18

“He did not do that!” Yukio insisted, sounding almost angry about it. “He did not fucking do that!”

Even Marc had to admit - if only to himself - that he had a hard time believing what just happened. Logan was like a living video game character sometimes.

As soon as Logan made it to the chopper, the shooting stopped - well, at least for them - and the chopper veered off shakily, dramatically, and something dark went flying out of the chopper. Marc was pretty sure it was a machine gun.

“What did he do?” Tony asked, as he got up off the floor. He was cut with some glass shards, but it didn’t look like he had been shot. Marc kept his gun out, but switched it to is other hand - there were fringe benefits to being ambidextrous. His shot arm was hurting a little bit near the wrist, where the bullets had plowed through, but the blood that was dribbling from the wounds was not spurting, so it wasn’t arterial. That was good, but the rest of his arm was numb, which was a bad thing.

Yukio might have been shot - she was splattered with blood - but it was impossible to tell, because she’d been grabbed by Logan, and nearest to him when he lunged for the copter. It could have been all Logan’s blood. She stared at her boss, still wide eyed and ashen in shock. “What did he do? That … moron jumped into the helicopter!”

“Moron?” Marcus repeated, fixing her with an icy stare.

She gesticulated wildly towards the broken window, eyes wide. It took her a moment to find her words. “Th-that is not something a smart person would do! In fact … holy shit, he ain’t human, is he?”

“We have to go,” he replied, not about to get into this with her now. “Are you hurt?”

“What?”

He repeated himself, but this time sounded as pissed off as he felt. “Are - you - hurt?”

She scowled at him. “Well how the hell should I know?! Doesn’t it at all bother you that your friend ran into a hail of bullets - and was not immediately killed - and took down a chopper? Fucking ‘ey, what kinda thing is he? And … things came out of his hands! I swear something came out of his hands …” Her gaze was sharp, accusing. “He’s one of them, isn’t he?”

He met her gaze with equal force. “Them?  Them?!  What, are they fucking giant ants?”

“Enough!” Tony snapped, with such vehemence they both jumped. The old guy had a thin line of blood trickling down from his hairline, where he got a good nick from the flying glass, but all he did was wipe it away with the back of his hand. His eyes looked hard, like steel, and it was the angriest he had ever seen him. “I don’t care what he is, he just saved all our lives. Would you have asked him only to do it if he were an average Human?”

Yukio seemed startled, probably because she had inadvertently annoyed the shit out of her boss, which was never a good career move. “I didn’t - I mean, did you see him? I was -”

“We need to find out if he’s still alive,” Tony snapped, cutting her off and turning towards the door.

“We need to get outta here anyways,” Marc agreed, quickly taking the lead. He had to make sure the hallway was clear before he let Tony out into it. Yukio scrambled to catch up with them. “Cover’s definitely blown now. And if it’s any consolation, I can guarantee Logan’s still alive. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess he’s in piss poor shape, but still among the breathing.” And that was only because he wasn’t sure how much of Logan had to be gone before his body actually stopped. If you could believe the stories he’d heard - about Logan specifically and the few crumbs he’d picked up about the pseudo-mythical “Weapon X” - Logan had been blown up, burned, dropped from mid-air, and actually killed (well, for a few seconds or so), and yet he had a tendency not to stay dead. How the fuck did he do that? If someone could harness his healing abilities and maybe spread the wealth around, near-immortality would stop being the realm of science fiction. Oh, and vampires. (He was s! till having a hard time with that.)

The hall was clear - the hall was, in fact, perforated. But wasn’t it unusually quite? No screaming, no incidental noise, not even someone exclaiming the Chinese version of “What the fuck?” The Triad must have used its connections to clear the floor. Lucky floor.

They made it to the elevator, and Marcus cradled his injured, bleeding arm against his body, Glock held securely in his left hand. As they began the long descent to the ground floor, he wondered what shape they’d find Logan in. He really hoped they wouldn’t have to go pick up pieces of him, because they were frankly having a hard enough time.

***

At least they didn’t have to look very hard to find him.

