Logan parked Farris's four by four in the snow frosted parking lot, and knew by the scent of snow in the air that they were bound to get more, and soon. Were they ever going to get that pass cleared?

He paused on his way to the station to use the snow to "wash off" the blood on his hands, even though it was just his blood - how ironic that Farris had lost so much blood, and yet hardly stained him at all. He was sure that meant something, but he didn't know what, and honestly he didn't care.

The station was virtually empty inside, and smelled of coffee, old fashioned mimeograph sheets, and boredom. Most of the light was artificial, flat white and harsh - like a department store changing room - and there were eight desk set in a neat geometric pattern beyond the front desk, which looked like it would have been more at home in an old, seedy hotel lobby. Each desk had a boxy computer and a varying sense of neatness to the paperwork and coffee mug rings on their surface.

There was a single cop in the station, standing behind the horseshoe shaped front desk, a police band radio crackling with traffic reports. The cop behind the front desk was a bit shorter and more slender than Farris, in his late twenties, with slightly longer black hair and sleepy brown eyes, and a face so anonymous Logan had a feeling he was forgetting it even as he was looking right at him. "Can I help you?" The cop drawled, sounding bored. He had a nameplate on the front desk - "Constable Dupuis". Not one of the Purity members - lucky him.

"Yeah, I'm looking for Chief Branson."

"He's out on a call. Is there something I can help you with?"

Logan shook his head. "Nah. Will he be long?"

Dupuis shrugged. "I don't think so."

"Mind if I wait for him?"

Dupuis shrugged again. He was an extremely laid back cop. "Go ahead."

Logan retreated to a hard plastic chair in front of the nearest desk, and sat down to wait, to feel his brain turn to mush.

It was weird, but he didn't think he'd been in a lot of police stations in his life ... well, the lack of memories probably helped. But sometimes he got feelings about places even though he had no hard facts to back them up with, and he had no gut feelings about police stations in general. But then again, what he'd told Pat was true - they had nothing here that could take him down, or hold him for long. Okay, cuffs would be a pain in the ass, but he could deal with them if he had to, and they'd have to get them on him first.

"So how do you know the Chief?" Dupuis asked, trying his damnedest to sound more casual than suspicious. And with his naturally sleepy eyed look he could almost pull it off. That was called making your looks work for you.

What, wasn't he giving off a cop vibe? Logan wondered if he should have left the blood on his hands for verisimilitude. "We know each other from Calgary."

Dupuis frowned, looking puzzled. "The Chief was in Calgary?"

Logan smirked at the kid, almost feeling sorry for him. Did he have no idea at all what was going on under his nose? He wondered why they left him out of the loop. "Oh yeah. It's like a second home to him."

Dupuis gave him a very dubious look, his eyebrow arching perfectly, when there was a spit of static, and a man's voice saying, "Adrien, you there?"

Dupuis turned his attention to the radio behind the front desk, and went to it to speak to the cop on the other end of the line. Adrien? Now Logan was sure he'd never met a cop named Adrien before. He idly wondered if he got teased by the cops with "butch-er" names. He could almost hear the bad Rocky Balboa impersonations from here.

While Adrien was busy on the radio, Logan twisted in his chair, and glanced at some of the papers on the desk behind him. Well, he had to slip most out of folders, but they hardly needed slipping out at all. At the top corner of one report was the typed notation Sergeant James Nelson.

Nelson? He was one of the members of Purity, wasn't he? Logan had a sudden, overwhelming urge to piss, and wondered if Nelson's desk drawers were locked.

He heard Dupuis get off the radio, and quickly sat back in his chair, pretending he hadn't been glancing at someone else's papers. "You're not a law enforcement officer, are you?" Dupuis said - it sounded like a question, but it wasn't.

He didn't know why he was bringing that up, but Logan felt a sudden, undeniably urge to be an asshole. "Actually, I am - I'm an UO working out of Calgary."

Dupuis stared at him in disbelief. "UO?"

