X-Men and the Avengers: Gamma Quest Omnibus E-Book

Greg Cox

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Bringing the classic X-Men and the Avengers: Gamma Quest trilogy back into print in a brand-new omnibus. TWO MISSING TEAMMATES. ONE DEADLY ENEMY… The X-Men—mutant protectors of a world that fears and hates them. The Avengers—Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the greatest super-team ever assembled. When the Scarlet Witch of the Avengers and Rogue of the X-Men both disappear under mysterious circumstances, each team's search leads them to more questions than answers. Desperate to recover their missing teammates, they must join forces to uncover the truth. But their efforts will bring them up against a foe with the deadliest power of all: to make them turn on each other!

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Novels of the Marvel Universe by Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Book One: Lost and Found

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Acknowledgements

Book Two: Search and Rescue

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Acknowledgements

Book Three: Friend or Foe?

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

GAMMA QUEST

A MARVEL OMNIBUS

NOVELS OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE BY TITAN BOOKS

Ant-Man: Natural Enemy by Jason Starr

Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Dan Abnett

Avengers: Infinity by James A. Moore

Black Panther: Who is the Black Panther? by Jesse J. Holland

Captain America: Dark Design by Stefan Petrucha

Captain Marvel: Liberation Run by Tess Sharpe

Civil War by Stuart Moore

Deadpool: Paws by Stefan Petrucha

Spider-Man: Forever Young by Stefan Petrucha

Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt by Neil Kleid

Spider-Man: The Venom Factor Omnibus by Diane Duane

Thanos: Death Sentence by Stuart Moore

Venom: Lethal Protector by James R. Tuck

X-Men: Days of Future Past by Alex Irvine

X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga by Stuart Moore

X-Men: Mutant Empire Omnibus by Christopher Golden

ALSO FROM TITAN AND TITAN BOOKS

Marvel Contest of Champions: The Art of the Battlerealm by Paul Davies

Marvel’s Spider-Man: The Art of the Game by Paul Davies

Obsessed with Marvel by Peter Sanderson and Marc Sumerak

Spider-Man: Hostile Takeover by David Liss

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – The Art of the Movie by Ramin Zahed

The Art of Iron Man (10th Anniversary Edition) by John Rhett Thomas

The Marvel Vault by Matthew K. Manning, Peter Sanderson, and Roy Thomas

Ant-Man and the Wasp: The Official Movie Special

Avengers: Endgame – The Official Movie Special

Avengers: Infinity War – The Official Movie Special

Black Panther: The Official Movie Companion

Black Panther: The Official Movie Special

Captain Marvel: The Official Movie Special

Marvel Studios: The First Ten Years

Spider-Man: Far From Home – The Official Movie Special

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – The Official Movie Special

Thor: Ragnarok – The Official Movie Special

X-Men and the Avengers: Gamma Quest Omnibus

Print edition ISBN: 9781789093339

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789093346

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: January 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

© 2020 MARVEL

Special thanks to Ginjer Buchanan, John Morgan, Ursula Ward, Mike Thomas, Steve Behling, and Dwight Jon Zimmerman. Original trilogy edited by Keith R.A. DeCandido and Dwight Jon Zimmerman.

FOR MARVEL PUBLISHING

Jeff Youngquist, VP Production Special Projects

Caitlin O’Connell, Assistant Editor, Special Projects

Sven Larsen, Director, Licensed Publishing

David Gabriel, SVP Sales & Marketing, Publishing

C.B. Cebulski, Editor in Chief

Joe Quesada, Chief Creative Officer

Dan Buckley, President, Marvel Entertainment

Alan Fine, Executive Producer

X-Men and Avengers created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

GAMMA QUEST

Book One

LOST AND FOUND

Greg Cox

To my parents

for countless stops at 7-Eleven to pick up

my weekly comic book fix.

Thanks for going out of your way to indulge

my peculiar hobbies.

“The jaws of darkness do devour it up: “So quick bright things come to confusion.”

– William Shakespeare (1595)

“X-Men, Avengers … I will not pretend ours has been a happy association.”

– Ororo Munroe (1993)

CHAPTER ONE

WAITING impatiently at a busy uptown intersection, Wanda Maximoff was tempted to throw a hex at the traffic lights. One little burst of probability-altering mutant power would change don’t walk to walk easily enough, but that probably wasn’t appropriate behavior for a card-carrying member of the Avengers. She could just see the headlines on the front page of the Daily Bugle: SCARLET WITCH CAUGHT JAYWALKING. MAYOR DENOUNCES NEW MUTANT MENACE TO PEDESTRIAN SAFETY.

Not that she was in uniform, of course. As near as she could tell, none of the assorted New Yorkers and tourists milling about at the crosswalk recognized her as a practicing super heroine; intent upon their own errands and itineraries, they paid little attention to the tall, auburn-haired woman standing in their midst.

Fine with me, she thought. For today’s outing, which promised little in the way of super-powered conflict, she had foregone her distinctive “working clothes” in favor of strictly civilian attire. A stylish trenchcoat, belted at the waist, protected her from the chilly breeze blowing off Central Park while a pair of sensible brown boots insulated her feet from the sidewalk, the toe of one boot now tapping restlessly against the pavement. Reddish-brown curls tumbled past her shoulders. Large silver loops hung beneath her ears, matching the bracelets that jangled around her wrists. The hastily thrown together ensemble was more than suitable to her purposes, although, to be honest, her scalp always felt somewhat naked without the high-pointed headdress she usually wore into battle.

No melees today, Wanda reminded herself. As far as she was concerned, she was taking a personal day. Heinous super villains and would-be world conquerors would just have to wait their turn; even an Avenger deserved a day off now and then.

The traffic signals changed of their own volition, and she crossed Central Park West, then headed north on Columbus Avenue. Although well into June, the day was overcast and surprisingly cool. Glancing up at the gray skies overhead, Wanda wondered fleetingly if she should have grabbed an umbrella before leaving the mansion. No matter, she decided, even as the first sprinkles of rain began to fall. She would be indoors soon enough.

The Manhattan Museum of Folk Art was located on the Upper West Side, across the park and a few blocks north from Avengers Mansion, her home for many years. Wanda paused for a moment outside the museum’s unimposing concrete facade, inspecting the banners on display in the ground-floor windows that flanked its main entrance. As advertised in the Arts section of the New York Times, the building was proudly hosting an exhibition titled “Beyond Gepetto: A Century of Eastern European Puppetry.”