The helicopter that attacked them - that Logan had presumably commandeered - had put down in a parking lot just slightly North of the building. Broken glass glittered on the pavement, and it was strewn like a diamond path for them to follow to the downed craft. It looked like an evacuation chopper gone Goth, painted black and rendered anonymous, and the crowds were torn between fleeing in horror of catching a bad ricochet - or being called on as a witness - while still others gawked, as if waiting for something even more interesting to happen. Marc spotted a couple of digital camcorders among them. He did his best to shield them from it, and, to his disgust, had to holster his gun again.

Still, they seemed to be the only ones brave enough to walk up to the chopper, and once they did, a Chinese guy in a loose, blood smeared flight suit came out, saying something in Chinese. Marc had no idea what, but it sounded like a lie. He just nodded as if in sympathy, and then hauled off and punched the sucker square across the jaw. He went down like a cheap hooker on the Sunset Strip, and from the force with which he hit the pavement, he probably wasn’t getting up any time soon. Good.

“Did you know what he was saying?” Tony asked.

“No.  Did you?”

“No. But I didn’t deck him.”

“He came out of the chopper, and the blood on him wasn’t his. My guess was he was a bad guy who didn’t recognize the guys he shot at.” As he neared the open hatch of the ‘copter, he said, “Hey guy, it’s us. You still alive in there?”

It was silly to say “It’s us” - Logan surely knew that already, having heard them or maybe even smelled them. Still, if he was really out of it, he might forget they were the good guys.

Marc smelled the blood as soon as he started to climb in the hatch, and wasn’t surprised to find it splashed all over the interior. It smelled like a fucking charnel house, and of the two bodies laying there, one was quite obviously dead. The other guy wasn’t dead yet, but was actively bleeding from every orifice in his face, and he didn’t look good. His piano playing days were probably over.

Marc kicked the dead guy out of the chopper, and grabbed the injured guy and dragged him out. Well, considering how badly hurt he was, it was highly unlikely he could make things much worse. When would these idiots learn you did not piss off Logan? Seriously, they deserved this if they hadn’t figured out that going after him was as bad as bear baiting. Actually, probably worse; bears would probably be taken down by a machine gun team.

Yukio made a disgusted noise once she got a whiff of the place, and if Tony was disgusted, he kept silent about it. Marcus clamored deeper into the chopper, wondering where Logan could possibly be. “Bud?” Could he have run off once it landed?

He heard a noise, a sort of grunt, and found Logan sitting in the co-pilot’s chair.  He looked like he was wearing a red shirt that came with a matching veil, covering most of his face - but it was blood, probably his own, judging from the holes still in his skin. One was so wide and deep, he could actually see a glimpse
of a silver metal rib.  Marc grimaced in empathy - fuck, that had to hurt - but then he realized Logan had roughly a dozen ragged bullet holes in him, covering his chest and arms, with one on his face and two in
his gut (and one of those was still oozing blood), and they hadn’t closed up yet. They should have by now, shouldn‘t they? Logan’s eyes were no longer empty, but glassy with pain. “It’s a bitch when the adrenaline wears off,” he said, his voice sounding …odd. Far away, fragile, soft. There was also a strange liquid tone to it as well.

Marc suddenly forgot about the pain in his own arm. “Why aren’t you healing?”

It didn’t look like his pupils were focusing correctly.  Only then did Marc notice he was sitting on the very edge of the seat, careful not to touch anything with his skin. “ I am.  It’s just...there’s so much damage, it’s takin’ a while.”

“We can take you to a doctor.  Surely Tony knows one who can handle mutants -”

“Can’t help me,” he said, almost shaking his head but thinking better of it. “I just need … gotta have some time.” He put his hand on the top of the seat, as if preparing to stand, and he let out an aborted sigh that could have been a kind of laugh. “It hurts to breathe.  I had no idea that could happen to me.”

Yukio came up behind him, and asked, as she pushed her way past Marc, “What pissed in here?  Smells like a urinal -” She then let out a harsh, hard gasp, and he knew she had just seen Logan. “Oh, fucking Christ. Are you -”

“..’M outta here,” he said, hauling himself to his feet.  He made a noise deep in his throat, a swallowed groan of pain, and his knees buckled before he even stood up all the way. “Oh...not good -” he gasped, and then keeled right over.

Marc caught him before he could hit the floor, and it occurred to him that Logan was probably the only guy who could make him feel like a wimp. He could easily bench press three hundred pounds, no problem at all, but Logan’s dead weight almost sent him falling over. And Logan was twitching as he hauled him
out of the cockpit and into the main body of the chopper, and he suddenly wondered if he was having a seizure. Could he have a seizure? Well, why the hell couldn’t he?

