Then Logan joined the scrum, grabbing the tackler by the back of the neck and tossing him aside, into a couple of his friends, as another lunged at him and drove a knife into his back.

Or, more correctly, he tried.  As soon as the knife pierced Logan's skin, it hit bone and shattered, and while it hurt like fuck, it didn't prevent him from lashing back with a fist and nailing the asshole flush in the head. He let out the briefest yelp before hitting the floor like a sack of garbage.  Demo Man - the guy with the detonator - had backed up against the far wall, so scared he was flour white, shaking now, his fear sweat reeking like fermented vinegar. He still held the detonator in a death grip. "Stay back," he stammered, looking between Logan and his supposed friends. "This mutie is fucking evil. We have to stop him."

Logan heard the hammer click back on a gun, and glanced over his shoulder to see one of Demo's friend aiming a revolver at his head. "We can finish off the freak another way, Mike. I ain't dyin' for this fuck!"

He loved being talked about like he wasn't in the room. "Oh, I don't know about that," Logan replied drolly, staring hard at the stringbean with the gun. "And besides, you ain't a true fanatic if you ain't willin' to die for your cause." Logan looked at Mike, and gave him a slow, evil smile that seemed to make his violent shaking increase. "Come on, Mike - let's do this thing."

That got Logan the reaction he had been hoping for - stringbean pulled the trigger, but rather than shooting Mike, he shot him in the back of the head. The force of the bullet's impact dropped him to his knees, black spots exploding before his eyes and nearly blotting out the light, and Mike was so startled he bobbled the detonator, not pressing the trigger, but only because his palms were so slick with sweat he almost lost hold of the damn thing.

The bullet had taken a queer ricochet off his skull, though, as when the ringing in Logan's ears subsided, he heard, " - fuckin' shot me! You fuckin' bastard, you shot me!"

"Give me the detonator, Mike!" Stringbean roared, over the wailing of his accidentally shot friend.

Mike's wide, pale eyes glanced fearfully at his friend, and that's when Logan made his move.

It was actually easier since he was on his knees. He lunged upward, towards Mike, and as he swung his arm around, he popped his claws. Stringbean fired again, hitting Logan in the back, but his adamantium laced spinal cord absorbed most of the blow as the small underground club filled with Mike's piteous, near hysterical howling.

Logan pivoted on his heels to face the rest of them, detonator in his hand. He threw Mike's now severed left hand at their feet, and slowly retracted his claws. "You know what the ultimate irony of this is?" Logan asked, as the men seemed unable to stop staring at the bloody hand on the floor. Maybe one of them saw the blood fountaining from the stump of Mike's wrist as he cowered in the corner, because one of the cops suddenly leaned over and vomited violently onto the cement floor. What, hadn't they been at crime scenes before? "This won't kill me. But I bet it'll kill all of you." His thumb caressing the trigger, he said, "Drop the guns. They've done fuck all for ya anyways."

"You wouldn't dare," Stringbean challenged.

Logan smiled at him, that wicked, predatory grin. He honestly felt like laughing, and maybe that showed on his face. "It's been my plan all along, asshole."

Those that still had guns dutifully dropped them on the floor, although the gut shot guy was slumped against the wall, arms around his stomach as he moaned, and a fairly significant puddle of blood was starting to form beneath him. Logan wondered if the ricochet had passed through an artery or a major organ - if so, that poor fuck was already dead. Even if someone rang an ambulance on a cell phone right this second, he'd be finished by the time they got here. Either that was bad luck or bad karma, or both.

But Stringbean held onto his gun, eyes scudding from his face to his hand, as if judging whether he could shoot the detonator out of it, or simply wondering where his claws had gone. "You just proved our entire point, motherfucker! You're not even human! You're a fucking animal!"

"They don't call me Wolverine because of the fur," he replied, and then nodded his head towards his gun. "You gonna lose it, or do you want to drop another one of your men?"

Stringbean gave him a look that could have blistered paint, but he dropped the gun. "What the fuck is it you want, freak?" He growled, defiant to the end. The hate was coming off him in waves, like heat from the pavement. "A medal?"