Just what I came for, she thought.

The pelting raindrops and her own curiosity drove her past a pair of glass doors and into the lobby of the small museum, whose spare white walls and utilitarian design were presumably intended not to call attention away from the homespun art on display. Apparently, neither puppets in particular nor folk art in general were big draws these days; there were few other visitors in attendance. In fact, it looked like she had practically the entire museum to herself.

Just as well, Wanda reflected. I don’t mind a little privacy.

After making a modest donation at the front desk, she followed a series of helpful signs, past displays of colorful quilts and whimsically-designed weather vanes, until she came to the exhibit that had lured her here.

Hand-carved wooden marionettes, painted in once-vibrant colors that had faded with the passage of decades, adorned the walls of a dead-end gallery near the back of the museum, where the curators no doubt hoped their presence would draw visitors past the institution’s other exhibits. The marionettes’ jointed legs dangled freely while whittled hands and arms pointed out informative blocks of text affixed to the walls between the puppets. Wanda declined to read the descriptive copy for now, preferring to focus first on the craftsmanship and imagination embodied by the puppets themselves.

As she admired their intricate detail and expressive, if exaggerated, features, she noted that the various artists had largely taken their subjects from the history and folklore of Russia and Eastern Europe: Baba Yaga, the Firebird, Peter and the Wolf, Rasputin, and so on. There was even a miniature puppet version of Dr. Doom, which would surely get its maker a stiff prison sentence if displayed anywhere within the borders of Latveria.

Not a bad likeness, Wanda judged, eyeing the forbidding metallic face beneath the doll-sized green hood, although she knew from personal experience that the real Victor Von Doom was infinitely more intimidating.

Inevitably, the sight of the puppets, so like the ones her adoptive father had made in the dimly-remembered days of her childhood, raised poignant memories in Wanda: memories of Django Maximoff, the kindly gypsy toymaker who had raised her and her brother Pietro after their mother’s death during childbirth. Those had been among the happiest days of her far too turbulent life, until that fearful night an angry mob attacked the gypsy camp, separating her and Pietro from the only family they had ever known.

Torches in the night. Gaudily-painted wooden wagons going up in flames. The crackle of burning pitch. Thick smoke filling her lungs, choking her. Furious shouting and screams of terror. The darkness of the forest as they fled in panic, only to fall at last into the freezing river which swept them away…

Wanda shuddered involuntarily. For years, she had repressed her recollections of those days, as her past slid into a morass of confusion and contradictions, but in recent years, as she uncovered more and more about the events that had shaped her youth, the memories had returned as well, sometimes springing forth from her unconscious mind with surprising force and clarity. Gazing now upon the handcrafted figure of the Wolf, its painted tongue hanging comically out of one side of its toothy jaws, it seemed to her that she could practically smell the smoke of the campfire, hear the horses whinny and the tambourines jangling, as she sat upon her now-dead papa’s knee.

Her mind in the past, her body in the present, she reached out to touch the Wolf upon the wall. Was it just her imagination, or was the Wolf looking back at her, a feral gleam in its hungry, hand-painted eyes? Her fingertips hovered just out of reach of the hinged wooden jaws.

“Excuse me,” a voice piped up behind Wanda, yanking her consciousness back to the here and now. She glanced back over her shoulder to discover a young woman, roughly college age or younger, standing behind her. “I’m sorry to bother you,” the woman said hesitantly, “but… you are the Scarlet Witch, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Wanda admitted. Engrossed in her memories, she had not even heard the other woman approach. Turning around to face the newcomer, she observed two more young people, about the same age, looking on from a few yards away while whispering furtively to each other.

Not quite as brave as their friend, Wanda guessed. Apparently, the museum was better attended than she had first thought. Art students, Wanda surmised, or maybe just broke college kids looking for a cheap diversion on a lazy Saturday morning.

“Wow,” the boldest of the students exclaimed. She wore a faded Lila Cheney tee-shirt and a pair of kneeless black jeans. Tiny silver rings pierced the skin above one eye. “Would you mind?” she began, holding out a sketch pad and a felt-tipped pen. “I mean, could I have your autograph?”

“Why, certainly,” Wanda said graciously, accepting the proffered pen and pad. Despite years spent in America, her voice still held a trace of a Balkan accent. “To whom shall I address it?”

“Janine,” the fan answered, wide-eyed. Wanda greeted the interruption with good humor; she realized that, as an Avenger, she was definitely a public figure. Sometimes she wondered if, at the onset of her colorful career, she should have assumed a mask and secret identity like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers and some of her other colleagues. No, she decided once again—her life had been complicated enough without adding the difficulties of a dual identity to the mix.

TO JANINE, she wrote. WITH BEST WISHES, THE SCARLET WITCH. She had learned long ago that autograph seekers preferred the somewhat exotic alias to her legal signature.

All part of good public relations, she mused. Captain America would surely approve. She handed back the pad and writing implement even as, out of the comer of her eye, she thought she spotted a shadow moving on the adjacent wall.

What’s that? she wondered, but when she looked to the side all she saw were the Rasputin and Baba Yaga puppets hanging as lifelessly as they had before. But wait—hadn’t the scaly chicken legs dangling beneath the witch’s mobile hut been positioned slightly differently the last time she had looked at them? Wanda tried to remember…

“Thanks!” Janine enthused, eagerly reclaiming her prize and shooting a triumphant grin at her two lurking cohorts. Her jubilant eyes devoured the inscription. “This is so great! I’ve been a fan of yours for, like, forever. Even before you were one of the good guys.”

Ouch, Wanda thought. Even though her beaming fan clearly meant well, the longtime heroine could have done without that reminder of her dubious days as one of the charter members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. So much had happened to her since those distant nights around the gypsy campfire. Many hardwon victories to be proud of, true, but also too much tragedy and heartache.

Perhaps I was never intended to be happy, she thought ruefully, but to defend the happiness of ordinary people like this girl.

Then, without warning, the excitement in Janine’s eyes turned to shock and fear. Her face went pale and her mouth fell open, while behind the young woman her two friends looked frightened as well. One of them screamed and dropped an armful of textbooks, his panicky shout echoing through the hushed atmosphere of the museum.

