Title: How's it Gonna Be?
Chapter 3: F.N.G.
Pairing: Wolverine/Sabretooth
Rating: NC-17/R
Feedback: Yeah, that would be good.
Notes: Takes place during the bone claw era. Sabretooth escaped from custody at the X-mansion as described in 'Red Zone', but in this timeline, he was never re-captured.
Summary: "F.N.G." Military slang. Short for, "fuckin' new guy".
Dawn. Pope AFB was a flat, sprawling complex of old buildings, parking ramps and taxiways, smack dab in the middle of an Army base. A line of fighter planes at the other end of the ramp were preparing to launch, and rings of blue and orange flame from the tail-pipes flickered on in the early morning dimness like the burners of a gas stove.
The scream of the engines would have been deafening up close, but from across the base it wasn't bad. Wildchild rolled the collar of his black turtleneck down a little, and pulled up the sleeves of his fatigues past the elbow. Seemed like pretty heavy clothes for going to Africa, but what did he know?
Most of the stuff Kyle had gotten back at the Ft. Drum supply depot, he already knew how to use. Having bounced from one black-bag super-team to another will do that. It was still cool, but there was a humid edge to the air this morning that promised a hot day ahead, though they wouldn't be here to see it. Wildchild couldn't believe how fast things had moved. This time last week, he'd been asleep in the back of the band bus, recovering from a show in Ottawa. Now he was about to deploy for God-knew-where with his father and Logan, and that meant NOBODY within fifty years of his own age. Maybe more like a hundred, the rumors differed about that part. He could ask, though... Nah.
Wildchild double-checked his M9. It still wasn't loaded. He holstered the pistol, and snapped the strap over the back of the grip. The ammo clips were on his belt, 'nonstandard mags' whatever that meant, three of them in small green fabric snap-pouches. Two more clips than Sabretooth had told him he would ever need, in a real firefight. That comment had earned Sabretooth a roll of the eyes from Wolverine.
The big stuff was already loaded on the plane. Not much of it belonged to Wildchild, and he was vaguely glad of this. Of all the things he'd gotten at Ft. Drum, it was the flat, sturdy survival knife strapped to his thigh that actually made him feel better. He'd gotten it at the PX on a whim, a Smith and Wesson HRT, with a total length barely more than his wrist to the tips of his fingers. The blade had been colored black somehow, except for the sharpened edge, and there was a hole in the end of the black plastic grip, to which he'd added a loop of green parachute cord because the empty hole looked out of place. It was his, now.
"Kid's getting antsy," Creed told Wolverine, watching Kyle check his gun again.
"He's got every right to be," Wolverine growled, "-did ya see the gear they just loaded? That was cold weather stuff. I don't know where we're goin', but it sure ain't AFRICA."
"Gee, snow and ice," Creed grinned, "-how will we -ever- cope?"
"I just don't like it," Logan folded his arms.
"You wanna bail, the time is now. Fury's already broken his end with the cold weather shit. You sure you want to do this op?"
"'Course," Wolverine snapped.
Creed glanced around the ready room, and saw that the only other person within sight was a sergeant writing the day's flying schedule on a dry erase-board, with his back turned.
Perfect.
Creed turned quickly, pinned Logan's arms down by gripping the material of both of sleeves where they crossed on Logan's chest, and kissed him.
"Mnn!?" Logan bit Creed's tongue. Creed let go, and then drew back with a thin sheen of red on his lips, which he licked off. Logan watched him do it.
So... this wasn't just about Kyle after all.
Creed's blood tasted good, and it seemed to focus Logan's thoughts.
"Optimistic sort, ain't ya," Logan observed.
"I just like the way you taste," Creed purred.
"Izzat a fact?" Logan murmured, turning to the flight crew, who had just come in from the OPS building, coffee cups in hand.
/Did he just-/ Creed glanced back at his companion.
Logan ignored him pointedly.
"I swear to GOD doctor, if one more unauthorized chump calls me on this private, secret, Pentagon-scrambled phone line, I'm having it cut off!" Nick Fury screamed into the receiver, "-now what the hell do you WANT?!"
"Er-" Beast looked at the phone dubiously, and wondered if he should have just-
"You are WASTING my TIME," Fury stated, coldly.
"This is Dr. Henry McCoy. I'm looking for a friend. -Wolverine. I don't suppose you-"
"I know where he is," Fury interrupted, "-why should I tell you?"
"I have some information that may be invaluable to him."
"You don't say. Why don't you call him yourself, if you're such good buds?"
"He prefers not to carry a phone," said Beast, starting to get impatient with being stone-walled.
"Anyone else you could call?" Fury hinted.
"I bloody tried that!" Beast snarled. "He won't permit me to talk to Wolverine. Let me guess, our intrepid Canadian friends are as we speak on a plane for some exotic foreign locale at least an ocean or two away?" Beast guessed.
"What are you gettin' at?" Fury demanded.
"My point is, Sabretooth has been systematically cutting Wolverine off from the rest of us. I would have seen it weeks ago, if the target in question hadn't been, well, WOLVERINE."
"You're sayin'..." Fury was paying attention now, "-that when they step off that plane, they'll vanish, and the next time anybody gets a bead on Wolverine, we'll be dealing with a Patty Hearst case?"
