Shadow of the Past Read online

  Then it hit Bobby that he had gotten to his feet too quickly. Still dazed from the impact of the energy blast, his knees wobbled like jello in an earthquake

  Fighting the vertigo, he staggered around the van. He expected to find the worst on the other side.

  Instead, he found Professor X sitting calmly in the driver's side doorway of the vehicle. The older man looked up at him, his temple bruised slightly but otherwise in good shape.

  'Tm fine, Bobby," Xavier reassured him, answering his unspoken question. “You, however,” he said with concern in his voice, “are looking somewhat the worse for wear.”

  The younger man touched a forefinger to the point of his brow, where a throbbing pain had developed. His fingertip came away wet with blood. “I guess I am,” he conceded.

  "No internal injuries, I trust?" asked the professor.

  "Just some bruises, I think."

  "I'm relieved to hear that."

  Bobby eyed his mentor with relief. "I thought for sure I was going to find you gone, sir... or worse." He looked up and down the moonlit ribbon of asphalt highway. "What happened? Where did they go?"

  Xavier shook his head. “I regret to say I don’t know. I was

  rendered unconscious by a force blast a few seconds after you were. When I awoke, I was still here... and our assailants had disappeared."

  The younger man puzzled over it for a moment, but couldn't come up with a plausible explanation. “It's just weird,” he said at last. "It seems like a lot of trouble for someone to go to just to trash our van and give us a couple of headaches."

  “I am compelled to agree,” the professor replied. "Unfortunately, I was unable to pick up any thoughts or clues from them telepathically, so I cannot answer as to their motive. Unless they return and reveal it to us, we may never know what it was."

  Bobby smiied humorlessly. "No thanks, sir,” he said. “I'd rather live with the mystery than have to deal with those guys again.”

  "Indeed," said Xavier. "Let's hope we have seen the last of those two." He craned his neck to get a look at the crumpled front end of the van. "I must assume," he said dryly, "that our vehicle is no longer roadworthy."

  The younger man found himself chuckling at the comment despite his injury. "You can say that again, sir."

  He leaned inside past the professor and rooted around on the floor until he found his suit jacket. Then he pulled his cell phone from an inside pocket and flipped it open.

  "Don't worry, sir,” Bobby said as he dialed the number of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. "I'll just call home and one of the guys will come pick us up."

  "Thank you,” the professor said with a nod. Suddenly, he looked very weary. "Truthfully, I would like nothing better than to put this day behind me."

  The younger man grunted. “That makes two of us.“

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  Abruptly, he heard a voice on the other end of the phone. "Hello?"

  Bobby Drake smiled ruefully at the sound of his teammate's voice. "Hank? It's me."

  "Bobby?" came the cultured reply. “I was starting to get worried. Is everything all right?"

  The mutant glanced at the van. "That all depends."

  "On what?" asked Hank.

  "On how you like rental cars," Bobby told him.

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  Jobby... ?"

  Professor X heard the name spoken out loud. The voice behind it was thin and weak but strangely familiar. It took him a moment to realize that the voice was his own.

  With an effort, he opened his eyes-but he didn’t see anything. He was lying in darkness on a hard, flat surface, a series of confining metal bands stretched taut across his chest, his arms and his legs.

  “Bobby?" Xavier whispered again.

  This time, he sent out telepathic signals in search of the younger man's consciousness. However, Bobby was nowhere to be found. That meant he was either still unconscious, outside the range of the professor's summons or—

  No, he thought forcefully. I won't contemplate that last possibility. At least, not yet.

  Clearly, something was wrong. And just as clearly, it had something to do with the silver-suited, super-powered figures who had attacked Xavier and his young companion.

  He remembered that he had been unable to draw a tele-

  pathic bead on either of their assailants. He remembered how helpless he had felt, how utterly, gallingly inept. And he remembered the brilliant, bone-rattling impact of his adversary's energy attack.

