The Return Read online

  “What the ... ?” Merrick said, and Lee thought he’d taken the words right out of her mouth.

  In the empty air between the rod’s tip and the blank wall, there now danced a fully three-dimensional image of a city. It glimmered slightly, and when Lee squinted she could just barely make out the texture of the wall on the far side, seen dimly through the image itself It was some kind of holographic technology, Lee assumed, perhaps using the far wall to bounce light back, the interference between the first wave and its reflection creating the solid-seeming images.

  As Lee and the others watched, the image shifted, and the perspective zoomed crazily, until finally it resolved itself They were looking at a city square, which from the Spanish words on the street signs and the varied skin colors of the passersby must have been somewhere in Central or South America. There was some sort of carnival or street fair in progress, and everyone looked to be having a ball.

  “What are we lookin’ at, Cap’n?” Jose asked.

  Lee shrugged. From what she could see, this was just an unremarkable city scene, which from the angle of the shadows and the color of the sky appeared to be just before sunset.

  “Ah, this one offers apologies,” Vox Septimus said. “The relevant element of this visual record is some short remove into the future. Allow this one to address.”

  Suddenly, the crowds, which moments before had been drifting leisurely across the miniature scene, shifted into high motion, blurring across the streets, and Lee realized that Vox Septimus had put the moving image into fast-forward.

  “Here we are,” Vox Septimus said with satisfaction.

  The image slowed to a normal rate once more, but where before the scene had been of happy people at a street festival, now things had taken a darker turn. Both literally, in that the sun had set in the sky, and figuratively, in that now the happy revelers of the earlier scene had been replaced by men and women in terror for their lives.

  A handful of hairless men and women, all dressed in strange clothing, were in the air and on the ground, rounding the festivalgoers into large metal pens, like cattle being led to the slaughter. Lasers shot from eyes, bone spears flew from palms, lightning crackled from fingertips, and the helpless people were powerless before them.

  Beside her, Paolo’s hands tightened into fists, and Lee saw a killing rage rising in the old man’s eyes. She reached out and laid a hand on his elbow. “Not now,” she whispered, though her instincts to injury were the same as his.

  Lee turned her attention back to the purple-robed figure. Perhaps this was an opportunity after all.

  “I can’t help but notice, Vox, that you don’t seem to have the same powers as so many of the rest of your kind. That you’re . . . how did you put it? Unaugmented?”

  Vox Septimus turned to her, and the image projected by the crystal rod vanished.

  “Of course,” he said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “And what of it?”

  “You must have been pretty unlucky to be born

  without any powers, I guess.” Lee spoke as casually as possible, as though discussing the possibility of rain in the distant future.

  Vox Septimus straightened, his head tilted to one side, quizzically. “Unlucky? This one was born for a task, as were all augments and unaugments alike. We are bred with the characteristics that our masters require, no more and no less.”

  “Ah,” Lee said, nodding slowly. “So your people have your powers from birth? They aren’t something that they get from some kind of machine?”

  Lee wasn’t sure what to expect, but if her experi- -ences with powers in the past were any indication, strange abilities could sometimes be turned on and off, at will and otherwise.

  “Machine?” Vox Septimus repeated, and then began to chuckle, once more with that strange, unnatural laugh. “Machine? Ha. As though the gifts of the Kh’thon were some mere mechanical contrivance? Ha ha. This one’s talents derive from the genome, foolish individual, just as do those of every servitor from the lowliest unaugmented to the loftiest Exemplar. Ha ha.” Genetic engineering? Lee tried to stifle a frown. That wasn’t exactly what she’d been fishing for. She was hoping that maybe all of this vaunted ability and power was something that came with a convenient “off” switch, preferably labeled with foot-tall letters. Something that was hidden in the genome? Perhaps a little trickier.

  “So they’re ...” Lee felt her enthusiasm for this line of questioning quickly fading. “They’re just born with their powers?”

