15

Black Fire’s idea of torture was a drill press, which seemed both strangely crude and wildly ingenious at the same time. Boyle wondered if they’d shared this with other sadistic bastards, or perhaps picked it up from the Organization or the CIA.

They just chained him down to a cold, hard table and drilled a couple of holes in his arms and shoulders, nothing fatal yet, just enough to cause him lots of pain. They didn’t even ask him questions, so he assumed they were doing this for fun.

Eventually someone came in, a guy with a sharply featured face and a shock of reddish-brown hair, his blue eyes sharp and cruel. It was Timebomb; he remembered seeing his photo on the roster. He glanced down at him with disdain, and asked, “Who did you bring in with you?”

Boyle looked up at him blearily, pain making it hard to focus. He had passed out at least once, but not nearly long enough. “Huh?”

He sighed impatiently, his eyes narrowing to slits. “The mutant you brought with you. He recognized Nomad, although Nomad wasn’t sure he recognized him. He had strange hair and even stranger sideburns, looked well built but had no obvious visible mutations. Who was it?”

Boyle stared at him, wondering if this was a test of some sort, one he was bound to fail, or perhaps the Organization did send a mutie in without telling them. He scoured his mind to see if any mutant he’d ever seen on the roster matched that vague description, and he recalled the only one who’d ever been mentioned as having sideburns. Oh god.

He couldn’t help it; he laughed. It was so funny, and it made a queer kind of sense. Was that the plan? How had they managed it?

Timebomb punched him in a shoulder hole, send a deep shuddering pain through him, making him see an explosion of red before his eyes as tears ran down his face. “What’s so fucking funny?”

“It’s Wolverine, you stupid piece of shit. He’s not with us anymore, he signed up with some penny ante goody two shoes outfit out of New York, but it doesn’t matter. You’re so fucking dead.” He cackled again, amused at the thought.

He didn’t get why Wolverine was considered such a hard target at first. His powers, on paper, were pathetic; that was true of most of the physicals, who had to work at close range and were compromised because of it. But each time the Organization tried to upgrade to a new, better mutant assassin, ultimately they would fall back on Wolverine. Why?

He figured it out eventually. The ones with the more impressive projection and distance powers were often harder to control, or became opies who were a danger to themselves as well as others, or would simply gain too much unwanted attention. (Timebomb, for example - he had a hundred percent kill rate, but he made a huge mess, and no one could excuse an exploding head as “natural” or “subtle“.) And Wolverine got his codename for a reason beyond his claws and sense of smell.

Real wolverines were mean, vicious bastards, the most evil little things in the animal kingdom. Supposedly there had been instances where they killed bears, majestic animals so much larger and technically more deadly than themselves. But where bears had the size and the cache, wolverines made up for it by sheer tenacity and savagery. They didn’t seem to realize they were outclassed or dwarfed; they fought until they were bloody strips of fur staining the snow. And that explained everything.

Logan was a wolverine who had killed many, many “bears”, mutants far more powerful than him, his betters, even though he shouldn’t have been in the same weight class as them, and he shouldn‘t technically have been able to last a minute. He killed them because he didn’t quit; you could kill him, and it wouldn’t be enough. He would come for you; he would find a way to kill you if it took him months to do it. He was a vicious little freak, truly deserving of his codename, because he wouldn’t stop. Powers didn’t make the man, and powers wasn’t what gave Wolverine the edge; it was something in the man himself, something that couldn’t quite be replicated, that made him so damn deadly. That’s why the Organization had never been able to successfully replace him, because Wolverine’s powers weren’t really what made him special.

And the Organization had somehow found a way to get their favorite old rogue mutant hunter on Timebomb’s trail. The fucker was completely doomed, and he probably wouldn’t even realize it until the claws popped through his chest. That was true comedy.

“Wolverine..?” Timebomb repeated, tasting the name, sure he knew it but not sure how.

The door of the stark, dark room opened - Boyle had a sneaking suspicion it was an actual woodshop - and the teleporter who brought him over came in. He was a tall, dark skinned man who looked unnaturally thin, his clothes hanging off him like his body was a wire frame, and there was an ashen undertone to his skin that pretty much screamed ‘junkie’. His cheeks were sunken in, and his eyes seemed a bit dull, like maybe he was in pain. “If it is Wolverine, we’re in trouble.” Boyle had finally decided his faint accent was a bit more Portuguese than Spanish, but close enough that he could pass for either.

Timebomb turned his annoyed glance on the ‘porter instead. “Why? I can’t blow him to pieces?”

