Finally she emerged,looking slightly ashen,her oil black hair pulled back to reveal the severe planes of her face.Although attractive enough,her cheekbones looked sharp enough to cut glass."Fuck,I hate getting near his mind.It's a house of horrors,Grant."

"I know,but you got something,didn't ya?I didn't make him that squirrelly."He took a deep drag,savoring the tar that settled into his lungs.Unlike dear Logan he could not count on semi-immortality,but he was nowhere near as fragile as the throwback humans,or,as he liked to call them,the 'homo subpar'.

Lucretia-best known to most people by her code name,Omen-nodded,pressing a hand to her temple as if her head hurt. "Yes,but what I got made no goddamn sense."

He grunted noncommittally."Sounds like Enigma.What'd you get?"

Omen pulled out the chair Logan had vacated like a wolverine with his tail on fire,and didn't sit in it more than she collapsed back on it."They were in a dive motel room somewhere,and she was quoting a Bible passage,I think.I didn't think she was into that sort of thing."

"From what I understand,she wasn't,"he allowed.He hadn't know Enigma personally;she was an almost mythical figure in the secret network of mutants who had infiltrated the Organization,as she left few clues,and,as the Org saying went,'no shadows'.

Except,apparently,for Logan.

When Omen let him know she had encountered an 'alternate track' in Logan's brain while telepathically scanning him-a track that seemed like the buried imprint of another person,cold and impenetrable-it was clear it could only be the work of Enigma,whose actual powers were unknown.But she did seem to have a knack for bending people's wills to hers,and for keeping secrets,which hinted at telepathy or an equivalent power,and that would scan with what little was known about the woman,who left dramatically and arrived so quietly no one could remember exactly when that was.She lived up to her code name by a nautical mile.

What was known:she was smarter-and tougher-than she looked,seemed to have some background in pharmaceuticals if not biochemistry,and buried her secrets all over,so finding one was no guarantee of finding others.

And she had some kind of soft spot for Logan.Or she was just being realistic:he aged with colossal slowness,and he was,for all intents and purposes,indestructible.Anything buried in his mind would last for an eon,and frankly,who would think to look there?

The woman was inscrutable and annoying,an arrogant bitch who let her own sense of invincibility go to her head.But man, was she brilliant.

Of course the idiots at the Organization hadn't put it together.So much went wrong,what with uncountable mutants escaping before the Big Empty became the Big Crater,and so many of their guys dying in the vaporization of the evidence (although Logan walked away-just like he did last time.Couldn't kill that fucker with a nuclear strike),they didn't really care if Enigma left something in his head.Sadly,the shit hit the fan about her being a suspected mutant,so they were scrutinizing the records of the employees and looking at all the mutants in their employ very closely,including Omen,who survived the Big Crater because she left before it happened.She wasn't only a telepath,after all:she had some psychic 'flashes',too,hence her code name,but she didn't tell them she knew what was going to happen to the base because she honestly didn't give a shit.They were advancing the mutant genome,not siding with those fucking morons,but of course she couldn't say that either.So she was just laying low,and helping him with his plan for unlocking the info Enigma left hidden in Logan's confused and deeply fucked up mind.

Erasmus himself had never joined  the Organization;he simply was support for his mutant brothers on the inside.Or,in Omen's case,daughter.But he was always intrigued by Enigma,especially since a mutant he knew and trusted once told him she had formulated something that would take care of the 'human problem' for good-precisely two days before her unfortunate,pyrotechnic demise.

And the last person to see her alive and still be alive himself was Logan.

If she locked that information away anywhere,it was in Logan's head;he had ruled out almost everywhere else.But the problem was breaking through the walls Enigma had put in Logan's head to protect the information,especially since Omen was so reluctant to go back in his head and find it.

Erasmus had a gift he knew the Organization would love to exploit if they knew it existed:he could manipulate the emotions of others.He didn't even need to be close to them,he just needed to know his target.And Logan had been ripe for the picking.

