No way is that Nightcrawler knocking to get in, Iceman realized. Colossus was the only X-Man he knew with powerhouse fists like that, and Peter Rasputin was, in theory, miles and miles away.
“Further adaptation to cryogenic disruption required,” the Harpy squawked. “Activating thermal conduction units.” A reddish glow began to emanate from deep within the enormous ice cube that contained the trapped bird-woman. Despite the cold, her fangs were conspicuously not chattering. “Beware the Harpy! Beware!”
“Huh?” Iceman blurted, his attention tom between the pummeling at the door and the Harpy’s unquenched defiance. The latter’s oddly robotic syntax puzzled him as well; it dawned on him that he and Moira may have completely misread the true identity of their winged assailant. What if this Harpy wasn’t the late Betty Banner at all, but some kind of mechanical duplicate?
The volcanic radiance coming from the freeze-packed Harpy caught his eye, and he watched in alarm as the ice enclosing the bird-woman melted at an accelerated rate. Cold, clear water streamed from the sides of the makeshift prison, carrying with it great chunks of soggy slush. Iceman concentrated all his power on the receding snowdrift, trying his best to keep the hostile Harpy in cold storage, but his handmade ice was liquefying faster than he could refreeze it. He could feel the heat radiating from the encased bird-woman, an unnatural warmth that bore little resemblance to even the hottest of fevers. It was like there was a portable nuclear generator blazing inside her, throwing off wave after wave of incandescent heat. That wasn’t plain old body heat, he understood. This was something different, something inhuman.
Oh geez, Iceman thought as the awful suspicion sunk in. I befshe ’s a Sentinel!
The Harpy did not wait until the ice was completely dissolved to free herself. Throwing out her enormous wings with tremendous force, she sent the remains of her frozen prison flying off in every direction. “None can cage the Harpy!” she cawed triumphantly and took to the air, displaying no visible signs of hypothermia or even frostbite. The wind from her wings blew powdered ice and snow against Iceman’s face. “You cannot escape the Harpy!”
“Yeah, right,” Iceman said skeptically. He wasn’t buying that story anymore. The way he figured it, the disguised Sentinel—until he learned otherwise, he’d consider it a Sentinel—had been programmed with a limited repertoire of stock super-villain phrases, purely to mislead the opposition and whatever media might be paying attention.
Just like a talking parrot, he thought, which was kind of weirdly fitting. He wasn’t sure why exactly someone wanted to pass off a Sentinel as a deceased bird-monster, but he could work that out later. All he knew now was that there was no more point in holding back; killing a living being was one thing, trashing another stinking Sentinel was something else entirely. “All right,” Iceman said, sucking up all the free moisture at his command, “no more Mr. Nice Ice.”
The Harpy wasn’t pulling her punches either. “Targeting mutant designate: Iceman,” she announced from above, only a nanosecond before a red-hot burst of flame erupted from her seemingly human hands. Un-oh, he thought, looks like she’s recharged. Iceman dove out of the line of fire, onto a self-generated luge that carried him sliding on his stomach away from instant incineration. Even though the main thrust of the hellish bolt missed him, rendering a square foot of floorspace completely free of ice, the fearsome heat of its proximity melted away Iceman’s legs all the way up to his knees, and he had to devote precious seconds to restoring his limbs to their original proportions.
That was close, he thought, shivering (and not from the cold). Theoretically, he could regenerate his entire body as long as some fraction of his awareness remained intact, but he didn’t feel like experimenting along those lines at this particular moment. The booming pounding at the armored door still reverberated across the lab, reminding him that the Harpy-Sentinel wasn’t their only problem. Where on earth is that pointy-eared German elf? he wondered desperately, hoping to hear a well-timed bamf any second now. From the sound of it, he was only moments away from being outnumbered.
A burst of orange fire exploded in his path. The Harpy was shrewdly firing her bolts at the luge as it formed in front of him. Iceman changed course at the last minute, creating a hitherto-nonexistent detour out of the chill Scottish air, then throwing in a series of zigzagging curves to keep his course unpredictable. Making sure he had built up enough momentum to carry him through, he executed a partial loop-the-loop that left him upright once more, sliding upon the slippery soles of his feet while making random turns every other second. He knew he was only buying time, though. A more ingenious tactic was called for, hopefully before whatever was outside the battered door broke all the way through.
