According to Jean, there had been some damage to a part of the frontal lobe that was associated with psychic abilities in mutants. Since little was known about that area, she couldn't say how bad it really was, or how permanent, not until she woke up. Bob seemed to think he could go into her mind and find her, but only when she was a bit stronger. Whatever that meant.

Conveniently his cell phone rang and he left the med lab, and Scott leaned against the wall, wondering if there was another way. Some way where Miranda wouldn't have gotten so badly hurt.

Of course, how could they know?Whatever Cressa was, she was clearly playing by her own rules - like Bob. Funny how it always worked out that way.

Jean and the Professor were studying Miranda's brain scans once more when Bob came back into the room, pumping his fist in the air like a truck driver yanking on his air horn cord. "Woohoo! We have a score."

They all looked at him curiously, Jean letting her red rimmed glasses fall to the bridge of her nose as she gazed at him quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"The Sisters have Heydon. They found him scoping prey in a nightclub."

"They captured him?" She replied, trying to keep the relief from her voice.

Bob shook his head. His hair was a little browner now, and the change had happened so suddenly no one had noticed. How'd he do that with his hair?"No. They can't really hurt him without killing Logan, so they're simply tagging along with him, but believe me, that's good. We'll always know where to find him, so we can plan a course of action."

"What if he loses them?" Scott asked.

Bob shook his head, more vehemently this time. "When the Sisters are looking for you, consider yourself found." He paused, then added, "They're some of those vampires you refuse to believe in, you know. So was Moira, although she wasn't nearly as gifted."

This was the resumption of an old argument. "Look, I just have a problem with the whole Dracula thing, all right? It doesn't seem real."

"Well, most of that stuff about Drac ain't true," he conceded.

"Most?" Was he pulling his leg?

"I know the Sisters are psychic," Xavier said, looking at Bob, a hint of pain making crinkles appear in the corners of his eyes. "Did they get any sense of Logan at all?"

Bob grimaced, and Scott once again wondered how old he was. His face seemed strangely ageless in a truly undefinable way, and every now and then it bothered him. "No. They knew it was Logan they saw, but they also knew he smelled wrong, and when they got close all they could pick up was Heydon. He must be submerged."

"What does that mean?" Jean asked, turning away to remove the MRIs from the reader board. He could still hear the concern and disappointment in her voice.

"Could mean a number of things. Could mean he's out cold, or shoved so far back in his own mind he can't get out until Heydon lets him out. Or, Logan himself could be hunting."

"What do you mean?" Jean asked, still keeping busy with the scans.

"I know he's kind of impatient, but when he's got a goal, he can be remarkably focused and patient. He could be conserving his energies and waiting for a chance to strike back again. He'll probably just have the one shot, so he'll want to make it count."

"What can he do?"

Bob shrugged expansively. "I'm not sure. But Logan surprised him once; I have faith he can do it again."

"To what end?" Scott interjected. "He can't beat him. It's an empty gesture."

"Possibly, but maybe not. Resistance, no matter how futile, is never an empty gesture mate. It's a declaration of intention - it means you are not going quietly."

"I don't think Logan could ever go quietly, even to the store." Jean gave him a dirty look for the joke, but Bob chuckled.

"That's good. You should tell him that when he gets back - he'll like that."

Jean turned to face Bob, not even trying to hide the hope in her expression. For some reason, it made Scott feel vaguely ill. "You think we'll get him back?"

"I know we will."

"How do we know Heydon isn't toying with us?" Scott argued. He crossed his arms over his chest, and just felt belligerant. "Logan knows the Sisters. How come Heydon didn't recognize them?"

"Logan's mind is a bit of a crazy quilt - it's not that easy to find what you need when you need it. And I imagine that whatever Heydon did to punish him has made the situation worse."