As far as he could tell,he was always a big furry ball of free floating rage,but now he was currently distraught,heartbroken,and self-piteous.He didn't need to push him any one way more than simply give him a nudge or two in the right direction.Even Enigma's walls couldn't stand in a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown.Logan was falling apart,and the walls were falling with him.

"What was the passage,Lu?"He asked,exhaling smoke through his nose.

She scowled at him,hating him when he called her that."Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.She thought it was funny,for some reason,but Logan had no idea what she meant,and really didn't care."

He thought about that for a minute,absentmindedly chewing on the end of his cigarette as he combed through what little info and innuendo he had accumulated about Enigma over the years.Why did 'valley of the shadow of death' sound so familiar,vis a vis her?

Finally,it clicked into place like a burst of intuition,and he chuckled to himself."Death Valley.She did love irony."

"What?"

"There were rumors putting secret labs of hers in several places over the years-the Sahara,Mount Kilimanjaro,the Gobi,even a cave in Iceland:she had a thing for desolate places where few would wander.And Death Valley is on that short list.I bet that's where it is."

"Where what is?"She sat forward,dark brows drawing together in annoyance over her clear blue eyes."Dad,what are we looking for exactly?What was Enigma's big secret?"

"She solved the human problem,Lu,but never found the time to put it into action.That's why it's up to us to finish up for her."He got up and stretched,feeling his old bones creak like branches too heavy with the weight of snow.

"So what do we do now?"She asked,reluctantly getting up as well.

"I say we get some sleep and tie up some loose ends.Then we head for Death Valley."

"What do we do with Logan?"

He shrugged."Nothing.His personal velocity will carry him on his pointless revenge mission,and,hey,what the hell.I have nothing personal against Logan:he was simply the wrong guinea pig of the wrong puppet master at the wrong time.Let him kill or be killed-whatever floats his boat."

Lu seemed disappointed with that answer,but this had never really been about Logan at all.He was simply the unwitting middleman.

It was the humans-and Enigma-that he wanted.

Naomi leaned against his shoulder,drifting off,and he carefully snaked his arm around her waist,holding her against him.Her body heat was nice.Being electric,she generated more body heat than your average person,and it seemed to spare the heater from working overtime,even if it did give the electrical system fits.

She settled against his chest,and murmured,"Wake me when the shooting starts."

He grunted in amusement,not even caring where they were going.He had a feeling the destination was out of reach anyways.

"We've been screwed,sweetheart."

It was a woman's voice,but not Naomi's.

He glanced in the rearview mirror,and instead of seeing the back of the truck,he saw a laboratory reflected:steel walls of cold,stark silver,dominated by a chair made of metal and welded to the floor.It had shackles built in on the arms and legs, leather straps hanging down across the center,and some strange built in headpiece that looked like a high tech crown of thorns,yet somehow medieval,like a brace used for trepanation.He thought maybe it was an electric chair,but it was much worse than that-he knew that instinctively.

Then the woman appeared;well,part of her.Only her almond shaped eyes,Asian yet an intense cobalt,suggesting she was a mutant,or at least rather unusual.And he knew the voice,didn't he?She was the woman he heard in his head sometimes,but had never seen;he could not even conjured up an idea of her face.He still couldn't.The eyes seemed startling and unfamiliar, while her voice retained its nagging familiarity:you knew the person,but could not name the face.

"What?"He asked,glancing over his shoulder.He saw nothing but the back of the hotwired truck.But when he glanced back into the mirror,she was still there,blocking the view of the nightmare chair.

(That's where I first met her-that chair.I was in that chair...)

"Doesn't getting used all the time get tiresome?"She asked,almost sounding bored.But there was irritation beneath the surface,buried rage that didn't dare express itself.

Suddenly Logan realized the landscape had changed:no longer was he driving to nowhere in the Rockies.He was now driving to nowhere in the desert,the sand baked to a sienna hue on either side of the cracked ribbon of road as waves of heat shimmered off the pavement,making everything look like a mirage.He was alone too;Naomi was gone.

No,he took that back-he was not alone.

"Are we ever really alone?"The woman asked,and although her voice was silken,it still sounded like a threat.

Logan woke up,feeling more disoriented than ever before.

