comers. He had killed more than deer with those claws....

Then, before his startled eyes, the buck’s severed antlers grew back until they were even larger and more lethal-looking than before.

“That cinches it,” Wolverine muttered. This was no ordinary deer and the whole altercation was no isolated incident; hostile agencies were at work. And Bambi’s father wasn’t just bait, either. He was part of the ambush, maybe the most important part.

Lowering his head, the buck charged again at Wolverine, who braced himself for the attack, shining silver claws extended.

“Come and get me,” he growled. “I smell venison on the menu.”

A sudden impact, followed by agonizing pain, caught him by surprise as another set of antlers stabbed him in the back, tearing through the flannel shirt to gouge the skin and muscle below, the bony horns lodging deeply into his flesh, barely missing his spine.

“What the—?” he gasped, glancing backwards to see who or what had gored him.

Impossibly, it was none other than the fawn, now twice its previous size and equipped with antlers fully as large as its apparent father. Only yards away, the doe was also growing a rack of antlers, the bony tines extruding from the female deer’s skull at an unnatural rate.

Kind of like Marrow, he thought instantly, the freakish sight forcibly reminding him of that disagreeable mutant rebel and the bony protuberances that spontaneously erupted through her skin. But since when have there been mutant deer?

Impaled upon the transformed fawn’s horns, Wolverine tried to pull himself free, but the fawn reared up, dragging the hero’s boots off the ground below, making it harder to get any kind of leverage. He gritted his teeth against the shock and pain of the antlers tearing through his flesh; his rapid healing factor couldn’t repair the damage until he got the injured tissue away from the antlers. Meanwhile, bright arterial blood streamed down his back, soaking his shirt, while the original buck came stampeding toward him.

Jaw clenched as tightly as his fists, Wolverine yanked his entire upper body forward, ignoring the stabbing shrieks of pain racing through his nervous system. The convulsive effort ripped him free of the transformed fawn’s antlers and he dropped onto the grass below—just in time to be gored in the chest by the onrushing buck.

A savage howl escaped his frothing lips as the points of the antlers dug into his ribcage. He slashed out wildly with his claws, but whatever wounds he inflicted on the buck’s neck and shoulders closed almost as fast as he opened them; it was like slicing through some sort of living jelly.

An adciptoid? he guessed desperately. A new kind of organic Sentinel? The metallic scent of his own blood inflamed his senses, driving reason and intellect from his mind. He became an enraged animal, fighting to survive.

His preternatural healing factor kicked in, the gashes on Wolverine’s back were already knitting up, staunching the flow of blood. But the lessening of the pain from those injuries was more than overpowered by the impact of two sets of hoofs pounding against the back of his head. While the buck stabbed him in the chest, both the doe and the fawn kicked at him from behind, their hoofs slamming again and again upon his skull. It fell like the Juggernaut was pounding on his head while Sabretooth clawed at his heart simultaneously.

It was too much even for his legendary endurance.

Funny, Wolverine thought, in one last burst of consciousness before darkness descended, I thought I was hunting them. .. .

U o one knew her real name, and the woman now known ■ 'I as Rogue preferred to keep it that way. Truth to tell, she rarely thought of herself as anyone but Rogue these days.

’Cept when I’ve got someone else’s memories stuck in my head, she thought.

At the moment, thank goodness, her mind was her own, although she could barely hear herself think over the noisy chatter and confusion of the crowded West Village street fair in which she was presently immersed. Milling New Yorkers, ranging from college kids to senior citizens, and packed shoulder-to-shoulder, jostled and nudged their way past each other, between rows of covered booths hawking everything from hot Thai food to used books and LPs. Hucksters called out to passersby, pitching free massages, cheap phone cards, Peruvian sweaters and pottery, cold lemonade, baby clothes, comic books, keyrings, wallets, refrigerator magnets, strawberry crepes, antique movie posters, ice cream, blue jeans, and just about anything else Rogue could imagine. The booths lined both sides of Waverly Place between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, blocking her view of aging brownstones to the north and Washington Square Park to the south. The fair on Waverly, which had been closed off to traffic for the afternoon, had drawn a sizable crowd of shoppers and sightseers, including at least one mutant heroine from the suburbs.

Nothing like a little bargain-hunting to take one’s mind off the super hero biz, Rogue thought, pausing to admire some reasonably priced turquoise jewelry; she was glad she had taken the train in from Westchester that morning. The sky, which had threatened rain earlier that morning, had cleared up, bathing the entire fair in sunshine. Wolvie has the right idea going walkabout and all. It’s not healthy to stay cooped up at the Institute all the time. She had better things to do this afternoon than run through another training exercise in the Danger Room.

Too bad I couldn’t talk Ororo into joining me, she thought, but the weather goddess had been too busy with her beloved garden to waste a day in the city. Still, it was nice to have some time on her own, especially after all the X-Men had gone through recently. Like that whole time-travel mess with Spider-Man last year, or that ugly business with Mr. Sinister ...

“See anything you like?” the jewelry dealer asked her, leaning forward over his wares. Despite the Native American designs of the rings and necklaces, the dealer looked more Pakistani than Apache. He raised a glittering trinket from a velvet-lined wooden tray. “Earrings are only $15 a pair. Very cheap!”

It would take a diamond drill to pierce my ears, she thought, shaking her head. “No thanks. Ah’m just lookin’,” she added with a smile, her melodious drawl betraying her origins somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line.

Rejoining the stream of pedestrians flowing by, she left the jewelry booth behind, blending in with the crowd, or so she thought. A couple of teenage boys, hanging out around a used-CD stand, looking for bootleg tapes of their favorite bands, whistled appreciatively as she walked past them.

Trust me, sugar, y’all don’t want to be getting too close 27

to me. Rogue sighed ruefully, running a hand through the bleached white skunktail running down the middle of her long brown hair; one kiss from her lips would sure suck the swagger from those boys, all right, along with what passed for their minds. Look, but don’t touch, honey. The story of my life...

Even though her mutant body was immune to extremes of heat and cold, she had on a long-sleeved sweater and gloves. Manhattan was way too cramped to do otherwise; she couldn’t risk brushing any exposed skin against that of some poor stranger, not without taking a chance of absorbing all their memories and strength. Not exactly the kind of souvenir I was hoping to pick on this little shopping trip, she thought wryly.

Rogue was treating herself to some freshly roasted com-on-the-cob, the melted butter dripping between the fingers of her glove, when she heard the angry shouting. At first she thought it was just another streetside salesman trying to attract the attention of the fairgoers, but there was a harsh edge to the yelling, very much at odds with the festive atmosphere of the fair, that caught her ear.

Some kind of trouble? she wondered, and began edging her way through the crowd toward the source of shouts. Maybe there was something she could do to help....

Packed in with several dozen other people, including a young mother pushing a slow-moving stroller, it took her a couple of minutes to get close enough to the speaker to make out the words. As she did so, her expression darkening, an all too familiar rage awoke inside her.

“Wake up, America!” a man’s voice bellowed. “Do you know what your children are? Don’t sit back and let mutants take over our world. This is your fight, too! Fight the mutant menace! Join now!”

There were still plenty of firm yellow kernels left on the cob, but Rogue had lost her appetite. Can’t I ever get away from this garbage? She chucked the half-eaten ear of com into a dented metal trash bin, then followed the venomous rant to its point of origin: a portable booth staffed and sponsored, at least according to the banner running along its top, by the anti-mutant hate group who called themselves the Friends of Humanity.

Tee-shirts, pamphlets, buttons, bumper stickers, and posters adorned the booth and were also spread out on a tabletop facing the street. Rogue quickly scanned the slogans printed on the assorted paraphernalia, feeling her blood pressure rise with every malicious word she read:

MEN WERE CREATED EQUAL, NOT MUTANTS.

100 PERCENT HUMAN—AND PROUD OF IT.

REMEMBER THE ONSLAUGHT!

FIRST THE NEANDERTHALS,

NOW HOMO SAPIENS?

OPEN YOUR EYES—FOR HUMANITY’S SAKE. SECOND PLACE NEVER COUNTS IN EVOLUTION.

SUPPORT THE MUTANT REGISTRATION ACT.

Phony wanted posters sported slightly doctored news photos of Magneto, Apocalypse, Sauron, and even some of her fellow X-Men, especially the less human-looking ones like the Beast and Nightcrawler. (Granted, it wasn’t too hard to make Wolverine look scary.) Rogue was halfamused/half-disgusted to see a cartoonish artist’s rendering of herself that made her look like a horror movie vampire, complete with fangs and pointed ears.