  “Some,” Vox Septimus said. “But some are triggered in later life. The randomizing element in the genome allows the Kh’thon to engender whatever trait or ability they require in a servitor. The augmented, the most powerful of which are the Exemplar, serve an endless number of functions for the Kh’thon, everything from navigating through hyperspace with enhanced sensory organs to serving as the defensive capacities for Kh’thon who venture planetside. The Fathership and the other ships in the Kh’thonic flotilla are well armed and fortified, of course, but in situations where more precise means are required, the Exemplar are deployed.”

  “More precise means?” Something about the way he’d said that sent chills down Lee’s spine.

  “Such as removing native populations from the planets the Kh’thon wish temporarily to inhabit,” Vox Septimus said simply. Then he treated Lee to a smile, and added, “Such populations are usually exterminated, but surely the Kh’thon will find a use for some of you, at least.”

  16

  “It’s right through here, Betsy,” Doug Ramsey said. He pulled the chain on the desk lamp, and the headmaster’s study was suffused with warm light. He was hyperconscious of the presence of the woman behind him, and did his best to keep his tone level and confident-sounding. His best, though, just didn’t seem to be good enough, since every time he opened his mouth to speak he sounded just like a chipmunk. Or at least, that’s what he thought.

  Doug was no hero. Sure, he had the black-and-yellow uniform of a student of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters hanging in his closet, unstable molecules and all, but that’s where it stayed, most of the time: hanging in his closet. Sure, he put it on whenever the rest of the gang got together to train in the Danger Room, but really, what good was he in those operations? All he really managed was to add another moving target to the team, another bystander to protect.

  But an innocent bystander? Doug almost blushed. If measured by his actions, particularly with the fairer sex, then yes, he was as innocent as they come, as pure as the driven snow. But if judged by his thoughts, by his ambitions? He chanced a glance at the vision behind him, and suppressed a shudder. Well, if thoughts were enough to damn him, then he was as far from innocent as they came.

  Up until a few short months ago, Dougjust figured he was smart. Heck, if he was honest with himself, he thought he was a genius. No, he knew he was a genius. It was really the only answer for it. He’d always been a clever kid, getting high marks in school, and never having to work that hard on his assignments, but there’d always been one or two other kids as smart or smarter than him in class. But then a few years ago, he’d hit puberty, and all bets were off.

  It was in Spanish class that he first realized he was a genius. He showed up, the first day, knowing no Spanish beyond taco and burrito, and by the end of that first class period he was correcting the teacher’s improper use of intransitive verbs. The next day, he was watching soap operas on Spanish-language television, and the day after that he was finishing up Cervantes’s Don Quixote de la Mancha in the original.

  And that was the longest it had taken him to learn a language, ever since.

  The computers came a short time later. He’d always played video games as a kid, but it wasn’t until he glanced through a book on computer programming that he understood that computers were simply, at their base, language. The software code which underlay everything that a computer did was nothing more than another grammar and vocabulary to learn, and it took Doug no time to pick the
m up.

  That was when he’d first met Kitty Pryde. They’d met at Stevie Hunter’s dance class in Salem Center— which Doug’s parents had insisted he take, so that he could get offhis backside and move now and again—and had quickly hit it off He’d initially thought that Kitty was some boarding school wannabe hacker, and had gone along with all her talk of hacking into government databases and the like because he thought she was cute. Having the ability to learn any language in short order, or to make any computer do whatever he wanted, strangely hadn’t helped Doug one iota when it came to meeting girls. When Kitty wanted to talk to him, he was happy to talk about whatever she wanted.

  Then, long story short, Kitty had revealed that she was a mutant. And more than that, her boarding school was a kind of training ground for mutants. And, the icing on the cake, the mutants trained at the boarding school were theX-Menl

  Doug’s mind was officially blown, however, when Kitty revealed to him that he was a mutant, too. Him!

  It was at this point that Doug decided that he’d somehow been given someone else’s life by mistake— someone much cooler than he was—but he wasn’t about to complain.

