3

It was one of those questions that you should have never asked if you really didn’t want to know the answer. Logan thought he had, but he was wrong.

Over their beers, Sloane told him how Lightning had died: blown to pieces in the same “incident” that had almost killed him. “According to Xi, you were trying to reach the control center, to abort the self-destruct,” she told him, staring morosely into her beer bottle. So Xia was there? Did that explain the looks? “You sent her after Lightning, who was trapped behind blast doors in another part of the base. But the self-destruct went off before you could reach it, and before she could reach him. She survived unharmed - her field, y’know - but … I don’t think there was much of Lightning left to pick up. The biggest piece retrieved was part of his leg, I think. And you …” she trailed off, as if the rest of the sentence was self-explanatory. Was it?

“I survived, but barely?”

She nodded, and he thought she shuddered. “You lost … do you remember that part?”

“I’m not sure,” he lied. He remembered none of this. “Tell me.”

She seemed reluctant, tracing her fingernail in a condensation ring on the scratched oaken table, and he thought she shuddered very faintly. “You … most of your skin was flash burned right off; you were trying to cut the secondary power source when the base detonated, so you were basically sitting on ground zero. You lost most of your right foot, a finger on your left hand, a big chunk of your nose, and at least one kidney. I think there was some other internal injuries, but I don’t know them all. I kinda tuned out the litany at that point, y’know?”

He looked at his hand, trying to figure out which finger he’d lost, but he moved them, and they all responded. He could feel them all as well, feel the rough, damp surface of the table beneath his skin. And he was pretty sure he had all his nose. “I look intact to me,” he finally admitted, trying to make it a joke. It failed.

“Well, yeah. It all grew back. And believe me, I’m glad -”

“What? What the hell do you mean they grew back? People don’t regrow fingers.”

She shrugged helplessly, lifting her beer. “You do.”

He stared at his hand once more, not quite believing this. Okay, maybe he healed fast, but grew back body parts? No fucking way. “How? Am I part lizard or something?”

That made her grimace, not ready to laugh at such a thing yet. “No. Yer just … you. I think they have somethin’ they give you, they add to the tank, that speeds the process up. But I don’t know what.”

The tank? Was that what he was in? He felt suddenly, immensely disturbed, mainly about himself. What the hell was he anyways?

There was something else bugging him about all this, but he didn’t realize what until they were leaving. “Did they ever figure out who double crossed us?”

“What?”

“The base in Kyoto. We were sabotaged, right? They ever find the guilty party?”

Sloane’s brow furrowed in consternation as she thought, her eyes staring through him at some internal image. “Now that you mention it, no. Huh. That’s kinda weird, isn’t it?”

Weird wasn’t really the word. But considering how “paranoid” he was, he wasn’t sure he could trust himself. Still, his gut was telling him there was something there, something that might give him some answers, if he could just figure out what was the right question to ask.

The secondary transit point was a private airstrip, where what looked like a passenger jet mated with a stealth bomber was waiting for them. The interior cabin was far more cramped than that of the cargo jet (of course), yet plusher, obviously more designed for human habitation. The seats were leather, and there was something that could have been industrial carpeting on the floor, smoke gray and so tightly napped it could have also been a type of compressed floorboard.

There were envelops sitting on two of the seats, and as he picked them up and glanced inside, it suddenly occurred to him: “Where’s Stryker?”

Sloane collapsed in a chair across from him, looking slightly confused by his comment. “What d’ya mean? He doesn’t come with us on recons.”

“When I talked to him on the phone yesterday, he said he was gonna have me scanned, whatever that means. But I didn’t see him at the base.”

When he said the word ‘scanned’, her eyes widened; just slightly, and she quickly affected neutrality, but he still caught it. And it was nice to know that being “scanned” was indeed worse than it sounded. “Oh. That whole New Dawn mission came up, and I’m pretty sure Control sent him on ahead to get some intell. I thought I heard some shouting from Control’s office before I left to pick you up, so I guess Stryker wasn’t happy about it.”

“But Control’s the boss.” It was actually a question, but he made sure it didn’t sound like it.

“Hell yeah. There’s very little irony in code names.”

He tossed her the envelope meant for her, and opened his with great reluctance. “What did he mean by getting scanned? I trust it wasn’t a reference to an MRI.”

