Hayward laughed, then dropped down into a large chair that faced the couch. He took another sip of his Scotch and then sighed. “Remy, you remember the last time Cornelia and I saw you?”
‘Airport. ’ ’
Hayward nodded. “We were returning from the best specialists in the country. Cornelia had only two months to live at that point.”
“What?” Remy almost stood, but instead moved to the edge of the couch.
‘Nothing anyone could do. Hereditary illness, the same that killed her mother. I had always feared it would take my daughter, too, and it did.”
Remy didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing as Hayward again sipped his Scotch.
“I spent most of Cornelia’s life working on a way to save her. When you last saw us, I had determined that I had failed. There was no cure. So I went the next step. I figured out a way to bring her back after she was dead. ’ ’
“De Elixir o’ Life?” Remy asked. For generations both the thieves’ guild and the assassins’ guild had fought over the Elixir of Life. It was the very reason Remy had been banned from his hometown.
Hayward laughed, dismissing Remy’s question with a wave of his hand. “Not hardly. You and your family made sure that wasn’t possible. Besides, there was too much baggage with that Elixir.”
“Den how?”
Hayward laughed, but this time his laugh sounded hollow and strained, as if directed at his own personal demon.
“I mixed science with black magic,” he said. “Simple, actually.”
“Voodoo?” Remy asked, his stomach sinking at the thought of zombies.
“Not really,” Hayward said. “I just studied the principles behind the voodoo and the zombie legends and applied science to them. By the time Cornelia died, I had the answer. I brought her back.”
Remy nodded. So the young girl he’d picked up in the street had actually been dead. But somehow reanimated with life. Science or black magic, she was still a zombie. One of the walking dead.
Hayward downed the last of his Scotch and stood, moving over to the bar to make himself another. With his back to Remy he continued talking. “I can tell you don’t understand. I loved my daughter more than anything. The thought of her dying was impossible for me even to consider.”
“She still dead, homnie,” Remy said.
“Only technically,” Hayward said, spinning around to face the X-Man.
Remy held the intense, blazing gaze of Hayward for a moment. The man was obsessed with this topic, that much was very clear. There seemed no point in arguing it. Inside Hayward knew his daughter was dead and that knowledge was eating at him like maggots in a coffin. And Remy knew that the children, once zombies, were monsters. They might look like the children they used to be, but they were just dead flesh walking. Nothing more.
Remy stood and stepped toward the door through which
they had entered. “So why slit her t’roat an’ put her out, bait for de other child’n? What went wrong?”
“My formula was stolen,” Hayward said. His shoulders sagged and he moved over and sat down heavily in his chair. “It was meant only for Cornelia. No one else.”
“Who stole it?
‘ ‘A lab tech,” Hayward said, almost laughing. ‘ ‘A nobody who is now dead and will remain that way. ”
“But dose childr’n out dere de walkin’ dead.”
Hayward sipped at his drink, as if deciding to go on or not. Then he asked, “You ever hear of the Arrington?” Remy felt himself shudder at the mention of the name. Arrington was a combination gang and family. Their leader, a gentleman named Lang, claimed that the Arrington, under old deeds dating from before the War between the States, had title to most of the area where the newer sections of the city had been built. Years ago the courts had rejected the family claim. So the family and their friends, back before Remy was even born, had gone underground, working to retake what they claimed was theirs without much caring how, or who got killed. But for the last five years they had been fairly silent members of the New Orleans crime world.
“Yeah,” Remy said, “I hear o’ dem. I don’ much like w'hat I hear.”
Hayward nodded, staring down into the golden liquid in his glass. “I agree. The stupid lab tech thought he could sell my formula to them. They killed him and took it before I could retrieve my property.”
“So why children?”
“My formula only works on children or young adults.” Remy stood and began to pace, trying to give himself a
moment to think. He’d just had two run-ins with the Arrington, and both times people had been killed. There was no telling what they’d do with the ability to raise dead children. But one thing for sure, they’d use the children to take parts of the city back by force, parts they felt belonged to them.
Remy stopped his pacing in front of Hayward. “What exactly dey plannin’?”
Hayward looked suddenly tired, his eyes glazed over, his mind a long distance away as he slowly shook his head. “I don’t know, but two weeks after they stole the serum, children started turning up missing. Lots of children, mostly from the projects. I never meant for my work to kill children.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and then, in a very soft voice, as if he were only talking to himself, said, “I just wanted to save my own daughter.”
Now Remy understood even more. Not only were the demons of his daughter eating at Hayward, but the deaths of other children now rode his mind, smothering him slowly but surely.
“So what’s Cornelia doin’?”
Hayward seemed to shake himself and glance up at the X-Man standing over him. “She’s locating their operational headquarters for us. I have a force ready to move in when she’s in place.”
Remy knew where the Arrington were mainly headquartered. It was a huge old building just outside the French Quarter. At one time it had been a warehouse, and from the outside it still looked that way. He’d been inside and had no desire to return. But he said nothing.
Hazard stood. “I think it’s time we go back to work, don’t you?”
Without waiting for an answer, he moved through the door and into the white lab beyond. Remy followed. There was nothing else for him to do.
Twenty minutes later the signal came in.
“On the big screen,” Hayward said, and on a nearby wall a map of the city suddenly appeared. After a moment a blinking light showed.
“That’s not possible,” one tech said. “That’s outside our door.”
“What?” Hayward said. He stared at the huge map for a moment and then made for the black arch leading into the street. But Remy was faster and he broke through and into the humid night air first, his hands on his cards, ready.
The mist still filled the dark street; again his eyes took a moment to adjust to the extreme difference in light. He moved against the building and crouched, letting all his senses cover the area while his eyes adjusted.
There was no one moving. Nothing.
Hayward blundered into the street, followed by two of his guards. It was then that Remy saw the head.
Cornelia’s head.
It sat on the shallow curb, blank eyes staring at the doorway and her father.
Clamped in her teeth was a small golden button, most likely the bug Hayward had been using to track her.
Now she was truly dead. There would be no bringing her back this time. Not even the walking dead could con-
tinue when their heads were cut off. No magic was that powerful.
Hayward slumped to the sidewalk and picked up his daughter’s head, cradling it against his chest as he sobbed.
There was nothing more Remy could do here. Hayward and his men were out of the picture, at least for the moment.
Remy had discovered why he’d been pulled back to New Orleans. Silently, he stepped back into the shadows and moved away. As with any good thief, no one saw him go.
The mist covered the old cotton warehouse district like a thick film. The biggest warehouse in the center loomed like a block In the fog, massive and very dangerous. The wood of the loading docks had decayed and rotted away. Someone long ago had boarded over the high windows on all the buildings. For the untrained eye, the warehouse district looked as if had been deserted for years, just another example of the decay of the city, standing amid many other deserted buildings.
But Remy’s eye was not untrained. Through the cracks in the old wood he could see the reinforced steel and concrete walls of the main Arrington building. Hidden cameras covered every inch of area around the building. Invisible laser beam sensors crisscrossed the streets a block in both directions. Even a rat couldn’t move in this area of abandoned buildings without being tracked.
But Remy had been trained in the thieves’ guild, his skills honed as Gambit with the X-Men. He was much, much better at getting in somewhere unseen than any common rat.
Carefully, slowly, an inch at a time, he made his way along a wall, passing over and under laser beams while never moving fast enough to trigger a motion detector. He stayed in the shadows of the wall knowing that, to anyone watching a camera, he would be nothing more than shadow.
After leaving Hayward, he had considered just barging into the main building, fighting. That was more his style, more his recent training. But he didn’t know exactly what was going on with the children and he couldn’t take a chance of any of the live ones getting hurt until he knew.
It took him over an hour, but he finally made the rear door of the building immediately next to the Arrington headquarters. He knew of a tunnel leading from each of the neighboring buildings into the main one. It would be his best way in.
With an easy twist, he picked the complex lock of the door and slipped inside. The place smelled of mold and decay. It was the building closest to the river and farthest from the normal traffic patterns of the French Quarter and the main areas of New Orleans. It would be the least-used building for entering the main compound. He counted on that.
