Where they were now, the land seemed perfectly flat and brown, running towards the horizon with an unbroken relentlessness, and the sky mirrored the wide flatness of the land - it hadn't even seemed so vast when they were up in it. He knew there were mountains somewhere in Montana, cities ( he saw some from the air ), people, but not in this corner of the State. This corner seemed perfectly desolate and empty, save for a cracked black ribbon of road that seemed to run into forever, and the more they drove, the more the landscape never seemed to change, and barely seemed to move.

Marcus landed the plane at a tiny airstrip about fifty miles from the site, and then proceeded to rent a car under the name Carstairs Mahoney.

"What kind of fucking name is that?" Logan asked, unable to keep from laughing. He barely managed to hold it in when he was renting the car.

Marcus flashed him that smart ass grin, all shiny white teeth, and said, "Contrary to popular belief, when you offer someone a goofy, embarrassing name with a straight face, they really do assume it's legitimate. Oh sure, you might get a "You're shitting me," every now and then, but then you just shrug and say it's a family name. Bought and sold."

He knew he was serious, but Marcus was almost as funny as Bob. "But you don't look like a Mahoney."

"I don't know - sometimes I sure feel like one." He then gave him a cheesy grin that made him laugh. No, he had no idea what that meant, but sometimes he was sure he felt like a Mahoney too. Maybe he knew that, because on the way to their rental Miata, he added, "And if anyone asks, you're my brother, Rutiger."

Logan had to laugh for a minute before he could talk. He didn't even want to know where he got Rutiger from, or why he thought it would apply to him. "Brother?"

"Hey, you said it - we're all brothers, right?"

"Not like that." He paused, then asked, "Why not Logan Mahoney?"

He scoffed derisively. "Now that's just a stupid name."

What was it with everyone thinking they were comedians?

It got worse. Once they started driving, Marcus started searching for a radio station, but what little could come in was unimpressive. He paused briefly on a country western station, and howled with a bad shit kicker accent, "Been buggerin' sheep all mornin', lord I miss you woman."

He stared at his grinning profile, and said, "My god, you're enjoying this."

"Course I am," Marcus agreed, thankfully changing the station. "Aren't you? Come on, you love trouble as much as I do."

"So you're expecting trouble? You think someone will be waitin' for us?"

In between all the static ( that word again! ), he occasionally found stations. One was playing what he thought of as dentist office waiting room music, another old rock songs ( Isley Brothers ), and one was a talk radio station that, as he flipped to it and away, was obviously discussing mutants. The snippet of dialogue he heard as Marc came across it was a prissy sounding woman saying, " - I don't want some filthy mutant sitting next to my child. Do you? -" before he moved on to a pop station ( he supposed it could have been worse than Matchbox Twenty, but he wasn't sure how ). Marcus gave up for now, turning the radio off. "Well, that would be the best case scenario, but most likely it'll just be us and a few prairie pies."

"And base fragments?"

"Big ol' base fragments," he agreed.

They road in silence for several moments, the distressingly leaf blower like hum of the engine filling the car, and then Marcus said, "Why don't you have a look in my bag?"

He had his nearly trademark oversized duffle bag in the back, that clanked when you picked it up, and weighed about two hundred pounds. Of course it was full of weapons; Logan could smell the gun oil. "Why should I?"

"Get some weapons ready for us. I'm sure they're all loaded, but the safeties are probably on."

"I don't need any weapons."

"Yes you do. For once in your life, be ready to pick off some asshole from a distance. We have weapons up close but we're fucked if they got a guy who can vomit lava or something. And then there's soldier fucks with their sniper rifles .... "

"I don't care about bullets."

"I do, or would you like to see my guts splattered all over you?"

"I thought you had a flak jacket."

"I do. But if they got armor piercers I'm fucked. So look already."

Logan sighed and reached back, unzipped the duffle, and started pulling out weapons at random. Mostly they seemed to be automatic hand guns, although he saw at least one snub nosed Uzi, and there had to be enough ammo to take out the Ukrainian army. "There's at least one grenade in there too, but I'm runnin' low," Marcus said, as if it was normal for everyone to carry a stash of them in their luggage. "I brought a flash bang, but maybe I shouldn't use it around you."