She opened her envelope and looked at the contents, deliberately not meeting his eyes. It was that bad, huh? “I’m sure he meant scan you with one of his telepathic pets, but Shrike’s still in the asylum … I think. I didn’t see any there, though.” The mention of the name Shrike made his stomach clench, like he was preparing for a physical blow. She glanced up at him from under her reddish blonde eyebrows, trying to keep the concern out of her eyes but not quite succeeding. “Logan, you okay? You’ve been actin’ really weird all day, askin’ questions about stuff you should know. Is that why Stryker wanted you scanned? Did Mirage get off a good one before … well, y’know.”

Could he trust her? His gut told him he could, and it was all he had to go on at the moment. Really, when it came down to it, he had no choice. “Maybe, I’m not sure. What was his power?”

“He had a weird kinda combination of low level telepathy and empathy. He could make you think your worst fear was comin’ true. Like, if you were afraid of spiders, he could make you believe you had big hairy ones crawlin’ all over you. That’s why he was such a hard target - people couldn’t get within twenty five feet of him without runnin’ away screamin’. But Control figured you’d be perfect to go after him, ‘cause what are you afraid of? I’ve worked with you for years, and even I don’t know.”

That made him scratch his head as he glanced out the window, the jet beginning its taxi down the runway, the swiftly moving scenery giving him a momentary excuse for evasion. It didn’t make sense, did it? On the verge of death, Phan hits him with a big blast of what - fear? That made no sense at all. Something else must have happened. Could someone else have been there? A compatriot who managed to escape before he regained consciousness? That made more sense.

Inside the envelopes were visas, passports, driver’s licenses, and credit cards in the names of their new identities, along with a background info sheet. He would be playing Shaun Logan Spencer, age thirty (birthday was Bastille Day, July 14^th - that would be easy to remember), a well intentioned environmental activist on vacation with his new wife, Rowena Ann Leigh - Spencer (which led Sloane to exclaim, “Rowena? What kind of fuckin’ dork ass name is that? Somebody did that to wind me up.”), who was also another one of those well intentioned neo-hippy types, who consistently meant well but never actually did anything concrete or worth a damn. While technically better than people who didn’t give a damn at all, they seemed to accomplish as much.

“Let’s see - I went to grad school, and also hitchhiked across Europe,” he read aloud, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with this information. What was he, a method actor?

“We both did,” Sloane pointed out. “I guess we went together. I bet I never shaved my armpits once.”

“I bet I liked you hairy,” he replied, raising his eyebrows in mock sauciness.

She laughed, giving his leg the slightest kick with the toe of her sneaker. “I bet you had long, David Lee Roth hair, and smelled like bong water.”

“I bet we slept in youth hostels, and didn’t bathe for weeks.”

“Eww. So bong water was a general improvement.”

“Oh hell yeah. Cologne.” He continued looking over the information, and let out a sigh of frustration. “They made me American again. Damn it, I hate that.”

“Well, you think that’s bad, they made me Irish.”

He smirked, unable to help himself. “Stereotyping bastards.”

“I know. What, should I wear a rosary and be constantly drunk?”

“Gettin’ in bar fights, demanding to know who took your Lucky Charms.”

She laughed once more, flashing her teeth, the open expanse of her throat, and the sparkle in her eyes made her look almost painfully young. “See, that’s why I like goin’ on missions with you. You usually have a sense of humor, unlike those other bastards.”

Usually? Did he really want to know?

They were hurtling towards South America at an incredible speed; he didn’t need to be in the cockpit to know that. There was a sense of G force, something that pressed you back, even if only on a miniscule level. He went to see if there was any booze on this crate, and there was; they actually had some little airplane bottles of liquor, and on her request he grabbed her a couple of bottles of vodka, while he grabbed some whiskey, and some packets of peanuts they actually had as well - he was hungry.

As he scarfed down his peanuts and looked out the window at the pillowy layer of snowy white clouds scudding beneath them at fantastic speeds, he began to wonder if his paranoia was flaring up, or there really was something wrong with this whole set up. Had anything seemed right since he returned from Cambodia? Or even since he returned to his hotel room?

The worst part was he couldn’t quite put his finger on the problem. It was shapeless and vague, a boogeyman who lurked in the back of the closet, and yet you knew, even without seeing them, that something was very wrong. The surface set up of this all was fine: they were off to do recon, a little advance scouting, which was always wise when you weren’t perfectly sure what you’d be dealing with. But there weren’t enough details about the actual mission itself. Was he really supposed to believe the Organization knew nothing about this Nova project? These bastards knew everything, especially when it came to dangerous weaponry. They took perverse pride in being able to kill anyone in a myriad of horrible ways, and having the biggest dicks - weapons - on the planet. There was no way anyone could sneak a huge weapons project past them, and certainly not the States - wasn’t Stryker their direct liaison to them? Stryker was the ranking American in the Org’s secret line up;! Control was Canada’s top man. He forgot the name of the top Brit, but it probably didn’t matter right now. What did matter was that there was no way the American could have snuck a weapons program past Stryker. So what the hell were they really going to South America for?