Jean's face paled, and Scott rather wished he'd left the 'punishment' part out. Before she could ask what he thought Heydon had done to him, Bob added, "But this works for us, believe it or not.  Heydon's such an arrogant prick he thinks he doesn't need any of Logan's memories, or, in spite of the scrambling and memory gaps, he can find what he needs when he needs it. Wouldn't you love to be that full of yourself?" He then looked at him askance, and with a wink said, "Very funny, mate." Scott stared at him in shock, as Jean looked at him in surprise. He hadn't said anything! Well, he had been thinking Bob should talk ...

"And I know from experience that being Logan is more complicated than it seems, " Bob went on, as if he hadn't just read his mind. "Those claws are more difficult than they look; there's a trick to 'em."

"How are we going to get Heydon out without hurting Logan?" The Professor wondered.

Bob grimaced, and Scott knew the news was bad. Funny how he hardly felt bad about it. "I don't think there's any way to get Heydon without hurting Logan. But hurt is better than kill."

Scott almost said it - "Is it always?" - but kept it to himself. It was bad enough that Bob knew he thought it.

He was sitting in the center of what must have been a dojo, with thin rice paper walls, and hardwood floors sporadically covered by thin mats that were more for traction than comfort, but when he slid aside a door to look out, he saw not Japan but Canada.

Although the towering pine forest could have belonged to the mountainous foothills of Japan, he thought he recognized the peaks with their thick snowcaps - barely visible between the thick netting of branches - as part of the Canadian Rockies. So his mind was still a fucking mess, slamming together recollections with a randomness that suggested his mind had been through a blender.

Well, he'd had worse. No, probably not, but he was trying to keep his spirits up.

Weirder still, it was warm in the dojo, sunlight making the rice paper walls gleam like snowshine, but in Canada it was hours before dawn, the sky turning violet and washing away the stars one by one. It was so frosty a spider web on the porch (since when did dojos have porches?) looked like a stretched out snowflake, the strands so encrusted with ice he was sure it would shatter as soon as the breeze hit it.

He found himself wearing loose white pants and shirtless, although an open white tunic and black sash were spread out on a black mat several meters away from him. He was barefoot too, which convinced him these were martial arts clothes, the kind you wore when practicing, but since he had no memory of ever having any martial arts training, he wondered how accurate this was. Of course the problem was while he didn't remember any training, he still had the skills, and must have learned it - several different types - at some point in his life. But when, why and how come he could recall the moves when he couldn't recall the actual learning of them were the nagging questions.  Also, there was the language thing - how come he knew so many goddamn languages without being aware he knew them?
"Perhaps you were a spy," Xavier had suggested, mostly joking.

But Logan was growing more and more convinced it really wasn't a joke at all. It would explain an awful lot.

He got up and paced, but he was alone here, no more representations of himself or his fractured mind popping up; maybe that was a blessing. But in a way it wasn't, because he still had no idea what he was going to do.

He went over and picked up the tunic, deciding it was probably too cold to risk going outside without a shirt (it was bad enough he'd have to go out barefoot, although he knew he could never get frostbite), when he heard a familiar voice say, "Bein' a magnet for freaky shit gets wearing, doesn't it?"

He could swear he felt his heart skip a beat as he pivoted to see Bob standing near the doorway, leaning back against it as if casually awaiting the next bus. "Bob? Are you actually here?"

He shook his head. "Sorry to get your hopes up, mate."

He should have guessed if Bob could show up he would have sooner. This was just another personality/memory fragment. But it brought up something he hadn't considered before. "Hey - is some of your energy still left in my mind?"

Bob had to consider that, cocking his head to the side and straightening up, shoving himself off the wall with his shoulder blades and somehow not ripping the paper. Bob was still talented, even here.  "I don't think so."

"Damn."

"But you should be goin' after him, not me. You got him once."

Logan sat back down on the floor, still feeling enervated. But at least he could move now - that had to be some kind of victory. "A lucky shot, and I'm sure Chuck and Jeannie puttin' the hurt on him helped immensely."

Bob came over and hunkered down in front of him. He was wearing what Logan had come to think of as his uniform - the black leather pants, the biker boots, the skintight t-shirt (this time white). "Maybe. But I think you can do this. You're gettin' stronger all the time, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "I don't know."

