The Return Read online

  “Ouch!”

  Kitty staggered back, suddenly solid.

  That is not vanadium steel, she thought ruefully. No, whatever the suit was made of, it was something so dense that it sat at the outer range of her ability to phase through it.

  The migraine was just beginning to fade, her vision clearing, when Kitty saw the power claw coming back around for another swipe. Still disoriented, she just managed to duck, the arm whistling only inches overhead. In no rush to feel the sensation of phasing through that again, she rushed forward, crouched low, and slipped between the powerful legs of the combat suit and out the other side.

  The Mandroid wheeled around as Kitty danced out of reach, trying to formulate a plan. She could continue to phase through its laser bolts indefinitely, but whenever the Mandroid closed the distance between them she was going to run the risk of another kick to the head.

  I’ll be lucky to handle another one or two phases through that muck, at best. And that’s if I only have to contend with an arm or leg. If I have to phase through the bulk of the suit, I’ll probably end up unconscious on the ground in seconds.

  Her only hope was to knock the suit out of commission with her next phase. Unless she was extraordinarily unlucky, the electronics driving the Mandroid would be vulnerable to her ability to disrupt any electrical system she phased through. Her phased molecules acted like a miniature, localized electromagnetic pulse, and if she could get a hand into the suit’s power source, she could immobilize it.

  The problem was that the suit’s power source was bound to be in some protected area, somewhere inside the chest carapace, and she was likely to have only one shot at this.

  Sure, she thought, lips pursed. A piece of cake.

  Kitty tried to think back and remember the schematics she’d studied. The models the X-Men faced years ago had been Stark Industries Mark I and Mark II Man-droids. The one she was facing now was a different design entirely, but seemed to be built on the same basic principles.

  Engineers usually don’t reinvent the wheel. It’s easier to evolve a design from one model to the next. That’s why cars almost always have their engine in the front and the trunk in the back. If a design works, why change it? So if this one is built on the same lines as the earlier model Mandroids, its power supply is probably in the same place. Right?

  Unless, of course, Kitty realized with a grimace, the engineer had decided to get creative. There was always the chance that this was the Volkswagen Beetle of Mandroids, with its power supply squirreled away somewhere screwy, and nothing but a roomy storage space where the power supply logically should be.

  So which was it? Simply this year’s model, or a new design entirely? If the former, Kitty’s play would work. If the latter, well...

  I hope my friends remember me fondly.

  Kitty crouched low, and waited until the Mandroid lunged at her. At the last possible moment she leapt into the air, legs out to either side, and planted her hands palms down on the Mandroid’s forearm, using it like a pommel horse and going into a handstand. Kitty breathed a silent prayer as the Mandroid responded just as expected, swinging its claw upward. Kitty folded her arms for a brief instant, like springs soaking up kinetic energy, and then pushed off, letting the combined momentum carry her upward, doing a tuck and roll in midair that would make Stevie Hunter proud and landing gracelessly on the Mandroid’s broad shoulders.

  “Here goes nothing,” Kitty said, and thrust her phased arm straight down into the back of the Mandroid carapace.

  With a sputtering sound and a sudden smell of ozone the Mandroid shuddered once and then went still as a statue.

  A blinding headache lancing through her skull, Kitty was barely able to remain phased long enough to pull her arm back out of the Mandroid before going solid, and then slipping unceremoniously down to the ground. She managed to keep her feet beneath her, just barely, and rubbed the bridge of her nose, waiting for the spots in front of her eyes to fade and the ice pick in her frontal lobe to dissipate.

  “Ouch,” Kitty said, rubbing her temples. “I’m not in a hurry to try that again.”

  The only answer was a deep, reverberating thud. Then another, and another, and another. Sounding like footsteps, but impossibly loud, and getting louder.

  Kitty turned, and looked up 70th Street toward Madison Avenue.

  A trio of Sentinels were emerging from the direction of Central Park Purple and gray human-shaped robots, designed to hunt and eradicate the “mutant menace,” stood a dozen stories tall, yellow eyes glaring in their expressionless faces, arms outstretched menacingly.

