X-Men: The Last Stand (8 page)

He had fangs, too—a mouthful. And claws that became quite evident when he neglected to keep his nails properly trimmed. He had a leonine mane of hair which was a discernibly darker hue than his body, swept elegantly back from a dramatic widow’s peak, as well as sweeping side whiskers that bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the major villains of a world-famous comic book. He could bench press twice his body weight without trying, had reflexes that were almost a match for Alicia’s—because
she
was a mutant too, just not quite so obvious a manifestation, thank God—and agility that could send the most madcap of monkeys back to school. He was, in fact, everything implied by the nickname he’d been given back in college—the
Beast.

McCoy could also speak a score of languages fluently, was one of the more respected genetic anthropologists on the planet, a demon dancer, and apparently an even better lover. He enjoyed fine wines with his brother, the Jungian psychiatrist, preferred cooking to eating out because he was a better chef than most professionals, and had an unfortunate weakness for karaoke bars. His speaking voice was wonderful, but his singing tended to recall cats congregating on a backyard fence.

What endeared him most to Alicia, however, was the fact that he needed reading glasses. He wore a classic pair, perched on his rather dramatic nose.

McCoy raised an eyebrow over the spine of the magazine as she snared his jacket off the back of his chair.

“The White House called,” she told him. “They’ve moved up the meeting. Something to do with Bolivar Trask.”

“Hmnh” was Hank’s only comment as he flipped through a crisp, confined somersault to land on the floor with feline grace. He frowned as he slipped on his shoes—Alicia was the only one who ever saw those reactions, the only one he truly trusted—he’d much prefer to go barefoot. His feet were designed for it, not for being strapped in. But people were spooked enough by his appearance as it was; dressing respectably was the first, big—necessary—step towards winning their tolerance, if not their acceptance.

“Your car’s waiting downstairs,” she told him as he donned his jacket, taking a moment for their usual exit ritual as she smoothed the suit across his shoulders and straightened his tie.

Then, twitching her own suit jacket to make sure her gun was in ready reach, she followed him out the door.

Another surprise awaited Hank and Alicia when they checked in at the White House: the meeting originally scheduled for the Oval Office had been moved downstairs to the Situation Room. It was a small and select meeting: the president, his national security advisor, the director of the FBI, a pair of uniforms, one representing the Joint Chiefs, the other the National Security Council, and the secretary of Homeland Security, Bolivar Trask.

Big as Hank was, Trask matched him in every dimension, tall and broad and radiating the impression that he remained as powerful and dangerous now as he was in his youth. He’d come out of Detroit, served a career in Army Special Ops before confounding everyone when he turned in his papers and built a new life for himself in disaster management. Trask had barely made it out of high school, yet over the course of his two careers he had amassed more practical knowledge than a roomful of certified academics, possessing an eclectic mix of street smarts and on-the-job training. He was a brilliant manager, as gifted in the military and defense aspects of his department as the civil, and seemed soundly determined to protect the country both from natural disasters and terrorist threats.

“Sorry I’m late, Mr. President,” Hank apologized, as he strode into the darkened room. Display screens were already active, filling the wall at the far end of the room, where everyone at the table could easily see them.

President David Cockrum indicated the open chair to his left. “Have a seat, Henry. Sorry for catching you short, but things have been happening.”

Trask sat opposite McCoy, at the president’s right hand. From everyone’s body language, McCoy knew this was Bolivar’s briefing.

“Homeland Security was tracking Magneto…”

With that cue, surveillance images appeared on the display wall, showing a tall and handsome man of naturally aristocratic bearing. Sometime in the recent past, he must have grown a beard, neatly trimmed of course, which gave him the air of a Shakespearean warrior king in exile.
A lion in winter,
McCoy thought, with a pang of regret at the promise of brighter, younger days, and all that might have been.

Trask was speaking, using a laser pointer to highlight his bullet points with the appropriate image: “Homeland Security has been coordinating with all the relevant alphabet agencies—CIA, NSA, DIA—plus their counterparts overseas. As you can see, we got hits on him in Lisbon, Geneva, Montreal. NavSat lost him crossing the border. But we did get a consolation prize…”

Different screen now, the biggest in the array, with a crawl at the bottom to inform everyone that they were watching real-time streaming video. The setting was obviously an interrogation room of some sort, with a double-door security airlock and double-paned observation glass, suggesting something more appropriate to a biohazard containment facility than a standard lockup. There were two figures in view, interrogator and prisoner. No guards—that could be seen.

The object of all this attention lounged in a chair as though she owned the place, and hadn’t a care in the world. She was naked and flaunted a perfect body as proudly as any other woman would a new designer gown. Her skin was as blue as McCoy’s fur, her hair the color of blood, swept straight back from her forehead and face to end in an impossibly precise blunt cut at the base of her neck. Her body was decorated with ridges, down the arms, the breasts and belly and groin, with a scattering along her legs. Hank had always been curious whether they were decorative or had some functional value, and the scientist in his soul wondered,
How hard would it be to get a cell sample?
Her eyes were a gleaming chrome yellow, the same vibrant hue that van Gogh tried to capture in his paintings around the town of Arles: the flower called rape. They glowed in the dark, Hank knew, when the rest of her became effectively invisible. The way they flicked from camera to camera, the way she allowed herself the smallest of smiles, told Hank that the woman knew she was being broadcast, and probably who was watching.

She called herself Mystique. She’d been by Magneto’s side for almost as long as he had been in active opposition to Charles Xavier. No one had ever been able to fathom the precise nature of their relationship, beyond the obvious fact that she was utterly devoted to him and to his cause, and that Magneto cared for her as he did for few others in his life, past or present.

