He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery.
- Revelation 2:27
Wolverine hurt right down to the core of his metal-laced bones. Getting thrown twenty feet by a blast wave and slammed into a solid rock wall tended to do that to a person. Yeah, he was having a real banner day - knocked out by a punk kid, beat up by ninjas, shot by a sideshow reject, and now this. Apocalypse's sudden disappearance, along with that of Mesmero and the Hand, only made things worse. At the moment, Wolverine was definitely in the mood to slug it out with some half-dead god and his flunkies - the more the merrier.
He groaned and pushed himself off the cave floor, stretching as he stood. The motion tugged at the burnt skin and muscles on his side and back and made him even more inclined to gut someone than usual. He hated burns; they took too long to heal, and stung like crazy while they were. But there was also the little matter of why he'd wound up across the cave, burnt and bruised.
He didn't know whether it had been a bomb or a grenade - it didn't smell like either - but he knew who had detonated it, and now he popped his claws with a low growl.
Cable.
The mercenary was standing at the back of the cave, lighting a flare. Storm was hovering overhead of Cable and didn't look too happy. The kids were scattered around - Cyke and Jean in the middle of the avenue, where Jean had shielded them from the blast, and Rogue and Gambit near the entrance - and the protective side of him made Logan glad to see they weren't seriously injured. In fact, it looked like the Cajun had pulled Rogue to safety, sheltering her with his own body. That was probably more for his benefit than hers, Logan thought, and had his suspicions borne out when the kid coughed and said, "If this is death, it's not so bad, huh, chere?"
"Speak for yourself," she said, coughing, and gave him a sharp elbow in the stomach before climbing to her feet unaided. Wolverine almost felt sorry for the kid; he'd do himself in, hanging around their resident tough girl.
"Wolverine, are you all right?" Cyclops asked as he approached them.
He pushed past the younger mutant without saying anything, focused now on the mercenary. Cable looked in his direction as he approached, but moved to defend himself too late. Wolverine knocked the gun out of his hand and tripped the guy in the same movement, then pinned him on the floor with one set of claws at his throat.
"You! You set off that explosion. You planned it all along. Tell me why," he growled, pressing his claws closer - not hard enough to break the skin, but he was itching for an excuse. "And I'd better like the answer."
"I had to." Cable's eyes flared gold, and Wolverine felt something grab him from behind - a small distraction, but Cable made it count. He punched Logan in the throat, where his adamantium skeleton didn't do jack for protection. And Wolverine saw red.
Don't lose it in front of the kids, part of his mind warned, but the rest of him told that part to go to hell.
Cable had managed to get to his feet. Wolverine lunged at him with claws spread and ready to do damage. He slashed at the other man's torso, trying to literally rip his heart out; Cable dodged the blow. The claws bit into the silver metal of his arm instead, sending sparks flying and all but severing it.
"Logan, stop!" Storm exclaimed, coming between them with unborn lightning crackling around her and putting a forcibly restraining hand on his shoulder. That was a mistake, because it was her bandaged hand and it was reeking blood.
He pushed her away before the smell got to him and took a few steps back, trying to bring himself under control again. Save it, he told himself. Save it for the next rematch with Creed. The thought made him calmer, although he had no idea why. And the expressions on the kids' faces - half fear, half concern - made him feel slightly guilty. They had it hard enough without worrying about their own teacher.
Cable was crouching now, one hand on his injured arm and that gold glow around his eyes. It was the arm that caught Logan's attention: it twisted and flowed in a way that metal was not supposed to move.
It caught the kids' attention, too. Cyclops asked, cautiously, "Your arm... is alive?"
"No," Cable said, grimacing as the arm warped back into its proper shape. "It's infected."
That sounded doubtful to Wolverine. "Infected? With what?"
"A techno-organic virus. It's designed to convert flesh into a living machine." He gave Wolverine a piercing glare which Logan returned in kind. "I can keep it under control when people aren't trying to separate my arm from my shoulder."
Jean stepped closer. "And your eye -?"
"Yeah." The surface of the arm seemed to ripple once, then returned to normal. Cable stood and looked at the rubble that had filled the back of the cave. "Did anyone see him teleport?"