"With the right leverage, Wolverine CAN be broken. It's happened in the past and you know that. ...Do you really think a child like Wildheart wouldn't be enough leverage to achieve this?" Beast challenged.
"You're almost talkin' sense, McCoy, and I don't like it," Fury decided.
"Will you call back the plane?" McCoy asked, anxiously.
"Can't do it."
"Why?!"
"Logan's team jumped four hours ago," Fury told him, simply.
"I see," Beast said, in a small voice.
"Something you should know, Doc."
"What's that?"
"I've known Wolverine one HELL of a lot longer than you, and he is NOT some PANSY-ASS HOSTAGE."
"I'm glad you feel strongly enough about that to have just risked his sanity on it," McCoy snapped.
"This is over your head, Doctor," warned Fury.
"I can see this conversation is over," said McCoy, icily, "-I'm sorry to have wasted your time, Colonel."
"Doc, do you know how Sabretooth learned German?" Fury broke into McCoy's parting shot.
"No, I do not."
"Wolverine set him up. Sabretooth spent three weeks strapped to the wall of a basement in Munich. At the end of that time, Wolverine busted him out. ...And not before, get me?"
"I'm sure Wolverine-" began McCoy.
"Sabretooth speaks five languages," Fury interrupted again, "-An' that's three clicks past coincidence, son," with that, the phone went dead in Beast's hand.
Moments later...
On the command deck of the helicarrier, Nick Fury's phone rang. Again.
"Who the fuck-" he demanded.
"Nicholas?"
"Oh," Fury sighed, canceling the rant he'd had planned for the next five minutes, "-sorry, doll. It's been that kind of day."
And as he spoke, several states away a lone C-130 cargo plane took off, headed East into the morning sun.
Wildchild yawned. He'd been up all night, watching the lights of the Eastern seaboard through the window of the chopper, then the refueler plane. The only thing out the window now was waves, waves, and still more waves. Too bright to look at for long, the Atlantic reminded him of a wide, flat, glacier lake. The C-130 Hercules was a very old airplane, smelling comfortably of hydraulic fluid, sun-baked leather seatbelt fastenings, and musty insulation blanketing. There was a great mountain of drab green duffel bags packed onto a series of wooden pallets towards the front of the cargo compartment, and at the back, Team X's gear was secured to a similar pallet, and rigged with a parachute. A wooden-crated helicopter engine was situated between these two mounds, held down by a taut spider-web of thick white cargo straps that were as hard as wood to the touch. Aside from the color scheme, it was remarkably like being back on the band bus.
Sabretooth had claimed a bunk near the front of the cargo compartment, growling viciously at an engineer who tried to talk him out of it. The engineer muttered something about those who breathe too little oxygen on high-altitude jumps, and retreated back up to the flight deck to sit with the pilots. Logan had watched this exchange with a slight smirk, and found a comfortable hollow on top of the green duffel-bag pile in which to pass out himself. Kyle could see him up there, one dark tuft of hair sticking up just above the level of the bags. Wildchild climbed to the top of the pile, and looked down at Logan thoughtfully.
He'd never really seen him asleep before. It had to be the engine noise, muffling his approach. Usually by the time he snuck up this close to a sleeping Wolverine, he would be looking at slitted eyes and bared claws.
But no.
Logan was still asleep, curled up on his side amidst the bags.
"Quit hoverin' and bed down, will ya?" Wolverine mumbled.
Kyle felt sheepish, and lay down a few feet away from where Logan was. He had to shift a few of the bags around until nothing hard was poking him, but after that it was surprisingly comfortable. Kyle slept.
Logan-
/Cold. Everywhere is ice, and it's grown thick over the blood on my claws. Heavy. Nothing feels right. Keep walking. Got to keep moving, or I'll never move again, keep going through nothing to the edge of the white, the edge of the blackness. Cold... so cold...
I smell something.
No. I can't smell anything now. I see an edge of rock up ahead, and I walk towards it. The ice is a mask around my face, cementing my hair into a sort of shield against the wind. If I touch it, if I touch me, I'll break forever. I keep walking, and my foot sinks in up to the hip.
There's something down there. I put my other foot in the same spot, and the snow beneath me gives way, and I slide down into the dark.
I'm not alone.
Something is waking up.
As my eyes narrow to see what it is, I see the bear.
Huge, hot brown shadow. Shaggy and sharp, one of his paws cuffs me against the cement snow of the cave wall. My forehead hits an unseen edge, and I hear a cracking like wood, and a faint ring of metal.
That's my HEAD.
The bear bellows behind me, and I turn, claws up. He is angry. I am angry too.
He is alive, and he is strong, and he is warm, and he has not just walked through a mountain snowstorm, but I am alive too, and I am hungry.
I want to live, and my hunger is stronger than his rage.
He dies.
My fists are buried up to the elbows in the bear's chest, and as the ice covering my fingers begins to melt, I scream.
But he's warm, this bear. And he gives his life, his heat, to me as I eat him.
Full now, and I can't keep my eyes open.
I sink down against the thick matted side of my kill, and know no more./
Wolverine awoke to the feeling of someone stroking his hair. Creed stopped when he saw that Logan was awake, and folded his arms on top of the duffel bag beside Logan's head. Logan stared at him, his expression unreadable.
