The Widow glanced around at the others in the room. All had remained silent as the two new inmates were brought in. Sean Cassidy was grim-faced and alert, mind obviously spinning as he tried to figure a way out of this mess. Maverick was awake, but looked drawn and distant, a reminder of the virus that even now raged within him.
Then there was Sabretooth. He merely hung there, eyes heavy-lidded but not with exhaustion. No, Natasha thought he looked more like a jungle cat on the prowl, patiently waiting for his prey to make a move that would put it within reach of his slavering, snapping jaws.
When the Widow looked back at Wolverine, who stirred now, despite his wounds, the guards were snapping a genetic dampener around his throat.
“Now wait a minute there, lads,” Banshee said unexpectedly.
The guards hadn’t expected it, either. They actually paused a moment and glanced at Cassidy.
“Y’know as well as I do that the only thing keeping Wolverine alive right now is his mutant healing factor,” Banshee said. “You put that thing on him, and you’ll be killing him, no question. You’ve kept the rest of us alive this long, for some reason. D’ye really want to kill him now?”
The guards glanced at one another, then at the other two who had just finished putting a similar collar on Mystique. Then they turned and walked from the room. The featureless door to the chamber closed with a solid click and the sound of bolts ratcheting into place in the heavy door.
“Wait a minute!” the Widow shouted, straining against her bonds. “You can’t just leave him to die like that!”
“Sure they can,” Maverick said bitterly. “That’s what they do.”
“Who? You sound like you know who we’re dealing with here, Maverick,” Cassidy snapped. “If so, I’d appreciate you enlightening the rest of us.”
Mystique had begun to stir, to moan a little and shift uncomfortably in her bonds. The Widow stared at Cassidy and Maverick.
“I have some guesses, but they won’t save Logan. If he’s as bad off as he looks, and his healing powers don’t kick in, they’ll just let him die,” Maverick explained.
“The runt ain’t gonna die,” Creed growled.
Natasha glared at him. “What makes you so sure?”
“Look, it ain’t like it’d break my heart if he went—though o’course I’d rather do it myself,” Sabretooth went on. “But he’s already done most o’ his healin’. Ain’t that right, runt?”
The Widow turned again, felt the stiffness in her neck from such prolonged inactivity. Wolverine stirred slightly again. A ripple seemed to pass through his muscles, just beneath the skin, from head to toe, as though he were shivering with a chill.
Then his eyes opened.
“I don’t know,” Wolverine croaked thickly. ” ‘Most’ might be overstatin’ things a bit.”
Logan’s eyes flicked around the room, glancing at each of the captives in turn. The Widow noticed immediately that Wolverine didn’t seem at all surprised by the company he found himself in. Finally, his gaze rested on Natasha.
“Widow,” he said, by way of greeting, and might have nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Wolverine,” she acknowledged. “Glad you’re not dead.”
“Nice o’ you to say so,” he said. “I kinda feel the same.”
The Black Widow smiled. A lot of time had passed since the first time she’d met Logan. They’d managed to not try killing each other—well, pretty much—since that first time. With the passage of time, as always, had come great change. Both of them had left government work and gone into the private sector.
Wolverine had become a member of the X-Men. Though that band of mutants was alternately considered heroes or outlaws depending on the month and who one asked, Natasha had always thought of them as freedom fighters. The Widow herself had defected from the Soviet Union, become partner and lover with the costumed vigilante known as Daredevil, and later become one of the Avengers, perhaps the most respected team of extranormally gifted heroes the world had ever known. She’d even been their leader for a time—and all that without any “super” powers at all.
A lot of time. A lot of old grudges and missions skittering away into the past like a cigarette butt flicked from the window of a speeding car.
She’d always liked Wolverine. Well, perhaps not when he’d wanted her dead, but that was business. No, she’d always liked him despite his apparent savagery, because she knew that at the core of that, there was a man of almost impossible goodness. A man with a code of honor many would have thought did not exist outside of John Wayne movies.
