Christopher Golden

by Codename Wolverine X-men

  Olga peeked out from inside the kitchen.

  “It’s about time you got here,” she said in English as she rushed toward them, her hands up and weaponless. “I was told the Widow wouldn’t even make it back to the border!”

  Before Natasha could even form the urge for vengeance upon the woman, the one called Sabretooth brought the stock of his AK-47 across Olga’s forehead. She crumbled to the ground with a small cry, and then the huge killer shot her in the face. Her end was so violent that, despite Olga’s betrayal, the Widow felt for her.

  But that didn’t slow Natasha down. She was up the stairs in a flash.

  “Widow!”

  She spun and saw another member of Team X standing in the hall with his weapon pointed at her torso. Maverick, she thought he was called.

  Outside, Cassidy’s shriek grew even louder, and windows shattered along the hall.

  Maverick flinched.

  Natasha ran for the open window and dove.

  Falling, she spun, landed hard on soft grass and rolled. When she came up, she was four feet from Wolverine. He turned, a nine-millimeter semiautomatic in each hand.

  But Natasha already had momentum. She leapt at him, held her gloves against either side of his head, and gave him thirty thousand volts at each temple.

  Wolverine went down hard.

  Another surge of adrenaline rushed through the Black Widow as she realized that she had a chance to escape. She might actually make it.

  Natasha turned to run, and stopped short as the ground at her feet began to churn, dirt flying as bullets punched the earth. She spun, bracelets at the ready. Silver Fox and Sabretooth were there, AK-47s slung low and aimed right at her.

  “The disk,” Silver Fox demanded.

  “Go to hell,” the Widow snapped, in English.

  “Fine,” Sabretooth said. “We’ll get it after.”

  His finger tightened on the trigger. Above, Sean Cassidy’s banshee wail grew louder, and Natasha’s thought her eardrums would burst.

  She closed her eyes and waited for death.

  * * *

  The alarms that resounded through the halls of CIA headquarters died suddenly. The echo lasted mere seconds, and was followed by complete silence. Wolverine crouched inside the office of the director of the CIA with his claws popped. Muscles rippled across his back and thighs as he stared at the office door and tensed to spring at whatever or whomever might walk through it.

  His upper lip curled back in a nearly silent snarl that rumbled in his chest, building to a roar that he waited to unleash. Waited. And waited.

  “I don’t get it,” Mystique whispered behind him.

  Logan ignored her. The pause might have her thinking the alarms weren’t all about them, but that was just empty hope. They’d gone off right after Wraith disappeared—and Wraith had disappeared right after they had discovered that he was part of the conspiracy, a member of the covert ops team sent to capture everyone involved with a mission that took place during the Cold War.

  No, it was definitely a setup. But Mystique’s instincts were right on. If it was a setup, why the delay? Why weren’t the CIA agents swarming this building, breaking down the door to capture Mystique and Wolverine? Why—?

  “We gotta get out of here,” Wolverine said.

  But even as he spoke the words, Logan heard a rapid-fire sound like a butcher chopping meat.

  “What’s happening?” Mystique asked anxiously.

  Logan pointed to the duct they’d used to climb through into the director’s office. It was covered, now, by a thick sheet of gleaming silvery metal.

  “Adamantium,” he growled. “Probably got the whole place sealed off that way.”

  Mystique was too much of a pro to ask why. She knew what the next step was. Small panels, no more than two inches square, opened on each of the four walls, and a pale green gas began to churn out.

  “No!” Mystique snapped. “We can’t let them take us this easily!”

  “Don’t worry, darlin’,” Wolverine replied grimly. “They won’t.”

  He went to the office door, and saw Mystique react in his peripheral vision. She opened her mouth, reached out as if to stop him.

  “Logan, stop,” she said. “You don’t know what they might’ve wired up to the door. Could be a nasty little surprise for us.”

  “They don’t want us dead,” Wolverine replied, growing angrier by the moment. The animal within him didn’t want to be caged. “You want to hide behind the desk over there, I ain’t stoppin’ you. But if Wraith and his government cronies want to chat with me, it’ll be on my terms.”