“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, puffs of condensed vapor fogging the air beyond his lips. Spotting the horrible Harpy out of the corner of his eye, he hurled a stream of sleet at her face. The cold, congealing liquid formed an icy mask over her face, blinding her as efficaciously as the hood over a falconer’s hunting bird. Perfect, Iceman thought. Now I just need to work quickly.. . .
Her powerful pinions flapped angrily as the Harpy tore at the frigid mask with emerald nails. She managed to quickly scrape the ice away from her eyes, but when she searched the laboratory for her frosty foe. those eyes widened in confusion.
Iceman was everywhere. Several Icemen, at least a dozen, stood in a variety of poses all over the laboratory. The stationary figures, each sculpted from identical blue-white ice, populated the scene, some staring upward at the Harpy, some looking away nonchalantly. There was even an Iceman hanging from one of Nightcrawler’s trapeze rings in the ceiling, his translucent knuckles wrapped around the metal hoop. Everywhere the Harpy-Sentinel looked, she saw another unmistakable specimen of the previously one-of-a-kind Iceman.
“Anomaly ... anomaly,” she squawked. Her face became immobile as her head jerked toward one humanoid ice sculpture after another. “Registering multiple coordinates for mutant designate: Iceman. Processing probability analysis....”
The feathered Sentinel hesitated, hovering in midair as its computerized synapses coped with this unanticipated occurrence. Then, abruptly, it unleashed a hellbolt at a motionless figure standing resolutely, arms akimbo, upon the floor. The destructive energy blast struck the figure dead-on, eliciting a horrified gasp from Moira MacTaggert as she peeked over the rim of the durable containment vault.
A crystalline body snapped and cracked loudly, and, when the blinding flare passed away, all that was left of that Iceman was a truncated pair of legs rooted to the frosted floor, standing forlornly like twin pillars left behind by some long-collapsed edifice,
“Feel the fury of the Harpy!” she announced before turning her attention to a nearly identical figure posing adjacent to the one she had devastated only seconds before. “Feel the fury of the Harpy!” she said again and launched a second blast that took the head off the next Iceman in the line. “Feel the fury of the Harpy! Feel the fury of the Harpy! Feel the fury of the Harpy . .. !”
Sounding very much like a broken record, the determined Harpy relentlessly and methodically picked off each of the apparent Icemen, one at a time. Hanging from the trapeze ring fifteen feet above the wintry carnage, the real Iceman resisted the temptation to nod in satisfaction. That’s right, he thought, his icy fingers stuck to the cold metal of the hoop, use up all your firepower on my handy-dandy, instant ice doubles. The same trick had fooled that mutant-hating creep. Bastion, a few months back, and it looked like it was working like a charm this time around. Still, as he watched the massacre from on high, being careful not to move a single crystalline muscle, he had to admit that it was more than a little unnerving to watch the Harpy blow his various self-portraits apart. He tried not to flinch as a hellbolt split one of his clones right down the middle.
Creating all those ice doubles from scratch had taken a lot of concentration and energy. The really tricky part, though, had been creating that ice-ladder to the ceiling, climbing as q
uietly as he could, then dissolving it completely before the Harpy got rid of her frozen blindfold. Iceman was glad to have a few moments to recuperate while the feathered Sentinel took out her cybernetic frustration on his lifeless duplicates.
And, from the look of things, the Harpy’s fiery blasts were losing their oomph. Instead of entirely decapitating the seventh frozen decoy, the sizzling hellbolt merely melted “Bobby’s” head to the size of an ordinary ice cube. Now there’s a disturbing image, he thought; he could just imagine the wisecracks the Beast might make about the double’s now-diminutive “cranium.”
He waited until the Harpy had expended her firepower on at least ten imitation Icemen. With only one decoy remaining between him and the Harpy’s lethal attentions, he let go of the trapeze ring and dropped toward the floor. Before he could hit the ground, however, a triangular sail, just an inch-and-a-half thick, grew from his shoulders, slowing his fall. He used his freshly-created parasail to glide after the Harpy. His rock-hard feet slammed into her back at the very moment that she released a final, sputtering burst of fire at the last of the sculpted ice doubles. Her outraged squawk of surprise merged with the wet, splintery sound of the clone melting to pieces.
