FOURTEEN

The trip to the storage facility was silent and packed with tension. I had stopped trying to ask him who this Creed was, and for the first time I sensed a fear in him I'd never before glimpsed. The mood in the car was not helped when we arrived at the storage facility, as we were greeted by the same dour little man I had encountered before. He wore a frown on his squashed little face that could have melted plastic as he waved us through the building. "Professor Xavier was very insistent that you gain access to his remaining files," He said over his shoulder as we traveled down a long grey corridor. He cast a lingering glance at Wraith. "Despite our policies and regulations, and despite our long history of confidentiality…" His voice descended into mutters ash he shook his head. "But who am I to argue?' We emerged into a concreted yard dotted with about thirty barn-sized buildings that resembled kit garages. The little man rummaged in his pocket for a huge set of keys, and jiggled them as he walked. "What you can tell him that the police could not, I don't know."

We had reached Xavier's storage building, which was one of the larger structures towards the back of the yard. The little man opened a serried of locks running down the side of the door, which he then opened to another shutter type door. Once both doors were open, he consulted his watch, shot Wraith a glance, and looked at me with contempt. "We close promptly at six." He shoved the keys in his pocket again, and began to walk away. "See that you are finished by then."

We walked into the room, which smelled of dust and age, and I took in the towers of boxes around us with a sinking feeling in the very pit of my stomach. There was no way we could sort all this out before six. Wraith walked to the back of the room and called to me. "There are some filing cabinets here," He said. Unlike the odd assortment of boxes I had walked through, these were organized. Each drawer was labeled with a serial number, moving sequentially from left to right. There were about twenty drawers in all. I looked at Wraith, who shrugged, and I tried the top left drawer, expecting to feel the resistance of a lock. The drawer slid open smoothly. The files inside were all marked in a similar fashion to the drawers. I suspected this was the system the haughty little man had worked out for Xavier. I pulled out the first folder and opened it. The first page was an index of the documents it contained, some with dates neatly typed beside a brief description. I followed the list down to Doctor Brian Xavier (Reply), then flipped to that page. It was a neatly typed personal letter from Dr. Xavier's office. Holding it at an angle so I could see it better, I read aloud.

"W, Thank you for your letter of the 20th. I confirm that the investigations are going quite well, despite some early setbacks. Subjects so far have shown promise…." My eyes flicked up to Wraith, who leaned in closer, his brow knit in concentration. "…However with each advance we make, we encounter previously unknown side effects. I will have a report for you at the end of the next trial. Sincerely, B."

"This is what you've been looking for?" Wraith asked.

"I think it is." I shoved the letter back in its folder and took stock of the remaining drawers. "Let's concentrate on just the drawers."

"Anything in particular we should be looking out for?" He slid open a drawer and retrieved a folder.

"Stuff like what I just read. Anything to do with Daddy Xavier's work for the government."

We took bundles of files back to a small steel table in the middle of the room, reading by the light of a bare bulb above. I worked through the pages slowly, and as I read the letters, I scribbled notes in my notepad. Many letters were to do with his research, and spoken of in vague terms and euphemisms. Many were sent to an unknown party, and very rarely was there a reply stored in the following pages.

We methodically flipped through each file folder until I had reached a file marked X-1065-PROJECT. The first pages were half-completed graphs and diagrams, some sketches of muscles and bones that looked straight out of Gray's Anatomy. There was a note attached to the drawings, written in a precise spidery hand that reminded me of Professor Xavier's. The letter was written on fine, stiff stationary, and it looked as if it had been torn in half.

We have successfully completed a human trial! Things have progressed with difficulty and have suffered greatly from recent budgetary constraints. I knew that this subject would be the last. The unwanted side effects on previous subjects concerned many in the project team, and to be honest I was beginning to see their point.

But after six months of intensive preparation, test subject X underwent the same procedure as the previous subjects, with the notable inclusion of multiple brain implants and hypnotic suggestion to remove the unwanted side effects abovementioned

Test subject X withstood both the brain surgery and the injection of the serum without incident, and recovered from both after a satisfactory period. Unlike out other subjects, X showed no sign of serious mental or physical degradation. He has responded to direct orders and verbal triggers unlike any we have seen. Barrington informs me that both his pioneering surgery and subconscious manipulations have achieved the desired effect. The triggers to activate his programming have been included in the dossier I have prepared for our meeting of the 15th.

We have much to do now, Warren. This project, fully realized, could be a boon for the armed forces…..

The letter ended abruptly where the page had been torn. My skin buzzing, I handed the page to Wraith. He took a few moments to read it and his expression matched mine. "Barrington." He said slowly, as if the name were foreign on his tongue. "Barrington was the guy who pulled the strings." His voice was hoarse, barely audible. "And Barrington was the guy who told Kwannon to kill you."

"Or someone claiming he was Barrington."

Wraith held up the file he was reading. "There are whole pages missing from some of these, man. I mean, you look at the lists that little man made, and then you look at the contents, and they just aren't there."

"Maybe they made a mistake."

Wraith smirked at me. "Does that little man back there look like someone who would miss this kinda shit?"

I sat back in my hard backed chair and sighed. "Whoever stole the files went through these as well," I said flatly. "Which means the theft of the other boxes was probably a smokescreen. They were really after this stuff."

Wraith dabbed at his face with a handkerchief. It had gotten unbearably hot in the little room. "What does it mean?" He asked.

"Xavier's father was writing to someone named Warren," I said, realization dawning in my eyes. "I wonder who that might be."

"Worthington's father?"

