“Logan?” Bob asked, turning to look at him.  He looked confused, but just staring into his eyes, Logan knew Bob had just seen his memory. “Holy shit,” he breathed, turning back to face Cole.

He just stood there in front of them, shoulders slumped, hands loose at his side, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and a long tan colored canvas jacket that looked like it had seen better years.   In fact, the jacket seemed far too large for him, and Logan couldn’t help but wonder if he was concealing a weapon.

“Nanites do exist.  You know, that’s actually pretty fucking cool,” Bob commented, crossing his arms over his chest. “But how cool is that for you, Cole?”

It seemed to take a minute for the “push” to work, but finally it did. “I don’t wanna be here,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft.

“Do you mean here in London, or alive?” Bob asked.

“I’m not alive,” Cole replied flatly. “None of us are alive.  This is Hell, and it’s a joke.  I just wanna rest; I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

The shock of seeing the dead man in front of him was starting to wear off, although the guilt of having killed him lingered.   Logan knew after finding the kid’s grave empty it was possible that he actually got up and walked off, but he didn’t think it of it quite so baldly.  The kid actually got up and walked away from having his skull caved in.  Jesus Christ.

“What do you mean?” Bob prompted. “Why are you here?”

“I was supposed to kill him,” he said, pointing at Logan. “Or at least try. But … I’m afraid. I can’t do it, ‘cause I’m too scared.   The increased cherubim didn’t help.”

Logan looked at Bob, but he looked as confused as he did.  “Huh?”
They asked in unison.

Cole spilled his guts, and it all seemed impossibly surreal.  Supposedly the “powers that be” assigned him a task to rid this world of certain people (amazing how these “powers that be” sounded just like the Organization), and they gave him “cherubim” (nanites by the truckload) so he would be able to counter the demons of this realm who would oppose him and try and hurt him.  In exchange for this “good work”, he would earn a “Get Out Of Hell Free” card.

And Cole was absolutely terrified of him; Logan was his own personal Satan, the boogeyman to end all boogeymen. But he knew he should be, as he was the man that murdered him, was he not?

Bob had made sure no one else could see them or hear them, and as the rain got worse, soaking them all to the bone, he wished Bob could do something about the weather.  But, no, he’d probably have to call Storm for that.

Cole broke down in tears as he told them how he had been sent to sabotage a machine that fed on innocent souls (it sounded, oddly, like Cerebro), and how he had to kill a demon that looked like a kid, but he almost fucked it up, and now he couldn’t quite get past the idea that he hurt a kid, even though it was really a demon.

They were both horrified by that, but Logan was ready to throttle him. “Who did you fucking hurt?!”  He demanded, trying not to panic.  If he killed one of the kids, he’d murder him a second fucking time. “Give me a name!”

“He doesn’t know,” Bob told him, and he knew just by the look on his face he was trying to will him to calm down.    He didn’t want to calm down, not here and not with this guy. The guilty pity he had felt for him minutes ago had simply evaporated.  Kill some kid, and all bets were off. “Now, you stay here and talk to him, I’ll be back in a second.”

“What -” But he had barely finished the word before Bob blinked out of existence. Was he off to the mansion to check on the kids? Why didn’t he take him with? But looking at the drowned wreck that was Cole, he supposed he knew exactly why Bob had left them alone. “Sorry Cole -” he began, and started towards him. Or at least he did mentally - he couldn’t actually move his legs.

Oh shit!  “Stay here” had been a push, hadn’t it?  “Goddamn it, Bob!” He snapped, to thin air. Cole was sobbing still - perhaps; it was now raining so hard it was hard to tell - and hadn’t noticed the comment at all, or at least didn’t react to it.

He looked and seemed pathetic.   So much so that Logan found it almost impossible to keep angry at him, or at least at the homicidal rage level.  Bob would fix what he could - Logan knew that, and he actually trusted him to pull it all back together within the realm of his abilities. And since he’d apparently glued his feet to the ground (bastard!), he couldn’t take his anger out on him anyways. Yelling wasn't all that cathartic when the guy was barely cognizant enough to appreciate it.

Staring at him, he could see just a hint of a shimmer underneath his pallid skin, like his complexion was flecked with mica, and you could see it in his eyes, miniscule arcs of electricity traveling between nanites, and it was all he could do not to shudder.  He'd only been a receptacle for them now, hadn’t he?  It worked, so now the Organization was taking advantage of his delusions and pumping him full of them. Probably the only reason Cole had anything approaching free will at
all was due to the fact that the nanites themselves had nothing approaching sentience: they simply followed their program and did
what they were constructed to do.  Anything outside of that was beyond them - luckily for Cole, and possibly everyone else.

