“Couldn’t hurt,” Iron Man agreed, remembering their teleconference with Nick Fury earlier that day. I wonder if Wanda's disappearance has anything to do with those UFOs S.H.I.E.L.D. reported? “Fury owes us a favor or two.”

Identifying Wanda as the victim wasn’t the problem, though; finding out who was behind those malignant puppets was. Puppets, dolls. . . hmm. “Give me a second, Cap, while I check on some of the more obvious suspects.”

Without budging one inch from the desolate gallery, Iron Man used the satellite link in his antenna array to go onto the Internet in search of information. A quick link to the main Avengers data base, accessible once he cy-bemetically keyed in the correct password, revealed that his old adversary, Mr. Doll, was still serving time for extortion and other crimes, but that Philip Masters, the so-called Puppet Master, was currently out on parole.

Interesting, Iron Man thought, although Masters was usually more a threat to the Fantastic Four than the Avengers. Justice Department records, available to all Avengers via their executive-level security clearances, further informed Iron Man of the intriguing fact that Masters’ current workshop was located in SoHo, only about ten minutes away by subway. Could be just a coincidence, Iron Man reminded himself. As he recalled, the Puppet Master’s niece, the noted sculptor Alicia Masters, kept a studio down in SoHo, too. Sounded worth following up on, even if the Puppet Master’s M.O. didn’t quite fit the incident under investigation.

In the past, the Puppet Master had always used his trademark figurines to control his victims’ minds, not attack them physically, but who else combined crime and puppetry? Django Maximoff, Wanda’s adopted father, had once transformed both her and her brother, Quicksilver, into marionettes, and later pitted animated mannequins against the Avengers, but the old gypsy was unequivocally dead; Cap and the others had helped bury him themselves after that fracas in Transia a few years back.

That doesn’t leave many other likely candidates, Iron

Man thought. Aside from assorted gods and demons, that is, whose doings and current whereabouts were not exactly the stuff of Web pages.

A copyrighted Stark search engine led him straight to the Puppet Master’s personal e-mail address. An instant link to that address brought unexpectedly immediate results when Masters himself responded with a real-time transmission from his workshop.

“Iron Man?” he asked suspiciously, as an image of the Puppet Master’s distinctive features, like a cross between Howdy Doody and Peter Lorre, were projected onto Iron Man’s retinas. His bulging eyes protruded from beneath a shiny bald dome. “What do you Avengers want with me? I haven’t done anything. Nothing at all, I tell you!” Saliva sprayed from his mouth as he sputtered vehemently, making Iron Man thankful this wasn’t a genuine face-to-face encounter. “Why, I haven’t left my workshop in weeks. My niece will back me on that, I assure you. Ask Alicia . .. she’ll testify that I have a perfect alibi!”

“Calm down, Mr. Masters,” Iron Man said, although he couldn’t help thinking that the former villain was protesting a bit too much. Maybe 1 should advise the Fantastic Four to keep a closer eye on him, just in case. “No one is accusing you of anything.” He briefly recounted the pertinent details of the Scarlet Witch’s encounter with the rampaging puppets. “So you can see,” he concluded, “why I thought to contact you. Even if you aren’t guilty yourself—and no one’s saying you are—maybe you can point us in the right direction.”

Without mentioning it to Masters, he immediately sent an urgent e-mail to Alicia Masters, checking on her perfidious uncle’s alleged alibi while keeping the line open to the Puppet Master himself. Thank heaven for the miracles of multi-tasking, he thought.

Looking very much like a sinister ventriloquist’s dummy, Masters appeared somewhat mollified by Iron Man’s attempts to keep an open mind. “Living marionettes, you say?” he said, stroking his hairless chin. “Very intriguing.” Iron Man hoped Masters was not taking notes for his next criminal enterprise. “I’m afraid, though, that I can’t think of any, er, former colleagues who might be responsible for the young lady’s abduction. My own puppets, as you know, were constructed from radioactive clay found only on Wundagore Mountain. The clay had many unusual properties, but autonomous locomotion was not one of them.” He glanced down at whatever he working on, just out of the frame of the transmission, and Iron Man would have given a month’s profits at Stark Solutions to see what exactly the Puppet Master was fashioning now.

Not another of his little mind-controlling toys, he prayed, and especially not a miniature Iron Man.

“Now then,” said Masters, “if you don’t mind, I have to get back to my work.”

“Fine,” Iron Man said gruffly, deciding it couldn’t hurt to put the fear of God into the man. He’d known a lot of criminals who had claimed to turn over a new leaf, like the Thunderbolts, and precious few who really had. “Just remember, Masters, if you’re hiding anything, the Fantastic Four isn’t the only super-team that’s ready to throw you back behind bars if necessary. We’ll be in touch—you can count on it,”

“Your faith and trust touch my heart,” the Puppet Master replied sarcastically, cutting off the transmission on that rather adversarial note. Iron Man wasn’t too con-cemed about getting on the twisted toymaker’s bad side; as an Avenger, he’d made too many dire enemies to worry about one more.

I can deal with Masters if I have to, he thought confidently.

Unfortunately, his exchange with the Puppet Master hadn’t brought them any closer to finding Wanda.

“No luck,” he reported to Cap and the Vision. ‘ ‘The only super-criminal puppeteers I could think of are either behind bars or appear to have alibis.” He wouldn’t know for sure until Alicia replied to his e-mail, but in his gut he suspected Masters was telling the truth. Why tell a lie that could be so easily checked on? Masters’s niece was trustworthy, Iron Man knew, even if her uncle was not.

Cap shrugged his broad shoulders, undiscouraged by Iron Man’s lack of positive results. “We’ll find her, one way or another.” Iron Man admired Cap’s unflagging optimism and faith; the old soldier never gave up, no matter the odds against him. “Besides, the Scarlet Witch I know is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If there’s a way to get word to us, or even to escape on her own, Wanda will find it.”

That’s true enough, Iron Man admitted. He recalled that Cap had personally trained Wanda and her brother when they had first joined the Avengers, right after the original team—Thor, Giant-Man, the Wasp, and Iron Man—had broken up. He glanced over at the Vision, hoping that Cap’s words would bring renewed hope to the synthezoid as well. The Vision floated a few feet above the floor, methodically searching the deserted gallery with his glittering plastic eyes. Iron Man found himself wishing he could offer some sort of consolation to the Witch’s former husband. But how did you ease the feelings of an

artificial being who rarely admitted having any?

Maybe the best thing I can do is follow Cap’s example and just refuse to abandon hope.

Rapidly running out of leads and deductive leaps, Iron Man decided to fall back on the high-tech approach that usually worked for him. Activating his short-range sensors, he scanned the gallery all along the electromagnetic spectrum, searching for any anomalous readings. A beam from his chest projection unit swept the empty chamber; if there were any charged particles, unusual radiation, or unstable molecules in the vicinity, the beam would record their presence and transmit the data to the optical display in his helmet. At first, all he could detect was the solar-based bio-electricity that powered the Vision, but, after fine-tuning his instruments to compensate for the synthezoid’s presence, he was surprised to register something quite unexpected.

“Well, I’ll be,” he murmured aloud.

“What is it?” Captain America waited expectantly, clearly confident in Iron Man’s ability to provide a scientific solution to this mystery. “Have you got something?”

The Vision waited stoically behind Cap, descending to a few inches above the floor. Whatever thoughts might have been passing through his cybernetic brain remained his alone.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Iron Man said, checking and recalibrating his sensors just to be sure, “but I’m picking up persistent traces of radiation. Not enough to endanger anyone, but pervasive enough to have been left behind by something very recently.”

His mind instantly raced through the various exhibits he had glimpsed throughout the folk art museum: hand-carved weathervanes, decorative quilts, rustic needlework and water colors. He couldn’t think of a location less likely to be trafficking in radioactive materials. But there the evidence was, as clear as the illuminated read-outs before his eyes.

“What kind of radiation?” Cap asked. It occurred to Iron Man that his fellow hero had actually attended the original atomic blast at Los Alamos, another piece of history in which Captain America had personally taken part. “Anything special?”

“You bet,” Iron Man answered tersely. Every sensor confirmed the same ominous truth. “It’s gamma radiation.”

The very force that created the rampaging, half-ton monster known as the incredible Hulk.

The headquarters of the 6th Precinct was a two-story’ building on West 10th Street, only a few city blocks away from the park where Rogue had achieved such a dubious form of TV stardom. If any vital evidence had been left behind by her struggle with the mysteriously energetic tee-shirts, it would have been taken here.

Night had descended on 10th Street, bringing with it a highly unusual visitor. Casing the police station from across the street, standing under the awning of a small antique store, the Beast shook his head and sighed philosophically.

This would be ever so much easier, he thought, if I was still with the Avengers. Then he could have just waltzed right in, flashed his genuine Avengers I.D. card, and received the full cooperation of the N.Y.P.D., including unrestricted access to the evidence. As an X-Man searching for another X-Man, however, he could hardly expect the same sort of VIP treatment. Alas, our status as outlaws and renegades is the cross which all we merry mutants must bear....

A palm-sized holographic image inducer, designed years ago by Tony Stark, allowed the otherwise eyecatching anthropoid to loiter inconspicuously upon the sidewalk; to anyone walking by, the Beast looked like merely another ordinary human—specifically, a studious-looking white male with trim brown hair, a tan trenchcoat, and slightly oversized hands. In fact, Hank McCoy had looked much the same when he was younger, before he metamorphosed into a more hirsute form of Beast. He had deliberately patterned the illusion to resemble his earlier self, for old time’s sake. Just to play it safe, though, he kept a safe distance from the overhead street lamps. The antique store behind him, like most of the shops on this unprepossessing sidestreet, had been closed for hours.

A stately black limousine cruised past, steered by a serious-looking young man wearing opaque red glasses. The Beast nodded to Cyclops before the car turned onto Hudson Street, signaling to his fellow X-Men that he was ready to make his move. Buckling the belt of the rundown trenchcoat, he stepped out of the shadow of the awning and crossed the moonlit street towards the entrance to the precinct house. He had to force himself to walk normally, as any other human would, rather than bound along as he preferred.    •

Easy does it, he thought. We’re not invading Asteroid M here, just doing a little low-key reconnoitering.

The sound of youthful laughter, coming from the bars and outdoor cafes on Hudson, provoked a pang of nostalgia. He and Bobby Drake, better known as Iceman, had spent many fun-filled nights in the Village during their collegiate years, hanging out at Coffee-a-Go-Go and listening, with their girlfriends, Vera and Zelda, to the slightly incomprehensible, Beat-styled verses of Bernard the Poet.    _

Frankly, the Beast concluded, that sounds like an eminently more appealing prospect than the mission on which I am presently engaged.

A solitary flagpole rose from the roof of the squat police station, which was flanked on both sides by much taller brownstones. The Beast passed through a pair of glass doors emblazoned with the badge-shaped insignia of New York’s Finest and was immediately greeted by a large painted sign that read all visitors proceed to desk. Rather than doing so right away, he lingered in the entrance vestibule to inspect a directory posted on the wall. His eyes scanned the list of departments housed within the station house: Community Policing, Crime Prevention, Domestic Violence, Youth Officer, Auxiliary Police, Bomb Squad, Detective Squad, and something provocatively called a Rip Unit. Nothing about Aggressive Attire or Missing Mutants, which made his task all the more problematic.

Let’s see—if I were evidence from a paranormal episode, where would I be?

