Wolverine: Weapon X Page 21

  “Less than fifty yards now,” Carol Hines said. “It appears the target is coming toward our subject, not moving away … his heart rate is elevated. Adrenal rise with carpal flux—”

  “Left claw extrusion.”

  “Camera ten, please…”

  “This is it,” Cornelius declared. “Keep the brain monitors up and running. We won’t get a second chance…”

  Carol Hines began speaking into the voice log on her terminal. “Mister Logan. Set… I mean, Subject X, Set Twelve … Stimulus response quarry one, duration from zero four minutes and twenty-one seconds—”

  * * * * *

  The grizzly bear emerged from behind a copse of leafless trees, lumbering forward on its short hind legs, forearms spread wide, claws bared, snarling.

  With a string of hot drool dripping from its snapping jaws, the creature grunted a challenge, then roared angrily when the human stood his ground.

  Without the benefit of a preprogrammed command, Subject X deftly avoided a swipe from one massive paw, crouching low to duck the blow, then slipping around the beast to administer a few stabbing jabs to the creature’s torso.

  Moving in front of the bear, Subject X thrust with his right hand, the adamantium blades sinking deep into the raging beast’s rippling red-brown flanks.

  The grizzly whirled, off balance. Logan saw the opening through the lenses of the virtual-reality visor—the signal dispatched to the brain by direct optic nerve inputs. Logan drew back his right arm for another thrust. The steel claws plunged through fur, hide, flab, and muscle, directly into the creature’s heart.

  Jaws gaping, lips flecked with gore, the bear’s roar of defiance faded into a wet gurgle in its throat as it choked on its own blood.

  Subject X brought up his left arm for a quick, slashing cut, and the bear’s head literally leaped from its shoulders and spun away, to tumble into the bloody snow, eyes staring blindly.

  A fountain of arterial blood gushed from the stump, steaming in the cold. The headless body of the bear wobbled and Logan drew back his right arm in a shower of gore. Without the indestructible claws to prop it up, the grizzly’s carcass slumped to the ground at Logan’s feet.

  Subject X stepped forward, looming over his vanquished foe, ready to deliver the coup de grace. But except for its dying spasms, the decapitated bear did not move. Even the black blood ceased to flow as the damaged heart ceased to beat.

  Programmed goal achieved, Logan stood stock-still, arms wide, legs braced, steel claws dripping gore, as if someone had turned him off According to the readings Carol Hines was receiving, Subject X had lapsed into a kind of mind loop. His brain remained active yet not fully conscious.

  * * * * *

  “Superb. Bravo!” the Professor cried. “An utterly impeccable killing. The time has come, Cornelius. The weapon is primed and perfect. He’s ready for his first mission.”

  The statement shocked Cornelius. No, he thought in a panic. You can’t take Logan away from me now. My study of his immune system will be over before it’s begun…

  Though his mind raged, outwardly Cornelius remained calm, arguing logic that the Professor could understand. “I’ll agree that the demonstration was impressive, Professor. But the transmitters limit his effective range … and they’re so cumbersome. And the helmet cuts his vision—”

  “Thirty percent, both sides,” offered Carol Hines.

  “—and the transmission lag delays his responses for what could be a critical split second in a tight situation. Worse than anything are those bulky battery packs. They’re nearly ten pounds apiece, and the microwave receiver weighs even more. Everything’s so clunky and in the way.”

  Carol Hines glanced at the screen. “Shall I retract his claws, Doctor? Or wait?”

  “Yes, go ahead, Ms. Hines.”

  “I agree that it’s not optimum, and it’s not what we planned,” said the Professor. “But we do have the weapon in our control, correct, Doctor? Ms. Hines?”

  Cornelius nodded.

  “As long as Logan’s brain is subject to the REM waves, he is under our control,” said Carol Hines.

  The Professor’s eyebrow shot up. “A qualification, Ms. Hines?”

  “Merely an observation, sir. The Reifying Encephalographic Monitor is an effective tool, but it must be utilized properly.”

