Chapter 3: Old Acquaintances

Scott opened the door cautiously staying near the frame just in case. The door had been left ajar as though someone had come or gone quickly, the door being the least of their worries. When nothing popped out to kill him he proceeded into the living room. He stopped short. This was bad.

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Logan fixed his shoulder strap for what had to have been the six- hundredth time.
"Gee Logan, I've never seen you fidget before." Storm said grinning, though deep down she was nervous. If Logan was nervous, she should definitely be nervous.
"I'm not fidgeting." After a short pause just in case she didn't believe him, "I'm not."
"Whatever you say. We're almost there. I have to find a place to land."
"So, where is this house anyway?" Logan felt very stupid. He should know where they were going. He'd just been having a hard time paying attention.
"The house is actually in Toronto, on one of the islands near there. We'll have to go into town and take a ferry." Logan went very still. He didn't like water, and the mention of it had made him nervous. The only problem was, he couldn't figure out why.

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Bobby stared at the interior of his house. He was trying to make sense of it all, he really was. The only problem was that none of it made any sense. The whole house was empty. Everything and everyone was gone. On top of that portions of the house were burned away, scorched and blackened with soot. Bobby couldn't help but wonder if John had been here, then couldn't figure out a reason why John would have been here. Bobby felt slightly guilty about that thought, however, John had always made a big display of being able to manipulate fire. As far as Bobby knew, John could at least tolerate him, though neither would call the other true friend. For Bobby, John was too much of a wildcard to be trusted. For John, it was because he thought Bobby was a wuss.
"There's no one here, there hasn't been anyone here for a long time." Scott said into the prevailing silence. "Are you sure that whoever called was really your parents?" Bobby just shook his head. He wasn't sure of anything anymore.

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They were finally here. So why did Logan want to turn around and walk away? He wasn't sure he just knew that something bad was going to happen. He looked back to the gate. Storm was standing patiently. Kurt was crouched in a tree constantly scanning in case he had to tele-port or hide. That was Kurt's ability. He could transport himself anywhere that he'd seen, as long as he was within a reasonable distance. When he "bampfed" as the kids at the Institute affectionately called it for that was the sound his disappearance made, he left behind a cloud of sulfur gas that was also present when he reappeared. The professor had been greatly intrigued by this ability and was trying to convince Kurt to let him probe further into the matter.
Logan looked back at the house. It was the same house from his dream only slightly more rundown. Pieces of siding had come off leaving patches like scabs. The grass had grown to almost knee height and some kind of vine looked to take over the porch roof. The car that had once leaned drunkenly alongside the house now was reduced to a pile of rust, no longer distinguishable even by Logan who had known it was a car. The porch was sagging and he almost fell through the second step. All of the windows were either boarded up, dirt covered black, or missing all together. The door hung crookedly on its hinges, and when Logan went to open it, it fell forward with a thunderous crash. Logan looked back and waved at Storm who had started forward at the sound. He waved away the thick cloud of dust that had dutifully risen to action after being disturbed.
He took a cautious step forward and was standing in the long, dark hall that had only one door to it. If he had been thinking logically he would have realized that was impossible. If the first thing you came to was the hallway than the outer dimensions didn't fit the inner dimensions. However, he wasn't thinking logically and after a couple of seconds he wouldn't be thinking at all because in the next instant, the floor gave out underneath Logan and he fell letting out a startled yell.

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Storm was worried. Logan had been inside the house for a very long time. She squinted worriedly up at the house and sighed. She resisted the urge to start pacing.
"Maybe ve should go and check on him?" Kurt asked both reproachfully and hopefully. He didn't like being out in the open this long. Logan had been gone a long time, but still Kurt did not wish to anger him.
"Kurt you read my mind." Storm said as she started up the drive.

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"Don't go through the door at the end of the hall. Bad things happen in there." The voice whispered across his semi-conscious state. Logan had a watery image of what he thought was the girl from his dream when pain jerked him back to reality.
Logan groaned and sat up. After several seconds he could see clearly. There were times he didn't like being able to heal quickly, no wait, he must have hit his head harder than he thought, because that was a lie. He cracked his neck and stood up. He was in a room bare save for its white motif that included the table and chairs. Wait, table? Chairs? He thought. There was a man there, sitting so Logan wasn't sure as to how tall or bulky he was. He was hard to see in the shadows, but Logan could at least tell that he was wearing a large black trench coat. Once he was paying attention to detail, he also noticed a woman beside him.
She was short and blonde and wore glasses. She was also wearing what appeared to be a lab coat. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that she was short and blonde, she would have reminded him of Jean when they first met. "Hello Logan," the man spoke, "please have a seat." Logan looked at the man, looked at the chair and then the woman and said, "How about you tell me what's going on, and I'll decide if I want to sit or not then."
"Fair enough." The girl looked away, her expression unreadable.
"Start talkin' bub." Logan was edgy, like he knew he really wasn't going to like what he was about to hear. The something dawned on him.
"We're not in the house anymore are we?" The man just shook is head agreeing that they weren't. "Than where the hell are we?" "Someplace secret, safe." The man replied. "Did you send me that dream, tell me to come here?" "No, you decided that for yourself, I merely made a suggestion." "You seem familiar, do I know you? Wait I do." From the depths of Logan's memory a name floated and attached to the face. "You're Fury, Nick Fury. You work for SHIELD." Logan couldn't really remember what SHIELD did, but then he wasn't really sure that SHIELD knew what SHIELD did.

