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Ororo was up to her elbows in dish suds and first-year students when Marie came running into the kitchen, slightly out of breath. She wiped a stray lock of hair from her eyes, tucking the snowy white tendrils behind her ear where they’d escaped from her ponytail. The remainder of the rich, chestnut brown mass gleamed in the sunlight flooding in through the windows. Ororo greeted her with a smile.

“Miss Munroe, you’ve got a visitor in the study,” she puffed, pausing to snitch a strip of bacon from the rapidly emptying platter. “Dr. McCoy’s in there with him right now. He asked me ta come an’ get ya.”

“Thank you, Marie,” she replied, nodding to a stack of clean plates beside the stove. “Help yourself before it’s gone.” She dried her hands on her apron before untying it and hanging it back on the peg. Behind her, Marie ladled scrambled eggs and toast onto her plate as Ororo swept from the room, walking briskly so as not to keep their guest waiting.

She was greeted by the sound of Henry’s laughter drifting from the room, instantly cheered by it. She knocked briefly on the door before letting herself in.

“Ororo! The woman of the hour! Come and meet the man who’s going to redesign the way the school reached out to those who need us and reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Forge, this is Ororo Munroe, the Professor’s successor and the school’s new headmistress.”

“Good morning. The pleasure’s mine, ma’am,” a rich bass voice claimed as the tall, athletically built inventor rose from his seat and faced her, extending a gloved hand.

“Call me Ororo,” she offered, crossing the room and shaking it. His grip was gentle, but she noticed how solid his hand felt in hers. Then she remembered Hank’s words from the other day about his wartime injuries.

“Mighty pretty name,” he mused.

“Flatterer,” she scoffed, but her smile dimpled.

“Call ‘em like I see ‘em,” he shrugged, releasing her and holding up his hands in a matter-of-fact gesture. His sable brown eyes danced as he looked his fill of Charles Xavier’s protégée, taking in every detail and committing them to memory. Forge prided himself on being a man who never forgot anything.

She was exquisite. Behind him, Hank cleared his throat.

“Come,” he announced, rising from Ororo’s desk and leading the way out the door. “Let’s adjourn to the basement, Forge. There’s something you need to see.” Ororo’s lips quirked in a more amused smile as Forge allowed her to exit first with a flourish. Her nose twitched; he smelled spicy, and his clothes held the faint scent of the outdoors.

They entered the elevator and Hank punched the key for the sub-level. Forge’s eyes took in the control panel and button pad, complete with a schematic blue print of the complex, examining the interior with undisguised interest.

“Impressive,” he murmured.

“It gets better,” Ororo assured him proudly. She felt his stare, and she fought the urge to meet it headlong.

DING… They filed into the hall, with Ororo taking the lead this time and gesturing them forward without going into further detail regarding the reinforced glass cabinets holding the reserve uniforms. Their first stop was the Cerebro suite.

“Welcome to Charles’ sanctum sanctorum,” she sighed. “At least it was, once.” She knelt by the retinal scanner and infrared indent module, allowing it to read and match her ocular data and feed it into the security system.

[Welcome, Headmaster.]

“The module doesn’t recognize gender?” Forge arched his thick black brow in concern.

“It certainly does. But why make it subscribe to a bias?” Ororo’s voice was smooth and unfazed as the doors slid open to the chamber that was now so empty that it echoed. The Cerebro console had been taken offline and broken down to its base components in anticipation of Forge’s arrival, since the lack of a strong enough telepath to run the module made it impossible to demonstrate its capabilities.

“What’s it made from? Titanium?” Forge was awed by the size alone of the cavernous, darkened chamber and the unspeakable fortune it must have taken to build it.

“Indeed. More specifically, my friend, we used an alloy of titanium, adamantium, and a rarer but equally useful mineral known as vibranium.” Beast’s expression was enthused during his explanation until Forge cursed under his breath.

“Vibranium? How did you come to acquire the amount of that substance to construct something this large, McCoy? Do you have any idea, man, of how difficult it’s been for our own government to obtain the necessary permits and trade agreements with the nation who produces it? We’re lucky if we can get our hands on a mere bar of it at a time for testing and R&D!’ His tone was indignant, and he planted his hands on his hips as his eyes continued to flit about his surroundings.

