Drills

The dark shadow paused momentarily as it swung the door open; only a moment, then the shadow was lost in the other shadows inside the darkened office. Catlike footsteps made their way through the darkened waiting area, past the receptionist's desk, and down the hallway lined with exam rooms toward a small office in the back. The shadow paused just outside the door, smiling grimly at the light under the door, then pushed it open.

The man inside was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn't look up until the intruder was almost halfway to the desk. "What—" he started, but the intruder was faster. Two fast steps crossed the small private office, and his hand clamped around the dentist's throat, stopping his rush of words and almost choking off his air. "Frank Gaylor?" the black-clad intruder hissed. Gaylor nodded as best he could around the fist clamped around his throat. It felt like it was made of steel, it was that tight and just as unyielding.

The intruder pulled off the stocking cap he wore with his left hand, still holding the doctor's throat with his right, and ran his hands through his hair, pushing stray bits of hair back into their customary points. As he did so, the images on the computer screen caught his eye, and he started at it for long moments, trying to believe what he was seeing. It was a kiddie porn site; Logan's skin crawled as he saw pictures of little girls in a schoolyard, laughing and talking and playing, oblivious to the fact that someone was parked across the street from them, taking their picture to post it on the 'Net. "So ya like little girls, do ya?" he growled, giving the dentist a shake by the throat he gripped in his adamantium fist. The dentist stared at him, eyes round, terrified…and struggling for breath to say something. A breath Logan didn't want to give him. Frank Gaylor was about to have a long-overdue appointment with justice.

It hadn't taken long to find him. After that night a week ago when he'd wrung the names of every man who had abused Jubilee from the lips of one of the O:ZT guards, the names had been committed to memory. They were scattered all over the country, but this one had ended up here. Dr. Frank Gaylor was the dentist who had tortured Jubilee; he'd drugged her, then cut her gums and mouth open with scalpels and stimulated the nerves until she told Bastion the location of the mansion. The rapes, the abuse, the mental anguish hadn't broken her. This man did.

He was a practicing dentist out on Long Island; and Logan, to his utter disgust, found out that the majority of Gaylor's patients were young girls. He also specialized in anesthetic procedures for young girls; which fact made Logan very suspicious indeed. And his fact-finding mission had turned up the fact that Gaylor had been arrested several times for propositioning prostitutes on the streets, despite the fact he was newly-married…to a woman with a twelve-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. The girl had suddenly developed behavioral problems at school, and was currently in counseling.

All of which pointed, very clearly, to the fact that Gaylor was a pedophile with an appetite for young girls. Logan was fairly sure that the reason for his new daughter's sudden behavioral problems was because of her new father's unwelcome advances. Logan had been watching Gaylor for the last week; he knew the dentist was spending an abnormal amount of time at this office long after his receptionist and patients had left for the day. Now he had an explanation for those long stays; the man was using his office computer to look at child porn online. Logan's lip curled in disgust, and he slammed the man's head against the wall hard enough to knock the man out cold. He'd have a splitting headache when he woke up, but that would be the very least of his concerns.

Logan dragged the unconscious dentist into his own exam room. Once there, a few quick claw swipes served to cut away the man's clothing, and Logan saw the raw red scratches on the man's torso and upper chest. They were parallel, shallow, and close together…just about the right length and size for a child who had tried to fight back when her attacker descended on her. Seeing the scratches made Logan furious, and the sleeping beast in him, the Wolverine, roused.

Wolverine tossed the ragged remains of the dentist's clothes away, then dropped the unconscious man into his own exam chair. A quick rummage through Gaylor's cabinets produced a giant roll of white medical tape; he wound this around the man's upper body, legs, and forehead, immobilizing him in the chair and preventing his escape. He left the exam room for a quick moment, going outside to his Jeep and bringing the toolbox he'd hidden under the front seat, returning to the exam room with it. Then he slapped the man's face hard. "Wake up," he growled.