It was police shorthand for an "undercover operative" - in layman's parlance, a narc. And Logan had no idea how he knew that. "Narcotics," Logan lied, so easily he could almost believe himself. "Specifically looking into the increasing sales of methamphetamine around the truck stops and logging camps round here." He couldn't believe he was keeping a straight face.

Dupuis continued to look dubious, but he was also starting to buy it - after all, wouldn't that explain the hair? The clothes? The way he casually sauntered into a police station like he owned the place? "You got your badge?"

That was a trick question. Logan scoffed. "I'm a UO - of course not."

"What's your name?"

That was always a trick question, whether the Constable knew it or not. "Detective James Logan," he replied smoothly, borrowing Nelson's first name. "You can look me up on the database if you want."

Logan knew he was a damn good poker player. Not only because he could literally smell if a person was happy about their cards or not, but because he could lie so easily,and had absolutely no fear when it came to calling a person's bluff. He had paid no attention to Dupuis's conversation on the radio, but he now sounded like he was in a hurry to do something, impatient, and if so, he wouldn't bother to access the Calgary police database. If he did, he was screwed, but risk small, win small.

Dupuis studied him a moment longer, as if daring him to flinch, to make a guilty move, but he didn't; Logan knew that game too. And it was finally Dupuis who said, "No, that's okay. Can you hold down the fort for a couple minutes?"

Logan had to bite his own tongue to keep from laughing. "Sure. What's up?"

Dupuis huffed an impatient sigh through his nose as he busied himself putting on his cold weather gear over his uniform. "Davies and Sinclair are stuck on Grossman's Pass. They went on a call about a fender bender turned heated up there, and while they got the parties to calm down, their truck got stuck in what they seem to think is a sinkhole."

"Can't call a tow?"

"Anders is busy in Littlefall - he's on radio incommunicado until then."

Logan assumed Anders was the one guy with a tow truck in this town - he knew Littlefall was one of those tiny burgs up in the mountains. "You'd think there'd be more than one guy with a tow truck around here."

Dupuis snorted in humorous agreement, winding a definitely non-police issue scarf around his neck. "I'm thinking of taking early retirement and doing it as a sideline. I'll be rich in no time."

Logan forced a knowing smile, like he really was a fellow officer that knew his pain. "Let me know if you do - I'm in for a cut."

Dupuis gave him an anemic smile back, and said, "Chief Branson should be back before me. " He gestured towards the radio behind the front desk. "Give us a call if something comes up."

"You got it," Logan agreed. Only in tiny towns in Canada could you ever get this level of trust. He almost felt sorry he was abusing it.

Dupuis gave him a mock salute as he headed out the door, into the cold, and Logan knew why he had been left out of the Purity loop - he was probably a decent guy, a good cop, who would look upon "protecting the human race" from mutants as a perversion of their stated mission as police officers. If they told him about it and he balked, they'd probably have to kill him to keep him quiet, and even crooked piece of shit cops like Farris hesitated to kill their own.

Unless they were mutants, of course, but that was a different story.

He waited until Dupuis pulled out of the lot, and then he got up to have a look around Nelson's desk. A cursory scan turned up nothing of great interest, so after making a mess Nelson wouldn't forget, he went behind the front desk to see what he could call up on the computer, as it was still on.

Accessing the database was a breeze, as Dupuis had inadvertently left access to that open as well, but what he could call up was disappointing. Purity got a big zero, as did Gordon Kean, and the names James Nelson and David Farris only called up service records that were so whitewashed it would have made the department proud. The search for Sinclair brought up a record for an Alan Sinclair, but it too held no surprises.

He had just moved on to Branson when a truck with the police logo emblazoned on the side doors pulled into the parking lot. The guy who got out of the truck was older and beefy, maybe in his late forties, wearing a cowboy hat in lieu of a traditional police cap, but he wore one of their thick parkas. Logan knew he'd hit the luck jackpot when Branson appeared to be alone.

The man came in, his large, bulldog like face ruddy from the cold, and Logan said, "Hey there Chief."

