X-Men: The Last Stand (26 page)

Lucas Bishop was once more in charge of the NYPD contingent, with Charlotte Jones beside him. The seven-eight, a couple of blocks away on Bergen, was her home precinct, and Prospect Heights, her home, period. Her folks lived a little farther in the other direction, in Fort Greene, so this wasn’t just the job for her. This was very personal.

The protestors surged forward, against the NYPD wooden sawhorses and the baton- and shield-carrying guardsmen who backed them up. A sergeant yelled at them through his bullhorn, “Everyone, please, get back!”

Around Bishop and Charlotte, everyone moved into their proper position. In their earbugs, which tied them into the command net, the two bosses heard the status reports from all the sniper teams.

“Perimeter secure,” came the report.

“Good,” Bishop said. Then, into his own radio, repeated more loudly for the benefit of the troops nearby, “Let’s start letting them in!”

A quartet of troopers, the biggest they could find, tucked the first clutch of mutants between them, like saplings amidst redwoods, and headed for the entrance. Watching, Charlotte remembered her dad telling her what it had been like as a boy, watching news reports from Little Rock, showing federal marshals escorting a little black girl into the first integrated school in the city, in the face of a mob of snarling, hate-filled faces spewing every cruel and hurtful catcall they could think of. She’d seen the Norman Rockwell painting as well, and hoped there was someone of equal talent and passion who could document this generation’s moment of grace and courage. She was glad she had the opportunity to stand amongst their defenders, as her heart ached to see more than a few she knew—some quite well—among the protestors.

There was a construction site nearby, and some of the crowd had collected some loose bits and pieces of rubble in passing; it didn’t take long for them to start throwing. The troopers used their shields as they’d been taught, linking them as the ancient Roman Legion had done to create the “turtle,” putting an unbreakable roof over their heads for protection.

But the shield wasn’t foolproof and not all the projectiles were deflected. One soldier went down, blood streaming from a gash below his helmet. Charlotte helped drag him clear and an NYPD uniformed officer took his place. The line bowed, retreated perhaps a step, but otherwise held.

Slowly, patiently, the snipers and their spotters swept the crowd with their high-powered lenses. Rounds chambered, safeties off, fingers rested beside the triggers, but not on them. Boring, meticulous work, maximum stress, because they couldn’t relax their vigilance even a smidge, and when the time came to act, they had to be perfect. It wasn’t even that warm a morning, yet, one and all, the snipers were sweating.

At Bishop’s command, the line of guards advanced, step by relentless step, easing the protestors back to their original position. The order for the day, emphasized repeatedly all along the chain of command, was restraint. No screwups were acceptable, not in the face of such comprehensive media coverage, not with the whole world watching. He spared himself a ghost of a grin at the thought, because some among the protestors—although he couldn’t yet tell which side—had begun that very chant, as their parents and grandparents had before them. “The Whole World Is Watching! The Whole World Is Watching!”

A stir among the anticure crowd snagged his attention. He began to respond. He noticed Charlotte turning as well, reacting to the same cop instinct, the same subconscious cues.

Someone was charging out of the crush and into the open. Lizard skin, with legs made more for jumping than walking.

“Green light,” Bishop said into his headset. “At your discretion.” There wasn’t an instant’s thought given to the repercussions if he was wrong, and he trusted his men as he did himself.

Sniper Team One across the avenue, twelve stories up, had the best angle. Officer Zak Penn stopped chewing his gum, tapped lightly on the button that laid the scarlet dot of his laser square against the center of the mutant’s back, and shifted his finger to the trigger.

The charging mutant leapt into the open, covering half the distance to the police line with the first jump and reaching a height that told them his second would put him on the roof. He had a bomb, of course. He also intended to be long gone when it detonated; he’d only need a second to drop the thing and another to be an entire block removed from the blast.

Penn made the necessary adjustments, pulled the trigger, and started chewing again while chambering the next round. He was ready for a second shot, but knew he wouldn’t need it.

The mutant was barely off the ground when the projectile hit him, right on the money.

He dropped as hard as if he’d just been hit by an invisible linebacker, going into violent convulsions the moment he landed. Bishop started forward, hand on his own weapon, while Charlotte yelled for the paramedics. But the seizure passed as quickly and abruptly as it had begun, and concern turned to astonishment as scales flaked off the man’s body, revealing clean,
human
flesh underneath. His head had been crowned by a succession of bony ridges, running front to back, rising to a central crest. Now he was nearly bald, with a definite shading of hair. And as for his legs—originally they’d formed a shape something like a wild S, made for leaping huge buildings with a single bound. Not anymore. Pink feet and ordinary—
normal
—toes were what could be seen sprouting from the hem of trousers which had fit perfectly before but were now hugely oversized.

Slowly, wobbling because his balance and center of gravity had changed so markedly, struggling to get used to the new configuration of his body, the man—who’d been a mutant—rose to his feet. He stared, dumbfounded, at his hands and then lifted them and his face skyward, unleashing all his grief and rage in one monstrous bellow of denial that echoed and re-echoed throughout the suddenly silent plaza:

“Nnnnooo!”

