X-Men: The Last Stand (27 page)

Normally, he’d go for the impossible route, the one nobody would think to watch. But Magneto had such a bug up his butt about the Wolverine, chances were he’d have guards posted everywhere, just for spite. The Master of Magnetism was no fool—he had to assume Logan would make a play for Jean, and establish his defenses accordingly.

So Logan found himself a backdoor that was a rugged traverse, but nowhere near impossible. It was one of a score of ways into the depths of the untracked, minimally charted mountain forest.

He came with the clothes on his back, trusting to senses and tradecraft, along with his claws, to see him safely—whatever that would mean—to the finish. No weapons, no gear. He’d sustain himself on whatever he found along the way and face the elements as he had done as a boy.

Speed was of the essence, but as he closed on his objective, it was far better to be silent. A ghost couldn’t have been less conspicuous as he slipped from shadow to shadow without making a sound—not even the
shush
of clothes as he moved, the touch of boot soles to leaves on the forest floor—or leaving a sign.

Security was quite respectable. Magneto—or the flunky who replaced Mystique—knew the business. He encountered the first cadre a klick from the clearing, chose to watch them rather than engage, to get a sense of what kind of adversaries they were. Their woodcraft was lousy—they made as much noise walking as a kid busting a wilderness trail aboard his brand-new ATV. If this was the best Magneto had…

As it turned out, they weren’t. Nasty surprises awaited him as he encountered snares and deadfalls, mostly in the obvious places, but a few sited quite ingeniously. Fortunately for Logan, he could smell the mutants who’d laid the traps and see where they’d covered their tracks. Gradually, painstakingly, he learned how his adversaries thought, and how well they worked. As he did so, he learned how best to beat them.

The home stretch came, their last line of defense—the best of their breed. These guys, he didn’t want to leave on his six; they’d have to be dealt with. By this time, he had their communication protocols down pat. If he took them hard and fast, before they could get the word out, he’d have enough time before they were missed to reach Jeannie and bail. The question was, did Magneto have himself a telepath—other than Jean, of course. If he did, the psi would likely be in constant link with the sentries, and shriek the alarm at the first sign of trouble. No way of knowing for sure, he just had to throw the dice and hope for the best.

But even as he allowed himself that thought, with it came the certainty that Magneto had no psis among his new Brotherhood.

Jean, he knew; helping again. He took that for a good sign.

Two guards patrolled the woods, with another trio in the trees.

Leaves rustled. The guards responded, more wary with each approaching step, bringing rifles to bear, gearing for a fight. Nothing worth reporting yet.

He left them a footprint, and as one of them put fingers to lips to alert the others with a whistle…

…Logan blindsided him into oblivion. His partner took a swing. Logan blocked it, stabbed thumb to throat to forestall any outcry, ducked under a second swing, clipped the guy’s legs out from under him, caught him as he fell, and sent him off to dreamland with his partner.

There hadn’t been a lot of noise, but it was sufficient to bring the others. They came in fast from all sides, trapping Logan at their convergence.

They found their two fallen comrades, but not the man who dropped them.

They should have looked up. Pretty uncanny how well, how quickly, how quietly, a fella can claw his way up the side of a tree if there’s a need.

A scrap of torn bark fluttered past one of the mutants. By the time his gaze rolled up to find the cause…

…Logan was on his way down. He dropped into the center of the trio—no claws, there was no need for blood. These weren’t hardcore Brotherhood. He moved in a blur, with a focus and precision most would consider wholly unlike him. They tried their best to land both punches and kicks, but he either parried them or slipped out of the way, returning their strikes with interest, the adamantium laced through his bones impacting with more force than solid steel bars. Tough as mutant physiognomy might be, they were no match for his enhanced skeleton, or his natural strength.

Three men, three seconds, six or seven moves by all concerned, and the fight was over. They never really knew what hit them, and Logan didn’t even break a sweat.

Now for the main event.

He was after Jean, and her scent took him away from the encampment, which was altogether fine with him. Mayhem wasn’t on his dance card tonight, if it could be avoided. Much more fun to find a way to outthink Magneto than to play the brute, to show the old man that he wasn’t the only mutant with an affinity for chess.

As Logan snaked his way along the ridgeline, a very slight shift in the wind flooded him with the scents of the mutants gathered below and tossed all his well-laid plans into the Dumpster. Thinking back over his trail, he realized that he’d been so intent on Jean and the sentries that he’d discounted the other scents filling the air—only now acknowledging that they really did
fill
the air. Carefully, taking not the slightest chance, he parted some brush along the edge of the cliff for a view of the encampment.

He had to concede that Magneto had been busy the past few days. The old man must have made a helluva case, too. He’d expected a few score, max, to rally to Magneto’s cause; what lay before him easily numbered in the hundreds. Both sexes, all ages, individuals and families—not merely the ones who could fight, but the future generations they were fighting
for.

Magneto stood upon a makeshift platform, giving a speech.

“They wish to cure us,” he said, giving that sentiment and those who held it the contempt they so richly deserved. “But I say
we
are the cure, to that infirm, imperfect condition of nature called
Homo sapiens.
”

They cheered.

“They have their weapons, we have ours!”