“The Professor had connections, and he was well-traveled. That’s all that needs explaining on that matter, Forge.” Henry’s tone held the unspoken “That’s all you need to know” that made Forge bristle. Ororo suppressed another sigh.

Henry was never above a pissing contest. It was like watching Einstein arm-wrestle with Newton.

“And you wonder why the government’s so interested in the comings and goings of mutants,” Forge carped, reaching up to rub his nape. His glossy dark hair was long enough to cover his collar, and he had the long, dexterous fingers of someone who was adept at handling minute circuitry, Ororo considered. Or perhaps who played the piano?

She mentally slapped herself. Piano, indeed.

“The government’s interested in the containment of mutants,” Ororo corrected him.

“Only the ones they perceive as a threat,” he countered. Hank sighed.

Ororo, too, could piss with the big dogs…

“Do they perceive you as a threat?” She straightened up haughtily, and Henry bit his tongue, watching her hands settle on her hips.

“Touché. And yes.” He removed his right-hand glove, tugging it off with his teeth. “But they also consider me useful.” Ororo sobered as she peered at his hand with renewed interest. She’d expected a prosthetic. She hadn’t expected this.

The bionic limb was riddled with circuitry, finely crafted and fully articulated. Unlike a hook attachment enabling the wearer limited use for simple grips, or a plain hand for the sake of aesthetics more than function, his hand flexed with full-range of fine motor skills as easily as Ororo or Henry’s own.

Forge merely smiled as he reached for the control panel’s interface, depressing the power button.

“It’s offline,” Henry reminded him.

“I just want to see what she’s made of,” Forge murmured cheerfully. With that, a tiny probe released itself slowly from his index finger, giving Henry and Ororo yet another surprise in a day full of them. Henry practically drooled with glee over the possibilities. Ororo read the look of “I’ve got to get me one of those” in her oldest friend’s eyes. Forge tapped the release for the console’s circuit board, and it slid neatly from the cabinet.

The probe moved of its own volition, as though sensing the location of the outlet, and inserted itself, glowing filaments twisting and adapting, like a custom-fitted plug. The unit came online, and the chamber was filled with the faint hum that they hadn’t heard for months since the Professor’s passing.

“What is it doing?”

“You mean what am I doing,” he corrected Ororo, allowing her a lazy smile. “And since inquiring minds want to know…”

“We do,” Henry muttered. “Get on with it, already…”

“I’m interfacing with it and translating the encryptions and logarithms.” He cocked his head as the mesh of circuitry outfitting his hand continued to glow and flash. “Nice firewall this thing’s got,” he remarked to no one in particular. “Hm.”

“Kitten needs to be here to see this,” Ororo mused. “You’d be her hero. She’s also quite gifted with electronics.”

“Tell her I’ll bring the chips and soda if she wants to talk shop.” Forge typed some commands into the keyboard at the prompt on the small monitor in the console, lefthanded, and the characters appeared line by line. Ororo watched the yellow text reflected in his eyes and flickering over his burnished flesh with his efforts. “Just running a schematic. Nothing’s been fouled…and there’s nothing to keep you from harvesting the data already collected in the Professor’s previous scans. You have access…”

“But?”

“You just need a different key.” His fingers continued to fly over the keyboard. “Mutants characteristically have different psychic energy that this unit is designed to detect. Almost like using a litmus test on the wavelengths of those thoughts. There are also different factors in mutant genetic structure which Dr. Rao’s research managed to isolate that she detailed in her files before the clinics were shut down. Metabolic rates and cell growth. Respiration and biorhythms.”

“Anyone could have access to that information,” Henry protested. “The files aren’t locked?”

“They’re the property of Homeland Security,” Forge assured him. “Relax, Hank.”

“Good Lord, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Henry muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his furry, thick fingers.

“Kavita was interested in what made mutants ‘mutants.’ Not just how their powers worked, Hank, but how they came to be. What makes some people born with blue eyes, and what enables some to fly?”

“Or what makes some people better at making a cherry pie,” Ororo quipped. “Or doing the tango.”

“I’m tango-dancing recessive,” Forge commented dryly, “but I make a mean pie.”

“We may put you up to that. Then you’d be my hero,” Ororo admitted. She hadn’t mastered pie.