  From the immobile mouth on the face of the lead Sentinel issued a strange, inhuman voice.

  "Mutant, you are advised to surrender or face immediate termination. This is your only warning.”

  “Aw, come on, Doug!” Kitty yelled, hands on her hips. “Are you kidding me? Why not just toss in Galac-tus, too, and complete the set?”

  The Sentinels were less than half a block away, their hands raised, palms forward, weapons no doubt trained on Kitty and ready to extinguish her life.

  And then everything was gone.

  All of it, the city, the street, the buildings, the Sentinels. Only Kitty remained, standing in an immense, featureless room of glittering steel. Where the Mandroid had stood was now an oversized humaniform practice dummy of the same featureless steel as the surrounding walls, ceiling, and floor, its holographic cloak now disabled.

  Through the window of reinforced transparent aluminum, set high on the wall overhead, Kitty could see the smirking face of Doug Ramsey in the control room.

  “Aw, come on, Pryde. Don’t feel up to a little challenge?”

  Kitty shook her head and stepped forward, lifting her foot as though to put it on a step. The fact that there was no stairway there, just empty air, didn’t stop her from slowly ascending, air-walking gradually higher, step by step. It was another interesting side effect of her phasing abilities, one that had taken a while to get the hang of. She often felt like Wile E. Coyote from the Road Runner cartoons when air-walking, and preferred to keep from looking down, for fear that the sudden discovery that there was nothing beneath her but empty air might send her falling to the ground far below.

  “Doug, have I ever told you about the first time I was in the Danger Room?”

  His voice echoed through the speakers hidden in the walls around her, but the shake of his head was a slight, understated motion. “No, I don’t think so. Why?” “Well, it was just the standard first-timer test, just like all the New Mutants had to do on their first days— present company excluded. All I had to do was walk from one side of the room to the other. I don’t think I’d ever been so scared in my life, even after being kidnapped by the Hellfire Club and all of that crazy. So I squeezed my eyes shut and just put one foot in front of the other. And you know what happened?”

  Kitty was now only a few steps away from the control room, her eyes fixed on her destination, and not on the hard steel floor dozens of feet below.

  “No, what?” Doug said.

  “Nothing,” Kitty answered with a smile. “I just kept walking. I didn’t even realize I was phasing through tentacles, and projectiles, and force beams, and all kinds of nastiness Professor Xavier had cooked up.”

  Kitty was now in arm’s reach of the control room window. She stepped through, feeling the slightest whisper on her exposed skin as her molecules phased through those of the transparent aluminum.

  “Of course,” Kitty added with a sigh, “then I was knocked unconscious by a psionic bolt, and spent the next few hours in a coma in someone else’s body while an alternate version of me from the future of a parallel time line used mine to try to stop World War III, but that’s a whole different story.”

  “Heck” Doug said, leaning back and lacing his fingers behind his head, feet propped up on the Danger Room’s control panel. “I’d be lucky just to make it through the front door.”

  “Yeah,” Kitty said, dropping into the chair be
side him wearily. “I guess the ability to translate any language and talk to computers isn’t all that handy when dealing with evil mutants or giant robots.”

  “I’ll just have to get by on my good looks.” Doug smiled.

  “Well, good luck with that.” Kitty punched him lightly in the arm. “I wouldn’t count on the next mutant you meet succumbing to your boyish charms, though.” “Um, excuse me?” came a cultured voice from behind them.

  Kitty looked to see a stunning woman with purple hair standing in the entrance to the control room. It was

  Betsy Braddock former British fashion model, telepath, and newcomer to the Xavier mansion.

  “On the other hand,” Kitty said in a low voice, shooting Doug a sly look

  “B-Betsy,” Doug said, jumping awkwardly to his feet. “What . . . what can I . . . ?” He stopped, and glanced at Kitty nervously. “You didn’t just . . .” He looked back to Betsy. “Did you?”

  Betsy regarded Doug for a moment, a slight smile on her full lips, and shook her head. “I’m certain I didn’t, whatever it was.”

