... and then went silent.
He started again, Storm gently manipulating the throttles, both of them watching the displays like hungry hawks to make sure that this time there'd be no loss of power.
"Thrusters four and six are out," she reported. It wasn't anything Rogue had done; this was left over from the Air Force missile that had knocked them from the sky.
"We should still be able to fly," Cyclops told her.
"If we were level, absolutely. But we're stuck fast, and the thrusters we need to punch us loose are the ones we're missing. There's not enough power available to pull us out of the ground!"
"You got a better idea?"
She advanced the throttles, and the great aircraft began to tremble violently. Seeing a clutch of tree trunks flipping toward them through the air, Storm reflexively ducked her head into her shoulders, whistling as they bounced harmlessly past. They'd been torn loose by the flood and pitched on ahead. The mutants had only a few moments before the water was on them. It was now or never.
Xavier sensed the children's agitation and used his telepathy to ease their fear. If this was indeed the end, he would make sure that, for them, it would be peaceful and without pain.
Nightcrawler clutched his rosary and offered up the most heartfelt prayers he knew.
Jean closed her broken eyes and went to that place within her where the celestial song could be heard. Now, more than ever before, that strength was needed. In her mind's eye she rose once more from the ashes of creation and spread wide her arms, turning them to wings of fire and glory, that the Blackbird might fly, that these friends-who she loved more than her own life-would live.
In the base's loading bay, the closed doors finally gave way under the onslaught of this latest and most terrible fall of water, together with a major stretch of ceiling as well. Like starving hounds after a deer, floods poured down every corridor.
Far below, Yuriko Oyama lay unmoving in her cocoon of adamantium at the bottom of the augmentation tank. The room was mostly in ruins, but there were redundancy systems galore, and that meant some of the monitors were still active. The bionics that replaced much of Yuriko's purely organic components came with their own dedicated suite of sensors, and even though the images on the screens were wobbly and shot through with static, it was evident that she was still alive.
Not that it mattered. Encased in an adamantium shell, she was wholly incapable of movement. She wasn't going anywhere of her own volition or under her own steam.
A few moments later, as the flood waves reached this section of the complex, the whole question became moot. Walls shattered from the torrential impact, and that, in turn, collapsed the entire ceiling. In a heartbeat, the lab was filled with water, and the augmentation chamber itself, together with the Weapon X tank, was buried under hundreds of tons of steel and rock and earth.
Elsewhere, the same happened in the Cerebro chamber.
Outside, an avalanche of water hundreds of feet high cut a remorseless swath through the valley below Alkali Lake, annihilating every trace of the complex that had been constructed beneath the dam. The pressure wave of air that preceded it made trees that were meters thick bend almost double for the few seconds it took the water to reach them and snap them like kindling. Mist and foam rose from that leading edge of the wave, partially obscuring the awful fury of the event and the devastation it was causing.
Directly in its path, mere seconds from destruction, lay the Blackbird.
No, Jean thought to herself. More than an article of faith, this denial became for her its own irresistible, indomitable force of nature.
On the flight deck, both Storm and Cyclops reacted with surprise as switches and controls began to operate by themselves. Before their eyes the plane once more set itself for vertical takeoff.
Realizing who had to be responsible for this, Cyclops turned in his chair to call out, concern evident in his voice, "Jean?"
He reached for the release on his harness, but Storm laid her hand on his arm to stop him. It was the only card left to play.
Jean raised both hands, her face eerily serene, revealing none of the murderous concentration of will and effort this had to be demanding of her. Xavier's eyes narrowed. He couldn't gain access to Jean's mind, to determine precisely what was happening or assist in any way. The power she was manifesting created a scrambling field around her thoughts unlike anything he'd ever encountered, which he found himself unable to penetrate.
At Jean's bidding, the vertical thrusters fired. Mentally reviewing the plane's schematics, she cast forth a piece of her awareness to take a look directly at the problem, smiling to herself at how much simpler it was to do the work this way than it would have been with her hands. No more squeezing through impossibly small spaces and getting cut and scraped by wayward outcrops of metal. She identified the problem and, using telekinesis, fixed it.
Obligingly, the engines roared to full power.
"The thrusters are back on-line," Storm told Cyclops, grabbing her controls and pulling back on the yoke. He took care of the throttles, advancing them to full emergency power, while keeping a wary eye on their appropriate telltales.
