13

The first thing Logan noticed was the smell.

Spider had noticed it too, and commented, “Ooh, somebody likes their poochies damp.” It was a sort of wet dog smell, but what he picked up on was a slightly … inhuman smell. Demonic? Possibly, but a kind of demon he had never smelled before.

Once they were past the main metal doors, the warehouse revealed itself to be a shell, or at least the front part of it. Because the inner doors were vacuum sealed bullet proof glass airlocks. Logan simply shattered them with his claws (they must have been working on that adamantium proof stuff still), and they walked through them, into a stainless steel corridor. The wet dog smell continued here, but so did another one, a scent of ozone, that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. He could also hear, at the very threshold of his hearing, a high pitched noise. “We got infrared sensors ahead,” he warned them, stopping before he entered the next corridor. It was a bland looking hall, just seamless metal walls, and that itself made it suspicious.

Chameleon appeared beside him, holding a small aerosol can. She sprayed a fine mist that made the slender crimson beams appear. She lengthened her arm to rather extreme lengths so she could reach up towards the ceiling, showing dozens of crimson beams crisscrossing the entire hall ended only three inches from the ceiling. At their lowest point, they were a mere inch away from the floor. “Didn’t take any chances, did they?” Logan mused.

“Where did you get that canister from?” Tom asked, just as it disappeared into Cressida’s hand. “Oh, eww, it was you, wasn’t it?”

“Hey, use it if you got it,” she replied dismissively.

“Think you can make it down there and shut it off, Spider?” Logan asked, glancing behind him.

“Piece of pork pie,” Spider said, climbing up the side wall and moving up to the ceiling. He pressed himself as flat as possible, and started scuttling down the ceiling towards the end of the hall.

“I’d better go too,” Chameleon said, and suddenly collapsed into a huge puddle of water, which then transformed into a very long snake, which slinked across the floor, beneath the beams.

“These are the creepiest people to do anything with,” Tom said, possibly to Xia.

Logan shrugged. “At least they get the job done.”

“And that’s the most important thing,” Spike agreed.

It was all Logan could do not to turn around and smack him. If he wanted comments from the peanut gallery, he would have asked for them.

They disappeared from sight around the bend in the hall, and it was about thirty seconds before the hum of electricity died, along with the scent of ozone. The prickly feeling on his skin died away too. He jerked his head forward, and proceeded down the hall, not setting off any alarms or death lasers, or whatever the fuck these things were attached to. As he rounded the bend, he found Chameleon waiting for them, but in a brand new guise. Tom chuckled when he saw she was now a broad shouldered goon in a blue jumpsuit, holding a machete and wearing a hockey mask. “You should really go outside like that,” Tom said. “I bet Jayson will scream.”

“Are we through having our little laugh?” Logan wondered impatiently. “Where’s Spider?”

She gestured with her machete, which subtly grew out from the palm of her hand. “He decided to crawl ahead, see if there were any more guards lying in wait.” She’d changed her voice to male as well, and made it sound muffled, like she was wearing a mask. Were all metamorphs this way? Did they really like playing dress up every day of their goddamn lives?

“There ain’t,” Logan grumbled, shouldering past her and continuing down the hall. Or at least he didn’t smell any Humans currently around. Just that weird semi-demonic dog smell, and a new one creeping in, one heavy with chemicals. Some of them were almost familiar … but not quite.

It was like a maze of featureless steel corridors, some twisting back on themselves, and it got darker as they continued, probably because the alarm system was tied into the main power, and killing one killed them both. It started to get more humid the further they went in, which made sense if the air conditioner was shut off as well … but he hadn’t heard an air conditioner, hadn’t smelled its slightly freon tinged forced air. And the more humid it became, the more it stank of chemicals and wet demon dog. Which
was bad enough on its own.

But it was kind of familiar.

He finally turned around to look, and asked Xia, “Have we ever been here before?”

She was so pale, her startled face was almost luminous in the shadows closing in all around them. “No. I mean...I’ve never been. I don’t know about you.”

“Never mentioned Death Valley?”

She thought about (all the while, Tom was giving him an evil frown, gripping his gun ever tighter), then shook her head. “Not to me, no.”

“Hmm.” He turned around, and looked at the darkness ahead. He could just make out a very large door, like one you’d find on an airplane hangar, and it made him deeply nervous, although he couldn’t say why.