He crouched against the wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust. His senses told him instantly he was not alone. “So much for goin’ in unannounced,” he said softly to himself.
“Remy LeBeau,” a voice said, echoing through the darkness. “Nice of you to come back to see me.”
Remy stood, his hands in his pockets on his cards. The voice belonged to Lang, the fat, chipmunked-faced leader of the Arrington. But it had been broadcast. Lang would never risk himself in the open like this. Remy could see ten
outlines in the dim light, all holding machine guns. Lang had sent his goons. But he had underestimated Remy by sending only ten.
“I’m so sorry, however,” Lang’s voice continued, “that we won’t have a chance to chat.”
Remy jumped, hard and fast, while at the same time sending glowing cards at where he’d spotted the shadows.
First the explosions of gunfire, then of Remy’s cards filled the huge, empty warehouse.
In a tight ball, Remy flipped over twice in midair before landing and rolling behind an old column.
The bright orange flashes quickly showed Remy that he’d taken out most of the men with his first throws.
But he needed a diversion for just a moment longer.
Flipping energized cards at the remaining Arrington men as well as at distant walls and camera locations, Remy moved quickly into a cloud of smoke from the explosions.
Then between explosions he slipped down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs two men with guns ready stood guarding an open tunnel. He was on them so fast, they didn’t even get a shot off before he rendered them unconscious.
Taking both the guns from the men, he quickly kineti-cized the energy in them and then, With all his strength, threw the guns down the dark tunnel toward the main Arrington building.
He stood to one side as the explosion sent an impact blast back his direction so hard, it destroyed the old wooden stairs he’d just come down.
At a full run, flipping energized cards ahead of him into
the smoke as he went, he crossed through the tunnel and under the main building compound.
A main staircase led upward, but it was blocked by a huge steel door at the top. Five of Lang’s guards already lay unconscious around the bottom of the stairs and still no sign at all of the children. Or the zombies.
He needed to think of them as zombies, but somehow he just couldn’t get the image of children out of his mind.
He glanced around* then picked up a metal folding chair from a guard station. There was no point in being subtle now, not after this explosive entrance.
He quickly changed the potential energy of the chair into kinetic and, with a quick spin like a hammer throw, flung it at the steel door at the top of the stairs.
The explosion sent the door smashing inward.
Immediately on the other side machine guns opened up a deadly rain of fire.
Remy dove for a nearby tunnel and waited, tucked against a wall, as the area under the building was riddled with hundreds of bullets.
Finally the firing slowed and stopped. Six men, obviously more of Lang’s stooges, appeared at the top of the stairs and looked down.
Spinning out six energized cards with a quick flick of the wrist, Remy took all six out. Then, flicking cards through the opening above, he went up the stairs and to the right, rolling to stay out of the line of fire, all the time flipping card after card.
The firing stopped in a dozen explosions as he came up hard against a concrete wall. He remained crouched, letting his senses scan the smoke-fogged room. This assault felt like
an evening in the Danger Room back at the Xavier Institute. Here, just like there, you never knew what was going to come at you at any moment.
Then, through the smoke, there was movement. Someone was slowly coming toward him. Remy crouched, ready for anything.
It took a moment for his mind to register what was coming at him, then a moment longer to get past the shock of
What appeared to be a young woman in a white prom dress stumbled through the smoke directly at his position.
It was Cornelia. Or, more accurately, Cornelia’s body.
Her head was missing.
Her body stumbled forward, as if under mechanical control of a bad director in the worst B-movie.
Remy stared for a moment at where her head should have been, remembering her smile at the airport and how he had kissed her hand.
Then he realized that in her hands she now carried two very large and very live explosive charges.
With a quick flip of two energized cards, he hit both charges, while rolling as fast and hard as he could away to the left.
The concussion from the huge explosion smashed him against the wall. He banged his head hard on the concrete, but managed to come up running. Ahead was a wide double door made of ornate wood.
At a run he hit the door with both feet, sending it smashing inward. If he remembered right, behind this door was Lang’s personal office.
He had remembered right.
Six guards flanked Lang, but before any of them could even get off a shot at the intruder, Remy flicked energized cards against their chests, sending each smashing backward in a muffled explosion.
The explosions also knocked Lang backward and Remy was over him in a flash, pulling him back to his feet and holding him up above the desk. In the two years since Remy had seen Lang, the man had gained another hundred pounds. Now he seemed to be more a ball of flesh than anything else.
“Dat. anyway to greet a guest?” Remy asked with a smile.
Lang shook his head no, his fat chipmunk cheeks folding and unfolding with the motion.
Remy dropped him into his overstuffed chair and with one foot shoved him hard back against the wall. Lang’s head banged the wood and then lolled forward. His eyes were glazed and blood dripped from his mouth where he’d bitten a fat cheek.
“My motto,” Remy said, bending down right into the fat man’s face, “is live and let live. Comprendez-vous?”
Lang took a moment, then finally nodded, his beady eyes focusing on the X-Man.
“I’d never be here, but now I hear tell you take children.”
“None of your business, thief,” Lang managed to say, spitting blood as he did.
“Ah, dere you wrong. Children is all our business. Harmin’ children harms me. Harms my family. Harms my city. Now where are dey?”
Lang just spat out blood. “All dead and waiting to kill you, LeBeau.”
Remy grabbed the fat man by the collar and picked him up with one hand, holding him pressed up against the wall. With the other hand he took out a charged card and waved it in front of Lang’s face before tucking it carefully into the rolls of blubber around the fat man’s belt.
At the sight of the card the man’s small eyes grew large and he swallowed. “We can talk, LeBeau.”
Remy nodded. “ ’Til my arm gets tired, fat man. But if you give me a wrong answer, my arm gets real tired. Now, de children?”
Remy saw the fat man’s eyes flicker in the direction of the main door. With a quick flick of the wrist, Remy sent five charged cards spinning in that direction. The explosions and a short, cut off scream made him smile at Lang. “You a fat one. I t’ink I drop you now. Yes?”
“No!” Lang said. “The children are in the next building over, toward town. But they’i'e all dead. All zombies.” Remy pretended to almost drop Lang and the fat man squeezed his eyes closed, then opened them again.
“Sorry,” Remy said. “You sure need to lose de weight. Now what else?” As he asked he took another charged card out of his pocket, waved it in front of Lang’s face, and slipped it into the fat man’s belt beside the first.
Lang’s eyes got even wider than before. “Without another dose of the formula real soon, they won’t even be zombies. They’ll just be dead.”
“So where de medicine?”
Lang swallowed and glanced to the left at a wooden door leading into a back room. “Back there, in the lab.” “You lyin’ to me, homme?” Remy said, pretending to drop the fat man.
Sweat poured from Lang’s face as he shook his head. “LeBeau, I’m telling you the truth. They’re already dead and will be for certain in thirty minutes unless I take them their next dose.”
Remy nodded and, with a flick of his arm, tossed the fat man in a swan dive over his head into the center of the office. The guy let out a short scream before he hit.
The resulting muffled explosion made Remy smile.
Without looking back, he went through the door into the lab. The fat man had been telling the truth. The place looked like a chemistry lab, with one large table running down the middle. Beakers full of fluids filled the table. Remy stood in the door studying it all, then stepped inside and picked up a metal stool. Holding the stool up, he energized it until it glowed brightly.
And for a moment, he hesitated, thinking of the children. But now they were already dead. All he was doing was stopping monsters like Lang from using their walking bodies for what ever purpose they wanted. Remy hated with his deepest passion anyone who could hurt children.
With as hard a throw as he could manage he spun the metal stool at the center of the chemicals.
Then he tumbled backward and out of the way of the explosion.
Glass and smoke filled the room and he turned and ran. There was no telling what sort of poisons were in there burning now.
He paused in the outer area only long enough to make a quick call to the police, telling them there was a fire and where they could find the children.
At least this way their parents could give the kids a de-
cent burial. That was more than Hayward would be able to do for Cornelia.
Remy waited outside in the shadows of a nearby empty warehouse until the police had fought their way inside.
