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  The Phoenix.

  An appropriate codename for the woman—whose real name was

  Jean Grey—considering the many times she had cheated death, either on her own or while standing beside her teammates in battle.

  “Momin’, Jeannie,” Logan rasped, his voice made husky from a lifetime of cheap alcohol and even cheaper cigars.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting, Logan,” Jean said.

  Logan shrugged. “Just contemplatin’ my navel. .. which you already knew.”

  Jean nodded in agreement, though his back was still turned to her. As a telepath, she had the ability to scan the minds of others, even from a distance—a talent she had possessed since turning fourteen. And after years of dealing with power-mad super-villains, renegade mutants, hate-filled humans, and a race of insectoid monsters that made the creatures in Aliens look tame in comparison, she always mentally probed any room she was about to enter; such precautions often spared her the painful experience of having a hidden enemy bring a metal pipe crashing down on her head, or being surprised by a psi-powered individual like herself.

  Occasionally, though, it meant that she might accidentally stumble into her friends’ most private thoughts.

  “I’m sorry about that, Logan,” Jean said. “Force of habit.”

  “No big deal,” he replied. “Even without you rappin’ on my chamber door proper, I picked up the smell o’ yer perfume while you were still cornin’ down the hall.” He sniffed again. “Wings?”

  Jean smiled. “It’s Scott’s favorite.”

  Logan nodded, then turned to face her. “We ‘bout done here, Red? I ain’t had a beer in a month—” he waved a hand at the room around them “—and this place don’t even have a minibar.”

  Jean laughed softly. The sound sent a pleasant shiver up Logan’s back. He’d fallen in love with that laugh when they’d first met at Xavier’s School for Gifted Mutants. Back then, he was the rough-and-tumble Canadian spy that the school’s director, Charles Xavier, had recruited to join his academy; she was one of the original students, using the less attractive name “Marvel Girl” during her exploits with her four fellow students—Scott Summers, Henry McCoy, Bobby Drake, and Warren Worthington III. It had been a long time since he’d felt like a nervous schoolboy around a pretty girl, but Jean Grey had had that effect on him, almost from the moment he laid eyes on her. And like any man who suddenly finds himself tongue-tied by the sight of someone so beautiful that he can’t bring himself to speak for fear of looking foolish and forever ruining the moment, Logan was never able to work up the nerve to tell Jean how he really felt for her; in fact, he made the situation even worse by eventually cutting himself off from the other X-Men, keeping to his own company, often leaving the school for long periods of time without telling anyone where he was going, or when he’d be back.

  It was better that way, he often told himself. In his eyes, Jean was an unreachable goal; a woman who shone with the brightness of a sun. And he? He was Icarus, forever reaching for that shining star, basking in its warmth, only to be violently hurled to the ground, his once-lofty wings no longer able to support his weight.

  Or his dreams.

  An almost laughable situation, considering Logan had never been so hesitant—or outright smitten—during a lifetime of fighting and loving and, when the moment required it, killing.

  The final, fatal blow to his heart had come on the day that he had found himself unable to hold back the truth—the hurt—any longer. It had been a brief conversation, for Logan had always been a man of few words, but the outcome had been as he’d always known it would be: she cherished his friendship, but her heart belonged to another.

  To Scott Summers, in fact.

  It had come as no surprise to Logan. Summers was the team leader, a twentysomething mutant with an ability to project powerful, destructive beams of force from his eyes. It had been determined through years of testing that he was actually drawing upon the energy of a “non-Einsteinian universe,” whatever the blazes that meant; Logan had never done well with science courses. Whether the power was a gift or a curse could only be determined by Summers, who had no control over it— merely opening his eyes when he awoke each morning would be enough to unleash an explosive force strong enough to level a good-sized hill... if he hadn’t trained himself to keep his eyes closed in such situations. The only way to harness the wild energy, he had learned early in life, was through the use of ruby quartz, which was why he wore specially-designed sunglasses wherever he went, day or night, and why, when he was dressed in his flamboyant costume of blue and yellow, his eyes were covered by a slitted visor—one that had thus provided him with an appropriate codename: Cyclops. Tall and handsome, soft-spoken yet confident, with an air of tragedy that seemed to constantly hang over his shoulders like a stifling cloak, Summers hadn’t pursued Jean—like Logan, he considered himself beneath her—but that hadn’t stopped her from going after him. They’d been through too much together through the years, she’d insisted, had shared too many secrets to treat their relationship as nothing more than a by-product of a lengthy working environment. Slowly, she reached the poetic soul that lay hidden beneath the stoic exterior he had always projected, cracked the shell of professionalism he had used as a barrier to protect himself from an often cruel world.