That made the ‘porter frown in thought. “I dunno … maybe, but I dunno if it will have any effect on him. He’s an assassin, and from what I’ve heard, trouble. We may not be ready for him.”

“What’s his powers?”

The ‘porter shrugged, so Timebomb turned his laser intense gaze on him once more. “Come on, grunt, what’s his powers?”

Was there any harm in telling him? It wasn’t going to help them in the least. “Heightened senses, an amazing healing factor, nine inch adamantium claws.”

Timebomb’s face distorted like he thought this was a joke he didn’t understand. “What? That’s it?” He scoffed. “That’s pathetic. Why’s he supposed to be such hot shit? I’ll blow his fucking head off and we’ll be done.”

Boyle laughed once again, tears squeezing from his eyes since simply moving in any fashion made the new holes in his body throb even more. Idiot - didn’t he understand that between his metal skeleton and his healing factor, the best Timebomb - who could only affect organic material - could do was blow Wolverine’s face off? And how fucking mad would that make Logan? Logan would turn him into sushi, bite size pieces no bigger than glops of coleslaw, and Timebomb would deserve every excruciating minute of it. How he wished he could have lived to see that, but he kind of doubted he had that kind of time. The thought made him laugh even harder - Wolverine would avenge his death. How funny was that? He’d never even know.

He felt almost giddy with pain, lightheaded and hot, his whole body thrumming like his nerves had short circuited and were now spitting sparks. It hurt unlike anything he’d ever experienced, but at the same time, he was almost beyond pain. Almost.

Timebomb grabbed his arm, digging his fingers in one of the holes, and the laugh died in his throat, becoming a kind of squeal. It was embarrassing, but he couldn’t help it. “What is so fucking funny, baseline?” Timebomb snarled down into his face.

Tears of agony made his vision watery, but he still wanted to laugh, and it came out as a sort of pained hiss, a noise that didn’t say great things about his sanity, but he just didn’t care anymore. He felt strangely at peace, because he knew what was going to happen. These bears would posture and preen, sure nothing as puny as that could hurt them in the slightest, and the wolverine would come in and gut them all, leaving them dying in pools of their own offal, protesting weakly as they died that he couldn’t have done that, because they were so much stronger, better, and more powerful than he was. How could he have killed things as powerful as them? They would understand far too late that sometimes powers just weren’t enough. Wolverines didn’t fear, nor did they acknowledge the superiority of other beings; they were what they were, and they would fight until they were dead, because retreat was not in the vocabulary of such savage little creatures. And such was the man w! ho had their name as his own. If this motherfucker wasn’t pulling open his shoulder wound, he might have felt sorry for him. “You, you stupid fuck,” he replied, his voice both raspy and wavering. “You’re gonna die. You’re all gonna die.”

Timebomb’s face seemed to cloud with fury, his features pinching in and his face flushing, and Boyle knew he was going to die right now, that he’d use his power on him and his head would explode, but that was okay. It would be a quick death, and he would have absolution and revenge as soon as Wolverine showed up to start tearing down everything they ever built, piece by piece and limb by limb.

Every now and then, the Organization surprised him with the beautiful poetry of their plans.

****

The kid had been right about Masiri being essentially a void with a building in it. The area leading up to the former boundaries of the city was a cratered, dusty wasteland that could have been a part of the Moon, or a landing area for one of those “rovers” on Mars. Eventually he came to a kind of dip in the landscape, and in the shallow man made valley, he saw the factory, a long, low slung rectangle of a building made of poured concrete and rusting metal, with a line of tiny, darkened windows at the very top. He saw no vehicles outside, no guards, no sign that anyone was using the place, but that was the point.

But the way the breeze shifted and brought a soft but prominent metallic scent with it, he knew something else - this place was lousy with landmines. Claymores probably, judging from the tiny pockmarks of ball bearing just visible on the far wall of the factory. If he got down on the desert floor, he could smell the mines, but crawling around like a dog all the way to the factory didn’t appeal to him. He wondered if there was another way to do this.

Somehow his Bob powers helped him keep a sense of where he was even when he couldn’t see. Could he use it to somehow figure out where the landmines were? He didn’t know how to access his powers exactly, how to make them work like that, but if Bob’s powers worked on instinct, he should be able to figure it out.

He imagined that he was in a dark place, and looking for a source of blue light. He found it, a distant blue glow growing brighter and brighter, until it seemed to fill the room, his mind, and he had to open his eyes to keep from being blinded.

And there it was. He didn’t know how, but the places without landmines seemed brighter, the sand a clearer ocher, while the places with landmines seemed to be a bit darker, like pools of oil were hidden just beneath the surface. Well, good - finally Bob had worked for him.