She was a metamorph, a shape-changer able to transform herself with a thought into any other human form she pleased. What they were viewing now was supposedly her default form; it was certainly the skin she was most comfortable wearing, the one she always returned to.

The main screen was complemented by an array of lesser display windows, showing different perspectives on the scene. Looking at the one aimed at her eyes, McCoy couldn’t shake the sense that she was looking right back at him through the lens. That she could actually
see
him.

With an inner wrench, he turned his attention back to Trask, who was still speaking.

“We picked her up breaking into the FDA, of all places.”

“Do you know who she was imitating?” the president asked in an aside to Hank. “Secretary Trask.”

That must have been a sight to behold,
Hank thought, and almost as if he’d heard the comment aloud, Trask cued an archival shot of the scene in question, showing Mystique before, and then right after, the takedown. Hank looked from the man himself to the screen and back again—as did everyone else present. The match was flawless.

“Yes, sir,” Hank told the president. “She can do that.”

“Not anymore, she can’t,” Trask said with pardonable satisfaction. Smart as she may have been—and that reputation was as well-deserved as it was formidable—he had found a way to nail her: “We got her.”

“You think your walls can hold her, Bolivar?”

“We have some new walls, Henry,” came the reply, with the hint of an edge. Trask’s tone indicated that he thought Hank’s question was utterly foolish. What was the point of taking the woman if you didn’t have a means to keep her? “We’ll be a step ahead this time.”

Hank was about to press him on that point when Trask gestured with his remote and added sound to the streaming video from the interrogation room.

“Raven,” the agent with her said softly, and was ignored.

“Raven,” he repeated, “I’m talking to you.”

She flicked her eyes dismissively. “I don’t answer to my slave name.”

“It’s on your birth certificate, Raven Darkhölme. Or has he convinced you that you don’t have a family anymore?”

No one needed to be told which “he” was being referred to, but the question did provoke a response. Mystique swung around in her chair to face the agent. Her look promised mayhem. The interrogator took it in stride.

“My family tried to kill me, you pathetic meat-sack.”

“So now
he’s
your family?”

She sniffed, haughty as a queen, and half turned away, striking a glamour pose that flaunted her body to him and to the cameras.

McCoy heard a mutter from down the table: “My God, it’s like watching cable!”

The interrogator’s tone hardened.

“Are you playing games with me?”

She gave the agent a smile as overtly sexy as her pose, and then morphed into a mirror image of him.

“What makes you say that?”

“Is it worth it, all this, to protect him?”

“You
really
want to know where he is?” He didn’t need to reply. He didn’t have to, the answer went without saying. “All right then, I’ll tell you…”

She leaned forward. Inviting the interrogator to meet her halfway.

Hank’s eyes flicked a warning to Trask. Both men were on the same wavelength. This was too soon, too easy,
way
too good to be true. Trask already had a phone in hand, a direct line to the holding cell, but he never got the chance to warn him.

Even as Hank heard the ringing phone through the main display, Mystique struck, grabbing the interrogator by the ears and delivering a vicious head-butt that would have him in the hospital for the better part of a week with a wicked concussion.

Now the previously unseen guards made their entrance, hard and fast and in no mood to play. Their adversary was faster than they were, stronger as well, likely more skilled in the martial arts. She’d slipped herself free of every restraint, making her hands momentarily boneless so that they’d slid loose from her cuffs. But the room was too small and suddenly filled wall-to-wall with muscle. She had no room to maneuver, and when she tried morphing into one of them Hank saw that they’d been biotagged. External surveillance systems told the team outside who was who so that they always knew who to hit.

It was a gallant, desperate struggle that reminded Hank too much of a wild animal being caged. It was doomed from the start and quickly over.

Trask shut off the feed.

“One down,” he said quietly, “one to go.”

Hank stared at him. “You know her capture will only provoke Magneto.”

“So? Do we forgo the capture of terrorist lieutenants because we’re scared of their boss? If that’s our policy, why don’t we just hand over the country to him and be done with it?”

Trask gestured to the screen.

“Henry, be real here. You
see
what we’re dealing with.”

“All the more reason to be diplomatic.”

“You expect me to negotiate with these people?” asked the president pointedly.

Hank’s first reaction was a thankfully unspoken thought:
And
what
people precisely would you be referring to, sir? The “terrorist” mutants or mutants in general?

Aloud, he chose to follow his own advice and speak diplomatically: “All due respect, sir, I thought that’s why you appointed me.”

Hank shook his head, realizing from the look on the president’s face and the way the other man’s eyes shifted ever so slightly that the venue for this meeting hadn’t been any last-minute change, nor had its earlier start.

“This isn’t why you called me here, is it, sir?”

The president shook his head. “No,” he said, his tone conveying what was surely meant to sound like a sincere and heartfelt apology. He slid a file towards McCoy.

“This is what she was after.”

Hank used a ritual with his glasses to regain his inner composure: he removed the bifocals, puffed on the lenses, wiping them clear on the thick and luxurious fur protruding from his cuffs.

When he was done reading, when the axis of the Earth had finished shifting beneath him, he didn’t know whether he felt rage or terror, but assumed it was a decent measure of both. He pressed his hands together, resting his face against them, like a man assuming an attitude of prayer, determined not to allow them to tremble and hoping his voice wouldn’t betray him when he spoke.

“Is it viable?” he asked.

“We believe it is, yes.”

“Do you have any idea of the level of impact this will have on the mutant community?”