He paused as he took off his gloves, bushy grey eyebrows moving low over pale blue eyes. "And who may you be?"

Logan knew he could play this so many ways, and it was hard not to grin. "I'm Detective Logan, a UO from Calgary, narcotics. Adrien had to go rescue Sinclair and Davies, stuck on Grossman's Pass. I'm sort of holding things down until they get back."

Branson looked him up and down slowly, scrutinizing him, his heavy, prominent jaw clenching tightly. He wasn't going to be as easy a sell as Dupuis, but Logan already knew pretending you belonged was eighty percent of everything. If you believed your own bullshit, chances were good other people would too. "Calgary huh? Know Lafferty?"

Just from the way he said it, Logan knew he had pulled that name out of thin air - it was a trick question. Logan made himself frown, as if puzzled, and said, "No, I don't know anyone by that name."

Branson nodded, posture loosening slightly. He had passed that test. "What is someone from Calgary narc doing around these parts?"

"I was investigating a meth ring that seems to be centering around truck stops, and my leads brought me here."

Branson scowled ever so slightly, deepening the folds of flesh around his jaw. He was a big guy, more hard fat than plain old fat, and Logan knew he'd put up a better fight than you'd ever expect. Well, for a normal human. "Let me guess - McQuarrie's?" Logan simply nodded. "I thought you looked familiar. Ya know, Guthrie runs a pretty tight ship."

Guthrie was Pat's last name, and it was really all he could do not to laugh. Tight ship? He put on illegal fights and had illegal gambling in an outbuilding, and the Chief knew - he let it happen for a cut. Was he in on the drug trade too? How crooked was Branson? "Is that the man who owns the place? I haven't had the pleasure." Oh, he was such a fucking liar it was hard not to laugh. "Actually, it was why I'm here. I didn't tell Constable Dupuis, because I thought you might want to handle this yourself."

"Oh?" Branson tensed up again. Oh yeah, he was guilty of a lot of things with Pat, wasn't he? Branson was so crooked he probably peed sideways.

"I think one of your men may be facilitating the sale, if not outright using or taking a cut himself."

"Really? Who?" He was trying not to tense up, trying not to show concern.

"Constable David Farris." This was too goddamn much fun. Maybe that's why he got involved - maybe he knew, in the back of his mind, that this could be an entertaining break from his normal routine.

Branson looked vaguely surprised, but Logan knew it was mostly an act. "Farris? You can't be serious. He's a good cop."

It was so hard for him not to laugh at that he thought he might have to bite his tongue again, but this time hard enough to draw blood. "Believe me, I don't make this accusation lightly. I have no reason to believe the perps were lying."

Branson took off his hat and fingered the rim in what Logan knew to be a nervous gesture. He had thinning hair, almost all prematurely grey, and if only he had a beard, he'd have looked like Santa Claus if he'd lost a hundred pounds and taken up a job as a bouncer in a seedy bar. "Do you have any evidence?"

"I do, but I left it at the scene - I thought perhaps you might like to see it first."

Branson gave him a curious look from beneath his bushy brows. "Aren't you worried about contamination? Disappearance?"

"No. No one's getting out of this town." Before Branson could comment on what Logan knew to be a curious statement, he quickly said, "Shall we take your truck? I left my vehicle up the road so it couldn't be traced here."

Branson continued to eye him warily, and Logan knew that the scammers were always the hardest to scam. "Where is this?"

"The evidence? There's a small building hidden within the woods just off the interstate, about two miles from here. Know what I mean?" Logan had seen it driving past - it looked like the garden shed of a house, but the house was long gone, claimed once again by the woods. You could only see it at certain angles, as the shed was wedged between two large, fast growing pines on either side - it looked like the trees were slowly squeezing the outbuilding for information. It didn't appear completely abandoned, but Logan just figured it was used by squatters or hunters, or people looking for a secure place to get stoned.

It was, honestly, a great place to kill someone. And Branson knew that too. "Yeah. Okay, sure - I'm sure Dupuis will be back soon enough." He put his hat back on, and reached for the door. "Let's go."

