Disclaimer: Just the usual...oh, and Angela belongs to me along with a few other people about to appear...keep your grubby mitts off them!

Chapter 17.

(Angela)

You're lying on your back in the sand, the sound of the surf pounding in your ears, relaxing you. The full moon gazes back at you offering a serenity you've not felt in ages. Your mission was completed ahead of schedule, but the extraction team won't be here until tomorrow morning. So, you get this one night on the beach, warm winds and cool spray. You can almost believe you have a normal life at times like this.

The sound of footsteps startles you for a moment, but you relax when you realize it's your partner. You've been training together for weeks now and he's come with you on the past five ops you've run. You're still getting used to his presence. He walks a little ahead of you and you can't help but notice that he's wearing only his fatigue pants. You sit up slowly as you admire his powerful back, the muscles rippling like the waves you can hear. He stares out across the water for moment, then sighs and turns to you.

The front view is even better and you begin to wonder if you really can bounce a quarter off a really tight six-pack. You've never known anyone who had one until now. You don't mean to stare, but you can't help it. If you had to use one word to describe him, it would not be "berserker" or "psychopath" or even "killer". You're thinking to yourself "Gods, he's fucking perfection".

He walks over and sits next to you. You swallow and turn back to contemplating the waves and trying to regain your inner peace. However, you can't help but glance over at him surreptitiously. Yep, definitely perfect. After a few moments he clears his throat and turns to you.

"Hellcat, why do you do this?"

"What, contemplate the ocean? It's relaxing." You reply.

"No, not that. I get why you're doing that. I mean, the job, the killin'. Why do you do it?"

So, with a heavy heart, you tell him how they roped you in. You tell him how you spent more time in sensory dep and behavior mod your first six months than most people see in their whole lives. You tell him about the first time the telepaths came in and "softened" your mind so they could re-mold it into their image. And how every time it starts to break down, they take a little more of the real you with them.

"…And now, I don't know. I only stay for the sake of my child. At least, that's what I keep telling myself." You say in conclusion.

"But you're lyin' to yourself, aren't you?" He asks.

You nod. "Yep, I sure am. I stay for her sake, I really do." You turn and look deep into his eyes. "But I keep killing because…I'm starting to really like it." You look away, suddenly ashamed.

"Doesn't it bother you, though? That you don't know why they want these people taken out?" You give a tiny shrug and he continues. "No, really. I mean, I've done my share before this, don't get me wrong. But there was always a really good reason for it. I've never just murdered someone in cold blood before."

"After a while, it's all the same. But it's also a rush, you against them. Not knowing if you'll make it out alive. I don't know how else to explain it." You look back into his face. "It's like I'm only really alive when someone else is dying under my claws. Not because of power or anything like that. It's because I know that'll never happen to me and I envy them. I can't taste mortality, but I can sure dish it out."

"You ever want to get out?"

"Every goddamn day."

He nods and looks away. "Maybe we will someday."

"Maybe."

You pass the rest of the night in silence, but you've just been given some insight into the Wolverine. He's feral all right, and tough, mean and nasty. But he's also still human. You know it's only a matter of time before they strip his mind down to bare bones, but right now he's still just…whoever he is. He doesn't see the single tear slide down your cheek, but it's a tear shed for him. You just hope that when you're really ready to get away, he'll be enough of the same man to help you.

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We were two weeks away from the start of the new term and the older kids had gone so far in their training, we were putting them through some pretty intense Danger Room scenarios. They'd already been using their powers as part of the training for some time and had exceeded our expectations tenfold. We decided it was time to ask the Professor to make them official X-Men. Which is funny, because I still wasn't considered part of that team. Maybe the Professor didn't want to push me or something, I don't know. But it wouldn't be until much later that the invitation was forthcoming. I was perfectly content in my role as teacher and didn't worry about it too much.

When we met with the Professor, Scott, Storm and Kurt about this, Logan and I naturally expected resistance from Scott. He sat through the whole meeting clenching his jaw so hard it gave me a headache, but remarkably said nothing. Logan and I explained how well they'd done in every aspect of the training program. They still had things to learn from a tactical standpoint, but if someone were to invade the mansion at that moment, they'd be able to repel the enemy with no problems. The only resistance Scott gave was his insistence that they be put through a final exam of his choosing first. Realizing that we'd never get a yes from him without it, we agreed.