“Experiencing some déjà vu, Wolverine?” Spike asked. He tried to make it sound innocent, but Logan knew there was some mockery in it.  He knew then that he had asked the wrong person.

He was going to nail Spike to the goddamn wall when there was a clank, like a huge metal bolt being thrown, and one of the huge doors started to slide open. Logan popped his claws, felt Xia’s field going up behind him as Tom aimed his weapon, and Chameleon, still looking like a horror movie slasher, came up beside him and held her machete at the ready.

But it was Spider who squeezed out the small gap, and said to them, “You won’t believe what’s in here.”

The odor from inside the room hit Logan hard. It was chemical (they were familiar, somehow, some way…) and demonic, Human and … familiar. Familiar enough that his stomach twisted, and he could taste sour adrenaline in the back of his throat. Whatever was in there, it terrified him and made him angry enough to wish he’d bought along some Semtex, so he could reduce this heap to rubble.

He wanted to run in the opposite direction, but he forced himself forward, and shoved open the door with a brute force even Spider couldn’t hope to muster.

It was a huge space that could have been a factory floor at one time, but now held nothing but … coffins. No, not quite. Tanks. Just like the Weapon X tanks, clear material that was not quite glass and not quite metal, but something in between.  Some were standing on end, while others were in the traditional horizontal manner, and there were maybe three dozen of them lining the huge side walls, and the one at the very back of the room. Maybe half of them emanated a low, green glow, and seemed to be occupied … but not all the occupants were even remotely humanoid.

Xia gasped in horror, and the sound seemed to echo in the cavernous space as they all filed in. The only light came from the functional units, a sickly glow like flames through gangrenous flesh that barely punctured the gloom. To say it was nightmarish was like saying the Antarctic could get chilly at times. And this was exactly the place from his nightmares, as dark and rank with the scent of fear and pain and blood … only it wasn’t all Human blood.

And there was that bizarrely familiar smell again. Another scent was layered over it, demonic enough to throw him off. What was that smell?

“What the fuck is this place?” Tom asked, nervously aiming his gun at all the creeping shadows.

“Armageddon,” Spike said, and he didn’t sound too shocked.

Logan followed the hauntingly familiar scent to a horizontal tank close to the center of the room. The thing in the thick green goop looked more or less Humanoid. “This is an outgrowth of Arsenal, isn’t it?” He asked, suddenly sure he had the missing piece of the puzzle.

“Arsenal?” Spider asked, putting undo emphasis on the first syllable.

“A failed program where the Organization tried to recruit demons and mutants into working together,” Spike dutifully told them. “It was cancelled because the demons were often uncontrollable, and some of the mutants were hardly any better.” Logan wondered if that was a vague reference to party pooper Magneto.

“What the fuck?” Chameleon said, still in her male voice. Her machete flashed in the darkness. ”Demons? Are you serious?”

“Very much so,” Logan told her, not looking back. These tanks had lids on them, see through, but covered with an internal fog, so he couldn’t quite see through it. He wondered if this was some kind of suspended animation. “Humans attack us, and they don’t know there’s other creatures out there fightin’ for the Earth. Some are better than people, and some are just as bad.”

“And you know that how?” Tom challenged.

“I’ve met ‘em, I’ve fought ‘em. And I got a god on my tail who thinks he’s my friend.”

“Would you repeat that last statement?” Chameleon said incredulously.

“Oh my god,” Spike gasped. “That’s it, isn’t it? All this time, we thought he was just a powerful mutant.”

“No...MY god,” Logan drawled. “And you’re mine, Spike.”

“You hitting him on him now, mate?” Spider jeered. “I thought you godhead types didn’t go for behind the woodshed hanky panky.”

“He’s just revealed himself to be a member of the Organization upper echelon,” he explained, never taking his eyes off the livid green glow of the tank. It was unreal somehow, like walking freely in his own nightmare. Maybe he wasn’t really awake. “He wasn’t surprised by any of this, and he knows about Bob, a reality warper who no one has ever remembered - except the late, not so great Reaper, whom Bob made mundane. Sorry to break it to you, Spike, but Bob let him remember for a reason. Tag, you’re it.” Bob did everything for a reason; sometimes it wasn’t clear at the time, but later it always made a bizarre sort of sense. And here, it had revealed a traitor. Bob didn’t just think several moves ahead - he controlled the entire fucking board.