  In no time, Doug was palling around with Kitty and her mutant friends—and his mutant friends. Then the headmaster somehow convinced Doug’s parents to let him come and be a student at the school, and then Doug was a bona fide superhero. Costume, code name, and all.

  Except he wasn’t, really. Oh, he was a mutant, and a member of a team of mutants, and he had a costume and a code name, but a super-hero? Doug didn’t think so. He couldn’t shoot lasers from his eyes, or teleport, or turn into steel, or pass through solid walls. What could he do? Well, he could read.

  Did no one on the team realize that his code name, Cypher, didn’t just connote the ability to transcipher or decypher, but meant, literally, nothing? Cypher meant “zero,” but worse than that, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it also meant “A person who fills a place, but is of no importance or worth, a nonentity, a ‘mere nothing.’”

  Gee, thanks, Professor X, Doug thought ruefully, way to address any lingering insecurities I might have had.

  At the moment, while Kitty and the rest of the graduate team went off to save lives, Doug was left behind to man the home fires, and act as the yellow pages for Betsy Braddock Which meant firing up Cerebro, which meant coming into the headmaster’s office and opening the secret panel beside the bookshelf that swung open to reveal the hidden chamber behind the wall.

  Sure, Doug wasn’t a hero. But he knew languages, and he knew computers. And because of that, he’d gotten to go places, and experience things, that he’d never in a million years dreamed might have been possible. He’d put his life on the line, time and again, and done it happily, because it meant that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t so much of a “mere nothing” after all.

  Doug knew that, as Milton said, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Now, it was his turn to serve in his own particular fashion again, and stand beside Betsy. He hoped that she wasn’t picking up any of his thoughts, hoped against hope that she hadn’t seen any of the images that popped unbidden into his mind whenever he looked at her. But who could blame him? She used to be a fashion model, for cripes sake, and now she was living under the same roof? And maybe Doug was just kidding himself, but he couldn’t help but think there was a chance that maybe she might like him, too. And not just like him, but like him.

  Doug couldn’t wait any longer. He steeled himself, taking a deep breath, and turned around.

  “There it is, Betsy,” he said, trying to think pure, innocent thoughts. “That’s Cerebro.”

  He needn’t have worried. Betsy had eyes only for the machine.

  17

  From Salem Center in Westchester County to Times Square in New York was a distance of just a bit more than fifty-four miles. Barring traffic, it could take just over an hour. With traffic, it could take forever.

  At a top speed at sea level of Mach 2.3, the Blackbird could travel 1,770 miles per hour. Factoring in acceleration and deceleration, that meant that the X-Men’s plane could get from the Xavier mansion to downtown Manhattan in a handful of minutes.

  Even so, Peter Rasputin couldn’t help but feel impatient as the lights of Times Square hove into view below them, and wished that there wasn’t some quicker way to go. He was strapped into his accustomed seat on the Blackbird, his hands folded in his lap, eager to get to work.

  “Everybody ready?” called Scott Summers from the pilot’s chair.

  Before Peter could answer, Rogue unbuckled her seat belts and moved over to the hatch. “I’ll see y’all down there, ’kay?” With that, she flung open the hatch and jumped out.

  Peter turned and peered out the window, and watched as Rogue flew by, her white-streaked brown hair rustling in the high wind. She turned, and gave him a broad wink before diving out of sight in a blur of black and green.

  “Aw, cripes,” Kitty said, looking out the window on the plane’s opposite side.

  “What is it, Katya?” Peter loosened his seat belts, and leaned over to see.

  “That,” Kitty said flatly, “is one big-boned gal.”

  Peter looked over Kitty’s shoulder, and his mouth opened wide. Just below them was Times Square, and through the plane’s side window could be seen a woman standing on the pavement, dressed in a strangely cut suit of green and white, lifting one foot off the ground, as though preparing to squash a bug underfoot.