The dentist came awake with a start. There was a moment of disorientation as he looked around him at what little he could see around him, then his eyes focused on Wolverine and he opened his mouth to yell for help. Wolverine beat him to it, clamping a heavy hand over his mouth. "Yell and I kill ya," he snarled. "Got me? I don't think there's anyone left in the buildin' ta hear ya, anyway." The sudden realization in the dentist's eyes was sweet. So was the fear. Wolverine drank in his terror and uncertainty, letting it wash over him and fuel the rage burning in him.

"Who are you?" the man asked finally, weakly. "Look, if it's money you want, I have plenty, and my checkbook's—"

Wolverine slammed a hand on the steel counter beside the sink. A glass jar of cotton balls fell onto its side and broke; Gaylor jumped, and the smell of fear in the room increased. "I don't want yer money," he snarled. "I want payment fer what ya did ta my little girl."

"Are you Stacy's dad? Look, I settled with her mother out of court, and since you don't have custody of her, you can't object. I didn't do all the stuff Stacy said I did. And when I did her procedure her mother misinterpreted the pain when I took care of her cavity as sadistic fetish because I didn't use gas. I didn't do it cause I was a sadist, I swear, I did it because her mother's insurance wouldn't cover gas so I thought by doing it that way I'd save them money. I didn't realize I was drilling too deep until Stacy started screaming. But I had to finish up since I'd gone that far so I packed her mouth with cotton to collect the blood and kept going."

Wolverine's fist curled around a tiny scalpel. "Ya like the sound o' little girls screamin'?" he said, too softly.

"No! No, I swear, I really had to finish up, I didn't like it, I swear!"

Wolverine whirled, pointing the scalpel at the man's groin. "So how come the little dentist down there's suddenly payin' attention?" It was true, the dentist's genitals had reacted as he described what he'd done.

"Please, I swear it wasn't true, I didn't touch her while she was crying, I didn't say all those things she said I said, I swear!" the man was begging pitifully.

Wolverine turned back to the table as the begging went on behind him. He'd read the whole story in the papers; it was in the article about the court case that he had found Frank Gaylor's name. It had been an ugly case; a little ten year old girl named Stacy had been a patient, and Gaylor had treated her for a cavity.

According to Stacy, he'd strapped her down to the chair Gaylor was currently strapped to, saying that he needed her to be absolutely still for the procedure; then he'd slid his hand up her shirt to touch her chest, claiming he needed to make sure she wasn't suffering undue anxiety and causing an irregular heartbeat. He hadn't gone up her skirt (she went to a private school and wore a uniform) but he had laid a hand on her hip just a little too long. Then he'd proceeded to drill out her cavity. The drill went too deep, hit a nerve and blood vessel, and she started screaming in pain, at which point Gaylor stuffed wads of cotton into her mouth while he continued. Stacy's mother, waiting outside in the waiting room, hadn't heard her daughter, didn't know anything was wrong until Gaylor finished, gave Stacy a huge shot of novocaine to numb her mouth, and waited till the little girl was sufficiently unable to speak before sending her back out to her mother. It hadn't been until the novocaine wore off that Stacy had been able to tell her mother what happened. Her mother had filed a lawsuit, which Gaylor settled out of court by offering the mother a huge sum of money. Wolverine despised the mother; if it had been him, he would have sued the bastard not only for money but his license to practice dentistry as well. It was too late to sue Gaylor for what he'd done to Jubilee during her stay at the Hulkbuster base, but there was justice, and there was justice, and Logan was going to refer the 'case' to the highest judge possible. Let Frank explain what he'd done to his Maker and hope for mercy: Wolverine had none.

"Well, maybe this'll help a little," Wolverine said at last, having completed his inspection of the available tools in the dentist's office and his toolbox and decided what he was going to do. "I ain't here fer Stacy. This is about another little girl."