"Just warn me before you do; I'll get over it." A flash bang was a grenade that did just that - rather than explode in a traditional manner, it emitted a ( temporarily ) blinding burst of white light and an extremely loud noise, both of which were meant to disorient an opponent as opposed to kill them. With senses such as his, it would probably make his eardrums burst, but he'd been taught by Legion that deafness for him was usually temporary.

He popped the clip on a Glock, made sure it was full, then slammed it back in and took off the safety, handing it butt first to Marcus. After he took it, Logan checked a second gun, and Marcus said, "And you're tellin' me you've never handled guns before?"

"I did once, at that gas station up in the mountains, with Naomi." Just admitting that seemed to cast a pall over the entire car. The landscape outside was starting to change, with rolling brown hills slowly coming into view, and they passed a sprawling, weather beaten farm, where cows stared at the dully through the mesh of a fence in the process of a gradual collapse. He suddenly remembered Elena explaining away her handgun proficiency as being due to the fact that she was a "Montana rancher's daughter". He wondered if he kept her from killing herself if they could have found a way to save her from the designer illness in her bloodstream. No, probably not. But it brought to mind a litany of all the women he had failed in his life: Mariko, Elena, Naomi. There were surely more, but he didn't really want to follow this line of thought anymore. ( Sloane - did he fail her too? )

He went back to taking the safety off another Glock and handing it to Marcus, as he knew one gun wasn't about to satisfy him. He took it, then asked, "Have you seen her since then?"

"Once." Another topic he didn't want to discuss. He was checking a third Glock when he realized he didn't need to. Still, he found himself studying the bullets in the clip, as they looked different somehow.

"How's she doing?"

"She's living her life. Hey, what kind of bullets are these?"

"Hollow point fragmenting armor piercers; guarantees almost any hit is lethal." Logan had no idea so much could be crammed in a single bullet. "Only the once? Did you ever even tell her you two used to do the horizontal mambo?"

He slammed the ammo clip back in the gun and shook his head. "You're a poet, Marc." He made to put the gun in the bag, but  he said, "Give it to me - I can carry three. And I want you to carry at least one. Plus, I'm a philosopher, not a poet."

"Oh, that's right. I guess you're the only philosophy degreed mercenary out there."

"Probably. Most jobs for philosophy majors usually involve the phrase "do you want fries with that?" so I feel pretty lucky. And you are taking a gun, if only for my safety, so do it before I start reciting Descartes at you."

"That's low, sinking to the French." He carped, reaching back for another gun. He assumed he wanted him to have a gun to cover him (  the "protection" comment  ), and he figured the least he could do was humor him. "Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, I drink therefore I am," he muttered, as that had suddenly occurred to him, although he wasn't sure why.

Marcus laughed, then added, "Socrates himself is particularly missed. A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed. How in the hell do you know "The Philosopher's Drinking Song"?"

"Is that what it is?" He checked the ammo, took off the safety, and laid the gun on his lap.

"We need extra ammo clips. Yeah, you didn't remember? Like Monty Python?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"That's it, then. It's a Monty Python song."

"Oh." Weird how he couldn't exactly remember it, and yet the line occurred to him.Him and his fucked up little mind. He grabbed up four ammo clips , tossing three to Marcus and keeping one for himself. "You're gonna be disappointed if nothin' happens, aren't ya?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. But our luck doesn't usually run like that, does it?"

That was a damn good point.

9

Jean always looked forward to this time of day - just a little quiet, reflective time in the Professor's office, nestled in the corner of his comfy leather sofa with a cup of lemon tea, just discussing - aloud or otherwise - the events of the day. She had her legs folded up beneath her, her cup of tea resting on the sofa arm, and while she should have been relaxing, she was still tense. It was everything that had happened, of course, but the knowledge of that didn't make it easy to dismiss.