“Who the fuck is Bob?” Chameleon asked, obviously appealing to the others for information.

Much to Logan’s shock, he heard the gun being primed, and Tom said, “Don’t move, Spike.”

“What?” Spike sounded indignant. “You can’t believe him. He used to fuck your wife.”

Spider laughed. “Wolverine fucked a lot of wives; the ladies loved the furry guy.”

“Reaper was stabbed, for Christ’s sake - he probably did it,” Spike continued, perhaps rethinking the whole infidelity thing since Tom was already pissed off and sighting down the barrel of a gun at him. Bullets would annoy him but do little else; Spike would get splattered all over the hangar.

“Stabbed?” Logan repeated, finally looking at him over his shoulder. “Bob didn’t kill him, and since when do I stab anybody?” He raised a set of sprung claws until they glinted in the green light. “I fucking disembowel. And I would have cut up that Reaper fuck like a pizza, but Bob didn’t let me. So who did kill him, Spike?” He emphasized his code name, only then realizing Spike could stab people pretty damn good at close range.

But Spike glared back at him fearlessly, his dark eyes full of loathing. Did he hate him figuring it out, or just hate him on principal? “You really think anyone believes you didn’t kill him?”

“He didn’t,” Xia suddenly interjected. She was now shimmering faintly. “Wolverine hated Reaper - he’d have left nothing but chunks. Besides, wasn’t he found dead in his office? How would he have gotten within a yard of the building without anyone knowing about it?”

Spider was now sticking to the side of a tank standing on its end, but dark as if not in use. “I think someone advanced up the ladder the easy way. The kill-your-boss way.”

Spike seemed to share the glare with all of them. “What, do you think I’m out to screw you ‘cause I worked for Reaper? News flash, assholes - we all worked for Reaper. And I heard rumors of Armageddon existing, but I had no idea where or what it is; Reaper was in that loop, not me. And it’s fine if you want to think this is some bad spy melodrama and I’m a mole, but no mutant is welcome in the Organization anymore. May I also point out that Wolverine works for the very group that ruined everything, and has been talking to this mysterious Bob person behind our backs, and telling him everything we’re doing?”

Logan shook his head and looked back down at the tank. “Like I have to tell Bob anything.” He attempted to clear the condensation off the lid of the tank, but most of it was inside, and it did no good. He just saw hairy legs, a man’s, that looked fairly human, but he knew that with a lot of demons, they could hide what they were, or it was all inside. Same with mutants too.

“And what does that mean?” Spike snapped. “If he’s a god, why won’t he help you?”

“All he’s done is help me; I’d rather help myself.” There was a glowing green pin light at the end of the tank, on a small metal inset that probably passed for a readout on this tub. He couldn’t make heads nor tails of any of it, but the green light was now flickering.

“God helps those who help themselves,” Spider said, chuckling darkly.

Logan really wanted to find out if he would squish like his namesake.

“Demons and gods both exist?” Chameleon asked, her voice deepening as she grew more frustrated. “Do little green men exist too? Can we look forward to a visit from aliens now?”

“According to Bob, most aliens are actually just people from other dimensions, and they want nothing’ to do with us as a matter of principal.”

“You really expect me to believe there’s a god, and his name is Bob?” Chameleon repeated, apparently unable to get over this.

“Maybe he’s incognito,” Spider offered, still chuckling.

Logan tried to figured out why the light was blinking when he noticed that some of the condensation within the tank had started to clear up. Okay, that wasn’t good. “I think we set off a silent alarm,” he said, the instant the huge metal doors sealed and locked with a heavy finality.

“Oh shit,” Spider said, as all the functional tanks seemed to explode open, spilling their human and demonic contents onto the cement floor. Except for this tank, of course. Logan stood over it, claws out, and wondered if it was malfunctioning. Should he just shatter it?  Or did it even matter?

“Jayson,” Tom shouted into his comm as he opened fire on something that looked extremely squid-like - if squids were six feet tall and had several extra sets of tentacles.

It was then that the tank he was standing by exploded open, sending metallic edge glass fragments flying into his face - along with blood-warm, chemical-laden fluid, and as he reeled back, he thought he’d caught a glimpse of silver.

“Holy fuck,” Chameleon exclaimed.