"Trust me, you are. And bein' here is no coincidence. What do all martial arts have in common?"

Logan glared at him. "Tell me. I don't have time for twenty questions."

"Hey, I got all day."

He scowled at him. Even here, he was a bastard. "The pajamas?"

"Cute, but not what I'm goin' for."

It was so unfair that Bob was still playing games in his own mind. "Discipline?"

"Woohoo, we have a winner! Yes, exactly."

He stared at the pseudo -Bob, wondering if he could punch him, and if it would do any good. "How the fuck does that help me?!"

"Well, a lot of that discipline is expressed as meditation. Meditation teaches you to connect to all aspects of yourself. Now we know that Heydon's gonna expect you to react violently the next time he lets you come out,and he'll be ready. So do the sneaky thing."

"What's the sneaky thing?"

"If frontal assault doesn't work, what's the next option?"

He felt like he was being walked through something. "Infiltration."

Bob pointed at him and nodded. But Logan continued to stare at him in disbelief. "How do I infiltrate my own mind? I'm already here."

"Not your mind - your body."

"Huh?"

"He took that away from you, all the control. He expects an attack on the mind. He doesn't expect an attack on the body. He doesn't think you can do it."

"I can't do it."

"Yes, you can. Meditation, focus. Reach out to yourself with your mind."

"What the fuck do you mean?"

"You know meditation techniques, unconsciously if nothing else. Use them to try and find your center."

"Since when do you use New Age psychobabble?" He snapped, really considering the beating now.

"It's there, Logan. Defeat him by taking your control back."

He rolled his eyes. "So  I regain control of my toes. How the fuck does that help me?"

Bob clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Be patient, mate. We're comin' for ya, you know that. And working together, we can kick this fucker's ass."

"We'd better. My mind is so fucked I can't imagine living here the rest of my life."

Even as he said it, the irony didn't escape Logan.

**

They didn't want to 'prowl' for prey - what they wanted to do was wait and hit a rave. Apparently there was an illegal but well known rave going down tonight at a warehouse on Pacific and 53rd, and the Sisters were hot to hit it. They loved raves. Or, more accurately, they loved the bad lighting and heavy drug use,  which meant they could kill up to a dozen people without anyone actually noticing. The drugs and alcohol in the blood was just an added 'bonus'.
He decided to take their word on that.

But a bunch of fine young things sounded like a damn good meal, and since it was now dusk, they could walk the streets and he didn't have to tromp through the foul smelling sewer. With Logan's hyper acute nose, he bet it would be a real trial.

The Sisters had a tendency to disappear and reappear in the shadows before him, like they were wraiths as opposed to vampires. They never seemed to get farther than twenty feet from each other, even though one might disappear from sight. He wished he knew how they thought; he couldn't even imagine.

Heydon was surprised that Logan hadn't tried something, no matter how futile and stupid - after all, those seemed to be his middle name - but he still seemed to be withdrawn deeply, perhaps licking his wounds. Stupid animal. He wished he could have the Sisters explain to him that weaker species had no chance against a superior species, but if the moron hadn't learned that by now, he was never going to know.

He'd been hoping to grab a snack on the way, but so far he had yet to encounter any Humans at all. Was it the Sister's shortcut, or were the Sisters themselves scaring off any Humans who got near? Or worse - snacking on them themselves and hiding the bodies? They were in and out of the shadows so much he knew it was a possibility.
So he tried to sniff out any blood, and watched them as carefully as he could.

If he discovered they were lying to him, he'd see how well Logan's claws worked on vampires.

Bob had transported them - himself, Jean, Storm - into an alley filled with overflowing, fetid dumpsters, and what smelled like the emptied contents of a really filthy men's room.

"Oh Jesus," Scott exclaimed, immediately pressing a hand to his nose. He never smelled anything that made him feel like losing his lunch, but this was skirting the line. "You had to bring us here?"

"The Sisters told me they were bringing him here," Bob said, as if that explained everything.