Oddly enough, the scenario he chose was the invasion of the mansion. I hadn't realized that he'd programmed that into the network, but it did make a kind of sense. It would be uncomfortable for the kids, since it was the event that represented a loss of security for them. Also, Logan wouldn't be running around taking out the soldiers he came across, which would give them more enemies to deal with. The only advantage they would have was intimate knowledge of the battlefield. We watched from the observation room as the kids filed in and took position near the door. The lights dimmed and the program started.

Let me say this right now: I love the Danger Room. I shudder to think what kind of person I'd be right now if Stryker had had anything like it for training purposes. Knowing him, he'd have used it to take out the mutants he had no use for, just to see what kind of creative ways he could kill them. I could imagine the look on Buzz's face if he could get a hold of this. Which then led me to think about the kinds of things he could program into this baby for us. I vowed to invite him to the mansion for the weekend if it was the last thing I did.

So, with that in mind, back to the exam. Scott had the fail safes set pretty high. There needed to be enough danger that they'd have to use their skills, but we didn't want them getting hurt too badly. I'm not sure how the interface worked, but the holographic enemies were programmed to take their powers into account and react accordingly. I made a mental note to run myself through this scenario with Logan later. I had an idea.

The kids handled the scenario well. Rogue was running around with gloves off, only using her power if she couldn't disable the soldiers physically. Colossus was throwing them around like rag dolls, completely armored up in case they started shooting. Jubilee was holding her own, mostly just fighting and only using her power on a few rare occasions. Bobby had simply iced the intruders' feet to the floor, froze their guns and walked up to them calmly to disarm and disable them. Kitty was impressive with both hand-to-hand and creative use of her ability. She liked to grab them, use her phasing ability to make them both intangible and left them half-stuck through walls, furniture and in one case a toilet. Then there was Kyle.

Kyle was a feral mutant, like me and Logan, except he had more in the lines of physical attributes. His eyes were pure black and his finger and toenails were more like claws than even my retractable ones. Logan says they're a lot like Sabretooth's, but having never met the man I can't say for sure. Kyle also had a healing factor that fell somewhere in between mine and Logan's and senses as heightened as Logan's if not a little better. He also had the same predatory instinct for hunting that we have. He ambushed them from around corners, from the tops of highboys and tore through them like nobody's business. We had a soft spot for him, for obvious reasons.

At any rate, Scott couldn't fault their performance in the exam, so he passed them with flying colors and invited them to the team with certain restrictions. No missions until they took the tactics and strategy classes. After that, no missions on school nights. And no matter what, they had to follow the team leader's instructions to the letter, even if they were told to run away. Personally, I didn't agree with the last one. Sometimes you have to disobey orders to achieve your objective. I just hoped they'd learned as much from us and added their own qualifiers to that restriction. But, for all intents and purposes, the X-Men now had another complete team.

During the next two weeks, I kept in close contact with Buzz and the Professor's foreign colleagues, setting up the mutant underground. It turns out that a couple of his hacker friends were also mutants (one in Belgium and another in New Zealand), so they were thrilled to lend a hand. They spread the word throughout their own underground community and just before the school term started, the mutant underground went "online". Between Charles with Cerebro and the hackers, they found ways to contact those who seemed to be at the most risk and got word to them about this new project, gave them addresses to safe houses near where they lived and passwords to get into them. We even had a few telepaths who made the rounds through runaway shelters in an attempt to find those unfortunate enough to be on the streets. A few weeks after the term started, the new kids started trickling in via the underground.

At first, everything was ok. The kids ranged in age from about nine (brought in by his own parents) to about seventeen (a runaway who'd been on the streets for six months and found out about the school from one of the telepaths at a shelter). Their gifts ranged from mild telepathy (the seventeen year old, a girl named Anissa Hallett) to a bona fide firestarter (a thirteen year old boy named Davey Bowman with flame red hair, go figure). They would continue to arrive at a steady trickle throughout the first part of the school year, but never so many that the mansion was stretched to the limits. The kids who were returning were thrilled with the new classes and some of the older ones volunteered to take shifts in the security center. Overall, things seemed to be going well.

