Chapter 2: Logan 2104
Logan paused, still in a fighter's crouch, claws still extended, warily keeping one eye on his opponents as he watched for signs that they might get up and come after him again.
No one did. Satisfied after a few moments, he rose to his full height and retracted his claws. "Suckers," he growled, looking at the fallen men. "Think yer fancy guns are gonna take me down? Don' think so. I ain't lived two centuries to fall ta the likes o' you." He sniffed disdainfully as he exited the bar.
There were a few other bikes here besides his, but most of the vehicles in the airpark were aircars, or the smaller personal craft that most people drove around these days. He scorned them. If it had been possible, he would have kept his Harley and ridden it around on the streets below; but machines get old, and parts for his bike had gotten increasingly rarer. And gasoline was scarce, since the powers that now ruled this world had decided that gasoline-powered vehicles polluted the air. So aircars and airbikes began to proliferate; vehicles powered by solar power and equipped with antigrav generators like the ones used on Chuck's wheelchair all those years ago.
He slid a leg over the black airbike. He'd bought the one closest to the shape and make of the old Harley as possible. This one looked like his old bike, but instead of a gas tank, this bike had a solar battery with a couple of energy cells in it for backup.
He turned the ignition key and listened as it started up. Most of them started up without a sound; the running lights would come on (even in the daytime, which Logan thought was a waste) and a discreet beep; but he, missing the old sound, had had a custom shop put on a soundbox that would mimic the throaty roar of a real Harley as it started up.
But no matter what he did to this airbike, it would never equal the speed, handling, maneuverability, and grace of the old machine. He looked ruefully down at the gas-tank-turned-solar-cell-chamber on top of this bike, and sighed. "Ain't never gonna be the same. Think I lived too long," and he guided the airbike out of the airpark and headed out along the freeway.
2104 bore no resemblance to 2004. Only a century had passed, but it had been a century full of new innovations, things that were supposed to make life easier and better for everyone. Some of the inventions weren't all that bad, but some…like airbikes…just made his lip curl with disgust. "Definitely lived too long," he said softly to himself.
Madripoor didn't look like it used to. Instead of being a nice little backwater place where fights and murders were commonplace and were never looked at too carefully, it was now a busy town, filled with silver aircars and a few airbikes. Bars and seedy dives were still in abundance, but the streets were better policed and the dives no longer provided the kind of rough 'amusement' he had come here for back in the days when he was running with Chuck's X-Men.
He supposed, though, that for all its apparent fanciness, Madripoor was still the sticks when compared with, say, New York or Washington. The stuff available back in New York must be incredible, but Logan wanted none of it. Let the younger generation have their fancy gadgets; he wanted to go back to the good old days.
Behind him, he heard the sound of a siren, and then the flashing red and blue lights of a cop started reflecting off the windows of the nearby buildings. Logan suppressed a growl as he pulled over. Some things didn't change. Like cops out to ruin a good night. "What's the problem, officer," he said heavily, staring at the sky and crossing his arms.
If the cop was irritated by Logan's attitude, he didn't show it. "You were speeding," he said absently, scribbling with a stylus on a datapad, and said, "ID?"
Logan growled as he fished around in his back pocket for his wallet. That was one thing that hadn't changed; jeans. People like him still wore jeans, although the upper-crust, artsy-fartsy people wore expensive clothing made of synthetic materials that would last a lot longer than natural fibers like cotton. But denim was still the preferred material for middle and lower class people all over the world.
He dug out the little chip of plastic that passed for ID these days. It was the size and shape of a credit card, though made of a more durable material than plastic, and the little encoded black strip behind the card had a lot more information than the old strips had. Logan didn't know what was on that strip…didn't want to know either.
The officer took the ID card from Logan and slid it into a slot in the side of his datapad. "Patch Logan," that was the name Logan was going by these days, especially in this city, where the name and the face had become legend after over a century and a half of familiarity with the residents and the area. Especially in the last hundred years, after Logan had taken up permanent residence here in Madripoor; the lower class now looked on him as something of a local god. "You have been cited for speeding. The sum of one hundred euros has been deducted from the account number encoded on your card. Here's your receipt." The man pulled a little slip of paper from the front of his datapad and started to hand the card and the receipt to Logan, then paused. "Sir, why is your helmet on the back of your bike instead of on your head?"
Logan rolled his eyes. "Don't wear one," he groused. "Never wear one. Messes up my hair."
The officer slid the card back into the side port. "For failure to wear a helmet, you are being fined another eighty five euros, which is now being deducted from your account." The machine spit the little card out and the officer tore off another little slip of paper, handing it to Logan. "Here's your receipt. Have a nice evening."
Logan snarled as he took the card and the slips of paper back, "What's so nice about it?" He took the card back, palming the loose slips of paper. The cop, however, didn't go anywhere.
