13

Logan opened his eyes slowly, aware that he was in a very closed space - back of a truck maybe, except it wasn’t moving. He could still smell exhaust, though, and he was pretty sure the transport had an oil leak. There was a general ache around his heart, and he felt a heaviness upon him, his arms falling asleep. No wonder - the fucks put him in a straight jacket.

Oh, that was fucking hilarious.

“I can’t believe you woke up so soon,” the voice on the telephone said, right beside him. He looked to his right, and saw a pale man with straw colored hair and beady pale eyes wearing the face mask of a doctor to conceal the bottom half of his face. “But then again, I was surprised your body spit the dart out so soon. That’s pretty gross to witness, you know - like a shooting in reverse.”

Logan glared up at him. The upper half of his body was also strapped down, possibly to a gurney. So that was a ploy? Did this look like an ambulance to everyone else? Was it assumed he was being rescued from a collapse, a heart attack perhaps? Really cute. “Who the fuck are you supposed to be - Michael Jackson?”

He chuckled dryly. “I felt a disguise was in my best interest, because I’m not really sure if we’re going to kill you this time. Honestly, this is a surprise. I knew your vaunted healing factor would probably compensate for Quill’s poison, but not so quickly.”

“Quill?” He repeated, chuckling derisively. “That has to be the lamest code name I’ve ever heard.”

“I’ll tell him you said so. Now, are you going to tell us where it is, or do I send in the telepath?”

Logan attempted to look at his limited surroundings, craning his neck slowly and with some difficulty. The interior was really cramped - there was just enough room back here for the weasel and the gurney, but that was pretty much it. The metal interior was painted white, and where the front seat must have been was separated by what looked like some opaque, plastic like material. So no one could glance in and see what was going on? Or to protect whoever sat up front? He could see a shadow of someone up there, probably the telepath.

“Having trouble moving?” Face mask asked, with a sick kind of glee.

He glared at him. “You know I am.”

“I’m sure it’s very temporary for you. The paralysis usually lasts hours in a normal person - if they somehow survive the poison - but considering how quickly you came around, you may just be out for an hour. Kudos to you.”

He let his head fall back heavily to the gurney, and asked, “Can you at least tell me why the fuck now? Those fucks took your shit sixteen years ago.”

The man’s pale eyes regarded him with something like pity, and something like disgust. He finally sighed, as if somehow put upon, and said, “You really are stupid, aren’t you? At first, we thought those morons just took standard armaments, and by the time we traced them, they were mostly dead. After the trial of the ringleader was over, it was no problem to reclaim the weapons from the police. But apparently there was something in that shipment that only one person knew about, something classified black. By the time we were informed, Stoff was in prison. We tore apart the hovels of all the men, retraced their steps, recovered some knives from pawn shops, but never found it. If those idiots had any idea what they had, it would have hit the weapons market, but there was no way retards of that caliber could have known what they had, nor have any idea what to do with it. So while the search continued in an increasingly half-hearted manner - it was just a prototype, and we had! no guarantee they even worked in theory - it was just decided the threat level of the material had dropped to zero. As soon as Stoff was out of jail, we’d have a little chat with him, and sort it all out. Well, the idiot didn’t even know what we were talking about - one of his dead buddies probably took it. And since we know you killed them, Logan - who cares that she left her name off the report? Ryan, our telepath, recognized you in Stoff’s memory - we figured you took what we were after. It’s hard to believe that even then you had decided to become a goody two shoes, and working with a cop. They really must have fucked with your brain.”

“So you did kill her ‘cause of me.” He sighed, then asked, “What the hell is it yer looking for? I didn’t take anything from those fucks; I just killed ‘em.”

“We’ll determine that. Oh Ryan?”

The plastic slid aside, revealing a rather bland looking brunette guy with acne scars, who couldn’t have been more than twenty. Logan stared into his pale blue eyes, and warned, “You don’t wanna do that, bub. You’ll get fucked up.”

He sneered at him. “Oh yeah, old guy gets tortured. I’m so scared.”

“Your funeral.” Logan closed his eyes and concentrated on blue; an endless ocean of warm, calm blue, covering his brain like a shroud.