"Fanny? But her case was settled out of court too. She admitted she lied, she only said what she said because her parents heard about the Stacy case and wanted a bit of the lawsuit proceeds—"

"Naw, this ain't 'bout Fanny, either," Wolverine said nastily, turning to the doctor with a syringe full of novocaine in his hand. He didn't use it immediately, though. "This is 'bout another little girl. Ya oughtta remember her. You worked as a dentist for the mutants incarcerated at the Hulkbuster Base in New Mexico a few years back, didn't ya?" He already knew the answer.

"Yes, but what has that got to do with…the sudden silence caused Wolverine to look up. Gaylor's face was pasty white. "Jimmy…"

"I see ya saw the news reports 'bout his death." Wolverine nodded. "Jimmy told me everythin' 'fore he paid the price fer what he did ta my little girl. Now yer gonna pay too. An' so will every other bastard who touched her."

"But…I did what I was told to! It was all sanctioned by Bastion! He said it was all right, she was just a mutie freak, and she had information that was vital to national security and mankind's future!"

"Hitler said the same thing ta his people 'bout the Jews. Didn't keep 'em from goin' up in Nuremburg fer war crimes. Jus' like yer goin' up right now fer yer crimes in the mutant/human war. Except yer goin' up to the Final Judge ta see if he'll offer ya any mercy. I ain't got any."

"I never touched her body! I swear, I did only what I was told to, whatever Jimmy said was a lie!" Gaylor began struggling against the straps on the chair. "Help! Somebody help me!"

Wolverine smiled as he snapped a pair of latex exam gloves over his hands. "Ain't nobody gonna hear ya," he said. "Ya soundproofed the room so nobody'd hear yer girl patients screamin', right? An' then threatened 'em with more pain if they talked. Too bad fer you that Stacy didn't believe ya an' told her mom what ya did. It mighta taken me another year or so ta find ya if she had. Don't mistake me, though; I'd 'a found you eventually anyway." He leaned in. "Now I'll tell ya what Jimmy told me. Another doctor gave her a dose o' pentothal, then ya had Jubes strapped down ta a chair a lot like this one, propped her mouth open with a spreader like the one ya used on little Stacy, an' then ya cut her gums open ta expose the nerves. Then ya stimulated them till she was delirious from the pain an' gave Bastion the information he wanted." Wolverine's voice went very soft. "I had a discussion with Jubes. She didn't remember much o' what happened after you was done 'cause o' the drugs an' blood loss an' the fact that she blacked out from lack o' air a few times, but she does remember clearly that ya left the room complainin' that ya should taken yer pants off before ya took her, that she got blood all over yer pants."

Gaylor went white as Wolverine went on. "What I figure was that you was so excited 'bout hearin' her scream an' beg that ya got on top o' her an' tried ta get an oral fuck in. All that blood from her bleeding mouth got on ya when ya went too deep in her throat an' triggered her gag reflex. She threw up a whole lotta blood on yer pants. Ya ignored it at the time an' shoved it in further till ya cut off her air an' she passed out from lack o' oxygen. M' I right?"

The expression on Frank Gaylor's face told Wolverine everything he needed to know.

"I wonder how many other little girl patients o' yers got throat-fucked till they threw up?" Wolverine asked softly. "Wonder how many o' them were out under the gas an' never knew it? How many lives have ya screwed up, like ya messed up my little girl's?"

"I didn't mess up her life!" Gaylor found his voice. "Chester—Dr. Chester Lee sterilized her! Then he put the implant in her thigh so she wouldn't have her period and mess up our fun. But she still got pregnant…we realized it when she started throwing up…he was planning a hysterectomy when she escaped."

A hysterectomy. That was irreversible. Wolverine went very still. Dr. Chester Lee was next on his list. And if Gaylor was on a first name basis with him, he probably knew where the bastard was. "Chester," he drawled slowly. "If he's more culpable than you, I oughta be goin' after him, right? Where is he?"

"If I tell you, you'll leave me alone?"

Wolverine laughed nastily. "Yes," he said unhesitatingly.

