Wolverine: Weapon X

by Marc Cerasini

  Just like one of the ghosts that haunts this place….

  * * * * *

  Cornelius thrust his hands into his pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet. “So what have we got here, Professor? Logan thinks he’s killed everyone inside this complex, all to get to you—the focus of his vengeance.”

  The Professor paced uncomfortably. “Yes, go on.”

  “Now, thanks to the REM machine’s induced dreams, Logan knows he isn’t human. Not only is he a mutant, but he now possesses a near-indestructible skeleton, a piece of technology that further alienates him—further separates him from his own humanity And with all of that, he also knows it was you who harnessed his dark secret, who used that hated part of himself—the mutant part—and turned him into Weapon X.”

  “Indeed,” replied the Professor, staring at the monitor. “So Logan had no choice but to destroy me, did he not? As we are compelled to destroy our old gods to make way for new ones. In the act of killing his creator, Logan’s once inculpable savagery is transformed into the cunning of a ruthless killer—an inspired bit of ‘psychological transference,’ as Dr. MacKenzie called it.” Finally, the Professor faced the doctor. “I savor these events, Cornelius.”

  Cornelius nodded before he twisted the knife. “Of course, you did hedge your bets a little, Professor.”

  “What? How do you mean?”

  “Making up all that stuff about how you were actually working for somebody else … some great power or something … as if you were a stooge or a flunky instead of the genius behind Experiment X.”

  The Professor met Cornelius’s gaze and knew the man was suspicious. “A mere psychological ruse…” murmured the Professor.

  “It was a good one. Setting yourself up for your own murder, but then playing at being betrayed by the real creator of Weapon X at the climax. Were you trying for a little ambiguity—a way to cast a shadow of a doubt in Logan’s mind? Or were you working for sympathy? Testing your subject to see if he’d reason that you weren’t the real threat, that he’d spare you the way he spared Ms. Hines? Either way, it’s clever. Really tricky.”

  The Professor offered an enigmatic half smile. “Indeed, Dr. Cornelius. All just a dramatic ploy that… proved a great deal about the nature of the beast, hmm?”

  “Well, all in all, it’s been a good day, right, Ms. Hines?”

  But the woman did not reply. Lost in thought, she frowned up at the monitor. On the screen, the wranglers were approaching the motionless man crouched in the snow.

  “Are you okay, Ms. Hines?” Cornelius asked. “You seem tense.”

  “Yes, Hines. You don’t seem to be sharing the doctor’s celebratory mood…”

  “Something is bothering me, it’s true,” Carol Hines replied. “But I don’t know if I’m free to speak of it, Professor. The information is classified. And I signed an agreement not to speak of the matter, even after I left NASA’s employ.”

  “If your secret involves our work here, then surely you are compelled to speak,” sputtered the Professor.

  Carol Hines nodded. “Yes, sir. I suppose you are right…”

  20

  Redemption

  Logan felt something touch his head, someone tug at his clothes. He opened his eyes and stared up at a seat swinging precipitously from a single bolt. His eardrums still reverberated from a terrible noise he could not recall from memory.

  “Logan…”

  He twisted his neck and spied Miko on the ground beside him. Her face was bruised, and a long piece of shrapnel—probably a chunk of the shattered APC—was lodged in her shoulder. The flesh around the metal was puckered and seeping blood.

  He rolled over, checked her out. “Where’s Langram?”

  “Still in his seat.”

  Logan looked up and saw his partner dangling limply from the driver’s seat. His leg hung on the steering wheel. Obviously, the cab had overturned, but Logan could not recall the exact circumstances of the accident.

  He quickly rolled to his feet and checked his partner’s pulse. “Langram’s alive!”

  Logan hauled his partner down, and saw blood oozing from a head wound. Langram’s leg was also broken.

  He’s lucky. Clean break, not a compound fracture, but Langram isn’t going to be jogging anytime soon. Guess I’ll be hauling him up to the extraction point.

  Miko crawled to Logan’s side, struggling to stand up. “Take this,” grunted Logan, yanking the AK-47 off his shoulder and handing it over to her. “Can you walk?”

