Christopher Golden

by Codename Wolverine X-men

  * * *

  “Hold on!” Wolverine yelled, and opened up the throttle on his ancient Norton. The motorcycle threatened to flip them backward, but Wolverine kept the front wheel on the ground as the tires found purchase and smoke rose from the burning rubber. All they left behind were black smears on the pavement as the bike shot away from the place Wraith had used as a bolt-hole. Though the road ahead rose up into a small hill, Wolverine did not turn away. He’d rebuilt the Norton himself and knew what if could handle. They’d make the top of the hill.

  It was the other side that he was worried about.

  Bullets chewed pavement on either side of the bike. Logan kept her as steady as he could, even as he cursed the bike to go faster. Mystique was a slender woman, but even her extra weight might make all the difference in this race. Not that it was much of a race. No way would the Norton, or any other bike, for that matter, be able to outrun a helicopter.

  But they didn’t need to outrun it. They just needed to stay ahead of it for a little while longer. At least, if Logan’s short-term memory wasn’t lying to him. He thought he recalled a subway station a ways back along this road. Helicopters couldn’t fly underground.

  “They’re not trying to hit us!” Mystique yelled.

  “No, but they ain’t bein’ too careful about missin’ us, either,” Wolverine growled in response. “Seems to me if they wanted to bring us down, they’d use somethin’ that wasn’t lethal.”

  “At this speed, anything is lethal,” Mystique said.

  Which was when the ground ahead of them was pounded by blasts of crackling light that refracted harmlessly off the gray pavement. Wolverine cursed loudly and swerved the bike from left to right, hoping to make them a more difficult target. A bullet shattered the rearview mirror on the Norton’s left handlebar, and Logan began to snarl through his gritted teeth.

  The bullets had created a corridor, forcing them to stay their course. If Wolverine deviated, he and Mystique would be cut down by their pursuers’ traditional weapons. But if they didn’t swerve, they could not possibly avoid the plasma bursts from above.

  “What is it?” Mystique asked, her frustration evident in her tone.

  “Some kind of stunner,” he guessed. “Hang on!”

  Logan gunned the Norton up the hill. They crested it and took flight. Hang time was no more than two and a half, maybe three seconds, then the tires bit into the pavement again. They were heading downhill now. The streets were closer together, and Wolverine could see the subway station ahead on the left.

  A stun bolt hit the Norton’s front tire and was harmlessly absorbed by the rubber. A second hit the bike itself, and Wolverine felt the shock of it pass through him like a bolt of electricity. Mystique twitched behind him and the starter shorted. The Norton was taking a beating, and completely apart from any concern for his and Mystique’s safety, Logan felt an almost absurd fury begin to burn in his gut over the motorcycle. He’d begun to realize that he was going to have to ditch the bike.

  “Those idiots should probably think real hard about whether they really want to take us alive,” he said angrily. “If I end up wreckin’ this ride, they’re gonna wish they had killed us.”

  Mystique grunted. For the space of a heartbeat, Logan thought she was merely agreeing with him. Then he sensed an increase in her weight against his back, the loosening of her grip around his waist, and the way her body had begun to slide to the left on the Norton’s seat.

  “Aw, hell!” he snarled. “Not now!”

  His left arm whipped around behind him, clamped tight on Mystique, and held her against his back. It was a terribly awkward position, and despite his strength, he wouldn’t be able to hold her there for long—not and still steer a motorcycle at an insane speed downhill.

  Wolverine threw his weight to one side, turned the front wheel, and applied the brake. The bike slewed to one side, rubber burning, staining the pavement black. But he’d been going too fast. The bike couldn’t take the momentum. It kept going, flipped forward, and Wolverine and Mystique were thrown into the air along the same path.

  Logan spun, held on to Mystique, and twisted his body to try to keep from getting tangled up in the Norton as it cartwheeled off the pavement and then slid.