Then Remy LeBeau turned away, heading back to the X-Men, once again leaving his hometown. But this time he left it just a little better than when he’d found it.
And, as with any good thief, no one saw him go.
Illustration by Dave Cockrum & John Nyberg
I ooking back, I’d say the second most exciting thing that I happened to me today was getting hit in the gut with a L fastball special. Well, maybe the third most. Ysee, being an X-Man and all, improbable, unpredictable stuff happens to us all the time. It’s just as likely that one of us gets spirited away to another dimension as rip a pair of dungarees. But what happened today was different. It was special. Still, I don’t mind saying, it didn’t start out too pretty.
It began with a letter from my momma. She wrote to tell me that my younger brother Josh had left the farm to go to Nashville. I swear, when I read that, I felt my jaw hit the floor. Ysee, since my daddy died and I went to study with Professor Xavier, Josh has sorta been the “man” of the house, helping out my momma and the younger kids on the farm. Up until I got that letter, I thought Josh’d always stay on the farm, on account of he took such pride in it. More than once w’hen I’d come home for a visit, Josh’d go out of his way to tell me that he ’n’ momma had the farm well in hand, thrusting that fact in my face like a badge of honor he’d won in a war I’d never fought. ’Course, he was always a little jealous that our sister Paige and I had gotten to leave the farm and go to private boarding schools. But at that same time, he’d always take great pride in the fine job he ’n’ Momma had done in taking care of the farm and our younger brothers and sisters. Besides, Paige and I only went away for school because we’d discovered that we had mutant powers, and going away to the Xavier Institute and the Massachusetts Academy was the best way to deal with them. Josh was pretty relieved that he didn’t have that particular curse.
’Cept maybe his singing. Lord, he has such a lovely singing voice, like no one I’d heard before or since. Oh, ’cept for Lila. Or Alison Blaire. ’Course, they’re professionals. What the heck did my dangfool brother know about “making it” as a singer? How could he leave the farm to go on some merry chase to be the next Garth Brooks? I love my brother. But if he was standing in front of me when I got the news, I swear I would’ve boxed his ears. How dare he leave Momma alone to run the farm for something as frivolous as this? College I could understand. But a singing career? With poor Joelle probably still recovering from her run-in with that cult and the rest of the young’uns still not big enough to handle the farm by themselves, and Momma . . . well, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had to figure out what to do.
Now mind you, I ain’t ashamed to say that I had one or two other things worrying me on a fair to regular basis— not the least of which was my recent promotion from leader of the X-Force team to a full-fledged member of the X-Men. But dangit, family’s important. I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about Josh leaving the farm. And I couldn’t stop thinking about my momma workin’ herself to the bone, with me gone for years, Paige havin’ left only recently, and now Josh. And I couldn’t help but feeling a symphony of guilt that started as soon as I discovered my mutant powers and took Professor Xavier’s offer. But most of all, I couldn’t stop tryin’ to figure out what I could tell Josh to make him give up this damnfool idea and get him to go back to the farm where he belongs. And that’s what I was thinkin’ about when the Beast threw Gambit at me.
For most of the week, Professor X had seen fit to pit
pairs of us X-Men against each other for practice. For this particular Danger Room session, the Professor put the Beast and Gambit on one side, and Archangel and myself on the other. Two flyers against two walkers. Heck, I had Archangel on my side, and he’s one of the original X-Men. I figured we had it all over Hank and Remy. Of course, I didn’t account for how distracted I’d be over that letter.
The X-Men call it a “fastball special”: one member throws the other one to take out one or several opponents. Well, that’s all well and good if you’re fighting against the Marauders or the Genoshan High Guard, but I guess I didn’t expect it in a simple Danger Room sequence.
I’m invulnerable to dang near anything when I’m using my blasting power. Gambit knew that, and it gave him free reign to cut loose. Remy charged up his quarterstaff, filling it to bursting with energy, and, with the force of the fastball special behind him, brought it full-tilt into my solar plexus. Now, it didn’t exactly hurt. But it bounced me off a couple of the Danger Room’s walls and shocked me out of blasting. I hit the floor, dislocating my shoulder.
Now, these Danger Room sessions are rough on purpose. Professor X says it’s the only way to keep ourselves sharp for real missions, and he’s right. But, damn, did my shoulder hurt! Remy apologized, even though we both knew we’re supposed to give it our all in the Danger Room. And the Beast was even kind enough to reset my shoulder, which didn’t make it hurt any less, but at least I could move it around some. Then I went back to my room to nurse my arm and my pride. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of time to myself.
No such luck.
“Guthrie!”
I could hear my girlfriend hollering all the way from the other end of the East Wing. For a pretty little thing of five feet four or so, there was a danged good reason even aside from her mutant powers that she took the code name Meltdown. Even when she wasn’t trying, she was goin’ critical. And this time, she was trying.
She burst into my room without knocking. “Where the hell have you been? I do hope you realize that you just stood me up for lunch!”
I slapped my head with my hand. “Tabitha, honey, I’m sorry. I forgot. But we weren’t goin’ out for lunch or anything ...”
“That’s not the point, Sam! We hardly get to see each other as it is without you forgetting little things like ‘meet me in the commissary at two.’ How hard is that to remember??!
I caught on quickly that there wasn’t no way I could blast myself out of this particular doghouse. “Tab, I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind and—
“Yeah, Sambo, I’ll just bet you do. I see you looking at the other women on your team. You think I don’t notice you and Psylocke making eyes at each other in the Danger Room?”
And I thought I could only get blindsided in the Danger Room. “What?”
“I’ve got eyes behind these shades, Guthrie. Don’t you dare try putting anything over on me. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you were watching every move that she made, that tramp ...”
Now, I know a lot about Tabitha. I know how she needs
a lot of attention, ’cause she’s real insecure and all that— problems with her dad and all. I also know that our relationship’s taken a few hits by my getting promoted to the X-Men and her staying behind in X-Force. We go on different missions most of the time and just can’t see each other as much as we’d like to. But this just wasn’t a good day to address it. And she obviously wasn’t in the mood to listen—or even to stop talking!
My shoulder ached something fierce, my head throbbed from the morning’s events, and it got harder and harder to listen to Tabitha’s ruckus. Now, I don’t like to speak ill of anybody, least of all my girlfriend, but, well. . . she got irritating. Too irritating. So irritating that I found myself getting up, grabbing her by the shoulders, and forcibly placing her on the other side of my door. Then I slammed it right in her face.
Of course, I used my bad arm, which made me even madder. Bad enough I’d failed my family and embarrassed myself in front of the other X-Men. But I wasn’t about to stand there and listen to Tabitha’s paranoid rants. I can only coddle her so much, you know? Sometimes I needed understanding. This was one of those times and I just couldn’t deal with Tabitha’s crazy accusations today.
I’ll never understand us. Meltdown ’n’ I’ve fought side-by-side against aliens, forces of nature, cold-blooded killers—you name it. We’ve been through more together than most couples dream of. But one little domestic squabble and both of us just go to pieces.
Well, I could hardly figure out what to do with myself after that. I wanted to just take off through the ceiling, blasting through floor after floor of the mansion and out into
the sky. ’Course, I stifled that urge pretty quickly. I like to think of myself as a strong man—heck, I’m a mutant, after all. But that don’t seem to mean much in the face of family troubles, girlfriend troubles, and dislocating your shoulder, all in the space of a few hours. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I wTanted to be alone with my thoughts. And getting out of the mansion seemed like a pretty good idea. The Institute’s getting more crowded all the time, and as for the woods outside the campus, well . . . Wolverine’s taken to living out there these days. And he’s been scaring me lately.
I was on a train bound for New York City within the hour. Now, you might wonder, What the heck was Sam thinking, going to the biggest city in the world when he wants to be alone? And if you are, then you must not have been to New York much. ’Cause there’s just so many people there, rushing around, each in their own world. That makes for millions of little worlds in one city, and I figured it wouldn’t mind one more. Besides, I wanted to be around normal people and maybe, just maybe, not worry about being a mutant for a while.
