The Ultimate X-Men

by Unknown Author

  “She only needs ta buy us a couple seconds, darlin’.” He wrenched the wheel to the right, sliding into the empty driveway of a brick rambler, into the backyard, and straight through a picket fence. They hit a snowbank and cleared a frozen drainage ditch by at least six feet.

  Logan’s head hit the roll-bar as they landed, but he hardly noticed. Ahead he could see the old woman trying to run across a stretch of park meadow, an overturned two-wheel cart abandoned behind her. And he could see the killer, the Snowman, only a few yards behind. He threw the door open and jumped out while the Jeep was still slowing.

  The Snowman stopped his advance when he spotted Wolverine, but he didn’t withdraw. Instead, he reached into his belt, cross-armed, with both hands, and drew a pair of ordinary looking hunting knives.

  So much for “knives of green fire, ” Logan thought. He unsheathed his claws, anticipating his strike. He thought of the gutted young woman, the terrified old lady, the three bodies from last year, and mercy was not foremost on his mind.

  Logan leapt, claws out. He hit, and hit hard. His claws

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  raked off something invisible, millimeters from the Snowman’s skin, leaving behind streaks of green electricity.

  His momentum carried him past the killer; he landed off-balance and tumbled twice before coming up in a crouch.

  He spun. The killer stood his ground, sheets of green lightning dancing around his body. In the background, he could see Jean helping the woman to safety. He had to keep the Snowman’s attention distracted. Logan growled deep in his throat, and charged for another attack. He moved in close, slashing with what should have been killing strokes. They skittered off harmlessly, stirring up the lightning, which flowed up the Snowman’s arms and into his knives.

  The Snowman laughed and brought down his left arm.

  The thick leather of Logan’s jacket sliced like tissue paper, and he felt the knife bite deep and jam between two of his ribs. He grunted as the knife pulled free, and tried to return a blow of his own. Ineffective. The Snowman’s other knife fell. Logan tried to stop it, and the blade sliced his forearm to the bone. He staggered. Before he could recover, the first blade stabbed completely through Logan’s left thigh.

  Logan fell, rolling clear of his attacker. The green fire wrent with him, burning deep in his wounds, fighting his healing factor. The effort of the struggle dropped him to his knees, near unconsciousness.

  He looked up, and through his blurry vision, the Snowman seemed to be running away. Logan could hear laughing. “Did he get her?” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  She’s safe, Jean’s thoughts reached him as a note of belllike clarity in a pool of pain and confusion. I’m going to try

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  to stop him telekinetically if I can, and probe him at close range if I can’t.

  “Don’t,” Logan managed to whisper. Then the screaming began again.

  Logan leaned against the fender of the Jeep, trying to clear his head.

  Next to him, the elderly woman was beaming at Jean, seemingly unfazed by the attack. “She’s my guardian angel,” the woman kept saying, “I saw her in a vision.”

  Whatever gave comfort, Logan supposed, though right then her “guardian angel” looked like she’d been dragged through the deep end of the pool. Jean sat in the Jeep’s passenger seat, dazed and bedraggled, her hair wet with melting snow. He’d found her fallen in a snowbank and carried her back to the rig.

  Jean shook her head slowly, stringy ringlets of hair tumbling over her face. Speaking telepathically, so as not to let the old woman know more than she needed to, she said, Got to stop them, Logan. They ’11 kill again unless we can stop them.

  He reached out and brushed the hair back from her eyes. You sure you’re okay, Red? You’re talking “them” and “they” again.

  She looked up, and met his eyes with a tired, but lucid, stare. I understand now, Logan, what we’re dealing with in the Snowman. The true horror of it nearly flattened me. The killer, the hostage, the mutant, and two others, the little boy and the old woman, all in one body.

  Logan raised an eyebrow. Multiple personalities ? No ivay. Mutant isn’t personality, it’s genes. I don’t have to be the Professor to know that.