Since the Beta team (as we dubbed Bobby, Rogue, Kitty, Jubilee, Piotr and Kyle) had already "graduated" the defense course, we assigned them to teaching the younger kids. They took turns with the task so that none of them ever had to teach more than once a week, which was good. It made us proud to see them flourish with their new responsibilities. It was also good for the younger kids, since they didn't have be taught by anyone as intimidating as Logan. The older kids were another story, but once they figured out that he wasn't going to gut them if they screwed up a move, they relaxed a bit. The standouts were obvious from the beginning, a boy named Julian Keller (a telekinetic), a very nice boy named Jamie Madrox (who could make copies of himself that could act independently of one another) and another boy named Jesse Aaronson (who could generate bioelectric fields that disrupted any electrical system, as well as scan and perceive electrical fields). The rest of them were good enough to hold their own, but these were the ones we planned on advancing to the team if their progress continued to impress.

Of course, we had plenty whose talents were better used elsewhere. We had a couple older kids come in who had an affinity for machinery not related to their mutations (one could manipulate water in any form, while the other could communicate with animals), so Scott snagged them up to assist him with the many different vehicles we had, from Logan's motorcycle to the X-jet itself. Quite a few were handy with computers, so we set them to keeping the network running as well as helping with teaching some of the younger kids the same. The more responsible ones were assigned shifts in security central. One girl came through whose mutation was the ability to make plants grow, so Storm snagged her up right away for help in the gardens. The rest were mostly too young to give extra duties to, but we were sure that would change in time.

We were about five weeks into the term when it came up. Logan and I had decided that the original (Alpha) team of X-Men needed more training, so we'd scheduled twice weekly Danger Room sessions with them along with Beta team. Sometimes we mixed the teams up, sometimes we ran them separately and sometimes they were all together as one big team. They made it through most of the scenarios with no problem. It wasn't until they asked us for what we thought would be the "worst case scenario" that the problems began.

I had thought about that myself back when Beta team was doing their exam for Scott. I had wondered what might have happened if those soldiers had been backed up by a couple of mutants built for killing. Mutants like me and Logan. So we altered the scenario to include us in it, except we'd be IN the Danger Room and it accepted us as part of the assault scenario. We did this because we knew that it was only a matter of time before whatever was left of Stryker's bunch would find someone else like us or (gods forbid) capture one or both of us and recondition us. We'd just run the combined team through the "Angela and Logan are evil" scenario and they'd failed miserably, again, so we were sitting down to see if we could figure out why.

"Ok you guys." I began, standing with my hands on the table and leaning forward. "Why did we beat you?" I looked at each of them in turn and no one had an answer. "Anyone? You have to have ideas here."

Rogue cleared her throat. "It's just…it's you guys! I couldn't hurt you guys!"

I sighed in frustration. It was the same old song and dance. "Rogue, all of you, that's the entire point of this exercise. I know Stryker had other feral mutants he was tracking. He kept his 'projects' apart, so I don't know how many. Could have been one, could have been a hundred for all I know."

"But they're not you guys!" She protested.

"So what? What if his remaining collaborators got their hand on us again and turned us back into the killers we were? The very first thing they'd do is send us back HERE. They'd do it knowing that you would all have trouble attacking us in earnest. You have to get over it!"

"Why?" Storm asked. "What are the chances of that happening in the first place?"

"As long as we never leave the mansion again? Zero." Logan said from where he was sitting with his feet propped up on the table. "But we all know that we'll eventually have to go somewhere. It could happen the next time I go to town for smokes. Or they could capture a bunch of kids like they did before, knowin' we'd come runnin'. Or any of a thousand different things could happen."

I nodded in agreement. "You have to remember that we are trained in one thing and we are very, very good at it. If something like that happened, neither one of us would hesitate to kill you all. Hell, I'd probably do it with a smile on my face."

"And you can guarantee that anythin' else they send in here will be just as well-trained as we are. You asked us to give you the nastiest scenario we could think of and we delivered. Now it's up to you to get through it alive."

They sat in silence for a while, mulling it over. I looked over at Logan, who just shrugged. He didn't know how to get through to them either. "Listen, we didn't want to do this, but I don't see a choice." I sighed. "We want to run this again tomorrow with the failsafes off. We want all of you to use your powers against us just like any other enemy. Rogue, that means no gloves and do NOT hesitate to touch either one of us."

