The Ultimate X-Men (7 page)

But Remy’s eye was not untrained. Through the cracks in the old wood he could see the reinforced steel and concrete walls of the main Arrington building. Hidden cameras covered every inch of area around the building. Invisible laser beam sensors crisscrossed the streets a block in both directions. Even a rat couldn’t move in this area of abandoned buildings without being tracked.

But Remy had been trained in the thieves’ guild, his skills honed as Gambit with the X-Men. He was much, much better at getting in somewhere unseen than any common rat.

THE ULTIMATE X HCH

Carefully, slowly, an inch at a time, he made his way along a wall, passing over and under laser beams while never moving fast enough to trigger a motion detector. He stayed in the shadows of the wall knowing that, to anyone watching a camera, he would be nothing more than shadow.

After leaving Hayward, he had considered just barging into the main building, fighting. That was more his style, more his recent training. But he didn’t know exactly what was going on with the children and he couldn’t take a chance of any of the live ones getting hurt until he knew.

It took him over an hour, but he finally made the rear door of the building immediately next to the Arrington headquarters. He knew of a tunnel leading from each of the neighboring buildings into the main one. It would be his best way in.

With an easy twist, he picked the complex lock of the door and slipped inside. The place smelled of mold and decay. It was the building closest to the river and farthest from the normal traffic patterns of the French Quarter and the main areas of New Orleans. It would be the least-used building for entering the main compound. He counted on that.

He crouched against the wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust. His senses told him instantly he was not alone. “So much for goin’ in unannounced,” he said softly to himself.

“Remy LeBeau,” a voice said, echoing through the darkness. “Nice of you to come back to see me.”

Remy stood, his hands in his pockets on his cards. The voice belonged to Lang, the fat, chipmunked-faced leader of the Arrington. But it had been broadcast. Lang would never risk himself in the open like this. Remy could see ten

miLISORlI III lit IH5T

outlines in the dim light, all holding machine guns. Lang had sent his goons. But he had underestimated Remy by sending only ten.

“I’m so sorry, however,” Lang’s voice continued, “that we won’t have a chance to chat.”

Remy jumped, hard and fast, while at the same time sending glowing cards at where he’d spotted the shadows.

First the explosions of gunfire, then of Remy’s cards filled the huge, empty warehouse.

In a tight ball, Remy flipped over twice in midair before landing and rolling behind an old column.

The bright orange flashes quickly showed Remy that he’d taken out most of the men with his first throws.

But he needed a diversion for just a moment longer.

Flipping energized cards at the remaining Arrington men as well as at distant walls and camera locations, Remy moved quickly into a cloud of smoke from the explosions.

Then between explosions he slipped down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs two men with guns ready stood guarding an open tunnel. He was on them so fast, they didn’t even get a shot off before he rendered them unconscious.

Taking both the guns from the men, he quickly kineti-cized the energy in them and then, With all his strength, threw the guns down the dark tunnel toward the main Arrington building.

He stood to one side as the explosion sent an impact blast back his direction so hard, it destroyed the old wooden stairs he’d just come down.

At a full run, flipping energized cards ahead of him into

the smoke as he went, he crossed through the tunnel and under the main building compound.

A main staircase led upward, but it was blocked by a huge steel door at the top. Five of Lang’s guards already lay unconscious around the bottom of the stairs and still no sign at all of the children. Or the zombies.

He needed to think of them as zombies, but somehow he just couldn’t get the image of children out of his mind.

He glanced around* then picked up a metal folding chair from a guard station. There was no point in being subtle now, not after this explosive entrance.

He quickly changed the potential energy of the chair into kinetic and, with a quick spin like a hammer throw, flung it at the steel door at the top of the stairs.

The explosion sent the door smashing inward.

Immediately on the other side machine guns opened up a deadly rain of fire.

Remy dove for a nearby tunnel and waited, tucked against a wall, as the area under the building was riddled with hundreds of bullets.

Finally the firing slowed and stopped. Six men, obviously more of Lang’s stooges, appeared at the top of the stairs and looked down.

Spinning out six energized cards with a quick flick of the wrist, Remy took all six out. Then, flicking cards through the opening above, he went up the stairs and to the right, rolling to stay out of the line of fire, all the time flipping card after card.

The firing stopped in a dozen explosions as he came up hard against a concrete wall. He remained crouched, letting his senses scan the smoke-fogged room. This assault felt like

ST1LLB0RR III TI1E HIST

an evening in the Danger Room back at the Xavier Institute. Here, just like there, you never knew what was going to come at you at any moment.

Then, through the smoke, there was movement. Someone was slowly coming toward him. Remy crouched, ready for anything.

It took a moment for his mind to register what was coming at him, then a moment longer to get past the shock of

What appeared to be a young woman in a white prom dress stumbled through the smoke directly at his position.

It was Cornelia. Or, more accurately, Cornelia’s body.

Her head was missing.

Her body stumbled forward, as if under mechanical control of a bad director in the worst B-movie.

Remy stared for a moment at where her head should have been, remembering her smile at the airport and how he had kissed her hand.

Then he realized that in her hands she now carried two very large and very live explosive charges.

With a quick flip of two energized cards, he hit both charges, while rolling as fast and hard as he could away to the left.

The concussion from the huge explosion smashed him against the wall. He banged his head hard on the concrete, but managed to come up running. Ahead was a wide double door made of ornate wood.

At a run he hit the door with both feet, sending it smashing inward. If he remembered right, behind this door was Lang’s personal office.

He had remembered right.

Six guards flanked Lang, but before any of them could even get off a shot at the intruder, Remy flicked energized cards against their chests, sending each smashing backward in a muffled explosion.

