Christopher Golden

by Codename Wolverine X-men

  “You try in’ to say you wanna leave him with these losers?” Wolverine drawled.

  The smile disappeared from Cassidy’s lips. “No,” he answered. “He deserves whatever he gets. If not for this, then for a hundred other things. But not while we’re standing right here. And not at the hands of treacherous cowards like these.”

  “Sic the Widow on them,” Mystique suggested. “She’s primed.”

  The Black Widow stared at Mystique. Wolverine knew the look. He’d seen it in the mirror often enough.

  “I don’t think Natasha’s in the mood for jokes, Raven,” Logan said.

  He might have said more, but he caught a scent from the hallway. Wolverine looked up and saw the barrel of a weapon just barely poking through the open door half a yard from the Widow’s head.

  There was no time to warn her, no time to do any more than growl as he launched himself at the wall, claws extended. The adamantium cut through the wall as though it weren’t there at all and through the weapon and the man wielding it as well. The Widow dodged, in case he were still able to discharge the gun, then she kicked it out of his hands as the guard went down on the tile floor of the corridor.

  Wolverine stepped around the ravaged wall and looked down at the man. It was Cassidy who knelt by his side and took his pulse, ignoring the blood spilling from the slashes in the guard’s arm and lower abdomen.

  “He’ll live, I think,” Banshee said.

  “Yeah,” Wolverine said. “Great.”

  “Thanks,” the Widow said.

  “Let’s just get it done,” Wolverine grunted.

  Together, they turned and started down the corridor, moving quickly but cautiously. Maverick and Mystique were armed with the weapons they’d taken from the guards who’d been with Wraith. Cassidy was his own weapon. Wolverine and the Widow didn’t really need them.

  At the end of the hall was a solid door. Logan ripped through a control panel that required a keycard. The door didn’t open. But Wolverine’s hearing had picked something up on the other side of the door, still deeper inside the complex.

  “I can hear Creed,” he told them. “Screaming.”

  The shock on their faces was obvious. Banshee’s greenish eyes grew wide. Maverick frowned dangerously, adding to the damage the Legacy Virus had done to his boyish good looks. Mystique’s face went slack, as if, for once, she had no ulterior motive.

  “They know we’re out, of course,” Natasha said.

  “Yeah,” Wolverine growled. “I can smell ‘em. On the other side of the door.”

  The Widow stretched, turned her head like she was working some stiffness out of her joints, and nodded at Wolverine.

  “Irish?” Logan said, and stepped aside, indicating that the others should do the same.

  Cassidy opened his mouth and shouted, and the walls around the door buckled. The door blew off its moorings, erupting back into the hallway and slamming into the cadre of armored federal agents who waited there. Four of them went down, and two were wounded as the door’s edges slashed through their armor.

  Wolverine roared and ran through the opening. He dove at the remaining guards, more than a dozen of them, and started clawing through their armor. He could hear more of them approaching from down the hall.

  “Logan!” Mystique shouted.

  He looked up at the new arrivals. In the midst of weapons fire and the shouts of wounded guards, he recognized the black jumpsuits on the men and women running down the hall toward them.

  “Why, if it ain’t Team Alpha?” he snarled, then turned to the others. “Wake up, kiddies,” he barked. “Payback’s a bitch.”

  “So am I,” Mystique crowed.

  She pulled the trigger and started firing. Wolverine went for Team Alpha, not even bothering to slow down as he caught several rounds from Mystique. His healing factor had aleady been working overtime to heal the dozens of bullet wounds he’d taken the night before, and the damage he’d done to his own arm while escaping. Another couple of bullets weren’t going to slow him down any more.

  “Hang it up, old man!” one of the black-suited feds shouted as Wolverine came at them. “You’re over—get it through your head. The new breed is here, and you just don’t measure up.”

  A bullet ricocheted off Wolverine’s femur. He slashed through the plasma rifle the black suit brandished in his direction, then withdrew his claws and grabbed the soldier by the shirt front and hauled him up short.

  “Boy,” Wolverine growled, “you ain’t fit to spit shine my boots.”

