Shadow of the Past Read online

  Oh, yes, Xavier, the voice thundered painfully in his skull. Fight me. Cling to your thin, sickly hopes... so I can crush your soul the way I intend to crush your feeble body.

  Sensing a movement behind him, the professor used his arms to turn himself around. His eyes narrowed as he saw what was speeding towards him. Standing upright, propelled by his ionic-energy powers, came the crimson-garbed figure of Lucifer.

  It wasn't the simulacrum, either-not this time. It was the Quistalian himself. Even from a distance, Xavier could see the hatred blazing in his enemy's eyes, the rage twisting his thin, cruel lips.

  Lucifer wasn't coming to talk. Of that much, the professor was certain. He knew as sure as he was breathing liquid that there would be considerable misery in his immediate future.

  Xavier couldn't deflect the Quistalian's attack-not with his telepathic abilities muted by the Nameless Dimension. However, he could still erect a shell around the deepest part of his consciousness and try to hide his psyche inside it.

  His body would take a beating. There was nothing he could do about that. But he could protect his sanity and that was more important. Even in a diminished state, the mutant's mind was his greatest asset. To lose that would be to lose everything.

  Lucifer slowed as he came nearer, his purple cape billow-

  ing majestically about him, his posture that of the hunter that has cornered his prey. Finally, the alien stopped altogether and hovered in front of Xavier.

  You don't look happy to see me, Lucifer told him. I was hoping for a warmer greeting from such an old friend.

  The Quistalian wasted no more of his strength on telepathic communication. Instead, he unleashed a barrage of brilliant, white energy bolts. They struck Xavier with triphammer force, sending him tumbling end over end through the thick liquid atmosphere.

  Then, before the professor could catch his breath, his adversary hit him again. And again.

  Lucifer toyed with him as a cat might toy with a mouse, swatting at him and sending him pinwheeling away so he could pursue him and catch him all over again. And while the alien blasted his body, his psionic attacks pounded Xavier's mental defenses.

  All the professor could do was roll with the blows, trying his best to disassociate himself from the pain and the suffering and the humiliation. He continued to focus his energies on one goal and one goal oniy-to maintain the shell that kept his mind from serious harm.

  Of course, complete non-resistance would have made it clear to the Quistalian that Xavier was up to something. So every so often, the professor lashed out with his fists or launched a halfhearted psionic counterattack, making it appear that he was concentrating all his power on the strug-gle-and that it just wasn't enough to make a difference.

  Xavier hoped fervently that Lucifer would eventually have his fill of revenge or simply grow tired of battering him. After all, as tough as he had made himself, even he couldn't endure such punishment indefinitely.

  But to his chagrin, the alien wasn't done with him-not by a long shot. Though Lucifer stopped walloping him with his ionic energy bolts, he continued to assault the mutant with his fists.

  Through his pain-clouded vision, Xavier could see the sadistic glint of pleasure in the eyes of his helmeted tormentor. With every cruel, damaging blow that he brought down on the professor, the Quistaiian's face beamed with evil delight.

  The thick liquid environment did little to diminish the speed and impact of Lucifer's blows. His fists flew at the professor with bone-crushing force, bloodying the mutant's mouth and nose, raising bruise after bruise and welt after welt.

  Finally, panting from his exertions, his eyes shining with the knowledge that he had brought Xavier to the brink of unconsciousness, the alien ended his attack. With a sigh, he allowed himself to float back a little and observe the results of his handiwork.

  “You cannot imagine how long I have dreamed of this," Lucifer rasped, his cape undulating behind him. "To see you flail helplessly, to hear your mind scream in pain ... it is like a symphony to me."

  The professor didn't say anything. He couldn't. He was too close to unconsciousness to come up with anything intelligible.

  Lucifer smiled at his silence. “You cannot appreciate what I'm saying, can you? But you will learn, Xavier. Oh, how you will learn! And the time I spent imprisoned here will be as the smallest fraction of the eternity I have planned for you. But that is not all..."

  As he spoke, the alien began to construct a cage of ionic energy around the professor. Having allowed himself to be battered so soundly, Xavier was only dimly aware of the glitter-

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  ing strands of force that wrapped themselves around him, binding his arms to his sides, encircling his torso and tightening around his neck. Before they were done, they had forced his chin to tilt up at an awkward and uncomfortable angle.

  "Unlike me," Lucifer went on, "you won't even have freedom of movement You'll remain immobilized by my force fields, your arms every bit as helpless as your legs. While I was free to search for a means of escape, you will be denied that luxury." He sneered in triumph. "You are mine, Terran ... finally and irrevocably mine!"

  With that, the Quistalian began to laugh-an hysterical laughter that chilled Xavier to his soul. The professor was more certain now than ever that the Quistalian's long imprisonment in this realm of nothingness had indeed driven him mad.

  "Alas," said Lucifer, “I will not be sharing this ocean of hell with you much longer. You see, the transportation device I used to bring you here can reverse its effects. It can also transport someone out again-though not as it is presently put together."

