Wolverine: Weapon X Read online

  “Hai.”

  “It’s a sure bet Langram is there, too.”

  “Last night you said you were going to rescue your friend.”

  “I intend to go after Langram. It’s such a stupid, suicidal move, the Koreans might just fall for it. You can come with me and finish your personal business as long as it doesn’t interfere with mine. Or you can try to get out of North Korea on your own.”

  “I will come with you, Logan. When do we go?”

  “Tonight, after it gets dark. It’ll take us an hour to get past the dam, another two to get down the hill and inside.”

  “Until then?”

  “We eat, Miko. Then we rest. It’s gonna be a long night.”

  “You have an appetite?” Miko asked.

  “Yeah. After one of those healing comas, I wake up hungry as a damn wolf.”

  * * * * *

  “They’re eating him alive!”

  “I’m getting no response,” cried Cornelius. He pushed Carol Hines out of the way and started banging on her console. “He should have been triggered. We’ve lost it.”

  On the screen, the wolves were a snarling, squirming mass swarming over the struggling mutant. Subject X fought back weakly as ripping claws and gnashing jaws closed on his unprotected belly and slashed at his throat.

  Suddenly, Cornelius looked up from the REM console. “It’s coming through. The epinephrine is rising…”

  The Professor appeared at his shoulder. “Eighty-six… ninety percent … ninety-five…” The man clapped his hand on Cornelius’s shoulder. “He’s fighting back!”

  A moan of agony blared from the speakers. On the screen, Logan’s right forearm emerged from the sniveling, slavering pack. The groan became a frightful roar of rage and defiance. Suddenly, the wolves reared back, yelping, their muzzles flecked with blood, as three adamantium claws sprung from Logan’s ravaged flesh.

  “Listen to that feral roar. Gentlemen, we have succeeded!”

  “I don’t think that sound is bloodlust, Professor,” Dr. Cornelius said. “I think it’s pain.”

  A welter of blood poured from the claw extraction points, rolling down Logan’s outstretched arms as he stumbled to his feet.

  “Splendid.” The Professor nodded his head, adjusted his square glasses. “It will make him all the more savage.”

  Over Logan’s roar, the scientists heard a snarling whelp that made them wince. Logan burst from the middle of the barking curs. The alpha leaped at his throat. With an uppercut that impaled the animal and lifted it over his head, Logan slashed the wolf in half at the torso—severing its spine in a chopping gesture that neatly divided the howling creature.

  Hot, steaming blood rained down on Logan, saturating his face, neck, torso. He ducked a leaping female and thrust his right arm back to pierce the skull of another male.

  Carol Hines averted her eyes as Logan disemboweled a yelping she-wolf, then slammed its broken, writhing body against another. Though she avoided the image, Hines could not block out the gruesome sounds—barks, howls, grunts, whelps, and whimpers of animals suffering, dying…

  “Readings, Cornelius,” the Professor commanded.

  “Heart rate just shot off the scale, Professor. And you don’t want to know the high levels of adrenaline, epinephrine, serotonin. Phenomenal stress level. He could burn out.”

  “Is that likely?” the Professor asked, alarmed.

  “I don’t know,” Cornelius answered truthfully. “The metabolics alone … it’s beyond human. And the wounds he’s already received…”

  “Those wounds haven’t slowed Logan yet,” noted MacKenzie.

  A half-dozen dead wolves sprawled on the ground.

  Others gasped their last frost-steamed breath. A few struggled in the slippery muck, dragging broken limbs, their entrails staining the snow yellow-brown-red.

  Then a sustained howl pierced the air as Logan pinned the alpha female to the ground with the claws of his left hand while using his right to cut the flopping bitch to pieces. Blood and gouts of fur and flesh flew with each brutal swing, yet no mortal blow was struck. Logan was deliberately prolonging the creature’s agony.

  “He’s far more bestial than those he’s slaughtering,” Cornelius observed.

  The Professor was all smiles. “What a perfect choice Logan was,” he declared with smug satisfaction. And how foolish of me to doubt the Director.