"You were dreaming," Creed offered.
"I know."
"Didn't look like a whole lotta fun."
"It had a good ending," Logan yawned.
"How so?"
"I got to eat the bear, 'stead of the other way around."
Creed laughed.
"You hungry?"
"Yeah."
"Figures," Creed smirked.
"Is the kid awake?" Logan asked.
"See fer yourself," Creed pointed to where Kyle had burrowed partway down into the duffel bag pile, like he planned to hibernate there.
"Huh," Logan smiled.
It was nearly sundown when Kyle awoke, and the light slanting in the small, round windows was a deep amber yellow. Kyle dug his way out the side of the pile of bags, and dusted himself off. Wolverine and Sabretooth were already awake, checking the rigging of the drop-chute gear, and making last adjustments to their own packs. Logan noticed him, and pointed to a large brown paper bag sitting on the wooden engine box. It contained torn paper wrappers, and an unopened turkey sandwich. Kyle had been picturing some kind of sealed military ration bar, but this worked too. As he ate, Kyle watched Logan and Creed prepping for the jump, and wished he knew enough about what they were doing to help out. Which he didn't.
Creed had tied his hair back into a ponytail, Kyle noted. Was that better for jumping? Kyle fished out a black elastic band from a side pocket of his rucksack, and tied his own wild blonde hair back. The sides and nape of his neck felt exposed, but his field of vision opened up a little.
Creed came over and ran through what to do before, and during, a parachute jump. Logan had given Kyle the same checklist while they were taxiing out from Pope, but Kyle was glad to hear it again. Creed looked way too happy about being the last jumper though, and Kyle wondered what he was in for, being the second.
Red light. The howl of the wind through the mouth of the open cargo ramp ruled out any talking, and dropping away behind the plane, was a gulf of sky that just didn't seem real. In the light of a half-moon, Wildchild's eyes could pick out mountains and snowfields, like features on a giant map. Where the hell were they? Russia? It hadn't been that long, had it?
Green light.
A green-suited crewman tugged on a pair of thick red straps, releasing the pallet with Team X's gear, and as it dropped away, Logan was already running towards the end of the ramp. Kyle saw the flash of sharp white teeth as Logan looked back at them, grinning. He went off the ramp sideways, and turned skillfully in the empty air, to watch rest of the jump. That looked like fun.
Besides, if Kyle didn't go now, Creed would just shove him off the ramp anyway.
Wildchild went for it.
There was a moment of absolute panic when he realized that he was airborne, but Kyle managed not to tear any of his straps off, or pull the ripcord early. That was good, but he was falling every which-way. Whatever Logan's trick of swimming through air like water was, Kyle didn't know it. Air... Water... Hmmm...
Kyle tried to glide to the right, moving his arms like wings. He succeeded in doing an abrupt corkscrew. Matching what he was doing with his right arm to his left, mirror-image, Kyle stopped spinning. As easy as falling off a log. Yeah right.
There was one dark dot above him, and two below him. Kyle noticed that fighting the air or trying to 'fly' did actually slow him down, but folding his arms at his sides made him fall faster. The air was bitterly cold up here.
But goddamn, he was FLYING! No wonder Jean Paul had spent so much time with the sky.
This was great!
Of course, his parachute could still be a dud...
/If I was anyone else/ Kyle reflected, /they woulda let me practice this jump. Just because I CAN pull my elbow out of my ribcage and live, doesn't mean I WANT to.../
He'd been diving while he thought this, and Kyle leveled off frantically after realizing he'd passed something. As the world stopped whirling, Kyle saw Wolverine falling about thirty feet to the left and in front of him. Logan made a hands-down gesture, and Kyle nodded. Stay there. Logan glided closer through the empty night air, and at last, grabbed Kyle's hands.
Kyle grabbed back, hard. Solid. Solid was good.
Logan's dark eyes shone behind the face-plate of his goggles, crinkling at the edges, and even with the errors Kyle was probably making, their flight pattern had all but completely stabilized.
Kyle had always thought of parachuting as a way to appear magically on the ground behind enemy lines in cheap movies.
Several minutes later Creed joined them, rocking the formation for a second as the wind flow shifted. He didn't seem to be as self-assured as Logan was in this environment, but he clearly knew what he was doing. The wind was deafening, and so there was silence. The mountains opened up beneath them, faint trails becoming rivers, flecks of white becoming frozen clearings. Trees. TREES? Trees were bad, right? Kyle had seen enough war movies to know THAT much...
Logan and Creed seemed to be arguing, and they kept looking at the altimeter dials on their wrists. Kyle had never learned how to lip-read, so he couldn't hear exactly what was being said.
The argument ended with Creed pulling Logan's ripcord, and Logan swearing down at him loud enough to be heard over the wind as his parachute jerked him upwards and out of the circle.