The explosions also knocked Lang backward and Remy was over him in a flash, pulling him back to his feet and holding him up above the desk. In the two years since Remy had seen Lang, the man had gained another hundred pounds. Now he seemed to be more a ball of flesh than anything else.

“Dat. anyway to greet a guest?” Remy asked with a smile.

Lang shook his head no, his fat chipmunk cheeks folding and unfolding with the motion.

Remy dropped him into his overstuffed chair and with one foot shoved him hard back against the wall. Lang’s head banged the wood and then lolled forward. His eyes were glazed and blood dripped from his mouth where he’d bitten a fat cheek.

“My motto,” Remy said, bending down right into the fat man’s face, “is live and let live.
Comprendez-vous
?”

Lang took a moment, then finally nodded, his beady eyes focusing on the X-Man.

“I’d never be here, but now I hear tell you take children.”

“None of your business, thief,” Lang managed to say, spitting blood as he did.

“Ah, dere you wrong. Children is all our business. Harmin’ children harms me. Harms my family. Harms my city. Now where are dey?”

Lang just spat out blood. “All dead and waiting to kill you, LeBeau.”

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Remy grabbed the fat man by the collar and picked him up with one hand, holding him pressed up against the wall. With the other hand he took out a charged card and waved it in front of Lang’s face before tucking it carefully into the rolls of blubber around the fat man’s belt.

At the sight of the card the man’s small eyes grew large and he swallowed. “We can talk, LeBeau.”

Remy nodded. “ ’Til my arm gets tired, fat man. But if you give me a wrong answer, my arm gets real tired. Now, de children?”

Remy saw the fat man’s eyes flicker in the direction of the main door. With a quick flick of the wrist, Remy sent five charged cards spinning in that direction. The explosions and a short, cut off scream made him smile at Lang. “You a fat one. I t’ink I drop you now. Yes?”

“No!” Lang said. “The children are in the next building over, toward town. But they’i'e all dead. All zombies.” Remy pretended to almost drop Lang and the fat man squeezed his eyes closed, then opened them again.

“Sorry,” Remy said. “You sure need to lose de weight. Now what else?” As he asked he took another charged card out of his pocket, waved it in front of Lang’s face, and slipped it into the fat man’s belt beside the first.

Lang’s eyes got even wider than before. “Without another dose of the formula real soon, they won’t even be zombies. They’ll just be dead.”

“So where de medicine?”

Lang swallowed and glanced to the left at a wooden door leading into a back room. “Back there, in the lab.” “You lyin’ to me,
homme
?” Remy said, pretending to drop the fat man.

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Sweat poured from Lang’s face as he shook his head. “LeBeau, I’m telling you the truth. They’re already dead and will be for certain in thirty minutes unless I take them their next dose.”

Remy nodded and, with a flick of his arm, tossed the fat man in a swan dive over his head into the center of the office. The guy let out a short scream before he hit.

The resulting muffled explosion made Remy smile.

Without looking back, he went through the door into the lab. The fat man had been telling the truth. The place looked like a chemistry lab, with one large table running down the middle. Beakers full of fluids filled the table. Remy stood in the door studying it all, then stepped inside and picked up a metal stool. Holding the stool up, he energized it until it glowed brightly.

And for a moment, he hesitated, thinking of the children. But now they were already dead. All he was doing was stopping monsters like Lang from using their walking bodies for what ever purpose they wanted. Remy hated with his deepest passion anyone who could hurt children.

With as hard a throw as he could manage he spun the metal stool at the center of the chemicals.

Then he tumbled backward and out of the way of the explosion.

Glass and smoke filled the room and he turned and ran. There was no telling what sort of poisons were in there burning now.

He paused in the outer area only long enough to make a quick call to the police, telling them there was a fire and where they could find the children.

At least this way their parents could give the kids a de-

STILLSORn III Tit niST

cent burial. That was more than Hayward would be able to do for Cornelia.

Remy waited outside in the shadows of a nearby empty warehouse until the police had fought their way inside.

Then Remy LeBeau turned away, heading back to the X-Men, once again leaving his hometown. But this time he left it just a little better than when he’d found it.

And, as with any good thief, no one saw him go.

X-rRESSO

Ken drobe

Illustration by Dave Cockrum & John Nyberg

I
ooking back, I’d say the second most exciting thing that I happened to me today was getting hit in the gut with a L fastball special. Well, maybe the third most. Ysee, being an X-Man and all, improbable, unpredictable stuff happens to us all the time. It’s just as likely that one of us gets spirited away to another dimension as rip a pair of dungarees. But what happened today was different. It was special. Still, I don’t mind saying, it didn’t start out too pretty.

It began with a letter from my momma. She wrote to tell me that my younger brother Josh had left the farm to go to Nashville. I swear, when I read that, I felt my jaw hit the floor. Ysee, since my daddy died and I went to study with Professor Xavier, Josh has sorta been the “man” of the house, helping out my momma and the younger kids on the farm. Up until I got that letter, I thought Josh’d always stay on the farm, on account of he took such pride in it. More than once w’hen I’d come home for a visit, Josh’d go out of his way to tell me that he ’n’ momma had the farm well in hand, thrusting that fact in my face like a badge of honor he’d won in a war I’d never fought. ’Course, he was always a little jealous that our sister Paige and I had gotten to leave the farm and go to private boarding schools. But at that same time, he’d always take great pride in the fine job he ’n’ Momma had done in taking care of the farm and our younger brothers and sisters. Besides, Paige and I only went away for school because we’d discovered that we had mutant powers, and going away to the Xavier Institute and the Massachusetts Academy was the best way to deal with them. Josh was pretty relieved that he didn’t have that particular curse.