The others she had mixed feelings about. Sabretooth was a homicidal maniac. His death would be a mercy to the world at large. Mystique was a criminal, no question, but the Widow didn’t know much more about her than that she’d once been a spy and later a terrorist.
Maverick was a cipher. They’d crossed paths once or twice after that first time she’d run into Team X, but she never knew any more about him. He was a hard man, that much was clear. And still in the game, as far as she could tell. But he was sick and dying. This was no place for a man upon whom disease had already staked its claim.
Then there was Cassidy. For a long time, things between them had been uncomfortable. She wasn’t even sure how it stood now. Once upon a time, he’d blamed her for his not being there when his wife was killed. But that had been resolved ages ago. Otherwise Cassidy would never have saved her life. Still, a certain coldness existed between them. To her shame, some people still saw KGB when they looked at her, and Cassidy was one of them.
Still, she trusted him and Logan, at least. The Widow looked to Wolverine once more, and it was him she addressed.
“So, what now?” she asked. “I mean, we’re all here, I take it?”
“Far as I know,” he replied.
“All but Silver Fox and Wraith,” Maverick added. “And Fox is dead.”
“Wraith is in it,” Wolverine said with a snarl, and the Widow noticed that he looked a bit better than he had earlier. The blood had stopped dripping to the floor.
“Figured as much,” Sabretooth snorted.
“Then that’s it,” Maverick agreed. “The principal players in an operation more than a decade old. But why? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What I want to know,” Cassidy interrupted, staring across the room at Mystique, “is something I’ve been wondering for years. That’s how you survived, Mystique.”
Raven Darkholme smiled. “My little secret.”
“Yours and Creed’s,” Wolverine said. “Easy enough, Irish. Creed let her live. Sure, he shot her, but he didn’t hit anything vital. I suspected it then, but I’d have known it for sure if I’d known just how many times Creed and Mystique had crossed paths before that op.”
“More than crossed paths,” Maverick added.
“Shut your mouth, North,” Sabretooth growled. “That’s territory that don’t have nothin’ to do with you. Any of you.”
“Victor!” Mystique gasped with mock astonishment. “Ashamed of our little tryst? Oh, I’m crushed.”
The Widow watched this whole exchange in confusion. Obviously Mystique and Creed had been involved once, but there was more to this than just love among killers.
“What am I missing?” she asked.
“Graydon Creed,” Wolverine answered.
With those two words, it all began to make sense to Natasha. Graydon Creed had been a U.S. senator who stood a very good chance of taking the Oval Office before getting assassinated in the middle of a campaign crowd months earlier.
“Sabretooth’ll kill just about anything, Widow, but even he didn’t want to kill the mother of his only son,” Logan said.
“But,” the Widow said, “Graydon Creed was running on an antimutant campaign. He was … was …”
“Human?” Mystique asked, her face cold. “Yes. He was. And a psychopath like his father. He deserved what he got.”
“We’re getting a little off track, here,” Maverick interrupted.
“Agreed,” Cassidy said. “So, anybody have any idea why we’re here?”
The Widow opened her mouth to speak, but she was brought up short by the sound of bolts ratcheting back.
Then the door opened.
Logan straightened up as best he could when Wraith walked in. He didn’t want the traitorous weasel to know just how bad off he was. His healing factor had kept him alive, but with that collar on, eventually he’d die of infection or just bleed to death.
And he didn’t plan on dying alone.
For a moment, he was surprised at the apparent regret on Wraith’s face. The man actually seemed sorry.
“Hello, Kestrel,” Maverick sneered, then began to cough so hard he couldn’t speak any longer. A small rivulet of bloody spittle sat on his chin after he finished coughing.
“Just wanted you folks to know it was nothing personal,” Wraith said. “Just doing my job. No hard feelings.”
“Sure,” Logan growled. “Long as you don’t have any hard feelin’s after I cut you open.”
