The woman made a noise that made him internally wince, wet and strangled, but he kept it from his face because she didn’t need to see it. No one knew how bad she was more than she did. It seemed to take an effort of will, but she finally forced out, “CHiP found a car, and a sick passenger, belligerent, called in back up. Feds arrived first, tried to take -” she paused to make that noise again, a horrible sound, fresh blood appearing in her mouth. “ - person, seemed wrong, tried to tell them they’d work it out at the hospital. We were coming up when they shot him.” She choked again, coughing up a fine spray of blood.

Okay - so the highway patrol found their quarry in a stalled out car? Something was obviously wrong with them, so while he didn’t engage, he called in back up, and maybe an ambulance that wasn’t here yet. He thought something was funny with the Organization’s request, or thought the quarry was too sick; either way, he didn’t play ball. So they shot him for doing his job a little too well. It still seemed extreme for the Org, especially with witnesses arriving.

Her hand flopped against her chest almost spasmodically, fingers clenching and unclenching, and before he was aware of what he was doing, he’d grabbed her blood smeared hand. She was ice cold, all her blood was pouring into her midsection, and her grip was weak. “Lucia Mendoza,” she rasped.

“Alex Logan.” Was that the name he was a sniper under, or was that solely his name in Canadian Intelligence? Oh hell, it didn’t matter - they were all fake names (as far as he knew).

She made that noise again, before forcing out another question. “You really RCMP?”

He nodded as a bullet punched through the hood and a gout of steam erupted from the side of the car. It obscured his view of Faith and Marc, at least for the moment. He saw no point in telling her “maybe”; the truth had no place here. “They’re gonna pay for this,” he promised her, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.

She gave a faint nod, and maybe she attempted to squeeze his hand back, but it wasn’t working. Still, he saw some spark of determination in her eyes below the shock, and it was almost heartbreaking the look of trust she was giving him. He felt like a heel, so as another barrage of gunfire strafed them, he fired back blindly, not aiming and not caring. None of the bullets they had would punch through that Organization van; it was perfect cover, which is why the cops were getting shot down like slow targets in a shooting gallery, and the grunts had all the time in the world to reload and fire again. It was only a matter of time before a gas tank went, and the few survivors were blown to hell. That was probably their clean up strategy.

Her hand went limp in his; just limp, a dead, cold thing in his hand. He looked back at her, her eyes were closed, and he didn’t know if she was unconscious or dead, and he didn’t check. It didn’t matter, as if she wasn’t dead now, she would be in a minute. They all might be dead in a minute if the grunts got a lucky shot and hit a tank.

That was it. He was so angry he was shaking, his blood was pounding in his ears so loudly the gunshots seemed muffled, so he slid his gun along the asphalt to one of the surviving cops behind a neighboring car as he placed Lucia’s hand down on her useless bulletproof vest. “Cover me!” he roared, vaulting the roof of the cop car and charging the overturned van as bullets swarmed towards him like angry bees. This was it - no more dying.

They hit him but he felt little more than impact, each like a donkey kick, as his skin tore and burned at the penetration site. Some bounced off bones, others went through, but almost none hit anything vital - or at least vital enough to slow him down. As soon as he was even with the van they couldn’t shoot him without leaning around the side and getting picked off by a cop or Marc or Faith, but he didn’t wait for them to try. He grabbed the edge of the former roof of the van and hauled himself up, popping his claws as he lunged at the grunts behind the van.

Heads swiveled and guns turned, but they looked like they were moving in slow motion to him. He lashed out with his claws, shredding guns, and came down feet first on the chest of the guy who looked like the high ranker, collapsing his rib cage as they hit the ground. Some of them shot him point blank, but he was so enraged he barely felt the pain of it, he just tasted the cordite and blood as he shredded their guns and kicked out, shattering kneecaps and femurs with single, savage kicks. He slashed the faces of some of them, cutting open eyeballs and slicing open noses, sharp pains that made men turn away stumbling and screaming, temporarily blind and horrified by the feeling of their own blood spurting from their wounds, and when one man came at him with a hunting knife he rammed a single claw straight through his right lung. “At least you still have one; it’s more than she had,” he growled in the man’s face, as he stared at him in wide eyed shock.