As he laid him out on the blood slicked floor, Yukio continued to gape at them from the cockpit. “How
in the hell is he still alive?”

“Can you fly this damn thing?” Marc snapped at her.

She snapped out of it enough to give him an evil look.  That was something at least.  “Yeah.”

“Then do it, get us to the airport.” When she made no move to do anything, he added, “We’re sitting ducks here! C’mon!”

Tony nodded at her, and she turned back, prepping the chopper for launch.  Tony was standing near the tail, away from the open door (that was smart), hand over his mouth.  It was hard to say if he was just stunned or trying hard not to vomit from the stench, the sight of Logan, or both.

Marc knelt down on the floor, so he could keep Logan steady while the chopper lifted off.  He propped Logan’s head on his thigh, and wished immediately that he hadn’t.  The guy was burning up; Logan was so hot his hair was already slick with sweat, beads tinged red with blood oozing down the side of his face. Marc found the heat of him almost unbearable.  How could a person get this hot and survive it?

His muscles were twitching so violently beneath his skin it looked like they were trying to punch their way out of him, and he was occasionally making this low noise in his throat, kind of like a growl. “You still with us, man?” He asked. When there was no immediate response, Marc gently pried open one of his eyelids to check, and found only white.  Logan was out cold.

Christ. This wasn’t what he thought it was, was it?  He wasn’t still reacting to the pain even though he
was unconscious, was he?  Oh shit.

“Why did he do this?” Tony asked, in a breathless, small voice.

Marc looked up at him, scowling. “Oh, come on!  You know damn well why!  Haven’t you figured it out by now?  He’s not like me; he’s not just in it for the pay check.  He helps people because he wants to.  I don’t know why - I don’t think he even knows why.  Considering what they’ve done to him, he’s got more reasons to be jaded about them than I do, but it doesn’t make a difference.” Belatedly, he realized he'd said too much - “What they've done to him” - but there was no turning back now.  “He will do whatever it takes to get the job done, even if it kills him.”

The chopper lifted off, and Tony grabbed a metal protrusion on the inside of the chopper’s hull to keep
his balance.  He really did look whey-faced and on the verge of getting ill. “I - I didn’t want it to be this way. I didn’t want … I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“Going up against the Yakuza and the Triad?  No offense, but fuck you!  Most people who oppose them end up dead.  I knew taking this job that getting hurt was a given.  I just didn’t expect Logan to take the brunt of it.”  He then looked down at his face - there was a perfectly round bullet hole in his right cheek - and sighed. “But I should have, shouldn’t I?  He usually does.” And figuring Logan had a grudge against the Yakuza, he felt like a total fucking moron.  He just hadn’t wanted to see it.  There were a lot of things he didn’t want to see.  His philosophy professor would be so disappointed in him. Then again, his philosophy professor would probably be disappointed in him killing people, in general. “He’s a fucking superhero, and I’m a bloody rent-a-thug.  We have different behavioral mandates.”

“You’re not a thug, Marcus.”

“The hell I ain’t.  It’s what I’m good at.” Logan continued to smolder and twitch, body complete dead weight, blood still oozing from the torn wound in his gut.  He had to look on the positive side, though - at least this was the only wound actively bleeding.  But how much blood had he lost altogether?

He dropped his hand from the side of his sweaty head, and hit something heavy in his own left side coat pocket. What the hell was that? Then he remembered - the drug he snagged from Tetsuo’s place. Marc pulled the bottle out of his pocket, relieved to find it had come through the assault intact, and said, “Tell
me the truth about this, Tony.”

He looked at him with mild surprise, and Marc didn’t like seeing that much emotion on his face.  It was
out of character. “I have.”

“Not completely, no. You knew about this, didn’t you? What the fuck is it, and is this why the Yakuza
and the Triad want Tetsuo’s “assets” so bad?  Considering Logan could be dying right now ‘cause of it,
I want the fucking truth.”