A severe overreaction to my notorious past, Wanda wondered momentarily, or something else altogether? She spun around just in time to see the puppets leaping impossibly from the wall, using their tiny legs to propel themselves straight at Wanda, attacking her. Closest to her, the wooden Wolf lunged for her throat.

Her reflexes trained by years of hand-to-hand combat against everything from Norse gods to the Lunatic Legion, she batted the fanged marionette away with the back of her hand, sending it skittering across the tile floor several yards away. But she could not stop its companion puppet, carved in the cherubic image of Peter the child huntsman, from landing heavily upon her shoulder and grabbing onto her reddish-brown tresses. The Peter puppet yanked her hair across her face, obscuring her vision while he tugged on its roots.

“Run!” Wanda shouted to Janine and the other students. Suddenly, the museum was no place for civilians. She clutched at Peter, who was now straddling her neck piggyback-style, choking Wanda with her own hair, until she managed to pry him off her shoulders at the cost of two miniature handfuls of hair. Discarding the auburn curls, he snagged one of her silver earrings, ripping it from the tender lobe.

“Aiee!” the Scarlet Witch cried out. The pain distracted her, made it hard to call up her powers, but she hurled the marionette away with all the force she could muster, hoping the wooden simulacrum would shatter upon the hard, gray tiles.

No such luck. The oaken boy bounced twice upon the tiles, then sprung back onto his feet, joining Rasputin and Baba Yaga as they rushed across the floor at her. Unlike the playthings she recalled, these marionettes required neither strings nor visible puppeteer to give them animation. The gnarled head of the Russian witch protruded from the thatch roof of her doll-sized hut as it hurried forward atop oversized hen’s legs, taking the lead from Rasputin and Peter. Malevolent cackling escaped, absurdly, from Baba Yaga’s wooden lips. Painted yellow eyes leered above a jagged nose crowned by a bulging wart. The hut took a flying leap, the claws of the chicken’s feet extended at Wanda’s face.

You’re giving us witches a bad name, she thought, ducking out of the way. Her hands came up to form a protective hex, but all at once the Firebird was flapping its gilded wings in her face, pecking at her eyes. At the same time, wooden jaws closed around her ankle, pointed teeth digging through her leather boot. The Wolf, she realized, trying to shake her leg free even as she snapped her face from side to side, striving to keep her eyes away from the Firebird’s angry beak.

Who could be responsible for this? she wondered, her eyes tightly shut, grabbing unsuccessfully at the sound of the flapping wings. The Puppet Master? The Brothers Grimm? There was no time to even try to decipher the mystery. Between the Wolf gnawing on her leg and the Firebird jabbing at her face, she couldn’t begin to think straight, let alone play detective.

The witch’s hut rejoined the fray, clawing at Wanda’s back, and she was grateful that she had chosen to wear the heavy coat instead of her somewhat skimpier gypsy garb. Despite her own peril, she feared for her comrades as well.

The others might be in danger, too, she realized. An attack on one Avenger often meant an assault on the entire team. I need to alert Captain America and the rest. There was a communication device in one of her coat pockets, but how could she get at it when she had to defend herself from these homicidal Pinocchios?

Her face turned downward, eyes squeezed shut, she forced herself to ignore the fangs and the claws and the beak and the flapping wings, putting aside the sharp, jabbing pains so that she could concentrate on a hex. Her fingers instinctively formed the right configuration, the gestures focusing her unique mutant ability to manipulate the laws of probability.

Even after countless efforts and exercises to hone her special gifts, she still had trouble describing what it felt like when she used her birthright. It was like breathing, in a way—you didn’t think about it, you just did it. Wanda visualized the effect she desired, then let the power flow from somewhere deep inside her out to her fingertips, which tingled slightly as they released her mutant magic into the world.

The power manifested first as a shimmering sphere of crimson light that spread outward to enclose both the Scarlet Witch and her attackers. Within that sphere, mathematical probabilities shifted so that the most unlikely of possibilities became not just likely but an absolute certainty.

The Firebird’s crystalline eyes blinked in surprise as an extremely improbable fluctuation in the air currents stole the wind from beneath its wings, causing it to drop like a stone, fortuitously slamming into the wooden Wolf at the very moment that, behind Wanda, Baba Yaga’s ambulatory hut lost its balance and toppled forward. Her foot at last freed from the jaws of the Wolf, the Scarlet Witch deftly evaded the falling marionette so that it landed in a heap upon its fellow puppets.

The odds that three such happy accidents would combine to rid Wanda of her attackers simultaneously were ridiculously small, of course, except within the radius of her hex sphere.

That’s better, she thought. The rose-colored radiance dissipated as she took a deep breath to collect her thoughts before the murderous marionettes regrouped. At last, she had a moment to try to figure out what was happening and why?

Who is behind this? She sensed no sorcerous energies at work, but some force had to have brought the seemingly harmless puppets to life. Telekinesis? Nanotechnology? Her mind grappled for a solution, even as she readied herself for the puppets’ next attack. There were too many possibilities, too many enemies old and new.

These might not even be marionettes at all, she surmised, but cleverly disguised android assassins.

Floodlights mounted into the ceiling called attention to the empty stretches of wall that the puppets had occupied only moments before.

Thank heavens I didn’t go to the Natural History Museum instead. She could just imagine the dinosaur fossils and stuffed mammoths coming to life in place of the puppets.

Her fingers groped through her coat pockets in search of her Avengers I.D. card, which also doubled as a communications device, thanks to the ingenuity of Tony Stark. If she hurried, she could still alert the team before the puppets came at her again. Manicured nails, painted in her trademark shade of red, tapped against the laminated surface of the card, and she had just started to draw it out of the pocket when she heard someone call out in alarm:

“Help! Keep away from me!”

The Scarlet Witch glanced back over her shoulder, where her cape usually was, and saw Janine cornered by puppet replicas of Rasputin and Ivan the Terrible. Blast, Wanda thought. The starstruck fan must have stayed behind to watch her heroine in action. Now, Rasputin and Ivan, brandishing miniature daggers, had backed the college student up against a glass display case on the opposite side of the gallery. Wanda wasn’t sure what frightened the poor girl more: the puppets’ hostile intent and weapons, or the fact that they were alive at all.