I started by just walking around downtown. I didn’t much feel like going to any of the museums, and I like the Greenwich Village area quite a bit. It’s kinda, well, alive. Everyone’s in their own little world in New York, but the Village is the best place to sit and watch ’em go by.
Another thing I like about the Village is it always looks the same. I’ve seen pictures of the Village from the 1950s and 1960s, and, well, there’s not much important about it that’s changed. The buildings are all there, and even some of the clubs and theaters are the same. But most of the storefronts are flashier now, and today there’s a lot more kids from the Empire State University campus running around.
Now, while the Village isn’t exactly the best place for solitude, it’s an ideal spot to lose yourself in a crowd. After walking around aimlessly for a while, poking my head in stores and checking out vintage record shops for old George Jones albums, I decided to head up to Washington Square Park. Washington Square Park isn’t exactly a park like we had in Kentucky. After all, it’s mostly concrete, and the places that have grass also have keep off signs. But there’s no place better in the Village to entertain your eyes for free. On a crisp, just-after-a-light-drizzle day like that one, people from all walks of life hang out to meet, relax, perform, or watch passersby, as I was doing that day. As I entered the park, I heard dogs barking as they chased their masters, their tennis balls, or each other in the fenced-off dog run just to my left. Right in front of that was a group of musicians playing and singing old Beatles songs. Way over to the right was a man in a three-piece suit buying a hot dog from a street vendor. Just past them was a single guitar player singing love songs, surrounded by a few pretty young college girls. Listening to that boy sing made me think of Josh’s own glorious voice. I remember him even as a young’un, using that voice of his to charm us all: singing “Amazing Grace” in church, leading the family in sing-alongs by the fireplace on cold winter nights, and entertaining his friends at the soda shop like this young fellow in front of me was doing. In fact, I got so caught up in the flow of memories that I didn’t even notice until too late that my pocket had been picked.
I felt light fingers cross my back pocket and immediately
reached to discover my wallet was missing. Looking up quickly, I saw a kid in a yellow T-shirt and baggy jeans running away. “Stop!” I yelled. I screamed for the police, but there weren’t any around. Typical, ain’t it? So I took off after the kid. That is to say, I ran after him. No sense in using my mutant power in broad daylight, I figured.
Does anyone really think that yelling, “Hey! Stop, thief! ” at a thief is really going to make them stop running from you? Well, I did it anyway, and of course it didn’t work. ’Course, after chasing him for a few blocks, I realized that I wasn’t going to catch up to him, and no one was willing to help me. Maybe I looked too much like a tourist. I sure don’t look like no New Yorker! I felt my heart beating faster and I started to get a stitch in my side. But there was no way I was gonna let that kid get away with my wallet.
Just my luck, the kid turned down a side alley. An empty side alley, mind you. So I figured, what the heck, and took off. I mean, really took off.
Lord, do I ever love flying. I so rarely get the chance to really take off, to really soar. I feel such a rush from using my powers. I guess regular folks find it scary that there’s someone like me around, who can fly like I do. But if I could give them the power for a day, I would, just so they could experience the pure joy that goes with it. Sometimes I feel sorry for them, ’cause they don’t get to shoot through the air like me. Speeding through the air, seeing clouds and rooftops whipping past—I tell you, it’s true freedom, if only for a moment. But not that day. At that time, I just wanted to teach this guy a lesson—Cannonball-style—for picking my dang pocket.
Using my Cannonball powers, I caught up with him in
a second, yelling, “Surprise, sucker!” as I grabbed him by the waist of his baggy pants and took off into the air. He began yelling in Spanish and twisting around so much, I thought he might fall right out of those pants. I’d figured it might be fun to put a little scare into him, but he wasn’t scared at all. Also, my arm hurt like crazy. So I made a snap decision and deposited him on the rooftop of the nearest apartment building. I grabbed the wallet out of his hand and took off just as he tried to throw a punch at me. So that’s how he wants to play it? I thought. I blasted back down to the alley and went looking for a phone to call the police. It had occurred to me that they might be interested in a trespasser on the roof of that apartment building. Hell, there were a lot worse things I could’ve done to him.
I could hear him swearing and yelling to beat the band as I flew down from the roof back into the alleyway. I’m pretty sure I looked around to make sure nobody saw, but I don’t completely recall. I didn’t really care at the time, ’cause, dang, after all that’d happened already, I didn’t rightly care.
I came out the other side of the alley onto a street I didn’t recognize. I thought I’d walked down most every street in this area, but didn’t recall this one. I walked into the first storefront I found. The words coffee a-go-go were stenciled on the storefront window in a cut-paper style that reminded me of movie posters from the 1950s. I could sense coffee and conversation before I even opened the door. But there wasn’t much that could have prepared me for what I saw when I walked in.
Across from the front door lay a small stage that barely held five empty stools and a microphone stand. Next to it
hung a sign that said free verse poetry readings Fridays at 9. Why would they need so many people onstage for a poetry reading, I wondered?
Then I took a look around the place. Colorful Guatemalan weavings, which I recognized from my art history courses, hung from the walls next to wild canvasses that looked like something Jackson Pollock painted in a bad mood. People of all ages sat at the tables, mostly wearing berets, porkpie hats, or black turtlenecks. Above them hung strangely colorful mobiles composed of geometric shapes. Many of the men had goatees and the women had long, straight hair. Boy, did I feel uncomfortable in my slacks and plaid shirt. I’ll tell you, it felt like I’d walked straight into Greenwich Village in the 1950s. From the little I’d remembered from movies and old magazines, I seemed to have walked into a picture-perfect slice of beatnik culture. A woman kept yelling for someone named “Chester” until I turned around and realized that she meant me.
The lady who had finally caught my attention was older—forty or so, it was difficult to tell. She wore a white men’s oxford shirt over a black leotard. She didn’t wear any makeup and kept her dark hair, streaked with gray, pulled back in a ponytail. The tray under her arm tipped me off that she worked there. The one raised eyebrow told me that she regarded me with some amusement. I tell you, that’s the blessing and curse of being a mutant: I have this incredible power inside me, but on the outside, I still look like a gangly farmboy. To this lady I must have looked like I’d wandered in off the street, which, well, I had.
“What’s the Odyssey, Homer? You here for cheer or you just come to do the pet shop window thing?”
What language was she speaking? “Um ... I, uh . . . is there a phone here?”
She eyed me coolly. “Smoke signals for paying Indians only. Buy a cup or take your dime elsewhere.”
I sighed. “Okay. Fine. One cup of Earl Grey, please.” She nodded. “Phone’s in the back next to the Che Guevara collage.”
I said thanks and made my way to the back of the cafe. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, incense smoke, and a couple other kinds of smoke I wasn’t sure I recognized. I caught snatches of conversation where words like words classism, paradigm, Mugwump, and yage stood out to my virgin ears. Also a name that I didn’t expect to hear. Mine. “Sam.”
I turned to see him sitting at a dark table in the far corner. Truth to tell, he was the last person I’d expected to see in a place like this (aside from me, of course). He had been in the first class at the Xavier Institute, back before my time. And while I’m pretty much the last X-Man to date, he’s the first, the best. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what he was doing sipping coffee in the back of a beatnik coffee shop.
He waved me over. I joined him. Even his clothes, while surprisingly stylish, seemed out of date. He wore a suit nearly the color of the wet pavement outside, with a thin tie, and while I hate to say it, he looked like a character out of those Man from U.N.C.L.E. episodes my friend Roberto likes so much. Mind you, it fit right in with the mood of the cafe. But it seemed odd not to see him in his traditional blue-and-yellow battle-duds, or in the sweatshirts and jeans that he wears when he’s fixing the planes or the machinery
in the Danger Room. Come to think of it, this was the only time I could remember seeing him not working. A stray beam of light glinted off of his red sunglasses as he took a sip from his coffee cup.
As I walked to him, the cafe seemed to brighten up a little, as a strange place only can when you spot a friendly face. Although friendly generally isn’t the first word I’d use to describe Cyclops. I found him a little intimidating. ’Course, if I had the power to kill people just by lookin’ at them the wrong way, I don’t suppose I’d want to make too many friends either. In many ways, the X-Men’ve never had as capable a leader as him. But friendly? Heck, he’s always been nice enough to me; just distant is all.