But that’s when he saw what was wrong with them. Their eyes were glazed, the pupils blown, and the whites had the faintest tinge of yellow in them. It wasn’t jaundice - it was a drug. He could smell it in their sweat and blood, something like lysergic acid and rust. The man was staring at him incomprehensibly, making little noises that were almost grunts, the rudimentary language of being that had lost the ability to form language.

One of them shot him point blank in the back, the impact making him stagger as the powder flash burned his skin, and the bullet ripped through him, missing bones all the way, and punched straight unto the grunt in front of him, hard enough to splatter his blood all over his face.

Logan turned, claws flashing in the sun, adamantium tearing the gun to ribbons, and he brought his other fist around as he spun. At the last second he retracted his claws and simply punched him, but he didn’t hold back like he did in the cage fights. He felt the man’s eye socket shatter beneath his knuckles, his cheekbone cracking like porcelain, and the grunt thudded against the van’s undercarriage before collapsing to the asphalt.

A grunt with a broken leg scrabbled along the ground for a gun, and Logan stomped on his hand, grinding fine bones beneath his heel. He was tempted to just start breaking as many bones as possible in every one of these fuckers, because it was painful and not fatal, as long as he avoided the neck and spine. He realized he could feel a catch in his chest when he tried to breathe, and he figured the bullet he got in the back had ripped into his lungs on the way out. Funny. What, was it a theme with these assholes?

One of the grunts near the front end of the van found a gun, and held it up in spite of his broken arm, sighting him with drug glazed, distant eyes. Logan just sneered at him and his rampant stupidity. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m one of your boss’s fucking attack dogs, codenamed Wolverine.” There was the slightest glimmer of recognition somewhere deep within the man’s eyes, and something else, exactly what he wanted: the sour smell of fear. “You think bullets mean anything to me?”

There was no response, but he hadn’t expected one. Besides, he’d just finished talking when a dark hand grabbed him by the throat. The grunt meant to react, he could see it in his eyes, but by then Marc had dug in his fingernails, and the paralyzing toxin had already hit his bloodstream. Marc let go, and he toppled stiffly to the ground like an imbalanced statue.

Just behind them, one of the grunts with a broken leg had managed to get up to his knees, holding an automatic pistol, but Faith simply snap kicked him in the face, and he went down like a bag of hammers.

Logan caught movement out of the corner of his eye and pivoted swiftly, but it was just a cop coming around the other side of the van gun first, just like he was taught. He was glad he’d already retracted his claws, as he didn’t want to know what they would have done had they seen that. The cop with the gun inched around, and seeing the soldiers laying unconscious or mewling in pain splayed out on the ground all around them, his face took on an almost comical look of wide eyed astonishment. He then looked at him, and asked the best question in the universe: “How the hell are you still alive?”

He had no answer to that (well, at least that he could tell him), so he didn’t give him one. The guy was a deputy clearly, with one of those horrible little cop mustaches that could have been the facial hair of a ‘70’s porn star with just a centimeter more length on each side. He was Hispanic and on the short side, but built like a bulldog, suggesting he didn’t sit on his ass every day eating doughnuts. He was also splattered with blood, it stained his uniform, and Logan wasn’t completely sure if it was his own or someone else’s.

More cops came around, but there were only four still capable of standing (all Barstow - he didn’t see a CHiP uniform among them), and two of them were bleeding pretty badly: a rangy blond cop, limping and bleeding from a leg wound and from a cut (nick?) on his face, and a sturdily built female cop whose left arm was hanging limp at her side and dribbling blood like a gutter in a rainstorm. They all had their guns out and aimed on the men, even though none were in any condition to resist, and few of their weapons were still in one piece. But they were still freaked out by what happened, it was probably the first time most of them had fired their weapon off the shooting range, and several of their colleagues and (possible) friends had just died. Worse yet, this was totally senseless; if it was a bank robbery or something, gangs having a go, it would make sense. But these were weird guys with strange bullets just shooting at them for no particular reason. People needed mean! ing, they needed a reason of some kind. “Just because” pleased no one.