Just to complicate matters, a security guard, whom Wanda had seen posted in the lobby earlier, came running around the corner, only to come to an abrupt halt at the bizarre sight that greeted him. Pistol in hand, he froze, uncertain what to do.

Wanda sympathized with his confusion. He was surely hired to protect the exhibits from the patrons, not the other way around!

“Stay back,” she warned him, flashing her I.D. “This is Avengers business. Let me handle it.”

Not waiting to hear his response, she unleashed another hex at the puppets menacing Janine. The floodlights above the predatory marionettes suddenly exploded, showering Ivan and Rasputin with white-hot sparks that nevertheless missed Janine entirely.

Am I good or am I good? the Scarlet Witch thought, smiling with satisfaction as the puppets retreated frantically from the rain of sparks, whiffs of smoke rising from their wooden heads and shoulders. But after all, they’re only puppets, she reminded herself. Maybe she didn’t need any other Avengers after all.

“Get her out of here,” she instructed the security guard, who hurried to comply. This time, Janine seemed perfectly willing to flee the scene. Keeping one eye on the smoldering forms of Ivan and Rasputin, not to mention the tangle of fallen puppets at her feet, Wanda breathed a sigh of relief as both guard and fan exited from sight. She still had no idea what force had animated the marionettes and until she did, she didn’t want to have to worry about innocent bystanders.

I can take care of myself, no matter who is behind this. Ordinary humans are different.

An overwhelming blast of concussive force, striking her at the base of her neck, shattered her confidence and sent her reeling forward. Gray institutional tiles seemed to rush at her face as darkness encroached on the periphery of her vision, casting the stark white walls into shadow. Her I.D. card slipped from her fingers.

Of course, she recalled right before she blacked out. That blasted Doom puppet…!

CHAPTER TWO

HE crouched in the underbrush, sniffing the scent of his prey.

That way, he thought, nodding to himself. Just like I figured.

Most hunters might have never noticed the subtle deer path winding through the trees and bushes ahead of him, but Logan was the best there was at what he did.

The dense wilderness of the Adirondacks surrounded him. Towering pines and spruce trees branched out high above his head to form a verdant canopy that shielded the forest floor from the afternoon sun. A light breeze rustled through the branches, carrying with it a dozen separate aromas, each distinct and recognizable to Logan’s keen sense of smell. Out of sight, but not beyond earshot, a mountain stream rushed through the woods somewhere ahead. Logan could practically taste the cold, clear water.

It doesn’t get much better than this, he thought, a rare smile creasing his rugged yet ageless features. Twin peaks of bristling black hair rose from his scalp, looking like the vee-shaped points of the mask he often wore. Logan savored the primeval sanctity of the untamed wilderness, along with the sense of solitude. Here in the woods of upstate New York, it was easy to fool himself into thinking that he was the only two-legged mammal around for hundreds of miles.

Yeah, I needed this, he decided, breathing in the clean, intoxicating aroma of the trees and loam, so similar to that of the Canadian timberlands he had long ago called home. Even though he was no longer quite the loner he once was, thanks to Professor Charles Xavier and his X-Men, sometimes he still needed to put some distance between himself and other people, mutant or otherwise, and get back to his roots. This is where I really belong. In the wild.

His heightened senses revealed all the secrets of the woods to him. A whiff of wintergreen in the air announced the presence of a stand of yellow birch to the west, while his ears detected squirrels scurrying through the branches overhead. His fingers brushed against the scaly bark of a tall white pine, guessing the tree’s approximate age from the feel of the bark. Probing gray eyes penetrated the shade, spotting the spoor of his prey as it led away to the north.

They were here less than an hour ago, he estimated. I’m gaining on them.

Rising from his crouch, Logan took off through the forest, moving with practiced speed and stealth. His well-worn cowboy boots trod softly upon a carpet of twigs, pine cones, and fallen needles, making little or no sound as he followed the trail. He had left his Wolverine uniform behind in Westchester; a red flannel shirt and faded Levi’s were all he needed for this hunting expedition. Besides, he wouldn’t want to give any stray hikers or forest rangers a heart attack by surprising them in his X-Men gear.

We’re unpopular enough as is, he thought.

The deer path led uphill, toward the peak. Logan came upon the stream he had heard earlier, cutting its way through the sylvan landscape, and paused only long enough to take a couple of deep mouthfuls of the icy water, which was just as refreshing as he had imagined. Like a cool beer on a hot day, he decided. Licking the last drops of moisture from his lips, he waded across the stream, then headed up-country. If his prey had thought that the flowing water would throw him off the trail, they were in for a big surprise.

Scotch pine and aspen gave way to balsam and paper birch as he climbed the mountain, gaining elevation. Snow-white flowers bloomed from the occasional mountain ash growing along the trail, a sure sign of springtime. Logan sniffed the air again and nodded to himself. He was getting closer. Hunching over, his flared nostrils scouting ahead of him, he stalked forward even more quietly than before.

Easy does it, he counseled himself. The last thing he wanted to do was startle his prey as soon as he caught up with them. Retracted for the moment, his claws itched within their metal sheaths.

The timberland opened up before him, exposing an open meadow awash in golden sunshine. Sneaking up to the edge of the glade, Logan knelt behind a fallen log, its rotting carcass covered with moss and mushrooms, and peered with feral satisfaction at the sight of a family of deer—doe, fawn, and even, surprisingly, a buck—grazing upon the wild grass near the center of the clearing.

Gotcha! he thought, eyes narrowing. Almost.

Logan, sometimes known as Wolverine, ached to unsheathe his claws and pounce upon his prey with all the ferocity of his namesake, but more civilized habits prevailed. He seldom hunted to kill anymore, at least where dumb animals were concerned; it was sport enough to track a deer through miles of wilderness, until he came close enough to touch the skittish creature without being detected first. Not as satisfying, perhaps, as indulging his predatory instincts to the full, but enough of a challenge to make it interesting.

’Sides, he thought, what’d Bambi and family ever do to me? These days, he preferred to reserve his claws for those folks that really deserved them, like Magneto, for instance, or the Hellfire Club.

Officially, deer hunting season did not begin until winter, but the law didn’t say anything about just tracking the animals. Logan liked it better this time of year, when he didn’t have to worry about any trigger-happy weekend warriors tramping through the woods, shooting at anything that moved. I’ve got the whole forest to myself, just the way I like it.

