X-Men: Dark Mirror (29 page)

" 'Ro," Remy said. "Ease up. Something not right here."

She did not want to ease up. "They should be punished, Remy. For Jubilee, if nothing else."

"Storm," said the girl, but she was cut off by a new voice, a deep voice, one that rang clear as a bell even over the howling of her winds.

"Yes," said that voice. "Yes, that was my thought, as well, given their lackluster performance."

Storm cut the winds. The impostors slumped to the ground as though their wires had been cut. Between them, stepping over them, a man entered through the open doorway. He was tall and elegant, with sharp brown eyes and strong hands. He might have been handsome had it not been for the sickly cast of his skin, the gaunt- ness of his cheeks. He looked tired, but beyond that, deeper, she saw iron resolve.

"Who are you?" Ororo demanded. "How did you enter this school without the alarms going off?"

He smiled. "My name, Ms. Monroe, is Jonas Maguire. I was able to enter this place because I was invited."

"By them," Remy said, gesturing at the group still resting limp on the floor.

"Yes," he said. "I suppose you mind that a great deal."

"Oui," Remy snapped.

"And if I told you I was a mutant? Would that make a difference?"

"Not particularly," Ororo said. "What have you done with our friends? Our real friends?"

"They're still alive, though no doubt uncomfortable if

they haven't managed to escape the place I put them. Another special school for gifted youngsters." He smiled. "I was a teacher there myself, though that was not my job description. After observing what you people do here, part of me hopes your friends do escape. I think it would be nice for those five to come back and see the home they can never be a part of again."

"So they're alive," she breathed. "You stole them from their bodies, didn't you? Why? What is the point of such deception, especially one so poorly done?" She wanted to attack him, to slam lightning in his eyes, but she suddenly could not move and her powers refused to respond. So much for the psychic dampener.

"Poorly done?" He looked amused. "And I tried so hard. Oh, well. I won't care much about the execution, as long as I get the job done. And I think I will. I actually think I will be able to do this thing." He held up the newspaper and Ororo saw the front page's news, a discussion of the mutant-rights march. "I had hoped the X-Men would be attending this. It wouldn't have mattered, either way, but this is official. This means the press and the public will be playing close attention to all of you."

Jonas smiled. "Maybe I shouldn't have revealed myself like this. I thought I could wait. I had been waiting for so long already. I did think, however, that the charade would last a little longer. I thought that, despite your suspicions, you would play dumb to see what could be wrong with your teammates, your
friends.
I thought I could do all these things, to learn more about you, but I did not anticipate
my
Wolverine's reaction to the girl.

"If it comforts you," he said to Jubilee, "I did my best to rein her in, but she was too far gone. Her temper is quite fierce. I apologize for that."

"Wha?" Jubilee asked, frowning.

"I need to go," he said. "I'm going to make you all sleep now. I would do more—there are some lovely people the three of you would be perfect in, but my resources are limited. This is the finest balancing act I have ever committed myself to, a great feat of puppetry."

Lassitude swept over Ororo's mind, her body, and she struggled to move anything, including her mind, those heavy thoughts. Those psychic dampeners were worth nothing at all. Jubilee already looked unconscious, while Remy had fallen to one knee. His eyes were half-lidded and Ororo found that she, too, could not keep her eyes open. She saw enough, though. She saw the five fallen X-Men finally stir, rising to their feet and rubbing their heads and eyes as though they had been in a deep sleep. Jonas did not look at them. He stared only at Ororo, and his gaze was wild and dark.

"I am sorry about your roses," he said, "but my boy, your Jean, had to practice certain skills."

"What do you want from us?" Ororo asked, her words slurred.

She heard him say "Nothing. I want nothing from you at all," and then he patted her cheek and told her to sleep. Her eyes drifted shut.

They arrived home after a night of near relentless driving, cramped in a car they stole in Minneapolis, which was a junker on the outside, but had a beauty of an engine that made Logan consider keeping the old sweet Bess when they got back to the Mansion. Not right, of course, but life threw him so many curveballs he thought his karma must really suck. Might as well tack another onto the chopping block of his life.

The closer they got to New York State, the quieter they became. Nerves, fear of the unknown, a lack of certainty about their reception. Hell, they might not be able to get through the front gate and wasn't that going to suck. If that happened, Logan planned on chaining himself to the bars and waiting for the Professor to come home, or for someone to call another telepath. One good mental sweep should do the trick. Wasn't like anyone could mistake his mind for someone else's.

That was the positive side of his thoughts, the ones that led to the good outcome. The other side, the darker side, worried that the Mansion as they knew it would be gone, that all their friends would be hurt or dead, and that the X-Men as a team, a symbol, would never live again. All that work, all those dreams, flushed down the toilet for a reason none of them could yet suss out.

Again, he thought about having to spend the rest of his life as a woman. The prospect still did not appeal. Walking in other people's shoes was an overrated exercise, especially if the only purpose was to build a well-rounded character. He had plenty of character, thank you very much. He did not need any more.

And then, on the fifth morning of their pseudo- captivity, Scott drove up to the gate of their home. It was open, which was slightly unusual, but they pulled in and followed the winding driveway to the house. Everything was very quiet.

