by Greg Cox
“My God!” Wanda gasped, shocked to wakefulness by the deafening roar. “What is that?”
Rogue realized the blinded Witch had not guessed the source of the bestial tumult.
She probably thinks there’s an enraged tiger loose in the lab, Rogue thought. But there was no time to explain; Rogue feared Wolverine would injure himself in his frenzied efforts to escape from the casket—and the memories it held. “Logan!” she shouted. Her throat was dry and hoarse, but she swallowed hard to work up enough saliva to speak. “Logan! Listen to me. You’ve gotta snap out of it!”
But he didn’t seem to hear her. He looked like he didn’t even know where—or who—he was. If Logan could have chewed his own arms off to escape, Rogue believed he would have done it. She had only seen him like this a few times before, usually right before somebody got sliced to shreds.
“Logan!” she tried again. “It’s me, Rogue! Remember?!”
This time she seem to get through to him. “RRRR—Rogue?” A hint of sanity crept into his bloodshot eyes. His limbs ceased their convulsive thrashing, and his contorted face relaxed into something closer to calm. He searched the images in the mirror, as if grounding himself once more in this particular time and place. His eyes held a look of weary regret, and he took a deep breath before speaking again. “Sorry, darlin’. You didn’t need to see that.”
“It’s okay, Wolvie,” she assured him, her throat tightening with emotion. “I understand. You don’t need to explain.”
The Scarlet Witch, on the other hand, was still in need of elucidation concerning what her startled ears had just heard. “That was Wolverine?” she asked incredulously.
“Yeah,” Logan growled, sounding more like his old self. “You got a problem with that?”
Before Wanda could craft a reply, the rumble of moving machinery caught the attention of all three prisoners.
Oh no. Rogue thought. She didn’t know exactly what was about to transpire, but she knew what the resumption of mechanical activity meant: another round of inhuman medical experiments was beginning.
“Here we go again,” Wolverine snarled, and Rogue thought she heard a heartrending groan from the Scarlet Witch. What now? Rogue wondered apprehensively. In some ways, the anticipation—and the uncertainty— was almost worse than the painful and degrading tests themselves; it was like sitting outside the doctor’s office when you were little, worrying if you were going to get a shot and wondering how much it would hurt.
Previous experiments had tested the limits of their respective mutant powers, even subjecting Wolverine to a cruel variety of injuries just to see how quickly he healed. Rogue had gotten a spoonful of the same nasty medicine after getting Logan’s healing factor forced on her in another experiment. Their anonymous persecutor, cowardly hiding his or her face behind what had to be a one-way mirror, was always thinking ahead; Rogue figured her coffin had been deliberately situated between Wolvie and the Witch to make it easier for her to touch either one of them.
There had also been a series of grueling examinations in which remote-controlled waldoes had extracted samples of blood, hair, skin, saliva, bone marrow, and even spinal fluid from Rogue and her fellow human guinea pigs. She tried not to think about the grisly procedures, performed largely without anesthesia, except to wonder what the robotic limbs would come for next. So far she had been allowed to keep all of her teeth, but she figured that was only a matter of time. We’ve got to get out of here, she resolved fiercely, but how? By now the X-Men, and probably the Avengers, had to be looking for them, but Rogue wasn’t about to lie back and wait patiently for a rescue attempt. She tested the unbreakable steel clamps holding her in place, only to find them just as immovable as before.
Her casket, however, suddenly revealed itself to be surprisingly mobile. Unseen motors hummed as all three coffins began traveling along some kind of conveyor belt or tracks. Rogue felt like a prop in an old-fashioned shell game as the pinioned mutants were reassigned new positions before the mirror, with Wolverine now occupying the central berth between the two women.
So? Rogue asked silently, giving the mirror a dirty look she hoped penetrated through to the other side. Was I just demoted or what?
Not for the first time, she wondered who was hiding behind that silvered glass. Magneto? Bastion? The Hellfire Club? She wasn’t sure why any of the X-Men’s old enemies would bother to hide their identity like this. Heck, most of them could hardly resist a chance to gloat over a couple of captured X-Men. Mister Sinister, on the other hand, tended to be a bit more on the sneaky side; could they have fallen into the clutches of Gambit’s unscrupulous old boss? These sick experiments seemed like the kind of thing Sinister would get off on.