I shook his hand, always respectful of his authority as leader of the X-Men.
“Scott. What’re you doing here?”
“Same thing as you, I suppose. Care to sit down?”
My eyes flicked to the phone. Scott sat within spittin’ distance of it. “Um, in just a minute. I have to make a phone call.”
Well, there was no way around it, sure enough. I didn’t want Scott to know about my momentary lapse in judgment. But I couldn’t leave that kid up on the roof to hurt himself or cause who knows what kind of trouble. Facing away from Scott, I placed the call to the police, trying to keep my voice as low as possible without sounding too suspicious.
So much for that. I pretended to cough over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of him, staring at me intently. Busted! I thought to myself. Not for nothing has he been the field leader of the X-Men since I was in grade school. He sussed the situation out pretty quickly. He had his lips
pursed and his arms folded, staring at my cup of Earl Grey across the table from him as I approached.
He didn’t apologize for eavesdropping. He didn’t need to. “You want to tell me how you know about this trespasser on the roof?” He asked, catching my gaze and (I think) looking me straight in the eye.
Briefly, and somewhat ashamedly, I told him what had happened with the pickpocket. Cyclops isn’t one to show emotion, but I did notice the corners of his eyes crease like most people’s do when they go into a deep frown. Boy, just seeing that made me feel lower than a Morlock in a cistern.
My head sank between my shoulders as I waited for a reprimand from my team leader. I knew exactly what Cyclops was going to tell me: that we should only use our powers in dire situations, that random displays of them only elicit fear in the general populace, that if the wrong person took a picture of me or even saw me flying that boy to the roof, it could seriously compromise my privacy and that of the X-Men as well. In my mind I pictured Scott and Professor Xavier calling me into the Professor’s office and telling me that I just wasn’t working out with the X-Men, that I’d made too many mistakes and would have to go back to X-Force. I braced myself, practically feeling my shoulders touch the bottoms of these big ears of mine. Scott aimed an accusing finger at me and opened his mouth to give me the lecture I deserved. But then he took a good look at me (at least I think he did; it’s tough to tell behind those red sunglasses of his), lowered his hand, and let out a long, low breath.
What came from him didn’t sound like a scolding. It came across as softer, more patient. “What you did wasn’t
too smart, Sam. Someone could have seen you. I thought you knew better than that.”
“I know, sir. But I just haven’t been myself today. My brother’s leaving the family and my girlfriend hates me and I’m not measuring up and . .
Well, I try not to get to emotional in front of a senior X-Man. Shucks, I’d only just been promoted to the big team recently, and I still had to prove myself. But I couldn’t help it. It all came pouring out: my brother, my screwups in the Danger Room, my argument with Meltdown. I just couldn’t help but tell my problems to a familiar face. Scott listened to every word, brow slighdy furrowed about those ruby specs, his chin resting in the crook between thumb and forefinger, aiming the whole of his concentration at my tortured monologue.
I talked and talked until I ran out of things to say. Then I looked up at Cyclops, and caught him actually smiling. Or was it a smirk? It’s difficult to tell with Cyclops. He doesn’t smile much.
“Sounds like a pretty bad day.” His voice was even and calm.
“Yes, sir. It sure is.” I said, unsure. Here I’d poured out my heart to the man—the leader of my team—and he responded by smiling? I wasn’t rightly sure whether or not he was mocking me. And like I said, he wears those ruby quartz sunglasses all the time, so it’s almost impossible to read his face. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He raised his hand to signal the waitress. “Zelda! Another espresso, please, and refill my friend’s tea. And some biscotti. ’ ’
Zelda smiled and nodded across the restaurant to him.
“You got it, Slim,” she called back as she stepped behind the brass espresso machine and began to pull levers.
Neither of us said a word as we waited. Scott folded his arms again and stared straight ahead at me. I noticed that he’d clenched his jaw and hadn’t said a word for what seemed like a full two minutes. The whole effect reminded me of the sort of expression one makes when trying to plot a course on an unfamiliar road map.
I didn’t say anything either—heck, I didn’t have nothing left to say. I looked at Scott’s glasses and thought of the power behind them, how his optic beams could flare out and tear the head from my shoulders before I could blink. It’s not easy living with the X-Men. As many times as they might save your life or you theirs, there’s always a possibility in the back of your mind that Wolverine might snap, or that you might accidentally touch Rogue and lose your identity. I’ve been with ’em in one capacity or another for some years now and I still find that hard to shake.
Zelda came over with a tiny coffee cup and a larger tea mug, each with an Italian biscuit placed in the saucer. “ Uno espresso a-go-go, bello—with nutmeg and cinnamon, just how you like it. And some more Earl Grey.” I reached for my wallet. Without looking at me, Zelda said, “Keep it in the holster, cowboy—if you’re a friend of Slim’s, the bevvies’re on the casa. Enjoy.”
Then she fixed Scott with a mocking smirk. “And as for you, Slim, how’s it I hardly see your pan these days? All this time and you’re too good for the A-Go-Go?”
Scott’s manner, while unsmiling, was easygoing. “Come on, Zelda. You know it’s not like that. It’s just that after the last time, we wanted to spare you the ruckus.”
Zelda’s eyes turned upward. “Don’t remind me! The last time you people showed up, Drake brought some walking, talking Mighty Joe Young-looking thing in here—and I don’t mean Topo Gigio, shatz. He nearly caused a riot in here with that animal.”
I realized that Zelda was talking about the Beast. I don’t know how, but I could tell Scott was holding back a grin. “Now, Zelda, no harm done. Didn’t Bobby promise not to bring pets in anymore?”
“Yeah, and I haven’t seen his carcass since. What’s he doin’, starting the next ice age early?”
“Something like that. I’ll let him know he should come by soon.”
“You do that, Slim. Tell him all is forgiven. Don’t think I don’t remember how he used to be warm for this form back in the days.” Zelda patted her hip, winked at me and sauntered back to the counter, tray nestled under her arm.
She knew Iceman and—in a way—Hank too? Had they come here before—and often? Why hadn’t I ever heard about it? I couldn’t wait to hear the story. But even above that, one nagging, burning, tantalizing question tugged at my curiosity above all others.
I couldn’t bear not asking. I cleared my throat, turned to him, and, with as much tact as I could muster, I asked, “Slim?”
“Old nickname. I know Zelda from way back.”
Way back? My mind instantly rang with question upon question. How in the heck does the stoic leader of the X-Men know this strange beatnik woman? It made me want to imagine Scott before the X-Men. I couldn’t.
Scott could tell. He leaned toward me and said, “I take
the train in to New York fairly often, when I have time. Sometimes I come with Jean, sometimes I go alone. The mansion’s a great piece of land, but it’s not the best place to take your mind off of your problems.” I nodded my head in agreement and took a couple of sips of my tea. I realize that anyone who actually knows Cyclops would have trouble believing that he’s anything but businesslike, stoic, and, well, cold. But I swear to you, sitting in that coffeehouse, sipping from that tiny cup, he was downright gregarious. For him, anyway.
Scott looked around the cafe and continued on. “This cafe has a special place in X-Men history. Bobby and Hank discovered it years ago, when we were just starting out at the school. After a while, we all started coming here. As important as our training was, we tended to lose track of the real world. Coming here, we could let off steam—as people—and feel like we had a part in the real world too.
It wasn’t like anyplace we’d ever seen before. It was so free and accepting.
“You should have seen it then, Sam. Wall hangings and Picasso prints, the whole place filled with smoke and wild performances. On any given day you could find poets, dancers, musicians . . . the place looked like, well, much like it does today. The credit goes to Zelda for bringing back the look of the place. She was just a waitress at the time. Now she owns it.
“Eventually, the four of us graduated, and the new team of X-Men came in, and the place was bought by new owners and turned into a diner. Then, when Jean . . . came back and we started X-Factor, we returned to the old spot to find. _ that it had become a sushi bar, of all things. A year ago,
that place went out of business. God bless her, Zelda got some money together, bought the place herself, and restored it to its former glory. Jean and I’ve both been coming back ever since. As you heard, Bobby and Hank haven’t been here in a while.”