"To a stinky alley?" Jean said, wrinkling her nose in disgust.

There was a noise in the nearest dumpster, and as they turned towards it, a ratty old tom cat with one and a half ears peered at them over the edge. It was orange and white and mangy, looking more like an overgrown rat than a cat.

It looked like it started to hiss, but then it stopped, and Bob held his arms out towards it. "Come on, moggy, we're friends."

To Scott's disbelief, the tom tamely jumped in Bob's arms, and he held the smelly cat to his chest and petted its matted, slimed fur as he explained to them, "No, to a waste treatment plant off Pacific. Weird shit happens here all the time, and no one notices or cares."

The cat was purring contentedly, loud enough that they could all hear it. It had a big, ugly gash on its left rear leg that looked swollen with infection, but it didn't seem to mind Bob touching it.

"You affect cats too?" Storm asked in surprise.

Bob just shrugged. "What can I say? Animals love me."

"What exactly is the plan?" Scott asked, hoping to catch him off guard.

"You know - knock him out. I'll take care of the rest."

"What is 'the rest' exactly?" Scott wondered.

"Believe me, I can't explain it. You're just gonna have to trust me."

"Famous last words," Scott muttered. He really didn't like not knowing what Bob was up to. But did they ever know for sure?

"I thought you couldn't effect Heydon," Jean said, trying to coax something out of him.

"Not in a conventional sense, no."

"So an energy overload won't work here," Storm said, sounding disappointed.

"No. But I got a secret weapon he can't do anything about."

"Oh no - that fly guy isn't back, is he?" Scott looked around, checking the rooftops of the brick buildings that made up the alley. Beyond its narrow corridor he could see a huge warehouse type building about thirty meters away across rutted blacktop, all surrounded by a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire, and large 'No Trespassing' signs posted every three meters or so. "Lot of people want to break into the waste treatment plant?" He thought aloud.

Bob shook his head, and crouched down to let go of the cat. "Nah, but some Frenik demons did try and raise a Hellgod here a couple of years ago. It didn't go very well." The cat hopped out of Bob's arms and walked confidently away, tail held high, and Scott almost did a double take. The cat no longer had an injured back leg.

"Whoa," he said, pointing. It took him a moment to spit the words out, because the whole thing seemed so absurd. "Did you just heal that cat?"

Both Jean and Storm looked after the cat as it disappeared around the corner. "It's a strange world, Scott," he said, giving him a shit eating grin. It was no answer at all, and they all knew it, but Scott also knew that was as close to an answer that he'd ever get from Bob.

Infuriating man. He didn't know whether to be angry, insulted, or afraid. Or all of the above.

**

The smell emanating from the waste treatment plant was bad enough: to Logan's nose, it was like a fermenting landfill in a septic tank. But the weather had taken on an abrupt shift, dark clouds foaming in the sky like water boiling in a pot, sheltering the moon from view, and he could smell the ozone in spite of the overwhelming shit stink of the quiet, darkened block. A big electrical storm was brewing, but it was far from natural.

"Somebody's using magicks," he said, glancing around the block. With the reek and the ozone, it was hard to pick anything up by scent, and he had yet to see anything with his eyes.

The Weird Sisters, back together as a team, stopped in the middle of the empty street about twenty feet away and turned to face him, leering smiles on the pale faces.

"Not - "

" - magic -"

"- we don't - "

" - feel it."

He gestured violently to the sky. "Explain this then."

"We - "

" - can't."

"But he -"

" - can."

The Sisters suddenly moved aside, and  the Drai' shajan appeared between them, like a game show host after the hostesses have pulled open the curtains. "Heydon, bubula!" Bob said, with the same kind of phony emcee warmth.

"You weren't gonna leave without saying goodbye, were you?"

Heydon leered back at him, and said, "Think I wasn't prepared for you, exile?" And he shouted the incantation as several things occurred simultaneously: a lightning bolt came straight out of the sky towards him, like Logan's adamantium skeleton had made him a lightning rod; some guy across the street on the right shot a red beam of phased energy straight towards him; and on the left, the luscious Red sent out a telekinetic wave straight for him.

