The Ultimate X-Men (11 page)

There was a note in Wydell’s voice that suggested this was a cause of some satisfaction to him. Logan wondered if he’d prosecuted that case too. And how fair the trial had been if he had. Shifting to a more comfortable position, Logan settled down for a long and depressing day. Justice seemed about the last thing Xavier had brought him here to witness.

Bobby pushed the remains of his lunch listlessly around his plate and sighed. It hardly seemed possible, but this was even worse than he’d imagined, what with the claustropho-

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bic, clinical little room they’d shut the jury up in for their meal, the terrible quality of the meal itself, and the hushed antimutant conversations he could hear going on among his fellow jurors. But then, the prosecution case was so strong that even he thought Streck was guilty. The guy looked shifty, too, and this claim that he’d only been in the areas of the crimes because he’d signed up with a new agency specializing in mutants and he’d had job interviews near each crime was so obviously fraudulent that Bobby couldn’t believe Streck was trying it.

So here he was, sitting in this miserable little room with a bunch of people he didn’t dare speak to. And there she was: the gorgeous Rachel Mostel. He was sure there must be all sorts of laws against having an affair with another juror, but he just couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off her. Most of the rest of the jury seemed to feel the same way. Trust him—unlucky at cards and unlucky in love.

He felt himself blushing fiercely as he realized that she had noticed him noticing her. Worse, she was walking toward him. He looked down at the unlovely remains of his fried eggplant, and hurriedly shovelled in another mouthful.

It was too late. His plate rattled as she sat down opposite him. “You’re Bobby, aren’t you?” God, her voice was as beautiful as the rest of her.

He began to answer, realized he still had a mouthful of food, flushed again, and swallowed. “Yes, but my friends call me Mr. Drake.” She looked confused. “Joke,” he said, waving his fork at her and, to his horror, splashing some eggplant juice on her cream-colored blouse.

She didn’t seem to notice. She smiled, and leaned fur-

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ther toward him. He wondered if she could hear his heart pounding. “It’s such a waste of time, isn’t it?” she said softly.

Bobby frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“This trial. I mean, everyone knows he did it.”

“Do they?” Bobby said uncomfortably. “Do you really think we should be discussing it?”

“Why not?” said a gruff voice at his shoulder. Bobby twisted round to identify Joey, the jury’s foreman—a squat bulldog of a man with a nicotine-stained moustache. “We all think the same.” There were nods and grunts of assent from several of the other jury members who had begun to gather around. Most of them were staring at Rachel with something approaching awe in their eyes.

Rachel smiled at them. “He’s a mutie,” she said sweetly. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re always guilty until proven innocent.”

“Not much danger of that,” another juror interjected. The grunts of agreement were more forceful.

Bobby felt about as out of place as a panda at a prayer meeting. “Don’t you think we should wait till we see the evidence ...,?” he began tentatively, trailing off as he felt Rachel’s huge green eyes focus on him. He was still looking into them when the bailiff summoned the jury back to the courtroom. Even after he sat down, they remained in his memory.

The afternoon brought a parade of witnesses willing to testify that they’d seen Streck at the scenes of each crime. The forensic evidence, too, seemed pretty conclusive. Xavier projected a cautionary telepathic message—
They’ve only proved the murders
could
have been committed using Streck’s

THE UlTIHATE X-HEII

claws, not that they were
—but Bobby thought he was grasping at straws. The pictures they showed the jury of the dismembered carcasses of the victims turned even his stomach, and he’d seen more death and pain in his lifetime than he cared to remember. He felt a shudder running through the jury, as if someone had just walked over all their graves.

Unable to stop himself, he turned his eyes to Rachel. She was looking at one of the photos with shock and horror. Bobby felt a wave of understanding sweep over him. So she didn’t like mutants. So what? Would he like them if he didn’t happen to be one himself?

The next photo they passed to the jury was of Streck’s sister. It was taken shortly after her assault, and Bobby winced at the contusions on her fragile body. But when the photo was passed on he sensed it evoking an altogether different kind of horror inside him. He glanced across at the picture again as the next juror held it. She was pretty frightening, he supposed: scaled and tailed like her brother. Was it any wonder people didn’t feel much sympathy for someone as freakish looking as she? And Bobby had seen— had fought—plenty of evil mutants in his time.