"I want the name of your "Grand Dragon" or whatever the fuck, and don't insult my intelligence by claimin' to be him, 'cause I know none of you are. Talk, and you get to hobble out of here with your lives. Piss me off, and I'm blowin' the fuckin' house down."

Stringbean continued to glare at him hatefully, just itching to attack him. He was welcome to, as far as Logan was concerned. "No you won't. An explosion would kill you, no matter how tough you think you are."

"I've lived through 'em before." Was that true? He didn't even know. "Have any of you?"

From the way he slid completely to the floor, the gut shot guy had passed out. Only one of the four men still standing glanced back at him; the rest were looking at Logan, or more precisely, the detonator in his hand. "Give me the name." He said quietly, finger on the trigger. Just a little more pressure, and they'd all find out if he could survive a blast. The funny thing was, Logan almost found himself curious about it. Of course, it was bound to hurt like fuck, but what if it was the thing that could kill him?

Logan heard the man outside, heard him chamber a round in the sawed off shotgun before he even appeared in the upstairs doorway, looking down at him, barrels aimed down at his head. "Drop it, freak," the man growled. "If a muscle so much as twitches, I'll blow your fucking hand off."

Logan looked up at him and smiled humorlessly, still keeping the corner of his eye on the anxious Stringbean and his friends. Blow his hand off? Really? Shotgun shells that could cut through adamantium? That he had to see. "I think we got us a Mexican standoff," Logan said, feeling oddly giddy. Did Shotgun Billy up there really think this would change a goddamn thing? "Wanna see who's quicker on the draw, bub?"

There was a thick silence as the men waited for the power to shift, for Logan to show fear, doubt, hesitancy, but of course he didn't - this changed nothing. Except, of course, when they were all going to die.

Logan waited for the men to decide what they were going to do. After all, he had his thumb on the button.

He had all the time in the world.

14

He knew he should turn it over to the news, see if it was done, but wasn't George going to call him? The phone hadn't rung all evening. Had something gone wrong?

No, that was stupid - what could possibly go wrong?

That was the one good thing about forced "retirement" - he finally got to see all these shows and games he had taped over the years, but never found the time to see. Too bad he was almost at the end of the tapes.

He had wandered off to the bathroom to take a leak when he heard that damn dog start barking again. Some guard dog he turned out to be - he barked at every leaf rustled by the breeze. All that money training him, pissed away.

Just as he flushed, he heard the dog ... what was that noise? It sounded like a high whimper, but it happened so fast ... but he was quiet now, wasn't he?

John started towards the front door, overcome with a sudden eerie feeling. He'd only left a single light on in the kitchen ( if you didn't count the blue light of the television, which made it seem like he lived in a whitewashed, cold world, devoid of color but teeming with life he could only spy as pixilated shadows ) so the house - his strange house, somehow too large and too confining all at once - seemed sinister. Anything could be hiding in these clinging shadows, in the empty spaces of his aggressively vacant home.

He opened the front door and looked out at the front yard, and only when the cold wind blew in did he realize how vulnerable he felt, barefoot and clad only in sweat pants and a t-shirt starting to tear at the collar. But how stupid a thought was that? Everyone here knew who he was and what he used to be - he had carefully cultivated his "grumpy old coot who lives in the big house at the end of the cul de sac" image. It kept kids away, and any nosy neighbors from the neighboring street at bay.

The air smelled of leaf mold and dog shit, and there didn't look like anything was amiss; the front gate appeared both closed and locked. But where was that damn dog? "Duke!" He called impatiently. "Come 'ere you stupid dog! Duke!"

Usually, the stupid mastiff would have come running by now - it knew what the tone of his voice meant. But not only did it not come running, it was almost frighteningly quiet out here. There was no noise but the slap and rustle of branches in the breeze, the creak of the house settling in its silence ... those creaks over his head were just the house settling, right?

For a moment he listened for footsteps overhead, taken with the image that he had an intruder in his house, an intruder who had taken out Duke and was now upstairs, waiting for him to come up ...