  The others had caught up, and it was close quarters fighting for all of thirty seconds.

  Then Banshee opened his mouth again.

  Victor Creed roared in agony, every muscle in his body taut with pain. They’d burned him, at first. Shot holes in him. Even taken some samples of his flesh. But all those things had done was annoy him even more. He’d growled and snarled and promised to do the most dreadful things to them when he was free.

  Then they’d cranked up the electricity and started pumping the volts into him—higher and higher, until any three normal men would have been frying.

  Sabretooth smelled smoke, and that was the worst part. His clothes were smoking. His flesh was being slowly cooked.

  Then somebody gave the order to shut it down, and it was over.

  And he was still alive.

  A pair of techs came over to the table where he was still strapped down. There were two guards behind them with plasma rifles, and behind them, Senator Zenak—who’d been smiling at first but wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “That the best you can do?” Sabretooth croaked.

  His clawed hands shot up, and he ripped out the technicians’ throats, snapping the bonds that held him to the table. He tried to sit up, but failed, and rolled off the table onto the mercifully cold tile floor. Then he just lay there a few seconds, unable to move.

  “Dear God, you’re nothing more than a monster!” Zenak screamed. “Those men, my parents, how many more have you killed?”

  “Monster?” Sabretooth gurgled, choking on his own blood. “Welcome to the club, Senator.”

  Then, with no preamble, the laboratory door blew in. Creed couldn’t rise, but he managed to look up. To turn and see the group standing in the doorway. They all looked ragged, clothing torn, blood dripping from multiple wounds, but they were there by choice, that much was certain, given the weapons they held in their hands.

  “Well I’ll be—” Creed growled low, and with genuine surprise.

  A team of black-suited federal troops was inside the lab, and they started to fire on Wolverine and the others immediately. Banshee let loose with a scream that set Creed’s fangs on edge, and Maverick and Mystique opened fire.

  The few armored guards that were left started hustling Senator Zenak toward what appeared to be a rear exit. Maverick saw them first, and shouted to Wolverine. Logan looked up, grunted, and started after them.

  “No way he’s gettin’ outta here without hearin’ the truth,” Logan drawled.

  His claws were popped, and the armored guards had learned to keep back from him. When he lunged after the retreating Zenak, they knew enough to get out of the way. He was leaving his prey alive, but some of them would be a lot better off dead.

  “Senator, stop!” he snarled. “There’s a few things someone’s gotta get through your head!”

  A hand landed on Wolverine’s shoulder.

  “Not now. Not you.”

  Even as Logan recognized the voice as Wraith’s, he felt his stomach churn with the nauseating sensation of teleportation once more. Then he was standing with Mystique and Maverick, with Cassidy just above and Sabretooth lying crumbled at their feet. The Black Widow was using one of the armored guards as a shield while she fired a plasma weapon at another. She brought him down without killing him, and Wolverine thought again of how they’d changed, all of them in different ways.

  Hell, he’d just saved Victor Creed’s life.

  It wasn’t anything he ever w
anted to do again.

  “Let’s go,” Wraith said.

  That familiar stomach churning started up again. When it ended, they were on a sprawling plain of grass that looked like it might be in the suburbs somewhere. Tall trees waved in the breeze, and white clouds floated across a blue sky.

  Only the scents told Wolverine where they were: Central Park, New York City.

  He spun on Wraith, ready to attack him again, and saw the bloody bruises that the Widow had given him earlier. Wraith held up his hands.

  “You win,” the little man said. “It’s over, Logan. What are you going to do, kill me?”

  When Wraith smiled that too-white smile, Wolverine was sorely tempted to do just that. Instead, he retracted his claws. He thought about hitting Wraith, at least. But it wouldn’t make him feel any better.

  “Hell, you don’t have the stones to kill him, I’ll be happy to do it,” Sabretooth said, and surged forward.

  Banshee and the Widow stopped him. And given his recent trauma, Sabretooth was in no condition to put up a fight. Not with the two of them.

  “You won,” Wraith said again. “Just enjoy it.”