Logan waited until his back was turned before he smiled. He wondered which one of them was going to try and kill the other first.

Not that it mattered - even before the fight began, it was easy to predict the outcome.

8

Oh, Branson asked him how long he'd been a cop, and how long he'd been a narc, and Logan just pulled numbers out of the air before launching into a rambling story about how he almost got "burned" (discovered as a narc) on his first undercover case. He was pretty sure he was borrowing from the plot of a movie and at least one t.v. show and mixing them together, but he didn't care - not only did it make him seem more authentic, but it kept Branson from trying to make any more conversation.He went off road to park, taking the truck into the trees, hiding it from the view of the interstate. Logan wondered if Branson thought he actually wouldn't notice that.

Branson paused to put on his gloves as he asked, "What is the nature of this evidence?"

"Some physical stuff, drug paraphernalia that I saw him handle - so I know his prints are on it - and photos I managed to take."

"Photos?"

"Thanks to the digital revolution, I have a camera this big," he claimed, using his thumb and forefinger to measure out a space about half the size of a cigarette pack. He was pretty sure they had cameras that small. "Sometimes I can take pics of the perps when they're right in front of me, and they never notice."

Branson quirked an eyebrow at him, but didn't say anything. Logan turned away and led the way into the woods before he laughed.

Here the snow had mixed with dirt, so it looked like someone had sprinkled coffee grounds on a white carpet. He could smell the marks of animals that had been here: wolves, hares, a domesticated dog, many cats, several birds, even - ironically - a wolverine. Along with the dense growth of trees, the snow muffled almost all sound, so even though Branson was right behind him, clomping along like a bull moose, his footsteps were barely audible. By the time they reached the tree bracketed shed, it was just starting to snow, tiny flakes drifting down like confetti through the heavy branches.

Logan turned to look at Branson, coming up behind him, his breath puffing out in white clouds before him like he was more steam engine than Human. "By the way, Chief, I'm afraid Farris isn't the only dirty cop in your unit."

Branson stopped after he stepped over a fallen log, so covered with snow it looked like a speed bump. "Oh?" His voice was flat, had lost all inflection, and his belligerent jaw set once more. He wasn't as stupid as he looked. That was a good thing, really.

"Other names have come up. Nelson, Sinclair ... anyone else you'd like to add to the list?"

Branson had slipped his hands into his pockets, like he was cold, but he was wearing gloves. Logan had seen him very subtlety reach under his seat while he was getting out of the truck - surely a weapon, probably one untraceable to the police. A knife? Oh, he so dearly hoped it was a knife. "I don't have the slightest fucking idea what you're talking about," he said, his voice as cold as the air.

"Let's cut the shit, okay? I know."

"Know what?"

Logan quirked an eyebrow at him. "Do I really need to draw ya a picture here, Chief?"

Branson glared at him, trying to stare him down, but this man wasn't even close to intimidating to him, not even if he had a fucking stick of dynamite in his pocket and the entire Canadian Special Forces (why did that almost sound familiar?) backing him up. It wasn't going to help him now; nothing was going to save him now. Hadn't Branson's mother ever told him not to get in a car with a stranger? "What is it you want? A cut, is that it? Hush money?"

He shook his head, grinning at the offer. This just confirmed what he thought about him: Branson was so rotten to the core his bone marrow was probably black. Even though sadistic weasels like Farris would gladly kill anyone but hesitate when it came to cops, Branson didn't have that hesitation, especially when it was a cop from another department, one threatening to nail his fat ass to the wall. As soon as he intimated he was going to nail Farris for something, Branson had decided to kill him, because Farris might rat him out. And even if Logan said he wanted a cut, Branson planned to kill him here and now - no outsiders, no blackmail. "I want you to tell me about Purity."

He blinked rapidly, hiding a flinch. He didn't expect him to know that much. But still, he tried the idiot route again. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Purity, your little Human supremacist group with Sinclair, Nelson, Farris, and some shits down in Calgary. I made up the meth thing, but are you up to your ass in that too?"

