The Return Read online

  “What the heck... ?” the American girl named Kitty said in amazement.

  Clasping her hands behind her back, Alysande glanced over at the girl. ‘You’ll find that Her Majesty’s government is quite prepared for any eventuality, young lady. If you could content yourself with letting the professionals handle this, we’d have matters well in hand in short order.”

  “You think?” the man called Logan said, and pointed with the stub of his cigar toward the alien city.

  As the platforms reached the city itself, having crossed the mile of open water separating it from the atoll, a shimmering energy field sprang up. In the afternoon light it flickered multicolored, like a frenetic rainbow.

  The jetpack-wearing marine in the lead had very nearly reached the city himself, only lengths from the energy field.

  “Colonel?” A lieutenant, in his hands a radio connecting him to the airborne marines, looked to Alysande questioningly.

  Just then the marine slammed into the energy field, and was instantly engulfed in coruscating energy that danced over his body like lightning trapped in a bottle. •

  “Break away!” Alysande shouted, and spun around to the lieutenant with the radio. “Order them to break away, now!”

  The lieutenant immediately began relaying the orders over the radio waves in breathless tones, but it was already too late.

  The second jetpack-wearing marine had already flown too close, like Icarus brushing too near the sun, and as he attempted to veer away slammed bodily into the energy field, and was consumed by the same corns-eating energy as his companion, like an insect caught in the blue light of a bug zapper.

  The third marine, for his part, managed to change direction just before reaching the field, and jetted back toward the atoll at speed.

  “Damn,” Alysande swore under her breath, hands tightened into white-knuckled fists.

  “Weren’t your fault, Colonel,” Logan said, in all sincerity. “There was no way of knowing they’d be able to throw up a defensive shield that quick.”

  “Perhaps,” Alysande said through gritted teeth, “but my role is to anticipate and account for the unexpected, and I neither request nor desire your permission to fail in that obligation.” .

  Logan shrugged, and blew out of a cloud of cigar smoke that hung around his head like a halo. “Suit yourself.”

  “Colonel Stuart,” Scott Summers said, hurrying to her side. Alysande noticed that he’d replaced his red sunglasses with some sort of yellow wraparound visor, his eyes faint red glows behind a narrow red lens. “My people have experience dealing with these sorts of things, and with all due respect I think your men are out of their depth.”

  The third of the jetpack-wearing marines was now landing on the beach, looking shaken.

  “We are marines, Mr. Summers,” Alysande snapped back. “I think you’ll find that, land, sea, or air, we are well trained to handle whatever depths we might encounter.”

  “Excuse me? Colonel?” Raphael was approaching, coming from the direction of the helicopter transports that had carried Alysande and her men to the island. He carried in his hands a device the size of a portable computer. “I’ve just had a peek at the scanner readings your men did of the . . . individuals ... we so recently encountered.”

  “Yes?” Alysande replied impatiently. “What of it?” “Well,” Raphael said, tilting his head to one side, “there’s definitely some strange aspects of their physiology, no doubt about it, which at first guess I’d take to be surgical alterations. But in terms of genetics, well...”

  The man in the black suit trailed off “Well, spit it out, man!” Alysande barked. “Genetically,” Raphael answered, “they’re nothing more unusual than baseline Homo sapiens.” He glanced across the water at the alien city, now safely ensconced inside its dome of coruscating energy. “They’re human.” Well, of course they are, Alysande thought. They looked human, didn’t they? But then she reminded herself that humans, in her everyday experience, don’t typically fly out of the sky from parts unknown in impossibly fast spacecraft, take up residence in previously unknown nightmarish cities in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, and issue cryptic pronouncements while riding atop levitating metal platforms. Which, taken all together, suggested there might be something unusual about them being strictly human, after all.

  “Look!” Kitty shouted, pointing at the sky.

  Alysande looked up, shielding her eyes against the afternoon sun, and saw a glint of silver.