"Well? Whatcha waitin' for, a dry rot ta set in?" Logan grumped.
"Your helmet," the cop said, his jaw clenched. "You need to put your helmet on before I leave."
Logan reached onto the back of the airbike, grabbing the black helmet and jamming it down on top of his head. Fastening the straps under his chin, he glowered at the cop. "Satisfied?"
The cop nodded. "Have a nice evening, Mister Logan." He drove off.
As soon as he turned the corner Logan yanked the helmet off his head and dropped it on the back of the bike. "Have a nice flamin' evenin' yerself," he grumped. Running his hand through his hair, he got all the strands back to where they usually sat, and started his bike again.
He reflected on the times as he rode back to his apartment. He'd never had problems with traffic cops and citations for doing (or not doing) something even in New York. And he'd never had problems with Madripoor police. He growled as he looked at the receipts. Ah, hell. He'd have to subtract the cost of the citations from the account this ID card was tied to. He had several ID cards, and each one had a different amount attached to each one.
He shoved them into his pocket and continued on.
His apartment wasn't far from the bar he'd just come from; he would have made it home in ten minutes if he hadn't been stopped by that damn cop. But finally, he did pull into the airpark for his apartment complex, got off and powered down the airbike.
The building was quiet as he walked in and stepped into the lift that would take him up to his floor. "Lift: floor six." It started moving obediently. They worked just like the elevators of the last century, but these started smoothly and stopped without the peculiarsensation of having the floor dropping out under your feet, and the lifts were now equipped with holographic imaging technology that could give you the illusion of standing on a flying platform above a green countryside with nothing but trees around you if you wanted it.'Ro woulda loved this, he sighed to himself wistfully as he watched himself leave the ground and soar into the air. She wouldn't'a hadda deal with her claustrophobia.
The lift stopped, and a door opened up seemingly in midair. "Have a nice morning," the electronic voice said cheerfully, and Logan growled. "It's evenin', ya know. Dumb machine."
"Actually," said a quiet voice from in front of him, "It is morning. Early morning. Very early morning. So the lift is right."
Logan pinned the speaker with a glare. "Still evenin' in my book, 'cause I ain't gone ta bed yet," he growled. "So git on off your soapbox." He frowned in mock annoyance at the tall dark-skinned girl in front of him.
Her name was Carey. She lived in the apartment beside his, and seemed to take a special interest in taking care of him. Or tormenting him, whichever way you wanted to look at it. He growled and snarled at her when she came in to clean up his apartment for him, or when she came to cook or pick up his laundry…but although he would never admit it, he liked her, and permitted her interference in his life, albeit tacitly. Mostly because she reminded him so much of Ororo, lost a century earlier on a mission with the X-Men.
Carey spotted the slips of paper sticking out of his coat pocket, and grabbed at them before he could prevent her. "Another ticket? Patch!" She scanned them quickly. "Not wearing a helmet and speeding. Patch, when will you learn?" she clicked her tongue behind her teeth disapprovingly. "Your account book is in the upper drawer of your nighttable. Worry about that tomorrow; right now you really need to eat and get some sleep." She had escorted him to the door to his apartment, and now opened it and pushed him through.
Logan stopped in the doorway, resisting her. "I locked that door. How'd ya get through it?"
She grinned cheekily at him, her dusky skin getting darker over her cheekbones as she blushed. "Got a new lockpick set," she admitted. "Supposed to work on even the best high-tech locks and retinal scanners. I tried them on your door. Worked like a charm. Now go on and get some sleep, Logan!" she gave him a shove through the door of his apartment, and shut the door behind him.
He turned and stared at the shut door for a moment in irritation, then a smile softened the harsh line of his mouth. "Damn woman," he said softly. "Let's see what she made me for dinner."
It turned out to be a hearty beef stew with a minimum of vegetables and lots of meat. Just the way he liked it. He was touched; she usually tended to make vegetarian dishes. Again, he was forcibly reminded of Ororo as he sat down and ate.
By the time he finished, he was starting to feel sleepy. He wandered into his bedroom. The bed sheets had been replaced with freshly-laundered ones, and the old dirty laundry had been taken away. On his nightstand was a note; I took the dirty laundry to do with my laundry tomorrow. If you would be so kind as to leave your door unlocked, I will bring the washed clothing back tomorrow evening before you get home. Oh, and a friend of yours stopped by, looking for you; he says he wants to talk to you about a job. He said he was at the Glass and Tap tavern and inn in town, and you could find him there. Carey.
Logan stripped down to his boxers and slipped between the sheets. The bed was warm; she had obviously turned the heating element on in the mattress under him. It was welcome, since it was a cool night. He stretched out in bed, smiling a bit at her thoughtfulness. As he lay there, trying to get to sleep, his mind returned to thoughts of Ororo.