They cheered more loudly. Logan hoped Magneto, like Fidel Castro, would go on for hours. That would make his life
so
much easier.

“We will strike with a vengeance and fury this world has never witnessed. We will destroy the very
source
of this cure…”

It doesn’t have to be this way,
Logan thought, and knew as he did so that for Magneto there could be no other. He seemed as hardwired into the patterns of his life as he so firmly believed Logan was into his.

“…and if any mutant should stand in our way, then we will use this poison against them….”

Logan paused and took a moment to look long and hard at his hands, as if his skin had turned transparent and he could see the claws in their housings, tucked into his forearms, see how intricately the molecular structure of his bones had been interwoven with that of the adamantium that made them unbreakable. The process had cost him a significant portion of his bone marrow; the key element that sustained him was his healing factor. It not only healed the gashes made between his knuckles every time the blades extended and retracted, it produced red and white blood cells with incredible efficiency. Take away the healing and he was a Dead Mutant Walking.

It was not a happy thought, and a fate he was determined to avoid. He wasn’t always comfortable with the X-Men, but life with them had definitely gotten interesting over the years, more than enough to keep him coming back, and maybe even to consider sticking around.

“We will end this where it all began.” That caught Logan’s attention. “And then, my brothers and sisters,
nothing can stop us
!”

And suppose you win, smart guy,
Logan thought,
what then, eh? What about the people who’re left, you just gonna make ’em “disappear”? Beat Hitler’s score by a factor of a hundred or more? Can even
you
embrace genocide? Or do you exile everyone to Australia? Or turn them into the perpetual underclass? Is that the future you promise these folks, to become lords of an Earth populated by slaves? Look in the mirror, bub, you’ll see how that scenario plays out.

He heard a chuckle deep inside his skull, caught a flash of scarlet amidst the woods, where Jean was watching both Magneto and him.

He should have been more careful, but knew in the end it wouldn’t have made any difference. He was on his way to her, quick but silent…

…when he was bounced back off his feet by an invisible wall. He thought for that first moment he’d been attacked by Jean, especially when he found himself pinned spread-eagled to a tree, unable to even wriggle.

“Here we go again,” Magneto said amusedly as he approached to set him straight. “I know the stench of your adamantium from a mile away.”

Logan struggled, and then grew very still as Magneto idly brandished the pistol taken from Mystique’s guard. Magneto flashed his eyes from the gun to Logan, his smile broadening as they returned to the weapon. Then, obviously enjoying the moment immensely, he tucked it in his pocket.

“I didn’t come here to fight you,” Logan told him.

“Smart boy.”

“I came for
Jean.
”

“And you think I’m keeping her against her will?”

Jean turned her back on them both as Magneto pulled Logan close, using magnetic fields both to hold him in midair and to keep the X-Man utterly immobile.

“She is here,” Magneto said, “because she
wants
to be.”

“You have
no idea
what you’re dealing with!” Logan cried out.

Magneto shook his head, battling an unhappy memory that Logan knew he was prepared to accept. A price to pay, for the old man’s
greater good.
“I know full well. I saw what she did to Charles.”

“You light that fire, what makes you think you can put it out?”

“Perhaps I’m like Prometheus, bringing that sacred fire to the masses?”

“I’m thinkin’ more like Icarus. I don’t give a rat’s ass how far you fall, Lensherr, but damned if I’ll see Jean fall with you.”

“You truly love her.” The older man shook his head, surprised by the revelation, and clearly saddened.

“I’m not leaving without her.”

Magneto pulled Logan right up to him and the look he gave the other man was actually sympathetic.

“Yes,” he said. “You are.”

He placed his hand flat against Logan’s chest and gave a gentle push.

Logan finally came to rest just this side of the horizon from where he’d started, close on twenty miles, through an entire forest and a fair share of boulders and quite likely a mountaintop. He’d lost track of his progress early on, and when he landed he didn’t move. His body was brutally torn, flesh as much in rags and tatters as his clothes, and while his bones arrived unscathed, the rest of him was as close to the end as could be imagined. His spleen was ruptured, liver speared by a broken branch. His lungs were intact within the rib cage but the diaphragm needed to pump them was savagely torn. His heart could still beat but what was the point, since a huge gash across the top of one thigh had severed the femoral artery. Any one of those injuries was an absolute guarantee of death. The combination of them all…

…only made his healing take quite a bit longer than usual—it was also a real pain.

Miles away, hearing him scream, knowing how he felt—both in terms of the healing and, far more importantly, about her—Jean Grey hugged her knees to her breast and stared into the heart of the campfire.

She wept.

Logan looked like hell when he returned to the Mansion. He felt a whole helluva lot worse. He hadn’t waited for the healing to run its full course. As soon as he’d woken, as soon as he could move, he found his bike and hit the road, stopping at a biker dive just long enough to pull a
Terminator
and relieve one of the gentlemen present of his leathers. And then, once the dust settled, he put in a quick call to the feds to come deal with the crystal meth lab percolating out back.

He’d ridden all day, all night, and he was just getting warmed up.

“Storm!” he bellowed, slapping the double doors of the formal entryway open so hard he damn near popped them off the hinges.

“We have problems,” he announced.