Lady Deathstryke is an efficient killer. She slips in unnoticed and leaves the scene just as easily, with minimal evidence left behind in her wake. She has a sharp, confident air about her- she has the look of an impressive businesswoman. She wears dark, serious business suits with stiletto pumps, and wears her long dark hair in a low ponytail. Often she wears dark sunglasses to disguise the only physical oddity of her person.

Oh, yes, Lady Deathstryke gives off the perfect aura of complete and perfect control.

To look at her, you'd never know that she was dying on the inside. I hated looking at my reflection- a killer was what stared back at me in the glass. I never knew that just by accompanying my father for what was to be a special project that my life would have gone on the way it has.

My father is dead, and if I can't free myself from William's drugs, I will die too, and truly become Lady Deathstryke. My only freedom is in my mind, there I return home to Japan, to my parents and my friends.

I don't know how I survived the years of William's assassination assignments and his experiments. Yes, he experimented on me- testing to see if my martial arts skills were still sharp by having his soldiers attack me. William told me to hold back- he wanted to know how well I could fight without using my talons. I was meant to hold back, but his soldiers were under no such orders. Not that it mattered- my mutation was a simple healing factor, that's all. No psychic ability, no super-strength, no flight, no element control- all I can do is heal myself.

I would often stay up late into the night and wonder how a healing factor that had once been so boring to me had so quickly given William the idea to find new ways to torture me. It wasn't enough that he had murdered my father, made me his killing slave and whore- no, William wanted to know everything about my power.

He wanted to know how easily my bones would reset themselves after they were broken, how quickly I could heal myself from a third-degree burn and how my organs would repair themselves after I was stabbed…

I thought that William may have been trying to break my spirit, so that one day there would be no need for the drug. He wanted me to be his killer of my own choosing, but inside he must have known that would never happen.

As I said, I always kept up the hope that one day I would be freed somehow of William's hold over me, and the first spark of inspiration came to me almost 15 years after he'd first implanted me with the adamantium and forced me to be his killer. William had begun to make visits to the plastic prison that held Magneto. I didn't know much about this mutant, only that he had once tried to warp the DNA of numerous world leaders in the hope that, if they were mutants themselves, they would allow mutants their basic rights to live without fear.

His attempt backfired, as he and his few mutant comrades were outdone by another group of mutants- former students of a man named Charles Xavier. William would never have told me anything of his past, but I had overhead his soldiers talking about him and what had happened to his family.

Rumors don't hold much truth, but something about his own son being a mutant and the cause of his wife's death seemed to make sense. If, in William's mind, it was a mutation that had taken away his wife and son, then of course he would see all mutations as an enemy. For all of the terrible things that William did to me- he is a genius. He developed the technology to create the adamantium laced through my, and countless other mutants' bodies. He developed the plastic prison where the Magneto was being held.

William had devised the plan to capture and manipulate Charles Xavier into harming mutants. I knew that my time on the earth was limited- when Charles would kill the global population of mutants, I would be among the first to go. After all, I was in the eye of the storm.

I went along with William to the plastic prison only one time, and it was there that I had my first glimpse of Magneto, Xavier and Cyclops. William had given me orders to collect Xavier from the plastic prison cell, but I knew I had to try to do something, anything to stop him. I went in too late- my idea had been to show myself to Magneto. I would have had to subdue the guards, but I wouldn't have killed them, I would have just fought them off as quickly as I could before going to Magneto.

I had seen a few select video clips of the man that called himself Magneto. He was intelligent, very sharp, and unbelievably powerful. It shocked me that Magneto had been held for as long as he had in his prison- perhaps he had been just biding his time, waiting to find out exactly what it was that William was planning. He withstood the beatings of his guard, and William's interrogations just for the sake of information.

In my mind, I had planned a scenario- I would have fought off the guards, set the tunneled bridge out to his cell, walked through the door and said to him, "Magneto, I'm a mutant, William Stryker has made plans to kill us all! You know that I have metal in my body; I know you can sense it, the adamantium is indestructible. Let me help you, together we can escape to save the rest of our race!"

I fought against the drug as strongly as I could, but it was as powerful as ever, and all I could accomplish was giving myself a terrible headache from the effort. I fought Cyclops, knocked him unconscious- screaming inside as I did so. Had I been free, he would have helped me and the others to escape William's plastic fortress, we could have made it…

When I turned to release the bridge to Magneto's cell, both he and professor Xavier were unconscious- some form of gas vapor that had knocked them out.

I stepped over to Magneto. He was slumped against the back wall of his cell, his eyes were glazed over and his mouth was slightly opened. He looked older than I had expected, and much more haggard. It had to be the abuse he'd been suffering throughout his imprisonment. I could see a large bruise on the right side of his face, there were dark circles under his eyes and stubble shaded his jaw. Lying there on the floor, Magneto didn't look powerful at all. Where had the great mutant liberator gone? Where was his dignity, his commanding presence and his magnetic powers?

I wondered idly if he could sense my adamantium, but like me, he was too trapped in his drugged state to do anything about it. I hated him then, which was silly because he'd done nothing to me, but I hated him for being as weak as I had been, to fall prey to mere chemicals. He was our most powerful defender, and here he was, lying on the floor in a drugged stupor- where's the dignity in this?

I knew that William had won.

He had captured Xavier and together they would end us all. I tried to cut myself as I lied in bed the next few nights, hoping to bleed myself dry but of course it was impossible- a cut would heal itself before a drop of blood would escape. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I've as good as killed the entire planet! Countless mutants would die because of my idiot gullibility!

It was strange, having never met him before, but I felt even worse knowing that Magneto would see me as a traitor if he knew that a mutant had played such a major role in this mass murder.

William had his plan carefully laid out, but the one thing he hadn't counted on was that Xavier's students and Magneto himself knew where his base was located and they had wasted no time in their attack. I was cheering inside as I watched William begin to despair. Something was happening to the dam of Alkali Lake- the base would be flooded.

William took a moment to calm himself and he then gave me the strangest look- hatred, anger, jealousy and lust all rolled into one. He motioned for me to follow him, and the drug forced me forward. He didn't bother telling me to wipe the smirk off my face- he knew that he was finished. The X-men mutants and Magneto would somehow stop Xavier from going through with William's plans.

His only option was to escape, even if only so that he might fight another day. He led me through a lab that I recognized instantly- it was the same lab where he'd created me, it was the lab where Lady Deathstryke had been born.

Logan had reappeared, and I knew that it was here, in this lab where Lady Deathstryke would die.