The light striped across the white stuccoed ceiling of the hotel room was intensely yellow,suggesting it was afternoon already, and as he sat up,he realized the bed was intact,and he felt...strange somehow.Slightly empty,with the lingering fragment of a headache.

He didn't get headaches.

It all but disappeared as he got up and went into the bathroom,staring at himself in the mirror to make sure he was still himself.He was,and was relieved to see no reflection but his own.Did he really think he'd see someone else?

The most remarkable thing was he felt more like himself than he had in days.He wasn't tense more than he was simply... disappointed;let down.And angry,of course;he was almost always angry.

Something had happened to him,but he wasn't sure what.

He thought he'd feel better after a shower,and while he did feel a little more awake,he remained as confused as ever.But he still felt better than he had in days,as if the tension in him had reached a breaking point and simply fell apart.Or the last few days had been some sort of fever dream...except he didn't have fever dreams either.

And it had happened.Everything he had feared happened did.

Oh shit-had really almost stabbed Jean in the face?

Well,hopefully she'd have a sense of humor about that kind of thing.Did she have a sense of humor?

She must to put up with old one eye.Although you'd think that joke was past its shelf life.

He was half dressed when he heard a knock at the door.

His first thought was that it was Jean,but considering how their last meeting went,he figured she'd just blow the door off its hinges,and he'd wake up locked down to a table back at the mansion with a whole bunch of weapons aimed at his face.But no bad guy would knock,would they?They couldn't be that stupid.No,wait a minute-if they actually wanted to mess with him,they must be.

He zipped up his jeans and went to the curtain,pulling it back a fragment to look out at whoever was at his door.

The light seemed harsh,making him squint until his eyes adjusted,and then he saw a black man of average height but above average musculature standing there,wearing a black leather jacket and gloves over jeans and a worn t-shirt with a flaking hawk illustration on it,but,strangest of all was he wore these weird dark glasses,streamlined but still somewhat bulky,to the point that they looked like an unholy hybrid between sunglasses and welding goggles.

No fucking way.

He grabbed his t-shirt and pulled it on as he opened the door."Scorpion?"

He'd been the other one in Shrike's mindfucked troika of him,Electra,and Scorpion,all telepathically brainwashed to believe they had been at Alkali Lake together,and almost lured into a trap.Of course it didn't work,and Shrike ended up dead;only Logan and Shrike had really been at Alkali Lake,and it seemed Shrike wasn't there involuntarily.The last he knew, Scorpion-nee Marcus Drury-had headed off to become a one man demolition squad,determined to find and destroy any mutant experimentation bases he found.The fact that he had never really been in one did nothing to assuage his anger.He didn't blame him in the least.

"Hey,que pasa,Logan.How's it hanging?"He asked,and Logan stood aside to let him in.

Scorpion had to wear those weird glasses in bright light because of his 'gifts'-he could see in infrared,and bright light just about blinded him.He also had to wear the gloves,because he had glands under his fingernails that excreted a toxin:a little would paralyze a person,a little more would kill them.Logan had seen him do it back at Dry Lake;it was sort of like watching someone give a lethal Vulcan nerve pinch,but nonetheless impressive.

"Haven't checked,"he replied,closing the door after him."What are you doing here?"

"I heard there was a base up here,in the Rockies,"he said,looking around his strange,mostly empty room before turning back to face him,pushing his goggles up onto his freshly shaved head.His eyes looked normal,except they were mostly pupil;his eyes always looked blown,to the point that Logan wondered if he really had irises at all."But I show up and,lo and behold,it's already a smoking hole in the ground.A little searching turned up tales about a guy with muttonchops and a bad attitude beating the shit out of people and putting 'em through tables,so instantly I thought of you."

"I never put anyone through a table,"he countered."Well,maybe just their hand."

"Asking for it?"

"Do they ever not?"

"True enough."As Logan grabbed his flannel shirt from the bed and shrugged it on,Scorpion said,"You know,I prefer the Ritz-Carlton."

"Some of us ain't snobs."

"Ooh,"he replied,chuckling slightly."Ever wonder if my toxin would work on you?"