But as he walked down towards the factory, which seemed for all the world like an abandoned husk, a dead corpse left behind in the ruins, Bob’s powers were cluing him in to other things. For instance, life buzzed all over this barren place - he could sense the insects in the ground, scurrying over the surface, tenacious bits of existence that carved out a niche in this dead place. And there were many people in the factory, some of them a bit perturbed. Did that mean they knew he was coming? Probably. Did it matter?

Honestly, he didn’t think so. He wasn’t concerned that he couldn’t beat them anymore. He was sure that he could - he had a secret weapon he really hadn’t considered before. He had Bob’s power. How far could he push it? He didn’t think he could just tell people what he wanted them to do and have them do it, he wasn’t sure how that worked, but he had a feeling he could do some other things if he really wanted to. It would be a last resort, mainly because he still had no idea how any of this worked, and what he would do if it grew beyond his control.

Once he got to the factory, he decided to eschew going in the rusty front doors. They were locked with a chain and a padlock but nothing more, a lock mainly for show rather than strength, but it seemed like a trap, even though he didn’t sense or smell anyone just beyond the door. Still, he quietly used his claws to climb up the side of the factory, and he shinnied across the roof until he could lean over the side and look in a window. They weren’t locked - at that height, there was no point - so he pushed it open and looked inside.

The factory was unlit and seemingly barren, with only quiescent hulks of old machinery - run down conveyor belts, ominous shapes of rusting machinery, something like metal udders hanging down over a broken belt that laid on the floor like a fallen railroad tie - and he couldn’t begin to guess what this place used to make.

Carefully, he climbed in through the narrow window, just big enough for him to slip through, and crawled down the wall towards the cement floor. He could have jumped down, it wouldn’t have hurt him, but he didn’t want to make that much noise. The place smelled of recent Human passage - some very familiar - moldy flour, and old rat shit. His Bob powers told him no rats lived here anymore, which was typically a bad sign. Rats would live anywhere, and if you had none, something had killed them off. The only way you could scare them off would be with a very large predator - some form of lion, a rat eating snake, a wolverine (ha!), a raptor - and really that was kind of doubtful. Rats were hard to get rid of unless you did kill them all.

He walked around the factory, his eyes adjusted to the deep darkness, and he followed the trail of scents, trying to figure out where the access to the lower levels were, as there had to be some hidden place where the mujahadeen as well as Black Fire had to operate.

Although he was alone, he got a sudden sense he should move several feet to the right, and after backing up he turned to see that the air seemed excited in a certain area, the particles seemed to be swirling in an unusual pattern, and he realized that that’s what a teleport looked like.

It was Nomad, or the guy who looked like Nomad ; really, it didn’t matter. He seemed surprised to find himself facing him, he probably meant to pop in behind him, grab him before he could react, and teleport him somewhere, but he was unaware that Logan currently had the ability to sense a teleport in progress. He stared at him in surprise, and he was sure he was going to pop back out and try it again, but he said, “We don’t have to do this, Javier.”

That made him pause, his hazel eyes widening in surprise. “What did you call me?”

“Javier. That’s your name, right? I used to know you. Or the real Nomad, at any rate.”

“The real Nomad? I’m the real Nomad.”

He shook his head dismissively. “Okay, the other one then. We’d work together now and again. I can’t say I knew him well, but he wasn’t really a fighter, and certainly not a killer. You know that as well as I do. If we get into something, you don‘t have a chance. But I really don‘t wanna kill you. I‘m giving you an opportunity to go.” He had but vague memories and impressions of Nomad, but he knew that Nomad was mostly just an errand boy, a guy who followed orders and did transporting, but never really got in the thick of things. He wasn’t the most moral guy in the world, and there was something sinister in his innate spinelessness, but he wasn’t a psychopath. Left to his own devices, he wouldn’t kill people or try and take over the world. No, knowing Nomad, he’d just retreat into a world of prescription painkillers. Right now, his sweat reeked of oxycontin.

His look was almost uncomprehending, as if he was speaking a foreign language, but a quick mental check assured him that he was speaking English. “You’re saying there was another man named Nomad?”

Oh wow; this was going to be difficult. He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and said, “Yes. Apparently the Organization had a secret plan where they collected the genetic material of many mutants, and was able to experimentally create functional clones of them along with hybrids. A lot of them are opies or fatally flawed, but some work out okay.”