  When they hit the ground, Wolverine was under Mystique. The pavement tore through his jacket, and then they were rolling. He kept her away from the road as much as possible until they came to a stop. He was momentarily disoriented, but then his mind focused and he saw that Mystique had only some surface scrapes and cuts. Those would heal the next time she changed, he knew.

  Problem was she must have hit her head. Mystique was unconscious.

  Anger continued to grow in Logan’s gut as he ran toward the subway entrance. He carried Mystique over one shoulder. It wasn’t an even distribution of weight, but it freed the rest of his body for the business of running.

  “Tell ya, Raven,” he grumbled to the unconscious terrorist. “Never thought the day would come when I risked my own tail to get you to safety. Must be gettin’ soft in my old age. Workin’ to find Creed, and now pullin’ your fat out of the fire.”

  Not that she had much fat. He left that notion unvoiced. There was no mistaking the mystery and beauty of Raven Darkholme. But it was almost suicidal folly to do more than notice. And he had not forgotten for whom he was really doing all this. For Maverick. For Cassidy and Natasha. And for himself.

  Those guys in the chopper wanted a piece of Wolverine.

  He meant to give them more than they bargained for.

  As Logan hurried down the steps into the subway station—careful of his footing so as not to send Mystique tumbling down ahead of him—a powerful wind slammed him from behind, and pushed past him as air was forced into the station. The chopper had landed. The goons who’d been after them before were still on the trail. Team Alpha, whoever they were, weren’t giving up easily. Wolverine figured it was time to show them the error of their ways.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he turned to the left and let Mystique slump from his arms to the filthy floor of the station. In midmorning, there were only a handful of other people in the station, including a man selling flowers and a college-age girl with unwashed hair accompanying her own singing on a battered acoustic guitar.

  Or she had been, before Wolverine and Mystique appeared amongst them. Raven was blue again, of course. That had happened as she passed out, and Logan had barely noticed until now. Until he heard the first civilian shout: “Muties!”

  They scattered in fear, and he didn’t even have time to be disgusted by their bigotry. He heard the rumbling of Team Alpha’s boots as the soldiers ran down into the station after them. Logan thought about his bike again, realized it was probably lost for good.

  He barely noticed as his claws popped out. He felt them, a part of him just as much as his fingers or his eyes, and just as important in their way. The savage beast who still surged within his heart wanted nothing more than to rip those claws through flesh and bone. Even the calmer, human part of him was tempted by the idea.

  But killing wasn’t a way of life for him anymore. It was just a way of staying alive. Other than that, he didn’t have much use for stone-cold murder. On the other hand, some well-chosen bloodshed always seemed to generate a useful reaction.

  The first soldier rounded the corner at a run, expecting to catch Wolverine and Mystique fleeing. What the man didn’t expect was to find Wolverine just off to the side, waiting for him. The plasma stun rifle in the soldier’s hands began to turn ever so slightly in Logan’s direction, but the man didn’t have time to do any more than that before the rifle was sliced to useless scrap by adamantium claws.

  Adamantium. For all its curses, the metal had become part of what Wolverine was. In addition to the claws, the integration of adamantium into his physiology had made him almost unkillable, Which didn’t stop people from trying. And in times like this, Wolverine wouldn’t have it any other way.

  The soldier reached for anoth
er weapon. Logan lashed out and with a flick of his wrist the guy’s Kevlar bodysuit and the shoulder underneath were hacked to ribbons. He screamed and went down, just as the rest of his squad realized what was going on.

  Wolverine couldn’t run, not with Mystique at his feet unconscious. That was fine with him. With blood on his claws, and the animal inside him rising dangerously close to the surface, he crouched to spring at the four black-suited soldiers who’d already turned the corner to aid their fallen comrade.

  A voice came out of nowhere.

  “Another time,” it said, and a hand gripped Logan’s bicep from behind.

  Even as reality warped around him, and his stomach lurched slightly, unused to teleportation, Wolverine recognized the voice. A moment later, they were inside a cheap motel room with water stains on the ceiling and peeling wallpaper. The television was bolted to the bureau and the curtains were saturated with the smell of cigarettes. All of that was in Logan’s first observation of the room. It barely registered.