  “What can we do for you, Betsy, is what the boy wonder here is trying to say,” Kitty said dryly.

  “Yes, well, it appears that someone is waiting at the front door. Or so it would appear on the monitors in the corridor. I’d have gone and answered it myself but...” A slight blush rose on Betsy’s cheeks. “But to be perfectly frank I couldn’t find my way back to the lift, and I’ve been stuck in this bloody subbasement all morning!”

  “No problem,” Kitty said, standing. “That’ll probably be Scott at the door, and I need to talk to him myself anyway.” She strode toward the door, but paused as she came abreast of Betsy and glanced back at Doug. “Hey, Ramsey, why don’t you give Ms. Braddock a full tour of the mansion. I’m sure she’d appreciate the attention.” As Kitty walked out, Doug gave Betsy a sheepish grin, looking like a kid at a middle school dance trying to work up the courage to approach a girl.

  I don’t know who to pity more, Kitty thought, heading up the corridor toward the elevator. Him or her.

  2

  Scott Summers stood at the front door of the Xavier mansion, scowling, eyes narrowed behind the thick ruby quartz lenses of his glasses. He felt uncomfortably like an outsider, like a door-to-door salesman, not like someone who’d lived his entire adult life and almost half his childhood inside these walls. It’d only been a short time since he’d left, but it already seemed a lifetime ago.

  Scott remembered the first time he stood on this doorstep, the day that Charles Xavier had invited him to be the first X-Man, and given him the code name Cyclops. It sometimes felt as though he’d spent his every waking moment these last years wearing that uniform, answering to that name. And now who was he? This would be the first time since he was a teenager that he’d be entering the mansion as anything but the leader of the X-Men.

  So he wasn’t an X-Man anymore. What of it? He and the others, the founders—Hank, Bobby, Warren, and Jean—-they had lives of their own these days, and plans that kept them busy in Manhattan and elsewhere. Scott tried not to look back, tried to put his past behind him.

  Besides, in a very real sense, the mansion wasn’t the place he remembered. Not anymore.

  But when he’d gotten Kitty’s call, he knew he couldn’t refuse. Even though the X-Men weren’t his team anymore, and the mansion not his home, he would always answer when they called.

  So why weren’t they answering the door?

  As if in response, the knob turned, and the door swung open. Kitty Pryde, face flushed and hair in disarray, stood on the other side.

  “I thought it’d be you!” Kitty said, breathless. She tilted her head to one side, looking at him quizzically. “Why didn’t you just come in?”

  Scott just held up his key, his eyebrow raised. “You changed the locks?”

  Kitty smiled, somewhat sheepishly. “Ah. Well, don’t take it personally. It was Tom Corsi’s idea, to cycle all the security systems once a month. With the number of doppelgangers and alien shape-shifters and mind-controlled zombies we get around here, we figured it couldn’t hurt to try.”

  Scott realized that the long silence that followed suggested that Kitty was waiting for some kind of response. He nodded, and when that failed to get the desired reaction, gestured toward the door. “Can I come in?” “Oh,” Kitty said, eyes widening. She stepped to one side, and added apologetically, “Of course, sorry about that.”

  When Scott was through, Kitty closed the door behind him, then set off across the foyer toward the headmaster’s office.

  Scott remembered that once upon a time he’d kidded himself that Xavier might one day hand the school down to him, if circumstances ever demanded. But when the time came, and Xavier chose a successor, Scott wasn’t it. Really, if he was honest with himself that was probably the biggest reason that Scott had left in the first place. They were someone else’s X-Men now.

  “Anyway,” Kitty was saying, “like I said on the phone, just about everybody is still on their way back from visiting Moira and Sean on Muir Island. Logan’s somewhere around here, and all of the New Mutants are all out west visiting Danielle Moonstar’s parents. All except Doug Ramsey, of course, who’s busy following Betsy Braddock around like a lovesick puppy. It’s kind of cute, in a sickeningly icky sort of way.”

  “You said there was some kind of message?” Scott said impatiently.

