Gifted

  Then Ord hit the braking thrusters.

  It was only a momentary diversion, but it was all Ord required. The thrusters fired in reverse, bringing the ship to the equivalent of a panic stop in midair. Tildie screamed and slid from the back of the cockpit to the front, thudding painfully against the underside of the console. Because Ord was belted in tightly and prepared, he was able to keep himself upright and back against the seat.

  As for Wolverine, there were many rules that he was capable of ignoring, but the laws of physics were not among them. Objects in motion tended to stay in motion, and the violent stop propelled him forward, forcing his hand out of Ord’s mouth. His claws popped out a second too late to be of any use. An instant later, he was gone, propelled through the window and out of the ship.

  “Hah!” shouted Ord. He looked out the shattered window and saw no sign of Wolverine. At the speed the mutant had been moving, he’d probably already hit the ground by now.

  They were just above Benetech, and Ord could see the frustrated mutants helpless upon the ground. The last they would see of him would be the rear of his departing vessel, and they would know that—

  Something sliced across his forearm in a blur, and he screamed in pain. For a moment he thought it was Wolverine back from the dead, but he was wrong.

  Ord, as it turned out, had not been completely immune to the effects of the sudden deceleration. He hadn’t realized that his spikedring weapon had come free of its holster and lodged under the control panel.

  Tildie had extracted it.

  She was standing not two feet away from him, gripping the weapon with both hands. She was neither trembling nor in panic. Holding a weapon seemed to give her some degree of confidence, a sense of control.

  “No more nightmares,” she whispered.

  “Put that down,” said Ord, “before you hurt yourself.”

  He tried to grab the weapon, and she whipped it around. There was no artistry or combat style to her assault. But considering even a glancing blow could cut through his armor and to the bone, she didn’t have to be precise. If Ord had yanked his arm back a second later, she would have hacked off his hand.

  This was insane. He had dispatched the X-Men with little to no difficulty, and he was being held at bay by a frantic child?

  “Give me that!” he roared, yanking clear his straps.

  “No more nightmares!” she screamed, right back at him. She came at him, swinging the vicious weapon back and forth like a scythe.

  Ord backed up across the cockpit, slowly, trying to time Tildie’s swings. When he was sure he had it down, he swung a fast kick toward her. His timing was perfect, catching her on the downswing, and it knocked her on her side. She cried out, losing her grip on his weapon, and it clattered across the floor. He started to reach for it.

  And that was when he lost control of the ship.

  WOLVERINE tumbled out the port window, cursing himself profusely for allowing himself to be distracted by the girl. Except it wasn’t really her fault; there was no point in blaming anyone but himself.

  With a miles-long drop yawning beneath him, Wolverine twisted in midair in a movement that by any reasonable measure should have been impossible. He managed to sink his claws into the hull once more, but the ship was tilted nose-up, and this time he slid down the middle of the hull lengthwise. His claws gutted it like a trout, but the toes of his boots glanced helplessly off the slick surface. He couldn’t stop his downward slide.

  He realized he was heading straight toward one of the thrusters. Powerful blasts of energy streamed out of it, keeping the ship in place in midair. Fortunately, thanks to the design of the ship, there was a ledge right above the thruster. Wolverine slid right toward the ledge and seconds later, his feet were braced against it.

  Quickly, he sliced into the ship’s hull, effectively creating his own hatchway. The thruster roared all around him, nearly deafening, and there was an aroma of concentrated ozone, as if he were scrambling around within the center of a lightning storm. He eased his way into the very guts of the ship, cramped into a narrow utilities tube that was a latticework of circuitry and energy relays.

  Wolverine wasn’t an engineer or an expert in alien technology.

  He was, however, extremely expert in being the monkey wrench in the works.

  He started hacking away with his claws, accomplishing two things simultaneously: disrupting the energy flow through the circuitry, and carving himself a way into the vessel’s interior.