“I’ll be onsite tomorrow,” he countered, then returned to the matter at hand. “Dominant genes. Two parents who are both mutants may give one of their offspring mutant potential, just like rhesus positive blood. Or, they may only pass on the recessive genes and have a baseline child.

“Neither of my parents were mutants.”

“Not that you know of. Mutantcy normally manifests itself in adulthood, most often during adolescence. But these traits can sometimes lie dormant for several years; they may be passive enough that you may not even realize you carry them until you’ve had a breakthrough.” He nodded to Henry, who assented with a tilt of his leonine head. “It may seem like the world has a growing population of mutants; truthfully, we may just be discovering more of the ones who already walked among us to begin with. Kind of like an allergy to shellfish, if you never ate shellfish before, but suddenly went into anaphylaxis after a shrimp cocktail.

So, we can isolate mutant genes. That means we can also scan for them, just like using an x-ray to view a broken bone.”

“Again, with treating mutantcy like a disease,” Ororo sniffed. “I wasn’t a particular fan of Dr. Rao’s work, Forge, so you will have to excuse me if I don’t extol her virtues and value her hard work right now.”

“Her research helped many whose mutations were not as benign as yours, Ororo. Some of them got back the lives they were always meant to have.”

“Tell that to one of my students, who Dr. Rao attempted to ‘cure’ of a gift that was beautiful and vital to the life that he has now. Not all mutants are monsters, something you know firsthand. Warren is proof positive that angels, as well as mutants, walk among us. This isn’t just a school to him, and many of the other students that come to us. It’s a haven.”

“What then? When it stops being a school? Do you induct them into the ranks? Offer them a place at the round table? Dress them in a uniform and send them out to fight the good fight?”

“Only if they choose to.”

“Thus turning those gifts into weapons, Storm,” he challenged.

“Pot calling the kettle.” Henry sighed again. Ororo wasn’t finished marking her territory… “Who’s pulling your trigger, Forge?” His gaze turned stony, and, Ororo winced, hurt.

“That’s enough for today,” he announced, his voice clipped and sharp as he disengaged himself from the console, retracting the probe. “I have what I need for the moment. Hank, I’ll be in touch.” The console was rendered inert once more as soon as he broke his connection, as though he alone were animating the controls; the low humming sound died away like the chords of a plucked guitar string. He donned his glove once more and shut down the interface, nodding at Henry as he turned on his heel. His stride was lanky, his back stiff as he headed for the door.

Henry and Ororo shared a brief look. Henry gave her an exasperated look and threw up his hands. Her lips tightened into a thin line as she exhaled a shaky breath.

Her feet pulled her after him before she planned what she’d say.

“Forge!” He was halfway to the elevator by the time she caught up.

“Hank has me on speed dial,” he assured her. “I’m staying in Salem Center this week; Homeland Security’s footing the bill. You’ll be one of the privileged few who will know how to find me.”

“Forge…” She kneaded her neck in frustration, toying with a lock of her ivory hair.

“I was a soldier, once.” She heard pride in his voice; his words held simple candor. “I fought for my country and my countrymen alike. Mutant, baseline or otherwise. I did what I thought was right, and I paid a heavy price. Yet if I hadn’t, perhaps I wouldn’t be the man I am today. Necessity breeds invention.”

“Forge?”

“Are you finished judging me?”

“I didn’t realize I had begun. Tell me something; has anyone ever stood up for you, to protect you when being a mutant automatically labeled you a menace?”

“It never came to that.” Still, he waited for the elevator door to admit him, turning to face her as he held down the open button.

“For many of us, it has.” Her eyes measured him, no longer icy. “That’s why I soldier on.”

“Don’t let them turn you into a weapon, Ororo.” Her brows drew together as he took his leave, the elevator doors swallowing his wry look.

Ottawa, Canada:


“Man, I’ve missed this,” Logan mumbled between bites of Heather Hudson’s blueberry pancakes and plump links of sausage. “Still ain’t a woman on the planet that can hold a candle ta yer greatness, kiddo.”

“You might feel differently when you have to help me with the dishes,” grinned the slender strawberry blonde gazing fondly at him through her spectacles. “Leg’s still hollow,” she added.

