10

The one thing going for them was she couldn’t have left too long ago. If she had, the whole place would already have been in flames. They were just minutes behind her; maybe they could still catch up.

Logan glanced down at the tire tracks in the dirt floor, and said, “An SUV or a big truck. She’s in one or the other.”

Faith looked at him like he just started burping the alphabet, eyes tearing up from the smoke. “Who are you now, Tonto?”

He scowled at her. “No, I just know some tire treads.” Once they were out of the barn, he added, “Paleface.”

She coughed out some of the smoke, then said, “Let’s see how pale I am when I put my foot up your ass.”

As soon as he took several cleansing breaths, almost but not quite clearing the scent of accelerant out of his nose, he asked, “Does that make sense?”

She shrugged with a pained grimace. “Prob’ly not, but I had to say something.”

Fair enough.

The good thing about having a Corvette was you could get going fast, and by the time they got to the car and Faith had revved the engine, they were going nearly one hundred as she screamed down the empty roads, trying to catch Mystique’s trail. It was a good thing that they were in a quiet outskirt of Vancouver, as there wasn’t much in the way of traffic on the roads right now, and there was only one way Mystique could have gone if she didn’t pass them (and no car or truck had). Faith was driving way too fast, but he doubted there was any police presence out here, and she had better than average reflexes, so he knew she could handle it.

He took the time to put this together in his head, but some things still didn’t add up. Was Mystique after the Hype all along? Why? Was there something she hadn’t told him about it? (Mystique lie? Oh wow, what a shock. Next thing you know, somebody was going to claim the Pope was Catholic.) There must have been some truth to the story about Vogel: not only was she far too upset to have been lying about it, but he recognized the man’s smell, and it made his stomach clench. It wasn’t good and he knew it.

So what was going on here? It was making his head hurt - or maybe that was the lingering effect of the accelerant on his sinuses. He was sure she’d used something extra pungent just in case he stumbled upon the scene. She knew he could be attacked through his sense of smell far more effectively than most physical attacks, a bizarre weakness that only a few knew to exploit. (And the Organization knew how to exploit his sense of hearing as well. He was just glad that he hadn’t encountered that goddamn ultrasonic pulse again. Presumably it didn’t travel well.)

He wished Marc was here, even though he’d probably be trotting out the “I told you so” guff. Marc knew how the devious mind worked. Logan felt he should know too, but Marc just seemed gifted with a deeper, more facile psychological insight. Maybe that’s where the philosophy degree paid off.

He rubbed his eyes, the pain of the smoke gone, and Faith asked, “What’re you thinking?”

“That I’m a total dumbass. I’m trying to figure out what Mystique is really up to and I’m drawing a blank. I mean, I know she wants Vogel, but what does she want with the Hype? Is she gonna destroy it, or flood the market with it to hurt Humans? But it would hurt mutants more - they’d be blamed for it. And people would have to want to use it; she couldn’t make them take it.”

Faith thought about it for a moment. “Couldn’t she? I mean, for the toxin to work it had to be dumped in a water supply, right? Maybe she’s gonna do that with the Hype.”

“It could hurt mutants though. She doesn’t know what effect it has on mutants; no one does.”

“So she said. Do we trust her?”

Good point. “Maybe that’s why she has Vogel. Maybe she’s trying to get answers from him about it.”

She shrugged. “Could be. Or maybe, y’know, she’s just a psychotic bitch who needs to be stomped into a blueberry stain.”

“I think that’s a given.”

“Then that’s all the excuse we need to kick her ass. We can worry about the rest later.”

As always, Faith had a good point. When they had Mystique, they could do their best to get information out of her.

After all, he had a wild card that Mystique didn’t even know about. One that could make even her tell the truth, whether she wanted to or not.

***

Several minutes later, they saw a black and silver SUV down the road, one that looked fairly new and about the width of the vehicle they were looking for, so Logan asked Faith to hang back as far as possible so hopefully Mystique didn’t notice she was being tailed. It was better when they reached the freeway, where it was easy to get lost in the multitudes. Logan tried to figure out where she might have been going, but honestly couldn’t guess yet. She seemed to be heading towards Surrey, but he had no idea why she would. What the fuck was in Surrey? All he knew was the Russian mob didn’t have a big influence there, so perhaps that was enough.

