"Keep looking," Stryker told him, and then, "Send your team to collect him." He rounded on Lyman, poking him with a knuckle to the chest for emphasis. "Don't allow him inside until he's shackled-knuckles to chin! Once he's secure, bring him to me in the loading bay. Carefully, Mr. Lyman," he added, stopping his subordinate before Lyman had taken more than a step. "Very carefully."

Lyman nodded, remembering what had happened at the mansion. He'd do as he was told, he was too good, too well trained, a soldier to do otherwise, but if it was his call, he wouldn't have gone near the little man in the tunnel until his troops had shot him to pieces.

Ten meters ahead of Logan, a section of the tunnel wall suddenly opened and three troopers broke into view, leveling two HK MP5s with laser sights and a Smith & Wesson automatic assault shotgun with the big thirty-round box. He heard more movement behind him as another fire team took position, the troopers setting themselves in a triangular formation, with him in the center, allowing them clear fields of fire. Less danger of shooting their own guys. The shotguns were there to knock him off his feet, with a rate of fire comparable to a low-end submachine gun. Once he was down, their tactics told him, the others could finish him at their convenience.

He smiled. These guys were good, they'd learned from their last encounter with him.

"Don't move," yelled one of the troopers in front of him. "Stand where you are, hands in the air!"

Logan was impressed by their fire discipline and what that told him about their commander. Tone and body language made clear to Logan these troopers did indeed remember the fight at the mansion, the comrades and buddies they'd lost to his claws. They were itching to pull the trigger. All they lacked was the slightest excuse to justify it.

Instead, to their surprise-and disappointment-he did as he was told.

The troopers weren't gentle with him. Even though he offered no resistance, he collected a share of surreptitious punches and kicks as his hands were shackled together with his knuckles pressed up tight to both sides of his neck. The idea here was that any use of his claws would essentially cause him to decapitate himself. Stryker's curiosity was leavened by his malicious sense of humor-could Logan's claws, forged of pure adamantium, cut through his own skeleton, which was an amalgam of adamantium and bone? Could they slice through his vertebrae? He actually found that amusing, the tradition that worked for vampires possibly doing the same for this otherwise unkillable mutant.

The vehicular entrance to the loading bay was blocked by a set of sliding blast doors more appropriate to a bank vault, armored steel better than a foot thick. That's what Logan had noted during his initial reconnaissance, that the base had been designed as the ultimate prison. And that whatever had been incarcerated here during its heyday represented a serious threat. Couldn't have been Magneto, though, way too much metal. Or anyone like Cyclops, who could project beams of force. This place dealt with purely physical strength or-and here Logan's eyes flicked sideways to his imprisoned hands-weapons. That was the constant with these doors, they were all thicker than the length of his claws. He might be able to cut them, but not easily cut through them.

Custom built, perhaps, for one specific class of mutant-and then abandoned when the manifestation of other kinds of powers had rendered it obsolete?

The floor of the loading bay continued the same oversized scale of the rest of the installation, with room to spare for a convoy of full-sized semitrailers. A dock ran across the length of the wall opposite the entrance, allowing access to the interior corridors of the base. A couple of military-painted Humvees were parked flanking Logan and his escort. Both vehicles carried powered miniguns, whose six-barrel Gatling configuration allowed them to unleash five thousand rounds per minute. They were manned, and the tension on the gunners was obvious. One false move, they'd fire until the barrels melted.

Their laser sights were aimed right at him.

Waiting on the dock were Stryker, Yuriko, and Lyman, whose hand rested on the butt of his holstered Beretta. He wasn't taking any chances, either.

Stryker was grinning broadly as he approached the prisoner, but with each stride his expression changed, triumph gradually giving way to confusion. His eyes narrowed as he began to examine Logan more and more intently.

He nodded, then asked, "Who do you think you're looking at?"

The troopers had no idea what he meant. The answer was obvious to them.

"Sir?" asked Lyman.

Stryker shook his head. "The one thing I know better than anyone else... is my own work."

He turned his back and said, "Shoot it."

