Wolverine: Weapon X Page 31

  “Colonel … the men down there are expendable. We’re not supposed to land, not even to pick up the package, if the NKs are in sight,” the pilot warned.

  Breen frowned, and his eyes narrowed in concentration. Finally, the tall man spoke, “Lock and load. We’re going down.”

  The Pave Hawk circled the plateau and came around for a second approach.

  “I see firing down there, sir. And lots of bodies…” said the man in the doorway. As the chopper dipped, the observer dangled more than halfway out the door, one hand on his safety strap, the other on the NVGs attached to his helmet.

  Breen squeezed his shoulder. “Keep your eyes open, Corporal Cutler. And be ready to take over that machine gun when we hit the ground…”

  A graceful arc put the Pave low over the landing zone. Cutler let loose with a burst of automatic gunfire when the chopper made a first pass. To his surprise, the Koreans melted into the woods without returning fire.

  “Descend, descend!” barked Colonel Breen, signaling the pilot to power down. Before the Pave Hawk settled on the ground, Corporal Cutler stepped out, into a field of death.

  The plateau was carpeted with corpses. The pilot managed not to land on them only with deft maneuvering of his controls.

  Through Cutler’s night-vision goggles, the entire scene was a green-tinged nightmare of mass murder. Corpses were sprawled everywhere, and though they appeared to be the victims of a firefight, none had been shot. There was little evidence of explosives, either—no stench of cordite, no shattered ground or splintered trees, no bullet-riddled bodies. Yet virtually every dead soldier had been dismembered, disemboweled, beheaded, their insides and outsides ravaged beyond belief.

  As the others fanned out around Cutler to secure the perimeter, Sergeant Mason cried out, “Got someone on the ground here! He’s not Korean.”

  Breen raced to the sergeant and peered down at the man. Unconscious, he wore tattered splinter camouflage and had sandy hair in a buzz cut.

  “That’s one of them,” said Breen.

  The medic arrived a moment later, checked the man’s pulse, shone a flashlight into his eyes. Suddenly, the man woke up, pushed away the light. “Who…”

  “Easy soldier,” said Breen. “We’re getting you out—”

  “Colonel!” another soldier cried. “Found a woman over here. Dead. Somebody blew her head off. Think she may be Korean.”

  “Leave her,” said Sergeant Mason.

  But Langram lifted his head. “She’s Japanese,” he cried, his voice hoarse. “Bring her out, too.”

  Breen looked into Langram’s eyes. “Where is your partner? Where’s—”

  “Colonel. Found the package,” Mason called.

  Cutler turned at the cry. He was close and curious, so he crossed the corpse-littered ground to his sergeant’s side.

  Mason stood over a kneeling figure, long hair, splinter camo in shreds. The man’s face was downcast, staring at the ground. Cutler couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

  “Need a medic over here,” called Mason.

  “Only got one doctor,” said Cutler. “And he’s still working on the other guy.”

  The sergeant looked around at the decimation. “What the hell happened here?” he whispered, face pale under war paint.

  The kneeling man was covered in gore—his own and the blood of others. His arms were particularly ravaged, flesh seeping liquid crimson from deep gashes above the wrists. Mason reached out cautiously and touched the man, who did not react. Mason checked his pulse.

  “He’s fine. Calm… I don’t get it. This guy’s a mess, but he might as well be sleeping, based on his heart rate.”

  In the gloom, Mason used his flashlight to search for injuries. “Got it in the head. Look, wood splinters are still sticking out of the wound. Hold the flashlight…”

  Mason thrust the flashlight into Cutler’s hand, then felt the man’s legs, then his arms. “His wrists feel weird, like they might be fractured. He’s probably in shock. Stick with him, Cutler. I’ll fetch the medic.”

  Cutler stood anxiously over the silent man, gazed at the dead laying in heaps around him. The stench of spilled blood was choking, and Cutler raised his kerchief to cover his nose and mouth.

  The move seemed to startle the man on the ground. He winced, then slowly lifted his head.

  “You okay?” Cutler asked softly. The kneeling man did not speak. When he opened his eyes and locked stares with the soldier looming over him, Cutler reeled back in horror.