"I did," Rogue said, holding up a hand like she was in class. "Took Mesmero and those stupid ninjas with him."
Gambit added, "Said somethin' 'bout a golden room 'fore he left."
Storm pressed a hand to the earpiece of her headset, nodded, and said, "Beast says that the term 'golden room' refers to a pharaoh's burial chamber - gold is a symbol of eternity."
Cable scowled. "He's gone back to Egypt."
"And how do you know that?" Wolverine demanded.
"I know it, old man. Leave it at that."
Wolverine curled his lip in an unconscious sneer, but managed to suppress his urge to take the mercenary down a peg or two. "Fine. But we're not goin' anywhere until you explain why we got front-row seats to that little explosion."
"I'm not playing this game again. Apocalypse is regenerating and you're just wasting time," Cable snarled, and started to shove past the group.
Cyclops stepped into his path, red visor flashing. "We're not giving you a choice."
Cable was nearly a head taller than Cyclops, and twice as broad across the shoulders, but Cyke stared him down without the smallest flicker of concern. Logan approved. You didn't always get to be the bigger opponent in a fight, but fearlessness and persistence would take you a long way.
Cable leaned forward. "Get out of my way."
Cyke put a hand to his visor. "No."
Before the fireworks could start, Jean said, voice strained, "Look, I don't care if you guys have another shoving match, but could we please take it outside before the cave falls on our heads?"
He quickly looked up at the high, natural vault of the cave, noticing for the first time that fault lines were crisscrossing the rock. Several small sections had already crumbled and separated from the ceiling, but they hadn't fallen to the floor. Jean was holding it all up with her telekinesis, a pretty impressive feat for a girl who used to have trouble lifting her own weight. "Good point."
Even in the cold night, Jean was sweating, and her hands were pressed to her temples in the universal gesture of a psi concentrating to their breaking point. When she added, "And - ah - we should hurry," that was all the incentive the team needed.
Storm led the way, soaring out into the night sky with an air of escape that only a claustrophobic could appreciate. Gambit and Rogue were next.
"After you," Wolverine said, giving Cable a decidedly unfriendly smile. Cable glared at him and left the cave. Logan followed, paying close attention the two guns strapped to Cable's back; there was a scent coming off of the weapons which he couldn't identify. It wasn't the heavy chemical smell of gunpowder, that was sure, and it wasn't quite the fried ozone of laser. This guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and it was seriously starting to annoy him.
On the narrow cliff trail, he stopped and looked back at the cave's entrance. Jean walked out slowly with Cyke hovering at her side. As soon as they'd cleared the platform, she lifted her hands from her temples.
He heard a series of sharp cracks, each magnified and echoed by the space inside the cave, and then the cracks merged into one massive, booming sound that shook the mountain. The collapse rumbled through his bones at the same time a billowing cloud of dust and stone debris exploded out of the entrance.
Storm, flying beside the trail, raised her hands and the cloud immediately dissipated rather than blowing back onto them. Having a weather-witch around came in handy more often than not.
The cave entrance was gone, blocked by several tons of fallen rock.
"So much for the Ancient One's prison," Rogue muttered.
They started down the mountainside, retracing their steps to the Blackbird. They hadn't heard anything from Xavier in a while - not since before the explosion - and though he hadn't been concerned earlier, Logan was now. Apocalypse could've gotten in a parting shot before he left, destroying the jet or blasting Charles into some far corner of the astral plane.
But the jet was right where they'd left it, undamaged. That didn't alleviate his concerns, not in the slightest. He pushed to the front of the group and charged up the stairway, half-expecting to see Xavier sitting with a Hand dagger buried in his chest.
There was no dagger, but Xavier was clearly the worse for the wear, leaning dangerously forward in his chair and holding his head in both hands. Wolverine grabbed the first-aid kit, just in case, and took up a position next to the X-Men's true leader, who was still conscious - always a good sign.
The kids bordered the jet with various exclamations of alarm. "Professor!"
"Is everyone all right?" Xavier asked, straightening and waving away the first-aid kit.
Wolverine did a quick visual check of the kids and Storm - Cable didn't count - and nodded.
