Christopher Golden

by Codename Wolverine X-men

  His healing factor was on overdrive, trying desperately to compensate for so many wounds at one time. If he didn’t bleed to death first, it would be days before he was completely recovered. Hours before the bullet wounds would actually begin to close. If he didn’t bleed to death first … but the bleeding should stop soon, he thought.

  Real soon.

  Snikt.

  His claws slid out, almost unconsciously. He wanted to kill Wraith, then. But even the berserk rage deep in his soul would not be enough to get him to his feet. Not this time.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Wraith said. “We did want you alive, which is why my operatives were only supposed to shoot at you, Logan. After all, you can take it, can’t you?”

  Wolverine grunted. Wraith had always known about his healing factor. But the adamantium? That had been added later. Wraith must have known, sure, but he’d never seen it in action. Never seen what it could really do. Now he had.

  “You even try to escape, try to touch me, so much as even bleed on me, and I’ll execute Mystique right now,” Wraith said.

  Then he knelt by Logan, so nobody else could hear, and he whispered. “I’m sorry, man. I truly am. But you shouldn’t have run. Should’ve just come in when you figured it all out. You brought this on yourself. Just play along, and you might live through it.”

  The thing that made Wolverine want so desperately to lunge forward and tear Wraith’s throat out with his teeth was not the betrayal, not the pain he was in, but the sincerity in his former teammate’s voice.

  But Logan couldn’t even get up the energy to spit in John Wraith’s face.

  Unconsciousness tugged at him, and, realizing he could do nothing more, Wolverine did not struggle as the darkness took him.

  The next time Logan came to, he sensed immediately that he was no longer outside. The bright lights against his still-closed eyelids were not the sun, but harsh fluorescents. The smells were antiseptic and human sweat. Before he was completely conscious, even before he was aware of the restraints that bolted him upright to the wall, of the metal choker around his neck, he knew who else was in that room with him.

  When he heard the voice, then, it came as no surprise.

  “Welcome back to the land of the livin’, runt.”

  * * *

  The Widow had seconds to live, seconds in which bullets would rip through her flesh and splash her blood on the hard, cold earth. Seconds in which she would not even have time to aim her widow’s bite before Sabretooth and Silver Fox would cut her down where she stood.

  If Cassidy didn’t get to her first.

  The Interpol agent had become one of the banes of her existence, had made her his top priority. Though the first time they clashed, she’d thought him no more than another international peacekeeper, during this op it had become clear that he planned to kill her.

  Cassidy was a mutant, or whatever they called themselves. With a thought, his normal voice became an ear-splitting wail that could shatter walls as easily as eardrums, and could carry him aloft as though he were some kind of rocket. Natasha had seen the destructive capacity of that voice several times. She hesitated to think what it might do to a human body if Cassidy really wanted to kill.

  Being shot to death seemed, in some ways, infinitely preferable.

  She crouched with her eyes closed, waiting for the bullets. Waiting for the pile driver of force that scream would bring down upon her from above. Cassidy’s wailing grew closer.

  Sabretooth let out a roar that was half grunt, but the bullets didn’t come. The Widow opened her eyes in surprise to see the two members of Team X being thrown back across the road and into the trees. Silver Fox fell at the tree line, but with incredible accuracy, Cassidy swooped low, still screaming, and used his sonic scream to slam Sabretooth deep into the woods and into the thick trunk of a tree.

  Cassidy rose up through branches and leaves, turned, and dove back down toward her, and Natasha felt her fear return. She lifted her arms, fired her widow’s bite with both wrists, but the Irishman’s sonic scream turned her attack away harmlessly. His voice seemed to recede even as he approached her, no longer in danger of shattering her eardrums. Cassidy’s eyes burned with hatred, and Natasha realized what had happened.

  He wanted her for himself. He had actually attacked Team X to keep them from killing her, all so he could do it himself. So much hate, and all for something Natasha had no control over, a nasty twist of fate.

  At the last possible moment, Natasha tried to dive out of his path. But she was too late. Cassidy slammed into her hard enough to knock the air from her lungs, and then she was borne aloft in his arms, trying desperately to draw a breath.