He had a sick feeling in his gut that he wasn’t going to like the answer, no matter what it was.

4

He didn't care what the mission was - he wasn't wearing shorts.

So while Sloane was changing into her "tourist-y" outfit of logo tank top and walking shorts, he remained in his jeans, only putting on his own logo tank top, because, as Sloane said in a way that could have been sarcastic (or maybe not), "All Americans wear ads."

She had to talk him into using the depilatory, though. He offered to shave - Shaun probably wouldn't be quite as hairy as him - but she told him the cream kept him "stubble free" longer, as his hair seemed to grow faster than normal. (Another regeneration thing?) So he smeared the stuff on his face and instantly regretted it; the smell of the stuff made his eyes water like he was crying. It was like someone was repeatedly stabbing his sinus membranes with a sharpened ice pick.

Still, he didn't have to keep it on that long, and he gratefully washed the stuff off, using soap to try and wash the lingering chemical scent out of his skin. At some point he began to suspect the smell - which he could only equate to someone toasting Fritos over an acetate and cat hair fire - was psychosomatic.

He looked at himself in the tiny plastic mirror over the sink, and it was weird to see himself without his sideburns or facial hair; in fact, not just weird, but wrong. He didn't recognize himself. It was like a hollow eyed stranger was staring back at him. But did he ever recognize himself? It was a disturbing thought, but he wasn't sure at all. So he dried his face and left the bathroom before he could ponder its meaning further.

Sloane was waiting for him, dressed in her khaki shorts and blue Addidas tank top, red hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she grinned broadly at him, almost but not quite laughing. "Well, hello stranger," she said, coming up to him and grabbing his chin. "Cor, would you look at you! You clean up nice, don't cha?"

He rolled his eyes, and gently removed her hand. The metal of her wedding band felt cold against his skin, and it reminded him of how deeply creepy and disturbing it felt slipping on his own faux wedding band. It almost gave him a sense of déjà vu that made his stomach flip flop. "Yeah, yeah, make fun."

"I'm not making fun! You're a handsome bloke under all that fur. You're a real heartbreaker. See, I always knew it, but you got that whole macho thing goin' on."

"What macho thing?"

She gave him a toothy grin, and a slight nudge to the chest. "Oh, you know. The "I'm all hairy and broody and don't touch me" thing. I always suspected that, under it all, you really were a handsome devil. It's in the eyes, inn't?"

He glowered at her. "Are you through yet?"

She finally did laugh, but it was a sort of knowing chuckle. "Yer embarrassed about it, aren't you? See, the macho thing. You'd rather be ugly."

"At least it would match the inside." Now why the hell had he said that? He'd even shocked the mocking good cheer out of Sloane with that, he could see it draining out of her face like she was losing blood. Why the hell had he said that?

He turned away, and opened an overhead compartment. "So what weapons can you carry exactly?" Inside the compartment was an assortment of small firearms, knives as sharp as scalpels, and assorted other hand weaponry, in case their powers weren't enough. Logan didn't think he'd need any of this, and as a rule he didn't like guns. He preferred things to go hand to hand, because there he had an obvious advantage that was almost insurmountable. And at least you didn't have to worry about collateral damage when you went to fisticuffs.

After a moment, she said, "I think I can fit a paralyzer in these shorts. They have these weird big ass pockets."

He grabbed one of the boxy black things - somehow he just knew that was a "paralyzer" - and handed it to her. "Can you fit it in your boot instead?"

She looked down at her feet and frowned in thought. "No, no room in these hiking boots. Gotta risk the pocket." She looked up to take it from him, and gave him a smile that seemed forced. "I got nothin' to worry about, though, do I? I'm with you. Yer a weapon all by yourself."

He knew she meant that as a compliment. But for some reason, it sent a chill through his body that he felt all the way down to his toes.

****

Another hot country, humid and yet arid, the sun glaring down like a punishment, heat rising up from the asphalt as if everyone was being baked in a humongous convection oven. They both wore ubiquitous baseball caps to protect their eyes and continue to promote the gringo image, but it was so hot he wanted to rip it off and risk it. But he didn't, because he was in no mood to argue with Sloane.

