“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 ex
tensive 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.