11

Chameleon must have drawn the short straw, because when Xi went into the back of the van to sleep, Cressida took her place.

Of all the mutants with him, Logan knew the least about her, second only to Specter, who kept himself “ghosted” most of the time; he had a thing about his privacy, apparently. He didn’t like to fight, and he didn’t like the real world to see him - he was the oddest of the Organization recruits.

Or maybe not. What little Logan had gotten from Xi about Chameleon was this: she was from Brazil initially, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist who owned huge chunks of beach property around Rio, and is possibly one of its biggest slumlords. She didn’t talk about her family much, or anything else for that matter. Except when her family found out she was a mutant, they sent her to a highly questionable “clinic” in Sao Paulo that claimed to - for a very exorbitant fee - “cure” or at least “suppress” mutant tendencies. It was in actuality a “blind” for the Organization, which recruited her from there.

As her code name indicated, she was a shapeshifter, but she was not like Mystique. Not only was she not blue and partially scaled, but, according to Xi, not really humanoid. “She’s a slug,” Spider had once jeered at her. “You need a bucket to hide in, Cressie.”

It wasn’t that exactly; her molecules were so elastic they were virtually semi-solid. Touching her skin could be like touching gelatin unless she deliberately altered her dermis to feel harder. She had to concentrate to make her bones completely firm, and after a while she found it tiring and painful to keep up the Human form - or any form, for that matter. When she “relaxed”, she didn’t look sweaty as much as she looked like she was melting, like an ice cream cone in hell.

But because she was extremely liquid, she was not limited to humanoid forms like Mystique. She could become a part of the wall, a section of carpet, a piece of furniture, and she had been often, according to Xia. In fact, she enjoyed being on a wall, spreading her molecules, awareness, and consciousness as thin as possible. Logan wondered how she altered herself so she could, hear and see in those states, not to mention pull herself back together, but that was another thing she didn’t like to discuss.

For a long time he sat in uncomfortable silence with her in the front of the van as he drove the endless highways of California, where the pastoral North blended into the urban and gentrified middle, and eventually ceded to desertification and the blight that was major corporate development in the Southern end. He could hear Quake and Spike quietly playing poker in the back, and just by the simplest infections in their voice when they said “Open” or “Call” or “Raise you”, he knew who had the good hand, and who was destined to lose. He wondered if they’d let him sit in sometime, so he could completely free them of their wallets.

Chameleon’s humanoid form of choice seemed to be that of a petite, somewhat plain young woman with short brown hair, and skin so bronze it was almost metallic. Sometimes her shirt looked damp, as if she was sweating through it, but it was just her, losing cohesion by increments.

Logan gradually became aware that some of this scenery looked familiar, and remembered that he had been here before, The first time he’d met Bob, he, Angel, Marcus, and Helga had headed off to Death Valley to discover what the Organization - no, Enigma - had hidden there. It only turned out that Erasmus, Omen, and the Organization were all after it too. But with Bob on their side, none of them ever had a chance. He wondered what had become of Omen, and if Erasmus ever got over believing his hand had been burned off by molten lead.

It couldn’t have been in the same spot, or Bob would have mentioned it back at the mini-mart. Besides, the Organization would have known exactly where to look for Enigma’s little hideout if it had been in the exact same place as the Org had their super-secret torture chamber. Death Valley was huge - not the Sahara, not the Gobi, but still pretty damn big. If you wanted to get lost there, what was going to stop you?

They were driving along a coast road, the water turning as violently orange as the sky as it reflected the setting sun, and suddenly Cressida said something. “I’ve always wondered if I could disperse there, you know.”

“Huh?” He wasn’t really interested, he just wondered what she was talking about.

“The ocean. I always wondered if I could disperse in there and remain conscious, the brain of a living ocean, the sea my body. Probably not, but once the implant completely fails, it would be interesting to find out.”

“Implant?” He instantly thought about the one that blew out the side of Static’s neck.

“You know, the regulating ones. They’re breaking down now that we’re not among them anymore. Although I think Jayson’s broke down a while ago. Spike and Quake never had one, but they’re not one of the opies.”

“Opies?” For some reason, he knew this was important.

She grimaced, her thin bronze lips nearly twisting into knots. “It was their stupid nicknames for us overpowered sorts - opies.”

“Overpowered? I thought all powers were good.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but some of us … it’s fatal, you know? Too much for our physiology to handle. Our powers just grow out of control and kill us. The implants were supposed to help us regulate them, but now they‘re crapping out, and they ain‘t gonna help us anymore.”