  Gas still pumped into the room, and Logan took a deep breath, held it, and brought his claws down, slashing through the door, the knob, the entire locking mechanism, and the door frame. But beyond the door itself, he felt the claws meet resistance. That was something that almost never happened. Adamantium was virtually indestructible, and when you had half a dozen claws made out of the alloy, you expected them to cut through just about anything.

  He reached into the splintered space between the door and its frame, the place where the lock had been only seconds earlier. When he pulled it open, he saw that same gleaming metal that had covered the air duct was across the door frame. Behind him, Mystique began to cough, hard, and choke on the gas fumes.

  Wolverine scraped his claws across the tempered metal sheeting, eliciting a screech far, far more grating than nails on a blackboard.

  “Adamantium?” Mystique asked, and covered her mouth with her hands.

  “Yep,” Logan agreed, and stared at the metal. His claws were made of the same thing, of course. Probably the one thing they couldn’t cut through.

  He shook his head, then tried to block out the acrid odor of the gas, the sting in his eyes.

  “Uh-uh,” Logan said. “It ain’t happenin’ like this.”

  “What … what are you talking about?” Mystique said between coughs. “They’ve got us. Unless you can teleport us out of here.”

  “No,” Wolverine said, still staring at the sheet of metal across the open door.

  “You’re in denial, Logan,” she said, and coughed again. Mystique sat down on the carpeted floor of the office, where the gas hadn’t yet settled. “I know you only half-trusted Wraith, but you trusted him enough to get us into this trap. I don’t blame you—I walked into it, too. But be realistic about it.”

  Her voice had become a bit shaky, as though she’d been drinking, and Wolverine grew angrier with every word she spoke. Not at Mystique, but at Wraith. She was right about that much. He should have known better. Wraith was such a loyal soldier that if his superiors were trying to capture him, for whatever reason, he’d likely just sit and wait for them. But they didn’t have to capture him. He’d been working for them all along.

  “Least we’ll get to find out what this is all about,” Mystique said airily.

  With a roar that had been growing in the burning pit of his belly since he’d first seen Wraith’s name on that computer screen, Wolverine launched himself forward and began hacking and slashing with his claws. Wood and plaster and insulation and wiring split like paper as he carved a huge section of wall away from the adamantium sheet that had fallen down inside of it.

  “Logan, why bother?” Mystique asked.

  From the sound of her voice, he thought she might be on the verge of unconsciousness. He couldn’t have that. Wolverine turned and took four steps to where Mystique lay on the ground, lolling idly as though she were bored. He reached down, hauled her up by the front of her white dress and slapped her, hard, across the face. Her skin flared deeper blue for a moment, and her yellow eyes focused.

  “That hurt,” she said, her teeth gritted.

  “You wanna get outta here, you’ll do it on your own two feet,” he said. “I ain’t carryin’ you, Raven.”

  Even as she began to ask him again how he planned to escape, Logan turned his back to her again and stomped to the door. Where he’d ripped the wall away, the adamant
ium sheeting kept them trapped inside. It would be all through the floor and ceiling as well, he knew. But it couldn’t possibly have been all one piece. And if the door had been open before, the plate had to have slid over it from one side or the other. Didn’t matter, really, because that meant on either side there’d be seams.

  “Stupid,” he mumbled, and found it hard to get his mouth to form the word.

  He lost focus a second, and then it came back quickly. His mutant healing factor would hold off the effects of the gas much longer than Mystique would be able to hold out. But if he didn’t get her a breath of fresh air soon, he would end up having to carry her.

  Eyes narrowed, he focused on the dark line that marked the seam between one sheet of adamantium and the next. Wolverine tilted his head, his whole body, lifted his arms, aimed, and slammed both fists forward as hard as he could.