  “So now what?” the Widow snapped. “We’re supposed to forget all about this? You don’t want the senator knowing what really went down here? What’s to keep us from telling him? From telling all of Washington, for that matter?”

  Wraith smiled. “Now why would you want to do that?” he asked, and the smile disappeared. “Everyone loves you, Widow. You’re an Avenger. Sure, they know you were a KGB spy a long time back, but you’re a hero now, right?”

  The little man sneered. A breeze blew the smell of car exhaust through the trees, and there was a burst of laughter and conversation from a nearby walkway where a couple jogged by.

  “Most people don’t realize what it means to be a spy,” Wraith went on. “At least, what it means for those who do it professionally. Lying. Stealing. Seducing secrets from diplomats during, hmm, extracurricular activities. Killing. We’ve got a big file on you, Widow. And let’s face it, you’re the only threat to us. The rest of you are mutants, just like me. Nothin’ America hates more than ‘muties.’ Nobody’s gonna listen to them. And you ain’t gonna say nothin’. Are you?”

  The Black Widow felt as if she might vomit, but she kept quiet. They might have made her life difficult for a few days, even planned to kill her, but she wasn’t dead. No real harm done. Not enough to turn her life upside down. It wasn’t worth it. This time.

  “So what’re you gonna tell the senator?” Wolverine asked. “He ain’t gonna just give up on us all like that, and you guys ain’t eager to give up the control you’ll have over his vote in Congress. He’s a powerful man now.”

  “Easy,” Wraith said with a chuckle. “The Widow and Cassidy named Creed just ‘cause they hated him. But under torture, other members of Team X revealed that Silver Fox had killed Senator Zenak’s parents.”

  “That’s a lie,” Wolverine said with a vicious snarl.

  “Yeah, but Fox is dead, Logan,” Wraith said. “That means we can’t go after her. You people are off the hook, and we’ve done so much for Peter Zenak in good faith.”

  The smile on Wraith’s face was terrible, and the Widow turned away. It was just this kind of disgusting manipulation and conniving that had made her leave the Soviet Union to begin with. She hated the idea that people like Wraith operated within the government to which she had now pledged herself. The only saving grace was that she knew he operated without the blessing of those who actually ruled the country. He was working beneath the system, rather than within it.

  It was cold comfort.

  Wolverine narrowed his eyes and stared at Wraith. There was one question he wanted to ask, but didn’t bother because he knew he’d never get an honest answer. That question was “Why?” Why would Wraith bother to fabricate such a story, to spirit them away instead of continuing to try to capture them, to give Zenak his vengeance, the blood he’d wanted to see spilled?

  All he would have had to do would be to name Wolverine or the Widow, or Maverick as the killer, and the search would have continued indefinitely. Yet he’d dragged them all through this shadow game and managed to fulfill his own mission while somehow preserving the lives of his old comrades.

  It was difficult for Wolverine to ascribe any benevolent purpose to Wraith’s actions, nor would the man ever admit to such motivations if he’d had them. But it was food for thought: maybe even Wraith had changed a little since those dark days when they all were a part of Team X together.

  “You won’t see me again,” Wraith said, and slipped black sunglasses over his eyes.

  “Good,” Maverick grunted.

  Sabretooth began to climb to his feet, eyes blazing, obviously intent on paying Wraith back.

  “You keep sayin’ that,” Wolverine said, “but you keep poppin’ up.”

  Wraith said nothing. The air behind him seemed to ripple, as if it were a pool into which a stone had been dropped. He turned and stepped through before Sabretooth could get near him.

  Creed sank to the ground again, still too weak to do much more than that. Wolverine looked at him, then at Mystique.

  “I guess I can trust you to get him back to X-Factor?” he asked.

  Mystique nodded.

  “Trust her?” Maverick said, then coughed into his hand. “Have you been asleep through this whole thing, Logan?”

  Before Wolverine could respond, Mystique’s yellow eyes blazed, and she raised an accusatory finger at Maverick.

  “You listen to me, North,” she snapped. “You think just because you’re dying you stand on some kind of pedestal where you can look down on the rest of the world? What a hypocrite!”