  More than likely, it was that enemy who had brought him here-wherever here was. The professor expanded his telepathic senses to see if he could find a clue as to his surroundings. It was no use.

  The place was devoid of sound as well as light. There was no hint of movement, no stray thought that Xavier could sift from his environment. Just the cold, hard reality of his bonds and the sharp tang of metal on the chill, climate controlled air.

  Obviously, he was a prisoner. But whose prisoner? Who was the guiding force behind the silver-suits?

  Surely, a voice hissed softly in the professor's mind, you've not forgotten your old friend.

  Xavier's heart began to beat faster beneath his metal restraints. A telepath, he thought. It made sense, given that the silver-clad supermen who had attacked him had no volition of their own. A telepath could have directed them without the use of any mind-enhancing technology.

  But such a feat would have taken an adept of considerable skill and experience. And any foe that powerful could easily read the professor's thoughts if he left them unshielded.

  Quickly, Xavier put up screens against the intrusion. He envisioned a massive stone wall surrounding his mind to keep his mysterious adversary from gaining further access to it.

  A moment later, he could feel the ticklish brush of a mental probe testing his barrier. Really, the voice slithered chillingly through his brain, if I have power enough to make

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  a prisoner of you, your little mental wall will hardly prove an obstacle.

  The only emotion the professor sensed in his enemy was amusement. As a result, he was unprepared for the mind-splintering agony that smashed at his head, pounding his mental barrier like a sledgehammer.

  Xavier writhed in pain, forced to bite his lip to keep from screaming. Clearly, he realized, he was still debilitated from the beating he had taken on the road. Rather than endure another assault, he dropped his barrier for the moment.

  There, the voice said. That's much better. I do so prefer unrestricted access to your mind. A soft chuckle whispered through the throbbing ache in the mutant's brain. Especially here and now. Your confusion, your discomfort... they're quite delicious, you know.

  "Who—?'' Xavier croaked through parched, swollen lips. "Who are you? What do you want?"

  I told you, came the reply. I am an old friend.

  "That's a relief," the professor said dryly, speaking out loud so as to minimize his enemy's access to his mind, "imagine the trouble I would be in if you were an enemy."

  Laughter rumbled through his head. Yes, please do imagine that, the voice told him. Ponder the implications of being physically and psychically helpless in the clutches of one who hates you. Think what such an individual might do to you... the pain he might inflict. The damage he might do to you and those close to you.

  Xavier had already entertained such thoughts, but he quickly tamped them down into the deepest recesses of his subconscious. The last thing he could afford now was to give his enemy, whoever he might be, ammunition to use against

  him. And at the moment, fear was the greatest weapon his tormentor had in his arsenal.

  He couldn't erect another telepathic firewall—his adversary would only detect it and attempt to batter it down again. Still, the professor had to maintain some control over his thoughts and emotions. And he had to do this without the one who had invaded his brain realizing he was holding something in reserve.

  “Then let's get on with it," Xavier retorted with feig
ned impatience. “If you know me as well as you claim, you know also that I have no patience for mind games."

  Ah, but it is all mind games between us, the voice said with growing heat. It always has been and it always will be.

  The professor felt something revealing then-a telepathic twitch, a tiny flare of anger. It was the slip he had been waiting for, the stray emotion that marked the intruder as surely as if he had signed his name on the darkness in phosphorescent characters.

  Xavier smiled grimly to himself. So that was who it was.

  I thought by now you would have given up on the idea of revenge, he shot at his captor. After all, you haven't proven very adept at it.

  Another flare of anger, bigger than the one before it. Very good, the voice snapped harshly in the professor's head, sending pinpoint needles of pain through his forebrain. I forgot that I must never underestimate you, Terran, not even for the briefest of moments.

  Suddenly, the room was awash with light. Xavier squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head from the source of it. Then he opened his eyes slowly, allowing them to adjust to the brightness.