"Angela! I can't do that!" She yelled, jumping to her feet. "You know what'll happen if I do!"

"Yes, I do. But we won't hold back on you guys anymore either. The best we can promise is that Logan won't stab you and I won't tear your throats out. But everything else is fair game."

They filed out of the room looking somber. It was a huge risk, I knew that, going full out against them. Once there were no safeties, there was a good chance that either Logan or I would give in to the animal and lose all sense of what we were doing. But I couldn't see any other way to bring it home to them that we could be the enemy someday, or someone just like us. It was ugly and it would be painful, but they'd finally learn. I sat down with a sigh and put my head in my hands.

"You look tired, darlin'. Why don't you get some sleep?" Logan asked, stroking my head.

"I can't." I replied, looking up at him with a tired smile. "I have to reprogram the scenario, go over the logs of this most recent disaster and see what they need to change and about a million other things."

"Yeah, I know. You're workin' yourself to death on this darlin'. What I don't get is why."

I shrugged. "I can't explain it. I just see all these new faces around here every day and it scares the shit out of me that something might happen to them. That someone will get in here and we won't be around to stop them." I clenched my fists. "I know that the chances of them getting their hands back on either one us are so small that we can pretty much rule them out. But I am certain there were others like us that I never saw. What if one of them is still active with them?" I shook my head. "No, we have to push them. I have to push them, even if it means they have to kill me. I'll be back, it doesn't matter."

"Just promise me you won't stay up til dawn?" He said, grasping my hands. "It gets lonely up there without you."

I smiled in genuine amusement. "Is the extreme horniness part of your mutation or is it just a man thing?"

He grinned. "Wouldn't you like to know?" He stood up and kissed the top of my head. "I'll be waitin' for you."

I watched him leave the conference room then went back to the control room. I was going over the logs of that last session and trying to figure out what went wrong this time, but I was still coming up blank. It was just after ten when I started; the next time I looked at the clock it was after two. I cursed silently and pushed away from the console. It would just have to wait until morning. I walked down to the security office to check in before heading up to bed.

I poked my head in and saw Jubilee sitting there. "Hey Angela." She greeted. "How's it going?"

"Frustrating, as you know. I have to get that scenario perfected and you guys have to get over being afraid to hurt us."

She grimaced. "Yeah, I know. I guess it's because we know it's not real that we're not really trying."

"Like I said before, get over it." I looked over the monitors that kept track of all parts of the mansion. As I was looking at the one the was focused on the patio, something just looked off. I rubbed my eyes thinking 'I'm more tired than I thought' when the same thing happened again. I leaned in close to the screen, thinking, HOPING, it was a trick of the light, but I saw it again. It was a little thing, something anyone else would have missed. In fact, Jubilee had missed it. But I didn't. I watched closely as a leaf fell from a tree and came to rest near the edge of the patio, but less than a second later, it vanished. About half a minute later, it fell again.

"SHIT!" I yelled, scaring the wits out of Jubilee. I hit a button on the main console, which activated a silent alarm and locked every door in the house except those belonging to the staff.

"What is it?" She asked, her voice shaking.

"Someone looped camera five! We have a serious problem!" I ran out of the control room and shot down the hall to the elevator. It seemed to take forever for it to reach the main floor, but I was running as soon as the door opened. I dashed up the stairs to the second floor to find Storm, Kurt and Scott standing in the hallway, bewildered looks on their faces.

"Vhat is it, Angela?" Kurt asked, clearly confused.

I quickly outlined what I saw on the camera as I took stock of the immediate area. It took less than a minute, but that was enough for me to worry. Logan wasn't out here yet. "Where's Logan?" I asked, suddenly frantic.

"I don't know." Storm replied. "Maybe he's already patrolling downstairs."

"No, I would have seen him." I turned and ran to our door, which was still closed. I tried the knob and it was unlocked. I felt every muscle in my body tense as I pushed the door open and entered in a crouch. What I saw made my stomach drop.

The room was in a shambles. Claw marks scored the front of the closet and the dresser was in pieces. The bedding was shredded and I saw a few small drops of blood on their remains. Logan was nowhere to be found. I suddenly felt detached from myself, as though I was just a passenger in my body. I could hear my blood rushing in my ears and my vision was obscured in a red haze. The animal was taking over and I welcomed it.