Logan now knew why the scent was so familiar. He found, standing in the ruins of the tank, a naked man with three nine inch blades coming out of each of his hands; a man who was himself in almost every physical respect imaginable.

The word “clone” barely had time to zip through his mind when its - his - eyes suddenly glowed an ichor green, and it let loose a gravelly, inhuman growl. Not a clone - a hybrid.

But of him and what?

Before he could recover from the shock, it dove into him, punching its slick claws through his midsection, and Logan’s scream of pain got lost in the inchoate noise of battle.

14

There was much more in Death Valley than Scott ever expected.

Still, after scanning with the available equipment, he was able to figure out what it was he wanted. Not people wandering around in a daze, but a cluster of vaguely camouflaged buildings that gave off a strange metallic reading: adamantium, of course. Not much, but enough to register. They must have reinforced it for some reason, and whatever that reason was, Scott knew it couldn’t be good.

The heat still radiating from the desert floor was fucking up the infrared sensors (or the building was radiating a field that did it - he didn’t know how exactly, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible), but a close visual seemed to indicate that everyone had gone inside. The dead and dying (?) guards splayed out across the tarmac before a smashed gate were equally indicative of this. Scott shook his head in disgust, marveling at what an animal Logan still was. The Professor was so very wrong - redemption? For that thing? Unlikely. But then again, he still refused to give up on Magneto, didn’t he? He had faith in the most hopeless people.

Scott decided to put the jet down behind a dune just West of the base, as there was no need to advertise his arrival so dramatically. He wanted to surprise Logan and his “pals” as much as Humanly possible. He’d brought weapons too; nothing lethal, just enough to put them down for a while. He wasn’t positive his optic beam could take them all down, and he knew it was better to be safe than sorry, especially when dealing with asshole psychopaths of this particular magnitude.

Not that it mattered, but he didn’t wear his uniform, just his casual clothes, although he wore a high-impact vest underneath his shirt. It wouldn’t protect him from Logan’s claws (if he was stupid enough to let him get close enough to use them), but he knew from past experience that Logan’s punches and kicks - when he went all out - were a bit more brutal than average. All that adamantium in him gave him an edge; it was like getting smacked around by a guy in armor.

He regretted the vest the instance he was outside the plane, though; it was so hot he started sweating instantly, and the cool night breeze hardly cut it. Well, they did call it Death Valley for a reason.

He walked in through the broken gate, wondering if there were any guards still alive and if he should call 911 for them (but then again, the nearest road was about five miles away at least - did they come out here? And how would he give directions: “Hang a right at the coyote carcass beside the saguaro shaped like someone giving the peace sign … “) when he heard a static-y radio spit out a frantic “Jayson!”

before dying in what sounded like a burst of gunfire.

It didn't sound like it came from the guards; it sounded like it came from the direction of the van that presumably Logan and his friends hijacked. Still, it could have been a guard's radio - it could have fallen out during the melee and ended up over there.

As Scott wandered over to see if he could find it, he was sure he heard the crunch of gravel, like someone walking away, but as he frantically looked around, he saw no one.

One hand on his visor and the other loosely on the paralyzer on his hip, he said, "Hello? Who's here?" He was braced for attack from any direction, but there was no answer - or any noise - at all.

It was then that an earthquake hit and made him stumble, fighting for balance as the earth seemed to turn gelatinous under his feet. Okay, he assumed he was either in California on the wrong day, or it was simply the guy that Brendan had called "earthquake boy", one of the mutants supposedly on the Organization team. Although this was inconvenient, Scott figured he could take him out with a blast if he got him in range (and before any buildings fell on him).

The warehouse seemed to waver, like a tree limb in a breeze, but it held firm, and no big bits of it fell off or down; Scott assumed that's what the adamantium was for. Being in California, this place was probably built to take a ten pointer on the Richter scale.

But the asphalt wasn't. It was cracking beneath his feet, spider webbing like fractured glass, and he had to stumble inside the broken doorway of the warehouse to avoid getting thrown down into a newly formed sinkhole. He wondered if the invisible (?) person was still around, but he didn't know what to do if they were, or how to find them.

As it was, the quake died then - just in time for him to hear the shouts and the gunshots. Very muffled, but deep within the building. Great; Logan and his friends had started the party without him.

Scott forged ahead grimly, wondering if there were any good guys he could join up with here, or if they were all bad, with some just simply being worse than the others. What was that saying? The devil and the deep blue sea. Well, maybe that should be amended to Bob or Logan.