This close, the musky scent of the deer was almost overwhelming. Logan started to creep around the lichen-wrapped log, then paused and sniffed once more. A scowl creased his feature; something wasn’t right. The deer smelled like deer, all right, but the pungent odor was almost too pure, like someone had distilled the essence of deer musk and sprayed it on the trio of animals grazing a few yards away. Logan couldn’t smell any evidence of fleas or ticks or even dried deer droppings; it was like all three deer had been raised, or at least painstakingly groomed, in a pristine laboratory environment, instead of the wilds of the Adirondacks.

There was something vaguely wrong about this perfect little domestic tableau—what was the buck doing here, hanging out with his family? Typically, adult male deer went their own way.

Maybe I’m just getting paranoid in my old age, Logan thought, but I don’t like the smell of this. As far as he knew, nobody but nobody knew where he was right now, not even his fellow X-Men; still, he’d made plenty of enemies in his time, and he was too smart to underestimate any of them. There was always a chance that these harmless-looking deer were being used as bait in a trap. Maybe I’ll get a chance to use my claws after all, he thought hopefully, looking forward to a good scrap.

Retreat was not an option. He had tracked this game too far to give up now. More importantly, if this was a trap he wanted to know who was behind it. A frontal assault, even into the jaws of danger, was better than looking back over your shoulder all the time, at least as far as Logan was concerned.

Let’s get on with it, he decided.

Getting down on all fours, his nose only inches from the fragrant soil, he slipped around the overgrown log and into the tall grass. He crept through the clearing on his hands and knees, eating up the distance between him and the grazing deer. His senses and reflexes were geared up to razor-sharp intensity, yet he could detect nothing in the vicinity except a few birds and rodents here and there. If an ambush was in the works, he sure as blazes didn’t know where it could come from; there was nothing here but the deer.

The fawn, its tawny fur still spotted with patches of white, was the closest to Logan. Balancing awkwardly on four spindly limbs, it nibbled on the grass within the protective shadow of its mother and father. So far, none of the animals appeared aware of Logan’s approach, which was just the way he liked it. He came within reach of the baby deer, then stretched his fingers toward the fawn’s flanks.

Here goes nothing, he thought, suspecting that the trap, if any, would be sprung once the deer reacted to his presence.

Before he even touched the unsuspecting animal, however, that unlikely father deer lunged at Logan, his head lowered so that an impressive rack of antlers came straight at the crouching mutant. The deep-throated roar of the attacking buck sounded in Logan’s ears. He was only a heartbeat away from being gored.

“I knew it,” he muttered. Something wasn’t right about that buck.

Snikt. Matching sets of twelve-inch steel claws emerged from the backs of his hands as he swiped out at the oncoming antlers, responding instinctively to the threat. The sharpened edges of his claws sliced off the points of the antlers, sending the bony tips flying off into the scrub. The buck reared up on its hind legs, kicking out at Wolverine with its forward hooves. He threw himself backwards, dodging the blow, and scrambled to his feet; mutant healing factor or not, he didn’t feel like having his adamantium skull slammed by a two-hundred-pound deer.

What’s this about? Logan speculated. Primal aggression from a protective papa or something more sinister? He glanced quickly to each side, but saw no sign of any human attackers—or inhuman, for that matter. Maybe, just maybe, all he had to deal with was some irate wildlife. That would be easy enough to handle. The only tricky part would be resisting the temptation to lash back with deadly force against an animal protecting his family. He clenched his fists, keeping the claws raised in front of him. There were three on each hand, all six poised to strike out at all comers. He had killed more than deer with those claws…

Then, before his startled eyes, the buck’s severed antlers grew back until they were even larger and more lethal-looking than before.

“That cinches it,” Wolverine muttered. This was no ordinary deer and the whole altercation was no isolated incident; hostile agencies were at work. And Bambi’s father wasn’t just bait, either. He was part of the ambush, maybe the most important part.

Lowering his head, the buck charged again at Wolverine, who braced himself for the attack, shining silver claws extended.

“Come and get me,” he growled. “I smell venison on the menu.”

A sudden impact, followed by agonizing pain, caught him by surprise as another set of antlers stabbed him in the back, tearing through the flannel shirt to gouge the skin and muscle below, the bony horns lodging deeply into his flesh, barely missing his spine.

“What the—?” he gasped, glancing backwards to see who or what had gored him.

Impossibly, it was none other than the fawn, now twice its previous size and equipped with antlers fully as large as its apparent father. Only yards away, the doe was also growing a rack of antlers, the bony tines extruding from the female deer’s skull at an unnatural rate.

Kind of like Marrow, he thought instantly, the freakish sight forcibly reminding him of that disagreeable mutant rebel and the bony protuberances that spontaneously erupted through her skin. But since when have there been mutant deer?

Impaled upon the transformed fawn’s horns, Wolverine tried to pull himself free, but the fawn reared up, dragging the hero’s boots off the ground below, making it harder to get any kind of leverage. He gritted his teeth against the shock and pain of the antlers tearing through his flesh; his rapid healing factor couldn’t repair the damage until he got the injured tissue away from the antlers. Meanwhile, bright arterial blood streamed down his back, soaking his shirt, while the original buck came stampeding toward him.

Jaw clenched as tightly as his fists, Wolverine yanked his entire upper body forward, ignoring the stabbing shrieks of pain racing through his nervous system. The convulsive effort ripped him free of the transformed fawn’s antlers and he dropped onto the grass below—just in time to be gored in the chest by the onrushing buck.

A savage howl escaped his frothing lips as the points of the antlers dug into his ribcage. He slashed out wildly with his claws, but whatever wounds he inflicted on the buck’s neck and shoulders closed almost as fast as he opened them; it was like slicing through some sort of living jelly.

An adaptoid? he guessed desperately. A new kind of organic Sentinel? The metallic scent of his own blood inflamed his senses, driving reason and intellect from his mind. He became an enraged animal, fighting to survive.

His preternatural healing factor kicked in, the gashes on Wolverine’s back were already knitting up, staunching the flow of blood. But the lessening of the pain from those injuries was more than overpowered by the impact of two sets of hoofs pounding against the back of his head. While the buck stabbed him in the chest, both the doe and the fawn kicked at him from behind, their hoofs slamming again and again upon his skull. It felt like the Juggernaut was pounding on his head while Sabretooth clawed at his heart simultaneously.