"Yeah. How about you?"
Xavier grimaced. "There was... a psychic backlash when Apocalypse emerged. I was caught in it. He is more powerful than anyone I've ever encountered - and there is something else, something about his very soul... I believe Rogue described him best - 'all hate and evil.' "
"He's gone to his tomb in Egypt," Cable told Xavier. "There he'll regenerate and we'll lose what little advantage we have right now."
"Oh yeah - that reminds me," Wolverine said, crossing his arms. "You were gonna tell us about that explosion."
Cable looked at him, then at the other X-Men, and tapped an empty hook on his belt. "Plasma grenade."
Wolverine snorted, unimpressed. "Science fiction, bub. Try again."
"That's the truth, old man."
Wolverine growled, bringing his arms up, but Xavier telepathically ordered him to stand down and took over the questioning with a calm, "Why did you set off the explosion?"
Cable sighed, an expression of frustration that made Wolverine feel much better, in a vengeful way. "I knew that there was no way to prevent the door from being unlocked - with freedom that close, Apocalypse would've done anything to make sure he got out. He tried to take Storm's mind almost as soon as we got there."
Logan glanced at her and saw that she was looking at Cable with an odd expression, but she didn't say anything.
"I set off that explosion because it was the one chance we had," Cable went on, glaring at the others as if daring them to challenge him. "Think about it."
Logan had already thought about it, including the parts Cable had obviously left out, and the confirmation only made him feel more used. The sonofabitch had dragged them along as distractions, not help.
Cyke started and looked around at the other kids, who didn't have a clue, before turning back to Cable. "Of course - he was free. He wasn't expecting an attack."
"Exactly. He'd been waiting two thousand years for that moment. Planned to start conquering the world immediately. I used his arrogance against him."
"Which makes me wonder, bub, how you know so much about him," Wolverine said, narrowing his eyes. "After all, guy's been locked away for a long time."
Cable hesitated. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
Wolverine uncrossed his arms and leaned forward. "Try me."
Cable hesitated again, this time with the space-cadet look Wolverine had come to recognize as telepathic communication. The mercenary was talking to Charles, probably. If he was talking to Jean then he was going to get a claw through his mercenary head. No one messed with the kids on Logan's watch.
"I'm from the future," Cable finally said.
"Jesus Christ," Wolverine swore, disgusted. He was supposed to keep his language clean around the kids, but he didn't care at the moment; this was too much. "You expect us to believe that garbage?"
Xavier held up a hand, signaling patience. "He's telling the truth."
Wolverine looked at him in total disbelief. "What, your spider-sense lettin' you know that?"
"I can understand your reluctance, Wolverine," Xavier said, with the brisk, businesslike tone he used when he was disciplining the kids, "but there is no doubt in my mind as to the veracity of Cable's claims."
Wolverine respected Xavier. There weren't a lot of people with the guts to actively make a dream into reality - and to keep fighting for that dream the further away it got. For that matter, he respected Xavier's dream, even if he did think that the professor's tactics were sometimes too soft.
And nine times out of ten, Xavier turned out to be right. But having his instincts questioned never failed to make Wolverine angry.
"All right," he snarled, pointing at Cable with one set of claws extended for emphasis. "Future Boy here can drag us to another unknown location to fight a creature who may or may not be too powerful for us to handle. Nothing wrong with that."
He stalked to the rear of the passenger cabin, where he leaned against the wall and stayed through takeoff. No one, not even the Cajun, was dumb enough to try to talk to him. Instead, the kids clustered around Cable, who was mapping out the location of Apocalypse's golden room.
Wolverine looked at the group absently, still too angry to concentrate - and then he blinked, seeing something for the first time. Cable was heavier, yeah, and older, but the lines of his skull were too similar... And the way he held himself, the attitude, the psionics...
Like a lot of things in life, it was obvious once you saw it.
"I'll be damned," Wolverine muttered, too low for anyone to hear. Cable was from the future.
His bad mood was still there, but as he thought about the ramifications of Cable's existence - especially after the last few months of non-stop tension and teen angst - he had to chuckle. If they all made it through this alive, the next few years would be interesting. Interesting indeed...