No fair, she thought. I haven’t looked like that since the last time I tussled with Sabretooth. Besides, my hips

aren ’t nearly that big. ... On a deeper level, she felt tom between anger and nausea at the sight of the same old lies and insults being dished out once more. You’d think people would be fed up with this stuff by now.

The loudmouth manning the booth, a petition in one hand and a donation tin in the other, was hardly a prime specimen of ordinary humanity. Stuffed pretentiously into a three-piece suit that seemed one size too small for him, the man was red-faced and sweating, too full of simmering bigotry and resentment to possibly look at ease in his own skin.

“You there, miss,” he said, making eye contact with Rogue. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to be doing too much business right now; most everybody else looked more interested in snacking and shopping. “Would you like to support the Friends of Humanity?”

You’re no friend of mine, she thought, fuming. She knew she should just walk away, leave this prejudiced peabrain to stew in his own stinking bile, but it was too late for that now. She strode toward the booth, clenching her fists. Why should she be the only one whose afternoon was spoiled?

“You ever met a mutant?” she challenged him. The press of the crowd squeezed her forward until she was squeezed against the edge of the table, her face only inches away from the so-called Friend of Humanity. She rested her palm on a stack of folded tee-shirts, not worried all that much about getting excess butter all over them. “You ever got to know one?”

“That’s not necessary,” the man said smugly, appearing all too happy to have an audience at last, even a hostile one. “I know everything I need to know.” He put down his petition and waved a pamphlet in her face.

Heavy black letters advertised THE TRUTH ABOUT THE COMING GENE WAR. “The mutant menace is the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced. That’s a matter of fact. Every time a mutant is born, humanity as we know it comes a little closer to extinction.”

Right now that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, Rogue thought. “You ever think that mutants are no different than anybody else, ’cept for a coupla extra powers or somethin’?” She glared at him with furious green eyes, and wondered if any other mutants, unknown to her, had come to the fair today, only to have this kind of senseless animosity thrown in their faces. She could just imagine how devastating this clown’s propaganda could be to some poor kid still coming to terms with his new abilities. I’ve been an X-Man for years now, and a mutant for even longer, and it still gets to me. “Some of the best people ah know are mutants.”

“Then you’re either naive or foolish,” the FoH declared. His pig-like eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Or one of them. ’ ’

“And what if ah was?” she shot back, seeing a hint of fear chip away at the man’s self-righteous demeanor. He stepped backward away from the table, his gaze darting from the woman in front of him to the vamp-like caricature of Rogue emblazoned on one of the tee-shirts up for sale.

At least, she acknowledged, giving the shocked hate merchant a conspiratorial wink, they got the white streak in my hair right.

“Get away from me!” the man said, his ruddy complexion going pale as recognition sunk in. He backed away from the table until he ran into the plastic tarp at the rear of the booth. “You don’t dare hurt me. We have

people everywhere. Friends in high places ...”

Tell me about it, she thought. Sometimes it seemed like half the federal budget was going to bankroll new Sentinel projects and mutant eradication schemes. Rogue was tempted to tear the flimsy booth apart with her (sort of) bare hands, then take off into the sky, giving this twolegged varmint the shock of his useless life, but, no, that would just confirm all his worst fantasies about berserk mutant monsters on the loose. Instead, she contented herself with wadding up the “Rogue” tee-shirt in her fist and hurling the offending garment at the cowering FoH with just a fraction of her superhuman strength.

The last thing she expected was for the shirt to come flying back at her.

Flapping its fabric like the wings of an albino bat, the white tee-shirt reversed course in midair and rocketed straight at Rogue, wrapping itself around her face. She reached up to pull it away only to discover that the shirts on the table had come alive as well, swaddling both her hands so that she could barely move her fingers. Blinded and disoriented, she flailed out with her arms—and heard one of the metal posts supporting the booth crumple before the force of her blow.

“Ah don’t believe this!” she tried to exclaim, but the fabric stretched across her face muffled her words. She felt more of the anti-mutant tee-shirts attack her all too literally, wrapping layer after layer of animated cotton and polyester around her head, cutting off her air.

I can’t breathe! she realized.

Shouts and screams from the crowd penetrated the cocoon engulfing her head.

“Watch out! She’s a mutant!” the Friend of Humanity hollered, like this was her fault or something.

One comer of the canopy over his booth sagged forward, bouncing harmlessly off the suffocating shroud of shirts that had thrown her into airless darkness. She tried to grab at the wrappings, but her hands might as well have been wearing padded boxing gloves for all the good they did her. She swung one arm down violently, hoping to shake off the clinging garments, but succeeded only in splitting the plywood tabletop right down the middle. Pamphlets and pins spilled onto the toes of her boots.

Careful there! she reminded herself, despite a growing sense of panic. Lashing out blindly like this, it would be too easy to injure some innocent fairgoer with her superstrength. I need room to cut loose.

Figuring the sky would be less crowded than the street, she flew straight upward, using her innate ability to defy gravity. Her abrupt take-off provoked another round of frightened gasps and shrieks from the teeming masses below. And still the obnoxious hate-monger manning the shattered booth wouldn’t give it a rest.

“Mutant freak!” he called out. “They’re everywhere, just like I said!”

I wish, Rogue thought. Frankly, she could use a little X-assistance right now. Although airborne, she still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. She wished desperately that Cyclops was close enough for her to grab onto; she wouldn’t mind borrowing his high-powered eyebeams for just a second or two, so she could blast her blindfolds to smithereens. Instead all she could do was paw uselessly at the enveloping hood with swaddled hands, while her lungs cried out for oxygen.

Even Ms. Marvel couldn’t survive without air, she thought, recalling the unlucky heroine from whom Rogue had stolen her invulnerability and strength. I’m blacking out....

Terrified pigeons, roosted atop and around Washington Square Arch, vacated the premises in a frantic flurry of wings, but Rogue was not awake to hear the panicky flapping. Unconscious, she plummeted to earth like a meteor, smashing through the top of the marble arch before carving out a crater, several feet deep, in the center of the park. The crater was still there, surrounded by smoking chunks of displaced pavement, when police arrived on the scene only minutes later. Shattered fragments of marble littered the ground beneath the broken monument, which now resembled two jagged pillars instead of an arch. Sculpted figures of George Washington, portrayed as both general and president, looked on in mute disapproval.

But Rogue was gone.

Chapter four

//A vengers Assemble!”

Mi Tlie hallowed battlecry came readily to Iron Man’s lips as he came within sight of Avengers Mansion, The crimson and golden sheen of his metallic armor glistened in the sunlight, reflecting the blue sky above him and the bustling city streets below, where excited pedestrians stopped in their tracks to stare and point at the armored Avenger as he soared by overhead. Micro-turbine jets in his boots propelled him over Fifth Avenue until he was directly above the venerable townhouse that had long served as headquarters for “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” as the tabloids loved to call the Avengers.

Beats “Earth’s Lousiest Losers,” he thought. As both a veteran super hero and, as billionaire Tony Stark, a successful businessman, he knew the value of good publicity. Even Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson, that inveterate campaigner against costumed vigilantes, seldom had a bad word to say about the Avengers.

The mansion was only a short flight away from Stark’s corporate offices in the Flatiron district; still, he wouldn’t have begrudged the trip even if he had needed to fly across half the state to get here.

I’ve made my fair share of mistakes over the years, he reflected, especially in my personal life, but one thing I can never regret is helping to found the Avengers.

The team had done a lot of good for humanity, including saving the entire planet on more occasions than he could recall. Iron Man looked forward to meeting again with his fellow heroes, even as he wondered what sort of crisis had inspired Captain America to call the team together today. Cap’s summons had not included any details.

Iron Man’s boots touched down on the reinforced concrete heliport nestled amid the Gothic spires of the mansion. Moving with surprising ease for a man wrapped from head to toe in a state-of-the-art suit of combat armor, he approached a doorway a few yards away. Concealed security devices, designed by Stark himself, scanned Iron Man discreetly, confirming his identity before permitting him entry to the mansion. He descended a short flight of wooden stairs to the top floor, where he was greeted by a balding, middle-aged man clad in a conservative, impeccably pressed tuxedo.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said to Iron Man with an upper-class British accent, looking neither surprised nor intimidated by Iron Man’s robotic appearance. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Jarvis,” Iron Man replied. The butler had been an indispensable fixture of the old Stark family mansion since before Tony donated the house to the Avengers. Iron Man couldn’t imagine the mansion without him. “I hope I haven’t kept everyone waiting.”