Iceman kicked off from the base of the creature’s wings, catching an updraft to carry him up and away from his inhuman adversary. His own wingspan, he noted proudly, nearly equalled the Harpy’s. He bombarded the flying Sentinel with a barrage of icy hail that dislodged a few of the Harpy’s synthetic feathers. The emerald plumes fluttered gently to the floor even as their recent owner banked sharply upon the wind and climbed toward Iceman, slashing out once more with her long talons.
The airborne X-Man thought he was ready for the Harpy’s attack. An instant ice-shield attached itself to his upper arm and he held it up to block the raking claws. But the Sentinel had another trick beneath her verdant feathers;
an aperture opened in the Harpy’s chest, which fired like a cannon at the unsuspecting Iceman, who suddenly found himself snared in some sort of electrified net. Thin metal filaments, glowing with blistering energy, sliced off the tips of Iceman’s improvised parasail, sending him spiraling toward the ice-glazed floor below. He landed in a heap, hard enough to knock the wind out of him, hopelessly tangled in the electrically charged netting, which began melting into the very substance of his crystalline body. Despairing, Iceman realized he had to shed his ice-form before he melted away entirely, even if that meant leaving himself vulnerable to physical attacks on his restored flesh and blood. Talk about your lose-lose situations!
The corrosive heat of the net made it hard to concentrate, but Iceman closed his eyes and forced himself to visualize his humanoid alter ego: brown hair, pink skin, meat and bone and gristle. Blood rushing through pulsing veins and arteries. A human heart beating in his chest. Through some bizarre alchemical process known only to his own mutant metabolism, solid ice transmuted into organic tissue, turning Iceman back into Bobby Drake, a slender young man in a light blue uniform, lying in a puddle upon the floor. His hair clung damply to his skull. Ice-cold water glistened upon his back.
Despite this miraculous transformation. Bobby’s circumstances hardly improved. The wires no longer threatened to reduce his limbs to liquid, but his mortal flesh felt the stinging sensation of who knew how many volts running through his body; it was like getting the shock treatment from Storm during a Danger Room skirmish. I’m sorry, doc, he thought as he felt his consciousness slipping away. I didn ’t want to let you down.
The last thing he heard before passing out was the sound of a heavy iron door crashing to the floor.
Peering over the edge of the containment vault, Moira MacTaggert inspected the frozen wasteland the laboratory had become; it looked like a new Ice Age had hit Scotland, and never mind global warming. But what else could you expect when someone called Iceman came to your defense? Shattered replicas of the frigid X-Man were scattered about the lab, whilst Iceman and the Harpy took their battle to the limited airspace of the lab. Moira just hoped she’d be around to mop the bloody place up once the fighting was over.
So far, at least, Bobby seemed to be holding his own against the Harpy, leaving Moira to wonder what had become of Nightcrawler. Watch out, Kurt, she thought. If we have a gamma-mutated bird/woman hybrid up here, Lord only knows what’s poking around downstairs.
Pounding blows smashed against the sealed entrance, distracting her from the aerial battle being fought above her. “Now what?” she muttered, sounding more exasperated than alarmed. The emergency bulkhead was made of reinforced steel, yet the thick plates were already buckling beneath the relentless impact of whoever was trying to smash his or her way into the lab. Moira glanced hopefully at the security monitors, but the internal cameras were still on the fritz, providing her with no clue as to the identity of the apparently super-strong housebreaker. Judging from the sheer power of the blows, she thought, I think we can safely rule out Jubilee.
A high-tech bio-medical laboratory was no place to store weapons, but Moira found herself wishing she’d stashed an Uzi somewhere among the microscopes and petrie dishes. The middle-aged scientist was no shrinking violet, and considered that she could make a fair accounting for herself in any ordinary donnybrook. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to comprehend, however, that she wouldn’t last long in unarmed combat against any being capable of making it through that door. Blast it, she thought. I’m a scientist, not a bloody super-heroine.
With one final, tremendous heave, the armor-plated door gave way, falling forward onto the floor of the lab with a deafening clang that echoed through the entire icebound laboratory. Moira braced herself for whatever ghastly monstrosity might makes its way through the now-open entrance. Imagine her relief when she spied a respected colleague instead.