"He's in Florida. Got a busy obstetrics practice in Miami." The trusting little fool.

Enough talk. He had what he needed. Now time for payment. Wolverine caught the end of the man's tongue in a pair of forceps just as he finished speaking, his own movement too quick for the other man to discern his intent. Gaylor yelled, his eyes watering in pain at the tight grip the forceps had on his tongue, but Wolverine didn't grab it for long. Just long enough to add a jaw-spreader, rendering Gaylor's babbled speech incoherent.

He turned back to the table, picked up a drill. It was one of those new-fangled laser things, designed not to drill too deep. Useless for what he wanted it to do, so he put it aside in favor of the drill he pulled out of his own tool box. This was no dentist's drill; this was a specialized high-torque drill with a diamond-studded head used for drilling holes in metal…and it was cordless, which was even better. He'd made sure the battery was fully charged.

He checked the available bits, selected a 1/8th extra-long bit. A cruel smile twitched the corner of his lips upward as he turned and looked at Gaylor's cock, which was wilting quickly under his diabolically cheery smile. Logan leaned over, grabbed the penis, and placed the tip of the drill directly inside the hole at the tip of the organ. There were some incoherent noises as he did this; but it paled in comparison to what came from the dentist's mouth and throat when he started the drill.

Five minutes later, he stopped the drill and used the dentist's white coat to mop some of the blood away from the now-unconscious man's genitals. Going to the cabinets, he found a bottle of alcohol and uncapped it, then drew some of it up into an available syringe and leisurely started to inject the alcohol, drip by drip, into the mutilated organ. Gaylor roused, screaming in agony and panic, though the sound was confined to the exam room. Wolverine took care to get the alcohol into the hole he'd just drilled.

When he got tired of that he picked up a tourniquet, tied it around the cock and ball sack of the man he was torturing to death. He watched in satisfaction as blood remained trapped in the blood vessels, causing the balls to swell and turn red, then blue and purple. When the incoherent screaming was almost constant and the balls were almost black, he cut into the sack with a shallow swipe from his claws, one shallow cut on each side, and peeled the skin back until the balls popped out. Instead of cutting them off, though, he carefully manipulated the bundles of tightly-compacted tubing through which Gaylor's sperm traveled, then pulled the tissue up. The unraveled vas deferens came to rest wetly on Gaylor's stomach, and Wolverine dropped the rest of the tissue mass into the open mouth. A few pokes with his finger and the stuff slid into the man's throat. Gaylor's eyes were rolling, his heart rate had increased to the point where even Wolverine's sensitive hearing couldn't pick out the individual beats, and he was sweating and shaking. Shock. Wolverine shrugged; time to wrap this up. The guy hadn't lasted as long as Jim had. Pity. Maybe Chester Lee would be more satisfying.

He ended the man's agony, finishing it all with a quick claw jab into Gaylor's chest, impaling the heart and stopping the frantic beating instantly. The body tensed for a moment on the table, then relaxed. Wolverine took his time leisurely cleaning his hands; he didn't want to return to the mansion with this scumbag's blood on his hands, like he had the last time. He wiped his fingerprints off every object he'd touched, every surface he'd rested his hands on, tucked the cordless drill back into the toolbox, and then turned his attention to the doctor's file cabinets. Somewhere in there, Gaylor might have the address to Lee's practice, or at least a phone number. That would simplify Wolverine's search for the man who had done his best to ruin Jubilee's body.

He pulled out a thick manila envelope labeled 'personal' and opened it, carelessly spilling its contents onto the counter. Then he did a double-take, shocked, by what he saw. Gaylor had stashed his own personal porn collection in this envelope; there were dozens of Polaroid photos of various little girls lying sleeping in the exam chair, in various stages of undress. They ranged in age from very young (Wolverine saw one adorable blond girl who looked no more than five) to early teens; none of them looked any older than about thirteen or fourteen.