"No.If it did,it wouldn't for long."

"Probably not."He nodded,and the earring in his left earlobe swung back and forth,briefly catching the minimal light in the room.It was a small gold scorpion,of course.

"I take it you're not here to reminisce."

"No.I need your help,Logan.This was my last solid lead on a base,and I was hoping you might know of some other places since you were there takin' care of it."

"I wasn't exactly there to take care of it."

Scorpion arched an eyebrow at him,tacitly asking the question Logan really didn't want to answer."It's a long story."

"Hey,do I look busy?"Scorpion replied,shrugging with his gloved hands."Come on,I'm starving,let's go get some lunch.You can tell me then."

Logan stared at him,thinking it over.Did he really want to rehash the pain of it all,of losing Naomi all over again?

But Naomi had been his friend too,and he supposed Marcus deserved to know what had happened to her.Logan shrugged a single shoulder,sitting down on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks and boots."Yeah,all right.I guess I could use something."A bit of an understatement:his stomach was so empty it was like he hadn't eaten in days.Had he?

"Is there a decent place to eat in this shitty little town?"

"I have no fucking idea,"Logan admitted.Although he preferred being alone,right now the idea of company didn't seem so bad,especially someone who had known Naomi,and knew Shrike too.It was like a grounding to a past that couldn't be disputed."So how went the base demolition?Got any?"

"Only two,"he replied,sounding disappointed."They had a tendency to up and move before I got there,if they ever even existed at all.A couple turned out to be nothing more than run of the mill standard military bases.Although I did discover the U.S. government does have a U.F.O.,but it's not at Area 51.That's a story they tell to misdirect people."

He said it so deadpan Logan wasn't sure if he was joking or not,but he assumed he was."No matter what government it is,it sucks."

"Amen,brother.Seen Electra recently?I thought I heard rumors of a woman dripping electricity in a town about fifty miles away a few weeks back."

Logan sighed as he got up,finished lacing up his boots,and went into the connecting room to grab his own leather jacket off the one good chair.Scorpion followed,as he thought he might."That's part of the story,"he admitted."Come on,let's get out of here.This place is starting to depress me."

"Only now it's depressing you?"Scorpion replied incredulously.

"Ha fucking ha,"he snapped,waiting for Scorpion to don his goggles before opening the door to the harsh daylight outside.

He just hoped that this wasn't some sort of redux of what happened when Naomi came to him for help.He'd hate to rob Scorpion of ten years of his life too.

***

"Shit.She forgot ten years,just like that?"He replied,sounding stunned.Since he had to keep his goggles on in the brightly sunlit diner,he couldn't read his expression from his eyes.

"That was Lethe's 'power':burning through people's memories.She probably could've taken 'em all if Naomi hadn't managed to kill her first."

"Naomi had a kick ass power,"he said,commiserating."She still has it,right?"

"Oh yeah,the drugs had only a temporary effect.She's hiding out now,she's safe,and just...trying to put her life back in order,I guess.As far as she's concerned,she went to bed twenty and woke up on that floor thirty,with a big hole in her memory.I don't think it's coming back either."

Scorpion sat back in the battered tan vinyl booth,canting his head to the side,clearly thinking."Could this Lethe have done that to you?"

That was the million dollar question,wasn't it?He had been wondering that himself."I don't know.She'd have been young at the time,sixteen,seventeen."

"Doesn't preclude her burnin' through you."

"I know."He chewed on one of the fries,saltier than the Dead Sea,and admitted,"I'll never know for sure.She's dead."He had neglected to mention that Lethe was the long lost sister Naomi had been searching for,just like he left out how friendly he and Naomi had gotten-it didn't matter now,if it had in fact ever mattered.Could fate and fluke have connected them long before they ever met,though?Through a sister who absorbed other people's memories...

"What was your first one?"

Logan looked across the formica table at him,only now realizing he was drifting away into his own thoughts."What?"

"Memory,when you woke up outside Alkali Lake.What was the first thing you remembered?"