By rights, the troopers with the miniguns should have opened fire-but their buddies were in the kill zone! Logan's escort started to respond, backing up to give themselves a better shot. In each case, though, there was a moment's hesitation, born of surprise, as the soldiers processed the unexpected order.

By the time they reacted, Logan was way ahead of them. Before their disbelieving eyes, the prisoner's features blurred like watercolors in the rain. He grew taller, slimmer, changed color, changed gender. With blinding speed, the prisoner-a woman- Mystique-lashed out to either side, kick to the chest, kick to the head, to deal with the flanking guards. Hands slipped free of shackles configured to wrists twice their size, and while she was still in midair from the second kick, she hurled the cuffs into the face of the guard behind her with force enough to turn his features bloody and smash him to the ground. As he fell, his finger spasmed on the trigger of his automatic shotgun, spraying the ceiling with round after round of magnum buckshot. His shells hit some lights as he fell, and apparently some power cables, too, because the remaining lights started flickering like strobes.

Mystique was far faster than the troopers expected, and incredibly agile-the gunners couldn't keep up with her. With Stryker in the room, they dared not open indiscriminate fire. She knew that, she used it, landing in a spider crouch before leaping for the dock. Take him prisoner, the whole game changes. Kill him, it might even be over.

She never even came close. Yuriko intercepted her in midair with a speed and agility to match, and a strength that left Mystique breathless. She caught Mystique by the arm, twisted, and the moment her feet touched the floor she hurled the blue-skinned invader all the way to one of the parked Humvees.

Mystique heard yelling behind her, Stryker ordering everyone present to start shooting. The gunner on the Humvee, realizing his own danger, abandoned his post and dove frantically for cover. Yuriko's intention had been to bounce Mystique off the vehicle hard enough to leave her stunned. Even if it was just for a moment, that would be enough to give the others a target.

But just as Mystique had underestimated Yuriko, so, too, had Stryker's bodyguard made the same mistake.

Mystique pivoted in midflight so that she landed on her feet, touching down just long enough to use the hood of the Humvee as a launch point to hurl herself back onto the dock. Before a single trigger could be pulled, she disappeared down the adjoining tunnel.

Throughout the complex, alarms sounded; the halls and tunnels resounded with running feet and shouted commands as Stryker's men rushed to their stations. The airwaves filled with queries and orders, everyone demanding a fix on the intruder's position.

In the control room, Wilkins was trying his best to comply, using the computer to handle the search through one set of monitors while he controlled the second set manually along the tunnel Mystique had used to escape from the loading bay.

He caught sight of a familiar-and now very welcome-figure coming down the corridor and spun his chair around to face Stryker as the commander entered with an escort.

"Sir," Wilkins asked anxiously, "what's happening?"

Stryker glared hawklike at the monitors. "We have a metamorph loose," he said with a growl of barely suppressed rage. "She could be anybody."

"Anybody?" Wilkins found that hard to accept. And then his eyes widened as a second Stryker appeared on screen, accompanied by Lyman and Yuriko and a trio of troopers.

The Stryker standing beside him elbowed his escort in the belly. A second shot-a palm thrust to the face-put him down hard even as Stryker wrenched his MP5 off his shoulder. Wilkins was just starting to react, rising from his chair, grabbing for his sidearm, when the butt of the submachine gun snapped toward him at the full extension of "Stryker's" arm, connecting like a baseball bat with force enough to upend the chair. Like the guard, Wilkins was unconscious before he hit the floor.

Approaching the control room from outside, the real William Stryker watched in futility as his double blew him a kiss. Then the doors slammed shut in his face.

Inside, Mystique reverted to her baseline physiognomy and took a seat at the main console. Above her on the wall display were images of the captured children from Xavier's.

She paused a moment, looking at them one by one, as if to imprint their faces on her memory. That done, all business once more, she donned a communications headset and tapped a set of commands into the keyboard. The children vanished from view, replaced by a three-dimensional schematic of the base.

Then she made a call.

