He stopped so abruptly that Bob almost ran into his back. “What’s up?”

“I smell gunfire,” he said, quickly moving through the house. He found an elderly woman dead on the kitchen floor, but there was no blood, no smell of cordite, suggesting she’d died of the Eri virus. He found an elderly man in the drawing room, sprawled out dead on a settee, also surprisingly free of blood. He pelted up the quaintly narrow staircase to the upper level, and it was there he smelled the cordite the most strongest. He opened two doors before he found the right one.

Was it Schultz? It must have been; a laptop computer was open on a small desk, its screen casting a cool, dim blue-white light throughout the room. The man who must have been Schultz was laying on the floor, his back to the door. What had been the contents of his skull had spilled out on the carpet, leaving him laying in a puddle as black as ink, most of which had saturated the carpet. There was a smear of brain matter and skull fragments on the opposite wall, telling Logan almost all he needed to know.

Taking a closer look, he found the gun still in his right hand, a 9 millimeter that was devastating at point blank range. Half his skull was gone, but he found a powder on the skin of his head that was still intact, just beneath the right ear. He sat back on his haunches, avoiding the gore, and glanced up at the laptop screen to see if there was anything useful up there. There wasn’t.

He heard Bob join him, pausing in the doorway. “So what happened?”

“He killed himself,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “He blew his own fucking brains out.”

Bob was quiet for a moment. “Maybe he couldn’t live with himself after realizing what he had done.”

“Or he was afraid he had been infected and decided to take his own way out.”

“Maybe both.” He nodded his head at the laptop. “He leave a suicide note?”

Logan got up and had a better look, navigating through various screens, having a look at the desktop. “No. He erased his hard drive. Trying to cover his tracks, I guess.”

“No one wants to be remembered as a mass murderer,” Bob pointed out, almost sounding sympathetic towards the creep. “Especially a doctor who thought he was going to be doing something good.”

“Good for his wallet.” He shut down the laptop and slammed it shut, disgusted with everything.

“That goes without saying, but I think he honestly wanted to help people, if only to cement a Nobel Prize for himself. Everybody wants to find that miracle cure, that panacea that will purge the Human race of disease and illness. You were the best bet, if only it wasn’t for that caveat. There’s always a catch.”

He tossed the laptop to Bob, who caught it easily, not at all surprised he’d slung it at him. “I want to put an end to Priotech and Primafacie.”

“Already done. Tomorrow, they’ll both be grabbed in a semi-hostile takeover by BobCo, and repurposed into the sadly growing field of cloning endangered or extinct species. Can you imagine a world without Siberian tigers in it? I don’t even want to.”

It was possible he was joking, but highly unlikely. Bob did like to kill businesses at the boardroom level, arguably the best way to go about it. But the tiger thing? Well, he was weird, so he was probably serious. “As soon as I own them both, I’ll make them turn over all their records, every single scrap,” Bob continued. “I find anything concerning you, you can see it before I destroy it. Cool?”

He sighed, aware that they were done here. But why didn’t it feel satisfying? Marc would be okay, and he should be happy about that. He was, he honestly was, but … all these dead people. Where was the justice for them? Could there ever be any?

“You wanna go?” Bob suggested mildly. “I’ll alert the appropriate authorities that there seems to be an awful lot of dead people here. They’ll take care of things.”

He nodded, aware that that was honestly all they could do. “This still doesn’t feel right. These fucking bastards used me to kill all these people, and they didn’t even mean to. They just wanted to exploit my biology for money.”

“And they’re done. I know it seems like a dog’s breakfast, but this is over - the Organization must know now that they can’t transfer your ability to non-mutants; that’s a well that’s not only dry, but poisoned. I’m just sorry all these people had to pay the price for the strip mining of your genes.”

“Me too.” He looked around the small, utilitarian guest room, with its quaint blue and white checkered curtains open to the dying rays of the sun, overlooking a street full of corpses. There was no way this could ever feel right; there was no way this debt could ever be paid, this sin atoned.

But maybe this sin wasn’t really his to pay for. Maybe it was time he left the Organization to bear their burden alone.

11

The only consolation was things could have been worse.

Once news got about the deaths, it was blamed on an outbreak of “bird flu”, which then became a biological terrorist strike, and then a mutant terrorist strike. Was the Organization behind that rumor? Logan had no idea, but that one seemed to have dug itself in, making him suspicious.

Marc was getting better by the day, and was able to transfer to a hospital in Belgium, where he was dying to leave. “Brussels’s so fucking boring,” he complained. “Everything’s too damn quaint.” He actually had a point, which was kind of sad, but the Belgians probably liked it. Marc was already preparing to return to the States.