Perhaps the Bomb Squad was the place to start; the rambunctious Rogue had certainly left a big enough crater in Washington Square Park. Unfortunately, by the time Hank, Scott, and Ororo had arrived on the scene, the hole had already been trampled on and about by too many curious citizens, rendering whatever evidence the X-Men might have found there hopelessly suspect. Hank could only hope that the local constabulary had preserved their evidence in a significantly more pristine condition,

as

‘ ‘Can I help you?’ ’ a deep voice challenged, an intimidating tone belying the cordiality of its query.

The Beast looked up to see an imposing-looking officer watching him with a less-than-friendly expression on his face. The Beast was impressed by the officer’s formidable physique . . . why, his fists looked like they were nearly half as capacious as the Beast’s own gorilla-sized mitts. The undercover X-Man hoped his current disguise looked innocuous enough.

“Why, yes!” he improvised. “Is this where I go to get an exemption from jury duty? They’ve sent me a summons for next month, but you wouldn’t believe how inexpressibly impossible that is. I’m much too busy, what with deadlines and sales conferences looming on the horizon, not to mention debugging all the software and getting ready for the end-of-the-millennium crunch. ...”

As he rambled on, the Beast scoped out the lobby beyond, spotting a pair of stairwells located behind a metal barricade bearing a sign that read stop, police personnel only.

That’s surely where I want to go, he concluded. And with all deliberate speed.

The officer held up a hand to cut the Beast off. “You want the city courthouse, down by Wall Street. But they’re closed for the weekend. You’ll have to report there in person, during ordinary' business hours, Monday through Friday.”

“Thank you, officer,” the Beast replied, even as he continued to take note of goings-on at the precinct house. “I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.”

For late Saturday night, the station seemed strikingly calm and underpopulated; then again, he recalled, this had always been a relatively crime-free neighborhood, as much as any part of Manhattan was. Aside from a couple of German teenagers trying to report a stolen knapsack, all he saw were cops going in and out of the building. He glanced at an old-fashioned analog clock mounted on the wall above a convenient pay phone. It was 11:25 P.M. Almost time for the graveyard shift to come on.

Hmm. That gives me an idea.

Leaving the building, the Beast returned to the shadows across the street, then scanned one of the departing police officers with the “Record” function of the image inducer, storing the parameters of that particular officer’s appearance in the device’s memory. Then he sat back and waited.

Sure enough, a little after 11:30, there was suddenly a lot more activity around the entrance, with several exiting cops meeting their nocturnal replacements on the way out. The turnover between shifts was obviously well underway; the Beast realized he would never have a better opportunity to slip into the station unnoticed.

But first, he thought, a little protective coloration.

Changing the setting on the image inducer, the blue-furred mutant shifted in appearance to a reasonable facsimile of an officer in blue. Hank McCoy’s youthful face morphed into the prerecorded visage of the officer he had just observed leaving, right down to the last mole and freckle.

You know, he reflected, considering the furry exterior hidden beneath the holographic disguise, this brings all new mean ing to the faintly archaic vernacular appellation of “fuzz.”

Striding forward with the assumed confidence of one who truly belonged there, he joined the stream of fresh officers pouring into the station house. No one challenged him as he walked past the admissions desk and beyond the metal barricade erected to discourage further passage by civilians.

Upstairs or down? he wondered, trying hard not to look at all lost. Glancing around, he saw a large bulletin board labeled Crime Prevention Center. Black-and-white crime photos shared the board with maps and charts and clipboards, only a few feet away from what, quite mysteriously, appeared to be a Canadian Mountie uniform on display. If only the elusive evidence would just call out to him ... !

‘ ‘Hey, O'Donnell,’ ’ an unfamiliar voice addressed him, “I thought you left already.”

It took the Beast a second or two to realize the cop was speaking to him.

“Forgot something,” he muttered gruffly, hoping that his interrogator, approaching the disguised X-Man in a matching blue uniform, had not taken note of his momentary hesitation. “Cough drops,” he elaborated, throwing in a raspy hack for the sake of verisimilitude.

Will my rather underdeveloped acting abilities be enough to carry the day? he fretted. Talk about an impersonation devoutly to be wished....

“Yeah,” the other cop said with a shrug. He looked like he’d been on the force for years. The nametag beneath his badge identified him as FORRESTER. “Your voice sounds a little weird. Hoarse, kind of.”

The Beast issued a silent prayer of thanksgiving to Melpomene, patron muse of thespians, and started to step away. Unfortunately, the friendly officer seemed to be in no hurry to terminate the conversation. He loitered only a few steps away from the Beast; this cop and O’Donnell were obviously the best of buds.

“You know what really works for sore throats?” Forester said. “Vitamin C. You just have a coupla glasses of O.J. before you turn in tonight and you’ll be amazed how much better your throat’ll feel in the morning. There’s gotta be some orange juice in the fridge back home, assuming Brenda’s done her shopping this week.”

Who in the name of domestic partnership is Brenda? the Beast wondered. My wife? My girlfriend? My mother? It dawned on the beleaguered X-Man that he didn’t even know the first name of the man he was impersonating. He was reluctant to open his mouth for fear of blowing his cover through some innocent error. However does Mystique manage to pull off stunts like these with such aplomb? he thought, gaining a grudging new respect for the malevolent mutant mistress of disguise.

“Thanks for the tip,” he coughed, holding his fist before his mouth. “Well, see you.”

Upstairs it is, he decided, stepping decisively toward the beckoning stairwell. Anything was preferable to this torturous charade. “Hey,” his newfound buddy called out, “you want a ride to the PATH train?”

Who says NY cops aren’t helpful to a fault? the Beast thought, groaning inwardly. Was there no way to escape this oversolicitous officer without calling attention to himself? For all I know, he’s my partner of twenty years.

“No thanks,” he rasped. “I’ve got to make some calls.”

“At this time of night? Like to who?” For the first time, the cop eyed him suspiciously. The Beast fingered the controls of his image inducer, just in case the jig was up and he needed to discard his disguise. What was the legal penalty for impersonating an officer anyway? “You ain’t cheating on Brenda, are you?”

Heaven forbid, the Beast thought, looking past his chatty associate at the lobby beyond. The crowd of police officers was already thinning out as the transition between shifts neared completion; the longer he lingered here, the more he risked exposure.

“No way,” he promised. “I just want to order some movie tickets before they’re sold out.”

“Oh yeah?” Forrester said, looking much more curious than the Beast would have liked. The way his luck was going, the other cop would likely turn out to be a film buff. “What flick?”

“Um, Spider-Man: The Motion Picturehe improvised, vaguely remembering a “coming soon” ad he’d seen in a magazine somewhere. Wonder if that wascaliy wall-crawler will see any slice of the proceeds from the box office? Probably not; the courts had long ago ruled that costumed adventurers were public figures and thus fair game for the media. If anyone ever films an X-Men movie, they’ll no doubt pitch it as a horror flick. “Beware the bloodthirsty Beast! ’ ’

“Oh, right,” the cop agreed. “I heard that was good.” The Beast expected him to launch into a lengthy discourse on the relative artistic pros and cons of the latest summer blockbusters, but, mercifully, the conversation began to show signs of winding down. The loquacious lawman peered down at his wristwatch. “Geez, look at the time. I gotta hit the road. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you, too,” the Beast replied, breathing a sigh of relief. It looked like he was actually going to get away with this extraordinarily stressful exercise in infiltration.

Then another voice rang out across the lobby, sounding both surprised and aggrieved. “What in the world? That’s me!”

The Beast looked up to see the real Officer O’Donnell staring at him, wide-eyed, from the other side of the metal barricade.

“I mean, that’s not me!” O’Donnell amended, pointing accusingly at his doppleganger, who smiled weakly behind his false features.

Uh-oh, the Beast thought, uncharacteristically speechless.

Heads turned across the lobby as a roomful of New York cops took in the unexpected sight of twin O’Donnells. The chummy policeman with whom the Beast had been conversing for the last several minutes looked the most flabbergasted of all. His confused gaze swung back and forth between the two identical officers. He rubbed his eyes in amazement, but the paradox remained.

“Hey!” Forrester yelled. “What’s going on?”

What was the real O’Donnell doing back here? The Beast was nearly as startled as the befuddled onlookers. He’d felt positive that O’Donnell had left for the night.

Probably forgot his cough drops, the Beast theorized. How annoyingly ironic.

Realizing that he had been scammed, Forrester lunged at the Beast, but his ordinary human reflexes could not match the X-Man’s astounding agility.

“Nice talking to you,” the Beast said cheerily, taking the stairs six steps at a time while simultaneously kicking out with his feet to slam a fire door shut in Forrester’s face. He hopped up the steps with the utmost alacrity, realizing he had only moments before the entire precinct house would be in an uproar. Spotting a fire alarm mechanism at the top of the stairs, he briefly considered triggering the alarm to provide a much-needed diversion, but, upon rapid deliberation, decided that was simply too antisocial a ploy; what if there was an authentic four-alarm blaze going on elsewhere in the city? He’d never forgive himself if lives were lost due to a false alarm.

“Gangway! Coming through!” the Beast hollered as he careened down a corridor on the second floor, hastily scanning the labels on each door he passed. Plainclothes detectives emerged from doorways in a hurry, only to dive out of the way as the Beast bounced through the halls like an out-of-control rubber ball. One staunch officer, made of sturdier stuff than his fellows, attempted to block the disguised X-Man’s path, planting himself squarely in the center of the hall, beefy arms crossed atop his chest. Without even slowing down, the Beast launched himself from the floor and somersaulted over the detective’s head, landing on both feet at least a yard further down the hall.

“Alley oop!” he exclaimed.

Sorely tempted to abort his increasingly disordered and quixotic mission, the Beast nevertheless continued to peruse the label on each door that came within view. If he abandoned his quest now, he knew full well, he might also sacrifice the X-Men’s only lead, however slender, toward discovering Rogue’s whereabouts. He could not in good conscience allow another X-Man to suffer captivity for one instant longer than necessary, not while it remained within his power to do anything about it.

Fear not, fair damsel, he vowed extravagantly. Help is on the way!

Footsteps and angry voices pursued him. Doors slammed open in his wake and more officers joined the pursuit.

‘ ‘Thy chase had a beast in view, ” he thought, quoting John Dryden, circa 1700 A.D. He was on the verge of giving up when he spotted the stenciled lettering on a glass-and-metal door at the far end of the corridor: property room.

“Eureka!” he exclaimed, grabbing onto the doorknob and throwing it open.

A uniformed officer, seated behind a cheap and chipped wooden desk, blinked in surprise, caught offguard by the Beast’s enthusiastic entrance. “O’Donnell?”

Thank you, trusty image inducer, the Beast thought, grateful for the cop’s convenient case of mistaken identity.

Before the officer could even begin to reach for his gun, the Beast seized him by the shoulders, pulled him across the desktop, sending notepads and documents flying while the startled cop yelped loudly, and threw the officer out into the hall. Then he slammed the door shut, cartwheeled over the desktop, shoved the entire piece of furniture up against the closed portal, and turned it on one side, effectively barricading the entrance.

That should buy me a second or two.

Despite his acrobatic exertions, the mutant hero wasn’t even breathing hard; compared to the Danger Room, this was a leisurely stroll in the park. He quickly inspected the property room, seeing that the bulk of the physical evidence collected by the precinct’s officers was locked away behind a sturdy metal cage that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Peering through the steel bars, which were painted industrial black, he spied a stack of innocuous-seeming cotton tee-shirts resting on a shelf on the right side of the cage. Trying the door, he discovered that an old-fashioned combination lock protected the enclosure from intruders—in theory, at least.