  Mystique glared at Maverick, then glanced around the circle at each of them. When she spoke again, it was with a sneer and a tiny, wicked smile that said all Logan would ever need to know about what was in her heart.

  “You’re all hypocrites,” Mystique told them. “All but Creed, if that isn’t a laugh. I was on a mission. Maybe I don’t like what I did, but you all played that game, same as I did.”

  Sean Cassidy stood taller, stared down at Mystique with contempt in his eyes.

  “Not I, lass,” he said. “That wasn’t the world I walked in. I’ve done some misguided things in my time, but never anything like that. You can say what you like, Raven Darkholme, but know this. You got away with it, this time, but one day … one day, you’re going to pay for your crimes.”

  Wolverine grunted. Chuckled lightly. Looked around at them gathered there. Maverick. Mystique. Sabretooth. The Black Widow. Banshee. Yeah, he thought, even Banshee.

  All of them had done questionable things in their lives.

  “One day you’re going to pay,” Cassidy repeated.

  “Yeah,” Wolverine drawled. “Aren’t we all?”

  * * *

  Christopher Golden is a novelist, journalist, and comic book writer. His novels include the vampire epics Of Saints and Shadows, Angel Souls and Devil Hearts, and Of Masques and Martyrs; the bestselling X-Men: Mutant Empire trilogy; Daredevil: Predator’s Smile; a series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels (with Nancy Holder) and Battlestar Galactica novels (with Richard Hatch); and Hellboy: The Lost Army.

  Golden’s comic book work includes Wolverine, The Crow, Spider-Man Unlimited, Shi, Genl3 Bootleg, X-Man, Blade: Crescent City Blues, and Vampirella. Most recently, he and frequent collaborator Tom Sniegoski have resurrected The Pun-isher for Marvel.

  The editor of the Bram Stoker Award-winning book of criticism CUT!: Horror Writers on Horror Film, he is also one of the authors of the recently released Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher’s Guide, the official companion to the hit TV series.

  Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. He graduated from Tufts University. He is currently at work on a new, original dark fantasy entitled, Strangewood, which was published in 1999 by Penguin Putnam Inc. He invites you to visit him on the Wo
rld Wide Web at www.christophergolden.com.

  Darick Robinson is the cocreator (with Warren Ellis) and artist for the acclaimed Transmetropolitan monthly series for DCs Vertigo imprint. Darick started working as a comics professional at the age of seventeen with his self-created and self-published comic, Space Beaver. Since 1990, he has worked on New Warriors, X-Factor, Cable, The Incredible Hulk, and numerous Spider-Man projects for Marvel and Superman and Justice League: A Midsummer’s Nightmare for DC. His illustrations appear in Diane Duane’s Spider-Man novels The Lizard Sanction and The Octopus Agenda, as well as in Ellis’s forthcoming Daredevil novel.

  * * *

  THE DEADLIEST MISSION. THE DEADLIEST WOMEN.

  Wolverine. Sabretooth. Silver Fox. Wraith. Maverick. Together, they were Team X, the best covert-ops team NATO had to offer. But a mission to retrieve a disk from a pair of Soviet agents proved to be more trouble than they bargained for. A Soviet operative codenamed the Black Widow, a mutant Interpol officer named Sean Cassidy, and shape-changing freelance spy Mystique were also all after the disk.

  Years later, Wolverine is a valued member of the uncanny X-Men. The Black Widow defected and became a respected American super hero. Cassidy is Banshee, mentor to the next generation of young mutants. Mystique and Sabretooth are reluctant members of X-Factor, the government strike force. Wraith is still a covert-ops agent. Silver Fox is dead, and Maverick is dying of the Legacy Virus.

  Each of them is kidnapped, one by one—starting with Sabretooth, by far the deadliest member of the former Team X. Wolverine must find out the terrible secret from that old mission—a secret that has remained hidden for years, and could spell death for all of them!

  Cover art by Luis Royo Interior illustrations by Darick Robertson

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  TK scanned and proofed. June 2011. (v1.0) (html)