  But, with Jean’s help, the walls around his heart eventually crumbled. Love followed soon after.

  Logan never had a chance.

  He’d gotten over the hurt, eventually. Showed up for their wedding day—though he’d kept to the shadows, away from the ceremony—even went so far as to pull her aside one day and utter “The Oath,” that dreaded special occasions’ pledge that has gotten more men into trouble over the centuries than any build-up to a war: wherever she was, he told her, whatever fix she might find herself in, all she had to do was call him, and he’d come running to her side. And being a man of his word, he’d meant every syllable of that promise.

  Then he’d left to drown his sorrows.

  After that, he’d given up any thoughts of trying to take Jean away from Scott—honor demanded it. But the ache was still there, sometimes, when he looked into her bright green eyes and saw the lively sparkle that had won his heart.

  Or when she laughed that throaty little laugh of hers ...

  “Penny for your thoughts, Logan?” Jean asked.

  “Huh?” Logan started, then shook his head to clear it. “Nothin’ special, Red—my mind’s just wanderin’.” He glanced around the room. “Must be this smoke-free environment; all this clean air is messin’ with my head.”

  A small smile played at the comers of Jean’s mouth. “Then I guess it’s even more important that we start heading for home. I wouldn’t want you passing out before you’ve had the chance to refill your lungs with the nauseating smoke of those carcinogenic materials you love so much.”

  “That’s the beauty of havin’ a healin’ factor, Jeannie,” Logan replied, referring to his mutant ability to recover quickly from any illness or injury. “Can’t get sick from tobacco, can’t get too drunk from alcohol.” His facial muscles twitched into an approximation of a smile. “All the vices, none o’ the consequences.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I see you praying at the porcelain altar after one of your more . . . self-indulgent evenings,” Jean said sarcastically. She gestured over her shoulder, toward the hallway outside. “Right now, however, we’re needed in the throne room. Roma wants to speak with us one last time before she sends us back to Earth.”

  “If it’s so flamin’ important, how come you just didn’t beam that message into everybody’s noggins, like you and Charlie usually do when you want our attention?”

  “Because I didn’t want to come blaring into everyone’s minds like some overactive clock radio with the volume cranked to ten,” Jean replied. “Even though we’re outside the time stream, our bodies are still attuned to Daylight Savings—it’s about seven a.m. back home. Rogue and Gambit are still fast aslee
p, Scott was lightly dozing when I left our room, and the Professor was just sitting down to breakfast. But knowing your habits, I figured you’d already be up and about.”

  “Where’s the elf?” Logan asked—his nickname for their blueskinned, pointy-eared teammate, Nightcrawler.

  “Kurt’s been up for hours; actually, I’m not even sure he went to bed. He found a screening room on one of the citadel’s lower levels, and a collection of first-generation movie prints. He’s been holding his own, private classic film festival.” She shook her head in mild disapproval. “If he doesn’t wind up gorging himself on hot, buttered popcorn, it’s a certainty he’ll still get sick from all the jujubees.”

  Logan grunted. “Let ’im have his fun. After all the fightin’ we’ve had to do against that crazy fascist broad, Opul Lun Sat-yr-nin, ever since we got here, catchin’ some downtime ain’t a bad thing. If the elf wants t’eat like a five-year-old an’ stay up all night watchin’ movies, that’s his prerogative ... long as he don’t wind up gettin’ sick all over my boots.”