  Sergeant Mason arrived a moment later, the medic in tow.

  “Cutler? What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “That guy… the look in his eyes. Savage. Like he could kill me with just a stare. Like he wanted to.”

  Meanwhile, the medic had gotten the man off his knees and stumbling on his own power to the helicopter.

  “Let’s go, Cutler. We’ve overstayed our welcome. The Koreans are gonna come back any minute now.”

  But Cutler just stared at the man as the medic helped him into the helicopter.

  “Jesus, Sarge. Who the hell is he?”

  “Our package, son. He’s on a classified mission and so are we. That’s all you or I need to know.”

  That was answer enough for Cutler. Truth to tell, he didn’t want to know the identity of the man. He would rather forget—forget this mission and the massacre. The look of soulless, bestial savagery reflected in that nameless man’s eyes scarred Cutler. It would not fade from his mind.

  21

  Interlude and Escape

  “Please, Ms. Hines, tell us your secret,” said Dr. Cornelius, grinning.

  The Professor frowned impatiently. “Yes, yes. Get on with it.”

  Carol Hines glanced up at the monitor, where a pair of wranglers in protective suits were about to collar Logan with their electroprods. Then she lowered her eyes and swung her chair around to face them both. ‘s I said, this happened when I was at NASA, working with the REM machine for several months—”

  “Astronaut training simulations, as I recall,” the Professor said.

  Carol nodded. “That’s how the work began. But after a few months of REM training, Dr. Powell of the Space Administration’s psychology department devised a new experiment… one that would test the astronaut’s reaction to fear.”

  “Indeed.” The Professor listened more intently.

  “The test was to be a routine simulation of a space shuttle reentry, but a specific set of circumstances would go wrong as the ship hit the atmosphere, building to the shuttle’s destruction. There was nothing the astronauts could do to stop the accident from happening. That was the point of the exercise.”

  “And the subjects … they thought the experience was real?” Cornelius asked.

  “Of course. From the moment of interface until the REM was switched off, the subjects believed what was happening was real.

  “Dr. Reddy, the mission control chief, became furious when he found out the test had been conducted, angry that he was not informed. He also feared there would be adverse psychological effects, some of them lingering. But Dr. Powell brought him evidence to the contrary. According to Powell the astronauts seemed absolutely empowered, almost emboldened by their virtual near death experience.”

  “Of course,” said Cornelius. “They faced personal extinction but survived—the very same feeling we get after a particularly scary amusement park ride, but multiplied exponentially.”

  “Three astronauts experienced the simulation,” Hines continued. “Two men, one woman, all of them experienced space shuttle pilots. In the weeks after the simulation, they each reported vivid, recurring dreams. A month later, one of the men died in a traffic accident—”

  “I read about that,” said Cornelius. “Head-on crash in Florida. A punk with a hot rod smashed into him or something.”

  “In truth, it was the astronaut who was flirting with death. He was playing chicken with a youth on a deserted stretch of highway. Neither of them swerved, so I
suspect it was ruled a-tie.”

  The Professor raised an eyebrow. “Humor, Ms. Hines? How uncharacteristic. Is this a tall tale?”

  “Not at all, sir. As I said, the astronaut transformed into a thrill-seeker. NASA’s public relations machine concealed the truth.”

  “And the others?”

  “The other man was slated for the next shuttle mission—as its pilot, in fact. He was tested periodically in the ensuing weeks and deemed fit·”

  “And the woman?”

  “Six weeks after the simulation, she disappeared without a trace. Left her husband and small child. The FBI suspected foul play, but NASA managed to hush it up, blaming her disappearance on marital woes. They found her, though, about three weeks later.”

  “And?”

  “She was arrested in Nevada. The woman had joined a motorcycle gang. She started running drugs through Mexico, shooting heroin, working nights at a Reno brothel … in the end she got arrested by the local police for stabbing a young woman to death in a barroom brawl.”

  “Living on the edge … flirting with disaster,” Cornelius said thoughtfully. “And the other pilot?”

  “That’s the strangest part,” Carol replied. “It was Major Wylling—”

  Cornelius sat up. “The pilot on the shuttle that crashed?”