“Been a while since I made this long a trip on the back of a bike,” he replied, downing the last of his orange juice and wiping his mouth. He leaned back contentedly from the table, looking sated and happy. “Yer lookin’ good, Heather.”

“I’m feeling good, bub.” She toyed with her own food, using a sausage link to mop up the stray puddle of syrup on her plate.

“Might tempt a man like me ta make off with ya in the middle of the night.”

“Might need that healing factor if you tried. Mac’s made some upgrades to the suits.”

“Wouldn’t have that hard a time tracking you down either, runt,” James McDonald Hudson’s voice rumbled as he rounded the corner of their spacious kitchen. “Just follow the trail of empty beer cans and people muttering ‘He had CLAWS, by God!’ Never were subtle.”

“Part of my charm, Mac.” Logan’s gaze swept over the cozy kitchen, decorated in roosters and sunflowers. “Married life’s makin’ ya soft.”

“Look who’s talking. They teaching you to play hopscotch and to share the swings at that fancy school? Look at you,” Mac muttered, sipping from his black coffee; his dark eyes measured Logan with amusement and interest. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you almost look tame!”

“Excuse me, got somethin’ in my throat - *cough* FUCK OFF *cough…that’s better.” Heather snorted under her breath she rose from the table, beginning to clear the plates. “Come out an’ spar with me, buddy, and I’ll show ya tame.”

“After we brief you,” Mac reminded him solemnly, swirling the last of his coffee in the bottom of the cup.

“Yeah,” Logan agreed. “Whatever ya want.”

“C’mon.” Mac rose, clearing the rest of his own dishes and depositing them on the counter. He leaned in to kiss the nape of his wife’s neck, sweeping her red-gold ponytail aside and making mock growling sounds just to make her giggle. Logan felt the familiar pang of jealousy witnessing their affection for each other. It never failed.

Heather and Mac had everything he couldn’t afford to have for himself. The cost was simply too high. He couldn’t put down roots, or as Mac put it, leave a trail. No connections. No attachments.

Ororo’s voice haunted his sleep. He woke up with her name on his lips. That was dangerous.

Logan followed Mac to his study, a man-friendly den with a small computer desk and huge, overstuffed couches. The LazyBoy leather recliner was the best seat in the house, currently occupied by Heather’s ugly pug, Huggles. The dog yawned at him, raising his head from his paws and panting for a rubdown. Logan obliged the pooch, scratching behind his ears; the dog rolled to his back, showing his belly.

“Spoiled little sonofagun,” Logan muttered.

“Blame Heather.” Huggles yipped at Mac, hopping down from the recliner and wagging his stump of a tail. He stood on his stubby hind legs, begging for Mac’s attention. “Sit!” Mac barked, and the dog instantly complied. Logan was just about done with him when Mac cradled the dog’s saggy, poochy face in his palms and let out a stream of “Who’s a good boy?” that would even make Mr. Rogers gag. “Back to business.” He moved behind the desk, flicking down the green, leather-bound volume of Catch-22 resting on the top shelf.

The bookcase retracted itself into the wall unit with a loud click, and then it slid aside, revealing that it was a door.

“Can’t believe ya still keep a friggin’ Bat Cave in yer house, Mac.”

“Where else would I keep it?”

“Might as well just spray paint it on the roof: Canadian Secret Service Here.”

“Eh. Just as long as folks use the back door. Heather gets pissed when people walk in the front door and don’t take off their shoes. Just got that new berber carpet.” Mac ducked inside the doorframe, taking care not to rap his head against the panel. Logan stood several inches shorter than his oldest friend from Department H, and he eased inside, smirking at the surprisingly spacious interior.

“Blue would be droolin’ over this shit,” he quipped.

“Blue?”

“McCoy. Hates it when I call him Furball.”

“Nice to see you’re making friends. And don’t tell me this ‘Furball’ happens to be Dr. Henry McCoy?”

“Eh. Whaddever.”

“Man’s a genius. Leader in his field. Heather stumbled over his thesis on mutant genomes that he wrote during med school.”

“He’s keepin’ close company with the Pentagon and the White House now. Makes time every now an’ again ta come and see ‘Ro-“

“Who?”