“That seems unlikely, sir,” Edwin Jarvis assured him. He glanced at his brass pocketwatch. “I believe the others are just now gathering in the meeting room.”

Iron Man knew the way by heart, so he marched down a long, carpeted corridor lined with polished oak paneling and framed portraits of many of the Avengers’ most famous alumni, such as Hercules, Wonder Man, Tigra, and the notorious Black Widow.

Wonder what Natasha is up to these days? he wondered as his eyes, peering out through two slits in his gilded faceplate, fell upon the latter portrait; he hadn’t seen the Widow since that nasty clash with the Mandarin several weeks back. The thick olive carpeting absorbed the heavy tread of his iron boots until he came to a pair of sturdy double doors. His crimson gauntlet closed gently upon a crystal doorknob as he let himself in.

In contrast to the tasteful Old World elegance of the corridor outside, the meeting room looked like something out of a science-fiction movie. Banks of sophisticated computer circuitry and monitors covered the walls and ceiling, lighted control panels blinking on and off, while the room was dominated by a large chrome table, the top of which was emblazoned by a stylized capital “A.” Egg-shaped metal chairs, designed to support the weight of even the Hulk if necessary, surrounded the futuristic round table. Iron Man’s boots rang against the shining stainless-steel tiles beneath his feet as he crossed the room.

The chairs were all empty now, but not the room itself. Iron Man immediately recognized the imposing figure standing on the opposite side of the table, his athletic figure proudly wearing the red-white-and-blue colors of the nation he had served and protected for over fifty years. A single white star glittered upon his chest, surrounded by a shirt of bright blue chain mail. Vertical red and white stripes girded his waist while a symbolic eagle wing rose from each side of his blue cowl. Flared red gloves and boots completed the ensemble.

“Hello, Tony,” Captain America said warmly. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“No problem,” Iron Man said. The vocalizer in his mouthpiece distorted his voice, giving him a forbidding, mechanical tone. He took advantage of the mansion’s privacy, protected by dozens of electronic countermeasures,

by unlocking the metallic seals at the base of his helmet. Removing the headpiece, he placed it gently on the surface of the table, revealing handsome features distinguished by a trim black mustache and beard. A face often seen on the cover of People magazine looked vaguely out of place atop Iron Man’s mechanized form.

That’s better, Tony thought. He breathed a sigh of relief—despite all the improvements he’d made to the suit’s ventilation and internal cooling systems, it still got a bit stuffy under the helmet. Besides, he had no secrets from Cap.

Captain America kept his own mask on, probably just from force of habit. Iron Man suspected that, after five decades of fighting for freedom, from the dark days of World War II through all the years since, Cap was more comfortable in uniform than out of it. His real name was Steve Rogers, Iron Man knew, but even his closest friends mostly thought of him as Cap. His proud stance and patriotic costume, from the A-for-America upon his brow right down to his bright red boots, had been an enduring national icon since before Tony Stark was even born. Cap’s circular metal shield, similarly adorned with the Stars and Stripes, rested on the table as well, only a few feet away from Iron Man’s helmet.

The tools of our trade, Iron Man thought.

He wiped the perspiration from his forehead and glanced around the room, wondering where the rest of the team was. As if in answer to his unspoken query, a spectral figure rose from the center of the table, passing through the solid tabletop, and the chromium floor below, like an insubstantial wraith.

Or Vision.

Translucent at first, so that Iron Man could spy a wall 39

of computer banks through the green-and-veilow body of the newcomer, the Vision emerged in his entirety a few inches above the Avengers insignia on the table, then drifted silently to one side and lowered himself into an empty chair. Once seated, he solidified quickly, effortlessly taking on mass and substance until he appeared just as tangible as Captain America and Iron Man. A voluminous yellow cape, that had previously floated about him like a phantasmal aura, settled upon his emerald shoulders.

“Forgive my delay,” he said, his voice as cold and unfeeling as the grave, “but I was engaged in routine maintenance of my thermoscopic receptor.”

Iron Man was not too startled by the Vision’s eerie arrival. He had grown accustomed to the synthetic Avenger’s tendency to pass through solid objects when convenient—a useful application of the Vision’s unique ability to control his artificial body’s density. It was just such an immaterial manifestation, he recalled, that had led their former colleague, the winsome Wasp, to christen the synthezoid “the Vision” in the first place.

A fitting name, he reflected.

If Iron Man, at least with his helmet in place, resembled a humanoid robot forged from gleaming steel, the Vision, in his solid state, looked more or less like a living mannequin sculpted out of plastic. A skintight sheet of green and yellow latex garbed his synthetic frame, except where his scarlet face peeked through, looking no more natural or organic than the statues in a wax museum. A polished golden gem resided in the center of his forehead, absorbing the solar energy that provided the Vision with his own artificial form of life. The mask-like face, slender and refined in its contours, was capable of expressing emotion, Iron Man knew, but seldom displayed that ability to any significant degree.

Especially since his marriage to Wanda broke up, Stark thought privately. These days, the Vision was even more icy and inhuman than he had been in years.

“Who else are we expecting?” Iron Man asked. He didn’t want to rush things, but there was a stack of paperwork waiting back on his alter ego’s desk. His executive assistant, Pepper Potts, could handle most of it if necessary, but Stark preferred to be a hands-on administrator whenever possible; he owed that to his numerous employees and stockholders. Avengers business took priority, though, as well it should. The fate of one company, even his own, hardly compared to the safety of the whole world.

“Just Wanda,” Cap informed him. “Hawkeye and Thor are both pursuing solo missions, while Firestar and Justice are attending a New Warriors reunion. That leaves only the Scarlet Witch on the duty roster.” He glanced at a digital chronometer mounted into the south wall, beneath a sizable viewscreen. The clock read 01:36:08 P.M. “I’m not sure what’s keeping her. So far, she hasn’t responded to any of my hails.”

There was a moment of awkward silence as both Cap and Iron Man looked toward the seated Vision.

If anyone might know where Wanda is ... the armored Avenger thought. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch had been deeply in love once, even happily married with two small children of their own. But several tragic reversals of fortune, including the loss of their twin sons, had taken its toll on their union. The Vision had even been completely disassembled and reconstructed at least once, losing much of his earlier personality in the process—or so it appeared. Iron Man didn’t pretend to understand all that had happened to their relationship, but it was clearly no longer what it once was, and had not been for some time.

It can’t be easy for them, he thought, still living under the same roof, fighting beside each other as members of the same team. Still, that was none of his business, even now.

Perhaps sensing his human teammates’ discomfort, the Vision volunteered what he knew without being asked. “I believe Wanda expressed an interest in visiting an exhibition at a local museum, but I do not know when she expected to return.”

Cap nodded solemnly, his chiseled jaw firmly set beneath his cowl. “Well, why don’t we get started without her,” he decided as chairman.

Iron Man agreed silently, taking a seat at the table. It was unlike Wanda to skip out on official Avengers business, but, given all the hardships she had endured over the last few years, he was inclined to cut her some slack. We can always fill her in later if we have to.

Cap walked over to the primary viewscreen and activated the widescreen monitor, which flared to life with a faint phosphor glow. ‘ ‘I received the following transmission at roughly 1300 hours. I think it speaks for itself.” A prerecorded image appeared on the screen, depicting the scowling visage of Nick Fury, director of the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistic Directorate. Four times larger than life, Fury glared out from the monitor with his one good eye. A simple black eyepatch concealed the remains of his other eye, while what looked like a day’s worth of stubble bristled along his jaw, which chomped down, as usual, on a cheap cigar. Only the gray at his temples hinted that the veteran spymaster had been around just as long as Captain America. Fury was a tough old warhorse, Iron Man knew; Stark had personally recommended Fury for his post at S.H.I.E.L.D., back when it was still called the Supreme Headquarters International Espionage and Law-enforcement Division.

“Listen up, heroes,” Fury barked. His voice was as gravelly as a bad stretch of road. “S.H.I.E.L.D. has confirmed several UFO sightings in New York State, at least five in the last three hours. We’re not talking swamp gas or weather balloons here; this looks like the real deal.” His scowl deepened, as if the alleged alien spacecraft had arrived just to make his life difficult. He bit down hard on the base of his stogie. A puff of gray smoke rose from the burning tobacco. “Invading ETs are more your line than ours, so you’d better be on the lookout and get ready for anything. Full details of the sightings are being transmitted to your computers—under maximum encryption, natch—even while I’m sitting here jawin’ about this. That’s all for now. Let me know if we’re about to be overrun by little green men. Fury out.”