Creed touched the plastic grip of his own ripcord, said one word, and pushed Kyle away from him into the slipstream. Kyle pulled the ripcord, and the upward jerk of the harness knocked the wind out him. Then the wind dropped abruptly, and Kyle saw Creed's parachute open just below and about a hundred feet ahead of his. They were coming in slowly over a rocky snowfield, and the gear landed first, small wooden pallet breaking apart on impact. The ground looked good and bad at the same time. At least it wasn't trees. Creed landed hard, going down in a tangle of parachute risers and dark rocks. Kyle hit the ground next, scrabbling for purchase on a patch of shale, and finally being pulled forward onto his knees by the wind catching his half-open parachute. Logan touched down last, nearly at the edge of the snow field, releasing his parachute just before he actually landed, and dropping the last five feet to land lightly on a sharp outcropping. Kyle was halfway through cutting himself free of his own parachute with the black-handled knife by then, and Logan left him to it, heading over to sort out Creed instead.
Kyle took that as the compliment it was.
"Don't flamin' touch me," Creed warned, slashing his way out of the nylon spaghetti with one of his K-bars. Logan obliged him, and lit a cigar while he waited. Kyle, finally free of the parachute and all of it's associated webbing, weighted the mess down with a large triangular rock, and cut an arm's length of cord from one of the risers. He put it in his pocket, and walked up the field to where the equipment pallet had landed. Surprisingly, the only thing that had actually broken was the wooden pallet itself and a long black plastic box, like a pool-stick case. It smelled suspiciously like fireworks, so Kyle left it alone.
"What do we got, Logan?" Creed asked, as Wolverine read their orders, torn-open yellow envelope under one arm. From high up the side of a mountain overlooking the field where they had touched down, the foot-tracks crisscrossing in the snow around the remains of the pallet looked like a target. The pallet itself had since been broken up into three packs and everybody's guns, but piling rocks on the boards would only work as camouflage if the snow melted, or more fell on top of it, and covering them up with snow would have looked even worse. They couldn't stay here long.
"Says here we're goin' after a nasty little package called 'shipment 12.'"
"That tells us jack shit," Creed snorted, around the end of the cigar he'd acquired earlier.
"It also says we can't bring any friendlies in OR out. No prisoners, either," Logan continued.
"Not that I'm complainin' about the last part, but you do know what this means, don't you?"
"Bio-weapons." nodded Logan.
"Yup," agreed Creed, "-it's a doc hunt."
"Figures," shrugged Kyle.
"Oh yeah, you DID work for the government before..." recalled Creed, amused.
"Where are we, anyway?" Kyle asked, looking doubtfully at the topographical map weighted down by a rock and one of Logan's knives.
"This might sound funny to ya, but we're in Georgia," Logan told him.
"Georgia?..." Kyle repeated.
"The one that used to be part of Russia," Logan explained.
"Oh. Right," Kyle made a mental note to lay hands on a world map at some point. He knew Russia was before China and past Germany, but ...Georgia?!
"Just be glad he didn't expect ya to know where Madripoor was," Creed pointed out, amused.
By sunrise, the map had led them many kilometers to the Northwest. Logan was walking point, and Kyle was just behind him. Creed trailed the other two, watching them as much as the woods around them. One good thing about Kyle was that he didn't waste time stating the obvious or asking stupid frickin' questions. Yes, they were gonna walk until Logan or Creed called a halt. No, there didn't seem to be anyone else around for miles. Hey, look at the squirrels.
-No.
Kyle just kept his mouth shut, watched the game in the underbrush with detached predatory interest, and kept up. As much as Creed liked Kyle's attitude, he had to wonder who had beaten it into him. Not Logan, if he was any judge, and he -knew- Logan's work. Maybe Kyle was just one of those rare people who kept his own council.
/Where have I seen THAT before.../ Creed thought, wryly.
Logan still hadn't seen fit to tell Kyle about the genetic connection between himself and the boy, and Creed wondered if it was because Logan hadn't believed what Creed had told him at the lake, or because Logan had plain FORGOTTEN. That happened sometimes.
Maybe Logan just didn't give a shit WHO Kyle was, since the kid was already one of his protégés. /Kyle might wanna know, though, y'ever think of THAT?/
Logan called a halt and they camped in a hollow under the thick crisscrossing branches of two old pine trees. Nobody bothered with a sleeping bag. Logan took first watch as Kyle and Sabretooth slept, listening to the wind through the pine needles overhead.
Creed-
/I see him just off the back porch of the cabin, talking to HER again. Girl's bad fucking medicine. Any fool can tell what she's about, even this young. Even her name is 'foxy-somethin' for cryin' out loud. Logan doesn't see it. He can't. He don't smell the hands that have been on her. It's none of my damn business what the Indians do with their own, but Logan is MINE. Like hell will this two-bit TRAMP of a squaw use him for whatever scam she's got planned.
I'm tryin', dammit. I warned 'im. Why won't he listen to me?
Why does he take her word over mine? He don't even know her!
Why can't he just shut up and trust me for once?
I'm gonna beat the tar out of him. Maybe then he'll remember why.
I can fight with 'im or I can protect 'im, but if I got ta do both...
I walk over. I mean business. I don't really sound like that, do I?
He lies to my face.
That. Is. It.
I go ta town on him. Fraulien Panzer could do better, but I'm not tryin' ta kill the boy.
...Waitaminute. Fraulien Panzer doesn't happen until the forties. The nineteen forties.
I'm dreamin'.