The lights suddenly came up and I blinked back the red. "Mein Gott! Vhat happened here?" I heard Kurt ask as though from a great distance. Scott and Storm followed him in and I heard her gasp in alarm.

"Security breach. Scramble Beta for lockdown. We need to do a sweep." I said. No one moved. "Now! Someone's got Logan!" They were out the door without further prompting. I went over to the bedding and touched it. It was still faintly warm from his body, so whoever had him had just grabbed him moments before I'd seen the looped image on the monitor downstairs. I still felt like two people; Angela Rex was in there, screaming in grief and begging for answers. But it was Hellcat who calmly went to the nightstand and got the communicator, placing it in her ear and walking out into the hallway. "Alpha team, check in."

I paused and listened as everyone confirmed they were on radio. I tapped the earpiece to change frequency. "Beta team, check in." Another pause as they confirmed their positions. "Alpha, I want Nightcrawler to check the interior with Rogue and Shadowcat. Cyclops, Storm, you'll take the front of the grounds. I want Wild Child with me out back. The rest of Beta, I want you inside, check every dorm room and get me a head count. Go!" I issued the orders with a calm I really didn't feel. My vision was going red again, but I willed it back and kicked off my shoes. Taking off at a run, I met Kyle at the back doors and we slipped into the night.

It was cool out, but there was no dew on the grass. I motioned to Kyle to check to the left, while I took the right. This meant that I would have to check the woods, but I wanted it that way. It was the likeliest way someone would have gotten off the grounds without being detected. I ran silently down the path, my ears stretched to the limit for anything that was amiss. My eyes took in a thousand details with every glance. Broken branches, bruised wildflowers, a fox hiding in the underbrush. With my enhanced vision, the night was an open book to me; nothing was hidden. The trail of broken foliage led back to what I thought of as "my" tree.

I scrambled straight up the trunk to the topmost branches and started scanning my surroundings. This was the tallest tree on the grounds and I had an unobstructed view of everything. I could make out Kyle doing his search, slight movement behind darkened windows in the dorms, leaves skittering along the patio, harbingers of a dying season. I shifted my gaze away from the school just in time to see a dark colored van speeding down Greymalkin Lane. That had to be it. Fuck, they had him.

"Hellcat to Alpha, one vehicle leaving the scene." I spat into the communicator. "Dark colored van. Ready for pursuit. Meet me in the garage." I climbed swiftly back down the tree and ran full out back to the mansion. As I ran, I sent the strongest thought I could in the general direction of Xavier, hoping he'd pick up on it. 'Professor, we'll probably need Cerebro on this.'

'Already on my way. Be careful.'

'Only if I have to be. When I get my hands on these assholes, they're dead.'

'Hellcat…'

'No, they are. They just don't know it yet.'

I made it to the garage and the others were already there. However, none of them except for Rogue were preparing for pursuit. I stalked over to Cyclops.

"I thought I said to be ready for pursuit. Why are the doors closed? No car running?"

"We have another problem." He said "Anissa is also missing."

"How? We were on lockdown."

"It appears that she's the one who tampered with our security system. We let her on security rotation because she's so good with the computers. I think she was a plant."

"How the hell did a plant get past the Professor?"

"I don't know, but until we know more, I feel that pursuit is not the best option."

That was it. I'd had enough. Without even thinking I hauled off and slapped him as hard as I could. "I don't give a fuck what you think. I'm going after him. The rest of you can stay or go, I don't give a shit, but they're not getting him. Not on my watch."

I rushed over to the motorcycle I'd seen Logan riding and straddled it. I vaguely heard Scott protest, but he was drowned out by the engine turning over. As I was getting it turned towards the door, I heard another protest and felt someone hop on behind me. I didn't have to turn my head to know it was Rogue. "Thanks for coming."

"I have to. I love him too." She said simply. I smiled and gunned the engine. Someone must have figured I'd crash through the door if I had to and wisely opened it. We shot out into the darkness.