The screen went blank, shutting itself off as it reached the end of the communication. Cap let the ominous message sink in for a moment before speaking. He gave Iron Man a quizzical look. “I don’t suppose Stark Industries is testing any experimental aircraft in this vicinity?” “Stark Solutions,” Iron Man corrected him, supplying the name of his new-and-improved corporation. He was proud of his latest enterprise. He shook his head. “I would’ve alerted S.H.I.E.L.D. ahead of time in any case.” “I figured as much,” Cap said. “I spoke with Reed Richards earlier. The Fantastic Four don’t know anything about this either.”

“What about the X-Men?” Iron Man asked. Compared to the FF or the Avengers, the mutant team were renegades as far as the government was concerned. He couldn’t imagine that Wolverine and company bothered to notify the authorities when they went offworld or hosted extraterrestrial visitors.

Typical, Iron Man thought, a frown marring his debonair features. He didn’t buy into all the anti-mutant hysteria that sometimes got directed at the X-Men, but he had to admit that the whole bunch of them had always struck him as a pack of dangerously loose cannons, even if they had managed to cooperate (barely) with the Avengers on a couple of occasions. Why can’t they work within the system like the rest of us?

“Apparently not,” Cap answered. “I quietly dropped a line to the Beast, and he assured me that we can cross the X-Men off our list of suspects, although he couldn’t vouch for all their splinter groups.”

Iron Man rolled his eyes. X-Factor. X-Force. Excali-bur. Generation X. . . there’s even some kid calling himself X-Man running around these days. He couldn’t blame Hank McCoy for not being able to keep track of all his fellow mutants. I can’t make sense of it myself. He sighed wearily. We Avengers may retool our membership periodically, but at least we always know who’s who. And you can tell the good guys from the bad. . . .

‘ ‘Then it could be almost anybody behind these sightings,” he objected. “The Kree, the Skrulls, the Badoon, Galactus. Even the Stone Men from Jupiter. And that’s assuming that this UFO really is extraterrestrial in origin, and not just some new high-tech aircraft cooked up by Zemo or Hydra or someone.”

“Fury has his own sources of information,” Cap pointed out, sitting down at the table between the Vision and Iron Man. His trusty shield rested within easy reach. “If he says that none of our local mad geniuses are responsible, I’m inclined to believe him.”

That was true, Iron Man conceded. S.H.I.E.L.D wasn’t known as the world’s premiere intelligence operation for nothing; Fury probably knew what the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants had for breakfast. “So what do we do now?” he asked. “Take notes while we watch The X-FilesT’

Cap raised an eyebrow under his cowl, looking a bit puzzled by the allusion. Iron Man guessed that Captain America, having grown up with old-time radio, didn’t watch much TV.

“Never mind,” he told Cap. “But besides notifying all our auxiliary members, I’m not sure what else Fury expects us to do.”

The double doors behind him swung open and Jarvis entered the meeting room, carrying a silver tray on which Iron Man spied three china cups. “Excuse the interruption, gentlemen, but I thought you might care for a spot of refreshment.” He strolled around the table, handing out the steaming cups. “A black coffee for you, sir,” he said to Captain America, “and a cappuchino for you, Master Stark.” The butler did not offer the third cup to the Vision, since the solar-powered synthezoid had little need of food or drink, but instead looked about the meeting room. “I say, has Mistress Wanda not yet returned? I thought sure that she would have arrived by now, perhaps while I was busying myself in the kitchen.”

“I confess that I grow increasingly concerned about the Scarlet Witch’s continued absence,” the Vision intoned. Iron Man had heard automated answering machines that sounded warmer. “I have never known her to disregard an official summons.”

He has a point, Iron Man thought. When Wanda had served as team leader for the West Coast Avengers, before that branch of the team was dissolved, she had been a stickler for punctuality, usually arriving several minutes before any planned meeting. It was always possible that her tardiness today had a perfectly innocent explanation— perhaps her I.D. card had been misplaced or malfunctioned—but Lord knows it wouldn’t be the first time that an individual Avenger had been waylaid by one or more of their many foes.

“Easy enough to check out,” he said, reaching for his helmet. Putting the headpiece back into place, the magnetic seals engaging automatically, he employed a cybernetic command to activate the helmet’s built-in antenna array. A priority signal, keyed to Wanda’s specific coded frequency, and strong enough to reach her anywhere within New York’s five boroughs, issued from the powerful communications equipment embedded in Iron Man’s armor.

A shame if we alarm her unnecessarily, he thought, but better safe than sorry.

“Iron Man to Scarlet Witch. Priority Yellow. Please reply.”

To his surprise, he couldn’t even get a lock on the card. Not only did Wanda not respond verbally, but there was no indication that the card was anywhere within range of the signal, which argued conclusively against it being left downstairs somewhere.

Blast it, Wanda, what the devil has happened to you?

“Iron Man to Scarlet Witch,” he repeated, more urgently this time. “Let us know where you are.”

Nothing.

“This isn’t good,” Iron Man reported to Cap and the Vision. Was that a flicker of anxiety in the synthezoid’s glittering plastic eyes or merely a trick of the light? “I can’t reach her at all, or even get a fix on her location.” He silenced the static in his earpiece, abandoning his efforts to establish contact with the missing mutant sorceress. “I don’t like this one bit. Wanda wouldn’t just leave the city without telling anyone.”

Not of her own free will, that is.

//§ et’s go, people!” Cyclops shouted. “Hurry!”

L A series of explosions rocked the alien space station, punctuating the X-Man’s command with a string of seismic exclamation points.

I need no further urging, Storm thought, running down the quaking corridor, the diminished gravity, less than a third of Earth-normal, seeming to add wings to her feet. She was anxious to leave this cold and sterile environment behind. Transparent portholes, revealing the blackness of interstellar space, only emphasized how far this place was from the gentle winds, cool waters, and nurturing sunlight of her beloved Mother Earth. The cramped confines of the silver corridor, added to the enclosed nature of the entire station, induced an all-too-familiar sense of claustrophobia, but Storm refused to let any irrational fears, no matter how deeply ingrained, distract her from the challenge at hand.

If we can just make it to the shuttle, she thought, before the whole station falls apart!

They were running out of time. Already the walkway buckled beneath her feet, venting gusts of hot gas and ionized plasma which she and her two companions were forced to dodge as they ran, trusting on agility and adrenaline to avoid the hazards that sprang up in their path again and again. Ahead of her, the Beast bounded over a ruptured steam pipe, his powerful legs propelling him well above the pipe itself, so that his shaggy dark blue fur was only slightly scalded by the blistering steam spewing forth from the jagged cleft.

SO

“Alley oop!” he called exuberantly, landing upon his massive hands, which he used to launch himself further down the corridor. “Come along, my brother- and sister-in-arms. Our heavenly chariot awaits!”

“Just have it warmed up and ready to go,” Cyclops ordered him, sounding like he was only a few yards behind Storm. In contrast to the effusive Beast, his voice was brusque and humorless. “This is going to be a close one.”

If we make it at all, Storm thought grimly.

The harsh clamor of metal supports crumpling and crashing upon each other came from the heart of the station, merely three levels away. Although the outer hull had not yet been breached, exposing them to the deadly vacuum outside, she knew that complete explosive decompression—and near instantaneous death—was only minutes away.

This is taking too long, she realized. We need Rogue or Wolverine. But the X-Men’s numbers were sorely reduced today, leaving only the three of them to face this latest trial by fire.

Steaming vapor filled the corridor before her. Storm realized her own legs could hardly duplicate the Beast's spectacular leap, even allowing for the lesser gravity, so she called upon her own mutant abilities instead, taking hold of the pressurized atmosphere with her mind and shaping it to her will. Elemental energy suffused her eyes, masking the striking blue orbs behind an impenetrable white glow. A robust wind sprung to life within the ordinarily weatherless environment of the station, fluttering the wings of slick black fabric that hung beneath her arms and blowing the scalding steam away from her path. It took only seconds to disperse the hot mist, then an incandescent red beam shot past Storm to crush the exposed pipe to a flattened mass of lead, sealing the leak completely.

“Good work,” said Cyclops, the source of the irresistible force beam. “Now keep moving. We haven’t got much time.”

/ am quite aware of that, thank you, Storm thought, slightly irked by Cyclops’s tone. Sometimes, Scott Summers forgot that he was no longer the sole leader of the X-Men, that indeed Storm had earned co-leader status within the group. She didn’t take it personally, though, knowing that Cyclops drove everyone else almost as hard as he drove himself.