That was a good question.Had he been asked it before?He couldn't remember.Oh,how ironic.He continued to eat the over salted,greasy fries absentmindedly as he tried to remember all that way back-to his 'birth',as it were.And for all intents and purposes,it was."Cold.I was cold.That's what I remember.And for a moment,I thought I was blind,because I saw nothing but white,featureless white."

He sat forward,almost resting his hands in his own plate of fries."What happened?Did they just heal back?"

"No,they weren't damaged.I was face down in the snow.When I got up,I saw...well,trees.Rubble.Body parts."

"Those are observations,not memories."

Logan shook his head,looking down at his plate of limp,golden french fries,realizing for the first time they looked like the fallen pillars of some denuded trees as seen from a helicopter."I was a blank slate.I didn't remember anything."

"Until..?"

Logan scowled at him,wondering why he wanted to know."Until I remembered my name."Yes,he remembered that-laying on broken glass in the front seat of that truck,blanket wrapped around him as he tried to thaw,seeing his dog tags for the first time.They said Wolverine,but he knew that couldn't be his name...Logan just floated to the surface like an afterthought, a piece of flotsam churned up after the storm.

"Did she remember hers?"Scorpion asked,genuinely curious.

That caught him flat,and he wasn't sure why.Except maybe Marcus was asking the questions he should have asked."I don't know."

Scorpion sat back,frowning slightly."Well,she must have if she only forgot ten years."

"Yeah."For some reason,that  was a downer-it was like a clue had slipped away.

"But that sort of begs the question why didn't you forget your name.Maybe you didn't lose everything,Logan.Maybe you just lost everything worth remembering."

Logan arched an eyebrow at him."What the fuck are you talking about?"

He shrugged his massive shoulders half heartedly."Sorry,I get carried away sometimes.I was a philosophy major,and it shows."

"You were not."

"I was.At UCLA-I thought it would help me cope with being different."

"Did it?"

"No."

After a moment,Logan asked,"UCLA has a philosophy department?"

"I know,it shocked the hell out of me too."Scorpion gulped back the rest of his soda,taking in a mouthful of ice cubes that he crunched nosily."Should I stop annoying you and get back to the point?"

"Please."

"When you were in the base,I assume you were in con?"

"Had to be to blow the place up."

"Did you see any computer files?A map with coordinates,base names?"

It was amazing how little he remembered of the actual incident,and it was just over a week ago."No.I don't even remember triggering the self-destruct.I wasn't in the best of moods."

"Are you ever?"

He grunted in sarcastic amusement,although he had a point.But he thought back to the Big Empty-everything but losing Naomi was a big blur-but suddenly he remembered that smell that bugged him in Sully's last night.He had smelled it at the base,hadn't he?"Holy shit,"he exclaimed,remembering.

"What?"Scorpion glanced around,in case Logan had seen something bad.

"I think I just got set up.Last night,I went to see this guy about getting some weapons...and I smelled a telepath who'd been working for those bastards.Omen I think her name was.They tried to cover up her scent,but they couldn't."

"When's the buy going down?"

"Midnight tonight,at a storage rental place outside of town."

Scorpion sat forward,grinning fiercely,flashing even white teeth."What's say we we set up a little counter trap for the bastards?"

"You read my mind,"Logan replied,grinning back.It might be fun to get some of his own back,and since Scorpion was an experienced demolitionist,it might even be more fun than usual.

Scorpion started digging in his coat,presumably for his wallet to pay the check,when he suddenly said,"It wasn't your fault."

Logan gave him a curious look,wondering if he had faded out again and missed something."Huh?"

"What happened to Naomi,and what happened to you.You're the toughest bastard I know,Logan,but we all have our limits-and I know Naomi.She had to know what she was risking when she grabbed Lethe;she chose to do that,probably because she thought killing the traitorous bitch was worth everything she'd lose.And she trusted you to get her out no matter what,so in a weird way,I think it was a compliment.So stop the self-pity trip,'kay?"

"I am not on a self-pity trip,"he snapped,pissed off at the suggestion (especially when it was so close to the bone-could he honestly claim he didn't blame himself about what happened to Naomi?),and yet somewhat ashamed at the same time.Was he that easy to read?"Since when did you become a fucking telepath?"