Seized with a sudden curiosity, he asked, “Did you - would you have killed me?  That night, the night you died … would you have killed me first?”  He didn’t add “if you could”, but he thought it.

Cole's stare was glazed, almost drunken, and he seemed to look straight through him, but he still responded.  “It was our big score, our way out.   I didn’t wanna kill anybody … but I didn’t wanna go to jail.  The cop couldn’t leave.  We were all in way too deep.  I didn’t want it to go that way, but …”

“A cop was already dead, and what was one more, as long as you could get away?”

“Yeah. We didn’t really know about you.  Well, maybe Mike did, I think he said something about a crazy guy in the area, but who cared? If you got in the way, we could take care of you.”  He paused briefly. “Or, well, so we thought. I mean, if we’d known then you were some kinda demonic assassin, we prob’ly would have just waited you out.  We just thought you were a crazy guy. ”

Logan snickered.  So he had been tagged and dismissed as the “crazy guy”?  Amazing how a bunch of desperate junkies turned robbers and hopeful drug dealers had pegged him so well, so quickly.   It was probably a talent; shame the guys wasted it on a lame crime that had
no hope of working. “You intended to kill Lily,” he asked, clarifying,
“The cop.  You intended to kill her.”

“Well, yeah.  We had no choice.”

And there it was. Logan let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. It shouldn’t have made it okay - and he knew, logically, that it didn’t - but something in him relaxed, uncoiled, the guilt draining away until it was a trickle.   He could almost never claim a killing in self defense without some sense of irony, but he could here; killing to protect someone else didn’t make him any less a killer, but it did make it justified.  It made it almost karmic, in fact; the big bad guys expecting an easy target, and coming face to face with him instead.  Killers facing off with another killer - let Darwinism reign, and may the worst man win.  He knew that was usually him, so he wasn’t overly concerned as far as the outcome was concerned.   Maybe Lily was eventually killed, and it was his goddamn fault (and hers, for showing him compassion), but in that instance he did what he could to protect her that night.  He had the defense that he wasn’t in his right mind - and he wasn’t; he almost was, but not quite - but he couldn’t imagine his reaction being much different if he was completely sane.

Aware he was on the spot, Logan admitted, “I am sorry.  I mean, that I killed you.” He’d never had to apologize to a dead man before.  And while he meant it, he also knew the fact that he was sorry about it had no bearing on whether he would do it again; if he had to do it over again, the outcome would surely be the same.  He was simply sorry he ever had to kill.

Cole shrugged, and Logan didn’t blame him.  What did you say that?

Bob popped back into existence in the same exact location he had been occupying before he left, and he actually took a deep breath, as if he’d been running all the way. “Okay - it’s okay.”

“What d’ya mean it’s okay?” Logan asked testily.  Well, he really hadn’t wanted to stand here, having a conversation with a guy he once killed, who was now being royally fucked by the Organization, and all while getting drenched.  (Srina had been right about the rain …)

“Saddiq managed to hang on - in critical condition, but hey, it counts,” Bob told him, as Logan realized he was perfectly dry.  It was raining on him, and Bob was still perfectly dry.  What the fuck?  A mini force field? Could he not share it?

“Saddiq?” Now there was a name he recognized, mainly because he was a hard kid not to remember.  It was not just because he was one
of the Eden kids, although that helped; no, it was because he was ultra-serious.  Not in a Scott “I’m so anal it hurts” way, but in a “I could kill you seven different ways with a single finger within four seconds” kind of way - intensity squared.  He was a cute little cub that was still
a tiger, no matter how you looked at him.   But then again, he was engineered and trained to be just that, and Logan always felt a sympathy towards him.  From birth, his future had been laid out for him, regardless of how he felt, and now that he was free to do his own thing, he wasn’t sure how.  Saddiq was kind of like the son he never had - or the clone, whichever.  Logan shifted his gaze back to Cole. “How the hell did you hurt Saddiq?”  And really, was it any surprise that Cole almost got his ass kicked by him?  Saddiq could do it.  He was a “kid”
in age only.

“I altered my hand to adamantium, the hardest substance they can replicate.  His skin … it wouldn’t break, and he was trying to kill me.  I had no choice.”

“You keep saying that, ‘you had no choice’ - bullshit,” Logan snapped angrily. “You were not mind controlled, not back in Bear Creek, and not at the mansion. You did have a choice in both cases, and you made the wrong fucking one.”