It was too much even for his legendary endurance.

Funny, Wolverine thought, in one last burst of consciousness before darkness descended, I thought I was hunting them…

CHAPTER THREE

NO one knew her real name, and the woman now known as Rogue preferred to keep it that way. Truth to tell, she rarely thought of herself as anyone but Rogue these days.

’Cept when I’ve got someone else’s memories stuck in my head, she thought.

At the moment, thank goodness, her mind was her own, although she could barely hear herself think over the noisy chatter and confusion of the crowded West Village street fair in which she was presently immersed. Milling New Yorkers, ranging from college kids to senior citizens, and packed shoulder-to-shoulder, jostled and nudged their way past each other, between rows of covered booths hawking everything from hot Thai food to used books and LPs. Hucksters called out to passersby, pitching free massages, cheap phone cards, Peruvian sweaters and pottery, cold lemonade, baby clothes, comic books, keyrings, wallets, refrigerator magnets, strawberry crepes, antique movie posters, ice cream, blue jeans, and just about anything else Rogue could imagine. The booths lined both sides of Waverly Place between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, blocking her view of aging brownstones to the north and Washington Square Park to the south. The fair on Waverly, which had been closed off to traffic for the afternoon, had drawn a sizable crowd of shoppers and sightseers, including at least one mutant heroine from the suburbs.

Nothing like a little bargain-hunting to take one’s mind off the super hero biz, Rogue thought, pausing to admire some reasonably priced turquoise jewelry; she was glad she had taken the train in from Westchester that morning. The sky, which had threatened rain earlier that morning, had cleared up, bathing the entire fair in sunshine. Wolvie has the right idea going walkabout and all. It’s not healthy to stay cooped up at the Instituteall the time. She had better things to do this afternoon than run through another training exercise in the Danger Room.

Too bad I couldn’t talk Ororo into joining me, she thought, but the weather goddess had been too busy with her beloved garden to waste a day in the city. Still, it was nice to have some time on her own, especially after all the X-Men had gone through recently. Like that whole time-travel mess with Spider-Man last year, or that ugly business with Mr. Sinister…

“See anything you like?” the jewelry dealer asked her, leaning forward over his wares. Despite the Native American designs of the rings and necklaces, the dealer looked more Pakistani than Apache. He raised a glittering trinket from a velvet-lined wooden tray. “Earrings are only $15 a pair. Very cheap!”

It would take a diamond drill to pierce my ears, she thought, shaking her head. “No thanks. Ah’m just lookin’,” she added with a smile, her melodious drawl betraying her origins somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line.

Rejoining the stream of pedestrians flowing by, she left the jewelry booth behind, blending in with the crowd, or so she thought. A couple of teenage boys, hanging out around a used-CD stand, looking for bootleg tapes of their favorite bands, whistled appreciatively as she walked past them.

Trust me, sugar, y’all don’t want to be getting too close to me. Rogue sighed ruefully, running a hand through the bleached white skunktail running down the middle of her long brown hair; one kiss from her lips would sure suck the swagger from those boys, all right, along with what passed for their minds. Look, but don’t touch, honey. The story of my life …

Even though her mutant body was immune to extremes of heat and cold, she had on a long-sleeved sweater and gloves. Manhattan was way too cramped to do otherwise; she couldn’t risk brushing any exposed skin against that of some poor stranger, not without taking a chance of absorbing all their memories and strength. Not exactly the kind of souvenir I was hoping to pick on this little shopping trip, she thought wryly.

Rogue was treating herself to some freshly roasted corn-on-the-cob, the melted butter dripping between the fingers of her glove, when she heard the angry shouting. At first she thought it was just another streetside salesman trying to attract the attention of the fairgoers, but there was a harsh edge to the yelling, very much at odds with the festive atmosphere of the fair, that caught her ear.

Some kind of trouble? she wondered, and began edging her way through the crowd toward the source of shouts. Maybe there was something she could do to help…

Packed in with several dozen other people, including a young mother pushing a slow-moving stroller, it took her a couple of minutes to get close enough to the speaker to make out the words. As she did so, her expression darkening, an all too familiar rage awoke inside her.

“Wake up, America!” a man’s voice bellowed. “Do you know what your children are? Don’t sit back and let mutants take over our world. This is your fight, too! Fight the mutant menace! Join now!”

There were still plenty of firm yellow kernels left on the cob, but Rogue had lost her appetite. Can’t I ever get away from this garbage? She chucked the half-eaten ear of corn into a dented metal trash bin, then followed the venomous rant to its point of origin: a portable booth staffed and sponsored, at least according to the banner running along its top, by the anti-mutant hate group who called themselves the Friends of Humanity.

Tee-shirts, pamphlets, buttons, bumper stickers, and posters adorned the booth and were also spread out on a tabletop facing the street. Rogue quickly scanned the slogans printed on the assorted paraphernalia, feeling her blood pressure rise with every malicious word she read:

MEN WERE CREATED EQUAL, NOT MUTANTS.

100 PERCENT HUMAN—AND PROUD OF IT.

REMEMBER THE ONSLAUGHT!

FIRST THE NEANDERTHALS,

NOW HOMO SAPIENS?

OPEN YOUR EYES—FOR HUMANITY’S SAKE.

SECOND PLACE NEVER COUNTS IN EVOLUTION.

SUPPORT THE MUTANT REGISTRATION ACT.

Phony wanted posters sported slightly doctored news photos of Magneto, Apocalypse, Sauron, and even some of her fellow X-Men, especially the less human-looking ones like the Beast and Nightcrawler. (Granted, it wasn’t too hard to make Wolverine look scary.) Rogue was half-amused/half-disgusted to see a cartoonish artist’s rendering of herself that made her look like a horror movie vampire, complete with fangs and pointed ears.

No fair, she thought. I haven’t looked like that since the last time I tussled with Sabretooth. Besides, my hips aren’t nearly that big… On a deeper level, she felt torn between anger and nausea at the sight of the same old lies and insults being dished out once more. You’d think people would be fed up with this stuff by now.