And just like that, I'm in a bar in Ottawa someplace. Don't know the name of the joint, but I remember the bar real good. The juke box plays old stuff, nothin' after sixty two or thereabouts. Logan's s'posed ta meet me here, and he never does.
I glare at the jukebox, and for once I wish it would play somethin' else. 'White Rabbit' would sound good right about now, but that didn't come out 'till sixty-seven.
Damn./
"Hey," pat, pat.
"Hunh?" Kyle scrunched his eyes shut against the mid-day sun, and sat up in the pine needles. Logan was crouched beside him, hand on his shoulder.
"Your watch, kid."
"Uhhh... Uh, right. When do I wake him up again?" Kyle asked, yawning.
"Sixteen hundred. Four-ish," Logan told him.
"Got it," Kyle screwed the top off of his canteen, and drank some water. "G'night, Logan."
"G'night, kid."
Logan-
/Something's different. Air from outside feels warm. Getting lighter too. I wake up, and go back to sleep again. Later I wake, and it's dark outside. I'm hungry, so I eat part of the bear's paw. Not much of the bear left in his skin now. This was such a good place to stay for the winter. Safe. Snug. Lots of meat. I just curled in around myself, and slept, and I was warm.
I am stronger now, than when I fell down here.
I sleep, but I have woken up once, and I know I can't stay here forever.
At sunrise, I wake and hear something outside. One faint, trilling call, answered by another.
Marmots, greeting the sun.
It's not as far up to the hole as I thought it was. There's a slope up to the sky. I start climbing, and I slip. From the bottom of the cave, I look up at the opening, puzzled.
I start climbing again, and this time I make it, hauling myself out onto the unmarked bright, white snow outside. I stay on hands and knees for a long time, waiting for my eyes to adjust. All the smells are loud up here, and the breeze is so clean it's almost sharp. The marmots finish their sun-greeting, and the pine woods creak softly as the sun begins heating them. I hear a noisy stream down below somewhere. The wind is cool, but the sun is warm. The snow is patchy, and strips of wild grasses and heather grow in the spaces between. I crawl over to the grass, and watch a shiny green beetle opening and closing the shell over it's wings. It flies away.
I lie back in the long green stalks, and the wind plays with my hair. I got away. I'm free.
Is this what freedom feels like?
The wind that blows is all that any body knows.
Right now, that's all I need./
Kyle considered the problem before him. He'd never had to wake up Sabretooth before. Creed snored, in a low, rhythmic way that reminded Kyle of a big cat purring. It figured. While Kyle was in Alpha Flight, he'd taken a CPR course that said the best way to see if someone was unconscious without leaving yourself open to attack was to kick their foot a few times.
That could work. Kicking. Maybe not such a hot idea.
Creed struck Kyle as a dog person. Maybe he should lick his face and see if that did the trick.
Hand on the shoulder was automatically out.
Calling Creed's cell phone would have worked, except that Kyle didn't have a phone.
Maybe poking him with a stick?
"Hey dad, wake up," Kyle said softly, trying not to wake up Logan too.
Creed scowled, eyes still closed, and patted around on the ground in front of him, looking for a pillow to cover his head with. /I've had days like that/ Kyle thought, amused.
"-C'mon man, it's your watch-" -something about the word 'watch' seemed to get through, and Sabretooth opened his eyes.
"What is it?"
"No problem, It's just ah, your turn to watch," said Kyle.
Creed checked his watch.
"Hrm," Creed sat up, scratched his head, and brushed a few pine needles out of his hair, "-fine. Rack out, boy."
Kyle stretched out between Creed and Logan, and looked up at the branches over his head, thinking.
"I said rack out," Creed repeated, a little irritated.
"Did, um... Have you ever done something, and had no idea why you did it?" Kyle asked.
"Yeah," Creed replied.
"What was it?" Kyle gambled, sitting up a little.
"Go to sleep," Creed pushed Kyle's head back down with one hand, firmly.
Kyle closed his eyes, then opened one a minute later, stealthily.
"Kyle, I know I said 'sleep', but I'll settle for unconscious."
Kyle slept.
Kyle-
/Wolves in the snow. Powerful, and so fast it looks like they can fly. Blood-spray like a water balloon, and the snowshoe hare's history, a trailing mess between long sharp teeth. I'm there with the pack, but I'm almost Human, naked, crouching between two of the wolves, soft spring snow pressing up between my toes. I can see my breath faintly in the air in front of me. The wolves shouldn't accept me, I'm not one of them. The leader cleans the blood off of his muzzle with his long pink tongue, looking me in the eyes as he does it.
He's going to kill me.
He pads up until we are nose to nose, and I can't move. I'm terrified and unlike that rabbit, I'm frozen to the spot. Wolf eyes.
He turns his head to the side, never breaking eye contact, and his lip curls up to show me his fangs.
I don't want to die.
I can smell the fresh blood on the wolf's warm breath. He bites my throat, and I fall backwards into the snow, with his heavy forepaws planted on my chest. I can't even scream, my throat won't work. Two of the others are looking down at me, curiously.
I'm still alive.
He's just holding me DOWN by my throat, he hasn't broken skin.