  “Hai.” She turned away, he stopped her. Before she could protest, Logan yanked the shrapnel out of her arm. She paled, bit her lip, but made no sound.

  “You are samurai,” he reminded her in Japanese, prompting Miko to smile despite her discomfort. Logan found the first-aid kit, dumped a tube of disinfectant into the bloody hole, then stuffed it with gauze, which he taped in place.

  “Let’s go.”

  Rising, Logan hefted his unconscious partner over his wide shoulders, then helped Miko off the ground. Outside the shattered armored personnel carrier, the dark forest was alive with sounds. Voices shouted from the woods below, mingling with the clank of tank treads. Searchlights pierced the night, shining between trees—but nowhere near Logan and company’s actual position. They had lost the North Koreans for a little while at least.

  “Which direction should we go?”

  Logan scanned the area but could not see beyond a few dozen meters in any direction because of the dense foliage. Is any part of this mission not a pain in the ass?

  “I need your compass.”

  Miko held the device under his nose.

  “Northeast.” Logan pointed. “Through that line of pine trees. There’s supposed to be a flat plateau at the top of this ridge. We should be real close.”

  Logan glanced at his watch. The face was shattered, but it was still ticking. Almost twenty minutes before the chopper’s ETA Hope we’re not too early, or the soldiers might catch up to us before the helicopter does.

  They heard voices, much closer. Then the sound of men moving through the forest floated to their position.

  “Up here,” whispered Logan. He stumbled along on a low rise; and caught a log to haul himself the rest of the way. Miko scrambled on the slope next to him, moving quickly despite her wound.

  A searchlight beam stabbed through the trees, pinning them in its light as they crawled over the edge of the low cliff Voices erupted, soon followed by the incongruous sound of a bugle.

  “Here comes the cavalry,” huffed Logan, sprinting between trees. Miko stumbled to the ground underneath a tall tree. Logan paused, waiting for her to catch up.

  “I will hold them back, give you cover,” she called.

  “No! Come on.”

  “Do not worry I will follow.”

  “There’s too many of them. The soldiers will overwhelm you.”

  But Miko turned her back on Logan and aimed the AK-47 toward the distorted silhouettes dancing in the wavering glow of search beacons. Her weapon barked, sending tracers burning through the night-shrouded woods. Frenzied cries, then sporadic and ineffectual gunfire replied. Bullets whizzed through the trees and snapped against branches. Miko fired again and kept on firing. Logan heard screams and the slap of bullets against flesh.

  Logan turned. Legs pumping, he continued the difficult ascent to higher ground. Behind him, he heard more shots—first rifles, then the steady chatter of Miko’s machine gun. Muffled by the trees, the sounds of shattering glass and a dying man’s cry made their way to his ears. Then a searchlight winked out of existence.

  “Good girl,” he grunted. Breath ragged, muscles weakening, Logan relentlessly pushed on. Over the sound of his breathing, he listened for noise of a firefight, but the forest was suddenly quiet. He risked peering over his shoulder, and saw the searchlights scanning the forest far below his vantage point.

  Maybe Miko’s on the way. . . maybe she’ll catch up to me soon.

  Struggling under his partner’s w
eight, Logan placed his foot on a loose rock and it broke from the ground, pitching him forward. He landed on his face, Langram falling limply off his shoulders. When Logan looked up, spitting dirt, he found himself at the top of the slope, a small plateau spread out before him.

  The landing zone … this is it!

  Logan rolled onto his back, sucking in the cool night air. Heart racing, he lifted a shaky arm and glanced at the phosphorescent hands on the Korean watch.

  Nine minutes to go . . . nine minutes to find Miko, get her back here . . . then we can all go home.

  Logan moved away from Langram and got to his knees. But as he tried to rise, a shape loomed out of the darkness, and a booted foot smashed into his face.

  Logan blinked back the explosion of light inside his head. Harsh voices barked at him. When Logan’s eyes focused again, he saw khaki uniforms all around him. North Korean regulars.