  It took him only seconds to cut through what turned out to be the ceiling of a hallway, which he dropped into feet first. The ship was shuddering all around him. He could actually hear the mighty thrusters choking, practically eating themselves, as the energy relays tried to reroute themselves and failed. Knowing which direction the cockpit lay, he sprinted along the hallway, which was starting to tilt downward. The angle wasn’t sharp at first, but it was increasing dramatically.

  He was running out of time.

  ORD fell backwards against the ship’s controls, trying to steady himself. He managed to reach down, pick up his ringed weapon and fasten it back into place. Tildie cowered a short distance away, but he couldn’t be bothered with her; he would hack her to pieces later.

  He didn’t understand the readings he was seeing. Energy wasn’t getting to the engines. The ship was sputtering, dying.

  Had he been in space, he would simply have shut down the engines and allowed the ship to drift while he sorted things out. But that wasn’t an option here. Gravity was having its say, and as the last of the ship’s thrusting capacity began to choke out, his vessel was displaying as much maneuverability as a dying pig.

  Suddenly Tildie started thudding bare fists on his arm. “Get away!” he shouted at her and knocked her aside as he worked desperately to coax energy out of the engines.

  Suddenly, there was the sound of tearing metal behind him. Ord risked a glance around. To his shock, Wolverine had just hacked his way through the far door of the bridge. The mutant sprinted across the deck, snarled, “Need some help with the controls?” and jammed his claws deep into the console. He ripped it open, sparks flying everywhere including into Ord’s face. Little bits of the alien’s flesh ignited, and he cried out as he batted at them.

  The engines died completely. And suddenly, just like that, the ship was in free-fall.

  TILDIE shrieked in terror, and Wolverine ran to her. She was in total panic mode, and Wolverine couldn’t blame her. He didn’t have time to tap-dance with her, however.

  “Trust me,” he shouted, knowing she had no reason to, hoping that she would.

  With a roar, Ord lunged at them. Wolverine darted to one side, and a backslash of his claws caught Ord along his ribcage. Ord let out a howl of pain. It wasn’t quite the full payback Wolverine would have liked, but it was the closest he was going to manage.

  Wolverine had no idea how close they were to the ground. He would do everything he could to shield Tildie from the impact, but he was concerned it wouldn’t be enough.

  He charged toward the shattered window and leaped through it with all the strength in his powerful legs. Moments later, the ship was falling in one direction and Wolverine—with Tildie clutched to him—the other. Then Wolverine saw how far down the ground was and realized he’d misjudged badly. He would survive; it’d hurt like hell, but he’d survive. But the impact would be too much for the child. Even with his body wrapped around her, her bones would shatter on impact.

  They fell, end over end, Wolverine curled in a protective circle. Emma…if you’re listening…a little help. A small miracle. If that ain’t too much of a problem…

  Get ready, came back a sharp reply.

  Ready? Ready for wh—?

  Suddenly something banged up against them in midair.

  “What the hell!” said Wolverine.

  Against the rushing noise of the air, he heard the last thing he expected: Kitty Pryde saying, “Hold onto her! Get ready!” Sure enough, Kitty’s arms were wrapped
around them.

  “Ready for what?”

  Wolverine, Kitty, and Tildie hit the ground together, and then dropped straight through it. Their momentum continued to carry them down, down, into darkness and dirt, where it was impossible to see anything. Even Wolverine felt creeped out by the sensation of premature burial.

  Then, suddenly, their downward plummet reversed itself. They floated upward, slowly but steadily. Wolverine had Tildie pressed against him, her face buried in his chest so she wouldn’t see what was happening around them.

  Seconds later they broke the surface, coming up from underground, to the delight and relief of the other X-Men. Kitty staggered a little once they materialized. She sagged against Colossus, who caught her. “Don’t ever tell me to do that again,” Colossus said to her in a voice filled with relief.