Of course, it wasn't quite that easy. Jean walked the psychic image of herself underneath the hull, where the wing was still stuck fast. Reminding herself to apologize later, she slipped the throttles out of Cyclops' grasp and eased back on the power to minimize the risk of structural damage. Another asset of working this way, she discovered to her delight, was that she could multitask at the speed of thought, accomplishing a number of objectives in no time at all, so that for her the onrushing wave appeared to be frozen in place, like one of Bobby's ice sculptures.
She set her phantom shoulders against the wing root, planted her phantom feet firmly enough on the ground to leave an actual imprint, and applied power in much the same way as Cyclops did by advancing the throttle. She called it from this magical place within herself, and reveled in the celestial song that enveloped her as she mated imagination to will and found the place where there are no limits.
The smile she gave, on her real face as on her phantom one, as the wing slipped free of the ground, was as radiant as if she were witnessing the birth of the very first star in the heavens.
The engines roared, gravity pressing everyone aboard into their seats as Storm grabbed for altitude, racing ahead of the flood wave at a steep upward angle that bought them the time they needed to rise above the crest of the water. At the same time, she brought a wind right into their face, to create an even greater amount of lift for the wings.
At the back of the plane, Logan stood by the open ramp as the valley fell farther and farther behind. A light was pinging insistently beside his head, Storm on the flight deck pointedly telling him to close the damn door. He ignored it, for the moment.
He looked around suddenly, sharply, as if someone were standing right beside him, and more slowly his gaze swept the passenger section of the jet until his eyes came to rest on Jean. She didn't respond, but he knew she was aware he was looking at her. He suspected she was aware of a lot of things, and capable of far more than any of them even imagined. She'd need someone strong to walk beside her, and he flicked a quick glare to the right-hand seat on the flight deck. Cyclops better be equal to the task. Jean deserved the best, and if she figured Logan didn't fit that bill, he'd make damn sure whoever she chose was worthy of her.
That made him chuckle, and he looked back toward what had been Alkali Lake. The water was down by more than half, though with any luck the flood would slacken over time and distance, and the towns downriver would survive. Probably worth suggesting to Charley that the X-Men help out, though.
Then his mood darkened. No more Stryker, thanks to Magneto. Whatever secrets he possessed were lost to Logan now. Same went for the base. If the past was indeed prologue, like Shakespeare said, then all Logan was left with right now was a book full of blank pages.
Stryker had called him an animal.
He looked at his dog tags and knew that wasn't entirely a lie, or even an exaggeration. But man was an animal. Did that make what Stryker said true, the way that Stryker meant it?
Logan turned once more into the body of the plane until his eyes came to rest again on Jean.
Animals didn't feel the way she made him feel, or inspire the feelings he knew he did in her. Animals didn't give a damn about feeling... worthy.
A new movement caught his eye; Rogue had turned in her seat to look from Jean to him. He gave her a smile, acknowledging that his epiphany cut both ways, that much of what drove Rogue was the desire to feel worthy of him. That had never happened before, either.
There was more to this new world he'd found than Jean, no matter how signal a part of it she was. And some other parts were just as precious.
He didn't look back as he pressed the control that raised the ramp and sealed the hatch. He didn't look down as he dropped the dog tags into his pocket.
He made his way forward, shaking his head in amusement as he saw Jones curled up around Nightcrawler's tail, playing with it the way a kitten might a ball of string. Rogue and Bobby were looking after the kids, most of whom had crashed the moment the Blackbird was airborne. No one said a word about John.
Logan had marked the boy's scent on the tree line, followed its trail to the helicopter pad where it mingled with Magneto's and Mystique's. As best his senses could report, they'd taken off together. The boy had joined up of his own free will.
Then there was Charley.
They met each other's eyes, but only for a moment. They had a lot to talk about, and it had to be talk. Logan wasn't sure when he'd allow the other man inside his head, only that it would be a while. And Xavier knew better than to visit uninvited. They were both wary, they were both wounded; it made sense under the circumstances to put things off until they'd had time to heal.
Not as if Logan was planning on going anywhere. Not solo, anyway. Not anymore.
He climbed up to the cockpit and slipped into the seat that Scott had vacated, watching him tenderly begin to apply bandages to Jean's eyes, while Xavier leaned close, probably using his own mental powers in concert with hers to determine the full extent of the damage.
Storm was looking at him, and he was surprised to see there was no sign of concern on her face. Made him grin to realize that it wasn't because she didn't care, but rather because he didn't need it.
The book of his past was closed. Didn't matter to the X-Men who or what he was; he'd proven by character and actions that he belonged. They accepted him wholeheartedly and without question. Now that ball was in his court.
