The Game of Empires - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Valerie Jones
Last updated: 02/13/2010 03:54:13 PM

Chapter 17

His thoughts were so consumed with Token’s predictions that he didn’t immediately register the two people who stood beside an unremarkable white sedan parked next to the dirt track that passed as a road through this section of desert. But then Lilandra stepped forward and greeted Cyclops and Phoenix, and Remy found himself the object of sudden scrutiny.

Lilandra seemed to understand the situation. She stepped obliquely out of the way after her initial greeting, allowing the Remy and the two X-Men to stare at each other without interruption. Remy didn’t see anything in Scott and Jean that he didn’t expect to -- hurt, anger and disappointment were the most visible of their reactions. Jean’s body language would have told him that her psi shields were at full force even if he hadn’t felt the prickly wash of her telepathy. Scott, as always, was inscrutable behind his opaque glasses, but the set of his jaw hinted at a great mass of restrained anger.

"Gambit." Scott acknowledged him sharply. "What are you doing here?"

Remy glanced over at Lilandra who was watching them all with patent interest while Gladiator stood impassively behind her. Then he returned his attention to Scott and shrugged. "I ran into Lil here, an’ discovered we were bot’ lookin’ f’ de same t’ing, so we figured it made de most sense t’ work together."

Scott turned to Lilandra, his expression questioning.

"I went to the mansion to see if the X-Men had heard news of Charles," Lilandra answered. "I encountered Gambit there."

One eyebrow arched above the top of Scott’s glasses as his gaze moved to Remy. "I didn’t know you’d gone back. Jean and I have been out of touch lately." His words were clipped, and Remy had the distinct feeling that Scott didn’t like the idea of him returning to the X-Men.

The realization made him angry. "I’m not back," Remy retorted sharply. "I went t’ de mansion t’ see if de Professor was dere. Dat’s all."

Scott frowned. "As far as we know, Professor Xavier is still in government custody."

"Why were you looking for him?" Jean seemed reluctant to break her silence, but the question was filled with wary curiosity.

Remy stared at them both, debating what to say. The things he wanted from the Professor were personal. Even if he were still an X-Man, he wouldn’t have wanted to give them specifics. He lifted his chin slightly and met Jean’s gaze with as much defiance as he could muster. "Let’s jus’ say dat I got reason t’ t’ink de Professor knows a lot more dan he’s been lettin’ on, an’ I got some questions dat I wan’ answers to."

He was unprepared for the looks of amazement that passed between Scott and Jean. Then they both turned to him, their combined interest so intense it was intimidating.

"Looks like I pushed de magic button," he commented before either of them could speak.

"You could say that." Scott agreed tersely. He glanced back at his wife, his expression softening briefly. "This thing just keeps getting bigger and stranger."

Jean gave him a helpless shrug. "Charles has the answers. I’m certain of it."

"Answers to what?" Lilandra looked back and forth between them, her expression troubled.

Scott and Jean traded glances, and then Scott made a gesture indicating that Jean should proceed. She nodded in response, and focused her attention on Remy. There was a bitterness in her expression that Remy hadn’t seen before.

"Scott and I are looking for the Professor as well." She paused. "Because we have reason to believe that he has been hiding something. Something he was so desperate to protect that he was willing to give Onslaught a very potent weapon to use against me rather than reveal it."

"Onslaught?" Remy frowned, confused, as bits and pieces of information collided in his mind. The dismay that had filled Jean-Luc’s face when Remy had told him about Onslaught and Xavier came back to him in a rush. He had no idea why it was significant, but now he was certain that it was. He also realized that he was going to have to tell them a lot more than he wanted to about the woman Token had seen and the reasons he was searching for the Professor.

He looked up into three pairs of eyes that watched him expectantly.

Remy sighed. "De short version goes like dis: Apparently, somewhere out dere," he nodded toward the desert to indicate the world at large, "dere’s a woman wit’ my face who calls herself LeBeau."

Scott cocked his head. "Who is she?"

"I don’ have a clue. So I went t’ talk t’ m’ father -- Jean-Luc -- about it." Remy was finding it increasingly difficult to think of the man who had raised him as "Father", despite the fact that he had done so for the last thirteen years. There was some other man out there who held that title now. A man that Jean-Luc knew, and had never said a single thing to Remy about. He was surprised by how cheated he felt by that.