  Jean wrinkled her nose and grimaced, clearly imagining what that scene might look like. “Anyway..she said, quickly changing the subject, “I told him to save me a seat if he comes across a copy of Casablanca—especially one with Ronald Reagan as Rick. I’ve always wanted to see how his performance might stack up against Humphrey Bogart’s, since Reagan had been the original choice for the part back on our world.” She smiled. “One advantage of having access to the omniverse, wouldn’t you say? You can check out all the alternate versions of your favorite films.” She pinched her chin between thumb and forefinger, an idea obviously springing into her mind. “I wonder if there’s a lending library here? I’ve never seen Buddy Ebsen’s performance as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz■ Jack Haley might never have gotten the chance to play the part in the final version if Ebsen hadn’t been allergic to the silver makeup . .Her voice trailed off, and she gazed at Logan. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

  Logan shrugged. “I don’t mind. Never knew you were such a big movie trivia buff, though.”

  “One of my few vices that Scott has learned to put up with. Sit me down on a couch with a bag of nacho-flavored com chips and a TV tuned to American Movie Classics, and I won’t even realize the world might have come to an end until the cable signal goes out.” Jean shook her head, a few scarlet strands of hair drifting down between her eyes. “Oh, well—there are more important things to deal with for the moment. We’d better wake the others and get to the throne room before Roma thinks we’re taking advantage of her hospitality.”

  “Then, let’s not keep the lady waitin’, darlin’,” Logan said. “You know how cross these goddess-types can get if us ‘mere mortals’ don’t come runnin’ at their beck an’ call.”

  “Logan, you’re ... you’re incorrigible.” Jean wagged a disapproving finger at her teammate, but her broadening smile belied any hint of anger she might have been trying to show.

  “That’s one’a my better qualities, Red,” Logan replied. “You oughtta know that by now.” He bowed slightly, and dramatically waved a hand toward the open door. “After you, darlin’.”

  Jean politely curtsied, fingers delicately holding up the hem of an imaginary skirt, then turned to go. Instantly, the smile faded from Logan’s features as he mentally kicked himself. Letting his mind wander like it had in the presence of a telepath was a rookie mistake—one that would have cost him an advantage—or his life—had they been engaged in battle, and not in polite conversation. And considering the fact that the telepath in this case was Jean Grey, who was all too aware of how strongly he still felt for her, allowing his thoughts to bubble to the surface where she could easily detect them was almost certain to result in her avoiding any social contact with him for a couple of days.

  It wouldn’t be the first time it happened; nor, probably, the last. Jean, however, had acted as though she hadn’t “heard” them, for which Logan had been grateful. But, he now wondered, was that because she had consciously tuned down her power before his mental slip, so as not to intrude on his thoughts again ... or had they come streaming into her mind, and she was trying to avoid discussing them, in order to keep from having to revisit the whole messy issue of the emotional triangle that had once existed among the two of them and Scott? He’d never know for certain, unless Jean mentioned it, but she was far too sweet a person to do that and possibly run the risk of embarrassing him.

  Slipping his mask back over his head, Logan stomped out of the observation suite after Jean, hoping that an opportunity would eventually present itself so that he could unleash his self-directed anger on the nearest handy object.

  Or person.

  Located on the uppermost level of the Starlight Citadel, the throne room of the Supreme Guardian of the Omniverse was as opulent as it was immense. Containing sweeping stone arches and two-foot-thick marble columns that stretched so high that the ceiling could not be seen, the room seemed less like a seat of multiversal power and more like a vast gothic cathedral whose nave ran the length of two football fields, and whose transepts were as wide as a city block. On closer observation, visitors to this awe-inspiring place often wondered aloud how a room so huge could exist in such a finite area as the citadel; the answer they were given was that the citadel was, in scientific terms, “dimensionally transcendental,” which, roughly translated into English, meant that it was bigger on the inside than the outside. Truth be told, it was really built that way because Roma—like her father, Merlyn, before her— liked having a lot of space in which to think.