And then, as I realize this, the leader lets go with his jaws and pulls his head back to look at me again. One of the other wolves nuzzles him under the chin. The leader breaks eye contact with me to glance down at the other wolf, though both of his paws are still holding me so I don't go anywhere.
I close my eyes for a-
It's warm and dark suddenly, and I'm out of the wind. I try to open my eyes, but I can't remember how. Something very big is licking me. I feel the wolf's whiskers brush against my face, and there is warm fur at my back. I know this smell.
I am safer here than I can ever remember being./
Sundown. Creed leaned down and blew softly across Logan's ear. The ear, Human though it looked, twitched as if troubled by a flea. Creed blew across it again. Logan woke up, took note of the sky's color, and disentangled himself from Kyle, who had snuggled under his arm sometime during the day.
Better not to wake him up in that position. Young guys got all bent out of shape over stuff like this, and Kyle was self-conscious enough as it was. /I gotta wonder who he thought I was, though... Does Kyle have a girlfriend?/ Logan thought.
Creed, digging something out of the top of his pack, watched Logan's careful retreat and started laughing.
"Stow it, Creed," Logan warned.
"Ahh, he's just sayin' he knows you," Creed purred, "-are you ever gonna tell him you're the other one, or what?"
"I've known you long enough to check my facts first," Logan told him.
"Hey! If you're gonna get all high-and-mighty like that, why didn't you call McCoy when you had the chance?"
"From a military-monitored phone, or worse, YOURS?" Logan retorted.
"Er-"
Kyle woke up, ending the argument.
Twenty minutes later they were on the move again, quiet, deadly shadows passing beneath the trees, heading Northwest.
The compound marked on the mission target map was built on into the side of a steep, rocky hill. High, unpainted concrete walls were blocked together at right angles, like a prison. It had all the earmarks of a former military outpost bought out by a private company, which it was, but there was a faint, noxious, yeasty smell about the place, like the stench of a brewery. The well-maintained military grade electric fence and razor-wire didn't add up either. This was the place, all right. Growing right up to the edge of the electric fence, a thick mat of blackberry brambles covered the hillside. Wolverine thought he could make out the skeleton of a crashed jeep in one particularly high patch. Kyle had collected a handful of berries, and was eating them while they studied the target.
"Looks simple to me," Creed decided, "-hop the fence, ace the guards, and follow our noses."
"What IS that smell?" Wildchild asked.
"Bacteria. E-coli, probably," Logan explained, "-when you wanna mass-produce a bio-weapon, you get the strain you want, and then you grow it in somethin' else that's got DNA simple enough to re-write. Beast gave me a rundown on it once."
"Then... isn't that smell exposing anyone who breathes it?" Kyle asked, concerned.
"Nah. They'd go through guards too fast that way," shrugged Creed, "-what's your worry? It's not like WE can catch it."
"Uh, this may not be the best time to say this, but I've never been exposed to a seriously bad disease before," Kyle said, uncomfortably.
"You got shots while you were with Alpha Flight, right?"
"Yes..."
"And while everybody else felt like crap and bitched about having sore arms, what happened to you?"
"Nothing."
"Then you're good," Creed assured him, cheerfully, "-now let's get started here."
They hit the facility about an hour before sunrise. Wolverine rigged an electrical bypass on the fence with a length of razor wire, and cut through the bottom of the chain-link. The fact that there had been a pair of thick rubber gloves and an industrial-strength Leatherman in his gear suggested that the Intel on this place might actually be good. That would be nice, but Logan still wasn't counting on it. Creed and Kyle's packs were hidden in the blackberry bushes down below, but Logan still had his, and most of it was explosives. Kyle was rear-guard for this op, and Creed had point. The guards at the downhill entrance were wearing gray uniforms with blue and white corporate patches in Russian on the shoulders, and no nametags. Sabretooth climbed the rough concrete wall over the doorway, waited until the guards had just made their radio check-in, then dropped down on them claws-first. The loudest noise was the sharp 'thack' of a dropped radio bouncing off a rock below. They were in.
There was a black and white sign on the wall just past the entrance and before a set of steel elevator doors, with a building map on it showing three floors. Wolverine loved these things. No matter how secret a facility was, the eggheads always had to know how to get to work in the morning.
"Where?" Creed asked, covering the right branch the hallway.
"Up one floor, and then down two," Logan told him.
"Say what?"
"Move yer ass, and take the stairs," Logan clarified.
One floor higher, the stairwell opened onto a four-sided mezzanine. A double-walled glass window separated the mezzanine from a factory floor three feet lower, where a series of metal canisters interconnected by clear tubes sent up whiffs of noxious-looking steam. There were ten people monitoring the equipment and taking readings, all sealed inside blue bio-suits with clear plastic facemasks. There were a pair of clear airlocks separating this half of the mezzanine from the mezzanine on the far side. The toxic-brewery smell was stronger inside the first set of airlocks. Logan set a charge against the corner of the wall and the first airlock once they'd all gone through it. It was still a long way to the far side of the mezzanine, where they had to go next, and one of the blue-suits below was bound to look up sooner or later, unless...