The book of his future was waiting to be written, and wherever it might lead in days to come, Logan knew that for the present his life was bound to theirs.
He reached out his left hand, and with a smile full of promise and delight, Storm took it, indicating that he place his right hand on the yoke.
Together they pulled back on the sticks and sent the Blackbird soaring toward the stars.
Epilogue.
Ten minutes before, the news anchors of all the major networks had solemnly introduced the President, live from the White House in Washington, D.C. The graphic of the presidential seal was displayed, and the image dissolved to George McKenna sitting at his desk. The housekeeping staff had been busy in the week since the attempt on his life, and the office looked good as new. The desk itself, carved from the timbers of a British frigate captured during the war of 1812, had been swept of its usual clutter. The only items in view were a stack of files, in leather loose-leaf binders adorned with the seal, and the knife with its scarlet banner: MUTANT FREEDOM NOW. And of course, the speech.
The copy he held was just for show. He was actually reading from the TelePrompTer right in front of him, speaking to the nation as he would to his own children. It was a good quality he had, this ability to convey the most complex of issues in terms that everyone not only understood but which also made them relevant to their own lives.
He just wished-with all his heart-he had a different topic.
The office was crowded-broadcast technicians, staffers, military, Secret Service. There was a palpable air of anxiety to the room, and McKenna prayed that didn't show on his own face. He was asking a lot of his country, to in effect declare war on some of its own children.
He had a bust of Lincoln on his desk, out of camera shot, and a photo of John Kennedy. The one, because he led the Union in and out of a Civil War; the other, because he had stood with the world on the brink of nuclear Armageddon and brought it safely home. He thought he knew now some of what they had felt during those fateful days and weeks and, for Lincoln, years. He looked at the knife and wondered as well if the road of his life would come to the same end.
Dying wasn't such a horror; he accepted it as a natural part of life. Being killed, though, especially having survived a combat tour in a serious shooting war, that was something he'd hoped he'd never have to worry about again.
There'd been no word from Stryker since their meeting in this very office. No contact, in fact, with any of the man's senior staff. That was worrisome to McKenna, especially in light of the reports that filtered out of Westchester, about military helicopters and kidnapped and terrorized children. They represented everything McKenna feared most about Stryker's operation and his methods, and he'd been on the brink of ordering him to stand down when the whole of the human race had apparently come within a heartbeat of extinction.
He couldn't really recall much of what had happened, beyond collapsing, and then finding himself cradled in the lap of one of his female Secret Service detail, while she leveled her pistol at the doorway. Today she was standing off in the corner, to his left, back to the wall, where she had a clear view of everyone present and an equally clear run at McKenna himself. If anything happened, he knew that Alicia Vargas would give her life to save him, without hesitation.
She hadn't seen the speech, almost no one had, although its substance had been the focus of scores of rumors ever since he had asked for airtime. He'd worked on it with his wife-who'd been with him most of his political career and who actually served as his de facto chief speechwriter-and ended up writing most of the text himself. There were no copies, other than the one scrolling through the camera mount in front of him, and no advance material had been released to the press. Whatever he would say tonight would come to the nation as a surprise.
He thought of his children as he spoke, and of how he'd feel if he were to discover one of them was a mutant. Could he stand by and see them condemned? How fiercely would he resist? And yet, it was only by the smallest yet most profound of miracles that the world had survived at all. Did not the needs, the very survival, of the many justify the sacrifice of a few?
Stryker's indictment of mutantkind was damning, but that's what indictments were supposed to do, make the case for conviction. McKenna would have felt better, though, if someone had been able to mount a defense.
Maybe he needed one more bust on his desk, of Pontius Pilate. Or would old Ramses be better, condemning the Hebrew firstborn?
Movement caught his eye, but it was only his chief of staff pouring a glass of water.
"... in this time of adversity," McKenna read, "we are being offered a unique opportunity-a moment to recognize a growing threat within our own population, and take a unique role in the shaping of human events."
He took a deliberate look at the pile of folders Stryker had given him.
"I have in my possession... evidence... of a threat born in our own schools, and possibly even in our own homes..."
He jumped, just a little, as a surprise burst of thunder rattled the room. Staffers moved quickly to the door and windows out of camera view, to close the curtains. Unfortunately, the broadcast was live; there was nothing to be done about the windows right behind him as a sky that the Weather Channel had guaranteed would be clear suddenly darkened with angry clouds from horizon to horizon. Lightning flashed spectacularly and often, and the glass was pelted by a torrential downpour of cold and driving rain. Nothing would be flying today, not in the vicinity of Washington. If people had half a brain, they wouldn't even try driving.