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  I didn’t understand it at first either. But the mutant isn’t an aspect of the killer’s shattered personality; he’s the killer’s third victim. She sighed, and wiped the moisture from her eyes. Imagine a young mutant, his power not yet expressed, a very unusual power. He was a symbiont, capable of surviving the death of his physical body by bonding with another being at the moment of death. Now imagine he becomes the victim of a serial killer, and at the moment of his death . . .

  Logan’s thoughts wTent grim. He jumps straight into the body of his own killer.

  He can’t control the host body, and his power makes him a true symbiont, not a parasite. His power “pays the rent” somehow. Maybe by making the host better at what he does. In this case, he certainly made the Snowman into a better killer, maybe a perfect one.

  So, the victim, the mutant, he’s the “hostage”? He’s the one that’s been helping us?

  Yes, he’s the hostage, and it makes sense that he’s the one helping us. Maybe he can control the body, but only when the host is sufficiently distracted. She hesitated. During a killing, for instance.

  Logan just grunted.

  I’m also worried, Jean continued, about what will happen if the symbiont draws too much attention to himself.

  What do you mean ?

  I mean, if you already have three personalities, what’s the big deal if another one shows up ? But if you learn that one of those personalities is an alien from outside ? He might be able to kill the boy, or wipe his personality and take his powers. We just don’t know.

  Logan looked down at his shredded and bloodied

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  clothes. His wounds were completely healed. The effects of the green fire had burned themselves out in a few minutes. Still, it made the Snowman one of the more formidable opponents he’d ever faced. He sighed, and climbed into the driver’s seat of the Jeep. “Ma’am,” he said to the smiling woman, who probably had no idea why the two of them had been so quiet for the last few minutes, “you head home now.” She nodded, and watched as they drove off across the park.

  They had picked up one other useful piece of information: Logan had recovered soon enough to catch a glimpse of the Snowman’s vehicle as it drove away across the park, a vintage green Corvair van, ancient and spotted with rust. They were building the clues to run the Snowman down, but could they find him before he killed again, and what would they do with him when they had him?

  Logan stopped at the main road and looked both ways. “I need some help, Red. Which way?”

  She shook her head. “You know I can’t track him, Logan.”

  “We know somebody in there is tryin’ to help you, and you’ve already been inside his mind now. Give it a try.” She closed her eyes and concentrated, teeth gritted, breath held, her face lined with the strain. This continued for thirty seconds or so. Then her eyes snapped open. She blinked. “I saw something, just a flash, it could have been another victim. I couldn’t tell anything except—it was a man walking a dog.”

  Logan unfolded a map and scanned the surrounding area. A small notation caught his eye. “A dog? Like a seein’-eye dog?”

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  She nodded. “It would fit the killer’s pattern.” “There’s a training academy for ’em in the next town east of here, ’bout six miles.” He tossed her the map without folding it and punched the accelerator. They skidded onto the highway.

  Jean threw the map in the back, and drew herself up in her seat. She was finally recovering from their battle. “We still don’t know what to do with the Snowman when we find him. My TK seems to be as useless against him as your claws, and even if we could harm him, we don’t know what it would do to the innocent mutant trapped insi
de his body. ’ ’ “Could be,” suggested Logan, “that he’d just jump to a new host.”

  “We don’t know that. It could be he can make the transfer only once. Our best bet is to find a way to contain him and take him back to the Institute—maybe the Professor can help him.”

  “Whatever,” Logan said as he skidded the Jeep around an especially sharp corner, but he remained unconvinced. While he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of the symbiont setting up housekeeping in Jean’s or his body, there were worse alternatives.

  They soon found the Oltion Dog Training Academy, but no sign of the killer’s van or a man walking with a dog. Logan had another idea. “That man you saw must have left here not long ago with a dog. We don’t have to find the hunter if we can track the prey.”

  They left the Jeep in front of the academy while Logan attempted to pick up the trail. He’d circled only a part of the building before finding it. The nice thing about dogs

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  was that they were very easy to track by smell, especially when they were wet.