Dr. Leonard Samson, possibly the world’s leading authority on the psychology of superhumans, and the Hulk’s personal therapist, strode into the ice-bedecked chamber. Along with his impressive academic credentials, he had a muscular build worthy of Hercules or the mighty Thor. His long green hair, flowing freely over his shoulders, testified to the effects of gamma radiation on his own DNA, although he had obviously been spared a transformation as grotesque as either the Harpy’s or the Hulk’s; the unpredictable vagaries of gamma mutation had dealt with him much more generously, merely enhancing his physical strength to Hulk-like proportions whilst adding a greenish tint to his distinctive mane.
“Have no fear, Doc Samson is here,” he declared, utilizing the colorful nickname the media had inevitably dubbed him with. He had clearly come dressed for action, clad in a red leather outfit consisting of a sleeveless vest, trousers, and boots. Fingerless red gloves protected his clenched fists. A handsome, intelligent face swept the lab with his gaze, looking surprisingly unsurprised by its arctic appearance.
“Leonard!” Moira called out, rising from behind the vault. She did not know Samson well, but they had met at the odd scientific conference over the years. She remembered being particularly impressed by his paper on The Behavioral Dynamics of Human/Super-Human Relations. No doubt he hoped to treat the unfortunate Ms. Banner once he apprehended the crazed creature she had become; Moira hoped he could cope with an energy-blasting Harpy as well as he’d handled that symposium in Anchorage a few years back.
Samson turned piercing green eyes toward her. “Identified: Dr. Moira MacTaggert. Human, female. Director and proprietor of targeted facility. Prepare for relocation to Gamma Base.”
The voice, deep and authoritative, was as Moira remembered, but the words and their delivery did not sound like anything she ever expected Leonard Samson to say. If she heard him correctly, he was after her, not the Harpy! “What are ye talking about, Leonard?” she demanded. “What’s this all about?”
Before he could answer, the brittle sound of Iceman crashing to earth attracted Moira’s gaze and filled her heart with anxiety. Enmeshed in a crackling electronic net, Iceman lay sprawled upon the fractured ice whilst the Harpy cawed triumphantly above
him. Moira watched in horror as the frozen X-Man reverted to plain old Bobby Drake. She felt both victory and safety slipping away, an impression confirmed when a powerful hand grabbed onto her throat and lifted her off the floor. “Apprehended: human designate: Moira MacTaggert,” Doc Samson proclaimed, not a trace of human emotion in his voice. f ‘No further resistance is anticipated.”
Where are ye, Kurt? Moira wondered desperately. Samson’s strength matched that of his Biblical namesake. No matter how she struggled, she could not escape from his steely grip. Unable to turn her head, she barely managed to glimpse Bobby collapsing unconscious onto the floor a few meters away. With Iceman down, and Samson and the Harpy running roughshod over the lab and its inhabitants, everything now depended on Nightcrawler.
If only she knew where he was ... !
“Unglaublich!”
Nightcrawler cried out in both agony and amazement. Delicate bones in his ankle cracked as the pseudoAbomination tightened his grip on the ceiling-crawling X-Man. Nightcrawler tried to yank his leg free, but the Sentinel held on to him as securely as a ball and chain. In desperation, Kurt used his tail to fling the borrowed scalpel at his foe. The blade struck the monster in the throat, where it bounced harmlessly off the Sentinel’s synthetic scales. “Apprehended: mutant designate: Nightcrawler,” the robot reported to itself. “Elimination of mutant imminent.” The Sentinel pulled Nightcrawler down from the ceiling and, as his fingers and toes were forcibly tom from their gravity-defying holds on the ceiling, the tortured X-Man escaped the only way left to him.
BAMF!
With a flourish of smoke and brimstone, he teleported away from the mock Abomination’s excruciating grasp. A split-second later, he arrived in the darkened hallway, gasping for breath. All this teleporting, on top of the shock induced by his broken ankle, left him weak and exhausted. Ordinarily, I’d report to the medlab, he thought, biting down on his lip to keep from yelping in pain, but that’s probably not the best idea at the moment, considering that I just left an annoyed and artificial Abomination there.