**Calm down Jean** Xavier answered back. It had been the fifth outing for his newly formed team of mutants, his X-Men and they had already lost one of their teammates. Not to death but to capture.
They had been tracking a newly discovered mutant, whom Xavier had found with his newly commissioned power-enhancing machine, Cerebro. This Cerebro allowed his to join his mind with millions of mutants worldwide, something he hoped to increased to every mutant. The machine was located deep underground, under his personal mansion which he had changed into a school with plans to add on as the school population grew.
Currently there were just four members, all of whom were a part of the X-Men. There was Scott Summers, who was the second student he had approached an enrolled for his venture. Scott shot energy blasts from his eyes and went by the name Cyclops. He was also the team field leader, a position second only to Xavier himself. The second student to join was Jean Grey, a telepath-telekinetic. Her, he had been just able to rescue from being sent into a mental asylum. Her, he was training both to enhance her already stronger telekinetic skills and to control her telepathy which was what got her into trouble in the first place. He also hoped that once her powers were developed enough, she would be able to take charge and operate Cerebro in his absence, something she couldn’t do at present. The load of the machine was too much for her. She went by the codename Marvel Girl.
Next was the wing possessing flyer and healer known as Angel, or to be more precise Warren Worthington III. He was the scion of the multi billionaire Worthington family, who were one of Xavier’s chief financial supporters, not because of any philanthropic feelings on part of Warren’s father, but because unable to hide their son’s growing wings and keep him locked away in some remote region, due to his increasingly rebellious nature, Worthington senior had shipped him off to Xavier’s with instructions that as long as Xavier kept him there, he would have a steady monetary help.
The last and currently missing member of the group was Ororo Monroe, Storm. Her story was different from the rest in the way that Xavier discovered her years ago in Africa when she tried to pickpocket him. Finding that it was too soon for her, he planted a suggestion in her subconscious that compelled her to find her way to him once she turned an adult. During the ten years from that day to the day they finally met, Ororo had led a varied life, going from a common thief to one who stole ‘boosted’ cars and bikes. During that time, she somehow found her way back to US, most probably under the influence of Xavier’s implanted suggestion.
Right now, she was missing, with her mutant signature undetectable not even via Cerebro. On his telling his students that, they felt even more dejected. Whoever that mutant had been, was most probably a plant by the same people who had captured Ororo.
**Return to the base X-Men** He sounded in their minds, not wanting to expose them too any more danger and possible capture.
**Professor, what about Ororo?** Cyclops responded.
**Do you think it was the Brotherhood?** Angel contributed his thoughts. **Maybe Magneto’s got her**
**We cannot rule out that possibility** Xavier agreed, although thinking that it was not the modus-operendus of his onetime friend and present enemy to resort to covert kidnapping. Magneto had a flare for big things and for announcing himself with a bang. He believed that the mutant race were the next rulers of the world, which was in total opposition to Xavier’s cohabitate with humanity belief. **However, I suggest that you return. We don’t want anymore casualties**
**Yes Professor** Scott answered, hoping that they would be able to find their teammate soon.
What neither of them knew or even suspected was that it would be almost two and a half years before that happened.
------
Five years, two and a half months into the past, in a remote part of the Alberta province of Canada,
“Hey George, don’t strain yourself there!” The young man called out to the older one who loading the last of his five delivery boxes into the back of his equally if not more old pickup truck. “You ain’t getting any younger.”
“Where are you going with all that stuff anyway?” Asked his friend, who even before the sun had set already had his alcohol bottle out and about.
“Out by the river bend,” the balding man answered, breathing a relieved sigh as he finally let the box go on the wooden one below it. “I figured I’d take the day off from you two boneheads.”
“River Bend?” That got a reaction from the man who had asked the first question. “Are you goin’ out t’ see the weirdo?” The younger man pointed a finger in the general direction of the senior’s destination.
“Ah…ehhh….he ain’t weird. He’s just like you an’ me.” George dallied with his answer. “Besides, it ain’t like I am givin’ the stuff away. We got a deal. Where do you think half the pelts in this town come from?”
“I heard the guy’s a mutant….” The blonde haired man with the bottle commented, his words causing the older man to falter as he reached for the driver side door handle.
“So what?” His friend retorted. “Your cousin Tiffany is a mutant.”
“She ain’t a mutant,” came the slightly annoyed response. “She has a glandular problem, is all.”
“She looks like a whale. They should put her back in the ocean where she belongs….” the childish bickering started, giving George a way out to get away.
Starting his truck, George honked the horn and leaned his head out the window. “Uh-huh…well, stimulatin’ as you two idiots are, I gotta be back by six.”
“Hey George…” the raven haired mutton-chopped youngster stepped out of the way. “Just how long have you been deliverin’ out to that old nut at River Bend anyway?”
George didn’t answer outright. He waited until he had driven a short distance, before he finally whispered the answer, more to himself than to anyone else.
“Since I was eleven.”
----
In another part of Canada,
“Is the subject ready?” A bespectacled white lab coat garbed male peered at the large glass tank in the center of the cavernous room below.
“Yes sir,” a technician answered, checking to make double sure that in fact the white haired dark skinned woman floating in the water-filled tank was indeed unconscious or not. They did not want to take any chances, especially after the last time when she came out of her drug induced sleep and literally electrocuted two other technicians.