"He admitted t’ knowin’ who she was, but wouldn’ tell me. An’ den he hinted dat Xavier knew somet’ing about it, too."

Scott digested the information. "What does this have to do with Onslaught?"

Remy shrugged. "When Jean-Luc mentioned de Professor, I had t’ explain about Onslaught an’ dat he wasn’ around anymore. He went white as a sheet when I told him dat Xavier became Onslaught." He shook his head in frustration. "I don’ have any idea why it was important, or why dat would make him so upset. Far as I know, he’s never even met de Professor. Why would he care about him bein’ Onslaught?"

Both Scott and Jean were thoughtful. "Your father’s not a telepath, is he?" Jean asked suddenly.

Remy blinked at the odd question. "No. Why?"

She sighed and brushed away the errant hair that had escaped her ponytail. "Scott and I got here by chasing a government program that is recruiting telepaths for some unknown reason. We were trying to track down the remains of Zero Tolerance in the hopes of finding Charles, but this program has kind of distracted us." She looked up sharply, her gaze taking in both Remy and Lilandra. "Is Charles in that complex over there?" She jerked her head in the direction of the government installation that lay several miles further down the road.

"That I don’t know," Lilandra answered. "But at least part of Cerebro is there."

Scott looked up in surprise. "Cerebro and everything else in the mansion was confiscated by Bastion."

A dull roar cut off anything else he might have said and Remy looked up to see a ball of fire rolling into the sky above the place where the government complex was supposed to be. Instinctively, he turned to Scott for instructions.

"Jean! Get us there!" Cyclops’ expression firmed into one that Remy recognized from a hundred missions or more as he felt Phoenix’s telekinetic grip lift him off the ground. In that instant everything else was forgotten as habit took over and the three X-Men were forged into a team with one objective. For a moment, Remy forgot about Antarctica, forgot about the Morlocks, forgot about Rogue. He was an X-Man again, if only briefly, and as Cyclops flashed him a series of hand signs in the abbreviated language of combat, Remy was certain that the other man realized it as well.

The government installation was in chaos. The visible buildings were all single story, except for the hangar located beside an unmarked airstrip, and Remy concluded that the vast majority of the complex was underground. Two of the buildings were burning out of control, and one of those had a large chunk ripped out of the southwest quadrant so that the flames seemed to be pouring out of the interior through the hole. Soldiers surrounded the buildings and ran between them in a combination organized defense and blind panic. They appeared to be under attack by a mixture of . . . things. Large red cat-like creatures prowled through the visible grounds, apparently impervious to the soldiers’ gunfire. Here and there, one of the large laser cannons that flanked the runway managed to target a cat, which burst into hundreds of pieces that evaporated into the air before they could hit the ground. Other creatures attacking the base looked more human than the cat-things, except for the ride of long spines growing down their backs and the oversized hands sporting wickedly curved claws in the place of fingers. They were more susceptible to the soldiers’ fire, but they also seemed more intelligent than the cats.

A single figure floated above the complex and Remy’s stomach clenched with cold fear as he recognized him. Erik the Red appeared to be impervious within the hazy glow of the shield that surrounded him. One of the gun emplacements took several shots at him, but the wide red beam was simply deflected away, its trace curving oddly.

By unspoken accord, the three X-Men set down in the midst of a group of creatures that were trying to force their way inside one of the still-intact buildings. Gladiator dropped Lilandra down beside them, and, at her command, turned and rocketed toward Erik.

The soldiers’ shouts of surprise and alarm became ragged cheers as Cyclops speared the nearest cat-creature with his optic blast, shattering it. Remy pushed thoughts of Erik out of his mind and turned his attention to the situation at hand. He knew what he needed to do -- what Cyclops expected of him and what would be most effective for protecting both his teammates and the soldiers. He charged a handful of cards and let fly, then dove out of the way of the creature that lunged at him, rolling to his feet with a new set of cards charged and ready. Around him, the staccato of gunfire was tremendously loud as the soldiers continued their defense, and the continuous spray of bullets made it seem to Remy’s spatial sense like the entire world was moving.