  His claws punched right through the seam, and Wolverine began to pull. The plate would not rip, but Logan was incredibly strong. Veins stood out on his forehead and his biceps as he pulled on the plate, and he heard the grating sound of metal against metal as the adamantium plate over the door began to tear loose of its moorings above and below.

  “How ‘bout a hand?” a familiar growl came from behind him.

  Wolverine glanced back a moment, and was startled to see Sabretooth standing behind him, reaching for the inch-wide gap he’d made. Then he realized it was Mystique.

  “Thought Forge put somethin’ in your head to prevent you from takin’ the shape o’ anyone in the X-Men or X-Factor, or close to us?” he asked.

  “I’ve been practicing,” Mystique growled in Creed’s voice, and reached Sabretooth’s claws into the gap next to Wolverine’s fingers. She was no stronger in this shape—Mystique could only change form, not function. But Sabretooth’s clawed hands gave her a better grip than Raven Darkholme’s ordinary hands would have. “I can’t hold it for very long.”

  With a massive effort, they tore the panel from its frame.

  “Long enough,” Wolverine muttered.

  Then he froze, stunned. The reception area outside the director’s office was completely empty—sterile and abandoned. He’d expected a greeting party similar to the one led by Nick Fury when he and Mystique had broken into the S.H.I.E.L.D. base, only with Wraith at the head of the wolf pack.

  Behind him, Mystique went into a fit of coughing. When she collapsed against Wolverine’s back, she had morphed back into her true form. Logan turned, pulled her arm over his shoulder, and dragged her into the reception area. A cup of coffee sat on top of the desk of the director’s assistant. Lipstick stained its rim and steam still rose from the cup.

  Trying not to think about what was going on, what Wraith and the Agency might have cooked up for them in the middle of CIA HQ, Logan let Mystique slump, half-unconscious, against the edge of the desk in the reception area. He lifted that steaming cup of coffee to her lips and tipped it back.

  Yellow eyes fluttered open, unfocused, and she turned away from the burning liquid at first. But the taste or the scent or a combination of the two brought her back to it, and Mystique’s hands came up to grasp the cup. She drained it, though Logan would have thought it still too hot to drink. Mystique stood up, a hand on his shoulder for balance, and shook her whole body as though she’d caught a chill or someone had walked over her grave.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.

  Without further comment, Logan turned toward the glass door that looked out on an equally empty, carpeted hallway. The place was a ghost ship, running on its own. Or, at least, that’s how it looked. But he knew differently. Wraith wasn’t about to leave this operation to run itself. He’d be watching them, somehow, even now.

  Wolverine looked around the reception area for a surveillance camera, and found it immediately, out in the open. Why not? This was the Central Intelligence Agency—of course they’d have video surveillance. Probably hidden cameras as well as the overt ones.

  “You ain’t gettin’ us, Wraith,” Logan said aloud. “We’re leavin’ now, but we’ll be back when you’re not lookin’. We’ll be back for the rest of the team, for the Widow and Cassidy—but mostly we’ll be back for you.”

  It occurred to him once again, with Mystique at his side, that everyone involved in that op so many years ago had all changed.

  All but John Wraith.

  Wolverine grabbed the computer monitor off the director’s assistant’s desk, ripped it away from the computer, trailing cables and sparks, and hurled it with all his might at the glass door that led to the hallway. Glass shattered loudly and then fell softly to the carpeted floor of the corridor.

  Nothing.

  The hallway was clear. Not a movement. Not a sound.

  “They’re not going to kill us,” Mystique said. “That’s their weakness. Difference is, I don’t care too much whether I kill them or not. Wraith, particularly. I think I’d like that.”

  She started for the shattered door, its shattered glass hanging down like jagged teeth. Wolverine didn’t stop her. Instead, he walked close behind Mystique, and tapped her gently on the right elbow. They reached the door, some of the broken glass crunching beneath the soles of their boots.

  “Go!” Logan roared.

  Mystique was through the door, breaking right, and sprinting down the hall as fast as her unsteady feet would carry her. Wolverine was right behind her.

