Chapter 838: The Intruder’s Purpose

Cyclops resumed pushing Professor X’s wheelchair.

The usually wise and composed old man’s voice carried a hint of regret.

“The core ingredient in this mind-control drug is Jason Stryker’s spinal fluid.

“He was once a student at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. He specialized in constructing mental illusions that made it impossible to distinguish reality from falsehood.

“Even I could be deceived by his mental illusions. He was an extremely powerful mutant.”

Magneto asked, “His relationship with William Stryker?”

“They were father and son.

“But William believed mutants were a disease. Even his wife couldn’t accept what had happened, and eventually she committed suicide.”

As the man who had built the prison where Magneto himself was incarcerated, William Stryker and Magneto had interacted quite a bit over the past two or three years.

But this was the first time Magneto had ever heard about Jason Stryker.

Whenever William Stryker wanted to question him, he would always administer some kind of drug.

At the time, Magneto had assumed it was some sort of military truth serum. He had never imagined that he was actually being subjected to a much deeper form of control.

Now that he had heard Professor X’s explanation, naturally he was concerned.

Whether it was his persecuted mutant brethren or the drug itself, both were matters worthy of his attention.

“All right, then where is the tragic protagonist of our story?

“Don’t tell me that even though you’ve taken control of this base, you still haven’t managed to capture a single person.”

When the group arrived at the spherical chamber containing the brainwave amplifier, Professor X pointed in anguish toward the figure on the suspended bridge.

The remains had been burned to ash, barely maintaining the shape of a human body seated in a wheelchair.

“He is Jason Stryker, one of my former students.”

The horrific manner of his death shocked everyone seeing it for the first time.

Even Lady Deathstrike, who had just learned that she had been controlled, wore an expression of surprise.

Amid his astonishment, Magneto shifted his gaze toward another familiar face nearby.

It was a head with an obvious hole in the back of the skull, and the ruined brain was clearly visible inside.

“Is this another Stryker?”

Professor X was likewise filled with regret.

“Yes. William Stryker.

“Colonel in the U.S. Army and commander of this base.”

“That Wild Boar metal man did this?”

As he asked, Magneto also noticed the headless corpse nearby.

The corpse had been ripped open, with almost all of its internal organs removed.

It wasn’t difficult to figure out where they had gone.

The metal walls of the spherical chamber were covered with organs that had apparently been thrown against them.

There weren’t enough organs from a single person to cover the entire brainwave amplifier chamber, of course.

But the scene was still extraordinarily bizarre.

Especially once one realized that those red things weren’t ordinary paint.

Magneto walked over to William Stryker’s head and nudged it with the tip of his shoe.

“To be honest, every time I saw him in prison, I imagined how I would kill him and take revenge for what he’d done to me.

“But my imagination wasn’t nearly as creative as the person who actually did this.

“Do you know how he died, Charles?

“Was he beheaded first, or were his internal organs ripped out first?”

Some of the younger members of the Brotherhood of Mutants who had only recently joined and hadn’t seen much of the world were already so traumatized by the sight that they hurried outside and began dry heaving.

Fortunately, the students from Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters were all beside Jean Grey, helping provide first aid to the wounded in the base.

If they had come along as well, the place would have been covered in vomit by now.

Professor X didn’t answer Magneto’s question about how William Stryker had died.

“Erik, my friend.

“We still have a greater problem to deal with.

“You don’t think the Alkali base is the ultimate solution to all of this, do you?

“The soldiers here were merely following lawful orders. They weren’t William Stryker’s private army.

“The real problem lies in Washington, with the man who occupies the White House.

“We need to find a way to convince him that Kurt’s attempted assassination wasn’t a mutant plot, but a clumsy performance staged by William Stryker himself.

“Ororo, I saw that you found Kurt. That’s good.

“His testimony, together with the evidence recovered from this base, should be enough to explain to the President that the people who launched a rebellion against this country weren’t mutants.”

“And?”

Magneto’s voice rose dramatically, almost like the high notes of an aria.

“You still choose to turn back and beg those in power for mercy?

“Just like the Black people who were sold into slavery and brought to this land more than a century ago, pleading for their masters’ kindness.

“Charles, Professor X, my friend, when will you finally see clearly?

“When the gun isn’t in their hands, no matter how much you do, you will never earn their trust.

“A mutant’s abilities are weapons that cannot be controlled.

“How much has the X-Men done for the U.S. government?

“And yet your school was attacked by the U.S. military.

“Betrayal is in those humans’ nature. All they see is power and profit, and they know nothing of gratitude.”

Without even looking at the conflicted expression on his old friend’s face, Magneto walked over to the ashes that had once been Jason Stryker.

He whispered softly, as though speaking to the dead.

“Child, what exactly did you do to deserve being treated like this?”

The death of a fellow mutant gave Magneto the melancholy feeling of watching one of his own kind fall.

But strangely, he didn’t feel an intense desire for revenge.

It was true that Magneto was unwilling to personally kill mutants.

But there was one kind of mutant threat that he would actively eliminate.

Those who threatened the survival of the mutant population as a whole.

Mystique in 1973 was one example.

After she killed Bolivar Trask and was captured, the U.S. government threw its full support behind the Sentinel program, eventually leading to the disastrous future that followed.

And the person before them now—the creator of the illusion-based mind-control drug—was another such example.

The older Magneto had seen enough of the world to understand how things worked.

He knew that sometimes, someone had to get their hands dirty for the entire group to keep moving forward.

But seeing such a mutant killed by someone else was an entirely different matter.

There was still plenty that seemed strange about the base.

Magneto asked, “Cyclops, do you know how many people that Wild Boar metal man killed during his infiltration?

“I can see plenty of soldiers still moving around normally.

“Were they all deserters?”

Cyclops, Scott Summers, didn’t refuse to answer.

His conflict with Magneto was primarily ideological, rather than stemming from any deep personal hatred.

“According to the soldiers at the base, most of them were hit by anesthetic darts and knocked unconscious.

“The rest were seriously wounded rather than killed on the spot.

“Most of the deaths occurred afterward because the wounded couldn’t be treated in time or weren’t treated properly, and they bled to death.

“The only people killed outright were those two inside the replica brainwave amplifier chamber.”

“Anesthetic darts?”

Magneto was skeptical.

“How do you know they were anesthetic darts rather than part of some act staged by the soldiers at this base?”

For once, Professor X showed an emotion other than sorrow.

His expression carried a trace of anger.

“Erik, they really were anesthetic darts.

“I know because I was hit by one myself.”

He casually pulled the anesthetic dart he had kept as evidence from his pocket and held it out for everyone to see.

Magneto didn’t bother examining the object.

Instead, he confirmed a thought that had already occurred to him.

“So that Wild Boar man’s infiltration was solely to kill Stryker and his son.

“He had no other objective, right?

“The U.S. soldiers were merely collateral damage.”

“Actually…”

Professor X hesitated before leading the group toward the next location.

“He didn’t only do that.”