  He was in a large room, filled from floor to ceiling with dark, oily-looking, angular machines whose purpose and

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  function he could only guess at. However, the mutant knew one thing with absolute certainty, even before his vision cleared enough to inspect the devices more closely... they were not of earthly origin.

  Rather, they were from a distant world called Quistalium. But that came as no surprise, because so did the professor's captor... the malevolent arch-schemer known on Earth as Lucifer.

  Xavier caught a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye. Craning his neck, he got a better view of it. A moment later, a tall, powerful-looking figure loomed beside the mutant and gazed down at him.

  Lucifer wore a crimson tunic and loose-fitting pants of the same color, cinched at the waist by a purple sash. His gloves, boots and cloak were purple as well, as was the helmet that covered most of his face. Only his eyes, pale biue and cold as ice, and his mouth, twisted into a snarl over a black slash of goatee, were visible.

  But how could he be standing there? Professor X wondered. Hadn't his own people killed him, disappointed in his failures?

  “I thought you were dead," he said.

  Lucifer's mouth quirked into a sneer. “As one of you Ter-rans once said, news of my death was greatly exaggerated."

  Suddenly, Xavier realized that something else had been exaggerated. After all, his enemy's footsteps hadn’t made any sound when he approached. "You're a simulacrum," he concluded. “A hologram."

  Lucifer's eyes glinted cruelly. "Right again," he responded. "But then, you have always been a difficult man to deceive."

  Many years earlier, when Xavier was a young man in search of his destiny, he had discovered Lucifer's handiwork in a remote walled village in Tibet. An advance agent for his species of space conquerors, the Quistalian had brought the local populace under his control and was using the town as his base of operations.

  Xavier led a revolt against Lucifer, throwing a wrench into the alien's plans. However, he paid for his presumptuousness when Lucifer dropped an immense stone slab on him-crushing his spine and crippling him from the waist down.

  Even now, the professor could feel the terrible, sudden weight of the stone, heavier by far than anything he might have imagined. And he could feel the even greater weight of pain and sorrow as he was struck by the magnitude of his loss____

  "Yes," said Lucifer-a voice in his head again. "I remember it vividly. You should have seen the look on your face, Xavier... the comical, wide-eyed expression of shock ... of horror____"

  The professor had to quell his own rising storm of anger. “Then you remember also," he said evenly, “that what happened to my legs didn't stop me. If anything, it made me more determined to stop you."

  Lucifer's simulacrum scowled. “You and your X-Men, you mean."

  Xavier nodded. "My X-Men.”

  In fact, one of the reasons he had brought his group of young mutants together was to thwart the Quistalian's next move. But he had to wait for a number of years.

  Then Lucifer brought a terrifying array of alien technology against Xavier's original task force-five young mutants code-named Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel and Iceman. However, the teenagers proved themselves more than a

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  match for the Quistalian. Like their mentor before them, they defused his plans to enslave the human race.

  In punishment for his failure, Lucifer was banished by his masters to the Nameless Dimension, where neither time nor space existed in any recognizable form. But even then, he tried to get his revenge on Xavier—using his alien powers to manipulate various Earthmen and sometimes even imbuing them with ionic energy powers.

  Fortunately, he was beaten each time. And when the Quistalians got wind of his ill-fated efforts, they terminated him for attracting too much attention. Or so the professor had been given to believe.

  It seemed now that Lucifer had survived after all. But if he was compelled to speak through a hologram ...

  Yes, the villain told him. His voice was a bitter, hissing response in Xavier’s head. You're correct, of course. I'm still a prisoner here in the Nameless Dimension.

  Abruptly, another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “And those brutish figures in the silver suits..said the professor, “they were powered by ionic energy, weren't they? Just like all the other pawns you've manipulated over the years."

  Lucifer shook his head. “No," he replied out loud, “not like the other pawns. Those two were made entirely of ionic energy. That made them a good deai more dangerous-not to mention a lot easier to control."