“Sorry. Ororo. She took Chuck’s place after we lost him.” His expression darkened, and Mac felt a pang of remorse for his friend, watching the skin over Logan’s knuckles draw itself taut and whiten along with his lips. “It sticks with ya. Watchin’ somebody go like that, and seein’ ‘em look at ya like they wanna tell ya it couldn’t be helped. Like there was nothin’ you could do that woulda made a damn bit of difference.”

“Makes it worse for you, buddy,” Mac agreed, his tone full of empathy as he rubbed his nape. “Down to business,” he announced crisply. He took up the rolling chair and seated himself at the console of the enormous database and archives of the Flight program’s files. Mac’s work-thickened fingers flew over the keys effortlessly as he searched for the records he wanted.

“Thought this was Heather’s bag.”

“Live and learn. She showed me everything she knows.” Mac keyed in the password at the prompt before it accepted his request for the records.

[WEAPON X; ARCHIVES]
[WELCOME, HUDSON,JAMES…]

“Back in the day, that quack, Cornelius, was on the Department of Defence payroll just like us. Department H owned the patent on some of the work he did on the strength and endurance enhancement trials they were working on back then. The purpose was to serve and protect. Find a way to keep our men safe if they ever saw fire. Make them stronger, faster, tougher. We found some of his files harvested from the archives after the original Weapon X complex was destroyed…”

“Ya mean cleaned out,” Logan grumbled. His knuckles itched restlessly.

“Easy, old man. They ran trials for about six months before Cornelius made noises about needing more funding. Guy only shared enough of his research to keep the department’s yap shut. All of the subjects participating in the trial were young, healthy volunteers. Baselines, not mutants. At least the ones on paper.” He scrolled through the records, mostly scanned pages of what looked like a microfiche. “Then we found these.”

“What?”

“Police reports of a crematorium they raided, since it was too close to a crystal meth lab. Keep in mind, Logan, these records have had fifteen years to lose their gloss and for the Department to move on. They kept files at the crematorium of the incoming remains. Gave us names to go with the faces, even after we didn’t have faces to identify them. Check out the notes.” Logan’s eyes flitted over the data line by line. Coroner’s reports. Physician reports. Journals from the crematorium. Times of arrival for the bodies.

Logan’s razor-sharp mind absorbed all of it, processing clues and analyzing the facts before him like a chessboard. All of the subjects were male. All of them had military backgrounds, with a history of injuries sustained in live combats. Logan didn’t flinch when he noticed photographs taken of each corpse; some of the bodies were visibly broken and riddled with scars. Whether they were sustained during their trials, or way before Weapon X got their hands on them was moot.

Cornelius and those other bastards had made sure that the Department felt that way, too.

All of the bodies had been brought in during the wee hours, in dead of night.

Mac toggled through each screen, speeding up as Logan nudged him to continue. His stance was impatient, and his face was stony and calm as he reviewed the records. Mac nearly jumped when Logan clapped his shoulder firmly to make him pause.

“Holy shit,” he rasped. “Sons of bitches.”

“What am I looking at?” Mac winced at the image in the file, a photograph paper-clipped onto the coroner’s notes of the body of a man no older than twenty. The vague, grim impression that he was even younger than Piotr wasn’t lost on Logan, but what disgusted him, gnawing at his gut and nearly making him lose his breakfast were the scars, neatly spaced over his limbs, chest, and neck.

His body had been etched with a surgeon’s marker, indicating where cuts were to be made. Round scars resembling bullet holes indicated where intravenous tubes and probes had broken his flesh, feeding into ports resting below the muscle tissue and arteries.

“Those look deep,” Mac muttered.

“They go all the way to the bone.” SNIKT. Mac bristled, feeling a shiver run up his spine as he magnified the screen twenty percent. Logan was correct; Mac wished he wasn’t.

“What the hell were they doing to these boys?”

“Trying ta duplicate their efforts. They wanted ta make more o’ me.” Logan’s nostrils were flaring, and he was nearly hyperventilating; Mac promptly punched in a few more keystrokes and closed the records. “Mac,” he grunted. “Let me outta this fucking cave. I need ta hit somethin’.”

“Fine. C’mon.” They’d been down this road before. Mac recalled the day he and Logan met with a shudder.

“Bring the suit.” Mac suppressed a smile.

“Shit. Now we’re talking.”





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