Beyond the relocated desk, the door to the property

room rattled in its frame. Determined fists pounded against the blockade as heated voices shouted through the doorway, among them the angry tones of both Forrester and the officer the Beast had just evicted from his post. “O’Donnell—or whoever you are—open this door right now! You’re not going anywhere!”

We ’11 cross that bridge when we come to it, the Beast thought, contemplating the cage. First, he needed to get at those shirts. Since there was clearly no time to attempt any elegant safecracking (which was more Storm’s specialty, in any event), he was forced to resort to cruder methods to gain access to the cage’s interior. Bracing his oversized feet against the floor, he took hold of the cage door with both hands and strained the ape-like muscles beneath his furry pelt (and holographic disguise).

While his brute physical strength wasn’t nearly in the same class as, say, Colossus or Rogue, it was nothing to sneeze at, either; the Beast figured he could easily arm-wrestle Spider-Man to a draw, which should be more than enough to overcome whatever elementary metal alloy the cage was comprised of. Fortunately, the N.Y.P.D.’s budget probably didn’t allow for adamantium furnishings.

The steel bars shrieked in protest as the Beast tugged on them with all his might, baring his jagged canines as he gritted his teeth. The door came free with a wrenching noise and the broken padlock crashed to the floor. Hurrying into the cage, the Beast went straight for the tee-shirts the cops must have confiscated at the scene of Rogue’s apparent abduction. On closer inspection, he saw that the top shirt bore an ugly anti-mutant slogan, and that the entire stack had been stuffed into a clear plastic bag to preserve and protect the integrity of the evidence.

Excellent, he thought. Let’s hear it for professionalism in criminal investigations.

Judging from the crashing sounds behind him, however, now was no time to conduct his own examination of the suspect shirts. That would have to wait for a more leisurely and private an occasion. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw several arms and hands pushing past the barricaded doorway, trying to get a grip on the overturned desk. The grasping arms were uncomfortably reminiscent of a George Romero zombie flick.

Time to go, the Beast concluded.

Stuffing the entire sack into the deep pocket of his trenchcoat, he glanced about for a plausible means of egress, his gaze quickly landing upon the surprising sight of an antique, standard-issue, U.S. Army bazooka, with accompanying ammunition. I don’t even want to think what criminal or street gang they took that particular piece of hardware off of. His heart swiftly went out to Spidey, Daredevil, and the city’s other urban defenders, not to mention the embattled N.Y.P.D. Since when did everyday miscreants come complete with heavy artillery?

Still, perhaps society’s loss was his present salvation. Falling back on a bygone crash course in military ordinance conducted by none other than Captain America himself, the Beast loaded the bazooka as expeditiously as possible, then took aim at the ceiling directly overhead. A resounding explosion followed, blowing a sizable hole in the roof of the police station and raining bit-sized chunks of plaster and concrete onto the Beast’s bushy head.

“Oh, dear,^-’ he murmured, wincing at the damage he had just inflicted on the building. “I’ll have to persuade Warren to make a generous donation to the police department on my behalf.” His billionaire chum could easily afford a whole new station house if necessary, let alone the cost of repairing a hole in the ceiling.

His conscience thus assuaged, the Beast returned the contraband weapon back to where it belonged, then crouched down beneath the newly-created gap, tensing the powerful muscles in his lower limbs. He sprang through the ceiling onto the roof—where he found what looked like an entire squadron of police officers waiting for him.

Well, this is certainly an unexpected and unwelcome development, he thought. I guess I wasn’t the only one who realized the only way out was up.

‘‘All right, stay where you are!” a police woman ordered, taking a bead on him with her handgun. Several other officers followed her lead, the real Officer O’Donnell among them. He glowered at the camouflaged Beast with justifiable outrage in his eyes. “Freeze!”

“I think you have me confused with my friend and associate, the illustrious Iceman,” the Beast declared. Seeing no further point in his appropriation of O’Donnell’s identity and appearance, and hoping for some slight psychological advantage, he flicked off the image inducer in his pocket, appearing before the dumbfounded law enforcement personnel in all his shaggy, simian glory. “Behold, the bouncing, yet benevolent Beast, at your service.”

As hoped, his abrupt transformation provoked gasps and puzzled expressions. A few of the officers, including O’Donnell, stepped backward involuntarily, the muzzles of their firearms dipping toward the roof beneath their feet.

“I don’t get it,” the Beast heard O’Donnell mutter. “I thought he was one of the good guys....”

And indeed I am, he thought, although this hardly seemed the most prudent moment to explicate the matter, given that he had just been caught red-handed, as it were. Or blue-handed, to be more precise.

Taking advantage of his would-be detainers’ momentary discomfiture, the Beast propelled himself across the open roof, his fists wrapping around the flagpole he had noticed earlier. Legs flying out parallel to the ceiling, he swung around and around the pole, his great feet knocking the guns from the hands of the nearest detectives and uniformed officers. He orbited the pole one more time, building up momentum, then let go, sending his furry form hurtling over the heads of the assembled cops and onto the eastern wall of the five-story brownstone bordering the police station. His nimble fingers and toes found purchase in the brownstone’s red-brick exterior, and he swiftly began to scale the side of the building.

“Up, up, and away!” he chortled, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the police stranded on the rooftop below.

But, although taken aback by the fuzzy fugitive’s spectacular gymnastics, New York’s Finest quickly took action.

“Stop, or we’ll shoot!” a voice (O’Donnell’s?) commanded, followed by a warning shot that sent chips of stone flying off the brick facade only inches from the Beast’s skull. Laser sights surrounded him with dimesized disks of blood-red light. The smell of gunpowder reached his sensitive nostrils.

Egads! the Beast thought, gulping loudly as a second warning shot peppered him with bits of stone and mortar. I wonder if it’s too late to rejoin the Avengers?

Suddenly, from out of a clear moonlit sky, a roll of thunder shook the night, drowning out the echoes of the gunshots. A jagged bolt of lightning struck the punctured roof of the precinct house, scattering the throng of armed police officers threatening the Beast and leaving a charred-black scorch mark upon the cement rooftop. A rolling, pea soup fog swept over the scene, instantly reducing visibility to near zero. Immersed in the thick, gray mist, the Beast couldn’t see a thing, but he heard a familiar dulcet voice calling out to him with an exotic West African accent.

“Are you ready to leave this place, my friend?” Storm asked from somewhere overhead.

“Ready and willing,” he confirmed, feeling the comforting weight of the purloined evidence in his pocket. Despite a few unanticipated complications, he had gotten what he had come for. “Thanks for the airborne assist.”

“Your exit could hardly have been more conspicuous,” Ororo chided him. Her strong hands grabbed his wrists. With no fear of falling, trusting completely in his fellow X-Man, the Beast released his hold on the brick wall and let Storm, assisted by a powerful gust of wind, carry him aloft.

It never hurts to have a mutant weather witch on your side, he reflected. His bare feet dangled in the air, high above the rooftop below. Lost in the fog, which shortly dispersed, the 6th Precinct receded beneath him, along with several understandably thunderstruck guardians of law and order.

Somehow, the Beast thought, I don’t expect I’m getting invited to the Policeman’s Ball this year.. ..

Later, in the luxurious back seat of Charles Xavier’s customized Rolls Royce, the Beast shared the fruits of his arduous adventure with his teammates. Storm sat beside him, looking refreshed by her recent flight, while Cyclops manned the wheel, driving the limousine north and out of the city, back toward the Institute. Discarded after the Beast removed his plunder from its pockets, the wadded-up trenchcoat rested on the empty passenger seat next to Cyclops, even though the air-conditioned interior of the Rolls was significantly cooler than the night outside.

GOD MADE MAN IN HIS IMAGE, THE DEVIL MADE MUTANTS declared the uppermost of the stolen tee-shirts. The Beast could not help scowling at the inflammatory slogan as he removed the shirt from its plastic sheath and unfolded it on the seat between Storm and himself. The tips of his fangs protruded from beneath his lower lip. It was clear from Ororo’s disapproving expression that she was also disturbed by the garment’s hate-filled message.

“No matter how many times I encounter such unreasoning hostility,” she commented, “it never fails to surprise and sadden me. You would think that such vile sentiments could not endure so long in defiance of all sense and decency.”

“To quote the late, great Johann von Schiller, ‘against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.’ ” The Beast sympathized with Storm’s disillusionment. Sometimes it seemed like certain regrettable tendencies were never going to change. “I fear the same may be said of prejudice and fear.”

In any event, he reminded himself, there was little that could be done tonight concerning the thorny and dismayingly intractable problem of human/mutant relations. The most they could hope for was some clue to point the way to wherever Rogue now resided, almost certainly against her will. He declined to even consider the other, unspoken possibility: that Cerebro could not find their absent friend because she was no longer alive.

I won’t believe that until I see a body, and maybe not even then. If there was one thing the Beast knew, amidst all his vast erudition, it was that X-Men were harder to kill than cockroaches.

He scanned the shirt with a handheld sensor based on advanced Shi’ar designs. The device, which he had taken care to bring along from the mansion, was several hundred times more sensitive than any equivalent Terran technology, and almost certainly many orders of magnitude more acute than any apparatus available to the N.Y.P.D. If there was anything unusual to be found, the sensor would surely alert them to its presence.

Granted, these garments were merely those left behind at the devastated fair booth, not the ones that Rogue carried away with her in her short-lived flight toward freedom. Still, these shirts presumably came from the same batch that had yielded Rogue’s textile tormentors. The Beast resolved to stay wary, lest the pilfered tee-shirts suddenly turn on the limousine’s passengers, but so far the cheap cotton apparel had displayed no evidence of vitality whatsoever.

Thank Providence for small favors, he thought. After successfully evading the eager clutches of the police, he had no desire to tangle with a bevy of belligerent attire.

Scanning for everything from mystical energy to signs of life, he carefully inspected the read-outs on the illuminated display panel. I am going to feel extremely foolish, he reflected, if my in-depth investigation reveals nothing more ominous than a made in KOREA label.

Imagine stealing the shirts from the police for no reason at all!

But that proved not to be the case.

“Well, I’ll be a primate’s progenitor,” he declared, staring at the results of the scan with keen scientific curiosity. His blue eyes flared with intellectual excitement. “In more ways than one.”

“What is it?” Cyclops asked from the driver’s seat. Eagerness and anxiety warred within his voice. “Did you find something?” Ororo listened expectantly as well.

“Indeed I have,” the Beast announced, switching off the scanner and placing it gently upon the garments in question. “According to our equipment, all of these undeniably insulting items of clothing have been recently exposed to gamma radiation. Not exactly a standard feature of ordinary sweatshop output, I’m certain.”

“Gamma radiation?” Cyclops repeated in surprise, although the Beast was pleased to see that their erstwhile leader kept his super-energized eyes on the road.

“With a capital G,” he confirmed. “There’s no mistaking these readings.” He wondered if and when the police would have ever detected the contamination. I didn’t see any Geiger counters around the precinct house.

“Well done, my friend,” Storm said warmly. She eyed the pilfered garments with a new wariness. “But I don’t understand. How can radiation bring mere clothing to life?”

“You’ve got me there,” he admitted, considering the problem from every angle. Outside the tinted windows, the lights of the city gave way to a tree-lined highway as the car carried them toward their home in Salem Center. The Beast scratched his hairy chin. Gamma radiation . ..