Jean stood still inside a telekinetic shield, her head tilted upward and her attention very obviously focused on Erik. Remy saw Erik flinch and then spin around as something Jean did got to him, and he felt a surge of satisfaction. But then he had no more time to watch the conflict as more of the creatures turned on him. He brought his bo staff around, clipping one of the bipedal creatures under the chin with enough force to break its neck as a massive weight hit him from behind. He went down with one of the cats on top of him. Its jaws closed around his shoulder, but all he felt through his armor was the pressure of its grip and he sent a silent prayer of thanks to Lilandra for her gift. Charging a card, he shoved it behind him. The cat’s scream was lost in the sound of the explosion that left Remy feeling like someone had punched him in the kidney, but the weight disappeared.

He scrambled to his feet and observed something a bit unnerving. The cat he’d just hit was several feet away. It lay on its side, looking very much like it had been hit by an explosion at close range, except that there was no blood. And as Remy watched, the gaping wounds in its chest resealed and it rolled fluidly to its feet. Smiling grimly, he charged a set of three cards and sent them all toward the restored creature. This time, it disintegrated, leaving nothing behind but a small crater from the blast.

Quickly, Remy scanned the area for the others. Phoenix was still safe within her telekinetic shield, and the creatures appeared to have given up attacking her. She held both hands to her head, her face contorted with either pain or intense concentration, but she seemed to be holding her own. Cyclops was a ways beyond her, his optic blasts firing off in all directions as he moved and spun. He was causing a tremendous amount of damage to the strange army that was attacking, and Remy noted that the bodies of the bipedal creatures didn’t disappear like the cats’ did.

Gladiator had managed to get at least partially inside Erik’s shield, and the two were grappling about fifty feet above the ground. Remy was both frightened and impressed by Erik. There weren’t very many people of any species that could take on Gladiator, and he had to wonder why such a powerful mutant had bothered with something like that horrendous trial he had conducted for Remy.

For a moment, he couldn’t find Lilandra, but then he spied her silvered form near one of the burning buildings. She was crouched beside a doorway that had tongues of flame licking outward from its upper edge, and Remy could see the swirl of fire that lined the ceiling inside. To his surprise and horror, she looked around once and then dove into the burning building.

"Lilandra!"

Cyclops looked up at Remy’s shout, and Remy flashed him a sign as he sprinted for the burning doorway. He didn’t have a clue what Lilandra was doing, but he had no intention of letting her get herself killed if he could help it.

One arm up to shield his face from the heat, Remy leapt through the door through which Lilandra had disappeared. There were flames everywhere and the air was filled with thick smoke that felt like sandpaper on his eyes and throat. He immediately felt like his lungs were trying to close down as the fire consumed the oxygen he needed to breathe, but he forced himself to keep moving. In places, the ceiling had collapsed, leaving burning pieces of wood and plaster dangling midair. He spied Lilandra across the room and ran after her. He caught up to her just as another portion of the ceiling collapsed with a roar, sending a new burst of flames shooting outward in all directions. He flinched and instinctively pulled Lilandra away from the hungry flames.

"What are y’ doin’ in here?!" he yelled at her over the noise of the fire.

She held up her arm, which had a small display screen strapped to it. "The fire has taken out the shielding equipment!" Her black eyes were almost frantic. "Charles is here! Beneath this structure." She pointed to the floor.

Remy looked around, well aware that they were perilously close to being buried alive in the collapsing building. But if the Professor was really there, he couldn’t leave. Too many innocent people had already died because of his lack of action. He had no intention of letting that happen again. Lilandra had been making a straight track toward the elevator doors located in a central column of the building, and the path was still fairly clear. Nodding, he grabbed her hand and together they ran for the elevator.

Charles Xavier paused and looked up as a distant rumble shook his tiny cell. The fluorescent lights flickered in response, distorting the shadows on the bare metal wall. His pulse quickened. Something was happening up above. He turned and swung his legs over the edge of the bed so that he could face the door.

He had no sooner turned around than the earth beneath him gave a mighty heave, tossing him bodily off of the bed. He landed on his stomach on the floor with the overturned bed falling across his lower legs. A huge crack ran down one of the cell walls as the metal buckled, showing bare rock behind it. The lights flickered once again and then went out, plunging Charles into darkness as the floor beneath him continued to rock. The sickening motion quickly damped out as secondary lights came on, illuminating the interior of his cell with a pale amber glow.

Charles struggled to unlock his lungs after having the breath knocked out of him. Looking around, he tried to take stock of the situation. In the distance he could hear some kind of alarm wailing and the sound of shouting, but nothing seemed to come any closer.

An earthquake? he wondered dazedly. It had to be something on that magnitude. Though he didn’t know the specifics, he was fairly certain he was deep underground. It would take something like a nuclear blast on the surface to be felt with such force down there.