Branson pulled his hand out of his pocket, and finally showed his weapon. Not a knife, but a Walther PPK semi-automatic pistol - definitely not police issue, so a ballistics trace wouldn't tie to the department. Slick. Had he murdered before - beside Gordon? There were a million places to hide the body out here, and there was a good chance the animals would take care of it for you. "You're not a cop, are you?"

"What was the clue, Columbo? No, I ain't no fucking cop, and some observation skills you got there if you thought you recognized me from McQuarries. Were you never around for the fights? Would it have helped if I took off my shirt?"

Finally he seemed to get it, and the realization only subtlety altered his stony expression. "Oh, wait - you're one of them, aren't you? One of Pat's finds. I shoulda recognized that hair. You're ... the wolf or something."

"Wolverine."

"Whatever the fuck. Is Pat trying to weasel out of payin' me, is that it? Are there more thugs waiting around here?"

Logan shook his head. "I want to know the name of your fellow shitheads in Calgary, and what they told you Gordon Kean knew."

He kept his expression perfectly neutral, but Logan saw surprise briefly flash through his hard eyes. "Don't bother to lie," Logan warned him. "Farris tried, and it did him no good."

"Farris?"

"Yeah. I really oughta call him an ambulance."

Branson raised a snowy eyebrow, moving the muzzle of the gun ever so slightly. "Do you really think you can intimidate me?"

"Do you think you can intimidate me?" Logan shot back at him. "Tell me about Purity, Roger. What's the plan?"

There was nothing in his expression, in his face - it was like he'd checked out and left nothing behind. Logan moved then, but a beat too late.

The bullet hit him in the left temple like a donkey kick to the skull, and he didn't realize he'd been knocked backwards until he hit the ground. His vision went liquid, and the sky seemed as white as the ground, as if reality had been inverted somehow. "You stupid piece of shit," he heard Branson say distantly, as if he was moving away from him as opposed to coming closer. "You had no idea who you were fucking with."

Logan could feel the snow melting around his hands, under his neck, and it helped him hold on to consciousness as the corner of his forehead where the bullet had hit him and ricocheted off ( Branson must not have noticed that little detail ) burned as his healing factor kicked in. His skull still felt like it was ringing like a bell, but he could deal with that.

He played dead until Branson was in range.

It was hard not to blink as snowflakes fell into his eyes, but he managed as he caught the shadow of Branson entering his vision. Now he was just muttering curses to himself, like having to dispose of a body ruined his whole afternoon.

Letting his ears as much as his eyes judge Branson's approximate position, he kicked out. The flat of his foot hit Branson's left knee so hard the leg bent the other way.

The bone cracked as loud as a rifle shot, and Branson screamed like a banshee as he collapsed to the ground. Logan quickly scrambled over to him, knocking the gun out of his hand as he attempted to raise it, and grabbed Branson by the throat. "My fucking leg! You broke my fucking leg!" He wailed, as his eyes seemed to settle on Logan's temple. There was probably still blood there, but Logan knew exactly what he was thinking : 'Where's the bullet hole?'

"You had no idea who you were fucking with, you stupid piece of shit," he growled down into his confused face. "I was one of 'em all right, but you guessed the wrong "them"." Logan held his free right hand right over Branson's face, made a fist, and popped his claws, but slowly, so he could watch them come out millimeter by millimeter.

The fear coming off him was almost rancid, and his heart was pounding so loudly he was afraid the fat fuck was going to have a heart attack on him before he could get a single answer out of him. "Now I'm tired of fucking around, and by tryin' to shoot me you have really pissed me off," he snarled. Branson seemed unable to look at anything but the claws growing out of his hand, his eyes so wide they were nearly all whites. "I want to kill you like you killed Gordon, but that seems almost too good for an evil fucker like you. I should break every fucking bone in your body and leave you for the real wolverines. I bet you'll feed a whole bunch of 'em until the summer."