  As she gasped for air, the Widow hung limply in Cassidy’s arms and watched the lake flash by beneath her at dizzying speed. Her ears pounded with the mutant’s scream, but it was as though the noise were beyond her now. Somehow he could control it enough to protect her, and himself, to use the sonic power of his voice for precisely what he needed.

  She waited for him to drop her into the lake, and thought about drowning. Then they were past the lake, and she saw a narrow cart path below. The ground rushed up to meet them, and Cassidy slowed abruptly and set his feet down easily on the hard-packed earth of the path. Unceremoniously, he dropped Natasha to the ground. She choked, lungs greedily sucking in air, finally beginning to get her bearings.

  “If I were you, lass, I’d get moving as soon as ye can manage it,” Cassidy said, his kindly voice such a startling contrast to his scream.

  He bent over her and began to run his hands over her body. She stiffened, but was still barely focused enough to voice a protest. Cassidy found what he wanted quickly, and unzipped the front of her bodysuit to remove the data disk that had already been the cause of so much death and confusion.

  “Why?” she croaked, even as she began to get to her knees.

  Cassidy had turned away, but not yet taken to the air. He stopped short, turned to face her. In that moment, he was vulnerable. She could have used her widow’s bite on him, but she didn’t. Mainly because she really wanted to know.

  “Ye put me in hospital last we met,” he said. “I wasn’t at home when I ought to’ve been. I blamed ye for that, but I know now ‘twas nobody’s fault but this bloody job’s. I wanted to kill ye myself, lass. But ye’re just a wee slip of a girl, and there’s been enough killing already, there has. No, I won’t be party to murder if I can help it.

  “Ye’d best get on, now. I’ll tell ‘em ye’re dead, but I can’t be certain they won’t get after ye. Wolverine and that other, Sabretooth, they’re likely to know just from smellin’ me that ye’re still alive.”

  Cassidy narrowed his eyes.

  “They’ll be another time, though,” he said. “Mark me words. The only reason I’m not takin’ you in is ‘cause that group would kill you sure as pass the time playin’ cards. And ‘cause this disk should buy me the kind of security I need.”

  Then he opened his mouth and began to scream, and his feet left the ground. Sean Cassidy sailed up and over the lake, his voice diminishing as he sped away.

  Natasha Romanova sat on the hard earth and watched him go. She had lost. That was a strange realization. In her short career with the KGB, this was the first time she had ever lost. The Widow was certain to face censure for her defeat, and for her failure to bring the disk back to Moscow as instructed—no matter that Olga had betrayed her and the KGB, not to mention the U.S.S.R.

  Yet, somehow, she didn’t feel as though she had failed.

  Wolverine was drawn from unconsciousness by the piercing wail of Sean Cassidy’s sonic scream. It speared into his brain, interrupting a flickering dream-memory—of his finding Igor, sitting behind the wheel of the truck with his throat ripped out. The KGB man had been as good as his word, kept his end of the bargain. But apparently Creed had been so incensed at the idea of bringing him back to the West with them, as Logan had promised, that he had somehow managed to double back and slaughter t
he man.

  Cassidy’s scream, despite the pain it caused his already aching head, was a welcome interruption to the fury and sorrow he felt in his dream. Wolverine’s eyes flickered open, and he cringed at the pain in his head and ears and spine. Though he was awake, he was still disoriented and couldn’t focus well enough even to sit up.

  The wind had begun to howl, as if the maelstrom they had created here in the countryside beyond Minsk had kicked up a real storm. Logan blinked, moved his head slightly and was rewarded with a spike of pain that ran from his neck straight up into his brain.

  “He’s comin’ back!” Creed growled, not far off.

  But Logan didn’t know if Sabretooth was talking about him, or about Cassidy, whose scream grew ever closer until it simply stopped. The Interpol agent dropped to the ground from a height of just under ten feet up.

  Wolverine tilted his head slightly and saw them, then, all four of them standing there—Sabretooth, Silver Fox, Maverick, and Cassidy. He wanted to speak, but he could barely form thoughts. One thought that did make it to his brain was this: if it weren’t for his healing factor, the Black Widow very likely would have killed him.