  His attention was on Wraith.

  John Wraith, who’d been codenamed Kestrel in their days as Team X, crouched over Mystique and checked her pulse and respiration. He said nothing as he lifted her to the bed, but already, Raven was beginning to come around.

  He was a lanky black man who’d apparently abandoned, at least temporarily, his fondness for cowboy hats and dark sunglasses. The Wraith who turned to face Wolverine was a different man. Hard and angry, absent the charming smile that so often hid his true feelings. His eyes flashed with an almost hysterical amusement that didn’t reach his lips, and he tilted his head back as he regarded Wolverine across the bed where Mystique finally opened her eyes.

  “I hope you’re happy, Logan,” Wraith snapped, punctuating his angry words with his bobbing chin. “You can bet I’m not. I don’t know what the hell you thought you were pulling, trying to smoke me out or whatever, but you’ve caused me a lot of trouble today. Cost me one of my hidey-holes, too, and I’m not likely to forget that any time soon. I don’t know how you found me, and I don’t want to know. I saved your tail for old times’ sake, and now that I’ve done it, you and the shapeshifter here can hit the road. Whatever you’re in, leave me out of it. Just clear out. We were on the same team once upon a time, but that doesn’t make us friends.”

  Wraith looked as though he might happily have continued this rant for several more minutes if something wasn’t done to stop him. Wolverine didn’t want to hear him anymore. With the sharp sound of metal on metal and the click of joints locking in place, his claws popped out. Logan stepped up on the bed, over Mystique, and back down again in front of John Wraith. The other man glanced down at the claws, gleaming in the diffuse sunlight streaming through the filthy hotel room windows, and the words stopped erupting from his mouth.

  “You’re right,” Wolverine said. “We ain’t friends. Thanks for pointin’ that out. Now we both know where we stand. You can see where you stand, can’t you, Wraith?”

  “What do you want?” the skinny man asked bluntly.

  “You don’t know?” Logan asked skeptically.

  Wraith didn’t bother answering.

  “Right,” Logan replied. “Those jumpsuit boys, looked like they were wearing the old Team X overalls? They call themselves Team Alpha. I don’t know who they’re working for, but they’re not the amateurs they seem to be. Somehow, they’ve managed to snatch Sabretooth, Maverick, Banshee, and the Black Widow without too much trouble.”

  “Wolverine and I gave them a bit of a hard time,” Mystique said, rubbing her forehead and squinting painfully. “We had the advantage of knowing they were coming. Thanks for the save, by the way. Sorry to say the journal we grabbed up from your flop got trashed with Logan’s ride.”

  “It wasn’t anything important,” Wraith said, but Wolverine didn’t think he sounded very sincere.

  Then, as if an idea had just struck him, Wraith looked at Mystique as though she were under a microscope.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Those morons weren’t after you because you were kicking up dust looking for me?” Wraith asked.

  “You been listenin’ at all?” Logan said with a snarl.

  “So they’ve come after you as well?” Mystique asked Wraith.

  “Hard and fast,” Wraith replied. “But escaping is sort of my specialty. I’ve been hiding out for days.”

  Wolverine stared at him, trying to decide if he could trust Wraith or not. What worried him was that he found he didn’t have much of a choice.

  “I don’t see the connections,” Wraith said suddenly. “Cassidy. The Widow. What do—?”

  Logan cut him off. “You remember that time you left us high and dry in East Berlin, Kestrel?” he sneered. “That’s the connection. That op is what we’re looking at here. Near as I can tell, nobody should be able to put all the parties involved in East Berlin at that time except your employers, Interpol, and possibly the Mossad.”

  “Not the Mossad,” Mystique said. “They never knew Team X was involved. It wasn’t in my reports.”

  This was the moment where he figured Wraith would end the conversation. He was a loyal soldier. If he was also being hunted, he would never figure his bosses were involved. He’d be more likely to just go in and ask them than to be sneaky about it. For a spy, he was too damn predictable, as far as his loyalty went.