Logan told him everything, what happened, what he had stumbled into, and Marc was really surprised, a good sign that he hadn’t known of his connection to the “outbreak” prior to this. He commented that it was all “pretty fucked up”, which seemed to encapsulate things nicely.

Bob did in fact “take over” Priotech and the shell that was Primafacie with his own shell corporation. Bob offered him some stock, because it was “going through the roof”. The sick thing was, it actually was, proving that a hostile takeover wasn’t considered bad by the stockholders.

Scott had long since returned to the mansion, but Logan hadn’t gone with him. He stayed behind in Brussels, on Bob’s dime, staying in a quaint hotel where everyone was very pleasant, the maids didn’t use that air freshener in his room as he requested (it was like walloping him with a two by four, straight to the sinus cavities), and he was so bored he had taken to counting the bunches of flowers in the wallpaper pattern. Belgian television was dreadfully dull; even the commercials were too genteel to take seriously. He got a lot of reading done, though, which was a good thing (there was a nice bookshop on the opposite block, which was a good place to kill some time), and saw a film, which turned out to be French and badly translated (he grew increasingly irritated at the shortcuts the subtitlers took with the dialogue). He kept trying to find a seedy bar, a kind where he would feel more at home, but so far all he found were nice little pubs with varying levels of quaintne! ss. At least the beer was good.

Marc was right about Brussels. There was a point where quaintness and politeness felt like it was slowly strangling you, and you were dying for something untoward - a bar fight, a mugging, a rude bastard who screamed at you for no reason at all - but it never seemed to happen. He worried about himself that he couldn’t take such constant civility; at least Marc was the same way, so he didn’t feel so bad.

One morning, he woke up, aware he wasn’t alone, but he knew he hadn’t picked anyone up last night. But as soon as he caught their scent, he knew who it was, and groaned into his pillow. “Do you ever knock?”

“And spoil the surprise?” Bob replied, with an exaggerated sort of cheerfulness. “Come on, get up. I actually do have a surprise for you, a good one for a change. “

He rolled over and stared at Bob, who was standing at the foot of the bed, wearing a big smile, a pair of crocodile patterned leather pants, and a bright blue t-shirt that said inexplicably, in small yellow lettering, ‘Give me a hand, I’m going to milk the cows’. Where the hell did he get his freaky shirts? “Will it get me outta Brussels?” He wondered.

“Too right.”

“Okay, give me a minute to get dressed.” Hey, now that Marc was doing so well, there was no reason to bore himself to death in Belgium. He could easily die someplace else, perhaps under livelier circumstances.

*****

He had honestly forgotten what a beautiful area this was.

Why he had no idea, except he hadn’t been back here in a dog’s age. In fact, he’d nearly forgotten about, since the last time he was here was when he showed up to decompress after his last divorce. Which was ….what? About twenty years ago? Maybe fifteen. He usually got married in ten year spurts, so this was a surprisingly fallow period for him.

They teleported right in the clearing, in front of the house. It was a nice house - small, modern, but rather modest, with a sharply peaked roof and large, panoramic windows to take advantage of the natural light; there was also a skylight in the living room. There was a semi-rustic looking porch area, ideal for sitting and watching absolutely nothing happen.

Beyond the fifty foot ring of the natural clearing, huge, ancient pines and firs of many varieties - with the occasional hemlock, red cedar, and Garry oak added for visual interest - rose up around them like a natural barricade, which was pretty much the case. Logan looked around curiously, and showing an uncanny knack for parsing smells (or identifying trees - hard to say, really), asked, “Is this Canada?”

Bob nodded vigorously. “Indeed it is. Good sniffer you got there. It’s British Columbia, to be exact; the Kootenays to be even more precise, between the Columbia River over thataway -” he pointed to the thicket of trees to the immediate northeast “- and a town called Nakusp, over thataway.” Now he pointed to a completely different thicket of trees to the southwest.

“Nakusp?” Logan repeated, as if he’s heard of it before. Had he? Well, hell, how long had he been aimlessly wandering the Canadian countryside like a nomad in a really shitty truck? He probably knew every place there was to know. “The place with the hot springs?”

“You been?”

He shook his head. “No, I’ve been to Halcyon, though. Figure it’s the same thing.”

Ah, Halcyon Hot Springs, which wasn’t that far from here. Actually, there was a buttload of hot springs in this part of British Columbia, and Bob had honestly been to most, because he thought they were kind of fun. He felt he’d missed his calling as a water god of some sort, since he was so fond of surfing and hot springs - he could make an extended weekend out of that easily.