Pressing the guilt buttons was cheap and manipulative, but fuck it;  he felt like he was getting a first
degree burn from Logan’s head.  It suddenly occurred to him … was this why those Organization fucks liked keeping Logan in tanks of fluid?  He'd always assumed it had something to do with keeping the adamantium liquid and pliable - but what if it was just to keep Logan’s body temperature down, to keep his healing factor operating at a more leisurely pace, or perhaps to prevent him from - literally - baking?  Would throwing him in a bathtub full of ice water help at this point?

Something in Tony’s expression resolved as he glanced down at Logan, and he closed his eyes, as if unwilling - or unable - to witness the damage any longer.  Logan did look pretty much like road kill at
this point. “It’s called Anodyne.”

That rang a bell, but it took Marc a moment to place it.  A line from an old piece of writing, he couldn’t remember by whom (some old white guy, extremely long-since dead):  ‘The anodyne draught of oblivion.’  Now there was a drink he wanted to try. “Painkiller.  It’s an old word for painkiller, right?”

Tony nodded, looking away before opening his eyes. “Yes, I believe so.  From what I’ve been able
to piece together, Tetsuo discovered a “connection” who could help him manufacture a new opium derivative, more addictive than heroin, and with far more narcotic power. But he kept the exact formula - and connection - secret.  I can’t even find references to either in the papers he did leave behind.  But he was terribly excited about it - and earning a strangely large amount of money for it, before it even hit the market.  I think that was what led to his death.  Someone was paying him to get Anodyne out there, someone neither Yakuza or Triad, but an unknown entity.”

That didn’t make a lot of sense to Marcus, but then he remembered what Logan had said before the shooting started: “It smells like magic. Demonic …” And the case that inadvertently brought Logan and Tony together for the first time involved something like a demon mob in Japan trying to muscle the Yakuza out of its territory, right?  Oh shit - this all made a perverse kind of sense now, didn’t it?

Didn’t it?

“Anodyne does more than addict people. It addicts them and leaves them helpless in some way.”  Prey to demons?  Perhaps. Or just more vulnerable to the big masterminds, whoever they were.  And you had to give this big bad - whatever they were - credit for big brass balls:  they’d helped unite the Yakuza and the Triad, with the ultimate goal of destroying them. They were clearly not afraid of them, even as a combined unit.  And why should they be?  There were some demons immune to bullets.

Tony gave him a suspicious sidelong glance. “Who would do such a thing?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Marc lied. “How much Anodyne is there?”

“In my brother’s possession? I think you have it all there. I found a small vial of a similar substance in with some of my brother’s effects, but a lab in Vancouver has been trying to analyze it for weeks. All they can
tell me is its an ultra-concentrated opium derivative, full of rather benign herbs that make no logical sense being included in the mixture, and some other things not yet identified.”

Yep, that sounded like something magical, and possibly demonic.  He wished Logan was awake, because he knew a bit more about this kind of shit than he did.  (And what the hell was the connection with Yasha anyways?) Then it occurred to him exactly what he was holding in his hand. “Have subjects survived taking this?  Do you know?”

Tony nodded. “That’s how Tetsuo knew the drug was so powerful.  I believe he sampled it himself.”

“And got addicted?  That’s fucking stupid.”

“He wasn’t known for his brains.”

“Is that what killed him?”

“I have no idea.  I’m honestly leaning more towards murder. He could have angered the wrong people in either group - or among his “connections”.”

Shit yeah; there were some demons you just didn’t want to fuck with. Of course, if he was their conduit to spreading this to the world, why would they kill him?  Unless …unless they'd decided they wanted to deal with someone else, someone with more power in the Yakuza or the Triad, or someone personally more trustworthy. “You wouldn’t happen to know if it had antipyretic qualities, do you?”

“What?  I would-” Tony looked at him sharply then, eyes widening in shock. “What are you planning to do?”

“Something undoubtedly stupid.” Marc forced his injured hand to work, and pulled off the cap. There
was a faint odor of musk and … wormwood?  Maybe.  It was herbal but pungent, and not what he'd
you expected. “Logan’s in a lot of pain, and he doesn’t get addicted to things.”

“But this isn’t like anything else in the world.”

“Neither is his immune system.  Hit him with a drug once, and he’s immune.  You think he’s stubborn? He’s just mimicking his basic biology.” He wondered if there was something in it - demonic, magical - that could actually hurt him.  It would be a unique combination if it could.  Shit - did he have any idea what he was about to do?