No, that was giving Logan too much credit - he was still mortal after all. Something could kill him. Bob ... well, who the hell knew? Nothing had worked yet.

The cacophony seemed to end behind two huge hangar doors, warped in its frame but still sealed shut. There was no visible panel anywhere, so he didn't see how he could operate it, and it was too heavy to open manually. That left him one option, didn't it?

He backed up down the hall, not wanting to be caught in any backwash, and did pause for a moment, as he considered the possibility it would rob him of the element of surprise.

Oh, fuck it - if this didn't surprise them, nothing would.

And with that thought, Scott ripped off his visor, and opened his eyes.

***

Tom started an earthquake as the hybrid Wolverine ripped a claw out of Logan's abdomen and started slashing his face, ripping back and forth as if pimp-slapping him. Of course, most pimp slappings didn't partially sever your nose or rip the side of your face open.

Logan punched his own claw through the thing's chest, right where the heart should be (should - if it was part demon, there was no telling where the heart was), and brought his other claw up to block the next slash. But god it hurt; it hurt so fucking much.

It was hard to breathe too; blood was flooding his nasal passages and his mouth, and he was trying not to choke on it. He hated the taste of his own blood.

The thing's florescent green eyes widened, presumably in pain, as he punctured the heart (or he at least hoped he did), and since that had stilled his assault for a moment, Logan grabbed his extended arm and tossed him off.  He’d forgotten it still had a claw in him until it tore away with its owner.

His intention was to get up and give that sucker some of his own back, but when he rolled over, pure agony ripped through his gut, and he curled up in a fetal ball, arms around his torn open stomach, surprised to feel how much blood was still flowing from the wound. Had that thing done that much damage in a short amount of time? (He knows my weaknesses because he's me.)  Or was there some kind of demonic poison on the claws?  Oh fuck, hadn't he been down that road before?

"It's not working," Chameleon shouted, almost in time with the wet thwacks of her machete as she sliced another Squidward apart. "Tom, the room is holding."

"Of course it is," Spike shouted. All spiked out again, he was punching and ramming them into any demon/mutant thing stupid enough to get close to him. He was covered in blood but doing all right for himself. "We're in California; this place is so earthquake proof it could probably be at the bottom of the San Andreas Fault and never even suffer a crack."

Great - another flaw in the master plan.

As the earthquake died away (Tom officially giving up for now), Logan forced himself to sit up, ignoring the monstrous, burning pain in his belly, only to see his demonic doppelganger had recovered first. It was back on its feet, still snarling, eyes lambent in the gloom. Blood ran down his claws, and Logan knew it was his. “Who are you?” Logan barked, just to see if this thing had anything approaching a functioning higher brain. The shadows around them were roiling with movement, and he could see more glowing eyes, and more claws - some metal, some not. “Can you speak? Do you have a name? Do you know it?”

The rage sent adrenaline flooding through him, and the pain became a dull background ache. Those sons of bitches; they had taken his DNA, and made these … things. It wasn’t enough he had been violated once so they could make him a walking Ginsu - he had also been violated at the cellular level, to make a hybrid demon/mutant army.

Out of the corner of his eye, Logan saw an energy beam spit out from the side of the room, and hit the cement floor with a sizzle. “Christ!” Tom yelled, more surprised than anything.

“I’m punching down the door,” Xia said.

The green-eyed thing snarled at him as the last of its puncture wounds sealed while he watched, the seam of flesh growing together, and it growled a single gravelly word: “Wolverine.” Logan didn’t know if it was identifying him, or naming itself.

It charged in, claws flashing, and Logan, realizing it was just a straight ahead charge, ducked under and to the side, barely avoiding its claws and slamming one of his own through its stomach before quickly turning away, ripping out most of its left side at the same time. If it was half demon he had no idea the amount of damage it could sustain; god knew he could take a lot.

Blood splashed on the floor between them, and even in the darkness, Logan knew its color was as wrong as its smell. And while the thing (“Wolverdemon,” he thought, and almost laughed at how pathetic it was) stumbled and almost slipped on its own blood, it didn’t fall. Was it possible they made this son-of-a-bitch tougher than he was? Well, what would be his purpose if it wasn’t?

He had just decided he was going to have to try and decapitate it when the door violently exploded open … all over them.