"Shit, no!" Bob shouted, recognizing the incantation, but it was too late.

All the energy hit the invisible outer envelope around him, and bounced right back towards the senders. They didn't call it a 'rebound' spell for nothing.

Whoever lightning lady was, she let out a satisfying cry of pain as the lightning bolt hit her square on and made her collapse on the roof of a building at the end of the block. Red didn't have much time to make a noise as her own telekinesis hit her straight on and sent her flying out of view, but the guy who shot at him yelped as he was thrown off his feet by his own energy beam and flew into the alley as boneless as a rag doll.

He was now alone with Bob, as the Sisters had departed. Apparently, they knew a losing side when they saw it.

"At what point did you think you were dealing with an amateur?" Heydon asked coolly.  Did he just get cocky, or was age getting to old Bob?

Bob glowered at him, eyes almost glowing in the imposed pitch blackness. " You modified it to work on mutants, huh?"

"Had to. Logan's one, was he not?"

"Is. He's not dead, and I heard he hurt you."

Heydon scoffed and rolled his eyes. "No, not really. I think old Baldy hurt me more, although it was a temporary thing. Where is he? Can I expect him to wheel up any second?" He chuckled at his own mental image of that. Oh sure, he appeared perfectly functional on the mindscape, but Heydon had picked up the knowledge of his paralysis from his own mind. What a terrible irony - a magnificent, powerful brain trapped in a shattered and worthless body. Well, for now. Heydon was planning to put him out of his misery.

"You really get your rocks off on stuff like this, don't you?"

"Bob  - shouldn't you know better? On this dimension, we're just about even. All you can do is piss me off."

"Are you sure about that?"

It was then that he felt something - no, somethings, two - hit him hard on the back of the head. In spite of Logan's adamantium lined skull, the blow caused stars to explode before his eyes, and he stumbled forward, not quite falling but almost.

"Spell - "

" - doesn't -"

" - work on - "

" - us. We're - "

" - not using powers." The Sisters said, as they spun into perfectly synchronized side kicks, both catching him on opposite sides of the face.

Another bone jarring blow, and he was pretty sure he heard the Sisters boot heels crack under the strain of impacting adamantium so hard, but still he staggered back. They were vampire/demon hybrids, and pain just didn't mean a lot to them.

He shouted a spell for repulsing vampires, and as they moved in for another hit they were thrown back violently, causing them to both sprawl back first on the street. The spell didn't make exceptions for half breeds.

"You use vampires to do your dirty work?" He shouted at Bob, wiping away a trickle of blood from his nostril. "Blood sucking killers? That's not very humane, is it?"

He was suddenly aware someone was beside him when he felt a kick in the back of the knee that sent him crashing down to one shin on the street. When he turned to see who it was, he got a knee right in the face, one that shattered Logan's nose like an icicle.

He had expected Bob, and was surprised to see it was the guy Logan thought of as 'The Boy Scout' - Scott. "I can't tell you how long I've been waiting to do this," he snarled, giving him a seriously hard kick in the stomach.

Thanks to Logan's nose, he could smell the adrenaline coming off of him, mostly anger but some pain, and Heydon wondered if he was actually beating on him for sending his beam back in his face, or beating on Logan over Red.
Yes, he had picked that up too.

Perhaps fucking a doctor had certain privileges, because he was going for all the non - adamantium parts: the nose, the stomach, and now he was hammering painful punches, one right after another, into his ear. Fuck, that hurt.

And, as it turned out, Logan's body had a nasty shock of its own: healing kind of hurt. It was like a low fire spread by a multitude of fast moving insects under the skin, and while it was more unpleasant than genuinely painful, he really didn't like it. It didn't seem fair somehow.

Heydon tired of Scott's attempts at machismo. He blocked an incoming blow with his forearm, and with his other punched the little son of a bitch straight in the balls. Because he was on the street and at an odd angle, the blow was glancing, but considering Logan had an adamantium bolstered fist, that was more than enough.