Ever since she'd left the Blackbird, all the others had heard over her com channel was a carrier wave of static, telling them she was off-line. Ever since she'd left, Logan had paced the length of the aisle, back and forth like a caged tiger. No one said a word to him, no one got in his way. He was convinced from the start this was a mistake, and each additional minute of silence made him that much more certain.

Until Mystique's cheery voice stopped him in his tracks.

"I'm in," she reported.

Magneto smiled proudly, and even Logan had to admit he had reason.

"She's good," he conceded.

"You have no idea," Magneto replied.

While the three X-Men finished their preparations, John Allardyce stood up.

"Let us help," he said. Behind him, Bobby and Rogue nodded assent.

Storm put a stop to that notion.

"You're not helping with anything," she told them.

John started to protest but said nothing as Storm held up her hand.

"If something... happens to us," she continued, speaking to them all, "activate the escape-and-evade flight sequence that's programmed into the autopilot, just the way we briefed you. Don't touch any of the controls, on the ground or in the air. The Blackbird will take care of you just fine. The autopilot will fly you home."

"Then what?" Bobby demanded. He didn't hide his thoughts. Like any of us have a home to go to anymore. Or a school!

"You've all got superpowers," Logan told him. "Figure it out."

Chapter Fourteen.

Outside the control room, Stryker wasn't a happy man. He tried his key card on the electronic lock; no joy. Same for the manual combination, punched into the keypad. Same for the override. He tried the backdoor codes that only he knew, that were hardwired into the system and guaranteed unbreakable.

The door didn't budge, and as he pounded his fist on its steel face in righteous frustration, he swore he could hear that blue-skinned shape-shifting mutant bitch laughing at him with every failed try.

"It's... a very thick door, sir," Lyman said, and Stryker stared at him incredulously, wondering if this was some lame attempt at humor or if the man was a total idiot.

"Yes," Stryker told him, giving vent to his rage with such vehemence that his men backed off a step. Even Yuriko looked anxious. "But she's in there-and I'm out here!"

He took a breath, then another, forcing himself to calm down.

"Isolate the systems and transfer operations to the backup command center," he ordered. "Chances are she's locked you out, same as she did with the door, but you never know. We might get lucky. Meanwhile, she's locked in. Get some charges, and blow the damn doors! Do it quickly, Mr. Lyman, and kill whoever's inside. No questions, no hesitation, no mercy. I want them dead, I don't care who they look like."

Inside, Mystique had indeed locked out all the secondary command nodes. For what it was worth, the computers and systems controlling the physical plant of the base were hers to control. Pity the intruder net wasn't operational anymore; life would have been so much simpler if she could just flood the tunnels with knockout gas. As well, time and neglect had taken their toll. There were entire sections of the complex she couldn't access.

Fortunately, that didn't apply to the external doors. She called up the loading bay on the menu and pressed the appropriate button. Obligingly, the monitor flashed the legend SPILLWAY DOOR OPEN.

There were still a handful of troops in the loading bay, and they reacted with surprise as the double doors separated and slid apart. Seeing who was standing on the other side, they went for their weapons. Mystique, watching on the monitor, shook her head: They had a lot more courage than brains.

Any one of the intruders could have dealt with the situation. Between Logan, Jean Grey, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Magneto, the troopers didn't have a chance. Not one got more than a step, did more than begin to move, before he was rendered unconscious.

In passing, Magneto looked up at the ceiling-mounted camera-his awareness of magnetic fields allowed him to sense the location of any power conduit or video link-and smiled. Mystique smiled back. This was going to be fun.

Payback was a bitch, and so was she.

She had no view of the hallway outside her door. One of Stryker's first orders must have been to disable all the external cameras covering the approaches to the control room. She could guess what was happening now.

A team of demolition experts were in the process of attaching C4 plastic explosives to the doorway, spiraling them outward from the central locking mechanism.

There was a crackle from one of the walkie-talkies, the faint sound of gunfire, and screams.

Lyman raised his own radio and said, "Post five, report."

He looked at Stryker, who nodded. They both knew what this meant.