He wished momentarily for his powers. The quake or whatever it was might very well have disabled the psi-dampers that surrounded his cell. He might have been able to call for help. Bitterly, he shoved the thoughts away. There were many reasons for him to want his powers back, but they were gone forever. Onslaught had stripped them away with brutal efficiency. The horrible irony was that he had been trying to protect his son from Onslaught when he’d unwittingly given that monster control of his powers, and he had managed to keep Onslaught from discovering the truth. But in taking Charles’ powers, Onslaught also condemned Remi to die, and that was the part that Charles didn’t know how to live with.

Footsteps pounded by outside the door and Charles forced himself to look up. He couldn’t give up hope. Even if everything else was gone, he couldn’t give up that. He’d seen too many impossible things happen to simply discard the chance of a miracle.

Something thumped against his door, followed by the sound of muffled voices, and then an explosion sent tongues of flame shooting through the space between the door and the frame. Charles ducked, covering his head with his arms, and when he looked up he thought for a moment that he might just be seeing that miracle.

The door to his cell hung haphazardly from a single hinge and framed in the opening were two of the people that Charles most wanted to see. His heart climbed into his throat as a dozen conflicting emotions filled him. Lilandra was even more beautiful than he remembered, despite the smudges of soot on her face and the wild disarray of her feathered crest. Her face reflected both triumph and joy at seeing him. But it was the man beside her that made Charles’ heart skip a beat.

He stood beside his mother, clad in Imperial armor that, though black, only heightened the resemblance between them. His roving gaze was intent, and Charles could only think that he was staring at a Prince of the Empire.

He looked up into the face that had filled his dreams for more nights than he could remember. "Remi?"

The familiar face split into a grin. "Hope y’ don’ mind us droppin’ in unannounced like dis, Professor."

Charles closed his eyes and let his head fall, unable to contain the flood of disappointment that threatened to drown him. "Gambit." He bit his lip, forcing himself through sheer effort of will to maintain his composure. "Not at all."

He didn’t look up until he felt the weight lifting from his legs as Gambit and Lilandra took the ends of the steel frame and moved it away. Then there were hands on his back and shoulders, lifting him, as Lilandra dropped to her knees and threw her arms around his neck.

"My love..." Her lips sought his and Charles returned her kiss with a passion born of equal parts joy and pain.

After a moment, Gambit cleared his throat. "I hate t’ interrupt de reunion an all, but we left Cyke an’ Phoenix an’ Gladiator up dere all by demselves, non?" His gaze rested on Lilandra.

"Of course." Lilandra stiffened as she withdrew from Charles’ arms. Her demeanor immediately became that of the Empress Shi’ar, a mix of determination and professionalism that still impressed Charles no matter how often he saw it.

"Do you know what caused that quake?" Charles asked, splitting his attention between them as Gambit picked him up and ducked back out into the hall.

"No," Lilandra answered, shaking her head as she followed Gambit. "I can’t contact my ship this far beneath the planet’s surface."

"Ain’t too likely it was an earthquake, t’ough," Remy added. "Considerin’ de mess we left t’ come lookin’ f’ you."

They walked down the deserted hallway until it ended in a T-intersection with a second hall. Both Remy and Lilandra were moving quickly and warily, and in the Shi’ar armor Charles found he could see the resemblance between them much more easily. Remy paused at the intersection, studying the choices.

"Y’ know anyt’ing ‘bout how dis place is laid out, Professor?" he asked.

"Not much," Charles admitted. "I take it we can’t retrace the route in?"

Remy and Lilandra traded glances that made Charles think they’d come a lot closer to getting themselves killed than he’d like to imagine.

"That way is blocked," Lilandra said after a moment, and Remy snorted at her obvious understatement.

Remy looked at the two hallways once again. "Eenie, meanie, minie, mo." He shrugged and turned left.

They kept moving, and Charles found himself discovering a new appreciation for Remy’s thieving skills. Charles had never really considered the ancillary abilities that being trained as a thief would give him, but now he was coming to appreciate what was obviously a tremendous ability to guess building layouts and the most likely locations for elevators and stairs. He was forced to admit to himself that he had always resisted allowing Gambit to use those skills except under the greatest duress because that was not the man Charles wanted to see him become. In retrospect, the utter arrogance of his actions was appallingly clear, and he wondered once again if losing his son permanently wasn’t a fitting punishment. If only Remy didn’t have to suffer for those choices as well.