He shook his head slowly, in obvious disbelief. “That’s bullshit. No one can clone -”

“In the real world, yeah, but the Organization has access to stuff, people, and technology that no one else has. You know that as well as I do. Do police have paralyzers? What about the CIA? Mossad? No. What about adamantium? You’re not stupid, Nomad. You know the score here - they don’t officially exist, and neither does anything that’s a part of them. Including us. We’re all replaceable cogs in a vast machine.”

He was giving him a thousand yard stare now, one that he could feel trying to punch its way through his skull, and the smell of fear made his sweat turn sour. “I am not a clone,” he insisted, but there was a tremor in his voice. He didn’t want it to be true, but he was afraid it was. Maybe there was something wrong with his memories or something, a flaw that made him suspect he was incorrect from the get go.

“You know what happened to the original Timebomb? He was killed by a sniper with a high powered rifle. He never saw it coming; his head was blown to pieces, just like he used to do to other people. It was set up to look like a terrorist group took him out, but it was actually an inside job. He was cocky and pissing off the brass, making them nervous, so they just took him out. And apparently they decided to “reboot” him, make him better and maybe more controllable this time around. But clearly that didn’t work. What did they do, enhance his powers so he could blow up all organic material, not just brains?”

Nomad’s jaw worked for a moment, opening and closing slowly, but no noise came out. After another moment, he asked in a hushed voice, “Did I die?”

He nodded, almost sorry to tell him. “The ‘ports caused him a lot of pain, which you obviously know. He got addicted to drugs, and the Org encouraged it, because it kept him in line. One night he just o.d.’d; he was found rotting in an opium den in Bangkok. It was investigated, in case it was a murder, but there was never any doubt that it was self-inflicted. The only question remaining was if it was accidental or a suicide. And there was never any way to tell.”

He looked devastated, as if something in him was dying, although something like anger sparked in his eyes. He didn’t want to believe it … but there was doubt, and how could there not be? The Organization did nothing but lie, even to its most loyal soldiers. Nothing was certain, nothing was correct, and it never felt right, no matter how many times you told yourself it did.

If Nomad had been a leader and not a lifelong follower, he’d have gutted him now. But Nomad had always been pushed around, and much like milk, he took on the flavor of whatever was around him. He was a teleporter who ironically was also a man who never settled on a true identity for himself; he was whoever he decided he should be that day. He was forever rootless and adrift, and Logan couldn’t help but wonder if it was really that that ultimately killed him. Drugs were the anchor he didn’t otherwise have. Now he just might have a second chance, even though this technically wasn’t the same man at all.

And he knew that Nomad was the key to all these Black Fire hits. The drugs in the system, the stuff that made the blood smell funny, was a deliberate mislead. Nomad ‘ported in with Timebomb at the last minute, and Timebomb took out the victims; Nomad then got them the hell out of there. So he was an accomplice, an abettor, and yet Logan knew that Nomad was probably wasted to the gills the entire time. He was probably Timebomb’s bitch, just like he had been the Organization’s bitch, and while he was nearly as responsible for all those deaths as Timebomb, he knew Javier simply didn’t have it in him to refuse the order of a more dominant personality. He didn’t need to dip into his personnel file to know that Javier must have had one shitty childhood; his parents probably beat the shit out of him every day of his life, until they kicked the will to resist right out of him. He came in broken, saving the Organization oodles of time.

After what seemed like forever, he licked his lips nervously, and whispered, “No, that can’t be true …”

“Do you want to die again, Javier?” he asked, with genuine curiosity. “Stay here and I guarantee you will. Leave now, and live the life you never had the first time around. Stop taking orders, and just try and live for yourself, huh?”

His eyes had the glazed look of a shock victim. “He’s gonna kill you.”

He knew he meant Timebomb. “No he’s not.”

“Yes he is, that’s the plan. You don’t have a chance.”

“No, he’s wrong. I think you know that. Everyone here is going to die, or wish they were dead. You can actually leave; I’m giving you a choice. It’s the only one you’ll get.”

Nomad was looking at him like a crazy person, and yet there was a strange kind of awe there too, as if he was the first person to ever be nice to him. Maybe he was. “You … you should really get out of here. He’s -”

“Go through with the plan,” he insisted. “Let’s do this thing. Take me to Timebomb, let him do what he thinks will kill me. Then you’d better leave, and don’t look back.” Logan held out his hand, and Nomad actually took a step back, looking at his hand with some anxiety, as if he expected the claws to come out. But he was just giving him something to grab on to for teleport, and after a moment he got that.

“You really wanna do this? You really think you can beat him?”

“He’s a dead man walking, Jav. Now finally show some cajones, or die with him.”

He said nothing, just glanced down at the floor, and after a few quiet seconds grabbed his wrist and initiated teleport.