Is that you, you diamond-headed dirtbag? she accused the mirror. Killing all those innocent Morlocks wasn’t enough, you had to come after us, too?
No answers were forthcoming, only busy waldoes that swiftly and efficiently went to work reconfiguring the various lengths of plastic tubing flowing in and out of the punctured mutants. Wolverine grunted as a mechanical arm inserted another line into his left arm, stabbing a convenient vein right through the fabric of his orange jumpsuit. Multiple steel hemostats, mounted at the ends of articulated metal appendages, pinched the hollow tubes shut at strategic junctures. Rogue, whom as an X-Man had learned a thing or two about emergency medicine, could have sworn the waldoes were setting up some kind of complicated transfusion procedure.
Then a hemostat clicked open and the blood, dark and venous, began flowing from the flattened elbow of her right arm—straight into the tube newly inserted in Wolverine’s left arm. But that’s crazy, she thought in horror, eyes wide at the sight of her blood pouring into Logan’s body. We’re not even the same blood type!
Yet that wasn’t the worst of it. Her shocked gaze swept across the face of the mirror until she saw an identical flow coursing from the Scarlet Witch to Wolverine.
“Ah don’t believe it!” she exclaimed out loud, her Southern drawl in no way softening the desperate panic in her voice. Logan was receiving simultaneous transfusions from both her and Wanda, thus doubling his chances of a fatal hemolytic reaction. Could even Wolverine survive such a devastating shock to his system? That, she realized bitterly, had to be the blasted point of the experiment.
“Stop it!” she hollered at the mirror. “You’re goin’ to kill him!” She saw a look of confusion come over the bottom half of Wanda’s face, the part not covered by the metal visor. Right now Rogue practically envied the Scarlet Witch; at least she couldn’t see the barbaric atrocity being committed upon Wolverine’s unsuspecting circulatory system.
Two, maybe three, incompatible blood types mixed in Logan’s veins, producing an immediate adverse reaction. His entire body jerked uncontrollably and his eyes rolled up until only the whites could be seen. His face and hands turned blue, proof that the clash in his bloodstream had cut off the flow of oxygen to his cells. The paroxysm shook him violently; Rogue knew that he had to be suffering internal shock and hemorrhaging. “Stop it, you maniac!”
Not that she truly expected any mercy from their unknown captor. Instead she placed all her hopes in Logan’s mutant immune system. In the past, it had saved him from any number of toxins and hostile organisms, even the implanted embryo of a sleazoid Brood warrior; now it was up to that same superhuman resilience to protect him from the hemolytic warfare tearing him apart from inside.
The automated hemostats cut off the flow of blood after a minute, but the damage had already been done. His corpse-like blue pallor increased and his breathing grew weak and ragged. The bone-shaking seizure ceased abruptly and Wolverine sagged within his restraints, his chin dipping as much as his neck-clamp permitted. Rogue couldn’t hear any breathing, and her own heart skipped a beat. Had the unconquerable fighter, the best there was, finally met an enemy he couldn’t defeat? If so, Rogue vowed that, one way or another, she would make someone pay for Wolverine’s ugly death, even if she had to tear this miserable place down to
the ground to find out who was responsible.
“What is it?” the Scarlet Witch asked anxiously, her blindfold sparing her the ghastly sight. “What’s happening?”
Choking back angry sobs, her eyes tearing despite her best efforts to stay strong, the way Logan would have wanted her to, she wondered how to break the terrible news to Wanda. The Witch had not known Wolverine well, but she knew the heroic Avenger would mourn his death regardless. “It—it’s Wolverine,” she began haltingly. “He’s—that is, I think—”
An explosive gasp broke the silence between the two women. Rogue’s heart pounded as she saw Logan’s body jolt back to life. The cyanotic blue tint of his oxygen-deprived flesh began to fade, supplanted by a healthy shade of pink. He coughed wetly and a trickle of black, clotted blood dribbled from his lips. Then his head lifted, and pained, exhausted eyes met Rogue’s in the mirror. “Well, that was a ball and a half,” he said gruffly.
Rogue couldn’t contain her relief. “Oh, Wolvie!” she gushed. Logan had often warned her about wearing her emotions on her sleeve. “Ah wasn’t sure you was goin’ to make it.”