The X-Men were often called the “Children of the Atom,” based on a trendy theory relating the rapid increase in human mutations to the spread of nuclear power. There was some truth to this theory, the Beast conceded; indeed, his own parents had been employed in the fledgling atomic industry, which probably contributed to his exceptional characteristics. Subsequent work, conducted by such respected authorities as Charles Xavier and Dr. Moira MacTaggert, had also explored the potential impact of various forms of radiation on human DNA, especially during conception and fetal development. As a scientist as well as a super hero, Henry McCoy had reviewed all the pertinent literature on the subject and even written a few incisive monographs himself, probing the causes and possibilities of human mutation. Consequently, the Beast felt he knew quite a lot about the intertwined mysteries of radiation and mutation.

That being said, he also knew there was only one man on Earth who was the undisputed authority on the effects of gamma radiation in particular: Dr. Robert Bruce Banner.

The man who was also known as the unstoppable mountain of muscle that a terrified world had named ... the Hulk.

Cruising majestically 25,000 feet above sea level, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier was the largest moving object capable of soaring over the Earth. A huge mobile command base for the world's premiere intelligence organization, the Helicarrier looked big enough to house a couple of Boeing 747s and still have room left over for a decent-sized shopping mall. Smaller aircraft buzzed and hovered around the immense vessel like jet fighters around a Navy aircraft carrier, landing and departing constantly while the Helicarrier remained aloft twenty-four hours a day, keeping watch over the world it was built to protect. Many noted meteorologists maintained that the Helicarrier was so colossal, and its energy output so vast, that it had a direct effect on the weather conditions in whatever airspace it was currently occupying. This was probably true; certainly, it was casting a massive shadow on portions of eastern Montana at this very moment.

Aboard the Helicarrier, in the office of the Executive Director, Nicholas Fury was not having a good day.

“Blast it, Val!” he swore, pounding his fist on his desk. “How hard is it to find a UFO? It’s been hours since we first tracked that thing.” He gulped down a steaming cup of black coffee—his fifth that day—then took a long drag on the stump of a cigar clenched between his teeth. Technically, smoking was forbidden anywhere on the Helicarrier, but the only person who had ever had the nerve to point that out to Nick Fury quickly lived to regret it. Last anyone had heard, he was still serving extended duty in Antarctica.

If I can survive World War II and a coupla hundred Hydra assassins, Fury thought, as the smoke warmed his lungs, a little caffeine and tobacco ain’t about to kill me.

‘ ‘The Air Force, NASA, and our own units are searching for the mystery ship at this very moment,” a tall, dark-haired woman reminded him, her voice holding a distinct European accent. Like Fury, the Countess Valentina Allegro de Fontaine wore the standard blue jumpsuit worn by any S.H.I.E.L.D. field agent, complete with shoulder holster, handgun, plasma beam projector, and other lethal accessories. Even though they were currently occupying the nerve center of the world’s most formidable flying fortress, years of experience had taught both Fury and his second-in-command to be ready for anything, anytime, and anywhere. “Even the cosmonauts on Mir are keeping an eye out for this elusive UFO.”

“Right!” Fury barked. The empty socket behind his trademark black eyepatch itched something terrible, like it always did when trouble was brewing, but he refused to scratch out of sheer cussedness. “Like I’d trust the Russkies to share classified intel out of the goodness of their hearts.”

“The Cold War is over, Nick,” Val said, sounding faintly amused by her boss’s intransigent attitude. Only a white streak rising up through the lofty pile of jet-black hair above her unwrinkled brow indicated that the Countess had been in the spy game almost as long as Fury.

“Yeah, that’s what they want us to think,” Fury replied, exhaling an acrid cloud of smoke into the pressurized atmosphere of the immense airship. A half-day’s growth of stubble carpeted his jaw. “You and I both know better.”

Deep down, though, he knew Val had a point. This 105

didn't feel like a Russian operation. Red or otherwise, which was one reason he had brought Cap and the Avengers into the loop. Ordinarily, Fury preferred to handle matters of international security without relying on the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, or any other super-powered civilians, thank you very much, but if these UFO sightings were the first glimmerings of another extraterrestrial offensive, then the Avengers might be the only people equipped to handle the threat. Good as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s hardware was—the best on Earth, probably—he knew dam well that it didn't stack up against the futuristic super-science of Galactus or the Celestials.

Blasted aliens, he fumed. It’s not like there weren’t enough cockamamie menaces on Earth already. Faxes blanketed the top of his stainless steel desk, containing updates and status reports from field agents and regional directors all over the world, bringing him up to speed on any number of brewing situations that might soon require immediate intervention by S.H.I.E.L.D. He quickly sorted through the documents, scanning them for the pertinent details. An underground A.I.M. laboratory somewhere south of Seattle, rumored to be the site of unsanctioned time travel experiments. A reported alliance between two Hydra splinter groups, in Berlin and Stockholm, respectively. Rumors of industrial espionage at Stark-Fujikawa, including advanced computer technology diverted to the Zodiac crime cartel. Ceasefire violations along the Wak-andan border. Civil unrest in Genosha. New leads pointing toward the possible hidden lairs of Baron Zemo, Modok, Viper, Fenris, the Red Skull, the Yellow Claw, and other regular fixtures on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Ten Most Wanted List. The usual, in other words.

All in a day’s work, he thought sourly.

And now, on top of everything else, an Unknown Flying Object that persisted in staying Unknown despite the best efforts of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s considerable resources, and up to who knew what. Fury ground out the remains of his stogie in the adamantium ashtray on his desk, rubbing the ashes into a scorched photo of Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, and wished he could dispose of the nagging problem of the mystery ship as easily.

“Keep watchin’ the blasted skies,” he muttered under his breath. “Why can’t these everlovin’ ET types stick to their own backyards?”

It didn’t help his mood any that the Helicarrier was carrying him farther and farther away from the vicinity of the UFO sightings. While security considerations clearly dictated that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s command center be moved away from any potentially hostile aircraft, running away always rubbed Fury the wrong way. There was a reason his office was surprisingly compact, barely large enough for a small meeting; he didn’t want to get too comfortable sitting behind a desk.

If there’s a nasty brawl ahead, I want to be where the action is, not sitting tight hundreds of miles away.

As if in answer to his unspoken request, a warning siren suddenly caught both Fury and the Countess by surprise.

“What the—?” he exclaimed, shooting an inquisitive glance at Val, who didn’t know any more than he did. He slammed down his palm on the intercom switch on his desk, heedless of the faxes that went sliding off the edge of the desk to flutter unnoticed to the floor. “This is Fury,” he snapped, spitting out the words like bullets from an automatic rifle. “What the devil is going on?” “Intruders on Deck Four,” an automated voice reported. “All security forces report to site of breach. Instituting stage-three containment procedures. ...”

Fury was already away from his desk and out the door, with Val right on his tail, pausing only long enough to stuff a couple of particularly sensitive documents into the shredder. A Colt automatic in his hand, Fury joined a stampede of armed agents rushing to defend the Helicar-rier from the still-unidentified invaders.

What’s the matter with our security perimeter? he wondered. In theory, the smaller aircraft surrounding the Helicarrier should have intercepted any hostiles before they ever got close enough to board the vast airship itself. Why wasn’t there any warning?

The shrill alarm blared in his ears. Unwilling to take a chance on the mag-rail elevators during an emergency situation, Fury shoved the Colt back into his shoulder holster and clambered hand-over-hand down a sturdy maintenance ladder, counting off the decks as he descended rapidly toward who knew what.

Deck Four, he considered as he climbed. That was mostly R&D: state-of-the-art laboratories where S.H.I.E.L.D.’s crack team of scientists and technicians developed everything from new particle-beam weapons to the latest generation of Life Model Decoys. Pretty darn convenient, Fury thought, that the invaders chose that region to stage their incursion. He’d bet his government pension, which he never expected to collect anyway, that they knew exactly what they were looking for.

Valentina’s steel-toed boots rang against the metal rungs right above Fury’s head. “Nick,” she suggested hesitantly, “maybe you should hang back until we find out what exactly we’re dealing with here.” From the tone of her voice, she knew this idea wasn’t going to fly with

Fury, but felt obliged to bring it up, anyway. “We can’t afford to lose you.”

“Not a chance,” he barked gruffly. The day he had to hide behind a battalion of bodyguards, like some president or senator, was the day he’d hang up his eyepatch for good. “Nobody breaks into my HQ without an invite, not without gettin’ a .45-caliber welcome from me.”

As he neared his destination, Fury could hear the unmistakable sound of battle raging, like a small war had erupted on Deck Four. Gunfire crackled and voices shouted, along with a series of hisses, zaps, and buzzes of a less recognizable nature. Fury smelt both gunpowder and ozone in the air and felt the ladder tremble in his grip. A series of violent shocks shook the Helicarrier, which was swiftly losing altitude, perhaps to cope with the loss of air pressure on the research deck. Judging from the lack of explosive decompression, not to mention the fact that he could still breathe, Fury guessed that the titanic airship’s automatic self-maintenance systems had already sealed whatever gap the enemy boarding party had tom in the hull. He just hoped whoever was flying the Helicarrier right now knew what they were doing. Chances were, Fury’d be too busy fighting off the bad guys to approve any flight plans for a while.

But what kind of customers was he gunning for? Who in heck had the nerve and the gall to stage a raid on S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ? Dropping from the ladder onto the quaking floor of Deck Four, Fury quickly ran through all the possibilities. Hydra? The Serpent Society? The Mutant Liberation Front? Nothing in any of his daily briefings and status reports had even hinted at an enemy operation of this magnitude.

Just that blasted UFO, he thought, all his instincts pinning the blame on the mystery ship. In his gut, he knew there had to be a connection. Guess there’s no time like the present to find out who’s come knockin’, he thought, drawing his handgun. The customized blue-steel firearm fit perfectly into his hand.

“Heads up, everybody!” he hollered to Val and the other agents coming down the ladder behind him. He recognized Lee, Coning, Plummer, and Schwartz—all solid agents. They dropped onto the shaking deck without a single misstep. “Let’s show these trespassers what we think of surprise visits!”

Rounding a comer into a spacious testing area, over a city block in size, he was prepared to confront anybody from foreign terrorists to alien space monsters. The last people he expected to see fighting a team of hard-pressed S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives were . . . the X-Men?

Unlike like many of his peers in the CIA and the NSA. Fury had never regarded the notorious mutant team as more dangerous to public safety than any of the other high-profile super-groups proliferating out there in this brave new world of costumed cut-ups with paranormal powers. To tell the truth, he’d always figured the X-Men served a useful strategic function in keeping tabs on the real bad apples in the mutant community, like Magneto and his fanatical Acolytes. Let the super-weirdoes police themselves, while the rest of us take care of our own problems, that was his philosophy, at least until one or more of the costumed clan got seriously out of line. To date, the X-Men had never risen to the top of Fury’s “to-do” list. He had his hands full with real hard cases.

But if that was the case, then what were they doing here, wreaking havoc on the Helicarrier with their freakish talents for destruction? Before his one remaining eye, brightly-garbed figures whom Fury identified as past and present X-Men took on his own people, each in their own bizarre fashion. A jagged gap in the ceiling, nearly two yards across, testified to the mutants’ initial angle of attack, but their goal appeared to be a sealed airlock at the opposite end of the staging area, which the first wave of courageous S.H.I.E.L.D operatives were doing their best to defend, despite the uncanny forces arrayed against them.

Clad in an eye-catching crimson costume, his face concealed behind a stylized mask that made him resemble some exotic Asian demon, Sunfire directed intense blasts of heat and flame at hard-pressed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, who were forced to fall back before the thermal onslaught, despite the fire-resistant Beta Cloth (type C) in their uniforms. The Japanese mutant kept up the offensive, discharging his fusillade from both hands.