“Hold her steady,” that command let to an instant reaction as they wires and supports holding the ‘subject’ grey taut, preventing any movement except for the rhythmic rising and falling of her chest as the breathing apparatus attached to her mouth and nose supplied air to her.
“Be ready to go subcutaneous as soon as I give the word,” was the second command.
“Ready sir,” another assistant replied seconds later.
“Will she remember anything?” A second doctor asked her question, noting down the various steps on her PDA.
“She doesn’t even remember her own name,” the first one chuckled evilly. “And once we get done, she never will.”
“What IS her name?” Another colleague piped up, his middle-aged eyes leering at the lithe form floating in the water. Where once there had been long luxurious snow colored hair, there was now a rough patchwork left, one that covered only the front half of her head. The rest had been chopped off and cleared away to make space for the two sensors tubes fitted there.
“What does it matter?” The first of the three answered. “She’s our now. Weapon X can give her any designation it wants.”
“What was her name before she came here?” The leery one stressed more for his later personal pleasure than for anything else.
“Let me check,” his colleague drew up her file. “Ah, here it is…..Ororo Monroe. Codename – Storm.”
----
“Hey Mr. Logan!” George greeted the ‘younger’ man. “I brought out that fishing lure you wanted…it’s in the box.”
“Fine,” Logan looked up from his porch side chair. “Stuff’s round back.”
Finding it odd that the usually to-the-business George stayed set at his position Logan returned his gaze to him.
“You want somethin’ else, son?” He asked in his usual gruff manner. “I told you before, I ain’t got no tip for you.”
“I been comin’ here more ‘en forty years, Mr. Logan. You ain’t never tipped me yet.” George crossed his arms almost looking like the young kid he had been when he first saw this mountain of a man. It had been the sixties then and although the passing decades had done their work in him, they did not seem to affect this somewhat of a friend stranger. “I just wanted t’ give ya this…” he stepped forward, his hand going into this back pocket.
“You got a letter.”
-----
One month later,
“Alarms,” The half-asleep sentry woke just in time to see metal flash before his eyes, just as his entire life did seconds later. With the last bit of his living energy leaving his body, he saw the face of his attacker, the face of the man who killed him…..the face he had been warned about.
Dispensing with the now dead man, Logan started along the corridor. The blaring alarms and the frantic voices and footsteps told him that they had detected him. ‘Let ‘em,’ he grinned to himself as he cracked hi neck, his claws ready for his next kill.
It had taken him just a month for this one, from the time he came to know about this base to the time he actually got here.
It had been one of his many informants. That was what the letter was about. The work of these informants was simple. Whenever they came to know about any such lab or base, they were to try to gather information, only without putting themselves in danger, and then they were to send that information to him…..he would take care of the rest.
In the last two years, Logan had found and destroyed, three such installations, two of them in Canada itself. Weapon X was all over the world, mostly in remote and hard to approach places like the Canadian Rockies. With this one, he would add a third to that already present two.
He had reached this place a day before and had spent the entire time scoping it out before moving in. Disabling all their getaway vehicles, he had entered through the only surface side opening and was making swift progress to the main work center. He had his destination in mind and his target. He was looking for a woman, one about whom he had come to know by chance while on a previous operation and whom he had been tracking ever since.
A girl with claws….claws like the ones he had.
----
“Stop,” he wanted to chuckle at the fear rolling off the soldiers that were confronting him. He smelled the men even before he came across the bend and was already readying himself for the kill.
“STOP,” the second one yelled, louder this time. “FIRE”
A volley of bullets tearing into face, chest and sides did nothing to stop the approaching Wolverine, the original Weapon X the soldiers had heard about. It had been mostly rumors, ones that had gotten louder with the subsequent destruction of each of previous labs.
KHHUUCCCCH
Simultaneously two sets of claws entered and tore through the two men, beheading one of them completely.
Panting to regain his breath, Logan straightened up to face the door on the other side of which lay whatever the men were guarding. He had killed more than two dozen of them in the last hundred feet and from the smell; he could tell there were a dozen more ready to die.
‘Musta got someone here,’ he thought blood dripping from his hands and claws. ‘Hope it’s the kid.’
With that thought he tore though the double enforced bullet proof door…..just as he tore though the soldiers guarding it next.
---
More than a dozen kills and ten minutes later, he found himself face to face with what….who the soldiers were guarding.
“Fuck, she’s dyng,” he cursed as the figure inside the glass cylinder began to writhe….her oxygen had been cut off.
Two more slashes and the glass and the water like fluid inside it fell away, giving the emaciated woman inside it precious life giving air.
----
ONE MINUTE TO DESTRUCTION
An electronic voice and the ensuing red light told him to get his butt in gear and get out of the underground base. He knew he could make that easily…but alone. With the woman in the state she was in, he knew he would have to carry her and that could pose a problem. Even if they got out, the weather outside was bitter cold, thirty-Celsius below zero and would freeze this bag of bones under thirty seconds.
Whoever this chick was, she had to be a mutant, otherwise why would these fuckers be doing to her what they had done to him. Maybe she was the one he had been looking for. In that case, her healing factor would save her….at least until he got her some clothes and something to fill that skeletal body of hers.
None of that came into Logan’s mind as he grabbed the female, cradled her within his strong bloodied arms and rushed for the door.
“Let’s get outta here babe.”
Note: The conversation with the character George is from the Wolverine: The End miniseries and although in that one, Wolverine is over two centuries old and has aged quite a bit, I have used it here with the younger one….with minute changes.
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