The loudmouth manning the booth, a petition in one hand and a donation tin in the other, was hardly a prime specimen of ordinary humanity. Stuffed pretentiously into a three-piece suit that seemed one size too small for him, the man was red-faced and sweating, too full of simmering bigotry and resentment to possibly look at ease in his own skin.

“You there, miss,” he said, making eye contact with Rogue. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to be doing too much business right now; most everybody else looked more interested in snacking and shopping. “Would you like to support the Friends of Humanity?”

You’re no friend of mine, she thought, fuming. She knew she should just walk away, leave this prejudiced peabrain to stew in his own stinking bile, but it was too late for that now. She strode toward the booth, clenching her fists. Why should she be the only one whose afternoon was spoiled?

“You ever met a mutant?” she challenged him. The press of the crowd squeezed her forward until she was squeezed against the edge of the table, her face only inches away from the so-called Friend of Humanity. She rested her palm on a stack of folded tee-shirts, not worried all that much about getting excess butter all over them. “You ever got to know one?”

“That’s not necessary,” the man said smugly, appearing all too happy to have an audience at last, even a hostile one. “I know everything I need to know.” He put down his petition and waved a pamphlet in her face. Heavy black letters advertised THE TRUTH ABOUT THE COMING GENE WAR. “The mutant menace is the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced. That’s a matter of fact. Every time a mutant is born, humanity as we know it comes a little closer to extinction.”

Right now that doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, Rogue thought. “You ever think that mutants are no different than anybody else, ’cept for a coupla extra powers or somethin’?” She glared at him with furious green eyes, and wondered if any other mutants, unknown to her, had come to the fair today, only to have this kind of senseless animosity thrown in their faces. She could just imagine how devastating this clown’s propaganda could be to some poor kid still coming to terms with his new abilities. I’ve been an X-Man for years now, and a mutant for even longer, and it still gets to me. “Some of the best people ah know are mutants.”

“Then you’re either naive or foolish,” the FoH declared. His pig-like eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Or one of them.”

“And what if ah was?” she shot back, seeing a hint of fear chip away at the man’s self-righteous demeanor. He stepped backwards away from the table, his gaze darting from the woman in front of him to the vamp-like caricature of Rogue emblazoned on one of the tee-shirts up for sale.

At least, she acknowledged, giving the shocked hate merchant a conspiratorial wink, they got the white streak in my hair right.

“Get away from me!” the man said, his ruddy complexion going pale as recognition sunk in. He backed away from the table until he ran into the plastic tarp at the rear of the booth. “You don’t dare hurt me. We have people everywhere. Friends in high places …”

Tell me about it, she thought. Sometimes it seemed like half the federal budget was going to bankroll new Sentinel projects and mutant eradication schemes. Rogue was tempted to tear the flimsy booth apart with her (sort of) bare hands, then take off into the sky, giving this two-legged varmint the shock of his useless life, but, no, that would just confirm all his worst fantasies about berserk mutant monsters on the loose. Instead, she contented herself with wadding up the “Rogue” tee-shirt in her fist and hurling the offending garment at the cowering FoH with just a fraction of her superhuman strength.

The last thing she expected was for the shirt to come flying back at her.

Flapping its fabric like the wings of an albino bat, the white tee-shirt reversed course in midair and rocketed straight at Rogue, wrapping itself around her face. She reached up to pull it away only to discover that the shirts on the table had come alive as well, swaddling both her hands so that she could barely move her fingers. Blinded and disoriented, she flailed out with her arms—and heard one of the metal posts supporting the booth crumple before the force of her blow.

“Ah don’t believe this!” she tried to exclaim, but the fabric stretched across her face muffled her words. She felt more of the anti-mutant tee-shirts attack her all too literally, wrapping layer after layer of animated cotton and polyester around her head, cutting off her air.

I can’t breathe! she realized.

Shouts and screams from the crowd penetrated the cocoon engulfing her head.

“Watch out! She’s a mutant!” the Friend of Humanity hollered, like this was her fault or something.

One corner of the canopy over his booth sagged forward, bouncing harmlessly off the suffocating shroud of shirts that had thrown her into airless darkness. She tried to grab at the wrappings, but her hands might as well have been wearing padded boxing gloves for all the good they did her. She swung one arm down violently, hoping to shake off the clinging garments, but succeeded only in splitting the plywood tabletop right down the middle. Pamphlets and pins spilled onto the toes of her boots.

Careful there! she reminded herself, despite a growing sense of panic. Lashing out blindly like this, it would be too easy to injure some innocent fairgoer with her superstrength. I need room to cut loose.

Figuring the sky would be less crowded than the street, she flew straight upward, using her innate ability to defy gravity. Her abrupt takeoff provoked another round of frightened gasps and shrieks from the teeming masses below. And still the obnoxious hate-monger manning the shattered booth wouldn’t give it a rest.

“Mutant freak!” he called out. “They’re everywhere, just like I said!”

I wish, Rogue thought. Frankly, she could use a little X-assistance right now. Although airborne, she still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. She wished desperately that Cyclops was close enough for her to grab onto; she wouldn’t mind borrowing his high-powered eyebeams for just a second or two, so she could blast her blindfolds to smithereens. Instead all she could do was paw uselessly at the enveloping hood with swaddled hands, while her lungs cried out for oxygen.

Even Ms. Marvel couldn’t survive without air, she thought, recalling the unlucky heroine from whom Rogue had stolen her invulnerability and strength. I’m blacking out…

Terrified pigeons, roosted atop and around Washington Square Arch, vacated the premises in a frantic flurry of wings, but Rogue was not awake to hear the panicky flapping. Unconscious, she plummeted to earth like a meteor, smashing through the top of the marble arch before carving out a crater, several feet deep, in the center of the park. The crater was still there, surrounded by smoking chunks of displaced pavement, when police arrived on the scene only minutes later. Shattered fragments of marble littered the ground beneath the broken monument, which now resembled two jagged pillars instead of an arch. Sculpted figures of George Washington, portrayed as both general and president, looked on in mute disapproval.

But Rogue was gone.

CHAPTER FOUR

“AVENGERS Assemble!”