She raced over the squashed pipe, taking advantage of the sudden gale to literally take flight down the corridor, rising upon the wind currents until the vaulted ceiling hung less than an inch above her billowing crown of snow-white hair. Another flicker of claustrophobia stirred at the back of her mind, but she quashed it mercilessly. Now was no time to succumb to the terrors of the past. She looked for the Beast, but could not spot him ahead; he must have gained a considerable lead on them.

Godspeed, my friend, she urged him silently. May we meet again soon.

An airlock door slammed shut in front of her, the heavy bulkhead blocking her and Cyclops’s escape and cutting them off from the Beast.

An automated safety measure, she guessed. And a most inconvenient one. Landing gracefully before the door, her feet touching down upon the shuddering walkway, she tugged at the wheel-shaped handle with both hands, but it wouldn’t budge. The gray steel door remained fixed in place.

“Stand back!” Cyclops yelled, and this time she didn’t object. His optic blasts were their best chance now. She flattened her back against the adjacent wall, distressed to feel the convulsive tremors vibrating through the straining steel, and watched as her fellow X-Man approached the airlock. His costume, a streamlined variation on the same blue-and-gold uniform he had worn since the bygone days of the original X-Men team, did not call attention away from the gleaming metallic visor that covered his eyes, Inside the visor, only a single ruby quartz lens, about eight inches in length, held back the awesome energies contained within Scott Summer’s eyes.

The lens receded, unleashing a brilliant burst of energy that struck the sealed airlock with the force of a battering ram, knocking the airtight door off its hinges. The metal bulkhead, six inches thick, crashed onto the floor with a resounding peal that hurt Storm’s ears. Nevertheless, she and Cyclops had sped past the now-open doorframe before the reverberating echoes of the crash even began to fade. The ruby lens in Cyclops’s visor slid back into place, blocking his devastating eyebeams once more. A stray breeze rustled his short brown hair.

Storm galloped down the corridor as fleetly as the gazelles of the African veldt she had once called home. Her knee-high black boots pounded rapidly against the floor until, just around the next comer, she encountered a shocking sight that brought both she and Cyclops to an abrupt halt.

Bright Lady, no! she thought.

Three Brood warriors, their brown insectoid bodies hideous beyond belief, held the Beast at bay. Each hostile alien skittered across the floor on four spidery legs, hissing at the embattled blue mutant through gaping jaws filled with rows of needle-like teeth. Membranous wings vibrated furiously behind large triangular skulls. Their razor-sharp forelimbs slashed at the Beast, who hung upside-down from an exposed power conduit in the ceiling, batting away the stabbing thrusts of the Brood monsters with his disproportionally large fists.

“Paging Sigourney Weaver,” he quipped in the face of danger, glimpsing his comrades’ arrival out of the corner of his eye. “We appear to have an indisputable bug infestation problem on our hands.”

“Do not let the mammal escape!” the central insectoid commanded its fellow Brood. A throat not meant for human speech screeched every word. Its venomous, twopronged stinger stood poised at the far end of its tail, but, focused exclusively on the Beast, the creature had not yet spotted either Storm or Cyclops. Its demonic, serpentine eyes were fixed on the hanging mutant. “His unique genetic material will strengthen our young!”

The unforeseen appearance of the Brood caught Storm by surprise. This is supposed to be a Shi’ar station, she recalled. What are the Brood doing here?

Her astonishment slowed her only a moment, though; reflexes honed against foes even more deadly than these sent her running forward to defend her imperiled ally. As yet, the Beast seemed to have avoided serious injury, but he was clearly outnumbered, fighting a losing defensive struggle against a half-dozen segmented spears. Its wings vibrating so rapidly that they were practically invisible, the nearest Brood began to lift off from the floor, taking the battle closer to the Beast.

“Cyclops,” Storm instructed hastily, “the one on the left is yours. I’ll take the right.”

Despite their occasional rivalry, Cyclops followed her lead without hesitation. His forcebeam lashed out again, smiting the armored carapace of a malevolent insectoid, who let out an inhuman squawk as it tumbled backwards down the corridor. The remaining drones turned their wedge-shaped skulls toward the mutant reinforcements. Slitted red eyes, strangely reptilian in appearance, glared at Storm with unremitting virulence. Their wings buzzed as loudly as a swarm of bees. To the Brood, as she knew only too well, other species were only fit to be the involuntary hosts of their vile, invasive progeny.

They shall plant no eggs in me, she vowed, caught up in the heat of the conflict, nor in the precious flesh of my friends.

The starboard Brood sprang forward with alarming speed, slashing out at her exposed midriff with a barbed forelimb. “We know you, X-Men!” it squawked. “You shall not defy us again!”

Storm barely threw herself backwards in time to evade a cutting blow across her abdomen. Gods of earth and air, defend me! she prayed, calling upon the tempest that was her namesake.

Electrical fury coursed through her, streaming toward her fingertips, from which a sizzling bolt of lightning leapt to strike the attacking Brood upon its brow. Sparks erupted where the thunderbolt hit, followed by scintillating white-hot traceries that spread over the electrified form of the alien parasite. The noxious smell of burnt insect flesh mixed with a trace of ozone in the air. The monster’s spindly legs gave out and it collapsed onto the floor, its impotent forelimbs still twitching spasmodically, its translucent wings folding in upon themselves.

Storm regarded her fallen foe with grim satisfaction. She generally strove to consider all living things sacred, but the Brood tested that resolve more than most. Not for nothing did Wolverine often refer to these beings as “sleazoids,” a colorful but apt description. They were unclean creatures, existing only to propagate themselves through the pain and exploitation of others.

Would that the whole of their breed could be defeated so readily... Storm thought.

Meanwhile, the Beast, no longer compelled to battle all three Brood at once, went on the offensive against the sole Brood still intent on skewering the hirsute X-Man. Letting go of the elevated power conduit with his astonishingly dexterous feet, he flipped through the air, landing piggyback on the short, stumpy neck that connected the insectoid’s flared skull to its squat torso. The Beast’s added weight sank the flying creature to the floor, while squashing its buzzing wings.

“Stop! What is this?” it screeched. “Get off me, mammal! Get off, get off!”

The warrior drone shook its head violently and hopped about like a gigantic grasshopper, hoping to buck the Beast from his perch, but failed to dislodge its unwanted passenger, nor could it get at the Beast with its now useless forelimbs, which flailed angrily at the empty air. Its lethal tail twisted backwards, its lethal stingers coming dangerously close to the Beast’s hairy back—until a precision blast from Cyclops’s visor shattered the bony spikes, disarming the tail.

The Brood hissed in agony. “You will suffer for this, you mutated mammal!” it vowed.

“Ride ’em, cowboy,” the Beast wisecracked, undaunted by the drone’s threats. He straddled the creature’s back, holding onto the upper portion of its skull as though it were the hom of a saddle. “I’ve heard of flea circuses, but this may well be the world’s first insect rodeo. Assuming we were currently residing on a world, that is.”

Storm paid little attention to the Beast’s typically lighthearted banter. She would never entirely understand his predilection for humorous repartee even in the midst of the most life-and-death struggle, but she had long ago grown accustomed to it. Certainly, Henry McCoy’s perpetual witticisms had never interfered with his ability to hold his own in combat, at least not that she had ever been able to tell.

Perhaps he is merely blessed, she thought, with an exceptionally carefree spirit.

Even now, as he indulged in yet more adroit japery, the Beast grabbed hold of the irate drone’s upper and lower jaws, being careful to keep his oversized fingers away from the insectoid’s stiletto teeth. Powerful muscles flexed beneath a thick layer of blue fuzz as he strained his simian arms to pull the ferocious jaws apart. Storm found herself reminded unexpectedly of one of the Beast’s favorite old movies, King Kong, in particular, the scene in which the mighty ape wrestled thus with a voracious Tyrannosaurus rex. As in that classic film, the drone’s jaws broke apart with a brutal crack, and the injured in-sectoid fell limply onto the grilled metal floor, a repugnant green ichor leaking from its mouth. Storm could not tell if the creature still lived, nor, to be honest, did she care overmuch. The floor rattled beneath the vanquished Brood, lending it a semblance of animation while reminding Storm of the greater danger to the station itself. The telltale clangor of imploding steel beams sounded ever closer behind them. The walls around her groaned alarmingly, and the smell of noxious gases permeated the enclosed atmosphere.