Guns were leveled at the sound of running feet, forcing the two troopers racing around the closest corner to come to a quick stop, their hands raised clear of their weapons. Everyone was jumpy, but Stryker had trained them well. Discipline held.

"Sir," one of them reported, "someone's opened the loading bay doors. More mutants have entered the base."

"How many?" Stryker demanded.

"We don't know."

"Who are they?"

Both soldiers shook their heads. Anyone close enough to discover that crucial information hadn't been allowed to escape to report it.

"Should we engage them, sir?" Lyman asked.

Stryker looked thoughtful.

"No," he said. "Have the rest of your troops meet us outside the machine, with all the heavy ordnance they can carry.

"Keep working on the doorway," he told the demo team, and then, to the new arrivals, "You two are with me." He motioned for Lyman and Yuriko to accompany him as well as he strode briskly down the hall. "They can't stop anything," he said as an absolute statement of fact. "In fifteen minutes, they'll all be on their knees."

It was a morning to write home about, the sun still hidden below the horizon as the helicopter skated along the crest of the fog layer that shrouded the hills and hollows of the Hudson Valley. To anyone watching, this was just another corporate helo, taking care of one of the many moguls and high-ranking politicos who made their home in this part of Westchester County and neighboring Connecticut.

They'd made a quick and uneventful flight from Alkali Lake to the coast, but the closer they came to their destination, the harder it was for Charles Xavier to mask his impatience. Or keep tight rein on the niggling sense of dread that wandered the outermost regions of his awareness, where he rarely went.

At Xavier's mental direction, the pilot made a combat approach to the back lawn, swift and certain, popping over the surrounding trees and down to a safe landing in a matter of heartbeats.

Just as quickly, Cyclops helped Xavier from his seat and into his wheelchair. As Scott pushed him up the ramp to the terrace, Xavier had the pilot shut down the engines and then fall asleep.

Using telepathy, he'd been calling out to his students since they departed Alkali Lake, expanding his mental awareness as widely as possible in hopes of hearing an answer, no matter how faint. From Jean, at the very least, he should have received some response.

Now, at the mansion, he again felt that disquieting absence of contact.

"I don't like this, Professor," Scott said as they entered the foyer. He called out as loudly as he could, but all either man heard was the fading echo of their voices through the empty rooms and hallways. "Where is everyone?"

"See if you can locate the Blackbird, Scott," Xavier told him. "Use the transponder, try to raise the onboard computer. Find some way to contact Jean and Storm. I'll use Cerebro."

With a nod, Scott took off down the corridor, while Xavier turned his chair toward the elevators that gave access to the mansion's underground complex. It never occurred to him that Scott was violating protocol, not to mention common sense, by leaving him alone in a potentially hostile environment. And since he was resolutely ignoring that pernicious sense of dread that just wouldn't quit, he never turned his head to see Scott vanish behind him into thin air.

The hallways underground were as empty as those above as the elevator doors opened and he rolled out onto the polished floor. Until his ears caught the sound of crying.

He did a slow pivot at the main junction, where the two sets of corridors came together in front of the elevator to form yet another of the ubiquitous Xs that popped up throughout the complex.

"It's all right," he called, wondering why he couldn't pinpoint her location, either by sound or thought. "You can come out now."

He found her hiding in a corner of the computer room on the main floor of the mansion. She was far younger than any mutant of his experience, not yet of middle-school age, with blond hair and blue eyes and a classic peaches-and-cream complexion. Her eyes were very large and wounded and brimming with tears, and she wore a nightgown.

"Are they gone?" she asked tremulously, and Xavier knew she meant Stryker's invasion force. It didn't bother him in the slightest that a violent invasion of his school had left it in pristine condition. That wasn't important. Only this girl mattered, and his lost students.

"Yes," he replied. "Where are all the others?"

She shrugged.

"Then I guess we'll have to find them, won't we?"

He held out his hand. She took it. Together, they moved down the hallway toward the vaultlike door that was the entrance to Cerebro.