But what about his fellow X-Men? They were okay, weren’t they? He’d had good times with them. They had helped him over problems in his life. They had saved his life too many times to count.

Except that Wolverine was dangerous—too close to the animal within him to trust completely. And nobody really knew where Gambit came from, with his glowing red eyes. His demonic glowing red eyes.

Bobby shook his head, telling himself this was an absurd

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line of reasoning. But when the photo was passed back to him again, he couldn’t feel anything except disgust.

Logan had chosen to wait in the narrow alley that ran beside the courtroom. The sun had sunk so low that its light didn’t penetrate there, and water dripped down the dank walls in premature twilight. There was no reason not to wait out front; he just felt more at home here. His natural habitat. Charley was snug back at the mansion, chauffeured home by Cyke. But Logan had picked up the “meeting Bobby and sniffing around” detail. Just his luck.

There was Drake now, walking past the mouth of the alley. He was looking off to the left, so rapt he didn’t notice Logan saunter up beside him. It was that woman he was watching, the good-looking juror. He was virtually drooling over her. Logan studied her: mile-long legs, healthy from working out rather than hard work. There was no denying, she was easy on the eye. Logan realized he was staring at her too, heart racing faster than his car, as she brushed past Bobby, flicking him a quick come-hither smile.

For a second, he didn’t want anything in life more than her. And then it was gone, and she was just another well-groomed frail. And he had that feeling running through his blood, that I-was-real-ill-but-now-I’m-well buzz that told him his healing factor had done some work. Dammit, Drake went and fell for a
femme fatale.
Worse, a super-powered
femme fatale.

He realized Bobby was about to walk off down the road after her. Sighing, he snaked out an arm and grabbed the scruff of his neck.

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im

“What?” Bobby said irritably, halfheartedly trying to shake Logan off. His eyes never left the woman.

“Snap out of it, bub,” Logan grated.

Bobby jerked his head round. His face briefly contorted into an alien mask of anger, like a pet that had unexpectedly turned rabid. Then it was just Bobby again. “Logan! And there I was just about to call a cab.” As if he couldn’t help it, he returned his gaze to the retreating woman. “She’s something, isn’t she?” he said softly.

Logan grunted. “I hear Hank says beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. Maybe he oughtta change it to smell.”

“Is that some kind of joke I’m not getting?”

“Depends how funny you think controlling folks’ feelings is.”

“What?” Bobby snapped. “Ground control calling Logan—what’s the matter with you, buddy?” His lake-blue eyes looked into Logan’s with genuine concern.

“Let me put it so you can understand. She walks past here, I feel drawn to her real strong, my healing factor kicks in, and I don’t feel it no more. What does that sound like to you?”

Bobby frowned. “You think she’s a mutant? Some kind of pheromone-control power like Spoor’s?” He laughed suddenly. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d heard the things she was saying about mutants!”

“Yeah?”

“All sorts of stuff in the courtroom. You know, the mutant menace spiel. She was mouthing off to all the other jurors. It was like some kind of Friends of Humanity meeting in there.” His expression became more thoughtful. “She was saying all these things, and they were all agreeing,

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like they couldn’t help themselves ...” He looked after the retreating figure speculatively. A slight blush crept across his face. “I guess you think we should follow her, huh?”

An hour later, and they’d toured just about every street and downtown alley there was. The rain had strengthened, and after they’d slipped away to get into X-Men uniforms, Logan almost hadn’t been able to pick up the trail again. It was dark now, too, dismal as only the fall could be. But they had found her, jittery and looking behind her every step, and now she seemed to have gotten wherever it was she was going.

They were in an old part of town: derelict warehouses, big and ugly, and not much else. She’d slipped into one of the most run-down buildings. It looked just as deserted as the rest, but Logan could see light creeping out the edges of the blacked-out windows, and he could smell people in there. Lots of them.

“She’s definitely up to something,” Bobby hissed.

“And they say a college education ain’t worth anything,” Logan said dryly. “We gotta get in there. How about you take guard duty and I sneak around?”