I don’t get it, Fury thought. He could feel the heat from Sunfire’s blasts even from a distance. Yoshida usually sticks pretty close to his homeland. What’s he doing here?

Standing beside Sunfire, mouth wide open beneath a mop of unruly orange hair, the Irish mutant codenamed Banshee added his own powerful sonic screams to their joint assault. Although less visible than his compatriot’s flashy fireworks, Banshee’s wails were no less effective; stricken security officers threw their hands over their ears, letting go of their automatic rifles and high-tech ray guns even as the weapons vibrated to pieces within their grips. So tightly focused was the sonic bombardment that Fury and his reinforcements, approaching the fray at a right angle, barely heard more than a faint, high-pitched whine. Banshee’s green-and-yellow costume contrasted dramatically with Sunfire’s own crimson garb, making the regulation blue of the besieged S.H.I.E.L.D. agents even more uniform and interchangeable by comparison. Crinkly wrinkles around the Irishman’s merry green eyes hinted at the fortyish mutant’s age. Striped black-and-yellow wings hanging beneath Banshee’s arms reminded Fury that, like Sunfire, the shrieking Irishman was fully capable of taking flight if necessary.

This is crazy, Fury thought, taking aim with his .45 while filling his free hand with a palm-sized fragmentation bomb from a pouch on his belt. Sean Cassidy is an ex-Interpol agent, for pete’s sakes! What the devil is he thinking? Deciding to try the stun-bomb before resorting to deadly force, out of respect for Cassidy’s roots in law enforcement, he hurled the bomb with all his strength, aiming it straight between Sunfire and Banshee. That should knock them off their feet, he thought, counting down to the expected detonation. “Three, two, one ...”

A wall of solid ice formed in the grenade’s path, blocking its downward arc and freezing the bomb in mid-air a heartbeat before it exploded. Fury did not have to look far to find the source of the unexpected arctic fortification—sliding forward on a swiftly-forming sheet of fric-tionless white ice, Iceman, his entire body seemingly sculpted from translucent blue ice, joined Banshee and Sunfire at the front line of the conflict. More ice spraying from his fingertips like water, the refrigerated X-Man defended his fellow invaders with a shield that rose in front of Sunfire and Banshee, and from behind which the other mutants continued to direct destructive volleys of sound and flame. Fury was impressed that Iceman could construct and maintain his miniature glaciers even in the presence of Sunfire’s volcanic combustion.

He just keeps pouring it on, Fury noted. He could feel the very air around him growing arid and more parched as Iceman leeched all available moisture out of the atmosphere to construct his dense, frigid barricade. Fury swallowed repeatedly to keep his throat from drying up while a trickle of blood leaked from his nostrils.

“Never did like air conditioning,” he muttered to himself as he removed a thermite grenade from his belt and threw it at the wall of ice. ‘ ‘This ought to heat things up a bit.”

Right on target, the bomb flew toward the instantly-erected snow fort—until an invisible force seized hold of the grenade and flung it back at Fury and the rest.

What the hey? Fury thought, jaw dropping in surprise only a second before battle-honed reflexes kicked in and sent him diving for safety. His palms and elbows skidded across the floor as he hit the ground.

“Incoming!” he warned Val and the other agents, squeezing his eye shut to spare it from the blinding flash he knew was coming. “Duck and cover!”

A white-hot explosion of heat and light went off less than two yards from where Fury' landed, giving one side of his face a bad case of sunburn. Nick scrambled to his feet and opened his eye. His toasted profile stung like blazes.

That was a close one, he realized. The thermite charge had scorched the metal floor where Fury had stood only a moment before. Someone is playing for keeps.

But who? None of the X-Men he’d identified so far were reported to have that sort of telekinetic power. Peering past the three men apparently leading the assault, he spotted a striking, red-haired woman in a gleaming green-and-gold costume. A metallic gold sash clung to her hips while a generous cloud of carmine-colored curls billowed about her head, as though held aloft by the same unseen force that had snatched the firebomb in its flight. Her blue eyes glowed with psionic energy.

Figures, Fury thought, immediately I.D.ing the woman as Jean Grey, alias Marvel Girl or Phoenix or whatever she was calling herself these days. S.H.I.E.L.D. had a file on her two inches thick, including her various clones, doubles, and counterparts, even documenting one lady, also codenamed Phoenix, who was alleged to be her full-grown daughter from an alternate future!

I knew there was a reason I hated getting mixed up in this mutant stuff, Fury groused silently.

“Everyone in one piece?” he asked hastily, glancing over his shoulder to see Val and the two or three nearest agents rising to their feet. To his relief, none of them looked seriously harmed by the boomeranging grenade, although the Countess’s elegant features seemed a little redder than usual and his nose detected something that smelled suspiciously like burnt hair.

“We’re fine,” she assured him, reasonably unruffled by their recent brush with incineration. She cradled a .30-caliber automatic machine pistol against her chest. Her keen eyes fixed on the sturdy airlock that was clearly the X-Men’s objective, no admittance, a lighted sign above the doorway read, level 2 clearance required. ‘ ‘What do you think they’re after, Nick?”

“Heck if I know,” Fury admitted. It was the bane of his existence that, no matter how hard he tried to stay on top of things, S.H.I.E.L.D. was simply too big and multipurposed for any one man to keep track of, especially if he wasn’t a scientist. For all he knew, any number of experiment research projects could be going on behind those polished titanium doors. Whatever it could be, it was obvious the X-Men wanted it, and Fury didn’t think that a little thing like a lack of the proper security clearance was going to slow them down one bit.

That’s our job, he thought, hefting his Colt.

Mindful of Banshee’s acoustic powers, he took a pair of protective ear plugs from his supply belt and quickly inserted them into his auditory canals, then signaled Val and the others to do the same. The plugs couldn’t protect them completely from the mutant’s sonic barrage, he knew, but it might give them a moment’s advantage.

Better than nothing, I guess.

The mutant boarding party made swift progress toward the laboratory entrance, Iceman’s protective wall of frozen moisture advancing ahead of them while protecting them on both sides as well, forming a horseshoe of solid ice at least a foot thick at its weakest points. Sunfire kept the X-Men moving forward by melting away the ice directly in front of them even as Iceman spread more ice further ahead. By now, the first wave of defenders had been thoroughly routed, forced to abandon their positions by the relentless force of Sunfire and Banshee’s dual blitzkrieg. Those agents still standing helped cany their wounded colleagues to safety as Fury fearlessly led his own team into the breach, ducking his head beneath streams of flame while firing repeated clips of ammo over the top of the icy wall.

To his chagrin, he glimpsed the bullets melting into molten lead as soon as they came within proximity of Sunfire’s incandescent, super-heated aura. A hail of gunfire dissolved into a rain of liquid metal that produced rising tendrils of steam, the melted ammo tunneling through Iceman’s impromptu stockade.

That’s no good, Fury realized, wincing at the timbre of Banshee’s incessant waii. Even through his regulation earplugs, designed to muffle the impact of both explosions and gunfights, the eerie siren was enough to set all his nerves on edge and bring on a killer headache. Trickles of blood leaked from his ears. Time to change tactics.

He emptied the clip of his .45 into the oncoming ice wall, blasting gaps and fissures in the frost-covered barrier that refilled almost instantly, then he switched to the ,5mm plasma projector in his side holster. The beam of ionized particles produced by the blaster proved more effective against the mutants’ advance than conventional gunfire, reducing solid ice to vapor. The wall of ice receded faster than Iceman could replenish the X-Men’s defenses, leaving the invaders semi-exposed.

Following his lead, Val, Lee, and the others abandoned their various firearms in favor of plasma blasters. Banshee was forced to vary the pitch and volume of his sonic output, altering the nature of the wail from a w'eapon to a protective force field, shielding him from the unleashed power of the energy weapons. Composed of standing sound waves, the force barrier was invisible, but Fury could see the plasma blasts swerve around it. Sunfire reeled before the surging plasma, dropping onto one knee before retreating behind Banshee and his sonic shield, joining Jean Grey who had already drawn back to put more distance between her and the plasma barrage, but not before Fury spotted the symbol spread out upon her chest: a golden silhouette of a bird in flight.

Phoenix it is, he deduced.

Streams of hot ions rippled around her, diverted by a telekinetic forcefield that he could have sworn resembled a bird. The flame-like glow in her eyes grew bright enough to hide the natural color of her pupils, giving her face an eerie appearance. Telekinetically-tossed red tresses seethed like the serpentine crown of an enraged gorgon. Only Iceman appeared to go on the offensive, showering the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents with a cannonade of icy hail even as the crystalline planes of the X-Man’s frozen body began to melt away, streaming down his frame to puddle at his feet.

“Take that, you human popsicle!” Fury growled, ignoring the stinging impact of the hail against his exposed face, grateful that the 9-ply Kevlar in his uniform spared him the worst of the hailstorm. He kept squeezing the trigger of his blaster, encouraged by the beam’s punitive effect. Val and other others formed a defensive phalanx around him, the agents in the back firing over the heads of Fury and the frontmost fighters.

That’s the ticket, he thought. Looks like we’re starting to turn this thing around.

Then, without warning, he felt his own gun try to tear itself free from his grip. The weapon seemed possessed of its own will, twisting and bucking with surprising strength. Nor was his the only blaster that had suddenly decided to make a break for it; out of the corner of his eye, he saw Schwartz’s weapon fly from the baffled agent’s hand. More blasters joined in the exodus, levitating across the open test area until they came within range of Sunfire’s incendiary blasts, which reduced the runaway ray guns to molten metal in seconds, shooting them out of the air like so many flying ducks. It took all of Fury’s strenuous efforts to keep his own blaster from committing mechanical suicide by joining its slagged counterparts in a lemming-like leap to destruction. The knuckles of his right hand turned white where he squeezed tightly upon the grip and trigger, while his left hand pushed down hard on the muzzle of the blaster to keep it from tilting upward against his will.

“No way, X-Gal,” he grunted, recognizing Jean Grey’s telekinetic prowess at work. Forget his cold, dead body—the only way anyone was prying his gun out of his hand was by vaporizing him down to the last atom.

I hope Chuck Heston appreciates this. He bet the N.R.A. had never worried about guns that tried to liberate themselves from their legal owners.

Gritting his teeth so tightly that he could have flattened a penny between his molars, while the fingers around his blaster felt like they were ready to break off, Fury kept assailing the X-Men with a cascade of hot plasma, even as doubts about the whole blasted setup began to simmer at the back of his mind.

Something’s not right here, he realized, besides the obvious. An X-Men team consisting of Sunfire, Banshee, Iceman, and Phoenix? That didn’t gibe with his most recent intel. Sure, the X-Men, like most super-squads, changed their roster more often than a major league baseball team, but this lineup sounded more fishy than most. According to reliable sources, Banshee was semi-retired these days, running some private school in Massachusetts, while Sunfire hadn’t been an active member of the team for years. This was like a “Greatest Hits” version of the X-Men, put together out of personnel plucked from various eras in the team’s colorful history.

A fine time to stage a class reunion, Fury thought. If that’s what this really is.

Frankly, he was starting to have his doubts.

Any suspicions he might have been forming, however, were driven out of his head by the startling arrival of another intruder. Propelled by an impressive pair of blue metallic wings, the newcomer swooped through the gap in the ceiling and flew over the heads of his mutant cohorts to carry the fight back to Fury and his agents. The new combatant’s skin and costume were as blue as his artificial wings, with only his light blonde hair providing any relief from his sleek, monochromatic appearance.