  Then Wolverine understood. Colossus had performed a fastball special with Kitty Pryde, hurling her the same way that he had thrown Wolverine. Except this had been even more of a challenge. With Wolverine, Colossus had been aiming at an entire ship. In this case, he had slung Kitty directly at the falling Wolverine and Tildie. If his timing and aim had been anything less than precise, Kitty would have gone flying right past them. Instead she had managed to snag them in midair, accomplishing the miracle that Wolverine had hoped for, but not really expected.

  “Tildie!”

  The child had been shivering, sobbing in Wolverine’s grasp, but then she heard her name shouted by the one voice in the world she trusted. Immediately she uncurled herself from Wolverine and, stumbling to her feet, sprinted toward Doctor Kavita Rao. Tildie practically leaped into her arms, and Rao hugged her tightly, like a gratified mother.

  Then Wolverine noticed that events had not stopped while he was underground.

  About two hundred yards away, the remains of Ord’s ship were a massive crumbled heap upon the ground. Smoke rose from all over, and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were dousing the wreckage with foam to put out little fires. Other agents swarmed all over the ship, examining it.

  “Looks like I missed the big event,” said Wolverine.

  “Yeah. Talk about your close encounters,” Kitty said. She smiled wanly, clearly exhausted. “Is Ord dead?”

  “With any luck,” said Colossus grimly. “With any luck he is.”

  THEY had no luck.

  Ord, as it turned out, was still alive. He was unconscious when they found him. By the time he came around, he had been solidly encased in electronic braces that ran across his chest and legs, immobilizing them. He snarled, he struggled, but he was helpless to budge them. It brought Cyclops some measure of satisfaction to see a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents lugging Ord along, suspended between two lines of agents via a sling, like a cooked hog being hauled to a luau.

  Fury stood there, watching Ord being taken away, with the rest of the X-Men nearby. Kavita was keeping Tildie close, and Tildie didn’t seem inclined to move away from her.

  Beast drew near Kavita. She couldn’t meet his gaze. In a low voice, the Beast said, “I never received an answer to my question. I would appreciate the courtesy of your honesty. Did you know—?”

  “About your man? About Colossus? About his status and what was happening to him?”

  He nodded.

  She closed her eyes, and all she could say was, “The truth, Henry? The truth is…I didn’t ask.”

  “And he didn’t tell.”

  She nodded.

  “That,” he said to her, “is quite possibly the worst answer you could have given.”

  “Henry…”

  “Don’t say anything more, please.”

  She nodded again, looked down at the trembling Tildie, and hugged her tight.

  * * * *

  Nick Fury surveyed the assemblage in front of him. Hands on his hips, he said, “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do: not a solitary thing. We all walk away from this like nothing happened—which, after S.H.I.E.L.D. gets done here, will be more or less the truth.”

  “You are, of course, joking,” said Beast.

  “Of course,” Fury said laconically. “This is one of those jokes I’m so famous and beloved for.”

  Cyclops faced the S.H.I.E.L.D. director. “What Agent Brand has done is inhumane, illegal, and appalling.”

  “Yeah, she’s a pip,” said the S.H.I.E.L.D. director.

  “Fury—”

  Fury didn’t bother to let Cyclops keep talking. “I’m not gonna speak for my counterpart here…”

  “I don’t—” Brand started to say.

  “And neither is she,” Fury said sharply. Brand took the hint and her mouth snapped shut. “Fact is, she blew it on many levels, and that will not go…unremarked.”

  This comment clearly infuriated Brand. She kept her silence in Fury’s presence, but her face went remarkably pale except for two spots of red flush on her cheeks.

  Fury continued, “But she’s dealing with a much bigger picture than any of us. She’s trying to stop a war with the Breakworld, a war that just got that much closer to inevitable. And since the only things that got wrecked in that landing,” and he nodded toward the mass of twisted metal, “were Doctor Rao’s work and the illustrious ambassador, I’d count my blessings and go.”

  “And that’s it?” said Wolverine.

  “Yeah, Shortie. That’s it.”