He shook his head and angrily dismissed the thought, slamming the door. He chose this damn house because it was so quiet, isolated from both street noises and annoying neighbors. And Duke was almost two hundred pounds of mastiff - that alone scared most people off. To take him down with drugs, you'd need to get a hold of some serious tranquilizers, and most thieves didn't bother with shit like that; and if they did get some "special K", they were more likely to take it themselves. And he didn't hear footsteps, and he knew that he would if there were any to be heard - the only sound in the house right now was the white noise hiss of the t.v. as the tape rewound, and he had the volume so low that he could barely hear it over the wind.

Then there was the simple bottom line: he was a former Chief of Police. What thief was shit for brains stupid enough to bust into a cop's house? And it wasn't like any of the trees were close enough to the house - how in the fuck could any thief enter from the second story? Well, maybe if he was Spider-Man or something. Perhaps a thief on really tall stilts.

He was chuckling to himself as he wandered out to the kitchen, helping himself to another can of beer. He couldn't believe he was going to have to break out the spare twenty four pack already - he hadn't had that much to drink yet. But the days were blurring together, and he couldn't even remember the last time he left the house; most of the business he had could be conducted by phone, or his boys could come see him. John didn't want to think of himself as pathetic or a shambles, but he knew he was slowly going the way of his life.

He had just cracked open the can of Molson's and paused to look out the kitchen window when he noticed a dark reflection in the glass.

His heart beating double time, he pivoted on his heels, and there, standing just beyond the kitchen entryway, was the shadow of a man. He was in the living room, and the ghost light of static back lit him, so he was a form without face, a shadow independent of a body. He was  broad shouldered and carried his arms at his side like a prizefighter waiting for a match to start, and for an instant, John would have sworn his heart had stopped. "Dustin - " he said, and the moment it was out of his mouth, he winced and regretted it. That was idiotic - the dead didn't come back; the only people who believed in ghosts were people who couldn't deal with reality.

"Is that why you did this?" The man said. His voice was a deep rumble, and it sounded parched somehow, seared.

"I don't know who the fuck you are, but you'd better get out of my house this instant!" He snapped, showing anger but no fear. Crooks were like dogs; they could smell fear, and went for it. "Do you have any fuckin' idea who I am?'

"John "Sonny" Hayes, former police chief of Calgary," the shadow man replied, slowly moving into the penumbra of light cast off by the kitchen.

John instantly wished he hadn't.

He knew why he had moved with inhuman quiet now - he was barefoot. His clothes fit wrong, and looked familiar ... because they were Dustin's; no wonder he thought he was him at first. The jeans were too baggy and sagged at the waist, but the blue t-shirt he'd taken was almost too small, and clung to him like a second skin, revealing an almost absurdly chiseled chest and virtually no stomach at all - this guy was no thief, he was a fucking bodybuilder. No crook ever looked like he worked out on a regular basis.

But his face ...

He must have been in a hideous accident. Half his face was raw flesh pink, and his hair on that side had been cropped down to a nub, and it looked like part of his left ear was missing. The raw flesh continued down the side of his neck too, disappearing beneath the shirt, and John wondered if it continued down his side. His left arm looked a bit raw, didn't it?

Something was off on his right side as well. The skin looked more or less normal there, but shiny as if new, baby flesh. He had a hint of dark stubble tracing his jawline, and while his hair was desperately short on that side, it wasn't scraped down to root like it was on the left.

He briefly wondered if he was a vagrant, but that didn't make sense. A ripped vagrant? Fuck - a hideously maimed guy who still pumped iron didn't make a lot of sense either. "What the fuck happened to you?" He asked, only because his curiosity got the better of him. Not that he cared, but fuck, did somebody feed half his face into a meat grinder?

The man had green eyes that were remarkably hard and cold, glaring at him with a hate that was almost clinical, like he knew he couldn't help being a vicious animal, as that was a hazard of his breed. He really didn't like being on the receiving end of that look. "Purity. Your brainchild, yes?"

John shook his head. "Who the fuck are you?" Maybe he was just a nutjob - strong nutjobs happened with frightening regularity.

"You should be asking what the fuck I am," the man growled.

Definitely a nutjob. "So what the fuck are you?"