  Of course, Xavier thought. Otherwise, the alien would already have had his ionic-powered agents return him to his original reality.

  "The device needs to undergo a significant alteration," Lucifer explained. "A retrofit, if you will. Fortunately, all the requisite components are already present on Earth, stored in three different abandoned but still functional Quistalian facilities."

  The professor had always suspected that some of the aliens' sites had remained hidden. Now his suspicions were confirmed.

  “On the other hand," said Lucifer, "my drones aren't up to

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  the task of retrieving these parts. They have tried, of course, but they are primitive beings without independent thought or intelligence, useful only for the simplest tasks... accosting motorists on the highway, for instance. But you already know that, don't you?"

  Xavier didn't utter a word in response. He kept his mind blank, his eyes unfocused. He would let the alien believe he was still reeling from the beating he had absorbed.

  "However,” Lucifer noted, pointing a gloved finger at his prisoner, ‘‘your doppelganger is another matter entirely. As I told you, it has been programmed with your thoughts, your memories. It is therefore capable of independent thought and action ... the kind of thought and action that can obtain for me the components I need.”

  He pantomimed the action of a puppeteer with his hand. "I pull the doppelganger's strings, like so ... and it, in turn, pulls the strings of your precious, fawning X-Men!"

  His willpower at an ebb, Xavier couldn't help but respond to that bit of news. His eyes widened ... and his enemy barked out a laugh.

  "Yes,” he observed, "you understand now ... don't you, my friend? Your X-Men are as much to blame for my fate as you are. Surely I cannot leave them out of my plans!"

  Indeed, the professor was beginning to see where Lucifer was going with his scheme. Still, he allowed the alien to articulate it.

  "And what could be sweeter," Lucifer asked, "than to make my old enemies the means by which I free myself? What could be more fitting than to have them obtain the components I require? Just one thing, Xavier... the knowledge that you will be looking on all the
while, gazing through the dimensional barrier but helpless to interfere with my plan."

  The mutant bit back a curse. No, he told himself, don't. Don't give your enemy the satisfaction.

  "I can see you've already begun dwelling on what I've told you," the Quistalian observed gleefully. “Good. That is just as I had hoped. After all, watching your X-Men risk their lives to liberate me ... only to see me destroy them as soon as I leave this place .. .should be even more of a torment than anything I have inflicted so far.

  “But as a bonus," he said, “as an added pleasure, they will be acting under the direction of a being they believe to be their beloved leader—a being with your countenance."

  Lucifer moved closer to Xavier, so they were almost face to face. “And that," he noted in a honey-sweet voice, "is an irony you will no doubt remember the rest of your days."

  The alien patted the professor's swollen cheek with mock affection. "Enjoy the show, my old friend. I know i will. I go now to a place where I can concentrate, focus my mental energies—so I can destroy everything you hold dear."

  Then he turned and moved away, leaving a gossamer trail of ionic energy in his wake. Little by little, he was swallowed by distance until Xavier lost sight of him altogether.

  Taking a breath of his liquid environment, the professor sagged against his shimmering bonds. He was exhausted, even more from the effort of maintaining his psychic shields than from the physical abuse he had suffered.

  He needed a moment, just a moment, to drop his guard and rest. A second or two to gather his strength. Then he would try to break the restraints in which Lucifer had left him.

  But to have a chance of success, Xavier had to concentrate all his strength on the task. That meant he had to drop the protective barriers he had erected around his psyche minutes earlier, forcing his innermost self to relive everything he had suffered at Lucifer's hands.

  He didn't hesitate. After all, what choice did he have?

  Suddenly, the pain overwhelmed him. It was like a poisonous, red wave, crushing him, making his nerve endings quiver with accumulated trauma. Under that piercing, wrenching onslaught, one of the most disciplined individuals born on Earth moaned in agony.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it-because in the professor's dazed and weakened state, he accidentally let down one barrier too many. He dropped the barricade he had put up around the worst suffering he had ever known, the torment he lived with every day...

  The pain of his crushed and ruined spine.

  For years, he had held that agony at bay through sheer force of will. But now, clumsily, he exposed himself to it, and the electric fury of it nearly caused him to spiral into darkness.

  Somehow, Xavier managed to fight it back. Somehow, using reserves of strength he didn't know he possessed, he forced the mind-numbing misery back down into the depths of his subconscious.

  Then, gasping, he applied every bit of his flagging concentration in an effort to rebuild his defenses. Make them high and strong, he told himself. Seal the pain where it can no longer hurt you. Take back your body and your mind from the unspeakable agony.

  Slowly, little by little, the tides of suffering ebbed and receded, until at last all that was left was a dull residual ache. Only then could the professor turn his thoughts back to Lucifer, to attempting to break the bonds the alien had created.

  Applying all the strength in his arms, he tried to push out-to stretch the ionic energy bands beyond their breaking point. But they wouldn't budge.

  A second time, he pushed out with his elbows, straining his physical capabilities to the limit. And a second time, the bonds resisted him.

  Xavier sighed with frustration. Clearly, he would have to find another way to free himself. But that could wait. For now, he had to focus all his energies on sabotaging Lucifer’s scheme.