His gorge rose, the sudden sick feeling shocking the Wolverine back into hiding. How many girls had had this done to them by this sick dentist? How could…had they known? Would their parents listen if their child told them they didn't like Dr. Gaylor? Would a parent assume their child had a funny dream while under anesthesia and not bother to confront the doctor because they didn't believe the child? How many of these girls were now permanently scarred, mentally and emotionally, because of what Gaylor had done to them?

He reached for the toolbox, took out a hammer and a pack of nails. One by one, he nailed each one of the gruesome, disgusting pictures to the wall at the right of the exam chair, on which the body was now cooling. When the receptionist came the next day to open up, she would call the police, and the police would see the pictures. After that, they probably wouldn't look too hard to find the killer, and they would also be able to figure out who all those little children were and get them counseling.

The last photo in the packet made him stop and lean against the wall, tears in his eyes. It was Jubilee as she had looked back there at the time O:ZT happened; but it was a Jubilee Logan had never seen. This was a skinny, bruised, battered Jubilee, strapped to a table, her mouth held open by a jaw spreader, blood streaked on her pale skin. Her blue eyes were glazed by the combination of drugs and pain, and Logan felt tears spring to his eyes as he gently touched the two-dimensional face. The lighting in the room this was taken had been bright, harsh, like an operating theater; it showed the dark bruises on her skin, picking out the shadows between the bones protruding in stark relief from her thin, fragile, papery skin. She had endured so much, his little Jubes… it was a wonder she had been strong enough to emerge with her sanity intact from the other side of this ordeal. With all his heart he wished that it had never happened, wished he could have prevented what happened to her, but he couldn't. He could only try and bring some long-delayed justice to those who had done these horrible things to Jubilee, bringing some peace of mind to himself as well as her.

He tucked the photograph into the toolbox; he didn't want to nail that up here. Not where everyone would be able to see. He couldn't do that. He'd take it, destroy it. Jubilee didn't need to know they'd taken pictures of her while she was drugged and out of it.

He stopped in the reception area on his way out when he saw the Rolodex sitting on the desk there. It wasn't likely that Gaylor had put a personal contact in his patient Rolodex, but just maybe…. He flipped to the L's, thumbed through the address and name cards. And, amazingly, there it was; Dr. Chester Lee, 3821 Surfside Road, Miami, Florida. Logan grabbed a pen and scribbled it on the front page of a prescription pad, being careful as he ripped the page out that he took the three pages behind it too. The police might have been able to take a rubbing of the imprinted writing…if they even bothered after seeing the pictures above Gaylor's body. Grimly satisfied, he went outside, strolled around to the back of the building, and got into his Jeep, which he'd parked beside the dentist's BMW.

He drove home slowly, somberly, thinking about what he'd done. He let himself into the mansion at almost five in the morning. He headed wearily for his room…and was stopped by Emma on the stairs.

"Good morning, Logan," she said in her clipped Boston accent. Then, seeing the toolbox in his hand, she said, "I was looking for that last night. Charles found a painting while he was in Paris and thought it would look wonderful in the front hall. Here, let me have it, and I'll go hang it up now."

"No." Logan gripped the toolbox tighter. "I'll bring it down when I'm done with it."

Emma sensed his unease but didn't understand it. "Logan, the toolbox is for all of us to use, not for any one person's private use."

"I just borrowed it for the evenin'. I'll put it back in the closet after I clean off the tools I used."

Emma blew out her breath in exasperation. "Well, then at least give me the hammer and the nails. I'll put them back in the toolbox when you put the toolbox back in the closet."

Logan set the toolbox down on the step with a thump and opened it. He'd shaken it up a bit, and the pack of nails had fallen off the top of the hammer and screwdrivers and into the bottom compartment of the box. He lifted the top tray out to reach the packet, and when he turned around Emma had a small white square in her hand and was staring at it in complete shock and horror.

"Jubilee…" her voice was a whisper. "Logan, this is Jubilee."