“To be fair, I think he was slightly mind controlled back at the mansion,” Bob interjected. “He doesn’t know what reality is.  He thinks this is hell.”

“It is,” Cole said flatly. “Only I know it.”

“This is not hell,” Logan said dismissively. “I’ve been there.  And I don’t hear ‘Girl From Ipanema’ playin’.”

“MacArthur Park is much worse,” Bob assured him.

“Well, they both suck.”

“Especially when played on a Hammond organ.  It’s the great equalizer.”

Precisely how had they digressed to this point?  “You sure Saddiq’s okay?”

“Yes, he will be.  Luckily, he’s a tough kid.”

“Everybody else okay?”

“I think so.  I haven’t gone to fix Cerebro or whatever - I felt it took a back seat.”

Logan nodded, agreeing with that. Why did the Organization want to futz with Cerebro anyways?  Then he realized they must have been afraid Xavier could find their mutant foot soldiers.  Were they intending to send them out after him, or someone at the mansion? “Can you fix it?”

“Oh sure.  What are nanites but little machines?  I can fuck up machines without even intendin’ to.”

He was sure Bob was making a partial joke, but was serious enough that he didn’t have to worry about it.  “So, what do we do with him?”

Bob didn’t answer, simply turned to face Cole.  “What d’ya wanna do, mate?”

He shrugged. “I just don’t wanna do this anymore.  I’m tired.  The cherubim don’t really let me sleep anymore; I don’t dream.  Occasionally I remember gettin’ killed, but that’s it.”

“Would you like me to remove the cherubim?”

Cole seemed to hesitate, but then nodded, shoulders slumping as if giving up. “Yeah.  I can’t do this anymore.”

“If I do, you might die, Cole.  They’re the only things keeping you functioning.”

That just got a shrug. “Will I be in a better place?”

“It oughta be more peaceful.”

He sighed, “I’ll take that, as long as it’s over.”

“How do you get in contact the Organization?  Or the powers that be, whatever you call them?” Logan interjected, before Bob could do anything.

“I don’t.  They get in contact with me.”

“Even when you’re traveling?”

“They gave me a phone.”

“Can I see it?” Bob asked even though it wasn’t a question.

Cole took a cell phone out of his coat pocket and handed it to Bob.  It looked like an ordinary flip phone that fit snuggly in the palm of his hand.  Bob tossed it to Logan, and he caught it deftly.  “I disabled the tracking chip,” Bob said, just as he was about to open it. “But you might want to formulate a plan before you close in on them.”

“Killing all the fuckers isn’t plan enough?”

“It’s a start. But it’s not strategy, mate.  You have no idea what you‘ll be going up against. They know you, they know you‘re a threat, and they‘re usually ready for you.  Make sure you‘re ready for them.”

Bob was hardly telling him something he didn’t know, but with a sigh he tucked the phone in his pocket.  There was no way he could talk Xavier into a full on assault against the Organization, was there?   Although, come to think of it … Scott had a minor grudge against them, and Saddiq - when he was healed - would probably like to get a piece of them.   He knew he could get Marcus in on it, and Helga (when did she miss a fight?), and if he could find Spider, he could have quite a strike team.  Oh, and the Sisters - after seeing them rip Kali’s arms off, he knew he just had to them on the team.  Of course, if Bob came along,
he probably wouldn’t need anyone else - but would it be as satisfying? Personally, the thought of The Sisters being released on the upper echelon and playing tug of war with their limbs warmed his heart.

Bob said something in a language Logan didn’t recognize, and held out his right hand. Reality seemed to warp in a limited area around his hand, and a cell phone appeared in his palm, one that was an exact replica of the phone Logan had just put in his pocket. “You can clone phones?”

“If they know it’s missing, the jig’s up.” Bob opened Cole’s coat, and
slid the phone in his pocket for him.  “I want them to think their nanite experiment suffered a catastrophic failure, so they don’t pump any
more poor schlubs.”

“It’s not gonna stop them.”

“Of course not.  Technology doesn’t stop.  Once that genie is out of
the bottle, it can’t be forced back in, I know that, but we can delay it‘s general release.  If they think there’s a fatal flaw in the design, it will force it back to R & D.  That oughta set them back a year at least.”

“You’re an evil genius.”

“Of course I am; I’m a business man.” He clapped his hands together, and said, with achingly false cheerfulness, “Are you sure you want to
do this, Cole?”

The sad man in the soggy canvas coat nodded, letting his chin drop to his chest. “I just want this over with. I don’t wanna be in Hell anymore.”