"... a threat we must learn to recognize, in order to combat it..."
A display monitor was mounted to one side of the camera, allowing him to see how he looked. But with another, even more daunting burst of lightning and thunder like the wrath of God, that screen abruptly dissolved into static.
"What the hell?" McKenna demanded, as much a reaction to the atmospheric display outside as to what was happening here. The lights had flickered as well. Just perfect, just dandy, the most important speech of his administration gets skunked by wild weather that just whistled up out of nowhere.
"What the hell?" he repeated, rising slightly from his chair, because he'd just then noticed that the red light atop the camera was no longer glowing. The camera was off, he wasn't broadcasting. He was about to call to the cameraman, only to realize that the man was standing stock-still, as if he'd been flash frozen.
He looked around the room and saw that the same applied to every person present. They weren't moving, not a one. And yet it wasn't time that had stopped, only the people-water was still pouring from the pitcher Larry Abrahms was holding, overflowing the cup and pouring over his leg to the floor.
McKenna grabbed for his phone but couldn't find a dial tone on any of the lines, not even the direct, secure, untappable link to the National Military Command and Control Center in the Pentagon. He pressed the crash button, to indicate an imminent threat inside the Oval Office. By rights that should have set off alarms throughout the building and brought armed agents at a dead run.
Nothing happened. In a room crowded with people, he was suddenly quite alone.
Something stirred over by the fireplace, but because of the bright TV lights right in his face he couldn't quite make out what he was seeing until they stepped forward.
Six in all. Three men, three woman. One man in a wheelchair, everyone but him clad in form-fitting leather that bore the look of a uniform. He wore a suit, as conservatively respectable as McKenna's own.
"You," he said to the man in the wheelchair, immediately recognizing the familiar face from various news programs, the networks' go-to talking head when it came to the subject of mutants. Stryker's file had made the reason plain.
"Good afternoon, Mr. President," said Charles Xavier.
"What are you doing here?" McKenna demanded, rising to his feet.
"We're mutants," Xavier said, "but we aren't here to harm you. Quite the contrary. My name is Charles Xavier. These are the X-Men. Please sit down."
"I'd rather stand."
He had names for all of them, mainly from Stryker's files: the redhead, whom he'd met when she testified before Congress, was Xavier's associate, Dr. Jean Grey. The silver-haired woman was one of the teachers at Xavier's School, Ororo Munroe. The younger girl had been referred to in Stryker's files only by a code name: Rogue. One of the men was also a mainstay of the School, Scott Summers; the other, surprisingly, as McKenna remembered from some particularly nasty CIA files, shared ops with, of all organizations, the Canadian Special Intelligence Operations Executive. He was Logan. He hung a little back and apart from the others, his eyes never resting as they ceaselessly swept the room for any signs of trouble. He was the team's cover, just as Alicia Vargas was for her President. If there was a problem, McKenna understood that he'd be the one to deal with it.
Dr. Grey's eyes were strangely milky, lacking iris and pupil, and McKenna realized with a start that she must be blind. She made a small gesture with a hand, and an imposing stack of files floated through the air to McKenna's desk, landing right beside the folders already there.
"These are files from the private offices of William Stryker."
"How did you get them?"
"Let's just say I know a little girl who can walk through walls."
"Where is Stryker?"
"Regrettably," and Xavier sounded like he actually meant it, "no longer with us."
"You killed him!"
"He was killed, yes. While trying to annihilate every person on this globe who possessed the mutator gene."
McKenna's eyes flashed to his left, to Alicia Vargas, as he remembered how shockingly she'd collapsed, writhing on the floor as if in the throes of a grand mal epileptic seizure, blood gushing horribly from her mouth and nose and eyes and ears and the pads of finger- and toe-nails, as though her whole body had suddenly become obscenely porous. She hadn't moved from her post, but he could see that, unlike everyone else in the room, she was aware of what was happening. She could hear Xavier and see him. She had her hand on her gun, but she hadn't yet drawn it. To his credit, McKenna didn't once doubt her loyalties. Mutant or no, she would be true to her oath.
"I didn't know," he said. "My God." He shook his head, vainly trying to grasp the enormity of Stryker's ambition. "Do you think I would-do you think I could-sanction such a thing?"
"If I did, sir," Xavier told him, "we wouldn't be here talking."
McKenna flipped through the dossiers, speed-reading enough to make him sag atop the desk, resting his full weight, plus that of the office, plus that of the world, on hands and shoulders. Atlas had nothing on him when it came to bearing burdens.