"I ain't.But even a half blind dumb ass like me can tell when someone's hurting.Even if he is a macho bastard like you."

"Are you tryin' to get into my pants?"He wondered sarcastically.

"Nah,you ain't my type.Too hairy."He replied smoothly,giving him a sarcastic little grin.

Logan shook his head,but he couldn't help but smile,even in spite of himself.

They ended up having to watch everything from the only high building in the vicinity,some kind of four story brick facade office building a block and a half away.He and Scorpion had opposite problems:although he could see quite far,and his night vision was better than average,Logan still needed the night vision goggles Scorpion had 'liberated' from Army base to see things a bit clearer.Scorpion could see perfectly well in the dark,but couldn't see that well from far away,so he was using standard binoculars,with no night vision component whatsoever.

They watched the commandos setting up a perimeter,hiding their trucks and setting up sniper positions,and Logan noticed many ground troops were wearing the adamantium/electricity proof armor.

"When you're right,you're right,"Scorpion finally commented,lowering the binoculars."You weren't just being set up,you're being handed to them on a silver platter."

Logan kept searching for Erasmus and that Omen witch,but he didn't seen hide nor hair of them,and when the wind shifted in the right direction,he couldn't smell them either.Damn it:he wanted those bastards."You're stronger than a human,right?"

"No.These muscles are inflatable."He replied,deadpan.

Logan scowled at him,even though he was looking through the binoculars,not at him."The armor has a weakness in the back where it connects to the headpiece.Hit 'em there,hard."

Scorpion finally lowered the binoculars,and scowled back at him."You want to fight with them that way?"

"You have a better idea?"

Without a word,Scorpion put the binoculars down,got up from where he had been laying on his belly overlooking the edge of the roof,and started rummaging in the heavy duffle bag he'd brought with him ("A few toys we might need,"he had said). After a moment,he brought out a snub nosed silver metal cylinder,which could have been a segment of plumbing pipe,but Logan knew it wasn't."You brought a grenade launcher?"Logan asked,wondering why he was surprised.

"Amongst other things.These have a tendency to break up a party real fast."

"I want at least one of them alive.I need to know where their new base is,and where the hell Omen is."

"Fine.I'll scatter the pheasants,you pick one out for plucking."

Logan stared at him."You love metaphors,don't you?"

"Is the Pope Catholic?"He replied,pulling out a couple of grenades.

"Smart ass."Logan popped his claws and started down the side of the building.To get up here,he used his claws,while Scorpion simply shinnied up the drainpipe.How it didn't collapse Logan had no idea.

Logan carefully went up the street,staying in the shadows and out of sight as well as outside their perimeter.Well,for now.

He didn't for long.

There was a muffled whump,like a pillow hitting a microphone,and he saw some of the commandos look around curiously before the first grenade came down and exploded.It hit one of their trucks that had yet to be parked in a hiding place,and there was a secondary explosion brighter than the first as the gas tank went up,shooting of a red orange fireball that lit up the entire block and sent flaming truck fragments raining down like apocalyptic hail.

Commandos scattered,trying to escape the fallout and determine where it had come from when a second grenade landed on the roof of one of the storage units (with a sniper on it probably) and exploded,collapsing the roof inward and causing the walls of the structure to fall like it had been made of precariously balanced cards.

In the chaos and the scrambling for both cover and targets,Logan had no trouble at all joining the fray.

He walked out into the street,avoiding the fiery wreckage that still burned on the pavement and gave everything a nice reddish glow,occasionally dodging the incoming grenades or flying debris from their violent landings,and delivering a punch or a kick to any punk who looked like he deserved it.Man,there were a lot of those.

Logan looked around for someone who could be the head honcho,at least on the ground here if not elsewhere (the real big cheeses never did their own dirty work),stepping over the occasional fallen body of an armor clad commando.They didn't look hurt-that armor could take a lot-but they weren't moving,and none went for him as he passed.He wondered if maybe they got flash fried in that stuffy armor,or otherwise splattered against the inside of it like a bug against the windshield due to the shockwave of the blasts.