Bob, oddly enough, went to hug him, and it seemed that the very moment he embraced him, Cole sagged forward, going limp in his arms, and his smell changed instantly to one of decay.  He was dead, just like that; Bob wasn’t kidding about being able to fuck them up.

He then moved Cole’s limp body behind the tree, propping him up as if he was sitting against the trunk.  He almost could have been alive, as long as you didn’t catch the smell. “Poor guy,” Bob whispered quietly. “He should have been dead, and those blasted machines brought him back.”

“He tried to kill Saddiq. I can’t feel all that sorry for him.”  But he did feel some pity for him.  He was just a stupid kid, a stupid dead kid, who was a puppet for the Organization beyond the grave.  And he had killed him in the first place.  What a shitty fate.

They started away, leaving the cemetery, and after a long, awkward moment of silence, Bob said, “I thought you might want to know that I’ve decided to try and track down Angel.”

“Really? Good.  Why’d you change your mind?”

Bob shrugged, and he sensed he was being ingenuous, but he changed his mind there too, and admitted, “It’d be worth it just to see the look on the big lug’s face if I saved his hash.”

Logan snorted, just imagining that.  If Angel had been shocked to see him, think how fucking pissed he’d be to see Bob.  Happy but pissed, a reaction Bob was probably accustomed to by now.  Then Logan saw Srina, in her junky little Citroen (a million dollars, and she still drove that crappy car), and she waved at him before wiping condensation off the inside of the window.

Bob patted him on the back, and it was so unexpected it nearly made him jump. “Think long and hard about this.  The Organization is like an invasive cancer - you can cut away all the parts you want, but it will always come back.  They know you, they’ll be ready for you.”

So he had known what he was thinking.  But, then, didn’t he always? “Then I’ll have to give them something else.”

Bob didn’t respond to that, just grimaced.  “Just take some time off to relax, and think about it.  There will always be time to get them.”

Logan didn’t know which was worse: Bob being slightly condescending, or the possibility he was simply telling the truth.

Shit.  This was never going to end, was it?  They would be after him,
 and he would be theirs - forever.

Logan knew what he was doing was so wrong, and yet he was hard pressed to care.

He’d been lingering around London for two weeks now, and Srina hadn’t gotten sick of him yet, although he supposed that was only a matter of time.  It felt like he was playing hooky, although from what he had no idea.

He had called Xavier a couple of times, to make sure everything was really okay, and to figure out how to ask about Leonie’s body.  That was where him being a telepath paid off, because Charles guessed what he was trying to ask, and told him Leonie was buried in a cemetery outside of Westchester, as he'd thought it was the least the poor girl deserved, and he also figured that was what Logan would want, as soon as he could think straight.  (Logan was almost offended by that comment, but let it go.  He wasn’t honestly sure he had been in what passed for his right mind since then.)  Xavier gave him the address, and Logan decided when he returned to New York, he would see her first.

Word of his “status” as Lady Blood’s consort had gotten around the city, and as a result, he discovered he could tell the vampires of London almost anything and have them obey.  He could walk into bars and tell them to hunt elsewhere, and they would leave - grumbling, but they would leave.  He could get used to bossing them around, but he knew if he kept it up much longer, Hashim might get pissed off.   Not that he cared, but he would hate to have to kill the guy after he helped him out with Kali.

He was still thinking about what to do.  The phone had never rung, and with them knowing Cole was dead you’d think it wouldn’t ever, but then again, it was probably a number they intended to reuse.  He wasn’t sure what he would do if - and when - it did.

Srina had found the phone and asked about it, and while he considered lying, he decided what the hell, and told her an edited version of the truth.  (Well, edited because the nanite/dead thing was too fucking weird.)  After he told her it might be his way to track them down at their new header quarters, she stared at him like he had just sprouted claws through his forehead.  “Are you fucking insane?  Don’t you remember Chimera?”

He should have known that would open an old wound, and he knew then he really should have lied.   But later on that night, after she had some time to think about it, she told him, “You know … if you need some invisible help with this whole … thing, let me know.  Just don’t expect me to fight.  I break into places and steal things - I don’t kickbox like an action hero.”

“How can they fight what they can’t see?” He replied, smiling.  He knew what it took for her to make that offer, and he appreciated it.  Someone who could be invisible to cameras as well as people might even be more useful than a teleporter.   But could he justify ever putting her at risk again?

He felt like he was finally putting a workable action plan together - would the Organization expect him to attack now, especially after all this time?   And with a new strike team? - but he had yet to put it in motion. Xavier would object if he heard about it, so he knew he couldn’t catch wind of it, not until after the fact.