  Carol Hines appeared behind them, her eyes fixed on the screen. “Professor, can’t we stop it now? Save the animals that remain? It’s just senseless slaughter.”

  The Professor was shocked by her suggestion. “I think not, madam. I am enjoying this far too much. Let the animals save themselves. Survival of the fiercest. It’s nature’s violent way.”

  “Professor, I’ve got a fluorescent analysis now, and a CAT scan,” called Dr. Hendry. “Would you like to see them?”

  “Just give me your results on the scan.”

  “Activity in the left prefrontal cortex—” began Dr. MacKenzie.

  “Ah, I see—the part of the brain that seeks vengeance,” the Professor interjected.

  “You are correct, Professor,” MacKenzie replied. “It’s also the part of the brain that is active when people prepare to satisfy hunger, a craving. Hunger and the lust for revenge are hardwired—and appear to be related.”

  “And the fluorescent analysis?”

  “On-screen,” said Hendry.

  A square section of the violent images on the screen froze, broke away, then filled the entire monitor—Logan’s raised right arm, claws extended.

  “Yes. Can you hold on that?” the Professor asked.

  The screen went blank, then the same picture reappeared—but as an X-ray image. Logan’s claws and adamantium bones silver-white; vessels, tendons, muscles a medley of muted grays.

  “We need more detail,” the Professor complained. “Give me a re-emission on the osteograph.”

  “One second,” said Hendry’s assistant.

  The image morphed, then melted into a blur. “Bring it in to either hand,” instructed the Professor.

  Suddenly, the image of Logan’s clawed right hand filled the screen, bones still silver-white, but nerves, veins, tendons all shaded a multitude of hues. The image was three-dimensional, and as they watched, Dr. Hendry shifted the perspective so they could view the anatomy in action from every conceivable angle.

  “Look at that,” the Professor cried. “The perfect synthesis of human trabeculae and adamantium. Bone, bonded to the hardest metal in the world, inside the body of a berserker.”

  The Professor stepped up to the screen as if he were about to embrace the image. “Logan. Weapon X. The perfect fighting machine. The perfect killing machine.”

  Dr. Hendry interrupted the Professor’s revelry. “There is some excessive distortion in the metacarpals. That could be the cause of the subject’s pain upon extrusion, as Dr. Cornelius suggested.”

  “How so?” It was Carol Hines who asked.

  “The adamantium appendages seem to cause him discomfort as they activate,” Hendry told her. “Some of it is undoubtedly due to the damage the adamantium prostheses cause to his own skin as the claws rip through, but he may also be experiencing a general ache, similar to a child who is teething.”

  The Professor faced Hendry. “You’ll look into that?”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  “Good. Then take us back to the battlefield.”

  With a beep the image vanished, to be replaced by the prerecorded scene in the bloody snow. The sound returned as well, though the howls and cries of the wolves had been silenced forever.

  Logan stood, legs wide, in the center of the bloody tableau, arms outstretched and dripping hot gore.

  “Program complete,” Cornelius announced. “We seem to have gone through all our wolves.”

  Carol Hines turned away from the screen.

  “A total massacre. Splendid. This exercise couldn’t have gone better,” said the Professor. “And look at Lo
gan! I think he wants more. Do we have more?”

  “No,” said Ms. Hines.

  “Pity…”

  Then a long, continuous canine howl echoed throughout the lab; an alarming sound that sent shivers of superstitious dread down the spines of civilized, educated scientists and researchers. The cry was feral, animalistic—yet somehow ominously human.

  Cornelius spun to face the Professor. “Good God. He’s roaring like an animal.”

  “Ah! And you thought it was just pain that made him cry out, Cornelius—but no.” The Professor stood, fist clenched in front of his face as he stared at Logan’s image on the screen, listening to the sustained bestial bellow.

  “The wolves would kill for food, or territory, perhaps,” said the Professor, his voice rising in intensity. “But this mutant … this living weapon … his passion is the fear of his prey. He finds relish in the odor of blood. Fear is the key. Fear is his motivating factor.”