  ‘Another craft,” relayed the lieutenant with the radio gear, hand to his headphones. “The carrier group reports that it’s on an approach vector, traveling at supersonic speeds but quickly decelerating.” He listened carefully, and then added, “Trajectory suggests it just came in from high orbit.”

  Between one eyeblink and the next, the glint of silver became a large craft, easily the size of a troop carrier helicopter. Without making a sound, it stopped dead in midair directly over the city, just outside the reach of the defensive force field. Though constructed of some smooth, unmarked metal, its shape was almost organic in design, looking like an internal organ removed under dissection, or some microscopic bacterium.

  Alysande turned to her second in command, standing nearby. “Major! Tell the men that I want all safeties off, all weapons hot, but that they are to fire only on my command.”

  “Yes, sir,” the major snapped back, taking to his heels to relay the orders down the line.

  “What’s it doing up there, anyway?” Kitty asked, squinting up at the strangely shaped craft.

  As if in answer, the craft rotated slightly in midair. Then, as Alysande and the others on the beach watched, it began to unfold—that was the only word for it—to unfold, sections opening up and curling back, looking more like the petals of a blossoming flower than anything man-made.

  Without warning, from the top of the blossoming vessel, five figures emerged. They were all roughly human-shaped, but while each was as hairless as the platform riders had been, there the resemblance ended.

  “Blimey,” Alysande swore under her breath.

  They were flying under their own power, for starters. That was the first thing one noticed. And they were coming straight for them.

  As they drew nearer, more details emerged. All of them were dressed in strange, metallic formfitting clothing, but their appearances were anything but uniform. One had wings; another seemed to be covered in a sheath of green flame; another seemed to be made entirely of stone; still another had pointed ears and blue fur.

  The lead figure, a massive, heavily muscled male whose skin appeared to be made of highly reflective metal—organic steel?—hovered in midair above the atoll, addressing Alysande and the others on the beach.

  “I am Invictus Prime of the Exemplar, augmented clade, and you are hereby ordered to vacate this area.”

  “On what authority?” Alysande shouted back.

  The steel-skinned figure regarded her coolly before answering.

  “The Exemplar carry out the will of the Kh’thon Collective, former occupants and rightful owners of the planet Earth.”

  Before Alysande could voice a response, or give orders to her men, Raphael tapped her on the shoulder. He stuck the scanning device in front of her face. “Now that’s interesting,” he said, an unexpectedly jolly tone to his voice. “These new blokes? They’re mutantsl”

  10

  Scott knew the attack was coming an instant before the Exemplar exploded into motion. It came of fighting for his life on an weekly basis—if not more frequently— since he was a teenager. A life of facing down genocidal maniacs, alien invaders, evil mutants, and more had given him an almost preternatural danger sense, allowing him to anticipate an opponent’s movements, and to have a counterattack ready at a moment’s notice.

  In most instances, that meant that Scott was able to win a fight almost before it had begun.

  In this instance^ it simply meant that he got to stay alive for another few moments.

  The figure cal
ling himself Invictus Prime, the sun glinting off his steel-like skin—so much like Colossus, Scott thought—simply motioned with his hand, and the five figures hovering in midair behind him rushed forward like a wave breaking on a rocky shore.

  Scott didn’t hesitate an instant, tapping the side of his visor and widening the aperture of the ruby-quartz lens.

  His eyes exposed, a wide scarlet beam of concussive force lanced from the visor, catching the nearest of the

  Exemplar in her midriff She had wings sprouting from her back, gray and leathery like those of a bat, and long talons on her fingers.

  Scott didn’t waste time waiting to see the effects of his blast, but swung his head around and sent another beam lancing toward the male figure wreathed in a sheath of green flame. The impact of the optic blast sent the green torch tumbling backward, but before Scott could sight on another target, he was knocked off his feet by a beam of force that caught him in the chest.

  The wind knocked out of him, he struggled into a sitting position, and looked up to see the steel-skinned figure of Invictus Prime regarding him, white energy dancing at the corner of his eyes.