  It wouldn't be easy. He knew that. His adversary had had a long time to plan his escape ... to plot out his vengeance in exacting detail. The professor had a good deal less time at his disposal-a day, maybe two at the outside, depending on how quickly Lucifer's doppelganger worked.

  But defeat was never something Charles Xavier had embraced eagerly. He wouldn't begin to do so now.

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  he duplicate Professor Xavier-who all too recently had been an ambient cloud of ionic particles-sat comfortably in his large, handsome study, and reflected on everything he knew about the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning.

  The real Professor X had created the institution in New York's Westchester County, in the town of Salem Center, years earlier. To the casual observer, the hoary gray compound appeared to be nothing more than a private academy dedicated to children with exceptional abilities. Indeed, it was a school; but what made the students exceptional was something other than their intelligence.

  For this unassuming mansion, set on several acres of rolling, wooded hills, was also the haven and headquarters of the uncanny X-Men, Earth's first team of mutant Super Heroes.

  Years before, Xavier had initiated the work of seeking out and training certain youngsters—men and women born with extraordinary powers as a result of unexpected quirks in their genetic codes.

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  In short, mutants.

  The professor had known from the beginning that he wouldn't be able to identify them all. However, he had vowed to find and work with as many of them as he possibly could. His goal was to sequester young mutants and protect them from the rest of humanity, whose fear of their kind was inexorably turning into a conflagration.

  The professor had already encountered mutants who had come of age under a shadow of fear and suspicion-a shadow that had cast a permanent darkness over their lives, embittering them beyond redemption. These individuals felt that their unique powers and abilities placed them a level above humanity, even though that same humanity loathed them and held them in contempt.

  Rather than try to prove themselves worthy of respect and acceptance, they turned to evil and the conquest of their fellow human beings. Xavier couldn't do anything for them any longer. But for those still coming to grips with the world, he had much to offer.

  He gave them a direction. He held out the promise of camaraderie and acceptance... of accomplishment. But most of all, he gave these frightened, young mutants peace of mind.

  Over the years, Professor X had schooled a great many of them. In time, they became members of his X-Men. They formed teams, split and reunited in new configurations. However, no group would ever be as close to his heart as the first one he had assembled.

  Their names still struck a remarkably powerful chord in Xavier's consciousness, both individually and together. Scott Summers. Jean Grey. Warren Worthington III. Hank McCoy. Bobby Drake. But he thought of them by other designations

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  as well—the names to which they referred when they were in combat...

  Cyclops.

  Marvel Girl.

  Angel.

  Beast.

  Iceman.

  Xavier and his five original charges had been together, off and on, for several years. It was a long enough time for the older man to consider the quintet his family.

  And the stately old mansion that housed the X-Men? It was as deceiving as the people who lived inside it.

  After inheriting the building and the land on which it sat, the professor had seen the entire structure gutted and refurbished to his own specifications. It had been transformed into a high-tech fortress equipped with state of the art reconnaissance and defensive systems, with several of its rooms dedicated to highly specialized purposes.

  Of course, a casual visitor to the Institute would see nothing but ordinary classrooms and living quarters. It was only by looking beyond the carefully constructed facade that one might discover such places as the subterranean Danger Room-a training facility capable of generating an almost unlimited array of holographic environments, each with its own unique collection of compu
ter-programmed obstacles and challenges.

  Of most interest to the ionic-energy doppelganger was the sophisticated device known as Cerebro, a highly intelligent network capable of detecting the psychic emanations of other mutants. But he was also intrigued by the mansion's extraterrestrial energy battery—the gift of a distant species known as the Shi'ar-which had been installed some time ago to guarantee Xavier an uninterrupted supply of power.

  Naturally, few people were ever allowed to see beyond the facade. Only those mutants who lived and worked there were privy to the school's secrets. Bobby Drake, for instance. And Hank McCoy. And of course, Professor Charles Xavier himself.

  Or in this case, his duplicate.

  Henry McCoy, known to the civilized world as Beast, pushed aside his dangling laser beam projector, removed his protective goggles and took a closer look at his handiwork.

  The mutant was pleased-and justifiably so. The centimeter-long titanium component lying on the dark, stone-topped table in front of him appeared to be precisely in line with his design specifications.

  "And they said nothing?" he asked, his furry blue brow bunched in concentration on the component.

  “Not a word," Bobby said, removing his goggles as well. He was sitting on the opposite side of the table, peering at his friend over a landscape of miniaturized power-transfer parts.

  "You're certain?" Hank pressed, still hunkered over the component and inspecting it for flaws.

  "It's just the way I told you," said Bobby. “They showed up out of nowhere and trashed the van. Then they whipped our butts but good. And while we were unconscious, they disappeared."

  Satisfied that the component was all it needed to be, Hank glanced at his companion and pushed his glasses up his nose. "Without taking a thing? Not even a stick of chewing gum?"

  "That's right,” Bobby confirmed.

  Hank grunted. "Sorry to make you repeat this all over again. The problem is it makes no sense."