  Must’ve been waiting for us. Figures. This mission was FUBAR from zero hour…

  More orders shouted in Korean. Warily, the soldiers hemmed Logan in, though none seemed willing to get within reach of him.

  “Know me by reputation, eh?” he muttered, aware that the bayonet was still in its sheath on his belt.

  “Get up now, get up,” the officer cried, no doubt exhausting his entire English vocabulary.

  “Yeah, yeah, you got me.” Logan staggered to his feet, hands above his head. A soldier moved within arms length to grab Langram, but Logan chased him back with a lunge and a sneer.

  “No move, no move!” the officer screamed, waving his pistol.

  Logan weighed his options, wondering if he should strike now or wait for a better chance—which might disappear altogether if the Koreans noticed he was still armed. Then excited voices emerged from the darkness beyond the circle of soldiers.

  The ranks parted, and two soldiers tossed a beaten and bloody Miko to the ground next to Langram.

  Logan wanted to go to her, but knew better. He noticed Miko stir, and her eyes fluttered, to focus finally on him. Weakly, she tried to smile, but gagged on blood instead. Logan saw that the woman’s front teeth were missing.

  “You dirty bastards.” Logan’s knuckles whitened as he tightened his fist, glared at the officer with a look that said he wanted to put his fingers into the screaming man’s eye sockets.

  The Korean officer seemed empowered by Logan’s anger. Still out of reach, he displayed his pistol and aimed it at Miko’s head.

  “No.” Logan’s voice was a warning. Unemotional, stark. “You’ve got us. That’s enough.”

  “Now she die!” the officer cried.

  The shot cut through the night like a nuclear explosion. Miko’s body jerked once as the top of her head was blown off. The sound of the single shot, and its terrible consequence, caused even the hardened North Korean soldiers to wince and avert their eyes.

  Logan struck.

  In a flash, the bayonet was out of its sheath and in his hand. Logan knocked the officer’s pistol aside and the weapon discharged again, striking one of the surrounding soldiers in the groin.

  Logan spun the blade and plunged it into the Korean’s chin, up through the skull and into the brain. The officer went limp, cross-eyed. Logan yanked the blade free and threw the dead man into his soldiers’ arms.

  A half-dozen rifles crackled, splitting branches and chipping bark off trees. They missed Logan, who was already behind them, slashing one throat after another before the bayonet tip snapped in two, lodged in a Korean’s thick skull. Weaponless now, Logan ran.

  Fortunately for him, the Koreans had been using searchlights. To a man, they lacked night vision. Though Logan could see them clearly. Khaki uniforms standing out against the night.

  Logan raced for the forest, bowling over a soldier and smashing his larynx with his boot. More shots whizzed around his head. Then a bullet caught Logan’s shoulder and spun him around. He stumbled up a small rise and plunged into the bush.

  Bleeding, Logan crawled behind a tree. He heard voices all around him. It sounded like a hundred men were searching the area. Logan knew it was only a matter of time before they hit the jackpot.

  He thought of Langram helpless and Miko dead, and panic suffocated him. The bullet wound and the pumping adrenaline made his limbs quiver uncontrollably, especially his forearms, which were suddenly suffused with lancing agony. As he stumbled to his feet, the burning pain continued, more intense than the shoulder wound.

  Logan traced his left wrist in the darkness. Under tortured flesh and muscle, something stirred.

  The men who hunted him forgotten with the arrival of this strange new agony, Logan watched as the flesh on top of his wrists burst in a squirt of crimson. A moan escaped his lips as six claws made of pristine, ivory-colored bone emerged from sheaths hidden undetected under Logan’s flesh. Curved, honed, the claws extended one foot from their base to their razor-sharp tips.

  Nearby, a Korean soldier heard Logan’s cries. He fired a shot into the trees. The shell struck the trunk next to Logan’s head, sending wood chips and bullet fragments into his skull. Logan reeled as if punched, lights exploded in his mind. He stumbled and slid back down to the ground.

  The soldier saw Logan’s legs sticking out from behind the tree and alerted his sergeant. Cautiously, thirty infantrymen converged on the area, weapons aimed.