If Mystique knew she was being tailed, she gave no sign of it. Her driving was pretty normal, no evasive behavior … but that in itself made him suspicious. God, he was so fucking paranoid nothing was ever going to make him happy. He supposed he was going to have live with that.

“So what’s the plan?” Faith asked.

“Umm … good question. Guess it depends on where she’s going.”

“You don’t know?”

“My best guess is Surrey. But that’s about as specific as I can get right now.”

“That’s not very helpful, hon.”

“I realize that. But that’s all I g -” he was glancing in the rearview mirror - habit; when trailing someone, he always had the tendency to check and make sure he wasn’t being followed as a kind of trap - and he saw a black Escalade with subtle armor and tinted windows coming up fast, cutting in and out of traffic, not quite recklessly enough to draw attention to itself, but not exactly exhibiting safe driving behavior either. “Oh fuck.”

Faith had been fiddling with the radio settings - she had satellite radio in this thing, which shouldn’t have surprised him - and settled on Kane Hodder before looking up, her eyes immediately focusing on Mystique’s SUV four cars ahead of them in the fast lane. “We get made?”

“No. Look who’s coming up on the left.” He ducked down in the seat, below the dashboard, until the Escalade roared passed. Just as he thought, they weren’t after them.

“Crap in a hat,” Faith exclaimed, tightening her hands on the steering wheel so dramatically it creaked a little. Either she held back or it was reinforced, because it didn’t snap in her hands like glass. “How do they know where she is when we just barely did?”

There was only one logical answer. “There’s a transponder in the SUV. Probably a second one. Mystique found the first one and probably left it at the barn, unaware there was a second hidden in the vehicle. That’s an old Organization trick. Kind of surprised the mob are using it.”

“How much money are they sinking into transponders?” she wondered, with a sarcastic tsk. “Very wasteful.”

“Yet, in this case, very effective.” He didn’t know what the mob guys in the Escalade were going to try, but he figured they’d go one of two ways: try and run (ram?) her off the road, or open fire on her. Both were awful considering the amount of people on the road. It wasn’t rush hour, but it was pretty busy, and the odds of collateral damage was astronomical, especially if they opened fire and people started panicking.

Sometimes Logan just really wanted to beat the shit out of himself. Had he learned nothing in his seemingly endless life? If there is a choice of options, always go with the worst case scenario and you will never be wrong. The mob proved this to him by lowering their side windows and opening fire with automatic weapons on the back of the SUV.

“Fuck!” Faith cursed, barely swearing in time to miss a Jeep Cherokee that made a sudden, erratic lane change. More cars were swerving off the road - some hit by bullets, others hit by flying debris or other cars, some people just panicking and losing control of their cars. The SUV had had its back window blown out, and it was leaking something that was more than likely gasoline, but Mystique was taking advantage of the panic to open up the throttle in the quickly emptying lanes. Logan wondered how far she’d get before she ran out of gas.

“Can’t they light that?” Faith asked, jerking her head towards the gasoline trail.

“They can, but it’ll never catch up the SUV unless it comes to a dead stop. Even then, most gas tank explosions only happen in movies.”

“But it can still catch on fire, right?”

She had a point. “Fuck.”

More shots caused the right rear tire of the SUV to explode, flinging rubber fragments like shrapnel, and a stray bullet shattered the side window of a Honda that jerked suddenly into a spin and was quickly t-boned by the Chevy behind it. Goddamn it, this was turning into a bloodbath. He was going to have expose them; he could at least console himself with the knowledge that they could easily catch Mystique now, even if she did realize they were following her.

“Is this your car?” he asked Faith.

She shook her head. “It’s Tony’s. He lets me have a pick from his garages in whatever city we’re in.”

Logan was tempted to ask how many cars he owned scattered among how many cities, but then decided it was a topic for another time. “Good, so we can hurt it.”

Faith nodded. “Yep. Should I ram them?”

How could you not love a woman who didn‘t ask “What?” or “Why?”, just offered to go to ramming speed. He really should marry her. “A Corvette ramming an armored Escalade? No, that’d only work if we were goin’ a hundred twenty." Also, he doubted Faith would survive such a collision, Slayer healing factor or not. This was a Corvette, and the reason it could go so fast was it had a light fiberglass body that offered almost no protection in a high speed crash. "I want you to pull up to it. I’m gonna have to jump on and get ‘em the old fashioned way.”