(A/N: Two things to apologize for, the first the awful James Bond naming stunt I pulled above and the second being me copping out on the SHIELD thing. I am having a hard time finding out what they do in my research so if anyone knows, please tell me.)

"I'm head of shield now, glad to see you haven't forgotten everything."
"I'm just full of surprises."
"As I recall, you don't like surprises." Fury said. Logan shrugged.
"There's no easy way to tell you this, but I suppose I should let Caroline tell you. Caroline..." Logan turned his sardonic gaze on her. She looked away.
"Weapon X, I never thou—" She broke off when he glared at her.
"It's Logan."

(A/N: Yeah, here's where it gets tricky...In the cartoon he knows a lot more about the Weapon X project than he does in the movie, shrugs my story, mostly my rules.)

"Ri--right." She stuttered. Now she was nervous. "After the Weapon X project was disbanded, a new group, HYDRA took over their research." She glanced at him uneasily at the mention of Weapon X, but afterwards she gained confidence in what she said. "HYDRA had a plan to create the perfect weapon, going beyond where they had failed with you. They quickly realized that to do this, the weapon would need your rejuvenating powers. So they took samples of DNA and created several specimens." She paused when he held up a hand.
"Are you trying to tell me that you CLONED me?!"
"Um...well no. See if it was a clone, the specimen would be male and look exactly like you, but as is the case the specimen is female and only looks slightly like you. She was created as I said to be the most advanced weapon that the world had ever seen. When she was twelve she underwent the Weapon X treatment." Caroline was cut off by Logan lunging out of his chair and smacking the table very hard. He didn't remember much about having his skin ripped open and hot metal grafted to his skeleton but he knew one thing for sure: those memories should not be in a little girl's head. "YOU DID THAT TO A TWELVE YEAR OLD!" He roared. His vision was taking on a dangerous hue of scarlet. He wanted to pick up the table and hurl it at Caroline's head. He decided that he really didn't like her much. "What went wrong? If she's anything like me, something had to have gone wrong."
"The girl, X23, she was her own undoing, she was too good, too destructive."
"You couldn't handle her." Logan snorted in disgust.
"Watch." Caroline said as she flipped on a screen behind her and footage of what Logan could only assume to be X23 flickered to life.
On the black and white screen a young girl with medium long brown hair and pale skin dressed in a black workout suit worked her way through an obstacle course. She hacked and slashed, jumped, dodged, and whirled until she collapsed from exhaustion. Then the scene changed and the same girl appeared only older and in white. A guard accompanied her to what he could only conclude was a park. A young blond pigtailed girl walked over to X23 and offered her a doll in the hopes that they might play together. X23 shoved the girl aside and ripped the head off of the doll. Logan wasn't sure which look in X23's eyes was more heartbreaking: the unrestrained rage she showed when ripping off the doll's head, or the unfeeling coldness that settled in after the deed was done as she was dragged away by her keeper.
"X23 escaped when she was about 16, about two years after this footage. We had been unable to track her activities until now." Caroline spoke softly into the silence. "I loved her. I tried to protect her the best that I could, but by the time..." She trailed off. "Bring her back to me, please."
"Lady, with friends like you, enemies are not needed." Logan said bitterly.
"There's more." Fury said as Caroline quietly began to cry. "Follow me."
He walked out a door that Logan hadn't noticed before. Logan seemed to have no choice but to follow. They walked out into a hallway that had many doors and went through the door that had been splintered as though someone had smacked into it, hard. Logan followed Fury further down to another doorway that was actually devoid of a door. The interior of the room was trashed. Claw marks marred the walls and the computer that had once occupied the desk was demolished. He still wasn't understanding why he was here and was about to voice his inquiry when Fury handed him a printout.
"We uploaded the last thing that she was looking at when she went nuts." Logan stared at his own image glowering back at him. "She's coming for you."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Find her, catch her, convince her, whatever, but bring her back to me."

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Logan opened groggy eyes for the second time that day. He looked up into Storm and Kurt's worried eyes. He groaned and sat up, cracking his neck as he went. "I wish you wouldn't do that." Storm said. Logan wasn't listening though. He was back at the house, on the floor; no holes, a long hallway, but no door at the end. He wondered if he had dreamed the whole thing when he realized that he had something crumpled in his hand. It was a blank white card with a phone number. "We gotta get back to the Institute."