Wraith sighed, raised a hand, and glanced toward the door. Wolverine didn’t know what to expect. Maybe an old enemy, maybe just a retired KGB man looking for some payback. What he didn’t expect was the handsome, thirty something man in the suit escorted in by armored guards. The man stopped half a dozen feet into the room and stared around at them. His eyes rested on Wolverine.
“Well, well,” Logan drawled. “If it ain’t Graydon Creed’s replacement in the mutant haters hall o’ fame.”
The man ignored him. Instead, he smoothed his tie and turned to Wraith. “Which one?” he asked.
“We don’t know yet, Senator, but we’ll find out,” Wraith replied.
“Senator?” Sabretooth barked with amusement.
“I recognize you, Senator Zenak,” the Widow said.
“Clue us in, Widow,” Creed asked. “He ain’t familiar to me.”
“Peter Zenak,” Natasha replied. “Washington’s golden boy right now. One of the men who’s stepped into the void left by the assassination of—”
“Of Graydon Creed, yes,” Zenak agreed. “A little poetic justice, don’t you think? Delicious irony.”
“You had him killed, then?” Mystique asked, and though she’d claimed to be happy her son was dead, there was a razor edge to her question that Logan recognized.
“I only wish I had,” Zenak said with a shrug.
“Senator?” the Widow said. “Do you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself involved in? I’m an Avenger, sir. There will be serious repercussions from this incident.”
The senator looked over at the Widow and frowned. “What makes you think anyone’s ever going to know you were here, Natalia Romanova?”
The Widow twitched, and Wolverine had heard it, too. The trace of an accent in his voice when he pronounced Natasha’s birth name.
“You’re Russian?” Logan growled, not bothering to hide his surprise.
“No,” the senator snapped. “I’m an American. But I was born in Moscow. Lived there until I was four years old, then came to America to live with my aunt and uncle. My parents were supposed to come later, when they could manage it.”
“They don’t need to know, Senator,” Wraith broke in suddenly.
Wolverine narrowed his eyes. What was Wraith playing at?
“So unlike Graydon Creed, you can never be president,” Cassidy pointed out. “I’m Irish-born, but I’m American enough to know you’ve got to be born here to be the President.”
“No, I’ll never be president,” Zenak agreed. “But it isn’t the president who wields the true power anyway.”
Wolverine’s mind was racing. Trying to fit the pieces together. Zenak was Russian. He was obviously the one behind their abductions, or the person for whom they’d been abducted, at least. But it didn’t make sense. He’d probably barely begun college by the time they’d all met up in East Berlin on the op that brought them together. How could he be connected to that mission?
Then he had it. Once he knew, it all seemed so obvious.
“They were your parents, weren’t they?” he drawled.
Zenak looked up as if Logan had spit on him. Wraith put a hand on the senator’s bicep and tried to steer him out of the room.
“What?” the Widow asked quickly.
The others followed suit, trying to figure out what Logan was getting at.
“The Zhevakovs,” Wolverine said quietly. “They were his parents.”
“Who the hell are the Zhevakovs?” Creed snarled angrily, his lurking predator’s patience finally beginning to wear thin.
But his words cut the senator deeply. Wolverine could see it in Zenak’s eyes, just before the man exploded toward Sabretooth. Only Wraith and the guards’ presence kept him from attacking Creed.
“You evil son of a—” the senator sputtered, fumbling for words. “You monster! All of you, monsters! You slaughter my parents in cold blood, and then you can’t even remember their names? All they wanted was to escape, to defect, to live without the KGB peering over their shoulders. All they wanted was to be with me! With the son they’d already been apart from for nearly sixteen years! They betrayed their entire nation just so they’d have something to buy their passage with! And you killed them!”
There was silence in the room for several heartbeats. Finally, Maverick spoke up.
“I didn’t kill them, Senator,” he says. “And in all that confusion, I couldn’t even begin to tell you who did. You want to blame someone, why not blame the men who gave the orders. My God, they’re the same men who you’ve been—”
Then Maverick started to scream. His body jumped in his restraints as some kind of electric charge pumped through his body.
