The Ultimate X-Men Read Online Free PDF Page B

only make him see that!
    Phoenix’s battleground was a world where will and desire were weapons; where passion took all and good intentions were the best defense. She no longer knew where she was at all, in this psychic realm where every possibility was as real as every other. All she knew was that she must succeed.
    Come with me, David. Come back with me —
    But the lure of Might Have Been was strong. . . .
    Let’s get this over with so I can go home.
    Parts of Long Island were scenic and pleasant and delightful to visit. Stark Industries wasn’t built on any of them. Though it had been years since this location was a particularly important manufacturing plant—or even the main one, Morgan Stark having moved most of Stark Industries assembly overseas—most of the administration for the Stark financial empire was still located here. Despite the fact that the corporation had been deprived of its guiding genius with Anthony Stark’s death a decade earlier, Stark Industries continued to hold thousands of lucrative patents, and a number of top-secret industrial processes too confidential even to patent.
    That was why she’d come.
    THE ULTIflATE MIEII
    It’s too bad my telepathy is so short range, Jean Grey thought as she made her clandestine way as close to the fence as she dared. If I had more range, I could do this from a hotel room in Montauk and avoid all this mess.
    But the fact of the matter was that telepaths were in short supply in the competitive world of industrial espionage, so as she sent her mind out to tap the minds of others and began to speak her findings quietly into the small tape-recorder she carried, she reflected that this truly was the best of all possible worlds.
    The helicopter that hung motionless in the sky over the mansion on Greymalkin Lane was the same one that had been following David Ferris all morning. It was stealth configured, sonic suppressed, and transparent to nearly every form of tracking and monitoring device that could be matched against it by the major players in the field, but in the end, technical superiority had come down to a simple matter of looking out the window and keeping in radio contact with the chase car below.
    Sometimes the old-fashioned methods worked the best.
    Ashton and Keithley were the sort of faceless professionals who populated the field arms of an uncounted number of alphabet organizations from SHIELD to A.I.M. to SAFE. It didn’t matter to them whether they were sent out to retrieve David Ferris or a quart of milk from the corner deli; they did what they were assigned, collected their security clearances, and, if they were lucky, their pensions.
    As Egan and Gilman would not.
    Ashton and Keithley’s first warning of trouble had been the mirror flash of light that zeroed every bean counter in
    in I WONDERFUL LIFE
    the bird. They didn’t see what happened to the chase car, but when the light was gone, it was easy to see that the car below had been crushed like a paper cup and sunk into the roadway.
    “Did they use the lance?”
    “Do I look like a mind reader, Ash?” his partner said.
    Once the sensors started mapping again, Techlnt told them there was no one left alive below. Their quarry was gone, but, flying a standard search configuration, they found Ferris again without trouble—rather too easily, in fact.
    “Who’s that guy with the wings?”
    “Wait one . . . congratulations, Mr. Ashton,” Keithley drawled. Like his partner, Keithley wore a dark suit and dark glasses, his only concession to individuality being the silver gargoyle earring dangling from his left earlobe. “You’ve just won yourself your very own Archangel. Known to be affiliated with both X-Factor and the X-Men, the database says; also known to operate solo.”
    “You mean there’s more of them,” Ashton said resignedly.
    “Look down there, off to the right,” Keithley said helpfully. “One, two, three more that I can see. We’re blown.”
    “Time to phone home.”
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