“Tell you the truth, darlin’,” he admitted, “neither was I.” He closed his eyes again, just to give them a moment’s rest. When he spoke again, she could hear the simmering fury in his voice. “Whoever’s behind this flamin’ stab lab’s got a really twisted idea of hospitality.”
An impatient sigh emerged from the visually-deprived Avenger two caskets away from Rogue. “Good to hear you’re still with us, Wolverine, whatever they did to you, but, if it’s not too inconvenient, could someone please let me know what’s going on.”
A word that rhymed with “witch” briefly popped into Rogue’s mind, but she realized that was unfair. I’d be getting pretty fed up and frustrated, too, if I couldn’t even see what all the shouting was about. Rogue started to explain about the latest perverted experiment their jailer had devised when, with brisk proficiency and dexterity, the waldoes went to work again. Hemostats clicked and tiny plastic valves were opened and closed in careful sequence. Flowing saline flushed clean the lines connecting the three mutants.
For a second or two, Rogue feared that the same awful experiment was about to be repeated, subjecting Wolverine to another round of near-fatal agony. Then she realized that, no, something different was in store. The transfusions had resumed, but now the dark venous blood was streaming in one direction only, from the Scarlet Witch to Wolverine, through Wolverine, to Rogue herself. Dear God, no! she thought, overcome with dread as the mingled essences of both Logan and Wanda ran into her veins, bringing with them a flood of alien thoughts and sensations.
Blood-to-blood communion proved even more effective than mere skin-to-skin. In the space of a few frightened heartbeats, she lost all sense of her own identity. She was at once all three individuals: Rogue and Logan and Wanda. X-Man and Avenger. Donor and recipient. Brown eyes turned blue, then brown again, before splitting the difference somewhere in-between. Streaks of auburn colored the white swath running through her hair, while raw animal vitality, only slightly depleted by her/his/her recent brush with death, set her senses aflame. Fragments of fresh memories spun like a kaleidoscope within her roiling, disordered mind. Hand-carved marionettes attacked her in an empty museum gallery. Flying tee-shirts, inscribed with virulent anti-mutant slogans, wrapped themselves around her face and hands, suffocating her and cutting off her vision while, all around her, terrified fairgoers shrieked in panic. A family of shape-changing deer gored her with their antlers in the shade of a towering forest. “Gambit!” she cried out in torment. “Mariko! Vision!” Her mouth was full of unfamiliar fangs and languages. She screamed obscenities in English, Japanese, and Romany, then begged for relief. “Help me! Help us! Please!”
Then the pain hit her, twisting her insides so hard she could barely breathe. Part of her polyglot consciousness, the same part that suffused her with a ferocious hunger to strike back at her enemies, recognized the excruciating pangs wracking every organ in her body. The mismatched blood was clotting inside her, tearing her apart, starving her brain. Her head throbbed behind her eyes and darkness stole her sight. All she could hear, over the rapid-fire drumming of her heart, was an agonized howl that didn’t sound remotely human.
That howl was her own.
CHAPTER FIVE
“THERE. That should do it.”
Iron Man stepped back from the operating table, where he had just finished reconnecting the Vision’s severed arm. A pen-sized laser wielder was gripped between the steel-sheathed fingers of his right gauntlet. Magnifying lenses, which had slid into place within his eye slits, receded now that the delicate work was completed. “I’m no Henry Pym,” he announced, referring to the Avengers’ premiere roboticist and the Vision’s putative grandfather, “but I think he should be good as new.”
The seemingly lifeless synthezoid rested atop a shining chromium operating table, located in a sub-basement of Avengers Mansion in Manhattan. The reattached arm remained softer and less incredibly dense than the rest of the android’s body. Adamantium supports held the surgical platform intact despite the extreme weight of Iron Man’s mechanical patient. An unlikely assortment of X-Men and Avengers looked on anxiously while the Golden Avenger waited to see if the Vision would spontaneously awaken now that he’d been repaired. Iron Man wished he could wipe the sweat from his brow, but he could hardly remove his helmet while the X-Men and the Hulk were present. That’s the problem with having company over, he thought wryly.