“What’s going on here?” Zenak demanded.
But Wraith was already hustling him out.
The door closed. Maverick slumped in his restraints, barely conscious.
“I can’t believe the game they’re playing with that man,” the Widow said grimly.
“Don’t lie to yourself, Widow,” Cassidy said. “You believe it all too well. The very same men who sent Team X to East Berlin are using their own former operatives as cannon fodder, just to try and manipulate one American senator.”
“I’d be real concerned about the morality o’ all that if I weren’t tryin’ to figure out how to stay alive,” Wolverine said.
Logan’s mind raced. His memories of his time with Team X were all muddled at best. Somebody’d spent time messing around in his brain since then, and he’d lost a lot. He remembered the op well enough, but the details were sketchy. He’d been in a rage during the fight in which Zenak’s parents were killed. They’d all been trying to escape the East German authorities.
The worst part was he couldn’t even be completely certain he didn’t kill them himself. He’d changed since then. Chained the beast within him. But that didn’t excuse the sins of the past.
“Anybody—” Maverick grunted in pain, coughed twice. “Anybody actually see the Zhevakovs buy it?”
“I did,” the Widow said.
“And I,” Cassidy added.
Wolverine looked at their faces, but they weren’t looking at him. They were looking at Sabretooth.
“Oh,” Logan said drily, “what a shocker.”
“What are you idiots lookin’ at?” Creed said with a growl.
“Wait a second,” Mystique snapped angrily, and they all turned to look at her. Her yellow eyes flashed, and her skin had grown a deeper shade of blue with her anger. “What’s this all really about? Is it about who did what back then, or is it about what’s being done to us right now?”
“A little o’ both, I’d say,” Logan drawled.
“That’s because you just want to blame someone else for what happened,” Mystique sneered contemptuously at him. “You don’t want to own up to what you did back then any more than the rest of us. Why? Because you’ve changed, Logan. Time goes on. We’ve all changed in some ways. Some more than others, obvi
ously. Except for Wraith, maybe, we’ve all changed. And maybe Creed has changed for the worse. In some ways, it looks like Maverick has, too.”
“What?” Maverick said, eyes narrowed.
“You’re not the idealist you once were, North. Don’t try to deny it.”
Maverick said nothing.
“That op changed us all a little,” Mystique said. “It started me thinking in new ways. Maybe made you all start thinking a little differently. Team X didn’t last too long after that, as I recall. Widow, Cassidy saved your life that night in Minsk. That’s got to have affected you.”
“It’s one of the things that started me questioning the absolutes of the KGB,” Natasha admitted.
“If Sabretooth killed those people as part of that op, well, hell, Logan, that’s what you were there for,” Mystique went on. “I heard your debates back then, remember? You wanted to kill me yourself. You can’t let what Sabretooth’s become make him any more responsible for what happened then than you are. Than we all are. This is about now. This is about getting out of here and getting some payback.”
Wolverine was quiet.
“Raven, darlin’,” Creed said, voice thick with irony, “I didn’t know you still cared.”
“Shut up, you psycho,” Mystique snapped. “Nothing I’ve said changes the fact that you’re no better than Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer.”
Sabretooth actually laughed.
“Wrong, sweetheart,” Creed snarled. “I’m way better than those guys. Together, they didn’t even begin to reach my numbers. And for sheer ferocity, nobody holds a candle to me.”
“The few, the proud, the serial killers,” Maverick chuckled drily, then coughed again. “I don’t know what difference any of this makes. I’m with Mystique. It was a long time ago. Let’s just figure out how to get out of this.”
“Y’know, I appreciate the support and all,” Creed responded. “But I gotta tell you losers this much: I didn’t do it.”
“What?” Logan snapped.
“You deaf, runt?” Sabretooth growled. “I said I didn’t kill those folks. You and me both got memory gaps, but I got a runnin’ count o’ my kills goin’ all the time. I remember that op. I remember all of it. I didn’t kill those people.”
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