It was such a nice feeling, he never even knew when Ryan tried to read his mind - he only knew the second after he tried.

The telepath started making a strange choking noise, like he was trying to hawk up a hairball caught deep within his throat. He heard facemask lunge towards the front, as he cried, “Ryan? What is it? Ryan?” From the thud of flesh against leather, it sounded like Ryan was having a seizure in the front seat.

Logan opened his eyes and surged up, with all his strength, popping his claws at the same time. While the chest strap snapped like a rubber band, his claws tore through the fabric of the straightjacket like tissue. Facemask snapped his head towards him, hand going instantly to something on his belt, but Logan didn’t give him a chance to grab it - he kicked out with both feet and nailed the fucker in his weak chin. There was much cracking, and he hit the side of the truck’s interior wall hard. Blood started soaking into the mask, and Logan didn’t know if he’s broken his jaw, several teeth, or all of the above.

He tore off the straightjacket and threw the remains on the bloody boss as he shoved open the rear doors and jumped out, ready to face whatever sorry ass security they had.

The phony “ambulance” was parked in what appeared to be an abandoned lot in a rural area, with waist high weeds and scrub brush and pines bracketing either side of an unpaved road that was quickly turning to mud in the steady rain. A startled Quill, who was a few feet away in one of the fields, started at him with his strangely reptilian eyes, and then flicked a hand in his direction, as if waving off a fly.

Logan looked down at the half dozen needle fine quills sticking out of his chest, and started stomping towards the kid. He looked even more startled, and flicked his hand at him again, sending a half dozen more quills at him. “Take a lot to put you down, old man?” He asked, taunting, but an edge of panic started creeping into his voice as Logan kept walking towards him. He reached up, grabbed a handful of quills, and threw them into the wet grass.

“No, you stupid shit, it takes none. Can’t you even tell a set up when you see one?”

It finally dawned him that his one trick wasn’t going to do a damn bit of good, and he broke into a run. Logan had been waiting for him to run, and pounced on the kid, not dragging him down to the ground but bringing him to a complete stop, swinging him around to face him. His sweatshirt felt like a sponge.

“It’s those other mutants you work for, is that it?” he asked, wild eyed. His fear, for whatever reason, smelled like horse piss.

“Naw, it’s just little old me. And I don’t work for them.”

“You can’t be immune to me,” he claimed, stammering slightly. “No one is immune to me. You couldn’t have gotten past Ryan without help!”

Logan glared at this mewling little coward, and wondered if he could actually kill him. Better yet, he should just hand him over to Ellison as Lily’s murderer … but considering his toxic power, no Humans would be able to handle him. “You killed her. I want you to say it.”

Quill looked baffled, his pale eyebrows arching high. “Killed who? I’ve killed a lot of people. You mean the pig?”

That did it. Logan felt himself grow ice cold as Quill kept spewing out words, digging his own grave. “She was a fucking mundane anyways, who gives a shit?!”

He slammed his claws right into Quill’s slender midriff, and he gasped, apparently having forgotten that he had claws. Kind of put poison quills to shame at the end of the day, didn’t it? In retrospect, it would have been poetic justice if he had clawed him in the heart, but he wanted him to know he was dead before he actually died - he had no idea if Lily even had that kind of awareness, but right now he didn’t even want to think about that - so he went for the solar plexus, which was also a lethal hit, but would give him a minute. (It was his fault she was dead; they thought she knew too much.) “I did,” Logan snarled in his pale, flat face. He then yanked his claws out, and Quill collapsed to the ground, boneless and without any strength left at all. Logan had a bad taste in his mouth, but he knew there was no turning that fucker over to authorities, and besides, he had tried to kill him - he just didn’t know how ineffective it would be.

He stomped back to the van, where movement suggested the good “doctor” (or whatever the fuck he actually was) was up to something. He retracted his claws before ripping the door open, and casually batted away whatever weapon facemask had scrounged before grabbing him by the collar and tossing him out onto the muddy road.