This delay may cost us dearly, she realized.

Was the battle concluded at last? For a second, she dared to hope so. Then, on the opposite side of the corridor, the drone sent tumbling by Cyclops re-entered the fray. Lying awkwardly upon its back, its four tiny legs kicking at the air above it, it employed its coiled tail to flip right-side up.

“Watch out!” Cyclops shouted as the Brood warrior charged at Storm, ducking around its two insensate hive-mates to avoid Cyclops’s line of fire before sailing through the air at the mutant weather witch. The buzzing of the monster filled her ears.

Lacking a straight shot at the insectoid, Cyclops aimed upward, ricocheting his forcebeam off the ceiling so that it slammed into the drone from above, coinciding with Storm's own defensive lightning bolt. Unable to withstand two such devastating assaults, the sleazoid’s mottled brown exoskeleton exploded, spraying the walls and ceiling with pulpy goo and bits of cartilage.

“Well, that’s quite revoltingly visceral,” the Beast observed. He stepped away from the fractured drone beneath him, being careful to avoid stepping into a spreading puddle of viscous green fluid. Wet, scaly flakes of Brood dripped from the ceiling. “I think I prefer trashing Sentinels. At least when they come apart, all that’s left are gears and computer chips.”

Cyclops didn’t crack a smile at the Beast’s levity. He seldom did. “Time’s wasting, folks,” he reminded them. His trim brown hair, visible above his visor, had not a strand out of place. He nodded in the direction of their waiting shuttle. “Let’s head out... pronto.”

But, before they could even begin to leave the trio of Brood behind, the grillwork under their feet snapped like a whip, throwing them all off-balance. Storm felt the floor yanked out from beneath her, and she hastily summoned a wind to lift her off the treacherous walkway. The wrenching sound of metal sheets tearing asunder came from directly below her.

“Goddess!” she exclaimed in horror, realizing at once that they had won their fight with the Brood only to lose their race against time. Aghast, she saw the hull of the space station break apart in a dozen places.

In space, it is often said, no one can hear you scream, but within the station Storm could still hear the agonized shriek of futuristic steel alloys pushed beyond the limits of their endurance, followed by a roaring whoosh that sounded in her ears like the coming of a hurricane. Their air supply rushed out into the vacuum, carrying with it bits of debris and broken insect parts. Although Storm exerted all her meteorological powers to hold in the fleeing atmosphere, she could not stop the freezing emptiness outside from greedily stealing away their oxygen and their lives.

Pieces of the collapsed walkway flew past her face. Fingers aching, she clung frantically to an exposed piece of piping, watching in dismay as first Cyclops, then the Beast were sucked into the void, so that only she remained aboard the disintegrating hulk of the alien space station. The suction pulled at her remorselessly, until her fingers began to slip free from her black gloves. The silver belt around her waist succumbed to the strain, breaking apart at its weakest link and flying off into space. An icy cold enveloped her, chilling her to the bone. Her lungs gasped for air.

I can do no more, she realized with fatalistic certainty. We have lost.

“End simulation,” she stated distinctly.

The disaster in space disappeared in a heartbeat, replaced by the familiar sights and sounds of the Danger Room. The fierce suction gave way to the ordinary pull of terrestrial gravity, and Storm found herself lying prone upon the floor. Exhausted by her ordeal, she climbed slowly to her feet, still feeling a lingering chill from the artificial environment. Shivering, her arms clutched tightly across her chest, she marveled once more at how astonishingly lifelike were the holographic simulations created by the advanced Shi’ar technology installed in the X-Men’s training facility.

That was almost too convincing, she reflected.

Several yards away, across the empty gymnasium floor, her “deceased” teammates were recuperating as well. Judging from the deepening scowl on Cyclops’s face, he was not at all pleased by their performance in this latest exercise, designed to keep their survival skills, as well as their ability to function as a team, in peak condition

Nor should he, Storm thought, although she allowed that there were extenuating circumstances. Where are Rogue and Wolverine?

“Not good, people,” Cyclops pronounced soberly. Storm could not see Scott’s eyes through his visor, but she could imagine how frustrated and unhappy they must look. “If that had been a real space mission, we’d all be dead now.” His fists remained clenched at his sides, his posture taut and unyielding. Sometimes, Storm worried about Cyclops—all the pressure he imposed on himself could not be good for his health. “I blame myself as much as anyone, of course.”

“It may be that no one is to blame,” Storm said evenly. She recovered her broken belt from the floor, then walked across the chamber to join the Beast and Cyclops. After the clamorous demise of the space station, the Danger Room felt as quiet and still as a museum after hours. “As I recall, Shadowcat programmed that scenario to include Logan and Rogue, as well. With five X-Men we might well have defeated the Brood in time to reach the shuttle.”

Cyclops shook his head. “That’s not good enough. You know as well as I do that we can’t count on having a full house the next time we come under attack.” Storm noticed that some of the pouches on his yellow bandoleer and utility belt had been tom open by the holographic space station’s spectacular decompression. She imagined that they all had acquired some new bruises beneath their uniforms or, in the Beast’s case, below his fur.

“Take now, for instance,” Cyclops continued. “Jean and the Professor and half the team are off in the Savage Land, helping out the Fall People, so they’re essentially incommunicado for who knows how long. Bobby is way off in Scotland, assisting Moira’s research, and none of this is very unusual. We can hardly expect our enemies to wait until everyone is home before they stage an assault on one or more of us.”

“Granted,” Storm said. “I was merely observing that, in this particular instance, the odds were—by design— against a successful outcome.” She made no attempt to conceal a trace of irritation in her voice; although she sympathized with Cyclops’s concerns, she disliked being lectured to. Storm suspected Jean’s prolonged absence might also be contributing to her husband’s bad mood.

Perhaps to change the subject, the Beast somersaulted through the air, landing precisely between Storm and

Cyclops. “That reminds me,” he said. “Where are Rogue and Logan, anyway?”

A good question, Storm thought. “As you know, Wolverine could be almost anywhere,” By temperament and inclination, Logan went his own way, and was very much in the habit of indulging his wanderlust without notice, sometimes for lengthy periods of time; this was an intrinsic aspect of his personality to which they had all become accustomed. “Rogue’s absence puzzles me, however. She left this morning for a shopping expedition in the city, but I believe she had every intention of returning in time for this scheduled exercise program.”

Cyclops’s expression grew even more somber, if possible. “I don’t like the sound of that.” He adjusted his uniform as best he could, then headed for the exit. ‘ ‘These are dangerous times for any mutant to go AWOL. Especially an X-Man.” A pair of gleaming metal doors slid apart, permitting them to leave the deceptively-empty Danger Room. “Who knows what kind of trouble she might be in this very minute?’ ’

A healthy degree of paranoia, Storm reflected, was perhaps essential to life as an X-Man, especially for a team leader. And yet...

“We should not leap to the conclusion that Rogue is in danger. She may have simply lost track of time, or perhaps missed a connection at Grand Central.” Then again, she thought, even if the train left without her, Rogue could have always flown home under her own power. “I share your concern, however.”

“Might I suggest we resolve this conundrum by efficiently ascertaining the present location of our elusive Southern belle?” the Beast proposed. His knuckles brushed against the floor, his simian stance making him seem shorter than he actually was. Unlike the others, he wore only a pair of blue trunks, just a shade darker than his own indigo fur; with his dense, hairy pelt, he had little need for clothing, except for the minimum modesty required. A large capital “X” adorned the buckle of a bright yellow belt.

With Storm and Cyclops in tow, the Beast hopped nimbly through the lower level of the sprawling mansion that housed what was now called the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Safely locked away from prying eyes, this section of the mansion had the feel of a high-tech research facility. Sterile white hallways connected with well-equipped laboratories, the ground floor of the Danger Room, and an emergency medical center capable of treating everything from radiation bums to bite wounds.

“Certainly,” the Beast added, “the means to do so is readily at hand.”

Cyclops nodded. “Cerebro,” he said tersely, leading the way to Professor X’s personal laboratory.

At the center of the lab, connected to an impressive array of streamlined computer banks and monitors, was a helmet-shaped apparatus secured to the ceiling by two flexible steel cables. This was Cerebro, a cybernetic tracking system designed to locate and identify mutants throughout the world; nearly all of the X-Men had been initially recruited via Cerebro. If the device, the brainchild of Professor Charles Xavier, couldn’t find a missing mutant, then that mutant had gone to enormous efforts not to be found.