Several seconds passed and the Vision remained as inert as before. Only the Hulk appeared unconcerned; the green goliath slouched against the far wall, looking bored and impatient. He cracked his enormous knuckles noisily. “Aren’t you done yet?” the Hulk rumbled. “For pete’s sake, he’s just a machine. Only you do-gooding Avengers could get this worked up over a piece of broken hardware.”
Iron Man clenched his fists so hard the laser wielder crumpled within his grip. He started to reply angrily, but caught a warning look from Cap. Instead, to his surprise, Storm spoke up. “Our friend and ally Douglock is a machine as well,” she rebuked the Hulk, “but we X-Men consider his life to be of no less value than our own.”
“Then you’re all a bunch of soft-hearted suckers,” the Hulk retorted. He glowered at them from beneath a sloping brow. “Trust me, when you’ve trashed as many killer robots and mandroids as I have, you get a lot less squeamish where smashing wind-up people is concerned.”
I’ve fought plenty of mechanical men, too, Iron Man thought indignantly. Dreadnought and adaptoids and so on. But that’s no excuse for callous disregard toward a hero like the Vision.
The android Avenger had proven his humanity and courage a hundred times over, no matter how cold and unfeeling he might seem to the outside world. You’d think a misunderstood monster like the Hulk could appreciate that, Iron Man thought.
Cyclops forestalled further debate by stepping between Storm and the Hulk. His glowing red visor and serious expression offered little hint of his own feelings on the subject. “How is your patient, Iron Man?” he asked. “When do you expect him to revive?”
“I was hoping that his cybernetic brain would reboot automatically once I restored his arm,” Iron Man admitted, “but it’s looking like I’m going to have to jumpstart his entire system. Fortunately, I think I know how.”
Iron Man directed his chest projector at the Vision’s brow. Replacing the lens broken at Niagara Falls had been easily accomplished once he picked up a spare at the Mansion; the modular design of his armor made such repairs a simple matter provided the right parts were available. If only the Vision could be fixed as readily.
Solar power, absorbed via the amber gem in his forehead, powered the Vision. The sun was already setting outside, but Iron Man figured he could provide an adequate substitute. Using the vari-beam projector in his chestplate, he aimed a beam of energized photons directly at the Vision’s solar jewel. At first, nothing seemed to be happening, then the synt
hezoid’s pliable right arm hardened visibly, achieving the same uniform density as his entire artificial body. “Look,” he said, encouraged by this positive sign, “he’s achieving equilibrium.” According to gravimetric sensors built into the operating table itself, the Vision’s intensely amplified weight was rapidly returning to normal parameters, somewhere between 150 to 200 pounds. “He’s coming back on-line.”
“Thank heavens,” Captain America said.
“Praise the Goddess,” Storm seconded.
“Most felicitous congratulations!” the Beast enthused, bounding across the lab for a better look. “Once again you have proven yourself a maestro mechanic of unparalleled skill and ingenuity.”
Iron Man shook his head. “It’s nothing any qualified technician couldn’t handle,” he insisted, motivated less by false modesty than by a vigorous desire to conceal his civilian identity. He cut off the photonic beam, convinced the concentrated radiant energy had done its work. “Working for Mr. Stark for so many years, you can’t help picking up plenty of scientific know-how, especially when your life often depends on keeping a suit of complicated, high-tech armor up and running.”
The gem in the Vision’s brow flashed busily. Assuming a uniform density was just the first step in the Vision’s warm-up procedure. A low electrical hum came from the synthezoid’s supine body until, at last, red plastic eyelids flickered, exposing lighted amber orbs that stared with renewed intensity at the ceiling. The Vision sat up abruptly, provoking gasps of relief from the X-Men and his fellow Avengers.
The Hulk merely snorted and scratched himself rudely. “About time,” he muttered, not caring who heard him.
Twenty minutes, and several much-needed showers, later, the various heroes reconvened in the Avenger’s conference room. The Beast made himself at home, hopping over to the nearest communications console and tapping in instructions with both hands and most of his toes. The remaining X-Men stood around awkwardly, feeling distinctly out of place, until Captain America graciously insisted that both Cyclops and Storm take a seat at the round steel table in the center of the conference room. I wonder if this is Wanda’s chair? Cyclops wondered as he sat down. Over the years, the Scarlet Witch had been both a foe and ally to the X-Men. Now it seemed that she and Rogue faced the same dire fate, most likely at the hands of the notorious Leader.