He howled in anguish, and the pain served as a reminder of more recent agonies. In a rush, memory returned. Faces and forms and familiar voices filled his mind—inseparably these features were linked to his torment, their voices a barbed lash that stripped away his soul and seared him bone-deep. They did things to him, these people, things he still did not understand. They kidnapped him, drugged him, ripped him to pieces, and glued him back together again. And this series of unbearable events kept repeating itself in an endless loop.
And for that, they will all pay…
But, dominating his mind, there was one face above all. A predatory face, lean and hungry on a frame tall and thin. Patrician features, hairless scalp, rectangular glasses through which stared the eyes of a savage raptor.
A memory of pain…
Logan knew it was the face of his creator and his tormentor. His god and his devil. The creature who robbed him of his humanity to forge him into a living weapon.
It was only fitting, then, that the Professor should become the next victim of Weapon X.
17
The Storm
Carol Hines punched in the Professor’s code and opened the security door. The Professor led the way through a hot, narrow; winding maze of corridors and ventilation shafts to a steel access ramp. They climbed the incline to the adamantium smelting facility’s control center. She soon realized their location. “Professor, if we could purge the core, we could at least save the complex.”
“Of course, Ms. Hines. My plan exactly. After all, what could be more important than the data we’ve collected, the memory of Experiment X?”
Bypassing the enclosed control room, they exited the corridor on one of the open platforms above the reactor’s fission gate—a circular, multileveled, bowl-like structure of gleaming metal more than a hundred meters across. In the center of the mammoth machine, the lead-lined, adamantium-encased exhaust pit descended fifty meters down and was covered by a steel grate. Walkways surrounded the entire configuration, and the Professor and Carol Hines now stood on one of the highest.
Fifty meters over their heads, the pipelined ceiling wowed amber in patches as flashes of fire and debris burst through straining metal seams, splattering metal magma through the grate to the exhaust pit below.
“The containment is cracking already, Professor. We must release the fission gate before the entire facility melts down.”
“Yes, Ms. Hines, but it’s a matter of getting Logan into the exhaust pit first.”
“But sir, there’s not much time left!”
The Professor’s eyes were bright with feral cunning. “I need a lure of some kind, you see. Someone to trick Logan into the pit. Don’t you understand? He would be incinerated in seconds.”
Carol Hines looked at the Professor, trying to comprehend what he was saying. “I’m sorry sir?”
The Professor loomed over her. “Yes, that is too trite, Ms. Hines. I am sorry. Truly sorry. Let us take a moment to consider our options. It is clear what you must do…”
Carol Hines ducked as a shower of sparks burst through the metal plates above their heads. A loud crash followed as sections of melted pipes plunged into the exhaust port in a red-orange molten ball.
“Ms. Hines. I know you have worked long and hard for our Experiment X…”
“Yès, sir. Thank you, sir…”
“You have been a real boon to the good Dr. Cornelius, too.”
“Oh, poor Dr. Cornelius.” Tears pooled in the woman’s eyes.
“Yes. He gave his life for the project… why, I dare say you would do the same, would you not, Ms. Hines?”
“Sir?”
“Give your life.”
At last, Carol recognized the intentions burning behind the Professor’s eyes and she understood what her role was to be in this, the final act. This time, however, she refused to be a tractable and compliant volunteer in her own destruction.
“No. No, sir. I would not want to die.” Her voice, even to her own ears, was surprisingly strong.
The Professor fixed his gaze on her. It was hateful—an angry, disapproving, parental sneer. Though frightened, Carol Hines stood her ground, met his stare with her own.
“Bait, Ms. Hines. I need bait.”
“Why … why would you want to hurt me, Professor?”
“Because, my dear lady—”
The Professor lunged, surprising her. Before she could regain her balance, Carol Hines tumbled over the rail.
“—there is no other way.”
She screamed all the way down, until her body struck the hot metal grate mounted just above the exhaust port.