“Who the hell are you people anyways?” the female cop asked, scowling at him, Faith, and Marc.

He could taste blood in the back of his throat, and black spots were starting to dance in front of his eyes as the oxygen content of his blood dropped. He was healing, he could feel the burning in his lungs, but he did get shot more than he thought so it was taking a moment. Blue started to push in at the corners of his vision, and he tried to push it back - gods didn’t belong here either - but it was autonomic, like his healing factor.

“Would you believe we’re superheroes?” Faith asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“We’re members of Canada’s Special Operations Joint Task Force Two,” Logan replied, the lie burbling easily to his lips. Maybe he’d also inherited Bob’s ability to bullshit.

This earned him puzzled looks from everyone, including Faith and Marc, although the latter were careful not to let the cops see it. “What the fuck is that?” the blond cop asked bluntly.

“That military?” the deputy wondered.

“In a sense,” he replied cryptically, deciding not to get into it.

“You’re Canadian?” the lone uninjured cop (save for some glass cuts on his face) asked with genuine shock. What the hell was that supposed to mean?!

“You’ve been shot,” the female cop said, gesturing at the many holes in his shirt. He was splattered with so much blood they couldn’t tell he wasn’t actively bleeding, which was good.

“You should sit down,” the deputy said, giving him a scrutinizing look from head to toe. The look on his face seemed to say he thought he was going to die within the next few minutes, and he had no clue how he was still alive, not to mention still on his feet.

“I know how it looks, but -”

“Sir, you need to sit down now,” the deputy interrupted, in his stern cop voice.

He got it. Part of it was concern for someone who appeared to take a half dozen bullets, but part of it was fear over a man who could take so many bullets and not only still be standing, but still defeat so many mad gunmen while apparently unarmed. He knew the deputy was weighing arresting him, simply because none of this made sense, but his potentially fatal injuries were stopping him.

Faith grabbed his arm, and whispered in his ear, “Logan, please, just do it.” She continued holding on to his arm, as if holding him back, and just for her he did it, and she sat down with him, keeping a hold of his bicep. It annoyed the shit out of him that she was so afraid he’d attack the guy she was holding on to him, but after a moment he realized she wasn’t holding on to him for that reason. “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen,” she hissed angrily into his ear. She must have been referring to charging the van. “And I’ve seen stupid. Hell, I’ve done it.” But after a moment she kissed his cheek and rested her head on his shoulder, giving his arm another squeeze. “You crazy bastard. I don’t know whether to hit you or fuck you.”

“Right this second?”

She punched his thigh - and damn did that hurt! It was all he could do not to yelp - but she hid her face against his shoulder so the cops didn’t see her laugh.

The cops started cuffing the grunts in spite of their injuries or lack of consciousness, but they ran out of those plastic tie thingies quickly. Also, they started to notice other things. “What the fuck happened to these guns?” the female cop exclaimed, nudging some shredded pieces of an automatic rifle with her toe.

The uninjured cop pointed down at the guy Marc had paralyzed, and asked, “What’d ya do? Give him the Vulcan nerve pinch?”

He could breathe much easier now, and there was no pain, not even burning. The blue was edging out into his normal field of vision now, filling him with light. “These guys are full of drugs; check their pupils.”

The deputy did, and one of the soldiers grunted at him, a noise as sharp as a bark, making him take a step back and unconsciously drop his hand on the butt of his now holstered gun. “Are you sure they’re not just sick? The white’s are yellow.”

“They’re not, trust me. They can’t even talk.”

“Isn’t that convenient?” the deputy replied, glaring down at the cuffed man at his feet like it was his fault. Maybe it was; there was no visible signs of ranking on these grunts. No visible sign of anything, in fact.

There was a sharp burst of ambulance sirens, finally arriving, and Logan realized something. “Hey, where’s the person the CHiP tried to take in?”

The deputy looked at him sharply. “How’d you know about that?”