Scott was sleeping off his tylenol codeine, the students were enjoying some free time - unaware of the dead body in the lower levels, or anything else that had happened - and the Professor was behind his desk with his cup of peppermint tea, but was intently at work on the computer, still putting together that program that would, hopefully, bring coherence to the scrambled data. She had no idea he was that proficient with computers, but come to think of it, he was the smartest man she had ever met; there was probably precious little he couldn't do. "How much do you know about Marcus?" She wondered. She didn't know much about him at all - a "friend" of Logan's, he apparently aided him in emptying out that base in Nevada, and escaping a rogue, potentially insane telepath named "Shrike" ( although she had picked up that Electra, nee Naomi Deschanel, had actually killed Shrike with a bolt of electricity after Shrike shot Logan and punctured his lungs. Logan had never really talked about it at all, and when she tried to bring it up claimed he killed Shrike - that should have been her first clue he cared for Naomi; he'd been trying to cover up for her. As much as she detested violence and death, she couldn't claim she wouldn't have done the same thing in Naomi's shoes ). Marcus had also been in on something that involved Bob in Death Valley, but they knew almost zero about that, as Logan still didn't share much with them. She had a telepathic image of Marcus she had accidentally gleamed telepathically from Logan ( accidents happened ), and he was an extremely burly, muscular man with a penchant for wearing dark glasses ( he had infrared vision - that figured ) and black leather gloves ( poison glands under his fingernails - that also figured ).

"He's a ..." Xavier hesitated, which was rare for him to do. "... an interesting man."

"Interesting?" That wasn't a word he usually used in a positive manner. "How so?"

"He and Logan probably have much in common."

"Do you mean he has a temper?"

"I don't know. I only know he is not adverse to violence." In the blue light of the computer screen, he looked eerie, almost like a ghost.

"Oh." That was even worse than she thought. "Do you think they're bound for trouble or looking for it?"

Xavier smiled wryly, and replied, "Some philosophers might argue that's the same thing."

Possibly. As if Logan wasn't in enough trouble as it was. "Perhaps I could - "

"No," he interrupted. "If you'd like, I will use Cerebro later and make sure Logan is all right."

She scowled at him, but he was still looking at the screen, not her. "I can do it, Professor."

"You could hurt yourself, Jean, and I think enough people have been hurt as it is."

"I wasn't hurt before."

"Not permanently, but you got lucky. I realize your powers are growing, but - " He trailed off so suddenly she stared at him, only to see him gazing at the computer screen with a haunted, grim expression on his face. She could feel the shift in his mood, something caught between fear, anger, and a sort of resolved disappointment.

"What is it?"

"The word arsenal just popped up on the screen."

Arsenal - the project where the government tried to forcefully recruit Xavier to act as a weapon for them almost fifty years ago. A project that also involved demons. But it was dead, and had been dead all this time. Right? "It could be just the word, not a reference to the program."

He nodded, but his look didn't improve. "I know. It just seems like a coincidence."

It did, and not a good one. She settled back against the couch, and picked up her cup of tea, letting it warm her hands through its delicate china form. "It's  bad enough they hate us - they have  to try and use us too?"

"It's easier for some people to think of us as objects rather than fellow human beings," Xavier replied evenly. "That way we can be swept under the carpet, used, or arbitrarily punished without it bothering their conscience."

True, but it did absolutely nothing to assuage her anxiety. What exactly were Logan and Marcus heading into? And would they be able to get out of it again?

***

It mostly smelled like deer poop of some variety, but there was random cow shit, sheep crap, and even wolf dung scattered about the lea, which was about the size of a football field. There were also what appeared to be corroded chunks of metal strewn everywhere, varying in size from that of a dime to roughly the size of the front half of a Buick. Some may have mimicked the shape of former buildings, but it was almost impossible to say what used to be here - he was taking it on faith that this used to comprise a base. He couldn't smell much of anything beneath the animal shit and other smells that had come to contaminate this place over the years.

And, much to Marc's disappointment, it was empty and untouched, having clearly been abandoned for all this time. They'd parked so far away and lugged in with all these weapons for nothing. Marcus kicked over a large piece of metal that was in a sort of dome shape, making several voles scatter, but there seemed to be nothing but a few weeds and more fragments of metal lurking underneath. "I swear there used to be more here," Marcus claimed.

"Ever seen this place when it wasn't ass deep in snow?"

He paused and looked around, scratching the back of his neck. "Well, now that you mention it - "

Logan threw up his hands in disgust. "So you're telling me we came all this way to look at scrap metal?" He shook his head and walked away, kicking fist sized, warped metal fragments towards a dried up drainage ditch on the far side of the field. Patches of long yellow grass seemed to shiver as the Northern wind picked up, and a flat grey scrim of clouds started to hem in the sky. It was going to rain soon, and probably turn this place into a mud pit. "Are we the stupidest men on the goddamn planet?"