Nobody else said a word as a couple of cops and troopers trundled forward—nothing quick or graceful about moving in all that gear—to trip him up and put him gently down so they could bind his wrists with zip ties and hustle him to the nearest police van for processing.

The protestors said nothing, did nothing, although some shot nervous looks at the neighboring rooftops, wondering what would happen next.

Off to the side, watching from the roof of their truck, which afforded the best vantage, one of the local reporters elbowed her camera guy in the ribs: “Tell me you got that,” she demanded of him and was rewarded by a terse, satisfied nod.

Worthingon Jr. snapped off the TV. He couldn’t bear to watch anymore.

“What have I done?” he asked. “What have I done?”

It wasn’t just the violence done to the clinics that haunted him; in a way, he’d half-expected such a reaction, as it was emblematic of the times. What struck him to the quick—coming on the heels of his own son’s terror at the prospect of the needle—was the look on the mutant’s face as he realized what had been done to him. Thus far, the only mutants Worthington Jr. had encountered directly were those who’d embraced what he offered. Here was the first time he’d seen someone transformed involuntarily. The fact that he was likely a terrorist, committing a criminal act that might have gotten people hurt or killed, didn’t matter to him—which was strange because he was a devout proponent of law and public order. It was coming face-to-face with the realization that he’d done something irrevocable.

He remembered a movie from his youth, seen on a day one afternoon in London, Fellini’s
Satyricon.
Early on in the movie, a man—an extra, a derelict drafted off the streets—had actually allowed his hand to be severed at the wrist, in a scene presenting how ancient Rome punished criminals. He had never understood how that person had permitted himself to be so mutilated, or how any other rational,
decent
person could have committed the act. What was done could never be undone, the hand gone forever.

Just like that mutant’s powers.

He remembered that tragic moment in the bathroom, beholding his son, the light of his life, slashing at himself with a boning knife, desperate to pluck away the wings sprouting from his back, unable to accept the cruel alterations in his body that would make them practical. He’d held the boy in his arms, the two of them rocking back and forth, as so much blood flooded over them that when his wife came home from work she screamed and damn near fainted, thinking husband and son had both been murdered. They’d all sobbed themselves to sleep that night, without any answers to their prayers. Why, oh
why,
had God done this to their bright and beautiful boy? Ultimately, they’d homeschooled their son because Warren hated to go outside. He had to strap his wings into a cruel harness that made him feel like he was walking around in a perpetual hammerlock, desperately afraid of what would happen if anyone found out. He broke contact with his childhood friends; he hardly left his room. Briefly, they considered consulting with Charles Xavier, but neither of them wanted their boy to be lumped in with a student body that was described in the popular press as either freaks or terrorists, or both.

Beyond that, Worthington Jr. had begun to consider the course of his son’s life
after
school. Who would hire a man with wings? What work could he do? And what would this mean for any grandchildren should he ever marry?

So many hard questions, so few satisfactory answers, so much misery for all concerned. He found himself imprisoned in a box, and so he had sought a solution that was outside the box, which is what led him to Kavita. Her research seemed to him a godsend, her discovery the ideal solution to everyone’s problem.

Until this moment, when all his good works and intentions turned to ashes in his mouth.

“All I wanted to do was help,” he said, a little bit lost, a little bit helpless, recalling out of nowhere the old saying about what paved the road to Hell.

“Perhaps,” Dr. Rao offered, “we hadn’t considered the full ramifications of the cure.”

“I just…” Worthington Jr. said, his explanation more for his own ears than hers, “I thought this would bring us together.”

Rao shook her head. “Let us hope—let us pray—it doesn’t tear the world apart.”

The room shook with the powerful downdraft of rotor blades as a pair of Apache attack helos circled the building, providing air cover for a Sikorsky Black Hawk troop transport that was already touching down. They heard a minor tumult in the outer office, the repetitive thunder of boots hurrying along the hallways, and then were faced by a civilian flashing a badge that identified him as FBI, accompanied by a stick of paratroopers, assigned to secure the location and especially anyone and everything relating to the cure.

Worthington’s discovery was no longer his. And its fate, like those of his son, and mutantkind in general, had just been assumed by greater hands.

Logan knew nothing about what was happening in the world, and at the moment cared less. He was hunting.

Jean had shown him the way, but he was too innately wary to follow her trail directly. Once he found the jumping-off point, he used one of the handheld computers Kitty was fond of gimmicking together to pull a landsat overview of the scene off the Net. Cute little gizmo, he discovered, in keeping with its creator—full of surprises—it contained a miniature version of the holo-projection systems in the
Blackbird
and the Mansion, allowing him to view the target area in three dimensions rather than as a flat picture on a screen. This enabled him to follow Jean’s trail virtually, a dry run that told him where he had to go, so that he could find his own way.