“No way!” Bobby said indignandy. “You might need me in there.”

Logan looked him over. He seemed more businesslike and confident in his ice form. And he didn’t look like he was going to change his mind. Logan sighed. “You keep control of yourself, boy. If it looks like you’re falling under that frail’s spell again, I’m taking you out.”

Bobby nodded sharply. Logan pointed out a broken window, somewhere on the fifth floor, and they headed for it.

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The night was very silent in that area, and Bobby’s ice-laden footsteps echoed loudly in Logan’s ears.

Logan shook his head. He scaled the decaying building with the ease of long practice and setded on a crumbling balcony beneath the window. Bobby looked up at him with some trepidation, his frozen hair gleaming silver in the rising moonlight. He looked so young: just a boy. Logan felt a sudden, choking sense of responsibility for him. Then Bobby grinned cheekily. He pointed at the wall in front of him and a knob of ice grew out of it. Pulling himself up it, he built another and then another. Mutant mountaineering.

Soon, they crouched together beneath the window. Muffled voices trickled through the shattered pane of glass. One voice, mainly, a deep confident one, and others joining in at intervals. It reminded Logan of something. A prayer meeting, he decided: the preacher leading the congregation.

Logan gestured Bobby to wait while he peered in through the window. Making sure he couldn’t smell anyone nearby, he pushed his head carefully through the broken glass. An awkward shard gouged a deep cut in his cheek, but the familiar stinging of his accelerated healing factor knitting his skin back together, skin on muscle on bone, didn’t distract him from what he saw. He let his breath out gently in a silent whistle of recognition.

There was a flag opposite. Flags all around the room, all showing the same thing: a flattened black cross on a red background, and three letters.
FoH.
Friends of Humanity. What kind of mutant would be meeting with a mutant-hating rabble like that?

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While he’d been taking this in, Logan had been looking around—point man scouting the territory, he thought sourly. He was above a rusty-metal-and-rotting-wood platform. It circled the room, a giant, dark chamber that seemed to occupy most of the inside of the warehouse. The only illumination came from torches held by some of the hundred-odd congregation below. All looking at one man, the “preacher” on his stage, shouting out a sermon of hate against mutants. He finished some rousing phrase and they all cheered, lifting up their torches in an old salute. Logan remembered an SS meeting he’d broken into in a German castle, back in World War II. This was like that, only worse, because these people knew about that war and hadn’t learned from it.

There was no danger of being seen. No one was paying any attention to much except the preacher. Turning back to the window, Logan released one of his six adamantium claws out of its housing and carefully cut off the shards of glass until the entrance was clear. Logan went in, then summoned Iceman in after him.

Bobby’s eyes widened as he, too, took in the information that had intrigued Logan. He soon recovered himself and crouched down on the walkway beside him. “Gee, do you think we wore the right clothes for the party?” he whispered, smiling tensely. His expression became more serious. “But where’s Rachel?”

Logan had all but forgotten the frail In the excitement of his discovery. Now he looked carefully around the room, his keener-than-human eyes searching her out. And there she was, in the darkness by the door, surrounded by men whose faces looked strangely distorted.

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The preacher finished, and the congregation turned their attention to the woman. As she approached them, not with any enthusiasm, Logan thought, they, too, put something over their faces. Gas masks, he realized—more World War II imagery. They looked both macabre and absurdly comic, like postapocalyptic carnival masks, but it made sense if Logan was right about her. And he was always right.

Just then, Logan sensed a flicker of motion beside him. He felt himself shouldered aside as Bobby lunged forward. Logan grabbed at him, catching him around the waist before the young fool could throw himself off the walkway. “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?” he hissed.

“I’ve got to help her!” Bobby returned, none too quietly. Cursing, Logan clapped his hand over Bobby’s mouth and fought to hold the young man’s squirming, cold body with his own. Below them, he saw two men in Friends of Humanity uniforms peering upward toward them. He held his breath, and tightened his grip on Bobby until he probably couldn’t breathe either. For a taut stretch of time, the men continued looking up, muttering to each other. Then the darkness defeated them and they turned their attention back to the woman.