“Yuh couldn’t haf,” he mumbled, his syllables mushy. “The pusin wuld work on yuh -”

“Newsflash, asshole. The poison would only work on me if it was new to my system. But it seems the dart that killed Lily still had some toxin on it. See how stupid I am? Handlin’ the thing, I pricked my damn finger, just like sleeping beauty. Oops.” As soon as he figured out the dart must have come from a mutant, he decide to “immunize” himself. It really wasn’t pleasant, he felt as sick as a fucking dog for at least twenty minutes, and he was roughly certain he passed out for a little while. The so-called paralysis, though, only lasted for ten minutes or so. It bothered him that he passed out this time, however briefly, but figured it was either because he got a straight shot of full intensity poison to the heart, or the damn dart had pierced one of his ventricles and briefly interrupted blood flow, which was always a pisser. “Oh, and one more think, fuckface - it doesn’t matter if you wear a fiberglass head, or get a sex change operation. I don’t need to know your face! - I know your smell. I could track you from here ‘til the end of time. Didn’t you read my fucking file?”

Facemask was still bleeding, and the blood seemed to be running even faster in the rain, covering the lower half of his face in a new kind of mask. He was pulling himself back with his elbows as Logan loomed over him, keeping pace but keeping out of general range, just in case he had any new Org toys left to use.

“This is it? This is all?” Logan wondered, gesturing to the emptiness around them. “You guys really must be hurtin’ from a power vacuum if you thought a telepath and a poison were enough to hold me down.” But then again, maybe it was felt a mobile, small “strike team” was a better defense against a potential siege attack. Terrorist mentality. He shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Whud yuh duta rhine?” He asked, his eyes slightly glazed.

“I told ya I had friends in high places. One left me with a little present. Now, tell me what the fuck it is you’re looking for.”

“Fug oo.”

Logan reached down and grabbed the muddy Org toady by the collar, yanking him up to his feet. He weakly batted at his arms, but almost instantly gave up, aware it was futile. “You think I’m just gonna kill you, you bastard? I gotta whole night to kill, and I think it would be interesting to see how many new breathin’ holes I can give you before you actually stop breathing.“ He popped a single claw, letting it poke into the soft skin beneath his chin, just enough to break the skin. He tried hard to look brave, but the fear was making his pupils big, and the stench of panic was almost as strong as the smell of blood. “All in the name of science, of course. Is that why you vivisected me, pumped me full of molten metal?”

“Esspmental nunits fer weaponry and alturession.”

Logan tightened his grip, and said, “Enunciate clearly.” He honestly had no fucking clue what he just said.

He swallowed hard, almost gagging on his own blood, and tried once more, speaking slowly and with some pain. “Essperimental nunites.”

This would teach him to break a man’s jaw before he interrogated him. He pondered his words a moment - experimental was obvious - and finally settled on, “Nanites? You mean microscopic machines?”

He tried to nod, then remembered the claw beneath his chin. “For wepuns and genic recussrussion. Who diffrent sciencists were workin on if, an un hried oo neak heirs foo.”

Wow, it was like talking to a muppet after a root canal. It almost gave him a headache, but his best guess for that entire sentence was ‘For weapons and genetic reconstruction. Two different scientists were working on it, and one tried to sneak theirs through.’ “And no one was keeping track of dangerous shit like that? What was it in?”

“Uh vile uf suspenssion food, a fird th sive uf a phen.”

‘A vial of suspension fluid, a third the size of a pen.’ “Why would those penny ante fucks take it?”

“Dunno. Culdnt’ve nown wha ih whas.”

“And why did you think I would?”

He shrugged, unable to give a decent answer, save for, “Guddy oo shuz.” ‘Goody two shoes.’

“Why destroy them now?”

“Effidenf. Bessides, ours unywhays.”

Logan wasn’t sure he believed that; the guy was holding back something. “What else?” He shook him and brought him even closer, so they were now perfectly eye to eye. “Evidence of what?”

His fear widened eyes seemed to bug out, and he made a choking noise in the back of his throat. As he exhaled hard as if punched, blood soaked mask belling out slightly, Logan smelled poison on his breath.

He glanced down, and saw he’d pulled the man too close - one of the darts that Quill had hit him with had stuck in his chest.

Logan let the guy go and he collapsed to the mud, gurgling once before he died with his eyes wide open, rain already starting to fill his eyes and spill over the lids.