  Xavier understood now why the silver-suited drones hadn’t evinced any detectable thoughts. Their master hadn’t bothered to program them with minds of their own.

  "As you can see," Lucifer breathed, his eyes narrowed to slits, “I've learned a few new tricks since we last saw each other. But then, I've had nothing but time on my hands."

  The professor saw the simulacrum's eyes blaze with shame and indignation. He knew why, too. Quistalians were conquerors by nature. The impulse to dominate was in their blood. It was difficult for one of them to accept defeat at the hands of an apparently inferior species.

  "It was you who brought me to this pass," Lucifer snarled. "My suffering and humiliation ... they are all your doing.”

  Xavier shook his head from side to side. “All I did was act to save my planet," he said reasonably. "It was no more than you would have done if our positions had been reversed."

  "No!" the simulacrum roared suddenly, its deep voice echoing from one bank of alien machines to another. Its gloved fingers coiled into fists. "Your place was not to resist, Terran! Your place was to submit-as the inhabitants of a thousand worlds submitted before you!"

  The professor sighed. He might as well have tried to teach a scorpion the philosophy of peaceful co-existence. Lucifer simply wasn't capable of embracing a non-Quistalian view of the universe.

  Unfortunately, this wasn't merely an academic exercise. In the present case, the very deadly, very hostile scorpion in question held Xavier's fate in the palm of his hand.

  "I am Lucifer," the hologram rasped, shaking with accumulated fury. “I am a Quistalian, an initiate of the great and terrible Arcana. I lived to bring honor to myself and my peo-ple-until you made a fool of me.”

  He lowered his face closer to his prisoner's, his lips pulled back from his teeth like a wolfs, his eyes cold and merciless. “I can still win honor, Xavier. I can still serve Quistalium. But first, I must escape my confinement and destroy the source of my humiliation."

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  The muscles writhed in Lucifer's jaw. It looked to Xavier as if he were in real, physical pain.

  "Only then,” the hologram insisted raggedly, "can I prostrate myself before the Supreme One and beg his mercy! Only then,” he thun
dered, shaking his fists at the machine-studded ceiling, "can my name be restored to the list of his most trusted agents!"

  It was at that moment that the professor realized the full extent of what he was dealing with. Lucifer was no longer just a powerful adversary, no longer just a tool bred to conquer other species and crush them beneath his heel. He was in the process of becoming something else now, something infinitely more treacherous.

  He was in the process of going insane.

  Nor was it difficult for Xavier to understand how it had begun. After all, the Quistalian had spent years in a place where time and space had no meaning. Was it any wonder that his grip on reality had started to slip?

  Lucifer's simulacrum straightened, walked over to a bank of machines and inspected its control panel. Then he cast a glance back over his shoulder at his captive.

  "Do me a favor," he said.

  The professor looked at him. "A favor?" he echoed warily.

  "Yes." The hologram's eyes narrowed in the oval slits of his helmet. "Remember each of my defeats at your hands. Savor each detail for me. Turn it over again and again in your mind. That way, I won’t have to look far to fuel the flames of my hatred."

  Xavier met Lucifer’s gaze, but he didn't say anything. He was too busy trying to think of a way to escape his confine-ment-because he knew now that he wouldn't survive any other way.

  “And above all else,” said the hologram, considering the machine again, "keep hope alive in your heart. After all, you beat me before. You must feel some confidence that you can do so again."

  Suddenly, he pounded his fist on the control panel, but there was no contact. After all, he was immaterial.

  "Then," Lucifer continued, his voice taut and guttural, "I can strangle that hope, little by little. I can have the pleasure of watching it die ... before I destroy you as well."

  The professor tried not to think about such things. "I'm pleased that you don't harbor a grudge," he said as evenly as he could.

  Lucifer whirled-only to smile at him like a predator picking at a corpse. "I do harbor one, yes,” the alien admitted, "indeed, it’s all that has sustained me since I was sent to the Nameless Dimension."