  “Explain.”

  “Well, Professor … the REM sends out frequency specific brain waves that interfere with the normal functions of the right and left frontal cortex of the brain.”

  “And that’s what makes Logan docile? Controllable?”

  “Not precisely, Professor. The REM device takes control of the subject in three stages. In its initial phase, the waves effectively deactivate the right and left frontal lobes of the brain—cutting the subject off from all memory, emotion, self-awareness, and the ability to distinguish between the real and vividly imagined experience. Though hearing is unaffected, the proximity of Broca’s area—the part of the brain that controls speech—means that Logan’s vocal abilities beyond the most rudimentary are also eradicated.”

  “We don’t need him to speak, Ms. Hines. We need him to hunt, to kill,” said the Professor.

  “Yes, sir. During the second stage, the REM destroys or suppresses the subject’s actual memories and replaces them with false memories and experiences we create ourselves. At NASA, the implanted memories were used as learning tools, a kind of virtual reality exercise to teach pilots of space shuttle emergency procedures. We went no further than that because of certain unforeseen side effects.”

  “No one told me about any side effects,” grumbled Cornelius.

  “We’re well past that stage, Doctor, so the question is moot. Please continue, Ms. Hines.”

  “In the case of Weapon X, the implanted memories will be used to manipulate him, make him believe things that aren’t or weren’t true, in an effort to make his mind more … pliable. We can manipulate his fear, paranoia, activate feelings of vengeance, anger, rage…”

  The Professor tapped his chin impatiently. “Yes, I understand, Ms. Hines. Get to your point.”

  “We are now in the middle of the third stage of the subject’s retraining—the critical command-and-control phase—but psychological integration is not yet complete, which means that Logan is not yet completely under our control.”

  “But he obeys our commands. What am I missing?”

  “Once the third phase is complete, Weapon X will be self-sufficient. He will not need the REM waves to keep him in thrall because his own brain will be programmed to obey without them. But right now, the subject still needs the microwave receivers and a power source. If the brain waves generated by the REM device cease to reach his brain or if the batteries fail or something breaks down, then we will lose control of the subject.”

  “He’ll go wild? Attack?”

  “Not likely, Professor. Probably he will simply shut down, or fall into a mind loop similar to the state he reverts to after a training session. There is danger only when a modicum of someone’s personality, their individuality survives the initial phase of REM integration. That can cause conflicts in the id, the subconscious, that can result in explosive bouts of violence.”

  “So he’s safe?”

  “Yes, Professor. In the case of Subject X, I’m positive we’ve utterly eradicated his personality. Nothing of the man called Logan remains in his mind.”

  While Carol Hines spoke, Cornelius buzzed the wrangler pen.

  “Cutler here.”

  “Bring the subject.”

  Cornelius swiveled his chair to face the Professor, “See our situation, sir. Logan is working—but not to optimum potential. Not yet. I think that with a little more psychological—”

  The Professor cut him off. “No. No more psycho-anything. I want action now.”

  “Action? Chopping a grizzly into bloody pieces—that’s not enough action for you?”

  The Professor’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t create this weapon to be some im
becilic game warden, Cornelius.”

  “So what are you saying here?”

  The professor shifted his gaze to the screen, where Logan waited docilely while the wranglers approached him.

  “I am saying that our killer is ready.”

  “But it isn’t all cut-and-thrust, Professor. A bit more time to eliminate some of the kinks in the system, that’s all I’m asking.”

  “No. He is ready,” the Professor repeated in the tone of a spoiled child.

  “Ready for what?”

  “The great test, Doctor.” The Professor spun to face Cornelius. “What is the most dangerous game of all?”

  Cornelius blinked. “Bengal tiger?”

  “Man, of course.”

  Cornelius stared at the control console, face grim.

  Pretending to work, Carol Hines and Technician Rice listened intently to the exchange.

  “Well, we don’t have any humans in stock right now,” Cornelius said at last.

  “Then we’ll have to get some, won’t we?”