  “Yes. When the black box was recovered, the events that caused the disaster were re-created in simulation—and they precisely mirrored the false accident in Dr. Powell’s psychological simulation. A leak in the coolant system led to a corrosive substance that came in contact with the superheating fuel cell, which then ruptured, causing the final, fatal explosion.”

  “A coincidence, surely,” scoffed the Professor.

  “A trillion-to-one coincidence, according to NASA’s computers,” Hines replied. “Dr. Reddy insisted the simulation was to blame, which the other scientists said was absurd on its face. At first, Dr. Reddy suggested Astronaut Wylling somehow sabotaged the system himself—a self-fulfilling prophecy But Dr. Able, the chief engineer, objected to that theory Said some of the key components involved in the crash were impossible to get to, and had been sealed for months before the fear experiment ever took place.”

  “Sounds like an academic food fight,” said Cornelius. “A bureaucratic war did break out between Dr. Powell’s psych department and Dr. Reddy and his supporters in mission control.”

  “Who won?”

  “To bolster his case, Dr. Reddy brought in other experts,” Carol Hines replied. “Physicists. Theorists working in quantum mechanics. Dream psychologists. Brain specialists. Even a parapsychologist. They discussed the problem behind closed doors. I testified, because I ran the REM program during the experiment.”

  Cornelius rubbed his brown beard. “What did they conclude?”

  “They spoke of Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Carl Jung’s Collective Consciousness, and the simple power of suggestion. A psychiatrist lectured the panel on the potential of the subconscious mind and the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy without physical intervention. In the end, the majority concluded that the REM machine probably induced a prophetic trance in the participants of the fear experiment—a hypothesis, if you will. Some process similar to what the Oracle of Delphi or the Old Testament prophets experienced.”

  * * * * *

  Cutler cautiously approached Weapon X, electroprod extended.

  Something about this poor sap didn’t feel quite right tonight. The way Logan stood over the dead tiger, maybe how his eyes were only half-closed, or how his head was cocked. It was as if he were listening. The fact that Logan had not yet retracted his claws troubled Cutler.

  “Watch him, Anderson,” Cutler warned as they approached.

  The sound of Cutler’s voice triggered something in Logan—a ghost of a memory perhaps. Suddenly, he lifted his head, opened his eyes, and locked stares with Cutler, who reeled back in recognition.

  All the other times he’d dealt with Subject X, the man was a zombie—eyes glazed, shuffling like a sleepwalker—but this time Logan was no limp victim, no trained animal to be “handled.”

  His eyes. Seen them before. . . I know who this man is.

  Faster than Cutler or Anderson could react, faster than merely human reflexes could respond, Logan brought up his bloodstained claws and lashed out.

  * * * * *

  “My God, madam! What are you suggesting?” the Professor cried. “This is not science, it’s magic, sorcery Or perhaps divination.”

  “I am suggesting nothing, Professor,” said Carol Hines. “I did not formulate the theory. I am only telling you what panel members—a group of highly esteemed scientists and researchers—concluded.”

  “What happened after that?” Cornelius asked.

  “Of course, the truth was hidden from the public, even though Dr. Reddy insisted that the results of the simulation at least should be shared with other scientists. Reddy even gave the theory a name—the Nostradamus Effect, after the fifteenth-century prophet.”

  “Preposterous,” the Professor snorted.

  “You are not alone in thinking that, Professor. Dr. Powell and some of the others, including NASA’s chief engineer, Dr. Able, used Reddy’s intransigence in the matter against him. In the end, the blame for the shuttle disaster dropped squarely in Dr. Reddy’s lap and he was forced out in disgrace.”

  “Understandably so, Ms. Hines,” said the Professor. “What a ridiculous theorem. That man was a fool.”

  “And yet enough evidence exists to support the prophetic effect of the REM device, at least to one body of scientists,” Hines replied. “Despite general skepticism about the Nostradamus Effect, NASA never again utilized the REM device, and its operation was phased out of training completely within a year.”

  Cornelius chuckled. “That’s a great campfire story Carol. Cute. Real cute. Next you’ll be telling us that Logan will be coming for us in the dark of night.”

