The Ultimate X-Men Read Online Free PDF Page A

of one reality.
    But not the only one.
    THE Mm Ml Ell
    * ❖ *
    “If I had the wings of an angel—” The melodious baritone came to a distracted halt as the singer tried and failed to remember the next line. Oh, well. Hardly matters, Warren Worthington III told himself philosophically.
    Below him the green of the Hudson River Valley unrolled in an immaculate carpet, and Warren almost felt as if he could taste the wind on his face. This little flight up to Albany was just what the doctor ordered to chase those boardroom blues away.
    Making a small adjustment, Warren maneuvered the Piper Cub into a showy sideslip. He’d always loved to fly . . .
    I’ve always loved to fly. Why did that simple statement fill him with panic? Of course he did; been flying since he was sixteen; his father had bought him his own plane for his twenty-first birthday. Sailplaning; hang gliding; Warren had always loved anything that would take him into the air.
    My wings! He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, racing faster and faster. Black spots danced before his eyes and the Piper Cub’s stick slipped forward, taking with it the nose of the small plane. Falling forward in an uncontrolled dive, the small plane began, lazily, to spin.
    Where are my wings ?
    The scream of air past the Cub’s cowling roused him to his immediate plight. Frantically Warren clawed at the controls, trying to pull the plane out of its deadly dive. He heard the singing in the guide wires as the ailerons snatched at the treacherous air. The surface of the Hudson rushed closer with each passing second. Only the wings of an angel could save him now.
    IT’5 A WOflDERfUl Lift
    But Warren Worthington III didn’t have wings.
    He never had.
    And as the surging tides of David Ferris’s mind closed over her, Jean Grey was linked to a universe in which every possibility was just as real as every other.
    Every one.
    August in New York, and even in the 1990s, some addresses are still more fashionable than others. Submitted for your approval: a particular Park Avenue penthouse, somewhere in the East Seventies.
    She called herself Jeanne Grey, having changed the spelling of her first name to the more exotic French form when she reached adulthood. She was born with the power to read people’s minds—and cloud them too. She grew up in a small town—Annandale-on-Hudson—knowing what people were going to say before they said it.
    Sometimes it was an advantage.
    “Mrs. Byrne, how lovely to see you again. I’m so glad you’ve heard from your son—didn’t Kra Tho tell you everything would be all right?”
    The regal redhead took the arm of the older woman, and led her from the vestibule of the lavish penthouse to the drawing room where the others were waiting for their Wednesday-afternoon sitting. She smiled inwardly as Mrs. Byrne’s surprise and awe reverberated through her mutant senses. Amelia Byrne believed absolutely in the power of Kra Tho, a disembodied being from ancient Atlantis who spoke through his contact, Jeanne Grey, to bring messages of hope and purpose to the modern world.
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    Kra Tho did not exist, though he was a very lucrative fiction. And an easy road to travel, for a young woman who had never heard of either Professor Charles Francis Xavier or his unique private school.
    No. That isn’t me.
    Although she knows it is.
    I have to change it.
    But how do you change the present?
    That isn’t me. . . . Thrust into an alternate universe, her ego merging with her body double’s, Phoenix fought desperately to free herself from the trap of David’s thoughts. But she was only one person, trapped in only one possible present. The Wheel of Fortune turned for them all. . . .
    He’d been sorry to have to leave the party, but he’d promised Barry he’d put in some hours this weekend. Too bad he hadn’t been born rich instead of so good looking.
    Scott Summers smiled at his own feeble joke and shifted the briefcase to his other hand. Among