The hallowed battlecry came readily to Iron Man’s lips as he came within sight of Avengers Mansion. The crimson and golden sheen of his metallic armor glistened in the sunlight, reflecting the blue sky above him and the bustling city streets below, where excited pedestrians stopped in their tracks to stare and point at the armored Avenger as he soared by overhead. Micro-turbine jets in his boots propelled him over Fifth Avenue until he was directly above the venerable townhouse that had long served as headquarters for “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” as the tabloids loved to call the Avengers.

Beats “Earth’s Lousiest Losers,” he thought. As both a veteran super hero and, as billionaire Tony Stark, a successful businessman, he knew the value of good publicity. Even Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson, that inveterate campaigner against costumed vigilantes, seldom had a bad word to say about the Avengers.

The mansion was only a short flight away from Stark’s corporate offices in the Flatiron district; still, he wouldn’t have begrudged the trip even if he had needed to fly across half the state to get here.

I’ve made my fair share of mistakes over the years, he reflected, especially in my personal life, but one thing I can never regret is helping to found the Avengers.

The team had done a lot of good for humanity, including saving the entire planet on more occasions than he could recall. Iron Man looked forward to meeting again with his fellow heroes, even as he wondered what sort of crisis had inspired Captain America to call the team together today. Cap’s summons had not included any details.

Iron Man’s boots touched down on the reinforced concrete heliport nestled amid the Gothic spires of the mansion. Moving with surprising ease for a man wrapped from head to toe in a state-of-the-art suit of combat armor, he approached a doorway a few yards away. Concealed security devices, designed by Stark himself, scanned Iron Man discreetly, confirming his identity before permitting him entry to the mansion. He descended a short flight of wooden stairs to the top floor, where he was greeted by a balding, middle-aged man clad in a conservative, impeccably pressed tuxedo.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said to Iron Man with an upper-class British accent, looking neither surprised nor intimidated by Iron Man’s robotic appearance. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you, Jarvis,” Iron Man replied. The butler had been an indispensable fixture of the old Stark family mansion since before Tony donated the house to the Avengers. Iron Man couldn’t imagine the mansion without him. “I hope I haven’t kept everyone waiting.”

“That seems unlikely, sir,” Edwin Jarvis assured him. He glanced at his brass pocketwatch. “I believe the others are just now gathering in the meeting room.”

Iron Man knew the way by heart, so he marched down a long, carpeted corridor lined with polished oak paneling and framed portraits of many of the Avengers’ most famous alumni, such as Hercules, Wonder Man, Tigra, and the notorious Black Widow.

Wonder what Natasha is up to these days? he wondered as his eyes, peering out through two slits in his gilded faceplate, fell upon the latter portrait; he hadn’t seen the Widow since that nasty clash with the Mandarin several weeks back. The thick olive carpeting absorbed the heavy tread of his iron boots until he came to a pair of sturdy double doors. His crimson gauntlet closed gently upon a crystal doorknob as he let himself in.

In contrast to the tasteful Old World elegance of the corridor outside, the meeting room looked like something out of a science-fiction movie. Banks of sophisticated computer circuitry and monitors covered the walls and ceiling, lighted control panels blinking on and off, while the room was dominated by a large chrome table, the top of which was emblazoned by a stylized capital “A.” Egg-shaped metal chairs, designed to support the weight of even the Hulk if necessary, surrounded the futuristic round table. Iron Man’s boots rang against the shining stainless-steel tiles beneath his feet as he crossed the room.

The chairs were all empty now, but not the room itself. Iron Man immediately recognized the imposing figure standing on the opposite side of the table, his athletic figure proudly wearing the red-white-and-blue colors of the nation he had served and protected for over fifty years. A single white star glittered upon his chest, surrounded by a shirt of bright blue chain mail. Vertical red and white stripes girded his waist while a symbolic eagle wing rose from each side of his blue cowl. Flared red gloves and boots completed the ensemble.

“Hello, Tony,” Captain America said warmly. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

“No problem,” Iron Man said. The vocalizer in his mouthpiece distorted his voice, giving him a forbidding, mechanical tone. He took advantage of the mansion’s privacy, protected by dozens of electronic countermeasures, by unlocking the metallic seals at the base of his helmet. Removing the headpiece, he placed it gently on the surface of the table, revealing handsome features distinguished by a trim black mustache and beard. A face often seen on the cover of People magazine looked vaguely out of place atop Iron Man’s mechanized form.

That’s better, Tony thought. He breathed a sigh of relief—despite all the improvements he’d made to the suit’s ventilation and internal cooling systems, it still got a bit stuffy under the helmet. Besides, he had no secrets from Cap.

Captain America kept his own mask on, probably just from force of habit. Iron Man suspected that, after five decades of fighting for freedom, from the dark days of World War II through all the years since. Cap was more comfortable in uniform than out of it. His real name was Steve Rogers, Iron Man knew, but even his closest friends mostly thought of him as Cap. His proud stance and patriotic costume, from the A-for-America upon his brow right down to his bright red boots, had been an enduring national icon since before Tony Stark was even born. Cap’s circular metal shield, similarly adorned with the Stars and Stripes, rested on the table as well, only a few feet away from Iron Man’s helmet.

The tools of our trade, Iron Man thought.

He wiped the perspiration from his forehead and glanced around the room, wondering where the rest of the team was. As if in answer to his unspoken query, a spectral figure rose from the center of the table, passing through the solid tabletop, and the chromium floor below, like an insubstantial wraith.

Or Vision.

Translucent at first, so that Iron Man could spy a wall of computer banks through the green-and-yellow body of the newcomer, the Vision emerged in his entirety a few inches above the Avengers insignia on the table, then drifted silently to one side and lowered himself into an empty chair. Once seated, he solidified quickly, effortlessly taking on mass and substance until he appeared just as tangible as Captain America and Iron Man. A voluminous yellow cape, that had previously floated about him like a phantasmal aura, settled upon his emerald shoulders.

“Forgive my delay,” he said, his voice as cold and unfeeling as the grave, “but I was engaged in routine maintenance of my thermoscopic receptor.”

Iron Man was not too startled by the Vision’s eerie arrival. He had grown accustomed to the synthetic Avenger’s tendency to pass through solid objects when convenient—a useful application of the Vision’s unique ability to control his artificial body’s density. It was just such an immaterial manifestation, he recalled, that had led their former colleague, the winsome Wasp, to christen the synthezoid “the Vision” in the first place.

A fitting name, he reflected.