"I am the living ghost, the thing that won't die. Maybe it's like what the Buddhists believe - reincarnation. But in that case, you die and come back as something else. Me, I always end up at the very same place I was before. Maybe I'm supposed to do something or learn something before I can move on, I don't know. That's what they say about reincarnation, isn't it?"

John put his can of beer down on the counter, and realized the phone was within easy reach. "Are you high?"

The guy snorted a derisive laugh that sounded almost painful. "I wish I could be. I don't think ... I think my brain is still recovering from the blast, you know? Concussion. I've been mostly operating on instinct."

"The blast?" What the fuck was this about? He couldn't possibly mean ... no, he didn't look like a guy he'd seen recruited.

"He actually thought he could beat me," the man said, either ignoring or not noticing John's casual drift towards the phone. "A Human, with better reflexes than me? He had time to tense on the trigger - but that was it. Stupid shit thought I was bluffin'. I never bluff outside of poker games."

"Who the hell are you talking about?"

"Jerry. Detective Jerry McManus, he said his name was. The initial concussion wave of the blast traveled up the stairs and threw him clear - he was hurt, but not badly at all. He probably could have shook it off and walked away. But I think ... I think I may have broke him."

John had almost reached for the phone, but stopped. That was a curious turn of phrase - and how did he know Jerry? "What do you mean?"

"When I crawled out of the wreckage. I mean, the big damage - the internal stuff - was probably healed before I regained consciousness. But when I got so much healin' to do, it takes time, as you can see." He gestured to his ruined face. Did - was his hair now longer than before on the left side? No, that was impossible ... "And you know, when most of your skin is gone, the wind hurts. It's like acid rain. I guess I must have looked a sight, 'cause the moment he saw me he just started screamin'. I mean banshee howls, like he was the blonde bimbo in a horror movie and I was the dildo with the chainsaw."

John snatched up the receiver, sure this guy was a complete psycho nutjob, and brought it to his ear ... only to hear nothing, not even a dial tone. He cradled the receiver with a resigned sigh. "You cut the telephone line."

The maimed man nodded, but faintly, as if too deep a nod hurt the burned skin on his neck. "I thought about cuttin' the power, but didn't see the point."

"Did you kill the dog?"

"No. I don't hurt animals unless I absolutely have to; they're better than Humans. I just scared him into submission - I have a better growl."

It was just then that John heard a noise that raised the hair on the back of his neck. It was a deep, menacing growl, the kind made by a beast that would not only rip your throat out but enjoy every second of doing so, and for a second he thought Duke had gotten inside the house. But Duke's growl wasn't half that powerful, and it seemed to be coming from the direction of the mutilated man. He was making that noise?

No, no he couldn't be - no human being could make a noise like that. He must have had a recorder somewhere, was playing something off a tape. How he didn't hear it click on or off he had no idea. "I suggest you leave while you can. My son is - "

" - not here," the man interrupted. "No one's been upstairs except you and the dog for a very long time. You're wife's gone, right? And the clothes of your boy smell musty, as if they should have been mothballed a long time ago."

"Smell?" He asked incredulously. "What the fuck are you, some kinda bloodhound?"

"Somethin' like that. What happened to the family, John? Jerry said you blamed mutants for ruinin' your life, but he didn't say how. He was babblin', pretty far into hysteria when I left him. That's what I mean by I think I broke him - I broke his mind. He sounded like the fruitcake he really must o' been to do this thing. What's your excuse for mass murder, John? What lets you sleep at night?"

He had no idea what this fucking lunatic was on about, but he hated him; in this moment he hated him with a fiery, sour vengeance that made him see red. "I haven't murdered anyone, you lyin' sack of shit! You want to know what those fuckin' muties did to me?" He reached up, and dug into his left eye with a movement so familiar it was rote by now. He plucked out the hard, lukewarm glass eye and held it out to the scarred man, feeling the peculiar emptiness of his eye socket. That was worse than not being able to see out of that side  - the emptiness, the feeling of void. "One of those gene trash spit acid in my face, and I lost this, you crazy shit. And that was the just the beginning of what I lost thanks to those animals."

The disfigured man appeared unmoved, waiting for more. His eyes were so hard they could have been made of glass themselves. "Then, if that wasn't enough, another one of those fuckin' bastards trumped up a police brutality charge against me. I had to cut a deal to retire early to save my name from bein' smeared in the press."