He looked around, sniffing the air, just making sure he had taken everybody out that was supposed to be watching him. He had, and felt disappointed, especially since he only had half an answer.

So one of Stoff’s stupid friends grabbed the nanite vial, not knowing what it was, and hid it from the others. But he must have never known what it was, and died before anyone could do anything with it. But surely the Organization tore apart everything that had to do with Stoff and his gang, so … where were the nanites? If the Organization decided that the prototypes themselves were unfeasible, why did they want them back so bad?

Logan scratched his head, trying to mentally construct a scenario where this would all make sense, but he was at a loss. And he was roughly certain he had blown his chance to get any of these questions answered, thanks to Quill.

He pulled the remaining darts out of his chest and upper arms and tossed them into the grass before he started hiking down the road. He could consider this all case closed - after all, he’d done what he set out to do; he got Lily’s killer. But having only part of the answer to the mystery would bug him no end.

And where the hell were the nanites?

14

If that bastard ever showed up again, she was going to kick the shit out of him.

Helga knew very well Bob must have pushed her before he left, because as much as she wanted to worry about his sudden disappearance, she couldn’t; something in her mind would not physically let her. That weasely little bastard - did he really think being her fuck buddy was enough to save him from her wrath? He should know better - he knew about Stansins, right? Passionate demons, and not just about sex either. Besides, she hadn’t been in a good fight in a while, and after a while she grew itchy for one. The only good thing about being an assassin - well, aside from the money (even in the highly Darwinian demon world, it paid well) - was she could get some of her “negative” energy out on her targets. Now she had to channel it in different ways, but work as Bob’s “bodyguard” usually afforded her a chance to mix it up. But now she had nothing, and swimming and surfing didn’t cut it; she was going to have to get teleported to the Way Station, if only to start a fight. At least she always knew she could count on a brawl with vampires - they were, with a few exceptions - ill mannered demons, and usually itching for some quality destruction as well.

She had taken to playing the stereo, letting his player shuffle through his voluminous CD collection, in hopes the sounds of his beloved tunes would bring him back. It was irrational, of course, but it wasn’t like she could worry. (She was going to kill him.)

She had Bad Religion keeping her company as she sat on his couch, drinking what could have been her second beer of the evening (she had forgotten), and actually wished the player had picked Mr. Bungle or something; bizarre and slightly incoherent may have been better than intelligently depressed. She could not deny that they rocked, though - excellent fighting music, even if the lyrics were more generalized hostility than personal aggression.

The words reached what seemed to be an ironic point (“You create your own reality, and leave mine to me …”) when there was an explosion upstairs.

No, not an explosion…exactly. It was a tremendous flash of blue light, accompanied by a feeling of … what? It was like she was hit with a spatial shockwave, like reality had ripped itself apart and rather suddenly knitted itself back together again. It caused the CD player to skip; now it was The Tragically
Hip playing, and she wondered if that was coincidence.

“Bob?” she exclaimed, and slammed down the beer can on the coffee table before jumping up and
running towards the stairs. It was equally possible it was one of Bob’s enemies dropping in to mangle him, unaware he was one of the missing, or Amaranth … but since when did one of her spells ever announce
it so dramatically? She was better than that.

As soon as she reached the upper floor, she found Bob laying on the wine red carpet, naked, sweating, and breathing hard, like maybe he was hurt. Had he teleported in like that? That wasn’t like him either - he wasn’t the reality tearing type (although she suspected he could be if he wanted to).

“Bob? Where the fuck have you been?” She exclaimed, her brain allowing only the anger through - concern seemed off limits.

He glanced up at her, and his eyes were still all blue, the whites and what passed for his pupil slowly surfacing, like flotsam in a calm sea. “Aww hon, sorry about that.  Been gettin’ spanked by the Powers That Be.”

How did you respond to a statement like that? (She could have been dating just another demon, but no, she had to end up with one that was somehow quasi-divine…) “Why? What did you do this time?”

“Killed one of their mistakes.”

“When?”

He waved a hand in the air, as if shooing away gnats. “Uh, umm … time I went to a heaven dimension. How long have I been gone?”

Now that he asked, she wasn’t sure. How many beers had she actually had? “Four or five days?”