That was the most I had ever heard Scott say at one time—to anyone. I was flabbergasted. I think I was a bit too obvious about it, as usual, because Scott looked a little taken aback, and a little embarrassed, probably for having gone on like he did. He cut himself off with a bite of his biscotti, and gave me that road-map look again.
“But let’s see what we can do about your problems. The first one’s easy: Fastball Special.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The next time an opponent tries that on you, use your shoulders to sort of sidestep it in the air. ’ ’ He made a swinging motion with his shoulders to illustrate. “Quickly grab your opponent and ride his momentum from behind. Then he’s yours to drop or do with what you will.”
Of course. “Gee, Scott, you make it sound so simple.” “No. You and I both know it takes hard work. I also know that you’re no slouch. Schedule extra Danger Room time and practice. You’ll get it. Let me know if you need help and I’ll have Warren work with you.”
Now his voice started to fill me with confidence. This was the Cyclops I knew. He was truly the best an X-Man could be. For a moment, I couldn’t believe I was sitting in Greenwich Village drinking with him.
He chewed and swallowed another bite of biscotti. “Second of all, forget about making your brother change his
decision. If my experience is any indication, you have no hope of telling your brother what to do.”
I’m not one to argue with someone like Scott, but what he said just didn’t seem right. “He’s making an absolutely wrong decision! This—this Nashville thing—it’s idiotic! As the eldest Guthrie male, it’s my responsibility to talk him out of it. And I’ll tell you, Scott, I’m not the only member of this family who—”
He shot me a look that I could feel through those ruby quartz lenses of his. “No, Sam, you’re not.”
Hearing him say that shut me up and made me feel like a wet sack of feed. Ysee, I know about Scott’s past from the computer records. And it’s just plain sad. He grew up in an orphanage, not knowing he had any family to speak of. He only found his brother after ten years, and his father and his grandparents after twenty. And that’s it. ’Cept for his in-laws, that’s all the family Scott has, unless you count the X-Men. And Scott’d had more than his share of trouble with his brother. His brother ended up discovering mutant powers as well, powers even more dangerous than Scott’s.
“What you’ve got to understand, Sam, is people aren’t going to change just because you want them to. My brother’s spent half his life running around the world, trying to figure out his place. And there wasn’t a single thing I could do to change that. He’s doing a fine job heading up the X-Factor team now, and I’m proud as hell of him. But if he decided to leave tomorrow, nothing I could say or do would change that. Sam, if you love your brother, the best you can do is stand back and catch him if he falls. If you’re lucky,
he’ll make the change himself, or ask for your help. Or maybe, just maybe, he’s made the right decision after all.
“Look at Magneto. How may times has Charles tried to reform him? Wolverine? Sabretooth?”
He raised an eyebrow above its ruby lens.
“You?”
He was right. When I first discovered my powers, I threw in with Donald Pierce, an old enemy of the X-Men, because he paid well and I had to support my family. But when the Professor uncovered what a rat Pierce was, the Prof invited me to his school and welcomed me with open arms. He’s helped my family and me out ever since, and the farm’s thrived besides. I made the best decision of my life when I joined the Xavier Institute. And here I was trying to stop my brother from making his own decisions.
“You don’t want to lose your brother, Sam.”
“You’re right, sir. Point well taken.”
He drained his espresso cup. “Third: Meltdown. Apologize to her.”
That suggestion set me aback. What did he mean, “apologize to her”? Didn’t he realize all the neurotic trash she was talking to me? Obviously he didn’t, so I related the rest of our argument—or should I say her argument—to Scott, point by point, and I really would have gotten my dander up if Scott hadn’t raised his voice just enough to cut me off and say,
“Sam.”
I heard a bit of irritation in his voice. “Yes, sir.”
“Do you love her?
I let out a sigh or resignation. “Yes, sir.”
“Does she love you?”
“I believe so.”
“Then apologize, dammit. Life’s too short to waste your time with laying blame and pointing fingers. You’re an X-Man, Sam. Live your life the best you can with no regrets. When you go on the kind of missions that we do, you can’t afford those luxuries.”
I hate to say it, but he made a brick of sense. I really did care for Tabitha, and when it came down to it, none of that little stuff should’ve mattered. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to find her and tell her. Scott must’ve picked up on this because he was already standing up and pulling money from his wallet for the tip jar.
“C’mon. If we catch the six-thirty, we can make it back for dinner. Gambit’s making gumbo. Bobby’s doing dessert.”
Zelda waved us out with a wink and another reminder to bring Bobby the next time we came. As we stepped out into the crisp fall air, I felt just a little bit different. Nothin’ to scream about. But I had learned a lot about myself, and more than I’d ever hoped about the man whom I’d always passed off as the most dispassionate X-Man.
We walked the thirty-odd blocks back to the train station, talking all the way.
We missed the 6:30 and had to catch the 7:05 local instead, but it was okay. That’s what happened to normal people. And for once, there were no emergencies, no problems. No superpowers. Just a couple of friends killing time. And feeling every bit as human as we had a right to.
Illustration by Brent Anderson
Iogan’s car was like Logan himself: brash, aggressive, and powerful. Bobby Drake could hear it thundering along the drive toward the Xavier Institute long before he could see it. There was no doubt in his mind that it was Logan. Who else would drive a car like that?
As he stared out from the window of Professor Xavier’s study, a sense of foreboding weighed Bobby down for a moment. Of all the X-Men who could have returned to the fold at that time, it had to be Logan. There would be no sympathy for the ordeal Bobby was about to go through. No understanding. Just sarcasm and a continual barrage of jokes. Jean would have understood. So would Hank. But not Logan.
There was a fine mist of rain in the air outside. Without thinking, Bobby reached out through the window and felt the shape of the water molecules, caressing them, altering their energy levels until they sought each other out for company. Snow began to fall outside the window, each flake unique.
Just like mutants: each cursed with his or her own singular abilities.
The car finally cleared the treeline and raced toward the mansion, belching smoke from its exhaust. Crimson and yellow flames had been painted along its sides. Logan had the top down, despite the rain, and his abundant black sideburns were whipping back behind him like a scarf as he drove. He was smiling ferally, and Bobby could see the glint of his too-white teeth in the morning sunlight.
“Bobby, you’re worried,” said a calm voice from the room behind him.
“With respect, Professor, it doesn’t take a telepath to spot that,” he replied. As he turned away from the window, the last thing he saw was Logan’s car slewing to a halt, throwing up an arc of gravel, and the man himself vaulting over the side and loping towards the door to the mansion. “I just don’t see how I can do this and keep the X-Men out of it. I’ve lied once already. If the authorities find out—” “I understand your concerns, Bobby,” the Professor said. The light from the roaring fire in his study gleamed off his hairless scalp, making him look like he had a crimson halo. “But remember, you will be serving your country.” “Professor, I’ve put my life on the line for my country more times than I can count. I just—”
The door slammed open and Logan strode in as if he owned the place, almost glowing with health and animal vitality. “Hi, Charley,” he interrupted, “hi, Bobby-boy. How’s tricks?”
“I’m glad you’re back, Logan,” Xavier said. “I would like you to drive me down to town tomorrow. There’s a case starting at the Westchester County Courthouse I want to sit in on.”
Bobby suppressed his anger at the change of subject, although he knew that Professor Xavier must have spotted the slight drop in temperature in the room.
Logan’s eyes gleamed. “Somethin’ to do with mutants, huh? Warren been caught flyin’ past women’s bedrooms at night?”
“Nothing like that,” the Professor said in his infuriatingly calm way. “Bobby has been called up for jury duty, and I want to see how things go.”
Bobby cursed silendy. He’d been hoping that the Professor wouldn’t tell anyone.
Logan’s gaze flicked across to Bobby. “Weeeellll,” he drawled, “defectin’ to the enemy, eh, bub?”