“Mendoza told me.”

The blond cop suddenly looked towards him, dismay and something close to panic distorting his features. “Lucia? Is she ..?”

He shook his head. “Sorry. She got a bullet in her lungs.”

His face seemed to collapse in on itself and he turned away, so no one could see him. He was either her partner or something more, maybe boyfriend - either way, this hurt, seemingly more than his bullet wound.

“We’re gonna have to take you guys in,” the deputy said. “Just until we can confirm your identities and figure out what the fuck happened here.”

Faith’s feelings were crashing into his, the blue light making everything too clear, too sharp, and he knew that he’d need to get out of here as soon as possible. He couldn’t let them take them, not when the quarry - whoever they were - was mysteriously gone. Every minute they were gone was another minute that someone else could be dead.

He slid his arm out of Faith’s grasp and stood up, letting the power flow through him, out of him through his eyes, into his throat, as he stared at the deputy, and said, “You are not taking us in.” Was he nuts, or had his voice changed? He sounded a little like Bob when he went into “god voice” mode. “Make up whatever story you have to, but we were not here. You won’t remember us.”

The deputy stared back, dazed, and the other cops, looking towards him, looked frozen. He felt like a cobra hypnotizing his prey, and he had no idea how he was doing it. The answer, of course, was that he wasn’t doing it at all; Bob was doing it for him. “Now tell me where the prisoner is.”

The deputy - whose name he suddenly knew was Carlos Garcia, a man who lived in fear that he was actually gay since his sex drive was almost nil and he didn’t find women particularly attractive, even though he never found men all that attractive either, making him wonder if he was just some kind of sexless freak, a condition that led him to throw himself into his work wholeheartedly to get his mind off such things; a man who lived with a dog and two cats, who hadn’t talked to anyone in his estranged family for ten years yet told people at work he saw them every Christmas, even though in reality he spent it at home alone, or volunteering to bring toys to kids in the annual police charity drive, just to keep busy - almost seemed reluctant, but couldn’t resist him. “They stole a squad car and took off during the gunfight. I tried to call in an APB but I don’t know if it got through to dispatch before a bullet took out the radio.”

“How are you doing this?” Marc asked curiously.

“Logan?” Faith asked, in the kind of voice that suggested she hoped this was just some kind of joke and not him being possessed by an evil entity.

He tried very hard not to look at anyone else, as he didn’t want to know them. He got it now that Bob wasn’t just a nosy bastard - although he was - but he couldn’t help it. He wasn’t a telepath; to call him a telepath was an insult. He didn’t read your mind; he didn’t have to. He would look at you and he would know you - your every secret, your pain, he would know it as intimately as his own. You were a book, and when he looked at you, the first thing he saw was your life spread out all around you. And somewhere in the back of his mind, Logan felt a sting of panic: what had Bob seen when he first saw him? “What can you tell me about this person?”

Garcia shrugged. “Not much. I didn’t see them, I just saw the car driving off and knew it wasn’t one of us.”

“Gender?”

“Man.”

Glancing at the grunts, he could see their minds were like broken mirrors; they were shards, fragments of a greater whole, a distorted reflection. The grunt he had talked to, whom he had identified himself to, had a strangely elliptical and manic train of thought; he kept thinking “Wolverine, alpha target, normals don’t pursue without proper equipment. Wolverine, alpha target, normals don’t pursue without proper equipment -” And he was the only one with any kind of thought train that could be followed.

Almost as an afterthought, he added, “You’ll all be fine,” meaning the cops. He actually didn’t care if the grunts ever got better or not, although he was pretty sure they would. The only one who had a really serious injury was the one who took the bullet that passed through him.

Logan turned towards Marc and Faith but looked down at the ground, although not quite quick enough to avoid seeing them both jump back in shock. “Dude,” Marc said tentatively. “You’ve got Bob eyes.”

“Yeah, I was about to say that,” Faith agreed.

He was pretty sure that they meant his eyes weren’t simply cobalt blue but bleeding energy, electric blue filling his eye sockets and imbuing into the air. He could almost see it himself, in his mind’s eye, and it was pretty disturbing. “I am his avatar, you know. I’m kind of stuck with his powers for now. We’d better go.”