“Don’t break your neck on the way down, Ms. Hines,” the Professor called, “because I want you to scream and yell and draw that mindless beast into the pit.,,
While he ranted, the Professor climbed a staircase to the control booth. Before he entered the glass-enclosed, soundproof structure, he turned and shouted his farewell to the woman he’d consigned to the pit.
“Come on, Hines, scream, will you? Think Of the horror of it all. Use your imagination.”
At the bottom of the exhaust port, Carol Hines raised herself onto her elbows and shook her head to clear it. She tried to rise, but her leg was bent at an odd angle and would not support her weight. When she looked up, she saw the Professor through the glass panels. His mouth moved, but she could not hear his words. Then Carol Hines lifted her eyes to the high ceiling, where molten metal was beginning to drip in glowing orange icicles. She screamed.
The Professor saw her mouth gape and laughed. “There you have it, Ms. Hines. Bravo!”
An electronic voice cut through the man’s rants.
“Computer control operating,”
“Computer, activate a satellite link to Director X… Code 324 Omega 99 plus.”
“Activated.”
“Now give me the current thermal breakdown.”
“Two hundred thirty thousand at seventy thousand cubic meters.”
“Advise on those numbers.”
“Open fission gate immediately.”
“Begin purge sequence and open manual control to me.” As he spoke, the Professor reached out with his remaining hand and gripped the manual control lever overhead.
“Control open. Purge begin—”
The Professor turned to face the microphone. “I want you to listen to this,” he said. “I want you to hear the end of your dreams, and mine.”
On the level directly above the fission gate came an explosion as a door blew outward. In the center of the blast’s corona stood Logan, framed by the glow. Seemingly untouched by the fire that swirled around him,
Logan advanced through flames until he spied the cowering woman. With a throaty growl, he hopped onto a railing to stare down at her.
“Come, come, creature. Into the pit with you,” yelled the Professor, his cries muted by the glass walls. “I’ll crisp you like bacon, like the mutant meat you are.”
Logan sniffed the air as if sensing a trap. Carol Hines whimpered and tried to rise, her movements drawing his attention. Grunting, he leaped off the rail to land in a crouch on the steel grate directly in front of her. Slowly, Logan paced forward, stalking her, all six claws extended.
Limping as she tried to back away, Carol Hines’s voice broke, her words divided by sobs. “Mr. Logan… I don’t know if you can understand me… I don’t… don’t want to die.”
Logan’s eyes were wide and alert, but there was no indication he comprehended her words.
“It’s… it’s the pain, Mr. Logan… I can’t stand pain. I was burned once—chemicals—and I never forgot the pain…”
In the booth, the Professor sighed in disgust.
“Good God, Ms. Hines, don’t beg. You are living the last few moments of your pointless existence. Don’t waste them pleading to a mindless animal. How grotesque. How undignified.”
Carol Hines stumbled and collapsed onto the grate. Instead of trying to rise, she averted her eyes and covered her head wi
th her hands. “I know you want to kill me,” she sobbed. “But please, kill me quickly … please, I beg you.”
An animalistic rumble began in Logan’s throat but emerged as rasping words. “I… I understand. I understand you …”
Hopefully, Carol Hines looked up.
“You don’t matter … to me,” muttered Logan.
His head slowly turned, until Logan faced the man inside the booth. “I want him—”
The Professor pulled the lever, and the blinking digital display switched from STANDBY to PURGE.
Over their heads, the glowing steel ceiling opened like a clamshell. Carol Hines looked up to see a dozen white-hot nozzles, like the exhaust port of a rocket. As one, the nozzles opened, too.
“Oh God!” she cried. “He did it. He opened the fission gate!”
She staggered to her feet, but her shattered leg prevented her from running. As molten metal and waves of invisible radiation poured down on them, Carol used her final seconds on earth not to cower, but to warn the man she’d willingly tortured to save himself.
“Run, Mr. Logan… Run!”