“Ah, good. Felt longer.” He shoved himself up to a sitting position, but only with the help of the far well. He groaned as if in pain, and leaned his head back, closing his half-formed eyes.

“They didn’t actually beat you up, did they?” She wondered. She didn’t think they were the type to get their hands dirty like that. (But what the hell did she know about them exactly?)

He let out a huff of breath, which may have been a feeble scoff. “No love. It’s just that sudden reincorporation is a lot harder than being de-corporated. Like it’s easier to take off clothes than put them on.”

He was talking about … being rid of his body? And then “putting it back on” like a suit? Okay, wait … no. If he was a parasitic demon, the type who wore bodies like coats, she could understand that, but Belials were simply charming liars, who got a measure of psychic ability as they got older. But his “divine” part … ah shit, it was one of those questions that numerous bar bets were built on: did gods need bodies? You’d think, if they could have an avatar, they wouldn’t necessarily; that was an energy switch. And most gods were just energy, so that meant-

“Don’t worry about it,” he told her, interrupting her train of thought. “I can get rid of it if I have to, but this bod’s a prison. They prefer their felons corporeal. It is me as much as everything else.”

She decided she was too drunk to think about it, where she actually was or not. “Have they punished you in some way?”

“You mean in a new way?” He shook his head. Even though his hair was wet with sweat, his hair was all gold, bled of all brown. And it wasn’t blond gold either, it was … gold gold; almost like a flattened and shredded halo. (Why had she not noticed that before?) “Not really. I think I’m on some kind of probation.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

He sighed. “Well … ya know, that’s a good question. I’m no longer sure. I think they’re just gonna be watching more closely for a while, ‘cause I’ve been naughty, but - and they won’t admit it directly, but it was pretty clear anyways - they need me down here. I’m like a failsafe. Most of the big bads who might gun for them end up on my doorstep first.”

“You need help up?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. I need to sleep for a while, get my strength back.”

She grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet, sliding his arm across her shoulders and pulling him up. He was much lighter than she’d ever felt, and a sudden, strange thought flashed across her mind: ‘He’s not all together yet.’ Oh sure, on the outside he had a complete, perfect body, but what about the inside..?

She felt oddly queasy, and blamed the beer.

“You’re gonna be all right soon, right?” She asked, if just for confirmation.

“Oh yeah.”

“Can I kick your ass then?”

“If you must.”

Well, maybe she could live with that. Better than nothing.

****

Logan was marveling over how much this dive bar looked like that one in Alberta where he finally figured out his hideous secret, when he finally spied the reflection of Ellison in the dingy Molson mirror behind the bar. “Sorry I don’t frequent classier joints,” he said, a the cop slid onto a hard wooden bar stool beside him. This place was the polar opposite of the one they had met in before: the dark wood here seemed to absorb light - it was neither cozy nor homey, but more akin to the slow heat death at the end of the universe. It smelled like beer, body odor, vomit, and regret to Logan, a miasma of dejection and defeat, but he had no idea how it smelled to Ellison. From the way his nose wrinkled, probably not any good either.

Ellison had finally traded his trench coat for a simpler, more common fleece and leather jacket which had seen better years - the leather was cracked and starting to flake at the elbows - and he even dug out a flannel shirt and jeans to wear, but damn it if he still didn’t seem like a cop. It was an air, something about his rigid posture and natural awareness, the way his eyes scudded across the entire room assessing potential perpetrators and discarding them almost in the same instant, a veteran who had seen the ugly side of people so often he now had its detection down to a science - a flawed science, because he could see the traits in nearly everyone. It was sad; it was also true.

His Dudley Do-Right jaw tensed, and he drummed his fingers impatiently on the scarred bar top. He must have been disappointed there were only bowls of pretzels. “I could have you arrested, you know.”

“For what?” Logan wondered, genuinely curious which crime he was going to pick. He had committed so many, had Brent actually winnowed the choice down to one? Or was he going to start ticking them all off, like reading a laundry list? The awful part was, Logan actually found the thought kind of amusing. It would have been easily to list the crimes he hadn’t committed - littering, public indecency, public urination, not picking up after his dog, tax evasion. (Oh, wait - had he ever actually paid taxes? Oops; another crime for the list.)