Cerebro worked best, Storm knew, when used in conjunction with a powerful telepathic mind, such as Professor X’s or Jean Grey’s, but, in their absence, any one of those present should be able to use the device to confirm that Rogue was safely on her way home. After all, her unique mutant signature was already on file in Cerebro’s capacious memory.

Bright Lady, Storm prayed, let our fears be unfounded. “Would you care to do the honors, Ororo?” the Beast asked, addressing Storm by her true name. His long arms reached up and pulled the helmet down to eye-level. “I believe you may have the most affinity to our absent compatriot.”

“Very well,” she agreed. Although she and Rogue came from radically different backgrounds, she and the younger woman had indeed grown close over the years. Storm removed the stiff black headdress that rested upon her lustrous white hair, and placed the metallic helmet over her head. A blinking red sensor fell into place between her eyes, just above the bridge of her nose. It was a tight fit, but not uncomfortable. “You may proceed when ready.”

“Just give me a second,” the Beast said, the sound of his voice muffled somewhat by the helmet covering her ears, “while I call up Rogue’s profile.” His enormous fingers manipulated a control panel with surprising dexterity, and Storm heard Cerebro hum to life. Cyclops looked on stiffly, unable to relax until he learned the truth. “There we go. Commence scanning now.”

Storm closed her eyes and visualized Rogue, looking just as she had when Storm had last seen her: casually dressed in civilian attire and enthusiastic at the prospect of a carefree day in the city. Despite the cumbersome apparatus enclosing her skull, Storm did not feel at all cramped or confined. If anything, she felt the exact opposite: she could feel her awareness radiating outward beyond the walls of the Institute, sending out finely-attuned tendrils of thought that spread out for miles and miles in every direction, with herself at the center of an unfolding psionic web. The sensation was not unlike that of calling upon the wind and the rain, except that now she was searching for a single individual spirit instead of a compliant cloud or cold front. Wherever Rogue might have strayed to, she could not remain undetected for long.

And yet, as the seconds rushed by, becoming minutes, doubts began to assail Storm. In theory, Rogue should have gone no further than Manhattan, merely a couple of hours away from the X-Men’s residence in Westchester County. Why then did she continue to elude the far-reaching sensitivities of Cerebro, which had been known to chart the emergence of an unknown mutant power even half a world away? Her mind was traveling at the speed of thought, yet Rogue remained beyond her reach.

Where are you, my friend? What has become of you?

Storm opened her eyes to see her fellow X-Men watching her with growing apprehension. Even the Beast’s natural ebullience appeared dampened by her continuing inability to find their missing friend.

Finally, after many long minutes that felt like hours, the Beast shook his shaggy head and deactivated the device. The blinking sensor between her eyes switched off and Storm felt the extended feelers of her artificially-amplified consciousness withdraw back into her mind, grounding her within her physical body. She slowly lifted the helmet from her head and let the steel cables retract so that the headpiece ascended toward the ceiling once more.

If only my fears could be lifted from me so readily, she thought mournfully.

“It is no use,” she reported to Cyclops and the Beast, confirming what they no doubt already knew, “I could sense no trace of Rogue—anywhere upon the Earth.”

//f” o. I hear this scream and I come running, and the w first thing I see is the puppets attacking the Witch— is it okay if I call her that?”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind,” Iron Man said to the nervous security guard. The Avengers interviewed the man, a retired cop named Rodriguez, in the lobby of the folk art museum. Staffers and patrons looked on excitedly, whispering among themselves, as the armored Avenger, along with Captain America and the Vision, pursued their investigation of the Scarlet Witch’s apparent abduction. The Vision’s knowledge of Wanda’s itinerary had indeed led them to the museum—and to an increasingly bizarre mystery.

Puppets? Iron Man thought. Wanda was ambushed by puppets?

“ ’Course I didn’t know it was her at first,” Rodriguez continued, gulping uneasily as he spoke to the costumed heroes, “but then she said she was an Avenger and told me to get that other girl—I mean, young woman—out of there. I didn’t argue the point. I figured she knew what she was doing, especially after she started waving her hands around and all that weird stuff happened. Besides the puppets, I mean.” Despite the museum’s air conditioning, the guard wiped his forehead, remembering. “So, anyway, I made sure the other woman was safe, then hurried back to see if the Witch was okay. But when I got there, they were all gone. The Witch. The puppets. Everything.”

“And you had never noticed anything odd about the 68

puppets before?” Captain America asked. A patriotic quilt on the wall behind the guard matched Cap’s uniform.

He’s the only one of us who looks like he belongs here, Iron Man thought, taking in all the quaint and old-fashioned Americana on display. The Vision and I stand out like sore thumbs.

“No,” Rodriguez insisted, shaking his head. “They arrived on loan from some museum in Europe last week. I watched the curators mount them on the walls myself. There’s been no problem at all, until this morning.” When the puppets came to life, Iron Man thought. Blast, I hope this doesn’t turn out to be one of those weird sorcerous things. A scientist by both training and inclination, he was never comfortable dealing with the supernatural. Past adventures had forced him to grudgingly concede the existence of mystical forces within the universe, like Asgardian gods or the dread Dormammu, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Give me a horde of rampaging cyborgs and aliens any day. Unfortunately, when it came to the Scarlet Witch, whose mutant sorcery derived from both science and the supernatural, an occult attack of some sort was a distinct possibility.

“You mentioned a security video earlier,” he reminded the guard. “I’d like to see that.”

“Yes,” the Vision said emphatically. “More data is required.” His sepulchral voice visibly unnerved Rodriguez, who gulped and looked away to avoid meeting the synthezoid’s unblinking plastic eyes. There was an intensity behind the Vision’s eerie stillness, Iron Man thought, that betrayed an unmistakable concern for the safety of his former wife—at least to someone who had known the Vision for as long as Iron Man had.

The guard signaled to a young aide or intern, who hurried over to hand Rodriguez an ordinary videocassette.

“We have cameras in the ceilings,” Rodriguez explained, presenting Iron Man with the tape, “to discourage vandalism, you know.” He cocked his head to one side, toward a closed door beyond the front desk. ‘ ‘If you want, you can use the VCR in the curator’s office, although it might be kind of crowded with all of you in there.” Rodriguez had explained earlier that the office was not a large one, which was why they had chosen to conduct the interview in the lobby, despite the milling spectators.

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Iron Man replied.

Gripping the cassette gently between his armored fingers, which could have crushed it to powder had he desired, he inserted the tape into the audiovisual communications array built into the collar of his armor. Stark-designed software rapidly converted the information encoded on the tape to his private format, then routed the data to the multi-purpose beam projector embedded in his chestplate. The unbreakable polycrystal lens lit up from within and, only seconds after Iron Man received the tape, it projected a three-dimensional, holographic image onto the empty air in front of the guard and the heroes. The holograph was even colorized.

“Holy cow!” Rodriguez exclaimed, his jaw dropping open.

Iron Man peered through the eye slits in his helmet at the instant replay of Wanda’s battle against, sure enough, a bunch of a very lively marionettes. He nodded in approval as the Scarlet Witch deployed her hex spheres against Baba Yaga and the other puppets, then frowned as a miniature effigy of Victor Von Doom blasted Wanda from behind with some variety of energy beam. For a second, he wondered whether the real Doom might be behind this unlikely ambush, but no, he decided, this didn’t feel like Doom’s style. Doom could be devious, but he had too much pride to shoot a woman in the back, especially via a puny toy version of himself.

Then who? Iron Man wondered. The Puppet Master? Mister Doll?

Before his eyes, the holographic Witch collapsed onto the floor and the malevolent puppets converged on her unconscious body, forming a circle around her. Iron Man held his breath, anxious to see what happened next, when the image dissolved into a blur of incoherent visual static.

“What is it?” Captain America asked, squinting at the globe of flickering electronic snow. “What’s wrong?” Iron Man called up an immediate systems report. Micro-projectors in his eyepieces aimed facts and figures directly onto his retina, causing the visual display to float before his field of vision. He scrolled quickly through the report, but the news was not encouraging. Switching off his multi-beam in disappointment, he turned toward his fellow Avengers.

“It’s no good,” he reported. The flexible metal of his golden faceplate mirrored his disapproving expression. “Some sort of intense electromagnetic pulse erased the tape from that point on.”

“Then we have no idea where they took Wanda,” Cap stated, frustration burning in his clear blue eyes, ‘ ‘or even how they got her out of the building.”