  At the moment, Roma was doing a lot of thinking.

  By human standards, she was an attractive woman in her early twenties, with an oval face and large, dark eyes. Her waist-length black hair was tied into a ponytail with a golden band, the better to display delicately-formed ears that tapered to small points at their tips. But referring to the Guardian in human terms would have been as insulting to her as someone making a vulgar comment about a friend’s mother. Roma was, in fact, an immortal, an inhabitant of the higher dimensional plane called Otherworld, from which her father also hailed. As immortals go, Merlyn was the grandest of manipulators, often going so far as to fake his own death in order to bring his plans to fruition, as he had done centuries ago, when it appeared he had been slain at the hands of the dreaded sorceress Morgana Le Fay, as the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have depicted. The strategy worked again hundreds of years later, when he put into play his greatest scheme: to turn an unassuming man named Brian Braddock into Captain Britain, the superpowered champion of the omniverse, and, in turn, influence Braddock to create a superteam called Excalibur—comprised of British heroes like himself, as well as former members of the X-Men—in preparation for the day when the omniverse would be threatened by a powerful sorcerer called Necrom. The plan had ultimately proved successful, and Merlyn had departed for other realms, leaving his daughter in charge of the Starlight Citadel as the new Supreme Guardian of the Omniverse.

  It also left Roma as the focus of Braddock’s anger when he finally learned the truth about his role in Merlyn’s plans, and about his own real identity: that his late father, James, Sr., had actually been an inhabitant of Otherworld—had, in fact, been one of Merlyn’s chosen guard, sent to a specific Earth to set the Master Plan in motion. That Brian—like his sister, Elisabeth—was really half-human, bom with a genetic makeup that, in his case, provided him with tremendous strength and the power of flight.

  The best that Roma could do when Brian and Betsy eventually confronted her with this information was to shrug and say that it had all been for the greater good of the omniverse.

  Not quite “I’m sorry”; not quite “You’re welcome.”

  But enough of a reply for an immortal.

  Now, lounging in a comer of one of the throne room’s transepts, in a small, rock-lined pool that was constantly replenished by a quiet little waterfall that descended from the inky blackness high above, Roma stared i
ntensely at an elaborate chessboard that floated in front of her, six inches above the churning, pale-green liquid. Its squares were made of ivory and black onyx, and scattered across them were a number of objects made of the same materials—not the traditional pieces of kings and queens, knights and pawns, but startlingly accurate representations of various individuals—both superhuman and nonpowered—from the world designated as “Earth 616.” The X-Men who were here as her guests were included in the collection; they comprised the set of white pieces on one side of the board. On the other side were half-a-dozen black figurines: scaled-down versions of Victor von Doom—with armor—Magneto, Quicksilver, Wanda Maximoff, Sebastian Shaw . . . and Ororo.

  And in the center of the board stood a very odd piece. From a foot away, it appeared to be a representation of Betsy Braddock, dressed in a dark-blue swimsuit and matching thigh-high stockings, a Japanese sword—a katana—gripped in one hand; a garish red mark—possibly makeup, possibly a scar of some sort—glowed hotly under her left eye. On closer inspection, though, Roma could see the figure flicker and fade and change appearance, from lethal femme fatale to cabaret singer, the swimsuit changing into a full-length evening gown, the sword becoming a microphone. Then it would shift again, constantly in a state of flux, moving back and forth from one version to the other.

  “This is not right,” Roma mused aloud, eyes narrowing to slits as she stared at the morphing game piece. “None of this is right. . .”

  Rising from the water, she stepped from the pool and shrugged into a full-length, white silk robe; the chessboard automatically moved to remain in front of her, floating to a halt at chest-level. A deep frown creasing her flawless face, Roma quickly strode across the transept toward a platform near the apse which contained her throne. The board kept pace with her.

  Sweeping up a short flight of steps to the platform, Roma stopped before a pulpit-like stand, into which was set an assortment of long, oddly-shaped white crystals. It was one piece of quartz in particular that immediately caught her attention—and sent a slight chill racing up her spine.