"So you were guilty," the man said flatly. "Innocent men don't cut deals."

"Yer a self-righteous bastard, aren't ya?" He snapped. This man didn't deserve to know a goddamn thing about him or his life. And that fucking maniac took his eye, for Christ's sake - so what if one of his mutie brothers got a few broken bones? That was the price you paid for fucking with the law. "So my wife left me - the selfish bitch - after our boy Dusty died in a plane crash. There were rumors it was 'cause of some mutie bastard, but the American FAA refuses to release that kind of info."

"So this is where I break down and weep for ya, is that it?" The man replied with cold disdain. "I'm supposed to apologize for all my kind, and agree that killing bunches of us - kids, you fucker, kids - was justified?"

It was then he noticed that the man's skin was moving.

On the left side of his ruined face, it seemed be ... crawling?.. and changing color as ... oh god. Oh Christ in heaven, his skin was growing back.

It was growing over the burned skin like some kind of living, animate stain, and dark stubble started popping out along his jawline underneath the new skin. And his hair was thicker now, growing slowly but steadily; it looked like it was moving in a gentle, constant breeze.

And it looked like the cartilage of his left ear was almost boiling ... filling out, coming back.

Mutant. Fucking mutant freak.

But honestly, hadn't he known that all along? Hadn't he expected, on some level, that at least one would hunt him down someday? Hunt him down, and help him prove to the world how animalistic and sub-human they were. "So it happened, did it? It went off, and you were near it." He put his eye back in, because he always felt naked without it. Also, he didn't like the feeling of air entering the hole, reminding him of the sudden gap in his face, in his life. He had the permanent blind spot if he needed any other reminder.

The man shook his head faintly, the muscles along his jaw tensing, making cords stand out on his still slightly raw neck. "I was inside it. I set it off, you vicious fuck - after evacuating the place. You didn't kill any mutants tonight; you only killed your men."

"Bullshit." That wasn't possible - it couldn't be. The scam was perfect, and Smythe and Hunt knew damn well how to handle explosives; they'd never get caught in it.

The freak studied him for a long time, and his scrutiny was uncomfortable - it was like he was looking straight through him. Was he? Muties could do shit like that. "What? You need time to think up a better lie?"

The freak shook his head dismissively. "You knew you'd eventually fail, didn't you? You convinced your men they'd succeed, but you knew the "accidents" would eventually draw attention. But you honestly didn't care, did you? You didn't even care what happened to them as long as you got to kill a bunch of muties before it all came crashin' down, huh?"

"Shut your face," he snapped. "You don't know shit, freak."

"I do - you're pathetic. You're like Farris."

"Who?" That wasn't one of the guys, was it?

The freak snorted again, and his face looked almost perfectly normal now; the raw skin on his neck was submerging beneath shiny new flesh. "I wanted you to be like Branson - rotten to the core. A fuck with no conscious, a pure sociopath with a badge. But you're just a bitter, twisted little man, a wounded animal just lashin' out at the weakest thing you can find, usin' your men to do your dirty work."

"Shut the fuck up!" He demanded, feeling his face flush in rage. He hated it; he hated even showing contempt towards this animal - it was more than he deserved. Why didn't he keep a gun in the kitchen? Fuck, he was an idiot for keeping them all in a cabinet in the den.

But what if the story he was telling was true? What if he was in the explosion, and survived it? That seemed unbelievable, but what couldn't a freak do? If he had - if he survived being that badly maimed - would a bullet do anything to him?

The freak sneered at him, like he was below contempt - like he was the freak. "I hurt, you asshole. Comin' here, I felt like I was walkin' on broken glass, and bein' cut by a thousand razor blades. But I knew when I got here I was gonna share some of that pain - I was gonna hurt you, old man, like you've never been hurt before. Then I was gonna rip your fucking head off, and not even use my claws."

Claws? He glanced at the man's hands, but he looked like he had plain old fingernails - they weren't even long, either.