“Awesome,” she exclaimed with a bizarre sort of cheerfulness, a broad, unsettling grin splitting her face. “I always wanted to do a Road Warrior thing.”

“Once I’m out, keep tailin’ Mystique. I’ll catch up with you or you can come back and get me.”

She gazed at him with a smirk. “Glory hog.” She then put the pedal to the metal, effortlessly swerving in and out of panicking traffic and avoiding debris, heading for the Escalade, while Logan opened the passenger side window and climbed out, sitting on the window’s edge with his legs still inside the car. They were racing along at ludicrous speeds, dangerous ones, especially with other cars crashing into each other and debris flying around, but that’s where having a healing factor came in handy.

The mobsters were so focused on Mystique that they didn’t realize they were coming up on them, so he climbed up a bit more onto the roof. It was starting to dent and buckle under his weight, but not totally, so it was holding up for now. A good thing, as he didn’t want to accidentally make Faith a pancake. Despite the wind screaming in his ears, along with the sharp bursts of gunfire and breaking glass, he heard Faith shouting inside the car, in a comically deep voice, “Just walk away!” It was a line from The Road Warrior.

Yeah, he was really going to have to marry her now. He'd be nuts not to.

He popped one set of claws and used them basically as pitons - and it was a very fine line between using them as a brace and using them as the jaws of life to open up a car like a tin can - as he used the fingers on his other hand to try and get a hold of the car. This was difficult as he climbed out on the roof, kneeling as both wind and velocity wanted to send him flying away like a paper bag. That fact that Faith was occasionally swerving to avoid detritus and other cars wasn't helping either.

But once he was certain he had things under control (for the moment at the very least), he was able to bring himself up into a deep crouch, like he was surfing on top of the car. Anybody looking on might think they were filming the third Jackass movie, except most people were more concerned with the gunfire and whatnot. To prove just how much Mystique cared about collateral damage, she deliberately rammed a Kia that was going too slow and sent it spinning off the freeway, crumpled up like a tin can. She was still moving at a good clip, losing gas and some speed now that she was running on the rim of the missing rear tire. It was making a painful grating noise, tearing up the roadway and shooting sparks, which had ignited tiny pockets of spilled gasoline, but most were extinguished by the breeze of passing cars or the cars themselves. The tiny pockets of flame were no danger to anyone, but he had no idea how long she could ride the rim at these speeds, and adding bleeding gas into the equation meant she ws on even less borrowed time than she was before. If she didn’t lose control and crash in a big ugly mess, she’d be very lucky.

Faith pulled up even with the Escalade and swerved towards it, giving Logan a very short leap across. As he did, he popped his second set of claws and drove them in through the open passenger side window, driving them deep into the flesh of the gunman and into the seat behind him, his gun falling silent as he made a wet gagging noise. He grabbed onto the inside of the door with his other hand and hung on, inches from the roadway but otherwise safe, as Faith sped the Corvette up and tried to catch up to Mystique. He was pretty sure he heard her shouting an excited, "Yee haw!"

Logan was hanging on to the door of the Escalade for dear life, the road screaming by beneath his feet at a rate that certainly wouldn't kill him if he fell, but would take off most layers of skin, and he knew from experience that hurt like a motherfucker. Aware he was there, the mobsters inside started shooting at him, but they shot their own man, who wasn't dead in spite of Logan having his claws buried in him, but was now as bullets exploded through his chest and midsection, splattering Logan with his blood.

Logan pulled himself up into the passenger side window. The driver was swerving wildly to throw him off, but he was too much inside the Escalade for that to work now. The driver pulled out a handgun and fired at almost point blank range, but still he only hit Logan's shoulder, and the bullet ricocheted off bone, putting a hole in the windshield. Perhaps this made the men in back think someone else was firing on them as well, as they opened fire in his direction and outward, and once again they hit their own man, the driver this time, his head exploding like a balloon full of blood. Logan had just pulled himself into the SUV entirely when this happened, and reached across to grab the steering wheel as bullets slammed into his own body, but it was already too late, as the Escalade jerked violently, death spasms causing the driver's body to hit both the gas pedal and the brake, and suddenly the world turned upside down.

They were tumbling end over end, off the road and into the grassy median, glass shattering and everything not strapped down being thrown around the cabin, and Logan guessed he now knew what a towel in a dryer must have felt like.