But Logan continued to twitch and groan on the floor, and he realized he had little choice.  He couldn’t stand to see him hurting like this.

“Aw shit, I hope I don’t make things worse,” he grumbled to himself, measuring out a portion of the lilac fluid inside its own shallow cap.

“You love him?” Tony asked, although it didn’t sound much like a question.

That was a surprising comment. “Yeah.  He’s my friend, the only one I trust implicitly.  And if he got used because of me, I’m gonna be so fucking pissed off.”

“Used? What -”

“How long have you known?  Huh?”

“Known what?”

Marc glared at him. “Do I have to spell it out for you? C’mon - how long have you known about Logan?”

He was quiet for several moments, but he didn’t look away, and Tony had no choice but to give up. “I only knew he was the mononoke shortly after I met him.”

It took him a moment to place that reference. Mononoke …angry ghost, right?  The nickname for the guy who'd wiped out the Yashida and Takabe crime families singlehandedly.  Logan, in other words. “And you knew he was - how?  Because his name was Logan?”

“His name was Logan, his Japanese was impeccable - not just language, but mannerisms as well.  He knew a lot for a man who supposedly had never been to Japan.  It was … suspicious.”

“That didn’t make him the guy.”

After a hesitant pause, Tony admitted, “I discovered photographs from that era through a contact.  They’re not good photos, but it is him.  He hasn’t aged a day.”

“So that’s when you figured he was a mutant.”

He grimaced, and glanced away again. “Either that, or he had an excellent plastic surgeon.”

Marc glowered at his profile, and was suddenly pissed off enough to consider drawing his gun.  Son of a bitch.  If Logan wasn’t keeping him down on the floor, he’d have gone over there and smacked the shit out of him. “He was your threat against the Yakuza, wasn’t he?”

Tony shook his head. “No, Marcus, you -”

“You fucking used him as a bargaining chip!”  He interrupted angrily.  One of the things he liked about Tony was he was always thinking three steps ahead of everyone else; the guy was a born mastermind. But that was a dual-edge sword, wasn’t it? “The Yakuza still have a revenge hard-on for him, and you knew if you brought him with you, he’d be an extra sword to dangle over their heads!  He was an additional threat, ‘cause he'd wiped them out before.  How could you fucking do that, man?”

Tony looked shamed, which was good - he should be fucking ashamed of himself.  “I never thought it would come to this.  I underestimated their desire to corner the market on Anodyne, and overestimated their general intelligence.”

“And underestimated their desire to snuff both you and Logan out, no matter the cost.  Jesus fucking
Christ …” He was so angry it was hard to think, but he forced himself to do it.  “When this is all over, when he wakes up, you’re gonna give Logan everything you have on that mononoke-era shit, and you’re gonna explain how you fucked up here, got that?  If you wanna keep any professional relationship with me at all, this is the only way to do it. Comprende?”

Tony glanced down at the blood splattered floor and nodded, a portrait of humiliation.  Good. ”I don’t have much, but that’s easily done.”

“You bet your ass it is.” He turned back to the Anodyne he had measured out in the lid.  It was maybe
one fourth of a teaspoon, barely any at all, but he didn’t know if it was too little, or too damn much.  He had no idea what the side effects of this could be - if any.  It was highly unlikely they’d infect Logan anyway - his body was just too hostile an environment (much like his personality), and he did have some
of Bob's energy still in him, right?  That should take out anything demonically sinister. (He hoped…)

“Here goes nothin’,” Marc said, pouring the meager amount of fluid into Logan's slack mouth. “Hope I didn’t just kill ya.” He bet that was something Logan wouldn't have a difficult time forgiving.

He had time to recap the bottle and put it away before there were any visible signs.  At first it was like a ripple effect:  his muscles stopped spasming from the upper body down, and those troubling noises ceased issuing from his throat.  His body seemed to relax in stages, and while he was still sweating like the world’s fattest man in the world’s hottest sauna, from surface appearance alone he seemed better. Marc felt for the pulse on his throat, and found it easily. A minute before it had been pounding like a jackhammer, as if it too was trying to get the hell out of him and find a more friendly, less injury prone body,  but it had calmed now.  It was still too fast and heart-attack hard, but nothing like before.  It seemed survivable.

Marc hoped that was true.  Because if he'd just damned Logan to some new form of hell, he knew Helga was gonna kick his ass.