  “our blasts are unfocused, your aim undisciplined,” Invictus Prime said, his tone haughty. “Shall I demonstrate proper form?”

  Beams of solid white light shot from the Exemplar’s eyes, and Scott managed to roll to one side just before they blasted into the ground where he’d been, kicking up a huge cloud of sand.

  Scott scrambled to his feet, parrying with an optic blast of his own that missed Invictus Prime only by inches, and began looking for cover. He hoped the others were faring better than he.

  “Quickly now,” Alysande shouted as the last of the marines raced toward the transport. “Pick up the pace or we’ll leave you here with that lot.”

  The rotors had already been turning on the transport by the time Alysande had ordered a retreat, her marines laying down suppressing fire as they broke off in twos and threes and raced to the helicopter. Now, as the last of them climbed aboard, she motioned to the pilot, who gave a thumbs-up and prepared to take off.

  “Discretion here,” Raphael said, as Alysande strapped into the jump seat beside him, “being the better part of valor?”

  “We’ll be back,” Alysande said, keeping her tone level, “and with reinforcements, and we’ll see to this alien incursion, once and for all.”

  “If they are aliens.” Raphael’s tone was suggestive, insinuating, but Alysande refused to rise to the bait. “And what of the X-Men?”

  Alysande glanced out the helicopter’s windscreen as the transport lifted off the ground. Back on the beach, the two groups of mutants were in pitched battle, and seemed to have forgotten all about the humans formerly among them.

  “The X-Men can bloody well look after themselves.”

  Logan hadn’t forgotten about Alysande and her men. He had been busy keeping these Exemplar jokers busy while the marines beat a hasty retreat, and now that their transport was speeding away from the atoll, and the battle, he allowed himself a little grin, biting down hard on his cigar.

  Now that the bystanders are out of the way, Logan thought, I can cut loose and have a little bit of fun.

  Logan saw that Scott was busy swapping optic blasts with the big metal guy, and the flying chick and the green torch had both gone off somewhere, which left the other two for him. Both were female, at least as near as Logan could tell, and stood on the sandy beach a few short yards away from Logan’s position.

  One was built like a brick house—literally. She was maybe twice Logan’s height, and looked to be made of gray stone, like living granite. She looked like the Thing’s older sister.

  The other was closer to Logan’s height, but lithe, built like a dancer. She had pointed ears, yellow eyes, and blue fur, with long bony talons growing from her fingertips, and hopped from one foot to another like an acrobat.

  Without preamble, the blue acrobat leaped toward Logan, talons raking the air.

  Logan, with a minimum expenditure of energy and motion, sidestepped the acrobat’s attack grabbing hold of one of her forearms and using her own momentum to swing her around, hurling her through the air.

  “Alley oop,” Logan said casually.

  The acrobat, though, yellow eyes flashing, twisted in midair, and landed effortlessly on her feet a short distance away, arms held out slightly to her sides for balance.

  “Hey, darlin’.” Logan smiled at the acrobat, and raised his hands in front of him. “You showed me yours. How ’bout I show you mine?”

  From the back of his own fists popped adamantium claws, each like a tiny, unbreakable sword, capable of cutting through anything short of adamantium itself.

  “Degenerate,” the blue acrobat spat, and bared pointed teeth. “I see now I shouldn’t have gone easy on you.”

  “Desist, sibling,” the brick said, motioning with a hand the size of a shovel. “Allow me to deal with this mongrel.”

  Before Logan could react, the brick rushed forward.

  Cripes, he thought in the split second allowed him, how can something so big move so fast?!

  And then the brick plowed into him with the speed and force of a freight train.

  Logan skidded into the sand a few yards away. It would take a bigger blow than that to break his near invulnerable adamantium-laced bones, but a couple more hits like that and his healing factor would be working overtime.

  “Okay,” he said in a low voice, rising to a crouch, claws out and ready, “so maybe this won’t be quite as easy as I thought.”