“I’m afraid not,” Iron Man confirmed. He ejected the cassette from his communications array and handed it back to Rodriguez, who still seemed amazed that such an extraordinary visual display could come from so ordinary a video cassette. “Thank you for your cooperation, sir,” Iron Man said, making a mental note to have Tony Stark donate a sizable endowment to the museum. “Perhaps you can show us exactly where this occurred?”

When in doubt, inspect the scene of the crime, Iron Man thought. He was a scientist and engineer, not a detective, but maybe the marauding marionettes had left some clue to their origins or present whereabouts. Right now, that was the only chance they had to find the Scarlet Witch, hopefully in one piece.

I really, really hope we’re not talking magic here, he wished. Anything but that.

The Vision said nothing at all.

“Oh, my stars and garters!”

Henry McCoy leaped over the camelback sofa toward the television set mounted on the wall of the X-Men’s spacious rec room, the book he was reading—Metaphor and Metaphysics: A New Interpretation of Quantum Reality—instantly forgotten, all thought of its contents driven away by the startling pictures on the TV screen.

“Scott! Ororo! Make haste!” he called out. “The redoubtable Rogue has made the nightly news!”

His hairy blue fingers turned up the volume even as Cyclops and Storm, now garbed in everyday attire, rushed into the room. Scott Summer’s eyes remained concealed behind a pair of ruby quartz glasses, but Ororo Munroe's lustrous azure orbs widened in amazement.

“Goddess!” she exclaimed.

On the screen above their heads, a familiar figure appeared to be fighting off a swarm of. .. angry tee-shirts? Although the woman’s features were obscured by the frenzied layers of fabric clinging to her face, it was obvious to the Beast and his teammates that the lady in question was none other than the X-Men’s very own Southern rebel. The heads and shoulders of fleeing New Yorkers occasionally intruded into the frame as the jostled cameraman struggled to keep Rogue in the center of the picture. As she flailed about wildly, her super-strength tore apart what looked like some sort of flimsy showcase for anti-mutant propaganda, while the typically resonant voice of a local news anchor provided a running commentary:

“... this amateur video, taken by a quick-thinking tourist from Santa Fe, clearly shows the chaos that erupted today at a Greenwich Village street fair, turning an afternoon of outdoor entertainment into a terrifying experience for dozens of innocent fairgoers. Authorities have tentatively identified the woman in this footage as a member of the outlaw mutant organization known as the X-Men. She is believed to go by the alias of ‘Rogue,’ and has been linked to a number of past mutant disturbances....”

An eyewitness, so named by the caption that appeared under his close-up, offered his own take on the episode. “What more proof do we need that these mutant monsters don’t care who gets caught in the middle of one of their paranormal power struggles?” Sweaty but self-satisfied, the witness eagerly launched into what sounded like a well-worn spiel. “The Friends of Humanity have documented over 875 cases of collateral damage caused by rival factions of mutant terrorists....”

“These views do not necessarily represent those of this station or its management,” the Beast interrupted, lowering the volume once more. “Or so one most fervently hopes and prays.”

Thankfully, the unsolicited editorializing quickly gave way to further footage of the incident in the Village. Her hands and face nearly mummified by the seemingly possessed garments, Rogue lifted off from the street, the jerky eye of the camera tracking her into the sky until she flew out of the frame. This was followed by a somewhat more professional shot of a familiar stone monument that looked like it had been hit by a missile. The Washington Square Arch, the Beast recognized, although it would be better described now as the Washington Square Pillars, the arch itself having been reduced to rubble, apparently during Rogue’s headlong attempt to escape the suffocating fabric.

Another landmark destroyed, the Beast thought, sighing. Through no fault of their own, the X-Men’s hard-fought battles against evil mutants and other menaces often left a regrettable amount of damage and debris behind. This is not going to help our already dubious reputation.

Bad publicity could be dealt with another day, however; finding out what had become of Rogue was the preeminent matter at the moment. With Cyclops and Storm, the Beast watched the news broadcast for a few minutes more, until it became obvious that there was nothing further to be learned there. He channel-surfed rapidly, checking out the coverage on other stations, but they all seemed to be repeating the same information and footage over and over.

“So much for the mass media,” he pronounced, clicking the TV off and hopping over to confer with Scott and Ororo. He perched on the back of a chair, his toes wrapped around the carved wooden ridge atop the seat. “No one seems clear on what transpired after Rogue’s collision with the Arch, but this does not bode well for the ready return of our absent amigo.”

“We have to assume she’s in the hands of the enemy,” Cyclops stated. He paced behind the couch, his hands jammed into the pockets of his slacks, too engaged with the crisis to sit down. Storm, wearing a floor-length green housedress of African design, stood by the window, looking on with a deceptive aura of serenity. The Beast knew that Ororo was no doubt just as impatient to come to Rogue’s aid as Cyclops.

“Ah, but which one?” the Beast asked. “Refresh my overtaxed memory,” he said, balancing on one foot while he scratched his head with the other. “Isn’t there some costumed character out west—California, I believe— who’s supposed to have the ability to psychically manipulate clothing and other textiles?”

“Gypsy Moth,” Cyclops supplied, having done his homework as usual; Scott was the only person Hank knew who read super-criminal case studies in his spare time. “But she’s never had any grudge against us. More likely, we’re dealing with a powerful telekinetic capable of turning inanimate objects into weapons. The Black Queen maybe, or the Shadow King.”

“It is unfortunate that Phoenix is abroad,” Storm commented. “In her absence, we are ill-equipped to deal with attacks of a psionic nature. Especially now that Psylocke can no longer access her telekinetic gifts.”

Betsy Braddock, the Beast recalled, had recently departed the X-Men, following her crippling psychic clash with Amahl Farouk. A costly victory, that, he mused, and a reminder that we X-Men do not always emerge unscathed from our various sorties into all manner of peril. “We’ll just have to do the best we can,” Cyclops declared grimly. His hands gripped the back of the overstuffed ottoman. “I’ll send out a general alert, but Lord only knows when Jean and the others will wrap up that business in the Savage Land.” He strode decisively for the door, turning his back on the silent television. ‘ ‘Into uniform, everyone. There's nothing more we can do here. I want to be in NYC by 2030 hours.”

Already wearing as much of a uniform as he ever did, the Beast headed for the lab to assemble whatever equipment might be required. Somehow, he guessed that finding Rogue was going to take a lot of old-fashioned detective work, including a forensic examination of whatever evidence remained.

I mean, homicidal tee-shirts? he thought. Well, I’ll be an anthropoid’s antecedent. . . .

Yellow crime scene ribbons still cordoned off the back wing of the museum. The Vision glided right through them, leaving the banners untouched, but Iron Man and Captain America waited for the security guard to pull the tape aside before entering the site of the Scarlet Witch’s abduction. Curious onlookers lingered behind the yellow banners, watching the heroes’ every move through the viewfinders of clicking disposable cameras.

The walls were conspicuously bare, except for mounted plaques describing the now-missing exhibits. Spotlights shone on empty hooks where once the puppets had hung. Iron Man noted some scuff marks on the floor, possibly from the tussle earlier that day, but he imagined that the museum probably got a fair amount of foot traffic in any event.

I’m not even sure what we hope to find here, he thought. One could hardly expect puppets to leave behind fingerprints or samples of DNA. Unless they weren’t really puppets. . . .

“The police found some tom-out hair on the floor, plus a silver earring,” Rodriguez informed them, pointing to a spot on the tiles. lion Man noticed a single speck of blood.

“Wanda has numerous earrings that fit that description,” the Vision observed, his inscrutable gaze riveted to that solitary bloodstain. ‘ ‘My memory banks confirm that she was wearing a pair of silver earrings when she departed the Mansion this morning.”

For someone with no more ties to his ex-wife, the Vision sure pays a lot of attention to her comings and goings, Iron Man noted. He also recalled that the Scarlet Witch had a fondness for bangles that reflected her gypsy roots.

“Umm, yeah,” Rodriguez answered, still somewhat spooked by the Vision’s icy voice. “The cops thought the earring might belong to the Witch, but you’d have to check with them about that.”

“We’ll be sure we do that, Mr. Rodriguez,” Captain America said. “Thank you for being so helpful.” As the guard departed toward the lobby, clearing away the assembled spectators, Cap searched the deserted gallery with his eyes, then turned toward Iron Man. “What do you think? Should we have those hair samples sent onto S.H.I.E.L.D. for analysis?”

• “Couldn’t hurt,” Iron Man agreed, remembering thei
• “Not the black,” she whispered vehemently, her lip
• “Ororo,” a plaintive voice cried out weakly. Strug