He looked away from the road, and found things clicking into place with a sickening finality. It made sense now, didn’t it? It all made sense now. “Is that why you stayed with the Organization, all of you? Because you thought they were helping you?”

She shrugged again, looked out the window at the mango hued water far below them. “Some of us, yeah.”

“And now they’re letting you die?”

She didn’t look at him, but the faintest wry smile graced her lips. “Joining the Organization is a death sentence, Wolverine. But I wouldn’t expect you to know that.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means. You have to actually die and stay dead for it to matter.”

He almost shot back that he could die, but then he realized what a stupid thing it was to argue about. He stared out at the gray ribbon of highway before them, and it dawned on him, “You’re all in this for revenge, aren’t you? You don’t actually give a damn about destroying a threat to mutants; you just want to hurt them before you die.”

She snorted a laugh, and shook her head as she watched the ocean disappear behind them. “Like you’re in it for mutant solidarity, Wolverine. We know what they did to you.”

He resented that, and seriously considered slashing her. But if she was basically gelatin, would it even hurt her? Then her words really sunk in. Nearly all of them had implants that were now being shut down, meaning - if the Organization wasn’t just feeding them bullshit - they were dying. All of them, save for Quake and Spike.

Xia. Oh shit, that was what he smelled. Anemia his ass; her implant - or her own powers,, both or neither - were killing her.

That explained why Quake was here too, even if he wasn’t dying - here to get revenge for his wife. Fair enough. But why was Spike here? Now he was suspicious. As for Spider, he was just a psycho - if there was some killing going down, he very much wanted to be there. But Spike didn’t strike him as a psycho; a cipher, yes, but not a maniac. He had to keep a closer eye on him, especially when they neared their target.

Did that explain Xia’s strange behavior? Was that all she was hiding?

****

She knew that there were explicit instructions that she not see Logan again, and that’s why she stole a technician’s magcard, so she could access the private elevator down to the sub-basement.

Once the doors slid open on the darkened chamber, she was already formulating her excuse in her head when a familiar voice said, “Did Logan teach you to disobey orders as well?”

Control emerged from the shadows near the door, and motioned with his hand that she should come forward.

Her stomach clenched in anxiety, but she did as he wanted her to. She’d already ignored his orders once; any more, and she was asking for even bigger trouble. Once inside the room, she noticed that all the technicians had cleared out, and she was alone with Control, comatose Logan, and the bleeping machines, the chemical smell of the cool air making her feel slightly woozy already. Or maybe it was just nerves.

“Do you know why Static was pulled off your mission at the last minute?” Control asked, breaking the fragile silence. He walked around to the far side of Logan’s tank, so it was firmly between them. She didn’t want to get too close to it. Not only did it seem like an invasion of his privacy, but she didn’t want to look at him submerged beneath that green goop, skin as sleek as a newborn baby’s, hair just a fringe that was slowly coming back, charting his progress back to the world of the truly living.

“No.” She winced at the volume of her own voice; it seemed to echo, like this room was a massive cavern cut into the Earth itself.

“Shrike had a psychotic break. But being a telepath and a natural son-of-a-bitch, he wasn’t the one that suffered.” Control rested his elbows casually on the edge of Logan’s tank, and clasped his hands together just inches over the oxygenated water. If Logan regained consciousness now, he could have grabbed him, pulled him in, and just maybe drown him before anyone responded. She certainly wouldn’t have run to Control’s aid. “All the members of his team had Shrike’s thoughts projected onto them. They all killed each other, pretty gruesomely I might add, although Shrike himself was spared. He then went rogue, probably not out of intent, but because he had all the conscious thought processes of a terrier with a lobotomy. We needed Static to neutralize his telepathic powers until we could physically contain him.”

He paused for quite a while before she realized she should say something. “Uh, is he - “

“Contained?” He interrupted, although he kept a deceptively bland smile on his face. But there was a brittleness in his eyes, reflected in the greenish glow from the tank, that made him look like a hungry ghoul. “Yes. And now we have new telepaths working on repairing the damage in Logan’s mind,

When he’s not conscious of them on some level - do you know he likes to fight them? It always surprises me when Wolverine proves his resourcefulness; he’s not nearly as dumb as he looks. He bombards them with painful images, you know, and telepaths are very sensitive, especially when he supplies the intense sensory details that he does. And he has lots of nasty memories.”

She flinched - certainly he had a new one now - and wondered why he was telling her this, but she knew better than to ask. He would tell her in due time.