The weird American sense of gentrification had taken root down here already. The only way to tell you were South of the border was the prevalence of signs in Spanish and Portuguese on the businesses. Otherwise the city was a thicket of tall spires, skyscrapers that looked bizarrely the same no matter where in the world you were. They walked past a McDonald's and a Pizza Hut on their way to the hotel, which was also a branch of an American hotel chain. The world was actually getting smaller every day, but he didn't find it terribly comforting.

The hotel lobby, done up in faux elegant burgundy and gold, was air conditioned to within an inch of its life. After baking outside, it was like being shoved into a refrigerator, and he actually shuddered until his body adapted to the temperature shift. He was pretty sure they weren’t followed, but he still didn’t trust a damn thing, and he kept parsing scents, inhaling discreetly and figuring out what he was smelling. He was smelling lots of people, heat baked asphalt, auto exhaust, garbage, piss, bird shit, all the usual scents of urban existence, and inside the lobby of the hotel it mostly faded away to people smell, and the various chemicals use to condition air and clean a hotel.

Sloane clung to his arm and otherwise kept touching him as they signed into the hotel, with the extra officious demeanor of the clerk suggesting that this was the kind of place where they felt if they sucked up to you enough, you’d never notice they were overcharging you. She was good at playing her role of spunky newlywed; she was a method actress. He knew he should be getting into his role more, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure if it was simple lethargy, the heat sapping his strength, or the fact that this honestly stunk to high heaven, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on the “why” of it.

Finally they got the key card to their honeymoon suite, and headed for the elevator, carrying their “luggage”, which was a rustic backpack and knapsack apiece, keeping with the outdoorsy backpacker back story. But the only thing the bags contained were a change of clothes and some equipment they might need; they could have fit it in the backpacks alone, but no newlyweds would travel that light.

The room was on the seventeenth floor, and it was reasonably generous, with a wide king sized bed and a large bathroom, and an air conditioner already chugging away. It had almost - but not quite - flushed away the scent of faux flowery room freshener, that made him sneeze repeatedly. As soon as he could, he flung himself on the bed, letting his bags fall to the strange copper colored carpet. Sloane looked down at him, curious. “You tired?”

“A little.” Better than saying he thought this whole mission was crap.

She paused and he felt her using her power, something like static electricity crawling up his skin and making his hair stand on end. The air conditioner shut off, and everything in the room fell eerily quiet as she did a preliminary scan. After a second, she let up, but the air conditioner still didn’t come back on; it would need a manual reboot. “I didn’t get a sense of a bug. Did you hear anything?”

“No.” If it was a passive relay bug, he wouldn’t hear anything, but the good thing about her using her “static” powers was she could take out a passive bug with one of her scanning pulses. It was probably needlessly paranoid, but it was better to scan a new room for surveillance devices than instantly blow your cover.

She walked across the room and turned the air conditioner back on. “You hungry? I’m a bit peckish. Thought I might call room service to bring up some grub. You want somethin’?”

“Sure. Get me whatever you’re gettin’. And a beer.”

She snickered as she opened the curtain on the far side of the room a crack, letting some more of the sunlight in. Even if there was a sniper on the roof across the way, that side of the room had nothing of interest for them, nothing lethal they could hit. “Give over - I knew about the beer. It’s always a beer, inn’t? I was getting one for myself as well. Although, I suppose, as newlyweds, we should be getting champagne.”

“Not necessarily. That would seem like a pretentiously upper class thing to do to Shaun and Rowena. They do pretentious lower class things.”

“Of course.”

While she looked over the room menu, he thought about their next move. Technically, they were supposed to act like tourists, look around the city, take pictures and buy useless crap, while surreptitiously doing a little recon. The place they wanted to work their way towards was a former automotive plant on the outside of the city proper; satellite photos had picked up some unusual activity there as of late, and considering it was supposed to be a long abandoned plant, any activity there was pretty suspicious. He also knew that Control was hoping they might pull a tail, get Mystique to follow them, so he could flush her out. Mystique didn’t know that he could smell her, or maybe - more likely - she didn’t know her scent didn’t change when she did. But that still didn’t make her any less dangerous … well, to Sloane. He had a vague gut feeling that he’d beat her before, and, while definitely a credible threat, he generally found her to be more annoying than anything ! else.

And Spectre would be meeting them at some point. The when and where of it was never discussed, but he was the invisible guy; he would find them, and reveal himself when he thought it safe. Or when Logan smelled him, whichever came first.

Sloane called in their order, putting on her perky voice once more, sitting close to him on the edge of the bed. For some reason he reached out and touched her back, letting his hand rest between her shoulder blades. She didn’t seem to mind, but he suddenly thought he shouldn’t, and pulled his hand away before she hung up the phone. As soon as she did, he asked, “So what happened to us?”