Then molten metal, seething, superheated chemicals, and waves of radiation washed over Carol Hines until she vanished in a writhing burst of fire.
From somewhere, the electronic voice of the computer boomed through the facility.
“Discharge: two hundred and forty thousand megatherms at seventy thousand cubic meters. Current rate: seven hundred FPS. Velocity: two thousand. Acknowledge.”
In the booth, the Professor’s pain-ravaged face was alight with savage glee. “Acknowledged,” he told the computer.
Then he faced the microphone. “This is the Professor,” he said into the satellite communicator. “Experiment X is destroyed, and I, I am his destroyer. Do you hear me? I beat you, you treacherous son of a—”
“Purge proceeding,” said the computer, “six hundred FPS…”
“I served your every demand! Yet you turned against me…”
“System override … four hundred… three hundred two hundred. Thermal rate noncritical. Purge sequence canceled.”
“What?” the Professor roared. “You … you are controlling the fission gate, aren’t you?”
“Purge shutdown complete… Fission gate clear of radiation. Temperature four hundred and seven degrees… Three-fifty… two hundred…”
“My God,” the Professor moaned. “Is… Is there nothing you cannot do?”
* * * * *
As Carol Hines screamed her final warning, thousands of roentgens of ionized radiation washed over Logan, scorching his flesh, boiling his blood. Vaguely, as if from a great distance, Logan heard the woman’s dying cries amid the clamor of the fission gate’s exhaust ports, saw her faint silhouette disappear as wave after wave of unimaginably destructive energy was released, until his own eyeballs began to burn, his eardrums seared and turned to ash.
Then, with an agonized scream of his own, Logan dropped to his hands and knees as more radiation, along with splashes of molten metal and gouts of dripping adamantium, poured down from the leaking containment vat overhead. His cries ceased as his lungs singed and his vocal chords burned. His breath came in violent, choking gasps.
Logan was literally flayed alive by fire as layers of flesh, muscle, and tendon cooked away in a split second.
But as each cell, each nerve ending was incinerated, more nerve tissue, more cells were generated by his phenomenal biology to replace them. The phoenix-like process accelerated as more and more roentgens of raw radiation blasted him. Logan’s flesh and muscle seemed to flicker in and out of existence and he became a walking metal skeleton, burned to ashes and restored, only to be incinerated once again.
Radiation has an affinity for bone tissue, and even a single dose of radiation as small as twenty-five roentgens produces a detectable drop of circulation lymphocytes—white blood cells. Continued exposure will quickly initiate cancer in even the most healthy individual, which meant that the elevated amount of radiation drenching Logan not only should have killed him ten times over but also caused acute, fatal radiation syndrome if he had by some miracle survived.
However, adamantium now sheathed his skeleton, effectively shielding Logan’s blood-producing bone marrow from radiation damage, keeping enough cells alive and functioning inside of Logan’s ravaged body to continue his extraordinary cycle of healing and renewal after each new wound, each new torment.
As raw agony coursed through every nerve ending in his body, Logan stumbled defiantly to his feet. With muscles stiff and scorched, with tendons crisped by fire, he shambled toward the distant control booth. Through eyes milky white and blurred by heat, Logan could see the Professor inside the glass-enclosed cage, pounding his remaining hand and ranting into a microphone. Though each step cost him enormous effort, though each movement was excruciating, a more powerful torture spurred Logan on.
As his fingers curled and shrank to bony knuckles under the stream of devastating energy, Logan used his adamantium claws to half-climb, half-drag himself up the metal staircase. At the window, he saw his own reflection—a glowing, living effigy smoldering with each vengeful step.
On the other side of the glass, the Professor felt Logan’s eyes on his back. He turned to see Weapon X, still alive, still advancing on him like a relentless pit bull, wounded but determined to strike at the one who abused.
“Good God in heaven,” the Professor cried. “You are still transmitting to him. Controlling a corpse … a walking dead man.”