Creed sighted the shot carefully, and put a rifle round in the electrical outlet providing power to an operating centrifuge down on the floor. Alarms went off as the centrifuge started losing speed, and the blue-suits scrambled for the fire extinguishers. A whistle of air rushed into the bullet hole from the mezzanine side of the sturdy glass, and Creed slapped his palm over it before the rise in pressure in the vacuum-sealed lab below set off building-wide alarms. He was buying maybe five minutes, but what the hell. Creed turned to Logan.
"You got some duct tape?"
Logan considered the size of the bullet hole, and cut off a half-inch-thick slice of C-4. He pressed it carefully into place as soon as Creed moved his hand, plastic-wrapper side first. The plastic would tear soon, but for now it had just enough strength to keep the C-4 from oozing through the hole like toothpaste. He didn't bother with a detonator for this one.
"Sweet," Creed grinned. Kyle wondered if the vacuum-seal on the window meant they still hadn't been exposed to the whatever-it-was yet.
"Let's go," said Logan, pointing to the double doors at the far side of the mezzanine.
Just then, the central alarm went off.
They ran for it. Making it to the door, Creed kicked it open, blowing the vacuum-seal on the factory lab to hell once and for all. The guards coming out of the elevator were not amused. THEY knew what the loss of containment meant, and they wanted to take full payment out of the hide of the psychopath who had just dropped the hammer on them. Lead hail blasted back into the factory room, killing most of the blue-suited workers, and dropping Creed to his knees. Kyle watched the elevator doors at the far side of the mezzanine start to open, and opened fire without waiting to see who or what came out. Logan tossed a grenade through the kicked-open doors into the elevator, and it bounced off the boot of one of the guards who were shooting at them, skittering sideways. Logan took cover behind the doorjamb, yanking Creed back along with him by the back of his equipment harness.
"Kyle! MOVE!" Logan yelled.
Kyle turned towards the sound of the shout, a mistake that's gotten a lot of people killed over the years. /Oh, HELL.../ thought Logan, with a mental wince.
The grenade went off.
Splash six guards. Kyle blew backwards through the railing of the mezzanine, and onto the floor of the lab, taking out a computer console on the way. Hoping Creed would pull together enough to give him covering fire soon, Logan jumped down after Wildchild. The kid was in bad shape, but not as bad as it had looked from the mezzanine. He looked more stunned than anything else, though he was still unconscious. The reason for this became clear when Logan started to hoist him up on one shoulder. Trying not to think about it, Logan felt along the bloody patch at the back of Kyle's head with his fingers, searching for any embedded shards from the computer console. There weren't any.
The guards that Kyle had been shooting at across the room started to recover at that point, and a few shots nicked the floor at Logan's feet. An answering burst of full-auto sounded from Creed's end of the mezzanine, dropping two of the guards and forcing the remaining pair back into the shelter of the elevator. Logan took up Kyle and ran for the steps that used to lead up from the factory lab to one of the airlocks, broken glass cracking and grinding beneath his boots as he pounded up them back to the mezzanine. Creed paused for a moment to change magazines, and then kept firing.
"CONTAINMENT SHIELD I COMPROMISED. ALL LEVELS, STAND BY FOR BIO-HAZARD CONTAINMENT, SHIELD II," the PA system announced, in Russian.
"Elevator! NOW!" Creed yelled. Logan was halfway there already. Creed followed him in, and hit the 'door close' button. The elevator door started to shut, hit the leg of a dead guard, and slid open again. Creed kicked the body out of the elevator with a single vicious blow, and hit the button again. The elevator doors closed with a soft chime, and locked behind them.
After the firefight outside, the elevator was deafeningly silent. Creed pressed the 'down' arrow. Nothing happened. Creed sighed wearily, and turned to Logan.
"How's the kid?"
"Alive," Logan said, shortly. Creed inspected the bloody tangles at the back of Kyle's head, and sniffed him a few times.
"No spinal fluid," Creed decided, "-just blood. He's fine, Logan."
"I know," Logan swallowed, easing Kyle down onto the floor of the elevator. "Elevator's off?"
"Yeah," Creed nodded, "-that must be part of 'KONTINMENT SHIELD TWO'. -Big fucking surprise."
The floor of the elevator compartment was solid. Logan looked at the ceiling. He could cut through it, but the trick was to do so in such a way as to not to snap the elevator cables. In old, cold-war-era complexes like this one, you never knew HOW far down the elevator shaft went.
"Boost me up," Logan instructed, fishing a small plasma torch out of one of his equipment pouches. Creed obliged him.
Logan flicked the plasma torch on, and started cutting. Creed stood as still as he could, and watched the cuts on Kyle's face and neck heal. It was beautiful, in a way. Wet, red flowers sealing shut to leave smooth, unbroken skin and blood-streaks of pain memory. He'd only ever seen it happen on himself and Logan before. Kyle was new.
After what felt like far, FAR too long, there was a low moan of pain from the floor, and Kyle clutched his head with both hands. Logan looked down at the miserable shape stirring on the floor, grinned, and went back to cutting the ceiling.
"Welcome back, dogmeat!" Creed called down to him, "-ya lose anything?"
"Uhhhghhh..." Kyle whimpered. He felt the sticky wetness in his hair, and looked at the blood on his fingers when he pulled them back. "What-?... ...tha' hurt..."
"Ya caught a pineapple, Kyle," Creed explained, "-how'd it taste?"