  The Logan who emerged from behind that tree was not the same wounded, fearful man who cowered behind it moments before. That man was gone, smothered by a berserker rage that consumed him, scourged him, burned his personality away—transforming Logan into a vengeful killing machine, a raging bundle of superfast reflexes and instinctive fighting ability honed as sharp as his claws over centuries of constant strife. Logan was now a warrior born, connected by psychic strings to a range of martial skills gathered throughout a thousand lives lived in endless warfare.

  Pale white claws gleaming in the moonlight, Logan dropped into a crouch and leaped from cover. The first to see him: the man who fired the shot. The North Korean saw the claws, too—before they plunged into his eyes.

  Down without a whimper, the gun fell from the Korean’s limp hand. Logan ignored the weapon. The feral savagery that possessed him now would not be sated without the satisfying feel of the blade ripping flesh and splintering bone.

  A dozen soldiers turned as Logan burst from cover, their movements in slow motion to Logan’s superaccelerated senses. He tore through their ranks, severing limbs, slashing throats, ducking and stabbing as the stunned soldiers vainly tried to defend themselves against the lethal living weapon that slaughtered them.

  Rifles cracked. Machine guns chattered. Logan could sense, almost see the bullets’ glow in the gloom, hear the wavering shock waves, and deftly avoided each shot. He stabbed and thrust, slashed and ripped his way through ten, twenty men as more soldiers emerged with a collective howl from the forest.

  Logan waded into them, a murderous juggernaut. Grasping, desperate hands tried to drag him down. Logan shook them off like pygmies. Tenaciously, a three hundred-pound giant in khaki locked his hands around Logan’s neck. A double uppercut lifted the man—impaled—over Logan’s head and his innards spilled to the blood-soaked ground.

  One officer tried to rally the soldiers into an execution squad. Logan discerned the tactic and charged the troops before they had a chance to assemble.

  Another stepped forward and shoved a bayoneted rifle into Logan’s belly. With a roar he decapitated the man, tore the rifle out of his guts and hurled it like a spear. The bayonet struck a different soldier in the chest, slamming him against a tree.

  A demolition man tossed a satchel charge in Logan’s direction. The high-explosives landed in a dead soldier’s lap. Logan scooped up the package, shoved it into another man’s arms, and tossed the howling trooper to his comrades. The explosion sent gouts of gore and bone shrapnel ripping through the enemy ranks.

  More soldiers began firing from the forest. Logan sneered, bared blood-flecked teeth, and dived once more into t
he bush. In the dark shadows of the forest, he circled the soldiers, stalked them, then butchered them, one by one.

  * * * * *

  The MH-60 Pave Hawk flew above the brown landscape, hovering only a few dozen meters over the ground—“nape of the earth,” the military pilots called it, a most dangerous maneuver. Racing through the night, over the hilly North Korean terrain, at a constant, computer-controlled altitude of thirty-five meters off the ground, made for a bumpy ride. Each hill, each tall tree, had to be navigated. With the hatches open, and two of the eight soldiers aboard hanging by their safety lines out the door, the harrowing flight resembled the most sadistic roller-coaster ride ever invented.

  The Pave Hawk, a Canadian variation of the United States Air Force Search and Rescue aircraft, was basically a Blackhawk helicopter filled with an array of specialized avionics that made a night flight over enemy territory at two hundred and fifty kilometers an hour possible. The low altitude was necessary to avoid North Korean radar, which was effective above a height of seventy-five meters. Avoiding radar was necessary when the aircraft in question was violating thirty-seven international laws and seven treaties by its very presence in North Korean airspace, never mind its mission.

  Inside the soldiers’ helmets, the pilot’s voice announced their location. “LZ in thirty seconds…”

  “Watch the night-vision scope,” cautioned the copilot. “There are power lines strung all over these hills.”

  One of the soldiers hanging out the door activated night-vision goggles and scanned the river and the road that paralleled it.

  “Colonel Breen, tank on the road.”

  The officer appeared at his shoulder.

  “Over there, sir. Some trucks, too.”

  Breen stared at the tank, then saw the trucks, and more soldiers rushing into the woods at the base of the plateau.