  And from the sound of things, Cassidy had just saved her life.

  “You’re askin’ to get your throat slashed, Irishman,” Creed snarled. “What the hell did you do with the Widow? You’ve got about ten seconds to tell us where you took her. After that, I ain’t responsible for what’s gonna happen to you.”

  Cassidy didn’t look at all bothered by Sabretooth’s threats. He stood off to one side, legs apart, ready to use his sonic scream the second one of them moved on him.

  “I was going to tell all of ye that I killed her,” Cassidy said, his brogue heavy and his words slow and deliberate. “But I can’t even do that. I let the girl go. There’s been enough death on this mission. I’ve seen enough death in me own life, and I come to realize it wasn’t her fault.”

  “That’s all well and good,” Maverick said angrily, “but we need that disk. You’ve made our job a whole lot harder now.”

  “Worse than that,” Fox added. “Our pickup’ll be here in fifteen minutes. We’ll never find her and get back in time. You’ve blown our op, Cassidy. I’m starting to agree with Sabretooth. Maybe somebody’s got to die for all this, and maybe it should be you.”

  “Never thought I’d see you agree with Creed, lassie,” Cassidy said. “But ye’re all welcome to try your best. I wouldn’t take any bets, though. I didn’t want to kill a helpless girl, but that doesn’t mean I won’t do it to protect myself. Aye, I’ve done it an awful lot the past few days. Besides, I believe I’ve a better way to resolve things,” Cassidy said. “I just told ye that I killed the Widow. That’s what ye report. And as far as the disk, well, I think we can take care of that, don’t you?”

  With that, the Irishman pulled the data disk from inside his jacket. Immediately, Sabretooth took a step forward.

  “Well, that’s a start,” Creed snarled. “Give it here, Irish, and maybe we’ll let you go home after this op.”

  “Even give you a lift,” Maverick said.

  “What are you going to tell your superiors?” Silver Fox asked, eyes narrowed in doubt.

  “Leave that to me, lass,” Cassidy replied. “Interpol is getting a bit boring these days anyway. I’m thinking it might be time for me to make a move.”

  “The disk, Cassidy, now,” Sabretooth growled, and took another step toward him.

  “Stay where ye are, Creed,” Cassidy snapped. “I’ll give it over, but not to you.”

  Cassidy glanced over at Wolverine. Logan opened his mouth to speak, even began to sit up a little. He nodded. As far as Wolverine was concerned, the Widow still being alive was unfortunate, but he understood what Cassidy had done and it didn’t bother him. Cold-blooded killing was not a pleasant job. In a fight, okay. But gunning down an unarmed enemy? There’d be other chances to get the Widow.

  As Logan watched, Cassidy looked from Silver Fox to Maverick, and back to Fox. Then he stepped forward and held the disk out to Maverick, who smiled as he took it. Wolverine shook his head, which was finally beginning to clear. There was something off about Maverick. The smile on his face, for one.

  Then Wolverine noticed that the wind had died down. The scents of his team swirled around, theirs, and two others. Cassidy’s and … suddenly he realized that Maverick’s scent was coming from behind him, rather than in front. Wolverine began, slowly, to rise, coming to his knees.

  “Logan!” Maverick shouted from the steps of the KGB safehouse.

  And in front of him, the hand holding the disk began to change. For it wasn’t Maverick at all, of course. It was Mystique. And in her other hand, she held a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. The muscles in her hand tightened.

  “No!” Wolverine roared, and leapt from a crouched position across the space separating him from Mystique.

  Her pistol barked twice, and Cassidy went down in a spray of blood.

  Then Wolverine was on her, and Mystique fell beneath his attack. He speared her gun hand with a blade. Mystique let out a squeal of pain and a grunt as she hit the ground. Logan snatched the disk from her hand, and leaned in close so he was eye to eye with her.

  “I never trusted you, girl,” he snarled. “If anyone on this op needed killin’, it was definitely you. But I ain’t gonna kill you now. Better you go back to your Mossad bosses and tell ‘em you blew it.”