The van was now at least four minutes ahead of us, but I was hoping to shorten that distance by breaking land speed records if I had to. Rogue was a good passenger, she didn't cling too tight and she moved with the bike instead of fighting it. I absently noted that this was probably because she'd absorbed Logan in the past and mentally thanked that fact. Of course, I couldn't go as fast through here as I wanted to because the road was full of blind curves. After an eternity, we finally came to where it ended at an intersection and I rolled to a stop.

"Why are we stopping? We have to catch them!" Rogue protested.

I put up a hand to quiet her and closed my eyes. I reached down, tapping into my feral side to let my instincts guide me. I also stretched my hearing and thought I could hear a single vehicle to the left. I took it and jammed the throttle. At least the road here was straight, even though it had some pretty good dips in it and I'm sure we caught some wicked air. Unfortunately, I was in no position to enjoy it. I kept part of my mind concentrating on that primal connection and followed wherever it led me. Ten minutes later we came to where the road dead-ended in a field just in time to see a chopper taking off in a vaguely northwestern direction. I screamed in pain and frustration and heard Rogue utter a strangled "no" behind me. Numbing cold fell over me like a shroud as I watched its ascent.

Rogue hopped off the bike. "God damn it! If that asshole Cyclops hadn't waited, we could have caught them!"

"I know. Fuck. I think I will kill him. It'll make me feel better." I replied, a lump forming in my throat.

"Can I help?"

"Sure."

I switched off the bike and parked it. The van was there, abandoned and I carefully climbed inside. As I expected, there was precious little in there for clues; A smear of blood on one of the inner panels, a couple long blond hairs (probably Anissa's), a spent tranquilizer dart and three evenly spaced slits in the floor of the van. He'd awakened just before we got there and we were still too late to save him. I scooped up the spent dart and gestured to Rogue and we got back on the bike and returned to the house.

I didn't even wait. As soon as the bike was parked, I was off and striding purposefully through the halls to the Professor's office. I don't know how I knew they'd all be there and not the security office, but I did. I jerked the door open, stalked over to Scott and this time I punched him in the jaw and I did not hold back. He flew back a couple feet and landed on the floor, stunned. "IDIOT!" I screamed. "Your pussyfooting around cost us valuable time. Had we been there just twenty seconds and I do mean TWENTY FUCKING SECONDS earlier, they'd have never gotten away!"

"Angela, please, calm down." Xavier said coolly.

"NO, I will not calm down! Don't you see? Can't you figure out what's happened? That bitch Anissa was sent to infiltrate this place to extract him! An op like this can take months to plan! The only reason they didn't get me too was because I wasn't there! I wasn't fucking there!" Angry tears started to leak from my eyes and I was sliding my claws in and out with frustration.

"Professor, Angela's right." Rogue added. "From what we could see in the van, he woke up and hurt someone right before we got there."

Scott stood up, scowling. "How do you know?"

I reached into my pocket and tossed the dart at him. "THAT'S how I know. They wouldn't have had to do that if he wasn't awake."

"Did you find any of those in your room?"

"I didn't look that hard, I was too concerned with saving someone's life!"

Scott snorted. "Logan can't die."

"YES HE CAN!" Everyone stopped and stared at me. "Logan's hard to kill, not impossible to kill. I know, because they would never have sent him out in the field without knowing his limitations. It's takes a lot and it's not pretty, but with enough effort, they can kill him. Maybe they just wanted him back to punish him for leaving, I don't know. Maybe they'll toss him in a vat of acid until there IS no Logan to heal. Or strap a nuclear bomb to his chest and have him waltz back in here so he can destroy everything he holds dear. But they can kill him. And if they can't turn him back, they will."

Storm's eyes widened in horror. "My God, Angela."

I nodded. "You wanted worst case scenario. This is it."

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AN: Oh look, a cliffie:) We're in the home stretch now, so bear with me...if everything goes right, I'll have the sequel finished and ready to post by the time I post the last chapter to this story...Special thanks to my beta readers, Zac and Turiel Tincdaniel for their tireless devotion to my cause...Extra Special thanks to DBK(tm) for his continuing efforts to keep me on track...Super Special thanks to those who reviewed, you not only make this all worth it, but the happy dance is a good time too! And, as always, Super Special Swanky thanks to the readers for sticking with me...now, if all of you who read would review, imagine the happy dancing that would ensue! So don't wait, just do it:)