  The Professor’s rant ended as did the mad howl. Instantly, the laboratory grew quiet.

  The Professor turned to address them all.

  “Despite his original protestations, his struggles against us, I know we’ve done Logan a great favor,” the Professor declared. “His most bestial needs are about to exceed his most primitive dreams … In our service, of course.”

  He faced Cornelius. “You can turn him off now, Doctor.”

  Cornelius returned to his console as Carol Hines resumed her position behind the REM keyboard. They both prepped their systems for powering down.

  On the screen, Logan dropped to his knees, where he swayed as the claws slid back into their sheaths. Then, without a sound, he toppled face-first into the bloody snow like a puppet whose strings had been severed. Legs jerked like the spasms of the dead, and Logan flopped in the wolf guts and settled on his back.

  “Wranglers?” Cornelius radioed.

  “Copy,” Cutler replied, his voice tense—an effect of the scene he’d just witnessed from the bunker.

  “Bring Logan in.”

  Suddenly, the Professor stepped forward. “Please cancel that order, Cornelius.”

  Cornelius wondered why he had just been overridden. But he knew better than to question the Professor’s command. Better to take a diplomatic approach. “Cancel …”

  Then Cornelius turned. “I’m sorry, Professor,” he began. “I thought we were done for the day.”

  “We are.”

  “Then?”

  The Professor turned his back on the screen and walked to the exit. “Leave Logan out for the night,” he called over his shoulder. “I like the idea of him resting in his own gore. He needs to become one with the guts of his glory.”

  “But it’s fifteen degrees below Fahrenheit out there,” Cornelius protested. The winter day was so short, the sun was already beginning to set behind the mountains.

  “All the better. Toughen him up, eh?” The Professor paused at the door, then turned to face Cornelius again. “You can monitor his vital signs from here, can you not?”

  “Yes, of course,” Cornelius replied.

  “Splendid. Then we’ve accomplished much this day. Good evening to you all.”

  * * * * *

  “You are now guests of the provisional military government. Though you are Western oppressors. .

  The Professor heard the harsh voice. Authoritarian. Insistent. A barking horn of spartan bravado.

  Don’t bother me now. Too much to do to be sidetracked by ancient history.

  He’d worked through the night, then all the next day. As night fell again, he’d returned to his technological lair to review unending loops of data. Sleep was an illusion, a distant oasis that provided no rest, no peace. Instead, he sat erect in his command chair, as he had for endless days.

  “Once the interrogation is complete, you will both be released: Nothing will happen to you or your child as long as you … cooperate fully.”

  Annoyed, the Professor tossed his glasses onto the console. A road map of thin, red lines marked the whites of his eyes. He rubbed them with long-fingered hands.

  I know I’m right…

  Fear is the key.

  Control Logan’s fear and you control his aggression. Control his aggression and you control him. And then you have the perfect killing machine. The perfect defense…

  “Do not fear for your boy… He will survive as long as you please us. I hear he is quite intelligent, your son. It would be a shame if something happened to him … to you both…”

  Go away.

  “Not until I’ve gotten what I want from your mother, boy. Not until she pleases me…”

  The faces were around him again, circling like the wolves stalking Logan. Cruel. Feral. Savage. Mocking. And one face above all…

  Colonel Otumo.

  At eight, the Professor was small and wiry for his age. His father was a renowned epidemiologist, his mother the heiress of a Vancouver business empire. They’d journeyed to Africa to do good works, to help the impoverished, cure the sick.

  Noble sentiments wasted on savages…

  Father was somewhere in the jungle, inoculating tribesmen’s children in remote tribal villages. He and his mother had remained in the capital city a rude former colonial town built on the shore of a muddy African river. While his father was gone, a military coup had cast the West African nation into bloody chaos.

  Pale, terrified, he hugged his mother’s skirt that night. Trembling behind oversized glasses, watching tanks roll through dusty streets, soldiers beating back unarmed men and women. He heard shots, saw panic, smelled burning tires and the stench of fly-specked, bloated bodies rotting in the tropical heat.