“During the attempt to rebuild - and since he’s comatose, he’s not fighting so much - our telepaths discovered Shrike had some unauthorized fun in Wolverine’s mind. We knew he hated him, but we obviously underestimated how much. He … cluttered his mind with several things that were news to us. And you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this, aren’t you?”

She nodded, pretty sure he was waiting for some kind of acknowledgement.

His grin grew wider, and infinitely colder. He looked like the personification of death. “Because Shrike made you one of his visual triggers, sweetheart, and you’re fucking around with him built up an immunity to the trigger. His personality started falling apart sooner than expected because he was around you too much.”

Her stomach turned to ice, and she wanted instantly to deny it, to run for the elevator, but she knew it was pointless. “I - “

“I don’t want an excuse,” he interrupted coldly. “I don’t care who you chose to fuck. What I do care about is you messing up Wolverine’s trigger.”

“I - I didn’t know,” she stammered, wanting to argue that Logan shouldn’t need a trigger or another personality in the first place. But the look in his eyes made her hold her tongue.

“And that’s the only reason you’re not dead,” he replied matter of factly. She didn’t doubt it for a second. “But no more fraternization with him after hours. When we assign you on a mission together, it’s business only. Is that clear? Or do you want this to happen to him all the time?”

Now she was confused on top of being dizzy, and her head seemed to hurt on top of her stomach. It was an effort of will not to start shaking. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“If his personality was still in place, if it was still holding, he wouldn’t have tried to shut down the self-destruct before it detonated. He would have simply retreated and left whatever mutants were still in there to die. Lightning would probably still be alive if he had - no offense, Atomic, but Wolverine can cut through things much faster than you. And Wolverine wouldn’t be in this tank, waiting for a kidney to grow back along with his skin, his left index finger, half of his foot, and most of his nose. Can you imagine the pain he suffered? Can you imagine the pain he’s still in?”

She put a hand to her mouth, and tried to will herself not to cry, but tears were already blurring her vision. Was this her fault? It couldn’t be her fault … could it?

“You think we’re monsters? Logan’s implants have always been for his own good,” Control told her, his voice now a silky purr of confidence and menace. “We’ve worked together a long time, him and I, and I can tell you he’s a fucking mess, Xia. He had a breakdown himself, you know. He doesn’t function well anymore. He’s a suicidal, troubled man when left to his own devices - you’ve seen signs of that yourself, haven’t you? He requested his first personality rebuild. I bet you weren’t aware of that; I doubt he remembers anymore himself - he has such a poor memory. He knew he wasn’t cutting it anymore - so to speak - and he didn’t want to risk the lives of his men in the field. He’s always thinking of others like that. Which is good in theory, but you can see what happens when he puts it into practice.” He pointed down at Logan, floating in serene unconsciousness in his tank of enzyme infused water. “Rather than harming him, we’re only trying to protect him from himself. Do y! ou understand that?”

She nodded, crying in earnest now. She couldn’t believe it …but she remembered how depressed he was back in Le Havre … god, what was she supposed to think? Was it her fault that he was burned alive and nearly blown to pieces? Did she cause this?

“Remember, Xia, if you see him again off mission, you will be endangering his life. You will be subjecting him to this kind of pain again and again and again. You don’t want to do that to him, do you?” He said it in such a patronizing manner it was hard to tell if that was a threat or not. Was it?

She shook her head, and turned to leave, finding it hard to breathe past the lump in her throat. She wondered if she’d ever get a chance to apologize to him, and if he’d ever forgive her - if indeed he ever knew.

12

Scott had forgotten he had his communicator open until it bleeped, but even then, it was almost drowned by the noises of the other equipment in the cockpit. And when he realized what it was, he was reluctant to pick it up - what if it was Xavier?

He told Storm he needed the jet for a “personal assignment”, and while she was dubious, she let him go. She might kill him later when she found out what that mission exactly was, but he figured he’d deal with that when he came to it. He switched on the auto-pilot and pulled out the comm, thumbing it on and keeping his thumb on the release; if it was Xavier, he’d cut the connection so fast he’d be lucky to get out a full syllable. “Yeah?”

“You’re just Mr. Polite, aren’t you?” Forajo creaked.

He rolled his eyes. “Do you have a location for me?”

“What’s the magic word?”

Scott was sorely tempted to throw the comm into the nearest bulkhead, but he knew it wouldn’t solve anything. Besides, hadn’t they already lost enough equipment? “Please,” he hissed through gritted teeth.

“There, did that kill you? Death Valley.”