With the Bob power in effect, it wasn’t the least bit disorienting. It was simply that the molecules parted, time opened up, and dropped them somewhere else. In this case it was a dimly lit room, where the casually good looking, pale Timebomb waited, sitting on the edge of a desk. He’d barely been in the room a millisecond before he felt an unnatural warmth and pressure in his chest, and Logan really wasn’t at all surprised when his torso suddenly exploded, splattering his gore all over the walls.

16

The funny thing was, he never lost consciousness.

Logan felt his body fall, and he laid their on the dusty cement floor, watching his blood leak across the floor, wondering why he wasn’t unconscious, and why it didn’t actually hurt. But he knew, didn’t he? He was seeing everything tinged with the faintest trace of neon blue, even his own blood as it trickled down the wall of the bunker like office. Would this have killed him normally? No, he didn’t actually think so, which may have been cocky on his part, or it simply may have been experience. How many times had he been blown up? A couple of times, and he lost a lot of blood, a lot of skin, and by all rights should have died each time. But he didn’t, because he believed his body was honestly a cruel thing that wanted to taunt him. It wanted to show him that he wouldn’t ever be getting off that easy.

Working in concert with his healing factor, turbo charging it, his body was healing in record time, and it didn’t even feel uncomfortable. His organs were rebuilding themselves, his chest walls resurrecting themselves and knitting back together over his untouched adamantium ribcage with unprecedented speed, and the loss of blood didn’t make him feel the least bit tired or cold. Perhaps this was the pay off of being an avatar.

As he laid on the floor, feigning death, he listened to Timebomb and Nomad.

Timebomb scoffed. “Some killer he was, huh? He was even more pathetic than I imagined. What the hell took you so long?”

Nomad’s hesitated before replying. “He told me some things … he claimed we were clones.”

“And?”

A startled pause. “What?”

“Yeah, of course we’re clones. Shit man, you didn’t know?” he snickered nastily. “Good god, mate, are you that much of an idiot? You believed everything the Org fed ya? Didn’t cha ever dig in the classified files?”

“No! You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

“It wasn’t fucking important, was it? The first guys were dipshits who got themselves killed; I wasn’t about to make the same mistake. I’m improved anyways.”

Did Nomad catch that? He didn’t say “we”, he said “I”. He’d already written Nomad off as a loss; he was just going to use him until he couldn’t use him anymore.

Logan already felt like he was totally back together again - definitely a record. Blue fire burned through his veins, and he was ready to jump up to his feet, but he didn’t. He wanted Nomad to make his choice first, therefore if he had to kill him, he wouldn’t feel bad about it.

After what seemed to be a minute’s pause, Nomad said, in a crestfallen voice, “You are improved, but I’m the same old thing, right?”

“Hey, you can already ‘port everywhere. What’s to improve?”

“It’s killing me,” he roared, with a depth and breadth of anger he’d never heard from Nomad before. Then again, his dream had just been dashed, his heart broken, and maybe that was the final straw, even for a co-dependant Stockholm Syndrome victim like Javier. “Why didn’t they fix that? Why didn’t make you make them?”

Timebomb scoffed again, like this was a confusing joke. “Huh? What the fuck did that obsolete waste of space tell you?”

He heard Nomad shift his weight from foot to foot, and he knew he’d made his decision. “He said we were all dead. And he was right.” With a small noise that really wasn’t a noise at all, Nomad teleported out of the room.

“What?” Timebomb said in annoyance to the now empty air. Logan heard him get off the edge of his desk and walk past him to the door. He heard him open it, it creaked slightly, and Timebomb shouted out, “ Mel? Nomad made an unscheduled ‘port - track him down. Tell me where the fuck he’s gone. And get someone in here to get this piece of shit out of my office.”

But Logan had risen to his feet quietly, and took two steps towards Timebomb’s turned back. He could see nothing beyond him but a narrow, dimly lit hallway, but just from the smell alone, he knew there was probably about ten other people in this base. They had outsmarted everyone, a mere dozen mutants? It didn’t speak well for any government or the Organization, but then again, he had no respect for any of those institutions. They were lumbering beasts that were helpless against a swift moving predatory outfit like this.

Which is why Canadian Intelligence had finally come back to him. He wasn’t. It was a shame Timebomb would barely have time to realize that.

“Copy or not, Keogh,” he said, “you’re still a prick.”

He stiffened and spun quickly on his heels, but not fast enough. Logan popped his claws as he lashed out, and by the time Timebomb’s eyes had met his own, his head was already sailing across the room.