  Still shaking the cobwebs from his mind, Wolverine spat orders: “Fox, see to Cassidy. Creed, make sure Maverick’s all right.”

  “I’m fine,” Maverick said, sitting up. “I’d cleaned it all up inside when Mystique caught me up from behind.”

  Cassidy was sitting up as well. Only one of the bullets had tagged him, and the wound was in his shoulder: looked like it had gone through cleanly.

  Wolverine stood up, disk in hand.

  But Team X wasn’t done with Mystique yet.

  “Kill her,” Silver Fox said grimly.

  “My call, too,” Maverick said. “It’s well within our op parameters. We know she’s a lying, deceitful witch. And with that morphing ability, she’s too dangerous just to leave around. Not in this game. We let her live, we’ll regret it later.”

  Logan looked at them. Maverick had always been the least vicious of the team, though it had never been a handicap in a fight. And Silver Fox had been getting more and more concerned with doing the right thing of late. They weren’t bloodthirsty, not really. Not any more than you had to be to be in this line of work.

  No. They were just being logical.

  Wolverine glanced over at Cassidy, expecting to get an argument. But Cassidy had just been shot by Mystique, and he only stared back at Wolverine for a few seconds before looking away.

  Before Logan could answer one way or another—though he’d already made up his mind—Creed stepped forward and grabbed Mystique’s gun from Wolverine’s hands.

  “Give me that!” he snarled. “You want to off the duplicitous tart, all ya gotta do is say so. I’m a little tired o’ her usin’ the fact that we’ve worked together in the past to manipulate this op. If she’d gotten away with that disk, killed any of us, it woulda been my fault.”

  Wolverine frowned and stared at Creed. But Sabretooth seemed serious, no matter how much he’d fought to keep Mystique alive previously. He’d wanted them to trust her. Maybe he did feel somehow responsible, as out of character as that seemed.

  Up the road a short way, a large hole suddenly tore itself open in the fabric of reality. The air shimmered and John Wraith appeared as if from nowhere. Even in the dark, Logan could see the sunglasses the man never removed. Wraith lifted a hand and signaled to them.

  “Creed,” Logan said. “Time to go.”

  “Go ‘head,” Creed replied. “I got business.”

  With Maverick helping the wounded Cassidy, the team began to move toward John Wraith. Logan paused, turned to watch Sabretooth. Creed snarled something so low even Wolverine coul
dn’t hear him, then cracked Mystique hard enough across the face with the nine-millimeter to shatter bone. She went down.

  Sabretooth aimed the gun down at her chest and shot Mystique twice. Her body bounced slightly on the road and then lay still.

  Creed tossed the gun into the trees and then started up the road toward where Team X waited with Wraith.

  The op was finished. They were bringing home the mission objective. They were victorious. But somehow, Wolverine did not feel as though they’d truly won anything.

  * * *

  The Black Widow was exhausted. Though her restraints kept her clamped tightly to the wall, she could not relax enough to sleep for more than several minutes at a time. Her muscles ached from holding the same position for so long. There were blessed periods of numbness and near unconsciousness, but it wasn’t enough.

  She had never wanted sleep quite so badly.

  Natasha’s eyelids fluttered in the half-rest that was the best she could manage, but snapped awake when the door to their cell clicked open. Two armored guards stepped inside and covered her and the other captives. Why bother? she thought. With the genetic dampeners working against her mutant fellow prisoners, they must all be as exhausted as she was.

  But the guards kept their weapons trained on the Widow, and on Banshee and Sabretooth and Maverick as well, as a new captive was dragged into the room.

  Mystique. The Widow hadn’t run into her more than a few times since that first incident so long ago, but it wasn’t as if she would have forgotten that blue skin and red hair.

  Then they brought Wolverine in. The front of his clothing was saturated with blood and peppered with black, crusted holes. Plenty of blood coming from Logan, leaving a snail trail of pungent gore as his feet dragged beneath him. With the adamantium that had been bonded to his skeleton, Wolverine was much heavier than an average man of his build. The guards struggled as they brought him in and clamped him to his restraints, on the wall right next to the Widow.