Bobby immediately felt his temper rise. “Hey, Canuck, this is my civic duty, if you don’t mind. At least I’ve got some feeling of moral responsibility!”
“Well ain’t we on our high horse?” Logan switched his hunter’s gaze back to the Professor. “Somethin’ ’bout the way you’re talkin’ gives me the feelin’ there’s a problem, Charley.”
Xavier nodded. “Your senses are as finely honed as ever, my friend. We were hoping that Bobby’s case would have nothing to do with mutants and he could sit on the jury with no conflict of interest. Unfortunately, during the empanelling process yesterday it became obvious that the accused was himself a mutant—a man named Arthur Streck. All the jurors were asked to declare whether or not they themselves were mutants. Bobby had to lie, of course, given that his powers and his identity as an X-Man are not widely known.”
“I asked the Professor whether or not I should find another reason to get kicked off the jury,” Bobby interrupted. “After all, I can fake a cold better than anyone—but he said no.”
“One juror did declare himself to be a mutant,” Xavier explained. “He was immediately excused. The reason given by the assistant district attorney was that a mutant would be automatically biased in favor of another mutant. I find this line of reasoning specious, and I wanted Bobby to remain on the jury so I can monitor how fair the deliberations are.”
Logan nodded. “Most all juries I ever came across were biased to the core,” he said. “So, what’s this Streck guy charged with, anyhow?”
“First degree murder,” Bobby said.
“Should you be tellin’ us this?” Logan frowned. “Ain’t you supposed to keep quiet ’bout what goes on in court?” The Professor looked a little discomfited. “Bobby is indeed bound by an oath not to discuss the case outside the courthouse, but I have persuaded him that his primary duty is to justice, rather than to the letter of the law.”
“And besides,” Bobby added, “the case hasn’t actually started yet. The jury were sent home today while the judge considers points of law.”
Logan considered. “Y’know, I think I will drive you down to the courthouse tomorrow, Prof. Might be interestin’.”
Bobby sighed. This was exactly what he’d been hoping to avoid. It was bad enough having to be on a jury, worse having to lie about it, but to have Logan sitting there in the public gallery—that was almost too much to bear.
Logan leaned back in his seat and hooked his hands behind his head, suppressing a smile as he felt the woman beside him shuffle surreptitiously farther away. He looked around the chamber, assessing it and the people within it. The oak-paneled room wasn’t grand, but it was trying very hard to be, like a hick cousin dressed up for a night at the opera. The people were the same—all the petty officials puffed up with their own self-importance. Making the most of a smalltown case that had suddenly made the big time.
m
Almost unconsciously, Logan had chosen a position that gave him a good view of the court proceedings while leaving a clear escape route to the door. Something about the silence in the chamber made him nervous. It was an expectant rather than a peaceful silence, charged up with all the things people weren’t saying.
Xavier, sitting calmly beside him, had seemed to understand his motivation and hadn’t protested. Or maybe courtrooms made him as uncomfortable as they made Logan. There was certainly an animal edginess about this one. He could smell the ghoulish interest of the press gallery behind him, the animosity of the public, and the fidgety nervousness of the jury.
Bobby didn’t look any happier than the rest. His usually amiable face was pinched and worried. He constantly ran his fingers through his sandy hair, while his eyes roved the courtroom, carefully avoiding those of Logan and the Professor. In fact, they setded most often on one of his fellow jurors: a stately dark-haired woman Logan judged to be way out of Bobby’s league—and Logan was an expert at these things. Bobby was looking at her when the assistant DA rose to make his opening statement, and at the squeal of the prosecutor’s chair he jerked his eyes away with a start. Logan gritted his teeth. Drake was acting so guilty you’d have thought he was the one on trial. Why didn’t he just wear a sign? MUTANT IN DISGUISE—PLEASE LYNCH.
“Alan Wydell, a man with no few political ambitions,” Xavier said quietly, nodding toward the ADA.
Logan studied the man. Medium height, middle-aged, paunchy—not much good in a fight, but could probably
talk himself out of one. “I guess winning this case wouldn’t hurt those ambitions none.”
The Professor smiled very slightly, his expression then changing to a thoughtful frown as he gave his full attention to the prosecution’s opening remarks.
“. . . heard a lot about the mutant menace. And maybe we’ve been told there isn’t such a thing. Well, if there isn’t a mutant menace, there sure as hellfire are mutant menaces, and this—” Wydell spun round dramatically to point at the defendant “—this is one of the worst of them. Five good family men, sons and fathers and brothers, have been killed. Torn to shreds by the savage claws of a freak of nature that some might say should never have been born. Murdered in cold blood by this—this man, Arthur Streck.”
The emphasis didn’t escape Logan’s attention, and he felt anger surge within him at Wydell’s blatant manipulation of the court.
Streck shifted uncomfortably, as if the scores of eyes resting on him exerted some real physical force. Logan’s scalp prickled with the fear he could sense emanating from the defendant. Fear and, even more strongly, anger. The press had dubbed Streck the Dinosaur Killer. His green-yellow scales fitted this image, but Logan was put in mind more of a cat. Streck’s frame was slender and looked agile. Flis face, beneath the scales, was narrow and intelligent. Beside him, the tip of a prehensile tail twitched its irritation. A cat, and not a tame one.
The ADA had paused to stare at Streck, and Streck returned the stare full force, his lips drawn back in a sneer that was halfway to being a snarl. Wydell shifted away slightly, his expensive lawyer’s suit rumpling as the muscles
beneath it unconsciously tensed for action. All around the courtroom Logan could feel the same reaction repeated. The million-year-old fight-or-flight instinct of an animal confronted with a threat.
“You may ask why we’re so sure we’ve found the right. . . man,” Wydell continued after a moment in his deep, reassuring voice. “Motive, opportunity, and method, ladies and gentlemen. Method—well, Mr. Streck couldn’t dispose of his murder weapons. He was born with them on the ends of his fingers. Opportunity, then. This creature was present at every single one of the crimes. And motivation. The accused, I guess you’ve probably noticed, is a mutant.” Wydell paused for a wave of laughter to sweep the court. “The victims were members of a group, the Friends of Humanity, which has been fighting for the rights of ordinary folks against the so-called mutant menace. Some time ago, there was an incident involving the victims and Arthur Streck’s sister. The victims were brought to trial—Streck claimed they’d assaulted her—but the jury thought otherwise and the case was dismissed.”
There was a note in Wydell’s voice that suggested this was a cause of some satisfaction to him. Logan wondered if he’d prosecuted that case too. And how fair the trial had been if he had. Shifting to a more comfortable position, Logan settled down for a long and depressing day. Justice seemed about the last thing Xavier had brought him here to witness.
Bobby pushed the remains of his lunch listlessly around his plate and sighed. It hardly seemed possible, but this was even worse than he’d imagined, what with the claustropho-
bic, clinical little room they’d shut the jury up in for their meal, the terrible quality of the meal itself, and the hushed antimutant conversations he could hear going on among his fellow jurors. But then, the prosecution case was so strong that even he thought Streck was guilty. The guy looked shifty, too, and this claim that he’d only been in the areas of the crimes because he’d signed up with a new agency specializing in mutants and he’d had job interviews near each crime was so obviously fraudulent that Bobby couldn’t believe Streck was trying it.
So here he was, sitting in this miserable little room with a bunch of people he didn’t dare speak to. And there she was: the gorgeous Rachel Mostel. He was sure there must be all sorts of laws against having an affair with another juror, but he just couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off her. Most of the rest of the jury seemed to feel the same way. Trust him—unlucky at cards and unlucky in love.
He felt himself blushing fiercely as he realized that she had noticed him noticing her. Worse, she was walking toward him. He looked down at the unlovely remains of his fried eggplant, and hurriedly shovelled in another mouthful.
It was too late. His plate rattled as she sat down opposite him. “You’re Bobby, aren’t you?” God, her voice was as beautiful as the rest of her.
He began to answer, realized he still had a mouthful of food, flushed again, and swallowed. “Yes, but my friends call me Mr. Drake.” She looked confused. “Joke,” he said, waving his fork at her and, to his horror, splashing some eggplant juice on her cream-colored blouse.
