or the Scarlet Witch. It had been developed during experiments conducted on the mutant known as Angar the Screamer before his death, and was supposed to scramble a parapsi’s nervous system, setting
Tilt umnm mien
up a feedback loop that would render them the victim of their own power for a short but undetermined period.
There were only two problems.
The Moebius Lance had never actually been tested on the people it was supposed to control.
And its effects weren’t anything like the ones its designer had predicted.
Thoughts and memories spilled through David Ferris’s mind as his neurochemistry reconfigured, wiping memory and personality from the intricate architecture of his brain. All that he was drained away, the tangled skein of memory unknotting into smoothness once more.
Above the other X-Men, Archangel braked and veered groundward. He didn’t know what connection the glowing man below him had with the wrecked car he’d seen back on 9A North, but he did know that the car looked as if it’d been bear-hugged by the Hulk and that even in Westchester normal people didn’t glow in the dark.
Archangel and the former David Ferris broke through the trees at about the same time.
A moment ago he’d been hungry, tired, and afraid. Now he was none of those things. He no longer remembered that he’d been fleeing, or from whom. The running man stopped when he reached the edge of the trees. He didn’t, in fact, remember being David Ferris very well at all.
Probabilities cascaded through David’s mind like a winning hand of solitaire on Windows 95.
say something you have to
So many ways to go, so many paths to choose, and who he was had been lost forever, buried in a thousand might-be-maybes, and who was he?
you have to remember it was important you were—you were — “I am the Wheel of Fortune!” David Ferris shouted. “In that case, I’d like to buy a vowel, Vanna,” the Beast replied smoothly, loping forward. The glowing man was a threat, but possibly not the main threat. In torn jeans and ripped shirt, their little glowworm looked more like one of the victims than like the vanguard of an attacking force— but it didn’t pay to take chances . . .
“For God’s sake, Beast, be—” Cyclops shouted.
The glowing man flung out his hand.
—killme goingtokillme extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice —
And that was the last thing Hank McCoy saw.
In this world, at least.
“I said, ya gotta get over yerself, Torchy.”
Henry P. McCoy twitched ever so slightly as the unmistakable gravel voice of Benjamin J. Grimm cut through his concentration.
There was a crash from the room beyond and the sound of a rushing whoosh of flame. Hank sighed and pushed his glasses farther up on his nose. Working as Reed Richards’s research assistant w r as a wonderful opportunity, it was true, and if not for Stark International’s continuing-education program, he wouldn’t have had it.
If only it weren’t so . . . stressful.
“Look here, brick-face—” Another crash.
Hank winced. He sincerely believed that violence was
lit UlTMATE X-HEfl
the last refuge of the incompetent; he abhorred physical brutality and shunned strife in every form. He’d managed to forget that in addition to being one of Earth’s foremost scientists, Dr. Richards was a lightning rod for trouble. Usually super-powered trouble.
And me without a supemormality to my name, Hank thought mournfully. A litde agility hardly counted. In fact, it was a positive prerequisite for his current assignment.
The building shook. Hank leapt to his feet with a yelp of dismay. While he’d been distracted, the chemical he’d been timing had boiled over and was now foaming greenly across the lab bench.
What you need, Henry old son, is a guardian angel . . .
A thousand presents, a thousand worlds; each as real as the next. . . .
And the Wheel was Spinning. . . .
Cyclops was the farthest away of any of the team: Archangel, Iceman, and Phoenix