  When daylight came, so did martial law. Police and bureaucrats from the overthrown regime were captured and herded off to a sports stadium. Firing squads worked all day and through the next night.

  That second night, the hotel’s thin door bulged. The tromp of heavy boots on wooden floors, locks kicked through, servants and hotel workers beaten and shot. He’d run to his mother’s room for safety. Colonel Otumo had already arrived with his officers.

  Tall. Beige uniform. Crisp and pressed. A soldier.

  Father had told him soldiers were like policemen—men to be trusted. Respected. Here to serve and protect.

  “Where is your husband, the Western doctor? … That answer is not sufficient … What is your reason for coming to our country? … No, that is a lie. You represent the criminal interests of the North American colonial powers, no use denying it…”

  At first, the men acted somewhat civil—Otumo most of all—Oxford-educated, well-spoken, he could discuss William Blake’s poetry British history, Marxist economics, or methods of torture with equal eloquence. But all too soon the polite conversation turned completely brutal.

  An eight-year-old could barely understand the events unfolding. He knew the soldiers were cruel and loud, his mother sobbing and afraid.

  As day turned to evening once again, the soldiers took his mother away. She kissed him and told him to be brave … that she would be back with him soon, and forever. He tried to follow, crying, screaming, but the other soldiers laughed and beat him down with their rifle butts.

  After that, he lay on the floor, listening as, from another part of the hotel, his mother’s sobs, her pleas, finally her screams, broke through the black night. Meanwhile, the soldiers … did things to him. Things he did not understand. They did things to his body that hurt so much he retreated into his mind until he was far away. In a vast desert, alone. What was happening to him couldn’t be happening, and so he watched as if through a glass, or a camera, or another person’s eyes.

  Morning brought a blast of wind and beating blades. The helicopters descended from the high clouds in the African sky. Men in black-skinned suits carrying big guns blasted their way through the hotel. The guard sitting over him rose to flee but was shot through the eye. Then, for the second time in twenty-four hours, men burst into the room. A man picked him up off the floor.

&
nbsp; “You’re safe now, boy. Understand? Safe,” he said in a thick British accent. The man pulled off his hood. “I’m a soldier, son. Here to rescue your mother and father. Do you know where they are?”

  Dumbly, he pointed down the hall. The men moved through the building, shooting and knocking down doors.

  “Oh God,” someone choked. “She’s in here.”

  “Mother!” he’d cried, hurling himself down the hall.

  “Don’t let him see her!”

  But he was too determined—a small animal squeezing between giraffe legs—and he did see her, sprawled on the bed, before they picked him up and carried him away.

  In the helicopter, he sat mute, listening to the British soldiers speaking over the command net.

  “Why did they do that to her?” a soldier whispered when they thought he couldn’t hear. “Why’d they cut off her—”

  “Quiet! The boy,” hissed the officer.

  “But why, sir?”

  “Colonel Otumo calls it tribal justice. When his troops attack a rival clan, they … mutilate the women that way. So they can never suckle their young or bear more children…”

  “What’s going to happen to the boy?”

  “Found his father in the jungle. Be here later today. They’re going back to Canada, I’d reckon … no point in staying here.”

  When he saw his father that day, he said nothing. When they flew back to Canada, he didn’t speak. When he turned nine, his father sought help.

  “Despite his terrible trauma, your son exhibits a phenomenal intellect. He’s a perfect candidate for our school. He’s brilliant, IQ among the top one percent, and he’s at just the right age to absorb knowledge without effort.”

  “I only want the best for my son … he’s been through so much.”

  “At our academy, your son will be surrounded by peers. Boys of a gentle, academic nature who’ll understand his … intensity. The trauma he experienced.”

  So his father shipped him off to a boarding school, then married his nurse.

  In school, he missed his mother, he drew pictures of soldiers, hung them by his bed like talismans to ward off evil, taped them to the ceiling above his head. He lay awake, telling himself that one day he would have his own soldier to protect him from all the bad things.