With an awful crash, the pane exploded inward in a shower of crystalline shards. The Professor reared back, raising his bloody stump to ward off the razor-sharp splinters that rained upon him.
The Professor hit the floor as Logan landed, legs braced, to tower over him. Claws extended, Logan grabbed the man by the collar with black, blistered hands and lifted him until his ravaged, smoking face was mere inches from the Professor’s own.
“Am I dead?” Logan gasped. “Is that what you … did to me?”
He stared into the Professor’s eyes He saw fear there, and madness, too.
“Dead!” Logan groaned like a tormented ghost. “A walking dead man, am I?”
The Professor’s eyes widened as he stared with hatred at the furious, burning thing. He spit his defiance in Logan’s face, then flailed his arms to break free. “I’ll tell you what you are. You are an animal…”
The Professor’s words detonated in Logan’s mind. He screamed, “I am Logan. Logan! Do you hear me… I am a man—”
Logan jerked him over his head.
“—And you … you are an animal! You are my monster!”
With a crash and the crunch of splintered bone, the Professor slammed down, to sprawl across a console. Whimpering, he turned away from Logan to punch the intercom. “Security! Security! Help me,” he cried. “For God’s sake—”
Logan slashed down, parting the Professor’s remaining hand from its wrist. As his claws retracted, a feeble gush of the Professor’s blood spilled onto the console. The crimson gore made hardly a splash, as if there wasn’t enough of it left in the man for a real spurt.
With the radioactivity fading, Logan’s skin began to reform over pink, stringy muscle. His features began to reappear, though the flesh was pitted and blistered, his hair and ears gone. With both sinewy, fleshless fists he grabbed the Professor by the throat and yanked him to his feet again. The man moaned and tried to break away. The effort was a limp jerk in Logan’s adamantium grip.
The Professor’s eyes glazed over and he moaned again. Logan shook him back to reality. When the scientist looked into his monster’s eyes, Logan’s regenerated lips curled and he laughed.
“Now we both got our paddles bollixed, eh?” growled Logan. “But do you really think that makes us … even?”
The Professor turned away from Logan’s stare, muttered an unintelligible reply.
“Well, I don’t.”
Three bright silver points sprang out of Logan’s arm.
Supporting the struggling man with his left hand, Logan plunged his claws into the Professor’s groin. The man’s eyes went wide and he bellowed like a gutted pig. Slowly, Logan slid his claws out of the man’s body, then thrust again, this time piercing the Professor’s quivering belly. The Professor’s head lolled, his eyes rolled up in his head, he coughed crimson bile.
Logan thrust again, then again, and again—to pierce heart, lungs, throat. Finally, Logan raised his arm, touched the Professor’s pallid forehead with the tips of his claws, and then—slowly and deliberately—he thrust the blades through the skull and into the brain. The Professor twitched once, and Logan lowered his corpse to the floor.
“Now we’re square … got that, you bastard? Now we’re even…”
Rage not yet spent, Logan bent low and lifted the limp body off the ground. With the Professor’s dead arms flung wide, his glasses askew, Logan tossed him through the broken window and down into the seething pit far below. The Professor’s carcass struck the superheated fission gate, and with a steaming sizzle, disintegrated.
Uttering a grotesque sound something between a snarl and a laugh, Logan turned his back to the shattered window and took a single step forward. Suddenly, the entire room seemed to shift on its axis. Hit by a wave of nausea and a jolt of lancing pain inside his skull, he clutched his head with both hands. Then, without a sound, Logan collapsed to the ground.
* * * * *
His first awareness was of pain. Cautiously, Logan opened his lids, to squint with tearing eyes against harsh white glare.
“Easy, mate. Take it easy,” said a gruff voice close by. A rough hand touched his forehead. “It’s me—”
“Langram?”
A silhouette loomed over him, its shadow blocking out the overhead light. “Didn’t think you cared, Logan.”
Wolverine: Weapon X Page 26