I rapped my finger on the desk. "No, it can't be. The timeline is all wrong….Unless it's Warren Worthington the First."

"The grandfather?"

I nodded. "He was the one who set up all the ties with the government, landed all those big contracts, and built the company into what it is today."

Wraith whistled. "You did your research."

"Edmund did his research." I stood up and stretched my aching back, shook out the tension in my muscles. "He told me that Warren Worthington the First signed a weapons contract with the government, and about the same time Xavier's daddy was pioneering some sort of procedure to give soldiers some sort of edge on the battlefield. I didn't put it together at the time, but Warren's grandfather had to have been the benefactor of Brian Xavier's research."

Wraith nodded his understanding. "They were up to their necks in something."

I stood there for a few moments, feet planted to the spot. Xavier was obviously unaware of his grandfather's involvement with Warren Worthington I, and I felt pretty sure he wasn't aware of Barrington's involvement in Kwannon's hit. By now Barrington would be a very old man. What business did he have ordering anyone to be killed?

"I was right all along about Warren being a bad seed," I said quietly.

"Seems to me you just had the wrong Warren," Wraith said.

I never got a chance to reply. Three men with guns appeared at the door, blocking our entrance. They looked nondescript, like low rent thugs. Wraith lowered his head and looked at me; his eyes telling me get ready for this. He took his hat off and squared his shoulders. I could see his fingers flex at his sides, just inches from his holster.

I went for my gun instinctively, and a split second later realized I did not have one. I must've left it in Wraith's car, or back at the motel room…Hell I could have left it in my other pants for all the good it did me. I tried to signal a warning to Wraith, gesturing subtly. He frowned and shook his head, then turned his attention to the biggest thug. "So this is how they do it," He said. "Finally they gun us down like dogs."

Wraith was buying time and we all knew it. The gunmen, so assured that they would kill us at their leisure, began cocking their weapons slowly. The big one grinned, showing a row of yellowing teeth. "Nothin' personal. We're just here to do a job."

"Who sent you?" I asked. My voice was low, raspy. I ground the words out through gritted teeth.

In reply, he aimed the gun at me and fired. At that instant, Wraith shouted my name and tossed me his other gun. I caught it, cocked and fired it as the big man's bullet struck a metal filing cabinet behind me. The big man took the bullet in the shoulder, but it wasn't enough to down him. Wraith and I scattered as a barrage of gunfire erupted around us.

I glanced at the gun Wraith had tossed me. It was a compact silver Derringer. It didn't have the power to put a man on his back except at close range. Even then you had to put the friggin' thing against his temple. Wraith was returning fire blindly, hoping that the other men would be hit with the grace of God. I didn't invest my hope so easily, and looked around for something else to use. Wraith would run outta ammo soon, and it became clear to me that the man I shot hadn't fired a single one in retaliation. That means, if he was smart, he would have a full clip left to pump into us once things went quiet.

"Logan, anytime you'd care to join the fight-!" Wraith yelled over the din.

The flash of memory hit me so hard it almost felt like a bullet.

Wraith let of a savage arc of gunfire once we were all behind him. Spent cartridges rained over us as we crouched low in a corner. Shouts in a language we didn't have the patience to understand rained down on us in a similar way. We were in the bowels of some Russian complex, sent to kill Terry Adams…

"Anytime you girls wanna join the fight!" He yelled over his assault.

Creed and I looked at each other like chastened schoolboys, then drew our arms and fired over Wraith's shoulders. "Don't be so hard on the runt," Creed yelled at Wraith.

"This is not the best time to talk about it," Wraith shot back. "If we survive this, we can tear him a new..."

The floor beneath us screamed and tore as two white worms sought us out…No…they weren't worms at all! They were….

I opened my eyes to Wraith's very unimpressed face.

"You slept through the good bits," He said.

I tried to prop myself up by the elbows, but my right shoulder refused to take the strain. I fell back in a sweating heap.

"You've been shot."

I could feel the throbbing heat of the entry wound, could smell the searing flesh on me, but I couldn't remember being hit. "I had a dream…"

"How nice for you." Wraith strode over to the bodies of the three men and knelt beside the first one. He searched his pockets, came up with some more bullets and another gun. He Pocketed both. He moved on to the next man.

"You were in it…"

"Logan, as much as I'd like to take a trip down memory lane with you…"

"We were sent to kill Terry Adams." I scrambled to my feet, using the filing cabinets as support.

Wraith looked over at me, his jaw working for a few moments before actually speaking. "You remember Terry Adams?" His voice was hushed.

"I remember the name in my head…I saw Creed, saw you. We were in Russia…"

"Man, people would pay to forget what we went through there…Now you want to remember."

"You mean what I dreamed actually happened?"

Wraith handed me a weapon lifted from the third man, a heavy colt. "Terry Adams changed everything. After that, I couldn't see right from wrong anymore…Couldn't see what was really happening…" He sighed, shook his head. "It opened my eyes, and I owe it all to you."

"Is that why you're helping me now?"

"It's a big debt."

We dragged the corpses into the storage room and closed the door. It was almost dark, and not one soul could be seen. "So you think they knocked off early?" I asked.

"I think that pathetic little man knew these weasels were coming," Wraith said as we made our way through the main gate, which was still unlocked. "And he knew to get the hell outta here when the bullets started flying."

We walked through the deserted lobby and found Wraith's car in the lot where we left it. Wraith and I jumped in and he gunned the engine. "Logan, you sure get yourself into some nutty situations," He said as he pulled out of the lot and shot onto the road. "Is your job always this much fun?"