  Cornelius’s eyes flashed in anger. “You’re not serious, of course.”

  “On the contrary Cornelius. I’m deadly serious.”

  “My God,” the doctor protested, appalled. “If you think I’ll sit at these controls and make Logan … that’s complete madness. Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “I always know what I’m saying, Cornelius. So I’ll brook no arguments.” The Professor turned his back on the room and strode to the door.

  “We’re … we’re not finished with this debate,” Cornelius rasped.

  But the Professor entered his own world. He stopped listening to Cornelius. His focus was on Weapon X and the grand experiment he was about to conduct.

  “I will be in my control room,” the Professor declared as the hatch closed behind him.

  * * * * *

  Logan was fairly certain Miko had gotten away clean. That knowledge kept him going, even after he heard a second helicopter join the hunt.

  Every step I take leads them a step farther away from Miko…

  Twice Logan took time-consuming detours and double-backs to avoid large clearings where he could be seen from the air. He knew from experience it would be better after dark, when the choppers would have to use searchlights.

  But all this running is for nothing if those helos are equipped with infrared or thermal imaging. They will find me easily once it gets dark…

  For now, Logan ran as quietly as he could, until the only sound he could hear was his own breathing and the distant baying of dogs. No matter what happened, he was determined to go down fighting.

  After all, why make it easy for them?

  As the yellow sun sank low on the horizon, Logan broke out of a wall of pines as straight as telephone poles, their lower trunks mostly stripped of branches. Just ahead, a narrow stream of clear, icy water tumbled down the rocky slope to the lake far below. Without breaking stride, he plunged into the shallow pool, shivering as he slathered mud on his face, his hands, to hide what the splinter camouflage did not. He even rubbed the brown sludge into his hair in an effort to dull the sheen. Though he’d gotten a severe buzz cut before the mission, two days had passed and he now had a full head of long hair again.

  Logan followed the stream for about a kilometer—an old but effective trick to throw the dogs off his scent. He knew that the bloodhounds would soon find his trail again, but he hoped the search would slow them down. Sometimes bloodhounds would be distracted by other animals, but these bills have been purged of all wildlife by the starving population in the area. Logan hadn’t seen any creatures larger than a bird or insect since he’d arrived.

  More and more, the landscape—brown grass, sloping hills climbing to jagged mountain peaks, forests of gaunt, tall pines—reminded Logan of the Canadian Rockies where he’d grown up. Logan found himself reaching back through a century of memories and experiences to conjure up every trick of woodcraft he’d learned from the Blackfoot Indian trackers he’d known in his youth.

  When he reached a rocky area where he would leave scant footprints, Logan exited the stream and sprinted through the forest. The foliage was denser here, so as he swept past, Logan was careful to bend branches rather than break them, crossing more hard ground than loose soil, more rocks than mud. For an instant, memory carried him back, until Logan felt like the boy he’d once been—a wild youth on an even wilder frontier.

  In the gathering gloom, Logan glanced at the fluorescent glow of the chronometer-and-compass combination on his wrist. According to their original plan, Miko should be slipping past the dam about now and making her way down the valley to the top secret complex below—if she hadn’t run into trouble, that is.

  Suddenly, Logan paused to listen to an insistent beat of distant propellers. Down among the trees, the sound was muffled and he could not decide what direction the noise came from.

  It was sheer instinct that threw Logan to the ground a moment later. It was training that made him press himself into the dirt as a helicopter passed directly over his head at an altitude of less than fifty meters.

  Son of a bitch! Didn’t even see it coming.

  The thick trees hid Logan well, but he knew they also obscured and distorted sound, which aided his pursuers.

  He lay on the ground for a few minutes, heart racing from the close call. Finally, Logan heard the dogs yelping in confusion behind him. They had lost his trail, for now at least.

  Logan rolled to his feet and began to move swiftly between the trees again, this time keeping one eye skyward to scan the breaks between the branches for any sign of pursuit. But soon the sun set behind the mountains and the valley became shrouded in deep shadows.