The EMTs were here, but as they walked past them, Logan said simply, “We’re not here.” And they weren’t; the EMT’s did their triage without giving them a single glance as they started walking back down the road towards their vehicles.

“Why’s your head down?” Faith asked.

“I can’t look at either of you. I don’t have total control of his powers yet.” He hoped they didn’t quiz him further, as he wasn’t sure what he’d say.

“You seem to be doing a good job anyways,” Marc noted, but he left it at that.

He could feel it all, all the pain left behind him; it tasted like blood and ashes in his mouth. Marc’s and Faith’s thoughts were crashing into him, but were too jumbled up with his own for him to make any sense of them. All he got was feelings, and too many of them as well. His head was starting to throb, hurting like he was about to have some sort of cranial meltdown. “I’m gonna pass out in a minute,” he warned them, actually hoping that was true. The pain was building exponentially, bringing up a blue glow when he closed his eyes, a light brighter than the sun. It felt almost as hot. “But I’m gonna be okay. It’s just Bob takin’ his power back before it kills me.”

“What?” Faith replied, alarmed. Or he thought she said it; he wasn’t hearing well at the moment, mainly because he was hearing everything all at once, and with so many people’s thoughts running through his head, he was hearing everything through a hum of gibberish and white noise.

“I’ll be all right. It’s just -” he felt his legs give way, but he didn’t feel his knees hit the pavement. Someone may have grabbed him, maybe both of them, but in the burning heat of the light he didn’t feel it. He just felt the hollow shell of his body all around him, a soft prison, one he was dying to leave -

- and he found himself on a lawn chair besides a sapphire blue pool, a rum drink with a straw of speared fruit chunks sticking out of it sitting in his hand. Bob was sitting on the diving board across the pool from him, wearing nothing but a scarlet Speedo. He was grinning at him in a way that made him suspicious. “You’re full of surprises,” Bob told him. “You know how refreshing that is? I don’t meet too many people who surprise me.”

“Why are you wearing a Speedo?” Logan looked down at himself, hoping he hadn’t put him in a Speedo - he’d have to kill him then - but Bob had put him in the type of long surfer shorts Bob liked to wear. They were bright blue with a pattern of bright green palm trees and red parrots on it; not so much loud as positively flaming.

“’Cause I knew you’d balk if I was starkers.”

He sighed, taking a gulp of his frou-frou rum drink. It went down sweet and warm, like molten honey. “Yeah, I would. I really don’t wanna see your junk.”

“I don’t blame you. You’d never be able to live with the jealousy.” He flashed him that grin again, amused at his own joke, as only Bob could be. “You’re embarrassed about it, aren’t you?”

“Your dick jokes? No.”

“That’s not what I’m referring to, and you know it.”

Yes, he knew what he was referring to: Lucia. “Sometimes I do stuff, okay, and I don’t know why I do it. Don’t start.”

But Bob didn’t take the hint - did he ever? “Not many people are capable of that kind of compassion towards a stranger. Especially a person who’s been through what -”

“Shut the fuck up,” he snapped, angry enough that he considered throwing his glass at him. But the drink was good and he was parched, so he didn’t. “Just drop it, okay? Put the power back in its box and let me wake up. I’ve probably freaked Faith out. Marc’s used to me passing out for a bit to heal, but she isn’t. “

Bob stared at him, but he knew he was looking through him, as he usually did. Now Logan knew what he was seeing, and it made him squirm. “You love her?” It almost wasn’t a question.

“She’s too young for me. I’m not sure how our relationship would ever work.”

Bob shook his head. “That’s not an answer.”

“Well you know the fucking answer, don’t ya? So why are we even talking about it?”

Bob gave him a sly smile that had a tinge of sadness and regret to it. “Beneath all your armor, you’re still something of a romantic at heart, just like me. It’s a total bitch, isn’t it?” And with that, he stood up and jumped into the water, hardly making a splash, and sliding smoothly and sleekly under the water like a seal, his body a narrow shadow over the cloud painted tiles. That was the end of the conversation, and he was glad. He didn’t think he could take more conversations with Bob.