  The trail led away from the road, through the academy grounds, and into the back country. They were headed up a steep grade paralleling a stream when Jean glanced back over her shoulder and pointed. Visible through the trees, parked next to a side road, was the light green van.

  Logan picked up his pace, and trusted that Jean would keep time. As they rounded the next bend, the trail crossed from one side of the ravine to the other, via an arched concrete bridge that soared high over the rocky stream.

  “It’s happening,” Jean cried.

  On the center of the bridge Logan could see three figures: two human and one canine. As they came closer, it became apparent that the dog was trying to defend its fallen master from the Snowman. It was a battie as brave as it was hopeless. Only the dog’s speed kept it from being cut to ribbons. That was a lesson Wolverine took careful note of as he broke into a full sprint.

  Logan, he heard her in his thoughts, while you attack on the physical plane, I’m going to attempt to contact the mutant by deep probe. There may be a way we can help you from inside, or at least learn something useful.

  He didn’t even think, Be careful. The time for care was past. This was war.

  Logan ran onto the bridge just in time. The dog was withdrawing in defeat, bleeding from several seemingly minor cuts. The dog hunched down near the railing where his master had fallen. The man seemed disoriented, if unhurt. Logan placed himself between the killer and his intended victim, but kept his distance.

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  They danced a dance of death for a moment, then the Snowman struck. Logan stepped just outside the knife’s arc, then replied with a thrust of his own, aiming not for the vitals or limbs, but for the eyes. As always, the Snowman’s bioelectric field protected him from the blow, but he still instinctively pulled back, trying to protect his face.

  Made you jump, thought Logan. It was a small victory, but he’d settle for anything at this point. The strike also had an unanticipated secondary effect. The green fire lingered over the Snowman’s face, interfering with his vision.

  WJiile he’s confused, Logan, I’m going in .. .

  Then things went terribly wrong. Jean’s psyche was suddenly sucked inside the Snowman, and, through their contact, a part of Logan as well.

  It was a strange sensation, to see his physical self still doing battle with the Snowman, to still be a part of that, and yet to exist on this inner plane as well.

  He and Jean were falling, though he had no fear of it. They were falling down a long shaft, like the vent of a deep volcano. He could see a shrinking circle of blue sky, wispy with cloud, far above, dwindling to only a spot as they reached the bottom. He had no memory of stopping, and yet they were there.

  As he looked around the dark, fog shrouded plane, he saw four others besides Jean and himself standing there. One of them, a thin teenage boy with dishwater-blond hair, stepped forward. The symbiont, Logan knew.

  “You came,” the symbiont said, his eyes wide with wonder. “Tommy said you’d come, but I didn’t believe .him.”

  A flash of pain pulled Logan back into the part of his consciousness existing in the physical plane. The batde had

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  gotten close and bloody while his attention was elsewhere, and, from his current perspective, seemed to move in slow motion. Fury and confusion marked the Snowman’s face as he slashed at Logan, flashes of green fire illuminating his face in stark shadows.

  A spray of blood arched through the air, his own, Logan realized. Got to pull back, get room to move. As he did, he saw Jean standing at the end of the bridge, frozen in midstride, the blind man still propped against the railing, and the Snowman, moving toward him. Logan moved to protect the helpless man.

  Snap. He was back on the astral plane. Jean emerged from the shadows, holding the hand of a young black boy of about nine. “This is Tommy,” she said. “He wants to help us end the killing.”

  The boy’s eyes were large and gende, and it was hard to believe that he was part of the Snowman. He looked up at Logan and nodded sadly. “We done some bad things, mister. Got to make it stop. That’s why I brought your lady friend to help our friend Roger,” he pointed at the symbiont, “and you, Mr. Wolverine, to help fight our Snow-beast.”

  The nameless old woman glanced at Logan contemptuously, then turned her back on him. Three aspects of the Snowman, Jean had said. Tommy was one, this woman another, and the third . . . Something roared behind him. He turned to face a child’s nightmare: a buffalo sized lion made of soiled velvet drapery fabric and old buttons, held together with crude hand stitchery, its back crusted with fallen snow, as though it had just shambled out of a snowbank. Despite its bulk, it moved with easy grace, its eyes glowed

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  with green fire, and when it roared, it revealed a maw studded with very real teeth.