"That's only occurred to you now? Look, there was more here. Unless someone moved a small hill, there was crap here that ain't here anymore. Are you sure you don't smell people?"

"No,I don't . I smell several varieties of shit, but no people, except for our lame asses."

Marcus looked around helplessly. "I was sure there used to be a kind of a - " He made a very vague hand gesture towards the center of the field. " - thingy there."

He glared at him, not bothering to hide his disdain. "Thingy? Were there doohickeys and whatchamacallits around here too?"

Even thought his eyes were hidden by his black welding goggles, he knew Marcus was giving him a death stare. "I'm tryin' to help you here, asshole. I'm sorry if it's not living up to your expectations."

"I thought help was supposed to be helpful," he snapped, wondering if anyone's luck was quite as bad as this.

And as if just to prove a point, it was like reality blinked, and about fifteen men in black body armor materialized out of nowhere thirty feet away, along with a civilian who was too pasty pale white to be anything but a mutant ( or maybe an albino ), and another near the back, a girl whose hair was half lavender and half silver. It was so sudden, shocking, and quiet it seemed unreal, but even as the men raised their automatic weapons, Marcus had pulled two of his guns, and Logan rushed them, popping his claws and launching himself at them with an angry roar.

It wasn't an answer, but it was close enough.

10

They were hard punches, stings that tore through his flesh and muscle, sometimes bouncing off bone with an impact like Scott was taking potshots at him ( adamantium bullets? ), but it wasn't enough to slow him down.

The men may have tried to break up, but Logan moved too fast and the bulk remained in a group, so as soon as he was within claw's reach, he took out about four guns and an equal number of body parts. There were screams and shouts, and while they kept shooting at him, they were distracted from shooting at Marcus, who, by the sound of it , was shooting back while on the move. Judging by the sound he had also hit a few, and since shots were now coming from a different direction, he knew this group had only been the first wave. Shit.

He slashed and kicked at anything that moved, and judging from the blood and shouts and grunts of pain he was hitting targets. He could feel his skin being sliced, hard blows to the body, some shots to the head hard enough to make lights explode in front of his eyes, but he didn't stop; he couldn't stop. He was carried away with an angry momentum, and nothing short of a crippling blow was going to phase him now.

The albino was gone from where he had seen him last, but he hadn't seen him move - where the hell had he gone? He slashed two men aside and kicked one in the gut when he suddenly sensed someone behind him. Two more soldiers were lunging for him, so he didn't bother to turn around, he just threw back a hard elbow that caught someone in the face solidly enough to audibly break a bone. Once he had tossed the two soldiers aside like sacks of garbage, he turned around and saw he had nailed the albino. What the fuck? How the hell did he get behind him so fast? Maybe he was the one who teleported everybody in - he didn't know if any mutants could teleport, but why the hell not? There seemed to be a mutation for everything else.

He took an adamantium bullet point blank in the gut as he ran a soldier through with his claws, tearing through his body armor like wet paper, and it hurt so much it almost dropped him to his knees. It must have been a bullet like Marcus had, not just adamantium - he could feel it rip through his organs before it hit his spinal column and stop. Even as he kicked one charging soldier in the jaw and raked another one across the face, he kept one arm wrapped around the new hole in his gut. It hurt, but now the healing was making it hurt even worse; in fact, his whole body felt like it was on fire from the healing process. He'd taken a lot of damage, and he was going to need to stop that soon if he didn't want his body to give up on him and collapse.

The clot of soldiers had thinned dramatically, and he found his nearest opponent was a thick necked civilian who was apparently unarmed, but still he held his hands out towards him anyways. Logan guessed that was bad, but before he could react, he was hit by an invisible force that instantly threw him off his feet.

Even though he was flying through the air, he knew roughly where he was going, so as soon as he hit the ground he rolled with it, and rolled right into the drainage ditch. He landed badly, on his neck, so he just laid there on his back, staring up at the grey ceiling of the sky. His whole body seemed to burn, but he grabbed the gun stashed in his waistband and pulled it out as he heard approaching footsteps, and as soon as a shadow fell over him, he fired. There was a yelp and someone fell back heavily -  he had no idea if it was the mutie or another soldier.