“Death Valley?” He repeated incredulously. “Why not just say the Pacific Ocean? Do you know how goddamn big Death Valley is?!”

“Hey, don’t climb up my ass! A lot of places there don’t have names, ya know, they’re just Death Valley! Besides, do you really think there’s lots of people wanderin’ around out there?”

He didn’t want to admit it, but he probably had a point. And with all this equipment, he couldn’t pinpoint a bunch of people? Sure he could. As it was, he only had to change his heading a few degrees; he was about twenty minutes away from entering California air space. The sun was starting to set, and he felt like he’d been chasing it across the country. The dying light turned the blanket of clouds beneath him the color of tiger lilies, growing bloody at the edge of the horizon where the California smog started to assert itself. Jean had told him that sometime he ought to just stop and enjoy the view from up here. He hoped she knew he was trying, but when you were dreaming about kicking someone’s ass, it ruined the moment. “Thanks,” he said, wanting to end this.

“Eh,” Forajo said dismissively, and cut the connection before he did.

This is exactly why he hated dealing with demons. Well, amongst other things.

***

The van was built to go off road, which was a good thing, because as soon as they saw the desert, Logan drove straight into it.

It wasn’t that there wouldn’t be an access road to it; surely there was of some type. But most likely this thing would be out of casual view; you’d have to know where it was to find it. But with a tank full of gas, he was willing to spend all night driving around this fucking desert until he found the goddamn place.

It actually took about an hour and a half.

Spider volunteered to climb on top of the van and have a look see, since his distance vision was so good, and he proved he was a crazy fuck by simply climbing out the passenger window while the van was still moving - at sixty five miles an hour, no less. Now there was a loony motherfucker after his own heart. He bet he was fun to go into battle with.

He’d been riding up there for about twenty minutes when he banged on the roof and hung his head down in front of the windshield. “North,” he said, then resumed his position on the roof of the van like a mermaid carved into the prow of the ship.

Jayson, silent all this time, finally shouted from the back, “You’re a fucking maniac, Clive!”

Logan was pretty sure he heard Spider laughing over the whistle of the wind.

They hit a dune, and as soon as they crested it, he could see a glimmer of silver. It wasn’t true dark yet, just a sort of dark reddish purple hue that reminded him of a fresh bruise just starting to hemorrhage under the skin, And beneath the lowering sky was a complex of interconnected buildings, as flat and rectangular as airplane hangars, all surrounded by a twelve foot high chain link fence, topped with razor wire. There were huge signs warning that it was not only private property but a hazardous waste processing center; there were luminous biohazard symbols every three feet.

“Did you know we were hazardous waste?” Logan asked sarcastically.

Chameleon, back in the shotgun seat, snorted a laugh. “Always.”

Spike peeked his head out from the back, and Logan kept the corner of his eye firmly on him. “Think they still have people on guard?”

“Only one way to find out,” Logan commented, stepping on the gas.

The van lurched forward, spitting sand in great waves behind them, and he swear he heard Spider actually yell, “Yee haw!” He’d never heard anyone say that before.

A few meters before they met the fence, a guard appeared brandishing some kind of automatic weapon, but even before they hit the gate, Spider launched himself off the roof and just nailed the surprised guard dead on; he didn’t even have a chance to get his gun all the way up. Spider just flattened him and grabbed the strap of the gun in his teeth before he launched himself off the guard, an impossibly acrobatic back flip that allowed him to hit the guard flush under the chin with both of his feet. The guard’s head snapped back so violently he hit the ground and just laid there, not moving. Logan wondered if he had snapped his neck - a kick that violent, and at such an odd angle, could have done just that.

Spider was doing perfect, rapid back flips across the asphalt covered entryway towards other guards who had appeared and randomly opened fire, but he was moving so fast he was a blur they couldn’t quite get a lock on. Then he did something Logan couldn’t quite believe: in mid-air, he twisted from vertical to horizontal, and slammed straight into three guards, knocking down a fourth as they all went down like ten pins. Logan suddenly felt like his bad ass status was in question.

The van crashed through the gate violently, warping the frame of both the main gate and the front end of the vehicle (Logan could almost feel the wrenching metal beneath the pedals), and as he brought it to a stop he slued it sideways, so it cut off a small cadre of guards on the way to helping their friends, who were getting the holy shit beaten out of them by the lone, gravity defying Spider.

It was then that the ground started to shake, like a tyrannosaurus rex was on their ass, and he heard Xia shouted, “Tom, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“It’s just to freak them out,” he shouted, his voice showing the strain. “It won’t get near us.”