  Just when Logan thought things would get easier, he burst through the tree line into a vast clearing. At the same time he heard the roar of an engine and the beat of blades. He ducked back into the trees and peered cautiously through pine needles. Within a minute, an MD500 arrived overhead, its searchlight cutting an arc through the twilight. Illuminated by the glare were hundreds of ragged stumps that used to be trees. About a hundred meters away, a steel tower bristling with cables punctuated the clearing. The power lines ran up the slope to another tower, then over the hill.

  Across the wide, desolate swath—perhaps three, maybe four hundred meters away—more forest, more cover. Behind him, Logan heard the dogs again. They had picked up his trail and were closing in.

  The bastards have been herding me all along. . . pushing me to this clearing where their helicopter gunners can pick me off. All those guys in the chopper have to do is wait for me to make a break for it.

  Too bad for them I’m not that stupid.

  Patiently, Logan watched the single chopper cruise up and down the clearing, its searchlight effectively covering every inch of ground. He used their light to scope out the landscape, but the results were not promising. There were no ditches, no dips or rolls in the ground to hide behind, and absolutely no vegetation beyond some ankledeep brown grass and hundreds of tree stumps sticking out of the earth like grave markers.

  From somewhere in the night, Logan could hear the echoing beat of the second helicopter.

  Sounds like it’s covering the road. Which means it will take a couple of minutes to get here if there’s trouble.

  Logan knew time was running out. He would have to act now or risk capture. Longing for the stopping power of his familiar Colt, Logan drew his Beretta, checked the clip, and flicked off the safety Then he hunkered down in a bed of pine needles and ignored the sound of the approaching dogs as he waited for the helicopter to make another low-level pass.

  Logan’s patience was rewarded a few moments later. The MD-500, moonlight glinting off its bubble canopy, swept overhead. A column of light stabbed down through the trees, and Logan had to slip deeper into the brush to avoid its glare. As the helicopter passed over his hiding place, Logan discovered there were two men onboard—the pilot and a soldier armed with a sniper rifle. The gunner’s door was op
en, and the man’s foot hung out of the cabin, to rest on the landing skid.

  They’re not looking for a prisoner, Logan realized. They’re planning to gun me down from the air

  The dogs were close now. He had perhaps ten minutes, no more than fifteen, to make a move before the hounds sniffed him out. As the helicopter circled the top of the hill for another pass, Logan took several deliberately slow and calming breaths.

  Then, when the helicopter was almost on him, its searchlight beam rippling along the uneven ground, Logan burst from cover and ran right into the middle of the clearing.

  * * * * *

  Cutler didn’t like the way Subject X was behaving.

  Something about the bear hunt had gotten under Logan’s skin. Though he looked like a walking dead man, he sure wasn’t acting like a zombie tonight.

  When the wranglers found Subject X, he loomed over the dead grizzly, muscles twitching. Lynch said that he was shivering from the cold. Of course, he had a point. Logan was naked, and it was more than ten below zero. But the cold had never bothered Subject X before, so Cutler couldn’t understand why it would affect him now.

  To Cutler, Logan’s sudden jerks and ticks more resembled the actions of his boyhood pet, a dog who flopped and twitched when he was in the throes of a dream. At one point, as Cutler was about to connect his electroprod into his helmet port, Logan shook his head like a horse wildly flapping its mane.

  The prod locked into place on Cutler’s second try and he carefully steered Logan toward the pens and the elevator. But they hadn’t walked more than ten meters before Logan paused, seemingly reluctant to move forward, His helmeted head lifted, as if scanning the darkening sky.

  Cutler pushed, and Logan shambled ahead. But his steps were hesitant, and instead of dropping his shoulders under the weight of the heavy cybernetic hardware, Logan jerked it from side to side as if he were alert and watching.

  “Cuff him,” Cutler commanded.

  “Come on, Cut. He’s a freakin’ zombie, wh—”

  “I said cuff him, Lynch. Don’t make me give a command twice.”