Archangel, Fury recognized at once, worried less about the winged mutant’s fashion sense than the glint of the overlapping, razor-sharp blades that feathered the underside of Archangel’s powerful pinions. Wait a sec, he objected silently. I thought Worthington had grown a new pair of organic wings—fluffy white feathers and all... ?

Belying Fury’s doubts, based on meticulous and extensive intelligence on all known parahuman principals and their associates, Archangel unleashed a volley of knife-edged flechettes that shot forth from his wings to strike at the S.H.I.E.L.D. forces with merciless accuracy. To Nick’s right, a flechette struck Agent Plummer in the shoulder, slicing through the reinforced Kevlar and Beta Cloth like they were tissue paper. More than simply a sharpened blade, the flechette imparted a taser-like shock to the unlucky agent’s nervous system. Plummer convulsed once, his eyes rolling up until only the whites were visible, then collapsed onto the metal floor like a sack of potatoes. All around him, Fury heard agents crying out, then hitting the ground hard.

Whatever we ’re protecting, he thought bitterly, I hope it’s worth it.

“Nick! Watch out!” The Countess threw herself in front of Fury, just in time to take a flechette right below her ribs. She spasmed for only a second before mercifully crumpling to the floor, landing in a heap in front of Fury’s feet.

Blast it, Val, he thought, you didn’t have to do that.

Now the last man standing, he tried to raise up his gunsight, to take out the airborne hooligan who had decked Val and the others, but his blaster still fought against his control, spurred on by the telekinetic mojo of Phoenix. He couldn’t bring the weapon up fast enough to stop Archangel from releasing another salvo of fiechettes, which whistled through the air toward Fury and the others.

The first blade struck him in the thigh, slashing through flesh and fabric like a scalpel, and carrying a bio-electric charge that raced through Fury’s body. Every hair on his body stood on end, and he bit down on his tongue so hard he drew blood.

Metal wings again ? Fury thought in the instant before losing consciousness. Something doesn ’t add up... .

The blaster was still clutched in his fist when his body dropped onto the floor of Deck Four.

//T he operations went off smoothly, as you foretold.” I ' “Of course. With my exceptional mental faculties, it was child’s play to anticipate our subjects’ movements and prepare appropriate receptions.”

“If you say so, but do not neglect my own contributions to the success of our endeavor. The subjects could not have been so easily captured if not for the special training and talents of my lieutenants.”

“Naturally. I by no means intended to discount the efforts of you and your followers. Our newly-forged alliance has already yielded positive results, in the form of our three unwilling visitors. ...”

Logan awoke to find himself immersed in one of his least favorite memories. Or so it first seemed.

Metal restraints held him fast within what looked like the bottom half of a futuristic sarcophagus, inclined at a forty-five degree angle from the floor. Electrodes and sensors were affixed to his forehead, throat, chest, and other junctures on his body. Hypodermic needles speared his skin, threading the veins and arteries underneath. Electrical cables coiled around matching I.V. lines that snaked over the sides of the steel coffin to disappear beyond his confined field of vision. As is, the wall-sized mirror facing him showed him far more of his captive state than he would have liked: trussed up like a mummy inside the metal coffin, multicolored cables swathing him in place of dusty bandages. He had no doubt that, on the other side of the mirror, peering through a sheet of one-way glass,

the unknown parties responsible for his captivity were monitoring him at this very moment.

Just like before. That lab in Canada, so many years ago. The experiments. The pain . . .

Triggered by the memories, a feral rage rose within him, threatening to swamp his hard-won rationality. A blood-red haze swam before his eyes. Jagged teeth gnashed together. Steel claws erupted from clenched fists, but clamps upon his wrists prevented him from tearing apart the apparatus that trapped him. Additional clamps held down his legs and neck.

“Gotta stay in control,” he whispered to himself, holding back the bestial roar building in his throat. Can’t let the animal get loose. . . .

It wasn’t easy, though. Feverish, distorted memories of being trapped once before, of being poked and prodded like a lab animal, of being forcibly altered and made even less human than he had been before, flared within his mind, urging him to strike out blindly, unchain the raging beast at the core of his soul.

“Not again,” Wolverine snarled, his eyes wild. Flecks of foam appeared at the comers of his mouth.

“Logan?”

Rogue’s magnolia-tinged voice called him back to sanity. For the first time, he became aware that he was not alone in this mirrored mausoleum. Who else got snatched? he wondered, fearing that the rest of the X-Men had been captured as well.

Straining to lift his head despite the metal band stretched across his throat, Logan managed to crane his head enough to see two more sarcophagi reflected in the horizontal mirror, each one holding another tube-and-wire-bedecked hostage clad in matching orange plastic jumpsuits that, he assumed, looked better on Rogue and the other woman than they did on him. Rogue’s elevated coffin was directly to the right of Logan, with the third prisoner farther down the row. From what he could see, she had it worse than either he or Rogue. An opaque metal visor completely covered her eyes. He guessed she couldn’t see a thing, if she was even conscious at all.

Least there’s only the three of us, it looks like. That’s somethin ’, I guess.

It took him a second or two to recognize the blindfolded woman, as much by her scent as by her curly auburn hair: Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch.

Magneto’s daughter, he thought uncharitably, then granted that it wasn’t exactly fair to hold her old man’s crimes against her. He didn’t know the Witch very well, but figured she couldn’t be too much like her father, otherwise a bunch of Boy Scouts like the Avengers would’ve never let her into their club. Probably ought to give her the benefit of the doubt. Least for now.

“I hear ya, Rogue,” he replied. Needles in his throat made it painful to speak. He tested the bonds holding his arms and legs, with little success. No big surprise there, he decided; if these shiny steel manacles were strong enough to hold Rogue, there was no way he was breaking out of them anytime soon. He’d just have to wait for the right opportunity to escape. It would come; it always did. “What about you, Witchie?” he called out to their neighbor. “You with us?”

“So it appears,” she answered. Her accent sounded a bit like Magneto’s. Czech maybe, or Ukrainian. “And my name is Wanda.”

“This here’s Wolverine,” Rogue volunteered, thinking perhaps that Wanda wouldn’t recognize their voices.

“And ah’m Rogue. From the X-Men, you know?”

“I know who you are,” the Witch said icily, with special emphasis on the pronoun. “Carol Danvers is a friend of mine.”    _

Caught offguard by the rebuke, Rogue couldn’t conceal her stricken expression.

Ouch, Logan thought. That’s gotta hurt.

Rogue was carrying around a lot of guilt where Carol Danvers was concerned. Back when Carol was still calling herself Ms. Marvel, a younger Rogue, led astray by Mystique, had permanently stolen the female Avenger’s strength and super-powers, along with most of Carol’s memories. Carol had been a long time recovering from that devastating attack on her very identity, and, from what Logan had heard, she still suffered psychological scars from the whole crummy business.

No more so than Rogue, he knew, although he supposed he couldn’t expect Carol’s old Avengers buddy to understand that.

“I’ve known Danvers longer than either of you,” Logan stated bluntly. It was true, too; he and Carol had teamed up on plenty of risky spy missions back when they were both doing the secret agent thing, way before either he or Carol got sucked into the super hero biz. “And none of that old news is goin’ to do us a bit of good here. So let’s put any bad blood behind us, at least ’til we bring down the house on whatever dirtbag shanghaied us.”

The Scarlet Witch couldn’t exactly nod her head, not with her neck pinned down, but she looked like she got the message. “Point made, X-Man,” she said coolly.

Logan caught a look of relief on Rogue’s face. Remind me to teach that girl how to play poker, he thought; sometimes her emotions were way too obvious.

“Where do you think we are?” Wanda asked.

Good question, he thought. While Rogue described their prison to the blindfolded Witch, Logan sniffed the air for clues; it smelled sterile. Antiseptic. The temperature felt like an even seventy degrees or so. His ears detected the distant thrumming of automated machinery in the walls and floors, beneath the hum of the sensors built into their high-tech coffins, but nothing that provided any hint of their present location. The only odd thing was, and he couldn’t be sure of this, strapped down like he was, but his body felt lighter somehow. Like there was something not quite right with the gravity. Or maybe that was just a side-effect of whatever their captors used to knock him out before. He eyed the I.V. lines flowing into his arm with disgust. Who knew what kind of junk they might be feeding him?

“Hard to say where this is,” he told Rogue and the Witch, making eye contact with Rogue via the mirror. “Some kind of lab, obviously.”

Back in the lab again . . . Another post-traumatic flashback to his past ordeal crept up on Logan’s consciousness, bringing with it an almost overwhelming fury that made it hard to concentrate on anything else. His heart pounded with remembered torment. Tubes and needles gouging into me. Liquid metal pouring into my marrow, changing me from within. Pain and bones and spikes . . .

Logan bit down on his lower lip—hard—to hold back an atavistic howl. He dug his fingernails into his palms, using the pain to keep himself grounded in the present, to approach their dilemma from a strictly strategic point of view.

Think like Cyke, he thought, glad that Jeannie wasn’t around to pick up that particular bit of brain activity. Take this cool as a cucumber. All business. He could go crazy later, when there was an enemy within slashing range. When he could slice their captors into so many bite-sized pieces of meat. I'm looking forward to that.

“Hey, Witch... er, Wanda,” he said. “The way they’ve got us trussed up, me an’ Rogue can’t pull any of our usual stunts, but how ’bout you?” It dawned on him that he had only the fuzziest idea of how the Scarlet Witch’s powers worked. Some kind of mutant magic or something? She’d been a regular adversary of the X-Men once, back when she was still working for her dad, but that was way before Logan hooked up with the team. “Any chance you can witch yourself loose?”

Wanda tried to shake her head, was forcibly reminded of her restraints, and abandoned the gesture. “Not really,” she explained. “I use my hands to focus my powers and my eyes to pinpoint the target of my hex.” Examining her more closely in the mirror, Logan noticed that, unlike he and Rogue, the Witch’s hands were completely encased by solid metal hemispheres the size of boxing gloves.

Bet she can’t even a wiggle a finger, he guessed.

“It’s like trying to read in the dark,” Wanda said, attempting to fully describe the difficulties imposed on her by her specially-designed bonds. “Or turn a page with your hands tied behind your back. Maybe in time I might be able to manage something, but it doesn’t feel natural except the way that I usually project a hex sphere, if that makes any sense at all.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Wolverine said gruffly. Not for the first time, he was thankful his mutant senses and healing ability were simple and uncomplicated, as opposed to some sort of weird sci-fi type power. Let other mutants shoot energy beams from their bodies, read minds, or tinker with gravity.

Me, I like the basics—even if they can’t do me much good under the circumstances. Too bad Witchie didn’t inherit her dad’s magnetic powers. Then she could dismantle this whole setup in no time at all.

Putting aside thoughts of escape, at least for the moment, Logan reviewed the unlikely chain of events that had brought him here, events that seemed crazier the more he thought about them. Shape-changing deer—what was that all about? The injuries inflicted by the unnatural antlers had long since healed, thanks to his mutant metabolism, but the bizarre nature of the attack lingered in his memory.

“So,” he said aloud to the other prisoners, “I don’t suppose you two got bushwhacked by Bambi and his folks?”

Rogue looked like she had no idea what he talking about. “What’s a Disney movie got to do with all this?”

By the time they got through comparing notes, Logan felt even more in the dark than before.

“All I know,” he declared, “is that a setup like this, with all this E.R. hardware and crud, wasn’t built by no flamin’ puppets, deer, or tee-shirts! This place stinks of the kind of preening egghead who figgers the whole blamed world would be better off under his thumb. You know the type, Rogue. We’ve trashed enough of them.” He glanced at Wanda in the mirror, making a point to include her. “So have the Avengers, I bet.”