Logan looked at him with pure bafflement, the tilt of his eyebrows suggesting he was on the verge of annoyance. “What the fuck are we doing here?”

“I’m givin’ you the house. C’mon, I’ll show you the grounds.” He headed for the house, bounding up the two wide cedar steps up to the neatly laid porch. If he didn’t say so himself, he had conjured up a nice little house here. Too bad he didn’t use it more.

Oh, he intended to. After his last divorce he’d decided he wanted to escape an urban, demon and people heavy environment and just shun everyone, but it was a stupid, rash decision. After all, he’d done the self-imposed exile thing about a century ago in the Outback, and hadn’t he learned his lesson then? He made a bad loner. He needed people - and others - far too much. He supposed he could blame his basic nature, as the Powers were single organisms, and yet existed as a group organism at the same time, the paradox of being forever alone and never alone. He desired a peace that didn’t exist, and couldn’t exist. He’d come to terms with that - embracing a Zen philosophy helped a bit - but Logan hadn’t yet, and he desperately needed to before he had another nervous breakdown.

It was kind of funny. For a gruff, macho guy who sweated testosterone, he was far too sensitive for his own good half the time. An odd paradox that made him feel like Logan was the son he hadn’t realized he’d misplaced.

“Huh? You’re giving me a house?”

“Call it instant karma. You gave Angel the flat Wing left you, and now I’m paying you back by givin’ you a place I haven’t used for years. You swapped one for another, and never realized it.”

Logan followed him up onto the porch with an obvious reluctance, staring at him like he’d lost his mind. “I don’t wanna house. I mean, thanks, but -”

”You need somewhere you can cool your heels when you’re tired of people,” he replied, opening the door and strolling inside. “This is that place.”

He looked hard at the door. “There’s no lock?”

“No. The house is surrounded by a glamour Ammy put up for me. Not only can no one see this house - by infrared, naked eyes, satellite, sonar, you name it; this house doesn’t exist by any measurement - but it repels anyone who accidentally comes close. Any person that doesn’t belong here gets an unbearable urge to run away, as if their lives depended on it.” He turned to face him, flashing a bright smile. “They say these woods are haunted, you know. Ancient Indian burial grounds or somethin’.” He thought that was a brilliant bit of embellishment on Ammy’s part.

Logan was about to say something, but paused in mid breath, as he saw the living room, with its skylight flooding the place with natural light, showing off the crushed velvet sofa wedged between built in bookshelves that ringed the room, interrupted only by a fireplace made of large river stones, and an entertainment system on the shelves directly across from the couch. There was a plush royal blue throw rug spread out over the wood flooring, and a bright blue and red abstract painting done by one of his grandkids on the patch of bare wall behind the sofa. “Holy fuck,” Logan finally gasped. He seemed to gravitate towards the bookshelves, which he had come in and recently restocked. He’d also stocked in a bunch of movies, and set up an internet connection in the bedroom, along with a cell phone, as he figured that Logan might need some privacy, but he shouldn’t be totally isolated.

Bob walked into the open archway, and gestured behind him. “The bathroom’s in here - full bath and everything, the water’s from a rather large well - and the bedroom’s past it. You have electricity, but you will never get a bill, as it never registers on any instruments. There’s also an emergency generator in a shed out back, which also has all sorts of gardening and land implements that you might need, and probably ones you’ll never need. But I figure you’re an outdoorsy kind of guy.”

Logan turned and stared at him, jaw slack. “You can’t be giving me all this, Bob. I don’t want charity.”

“It’s not charity! I ain’t usin’ it, and I need someone to take care of shit while I’m gone.” He was aware that this was similar to what he told Angel, as he had talked to him.

He gave him a look that suggested he knew that, his eyebrow raised sharply, but what could he say? If he said that was bullshit, he would be admitting that what he told Angel was bullshit. “But -”

“It’s yours, mate. Enjoy it. You’d be doin’ me a favor.”

He gave him that skeptical look, but it slowly faded to something akin to gratefulness. He looked down and away before mumbling, “Thank you.”

Since he was facing away, Bob whispered, a gentle push, “Find your peace, Logan. Stay here, and have no nightmares. Feel like you’re finally home.”

Logan wandered over to the far bookcase to have a look at the titles, and Bob joined him, pointing out various novels and rambling with the happy bullshit he expected from him.

After so much death and so much guilt, it was high time he had a vacation from it.

The End....?