"Where are the children?" Jean asked, and they all had the same terrible thought, that one of them, all of them, perhaps, with their bodies, had wreaked some terrible harm upon the young people.

The school still stood, though, and Logan did not see any discernable signs of a firefight. Except for the dead roses—which, if he remembered correctly, had all been very much alive on the day of his departure—nothing seemed out of ordinary. The front door, however, was unlocked.

"I am worried," Kurt said.

"Yes," Scott said, and they entered the house. The security system was off and Scott punched in the code, reinstating the alarms. A warning, if nothing else, to give them time to prepare. Although, in Logan's professional opinion, if they were forced to go up against themselves—which seemed likely, at some point—preparation would not help them in the slightest. Only luck, only resolve. Those were the kinds of things that kept a man living through hard times, and even though they were home, Logan did not think their lives were about to become any easier.

Indeed, the more he walked through the Mansion, soaking in the unrelenting quiet, the unending lack of "presence," familiar or otherwise, the more he prepared himself for something truly horrible, the kind of thing that would create another anniversary, the sort that requires flowers on a grave to mark the passing of another year gone without a dear friend or lover. Logan was far too good about those anniversaries. He never forgot.

"It's like everyone picked up and left," Rogue said.

"I hope they just left," Logan muttered, and ignored the dirty looks his friends gave him.

The first place they found that indicated some kind of trouble was the gym, and there were two clues that made Logan's mouth go dry and his bowels loosen: a yellow leather jacket, and a spot some distance away that was covered in blood and bits of flesh.

He did not wait for the others. Holding the jacket tight against his chest, he raced down the hall toward the infirmary, and when he entered and saw who lay on the bed looking like death warmed over, who lay on the floor on either side looking not much better, a loud shout escaped his throat.

A thin layer of water covered the infirmary's entire floor. He slipped on his way in, falling hard, but crawled the last bit of distance. A quick glance showed him that Ororo and Remy still breathed, though the expressions on their faces looked like trouble had come knocking. He tried shaking them, but they did not respond. Their sleep was unnaturally deep.

Logan stepped over their bodies and sat gingerly on the edge of Jubilee's bed. It was difficult for him to peer into her swollen, beaten face, and he imagined what each blow must have looked like to make those marks. The attacker had been violent, brutal, and unrelenting. The attacker was also someone Jubilee knew, because the kid was too good to be taken down by anyone less than a friend, someone she would be reluctant to hurt too badly.

Logan looked at his hands, soft and round and female. He had a bad feeling about the person who had hurt Jubilee. Very bad.

"What happened here?" Jean asked, leaning over his shoulder to get a better look at Jubilee. "My God. Did one of us do that to her?"

Logan said nothing and Jean gave him a sharp look. "Logan?"

He shook his head, still unable to give voice to his fear, his certainty. He might be wrong, but he doubted it. Things like this he had instincts for. He knew what the work of his hands looked like. Jean squeezed his shoulder.

Scott and Kurt crouched over Ororo. Kurt held a small cup of water.

"I do not know about this," he said.

"Unless you want to start getting physical, use the water."

He did. Ororo stirred. Kurt placed her head in his lap and gendy smoothed back her hair, whispering nonsense in German. Slowly, Ororo opened her eyes—

—and froze.

"Who are you?" she said. Her voice sounded hoarse, misused.

Kurt smiled, ever so gently. "I have been away too long, Storm. Maybe I am not blue, maybe I am no longer handsome, but how could you fail to recognize the twinkling light of my eyes? The eyes do not change,
meine schoone Frau."

Ororo blinked. "Kurt?"

"The one and only."

She reached up with a careful hand and touched his face. Tore her gaze from him to stare at the others. She took a deep shuddering breath.

"These last days have been difficult without the five of you," she whispered.

"Have our bodies been here? Where are the children?"

"The children are fine, everyone except for... for Jubilee. And yes, your impostors have been here. You need to go after them. I do not know how long I have been unconscious, but the man controlling your counterparts mentioned the mutant-rights march. He is going there. I think he plans on having his impersonators do something that will damage us all." She tried to sit up and Kurt settled her against his chest. "He is a telepath. His name is—"

"—Jonas Maguire," Scott said. "Yes, we know."

"I have something of his," Logan growled. "Maybe a couple somethings."

"Logan?" she said, startled. "Is that you?"

"What? You can see the resemblance?"

She narrowed her eyes and Logan gave her a brief smile before turning his attention back on Jubilee. He felt her watch him and he knew she wanted to say something. He did not ask. He did not let her.

Rogue said, "Remy won't wake up."

"We don't have time to wait on him," Ororo said. "We must go into the city and stop Maguire."

Scott checked the clock. "It's after ten thirty. Isn't the march supposed to start at eleven?"

"Yes, I—" She stopped talking. "I can't move."

'Your spine—" Kurt began, but Ororo shook her head.

"No, he did something to me. My body won't listen." Tears leaked from her eyes. "You need help."

Kurt shook his head. He gave her a quick hug. "As you said, we have no time. We will be fine."

Logan agreed. They were going to be fine because they were too pissed off for anything less. Maguire was going to get stuck on a stick, and roasted like a marsh- mallow.

Plus, it would be one more for the road. The five of them, finishing what they had started.

Logan did not think that was such a bad way to die.