  Except that the woman stood at least one hundred feet tall, and the “bugs” she was preparing to squash underfoot were regular men and women, scrambling to escape from Times Square.

  “Isn’t this about the time you normally invoke that white wolf of yours, Pete?” Kitty glanced over at him and treated him to a tight smile.

  “Perhaps later, Katya.” Peter slapped the buckles on his seat belts and climbed out of his seat. He moved toward the open hatch, marveling as always at the Shi’ar force fields that maintained the internal cabin pressure. Even with the hatch wide open, one could barely hear the whistle of wind rushing by outside.

  “Preparing to touch down, folks,” Scott said at the controls.

  The Blackbird stopped its forward motion and, hovering, began to descend straight down on the intersection of 42nd Street and Broadway.

  “I believe this is my stop,” Peter said, and with a quick smile, lunged out of the window.

  For a brief, exhilarating moment, Peter luxuriated in the sense of motion, in the high whistle of the air whipping past his ears, the fluttering of butterflies in his belly as his senses tried desperately to reorient themselves.

  Then, he triggered the transformation.

  The briefest smell of ozone filled his nostrils, as it always did, some faint residual energy left over from the transformation of flesh to metal. And the rest of his senses, particularly sight and hearing, shifted further down their registers, the world becoming suddenly a slightly grayer, slightly quieter place, as it always seemed to him in his armored form. Professor Xavier had tried to explain it to him once, how rods and cones of metal were less sensitive to photons than those of organic cells, how the bones of the inner ear had a lower range of motion when made of steel than of calcium. But Peter, for all his fearsome mien and imposing stature, had the heart of the poet, and all that he needed to know was that when his body was armored, so too was his soul. He sometimes felt that was the only way he was able to live with the violent, often terrifying things he experienced as an X-Man: with his senses blunted, the experiences were always kept at a slight distance, so when he was once more a regular man, living in a world of rich sounds and vibrant colors, he could look upon those memories as though they’d happened to another person entirely.

  Such as now, as he whistled through the air at terminal velocity, an organic steel bullet falling directly toward the towering giant of a woman, prepared any second to end the lives of innocents with a stamping foot.

  Somewhere deep inside, the poet’s heart hid
inside a suit of solid armor, while the man of steel did what he had to do.

  As Peter jumped from the open hatch, Kurt Wagner decided it was time for him to go as well. He glanced out the window to get his bearings.

  “Auf wiedersehen,” he said, with a jaunty salute, then disappeared with a bamf and a puff of brimstone.

  Kurt reappeared a hundred feet to the west of the Blackbird. Since his momentum was always retained through teleportation, at first he and the plane were moving in the same direction, and at the same speed. But where the Blackbird had its powerful Shi’ar engines to act against the force of gravity, Kurt was out in the empty air, and so after hanging briefly in midair, he began to fall, slowly accelerating at thirty-two feet per second per second.

  Kurt spread his arms and legs wide, drawing on his years of experience as a trapeze artist with Der Jahrmarkt to slow his fall, and then scanned the swiftly approaching ground below.

  To one side, Peter was plowing into the shoulder of the giant woman, knocking her off balance and preventing her from squashing a crowd of innocents underfoot. The woman fell against a building, sending a rain of dust and small debris on the crowd below, which meant the worst of their injuries would be minor cuts and bruises, not liquefaction.

  Below, Rogue was setting to with a large figure, whose golden skin glinted brightly in the neon lights. That he was taking and giving blows with Rogue by turns suggested he was even stronger, and tougher, than he looked.

  Kurt was just a few hundred feet above the ground by now and would have to choose a target quickly. Then he saw his man. With pale white skin and glowing green eyes, the hairless figure looked almost like an animated corpse, but he was all too lively, shooting beams of crackling black energy from the palms of his hands, using it to herd the panic-stricken humans into the metal pens set up by his fellows.

  Kurt grinned, and did some quick calculations in his head. Fixing the image of his destination in mind, he concentrated, and disappeared once more.