"Yeah."

He grabbed for the picture, but Emma saw him move and held it up out of his reach. "Logan…where did you get this?"

"One of the guys who did that to Jubilee had it. Give it to me. I wanna destroy it 'fore she sees it." He grabbed for it.

"Is that where you've been disappearing to every afternoon this week?" Emma didn't sound disapproving or accusatory. Her voice was carefully neutral, and Logan couldn't read anything in her face or voice.

"Yeah."

"Is he dead?"

"Yeah."

"Good." Emma's eyes were full of a terrible savage delight. "I'm glad."

Logan blinked. "What?"

Emma sighed and sat heavily on the step beside him. "I saw her when she came back from Bastion's, Logan. I heard her cry out when she had nightmares. I didn't think much of them, then, because what happened to her would give anyone nightmares, but she's still having them and that means she hasn't quite fully come to terms with what happened. I can hear her try to muffle her sobbing at night, sometimes, as I'm sure you have as well. It hurts when I hear her beg her nightmare tormentors for mercy. If I knew the names of the men who did it I'd kill all of them. I tried talking to her, once. Told her if she told me the names I could try to find out what happened to them. She told me what she could, but she didn't know all of their names."

"She knew…some of 'em?" Logan almost stopped breathing.

"The three guards whose names she knew are very, very dead, Logan."

"Ya know that for certain?"

Emma looked straight at him. She didn't say a word. She didn't have to. Into Logan's mind poured a brief montage of images of three men, viciously sexually tortured, maimed, and killed.

Logan stared at Emma, feeling slightly shaken. He'd known that Emma knew about what had happened to Jubilee, knew that, of every other X-Man in the mansion, Emma had the resources to carry out a vendetta. He hadn't known Emma was putting those resources to use on the men who had violated Jubilee. But three of the names on his list, three targets, were gone. "Who?" he finally said.

"Merrill, Ramsey, and Jackson," Emma said. "There was another man who hurt her very badly, named George, but Jubilee didn't know his last name."

"Wenger," Logan said. "George Wenger. I got the names of all the men who hurt her from a guy who was there. He died…but not 'til after he confessed an' gave me the rest of the names. I'm leavin' fer Florida tomorrow ta go find the doctor who sterilized her."

Emma looked at him. "I took Jubilee to a surgeon who reversed the procedure."

He nodded. "I know. The guy I just…executed…said the doctor was plannin' on doin' a hysterectomy on Jubes right before she escaped. He's an OB/GYN; he's supposed to care for women and their reproductive health, not hurt 'em.."

"A hysterectomy." Emma could look as deadly as Logan, when she put her mind to it. He saw that look of icy rage on her face now, as she tapped her lower lip with one manicured nail thoughtfully. "Wonder if I would I have to look pregnant to get close to him…"

"What?" Logan yelped.

She looked at him, wry amusement almost cloaking the deadly intent he saw in her eyes. "Well, you didn't think you were going to do this one alone, were you? I want this man. You can have the rest but I want this one."

"Does Jubilee know?"

"She's got a box under her bed with little souvenirs in it, Logan. Every time I had one killed, I made sure the police found the body…and then I clipped the resulting news story out of the newspaper and gave it to her. She kept them. I don't know if she knows I arranged it, though. She's smart enough to have figured it out but if she knows she hasn't said anything to me."

"Emma…"

"Save it, Logan," she held up a hand to stem his words. "This is as much for my peace of mind as it is for hers. I hate hearing her fight these men over and over in her dreams. She doesn't have them often anymore, but she does still have them and it hurts me when I hear it. So don't lecture me. I'm going to Florida, with or without you."

Logan blinked. Now what the hell was he supposed to say to that?

"'Thank you' might be nice," Emma said wryly.

He stared at her.

She sighed. "Go put that picture away where Jubes won't find it and come help me hang this painting. We're the only ones up, so it's a good time for planning something that Charles…and Scott…probably won't approve of."