  Cyclops stepped forward. “No apologies, then? No acknowledgment that if you’d been more forthcoming with me in the first place, all of this could have been avoided? When are you going to realize that we’re on the same side?”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Summers. I’m on my side. You’re on your side. Sometimes those sides are gonna overlap, and sometimes they ain’t. This time out, we had a little of both. Next time it could be more, or maybe less. But I ain’t gonna apologize for doing what I had to do. I can, however, give you some advice: In the future, stay out of my way.”

  “Right back at’cha,” said Wolverine.

  Fury stared at them for a time, and then shook his head and walked away.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “OUR blessings.”

  It was the next day, and Scott and Hank were dressed in street clothes, walking the corridors of the school. But Scott was still seething over what he believed to be Nick Fury’s high-handed attitude. “Our blessings? What blessings would he suggest we count? In causing that crash, Logan destroyed a lot of Rao’s work, but that’s a setback at most. The cure will be out there, in the hands of government agencies we can’t possibly trust.”

  Hank was in full commiseration with his longtime friend and teammate. “Meanwhile we have mutant riots brewing in every major city over this cure. A student of ours has been neutered by it. And—oh yes!—one of us is predestined to destroy a planet and start an intergalactic war. I’ll be blessed.”

  They stopped at a bay window. From there they had a clear view of two small figures standing outside, one significantly smaller than the other. “We got Pete back,” said Scott, gazing out at Peter and Kitty standing a short distance away on a hillock.

  “Hell of a thing,” said Hank. “Boy’s named ‘Rasputin.’ Should have known he wouldn’t be that easy to kill.”

  There was something else to be said between the two of them. Hank stared sideways at Scott, waiting for him to bring it up. Finally Scott did.

  “The cure. Your sample’s still cooling in the—”

  “I know,” said Hank. Anticipating Scott’s next question, he continued, “I don’t know. I heard about the cure, and it was like this great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I never felt that weight until I felt it gone. If Ord had tapped me instead of that poor kid, Tildie…maybe this would all be simple. But it’s not. I’ve seen so much self-loathing. These desperate people…”

  “I was wrong.”

  Hank looked at Scott in confusion. “I’m sorry?”

  “No, I should be the one apologizing to you,” said Scott. “I was being selfish. The fact is that I was more concerned about the prospect of losing you from the
team than I was about what was right for you. And for them.”

  “Them. You mean those mutants who rioted at Benetech.”

  “Those people who rioted. I think that’s what we may have been losing track of. They’re people, first and foremost, and they’re not thinking about the survival of the mutant race, or squaring off against super-powered enemies. They’re just trying to get through the day, live their lives. And I don’t think I have the right to pass judgment on their decisions just because they don’t fall in line with my priorities. I should never have agreed with Logan.”

  “Actually, Logan was right.”

  Cyclops stared at him from behind his visor. “This is payback, isn’t it? You’re saying Logan was right just to irritate me.”

  “No, he was right….and I’m counting on you never to tell him I said that. Logan said that an X-Man doesn’t quit. Not with the world watching.”

  Cyclops nodded. Then he said, “And if we ever reach a point where mutants have become so accepted that the world isn’t watching?”

  Hank opened the door to his lab. “I’m not saying ‘never.’”

  “Didn’t ask you to.” Once again, Scott Summers felt the stirring of his tragedy-filled inner child. But he wasn’t ready to think about that. So all he said to Hank was, “So…Pete.”

  “Hell of a thing,” said Hank.

  WING sat alone in the boys’ dormitory. The room was empty. It was a Saturday, no classes, and everyone was off doing things.

  Wing was sure that he made everyone feel weird. Ord had chosen Edward for the “demonstration” totally at random. Any of them could have been robbed of their powers. It was pure bad luck that Eddie had been the chosen one.

  Even Hisako was steering clear of him, mostly because he had practically torn her head off verbally, telling her to get the hell away from him, saying harshly that he hadn’t the slightest interest in anything she had to say. Apparently the message had gotten through loud and clear. He’d managed to chase away everyone who cared about him.