  Scott was on the beach, and the winged woman, the green torch, and Invictus Prime were converging on him. His optic blasts were nearly spent, the most recent beams carrying little more impact than a rose-colored flashlight. It would be only a moment or two before his reserves of energy replenished themselves, provided he lived that long.

  “To think,” Invictus Prime said, looking down his nose at Scott, “that the once proud Earth has fallen into the clutching grasp of such as this.”

  “Oh, yeah?” came a voice blaring over a loudspeaker. “Well... suck it.”

  The three Exemplar turned in the direction of the voice and were caught completely unawares as the nose of a Lockheed RS-150 rammed into them at speed, knocking them for a loop.

  The Blackbird stopped short, hovering in midair just above Scott, the sound dampeners on the engines acting at full capacity, with only a whisper of noise escaping.

  “Well?” Kitty Pryde was visible through the windscreen at the controls, her voice reverberating over the plane’s external loudspeakers.

  “‘Suck it’?” Scott asked, climbing to his feet and dusting off the legs of his jeans.

  “Okay, so I choked under pressure,” Kitty answered. “Now, will you guys come on, already? The meter’s running here.”

  Without sparing a glance to see what had become of the Exemplar, Scott leapt up into the open hatch of the Blackbird. As he maneuvered into the copilot’s seat, Logan lurched through the hatch behind him, his face and arms crisscrossed with deep cuts and scrapes.

  “I’m not usually one for runnin’ from a scrape, but I know when I’m outmatched. So what you waitin’ for, kiddo?” Logan said impatiently. “Punch it!”

  The hatch swung shut automatically, and Kitty gripped the controls as the plane shot up into the afternoon sky, steadily climbing toward Mach 4.

  Invictus Prime hung motionless in midair, watching the little craft zipping away toward the horizon. The rest of his Exemplar cell gathered around him, taking up their accustomed positions.

  “They were more powerful than we had been led to imagine,” said the winged woman.

  “And more skilled,” said the one with the skin like gray granite.

  “But still not a match for us,” said the blue-furred acrobat, yellow eyes narrowed.

  “Perhaps,” said the green torch. “But they were few, and we do not know in what numbers they infest this world.”

  “We should have pursue
d them,” the blue-furred acrobat said angrily. “We could have made short work of them.”

  “Enough!” The voice of Invictus Prime rang like a bell. “We have done as ordered. The time will come to attend to these degenerates. And soon.”

  11

  Once upon a time, Magneto had made this room his bedchamber. Now, it was a prison cell.

  Lee liked it better the old way.

  Their captors, it seemed, were none too pleased that others had taken up residence in the city before their arrival. Before Lee and her crew had been locked away in this high tower room, the strange hairless beings who’d captured them had made a show of removing every tapestry and stick of furniture that Magneto had brought to these strange, unearthly buildings. From the high, narrow window of their cell, Lee could even now see the pillar of smoke rising from the courtyard far below, where their captors had set everything of Magneto’s to the torch.

  Lee had stayed in the city as well, a time or two, first with Scott, then with Magneto, and then on her own, after she’d lost touch with both of them. Lee had been fascinated with the city, and with the beings who’d originally built it, sometime in distant prehistory. Based on the statuary that covered the city, and the shape and dimensions of the doors and corridors, she’d had to conclude that whatever the original inhabitants of the city had been, they weren’t people. At least not by any definition she was accustomed to using.

  But now, all this time later, she found herself back again, and the prisoner of men and women who, though hairless, silent, and strange, were nonetheless inarguably people.

  There were six of them locked in the otherwise empty chamber. Lee and Paolo sat in one corner, while Richie, Jose, and Merrick clustered around Frank in another.

  Lee didn’t have to possess the mutant ability to read minds to know precisely what Frank and the others were thinking.

  This was all Lee’s fault.

  Lee couldn’t find it within herself to disagree. It was her fault. Had she spent so much time rubbing elbows with men and women who had the ability to move mountains with a glance that she’d forgotten that she was just a regular human being? Just a person, with only the strengths—and weaknesses—that entailed.