Her spine stiffened, and he knew it had been the wrong thing to ask. She got up and paced to the other side of the room, arms clasped protectively in front of her, and didn’t quite look at him as she spoke. “Sorry, love, that was just kind of a … casual thing.”

It was all reading between the lines. “I took it more seriously than you did.”

“Yeah. I mean, I do technically have a boyfriend, y’know, and I didn’t want to … I mean, we have a kinda rocky relationship and -”

“I was a stop gap.”

She finally looked at him, frowning. “That’s a bit harsh.”

“For you or for me?”

Now her expression got uglier, angrier, and he supposed it was a good thing he was out of kicking distance. “Do you really want to have this convo now? Do you think I’m the only asshole here?”

“If you were happy with the guy, you wouldn’t have cheated. It’s not a judgment, it’s just the truth, and I’m sure you know it. We’re both massively fucked up people, Sloane. Why else are we in the Organization? We go to wonderful, fabulous locations and kill people. That isn’t something the well adjusted do.”

“And what would you know ab -”

She was cut off, undoubtedly in mid insult, by the sudden ring of the telephone on the nightstand. They both shared a startled glance, but what were they worried about? Technically, no one should be calling them, but then again, the Organization always knew where they were. That’s why they had the credit cards; it was an easy paper trail to follow, as well as an easy way to keep track of their expenses. Fascistic and yet frighteningly practical.

He shifted closer to the nightstand, enough that he could reach out and snag the receiver. “Yeah?”

He was greeted with a slightly hollow, slightly metallic hum, and after a moment he heard a strange noise, like a strained sniffle. “I’m - ‘m sorry I’m calling you, I know I shouldn’t …”

The voice was small, high, and strained. He finally recognized it. “Xi?” he asked, sitting up. Sloane gave him a slightly startled look - she shouldn’t be calling; this was totally against protocol - but all he could do was shrug. “You really shouldn’t be -”

“I know, I know,” she sniffed. The hum in the background was a special frequency, so if someone was bugging this conversation, all they’d get would be that noise, a deep, voice obliterating hum. “But I had to talk to someone …” She sobbed, try to swallow it back.

His heart seemed to plummet into his stomach. “What’s wrong?”

There was a pause when she tried to pull herself together, but she wasn’t doing too well. “They killed him. He’s dead.”

“Who’s dead?” Sloane looked at him sharply.

“Timebomb. He - he was standing there, right next to me … we cleared the threat, I know we did, and yet … the bullet came out of nowhere. Maybe there was a sniper … there must have been, I didn’t see anyone …”

“Someone shot and killed Timebomb?” He had to repeat it, because it seemed pretty unbelievable. Timebomb could spill the total contents of your skull on the pavement in the time it took for him to see you. If he could see you, you were dead, no two ways about it. Even Sloane’s eyes widened in disbelief, her jaw going slack. If you wanted to kill Timebomb, you had to know exactly how to approach him - which was not at all. You stayed out of sight line, and tried to take him out from a distance. As this person must have done. How much intell did this “New Dawn” have on them?

“Are you hurt?” he asked her. With her field, it was probably a long shot at best, but she could have dropped it at that point. He had told her to never drop it in the field, even when it looks clear, but she was still a rookie; she still did stupid things. (Didn’t they all?)

“No, I still had my field up … I should have included him in it, but I don’t like to be that close to him … oh, shit, I have to go.” She then hung up, and he figured that, wherever she was calling from, she was about to be discovered by someone.

He dropped the receiver in its cradle, feeling slightly numb. “Who in the hell could kill Keogh?” Sloane exclaimed, sounding honestly puzzled. “That had to be a fucking once in a lifetime shot.”

“Yeah.” He should have felt something for Keogh, and maybe he did, but only in the most abstract sense. Keogh was a decent weapon, but he was a cocky son of a bitch who thought he knew everything, who thought he was better than everybody. He once bragged that he’d be running the Organization within five years, and he couldn’t wait to sack Control.

Control. He remembered that look in his eye at the briefing, the sheer contempt he shot at Keogh from across the table, but then, near the end, it seemed to level out, disappear into his usual cool distain. It was like he knew something that he didn’t.

And now Logan thought he knew it too. Keogh wasn’t killed by New Dawn. Control had him cancelled.  He'd pulled Keogh and Xia off this mission to send them to a trap.

So if that was a trap for them ….

… what the hell was this?