  The doctor glanced up at the HDTV monitor and blinked in surprise. “Where is Logan? And where are the wranglers?”

  Hines spun in her chair. “Off camera, sir.”

  “I can see that, Ms. Hines. Put them back on camera, please.”

  “Switching, sir.”

  The next camera in sequence was positioned near the elevator doors. It revealed nothing. And the security cam inside the car showed it to be empty too.

  Carol Hines keyed the intercom. “Security, where’s Mr. Logan?”

  “Wranglers have him, Ms. Hines.”

  “Wranglers, come in,” she called. Wranglers? Do you copy?” There was no reply.

  “Switch to camera five, back in the field,” Cornelius said.

  Hines gasped when she saw the new image on screen. In the foreground, two wranglers lay dead, hacked to pieces, their body parts mingled with the slaughtered tiger’s. In the background, Logan strode through a sundered chain link fence toward the elevator and the underground complex.

  Suddenly, the Klaxon blare of the alarm echoed in the complex’s steel corridors.

  “Security!” the Professor cried. “What is wrong? What is the siren for?”

  “Not sure,” Major Deavers replied from the command center.

  “This could be serious,” said Cornelius. “Shut down Logan’s transponder, Ms. Hines. That should send Logan into a mmd loop and settle him down for good.”

  Carol Hines tapped her keyboard, then slammed her fist down. “No response,” she said, her usual monotone shaded with panic. “The transponder is in override… from an outside source. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Security! I ask again: What is wrong?” the Professor screamed.

  “Sorry sir,” a voice replied. “This is the guard outside of your lab. Someone is breaching the security perimeter, in the elevator, on his way down here. The level is in lockdown. We’re armed an—”

  His words died in a terrible scream. Over the loudspeakers, Cornelius, Carol Hines, and the Professor heard shots, shouts, screams… chaos.
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br />   The Professor was visibly trembling. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “We’re safe behind these walls. Logan doesn’t know we’re here, he—”

  A grating sound interrupted him. Three diamond—sharp claws began tearing through solid steel. The door to the laboratory shook, then fell from its hinges.

  Logan loomed in the doorway, snarling.

  Desperately, Carol Hines tried to regain control of Weapon X through the REM device. As he burst into the lab, control of the subject eluded her, though she did manage to interface with Logan’s brain sufficiently enough to project his thoughts.

  On the HDTV monitor, Carol saw an image of herself in Logan’s mind. Malignant and small—almost diminutive compared to the giant that he was. She watched in horror as her virtual doppelganger was beheaded with a backhand swipe of Logan’s claws, only a split second before she felt the actual slash of death. Her own head leaped from its shoulders in a fountain of blood.

  While her brain died from lack of oxygen, Carol Hines considered a final irony. I was right . . . never should have stuck my neck out... sure to get it chopped off…

  Logan came at Cornelius next. As he lunged, the doctor saw his virtual twin on the monitor, in the guise of a grim, medieval torturer, with a surgical mask for a hood and angels of death—wearing the faces of MacKenzie, Hendry, Chang, and many others—hovering in the background.

  “That’s not right,” moaned Cornelius in the moment of his long and brutal murder. “I’m a doctor … a healer I help people …”

  Finally, Logan turned on the Professor.

  The scientist backed up. He begged, pleaded, whined, and finally howled as Logan severed one hand, then the other. Kneeling, then crawling, imploring Logan to spare his life, the Professor looked tip at the monitor right before death cast its pall over him.

  On the screen, he saw no genius. No architect of the flesh. Certainly not a god. Not even a man, really … just a frightened, sobbing little boy crying for his mother, pleading for mercy—utterly powerless in the face of a cruel, arbitrary uncaring fate.

  EPILOGUE

  The slaughter continued all night. By morning, as the rising sun broke over the mountains, Logan had killed them all. Carol Hines. Dr. Abraham B. Cornelius. The Professor. Dr. Hendry and his cadre of physicians. Dr. MacKenzie and all of his psychiatric specialists. The guards. The wranglers. Even the technicians, maintenance workers, and kitchen staff.