  “Right, the message,” Kitty said. “It came in when I was in the shower, and Logan was taking a nap, so the machine picked it up.”

  “A nap?” Scott smirked.

  “So sue me, Cyke,” Logan said, coming around the comer, his flannel shirt open to the waist, a beer in one hand and an unlit cigar in the other. “I gotta get my beauty sleep, don’t I?”

  “Logan,” Scott said simply by way of greeting. Taking a long slug of his beer, Logan shouldered past Scott and into the headmaster’s office. He collapsed unceremoniously into the leather swivel chair, propping his feet up on the desk

  “Here it is,” Kitty said, and punched the replay button on the answering machine.

  The voice message was fragmentary, and laced with static, but the breathless voice was immediately recognizable. She was clearly under stress, but not yet panicking.

  “Scott? Or . . . it’s Lee. We’re here . . . triangle . . . There’s some . . . UFO . . . and these . . . others . . . coming closer ... Help!!”

  “Lee.” Scott closed his eyes behind his ruby quartz glasses, his hands curled into fists at his sides.

  “I figure ‘Lee’ to be Magneto’s old squeeze,” Logan said casually. “But I can’t make heads or tails of the rest ofit.”

  “Scott,” Kitty said, concern written on her features. “Does that make any kind of sense to you?”

  “Yes,” Scott said, his tone grim.

  “Well, what does it mean?”

  ‘Yeah, Cyke, spill it.”

  “It means,” Scott answered, his mouth drawn into a thin line, “that I need to borrow a plane.”

  3

  A short while later, the Blackbird was halfway to Bermuda. A Lockheed RS-150 modified with Shi’ar technology, the X-Men’s private spy plane was cruising somewhere around Mach 4, and would reach the waters of the Sargasso Sea in only a matter of minutes.

  Kitty looked out the window at the sapphire blue waters racing far beneath them. Scott was beside her at the controls. Behind them, Logan sprawled across two passenger seats, his cowboy hat tilted forward, almost completely covering his eyes.

  Logan hadn’t said a word since they’d boarded, and Kitty was sure he was asleep, but then he surprised her by breaking the silence.

  “You know, Cyke, you seem awfully hot and bothered over a call from Mags’s ex-girl.” Logan reached up a single finger and tilted his cowboy hat back fractionally, looking up under his brows at the back of Scott’s head. “Am I wrong in thinking maybe the two of you had a little something on the side?”

  “Logan!” Kitty snapped, wheeling a
round in her chair.

  “No,” Scott answered, glancing back at the diminutive

  Canadian. “Logan’s right. Lee and I were... involved.” Kitty gaped at him. “When?!”

  Scott? Two-timing with Magneto's girlfriend?!

  Kitty’d met Lee Forrester only once or twice, and only at Magneto’s side. Lee had always seemed a bit shy and standoffish, though Kitty could tell there was real iron in her. She’d initially thought that she might be some kind of mutaphobe, but quickly dismissed the idea. No one with a pathological fear or hatred of mutants could be in a romantic relationship with Magneto. That would be like a white supremacist snuggling up with Malcolm X. Still, there was something about the way Lee carried herself that suggested that, while she might have been the mistress of her domain at sea, when elbow to elbow with people who shot lasers from their eyes or had claws that popped out of their knuckles, she felt a little out of her depth.

  “It was before she ever met Magneto,” Scott explained, his voice sounding far away. “It was shortly after Phoenix died on the moon. I was ...” He paused for a moment, swallowing hard. “I needed to take some time away. I roamed around for a while, and eventually ended up down in Florida. Joined the crew of a fishing boat out of Shark Bay, and got to know her captain pretty well.” “And that was Lee?” Kitty asked.

  “Sole owner and operator,” Scott said, sounding more than a little proud. “She’d turned her back on a life of ease to work for a living, instead, and I don’t think I’ve ever met a more resourceful, strong woman. Well, we got to be friends, and then maybe a little more than friends. One night Lee was washed overboard during a freak squall, and I dove in after her. We kept afloat, but only barely, and then we ended up washing ashore on a little atoll in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle.”