The freak then shook his head again, more vehemently, and made a face like he had just tasted something bad. "But you're not even worth my time. You're nothing. You're a warped motherfucker stewing in his own juices - "

"Don't you dare talk to me like that, you fucking freak of nature!" He roared, letting his rage spill out. For so long he wanted to look one of these freaks in the face and spit in their eye - he was just sorry he couldn't spit acid as well. "You dirty bastards robbed me of everything! I won't let you rob my species too!"

But the hard, arrogant glint was back in the man's stony eyes, and he was convinced this was proof that mutants had nothing like a soul, not like real people. "You robbed yourself, John. You failed as a cop, as a husband, and now you're blamin' the one thing that ever put the hurt on you. To your sad little followers, you made it a cause - but to you, it's nothing more than a grudge." He made a disdainful noise and looked away. "Some criminal mastermind you are. You're just a sad little man with connections - "

"Shut up!" He shouted, and threw open the nearest drawer on his right. He groped blindly for a knife, closed his hand around a wooden handle, and took a wild stab at the mutie who dared to wear his son's clothes.

He was aiming for the heart - assuming the freak had a heart, and in the right place - but he must have been off slightly, hit a rib, or something - how else could he explain the tempered steel blade of the butcher knife shattering like it was made of glass, the instant the tip penetrated the freak's skin? He still held the wooden hilt when the freak grabbed him by the throat and slammed him back against the counter so hard John was surprised his spine hadn't snapped on impact.

The freak had a grip like a vise, like his bones were made of metal, and John feared that with just a little more pressure he could crush every single bone in his neck, or maybe even break the skin and just rip his goddamn windpipe out. And he reeked of blood - blood and burned flesh, and he knew he had already killed someone tonight. As it was he couldn't draw a single breath, and the freak was right in his face, glaring at him with more animalistic rage than he had ever seen, even in his twenty plus years on the force. The man's eyes were almost demonic, so far beyond Human in their sheer hatred it was like looking into the eyes of the Devil himself.

And that's when he knew the freak was going to kill him.

The freak started to shake, his muscles trembled, and even through the redness filling his vision, John could see something going on behind the mutie's eyes, something he couldn't recognize. Unless it was a war, a battle internalized; the muscles not trembling from exertion, but from him trying to hold his own impulses back. And losing.

Blood thundered in his ears, and his lungs actually felt like they were going to explode from the lack of air, and he wished this freak would just snap his neck; he didn't want to die like this, by strangulation. Almost any death was better than that.

Suddenly the mutie let him go and turned away with a noise that was half growl, half frustrated grunt. John collapsed to his hands and knees on the tiled floor and choked as he sucked in air desperately, like a drowning man. He hadn't crushed his windpipe or his larynx, but it had been a very close thing - an iota more pressure, and he'd still be busy asphyxiating on the floor. Bile burned in the back of his throat, but he swallowed it back as best he could. He wasn't puking in front of this maggot.

"Not this way," the freak was muttering to himself. "Not like this."

When he was able to breathe again, and was sure he could talk without vomiting, he rasped, "Why don't you just rip my head off like you said you would, you fuckin' circus freak?" It hurt to talk, and he wasn't sure he had the strength to stand up just yet.

The mutie stalked back towards him, snarling like the animal he was, and John was pretty sure this was finally it. But maybe this time he wouldn't strangle him.

The freak grabbed him by the hair and yanked him violently to his feet, still snarling, his breath reeking of blood, upper lip curled back to reveal a sharp looking canine tooth that was several millimeters short of a fang. This freak really was an animal, wasn't he?

But as he glared at him, something changed in the mutie's face; he looked almost puzzled by something he must have seen in his eye. For some reason, he let go of him and backed off, and John had to hang on to the counter to stay on his feet. "What, you chickenshit?" He rasped painfully. "Ain't you got no balls?"

The freak gave him a confused look that soon gave way to an expression John had seen far too many times in his life - pity. He wanted to shoot it off his fucking freak face. "You want me to kill you."

"Stop tryin' to cover up your own spinelessness!" He tried to shout, but it hurt too much. He had to settle for a gravelly growl, not unlike the noises the freak made. "Do what you were born to do, you fucking animal, you fucking piece of gene trash! Kill me!"