"Great," Marcus grumbled, crawling over towards him. "A guy who shoots concussive blasts from his hands."

"Is that what it was?"

"Hasn't he heard all us mutants are brothers bullshit? Fuck, you been super - perforated, haven't you? Gonna be okay?"

"I'm healin'. You?"

"Coupla nicks, nothing major." He blindly shot over the top of the ditch, and he hit a couple while the rest scattered, falling back to safer positions. "Good job nailin' the 'porter, but, dude, we're completely, royally fucked."

"They keep coming, don't they?"

"Totally."

"Seen the weird haired girl?"

"Huh? No - you didn't take her out?"

"No. I haven't seen her since the beginning of the fight."

"Huh. Maybe she's another 'porter, and she keeps bringin' these guys in. Anyways, I think we only have one shot here."

"Alamo stand?"

"Fuck no - you think these guys really want to fight us to our deaths? I think we'd be lucky if that were the case."

That was a good point. Some of the burning of  the healing process had stopped in his face and torso, so he felt a little stronger, but his gut still hurt like fuck. He wondered how much blood he could lose before it really started to effect him. "Surrender is not an option."

"Agreed. I'm thinkin' a Paris defense."

"That's surrender."

"Is it? I thought it was beating cheeks."

"No, that's the Holy Grail defense."

Marcus snickered, and then said, in his best phony English accent, "Run away, run away." He then reverted back to his normal voice, which, oddly enough, always had a touch of California surfer. " Yeah, you're right. And here I was the one that had to remind you about Monty Python in the car." Marcus held something over his face. "Well enough to throw?"

Logan reached up and took it from him; it was one of the grenades, but he wasn't sure if it was the normal or the flash bang. "I'll throw North,  you throw South, and then we run like hell. Got a better idea?"

"Not in the least."

He blindly fired another burst from the ditch, and this time there was a response, although the bullets all hit the ground and did little more than spit dirt into their faces. "Ready?"

Logan grunted, shoving himself up to his elbows, and then moved into a crouch. It still felt like he had a piece of hot shrapnel in his belly, but he could live with it. "As I'll ever be."

"Good enough." Marcus pulled the pin, so Logan did the same. They waited a beat, then tossed them out in opposite directions.

Someone yelled, "Incoming!" as they both ducked, and the world seemed to explode. Logan's eardrums remained intact, but he was temporarily deafened, at least figuring from the hollow white noise that rushed into his head. But he could live with it.

They both vaulted out of the ditch on the opposite side and ran for it, and there was a huge cloud of smoke and dirt fragments still hanging in the air, screening them for the moment. But Logan knew it wouldn't last long, and if there was a teleporter still working with the troops, they would be in deep shit until they were out of the fucking State.

They started firing randomly - always a good strategy - and Marcus started firing back blindly with both guns, spraying bullets in a wide arc and emptying the clips. "Suddenly we're the mutant Bonnie and Clyde," he said, giving him that cheesy grin.

He was about to point out what happened to them ( and there was no way he was Bonnie ), when something exploded out of Marcus's chest in a spray of red, with a wet noise that almost smothered the sound of something cracking inside his body armor. They both stopped and stared at each other in abject horror as Marcus said, "Oh fuck."

He started to fall towards the ground, but Logan caught him, dropping the gun he no longer cared about. Marcus was heavy enough that he dropped to one knee, still holding him by the shoulders, and he felt warm blood spill out of the hole in his back and drench his pantleg with gore.

The wound wasn't bad; it was fatal. A hole the size of fingertip in the back had become a hole the size of a grapefruit in the chest; an expanding slug, just like he had in his guns, and an armor piercer as well. Logan felt equally enraged and ill - he had killed him. He had led yet another person, one of the few friends he had, to their death. And for what - what?! There had been nothing here!

Marcus looked up at him, eyes barely visible beneath the thick black goggles, and said, "Go. It's only me they want dead." If he looked in the hole in his chest, he could seem a white gleam of bone among the muscles and deeply red blood. He wished it was a new sight, but Logan knew it was familiar somehow. He may as well have been a coroner.