"D-don't - " he stammered, but he wasn't sure what Branson was asking him not to do. There were so many things to choose from.

"You want to spare your worthless life? Talk - tell me about Purity, tell me about Calgary, tell me how deep and wide this fucking thing goes, or I'm going to start carving you a new face." He let the tip of one claw dig into his skin at the bridge of Branson's Roman nose, until a small trickle of blood starting oozing down his fear paled face. "Lie to me, and this is the first part you lose."

As soon as he remembered how to speak, Branson started to talk like his life depended on it.

But then again, it did.

9

But it was an odd dream, one he barely remembered upon waking. He was ... he was where? It was cold ... and he was slogging through snow and ice that almost came up to his thighs. He could smell blood, he had blood on his hands, but it wasn't his own. In the pearly grey light of dawn, the blood on the surface of the snow looked black, a spill of ink on the permafrost. Up ahead, there was a small hill, so dark it looked like it was made of dirt, but as he got closer he realized it was a mound of bodies. What the fuck ..?

And then he heard something behind him -

Logan woke up with the panicky feeling he was about to be attacked, but as he sat up, he almost hit his head on the edge of the steering wheel. Okay, just a dream. Fuck, he hated sleeping.

He had to squint as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight now streaming in the windows, as it had cleared since he nodded off. The lower the elevation, the less snow there was, and in fact it looked as if Calgary hadn't gotten a single flake at all.

He stretched his arms as best he could in the truck, rolling his shoulders, working out the kinks and aches. Sleeping in a car was never comfortable, but he didn't see the point in getting a hotel room if he didn't have to. And he wasn't planning on staying in Calgary long - big cities full of people made him feel inexplicably crowded and vulnerable, and frankly lots of people in one place always caused a hellacious stink.

Well, if he had to have a nightmare, at least it didn't involve guys in HazMat suits. And he didn't claw the shit out of the seat, so that was something. And it was just a nightmare, right? Not a memory. It couldn't have been a memory ... right?

He was hungry and desperately needed to take a piss, so he got back on the road and stopped at the first place he saw that wasn't a fast food restaurant ( they were always too crowded, and the smell of the grease they used almost knocked him flat ). Logan ended up in a sad cafe called The Blue Rose, where the grease smell was almost as pungent as any fast food joint, and the men's room smelled like it hadn't been cleaned since last year. But he'd been in worse places.

As he sat in his window booth, waiting for his eggs and trying to ignore the parchment and cigarette smoke smell of the old guys slurping diesel grade coffee at the end of the front counter, he pulled out the card he had in his pocket, the one that simply read Carnivale Outré. He mulled over everything Branson had told him, desperate to save his own ass, and he wondered if he had managed to drag himself out of the woods and get to a phone by now. Had he warned his friends in Calgary he might be coming for them?

He hoped so. He honestly did.

It was the only reason he left him alive, in fact. He wanted Branson to send up an emergency flare, so there'd be a welcoming committee of motherfucking redneck bastards waiting for him when he crashed their nest. He wanted them all - or as many as possible - in one place. He wanted to take out as many as possible in one fell swoop. But what if he'd died of exposure? Naw, he had too much blubber.

Not for the first time, he wondered why he was doing this. Gordon wasn't going to come back to life - and did he want him to anyways? He didn't know the kid! And surely if the plan was as big as Branson seemed to intimate, other people - other mutants - had to know, or would soon enough.

But would they - or could they - shut it down? Logan knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he could. He could take them out before they killed any more people. And frankly, it made a change, didn't it? Kicking asses, and not having to take a beating to sell the drama.

And no longer holding back; he was tired of holding back. And Purity were going to find out first hand just how dangerous a mutant could be when he really set his mind to it.

The waitress, a matronly sort with a name tag that said "Angie" on her white and powder blue uniform, came by with his breakfast, and asked curiously, "What are you smiling at, hon?"

He tucked the card back in his pocket, and said, "I just thought of somethin' funny, that's all."

Yeah - this was going to be fucking hilarious.