  “Nowhere to run, Logan!” Wraith screamed behind him. “You’re just making this harder on yourself. Give it up now! You know you got nowhere to go!”

  Dozens of weapons cocked. Wolverine didn’t even look back. The wall to his left split horizontally, and its top and bottom began to slide toward floor and ceiling. He could see the hips and abdomen of jumpsuited operatives in the opening, some with their weapons slung low across their waists. He didn’t slow down.

  There had been no movement, no sound in the hallway. But Wolverine had smelled them. Wraith should have known he’d be able to. Maybe he had known, and just not cared. After all, they were seven stories off the ground, and the only way down was most certainly behind them. They had to fight if they wanted to get away, and Wraith sounded confident that Wolverine and Mystique weren’t going to. He’d be well prepared, Logan knew that much. He’d already proven it, in fact.

  But Wraith was always guilty of overestimating his own intelligence, and his usefulness.

  “Not another step, or they open fire!” Wraith shouted.

  Mystique had slowed down, and now Logan caught up with her. He placed a hand on her back and propelled her along, her feet moving beneath her just to keep her from falling.

  Team Alpha was behind them, by the elevator banks, and Wraith was with them, shouting at Logan to stop. Behind the wall, that must be Team Omega, Wolverine figured.

  “What… what are we doing?” Mystique asked breathlessly. “There’s no way out up here!”

  “You blind?” Wolverine asked.

  She looked down the hall ahead of them. Wolverine heard the intake of breath as she realized what he had in mind.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Not again.”

  “Fire!” Wraith shrieked.

  Bullets tore up the floor and walls around them, and Logan smirked as he realized that keeping them alive had suddenly become less of a priority. Which was fine with him. He wasn’t sure they were going to survive the next minute or so anyway.

  Mystique grunted as a bullet passed through her shoulder, spraying her blood onto the white of her dress. Wolverine felt a bullet enter his back and puncture a lung. He took another in the meat of his thigh.

  Then they had reached the end of the corridor. No time to turn left or right, and nowhere to go if they did. The window that ran the length of the hall to either side was certain to be bulletproof, blastproof, and seven other proofs he hadn’t considered.

  Wolverine dove.

  He held onto Mystique’s wrist with his right hand. Claws popped out of his left. With all his momentum, he s
lammed his fist into the window, claws splitting the glass. When his body slammed into it, those little holes were enough. The window exploded outward under the weight of Wolverine and Mystique and bullets that were meant for them.

  Something smacked Logan in the back of the head with such force that he tumbled forward, falling out of control. The sky was still blue, the breeze smelled sweet, but the parking lot below was rushing up too fast for him to appreciate the beauty of the day. The pain in the back of his head subsided, he shook off the disorientation.

  Mystique was screaming.

  Wolverine still had her by the wrist.

  He twisted, got control of his fall, pulled her on top of him, and hit the narrow expanse of lawn that ran between building and parking lot, hard.

  Logan was out for a second. He never would have noticed if it weren’t for the fact that he came to with Mystique slapping his face.

  “Wolverine!” she screamed in his face. “Get up! We’ve got to go!”

  His eyes opened, but he was already in motion. Never mind the pain, the blood running from his bullet wounds, including the one from the slug that had bounced off his adamantium-reinforced skull. Never mind the fact that even with his healing factor, his back and legs would be deeply bruised for days. Without the healing factor, his flesh would have been pulped between adamantium bones and freshly cut green.

  Mystique struggled to stand, hand clamped to her bleeding shoulder.

  “You’re insane!” she snapped at him.

  “I got us out, didn’t I?”

  Then the shooting started again, from all around them. But this time, Wolverine was the only target.

  The legs. The back. The stomach. He took thirteen bullets before he went down, and the last one, incredibly, went through his open mouth and punched out through the back of his neck.

  The warmth of his own blood, and its intense scent, were the only things Wolverine was aware of at first. Sunlight pricked his eyes. Wraith stood above him, silhouetted against blue sky. Logan tried to speak, but his throat was damaged and all that came out was a low, ragged growl.