They climbed upward, carefully skirting areas where the underground structure had collapsed or had simply been crushed as if in the grip of a giant hand. The damage spoke volumes about the force of the explosion that must have caused the earth to move so violently, and the higher they climbed, the more frightened Charles became for Scott and Jean.

At one point, Lilandra shook her head and frowned as she studied the communications unit on her wrist. "I still cannot raise my cruiser."

"Y’ t’ink we still too deep?" Remy didn’t look at her. He was busy studying the pile of rock and twisted metal that blocked their way and trying to decide whether to backtrack or to use his powers to blast them a path through the debris.

Lilandra shook her head again. "No. We should be well within range." By Charles’ count, they had climbed eight stories from the level of his cell, but he wasn’t certain how close that would put them to the surface.

Remy stepped back away from the blockage. "Well, if I calculated right, we should be comin’ up under de building closest t’ de hangar. We’re shallow enough I t’ink I c’n blast t’rough de ceiling here wit’out collapsin’ de rest t’ get us up t’ de next level."

"How deep are we still?" Charles asked.

"Maybe forty or fifty feet." Remy moved back and set Charles down well away from the spot he planned to destroy. Lilandra came and knelt next to Charles, ready to shield them both should something go awry, and together they watched as Remy climbed the edge of the pile of debris until he could reach up and place his fingertips against the rock face that was visible through the fallen ceiling tiles. The lurid pink glow that was the hallmark of his kinetic power surrounded his hands and began to soak into the stone.

When an area the size of a tire was glowing with charge, Remy let go of the ceiling and leapt neatly to the floor. Charles watched apprehensively as Remy walked toward them, instinct urging him to shout to the young man to hurry lest the waiting explosion go off before he reached a safe distance. Remy didn’t seem worried, though. Charles studied his expression, taking in his calm demeanor as well as the slight narrowing of his eyes and the crease of concentration between his brows.

What are you doing, Remy? he thought suddenly. Controlling the blast telepathically? That was for all the world what it looked like. Charles knew that he had access only to the minimal leakage of his telepathic powers around the edges of the block Charles had established, but he was both surprised and pleased to see the use Remy had put it to.

Remy joined them and Charles saw his eyebrows relax just a moment before the glowing circle of rock exploded. The blast was deafening in the confined space, and showered them with a multitude of small, sharp fragments of rock. When he felt it was safe to look back, Charles was surprised to see a dim circle of light falling on the floor. And through the gap in the ceiling he could see the sky, filled with roiling gray-brown clouds.

Charles turned to Remy. "I thought you said we were still forty or fifty feet underground?"

Remy had not moved as he stared up at the visible patch of sky. "I got a bad feelin’ ‘bout dis."

As if on cue, a head and shoulders appeared over the edge of the hole. Charles recognized the red horned mask, though he could not have said who might be masquerading as Erik the Red these days. On either side of him, Remy and Lilandra wore twin expressions of alarm as Erik grinned down at them.

"Do come up. We’ve been waiting for you."

Charles felt an invisible hand take hold of him and lift him off the ground. The same force grabbed both Remy and Lilandra and brought them up, one after the other, through the gap Remy had opened. The sight that greeted them was one that Charles would not soon forget.

"My ship..." Lilandra breathed.

The Shi’ar cruiser was half buried in a lake of molten rock and dirt caused by the force of its impact. Charles knew immediately that that was the earthquake he’d felt. All around the ship, the earth had been blasted away, creating a giant crater. The only interruption to the destruction was a wedge shaped area off to Charles’ right. It looked as if someone had stuck an obstacle in the path of the blast, forcing it to divert to either side and leaving an area of shelter behind it. Charles could see the smoking remains of several buildings atop a fifty foot cliff of rock that was the same shape as the rest of the protected area, and he knew instinctively that he was seeing Jean’s handiwork. He felt a fluttering of hope that she and Scott might still be alive.

Erik was watching him with a tiny smile playing about his lips. "Ah, Charles, we meet again."

Charles’ gaze snapped to the eyes hidden in the shadowed mask. "Who are you?"

Erik’s smile turned sly. "You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you."

Charles opened his mouth to reply, but something heavy and black seemed to descend inside his mind, smothering him. The blackness filled his head and then reached out and took the rest of the world away as well.