She didn’t seem to notice. She smiled, and leaned fur-
ther toward him. He wondered if she could hear his heart pounding. “It’s such a waste of time, isn’t it?” she said softly.
Bobby frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“This trial. I mean, everyone knows he did it.”
“Do they?” Bobby said uncomfortably. “Do you really think we should be discussing it?”
“Why not?” said a gruff voice at his shoulder. Bobby twisted round to identify Joey, the jury’s foreman—a squat bulldog of a man with a nicotine-stained moustache. “We all think the same.” There were nods and grunts of assent from several of the other jury members who had begun to gather around. Most of them were staring at Rachel with something approaching awe in their eyes.
Rachel smiled at them. “He’s a mutie,” she said sweetly. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re always guilty until proven innocent.”
“Not much danger of that,” another juror interjected. The grunts of agreement were more forceful.
Bobby felt about as out of place as a panda at a prayer meeting. “Don’t you think we should wait till we see the evidence ...,?” he began tentatively, trailing off as he felt Rachel’s huge green eyes focus on him. He was still looking into them when the bailiff summoned the jury back to the courtroom. Even after he sat down, they remained in his memory.
The afternoon brought a parade of witnesses willing to testify that they’d seen Streck at the scenes of each crime. The forensic evidence, too, seemed pretty conclusive. Xavier projected a cautionary telepathic message—They’ve only proved the murders could have been committed using Streck’s
claws, not that they were—but Bobby thought he was grasping at straws. The pictures they showed the jury of the dismembered carcasses of the victims turned even his stomach, and he’d seen more death and pain in his lifetime than he cared to remember. He felt a shudder running through the jury, as if someone had just walked over all their graves.
Unable to stop himself, he turned his eyes to Rachel. She was looking at one of the photos with shock and horror. Bobby felt a wave of understanding sweep over him. So she didn’t like mutants. So what? Would he like them if he didn’t happen to be one himself?
The next photo they passed to the jury was of Streck’s sister. It was taken shortly after her assault, and Bobby winced at the contusions on her fragile body. But when the photo was passed on he sensed it evoking an altogether different kind of horror inside him. He glanced across at the picture again as the next juror held it. She was pretty frightening, he supposed: scaled and tailed like her brother. Was it any wonder people didn’t feel much sympathy for someone as freakish looking as she? And Bobby had seen— had fought—plenty of evil mutants in his time.
But what about his fellow X-Men? They were okay, weren’t they? He’d had good times with them. They had helped him over problems in his life. They had saved his life too many times to count.
Except that Wolverine was dangerous—too close to the animal within him to trust completely. And nobody really knew where Gambit came from, with his glowing red eyes. His demonic glowing red eyes.
Bobby shook his head, telling himself this was an absurd
line of reasoning. But when the photo was passed back to him again, he couldn’t feel anything except disgust.
Logan had chosen to wait in the narrow alley that ran beside the courtroom. The sun had sunk so low that its light didn’t penetrate there, and water dripped down the dank walls in premature twilight. There was no reason not to wait out front; he just felt more at home here. His natural habitat. Charley was snug back at the mansion, chauffeured home by Cyke. But Logan had picked up the “meeting Bobby and sniffing around” detail. Just his luck.
There was Drake now, walking past the mouth of the alley. He was looking off to the left, so rapt he didn’t notice Logan saunter up beside him. It was that woman he was watching, the good-looking juror. He was virtually drooling over her. Logan studied her: mile-long legs, healthy from working out rather than hard work. There was no denying, she was easy on the eye. Logan realized he was staring at her too, heart racing faster than his car, as she brushed past Bobby, flicking him a quick come-hither smile.
For a second, he didn’t want anything in life more than her. And then it was gone, and she was just another well-groomed frail. And he had that feeling running through his blood, that I-was-real-ill-but-now-I’m-well buzz that told him his healing factor had done some work. Dammit, Drake went and fell for a femme fatale. Worse, a super-powered femme fatale.
He realized Bobby was about to walk off down the road after her. Sighing, he snaked out an arm and grabbed the scruff of his neck.
“What?” Bobby said irritably, halfheartedly trying to shake Logan off. His eyes never left the woman.
“Snap out of it, bub,” Logan grated.
Bobby jerked his head round. His face briefly contorted into an alien mask of anger, like a pet that had unexpectedly turned rabid. Then it was just Bobby again. “Logan! And there I was just about to call a cab.” As if he couldn’t help it, he returned his gaze to the retreating woman. “She’s something, isn’t she?” he said softly.
Logan grunted. “I hear Hank says beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. Maybe he oughtta change it to smell.”
“Is that some kind of joke I’m not getting?”
“Depends how funny you think controlling folks’ feelings is.”
“What?” Bobby snapped. “Ground control calling Logan—what’s the matter with you, buddy?” His lake-blue eyes looked into Logan’s with genuine concern.
“Let me put it so you can understand. She walks past here, I feel drawn to her real strong, my healing factor kicks in, and I don’t feel it no more. What does that sound like to you?”
Bobby frowned. “You think she’s a mutant? Some kind of pheromone-control power like Spoor’s?” He laughed suddenly. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d heard the things she was saying about mutants!”
“Yeah?”
“All sorts of stuff in the courtroom. You know, the mutant menace spiel. She was mouthing off to all the other jurors. It was like some kind of Friends of Humanity meeting in there.” His expression became more thoughtful. “She was saying all these things, and they were all agreeing,
like they couldn’t help themselves ...” He looked after the retreating figure speculatively. A slight blush crept across his face. “I guess you think we should follow her, huh?”
An hour later, and they’d toured just about every street and downtown alley there was. The rain had strengthened, and after they’d slipped away to get into X-Men uniforms, Logan almost hadn’t been able to pick up the trail again. It was dark now, too, dismal as only the fall could be. But they had found her, jittery and looking behind her every step, and now she seemed to have gotten wherever it was she was going.
They were in an old part of town: derelict warehouses, big and ugly, and not much else. She’d slipped into one of the most run-down buildings. It looked just as deserted as the rest, but Logan could see light creeping out the edges of the blacked-out windows, and he could smell people in there. Lots of them.
“She’s definitely up to something,” Bobby hissed.
“And they say a college education ain’t worth anything,” Logan said dryly. “We gotta get in there. How about you take guard duty and I sneak around?”
“No way!” Bobby said indignandy. “You might need me in there.”
Logan looked him over. He seemed more businesslike and confident in his ice form. And he didn’t look like he was going to change his mind. Logan sighed. “You keep control of yourself, boy. If it looks like you’re falling under that frail’s spell again, I’m taking you out.”
Bobby nodded sharply. Logan pointed out a broken window, somewhere on the fifth floor, and they headed for it.
The night was very silent in that area, and Bobby’s ice-laden footsteps echoed loudly in Logan’s ears.
Logan shook his head. He scaled the decaying building with the ease of long practice and setded on a crumbling balcony beneath the window. Bobby looked up at him with some trepidation, his frozen hair gleaming silver in the rising moonlight. He looked so young: just a boy. Logan felt a sudden, choking sense of responsibility for him. Then Bobby grinned cheekily. He pointed at the wall in front of him and a knob of ice grew out of it. Pulling himself up it, he built another and then another. Mutant mountaineering.
Soon, they crouched together beneath the window. Muffled voices trickled through the shattered pane of glass. One voice, mainly, a deep confident one, and others joining in at intervals. It reminded Logan of something. A prayer meeting, he decided: the preacher leading the congregation.
Logan gestured Bobby to wait while he peered in through the window. Making sure he couldn’t smell anyone nearby, he pushed his head carefully through the broken glass. An awkward shard gouged a deep cut in his cheek, but the familiar stinging of his accelerated healing factor knitting his skin back together, skin on muscle on bone, didn’t distract him from what he saw. He let his breath out gently in a silent whistle of recognition.
There was a flag opposite. Flags all around the room, all showing the same thing: a flattened black cross on a red background, and three letters. FoH. Friends of Humanity. What kind of mutant would be meeting with a mutant-hating rabble like that?