"Sharp," Kyle winced, putting a hand to the back of his head again. "-What's going on? ...Did we win?"
"It's a work in progress," Creed admitted, "-once we get outta this can, we can mop up and book."
"Oh, please," Logan cut in, "-we haven't even found the primary TARGET yet."
"Shut up and slice," Creed grumbled.
"Don't tempt me."
Sliding down to the end of the elevator cable, Kyle wiped the dark grease off of his palms on the side of his camo pants. Creed was trying to open the elevator doors at this level, but had only managed to get them open a crack. Kyle noticed a worn metal latch, low down on the bottom edge of one of the doors, and kicked it in. The doors opened.
Kyle and Creed looked at each other, and neither of them said anything.
Logan landed softly at the bottom of the elevator shaft behind them, and dusted his hands off.
"That was good," Creed told Kyle.
"Thanks."
Logan looked from one to the other, and then noticed something out of the corner of his eye, a movement in the parking garage beyond the elevator doors. It was a diesel panel truck, starting to pull out. Unless the tires were nearly flat, it had a full cargo.
"Nail that thing!" Logan yelled, opening fire. The truck turned it's front wheels, and the driver stepped on the accelerator. Creed shot out one of the back tires. Kyle shot the back doors once, clicked on an empty chamber, and had to change mags. Logan ran out of the elevator doors to the left, trying to get an angle on the driver himself. The driver ground into gear desperately, and floored it.
"Here, kitty kitty kitty..." Creed coaxed the truck, sighting along his gun to the control box of the garage door. He fired. Nothing. He fired again. The door made a high electrical whine, and started sliding downwards like a portcullis. Just as the driver was almost certain to make it out ahead of the door, Logan shot him through the left ear. The truck stopped accelerating, and the heavy steel garage door slammed down on the truck's engine block with a sickening metallic crunch. Logan walked out into the pale morning sun, and keyed his radio.
"Shanghai, this is Wolverine. Come in."
After a pause, the radio answered.
"Wolverine, Shanghai here. Is number twelve secure?"
"Intel advise. Has anything left the mission site?" Logan asked.
"Negative."
Logan looked back over his shoulder at Creed, who was leaning out of the rear of the truck and giving him a thumbs-up.
"Number twelve is secure, Shanghai," Logan reported, "-team X is intact. Mission site is locked down from the inside. Estimate multiple prisoners."
"Are they compromised?"
"...Very."
"Dust it," Shanghai ordered, "-you have trouble inbound by helicopter, ETA fifteen minutes.
"Copy that, Wolverine out," Logan slipped the radio back into the pouch on his belt, and snapped it shut. Shouldering his pack, he walked back into the parking garage. Creed was taking pictures of the captured bio-weapon containers, some of them broken open during the truck's attempted escape, and a few of the driver with the perfect bullet hole through his ear, just because. Afterwards he got out a vial, scooped up some of the eggshell-white powder leaking out on the floor, and capped it. Logan started setting charges, both C-4 on the truck itself, and a large, boxy-looking device in the elevator shaft. He closed the door behind him, after setting that one. Kyle wiped his face off with his sleeve, and stayed as far away from the truck and the strange white powder as he could. It made his nose itch, and knowing what it WAS gave Kyle a serious case of the creeps. If he was anyone else...
The alarm that had been going off since the firefight in the factory room shut off abruptly. Logan and Creed exchanged glances.
"That means run, right?" Kyle guessed.
Logan nodded.
They were very far back from the compound. Further, Kyle thought, than they probably needed to be. Logan pulled the C-4 detonator out of his pocket, and, keyed it. There was a medium-sized explosion, and the complex rocked as if hit by an earthquake. Then nothing.
"That's it?" Kyle asked, puzzled.
"Patience," Logan checked his watch.
Creed folded his arms, and watched the compound. The shipment twelve truck had blown with the C-4 charges, and a cloud of white dust hung over the parking garage entrance ominously.
"Don't try and hold your breath," Logan warned Kyle.
"Wh-"
Just then, the top of the facility exploded like a champagne cork, and then the thick concrete walls cracked and blew apart outwards. The noise was incredible. Reaching the height of the reaction, the fireball that had once been the compound sucked the air and most of the dust cloud back into itself, and exploded into black soot and orange flame for a second time.
Kyle coughed a few times, and tried to get some air back into his lungs. It was at least half a minute before the air pressure rose enough that he could do it. Logan passed Creed a cigar, and lit one himself. The lighter sputtered on his first two tries, and then caught.
"What- was-" Kyle managed.
"Fuel-air bomb," Logan told him, "-they work real good on biotech."
"Want one?" Creed asked, indicating the cigars.
"I don't smoke," Kyle told him, smiling lopsidedly.
Creed lit up, eyeing Kyle with concern.
"What kind o' granola-eatin'-" he began, reasonably.
"The cavalry's gonna start showin' up soon," Logan reminded them, "-so unless one o' you has got a marshmallow...?"
"Ninja, vanish," agreed Kyle, shouldering his pack.
Logan puffed his cigar thoughtfully.
"NO!" Creed barked, seeing Logan's expression, "-WE ARE NOT GOIN' TA #!&! JAPAN!"
-