Logan knew that what Marcus said was probably true, but he was so furious - at them, at himself - he didn't care. "I ain't leavin' you here," he said, wrapping one of Marcus's thick arms around his shoulders, in preparation for hauling him up.

"Oh, you fucking stupid bastard, you can't get anywhere with me," he argued weakly, unable to fight even as he grabbed his waist firmly and lifted him up. "Save yourself - leave me."

"Fuck you," he snapped, just as he heard a soft plop in the dirt a few feet away from them. He hardly needed to turn to confirm it was an explosive, but there was absolutely nothing he could do.

He was looking at it when it went off, and the blinding white light seemed to stab straight through his eyes and into the back of his brain long before it turned the world to black.

11

It was his blood, right?

Oddly enough, the smell of leather was almost suffocating, but it was quickly obvious was why: he had something like a stiff leather gag wrapped tightly around his mouth. His hands were tightly shackled behind him, and just by trying them, he knew they were adamantium, and so tight they were already slicing into his skin. The chair he was sitting in was metal - by the scent, at least adamantium plated - and bolted to the floor; his ankles were also shackled to the legs of the chair. He tried to shift, move, but all he managed to accomplish was tearing open the skin on his wrists some more. What was the gag about? Were they afraid, since he couldn't move anything else, he'd try and bite them? Or did they just think his screaming would disturb the neighbors?

There were no lights on, but he could see well enough to know he was in a small metal room, maybe eight feet by ten, empty save for him and the bolted down chair. There was a small seam in the wall about five feet in front of him, and he imagined that's what passed for a door.

After a moment, it slid open, and filled the room with a pale yellow light that was still far too bright for his dark adjusted eyes. So he closed them until the door slid shut, and opened them with golden afterimages still burnt into his retinas. There was a tall, slender man standing before him, holding something that  may have been a gun or a type of injection needle. "Wolverine - wow, isn't this a blast from the past? I bet you never expected to see me again. Oh, wait, you don't even remember me, do you?"

He wanted to tell the man to fuck off; he wanted to ask where Marcus was ( maybe they saved him - was it completely beyond the realm of possibility? ); he wanted to ask how he knew him. But he couldn't do any of that, not with the gag over his mouth. He still tried to sound out "Fuck you," and hope he figured it out.

He must have. The man, who must have been wearing glasses, chuckled. "Such ungratefulness. And here I was, going to help you piece together your past. You're curious, aren't you?" He took a few steps closer, and his aftershave seemed to wash over him like a noxious wave. "Did you know you were classified with the mutants we called "monsters" because of their powers? But you were the only one in the category who wasn't there because of his powers - come on, healing factor? Claws? Slightly better than average strength? Lame. You were a monster because of your temper. Homicidal never even began to describe it."

He wished he'd take the gag off. He'd show him homicidal.

"Psychotic? Well, that was much closer. You were definitely insane, and therefore perfect for molding. We didn't even need to wipe out that many memories - you were so loco you didn't actually remember all that much."

Logan didn't want to believe a single thing this bastard said, and he tried not to listen ... but was it so hard to believe he was insane before he fell into their hands? That would explain so much ...

"It may not be the smartest thing in the world, but we're curious to see how much of you we can bring back. What do you think, Wolverine? Interested in a stroll through the past?"

He realized there was a sinister edge to "see how much of you we can bring back". They were going to try and resurrect the "Wolverine" personality, weren't they? The one incapable of thinking himself as anything but a killer - their killer. Even as the man reached for him he tried to turn his head away, tried to shake his hand off even as the man grabbed a handful of his hair and forced his head to the side; Logan tried to pull free, feeling the hair tear from his scalp, blood trickling down before the skin healed shut, but it was too late. He heard the hiss of the injection gun, felt the sting of a needle piercing an artery on the side of his neck, and the man stepped away as Logan pulled his head straight, trying to shake away the effects of the drug. His immune system would metabolize it, right? It wouldn't work.

But he could feel it, a slow warmth infusing his bloodstream, and he knew they had compensated for that. Of course they had - and why else would they have an adamantium chair with built in shackles? They were waiting for him. They had been ready for him for some time.

They had been waiting for their sleeper to awaken.