It was almost a century now since she had died, but the memory still hurt. Jubilee had sneaked out of the mansion to go shopping when she was supposed to have been grounded, and got herself captured by an old associate of Bastion's, who had his own anti-X-Men vendetta. Logan and a few of the X-Men had gone to rescue her, and as they broke her out of the old Hulkbuster base, Ororo and Kurt had both died. He and Ororo had picked up on their on-again-off-again relationship just before the incident had happened, and in the renewed welter of emotions that caused, her death coming in the middle of it had made things extremely difficult. And Kurt, his best friend in the X-Men, had died too. It made him snap.
Jubilee had been worked over mentally by the time they had reached her, and seeing her friends die in front of her had sent her into emotional shock. She had, as she usually did, come to him for comfort. He, still in emotional shock himself from Ororo's and Kurt's deaths, had rebuffed her, had accused her of causing their deaths because she refused to accept responsibility for her actions and staying at the mansion when she'd been grounded. He'd flown into a rage, accused her of killing them, and when she tried to deny it was her fault, he'd gotten angry and hurled a computer monitor from the library table at her. It had connected with her shoulder, snapping her collarbone and sending her back to the medlabs. Sure that she would blame him, feeling guilty about hurting her, and with grief still an open wound in his soul, he had left the mansion the next day, packing everything, taking his jeep and putting his Harley on the trailer in the back. By the time Jubilee woke up from Hank's surgery on her shoulder, Logan was gone.
And he'd never gone back. He'd returned once the next year, to leave flowers at the memorial headstone for Ororo and Kurt, and also to apologize to Jubilee for hurting her. But she had been gone, too, to LA to live with her aunt, and had chosen to leave the X-Men. He'd briefly thought about going to seek her out, but a year had passed. He was no longer sure she would want to see him; no longer sure she would welcome him with open arms and the tight choke-hold hug she used to give him. So he stayed away. They had been growing apart for a few years prior to his leaving, and he decided to let sleeping dogs lie and not stir up old feelings. And he wasn't sure he could face the anger she surely felt over his careless injuring of her.
He thought of her not infrequently over the next few years, but somehow he'd never gotten around to going and finding her. He knew where to look for her; he'd kept track of her, looked out for her from a distance even if she didn't know it. He'd almost interfered when she volunteered for the CyberTech cybernetic enhancement program sixty years ago, almost went to her and told her it was a bad idea, but decided she was old enough to make her own decisions and didn't interfere. He hadn't heard about her for a decade after that, and he'd just started getting concerned when she turned up in a special training program sponsored by the government. She had completed the enhancement program, went into training, then went overseas to study from the masters of the martial arts in China and Japan. Upon her return almost twenty five years later, she went through still more government-sponsored training, this time in weaponry and stealth skills. Logan was mystified at this constant training, but it all became clear when she and a few others who had been similarly 'enhanced' by nanotechnology and cybernetics had formed a black ops team. So she was now a government assassin.
Over the last twenty years, he'd kept an eye on her exploits. She was highly skilled and proficient in killing and covert ops. Hell, she was damn good. She was the only survivor of a mission when everything had gone wrong and her teammates were killed; he was proud of her. Black ops wasn't the life he would have chosen for her back when they were watching horror movies and kicking ass with the X-Men, but she seemed happy, and she was certainly good at what she did. And because she seemed content with her life, he'd decided not to open old wounds, bring back old memories, by a sudden reappearance in her life.
He sighed. Sometimes he wished they were still in contact; he missed her laughter, her humor, her personality; missed being able to talk to her and laugh with her. He missed her so badly that it ached sometimes; he hadn't realized until after she left and it was too late just how much he had grown to care about her, how much he'd depended on her for his own happiness. Which was probably why he kept such obsessive track of her whereabouts.
Sighing, he turned over and stared at the picture on his bedside table. One of the few reminders of them that he'd kept after leaving the X-Men, it was of them both standing side by side. Just as Ororo (who had been holding the camera) had clicked the shutter, Jubilee had snatched his hat off his head and plunked it on her own. The camera had captured his look of surprise and her laughing face perfectly. God, he missed her. Resolutely, he turned his mind back to the 'friend' who had come by with a 'job' for him.
The Glass and Tap was a small inn in town that catered to the seedier elements of society. No questions were asked, and anyone looking for a hired assassin could usually find one there. Logan himself owned half the bar; mostly because he still remembered the 'Princess Bar' that Tyger Tiger had run for him way back in the day; and partly because it was the surest place to get wind of a new 'job'. He was an assassin himself now, too. A freelance one, available for hire, not affiliated with any government and with no political or personal entanglements to get in the way. This 'friend' was likely going to hire him for another assassination.
Good. He could use the money to replenish his account now that that damn cop had relieved him of some of his hard-earned cash.
Still thinking, he drifted off into sleep.