  But there was a first time for everything.

  “You’re right,” Wraith said. “So what do we do about it?”

  “We were hopin’ you could help us with that,” Wolverine admitted. “We need to find the others before somebody decides they don’t need ‘em alive anymore. We need to find out who’s behind this whole thing, and why.”

  “We need access to the Agency’s files on Team X, ” Mystique said. “Everything. Do you have access to that kind of thing?”

  Wraith looked thoughtful for a moment, stroked his chin. The smile that Wolverine had become so familiar with over the years he spent with Team X blossomed on the man’s face. It was radiant and almost always a mask for something else.

  “You’re going to love this, Logan,” Wraith said. “I know how we can get to those files.”

  Logan said nothing, only stared at Wraith awaiting an answer.

  “We’ve got to break into Langley.”

  Wolverine stared at him. Mystique’s mouth was open.

  “You’re talking about CIA headquarters, I assume,” she asked, and blinked several times as the absolute insanity of the idea became clear to all of them.

  “You broke into a S.H.I.E.L.D. base yesterday,” Logan said. “What’s the difference?”

  * * *

  Once out of East Berlin, Warsaw was a straight shot across several hundred miles of Eastern Europe, mostly made up of farmland, small towns, and several rivers. They had been fortunate enough to find a Wartburg truck sitting overnight behind a clothing store in Alexanderplatz, particularly since motor vehicles of any kind were increasingly rare the deeper behind the Iron Curtain one might delve. But Team X did not feel fortunate as the truck bounced and rattled along the road that would take them to Poznan, Poland, which lay sleepily along the Warta River.

  They had lit out of East Berlin as dawn approached. Though they had undergone a certain amount of scrutiny, that was completely normal for a nation as paranoid as East Germany. Still, Logan had been stunned that they didn’t have more trouble.

  “They’re looking for Western spies,” Silver Fox commented as they bounced along in the back of the truck. “Western spies would be insane to get in a jam in East Berlin and then go further into communist territory.”

  Wolverine had smiled. But Fox was right. The border guards had looked them over carefully, but not with the air of soldiers looking for spies. North was German by birth, and he knew the language and customs well enough that the guards didn’t seem suspicious at all. At least, no more so than their job demanded.

  One of them had even given Maverick a cigarette.

  The P
olish countryside was completely different from East Germany. Though at first it had looked the same, it quickly became obvious that the atmosphere in Poland made it nearly another world. The pressure and the paranoia seemed to lift the further they got into the farmland. Early risers tilling their fields or making their way along the road by foot or horseback waved as they passed.

  Logan had always admired the Poles for the way they had held their heads high under the yoke of communism. But he had never felt any benefit from their fortitude until now. The peasants in Poland had resisted the Soviet-style collective farms, and most of the nation’s land remained in private hands. The sense of the value of the individual was not dead here.

  He suspected that these people would neither be on the watch for spies, nor would they be likely to care much if they actually found some. Warsaw might be another story, more than likely overrun by Soviet agents. But the Polish countryside offered no threat to Team X save for the chance that they might pass communist authorities on the road.

  For now, they concentrated on making sure their transportation didn’t break down before they reached Poznan, where they hoped to find enough fuel to make it to Warsaw. At the rate they were traveling, however, it would likely be midafternoon at the earliest before they reached the Polish capital.

  Creed, Logan, and Fox had been quiet for some time in the back of the truck. In the front, North drove in silence, sometimes humming to himself. He was comfortable here, Logan realized. And in an odd way, he understood. This was familiar territory for Maverick, the same way mountain forests and snowy valleys felt, to Wolverine, like home.

  But they weren’t silent out of their appreciation for the beauty of nature, or the less stressful atmosphere of the Polish countryside. The weight of unfinished business lay upon them heavily, and the conflicts that had already arisen, the questions that had been raised, brewed slowly into a maelstrom among them. Logan sensed it, and didn’t know what to do to stop it. In truth, he wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to stop it.