  This was it, the killer’s dark soul, the inner beast. Logan knew it well, knew what could happen if it were set loose.

  Tommy stepped forward, challenging the beast. “Got to stop it! Got to stop the killing, Snowbeast! Got to make it end!”

  “Nooooo,” the Snowbeast roared, brushing the boy aside with his paw. “Kill the weak! Kill the weak!” He turned toward Roger, the symbiont. ‘ ‘Kill—the outsider?”

  More pain, as his claws locked with the killer’s knives and the blades slid down to bite into his knuckles. Too close. Too close again. He shoved the Snowman backward, stepping back himself.

  He was bleeding from a dozen places, none too serious, but the green energy was sapping his strength, and impeding his healing. He needed the breather.

  The Snowman leaned back against the bridge rail, casually wiping a little saliva from the corner of his mouth. He looked at Logan and laughed. Then, too quickly for Logan to act, he grabbed the terrified blind man by his collar, pulled him up onto the bridge railing, and climbed up after him.

  The concrete railing was only four or five inches wide and covered with snow. Using strength that could only have been granted by his symbiosis, the Snowman held the struggling man out over the drop.

  “No!” cried Tommy. The Snowbeast lumbered toward the young mutant. Logan popped his claws, relieved that they worked here as well as the real world, plunging his right claws into the Snowbeast’s side, ripping down in a long

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  stroke. But there was no blood, just more of the green fire, spewing out, burning where it touched.

  “Tommy,” urged Jean, “you have to help us.”

  The boy just sat watching the battie, arms curled around his knees. “Can’t do nothing without Auntie.” He gestured at the old woman. “Her and me could outvote the Snow-beast, but she won’t vote. She don’t care. It’s always that way.”

  Logan leapt and rolled beyond the Snowbeast’s claws. “We need help, Red, or the man’s gonna die. What about Blondie there?” He nodded toward the young symbiont before having to fend off anot
her of the Snowbeast’s attacks.

  Roger shook his head. “I can’t control his powers. I’ve tried, but I can’t.”

  “Then,” said Jean, “control yours. I’ll help you see your true nature.” She waved her hand toward the three aspects of the Snowman. “You have the ability to enhance your host, compensate for his shortcomings, to make him better at what he is. But you didn’t understand that when you were suddenly cast into this poor shattered creature. You made him a better killer, and that’s all, but Roger, you can make him whole.”

  The Snowbeast stopped for a moment, looking up in response to the words, then redoubled his attack on Logan.

  “No,” said Roger, “I don’t know how.”

  “I’ll help you,” said Jean.

  Some part of Logan could see the Snowman’s fingers loosening from the man’s collar, even as the Snowbeast landed on top of his chest, huge jaws snapping shut just short of his throat.

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  “Now would be a good time,” he growled, freeing an arm to fend off another bite.

  Then the Snow'beast was screaming, joining the chorus of Tommy and the old woman, with Jean, and with the mutant teenager, and finally with Logan himself, an animal howl rising from deep in his throat.

  The weight lifted from Logan’s body as the Snowbeast and his other aspects were drawn together into a boiling ball of green anger and rage. Then the color warmed, to yellow, and then orange, and the ball coalesced into a single figure, the silver-haired man they had called the Snowman.

  Suddenly, Logan was back in the real world. The Snowman still stood on the railing, a look of growing realization and horror on his face. In the corner of his vision, Logan saw Jean stagger from the psychic backlash of returning to her own body.

  “Help me,” the blind man croaked, and the Snowman seemed to notice for the first time the helpless victim dangling from his hand. He placed the man’s feet back on the railing, but did not release him.

  “What have we done?” asked the Snowman. “What have I done?” The Snowman turned his face toward the bright sky, the wind plucking at his short white hair.