6

Waiting for sunset was a real pain in the ass, but they had no choice in the matter. Still, waiting wasn’t good for Brendan.

He tried not to think about his mother, and it was growing harder not to do it the more time passed. He snuck off to the bathroom several times, went out once to “get something at his apartment”, but really he just went to the Way Station and got Lau to give him a Long Island ice tea and a “red jolt“ (Red Bull and vodka)- or two. Two and a half. He was glad Lau was on, as he didn’t judge, and he wouldn’t rat on him to Angel. He cried a couple of times, but he wasn’t sure why, and he hated himself for his weakness. He wasn’t sure if he was crying for him mother or himself.

He ate a taco to get some food in his stomach, and went to the Church of the Stone Temple, just to sit and gather his thoughts, but he didn’t like his thoughts so he left. He did pick up his necklace, though, the ones blessed by the Gorgons. It might help; it couldn’t hurt.

They kept asking him what was wrong: Angel, Giles, Naomi. They knew that call he received had unnerved him, but he lied and said it was nothing, just his mother fucking up her parole, and he was so suddenly angry he didn’t know how to deal with it. How did you deal with this? He swallowed it as best he could, but it was an ember smoldering in his stomach, burning and leaden. As they prepared to move out, he armed himself appropriately: compact crossbow, a belt pouch quiver of small arrows, silver, wood, copper; a large, sharp hunting knife that reminded him a little of one of Logan’s claws; two stakes (in case he lost one); an explosive glass globe of holy water; and a Glock 23 handgun with a thirteen round capacity. Logan had told him they were standard issue armaments of the feds, the FBI in particular, but Logan didn’t say how he knew that. Maybe he didn’t know.

He made sure the gun had a full clip and grabbed two more, trying to find places to conceal them on his person (still within easy reach) when Angel came into what they called the “war room” (where they stored all the rest of their weapons) and closed the door, leaning against it as though blocking the way out. He stared at him, his dark eyes slightly fathomless, and Bren shook his head as he found room in his boot to shove a clip in (yeah, it hurt, but it would only be for tonight). “Let’s not do this.”

“Brendan, what’s going on?” he asked, ignoring his request. “You’ve been upset since that phone call, and I know you were lying earlier.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“You’ve also been drinking,” he added sharply. “Did you really think Altoids would be enough to block the smell for me? You smell like a bar.”

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it,” he snapped, whirling to face him. “I am not drunk, I just needed a shot of courage to walk into a den of vampire snuff film makers, okay? I’m ready; let’s go kill something.” Angel looked surprised, and he thought it was his anger that did it, but Bren caught a glimpse of his hand, and saw that he’d demoned out; he was so angry he lost control of his form. It seemed inordinately hard to change back to his Human form, and he wasn’t sure why. He also wasn’t sure why he bothered to shift back to his Human form, as he wasn’t going into battle that way. Demons took him more seriously as a fellow demon.

“I don’t think you should go,” Angel told him. “You get emotional, you get sloppy. Believe me, I know.”

“I am not emotional. In fact, I’m just the opposite, Angel. I’m a cold blooded bastard who has to get out there and do something constructively violent or I’m going to go crawl inside a bottle and never get out again. Now are you gonna get out of my way, or do I put you through the door?” Was he channeling Logan there? He had no idea where that had come from. Angel had always been very decent to him; he had no problem with him. But he felt like a spring had been wound tightly within his chest, and if he didn’t go out there and do something right this second, he would explode; he could almost picture his entrails hanging from the ceiling like gory streamers.

There was no anger in Angel’s expression, just concern, and it made him hate him for a moment. “Is she dead?” he wondered, taking a stab in the dark.

It was a stab that seemed to cut right through him, made the ember in his gut throb, and he didn’t even realize what he was going to do until he did it.

He charged him, so angry he could see only red (he always thought that was just an expression), and hit Angel square in the jaw.