“But who are they, Wolvie?” Rogue asked.

Logan had no idea. As an Avenger or an X-Man, the three of them had probably made enough enemies to fill a couple dozen penitentiaries. It was likely someone with an interest in mutants, he guessed; that was the main thing all three prisoners had in common. Besides choosing a lousy day for a little R&R, that is.

“What do you think they want with us?” Rogue wondered aloud.

“Nothing good,” Logan stated with certainty. Unbidden, images from that other lab flashed through his mind, pulling back his lips until his fangs were fully bared. Pain and bones and spikes...

“They are awake and aware. Are you certain your shackles can hold them?”

“Fear not, my security-conscious friend. Trust me, those adamantium restraints would hold back the Hulk ... well, almost. Besides, even if they should escape, which is highly improbable, where could they go? Have you forgotten precisely where we are?”

“If only I could! And I still think it would have been wiser to have kept them separated. Why give them the opportunity to conspire against us?”

“The controlled interaction of their respective mutant traits is a fundamental aspect of my experiment. This arrangement simplifies procedures considerably, and it eliminates the inherent risks involved in physically transporting them from one location to another, such as from a solitary cell to a lab and back again. Indeed, statistics indicate that approximately 75.331 percent of successful escapes occur during the transportation of prisoners. You may be assured that all such logistical matters were subjected to thorough analysis and consideration during the very conception of this project.”

“I am not interested in procedures, only results. How long before you can-deiiver what you have promised? I have no desire to languish in this accursed place forever, not while entire worlds remain to be conquered.”

“Spoken like a soldier, not a scientist. Patience. The experiment is just beginning....”

The torture began without warning. Mechanical waldoes descended from the ceiling, bearing scalpels, lasers, and fiber-optic cameras at the ends of jointed metal arms.

Uh-oh. Looks like the fun’s starting, Logan thought, bracing himself for what was to come.

The whirr of the servoes came ever closer. Metal rods protruded from the sarcophagus, forcing his hands open and his fingers apart. His hairy palms thus exposed, the waldoes moved in closer to commence their inhuman tasks. A remote-controlled scalpel made surgical incisions across his right palm, then retreated a few centimeters while Logan’s stubborn flesh swiftly reknitted itself under the watchful eye of a miniature camera embedded in the base of the scalpel. Logan had no doubt that, besides the knife’s-eye view provided by the scalpel, the various sensors affixed to his body were monitoring his heartbeat, respiration, glands, et cetera, to see how they registered during the healing process.

“Take a good look, bub,” he called out to his unseen tormentor. Only the slightest trickle of blood escaped before the shallow cuts disappeared entirely. “You’re the one who’s goin’ to need healin’ after I get done with you!”

The only response to his threat came from an automated laser that directed a narrow beam of coherent light against his exposed left palm, methodically burning away the uppermost layer of skin, exposing raw, reddened tis-r sue. Logan grimaced slightly but made no sound, even as his hyper-sensitive nostrils smelled his own vaporized flesh. He’d bite his tongue off before he’d give the sadist behind the mirror the satisfaction of hearing one peep from him. The searing heat of the laser hurt more than the scalpel, but the damage it inflicted was nothing his mutant healing factor couldn’t handle.

That, he feared, was the whole point.

The scalpel sliced his right hand open again. This time, the blade struck deeper, all the way to the bone.

“A truly remarkable rate of metabolic regeneration, marked by an accelerated immune response and profuse cellular mitosis that appears to impose minimal strain on his circadian rhythms and autonomic functions. Wolverine’s recuperative abilities are just as formidable as I had been led to believe; I know of only one individual whose healing powers surpass those of this specimen. I will be curious to observe how Wolverine’s immune system copes with the various toxins and varieties of electromagnetic radiation I intend to subject him to. It should be a fascinating experiment.”

“Fascinating to you, perhaps. Do not let your idle curiosity interfere with the timely pursuit of our objective. What about the females? When will you begin with them?”    ’

“Time spent accumulating new scientific knowledge is never wasted. Still, if it will ease your militaristic impatience, let us proceed to the next stage of my research. Kindly observe the specimen    as Rogue.”

Poor Wolvie!

Rogue could barely bring herself to watch as the robotic arms slashed and burned Logan’s defenseless flesh. Sure, his special healing power would protect him from any permanent damage, but that didn’t mean the busy knives and lasers didn’t hurt like blazes. Her own hands, which already felt naked without their usual gloves, seemed even more exposed. She clenched her fists protectively and winced in sympathy with each new wound inflicted on Logan. What kind of no-good sidewinder could do this to another person? From what she could see in the mirror, they weren’t even using any sort of anesthetic!

She was tempted to offer Wolverine whatever paltry words of comfort she could come up with, but she knew that the stoic X-Man did not want anybody’s pity or sympathy, especially when a hostile party was almost certainly looking on. Her compassion might be seen as a sign of weakness or vulnerability on his part. So she kept her mouth shut, all the while wishing there was something— anything—she could do to relieve Logan’s torment.

And wondering when her own turn was coming round.

“What’s happening?” the Scarlet Witch asked, one coffin over. Her nose twitched beneath the metal visor. “What’s that burning smell?”

Trust me, sugah, you don’t want to know. Rather than keep the other woman in the dark, however, Rogue opened her mouth to respond. She hadn’t forgotten the Witch’s harsh remark about Carol Danvers, but no matter what the other woman thought about her, Rogue couldn’t let just let Wanda suffer in sightless suspense. ’Sides, I guess she’s entitled to feel the way she does, being a friend of Ms. Marvel and all.

“They’re performin’ some kind of medical experiments on Wolverine,” she began, wondering how much grisly detail the Scarlet Witch would want. “Ah don’ know why.”

Before she could explain further, the raised metal ridge running along the left side of her coffin slid downward and out of sight, at the same time that the ridge on the right side of Logan’s pulled a similar disappearing act.

What now? Rogue wondered apprehensively.

A mechanical rambling started up beneath her, like a conveyor belt coming to life, and the two metal caskets containing her and Wolverine began to slide horizontally toward each other, with not a single plate of chromed steel to separate their transfixed bodies. Rogue stared in alarm as her uncovered left hand drew steadily nearer to Logan’s scarred and bleeding right palm. It wasn’t the blood that frightened her, though, but the prospect of their two hands touching.

“Wait! Stop!” she cried out to whomever was operating the mechanism bringing them together. “Y’all don’ know what you’re doin’!”

Unfortunately, she had a sneaking suspicion that they did.

Their bare hands less than a foot apart and closing fast, Rogue’s frantic eyes found Wolverine’s. From the grim look on his face, it was clear he had also realized what their captors were up to.

No! she thought fervently. I won’t let it happen. I won’t! She straggled anew against the metal bonds holding her arm in place, but it was no good; not even Ms. Marvel’s stolen super-strength could break the ^yielding steel bands.

“Ah’m so sorry, Logan,” she whispered. “Ah don’ want this.”

“I know that, kid,” he assured her. She searched for 133

forgiveness in his face, finding it in his ageless black eyes. “It ain’t your fault.”

Somewhere to the right, now a bit further away, the Scarlet Witch demanded to know what was going on. But there was no time to explain, even if Rogue felt like sharing her profound humiliation and horror with the blindfolded Avenger, which was not exactly her first instinct.

Bad enough that I have to know what I’m going to do to Logan.

The edge of Rogue’s coffin clanked against Wolverine’s as the conveyances came to a halt. Her trapped hand pressed against his, flesh to flesh, and, despite herself, the young mutant gasped in anticipation. Strange new sensations, wild and unbelievably intense, flooded her mind and senses as, against her will, Logan’s powers and memories flowed into her, leaving him drained and unconscious. Familiar faces and exotic places rushed the stage of her memory: Sabretooth and Mariko, the Yukon and Madripoor, Heather Hudson, Jubilee, and Krakoa....

Her teeth sharpened into carnivorous fangs. Her brown hair grew stiffer and more fur-like in a matter of instants. Her eyes blazed with predatory fury as her senses came alive, smell and touch and hearing suddenly magnified a hundredfold. The whole world became brighter and richer and more vivid. Feral passions surged inside her, even as Wolverine slumped within his coffin, his drooping lips finally releasing the anguished moan that neither slicing blades nor scorching laser fire had succeeded in extracting before.

This is glorious, Rogue thought, tom between shame and exultation.

The damage done, hidden gears engaged and the two caskets began to withdraw to their original positions. Next

to Rogue, the left-hand wall of her coffin slid upward, back into place, cutting her off from the man whose vitality and unique attributes she had just leeched. It didn’t matter, though. Only a moment’s touch had been enough to effect the transference.

The shocking clarity and impact of her newly-heightened senses stunned Rogue. The light seemed brighter, throwing her surroundings into extreme focus, so that every edge and surface stood out with a distinctness that went beyond three-dimensional. She could practically feel textures with her eyes alone: the cool smoothness of the mirror, the leathery feel of Logan’s weathered face, the stickiness of his drying blood. Her ears brought her sounds that now seemed unnaturally amplified; her own heartbeat pounded like a kettle drum, nearly drowning out the sibilant hiss of electrons coursing through myriad electrical cables, while Wolverine’s pulse faded to a slow, dim rumble. Her nose twitched, alerted to both Logan’s musky odor and the faint scent of fear rising off the blinded witch. Her fists flexed against the sides of the coffin, instinctively trying to extend claws that weren’t really there.

She had only seconds, though, to take in Wolverine’s perceptions of the present, before his borrowed memories thrust her into a past that was not her own.

All at once, she was in another lab, floating in a tank of liquid nutrients while bubbles rose through the murky red fluid, obscuring her view of the facility beyond the transparent walls of the tank. Some sort of breathing apparatus covered her mouth, tasting coppery upon her tongue and forcing a plastic tube partway down her windpipe. More tubes dug into veins and arteries all over her body; she couldn’t move without getting tangled in a web of cables and thin capillary tubing. Metal spikes, attached to flexible steel cables, dug deeply into her bones, producing agonizing pain as her body tried to reject the foreign matter. The spikes, though, were embedded too firmly to be dislodged. Her eyes tearing up from the agony, she peered through the rising bubbles at the dimly-glimpsed silhouettes of nameless figures looking on, charting her ordeal on clipboards and computers. The lukewarm fluid raised goosebumps up and down her arms and legs. Her feet floated freely, unable to touch the floor of the tank.

This never happened, Rogue tried to remember. Not to me. Not now.

But Wolverine’s memories, dragged to the surface by more recent tortures, were too vivid to ignore, no matter how hard Rogue fought to regain control of her mind. She could not escape the crimson tank, could not distance herself from the spikes and tubes even as they began pouring something alien into her body, her bones. The forced infusion was cold and hot at the same time and made her flesh crawl; she could feel it spreading over her skeleton, bonding to the calcified hardness supporting her flesh and blood.

The adamantium! she realized in a precious moment of lucidity. This must be when they put the metal in Wol-vie’s bones.

Sharp, throbbing pains stabbed at her hands and she brought them up before her eyes, dragging I.V. lines and cables from her elbows and wrists. Her bottom knuckles swelled and ached, pulsating in synch, like there was something beneath her skin trying to get out. And there was: blood spurted from the backs of her hands as six sharp metal claws, three on each hand, tore their way through the fragile epidermis that stretched across her knuckles. The curved silver daggers sliced through the thick red liquid, further churning the bubbling solution surrounding Rogue. Her spilled blood joined the tepid fluid surrounding her.