Logan slammed open the driver’s side door and got out, aware that Spike had gotten out of the back and was now following him, all spiked out; dozens upon dozens of black spikes, in various lengths and thickness, stuck through his clothing and his skin, even on his face. He looked like some kind of weird, inhuman porcupine, and it definitely unsettled the guards. So did Chameleon, who got out on the opposite side and came around, this time in the surprising guise of one of those H.R. Giger aliens from the “alien” movies. A small one to be sure, with a more reasonably sized head, but it was still slick black exoskeleton and almost half jutting, slavering jaws. They didn’t seem to know who to look at, or who to aim their weapons at first.

He popped his claws, making some of them jump as the earthquake started to subside, and Logan could imagine easily slicing through all of them, cutting them down as cleanly as stalks in a corn field. He could almost taste their blood. “Run,” he growled, surprising himself. He had no idea he was going to say that.

And unlike many a soldier he had encountered before, this group obviously had brains, as they instantly turned and ran like their asses were on fire. They must have done the math, and figured out they were outclassed.

“Aww, what did ya do that for, mate?” Spider complained, jumping on top of the van. He was bloody, but that wasn’t a surprise. “I was just getting in the zone.”

Logan glanced over at the drooling, top heavy Chameleon, and asked, “Could you try and be more Human? I feel like I’m at a Halloween party.”

“Yeah,” Jayson chimed in from beside the back of the van. He was ghosted out completely, but Logan could still smell him. “Those things gave me nightmares as a kid. Fucking creepy.”

When Chameleon reverted, she didn’t “flow” from one shape to another; one shape disappeared as rapidly as popping a balloon, with the other - this time her average Latina self - beneath. “Well that’s the point, isn’t it?” She snapped in Jayson’s general direction. “That thing freaks out a lot of people. It’s called psychological warfare - look it up sometime.”

“In that case, maybe you should become that Texas Chainsaw guy next time,” Tom said, emerging from the back. The only sign he had done anything was beads of sweat on his forehead from the exertion of controlling the quake. Xia was right beside him, and the lack of shimmer indicated she didn’t have her field up yet. “Or maybe Hannibal Lecter in that mask thingy.”

“Or maybe me,” Spider said, doing a back flip off the roof and sticking a perfect landing right beside Logan. It was then he figured out how he must have gotten his code name - wolf spiders jumped on their prey, didn’t they? They could jump a tremendous distance, and they didn’t have a spine either, only an exoskeleton. It didn’t look like Clive had an exoskeleton, but after seeing him in action, he could easily believe he didn’t have a spine. Spider grinned, showing blood on his slender teeth, and took the strap of the gun off from around his neck. “Any of you gravity challenged people want a boom stick?”

Logan retracted his claws and grabbed the gun away from Spider before Spike - who had also reached for the weapon - could take it. Until he was sure Spike wasn’t going to betray them, he wasn’t about to let him have a weapon. “ Want it Jayson?” Logan asked.

The invisible man snorted derisively. “Fuck no. I’m reconnaissance, not a fighter.”

“You pronounced that wrong,” Spider jeered at him. “It’s not re-con-nay-sense, it’s puss-see.”

“Go fuck yourself, limey,” Jayson replied, but without a lot of heat. He could smell how freaked out Spider made him, even in his ghosted form.

After glancing around at the prospective carriers, he tossed the weapon to Tom, who caught it easily. “Try not to open up the ground unless you have to,” he said, by way of explanation. Truth be told, even though he knew Tom would gladly shoot him in the back if given half a chance, he was doing this for his wife - he had a reason to be here, and to see this through. As for Spike … no idea. He was either along for the ride, wanted revenge of his own that was completely separate from their own, or was here to fuck things up, in hopes of getting himself back in good with the Org. Now he was a mutant, and he’d probably never be back in the Org’s good graces, but some people didn’t have the sense of a toilet brush.

A look of annoyance flashed through his dark eyes, but Spike pretended to be okay with it. He wasn’t though. And Logan wasn’t sure if it was simply him he wanted to betray, or all of them. But he supposed they’d find out soon enough, wouldn’t they?

“Okay, let’s see what we got here,” he said, glancing at Xia. She looked pale, pained, and slightly sad, and he thought the look was just for him. Why? He remembered her powers were killing her and looked away, back at the interconnected tin warehouses.

He led the ragtag group towards them, wondering who and/or what was in there waiting for them. And exactly how pissed off it was going to be when they crashed its party.