Scott lost all his breath in a huff, and staggered, barely staying on his feet as he doubled over, and Heydon was surprised he hadn't thrown up. No matter what he lacked in the balls department, that had to hurt.

"You're not the only one who's been waiting a long time for this," Heydon pointed out, getting up to his feet.  He then backhanded him across the face, hard enough to split his lip open and maybe loosen some teeth, but not hard enough to knock him out. Oh no - he wanted him conscious for this. "But me? I don't really care. Still, always happy to kill."

He popped the claws on Logan's right hand, and gave Scott a solid jab in the stomach that would eviscerate him like a slaughterhouse pig.

Except something went wrong.

He felt the impact, and whatever air Scott had left in his lungs left in a rush, but there was no torn skin, no smell of blood, and as he withdrew his fist, he saw his claws had retracted into his hand. When the hell had that happened?He just didn't have the hang of Logan's claws.

Instead Heydon gave him an uppercut that snapped his head back violently, and as he staggered back, he hit him flush in the center of the face, shattering his nose and cracking his visor, which went flying as soon as he hit the concrete like a ton of raw beef.  "There's a lesson here for you, Scotty," he said, aware he was probably too unconscious hear, but did you ever know for sure? "Never pick a fight with a powerful demon, or the professional bare knuckle boxer with the metal skeleton. No real way to win there."

"But even Logan would tell you that's no guarantee of success," Bob said, and as he turned to face him, he shot him right in the head.

The bullet bounced off the metal underneath the skin of Logan's forehead, but it was like a donkey kick straight to the temple, and he staggered back, almost collapsing. "What the fuck is this shit?" He growled. "You know bullets can't hurt me or him."

"Actually, funny thing about these bullets - they've got adamantium jackets. So, unlike plain old soft metal bullets, they hurt Logan like flamin' hell." He fired again, hitting another bull's eye on his forehead, and he would swear his head rang like a fucking gong.

He tried to stand up, get up off his one knee, but he couldn't seem to move, and the next bullet knocked him onto his ass. Blood trickled down into his eyes from the new skin tear on his brow, and in a pause in the shooting, he looked up in time to have Bob's blood splatter his face, and he shouted an incantation that he almost recognized, and Bob's blood - deliberately splattered on him from a cut on his palm - felt like it was starting to burn on his skin.

"The spell is off," Bob announced, and then shot him once more in the head, making the view skew sideways, colors bleeding out of the dim landscape. "Logan, are you there? Can you get through?"

Heydon thought that was a weird non - sequitur, but then he began to realize that his hand was moving, but he hadn't moved it. He could not feel that hand.

Bob shot him again, and as his consciousness reeled, he felt a surge of something else in his mind.

No. This was not happening.

**

But it was. Logan could distantly feel the adamantium jacketed bullets slam into his skull, and it was only when it really started to piss him off that he realized he was starting to feel his body again.

For the longest time, he had concentrated on trying to get some sense of himself, and only knew he had regained some control when he felt his claws pop out of his hand. And that really pissed him off - no one used his claws but him, and it didn't matter that it was Scott who was the intended victim of the skewering.

His claws, not Heydon's. He was probably more surprised than the demon when it actually worked and he retracted them, then even more so that Heydon seemed completely unaware of what had happened. He hadn't noticed Logan was taking his body back piece by piece.

Then when Bob started to shoot him, it made things harder, but quickly became easier, as it seemed to be threatening Heydon's grip on his mind as his consciousness wavered. Logan could feel the pain, but it just added to his rage, and as always that seemed to help him focus.

Although he was still hearing things as if from deep underwater ( the gunshots couldn't help ), he managed to swallow, remember how exactly he worked his vocal chords, and said, "Empty the clip! He's fading out."

Bob shook his head, although Logan could barely see him out his own eyes. It was like he was peering through windows at another room, and deeply fucking disturbing,  just because it proved Heydon was still hanging on.