No, she thought emphatically, still locked in the unfolding nightmare. Not me. Wolverine.

Looking through Logan’s eyes, she glared past the gleaming claws at the shadowy figures lurking outside the tank, staring dispassionately at her grueling transformation. It was all their doing, she knew; they were the ones who had done this to him/her/whatever. An anger of frightening intensity seethed inside her. Beyond the pain, the violation, the icy dread at what she had become, her fury raged, savage and uncontrollable, like no anger she had ever experienced before. It didn’t even feel human, this rabid, instinctual frenzy. Her heart pounded ferociously in her chest. Her phantom claws ached for action. She craved her enemies’ blood, hungered for their deaths. Only the metal mouthpiece between her jaws kept her from gnashing her teeth in a bestial rage. All she could think of was tearing her foes apart with her hands and teeth and claws.

Good Lord, she thought, with the tiny spark of sanity remaining to her. Is this what Wolvie feels like when he loses his temper? How in the world does he ever keep this . . . madness . . . under control?

Then, from beyond yesterday, something sharp cut into her hand, yanking her back into the present at the same time that she suddenly felt a laser beam burning through her skin....

“Observe carefully. Note the subtle feral rearrangement of her features, the predatory glint in her eyes which mimics that displayed earlier by her primitive confederate. Her heartbeat, adrenaline output, and metabolism have increased by a factor of ten, while, according to my instrumentation, the transfer itself required less than one-point-eight-seven secondsvto take effect, with a corresponding diminution in the life energies of Wolverine.

“Also, as you can see for yourself, her newfound ability to heal herself at an accelerated rate appears indistinguishable from Wolverine’s, even to the exact amount of time required to repair identical third-degree bums. As nearly as I can tell, there is no statistical difference between the attributes originally manifested by the first subject and those duplicated by the second. I wonder how prolonged the physical contact must be to ensure that the transference is permanent? Perhaps I will conduct that test—when our work is complete, of course.”

“You can do as you like once we achieve the object of our ambitions. I will have more important matters to concern me than the fate of three human lab animals.” “Do not underestimate all we might leam from such unique specimens. Take our final specimen, for instance— the one who calls herself the Scarlet Witch. Who knows what the full potential of her unlikely abilities might be, once harnessed effectively? Behold.”

Alone in the darkness, her tom ear still throbbing where the Peter puppet had yanked her earring free, Wanda heard an animal growling far too close for comfort. Or was it an animal? She couldn’t be sure, but she thought the bone-chilling snarl sounded like it might be coming from ... Rogue?

I knew she was a vampire at heart, Wanda thought, but I didn ’t expect her to actually growl like a wolf!

“Rogue? Wolverine?” For about the two hundredth time, she wished that she was sharing a ceil with a couple of her fellow Avengers instead. She had a long history with the X-Men, none of it very good, even if the two teams had managed to successfully join forces now and again, if only during the most dire of emergencies. And of all the X-Men to be trapped with... ! A homicidal maniac with a bad attitude and the drawling little succu-bus who literally stole poor Carol’s soul. It was all Rogue’s fault that the former Ms. Marvel had been driven to alcoholism and disgrace, of that Wanda was utterly convinced. With cellmates like these, who needed enemies?

At least they’d had the decency to describe their mutual prison to her, even though both X-Men seemed to have fallen silent for the time being. Had something happened to them? Rogue had mentioned medical experiments, before her ominous words gave way to incoherent growls. Not exactly the most comforting note on which to leave things. What kind of medical experiments?

If only she could see what was going on! The blindfold over her eyes added to her understandable anxiety at being captured so easily. So far she didn’t even know who had abducted them, let alone how and why. With nothing else to gaze upon, the leering faces of past enemies passed before Wanda’s mind’s eye as she tried to guess the villain responsible for her captivity. The Grim Reaper? Ul-tron? Kang the Conqueror? It could be any of them, or even a new alliance between previously independent menaces. She racked her brain in search of a foe she shared in common with Wolverine and Rogue, but the only one that came to mind was Magneto and this didn’t feel like her father’s work.

Magneto could never be so anonymous, she decided, knowing the tyrannical mutant mastermind’s ways too well. He would have to gloat out loud, justifying his crimes by invoking the sacred destiny of homo superior.

Besides, if her natural father was involved, where was her brother? Surely Magneto would have rounded up Pietro as well, and maybe even little Luna, her brother’s infant daughter. With Wolverine and Rogue sharing her prison instead, she felt sure this was no family affair. But then what was it?

This is getting me nowhere, she thought, squirming impatiently within the confines of her cold, metallic sarcophagus. Lack of motion had caused both her legs to fall asleep and she struggled to rouse them despite the bonds hindering her. Wanda had no doubt that Captain America and the other Avengers were already searching for her, but she didn’t intend to simply hang around waiting to be rescued. Yet how could she escape on her own? Her fingers, eager to perform the gestures that summoned her magic, felt like they were immersed in solid cement. I suppose I could try just projecting a hex at random, but there’d be no way to predict the results. I could end up making things worse, maybe by triggering a short-circuit or electrical fire that kills all three of us.

“Hello?” she tried again. Like it or not, her best chance to escape might be to work together with her fellow captives. “X-Men?” She knew they were still nearby; she could hear their ragged, unsteady breathing. Why wouldn’t they answer her? Unseen machines whirred and hummed in the background, along with the sizzle of something burning. “Wolverine? Rogue?”

An agonized gasp was the only response.

That was definitely Rogue, Wanda thought, which did not bode well for her next-door neighbor. Despite the younger woman’s unquestionably guilty past, Wanda could not help feeling a pang of sympathy for a person who was obviously in pain. No one deserved to be tortured, not even Carol Danver’s heartless victimizer.

“What is it, Rogue?” she asked, more gently than before. “Are you all right?”

An unexpected light appeared before her eyes. She blinked in surprise as a glowing disk, about a foot in diameter, materialized only a few inches away from her face—even though her blindfold remained securely in place.

An illusion, Wanda realized instantly. Probably some sort of virtual reality projection. Iron Man, she knew, had a similar gadget inside his helmet to provide him with visual displays and data that only he could see; Tony would surely be able to explain exactly how this disk was projected. For herself, she didn’t much care about the mechanics involved, as long as it meant that something was happening at last. After lying here in the dark for who knew how long, blind and paralyzed, she felt genuinely relieved that her nameless captor was finally making his or her next move, even if Rogue’s pain-wracked moans hardly led one to hope for easy treatment at the hands of their foe.

Let’s get this over with, she resolved, bracing herself for whatever the enemy had in store. Chances are, it’s nothing I haven’t endured before.

“Greetings, Ms. Maximoff.” The voice, electronically distorted, was unfamiliar to her. It sounded like it was coming from miniature speakers implanted in her visor, which implied that the speaker was not actually near enough to hex.

Too bad, she thought, as the voice continued to whisper into her ears.

“My apologies for keeping you waiting, but I have a number of experiments to conduct on you and my other test subjects, so I am afraid you simply had to wait your turn.”

' ‘Who are you?’ ’ Wanda demanded, refusing to be patronized by the anonymous voice. “Don’t hide behind a microphone. Show your face.”

‘ ‘My identity, and that of my partner in this endeavor, is irrelevant, at least as far as you are concerned.”

Yes, definitely not Magneto, Wanda concluded from the speaker’s reticence and relative lack of egomania. Probably not Kang or Graviton, either.

“All that matters,” the disembodied voice continued, “is that you pay close attention to what I am about to explain to you. The rules of the game, as it were.” Before Wanda’s eyes, the virtual disk began to spin counter-clockwise. Luminescent lines, radiating from the center of the disk like the spokes of a wheel, divided the disk into wedge-shaped slices that alternated in color from red to black to red and so on.

Like a roulette wheel, she noted, a comparison that grew even more apt as a white virtual sphere, about the size of a Ping-Pong ball, was ejected from the center of the wheel, whose centrifugal force drew the sphere to the outer rim of the wheel. It bounced from wedge to wedge exactly like a ball upon a real, non-virtual roulette wheel. A clicking noise accompanied each bounce, presumably to enhance the illusion.

“Your genetic gift, as I understand it, involves the manipulation of probability upon on the physical plane. Taking a leaf from the professional gambling industry, I have prepared a simple game with which to test your celebrated abilities.”

That’s it? They snatch me in broad daylight, lay me out like a mummy in a tomb, just to make me play some glorijied video game? Wanda was unimpressed.

“Why should I play along?” she asked. “Frankly, I prefer games of skill, like chess or tennis. If I wanted to cheat at gambling, I could have made a fortune in Monte Carlo years ago.”

The faceless voice assumed a note of impatience. “Spare me your tiresome displays of defiance. You will take part in the experiment because the stakes are such that you have no choice. Let me demonstrate.”

The spinning wheel slowed to a stop and the bouncing sphere came to rest at the wide end of a glowing red wedge. Wanda held her breath, expecting the worst, but nothing happened, leaving her relieved but somewhat puzzled. Then the wheel began spinning again, gaining speed so that the ball skipped along the circumference of the wheel, bounding clockwise from wedge to wedge so quickly that Wanda could barely keep track of it until the wheel decelerated again. This time the computergenerated sphere landed squarely within a black wedge.

Excruciating pain, sharper than the most unbearable toothache, convulsed her body, causing her to writhe within her constraints. The pain passed in an instant, leaving Wanda pale-faced and shaking.

Where did that come from? she thought, shocked by the depth of the agony she had experienced. I’ve been blasted by Kree death-rays that didn’t hurt that much/ “Perhaps I should have mentioned earlier,” the voice

said, affecting a thoroughly unconvincing simulation of remorse, ‘ ‘that electrodes affixed to your skull provide me with direct access to your brain’s pain centers. I do not intend to employ this option arbitrarily, however. The parameters are simple: when the sphere stops in red, you will be spared, but when the sphere stops in black, you will receive another jolt of the same magnitude. Ordinarily, the program will yield 50/50 odds, so that the sphere will be deposited within a black region roughly half the time—unless you bring your distinctive talents to bear.”

On that note, the wheel started revolving once more. The bouncing ball clicked in her ears.

“Wait!” Wanda called out. “Why are you doing this? What do you hope to gain?”

The mysterious architect of this sadistic exercise said nothing more; apparently, he had told her all that he felt she needed to know. Wanda watched intently as the bouncing ball followed its preordained path, then flinched involuntarily as the wheel’s dizzying speed began to slacken.

Not the black, she silently commanded the ball. Not the black.

Her ensnared fingers ached to point at the virtual roulette game, even though she knew it wasn’t really there. Could her hexes even affect a computer-generated simulation? Despite years of training and adventures in the field, the precise limits of her powers remained slippery and elusive, sometimes changing without notice. Half scientific, half sorcerous, her hex spheres stemmed from a unique confluence of mutant DNA and ancient mystical energies present at her birth, making them almost as mutable as the weather and just as hard to predict. Recently, there had been an attempt to explain her abilities in terms of “chaos theory,” but Wanda remained skeptical that anyone, her unknown jailer included, would ever fully account for the peculiar and mercurial gift that was her birthright.

Just so long as it’s there when I need it.. . like right about now!

Her gaze fixed upon the ball as it hopped, now with maddening slowness, around the edge of the wheel, her heart missing a beat everytime the sphere touched down within an ebony wedge. She focused all her concentration, all her willpower, upon the glowing ball—and was heartened to feel a familiar buzz at the back of her brain, like a circuit had suddenly switched on.