The night before he had decided to try and track down Spider, Yasha came back to him in a dream.

They were back in Ammit’s sylvan realm, and Yasha was sitting by a marble fountain he had never seen before.   In fact, wasn’t it where Ammit previously had her hot tub?  Yasha smiled so wryly at him he knew instantly something was wrong.  “What is it?” He asked, sitting beside her on the black marble bench.

“The Japanese have a saying, something about the tallest nail being
the first to be hammered down.  Am I even close?”

“Kinda.  I know where you’re going, anyways.”

“Great.  Well, it seems you’ve attracted some high powered attention.”

“Again?  Who this time?”

She shifted uncomfortably, and sighed. “The Powers That Be got in contact with me.”

He groaned and rubbed his eyes. “No.  Tell them no.”

“You haven’t even heard what about...”

“I don’t care.  No.”

“They seemed to think that being around Bob had tainted you towards them, so they had an offer for you.   There’s something going on in California they want taken care of.  Their champion would do it, but he’s otherwise occupied, so they’d basically like you to do it.”

“No.  If they want a “champion” to do it, tell ‘em to go get Angel back.”

“They implied he was busy doing something else for them.”

He stared into her black eyes, but saw no deception there.  She was telling the truth, at least as she knew it.  So was Angel stuck in that Hell dimension on purpose?  Was it part of some master plan?  If so, Bob was never going to find him, or, even if he did, he couldn’t help him out in any way. “Well, I ain’t their lap dog.  No, way.  They can find someone else. What about Rags?  He ain’t much, but he can bring the wrath of the Gorgons down on people.  That’s gotta be considered nuclear level armament.”

“They assumed you would be … reluctant, so they’re offering you an exchange.”

“An exchange?”  What was this, hostage negotiations? “What, I do this for ‘em and they bring Angel back?”

“No.  You do this one thing for them, and they’ll help you regain some of your memories.”

He felt his heart skip a beat. “What?”  On the one hand, the offer was incredible - get his memories back.  All of them?  Would he finally know what his fucking real name was?  On the other hand, he knew the more he learned about the past, the more he didn’t want to know.   Maybe there was a good reason he didn’t remember, one that went beyond all the mindfucking.

“In fact, they said they’d give you a sample.  I’d take it if I were you, samurai.  I’ve never heard of the Powers making a deal with anyone. Good luck.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

“Wait -” he began, but then stopped, as it hit him.

What he wasn’t exactly sure what "it" was at first - it just felt like he'd taken a lightning strike directly to his prefrontal cortex.   Fire spread through his neurons, jumping synapses, the pain so white hot he couldn’t even scream …

…He was in a forest, old pine trees clustered around him, their needles making a soft bed for the thick ferns and wildflowers that covered the ground. There was a small path trampled into the ground, but already it was being grown over by berry vines and alpine grass.  Up ahead the woods thickened, casting every thing in dark shadows even though the sun hadn’t set, and when the chill breeze shifted, he smelled something familiar.

Blood.  Waiting for them up ahead, thick and fetid, new and old.  Logan felt his stomach turn, and knew this was going to be bad - worse than the previous scenes.  And the killer was still there, wasn’t he?   He couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes somewhere, staring as if trying to bore a hole through his skull by will alone.

“Sheriff?” MacDonald asked, nervously gripping his shotgun tight as his eyes darted furtively around them.  Obviously he couldn’t smell it - good for him.

“Go back to town, get Doc Withers,” he ordered, keeping his voice low.

“What?” Mac asked anxiously.  He lowered his weapon, aiming it ahead of them. “Is there something wrong?  D’ya think he’s -”

“Go,” Logan growled, making sure his voice was so hard the boy wouldn’t even dare consider disobedience. “Now.”

The scrawny young man swallowed so hard Logan could hear his Adam’s apple bob, smell his fear. “Y-yes sir,” he agreed, quickly heading back down towards town. He tried not to crash through the underbrush, but it was hard for him to avoid doing so, both in his haste and his panic.

This was going to be ugly - very ugly - and he really didn’t want any witnesses …

Logan jolted awake, eyes open and staring at the ceiling before he could even form a conscious thought. “Oh fuck no,” he snapped, glad Srina was already in the shower. “I was never a fucking cop!”

But as Logan rubbed his dry eyes, he knew he’d be unable to live with himself until he found out what the fuck that was all about.

Bastards!  The Powers That Be didn’t take no for an answer, did they?

__________

To Be Continued….